Avsnitt
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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 [email protected]. -
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thesis on Nabokov's 1969 novel Ada, impressing Nabokov's wife Vera so much that he was invited to catalogue Nabokov's unpublished archives.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 [email protected].
Special Guest: Brian Boyd. -
Saknas det avsnitt?
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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 [email protected]
Special Guest: Liron Shapira. -
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 [email protected]
Special Guest: Liron Shapira. -
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 [email protected]
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. -
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 [email protected]. Special Guest: David Deutsch. -
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 [email protected]. -
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 discussAre 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 differencesPopper's third thesis: The relation of progress to warWhether Popper was factually correct about his claim that democracies do not wage wars of aggressionSelf-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 byReferencesConjectures 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)QuotesThe 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 19How 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 355The 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 19In 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 19But 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 19I 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 19My 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 19I 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 19Thus 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, @VadenMasraniCome join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret linkHelp 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 [email protected].
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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 [email protected]. -
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
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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 [email protected]. Special Guest: Richard Meadows. -
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
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What's your credence in Bayesianism? Tell us over at [email protected]. -
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
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How much would you like to pay for a fresh gulp of air? Tell us over at [email protected].
Special Guest: Bruce Nielson. -
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
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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: [email protected]
Special Guest: Bruce Nielson. -
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
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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***: [email protected] Special Guest: Aella. -
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 [email protected]
Special Guest: Bruce Nielson. -
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 [email protected]
Special Guest: Bruce Nielson. -
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 discussThe origins of recycling and some of the earliest instancesEnergy 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 landfillsWhy we're not even close to running out of space for landfillsEconomic incentives for recycling vs top-down regulationThe 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 CorrectionVaden 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 / CitationsShare 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.66Cloth 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 landfillGuiyu, 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 mathConsider 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. SocialsFollow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasraniCome join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret linkHelp 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 [email protected]
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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 [email protected]
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 [email protected]
Special Guest: Lucas Smalldon. -
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 [email protected]
Special Guest: Bruce Nielson. - Visa fler
