Sarah Fitz-Claridge is a writer, coach, and speaker with a fallibilist worldview. She started the journal that became Taking Children Seriously in the early 1990s after being surprised by the heated audience reactions she was getting when talking about children. She has spoken all over the world about her educational philosophy, and you can find transcripts of some of her talks on her website.

Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform.

Episode website here.
Sarah's Website: https://www.fitz-claridge.com/
Follow Sarah on Twitter. Follow me on Twitter for updates.

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Michael Huemer is a professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado. He is the author of more than sixty academic articles in epistemology, ethics, metaethics, metaphysics, and political philosophy, as well as eight amazing books.  

Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform.

Podcast website here. 

Buy Knowledge, Reality, and Value and The Problem of Political Authority.

Read Michael’s awesome blog and follow me on Twitter for new episodes.

Timestamps: 

(0:00:00) - Intro 

(0:01:07) - The Problem of Political Authority 

(0:03:25) - Common sense ethics  

(0:09:39) - Stockholm syndrome and the charisma of power 

(0:18:14) - Moral progress 

(0:26:55) - Growth of libertarian ideas 

(0:33:37) - Does anarchy increase violence? 

(0:44:37) - Transitioning to anarchy 

(0:47:20) - Is Huemer attacking our society?! 

(0:51:40) - Huemer's writing process 

(0:53:18) - Is it okay to work for the government 

(0:56:39) - Burkean argument against anarchy 

(1:02:07) - The case for tyranny 

(1:11:58) - Underrated/overrated 

(1:25:55) - Huemer production function

(1:30:41) - Favorite books 

(1:33:04) - Advice for young people

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Robert Martin (aka Uncle Bob) is a programming pioneer and bestselling author or Clean Code. We discuss the prospect of automating programming, spotting and developing coding talent, occupational licensing, quotas, and the elusive sense of style.  

Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform.

Listen to his fascinating talk on the future of programming: https://youtu.be/ecIWPzGEbFc 

Read his blog about programming: http://blog.cleancoder.com/ 

Buy his books on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/ent... 

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Timestamps

(0:00) - Automating programming 

(8:40) - Educating programmers (expertise, talent, university) 

(21:45) - Spotting talent 

(26:10) - Teaching kids 

(29:31) - Prose and music sense in coding 

(32:22) - Occupational licensing for programmers 

(35:49) - Why is tech political 

(39:28) - Quotas 

(42:29) - Advice to 20 yr old

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Scott Aaronson is a Professor of Computer Science at The University of Texas at Austin, and director of its Quantum Information Center. 

He's the author of one of the most interesting blogs on the internet: https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/ and the book “Quantum Computing since Democritus”.

He was also my professor for a class on quantum computing.

Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform.

Episode website here.

Follow me on Twitter to get updates on future episodes and guests.

Timestamps

(0:00) - Intro

(0:33) - Journey through high school and college

(12:37) - Early work

(19:15) - Why quantum computing took so long

(33:30) - Contributions from outside academia

(38:18) - Busy beaver function

(53:50) - New quantum algorithms

(1:03:30) - Clusters

(1:06:23) - Complexity and economics

(1:13:26) - Creativity

(1:24:07) - Advice to young people

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Scott is the author of Ultralearning and famous for the MIT Challenge, where he taught himself MIT's 4 year Computer Science curriculum in 1 year.

I had a blast chatting with Scott Young about aggressive self-directed learning. Scott has some of the best advice out there about learning hard things. It has helped yours truly prepare to interview experts and dig into interesting subjects.  

Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform.

Podcast website here.

Check out Scott’s website. Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes.

Buy Scott’s book on Ultralearning: https://amzn.to/3TuPEbf

Timestamps

(00:00) - Intro 

(01:00) - Einstein 

(13:20) - Age 

(18:00) - Transfer 

(24:40) - Compounding 

(34:00) - Depth vs context 

(40:50) - MIT challenge 

(1:00:50) - Focus

(1:10:00) - Role models 

(1:20:30) - Progress studies 

(1:24:25) - Early work and ambition 

(1:28:18) - Advice for 20 yr old 

(1:35:00) - Raising a genius baby?

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I ask Charles Murray about Human Accomplishment, By The People, and The Curmudgeon's Guide to Getting Ahead.  

Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform.

Read the full transcript here.

Follow Charles on Twitter. Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes.

Timestamps

(00:00) - Intro 

(01:00) - Writing Human Accomplishment 

(06:30) - The Lotka curve, age, and miracle years 

(10:38) - Habits of the greats (hard work) 

(15:22) - Focus and explore in your 20s 

(19:57) - Living in Thailand 

(23:02) - Peace, wealth, and golden ages 

(26:02) - East, west, and religion 

(30:38) - Christianity and the Enlightenment 

(34:44) - Institutional sclerosis 

(37:43) - Antonine Rome, decadence, and declining accomplishment 

(42:13) - Crisis in social science 

(45:40) - Can secular humanism win? 

(55:00) - Future of Christianity 

(1:03:30) - Liberty and accomplishment 

(1:06:08) - By the People 

(1:11:17) - American exceptionalism 

(1:14:49) - Pessimism about reform 

(1:18:43) - Can libertarianism be resuscitated? 

(1:25:18) - Trump's deregulation and judicial nominations 

(1:28:11) - Beating the federal government  

(1:32:05) - Why don't big companies have a litigation fund? 

(1:34:05) - Getting around the Halo effect 

(1:36:07) - What happened to the Madison fund? 

(1:37:00) - Future of liberty 

(1:41:00) - Public sector unions 

(1:43:43) - Andrew Yang and UBI 

(1:44:36) - Groundhog Day 

(1:47:05) - Getting noticed as a young person 

(1:50:48) - Passage from Human Accomplishment

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Alex Tabarrok is a professor of economics at George Mason University and with Tyler Cowen a founder of the online education platform http://MRU.org.

I ask Alex Tabarrok about the Grand Innovation Prize, the Baumol effect, and Dominant Assurance Contracts.

Watch on YouTube, or listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or any other podcast platform.

Episode website here.
Follow Alex on Twitter. Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes.

Alex Tabarrok's and Tyler Cowen's excellent blog: https://marginalrevolution.com/ 

Thanks for reading The Lunar Society! Subscribe to find out about future episodes!

Timestamps:

(00:00) - Intro 

(00:34) - Grand Innovation Prize 

(08:45) - Prizes vs grants 

(14:10) -Baumol effect 

(27:50) - On Bryan Caplan's case against education 

(31:35) - Scaling education online 

(48:50) - Declining research productivity 

(52:15) - Dominant Assurance Contracts 

(58:40) - Future of governance

(1:04:05) - On Robin Hanson's Futarchy

(1:06:02) - Beating Adam Smith

(1:08:35) - Our Warfare-Welfare State 

(1:19:30) - The Great Stagnation vs The Innovation Renaissance 

(1:21:40) - Advice to 20 year olds

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Caleb Watney is the director of innovation policy at the Progressive Policy Institute.

Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform.

Episode website here.
Follow Caleb on Twitter. Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes.

Caleb's new blog: https://www.agglomerations.tech/

Timestamps

(00:00) - Intro

(00:20) - America's innovation engine is slowing

(01:02) - Remote work/ agglomeration effects

(08:45) - Chinese vs American innovation 

(16:23) - Reforming institutions 

(19:00) - Tom Cotton's critique of high skilled Immigration

(22:26) - Eric Weinstein's critique of high skilled Immigration

(26:02) - Reforming H1-B

(30:30) - Immigration during recession

(32:55) - Big tech / AI

(38:20) - EU regulation 

(40:07) - Biden vs Trump 

(42:30) - Federal R & D 

(47:20) - Climate megaprojects 

(49:35) - Falling fertility rates 

(52:20) - Advice to 20 year olds

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Robin Hanson is a professor of economics at George Mason University. He is the author of The Elephant in the Brain and The Age of Em.  

Robin's Twitter: https://twitter.com/robinhanson

Robin's blog: https://www.overcomingbias.com/ 

Robin's website: http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/home.html

My blog: https://dwarkeshpatel.com/

My Twitter: https://twitter.com/dwarkesh_sp

00:05 The long view 

15:07 Subconscious vs conscious intelligence 

20:28 Meditators 

26:50 Signaling, norms, and motives 

36:50 Conversation 

42:54 2020 election nominees 

49:25 Nerds in startups and social science 

54:50 Academia and Robin 

58:20 Dominance explains paternalism 

1:09:32 Remote work 

1:21:26 Advice for 20 yr old 

1:28:05 Idea futures 

1:32:13 Reforming institutions

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Jason Crawford writes at The Roots of Progress about the history of technology and industry and the philosophy of progress.  

Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. 

Podcast website here.

Follow Jason on Twitter. Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes.

Jason's website: https://jasoncrawford.org/ 

The Roots of Progress: https://rootsofprogress.org/  

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