How We Learned, Then Forgot, About Human Intelligence... And Witnessing the Live Breakdown of Academia (podcast interview with Cactus Chu)

This is a long interview I did recently with Cactus Chu, a math prodigy turned political theorist and podcaster. (Unfortunately I can't embed the podcast here.)

Steve Hsu: How We Learned, Then Forgot, About Human Intelligence... And Witnessing the Live Breakdown of Academia 

Timestamps: 

3:24 Interview Starts  

15:49 Cactus' Experience with High Math People 

19:49 High School Sports 

21:26 Comparison to Intelligence 

26:29 Is Lack of Understanding due to Denial or Ignorance? 

29:29 The Past and Present of Selection in Academia 

37:02 How Universities Look from the Inside 

44:19 Informal Networks Replacing Credentials 

48:37 Capture of Research Positions 

50:24 Progressivism as Demagoguery Against the Self-Made 

55:31 Innumeracy is Common 

1:06:53 Understanding Innumerate People 

1:13:53 Skill Alignment at Cactus' High School 

1:18:12 Free Speech in Academia 

1:21:00 You Shouldn't Fire Exceptional People 

1:23:03 The Anti-Excellence Progressives 

1:28:42 Rawls, Nozick, and Technology 

1:34:00 Freedom = Variance = Inequality 

1:37:58 Dating Apps 

1:41:27 Jumping Into Social Problems From a Technical Background 

1:41:50 Steve's High School Pranks 

1:46:43 996 and Cactus' High School 

1:50:26 The Vietnam War and Social Change 

1:53:07 Are Podcasts the Future? 

1:59:37 The Power of New Things 

2:02:56 The Birth of Twitter 

2:07:27 Selection Creates Quality 

2:10:21 Incentives of University Departments 

2:16:29 Woke Bureaucrats 

2:27:59 Building a New University 

2:30:42 What needs more order? 

2:31:56 What needs more chaos?

An automated (i.e., imperfect) transcript of our discussion.

Here's an excerpt from the podcast:

@hsu_steve on innumerate journalists, professors, and politicians:

"If you are not high [Math], you cannot reason from statistical data" pic.twitter.com/N3glUITCXH

— Cactus Chu (@cactus_chu) May 3, 2022