This is a crossover episode with the Seeking Truth From Facts podcast.

• (00:00) - Iranian missile attack vs Israel and missile defense
• (13:11) - Is there potential for a 1973-style oil crisis?
• (21:42) - Is NATO getting tired of the proxy war in Ukraine?
• (25:44) - Why has Europe declined relatively since 2008 and what are the consequences of said decline?
• (30:14) - Is procyclical European fiscal policy to blame?
• (34:52) - Has China's infrastructure boom been a white elephant?
• (41:37) - China's energy grid and solar energy transision
• (46:58) - Will India catch up to or overtake China?
• (57:07) - Is liberal democracy really necessary for long-term economic prosperity?
• (01:00:15) - How did Lee Kuan Yew transform Singapore?

Links:

Iran ballistic missiles and missile defense

https://stevehsu.substack.com/p/iran-vs-israel-implications-for-missile

Pershing 2 Missile

https://x.com/hsu_steve/status/1843450614552113316

Russia-Ukraine war and Iran blowback

https://x.com/hsu_steve/status/1844551899103863154

India development

https://x.com/hsu_steve/status/1814994391502667953

https://x.com/hsu_steve/status/1815047688829706279

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

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Steve Hsu is Professor of Theoretical Physics and of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering at Michigan State University. Previously, he was Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation at MSU and Director of the Institute of Theoretical Science at the University of Oregon. Hsu is a startup founder (SuperFocus, SafeWeb, Genomic Prediction, Othram) and advisor to venture capital and other investment firms. He was educated at Caltech and Berkeley, was a Harvard Junior Fellow, and has held faculty positions at Yale, the University of Oregon, and MSU. Please send any questions or suggestions to manifold1podcast@gmail.com or Steve on X @hsu_steve.

Samo Burja founded Bismarck Analysis, a consulting firm that investigates the political and institutional landscape of society. He is a Senior Research Fellow in Political Science at the Foresight Institute where he advises on how institutions can shape the future of technology. Since 2024, he has chaired the editorial board of Palladium Magazine, a non-partisan publication that explores the future of governance and society through international journalism, long-form analysis, and social philosophy. From 2020 to 2023, he was a Research Fellow at the Long Now Foundation where he studied how institutions can endure for centuries and millennia.

Samo writes and speaks on history, institutions, and strategy with a focus on exceptional leaders that create new social and political forms. Image has systematized this approach as “Great Founder Theory.”

Steve and Samo discuss:

• (00:00) - Introduction
• (01:38) - Meet Samo Burja: Founder of Bismarck Analysis
• (03:17) - Palladium Magazine: A West Coast Publication
• (06:37) - The Unique Culture of Silicon Valley
• (12:53) - Inside Bismarck Analysis: Services and Clients
• (21:35) - The Role of Technology in Global Innovation
• (32:13) - The Influence of Rationalists and Effective Altruists
• (48:07) - European Tech Policies and Global Competition
• (49:28) - The Role of Taiwan and China in Tech Manufacturing
• (51:12) - Geopolitical Dynamics and Strategic Alliances
• (52:49) - China's Provincial Power and Industrial Strategy
• (56:02) - Urbanization and Demography, Ancient Society
• (59:41) - Intellectual Pursuits and Cultural Dynamics
• (01:04:09) - Intellectuals, SF, and Global Influence
• (01:13:45) - Fertility Rates, Urbanization, and Forgotten Migration
• (01:22:24) - Interest in Cultural Dynamics and Population Rates
• (01:26:03) - Daily Life as an Intellectual

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

--

Steve Hsu is Professor of Theoretical Physics and of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering at Michigan State University. Previously, he was Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation at MSU and Director of the Institute of Theoretical Science at the University of Oregon. Hsu is a startup founder (SuperFocus, SafeWeb, Genomic Prediction, Othram) and advisor to venture capital and other investment firms. He was educated at Caltech and Berkeley, was a Harvard Junior Fellow, and has held faculty positions at Yale, the University of Oregon, and MSU.

Please send any questions or suggestions to manifold1podcast@gmail.com or Steve on X @hsu_steve.

This is a crossover episode in which https://x.com/loubohan interviews me for his podcast Deus Ex Machina.

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

Deus Ex Machina podcast:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/7mXUfNJdNnOjGfu6VGactr?si=Y3j1OZG4QsGdPhXd8dKsrw…

Timestamps:

• (00:00) - Growing up in Iowa. Athletics, Chinese culture. KMT and military family background.
• (11:48) - Hearing about the Cultural Revolution from my dad: his family experienced it firsthand in Zhejiang. Meanwhile, US experts and academics were entirely deluded about reality in PRC
• (20:55) - "Experts" are often miscalibrated
• (35:03) - Physicists and finance. Was Charlie Munger right to say it's a waste of talent to channel top brains into finance?
• (45:15) - Hedgehogs, Foxes, and Eagles. Polymathy.
• (48:41) - Development of modern China as the greatest story of the last 50 years. My first visit to China: the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone in 1992. US-China competition and the future of Asian Americans.
• (56:52) - Genomic Prediction. Genomics of cognitive ability. Leftists holding back genetic science. PING = NIH-funded Pediatric Imagining, Neurocognition, and Genetics study. Stephen J. Gould was a fraud. Asian culture (pragmatic realism) and resistance to woken...
• (01:05:20) - Physics and Free Will. Meat machines programmed by evolution to have an illusion of self?
• (01:10:04) - Copenhagen Interpretation of QM: Is there true randomness in Physics? Many Worlds, Foundations of QM, and groupthink in modern physics.
• (01:19:09) - Christianity, raised as a Methodist by my mother, whose family has been Christian since the 19th century. Religious Experience vs Physics viewpoint. Meat machines programmed by evolution to have mystical religious feelings?
• (01:21:28) - Raising children, family, happiness, the meaning of life in view of my father's life
• (01:24:34) - The meaning of life, "All is Vanity" (Ecclesiastes), Religion

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

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Steve Hsu is Professor of Theoretical Physics and of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering at Michigan State University. Previously, he was Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation at MSU and Director of the Institute of Theoretical Science at the University of Oregon. Hsu is a startup founder (SuperFocus.ai, SafeWeb, Genomic Prediction, Othram) and advisor to venture capital and other investment firms. He was educated at Caltech and Berkeley, was a Harvard Junior Fellow, and has held faculty positions at Yale, the University of Oregon, and MSU. Please send any questions or suggestions to manifold1podcast@gmail.com or Steve on X @hsu_steve.