Things Jerry Z. Muller Has Said on Podcasts

“It's important to see your life as having a shape, that is having a plot, and having a plot and having a shape means you're going to die… the transhumanists, that want to live forever, either in their own bodies or in some kind of mechanical form, I think those people are deeply ultimately nihilistic and don't really have a sense of what life is for.” — Jerry Z. Muller, Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning

Razib Khan had laid out an optimistic view of a "hybrid civilization" with AI. Muller answered with the part he is most skeptical of, drawing on a book he is writing about passing things on across generations.

Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning · 2026-10-19 Permalink → Listen →

Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning Around 1:04:38 into the episode

Jerry Z. Muller

…things, interested in the history of capitalism and its cultural and moral prerequisites and ramifications, is that we are in this period of really remarkable dynamism. And it's really hard to just understand what's actually going on. And that makes it all the more interesting, tell you the truth.

Razib Khan

…know the shape of it because until you actually live out something, you only have theoretical prediction. And right now, we're running the experiment. We're running the experiment. That's what we're in. We're in a great experiment, sociologically, culturally, and technologically. Let me tell you

Jerry Z. Muller

the part that I'm most skeptical about. I'm working on a book called Path. Passing it on, thinking across generations about money, time, and purpose. And part of the, one of the themes of that book, and I'm not by no means the first person to articulate this, is that it's important to see your life as having a shape, that is having a plot, and having a plot and having a shape means you're going to die. And that's an important part of giving shape and meaning to your life. And so I think that part of the tech community that I don't have any contact with, but you have some contact with, that is, you know, transhumanist and so on, and that wants to live forever, either in their own bodies or in some kind of mechanical form. I think those people are deeply ultimately nihilistic and don't really have a sense of what life is for. If you just want to go on forever, you don't really have a sense of what sort of things give meaning and purpose and shape to your life. So that is something I'm concerned about.

Razib Khan

Yeah, well, I mean, like, I think we, you know, we've been going on for a while. So check out your sub stack. Everybody should check out your sub stack. And, you know, I'll put the link on Twitter because, you know, you might be an emeritus professor, but you're definitely in the cyber age, you…

Jerry Z. Muller

Well, after having interacted with you through various media over the years and profiting from some of the very means that you've been talking about, it's been a pleasure to do this face to face, as it were.

Razib Khan

Yeah, maybe I'll see you all sometime soon.

Speaker names from our own diarization · position estimated from where the line sits in the episode

“AI is one of those really transformative technologies that is creating tremendous new possibilities and realities and is deflating the value of the human capital that some people have accumulated. If you were a computer science major graduating in 2011, things look great for you, much less so if you're graduating in 2026 or 2028.” — Jerry Z. Muller, Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning

Historian Jerry Z. Muller, asked whether capitalism will survive hostility from both parties, described it as Schumpeter's creative destruction: dynamism that leaves some people behind. He called himself optimistic about American capitalism in the medium and long term.

Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning · 2026-10-19 Permalink → Listen →

Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning Around 56:48 into the episode

Jerry Z. Muller

Right.

Razib Khan

…and like, you know, capitalism, as we understand it, has been around for a while now. How are you feeling? Do you think it's going to just, you know, make it through and just come back? Or are we in treacherous times? I mean, obviously, this isn't like global communism a century ago, but still.

Jerry Z. Muller

Yeah. Well, capitalism is, I mean, its defining feature really is its dynamism. And what Schumpeter, one of my favorite social theorists, called creative destruction. And part of that process is that new ways of doing things, new products, new ways of marketing are constantly being created. And as they are being created, they create tremendous advantages for some individuals. On the whole, they tend to create a better standard of living and more possibilities for more people. But they also destroy the way of life of some people as the way because the way in which things were made or distributed in the past becomes superannuated. So that's something that's gone on really throughout the history of capitalism, from the Industrial Revolution and the Luddites and so on, through the late 19th century populist era in the United States and in Europe as you had the opening up of international agriculture, which put a strain on farmers and peasants in many countries. And so in that sense, capitalism is the history of dynamism. It's a history of some people, of some people getting left behind, left behind either in absolute…

Razib Khan

Well, I guess the last question I'm going to ask because you brought it up, you know, I'm talking for an hour now. You know, you are an emeritus. You know, you seem like you're in good health and everything like that. But, you know, you have now witnessed, well, I have witnessed AI over the last…

Jerry Z. Muller

Well, I think the keywords are the ones that you articulated, uncharted territory, because there really hasn't been anything quite like this. I mean, in some ways, the coming of the internet was like it in terms of a huge transformative step in the transmission of knowledge and information and…

Razib Khan

Yeah, I mean, I do have to say, okay, I know the youth are having issues with reading, the ability to read. You know, some people are saying, we're going back to the age of orality, which is concerning to me because oral has limitations. But as you know, some people worried with the spread of…

Speaker names from our own diarization · position estimated from where the line sits in the episode

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