Tag: long-form podcasts

The most realistic AI worst-case scenario

When it comes to AI, there are a lot of crazy doomsday scenarios floating around out there—just like there are a lot of pie-in-the-sky, utopian visions of an AI-dominated future. But while nobody knows exactly what the future will bring, I think most of these projections are totally wrong. Instead, I think that AI will neither save us nor doom us—but it will completely change us.

With that in mind, I thought I would share this discussion of AI, which is one of the most grounded and realistic discussions of the subject that I’ve heard. It’s also one of the most insightful. We’ve created a technology that we barely understand, but it’s still just a new technology, not a savior or an antichrist. In a hundred years, when our great-grandchildren understand this technology and take it for granted, they will probably laugh at how we thought of it (assuming, of course, that Yudkowsky and Soares are wrong, and we aren’t all exterminated by a superintelligent AI).

Kandahar Giants? Fascinating Interview

Tim Alberino is a really fascinating guy. It’s like he watched Indiana Jones as a kid, and decided “that’s who I want to be when I grow up.” And then he did!

In this interview, he discusses Biblical giants that the US military may or may not have encountered in Afghanistan (it’s highly classified), Peruvian face peelers, and some other freaky stuff. Really interesting.

They squashed a generation of readers… on purpose

This is one of the scariest and most horrifying videos I’ve seen on YouTube in a while. The first time I watched it was outrage-inducing enough, but then I watched it a second time, and wow. Our education system isn’t broken, it’s functioning exactly as the elites intended. And that is why so many millennials and zoomers can’t read, can’t write… and honestly, can’t even think.

This video is well worth an hour of your time. Possibly two.

A fascinating update on the ongoing fertility crisis

Stephen J. Shaw is doing amazing work on the fertility crisis and the ongoing depopulation collapse. He’s the one who made the original Birthgap documentary, and I think he just came out with a new one, which is why he’s doing the podcast circuit.

In any case, I found this interview quite fascinating. From what I’ve seen of him, Stephen J. Shaw strikes me as a thoughtful, gentle, and caring man—not at all the sort of monster that the left-wing opponents of the pro-natalist movement like to paint us all as. It’s not at all about forcing women to have children, or about trying to breed more of the right kind of genes and less of the wrong kind. Rather, he sees our collapsing fertility as an existential human crisis, and wants to do everything he can to avert (or at least mitigate) the coming collapse.

S-tier relationship advice

A clip of this podcast showed up in my YouTube recommendations, and it was interesting enough that I clicked through to the full-length interview. Definitely worth a listen. Adam Lane Smith really knows his stuff—and he’s not at all woo woo or touchy feely like most of the women people giving relationship advice. Just solid, practical, down-to-earth “this is how it is,” kind of like hoe_math except concise and to-the-point, with a Christian angle and scientific evidence. Very interesting stuff.

So this is why so much of fantasy sucks right now…

…because it’s impossible to write a villain who’s truly evil if your moral compass reflects our current-year’s understanding (or lack therof) of good and evil.

Seriously, it explains so much, especially the concept of “emotional ethics,” where characters are deemed to be good or evil based on how likeable or relatable they are. This happens ALL THE TIME in modern fantasy, and I HATE it. I don’t care if your character has friends or pets a cat or has a thorough and well-written backstory. If they do something I find to be wrong or immoral, I will judge them accordingly.

Great video. Worth watching.

The sin that was so bad, the Bible barely mentioned it

I don’t usually post long-form podcasts on Sunday, but this one seemed appropriate (though I wouldn’t recommend listening to it if little children are around).

Ward Radio has been doing a lot of deep dives into the apocrypha & pseudopigrapha, and this one was particularly interesting, since the Bible barely touches on the sin of the antediluvians that was so terrible that God decided to send the flood. “But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.”

(As a companion episode, it’s also worth listening to this one where they talked about the true meaning of “nephilim” in Genesis, which is usually translated as “giants.” It’s probably not what you think!)

Interesting take on romantasy

TL:DW; It’s all just porn, and this is why we can’t have nice things.

This YouTuber has some very strong opinions. I don’t agree with all of her videos, but her arguments are always solid, so it’s always interesting to hear what she has to say.

On this issue, though, I agree with her almost completely. Almost all romantasy is porn, and its meteoric rise is a plague on fantasy books and literature.

The best take on the Epstein files that I’ve heard

Worth listening through to the end. I think Malcolm misses some of the deeper nuances of Epstein’s (alleged) operation, but there are plenty of people schooling him on it in the comments to this video.

Epstein did not kill himself… and if it ever became public who did, it would probably start WWIII (or massively escalate it, if indeed it has already started). We certainly live in interesting times.