Increments

Science, Philosophy, Epistemology, Mayhem

About the show

Vaden Masrani, a senior research scientist in machine learning, and Ben Chugg, a PhD student in statistics, 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

  • #85 (Reaction) - On Confidence and Evidence: Reacting to Brett Hall and Peter Boghossian (Part 1)

    May 8th, 2025  |  1 hr 49 mins
    belief, confidence, epistemology, falsification, reaction video

    Reacting to a discussion about belief, confidence, and epistemology between Brett Hall and Peter Boghossian

  •

    #84 - A Primer on Not Born Yesterday by Hugo Mercier

    April 17th, 2025  |  1 hr 9 mins
    gullibility, mercier, reason, social

    A discussion on Hugo Mercier's Not Born Yesterday.

  • #83 - The Anxious Generation Round II: Alternative Explanations

    March 27th, 2025  |  1 hr 21 mins
    anxious-generation, education, jonathan-haidt, mental-health, pessimism, social-media

    Are there other hypotheses on the rise in self-harm rates among adolescents? Not any good ones, it turns out.

  • #82 - Are Screens Really That Bad? Critiquing Jon Haidt's "The Anxious Generation"

    March 6th, 2025  |  1 hr 52 mins
    anxiety, haidt, mental health, parenting, social-media

    A review of Jonathan Haidt's newest book on social media and adolescent mental health. Are we losing a generation to TikTok, or have social scientists forgotten how to make causal claims?

  •

    #81 - What Does Critical Rationalism Get Wrong? (w/ Kasra)

    February 13th, 2025  |  1 hr 39 mins
    abstractions, deutsch, empiricism, philosophy, popper

    We have Kasra on to discuss his essay "'The Deutschian Deadend," about the ways he thinks the philosophies of Karl Popper and David Deutsch are fundamentally wrong.

  • #80 (C&R Series, Chap. 7) - Dare to Know: Immanuel Kant and the Enlightenment

    January 27th, 2025  |  1 hr 6 mins
    categorical imperative, conjectures and refutations, cosmology, enlightenment, kant, morality, popper, romanticism, transcendental idealism

    Back to the Conjectures and Refutations series. We discuss Immanuel Kant and his contributions to ethics, cosmology, politics, and the Enlightenment.

  •

    #79 (Bonus) - The Mitford Sisters

    December 28th, 2024  |  24 mins 32 secs
    hitler's sex life, the mitford sisters, treachery, unity mitford

    Vaden was invited on to the forthcoming Treacherous Jezebels podcast to discuss Unity Mitford and her family. Ever wonder about Adolf Hitler's sex life? This episode has you covered.

  • #78 - What could Karl Popper have learned from Vladimir Nabokov? (w/ Brian Boyd)

    December 9th, 2024  |  1 hr 39 secs
    art, brian boyd, discovery, literature, nabokov, popper

    Brian Boyd, the foremost expert on both Nabokov and Popper, comes on for a discussion about literature, discovery, and what Nabokov contributed to both.

  • #77 (Bonus) - AI Doom Debate (w/ Liron Shapira)

    November 19th, 2024  |  2 hrs 21 mins
    ai, comedy, creativity, deep learning, existential risk, induction, knowledge, novelty, superintelligence

    Part II of the great debate! Is AI about to kill everyone? Should you cash in on those vacation days now?

  • #76 (Bonus) - Is P(doom) meaningful? Debating epistemology (w/ Liron Shapira)

    November 8th, 2024  |  2 hrs 50 mins
    ai, bayes, belief, epistemology, induction, popper, prediction

    We were invited onto Liron Shapira's "Doom debates" to discuss Bayesian versus Popperian epistemology, AI doom, and superintelligence. Unsurprisingly, we got about one third of the way through the first subject ...

  • #75 - The Problem of Induction, Relitigated (w/ Tamler Sommers)

    October 23rd, 2024  |  1 hr 41 mins
    belief, certainty, deduction, induction, justification, logic, popper

    When Very Bad Wizards meets Very Culty Popperians. Famed philosopher, podcaster, and Kant-hater Tamler Sommers joins the boys for a spirited disagreement over Popper, and whether he solved the Problem of Induction.

  • #74 - Disagreeing about Belief, Probability, and Truth (w/ David Deutsch)

    October 1st, 2024  |  1 hr 32 mins
    belief, certainty, epistemology, mathematics, probability, statistics, truth

    We talk with David Deutsch about whether the concept of belief is a useful lens on human cognition, when probability and statistics are actually useful, and whether he disagrees with Karl Popper about the truth.

  • #73 - The Unfairness of Proportional Representation

    September 13th, 2024  |  1 hr 25 mins
    democracy, first-past-the-post, government, policies, popper, proportional-representation

    We discuss Karl Popper's theory of democracy, and why the first-past-the-post voting system is better than proportional representation.

  • #72 (C&R, Chap. 19: Part II) - On the (alleged) Right of a Nation to Self-Determination

    August 27th, 2024  |  51 mins 18 secs
    conjectures and refutations, nation-state, nationalism, optimism, popper, progress

    Second half of Chapter 19 of Conjectures and Refutations. Can we make it through more than one of Popper's five theses this time? (Hint: No, no we cannot)

  •

    #71 (C&R, Chap 19: Part I) - The History of Our Time: An Optimist's View

    August 2nd, 2024  |  1 hr 12 mins
    conjectures and refutations, evil, good, history, incentives, popper, progress

    A dive into Chapter 19 of Conjectures and Refutations, resulting in an hour long argument between Ben and Vaden about whether people are good, bad, or you know, just signaling.

  • #70 - ... and Bayes Bites Back (w/ Richard Meadows)

    July 9th, 2024  |  1 hr 30 mins
    bayesianism, decision-making, probability, rationality, uncertainty

    Rich comes on to defend Scott Alexander against our criticisms. Are we being unfair? Are the Bayesians simply the Most Rational People (MRP) and we can't handle it?