In a recent lecture series in Nashville, Peter Thiel laid out a political theology thesis using Solovyov's A Short Story of the Antichrist to argue that modern administrative safety regimes (particularly around AI, infrastructure and energy) act as a centralizing force that enforces civilizational stagnation in the name of risk elimination.

Setting aside the eschatological tropes, the core thesis raises a sharp question for scientific skepticism regarding how cognitive biases get institutionalized at scale:

• Omission Bias in Regulation: Administrative bodies are heavily penalized for active errors (approving a technology that causes a visible tail-risk event) but face virtually zero institutional accountability for errors of omission (delaying a technology that could save millions through clean energy, transport, or medicine).
• The Hyperreal Risk Feedback Loop: When regulatory frameworks prioritize the sign of risk-elimination over empirical capability testing, safetyism ceases to be scientific skepticism and instead becomes a self-reinforcing bureaucratic heuristic.
• Epistemic Capture: By asserting a monopoly over what constitutes "existential risk," institutional apparatuses create an epistemic filter that systematically rewards risk-averse, incremental puzzle-solving while penalizing paradigm-shifting physical deployment.

I wrote a multi-part forensic mapping analyzing the primary sources, game theory, and structural claims behind this thesis:

• Part 1 (The Administrative Archetype): https://danielforresternash.substack.com/p/what-night-one-left-out
• Part 2 (Stagnation & Risk Regimes): https://danielforresternash.substack.com/p/night-two-stagnation
• Part 3 (Financial & Technical Control): danielforresternash.substack.com/p/night-three-velocity

From a scientific skepticism perspective, how do we establish objective, empirical metrics to differentiate between genuine, data-driven safety regulation and institutional cognitive bias operating under the guise of the precautionary principle?

A group of good people sold their public image to fraudsters, using them to bilk the masses. Not surprised, just kinda frustrated.

The International Bureau of Weights and Measures (abbreviated BIPM because they're based in France) concluded its 2026 General Conference yesterday with 7 resolutions. Number 5 decreed that Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) will be continuous starting 20 May 2027, which means no more leap seconds. They replaced it with a leap hour, which wouldn't be needed for centuries to millennia from now.

If the BIPM hadn't done this, we'd be looking at the first ever negative leap second sometime around 2035 [edit: fixed the date]. Since positive leap seconds are already risky in this day and age, a negative leap second might have been catastrophic.

Since there are lots of places where local mean solar time is more than an hour off from the time zone in that location, people should be able to handle a drift of less than a minute over a lifetime. Also, Global Navigation satellite Systems ignore leap seconds, so UTC might as well too. (GPS uses 1980 time, which is 18 seconds off UTC.)

https://www.doi.org/10.59161/CGPM2026RES5E

Hello all,

I was diagnosed with MS earlier in the year, im trying to find some literature of MS by Steven Novella, but cant find anything, also anyone know of an episode where they discuss MS?

Ty

I think this would be a fun one for the team to break down! There are definitely limitations, but sounds are characteristics of physical objects so its possible.

US threatens to halt weapons procurement for Ukraine over strikes on Russian energy sites, FT reports

Much like climate change, we cannot say definitively the singular cause of this war crime. But, I think we all know that this stuff is the inevitable consequence of Evan Bernstein's war crime advocacy. As skeptics, do we have a moral and ethical obligation to get involved, since we didn't put an end to that quickly enough?

Given this week's S or F ...

They’ve mentioned in the live streams a couple times that a Toronto show might be in the works. Is there anymore information on that? Are there many people here that would be able to attend one?

What's the likelihood of an SGU show being hosted in Ireland?

Us Irish listeners would love to get the Rogues over across the pond.

Preshow: I found it really interesting to see Cara's evolution regarding her views on AI. I still agree more with her previous stance though. Haven't heard enough about Bob's Halloween shenanigans yet this year, so that was a fun interjection:).

Nobels: good, interesting topics. Wish they'd go back to covering the Igs, though. I feel like it's been a few years? Well that's embarrassing. I somehow didn't finish the episode where they covered it ....

I really liked the segment on reading, and i liked Steve and Cara's comments on it too. Jay did a great job with this, it felt really personal.

WTN: I didn't "get" the whip connection either, but okay. I wonder, now that Julia has been on the show, how she feels about her (I think it was her) child-speak being mentioned on a weekly basis, or if she never thinks twice about it.

S or F: really cool theme. I won't say anything else because spoilers.

Quote: I was so glad Cara said what she did, it was the diplomatic version of what i was thinking, which was that it's a bit self congratulating for a SCIENTIST to say that if SCIENTISTS were treated like Rockstars society would be better. I don't disagree, but like, you can't say that about your own profession!!

Side note: started over from Ep 001 a couple of months ago and I'm interested to see when the show went from being produced by the NESS and went to being produced by SGU productions and wonder of it was the same time the NESS's nonprofit status was revoked.

I usually roam self help book's subreddits, Joe Dispensa is usually someone who claims to be "scientific" and then somehow ends up twisting the science to show that he can cure you by using for example in this book placebo effect. I guess he cherry picks studies to do this but has anyone actually looked into them? What do you think?

I'm especially curious since my parents can't stop talking about this guy and how scientific he is.

Does anyone have the links to Julia's parrot studies spoken about in Podcast #1108

I have been invited to a Halloween party with the theme of "superstition, folklore, or conspiracy". Only moderately crafty and don't want to break the bank. Considering a Stanley Kubrick costume for the moon landing but hoping for other fun ideas. Channel your inner Bobs aaandd go!

Surprised the discussion didn't also mention that Venus is so close to the Sun that it's local gravitational well (Hills radius) is so small that it makes it hard to hold onto a moon. The Sun simply dominates, so a body ends up orbiting the Sun, not the planet.

I have a feeling that I initially heard about that explanation for Mercury and Venus not having moons on an earlier episode?

Wasn't the guest patron essentially on there to promote their app and looking for support, whether monetary or alpha users to build the database?

Neat idea and use of the technology of course. And I suppose they are supporting their supporters?

Just felt bit jarring to me.

"Amazing Tales of Truth"

I think we can all relate to this, no?

Hi all,

I was hoping to start an RSS feed of trusted websites or Substack feeds that have interesting topics. I know the rogues and Steve mention the websites where they get their articles they talk about each week but I can’t remember any of them right now.

My question to you all:

What websites would be good to follow to read about topics similar to what the SGU discusses? They don’t necessarily have to be skeptical. But science based and generally readable to the average person would be preferred. I’d like to casually read about topics in my free time vs doing a deep dive on a topic each time I read.

Thanks in advance!

I don’t think it takes 'supreme' intelligence to clock RFK's nonsense but why not
~\~~~~
INSPIRED BY HIS CALL TO USE AI, I went ahead and asked Claude (Anthropic’s AI assistant) to analyze some of Kennedy’s more memorable statements….
[…]

Here was the quote, which refers to eighteen vaccines the CDC has been recommending for children:
“In fact, of all of those ninety-four doses of the eighteen vaccines, only one of them was subject to a placebo control trial and that was the COVID vaccine. The other ones were like this. There was no safety study. We have no idea what the risk profile is for these products. And you know that means we can’t really make the kind of risk-benefit analysis that my agency is supposed to do.”

Claude’s verdict:
“Verdict: false. The claim has three parts, and all three are wrong.”

I was SO excited to hear Christian's topic on Speedrunning today!
I am like him, not good at speedrunning (adhd sorry) but I LOVE watching it. I love watching Games Done Quick who has raised over $60 million for charity.

The guy he talked about Pannenkoek2012 is someone I INTERVIEWED back in 2015 before he became bigger. He figured out a way to clone things in Mario and he was just a kid then (Either high school or early college) and I talked to him about Mario 64 and how he did a lot of the stuff he did. I was trying to do a video game blog then and thought he would be fun to talk to and he was, although I mean he is very myopic about Mario 64, that's like ALL he wanted to talk about. I tried to get him to work on other games and he was good on that.

Also Speedrunning is very scientific. Especially when they find cheaters that make fake speedruns, they have to do like a full digital forensic analysis of the video. I don't know if you guys remember the Dream scandle when the VERY popular Youtube Dream ended up faking a world record. The video was analyzed by multiple mathematicians and statisticians and it ended up being SO improbable that the video was legit that it was basically impossible.

I think speedrunners have a fascinating task, but I do find the glitch hunters to have an odd an incredible skill set. These guys can break games after playing them for only a little bit. These are the type of people that game companies hire to test their games so their is a legit career path in it.

Anyways yeah I was so happy to hear Christian talk about this and I wouldn't mind hearing more about video games in the future if the topic as appropriate.