Stephen and James Grugett are programmers, entrepreneurs, and cofounders of the website Manifold Markets, which hosts user-created prediction markets. They join the podcast to discuss the CSPI/Salem Tournament on Manifold Markets, which launched last week.

The Grugetts and Richard talk about the origins of Manifold, what differentiates it from other prediction markets, and how their version of creating a new

Listen in podcast form or watch on YouTube.

Links:

* Manifold Markets

* CSPI/Salem Tournament on Manifold Markets

* Richard Hanania, “Introducing the Salem/CSPI Forecasting Tournament”

* Richard Hanania, “Salem Tournament, 5 Days in”

* The Economist, “How Spooks are Turning to Superforecasting in the Cosmic Bazaar”

* Manifold Markets Statistics

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On this week’s CSPI Podcast, Richard interviews the top three winners of the CSPI Essay Contest: Policy Reform For Progress.

The first interview is with contest winner Andrew Kenneson, a program navigator at a public housing authority in Kodiak, Alaska and former reporter. In “Gathering Steam: Unlocking Geothermal Potential in the United States,” Andrew explains why exempting geothermal exploration on federally owned lands from NEPA requirements could set off a cascade of energy innovation.

The second interview (starting at 29:12) is with Maxwell Tabarrok, an Econ and Math student at the University of Virginia whose essay on science funding reform “Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems” won second prize. Maxwell proposes a system of research guided funding in which the ~$120 billion spent by the federal government on science each year is distributed equally to the ~250,000 full-time STEM faculty at high research activity universities.

The third interview (starting at 57:03) is with Brent Skorup, a senior research fellow at George Mason University's Mercatus Center and a visiting faculty fellow at the Nebraska Governance and Technology Center at the Nebraska College of Law. Brent’s 3rd place essay, “Drone Airspace: A New Global Asset Class,” outlines how public auctions for drone airspace would be an improvement on the FAA’s current plan to ration airspace to a few lucky companies.

Listen in podcast form or watch on YouTube.

Winning Essays:

* “Gathering Steam: Unlocking Geothermal Potential in the United States” by Andrew Kenneson

* “Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems” by Maxwell Tabarrok

* “Drone Airspace: A New Global Asset Class” by Brent Skorup

Honorable Mentions:

* “The University-Government Complex” by William L. Krayer

* “It’s Time to Review the Institutional Review Boards” by Willy Chertman

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Richard Lowery is an Associate Professor of Finance at The University of Texas at Austin and a senior scholar at the Salem Center for Public Policy. He joins the podcast to talk about his recent article “How UT-Austin Administrators Destroyed an Intellectual Diversity Initiative,” which details what went wrong with plans to build the Liberty Institute.

Lowery and Hanania discuss the politicization of academia and how it has even reached finance, why developing new educational institutions is difficult, how “fake conservatives” on campus provide cover for the Left to control universities, and the failure of Republican donors and politicians to push back against these trends effectively.

They converge on a set of ideas regarding how to fix academia going forward. Working within the university and without outside support is hopeless, as radicals committed to stamping out dissent have already won and are in a position to thwart any attempts at reform. Nonetheless, state university systems are ultimately under the control of politicians. Conservative elected officials need to show a greater interest in taking concrete steps toward restoring free inquiry and the search for objective truth, which will only happen if they are pressured to do so by donors and right-leaning media. Usually, this will mean not trying to reform individual departments, but relying on state funding and private philanthropy to create new institutions within existing universities, if not apart from them, that can be run by those ideologically committed to rolling back the triumph of anti-capitalist dogma and identity politics.

These problems are not insoluble. American conservatives have accomplished political goals before. All it takes is an understanding of the scope of the problem and the political will to do something about it. The conversation includes specific steps that elected officials, academics, donors, and political activists can take to build new institutions.

Listen in podcast form or watch on YouTube.

Links:

* Richard Lowery’s Twitter (@RichardLoweryTX).

* Richard Lowery, “How UT-Austin Administrators Destroyed an Intellectual Diversity Initiative.”

* Kate McGee, “UT-Austin Working with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Conservative Donors to Create ‘Limited Government’ Think Tank.”

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.cspicenter.com

David Bernstein is a Law Professor and Executive Director of the Liberty and Law Center at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University. He joins the podcast to talk about his new book Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America.

David and Richard discuss the history of racial conflict and classification in America, the political construction of ethnic identities like AAPI and Hispanic, how wealthy immigrants hijacked government set-asides, why medical researchers care so little about actual physiological and anthropological distinctions between ethnic groups, and the political feasibility of colorblindness in a world of racial disparities.

Listen in podcast form or watch on YouTube.

Links:

* David Bernstein, Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America.

* David Bernstein, You Can't Say That!: The Growing Threat to Civil Liberties from Antidiscrimination Laws.

* G. Christina Mora, Making Hispanics: How Activists, Bureaucrats, and Media Constructed a New American.

* Thomas Sowell, Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.cspicenter.com

Seth Stephens-Davidowitz is a data scientist, author, and keynote speaker. He holds a PhD in economics from Harvard and is a contributing op-ed writer for the New York Times. He joins the podcast to talk about his two books, Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are (2017) and Don’t Trust Your Gut: Using Data to Get What You Really Want in Life (2022). He and Richard discuss the behavioral genetics of sports, whether we pay too much attention to hate crimes, physiognomy as a science, the limits of evolutionary psychology in explaining porn preferences, and how to apply insights from big data and social science to improve our dating lives, careers, and overall happiness.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.cspicenter.com

Eric Kaufmann is Professor of Politics at Birkbeck College, University of London, a CSPI research fellow, and the author of several books, including Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities. He returns to the podcast to discuss his new report for CPSI, Born This Way? The Rise of LGBT as a Social and Political Identity. He and Richard talk about the factors underlying recent increases in LGBT identification and same-sex sexual behavior, the connection between being very liberal, LGBT, and having mental health issues, and the influence of modernism on left-wing ideology and right-wing political movements. They conclude the conversation by discussing whether concerns about teaching sexuality and CRT in K-12 schools should take precedence over free speech issues on university campuses and debates over history and national identity.



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

Tweet thread.




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Bryan Caplan is a professor of economics at George Mason University, a visiting senior scholar at the University of Texas at Austin, and the author of several books, including The Myth of the Rational Voter and The Case Against Education. He returns to the podcast to talk about his two new collections of essays released as books, Labor Econ Versus the World: Essays on the World’s Greatest Market and How Evil Are Politicians?: Essays on Demagoguery. The conversation centers around how much Richard and Bryan have in common when it comes to how they think through social and political issues, with a focus on Social Desirability Bias as a major hindrance to engaging in moral reasoning and discovering truth. Topics include:

• How little effort most people put towards developing their most cherished political views


• Why most politicians should be considered bad people


• Why the first world poor can be considered morally blameworthy, particularly compared to those who live in developing countries


• The demagoguery of feel-good policy ideas like raising the minimum wage

Bryan gives a teaser of his next collection of essays that will be released under the title Don’t Be a Feminist: Essays on Genuine Justice, discussing why, as the title suggests, he hopes his daughter does not become a feminist and turn against him. The conversation concludes with reflections on how podcasting and Substack have disrupted legacy media, and why that’s good for independent writers and journalists. 





Bryan Caplan, “The Ideologues of GMU.”
Bryan Caplan, “Labor Econ Versus the World: Essays on the World's Greatest Market.”
Bryan Caplan, “How Evil Are Politicians?: Essays on Demagoguery.” 

Bryan Caplan’s Substack



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Eron Wolf is the founder of Yahoo! Games, a WhatsApp seed investor, and the founder and CEO of FUTO, an Austin-based organization dedicated to developing technologies to fight the centralization and consolidation of the tech industry. He and Richard talk about the business model of Big Tech and how machine learning and algorithms can shape human behavior. Eron discusses his plans for FUTO, and how he hopes it will remake the internet. FUTO is hosting a Fellowship program in Austin this summer for programmers, which offers $20,000, housing, incubator space, mentorship, and networking events for those selected.





FUTO.org

FUTO Fellows Program 

@FUTO_Tech on Twitter



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Jordan Lasker is a PhD student at Texas Tech University and a bioinformatician. He joins the podcast to discuss his recent report for CSPI, “About Those Baby Brainwaves: Why ‘Policy Relevant’ Social Science is Mostly a Fraud.” The report critically examined a recent study claiming small cash transfers to the parents of newborns improved their babies’ brain activity. The study was lauded in the media and by D.C. policymakers, who argued its results supported redistributive policies, most notably the child tax credit. Jordan demonstrated that the study in question wildly overstated its claims, was methodologically suspect, and that its authors engaged in numerous bad research practices. Social science, he argues, is not a sound basis for policymaking given academia’s warped incentives.



He and Richard talk about why physiological measures like EEGs are taken much more seriously than psychometrics like IQ tests, whether “rich brains” and “poor brains” exist, if the Flynn effect means we’re getting smarter, and the politicization of academia and science more generally. The two agree that the priors of the average researcher or policymaker are way off base: dozens of studies have found cash transfers and even adoption to high SES families have minimal effects on IQ or income. Given that, why would we expect $333/month to move the needle? They conclude by considering whether society is better off with leaders who “trust the science” or those who are openly anti-intellectual, given broken incentive structures and political bias within the policy relevant literature. 



Jordan Lasker, “About Those Baby Brainwaves: Why ‘Policy Relevant’ Social Science is Mostly a Fraud.” 
Troller-Renfree et al. (Baby Brainwaves Study), “The Impact of a Poverty Reduction Intervention on Infant Brain Activity.” 
Richard Feynman, “Cargo Cult Science.” 
Kirkegaard et al., “Nerve Conduction Velocity and Cognitive Ability: A Large Sample Study.” 
“Flynn Effect.” 
Wongupparaj et al., “The Flynn Effect for Verbal and Visuospatial Short-Term and Working Memory: A Cross-Temporal Meta-Analysis.” 
Odenstad et al., “Does Age at Adoption and Geographic Origin Matter? A National Cohort Study of Cognitive Test Performance in Adult Inter-Country Adoptees.”
Tobias Hübinette, “The Adopted Koreans of Sweden and the Korean Adoption Issue.”



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Philippe Lemoine returns to the CSPI Podcast to discuss his prediction for the 2022 French Presidential election. This episode was recorded on April 22nd, two days before Macron’s victory on April 24th, because Philippe was so confident in his forecast that he didn’t think it was necessary to wait until after the election to discuss the results. 



He and Richard talk about the differences between French and American politics, right-wing ideology in France, class and age as predictors of voting for conservative candidates, and why Éric Zemmour’s campaign failed. They also discuss how best to think about the behavior of low information voters, why the far right doesn’t win French presidential elections despite strong anti-immigration sentiment among the public, and how people who criticize the Islamic veil are actually being PC. Philippe explains why Le Pen staying in politics means the Right can never win the French presidency, and the two conclude by discussing what to expect from Macron over the next five years. A transcript of some of the best parts of the conversation is available here.



Philippe Lemoine, “Will Zemmour Bring a Right-Wing Revolution in France?” 
Eric Zemmour, “Le Premier Sexe.” 
Simone de Beauvoir, “The Second Sex.” 
Sam Wang, “Why I Had to Eat a Bug on CNN.” 
Philippe’s tweets predicting the election:
https://twitter.com/phl43/status/1510606408047333388?s=21&t=b178Uzlay32RYFTalQnVUg
https://twitter.com/phl43/status/1511798012045103108

https://twitter.com/phl43/status/1512550945309306885?s=21&t=GsfmAceOj5Sg2xuayZIWog



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This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.cspicenter.com