The Jim Rutt Show

Max Borders with Jim on his new book, After Collapse: The End of America and the Rebirth of Her Ideals: GameB, complexity, climate, wokism... Max Borders talks to Jim about his new book, After Collapse: The End of America and the Rebirth of Her Ideals. They cover the definition of collapse, the potential role of debt in triggering a collapse, what a post-collapse scene might be like, cryptocurrencies, GameA vs GameB, complex vs complicated systems, the risks of scientism, climate change and its priority, the commons, mitigating negative externalities, the role of emergence, the negatives of funding moonshots, the cult of Elon Musk, Evonomics & the invisible hand, crony capitalism, negative impacts of wokism, and much more. Episode Transcript Mentions & Recommendations JRS: EP76 Max Borders on the Social Singularity After Collapse: The End of America and the Rebirth of Her Ideals Cardano JRS: EP56 Art Brock on Holo Tech Eric Weinstein JRS: EP73 James Lindsay on Cynical Theories Max Borders is a futurist, a theorist, a published author and an entrepreneur. He is the author of The Social Singularity and the founder and Executive Director of Social Evolution—a non-profit organization dedicated to liberating humanity through innovation. Max is also co-founder of the Voice & Exit event and former editor at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE).

John Bunzl talks to Jim about the multi-faceted approach to global cooperation he created, Simpol - The Simultaneous Policy... John Bunzl talks to Jim about his Simpol approach to global cooperation. They cover simultaneous implementation, connections to GameB, feasible viable support, the first-mover disadvantage, regulatory chill, the veto issue, destructive global competition, utilizing competition & cooperation, global problems, the myth of sovereign nations, wokism vs trumpism, the dead-ends of corporate social responsibility & the global justice movement, the failure of political targets, three core tactics of the Simpol solution, policy creation process & trade-offs, nation vs word-centric consciousness, biological & evolutionary connections, and more. Episode Transcript Mentions & Recommendations Simpol.org The Simpol Solution Book National Popular Vote The Logic of Collective Action by Mancur Olson Competitive Strategy by Michael Porter Competitive Advantage by Michael Porter Bret Weinstein JRS: EP111 Anatol Lieven on Climate & Nationalism John Bunzl is a global political activist and businessman. In 2000, he founded Simpol, a way for citizens to use their votes to drive politicians towards global cooperation. It has supporters in over 100 countries and enjoys the support of a growing number of Members of Parliament around the world. He has authored or co-authored a number of books including Monetary Reform – Making it Happen!, People-centred Global Governance – Making it Happen!, and Global Domestic Politics. He has published numerous articles on global governance in the Journal of Integral Theory & Practice. He has lectured widely, including to The Schumacher Society, The World Trade Organisation, The Lucis Trust, and various universities.

Jim & Simon DeDeo on his recent paper, "From Probability to Consilience: How Explanatory Values Implement Bayesian Reasoning"... In this currents episode, Jim talks to Simon DeDeo about his recently co-authored (with Zachary Wojtowicz) paper, "From Probability to Consilience: How Explanatory Values Implement Bayesian Reasoning". They cover its connection to AI & human development, description vs power in explanation, the value & challenge of using multiple conceptual lenses, the difference between powerful & unifying explanations, co-explanation, the Aristotelian aspect of this work, conspiracies, the value & complexity of simplicity, choosing explanation approaches, understanding their vices, and more. Episode Transcript Simon & Zach's paper, "From Probability to Consilience..." JRS: EP1 Simon DeDeo – The Evolution of Consciousness JRS Currents 001: Simon DeDeo on University Censorship JRS: Extra: On Post-COVID-19 Impact with Simon DeDeo Simon DeDeo is an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences, and External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. He is also affiliated with the Cognitive Science program at Indiana University, where he runs the Laboratory for Social Minds. For three years, from 2010 to 2013, he was an Omidyar Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute. He and his collaborators study how people use words and signals, and the ideas they represent, to create a world. They have studied a diverse set of systems that includes the French Revolution, the courtrooms of Victorian London, the research strategies of Charles Darwin, the insurgency of modern-day Afghanistan, the emergent bureaucracy of Wikipedia, the creation of power hierarchies among the social animals, and the collusions and conspiracies of petrol stations in the American Midwest. They combine data from the contemporary world, archives from the deep past, statistical tools from cosmology, and models of human cognition from Bayesian reasoning and information theory to understand how cultures grow, flourish, innovate, and evolve.

Zak Stein & Jim have a wide-ranging talk about the history & dynamics of hierarchical complexity & human development... Zak Stein & Jim have a wide-ranging talk about hierarchical complexity: its history, horizontal vs vertical development, the chunking property in development, emergence & evolution, success vs understanding, child development, the development advantage of youth, representational thinking & abstraction, the connection of social complexity & hierarchical development, limitation of measures of general intelligence, core dynamics of the levels of the model of hierarchical complexity, Lectica assessments use in education & business, key leadership skills, and much more. Episode Transcript Mentions & Recommendations Zak's Website JRS: EP57 Zak Stein on Education in a Time Between Worlds JRS: EP60 Zak Stein on Educational Systems Collapse JRS: EP62 Zak Stein on Education, Tech & Religion JRS: EP36 Hanzi Freinacht on Metamodernism Lectica board of directors Zachary Stein is a writer, educator, and futurist working to bring a greater sense of sanity and justice to education. He studied philosophy and religion at Hampshire College, and then educational neuroscience, human development, and the philosophy of education at Harvard University. While a student at Harvard, he co-founded what would become Lectica, Inc., a non-profit dedicated to the research-based, justice-oriented reform of large-scale standardized testing in K-12, higher-education, and business. He has published two books. Social Justice and Educational Measurement which was based on his dissertation and traces the history of standardized testing and its ethical implications. His second book, Education in a Time Between Worlds, expands the philosophical work to include grappling with the relations between schooling and technology more broadly. He writes for peer-reviewed academic journals across a range of topics including the philosophy of learning, educational technology, and integral theory. He’s a scholar at the Ronin Institute, Co-President and Academic Director of the activist think-tank at the Center for Integral Wisdom, and scientific advisor to the board of the Neurohacker Collective and other technology start-ups.

Charles Hoskinson & Jim on blockchain history, his history with the Ethereum project & what led him to found Cardano, a 3rd gen project, and much more... In this currents episode, Charles Hoskinson talks with Jim about the history of blockchain projects, his history with the Ethereum project and what led him to found Cardano, a 3rd gen project. They cover interoperability & decentralization, other projects & protocols, transactions per second considerations & dubious relevance, downside of proof of work & mining, Cardano's innovation via robust theory & strong engineering, Bitcoin inefficiency & scaling issues, the challenge of deeply understanding Cardano, comparing programming languages for blockchains, network effects, ecosystem considerations & their impact on tech adoption, addressing social media radicalization & moderation issues, and much more. Episode Transcript Ethereum Cardano IOHK JRS: Currents 026: Bill Ottman on Minds.com JRS: EP56 Art Brock on Holo Tech Daryl Davis Charles Hoskinson is a technology entrepreneur and mathematician. He attended Metropolitan State University of Denver and University of Colorado Boulder to study analytic number theory before moving into cryptography through industry exposure. His professional experience includes founding three cryptocurrency-related start-ups – Invictus Innovations, Ethereum and IOHK – and he has held a variety of posts in both the public and private sectors. He was the founding chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation’s education committee and established the Cryptocurrency Research Group in 2013. His current projects focus on educating people about cryptocurrency, being an evangelist for decentralization and making cryptographic tools easier to use for the mainstream. This includes leading the research, design and development of Cardano, a third-generation cryptocurrency that launched in September 2017.

Annie Duke & Jim have a wide-ranging talk about how key themes in her last two books lead to making better bets & decisions... Annie Duke & Jim talk about some of the key themes in her last two books. They cover how she became a championship level poker player, the deep differences between poker and chess, the complexity of poker & winning strategies, "resulting" and outcome bias, skill vs luck, "thinking in bets", making better decisions, system 1 vs 2 thinking, optionality, the 10/10/10 methodology, grit & quit dynamics, hindsight & recency bias, the value of peers & coaching, Nick the Greek, and much more. Episode Transcript Mentions & Recommendations Annie's book, Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts Annie's book, How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices Annie's Website Annie Duke is an author, corporate speaker, and consultant in the decision-making space. As a former professional poker player, she has won more than $4 million in tournament poker. During her career, Annie won a World Series of Poker bracelet and is the only woman to have won the World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions and the NBC National Poker Heads-Up Championship. She retired from the game in 2012. Prior to becoming a professional poker player, Annie was awarded a National Science Foundation Fellowship to study Cognitive Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the co-founder of The Alliance for Decision Education, a non-profit whose mission is to improve lives by empowering students through decision skills education. She is also a member of the National Board of After-School All-Stars and the Board of Directors of the Franklin Institute. In 2020, she joined the board of the Renew Democracy Initiative.

Anatol Lieven & Jim have a wide-ranging talk about his latest book, Climate Change and the Nation State: The Realist Case... Anatol Lieven & Jim talk about his latest book, Climate Change and the Nation State: The Realist Case. They cover motivating populations to take actions on climate change, the key role of nations & nationalism, the huge problem of residual elites, funding alternative energy, western government incompetence & political failures, individuality, Bernie & the green new deal, the carbon tax, nuclear power, natural gas, carbon removal & geoengineering, naive progressivism, the strangeness of the American culture wars, intelligent immigration, the importance of building social solidarity, getting clear on international priorities, global impacts of climate change, reducing air travel, Anatol's sensible approaches to climate change, and much more. Mentions & Recommendations Episode Transcript Anatol's book, Climate Change and the Nation State Anatol Lieven is a professor in Georgetown University in Qatar. He is a visiting professor in the War Studies Department of King’s College London, a senior fellow of the New America Foundation in Washington DC and a member of the academic board of the Valdai discussion club in Russia. He also serves on the advisory committee of the South Asia Department of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He holds a BA and PhD from Cambridge University in England. He's currently working on the relationship between nationalism and progress in modern history. From 1985 to 1998, Anatol Lieven worked as a British journalist in South Asia, the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and is author of several books on Russia and its neighbours including Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power? and Ukraine and Russia: A Fraternal Rivalry. From 2000 to 2007 he worked at think tanks in Washington DC. A new edition of his book America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism was published in 2012.

Brad Kershner & Jim on his book, Understanding Educational Complexity: Integrating Practices and Perspectives for 21st Century Leadership... Brad Kershner talks to Jim about his book, Understanding Educational Complexity: Integrating Practices and Perspectives for 21st Century Leadership. They cover how Brad defines complexity, key contextual aspects of education, the four quadrants of Integral Theory & how he used them when observing schools, identifying & working with strange attractors, leadership, driving change in complexity, turbulence vs perturbation, position-based vs role-based leadership, complex vs complicated systems, mixed-age education, enabling creativity in teaching, and the importance of autonomy. They finish the episode by talking about theories of psychological development: Kegan levels, Integral Theory, hierarchical complexity, avoiding stage simplification, and much more. Episode Transcript Mentions & Recommendations Brad's Early School Brad's YouTube Lectures JRS: EP100 Sam Bowles on Our Cooperative Nature Jim's article, In Search of the 5th Attractor Zak Stein JRS Episodes Theo L. Dawson & other Lectica Board Members Hanzi Freinacht JRS Episodes Brad Kershner is a school leader and independent scholar, and the author of Understanding Educational Complexity: Integrating Practices and Perspectives for 21st Century Leadership. His research, teaching, and writing cover a wide range of interdependent topics, including education, leadership, parenting, race, technology, metamodernism, integral theory, meditation, developmental psychology, complexity, and sociocultural emergence.

Bill Ottman & Jim have a wide-ranging talk on the state of social media and his open-source social platform, Minds.com... In this currents episode, Bill Ottman & Jim have a wide-ranging talk on the state of social media and his open-source social platform (Minds.com). They talk about what makes Minds different than other social networks: open-source, community-owned, profit-shared, decentralized, free speech, privacy, decentralized reputation, moderation process, monetization & incentives, tokens, AWS & decentralizing the back-end, Ethereum, and more. They also chat about Jim's recent Facebook banning, GitHub censorship, Reddit's move away from open-source, power & corruption, radicalizing dynamics of censorship, doxing, Google’s demands on the Minds app, possible government platform regulation, the media influence on big tech, Twitter & Facebook opportunities, some relevant stories from Jim’s CEO days at Network Solutions, the GameStop short squeeze, and more. Episode Transcript Developers.Minds.com Jim on Minds Daryl Davis Letter.wiki The Santa Clara Principles Cardano Casandra on Apache Mark Zuckerberg Speaks About Free Speech at Georgetown Joe Rogan Podcast with Tim Pool, Jack Dorsey & Vijaya Gadde Mastodon Bill Otman is the Co-creator & CEO of Minds.com.

Forrest Landry & Jim build on the foundation they built in his last JRS episode to continue to flesh out Forrest's Immanent Metaphysics... Forrest Landry & Jim build on the foundation they built in his last JRS episode to continue to flesh out Forrest's Immanent Metaphysics. They explore the self, subject/object relationship, perception, the nature of choice & process, causality & determinism, realism vs idealism, dualism, the foundational triplicate, the three modalities, statement & implications of Forrest's three axioms, their associated modalities, and much more. Episode Transcript Mentions & Recommendations JRS: EP96 Forrest Landry on Immanent Metaphysics: Part 1 JRS: EP31 Forrest Landry on Building our Future Immanent Metaphysics Landing Page (MFLB.com/1296) Forrest Landry is a philosopher, writer, researcher, scientist, engineer, craftsman, and teacher focused on metaphysics, the manner in which software applications, tools, and techniques influence the design and management of very large scale complex systems, and the thriving of all forms of life on this planet. Forrest is also the founder and CEO of Magic Flight, a third-generation master woodworker who found that he had a unique set of skills in large scale software systems design. Which led him to work in the production of several federal classified and unclassified systems, including various FBI investigative projects, TSC, IDW, DARPA, the Library of Congress Congressional Records System, and many others.

Bernard Baars talks to Jim about some of the key ideas in his book, On Consciousness: Science & Subjectivity... Bernard Baars talks to Jim about some of the key ideas in his book, On Consciousness: Science & Subjectivity. They start by covering some of the history of the scientific study of consciousness & its taboo reputation in science, the philosopher's zombie, and the limits of philosophy to study consciousness. They then go into some of the specifics of Bernards global workspace theory (GWT): limited capacity, conscious content & perceived objects, the aspects of the theater metaphor, dynamics of attention, animal consciousness, global access, contrastive analysis, unconscious & conscious interaction, upcoming integrated information theory (IIT) vs. GWT experimentation, and much more. Episode Transcript Mentions & Recommendations Bernard's book, On Consciousness Bernard on Twitter JRS: EP105 Christof Koch on Consciousness JRS: EP97 Emery Brown on Consciousness & Anesthesia Consciousness Explained by Dan Dennett The Mystery Of Consciousness by John Searle Bernard Baars is Co-founder & Editor in Chief of the Society for MindBrain Sciences, a former Senior Fellow in Theoretical Neurobiology at The Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, CA., and currently an Affiliated Fellow there. He is best known as the originator of the global workspace theory, a theory of human cognitive architecture and consciousness. He is recipient of the 2019 Hermann von Helmholtz Life Contribution Award by the International Neural Network Society recognizing work in perception proven to be paradigm changing and long lasting.

In this Currents episode, Ben Goertzel & Jim have a wide-ranging talk about the urgent need for decentralized tech platforms. They cover Jim's recent banning from Facebook & how it might have happened, the danger of kafkaesque algorithms & the challenge of building AI's that explain their decisions, the challenges around creating alternatives to big tech, politics power & corruption, game theory for today’s social platforms, Signal vs Telegram, moving Gameb off Facebook, alternative app frameworks, the David vs Goliath history of tech, the radicalization problem of alternative platforms & some possible solutions, generic vs specialized solutions, the role of AI in future platforms, and much more. Episode Transcript SingularityNET Blog OpenCog JRS Extra: On Post COVID-19 Impacts with Ben Goertzel JRS: EP3 Dr. Ben Goertzel – OpenCog, AGI and SingularityNET JRS: EP52 Steven Levy on Facebook: The Inside Story Ben's Interview with Charles Hoskinson Dr. Ben Goertzel is Chief Scientist of robotics firm Hanson Robotics and financial prediction firm Aidyia Holdings; Chairman of AI software company Novamente LLC and bioinformatics company Biomind LLC; Chairman of the Artificial General Intelligence Society and the OpenCog Foundation; Vice Chairman of futurist nonprofit Humanity+; Scientific Advisor of biopharma firm Genescient Corp.; Advisor to the Singularity University and Singularity Institute; Research Professor in the Fujian Key Lab for Brain-Like Intelligent Systems at Xiamen University, China; and general Chair of the Artificial General Intelligence conference series. His research work encompasses artificial general intelligence, natural language processing, cognitive science, data mining, machine learning, computational finance, bioinformatics, virtual worlds and gaming and other areas. He has published a dozen scientific books, 100+ technical papers, and numerous journalistic articles.

Tristan Harris & Jim on his hugely successful documentary, The Social Dilemma: social media good, harms, regulation, bold interventions, and much more... Tristan Harris talks to Jim about his hugely successful documentary, The Social Dilemma. They start by identifying the good aspects of social media, the obvious harms & exploitation tactics, AI-enabled race to the bottom dynamics, digital regulation approaches, the big tech oligarchs, combating cultish dynamics, AI-powered algorithmic influence, the conflict bias & its impact on our agency, establishing positive psychological habits, the unintuitive relationship between education & confirmation bias, and more. They finish the episode by speculating on the impacts of bold social media interventions like banning advertising, making them only legal for adults, or outlawing recommendation engines. Episode Transcript Mentions & Recommendations The Social Dilemma Your Undivided Attention Podcast JRS: EP38 Tristan Harris on Humane Tech JRS: EP81 Renée DiResta on Social Media Warfare Tristan Harris is the Co-Founder & Executive Director of the Center for Humane Technology, and the Co-Host of the podcast, “Your Undivided Attention.” He was called the “closest thing Silicon Valley has to a conscience” by The Atlantic magazine, Tristan was the former Design Ethicist at Google. He is a world expert on how technology steers us all, leaving Google to engage the issue publicly. Tristan spent over a decade understanding subtle psychological forces, from his childhood as a magician, to working with the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab, to his role as CEO of Apture, which was acquired by Google. His work on the attention economy started in 2013, when he created a slide deck within Google that went viral, warning about the technology industry’s arms race to capture human attention and the moral responsibility companies have for the ways they restructure society. Tristan’s work has been featured on TED, The Atlantic, 60 Minutes, The New York Times, The Associated Press, Wall Street Journal. and many more. Tristan has briefed Heads of State, technology company CEOs, and members of U.S. Congress about the attention economy.

BJ Campbell has a wide-ranging talk with Jim about article, "Social Justice is a Crowdsourced Religion", reflects on the future of wokeism, and much more... In this Currents episode, BJ Campbell has a wide-ranging talk with Jim about his article, "Social Justice is a Crowdsourced Religion": the history of the wokeism & how it can be seen as a religion, what makes religions efficacious, the falsification problem, woke scientific contradictions, protestant similarities, woke prevalence, its rapid ideological evolution, network-based self-organization, why wokeism should accept the religion title, the nature of mass movements & true believers, memetic tribes, the rapid growth of wokeism, its good initial intentions, and more. Episode Transcript Handwaving Freakoutery Handwaving Freakoutery on Substack Open Source Defense JRS: EP73 James Lindsay on Cynical Theories JRS: Currents 021: John Robb on Jan 6th, 2021 The True Believer by Eric Hoffer EP38 Tristan Harris on Humane Tech Peter Limberg's article, The Memetic Tribes Of Culture War 2.0

Michael Stevens talks to Jim about some of the ideas & stories in his book, The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science... Michael Stevens talks to Jim about some of the ideas & stories in his book, The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science: what the great method debate is & how Popper & Kuhn added to the topic, falsification & scientific progress, the messy history of testing Einstein's theories, understanding the theoretical cohort, Michael's iron rule, science vs natural philosophy, Francis Bacon's view on science, scientific convergence, the Tychonic principal, theory vs experimentation, Newton's trendsetting approach to science, the war against beauty in science, why science was born in western Europe, and much more. Episode Transcript Mentions & Recommendations Michael's Website Michael's book, The Knowledge Machine Michael Strevens is Professor of Philosophy at New York University, where since 2004 he has taught and thought about the nature of science, complex systems, the psychology of philosophy, the role of physical intuition in scientific discovery, and the nature of explanation and understanding, among other things. He was born and raised in New Zealand, graduated with a PhD in philosophy from Rutgers University, and has previously taught at Iowa State University and Stanford University. In 2017, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives in New York City.

Christof Koch & Jim have a wide-ranging conversation about the science of consciousness and his book, The Feeling of Life Itself: Why Consciousness Is Widespread But Can't Be Computed... Christof Koch and Jim have a wide-ranging conversation about the science of consciousness. They start by exploring some key topics brought up in his book, The Feeling of Life Itself: Why Consciousness Is Widespread But Can't Be Computed: defining conscious experience, the importance of feeling, the historical value of Cartesian dualism, the challenge of materialism to explain mental phenomena, emergent consciousness, neural correlates of consciousness & enabling factors, ways of understanding qualia, and consciousness vs intelligence. They finish this episode by talking about integrated information theory (IIT): origins & dynamics, consciousness substrates & what it could mean for AI, small & large phi, uniting consciousnesses, IIT vs. global workspace theory (GWT) experimentation, panpsychism, and much more. Episode Transcript Mentions & Recommendations Christof's book, The Feeling of Life Itself JRS: EP97 Emery Brown on Consciousness & Anesthesia Christof Koch, PhD is a neuroscientist best known for his studies and writings exploring the brain basis of consciousness. Trained as a physicist, Koch was for 27 years a professor of biology and engineering at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. He is now Chief Scientist, MindScope Program at the Allen Institute in Seattle, leading a large-scale, high through-put effort to build brain observatories to map, analyze and understand the visual system of the mouse. Dr. Koch is interested in the biophysics of the brain, in brain-machine interfaces, in the neurophysiology of cortex, in conscious experiences and what they can tell us about the mind and the brain. He published his first paper on the neural correlates of consciousness with the molecular biologist Francis Crick thirty years ago.

Joe Henrich talks to Jim about some of the key insights from his book, The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar & Particularly Prosperous. Joe Henrich talks to Jim about some of the key insights from his book, The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar & Particularly Prosperous. They cover who the WEIRD people are & what impact their WERDness has on academic research, the impact of literacy on cognition, nature & nurture, the unique characteristics of WEIRD people, individualist vs relational dispositions, guilt vs shame cultures, how events in Middle Ages driven by the Catholic Church lead to WEIRDness, kin-based institutions & cultures, non-kin organizations in societies & their impacts, differing views on justice, individualism's role in innovation & wealth, wholistic vs analytical thinking, moral universalism, free will, possible WEIRD genetic drivers, and more. Episode Transcript Mentions & Recommendations Joe's book, The WEIRDest People in the World Joe's paper, The weirdest people in the world? JRS: EP100 Sam Bowles on Our Cooperative Nature Joe on Twitter Jonathan Haidt Dr. Henrich is currently a Harvard Professor and Chair of the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology. Before moving to Harvard, he was a professor of both Economics and Psychology at the University of British Columbia for nearly a decade, where he held the Canada Research Chair in Culture, Cognition and Coevolution. In 2013-14, Dr. Henrich held the Peter and Charlotte Schoenenfeld Faculty Fellowship at NYU’s Stern School of Business. His research deploys evolutionary theory to understand how human psychology gives rise to cultural evolution and how this has shaped our species’ genetic evolution. Using insights generated from this approach, Professor Henrich has explored a variety of topics, including economic decision-making, social norms, fairness, religion, marriage, prestige, cooperation and innovation. He’s conducted long-term anthropological fieldwork in Peru, Chile and in the South Pacific, as well as having spearheaded several large comparative projects.

Former U.S. Capitol Police Chief, Terry Gainer talks to Jim about his views on the January 6th riot at the U.S. Capitol... In this Currents episode, Former U.S. Capitol Police Chief, Terry Gainer talks to Jim about his views on the January 6th riot at the U.S. Capitol. He discusses shortcomings in preparations, intelligence, and operations, highlights failure to adjust as new information came in, describes issues with the chain of command that impacted both preparation and response, the role of "optics" in protest preparations, how macro failure arose from several smaller ones, examines claims of police & military collusion with the rioters, positive aspects of the law enforcement response, and much more. Episode Transcript Terry Gainer began his law enforcement career as a police officer in the Chicago Police Department and rose through the ranks, including serving as a homicide detective and after gaining a law degree, Chief Legal Officer. He served as Deputy Inspector General, Deputy Director, and Director of the Illinois State Police. In 1998, Terry was named Executive Assistant Chief of Police for the Washington DC Metropolitan Police Department. In 2002 he was selected as Chief of the U.S. Capitol Police. From January 2007 to May 2014, Terry served as the 38th United States Senate Sergeant at Arms. While serving as Sergeant at Arms, Mr. Gainer was appointed a commissioner on the Independent Commission on the Security Forces of Iraq, and served as Special Envoy for Middle East Regional Security, to advance the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute by assisting in strengthening security institutions.

Jim talks to Curtis Yarvin about his recent article, "2020, the year of everything fake": presentism, history, COVID-19 response failures, and much more... In this Currents episode, Jim talks to Curtis Yarvin about some key points in his recent article, "2020, the year of everything fake". They start by talking about the ability &/or inability to take the world seriously, presentism, history, political formulas & their connection to governmental failure, the fall of the soviet union, and the stupidity quotient. They then explore aspects of the US institutional failures related to the COVID-19 response: virus origin, vaccines, conflicting incentives, lockdowns, and US governmental ops capacities today & in the past. They go on to talk about the Manhattan Project, oligarchy vs monarchy, and Curtis wraps the episode up by reciting a speech from 1933 to demonstrate how much has changed. Episode Transcript Curtis' site, Gray Mirror 2020, the year of everything fake The Rise and Decline of Nations by Mancur Olson The Logic of Collective Action by Mancur Olson Nicholson Baker's article, The Lab-Leak Hypothesis JRS: Currents 002: Brian Hanley on Releasing the Vaccines Coronavirus: The Hammer and the Dance Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott Curtis Yarvin (AKA Mencius Moldbug) is widely credited with founding neoreaction (NRx). Yarvin describes NRx as a political philosophy and intellectual movement dedicated to providing secure, responsible, and effective government. Yarvin further says a central thesis of neoreaction is that accomplishing this goal requires a critical re-evaluation of “democracy” from the perspective of political engineering and informed by a study of the great political thinkers of the past.

John Robb talks to Jim about the Jan 6th events at the US Capitol: intel & ops failures, opensource insurgency, social media, Trump, and much more... In this Currents episode, Jim talks to John Robb about the Jan 6th events at the US Capitol. They cover the intelligence & operations failures, the event as an example of domestic opensource insurgency, heterogeneous motivations & intentions among the protesters, self-organizing network tribal dynamics of the right & left, the conspiracy attractor for the insurgents, the criticality of this cultural moment, current & past US election distrust, consensus vs dissent on social media, Trump's role, the shifting political field & strategies, the Parler shutdown, big tech power & alternatives, and much more. Episode Transcript John’s Patreon: Global Guerrillas Trump's Jan 6th Speech John's Past JRS Episodes John is an author, inventor, entrepreneur, technology analyst, astro engineer, and military pilot. He’s started numerous successful technology companies, including one in the financial sector that sold for $295 million and one that pioneered the software we currently see in use at Facebook and Twitter. John’s insight on technology and governance has appeared on the BBC, Fox News, National Public Radio, CNBC, The Economist, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and BusinessWeek. John served as a pilot in a tier-one counter-terrorism unit that worked alongside Delta and Seal Team 6. He wrote the book Brave New War on the future of national security, and has advised the Joint Chiefs of Staff, NSA, DoD, CIA, and the House Armed Services Committee.

James Ehrlich talks to Jim about ReGen Villages: community types, de-urbanization & rural living, materialism, agriculture, and much more... James Ehrlich talks to Jim about what makes a ReGen Village, potential community organization types, how ReGen Villages could learn from each other, utilizing machine learning, working with existing government regulations, the importance & urgent need for ReGen Villages, the COVID-19 impact on demand, city living & de-urbanization, misconceptions of rural living, climate change, healthy living with less, materialism, funding villages, the future of pre-fab construction, plans for ReGen Village agriculture, and more. Episode Transcript Mentions & Recommendations ReGen Villages James on Twitter Business Insider article on Regen Villages James Ehrlich is Founder of ReGen Villages a Stanford University spin-off company realizing the future of living in regenerative and resilient communities, with critical life support of organic food, clean water, renewable energy and circular nutritional flows at the neighborhood scale. James is also an Entrepreneur in Residence at the Stanford University School of Medicine Flourishing Project, Faculty at Singularity University, Senior Fellow at NASA Ames Research Center and (Obama) White House Appointee for Regenerative Infrastructure. Ehrlich founded ReGen Villages as a Dutch (EU) impact-profit company in 2016, with its patented VillageOS™ operating system software to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to define, design and autonomously manage regenerative neighborhoods that promote healthy long-term outcomes for residents and wider communities. ReGen Villages are planned for global replication and scale in collaboration with established industrial partners, universities, governments and sovereign wealth and pension funds, enabling an optimistic post-COVID green transition.

Debora Spar & Jim have a wide-ranging chat on some of the insights in her book, Work Mate Marry Love: How Machines Shape Our Human Destiny. Debora Spar and Jim have a wide-ranging conversation on some of the insights in her book, Work Mate Marry Love: How Machines Shape Our Human Destiny. They start by focusing on our transition from forager to agricultural life: the creation of property & new family structures, roles & lifestyles of women, polygyny, hoe vs plow cultures, and bastard children. They then go on to cover highlights of the industrial revolution: fossil fuels & steam power impacts, the idea of progress, factory life, women's changing cultural expectation, class dynamics, washing machines & other impactful household appliances, freeing dynamics of automobiles & female birth control. They finish this chat by talking about more recent technological inventions & their potential impacts: in-vitro fertilization & genetic technologies, surrogacy, online dating, and more. Episode Transcript Mentions & Recommendations DeboraSpar.com Debora's book, Work Mate Marry Love Debora on Twitter Debora Spar is the MBA Class of 1952 Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and Senior Associate Dean of HBS Online. Her current research focuses on issues of gender and technology, and the interplay between technological change and broader social structures. She served as the President of Barnard College from 2008 to 2017. During her tenure at Barnard, Spar led initiatives to highlight women’s leadership and advancement, including the creation of the Athena Center for Leadership Studies and the development of Barnard’s Global Symposium series. Before joining Barnard, Spar spent 17 years on the HBS faculty as the Spangler Family Professor as well as the Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Research and Development. She is a member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences and serves as a director of Value Retail LLC and Thermo Fisher Scientific, as well as a trustee of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Spar earned her Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University and her B.S. from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

Clayton Banks talks to Jim about essential tools & digital literacy, why & how he started Silicon Harlem, community dev, the FCC, and much more... Clayton Banks talks to Jim about bridging the digital divide & the importance of internet access, essential tools & digital literacy, prioritizing digital infrastructure, possible COVID-19 impacts on the digital divide, capitalism with empathy, why & how he started Silicon Harlem, key relationships for community development, online meetups & business, internet costs & limitations, 5G tech potential & conspiracies, internet service competition & regulation, the power of the FCC, the racial disparity of computer access, keeping the digital divide non-partisan, and much more. Episode Transcript Mentions & Recommendations Clayton on Twitter Silicon Harlem Clayton Banks is the Co-Founder of Silicon Harlem. The mission of Silicon Harlem is to transform Harlem and other urban markets into Innovation and Technology Hubs. Under his leadership, Silicon Harlem has been able to partner with the Department of Education for New York City to establish an after school STEM based startup accelerator, collaborate with the NYC Mayor’s office to assess wireless broadband in upper manhattan and coordinate a virtual startup incubator for tech-based entrepreneurs. Banks has established a comprehensive next-generation technology conference in Harlem, the Silicon Harlem tech conference is focused on envisioning the technological future of urban markets and how innovation can move a community forward. Prior to Silicon Harlem, Banks has been a pioneer in the cable and communications industry for over two decades.

Sam Bowles talks to Jim about his book, A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity and Its Evolution: competition, hierarchy, game theory, and much more... Sam Bowles talks to Jim about his book, A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity and Its Evolution, co-authored with Herbert Gintis. They start by exploring cooperation in hunter-gatherer living: how human cooperation is different from other species', collaboration needed for big game hunting, egalitarianism & competition, hierarchy myths, impacts of weapons, how far cooperation goes back in history, the size & make-up of cooperative groups, altruism, and prerequisites for group selection. They then talk about collaboration in cultures more broadly: the wonder of nationalism, the pros of external threat, cultural progress, leadership, paradoxes of the prisoner's dilemma, differences in cultural cooperation, the "civilizing force of markets", game theory, punishing free-riders, the limitations of unconditional generosity, and more. Episode Transcript Mentions & Recommendations Sam's Site Sam's book, A Cooperative Species Hierarchy in the Forest by Christopher Boehm Samuel Bowles, (PhD, Economics, Harvard University) is Research Professor at the Santa Fe Institute where he heads the Behavioral Sciences Program. He taught economics at Harvard from 1965 to 1973 and since then at the University of Massachusetts, where he is now emeritus professor and at the University of Siena from 2002 to 2010 where he continues to occasionally teach. Bowles’ current research also includes theoretical and empirical studies of political hierarchy and wealth inequality and their evolution over the very long run. His most recent book is The Moral Economy: Why good laws are no substitute for good citizens. Other recent books include A Cooperative Species: Human reciprocity and its evolution, The new economics of inequality and redistribution, and Microeconomics: Behavior, Institutions and Evolution. He has also served as an economic advisor to the governments of Cuba, South Africa and Greece, to U.S presidential candidates Robert F. Kennedy and Jesse Jackson, to the Legislature of the State of New Mexico, to the Congress of South African Trade Unions, and to South African President Nelson Mandela. With the CORE Project he has produced a new free online introductory etext, The Economy.

Barbara Oakley talks to Jim about fluency across domains, understanding-centered learning, education evolution, online learning, and much more... In this Currents episode, Jim and Barbara Oakley start by talking about her eclectic background & career, then go on to talk about her article, How I Rewired My Brain to Become Fluent in Math: how a liberal arts person learned advanced math and became an engineering professor, fluency across domains, understanding-centered learning & the limits of procedural understanding, cultural-based education differences, slow educational evolution, online education, primary vs secondary biological learning, the direct instruction education method, the role of confidence in learning, comparing learning sports to learning math, and more. Episode Transcript Barbara's article, How I Rewired My Brain to Become Fluent in Math Khan Academy JRS: EP59 Gregg Henriques on Unifying Psychology Barbara Oakley loves to bring fresh perspectives into her books by applying knowledge and experience from many different disciplines, as well as from “real world” experiences. She's a professor of engineering, has also worked in many different places, and is doing very different things: serving as a Russian translator on Soviet trawlers up in the Bering Sea, teaching in China, going from US Army private to Regular Army Captain, and working as a radio operator at the South Pole Station in the Antarctic.

Jason Wiener talks to Jim about prioritizing missions in business, downfalls of profit-maximizing, employee ownership structures, and much more... Practicing business entity attorney Jason Wiener talks to Jim about prioritizing the mission in a business, downfalls of profit-maximizing models & intentions, employee ownership structures, understanding & planning for trade-offs, adaptive vs rigid structures, types of fundraising & their long-term business implications, cooperatives including the new multi-stakeholder form, adapting existing ownership structures, for-benefit corporations, land trusts, the types of businesses Jason has worked with, and more. Episode Transcript Mentions & Recommendations Jason's Website Jason on Twitter and Jason Wiener|p.c. twitter JRS: EP68 Mara Zepeda on Innovative Collaboration Jason Wiener comes to this work with a wide range of experience as an entrepreneur, litigator, activist, organizer and worker-owner. With more than fifteen years of experience as an attorney – his expertise and experience brings an innovative approach to solving client issues. Jason’s work has charted a new and grander course for the potential of democratized economic structures to re-calibrate the hazardous course set by “business as usual.” He has published more than six scholarly law review articles on international, human rights and renewable energy topics and speaks regularly about worker-owned and cooperative business model, non-extractive finance, the future of work, the contemporary and teal practice of law, distributed solar policy and sharing economy legal issues. Jason has been an adjunct professor in Colorado State University’s Global Sustainability and Social Enterprise program, where he taught an MBA course on business law and ethics. He has also been a guest lecturer at the University of Colorado Law School’s Entrepreneurial Law Clinic and at the Watson Institute.

Morag Gamble talks to Jim about the history & dynamics of permaculture, education, regenerative farming, Crystal Waters EcoVillage, and much more... Morag Gamble talks to Jim about the history & definition of permaculture, the different places & styles in which it can be implemented, the best ways of introducing it to others, seeing permaculture as a mycelial network, emersion over theory, Morag's experience with refugee communities embracing permaculture, redefining human value, Damanhur, connected education, working with trauma, regenerative farming, supplying regenerative food to cities, gardening at all scales, the burden of debt, the history & structure of The Crystal Waters EcoVillage, and more. Episode Transcript Mentions & Recommendations The Permaculture Education Institute JRS: EP30 Nora Bateson on Complexity & the Transcontextual Joel Salatin For the past 25 years, as a Global Permaculture Ambassador, Morag Gamble has led programs in 22 countries. Local food systems and permaculture education have seen her teach in communities and universities around the globe – most recently at Schumacher College in England – and leading a Food Politics course at Griffith University. Morag lives amidst an award-winning permaculture education garden in a UN recognised permaculture village, and works with city farmers, school farmers, community gardeners, and educators. She sees the direct social and ecological impact of industrial farming on marginalised farming communities around the world – in Indonesia, India and most recently in East Africa.

Emery Brown talks to Jim about anesthesiology as a probe on consciousness, brain networks & relationships, EEG dose calibration, and much more... Emery Brown joins Jim as the first in a series of guests exploring the science of consciousness. They cover anesthesiology as a probe on consciousness, types of brain observation (EEG & fMRI), propofol's impact on brain networks, brain waves in various frequency ranges, phase and frequency, breakdown of long-range networks under anesthesia, coming out of anesthesia, brain networks function & redundancy, non-linear effect of anesthesia dose impacts, EEG's use for anesthesia dose calibration, subjective awareness in anesthesia, the motor center component of anesthesia, simulating anesthesia impacts, the power of state-space global coherence theory, Emery's hopes for the future of his work, and more. Episode Transcript Mentions & Recommendations Emery's Neuroscience Statistics Research Laboratory Emery N. Brown is the Edward Hood Taplin Professor of Medical Engineering and Computational Neuroscience at MIT; the Warren M. Zapol Professor of Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School; and a practicing anesthesiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital. His experimental research has helped define the neuroscience mechanisms of how anesthetics work. His statistics research has developed a broad range of statistical and signal processing methods to improve neuroscience data analysis. He is a fellow of the IEEE, the American Statistical Association, the Institute for Mathematical Statistics, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Professor Brown is the recipient of the Dickson Prize in Science and an honorary Doctorate of Science degree from U.S.C. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts Sciences, the National Academy of Inventors, National Academy of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering.

Forrest Landry talks to Jim about his immanent metaphysics theory: the self, choice, interaction, time, soundness, mind vs matter, and much more... Forrest Landry talks to Jim about the value of metaphysics, how his immanent metaphysics compare to past metaphysical theories, his unique definition of self & its relationship with choice, quantum foundations, the nature of choice, interaction & time, observer as an epiphenomenon, limits of perception, soundness vs validity, reifying power & metaphor, mind vs matter, mind from brain, consciousness & time, process, and much more. Episode Transcript Mentions & Recommendations JRS: EP31 Forrest Landry on Building our Future Forrest's Immanent Metaphysics Landing Page JRS: Currents 016: Robin Hanson on Are We Living In A Simulation? Forrest's paper, The Hard Problem Forrest Landry is a philosopher, writer, researcher, scientist, engineer, craftsman, and teacher focused on metaphysics, the manner in which software applications, tools, and techniques influence the design and management of very large scale complex systems, and the thriving of all forms of life on this planet. Forrest is also the founder and CEO of Magic Flight, a third-generation master woodworker who found that he had a unique set of skills in large scale software systems design. Which led him to work in the production of several federal classified and unclassified systems, including various FBI investigative projects, TSC, IDW, DARPA, the Library of Congress Congressional Records System, and many others.

Alexander Bard talks to Jim about Syntheism's new take on theology, religious history, science, Zoroastrianism, Facebook, wokeness, and much more... Alexander Bard talks to Jim about Syntheism's new take on theology, the purpose of & roles in religion, post-contemporary God, the role of science in religious history, Zoroastrian history & its western influence, the digital exodus, the early internet, the failure of Facebook, #metoo, virtue ethics & game theory, damaging wokeness impacts & its philosophical history, Bard's digital future, the priest & the king, the boy king, managing membranes & scales, and much more. Episode Transcript Mentions & Recommendations Alexander's book, Syntheism JRS: EP73 James Lindsay on Cynical Theories Jordan Hall Alexander's book, Digital Libido Signals and Boundaries by John Holland Alexander Bard is a philosopher, futurologist, and political and spiritual activist, based in Stockholm, Sweden. He is the author of five books: The Netocrats, The Global Empire, The Body Machines, Syntheism – Creating God in The Internet Age, and Digital Libido – Sex, Power and Violence in The Network Society with his co-writer Jan Söderqvist. Bard is a radical process philosopher, merging Hegel and Nietzsche with Whitehead and Deleuze, using humanity as the constant and technology as the variable while working toward the deepest possible understanding of human history, contemporary society, and the intensely technology-driven future that humanity is facing. Bard has also enjoyed a highly successful 25-year-career as a producer and artist in the international music industry, followed by ten years as a tough love, reality-checking judge on TV shows “Swedish Idol” and “Sweden’s Got Talent”, and is an outspoken and provocative YouTube and Twitter celebrity.

Shahin Farshchi talks to Jim about self-driving tech: 5 automation levels, safeguards, the consumer market, costs, policy, and much more... Shahin Farshchi talks to Jim about self-driving technology. They cover Waymo's driverless taxi launch, the 5 levels of automation, teleoperation, redundant safeguards, self-driving deployment approaches & challenges, planning for corner cases, consumer market speculations, operating costs, Tesla's aspirations & shadow testing advantage, the simulator in the loop business model, sensors, policy & liability, ride-sharing companies advantage, and more. Episode Transcript Mentions & Recommendations Lux Capital Applied Intuition Shahin on Twitter Shahin empowers visionary founders aiming to accelerate humanity and build a fantastic future through feats of engineering. He built brain-machine interfaces for his PhD in Electrical Engineering, hybrids at General Motors, founded a wireless vital sign monitoring company, and as a Partner at Lux, has funded chip (Nervana), rocket (Relativity), satellite (Planet), robotics (Covariant.ai), and driverless car (Zoox) companies. Lux is a $2.4B VC that invests in tomorrow’s transformational companies across healthcare and technology.

Jim talks to Alexander Beiner about his new article on Indigenous Narcissism: western cultural norms, tribalism, social media, ethics, and much more... In this Currents episode, Jim and Alexander Beiner have a wide-ranging chat about his recent article on Indigenous Narcissism. They cover western cultural norms, tribalism & belonging, social media as a tribal battlefield, addiction dynamics of social media, voluntary organization decline, the erosion of trust in institutions, ethics, postmodern cultural influence & dynamics, indigenous perspectives, cultures as operating systems, integral theory & the messiness of progress, fixing vs replacing systems, bottom-up vs top-down cultural innovation, the GameB approach, and more. Rebel Wisdom Alexander's article, Indigenous Narcissism: Social Media, Belonging & WEIRDness The WEIRDest People in the World by Joseph Henrich Joe Henrich Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault Hanzi JRS Episodes Tyson Yunkaporta JRS Episodes Santa Fe Institute Emancipation Party The Logic of Collective Action by Mancur Olson Jim's article, A Journey To GameB Alexander is a writer, facilitator and cultural commentator. In 2012, he co-founded a meditation school, Open Meditation. He has also worked in some of the world's top events agencies developing immersive live experiences. He is one of the organizers of Breaking Convention, Europe’s largest conference on psychedelic science and culture. His work on psychedelic theory has been published in the 2016 book 'Neurotransmissions', as well as ‘The Guardian’. He also writes fiction and plays traditional Irish music.

Brent Cooper talks to Jim about the meta-crisis, critique, politics, GameB, monetary theory, climate policy, meta/post-modernism, and much more... Brent Cooper talks to Jim about his academic & intellectual background, the under-appreciation of sociology, the meta-crisis, useful critique, time-scales & approaches to solving the meta-crisis, Jim & Brent's political perspectives, GameB values, monetary theory, smuggling bad ideas, the cost of war, climate change & the Green New Deal, mapping & utilizing metamodernism, the diversity of postmodernism, the danger of cherry-picking from systems, the value in disagreement, and more. Episode Transcript Mentions & Recommendations Brent's Blog JRS: EP90 Joshua Epstein on Agent-Based Modeling JRS: EP73 James Lindsay on Cynical Theories Chris Kavanagh Decoding the Gurus Podcast Embrace the Void Podcast Sam Hoadley-Brill Convergence for Consensus Building Jim's presentation on Dividend Money Andrés Bernal JRS: EP84 William Perry & Tom Collina on The Nuclear Button Mapping Metamodernism for Collective Intelligence Hanzi JRS episodes JRS: EP67 Tomas Björkman on The Nordic Secret JRS: EP89 Lene Rachel Andersen on Metamodernity Brent Cooper is an independent political sociologist and metamodern philosopher who runs The Abs-Tract Organization, a nonprofit think tank and media project that specializes in abstraction, a mental, social, physical, and material process that defines the expanding complexity of society.

Alexa Clay talks to Jim about intentional communities: diversity, governance, cult dynamics, longevity, scale, norms, values, rituals, and much more... Alexa Clay talks to Jim about similar characteristics of intentional communities & startups, common personalities & intentions in intentional community, meeting their need for diverse skillsets & demographics, governance approaches, avoiding cult dynamics, planning for generational transition, community scales & boundaries, monetary systems, opportunity in crisis, norms & values, harnessing ritual, what we can learn from Amish traditions, and much more. Episode Transcript Mentions & Recommendations Alexa's book, The Misfit Economy Utopia Inc article on Aeon GameB What is Damanhur? Enspiral Community Canvas Alexa on Twitter Alexa Clay is the co-author of the best selling book The Misfit Economy, named one of the best business books to read by the World Economic Forum, TechRepublic, The Telegraph and Huffington Post. With degrees from Brown University and Oxford, she is the leading expert on subcultures and innovation from unlikely places. Alexa believes the underworld is filled with natural-born-innovators and they have more in common with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs or Exxon, than you might think. Today, she is working to create more inclusive innovation ecosystems in cities and regions across the U.S.

Joe Brewer talks to Jim about applied cultural evolution, planetary human impact, regenerative agro, collapse, ethics, social capital, and much more... Joe Brewer talks to Jim about the power & elements of applied cultural evolution, carrying capacity & human impacts on the planet, industrial vs regenerative agriculture, the likelihood of large-scale collapse & mass extinction events, the transition to regenerative living, human potential & responsibility, cultural evolution ethics, disastrous neoliberal & economic incentives & impacts, nested & bioregional resilience & trade, dynamics of the erosion of social capital, possible regenerative societal designs, and more. Episode Transcript Mentions & Recommendations Joe's book, The Design Pathway for Regenerating Earth JRS: EP50 Joe Brewer on Earth Regeneration Stockholm Resilience Centre's planetary boundaries Jordan Hall's Civium Project Joe Brewer is the Executive Director for the Center for Applied Cultural Evolution. He is a complexity researcher trained in the cognitive and evolutionary sciences. His work focuses on the converging global challenges that currently threaten the future of humanity. He helped create the Cultural Evolution Society — a scientific organization devoted to advancing the scholarly field of research in this integrative domain. Joe has also helped launch Evonomics magazine to promote the applications of evolution and complexity to the field of economics. He recently started a study group called Earth Regenerators to build a community of practice around the restoration of planetary health while safeguarding humanity’s future. Joe was formerly a member of the Center for Complex Systems Research at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and was a research fellow with George Lakoff at the Rockridge Institute in Berkeley.

Joshua Epstein talks to Jim about agent-based modeling, differential equations, computational archeology, COVID-19 failures, and much more... Joshua Epstein talks to Jim about Agent-Based Modeling (ABM) as a powerful tool in the social sciences. They start with the history of Sugarscape, an early ABM framework, the dynamics of ABM systems, types of agents, ABM vs models based on systems of differential equations, predicting vs explaining systems, Axelrod's demonstration of emergent racial segregation, computational archeology, the role of parameters in ABM, inverse evolutionary techniques, Josh's agent zero dynamics, the role of emotion in agents, COVID-19 response failures & lack of competent leadership, R0 misconceptions, superspreaders, and more. Episode Transcript Mentions & Recommendations Josh's book, Agent_Zero Josh's book, Generative Social Science Josh's book, Growing Artificial Societies Paper on Population growth & collapse in the Kayenta Anasazi Thomas Schelling's paper, Some Fun, Thirty-Five Years Ago Joshua Epstein is Professor of Epidemiology in the NYU College of Global Public Health, and founding Director of the NYU Agent-Based Modeling Laboratory, with affiliated appointments at The Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, and the College of Arts & Sciences. Prior to joining NYU, he was Professor of Emergency Medicine at Johns Hopkins, and Director of the Center for Advanced Modeling in the Social, Behavior, and Health Sciences, with Joint appointments in Economics, Applied Mathematics, International Health, and Biostatistics. Before that, he was Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution and Director of the Center on Social and Economic Dynamics. His research interest has been modeling complex social dynamics using mathematical and computational methods, notably the method of Agent-Based Modeling in which he is a recognized pioneer. For this transformative innovation, he was awarded the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award in 2008, an Honorary Doctorate of Science from Amherst College in 2010, and was elected to the Society of Sigma XI in 2018.

Lene Rachel Andersen talks to Jim about how metamodernity addresses our complex problems, postmodernism, meaning-making, education, and much more... Lene Rachel Andersen talks to Jim about the growing number of complex challenges we face today, the need for cultures to evolve, our cultural history & the need to integrate pre-modern norms back into culture, the value & danger of postmodernism, metamodernism vs metamodernity, the aesthetic & academic history of metamodernism, wokism, fascism vs maoism, appropriate meaning-making, education & the urgent need for historical perspectives, human development, better goals & metrics for our future, and much more. Episode Transcript Mentions & Recommendations Lene's book, Metamodernity Lene's Website Metamodernity article by Lene JRS: EP67 Tomas Björkman on The Nordic Secret Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta JRS: EP73 James Lindsay on Cynical Theories Lene Rachel Andersen is a member of the Club of Rome. She has a BA in business economy and studied theology 1993- 97. From 1993 to 2001, she wrote comedy and entertainment for Danish media and went to the US a number of times; she went there a Dane and returned as a European. Since 2005, she has worked as an independent futurist, author, philosopher, and publisher. For her books, she has received the Ebbe Kløvedal-Reich Democracy Baton (2007) and the Danish librarians’ Døssing Prize (2012); among her titles are Democracy Handbook (2010), Globalt gearskift (2014), Testosteroned Child. Sad. (2017), and The Nordic Secret (2017), Bildung: Keep Growing, and Metamodernity.

Nancy Hillis & Bruce Sawhill talk to Jim about the similarities of complexity science & art: emergence, order & chaos, luck, and much more... Nancy Hillis & Bruce Sawhill talk to Jim about the commonalities & dynamics of complexity science & art: innovation & imitation, breaking rules, inseparability, phase transitions, combinatorics & restraints, aesthetics, process vs result orientation, simplicity, paradox, uncertainty, emergence, navigating the edge of order & chaos, known unknowns & unknown unknowns, making space for luck, and much more. Episode Transcript Mentions & Recommendations Nancy's Website & Blog Personal Airline Exchange Bruce's paper, Phase Transitions in Logic Networks Bruce's paper, Self-Organized Criticality and Complexity Theory Bruce Sawhill is CTO and Co-Founder of Personal Airline Exchange, a startup per-seat on-demand air travel service for short flights between small airports in extended urban areas. He earned his B.S. degree in Physics, his B.A. in Music (organ performance and composition), and his PhD in Physics all from Stanford University, He was a postdoc at the Santa Fe Institute, working with Chris Langton and Stuart Kauffman. Bruce is currently writing a book with his partner Nancy Hillis, MD on the connections between evolutionary biology, complex adaptive systems, and creativity in the arts. In addition to his CTO duties, he gives regular organ recitals and swims long distances in the ocean without a wetsuit. Bruce and Nancy make their family home in Santa Cruz, CA. Nancy Hillis, MD is an artist, speaker, Stanford-trained psychiatrist and author of the best-selling self-help book The Artist’s Journey: Bold Strokes To Spark Creativity. as well as The Artist's Journey Creativity Reflection Journal. Nancy guides artists to create their deepest, most authentic art through her signature approach, which combines art and psychiatry. She’s helped thousands of artists transform their work from the inside out, operating from the conviction that artistic creation has as much to do with psychology as it does with paint and canvas. Nancy studied under renowned psychiatrist, Irvin Yalom, MD at Stanford and has been featured in Inc. magazine and The New York Observer. Her book The Artist's Journey: Bold Strokes To Spark Creativity was named one of the Top 100 Creativity Books Of All Time by BookAuthority. Nancy lives in Santa Cruz, CA with her partner and daughter.

Jim talks to Euvie Ivanova & Mike Gilliland about their Future Thinkers Smart Village: region, scaling, governance, economics, fundraising, and much more... In this Currents episode, Jim talks to Future Thinkers co-founders Euvie Ivanova & Mike Gilliland about their new Smart Village. They cover details about their selected bioregion, their short & long-term building & scaling plans, governance approaches, the economic models for residents & emphasis on remote working, regenerative agriculture goals & ideas, the ownership model for the village, their current fundraising strategy & investment priorities, open philosophy on types communal living, accessibility to surrounding communities & services, internet connectivity, childcare and schooling, their current fundraising structure & needs, and much more. Episode Transcript Staunton Makerspace Future Thinkers Podcast Future Thinkers Smart Village is a rural innovation lab & education center that combines technological innovation, education & personal development programs, regenerative agriculture, and community – located in a beautiful mountain valley the heart of the Kootenays, BC, Canada.

Jim talks to Bret Weinstein about his banning from Facebook, censorship on Twitter, the aspirations for his Unity 2020 movement, and much more... In this Currents episode, Jim talks to Bret Weinstein about the possible explanations for his banning from Facebook, social media & ideological bubbles, the history & goals for Bret's Unity 2020 movement & its ballot access strategy, the tyranny of "the lesser of two evils", election game theory, what he's learned from Unity 2020 supporters, types of non-voters, 2020 voters & candidates, post-election strategies to break our political duopoly, a non-ideological groundswell & Jim's idea for 'parametric social democracy', Twitter's censorship of Unity, and more. Episode Transcript Unity 2020 Website Bret's Website Bret's DarkHorse Podcast JRS: EP24 Bret Weinstein on Evolving Culture Bret Weinstein has spent two decades exploring the frontiers of evolutionary biology. He is currently working to uncover the evolutionary meaning of large scale patterns in human history, and seeking a game-theoretically stable path forward for humanity. His scholarly research is focused on evolutionary trade-offs. He has worked on the evolution of senescence and cancer, species diversity gradients, and the adaptive significance of human morality and religion. He has written for The Wall Street Journal and testified to the U.S. Congress regarding questions of freedom of expression on college campuses. He is the host of Bret Weinstein’s DarkHorse Podcast.

Joscha Bach talks to Jim about his views on popular consciousness theories, thinkers, dynamics, artificial intelligence, and much more... Joscha Bach and Jim start by talking about the difference between mind & brain, and the body & environment's connection to mind & emotions. Joscha then offers his views on some popular consciousness theories & thinkers: consciousness as frequency, Global Workspace Theory, Integrated Information Theory, Functionalism, Daniel Dennet, and Roger Penrose. While covering these theories & thinkers they talk about GPT-3, learning & memory, what it means to understand, intuitive vs analytical intelligence, dreaming vs reality, attention & agents, psychedelics, magical phenomena, areas worth exploring to improve AI, and much more. Episode Transcript Mentions & Recommendations Joscha on Twitter JRS: EP72 Joscha Bach on Minds, Machines & Magic Joscha Bach is a cognitive scientist working for MIT Media Lab and the Harvard Program for Evolutionary Dynamics. He earned his Ph.D. in cognitive science from the University of Osnabrück, Germany, and has built computational models of motivated decision making, perception, categorization, and concept-formation. He is especially interested in the philosophy of AI and in the augmentation of the human mind.

Nadav Zeimer talks to Jim about being a high school principal, our educational failures, dynamics of his proposed academic platform, and much more... Nadav Zeimer talks to Jim about his background & how it informs his work as a high school principal, the educational system's failure to build the right skills, consumption vs information literacy, COVID-19 impacts on education, what digital nativism & media creation means to Nadav, hands-on non-digital learning, out-dated education incentives, Nadav's academic platform & crediting system dynamics & incentives, centralized vs decentralized accreditation, learning vs memorizing, changing the role of teachers, credit experts & catalysts, tactics for preventing cheating, pass & fail system, Nadav's idea for education-based basic income, and more. Episode Transcript Mentions & Recommendations Nadav's book, Education in the Digital Age Zak Stein JRS Episodes G-House Pirates 2006 Documentary Nadav Zeimer works at the intersection of technology and education. He excelled as a software engineer in Silicon Valley prior to becoming an award-winning physics/robotics teacher, turnaround principal, and public speaker. As a teacher, Nadav integrated podcasting into his curricula and was selected to lead a school design team. Seven consecutive years of breakthrough student outcomes followed, along with widespread recognition for his digital media-centered approach to school reform. Based on nearly two decades of experience, he has launched an open-source, blockchain ledger of “gold standard” high school credits. Nadav is the author of Education in the Digital Age: How We Get There offers an evaluation of how digital technology and economics are poised to transform education by examining the concept of academic capital.

Jim talks to Robin Hanson about whether we live in a simulation or not, why it matters if we do, simulation types, the Fermi paradox, and much more... In this Currents episode, Jim talks to Robin Hanson about whether we live in a simulation or not, why it would matter if we do, his view of Nick Bostrom's simulation logic, Boltzmann brains & other possible simulation types, the appeal of simulating magic, the quantum Hilbert space, simulation accuracy, cost, & sizes, simulation theory induced paranoia, the value of & justifications for simulations, evolutionary universes, the Drake equation & Fermi paradox, impacts of increased pressure for human coordination, GameB, Robin & Jim's estimated simulation probabilities, and more. Episode Transcript Robin's Blog' Robin's Simulation post, Sim Argument Confidence JRS: EP79 Seth Lloyd on Our Quantum Universe Robin’s book, The Age of Em JRS: EP2 Robin Hanson – Decision Making and “The Age of Em JRS: Currents 011: Robin Hanson on RightTalkism JRS: Extra: On COVID-19 Strategies with Robin Hanson Robin Hanson is an Associate Professor of Economics, and received his Ph.D in 1997 in social sciences from Caltech. He joined George Mason’s economics faculty in 1999 after completing a two-year post-doc at U.C Berkely. His major fields of interest include health policy, regulation, and formal political theory.

Gar Alperovitz talks Jim about system dynamics of ownership, control, politics, economics, US unions, governance, evolution, and much more... Gar Alperovitz talks to Jim about what his definition of systems & their relationship to ownership & control, economic & political components in systems, GameB, the legitimacy crisis & systems collapse, the failure mode of the political process, pervasive corporate influences, theory & experimentation, the past dynamics & current decline of US unions, finding appropriate levels of governance, complexities of worker ownership, race-to-the-bottom dynamics, materialism, municipalities as testbeds, openness to systemic change, Gar's four types of systemic evolution, and more. Episode Transcript Mentions & Recommendations Gar's Website Gar's book, What Then Must We Do? TheNextSystem.org JRS: EP78 Ran Abramitzky on the Mystery of the Kibbutz Gar Alperovitz is a founding principal of The Democracy Collaborative and has had a distinguished career as a historian, political economist, activist, writer, and government official. For 15 years, he was the Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland, and is a former Fellow of Kings College, Cambridge University; Harvard’s Institute of Politics; the Institute for Policy Studies; and a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution. He is also the president of the National Center for Economic and Security Alternatives. Gar is the author of critically acclaimed books on the atomic bomb and atomic diplomacy. As a well-known policy expert, he has testified before numerous congressional committees and lectures widely around the country.

In this Currents episode, Jim talks to Melanie Mitchell & Jessica Flack about the complexity of COVID, randomness, robustness, collective intelligence, misinfo, and much more... In this Currents episode, Jim talks to Melanie Mitchell & Jessica Flack about their recent Aeon article, Uncertain times. Why R(0) is not a good measure for COVID contagion, network contagion & super spreaders, global non-linear causes & effects, feedback dynamics in complex systems, some hopeful views on COVID-19 impact, the importance of noise & randomness in complex systems, understanding & planning for fat-tailed distributions, designing for robustness, emergent engineering, funding robustness, collective intelligence, science distrust, misinformation, humility, authority, trust, and more. Episode Transcript Aeon article, Uncertain times JRS: EP33 Melanie Mitchell on the Elements of AI JRS: EP48 Jessica Flack on Complex System Dynamics JRS: Extra: On COVID-19 Opportunities with Jessica Flack Melanie Mitchell is Professor of Computer Science at Portland State University, and External Professor and Co-Chair of the Science Board at the Santa Fe Institute. Mitchell has also held faculty or professional positions at the University of Michigan, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the OGI School of Science and Engineering. She is the author or editor of seven books and numerous scholarly papers in the fields of artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and complex systems, including her latest, Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans. Jessica Flack is a professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Flack directs SFI’s Collective Computation Group (C4). Flack was formerly founding director of the Center for Complexity and Collective Computation in the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Flack received her Ph.D. from Emory in 2003, studying cognitive science, animal behavior and evolutionary theory, and B.A. with honors from Cornell in 1996. Flack’s work has been covered by scientists and science journalists in many publications and media outlets, including Quanta Magazine, the BBC, NPR, Nature, Science, The Economist, New Scientist, and Current Biology.

In this Currents episode, Jim talks to Steve LeVine about his article, Remote Work Is Killing the Hidden Trillion-Dollar Office Economy, the US city exodus, and much more... In this Currents episode, Jim talks to Steve LeVine about his article, Remote Work Is Killing the Hidden Trillion-Dollar Office Economy, cultural hysteresis & homeostasis, the challenge of predicting post-pandemic changes & looking to history, the emerging remote business fluency, designing for virtual serendipity, the big city COVID-19 exodus, GameB, the Civium Project, the plausibility of cities dying, dangers of the US culture war, vaccines, and more. Episode Transcript JRS: EP44 Steve LeVine on EV Battery Tech Steve LeVine is Editor at Large at Medium, writing on tech, economic, geopolitical and demographic trends. He formerly founded and directed the Future newsletter at Axios, and prior to that was Washington Correspondent for Quartz, the mobile-first startup. Steve is also a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Foresight, Strategy and Risks Initiative and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, where he teaches in the graduate-level Security Studies Program. Previously, Steve was a foreign correspondent for 18 years in the former Soviet Union, Pakistan and the Philippines, running a bureau for The Wall Street Journal, and before that writing for The New York Times, the Financial Times, and Newsweek. He is also an author of two books.

Former Sec of Defense William Perry & Tom Collina talk about their book, The Button: The New Nuclear Arms Race & Presidential Power, and much more... Former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry & Tom Z. Collina of the Ploughshares Fund talk to Jim about their book, The Button: The New Nuclear Arms Race and Presidential Power from Truman to Trump. They cover today's nuclear weapons amnesia, the current nuclear situation, the growing number of nuclear-armed countries, US presidential nuclear powers, first-use policies, the danger of 'launch on warning', three ways of blundering into nuclear war, nuclear game theory, the New START Treaty, William & Tom's proposed nuclear operations improvements, the plausibility of abolishing nuclear weapons, and more. Episode Transcript Mentions & Recommendations William & Tom's book, The Button Ploughshares Fund New START Treaty William J. Perry served as the U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering in the Carter administration and then as Secretary of Defense in the Clinton administration. He oversaw the development of the strategic nuclear systems that are currently in our arsenal. His new offset strategy ushered in the age of stealth, smart weapons, GPS, and technologies that changed the face of modern warfare. In 2007, Dr. Perry collaborated with George Shultz, Sam Nunn, and Henry Kissinger to publish several ground-breaking editorials in the Wall Street Journal that linked the vision of a world free from nuclear weapons with urgent but practical steps that could be taken to reduce nuclear dangers. Perry’s 2015 memoir, My Journey at the Nuclear Brink, is a personal account of his lifelong effort to reduce nuclear dangers. He founded the William J. Perry Project to educate the public on these dangers. In 2020 Perry co-authored THE BUTTON: The New Nuclear Arms Race and Presidential Power from Truman to Trump. He is the Michael and Barbara Berberian Professor (emeritus) at Stanford University. Tom Z. Collina is Director of Policy at Ploughshares Fund. He is the co-author with William J. Perry of THE BUTTON. Tom has thirty years of Washington, DC, experience in nuclear weapons, missile defense, and nonproliferation issues, and has held senior positions at the Arms Control Association, the Institute for Science and International Security, and the Union of Concerned Scientists. He has been directly involved with efforts to end U.S. nuclear testing, limit ineffective anti-missile programs, extend the Nonproliferation Treaty, and secure Senate ratification of the New START Treaty. He has published widely in major magazines and journals and has appeared frequently in the national media, including the New York Times, CNN, and NPR. He has testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and regularly briefs congressional staff. Tom has a degree in International Relations from Cornell University.

Michel Bauwens talks to Jim about P2P plurality, agro & regeneration, capitalist impact on social media, blockchains, cosmo-localism, and much more... Michel Bauwens talks to Jim about the forms of P2P (peer to peer) implementations & core elements, cosmo-local production, P2P in agriculture & regenerative processes, artificial rivalrous dynamics, capitalist impacts on social media & sensemaking, political polarization, creating better social media habits, centralized vs distributed & for-profit vs for-benefit business ops, blockchain design ethos', P2P from a historical perspective, de-growth misunderstandings, dangerous impacts of cities, cosmo-localism, Michel's commons transition strategy, and more. Episode Transcript Mentions & Recommendations JRS: EP63 Michel Bauwens on P2P & Commons Michel’s book, Peer to Peer: The Commons Manifesto P2PFoundation.net P2PFoundation Blog JRS: EP80 Daniel Schmachtenberger on Better Sensemaking The Social Dilemma on Netflix Surveillance Capitalism with Shoshana Zuboff The Memetic Tribes Of Culture War 2.0 P2P Accounting for Planetary Survival JRS: EP56 Art Brock on Holo Tech The Structure of World History by Kōjin Karatani JRS: EP65 Tyson Yunkaporta on Indigenous Complexity Jordan Hall's Civium Project Michel Bauwens is the founder & director of the P2P Foundation and works in collaboration with a global group of researchers in the exploration of peer production, governance, and property. Michel is also research director of CommonsTransition.org. He has (co-)published various books & reports in english, dutch and french, such as, ‘Network Society and Future Scenarios for a Collaborative Economy’, and P2P, A Commons Manifesto. Michel has been a candidate for the European Parliament, for the Flemish Green Party but as an independent candidate. He is currently working on prototyping a MOOC on commons-based economics.

Rob Malda (AKA: CmdrTaco) talks to Jim about the history & tech of Slashdot while speculating on what social media could learn from it. In this Currents episode, Jim talks to Rob Malda (AKA: CmdrTaco) about the history & creation of Slashdot, its opensource tech, rapid growth & eventual decline, unique moderation system & community involvement, utilization of scarcity, the down-side of open rating systems, the game theory of social media & the evolution of manipulation tactics, moderation trade-offs, the advantages of having a niche audience, implementing innovations inspired by Word of Warcraft, the sheer complexity of the moderation problem, what led to Slashdot's downfall, and more. Episode Transcript Rob's podcast, Geeks in Space JRS: EP71 Philip Howard on Computational Propaganda JRS: EP81 Renée DiResta on Social Media Warfare Rob Malda, also known as CmdrTaco, is an American Internet content author, and former editor-in-chief of the website Slashdot. After that, he spent his time writing, consulting, and working at the Washington Post’s Labs for a couple years. Today, he’s interested in news aggregation, community moderation, and pretty much all the nerdy techy subject matter he covered at Slashdot.

Hanzi Freinacht talks to Jim about political metamodernism, Gameb, sensemaking, conspiracy, top-down vs bottom-up tactics, coherent pluralism, and much more... In a wide-ranging all-new episode, Hanzi Freinacht talks to Jim about the dynamics of political metamodernism & commonalities with Gameb, our meta-crisis & diminished sensemaking capabilities, our culture of alienation, conspiracy theories, collective sensemaking, negative impacts of market economies, top-down vs bottom-up interventions, liquid democracy & other governance innovations, optimizing for emergence, coherent pluralism, the value of ritual & social norms, localism, building coherence & action orientation, prioritizing mental health, changing minds, and much more. Episode Transcript Mentions & Recommendations Metamoderna.org JRS: EP36 Hanzi Freinacht on Metamodernism JRS: EP53 Hanzi Freinacht on the Nordic Ideology Gameb.wiki JRS: EP78 Ran Abramitzky on the Mystery of the Kibbutz Jim's Talk on Dividend Money Hanzi Freinacht is a political philosopher, historian & sociologist, author of The Listening Society, Nordic Ideology, and the upcoming book The 6 Hidden Patterns of World History. As a writer, Hanzi combines in-depth knowledge of several sciences and disciplines and offers maps of our time and the human condition with his characteristically accessible, poetic and humorous writing style – challenging the reader’s perspective of herself and the world. He epitomizes much of the metamodern philosophy and can be considered a personification of this strand of thought.