Episode

Who Was Liron Shapira BEFORE Doom Debates? — Interview on Theo Jaffee's Podcast from December 2023

Podcast
Doom Debates!
Published
May 14, 2026
Duration seconds
5119
Processing state
not_requested
Canonical source
https://lironshapira.substack.com/p/who-was-liron-shapira-before-doom
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https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/197603602/b3934aa013f2d1a1153c3c897f4415f0.mp3
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Markdown
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Summary

In December 2023, I joined the Theo Jaffee Podcast to talk about a wide range of topics including non-AI x-risks, where I disagree with Eliezer Yudkwowsky, cryptocurrency and if P(Doom) is rigorous. This episode was recorded 6 months before I'd started Doom Debates. Let's look back with the power of hindsight and see if my answers still hold up. Links #10: Liron Shapira — AI doom, FOOM, rationalism, and crypto (YouTube) — https://youtu.be/YfEcAtHExFM Watch Theo Jafee now on MTS — https://www.mts.now/ MTS Live — https://x.com/MTSlive Timestamps 00:00:00 — Theo's Introduction 00:01:03 — Is Liron Worried About Non-AI Existential Risks 00:03:36 — Suffering Risks 00:05:22 — Is P(Doom) rigorous? 00:09:42 — Is Eliezer Overestimating P(Doom)? 00:12:18 — Where Does Liron Disagree with Eliezer? 00:15:43 — What Would Change Liron's Mind 00:17:14 — Elon Musk's AI Timelines 00:18:34 — Is xAI Making Things Worse? 00:20:24 — The Case for an AI Manhattan Project 00:22:32 — Are Superforecasters Wrong About AI Risk? 00:26:02 — The Race Against Time for Alignment 00:28:01 — Headroom Above Human Intelligence 00:33:31 — Vitalik's d/acc Framework 00:35:23 — Edging Toward Superintelligence 00:38:21 — From Chatbot to World-Ender 00:41:55 — GPT Paradigm vs. AlphaZero 00:43:18 — Critiquing AI Optimism 00:48:29 — Deceptive Alignment and Gradient Descent 00:53:31 — Does Nice Training Data Make Nice AI? 00:57:57 — How Do You Live with 50% P(Doom)? 01:00:08 — Why Have Kids If the World Might End?01:02:16 — Israel vs Hamas 01:06:15 — How LessWrong Changed Liron's Lif e01:08:42 — Rationalism and Effective Altruism 01:14:49 — Why Blockchain Has No Use Case Beyond Cryptocurrency 01:22:13 — Charlie Munger and Richard Feynman 01:24:38 — Closing Doom Debates’ Mission is to raise mainstream awareness of im…