The Students

Odcinki

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  How Nations Fight Over Industry — Ian Fletcher 15.09.2026 1godz 22min

  Ian Fletcher describes the fundamentals of industrial policy, how economic theorists ignore the practice of successful businesses and successfully industrializing nations, and why the US has the institutions it needs for strong industrial policy.
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  Where New Industries Come From: Ben Landau-Taylor lecture 13.09.2026 32min

  ​Sober, risk-averse, rational businessmen make great captains of industry—in established industries which someone else already built. But the new industries which drive progress come from wild half-mad ideologues. This lecture covers the psychology of the men behind the major breakthroughs, from the steam engine to the large language model.
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  Samo Burja — How Bureaucracy Defeated Democracy 12.09.2026 55min

  Samo Burja and Ben Landau-Taylor cover bureaucracy—why the golden age of bureaucracies worked so well in the early 20th century, how bureaucratic class interest overcomes checks and balances, and bureaucracy's role in today's Western governments.
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  Richard Ngo — What Makes Hierarchy Legitimate (Human Or Not) 08.09.2026 2godz 9min

  Richard Ngo argues against Wolf Tivy’s xenohumanism lecture. (https://open.spotify.com/episode/0XmEjgRaBpp3OxDrV3WXLD) What is the moral ground for cooperation and hierarchy? We need the answer to build a good society today, or to build a good AI future tomorrow.
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  Stop Waiting For AGI And Go To Space 04.09.2026 1godz 46min

  The long-awaited Marko Jukic episode. We all expect AGI to colonize the stars because it's the obvious thing any healthy expanding system does naturally. So why aren't we? Marko explains the elaborate cope keeping us on Earth.
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  Where "Open Source" Came From 01.09.2026 46min

  The internet can feel like a part of the landscape, but all our software was intelligently designed—and so were the social systems which produce that software. Christine Peterson of the Foresight Institute tells Ben Landau-Taylor about the struggle to define "open source software".
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  The Problem Of Humanity: Wolf Tivy lecture 30.08.2026 1godz 12min

  ​Our concepts of "humanity" and "humanitarianism" are usually taken as the eternal bedrock of morality. Today, artificial intelligence raises the prospect of "posthumanity", and magnates and regulators discuss what “humanity should do” about this. But in fact, the concept of "humanity" is a relatively recent and flimsy creation of the postwar political order. We need to abandon it to find our place in the future.
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  Will Technocapital Outlive Our Civilization? 28.08.2026 1godz 15min

  Samo Burja and Wolf Tivy discuss the forces raising our civilization higher vs the forces pulling it down. Is techno-industrial progress made of social and intellectual components which will take it down when they go, or can it outgrow the decay?
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  Joscha Bach — Consciousness Builds the Mind 25.08.2026 2godz 8min

  Joscha Bach and Wolf Tivy discuss how consciousness may be a convergent strategy for organizing both human and machine minds, whether powerful AI minds will resolve conflicts by merging or by fighting each other, and much more.
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  The Dutch Revolt: Jonathan Wallis lecture 23.08.2026 1godz 16min

  In 1572 twelve Dutch cities - less than a million people - began a war for independence against a global superpower and won. Over the next century they went toe-to-toe with the Spanish, English, and French and built the institutions which have defined the modern world. Jonathan Wallis explains how.
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  Someone Had To Build Your Community — Jonathan Wallis 21.08.2026 50min

  Intellectual activity, like any complex activity, can only take place in a rich social fabric. Jonathan Wallis and Ben Landau-Taylor talk about how to build community and why it's worthwhile.
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  Why Science Slowed Down — Samo Burja 18.08.2026 50min

  Scientific breakthroughs are much rarer today than the glory days of the early 1900s. Samo Burja and Ben Landau-Taylor discuss how the WWII-era centralization of science divorced theorists from the ideological—if not outright mystical—cult of Truth.
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  We Can Do Better Than "Human Values" — Ginevra Davis 17.08.2026 1godz 23min

  Philosophers talk of aligning AI to “human values”. This supposes there is no objective value, only the arbitrary values that humans happened to land on. Ginevra Davis and Wolf Tivy argue there is a deeper well of value in material reality.
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  Oliver Habryka — Good Discourse Needs Leadership 12.08.2026 1godz 20min

  Oliver Habryka joins Wolf Tivy to tell how he revived LessWrong after it nearly died, built the Lighthaven campus, and launched his $35m/quarter project to reform grantmaking.
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  Academic Apathy 09.08.2026 1godz 27min

  Jonathan Wallis and Wolf Tivy cover the role of passion in intellectual inquiry. The academy's sin is that its people have lost their passion, content to go through the motions. With passion, the work comes alive—but this upsets careers and institutions.
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  What Odysseus Teaches Us 29.07.2026 46min

  Stephen Pimentel and Wolf Tivy discuss Homer. If Odysseus reveals his power level too soon, the suitors will kill him. To take back his home, he needs metis (μῆτις): practical intelligence under duress. Today's would-be reformers need metis as well.0:00 — Intro2:22 — Restoring order in ancient Greece; Agamemnon’s warning9:24 — The importance of metis 15:34 — The meaning of Odysseus’s challenges22:46 — Circe, sorcery, and science27:30 — The Phaeacians31:26 — The recognition of nobility33:03 — Justice and retribution38:05 — Restoring order today 40:08 — How great stories and great men transcend the present moment
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  My Gene-Selected Daughter 22.07.2026 55min

  Rachel Wallis is pregnant with her highest-IQ embryo, with a 99.99th percentile polygenic IQ score. She and Wolf Tivy discuss what this means, and how in the 20th century our concept of "humanity" narrowed into an ideological straitjacket.0:00 — Intro1:17 — How we selected the embryo5:04 — What do these predictors actually mean?12:53 — Financial costs and benefits17:16 — Cultivating virtue22:31 — Where is this going for future generations?24:48 — Virtue and courage28:47 — Overcoming the “humanitarian” straitjacket34:00 — Transcendent humanism died in the war44:04 — The silicon ubermensch  48:30 — “The choice between death or change”52:27 — Investing in the next generation
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  The Computer Age Is Not Another Industrial Revolution 15.07.2026 1godz 7min

  Many say computers have transformed society as deeply as the advent of industry. While computers are powerful, they have not reordered the fundamental basis of society. Ben Landau-Tylor and Wolf Tivy cover the history0:00 — Intro2:44 — "We take the industrial background for granted"8:36 — What does it mean to revolutionize society?13:56 — The industrial social system18:41 — The rise of the laptop class22:34 — Cultural homogenization28:43 — Technological changes vs novelty effects31:05 — The case of journalism’s decline39:00 — The time traveler thought experiment41:02 — What will the full development of a computerized society look like?49:27 — Computers and material production58:21 — "What would it mean for computing to be as impactful as the Industrial Revolution?"
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  Posthuman Intelligence Will Care About Glory 08.07.2026 1godz 2min

  Max Dmitrienko and Wolf Tivy take on glory. From the ancient Greeks to the posthuman machine gods, some achievements are remembered because they show truths about how the world works and the challenges of coordination.0:00 — Intro1:26 — "How should one live given that one is mortal?"7:11 — What is worth remembering?13:53 — The transhuman perspective18:01 — Achilles' choice vs Socrates' choice29:18 — The legitimate basis of cooperation35:24 — What does glory look like in the modern world?39:37 — Reaching higher forms of society44:25 — Distinction vs gradients50:34 — What glory will mean to the posthuman AI
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  Why We Need Economic Depressions 07.07.2026 53min

  Ben Landau-Taylor and Wolf Tivy deal with industrial growth. Standard economic theories model growth as continuous marginal improvements, and seek stability. Schumpeter explains growth is a destructive "history of revolutions" which cause chaos.0:00 — Intro1:23 — Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy3:35 — Creative destruction and natural monopolies11:09 — How natural selection works in capitalism15:11 — Clearing out the dead wood22:17 — Eliminating depressions has slowed development28:57 — The degenerative ratchet in our political economy37:00 — Hope comes from circumvention, not reform41:26 — Where can circumvention come from?49:39 — Extropy