Bruce Nielson
Special guest
Bruce works as a software and machine learning engineer. He holds an MS in Machine Learning from Georgia Tech and a BS in computer science from Brigham Young. He's interested in Popperian and Deutschian epistemology and hosts the Theory of Anything Podcast.
Bruce Nielson has been a guest on 7 episodes.
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#102 - Criticizing Crit-rats (w/ Bruce Nielson and Peter Johansen)
May 12th, 2026 | 1 hr 46 mins
bad ideas, criticial rationalis, criticism, karl popper, philosophy, tribe
We turn on our own tribe and criticize some of the bad memes that have engulfed the online critical rationalist community
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#68 - Libertarianism IV: Political Issues (w/ Bruce Nielson)
May 30th, 2024 | 1 hr 50 mins
counterfactuals, libertarianism, metaphysics, politics
In our last libertarianism episode we tackle the remaining part of Scott's FAQ: Political issues! Can government ever do anything right? How should we think about that question? Is Scott being fair to libertarians?
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#67 - Libertarianism III: Social Issues (w/ Bruce Nielson)
May 9th, 2024 | 1 hr 45 mins
just desserts, libertarianism, regulation, social mobility, taxation
Back for part III of libertarianism series, when we find out if poor people deserve to be poor!
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#65 - Libertarianism II: Economic Issues (w/ Bruce Nielson)
March 28th, 2024 | 1 hr 33 mins
coercion, coordination-problems, externalities, irrationality, libertarianism, non-aggression-principle
In our second episode on Libertarianism, we finally dive into the meat of Scott Alexander's excellent critique, and cover four major flaws with the libertarian position - externalities, coordination problems, irrational choices, and lack of information. Buckle up.
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#64 - Libertarianism I: Intro and Moral Issues (w/ Bruce Nielson)
March 6th, 2024 | 1 hr 52 mins
incrementalism, libertarianism, morality, politics
First episode in a series on libertarianism. Coercion, taxation, freedom, liberty, every annoying keyword you've ever heard! Let's have it out.
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#62 (Bonus) - The Principle of Optimism (Vaden on the Theory of Anything Podcast)
January 31st, 2024 | 2 hrs 45 mins
constraints, epistemology, optimism, physics, progress
Listen to Vaden's dulcet tones on Bruce Nielson's Theory of Anything Podcast discussing the principle of optimism.
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#60 - Creativity and Computational Universality (with Bruce Nielson)
January 3rd, 2024 | 1 hr 58 mins
chaos theory, creativity, determinism, turing-completeness, universality
Bruce Nielsen makes his first appearance on the podcast to push us on machine intelligence and creativity, computational universality, Roger Penrose, and everything in between!