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

  • #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.

  • #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.

  • #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.

  • #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.

  • #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.

  • #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.

  • #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."

  • #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.

  • #42 (C&R, Chap 12+13) - Language and the Body-Mind Problem

    July 20th, 2022  |  50 mins 39 secs
    causality, determinism, karl buhler, language, mind-body problem, popper

    We wrestle with chapter 12 and 13 of Conjectures and Refutations, on the topic of the mind-body problem, theories of language, determinism, and causality. This one is a real doozy folks.

  • #41 - Parenting, Epistemology, and EA (w/ Lulie Tanett)

    June 20th, 2022  |  1 hr 18 mins
    bayesianism, critical rationalism, effective altruism, epistemology, rationality

    We're joined by the wonderful Lulie Tanett to talk about effective altruism, pulling spouses out of burning buildings, and why you should prefer critical rationalism to Bayesianism for your mom's sake.

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    #40 - The Myth of The Framework: On the possibility of fruitful discussion

    May 30th, 2022  |  45 mins 31 secs
    conversation, disagreement, framework, karl popper, progress

    We discuss "The Myth of the Framework," an essay by Karl Popper arguing against the thesis that fruitful conversation is impossible unless you share a common framework of beliefs and assumptions.

  • #39 - The Enigma of Reason

    April 27th, 2022  |  1 hr 1 min
    bias, cognitive biases, evolution, psychology, rationality, reason

    A discussion of The Enigma of Reason by Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber.

  • #38 (C&R Series, Ch. 2) - Wittgenstein vs Popper

    March 8th, 2022  |  1 hr 3 mins
    conjectures and refutations, philosophical problems, popper, wittgenstein, wittgenstein's poker

    What made Wittgenstein so angry with Popper that he threatened him with a poker? We analyze Chapter 2 of C&R to find out.

  • #37 - Montessori Education w/ Matt Bateman

    February 16th, 2022  |  1 hr 21 mins
    child development, childhood, education, education reform, maria montessori, work

    We're joined by Matt Bateman, the director of the Montessori think tank Montessorium, to talk all things education.

  • #36 - Analyzing Effective Altruism as a Social Movement

    January 26th, 2022  |  56 mins 15 secs
    core values, cults, effective altruism, groupthink, social movements

    Vaden and Ben debate Effective Altruism and provocatively ask "Is EA a cult?" and come up with a resounding... Kinda. Maybe. It's hard to say.

  • #35 - Climate Change III: Fossil Fuels

    November 29th, 2021  |  47 mins 48 secs
    climate change, energy, energy transitions, fossil fuels, peak oil, shale gas revolution, vaclav smil

    A dive into the science and politics of fossil fuels, guided by the inimitable Vaclav Smil.