Ben Chugg and Vaden Masrani

Increments

A Philosophy , Society & Culture and Science podcast

#63 in Philosophy · 🇸🇬 #119 in Philosophy · 🇿🇦

About the show

Vaden Masrani, a senior research scientist in machine learning, and Ben Chugg, a PhD student in statistics, get into trouble arguing about everything except machine learning and statistics. Coherence is somewhere on the horizon. Bribes, suggestions, love-mail and hate-mail all welcome at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

Newest episodes

#109 - Vaden on The Bayesian Conspiracy [FULL UNEDITED DEBATE]

Oct 30, 2026 1 hr 59 min

Vaden manages to penetrate deep into the rationalist stronghold in San Francisco, the Mecca of Yudkowsky himself, and - exactly as we'd all expect - gets into an epistemological standoff. Can he shake a Bayesian's credence in Bayesianism, or does he find in himself a Jaynesian acolyte, ready to make sure that no Dutchman is going to be able to mess with his books? We discuss Critical rationalism vs. Bayesianism Toby Ord's doom estimates Asteroids vs. AI risk What probabilities measure Comparing made-up numbers Is probability a law? Cox's theorem and Dutch books COVID models and Monte Carlo AI expert surveys How we actually decide Bentham's Bulldog and Pascal's mugging Animal consciousness and vegetarianism Strong longtermism References I Have Lost My Ability to be Charitable to Vaden (Eneasz Brodsky, Death Is Bad) The Bayesian Conspiracy ep. 273, "Vaden Masrani on... Critical Rationalism?" Death Is Bad, Eneasz's blog The Bayesian Conspiracy podcast Learning Bayesian Statistics ep. 160, "Bayesian Statistics vs Epistemology" (Alexandre Andorra with Vaden Masrani) Is P(Doom) Meaningful? Epistemology Debate with Vaden Masrani and Ben Chugg (Doom Debates, Liron Shapira; also Increments bonus ep. 76) Vaden's four-part longtermism series: A Case Against Strong Longtermism: A response to Hilary Greaves and William MacAskill (EA Forum version) Proving Too Much: A response to the EA forum The Credence Assumption: The paradoxes and problems with Cox's Theorem The Poverty of Longtermism: Why longtermism isn't an idea that could save one hundred billion trillion lives Books and papers The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity (Toby Ord) The Case for Strong Longtermism (Hilary Greaves, William MacAskill) (GPI summary) Global Catastrophes and Trends: The Next Fifty Years (Vaclav Smil, MIT Press, 2008) Conjectures and Refutations (Karl Popper) The Scout Mindset (Julia Galef) What's your P(Vaden is Bad Faith)? Send your credence, and only your credence, over...

#108 - The OpenAI/HuggingFace "incident": Responding to Sam Harris and Ryan Greenblatt

Oct 6, 2026 1 hr 17 min

Vaden has been annoyed about the Hugging Face incident for weeks, and the only known cure is yelling about it on the podcast. Ben, who as usual is more even-headed and objective about the incident (incidentally, he also writes the episode descriptions) plays devil's advocate. Was there ever really a sandbox? Did the agents cheat, or did they just do what they were told? Is terrifying the public good for an IPO? Multiple analogies enter the fray, zero minds are changed, and Saturday Night Live gets the last word. We discuss What actually happened in the Hugging Face incident (and what is ExploitGym?) What Project Glasswing and Mythos already told us about AI and cybersecurity Is a sandbox with Artifactory access still a sandbox? Did the agents cheat, or just follow their prompt? Negligence, PR stunt, or both? Going through OpenAI's timeline How independent is an "independent" investigation? Does anthropomorphic language help you predict what AI will do? Grenades, knives, and yogurt: parenting styles for package managers References The Hugging Face incident and the road ahead (OpenAI blog post): https://openai.com/index/hugging-face-incident-and-the-road-ahead/ OpenAI's technical report on the incident (PDF): https://cdn.openai.com/pdf/67869394-cb91-4c12-888c-5cbd85c7814c/OpenAI-Hugging-Face%20Incident-Technical-Report.pdf Making Sense #494, "A Coin Toss for the Future" (Sam Harris with Ryan Greenblatt): https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/494-a-coin-toss-for-the-future Redwood Research on the incident: https://blog.redwoodresearch.org/p/the-openaihuggingface-incident-redwood Dwarkesh Podcast with Ajeya Cotra, "Inside the OpenAI agent swarm that hacked Hugging Face": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X50zezLFWWI&pp=ygUVZHdhcmtlc2ggaHVnZ2luZyBmYWNl Melanie Mitchell, "Misleading Metaphors and Real Risks": https://aiguide.substack.com/p/misleading-metaphors-and-real-risks Anthropic's Project Glasswing: https://www.anthropic.com/glasswing JFrog Art...

#107 - Is Too Much Therapy Ruining a Generation?

Sep 12, 2026 1 hr 24 min

At 3am, tossing and turning in your bed, have you ever wondered why this generation is full of a bunch of fragile sissies? Journalist Abigail Shrier has, and her answer is: Therapy. Too much God d*** therapy. Is she right? Ben and Vaden read her 2024 book on the subject, Bad Therapy, and discuss it, including the good, the bad, and the preposterous footnotes. Buy the book here https://www.amazon.com/dp/0593542924 and check out the rest of Shrier's work here https://www.abigailshrier.com/. We discuss Iatrogenesis and whether there are negative side effects of therapy Why overly focusing on your feelings can lead to unhappiness Should kids be asked about suicidal ideation? Some problems with Shrier's analysis For God's sale, are kids fragile, or are they not? References Bad Therapy: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0593542924 Irreversible Damage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreversible_Damage Dr. K's youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/HealthyGamerGG Part 1 of Decoding the Gurus series on Dr K: https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate.fm/episode/dr-k-part-1-oped-ayurvedic-medicine-vs-nerfed-western-allopathy Let Grow: https://letgrow.org/ Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Become a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here. Click dem like buttons on youtube Would you rather go to therapy or fight in WWII? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com

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All episodes

#109 - Vaden on The Bayesian Conspiracy [FULL UNEDITED DEBATE]

Oct 30, 2026 1 hr 59 min

#108 - The OpenAI/HuggingFace "incident": Responding to Sam Harris and Ryan Greenblatt

Oct 6, 2026 1 hr 17 min

#107 - Is Too Much Therapy Ruining a Generation?

Sep 12, 2026 1 hr 24 min

#106 - The Successes, Failures, and Grifters of Neuroscience (w/ Tommy Blanchard)

Aug 22, 2026 1 hr 18 min

After Jason Arday, the second biggest topic of conversation has of course been the rise of the neuro-grifting guru. And for good reason! Neuroscience has been causing confusion lately. What is the hippocampus up to in there? Is your pre-post-medial-cerebrum-corta-bellum even working properly? What does neuroscience say about whether you should start each day with a slap in the face? Being incapable of answering these questions ourselves, we're bringing on bonafide neuroscientist and substacker Tommy Blanchard to help us navigate this terrain. Check out Tommy's website and substack, Cognitive Wonderland. We discuss Models of decision-making in neuroscience The common currency model What do we actually know about the brain? What constitutes an explanation in neuroscience? What neuroscience is put on a pedestal Neuro-grifting Gurus, aka Huberman et al. References Tommy's post about his research appearing in the NY Times: https://cognitivewonderland.substack.com/p/scientists-hope-gambling-monkeys Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Become a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here. Click dem like buttons on youtube Which area of your brain lights up when you consider sending an email to incrementspodcast@gmail.com? Special Guest: Tommy Blanchard.

#105 - The World of Bayesian Statistics (w/ Alex Andorra)

Jul 17, 2026 1 hr 18 min

We've spent a long time bashing Bayesian epistemology on the podcast. Unfortunately, this is sometimes taken to mean that we bash all things Bayesian. But our God-fearing listeners will be pleased to learn that we do not bash all things that the Reverend Thomas Bayes stood for. Bayesian statistics, when appropriately separated from epistemology, has many things to teach us. And instead of taking our word for it, we're bringing on an expert in this field: Alex Andorra, a research scientist at Meta and host of the Learning Bayesian Statistics podcast. The Gods Smile. Check out Alex's website and the Learning Bayesian statistics podcast. We discuss 538 and election forecasting Sports analytics and why Messi is objectively the best What is Bayesian statistics? What is the difference between Bayesian and frequentist statistics? What is the allure of Bayesian statistics? Are priors best thought of as beliefs? How do critical rationalists make decisions? References Learning Bayesian Statistics: https://learnbayesstats.com/ Silver Bulletin: https://www.natesilver.net/ Vaden's blog post on decision making: https://vmasrani.github.io/blog/2020/vaden_second_response/#what-other-options-to-decision-theory-are-there # Socials Follow us on Twitter at @alex_andorra, @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Become a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here. Click dem like buttons on youtube Send us an email because you have - no, because you want to - over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com. Special Guest: Alex Andorra.

#104 (C&R Chap 10, Part V) - The Duhem-Quine Thesis

Jun 27, 2026 1 hr 3 min

It's only taken us 104 episodes of talking incessantly about Karl Popper to get one of the most important and popular criticisms of falsification: The Duhem-Quine thesis. Should we wrap the podcast here? Is it game over? We discuss Does AI need more economic thinking? The role of background knowledge in conversation The allure of verificationism The Duhem-Quine thesis The role of competing theories in combatting the thesis Are conspiracies the price we pay for independent thinking? References Michael I. Jordan on ML Street Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AREWYbVtX64 Our conversation with Ben Recht: https://www.incrementspodcast.com/91 Quotes People involved in a fruitful critical discussion of a problem often rely, if only unconsciously, upon two things: the acceptance by all parties of the common aim of getting at the truth, or at least nearer to the truth, and a considerable amount of common background knowledge. This does not mean that either of these two things is an indispensable basis of every discussion, or that these two things are themselves ‘a priori’, and cannot be critically discussed in their turn. It only means that criticism never starts from nothing, even though every one of its starting points may be challenged, one at a time, in the course of the critical debate. - C&R, Chap 10 While discussing a problem we always accept (if only temporarily) all kinds of things as unproblematic: they constitute for the time being, and for the discussion of this particular problem, what I call our background knowledge. Few parts of this background knowledge will appear to us in all contexts as absolutely unproblematic, and any particular part of it may be challenged at any time, especially if we suspect that its uncritical acceptance may be responsible for some of our diﬃculties. But almost all of the vast amount of background knowledge which we constantly use in any informal discussion will, for practical reasons, necessarily remain unquestione...

#103 - AI, Evolution, and The God Test (w/ Robert Wright)

May 29, 2026 1 hr 47 min

Did you ever see the video of two regular people trying to fight Eddie Hall, the strongest man on earth? Ben and Vaden bring that same energy to this conversation, where they gang up on Robert Wright on the subject of his forthcoming book The God Test: Artificial Intelligence and Our Coming Cosmic Reckoning. Bob is a sport about it (well, there was no choice really: we have an advanced copy of his book that we're holding hostage) and there are only one or two black eyes by the end. Subscribe to Robert Wright's podcasting empire NonZero on youtube and substack. And go buy one of his many books. We discuss Whether Bob was the OG podcaster Is there a directionality to evolution? Where Bob is on the AI fear and awe spectrum Whether LLMs have decoded the meaning in language Is AI best viewed as a tool or as superintelligence? AI-as-slingshot analogy References The God Test by Robert Wright Nonzero by Robert Wright William Paley and his pocket watch The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins Our conversation with Scott Aaronson Socials Follow us on Twitter at @RobertWrighter, @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Become a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here. Click dem like buttons on youtube What's the directionality of this podcast? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com. Special Guest: Robert Wright.

#102 - Criticizing Crit-rats (w/ Bruce Nielson and Peter Johansen)

May 12, 2026 1 hr 46 min

Turning on our own! Vaden sits down with Bruce Nielson and Peter Johansen to discuss some of the bad memes that run rampant in the online "crit-rat" community, in an attempt of some intra-tribal error-correction. Ben, scared of the retribution, runs away with his tail uncomfortably close to his thighs. Follow Bruce and Peter's work on the Theory of Anything Podcast. Sign up for the Theory of Anything podcast Patreon here, and Check out Peter's Many World of David Deutsch facebook group here. We discuss Bruce and Peter's origin stories Anarcho-capitalism and its (pseudo) connections to Popperian philosophy CritRat disbelief in mental illness What does the Universal Explainer hypothesis imply about mental illness and IQ? Is Anarcho-capitalism a foundationalist and utopian philosophy? Why are so many crit-rats Trump supporters? See Also Theory of Anything Podcast #136: Michael Golding on Mental Illness Theory of Anything Podcast #82: Popper's Ratchet Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani, @bnielson01 Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Become a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here. Click dem like buttons on youtube I before E except after B? Send your best guess as to the spelling of Bruce's last name (no one knows) over to incrementspodcast@gmail.com. Special Guest: Bruce Nielson.

#101 (C&R Chap 10, Part IV) - Was Popper Wrong about Verisimilitude?

Apr 19, 2026 1 hr 17 min

Wasn't Popper a falsificationist? Then why did he try to develop ideas about corroboration and versimilitude - the extent to which a theory was closer to truth than another theory? Isn't this verging dangerously close to verificationist territory? In our fourth ep on Chapter 10 in C&R, we wrestle with Popper's treatment of verisimilutude, both the formal and informal versions. Did the project fail? Was Popper out of his mind? Does this invalidate everything? We discuss Murders with ball-peen hammers Walking the line between verification and falsification Is science only after truth? Verisimilutude and its formalization Why the formalization fails Popper's three requirements for the growth of knowledge Popper's ratchet and the no ad-hoc rule Quotes Like many other philosophers I am at times inclined to classify philosophers as belonging to two main groups—those with whom I disagree, and those who agree with me. - C&R, page 309 I shall give here a somewhat unsystematic list of six types of cases in which we should be inclined to say of a theory t1 that it is superseded by t2 in the sense that t2 seems—as far as we know—to correspond better to the facts than t1 , in some sense or other. t2 makes more precise assertions than t1 , and these more precise assertions stand up to more precise tests. t2 takes account of, and explains, more facts than t1 (which will include for example the above case that, other things being equal, t2 ’s assertions are more precise). t2 describes, or explains, the facts in more detail than t1 . t2 has passed tests which t 1 has failed to pass. t2 has suggested new experimental tests, not considered before t 2 was designed (and not suggested by t1 , and perhaps not even applicable to t1 ); and t 2 has passed these tests. t2 has uniﬁed or connected various hitherto unrelated problems. - C&R, page 315 Let me ﬁrst say that I do not suggest that the explicit introduction of the idea of verisimilitude will lead to any changes in the...

#100 - Celebrating the Centennial

Mar 26, 2026 1 hr 21 min

100 episodes! To celebrate, Vaden tries to get personal with Ben, while Ben dodges his questions and wants to know how Vaden feels about incest. All in all, a pretty typical episode. The questions From Vaden to Ben: How is your side hustle going? Who are some of your major influences outside of Popper? How has the Popperian worldview influenced your day-to-day? What is the life of a nomadic academic like? What would you say to people who are considering mathematics as a career? Which charities do you recommend? From Ben to Vaden: How do you feel about looksmaxxing? Thoughts on medical assistance in dying? Ethics of Alex Honnold free soloing Taipei 101? Thoughts on Nation-Buiding? Incest - into it? Episode References #22 - Thinking Through Thought Experiments #66 - Sex Research, Addiction, and Financial Domination (w/ Aella) #58 - Ask Us Anything V: How to Read and What to Read #70 - ... and Bayes Bites Back (w/ Richard Meadows) #76 (Bonus) - Is P(doom) meaningful? Debating epistemology (w/ Liron Shapira) References Angus Deaton debates Abhijit Banerjee: https://nyudri.wordpress.com/initiatives/deaton-v-banerjee/ Christopher Hitchens and Robert Wright Sam Harris and Garry Kasparov Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power The Bomb in My Garden: The Secrets of Saddam's Nuclear Mastermind Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Become a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here. Click dem like buttons on youtube What is your favorite form of ince... actually nevermind, too much. Just email us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

#99 - Debating Trump in Good Faith (w/ Don Robinson)

Mar 6, 2026 2 hr 9 min

Ben is hesitant to talk too much about politics on the podcast. So, naturally, we're having a political debate. We have on a pseudonymous guest to talk Trump, MAGA, and what's wrong with the left and the right. We discuss Trump's politics as trial and error The dynamics of MAGA ICE activity in Minnesota Illegal immigration Would Popper have supported Trump? What does "incrementalism" mean in politics? Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Become a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here. Click dem like buttons on youtube Cross the border into the increments discord and hit us up at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

#98 (C&R Chap 10, Part III) - What is truth?

Feb 17, 2026 1 hr 24 min

"What is Truth?", said jesting podcasters, who then stuck around for an answer. Back at it again with The Conjectures and Refutations Series (part three) on Chapter 10: Truth, Rationality, and the Growth of Scientific Knowledge. Can we say what truth is, even if we can never be certain we've found it? If not, can we say that science is approaching truth? How would we ever know? And why are so many theories of truth untrue? We discuss Ben's early reflections on Abigail Shrier's book Bad Therapy Why did Popper feel the need to answer this particular "what is" question? Can asking "what is truth" be a demogogic and bad-faith question? The correspondence theory of truth vs The pragmatic theory of truth vs The coherence theory of truth Alfred Tarski's formalization of the correspondence theory of truth Are there problems with the correspondence theory? The disagreement between Vaden and Deutsch on truth References Daniel Bonevac on the Correspondence theory of truth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlG_VaN1LHQ Tarki's 1944 paper on the semantic conception of truth Tarki's 1933 paper "On the concept of truth in formalized languages" Deutsch's 2022 talk on truth: Musings about Truth # Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Become a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here. Click dem like buttons on youtube It would be both useful, coherent, and correspond to our happiness if you signed up for our patreon or discord. Hit us up at incrementspodcast@gmail.com

#97 - Did Effective Altruism Have Ulterior Motives From the Beginning?

Jan 23, 2026 1 hr 41 min

Two years without discussing effective altruism -- did you miss it? Not as much as Vaden, surely. And probably a right bit more than Ben. Well, we're back in the game with a spicy one. Was EA a front for AI safety from the beginning? Did the leaders care not a wit for global poverty? Is Ben going to throw himself out window if Vaden keeps this up? We discuss Feedback on our introspection episode The motives of the EA founders The felicia forum Is this a conspiracy theory? EA's strategic ambiguity Bostromism, transhumanism, and AI safety EA funding The public/core divide and the funnel model Quotes new effective altruists tend to start off concerned about global poverty or animal suffering and then hear, take seriously, and often are convinced by the arguments for existential risk mitigation - Will MacAskill Existential risk isn’t the most useful public face for effective altruism – everyone inc[l]uding Eliezer Yudkowsky agrees about that - Scott Alexander, 2015 Utilitymonster: GWWC is explicitly poverty-focused but high impact careers (HIC) is not. In fact, hardcore members of GWWC are heavily interested in x-risk, and I estimate that 10-15% of its general membership is as well. I’d take them seriously as a group for promoting utilitarianism in general. I’m a GWWC leader. [Redacted]: but HIC always seems to talk about things in terms of “lives saved”, ive never heard them mentioning other things to donate to. […] Utilitymonster: That’s exactly the right thing for HIC to do. Talk about lives saved with their public face, let hardcore members hear about x-risk, and then, in the future, if some excellent x-risk opportunity arises, direct resources to x-risk. - From felicia forum. References Gleiberman's paper: https://medialibrary.uantwerpen.be/files/8518/61565cb6-e056-4e35-bd2e-d14d58e35231.pdf Old EA wikipedia page (web archive): https://web.archive.org/web/20170409171350/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism Old CEA webpage (web arc...

#96 (Bonus) - On the Limits of Introspection

Dec 22, 2025 41 min

Happy Christmas and Merry Festivus y'all! Today we're releasing a patreon episode, as both of us are away on vacation with the family for the holidays. In this episode we have a meandering discussion about parenting, Robert Kegan's four stages of development, the limits of introspection, and relationship counseling. We discuss Advice for new fathers Vaden comes out to the world (about snowboarding) Robert Kegan's four stages of development The limits of introspection Countertransference The show Couples Therapy with Dr. Orna Guralnik # Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Become a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here. Click dem like buttons on youtube Introspect a little, and tell us why you haven't signed up to our Patreon feed over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com

#95 (C&R Chap 10, Part II) - A Problem-First View of Scientific Progress

Nov 29, 2025 57 min

After a long hiatus where we both saw grief counsellors over our fight about Popper's theory of content in the last C&R episode, we are back. And we're ready to play nice ... for about 30 seconds until Vaden admits that two sentences from Popper changed his mind about something Ben had arguing for literally years. But eventually putting those disagreements aside, we return to the subject at hand: The Conjectures and Refutations Series: Chapter 10: Truth, Rationality, and the Growth of Scientific Knowledge (Part II). Here all goes smoothly. Just kidding, we start fighting about content again almost immediately. Where are the guests to break us up when you need them. We discuss Why Vaden changed his mind about "all thought is problem solving" Something that rhymes with wero horship Is Popper sloppy when it comes to writing about probability and content Is all modern data science based on the wrong idea? (Hint: No) Popper's problem-focused view of scientific progress How much formalization is too much? The difference between high verisimilitude and high probability Why do we value simplicity in science? Historical examples of science progressing via theories with increasing content Quotes Consciousness, world 2, was presumably an evaluating and discerning consciousness, a problem-solving consciousness, right from the start. I have said of the animate part of the physical world 1 that all organisms are problem solvers. My basic assumption regarding world 2 is that this problem-solving activity of the animate part of world 1 resulted in the emergence of world 2, of the world of consciousness. But I do not mean by this that consciousness solves problems all the time, as I asserted of the organisms. On the contrary. The organisms are preoccupied with problem-solving day in, day out, but consciousness is not only concerned with the solving of problems, although that is its most important biological function. My hypothesis is that the original task of conscio...

#94 - Is AI Just a Tool? (w/ Scott Aaronson)

Nov 6, 2025 1 hr 24 min

The time has come for Vaden to defend his faith in the face of cold, hard scientific rationality. Will AI take over the world, automating away everything that makes humans distinct? Or can Vaden defend the church of just-ism, the radical belief that AI is simply "just a tool." Scott Aaronson, professor of computer science at UT Austin, goes to head to head against the zealotry. Check out Scott's website and his blog, Shtetl Optimized. We discuss Scott view's on education. Should we radically reform K-12? Is ChatGPT changing Scott's approach to teaching The religion of "justa-ism" Is AI just a tool? Is there any principle which lets us say that AI won't be as general as humans? Aaronson's thesis of Artificial Intelligence Computational universality vs explanatory universality The many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Become a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here. Click dem like buttons on youtube Have you been converted? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com Special Guest: Scott Aaronson.

#93 (C&R Chap 10, Part I) - An Introduction to Popper's Theory of Content

Oct 16, 2025 1 hr 47 min

Back to basics baby. We're doing a couple introductory episodes on Popper's philosophy of science, following Chapter 10 of Conjectures and Refutations. We start with Popper's theory of content: what makes a good scientific theory? Can we judge some theories as better than others before we even run any empirical tests? Should we be looking for theories with high probability? Ben and Vaden also return to their roots in another way, and get into a nice little fight about how content relates to Bayesianism. We discuss Vaden's skin care routine If you find your friend's lost watch and proceed to lose it, are you responsible for the watch? Empirical vs logical content Whether and how content can be measured and compared How content relates to probability Quotes My aim in this lecture is to stress the significance of one particular aspect of science—its need to grow, or, if you like, its need to progress. I do not have in mind here the practical or social significance of this need. What I wish to discuss is rather its intellectual significance. I assert that continued growth is essential to the rational and empirical character of scientific knowledge; that if science ceases to grow it must lose that character. It is the way of its growth which makes science rational and empirical; the way, that is, in which scientists discriminate between available theories and choose the better one or (in the absence of a satisfactory theory) the way they give reasons for rejecting all the available theories, thereby suggesting some of the conditions with which a satisfactory theory should comply. You will have noticed from this formulation that it is not the accumulation of observations which I have in mind when I speak of the growth of scientific knowledge, but the repeated overthrow of scien- tific theories and their replacement by better or more satisfactory ones. This, incidentally, is a procedure which might be found worthy of attention even by those who see the most imp...

#92 - Confronting the Paradox of Tolerance: Christianity in the age of Trump (w/ Jonathan Rauch)

Sep 25, 2025 1 hr 7 min

We're joined by Jonathan Rauch to discuss what it means to be a radical incrementalist, how to foment revolution on geological timescales, and whether Christianity can be a force for good in politics. Can Jon convince angry-Hitchens-atheist Vaden that Christianity has some benefits? Will both Vaden and Ben be at Sunday prayer? Follow Jonathan on his website, at Brookings, at The Atlantic or on Bluesky. We discuss The constitution of knowledge and whether it's holding Norms vs laws, and whether we should introduce more laws to codify norms Popper's paradox of tolerance How should liberals respond to illiberalism? Which tactics, if any, should democrats adopt from MAGA to fight MAGA? Sharp Christianity and Christian nationalism Rauch's plea to Christians References The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth Cross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy Errata Jonathan Rauch is the author of nine books, not eight! Socials Follow us on Twitter at @JonRauch, @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Become a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here. Click dem like buttons on youtube Anyone in Canada have a basement suite Jonathan could rent for a while? Send your address over to incrementspodcast@gmail.com Special Guest: Jonathan Rauch.

#91 - The Uses and Abuses of Statistics (w/ Ben Recht)

Sep 4, 2025 1 hr 16 min

Professor of electrical engineering and computer science Ben Recht joins us to defend Bayesianism, AI doom, and assure us that the statisticians have everything under control. Just kidding. Recht might be even more suspicious of these things than we are. What has statistics ever done for us, really? When was the last time YOU ran a clinical trial after all, huh? HUH? After Ben Chugg defends his life decision to do a PhD in statistics, we talk AI, cults, philosophy, Paul Meehl, and discuss Ben Recht's forthcoming book, The Irrational Decision. Check out Ben's blog, website, and his story about machine learning. We discuss Ben Recht's theory of blogging Why is Berkeley the epicenter of AI doom? Where the word "robot" came from Is Bayesian reasoning responsible for AI doom? Paul Meehl and his contributions to science Ben Recht's bureaucratic theory of statistics What on earth is null hypothesis testing? What is the point of statistics? "Sweet spots" and "small worlds" Does science proceed by Popperian means? Can Popper get around the Duhem-Quine problem? Errata The z-score for the Pfizer trial was 20, not 12! References Argmin, Ben Recht's blog David Freedman, UC Berkeley Paul Meehl's online course Theoretical Risks and Tabular Asterisks: Sir Karl, Sir Ronald, and the Slow Progress of Soft Psychology, Paul Meehl's 1978 paper. Clinical versus statistical prediction: A theoretical analysis and a review of the evidence, by Meehl On the near impossibility of estimating the returns to advertising A Bureaucratic Theory of Statistics by Recht The new riddle of induction by Goodman Announcing the Irrational Decision Patterns, Predictions, and Actions, textbook by Ben Recht and Moritz Hardt Socials Follow us on Twitter at @BeenWrekt, @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Become a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover ou...

#90 (Reaction) - Disbelieving AI 2027: Responding to "Why We're Not Ready For Superintelligence"

Aug 18, 2025 1 hr 35 min

Always the uncool kids at the table, Ben and Vaden push back against the AGI hype domininating every second episode of every second podcast. We react to "We're not ready for superintelligence" by 80,000 Hours - a bleak portrayal of the pre and post AGI world. Can Ben keep Vaden's sass in check? Can the 80,000 hours team find enough cubes for AGI? Is Agent-5 listening to you RIGHT NOW? Listener Note: We strongly recommend watching the video for this one, available both on youtube and spotify: - https://www.youtube.com/@incrementspod - https://open.spotify.com/show/1gKKSP5HKT4Nk3i0y4UseB We discuss The incentives of superforecasters Arguments by authority Whether superintelligence is right around the corner The difference between model size and data Are we running out of high quality data? Does training on synthetic data work? The assumptions behind the AGI claims The pitfalls of reasoning from trends References Michael I Jordan Neil Lawrence [Important technical paper from Jordan pushing back on Doomerism](A Collectivist, Economic Perspective on AI) Jordan article talking about dangers of using AlphaFold data Nature paper showing you can't use synthetic data to train bigger models Paper estimating of when training data will run out (Coincidentally enough, sometime between 2027-2028) Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Become a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here. Click dem like buttons on youtube But how many cubes until we get to AGI though? Send a few of your cubes over to incrementspodcast@gmail.com Episode header image from here.

#89 (C&R, Chap 6) - Berkeley vs Newton: The Battle Over Gravity

Aug 1, 2025 1 hr 11 min

Phlogiston? Elan Vital? Caloric? Mention of any of these at a party, and Neil DeGrasse Tyson will be sure to take you out back and kick you in your essences. So why do "essences" have no place in science? In this episode we explore that question (and dive into some of the history behind this debate) by reading Chapter 6 of Conjectures and Refutations: A Note On Berkeley As Precursor Of Mach And Einstein. In one corner, we have the estimable Sir Isaac Newton and Roger Coates (and of course Andre the Giant, upon whose shoulders they are standing), and in the other, we have Bishop Berkeley and Ernst Mach, looking to throw down at the speed of sound. Berkeley can't get Newton and his forces out of his head (literally), and boy oh boy is the fight ever on. We discuss How should teachers address the "students using ChatGPT to write their essay" problem? Can we learn a bit from Stalin here? Is Ben basically Gandhi? (Answer: Yes of course) How can one be both an idealist and an empiricist? WTF is a 'force'??? Instrumentalism and Essentialism The history of the debate between Berkeley and Newton The lifelong feud between Ernst Mach and Ludwig Boltzman What's the difference between essences and unobservables? Is Mach a filthy plagiarist? Who won the essentialism vs instrumentalism debate? (Answer: Neither side won. Popper won.) References Go amuse yourselves and watch some videos of Newton's spinning bucket thought experiment. Boltzmanns Atom: The Great Debate That Launched A Revolution In Physics Quotes Everybody who reads this list of twenty-one theses must be struck by their modernity. They are surprisingly similar, especially in the criticism of Newton, to the philosophy of physics which Ernst Mach taught for many years in the conviction that it was new and revolutionary; in which he was followed by, for example, Joseph Petzold; and which had an immense influence on modern physics, especially on the Theory of Relativity. Popper, C&R Chapter 6 (20) A gene...

#88 (Bonus) - Homer's Odyssey

Jul 10, 2025 1 hr 12 min

This week we take a break from our regularly scheduled programming to listen to Ben, Rich, and Cam loutishly pontificate on one of the oldest poems in history. That's right, three fiction noobs take on Homer. Ladies, have you ever wondered what your fella is doing when you're out for the evening? Look no further. The podcast you're listening to is Do You Even Lit? which you can find on any podcast platform and on youtube. The hosts are Richard Meadows, Cam Peters, and some third guy. Back to increments in a couple weeks! In the meantime: find us on twitter at @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani, and @Incrementspod come join our discord channel! Send us a message or an email to get a supersecret link hit those like buttons on youtube to show off your virtuosity Should we switch out Vaden for Rich and Cam? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com. Special Guest: Richard Meadows.

#87 - Gullibility, Belief, and Conformity (with Hugo Mercier)

Jun 20, 2025 54 min

Ben and Vaden test their French skills and have Hugo Mercier on the podcast to discuss who we trust and what we believe. Are humans gullible? Do we fall for propaganda and advertising campaigns? Do we follow expert consensus or forge ahead as independent thinkers? Can Vaden go for one episode without bringing up Trump? Hugo Mercier is a research director at the CNRS (Institut Jean Nicod, Paris), where he work with the Evolution and Social Cognition team. Check out his two books: The Enigma of Reason and Not Born Yesterday . We discuss Mercier's thoughts on the cognitive bias literature Open vigilance mechanisms Criticism of the System 1 vs System 2 dichotomy Why Kahneman misinterpreted the bat and the ball thought experiment Do flat earthers really believe the earth is flat? The Asch conformity experiment Preference falsification vs internalization of professed beliefs How important is social signaling? Trump, MAGA, gullibility, and Tariffs How effective are advertisements? How effective is propaganda? Is social science reforming? References The Enigma of Reason by Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber Not Born Yesterday Our previous episodes on Not Born Yesterday and The Enigma of Reason Socials Follow us on Twitter at @hugoreasoning, @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Become a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here. Click dem like buttons on youtube How much system 2 thinking does it take to misunderstand system 1 vs system 2? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com Special Guest: Hugo Mercier.

#86 (Reaction) - On Confidence and Evidence: Reacting to Brett Hall and Peter Boghossian (Part 2)

May 31, 2025 1 hr 20 min

Go fund me page for Dr. Alaa Al-Najjar Please donate here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-dr-alaa-alnajjar-and-her-family-in-gaza Podcast w/ Dr. Ali Al Najjar https://open.spotify.com/episode/2f6twY40sjd0zwT0Eks3NX Further Reading https://www.thesun.ie/news/15281868/sligo-doctor-ali-al-najjar-nieces-nephew-killed-gaza/ https://www.thejournal.ie/brother-woman-nine-kids-gaza-6717437-May2025/ https://amp.rte.ie/amp/1515399/ https://www.oceanfm.ie/northwest-today-show/fundraiser-launched-after-sligo-doctors-9-nieces-and-nephews-killed-in-gaza-attack-504443 https://www.oceanfm.ie/news/dail-hears-of-devastation-caused-to-sligo-doctors-family-in-gaza-503064 https://m.independent.ie/regionals/sligo/news/sligo-doctors-nine-nephews-and-nieces-killed-in-devastating-gaza-attack/a121298480.html Episode Blurb Back with part two of our reaction to What's the most rational way to know?, a discussion between Brett Hall and Peter Boghossian on the relationship between confidence and evidence. Listen to part 1 first, availble here: https://www.incrementspodcast.com/85 It seems weird to try to be funny in this blurb, given the introduction, so going to keep the description lean. Back with our usual lighthearted nonsense next episode! Check out more from Brett Hall here and Peter Boghossian here. We discuss A falliblist's view of confidence Confidence as a form of implicit knowledge Problems with attempting to define "knowledge" Can we "derive" moral facts? Being triggered by the word 'derive' References Paper discussing how it took the wider scientific community over 40 years (after Eddington's experiment!) to become convinced in the truth of general relativity: The 1919 measurement of the deflection of light Eddington's original paper: Vaden and Brett's blog exchange Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Become a patreon subscriber he...

#85 (Reaction) - On Confidence and Evidence: Reacting to Brett Hall and Peter Boghossian (Part 1)

May 9, 2025 1 hr 49 min

We all knew that Vaden would release his inner Youtube debate bro at some point. Well he finally paid Ben enough to do it, and here we are: our first reaction video. Today we're commenting on the video What's the most rational way to know?, a discussion between Brett Hall and Peter Boghossian on the relationship between confidence and evidence. Are we overly confident in our ability to make reaction videos? Evidently. Check out more from Brett Hall here and Peter Boghossian here. We discuss What is the relationship between confidence and evidence? The "formal apparatus of science" vs the "sociology" of science Eddington's famous experiment Why confidence and belief can't be mathematized (But why they are useful nonetheless) Confidence as a function of falsifying experiments Bayesianism vs critical rationalism References Paper discussing how it took the wider scientific community over 40 years (after Eddington's experiment!) to become convinced in the truth of general relativity: The 1919 measurement of the deflection of light Eddington's original paper: Vaden and Brett's blog exchange Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Become a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here. Click dem like buttons on youtube Where were you last night, and why do you have condoms in your pocket? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

#84 - A Primer on Not Born Yesterday by Hugo Mercier

Apr 17, 2025 1 hr 9 min

Some thoughts (arguments?) on Hugo Mercier's Not Born Yesterday, which advances the thesis that humans are not as gullible as is commonly thought. This is our second episode on Mercier's work, and we're as intrigued as ever. But this time we have different interpretations of his thesis, so it's a good thing the man himself is coming on soon to sort us out. We discuss If humans are less gullible than is commonly believed Evolution of Communication Theory Gazelles jumping in the air Are humans too stubborn? Is one of your hosts who shall go unnamed too stubborn? When do humans actually change their minds? Does Mercier's work conflict with Popper? How much of our reasoning is motivated reasoning? How much is social conformity? Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Become a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here. Click dem like buttons on youtube Did you know that "gullible" isn't in the dictionary? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

#83 - The Anxious Generation Round II: Alternative Explanations

Mar 27, 2025 1 hr 21 min

Round two on the anxious generation. Well, honestly, round three. But we had a false start with round two, which is why this episode is a little late in coming. If you want to hear the gory, data-heavy details of our second attempt, you can access the episode by becoming a patron (was there ever a better sell?). We discuss Whether the rise in self-harm rates was due to reporting changes Whether education and common core could be affecting mental health Whether cultural pessimism is on the rise Cyberbullying Martin Gurri's thesis on the digital revolution How Vaden will handle social media with his kids References David Wallace Wells opinion piece Our patreon episode on David Wallace Wells' thesis Peter Gray on common core Revolt of the Public Errata Ben said The Revolt of the Public was written in 2014. It was written in 2018. Vaden said he would list all four of Haidt's points about why girls are uniquely vulnerable to negative effects of social media, and only got halfway in before forgetting he said that. The four reasons Haidt gives are: Girls are more affected by visual social comparison and perfectionism Girls' aggression is more relational Girls more easily share emotions and disorders Girls are more subject to predation and harassment Quotes Here is a story. In 2007, Apple released the iPhone, initiating the smartphone revolution that would quickly transform the world. In 2010, it added a front-facing camera, helping shift the social-media landscape toward images, especially selfies. Partly as a result, in the five years that followed, the nature of childhood and especially adolescence was fundamentally changed — a “great rewiring,” in the words of the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt — such that between 2010 and 2015 mental health and well-being plummeted and suffering and despair exploded, particularly among teenage girls. For young women, rates of hospitalization for nonfatal self-harm in the United States, which had bottomed out in 2...

#82 - Are Screens Really That Bad? Critiquing Jon Haidt's "The Anxious Generation"

Mar 6, 2025 1 hr 52 min

Anxiety, dispair, loneliness, depression -- all we need is a social media recession! A popular thesis is that All The Bad Things things are on the rise among adolescents because of social media, a view popularized in Jon Haidt's 2024 book The Anxious Generation. Haidt is calling for an end of the "phone-based childhood" and hoping that schools banish all screens for the benefit of its students. But is it true than social media is causing this mental health crisis? Is it true that there even is a mental health crisis? We do a deep dive into Haidt's book to discuss the evidence. We discuss A weird citation trend in philosophy Whether there is a mental health crisis among teens Some inconsistencies in Haidt's data on mental health outcomes Correlation vs causation, and whether Haidt establishes causation Why on earth do the quality of these studies suck so much? Whether Haidt's conclusions are justified References The Anxious Generation Jon Haidt's After Babel Substack After Babel's main post attempting to establish causation, and the response to critics. Collaborative review doc on adolescent mood disorders Collaborative review doc on social media and mental health Matthew B Jane's criticism of Haidt's meta-analysis Aaron Brown's criticism Stuart Ritchie's criticism Peter Gray's criticism Datasets Unaggregated life satisfaction data for boys/girls ages 11/13/15 across 44 countries Australia hospital admissions due to self harm France hospital admissions due to self harm Canada Ontario # Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Become a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here. Click dem like buttons on youtube No screen time for a month. If you send an email to incrementspodcast@gmail.com, we're taking away your iPad. Image credit: Is social media causi...

#81 - What Does Critical Rationalism Get Wrong? (w/ Kasra)

Feb 14, 2025 1 hr 39 min

As whores for criticism, we wanted to have Kasra on to discuss his essay The Deutschian Deadend. Kasra claims that Popper and Deutsch are fundamentally wrong in some important ways, and that many of their ideas will forever remain in the "footnotes of the history of philosophy". Does he change our mind or do we change his? Follow Kasra on twitter and subscribe to his blog, Bits of Wonder. We discuss Has Popper had of a cultural impact? The differences between Popper, Deutsch, and Deutsch's bulldogs. Is observation really theory laden? The hierarchy of reliability: do different disciplines have different methods of criticism? The ladder of abstractions The difference between Popper and Deutsch on truth and abstraction The Deutschian community's reaction to the essay References Bruce Nielson's podcast on verification and falsification: https://open.spotify.com/episode/38tGZnBlHK3vZHjyLgSs4C Popper on certainty: Chapter 22. Analytical Remarks on Certainty in Objective Knowledge Quotes By the nature of Deutsch and Popper’s ideas being abstract, this essay will also necessarily be abstract. To combat this, let me ground the whole essay in a concrete empirical bet: Popper’s ideas about epistemology, and David Deutsch’s extensions of them, will forever remain in the footnotes of the history of philosophy. Popper’s falsificationism, which was the main idea that he’s widely known for today, will continue to remain the only thing that he’s widely known for. The frustrating fact that Wittgenstein is widely regarded as a more influential philosopher than Popper will continue to remain true. Critical rationalism will never be widely recognized as the “one correct epistemology,” as the actual explanation (or even the precursor to an explanation) of knowledge, progress, and creativity. Instead it will be viewed, like many philosophical schools before it, as a useful and ambitious project that ultimately failed. In other words, critical rationalism is a kind of philo...

#80 (C&R Series, Chap. 7) - Dare to Know: Immanuel Kant and the Enlightenment

Jan 28, 2025 1 hr 6 min

Immanuel Kant was popular at his death. The whole town emptied out to see him. His last words were "it is good". But was his philosophy any good? In order to find out, we dive into Chapter 7 of Conjectures and Refutations: Kant’s Critique and Cosmology, where Popper rescues Kant's reputation from the clutches of the dastardly German Idealists. We discuss Deontology vs consquentialism vs virtue ethics Kant's Categorical Imperative Kant's contributions to cosmology and politics Kant as a defender of the enlightenment Romanticism vs (German) idealism vs critical rationalism Kant's cosmology and cosmogony Kant's antimony and his proofs that the universe is both finite and infinite in time Kant's Copernican revolution and transcendental idealism Kant's morality Why Popper admired Kant so much, and why he compares him to Socrates Quotes Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! "Have courage to use your own understanding!" --that is the motto of enlightenment. An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? (Translated by Ted Humphrey, Hackett Publishing, 1992) (Alternate translation from Popper: Enlightenment is the emancipation of man from a state of self-imposed tutelage . . . of incapacity to use his own intelligence without external guidance. Such a state of tutelage I call ‘self-imposed’ if it is due, not to lack of intelligence, but to lack of courage or determination to use one’s own intelligence without the help of a leader. Sapere aude! Dare to use your own intelligence! This is the battle-cry of the Enlightenment.) - C&R, Chap 6 What lesson did Kant draw from these bewildering antinomies? He concluded that our ideas of space and time are inapplicable to the universe...

#79 (Bonus) - The Mitford Sisters

Dec 28, 2024 24 min

Hope everyone is having a great holiday! Today we're releasing a short lil' bonus episode from the patreon archives before we get back into the serious and professional business of podcasting in the new year. A few months ago, Vaden appeared on the forthcoming Treacherous Jezebels podcast, to discuss the life of Unity Valkyrie Freeman-Mitford, the most treacherous of jezebels. Her biography is... shall we say... quite something. Even Hitler had to get his rocks off every once and a while. (Links to Treacherous Jezebels podcast will be added when their website is up!) We discuss Who are the Mitford Sisters, and why are they so friggen fascinating The squalid life of Unity Mitford in particular References Unity Mitford's Wikipedia Page Jessica Mitford's autobigraphy Hons and Rebels Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Become a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here. Click dem like buttons on youtube So did she bang Hitler... or didn't she? Email us the raw facts at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

#78 - What could Karl Popper have learned from Vladimir Nabokov? (w/ Brian Boyd)

Dec 10, 2024 1 hr 0 min

Where do you arrive if you follow Vaden's obsessions to their terminus? You arrive at Brian Boyd, the world expert on the two titanic thinkers of the 20th century: Karl Popper and Vladimir Nabokov. Boyd wrote his PhD thesis on Nabokov's 1969 novel Ada, impressing Nabokov's wife Vera so much that he was invited to catalogue Nabokov's unpublished archives. This led to Boyd's two-volume biography of Nabokov, which Vera kept on her beside table. Boyd also developed an interest in Popper, and began research for his biography in 1996, which was then promptly delayed as he worked on his book, On The Origin of Stories, which we [dedicated episode #50]((https://www.incrementspodcast.com/50) to. In this episode, we ask Professor Boyd to contrast and compare his two subjects, by addressing the question: What could Karl Popper have learned from Vladimir Nabokov? We discuss How Brian discovered Nabokov Did Nabokov have a philosophy? Nabokov's life as a scientist Was Nabokov simply a writer of puzzles? How much should author intentions matter when interpreting literature? References Boyd's book on the evolutionary origins of art and literature: On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction Our episode on the above Stalking Nabokov, by Boyd. Boyd's book on Pale Fire: Nabokov's Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic Discovery AdaOnline, annotated notes on Ada by Boyd. Art historian and one of Popper's close friends, Ernst Gombrich # Errata The Burghers of Calais is by Balzac rather than Rodin The Nabokov family fled Leningrad rather than Petrograd (as Petersburg had become during WWI). Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Become a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here. Click dem like buttons on youtube Do you love words, or ideas? Email us one but not the oth...

#77 (Bonus) - AI Doom Debate (w/ Liron Shapira)

Nov 19, 2024 2 hr 21 min

Back on Liron's Doom Debates podcast! Will we actually get around to the subject of superintelligent AI this time? Is it time to worry about the end of the world? Will Ben and Vaden emotionally recover from the devastating youtube comments from the last episode? Follow Liron on twitter (@liron) and check out the Doom Debates youtube channel and podcast. We discuss Definitions of "new knowledge" The reliance of deep learning on induction Can AIs be creative? The limits of statistical prediction Predictions of what deep learning cannot accomplish Can ChatGPT write funny jokes? Trends versus principles The psychological consequences of doomerism Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani, @liron Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link The world is going to end soon, might as well get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here. Click dem like buttons on youtube Was Vaden's two week anti-debate bro reeducation camp successful? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com Special Guest: Liron Shapira.

#76 (Bonus) - Is P(doom) meaningful? Debating epistemology (w/ Liron Shapira)

Nov 8, 2024 2 hr 50 min

Liron Shapira, host of [Doom Debates], invited us on to discuss Popperian versus Bayesian epistemology and whether we're worried about AI doom. As one might expect knowing us, we only got about halfway through the first subject, so get yourselves ready (presumably with many drinks) for part II in a few weeks! The era of Ben and Vaden's rowdy youtube debates has begun. Vaden is jubilant, Ben is uncomfortable, and the world has never been more annoyed by Popperians. Follow Liron on twitter (@liron) and check out the Doom Debates youtube channel and podcast. We discuss Whether we're concerned about AI doom Bayesian reasoning versus Popperian reasoning Whether it makes sense to put numbers on all your beliefs Solomonoff induction Objective vs subjective Bayesianism Prediction markets and superforecasting References Vaden's blog post on Cox's Theorem and Yudkowsky's claims of "Laws of Rationality": https://vmasrani.github.io/blog/2021/the_credence_assumption/ Disproof of probabilistic induction (including Solomonov Induction): https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.00749 EA Post Vaden Mentioned regarding predictions being uncalibrated more than 1yr out: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/hqkyaHLQhzuREcXSX/data-on-forecasting-accuracy-across-different-time-horizons#Calibrations Article by Gavin Leech and Misha Yagudin on the reliability of forecasters: https://ifp.org/can-policymakers-trust-forecasters/ Superforecaster p(doom) is ~1%: https://80000hours.org/2024/09/why-experts-and-forecasters-disagree-about-ai-risk/#:~:text=Domain%20experts%20in%20AI%20estimated,by%202100%20(around%2090%25). The existential risk persuasion tournament https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-extinction-tournament Some more info in Ben's article on superforecasting: https://benchugg.com/writing/superforecasting/ Slides on Content vs Probability: https://vmasrani.github.io/assets/pdf/popper_good.pdf Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani, @liron Com...

#75 - The Problem of Induction, Relitigated (w/ Tamler Sommers)

Oct 23, 2024 1 hr 41 min

When Very Bad Wizards meets Very Culty Popperians. We finally decided to have a real life professional philosopher on the pod to call us out on our nonsense, and are honored to have on Tamler Sommers, from the esteemed Very Bad Wizards podcast, to argue with us about the Problem of Induction. Did Popper solve it, or does his proposed solution, like all the other attempts, "fail decisively"? (Warning: One of the two hosts maaay have revealed their Popperian dogmatism a bit throughout this episode. Whichever host that is - they shall remain unnamed - apologizes quietly and stubbornly under their breath.) Check out Tamler's website, his podcast (Very Bad Wizards), or follow him on twitter (@tamler). We discuss What is the problem of induction? Whether regularities really exist in nature The difference between certainty and justification Popper's solution to the problem of induction If whiskey will taste like orange juice next week What makes a good theory? Why prediction is secondary to explanation for Popper If science and meditiation are in conflict The boundaries of science References Very Bad Wizards episode on induction The problem of induction, by Wesley Salmon Hume on induction Errata Vaden mentions in the episode how "Einstein's theory is better because it can explain earth's gravitational constant". He got some of the details wrong here - it's actually the inverse square law, not the gravitational constant. Listen to Edward Witten explain it much better here. Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani, @tamler Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Trust in our regularity and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here. Click dem like buttons on youtube If you are a Very Bad Wizards listener, hello! We're exactly like Tamler and David, except younger. Co...

#74 - Disagreeing about Belief, Probability, and Truth (w/ David Deutsch)

Oct 1, 2024 1 hr 32 min

What do you do when one of your intellectual idols comes on the podcast? Bombard them with disagreements of course. We were thrilled to have David Deutsch on the podcast to discuss whether the concept of belief is a useful lens on human cognition, when probability and statistics should be deployed, and whether he disagrees with Karl Popper on abstractions, the truth, and nothing but the truth. Follow David on Twitter (@DavidDeutschOxf) or find his website here. We discuss Whether belief is a fruitful lens through which to analyze ideas Whether a non-quantitative form of belief can be defended How does belief bottom out epistemologically? Whether statistics and probability are useful Where should statistics and probability be used in practice? The Popper-Miller theorem Statements vs propositions and their relevance for truth Whether Popper and Deutsch disagree about truth References The Popper-Miller theorem. See the original paper David's 2021 talk on the correspondence theory of truth David's talk on physics without probability. Hempel's paradox The Beginning of Infinity Knowledge and the Body-Mind Problem Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani, @DavidDeutschOxf Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Believe in us and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here. Click dem like buttons on youtube What's the truth about your belief on the probability of useful statistics? Tell us over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com. Special Guest: David Deutsch.

#73 - The Unfairness of Proportional Representation

Sep 13, 2024 1 hr 25 min

Want to make everyone under 30 extremely angry? Tell them you don't like proportional representation. Tell them proportional representation sucks, just like recycling. In this episode, we continue to improve your popularity at parties by diving into Sir Karl's theory of democracy, and his arguments for why the first-past-the-post electoral system is superior to proportional representation systems. And if you find anyone left at the party who still wants to talk to you, we also cover Chapter 13 of Beginning of Infinity, where Deutsch builds upon Popper's theory. And always remember, First-Past-The-Post: If it's good enough for the horses, it's good enough for us. We discuss Why democracy should be about the removal of bad leaders How Popper's conception of democracy differs from the usual conception Why Popper supports first-past-the-post (FPP) over proportional representation (PR) How PR encourages backroom dealing and magnifies the influence of unpopular leaders The sensitivity of FPP to changes to popular will How FPP makes it easier to obtain majorities How majorities make it easier to trace the consequences of policies Deutsch and his criticism of compromise-policies. References Popper on democracy (economist piece). Vaden's blog post Chapter 13: Choices of The Beginning of Infinity Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Help us form a majority and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here. Click dem like buttons on youtube What's the first post you past? Tell us over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

#72 (C&R, Chap. 19: Part II) - On the (alleged) Right of a Nation to Self-Determination

Aug 27, 2024 51 min

Part two on Chapter 19 of Conjectures and Refutations! Last time we got a little hung up arguing about human behavior and motivations. Putting that disagreement aside, like mature adults, we move on to the rest of the chapter and Popper's remaining theses. In particular, we focus on Popper's criticism of the idea of a nation's right to self-determination. Things were going smoothly ... until roughly five minutes in, when we start disagreeing about what the "nation" in "nation state" actually means. (Note: Early listeners of this episode have commented that this one is a bit hard to follow - highly suggest reading the text to compensate for our many confusing digressions. Our bad, our bad). We discuss Are there any benefits of being bilingual? Popper's attack on the idea of national self-determination Popper's second thesis: that out own free world is by far the best society thus far Reductions in poverty, unemployment, sickness, pain, cruelty, slavery, discrimination, class differences Popper's third thesis: The relation of progress to war Whether Popper was factually correct about his claim that democracies do not wage wars of aggression Self-accusation: A unique feature to Western societies Popper's fourth thesis about the power of ideas And his fifth thesis that truth is hard to come by References Conjectures and Refutations Definition of self-determination from Cornell Law School The UN Charter Wilson's 14 Points Quotes The absurdity of the communist faith is manifest. Appealing to the belief in human freedom, it has produced a system of oppression without parallel in history. But the nationalist faith is equally absurd. I am not alluding here to Hitler’s racial myth. What I have in mind is, rather, an alleged natural right of man— the alleged right of a nation to self-determination. That even a great humanitarian and liberal like Masaryk could uphold this absurd- ity as one of the natural rights of man is a sobering thought. It suffices to shak...

#71 (C&R, Chap 19: Part I) - The History of Our Time: An Optimist's View

Aug 2, 2024 1 hr 12 min

Back to the Conjectures and Refutations series, after a long hiatus! Given all that's happening in the world and the associated rampant pessimism, we thought it would be appropriate to tackle Chapter 19 - A History of Our Time: An Optimist's View. We get through a solid fifth of the chapter, at which point Ben and Vaden start arguing about whether people are fundamentally good, fundamentally bad, or fundamentally driven by signalling and incentives. And we finally answer the all-important question on everyone's mind: Does Adolf Eichmann support defunding the police? Banal Lives Matter. We discuss Thoughts on the recent Trump assasination attempt How can Popper be an optimist with prophesying about the future? The scarcity value of optimism Russell's view that our intellectual development has outrun our moral development Relationship of this view to the orthogonality thesis Popper's competing view that our troubles arise because we are good but stupid How much can incentives compel us to do bad things? How easy it for humans to really be led by the nose Ben's experience during the summer of 2020 References Conjectures and Refutations Orthogonality thesis Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt Adam Smith's thought experiment about losing a pinky Radiolab episode, "The Bad Show" Quotes Now I come to the word ‘Optimist’. First let me make it quite clear that if I call myself an optimist, I do not wish to suggest that I know anything about the future. I do not wish to pose as a prophet, least of all as a historical prophet. On the contrary, I have for many years tried to defend the view that historical prophecy is a kind of quackery. I do not believe in historical laws, and I disbelieve especially in anything like a law of progress. In fact, I believe that it is much easier for us to regress than to progress. Though I believe all this, I think that I may fairly describe myself as an optimist. For my optimism lies entirely in my interpretation of the presen...

#70 - ... and Bayes Bites Back (w/ Richard Meadows)

Jul 9, 2024 1 hr 30 min

Sick of hearing us shouting about Bayesianism? Well today you're in luck, because this time, someone shouts at us about Bayesianism! Richard Meadows, finance journalist, author, and Ben's secretive podcast paramour, takes us to task. Are we being unfair to the Bayesians? Is Bayesian rationality optimal in theory, and the rest of us are just coping with an uncertain world? Is this why the Bayesian rationalists have so much cultural influence (and money, and fame, and media attention, and ...), and we, ahem, uhhh, don't? Check out Rich's website, his book Optionality: How to Survive and Thrive in a Volatile World, and his podcast. We discuss The pros of the rationality and EA communities Whether Bayesian epistemology contributes to open-mindedness The fact that evidence doesn't speak for itself The fact that the world doesn't come bundled as discrete chunks of evidence Whether Bayesian epistemology would be "optimal" for Laplace's demon The difference between truth and certainty Vaden's tone issues and why he gets animated about this subject. References Scott's original piece: In continued defense of non-frequentist probabilities Scott Alexander's post about rootclaim Our previous episode on Scott's piece: #69 - Contra Scott Alexander on Probability Rootclaim Ben's blogpost You need a theory for that theory Cox's theorem Aumann's agreement theorem Vaden's blogposts mentioned in the episode: Critical Rationalism and Bayesian Epistemology Proving Too Much Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Follow Rich at @MeadowsRichard Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Help us calibrate our credences and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here. Click dem like buttons on youtube What's your favorite theory that is neither true nor useful? Tell us over at incremen...

#69 - Contra Scott Alexander on Probability

Jun 20, 2024 1 hr 45 min

After four episodes spent fawning over Scott Alexander's "Non-libertarian FAQ", we turn around and attack the good man instead. In this episode we respond to Scott's piece "In Continued Defense of Non-Frequentist Probabilities", and respond to each of his five arguments defending Bayesian probability. Like moths to a flame, we apparently cannot let the probability subject slide, sorry people. But the good news is that before getting there, you get to here about some therapists and pedophiles (therapeutic pedophelia?). What's the probability that Scott changes his mind based on this episode? We discuss Why we're not defending frequentism as a philosophy The Bayesian interpretation of probability The importance of being explicit about assumptions Why it's insane to think that 50% should mean both "equally likely" and "I have no effing idea". Why Scott's interpretation of probability is crippling our ability to communicate How super are Superforecasters? Marginal versus conditional guarantees (this is exactly as boring as it sounds) How to pronounce Samotsvety and are they Italian or Eastern European or what? References In Continued Defense Of Non-Frequentist Probabilities Article on superforecasting by Gavin Leech and Misha Yugadin Essay by Michael Story on superforecasting Existential risk tournament: Superforecasters vs AI doomers and Ben's blogpost about it The Good Judgment Project Quotes During the pandemic, Dominic Cummings said some of the most useful stuff that he received and circulated in the British government was not forecasting. It was qualitative information explaining the general model of what’s going on, which enabled decision-makers to think more clearly about their options for action and the likely consequences. If you’re worried about a new disease outbreak, you don’t just want a percentage probability estimate about future case numbers, you want an explanation of how the virus is likely to spread, what you can do about it, how you...

#68 - Libertarianism IV: Political Issues (w/ Bruce Nielson)

May 30, 2024 1 hr 50 min

The final part in a series which has polarized the nation. We tackle -- alongside Bruce Nielson as always -- the remaining part of Scott's FAQ: Political Issues. Can the government get anything right? Has Scott strawmanned the libertarian argument in this section? Is libertarianism an economic theory, a political theory, a metaphysical theory, or a branch of physics? And what do Milton and Ludwig have to say about all this? Warning: we get a little meta with this one... We discuss Is the government effective at doing anything? What's the use of thinking counterfactually? Is it just market failures all the way down? Three kinds of anarcho-capitalists The economic calculation problem Is an economic theory necessarily political? What to make of the claim that austrian economics is like physics But wait, isn't it also metaphysics? References Scott's FAQ Napolean science funding: Canned food More readings Bruce's Theory of Anything Pod and on twitter at @bnielson01 Vaden's blog posts on Libertarianism: First: Is Austrian Economics the Best Explanation of Economics? Second: Can we predict human behaviour? A discussion with Brett Hall Quotes The Argument: Government can’t do anything right. Its forays into every field are tinged in failure. Whether it’s trying to create contradictory “state owned businesses”, funding pet projects that end up over budget and useless, or creating burdensome and ridiculous “consumer protection” rules, its heavy-handed actions are always detrimental and usually embarrassing. ... The Counterargument: Government sometimes, though by no means always, does things right, and some of its institutions and programs are justifiably considered models of efficiency and human ingenuity. There are various reasons why people are less likely to notice these. - Scott's FAQ 7.1.1: Okay, fine. But that’s a special case where, given an infinite budget, they were able to accomplish something that private industry had no incentive to try. And to...

#67 - Libertarianism III: Social Issues (w/ Bruce Nielson)

May 9, 2024 1 hr 45 min

Have you ever wanted to be more rich? Have you considered just working a bit harder? Welcome to part III of our libertarian series, where we discuss Part B: Social Issues of Scott Alexander's Anti-Libertarian FAQ, which critiques the libertarian view that if you're rich, you deserve it, and if you're poor, well, you deserve that too. As always, the estimable Bruce Nielson (@bnielson) helps guide is through the thorny wicket of libertarian thought. We discuss Do the poor deserve to be poor? Waddabout the rich? Is dogmatism ever a good thing? Is social mobility determined in part by parental wealth? Is this due to genetics, culture, upbringing or something else? The chances of escaping the lower class Does government regulation increase social mobility? Why progressive taxation makes sense References David Friedman's response Bruce's Theory Of Anything podcast Popperian/Deutschian FB group: Many Worlds of David Deutsch On dogmatism: Bruce's episode: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/episodes/Episode-51-Was-Karl-Popper-Dogmatic-e1obs0m/a-a2hb64g Ben's blog post: https://benchugg.com/writing/dogmatism/ Vaden's blog posts on Libertarianism: First: Is Austrian Economics the Best Explanation of Economics? Second: Can we predict human behaviour? A discussion with Brett Hall Quotes The Argument: Those who work hardest (and smartest) should get the most money. Not only should we not begrudge them that money, but we should thank them for the good they must have done for the world in order to satisfy so many consumers. People who do not work hard should not get as much money. If they want more money, they should work harder. Getting more money without working harder or smarter is unfair, and indicative of a false sense of entitlement. Unfortunately, modern liberal society has internalized the opposite principle: that those who work hardest are greedy people who must have stolen from those who work less hard, and that we should distrust the...

#66 - Sex Research, Addiction, and Financial Domination (w/ Aella)

Apr 18, 2024 1 hr 6 min

What do you get when you mix nerds and sex research? A deep dive into the world of fetish statistics, men's calibration about women's sexual preferences, and the crazy underground world of financial domination. Stay tuned as Aella walks the boys through the world of gangbangs, camming, OnlyFans, escorting, findom, and even live-tests Vaden's wild hypothesis against her huge, thick, dataset. We discuss How to describe what Aella does Aella's bangin' birthday party The state of sex research Conservative and neo-trad pushback and whether Aella is immune from cancellation Are men calibrated when it comes to predicting women's sexual preferences? The wild world of findom (financial domination) Is findom addiction worse than other addictions? Differences between camming and OnlyFans Can a fetish ever be considered self-harm? Plus some live hypothesis testing! Does Vaden's hypothesis survive...? Aella's forthcoming journal based on Rationalist principles References from the ep Aella's good at sex series Aella's website Aella's blogpost on Fetish Tabooness vs Popularity "I spent $3,400 in a single day on financial domination": financial-domination addict James Clip starts at 12:25 Findom Addicts Anonymous Fetlife bans Findom Domme won't let me quit (unethical), addicted to findom, please help | Reddit I don't feel bad for subs that are addicted to findom. Findom References (additional sources used for episode prep that weren't mention in the episode) Random Men Pay My Bills | BBC Podcast Interview with a Recovering Paypig - A Financial Domination Addict FINDOM is not FEMDOM Confessions of a 'Pay Pig': Why I Give Away Money to Dominant Women I Meet Online Special Episode on Findoms... | The Kink Perspective Podcast She Gets Paid Just to Humiliate Her Fans | New York Times Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Help us put he...

#65 - Libertarianism II: Economic Issues (w/ Bruce Nielson)

Mar 28, 2024 1 hr 33 min

Back at it again, as we coerce you into listening to Part 2 of our four part series on Libertarianism, with Mr. Bruce Nielson (@bnielson01). In this episode we cover the Economic Issues section of Scott Alexander's (non-aggressive and principled) non-libertarian FAQ, and discuss his four major economic critiques of the libertarian view that free and voluntary trade between consenting, informed, rational individuals is the best possible thing ever, with no downsides at all. Also, can we interest you in buying some wasps? We discuss Loose ends from last episode - coercion and the Non-Aggression Principle What distinguishes a conservative like Bruce from a libertarian? Externalities Boycotts and Coordination Problems Irrational Choices Lack of Information References The Non-libertarian FAQ Planet Money on the Porcupine Freedom Festival Vaden's blog posts on Libertarianism / Austrian Economics / Anarcho-Captialism / Whateveryawannacallit First: Is Austrian Economics the Best Explanation of Economics? Second: Can we predict human behaviour? A discussion with Brett Hall Quotes The Argument: In a free market, all trade has to be voluntary, so you will never agree to a trade unless it benefits you. Further, you won’t make a trade unless you think it’s the best possible trade you can make. If you knew you could make a better one, you’d hold out for that. So trades in a free market are not only better than nothing, they’re also the best possible transaction you could make at that time. Labor is no different from any other commercial transaction in this respect. You won’t agree to a job unless it benefits you more than anything else you can do with your time, and your employer won’t hire you unless it benefits her more than anything else she can do with her money. So a voluntarily agreed labor contract must benefit both parties, and must do so more than any other alternative. If every trade in a free market benefits both parties, then any time the government...

#64 - Libertarianism I: Intro and Moral Issues (w/ Bruce Nielson)

Mar 7, 2024 1 hr 52 min

Liberty! Freedom! Coercion! Taxes are theft! The State is The Enemy! Bitcoin! Crypto! Down with the central banks! Let's all return to the Gold Standard! Have you encountered such phrases in the wild? Confused, perhaps, as to why an afternoon beer with a friend become an extended diatribe against John Maynard Kaynes? Us too, which is why we're diving into the ideological source of such views: Libertarianism. Welcome to Part 1 of a four part series where we, with Bruce Nielson (@bnielson01) as our battle-hardened guide, dive into Scott Alexander's non-libertarian FAQ. Ought George help, or ought George respect the government's property rights? Let's find out. And make sure to check out Bruce's excellent The Theory Of Anything podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-theory-of-anything/id1503194218 We discuss Varieties of libertarianism Why are some libertarians so ideological? Is taxation theft? The problem of public goods "Proprietary communities" and the perfect libertarian society Why the perfect libertarian society doesn't escape taxation Are we living in the libertarian utopia right now? Taxes as membership fees References The Non-libertarian FAQ George ought to help The Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman Vaden's blog posts on Libertarianism / Austrian Economics / Anarcho-Captialism / Whateveryawannacallit First: Is Austrian Economics the Best Explanation of Economics? Second: Can we predict human behaviour? A discussion with Brett Hall Quotes 0.2: Do you hate libertarianism? No. To many people, libertarianism is a reaction against an over-regulated society, and an attempt to spread the word that some seemingly intractable problems can be solved by a hands-off approach. Many libertarians have made excellent arguments for why certain libertarian policies are the best options, and I agree with many of them. I think this kind of libertarianism is a valuable strain of political thought that deserves more attention, and I have...

#63 - Recycling is the Dumps

Feb 14, 2024 1 hr 6 min

Close your eyes, and think of a bright and pristine, clean and immaculately run recycling center, green'r than a giant's thumb. Now think of a dirty, ugly, rotting landfill, stinking in the mid-day sun. Of these two scenarios, which, do you reckon, is worse for the environment? In this episode, Ben and Vaden attempt to reduce and refute a few reused canards about recycling and refuse, by rereading Rob Wiblin's excellent piece which addresses the aformentioned question: What you think about landfill and recycling is probably totally wrong. Steel yourselves for this one folks, because you may need to paper over arguments with loved ones, trash old opinions, and shatter previous misconceptions. Check out more of Rob's writing here. We discuss The origins of recycling and some of the earliest instances Energy efficiency of recycling plastics, aluminium, paper, steel, and electronic waste (e-waste) Why your peanut butter jars and plastic coffee cups are not recyclable Modern landfills and why they're awesome How landfills can be used to create energy Building stuff on top of landfills Why we're not even close to running out of space for landfills Economic incentives for recycling vs top-down regulation The modern recycling movement and its emergence in the 1990s > - Guiyu, China, where e-waste goes to die. That a lot of your "recycling" ends up as garbage in the Philippines Error Correction Vaden misremembered what Smil wrote regarding four categories of recycling (Metals and Aluminum / Plastics / Paper / Electronic Waste ("e-waste")). He incorrectly quoted Smil as saying these four categories were exhaustive, and represented the four major categories recycling into which the majority of recycled material can be bucketed. This is incorrect- what Smil actually wrote was: I will devote the rest of this section (and of this chapter) to brief appraisals of the recycling efforts for four materials — two key metals (steel and aluminum) and plastics and paper—an...

#62 (Bonus) - The Principle of Optimism (Vaden on the Theory of Anything Podcast)

Feb 1, 2024 2 hr 45 min

Vaden has selfishly gone on vacation with his family, leaving beloved listeners to fend for themselves in the wide world of epistemological confusion. To repair some of the damage, we're releasing an episode of The Theory of Anything Podcast from last June in which Vaden contributed to a roundtable discussion on the principle of optimism. Featuring Bruce Nielson, Peter Johansen, Sam Kuypers, Hervé Eulacia, Micah Redding, Bill Rugolsky, and Daniel Buchfink. Enjoy! From The Theory of Anything Podcast description: Are all evils due to a lack of knowledge? Are all interesting problems soluble? ALL the problems, really?!?! And what exactly is meant by interesting? Also, should “good guys” ignore the precautionary principle, and do they always win? What is the difference between cynicism, pessimism, and skepticism? And why is pessimism so attractive to so many humans? Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Help us solve problems and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here. Click dem like buttons on youtube Which unsolvable problem would you most like to solve? Send your answer via quantum tunneling to incrementspodcast@gmail.com Special Guests: Bruce Nielson and Sam Kuypers.

#61 - Debating Free Will: Frankenstein's Monster and a Filmstrip of the Universe (with Lucas Smalldon)

Jan 17, 2024 1 hr 42 min

While you're reading this you're having a thought. Something like "wow, I love the Increments podcast", or "those hosts are some handsome" or "I really wish people would stop talking about free will." Do you have a choice in the matter? Are you free to choose what you're thinking in any given moment, or is it determined by your genetics, environment, and existing ideas? Is the universe determined, are we all Frankenstein's monster? How does one profitably think about that question? Today we have Lucas Smalldon on to help us think through these questions. We reference Lucas's blog post titled reconciling-determinism-and-free-will. Because it's is barely more than a tweet, we've included the entire post here as well: Reconciling Free Will with Determinism Free will and determinism seem to conflict with each other. But the apparent conflict disappears when we understand that determinism and free will simply describe the world from radically different perspectives and at fundamentally different levels. Free will makes sense only within the context of the physical world, whereas determinism makes sense only from a perspective that is outside the physical world. Consider the determinist statement, “The future exists and has always existed”. It seems like a contradiction in terms, but only because our language forces us to express the idea misleadingly in terms of the past and future. If we assign special meanings to the temporal words in the statement—namely, if by the future we mean “objectively real events that from the perspective of our present have not yet happened”; and if by always we mean “transcending time itself” rather than the usual “existing across all time”—then the contradiction resolves. Assigning these special meanings allows us to express determinism as atemporal and objective: as a description of a physical reality of which time is an attribute. Conversely, free will, which is by far the more intuitive concept, is needed to explain certain kinds of...

#60 - Creativity and Computational Universality (with Bruce Nielson)

Jan 4, 2024 1 hr 58 min

Today we [finally] have on someone who actually knows what they're actually talking about: Mr. Bruce Nielson of the excellent Theory of Anything Podcast. We bring him on to straighten us out on the topics of creativity, machine intelligence, Turing machines, and computational universality - We build upon our previous conversation way back in Ask Us Anything I: Computation and Creativity, and suggest listening to that episode first. Go follow Bruce on twitter (https://twitter.com/bnielson01) and check out his Theory of Anything Podcast here. (Also Vaden's audio was acting up a bit in this episode, we humbly seek forgiveness.) We discuss Does theorem proving count as creativity? Is AlphaGo creative? Determinism, predictability, and chaos theory Essentialism and a misunderstanding of definitions Animal memes and understanding Turing Machines and computational universality Penrose's "proof" that we need new physics References Ask Us Anything I: Computation and Creativity (Listen first!) Logic theorist AlphaGo movie Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Help us fund more 64 minute-long blog posts and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here. Click dem like buttons on youtube Create us up an email with something imaginatively rote, cliche and formulaic, and mail that creative stinker over to incrementspodcast@gmail.com Special Guest: Bruce Nielson.

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#109 - Vaden on The Bayesian Conspiracy [FULL UNEDITED DEBATE]

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Created by: Ben Chugg and Vaden Masrani
Status: Active
Latest episode: Oct 30, 2026
Episodes: 110
Release period: Monthly
Avg. episode length: 1 hr 22 min
Explicit: No
Language: English

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