#26 - David Shapiro - Why We Must Defeat Nihilism

Can indigenous wisdom help us navigate these modern times? Fresh perspectives are in short supply these days, and it's not often you get to interview someone who has lived most of their lives entirely outside of modern society. So when I got the opportunity to speak to Txana Tuwe - elder of the Huni Kuin tribe, from deep in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest, I jumped at the chance. We discuss his life in the Amazon, his thoughts on modern technology like AI, competition, shamanic warfare and so much more. Huge thank you to him and his translator Leah for taking the time for this recording. If you'd like to learn more, and support Tuwe's Mission of protecting his corner of the Amazon rainforest, visit here: https://www.kayaweiearth.org/Chapters00:00 Intro01:35 - His Mission in America03:30 - Ancestral Wisdom and Ayahuasca07:46 - Alternative Paths to Wisdom10:48 - Ancient Technologies15:19 - Talking to Plants, Animals & Spirits17:11 - Impact of Technology in the Amazon18:56 - Deforestation Pressures24:37 - Tribal Warfare28:14 - What can be done by us?29:56 - Tuwe's Favorite Games 31:56 - Is he competitive? Shamanic Wars? Links:♾️ Support Tuwe's Mission: https://www.kayaweiearth.org/♾️ Earth Species Project: https://earthspecies.org/♾️ Huni Kuin Tribe - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huni_Kuin Credits:♾️ Hosted by Liv Boeree♾️ Edited by Luca de Vico & Liv BoereeThe Win-Win Podcast:Poker champion Liv Boeree takes to the interview chair to tease apart one of the most fundamental forces shaping human behavior: competition.Liv speaks with philosophers, technologists, scientists, founders, and public thinkers to understand how seemingly win-lose systems can be redesigned into win-wins.Podcast links:♾️ Website: https://www.winwinpodcast.com/♾️ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@winwinpodcast♾️ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/03bGVUaFZmJUmEvSHNDPdI♾️ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/win-win-with-liv-boeree/id1724791350#winwinpodcast #ayahuasca #indigenous

Advanced AI is coming. Is it time for the government to step in and regulate? Or is it better in the hands of the market and tech CEOs? Or is there a more nuanced way to think about this topic entirely? Welcome to the ANTI-DEBATE. It's debating, but with a positive-sum twist! My guests today are two of the most qualified people on either side this topic: former Trump AI advisor Dean Ball, and OpenAI researcher-turned-whistleblower Daniel Kokotajlo. Can they find a way to bridge their differences and find a synthesis that satisfies all their concerns? What are their thoughts on the Anthropic vs Department of War & Pete Hegseth feud? Can they align on alignment?

Free speech is often treated as a political issue. But what if it’s the foundational technology that makes peaceful civilization possible in the first place? I sat down with Greg Lukianoff — free speech advocate, first amendment attorney, and longtime leader of FIRE.org — to explore why freedom of expression is humanity’s ultimate win-win innovation.Greg strongly believes free speech is at risk across the globe. It's under threat from government censorship, and from the attitudes of citizens themselves, who have become increasingly intolerant of opposing views. These pressures seem to only be increasing as we enter the AI era, which allows censorship, surveillance and other oppression tools at scale. At the same time, it also offers the democratization of potentially hazardous information to violent actors, only increasing the pressures on governing authorities to clamp down even harder on speech. So how do we navigate this tension? That's what this conversation seeks to answer.Huge thanks to @TheFIREorg for collaborating with me on this episode (they were the ones who organised this live event)! Go support their important work at the link the below. Chapters: 00:00 — Intro 01:42 — Why is Free Speech a Win-Win? 05:10 — Is Free Speech At Risk in the USA? 08:41 — Charlie Kirk & The Case of Larry Bushart 11:40 — How Is Technology Changing Free Speech? 18:49 — ACLU & Institutional Capture 21:57 — AI & The First Amendment 29:40 — How To Calm The Arms Race? 33:50 — The Hidden Cost of LLM Slop 38:22 — How To Design Better Social Media Algorithms? 41:07 — UK & European Hate Speech Laws & Censorship 47:18 — J.K Rowling & Free Speech Influencers 52:20 — Can Free Speech Survive Gen Z? 59:04 — How To Talk To Skeptics Links: ♾️ Greg Lukianoff: https://www.thefire.org/people/greg-lukianoff ♾️ FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression): https://www.thefire.org ♾️ Greg’s TED Talk on Free Speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noWh8SSeRCo ♾️ The Larry Bushart Case: https://www.fire.org/cases/larry-bushart-v-perry-county ♾️ The Coddling of the American Mind: https://www.thecoddling.com ♾️ Karl Popper — Conjectures and Refutations: https://archive.org/details/karl-popper-conjectures-and-refutations-the-growth-of-scientific-knowledge Credits: ♾️ Hosted by Liv Boeree ♾️ Produced by Luca de Vico ♾️ Event Production: the team at Fire.org The Win-Win Podcast: Poker champion Liv Boeree takes to the interview chair to tease apart one of the most fundamental forces shaping human behavior: competition.Liv speaks with philosophers, technologists, scientists, founders, and public thinkers to understand how seemingly win-lose systems can be redesigned into win-wins. Podcast links: ♾️ Website: https://www.winwinpodcast.com/ ♾️ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWgq0OZMtwtOIyMsVM_vksqdfWcM-b68S ♾️ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/03bGVUaFZmJUmEvSHNDPdI?si=64379cc23696454f ♾️ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/win-win-with-liv-boeree/id1724791350 ♾️ Pocketcast: https://play.pocketcasts.com/podcasts/7f708340-d17c-013b-f46e-0acc26574db2 #winwinpodcast #freespeech #AI

Which LLM is best at POKER? What about the social deception game Werewolf? This week I'm collaborating with ⁠ @googledeepmind ⁠ and ⁠ @kaggle ⁠ to explain their new “AI Game Arena” project, designed to test all the top LLMs at various games. The Game Arena is a massive research project to create new AI benchmarks, and understand what really makes these general-purpose AIs tick. It also helps us evaluate how far along the path to true AGI we are, NBD.So who better to speak to than Deepmind research engineer John Schultz, one of the main brains behind the project. We discuss why some LLMs are so much better than others, their internal understanding of the games (or lack of it!) and why games are a useful way to evaluate both capabilities and safety of frontier models.And friends - do please note that for the first time ever on this channel, this post is part of a paid partnership (woohoo I made it!). So while everything I said in this interview, is absolutely my own views, there are also direct financial incentives behind this particular interview.

Superintelligence is predicted to arrive within a decade. If that's true, then what comes AFTER? And how can we prepare for it?Which is why I sat down with one of the few people actively thinking about this: philosopher Will MacAskill. Will heads up Forethought, a research nonprofit focused on how to navigate the transition to a world with superintelligent AI systems. He’s also a former Oxford University professor, and a co-founder of the effective altruism movement. In this special Win-Win Live conversation, we discuss why “utopias” often fail, the growing risks of authoritarian lock-in, whether moral progress survives in a post-labor world,, and how the transition to a post-superintelligence world may be more crucial than the development AGI itself. Also, lots of chat about the sun, space and the high seas.