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Best of the Pod: Reid Hoffman on How AI Is Answering Our Biggest Questions

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Best of the Pod: Reid Hoffman on How AI Is Answering Our Biggest Questions

AI & I

2025/12/24
AI & I

AI & I

2025/12/24
OverviewShownoteHighlightsTranscriptChaptersPins

Shownote

Learn how to use philosophy to run your business more effectively. Reid Hoffman thinks a masters in philosophy will help you run your business better than an MBA. Reid is a founder, investor, podcaster, and author. But before he did any of these things, h...

Highlights

In this thought-provoking conversation, Reid Hoffman makes a compelling case for the enduring value of philosophy in the age of artificial intelligence and entrepreneurship. Rather than focusing on technical skills or business tactics, the discussion centers on how deep thinking about human nature, truth, and meaning can shape better founders and more impactful technologies.
03:15
A background in philosophy is more important for entrepreneurship than an MBA.
08:06
The trolley problem assumes perfect knowledge and uncontrollable outcomes, which rarely exist in reality
11:50
Language models function more like nominalist thinking, reflecting relative truths rather than objective realities.
27:36
Early Wittgenstein's logical space of truth resembles AI word embeddings.
32:30
Truth isn't determined by language alone but is embedded in human navigation of the world.
41:24
LLMs can simulate profound philosophical conversations like Gödel and Wittgenstein discussing incompleteness
44:58
Glasses and LLMs both extend and transform human capabilities in profound ways.
49:32
ChatGPT is an on-demand personal research assistant breaking information bottlenecks
52:48
Philosophy should engage more with real-world technology instead of focusing narrowly on abstract problems like trolley problems.
56:30
Use ChatGPT interactively to explore both sides of an argument.

Chapters

START
00:00
Why philosophy will make you a better founder
04:35
The fundamental problem with “trolley problems”
08:22
How AI is changing the essentialism v. nominalism debate
14:27
Why embeddings align with nominalism
29:33
How LLMs are being trained to reason better
34:26
How technology changes the way we see ourselves and the world around us
44:52
Why most psychology literature is wrong
46:24
Why philosophers didn’t come up with AI
52:46
How to use ChatGPT to be more philosophically inclined
56:30

Transcript

Dan Shipper: Why do you care about philosophy? Why are answering these big questions important? Reid Hoffman: You know, one of the things that I sometimes will tell MBA schools, background in philosophy is more important for entrepreneurship than an MBA. ...