Power Hour with Alex Epstein | 18 November 2020 | 1h 08m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with J. Storrs Hall about his book Where’s My Flying Car?: A Memoir of Future Past. Discusses what has held back many forms of progress, including flying cars, over the last half-century. Backgrounds the Great Stagnation and discusses how government funding of research promotes stagnation; how green philosophy promotes stagnation; the regulatory stifling of nuclear energy; and how to liberate human progress from its political and philosophical strangulation.
Via the excellent book review at Roots of Progress.
I support nuclear power: it’s much safer than the public realises, good technological choices could make it safer still, the regulatory environment is crazy. Nevertheless, listening to this podcast about how we just need to deregulate innovation and press down hard on the gas pedal makes me think of Nick Bostrom’s Vulnerable World hypothesis (e.g., https://aeon.co/essays/none-of-our-technologies-has-managed-to-destroy-humanity-yet ).
Book review at: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-wheres-my-flying