Social Evolution Social Evolution

Imagine picking up your smartphone one morning to find only two apps: one red one blue. Your smartphone’s operating system now only runs these two apps. You’d probably think it sucks. 
In the USA, we run on DOS (the democratic operating system) with only two apps. Many fetishize voting and elections, but these have become circuses to go with all the bread. We labor under the illusion that we are “free,” but we have outsourced our primary responsibilities to a corrupt cartel in Washington. 
In this episode, Porch and Max discuss the evolution of the Republic, the problems of political power, and the woeful shortcomings of democracy. The fundamental question: can we do better than monopolies on violence?
Two-Party System
Constitutional Government
Separation of Powers - Check & Balances
Founding Father of the United States
Democratic republic
Scapegoating & René Girard
Tristan Harris
Daniel Schmactenberger
The Social Dilemma
The Social Singularity by Max Borders
First past the post voting
American civil religion
Campaign finance reform in the United States
Tammany Hall
Republic, Lost by Lawrence Lessig
United States presidential primary
Lobbying and special interests
Parliamentary system
Westphalian sovereignty
City-states
Settled agriculture and the Neolithic Revolution
James C. Scott
Theories on the origins of the state
James Madison
Thomas Hobbes: Moral and Political Philosophy
Philosopher King
Majoritarian democracy and majority rule
Liberal democracy
John Rawls and reasonable pluralism
Freedom of religion
Ninth Amendment to the US Constitution
Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution
George Mason and Anti-Federalism
Consent of the governed
Social contract theory
Ward republic
Territorial expansion of the US
Jane Jacobs and the Monstrous Hybrid
Bootleggers and Baptists
G.K. Chesterton and Chesterton’s Fence
Traditionalist conservatism
Progressivism
Political spectrum models - Nolan chart
The consistency of libertarianism
Glenn Greenwald
Joe Rogan
Mohair
Rational ignorance & rational irrationality
Path dependency
Political polarization and radicalization
Tribalism and groupthink
States rights
Horeshoe theory
Emergency powers
9/11 attacks
Mass surveillance
2021 US Capitol Attack
Domestic terrorism
Cognitive bias
Approval voting
Ranked-choice voting
Blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and smart contracts
On-chain Governance
Holacracy
Liquid democracy
Quadratic voting
Glen Weyl
Vatalik Buterin
Janeček method
Collective action problem
Decentralized autonomous organization
Alex Tabarrok’s Dominant Assurance Contract
Vote trading
Sociality
Mutual organization
Non-zero sum games
Organizational mission
Corporatist economics and Fascism
Minarchism
Code forking
Open-source software and Linux
Network effect
Antifragility from Taleb
Federalism and Subsidiarity
Availability cascade
Localism
Polyarchy, polycentricity, and panarchy
Circle of concern and circle of influence

Are we living through a moral panic about Social Media? Many folks are concerned about misinformation while for others censorship is the main concern. Social media companies seem stuck in a dilemma where they’re damned whatever they do. Does the magnitude of the problems measure up to the handwringing on either side? Is our ability to make sense of things lost in this hall of mirrors? 
Some argue that algorithms create asymmetries between enfeebled humans and awesome AIs. Others say these concerns are overblown and that partisans are scapegoating social media companies for the failures of legacy governance. 
Join us for what turned out to be, in moments, a heated exchange. You will not be bored. Strap in and hang on. (And of course: like, share, and hit subscribe.)
The Facebook Files - Wall Street Journal
The Social Dilemma
Limbic Hijacking
Operant conditioning chamber aka “skinner box”
Filter Bubble
Propaganda by Edward Bernays 
“We shape our tools and our tools shape us”
Marshall Macluhan
Critical Theory
A Propoganda Model by Noam Chomsky
B.F.  Skinner
Blank Slate
Evolutionary Psychology
IQ and susceptibility to misinformation
Propaganda
A/B split testing 
Click-through rate
Search engine optimization (SEO)
Conversion rate optimization (SRO)
Online Advertising networks and Ad exchanges
Unexplainability and Incomprehensibility of AI
GPT-3
RSS Newsreader
Moral panic
Steel Man Argument
Viral phenomenon
Hooked: How to Build Habit Forming Products by Nir Eyal
Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life also by Nir Eyal
Nudge theory
Clickbait
NPR Bias
Instagram in the News: Mental Health Risks for Teen Girls
Conspiracy theory
Internet meme
Political polarization
Understanding the Blue Church by Jordan Hall
A brief explanation of the cathedral by Curtis Yarvin
The Prussion Welfare State
High modernism
Technocracy
FDR’s Fireside Chats
Psychographic segmentation
Facebook needs, wants, must have regulation, Zuckerberg says
Regulatory capture
Deregulation of the Radio Broadcast Industry
Big 3 TV Networks
Walter Cronkite
Citizen journalism
Cyperphunk manifesto
Socrates on writing
Print and the persecution of witches
Spiral Dynamics
Plato’s Authoritarianism
Public choice theory
Platonism
Relativism
Rawls’ Reasonable Pluralism
Daniel Schmactenberger
Occam’s Razor
Lab-leak vs zoonotic origins of SARS-Cov-2
Crony Capitalism
Chinese Communist Party - The Great Firewall
Elizabeth Warren Call on Facebook to Stop the Deliberate Spread of Disinformation
Frances Haugen
The Hypocrisy of The Social Dilemma
Tristan Harris
Cambridge Analytica Controversy
Sensemaking in the Era of Authoritarian Media by Max Borders
Hot to make your iphone black & white
Less Wrong
Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters by Steven Pinker
Sequences by Eliezar Yudkowsky
Critical thinking
The dubious rise of ivermectin as a Covid-19 treatment, explained by Kelsey Piper
Bayesian inference
The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth by Jonathan Rauch
CGP Grey
Kurzgezagt
Prediction Market
Distributed ledger & blockchain
Falsifiability
Open Science

From Skynet to Singularitarian fantasy, AI is back in vogue with much hype and hand-wringing. Mainstream media don’t really know how to talk about it in a way that brings as much light as heat. In fact, even AI researchers have difficulty unpacking concepts like, well, intelligence. Philosophers stand by with critical eyes.
Michael and Max talk about the stickier issues as they try to find footing in a fog of mystery and misinformation. What is cognition? What are morals? Are we recreating conscious minds or just spinning out more sophisticated algorithms? Such questions linger as the industry speeds along, whether or not we have ready answers. Conversations like this help us burn the proverbial candle at both ends.
Artificial Intelligence
Intelligence
Boston Dynamics dog Spot
A Collection of Definitions of Intelligence by Marcus Hutter and Shane Legg
Metalhead episode of Black Mirror with killer robot dogs
Instrumental Rationality
Intelligence Quotient and g factor the psychometric of general human intelligence
Multiple Intelligences and developmental psychologist, Howard Gardner
Technological Singularity
The Age of Spiritual Machines and The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray Kurzweil
Exponential growth
Symposium: 'Will Spiritual Robots Replace Humanity?' on April 1st, 2000
Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us by Bill Joy
GPT-3 an AI text generator
Moore’s law
Moore’s Law is not dead and AI is ready to explode
IJ “Jack” Good and the Intelligence Explosion FAQ
AlphaGo project from DeepMind at Google
Lee Sedol
AlphaZero project from Deepmind 
Thomas Thwaites: How I built a toaster - from scratch
I, Pencil by Leonard Read
2001 A Space Odyssey
Terminator
Dystopia
“We are as gods and might as well get good at it.” — Stewart Brand
Stuart J. Russell
The myth of King Midas and the curse of his Golden Touch
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Paperclip Maximizer
Superintelligence
Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostrom
Descartes Errror and The Feeling of What Happens and the somatic marker hypothesis from Antonio Damasio
The Elephant and the Rider from Jonathan Haidt
Dual process theory — System 1 & System 2
The prefrontal cortex
Reinforcement learning
Skinner box
Playing Atari with Deep Reinforcement Learning
Neocortex
Cortical column
How to Create a Mind by Ray Kurzweil
On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines by Jeff Hawkins
Predictive model of the brain
B. F. Skinner and behaviorism
Noam Chomsky and the cognitive revolution
Neural networks
Machine learning
Writing Successful Reward Functions
Search engine
Image classifier
Homeostasis
Instrumental Convergence, the orthogonality thesis, and the superintelligent will
Externalities
The Chinese Room Argument from John Searle
Oracle AI
Deep Learning
Artificial general intelligence
AI safety conference in Puerto Rico
Tristan Harris
Iason Gabriel on Foundational Philosophical Questions in AI Alignment with Future of Life Institute
Morality, ethics, and meta-ethics
Moral anti-realism
Justice as Fairness by John Rawls
AI Alignment Problem, aka, the Control Problem
Ethics of technology
“We shape our tools and our thereafter our tools shape us”
Daniel Schmactenberger
Laws of Robotics
Friendly AI
Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control by Stuart J. Russell
Asliomar AI Principles
Complexity
Darwin Machine
Universal Darwinism
The Alignment Problem: Machine Learning and Human Values by Brian Christian
Moral Constructivism
Blockchain
Decentralization
Code is Law by Lawrence Lessig
Nudge theory from Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein
Spiral Dynamics
John Nash and game theor
David Gauthier and social contract theory of morality
Ahimsa
The Golden Rule
John Stuart Mill
No-harm principle
Categorical imperative from Immanuel Kant
Negative Utilitarianism
Communicative rationality from Jürgen Habermas
Hippocratic oath
Mutually assured destruction
Warr

Higher states of consciousness, whether through psychedelics or meditative practice, straddle the cognitive and the sacred. As we enter a “psychedelic renaissance,” we must do so not in a bacchanalian frenzy, but with respect and discernment. Michael and Max explore their personal experiences as well as the value of higher states in both personal transformation and contemporary life. Removing taboos around psychedelic substances, which are still illegal in most jurisdictions, starts with frank discussions around risks, benefits, and the need for wisdom.
Psychedelics
Entheogen
Ego death
Set and Setting
Psychological Shadow
Varieties of Religious Experience by William James
Vedanta
Ahimsa
The Immortality Key by Brian C. Muraresku
Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley
How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan
The Psychedelic Renaissance
Appolonian and Dionysian
Eleusinian Mysteries
Phenomenology
The Omega Point and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Terrence McKenna Omega Point
Where do ideas come from? with Alan Moore
Imagination and Hypothesis generation
Adult Development
Second Tier
Mystical Experiences
Nondualism
Model of hierarchical complexity
Is stage theory BS? - Nora Bateson

Consciousness is a central feature of our humanity, yet consciousness is a mystery. Conscious experience comprises every aspect of our waking lives, yet we have a hard time explaining its nature. We know that our brains and bodies are made up of energy and matter. We also know that if we get a big bonk on the head, we can disturb the energy and matter in such a way as to LOSE consciousness. So what is the nature of the relationship between mental properties (such as itchy feeling) and physical properties (such as firing neurons)? For millennia, humans have been trying to bridge this ‘explanatory gap.’ And as we enter the age of AI, questions about the nature of consciousness will become more relevant as we create artificial beings who will think and feel like us. 
Artificial Intelligence
Sentience
Bishop Berkeley (Idealism)
The Technological Singularity
Phenomenal Consciousness
Qualia
Animal Consciousness
Reductionism
Physicalism
Subjective/Objective Distinction
Epistemology
Mental Properties
Grits
Causal completeness/closure
The Explanatory Gap
“What it is Like to be a Bat?"” 
Cartesian Theater
Nanotechnology
Penrose Microtubules
Cartesian Dualism 
Eliminativism 
Paul and Patricia Churchland
Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennet
Conscious by Annaka Harris
The Conscious Mind by David Chalmers
Folk Psychology
Causal Overdetermination
Emergentism
Panpsychism
I Am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter
What is it like to be a Thermostat?
Multiple Drafts Theory
Recursion
Fractals
fMRIs
Complexity and Consciousness
Substrate Independence
Emulation
Ems (Emulation) - The Age of Em by Robin Hanson
Agnosticism
Conscious Universe
Panpsychism Redux (Porcelli’s Page!)
The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra
Wilber’s Quantum Questions
Dancing Wu Li Masters
Interdependent Co-arising (Pratītyasamutpāda)
Indra’s Net
Vedanta
Mythopoetic Thought
Phenomenology
Meditation
Edmund Husserl
Naturalism
Psychonautics
Physicalism
Paradigm Shift and Thomas Kuhn
Ineffability
Epistemic Status of Unobservable Entities

The greatest innovation since the printing press is here. The trouble is, it’s a threat to the old Westphalian order: digital ledger technologies (DLTs), like bitcoin: aka “crypto.” The supplicants of the old order have a lot at stake in the status quo, so a war is coming. Michael and Max spend this episode talking about the idea of crypto as money, going back through a little bit of history, then rocketing back to the future to discuss the implications for humanity. To what extent can we disintermediate using crypto? To what extent will humanity be able to create cloud governance that challenges the old order? Nobody knows, but it’s important to speculate. Indeed, we must set out a vision of possibilities for crypto, because there is so much promise in this evolving ecosystem. 
Cryptocurrency
Distributed Ledger Technology
Bitcoin
Ethereum
Blockchain
Distributed Application (DApp)
Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace by Lawrence Lessig
The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto (1988)by Timothy May
A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto (1993) by Eric Hughes
David Chaum
Nick Szabo
Wei Dai
Hal Finney
Cypherpunk
Freedom of Association
Common Law
Code of Justinian
DigiCash, ECash, BitGold 
Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System by Satoshi Nakamoto
Fiat Money
Reserve Currency
Central Bank
Neolithic Revolution
Moneychangers
James C. Scott
Temple / Palace Economy
Usury 
Medieval Antisemitism 
Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
Middleman or Intermediary
Interest
Investment Banking
Financial Crisis of 2007-2008
Occupy Wall Street
Money
Subjective Theory of Value
Price Mechanism
Goldbuggery
Bitcoin Maximalism
Cryptography
Miracle of Wörgl
Velocity of Money
John Maynard Keynes
Time Banking, Local Exchange Trading System, Mutual Credit
Sacred Economics by Charles Eisenstein
Bancor
Ludwig von Mises
Friederich Hayek
Bretton Woods Conference and System
Peter Zeihan
Virtual currencies
Deficit spending
Standing army
Inflation
Inflation hedge
The Big Short by Michael Lewis
Cooperative
Network effect
Metcalfe’s Law
Hyperinflation
FOMO
VisiCalc
Technology adoption lifecycle
Institutional investor
Coinbase
Regulatory capture
Cartelization
Securities and Exchange Commission
How we Become the Social Safety Net by Max Borders
Mutual societies
Welfare state
Trustless system
Art Brock and Holochain 
Open access network
Consensus mechanism
Tezos
On-chain governance
Butterfly effect
Real estate
Rivalry in Economics
Plutocracy
Oligopoly
Hobbesian trap
Bureaucracy
Democracy
Feedback loop
Crypto anarchism
The Vanguard Group
Credit Union
Polyarchy
Panarchy
Polycentric law