The Man in the Arena

My friend Brian Chau joins the podcast to talk about how life in DC is going. A few weeks ago we chatted on the CSPI podcast, and this can be seen as a followup to that discussion.

Our last conversation focused on the specifics of AI doomerism and why he’s not worried about the technology killing us all. This time, we go into detail about how things have been working out for him in DC. We begin by discussing the recent conversation between Tyler and Jonathan Haidt, which I posted thoughts about on X. The discussion then moves to its main part, which focuses on what things are like in the nation’s capital. Brian whitepills me a bit on DC. The people there seem to be better than both the voters and the punditocracy. This makes me wonder whether I should move to the area, and he presents a compelling case that I should, given that I’m getting sort of sick of the online discourse space, which is often depressing. Now that the conversation is over, I feel like this is a “grass is always greener” kind of thing. Whenever I talk to someone closer to the policy arena, I want to do something similar to them, but then when I reflect for even a little bit I decide that what I’m doing is quite enjoyable. But who knows? Maybe Brian planted a seed that will eventually grow.

I ask Brian about the influence of AI doomers in think tanks and government, and we discuss the landscape of the regulation debate. Part of me wonders whether regulation is something we don’t need to worry about too much due to policy inertia, but he makes the case that the danger is real enough to be a concern. We close with a grab bag of topics, including the relationship between the punditocracy and the policymaking class, and why I can’t stand to read articles about sex differences, though I promised to give Carole Hooven’s recent piece on why men dominate chess a try. To update everyone, I ended up liking it.

As always, make sure to subscribe to Brian’s Substack, where you can follow his work, including what he’s been doing with Alliance for the Future. I didn’t turn on the video recording this week, so unfortunately all we have is audio. And it seems that Substack transcripts aren’t working at the moment. I’ll see if I can add it later.