CSPI Podcast

Tyler Cowen needs no introduction. He joins the podcast to talk about his new book, co-authored with Daniel Gross, called Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World. Richard asks him about whether intelligence is overrated or underrated, the idea of “State Capacity Libertarianism” as an improvement over old-fashioned libertarianism, cultural differences between China and India, how optimistic to be about the future of the United States, different kinds of courage, free speech, and whether the world has too much or too little wokeness. The conversation also covers the feminization of intellectual life, with Tyler being optimistic that we will get better over time at navigating gender-integrated institutions.

Richard closes by asking Tyler about how he sees his own role as a public figure. They discuss the Emergent Ventures grant interview for CSPI, and the benefits of asking an interviewee about their own ambition.

A lightly edited transcript of the conversation is available here.

Listen in podcast form or watch the episode on YouTube.

Links:

Tyler Cowen and Daniel Gross, Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World.

CEO Study from Sweden.

Econ Talk episode where Tyler and Russ Roberts discuss Germany.

Tyler on State Capacity Libertarianism.

Tyler Cowen, “Why Wokism will Rule the World.”

Eric Kaufmann. “Born This Way? The Rise of LGBT as a Social and Political Identity.”

Tyler Cowen, “My Personal Moonshot.”

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.cspicenter.com

Bess Stillman (email) is a doctor at the Mayo Clinic and writes at Everything Is An Emergency. She is also an excellent storyteller who uses her skills to convey the hectic and at times heart wrenching experiences one faces as an ER doctor. Bess is married to Jake Seliger, who in 2022 was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma. She has written a three-part series about the struggles that she and Jake have faced getting him into clinical trials. On the podcast, Bess describes the maddening and cruelly irrational processes that dying patients must go through in order to find access to treatments that might help them. The conversation covers the nightmare of dealing with ClinicalTrials.gov, the requirement that an individual travel across state lines to even know if they are eligible for a trial, and how the government continues to exercise paternalism on the behalf of patients who have no other options other than to take a drug that has not yet been proven to work. Bess also discusses policy ideas she would like to see implemented, and finally shares some stories from her time as an ER doctor.

The themes touched on here will be familiar to those who have read about the “invisible graveyard” that the FDA is responsible for. Yet even listeners who know about the utter lack of interest in patient well being normally shown by federal agencies will find themselves shocked by the degree to which bureaucratic procedures with few plausible benefits govern the lives of sick individuals who want nothing but to get some extra time on this earth and help move science forward. For dealing with the clinical trial system in its current state, Bess is currently trying to figure out ways to assist oncologists and patients in being able to navigate the process at HelpMeFindAClinicalTrial.com. And hopefully by telling her story, she can help inspire much needed reforms to the system.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.cspicenter.com

Brian Chau writes and hosts a podcast at the From the New World Substack, and recently established a new think tank, the Alliance for the Future.

He joins the podcast to discuss why he’s not worried about the alignment problem, where he disagrees with “doomers,” the accomplishments of ChatGPT versus DALL-E, the dangers of regulating AI until progress comes to a halt in the way it did with nuclear power, and more. With his background in computer science, Brian takes issue with many of those who write on this topic, arguing that they think in terms of flawed analogies and know little about the underlying technology. The conversation touches on a previous CSPI discussion with Leopold Aschenbrenner, and the value of continuing to work on alignment.

Brian’s view is that AI doomers are making people needlessly pessimistic. He believes that this technology has the potential to do great things for humanity, particularly when it comes to areas like software development and biotech. But the post-World War II era has seen many examples of government hindering progress, and AFF is dedicated to stopping that from happening with artificial intelligence.

Listen to the conversation here, or watch the video here.

Links

Donate to AFF

AFF manifesto

Brian on diminishing returns to machine learning, and discussing AI with Marc Andreessen

Vaswani et al. on transformers

Limits of current machine learning techniques

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.cspicenter.com

Richard Lowery is an Associate Professor of Finance at The University of Texas at Austin and a senior scholar at the Salem Center for Public Policy. He joins the podcast to talk about his recent article “How UT-Austin Administrators Destroyed an Intellectual Diversity Initiative,” which details what went wrong with plans to build the Liberty Institute.

Lowery and Hanania discuss the politicization of academia and how it has even reached finance, why developing new educational institutions is difficult, how “fake conservatives” on campus provide cover for the Left to control universities, and the failure of Republican donors and politicians to push back against these trends effectively.

They converge on a set of ideas regarding how to fix academia going forward. Working within the university and without outside support is hopeless, as radicals committed to stamping out dissent have already won and are in a position to thwart any attempts at reform. Nonetheless, state university systems are ultimately under the control of politicians. Conservative elected officials need to show a greater interest in taking concrete steps toward restoring free inquiry and the search for objective truth, which will only happen if they are pressured to do so by donors and right-leaning media. Usually, this will mean not trying to reform individual departments, but relying on state funding and private philanthropy to create new institutions within existing universities, if not apart from them, that can be run by those ideologically committed to rolling back the triumph of anti-capitalist dogma and identity politics.

These problems are not insoluble. American conservatives have accomplished political goals before. All it takes is an understanding of the scope of the problem and the political will to do something about it. The conversation includes specific steps that elected officials, academics, donors, and political activists can take to build new institutions.

Listen in podcast form or watch on YouTube.

Links:

Richard Lowery’s Twitter (@RichardLoweryTX).

Richard Lowery, “How UT-Austin Administrators Destroyed an Intellectual Diversity Initiative.”

Kate McGee, “UT-Austin Working with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Conservative Donors to Create ‘Limited Government’ Think Tank.”

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.cspicenter.com

Stephen Hsu is a Professor of Theoretical Physics and Professor of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering at Michigan State University. He is also a serial entrepreneur and has published on genomics, in addition to blogging on a wide range of topics from econometrics and geopolitics to mixed martial arts. Hsu joins the Podcast, where he and Richard begin by talking about the Russia-Ukraine crisis and American military power relative to that of China and Russia. What would a Chinese attempt to conquer Taiwan look like, and what would the US be able to do in response? This is followed by a long discussion on the strengths and weaknesses of the Chinese system and its differences with the democratic capitalist model, including the former's high level of reliance on standardized tests and institutions designed to evaluate and promote government officials. The conversation closes on the topics of genomics and embryo selection, including the state of the technology, its current uses, and cross-national differences in attitudes and regulations. A full transcript of the conversation is available here.

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Ezra Voegel, “Japan as Number One.”
John Dower, “War Without Mercy."
Dan Wang, ”2021 Letter.”
Dan Bell, “The China Model.”
Richard McGregor, “The Party.”
"DNA Dreams" (documentary film).
Richard Hanania, “The Inevitable Rise of China.”
Richard Hanania, “Fertility as the Final Boss in Chinese Development, and Richard Hanania Prediction Markets.”
Steve Hsu, “Sustainability of China Economic Growth.”
Steve Hsu, “Les Grandes Ecoles Chinoises.”
Francesco C. Billari, Hans-Peter Kohler, Gunnar Andersson and Hans Lundström, “Approaching the Limit: Long-Term Trends in Late and Very Late Fertility.” p. 163. (On Swedish Fertility, Extreme Births)
Steve’s Podcast, “Manifold.”
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.cspicenter.com