Radical Candor, Feeding the Many & the Politicization of Science
Hot Nerd Summer #8 The eighth session of Hot Nerd Summer moved from the mechanics of honest feedback, to the logistics of feeding people in disaster zones, to the quiet capture of what counts as science. The conversation covered why flattery — including the machine kind — is more dangerous than criticism, why a walk beats a meeting and a phone call beats video, how an organisation that refuses to write plans manages to arrive first, why free rice can put a country's own farmers out of work, and what follows when political appointees are handed authority over which research qualifies as gold standard. Held under the Chatham House Rule, with voices from Silicon Valley, publishing, humanitarian relief, and public health. Selected, unattributed quotes below.
Main Guests
Jason Feifer
Editor-in-Chief, Entrepreneur · Moderator
Kim Scott
Author, Radical Candor · CEO coach · Former Google & Apple executive
Esther Dyson
Investor & author
Chef José Andrés
Founder, World Central Kitchen · Chef & restaurateur
David Michaels
Epidemiologist, George Washington University · Longest-serving Administrator of OSHA
and more...
From the discussion
Philanthropy always seems to be about the redemption of the giver. Philanthropy must be about the liberation of the receiver.
“AI has a tendency to be ruinously empathetic, if not manipulatively insincere. It tends to flatter — and flattery is dangerous. Flattery comes at you like a thick fog.
“Online you get rewarded for extreme statements. At a dinner party there's no thumbs-up or thumbs-down emoji — there's the eye roll. And that's what helps people moderate what they're saying.
“Immortality is just one letter away from immorality. We all need limits, and to a certain extent other people give us those limits.
“Take a walk instead of sitting across a table. We're mammals — looking each other in the eye can register as an aggressive act. There's something psychologically healthy about looking in the same direction.
“Nobody in your life really wants to give you criticism — except your teenage children. That's a service they'll offer for free.
“When there's a fire you send firefighters. When there's an earthquake you send rescue teams with dogs. But when you have to feed people, we were not sending the people best prepared to feed people — the chefs were missing in action.
“We don't have a plan, because plans are always a failure. If you only train your teams to follow a plan, you fail — because they don't learn to adapt. We are a machine of adaptation.
“You don't orchestrate a response from a dark room in a convention center a thousand kilometers away. The headquarters is every one of our cars on the field.
“We brought free rice to a country that lives by farming. Short term, people ate. But nobody was buying from the local farmers, so we put tens of thousands of them out of work. We made the poor poorer — and then they showed up at another country's border.
“The executive order sounded like apple pie — transparent, unbiased, peer-reviewed, all the things we expect. But it put all authority over what counts as good science into the hands of political appointees. That's the fear.
“You can't let people with very clear political interests decide what good science is.
“There's a line from an Italian novelist: we are condemned to hope. I think that's really where we are.
Digital Battlefield Group convenes senior leaders from government, industry, and academia to discuss intelligence and national security in the age of AI. All events operate under Chatham House Rule.
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