#81: How To Build A Future More Like Star Trek Than Terminator – Andrew Leigh

Dr Andrew Leigh MP is a member of the Australian federal parliament. He is currently Labor’s Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury and Charities.

Show notes

Selected links

• Follow Andrew: Website | Twitter
• Innovation + Equality, by Andrew Leigh and Joshua Gans
• Risk, Uncertainty and Profit, by Frank Knight
• A Treatise on Probability, by John Maynard Keynes
• ‘The General Theory of Employment’, 1937 article by John Maynard Keynes
• The Poverty of Historicism, by Karl Popper
• Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, by Joseph Schumpeter

Topics discussed

• What piece of advice would Andrew give to his teenage self? 1:44
• What’s one thing Andrew used to believe but no longer does? 3:00
• When is Andrew most happy? 4:58
• What is the most important thing Andrew does to stay healthy? 7:11
• Does Andrew have any guilty pleasures? 7:22
• Which person or experience has most shaped Andrew’s view of living an ethical life? 9:31
• What’s one thing Andrew holds to be true that very few other people believe? 10:20
• How does Andrew remain resilient in dark moments? 12:47
• Does Andrew regret not studying a quantitative degree undergraduate? 15:41
• Can we have both equality and innovation? 18:06
• Knightian uncertainty. 23:13
• Why is the future radically uncertain? 26:04
• Will the future keep getting better or have we already picked all the low-hanging fruit of technology? 33:00
• Combinatorial explosions. 35:55
• What is the optimal patent system? 38:46
• Why has Western productivity growth slowed since the 1970s? 41:05
• What is “creative destruction” and how should policy-makers handle it? 44:27
• Is Andrew worried about existential risks posed by Artificial General Intelligence? 46:31
• Is there a link between housing bubbles and secular stagnation? 50:07
• How confident is Andrew that the West will solve its productivity growth challenges in the next 5 to 10 years? 53:52