Worker and Parasite

In this episode Jerry and Stably discussed More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity by Adam Becker. Jerry values its look at the rationalist, effective altruist, and longtermist network and its critique of singularity, nanotechnology, and space-colonization beliefs. Stably finds it uneven and closer to magazine polemic than history, citing guilt by association and an AI chapter that has aged poorly. They question Becker’s proposed cap on billionaire wealth and ask what tangible harm his targets have caused, weighing Bill Gates’s geoengineering as an example. Neither fully recommends it, though both want a balanced primer for general readers.

In this episode Jerry and Stably discussed Buddha's Little Finger by Victor Pelevin. The hosts explored this postmodern Russian novel that weaves together multiple narrative threads across different time periods and realities. The protagonist Pyotr Void exists simultaneously as a patient in a 1990s Russian mental hospital and as a commissar to Bolshevik commander Chapayev in 1919. Through encounters with fellow patients whose delusions form separate vignettes—including a man believing he is a Mexican telenovela actress romantically involved with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and a drunk Russian intellectual inducted into a Japanese samurai clan—Pelevin constructs sophisticated commentary on post-Soviet Russian identity. Jerry and Stably discussed the novel's Buddhist philosophy, particularly how it functions as a Zen teaching device through paradox and riddle-like dialogue, depicting Pyotr's journey toward enlightenment and the realization of non-self. The translation was praised for its quality, and the hosts noted how Pelevin uses the patient hallucinations as political metaphors representing Russia's conflicting fantasies of merger with the West and East.

In this episode Jerry and Stably discussed Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong by J.L. Mackie, a dense, academic defense of moral error theory: the claim that no objective morality exists. They walked through Mackie's argument from relativity (moral codes vary across cultures) and his "argument from queerness" (an objective morality would have to be an inexplicably motivating fact unlike anything else we recognize as real), and his conclusion that this needn't lead to nihilism, since morality functions as an evolved, practically useful system for cooperation given humans' limited sympathy and scarce resources. They connected this to evolutionary psychology, discussed how rapid technological change (AI, simulated realities, warfare) could strain inherited moral intuitions, and debated whether openly admitting morality's non-objectivity destabilizes social cohesion. Despite finding the prose difficult, both recommended the book, particularly for readers already sympathetic to skepticism about objective morality.

In this episode Jerry and Stably discussed The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century by Walter Scheidel. The hosts examined Scheidel's thesis that historically, reductions in economic inequality have only occurred through four violent mechanisms: mass-mobilization warfare, transformative revolution, state collapse, and pandemic. They praised the book's meticulous, well-documented scholarship while noting its dense, repetitive style, and debated whether relative inequality (Scheidel's focus) matters as much as absolute living standards, using the Russian Revolution as a case study of leveling accompanied by catastrophic loss of wealth. They also discussed why humans psychologically fixate on inequality and whether today's disparities are comparable to historical ones. Both agreed the book rewards patience but isn't a breezy read, recommending readers focus on the introduction and conclusion if pressed for time.

In this episode Jerry and Stably discussed The God Test: Artificial Intelligence and Our Coming Cosmic Reckoning by Robert Wright. The book's first half explains AI's rise and risks; the second argues, via Teilhard de Chardin-style "complexification," that evolution is driving Earth toward a unified planetary consciousness, or "noosphere," with AI as the catalyst. Wright frames this as requiring expanded cognitive empathy and coordinated global governance to avoid catastrophe. Jerry and Stably examined the book's undercurrents of Buddhism, nonzero-sum game theory, and cosmic purpose, questioned whether Wright's proposed top-down steering contradicts his own bottom-up instincts, and debated whether moral progress or natural selection will ultimately determine humanity's fate. They also touched on Thomas Metzinger's theory of consciousness as a useful counterpoint.