Hacking State

Mark Wilcox on 21e8, his information architecture company, computational data markets, why compute is money, Bitcoin’s role in all this, price discovery via compute, how AI is destroying people’s belief in the computer, deleveraging from the U.S. dollar, decision theory, the curse of dimensionality, and moving back to base primitives.   “The problem to solve is how much compute it takes to generat...

I speak with Doomer Optimist cofounder and faculty in the Department of Sustainable Development at Appalachian State University, Jason Snyder, about finding the others, using the internet to encourage localism, Balaji Srinivasan’s The Network State, homesteading, the value of embodied work, regenerative agriculture, resource independence, and our disagreement on degrowth.   Doomer Optimism is an e...

Jonah Davids' new Substack, Mental Disorder , explores the science and politics of mental health from a data-driven perspective. Jonah is also Communications Director at the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology. We spoke about why being a psychologist has no noticeable effect on the efficaciousness of talk therapy, the lack of evidence in mental health treatment, how CBT became the go...

Cody Moser is a PhD student in the Department of Cognitive and Information Sciences at University of California, Merced. His work focuses primarily on the evolution of human behavior and human institutions. We spoke about his work generating formal network models with agent-based modeling, the life history of organizations, core-periphery dynamics and why "loser" nodes are necessary for network in...

Jae Yang and John Bugnacki of Tacen join me to discuss financial sovereignty, the regulatory state of crypto in the United States, the Wyoming stabelcoin, and why you have to go to the frontier for better governance and technology. Tacen is working on a crypto exchange that is fast, non-custodial, and cross-chain. Project TXA is a settlement network that allows cross-chain settlement. Jae Yang is...

Matthew Mehan is Associate Dean and Assistant Professor of Government for Hillsdale College’s Steve and Amy Van Andel Graduate School of Government in Washington D.C. We spoke about the relationship of poetry to philosophy, the value of a classical liberal arts education, technology and the Tyranny of Velocity, raising children with social media, politicization of education, the moral training of...

Robin Hanson and I discuss prediction markets, decision markets, Futarchy, and Demarchy. We cover simple and more elaborate applications of prediction markets, common objections to them and barriers to implementation at the organization level, when a prediction market becomes a decision market, his vision for Futarchy--a proposed system of government whereby elected officials use prediction market...