John and Steve explore: Are humans a cancer on Earth, or the most remarkable species? What future are we building with AI?

Topics:

• Sora vs Thinking: OpenAI's slop engine vs Anthropic's manifesto — who has the mandate of heaven?
• The death of humanism: When did "human extinction might be good actually" become respectable?
• Technology as human nature: Why the iPhone is as natural as the spear
• Malthusians were wrong (again): From famine predictions to obesity epidemics
• Agency vs inevitability: Are we passive observers or active creators of the future?
• The responsibility of builders: Every choice about what to build is a moral choice

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(00:00) Introduction

(00:31) Welcome to Episode 2

(01:11) OpenAI integrations & the last-mile problem

(03:00) Commoditization hell & frontier model economics

(04:52) Concrete examples: Spotify, Zillow, Expedia

(06:40) LLM personalities & brand loyalty

(09:36) The prompt window & memory

(10:40) Sora 2 launch & AI-generated slop

(11:49) Sam's avatar & CCTV memes

(13:40) Meta's Vibes vs Sora's social features

(15:49) Entertainment as slop

(18:31) Anthropic's "Keep Thinking" campaign

(19:54) Say no to slop — the mandate of heaven

(21:00) Machines of Loving Grace manifesto

(22:20) Think Different redux

(22:42) AI encroaching on human territory

(26:00) Honda's Power of Dreams

(27:02) Jason Crawford's "Ode to Man"

(28:00) The death of humanism

(29:20) When did anti-natalism become mainstream?

(30:28) Climate change & anti-human sentiment

(31:20) Malthusians & the fertility trap

(32:20) Haber-Bosch & human ingenuity

(33:00) Progress as stress vs progress as solution

(34:20) Obesity, not famine: The Malthusian surprise

(36:20) Technology as expression of human nature

(37:40) The cumulative human project

(38:20) Brutality without technology

(39:00) Cloud seeding & playing God

(40:04) Backbreaking work & technological relief

(41:16) Lapvona & life before modernity

(42:00) Egyptian agriculture & cosmic theology

(43:40) Controlling our environment

(44:00) Agency vs fatalism

(45:20) Doom vs E/acc vs Crawford's third way

(45:45) How much agency do we really have?

(46:20) Capitalism demands progress

(47:20) Agency can be taught

(48:20) Free will & self-fulfilling prophecy

(48:40) Progress isn't linear: The medieval dark ages

(50:00) Agency is accessible to everyone

(50:38) The Sovereign Individual

(51:32) Who decides what's responsible?

(52:20) Decision funnels & the Network State

(53:40) The Museum of Passion Projects

(55:00) Moral obligation of builders

(56:00) Why doesn't this exist: Neurodegenerative diseases

(57:29) Alzheimer's & personal genetics

(58:20) The 2006 amyloid hypothesis fraud

(59:40) Academic incentives gone wrong

(01:00:27) The man who can't get Alzheimer's

(01:01:20) Gene editing vs mRNA vaccines

(01:02:20) Food allergies & pollen misery

(01:03:40) He Jiankui & the CRISPR babies

(01:05:00) mRNA as the better path

(01:06:00) Pandora's Box & AGI parallels

(01:06:58) Why doesn't this exist yet: AI to-do list app

(01:08:00) Minimalist phone apps

(01:09:00) ChatGPT forgets my weekend tasks

(01:11:00) Proactive AI & location awareness

(01:11:32) Accountability & push notifications

(01:12:40) CBT: Everything is your fault

(01:13:20) Memes vs productivity nudges

(01:13:40) AI doesn't know what time it is

(01:14:20) Wrap-up & Crawford's thesis