Dreaming Against the Machine - Episode 4： Reactionary Futurism, with Dave Karpf

00:00:00.000 Hi, I'm Adam Becker, and this is Dreaming Against the Machine.

00:00:05.700 Today, I'm really excited about our guest.

00:00:08.760 But before I talk about him, I want to give you a little bit of background about why I

00:00:14.800 brought him on.

00:00:15.940 So I wrote a book called More Everything Forever, and it's about the horrible ideas that tech

00:00:21.960 billionaires have about the future and why they don't work and the weird places that

00:00:26.040 they got those ideas.

00:00:27.400 But that's not the true name of the book.

00:00:30.380 The true name of the book in like the sort of, you know, fantasy novel, Ursula Le Guin,

00:00:36.120 like names have power or sense, is not more everything forever. 0.99

00:00:39.660 It's these fucking people. 0.99

00:00:41.840 Because I would work on the book every day for years. 1.00

00:00:47.120 And at the end of the day, I would call a friend or text a friend and say, these fucking 1.00

00:00:53.000 people, you cannot believe what these fucking people want to do. 1.00

00:00:56.440 what they believe. It's crazy, and it's driving me nuts. And there's a reason that this podcast 1.00

00:01:03.300 is not just, you know, these fucking people, or about these fucking people. I thought about it, 0.99

00:01:10.380 but I decided that that would be bad for me and bad for my mental health, because I don't want

00:01:16.620 to have to keep texting and calling my friends at the end of the day and say, oh my god, these 1.00

00:01:21.000 fucking people. In fact, the question that I get the most often about the book is, how do I stay 0.99

00:01:28.740 sane writing about these fucking people? And the answer that I usually give is literally touching 0.99

00:01:36.240 grass. I go hiking, I go outside, I play with my cat, I spend time with human beings face to face

00:01:44.500 without a screen or a microphone involved.

00:01:47.300 And that keeps me sane.

00:01:49.900 But that also brings us to today's guest, Dave Karp. 0.99

00:01:55.640 Dave has an appetite for the work of these fucking people 0.99

00:02:01.760 that somehow exceeds my own. 0.99

00:02:04.520 I don't know how he does that.

00:02:06.680 But he will read what these guys write,

00:02:12.020 and then he will write long social media threads about them and post reviews on his website about

00:02:21.660 their work. And that's actually how I met Dave. I met Dave because I needed to find a reviewer

00:02:29.680 for my book manuscript for a grant that I got from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

00:02:35.160 fancy, very NPR of me, I know, but they wanted me to find reviewers for the book, Academic Experts,

00:02:43.380 and Dave is a professor at George Washington University. And I came across his posts about

00:02:51.620 the same people that I was writing about and said, oh, this guy is perfect for this.

00:02:56.060 And so I asked him if he would review the manuscript, and he did, and he wrote back

00:03:00.360 saying how much he liked it and we became friends and he is a delight and i am very excited for all

00:03:08.140 of you to hear the conversation that we had and also that is another answer to the question of

00:03:14.180 how i stay sane which is i talk about this stuff with people like dave and i think that in doing

00:03:21.180 that in talking about these fucking people we can build community and we can talk not just about 0.70

00:03:28.580 bad ideas about the future, but also what a good future might look like, which is what 0.99

00:03:33.040 this podcast is about.

00:03:35.260 And so while a lot of this episode is Dave and I talking about terrible ideas, we also

00:03:40.500 had a really good time and we had a lot of fun.

00:03:43.360 And I think that you can feel and hear that we have a lot of hope and I certainly hope

00:03:49.260 that you like it.

00:03:52.880 Dave, welcome to Dreaming Against the Machine.

00:03:55.200 Thanks for having me.

00:03:55.840 It's good to see you again.

00:03:56.600 Yeah, it's good to see you too.

00:03:57.480 So Dave is a professor, he's a professor at George Washington University, professor of what I think of you as an internet politics curmudgeon.

00:04:08.480 Yeah, so my degree is in political science.

00:04:12.080 I'm a professor in the School of Media and Public Affairs because I'm the type of political scientist who studies weird internet things and therefore gets hired to a different department.

00:04:20.360 Yeah, that tracks. You do study weird internet things. And you also post long threads on Blue Sky about books that you read that you hate. And then you keep reading terrible books. And David has me worried about you. Like, why do you do this to yourself?

00:04:37.200 So I think what your listeners should know is you have continually tried to talk me out of this.

00:04:43.740 And the fact that I still do it means that you have not made a compelling enough argument yet.

00:04:48.060 I'm going to keep on hurting myself like this until Adam Becker raises his game and convinces me to stop doing psychic damage to myself.

00:04:56.620 Wow. Okay, so what you're saying is that this is all my fault.

00:05:00.640 I'm saying that people around me who know and care about me should stop me and they have failed to do so.

00:05:06.380 so like the collective it's like not just you you're not my only friend but like but like there

00:05:12.800 should be an intervention you should be participating in it and none of you have stepped

00:05:16.920 up to bat yet so yeah i i do these hate read threads um and the serious answer i wrote a post

00:05:22.340 a few months ago discussing hate reading as method i think there's a lot of intellectual value

00:05:27.100 in taking the books that people in power take seriously to read them and sort of get a sense

00:05:35.280 of like what is my problem with them because particularly as an academic i'm just reading

00:05:39.220 other academics that i'm going to argue with my peers about the stuff that we see important as

00:05:44.020 being important and we're off to the side so we should also be looking at money and power and 0.99

00:05:48.440 saying wow those guys are fucking idiots so i do that like one in 10 books i'll hate read okay if 1.00

00:05:54.000 it's only one in 10 books you must read a lot of books because you've got a lot of these hate read 1.00

00:05:57.440 threads so i have done one or two hate reads so far this year and i've read 30 books so far this

00:06:03.240 year. And it's mid February. I read a lot of books. Great. No, I'm, I'm, I'm envious. I wish

00:06:11.620 I had the time to read that many books. Again, I want to point out to your listeners, what you're

00:06:15.660 doing right now is failing to dissuade me. You just told me it was fine. I'm going to keep doing

00:06:20.480 it. No, I did not say it was fine. I said that you're reading a lot of books and that reading

00:06:25.200 a lot of books is good. I heard social permission in there. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah.

00:06:32.100 Yeah, this is this is Dave, everyone.

00:06:37.880 I mean, look, to be completely honest, my serious answer is I think that you're right.

00:06:42.980 Right. And I and I also think that one in 10 is actually a healthy proportion.

00:06:46.520 I just didn't realize that you read so many books.

00:06:50.620 That's amazing and wonderful.

00:06:52.660 But no, I think that you're completely right.

00:06:54.580 I think that it's important to read the books that powerful people take seriously, even if they're bad, so we can understand why they're bad.

00:07:01.700 And I also think that asking everyone to read those books not only would inflict too much psychic damage on everyone, but is also too heavy of a lift. And so really, Dave, it's not that I am failing to dissuade you from this. It's that I like using you as a human shield.

00:07:21.960 You're offering me as a sacrifice to the volcano.

00:07:25.000 Yes, exactly. Yes.

00:07:26.480 All right. That's good. So long as it makes for good content.

00:07:29.100 Yeah, exactly. Yes. That's all that really matters here in, you know, our world of hyper online late capitalism is, you know, good content and commitment to the bit. Also, of course, I'd be a hypocrite, right? Because I've done the same thing.

00:07:47.780 you have you have done a medium amount of hate reading for sure yes yeah i mean it's a good

00:07:54.220 chunk of the research i did for more everything forever uh and i've also done i mean i did a book

00:08:01.220 review last year of a terrible book uh for the atlantic um which which you then discussed with

00:08:07.700 me uh on well like a video podcast we got that's true together it's good times yeah no that's true

00:08:14.220 That book, for our listeners, that book was

00:08:16.760 If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Suarez?

00:08:24.360 I don't know how to pronounce his last name.

00:08:25.640 Suarez, yeah, I don't know how to pronounce his last name.

00:08:28.420 Also, let's call him Nate.

00:08:30.760 Nate said that he didn't really write any of the book,

00:08:33.200 that he instead edited it down from Yudkowsky's original manuscript,

00:08:37.000 and I find that very easy to believe, having, unfortunately, read the whole book,

00:08:41.040 which is not that long, which is one of the good things about it.

00:08:43.500 maybe the only good thing. That book is terrible. I reviewed it in The Atlantic. You can have a look

00:08:48.060 at that if you're interested. I mean, if you're listening to this podcast, you probably already

00:08:52.480 know that I don't think that you, dear listeners, should take Eliezer Yudkowsky seriously about

00:08:57.620 anything, but you should not. And anyone who does, I think, is not really being very serious

00:09:03.340 themselves. But Dave, we could talk about many, many different books, but instead we said that

00:09:10.100 today we were going to talk about two books. One of them is this book that you posted some

00:09:17.020 excerpts from online in one of your threads. And I read some of those excerpts and I just started

00:09:22.980 seeing red and lost consciousness for a moment. And then when I came back to reality, I was just

00:09:29.220 surrounded by blood. I don't know what happened or where I was, but the authorities haven't caught

00:09:37.140 me yet. Anyway, tell us about that book. Yeah, so this is a book by James Pethokoukis. I might

00:09:42.300 be mispronouncing his last name. I don't know. That's what we do here on Dreaming Against the

00:09:46.620 Machine, apparently, is we mispronounce people's last names who write terrible books, and so we

00:09:51.060 don't care. Anyway. If you want us to know how to pronounce your name right, write a better book.

00:09:55.320 That's right. I wrote a book called The Conservative Futurist. And yeah, I had seen

00:10:00.900 this referenced a lot particularly because within the sort of abundance space the the tent that the

00:10:08.980 abundance crowd wants to build includes conservatives right and he's kind of the

00:10:12.580 respectable conservative who gets included in that tent respectable and scare quotes here heavy

00:10:17.980 scare quotes yeah though i like what i will what i will grant to him is he he is a conservative who

00:10:24.360 doesn't like trump and like when he wrote this book in 2023 he was saying things like yeah like

00:10:30.360 i'm a conservative futurist we should have a lot of immigration and then trump got elected and

00:10:34.180 instead of being one of the conservatives you say i didn't mean that i believe whatever he says

00:10:38.700 instead he like started rumbling and mumbling about how like uh this isn't gonna go well and 0.96

00:10:43.800 like when trump did his tariffs he's the type of guy who's like tariffs are dumb what are you doing

00:10:47.760 okay i will grant that like as conservative if we're starting at like the level of conservative

00:10:53.380 intellectuals how internally consistent are they he's internally consistent so yeah i wanted to

00:10:58.660 read it as sort of a what is the serious version of conservative techno-futurism and techno-optimism

00:11:05.620 like i actually kept thinking to myself is this more meant to drive me crazy or meant more meant

00:11:11.160 to drive adam becker specifically crazy it's kind of six of one half dozen the other like wow two of

00:11:17.380 us could do a dramatic reading and decide like in this particular passage is he unintentionally

00:11:22.700 aiming at you or at me but yeah in the introduction this one is aimed at you in the introduction he

00:11:27.740 raises Carl Sagan's pale blue dot, his pale blue dot essay. And then it's like, yeah, no, he said

00:11:33.720 we should focus here on Earth instead of Mars. But I don't know. I think if he had stuck around

00:11:39.100 and seen Elon Musk, now he would want us to go to Mars. And I posted that and you were like,

00:11:43.000 nope. And like, you're more a Sagan guy than I am. So like that one's aimed at you for sure.

00:11:46.860 Yes, it is. Yeah. I believe my exact response was, who do I have to fight? Where do I have

00:11:51.680 to go to fight him? But then later there's a passage where he starts getting into 1990s

00:11:56.860 wired magazines and misreading them oh yeah that's that's aimed right at you yeah so your

00:12:02.400 listeners might not know i read the entire back catalog of wired twice once for wired and once 0.97

00:12:08.220 for my book that's coming out next year so it's like i'm sorry motherfucker like i think i actually 0.94

00:12:12.480 wrote pistols at dawn like that was my reaction to that so we kind of like you know i don't think 0.95

00:12:17.640 he knows that he's like trying to pick a fight with you and me but he definitely is he absolutely

00:12:21.640 is okay i mean this is great because that means that you know there's two of us and only one of

00:12:26.480 him um so how would you do in a fight because i would do real bad in a fight i mean i'm large i

00:12:34.200 contain multitudes um uh yeah i'll just throw a book of walt whitman at him uh anyway that sounds

00:12:48.240 good there we go yeah projectiles will work for me okay good yeah but yeah okay so this is a guy

00:12:53.720 who has cleared the incredibly low bar that most of the Republican Party has not managed to clear,

00:13:03.340 and he's written a book aiming right at both of us unintentionally. What is he trying to say in

00:13:10.540 this thing? What he's trying to say is we could have, and this is only a direct quote, but it's

00:13:16.400 a close paraphrase. We could have the techno future that was imagined in the 50s and 60s and

00:13:22.660 70s like he references the jetsons a lot no yeah so like we could have that if only we've re-embraced

00:13:31.700 the optimism of those days and unleashed our innovators like you know like he wants to get

00:13:40.100 rid of the national environmental policy act like get rid of nipa get rid of any regulations that

00:13:45.060 slow silicon valley and builders down and that will supercharge the economy and if you supercharge

00:13:51.340 the economy then all the innovations will just flow and the the thing that is especially aimed

00:13:57.840 at you is like there are other books where you're gonna talk about like another book in a minute

00:14:02.780 that tries to do the science he doesn't even try to do the science like he is an a finance

00:14:09.660 journalist who isn't even really an economist and his his sort of gestures towards like he gestures

00:14:14.940 at nanotech and like all the you know it's like he read drexler and he's like well drexler says

00:14:18.800 that it must be right like so it's all of that sort of paper thing wait wait wait wait hold on

00:14:23.360 hold on he said if drexler said it it must be right like that's his attitude that that's the

00:14:29.000 quote but that yeah like his attitude on nanotech he thinks we could have nanobots swimming through

00:14:35.020 our bloodstreams if only we had kept economic growth high enough that the builders could have

00:14:41.240 just built it like he thinks that the way science works is just provide enough money to the like the

00:14:48.180 the wealthy people and you know the innovators will do it so long as we stay optimistic and

00:14:53.180 there's just nothing more than that so it ends up being this pretty long book that's actually like

00:14:58.560 very very thin he does like a brief like uh pastiche of history in which he says things like

00:15:04.720 yeah the 1960s were total optimism with like no like social fighting and it's like buddy i don't

00:15:10.880 i don't know if you've ever talked to a historian of the 1960s or like paid attention to it but you

00:15:15.240 No, no, there was actually some social strife in the 60s.

00:15:18.140 Don't know if you heard about it.

00:15:20.120 Like Chicago, 1968, famously, not all that happy-go-lucky peaceful.

00:15:26.740 And then he thinks in the 1970s that we got bummed out.

00:15:31.600 The economy went like the economy got bad because of stagflation and then the mood darkened.

00:15:37.500 And also we turned against nuclear power.

00:15:39.840 And ever since then, we've been stuck in a rut, but we can get out of it.

00:15:42.720 if we just have good, positive sci-fi and good feelings and low regulations and low taxes.

00:15:51.020 And it's like, it's just so embarrassingly thin. And this is the best they got.

00:15:55.120 Okay. There's so many places we got to go from here. But first, I just want to say-

00:15:58.580 You need a minute, right?

00:15:59.300 Yeah. I need a sec. There are a lot of reasons why Nick, my producer, and I decided that this

00:16:06.880 was not going to be a video podcast but right now just in this moment i'm regretting that a little

00:16:13.260 bit not enough to change it it's still going to be audio only but like i was making some faces

00:16:18.980 a minute ago listeners are missing some great reaction shots right now yeah yeah we might we

00:16:25.700 might end up using a little bit of that video for for the social or something we also need to go

00:16:30.280 back and explain who trexler is sure and also we need to explain why you're saying this is the best

00:16:35.300 they've got because like who's taking this guy seriously and of course we have to introduce the

00:16:39.220 other book but um let's start with Drexler um Eric Drexler was a is a guy and that's it yeah

00:16:48.580 Eric Drexler is a guy uh he is a guy who sort of came up with the modern sci-fi conception of what

00:16:59.100 nanotechnology is the idea of like little nanobots that live in your blood and fix all of the possible

00:17:06.120 diseases that you could get little nanobots that you know run around in the world and make anything

00:17:10.000 that you would want them to make um this is an idea that he you know he didn't originate it but

00:17:17.300 he developed it and put it into the public consciousness um in especially in the in the

00:17:23.220 80s is really when it happened with his book entrance of creation uh which i think was 1986

00:17:29.160 um and and then he had a follow-up in the early 90s uh the name of which is escaping me that was

00:17:37.260 supposed to be more technical but really just had a bunch of diagrams without explaining how they

00:17:42.040 would be built and i think it's called nanosystems um but basically drexler's vision of nanotech

00:17:49.900 is something that was considered and ultimately roundly rejected by actual scientists doing

00:17:58.400 actual work with nanoscale systems, like systems the size of, you know,

00:18:07.600 individual or, well, not individual atoms, but like small numbers of atoms.

00:18:13.640 And there's a lot of reasons for that. And we're not going to get into that because that's a whole

00:18:17.340 podcast episode by itself. I have some of that in more everything forever, but there are very good

00:18:23.240 scientific and engineering reasons why Drexler's ideas did not work out and he is no longer taken

00:18:27.920 seriously and was never taken particularly seriously. And one of the things I want to come

00:18:33.240 back to about what you just said about this guy whose name I just remember was long and not

00:18:39.580 particularly easy for me to remember or pronounce. He is part of this cohort of people, and there's

00:18:46.440 a lot of them in my book and a lot of them who've written other books that you've done threads about

00:18:50.500 who believe that somewhere buried in the economy or somewhere in government or somewhere

00:18:58.120 in the world, there's a big dial labeled like speed of progress. And you can just turn that

00:19:07.680 dial faster or slower. It has numbers on it. And those numbers mean something. And if you just turn

00:19:15.900 it up then things go

00:19:17.780 faster and what

00:19:19.680 things and what it means for them

00:19:21.840 to go faster you know

00:19:23.780 these are not questions that concern

00:19:25.900 such people yeah so there's

00:19:27.800 two bits I would add on to that yeah

00:19:29.540 one again just to give you a

00:19:31.700 sprinkling of Peth Koukis's book

00:19:33.460 yeah everybody who he read as

00:19:35.760 a kid like all the sci-fi authors he just calls futurists

00:19:38.040 including Isaac Asimov

00:19:39.680 no so like

00:19:40.820 Asimov like did an article in I think 1964

00:19:43.820 where he's imagining the future in like

00:19:45.660 2014. Sure. And to

00:19:47.680 Peth Kukas, he's just like, well, though, like

00:19:49.580 if the genius futurist said that

00:19:51.740 that's what the world would be, then clearly

00:19:53.720 we would have that. And if we don't have that, it's because

00:19:55.580 we got bummed out

00:19:57.240 as opposed to like, hey, man,

00:19:59.980 maybe the science didn't science.

00:20:02.160 Yeah. That also

00:20:03.760 means that he's like lifting up

00:20:05.460 Alvin Toffler's book. Oh, future

00:20:07.580 shock. Of course. Yeah. And like future

00:20:09.500 shock is a fun read if you're reading it for like

00:20:11.700 the wild stuff that

00:20:13.620 people imagine the future would be in the early

00:20:15.500 1970s but it's like yeah no everybody's gonna live in underwater cities and like pethokoukos

00:20:22.200 reads that and it's like yeah why don't we have underwater cities if we just increased global

00:20:26.880 domestic production enough oh no surely we would have that wouldn't that be cool

00:20:31.300 pethokoukos no yeah yeah so like a there's that but the thing that i wanted to add on to the dial

00:20:38.560 bit is yeah this entire intellectual community is wrapped around a point that tyler cowan and a few

00:20:44.540 other economists have made right that progress slows down in the 70s yeah and they're telling

00:20:49.960 themselves a story about why did progress and innovation slide like sure we had the internet

00:20:55.540 but that didn't really count like where you know where are flying cars to get to the other book but

00:20:59.340 like in general why did why did we no longer have that and the basic story that they tell is that's

00:21:06.600 because the environmental movement gained power in the 1970s created all this regulatory burden

00:21:13.860 And that's the reason why we don't have, you know, energy that's too cheap to meter. 0.99

00:21:18.320 It's because of the damned environmentalists. 0.99

00:21:20.100 And everything since then is also because the damned environmentalists made regulations, like, too powerful. 1.00

00:21:25.560 And they've been in charge ever since. 0.98

00:21:27.800 I'm on the board of the Sierra Club.

00:21:30.060 I've, you know, been with the Sierra Club on and off throughout my life.

00:21:32.820 Like, the thing that strikes me is, like, my fella, you were forgetting that there was this dude named Reagan in the 1980s.

00:21:38.620 Maybe the environmentalists passed a lot of stuff in the 1970s.

00:21:41.300 Some of it great.

00:21:42.200 Some of it with unintended consequences.

00:21:43.860 but like if you think that i'm still in charge here like my brother what's wrong with you like

00:21:49.880 i'm not that big of a deal yeah in what world do environmentalists have or have ever had

00:21:55.220 that much power are you serious like we had a moment in the early 70s and like it is true this

00:22:01.700 gets into the abundance things the abundance people are like hey you know it's probably too

00:22:05.180 hard to build now and that's a problem for clean energy and it kind of is like the figuring out

00:22:09.580 environmentalism that can that is uh pro developing good stuff is actually like a hard like a hard

00:22:16.260 and complicated project absolutely but like these so that's where these guys fit in with them but

00:22:21.200 all these guys are just obsessed with like that time in the 70s when they lost and they believe

00:22:26.520 that that's when we got diverted from like the tomorrowland walt disney dreams and if only the 0.95

00:22:32.600 damned environmentalists would go away and we could go back to like the like sunny side like 0.92

00:22:37.320 sunny optimism of sci-fi in the 60s then yada yada yada we would be living on mars and also 0.99

00:22:44.900 like underwater and like everything would be perfect and it's just so unserious and they all

00:22:50.060 say the same things there's so much there but for whatever reason what i'm like latching onto right

00:22:55.720 now why would you want to live under the ocean did you listen to the song under the sea too many

00:23:01.600 times as a kid and like took it really literally and didn't watch the rest of the movie like you

00:23:05.880 just you want to meet Sebastian the crab and you think that down where it's wetter everything's

00:23:10.160 better like I don't I don't understand the appeal of living under the ocean like I I kind of

00:23:17.820 understand the appeal of living on an island right until you start thinking about the fact that it's

00:23:21.840 going to be very very expensive to bring in stuff that you need um that's not possible to make on

00:23:28.540 the island living on an island seems fun and like and people do live on islands and there's lots of

00:23:34.480 wonderful things about islands, but under why? Like, I mean, putting aside that the, the massive

00:23:42.240 technical challenges to building something to withstand so much pressure. Oh my God. I just,

00:23:51.120 I, it's so crazy to me how many times these people have ideas, like the immediate first

00:23:58.540 response that you would have turns out to be actually the right response. Once you dig into

00:24:05.280 it more, it's like, oh, but if you lived under the sea, wouldn't you get crushed by the water

00:24:10.280 and then drown when it broke your habitat? And like, yeah, it's the first thing I think of.

00:24:16.280 And then when you look into it more and do a bunch of reading and a bunch of research,

00:24:19.560 that's still the problem. Like that's a huge problem. So I have two thoughts. One is a joke

00:24:26.540 and the other is serious so the joke is adam you're what you're not understanding is that you

00:24:30.980 would just build nanotech shields to make sure the water doesn't crush you duh i like with enough

00:24:35.420 gross to match the product i'm sure we could do it come on it's just nanotech that's the joke

00:24:40.400 that's a joke yeah no no i'm just i'm just glad that i naturally have like low blood pressure

00:24:46.700 because otherwise i'd be having a stroke right now but please continue yes um so the serious bit

00:24:52.700 that i like i think matters for understanding this crowd is yeah the dream of living under

00:24:58.900 the ocean like what you're doing now is what i would call techno pragmatism which is really

00:25:02.940 thinking about like how would that work and yeah what are the challenges we would run into and why

00:25:09.040 um and what they're engaging with is instead i would say um the appeal of a frontier still to

00:25:18.340 be conquered yep right like when they imagine like yeah people will live under the ocean

00:25:23.180 like i don't think he's saying like you know what i really want to do is take my wife and i think he's

00:25:27.280 like seven kids like me and my wife and seven kids are all gonna live underwater where we can't

00:25:32.140 escape like that doesn't sound fun for the kids he's not imagining that what he's imagining is

00:25:36.380 like a bygone era in which people could go encounter a frontier um and like expand the

00:25:44.580 horizons and this guy who both wants us to live underwater and wants us to travel through space

00:25:49.440 clearly wants to be able to still have a frontier and i do think that that like basic appeal of

00:25:56.260 you know like i i wouldn't want to be a like a frontier settler either like that life's terrible

00:26:00.940 but like that idea of oh in bygone times there were frontiers left to conquer and now they're

00:26:08.100 gone and so everything feels smaller let's go find another frontier like there is some base

00:26:14.140 appealed to like a lot of people's psyche in that and the pragmatic the pragmatist saying like yeah

00:26:20.020 but a that doesn't work and b if it even if it did would it be worth it that's the reason why

00:26:24.980 certainly i and i think you are kind of bummers at parties i don't know dave people people like

00:26:30.640 me at parties speak for yourself people including me don't like me at parties and i think if you

00:26:36.160 were at a party with me i i would affect your i would bring out the wrong thing and they'd be

00:26:40.760 like adam what no no this side of you absolutely not god uh no i have i have been known to bum

00:26:52.460 people out at parties i just you know i try not to but um oh god okay so once again here

00:27:00.860 here under me against the machine we just talk about uh turner's frontier thesis over and over

00:27:05.900 again um dave can you tell us i mean you're you're political scientist tell us about turner's

00:27:12.260 frontier thesis and and that will take us very nicely into the next book that we are going to

00:27:17.220 talk about so frederick jackson turner this is i want to say this is 1893 sounds right declares

00:27:23.460 the closing of the american frontier which uh is debated since then since the very notion of the

00:27:29.500 frontier imagined that there were no native americans living in these areas that you know

00:27:34.020 they were going west young man but also from a policy perspective you know there were decades

00:27:38.460 and decades in which the american ideal included there is still more america to go and populate

00:27:45.300 and so you can do that in fact that's part of what makes america different from europe like in

00:27:49.880 europe all the land has been settled and therefore they have to deal with the cross pressures that

00:27:55.200 come of living together and the idea of america for a long time involves this mythology of no no

00:28:01.840 it's a new continent and so we can spread out and we can keep on spreading so he declares the

00:28:06.400 ending of the frontier which sets off an awful lot of sort of mass psychic alarm bells one of

00:28:12.700 which i'll admit is the like a lot of the old conservation movement is people saying like oh

00:28:17.580 now that we have occupied the whole frontier we need to worry about running out of natural

00:28:22.140 preserves we need to protect it like that's some of what john muir and teddy roosevelt are doing

00:28:26.180 sort of to wear my environmentalist hat instead of my political science hat but then it also then

00:28:30.620 sort of leads to the development of the American state of like, okay, how do we take care of

00:28:33.740 ourselves? And you have all sorts of, you know, subsets of powerful, influential people saying,

00:28:39.420 we don't like this idea that the frontier is now closed. Let's go find another frontier.

00:28:43.420 Right. And, and along with that comes this notion that without a frontier, we will stagnate

00:28:53.320 and bad things will happen and so a frontier is vital and essential to the american project

00:29:02.060 and by extension humanity yeah yeah yeah okay and that brings us to uh a book that really feels like

00:29:12.500 a spiritual partner to you know the conservative futurist where is my flying car by jay stores

00:29:21.320 hall let's note genuinely good name for a book like bad book to take up such a good name yeah

00:29:26.860 i agree although i do think that the most important word in the title of that book is my

00:29:34.260 where is my flying car right i actually think a better title for a better book would be

00:29:42.020 where is the flying car or where is our flying car but where is my flying car i think

00:29:48.520 reveals some stuff about J. Storrs Hall, who's an associate of Eric Drexler, early nanotech guy,

00:29:58.800 and develops various ideas for nanotechnology that are not workable for a variety of reasons.

00:30:05.380 So Hall's book, which I read in the process of writing my book, and I think you read, Dave,

00:30:12.120 a very long time ago? I read a couple years ago also as research for my book.

00:30:16.000 Okay. Yeah. That's a very long time ago. That's about when I read it. Sure. But what's striking

00:30:21.240 to me is how many of the same notes it hits as, I'm sorry, the other author's name again, please.

00:30:28.840 Pethokoukis.

00:30:29.920 Pethokoukis. Yeah. Pethokoukis and Hall hit many of the same notes.

00:30:34.420 Yeah.

00:30:35.560 You know, there was a slowdown in the seventies. It was caused by the environmental movement,

00:30:40.880 although hall points to you know a few other culprits but the environmentalists are a big

00:30:46.340 chunk of of what he has in mind and if that hadn't happened we would already have nanotechnology and

00:30:53.720 we would go to space and live forever and we can just find that giant dial you know labeled speed

00:31:01.060 of progress and turn it back up again and that will supercharge the economy uh or you know other

00:31:06.440 way around we supercharge the economy and that will hall's particular thing the particular place

00:31:12.860 he thinks that dial resides is in energy consumption per capita yep something he calls

00:31:19.040 the henry adams curve uh he says we were on it for the first 200 years of the american experiment

00:31:26.880 and then sometime in the 70s we fell off that curve and that's when things started going wrong

00:31:32.940 And what's also striking to me is he also hits certain notes that you might not expect him to hit in common with this other book.

00:31:45.060 He also says that the 40s and 50s were this period of great communal spirit and everybody getting along and working together towards similar projects and a can-do attitude that was shared across all of America and led to great comedy and peace as opposed to civil strife.

00:32:11.760 and i i find i find this interesting do you know how old pethokoukis is he's like he's gen x but i

00:32:19.060 think on the older side of gen x that is exactly like early 60s that's exactly what i was gonna

00:32:24.460 guess so so this is perfect uh and and i wish i'd made that guess before you you gave the answer

00:32:30.220 he says the 60s were all all good and forgets you know all of the stuff that happened in the 60s

00:32:38.540 right? Hall says the forties and fifties were all good. He was born in the late forties, early

00:32:44.320 fifties. Um, so really what these guys are remembering is everything in the world seemed

00:32:50.400 fine when I was a kid. Yep. And it's like, um, I don't, I don't know, man. I seem to recall

00:32:59.780 all kinds of really serious problems, you know? And, and like I, Hall, Hall actually says,

00:33:07.780 I think he points to the period like 1930 to 1960.

00:33:12.380 I am having trouble thinking of any period in there

00:33:17.340 where there wasn't some very serious

00:33:20.080 domestic unrest in the US, right?

00:33:24.680 I mean, also wild to start that in 1930.

00:33:28.400 Are you kidding me?

00:33:29.600 The Great Depression? 1.00

00:33:31.560 Hey, it was great. 1.00

00:33:33.340 It's right there on the panel.

00:33:34.260 make the depression great again?

00:33:39.040 Is that where we're going with this?

00:33:40.940 I guess so.

00:33:41.880 Jesus Christ.

00:33:46.940 But yeah, Hall claims to have like the engineering chops

00:33:52.240 and scientific understanding to like bring hard data

00:33:57.740 and, you know, engineering know-how

00:34:00.800 to back up the kinds of claims that Pathakoukis

00:34:03.560 and and all both make in their books yeah and you know putting on my physicist hat no

00:34:12.180 absolutely not i mean hall this is a book where hall claims that cold fusion is a viable

00:34:23.000 possibility cold fusion being nuclear fusion which is something that like humanity has been

00:34:29.420 able to do artificially in nuclear weapons, but never in a controlled way to generate power.

00:34:34.880 The reason why we haven't been able to do that is that it's very, very difficult to get atoms to

00:34:39.240 fuse. You have to make them very, very hot. Cold fusion is this supposed shortcut that was

00:34:45.240 discovered in the 1980s and is now a paradigmatic example of junk science. It was tested many times

00:34:56.400 over and found not real um which you know makes some sense there's no theory to explain how it

00:35:03.460 could have been real um and yet hall thinks that it was suppressed by a conspiracy um which

00:35:13.880 actually i want to i want to hark back to an earlier thing that you said the stuff about

00:35:19.640 the environmentalists who both of these guys you know go to it's just got me thinking about

00:35:25.540 like this idea that there's this one powerful group that you know has control of the levers

00:35:34.380 of the world and if we can just dislodge them then we would have control of those levers and

00:35:40.440 then we could find the knob that says make make stuff go fast and turn it up um and like it's

00:35:47.380 just a very simplistic view of the world it's not how anything actually works and it is you know

00:35:52.540 it's a common feature of conspiracy theories and there's there is something i'm not calling these

00:35:58.740 guys conspiracy theorists i don't actually think that they are but there is something conspiratorial

00:36:05.240 about how they view the world yeah and what stands out to me is um i i have a chapter in my forthcoming

00:36:11.440 book which uh you'll get to read uh and folks will get to read next year yeah but it's it's about uh

00:36:16.820 the title is is um what silicon valley imagines a scientist to be and i think that's the through

00:36:22.320 line is yeah like these guys are like they're fans of science rather than scientists and they

00:36:29.700 imagine that if you can like if you can imagine it then science can achieve it yep if only we are

00:36:37.380 motivated enough and give them enough time freedom and funding funding that like yes the geniuses

00:36:42.100 will go and create and they look at the 70s and say like well the geniuses went and created they

00:36:47.180 did all this magical stuff until then and that means that we must have screwed up so then they

00:36:52.480 find someone to blame um but they really do imagine like in that chapter one of the things

00:36:57.680 that i sort of have an aside talking about is theranos because like theranos is a fascinating

00:37:02.380 example of silicon valley saying oh well you know this uh like pre-med student at stanford

00:37:10.880 has a really good slide deck saying, I can just overturn all of medical biology and do these

00:37:17.800 tests better and cheaper and faster and more effective if you give me money. And they say,

00:37:23.320 yeah, if we give her money, that sounds great. We'll give her money. She'll hire the scientists 0.91

00:37:27.260 and they'll just science that up. And the problem with that was, why would we think a 19 or 20-year-old

00:37:34.580 Stanford dropout, who's mostly an entrepreneur, would be able to overturn all of medical science

00:37:40.640 like that like yeah it's not impossible but it's pretty unlikely yeah but that that doesn't fit

00:37:46.180 because when silicon valley looks at anything else it's like yeah we'll just we'll just disrupt

00:37:50.800 that with the market and they just figure like science will work that way too right yeah and it

00:37:55.380 it doesn't like it's not like science is messier than that yeah and doesn't just do what you want

00:38:01.520 it to do if you stuff enough money and genius in it for long enough but i think that that sort of

00:38:06.840 like childlike conception uh like i one of my bits in the thread about peth kukus's book

00:38:12.260 is like i keep on repeating like it seems like you're 12 because it really is sort of a conception

00:38:17.300 of the world where like if i demand this thing happen and mom stop being a bummer and let me

00:38:24.640 stay up past my bedtime then it will happen yep and like that's fine for fans and it's like a

00:38:31.660 little sad but it's fine for fans as long as they have no power but again like tech billionaires

00:38:36.100 take this very seriously

00:38:37.100 and then use that

00:38:38.000 to bend the government

00:38:38.940 in the direction of

00:38:39.800 what they imagine

00:38:40.960 they can make money off of.

00:38:42.180 Like, that's where it gets bad

00:38:43.220 is that these guys are taking,

00:38:44.380 like, Hall's book is terrible.

00:38:47.380 Yes.

00:38:47.680 It's also like,

00:38:48.180 Ezra Klein described it

00:38:48.980 as reactionary futurism,

00:38:50.440 which I thought was a great term for it.

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00:40:02.620 i'm glad you brought up klein because klein also says something about that book that i think is

00:40:10.320 very telling and and also brings us back to his whole you know abundance thing and then this

00:40:15.200 abundance movement that his book abundance is like you know the the giant ad for klein says

00:40:22.500 in that ezra klein has an article talking about hall's book where's my flying car

00:40:27.980 he's in the new york times i want to say early 23 early 24 something like that yeah um one of the

00:40:38.280 things you know he calls it reactionary futurism he correctly recognizes that hall is like embarking

00:40:44.640 on a kind of very politically conservative project there um but then he says that hall's

00:40:51.320 technical analyses are as careful as his political analyses are misguided or something to that

00:41:01.800 effect. That's a close paraphrase of what Klein says. And of course, at this point, I would just

00:41:07.880 urge Ezra Klein to ask himself, why do you think that you can judge that? There's this thing called

00:41:17.420 uh, Gelman amnesia, um, supposedly named after Murray Gelman, the physicist where, you know,

00:41:23.540 you read a part of, of something written by someone who's not an expert, like a journalist

00:41:28.120 or something in an area where you have expertise and you think, oh, well, they got all sorts of

00:41:32.440 stuff wrong. And then you read something else in the same newspaper, maybe by the same journalist

00:41:36.580 on a different subject. And you forget that they got the stuff that you know wrong and you just

00:41:41.720 believe them on the other stuff. And this is, you know, maybe a charitable interpretation of what,

00:41:46.220 What happened to Klein reading this book?

00:41:48.060 He just looked at this stuff and thought, oh, I guess, you know, I see charts and numbers.

00:41:52.520 So I guess that means that this is a careful technical analysis.

00:41:55.900 And like, you know, my brother, you have no idea what you're talking about.

00:42:01.660 This book, the technical analyses are not careful.

00:42:08.100 It's, I mean, actually, this is another thing that it has in common with Pethokoukis' book.

00:42:14.080 He talks about the Jetsons quite a bit.

00:42:16.220 and where's my flying car and i actually talked to hall i interviewed him for my book and i asked

00:42:21.660 him what was the deal with that why do you keep bringing up the jetsons and say that the jetsons

00:42:26.060 because he brings up the jetsons to say that it's the most realistic depiction of what the future

00:42:32.200 could look like in all of science fiction which let's just take a moment

00:42:37.400 whoo uh yeah but i asked him why so much of the jetsons in this book and he said oh well

00:42:45.480 it actually started out as something that i was writing for like the 50th anniversary of the

00:42:48.780 jetsons all right yeah exactly yeah it's like okay and then it turned into this thing but like

00:42:56.540 but this is going back to climb though this is one of the problems that i see

00:43:01.820 with the abundance people is that they are similarly credulous about what science and

00:43:10.880 technology can do if you just unleash the power to build.

00:43:15.980 And like, I am not saying that we shouldn't build more housing, right?

00:43:18.920 I think building more housing is a good idea. 1.00

00:43:20.960 I am not saying that we, you know, shouldn't, well, let me, let me get rid of that double

00:43:25.300 negative.

00:43:25.560 I agree that we should make it easier to permit green energy projects and build them faster. Absolutely. But, you know, I think we both read Abundance. And to me, and maybe this is my Gelman amnesia at work, the parts of the book that I like the least were the parts that covered material I knew the best, right?

00:43:51.480 I don't know that much about housing policy or permitting policy.

00:43:55.020 And so I thought, okay, this seems plausible.

00:43:57.500 And then I got to the stuff about science funding policy.

00:43:59.600 I was like, are you kidding me?

00:44:01.340 That is not how anything works.

00:44:03.040 And, and, oh my God, you're citing Jay Bhattacharya credulously.

00:44:08.200 What's wrong with you?

00:44:10.320 And like, and, and where did you get these, these figures about, oh, oh, you got all this

00:44:15.660 stuff from like the progress studies people who are involved in tyler cowan's you know whole

00:44:22.260 thing that you were talking about earlier this episode it's just crazy to me how confident these

00:44:30.060 people are talking about science funding policy when they clearly don't know anything about how

00:44:35.580 actual scientific research is conducted and they never talk to anyone who who really does know

00:44:41.660 about that or else they wouldn't be making these mistakes instead they sort of started from the

00:44:47.980 place they wanted to go right so i have a couple thoughts one is i remember and so i did another

00:44:54.340 one of these threads about the abundance book and then i wrote it up as a book review on my on my

00:44:58.500 blog um i would call myself abundance curious okay there is a version of the abundance argument that

00:45:06.400 i quite like um and it dates back uh again steve tellers who um wrote about this a few years ago

00:45:13.340 i'm calling it state capacity liberalism and steve is kind of the gut they call him the godfather of

00:45:18.560 abundance okay let's let's take us hold on just for a sec what's state capacity state capacity

00:45:25.840 is the ability of the government to do stuff okay so the they'll like sentence length version of

00:45:33.040 abundance yeah at least from ezra klein's version and this is a sentence length version i agree with

00:45:38.780 is when the government decides a thing is good and we ought to do it the government should then

00:45:44.000 provide funding to go and try to do that thing and from like a democratic theory standpoint if

00:45:49.940 the government was able to implement its policies full in like a full-throated manner then people

00:45:55.640 could look at it and say do i like that or not and then vote in response whereas a thing that

00:45:59.760 came up post Obamacare, I think they came up post Inflation Reduction Act, is like the government

00:46:04.920 would do a big thing. And it takes so long for the government to then actually get out of its

00:46:08.800 own way and do this stuff that voters don't have the feedback of like, how did that go? Did it

00:46:14.060 actually improve our lives? What should we do about it? So the basic idea there is when government

00:46:18.360 decides something should be a priority, it should spend a lot of money on that and also reduce some

00:46:24.740 of the regulatory hurdles so we can get it done. And a place that I disagree with them on is like,

00:46:28.720 i think they make the like there's a bunch of evidence of like in practice when it's a high

00:46:34.120 priority the government actually is decently good at doing that um so like it's i don't think it's a

00:46:39.440 slam dunk case that they're making but there's a version of abundance that basically says like

00:46:43.880 yeah if the government decides that scientific research is a priority then it should create a

00:46:51.980 big pot of money for scientific research and then go at it um or like like the inflation

00:46:57.140 reduction act or the infrastructure bill like those are examples of a version of abundance that

00:47:03.400 says government should have like infrastructure like we should have infrastructure policy and we

00:47:08.960 should fund it and like then fund it through taxes um and like that that's kind of my ideal

00:47:14.040 like that's abundance ish um you know like if a city thinks like we don't have enough housing

00:47:19.360 the city should spend a lot of money to build more houses and then also maybe make it a little

00:47:23.700 But he's like, look at, are we making it too hard?

00:47:25.560 And if so, like, go and fix those processes.

00:47:28.560 And then when you get into the details, that's where things do get a lot, a little fuzzy.

00:47:33.360 I want to grant them a little bit of space that, like, they wrote that book.

00:47:37.000 This is my review of it.

00:47:38.100 I think they wrote that book for a world that doesn't exist anymore.

00:47:40.540 Right.

00:47:40.620 Like, I think they were writing a book for the world where Kamala Harris gets elected and then needs, like, big picture policy priorities that she tells people who are detail-oriented, go figure out the details on how to do the exact science policy.

00:47:51.800 but like we're gonna make science priority so a bunch of money towards it and like lines in the

00:47:56.120 state of the union towards it and in that world i think it's a pretty useful book but instead it ends

00:48:00.900 up being a book in a world where instead like the thing the government is doing a lot of is 0.56

00:48:06.480 deporting everybody who it decides looks vaguely like well just straight up non-white yeah and in 0.52

00:48:14.180 that world like we've got a lot of other problems and this seems like a silly thing and also in that 0.80

00:48:18.640 world they're building relationships with a bunch of conservatives who aren't quite offensive enough

00:48:23.960 ends up looking a little weird yeah i'm also going to push back a little bit like i see what you're

00:48:29.120 saying i don't think that you're completely wrong but i think you're a little bit wrong um um and

00:48:36.100 maybe this this shifts us toward the end of the podcast here where we're talking about maybe what

00:48:40.440 we might want a good future to look like because we've been we've been making fun of people a lot

00:48:45.000 It's hard on these people who are proposing Jetson's future, but what do we have in response? The thing I want to push back on is specifically that the abundance people are not just saying science should be a priority, let's put a bunch of money towards science.

00:48:59.400 I mean, we did put a lot of money towards science up until Trump and Musk and Doge started trying to destroy the national research infrastructure that had been around since the end of World War II.

00:49:15.760 the abundance people are saying oh the way that we fund science is too slow and too risk averse

00:49:24.820 and the evidence that they present for that is laughably bad so it's not just that it's thin

00:49:32.280 evidence like the first is that it's bad evidence the second is some of the evidence that they are

00:49:36.560 citing is coming from people who are not arguing in good faith uh or were not arguing in good faith

00:49:44.520 when they put that evidence together

00:49:45.940 and had an ideological project in mind

00:49:48.960 to do exactly what we're seeing now,

00:49:51.840 which is how you end up with Ezra Klein

00:49:54.180 citing Jay Bhattacharya in that book.

00:49:57.660 Jay Bhattacharya, currently the head of the NIH.

00:50:00.100 I would say, I mean, first of all,

00:50:02.940 scary to see from someone as influential as Klein.

00:50:07.460 And second, dangerously credulous on his part.

00:50:11.520 It's really, it's a problem.

00:50:13.320 And I would really love to understand how he sees that now, you know, in the unlikely event that I ever get to ask him about this. But like, I think that we are actually seeing now the fruits of a long term effort to paint the national research, like scientific research funding infrastructure as broken in the ways that the book Abundance claims that it is without good evidence.

00:50:40.900 and you know i i think that's a very serious problem at the heart of the book and you know

00:50:48.520 i would love to see a world where we give more money and a freer hand to people doing fundamental

00:50:55.620 scientific research that is not specifically aiming at a particular practical outcome um but

00:51:03.600 one of the things that the abundance guys or at least the book abundance has in common with

00:51:12.400 you know the conservative futurist and where's my flying car that book opens with this picture of

00:51:18.320 the future that's that's fine um but it opens by saying something like we need to build more stuff

00:51:25.780 and invent more of what we need and like buddy that is not how scientific research works you

00:51:33.800 can't just say this is the thing that we need so we have to invent it so i want to defend them a

00:51:39.780 little bit i want to defend that a little bit okay and then we're gonna then we're gonna wrap

00:51:43.400 it up i think the way that bit reads to me um is like i i can think of a few examples through the

00:51:52.460 past 30 40 years of history of government saying this is a priority so we're going to create a big

00:51:58.540 pot of money you know like human genome project is my favorite example of this yes because no

00:52:03.000 that's fair the dollars there it was 3 billion to do that which ends up being 6 billion adjusted

00:52:08.060 for inflation so i love taking that and comparing that to like what mark zuckerberg has spent on

00:52:12.900 the metaverse and it's like man we could have had like 15 human genome projects for the metaverse

00:52:17.160 which still doesn't like right like but like the the more modern example is

00:52:23.040 the the good news for the climate right now yeah is the pace at which solar has radically gone well

00:52:33.580 yep and you're right that we can't just say like oh we need this so go build it but like government

00:52:39.760 can say this is a priority so we are going to create lots and lots of funds for researchers

00:52:45.400 doing work on this thing and i mean like if i'm gonna be a jackass about it in ways that i agree

00:52:51.020 like let's have lots and lots of funds for that and not a lot of funds for like go to mars because

00:52:55.740 like sure we'll try to go to mars in 300 years but like not now come on yeah but having government

00:53:01.000 say these are social priorities and so like you know we can't just sort of like create the money

00:53:09.900 and therefore the science will exist but the thing that government can do is create the money and

00:53:13.780 then hope that scientific research figures stuff out along the way right like the story of why we

00:53:18.820 didn't end up with it k ark drexler's version of nanotech is they created a bunch of money for

00:53:23.440 nanotech and then the researchers went into the research and said nope that's not going to work

00:53:26.960 like to me that's a win where there was like all government can do is create that money again i

00:53:32.440 don't i don't do funded research like i i read old wired magazines so like my my joke during the

00:53:37.660 doge years because i had a bunch of friends and colleagues who were losing major grants and were

00:53:41.080 like you know really like have had real problems and my personal joke was like yeah they can't

00:53:46.440 touch me because i made the great career decision to never do fundable research like there was no

00:53:51.540 money to take away from me i've read magazines at a coffee house and then share thoughts about it

00:53:55.940 yep but i would say like amongst my colleagues who apply for nsf grants like man they spend a

00:54:02.160 lot of time having to fill out forms and oh sure i like i read the the abundance version of like

00:54:07.540 maybe like not no forms but fewer forms like okay sure again like don't don't be like quoting

00:54:13.620 bhattacharya on that like i'm with you on that but that like the broad brush because when we

00:54:18.560 talk about the future that we want i think the version of the future that i want it's not all

00:54:22.720 abundance but it's like a little bit abundance curious because it is like i would like a

00:54:26.880 government that collects tax money particularly from the billionaires because we need to deal

00:54:30.960 with um just how radically out of whack inequality has got and how that influences everything

00:54:35.280 and then spends that tax money on things that we believe are public goods and social priorities.

00:54:41.540 And that doesn't mean that you, like, create a pot of money for cold fusion

00:54:45.040 and therefore you get cold fusion because science is still science.

00:54:48.560 But it does mean that, like, if government were to say, yeah, we need renewable energy

00:54:52.860 and so we're going to spend a bunch of tax money on a public priority of research on renewable energy,

00:54:59.300 like, that probably produces something because that interacts with a scientific community

00:55:03.500 that follows its incentives does a lot of research on that hopefully learns a thing that we do not

00:55:07.880 already know and helps make the world a better place like that still ends up being very pragmatic

00:55:12.200 of like hey let's raise tax dollars and then spend those tax dollars on things that are good

00:55:16.560 and then adjust as we go as we learn like i i don't think that's going to get us towards the

00:55:22.080 jetsons i do think that allows us to build a better tomorrow by creating the context in which

00:55:29.140 scientists can go do the science for real i agree with that and i also agree that there should

00:55:33.960 probably be fewer forms for grant funding that'd be good yeah that'd be good okay not the top

00:55:40.720 priority but like yeah that's sure okay that sounds good um i still have problems i'm still

00:55:45.760 skeptical about like the abundance agenda but i see your point and i largely agree with you

00:55:52.280 i just think that the more important point is that ezra klein is wrong uh i guess what i would

00:55:59.020 say is have you read jen palka's book i know about jen palka's book but i haven't read it i think

00:56:04.800 it's really good and i it was actually like i thought it would be a good book and it was a

00:56:08.600 better and more impressive book than i was expecting to get can you can you describe the

00:56:12.500 book for our listeners the book is called recoding america so she spent time during the obama

00:56:17.500 administration helping to set up the technical side of you know like 18f and um u.s digital

00:56:25.120 service helping bring techies into government to help government work better and learned a lot of

00:56:30.620 lessons about oh we have set things up so that it's just really difficult for government to find out

00:56:37.360 what things aren't working well and there are a bunch of little bureaucratic fixes that we could

00:56:42.900 make so that government would be in a position to know that things are wrong at sort of a granular

00:56:51.220 level and fix them um so like it's it's about like reporting structures and like getting away

00:56:57.120 from like waterfell development cycles and a bunch of stuff that i am not positioned to have thought

00:57:02.120 about a lot but as soon as i started reading i was like all of this makes sense and would help

00:57:07.540 government like that we have a trajectory that started probably during reagan of viewing

00:57:13.180 government as just always the problem and it's a set of ideas for how to help government when it's

00:57:19.160 well-meaning actually provide the things it's trying to provide by getting out of its own way

00:57:23.960 and like she considers those part of the abundance movement and again like there's a lot of versions

00:57:28.420 of abundance and i deeply mistrust many of them but like her version of it i was like yeah that

00:57:32.660 sounds good like we need like first we need to like win the government back from the authoritarians

00:57:37.760 because a version of abundance that is just like building concentration camps is i don't know i

00:57:42.480 would say obviously bad but once we have won the government back and we are trying to rebuild the

00:57:47.980 administrative state i think there's a set of good ideas there for how to build it so it's a

00:57:51.360 little more functional so we gotta wrap up but sure i know people who really like that book and

00:57:57.800 i know people who really don't and i haven't read it but i probably should read it at some point but

00:58:04.040 i am i am skeptical um and one of the things that i think is troubling about the abundance movement

00:58:11.480 and i think you probably agree with me about this is who some of them have been hanging out with

00:58:16.180 lately okay and i wrote i wrote about that a while back of like yeah what does your movement stand for

00:58:22.720 if you're inviting these people to be the speakers at your conference like come on guys and these

00:58:27.240 these people just to be clear some of them are like effective altruist people some of them are

00:58:32.740 people involved with well who were you finding um i need to look up i need to look up the blog post

00:58:39.000 remember the exact name there was a guy who got invited who had argued for abundance but for

00:58:44.920 basically abundance but for ice like help the trump administration be way more and like again 0.90

00:58:50.460 like that guy's sort of a shit poster but also why are you inviting him to be on stage yeah yeah 0.97

00:58:55.700 okay well i think we're gonna wrap up on that unpleasant note i'm afraid but i i think whatever 0.98

00:59:04.240 good future looks like it's not gonna have ice in it so good okay well dave it's a pleasure to

00:59:10.720 have you on the show and obviously we're gonna have to bring you back um to complain about more

00:59:15.560 books together and hey next year when a good book comes out bring me back then too right oh yeah no

00:59:21.080 absolutely yes i mean assuming that it's good dave i mean you know okay so just so your listeners

00:59:28.380 know if i am not invited back on the podcast in early 2027 it means that adam becker has decided

00:59:35.440 that my book sucks and i'm aware of that and it hurts those are the stakes there that's right

00:59:40.480 Come back or your judgment has been rendered. 0.97

00:59:42.580 That's right.

00:59:43.120 If you don't come back to talk about that book with me,

00:59:46.080 it means that I believe that your book is bad

00:59:48.360 and you should feel bad.

00:59:49.880 I am Adam Becker,

00:59:51.420 and this is Dreaming Against the Machine.

00:59:56.860 Thanks again to this week's guest, Dave Karp.

00:59:59.440 You can find him on Blue Sky

01:00:01.140 and also on Substack at The Future Now and Then.

01:00:06.320 Next week's guest is Shannon Valor,

01:00:09.120 I'm a philosopher of AI and author of a book called The AI Mirror, and we have a great conversation about how what we see about AI says more about ourselves than it does about the technology.

01:00:22.100 To submit questions for future guests and to suggest other guests, and to see more pictures of Babka, join the conversation on Patreon.

01:00:31.320 You can also find us on YouTube, on Instagram at DATMPod, on the web and on Blue Sky at DreamingAgainstTheMachine.com, or just find us wherever you get your podcasts.

01:00:43.360 Dreaming Against the Machine is a proud member of Multitude Productions.

01:00:47.700 Our executive producer is Nick Karisimi.

01:00:50.300 Our associate producer is Rosie Thomas.

01:00:52.820 Our theme music is by Jared Emerson Johnson.

01:00:55.820 Our show logo is by Nick James.

01:00:58.080 And our fearless leader is Babka, the greatest cat in the observable universe.

01:01:03.340 I'm Adam Becker, and I'll see you next week.

Dreaming Against the Machine - May 05, 2026

Episode 4： Reactionary Futurism, with Dave Karpf

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