Erik Torenberg sits down with Jon Askonas to look at the impact of disruptive technology in important areas like the media, religion, culture, and politics. Jon is an assistant professor of politics at Catholic University, a senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation and a writer for publications like The New Atlantis and Compact.

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TIMESTAMPS:
(01:00) Episode Preview
(03:00) Jon’s thesis: The end of consensus reality
(04:20) What people have underestimated and overestimated since the 70s
(06:00) What comes after the nation state?
(07:00) The role of military technology in the next era
(09:45) What inputs are most important in determining a country’s dominance
(11:00) Countering Bali’s theory of the decline of the US dollar
(13:00) What has happened to our consensus reality? 
(16:49) Sponsors: Mercury and NetSuite
(18:50) Social Media is a red herring. The internet itself was the disruptor
(21:30) Why solving the problems of social media won’t return the world to sanity
(26:20) Fragmentation is a good thing
(29:25) 2nd order effects of AI
(30:30) E/acc vs EA 
(32:50) Creating a religion out of AI
(37:45) Understanding neural networks to understand ourselves?
(40:00) The problem with conservatives and technology
(46:25) Conservatives ignoring the culture
(52:00) Future of the right?
(56:20) national security: military operations and civil society implications of generative AI 
(57:00) How do we make sense of a world where we can’t determine a fact?
(59:10) Believing science, experts, and Sam Harris

SELECT LINKS
- End of Consensus Reality https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/what-happened-to-consensus-reality
- Reality is Just a Game Now
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/reality-is-just-a-game-now
- How Stewart Made Tucker https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/how-stewart-made-tucker
- Why Conservatism Failed, Compact Magazine  https://compactmag.com/article/why-conservatism-failed
- Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, Underground Empire https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250840554/undergroundempire
- Vanity Fair Article: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/08/musk-thiel-zuckerberg-andreessen-alternate-autocratic-reality
- Foundation for American Innovation: https://www.thefai.org/

X/ TWITTER:
Erik’s Twitter: @eriktorenberg
Jon’s Twitter: @JonAskonas
Podcast Twitter: @Upstream__Pod
Erik’s Substack: eriktorenberg.substack.com

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