Bloggingheads.tv

Emma’s forthcoming book on US grand strategy ... Gaza, Ukraine, and Mearsheimer’s realism ... The DC establishment’s dark view of world affairs ... How the Gaza war hurts American interests—and America itself ... Is the time ripe for realism and restraint? ... National problems that require international cooperation ... Heading to Overtime ...

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Are too many former Democratic presidents speaking at the convention? ... Does Kamala Harris need to win the national popular vote by a lot to win the Electoral College? ... Does Tim Walz need a better response to attacks on his military service? ... Does Donald Trump need a campaign shake up? ...

Nathan's podcast, The Cognitive Revolution ... The enduring enigmas of AI ... Conceptualizing how LLMs conceptualize ... Do AIs actually understand things? ... Why AI doesn’t need to be superhuman to be revolutionary ... Human vs AI representations of the world ... Thinking through high-dimensional AI brain space ... Nathan on AI risk: Doomer? Accelerationist? Both? ... The open source question and Cold War II ... Do LLMs “naturally” learn human values? ... Mamba: a new approach to building large language models ...

Peter’s background and (Root)claim to fame ... How Peter caught the Covid origins bug ... The Wuhan wet market: source or amplifier? ... Holes in the lab leak theory ... The patient zero problem ... A statistical deep dive into the wet market ... What the genetic evidence can (and can’t) tell us ... Can we “trust the science” on Covid? ... Has tribalism made resolving the debate impossible? ... Why lab leak matters—even if it didn’t happen ...

Matt argues Harris should have picked Shapiro ... Bill argues Walz has swing appeal ... Is the "couch" joke below the belt? ... How is Trump going after Walz? ... Will there be debates? ...

Who was Haniyeh—and why’d Israel kill him? ... Why Netanyahu may want a US-Iran war ... Are pro-Israel groups at peak power? ... Israel’s escalating conflict with Hezbollah ... The logic of Iranian retaliation ... Israel’s lack of a viable endgame in Gaza ... Heading to Overtime ...

How did Kamala Harris consolidate the Democratic Party so quickly? ... Is Harris authentic or a phony? ... Who will (and should) be Harris' VP? ... What is Trump thinking by attacking Harris' racial identity? ... What did Trump mean by saying "you won't have to vote anymore"? ...

Nick’s influential book Superintelligence and his new book Deep Utopia ... Has Nick flipped on AI doom? ... Life in the “solved world” of an AI utopia ... Can technology address the deepest problems of human nature? ... Meaning, artificial purpose, and the value of golf ... The promise and perils of virtual reality ... Heading to Overtime ...

Dmitri’s new book, World on the Brink ... Is America’s behavior more destabilizing than China’s? ... China-Taiwan compared to Russia-Ukraine ... Is the US making a Chinese invasion of Taiwan more likely? ... Should the US try to maintain global hegemony? ... The “autocracy versus democracy” framing ...