‎The Portal: Peter Thiel (Eric Weinstein Podcast)

Thanks for sharing! I'll give it a listen on my long commute.

Generally speaking, I find the 'intellectual dark web' to be a bit repetitive - they seem to have their talking points and they just keep hitting on the same things. It'll be interesting to see how this podcast develops.

Subscribe in iTunes and the file will be downloaded locally.

Or just find the RSS feed and curl it.

Re: The stagnation of Science and Technology. We've seen such stagnations before in history. Our culture has been losing the idea of science as a process of increasing understanding through inquiry. As expressed by the mass of people, the culture has been going towards a cargo cult worship of science. Western culture once enshrined the erroneous conclusions of Aristotle, instead of engaging in his act of inquiry.

Re: The particular exception of computers. If there were something like a PAIperclip Optimizer, it wouldn't be trying to produce paperclips. Rather, it would be producing something which is highly sought by virtually every person, most of industry, and every sector of society. If there were something like the PAIperclip Optimizer, we would see outsized progress in one particular area, focused around the production of the optimized thing. A super-optimizing AI wouldn't try to kill us off by firing off our missiles. It would instead warp our culture, so that it's producing the optimized thing.

Given that self preservation is such a strong, foundational behavioral pattern, the optimized thing would obviously be more and more faster and faster computers.

Yeah personally I think Eric Weinstein has bought into the idea a bit too much and it is boring to listen to the same thing over and over, but when he talks about other things it is pretty interesting. Hopefully he is able to branch out with guests.

I'm not sure I'll like Thiel much, I've found recently that the more I hear him talk the less I like him, and I think his political views are pretty bad, but I'm sure he's a smart person generally speaking. Hopefully they don't spend too much on politics or religion.