
Nihilism has become all too popular, and this man is on a mission to fix that! David is a philosopher and technologist focussed on understanding and healing what he calls the "Nihilism Crisis" - the crisis of meaning the world is currently suffering from, especially as it transitions into the AI age.
If you're interested in AI alignment, game theory, incentive design, Moloch and competition, this is very much a conversation for you.
00:00:00 - Intro
00:02:05 - Defeating Moloch
00:08:02 - The Meaning Crisis
00:14:39 - The Third Attractor
00:15:29 - Post-Nihilism
00:19:17 - The Four Abandonments
00:30:13 - Complexity Destruction & Extremism
00:36:40 - Radical Alignment & Body-First Living
00:44:30 - Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
00:48:04 - Accelerationists & Self Abandonment
00:50:43 - Competition & Status Games
00:52:28 - AI & Why Silicon Valley's Vibe Seems Off
00:58:14 - Sam Altman as a High Priest?
00:59:02 - Summarizing Everything so Far
01:01:33 - Mythic Archetypes
01:07:50 - Liv's Favourite Axioms
01:11:35 - Neurodivergence
01:16:17 - Culture Wars
01:26:26 - Creating the Third Attractor State
Links:
♾️ David's video: Moloch is Losing! - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiCUbJAwmgk
♾️ Slate Star Codex
https://slatestarcodex.com/
♾️ John Vervaeke - Awakening from the Meaning Crisis
https://johnvervaeke.com/series/awakening-from-the-meaning-crisis/
♾️ Daniel Schmactenberger - Finding the Third Attractor State
https://consilienceproject.org/media/daniel-schmachtenberger-in-search-of-the-third-attractor-part-1/
♾️ “Good Enough” Parenting study
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190508134511.htm
♾️ The Status Game - Will Storr
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58642436-the-status-game
♾️ An Immanent Metaphysics https://www.amazon.com/Immanent-Metaphysics-Forrest-Landry/dp/B0CPSJ647N
♾️ Roger Walsh - Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes
https://drrogerwalsh.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/LMH-Summary-for-California-Psychologist-2018-12-20.pdf
♾️ Self Determination Theory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination_theory
♾️ Patricia Churchland - Brain Trust
https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691180977/braintrust
♾️ William Ury - Power of the Positive No
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/182089/the-power-of-a-positive-no-by-william-ury/
♾️ The Fourth Turning - William Strauss, Neil Howe
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/174648/the-fourth-turning-by-william-strauss/
Credits:
♾️ Hosted by Liv Boeree
♾️ Produced & Edited by Raymond Wei
♾️ Audio Mix by Keir Schmidt
#WinWinPodcast
Jun 27, 2024
1 hr 43 min

How literally should we take the US Constitution? What about the bible? Should we experiment with radical honesty with strangers?
Those are just some of the questions human guinea pig A.J. Jacobs spends his life trying to answer. An author and journalist, he regularly immerses himself into extreme social experiments to understand the world better (and then usually writes a book about it). And this conversation does not disappoint -- we explore his discoveries on everything from love and relationships, competitive puzzling, US politics, health... one of my favourite conversations so far!
Chapters:
00:00:00 - Intro
00:02:06 - Immersions
00:05:47 - Maximizing Health
00:11:14 - Living Biblically
00:19:17 - Living Constitutionally
00:49:50 - Gratitude Experiment
00:53:03 - Extreme Outsourcing
00:55:31 - Relationship Stuff
01:01:13 - Radical Honesty
01:10:43 - Choosing Projects
01:17:43 - Tips for Building Habits
01:22:51 - The Power of Puzzles
01:29:19 - Relationship with Competition
Links:
♾️ AJ's Books
https://ajjacobs.com/books/
♾️ The Year of Living Constitutionally https://ajjacobs.com/books/the-year-of-living-constitutionally/
♾️ Cochrane Report
https://www.cochrane.org/
♾️ Cold Takes Blog
https://www.cold-takes.com/
♾️ The 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/49081/the-4-hour-workweek-expanded-and-updated-by-timothy-ferriss/
♾️ The Scout Mindset by Julia Galef
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/555240/the-scout-mindset-by-julia-galef/
♾️ Stickk.com
https://www.stickk.com/
Credits:
♾️ Hosted by Liv Boeree
♾️ Produced & Edited by Raymond Wei
♾️ Audio Mix by Keir Schmidt
The Win-Win Podcast:
Poker champion Liv Boeree takes to the interview chair to tease apart the complexities of one of the most fundamental parts of human nature: competition. Liv is joined by top philosophers, gamers, artists, technologists, CEOs, scientists, athletes and more to understand how competition manifests in their world, and how to change seemingly win-lose games into Win-Wins.
Jun 21, 2024
1 hr 39 min

Why did Rome fall? What can we learn from past civilization collapses to protect our own? How do we fix our Institutions? In this Win-Win episode I speak to Samo Burja - a leading geopolitical analyst and founder of the intelligence brief Bismarck Analysis.
Samo is a prolific writer on nature of power, leadership, bureaucracy and governance. If you're worried about the health of our institutions and sense-making, this is the episode for you.
Chapters
00:00:00 - Intro
00:01:40 - Common Themes of Historical Civilizations
00:05:13 - Loss of Knowledge
00:13:38 - Impact of Demographic Collapse
00:17:06 - Indigenous Knowledge Loss
00:21:13 - Role of Institutions
00:24:01 - The Succession Problem & Knowledge Loss
00:38:34 - Bureaucracy and Goodhart's Law
00:45:52 - Democracy and Monarchy
00:50:44 - Sensemaking & AI
01:07:13 - Building New Civilizational Games
01:23:27 - Great Founder Theory
01:33:34 - What Makes a Great Founder?
01:38:53 - How to Avoid Getting Drunk on Power
01:44:50 - Democratization of Technology & Vulnerable Worlds
01:53:52 - Geopolitical Predictions
Links
♾️ Bismarck Brief https://brief.bismarckanalysis.com/
♾️ Samo's Website https://samoburja.com/
♾️ Samo's Youtube https://www.youtube.com/@UC4QYBbgLkGaULStiC5yc_1Q
Credits
♾️ Hosted by Liv Boeree
♾️ Produced by Raymond Wei
♾️ Edit and Audio Mix by Ryan Kessler
The Win-Win Podcast:
Poker champion Liv Boeree takes to the interview chair to tease apart the complexities of one of the most fundamental parts of human nature: competition. Liv is joined by top philosophers, gamers, artists, technologists, CEOs, scientists, athletes and more to understand how competition manifests in their world, and how to change seemingly win-lose games into Win-Wins.
May 29, 2024
1 hr 59 min

Polarization, echo chambers... how do we fix the problem of biased news? That's a problem today's Win-Win guest has dedicated her life to solving.
Harleen Kaur is the founder of Ground News, a news aggregator platform that provides overviews of what different media outlets across the political spectrum report, so that consumers can get a clearer and more impartial perspective. We explore the deeper questions of WHY we’re so divided in the first place, and what are the most promising ways of healing that divide. An especially important topic as we head into the age of synthetic AI generated media!
Chapters:
00:00:00 - Intro
00:01:55 - Harleen’s Background
00:09:10 - Ground News
00:22:07 - Advertising Model Leading to Polarization
00:31:30 - Positive Effects from Ground News
00:35:22 - Reaching GenZ and Boomers
00:40:15 - Other Solutions To the Media Moloch
00:48:22 - Role of AI to Combat Media Bias
00:52:46 - Jonathan Haidt Solutions for Social Media
01:03:22 - Win-Win News
Links:
♾️ Ground News
https://ground.news/
Ground News Browser Extension
https://ground.news/extension
♾️ Sentiment Mining 500 Years Of History: Is The World Really Darkening?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2019/05/14/sentiment-mining-500-years-of-history-is-the-world-really-darkening/?sh=1725a43e35ef
♾️ Fairness Doctrine 1949
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_doctrine
♾️ Paradox of Polarisation Study
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-polarization-paradox-elected-officials-and-voters-have-shifted-in-opposite-directions/
♾️ Jonathan Haidt - Social Media
https://jonathanhaidt.com/social-media/
The Win-Win Podcast:
Poker champion Liv Boeree takes to the interview chair to tease apart the complexities of one of the most fundamental parts of human nature: competition. Liv is joined by top philosophers, gamers, artists, technologists, CEOs, scientists, athletes and more to understand how competition manifests in their world, and how to change seemingly win-lose games into Win-Wins.
Credits:
♾️ Hosted by Liv Boeree
♾️ Produced & Edited by Raymond Wei
♾️ Audio Mix by Keir Schmidt
May 16, 2024
1 hr 11 min

Is it possible to solve ocean pollution by turning the packaging industry into a closed-loop economy?
Wes Carter thinks so. Wes is the Founder of a New Earth Project and President of Atlantic Packaging, on a personal mission to stop the significant pollution the packaging industry causes. In this episode we hear what it would take to close the loop on the economy via new types of biodegradable materials that could replace plastic and other common pollutants. We also discuss which types of recycling work, and which are rubbish. And of course, in true Win-Win Podcast style, we hear about what it would take to change the game so that companies (and their customers) are properly incentivized to account for the true environmental costs of the production and consumption.
Chapters:
00:00:00 - Intro
00:02:35 - Wes's Story & the Packaging Industry
00:10:07 - Circular Economies
00:24:30 - Potential Solutions
00:31:11 - How to Align Incentives?
00:46:22 - Are Consumers Responsible?
00:51:41 - A New Earth Project
00:58:06 - Psychedelic Experiences
01:08:38 - Carbon Offsets
01:13:30 - Are Shareholders bad for the environment?
01:23:14 - Amazon's Progress
01:27:38 - Advice to Young Entrepreneurs
Links:
♾️ A New Earth Project
https://anewearthproject.com/
♾️ Atlantic Packaging
https://www.atlanticpkg.com/
♾️ Breaking Open the Head by Daniel Pinchbeck
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
♾️ A Journey to a New Earth Series https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detai...
The Win-Win Podcast:
Poker champion Liv Boeree takes to the interview chair to tease apart the complexities of one of the most fundamental parts of human nature: competition. Liv is joined by top philosophers, gamers, artists, technologists, CEOs, scientists, athletes and more to understand how competition manifests in their world, and how to change seemingly win-lose games into Win-Wins.
Watch the previous episode with Ocean Cleanup Founder Boyan Slat here: https://youtu.be/QEYbLN-LC5k?si=XaV2j...
Credits:
♾️ Hosted by Liv Boeree
♾️ Produced & Edited by Raymond Wei
♾️ Audio Mix by Keir Schmidt
Apr 26, 2024
1 hr 33 min

Sustainability. It's a buzzword that gets lots of headlines, but what if our definition of it is incomplete? That's the view of Hannah Ritchie - Hannah is the lead Environmental Scientist at OurWorldinData.org - a leading data science organization that analyses data to find out the true state of our world.
In today's conversation we explore her findings on the planet's biggest issues. We discuss which problems are over-hyped, which ones are under-hyped, and most importantly: How do we become sustainable AND keep the high quality of life we're used to? That would indeed be a Win-Win.
Chapters:
00:00:00 - Intro
00:02:06 - Redefining Sustainability
00:09:12 - The Perception Gap
00:22:09 - Degrowth Movement
00:26:46 - Jevon's Paradox
00:31:38 - Carbon Tax & Rethinking Incentives
00:35:45 - Latest Climate Data
00:43:38 - Geoengineering Solutions
00:50:03 - Impact of Farming
00:59:42 - Environmental Success Stories
01:05:12 - Badly Behaving Businesses
01:18:33 - Most Surprising Fact on OWID
01:26:18 - Relationship with Competition
01:31:38 - Win-Win Futures
Links:
♾️ Not the End of The World by Hannah Ritchie
https://www.nottheendoftheworld.co.uk/
♾️ Our World in Data
https://ourworldindata.org/
♾️ Hannah’s TED Talk - Are We the Last Generation or the First Sustainable One?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl3VVrggKz4
♾️ Hans Rosling - The Best Stats You’ve Ever Seen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w
♾️ Nate Hagen’s Youtube Channel
https://www.youtube.com/@thegreatsimplification
The Win-Win Podcast:
Poker champion Liv Boeree takes to the interview chair to tease apart the complexities of one of the most fundamental parts of human nature: competition. Liv is joined by top philosophers, gamers, artists, technologists, CEOs, scientists, athletes and more to understand how competition manifests in their world, and how to change seemingly win-lose games into Win-Wins.
Watch the previous episode with Philosopher Nick Bostrom here:
https://youtu.be/o28s-mnykdE
Credits:
♾️ Hosted by Liv Boeree
♾️ Produced & Edited by Raymond Wei
♾️ Audio Mix by Keir Schmidt
#WinWinPodcast #winwin
Apr 11, 2024
1 hr 36 min

What would life look like in a fully automated world? How would we derive meaning in a world of superintelligence?
Today's Win-Win episode is all about utopias, dystopias and thought experiments, because I'm talking to Professor Nick Bostrom. Nick is one of the world’s leading philosophers - he's a leading thinker on the nature of consciousness, AI, catastrophic risks, cosmology… he’s also the guy behind the Simulation Hypothesis, the Paperclip Maximizer thought experiment, the seminal AI book Superintelligence... Off into the hypotheti-sphere we go!
Chapters
0:00 - Intro
01:42 - Why a book on Utopia?
03:31 - Different types of Utopias
11:40 - How to find purpose in a solved world?
18:31 - Potential Limits to Technology
22:34 - How would Utopians approach Competition?
30:24 - Superintelligence
34:39 - Vulnerable World Hypothesis
39:48 - Thinking in Superpositions
41:24 - Solutions to the Vulnerable World?
46:34 - Aligning Markets to Defensive Tech
48:43 - Digital Minds & Uploading
52:25 - AI Consciousness
55:08 - Outro
Links:
Nick’s Website - https://nickbostrom.com/
Anthropic Bias Paper - https://anthropic-principle.com/
Deep Utopia Book - https://nickbostrom.com/booklink/deep...
Superintelligence book - Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies
Vulnerable World Hypothesis - https://nickbostrom.com/papers/vulner...
Orthogonality Thesis - https://nickbostrom.com/superintellig...
Simulation Argument - https://simulation-argument.com/
Digital Minds - https://nickbostrom.com/papers/intere...
Future of Humanity Institute - https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/
The Win-Win Podcast:
Poker champion Liv Boeree takes to the interview chair to tease apart the complexities of one of the most fundamental parts of human nature: competition. Liv is joined by top philosophers, gamers, artists, technologists, CEOs, scientists, athletes and more to understand how competition manifests in their world, and how to change seemingly win-lose games into Win-Wins.
Credits
♾️ Hosted by Liv Boeree & Igor Kurganov
♾️ Produced & Edited by Raymond Wei
♾️ Audio Mix by Keir Schmidt
Mar 29, 2024
55 min

What sacrifices does it take to be a pro tennis player? Is it possible to have a healthy mindset at the highest stakes?
Marcus Daniell understands it all - he has played professional tennis for over 20 years, a career that has earned him an Olympic medal and a whole lot of wisdom around the nature of competition. He is also the founder of High Impact Athletes, a movement of professional athletes who donate to highly effective charities.
Chapters
00:00:00 - Introduction
00:06:50 - Overlap of Tennis and Poker
00:13:56 - Dynamic Between Pro Tennis Players
00:22:00 - How competitiveness changes with age
00:29:08 - Strategies of Pro Players
00:31:11 - Competition As Young Athlete
00:31:57 - Playing Doubles
00:51:52 - Technology and Tennis
01:00:00 - Evolution of Tennis
01:05:44 - Moloch Traps in Tennis
01:11:10 - Enhanced Olympics
01:19:57 - Tennis Payout Structures
01:28:00 - High Impact Athletes and Philanthropy
01:49:43 - Kindest Things Someone Has Done
01:51:53 - Proudest Moment
Links
♾️ High Impact Athletes
https://www.highimpactathletes.org/
♾️ Marcus Daniell Twitter
https://twitter.com/marcusdaniell
♾️ Giving What We Can Pledge
https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/pledge
Credits
♾️ Hosted by Liv Boeree
♾️ Produced by Raymond Wei
♾️ Edit and Audio Mix by Ryan Kessler
The Win-Win Podcast:
Poker champion Liv Boeree takes to the interview chair to tease apart the complexities of one of the most fundamental parts of human nature: competition. Liv is joined by top philosophers, gamers, artists, technologists, CEOs, scientists, athletes and more to understand how competition manifests in their world, and how to change seemingly win-lose games into Win-Wins.
Mar 20, 2024
2 hr

What if we could harness the power of the internet to make kindness go VIRAL?
That's the topic of this conversation with Chris Anderson -- Chris has run TED (of the famous TED talks) for the last twenty years, and recently wrote a book called "Infectious Generosity", which seeks to understand the nature of human kindness, and find ways to make it spread in the digital age. A crucial issue in these divisive times!
Expect lots of evolutionary psychology, a dissection of why the media is broken, some deep internet history, and how to improve (and win at!) the attention game.
Chapters:
00:00:00 - Intro
00:02:20 - Infectious Generosity
00:13:09 - How the Internet Has Changed
00:30:50 - Role of News Media
00:37:08 - Evolution of Generosity
00:50:04 - Effective Giving
00:53:28 - Intent vs Consequence
01:01:30 - Religion and Generosity
01:08:59 - The Audacious Project
01:22:41 - Giving What You Can Pledge
01:26:54 - Is Chris Competitive?
01:36:35 - Future of TED
Links
♾️ Infectious Generosity by Chris Anderson
https://www.infectiousgenerosity.org/
♾️ Thinking Fast and Slow
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
♾️ Media Moloch Youtube Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRz54...
♾️ The Mystery Experiment - a Study of Generosity
https://bigthink.com/the-present/gene...
♾️ Against Empathy by Paul Bloom
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...
♾️ Atheism 2.0 by Alain de Botton TED Talk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Oe6H...
♾️ The Audacious Project
https://www.audaciousproject.org/
♾️ Project Vesta
https://www.vesta.earth/
♾️ Liv's TED talk - The Dark Side of Competition in AI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WX_vN...
♾️ The Giving Pledge - http://givingwhatwecan.org/winwin
Credits
♾️ Hosted by Liv Boeree
♾️ Produced & Edited by Raymond Wei
♾️ Audio Mix by Keir Schmidt
The Win-Win Podcast:
Poker champion Liv Boeree takes to the interview chair to tease apart the complexities of one of the most fundamental parts of human nature: competition. Liv is joined by top philosophers, gamers, artists, technologists, CEOs, scientists, athletes and more to understand how competition manifests in their world, and how to change seemingly win-lose games into Win-Wins.
Mar 6, 2024
1 hr 42 min

The rate of AI progress is accelerating, so how can we minimize the risks of this incredible technology, while maximizing the rewards?
Today I am speaking to leading AI researcher Dan Hendrycks — Dan is the founder of Center for AI Safety, and lead advisor to Elon Musk's X.AI. He was also the architect behind the "Mitigating Risks" letter that was signed by Demis Hassabis, Sam Altman, Bill Gates, Yoshua Bengio and many others.
In this conversation we discuss everything from immediate issues like deepfakes, to upcoming risks like malicious use, centralisation of power, regulatory capture and more. In other words, how do we ensure AI ends up a win/win for humanity instead of a lose/lose.
Chapters
00:00:00 - Intro
00:02:14 - Are current laws sufficient?
00:09:41 - Types of AI Risk
00:23:30 - Arms Races
00:39:10 - What happens inside an AI?
00:46:39 - Rogue AI
00:52:22 - Sentient AI
01:07:36 - Risks from Centralization
01:14:45 - Open Source
01:23:02 - AI speeding up systemic risks
01:29:54 - Synthetic Data & Simulations
01:36:52 - What Dan is excited about in AI
Links
♾️ An Overview of Catastrophic Risk Paper
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2306.12001.pdf
♾️ Center for AI Safety
https://www.safe.ai/ai-risk
♾️ Representation Engineering
https://www.ai-transparency.org/
♾️ Liv's Ted talk on AI & Moloch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WX_vN1QYgmE
♾️ Norbert Wiener
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norbert_Wiener
♾️ Reinforcement Learning Textbook
https://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs188/sp20/assets/files/SuttonBartoIPRLBook2ndEd.pdf
♾️ Richard Posner - Economics Engine
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/legal-econanalysis/
♾️ More Than a Toy: Random Matrix Models Predict How Real-World Neural
Representations Generalize
https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.06176
The Win-Win Podcast:
Poker champion Liv Boeree takes to the interview chair to tease apart the complexities of one of the most fundamental parts of human nature: competition. Liv is joined by top philosophers, gamers, artists, technologists, CEOs, scientists, athletes and more to understand how competition manifests in their world, and how to change seemingly win-lose games into Win-Wins.
Watch the previous episode with Boyan Slat of the Ocean Cleanup here:
https://youtu.be/QEYbLN-LC5k
Credits
♾️ Hosted by Liv Boeree
♾️ Produced & Edited by Raymond Wei
♾️ Audio Mix by Keir Schmidt
Feb 21, 2024
1 hr 40 min
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