Hacking State – Details, episodes & analysis

I speak with Nina Power about her harrowing defamation suit court battle, the narrowing window of free expression in the West, novel problems of anonymity, pseudonymity, and identity presented by the internet, the antagonism of the philosopher and the city, and the need for cultural tools to push back against authoritarian overreaches in free expression.

Nina Power on Substack: https://ninapower.substack.com/

Read the court judgement yourself: https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Miller-and-Power-v-Turner-08.11.23.pdf

If you enjoyed this interview, please leave a review on Spotify/iTunes.

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Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@alexmurshak

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hacking-state/id1689677076

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1XB9XYULrAY4dp0qIJVvCg

RSS: https://feed.podbean.com/hackingstate/feed.xml

I speak with sci-fi horrorist Zero HP Lovecraft on his Six Components of Religious Experience, a functionalist approach to religion, the concept of God becoming increasingly abstract and far away (divine distance), how Christianity can benefit from Nietzsche’s bitter medicine, Christianity’s struggle with modern sexual mores, pathological altruism, why goodness is strength, regaining self-possession, submitting to tradition to gain mastery over craft, and the tension between self-love and self-abolishment driving Western man.

Relevant Links:

Zero HP Lovecraft on X: https://x.com/0x49fa98

Zero HP Lovecraft on Substack: https://zerohplovecraft.substack.com/

Toward a Functionalist Understanding of Religion - https://zerohplovecraft.substack.com/p/marooned-in-the-deepest-darkness-993

Toward a Functionalist Understanding of Religion, Pt. 2: The American Civic Religion - https://zerohplovecraft.substack.com/p/marooned-in-the-deepest-darkness-90b

Toward a Functionalist Understanding of Religion, Pt. 3: Christo-Nietzschean Synthesis - https://zerohplovecraft.substack.com/p/marooned-in-the-deepest-darkness-bad

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If you enjoyed this interview, please leave a review on Spotify/iTunes.

Support Hacking State: https://hackingstate.substack.com/subscribe

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Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@alexmurshak

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hacking-state/id1689677076

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1XB9XYULrAY4dp0qIJVvCg

RSS: https://feed.podbean.com/hackingstate/feed.xml

Luca Cacciatore joins me to discuss Christianity in America, the decline of religiosity, the Second Great Awakening, how technology mediates religiosity, faith and fertility, religion grappling with science, the Evangelical Revolution, and the dearth of compelling Christian narratives for young men.

I am joined by Kino Corner to discuss movie making, film as a medium for capturing the zeitgeist of different eras, shooting on digital, film, and hybrid, the economics of why mid-budget movies have disappeared, crowdfunding movies, The Killer (Fincher, 2023), Asteroid City (Anderson, 2023), drifting from the binge model of TV series', and the Kino Corner's 5 masterpiece film recommendations.

Relevant Links:

https://www.youtube.com/c/thekinocorner

https://x.com/thekinocorner

https://instagram.com/the_kino_corner

https://letterboxd.com/TheKinoCorner

If you enjoyed this interview, please leave a review on Spotify/iTunes.

Support Hacking State: https://hackingstate.substack.com/subscribe

Listen on:

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@alexmurshak

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hacking-state/id1689677076

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1XB9XYULrAY4dp0qIJVvCg

RSS: https://feed.podbean.com/hackingstate/feed.xml

Michael Millerman joins me to discuss starting a philosophy school, why tech and startups are seeking wisdom, whether Western philosophy is still a living tradition, objections to the usefulness of philosophy, leading students to the eternal questions, the intimate pleasure of communing with old friends, Martin Heidegger's influence on Alexander Dugin, Leo Strauss and Heidegger's disagreement on philosophical historicism, our place in the cave beneath Plato's Cave, Millerman's intriguing encounter with Dugin, why Dugin is a dangerous philosopher, his take on "Selective Breeding and the Birth of Philosophy," and the potential for the rewilding of philosophy.

Relevant Links:

https://x.com/M_Millerman

https://www.michaelmillerman.ca/

https://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Heidegger-Philosophical-Constitution-Political/dp/1912975793

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AVVipiukPI 

If you enjoyed this interview, please leave a review on Spotify/iTunes.

Support Hacking State: https://hackingstate.substack.com/subscribe

Listen on:

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@alexmurshak

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hacking-state/id1689677076

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1XB9XYULrAY4dp0qIJVvCg

RSS: https://feed.podbean.com/hackingstate/feed.xml

I sit down with Bitcoin Gandalf for a deep dive on Satoshi's immaculate coinception. Gandalf is a large influencer in the Bitcoin space and works in Bitcoin mining.

Bitcoin is one of the most innovative technologies of the last century from a governance and coordination perspective. I believe it has the potential to be a vehicle for civilization-level reconfiguration of value.

We cover our respective journeys in becoming "orange-pilled" on Bitcoin, the Bitcoin mining industry from the inside, Bitcoin maximalism, its potential to supplant existing fiat currencies, the virtues of self-custody, Bitcoin ETFs, Bitcoiners (community), proof of work vs. proof of stake, where we are in the current hype cycle, and getting into Bitcoin for noobs.

You can find Gandalf on:

https://x.com/BTCGandalf

Suggested Reading:

Bitcoin White Paper: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

If you enjoyed this interview, please leave a review on Spotify/iTunes.

Support Hacking State: https://hackingstate.substack.com/subscribe

Listen on:

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@alexmurshak

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hacking-state/id1689677076

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1XB9XYULrAY4dp0qIJVvCg

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DeepNews is using LLMs to aggregate and summarize the latest news across the internet, seeking to change the way we digest news.

Nikolai Yakovenko is an ex-Twitter, Google, and Nvidia machine-learning engineer who initially forayed into Web3 with his venture 'DeepNFTValue,' which uses machine learning to estimate the value of NFTs; before also going on to create DeepNews.

We cover using generative AI for compression, why this application of LLMs could better deliver news from primary sources across the internet in real time, the narrative neutrality of the AI-platform, concerns about information accuracy, misinformation, fidelity, and robustness, as well as potential areas for improvement.

You can find Nikolai on:

https://twitter.com/ivan_bezdomny

https://nikocrypto.substack.com/

https://substack.com/@nikocrypto

Relevant Links:

https://deepnewz.com/

https://www.deepnftvalue.com/

If you enjoyed this interview, please leave a review on Spotify/iTunes. Support Hacking State: https://hackingstate.substack.com/subscribe

Listen on:

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@alexmurshak

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hacking-state/id1689677076

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1XB9XYULrAY4dp0qIJVvCg

RSS: https://feed.podbean.com/hackingstate/feed.xml

We envision a nuclear Texas. Grant Dever is a research fellow at FREOPP (Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity) who writes about energy policy, with a focus on nuclear power. He earned his degree in economics and business from the University of Rochester. During the pandemic, Grant cultivated community for IndieThinkers.org—an accelerator for independent thinkers on the internet. He also authored "Lead The Future: Strategies and Systems for Emerging Leaders."

The conversation touches on Texas as an independent energy powerhouse and the challenges with its power grid. Dever also speaks about the role of tech giants in advancing Nuclear Energy. By adopting demand response and managing intermittency, power-intensive applications like bitcoin mining, training LLMs & hydrogen production can be transformative in nuclear energy proliferation. 

The discussion concludes with a note on the  opportunities in the Texas energy sector, particularly when diverging from federal directives, standing as the lone star state.

You can find Grant on: 

Website: https://grantdever.com/

Substack: https://www.seekingtribe.com/

FREOPP: https://freopp.org/the-freopp-scholar-grant-dever-badbe66c8b7e

X: https://twitter.com/grantadever

Book: https://www.amazon.com/Lead-Future-Strategies-Systems-Emerging-ebook/dp/B0828895H4

Relevant Links: 

https://freopp.org/rethinking-u-s-nuclear-energy-regulation-7639c7e88642

https://blog.freopp.org/were-not-going-to-have-another-chernobyl/

If you enjoyed this interview, please leave a review on Spotify/iTunes.

Support Hacking State: https://hackingstate.substack.com/subscribe

Listen on:

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@alexmurshak

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hacking-state/id1689677076

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1XB9XYULrAY4dp0qIJVvCg

RSS: https://feed.podbean.com/hackingstate/feed.xml

Brendon Marotta is a filmmaker, author, and podcaster. We talk about his book, "Children's Justice", which applies critical theory to the controversial topic of infant circumcision.

We go through his decision to appropriate the tools and tactics of critical theory in service of this issue, apprehensions around taking circumcision up as a social justice or human rights concern, my discomfort with everything about this, childhood trauma and its reverberating effects on adults and institutions, rhetorical methods borrowed from Foucault and others to make his argument, barriers for men and parents to discussing circumcision, and why he sees advocacy around this issue as a microcosm for opening a broader discussion around the treatment of children.

Brendon Marotta's feature-length documentary, "American Circumcision" garnered numerous nominations and awards at film festivals, including Best Documentary at the Lone Star Film Festival (2017), The Silver Jury Prize at The Social Justice Film Festival (2017), Best Documentary Feature at Outer Docs Film Festival (2018), and is available on Netflix (non-US) and Prime video.

Children's Justice (2022): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735113425/

American Circumcision: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7628146/

Gods of AI (2022): https://www.amazon.com/Gods-AI-AI-Generated-Art-Book/dp/B0BMTFSNQ5/

Brendon Marotta

Site: https://brendonmarotta.com/

X: https://twitter.com/bdmarotta

If you enjoyed this interview, please leave a review on Spotify/iTunes.

Support Hacking State: https://hackingstate.substack.com/subscribe

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Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@alexmurshak

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hacking-state/id1689677076

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Engineer and essayist Stephen Pimentel joins me for a review of the recently released bestselling book in Political Philosophy, Costin Alamariu’s “Selective Breeding and the Birth of Philosophy”. In this discussion we go deep in tracing the argument, point-by-point, of Costin’s thesis concerning the twin emergence of philosophy and tyranny out of the idea of nature, and its teaching and preservation in the aristocratic regime.

We attempt to tour the line of argument in sequential fashion, laying out the basic premises, consequences, and conclusions Costin provides, as well as its potential reverberations for our understanding of classical political philosophy; and hint at potential future implications, given advances in technology and age of the current regime, of this timely and unexpectedly popular hit.

We go through the early anthropological account of pre-philosophical societies under the sway of collective nomos, the introduction of natural law from martial-aristocratic pastoralist conquerors, the discussion of Pindar and his insights for the aristocracy's self-understanding, phusis and its connection to physicality, the emergence of nature outside the city by breeding and training as a re-wilding project aimed at cultivating men of andreia and phronesis, Callicles and Socrates in Plato's Gorgias--turning Platonic political philosophy on its head, and Nietzsche's resurrection of aristocratic radicalism in service of the preservation of philosophy for the production of genius.

Get the book: https://www.amazon.com/Selective-Breeding-Philosophy-Costin-Alamariu/dp/B0CJ3ZDHF6 

Stephen Pimentel: https://twitter.com/StephenPiment 

If you enjoyed this interview, please leave a review on Spotify/iTunes.

Support Hacking State: https://hackingstate.substack.com/subscribe

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Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@alexmurshak

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