Just Asking Questions

Latest Episodes:

Byrne Hobart: What happened to progress? Dec 26, 2024

Show notes

How do we escape stagnation and accelerate progress? What if bubbles are actually good? Just asking questions.

"They promised us flying cars. All we got was one hundred forty characters." Those were the words of Peter Thiel over a decade ago, lamenting technological stagnation. The character limit has since increased, but his point remains the same: Innovation in the software world of "bits" has accelerated, but progress in the material world of "atoms" has been stubbornly slow, at least in his telling.

Economist Tyler Cowen, who popularized the term "Great Stagnation," argued that we picked all the low-hanging fruit in the early-to-mid 20th century thanks to cheap cultivation of unused land, mass education of a previously uneducated population, and revolutions in transportation, energy, and synthetic materials that could since be only marginally improved at increasingly greater expense and effort. The result has been stagnant wage growth when accounting for price inflation and a failure to realize any revolutionary breakthroughs in energy, transportation, or materials science for decades.

But today's guest says there's another underlying reason for the stagnation: a self-defeating cultural and spiritual malaise and pessimism about the future. It manifests itself in the dystopian movies and shows that dominate Hollywood, as well as in the falling prevalence of words associated with progress and the future, and a rise of words associated with caution, worry, and risk found in contemporary literature.

Byrne Hobart is the co-author of Boom: Bubbles and the End of Stagnation, which offers a surprising way out of stagnation: embracing the dynamic and chaotic power of bubbles—investment bubbles, big social bubbles, and filter bubbles. Examples range from big, ambitious public investments like the Apollo missions and the Manhattan Project to the rise of bitcoin.

Sources referenced:

The Great Stagnation by Tyler Cowen
Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta: "Real Wage Growth: A View from the Wage Growth Tracker"
Financial Times: "Is the west talking itself into decline?"
Boom: Bubbles and the End of Stagnation, by Byrne Hobart and Tobias Huber
Zach and Liz's Bitcoin documentary
"Bitcoin's Price History"
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis: "The Pandemic's Influence on U.S. Fertility Rates"
Federal debt held by the public
Federal debt held by the public as a percent of Gross Domestic Product
U.S. Treasury: The U.S. government has spent $1.25 trillion in fiscal year 2025
Moore's Law

Chapters

00:00 Coming up…
00:17 Introduction
02:46 How popular language points to cultural malaise
07:30 do we actually have technological stagnation?
09:31 Financial bubbles are good, actually?
15:43 FOMO is good
18:00 When are bubbles bad?
21:13 Bretton Woods
25:05 There are productive and unproductive bubbles
28:10 Is Bitcoin a bubble?
40:05 Social bubbles
47:17 Is society getting more risk averse?
53:53 Religion and technological innovation
01:06:01 Natalism
01:11:11 how do we make progress cool and interesting and relevant again?
01:14:58 what is one question that you think more people should be asking?

The post Byrne Hobart: What happened to progress? appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Guillaume Verdon: Should We Have a 'Second Amendment for AI'? Dec 19, 2024

Show notes

Must we accelerate AI innovation?

You've probably heard of "effective altruism," but how about "effective accelerationism," or e/acc? "You claim to be building an artificial god in the human image. We're building the conduit for the thermodynamic god that created us. We are not the same."

Those are the words of Based Beff Jezos, a pseudonymous X account devoted to spreading the e/acc message far and wide, once described by venture capitalist Marc Andreessen as a "patron saint of techno-optimism" and by its detractors as "unhinged" and "absolutely toxic for the AI discourse."

The man behind Based Beff Jezos was unmasked in Forbes magazine last December as Guillaume Verdon, a Google quantum computing engineer-turned-co-founder of the AI startup Extropic, which has received about $14 million in seed funding to develop a new kind of chip for running AI models.

He joins us today to talk about effective accelerationism, the politics of AI, and what his company is doing to make sure that Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) arrives quickly and remains beyond the control of a single corporation or government.

Sources Referenced:

"Who Is @BasedBeffJezos, The Leader Of The Tech Elite's 'E/Acc' Movement?" by Emily Baker-White in Forbes
what the f* is e/acc, the e/acc newsletter
"SITUATIONAL AWARENESS: The Decade Ahead," by Leopold Aschenbrenner
Gavin Newsom's veto of California's AI bill
"What is Moore's Law?" by Our World in Data
"Microsoft, Google and Amazon turn to nuclear energy to fuel the AI boom," by Mehek Mazhar in CBC Radio
Extropic: Ushering in the Thermodynamic Future
Just Asking Questions with Bryan Johnson

Chapters

00:00 Coming up…
00:28 Introductions
02:13 What is effective accelerationism?
04:33 Building a conduit for the thermodynamic god that created us?
09:54 Is AGI inevitable?
17:01 Why open source AI doesn't need regulation
29:18 A Second Amendment for AI?
31:58 Philosophical foundations of e/acc
37:16 An AI arms race between the U.S. and China?
55:27 Criticism of OpenAI
01:01:08 AI under the second Trump administration
01:07:22 Designing a biologically inspired chip
01:15:46 How the American chip industry will be impacted by China and Taiwan
01:18:44 Will AI make humans irrelevant?
01:23:53 How do we reimagine governance?

The post Guillaume Verdon: Should We Have a 'Second Amendment for AI'? appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Brianna Wu and TafTaj: How Have Trans Issues Scrambled Our Politics? Dec 12, 2024

Show notes

About 0.5 percent of U.S. adults identify as transgender, according to a 2022 UCLA study. Among 13- to 17-year-olds, the figure has grown to about 1.4 percent. That uptick in the youth might help explain why trans issues are playing a growing role in American politics.

Registered voters told Gallup pollsters that transgender issues ranked among the least important political issues they considered when weighing their presidential vote—just below climate change.

Yet, the Trump campaign spent $65 million running ads in swing states attacking Vice President Kamala Harris' transgender policy stances in the final stretch of the campaign, according to The New York Times. The top Harris super PAC found that one such ad shifted voters who viewed it almost three points towards Trump, resonating particularly well with demographics that swung significantly in his favor.

In a relatively close election, is it possible that this actually was a deciding factor? And how should trans advocates and Democrats adjust their approach to this issue?

Joining us today to talk about it are Brianna Wu and TafTaj. They are two of the co-hosts of the new show Dollcast, a show about transgender issues and politics, aiming to correct what they see as the excesses or errors in both the trans and gender-critical movements. TafTaj is a streamer and commentator. Wu is a programmer, political activist, and commentator, best known for her involvement in Gamergate. She now runs the progressive Rebellion PAC.

Sources to Reference:

Williams Institute: How Many Adults and Youth Identify as Transgender in the United States?
Economy Most Important Issue to 2024 Presidential Vote
The New York Times: Trump and Republicans Bet Big on Anti-Trans Ads Across the Country
The New York Times: How Trump Won, and How Harris Lost
The Washington Post: GamerGaters Inundated Her With Death Threats. Now Some Are Apologizing — and She Forgives Them.
Brianna Wu: I Fear That Progressivism Has Become the Very Thing We Fought Against
Brianna Wu: X Post "from the center"
The Cass Review
Should kids medically transition? | Jesse Singal | Just Asking Questions, Episode 21
IFLScience: The Woman Who Gave Birth Despite Most Of Her Cells Having XY Chromosomes
PubMed Central: Rare successful pregnancy in a patient with Swyer Syndrome

Chapters:

00:00 Coming up…
00:29 Introduction
03:24 Brianna Wu's political evolution
06:03 "The progressive purity spiral"
07:25 Taf's political evolution
09:58 "The centrist case for trans rights"
15:42 The "President Trump is for you" ad
23:10 "Non-binary" identity and science
29:17 Wu and Taf's personal stories
40:53 Youth gender dysphoria science and the Cass Review
48:46 Should insurance companies not be involved?
54:26 A libertarian approach?
01:05:05 Technological changes
01:07:48 Questions more people should be asking

The post Brianna Wu and TafTaj: How Have Trans Issues Scrambled Our Politics? appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Nic Carter: Did Bitcoin Win the Election? Dec 05, 2024

Show notes

Was bitcoin the winner of the 2024 election? Just asking questions.

Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to protect bitcoin and the entire crypto economy.

Major endorsements from the industry followed, including from the Winklevoss twins, who each made a $1 million bitcoin donation to a pro-Trump PAC. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong called Trump's win the "dawn of a new crypto era." Bitcoin has hit new all-time highs, since the election.

Today's guest has been writing and speaking on these topics for a long time, and was also celebrating after the election, going so far as to call Trump's win a victory in a "spiritual war."

Nic Carter is a writer and general partner at Castle Island Ventures, which invests in crypto-financial infrastructure.

Let's start with crypto and bitcoin before we zoom all the way out to spiritual warfare. Nick begins by telling us why he's optimistic about Trump's second term in regard to making America a better place for people to buy, sell, and hold bitcoin and other crypto assets.

This conversation was recorded on Nov. 20, 2024. Between now and then, some important and relevant news has come to light, especially regarding debanking. There is a new intro to this episode detailing why this matters.

Sources referenced:

Chapters:

00:00:00 Coming up…
00:00:35 New context regarding Operation Chokepoint 2.0
00:06:10 Did bitcoin win the 2024 election?
00:08:07 Nic is optimistic about Trump 2.0
00:10:26 Why has the GOP embraced crypto?
00:14:19 OCP 2.0 and Silvergate
00:18:44 How do you make normal people care about this?
00:21:45 The role of the FDIC
00:23:36 What will Trump do about all of this?
00:28:10 Central bank digital currencies, and why they matter
00:30:15 What can Nic tell us about his trip to congress?
00:31:08 What are stablecoins and why are they important?
00:37:29 The persecution of Polymarket
00:44:32 The election and spiritual warfare
00:57:30 Nic's wish list for Trump 2.0
01:07:58 Nic's No. 1 question: Where did COVID come from?

The post Nic Carter: Did Bitcoin Win the Election? appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Vinay Prasad: What Does RFK Jr. Get Right and Wrong? Nov 25, 2024

Show notes

What does Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. get right and wrong about science, vaccines, and health? Just asking questions.

President-elect Donald Trump announced Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. would be his pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the Food and Drug Adminstration, National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control, and several other health-related federal agencies. Trump wrote on X that "for too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to Public Health," and that "Kennedy will restore these Agencies to the traditions of Gold Standard Scientific Research, and beacons of Transparency, to end the Chronic Disease epidemic."

So will Kennedy—who has proposed removing fluoride from municipal tap water, and rolling back restrictions on everything from psychedelics to raw milk and ivermectin while banishing food additives and holding vaccine and other pharmaceutical manufacturers to stricter standards—Make America Healthy Again?

This week's guest will help us work through the good, bad, and unknown of RFK Jr.'s agenda. Vinay Prasad is a hematologist oncologist and Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco. He's the author of several books about drug and medical policy and writes at the Substack Vinay Prasad's Observations and Thoughts.

This conversation took place LIVE on November 26.

Sources Referenced:

The post Vinay Prasad: What Does RFK Jr. Get Right and Wrong? appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Yuval Levin: What is Trump's "Mandate"? Nov 21, 2024

Show notes

Is Trumpism America's new governing ideology? Just asking questions.

Trump won decisively by modern standards, meaning for the first time in several cycles nobody is seriously disputing the results, but did he really win bigly? Does he have a governing mandate?

Today's guest says, not really. Yuval Levin is the director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute and the editor of National Affairs. He co-authored a paper published just before the election called "Politics Without Winners" about the inability of either Democrats or the GOP to build a lasting governing coalition in the 21st century.

He recently published some of his thoughts on the election in The Dispatch under the headline, What Trump's Win Doesn't Mean, writing "The 2024 election was very much of a piece with our 21st-century politics: It was a relatively narrow win owed almost entirely to negative polarization." We dig into that negative polarization, whether Trump was given a "mandate" by voters, and how Edmund Burke vs. Thomas Paine is still a relevant divide in contemporary politics.

Sources Referenced:

2024 Presidential General Election Results
Politics Without Winners: Can Either Party Build a Majority Coalition?
Yuval Levin in The Dispatch: What Trump's Win Doesn't Mean
2024 House General Election Results
2024 Senate General Election Results
AP VoteCast: How America voted in 2024
- Is Trump honest and trustworthy?
- Harris and Trump's moral character as seen by voters.
- College vs. no college
Cleveland-Stevenson Tariff Reform Portrait Handkerchief, 1892
Levin's book: The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left

Chapters:

00:00 Coming up
00:20 Is Trumpism America's governing ideology?
00:33 Subscribe to the channel!!!
00:54 Introducing Yuval Levin
02:22 What is the significance of Trump winning a fairly slim majority?
04:04 Given the sweep of all swing states, and the wins in the House and Senate, are you SURE this isn't a mandate?
07:25 Do the parties retain any internal coherence?
09:01 Which faction in the GOP is ascendant?
13:14 Why did people who called Trump untrustworthy still vote for him? What does that mean?
16:38 Comparing Trump and Grover Cleveland
24:40 Are we now are we coming out of this electoral results legitimacy crisis?
26:09 The history of populism in the Democratic party
29:53 The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left
42:51 Is the left going to be insanely statist forever?
48:04 Why does America consistently produce two major parties?
52:16 Is Yuval bullish on Elon and Vivek's D.O.G.E.?
55:39 Would it take for the Democrats to build a lasting coalition?
58:40 The Final Question: What does our political system lack?

The post Yuval Levin: What is Trump's "Mandate"? appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Lee Fang: Will Democrats Ever Recover From 2024? Nov 14, 2024

Show notes

Subscribe to the new Just Asking Questions Youtube channel here!

Donald Trump won the presidential election decisively, taking every single battleground state, and as we discussed last week with Patrick Ruffini, winning over new voters across all sorts of racial, age, and gender demographics. He's, once again, remade the electoral map, with Republicans capturing the Senate and the House.

What should Democrats learn from this loss? Lee Fang is an independent journalist and political commentator who runs a Substack at leefang.com. One of his most recent posts comments on the complete lack of self-reflection coming from many of the highly paid Democratic consultants who seem to have whiffed so badly with the Harris campaign messaging.

Sources Referenced:

2024 Presidential General Election Results
2024 Senate General Election Results
2024 House General Election Results
Lee Fang: Democratic Consultants Lash Out at Voters as Racist and Sexist
OpenSecrets: 2024 Presidential Race Funding
Financial Times: The Left Is Losing its Grip on Ethnic Minority Voters
The New York Times: Early Results Show a Red Shift Across the U.S.
Bernie Sanders' Open Letter to Democrats
The New York Times: California Election Results 2024
California State Ballot Measure Results
San Francisco Election Results

Chapters:

00:00 Coming up…
00:27 Intro Theme
00:53 Subscribe to the new channel
02:41 What should Democrats learn from this loss?
03:18 Democratic consultants lash out at voters as racist and sexist
06:34 White progressives vs. pretty much everyone else?
10:06 Party insiders are burying their heads in the sand
12:28 Will a reckoning come?
19:36 What issues on the left are most ripe for rethinking?
21:16 Border security
25:40 Bernie Sanders' postelection criticism of the Democrats
30:00 Jared Polis Democrats?
33:28 Elon Musk's Republicanism
36:04 The MeToo Culture and rightwing young men
50:07 Even California is shifting red
01:06:41 Is there any Democrat out there who you're bullish on?
01:09:33 This could all backfire on the GOP
01:13:43 Is censorship behind us?
01:17:19 What's one question that you think more people should be asking?

The post Lee Fang: Will Democrats Ever Recover From 2024? appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Introducing the Just Asking Questions YouTube Channel Nov 13, 2024

Show notes

Interrogating current events, challenging assumptions, uncovering facts, and exposing realities that the government and the media would rather not talk about. Now on a new YouTube channel, Reason's Just Asking Questions is a weekly show for honesty and open inquiry. We're skeptics of unexamined power. We don't want to be told what to think. But we do want to know which questions to start asking. Hosted by Liz Wolfe and Zach Weissmueller. Produced by John Osterhoudt.

Subscribe to the new channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@reasonJustAskingQuestions

The post Introducing the <em>Just Asking Questions</em> YouTube Channel appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Patrick Ruffini: Why Did Trump Win? Nov 07, 2024

Show notes

Why did Donald Trump win?

Trump is back. Back again. He's secured the Electoral College majority needed to become America's 47th president and looks on track for a popular vote majority—the first Republican to pull that off in more than 20 years.

A New York Times breakdown shows that across just about every type of county—urban, suburban, older population, younger, white, black, Latino—Trump improved his numbers.

Surprising to many was Trump's large improvement among Latinos of all kinds, despite—or maybe in some cases because of—his hardline immigration stances and insult comic Tony Hinchcliffe calling Puerto Rico a "floating island of garbage" at his Madison Square Garden rally shortly before the election. Yet seven percent more Puerto Rican Americans appear to have voted for Trump this year than in 2020.

One person who is less surprised than many is today's guest, Patrick Ruffini, who wrote a book predicting much of this called Party of the People: Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP. He's a Republican Party strategist, a pollster for Echelon Insights, and writes at The Intersection.

Sources Referenced:

2024 Presidential General Election Results
The New York Times: Early Results Show a Red Shift Across the U.S.
The Wall Street Journal: How Different Groups Voted in the 2024 Election
The married/unmarried gap
Associated Press: How America voted in 2024 (demographic breakdowns)
National Center for Education Statistics: College Enrollment Rates
Florida election results 2024 vs. 2012
VoteCommon Kamala Harris Ad

The post Patrick Ruffini: Why Did Trump Win? appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Dave Smith, David Stockman, and Jacob Grier: Who Is The Lesser Evil? Oct 31, 2024

Show notes

Is this the most important election ever? And who should win? Just asking questions.

Next week, America decides: elect the 78-year-old criminally indicted, twice-impeached ex-president who's pledged to impose a universal tariff of 20 percent and embark on the largest mass deportation in American history; or his opponent, the vice president, swapped in for a malfunctioning Joe Biden, whose first major policy proposal was to cap grocery store prices to fight inflation, and who has trouble explaining how she'd govern any differently than her increasingly unpopular predecessor. It's a close race.

Independents, including libertarians, will likely decide it.

So we've invited three of them on today with three different perspectives to explain their votes. The first is David Stockman. He's the former director of the Office of Budget Management under Ronald Reagan. He served as a U.S. representative, and he says whoever wins we're basically screwed because neither candidate is addressing the most important policy issues facing America today.

Then we'll talk to Dave Smith, a repeat guest on the show, host of the popular Part of the Problem podcast. He says he's reluctantly and probably voting for Trump because of the threat that Kamala Harris—and the political machine that she represents—poses to liberty in America.

And lastly, we'll talk with Jacob Grier, a writer and Reason contributor who says that from a libertarian and small government perspective, the choice is obvious. Donald Trump is an authoritarian threat and Kamala Harris is a far superior choice.

Let's just ask each of them some questions.