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 6 episodes.
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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!