Win-Win

Should Governments Or Markets Dictate AI Policy?

Liv Boeree — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 21:45:03 GMT

Advanced AI is coming. But who should we trust to govern it? The tech CEOs, or the government? Or something else entirely?

My guests today are two of the most qualified people on this topic: (former senior AI advisor to Trump) and (former OpenAI researcher). They also disagree heavily on the topic. So I asked them to debate it!

But this is no ordinary debate. It’s an ANTI-DEBATE: not only does each side argue their case, but they also have to red-team their own arguments and steelman each other too. Very win-win!

Created by , the Anti-Debate is an open-source format designed to help find novel synthesis and deeper truths on hotly contested topics. And given that Anthropic and the Department of War are already at war with each other, I can’t think of a hotter topic than this one!

One of the most unique conversations you’ll see this year. LMK what you think.

Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
3:42 - Daniel’s Story
4:34 - Dean’s Story
6:52 - Opening Statements
19:54 - Rebuttals
25:45 - Free Debate
36:32 - Steelmanning
45:40 - Red-teaming
51:38 - Synthesis
1:17:30 - Closing Statements

Links:
♾️ Anti-Debate Project: https://anti-debate.org
♾️ Daniel's
♾️ Dean's Blog
♾️ Light Haven filming location: https://www.lighthaven.space
♾️ Synthesis Media: https://www.synthesismedia.org
♾️ Hoover Institution: https://www.hoover.org

#53 - Greg Lukianoff - Free Speech in the Age of AI

Liv Boeree — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 01:58:58 GMT

Free speech is often treated as a political issue—something to be debated and quibbled over (oh the iron). But what if it is fundamental to civilization itself?

I sat down with — free speech advocate, first amendment attorney, and longtime leader of Fire.org — to explore why freedom of expression is humanity’s ultimate win-win innovation.

Greg strongly believes free speech is at risk across the globe. It's under threat from both government censorship AND from normal citizens, many of whom have become increasingly intolerant of allowing opposing views to be discussed. These pressures seem to only be increasing as we enter the AI era, which potentially offers censorship, surveillance and other oppression tools at scale.

At the same time, AI also offers the democratization of potentially hazardous information to violent actors, which in turn may encourage on governing authorities to clamp down even harder on speech. So how do we navigate this tension? How do we save free speech? That's what this conversation seeks to answer.

Huge thanks to for collaborating with me on this episode (they were the ones who organised this live event)!

Go support their important work at the link the below.

Chapters:
00:00 — Intro
01:42 — Why is Free Speech a Win-Win?
05:10 — Is Free Speech At Risk in the USA?
08:41 — Charlie Kirk & The Case of Larry Bushart
11:40 — How Is Technology Changing Free Speech?
18:49 — ACLU & Institutional Capture
21:57 — AI & The First Amendment
29:40 — How To Calm The Arms Race?
33:50 — The Hidden Cost of LLM Slop
38:22 — How To Design Better Social Media Algorithms?
41:07 — UK & European Hate Speech Laws & Censorship
47:18 — J.K Rowling & Free Speech Influencers
52:20 — Can Free Speech Survive Gen Z?
59:04 — How To Talk To Free Speech Skeptics

Links:
♾️ Greg Lukianoff: https://www.thefire.org/people/greg-lukianoff
♾️ FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression): https://www.thefire.org
♾️ Greg’s TED Talk on Free Speech:

♾️ The Larry Bushart Case: https://www.fire.org/cases/larry-bushart-v-perry-county
♾️ The Coddling of the American Mind: https://www.thecoddling.com
♾️ Karl Popper — Conjectures and Refutations: https://archive.org/details/karl-popper-conjectures-and-refutations-the-growth-of-scientific-knowledge

Credits:
♾️ Hosted by Liv Boeree
♾️ Produced by Luca de Vico
♾️ Event Production: the team at Fire.org

The Win-Win Podcast:
Poker champion Liv Boeree takes to the interview chair to tease apart one of the most fundamental forces shaping human behavior: competition.
Liv speaks with philosophers, technologists, scientists, founders, and public thinkers to understand how seemingly win-lose systems can be redesigned into win-wins.

Podcast links:
♾️ Website: https://www.winwinpodcast.com/
♾️ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@winwinpodcast
♾️ Spotify:

#winwinpodcast #freespeech #AI

#52 - Will MacAskill - What Comes AFTER Superintelligent AI?

Liv Boeree — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 14:07:58 GMT

Superintelligence is predicted to arrive within a decade. Obviously, there’s some risk we don’t survive that transition. But assuming we do… then what comes after? And how can we prepare ourselves - and society - for it?

Thanks for reading Win-Win! This post is public so feel free to share it.

I sat down to discuss this minor topic with philosopher , one of the few people (outside of the AI labs) actively researching it. He’s the lead researcher at Forethought - a nonprofit focused on how to navigate the transition to a post-AGI world safely. He’s also a former Oxford University professor, and a co-founder of the effective altruism movement, among other things.

As you’ll see, the conversation takes us to some weird, wonderful and ugly places: why “utopias” always seem to fail, why authoritarian lock-in is terrifyingly plausible, and why divvying up portions of the sun, space and the high seas through some form of decentralised governance now may be the best way to avoid living under a corporate dictatorship for the rest of time.

So ya know, the small stuff. Enjoy.

Chapters:
00:01:10 — Intro
00:04:11 — Frameworks For Thinking about The Future
00:06:40 — Why We Need to Think About These Questions Now
00:10:50 — Post AGI Worlds
00:14:16 — Blockers of Positive Futures
00:20:11 — Hedonium
00:23:45 — Universal Basic Resources
00:29:23 — Suffering Risks
00:33:52 — Viatopia
00:37:50 — Can We Understand — and Steer — Moral Fashions?
00:43:06 — Can AI Repair Our Shared Reality?
00:49:45 — Pluralistic Futures: Choosing How We Want to Live
00:54:57 — The Dangers of Elites Controlling AI
01:03:14 — Can We Measure How Well We See the Future?
01:06:50 — Purpose in a World of Abundance
01:09:20 — Sci-Fi Ideas Worth Writing Now
01:16:29 — Meaning in a Post-labor Economy
01:21:24 — How Does Moral Progress Actually Happen?
01:27:45 — Will’s Call to Action

Subscribe now

Links:
♾️ Will MacAskill’s website: https://william-macaskill.com
♾️ Forethought: https://www.forethought.org/
♾️ Essay on Viatopia https://www.forethought.org/research/viatopia
♾️ What We Owe the Future (Will MacAskill): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1541618629
♾️ Deep Utopia (Nick Bostrom): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1914741128
♾️ Utopia (Thomas More): https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2130
♾️ The Republic (Plato): https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1497
♾️ Island (Aldous Huxley): https://www.amazon.com/dp/0061561791
♾️ Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Robert Nozick): https://www.amazon.com/dp/0465051006
♾️ The Archipelago (Scott Alexander): https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/09/the-archipelago/
♾️ Grabby Aliens Model (Robin Hanson): https://grabbyaliens.com
♾️ The Fermi Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox
♾️ WEIRD Psychology (Joseph Henrich): https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780374173227
♾️ Protopia (Kevin Kelly): https://kk.org/thetechnium/protopia/
♾️ Universe 25 (John B. Calhoun): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2636191/
♾️ Dyson Swarm (Concept): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere
♾️ Effective Altruism: https://www.effectivealtruism.org
♾️ Giving What We Can: https://www.givingwhatwecan.org
♾️ 80,000 Hours: https://80000hours.org

Credits:
♾️ Hosted by Liv Boeree
♾️ Produced by Luca de Vico

The Win-Win Podcast:
Poker champion Liv Boeree takes to the interview chair to tease apart the complexities of one of the most fundamental parts of human nature: competition. Liv is joined by top philosophers, gamers, artists, technologists, CEOs, scientists, politicians and more to understand how competition manifests in their world, and how to change seemingly win-lose systems into Win-Wins.

Podcast links:
♾️ Website: https://www.winwinpodcast.com/
♾️ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWgq0OZMtwtOIyMsVM_vksqdfWcM-b68S
♾️ Spotify:

♾️ Pocketcast: https://play.pocketcasts.com/podcasts/7f708340-d17c-013b-f46e-0acc26574db2

#winwinpodcast #AI #superintelligence

What if we're all PARTIALLY right... about AI?

Liv Boeree — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 20:59:39 GMT

Artificial Intelligence. What was once a topic of only the academic elite is now the dinner conversation starter of our time. Everyone from grandma to your dog groomer has an opinion on it. As they should. After all, its tentacles are now up in everyone’s business in some way or another.

At the same time, its popularity has definitely lowered the average quality of discourse. Any of you fellow masochists stuck in the AI-twitter trenches like me will know just how vicious and tribal the dialogue has become. The accelerationists smear the safetyists, who finger-point at the technologists, who try to shield themselves behind the ethicists, who blame seemingly everyone but especially the safetyists who they accuse of secretly being accelerationists. Then you have the all the competing government & NGO interests, the religious groups, the manosphere, mother’s groups, leftists, libertarians, environmentalists and everything in between.

The schism-generating forces of the Culture Wars are hardly new, but they’re especially merciless on a topic as broad-ranging and disruptive as AI… because not only are the number of conflicting opinions growing rapidly, but the conviction of belief of each faction is calcifying too. Which doesn’t bode well for civilizational coordination around AI, should it be needed.

Which is why I teamed up with of to make the above video.

Titled “Faces of AI”, it’s an art-piece that attempts to portray the dizzying landscape of AI opinions (or at least, some fraction of that landscape), and then steelman and synthesize those opinions into a higher-dimensional, and thus hopefully more accurate, view. In other words, find a win-win which satisfies as many as possible. Which is not easy to do in six minutes, but we tried anyway.

Stephanie’s made a number of these “Faces of [X]” before, like this one on capitalism, which features three characters…

…pro capitalist Liv, anti-capitalist Liv, and then a friendly synthesis Liv. A relatively simple script formula.

We started out with the same plan for this AI video too.

the pro-AI “builder”

the anti-AI “humanist”

But as we began writing, we realised such a compression of reality would be a fundamental error from the start. So we added more…

the “skeptic”

the “ethicist”

and more

the patriotic “geopolitical realist”

this one will probably get me cancelled but was necessary anyway

…until we ended up with TEN characters. And that was still insufficient, frankly.

Anyway, just watch the video. I apologize if I butcher your accent, your gender, or your particular AI tribe, but know that I am not a professional actor and this was made as an earnest attempt to portray the valid opinions that each character brings to the table.

Remember: not all of these opinions are equally “correct”… rarely does the truth lie in the middle of a disagreement. But each character represents a legitimate concern, and thus, has a legitimate part to play in helping map the multi-dimensional, time-evolving complex hypershape that is the “truth” of the AI debate. And if we can get a clearer picture of the landscape ahead, we stand a better chance of navigating it.

Thanks for reading Win-Win! This post is public so feel free to share it.

LMK what you think! Also, if you’re feeling inspired, this video format is designed to be copy-able, if you’d like to make your own. Go check out to see how Stephanie makes them, and give her a follow too — the internet is flooded with too much schism-generating tribal content, and desperately needs more synthesis/win-win generating art and content. So if you do make your own, let us know and we’ll happily amplify it!

#50 - Samantha Sweetwater - Indigenous Wisdom, Ecology and AI

Liv Boeree — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 05:10:03 GMT

What if our ultimate purpose is to harmonize the forces of nature, including the nature of ourselves?

My guest this week thinks so. I sit down with systems thinker and author to talk about the meta-crisis and her new book “True Human” - a stunningly unique civilizational roadmap for these funky times.

I was introduced to Samantha via Daniel Schmachtenberger, whom many of you likely know (watch his episode here), and I was blown away by her vast expertise, which bridges everything from complexity science, indigenous wisdom, embodiment, psychology and systems theory. Much like this project, Samantha’s on a mission to explore how we might transition from the old extract-and-dominate paradigm towards a more reciprocal, harmonious and flourishing future.

We discuss so much: from game theory and institutional design, to how dreams and psychedelic insights are more valuable than we realize, why chatbots are effectively sociopaths, and why any attempt to align AI without listening to indigenous ecological knowledge is really f’ing stupid. We also explore new story structures, power OVER life versus the power OF life, and what a truly win-win civilization might look like.

If you’re interested in AI alignment, systems change, and generally defeating Moloch etc, this is one for you.

Chapters
02:18 – Samantha’s Backstory
11:55 – Finite And Infinite Games
17:00 – True Human
21:55 – Exploring Dreams
34:28 – The Great Separation
38:51 – Power Of Life vs Power OVER life
44:36 – The Balance Between Masculine And Feminine
1:05:23 – Observing An Animate World
1:14:45 – Achieving Transmigration
1:24:28 – Practices To Become More True Human
1:42:14 – On AI Alignment
1:59:58 – Begin To Embody Intelligence
2:06:31 – Why Homo Sapiens Exist To Serve Sentience

Links:
♾️ True Human Book: https://www.samanthasweetwater.com/tr...
♾️ Samantha’s Substack:

♾️ Silent Spring: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_...

Credits:
♾️ Hosted by Liv Boeree
♾️ Produced by Luca de Vico

The Win-Win Podcast:
Poker champion Liv Boeree takes to the interview chair to tease apart the complexities of one of the most fundamental parts of human nature: competition. Liv is joined by top philosophers, gamers, artists, technologists, CEOs, scientists, politicians and more to understand how competition manifests in their world, and how to change seemingly win-lose systems into Win-Wins.

#AI #ecology #complexity

Forget Black Mirror, it's time for a Bright White Mirror

Liv Boeree — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 23:58:57 GMT

Sick of endless dystopian sci-fi, and depressing, fatalistic comedy? Me too.

Yes, comedy and cynicism tend to go hand in hand. And internet memes are the main comedic currency of our times. That said, our future is far from certain. Which means it needs us, the creators of it, to dream big, and dream well. Which is hard for us to do when the TV & movie industries are hellbent on producing endless dystopian, apocalyptic fiction. If the world only imagines and consumes that kind of content, its far more likely to end up there.

So we need more inspirational art, stat.

Fortunately the folks at just ran a $10,000 contest encouraging people to make inspiring, uplifting, and forward-looking memes and short-form media. They also asked me to be one of the judges, and the results just got published.

Here are some of my favourites:

“P(Bloom)” by @10BillionFuture

This from Anders Sandberg

This one by Su Hyeong Lee legit made me lol:

This tight depiction of the power of hyperstition by MahmoudDAO

And drumroll…. the winner is:

“Voices from 2099” by JellyFishDao.

Watch it. It’s good stuff.

Got an idea for your own positive, win-winny, vision of the future?

Drop a link to it in the comments, and if I like it, I’ll amplify!

Liv

#48 - Jim Rutt - How Capitalism Became A Dark Game of Mind Control

Liv Boeree — Sun, 19 Oct 2025 18:56:09 GMT

Capitalism has historically been our biggest blessing. But what if it’s now turning into our biggest curse?

My guest this week believes so. Jim is an early internet pioneer, a complexity scientist, the former chairman of the Santa Fe Institute, and co-founder of the Game B movement... and he has a lot to say about how our economic and technological systems have trapped us in addictive, self-reinforcing feedback loops.

From smartphones engineered like slot machines to markets that manufacture desire rather than meet real needs, he argues that our current “Game A” world runs on a single signal — money-on-money return — and that this growth-at-all-costs monoculture is rapidly eroding our agency, our sanity, and our planetary stability.

This is where “Game B” comes in: a post-capitalist operating system built on multidimensional value, regenerative economies, and what he calls “membranes” — local, self-governing communities that cooperate through trust, technology, and shared sensemaking rather than rivalry and coercion.

So if, like me, you increasingly feel that modern life is engineered to keep us divided and distracted, and want to understand how to fix it, I highly recommend this episode.

♾️ Liv ♾️

Chapters:

01:42 - Intro

03:38 - Tech hygiene practices

06:57 - Why tech sabbaticals?

10:12 - The allure of slot machines

15:02 - Building tech responsibly

21:38 - Status games

23:34 - The market as an information ecosystem

31:38 - Digital status games

38:42 - Definition of Game A and Game B

52:14 - Preventing system collapse

01:05:52 - Practical Game B experiments

01:18:00 - Why Game A is self-terminating

01:27:45 - Planetary boundaries and population size

01:39:41 - How to fix the game from within it?

01:41:45 - Defeating tyrants and “big men”

01:49:18 - Jim’s trillion dollar idea

02:00:31 - AI consciousness

02:14:36 - Consciousness vs Intelligence

02:22:48 - The high stakes game of AI consciousness

02:26:32 - Rapid fire predictions

02:28:53 - Jim’s Win-Win

Links:

♾️ The Jim Rutt Show: https://www.jimruttshow.com

♾️ Jim’s Substack: jimrutt.substack.com

♾️ Jim’s X: https://x.com/jim_rutt?lang=en

♾️ Game B wiki: https://www.gameb.wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

♾️ Game B Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/gamebcore

♾️ Jim’s essay on smartphone dopamine: https://medium.com/@memetic007/reclaiming-our-cognitive-sovereignty-f49f30eb26bb

Credits:

♾️ Hosted by Liv Boeree

♾️ Produced by Luca de Vico

The Win-Win Podcast: Poker champion Liv Boeree takes to the interview chair to tease apart the complexities of one of the most fundamental parts of human nature: competition. Liv is joined by top philosophers, gamers, artists, technologists, CEOs, scientists, politicians and more to understand how competition manifests in their world, and how to change seemingly win-lose systems into Win-Wins.

Podcast links:

♾️ Youtube:

♾️ Spotify:

♾️ Pocketcast: https://play.pocketcasts.com/podcasts/7f708340-d17c-013b-f46e-0acc26574db2

#47 - Emmett Shear - Why Nature Holds the Answer To AI Alignment

Liv Boeree — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 23:47:39 GMT

Superintelligent AI is rapidly approaching, and we humans — or specifically, the corporations building it — are still a long way from proving superintelligent systems can be safely controlled or steered. But what if that’s the wrong way of viewing the problem? Is there an alternative path to ensuring AI will be aligned to the interests of *all* lifeforms?

Emmett Shear, my conversation partner for today, believes there is. Emmett is the founder of Softmax, a research team exploring the “organic alignment” approach to AI safety. He’s also the co-founder of a little company called Twitch, and a former CEO of OpenAI (for those two days when Sam Altman was temporarily fired). Quite the resume.

As you’ll hear, he’s highly skeptical of the current top-down approach to alignment. Most labs are currently trying to hard-code pre-determined values into their systems; a path he believes will almost certainly fail. agents is destined to fail, and why a bottom-up approach might be the only path forward for coexistence. We also get into why betrayal can sometimes be the moral choice; and how we might go about teaching AI to care for us as its own family, rather than see us as masters to obey (or perhaps more accurately, ants to squash).

So if you like designing Gods, this is one for you ;-)

Chapters:

01:04 - Organic Alignment

09:33 - The Formation Of Emergent Coordination

16:01 - Techniques For Creating Alignment

23:43 - Ideal Environment For Generating Alignment

30:09 - How Much Influence To Give AI

32:49 - The Global Super Organism Of The Market

40:41 - Group Questions

40:50 - Difference Between Coordination And Alignment

43:02 - What Is The Win Condition For Softmax?

50:17 - How To Keep Humans In The Loop?

58:57 - Selecting And Scaling The Right Models

1:02:09 - Blowtorch Theory & Black Holes

1:04:48 - Difference between Agents And Humans

1:07:25 - AI’s Capability For Self Modification And Replication.

1:14:35 - Alignment Capacity Vs Aligning With Humanity.

1:18:38 - Does Emmett Believe In God?

1:25:23 - Are Humans The Appendix To The Future Super Intelligence?

1:32:17 - Isn’t Human Ethics And Morality Kinda Sketchy?

1:36:17 - AI Consciousness

1:40:48 - One Axiom To Rule Them All?

#46 - Why We Should Embrace Energy Abundance - Isabelle Boemeke

Liv Boeree — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 17:12:58 GMT

Energy is the lifeblood of civilization. It powers everything we do. At the same time, our addiction to fossil fuels has sent us on a kind of carbon-coke-binge whose negative environmental effects are now coming home to roost. Is nuclear power the source of abundant clean energy that's been sitting under our noses this whole time?

My guest this week thinks so.

Isabelle Boemeke is a model-turned-nuclear energy advocate who has pivoted her career to understanding what roadblocks are stopping us from adopting the technology. She’s also someone who understands human nature deeply, and a close friend. As such, we tackle a bunch of topics; from the pros and cons of degrowth mindset, why Gen Z aren’t having sex anymore, the problem with fake “renewables” like biomass, decentralized energy grids, and whether we need an international energy commission equivalent for AI.

Also, techno-pastoralism. It’s gonna be a thing… please enjoy!

Chapters:

1:06 - Isabelle's Backstory

7:08 - Cognitive Impact Of Air Conditioning

10:13 - Renewables Vs Nuclear False Dichotomy

13:23 - Wind Energy

15:59 - Decentralized Energy Grids?

18:32 - The Problem With "Renewable" Labelling

25:26 - Public Messaging Mistakes

29:11 - History Of Nuclear

41:38 - Nuclear Accidents e.g. Chernobyl

44:52 - Counterfactuals of not discovering the bomb

48:25 - Comparison Of Nuclear And AI

52:08 - Lessons for AI Industry

56:20 - Iran's Nuclear Program

59:38 - Funding Of IAEA

1:07:11 - The AI Race - What About China?

1:08:22 - Decentralized Surveillance

1:14:29 - Finding Meaning In A “Brave New World”

1:16:56 - Young People & Celibacy

1:20:06 - Wireheading And Instant Gratification

1:33:42 - Techno Pastoralism

1:36:30 - Economics Of Nuclear

1:45:15 - Government Incentives

1:46:36 - Small Modular Reactors

1:53:30 - Circular Economies & Thorium

1:59:43 - Fast-tracking Nuclear Engineers

2:01:12 - Why Writing A Book Is Hellish

2:09:36 - Rapid Fire Predictions

Links:

♾️ Isabelle IG: https://www.instagram.com/isabelleboemeke?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=Y2xkOG9kd3lvdW9h

♾️ Isodope Website: https://isodope.com

♾️ Isabelle X: https://x.com/isabelleboemeke

♾️ i_sodope X: https://x.com/isodope

♾️ Rad Future: https://www.amazon.com/Rad-Future-Untold-Nuclear-Electricity/dp/0593716329

Credits:

♾️ Hosted by Liv Boeree

♾️ Produced by Luca de Vico

Podcast links:

♾️ Youtube:

♾️ Spotify:

♾️ Pocketcast: https://play.pocketcasts.com/podcasts/7f708340-d17c-013b-f46e-0acc26574db2

#winwinpodcast #nuclearenergy #RadFuture

#45 - Dominic Cummings on why the West is eating itself

Liv Boeree — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 05:31:37 GMT

is one of the most polarizing figures in Britain. He's also one of its greatest strategists: he was one of the main masterminds behind Brexit. He served as Chief Advisor to Prime Minister Boris Johnson for a stint. He even had Benedict Cumberbatch play him in a movie!

What I find most interesting about him is his mind for systems. He’s had a deeper view into the inner machinations of the British & European governments than most could hope for in a lifetime. This gives him a unique perspective on this blog’s main theme: how to build more omni-win institutions that adapt and grow with the times?

As you’ll hear in this conversation, what he saw in there was not pretty. To paraphrase: “it’s a rotting carapace that cares only for itself”. Given the many soul-crushing scandals that have plagued Britain & America (and frankly much of the world) like cover-ups around grooming gangs and countless other horrors, we should take heed of his warnings.

So if you’re craving real talk about deep states, governance structures, personal competitiveness and what it might take to rebuild the West and its systems, this is one for you! Chapters etc below.

Much love,

Liv

Thanks for watching Win-Win! This post is public so feel free to share it and subscribe, it’s all free!

Chapters:

1:51 Is Dominic competitive?

7:30 First Interest in Politics

12:18 Beginning of his Euroskepticism

16:50 The current state of the British regime

23:04 His Time in No.10 Downing Street

33:00 Who is actually in charge?

36:38 More COVID screwups

40:05 Is the System conscious?

45:15 Avoiding future pandemics

1:01:27 Importance of stability

1:07:17 Bureaucratic Nightmares

1:11:57 Machiavelli And Escaping the Wheel

1:15:53 Singapore

1:19:34 Digitize the Government?

1:22:00 Moloch, Incentives & Political sacrifice

1:25:28 The Media Is A Simulation of Reality

1:29:12 How to design better social media platforms

1:31:05 Sensemaking in the AI age

1:37:24 UK Grooming Gangs Coverup

1:48:21 Political Gaslighting, Freedom of Speech & 2nd Amendment

1:50:38 Blasphemy and Islamophobia Laws in UK

1:56:10 The Sacred Cow of Multiculturalism

2:02:22 Core Principles To Live By

2:07:48 Smart vs Dumb Approaches to Regulation

2:17:05 Rapidfire Predictions

The Win-Win Podcast:

Poker champion Liv Boeree takes to the interview chair to tease apart the complexities of one of the most fundamental parts of human nature: competition. Liv is joined by top philosophers, gamers, artists, technologists, CEOs, scientists, politicians and more to understand how competition manifests in their world, and how to change seemingly win-lose systems into Win-Wins.

Subscribe now

Links:

♾️ Dominic’s X: https://x.com/Dominic2306

♾️ Dominic’s Substack:

♾️ Simulacra and Simulation: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

♾️ Moloch explainer:

• Why The News Is Destroying Us | Moloch & T...

♾️ Brexit The Movie: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8425058/

♾️ Mary Wakefield (Dominic’s wife) response to the movie: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/b...

Credits:

♾️ Hosted by Liv Boeree

♾️ Produced by Luca de Vico

♾️ Intro by Perry Sinclair

Podcast links:

♾️ Youtube:

♾️ Spotify: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/winwin-pod/episodes/45-Dominic-Cummings--Stagnation--Corruption--Rebooting-The-System-e35sqau/a-ac305h2

♾️ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...

♾️ Pocketcast: https://play.pocketcasts.com/podcasts...

#winwinpodcast #government #politics

#44 - How Bad Is Population Decline, Really?

Liv Boeree — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 21:26:30 GMT

The world —and especially the West— is having fewer babies than ever. But what's causing this rapid shift? Is it really a big of a deal as many claim? If so, what can we do about it?

My guest today thinks so. Professor Dean Spears is a demographer, economist and author of the new book "After The Spike" which explores why people are choosing to have fewer babies, and the stark realities it would mean if births remain far beneath replacement level as they currently are.

As you’ll see, this is was live-with-a-studio-audience recorded conversation, so worth sticking around for the latter half of the episode, which opens up into a group discussion with the audience, including number of previous Win-Win guests. After all, such a complex and deeply personal topic requires as many perspectives as possible!

Curious to hear what you think too, so feel free to add your thoughts in the comments. Enjoy!

Chapters

0:22 - Introduction to the Fertility Crisis

4:12 - Why Over-Population Isn’t A Thing Any More

11:17 - What’s Causing It?

16:03 - Role of Social Trends

18:20 - Role of Biological Infertility & Toxins

23:10 - Wouldn’t Fewer People Take Pressure Off The Environment?

28:56 - Climate, Ocean and Other Planetary Boundaries

32:28 - Paul Erlich and Dangers of Zero-Sum Thinking

36:25 - Can’t AI & Robots Fill The Economic Gap?

42:58 - Historical Strategies That Increased Birth Rates?

48:40 - Impact of Contraception

52:57 - Which Sub-Populations Are Bucking The Trend?

57:37 - How To Help Women Have Careers And Babies?

59:56 - The Issues of A Heavily Elderly Population

1:05:13 - Examples of Successful Incentives

1:09:07 - More AI Stuff

1:17:47 - Opportunity Cost Hypothesis

1:22:28 - Won’t People Just Adapt?

1:27:55 - COVID-19 And Fertility Rate

1:29:17 - Family Size Distributions

1:34:31 - Research on Declining Intimacy

Subscribe now

Links:

♾️ Dean's Website: https://deanspears.net/

♾️ After The Spike Book - https://www.simonandschuster.com/book...

♾️ Dean's NYTimes article: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/29/op...

♾️ Population Projections: https://ourworldindata.org/un-populat...

Credits

♾️ Hosted by Liv Boeree

♾️ Produced by Luca de Vico

The Win-Win Podcast

Poker champion Liv Boeree takes to the interview chair to tease apart the complexities of one of the most fundamental parts of human nature: competition. Liv is joined by top philosophers, gamers, artists, technologists, CEOs, scientists, athletes and more to understand how competition manifests in their world, and how to change seemingly win-lose games into Win-Wins.

Alternative links:

♾️ Youtube: • Win-Win with Liv Boeree

♾️ Spotify:

♾️ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...

♾️ Pocketcast: https://play.pocketcasts.com/podcasts...

#winwinpodcast #populationdecline #fertilitycrisis

#43 - Should We Digitize The Government To Save Democracy? - Jamie Joyce

Liv Boeree — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 20:47:49 GMT

Democracy is struggling, in part because human politicians are an outdated technology—no one human can sufficiently model nor represent the complexity of the preferences of their constituents. Could we save it by supplementing politicians with digitized databases?

My guest today think so. Jamie Joyce is the founder of the Society Library, a non-profit attempting to archive and condense all of humanity’s key ideas, ideologies, and world-views into easily navigable maps so that key decision-makers can come to more informed conclusions, especially on important topics like nuclear power and AI.

So if sensemaking is your thing, I highly recommend this conversation. We get into everything from navigating AI slop, to (the surprising value of) Alex Jones-type conspiracies, and what happens when you treat information not as content to consume, but as infrastructure to build. A bibliophiles dream! Also Jamie has a crazy origin story you must hear, so don’t miss that bit.

Pls enjoy, and lmk your thoughts in the comments!

Thanks for reading Win-Win! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Chapters:

0:00 - Intro

4:30 - Diablo Canyon Debate Map

14:26 - How To Evaluate Evidence?

16:18 - How To Minimize Bias?

19:06 - How To Handle Bad Faith & Fringe Perspectives

24:16 - What About Flat Earth Type Conspiracies?

28:37 - Cyber Attacks On Internet Archive

33:54 - Modernizing Government

41:01 - The Evil of Corporate Lobbying

49:40 - Managing Info Hazards

53:19 - Society Library Virtues And Values

57:06 - When Jamie Neatly Went Blind

1:01:27 - Improving The Information Ecosystem

1:12:44 - Prediction Markets and Sense-making

1:15:25 - Structuring Data For Improved Learning

1:22:17 - Society Library Meme Token Nonsense

1:32:21 - Rapid Fire Predictions

1:38:51 - Jamie's Favorite Win-Win

Links:

♾️ The Society Library : https://www.societylibrary.org

♾️ Internet Archive : https://archive.org

♾️ Jamie’s X : https://x.com/justjamiejoyce?lang=en

Subscribe now

Credits:

♾️ Hosted by Liv Boeree

♾️ Produced by Luca de Vico

The Win-Win Podcast

Poker champion Liv Boeree takes to the interview chair to tease apart the complexities of one of the most fundamental parts of human nature: competition. Liv is joined by top philosophers, gamers, artists, technologists, CEOs, scientists, athletes and more to understand how competition manifests in their world, and how to change seemingly win-lose games into Win-Wins.

Podcast links

♾️ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWgq0OZMtwtOIyMsVM_vksqdfWcM-b68S

♾️ Spotify:

♾️ Pocketcast: https://play.pocketcasts.com/podcasts/7f708340-d17c-013b-f46e-0acc26574db2

#Winwinpodcast #Democracy #Sensemaking

Can We Save Our Internet From The Bots, AND Preserve Anonymity?

Liv Boeree — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 14:22:49 GMT

Dead Internet Theory is hot right now: the idea that our beloved web is slowly becoming a bot-infested swamp devoid of authentic human content. And given we’re already knee-deep in AI slop, I’d say it’s already here. Online reviews are now meaningless. Most “news” articles on LinkedIn are self-referential LLM hallucinations. Okay sure, Linkedin has always been a ghoulfest… but have you tried shopping online for clothes lately? Search results have been taken over by “brands” selling implausibly cheap, eye-catching items that—if they ever arrive from China—look nothing like their marketing pictures.

expectations vs reality of online clothes shopping in 2025

Every act of consumption is now a negatively-weighted roll of the dice, with near zero recourse for us consumers if we get rooked. Same goes with news or political info—AI has made it easier than ever for the malicious to invent and spread targeted propaganda straight into our brain stems. I’ve noticed this personally: a growing % of replies to my X posts are clearly bots, especially when I say something about AI or the middle east, which often attract comments within minutes from a swarm of anon accounts. Most of these “accounts” don’t even follow me. It’s like they’re a drone swarm programmed to seek and attack whichever typed thoughts need to be shut down or amplified as per directive.

So how can we fight back against this army of the dead, especially on platforms like X? The midwit answer of course is: eRadiCatE aNonYMity! Just make every social media user or digital business verify themselves, faces to names, banking KYC style!

No thank you, sir—in the era of techno-capital surveillance, online anonymity may be our last bastion of freedom. For the 1 in 3 humans living under authoritarian regimes, it already is. Even supposed free-speech democracies like UK and Germany are steadily strangling themselves by the tentacles of tyranny.

Yascha Mounk

Europe Really Is Jailing People for Online Speech

Please support the cause of free speech by becoming a paying subscriber for less than the cost of a cup of coffee a week…

a year ago · 535 likes · 319 comments · Yascha Mounk

(And given how fast AI-enhanced synthetic biology is being developed and democratized to every omnicidal loon with a wifi connection, and how little effort being put into defense against future pandemics, we’re probably just a couple of bioterrorism events away from full-blown surveillance states anyway…)

Nonetheless, anonymity must be preserved for as long as possible. So how to do that? It will require a deep re-questioning of our assumptions. And the first of those assumptions for the chopping block is: should online anonymity always cost nothing?

Currently, X’s business model is an inversion of reality: only those who go to the inconvenience of verifying themselves (and have the cojones to put their real name to their words) — have to pay money. Meanwhile, the spambots and anonymous trolls get a free ride. Sure, they supposedly get a small algorithm hit, but given they can just flood the system with more and more accounts at zero cost, it clearly doesn’t seem to be much of a disincentive.

This is an inversion of reality, because in the real world, it is *extremely* costly to be anonymous. IRL humans can see and remember who you are, so any anon worth their salt must isolate away, or at least build a very elaborate web of lies and misdirection about their identity. Generally speaking, you don’t get to act like an asshole with impunity and still reap the benefits of society. It’s one or the other. And this trade-off is what allows high-trust civilization to develop in the first place.

But the internet never developed such an immune system. Why? Because it is anonymous by default. Of course, this what made it so awesome: a free and open world where novel ideas and weird communities could safely emerge and flourish. At least, for a while. Inevitably, its lack of immune system allowed the grifters and psychopaths (be they humans or bots) to exploit that gentle network and ruin it for everyone else.

So why not make those who want anonymity… pay *something* for it? Right now, it costs (effectively) nothing to hide in the shadows and/or spam the network. If X truly wants to rein in the bots and trolls, improve its signal to noise ratio, *and* maintain revenue, why not flip the fee structure so that the anons pay more than the brave souls who speak under their own name? Just enough to disincentivise the spammers, but affordable enough for dissidents who need it to stay in the conversation.

AND YES, YOU CAN PAY AND STAY ANONYMOUS. We live in age of crypto. We have zero-knowledge-proof protocols like Z-Cash which let you transact without revealing to the other party who you are. If X and other platforms adopted those payment methods, we’d have a legit omni-win situation: the anon humans win, the public humans win, the platforms win, the information ecosystem wins. Sure, the bot armies lose, but they’re army of the dead anyway, so screw them.

Privacy and openness are scarce, beautiful common-pool resources that need to be protected. Our decaying internet is yet another commons befalling a tragedy, and if we want to save it from total collapse, we must protect it from those who relentlessly exploit it. Most anonymous users are good people, but most online criminals are anonymous. If you want the freedom to act with impunity, you should burden the cost of it, not everyone else.

Make the bots pay.

#42 - Why We (Probably) Shouldn't Race To Build Superintelligent AI

Liv Boeree — Wed, 21 May 2025 20:38:01 GMT

Humanity is racing to build superintelligent AI.

But what happens if we create beings far smarter than us—and they decide upon different or conflicting goals?

In this special Win-Win IRL episode, I sat down with Anthony Aguirre —CEO of Future of Life Institute and author of essay “Keep The Future Human”—and Malo Bourgon —CEO of Machine Intelligence Research Institute—for a no-holds-barred conversation on finding alignment, avoiding power concentration and surveillance states, and the geopolitical implications of AGI.

We explore spicy topics like: why can’t the market be trusted to self-regulate AI? How worried should we be about power concentration, and how do we stop it? What happens if even the good guys lose control of the systems they’ve built?

Of course, this being win-win, we also try to figure out how to reap the boon of AI, *and* mitigate its worst risks… whether that’s via compute governance and open-source safety measures, or collaborative international treaties and new models for responsible innovation. So buckle up for a provocative episode that challenges assumptions and asks what it will really take to keep the future human.

And stick around for the audience questions towards the end. T’was quite the lineup of superstars as you’ll see… in fact it was at this event that this moment occurred! Chapters & Notes below.

Chapters:

0:00 - Intro

4:08 - Different Risk Types

10:23 - Why not just trust the market to manage risk?

14:56 - Dangers of Power Concentration

21:51 - Solutions to the Dilemma?

31:19 - Should Compute be Regulated?

37:00 - Taylor Capito - Is this an Evolutionary Nexus?

40:15 - J.D. Ross - Decentralization vs Centralization?

44:20 - Igor Kurganov - AI & Bio

44:43 - Isabelle Boemeke - Nuclear Power & AI?

48:53 - Peter Wang - Wrong Stories Attract Wrong People

55:34 - Aurora Quinn-Elmore & Eliezer Yudkowsky - Coherent Extrapolated Volition

1:03:13 - How to embed Win-Win philosophy into AGI?

Links :

♾️ Keep the Future Human Paper: https://keepthefuturehuman.ai

♾️ Future of Life Institute: https://futureoflife.org

♾️ MIRI: https://intelligence.org

♾️ Superintelligence Book by Nick Bostrom - https://www.amazon.com/Superintellige...

Credits

♾️ Hosted by Liv Boeree

♾️ Produced by Luca de Vico

The Win-Win Podcast Poker champion Liv Boeree takes to the interview chair to tease apart the complexities of one of the most fundamental parts of human nature: competition. Liv is joined by top philosophers, gamers, artists, technologists, CEOs, scientists, athletes and more to understand how competition manifests in their world, and how to change seemingly win-lose games into Win-Wins. Podcast links

#41 - Why We All Need to Learn To Live With AI - Harper Carroll

Liv Boeree — Sat, 17 May 2025 16:45:51 GMT

What if AI isn’t replacing us—but redefining what it means to be skilled? Should we even bother learning to code anymore? How do we avoid AI-enhanced scams?

In this episode I chat to ML engineer and educator Harper Carroll. A fundamental optimist at heart, Harper has made it her mission to teach people stay ahead of the AI revolution for as long as possible. A grounded look at the tools, challenges, and upsides of the tsunami of AI tools flooding the market, as well as an unusual exploration of the spirituality (or lack of it) in Silicon Valley.

Chapters

00:00 - Intro & Harper’s Story

04:58 - Growing a Following

07:19 - AI vs Machine Learning

11:18 - Harper’s Mission

18:47 - Her Favorite Applications of AI

27:30 - Choosing Between Tools

29:46 - Integrating AI in Schools

33:14 - Regulation to Prevent Over-Financial Optimization

37:01 - Leveling the Playing Field with AI

46:44 - Should People Still Learn to Code?

51:08 - AI Therapists?

58:01 - AI & Spirituality

1:03:23 - Cultivating Intuition and Wisdom

1:09:26 - Silicon Valley, Tech Bros and Femininity

1:16:05 - AI Generated Scams

1:21:15 - The Cat-and-Mouse Game

1:28:33 - The Hive Mind

1:35:24- Agency and Gratitude Links

Follow Harper here:

♾️ Harper Carroll IG : https://www.instagram.com/harpercarro...

♾️ Harper Carroll Youtube : / @harpercarrollai
♾️ Harper Carroll X : https://x.com/harperscarroll?lang=en

Help Me Stop The Torture of US Farm Animals

Liv Boeree — Fri, 09 May 2025 17:55:54 GMT

I’m thrilled to announce I’m teaming up with one of the leading organizations in farmed animal welfare — AnimalEquality.org— to help stop the industrialized torture of animals on US factory farms.

If you saw any of my recent discussion with , you’ll appreciate just how horrific the conditions are for the vast majority of farmed pigs and chickens in America (and if you haven’t, at least watch the short video above to understand why these nightmare conditions aren’t just bad for the animals, they’re dangerous for our health too).

I’ve decided to fundraise for Animal Equality specifically because their campaign tactics are provenly effective: they’ve successfully pressured many corporations to stop the most egregious practices, and their team is still so small that each new campaigner scales their impact linearly.

As such, I’m going to match up to $75,000 of your donations to them for the next ten days. Please do your part by donating here. Thank you!

#40 - How To End Factory Farming

Liv Boeree — Fri, 18 Apr 2025 18:39:43 GMT

Factory farming is one of the most universally loathed industries on Earth. After all, it sucks for our health, our animals, our environment, and it's putting small farmers out of business. So why is it still happening?

I chat with — a leading researcher in farm animal welfare and global food policy, to understand the true scale and impact of intensive “factory farmed” animal agriculture, and what we can do to improve it as appetites for meat increase.

We hear how corporate lobbying and political corruption have allowed the normalization of practices so harmful to both human and animal health they take your breath away… including irresponsibility towards deadly pathogens like H5N1, intentional mass animal torture, chronic antibiotic misuse and environmental contamination of everything downstream of these giant farms.

On the more positive side, we explore the growing bipartisan support for animal welfare among voters, and how simple ballot measures could radically shift the future of our food back onto a healthier, more win-win path.

So strap in for an intense episode—but one that’s packed with practical solutions and many reasons for hope.

Please share widely! Chapters and show notes below.

Chapters

0:00 - Intro & Lewis's life story

4:20 - What Qualifies as a Factory Farm?

14:20 - The Human Cost Of Factory Farming

20:33 - U.S. Labeling Standards

25:11 - Pandemic Risks from Factory Farming

31:45 - Environmental Impacts

36:28 - Mental Health Of Farm Workers

43:13 - Undercover Reporting

48:14 - Political Corruption and Incentives

53:14 - EATS Act & the Farm Bill

1:00:32 - Ag-gag Laws

1:04:32 - Improvements & Solutions

1:17:29 - Government Subsidies

1:24:02 - Technological Solutions

1:31:08 - Cultivated Meat

1:39:52 - What YOU can do!

1:45:38 - Finding a Win-Win Future of Farming

Links :

♾️ US Statistics on Factory Farming: https://ourworldindata.org/data-insig...

♾️ Global Statistics on Factory Farming https://ourworldindata.org/how-many-a...

♾️ Voters Demand Farm Animal Protections : https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/... ♾️ Take Action to Oppose the EATS act / anti Prop 12 addition to the Farm Bill: https://animalequality.org/stop-eats-...

♾️ Follow Lewis on Twitter: www.twitter.com/lewis_bollard

♾️ Follow Lewis on Substack: https://substack.com/@farmanimalwelfare

Credits ♾️ Hosted by Liv Boeree ♾️ Edited and Mixed by Jackson Page ♾️ Produced by Luca de Vico

The Win-Win Podcast

Poker champion Liv Boeree is joined by top researchers, philosophers, gamers, artists, technologists, CEOs, scientists, athletes and more to understand how competition manifests in their world, and how to design incentives to fix coordination problems and change lose-lose games into Win-Wins.

Podcast links

♾️ Youtube:

• Win-Win with Liv Boeree

♾️ Spotify:

♾️ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...

♾️ Pocketcast: https://play.pocketcasts.com/podcasts...

#winwinpodcast #animalwelfare #factoryfarming

Win-Win Came to Life on the TED stage!

Liv Boeree — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 23:08:50 GMT

Chris Anderson and a very excited me

I just got home from a week at the annual TED conference, where I was lucky enough to be one of seven new curators to be given a full hour of stage time to fill with speakers of my choice.

Naturally, my theme was Win-Win… specifically, “how can we upgrade the civilizational games we play to make them more win-win?”. A solid choice because not only would doing this be very useful for society; it’s also sufficiently broad that a newbie curator could cram it with all the game topics she cares most about.

My outfit for the session. Who said coordination problems couldn’t be fun?

My opening speaker was Tristan Harris on the AI race. I wanted someone who groks the technology game deeply; not only the “how does MY company win” game… but also the game of “how do we build a better meta-environment for tech development in general so that we don’t end up either enslaved by giant corporations or driven off a cliff by them because they went so fast they didn’t build a steering wheel in time” game.

And as someone who was successful at both the first (he successfully sold his company Apture to Google)… AND the second game (he became a design ethicist at Google before quitting to start the excellent ), Tristan was an obvious choice. And he absolutely crushed it. I expect his talk to be released very soon.

Tristan Harris bringing the memes

Next was Cate Hall. Cate - follow her at - is one of my dearest friends from poker, who has an incredible story of recovering her personal agency; she went from hotshot (but unhappy) D.C. lawyer, to top professional poker player, to rock bottom isolated drug addict on the verge of death, to a happily married CEO of one of the most valuable and ambitious non-profits in America.

Why, you may wonder, is her story a win-win? Because if we can teach even the destitute how to recover and harness their own agency, it’s a huge step towards solving many of our societal ills. And given how readily we are outsourcing our agency to digital tools and artificial intelligences, it’s even more important we find new ways to keep our agency muscles strong.

Cate is amazing and you should follow her

Next up was something truly experimental: the first ever live performance of a Faces of X ! Faces of X is a unique series of videos where one person acts out the different perspectives of a hotly debated culture war topic like capitalism, or race, or gender etc, and tries to find a synthesis. To see what I mean, here’s the original “Faces of Capitalism” video starring yours truly:

…but because my acting is thoroughly mediocre at best, for this live rendition we brought on the brilliant professional actor Bill Heck to bring it life. We then heard from its creator, the brilliant . Once again, they both ABSOLUTELY CRUSHED IT.

Bill Heck yes

Steph Lepp

Next up things got real: factory farming. As you probably know, factory farming has been a top of mind issue for me, especially since my World Series of Poker win last year.

Given that, I wanted to bring on a leading expert on the topic —Lewis has worked nearly his whole life on bringing relief to the billions of animals suffering yearly on the worst farms, and he threaded the delicate needle between horror and hope on this tough topic with class. After all, how can we have a win-win world if we aren’t willing to look at the most lose-lose parts of humanity? And factory farming is surely one of the biggest omni-loses for humans, animals and planet going. So if you end up only watching one talk from my session when it gets published, please make it this one.

look, Lewis is a tall man, okay

To round the session out was someone who is the living definition of a game-changer: Boyan Slat. Boyan, if you don’t know him, is the founder of The Ocean Cleanup — you know, that little non-profit that is singlehandedly reversing the nightmare that is ocean plastic pollution by filtering it from rivers and sucking it back out the Pacific before it breaks down into microplastics that end up lodged permanently in our brains.

Boyan Slat, the hero of our times

IMO Boyan and his team are worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize, because this is one of the few times in history that a disgustingly hard tragedy of the commons is being solved both retroactively and for the future, and as the crowd watched his footage of hundreds of tonnes of plastic being fished OUT the ocean instead of into it, he received not one but TWO standing ovations, including likely the first ever *mid-speech* standing ovation in TED history. That’s how powerful his talk was. That’s how much of a game-changer Boyan and the Ocean Cleanup is. And I am so proud and grateful that he got to be a part of my session.

I’m also so grateful to TED, and particularly Chris Anderson, for taking this gamble. It can’t be easy to hand over such an established and respected platform as their stage to an outsider, and especially on such spicy topics as these. But they did it, and made me feel as welcome and heard as any long-time patron. And I’m so grateful to my speakers, who worked so hard and all knocked it out the park. There are few more hectic experiences than stepping out onto that red circle, and if any of you readers get the chance, take it.

In the meantime, watch this space for the talks to get published!

#39 - Daniel Kokotajlo on Wargames, Superintelligence & Quitting OpenAI

Liv Boeree — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 20:49:42 GMT

AI is developing at breakneck speed—but are we prepared for what’s coming?

To explore this question Igor and I grabbed leading AI researcher and forecaster Daniel Kokotajlo for a conversation about why he left OpenAI, what's right and wrong with their company culture, and how tabletop wargames are one of the best tools we have to prepare for AGI and superintelligence in the current hyper-competitive environment.

Learn how these simulations—often used by militaries—can help us better forecast the geopolitical and technical dynamics of AI development, and why so many of them end with one person taking over the world. We also get into the topics of alignment, incentive structures, reasons for hope and sci-fi. And of course, lots and lots of predictions. Win-Win!

Chapters

0:00 - Intro

01:06 - AI Wargame & Superintelligence

05:15 - Resigning from OpenAI

09:15 - That Non-Disparagement Clause & His Equity

12:50 - Could OpenAI's behavior be Justified?

20:50 - Governance in a world with AGI

23:49 - Grading Daniel's AI predictions

31:37 - Hyperstition yay or nay?

38:09 - AI war games as simulations

46:50 - AI deception and misalignment

53:27 - More AI war games

1:03:16 - Common sense AI policies

1:23:01 - Science Fiction

1:27:12 - Rapid fire predictions

Show notes & links :

♾️ Daniel's new Predictions : https://ai-2027.com

♾️ His Historic predictions : https://www.alignmentforum.org/posts/6Xgy6CAf2jqHhynHL/what-2026-looks-like

♾️ AI - Futures: https://ai-futures.org

♾️ Time Article on Daniel : https://time.com/7086285/ai-transparency-measures/

♾️ Professional Wargaming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_wargaming

♾️ Leopold Aschenbrenner’s “Situational Awareness”: https://situational-awareness.ai/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/situationalawareness.pdf

♾️ Daniel’s X: https://x.com/DKokotajlo Credits

♾️ Hosted by Liv Boeree & Igor Kurganov

♾️ Edited and Mixed by Jackson Page

♾️ Produced by Luca de Vico

The Win-Win Podcast

Poker champion Liv Boeree takes to the interview chair to tease apart the complexities of one of the most fundamental parts of human nature: competition. Liv is joined by top philosophers, gamers, artists, technologists, CEOs, scientists, athletes and more to understand how competition manifests in their world, and how to change seemingly win-lose games into Win-Wins.

Podcast links

♾️ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWgq0OZMtwtOIyMsVM_vksqdfWcM-b68S

♾️ Spotify:

♾️ Pocketcast: https://play.pocketcasts.com/podcasts/7f708340-d17c-013b-f46e-0acc26574db2

#winwinpodcast #ai #openai

#38 - Manu Meel on Healing College Campus Division

Liv Boeree — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 20:28:27 GMT

I truly believe that my guest this week can—or at least should—be president some day. His name is Manu Meel, and he is almost singlehandedly healing the horrific political divides on many US college campuses through his “Bridging Sessions” which help students find new ways to listen to one another on explosive, culture war topics like Israel/Palestine, gender, race etc. In other words, he’s found a way to inverse the struggle sessions and screaming matches that have been sadly become the norm in recent years.

If you want to understand how we can unlock more constructive dialogue and ideological synthesis moving forward, I highly recommend a listen to this one. If nothing else, it’ll give ya some very real hope for the future of Gen Z!

Chapters:

00:00 - Intro

01:35 - What Is BridgeUSA?

07:19 - Understanding The Social Divide

19:03 - How do the Bridging Sessions work?

25:35 - Who Attends Bridge Sessions

33:24 - Incentive Structures to Maximize Collaboration

40:21 - Managing Bad Faith Actors

47:24 - Movement Building

52:23 - Turning Zero Sum into Positive

58:16 - Changes On Campuses Since Trump

01:02:35 - The Problem of the Ten Percent

01:06:33 - How to Redesign Social Media For Better?

01:18:03 - Bridging The Political Divide In Government

01:23:42 - Manu’s Mindset

Links :

♾️ BridgeUSA: https://bridgeusa.org

♾️ 2017 Berkeley protests: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Berkeley_protests

♾️ Why Bother Bridging Differences in College, Anyway? https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_bother_bridging_differences_in_college_anyway

♾️ Atlantic Article on Cancel Culture: https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2022/02/college-campus-free-speech-cancel-culture/621484/

♾️ Manu's X: https://x.com/manumeel_?lang=en

♾️ Forbes Profile: https://www.forbes.com/profile/manu-meel/

Credits:

♾️ Hosted by Liv Boeree

♾️ Edited and Mixed by Jackson Page

♾️ Produced by Luca de Vico

The Win-Win Podcast:

Poker champion Liv Boeree takes to the interview chair to tease apart the complexities of one of the most fundamental parts of human nature: competition. Liv is joined by top philosophers, gamers, artists, technologists, CEOs, scientists, athletes and more to understand how competition manifests in their world, and how to change seemingly win-lose games into Win-Wins.

Podcast links:

♾️ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LivBoeree

♾️ Spotify & Apple

#winwinpodcast #culturewars #polarization