Aug 28, 2026 · 1 hr 5 min · 13 segments
Today Liv brings the boys her best attempt at a “good news” episode without straying too far from our usual content. For our little cheat day, Liv has prepared a fun hour of discussing the investing…
Travis ViewHostJake RockatanskyHostJulian FeeldHostIt would certainly be silly for me to tell you that Leopold Aschenbrenner, the object of today's episode, was a complete dumbass.
So surely, more impressive academic accolades than I or most others listening will ever have.
And I'm sure that very quickly in Leopold's life, he was told that he was very smart, and that if he put his mind to his electrical problem, he would surely be able to solve it.
And even during his undergrad years, he seems to have been merging his perspectives on the world with many of the people and institutions that would later be behind the AI boom.
He appears to have co-founded the Effective Altruism Club at Columbia, for instance.
For those who are unaware or need a refresher, effective altruism is a philosophical position related to one's moral obligation to give away their money to charity, basically.
One of its most important influences comes from analytical philosopher Peter Singer, particularly an argument he makes in a 1972 essay that every philosophy undergrad in the English-speaking world has probably read, called Famine, Affluence, and Morality, where he argues for the moral principle that...
If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it.
One obvious application he applies this principle to considers a child drowning in a pond.
If I am walking past a shallow pond and see a child drowning in it, I ought to wade in and pull the child out.
This will mean getting my clothes muddy, but this is insignificant, while the death of the child would presumably be a very bad thing.
It would certainly be silly for me to tell you that Leopold Aschenbrenner, the object of today's episode, was a complete dumbass.
So surely, more impressive academic accolades than I or most others listening will ever have.
And I'm sure that very quickly in Leopold's life, he was told that he was very smart, and that if he put his mind to his electrical problem, he would surely be able to solve it.
And even during his undergrad years, he seems to have been merging his perspectives on the world with many of the people and institutions that would later be behind the AI boom.
He appears to have co-founded the Effective Altruism Club at Columbia, for instance.
For those who are unaware or need a refresher, effective altruism is a philosophical position related to one's moral obligation to give away their money to charity, basically.
One of its most important influences comes from analytical philosopher Peter Singer, particularly an argument he makes in a 1972 essay that every philosophy undergrad in the English-speaking world has probably read, called Famine, Affluence, and Morality, where he argues for the moral principle that...
If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it.
One obvious application he applies this principle to considers a child drowning in a pond.
If I am walking past a shallow pond and see a child drowning in it, I ought to wade in and pull the child out.
This will mean getting my clothes muddy, but this is insignificant, while the death of the child would presumably be a very bad thing.
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