Deus Ex Machina: A Man, Machines, and God

I was obviously in an exuberant mood for this interview - it's one of my favorites!

Deus Ex Machina podcast:

Timestamps:

0:00 Growing up in Iowa. Athletics, Chinese culture. KMT and military family background.
11:48 Hearing about the Cultural Revolution from my dad: his family experienced it firsthand in Zhejiang. Meanwhile, US experts and academics were entirely deluded about reality in PRC (same as today, but with different directionality).
20:55 “Experts” are often miscalibrated: example of US foreign policy and geostrategy. Huge difference in competence level between today and the height of the Cold War. “Word calculus” and the limitations of wordcels and intellectuals who lack technical expertise. “Policy
Entrepreneurs” and other grifters.
35:03 Physicists and finance. Was Charlie Munger right to say it’s a waste of talent to channel top brains into finance? Are AI startups a better use of brainpower? Why I didn’t leave Physics for Wall St.
45:15 Hedgehogs, Foxes, and Eagles. Polymathy.
48:41 Development of modern China as the greatest story of the last 50 years. My first visit to China: the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone in 1992. US-China competition and the future of Asian Americans.
56:52 Genomic Prediction. Genomics of cognitive ability. Leftists holding back genetic science. PING = NIH-funded Pediatric Imagining, Neurocognition, and Genetics study. Stephen J. Gould was a fraud. Asian culture (pragmatic realism) and resistance to wokeness.
1:05:20 Physics and Free Will. Meat machines programmed by evolution to have an illusion of self?
1:10:04 Copenhagen Interpretation of QM, Is there true randomness in Physics? Many Worlds, Foundations of QM, and groupthink in modern physics.
1:19:09 Christianity, raised as a Methodist by my mother, whose family has been Christian since the 19th century. Religious Experience vs Physics viewpoint. Meat machines programmed by evolution to have mystical religious feelings?
1:21:28 Raising children, family, happiness, the meaning of life in view of my father’s life
1:24:34 The meaning of life, “All is Vanity” (Ecclesiastes), Religion

Music used with permission from Blade Runner Blues Livestream improvisation by State Azure.

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[hkkyt]

Need more of this kind of content not something i come across regularly

[mistman]

25:00

Another guy I add to the list is Kevin Rudd.

[HanS]

@1:00:00 I wonder if there’s secret groups making sure to get smart babies…

[hkkyt]

Itd be great if the US prioritized STEM over finance and other service sector jobs unfortunately this will take generations to fix

[davidk]

Thank you Prof. Hsu and Bohan Lou for a great discussion. Regarding the quality of Chinese EVs one just needs to reach the CEO of Ford's recent discussion of Chinese EVs after he visited China. Very illuminating. 22:06 I have the personal opinion that the ill-conceived aggressive "Wolf Warrior" diplomacy was to a certain extent a reflection of Xi Jinping's political maneuvering to separate himself from the recent Chinese leaders in order to support his case for remaining in power beyond the two-term limit. He had to show himself and his policies as sufficiently different from Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao to justify breaking the term limits. Thankfully, Xi has tacitly acknowledged that the wolf warrior style of diplomacy was not serving China's best interest and has since reversed course and adopted a more traditional diplomatic approach.

[robertkaufman]

You say “you FI” more than I would like but, then again, I am probably a FI.

[hkkyt]

Credential shaming is the wrong approach, judging the individuals that make up the US govt just on the merit of their argument is enough. The biggest movers in tech in the US dropped out, many in finance studied conpletely unrelated things etc. Technical knowledge is good for society collectively but theres many project manager type roles and especially public sector roles where its a waste. If the US pivoted away from humanities toward STEM there'd just be a bunch of people jobless, which is what is happening with CS now

[DanHowardMtl]

When are you going to have Eric Weinstein?

[Po-village-chief]

both of you should think about what could happen if China goes to war with yankistan. don't forget the japanese internment camps in ww2 and the china exclusion act wasn't repealed till 1965. if you think the country is different, think twice