Increments (Ben Chugg and Vaden Masrani)

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 (https://www.daviddeutsch.org.uk/). 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 (https://www.nature.com/articles/302687a0) David's 2021 talk on the correspondence theory of truth (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ-opI-jghs) David's talk on physics without probability (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfzSE4Hoxbc). Hempel's paradox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven_paradox) The Beginning of Infinity (https://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Infinity-Explanations-Transform-World/dp/0143121359) Knowledge and the Body-Mind Problem (https://www.amazon.ca/Knowledge-Body-Mind-Problem-Defence-Interaction/dp/0415135567) 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 (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) What's the truth about your belief on the probability of useful statistics? Tell us over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com. Special Guest: David Deutsch.

Galileo vs the church - whose side are you on? Today we discuss Chapter 3 of Conjectures and Refutations, Three Views Concerning Human Knowledge. This is a juicy one, as Popper manages to simultaneously attack both philosophers and physicists, as he takes on instrumentalism and essentialism, two alternatives to his 'conjecture and refutation' approach to knowledge. We discuss: The conflict between Galileo and the church What is instrumentalism, and how did it become popular? How instrumentalism is still in vogue in many physics departments The Problem of Universals The essentialist approach to science Stars, air, cells, and lightning "What is" vs "How does" questions The relationship between essentialism and language, and its influence on politics. Viewing words as instruments See More: - Instrumentalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumentalism - Essentialism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essentialism - The problem of universals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problemofuniversals Quotes: Few if any of the physicists who have now accepted the instrumentalist view of Cardinal Bellarmino and Bishop Berkeley realize that they have accepted a philosophical theory. Nor do they realize that they have broken with the Galilean tradition. On the contrary, most of them think that they have kept clear of philosophy; and most of them no longer care anyway. What they now care about, as physicists, is (a) mastery of the mathematical formalism, i.e. of the instrument, and (b) its applications; and they care for nothing else. -- C&R, Page 134 Thus my criticism of essentialism does not aim at establishing the non-existence of essences; it merely aims at showing the obscurantist character of the role played by the idea of essences in the Galilean philosophy of science (down to Maxwell, who was inclined to believe in them but whose work destroyed this belief). In other words my criticism tries to show that, whether essences exist or not, the belief in them does not help us in any way and indeed is likely to hamper us; so that there is no reason why the scientist should assume their existence. -- C&R, Page 141. But they are more than this, as can be seen from the fact that we submit them to severe tests by trying to deduce from them some of the regularities of the known world of common experience i.e. by trying to explain these regularities. And these attempts to explain the known by the unknown (as I have described them elsewhere) have immeasurably extended the realm of the known. They have added to the facts of our everyday world the invisible air, the antipodes, the circulation of the blood, the worlds of the telescope and the microscope, of electricity, and of tracer atoms showing us in detail the movements of matter within living bodies. All these things are far from being mere instruments: they are witness to the intellectual conquest of our world by our minds. But there is another way of looking at these matters. For some, science is still nothing but glorified plumbing, glorified gadgetmaking—‘mechanics’; very useful, but a danger to true culture, threatening us with the domination of the near-illiterate (of Shakespeare’s ‘mechanicals’). It should never be mentioned in the same breath as literature or the arts or philosophy. Its professed discoveries are mere mechanical inventions, its theories are instruments—gadgets again, or perhaps super-gadgets. It cannot and does not reveal to us new worlds behind our everyday world of appearance; for the physical world is just surface: it has no depth. The world is just what it appears to be. Only the scientific theories are not what they appear to be. A scientific theory neither explains nor describes the world; it is nothing but an instrument. -- C&R, Page 137-8. What's the essential nature of this podcast? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com

We're joined today by Matt Bateman, one of the founders of Higher Ground Education, to discuss the Montessori method of education and how it compares to other teaching methodologies. Get ready for tiny furniture, putting on your jacket upside down, and teaching your toddler to make eggs benedict. We discuss: Maria Montessori What is a Montessori education (besides tiny furniture)? How Montessori classrooms differ from regular ones Why long periods of interrupted problem solving is important for a child's development How Montessori integrates with technology Drawbacks of traditional methods of testing and grading, and how they might be amended The importance of cultivating a love of work How Matt wants to reform high school education Bio: Matt is one of the founders of Higher Ground Education (https://www.tohigherground.com/), a worldwide Montessori network. He runs Montessorium, Higher Ground’s think tank. He holds a PhD in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania, where he focused on the philosophy of science. Make sure to follow him on twitter (https://twitter.com/mbateman) for some golden education nuggets References: Matt on the Where We Go Next (https://podcastaddict.com/episode/116009974) (formerly New Liberals) podcast. Montessorium (https://montessorium.com/) Vocational Training for the Soul: Bringing the Meaning of Work to Schools (https://thechalkboardreview.com/latest/vocational-training-for-the-soul-bringing-the-meaning-of-work-to-schools) Matt's History of Education Course (https://montessorium.com/courses/the-history-of-education) Social media everywhere Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Check us out on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Special Guest: Matt Bateman.

Ben and Vaden sit down to discuss what is possibly Popper's most confusing essay ever: Language and the Body-Mind Problem: A restatement of Interactionism. Determinism, causality, language, bodies, minds, and Ferris Buhler. What's not to like! Except for the terrible writing, spanning the entire essay. And before we get to that, we revolutionize the peer-review system in less than 10 minutes. We discuss - Problems with the current peer-review system and how to improve it - The Mind-Body Problem - How chaos theory relates to determinism - The four functions of language - Why you don't argue with thermometers - Whether Popper thinks we can build AGI - Why causality occurs at the level of ideas, not just of atoms References - Link to the essay (http://www.ditext.com/popper/lbp.html), which you should most definitely read for yourself. - Ben's call to abolish peer-review (https://benchugg.com/writing/peer-review/) - Discrete Analysis Math Journal (https://discreteanalysisjournal.com/) - Pachinko (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachinko) - Karl Buhler's theory of language (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organon_model) Quotes This, I think, solves the so-called problem of 'other minds'. If we talk to other people, and especially if we argue with them, then we assume (sometimes mistakenly) that they also argue: that they speak intentionally about things, seriously wishing to solve a problem, and not merely behaving as if they were doing so. It has often been seen that language is a social affair and that solipsism, and doubts about the existence of other minds, become selfcontradictory if formulated in a language. We can put this now more clearly. In arguing with other people (a thing which we have learnt from other people), for example about other minds, we cannot but attribute to them intentions, and this means, mental states. We do not argue with a thermometer. - C&R, Chap 13 Once we understand the causal behaviour of the machine, we realize that its behaviour is purely expressive or symptomatic. For amusement we may continue to ask the machine questions, but we shall not seriously argue with it-- unless we believe that it transmits the arguments, both from a person and back to a person. - C&R, Chap 13 If the behaviour of such a machine becomes very much like that of a man, then we may mistakenly believe that the machine describes and argues; just as a man"who does not know the working of a phonograph or radio may mistakenly think that it describes and argues. Yet an analysis of its mechanism teaches us that nothing of this kind happens. The radio does not argue, although it expresses and signals. - C&R, Chap 13 It is true that the presence of Mike in my environment may be one of the physical 'causes' of my saying, 'Here is Mike'. But if I say, 'Should this be your argument, then it is contradictory', because I have grasped or realized that it is so, then there was no physical 'cause' analogous to Mike; I do not need to hear or see your words in order to realize that a certain theory (it does not matter whose) is contradictory. The analogy is not to Mike, but rather to my realization that Mike is here. - C&R, Chap 13 The fear of obscurantism (or of being judged an obscurantist) has prevented most anti-obscurantists from saying such things as these. But this fear has produced, in the end, only obscurantism of another kind. - C&R, Chap 13 When's the last time you argued with your thermometer? Tell us over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com Image Credit: http://humanities.exeter.ac.uk/modernlanguages/research/groups/linguistics/

We often talk of explanation in the context of empirical sciences, but what about explanation in logic and mathematics? Is there such a thing? If so, what does it look like and what are the consequences? In this episode we sit down with professor of philosophy Mark Colyvan and explore How mathematical explanation differs from explanation in the natural sciences Counterfactual reasoning in mathematics Intra versus extra mathematical explanation Alternate logics Mathematical thought experiments The use of probability in the courtroom References: - The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences (https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranick/papers/wigner.pdf) by Eugene Wigner. - Proofs and Refutations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proofs_and_Refutations#:~:text=Proofs%20and%20Refutations%3A%20The%20Logic,characteristic%20defined%20for%20the%20polyhedron.) by Imre Lakatos. Mark Colyvan (http://www.colyvan.com/) is a professor of philosophy at the University of Sydney, and a visiting professor (and, previously, Humboldt fellow) at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich. He has a wide array of research interests, including the philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of logic, decision theory, environmental philosophy, and ecology. He has authored three books: The Indispensability of Mathematics (Oxford University Press, 2001), Ecological Orbits: How Planets Move and Populations Grow (Oxford University Press, 2004, co-authored with Lev Ginzburg), and An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mathematics (Cambridge University Press, 2012). Special Guest: Mark Colyvan.

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 (https://www.incrementspodcast.com/52), 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 (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-theory-of-anything/id1503194218). (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 (https://www.incrementspodcast.com/52) (Listen first!) Logic theorist (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_Theorist) AlphaGo movie (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaGo_(film)) 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 (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) 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.

There are many overused internet keywords that could be associated with this conversation, but none of them quite seem right. So here's a poem instead: The Ogre does what ogres can, Deeds quite impossible for Man, But one prize is beyond his reach: The Ogre cannot master speech. About a subjugated plain, Among its desperate and slain, The Ogre stalks with hands on hips, While drivel gushes from his lips - August 1968, W H Auden (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBG68YkOQOg) Send us an email at incrementspodcast@gmail.com Image from https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/the-august-1968-red-square-protest-and-its-legacy Audio updated: 05/07/2021

Ask us anything? Ask us everything! Back at it again with AUA Part 2/N. We wax poetic and wane dramatic on a number of subjects, including: - Ben's dark and despicable hidden historicist tendencies - Expounding upon (one of our many) critiques of Bayesian Epistemology - Ben's total abandonment of all of his principles - Similarities and differences between human and computer decision making - What can the critical rationalist community learn from Effective Altruism? - Ben's new best friend Peter Turchin - How to have effective disagreements and not take gleeful petty jabs at friends and co-hosts. Questions (Michael) A critique of Bayesian epistemology is that it "assigns scalars to feelings" in an ungrounded way. It's not clear to me that the problem-solving approach of Deutsch and Popper avoid this, because even during the conjecture-refutation process, the person needs to at some point decide whether the current problem has been solved satisfactorily enough to move on to the next problem. How is this satisfaction determined, if not via summarizing one's internal belief as a scalar that surpasses some threshold? If not this (which is essentially assigning scalars to feelings), by what mechanism is a problem determined to be solved? (Michael) Is the claim that "humans create new choices whereas machines are constrained to choose within the event-space defined by the human" equivalent to saying "humans can perform abstraction while machines cannot?" Not clear what "create new choices" means, given that humans are also constrained in their vocabulary (and thus their event-space of possible thoughts) (Lulie) In what ways could the critical rationalist culture improve by looking to EA? (Scott) What principles do the @IncrementsPod duo apply to navigating effective conversations involving deep disagreement? (Scott) Are there any contexts where bayesianism has utility? (steelman) (Scott) What is Vaden going to do post graduation? Quotes “The words or the language, as they are written or spoken,” he wrote, “do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be ‘voluntarily’ reproduced and combined...this combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought— before there is any connection with logical construction in words or other kinds of signs which can be communicated to others.” (Einstein) Contact us Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Check us out on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Send Ben an email asking him why god why over at incrementspodcast.com

The most reasonable and well-reasoned discussion of reason you can be reasonably expected to hear. Today we talk about the book The Enigma of Reason by Dan Sperber and Hugo Mercier. But first, get ready for dogs, modern art, and babies! *We discuss * - Reason as a social phenomenon - The two roles of reason: To justify our actions, and to evaluate the reasons of others - Reason as module of inference, and how that contrasts with dual-process theories - The "intellectualist" vs the "interactionist" approach to reason - Nassim Taleb's notion of "skin in the game" - The consequences of reason having evolved in a particular (social) niche - The marshmallow test and other debunked psychological findings Quotes: The interactionist approach, on the other hand, makes two contrasting predictions. In the production of arguments, we should be biased and lazy; in the evaluation of arguments, we should be demanding and objective— demanding so as not to be deceived by poor or fallacious arguments into accepting false ideas, objective so as to be ready to revise our ideas when presented with good reasons why we should. EoR (pg. 332) In our interactionist approach, the normal conditions for the use of reasoning are social, and more specifically dialogic. Outside of this environment, there is no guarantee that reasoning acts for the benefits of the reasoner. It might lead to epistemic distortions and poor decisions. This does not mean reasoning is broken, simply that it has been taken out of its normal conditions. EoR (pg. 247) References Dan Sperber's talk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXsjWo6K4w0) at the Santa Fe Institute Image credit: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/charlottehigginsblog/2009/oct/20/classics-barack-obama Social media everywhere Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Check us out on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Send a reason, any reason, any reason at all, to incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

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 (https://www.youtube.com/@DoomDebates) and podcast (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/doom-debates/id1751366208). 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 (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) Was Vaden's two week anti-debate bro reeducation camp successful? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com Special Guest: Liron Shapira.

As whores for criticism, we wanted to have Kasra on to discuss his essay The Deutschian Deadend (https://www.bitsofwonder.co/p/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 (https://x.com/kasratweets) and subscribe to his blog, Bits of Wonder (https://www.bitsofwonder.co/p/the-deutschian-deadend). 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 Neilson's podcast on verification and falsification: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/episode-61-a-critical-rationalist-defense/id1503194218?i=1000621362624 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 philosophical deadend: the Deutschian deadend. - Kasra in the Deutschian Deadend There are many things you can directly observe, and which are “manifestly true” to you: what you’re wearing at the moment, which room of your house you’re in, whether the sun has set yet, whether you are running out of breath, whether your parents are alive, whether you feel a piercing pain in your back, whether you feel warmth in your palms—and so on and so forth. These are not perfectly certain absolute truths about reality, and there’s always more to know about them—but it is silly to claim that we have absolutely no claim on their truth either. I also think there are even such “obvious truths” in the realm of science—like the claim that the earth is not flat, that your body is made of cells, and that everyday objects follow predictable laws of motion. - Kasra in the Deutschian Deadend Deutsch writes: Some philosophical arguments, including the argument against solipsism, are far more compelling than any scientific argument. Indeed, every scientific argument assumes the falsity not only of solipsism, but also of other philosophical theories including any number of variants of solipsism that might contradict specific parts of the scientific argument. There are two different mistakes happening here. First, what Deutsch is doing is assuming a strict logical dependency between any one piece of our knowledge and every other piece of it. He says that our knowledge of science (say, of astrophysics) implicitly relies on other philosophical arguments about solipsism, epistemology, and metaphysics. But anyone who has thought about the difference between philosophy and science recognizes that in practice they can be studied and argued about independently. We can make progress on our understanding of celestial mechanics without making any crucial assumption about metaphysics. We can make progress studying neurons without solving the hard problem of consciousness or the question of free will. - Kasra in the Deutschian Deadend, quoting Deutsch on Solipsism At that time I learnt from Popper that it was not scientifically disgraceful to have one's hypothesis falsified. That was the best news I had had for a long time. I was persuaded by Popper, in fact, to formulate my electrical hypotheses of excitatory and inhibitory synaptic transmission so precisely and rigorously that they invited falsification - and, in fact, that is what happened to them a few years later, very largely by my colleagues and myself, when in 1951 we started to do intra- cellular recording from motoneurones. Thanks to my tutelage by Popper, I was able to accept joyfully this death of the brain-child which I had nurtured for nearly two decades and was immediately able to contribute as much as I could to the chemical transmission story which was the Dale and Loewi brain-child. - John C. Eccles on Popper, All Life is Problem Solving, p.12 In order to state the problem more clearly, I should like to reformulate it as follows. We may distinguish here between three types of theory. First, logical and mathematical theories. Second, empirical and scientific theories. Third, philosophical or metaphysical theories. -Popper on the "hierarchy of reliability", C&R p.266 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 (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) Are you a solipsist? If so, send yourself an email over to incrementspodcast@gmail.com. Special Guest: Kasra.

Alright people, we made it. Six months, a few breaks, some uncontrollable laughter, some philosophy, many unhinged takes, a little bit of diarrhea and we're here, the last Ask Us Anything. After this we're never answering another God D*** question. Ever. We discuss Do you wish you could change your own interests? Methods of information ingestion Taking books off their pedestal bit Intellectual influences Veganism (why Ben is, why Vaden isn't) Anti-rational memes Fricken Andrew Huberman again Stoicism Are e-fuels the best of the best or the worst of the worst? Questions (Andrew) Any suggested methods of reading Popper (or others) and getting the most out of it? I'm not from a philosophy background, and although I get a lot out of the books, I think there's probably ways of reading them (notes etc?) where I could invest the same time and get more return. (Andrew) Any other books you'd say added to your personal philosophical development as DD, KP have? Who and why? (Alex) Are you aware of general types of insidious anti-rational memes which are hard to recognise as such? Any ideas on how we can go about recognising them in our own thinking? (I do realise that perhaps no general method exists, but still, if you have any thoughts on this...) (Lorcan) What do you think about efuels? Listen to this take (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egTCIyNBpQw&ab_channel=FullyChargedShow) by Fully Charged. References Lying (https://www.samharris.org/books/lying) and Free Will (https://www.samharris.org/books/free-will) by Sam Harris Doing Good Better (https://www.amazon.ca/Doing-Good-Better-Effective-Altruism/dp/1592409660) by MacAskill Animal Liberation (https://www.amazon.ca/Animal-Liberation-Definitive-Classic-Movement/dp/0061711306) by Peter Singer Mortal Questions (https://www.amazon.ca/Mortal-Questions-Thomas-Nagel/dp/1107604710#:~:text=Thomas%20Nagel's%20Mortal%20Questions%20explore,%2C%20consciousness%2C%20freedom%20and%20value.) by Thomas Nagel Death and Life of Great American Cities (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_American_Cities) by Jane Jacobs Peace is Every Step (https://www.amazon.ca/Peace-Every-Step-Mindfulness-Everyday/dp/0553351397) and True Love (https://www.amazon.ca/True-Love-Practice-Awakening-Heart/dp/1590304047) by Thich Nhat Hanh Seeing like a State (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_Like_a_State#:~:text=Seeing%20Like%20a%20State%3A%20How,accordance%20with%20purported%20scientific%20laws.) by James Scott The Truth Behind Cage-Free and Free-Range | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foHv_MCBveA&ab_channel=StuffYouShouldKnow) People Producers of rational memes: - Everything: Christopher Hitchens, Vladimir Nabokov, Sam Harris, George Orwell, Scott Alexander, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Steven Pinker - Sex and Relationships: Dan Savage - Environment/Progress: Vaclav Smil, Matt Ridley, Steven Pinker, Hans Rosling, Bjorn Lomborg, Michael Shellenburger, Alex Epstein - Race: Glenn Loury, John Mcwhorter, Coleman Hughes, Kmele Foster, Chloe Valdery - Woke: John Mcwhorter, Yasha Mounk, Coleman Hughes, Sam Harris, Douglas Murrey, Jordan Peterson, Steven Hicks, James Lindsay, Ben Shapiro - Feminism: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Christina Hoff Summers, Camille Paglia (Note: Then follow each thinker's favorite thinker, and never stop. ) Producers of anti-rational memes: - Eric Weinstein - Bret Weinstein - Noam Chomsky (See A Potpourri Of Chomskyan Nonsense: https://lingbuzz.net/lingbuzz/001592/v6.pdf) - Glenn Greenwald - Reza Aslan - Medhi Hassan - Robin Diangelo - Ibraam x Kendi - George Galloway - Judith Butler 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 the anti-book campaign and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help therapy costs here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) What aren't you interested in, and how might you fix that? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com

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 (https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/in-continued-defense-of-non-frequentist) Article on superforecasting by Gavin Leech and Misha Yugadin (https://progress.institute/can-policymakers-trust-forecasters/) Essay by Michael Story on superforecasting (https://www.samstack.io/p/five-questions-for-michael-story) Existential risk tournament: Superforecasters vs AI doomers (https://forecastingresearch.org/news/results-from-the-2022-existential-risk-persuasion-tournament) and Ben's blogpost about it (https://benchugg.com/writing/superforecasting/) The Good Judgment Project (https://goodjudgment.com/) 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 can prevent it. - Michael Story (https://www.samstack.io/p/five-questions-for-michael-story) Is it bad that one term can mean both perfect information (as in 1) and total lack of information (as in 3)? No. This is no different from how we discuss things when we’re not using probability. Do vaccines cause autism? No. Does drinking monkey blood cause autism? Also no. My evidence on the vaccines question is dozens of excellent studies, conducted so effectively that we’re as sure about this as we are about anything in biology. My evidence on the monkey blood question is that nobody’s ever proposed this and it would be weird if it were true. Still, it’s perfectly fine to say the single-word answer “no” to both of them to describe where I currently stand. If someone wants to know how much evidence/certainty is behind my “no”, they can ask, and I’ll tell them. - SA, Section 2 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 calibrate our credences and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) What's your credence in Bayesianism? Tell us over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

We're back! Apologies for the delay, but Vaden got married and Ben was summoned to be an astronaut on the next billionaire's vacation to Venus. This week we're talking about how to forecast the future (with this one simple and easy trick! Astrologers hate them!). Specifically, we're diving into Philip Tetlock's work on Superforecasting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superforecasting:_The_Art_and_Science_of_Prediction). So what's the deal? Is it possible to "harness the wisdom of the crowd to forecast world events" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Judgment_Project)? Or is the whole thing just a result of sloppy statistics? We believe the latter is likely to be true with probability 64.9% - no, wait, 66.1%. Intro segment: "The Sentience Debate": The moral value of shrimps, insects, and oysters (https://www.facebook.com/103405457813911/videos/254164216090604) Relevant timestamps: 10:05: "Even if there's only a one in one hundred chance, or one in one thousand chance, that insects are sentient given current information, and if we're killing trillions or quadrillions of insects in ways that are preventable or avoidable or that we can in various ways mitigate that harm... then we should consider that possibility." 25:47: "If you're all going to work on pain in invertebrates, I pity you in many respects... In my previous work, I was used to running experiments and getting a clear answer, and I could say what these animals do and what they don't do. But when I started to think about what they might be feeling, you meet this frustration, that after maybe about 15 years of research, if someone asks me do they feel pain, my answer is 'maybe'... a strong 'maybe'... you cannot discount the possibility." 46:47: "It is not 100% clear to me that plants are non sentient. I do think that animals including insects are much more likely to be sentient than plants are, but I would not have a credence of zero that plants are sentient." 1:01:59: "So the hard problem I would like to ask the panel is: If you were to compare the moral weight of one ant to the moral weight of one human, what ratio would you put? How much more is a human worth than an ant? 100:1? 1000:1? 10:1? Or maybe 1:1? ... Let's start with Jamie." Main References: Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superforecasting:_The_Art_and_Science_of_Prediction) How Policymakers Can Improve Crisis Planning (https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2020-10-13/better-crystal-ball) The Good Judgment Project - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Judgment_Project) Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?: Tetlock, Philip E.: 9780691128719: Books - Amazon.ca (https://www.amazon.ca/Expert-Political-Judgment-Good-Know/dp/0691128715) Additional references mentioned in the episode: The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Drunkard%27s_Walk) The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Swan:_The_Impact_of_the_Highly_Improbable) Book Review: Superforecasting | Slate Star Codex (https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/02/04/book-review-superforecasting/) Pandemic Uncovers the Limitations of Superforecasting – We Are Not Saved (https://wearenotsaved.com/2020/04/18/pandemic-uncovers-the-ridiculousness-of-superforecasting/) My Final Case Against Superforecasting (with criticisms considered, objections noted, and assumptions buttressed) – We Are Not Saved (https://wearenotsaved.com/2020/05/30/my-final-case-against-superforecasting-with-criticisms-considered-objections-noted-and-assumptions-buttressed/) Use your Good Judgement and send us email at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

In this episode Ben convinces Vaden to become a degrowther. We plan how to live out the rest of our lives on an organic tomato farm in Canada in December, sewing our own clothes and waxing our own candles. Step away from the thermostat Jimmy. We discuss: - The degrowth movement (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degrowth) - The basics of economic growth, and why it's good for developing economies in particular - How growth enables resilience in the face of environmental disasters - Why the environment is in better shape than you think - Availability bias and our tendency to think everything is falling apart - The decoupling of economic growth and carbon emissions - Energy dense production and energy portfolios And we respond to some of your criticism of the previous episode, including: Apocalyptic environmental predictions been happening for a while? Really? Number of annual cold deaths exceed the number of annual heat deaths? Really? Your previous episode was very human-centric, and failed to address the damage humans are causing to the environment. What say you? Are we right wing crypto-fascists? (Answer: Maybe, successfully dodged the question) Social media everywhere Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Check us out on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ Come join our discord server! DM one of us on twitter, or send an email to incrementspodcast@gmail.com to get a link References Two natural experiments on curtailing economic growth. Energy Crunch (https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/energy-crunch-hits-global-recovery-as-winter-approaches-report-121102000021_1.html), and the effect of Covid-19 on developing countries (world bank) (https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/799701589552654684/pdf/Costs-and-Trade-Offs-in-the-Fight-Against-the-COVID-19-Pandemic-A-Developing-Country-Perspective.pdf) 10x more cold deaths than heat deaths. Original study (https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00081-4/fulltext&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1636434110138000&usg=AOvVaw0Uas83UjktfZhIqzNOyMTQ) in the Lancet. Chilling Effect (https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/chilling-effects?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjozNDgwNTU5LCJwb3N0X2lkIjo0MjYwOTE3NCwiXyI6InVqQ3VpIiwiaWF0IjoxNjM0Nzg2MDY1LCJleHAiOjE2MzQ3ODk2NjUsImlzcyI6InB1Yi04OTEyMCIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.oIH0tvBYkHK5PfbmmqLdNVO0-U46kRy54CSjZlEC0ec) by Scott Alexander. Decoupling of economic growth and pollution (https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/absolute-decoupling-of-economic-growth-and-emissions-in-32-countries) by Zeke Hausfather of the Breakthrough institute. Air Pollution Trends data (EPA) (https://www.epa.gov/air-emissions-inventories/air-pollutant-emissions-trends-data) Number of deaths from natural disasters (https://ourworldindata.org/natural-disasters#number-of-deaths-from-natural-disasters) (Our World in Data). Original data taken from the EMDAT Natural Disasters database (https://www.emdat.be/). Increase in global canopy cover (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0411-9) 99 Good News Stories in 2018 you probably didn't hear about (https://medium.com/future-crunch/99-good-news-stories-you-probably-didnt-hear-about-in-2018-cc3c65f8ebd0) ...and 2019 (https://futurecrun.ch/99-good-news-2019) ...and 2020 (https://futurecrun.ch/99-good-news-2020) (also sign up for the FutureCrunch newsletter!) The Environmental Kuznets curves (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuznets_curve) Quotes On Degrowth This would be a way of life based on modest material and energy needs but nevertheless rich in other dimensions – a life of frugal abundance. It is about creating an economy based on sufficiency, knowing how much is enough to live well, and discovering that enough is plenty. In a degrowth society we would aspire to localise our economies as far and as appropriately as possible. This would assist with reducing carbon-intensive global trade, while also building resilience in the face of an uncertain and turbulent future. Wherever possible, we would grow our own organic food, water our gardens with water tanks, and turn our neighbourhoods into edible landscapes as the Cubans have done in Havana. As my friend Adam Grubb so delightfully declares, we should “eat the suburbs”, while supplementing urban agriculture with food from local farmers’ markets. - Samuel Alexander, Life in a 'degrowth' economy, and why you might actually enjoy it (https://theconversation.com/life-in-a-degrowth-economy-and-why-you-might-actually-enjoy-it-32224) It would be nice to hear it straight for once. Global warming is real, it’s here, and it’s mind-bogglingly dangerous. How bad it gets—literally, the degree—depends on how quickly the most profligate countries rein in their emissions. Averting catastrophe will thus require places like the United States and Canada to make drastic cutbacks, bringing their consumption more closely in line with the planetary average. Such cuts can be made more or less fairly, and the richest really ought to pay the most, but the crucial thing is that they are made. Because, above all, stopping climate change means giving up on growth. That will be hard. Not only will our standards of living almost certainly drop, but it’s likely that the very quality of our society—equality, safety, and trust—will decline, too. That’s not something to be giddy about, but it’s still a price that those of us living in affluent countries should prepare to pay. Because however difficult it is to slow down, flooding Bangladesh cannot be an option. In other words, we can and should act. It’s just going to hurt. - Daniel Immerwahr, Growth vs the Climate (https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/growth-vs-the-climate) On Perennial Apocalypticism My offices were so cold I couldn't concentrate, and my staff were typing with gloves on. I pleaded with Jimmy to set the thermostats at 68 degrees, but it didn't do any good. - Paul Sabin, quoting Rosalynn Carter in The Bet (https://books.google.com/books?id=nVd_AAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false) Mostafa K. Tolba, executive director of the United Nations environmental program, told delegates that if the nations of the world continued their present policies, they would face by the turn of the century ''an environmental catastrophe which will witness devastation as complete, as irreversible, as any nuclear holocaust.'' - New York Times, 1982 (https://www.nytimes.com/1982/05/11/world/un-ecology-parley-opens-amid-gloom.html) A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000. Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of "eco-refugees", threatening political chaos, said Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, or UNEP. He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control." - AP News, 1989 (https://web.archive.org/web/20201113001053/https://apnews.com/article/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0) On Environmental Conservation It’s not the case that humankind has failed to conserve habitat. By 2019, an area of Earth larger than the whole of Africa was protected, an area that is equivalent to 15 percent of Earth’s land surface. The number of designated protected areas in the world has grown from 9,214 in 1962 to 102,102 in 2003 to 244,869 in 2020. - Michael Shellenburger, Apocalypse Never, p.75 Thanks to habitat protection and targeted conservation efforts, many beloved species have been pulled from the brink of extinction, including albatrosses, condors, manatees, oryxes, pandas, rhinoceroses, Tasmanian devils, and tigers; according to the ecologist Stuart Pimm, the overall rate of extinctions has been reduced by 75 percent. - Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now, p.160 On Environmental Optimism Following China’s ban on ivory last year, 90% of Chinese support it, ivory demand has dropped by almost half, and poaching rates are falling (https://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/conservation/china-has-banned-ivory-but-has-the-african-elephant-poaching-crisis-actually-been-stemmed/news-story/b086f6a0e61acfcc15abeed18f899136) in places like Kenya. WWF (https://www.wwf.org.uk/updates/what-impact-chinas-ivory-ban) The population of wild tigers in Nepal was found to have nearly doubled in the last nine years, thanks to efforts by conservationists and increased funding for protected areas. Independent (https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/tigers-nepal-double-wwf-conservation-big-cats-wildlife-trade-a8551271.html) Deforestation in Indonesia fell by 60%, as a result of a ban on clearing peatlands, new educational campaigns and better law enforcement. Ecowatch (https://www.ecowatch.com/indonesia-deforestation-2595918463.html) See the remaining 294 good news stories here (https://medium.com/future-crunch/99-good-news-stories-you-probably-didnt-hear-about-in-2018-cc3c65f8ebd0), here (https://futurecrun.ch/99-good-news-2019), and here (https://futurecrun.ch/99-good-news-2020) Set your thermostats to 68, put those gloves on, and send an email over to incrementspodcast@gmail.com

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 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_Mitford) Jessica Mitford's autobigraphy Hons and Rebels (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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 (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) So did she bang Hitler... or didn't she? Email us the raw facts at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

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 (https://www.amazon.com/Origin-Stories-Evolution-Cognition-Fiction/dp/0674057112) Our episode on the above (https://www.incrementspodcast.com/50) Stalking Nabokov (https://www.amazon.com/Stalking-Nabokov-Brian-Boyd/dp/0231158564), by Boyd. Boyd's book on Pale Fire: Nabokov's Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic Discovery (https://www.amazon.com/Nabokovs-Pale-Fire-Artistic-Discovery/dp/0691089574) AdaOnline (https://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/), annotated notes on Ada by Boyd. Art historian and one of Popper's close friends, Ernst Gombrich (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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 (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) Do you love words, or ideas? Email us one but not the other at incrementspodcast@gmail.com. Special Guest: Brian Boyd.

Some people think (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/uMQ3cqWDPHhjtiesc/agi-ruin-a-list-of-lethalities) that advanced AI is going to kill everyone. Some people don't (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/31/opinion/superintelligent-artificial-intelligence.html). Who to believe? Fortunately, Ben and Vaden are here to sort out the question once and for all. No need to think for yourselves after listening to this one, we've got you covered. We discuss: - How well does math fit reality? Is that surprising? - Should artificial general intelligence (AGI) be considered "a person"? - How could AI possibly "go rogue?" - Can we know if current AI systems are being creative? - Is misplaced AI fear hampering progress? References: - The Unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics (https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranick/papers/wigner.pdf) - Prohibition on autonomous weapons letter (https://techlaw.uottawa.ca/bankillerai) - Google employee conversation with chat bot (https://cajundiscordian.medium.com/is-lamda-sentient-an-interview-ea64d916d917) - Gary marcus on the Turing test (https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/nonsense-on-stilts) - Melanie Mitchell essay (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2104.12871.pdf). - Did MIRI give up? Their (half-sarcastic?) death with dignity strategy (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/j9Q8bRmwCgXRYAgcJ/miri-announces-new-death-with-dignity-strategy) - Kerry Vaughan on slowing down (https://twitter.com/KerryLVaughan/status/1545423249013620736) AGI development. Contact us - Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani - Check us out on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ - Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Which prompt would you send to GPT-3 in order to end the world? Tell us before you're turned into a paperclip over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com

We make a guest appearance on Nick Anyos' podcast to talk about effective altruism, longtermism, and probability. Nick (very politely) pushes back on our anti-Bayesian credo, and we get deep into the weeds of probability and epistemology. You can find Nick's podcast on institutional design here (https://institutionaldesign.podbean.com/), and his substack here (https://institutionaldesign.substack.com/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=substack_profile). We discuss: - The lack of feedback loops in longtermism - Whether quantifying your beliefs is helpful - Objective versus subjective knowledge - The difference between prediction and explanation - The difference between Bayesian epistemology and Bayesian statistics - Statistical modelling and when statistics is useful Links - Philosophy and the practice of Bayesian statistics (http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/philosophy.pdf) by Andrew Gelman and Cosma Shalizi - EA forum post (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/hqkyaHLQhzuREcXSX/data-on-forecasting-accuracy-across-different-time-horizons#Calibrations) showing all forecasts beyond a year out are uncalibrated. - Vaclav smil quote where he predicts a pandemic by 2021: > The following realities indicate the imminence of the risk. The typical frequency of influenza pan- demics was once every 50–60 years between 1700 and 1889 (the longest known gap was 52 years, between the pandemics of 1729–1733 and 1781–1782) and only once every 10–40 years since 1889. The recurrence interval, calculated simply as the mean time elapsed between the last six known pandemics, is about 28 years, with the extremes of 6 and 53 years. Adding the mean and the highest interval to 1968 gives a span between 1996 and 2021. We are, probabilistically speaking, very much inside a high-risk zone. > > - Global Catastropes and Trends, p.46 Reference for Tetlock's superforecasters failing to predict the pandemic. "On February 20th, Tetlock’s superforecasters predicted only a 3% chance that there would be 200,000+ coronavirus cases a month later (there were)." (https://wearenotsaved.com/2020/04/18/pandemic-uncovers-the-ridiculousness-of-superforecasting/) Contact us - Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani - Check us out on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ - Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Errata - At the beginning of the episode Vaden says he hasn't been interviewed on another podcast before. He forgot his appearence (https://www.thedeclarationonline.com/podcast/2019/7/23/chesto-and-vaden-debatecast) on The Declaration Podcast in 2019, which will be appearing as a bonus episode on our feed in the coming weeks. Sick of hearing us talk about this subject? Understandable! Send topic suggestions over to incrementspodcast@gmail.com. Photo credit: James O’Brien (http://www.obrien-studio.com/) for Quanta Magazine (https://www.quantamagazine.org/where-quantum-probability-comes-from-20190909/)

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 (https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-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 (https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-libertarian-faq/) George ought to help (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGMQZEIXBMs&t=228s&ab_channel=bitbutter) The Machinery of Freedom (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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? (https://vmasrani.github.io/blog/2023/aecr-challenge/) Second: Can we predict human behaviour? A discussion with Brett Hall (https://vmasrani.github.io/blog/2023/predicting-human-behaviour/) 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 no quarrel whatsoever with it and find myself leaning more and more in that direction myself. However, there’s a certain more aggressive, very American strain of libertarianism with which I do have a quarrel. This is the strain which, rather than analyzing specific policies and often deciding a more laissez-faire approach is best, starts with the tenet that government can do no right and private industry can do no wrong and uses this faith in place of more careful analysis. This faction is not averse to discussing politics, but tends to trot out the same few arguments about why less regulation has to be better. I wish I could blame this all on Ayn Rand, but a lot of it seems to come from people who have never heard of her. I suppose I could just add it to the bottom of the list of things I blame Reagan for. - https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-libertarian-faq/ 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 curtail freedom and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) How do you summon libertarians at a party? Finish the punchline and tell us over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com Special Guest: Bruce Nielson.

We cover the spicy showdown between the two of the world's most headstrong philosophers: Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper. In a dingy Cambridge classroom Wittgenstein once threatened Popper with a fireplace poker. What led to the disagreement? In this episode, we continue with the Conjectures and Refutations series by analyzing Chapter 2: The Nature of Philosophical Problems And Their Roots In Science, where Popper outlines his agreements and disagreements with Mr. Ludwig Wittgenstein. We discuss: - Are there philosophical problems? - Why are scientific disciplines divided as they are? - How much of philosophy is meaningless pseudo-babble? (Hint: Not none) - Wittgenstein's background and feud between him and Popper - Wittgenstein 1 and 2 (pre and post Tractatus) - The danger of philosophical inbreeding - Two of Popper's examples of philosophical problems: 1. Plato and the Crisis in Early Greek Atomism 2. Immanuel Kant's Problem of Knowledge. - Musica universalis - The Problem of Change - How is knowledge possible? Quotes My first thesis is that every philosophy, and especially every philosophical ‘school’, is liable to degenerate in such a way that its problems become practically indistinguishable from pseudo-problems, and its cant, accordingly, practically indistinguishable from meaningless babble. This, I shall try to show, is a consequence of philosophical inbreeding. The degeneration of philosophical schools in its turn is the consequence of the mistaken belief that one can philosophize without having been compelled to philosophize by problems which arise outside philosophy—in mathematics, for example, or in cosmology, or in politics, or in religion, or in social life. In other words my first thesis is this. Genuine philosophical problems are always rooted in urgent problems outside philosophy, and they die if these roots decay. C&R p.95 His question, we now know, or believe we know, should have been: ‘How are successful conjectures possible?’ And our answer, in the spirit of his Copernican Revolution, might, I suggest, be something like this: Because, as you said, we are not passive receptors of sense data, but active organisms. Because we react to our environment not always merely instinctively, but sometimes consciously and freely. Because we can invent myths, stories, theories; because we have a thirst for explanation, an insatiable curiosity, a wish to know. Because we not only invent stories and theories, but try them out and see whether they work and how they work. Because by a great effort, by trying hard and making many mistakes, we may sometimes, if we are lucky, succeed in hitting upon a story, an explanation, which ‘saves the phenomena’; perhaps by making up a myth about ‘invisibles’, such as atoms or gravitational forces, which explain the visible. Because knowledge is an adventure of ideas. C&R p.128 If you were to threaten us with a common household object, what would it be? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com, or on twitter: @VadenMasrani, @BennyChugg, @IncrementsPod.

Want to make everyone under 30 extremely angry? Tell them you don't like proportional representation. Tell them proportional representation sucks, just like recycling (https://www.incrementspodcast.com/63). 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 (https://www.economist.com/democracy-in-america/2016/01/31/from-the-archives-the-open-society-and-its-enemies-revisited) (economist piece). Vaden's blog post (https://vmasrani.github.io/blog/2018/prop_rep/) Chapter 13: Choices of The Beginning of Infinity (https://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Infinity-Explanations-Transform-World/dp/0143121359) 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 (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) What's the first post you past? Tell us over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

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 (https://medium.com/@robertwiblin/what-you-think-about-landfill-and-recycling-is-probably-totally-wrong-3a6cf57049ce). 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 (https://www.robwiblin.com/). 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—and of electronic waste, a category of discarded material that would most benefit from much enhanced rates of recycling. - Making the Modern World: Materials and De-materialization, Smill, p.179 A list of the top 9 recycled materials can be found here: https://www.rd.com/list/most-recyclable-materials/ Sources / Citations Share of plastic waste that is recycled, landfilled, incinerated and mismanaged, 2019 (https://ourworldindata.org/waste-management) Source for the claim that recycling glass is not energy efficient (and thus not necessarily better for the environment than landfilling): Glass bottles can be more pleasant to drink out of, but they also require more energy to manufacture and recycle. Glass bottles consume 170 to 250 percent more energy and emit 200 to 400 percent more carbon than plastic bottles, due mostly to the heat energy required in the manufacturing process. Of course, if the extra energy required by glass were produced from emissions-free sources, it wouldn’t necessarily matter that glass bottles required more energy to make and move. “If the energy is nuclear power or renewables there should be less of an environmental impact,” notes Figgener. - Apocalypse Never, Shellenburger, p.66 Cloth bags need to be reused 173 times (https://www.savemoneycutcarbon.com/learn-save/plastic-vs-cotton-bags-which-is-more-sustainable) to be more eco-friendly than a plastic bag: Source for claim that majority of e-waste ends up in China (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/america-e-waste-gps-tracker-tells-all-earthfix): Puckett’s organization partnered with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to put 200 geolocating tracking devices inside old computers, TVs and printers. They dropped them off nationwide at donation centers, recyclers and electronic take-back programs — enterprises that advertise themselves as “green,” “sustainable,” “earth friendly” and “environmentally responsible.” ... About a third of the tracked electronics went overseas — some as far as 12,000 miles. That includes six of the 14 tracker-equipped electronics that Puckett’s group dropped off to be recycled in Washington and Oregon. The tracked electronics ended up in Mexico, Taiwan, China, Pakistan, Thailand, Dominican Republic, Canada and Kenya. Most often, they traveled across the Pacific to rural Hong Kong. (italics added.) NPR interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBGZtNJAt-M&ab_channel=NPR) on the fact that some manufacturers will put recycling logos on products that aren't recyclable. Bloomberg investigative report (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmGrI_BVlnc&ab_channel=BloombergOriginals) on tracking plastic to a town in Poland that burns it for energy. Video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHzltu6Tvl8&ab_channel=PBSTerra) about the apex landfill Guiyu, China. Wiki's description (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_waste_in_Guiyu.): Once a rice village, the pollution has made Guiyu unable to produce crops for food and the water of the river is undrinkable. Many of the primitive recycling operations in Guiyu are toxic and dangerous to workers' health with 80% of children suffering from lead poisoning. Above-average miscarriage rates are also reported in the region. Workers use their bare hands to crack open electronics to strip away any parts that can be reused—including chips and valuable metals, such as gold, silver, etc. Workers also "cook" circuit boards to remove chips and solders, burn wires and other plastics to liberate metals such as copper; use highly corrosive and dangerous acid baths along the riverbanks to extract gold from the microchips; and sweep printer toner out of cartridges. Children are exposed to the dioxin-laden ash as the smoke billows around Guiyu, finally settling on the area. The soil surrounding these factories has been saturated with lead, chromium, tin, and other heavy metals. Discarded electronics lie in pools of toxins that leach into the groundwater, making the water undrinkable to the extent that water must be trucked in from elsewhere. Lead levels in the river sediment are double European safety levels, according to the Basel Action Network. Lead in the blood of Guiyu's children is 54% higher on average than that of children in the nearby town of Chendian. Piles of ash and plastic waste sit on the ground beside rice paddies and dikes holding in the Lianjiang River. Ben's back-of-the-napkin math Consider the Apex landfill in Las Vegas. This handles trash for the whole city, which is ~700K people. The base of the landfill is currently 9km^2 , but they've hinted at expanding it in the future. So let's assume they more than double it and put it at 20km^2 . The estimates are that this landfill will handle trash for ~300 years "at current rates". I'm not sure if that includes population growth, so let's play it safe and assume not. So how much space does each person need landfill wise for the next 300 years? We have 20km^2 / 700K people = 28.5 m^2 per person for 300 years. For 400M people, that's roughly 12,000 km^2. The US is roughly 10,000,000 km^2. That's 0.012% of the US needed for landfills for the next 300 years. We definitely have the space. 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 fill up landfills and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) What do you like to bring to your local neighbourhood tire-fire? Tell us over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com

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 (https://www.tamlersommers.com/), his podcast (Very Bad Wizards (https://verybadwizards.com/)), 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 (https://verybadwizards.com/episode/episode-294-the-scandal-of-philosophy-humes-problem-of-induction) The problem of induction, by Wesley Salmon (https://home.csulb.edu/~cwallis/100/articles/salmon.html) Hume on induction (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/induction-problem/#HumeProb) 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 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_9RqsHYEAs). 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 (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) If you are a Very Bad Wizards listener, hello! We're exactly like Tamler and David, except younger. Come join the Cult of Popper over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com Image credit: From this Aeon essay on Hume (https://aeon.co/essays/hume-is-the-amiable-modest-generous-philosopher-we-need-today). Illustration by Petra Eriksson at Handsome Frank. Special Guest: Tamler Sommers.

Fifty godd*** episodes! 'Tis been a ride full of debate, drinks, questionable arguments, Ben becoming both a dualist and a social media addict, and Vaden stalwartly not changing his mind about a single thing. To celebrate, we dive into a thesis which connects many strands of what we've discussed over the years: Brian Boyd's work on art and fiction. Boyd provides an evolutionary account of why we're heavily invested in both creating and consuming fictional narratives. If this was simply a fun habit without any real advantage, such a propensity would have been selected against long ago because creating fiction requires an enormous amount of time. This raises the question: What is the advantage of fiction? Why is producing it adaptive? Brian Boyd (https://profiles.auckland.ac.nz/b-boyd) is a distinguished professor emeritus at the University of Auckland. His most well-known for his scholarship on Vladimir Nabokov, and is currently writing a biography on Karl Popper. You can understand why Vaden got so excited about him. Note: We spend a lot of time giving background context for Boyd's theory - if you want to skip all that and get right to the theory itself, we've added chapter markers to take you there. Added after publishing : Looks like chapter markers aren't working correctly on some players, discussion of theory begins at 00:40:43 We discuss - Reflections on our 50th episode! - Non-evolutionary theories of art and fiction, and why they fail - Boyd's thesis that art results from playing with pattern and information - Fiction as a kind of art which results from playing with social information - How these theories explain why art is adaptive - The link between art and creativity - How Boyd's theory improves on the two other major evolutionary theories of art References - On the Origin of Stories (https://www.amazon.com/Origin-Stories-Evolution-Cognition-Fiction/dp/0674057112) - Stacks of Stories, Stories of Stacks. Essay from the book Stalking Nabokov (https://www.amazon.com/Stalking-Nabokov-Brian-Boyd/dp/0231158572/ref=sr_1_1?crid=GM1PNYNGW6EO&keywords=stalking+nabokov&qid=1682337869&s=books&sprefix=stalking+nabokov%2Cstripbooks%2C82&sr=1-1) - Steven Pinker's thesis on art (https://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/pinker_2016_we_make_art_because_we_can_mona_exhibit_by_steven_pinker.pdf) - Geoffrey Miller's thesis (https://varenne.art/usr/library/documents/main/geoffrey_miller_art_to_attract_mates.pdf) Quotes We crave information. But because we have a much more open-ended curiosity than other animals, we have a special appetite for pattern. We crave the high yield of novel kinds of pattern. So we not only chase and tussle, we not only play physically, but we also play cognitively, with patterns of the kinds of information that matter most to us: sound, sight, and, in our ultrasocial species, social information. We play with the rhythm and pitch and shape of sounds in music and song; with colors and shapes in drawing and painting and mudpies or sandcastles; and with patterns of social information in pretend play and story. In the social world, we see patterns of identity (who are they?), personality (what are they like?), society (whom are they related to? whom do they team up with? how do they rank?). In the world of events, we see patterns of cause and effect. In the world of social events, we see patterns of intention, action, and outcome. (Stacks of Stories, Stories of Stacks - Boyd) To sum up: I’ve explored the hypothesis that art—or at least many forms of art—exploit visual aesthetics for no direct adaptive reason. Making and looking at art does not, and probably never did, result in more surviving offspring. There are, to be sure, adaptive explanations why certain visual patterns give human beings aesthetic, intellectual and sexual pleasure: they are cues to understandable, safe, productive, nutritious or fertile things in the world. And since we are a toolmaking, technological species, one of the things that we can do with our ingenuity, aside from trapping animals, detoxifying plants, conspiring against our enemies and so on, is to create purified, concentrated, supernormal, artificial sources of these visual pleasures, just for the sheer enjoyment experienced by both maker and viewer. (Pinker) In the 1950s, when Desmond Morris supplied chimpanzees in his care with paint, brushes, and paper, they threw themselves into painting provided they received no external reward. Those who were offered food would make a few perfunctory strokes and break off quickly to seek another tasty morsel. But those whose motivation remained uncorrupted by “payment” developed a fierce commitment to painting. They painted intensely, persisting, while the session lasted, until they thought a sheet finished, though they would never glance at their work later. (On the Origin of Stories, pg 94) Our capacity to understand other minds so well, which arises especially from our cooperative disposition, allows us to understand false belief: we appreciate clearly that others may not know information relevant to the situation that we happen to know. That also means that we realize * we * may not know what we need to know, and that realization drives human curiosity. (Stacks of Stories, Stories of Stacks - Boyd) Very young children do not readily think offline, away from the here and now. They do not easily recall their recent past, but they can easily use the present props of toys, whether homemade or manufactured, to conjure up scenarios involving agents that hook their attention. They learn to think in a sustained fashion in ways decoupled from the here and now, first by using physical props as fellow agents, then gradually by raiding the readymade stories and characters of their culture. By building on our sociality, fiction stretches our imaginations, taking us from our immediate present along tracks we can easily follow offline because they are the fresh tracks of agents. (Stacks of Stories, Stories of Stacks - Boyd) In the 1989 TV movie The Naked Lie the unpleasant and self-centered Webster shows no sympathy for a prostitute who has been killed. When Victoria asks him, “What if it were your sister?” he sneers: “I don’t have a sister, but if I did, she wouldn’t be a hooker.” Later in the movie Victoria muses to another character: “You know that sister Webster doesn’t have? Well, she doesn’t know how lucky she is.” We easily follow Victoria’s initial counterfactual, Webster’s counterfactual refutation of her condition, and Victoria’s comically contradictory counterfactual consequence, the sister who, because she does not exist, cannot know how lucky she is not to do so if she has to suffer Webster as her brother. Stories help train us to explore possibility as well as actuality, effortlessly and even playfully, and that capacity makes all the difference. (On the Origin of Stories, pg 188) Contact us Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Check us out on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link What patterns have you been playing with recently? Tell us your story over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com Image Credit: Kinza Riza, from the Atlantic article (https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/10/humanitys-earliest-art-was-spray-painted-graffiti/381259/).

Back to the C&R series baby! Feels goooooood. Need some bar-room explanations for why induction is impossible? We gotchu. Need some historical background on where your boy Isaac got his ideas? We gotchu. Need to know how to refute the irrefutable? Gotchu there too homie, because today we're diving into Conjectures and Refutations, Chapter 8: On the Status of Science and Metaphysics. Oh, and we also discuss, in admittedly frustrated tones, the failed blog exchange between Brett Hall and Vaden on prediction and Austrianism. If you want the full listening experience, we suggest reading both posts before hearing our kvetching: Vaden's post (https://vmasrani.github.io/blog/2023/predicting-human-behaviour/) Brett's "response" (https://www.bretthall.org/blog/humans-are-creative) Hold on to your hats for this one listeners, because she starts off rather spicy. We discuss Why Kant believed in the truth of Newtonian mechanics Newton and his assertion that he arrived at his theory via induction Why this isn't true and is logically impossible Was Copernicus influenced by Platonic ideals? How Kepler came up with the idea of elliptical orbits Why finite observations are always compatible with infinitely many theories Kant's paradox and his solution Popper's updated solution to Kant's paradox The irrefutability of philosophical theories How can we say that irrefutable theories are false? Annnnnd perhaps a few cheap shots here and there about Austrian Economics as well. # References Some background history (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/copernicus/notes.html#note-6) on Copernicus and why Ben thinks Popper is wrong Quotes Listening to this statement you may well wonder how I can possibly hold a theory to be false and irrefutable at one and the same time—I who claim to be a rationalist. For how can a rationalist say of a theory that it is false and irrefutable? Is he not bound, as a rationalist, to refute a theory before he asserts that it is false? And conversely, is he not bound to admit that if a theory is irrefutable, it is true? Now if we look upon a theory as a proposed solution to a set of problems, then the theory immediately lends itself to critical discussion—even if it is non-empirical and irrefutable. For we can now ask questions such as, Does it solve the problem? Does it solve it better than other theories? Has it perhaps merely shifted the problem? Is the solution simple? Is it fruitful? Does it perhaps contradict other philosophical theories needed for solving other problems? Because, as you [Kant] said, we are not passive receptors of sense data, but active organisms. Because we react to our environment not always merely instinctively, but sometimes con- sciously and freely. Because we can invent myths, stories, theories; because we have a thirst for explanation, an insatiable curiosity, a wish to know. Because we not only invent stories and theories, but try them out and see whether they work and how they work. Because by a great effort, by trying hard and making many mistakes, we may sometimes, if we are lucky, succeed in hitting upon a story, an explanation, which ‘saves the phenomena’; perhaps by making up a myth about ‘invisibles’, such as atoms or gravitational forces, which explain the visible. Because knowledge is an adventure of ideas. These ideas, it is true, are produced by us, and not by the world around us; they are not merely the traces of repeated sensations or stimuli or what not; here you were right. But we are more active and free than even you believed; for similar observations or similar environmental situations do not, as your theory implied, produce similar explanations in different men. Nor is the fact that we create our theories, and that we attempt to impose them upon the world, an explanation of their success, as you believed. For the overwhelming majority of our theories, of our freely invented ideas, are unsuccessful; they do not stand up to searching tests, and are discarded as falsified by experience. Only a very few of them succeed, for a time, in the competitive struggle for survival. \ C&R Chapter 2 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 hour-long blog posts and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover anger management here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) Would you rather be wrong or boring? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com

Come experience the thrill of the shill as we discuss the somewhat-controversial natural resource called "fossil fuels". In this episode, we drill deep into opto-pessimist Vaclav Smil's excellent book Oil: A Beginner's Guide, in what is possibly our only episode to feature heterodox Russian-Ukrainian science, subterranean sound waves, and that goop lady - what's her name? It's unbelievable, right? We discuss: The science behind fossil fuels: How they're made, found, processed, and used Energy transitions and the shale gas revolution Global oil dependence and human rights The environmental costs of fossil fuels Will we reach Peak Oil? Why natural resources aren't milkshakes The future of fossil fuels (Note to Big Oil: Please send shilling fees to incrementspodcast@gmail.com) References - Vaclav Smil: We Must Leave Growth Behind (https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/09/vaclav-smil-on-the-need-to-abandon-growth.html) - Vaclav Smil: Growth must end. Our economist friends don’t seem to realise that (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/sep/21/vaclav-smil-interview-growth-must-end-economists) - Oil: A Beginner's Guide (https://smile.amazon.com/Oil-Beginners-Guide-Guides/dp/1851685715?sa-no-redirect=1) - Abiogenic petroleum origin - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin) Social media everywhere Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Check us out on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Quotes Modern life now begins and ends amidst the plethora of plastics whose synthesis began with feedstocks derived from oil - because hospitals teem with them. Surgical gloves, flexible tubing, catheters, IV containers, sterile packaging, trays, basins, bed pans and rails, thermal blankets and lab ware: naturally, you are not aware of these surroundings when a few hours or a few days old, but most of us will become all too painfully aware of them six, seven or eight decades later. And that recital was limited only to common hospital items made of polyvinylchloride; countless other items fashioned from a huge variety of plastics are in our cars, aeroplanes, trains, homes, offices and factories. Oil: A Beginner's Guide, p.10 A free market has not been one of the hallmarks of the 150 years of oil’s commercial history. The oil business has seen repeated efforts to fix product prices by controlling either the level of crude oil extraction or by dominating its transportation and processing, or by monopolizing all of these aspects. The first infamous, and successful, attempt to do so was the establishment of Standard Oil in Cleveland in 1870. The Rockefeller brothers (John D. and William) and their partners used secretive acquisitions and deals with railroad companies to gain the control of oil markets first in Cleveland, then in the Northeast, and eventually throughout the US. By 1904 what was now known as the Standard Oil Trust controlled just over 90% of the country’s crude oil production and 85% of all sales. Oil: A Beginner's Guide, p.32 Photochemical smog was first observed in Los Angeles in the 1940s and its origins were soon traced primarily to automotive emissions. As car use progressed around the world al] major urban areas began to experience seasonal (Toronto, Paris) or near-permanent (Bangkok, Cairo) levels of smog, whose effects range from impaired health (eye irritation, lung problems) to damage to materials, crops and coniferous trees. A recent epidemiological study in California also demonstrated that the lung function of children living within 500m of a freeway was seriously impaired and that this adverse effect (independent of overall regional air quality) could result in significant lung capacity deficits later in life. Extreme smog levels now experienced in Beijing, New Delhi and other major Chinese and Indian cities arise from the combination of automotive traffic and large-scale combustion of coal in electricity-generating plants and are made worse by periodic temperature inversions that limit the depth of the mixing layer and keep the pollutants near the ground. Oil: A Beginner's Guide, p.50

Like moths to a flame, we come back to longtermism once again. But it's not our fault. Will MacAskill published a new book, What We Owe the Future, and billions (trillions!) of lives are at stake if we don't review it. Sisyphus had his task and we have ours. We're doing it for the (great great great ... great) grandchildren. We discuss: - Whether longtermism is actionable - Whether the book is a faithful representation of longtermism as practiced - Why humans are actually cool, despite what you might hear - Some cool ideas from the book including career advice and allowing vaccines on the free market - Ben's love of charter cities and whether he's is a totalitarian at heart - The plausability of "value lock-in" - The bizarro world of population ethics References: "Bait-and-switch" critique from a longtermist blogger: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9Y6Y6qoAigRC7A8eX/my-take-on-what-we-owe-the-future Quote: "For instance, I’m worried people will feel bait-and-switched if they get into EA via WWOTF then do an 80,000 Hours call or hang out around their EA university group and realize most people think AI risk is the biggest longtermist priority, many thinking this by a large margin." Contact us - Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani - Check us out on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ - Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link How long is your termist? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com

We were delighted to be joined by Davis Professor at the Sante Fe Insitute, Melanie Mitchell! We chat about our understanding of artificial intelligence, human intelligence, and whether it's reasonable to expect us to be able to build sophisticated human-like automated systems anytime soon. Follow Melanie on twitter @MelMitchell1 and check out her website: https://melaniemitchell.me/ We discuss: - AI hype through the ages - How do we know if machines understand? - Winograd schemas and the "WinoGrande" challenge. - The importance of metaphor and analogies to intelligence - The four fallacies in AI research: - 1. Narrow intelligence is on a continuum with general intelligence - 2. Easy things are easy and hard things are hard - 3. The lure of wishful mnemonics - 4. Intelligence is all in the brain - Whether embodiment is necessary for true intelligence - Douglas Hofstadter's views on AI - Ray Kurzweil and the "singularity" - The fact that Moore's law doesn't hold for software - The difference between symbolic AI and machine learning - What analogies have to teach us about human cognition Errata - Ben mistakenly says that Eliezer Yudkowsky has bet that everyone will die by 2025. It's actually by 2030. You can find the details of the bet here: https://www.econlib.org/archives/2017/01/my_end-of-the-w.html. References: - NY Times reporting on Perceptrons (https://www.nytimes.com/1958/07/13/archives/electronic-brain-teaches-itself.html). - The WinoGrande challenge paper (https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.10641) - Why AI is harder than we think (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2104.12871.pdf) - The Singularity is Near (https://smile.amazon.com/Singularity-Near-Humans-Transcend-Biology/dp/0143037889?sa-no-redirect=1), by Ray Kurzweil Contact us - Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani - Check us out on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ - Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Eliezer was more scared than Douglas about AI, so he wrote a blog post about it. Who wrote the blog post, Eliezer or Douglas? Tell us at over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com. Special Guest: Melanie Mitchell.

Second holiday season bonus episode! Vaden joins Chesto on The Declaration (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-declaration-podcast/id1433998370) podcast to talk about monism, dualism, the reality of abstractions, emergence, and reductionism. This convo was recorded in 2019, but much of the content is evergreen and we think it still makes for interestin' listenin'. Except the sound quality, which leaves much to be desired. Thanks Blue Yeti. We discuss: - The mind-body problem - Why Vaden is a filthy pluralist and Chesto is a sober, sane, rational materialist - Reductonism vs dualism vs pluralism - The reality of abstractions - Why explanations are central to science - Would you get into a Star Trek transporter? - And, a little bit out of left field, some advice for talking about mental health References: - Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (https://smile.amazon.com/G%C3%B6del-Escher-Bach-Eternal-Golden/dp/0465026567?sa-no-redirect=1) - Beginning of Infinity (https://www.amazon.ca/Beginning-Infinity-Explanations-Transform-World/dp/0143121359) - Chesto's instagram (https://www.instagram.com/mynameischesto/?hl=en) for your eyes and soundcloud (https://soundcloud.com/mynameischesto) for your ears. Errata: - In the Domino example from BOI the prime number was 641, not whatever number Vaden said - The Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977, not 1972 Contact us - Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani - Check us out on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ - Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Are emails real? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com. Photo credit: https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2019/11/07/optimization-dominoes-and-frankenstein/

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 (https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-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 (https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-libertarian-faq/) Planet Money on the Porcupine Freedom Festival (https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/06/28/534735727/episode-286-libertarian-summer-camp) Vaden's blog posts on Libertarianism / Austrian Economics / Anarcho-Captialism / Whateveryawannacallit First: Is Austrian Economics the Best Explanation of Economics? (https://vmasrani.github.io/blog/2023/aecr-challenge/) Second: Can we predict human behaviour? A discussion with Brett Hall (https://vmasrani.github.io/blog/2023/predicting-human-behaviour/) 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 tries to restrict trade in some way, it must hurt both parties. Or, to put it another way, you can help someone by giving them more options, but you can’t help them by taking away options. And in a free market, where everyone starts with all options, all the government can do is take options away. The Counterargument: This treats the world as a series of producer-consumer dyads instead of as a system in which every transaction affects everyone else. Also, it treats consumers as coherent entities who have specific variables like “utility” and “demand” and know exactly what they are, which doesn’t always work. - https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-libertarian-faq/ What is an externality? 1.1: What is an externality? An externality is when I make a trade with you, but it has some accidental effect on other people who weren’t involved in the trade. Suppose for example that I sell my house to an amateur wasp farmer. Only he’s not a very good wasp farmer, so his wasps usually get loose and sting people all over the neighborhood every couple of days. This trade between the wasp farmer and myself has benefited both of us, but it’s harmed people who weren’t consulted; namely, my neighbors, who are now locked indoors clutching cans of industrial-strength insect repellent. Although the trade was voluntary for both the wasp farmer and myself, it wasn’t voluntary for my neighbors. Another example of externalities would be a widget factory that spews carcinogenic chemicals into the air. When I trade with the widget factory I’m benefiting – I get widgets – and they’re benefiting – they get money. But the people who breathe in the carcinogenic chemicals weren’t consulted in the trade. 2.3: How do coordination problems justify regulation of ethical business practices? ... Let’s say Wanda’s Widgets has one million customers. Each customer pays it $100 per year, for a total income of $100 million. Each customer prefers Wanda to her competitor Wayland, who charges $150 for widgets of equal quality. Now let’s say Wanda’s Widgets does some unspeakably horrible act which makes it $10 million per year, but offends every one of its million customers. There is no incentive for a single customer to boycott Wanda’s Widgets. After all, that customer’s boycott will cost the customer $50 (she will have to switch to Wayland) and make an insignificant difference to Wanda (who is still earning $99,999,900 of her original hundred million). The customer takes significant inconvenience, and Wanda neither cares nor stops doing her unspeakably horrible act (after all, it’s giving her $10 million per year, and only losing her $100). The only reason it would be in a customer’s interests to boycott is if she believed over a hundred thousand other customers would join her. In that case, the boycott would be costing Wanda more than the $10 million she gains from her unspeakably horrible act, and it’s now in her self-interest to stop committing the act. However, unless each boycotter believes 99,999 others will join her, she is inconveniencing herself for no benefit. Furthermore, if a customer offended by Wanda’s actions believes 100,000 others will boycott Wanda, then it’s in the customer’s self-interest to “defect” from the boycott and buy Wanda’s products. After all, the customer will lose money if she buys Wayland’s more expensive widgets, and this is unnecessary – the 100,000 other boycotters will change Wanda’s mind with or without her participation. 3.1: What do you mean by “irrational choices”? A company (Thaler, 2007, download study as .pdf) gives its employees the opportunity to sign up for a pension plan. They contribute a small amount of money each month, and the company will also contribute some money, and overall it ends up as a really good deal for the employees and gives them an excellent retirement fund. Only a small minority of the employees sign up. The libertarian would answer that this is fine. Although some outsider might condescendingly declare it “a really good deal”, the employees are the most likely to understand their own unique financial situation. They may have a better pension plan somewhere else, or mistrust the company’s promises, or expect not to need much money in their own age. For some outsider to declare that they are wrong to avoid the pension plan, or worse to try to force them into it for their own good, would be the worst sort of arrogant paternalism, and an attack on the employees’ dignity as rational beings. Then the company switches tactics. It automatically signs the employees up for the pension plan, but offers them the option to opt out. This time, only a small minority of the employees opt out. That makes it very hard to spin the first condition as the employees rationally preferring not to participate in the pension plan, since the second condition reveals the opposite preference. It looks more like they just didn’t have the mental energy to think about it or go through the trouble of signing up. And in the latter condition, they didn’t have the mental energy to think about it or go through the trouble of opting out. If the employees were rationally deciding whether or not to sign up, then some outsider regulating their decision would be a disaster. But if the employees are making demonstrably irrational choices because of a lack of mental energy, and if people do so consistently and predictably, then having someone else who has considered the issue in more depth regulate their choices could lead to a better outcome. 4.1: What do you mean by “lack of information”? Many economic theories start with the assumption that everyone has perfect information about everything. For example, if a company’s products are unsafe, these economic theories assume consumers know the product is unsafe, and so will buy less of it. No economist literally believes consumers have perfect information, but there are still strong arguments for keeping the “perfect information” assumption. These revolve around the idea that consumers will be motivated to pursue information about things that are important to them. For example, if they care about product safety, they will fund investigations into product safety, or only buy products that have been certified safe by some credible third party. The only case in which a consumer would buy something without information on it is if the consumer had no interest in the information, or wasn’t willing to pay as much for the information as it would cost, in which case the consumer doesn’t care much about the information anyway, and it is a success rather than a failure of the market that it has not given it to her. In nonlibertarian thought, people care so much about things like product safety and efficacy, or the ethics of how a product is produced, that the government needs to ensure them. In libertarian thought, if people really care about product safety, efficacy and ethics, the market will ensure them itself, and if they genuinely don’t care, that’s okay too. 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 negative positive externalities and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) How much would you pay for a fresh nest of high quality, free range wasps? Tell us over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com Special Guest: Bruce Nielson.

We're joined by the wonderful Lulie Tanett to talk about effective altruism, pulling spouses out of burning buildings, and why you should prefer critical rationalism to Bayesianism for your mom's sake. Buckle up! We discuss: - Lulie's recent experience at EA Global - Bayesianism and how it differs from critical rationalism - Common arguments in favor of Bayesianism - Taking Children Seriously - What it was like for Lulie growing up without going to school - The Alexander Technique, Internal Family Systems, Gendlin's Focusing, and Belief Reporting References - EA Global (https://www.eaglobal.org/) - Taking Children Seriously (https://www.fitz-claridge.com/taking-children-seriously/) - Alexander Technique (https://expandingawareness.org/blog/what-is-the-alexander-technique/) - Internal Family Systems (https://ifs-institute.com/) - Gendlin Focusing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focusing_(psychotherapy)) Social Media Everywhere Follow Lulie on Twitter @reasonisfun. Follow us at @VadenMasrani, @BennyChugg, @IncrementsPod, or on Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ). Report your beliefs and focus your Gendlin's at incrementspodcast@gmail.com. Special Guest: Lulie Tanett.

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 (https://www.amazon.com/Anxious-Generation-Rewiring-Childhood-Epidemic/dp/0593655036) Jon Haidt's After Babel Substack (https://www.afterbabel.com/) After Babel's main post (https://www.afterbabel.com/p/social-media-mental-illness-epidemic) attempting to establish causation, and the response to critics (https://www.afterbabel.com/p/why-some-researchers-think-im-wrong). Collaborative review doc on adolescent mood disorders (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1diMvsMeRphUH7E6D1d_J7R6WbDdgnzFHDHPx9HXzR5o/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.rqnt07sjvlcd) Collaborative review doc on social media and mental health (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w-HOfseF2wF9YIpXwUUtP65-olnkPyWcgF5BiAtBEy0/edit?tab=t.0) Matthew B Jane's criticism of Haidt's meta-analysis (https://matthewbjane.github.io/blog-posts/blog-post-6.html) Aaron Brown's criticism (https://reason.com/2023/03/29/the-statistically-flawed-evidence-that-social-media-is-causing-the-teen-mental-health-crisis/) Stuart Ritchie's criticism (https://inews.co.uk/news/technology/dont-panic-about-social-media-harming-your-childs-mental-health-the-evidence-is-weak-2230571) Peter Gray's criticism (https://petergray.substack.com/p/45-the-importance-of-critical-analyses) Datasets Unaggregated life satisfaction data for boys/girls ages 11/13/15 across 44 countries (https://data-browser.hbsc.org/measure/life-satisfaction/) Australia hospital admissions due to self harm (https://www.aihw.gov.au/suicide-self-harm-monitoring/data/intentional-self-harm-hospitalisations/intentional-self-harm-hospitalisations-by-age-sex) France hospital admissions due to self harm (https://drees.solidarites-sante.gouv.fr/sites/default/files/2024-05/ER1300EMB.pdf) Canada (https://yourhealthsystem.cihi.ca/hsp/inbrief?lang=en&_gl=1*rtyvsz*_gcl_au*MTA5ODMwMzc5MS4xNzM3NTAyMTk0*_ga*MTM0Njk4MTc4MS4xNzM3NTAyMTk0*_ga_44X3CK377B*MTczNzUwMjE5NC4xLjAuMTczNzUwMjIwNi4wLjAuMA..#!/indicators/083/self-harm-including-suicide/;mapC1;mapLevel2;sex(F);trend(C5001,C300);/) Ontario (https://www.cmaj.ca/content/195/36/E1210) # 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 (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) 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 causing psychological harm to youth and young adults? (https://www.uclahealth.org/news/article/social-media-causing-psychological-harm-youth-and-young).

Why do logic and mathematics work so well in the world? Why do they seem to describe reality? Why do they they enable us to design circuit boards, build airplanes, and listen remotely to handsome and charming podcast hosts who rarely go off topic? To answer these questions, we dive into Chapter 9 of Conjectures and Refutations: Why are the Calculi of Logic and Arithmetic Applicable to Reality?. But before we get to that, we touch on some of the good stuff: evolutionary psychology, cunnilingus, and why Robin is better than Batman. References: - Conjectures and Refutations, Chapter 9: Why are the Calculi of Logic and Arithmetic Applicable to Reality? https://books.google.ca/books?id=iXp9AwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbsgesummaryr&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false - Ben on Do Explain with Christofer Lovgren (https://www.doexplain.org/episodes/311-nonuniversal-explainers-with-ben-chugg) - Debate (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Hb3oe7-PJ8&ab_channel=HarvardUniversity) between Spelke and Pinker - Very Bad Wizards discussing the paper "Oral Sex as Infidelity detection" (episode (https://www.verybadwizards.com/216), paper (https://www.toddkshackelford.com/downloads/Pham-Shackelford-PAID-2013.pdf)). - Sturgeon's Law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27slaw#:~:text=Sturgeon%27s%20law%20(or%20Sturgeon%27s%20revelation,science%20fiction%20author%20and%20critic. - Eugene Wigner's paper (https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranick/papers/wigner.pdf) The Unreasonable Effective of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences. - Stoic versus Aristotelian logic. Here (https://www.uvm.edu/~jbailly/courses/196Stoicism/notes/StoicLogic.html) is a nice discussion of the differences between the two. - Rob Wiblin's tweet (https://twitter.com/robertwiblin/status/1345800502093766657) that all probabilities are subjective probabilities (in an otherwise very good thread). - Buhler's three functions of language: (i) Expressive, (ii) Signaling, and (iii) Descriptive. See the "Organon Model" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organon_model#:~:text=B%C3%BChler's%20work%20influenced%20Roman%20Jakobson,the%20representation%20function%20(Darstellungsfunktion)). - Piece (https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2021/06/youre-probably-not-galileo-scientific-advance-rarely-comes-from-lone-contrarian-outsiders/) on Brett Weinstein and Ivermectin. Quotes: “The indescribable world I have in mind is, of course, the world I have ‘in my mind’—the world which most psychologists (except the behaviourists) attempt to describe, somewhat unsuccessfully, with the help of what is nothing but a host of metaphors taken from the languages of physics, of biology, and of social life.” “In so far as a calculus is applied to reality, it loses the character of a logical calculus and becomes a descriptive theory which may be empirically refutable; and in so far as it is treated as irrefutable, i.e. as a system of logically true formulae, rather than a descriptive scientific theory, it is not applied to reality.” Send us the most bizarre use of evolutionary psychology you've seen at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

Today we take your twitter questions before doing a deep dive into the Weinstein fiasco (Bret and Eric, not Harvey.) If you haven't heard of the Weinstein's before, then we suggest you run away before we drag you down into a rabbit hole filled with acronyms, anti-vaxxers, and theories of ... everything? anything? literally anything at all? Topics we touch: - We take your twitter questions! - Filos with a weird one: (https://twitter.com/iamFilos/status/1424025239370047488) I have a weird one that could be fun. It seems to me that the idea that we could upload our minds to a computer is nonsense. I agree with Kastrup that what we would upload is a description of our minds and a description of something is not that something. And it seems this desire to immortality is the nerd's reinvention of God via AGI, and heaven via uploading a mind to a silicon substrate. Where do you fall in this mind uploading fantasy? possible? Religious impulse? Reasonable? - Dan would like us to talk about: (https://twitter.com/danieljhageman/status/1424008345309126660) The pervasive skepticism that seems to run through much the Popperian and Crit Rat communities regarding nonhuman animals’ capacity to suffer, particularly factory farmed animals. - Karl is interested in: (https://twitter.com/krlwlzn/status/1424025137481912330) I'm interested in the meta-question of why that issue seems to split the community in two. Why hasn't one view become the dogmatic truth yet as it seems to have in most other communities? - WTF is up with Bret and Eric Weinstein - The allure of reflexive contrarianism - The (horrible! awful! stop it!) tendency of academics to use convoluted language to impress their non-peers - The notion of "secular gurus" and what distinguishes a secular guru from a person with a large platform - And the special responsibility of researchers to communicate clearly. References: Animal Suffering - Bruce Nielson's blog post (https://fourstrands.org/2021/04/15/do-animals-experience-qualia/) on whether animals experience qualia, and his second (https://fourstrands.org/2021/06/08/the-current-science-of-animal-emotions/) on animal emotions. We mostly discuss the first. Weinsteins - Eric Weinstein's excellent first appearance (https://samharris.org/podcasts/faith-in-reason/) on Sam Harris's podcast - Geometric Unity website (https://geometricunity.org/) - Geometric Unity pdf (https://geometricunity.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/Geometric_Unity-Draft-April-1st-2021.pdf) - See Timothy Nguyen on the Wright Show (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j86WIfRfPDk&ab_channel=Bloggingheads.tv) and Decoding the Gurus (https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate.fm/episode/special-episode-interview-with-tim-nguyen-on-geometric-unity) for an excellent overview of the whole scandal - ... and check out Timothy Nguyen on Eigenbros (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o31cGMENDTI&ab_channel=Eigenbros) for a deep dive into the technical nitty-gritty - Norbert Blum's original paper (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1708.03486v1.pdf) purporting to show that P is not equal to NP. - A nice answer (https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/38803/is-norbert-blums-2017-proof-that-p-ne-np-correct) on Stack Exchange detailing why Blum's proof was wrong. Quotes: Every intellectual has a very special responsibility. He has the privilege and the opportunity of studying. In return, he owes it to his fellow men (or 'to society') to represent the results of his study as simply, clearly and modestly as he can. The worst thing that intellectuals can do - the cardinal sin - is to try to set themselves up as great prophets vis-à-vis their fellow men and to impress them with puzzling philosophies. Anyone who cannot speak simply and clearly should say nothing and continue to work until he can do so. Karl Popper, Against Big Words (http://www.the-rathouse.com/shortreviews/Against_Big_Words.pdf) What would you say to your half million twitter followers who want to know your opinion on everything? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

Ben and Vaden attempt to justify why the world needs another podcast, and fail.  

We attempt to talk about Epistemic Modesty: broadly, the idea that one should be modest in their beliefs when other people (with similar credentials) disagree with them. Vaden however, entirely immodestly, tries abandoning the subject because he’s scared of Ben’s forceful arguments and derails the conversation on to the entirely uncontroversial subject of which systems of moral decision making are best suited for moral progress. A flabbergasted Ben tries to keep up, but too little too late. Most of the time he's just trying to get his microphone to behave anyway. 

References:

• In defence of epistemic modesty; Greg Lewis. 
• Against Modest Epistemology; Eliezer Yudkowski. 
• Podcast with Will MacAskill on moral uncertainty.  

An attempt to clean up the mess we made last episode. Ben still doesn't figure out how not to yell into his microphone, and Vaden finally realizes what Ben was saying and it was … perhaps not so interesting in the first place? Ben, all too pleased with himself, starts yammering on about future generations. Should we care? God — we promise that next week we’ll try to stick to whichever subject we pick. 

References: 

• Why the long-term future matters, podcast with Toby Ord. 

Ben persuades Vaden that all prisoners should be let loose. Vaden convinces Ben that he shouldn’t use the word “vista” so regularly. At least they stay on topic this time. 

References: 

• What is the PIC? What is Abolition?, Critical Resistance. 
• Is Prison Necessary? NY Times piece covering Ruth Wilson Gilmore. 
• What is Prison Abolition, The Nation. 

Are computer scientists recklessly applying their methods to other fields without sufficient thoughtfulness? What are computer scientists good for anyway? Ben, in true masochistic fashion, worries that computer scientists are overstepping their bounds. Vaden analyzes his worries with a random forest and determines that they are only 10% accurate, but then proceeds to piss of his entire field by arguing that we're nowhere close to true artificial intelligence.

References

• "Good" isn't good enough, Ben Green. 
• "How close are we to creating artificial intelligence?", David Deutsch, Aeon
• "Artificial Intelligence - The Revolution Hasn't Happened Yet", Michael Jordan, Medium
• "Deep Learning: A Critical Appraisal", Gary Marcus

Errata 

• Vaden says "every logarithmic curve starts with exponential growth". This should be "every logistic curve stats with exponential growth". 
• Vaden says "95 degree accuracy". This should be "95 percent accuracy." 
• The three main rationalists were Descarte, Spinoza, and Leibniz, and the three main empiricists were Bacon, Locke, and Hume. (Not whatever Vaden said)
•  

In their first somber episode, Ben and Vaden discuss the protests and political tensions surrounding the murder of George Floyd. They talk about defunding the police, the importance of philosophy in politics, and honest conversation as the only peaceful means of error-correction. 

References:  

• https://8cantwait.org/
• https://www.8toabolition.com/
• Study which found that body cameras did not have a statistically significant effect. 

Errata: 

• Ta-Nehisi Coates quote is "essential below" not "eternal under". Full quote is: "It is truly horrible to understand yourself as the essential below of your country."
• Things That Make White People Uncomfortable was written by Michael Bennett, not Michael Barnet

Love and complaints both welcome at incrementspodcast@gmail.com. 

Don't leave yet - we swear this will be more interesting than it sounds ...

... But a drink will definitely help. Ben and Vaden dive into the interpretations behind probability. What do people mean when they use the word, and why do we use this one tool to describe different concepts. The rowdiness truly kicks in when Vaden releases his pent-up critique of Bayesianism, thereby losing both his friends and PhD position. But at least he's ingratiated himself with Karl Popper.

References:

• Vaden's  Slides on a 1975 paper by Irving John Good titled Explicativity, Corroboration, and the Relative Odds of Hypotheses. The paper is I.J. Good’s response to Karl Popper, and in the presentation I compare the two philosophers’ views on probability, epistemology, induction, simplicity, and content.
• Diversity in Interpretations of Probability: Implications for Weather Forecasting
• Andrew Gelman, Philosophy and the practice of Bayesian statistics
• Popper quote: "Those who identify confirmation with probability must believe that a high degree of probability is desirable. They implicitly accept the rule: ‘Always choose the most probable hypothesis!’ Now it can be easily shown that this rule is equivalent to the following rule: ‘Always choose the hypothesis which goes as little beyond the evidence as possible!’ And this, in turn, can be shown to be equivalent, not only to ‘Always accept the hypothesis with the lowest content (within the limits of your task, for example, your task of predicting)!’, but also to ‘Always choose the hypothesis which has the highest degree of ad hoc character (within the limits of your task)!’" (Conjectures and Refutations p.391) 

Get in touch at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

audio updated 13/12/2020

Back down to earth we go! Or try to, at least. In this episode Ben and Vaden attempt to ground their previous discussion on the philosophy of probability by focusing on a real-world example, namely the book The Precipice by Toby Ord, recently featured on the Making Sense podcast. Vaden believes in arguments, and Ben argues for beliefs.

Quotes
"A common approach to estimating the chance of an unprecedented event with earth-shaking consequences is to take a skeptical stance: to start with an extremely small probability and only raise it from there when a large amount of hard evidence is presented. But I disagree. Instead, I think the right method is to start with a probability that reflects our overall impressions, then adjust this in light of the scientific evidence. When there is a lot of evidence, these approaches converge. But when there isn’t, the starting point can matter.

In the case of artificial intelligence, everyone agrees the evidence and arguments are far from watertight, but the question is where does this leave us? Very roughly, my approach is to start with the overall view of the expert community that there is something like a one in two chance that AI agents capable of outperforming humans in almost every task will be developed in the coming century. And conditional on that happening, we shouldn’t be shocked if these agents that outperform us across the board were to inherit our future. Especially if when looking into the details, we see great challenges in aligning these agents with our values."
- The Precipice, p. 165

"Most of the risks arising from long-term trends remain beyond revealing quantification. What is the probability of China’s spectacular economic expansion stalling or even going into reverse? What is the likelihood that Islamic terrorism will develop into a massive, determined quest to destroy the West? Probability estimates of these outcomes based on expert opinion provide at best some constraining guidelines but do not offer any reliable basis for relative comparisons of diverse events or their interrelations. What is the likelihood that a massive wave of global Islamic terrorism will accelerate the Western transition to non–fossil fuel energies? To what extent will the globalization trend be enhanced or impeded by a faster-than-expected sea level rise or by a precipitous demise of the United States? Setting such odds or multipliers is beyond any meaningful quantification."
- Global Catastrophes and Trends, p. 226

"And while computers have been used for many years to assemble other  computers and machines, such deployments do not indicate any imminent self- reproductive capability. All those processes require human actions to initiate them,  raw materials to build the hardware, and above all, energy to run them. I find it hard to visualize how those machines would (particularly in less than a generation) launch, integrate, and sustain an entirely independent exploration, extraction, conversion, and delivery of the requisite energies."
- Global Catastrophes and Trends, p. 26

References:
- Global Catastrophes and Trends: The Next Fifty Years
- The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity
- Making Sense podcast w/ Ord  (Clip starts around 40:00)
- Repugnant conclusion
- Arrow's theorem
- Balinski–Young theorem

On the same page at last! Ben comes to the philosophical confessional to announce his probabilistic sins. The Bayesians will be pissed (with high probability). At least Vaden doesn't make him kiss anything. After too much agreement and self-congratulation, Ben and Vaden conclude the mini-series on the philosophy of probability, and "announce" an upcoming mega-series on Conjectures and Refutations.


References:
- My Bayesian Enlightenment by Eliezer Yudkowsky

Rationalist community blogs:
- Less Wrong
- Slate Star Codex
- Marginal Revolution

Yell at us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com. 

The talented Stephen Caines punctures the cloud of confusion that is Ben and Vaden's conception of facial recognition technology. We talk about the development and usage of facial recognition in the private and public spheres, the dangers and merits of the technology, and Vaden's plan to use it a bars. For God's sake don't give that man a GPU.

Stephen is a legal technologist with a passion for access to justice. He is a 2019 graduate of the University of Miami School of Law with a concentration in the Business of Innovation, Law, and Technology. While in law school, his work focused on public interest, legal aid organizations, and non-profits. He was a 2018 Access to Justice Technology Fellow and has worked with the Legal Services of Greater Miami, Inc. on a variety of technology initiatives aimed at optimizing their operations. Additionally, he worked on the legislative and technology policy team of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative. Stephen’s current work focuses on developing standards and best practices for the safe and ethical implementation of technology in the public sector.

References: 

• Stephen's website.
• Perpetual Lineup Project (out of Georgetown)
• Stephen on the Our Data podcast
• IBM, Amazon, and Microsoft put moratoria on some aspects of their FRT technology. 
• Clearview AI 

Special Guest: Stephen Caines.

Traditions, what are you good for? Absolutely nothing? In this episode of Increments, Ben and Vaden begin their series on Conjectures and Refutations by looking at the role tradition plays in society, and examine one tradition in particular - the critical tradition. No monkeys were harmed in the making of this episode.


References:
- C&R, Chapter 4: Towards a Rational Theory of Tradition


Podcast shoutout:
- Jennifer Doleac and Rob Wiblin on policing, law and incarceration
- James Foreman Jr. on the US criminal legal system

audio updated 26/12/2020

Vaden's arguments against Bayesian philosophy and existential risk are examined by someone who might actually know what they're talking about, i.e., not Ben. After writing a critique of our conversation in Episode 7, which started off a series of blog posts, our good friend Mauricio (who studies political science, economics, and philosophy) kindly agrees to come on the podcast and try to figure out who's more confused. Does Vaden convert?

We apologize for the long wait between this episode and the last one. It was all Vaden's fault.

Hit us up at incrementspodcast@gmail.com!

Note from Vaden:  Upon relistening, I've just learned my new computer chair clicks in the most annoying possible way every time I get enthusiastic. My apologies - I'll work on being less enthusiastic in future episodes.  

Second note from Vaden: Yeesh lots of audio issues with this episode - I replaced the file with a cleaned up version at 5:30pm September 17th. Still learning... 

In the lead up to the American presidential election, one of the largest and most consequential expressions of public opinion, Ben and Vaden do what they always do and ask: "What does Popper say about this?" The second in the Conjectures and Refutations series, we cover Chapter 17: Public Opinion and Liberal Principles.  Largely irrelevant and probably unhelpful, we touch 

• A thesis that the far left and right are converging vis-a-vis reactionary politics
• The idea that "truth is manifest", i.e. obvious 
• The role of free speech and diversity of opinion
• Political polarization
• Libertarians and their hate of seatbelts

Send us some hate or some love at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

Chapter excerpt:
The following remarks were designed to provide material for debate at an international conference of liberals (...). My purpose was simply to lay the foundations for a good general discussion. Because I could assume liberal views in my audience I was largely concerned to challenge, rather than endorse, popular assumptions favourable to these views.

Stephen is back for round two! In this episode we learn that Vaden wants to live in a panopticon and Ben in a high tech surveillance state. Also, we're all going to use Bing from now on. 

Stephen Caines is a research fellow at Stanford law school's CodeX centre for legal informatics, where he specializes in the domestic use of facial recognition technology. He received a J.D. from  the University of Miami  with a concentration in the Business of Innovation, Law, and Technology.  

Bring on da feedback at incrementspodcast@gmail.com; we check it at least once a month ...

Special Guest: Stephen Caines.

The third in the Conjectures and Refutations series, we cover Chapter 16: Prediction And Prophecy in the Social Sciences. There's a bit more Hitler stuff in this one than usual (retweets  ≠ endorsements), but only because he provides a clear example of the motherlode of all bad ideas - historicism. We discuss:

• What historicism is and why it sucks
• Prediction vs prophecy
• Differences between the physical sciences and social sciences
• The success of prediction in the physical sciences
• The role of the social sciences
• What are laws of nature?

Plus a little easter egg! As always send us a little sumptin' sumptin' at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

Quotes:
"In memory of the countless men, women and children of all creeds or nations or races who fell victims to the fascist and communist belief in Inexorable Laws of Historical Destiny."
- Epigraph of The Poverty of Historicism

"It was not by mere chance that the first forms of civilisation arose where the Aryan came into contact with inferior races, subjugated them and forced them to obey his command. The members of the inferior race became the first mechanical tools in the service of a growing civilisation. Thereby the way was clearly indicated which the Aryan had to follow.

As a conqueror, he subjugated inferior races and turned their physical powers into organised channels under his own leadership, forcing them to follow his will and purpose.

By imposing on them a useful, though hard, manner of employing their powers, he not only spared the lives of those whom he had conquered, but probably made their lives easier than they had been in the former state of so-called 'freedom.'" (italics added)
- Mein Kampf (The Stalag Edition), Chapter XI: Nation and Race

“But it is clear that the adoption of the conspiracy theory can hardly be avoided by those who believe that they know how to make heaven on earth. The only explanation for their failure to produce this heaven is the malevolence of the devil who has a vested interest in hell.”
- Conjectures and Refutations, Chapter 16: Prediction and Prophecy in the Social Sciences

Alright spiders, point this at your brain. Ben and Vaden do a deep dive into the recent Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma and have a genuine debate, just like the good ol' days.  Topics touched:

• Why Vaden dislikes documentaries, and this one in particular
• Is reliance on social media a problem?
• The advertisement model
• The relationship between social media and mental health
• ... and political polarization
• ... and outrage in general
• Epistemological erosion
• Wars of words and swords

Outraged? Polarized? Radicalized, even?  We want to hear about it at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

Quotes referenced in episode:

"This point being crossed is at the root of addiction, polarization, radicalization, outrageification, vanityification, the entire thing. This is overpowering human nature, and this is checkmate on humanity."
- Tristan Harris, The Social Dilemma

"If we go down the current status quo for, let's say, another 20 years... we probably destroy our civilization through willful ignorance. We probably fail to meet the challenge of climate change. We probably degrade the world's democracies so that they fall into some sort of bizarre autocratic dysfunction. We probably ruin the global economy.  Uh, we probably, um, don't survive.  You know, I... I really do view it as existential."
- Jaron Lanier, The Social Dilemma

"We're pointing these engines of AI back at ourselves to reverse-engineer what elicits responses from us. Almost like you're stimulating nerve cells on a spider to see what causes its legs to respond. So, it really is this kind of prison experiment where we're just, you know, roping people into the matrix, and we're just harvesting all this money and... and data from all their activity to profit from."
- Tristan Harris, The Social Dilemma

"Although I am an admirer of tradition, and conscious of its importance, I am, at the same time, an almost orthodox adherent of unorthodoxy: I hold that orthodoxy is the death of knowledge, since the growth of knowledge depends entirely on the existence of disagreement. Admittedly, disagreement may lead to strife, and even to violence. And this, I think, is very bad indeed, for I abhor violence. Yet disagreement may also lead to discussion, to argument, and to mutual criticism. And these, I think, are of paramount importance. I suggest that the greatest step towards a better and more peaceful world was taken when the war of swords was first supported, and later sometimes even replaced, by a war of words."
- Karl Popper, The Myth Of The Framework

References:

• Welcome to the Cult Factory (Tristan Harris's latest appearance on Making Sense)
• Michael Moore’s 13 Rules for Making Documentary Films
• How to assess a documentary
• Twitter Study showing only 1% of users are polarized, and the rest moderate
• Literature review of social media use and mental health by Jonathan Haidt and Jean Twenge. Conclusion? It's complicated.
• Study showing self reports of time spent on social media are not reliable. This is relevant because most studies showing a link between social media use and deteriorating mental health rely on self reports. 
• Not Born Yesterday by Hugo Mercier

Errata: 
Vaden keeps saying "Jared Lanier" when it should be "Jaron Lanier". Oops!

Vaden comes battle-hardened and ready to debate and is met with ... a big soft hug from Ben. Ben repents his apocalyptic sins and admits that Vaden changed his mind. Again. God dammit this is getting annoying. To his credit, Vaden only gloats for 10 minutes.  Eventually we touch on some other topics: 

• technology as filling niches
• when is outrage appropriate? 
• the upsides of social media 
• conversation as a substitute for violence 

Much love to everyone and stay safe out there! Send us some feedback at incrementspodcast@gmail.com 

Well, there's no avoiding controversy with this one. We explain, examine, and attempt to refute the shiny new moral philosophy of longtermism. Our critique focuses on The Case for Strong Longtermism by Hilary Greaves and Will MacAskill.

We say so in the episode, but it's important to emphasize that we harbour no animosity towards anyone in the effective altruism community. However, we both think that longtermism is pretty f***ing scary and do our best to communicate why.

Confused as to why there's no charming, witty, and hilarious intro? Us too. Somehow, Ben managed to corrupt his audio. Classic. Oh well, some of you tell us you dislike the intros anyway.

References

• The Case for Strong Longtermism, by Greaves and MacAskill
• Vaden's EA forum post on longtermism
• The reddit discussion surrounding Vaden's piece
• Ben's piece on longtermism (which he has hidden in the depths of Medium because he's scared of the EA forum) 
• Ben on Pascal's Mugging and Expected Values
• Gwern and Robin Hanson making fun of Ben's piece 

Yell at us on the EA forum, on Reddit, on Medium, or over email at incrementspodcast@gmail.com. 

Bit of a personal episode this one is! Ben learns how to be a twitter warrior while Vaden has a full-on breakdown during quarantine. Who knew work addiction was actually a real thing? And that there are 12 step programs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workaholics_Anonymous) for people who identify as being "powerless over compulsive work, worry, or activity"? And that mathematics can create compulsive behavior indistinguishable from drug addiction? Vaden does, now. People mentioned in this episode: - Andrew Wiles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wiles) (look at his face! the face of an addict!) - Grigori Perelman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman) - Terry Tao's (https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/dont-prematurely-obsess-on-a-single-big-problem-or-big-theory/) blog post ("There is a particularly dangerous occupational hazard in this subject: one can become focused, to the exclusion of other mathematical activity (and in extreme cases, on non-mathematical activity also) on a single really difficult problem in a field (or on some grand unifying theory) before one is really ready (both in terms of mathematical preparation, and also in terms of one’s career) to devote so much of one’s research time to such a project. " - italics added)  Work slavishly without sleeping or eating to send email over to incrementspodcast@gmail.com. 

Back in the ring for round two on longtermism! We (Ben somewhat drunkenly) respond to some of the criticism of episode #17 and our two essays (Ben's, Vaden's) We touch on: 

• Ben's hate mail from his piece on cliodynamics
• Longtermism as implying altruistic portfolio shuffling
• What on earth is Bayesian epistemology 
• The Pasadena game
• Authoritarianism and the danger of seeking perfection 
• Arrow's theorem
• Alternative decision theories focusing on error correction 
• What's the probability of nuclear war before 2100?
• When are models reliable 
• What problems to work on 

You will, dear listener, be either pleased or horrified to learn that this will not be our last foray into longtermism. It's like choose your own adventure ... except we're choosing the adventure, and the adventure is longtermism. Next stop is the Hear this Idea podcast!

Send us best longterm prediction at incrementspodcast@gmail.com

Hello and sorry for the delay! We finally got together with Fin and Luca from the excellent HearThisIdea podcast for a nice roundtable discussion on longtermism. We laughed, we cried, we tried our best to communicate across the divide. 

Material referenced in the discussion:

- 80k Hours Problem Profiles
- Jon Hamm  imprisons us in an Alexa
- The Case for Strong Longtermism
- A Case Against Strong Longtermism
- Nick Bostrom's seminal paper on existential risks

Quote:  "[Events like Chernobyl, Bhopal, volcano eruptions, earthquakes, draughts, World War I, World War II, epidemics of influenza, smallpox, black plague, and AIDS. ] have occurred many times and our cultural attitudes towards risk have been shaped by trial-and-error in managing such hazards. But tragic as such events are to the people immediately affected, in the big picture of things – from the perspective of humankind as a whole – even the worst of these catastrophes are mere ripples on the surface of the great sea of life.  (italics added)"

- Nick Bostrom's "A survey of expert opinion" (errata: Vaden incorrectly said this paper was coauthored by Nick Bostrom and Toby Ord. It's actually authored by Vincent C. Müller and Nick Bostrom - Toby Ord and Anders Sandberg are acknowledged on page 15 for having helped design the questionnaire.) 

Send us a survey of expert credences over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com

Special Guests: Fin Moorhouse and Luca Righetti.

After a long digression, we finally return to the Conjectures and Refutations series. In this episode we cover Chapter 1: Science: Conjectures and Refutations. In particular, we focus on one of the trickiest Popperian concepts to wrap one's head around - the problem of induction. 

References:

• Wiki on scientific laws
• Hume's dialogues concerning natural religion  
• Proof of the impossibility of probability induction 
• One of the YouTube videos on induction. 

And in case you were wondering what happened to the two unfalsifiable theories Popper attacks in this chapter, you'll be pleased to know that they have merged into a super theory. We give you Psychoanalytic-Marxism: http://oldsite.english.ucsb.edu/faculty/janmohamed/Psychoanalytic-Marxism.pdf.

Sent us your favorite unfalsifiable theory at incrementspodcast@gmail.com

audio updated: 29/08/2021

In this episode, we discuss Peter Singer's famous drowning child thought experiment, the role of moral theories, and the role of thought experiments in moral reasoning. From our perspectives, the conversation went something like this: 

Ben's POV: Bravely and boldly trying to think through problems, Ben puts forward a stunningly insightful theory about the role of moral argumentation. Vaden, jealous of the profundity of Ben's message, tries to disagree but can't.

Vaden's POV: What the eff is Ben talking about? I disagree. No wait nvm I agree. Let's change the subject.

References in intro segment: 

• Talk by Joseph Agassi
• Robert Sapolsky's book Behave
• Milgram experiments
• Stanford Prison Experiments (see also: Radio Lab's The Bad Show)

References in main  segment:

• Famine, Affluence, and Morality by Peter Singer
• The Organization for the Prevention of Intense Suffering (OPIS) 
• Reasons and Persons by Derek Parfit
• Galileo's thought experiment: Parts of Falling Objects
• Einstein's thought experiments

 
Put on a suit and drown a child before sending your best moral theory to incrementspodcast@gmail.com. 

We are joined by the great Sam Kuypers for a conversation on physics, philosophy, and free will. 

Vaden spends most of the episode preparing for a huge debate on free-will, and Ben spends it worried about what alternate versions of himself are up to in parallel universes. Still, we manage to touch on a few topics: 

• Realism and antirealist interpretations of quantum theory
• The advisory styles of Dennis Sciama and John Wheeler and the standardization of education 
• Reconciling the Harris / Deutsch perspectives on Free Will
• Restorative and Rehabilitative justice
• A universe in which Ben spontaneously explodes into dust while speaking

Links: 

• Sam's recent paper with David Deutsch
• From Micro to Macro, by Vlatko Vedral 
• Hayek's Constitution of Liberty

Sam Kuypers is a  DPhil student at the University of Oxford, where he researches foundational issues in quantum theory. He's also one of the founders of the Oxford Karl Popper Society, an Oxford-based student society created to facilitate discussions about science and philosophy.

Follow him on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/crit_rat.

Send us an email or explode into dust - your choice:  incrementspodcast@gmail.com. 

Special Guest: Sam Kuypers.

This episode begins with a big announcement! Ben has officially become a cat person, and is now Taking Cats Seriously. Vaden follows up with some news of his own, before diving into the main subject for today's episode - Popper's Three Worlds.
In this episode we discuss:

• The TCS parenting movement 
• Chesto's tweet to Deutsch
• How Popper's Three Worlds differs from Deutsch's Things/Qualia/Abstractions classification
• Would prime numbers exist if humans didn't exist?
• What constitutes reality?
• The existence of non-physical entities and the reality of abstractions 

 
Having a quick glance at the following wikipedia pages will help ground the conversation:

• Formal systems 
• Formal languages
• Modular Arithmetic
• Rules of inference
• Alternative Logics

Errata:

• Somewhere Vaden says English is a formal language. Nope definitely not - English is natural language, which is distinct from a formal language.  

Send us your best guess for whether or not we're real at incrementspodcast@gmail.com. 

We we're looking for a nice light topic for our patron only episode, so Vaden naturally chosen to chat about the patriarchy. I guess he didn't get into enough trouble in his personal life talking about it so he wanted to make his support and admiration for the patriarchy public. This is a sneak preview into the land of patreon bonus episodes, so be sure to fork over some cold hard cash if you'd like a bit more mansplaining in your life. We discuss Harassment of women in various spheres of life The patriarchy as a set of facts versus a causal explanation Why conflating these two notions of the patriarchy harms progress Domains where women are doing better than men (hint: education, mental health, and psychopathy) Why it's so hard to talk about this Why Canada is different than Afghanistan (OR IS IT) 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 pay for men's rights posters and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help with upholding the patriarchy here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube over hur (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ). Who is a better meninist? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com

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 (http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Miscellaneous/My%20Response%20to%20a%20Non-Libertarian%20faq.html) Bruce's Theory Of Anything podcast (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-theory-of-anything/id1503194218) Popperian/Deutschian FB group: Many Worlds of David Deutsch (https://www.facebook.com/groups/2188597894605769/) 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? (https://vmasrani.github.io/blog/2023/aecr-challenge/) Second: Can we predict human behaviour? A discussion with Brett Hall (https://vmasrani.github.io/blog/2023/predicting-human-behaviour/) 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 them at until they give most of their ill-gotten gains away to others. The “progressive” taxation system as it currently exists serves this purpose. This way of thinking is not only morally wrong-headed, but economically catastrophic. Leaving wealth in the hands of the rich would “make the pie bigger”, allowing the extra wealth to “trickle down” to the poor naturally. The Counterargument: Hard work and intelligence are contributory factors to success, but depending on the way you phrase the question, you find you need other factors to explain between one-half and nine-tenths of the difference in success within the United States; within the world at large the numbers are much higher. If a poor person can’t keep a job solely because she was lead-poisoned from birth until age 16, is it still fair to blame her for her failure? And is it still so unthinkable to take a little bit of money from everyone who was lucky enough to grow up in an area without lead poisoning, and use it to help her and detoxify her neighborhood? 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 maintain poverty traps and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) Do your part to increase social mobility by sending your hard-earned money to: incrementspodcast@gmail.com Special Guest: Bruce Nielson.

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 (https://thedeepdish.org/start), his book Optionality: How to Survive and Thrive in a Volatile World (https://www.amazon.ca/Optionality-Survive-Thrive-Volatile-World/dp/0473545500), and his podcast (https://doyouevenlit.podbean.com/). 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 (https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/in-continued-defense-of-non-frequentist) Scott Alexander's post about rootclaim (https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/practically-a-book-review-rootclaim/comments) Our previous episode on Scott's piece: #69 - Contra Scott Alexander on Probability (https://www.incrementspodcast.com/69) Rootclaim (https://www.rootclaim.com/) Ben's blogpost You need a theory for that theory (https://benchugg.com/writing/you-need-a-theory/) Cox's theorem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cox%27s_theorem) Aumann's agreement theorem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aumann%27s_agreement_theorem) Vaden's blogposts mentioned in the episode: Critical Rationalism and Bayesian Epistemology (https://vmasrani.github.io/blog/2020/vaden_second_response/) Proving Too Much (https://vmasrani.github.io/blog/2021/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 (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) What's your favorite theory that is neither true nor useful? Tell us over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com. Special Guest: Richard Meadows.

In what is hopefully the last installment of Vaden and Ben debate Effective Altruism, we ask if EA lies on the cultishness (yes, that's a word) spectrum. We discuss: The potential pitfall of having goodness as a core value Aspects of Effective Altruism (EA) that put it on the cultishness spectrum Does EA focus on good over truth? Ben's experience with EA Making criticism a core value How does one resist the allure of groupthink? How to (mis)behave at parties How would one create a movement which doesn't succumb to cult-like dynamics? Weird ideas as junk food Error Correction intro segment - Scott Alexander pointing out that Ivermectin works indirectly via: There’s a reason the most impressive ivermectin studies came from parts of the world where worms are prevalent, he says. Parasites suppress the immune system, making it more difficult for the human body to fight off viruses. Thus, getting rid of worm infections makes it easier for COVID-19 patients to bounce back from the virus. See full post below and summary news article here (https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/everyone-was-wrong-about-ivermectin/ar-AAQRURP) Czechoslovakia was not a part of the USSR @lukeconibear pointing out some climate models and data are publicly available. See for instance Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) Chem model: https://github.com/geoschem/geos-chem Community Earth System Model (CESM): https://github.com/ESCOMP/CESM Energy Exascale Earth System model: https://github.com/E3SM-Project/E3SM @PRyan pointing out we were confused about the difference between economic growth, division of labour, and free trade Join the movement at incrementspodcast@gmail.com. Follow us on twitter at @IncrementsPod (https://twitter.com/IncrementsPod) and on Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ).

You may, perchance, have noticed that the sweeping utopian movements of the past did not end well. And most of them involved an horrific amount of violence. Is this connection just chance, or is there something inherent to utopian thinking which leads to violent ends? We turn to Chapter 18 of Conjectures and Refutations where Popper gives us his spicy take. We discuss - How do you "see" your early memories? - Vaden corrects the record on a few points - Rationality grounded in humility versus goal-oriented rationality - If ends can be decided rationally - How and if goal-oriented rationality leads to violence - Working to reduce concrete evils versus working to achieve abstract goods ** Link to chapter **: - https://sci-hub.ru/https://www.jstor.org/stable/20672078 Quotes A rationalist, as I use the word, is a man who attempts to reach decisions by argument and perhaps, in certain cases, by compromise, rather than by violence. He is a man who would rather be unsuccessful in convincing another man by argument than successful in crushing him by force, by intimidation and threats, or even by persuasive propaganda. Pg. 478 I believe that we can avoid violence only in so far as we practise this attitude of reasonableness when dealing with one another in social life; and that any other attitude is likely to produce violence—even a one-sided attempt to deal with others by gentle persuasion, and to convince them by argument and example of those insights we are proud of possessing, and of whose truth we are absolutely certain. We all remember how many religious wars were fought for a religion of love and gentleness; how many bodies were burned alive with the genuinely kind intention of saving souls from the eternal fire of hell. Only if we give up our authoritarian attitude in the realm of opinion, only if we establish the attitude of give and take, of readiness to learn from other people, can we hope to control acts of violence inspired by piety and duty. Pg. 479 In the latter case political action will be rational only if we first determine the final ends of the political changes which we intend to bring about. It will be rational only relative to certain ideas of what a state ought to be like. Thus it appears that as a preliminary to any rational political action we must first attempt to become as clear as possible about our ultimate political ends; for example the kind of state which we should consider the best; and only afterwards can we begin to determine the means which may best help us to realize this state, or to move slowly towards it, taking it as the aim of a historical process which we may to some extent influence and steer towards the goal selected. Now it is precisely this view which I call Utopianism. Any rational and non-selfish political action, on this view, must be preceded by a determination of our ultimate ends, not merely of intermediate or partial aims which are only steps towards our ultimate end, and which therefore should be considered as means rather than as ends; therefore rational political action must be based upon a more or less clear and detailed description or blueprint of our ideal state, and also upon a plan or blueprint of the historical path that leads towards this goal. Pg. 481-482 The Utopian method, which chooses an ideal state of society as the aim which all our political actions should serve, is likely to produce violence can be shown thus. Since we cannot determine the ultimate ends of political actions scientifically, or by purely rational methods, differences of opinion concerning what the ideal state should be like cannot always be smoothed out by the method of argument. They will at least partly have the character of religious differences. And there can hardly be tolerance between these different Utopian religions. Utopian aims are designed to serve as a basis for rational political action and discussion, and such action appears to be possible only if the aim is definitely decided upon. Thus the Utopianist must win over, or else crush, his Utopianist competitors who do not share his own Utopian aims and who do not profess his own Utopianist religion. Pg. 483 Work for the elimination of concrete evils rather than for the realization of abstract goods. Do not aim at establishing happiness by political means. Rather aim at the elimination of concrete miseries. Or, in more practical terms: fight for the elimination of poverty by direct means—for example, by making sure that everybody has a minimum income. Or fight against epidemics and disease by erecting hospitals and schools of medicine. Fight illiteracy as you fight criminality. But do all this by direct means. Choose what you consider the most urgent evil of the society in which you live, and try patiently to convince people that we can get rid of it. Pg. 485 But do not try to realize these aims indirectly by designing and working for a distant ideal of a society which is wholly good. However deeply you may feel indebted to its inspiring vision, do not think that you are obliged to work for its realization, or that it is your mission to open the eyes of others to its beauty. Do not allow your dreams of a beautiful world to lure you away from the claims of men who suffer here and now. Our fellow men have a claim to our help; no generation must be sacrificed for the sake of future generations, for the sake of an ideal of happiness that may never be realized. In brief, it is my thesis that human misery is the most urgent problem of a rational public policy and that happiness is not such a problem. The attainment of happiness should be left to our private endeavours. Pg. 485 It is a fact, and not a very strange fact, that it is not so very difficult to reach agreement by discussion on what are the most intolerable evils of our society, and on what are the most urgent social reforms. Such an agreement can be reached much more easily than an agreement concerning some ideal form of social life. For the evils are with us here and now. They can be experienced, and are being experienced every day, by many people who have been and are being made miserable by poverty, unemployment, national oppression, war and disease. Those of us who do not suffer from these miseries meet every day others who can describe them to us. This is what makes the evils concrete. This is why we can get somewhere in arguing about them; why we can profit here from the attitude of reasonableness. We can learn by listening to concrete claims, by patiently trying to assess them as impartially as we can, and by considering ways of meeting them without creating worse evils Pg. 485 I believe that it is quite true that we can judge the rationality of an action only in relation to some aims or ends. But this does not necessarily mean that the rationality of a political action can be judged only in relation to an _historical end._ Pg. 486 The appeal of Utopianism arises from the failure to realize that we cannot make heaven on earth. What I believe we can do instead is to make life a little less terrible and a little less unjust in each generation. A good deal can be achieved in this way. Much has been achieved in the last hundred years. More could be achieved by our own generation. There are many pressing problems which we might solve, at least partially, such as helping the weak and the sick, and those who suffer under oppression and injustice; stamping out unemployment; equalizing opportunities; and preventing international crime, such as blackmail and war instigated by men like gods, by omnipotent and omniscient leaders. All this we might achieve if only we could give up dreaming about distant ideals and fighting over our Utopian blueprints for a new world and a new man. Pg. 487 ** References ** - EA Forum post showing data on forecasting accuracy across different time horizons: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/hqkyaHLQhzuREcXSX/data-on-forecasting-accuracy-across-different-time-horizons#Calibrations - Vox article talking about PELTIV's: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23569519/effective-altrusim-sam-bankman-fried-will-macaskill-ea-risk-decentralization-philanthropy Contact us - Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani - Check us out on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ - Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Do you see your sweeping utopian blueprints in first person or third person? Send these blueprints over to incrementspodcast@gmail.com Image credit: Engin_Akyurt (https://www.needpix.com/photo/1062955/police-violence-thinking-man-mounting-journalist-helmets-human-news-barricade)

Vaden comes out swinging against David Chapman's work on meta-rationality. Is Chapman pointing out a fatal flaw, or has Popper solved these problems long ago? Do moose see cups? Does Ben see cups? What the f*** is a cup? We discuss - Chapman's concept of nebulosity - Whether this concept is covered by Popper - The relationship of nebulosity and the vagueness of language - The correspondence theory of truth - If the concept of "problem situation" saves us from Chapman's critique - Why "conjecture and criticism" isn't everything References - The excellent Do Explain (https://doexplain.buzzsprout.com/) podcast. Go listen, right now! - In the cells of the eggplant (https://metarationality.com/), David Chapman - Chapman's website (https://meaningness.com/about-my-sites) - Jake Orthwein on Do Explain (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irmwL97zGcM&ab_channel=DoExplainwithChristoferL%C3%B6vgren), Part I Chapman Quotes Reasonableness is not interested in universality. It aims to get practical work done in specific situations. Precise definitions and absolute truths are rarely necessary or helpful for that. Is this thing an eggplant? Depends on what you are trying to do with it. Is there water in the refrigerator? Well, what do you want it for? What counts as baldness, fruit, red, or water depends on your purposes, and on all sorts of details of the situation. Those details are so numerous and various that they can’t all be taken into account ahead of time to make a general formal theory. Any factor might matter in some situation. On the other hand, nearly all are irrelevant in any specific situation, so determining whether the water in an eggplant counts, or if Alain is bald, is usually easy. David Chapman, When will you go bald? (https://metarationality.com/vagueness) Do cow hairs that have come out of the follicle but that are stuck to the cow by friction, sweat, or blood count as part of the cow? How about ones that are on the verge of falling out, but are stuck in the follicle by only the weakest of bonds? The reasonable answer is “Dude! It doesn’t matter!” David Chapman, Objects, objectively (https://metarationality.com/objective-objects) We use words as tools to get things done; and to get things done, we improvise, making use of whatever materials are ready to hand. If you want to whack a piece of sheet metal to bend it, and don’t know or care what the “right” tool is (if there even is one), you might take a quick look around the garage, grab a large screwdriver at the “wrong” end, and hit the target with its hard rubber handle. A hand tool may have one or two standard uses; some less common but pretty obvious ones; and unusual, creative ones. But these are not clearly distinct categories of usage. David Chapman, The purpose of meaning (https://metarationality.com/purpose-of-meaning) Popper Quotes Observation is always selective. It needs a chosen object, a definite task, an interest, a point of view, a problem. And its description presupposes a descriptive language, with property words; it presupposes similarity and classification, which in their turn presuppose interests, points of view, and problems. ‘A hungry animal’, writes Katz, ‘divides the environment into edible and inedible things. An animal in flight sees roads to escape and hiding places . . . Generally speaking, objects change . . . according to the needs of the animal.’ We may add that objects can be classified, and can become similar or dissimilar, only in this way—by being related to needs and interests. This rule applies not only to animals but also to scientists. For the animal a point of view is provided by its needs, the task of the moment, and its expectations; for the scientist by his theoretical interests, the special problem under investigation, his conjectures and anticipations, and the theories which he accepts as a kind of background: his frame of reference, his "horizon of expectations". Conjectures and Refutations p. 61 (italics added) I believe that there is a limited analogy between this situation and the way we ‘use our terms’ in science. The analogy can be described in this way. In a branch of mathematics in which we operate with signs defined by implicit definition, the fact that these signs have no ‘definite meaning’ does not affect our operating with them, or the precision of our theories. Why is that so? Because we do not overburden the signs. We do not attach a ‘meaning’ to them, beyond that shadow of a meaning that is warranted by our implicit definitions. (And if we attach to them an intuitive meaning, then we are careful to treat this as a private auxiliary device, which must not interfere with the theory.) In this way, we try to keep, as it were, within the ‘penumbra of vagueness’ or of ambiguity, and to avoid touching the problem of the precise limits of this penumbra or range; and it turns out that we can achieve a great deal without discussing the meaning of these signs; for nothing depends on their meaning. In a similar way, I believe, we can operate with these terms whose meaning wehave learned ‘operationally’. We use them, as it were, so that nothing depends upon their meaning, or as little as possible. Our ‘operational definitions’ have the advantage of helping us to shift the problem into a field in which nothing or little depends on words. Clear speaking is speaking in such a way that words do not matter. OSE p. 841 (italics in original) Frege’s opinion is different; for he writes: “A definition of a concept ... must determine unambiguously of any object whether or not it falls under the concept . . . Using a metaphor, we may say: the concept must have a sharp boundary.” But it is clear that for this kind of absolute precision to be demanded of a defined concept, it must first be demanded of the defining concepts, and ultimately of our undefined, or primitive, terms. Yet this is impossible. For either our undefined or primitive terms have a traditional meaning (which is never very precise) or they are introduced by so-called “implicit definitions”—that is, through the way they are used in the context of a theory. This last way of introducing them—if they have to be “introduced”—seems to be the best. But it makes the meaning of the concepts depend on that of the theory, and most theories can be interpreted in more than one way. As a result, implicity defined concepts, and thus all concepts which are defined explicitly with their help, become not merely “vague” but systematically ambiguous. And the various systematically ambiguous interpretations (such as the points and straight lines of projective geometry) may be completely distinct. Unending Quest, p. 27 (italics added) What I do suggest is that it is always undesirable to make an effort to increase precision for its own sake—especially linguistic precision—since this usually leads to loss of clarity, and to a waste of time and effort on preliminaries which often turn out to be useless, because they are bypassed by the real advance of the subject: one should never try to be more precise than the problem situation demands. ... One further result is, quite simply, the realization that the quest for precision, in words or concepts or meanings, is a wild-goose chase. There simply is no such thing as a precise concept (say, in Frege’s sense), though concepts like “price of this kettle” and “thirty pence” are usually precise enough for the problem context in which they are used. Unending Quest, p. 22 (italics in original) Contact us Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Check us out on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link How nebulous is your eggplant? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

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 (https://www.youtube.com/@DoomDebates) and podcast (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/doom-debates/id1751366208). 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/thecredenceassumption/ 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 Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Trust in the reverend Bayes and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) What's your credence that the second debate is as fun as the first? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com Special Guest: Liron Shapira.

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 as a whole. We can, of course, apply the ideas of space and time to ordinary physical things and physical events. But space and time themselves are neither things nor events: they cannot even be observed: they are more elusive. They are a kind of framework for things and events: something like a system of pigeon-holes, or a filing system, for observations. Space and time are not part of the real empir- ical world of things and events, but rather part of our mental outfit, our apparatus for grasping this world. Their proper use is as instruments of observation: in observing any event we locate it, as a rule, immediately and intuitively in an order of space and time. Thus space and time may be described as a frame of reference which is not based upon experience but intuitively used in experience, and properly applicable to experience. This is why we get into trouble if we misapply the ideas of space and time by using them in a field which transcends all possible experience—as we did in our two proofs about the universe as a whole. ... To the view which I have just outlined Kant chose to give the ugly and doubly misleading name ‘Transcendental Idealism’. He soon regretted this choice, for it made people believe that he was an idealist in the sense of denying the reality of physical things: that he declared physical things to be mere ideas. Kant hastened to explain that he had only denied that space and time are empirical and real — empirical and real in the sense in which physical things and events are empirical and real. But in vain did he protest. His difficult style sealed his fate: he was to be revered as the father of German Idealism. I suggest that it is time to put this right. - C&R, Chap 6 Kant believed in the Enlightenment. He was its last great defender. I realize that this is not the usual view. While I see Kant as the defender of the Enlightenment, he is more often taken as the founder of the school which destroyed it—of the Romantic School of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. I contend that these two interpretations are incompatible. Fichte, and later Hegel, tried to appropriate Kant as the founder of their school. But Kant lived long enough to reject the persistent advances of Fichte, who proclaimed himself Kant’s successor and heir. In A Public Declaration Concerning Fichte, which is too little known, Kant wrote: ‘May God protect us from our friends. . . . For there are fraudulent and perfidious so-called friends who are scheming for our ruin while speaking the language of good-will.’ - C&R, Chap 6 As Kant puts it, Copernicus, finding that no progress was being made with the theory of the revolving heavens, broke the deadlock by turning the tables, as it were: he assumed that it is not the heavens which revolve while we the observers stand still, but that we the observers revolve while the heavens stand still. In a similar way, Kant says, the problem of scientific knowledge is to be solved — the problem how an exact science, such as Newtonian theory, is possible, and how it could ever have been found. We must give up the view that we are passive observers, waiting for nature to impress its regularity upon us. Instead we must adopt the view that in digesting our sense-data we actively impress the order and the laws of our intellect upon them. Our cosmos bears the imprint of our minds. - C&R, Chap 6 From Kant the cosmologist, the philosopher of knowledge and of science, I now turn to Kant the moralist. I do not know whether it has been noticed before that the fundamental idea of Kant’s ethics amounts to another Copernican Revolution, analogous in every respect to the one I have described. For Kant makes man the lawgiver of morality just as he makes him the lawgiver of nature. And in doing so he gives back to man his central place both in his moral and in his physical universe. Kant humanized ethics, as he had humanized science. ... Kant’s Copernican Revolution in the field of ethics is contained in his doctrine of autonomy—the doctrine that we cannot accept the command of an authority, however exalted, as the ultimate basis of ethics. For whenever we are faced with a command by an authority, it is our responsibility to judge whether this command is moral or immoral. The authority may have power to enforce its commands, and we may be powerless to resist. But unless we are physically prevented from choosing the responsibility remains ours. It is our decision whether to obey a command, whether to accept authority. - C&R, Chap 6 Stepping back further to get a still more distant view of Kant’s historical role, we may compare him with Socrates. Both were accused of perverting the state religion, and of corrupting the minds of the young. Both denied the charge; and both stood up for freedom of thought. Freedom meant more to them than absence of constraint; it was for both a way of life. ... To this Socratic idea of self-sufficiency, which forms part of our western heritage, Kant has given a new meaning in the fields of both knowledge and morals. And he has added to it further the idea of a community of free men—of all men. For he has shown that every man is free; not because he is born free, but because he is born with the burden of responsibility for free decision. - C&R, Chap 6 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 (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) Follow the Kantian Imperative: Stop masturbating and/or/while getting your hair cut, and start sending emails over to incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

Our argument at the end of last episode spilled over into discord, DMs, and world news, so we felt compelled to dedicate a full episode to addressing the question "Is all thought problem solving?" Some arguments make history, like whether atomic bombs were required in WWII, whether all philosophy is simply a language game, and whether the chicken did indeed come before the egg. Will this be one of them? We cover: - How Vaden listens to podcasts and why he thinks Andrew Huberman sucks (but studies show that Andrew Huberman is great!) - Popper's evolutionary take on problem-solving - Problems defined as "disappointed expectations" - Whether all volitional thought is problem-solving - Are irrefutable theories ever valuable, or should they all be discarded a-priori? References All life is problem-solving (https://www.amazon.com/Life-Problem-Solving-Karl-Popper/dp/0415249929) In Search of a Better World (https://www.amazon.ca/Search-Better-World-Lectures-Essays/dp/0415135486) Episode 51 of Increments (https://www.incrementspodcast.com/51), where we discuss "implicit definitions". Quotes Men, animals, plants, even unicellular organisms are constantly active. They are trying to improve their situation, or at least to avoid its deterioration. Even when asleep, the organism is actively maintaining the state of sleep: the depth (or else the shallowness) of sleep is a condition actively created by the organism, which sustains sleep (or else keeps the organism on the alert). Every organism is constantly preoccupied with the task of solving prob- lems. These problems arise from its own assessments of its condition and of its environment; conditions which the organism seeks to improve. - In Search Of A Better World, p.vii At bottom, this procedure seems to be the only logical one. It is also the procedure that a lower organism, even a single-cell amoeba, uses when trying to solve a problem. In this case we speak of testing movements through which the organism tries to rid itself of a troublesome problem. Higher organisms are able to learn through trial and error how a certain problem should be solved. We may say that they too make testing movements - mental testings - and that to learn is essentially to tryout one testing movement after another until one is found that solves the problem. We might compare the animal's successful solution to an expectation and hence to a hypothesis or a theory. For the animal's behaviour shows us that it expects (perhaps unconsciously or dispositionally) that in a similar case the same testing movements will again solve the problem in question. The behaviour of animals, and of plants too, shows that organisms are geared to laws or regularities. They expect laws or regularities in their surroundings, and I conjecture that most of these expectations are genetically determined - which is to say that they are innate. - All Life is Problem Solving, p.3 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 Solve all our problems and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments) Toss us some coin over hur (patreon subscription approach (https://www.patreon.com/Increments/posts) or the ko-fi, the "just give us cash you animals" approach (https://ko-fi.com/increments)), and click dem like buttons on youtube over hur (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ). Do studies show that Ben or Vaden is correct? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com

When big bearded men wearing fedoras begin yelling at you that the end is nigh (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA1sNLL6yg4&ab_channel=BanklessShows) and superintelligence is about to kill us all, what should you do? Vaden says don't panic, and Ben is simply awestruck by the ability to grow a beard in the first place. To help us think through the potential risks and rewards of ever more impressive machine learning models, we invited Rosie Campbell on the podcast. Rosie is on the safety team at OpenAI and, while she's more worried about the existential risks of AI than we are, she's just as keen on some debate over a bottle of wine. We discuss: - Whether machine learning poses an existential threat - How concerned we should be about existing AI - Whether deep learning can get us to artificial general intelligence (AGI) - If AI safety is simply quality assurance - How can we test if an AI system is creative? References: - Mathgen: Randomly generated math papers (https://thatsmathematics.com/mathgen/) Contact us - Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani - Follow Rosie at @RosieCampbell or https://www.rosiecampbell.xyz/ - Check us out on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ - Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Prove you're creative by inventing the next big thing and then send it to us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com Special Guest: Rosie Campbell.

Perhaps you thought, in your infinite ignorance, that the release of the previous episode marked the end of the age of the AMA! But nay my friends, the age of the AMA has just begun! We'll answer your questions until the cows come home; until Godot arrives; until all the world's babies are potty-trained. Or, at least, until we stop laughing. We discuss Potty training, taking babies seriously, and adult diapers Why Vaden never daydreams, fantasizes, or minds spending 10 hours in a car Whether the subjective notions of certainty, belief, or confidence deserve a spot in the objective world of epistemology Whether sports are authoritarian Whether spreading Popper's epistemology is a moral imperative The role of school and educational institutions Whether emergence is the result of the interplay between physical reality and the reality of abstraction Questions (Tom) Can any thinking take place completely independent of any certainty (explicitly acknowledged or inexplicit) whatsoever? Or can we introduce alternative terms to 'certainty' and 'confidence' to describe how individuals process their convictions, consent, and agreement? If 'certainty' and 'confidence' connote justificationism, can a fallibilist dismiss these terms entirely? (Tom) Can fallibilism, anti-authoritarianism, anti-justificationism, and critical rationalism overall operate effectively in the highly competitive space of sports, especially professional sports? (Andrew) If our best theory of how to make rapid progress comes from Popper's epistemology, should making it more widely known/understood be considered a moral imperative? If not, why? If so, thoughts? (Andrew) This one has been hanging about in my notes for a couple of years so I'm not sure it's a great question any more, but something zingy about the interplay between reality, abstractions and their effects on each other has pushed me to add it here: Is emergence the result of the interplay between physical reality and the reality of abstractions? 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 pay for diapers and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help with Diarrhea removal here (https://ko-fi.com/increments)). Click dem like buttons on youtube over hur (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ). Who is more annoying in the mornings? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com

Christofer Lövgren, host of the marvelous Do Explain (https://www.doexplain.org/) podcast and world's most famous Swede (second perhaps only to that Alfred fellow with the peace prize), joins us on the pod to teach us how podcasting is really done. And how to pronounce his last name. When we're not all sobbing, we touch on: Does Deutschian epistemology give us with Free Will? Should one identify as a critical rationalist? Does membership in a community, or identification with a label, affect our ability to give and receive criticism? How has reading Deutsch and Popper changed our lives? Can trauma get stored in the body? How often do we cry? Check out Chris on twitter (@ReachChristofer) and Do Subscribe to Do Explain (https://www.doexplain.org/). References: The Beginning of Infinity (https://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Infinity-Explanations-Transform-World/dp/0143121359?sa-no-redirect=1&pldnSite=1) by David Deutsch Behave (https://www.amazon.com/Behave-Biology-Humans-Best-Worst/dp/1594205078?sa-no-redirect=1&pldnSite=1) by Robert Sapolsky Lecture on Depression (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOAgplgTxfc&ab_channel=Stanford) by Sapolsky Do Explain episode (https://www.doexplain.org/episodes/24-emotional-processing-with-matt-goldenberg) with Chris and Matt Goldenberg on emotional processing Temple Grandin discussing (https://www.lakeforest.edu/news/still-thinking-in-pictures-a-conversation-with-temple-grandin) the "black-hat" horse. Body Keeps the Score (https://www.amazon.com/Body-Keeps-Score-Healing-Trauma/dp/0143127748?sa-no-redirect=1&pldnSite=1) by Bessel van der Kolk Sir Peter Brian Medawar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Medawar) whom Richard Dawkins referred to as 'the wittiest of all scientific writers'. Blow your nose, dry your eyes, and send us a tear-stained email at incrementspodcast@gmail.com. Special Guest: Christofer Lövgren.

Back again with AUA #3 - we're getting there people! Only, uhh, seven questions to go? Incremental progress baby. Plus, we see a good old Vaden and Ben fight in this one! Thank God, because things were getting a little stale with Vaden hammering on longtermism and Ben on cliodynamics. We cover: Is hypnosis a real thing? Types of universality contained within the genetic code Pressures associated with turning political/philosophical ideas into personal identities How do emotions/feelings interface with our rational/logical mind? How should they? Vaden's (hopefully one-off) experience with Bipolar Type-1 and psychosis Is problem solving the sole purpose of thinking? Vaden says yes (with many caveats!) and Ben says wtf no you fool. Then we argue about how to watch TV. Questions (Neil Hudson) Are there any theories as to the type of universality achievable via the genetic code (in BOI it is presumed to fall short of coding for all possible life forms)? (Neil Hudson) Wd be gd to get your take on: riffing on the Sperber/Mercier social thesis v. individual, if one is scarce private space/time then the need to constantly avow one’s public identity may “swamp” the critical evaluation of arguments one hears? Goes to seeking truth v status (Arun Kannan) What are your thoughts on inexplicit knowledge (David Deutsch jargon) and more broadly emotions/feelings in the mind ? How do these interplay with explicit ideas / thoughts ? What should we prioritize ? If we don't prioritize one over the other, how to resolve conflicts between them ? Any tips, literature, Popperian wisdom you can share on this ? (Tom Nassis) Is the sole purpose of all forms of thinking problem-solving? Or can thinking have purposes other than solving a problem? Quotes Reach always has an explanation. But this time, to the best of my knowledge, the explanation is not yet known. If the reason for the jump in reach was that it was a jump to universality, what was the universality? The genetic code is presumably not universal for specifying life forms, since it relies on specific types of chemicals, such as proteins. Could it be a universal constructor? Perhaps. It does manage to build with inorganic materials sometimes, such as the calcium phosphate in bones, or the magnetite in the navigation system inside a pigeon’s brain. Biotechnologists are already using it to manufacture hydrogen and to extract uranium from seawater. It can also program organisms to perform constructions outside their bodies: birds build nests; beavers build dams. Perhaps it would it be possible to specify, in the genetic code, an organism whose life cycle includes building a nuclear-powered spaceship. Or perhaps not. I guess it has some lesser, and not yet understood, universality. In 1994 the computer scientist and molecular biologist Leonard Adleman designed and built a computer composed of DNA together with some simple enzymes, and demonstrated that it was capable of performing some sophisticated computations. At the time, Adleman’s DNA computer was arguably the fastest computer in the world. Further, it was clear that a universal classical computer could be made in a similar way. Hence we know that, whatever that other universality of the DNA system was, the universality of computation had also been inherent in it for billions of years, without ever being used – until Adleman used it. Beginning of Infinity, p.158 (emph added) References Derren brown makes people forget their stop (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kSq7dPlw0A) Bari Weiss's conversation (https://open.spotify.com/episode/2WvW8VnfzwIM155NcFXwe5) with Freddie deBoer on psychosis, bipolar, and mental health. This conversation addresses the New York Times article (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/17/magazine/antipsychotic-medications-mental-health.html) which views having schizophrenia, bipolar, etc as no better or worse than not having schizophrenia, bipolar, etc. Also contains Vaden's favorite euphemism of 2022: "Nonconsensus Realities" Sad existentialist cat (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBjU3Ii7lfs) Send Vaden an email with a thought you have not designed to solve a problem at incrementspodcast.com 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 Toss us some coin over hur (patreon subscription approach (https://www.patreon.com/Increments/posts) or the ko-fi, just give us cash you animal approach (https://ko-fi.com/increments)), and click dem like buttons on youtube over hur (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ).

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 (https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-libertarian-faq/) Napolean science funding: Canned food (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canning#French_origins) More readings (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/napoleons-lifelong-interest-science-180964485/) Bruce's Theory of Anything Pod (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-theory-of-anything/id1503194218) and on twitter at @bnielson01 Vaden's blog posts on Libertarianism: First: Is Austrian Economics the Best Explanation of Economics? (https://vmasrani.github.io/blog/2023/aecr-challenge/) Second: Can we predict human behaviour? A discussion with Brett Hall (https://vmasrani.github.io/blog/2023/predicting-human-behaviour/) 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 their credit, they did pull it off, but do you have any examples of government succeeding at anything more practical? Eradicating smallpox and polio globally, and cholera and malaria from their endemic areas in the US. Inventing the computer, mouse, digital camera, and email. Building the information superhighway and the regular superhighway. Delivering clean, practically-free water and cheap on-the-grid electricity across an entire continent. Forcing integration and leading the struggle for civil rights. Setting up the Global Positioning System. Ensuring accurate disaster forecasts for hurricanes, volcanoes, and tidal waves. Zero life-savings-destroying bank runs in eighty years. Inventing nuclear power and the game theory necessary to avoid destroying the world with it. 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 think counterfactually and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) How much would you like to pay for a fresh gulp of air? Tell us over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com. Special Guest: Bruce Nielson.

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 (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) 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.

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 (https://barelymorethanatweet.com/2021/01/05/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 events (i.e., choices) that occur within time, and thus within the physical world that determinism describes from the outside. Determinism and free will are compatible. We really do make choices. It’s just that, from an atemporal determinist perspective, these choices have “always” existed. Follow Lucas on twitter (https://twitter.com/reason_wit_me?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor) or check out his blog (https://barelymorethanatweet.com/). We discuss Levels of explanation regarding free will The (in)compatibility of different levels of explanation Why the lack of free will does not hinge on reductionism Memetic arguments for the non-existence of free will Whether we can have moral responsibility without free will The universe as a filmstrip Whether we're all just Frankenstein's monster 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 find freedom and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) How much do you want to want Frankenstein's monster? Send your answer down the tubes and over to incrementspodcast@gmail.com Special Guest: Lucas Smalldon.

We debated calling this episode "An ode to Michael," because we set out to do an AMA but only get through his first two questions. But never fear, there are only 20 questions, so at this rate we should be done the AMA by the end of 2024. Who said we weren't fans of longtermism? Questions: Hey do you guys have a Patreon page or anyway to support you? (Michael) Not clear that humans are universal explainers. Standard argument for this is "to assume o.w. is to appeal to the supernatural," but this argument is weak b/c it does not explain why humans could in principle explain everything. But all Deutch's ideas rests on this axiom. It's almost tautological - there could be things humans cannot explain, but we wouldn't even know about these things b/c we wouldn't be able to explain them. I think this argument that humans are universal explainers and thus can achieve indefinite progress needs more rigor.It might be a step jump from animals to humans, but why could there not be more step jumps in intelligence beyond human intelligence that we do not even know about? I'd love to get your thoughts on this. (Michael) Another pt I'd love to get your perspectives on is the idea of the "creative program." Standard discussion is "humans are special because we are creative, and we don't know what the creative program is." But we need to make progress on creativity at some point and it kind of feels like we are using the word "creativity" as a vague suitcase word to encapsulate "everything we don't yet know about intelligence." Simply saying "humans are creative" without properly defining what it means to be creative in a way that we can evaluate in machines is not helping us make progress on developing creative AI. It's unsatisfying to hear critiques of AI that say "this AI model is not 'truly intelligent' because it is not creative" without also proposing a way to evaluate its creativity. In this sense, critiques of AI that say AI is "not creative" are bad explanations because these critiques are easy to vary. Without a proposing a proper test for creativity that can actually evaluated, it is not possible for us to conduct a test to refute the critique. I'd love to get your thoughts on how we can construct evaluations for creativity in a way that enables us to make scientific progress on understanding the creative algorithm! References: - Episode 9: Introduction to Computational Theory (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-9-introduction-to-computational-theory/id1503194218?i=1000502266361), Theory of Anything podcast (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-theory-of-anything/id1503194218) - David Deutsch on Coleman Hughes' podcast: Multiverse of Madness (https://en.padverb.com/er/conversations-with-coleman_rss-09-may-2023-multiverse-of-madness-with-david-deutsch) - John Cleese's excellent new book Creativity (https://www.amazon.ca/Creativity-Short-Cheerful-John-Cleese/dp/0385348274) Contact us - Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani - Check us out on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ - Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Support You can support the project on Patreon (monthly donations, https://www.patreon.com/Increments) or Ko-fi (one time donation, https://ko-fi.com/increments). Thank you! How much explaining could a universal explainer explain if a universal explainer could explain explaining? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

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 (https://aella.substack.com/p/how-to-be-good-at-sex-starve-her) series Aella's website (https://knowingless.com/) Aella's blogpost on Fetish Tabooness vs Popularity (https://aella.substack.com/p/fetish-tabooness-vs-popularity) "I spent $3,400 in a single day on financial domination": financial-domination addict James (https://youtu.be/8xCjXWDf6Y0?t=745) Clip starts at 12:25 Findom Addicts Anonymous (https://findomaddictsanonymous.org/) Fetlife bans Findom (https://www.reddit.com/r/FemdomCommunity/comments/89yx1n/fetlife_is_going_to_ban_financial_domination_and/) Domme won't let me quit (unethical), addicted to findom, please help | Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/paypigsupportgroup/comments/15n8i8z/domme_wont_let_me_quit_unethical_addicted_to/) I don't feel bad for subs that are addicted to findom. (https://www.reddit.com/r/findomsupportgroup/comments/14se62y/i_dont_feel_bad_for_subs_that_are_addicted_to/) Findom References (additional sources used for episode prep that weren't mention in the episode) Random Men Pay My Bills | BBC Podcast (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07q42yw) Interview with a Recovering Paypig - A Financial Domination Addict (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N68UT_LYl-Q) FINDOM is not FEMDOM (https://podcast.damianachiphd.com/blog/findom-is-not-femdom/) Confessions of a 'Pay Pig': Why I Give Away Money to Dominant Women I Meet Online (https://archive.ph/Jdyhi) Special Episode on Findoms... | The Kink Perspective Podcast (https://www.everand.com/podcast/694373930/Season-2-Episode-57-Special-Episode-on-Findoms) She Gets Paid Just to Humiliate Her Fans | New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/10/style/findom-kink.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur) 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 heads in toilets and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) Send us $500 and call us your Queen, you steaming pile of s***: incrementspodcast@gmail.com Special Guest: Aella.

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 (https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/orthogonality-thesis) Eichmann in Jerusalem (https://www.amazon.com/Eichmann-Jerusalem-Banality-Penguin-Classics/dp/0143039881) by Hannah Arendt Adam Smith's thought experiment about losing a pinky (https://www.adamsmithworks.org/speakings/moral-sentiments-active-and-passive) Radiolab episode, "The Bad Show" (https://radiolab.org/podcast/180092-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 present and the immediate past. It lies in my strongly appreciative view of our own time. And whatever you might think about this optimism you will have to admit that it has a scarcity value. In fact the wailings of the pessimists have become somewhat monotonous. No doubt there is much in our world about which we can rightly complain if only we give our mind to it; and no doubt it is sometimes most important to find out what is wrong with us. But I think that the other side of the story might also get a hearing. And whatever you might think about this optimism you will have to admit that it has a scarcity value. In fact the wailings of the pessimists have become somewhat monotonous. No doubt there is much in our world about which we can rightly complain if only we give our mind to it; and no doubt it is sometimes most important to find out what is wrong with us. But I think that the other side of the story might also get a hearing. We have become very clever, according to Russell, indeed too clever. We can make lots of wonderful gadgets, including television, high-speed rockets, and an atom bomb, or a thermonuclear bomb, if you prefer. But we have not been able to achieve that moral and political growth and maturity which alone could safely direct and control the uses to which we put our tremendous intellectual powers. This is why we now find ourselves in mortal danger. Our evil national pride has prevented us from achieving the world-state in time.To put this view in a nutshell: we are clever, perhaps too clever, but we are also wicked; and this mixture of cleverness and wickedness lies at the root of our troubles. My first thesis is this. We are good, perhaps a little too good, but we are also a little stupid; and it is this mixture of goodness and stupidity which lies at the root of our troubles. The main troubles of our time—and I do not deny that we live in troubled times—are not due to our moral wickedness, but, on the contrary, to our often misguided moral enthusiasm: to our anxiety to better the world we live in. Our wars are fundamentally religious wars; they are wars between competing theories of how to establish a better world. And our moral enthusiasm is often misguided, because we fail to realize that our moral principles, which are sure to be over-simple, are often difficult to apply to the complex human and political situations to which we feel bound to apply them. (All Popper) “The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.” - EO Wilson 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 calibrate our credences and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) What do Benny Chugg and Adolf Eichmann have in common? I mean, what don't they have in common? Tell us over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

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 (https://www.routledge.com/Conjectures-and-Refutations-The-Growth-of-Scientific-Knowledge/Popper/p/book/9780415285940?srsltid=AfmBOorkyc4_sllmg2YLqfQ3jYz1HpLtAEUJODspqZ-3adzKrPaQlj9D) Definition of self-determination from Cornell Law School (https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/self_determination_(international_law)) The UN Charter (https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/full-text) Wilson's 14 Points (https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-woodrow-wilsons-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 shake one’s faith in the wisdom of philosopher kings, and it should be contemplated by all who think that we are clever but wicked rather than good but stupid. For the utter absurdity of the principle of national self-determination must be plain to anybody who devotes a moment’s effort to criticizing it. The principle amounts to the demand that each state should be a nation-state: that it should be confined within a natural border, and that this border should coincide with the location of an ethnic group; so that it should be the ethnic group, the ‘nation’, which should determine and protect the natural limits of the state. But nation-states of this kind do not exist. Even Iceland—the only exception I can think of—is only an apparent exception to this rule. For its limits are determined, not by its ethnic group, but by the North Atlantic—just as they are protected, not by the Icelandic nation, but by the North Atlantic Treaty. Nation-states do not exist, simply because the so-called ‘nations’ or ‘peoples’ of which the nationalists dream do not exist. There are no, or hardly any, homogenous ethnic groups long settled in countries with natural borders. Ethnic and linguistic groups (dialects often amount to linguistic barriers) are closely intermingled everywhere. Masaryk’s Czechoslovakia was founded upon the principle of national self-determination. But as soon as it was founded, the Slovaks demanded, in the name of this principle, to be free from Czech domination; and ultimately it was destroyed by its German minority, in the name of the same principle. Similar situations have arisen in practically every case in which the principle of national self- determination has been applied to fixing the borders of a new state: in Ireland, in India, in Israel, in Yugoslavia. There are ethnic minorities everywhere. The proper aim cannot be to ‘liberate’ all of them; rather, it must be to protect all of them. The oppression of national groups is a great evil; but national self-determination is not a feasible remedy. Moreover, Britain, the United States, Canada, and Switzerland, are four obvious examples of states which in many ways violate the nationality principle. Instead of having its borders determined by one settled group, each of them has man- aged to unite a variety of ethnic groups. So the problem does not seem insoluble. C&R, Chapter 19 How anybody who had the slightest knowledge of European history, of the shifting and mixing of all kinds of tribes, of the countless waves of peoples who had come forth from their original Asian habitat and split up and mingled when reaching the maze of peninsulas called the European continent, how anybody who knew this could ever have put forward such an inapplicable principle, is hard to understand. Open Society, Page 355 The nationalist religion is strong. Many are ready to die for it, fer- vently believing that it is morally good, and factually true. But they are mistaken; just as mistaken as their communist bedfellows. Few creeds have created more hatred, cruelty, and senseless suffering than the belief in the righteousness of the nationality principle; and yet it is still widely believed that this principle will help to alleviate the misery of national oppression. My optimism is a little shaken, I admit, when I look at the near-unanimity with which this principle is still accepted, even today, without any hesitation, without any doubt—even by those whose political interests are clearly opposed to it. C&R, Chapter 19 In spite of our great and serious troubles, and in spite of the fact that ours is surely not the best possible society, I assert that our own free world is by far the best society which has come into existence during the course of human history. C&R, Chapter 19 But before examining these facts more closely, I wish to stress that I am very much alive to other facts also. Power still corrupts, even in our world. Civil servants still behave at times like uncivil masters. Pocket dictators still abound; and a normally intelligent man seeking medical advice must be prepared to be treated as a rather tiresome type of imbecile, if he betrays an intelligent interest—that is, a critical interest—in his physical condition. C&R, Chapter 19 I have in mind the standards and values which have come down to us through Christianity from Greece and from the Holy Land; from Socrates, and from the Old and New Testaments. C&R, Chapter 19 My third thesis is that since the time of the Boer War, none of the democratic governments of the free world has been in a position to wage a war of aggression. No democratic government would be united upon the issue, because they would not have the nation united behind them. Aggressive war has become almost a moral impossibility. C&R, Chapter 19 I believe that it is most important to say what the free world has achieved. For we have become unduly sceptical about ourselves. We are suspicious of anything like self-righteousness, and we find self-praise unpalatable. One of the great things we have learned is not only to be tolerant of others, but to ask ourselves seriously whether the other fellow is not perhaps in the right, and altogether the better man. We have learned the fundamental moral truth that nobody should be judge in his own cause. This, no doubt, is a symptom of a certain moral maturity; yet one may learn a lesson too well. Having discovered the sin of self-righteousness, we have fallen into its stereotyped inversion: into a stereotyped pose of self-depreciation, of inverted smugness. Having learned that one should not be judge in one’s own cause, we are tempted to become advocates for our opponents. Thus we become blind to our own achievements. But this tendency must be resisted. C&R, Chapter 19 Thus we learnt not only to tolerate beliefs that differ from ours, but to respect them and the men who sincerely held them. But this means that we slowly began to differentiate between sincerity and dogmatic stub- bornness or laziness, and to recognize the great truth that truth is not manifest, not plainly visible to all who ardently want to see it, but hard to come by. And we learnt that we must not draw authoritarian conclu- sions from this great truth but, on the contrary, suspect all those who claim that they are authorized to teach the truth. C&R, Chapter 19 # 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 revoke the UN charter and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) Form a nation and liberate yo' selves over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

After the immensely positive response to our previous episode on the Weinstein brothers - thanks @robertwiblin! - we thought we would keep giving the people what they want, and what they want is a long discussion on climate change. Specifically, the subject for today is: "The State of the Climate Debate". We touch on: The near perfect partisan split on climate change Will there be a climate apocalypse? The promise of nuclear energy as a solution The limitations of renewables Energy portfolios The rebound effect Degrowth economics Activist tactics and fear mongering Whether The Environment has become A Deity in environmentalist circles We expect very little pushback on this episode. References Apocalypse Never (https://smile.amazon.com/Apocalypse-Never-Environmental-Alarmism-Hurts/dp/0063001691?sa-no-redirect=1) by Michael Shellenberger. Greta Thunberg encouraging you to panic (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjsLm5PCdVQ&ab_channel=GuardianNews) Thunberg's double crossing of the Atlantic in sailboat (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_of_Greta_Thunberg) The Rebound Effect (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277338331_The_rebound_effects_of_switching_to_vegetarianism_A_microeconomic_analysis_of_Swedish_consumption_behavior) Quotes But real climate solutions are ones that steer these interventions to systematically disperse and devolve power and control to the community level, whether through community-controlled renewable energy, local organic agriculture or transit systems genuinely accountable to their users. -- Naomi Klein in the Nation (https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/capitalism-vs-climate/) Even if nuclear power were clean, safe, economic, assured of ample fuel, and socially benign, it would still be unattractive because of the political implications of the kind of energy economy it would lock us into. -- Amory Lovins, quoted from Forbes piece (https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/02/14/the-real-reason-they-hate-nuclear-is-because-it-means-we-dont-need-renewables/?sh=17c63299128f) by Michael Shellenberger Send us panic-induced email at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

Is there any possibility of fruitful dialogue with your mildly crazy, significantly intoxicated uncle at Thanksgiving dinner? We turn to Karl Popper's essay, The Myth of the Framework, to find out. Popper argues that it's wrong to assume that fruitful conversation is only possible among those who share an underlying framework of beliefs and assumptions. In fact, there's more to learn in difficult conversations which lack such a framework. We discuss - What is The Myth of the Framework? - The relationship between the myth of the framework and epistemological and moral relativism - Modern examples of the myth, including Jon Haidt's recent Atlantic essay (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/) and Paul Graham's Keep your identity small (http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html). - Why there's more to learn from conversations where the participants disagree, and why conversations with too much agreement are uninteresting - Linguistic relativism and the evolution of language as a refutation of the myth - The relationship between the myth of the framework and the Enigma of Reason Quotes I think what religion and politics have in common is that they become part of people's identity, and people can never have a fruitful argument about something that's part of their identity. By definition they're partisan. - Paul Graham, Keep your identity small The story of Babel is the best metaphor I have found for what happened to America in the 2010s, and for the fractured country we now inhabit. Something went terribly wrong, very suddenly. We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past. It’s been clear for quite a while now that red America and blue America are becoming like two different countries claiming the same territory, with two different versions of the Constitution, economics, and American history. But Babel is not a story about tribalism; it’s a story about the fragmentation of everything. It’s about the shattering of all that had seemed solid, the scattering of people who had been a community. It’s a metaphor for what is happening not only between red and blue, but within the left and within the right, as well as within universities, companies, professional associations, museums, and even families. - Jonathan Haidt, Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid The proponents of relativism put before us standards of mutual understanding which are unrealistically high. And when we fail to meet these standards, they claim that understanding is impossible. - Karl Popper, MotF, pg. 34 The myth of the framework can be stated in one sentence, as follows. A rational and fruiful discussion is impossible unless the participants share a common framework of basic assumptions or, at least, unless they have agreed on such a framework for the purpose of the discussion. As I have formulated it here, the myth sounds like a sober statement, or like a sensible warning to which we ought to pay attention in order to further rational discussion. Some people even think that what I describe as a myth is a logical principle, or based on a logical principle. I think, on the contrary, that it is not only a false statement, but also a vicious statement which, if widely believed, must undermine the unity of mankind, and so must greatly increase the likelihood of violence and of war. This is the main reason why I want to combat it, and to refute it. - Karl Popper, MotF, pg. 34 Although I am an admirer of tradition, and conscious of its importance, I am, at the same time, an almost orthodox adherent of unorthodoxy: _I hold that orthodoxy is the death of knowledge, since the growth of knowledge depends entirely on the existence of disagreement. Admittedly, disagreement may lead to strif, and even to violence. And this, I think, is very bad indeed, for I abhor violence. Yet disagreement may also lead to discussion, to argument, and to mutual criticism. And these, I think, are of paramount importance. I suggest that the greatest step towards a better and more peaceful world was taken when the war of swords was first supported, and later sometimes even replaced, by a war of words. This is why my topic is of some practical significance._ - Karl Popper, MotF, pg. 34 My thesis is that logic neither underpins the myth of the framework nor its denial, but that we can try to learn from each other. Whether we succeed will depend largely on our goodwill, and to some extent also on our historical situation, and on our problem situation. - Karl Popper, MotF, pg. 38 References - Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/), by Jonathan Haidt - Keep your identity small (http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html), by Paul Graham - The Enigma of Reason (https://smile.amazon.com/Enigma-Reason-Hugo-Mercier/dp/0674368304?sa-no-redirect=1) by Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber - Glenn Loury and Briahna Joy Grey (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-pxokcOUHY&ab_channel=TheGlennShow) - Normal Science and its Dangers (https://earthweb.ess.washington.edu/roe/Knowability_590/Week1/Normal%20Science%20and%20its%20Dangers.pdf) Social media everywhere Follow us on twitter (@Incrementspod, @VadenMasrani, @BennyChugg), and on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ). Tell us about your shaken framework at incrementspodcast@gmail.com Image: Cornelis Anthonisz (1505 – 1553) – The Fall of the Tower of Babel (1547)

In a rare turn of events, it just so happened that one or perhaps both of your charming co-hosts spewed a bit of nonsense about Derek Parfit in a previous episode, and we had to bring in a heavy hitter to sort us out. Today we're joined by friend of the podcast Mr. Dan Hageman, immuno-oncologist by day and aspiring ethicist by night, who gently takes us to task for misunderstanding Parfit and the role of ethical theorizing, and for ignoring the suffering of pigeons. The critiques land, and convince Vaden that we should dedicate our resources towards providing safe and affordable contraception for Apex predators. We cover all sorts of ground in this episode, including: - Mistakes we made in our thought experiments episode - Is it possible to over-theorize? - Wild animal suffering - Don't fish eat other fish?! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xHMyvtUbhM&ab_channel=moviequotescentral) - Feline family planning - Antinatalism - Moral Cluelessness - Population ethics and the repugnant conclusion (Ha!) - Similarities and differences between theoretical physics and theoretical philosophy References: - Organization for the Prevention of Intense Suffering (https://www.preventsuffering.org/#:~:text=The%20Organisation%20for%20the%20Prevention,suffering%20of%20all%20sentient%20beings.) (OPIS) - Lukas Gloor's post (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/HyeTgKBv7DjZYjcQT/the-problem-with-person-affecting-views) on population ethics - Wild Animal Initiative (https://www.wildanimalinitiative.org/) - Pigeon Contraception (https://www.wildanimalinitiative.org/blog/pigeon-contraception) (yes, really) - Hilary Greaves on moral cluelessness (talk+transcript (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/LdZcit8zX89rofZf3/evidence-cluelessness-and-the-long-term-hilary-greaves), paper (https://philpapers.org/rec/GREC-38)) - Better Never to Have Been (https://smile.amazon.com/Better-Never-Have-Been-Existence/dp/0199549265?sa-no-redirect=1) by David Benatar. Dan Hageman is a biomed engineer who works in immuno-oncology, but in his not-so-free time strives to sell himself as an amateur philosopher and aspiring 'Effective Altruist'. He spends much of this time trying to keep up with impactful charities focused on the reduction and/or prevention of extreme suffering, and in 2020 helped co-found a hopefully burgeoning side project called ‘Match for More (https://www.matchformore.org/)’. He would like to note that the IPAs are to blame for any and all errors/misapprehensions made during his lively discussion with epic friends and podcast hosts, Ben and Vaden. How many insect lives are morally equivalent to one human life? Send us your best guess at incrementspodcast@gmail.com. We'll reveal the correct answer in episode 1000. Update 13/06/21: The original title of this episode was "Meta-ethics Cage Match (with Dan Hageman)" Special Guest: Dan Hageman.