#119 – Andrew Yang on our very long-term future, and other topics most politicians won’t touch

Many of you will have heard of Zvi Mowshowitz as a superhuman information-absorbing-and-processing machine — which he definitely is. As the author of the Substack Don’t Worry About the Vase, Zvi has spent as much time as literally anyone in the world over the last two years tracking in detail how the explosion of AI has been playing out — and he has strong opinions about almost every aspect of it. Links to learn more, summary, and full transcript.In today’s episode, host Rob Wiblin asks Zvi for his takes on:US-China negotiationsWhether AI progress has stalledThe biggest wins and losses for alignment in 2023EU and White House AI regulationsWhich major AI lab has the best safety strategyThe pros and cons of the Pause AI movementRecent breakthroughs in capabilitiesIn what situations it’s morally acceptable to work at AI labsWhether you agree or disagree with his views, Zvi is super informed and brimming with concrete details.Zvi and Rob also talk about:The risk of AI labs fooling themselves into believing their alignment plans are working when they may not be.The “sleeper agent” issue uncovered in a recent Anthropic paper, and how it shows us how hard alignment actually is.Why Zvi disagrees with 80,000 Hours’ advice about gaining career capital to have a positive impact.Zvi’s project to identify the most strikingly horrible and neglected policy failures in the US, and how Zvi founded a new think tank (Balsa Research) to identify innovative solutions to overthrow the horrible status quo in areas like domestic shipping, environmental reviews, and housing supply.Why Zvi thinks that improving people’s prosperity and housing can make them care more about existential risks like AI.An idea from the online rationality community that Zvi thinks is really underrated and more people should have heard of: simulacra levels.And plenty more.Chapters:Zvi’s AI-related worldview (00:03:41)Sleeper agents (00:05:55)Safety plans of the three major labs (00:21:47)Misalignment vs misuse vs structural issues (00:50:00)Should concerned people work at AI labs? (00:55:45)Pause AI campaign (01:30:16)Has progress on useful AI products stalled? (01:38:03)White House executive order and US politics (01:42:09)Reasons for AI policy optimism (01:56:38)Zvi’s day-to-day (02:09:47)Big wins and losses on safety and alignment in 2023 (02:12:29)Other unappreciated technical breakthroughs (02:17:54)Concrete things we can do to mitigate risks (02:31:19)Balsa Research and the Jones Act (02:34:40)The National Environmental Policy Act (02:50:36)Housing policy (02:59:59)Underrated rationalist worldviews (03:16:22)Producer and editor: Keiran HarrisAudio Engineering Lead: Ben CordellTechnical editing: Simon Monsour, Milo McGuire, and Dominic ArmstrongTranscriptions and additional content editing: Katy Moore

11 Huhti 20243h 31min

Today’s release is a reading of our career review of AI governance and policy, written and narrated by Cody Fenwick.Advanced AI systems could have massive impacts on humanity and potentially pose global catastrophic risks, and there are opportunities in the broad field of AI governance to positively shape how society responds to and prepares for the challenges posed by the technology.Given the high stakes, pursuing this career path could be many people’s highest-impact option. But they should be very careful not to accidentally exacerbate the threats rather than mitigate them.If you want to check out the links, footnotes and figures in today’s article, you can find those here.Editing and audio proofing: Ben Cordell and Simon MonsourNarration: Cody Fenwick

28 Maalis 202451min

"When a friend comes to me with a decision, and they want my thoughts on it, very rarely am I trying to give them a really specific answer, like, 'I solved your problem.' What I’m trying to do often is give them other ways of thinking about what they’re doing, or giving different framings. A classic example of this would be someone who’s been working on a project for a long time and they feel really trapped by it. And someone says, 'Let’s suppose you currently weren’t working on the project, but you could join it. And if you joined, it would be exactly the state it is now. Would you join?' And they’d be like, 'Hell no!' It’s a reframe. It doesn’t mean you definitely shouldn’t join, but it’s a reframe that gives you a new way of looking at it." —Spencer GreenbergIn today’s episode, host Rob Wiblin speaks for a fourth time with listener favourite Spencer Greenberg — serial entrepreneur and host of the Clearer Thinking podcast — about a grab-bag of topics that Spencer has explored since his last appearance on the show a year ago.Links to learn more, summary, and full transcript.They cover:How much money makes you happy — and the tricky methodological issues that come up trying to answer that question.The importance of hype in making valuable things happen.How to recognise warning signs that someone is untrustworthy or likely to hurt you.Whether Registered Reports are successfully solving reproducibility issues in science.The personal principles Spencer lives by, and whether or not we should all establish our own list of life principles.The biggest and most harmful systemic mistakes we commit when making decisions, both individually and as groups.The potential harms of lightgassing, which is the opposite of gaslighting.How Spencer’s team used non-statistical methods to test whether astrology works.Whether there’s any social value in retaliation.And much more.Chapters:Does money make you happy? (00:05:54)Hype vs value (00:31:27)Warning signs that someone is bad news (00:41:25)Integrity and reproducibility in social science research (00:57:54)Personal principles (01:16:22)Decision-making errors (01:25:56)Lightgassing (01:49:23)Astrology (02:02:26)Game theory, tit for tat, and retaliation (02:20:51)Parenting (02:30:00)Producer and editor: Keiran HarrisAudio Engineering Lead: Ben CordellTechnical editing: Simon Monsour, Milo McGuire, and Dominic ArmstrongTranscriptions: Katy Moore

14 Maalis 20242h 36min

"[One] thing is just to spend time thinking about the kinds of things animals can do and what their lives are like. Just how hard a chicken will work to get to a nest box before she lays an egg, the amount of labour she’s willing to go through to do that, to think about how important that is to her. And to realise that we can quantify that, and see how much they care, or to see that they get stressed out when fellow chickens are threatened and that they seem to have some sympathy for conspecifics."Those kinds of things make me say there is something in there that is recognisable to me as another individual, with desires and preferences and a vantage point on the world, who wants things to go a certain way and is frustrated and upset when they don’t. And recognising the individuality, the perspective of nonhuman animals, for me, really challenges my tendency to not take them as seriously as I think I ought to, all things considered." — Bob FischerIn today’s episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Bob Fischer — senior research manager at Rethink Priorities and the director of the Society for the Study of Ethics and Animals — about Rethink Priorities’s Moral Weight Project.Links to learn more, summary, and full transcript.They cover:The methods used to assess the welfare ranges and capacities for pleasure and pain of chickens, pigs, octopuses, bees, and other animals — and the limitations of that approach.Concrete examples of how someone might use the estimated moral weights to compare the benefits of animal vs human interventions.The results that most surprised Bob.Why the team used a hedonic theory of welfare to inform the project, and what non-hedonic theories of welfare might bring to the table.Thought experiments like Tortured Tim that test different philosophical assumptions about welfare.Confronting our own biases when estimating animal mental capacities and moral worth.The limitations of using neuron counts as a proxy for moral weights.How different types of risk aversion, like avoiding worst-case scenarios, could impact cause prioritisation.And plenty more.Chapters:Welfare ranges (00:10:19)Historical assessments (00:16:47)Method (00:24:02)The present / absent approach (00:27:39)Results (00:31:42)Chickens (00:32:42)Bees (00:50:00)Salmon and limits of methodology (00:56:18)Octopuses (01:00:31)Pigs (01:27:50)Surprises about the project (01:30:19)Objections to the project (01:34:25)Alternative decision theories and risk aversion (01:39:14)Hedonism assumption (02:00:54)Producer and editor: Keiran HarrisAudio Engineering Lead: Ben CordellTechnical editing: Simon Monsour and Milo McGuireAdditional content editing: Katy Moore and Luisa RodriguezTranscriptions: Katy Moore

8 Maalis 20242h 21min

"The question I care about is: What do I want to do? Like, when I'm 80, how strong do I want to be? OK, and then if I want to be that strong, how well do my muscles have to work? OK, and then if that's true, what would they have to look like at the cellular level for that to be true? Then what do we have to do to make that happen? In my head, it's much more about agency and what choice do I have over my health. And even if I live the same number of years, can I live as an 80-year-old running every day happily with my grandkids?" — Laura DemingIn today’s episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Laura Deming — founder of The Longevity Fund — about the challenge of ending ageing.Links to learn more, summary, and full transcript.They cover:How lifespan is surprisingly easy to manipulate in animals, which suggests human longevity could be increased too.Why we irrationally accept age-related health decline as inevitable.The engineering mindset Laura takes to solving the problem of ageing.Laura’s thoughts on how ending ageing is primarily a social challenge, not a scientific one.The recent exciting regulatory breakthrough for an anti-ageing drug for dogs.Laura’s vision for how increased longevity could positively transform society by giving humans agency over when and how they age.Why this decade may be the most important decade ever for making progress on anti-ageing research.The beauty and fascination of biology, which makes it such a compelling field to work in.And plenty more.Chapters:The case for ending ageing (00:04:00)What might the world look like if this all goes well? (00:21:57)Reasons not to work on ageing research (00:27:25)Things that make mice live longer (00:44:12)Parabiosis, changing the brain, and organ replacement can increase lifespan (00:54:25)Big wins the field of ageing research (01:11:40)Talent shortages and other bottlenecks for ageing research (01:17:36)Producer and editor: Keiran HarrisAudio Engineering Lead: Ben CordellTechnical editing: Simon Monsour and Milo McGuireAdditional content editing: Katy Moore and Luisa RodriguezTranscriptions: Katy Moore

1 Maalis 20241h 37min

The World Economic Forum’s global risks survey of 1,400 experts, policymakers, and industry leaders ranked misinformation and disinformation as the number one global risk over the next two years — ranking it ahead of war, environmental problems, and other threats from AI.And the discussion around misinformation and disinformation has shifted to focus on how generative AI or a future super-persuasive AI might change the game and make it extremely hard to figure out what was going on in the world — or alternatively, extremely easy to mislead people into believing convenient lies.But this week’s guest, cognitive scientist Hugo Mercier, has a very different view on how people form beliefs and figure out who to trust — one in which misinformation really is barely a problem today, and is unlikely to be a problem anytime soon. As he explains in his book Not Born Yesterday, Hugo believes we seriously underrate the perceptiveness and judgement of ordinary people.Links to learn more, summary, and full transcript.In this interview, host Rob Wiblin and Hugo discuss:How our reasoning mechanisms evolved to facilitate beneficial communication, not blind gullibility.How Hugo makes sense of our apparent gullibility in many cases — like falling for financial scams, astrology, or bogus medical treatments, and voting for policies that aren’t actually beneficial for us.Rob and Hugo’s ideas about whether AI might make misinformation radically worse, and which mass persuasion approaches we should be most worried about.Why Hugo thinks our intuitions about who to trust are generally quite sound, even in today’s complex information environment.The distinction between intuitive beliefs that guide our actions versus reflective beliefs that don’t.Why fake news and conspiracy theories actually have less impact than most people assume.False beliefs that have persisted across cultures and generations — like bloodletting and vaccine hesitancy — and theories about why.And plenty more.Chapters:The view that humans are really gullible (00:04:26)The evolutionary argument against humans being gullible (00:07:46) Open vigilance (00:18:56)Intuitive and reflective beliefs (00:32:25)How people decide who to trust (00:41:15)Redefining beliefs (00:51:57)Bloodletting (01:00:38)Vaccine hesitancy and creationism (01:06:38)False beliefs without skin in the game (01:12:36)One consistent weakness in human judgement (01:22:57)Trying to explain harmful financial decisions (01:27:15)Astrology (01:40:40)Medical treatments that don’t work (01:45:47)Generative AI, LLMs, and persuasion (01:54:50)Ways AI could improve the information environment (02:29:59)Producer and editor: Keiran HarrisAudio Engineering Lead: Ben CordellTechnical editing: Simon Monsour and Milo McGuireTranscriptions: Katy Moore

21 Helmi 20242h 36min

Mental health problems like depression and anxiety affect enormous numbers of people and severely interfere with their lives. By contrast, we don’t see similar levels of physical ill health in young people. At any point in time, something like 20% of young people are working through anxiety or depression that’s seriously interfering with their lives — but nowhere near 20% of people in their 20s have severe heart disease or cancer or a similar failure in a key organ of the body other than the brain.From an evolutionary perspective, that’s to be expected, right? If your heart or lungs or legs or skin stop working properly while you’re a teenager, you’re less likely to reproduce, and the genes that cause that malfunction get weeded out of the gene pool.So why is it that these evolutionary selective pressures seemingly fixed our bodies so that they work pretty smoothly for young people most of the time, but it feels like evolution fell asleep on the job when it comes to the brain? Why did evolution never get around to patching the most basic problems, like social anxiety, panic attacks, debilitating pessimism, or inappropriate mood swings? For that matter, why did evolution go out of its way to give us the capacity for low mood or chronic anxiety or extreme mood swings at all?Today’s guest, Randy Nesse — a leader in the field of evolutionary psychiatry — wrote the book Good Reasons for Bad Feelings, in which he sets out to try to resolve this paradox.Links to learn more, video, highlights, and full transcript.In the interview, host Rob Wiblin and Randy discuss the key points of the book, as well as:How the evolutionary psychiatry perspective can help people appreciate that their mental health problems are often the result of a useful and important system.How evolutionary pressures and dynamics lead to a wide range of different personalities, behaviours, strategies, and tradeoffs.The missing intellectual foundations of psychiatry, and how an evolutionary lens could revolutionise the field.How working as both an academic and a practicing psychiatrist shaped Randy’s understanding of treating mental health problems.The “smoke detector principle” of why we experience so many false alarms along with true threats.The origins of morality and capacity for genuine love, and why Randy thinks it’s a mistake to try to explain these from a selfish gene perspective.Evolutionary theories on why we age and die.And much more.Producer and editor: Keiran HarrisAudio Engineering Lead: Ben CordellTechnical editing: Dominic ArmstrongTranscriptions: Katy Moore

12 Helmi 20242h 56min

"I think at various times — before you have the kid, after you have the kid — it's useful to sit down and think about: What do I want the shape of this to look like? What time do I want to be spending? Which hours? How do I want the weekends to look? The things that are going to shape the way your day-to-day goes, and the time you spend with your kids, and what you're doing in that time with your kids, and all of those things: you have an opportunity to deliberately plan them. And you can then feel like, 'I've thought about this, and this is a life that I want. This is a life that we're trying to craft for our family, for our kids.' And that is distinct from thinking you're doing a good job in every moment — which you can't achieve. But you can achieve, 'I'm doing this the way that I think works for my family.'" — Emily OsterIn today’s episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Emily Oster — economist at Brown University, host of the ParentData podcast, and the author of three hugely popular books that provide evidence-based insights into pregnancy and early childhood.Links to learn more, summary, and full transcript.They cover:Common pregnancy myths and advice that Emily disagrees with — and why you should probably get a doula.Whether it’s fine to continue with antidepressants and coffee during pregnancy.What the data says — and doesn’t say — about outcomes from parenting decisions around breastfeeding, sleep training, childcare, and more.Which factors really matter for kids to thrive — and why that means parents shouldn’t sweat the small stuff.How to reduce parental guilt and anxiety with facts, and reject judgemental “Mommy Wars” attitudes when making decisions that are best for your family.The effects of having kids on career ambitions, pay, and productivity — and how the effects are different for men and women.Practical advice around managing the tradeoffs between career and family.What to consider when deciding whether and when to have kids.Relationship challenges after having kids, and the protective factors that help.And plenty more.Producer and editor: Keiran HarrisAudio Engineering Lead: Ben CordellTechnical editing: Simon Monsour and Milo McGuireAdditional content editing: Katy Moore and Luisa RodriguezTranscriptions: Katy Moore

1 Helmi 20242h 22min