Robert Wright's Interviews
AI, Rationalism, and the “Great Filter” (Robert Wright & Robin Hanson)
Robin’s history of thinking about the future ... Seeing AI as offspring, not adversary ... Robin’s famous answer to a great cosmic mystery ... Would evidence of aliens be good news or bad? ... Is rationalist culture cultist? ... LLMs: revolution or hype cycle? ... Heading to Overtime ...
Does AI Understand Things? (Robert Wright & Gary Marcus)
Gary’s background and place in the AI world ... Are Gary’s views on AI paradoxical? ... Bob: Searle’s Chinese Room argument is dead ... Have LLMs demonstrated "theory of mind"? ... Arguing the semantics of an LLM's “semantic space” ... Do LLM representations map onto the real world? ... Can (and should) we slow down AI
Conspiracy Theories and True Fictions (Robert Wright & Paul Bloom)
Bob’s bad newsletter news for Paul ... Fast Car's moving Grammy moment ... Music, female orgasms, and other evolutionary enigmas ... The Moral Animal turns 30—how has it aged? ... How AI (barely) helps Paul work ... Is America real? ... Bob tries to drag Paul down the JFK rabbit hole ... Lab leak and the trouble with “
An Israeli Looks at Gaza (Robert Wright & Russ Roberts)
How Israelis think about civilian casualties in Gaza ... Is the war spawning a new generation of terrorists? ... Explaining versus justifying bad behavior ... Can Hamas and other extremist groups be moderated? ... Is the world biased against Israel? ... Cognitive biases that inflame tribal tensions ... The “river to th
Why hasn’t the ground invasion happened yet? ... Do conditions in Gaza make terrorism more likely? ... Palestinian violence compared to Israeli violence ... Did Israel really offer the Palestinians a state two decades ago? ... Does Hamas have much support in the West? ... What should be done about Hamas? ... Israel’s b
Why did Republican moderates resist Jim Jordan? ... Why Democrats should empower Patrick McHenry ... Why did Trump attack Netanyahu? ...
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