Hear This Idea

Dean Spears is an an Economic Demographer, Development Economist, and Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Texas at Austin. With Michael Geruso, Dean is the co-author of After the Spike: Population, Progress, and the Case for People.

You can see a full transcript and a list of resources on the episode page on our website.

We're back from a hiatus! We still intend to post new episodes, but less frequently from now.

You can get in touch through our website or on Twitter. Thanks for listening.

Max Smeets is a Senior Researcher at ETH Zurich's Center for Security Studies and Co-Director of Virtual Routes

You can find links and a transcript at www.hearthisidea.com/episodes/smeets

In this episode we talk about:

The different types of cyber operations that a nation state might launch

How international norms formed around what kind of cyber attacks are “allowed”

The challenges that even elite cyber forces face

What capabilities future AI systems would need to drastically change the space

You can get in touch through our website or on Twitter. Consider leaving us an honest review wherever you're listening to this — it's the best free way to support the show. Thanks for listening!

Tom Kalil is the CEO of Renaissance Philanthropy.

He also served in the White House for two presidents (under Obama and Clinton); where he helped establish incentive prizes in government through challenge.gov; in addition to dozens of science and tech program. More recently Tom served as the Chief Innovation Officer at Schmidt Futures, where he helped launch Convergent Research.

Matt Clancy is an economist and a research fellow at Open Philanthropy. He writes ‘New Things Under the Sun’, which is a living literature review on academic research about science and innovation.

We talked about:

What is ‘influence without authority’?

Should public funders sponsor more innovation prizes?

Can policy entrepreneurship be taught formally?

Why isn't ultra-wealthy philanthropy much more ambitious?

What's the optimistic case for increasing US state capacity?

What was it like being principal staffer to Gordon Moore?

What is Renaissance Philanthropy?

You can get in touch through our website or on Twitter. Consider leaving us an honest review wherever you're listening to this — it's the best way to support the show. Thanks for listening!

Dr Cynthia Schuck-Paim is the Scientific Director of the Welfare Footprint Project, a scientific effort to quantify animal welfare to inform practice, policy, investing and purchasing decisions.

You can find links and a transcript at www.hearthisidea.com/episodes/schuck.

We discuss:

How to begin thinking about quantifying animal experiences in a cross-comparable way

Whether the ability to feel pain is unique to big brained animals, or more widespread in the tree of life

How fish farming compares to poultry and livestock farming

How worried to be about bird flu zoonosis

Whether different animal species experience time differently

Whether positive experiences like joy could make life worth living for some farmed animals

How animal welfare advocates can learn from anti-corruption nonprofits

You can get in touch through our website or on Twitter. Consider leaving us an honest review wherever you're listening to this — it's the best way to support the show. Thanks for listening!

Dan Williams is a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Sussex and an Associate Fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (CFI) at the University of Cambridge.

You can find links and a transcript at www.hearthisidea.com/episodes/williams.

We discuss:

If reasoning is so useful, why are we so bad at it?

Do some bad ideas really work like ‘mind viruses’? Is the ‘luxury beliefs’ concept useful?

What's up with the idea of a ‘marketplace for ideas’? Are people shopping for new beliefs, or to rationalise their existing attitudes?

How dangerous is misinformation, really? Can we ‘vaccinate’ or ‘inoculate’ against it?

Will AI help us form more accurate beliefs, or will it persuade more people of unhinged ideas?

Does fact-checking work?

Under transformative AI, should we worry more about the suppression or the proliferation of counter-establishment ideas?

You can get in touch through our website or on Twitter. Consider leaving us an honest review wherever you're listening to this — it's the best way to support the show. Thanks for listening!