The Shared Arc of History, AI, and Technology | Niall Ferguson

New institutions cannot fundamentally violate evolutionary biology constraints; humans are apes constrained by the Dunbar number (small group size where people know each other), so truly new institutional forms enabled by internet technology are unlikely—instead, we are 'in the business not of inventing entirely new institutions but rejuvenating and replacing the ones that have become old and sclerotic.'

“When people tell me that there are going to be these new uh hitherto unseen institutions made possible by the internet, I tend to be skeptical because we're apes. We are apes and our institutions are therefore constrained by our evolutionary biology. We don't really like there to be too many people. It's going to be kind of somewhat small. You need to know everybody. the Dunbar number is real. So I think we're really in the business not of inventing entirely new institutions but rejuvenating and replacing the ones that have become old and and sclerotic.”

Mark Zuckerberg was going to become one of the most unpopular people in America and occupy a role between press barons like William Randolph Hearst and monopolists like John D. Rockefeller in a new gilded age—a prediction Ferguson made shortly before Zuckerberg's congressional backlash.

“I can remember having a conversation with Mark Zuckerberg shortly after arriving and saying, 'You're going to become one of the most unpopular people in America really soon because of the power that you you've accumulated and you're going to be in a sense a cross between uh the press baronss uh you know, William Randph Hurst and John D. Rockefeller uh in our new gilded age.'”

It is historically plausible (and Ferguson thinks 'roughly three days out of seven') that American republican institutions are now in terminal decay, with the United States heading toward either dissolution (civil war, fragmentation) or empire (tyranny), representing the late-republic phase of a republic that has lasted nearly 250 years—a remarkable longevity by historical standards.

“It's not inconceivable that the institutions of the American Republic are now in terminal decay. I think roughly three days out of seven that we're in the late republic phase and that the United States is heading towards its inevitable historical fate which is either to tear itself apart or become an empire. So the interesting moment we live in is probably the late republic and we may live to see the dissolution of the republic under if the wrong conditions are come about. That's the thought that I am most disturbed by at the moment because it's so historically plausible.”

Most people are not very creative after the age of about 30, and in modern society they stick around for decades beyond that due to healthcare and medicine, becoming less creative and innovative while 'generally getting in the way' of progress.

“problem is that most people aren't very creative after the age of about 30. They just aren't. But they stick around in our world because of incredibly good healthcare and medical science and they stick around being less and less creative and innovative and generally getting in the way.”

Warfare and military dominance, not economic growth or technological innovation, is the ultimate historical punctuation mark—what really changes history most fundamentally, and the moment the United States loses a war (especially to China due to inferior technology) will mark the end of the American era.

“In the end, what really changes history more than anything else is is warfare. That that warfare does the big punctuation marks historically. At some point, uh it will matter when the United States loses a war, say against China. And if it loses because its technology is inferior, that will be without question the end of the American era.”

The industrial revolution of 1825 created more dramatic dislocation and felt transformation for people living through it than contemporary technological change, making it historically implausible to claim that the 2020s represent the most epochal moment in human history.

“I think we should be careful not to exaggerate how amazing and extraordinary and epoch uh changing our time is. I'd be inclined to think that the dislocation was greater 200 years ago.”

In human history, most people lived with the expectation that they would die prematurely; reaching old age was not something most could take for granted, and this changed the way people related to one another and to life in ways that may have been more conducive to creativity and innovation.

“I mean, getting getting to old age is is, you know, we take it for granted, but it certainly wasn't something that most people in history could take for granted. So, I think our lives are odd because we are so confident that they'll be long. That's very unusual for most of human history. you had to assume that your probability of premature death was really high. And um I think that changes the way we relate to one another as well as as to life.”

If AGI is achieved as Sam Altman describes (general intelligence superior to most humans), humans will become redundant—like horses after cars were invented—and 'we will have good reason to go extinct or at least to shrink in our numbers the way horses have,' making the renegotiation of the social contract moot.

“I think the advent of of AGR I will coincide with or just precede the decline in population that I I talked about. And and the human race will just go the way of horses. Horses used to be the defing form of transport for most of of recorded history until till we came up with something that was clearly better than a horse, namely a car. And I think if if AGI is achieved, general intelligence superior to most humans, then you know we we will have good reason to go extinct or at least to shrink in our numbers the way horses have.”

Ferguson doesn't see that any technology can significantly offset GDP decline caused by population shrinking because ultimately growth is about consumption—it's about more humans doing more work and then buying more stuff that the work has produced.

“I don't I don't see that any technology can s significantly offset that because ultimately growth is about consumption. It's it's about more humans doing more work and then buying more stuff that the work has produced. Once the population is shrinking the growth will be low to negative.”

People in Wall Street in 2007 had largely forgotten the Great Depression, and therefore had no clue what was happening when markets tanked in 2008-2009; knowledge of Great Depression history would have provided understanding of what Ben Bernanke was trying to prevent.

“People in Wall Street in 2007 had largely forgotten if they'd ever known about the Great Depression and so they had no clue what was happening when the markets tanked in 2008 2009. It was a very big advantage to know about the Great Depression then because you knew roughly what Ben Bernani was worried about and trying to avoid.”

Humans will not achieve multi-planetary civilization (Mars colonization) because even if the population of haredi Orthodox Jews (a group with high fertility) increased by two orders of magnitude and maintained reproduction rates, it would not be enough to provide the population needed for Mars settlement, given overall global fertility collapse.

“I mean at this point I love Elon but even if the population of heredi Orthodox Jews was to you know increase by two orders of magnitude and maintain its rate of reproduction it's still going to be a stretch to have the bodies that we'll need even to get to Mars.”

People in 1825 London could read morning newspapers to learn what had happened days before in India or North America, which was dramatically different from the situation 100-200 years prior, establishing the birth of 'news as daily information' long before the internet.

“I look back at the past and I'm struck by the fact that provided you were living in a city, none of what I'm saying applies if you lived in a village in La Pond or if you lived in the Scottish Highlands. If you lived in London uh in 1825, you were able to see in the morning newspaper at a glance what was happening or had happened several days before in India or what had happened uh several days before in North America and that was dramatically different from the state of affairs 100 years before and of course uh 200 years before.”

Ferguson was brought into the world in 1964, a time when nuclear weapons had become fully established as the key weapons of war and the Soviets were racing to catch up with the U.S., and the world had narrowly avoided World War III over Cuba just two years before; his parents would have found this extraordinarily terrifying, so the year 2025 is not that big a standout in terms of historical crisis.

“Uh this was a time when uh nuclear weapons had become fully established as uh the key weapons of war and the Soviets were racing to catch up with the United States. The world had narrowly avoided World War II over Cuba just two years before. Uh present the United States had been assassinated just before. And so if you just go back to the beginning of my life, that was also a time that must have seemed to my parents extraordinary and and in some measure terrifying.”

Our lives are unusual because we are so confident that they'll be long, which is very unusual for most of human history, and this changes the way we relate to one another and to life, and not necessarily in a good way.

“That's very unusual for most of human history. you had to assume that your probability of premature death was really high. And um I think that changes the way we relate to one another as well as as to life. That that not not in a good way either because I think people are seem to have been a great deal more uh innovative uh and and creative when they knew that time was short.”

Ferguson knew that knowing about the Great Depression in 2008 was a very big advantage because it let you know roughly what Ben Bernanke was worried about and trying to avoid, whereas Mark Zuckerberg's advantage was not knowing history because he could barrel ahead in pursuit of domination without thinking about the fact that he was going to become a hate figure.

“It was a very big advantage to know about the Great Depression then because you knew roughly what Ben Bernani was worried about and trying to avoid. In the same way, it helped not to know any history to be Mark Zuckerberg because you could barrel ahead in pursuit of domination without thinking too much about the fact that you were going to become a hate figure for a time.”

The institutions of the American Republic may now be in terminal decay, and roughly three days out of seven Ferguson thinks the US is in a 'late republic' phase heading toward inevitable historical outcomes of either tearing itself apart or becoming an empire.

“And let me add one shocking thought. It's not inconceivable that the institutions of the American Republic are now in terminal decay. I think roughly three days out of seven that we're in the late republic phase and that the United States is heading towards its inevitable historical fate which is either to tear itself apart or become an empire.”

Ferguson references his earlier writing comparing AGI to 'the aliens in our own midst' or 'the tricolarens from the threebody problem'—making artificial superintelligence that will supplant humans is 'absolutely mad' when one pauses to reflect on it, making the enterprise of AGI development 'highly undesirable.'

“I wrote a piece about this long ago now. If you if we create the aliens in our own midst, I mean, if we take if we create the tricolarens from the threebody problem, we we make them, then what do we expect to happen? I think the whole thing is absolutely mad when I pause for a moment to reflect on it.”

The industrial revolution (1820s-1920s), not the information revolution, was the more fundamental transformation of human existence, comparable to or exceeding technological change in the modern era.

“I think we should be careful not to exaggerate how amazing and extraordinary and epoch uh changing our time is. I'd be inclined to think that the dislocation was greater 200 years ago. We've been in our lifetimes, I just turned 60 through a series of dramatic technological discontinuities and uh in that sense the latest thing is not that dramatically different.”

Artificial general intelligence capable of warfare superior to humans would be the kind of paradigm-shifting change that would definitively prove we live in an epoch-changing moment, but current AI (large language models fine-tuned on internet data) is fake intelligence that cannot learn outside internet environments and would be defeated by special forces if deployed in physical warfare.

“when the robot army equipped with uh artificial intelligence superior to mine sweeps through uh North America uh slaughtering uh American citizens, I'll believe we're in the new era. Uh but we're not there yet.”

Even if the population of Haredi Orthodox Jews doubled or tripled and maintained their high fertility rate, there still would not be enough humans to colonize Mars, making intergalactic human expansion implausible as a solution to extinction risk.

“I mean at this point I love Elon but even if the population of heredi Orthodox Jews was to you know increase by two orders of magnitude and maintain its rate of reproduction it's still going to be a stretch to have the bodies that we'll need even to get to Mars.”

Current LLMs (like those from OpenAI) may soon be able to write the second volume of Kissinger's biography faster and possibly as well as Ferguson himself, indicating that human intellectual work is becoming increasingly substitutable.

“There's no LLM as good as me yet, but seems plausible that it could be achieved. Maybe an LLM is close to being able to write the second volume of Kissinger faster than me. Certainly, that seems likely. Would it be better than me? Not sure yet. But at some point, you got to consider that that's quite likely with sufficient compute.”

Current AI is not yet capable of independent learning outside the internet environment; it fakes human intelligence on the basis of internet-based training data with increasing sophistication but has not learned how to learn in the real world, making current AI systems vulnerable to real-world scenarios (e.g., special forces would quickly defeat AI-equipped robots).

“uh but it's sort of fake intelligence is sort of pretending to think like us by different means and it hasn't yet started to learn outside the environment of the internet. So a robot army equipped even really good robots equipped with the best that open AI can do they'd be eminently beatable because they'd be clueless about warfare. You you special forces people would destroy them I think quite quickly.”

Human population could collapse to 2 billion in 250 years based on current fertility trajectories; this outcome is 'not crazy.'

“human population could be back at 2 billion in like 250 years. It it's actually not crazy that that would happen.”

Ferguson's wife believes that religious revival will reverse the fertility crisis and restore purpose to humanity, suggesting that atheism and secularism are a dead end and that spiritual reawakening will lead to people wanting 3-5 children on average, which Ferguson's wife has consistently been ahead of conventional wisdom on.

“My wife is a visionary up there with Peter Teal. Uh they they have been consistently eight years ahead of everybody else. She thinks it will take the form of religious revival and that ultimately atheism and secularism, these things are a dead end and out of a religious revival, we will find our way back to having three children on average, four children on average, maybe five. I I hope she's right. I think it will take something, some spiritual reawakening to heal what seems to me to be a profound pathology most obvious amongst young people.”

Humanity is 'building the next species that will take our place' because we've collectively decided to 'go out of business as a species' through voluntary population decline combined with AGI development.

“I think this is the real significance of of AGI that that in a sense we're building the the next species that will take our place cuz we've collectively decided to to kind of go out of business as a species.”

The advent of AGI will likely coincide with or just precede the human population decline that Ferguson discussed, and humans will follow the same trajectory as horses—a once-defining form of transport that became redundant when cars were invented, and if AGI is as good as Sam Altman claims, most humans will be redundant.

“I think the advent of of AGR I will coincide with or just precede the decline in population that I I talked about. And and the human race will just go the way of horses. Horses used to be the defing form of transport for most of of recorded history until till we came up with something that was clearly better than a horse, namely a car. And I think if if AGI is achieved, general intelligence superior to most humans, then you know we we will have good reason to go extinct or at least to shrink in in our numbers the way horses have.”

A steady flow of new institutions (firms, voluntary associations, universities) is necessary to prevent institutional sclerosis; the United States was historically very good at generating new institutions until recently, when a noticeable decline in new company formation, new bank formation, and zero new universities founded in recent decades indicates the onset of a 'great degeneration.'

“There needs to be a steady flow of new institutions otherwise sclerosis sets in. And the United States historically has been very good at generating new firms but also new voluntary associations and and also uh new educational institutions. The US was very very good at that until recently. And it was striking to me that we saw at the time of the financial crisis a noticeable tick down in new company formation, new bank formation and no new universities had been founded for decades uh in the United States. So I began to be obsessed with the idea of a great degeneration where American institutions were becoming sclerotic in the way that British institutions had been for some time.”

When people claim that the internet will enable entirely new forms of institutions never before seen, Ferguson is skeptical because humans are apes constrained by evolutionary biology—we dislike large groups, prefer small groups where we know everybody, and this Dunbar number constraint is real, limiting us to rejuvenating old institutions rather than inventing entirely new ones.

“When people tell me that there are going to be these new uh hitherto unseen institutions made possible by the internet, I tend to be skeptical because we're apes. We are apes and our institutions are therefore constrained by our evolutionary biology. We don't really like there to be too many people. It's going to be kind of somewhat small. You need to know everybody. the Dunbar number is real. So I think we're really in the business not of inventing entirely new institutions but rejuvenating and replacing the ones that have become old and and sclerotic.”

Global GDP growth will trend down and eventually become negative because human population will start shrinking in 30-40 years and simultaneously aging, and this demographic contraction is fundamentally incompatible with growth-driven economics since growth requires expanding consumption by growing populations.

“I mean at the moment in fact GDP growth is trending down historically and that will continue because the human population is about to start shrinking starting in about 30 years 40 years and it's hard for me to imagine that we'll have high growth rates with population shrinking and simultaneously aging quite the reverse actually we're heading for a period when population growth will turn so sharply negative that I think GDP growth will will do who that's where we're heading.”

Ferguson's own life story—from working-class Scottish boy to Oxford and then international intellectual—is not remarkable compared to the distribution of interesting lives in history; he considers having five children his most important achievement, not his books.

“I mean, lots and lots of, you know, bright young white Scotsmen have made a career out of literature over the last 200 or 300 years. And so, what's there to learn? It's not remarkable. I haven't done anything that unusual, nothing that would impress Walter Scott or John Bacham. And the most important thing that I've done is not to write books. I've had five children. Forming them, helping them is the most important thing I do.”

Ferguson's wife (whom he characterizes as visionary and 'eight years ahead of everybody else' like Peter Thiel) believes that a religious revival—a return from atheism and secularism—will restore fertility by shifting cultural values toward larger families (averaging 3-5 children), reversing current decline.

“My wife is a visionary up there with Peter Teal. Uh they they have been consistently eight years ahead of everybody else. She thinks it will take the form of religious revival and that ultimately atheism and secularism, these things are a dead end and out of a religious revival, we will find our way back to having three children on average, four children on average, maybe five.”

Ferguson wrote about the concept of humans creating 'aliens in our own midst'—creating superintelligent AGI entities like the Trisolaran aliens from Liu Cixin's 'Three-Body Problem'—and he finds this entire enterprise 'absolutely mad' when he pauses to reflect on it.

“I wrote a piece about this long ago now. If you if we create the aliens in our own midst, I mean, if we take if we create the tricolarens from the threebody problem, we we make them, then what do we expect to happen? I think the whole thing is absolutely mad when I pause for a moment to reflect on it.”

The scaling of media and communication technology from 1825 to 1925 was 'essentially one of scaling up the technology of newspapers and railroads' rather than a qualitative shift in human communication.

“the change between 1825 and and 1925, which was essentially one of of scaling up the technology of of newspapers and railroads.”

Jonathan raises the question of whether there is a 'natural' preference for children when economic constraints are removed, suggesting that the relationship between fertility and economic incentives may be more complex than Ferguson's deterministic account.

“At some point, do you think that there are more people like you who want to have five children and who are not maybe as bound by economic constraints? Because it's unclear to me what the natural in some ways preference function there is.”

By 2011, Ferguson recognized two inevitable trends: (1) academic life would be overrun by 'crazy woke progressive lunatics,' as signaled by the overthrow of Larry Summers as Harvard president, and (2) the public sphere would become a 'hellscape' due to social media and the blogosphere.

“by 2011, and I'd been at Harvard by that time, 7 years, two things were obvious. One, that academic life was going to go crazy. That a bunch of crazy woke progressive lunatics were going to take over the universities. And that was not good. So you saw that before most? Oh, yeah. No, it was obvious. It was obvious. You could see from the moment Larry Summers was overthrown as president of Harvard that hostile, dark, illiberal forces were taking control.”

The centralization of the internet around platform companies like Amazon, Google, and Facebook was bound to create unintended consequences, and those consequences were already manifesting themselves in 2016 when Ferguson arrived at Stanford.

“the power of the network platforms that had uh arisen very rapidly that centralization of of the internet around platforms like Amazon and then uh Google and Facebook was bound to create unintended consequences and and the unintended consequences were already manifesting themselves in 2016.”

Literature is a critical guide to human experience that helps anticipate rough and smooth patches in personal life; most people enter love and business without reading enough literature and consequently make terrible decisions.

“I don't just read history. Uh I also read literature because literature is a critical guide to human experience that helps you anticipate the rough and the smooth of personal life. And most people decide to go into the business of of love without actually having read nearly enough about it. And therefore, they usually make terrible decisions.”

Science fiction authors, unlike historians, are paid to think systematically about the future, and Ferguson has found almost as much value from reading science fiction as history over the last decade.

“and then science fiction because historians can't and aren't paid to think about the future. People who write science fiction are and I've found almost as much value from reading science fiction as history over the last decade.”

Nobody at the time of an event really knows which historical developments are actually significant; people in 1825 were as uncertain about the future as we are today, and they spent their news consumption on gossip (royal family) and financial crises (Latin American debt) just as we do.

“What we do is we sort of allow the news media to create filters for us. And some of us focus on the tariff issue and some of us focus on Karma's love life which was the topic of conversation uh my wife was having just a moment ago. But we're essentially doing what people did in 1825 when they decided whether they would gossip about what was then the first Latin American debt crisis or the love life of the royal family. That that's always what we do with news is just a kind of amorphous mass of events. Nobody really knows at the time which ones are historically significant.”

Silicon Valley, like Wall Street, deliberately ignores history because the past is full of worrying implications that would constrain aggressive expansion and dominance-seeking behavior.

“What's interesting to me about Silicon Valley is that like Wall Street, it doesn't want to remember the past because ultimately the past is full of quite worrying implications.”

Ferguson predicted in 2011 that the public sphere would turn into a 'hellscape' because of social media, the blogosphere, and other digital communication platforms, which is why he decided to create an advisory business (Greenmantle) to work on money and power outside of academia and social media.

“And the other thing I noticed in 2011 was that the public sphere was going to turn into a hellscape uh because of social media, the blogger sphere, etc. So I decided I would take a part of my life out of those domains, create an advisory business called Green Mantle and work in earnest on money and power without the constraints of academia and social media.”

We are building the next species to replace us precisely because we have collectively decided to 'go out of business' as a species through fertility collapse; AGI development is a symptom of human civilizational surrender.

“we're building the the next species that will take our place cuz we've collectively decided to to kind of go out of business as a species.”

Literature is a critical guide to human experience that helps anticipate the rough and smooth of personal life, and most people make terrible decisions about love because they haven't read enough literature about it.

“Second point, I don't just read history. Uh I also read literature because literature is a critical guide to human experience that helps you anticipate the rough and the smooth of personal life. And most people decide to go into the business of of love without actually having read nearly enough about it. And therefore, they usually make terrible decisions.”

Ferguson wrote 'The Square and the Tower' to demonstrate that the internet and platforms did not represent a drastic discontinuity in history, but rather fit into a cyclical pattern of history favoring networks and hierarchies alternately, with technology periodically favoring one over the other.

“And so I spent my first few years uh at at Stanford writing a book called The Square of the Tower, which was just designed to show that there really wasn't some completely drastic discontinuity that had happened with the invention of the internet, the worldwide web, and the platforms that were built upon it. that one could understand that in the continuum of uh networks and hierarchies with technology periodically favoring the networks and then periodically favoring the hierarchies.”

The centralization of the internet around platforms like Amazon, Google, and Facebook was bound to create unintended consequences, and these consequences were already manifesting in 2016, which Ferguson had recognized earlier.

“that one could understand that in the continuum of uh networks and hierarchies with technology periodically favoring the networks and then periodically favoring the hierarchies. That was roughly the argument I made and my point at the end of that book was that the power of the network platforms that had uh arisen very rapidly that centralization of of the internet around platforms like Amazon and then uh Google and Facebook was bound to create unintended consequences and and the unintended consequences were already manifesting themselves in 2016.”

Science fiction writers have been systematically thinking about the future since the early 1990s (Ferguson cites Neal Stephenson), and Ferguson has found almost as much value from reading science fiction as history over the last decade for understanding what might come.

“and then science fiction because historians can't and aren't paid to think about the future. People who write science fiction are and I've found almost as much value from reading science fiction as history over the last decade. So the key thing is to make sure that you're locating your experience as an individual and as a you know family once you have a family in a historical context but also in the context of the unknowable future take advantage of the fact that Neil Stevenson one of the smartest people I know has been trying to think about the future systematically since I guess the early 1990s and why has he been good at it.”

Greenmantle, Ferguson's advisory business, allows him to 'do history in real time'—to assess what is happening right now, discern its historical significance, and understand what it means for markets and macro economics—and this real-time historical analysis has become a central part of his daily life.

“And that was the birth of Greenmantle which has become a big part of my life. uh an advisory business which you know solved a lot of problems economically but also solved intellectual problems because with Green Mantle I do history in real time what is happening right now can we discern its historical significance and what does that mean for markets and macro uh and that's that's tremendous fun uh and it's it's become a part of every day of my life”

Tolstoy's 'War and Peace' is a wonderful book because it depicts ordinary people caught up in history with limited control over unfolding events while having to live their lives during upheaval, which is a useful model for understanding historical experience when experiencing actual war (as Ukrainians have since February 2022).

“When I was a teenager, I immersed myself in the novels of Toltoy. Uh Warren Peace is a wonderful book because it's about ordinary people who are caught up in history. They have no real control over over the events that are uh unfolding as France invades Russia. But somehow they have to live their lives in this upheaval. And if you were a Ukrainian, you you'd be living through that experience. Now since the February of 2022, war has happened to your society. And you're contending with that tension between history and everyday life literally every day, every hour.”

Ferguson avoids introspection because looking at oneself teaches very little about the human condition; one learns more from reading about the lives of others in literature, history, and biography.

“I do my best to avoid introspection because it's really a tremendous waste of time mostly. Uh you you'll learn very little about the human condition looking at your yourself. It's much more informative to look at uh the lives of others. And so throughout my life, whenever anybody's tried to lure me into psychoanalysis or or amateur introspection, I I reach for a book and read about somebody far more interesting than me.”

Ferguson decided at age 22 to pursue writing as a profession and chose academia (PhD at Oxford or Cambridge) as the financial vehicle because those institutions offered three 8-week terms, allowing substantial time to write, beautiful working conditions, and reliable salary—a pragmatic solution to the 'economic problem' of being a writer without a trust fund.

“I had an economic problem to solve at the age of about 22 which was that I I felt I wanted to write for a living. I thought writing was a an admirable profession that to produce books was to contribute to the sum of of human civilization. But I had to pay the rent and eat. And the way to do that if you don't have a trust fund, which I did not, is to get an academic job because then you have a salary. to get an academic job you need a PhD. So I decided I'd get a PhD and get an academic job and Oxford and Cambridge uh as the dominant universities in the UK were the obvious places to be based. Three 8week terms gives you quite a lot of time not teaching.”

Ferguson's original plan ('Plan A') to use an academic sinecure for writing income was disrupted by marriage and children, requiring him to pivot to a new strategy ('Plan B'): writing popular books about money and power and creating TV tie-ins to increase sales and publisher advances.

“But you know, you start with a plan. And as Mike Tyson said, everybody has a plan until they're punched in the mouth. Profound insight. So along come the the major hazards of midlife, of mid20s life, uh marriage and children, and suddenly it's not enough money. So you then think, well, how do I deal with that challenge? And the solution that I initially came up with was I will write books that sell. And how do I do that? I will make TV shows that will then be tie-ins with the books and then 10 times as many people will buy the books and the publishers will pay me advances and I'll be able to pay for my new life as a father. So that was plan B.”

By the late 1990s, Ferguson felt his work at Oxford on money, power, and banks was not resonating with colleagues who expected historians to write about kings and queens, prompting Henry Kaufman to invite him to New York where 'money and power' would be better understood—an offer Ferguson was considering when 9/11 occurred and became the decisive factor in his move to the United States.

“by the late 1990s, I was sitting in Oxford thinking, you know what, this is not entirely as exciting as I had hoped for. I'm writing books about money and power, the Rothschilds, the cash nexus empire. And the British expect historians to write about kings and queens, and they don't understand that I'm obsessed with the banks and the bond market. And so somebody in New York, Henry Kuffman, says to me, 'Nil, hey, you seem to write a lot of books about money and power.' And I go, 'Well, I suppose you could say that.' So why don't you come to where the money and the power are? That was his question.”

Ferguson created Greenmantle, an advisory business in 2011, to take part of his life out of academia and social media, solve economic problems through advisory work on money and power, and 'do history in real time'—analyzing current events for their historical significance and implications for markets and macro trends.

“So I decided I would take a part of my life out of those domains, create an advisory business called Green Mantle and work in earnest on money and power without the constraints of academia and social media. And that was the birth of Greenmantle which has become a big part of my life. uh an advisory business which you know solved a lot of problems economically but also solved intellectual problems because with Green Mantle I do history in real time what is happening right now can we discern its historical significance and what does that mean for markets and macro uh and that's that's tremendous fun”

Ferguson will 'hardly bear to read' Ian M. Banks' Culture series novels despite admiring Banks, finding them difficult, though they do offer a vision of the future (post-human, AI-driven civilization) that parallels what humanity is 'actually just playing out.'

“The crazy thing is that like you talk about Neil Stevenson predicting the future, but this is basically what Ian Banks has been talking about with the Culture series through 30 years of writing about the Culture series that we are actually just playing out what he wrote except that he's a much worse writer than Neil Stevenson. So I can hardly bear to read those books.”

Ferguson moved from Harvard to Stanford in 2016 and initially felt he had 'arrived in the place without history, the place where the amnesia was complete and history was essentially the Google IPO. Everything before that was the dark ages not worth discussing.'

“When I moved from Harvard to Stanford in in 2016, it felt that I'd arrived in in the place without history, the place where the amnesia was complete and history was essentially the Google IPO. Everything before that was the dark ages not worth discussing.”

Elon Musk is 'sort of Napoleon Bonaparte of tech'—incredibly impressive and deeply influential—but represents the type of outsized individual ambition that Silicon Valley celebrates while ignoring historical precedent for how such power consolidation ends.

“Elon Musk is sort of Napoleon Bonapart of tech incredible uh and and deeply impressive.”

It is plausible that the true distinguishing mark of a genuine paradigm shift (from current times) would be 'when the robot army equipped with uh artificial intelligence superior to mine sweeps through uh North America uh slaughtering uh American citizens'—using extreme language to emphasize that we are not yet in a qualitatively different era despite technological advances.

“when the robot army equipped with uh artificial intelligence superior to mine sweeps through uh North America uh slaughtering uh American citizens, I'll believe we're in the new era. Uh but we're not there yet.”

The possibility that economic constraints might be removed for large populations, shifting whether people have more children, depends on understanding the actual preference function for children independent of economics.

“if we remove the economic constraints for a large amount of the human population, then what is the steadystate preference function for children? And I I genuinely don't know the answer”

The information revolution (newspapers in 1825, internet now) is less revolutionary than it appears; the fundamental change to human experience—receiving daily news—happened 200 years ago, and our brains' filtering capacity for information has not expanded since then.

“obviously we get a lot more information from many more sources very much faster than was true uh in the 1820s, but I'm not sure that that is such a dramatic alteration in the human condition compared with there being newspapers, which there were in the 1820s, and news agencies uh and the first railroads.”

The 'last historian will write the book that explains that [human decline] shortly before being winnowed out by AGI'—a dark prediction that even the scholarly record of human decline will disappear.

“The last historian will will write the book that explains that shortly before being winnowed out by AGI.”

When Ferguson moved from Harvard to Stanford in 2016, he found Silicon Valley to be a place without history where the amnesia was complete and history effectively began with the Google IPO, with everything before that treated as the dark ages.

“When I moved from Harvard to Stanford in in 2016, it felt that I'd arrived in in the place without history, the place where the amnesia was complete and history was essentially the Google IPO. Everything before that was the dark ages not worth discussing.”

Ferguson notes that a future large language model might be able to write the second volume of his Kissinger biography faster than he can, which would not necessarily be better, but it seems likely that with sufficient compute, such capability could be achieved.

“There's no LLM as good as me yet, but seems plausible that it could be achieved. Maybe an LLM is close to being able to write the second volume of Kissinger faster than me. Certainly, that seems likely. Would it be better than me? Not sure yet. But at some point, you got to consider that that's quite likely with sufficient compute.”

Ferguson calls himself 'somebody who works in an obsolescent technology called books' and notes that despite decades of study producing 'carefully sculpted prose,' he's now being told that people prefer watching him 'wing it' on video, suggesting the written form is becoming less valued.

“I'm just somebody who works in an obsolescent technology called books. I I like writing. I like the written word. It's so retro of me. I was being told today by someone at Substack that Neil, people actually prefer you on video. And to me it's sort of like really you really would rather just hear me wing it than see my carefully sculpted pros the work of you know decades of study. I would certainly have produced more elegant formulations than I am able to do on a podcast.”

The advent of AGI will likely coincide with or just precede the human population decline that Ferguson predicted, creating a double collapse: technological displacement and demographic collapse happening simultaneously.

“I think the advent of of AGR I will coincide with or just precede the decline in population that I I talked about.”

By 2011, Ferguson observed that academic life was going to be taken over by progressive forces that he terms 'crazy woke progressive lunatics,' and that he saw this beginning when Larry Summers was overthrown as president of Harvard by 'hostile, dark, illiberal forces.'

“by 2011, and I'd been at Harvard by that time, 7 years, two things were obvious. One, that academic life was going to go crazy. That a bunch of crazy woke progressive lunatics were going to take over the universities. And that was not good. So you saw that before most? Oh, yeah. No, it was obvious. It was obvious. You could see from the moment Larry Summers was overthrown as president of Harvard that hostile, dark, illiberal forces were taking control.”

Ferguson wrote a book called 'The Square and the Tower' designed to argue there was no completely drastic discontinuity with the invention of the internet and worldwide web; instead, networks and hierarchies have periodically alternated, with technology periodically favoring one or the other across history.

“And so I spent my first few years uh at at Stanford writing a book called The Square of the Tower, which was just designed to show that there really wasn't some completely drastic discontinuity that had happened with the invention of the internet, the worldwide web, and the platforms that were built upon it. that one could understand that in the continuum of uh networks and hierarchies with technology periodically favoring the networks and then periodically favoring the hierarchies.”

Ferguson had plan A (get PhD, get academic job to support writing) which was disrupted by marriage and children, forcing plan B (write commercial books with TV tie-ins), which worked but left him intellectually unsatisfied by late 1990s.

“I had an economic problem to solve at the age of about 22 which was that I I felt I wanted to write for a living. But I had to pay the rent and eat. And the way to do that if you don't have a trust fund, which I did not, is to get an academic job because then you have a salary.”