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Where New Industries Come From: Ben Landau-Taylor lecture
​Sober, risk-averse, rational businessmen make great captains of industry—in established industries which someone else already built.
Samo Burja — How Bureaucracy Defeated Democracy
Samo Burja and Ben Landau-Taylor cover bureaucracy—why the golden age of bureaucracies worked so well in the early 20th century, how bureaucratic class…
Richard Ngo — What Makes Hierarchy Legitimate (Human Or Not)
Richard Ngo argues against Wolf Tivy’s xenohumanism lecture. What is the moral ground for cooperation and hierarchy? We need the answer to build a good…
Marko Jukic — Stop Waiting For AGI And Go To Space
The long-awaited Marko Jukic episode.
Where "Open Source" Came From — Christine Peterson
The internet can feel like a part of the landscape, but all our software was intelligently designed—and so were the social systems which produce that…

August 2026

The Problem Of Humanity: Wolf Tivy lecture
​Our concepts of “humanity” and “humanitarianism” are usually taken as the eternal bedrock of morality.
Samo Burja — Will Technocapital Outlive Our Civilization?
Samo Burja and Wolf Tivy discuss the forces raising our civilization higher vs the forces pulling it down.
Joscha Bach — Consciousness Builds the Mind
Joscha Bach and Wolf Tivy discuss how consciousness may be a convergent strategy for organizing both human and machine minds, whether powerful AI minds…
The Dutch Revolt: Jonathan Wallis lecture
In 1572 twelve Dutch cities - less than a million people - began a war for independence against a global superpower and won.
Someone Had To Build Your Community — Jonathan Wallis
Intellectual activity, like any complex activity, can only take place in a rich social fabric.
Samo Burja — Why Science Slowed Down
Scientific breakthroughs are much rarer today than the glory days of the early 1900s.
We Can Do Better Than "Human Values" — Ginevra Davis
Philosophers talk of aligning AI to “human values”.
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