Sep 22, 2026 · 34 min · 10 segments
It’s not every day that the would be masters of the universe are going on television and proclaiming an imminent doomsday, as if they were street preachers or the people who used to walk around public…
Parker ThayerGuestMichael WatsonHost
Tiffany GabayHostAll these effective altruist techie people believe that AI can bring about the end of the world.
Believe that in fact, not just that it can, like not like nuclear weapons, like if you push the button, it will go off, but that it is near as makes no difference inevitable.
It is it is entirely incoherent approach to things, but they are kind of they're like they're almost transhumanists.
Like they think that we can, you know, eventually become better than human and improve ourselves to the point where, you know, we can maximize utilitarian value infinitely and, you know, never die and all these things.
It's a very weird, very, very weird movement with very, very weird people who are into a lot of very weird things in their.
to say, if you put effective altruism into the New York Post, make sure that you're over the age of 18.
take a Dustin Moskovitz or someone heavily invested in AI, let's say, anthropic in this case, or you have a lot of these heads of our big AI companies now calling for regulation.
So the question is, why would they want to effectively regulate themselves? Is it essentially, I mean, one could draw the conclusion that it's because they want to be in control of the controls.
It is a classic, in my opinion, this is a classic regulatory capture maneuver.
Define, I mean, I'm pretty sure that most people who will be listening to this know what regulatory capture is, but just to lay it out on the table, define regulatory capture.
The best example is that one of the biggest lobbyists for laws restricting cigarette advertisements back in the day when they were first banned from advertising on TV, one of the biggest lobbyists for that law was the cigarette companies,
But they wanted it because it meant that once the TV advertisements were gone, they got to keep their market share because, you know, they sell an addictive product that people, you know, come to have a chemical dependency on.
And so if the TV advertising is banned, that means no one new can break into the market.
All these effective altruist techie people believe that AI can bring about the end of the world.
Believe that in fact, not just that it can, like not like nuclear weapons, like if you push the button, it will go off, but that it is near as makes no difference inevitable.
It is it is entirely incoherent approach to things, but they are kind of they're like they're almost transhumanists.
Like they think that we can, you know, eventually become better than human and improve ourselves to the point where, you know, we can maximize utilitarian value infinitely and, you know, never die and all these things.
It's a very weird, very, very weird movement with very, very weird people who are into a lot of very weird things in their.
to say, if you put effective altruism into the New York Post, make sure that you're over the age of 18.
take a Dustin Moskovitz or someone heavily invested in AI, let's say, anthropic in this case, or you have a lot of these heads of our big AI companies now calling for regulation.
So the question is, why would they want to effectively regulate themselves? Is it essentially, I mean, one could draw the conclusion that it's because they want to be in control of the controls.
It is a classic, in my opinion, this is a classic regulatory capture maneuver.
Define, I mean, I'm pretty sure that most people who will be listening to this know what regulatory capture is, but just to lay it out on the table, define regulatory capture.
The best example is that one of the biggest lobbyists for laws restricting cigarette advertisements back in the day when they were first banned from advertising on TV, one of the biggest lobbyists for that law was the cigarette companies,
But they wanted it because it meant that once the TV advertisements were gone, they got to keep their market share because, you know, they sell an addictive product that people, you know, come to have a chemical dependency on.
And so if the TV advertising is banned, that means no one new can break into the market.
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