Samo Burja Transcript

00:55.46

cactuschu

And I assume that the namesake is Otto von bismarck. Yeah, so yeah, so who is Bismarck and why is he important?

00:56.68

Samo Burja

Ah, that's correct. He's a historical figure I greatly admire.

01:08.88

Samo Burja

Otto von Bismarck was the chancellor, the first chancellor of Unified Germany and was the statesman that shepherded Prussia through a number of social, political, economic and diplomatic challenges up to and including. Defeating ah the long-term rival of France and Austria sort of in finality concluding the geopolitical competition that had been taking place in central europe since the wars of religion in the sixteenth century possibly honestly even earlier. Arguably even the struggle between the pope and the Holy Roman emperor in medieval times was a struggle over this space. The social challenges especially were ones that were faced by a relatively conservative society or relatively a very traditional society. That encounter these mass challenges of industrialization today. We have a hard time even imagining the sheer pace of change from 1800 to eighteen seventy right during this time period there were parts of Europe where life hadn't changed much since the middle ages. Were sort of thrust into modernity and you know with it all the prospect and the question of what should politics be in um in this new world. 1 of Bismarck's innovations and one of the reasons I admire him um was the welfare state social democracy now. Why is it admirable to introduce sort of the first retirement system and so on well in his personal beliefs. Ah you know this Mark was fairly monarchist, fairly traditionalist yet he understood that pragmatism and innovation were necessary to sort of keep society running. To prevent chaos and revolution. Ah, but also ultimately to address iniquities of modern conditions as they are or rather as they were right? What was back then modernity rather than what our preconceptions or theories would like them to be right? So this is. Sort of deep appreciation for regardless of where your wishes, where you wish things would go or how you want the world to be seeing where it is and doing the best you can with that.

03:35.55

cactuschu

Right? And I think this question of institutions is a very important one I think maybe just for the audience. It would be important to just kind of lay out a list of Accomplishments or a list of inheritances that we draw from Bismarck nowadays.

03:52.52

Samo Burja

Well I think pretty much important innovations in the modern system of taxation. A lot of details of how the modern research university works by the way the modern American University is derived from the prussian university system. Um, important things about the structure of military command. Um, but the sort of basic political economy of a social democracy has for Europe at least been sort of the only stable non-utilitarian political system around. The tumult of the early twentieth century right? with say the communist revolution you know fascism and so on a lot of that was just a straightforward political side effect of society's maladjusting to the shock of industrialization right? So the institutional inheritance. Then is ah both in these systems of social change in the particular german brand of um, parliamentary parliamentary democracy right? The system started introducing elements like that. Um the approach to foreign politics right. Realpolitik is associated with Ortofon Bismarck more than anyone else. But unlike some of the advocates of this worldview he actually you know he actually could back it up. Ah he did maintain relative peace in Europe. Arguably you know, perhaps unfortunately he led the best German foreign policy. You know the best you know the best German foreign policy that was ever pursued I think even say even the post-war German foreign policy actually has. More significant issues as we see now with the energy dependence on Russia I mean obviously great improvement over the first half of the twentieth century but an improvement but look an improvement over bismarck I don't think so I think I think bismarck was.

05:54.69

cactuschu

Certainly.

06:03.34

Samo Burja

Exactly the kind of man, exactly the kind of thinker. Um, that would have sought to address rather than ignore Europe's energy dependence and you know Germany where Germany goes at least today just because of the size of its economy. There goes Europe.

06:19.58

cactuschu

Right? I think that there's this political process where decisions are diffused. They're put through a kind of network of failure points and this is kind of done to observe and absolve anyone of responsibility. And it takes a certain amount of time. It takes a certain outlook or a certain kind of game that someone is committed to playing and here I mean game in the game theoretic sense in order to take that responsibility in order to take that burden of decision Making. Ah. Onto oneself as a single person and I think this leads naturally to your idea of live players and I guess you would consider Bismarck one of them. So Can you tell us what a live player is and.

07:08.90

Samo Burja

Oh he.

07:15.12

cactuschu

Why does that matter?

07:16.14

Samo Burja

I Think for the vast majority of our lives we repeat what we've already done if you think of anything from your morning routine to office work to honestly most of education where you know maybe the lesson is different every week But the real lesson is that you're sitting in the classroom right? and that you're working on these exercises the way you always did. There's ah, there's a routine.. There's a script we learn from each other ah by imitating the scripts by taking the scripts. Um the patterns of action. Patterns of speech that work: we imitate them and we observe which ones work. However, you know when circumstances change all of those scripts are broken and might naively seem like we all. Are quite good at working off of scripts but it's just mostly not the case I think it's. It's very rare. It's very rare to evaluate completely novel situations on their own and construct on the fly an appropriate response that doesn't have a clear imitation. A response that is an innovation not just in terms of your own actions but sort of anything you've ever heard of consider this like a common story of the sort of misunderstood innovator, sort of the outsider that is never properly recognized. Until after they succeed the reason they're not recognized is because they have nothing to be compared to and live players therefore at all levels of society mind you this doesn't necessarily need to go all the way you know to to statesmen and Generals. Although I think I would claim that they're. They are rare at all levels of society this ability to genetically move through the world to adjust on the fly playing not off of a script but sort of in response to your immediate strategic circumstances. Um I think these are actually the people. We have to thank so much of Society's resilience and adaptability.

09:32.13

cactuschu

Right? And a big question that I think you've tackled here is how these scripts are actually formed because in a lot of circumstances the scripts work right.

09:50.33

Samo Burja

Yes, yes, it's you actually.

09:51.60

cactuschu

There's actually a good reason not to deviate from the script and yet of course at some point yet of course at some point they were written by someone.

09:59.00

Samo Burja

Of course, um, the key thing about it is you know, usually if you try to innovate, you will do it badly. There's no reason to reinvent the wheel if all you're going to invent is the wheel. Ah you know the reason the reason to reinvent the wheel is to do something. That's not a wheel right.

10:09.85

cactuschu

Sensitive.

10:15.77

cactuschu

Yeah.

10:17.86

Samo Burja

Um, and you know it, it's just the experience of childhood. I mean all of us here. I'm sure we still remember these lessons of how to ride a bike. I know I really don't think you were just left on a deserted island as a nine year old. With a bicycle you would necessarily know what this thing is for or maybe I mean maybe you would end up riding it. Maybe you wouldn't, it seems so intuitive and obvious to us. But I really think it isn't you know, just imagine you know you drop a bicycle to some islanders. Do they use it in the way it is designed to be used? probably not. I think probably not they might have better or different uses for the components but everything in our life is informed by our deep socialization by our parents and by our educational environment. Um by our media consumption habits. Um, you know religion by politics and political indoctrination and these are all of these examples and social roles that we draw upon right? Sometimes these are, you know, very abstract right? They can be even mythological like the hero archetypes or whatever. Um, and it can be difficult to even recognize what's going on when something doesn't fall at least partially into those scripts right? whenever we try to describe something new. We. Ah we kind of can't, we can't put a single word on it. We have to use all of these labels where none of them quite fit until whatever the name is of the new social role. The new pattern until it is an example of itself right? until you start comparing other things to this well-known pattern of behavior once you can say. Ah, you know oh this person is like a Steve jobs of finance for example or Steve Jobs of the art world or something like this at that point. Well exactly right? some of them some of them work some of them don't.

12:19.29

cactuschu

Right? We had all of these startups describing themselves as uber for X right? and some of them work like doordash. Yeah.

12:31.46

Samo Burja

But ah, my point more was that ah you know as soon as you could describe someone as the Steve jobs of something that's the point where you no longer need to explain who Steve Jobs is all right? That's the point where he became an archetype where he became an archetype. He's a little bit less so now than he was ten years ago I think ah you know sort of.

12:39.50

cactuschu

I see ah.

12:50.54

Samo Burja

Elon is now becoming an archetype I guarantee that the people will be described as the ah elon musk of something within the next five or or ten years

12:59.38

cactuschu

I think people have been described as the elon musk of something within I think just like the last week in The New York Times um but yeah I think I think actually this is.

13:07.23

Samo Burja

Interesting I haven't. I haven't read that but I believe it.

13:19.37

cactuschu

What's interesting and I'm not sure if this is novel you can correct me if it isn't but it feels novel ah is that you have these you have these scripts becoming extremely popularized before the terminology catches up so not only is this necessarily something that is done by the Few. Ah, but something that can be done by saying millions of people something like um, the word Selfie right? We had the word selfie far later than we actually had this phenomenon of oh everyone is taking a picture of themselves in their own room on social media and you had this time period where um. Where it was widely popular and no one. No one could put a pin on it because they didn't have to learn a language. Is this something that's happened also throughout history or is this something that's new to social media?

14:06.17

Samo Burja

Oh I think this has happened throughout history. It is however true that the speed of communication allows the social phenomena to be larger in scale and more synchronized right more more temporally synchronized. Um, one of the most interesting things to me for example, is that you know when ah our best estimates for the proportion of christians in the population of the Roman Empire when the emperor constantine you know, sort of decided to start a movement towards making christianity the sacred religion. It was about ten or fifteen percent a century later. It was sort of pagans that were the minority now 100 years doesn't sound. You know it doesn't sound fast. But if you imagine with the limitations of technology at the time that sort of lightning fast. That means you might. Born into a pagan world and sort of ah you know the pagan world of late antiquity and die in sort of the early medieval or let's let's call it late classical antiquity christianity right? A very different set of values. Very different worldview very different metaphysics. And honestly different social organizations. We could talk a little bit about what those social organizations were but you know history is full of these very rapid religious conversions these mass changes in language and behavior. Social reform movements and also the invisible. The invisible spread of you know folkways of of food of ways of raising your children. All of this stuff has always been flowing. This is the stuff of culture. We. We talk about culture. As this you know very detached thing but really culture is what we live it? Um, it can be It can be changed to some extent but to a very large extent. We're sort of like fish in water like you said there's no word for the selfie the practice emerges first. Then there's the word and maybe the word helps the practice spread right? As soon as you've coined the term selfie you know you have New York Times articles about you know people taking selfies and then maybe older people start taking selfies too a little bit faster than they would otherwise it really is this this. Very intense, very energetic copying borrowing sometimes incremental improvement and this is not static right? This is a metabolic process. So. That's why when we think of culture we shouldn't think of something that's sort of dead in a museum.

16:57.38

Samo Burja

We should very much think of this very dynamic, always living, always self transformed form. Ah you know the system of people.

17:04.21

cactuschu

Yeah, let's go into that a bit more because I think it's a big question. Everyone Is facing today how that culture changes who or what is in control of it and how it is passed down.

17:17.48

Samo Burja

To a very great extent There are some faster moving currents and some slower moving currents sort of cultural change and I think that to a very great extent. It is institutions often that function as their anchors. Um, it might seem obvious to us that the college experience is what it is but it's very historically contingent. This is sort of a 4 year period where you know where you're sort of secluded from the secular world. And secluded from the market and you are age segregated with your peers and at the end of it. You know congratulations you've entered society or something like this at least that's what university can market itself as this is so you know the very experience right? You know that. People can relate to this as an experience. Um stabilizes culture. It makes it sort of mutually intelligible. Um, you know the service experience during World War II played a similar role where basically you know anyone and everyone who is running. The United States in the 1960 s or seventies had some experience of military service during world war ii and contributions to that effort. They kind of understood these large bureaucratic organizations how they work and in many ways. Ah you know a large american corporation from 1950 was much more militaristic in the way it organized itself right? or at least the way the flavor of the bureaucracy isn't you know Nasa at least the Nasa that went to the moon sort of best understood as just a world war ii project run after world war ii. You know it's an army building a rocket that goes to the moon at least if it can look that way right? When we look back at the pictures and ah you know, many of the people in fact, had these experiences so the shared experiences we all have in institutions that have an intake that have an outtake are very important. There is also something like this deep sort of convergent convergent set of interests that permeates society. Especially I think to some extent sort of elites. Um, the elites of society are the people who have always had disproportionate economic, political and social influence. Ah they often have sort of interests that are quite stable over long periods of time even if say members of the elites change right? so.

20:09.10

Samo Burja

Particular way that financial incentives might be set up. Political Stability is achieved. Ah, these might be, you know, not necessarily even directly handed down, they might just be reinvented on the spot over and over Again. It's sort of like. You know when you start a fire as long as you keep it sustained with fuel. It never really goes out. It just keeps on going. You don't have to, you know, relight it every few minutes but the quality sort of the quality of some of the more intricate social machinery. The thing that sustains these universities sustains these government organizations Honestly, even sustains companies that's far more fragile I think in those cases when those are you know these functional institutions that are institutions sort of fit for purpose.

20:57.23

cactuschu

Writes.

21:04.40

Samo Burja

Institutions where sort of all the you know all the all the cogs fit the organization actually does its job I think those types of organizations on paper everyone claims that they have this kind of organization. But it's really striking. You know when you see one. It just stands out so much. It's an order of magnitude better than its competition right? and it just you realize that actually for the most part most of our organizations around society feel like bad Xerox copies of the few of the few functional ones.

21:35.54

cactuschu

Yes.

21:41.00

Samo Burja

So there's like a massive subsidy to all of society from the functional organizations . It takes 2 shapes. The first one the first way in which it's a massive subsidy is that it is an example right? again. The imitative example that we can all safely copy and that you know if our copy is. Pretty good. It works pretty well and you know that's excellent. The second one is these organizations just directly I think outproduce and out-innovate and indirectly subsidize all the other less functioning organizations so these are these functional institutions. And the people who can create them and especially the people who can handle the succession problem, that is the problem of replacing themselves with someone that also understands this like a fine tuned piece of social mimetic engineering. Ah. I think these people have a disproportionate impact on culture as a whole. They don't necessarily plan out all the effects of their actions on society but they certainly shape society. They're not the only thing that shapes society. But I think they are the best expressions we have. Of how human agency can transform our social world right? Where is there room for agency in society? I think the room for agency is best found not sort of like in this or that battle right? if I use the military metaphor but in ah you know sort of. Redesigning how the military command structure is if you consider a social technology right? The social technology being um, you know another way to describe culture, something that's intentionally designed and engineered. It's. These types of innovations can last a thousand years or longer, think of say codes of law right? We have continuity in continental europe between roman codes of law and modern civil law.

23:48.72

cactuschu

Right? I Think what you're seeing here is that all of these all of these ways of inheritance, these kinds of social methods whether it's copying, whether it's um, whether it's following a kind of script or kind of just having this inherent. As you said cultural ah cultural mixture. Um, such as the universities I think that's often something that we ignore and something that I noticed going from say a hard field or by hard I mean kind of like a technical field like machine learning or mathematics to ah to politics is that.

24:18.53

Samo Burja

In here here.

24:26.21

cactuschu

Um, there's often a very big question of where we're inspecting or where we're looking because we just have this kind of vast field of cultural assumptions and we typically pick one of them and say what's the problem with this. Um, but still stepping back and taking a look.

24:39.32

Samo Burja

Bright.

24:44.49

cactuschu

At The entire thing I do want to go more into why institutions might decline. Maybe we no longer have, maybe we no longer have the leader and maybe we have some kind of succession problem. But what is it that actually takes an institutional structure ? Ah, you might describe it as Functional. Ah, and turns it into something that you might describe as imitational. How does that actually happen?

25:08.67

Samo Burja

Write write. Write. Well you know I think functional institutions fall out of functionality in a few ways. The first one is um, you know the sort of designers build a structure. It's perfectly suited to its time and place. Cover the time and place they keep on changing and you know the founders are no longer around and it is extremely difficult to even try to reform an existing organization from the inside but it's even harder to know what you should reform it into. You know if ah, you know you sort of asked people what to do with Yahoo back in 2010 I'm not sure. Not sure anyone would have very good answers. Um I'm not sure what they would want to pivot that organization into that company. But also if you know, sort of tell someone you know? Okay, it's time to. Reformed the role of the British monarchy in modern society. Well, what do you do? even do the question of what might an old institution's role be in a new society and designing it just as well for this new role. As it had for the old one. It's very difficult and because of this you often end up having legacy institutions. They still kind of work but we can't really describe them misfunctional they work in the sense of, you know, having funding, having employees performing some of the same activities but you know maybe the activities are pointless, maybe they really don't need to be performed anymore. But because of the claims to resources and the talent to personnel the organization keeps chugging along so that's sort of number 1 we could just call this obsolescence. I think there are frequent claims that you know institutions are. Obsoleted by the progress of technology I think there is some truth to this but I think it's ah exaggerated nevertheless it does happen I say it's exaggerated because I think often the functions of institutions are not obvious and sort of the real role. Of an institution or an organization of a way of organizing people. It can be very hard to tease that out. It actually takes like um, a very close look at a refined investigation because you know, fun fact. Um you know institutions don't have to be transparent about their functioning. Honestly, even to ah the members that they have they might work for reasons that are completely unrelated to what the members of the institution believe are the reasons it works. Usually there's some correlation but it doesn't have to be very tight. Beyond obsolescence though.

27:57.65

Samo Burja

I Think there is just simply slow organizational Rot and hardening these are slightly different right? Organizational Rot I think is sort of like the decomposition and the atrophy of one's functional systems and then. The ossification the ossification the um, a sort of sclerotic rigor ah of a large bureaucracy rests in the fact that every process that is introduced for pragmatic reasons. Ends up having people attached to keeping that process running who benefit directly from keeping that process running meaning that it just once you introduce something as a new function. It just becomes very hard to get rid of. Fire a department that's been Hired. It's very difficult to convince people who've invested a lot of effort into a particular set of skills that no actually these skills aren't needed and that you need to go. You need to go do something else. Um, you know these are. These are, I think , just very, very difficult. Um and on a very.

29:15.71

cactuschu

It's right and I think it's. I think it's not only difficult to convince them. But it's difficult to really reallocate those resources altogether because not only do you have the kind of entrenchment of Desire. You have the entrenchment of political power. All of these positions. You can see this most obviously in the government . All of them gain greater and greater sway over the actual um, the actual resources over which they command. So Even though you might say um, be some kind of administrator in a public Program. You gain the potential to really attack a politician, a political candidate or a politician or like a political leader a president says and because of that you kind of become this porcupine. You kind of become this porcupine. That's very difficult to touch Even if I say. Actually administering that program or reorganizing. It is supposedly within the purview of that political leader.

30:18.45

Samo Burja

Yeah, any system again any system that involves the distribution of either social roles or material resources inevitably forms a sort of patronage pyramid where you.

30:36.56

cactuschu

Writes.

30:36.62

Samo Burja

Have these systems Where for example, you know a middle manager becomes more and more powerful. The more people he manages and sort of every single employee working on a team on a pet project for a particular manager. Well they are kind of de facto part of that. Manager's empire. There. Their principal agent problem exists of course even between them and their manager but a principal agent problem is introduced between the manager and the organization as a whole. It's very easy in fact to pursue missions. In the sort of departments of a large organization that are completely at odds with the goals of the organization as a whole, you might have people who disagree with the prioritization of a project and therefore siphon resources that were meant for 1 project into an alternative they're advocating for.

31:18.54

cactuschu

Yes.

31:31.14

Samo Burja

And sort of the more people you have working on maintaining that the more powerful de facto you are in these internal office politics I think you know organizations just do run on office politics. It's just a question of are office politics functional. Are they dysfunctional and can it be very difficult to have the alignment of those incentives be right? further they happen over time is a deep fragmentation of knowledge where sort of you know the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing almost at sort of every level of Society. You also have a siloing. Information where people are always incentivized to sort of like you know under report information that's going up. But even if they weren't under-reporting information that's going up for the sake of building up overtime information asymmetry advantage over your manager right? therefore sort of transmuting. Um. You know this power that's been lent to you into power that you own right? You kind of make yourself unfireable. You make yourself um necessary and the more opaque you can be while still providing an input someone needs in a way. The better, an office politics move that is.

32:32.68

cactuschu

Yes.

32:48.21

Samo Burja

Right? The more unassailable. You are the more. It's even hard to question people who don't even understand what it is that you do so they can kind of leave you alone and this works again as you pointed out in the government. This is one of the reasons it can be very difficult to fire people at the end of the day. Ah, these vast coalitions have a common interest that they want to limit who can fire you who can remove you from a social position from a physician of drawing economic resources which means that's say in the example of the us government I don't know I think the think the us president can fire about 10 to 20000 people. Um I could be wrong. But I think the number is in that ballpark somewhere . I'll check my notes later. Ah you know that's a far cry from the federal government's employees right? Um, that's like you know that's that.

33:37.63

cactuschu

Yes.

33:42.53

Samo Burja

Not the same order of magnitude and ah, you know when people imagine you know the Ceo of a company you know, being able to fire the doorman if they don't like the doorman you know, even that even that I think is ah is just kind of inappropriate in a lot of organizations. But. You know, in for-profit companies. That's it's more organized along these lines in say something like a University Or Nonprofit contexts or the US government. it's harder but I think that's because most companies are just much younger organizations. Then the Us federal government.

34:20.75

cactuschu

Yeah I want to put a pin in that into the structure of these contemporary institutions because we will. We will be talking about that very quickly. But I think one last point I want to touch on before that is to wrap this all together into a theory of civilizations: how civilizations rise and how they fall. I think you want to talk about this through the lens of the Roman Empire and then we can talk about today.

34:49.50

Samo Burja

Well, when it comes to the rise and fall of civilizations I think the best way you know first we have to think about what a civilization is um in my opinion sort of the best way to think of them are these ecosystems of interdependent institutions right? where. You know, imagine it like an old-growth forest. No 1 individual tree dying means that the forest is gone. In fact, the forest might be much healthier for it. Ah, but you know if all the trees die and it becomes a grassland or even a desert then I think it's fair to say that the forest died. So I think civilizations are again interdependent and have multiple institutions often. Each individual institution is replaceable. Ah, but you know in a sort of ship of theseus kind of way either. You know there's a point after which civilization is so transformed. It doesn't make sense to call it the same one or it just becomes a desert and there's in fact, this sort of mass desolation. Um, one way to think of this is sort of resource flows. Ah you could argue that you know every society. Ah, you know, be it. Democratic monarchical you know, oligarchical. Ah it ends up having a landscape of political power and most of the action is sort of between the very center and let's say the middle of this pyramid of power and most political conflicts. Ah, even when they involve the general population in support of these factions in the roman empire what often happened was that the late roman empire saw the most successful generals come under the most political pressure why because. The most successful general was the biggest political threat to the emperor. I mean how did the emperor get to be the emperor in the first place? It's today hard to imagine but the Roman Empire was sort of almost governed by a coup d'etat where you know people would take the legions and. Declare themselves emperor. Well how did you get the loyalty of the legions? Well you led them through battle. You had some victories you paid them well and this process sort of when there was enough of a resource in flow going into the Roman into Roman Society enough of a subsidy to all of these institutions from the senate to the religious structures to the grain dole to sort of public ah works to architecture and all of that to building roads infrastructure and so on.

37:31.29

Samo Burja

System had better and better economies as it scaled the more you conquered the Mediterranean the more you could pacify and pacify the seas you could eliminate the pirates as Julius Caesar did the more valuable the sea lanes would become the more incentivized you would be. To expand further and further and further. You could start doing things like feeding the city of Rome with grain grown in North Africa and grown in Egypt. You could do things like import an educated class wholesale from the former defeated Greek States you could do things such as import gaulish slaves as laborers. So in a way there was this society-wide patronage pyramid sort of flowing down from various sources in the middle. Um, and various sources at the top at first the senate and then you know later the office of the emperor and politically once this system ran out of an input which in the case of the romans I think was some combination of economic development and expansion by conquest as all pyramid schemes. Inevitably started. You know it. It failed, which meant it had to cannibalize itself more and more and more. At that point the conflict of interest between an emperor and a general became inevitable because sort of the best way to secure your piece of the pie wasn't to make the pie larger. It was to fight. You know your rivals for the existing slices. Um, and I think that in the Roman Empire this led to things such as excessive taxation excessive draining of manpower um cannibalization of important cultural institutions I think by the late Roman Empire quality of intellectual life in the Roman Empire was much lower than it had been in the immediate aftermath of conquering cities such as Alexandria. So if you went to the library of Alexandria in 400 a d versus if you went there at 100 ad you would see something startlingly different at 100 and eightyd. It's sort of a research institute. It has these mass collections of books by 480? Well some of the books are still around. Ah but you know not many people are sort of funded to build machines or innovate in important ways to just dwell on. Ah, the mosaon in Alexandria because that's actually the original term for it. Note our word museum derives from it ah eratosthenes who produce the first estimate for the size of the earth around earth ah, you know by measuring you know the the.

40:18.97

Samo Burja

But sort of like a very geometrical approach of measuring the angle of the shadows in Alexandria and far south in Siena in Egypt. He was sort of the kind of the chief royal cartographer or say heron of Alexandria wasn't just a philosopher as earlier generations had been such as Ah, Aristotle. Socrates. Ah you know he was an engineer also that built ah, you know what we today call heron's steam engine primarily to demonstrate the principle of heat being transformable into motion. Which I think people really underrate as essentially a basic but a real kind of scientific exercise. So anyway, not to dwell on this too much but you know that institution that long ago defunded the human capital going to it was long gone. Um, you know it but it had been burned at least once just over inf fighting. So you know the social capital of the society was greatly attenuated right now.

41:25.67

cactuschu

Yeah, and I think I think what's happening here is that the social capital is what makes the difference between institutions failing kind of uncorrelated and just being replaced and you risking a broader border collapse.

41:38.38

Samo Burja

A. Yeah, that sounds about right? Well, the social capital is a little bit intangible. Obviously as these things are social capital related to what right? you know at the end of the day. What would make you know what really makes you know something that we can consider material capital.

41:45.25

cactuschu

Is that right?

41:52.10

cactuschu

Writes.

42:01.69

Samo Burja

If you have a steam engine to utilize the coal. So I think if all these institutions in society are sort of self cannibalizing of course trust goes down because the only way to get ahead is to be untrustworthy.

42:03.19

cactuschu

Um.

42:17.80

Samo Burja

Is basically this kind of very 0 sum mentality and that starts depleting these mass reserves of social trust um, it becomes it can also become. You know there's different kinds of social capital as well like you might have knowledge that's embedded I think. Knowledge that is transmitted is a clear form of social capital. Um I think you know longstanding trade relations are also a form of social capital. You definitely treat the first merchant sailing from Portugal into your port asking for spices differently.

42:51.86

cactuschu

2

42:51.87

Samo Burja

Then you know treat the tenth merchant flowing from ah you know sailing from portugal to your port city right? and you know the merchants themselves. There's a massive difference when ah when they know that the spice trade can be profitable versus when they're still trying to find something that might work. It's ah it's very risky. So. Even something like having these clear examples of economic relations that make sense having them be running having them be set up is also a claim of social capital. So for the Roman Empire one way to think about it is that it started off as a decentralized expanding empire. Where you know, many different people at many levels of society are finding ways to intensify to expand to increase production or, you know, just steal stuff from other people by conquering them and then in the future. I think you can think of it almost as this ah descent is this very centralized declining empire where essentially you know there's a top dog and the top dog predates on everyone else on the pack for sustenance until there's no pack left and you know the city of Rome has. Been transformed from a city of millions to 70000 people and you know goats are grazing in the overgrown ruins of the colosseum.

44:17.94

cactuschu

I think this is a good time to move on to the second part of our conversation and the way to kick that off I think is to ask about the present day. So we've seen these patterns. Ah, in Rome you kind of have an abstract understanding of what they are. But I think spotting them in the present is much more difficult. So what is our kind of civilizational risk? What should we be looking towards as at least I hope most of us want to. Um, I want to protect civilization and move it forward into the future. Big question I know.

44:58.61

Samo Burja

Um, I think no no problem. Um, it's hearty. You know it's um, one thing that has to be established first is that you know even societies in decline usually don't have a narrative. Of existing in decline. They don't have a narrative of oh you know we're failing what usually is presented and maintained is kind of a narrative, a story of victory again to just use sort of the Lake Roman example. I think that the prevailing view was that these are old. Giant temples were wasteful and you know they were temples to pagan gods anyway and we should close them down so we're closing them down. You know, not because we can't afford to keep them running but because we've discovered a new and better form of piety and ah you know this this this.

45:50.16

cactuschu

Mom.

45:54.43

Samo Burja

Rationalizing mechanism is very strong. So if we look at the modern world. Um, I'm in favor of environmentalism. I am in favor of striking a sustainable relationship with the natural world but I can't help but notice the way they say. Green politics have evolved within Europe have made them sort of ir rationalization for poverty. You know it's not that GDP has shrunk by 5 % this year. It's not that everyone's poorer. No no, no carbon emissions are down 10% this year everyone is greener I've just said the exact same thing.

46:15.39

cactuschu

Yes.

46:29.64

cactuschu

Hm.

46:32.74

Samo Burja

Right? These 2 correlations allow you to reframe defeats as victories There's also a whole number of other examples where you know it's sort of um, it's not the case. It's not the case that it's not the case that we can't develop other countries. It's the case that interventionism is just always bad. So what I'm referring to here is Afghanistan . Um, I think the US has intervened too much and foolishly in many parts of the world.

46:59.35

cactuschu

Um, yes.

47:10.39

Samo Burja

But the reality is that for about 10 years We were engaged in the serious nation building project with trillions trillions of dollars spent educating building infrastructure and the whole thing collapsed like a house of cards within ten days and okay, we've. We barely remember that right? We barely remember that that happened and that just happened a year ago right less than a year ago. Even you know it's ah it's startling how fast we moved on from this failure. It's um.

47:38.21

cactuschu

Yes, exactly.

47:46.61

Samo Burja

Because it means some important things right? The United States did not fail at nation building in the aftermath of world war ii so whatever you think about the world. It seems clear that something is missing, some capability that was present in 1947 is not present in 2000 and 21 or 2010 or you know 2001 even 2002 I guess would be when it started. Um so these sort of signs where we recast our failures as either victories or recast them as. Basically fundamentally impossible. Um, and I I think this is sort of what the substance of this society-wide process of rationalization is right because you know admitting defeat. That's always a political liability. Um.

48:24.89

cactuschu

Yes, this is excellent. This is excellent.

48:41.75

Samo Burja

Minimizing it or presenting it as a victory. That's very important. I think another thing you might start seeing is that you know if it's hard to imagine the decline of industrial civilization. Every civilization rests on this relatively unique set of structures. But let's say that for our society mass production is one of the defining characteristics right? The beautiful economies of scale that make it so that the one millionth car is cheaper to build than the tenth car. So when you have a new model of car. Sort of the first one is like per unit the most expensive then she keeps it keeps getting better and better right? Like if you could make a billion cars. Ah you know the economies of scale for that production would just be wonderful. So the result of this is that we've had a need to constantly grow. Ah, the economy which was relatively easy to do when population was also growing but imagine a world where demand for chips is lower next year than it was this year right? You can imagine a world of dropping demand. And that world every few years certain basic products become more expensive. Also there's a similar argument to be made that you know the sources of energy. We've relied on are sort of finite that you know sort of eventually not any time soon in my opinion despite what many people might say. We will just run out of fossil fuels. We currently depend on it so we're kind of on borrowed time until we jump to something else. The optimists would say we always jump to something else. Ah, the pessimists would say that no, it's fundamentally impossible. We're hitting against the basic limits of the planet. The way you know the club of Rome people wrote about in the 1970's I'm sort of in between I think that you know civilizations successfully jump to substitutions. Until they don't imagine. It's like this very wide river and you're jumping from rock to rock and then eventually you just slip and you fall and you know that's it. That's it for your society. Your irrigation system collapsed for 1 and you took two or three years too long. To get it up and going because of some barbarian invasion. Well look. You know you just lost 30% of your population and you don't actually have the funding or the organizational capacity to rebuild your canals. Well I'm sorry you know half of your farmland is now back to desert or actually worse than desert right? because when you first.

51:27.80

Samo Burja

Ah, you know, cut down the shrubland and introduced irrigation. It was sort of a Greenland and after the irrigation was gone. It doesn't go right away back to shrubland. It just goes straight to dessert. It's been desertified right? You cut down the trees and so on.

51:42.30

cactuschu

Yeah.

51:43.53

Samo Burja

That might seem like basically an ecological failure but it's kind of an institutional failure assuming you don't have like problems with the the salt. The real problem was that you became very dependent on this highly productive system. The highly productive system had a hiccup, you had no real backup and then you lost resources. To get things going after the hickok. Um, the ability to maintain our super complex civilization is now sort of a third one so the first one is if the world's population starts to shrink I claim. Everything will start becoming more expensive because all the things that surround us.

52:04.87

cactuschu

So yeah.

52:20.76

Samo Burja

Are Basically ah you know, finished products and because of the magic of mass production the more of a finished product you produce So the cheaper that product is right I'm not talking here about the base resources I'm talking about things like your smartphone so that's number 1 number 2 We might face like fundamental resource limits and not have the flexibility the agility as a society to jump to the next thing a lot of people are you know arguing that we should be jumping to say renewable sources of energy I'm not sure most of the renewables make sense I think some of. Think a combination of nuclear and solar would probably be the best bet for a variety of reasons. Um and that sort of wind and and Hydro that these are kind of helpful on the margin but basically Distractions They're not seeing any type of rapid progress see the way I think about photovoltaics.

52:59.68

cactuschu

Yes.

53:15.51

Samo Burja

Genuinely are nor did they have the desirable qualities of a sort of 24 twenty four seven power that is provided by nuclear energy. But I can easily imagine us just being too inflexible to really transition. To a new high energy consuming civilization and make no mistake no matter what we say all of this stuff around us is high energy. We need to spend a lot of energy. The only thing we can hope for is that it's clean. Energy. We can gain some efficiencies at the cost of complexity. But every time you add complexity. Well you know guess what? you've increased the cost of it in terms of human labor and human attention. So again, let's connect these 2 parts together and you did ask a big question. I'm trying to sort of moduly build it together. Ah.

54:02.48

cactuschu

Yes.

54:09.93

Samo Burja

A dropping global population due to a demographic winter and note you know the population is set to decline in China in Europe in Japan Russia obviously even the United States now has a very low fertility exactly. So if that isn't counting immigration. But

54:18.73

cactuschu

Yes, yeah, certainly the west that's been on this trend if you don't count immigration.

54:28.81

Samo Burja

You know what? I don't know of any planet except earth from which we could draw more immigrants so North America might be fine for a little bit more but you know what? what happens when the last sort of bread bread basket of humanity. The place where we draw humans once that last.

54:34.00

cactuschu

Ah, yes.

54:41.74

cactuschu

M.

54:46.32

Samo Burja

Place goes through a demographic transition. What then right? global supply of humans becomes constrained um Africa I think is sort of the last part part of the planet undergoing rapid population growth even in India it slowed down remarkably and in ah latin America it's it's stopped it stopped in most of the Middle East and so on so you know you could have a demand for humans. So it actually becomes once you once human labor is more expensive. It becomes more difficult. To replace energy with complexity because complexity for the most part is something we have humans and systems handle and systems themselves even though we can offload some complexity onto them. They require maintenance so you don't actually ever. Escape the problem of directed human attention and directed human labor. You can just sort of restructure it around make it more efficient make it you know more um more resilient more so ah to some extent sort of automated.

55:50.40

cactuschu

Yeah, but you have a fundamental constraint problem here which is that the resource that you use to actually modify these things is shrinking right? That's what you're getting at here. Yes.

56:01.96

Samo Burja

That's exactly what I'm saying and if you are undergoing cultural decline of some sort as well. Where education is education is of a lower quality or human capital for whatever reason. Honestly, maybe even genetics is decreasing and. You know the human talent that isn't around is best rewarded when it plays 0 sum games rather than positive games and it's not even clear that human attention is a resource rather than a liability right? it becomes really messy, really messy once society undergoes this almost.

56:33.93

cactuschu

That's very good.

56:38.68

Samo Burja

Fractal transition from positive sum games to negative sum games in the game theory sense right? A positive sum game being a win-win a 0 sum game being you know I win you lose and ah, a negative sum game being we both lose. But I'm playing so that I lose less than you will lose right.

56:56.48

cactuschu

M.

56:58.36

Samo Burja

This this type of a transition can be very sudden and sort of starts at kind of these bedrock institutions in society. Um, so anyway we have then a world shrinking population possibly um decline in social capital across the board. Ah, more expensive energy from a failed energy transition. What I'm terrified of what I'm really terrified of is that we are being told to take a leap on this like you know this this raging river from one rock from 1 stone to the next we're going to cross the river stone by stone. And we make the step and we fall into the raging river and we drown if you imagine us failing the energy transition. It looks like a world where we've reduced energy consumption and become so poor. We can't actually make nuclear at scale work. Or solar at scale that we're actually just too poor for and we're just in a lower energy equilibrium and you know this? Ah this stuff once you start adding it up together. You realize that you could easily see a society. Where for example.

58:00.14

cactuschu

Yeah.

58:12.66

Samo Burja

I don't own a car. Cars are bad for the environment and gas is too expensive. Anyway, you know this enemy country is the only place that exports gas and you know they won't export to us and we won't buy it because it will finance. Their war note this is not hypothetical. We're seeing this happen right now in Europe prices at the gas pump.

58:28.45

cactuschu

M.

58:32.79

Samo Burja

Prices for heating homes are going up massively. Some of the Baltic States have 16% inflation because they've sanctioned Russia's energy exports as well. Consider how serious that is if you kept that going for a few decades. You could see the impoverishment. A continent and do we really think that this is going to be sort of the last breakdown of the international order, the war in Ukraine right? And the international totally totally and even if China you know and China's not even interested in running its own world order. It has.

58:57.77

cactuschu

Of course not of course not China's on the horizon.

59:12.24

Samo Burja

Too much of its own problems. So it's not even that we're substituting you know? Ah, we're not substituting one world order for a worse world Order. I think we're moving towards an international anarchy right? and that that is a world with some very big downsides.

59:23.25

cactuschu

Right.

59:29.47

Samo Burja

Also some upsides perhaps but mostly downsides. Um.

59:30.88

cactuschu

Yeah, before we move on there I think we really want to put a pin in what ideas we've already covered so far and I like to frame these things geometrically and I think like a very very kind of visceral visualization is that you kind of have this. You have this cyclical failure. You have this, you have this triangle of failure here and where you have population decline Energy limitations and this kind of an amorphous social loss that this social disorganization succumbing to energy.

01:00:02.69

Samo Burja

Will self metabolization be self-metabolization right? where it's sort of like when you run out of calories when the human body runs are the calories. It's going to start eating your muscles right? So I think we are eating the muscles of our society to sustain ourselves in a variety of ways where.

01:00:11.87

cactuschu

M.

01:00:20.61

Samo Burja

What we're lacking you know, um, we're drawing upon Wells of Social capital that we are not replenishing. Consider How much social trust was burned during our failure and it was a failed response to the global pandemic.

01:00:28.71

cactuschu

That's it.

01:00:38.41

Samo Burja

Really did try to mobilize and we really didn't do that good a job we did. It had some effect but you know how much resistance it produced in Society. How much resentment. What was our economic cost ? I'm not saying we shouldn't have responded but I'm saying I think it. You know I think we exhausted ourselves trying to respond and ultimately not even succeeding back. Well.

01:01:01.28

cactuschu

Yeah, what we did I think was really institutionalized. The worst part of our culture because we've done this kind of thing, we've done this kind of bidirectionally. We've both institutionalized the kind of neurotic most.

01:01:06.30

Samo Burja

Um, okay.

01:01:20.48

cactuschu

Unable to make cost-benefit Analysis actors on one side of the kind of bureaucracy but we've also created this kind of additional network This kind of parallel system which is deranged in the opposite direction which is deranged in favor of this kind of. Base suspicion in tribalism that is essentially kind of luddite or that is essentially rejecting technology or risk in General. It's this kind of mirror image where you have bureaucracy and you have this new decentralized thing. But

01:01:55.83

Samo Burja

I have.

01:01:58.73

cactuschu

They're both playing into the same dynamic here actually? Okay, here's a frame that I really want to look at because you mentioned something actually at the top of this description that I think is so incredibly important . This idea of the ever hedging narrative, this kind of nested nested narrative. Where you have something that looks like a success and then slowly it becomes more like more like oh this is inevitable until slowly it becomes no this is actually good for us because I think we're seeing this more and more across society I think Thiel had this observation that.

01:02:28.32

Samo Burja

Um, yes, plug.

01:02:35.90

cactuschu

Ah, that this occurred in banking. First it was oh, it's the age of growth then it was more like oh volatility is gone. So maybe we're not getting huge growth. But at least you don't have to worry about it and then you had 2008 and it was more like secular stagnation. Everything is slowing Down. We're not really getting innovation everywhere. But and because of that you should still be. You should still be buying stocks and you should still be rallying stocks and that this narrative kind of develops and transforms exactly as you said from this culture of hope to a kind of culture of demerit and I think actually you can.

01:03:00.74

Samo Burja

Ah, first.

01:03:09.35

Samo Burja

Book right.

01:03:12.98

cactuschu

You can translate this exactly into this kind of organization of bureaucracy because if you look at say um, if you look at say a spacer this kind of like a founder led company. You have truly a culture of award. You have a thing that doesn't exist and everything about that company. Is about bringing the thing that doesn't exist into the world and making it something that does exist whereas in these kinds of legacy institutions where the bureaucrats are more and more entrenched. The entrenchment comes along with the narrative. The irresponsibility comes along with the idea that. Ah, that there is nothing we could do or or that this is something that we shouldn't have done in the first place. This is something that favors the entrenchment of power that is enabled by the entrenchment of power and is kind of fundamentally feeding back to itself.

01:04:04.75

Samo Burja

I Mean you know there are a few ways to build power one way is that you harness resources or bring into being resources that no one harnessed before and you use these as sort of a carrot. The other way to build power is that you take someone else's carrot with a stick.

01:04:18.40

cactuschu

Um.

01:04:24.39

Samo Burja

So you know, ah note of course you can acquire new resources and still have a stick. This isn't a parable about violence. It's more parallel of production versus redistribution right at the most abstract level. Um, if you look at the modern European Union I think power is understood by European bureaucrats. To be mostly the ability to forbid things. This is best exemplified by the claim of oh the european union is a regulatory superpower I'm like what are you talking about? Are you really saying that it is a healthy society?

01:04:46.46

cactuschu

Yes.

01:05:03.21

Samo Burja

The innovations of americans and chinese so american and chinese companies are fined for basically tax revenue and made more inconvenient but. You basically are still using them right? This is not you see what I'm saying it's it's not a producing exactly It's not a producing society. It's exactly this type of a reframe of a failure. It's not that oh you know actually Russia Russia of all places has a better track record of big software companies.

01:05:19.15

cactuschu

Yeah, they're hedging. They're hedging. That's what this is.

01:05:38.80

Samo Burja

Then Germany came to think about that for a second. It's not for lack of German talent right? There are plenty of german startup founders in San Francisco where I live and in ah you know New York heck even in London to some extent so it really is a failure of society not to produce.

01:05:39.48

cactuschu

Yeah.

01:05:45.49

cactuschu

Um, yes.

01:05:56.52

Samo Burja

Social capital but to allow space for new organizations to come into being new companies and you know russian society is just much worse on most dimensions than german society but you know they have their own Facebook equivalent. They have their own you know Amazon they have all of these. Interesting russian variants of companies fundamentally probably still imitative imitative of the chinese and and american ones but they have them and I think that something similar must have happened with say nuclear power in the United States right where supposed to be this transition to a world where we use a hundred times more energy right too cheap to meter wasn't a joke. It was a promise. It was supposed to be this sort of thing where it's kind of pointless because there's just you know you pay for your subscription. You pay for your energy subscription. The same way you pay for your internet subscription, that model kind of makes sense once you have a hundred x energy. Why because all the remaining cost is maintaining the power grid that's bringing the electricity to your home in the middle of nowhere right? That's the only remaining cost if you drive the price of electricity.

01:06:54.29

cactuschu

Um.

01:07:12.72

Samo Burja

Low enough at least for individual users and it's ah it's fascinating to me how much we you know retreated from that and how we set up an incentive where there's almost ah you know an infinite demand for making things. Ever more expensive, ever more safe and yep, yep, yep, yep, and um, you know something similar was actually happening with space until sort of almost unilaterally.

01:07:33.80

cactuschu

Yeah, we have to lie about what narrative we had and we have to kind of commit to that lie. We have to double down and double down.

01:07:45.32

cactuschu

Oh.

01:07:48.82

Samo Burja

Ah, Elon and Bezos decided to step in. Ah, you know we were relying on the Russians to put people on the international space station again, like so humiliating right? like in a very real sense after the retirement of the space shuttle. There was a gap that probably would not be filled for decades. Were it not for these new private companies and this by the way is not a private versus public thing I'm pretty sure that if you could engineer and give Elon ah, you know complete control of Nasa I think you would basically do the same thing in a nonprofit world. You know.

01:08:21.39

cactuschu

Yeah.

01:08:23.66

Samo Burja

It's just that's not possible politically with the way Nasa is today. It was possible back in 1960 because it was a new thing but you know not today.

01:08:29.16

cactuschu

Yeah, you can say that Singapore runs better than Ibm and you can say that Spacex runs better than um than many governments. Um, but it doesn't it doesn't necessarily point one way or the other at.

01:08:36.60

Samo Burja

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly exactly it just it just was fortunate that America had the openness because of its worldview to allow for sort of a new space. Ah space flight provider and that. You know the idea that oh we're going to privatize it and that they'll fix it well that worked if and only if you have an elon musk lying around and ah, you know if you don't have those people lying around. Ah no, really, but look if you just think privatization is a panacea.

01:09:03.58

cactuschu

Yeah, anyone got a spare elon musk south Africa you got another one? yeah.

01:09:15.52

Samo Burja

Please explain you know, sort of ah the failure of the russian transition right? Where privatization basically meant destruction if you know, maybe those were badly built state rail systems or something but there was a real loss of wealth and a self cannibalization there in the 1990 s right? that.

01:09:18.93

cactuschu

A.

01:09:34.74

Samo Burja

Social shock is what gave us Putin's Russia so we should actually remember that the United States failed once more in the 1990 s there was no Marshall plan for Russia. So what else was supposed to be a marshall plan for Russia ended up being a treaty of Versailles. For Russia not to over index on that. But again the ability to develop an economy to a high earning economy like the marshall plan being the sort of investment into war-torn Europe where the view was that you know in order to sort of sustain. Ah political values.

01:09:55.68

cactuschu

Mm.

01:10:12.90

Samo Burja

Compatible with those of the United States, it's in America's best self-interest to help Germany, Italy, France write, redevelop and develop into, you know, wealthy societies once more.

01:10:24.00

cactuschu

Yeah I think we need to. I think this is actually a crucial thing to look at in our kind of toolkit is what things in society are treaties of versailles hiding as marshall plans disguised as marshall plans.

01:10:38.85

Samo Burja

Right? right? right? Internally not just internationally.

01:10:42.96

cactuschu

And I think yeah, you're right exactly. I think this kind of degrowth or like a low energy narrative is exactly this. It's exactly this and um.

01:10:53.35

Samo Burja

The view is sort of green . The sort of promise of the new green deal is that you know we're going to go to Green energy. But you're not going to experience a drop in living standards because we're going to increase transfers but the transfers of course. Are coming from an economy running on Energy. So Wait. What? No no if you think about the political economy of it like if you look at Us. Ah, and I'm not opposed to social democracy per se , not at all right? but um and I'm not necessarily in favor of it. It works Well some places it doesn't work. Well others.

01:11:13.48

cactuschu

Physicus is.

01:11:28.50

Samo Burja

Sweden is an example of a functioning social democracy and sort of the only reason Sweden can fiscally sustain it is because they have some very energy intensive companies by the way. Sweden still makes steel. Did you know that Sweden makes its own tanks and planes? They're one of the largest arms exporters in the world.

01:11:40.83

cactuschu

I didn't.

01:11:47.50

Samo Burja

Talk about good Pr right? Such a peaceful country has per capita like I think the highest arms exports maybe maybe comparable to Israel or or even higher and this sort of but of course also you know they make nice nice tables Ikea right? Everyone knows about Ikea so it's actually a fairly well functioning country.

01:11:49.45

cactuschu

Says it.

01:12:06.49

Samo Burja

And it's this energy intense export market that gives them ah the sort of like income to be able the state This is just I'm talking about state revenues right? State taxes these Sweden based companies that allows them to pay for their generous transfers and the transfers are not abused.

01:12:16.57

cactuschu

Yeah.

01:12:26.19

Samo Burja

Because it's a high trust society people literally are ashamed to make use of aid that they don't need because they believe someone else needs it more right? It's not a view that I'm going to like to maximize how much I can extract from this social safety net. Ah, you know we're providing it for those who really need it. But we're all these you know rather dowur post protesttestant work ethic people who will just judge each other if you're not trying to get your life together. So It's kind of interesting. There's ah, there's a social incentive.

01:12:56.43

cactuschu

Yeah, it's interesting. It's interesting that that exists in Sweden because I think what's increasingly occurring is that I'm here in Canada and I have a lot of connection with the United States as well.

01:13:01.76

Samo Burja

To return to work there.

01:13:15.30

cactuschu

Part of this hedging means that you have an increasing skepticism of talent, especially with what's happening with Musk and what has happened before with Bezos and the narrative surrounding that is that you have a kind of.

01:13:18.21

Samo Burja

If it.

01:13:33.60

cactuschu

Ah, view of anyone with leadership or anyone with potential or anyone with idealism as the primary threat that we went from this um we went from this narrative of oh it's a fight against stagnation to I think what is probably the ultimate the ultimate hedge which is.

01:13:39.95

Samo Burja

Right.

01:13:52.91

cactuschu

Um, basically demagoguery which is saying um, we're not interested in pursuing growth Anymore. We're not interested in pursuing the future, we're interested in taking these people who could change things and keeping them out and I think that's. That's kind of the ultimate hedge that we're fighting against here.

01:14:10.93

Samo Burja

Right? right? right? I think that? um, ah also the view. Let's say that you know humans will soon be obsoleted by artificial intelligence. Perhaps that's true to some extent but I want to note that.

01:14:13.35

cactuschu

And

01:14:30.76

Samo Burja

Most of the successes of artificial intelligence right now rely on vast databases of human behavior. We are in a way squeezing out optimization out of a vast catalog of human behavior, see essays written by people. Why is gpt 3 so good at producing. Ah, high school tier essay on any political or other topic. Well because you have a lot of writing at that level documented and available and I don't think we're anywhere near squeezing out everything we can out of this data set. But I do note that the internet is basically cataloged. World digitally and machine learning is sort of squeezing out insights out of the digital catalog of the world where most of this digital catalog is just stuff that is human behavior right? So you know I would not be surprised if we start hitting some. Surprising barriers to ai advancement in the coming years and decades especially because it's been best suited to sort of symbolic work. It's proven easier to have artificial intelligence write a good essay than it is to have an AI powered robot. Ah, install plumbing in your home. I think that might have surprised people you know from 1945.

01:15:53.87

cactuschu

I Think fundamentally, it's not surprising to me at all because this is actually a catchphrase. This is a catchphrase and that I have um this is something that I say kind of in my private life not even pop in.

01:15:56.93

Samo Burja

Well yes, I'm just talking about popular perceptions. Yeah I have I think you I think eighty years ago yeah

01:16:13.41

cactuschu

In public or in these kinds of public appearances, machine learning is fundamentally the science of finding statistical truths that you have ah you have truths embedded in data that is imperceptible to the human eye.

01:16:21.34

Samo Burja

Yes.

01:16:31.93

cactuschu

And this is what it does but the problem with that is in order to find statistical truths. You have to have statistics and what this really brings into question is what is fundamentally the resources of a country right? So you have the ah you have resources like population. Ah.

01:16:32.37

Samo Burja

A.

01:16:50.75

cactuschu

Ah, human capital in terms of education stuff like that you have natural resources you have geographic resources but I think right now right now we're approaching a time where these kinds of organizational resources. How much of your population is using the internet. How much innovation are we drawing not just from. People kind of go on the internet inserting companies but using the information that is embedded there. How much is that available? How accessible to companies are we giving people more control over that are we creating a market where that innovation is possible and I think the answer once again is that we're. We're doing this strange dance where we're backing away from anything that we can't do and we're saying oh this is this is actually a bad thing and the latest data point on that I actually made this in my notes and I'm not sure if we were going to talk about it but it ends up being very important to what we're talking about already is that there's this enormous cost to gdpr. This privacy law quote unquote privacy law in the united kingdom or sorry now in the united kingdom in the european union sorry yeah, ah literally not that um, but yeah in the european union which is essentially restricting the function of say companies like Facebook or.

01:17:48.74

Samo Burja

Yes. Um, yeah, the European union.

01:18:07.85

cactuschu

Or worse companies that could become the next Facebook and not only that. But the thing that I'm that I've been very excited for is that I told people when I was very naive when I was just first looking into politics I was like. Okay, you have these kinds of ch coordination problems. You have these problems of finding out underlying psychological truths about humanity and you know what's really getting into the way of that not having enough data. Do you know What's really causing the replication crisis? We like not being able to operationalize studies on these gigantic networks of human interaction. But

01:18:40.53

Samo Burja

Ah, have.

01:18:43.27

cactuschu

As that's proven to be much harder than we've thought as I think this draws from the failure of a field that I'm basically adjacent to which is network science as this is shown to be actually very bad or just not had the ability so far. In order to operationalize any of this information. We've kind of backed away from it slowly. We've kind of shouted privacy and we've turned our back on using this information to create more or to uncover more societal truths and at the same time I think China might be actually on the breakthrough of this because.

01:19:15.43

Samo Burja

Right.

01:19:21.45

cactuschu

Say what you will about them. But I think they're developing an ever more sophisticated understanding of how this information works especially domestically.

01:19:30.46

Samo Burja

Right? right? I mean one of the things that I've written in a piece titled the centralized internet is inevitable which was actually a provocation right? It was um, pointing out that the previous generations and waves of technology that were supposed to decentralize the world have centralized it right? because.

01:19:36.99

cactuschu

M.

01:19:50.18

Samo Burja

The internet became the instrument through which we documented the physical world and finally made the physical world legible. Ah you know about bureaucracies and especially our own social world. So one way to think about it is that because of mass adoption. Smartphones and so on the individual became both as a statistic and as a literal individual as part of a mass and as just a single user whose audio and video can be recorded from the phone became much more transparent to centralized bureaucracies. However, centralized bureaucracies. Not become much more transparent to the individual and note of course once that data is available. You can make great use of it currently, we don't have a good answer for why? not China I think we are every step of the way we're like okay China's gone too far. You know they have a social credit score system. You know our social responsibility index is completely different. It has these like 5 details you know has these 5 details from which it's different. Um, but actually all we're negotiating is how fast we're going into China's future

01:20:51.40

cactuschu

It isn't.

01:21:04.26

Samo Burja

We don't actually have a solution to the fundamental problem that the more online society is and note this is the only part of the economy that's growing and the only part often of the government that sort of works is stuff that's basically mass surveillance or mass data gathering. We don't have an answer to the riddle of you know? okay. The individual has been made more transparent, institutions have been made and have not become more transparent in response, you would need like 10000 Julian Assanges leaking the emails of 0 organizations to even start making a dent on the publicly available information individuals have. About everything from like you know Twitter's trust and safety committee to ah you know the Swedish Ministry Of Health to ah you know the Irs is the irs's decisions to pursue. You know one 1 violation not the other the politicization of the irs for example is something that can easily happen and in fact, happens in a. And countries such as Russia and China ah you know without this alternative vision. We're just stuck negotiating on how fast we're going to converge on the Chinese model and note you are completely correct that this is just abstaining from this information, not gathering it. Ah, you know that doesn't solve anything. It just slows down the economic gains that will be reaped by someone else.

01:22:31.71

cactuschu

I'm skeptical that we can ever get to anything other than ah than a cruel imitation of the chinese model like this is exactly what happened with lockdowns we wanted to we wanted to kind of like we looked at what looked like a flex right? It's now turning out to be pretty bad for China nowadays.

01:22:38.38

Samo Burja

Okay.

01:22:43.84

Samo Burja

Yes.

01:22:49.25

cactuschu

But what looked then like an enormous flex and we said okay we want to do that too and we tried and we failed we failed horribly and I think that's exactly what's going to happen if we try to pursue the same kind of the same kind of social credit system because here's the thing.

01:22:53.90

Samo Burja

We tried. Yeah.

01:23:08.85

cactuschu

And I know I'm going to take a lot of flak from my listeners, my more libertarian listeners but a functional social credit system can be good. There are problems that it solves that our current society does not solve, but the thing is what we're going to do and like of course there are also extreme downsides.

01:23:11.91

Samo Burja

Here.

01:23:19.68

Samo Burja

Yes.

01:23:28.32

cactuschu

But the thing is I'm not sure we can even solve those problems like I think that if we don't have the cost function for that because you have to have a very precise and very deep understanding of what the cost function is to actually order and to hierarchize your society. If you're going to build something like that, I think that is in the West. We have no sense of that whatsoever. We have no sense of how to gain those statistical truths and how to gain those orderings from those truths.

01:24:01.53

Samo Burja

Right? right? right? No, that's that's true that's true and 1 of the sort of 1 of our one of our bigger problems is the misinterpretation of systems that often work on very different principles than what we imagine them to work on. Um, you know one of the things that's been under discussion is that in the early stages of the pandemic. Ah, you would have Chinese governors impounding masks meant for other provinces to be used in their own province. Okay, 1 way to think of this is that oh this is corruption.

01:24:20.53

cactuschu

Mm.

01:24:39.44

Samo Burja

But a different way to think about this is oh wow, the Chinese system actually despite its appearances and claims is much more decentralized than what it claims to be. It has a weird kind of federalism right? Provinces will pursue their economic and public health interests. You know. To the exclusion of other provinces and I think that's sort of very notable right? I think we often take claims of how systems work at face value and to flip this around a little bit I think because the US prides itself on its federalism. We miss how centralized the system is and just how much more powerful it is. Ah, the central organs of society are ah compared to you know what's supposed to be the sort of middle layer like be it. The federal government versus states be it say the intellectual pull and influence of the ivy league universities versus some second or or third rate universities. Um, and you know the cultural impact of the large cities and the star cities. Let's call them like New York l a Sf Dc versus you know, comparable, slightly smaller cities. Um, you know the cultural frontier. Is very unequally distributed in cities the power the decision making power is very unequally distributed among government agencies. This doesn't mean that it's wielded in a coherent way. It just means that you know some parts are vastly more powerful than others and very little of this has the reality. Match the sort of description we find on the surface of the self-description.

01:26:18.43

cactuschu

So like yeah I think America is incredibly centralized I think there was this graph on Twitter that was like here is the percent of local spending or local provincial and federal spending in China and in the United States

01:26:27.39

Samo Burja

Guess ah.

01:26:34.85

cactuschu

And in China this is something that as you said, there's a great misconception about the vast majority of spending is local is by these local bureaucrats that are actually functional like we have this kind of stereotype of a bureaucrat. But um, these chinese bureaucrats are actually like they're actually doing pretty well and you can say okay, it's easier to get growth and.

01:26:39.65

Samo Burja

Exactly.

01:26:54.75

cactuschu

And the Chinese society but you don't have this in the end you do have this differential that exists and some of that I think is just based on this inherent order in both the American and Chinese societies because here's where I Think. All of this comes together. You had a quote that I wrote down which is that I feel so much of deadness is downstream of the desire for physical safety and the desire for social safety and what's happening here is I think you have a universal hedging. That this kind of that kind of safety is this kind of safety Ism This kind of neuroticism is kind of a universal hedging. Um, it's exactly what we're doing with energy. It's exactly what we're doing with finance but with how we order Society itself. Yes, this is actually something that I'm.

01:27:36.82

Samo Burja

Guess.

01:27:52.70

cactuschu

Really really grateful for and that yeah this it feels like it's all coming together here because this is connecting the kind of moral my moral philosophy with my institutional analysis is that I've long sensed that the difference between a culture in Asia and a culture in the United States is a kind of. Open competitiveness and you can just look at this with a difference in math tests so a math test just in school I think in high school in the United States anyone who is kind of reasonably competent is going to get 90 ish. Right? They're going to probably get 92 to 100 on a high school math test even up to say like up to um, any any course that's available to the general public and in China this is quite the opposite. You have extremely difficult exams.

01:28:45.90

Samo Burja

Right.

01:28:50.50

cactuschu

That are high ceilinged that um, create a vastly disparate distribution and not only is this distribution even possible to identify. But it's but it's made Explicit. It's put into the view of every parent. Every student here is how. Your child did and here's how your child did relative to the class and relative to the country and that this explicit competition is what a society that has innovation in its mind innovation in its future or at least its desired future looks like and when you have a failure of. Organization when you have institutions that are primarily Beholden to a kind of inheritor class people who have inherited their positions who don't have the kind of talents then you have this universal hedging in the form of taking that competition, hiding it and eventually destroying it.

01:29:41.77

Samo Burja

1 of my favorite comparisons here on this topic is the difference between the class of billionaires in Europe versus the United States um in the United States you know seventy seventy percent of the billionaires basically made there.

01:29:55.10

cactuschu

Her.

01:30:01.63

Samo Burja

Ah, you know, but they were probably initially wealthy but let's be honest, going from a millionaire family to being a billionaire. Ah I'm sorry that's you know that's an achievement it kind of doesn't matter. It's not an easy thing. So so so so so with that with that caveat with that caveat. Um.

01:30:10.26

cactuschu

Yeah, it's not. It's not an easy thing. There are a lot of millionaires who are never billionaires.

01:30:20.38

Samo Burja

70% of sort of american billionaires are self are self-made in in this qualified sense of the word 70% of european billionaires are inheritors people who inherited their wealth so isn't it interesting that in a society that is branded so that's European European Union european countries

01:30:29.00

cactuschu

The.

01:30:40.20

Samo Burja

Branded is more egalitarian than America because we regulate income right? You basically have this ah this tax taxation of the accumulation of wealth. But in practice if you already have wealth you are far safer from possible competitors in Europe than in the United States like in a way. It's very It's much easier to have not earned your wealth but to just enjoy it in Europe than in the United States and to me that's very interesting because you know 1 argument could be made that possibly ah european social democracy has devolved into a racket to protect.

01:31:16.63

cactuschu

Ah.

01:31:19.79

Samo Burja

Existing industries from disruption and the family wealth tied to these existing old companies and the US is better in this regard. But let's be honest, the US has a bunch of companies on life support as well. Consider let's say you know all of the favors done to the legacy car. Manufacturers recently. Ah, you know by the Biden administration I think it's good that they're supporting electric cars in the United States but I think it was very notable that Tesla was not mentioned or included despite being a clear success the frontrunner and the innovator in this industry so that that really showed. Ah, this kind of favoring of the older more politically connected class even on these purely economic questions.

01:32:03.80

cactuschu

Yes I think the reason why and let me know what you think on this as Well. The reason why politics is centered around the fight between old power and new power is that these are where the rules of the future are written. We have prewritten rules for how new Powers Compete. It's called competition and we have the same for how old powers Compete. It's called Prestige and all of those games are games where the rules are agreed upon but the question is what are the rules between old power and new power.

01:32:21.84

Samo Burja

Okay.

01:32:38.67

cactuschu

Well, they're constantly being litigated. They're in a realm of unknown and maybe in some places maybe in Europe there's much more of a domination of the old powers over you and maybe in America ah the balance is tipped towards the other way. But I think that. This litigation of rules is precisely what makes politics as fraught as it is.

01:33:04.26

Samo Burja

I Think that for democratic politics especially to work it kind of has to be a tide. It has to be a tide that lifts all boats because as soon as um. As soon as you live in a world. It's a shrinking Pie. You're basically just you know you're on an island or rather you're up in the andes mountains and you're just voting who you're going to eat First. So the negative and positive sum of both things I think I described in a theory set of Theoretical. Essays I Call Empire Theory Empire being not just like empire the sense of like imperialism but just in the sense of like ah a zone of coordination and I point out that sort of the difference between expanding and declining is precisely this factor of you know If. All organizations are to some extent pyramid schemes. Are you self-metabolizing or are you bringing in new resources from the outside or creating new resources Afresh Um I think that you know for the most part. High freedom architecture societies basically need fairly robust growth because otherwise sort of zero sum competition takes over and if it's zero sum competition then by far you know the most humane thing is to just have ah you know a single power center. In charge of everything.

01:34:38.46

cactuschu

Yeah I think this maybe delves into a kind of machiavellianism right? And here I mean like very explicitly referring to the kind of political philosophy that Machiavelli laid out which is.

01:34:46.46

Samo Burja

And

01:34:56.60

cactuschu

Um, a rule by fear, a rule by power and a rule by centralization and a rule by a kind of realpolitik. Um yes, this is very interesting. I think that's what's strange is that you have I think what you have in. Modern western societies at least is a type of machiavellianism hidden in the language of safety. It's ah it's exactly the hedged version of machiavellianism. It's and it's a nested hedged version of machiavellianism where we're going to do centralization. But we're going to say it's for safety and it's for. All these kinds of political narratives. We're going to do, we're going to rule by fear but we're not going to say it's fear of fear of this kind of explicit threat. But this kind of fear of implicit threat of social mores or whatever. Um, and. Or let's make this more explicit. It's kind of like the modern, especially American kind of social ideology or race ideology is that you have this fear of not necessarily being an explicit threat. You have this sphere of social sanction and then you're your kind of. Ah, your rule by cynical calculation is this kind of is this kind of bureaucratization is this kind of proceduralism and so you have this you you? Yeah I think that this process of this process of hedging that you described. This is so important for understanding and I'm not sure if I'm overfitting here. I'm not sure if I'm applying this too broadly. But I do think this pattern is just so evident and this is yes I'm just kind of working. I'm just trying to work with these ideas in real time and I kind of I'm kind of ah. Tripping up a little bit but here's the core here's the core problem with this I think is that we've we've innovated strangely enough. We've innovated a very powerful improvement over the past and this might be due to hyper connectedness as well. We've we've. We've innovated a very new system of how we can paper over things of how we can lie to ourselves and how we can convert society into a 0 sum game or into a negative sum game without most people knowing it with most people still behaving. In a positive way. Would you say that that's correct?

01:37:31.20

Samo Burja

I think that that's correct. 1 thing I want to emphasize though is that the existence of actualizable opportunities right? is important because there's a way in which.

01:37:33.90

cactuschu

If.

01:37:45.10

cactuschu

Yes.

01:37:49.18

Samo Burja

We can't talk ourselves back into an optimistic Mindset. We have to build the machinery that makes the optimistic mindset realistic without this I think ah you know we can draw upon social reserves possibly you know one way to think of it also is that optimism. Is a little bit like taking a loan from the future and if the loan is for a good investment then the optimism was always justified and you know if ah if the loan is not spent wisely then it was always retroactively foolish and delusional and you know we have to make it so that. It is realistic and sort of correct to be prosocial to believe in the positive externalities because they manifest because they are made apparent ah rather than try to optimize for extraction relabeled coped hedged. Into benevolence.

01:46:33.62

cactuschu

So I think we at this point have the stakes in front of us. We have what can happen if we don't manage to change course and we have what we can hope for and what we can aspire to if we do. But how do we actually get there? How do we go from the state we're in right now? To a state where we're valuing those live players again where we're actually doing innovation and we're incentivizing it as a society.

01:47:38.76

Samo Burja

This is a good question because to a significant extent I think we already have the live players in our society necessary for a rebirth. We could always do better in having a culture that's more open to innovation, individual growth, individual rebranding, experimentation , learning and so on. It would be excellent if we can increase the number of life players in societies through such things. But our core problem is that we're not making use of the live players that already exist in our society. We are too enamored with credentialism and too enamored with statistical methods. Honestly 1950's methods. This isn't machine learning right? This is 1950's bureaucratic methods of measuring talent and shepherding talent underneath our noses. What was supposed to be an accurate measurement of human potential frequently and not so secretly very closely related to the construct of IQ a lot of these measures were. Kind of iq proxies. It has over time morphed to the point where meritocracy has become a dirty word because everyone feels that what is called meritocracy is not meritocracy consider admissions to the ivy league universities where a choreographed high school experience. Including nonprofits started in your name by your mom you know with helping the fashionable cause de jure ah writing coaches for your essays. How that is just a reflection of helping entrenched ah families sort of retain. Existing privileges and if these were family cultures that sort of had a noble obligation that had a view that you know they owed their success to society and they have a personal responsibility to better themselves to be worth it if that were the case it would be much easier. But for the most part they're not very self-aware. Our society's elites somehow bizarrely delude themselves into thinking they're underdogs. You can even see this among say I don't know the journalistic class on Twitter you can see this among many many different classes of people. But. What does this have to do with live players? Well if all the institutions are gate kept for the cookie cutter where the cookie cutter is the very socially polished the very already existing the very acceptable and same as everyone else then always.

01:50:26.66

Samo Burja

Even life players get outcompeted by imitators. If the competition is to be the best imitator then the live player doesn't have an advantage so we would do well to it. All levels of our society put some spice into who we accept in positions of power. I always considered it. Very positive sign that the French parliament could have a successful politician who's a Fields medalist and has an eccentric sense of fashion including ah a love for wearing giant spider brooches right? That's a positive sign about French political culture. It's a positive sign. About American entrepreneurial culture, its entrepreneurs can be eccentric. It is and was a positive sign for Britain that scientists could in their you know private lives be unusual or in their political views. Be a little bit out there and finally. It's a positive sign if a politician is shocking and says things no one else would say you know I don't yeah I don't think the Trump administration was at all effective or successful in improving society I'm not even sure they tried. However I will know. Societies that have charismatic energetic politicians have good political culture. At least if those politicians have teams they know how to work with so again that we can barely name a politician worth listening to, it actually makes us more vulnerable. To the occasional demagogue no less and I hear I'm not commenting on the Trump administration I'm just talking about the specifics of where demagogues thrive. I would actually say that they perhaps thrive best in societies that are filled with boring politicians. Some of them have substance. Some of them don't imagine that all the politicians who were sort of charismatic were good leaders in an emotional and technocratic sense in such an environment. The demagogue would have a hard time competing right? You can't ever neglect a key dimension of excellence to be left for your opponent. So. Politics also needs room for live players and honestly I think ideology needs room for new players. I would warmly encourage everyone to try to develop new strands of thought one of the few excellent positive developments of society has been the proliferation. Small niche communities deeply interested in their topics signal chat groups that have moved off the open internet to go deeper to read together to debate together and eventually to meet up and organize. I think the internet meet up is sort of like Twitter meetup. Um.

01:53:20.40

Samo Burja

Organized by someone is the true replacement to what was once the town Hall. The Public Square is fully digital but we can exit the fully digital realm back into the physical world where we can meet together, make companies and so on so that's one of the small openings there and I think it would be. Very healthy. There are of course deep problems with online culture. There's toxicity and so on but you know what it would be deeply healthy if there was some sort of mechanism for just grabbing people who have made a reputation for themselves online and putting them. Ah, you know, letting them pass the line and putting them into some positions of Authority in Society I Actually think that you know if some of the regulators in the European Union Bureaucracy had experience as influencers. Maybe their decisions would be better.

01:54:14.80

cactuschu

Thin.

01:54:16.70

Samo Burja

And we think of influencers as very shallow but it actually takes enormous entrepreneurial grit to reach the very top of that field not to mention then there is this vast demand for basically private intellectual production have you just noticed how hyper Intellectual. Ah, some podcasts have become I mean I guess I'm on one of these and how often this is enough to sustain small markets or nonprofit ventures. There's ah, a thirst for thinking. Um and you know there is still a class of people in our society that are basically right now.

01:54:34.32

cactuschu

Certainly.

01:54:52.48

Samo Burja

Ah, information workers. They're software engineers. But as I'm sure the software engineers listening to this episode know, just being a software engineer doesn't necessarily mean you get to determine much about what's happening with your company or what happens with wider society but in a very real way. You're paid to think. You're paid to think in abstractions and there is a thirst a desire to be a more well-rounded person and this is the 1 sector of the economy that has grown over the last thirty years so what you have here then is an island of positive some thinking of a desire to find your place in society. And a willingness and openness to rethink it from first principles and finally communities of such people if there is an intellectual renaissance I think it will have been born. Ah, you know if there's an intellectual renaissance in this like late western civilization I think it will have been born on the internet. Among board software engineers debating the fundamental issues of life with each other not from the halls of 0 sum academia.

01:55:58.80

cactuschu

Yes, that's incredibly powerful and I think it's an articulation of something that I've thought about for a long time, which is that one of the benefits of hyperconnectivity is that there are a lot of networks which are. Unviable. Have now become viable just think of how much you had to do in order to organize a kind of um, exclusive exclusive hidden network in say the 18 hundreds that that would not have been an easy thing to do. You would almost certainly have to. Gathering people geographically in a city. Um, you would almost certainly have enormous costs and coordination and difficulty even just arriving at the same time and all of those problems are solved now so you have these situations in which these underground networks have gotten an upgrade now. Kind of hard technology and I would argue have the social technology as well in order to to take this um to take this method of competition or of recreating this explicit hierarchy or this explicit competition. Over some kind of value over some kind of deliverable and converting that into reality and creating an environment where people are brought up in that way where people are developed where people are and are learning how to function in the world in this kind of. Positively some island I think is really reminiscent of my childhood as well. I started at a very young age in um, informatics olympiads which is basically um, ah, a competition similar to a math competition. Where you are, where you're writing code to solve incredibly difficult problems. Um essentially math problems and I think that without that kind of informal network and without that kind of customization that absorption of culture. Of this kind of explicit competition positive sum type thinking that I wouldn't be nearly doing what I am today I guess this is a very strong note of optimism.

01:58:20.37

Samo Burja

I think I think there's ah, there's also sort of um you know I I don't know your age I'm 33 for me the formative intellectual experience was going to the library reading too many books because I was a board kid. And then going on online forums on obscure topics and debating them and there's a very interesting phenomenon in the late 1990's early two thousand s where you know what you said on the internet kind of just never mattered. It was laughable. The idea that something you would say on the internet would matter irl. But people had a culture of tearing each other's arguments to shreds just on technicalities. I don't know if you ever saw an old style forum post where you would have a quote of a single sentence and a rebuttal of that single sentence followed by a quote.

01:59:07.83

cactuschu

Yeah.

01:59:10.35

Samo Burja

A paragraph with like 3 paragraphs of rebuttal and or agreement and I think in a way it's it's almost like everyone got like a talmudic or jesuitical education for everyone who participated in in this culture and ah you know I think also that that that internet culture right on the cusp. Right? Before the internet became a mass phenomenon I think it kind of formed this generation of online writers. I no longer called them bloggers because you know you know even say ah so many of them have gone on to write for mainstream publications. Even say the most controversial ones like Curtis Yarwin you know are now appearing on Fox News or whatever it they really were and are this generation's writers you can see even over time. You know the New York Times has a nice style. The new yorker has a nice style of writing but their writing is slowly shifting. To match online norms of writing not the other way around. Yeah every year that passes the new yorker reads more like a high quality blog and you know that's a compliment.

02:00:02.58

cactuschu

Yes, yeah I think ah.

02:00:11.40

cactuschu

Yeah I think I think what you're seeing with a lot of this is that in the end no matter how much hedging you do no matter how much entrenching and institutionalizing you do there is a kind of way. That's all. I don't want to say always but it seems like at least in the history of american culture western culture. There is a way for these ideas to rise to the top I think that when you have these informal networks when you have these connections I mean it's like I think there is 1 kind of like Yarvin yarvin Camp ah, podcaster who says something along the lines of the Twitter anonymous accounts are true, intellectual elite and and there's something there.

02:00:56.10

Samo Burja

There is because in a way they're still, they're still also free. But I Also think that you know the most challenging transition. You know the most challenging transition is once you've incubated being an intellectual elite as an anon.. How are you? You know? How do you go out with your name because at the end of the day organizations will be moved by people with names not people without sorry web three friends you know I think I think the cipher Punk Dream I think it died in the 90's I think ah human physical bodies are going to get pretty surveilled. So if.

02:01:16.30

cactuschu

No.

02:01:22.65

cactuschu

Yeah.

02:01:33.11

Samo Burja

Things can be done. They'll have to be done in your physical body under your real name eventually. But before then maybe you can learn. Maybe you can play. Maybe you can build networks of people sort of safe with these kinds of disposable identities. Because the beautiful thing about the pseudonymous account is that I don't keep any anymore but I did back in the day. You can explore points of view that you don't even fully agree with. I think the intellectual value of that has been greatly underestimated. You know doing a bit you know like someone picks a niche political ideology or someone. Becomes a ah trained Twitter guy. It's like of course the full human being has other interests and high speed trains. But it does something very interesting when they run such an account.

02:02:19.67

cactuschu

Right? I think an anonymous account is the kind of ideal place for exploration and in a way for learning like maybe that's what your university is. Yeah, maybe that's yeah, your university should come with an anonymous Twitter account.

02:02:27.16

Samo Burja

Yes, for education. That's what I'm saying. That's the real University I. I think that would be amazing if it doesn't already have an anonymous server where all MIT students can speak anonymously with no limits.

02:02:37.52

cactuschu

Um.

02:02:46.87

Samo Burja

I think they should have it. I think they should have it with let's say maybe a small limit to like you know, no death threats or something like that. But I think that would make it much more creative.

02:02:56.20

cactuschu

Yeah I guess one of the differences here as well is basically how willing you are to be highly selective to say that you're curating a group and to stick to your guns when that curation happens because I think part of what makes that work is that it is mit.

02:03:10.20

Samo Burja

Intimate.

02:03:15.55

cactuschu

It is people who are kind of already high quality or like but let's just say high Iq basically who have a lot of yeah.

02:03:20.94

Samo Burja

Right? Somewhat technically proficient they have an interest in Idealism. There's an on-campus culture basically like the value of that group is that in an extremely filtered environment being able to speak the truth as you see it. Even if you're wrong. Is one of the best ways to discover the truth. But also one of the best ways to sort of reform parasitical aspects of a culture is if it's an unfiltered environment. It goes to the lowest common denominator. But if you set the common denominator high enough you know then sometimes. I Think a group can know more than an individual or at least can discover something more than an individual can and those are magical circumstances when they come together.

02:04:03.61

cactuschu

Yes, certainly.

02:04:09.49

cactuschu

I Think something that I've heard you talk about as well is that this is kind of a religious revival. It might not be explicitly a religious revival but this rewriting of norms from within a kind of enclosed community. That is what is right.

02:04:28.17

Samo Burja

It is a discovery of a new set of social norms for living together. We are in the process of building full stacks of social technologies like think about say you know the norms around something like you know, doxing or group participation. Ah, you know, ah you know the way people resolve their beefs and so on and so on there's just so much to unpack there and these are social lessons people are going to go and take out into society into their organizations just as the sort of gi generation took out the lessons of a. Fighting the second world war and their experiences in the ah you know branches of the armed service and distributed those across society like you know what sort of you know what does what does Ibm feel like when ah you know people. Who are running it primarily grew up intellectually on the internet. What does this look like? You know what the white house looks like? These institutions will have to change and many of them I hope will fall back into a functional setup. Appropriate to our time and place something innovative and something that sort of relies on human strength and cooperation rather than human weakness right? rather than this type of um because there is also a negative some culture right online I do think there's sort of a sort of a. Ah, mob-based ah, firing squad where it's just sort of like destroying person after person after person getting some weird energy out of it. Um, these are different people but they are both online cultures there exists a 0 sum and negative some online culture too.

02:06:11.49

cactuschu

Yeah, but these are different people like these are just like.

02:06:22.14

cactuschu

Yeah, but what I'm saying is like the people who are going to create like the people who are interested and who are able to create these new things like I'm not sure if this is just live players. There's kind of like a lower bar to this. But yeah.

02:06:22.18

Samo Burja

We can't deny that. Over.

02:06:33.56

Samo Burja

Oh no, no, that people often have very high quality scripts. 1 thing I want to emphasize is that you do not have to be a live player to be very positive and prosocial if you just do something very very well if you uphold a standard of professionalism.

02:06:45.82

cactuschu

Yep.

02:06:50.90

Samo Burja

In a way you're helping also to maintain the fabric of society right? like being an excellent doctor sets the example for other doctors. Even if you're not innovating in how you're being a doctor you know.

02:06:59.98

cactuschu

Yeah, but the idea is that you have these circles of high-quality interaction and you have these circles of low quality interaction and you can kind of see them coming. They're they're highly correlated and not just between individuals but between like kind of ideologies or psychological profiles.

02:07:04.60

Samo Burja

Of course. Yeah.

02:07:10.83

Samo Burja

Okay.

02:07:16.73

Samo Burja

And more and more they're sort of like separating right? It's almost like water and oil and then the big question is fundamentally. Do you believe we live in a zero or a positive sum era? If we live in a positive sum Era then one of these is going to radically outgrow the other and ah you know.

02:07:18.90

cactuschu

Yes, exactly.

02:07:35.95

Samo Burja

I Think that that's some cautious grounds for optimism despite everything I feel sort of the positive some communities think if not destroyed they're going to win out.

02:07:46.65

cactuschu

Yeah, and I think something about this online culture is actually very good for you If you're willing to make those kinds of differences and those kinds of partitions explicit. For example, something. That's just been very good for me in my personal life. Um, is. That you can actually just, especially if you're in a university , explicitly increase the quality of people who are willing to interact with you by saying something along the lines of I think vaccines work and I think that people should be treated neutrally based on Race they should be treated identically based on race.

02:08:23.77

Samo Burja

Um, nothing.

02:08:26.10

cactuschu

And a lot of these kinds of social performers ah will go either way and and will not they will themselves will choose not to interact with you and of course this can go out of hand.

02:08:32.20

Samo Burja

Um, I mean often. It's super good. It's super good to ah you know, sort of seem boring disinteresting or like you know, even off-putting to boring people like you.

02:08:44.82

cactuschu

Yes.

02:08:46.84

Samo Burja

Sometimes you want to offend the tribes not to provoke them. But just so they go away and stop wasting your time I I have absolutely loved my Twitter experience for the vast majority of it lately. It's a little bit worse but mostly due to just the problems of scale by.

02:08:50.61

cactuschu

Exactly exactly.

02:09:03.28

Samo Burja

Sort of refusing really to participate in the surface-level culture War A lot of what I have to say of course has ended up having cultural war consequences but like the desire isn't to participate in that the desire is to figure out things and you know build a truth.

02:09:06.76

cactuschu

Um.

02:09:19.95

Samo Burja

And the dichotomy you presented I think is pretty good. That's one good way to do it. Ah it weeds out sort of also the people who just want to agree with everything on their group and it's important to get rid of those people because you know ah consensus.

02:09:31.37

cactuschu

Oh yes, yes.

02:09:39.00

Samo Burja

Ah, you know, 9 times out of 10 It's correct and wise and 1 time out of 10 It's insane and evil and you have to say no to the insane and evil part.

02:09:48.46

cactuschu

Yeah I think this would be kind of my number 1 advice for people of my age is just prune your networks and spend a lot of time thinking what kind of traits you or people you want to attract and how those traits are attracted and this isn't kind of this. Isn't kind of very difficult. It's usually just what are people who I like right? What are people who are like either who I'm observing kind of in public or who I'm friends with often the latter and then what traits do these people have and what traits do those people want? And these kinds of sorting algorithms essentially these kinds of social sorting algorithms are probably among the most useful social technologies that we're just beginning to innovate.

02:10:37.77

Samo Burja

Right? I think that's right, um, the view that finding some audience is easy but finding the right audience is difficult. That is a recent view that was not the case once it was actually very difficult to get any audience whatsoever. But today it is easier to get an audience. It just might not be the audience you want.

02:10:56.31

cactuschu

M.

02:11:04.39

cactuschu

Yeah, do you have any advice for someone who is coming up and who is thinking about how either they want to change the world or just survive in it.

02:11:14.48

Samo Burja

Well, um, don't neglect your economic fundamentals. I do think we're in for some rough times. Um, don't neglect rolling, you know, don't don't believe that others will organize. Ah you know your social life for you. Ah, you're kind of stuck in the you know difficult but enviable position of if you start a book club. It might be the only book club your friends have ever attended like the sort of bowling alone syndrome, the sort of atomization of society bowling alone being this, you know, a good book from the 1980 s that's since become even. Sort of become more and more prophetic as time goes on. It was even written before the age of the internet. Ah many people lack this like an organized semi-organized community. it's one of it's one of these things that's ah, that's really missing. So if you have basically enough to sustain yourself. If you have an organized social community and if you're participating in some sort of high quality network of people, like really entrepreneurial intellectuals, it almost doesn't matter. Um I think then you're already ahead of 99% of people. Think you, you just have the tools to do so many things you might just decide to just have a basically nice life and a decent career and guess what because of your online presence because of your in-person organization skills. It'll be easier to find a job or you might decide that you actually know. I want to go forward and I want to sort of engage in creating a new culture right? New new ways of being, new scenes, new magazines, new art projects. New Political Movements New Social movements or. You know, build amazing companies, apologize that I have to ring it just a second. I'm just gonna have to turn that off. Sorry about that. I thought it was muted. I don't know why it's ringing. Okay, last question of the show.

02:13:14.25

cactuschu

Yes, the last question of the show.

02:13:26.84

cactuschu

Norries. Yeah, last question of the show and it's a bit ironic because we've been kind of talking about this the entire show so having at least 1 new answer which is what is something that is and that has too much order and that needs more chaos. Or something that is too much chaos and needs more order.

02:13:45.92

Samo Burja

Well, we've been touching on this for four. We didn't touch on this multiple times throughout the show and it's a question that is always bound to time and place. You know, many things that today are too ordered were once too chaotic. Many things that were once too ordered have now become chaotic. But if I were to give sort of a fresh answer on something that we haven't really touched on I think that I would actually be of the opinion. Ah that the financial world could use some more chaos because there's just a whole lot of parts of the structure that don't make sense. And us trying to keep it working as it was working and I do put working in quotation marks. I think that's actually this can that we've been kicking down the road for a few decades and we're at the end of the road. So we need to start learning as a society and experimenting. Sort of alternative political infrastructure around finance now. Maybe this actually does mean a sort of transition to crypto. Maybe it means that something more modest like you know the old financial giants go under and you know fintech giants such as stripe. Basically take the place of these banks. Um, maybe it means that you know there are multiple reserve currencies in the world that we go off of the dollar hegemony. Um, but I think we have reached the limits of where we can just patch this thing up and it's so central to our society to our production. And to our individual well-being ah that we have to get it right and we have to get it right fast and we don't know enough to design it from first principles.

02:15:35.16

cactuschu

Yeah I definitely want to think about that in the future as well and maybe have you on again to talk about it. But thanks for coming on the show Sammo it's been. It's been beyond my wildest. It's been beyond my wildest dreams really.

02:15:47.28

Samo Burja

Yeah, thank you, Thank you very much for having me. It was a great conversation.