Episode · Dwarkesh Podcast · 2025-04-03
Dwarkesh Patel, Scott Alexander & Daniel Kokotajlo: books mentioned on Dwarkesh Podcast
AI 2027: month-by-month model of intelligence explosion — Scott Alexander & Daniel Kokotajlo
Scott and Daniel break down every month from now until the 2027 intelligence explosion. Scott Alexander is author of the highly influential blogs Slate Star Codex and Astral Codex Ten.
Scott Alexander discussed The Horse, the Wheel, and Language by David W. Anthony. Dwarkesh Patel discussed The Secret of Our Success by Joseph Henrich. Daniel Kokotajlo discussed Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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The Horse, the Wheel, and Language
Discussed“one of my favorite examples of this is David Anthony, the guy who wrote the Horse, the Wheel and Language. He made this super impressive discovery before we had the genetic evidence for it”
Where to get it
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The Secret of Our Success
The Secret of Our Success by Joseph Henrich explores how human cultural evolution and cooperation, rather than raw individual intelligence alone, drove our species to dominate the globe.
Discussed“Scott, you reviewed Joseph Henrik’s book Secrets of Our Success, and then I interviewed him recently, and there the perspective is very much AGI is not even a thing, almost.”
Where to get it
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Superintelligence
Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom is a foundational exploration of artificial intelligence, examining the path toward human-level and superhuman machine intellect and the profound existential risks it poses.
Discussed“I think the Alignment community did not really expect LLMs. I mean, if you look in Bostrom Superintelligence, there’s a discussion of Oracle AIs which are sort of like LLMs.”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (1) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
“I can easily write a blog post, like a normal length ACX blog post, but if you ask me to write a novella or something that’s four times the length of the average ACX blog post, then it’s this giant mess of “re re re re” outline that just gets redone and redone and maybe eventually I make it work.”