The Test Stand

Trey Goff
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  • Philosophy

Trey Goff learns in public. Long conversations about AI, politics, culture, philosophy, economics, and how institutions actually change, with the people who think hardest about them. Ideas go on the test stand to see what holds. A test stand is where engineers bolt down a new rocket engine and light it to see whether it holds together or blows apart. The Test Stand does that to ideas. Trey builds special economic zones and works on governance reform in Washington, so the questions have skin in the game. Sometimes he brings a claim he has already published and lets a friend take it apart. Sometimes he brings a question he is stuck on. Sometimes it is just a long conversation with someone who has thought harder about something than he has. What survives contact with reality is what we keep. Host: Trey Goff — treygoff.com

Episodes

  1. Sep 28

    Is Effective Altruism Evil? — with Niklas Anzinger, Founder of Infinita

    Is effective altruism evil? Trey Goff published an essay arguing that it is. His friend Niklas Anzinger, founder and CEO of Infinita, thinks that's too strong, and in the first episode of The Test Stand he takes the essay apart. Niklas runs Infinita, which works to get biotech treatments to early clinical evidence faster, starting in Montana under SB 535, a law that builds on right-to-try. He hosts the Stranded Technologies Podcast, has been a Próspera resident for four and a half years, and his company formed Montana's first ETRB, a private review board. Trey goes first. He gives effective altruism its strongest case, then makes his own: the malaria bednets that ended up as fishing nets, and how refusing to discount the future puts an infinity in the ethical math and makes AI risk outweigh everything else. Niklas, a self-described weak deontologist (someone who holds that rights bind you unless the stakes are overwhelming), says effective altruism is possibly not good but not evil, a word he reserves for ideologies like Nazism and communism. He would have written the essay about AI doomerism instead, and he puts the real problem in the impartiality premise: the demand that you weigh strangers as heavily as your own family and children. Trey gives ground. On the essay's section about moral concealment, he tells Niklas "this is probably the weakest point that I made." Niklas gives some back: he agrees there is a streak of cowardice in effective altruism, and that entrepreneurship, not RCTs and aid programs, is what actually lifts people up. Then it gets bigger than EA. Why randomized controlled trials are weaker evidence than they look (exclusion criteria, professional trial volunteers, third variables nobody modeled). Why SpaceX's habit of testing hardware until it breaks beats NASA's plan-everything approach. And how someone with radical goals should behave in Washington, including why Trey has found honesty to be the best strategy there, against everything he was told to expect. If either of them got something wrong, say so. That is the point of the show. Chapters 00:00 Why this show exists 01:44 Who Niklas Anzinger is 05:05 Trey's steelman of effective altruism 09:34 The bednets that became fishing nets 11:26 Utilitarianism, longtermism, and infinity 17:35 Niklas on weak deontology and "evil" 22:31 AI doomerism as the real danger 25:47 Animal suffering and impartiality 30:04 The drowning child 31:27 Moral concealment and open-source AI 40:59 Trey concedes his weakest point 46:39 Scientism and the limits of RCTs 54:22 The hidden third variable 1:01:32 Cowardice and entrepreneurship 1:08:02 SpaceX versus NASA 1:14:00 Abolitionism versus incrementalism 1:21:28 Decision strategy and tit for tat 1:28:54 Honesty as the winning strategy 1:36:01 Play the game you're good at 1:43:18 Close Links Trey's essay, "Effective Altruism is evil": https://www.treygoff.com/writing/effective-altruism-is-evil Infinita: https://infinita.co Montana ETRB: https://montanaetrb.org Niklas on X: https://x.com/NiklasAnzinger Bednets used as fishing nets (Short et al., PLOS One, 2018): https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0191519

  • 1 Episode

About

Trey Goff learns in public. Long conversations about AI, politics, culture, philosophy, economics, and how institutions actually change, with the people who think hardest about them. Ideas go on the test stand to see what holds. A test stand is where engineers bolt down a new rocket engine and light it to see whether it holds together or blows apart. The Test Stand does that to ideas. Trey builds special economic zones and works on governance reform in Washington, so the questions have skin in the game. Sometimes he brings a claim he has already published and lets a friend take it apart. Sometimes he brings a question he is stuck on. Sometimes it is just a long conversation with someone who has thought harder about something than he has. What survives contact with reality is what we keep. Host: Trey Goff — treygoff.com

Information

  • Creator
    Trey Goff
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    1
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Trey Goff
  • Show Website
    The Test Stand