Increments
Science, Philosophy, Epistemology, Mayhem
About the show
Vaden Masrani, a PhD alum in machine learning at UBC, and Ben Chugg, a PhD student in statistics at CMU, get into trouble arguing about everything except machine learning and statistics. Coherence is somewhere on the horizon.
Bribes, suggestions, love-mail and hate-mail all welcome at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.
Increments on social media
Episodes
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#58 Ask Us Anything V: How to Read and What to Read
November 29th, 2023 | 1 hr 40 mins
anti-rational memes, ask-us-anything, books, e-fuels, veganism
In this episode we finally conclude our AUA series. We cover subjects like "how to read and learn more effectively", "can you change your own interests", "which books/authors have influenced you the most", veganism, rational/anti-rational memes, stoicism, and e-fuels.
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#57 (Bonus) - A calm and soothing discussion of The Patriarchy
November 15th, 2023 | 1 hr 1 min
activism, feminism, progress, sexism, the patriarchy
A sneak preview into what is usually reserved for our patrons! We talk patriachy as causal explanation vs patriarchy as description. Let's get spicy
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#56 - Ask Us Anything IV: Certainty, Emergence, and Popperian Imperatives
November 1st, 2023 | 1 hr 21 mins
ask-us-anything, belief, certainty, confidence, emergence, moral imperatives
Perhaps you thought, in your infinite ignorance, that the release of the previous episode marked the end of the age of the AMA! But nay: the age of the AMA has just begun!
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#55 - Is all thought problem-solving?
October 9th, 2023 | 54 mins 9 secs
consciousness, problem-solving, thought
We return to the argument from last episode: Is all thought problem-solving? This epic showdown might catalyze the next world war, listen accordingly.
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#54 - Ask Us Anything III: Emotional Epistemology
September 18th, 2023 | 1 hr 18 mins
ask-us-anything, emotions, epistemology, problem-solving, thinking, universality
The third of infinite installments in our ask us anything series. We touch on universality, emotions, epistemology, and whether all thinking is problem solving.
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#53 - Ask Us Anything II: Disagreements and Decisions
August 14th, 2023 | 1 hr 34 mins
ask-us-anything, bayesianism, decision-making, disagreements, probability
Ask us anything? Ask us everything! Back at it again with AUA Part 2/N. We wax poetic and wane dramatic on disagreements, decision-making, EA, and probability
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#52 - Ask Us Anything I: Computation and Creativity
July 10th, 2023 | 1 hr 13 mins
ask-us-anything, computation, creativity, universality
Our first ask us anything episode! We get through a whopping ... two questions.
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#51 - Truth, Moose, and Refrigerated Eggplant: Critiquing Chapman's Meta-Rationality
May 29th, 2023 | 1 hr 12 mins
chapman, epistemology, nebulosity, popper, rationality
We discuss David Chapman's work on nebulosity, the correspondence theory of truth, and how it relates to Karl Popper's epistemology.
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#50 - On the Evolutionary Origins of Storytelling, Art, and Science
April 24th, 2023 | 2 hrs 53 secs
artwork, brian boyd, evolution, fiction, myth, stories
Why do humans engage in art and storytelling? For our 50th episode, we explore Brian Boyd's thesis that art evolved from selection pressure to better understand the patterns and information around us.
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#49 - AGI: Could The End Be Nigh? (With Rosie Campbell)
March 22nd, 2023 | 1 hr 24 mins
ai, creativity, existential risks, progress
The delightful Rosie Campbell joins us on the podcast to debate AI, AGI, superintelligence, and rogue computer viruses.
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#48 (C&R Chap. 18) - Utopia and Violence
February 24th, 2023 | 1 hr 41 secs
popper, rationality, utopia, violence
Violent utopias? Utopian violence? Are the rationalists going to destroy the world? Chapter 18 of Conjectures and Refutations coming in hot.
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#47 (Bonus) - Dualism, Reductionism, and Explanation Pancakes
January 16th, 2023 | 1 hr 32 mins
abstractions, dualism, explanations, mind body problem, reductionism
Vaden goes on The Declaration podcast to argue about dualism, the reality of abstractions, emergence, and reductionism.
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#46 (Bonus) - Arguing about probability (with Nick Anyos)
December 19th, 2022 | 1 hr 59 mins
bayesianism, effective altruism, longtermism, probability, statistics
Ben and Vaden make a guest appearance on Nick Anyos' podcast on criticisms of effective altruism. As usual, they end up arguing about probability for most of it.
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#45 - Four Central Fallacies of AI Research (with Melanie Mitchell)
October 31st, 2022 | 53 mins 29 secs
ai, complexity, intelligence
We chat with Melanie Mitchell about our understanding of artificial intelligence, human intelligence, and whether it's reasonable to expect us to be able to build sophisticated human-like automated systems anytime soon.
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#44 - Longtermism Revisited: What We Owe the Future
October 3rd, 2022 | 1 hr 2 mins
effective altruism, ethics, longtermism, philosophy
Could have seen this one coming. We discuss Will MacAskill's new book "What We Owe the Future."
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#43 - Artificial General Intelligence and the AI Safety debate
August 28th, 2022 | 1 hr 7 mins
agi, ai safety, empiricism, existential risk
Is advanced AI going to kill everyone? How close are we to building AGI? Is current AI creative? Put aside your philosophy textbooks, because we have the answers.