CSPI Podcast

Nicholas Bagley is a professor of law at the University of Michigan, former Chief Legal Counsel to Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and a former attorney in the US Department of Justice. He joins the podcast to talk about his article, “The Procedure Fetish,” in which he calls for liberals to embrace reforms to make federal government agencies less sclerotic and more capable of addressing social problems. Richard presents Bagley with questions surrounding issues such as why we should trust government agencies with more power, the role of cost-benefit analysis, the performance of the FDA during Covid-19, and civil service reform, including President Trump’s executive order that would have made it easier to fire more officials. The two discuss whether there can be a synthesis between the right and left on major issues surrounding government regulation.

Listen to the podcast here, or watch on YouTube.

Links:

* Nicholas Bagley, “The Procedure Fetish”

* Bagley on The Ezra Klein Show

* Bagley on Twitter

* Michael Lewis, The Fifth Risk

* Matt Yglesias on Operation Warp Speed and the blowback to it

* Cass Sunstein on the role of OIRA

* Derek Thompson, “The Abundance Agenda”

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Tim Miller is a former political operative who has worked for Jeb Bush and John Huntsman, and is currently a writer for The Bulwark and an MSNBC analyst. He joins the podcast to talk about his political memoir, Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell. With a former insider’s perspective, Miller discusses

* Where the Republican Party went wrong

* The importance of character in politics

* Mistakes made by Clinton and George W. Bush that led us to this point

* To what extent right-wing populists have legitimate grievances

* The effect of the changing media environment on our fractious politics

* Why only Chris Christie could have derailed Trump in 2016

* Whether, to stop Trump, other candidates should get out of the way and support DeSantis

The discussion closes on whether there are reasons to be hopeful about the future of the Republican Party.

Listen here or watch the video on YouTube.

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Jobst Landgrebe is a German scientist and entrepreneur. He began his career as a Fellow at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, then moved on to become a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Göttingen, working in cell biology and biomathematics. In April 2013, he founded Cognotekt, an AI based language technology company.

Barry Smith is Professor of Philosophy at the University at Buffalo, with joint appointments in the Departments of Biomedical Informatics, Neurology, and Computer Science and Engineering. He is also Director of the National Center for Ontological Research and Visiting Professor in the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) in Lugano, Switzerland.

Landgrebe and Smith join the podcast to talk about their book Why Machines Will Never Rule the World: Artificial Intelligence without Fear. As the title indicates, the authors are skeptical towards claims made by Nick Bostrom, Elon Musk, and others about a coming superintelligence that will be able to dominate humanity. Landgrebe and Smith do not only think that such an outcome is beyond our current levels of technology, but that it is for all practical purposes impossible. Among the topics discussed are

* The limits of mathematical modeling

* The relevance of chaos theory

* Our tendency to overestimate human intelligence and underestimate the power of evolution

* Why the authors don’t believe that the achievements of Deep Mind, DALL-E, and ChatGPT indicate that general intelligence is imminent

* Where Langrebe and Smith think that believers in the Singularity go wrong.

Listen in podcast form or watch on YouTube.

Links:

* The Feynman Lectures on Physics

* Landgrebe on Galactica and ChatGPT.

* Rodney Brooks, “Intelligence without Representation.”

* Nick Bostrom, Superintelligence.

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Joe Henrich is the Ruth Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology and Professor of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. He is the author of Why Humans Cooperate, The Secret of Our Success, and The WEIRDest People in the World. He joins the podcast to talk about his work. Topics include:

* The implications of Henrich’s theories for the debate over AI alignment

* The nature of intelligence

* Whether genetic differences between populations explain societal outcomes

* If the Ancient Greeks and Romans were already WEIRD

* How to understand the group selection debate

* Why Islamic familial practices may have stunted economic development and growth

* The political and ideological reaction to his last book

Listen in podcast form or watch on YouTube. A transcript of the podcast can be found at the Richard Hanania newsletter.

Links:

* Joe Henrich, “The WEIRDest People in the World.”

* Joe Henrich, “The Secrets of Our Success.”

* Richard Hanania, “How Monogamy and Incest Taboos Made the West.”

* David Epstein, “The Sports Gene.”

* Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, “Don’t Trust Your Gut.”

* Elizabeth Shim, “North Korea finishes fourth at International Mathematical Olympiad.”

* Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study.

* Bryan Caplan, “The Wonder of International Adoption: Adult IQ in Sweden.”

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Garett Jones is a Professor of Economics at George Mason University. He joins the podcast to talk about his new book, The Culture Transplant. Richard asks whether IQ is superior to other measures used to predict prosperity, and the relationship between Garett’s new book and Hive Mind. He also presses the author on whether there is a selection effect in data showing that people preserve the traits of their original culture over time.

The conversation then gets into issues of causal inference, namely whether we should focus more on American history or cross-national trends to inform our understanding of US policy. Richard suggests that while immigration might in some contexts lead to larger government, in the US it is arguably the case that diversity has been a hindrance to the expansion of the welfare state.

And how important is trust, actually? It correlates with a lot of good things, but how much is that relationship simply driven by observations from Scandinavia? Garett makes the case for trust having an important causal role. This leads to a discussion of whether trust is simply a proxy for trustworthiness, and whether the latter trait is more important.

Garett also explains why Chinese migration could be a key force in lifting the third world out of poverty. Near the end, he discusses what he thinks America would look like after his preferred immigration policy, and what he’s working on next.

Listen to the podcast here or watch on YouTube.

Links:

* Garett Jones on the Institutionalized podcast

* Previous Jones appearance on the CSPI podcast

* Alex Nowrasteh, critiques of The Culture Transplant, Part 1 and Part 2

* Bryan Caplan review

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Alexander Young is a researcher at the UCLA Anderson School of Management Genomics Department and School of Medicine’s Human Genetics Department, working with the Social Science Genetic Association Consortium (SSGAC). He studies the genetics of cognitive ability and educational attainment, with a particular focus on developing methods to uncover true measures of heritability for important traits.

Richard and Alexander talk about why siblings are so useful for this purpose, in the midst of a larger overview of the history of behavioral genetics and modern methods. Twin and adoption studies show much higher levels of heritability than genome wide association studies (GWAS). Why might this be the case? Different theories are discussed, along with ways to solve seeming discrepancies.

The conversation goes on to cover the societal relevance of Alexander’s work, and attempts to isolate research on genes and cognitive ability within the academy.

Listen in podcast form or watch on YouTube:

Links:

* Alexander’s Twitter account.

* Alexander Young, “Solving the Missing Heritability Problem.”

* Alexander Young and co-authors, “Deconstructing the Sources of Genotype-Phenotype Associations in Humans.”

* James Lee, “Don’t Even Go There.”

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Aaron Sibarium is a recent graduate of Yale University (2018) and journalist who writes for the Washington Free Beacon. He joins the podcast to discuss his work covering identity politics issues from a conservative perspective, along with his dream of eventually synthesizing his reporting with his own opinion writing.

Aaron and Richard share many of the same frustrations with right-wing media and conservative journalism. They discuss the problems of the conservative movement, including it being prone to misinformation, a lack of interest in policy specifics, mindless tribalism, and the role of differences in intelligence between conservatives and liberals who go into activism and reporting. Aaron argues that the Republican Party might be suffering from an excess of democracy through its primary system, which warps the incentive structures politicians face.

Listen in podcast form or watch the video on YouTube.

Links:

* Richard Hanania, “Liberals Read, Conservatives Watch TV.”

* Richard Hanania, “Conservatism as an Oppositional Culture.”

* Richard Hanania, Tweet on liberal institutions rallying around removing a school dress code in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

* Aaron Sibarium, “Food and Drug Administration Guidance Drives Racial Rationing of COVID Drugs.”

* Institutionalized Podcast with Aaron Sibarium and Charles Fain Lehman. (Apple)

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Jonathan Anomaly is the academic director of a new philosophy, politics, and economics (PPE) program at La Universidad de las Americas in Ecuador, co-hosts the Ideas Sleep Furiously Podcast, and works in the startup world. He has taught in PPE programs around the US, including at the University of Pennsylvania, Duke, the University of North Carolina, and the University of Arizona. He joins the podcast to talk about his book Creating Future People: The Ethics of Genetic Enhancement. Topics covered include different technologies that may be used to change or select personality and cognitive traits, beauty enhancement, and addressing potential collective action problems that may arise from such technology.

Listen to the podcast here or watch the video on YouTube.

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Rob Henderson recently received his PhD in psychology at St. Catharine’s College, Cambridge. Zach Goldberg is a former research fellow at CSPI and currently affiliated with the Manhattan Institute. They both join the podcast to talk about Rob’s idea of “luxury beliefs” and Zach’s new paper testing the theory in the context of attitudes towards criminal justice policy. Richard wonders about the extent to which one can say any individual actually suffers the consequences of their political beliefs, since the views of one person rarely change a policy outcome.

Later on in the conversation, Richard asks whether the luxury beliefs idea absolves inner city communities of their own shortcomings and serves as a way to put the blame on mostly white elites. Zach and Rob point to polls showing that blacks are more supportive than white liberals of spending money on police, which leads to a discussion of whether we can interpret such data in a different way and would be better served by putting more stock in factors such as how much communities cooperate with law enforcement, how they vote, and the kinds of politicians they support. The host and two guests also debate the extent to which liberal elites have actually pushed harmful ideas onto the masses, and if influential figures could change attitudes and behavior if they actually tried.

Listen in podcast form or watch on YouTube.

Links:

* Zach Goldberg, “Is Defunding the Police a ‘Luxury Belief'? Analyzing White Vs. Non-White Democrats’ Attitudes on Policing.”

* Rob Henderson, “‘Luxury beliefs’ are the latest status symbol for rich Americans.”

* Rob Henderson, “Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class—A Status Update.”

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Eric Kaufmann is a distinguished researcher and a fellow at CSPI. He joins the podcast to talk about his latest CSPI report, “Diverse and Divided: A Political Demography of American Elite Students.” The data indicates that we can expect a future in which elites continue to be heavily divided by race, religion, sex, and sexual orientation. Richard and Eric discuss what this means for our politics, how conservatives should address identity issues, and what one should be looking for when choosing a university.

Listen in podcast form or watch on YouTube.

Links:

* Eric Kaufmann, “Diverse and Divided: A Political Demography of American Elite Students.”

* Eric Kaufmann, “Born This Way? The Rise of LGBT as a Social and Political Identity.”

* Eric Kaufmann, “Head to Red States for Political Diversity on Campus.”

* Eric Kaufmann, “Polarization Is About to Get a Lot Worse: Students Are Even More Divided Than We Are.”

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