Avsnitt
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It's only taken us 104 episodes of talking incessantly about Karl Popper to get one of the most important and popular criticisms of falsification: The Duhem-Quine thesis. Should we wrap the podcast here? Is it game over?
We discussDoes AI need more economic thinking? The role of background knowledge in conversation The allure of verificationism The Duhem-Quine thesis The role of competing theories in combatting the thesis Are conspiracies the price we pay for independent thinking?ReferencesMichael I. Jordan on ML Street Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AREWYbVtX64 Our conversation with Ben Recht: https://www.incrementspodcast.com/91QuotesPeople involved in a fruitful critical discussion of a problem often rely, if only unconsciously, upon two things: the acceptance by all parties of the common aim of getting at the truth, or at least nearer to the truth, and a considerable amount of common background knowledge. This does not mean that either of these two things is an indispensable basis of every discussion, or that these two things are themselves ‘a priori’, and cannot be critically discussed in their turn. It only means that criticism never starts from nothing, even though every one of its starting points may be challenged, one at a time, in the course of the critical debate.
- C&R, Chap 10While discussing a problem we always accept (if only temporarily) all kinds of things as unproblematic: they constitute for the time being, and for the discussion of this particular problem, what I call our background knowledge. Few parts of this background knowledge will appear to us in all contexts as absolutely unproblematic, and any particular part of it may be challenged at any time, especially if we suspect that its uncritical acceptance may be responsible for some of our difficulties. But almost all of the vast amount of background knowledge which we constantly use in any informal discussion will, for practical reasons, necessarily remain unquestioned; and the misguided attempt to question it all—that is to say, to start from scratch—can easily lead to the breakdown of a critical debate. (Were we to start the race where Adam started, I know of no reason why we should get any further than Adam did.)
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 linkBecome a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here.Click dem like buttons on youtube
- C&R, Chap 10What kind of thinking does this podcast need? Tell us at [email protected].
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Did you ever see the video of two regular people trying to fight Eddie Hall, the strongest man on earth? Ben and Vaden bring that same energy to this conversation, where they gang up on Robert Wright on the subject of his forthcoming book The God Test: Artificial Intelligence and Our Coming Cosmic Reckoning. Bob is a sport about it (well, there was no choice really: we have an advanced copy of his book that we're holding hostage) and there are only one or two black eyes by the end.
Subscribe to Robert Wright's podcasting empire NonZero on youtube and substack. And go buy one of his many books.
We discussWhether Bob was the OG podcaster Is there a directionality to evolution? Where Bob is on the AI fear and awe spectrum Whether LLMs have decoded the meaning in language Is AI best viewed as a tool or as superintelligence? AI-as-slingshot analogy ReferencesThe God Test by Robert WrightNonzero by Robert WrightWilliam Paley and his pocket watchThe Blind Watchmaker by Richard DawkinsOur conversation with Scott AaronsonSocialsFollow us on Twitter at @RobertWrighter, @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasraniCome join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret linkBecome a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here.Click dem like buttons on youtubeWhat's the directionality of this podcast? Tell us at [email protected].
Special Guest: Robert Wright.
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Saknas det avsnitt?
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Turning on our own! Vaden sits down with Bruce Nielson and Peter Johansen to discuss some of the bad memes that run rampant in the online "crit-rat" community, in an attempt of some intra-tribal error-correction. Ben, scared of the retribution, runs away with his tail uncomfortably close to his thighs.
Follow Bruce and Peter's work on the Theory of Anything Podcast.
Sign up for the Theory of Anything podcast Patreon here, and Check out Peter's Many World of David Deutsch facebook group here.
We discussBruce and Peter's origin storiesAnarcho-capitalism and its (pseudo) connections to Popperian philosophyCritRat disbelief in mental illnessWhat does the Universal Explainer hypothesis imply about mental illness and IQ?Is Anarcho-capitalism a foundationalist and utopian philosophy?
Why are so many crit-rats Trump supporters?See AlsoTheory of Anything Podcast #136: Michael Golding on Mental IllnessTheory of Anything Podcast #82: Popper's RatchetSocialsFollow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani, @bnielson01Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret linkBecome a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here.Click dem like buttons on youtubeI before E except after B? Send your best guess as to the spelling of Bruce's last name (no one knows) over to [email protected].
Special Guest: Bruce Nielson.
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Wasn't Popper a falsificationist? Then why did he try to develop ideas about corroboration and versimilitude - the extent to which a theory was closer to truth than another theory? Isn't this verging dangerously close to verificationist territory?
In our fourth ep on Chapter 10 in C&R, we wrestle with Popper's treatment of verisimilutude, both the formal and informal versions. Did the project fail? Was Popper out of his mind? Does this invalidate everything?
We discussMurders with ball-peen hammers Walking the line between verification and falsificationIs science only after truth?Verisimilutude and its formalization Why the formalization fails Popper's three requirements for the growth of knowledgePopper's ratchet and the no ad-hoc rule QuotesLike many other philosophers I am at times inclined to classify philosophers as belonging to two main groups—those with whom I disagree, and those who agree with me.
- C&R, page 309I shall give here a somewhat unsystematic list of six types of cases in which we should be inclined to say of a theory t1 that it is superseded by t2 in the sense that t2 seems—as far as we know—to correspond better to the facts than t1 , in some sense or other.
t2 makes more precise assertions than t1 , and these more precise assertions stand up to more precise tests.t2 takes account of, and explains, more facts than t1 (which will include for example the above case that, other things being equal, t2 ’s assertions are more precise).t2 describes, or explains, the facts in more detail than t1 .t2 has passed tests which t 1 has failed to pass.t2 has suggested new experimental tests, not considered before t 2 was designed (and not suggested by t1 , and perhaps not even applicable to t1 ); and t 2 has passed these tests.t2 has unified or connected various hitherto unrelated problems.- C&R, page 315
Let me first say that I do not suggest that the explicit introduction of the idea of verisimilitude will lead to any changes in the theory of method. On the contrary, I think that my theory of testability or corroboration by empirical tests is the proper methodological counterpart to this new metalogical idea. The only improvement is one of clarification.
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 linkBecome a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here.Click dem like buttons on youtube
- C&R, page 318How many chromosomes does diethyl-methyl pentophosphate have, exactly? Tell as at [email protected]
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100 episodes! To celebrate, Vaden tries to get personal with Ben, while Ben dodges his questions and wants to know how Vaden feels about incest. All in all, a pretty typical episode.
The questionsFrom Vaden to Ben:
How is your side hustle going? Who are some of your major influences outside of Popper?How has the Popperian worldview influenced your day-to-day?What is the life of a nomadic academic like?What would you say to people who are considering mathematics as a career? Which charities do you recommend?From Ben to Vaden:
How do you feel about looksmaxxing? Thoughts on medical assistance in dying? Ethics of Alex Honnold free soloing Taipei 101? Thoughts on Nation-Buiding?Incest - into it? Episode References#22 - Thinking Through Thought Experiments#66 - Sex Research, Addiction, and Financial Domination (w/ Aella)#58 - Ask Us Anything V: How to Read and What to Read#70 - ... and Bayes Bites Back (w/ Richard Meadows)#76 (Bonus) - Is P(doom) meaningful? Debating epistemology (w/ Liron Shapira) ReferencesAngus Deaton debates Abhijit Banerjee: https://nyudri.wordpress.com/initiatives/deaton-v-banerjee/ Christopher Hitchens and Robert WrightSam Harris and Garry KasparovPrivate Empire: ExxonMobil and American PowerThe Bomb in My Garden: The Secrets of Saddam's Nuclear MastermindSocialsFollow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasraniCome join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret linkBecome a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here.Click dem like buttons on youtubeWhat is your favorite form of ince... actually nevermind, too much. Just email us at [email protected].
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Ben is hesitant to talk too much about politics on the podcast. So, naturally, we're having a political debate. We have on a pseudonymous guest to talk Trump, MAGA, and what's wrong with the left and the right.
We discussTrump's politics as trial and error The dynamics of MAGA ICE activity in Minnesota Illegal immigrationWould Popper have supported Trump?What does "incrementalism" mean in politics? 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 linkBecome a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here.Click dem like buttons on youtubeCross the border into the increments discord and hit us up at [email protected].
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"What is Truth?", said jesting podcasters, who then stuck around for an answer. Back at it again with The Conjectures and Refutations Series (part three) on Chapter 10: Truth, Rationality, and the Growth of Scientific Knowledge. Can we say what truth is, even if we can never be certain we've found it? If not, can we say that science is approaching truth? How would we ever know? And why are so many theories of truth untrue?
We discussBen's early reflections on Abigail Shrier's book Bad Therapy Why did Popper feel the need to answer this particular "what is" question?Can asking "what is truth" be a demogogic and bad-faith question?The correspondence theory of truth vs The pragmatic theory of truth vs The coherence theory of truth Alfred Tarski's formalization of the correspondence theory of truth Are there problems with the correspondence theory?The disagreement between Vaden and Deutsch on truthReferencesDaniel Bonevac on the Correspondence theory of truth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlG_VaN1LHQ
Tarki's 1944 paper on the semantic conception of truth Tarki's 1933 paper "On the concept of truth in formalized languages" Deutsch's 2022 talk on truth: Musings about Truth# 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 linkBecome a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here.Click dem like buttons on youtubeIt would be both useful, coherent, and correspond to our happiness if you signed up for our patreon or discord. Hit us up at [email protected]
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Two years without discussing effective altruism -- did you miss it? Not as much as Vaden, surely. And probably a right bit more than Ben.
Well, we're back in the game with a spicy one. Was EA a front for AI safety from the beginning? Did the leaders care not a wit for global poverty? Is Ben going to throw himself out window if Vaden keeps this up?
We discussFeedback on our introspection episode The motives of the EA founders The felicia forum Is this a conspiracy theory?
EA's strategic ambiguity Bostromism, transhumanism, and AI safety EA funding The public/core divide and the funnel model Quotesnew effective altruists tend to start off concerned about global poverty or animal suffering and then hear, take seriously, and often are convinced by the arguments for existential risk mitigation
- Will MacAskillExistential risk isn’t the most useful public face for effective altruism – everyone inc[l]uding Eliezer Yudkowsky agrees about that
- Scott Alexander, 2015Utilitymonster: GWWC is explicitly poverty-focused but high impact careers (HIC) is not. In fact, hardcore members of GWWC are heavily interested in x-risk, and I estimate that 10-15% of its general membership is as well. I’d take them seriously as a group for promoting utilitarianism in general.
ReferencesGleiberman's paper: https://medialibrary.uantwerpen.be/files/8518/61565cb6-e056-4e35-bd2e-d14d58e35231.pdfOld EA wikipedia page (web archive): https://web.archive.org/web/20170409171350/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism Old CEA webpage (web archive): https://web.archive.org/web/20161219031827/https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/fundraising/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 linkBecome a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here.Click dem like buttons on youtube
I’m a GWWC leader.
[Redacted]: but HIC always seems to talk about things in terms of “lives saved”, ive never heard them mentioning other things to donate to. […]
Utilitymonster: That’s exactly the right thing for HIC to do. Talk about lives saved with their public face, let hardcore members hear about x-risk, and then, in the future, if some excellent x-risk opportunity arises, direct resources to x-risk.
- From felicia forum.Let us funnel you into the core group of super secret patreon supporters. Send us an email at [email protected]
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Happy Christmas and Merry Festivus y'all! Today we're releasing a patreon episode, as both of us are away on vacation with the family for the holidays. In this episode we have a meandering discussion about parenting, Robert Kegan's four stages of development, the limits of introspection, and relationship counseling.
We discussAdvice for new fathers Vaden comes out to the world (about snowboarding)Robert Kegan's four stages of developmentThe limits of introspection CountertransferenceThe show Couples Therapy with Dr. Orna Guralnik# 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 linkBecome a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here.Click dem like buttons on youtubeIntrospect a little, and tell us why you haven't signed up to our Patreon feed over at [email protected]
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After a long hiatus where we both saw grief counsellors over our fight about Popper's theory of content in the last C&R episode, we are back. And we're ready to play nice ... for about 30 seconds until Vaden admits that two sentences from Popper changed his mind about something Ben had arguing for literally years.
But eventually putting those disagreements aside, we return to the subject at hand: The Conjectures and Refutations Series: Chapter 10: Truth, Rationality, and the Growth of Scientific Knowledge (Part II). Here all goes smoothly. Just kidding, we start fighting about content again almost immediately. Where are the guests to break us up when you need them.
We discussWhy Vaden changed his mind about "all thought is problem solving" Something that rhymes with wero horship Is Popper sloppy when it comes to writing about probability and content Is all modern data science based on the wrong idea? (Hint: No) Popper's problem-focused view of scientific progress How much formalization is too much? The difference between high verisimilitude and high probability Why do we value simplicity in science? Historical examples of science progressing via theories with increasing content QuotesConsciousness, world 2, was presumably an evaluating and discerning consciousness, a problem-solving consciousness, right from the start. I have said of the animate part of the physical world 1 that all organisms are problem solvers. My basic assumption regarding world 2 is that this problem-solving activity of the animate part of world 1 resulted in the emergence of world 2, of the world of consciousness. But I do not mean by this that consciousness solves problems all the time, as I asserted of the organisms. On the contrary. The organisms are preoccupied with problem-solving day in, day out, but consciousness is not only concerned with the solving of problems, although that is its most important biological function. My hypothesis is that the original task of consciousness was to anticipate success and failure in problem-solving and to signal to the organism in the form of pleasure and pain whether it was on the right or wrong path to the solution of the problem.
In Search of a Better World, p.17 (emphasis added)The criterion of potential satisfactoriness is thus testability, or improbability: only a highly testable or improbable theory is worth testing, and is actually (and not merely potentially) satisfactory if it withstands severe tests—especially those tests to which we could point as crucial for the theory before they were ever undertaken.
- C&R, Chapter 10Consequently there is little merit in formalizing and elaborating a deductive system (intended for use as an empirical science) beyond the requirements of the task of criticizing and testing it, and of comparing it critically with competitors.
- C&R, Chapter 10Admittedly, our expectations, and thus our theories, may precede, historically, even our problems. Yet science starts only with problems. Problems crop up especially when we are disappointed in our expectations, or when our theories involve us in difficulties, in contradictions; and these may arise either within a theory, or between two different theories, or as the result of a clash between our theories and our observations.
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 linkBecome a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here.Click dem like buttons on youtube
- C&R, Chapter 10Is "Ben and Vaden will fight about content" high or low probability? Tell us at [email protected]
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The time has come for Vaden to defend his faith in the face of cold, hard scientific rationality. Will AI take over the world, automating away everything that makes humans distinct? Or can Vaden defend the church of just-ism, the radical belief that AI is simply "just a tool." Scott Aaronson, professor of computer science at UT Austin, goes to head to head against the zealotry.
Check out Scott's website and his blog, Shtetl Optimized.
We discussScott view's on education. Should we radically reform K-12? Is ChatGPT changing Scott's approach to teaching The religion of "justa-ism" Is AI just a tool? Is there any principle which lets us say that AI won't be as general as humans? Aaronson's thesis of Artificial Intelligence Computational universality vs explanatory universality The many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics 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 linkBecome a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here.Click dem like buttons on youtubeHave you been converted? Tell us at [email protected]
Special Guest: Scott Aaronson.
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Back to basics baby. We're doing a couple introductory episodes on Popper's philosophy of science, following Chapter 10 of Conjectures and Refutations. We start with Popper's theory of content: what makes a good scientific theory? Can we judge some theories as better than others before we even run any empirical tests? Should we be looking for theories with high probability?
Ben and Vaden also return to their roots in another way, and get into a nice little fight about how content relates to Bayesianism.
We discussVaden's skin care routine If you find your friend's lost watch and proceed to lose it, are you responsible for the watch?Empirical vs logical content Whether and how content can be measured and compared How content relates to probability QuotesMy aim in this lecture is to stress the significance of one particular aspect of science—its need to grow, or, if you like, its need to progress. I do not have in mind here the practical or social significance of this need. What I wish to discuss is rather its intellectual significance. I assert that continued growth is essential to the rational and empirical character of scientific knowledge; that if science ceases to grow it must lose that character. It is the way of its growth which makes science rational and empirical; the way, that is, in which scientists discriminate between available theories and choose the better one or (in the absence of a satisfactory theory) the way they give reasons for rejecting all the available theories, thereby suggesting some of the conditions with which a satisfactory theory should comply.
You will have noticed from this formulation that it is not the accumulation of observations which I have in mind when I speak of the growth of scientific knowledge, but the repeated overthrow of scien- tific theories and their replacement by better or more satisfactory ones. This, incidentally, is a procedure which might be found worthy of attention even by those who see the most important aspect of the growth of scientific knowledge in new experiments and in new observations.
C&R p. 291Thus it is my first thesis that we can know of a theory, even before it has been tested, that if it passes certain tests it will be better than some other theory.
My first thesis implies that we have a criterion of relative potential satisfactoriness, or of potential progressiveness, which can be applied to a theory even before we know whether or not it will turn out, by the passing of some crucial tests, to be satisfactory in fact.
This criterion of relative potential satisfactoriness (which I formu- lated some time ago,2 and which, incidentally, allows us to grade the- ories according to their degree of relative potential satisfactoriness) is extremely simple and intuitive. It characterizes as preferable the theory which tells us more; that is to say, the theory which contains the greater amount of empirical information or content; which is logically stronger; which has the greater explanatory and predictive power; and which can therefore be more severely tested by comparing predicted facts with observations. In short, we prefer an interesting, daring, and highly informative theory to a trivial one.
C&R p.294Let a be the statement ‘It will rain on Friday’; b the statement ‘It willbe fine on Saturday’; and ab the statement ‘It will rain on Friday and itwill be fine on Saturday’: it is then obvious that the informative contentof this last statement, the conjunction ab, will exceed that of its com-ponent a and also that of its component b. And it will also be obviousthat the probability of ab (or, what is the same, the probability that abwill be true) will be smaller than that of either of its components.
Writing Ct(a) for ‘the content of the statement a’, and Ct(ab) for ‘thecontent of the conjunction a and b’, we have
(1) Ct(a) <= Ct(ab) >= Ct(b).This contrasts with the corresponding law of the calculus of probability,
(2) p(a) >= p(ab) <= p(b),
where the inequality signs of (1) are inverted. Together these two laws, (1) and (2), state that with increasing content, probability decreases, and vice versa; or in other words, that content increases with increasing improbability. (This analysis is of course in full agreement with the general idea of the logical content of a statement as the class of all those statements which are logically entailed by it. We may also say that a statement a is logically stronger than a statement b if its content is greater than that of b—that is to say, if it entails more than b does.)
This trivial fact has the following inescapable consequences: if growth of knowledge means that we operate with theories of increasing content, it must also mean that we operate with theories of decreasing probability (in the sense of the calculus of probability). Thus if our aim is the advancement or growth of knowledge, then a high probability (in the sense of the calculus of probability) cannot possibly be our aim as well: these two aims are incompatible.
C&R p.295SocialsFollow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasraniCome join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret linkBecome a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here.Click dem like buttons on youtubeHow much content does the theory "dish soap is the ultimate face cleanser" have? Send your order of infinity over to [email protected]
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We're joined by Jonathan Rauch to discuss what it means to be a radical incrementalist, how to foment revolution on geological timescales, and whether Christianity can be a force for good in politics. Can Jon convince angry-Hitchens-atheist Vaden that Christianity has some benefits? Will both Vaden and Ben be at Sunday prayer?
Follow Jonathan on his website, at Brookings, at The Atlantic or on Bluesky.
We discussThe constitution of knowledge and whether it's holding Norms vs laws, and whether we should introduce more laws to codify norms Popper's paradox of toleranceHow should liberals respond to illiberalism? Which tactics, if any, should democrats adopt from MAGA to fight MAGA?
Sharp Christianity and Christian nationalism Rauch's plea to Christians ReferencesThe Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth Cross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain with DemocracyErrataJonathan Rauch is the author of nine books, not eight!
SocialsFollow us on Twitter at @JonRauch, @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasraniCome join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret linkBecome a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here.Click dem like buttons on youtubeAnyone in Canada have a basement suite Jonathan could rent for a while? Send your address over to [email protected]
Special Guest: Jonathan Rauch.
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Professor of electrical engineering and computer science Ben Recht joins us to defend Bayesianism, AI doom, and assure us that the statisticians have everything under control.
Just kidding. Recht might be even more suspicious of these things than we are. What has statistics ever done for us, really? When was the last time YOU ran a clinical trial after all, huh? HUH? After Ben Chugg defends his life decision to do a PhD in statistics, we talk AI, cults, philosophy, Paul Meehl, and discuss Ben Recht's forthcoming book, The Irrational Decision.
Check out Ben's blog, website, and his story about machine learning.
We discussBen Recht's theory of blogging Why is Berkeley the epicenter of AI doom?
Where the word "robot" came from Is Bayesian reasoning responsible for AI doom? Paul Meehl and his contributions to science Ben Recht's bureaucratic theory of statisticsWhat on earth is null hypothesis testing? What is the point of statistics?"Sweet spots" and "small worlds"Does science proceed by Popperian means? Can Popper get around the Duhem-Quine problem?
ErrataThe z-score for the Pfizer trial was 20, not 12!
ReferencesArgmin, Ben Recht's blogDavid Freedman, UC Berkeley Paul Meehl's online course Theoretical Risks and Tabular Asterisks: Sir Karl, Sir Ronald, and the Slow Progress of Soft Psychology, Paul Meehl's 1978 paper. Clinical versus statistical prediction: A theoretical analysis and a review of the evidence, by Meehl On the near impossibility of estimating the returns to advertisingA Bureaucratic Theory of Statistics by Recht The new riddle of induction by Goodman Announcing the Irrational Decision Patterns, Predictions, and Actions, textbook by Ben Recht and Moritz HardtSocialsFollow us on Twitter at @BeenWrekt, @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasraniCome join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret linkBecome a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here.Click dem like buttons on youtubeWhat's Berkeley's next cult? Send your guess over to [email protected]
Special Guest: Ben Recht.
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Always the uncool kids at the table, Ben and Vaden push back against the AGI hype domininating every second episode of every second podcast. We react to "We're not ready for superintelligence" by 80,000 Hours - a bleak portrayal of the pre and post AGI world. Can Ben keep Vaden's sass in check? Can the 80,000 hours team find enough cubes for AGI? Is Agent-5 listening to you RIGHT NOW?
Listener Note:We strongly recommend watching the video for this one, available both on youtube and spotify:
We discussThe incentives of superforecasters Arguments by authorityWhether superintelligence is right around the corner The difference between model size and data Are we running out of high quality data?Does training on synthetic data work? The assumptions behind the AGI claims The pitfalls of reasoning from trendsReferencesMichael I JordanNeil Lawrence
- https://www.youtube.com/@incrementspod
- https://open.spotify.com/show/1gKKSP5HKT4Nk3i0y4UseB
[Important technical paper from Jordan pushing back on Doomerism](A Collectivist, Economic Perspective on AI) Jordan article talking about dangers of using AlphaFold dataNature paper showing you can't use synthetic data to train bigger models Paper estimating of when training data will run out (Coincidentally enough, sometime between 2027-2028)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 linkBecome a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here.Click dem like buttons on youtubeBut how many cubes until we get to AGI though? Send a few of your cubes over to [email protected]
Episode header image from here.
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Phlogiston? Elan Vital? Caloric? Mention of any of these at a party, and Neil DeGrasse Tyson will be sure to take you out back and kick you in your essences. So why do "essences" have no place in science? In this episode we explore that question (and dive into some of the history behind this debate) by reading Chapter 6 of Conjectures and Refutations: A Note On Berkeley As Precursor Of Mach And Einstein.
In one corner, we have the estimable Sir Isaac Newton and Roger Coates (and of course Andre the Giant, upon whose shoulders they are standing), and in the other, we have Bishop Berkeley and Ernst Mach, looking to throw down at the speed of sound. Berkeley can't get Newton and his forces out of his head (literally), and boy oh boy is the fight ever on.
We discussHow should teachers address the "students using ChatGPT to write their essay" problem? Can we learn a bit from Stalin here? Is Ben basically Gandhi? (Answer: Yes of course)How can one be both an idealist and an empiricist? WTF is a 'force'???Instrumentalism and Essentialism The history of the debate between Berkeley and Newton The lifelong feud between Ernst Mach and Ludwig BoltzmanWhat's the difference between essences and unobservables? Is Mach a filthy plagiarist? Who won the essentialism vs instrumentalism debate? (Answer: Neither side won. Popper won.)
ReferencesGo amuse yourselves and watch some videos of Newton's spinning bucket thought experiment. Boltzmanns Atom: The Great Debate That Launched A Revolution In PhysicsQuotesEverybody who reads this list of twenty-one theses must be struck by their modernity. They are surprisingly similar, especially in the criticism of Newton, to the philosophy of physics which Ernst Mach taught for many years in the conviction that it was new and revolutionary; in which he was followed by, for example, Joseph Petzold; and which had an immense influence on modern physics, especially on the Theory of Relativity.
Popper, C&R Chapter 6(20) A general practical result—which I propose to call ‘Berkeley’s razor’—of this analysis of physics allows us a-priori to eliminate from physical science all essentialist explanations. If they have a mathematical and a predictive content they may be admitted qua mathematical hypotheses (while their essentialist interpretation is eliminated). If not, they may be ruled out altogether. This razor is sharper than Ockham’s: all entities are ruled out except those which are perceived.
Popper, C&R Chapter 6No attempt was made to show how or why the forces acted, but gravitation being taken as due to a mere "force", speculators thought themselves at liberty to imagine any number of forces, attractive or repulsive, or alternating, varying as the distance,[4] or the square, cube, or higher power of the distance, etc. At last, Ruđer Bošković[5] got rid of atoms altogether, by supposing them to be the mere centre of forces exerted by a position or point only, where nothing existed but the power of exerting a force.[6]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imponderable_fluidMach's antipathy to theorizing and to the invocation of "metaphysical" and therefore unprovable notions led him to some extreme opinions. In The Conservation of Energy he remarks: "We say now that water consists of hydrogen and oxygen, but this hydrogen and oxygen are merely thoughts or names which, at the sight of water, we keep ready to describe phenomena which are not present but which will appear again whenever, as we say, we decompose water.
David Lindley, Boltzmann's AtomIn Mach's world, there was to be no such thing as "explaining" in the way scientists had always understood it. Mach even went so far as to argue that the traditional notion of cause and effect-that kicking a rock makes it move, that heating a gas makes it expand —was presumptuous and therefore to be denied scientific status.
David Lindley, Boltzmann's AtomBut it was not always so. Well into the latter half of the 19th century, most scientists saw their essential task as the measurement and codification of phenomena they could investigate directly: the passage of sound waves through air, the expansion of gas when heated, the conversion of heat to motive power in a steam engine. A scientific law was a quantitative relationship between one observable phenomenon and another.
David Lindley, Boltzmann's AtomErrataVaden incorrectly said this that this essay was referenced in Mach's wikipedia page. Wrong! Fool! It was Berkeley's wiki page# 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 linkBecome a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here.Click dem like buttons on youtubeDo you have any fluids you'd like us to ponder? Send a sample over to [email protected]
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This week we take a break from our regularly scheduled programming to listen to Ben, Rich, and Cam loutishly pontificate on one of the oldest poems in history. That's right, three fiction noobs take on Homer. Ladies, have you ever wondered what your fella is doing when you're out for the evening? Look no further.
The podcast you're listening to is Do You Even Lit? which you can find on any podcast platform and on youtube. The hosts are Richard Meadows, Cam Peters, and some third guy.
Back to increments in a couple weeks! In the meantime:
find us on twitter at @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani, and @Incrementspod come join our discord channel! Send us a message or an email to get a supersecret link hit those like buttons on youtube to show off your virtuosityShould we switch out Vaden for Rich and Cam? Tell us at [email protected].
Special Guest: Richard Meadows.
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Ben and Vaden test their French skills and have Hugo Mercier on the podcast to discuss who we trust and what we believe. Are humans gullible? Do we fall for propaganda and advertising campaigns? Do we follow expert consensus or forge ahead as independent thinkers? Can Vaden go for one episode without bringing up Trump?
Hugo Mercier is a research director at the CNRS (Institut Jean Nicod, Paris), where he work with the Evolution and Social Cognition team. Check out his two books: The Enigma of Reason and Not Born Yesterday .
We discussMercier's thoughts on the cognitive bias literatureOpen vigilance mechanismsCriticism of the System 1 vs System 2 dichotomyWhy Kahneman misinterpreted the bat and the ball thought experimentDo flat earthers really believe the earth is flat?The Asch conformity experiment Preference falsification vs internalization of professed beliefs How important is social signaling? Trump, MAGA, gullibility, and Tariffs How effective are advertisements? How effective is propaganda? Is social science reforming? ReferencesThe Enigma of Reason by Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber Not Born Yesterday
Our previous episodes on Not Born Yesterday and The Enigma of Reason SocialsFollow us on Twitter at @hugoreasoning, @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasraniCome join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret linkBecome a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here.Click dem like buttons on youtubeHow much system 2 thinking does it take to misunderstand system 1 vs system 2? Tell us at [email protected]
Special Guest: Hugo Mercier.
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Go fund me page for Dr. Alaa Al-Najjar
Please donate here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-dr-alaa-alnajjar-and-her-family-in-gaza
Podcast w/ Dr. Ali Al Najjarhttps://open.spotify.com/episode/2f6twY40sjd0zwT0Eks3NXFurther Readinghttps://www.thesun.ie/news/15281868/sligo-doctor-ali-al-najjar-nieces-nephew-killed-gaza/
Episode Blurb
https://www.thejournal.ie/brother-woman-nine-kids-gaza-6717437-May2025/
https://amp.rte.ie/amp/1515399/
https://www.oceanfm.ie/northwest-today-show/fundraiser-launched-after-sligo-doctors-9-nieces-and-nephews-killed-in-gaza-attack-504443
https://www.oceanfm.ie/news/dail-hears-of-devastation-caused-to-sligo-doctors-family-in-gaza-503064
https://m.independent.ie/regionals/sligo/news/sligo-doctors-nine-nephews-and-nieces-killed-in-devastating-gaza-attack/a121298480.htmlBack with part two of our reaction to What's the most rational way to know?, a discussion between Brett Hall and Peter Boghossian on the relationship between confidence and evidence. Listen to part 1 first, availble here: https://www.incrementspodcast.com/85
It seems weird to try to be funny in this blurb, given the introduction, so going to keep the description lean. Back with our usual lighthearted nonsense next episode!
Check out more from Brett Hall here and Peter Boghossian here.
We discussA falliblist's view of confidenceConfidence as a form of implicit knowledge Problems with attempting to define "knowledge" Can we "derive" moral facts? Being triggered by the word 'derive'ReferencesPaper discussing how it took the wider scientific community over 40 years (after Eddington's experiment!) to become convinced in the truth of general relativity: The 1919 measurement of the deflection of lightEddington's original paper:Vaden and Brett's blog exchange 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 linkBecome a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here.Click dem like buttons on youtubePlease donate to: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-dr-alaa-alnajjar-and-her-family-in-gaza
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We all knew that Vaden would release his inner Youtube debate bro at some point. Well he finally paid Ben enough to do it, and here we are: our first reaction video. Today we're commenting on the video What's the most rational way to know?, a discussion between Brett Hall and Peter Boghossian on the relationship between confidence and evidence. Are we overly confident in our ability to make reaction videos? Evidently.
Check out more from Brett Hall here and Peter Boghossian here.
We discussWhat is the relationship between confidence and evidence? The "formal apparatus of science" vs the "sociology" of science Eddington's famous experiment Why confidence and belief can't be mathematized (But why they are useful nonetheless)Confidence as a function of falsifying experimentsBayesianism vs critical rationalism
ReferencesPaper discussing how it took the wider scientific community over 40 years (after Eddington's experiment!) to become convinced in the truth of general relativity: The 1919 measurement of the deflection of lightEddington's original paper:Vaden and Brett's blog exchange 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 linkBecome a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here.Click dem like buttons on youtubeWhere were you last night, and why do you have condoms in your pocket? Tell us at [email protected].
- Visa fler
