YouSaid · the spoken record

Nadia Asparouhova

lines on the record: 96
first: 2022-12-15
most recent: 2022-12-15
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“There's sort of like a shared set of values there that are maybe starting with politics, but like ideally, yeah, spreading through like other areas of public influence. So I think like those were a couple of the bigger movements that I see right now. But there's like smaller stuff too. Like I mentioned, like tools for thought in that post where like that's a that's never going to be a huge idea machine, but it's one where you have a lot of like interesting talented people that are thinking about sort of like future of computing, but like until maybe more recently, like they just hasn't been a lot of funding available and the funding is always really uneven and unpredictable. And so that's to me an example of like, you know, a smaller community that just needs that sort of like extra influx to turn a bunch of abstract ideas into practice. But yeah, I mean, I think like.”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I downloaded a couple of different possibilities in that post. Yeah, I think like the progress sort of meme is probably the largest growing contender that I would see right now. I think there's another one. Another one right now around sort of like the new right. That's not even like the best term necessarily for it.”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Developers or people that might fit really well into their developer culture just matters a lot more, and they're just doing that instead of with words or doing that with code.”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think it turns on a specific project, but a lot of times these are projects that were developed internally. It's the same reason of, like, I think code and writing are not that dissimilar in this way of like, why do people spend all this time writing long posts or papers or whatever? And they just release them for free. Like, why not put everything behind a paywall? And I think the answer is probably similar in both cases where Mindshare is a lot more interesting than, you know, your literal IP. And so you put out, you write these like long reports or you tweet or whatever. Like you spend all this time creating content for free and putting it out there because you're trying to capture Mindshare. Same thing with companies releasing open source projects. Like a lot of times they really want other developers to come in and contribute to them. They want to increase their status as like an open source friendly kind of company or show like, you know, here's a type of code that we write internally and showing that externally, they want to like recruiting is, you know, the hardest thing for any company, right? And so being able to attract the right kinds of.”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't want just one person that represents my personal views. I think I would focus more on effectiveness in governance than I would like, you know, just one person in charge or something that I don't mind if someone agrees with my views as long as they're good at what they do, if that makes sense And so I think the questions are like, how do we improve the speed at which our government works and the efficacy with which it works? Like I think there was so much room to be room for improvement there versus like, I don't know how much I really care about like changing the actual structure of our government”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like, you know, a small government or one person or whatever, because there just isn't that much dissent or difference. Everyone is sort of on the same page. America is the extreme opposite end of that angle. And I'm always thinking about America because like I'm American and I love America. But like, you know, everyone is trying to solve the governance question for America. And I think, yeah, I don't know. I mean, we're an extremely heterogeneous population. There are a lot of competing worldviews. I may not agree with all the views of everyone in America, but like I also.”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think it's also like everyone has the fantasy of wouldn't be so nice if there were just one person in charge. I hate all this squabbling. It would just be so great if we could just, you know, have one person just who has exactly the views that I have and just. Them in charge and let them run things. That would be very nice. I just do also think it's unrealistic. Like, I don't think I'm, you know, maybe like monarchy sounds great in theory, but in practice just doesn't like, I really embrace. And I think like. There is no perfect governance design either in the same way that there's no perfect open source project designer or whatever else we're talking about. It really just depends your population comprised of. There are some very small homogenous populations that can be very easily governed by.”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like over and over, we see evidence that doesn't, it just like doesn't really work, it doesn't even get to throw out the underlying principles or values behind that. Like, I still really believe in meritocracy. I really believe in access to opportunity. I really believe in pursuit of happiness. Like to me, those are all like very American values. But I think where that breaks is the idea that has to happen through these highly participatory methods. I just like, yeah, I haven't seen really great evidence of that being that working.”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I decided I was like, I am really very much a tech startup person and not a crypto person, even though I would very much like to be fun because I'm like, ah, this is the future. And there's so many interesting things happening. And I'm like, for the record, not at all down encrypted, I think it is like the next big sort of movement of things that are happening. But when I really come down to like the mindset, it's like I am so in that sort of like top talent founder, like power of the individual to break institutions mindset. Like that just resonates with me so much more than the like leaderless faceless like highly participatory kind of thing. And again, like I am very open to that being true. Like I maybe I'm so wrong on that. I just like I have not yet seen evidence that that works in the world. I see a lot of rhetoric about how that could work or should work. We have this sort of like implicit belief that like direct democracy is somehow like the greatest thing to aspire towards but”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like, you know, no one wants to see the Peter Thiel Foundation necessarily. That's just like, it's so not the style of how he works. But, you know, you meet so many people that are being funded by the same person, like just going out and sort of aggressively arming the rebels is a more sort of like, yeah, just like distributed, decentralized way of thinking about like spreading one's power instead of just starting a foundation.”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“By the community from the ground up, that's maybe like one very literal reaction against that, like having the generous sort of the central power figure. But I think idea machines are kind of like the, like maybe like the more realistic or effective answer in that like the donor is still like without the presence of a funder, like a community is just a community. They're just sitting around and talking about ideas of like. They don't have any money to make anything happen. But I think really effective funders are good at being sort of like subtle and thoughtful about like.”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Used to start the Nadia Asporova Foundation or whatever. And it was like, you know, had your name on it. And it was all about like, what do I as a funder want to do in the world? Right. And you spend all this time doing this sort of like classical research going out to the field, talking to people and you sit and you think, okay, like here is a strategy I'm going to pursue. But like ultimately it's like very, very donor centric in this very explicit way. And so within traditional blank company, you're seeing this sort of like backlash against that in like, you know, straight up like nonprofit land where now you're seeing the locus of power moving from being very donor centric.”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is partly so effective because it is hard to even define what it is or wrap your head around that you just sort of like every interesting person you meet somehow has some weird connection to Peter Till. And it's funny. But I think this is sort of that evolution from that, you know, if I want security foundation to the like idea machine. Implicit in that is this switch from, you know,”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I definitely being somewhat cryptic myself. That's my favorite one, the cryptic methodology. But I mean, yeah, I mean, you mentioned Peter Thiel, I think like the Teal verse is probably like the most influential things, in fact, that is hard.”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there's value in writing cryptically more broadly as a, like I think about like, I think Kernis Yarvin has done a really good job of this for intentionally or not, but because his writing is so cryptic and long-winded and it's like the Bible where you can just kind of like pour over endlessly like what did this mean? What did this mean? And in a weird, you know, you're always told to write very clearly, you're told to write succinctly, but like it's actually in a weird way, you can be much more effective by being very long-winded and non-obvious in what you're saying.”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I don't think it makes one better or worse. It's like the right way to do it is probably like Bitcoin, where you have A charismatic waiter for life because that leader is. Can't go away, can't ever die, but you still have the North Stars and like that. Yeah.”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think there are just like different shapes and classifications of different types of communities here. And I'm just thinking back again to sort of like different types of open source projects where it's not like they're like one model that fits perfectly for all of them. So I think there are some communities where it's like, yeah, I mean, I think if I develop is maybe a good example of that, where the community has grown so much that if all their leaders were to, you know, knock on would disappear tomorrow or something that I think the movement would still keep going. There are enough true believers like even within the next order of that community that I think that would just continue to grow. Whereas you have like, yeah, maybe certain like smaller or more nascent communities that are just like communities that are much more like oriented around a charismatic charismatic founder that's just like a different type where if you lose that leader then suddenly, you know, the whole thing falls apart because they're much more like these like cults or religions.”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a good question. I mean, like, I don't think there's some perfect template. Like each of these kind of has its own sort of unique quirks and characteristics to them. I guess yeah, back up a little bit. Idea machines is this concept I have around what the transition from, we were talking before about sort of like traditional 51c3 foundations as vehicles for philanthropy. What is the modern version of that look like that is not necessarily encoded in institution? And so I had this term idea machines, which is sort of this different way of thinking about like turning ideas into outcomes where you have a community that forms around a shared set of values and ideas. So yeah, you mentioned like progress studies as an example of that or effective altruism example. Eventually that community gets capitalized by some funders and then starts to be able to develop an agenda and then like actually start building like you know operational outcomes and like turning those ideas into real world initiatives. And remind me”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like intriguing to me, but I have a really hard time scoring it with seeing, like, in some sense, open source was the experiment that started playing out, you know, 20 years before then. And some things are obviously different in crypto because tokenization completely changes the incentive system for contributing and maintaining crypto projects versus traditional open source projects. But in the end, also, like humans are humans. And I feel like there are a lot of lessons to be learned from open source of like, you know, they also started out early on as being very starryed about the power of like hyper democratic regimes. And it turned out like that just like doesn't work in practice. And so how is cryptography square that? I'm just, yeah, very curious to see what happens.”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Leader or influential figure that is like driving the project forward for a certain period of time. And then you can kind of get to the point when you have enough of an active community that maybe that leader takes a step back and lets other people take over. But it's not like you can do that off of day one. And that's sort of this open question that I have for crypto as an industry more broadly because I think like if I think about sort of like what is defining each of these generations of people that are pushing for new technological paradigms, I mentioned that like Wall Street Finance mindset is very focused on like globalism and on the sort of like efficiency quantitative mindset. You have the tech Silicon Valley Y company or kind of generation that is really focused on top talent and the idea this sort of like you know founder mindset, the power of like individuals breaking institutions. And then you have like the crypto mindset, which is this sort of like faceless leaderless, like governed by protocol and by code mindset, which is”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think we are seeing a little bit, if not a corporate governance expert, but I do feel like we're seeing a little bit of this backlash against. Like, you know, shareholder activism and extreme focus on sort of like DI on boards and things like that. And like, I think we're seeing a little bit of people starting to like take the reins and take control again because they're like, ah, that doesn't really work so well. It turns out, I think DAOs are going to learn this hard lesson as well. It's still maybe just too early to say what is happening in DAOs right now, but at least the ones that I've looked at, it feels like there is a very common failure mode of people saying, you know, like, let's just have like let's have this be super democratic and like leave it to the crowd to kind of like run this thing and figure out how it works. And it turns out you actually do need a strong leader even in the beginning. And this is something I learned just from looking at open source projects where it's like, you know, very rarely or if at all do you have a project that starts sort of like leaderless and faithless. And then, you know, usually there is some.”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, I mean, that's basically what's for the writing of my book because I was like, okay, I feel like whatever's happening up on Source right now, you start with this idea that like democracy is green and like we should have tons and tons of people participating, tons of people participate, and then it turns out that most participation is actually just noise and not that useful. And then it ends up scaring everyone away. And in the end, you just have like, you know, one or small handful of people that are actually doing all the work while everyone else is kind of like screaming around them. This becomes like a really great metaphor for what happened in social media. And the reason I after I wrote the book, I went and worked at SubStack. And part of it was because I was like, I think the model is kind of converging from like, you know, Twitter being this big open space to like suddenly everyone is retreating the public space is so hostile that everyone must retreat into like smaller private spaces. So then Berkhaz became a thing. Subsec became a thing. And yeah, I just feel sort of like realistic, right?”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But everything just serves like different purposes, right? Like, because I think within open source, it's not all of open source maintenance work is creative. In fact, most of it is pretty boring and dredgerous. And that's the stuff that no one wants to do and that one person kind of got stuck with doing. And that's really different from who created a certain open source project, which is a little bit more of that creative mindset.”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think so. I feel I've never been like a big founder theory kind of person. I think I'm like my true theory is I guess that ideas are maybe some sort of like sentient concept or virus that operates outside of us and we are just sort of like the vessels through which like ideas flow. So in that sense, you know, it's not really about any one person, but I do think I think I tend to lean like in terms of sort of like where does creative like creative effort come from, I do think a lot of it comes much more from like a single individual than it does from wisdom of the crowds.”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and I think that's sort of undervalued. I think a lot of the rhetoric that we have about open source is rooted in sort of like early 2000s kind of starry eyed idea about like the power of the internet and the idea of like crowdsourcing and Wikipedia and all this stuff. And then like in reality, like we kind of see this convergence from very broad based collaborative volunteer efforts to narrowing down to kind of like single creators. And I think a lot of like, you know, single creators are the people that are really driving a lot of the internet today and a lot of cultural production.”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Use that as an excuse to not really contribute back to open source or not really think about how open source projects are maintained because we were like, you know, you kind of have this bysooner effect where you're like, well, you know, someone's taking care of it. It's volunteer oriented. Like, of course, there's someone out there taking care of it. But in reality, it actually turns out it is just one person. So maybe it's a little bit more like a wizard of Oz type model. It's actually just like one person behind the curtain that's like, you know, doing everything. And you see this huge, you know, grandeur and you think there must be so many people that are behind it. one person”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Nicholas Farbaki model, same concept of you know a single mathematician who's actually comprised of like lots of different I think it's actually the opposite would be sort of my conclusion. If we think about open source as this very like collective volunteer effort and I think”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Father of modern philanthropy in the US wrote these series of essays about wealth that were like very influential and where he sort of talks about this moral obligation. And I think really it was kind of this quiet way for him to, even though it was ostensibly about sort of like giving back or, you know, helping with the next generation of people and next generation of entrepreneurs. Like I think it really was much more of a protective stance of saying like if he doesn't frame it in this way, then people are just going to knock down the concept of wealth altogether.”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I really don't see it as a negative thing at all. And I think most of the writing and journalism and academia that focuses on philanthropy tends to be very wealth critical. I'm not at all like I personally don't feel wealth critical at all. I think, again, sort of returning to this mental model of aristocratic and meritocratic elites. Aristocratic elites are able to sort of like pass down what they're supposed to be doing in each generation because they have this kind of like familial ties. And I think like on the meritocratic side, like if you didn't have any sort of language around altruism or public stewardship, then like it's like you need to kind of create that narrative for the meritocratically or else, you know, there's just like nothing to hold on to. So I think like it makes sense to talk in those terms. Andrew Carnegie being sort of helped.”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the broader goal that motivates at least the new sort of elite classes to want to do any of this stuff at all, like I don't really think philanthropy is about altruism. I just, I think the term philanthropy is just totally fraught and refers to too many different things and it's not very helpful. But I think the part that I'm interested at least is sort of like what motivates elites to go from just sort of like making a lot of money and then like thinking about themselves to then thinking about sort of like their place in broader public society. And I think that starts with thinking about how do I control like media academia government are sort of like the three like arms of the public sector. And we think of it in that way a little bit more broadly where it's really much more about sort of like maintaining control over your own power, more so than sort of like this like altruistic kind of whitewashed.”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ton of money, and then their spouse kind of directs these like nice feel good philanthropy activities. I think of may not be the model that we continue to move forward on. And I'm kind of hopeful or curious to see what does a return to, like because we've had so many new people making a ton of money in the last 10 years or so, we might see this return to sort of like the gilded age style of philanthropy where people are not necessarily just like forming a philanthropic foundation and looking for the nicest causes to fund, but are actually just like thinking a little bit more holistically about like how do I help build and create like a movement around a thing that I really care about? How do I think more broadly around like funding companies and nonprofits and individuals and like doing lots of different kinds of activities?”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which I kind of more broadly wanted to define as like the actions of elites that are sort of like public facing activities. But like, even within sort of traditional philanthropy circles, we have like, you know, the 51c3 nonprofit, which is traditionally how people house all their money in a foundation. And then they do their full drawback activities out of that. But in more recent years, we've seen this trend towards LLCs. So Emerson Collective, I think, might have been maybe the first one to do it. That was Steve Jobs' Fond Ari Foundation. And then Mark Zuckerberg with Chan Zuckerberg Initiative also used an LLC. And then since then, a lot of other, especially within sort of like tech wealth, we've seen that move towards people using LLCs instead of 51c3s because they, it just gives you a lot more flexibility in the kinds of things you can fund. You'd all just have to fund other nonprofits. And they also see donor advised funds. So DAFs, which are sort of this like hacky workaround to foundations as well. So I guess point being that like this sort of mental model of like, you know, one person makes it.”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mean, I feel like we see that pattern, like the problem is that what even is philanthropy is changing very quickly. So we can say historically that. Even historically, in recent history, in recent decades, that has probably been true. That wasn't true in, say, late 1800s, early 1900s. It was Carnegie and Rockefeller were the ones that were actually doing their own philanthropy, not their spouses. So I'd say that some more recent trend. But now I think we're also seeing this thing where like a lot of wealthy people are not necessarily doing their philanthropic activities through foundations anymore. And that's true both within like traditional philanthropy sector and sort of like the looser definition of what we might consider to be philanthropy depending on how you define it.”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Private citizens don't experiment with public institutions. That's the government's job. And they're like, you see that sort of like pervasively throughout all of like European cultures. When we want something to change in public society, we look to government to regulate or change it. Whereas in the US, it's kind of much more like choose your own adventure. And we don't really see the government as like the sole provider or shaper of public institutions. We also look at private citizens and like there's so many things that like public institutions that we have now that were not started by government, but we're started by private philanthropists. And that's like a really unusual thing about the U.S.”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, like here we have much more of a culture of, like, even among aristocratic beliefs, this idea of like institution building or like large donations to like build institutions. Whereas in Europe, a lot of the public institutions are created by government and there's sort of this mentality of like.”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I assume, like most of the people that are the figures about sort of like Americans giving back is spread across like all Americans, not just the wealthiest.”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Been socialized into how to think about their role in society. And so, yeah, all the meritocratic elites eventually turn into aristocratic elites, which is where I think you start seeing this trend now towards people wanting to sort of like spend down their fortunes within their lifetime or within. I'm a set number of decades after they die because they kind of see what happened in previous generations and they're like, oh, I don't want to do that.”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's like a really special thing about the US. So we have this whole class of meritocratic elites who may not have aristocratic backgrounds, but ended up doing something within their lifetimes that made them successful. And so, yeah, I think it's a really cool thing. The downside of that being that you don't really get like socialized into what does it mean to have this fortune and do something interesting with your money? You don't have this sort of like generational benefit of that aristocratic elites have of sort of presiding over your land or whatever you want to call it where you're sort of like learning how to think about yourself in relation to the rest of society. And so it's much easier to just kind of like hoard your wealth or whatever. And so when you think about sort of like, what are the next generations, the children of the meritocratic elite is going to look like or were they going to do, it's very easy to imagine kind of just becoming aristocratic elites in the sense of like, yeah, they're just going to like inherit the money from their families and they haven't also”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I kind of worry about that actually. I think of there as being within the US, we were kind of lucky in that we have these two different types of elites. We have the aristocratic elites and we have meritocratic elites. Most other countries, I think basically just have aristocratic elites, especially comparing the US to Britain in this way. And so in the aristocratic model, your wealth and your power is sort of like conferred to you by previous generations. You just kind of like inherit it from your parents or your family or whomever. And the upside of that, if there is an upside, is they get really socialized into this idea of what does it mean to be a public steward? What does it mean to think of yourself and like your responsibility to the rest of society as a sort of like privileged elite person? In the US, we have this really great thing where you can kind of just, you know, we have the American dream, right? So lots of people that didn't grow up with money can break into the elite ranks by doing something that makes them really successful.”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think about it called the Altos Institute or the Science Initiative that he put out where he was recruiting these scientists from academic institutions and paying them really high salaries just to attract the very best top scientists around the world. That's much more of that kind of mindset than it is about like putting faith in sort of like existing institutions, which is what we would see from more of like a DAO's kind of mindset.”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Forget how commonplace this trope is of the young founder in a dorm room. And that was really popularized by the 2010s cohort of the startup elite of being someone that may have absolutely no skills, no background in industry, but can somehow sort of like turn the entire industry over on its head. And I think that was sort of like the unique insight of the tech startup crowd. And yeah, when I think about just sort of like some of the things that Bezos is doing now, it feels like she identifies with that much more strongly of being the sort of like lone cowboy or having this like one talented person with really great ideas who can sort of world.”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Much more of the sort of like startup elite mindset. And I can kind of back up a little bit there, but what I associate with the Davos Wall Street kind of crowd is much more this focus on quantitative thinking, measuring efficiency, and then also this globalist mindset. Like I think the vision that they want to ensure for the world is this idea of a very interconnected world where we're like the United Nations kind of mindset. And that is really literally what the devos gathering is. Whereas Bezos from his actions today feels much closer to the startup like why combinator hosts AWS kind of mindset of founders that really made their money by taking these non-obvious bets on talented people. So they were much less focused on credentialism. They were much more into this idea of meritocracy. I think we sort of.”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, he's come out and been sort of openly critical about a lot of Davos type institutions. He kind of pokes fun at mainstream media and for not believing in him, not believing in AWS. And I think because he sort of like expands across both of these generations, he's been able to see the evolution of how maybe like his earlier peers function versus the sort of second cohort of peers that he came across. But to me, he seems much more like”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's kind of a weird one because he's both associated with the early computing revolution, but then also AWS was sort of like what kicked off all of the 2010 sort of startup. And I think in the way that he's started to think about his public legacy and just from sort of his public behavior, I think he fits much more squarely now in that sort of tech startup elite mindset of the 2010s crowd, more so than the Davos elite crowd of the 2000s.”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I know there's sort of like conflicting accounts going around just from my sort of like character study or looking at SBF, it seems pretty clear to me that he is sort of inextricably tied to the concepts of utilitarianism that then motivate effective altruism. The difference for me in sort of like where I characterize effective altruism is I think it's much closer to sort of like finance Wall Street elite mindset than it is to startup mindset, even though a lot of people associate effective altruism with tech people. So yeah, to me, like that really squarely puts SBF in sort of like the finance crowd much more so than startups or crypto. And I think that's something that gets really misunderstood about him.”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You start with this idea that like democracy is green and like we should have tons and tons of people participating, tons of people participate, and then it turns out that most participation is actually just noise and not that useful. That really squarely puts SBF in sort of like the finance crowd, much more so than startups or crypto. Founders will always talk about like building and startups is like so important or whatever. And like what are all of them doing in their storytelling? They're like reading books. They're reading essays. And then those books and essays influence how they think about stuff.”
2022-12-15 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source