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Jim talks with BJ Campbell about the ideas in his Substack essay “On Cops, Belief, and Chainsaw Faced Robot Dogs.” They discuss forms of social control, absolute police states vs. belief states, the role of belief vs. actual enforcement in maintaining order, the noble lie concept & Plato’s original formulation, the 2020 crime spike & “defund the police” movement, the history of police forces & alternative methods of maintaining order, the “God-shaped hole” concept, membranes & group coherence, anthropological research on fairness, non-supernatural belief systems, marketing challenges for new social systems, money as a noble lie & coordination signal, Saudi Arabian social control methods, and much more.

• Episode Transcript
• Handwaving Freakoutery (Substack)
• JRS Currents 090: BJ Campbell and Patrick Ryan on Egregores
• JRS Currents 024: BJ Campbell on the Woke Religion
• “On Cops, Belief, and Chainsaw Faced Robot Dogs,” by BJ Campbell
• The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon
• Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, by Daniel Dennett

BJ Campbell is a licensed professional civil engineer and practicing hydrologist who consults in the land development and environmental industries. In addition to his Substack Handwaving Freakoutery, he writes for Open Source Defense, Quillette, and Recoil Magazine.

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Jim talks with Jonathan Rauch about the ideas in his book The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth. They discuss the epistemic crisis, Plato’s Theaetetus, Trump & propaganda techniques, the Constitution of Knowledge as a framework for epistemics, the “marketplace of ideas” metaphor, the reality-based community, the personal-institutional spiral, the social funnel of knowledge, social media’s impact on epistemics, advertising vs subscription models, meme space pollution, the anti-vax movement, the importance of free speech to the gay rights movement, recommendations for defending truth, supporting institutions, speaking out against misinformation, maintaining viewpoint diversity, and much more.

• Episode Links
• The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth, by Jonathan Rauch
• Plato’s Theaetetus
• Heterodox Academy
• JRS EP273 – Gregg Henriques on the Unified Theory of Knowledge
• Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality, by Renée DiResta
• Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy, by Jonathan Rauch

Jonathan Rauch, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, is the author of eight books and many articles on public policy, culture, and government. He is a contributing writer for The Atlantic and recipient of the 2005 National Magazine Award, the magazine industry’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize. His latest book, published in 2021 by the Brookings Press, is The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth, a spirited and deep-diving account of how to push back against disinformation, canceling, and other new threats to our fact-based epistemic order.

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• Episode Transcript
• JRS EP245 – Bob Levy on the Second Amendment and Supreme Court
• “The US needs to rein in presidential pardon power,” by Bob Levy
• JRS EP275 – Rachel Winkler on Mass Deportation

Bob Levy was, for 14 years, chairman of the board of directors at the Cato Institute. He is now chairman emeritus. Bob joined Cato as senior fellow in constitutional studies in 1997 after 25 years in business. The Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies is named in his honor. He has also served on boards of the Federalist Society, the Foundation for Government Accountability, and the Institute for Justice. Bob received his PhD in business from the American University in 1966, then founded CDA Investment Technologies, a major provider of investment information and software. At age 50, after leaving CDA in 1991, Bob went to George Mason law school, where he was chief articles editor of the law review and class valedictorian. He received his JD degree in 1994. The next two years he clerked for Judge Royce Lamberth on the US District Court and Judge Douglas Ginsburg on the US Court of Appeals, both in Washington, DC.

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• Episode Transcript
• “Could AI Replace the Teaching of Writing?: Why the Boston Globe op-ed is dead wrong” – Josh’s blog post
• “AI in the classroom could spare educators from having to teach writing” – Stephen Lane’s Boston Globe op-ed
• Writing Without Bullshit, by Josh Bernoff
• The Age of Intent: Using Artificial Intelligence to Deliver a Superior Customer Experience, by P.V. Kannan with Josh Bernoff

Josh Bernoff is an expert on how business books can propel thinkers to prominence. He is the author of Build a Better Business Book: How to Plan, Write, and Promote a Book That Matters – A Comprehensive Guide for Authors and Writing Without Bullshit: Boost Your Career by Saying What You Mean, as well as coauthor of Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies. He works closely with nonfiction authors as an advisor, coach, editor, or ghostwriter.

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Jim talks with Jordan Hall about the relationship between humanity and advanced AI. They discuss the false dichotomy of state vs market control of AI, the commons & the church as organizing principles, community vs society, why alignment with humanity is by definition impossible, the role of symbols & organizing principles in communities, how Moloch & Mammon shape AI development, hyper-concentration of power, neo-feudalism, the possibility of an AI singleton, entropy in communities, an alternative path centered on intimate AI, individual values, integrity, restoration of the commons, the potential for rapid dissemination, the choice between good & expediency, mutual self-correction, collective action guided by higher values, the need for a properly functioning priestly class, and much more.

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• Episode Transcript
• Alliance for the Future
• From the New World (Substack)
• Brian Chau on Twitter
• JRS EP200 – Brian Chau on AI Pluralism
• Nous Research
• JRS EP221 – George Hotz on Open-Source Driving Assistance
• AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference, by Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor

Brian Chau is a mathematician by training and is tied for the youngest Canadian to win a gold medal at the International Olympiad in Informatics. He writes software for a living while posting on his spare time. He writes independently on American bureaucracy and political theory and has contributed to Tablet Magazine. His political philosophy can be summed up as “see the world as it is, not as you wish it to be.” Everything else is application.

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• Episode Transcript
• Right Story, Wrong Story: Adventures in Indigenous Thinking, by Tyson Yunkaporta
• Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World, by Tyson Yunkaporta
• JRS EP 65 – Tyson Yunkaporta on Indigenous Complexity
• JRS EP 66 – Tyson Yunkaporta on Indigenous Knowledge
• JRS Currents 032 – Tyson Yunkaporta on Spirits, GameB & Protopias
• JRS Currents 010 – Tyson Yunkaporta on Humans as Custodial Species
• Deakin University – Indigenous Systems Knowledge Lab

Tyson Yunkaporta is an academic, an arts critic, and a researcher who is a member of the Apalech Clan in far north Queensland. He carves traditional tools and weapons and also works as a senior lecturer in Indigenous Knowledges at Deakin University in Melbourne. He lives in Melbourne and is the author of Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World.

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• Episode Transcript
• Perceptual Neuroscience: The Cerebral Cortex, Vernon B. Mountcastle
• On Intelligence, Jeff Hawkins and Sandra Blakeslee (2004)
• A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence, Jeff Hawkins
• Monty Project – Open-Source Implementation
• Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, Nick Bostrom

Jeff Hawkins is a scientist whose life-long interest in neuroscience led to the creation of Numenta and its focus on neocortical theory. His research focuses on how the cortex learns predictive models of the world through sensation and movement. In 2002, he founded the Redwood Neuroscience Institute, where he served as Director for three years. The institute is currently located at U.C. Berkeley. Previously, he co-founded two companies, Palm and Handspring, where he designed products such as the PalmPilot and Treo smartphone. Jeff has written two books, On Intelligence (2004 with Sandra Blakeslee) and A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence (2021).

Viviane Clay is the director of the Thousand Brains Project. She received her doctorate degree in Cognitive Computing and master’s degree in Cognitive Science at University of Osnabrück in Germany, where she focused on sensorimotor learning as a key aspect in intelligence. She brings to Numenta fifteen years of coding experience, along with her background in neuroscience, psychology, and machine learning.

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