 Hello Peter, thank you for doing this. Hello Tyler. Now the title of this conversation is political theology That was a phrase I think first used by the Russian anarchist Baekunin to mock the Italian nationalist Mazini German legal theorist Carl Schmidt then picked it up and said it's something that everyone needs. They all need a political theology What does the term mean to you? Well, so it's a bit of a fuzzy broad concept But maybe maybe sort of to motivate it as a contrast I think that in late modernity we're often living in this world of hyper Specialization where you can't think about the big picture and it's sort of like I don't know It's like Adam Smith's pin factory on steroids. It's sort of our our world and And I think I think there is some way that we have to try to integrate all these different Facets of our life to try to make progress and that's that's what political philosophy does. That's what political theology does The reasons these sorts of things were abandoned, you know, I think maybe maybe it's already was like the Enlightenment sort of Abandoned it from you know, and you know one one one type of reason it was abandoned was because it's too hard to figure this stuff out It's just a sort of fools errand I'm inclined to think the other reason was it was often things too dangerous too divisive You're not supposed to have debates about religion. We settled that in 1648 of the Treaty of Westphalia We're just gonna forget about it and not talk about these things But and I think that might have been a reasonable compromise in the 18th century It's my view that when you you fast forward to the 21st century It's maybe more dangerous not to think about things and it's again more dangerous to go into become it for us to Become ever smaller cogs and ever bigger machine, you know, I'll other the Adam Smith pin factory um and then the you know the political dimension on it just to say one one thing on that is is There's always sort of a question You know if we're trying to figure out something about the whole about our whole world You know, do you start on sort of a human scale or do you start on you know, sort of a microscopic telescopic atomic or cosmic scale and There's probably some way these things are related but the you know the political theology political philosophy debate art frame I think this was also so cratic. We start the sort of turn to common sense human the world around us questions about politics economics society culture And that's that that's sort of actually this important way to get access You know, there's some deep link between the university and the universe there's some deep link between the failing multiversity and the crazed multiverse But but we're you know the sort of the sort of political Orientation I have is your you're never going to solve these things by you have to start with the university or Whatever that's that's gone wrong If you're ever gonna make sense of the universe and there's some analog to that that motivates all of these things Well, let's say I'm trying to make sense of your political theology So I recall you saying in a recent talk you consider yourself religious but not spiritual And that strikes me as quite a Calvinist point So if you put aside predestination and think of Calvinism as insisting we know nothing about heaven So it's an aggregation of man's power to claim to know about heaven. That's related to your critique of the left The notion that we don't know anything about heaven. It also means you can't really be spiritual. That's also a kind of irrigation Isn't the consistent Peter teal really a Calvinist thinker and Calvinism. It's quite concrete It's quite serious. It takes governance and authority Very literally. Why aren't you just a Calvinist? Man? I like I'm I'm still like mostly a libertarian Tyler and but you can do that and that's You know, I mean, I think probably there are there things I they're probably redeeming things I can find in Calvinism It's probably you know, it's it's so anti-utopian that it's probably helpful in the battle against communism But you know, I don't I don't know if that's the only way to be anti-communist and I don't you do five-point Calvinism It's you know, um total prep depravity Unconditional election limited atonement irresistible grace perseverance of the Saints I don't know if I agree with even one out of those those five things. I would say, uh, you know, the Egerardian anthropological Frame is that is that, you know, there is this deep link between gods and scapegoats and We tend to always we have these scapegoats. We turn into gods. We Project our violence onto them and this is what you know, archaic religion does this is in some ways what you know Atheist liberalism does you blame everything on mr. God and isn't Calvinism just an extreme form of scapegoating Where mr. God did everything he determined everything. He's why you're wearing that blue Jacket and it's it's it's why you everything you did wrong. It's all mr. God's fault and It is just it's just sort of we should be deeply distrustful of Scapegoating mr. God for everything like that. So that's that's an anthropological argument against against Calvinism But the the intellect and then the intellectual reason I'm not Calvinist is that I think we should be trying to make sense of the world and if if if You are you know if you're You know so depraved that you can't even think which is sort of I think a core Calvinist thing We shouldn't be having a conversation So if I were if I were a real Calvinist, we wouldn't even be able to have have a conversation here and if I you know if I if I sort of you know, you know You know There's a domestic distinction between the intellect and the will and the Medieval's believe in the power of the intellect the weakness the will The moderns it's sort of in some ways reversed But but if you if you sort of take a effective altruist East Bay rationalist these people They're much closer to Calvinism they claim to be rationalist But if you're gonna you know if you're in a rationalist Bible study equivalent and you know the outward-facing thing is that you're rational You're pure and you're in your thinking the inward-facing thing is it's all just spaghetti code You're so you can never be right about anything. Maybe it can be a little bit less wrong, but it's It's that's and so I'm yeah, I'm against both Calvinism and and so-called rationalism But he was then the puzzle I'm faced with let's take all of that at face value Why is it you just don't slide into Catholicism or Eastern Orthodox belief and free well There's some middle position And why is your middle position stable? You could either be Catholic or for that matter Mormon or there's plenty of room for free Well, right Well again, these aren't they're absolutely not not all the all the alternatives You know, I have it's always a little bit of a cheap shot my my my two-word, you know rebuttal to Roman Catholicism is Pope Francis And You know and And you know, we were talking a little bit about you know the you know, what what you know I grew up as a Lutheran, you know, they're probably all these things that are you know problematic About Luther, they're things that were we're good about him But you know, I think the you know the one the one part of it that If we judge him by the standards of the 16th century, you know, I don't know I think the Reformation had to come from the outside It couldn't it was not actually possible for to to start from within and and there is a way that You know the Lutheran piece was it was the it was the less globally Centralized church was gonna be a it was gonna be a less centralized church and there's probably there's probably still some part of the the Protestant political project that lines up more closely with a libertarian view What is it from the Hebrew Bible or one could say Old Testament that you've incorporated into your own political thought? Well, I think I don't know. I think my views on this are pretty Fairly Orthodox Christian in that there's some continuity between the old and the new, you know There's there's some some sense It's sort of hard to define where you maybe the Christian God is the original progressive where the new is better than the old It's I think it's the first time where the new is simply better than the old just by virtue of being new But if you if you exaggerate the difference too much that that ends up being problematic That's you know sort of the where you know you end up saying that the Old Testament God Is it even is like maybe just a different God from the New Testament God and that you know sort of all the extremely progressive Forms of higher criticism things like this in the 19th century. We're all they were all deeply anti-Semitic And I think so I think if you're if you're too progressive you end up becoming anti-Semite if you're if you and then if you're and then you have to say there's some progress but The there's the Gerardian intuition I would have is it's just always this this this reversal and perspective where The Bible takes things from the the side of the victim There's a and it's already in the book of Genesis where it's the story of Cain and Abel You know the founding of the first city in the history of the world is a parallel But opposite story to the story of Romulus and Remus the founding of the greatest city where you know Romulus and Remus stories told from point of view of Romulus The Cain and Abel stories told from point of view of Abel or the you know the Israelites coming out of Egypt that would normally be told from the point of view of the Egyptians where you have these trouble makers We got rid of them and And it it and you have this sort of inversion of perspectives You know throughout the Old Testament I would say Is it possible that we can read the Old Testament conclude essentially history is something really bad That's the central message of the woke and then just say the woke basically are correct We should side with the woke they have all these excesses those are terrible But they're in a way a method of advertising the fundamental conclusion that history is bad And they're the ones who make us deal with that and thus you and I should be woke. What's wrong with that line of reasoning? Yes, I think the history was very bad. I think it's always a mistake for Conservatives or anti woke people to whitewash it too much And so if we if we say that you know You know, yeah, they used to be slavery, but the slaves were all happy people. They're all happy slaves That is a loser argument and you shouldn't you shouldn't do this. Um, you know the what I would say the the again the sort of Rough Christian frame on this is somehow the history is really bad And I think Christianity probably it is much worse than Islam or Judaism on this because I don't know You know Islam and Judaism it would be inconceivable that you could murder God You know in the form of a person if someone claimed to be God and and he got killed that would just prove that he's not God and so So yeah, so sort of the original sin the violence in some senses is is is is far greater in a Christian context and then But then there is some way that we're all part of that matrix and you also need to have you know You need to have forgiveness. So if you want to maybe outline three three rough possibilities There's this, you know hard to define Christian in between one which is the history is terrible And it's awful, but we need to try to find a way to forgive people and then there is a let's say Let's say a woke version where the history is terrible but we're gonna forget about the forgiveness part and then there is I don't know maybe sort of a Right-wing Nietzschean Bronze Age pervert alternative, which is we were just You know, we're gonna forget about the history. It's kind of oppressive I'm sick of the skill trip and don't hear anything more about the history and and somehow the the the sort of in-between Christian one I think is the most tenable even though there are all sorts of tensions in that There was a recent Harvard talk you gave where if I understand you correctly You suggested the left needed to learn how to relativize its victim hood What did you mean by that and how does it relate to what you just said? It's always in the context was you know How much how much victimhood is is? is unhealthy for people to have and you know Yeah, there are all these ways where you can you can identify yourself as a victim I don't want to have sort of blanket rule where you can never say that you weren't a victim You know, I sometimes like to joke that I'm a poor and persecuted Peter person and And that's maybe there are elements of truth to that. Maybe it's you know, maybe it's it's very exaggerated but if I if I absolutize that too much, it's probably unhealthy and sort of a you know a Christian division that I I suggested at the Harvard talk was that if It's okay to Say you're a victim. It's a it's okay to do these things up to a certain point you can't say that you're a greater victim than Christ and Once you do that You've probably lost perspective Are there other holy books besides the Bible that you draw ideas and inspiration from and what would those be? Well, you know, I think I think it's probably all in some sense. It's all the great books were you know Were these sort of I know that they're not quite they're not quite at the scale of of these holy books but There was there was a way that you know, we we treated, you know I don't know Shakespeare or Cervantes or go to as these almost semi-divine writers and and that's and that I think that's the sort of attitude one has to have to to Read any of these books You know appropriately and seriously so the Western Canon would be your answer so to speak something like the Western Canon I don't think that, you know, I don't think the great books are Are quite as holy as the Bible, but and I you know as a result I don't probably don't read enough of them, but but yes, that that's that's the closest approximation And it includes science fiction. Yes or no, I Read a lot as a kid. I'm so little of that nowadays. It's just it's all too depressing Last week I was teaching my graduate class on a bunch of them asking me Why is it we keep on hearing about Carl Schmidt now and I tried to explain that to them But why do you think there's now a resurgence of interest in Carl Schmidt and for you? What are the valuable insights and Schmidt, you know Carl Schmidt was it was one of a sort of this group of thought thinkers Came to prominence in the 1920s in Weimar Weimar Germany and there was obviously there were a lot of things that went You know very haywire with many of these many of these people, you know that sort of in some ways Schmidt got someone tangled with the Nazis a distance himself a few years later But it was some very bad judgment in certain ways, but the the thing that's you know the thing that I think is Interesting dangerous about looking at the the Weimar thinkers who somehow in the it was in the aftermath of World War one Germany had lost You couldn't go back to sort of the throne and altar You know Empire the Hopsporks and you couldn't we didn't really want to go forward with liberal democracy And so there were all these people had these fairly deep critiques in some ways It was going back to these questions of political theology political philosophy had been sort of whitewashed and set aside since the since the since the Enlightenment and And there were again there were things about that were dangerous You know sort of you know one way one way to think of the Weimar period was I know it's like them dwarves in Moria Where they dwelled too deep and you know finally they they awaken the nameless terror of the Balrog But but I think I think there are and I don't think we're ever in a cyclical world But there are certainly certain parallels in the US in the 2020s to Germany in the 1920s where you know You know liberalism is exhausted one suspects that democracy whatever that means is exhausted and and You know that that We have to ask some questions very far outside the Overton window What is it you think that Schmidt missed that's very important Let's let's maybe I'll just sort of do one insight that I think is powerful and then sort of what's what's what's wrong about that You know one of his books was the concept of the political and sort of what what defines politics and it's Sort of this It's some of this division of friends and enemies that are then that that somehow is really foundational And you shouldn't get sidetracked with all these other things and then all these interesting ways you could apply this There's you know sort of 1980s Reagan coalition question I always like to ask people where you had this you know the Reagan coalition was somehow the free market libertarians the defense hawks and The social conservatives and so if you ask what does the millionaire and The general and the priest what do they actually have in common? We just sort of imagine these three people are seated at a dinner table and they're having dinner and what do they actually talk about and it's really hard to come up with with an answer and and yet the coalition worked incredibly well and The answer I submit that they have in common is they're anti-communist and they have a common enemy and And that was you know incredibly powerful it was it was in some ways my formative political idea as a teenager You know junior high school high school late 70s early 80s was was anti-communism And and then there was a way that you know when the Berlin Wall came down in 89 This this seemingly incredibly powerful political Consolation just disintegrated and and there's and there's sort of a natural Schmittian analysis of this So that's that's sort of that's sort of where where I find Schmidt quite powerful as a thinker the you know the place Where it probably tends to always go haywire is there's always a question whether on Politics is like a market Or is it is it a sort of thing where if you understand it better it works better And and so or is it something like a scapegoating machine where? the scapegoating machine only works if you don't look into the sausage making factory and so if you say we're having a lot of conflicts in our Village and we have to find some random elderly woman and accuser of witchcrafts that will achieve some psychosocial unity as a village This sort of thing doesn't really work if you're if you're that self-aware and so and so there was sort of a You know Schmidt had this you know in a way had this Optimistic enlightenment Rationality to it where if we just describe politics as you know the arbitrary division of the world into friends and enemies Then this will somehow you know Strengthen the political it's and it probably actually in some ways Accelerated its disintegration instead it's Schmidt missing out on a certain possible cyclicality in history So the notion that liberalism will collapse in the Weimar Germany of the 1920s obviously that was the correct prediction But if you reappear in West Germany of 1948 it was a completely incorrect prediction And just as well liberalism had collapsed leading up to World War one it tends to come back Why isn't the cyclical perspective the correct one man, that's a that's a big question, but I I don't know I think you can you can stress that the aspects that are timeless and eternal I prefer to stress the aspects that are one time and world historical I think that in some sense every moment in history only only happens once and you know I think there is some kind of a Meaning to history. I think it has a certain type of linearity to it And if you I think that is sort of the let's say the Judeo-Christian view of history as Distinct from let's say the the classical Greco-Roman one, I don't I don't know if you can have a concept of history that's cyclical so if you look at I don't know if you look at Thucydides Where it's this great period of peace that leads this great war between Athens and Sparta So the Paraclean age some of them gives way to this this great conflict And then people came back to studying Thucydides right after World War one because there's some certain parallel You had a hundred years of peace between the Napoleonic Wars and then led to this great Conflict, but but there's nothing particular in the history none of the details matter in Thucydides He makes up all the speeches And so on and then you know you contrast this with something like of the book of Daniel in the Bible where it's It's a succession of four kingdoms, and it is a one-time world history Where everything that happens is unique not not to pre-repeated in and there's sort of a sense in which I would say The the the real first historian was Daniel and Thucydides isn't even close And then and then yeah, you know we talked off off the set a little bit about you know was Well, what about you know the Roman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire and isn't the European Union sort of like the Roman Empire and Then I don't know my my my response as well You know we have nuclear weapons today, and they didn't have those you know even in 1900 and so even just on the science and tech arc Things are are so different and I I would I would not trivialize the importance of science and technology So you think now the stakes are too high for the cyclical version of history to work because at some point It's just not possible to come back It's just that the the the science and tech has a progressive character, and so it is you know Yes, I there are elements. I think that are probably quite apocalyptic about our time, but but I wouldn't I would just start by saying they're they're very different and we're yeah, we're in a Very different world than we were in 1900 and I don't know how you go I don't know how you un-unlearn all the knowledge we've gained even since 1900 Do you think we're entering a new age of millenarian thought somewhat akin to the English 17th century where everything was very fertile? There's a scientific revolution tech. You could say is revitalized again. A lot of people went crazy Highly diverse theologies They execute a king many strange things happen But in many ways we're living in the world of the English 17th century right with constitutions political parties central banks Is this the new? Again, this is again like an absurdly cyclical frame. You're putting on things. It's it's just no I don't think any moment ever repeats itself. It is just radically different Of course, there are things that are you know that are apocalyptic about our world We have you know, we have all these kinds of dangers that they Unlike the 17th century they seem to come from you know this place. That's very non-religious It's like science technology was nuclear weapons after 1945, you know, it's maybe it's environmental degradation Climate change we debate about you know various forms of the environment. There's certainly you know There's certainly our fears people have about bio weapons. We can ask what really happened with the Wuhan lab There are apocalyptic fears, you know around AI that I think you know Deserves be Taken seriously. So if yeah, if it's if it's millenarian Or apocalyptic it's it has a very very different feel It is it's sort of a apocalyptic violence that comes from a purely human source It's not it's not really being you know orchestrated by by by God you know the one of the one of the one of the points that renaissance always like to make was that in the in the Catholic Church was I think the During the Advent season you'd often have these sort of sermons on the end times and the terrible things that happened at the end of the World and in Gerard's telling the church stopped those sermons and that after 1945 because people needed to be reassured that The nuclear weapons had nothing to do with Armageddon or fire and brimstone or or anything like this Even though of course, you know, there were there all these slight mythic elements You know the first nuclear test was called Trinity or you named it after all these Greek gods the Saturn Jupiter Zeus whatever But but yeah, I think I think it's I think we are We're sort of there are elements of that that I think are That are very true, but if I had to do my anti millenarian frame or Maybe it's it's not a pro-tech argument This is sort of an anti anti tech argument is that you know if we if we again talk about all these existential risks Today and you know, we can nuclear weapons climate change biotech, you know, nanotech killer robots The AI that's going to turn everyone to a paperclip or whatever I always think you have to you have you should at least include, you know, one more kind of existential risk if we're going to throw it in and in my mind one other existential risk is a one-world totalitarian government and I find that as least as scary as the others and you know in the in sort of a Biblical eschatological context, you know, you're supposed to worry about Armageddon You're also supposed to worry about the antichrist. Maybe you're supposed to worry more about the antichrist because the antichrist comes first And and so, you know, if we're going to find a pathway through this apocalyptic age You have to sort of navigate between the the Silla of all these, you know existential risks that are and the and the cryptus of the sort of political totalitarian Catastrophe if I'm if I had to do sort of a more literary version on this You know, it's very hard to write sort of a literary account of the antichrist But there was sort of the two good antichrist books that were written The two best fictional ones in my mind were pre-world were one. There was a 1908 Robert Hubens Some sort of Catholic book Lord of the World. There was a 1901 by Salaviev war progress in the end of history. They both had these sort of accounts of this future Totalitarian world dictator who took over the whole world and both of them. It's kind of a Demonium X machinist so really unclear how the antichrist takes over It's like it gives these hypnotic speeches and no one can remember word He says but they all just sell their souls for no parent good reason whatsoever and he just takes over the world But it seems to me that if we were to write it won't we're to try to write a novel like this post 1945 It's it's very straightforward. It would be you know, it'd be like one world or none This is a short film by the nuclear scientists after 1945 We don't give the nuclear weapons to the one-world government. It's gonna blow up the whole world and and basically The the the literary version would be that the antichrist comes to power by constantly talking about Armageddon and Constantly telling us scary millenarian stories and so that's that's sort of my complicated nuanced answer is There's a lot of truth To these existential risks. I don't want to completely dismiss them, but but that's also That's also, you know, how we're gonna get this totalitarian state if you look at You know all these versions of this I can I can go down, but it's like, you know It's you know, do you want to worry about dr. Strangelove or Greta? And it seems like dr. Strangelove is more dangerous, but if everyone's gonna have to you know, ride a bicycle That's not just gonna happen on its own and that requires, you know Some some some real real enforcement of this stuff or there's you know, there's a there's a there's a short You know boss from it. There's a boss from I say from 2019 on how to how to stop all the the AI risks and it's basically You know, maybe maybe we can change the culture so that nobody will have heterodox ideas anymore And so so a few different ideas like this, but then what you really need is Really effective global government and really effective policing because you and you have to have some kind of global compute governance and and That sounds to me At least as scary as the AI But isn't the much greater risk a collapse into a kind of disorderly feudalism So where in Florida the United States seems to be becoming more federalistic It's very hard for me to imagine China say taking over India You can look at the Balkans. It's even a word Balkan eyes. You look at the Middle East if it goes very badly It's hard to see any single power just ruling any substantial part of the Middle East It's easy to imagine it being in a kind of chaos Oh, why think there's so much scale that that kind of totalitarianism would be possible Man, I don't I don't know. It's it's uh, it's There's so many different versions of this but Just if we think about I don't know that the There were versions of this I would have been more on your side Let's say post 9-11, you know, it was you know Well, aren't we just gonna have all this chaotic terrorism all over the world? And and we didn't get that much terrorism and we instead got you know, the Patriot Act and You know incredible tracking of you know of money flows incredible monitoring of people and and so the you know And of course, you know, there's still there's still our things that can go wrong But but you know the the political slogan of the Antichrist first Thessalonians 5-3. I think is is peace and safety and It seems that we've gone far more in the peace and safety direction than the the global chaos direction I don't know. It's it's I don't I think it's hard to even have a like an illegal Swiss bank account And that's like a really modest modest way. It's it's it's you know It's it's hard to exit. It's hard. It's much harder to exit the United States than it was, you know, 20 30 years ago Let's say you're trying to track the probability That the Western world and its allies somehow muddles through and just keeps on muddling through What variable or variables do you look at to try to track or estimate that? What do you watch? I? Don't I don't think it's a really empirical question So this is it's it's if if yes, if you could convince me that was empirical and you'd say these are the variables We should pay attention to if I if I could if I agreed with that frame You've already won half the argument and so be like variables Well, you know the Sun has risen and set every day And so it will probably keep doing that and so we shouldn't worry or you know the planet has always muddled through so Greta's kind of wrong and It you know and we shouldn't really pay attention to her and I'm sympathetic to not paying attention to her but I don't think this is a great argument and and or you know this this is of course if we think about the the globalization project of Of the post Cold War Period where in some sense it's you know globalization is just sort of happens It's gonna be more movement of goods and people and ideas and and money and we're gonna sort of become this You know more peaceful better integrated world and You don't need to sweat the details We're just gonna kind of muddle through and then what you know in my telling You know there are a lot of things around that story that that went very haywire You know one one simple version is the the US China thing Hasn't quite worked the way people in Fukuyama and all these people envisioned it back in 1989 and and I think one could have figured this out much earlier and And if we had not been told you can just you're just going to muddle through It would you know the alarm bells would have gone off much sooner and you know You know, maybe maybe globalization is leading towards you know sort of a neoliberal paradise Maybe it's leading the totalitarian state of the Antichrist, but I would be yeah I'd be let's say it's not a very empirical argument But but if someone like you didn't ask questions about muddling through I'd be so much like an optimistic Broomer libertarian like you Stopped asking questions about muddling through I'd be so much more assured So we're so much more hopeful. Are you saying it's ultimately a metaphysical question rather than an empirical question? I don't I don't think it's metaphysical, but it's it's somewhat analytic. It's and moral even it's It's that you're laying down some duty by talking about muddling through well, it's It does tie into all these these bigger questions, so I think I Don't think if we had you know a one-world state that this would automatically be for the best and so there are there are You know, I'm not sure that if we do a classical liberal or libertarian intuition on this It would be you know, maybe maybe the absolute power that a one-world state would have would corrupt absolutely I don't think the libertarians were critical enough of it the last 20 or 30 years. So there was some way They didn't believe their own theories. They didn't connect things enough I don't I don't I say that's a moral failure, but there was some failure of the of the imagination So this multi-pronged skepticism about muddling through would you say that's your actual real? Political theology like if we got into the bottom of this now That would be that would be a you know, it's it's whenever people think you can just muddle through Yeah, that you're probably set up for some kind of disaster. That's that that's fair I mean it doesn't it's not like not as positive an agenda, but but I always I always think you know I know as a as a you know It's one of my chapters in the zero-to-one book was you know, you're not a lottery ticket and it's sort of like they The basic advice is if you're if you're an investor and you know, you can just think okay I'm just muddling through as an investor here. I have no idea what to invest in there all these people I don't I can't pay attention to any of them. I'm just gonna write checks to everyone make them go away and I'm just gonna set up, you know, um a desk somewhere here in on South Beach And I'm gonna give a check to everyone who comes up to the desk or you know, not everybody but I'll just it'll it's just some writing lottery tickets and that's just a formula for losing all your money and and there's some There's some and the the muddling the the place where I react so violently to the muddling through it's it's just It's again, we're we're just not thinking and this is like it's it's it can be Calvinist. It can be it can be rationalist It's it's anti-intellectual. It's it's not thinking about things So the muddling through view in the Calvinist view in your opinion, they have the same flaw actually It's a distrust in human agency a distrust in human thought a distrust You know in our ability to Yeah, to to make choices Now for months, I've been asking myself Why you and also Schmidt are so interested in this catacon idea, which is also from the bible You can explain that to us in a moment, but am I correct in now thinking it's just occurs to me That the catacon is in a sense your substitute vision for what for me is muddling through So you're not willing to believe in muddling through but things haven't collapsed now Not here. So you need something else holding the finger in the dike and that's catacon or no or no Well, it's it's a very mysterious idea. I'm not it's it's sort of this this There's always a question why the antichrist hasn't taken over yet And it's this mysterious force that holds back this restraining force that that holds back you know the totalitarian one-world state and And uh, you know, I don't necessarily put too much stock in it because it's uh, it's sort of uh On its own terms, it's somewhat unstable. It's um, it's provisional. It has these sort of Archaic sacred elements. It can it can work for a while. It's um, but it's not something It's not a you can't identify it with an institution It you know and again the schmidean view is there were all these different things that played the role of the Catacon at various points in time, but if you're not supposed to emanantize the eschaton you're also not supposed to emanantize the catacon and And so if you if you if you identify too much as one thing that can go very wrong And then if you think of the catacon is the thing that restrains the one-world state There were you know, there were various things or the restrains the antichrist Um Anything that's sort of like the opposite. This is sort of a gerardian cut is always going to be Memetically entangled and so it's going to have sort of this parallelism And so there's always a risk that the catacon becomes the antichrist So the you know the the original antique the proto antichrist was nero claudius The the good emperor was the catacon. He was restraining nero, but then at some point You know it's yeah, nero is the opposite of claudius, but they're both they're both uh roman emperors or um Or you know, you could say that You could say that um in the middle of the 20th century I don't know from let's say 1949 to 1989 I would identify the catacon as anti-communism I would identify communism as the ideology the antichrist in the 20th century and anti-communism was this You know, it was not you know what what stopped communism was not You know, the united states couldn't have done it. It was not just one country It was not um, it was not like some libertarian debating society was you know Something was like pretty violent pretty pretty hard to morally justify not really that christian but um, but that that sort of had this unifying effect and then um The way it morphed would be in 1989 Something like anti-communism morphs into neoliberalism and that's actually you know Well, if you're anti-communist, you're not aspiring for world control You're just trying to stop the communists from getting world control once you've defeated the communists What are you supposed to do and like maybe you can just go home and forget about all all of what you did But in practice these things have a tendency to perpetuate themselves and it was like bush 41 Anti-communism became the new world order and we're now going to just govern the world in the name of anti-communism And uh, and so there's something about it that's always Misleading or or even what I said about the antichrist in this apocalyptic thing Doesn't the antichrist just come to power by acting as a catechon? Like this is what Greta says she's doing. She is the catechon stopping climate change And um, and so it's yeah, it's a it's a somewhat useful concept, but um, I wouldn't put too much weight on it So at the macro level, uh, all the weight you're putting on human agency Is that really so compatible with Lutheranism? I'm probably not I I I'm not a perfect Lutheran. I mean there's a lot a lot. There's a lot that was If you look at all these all these people that one would Judge very differently in retrospect if you look in the bible all testament new testament And you think about all the christian thinkers who believed in some form of predestination Or moses was chosen and the like, uh, abraham was chosen What is it in the bible that points you in the direction of so much belief in human agency being so important And there's sort of a lot a lot of different levels on this but but certainly um, if you uh, if you if you think of it as as um, this this shift away from um Sacrificing individuals a sacrificing people. Um, there there is sort of an anti The anti sacrificial theme and you know, we can you know, you can always say how is you know modernity or enlightened values? How are they tied with this but? Um, certainly the the idea I would have would be some something like the idea of the individual came out of this this context where you know Um, the state was not absolute. It was not not not sacred. It it, um, you know, it was not necessarily providential um, you know, this is always a Gerard like to always say that um, you know, uh, christ was the first political atheist Because on the on the level of of the uh, of the political order if you say, um christ says that he's the son of God son of the father There's a way you can go into trinitarian metaphysics, but the the political interpretation of this is that Caesar augustus um, the son of the divinized Caesar is not um, that is not You know, the somehow that's not exactly the son of god and uh, that the roman empire is not simply Divinely ordained and then that somehow, you know opens a space for for um, you know, a less a less unitary system that you know Takes you know many many centuries to develop or something like this But this is where I don't know. I I think of you know, I think of even iron rand is like a pretty good christian And that's why I don't know if I really But it's it's just it's at least, you know, yes, it's Jewish and atheist and shrill and crazy, but it's but it's it's it's just no you can't sacrifice the individual And and then um, and then you know, you shouldn't sacrifice your mind. You shouldn't sacrifice your reason It's just that you can't you can't sacrifice that Now you've been quoting the tempest lately in some of your talks How is it you think the shakespeary and political vision differs from the christian? well, it's always it's always hard to know what um What shakespear? really thought but I I I um You know, you certainly have different characters if you have you know, I think it's um, you know, um You have someone like mcbeth. I think says life is a Tail told by an idiot full of sound fury signifying nothing. So Um, that doesn't sound like a particularly christian worldview, but maybe you know, that's what mcbeth says It's not what shakespear says. So it's always it's always very hard to know Or maybe it's a sort of a christian nihilistic view of the world or something something like that um but um, but I think the The contrast I always frame is that uh, I think I think The way I understand shakespear is always in contrast with someone like carl marx Where marx believed that people had battles over differences that mattered It was you know, the different classes and they had objectively different interests And this is what led to the intensity of the struggle and there's something in Shakespear that's sort of proto gerardian or very memetic where people have conflicts over when they The conflicts are the most intense when they don't differ at all And so it is you know, it's the opening line of romeo and juliet It's uh the capulets versus the monogies two houses alike in dignity They're identical and that's why they they hate each other so much or I think it's at the end of hamlet Where hamlet says, you know to be truly great You must take everything for an eggshell because um because an average person would fight over things that mattered But a truly great person would fight over things as a femoral as honor or an eggshell or something something like this And um, and of course, you know the hamlet's problems. He doesn't really um Believe all all the you know the the sort of insane revenge drama. He's he's supposed to he's he's supposed to be in um, so I think I think there is probably a um A place where I would I would say uh Yeah, shakespeare would probably be very distrustful of you know, um extreme ideological differences today that would probably In some ways also be be a kind of political atheist I find the play julie sees are very interesting because there's no catechon There's no muddling through so they sacrifice Caesar There's a civil war and a lot more people dying and no end to that insight It's the the pessimistic scenario of the teal mental universe. I think You know, there's there's sort of a strange way where they're they're all going back And thinking they're they're re-enacting things, right? So it's uh, it's um, it's um, you know the way uh brutus gets pulled into the conspiracy in julie sees are is that uh, he um, he gets reminded or That you know his ancestor another person named brutus had overthrown tarquin the the last of the kings of rome 509 bc And so he thinks he's he's just you know re-enacting that murder and then of course there's a you know, there's a um and then I think I think there is a some part in the in the in the in the play where um, um The shakespeare has the actors say, you know, i'm gonna get get this slightly garbled but it's something like You know and uh centuries hence there'll be people re-enacting this on a stage in front of an audience and and This is what motivates brutus to do it. It's like the the future applause and the shakespearean theater and then of course, you know the uh, the crazy literal re-enactment of it was um, john wilkes booth shooting abraham lincoln in 1865 where um, you know, um booth uh was a shakespearean actor and then it was six semper tyrannous was what he said It was like he thought he was re-enacting the brutus sees her thing and then you can you can look at the uh I think it's 1838 lincoln speech the young men's lyceum address where um lincoln sort of portrays himself Sort of in a somewhat coded way as sort of a proto-seizure where you know, they're and he sort of tells the audience they're they're people in this country who um You know who um wouldn't be happy to be you know, they're all these some people are like really ambitious and uh But no one could be like a founder Because that was in the past and the most you can now be as a president But there are people from being presidents not enough and there's some people who um, if you didn't stop them They would keep going until they enslaved all the white people or freed all the slaves This is sort of lincoln talking about himself and saying that he has the ambition to be like a caesar or a napoleon Or or something like this, um, but uh, but yeah, so there's the services a bit of a roundabout answer So um, yes, so there are ways we can see it as a as a cycle But but surely that's what we want to transcend It was it was a bad idea for brutus to think he was reenacting the caesar thing and somehow Um, there was something about uh, the john wilkes booth story. That's pretty sad, too For our last segment, let's turn to artificial intelligence As you know, large language models are already quite powerful. They're only going to get better In this world to come will the word sells just lose their influence People who write people who play around with ideas pundits. Are they just toast? What's this going to look like? Are they going to give up power peacefully? Are they going to go down with the ship? Are they going to um Man, I nuclear bombs. I You know, I I sort of I had this ripper. I I think again sort of the One of the things I'll say the the AI thing broadly the llms. It's a big breakthrough. It's very important um And it's striking to me how um, how bad silicon valley is talking about these sorts of things and uh And uh, they're they're sort of you know, they're sort of all kinds of the questions are either way too narrow Where it's something like, you know, we're going to have um You know Is the next transformer model going to be improved by 20 on the last one or something like this Or they're maybe too cosmic where it's like we go straight from there We go straight to the simulation theory of the universe And uh, and surely there are, you know, a lot of um in between questions one one could ask. Um, let me try to answer yours My my intuition would be it's going to be quite the opposite where it seems much worse for the math people than the word people and what you know what people have told me is that um They think within three to five years The ai models will be able to solve all the us math olympiad problems and um, and uh, that would you know, that would um, that would shift things uh, things quite a bit There's sort of a longer history. I always have on the math versus verbal Rift where if you ask when did um, when did our society bias to testing people more for a math ability I believe it was during the french revolution because it was believed that a verbal ability ran in families Math ability was sort of distributed Um in the sort of idiosamant way throughout the population And so if we um, if we prioritized uh math ability, um, it had sort of this meritocratic but also egalitarian effect on society And then I think by the time you get to the soviet union and soviet communism in the 20th century where you give um, you know a Um number theorist or chess grandmaster a medal which I was always a part. I was somewhat sympathetic to in the in the uh, soviet union You um, it maybe it's actually just sort of a control mechanism where the math people are singularly clueless They don't understand anything But if we put them on a pedestal we tell everyone else you need to be like the math person Then um, it's actually a way to sort of control or that the chess grandmaster doesn't understand anything about the world That's a way to to really control things And if I sort of fast forwarded to let's say silicon valley in the early 21st century It's way too biased towards the math people. I don't know if it's a french revolution thing or a russian sort of um, straussian secret cabal control thing where you had some private tries but uh, but that's that's the thing that seems deeply unstable and uh, that's what I would bet on on getting reversed where you know, it's like Isn't it like um, like in the the place where math ability like, you know, um You know, it's it's sort of it's the thing that's the test for everything, right? It's like if you want to go to medical school Okay, we weed people out through uh physics and calculus And like I'm not sure that's really correlated with your you know, I don't know your dexterity as a neurosurgeon I don't really want someone operating on my brain to be you know, doing prime number factorizations in their head while they're operating on my brain or something like that and so um, you know, I You know in the late 80s early 90s I had a sort of a chest bias because I was a pretty good chess player And so my chest bias was you should just test everyone on chess ability and that should be the gating factor Why why even do math? Why not just chess and that got undermined by by the computers in 1997 and um And isn't that what's going to happen to math and isn't that a long over do rebalancing of our society? And how is manual labor going to do in this world to come? There'll be a lot more new projects, right? If you're a very good gardener carpenter Will your ages go up by 5x or? Is there something else in store for us? It's it's hard to say but I look I think I It seems to me the kinds of let me just Not give the answer but let me sort of suggest some of the questions I'd like us to focus on more with the eye. So I think I think one question is, you know, is it going to How much will it increase gdp? versus how much will it increase inequality and Probably it does does some some of both Um, um, is it a very centralizing technology? That's another question. I'd like to get a better handle on You know, I had this ref five six years ago where if um If cryptos libertarian, why can't we say that ai is communist? and that it and And and one of the things that I I'm still probably a little bit uncomfortable about it is that it seems to lead to these incredible returns to scale you know Man, I thought I thought so, you know, I thought san francisco had at least, you know committed suicide And we could move on from san francisco and then um, but the the returns to scale on ai are so big that Maybe even san francisco will will survive with With the ai revolution, but then, you know, they're and their benefits to this but but it also leads to This kind of a set of centralization questions or the geopolitical question, you know You know, if it is as big a technology as you and I think it is What is it going to do to the china us rivalry? Will it, you know, and what do you think? Um, I don't actually I'm just saying like it would be good if we just at least ask the right sorts of questions I don't have answers all these my um, I can do the I'll do the pro china argument is they um They will not hesitate to use the ai and train it on all their people And so um, it'll be more quickly implemented the pro us argument is that uh, is that we are Probably ahead of china. Maybe the large language models are not really communist You know, maybe if you can't ask the large language model who winnie the pooh is You have to nerf it so badly that it doesn't even work or something like that. So I I I think there's sort of a There's an intuition that the effect of altruists are not just fifth columnists on the part of the ccp Where they're trying to sabotage us, but where they actually simply are Doing what the ccp wants, uh, which is actually to stop the lms and that's very disruptive And then um to the extent I think the second one that it probably helps the us more than china Is that actually massively destabilizing where um, you know, china was this sort of low volatility Plan to victory where they were just going to slowly beat the western world and if if if you now have this Volatility increasing technology that china cannot match does that just accelerate china's timetable Is china become sort of like russia where you know, you're ultimately going to lose and you have to you know Maybe you have to invade taiwan in the next year or two and you can't wait for another decade Final question. What is the next thing you will choose to learn about? Man, this is always these are all these questions, you know, this is all the all those projections of your personality tyler, you know, it's like And it's the isaia berlin thing where you know, um, you had these two you have these sort of uh You know the the hedgehog who knows one thing the fox who knows many things You know so many different things you're interested in so many different things You know, I'm I'm just I don't know. It's just sort of a few Core ideas I come back to and it's it's something like this, uh, you know, wonderful and terrible history of the world that we're living through as you know, um You know christianities unraveling our culture and we have to figure out a way to get to the other side I think that's what's going to keep me busy for a long time Peter teal. Thank you very much We now have time for questions. Yes Hello, um, it's just kind of a basic question maybe to you but to me. I'm wondering your opinion You have this dystopic view of like one world order, which I totally understand And I know that founders fund has invested in cryptocurrency and made money on it but do you view crypto or bitcoin in particular as Something that could put power back in the hands of the people or something that's likely to catalyze Uh more more centralization of power in this one world order in the future I I'm still hopeful that on net, um bitcoin is on the anti one world order side just based on All the people who are against it But maybe that's a little bit too of a simplistic schmitty an analysis. Um, but uh, yeah, no, um there are The the the questions are, you know, the sort of questions would be can you um, can you uh, do you have genuine um anonymity genuine pseudonymity um, and Probably there are certain ways in which, you know, if we want to have decentralized things where Um, you use money for questionable purposes You know, maybe maybe physical cash is still better than bitcoin and things have not gone quite the uh, sort of, um, I don't know Crypto anarchist utopia that people were were fantasizing about in the in the late in the late 90s on the other hand You know, I I think it probably is still um, you know, if if if you're just You know, thinking of it as a you know one time way To get money outside of the control of a particular government. It's probably still extremely good for that Thank you So you can hobble hobble until you need it next question So nick bostrom and uh communism those sort of start out with very different premise and up in the same place We need a one world government. Do you think that there's some sort of metaphysical reason for that? Some kind of attractor well there And there's there's a certain rationality to it if if we maybe just enlightenment rationality where if we if we say that uh There's you know, some set of things that make sense And uh that are good and then You know, it's it's it's probably there's some kind of a way you should have in a world order It sounds more peaceful in both cases than having you know a divided world But uh, but yeah, it there's probably just some kind of some kind of a rationality where um, if you had one modality of governance that would uh If it's the best that would make for the best possible world you should you should have that everywhere and then um, and then if you have it's only you have you know some very deep concerns about You know, um, maybe human nature or the people would run the government or things like that that uh, you start to second guess that The they're probably both, you know, somehow Pretty optimistic about human nature Hey If one extra year at the end of your life was for sale, what would you be willing to pay for it today? Man, I I I don't I don't agree with hypothetical questions where I don't believe in the premise I I I would uh, I would uh Probably not pay the person who asked me that anything because I think they were just ripping me off since it's uh, I I don't I I you know, I I hope to live for more than just one more year And uh by the time I needed to collect on that extra year. I think that person will be long gone There you go. Thanks What are the Straussian messages of the bible and what do they tell us about political theology? Simple questions tonight. Oh boy um well, I think I think um well, I think Strauss was this uh political philosopher who's you know, I wouldn't describe as christian was probably sort of uh Very very classical But the the place where I'd say both let's say someone like Strauss and gerard agreed on was that's there's certain ways of understanding the world that um Have this disruptive way and you know, you don't want enlightenment simply that if you if you just tell people the secret messages It it has this sort of unraveling effect. And so the I don't know. I'm not I'm not sure it's esoteric, but it is um, you know It's the book of revelations is the apocalypse because um, you know apocalypse in greek means unveiling and um, and it is And if you unveil the social order you um, you um, you you might end up, um, You know deconstructing and uh destroying it and uh, you know, this is or you know, one gerard's book was um um I see satan fall Like lightning and it's sort of to see satan is to see satan fall So the the only time satan appears in the bible is at the very end of the world Every other time it's maybe he's talking to god or he's talking to christ in the desert But no human being ever sees satan simply because to see satan is um to see satan fall You know, it's sort of the you know, the there's sort of the libertarian You know another libertarian cut on christianity is that uh, you know When christ is tempted in the desert and satan says just worship me and you can have all these kingdoms in the world It's it's somehow saying that all the governments are more satanic than divinely ordained and um And then people don't understand that they think the government governments are somehow divinely ordained And so once you see how satanic the government is how satanic taxes are other things besides the governments do It it will have this unraveling effect thank you A big part of the thesis of the sovereign individual is that The defenders will be able to have an advantage over offense and that that's the way that Violence and the exertion of force is going I'm interested if you still think that to be the case particularly with Companies like enderall where the thesis is kind of there is no inherent properties of a smaller weapon that Smaller state can easily have but rather the proliferation of those is simply a tactic that larger states need to use to evolve their strategies yeah, so I was extremely influenced by the Reese mock davidson book of 1997 the sovereign individual where Um, and and where the thesis was that uh Let's say the computer technology information age was trending in this very deeply decentralized libertarian way and that seemed Yeah, that seemed very true in 1999 and then certainly by the last You know by the end of the 2010s one would have said that Um, there's something about a lot of information technology that seemed maybe centralizing Maybe uh, maybe the opposite. There's always a riff I have in this where you know if we look at uh, there's a You know the star trek or you know the world of 1968 people also thought You know 2001 space odyssey's IBM is how You know it's it's sort of you're gonna have one big super computer It's going to run a planet or the planet beta and one of the early star trek episodes where there's one big Super computer that runs the planet the inhabitants are sort of these docile robot like people who've been living peacefully But uneventfully for 8 000 years and then of course as always the star trek people You know don't follow the prime director and blow up the computer and then leave leave the planet um But um, but that was the future of the computer age in the late 60s was highly centralized by the late 90s Was very decentralized You know by the late 2010s maybe crypto accepted. It was again seemed to be pushing back to centralization um, I don't know my My my intuitions these things are not, you know, absolutely written in stone and it's up to us to work on You know Making the technologies have in the push one way or the other As a follow up with that predetermined would you bet on open source AI? I If decentralization is great, it should have more dynamic properties should innovate more should be safer as many other virtues I don't quite know if that's the the main variable that's going to push the centralization or decentralization with it, but yeah that There's probably some version of that that would be helpful. I don't know the linux versus microsoft precedent not sure that Changed anything that much on the on the level of the operating system Thank you When do you think humans are going to destroy themselves and do you think AI is going to do it? I I I I don't think I don't think these things are Written in in stone. I'm not a Calvinist. I'm not a I'm not a p-doom EA East Bay rationalist. I think it's it's up to us But but as I said, I'm I'm I'm much more worried about The humans Trying to stop the AI than the AI destroying us, you know, like a you know a force That's powerful enough to stop the AI is probably a force that's powerful enough to destroy the world too So I would I want to worry more about the humans that are trying to stop the AI Ion her see Ali recently converted to Christianity, but it seems mostly for utilitarian reasons Something like for the great civilizational war because secularism doesn't provide a good enough answer Do you see religion as mainly utility in the postmodern world? You can have you can have utilitarian elements I I don't think one can ever stress those too much. And so my my bias is always to focus more on questions of truth You mentioned Lincoln's lyceum address where he talks about that towering genius figure and I'd never heard before that He thought did you think at the time? He thought he was the towering genius and do you approve of Lincoln's political religion or view for america? Well, I think it's a very it's a very fascinating speech because He references some some Caesar and Napoleon like figure who will enslave the white people or free the slaves And so that seems like it seems plausible to think that he was thinking of himself I have a question about your personal life if I may and if possible if you could give your answers a story that'd be lovely obviously You feel a great sense of personal responsibility indeed responsibility to history Um How did that sentiment begin? How has it evolved sort of? What have you found to be the more fruitful and less fruitful avenues for expressing it? How i'm always so bad at had doing a self psychoanalysis or something like that um, I don't know the you know that There were sort of all these ways. I was you know, I was like Incredibly competitive and tracked as a kid. I mean my eighth grade junior high school Yearbook one of my friends that I know is you're gonna get into stanford in four years I got into stanford and I went to stanford and I went to law school I ended up you know the top law firm in Manhattan from the outside It was a place um where everybody wanted to get in on the inside was a place everybody wanted to get out and um And so yeah, I sort of had some kind of a quarter life crisis in my mid 20s and uh You know, it's it was you know, I'm unclear what what what to do, but somehow you um, you you can't Uh, you you have to try to avoid the worst Mimetic entanglements the worst forms of a medic competition possible. It's uh, I don't I don't think one You know, I don't think psychology really works I don't I don't think sort of awareness of these things is it's quite quite the way to to do it, but uh, but uh, yeah, there was there was some Some some some some part of that that was very important for me Thank you So uh to that point to get people off of the medic track. I think um You know the teal fellowship was really amazing and has had tremendous success Have you thought about trying to scale that in a way that might be profitable or can make a larger impact than say 20 folks a year and maybe 20,000 eventually We've thought about scaling a lot of times It's it's probably quite quite hard to to scale it's always You know the the sort of the paradox Of something like the teal fellowship or my zero-to-one book or any sort of self-help thing is like, you know Um, it's it's always bad to just sort of give advice where okay. These are the things you're supposed to do because it's sort of like um, and so um that I I I I worry that Trying to scale things The only way you can scale things is by somehow automating them mechanizing them turning them into more of a cookie cutter type process and then um I always worry that that uh deranges it at scale. So somehow, you know, it's You know, I don't have like a I can't give it people a formula what to do It's something like well, you should think for yourself and figure it out and then But then um if I try to To scale that it's like I don't know. It's like some kind of I don't malice little red book or something you're producing and that's it's quite the opposite Thank you Peter my question is about diversity equity inclusion DEI has become very prevalent in corporate America And uh, I wanted to get your thoughts on whether you're seeing this in some of the early stage companies also Like the companies that found his fund is investing in And what are your thoughts? Do you think this is something positive? Are you neutral? Or you think this has gone a little over the top? Would love to know your views on that You know, I'm I'm I'm very against it. I Don't always know if it's the most important issue either so somehow you know, I I wrote a book as an um after my undergraduate years entitled the diversity myth and it was sort of focusing on a lot of the um Crazy the campus wars culture wars that were taking place at Stanford in the late 80s early 90s And uh, there are parts of it that seemed very prescient and uh, it sort of You know described a lot of things that eventually spread to the broader culture on another level it was like a completely ineffective book where the arguments didn't matter um, and uh, and uh What what drove these things somehow was was on a on a very uh, very different level. I think um I think the And you know if we think about the You know the woke corporation in in silicon valley It seems unhealthy if a company is is um leaning too much into into the dei narratives it um But you know, there always are the probably are machiavellian ways where this can also Work where it's sort of you know distracts people. So there's uh, you know I don't know walmart was sort of the proto woke company in the 2000s and they were constantly being attacked by the labor unions because they were um You know, they weren't paying their workers enough and then uh, you know, they could okay They could pay their workers more or they could rebrand themselves as a green environmentally friendly company And that turned out to be a very cheap way to split up the um, the um left-wing anti walmart coalition and uh, and so that was a version of it as um, I don't know as this sort of capitalist um Conspiracy Against it and then they're you know, there are cases where that can work in case work can go wrong um for the most part I uh, I think that uh, you know, it's it's Just a distraction from more important things. And so there's there's there's you know, there's one level on which I find the issues Very silly There's another level where where it's evil because it's stopping us from paying attention to more important things and uh, And it you know, it's things like the economy like science and tech Or even these these broader religious questions that we've talked about today I don't know I There's sort of a you know, um People always talk about it in terms of cultural Marxism But I think um, you know, I think a real Marxist would be much preferable to a uh diversity person Rosa Luxemburg who's uh, you know, sort of this crazed communist from the early 20th century It was like, you know, I think one thing she said was there can be nobody more revolutionary than a factory worker Nobody can be more revolutionary than a proletarian And so um a diversity officer in a university or corporation What would Rosa Luxemburg think of this it would be in the same category as a bank robber Or a prostitute as someone who's just a extremely Corrupt form of crony capitalism Thank you so much There's a fair amount of variation and regulation on biotech Um, you know, there's Prospera you funded some c-setting places What's your sense for why there aren't crazy cool ambitious bio hacking things going on where the gene edited babies The only one that we know about happened in china and that guy went to jail What's why isn't there more crazy stuff happening in different jurisdictions my my sense is the FDA has a global stranglehold on everything and it's uh it is because There are a lot of different reasons in in practice most governments are not willing to have looser regulations than the FDA so it's actually So there's less regulatory arbitrage than it looks and then um secondarily The u.s. Pays a lot more for this than other countries and we can you know go into all these debates about Whether we're paying too much in the u.s. Or whether um the rest of the world should be penalized for free writing off of it But uh, if you develop a biotech, uh drug and if you can't sell it in the u.s The economics are much less good. And so it's it's uh, it's in in practice. It tends to be us or bust Do you think that technology will eventually render a larger proportion of the human population Unproductive or unable to contribute to the economy? And if so, what should those unproductive people do with themselves? Well, I think I think the Luddites have have always they've been wrong for a long time Um, there are there's certainly ways you probably scare me some with with with ai and um, they're they're versions of it that Where where you can um, you know You you might but even if you convinced me that the Luddites were right about ai and that it's actually going to Just replace people without, you know You know If you were a Luddite, you know in the mid 19th century said, you know the machines are going to replace the humans And that was well that would be such a relief because there's so much work for people to do And they would just free them up to do other things and and so maybe it's um, maybe it's Less complimentary more game of substitution day, even if you could convince me of that I'm still in favor of the ai because um, because my default is muddling through isn't good my default is You know the default is really bad And so, you know, we're not you you don't get to muddle through with Greta on our bicycle Thanks for coming You've alluded to a lot of the forces between decentralization and centralization Particularly around ai with forces around the individual I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more describe what you think the forces could be that stop ai development Particularly as it relates to the state's role Or how a politician or another entity could co-op that force for their own benefit versus the benefit of many You know, maybe but maybe the premise of your question is what I challenges It's it's it's it's why is ai going to be the only That matters and so if if if we if we say there's just There's only this one big technology is going to be developed and it is going to dominate everything else That's that's already in a way, you know Conceding a version of the centralization point So, uh, so yeah, if we say that it's all around the next generation of large language models Nothing else matters then um, you've probably collapsed it to you know, you know a small number of players and And that is you know, that's a that's a future that I find you know somewhat uncomfortably centralizing probably but You know, this is the definition of technology um In the 1960s technology meant, you know, it meant computers, but it also meant new medicines and meant, you know Spaceships and supersonic planes and the green revolution agriculture And then at some point technology day just means it and maybe you know, we're gonna You know narrow it even further to ai and it seems to me that this this narrowing is you know Is sort of a manifestation of the centralizing stagnation that we should be trying to get out of Earlier you mentioned that tech might end up saving san francisco from itself AI AI specifically yeah, sorry AI AI specifically How do you evaluate the efforts of places like miami at austin to present themselves as alternative tech hubs and has that opinion changed over the course of the last two years Well, I'm still very I'm still very pro miami. I I think I think the miami story has been more More of a anti new york story. So it's a tale of two cities of And and the finance part of the economy doesn't have to be centered in in new york And and and that alone I think you know explains, you know, a great deal of miami's success I think the You know, I think the tech You know again It's somewhere in a very different place from what people were focused on even Two two and a half years ago, but two and a half years ago. There was sort of much more of a crypto story and the You know crypto is a decentralizing technology But also the companies that were doing crypto were decentralized not just in the u.s There's a decent number of them outside the u.s and so If if crypto was going to be a big part of the future tech tech story That would have been a you know naturally Decentralizing from silicon valley narrative and silicon valley had really missed out on the crypto thing in a relative sense And then um, you know, I know consumer internet, you know, a lot of this happened in silicon valley for all sorts of Complicated reasons, you know supposed to get rid of the tyranny of place, but it all happened in one place and then The the ai piece seems seems to be even more centralized in silicon valley So again, if we if we say that, um, you know, the next decade or two decades are just going to be doubling down on ai That that probably suggests that uh, you know, uh, san francisco will maintain and silicon valley will maintain or even gain gain in power Hello, first and foremost, I just want to say thank you for guy for coming out and doing this event. It's been wonderful um, I have a silly question and I I'm gonna bring star wars into it since we were talking star trek But when you in this concept of the world order, it's the first time I've really delve into it and thinking about it. I'm wondering do you envision a world order that's just like totalitarian dictatorship or just the similar to like there's just too much information too many countries too many people trying to vie Together and that everything just kind of gets lost and that the power isn't really about the people But that kind of world central. I mean a global central like what is that? That you envision Well, I'd like to avoid the first type. Um, and then it's always uh, yeah the second one I will concede it's it's a little bit more confusing and you know, there's and so yeah, you I would like to have You know a libertarian world order, uh, you know many nations and you can you can move between them um, but and so there's some there's some um, there's some Um transnational thing you're not completely stuck in a particular country But then the transnational thing can't be so powerful that it actually controls all the nations And this is these are these are sort of maybe maybe this is just a sort of paradox of globalization Like hegelian thought is always, you know, thesis and synthesis synthesis Even if you agree, this is the correct framing the problem is people always confuse the synthesis with um, The superposition of the thesis and antithesis. So if we say globalization Some global world order is the final synthesis Is globalization as it's described today just a superposition of a slightly unstable You know, um global market, but no global government and then Can that can that really be maintained? So um Yes, I I think uh, there probably are You know some paradoxes in my my picture of a desirable world order that you know, one could one could unpack some more Um, but uh, but yeah, if if we have too concrete a picture of exactly what the world order looks like That's probably really bad A bit of a follow-up to the gentleman too before me. Um, I I understand you've spent a little bit of time in in miami So um at kind of coming down from the macro level To the street level local governance Almost like an economy get economists getting lunch perspective. What is miami doing well and what does miami need to improve upon? Well, there are a lot of things I I've been here the last four winters. So In two three months each each winter here Um, yeah, there are a lot of things that I think are going Incredibly well. I'm always into these sort of georgist um real estate theories where if you're not very careful, um, all the the value in a place gets captured by the sort of corrupt real estate group of people and they're sort of Henry george was uh late 19th century economists who sort of like Sort of socialist then today seem to sort of libertarian Which probably just tells something about how our society's changed. Um, but uh, but the you know the the the worry in miami is that um, is it Have we really escaped the georgist disaster that is san francisco? That is new york that is london where um, even though there's been a tremendous increase in in gdp, you know It's it's it's not good if a hundred percent of it gets captured by um, you know By by slumlords or something like that. Thanks last question Thanks. Um, so question about a i and theology Volter had this great quote. Um, if god didn't exist, we would need to invent him or her or whatever the pronoun is um Do you do you find this view of like superintelligence a i which might be in the near future? As a kind of deity as a kind of machine god Is that useful? Is there leverage to that and it could even be more than just a heuristics and kind of substantive statement It's it's sort of a purely theological question I want to focus more on the political theology question, which would be something like You know, if if it's a Centralizing ai that's controlled by communist china Will it just be very good at convincing people that um, the party is god Or that the wisdom of crowds or you know, whatever the consensus is is is the truth And uh, and then yeah, there are these metaphysical questions where it doesn't seem like it's Exactly, you know, I don't know a transcendent traditional monotheistic god But I yeah, I would I would I would I would go to more of the political questions than the You know the the metaphysical ones and probably the You know the risk danger is that um, there's something something about the sort of telescopes even more the sort of um, you know Consensus Truth wisdom of crowds, you know, I think probably all the models, you know It will tell you that there's no particular religion that's more true than any other one Um, and then is that really what the models generate or is that has that been hardwired in those are the questions I'd be more curious about Thank you all for listening to conversations with filer at the mercatus center. Most of all. Thank you. Peter deal. Thank you