(Classic Episode) Zvi Mowshowitz - How the Worst People in Society Bungled a Pandemic

Zvi is a COVID forecaster, writer of thezvi blog, and game designer at the recently released (as of republishing) card game https://emergentstcg.com.

We discuss Magic the Gathering, chess and computability, learning curves, COVID projections, the CDC banning testing, immoral mazes, selection effects, psychological malleability, Robin Hanson and medicine, institutional incentives, egalitarianism, civilizational collapse, populism, libertarianism, and pure math.

Note: the timestamps are somewhat inaccurate due to editing and intro.

0:00 MTG

19:00 chess,  computability, and learning

36:30 COVID projections

49:00 CDC banning tests + immoral mazes

57:15 narrative hedging

1:14:05 selection vs. malleability

1:21:20 Robin Hanson and medicine

1:55:00 institution building

2:00:05 egalitarianism and social competition

2:13:30 were we in a golden age?

2:15:30 decivilization

2:18:50 economies of scale

3:03:00 chaos and order

3:14:05 pure math

Zvi’s Blog:

http://thezvi.wordpress.com/

Zvi on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/TheZvi

Episode with Samo Burja:

Samo Burja: Patterns of Destruction and Structures of Rebirth

Episode with Robin Hanson:

Robin Hanson: How Global Elites Manufactured Stagnation and How We Escape

CDC banning COVID tests:

https://www.science.org/content/article/united-states-badly-bungled-coronavirus-testing-things-may-soon-improve

Moral Mazes book:

https://www.amazon.ca/Moral-Mazes-Corporate-Managers-Updated/dp/0199729883