Increments - Episodes Tagged with “Belief”

#87 - Gullibility, Belief, and Conformity (with Hugo Mercier)

Ben Chugg and Vaden Masrani — Fri, 20 Jun 2025 10:15:00 -0700

Ben and Vaden test their French skills and have Hugo Mercier on the podcast to discuss who we trust and what we believe. Are humans gullible? Do we fall for propaganda and advertising campaigns? Do we follow expert consensus or forge ahead as independent thinkers? Can Vaden go for one episode without bringing up Trump?

Hugo Mercier is a research director at the CNRS (Institut Jean Nicod, Paris), where he work with the Evolution and Social Cognition team. Check out his two books: The Enigma of Reason and Not Born Yesterday .

We discuss

Mercier's thoughts on the cognitive bias literature
Open vigilance mechanisms
Criticism of the System 1 vs System 2 dichotomy
Why Kahneman misinterpreted the bat and the ball thought experiment
Do flat earthers really believe the earth is flat?
The Asch conformity experiment
Preference falsification vs internalization of professed beliefs
How important is social signaling?
Trump, MAGA, gullibility, and Tariffs
How effective are advertisements?
How effective is propaganda?
Is social science reforming?

References

The Enigma of Reason by Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber
Not Born Yesterday
Our previous episodes on Not Born Yesterday and The Enigma of Reason

Socials

Follow us on Twitter at @hugoreasoning, @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani
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How much system 2 thinking does it take to misunderstand system 1 vs system 2? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com Special Guest: Hugo Mercier.

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

Ben Chugg and Vaden Masrani — Thu, 08 May 2025 20:00:00 -0700

We all knew that Vaden would release his inner Youtube debate bro at some point. Well he finally paid Ben enough to do it, and here we are: our first reaction video. Today we're commenting on the video What's the most rational way to know?, a discussion between Brett Hall and Peter Boghossian on the relationship between confidence and evidence. Are we overly confident in our ability to make reaction videos? Evidently.

Check out more from Brett Hall here and Peter Boghossian here.

We discuss

What is the relationship between confidence and evidence?
The "formal apparatus of science" vs the "sociology" of science
Eddington's famous experiment
Why confidence and belief can't be mathematized (But why they are useful nonetheless)
Confidence as a function of falsifying experiments
Bayesianism vs critical rationalism

References

Paper discussing how it took the wider scientific community over 40 years (after Eddington's experiment!) to become convinced in the truth of general relativity: The 1919 measurement of the deflection of light
Eddington's original paper:
Vaden and Brett's blog exchange

Socials

Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani
Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link
Become a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here.
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Where were you last night, and why do you have condoms in your pocket? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

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

Ben Chugg and Vaden Masrani — Fri, 08 Nov 2024 14:30:00 -0800

Liron Shapira, host of [Doom Debates], invited us on to discuss Popperian versus Bayesian epistemology and whether we're worried about AI doom. As one might expect knowing us, we only got about halfway through the first subject, so get yourselves ready (presumably with many drinks) for part II in a few weeks! The era of Ben and Vaden's rowdy youtube debates has begun. Vaden is jubilant, Ben is uncomfortable, and the world has never been more annoyed by Popperians.

Follow Liron on twitter (@liron) and check out the Doom Debates youtube channel and podcast.

We discuss

Whether we're concerned about AI doom
Bayesian reasoning versus Popperian reasoning
Whether it makes sense to put numbers on all your beliefs
Solomonoff induction
Objective vs subjective Bayesianism
Prediction markets and superforecasting

References

Vaden's blog post on Cox's Theorem and Yudkowsky's claims of "Laws of Rationality": https://vmasrani.github.io/blog/2021/the_credence_assumption/
Disproof of probabilistic induction (including Solomonov Induction): https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.00749
EA Post Vaden Mentioned regarding predictions being uncalibrated more than 1yr out: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/hqkyaHLQhzuREcXSX/data-on-forecasting-accuracy-across-different-time-horizons#Calibrations
Article by Gavin Leech and Misha Yagudin on the reliability of forecasters: https://ifp.org/can-policymakers-trust-forecasters/
Superforecaster p(doom) is ~1%: https://80000hours.org/2024/09/why-experts-and-forecasters-disagree-about-ai-risk/#:~:text=Domain%20experts%20in%20AI%20estimated,by%202100%20(around%2090%25).
The existential risk persuasion tournament https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-extinction-tournament
Some more info in Ben's article on superforecasting: https://benchugg.com/writing/superforecasting/
Slides on Content vs Probability: https://vmasrani.github.io/assets/pdf/popper_good.pdf

Socials

Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani, @liron
Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link
Trust in the reverend Bayes and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here.
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What's your credence that the second debate is as fun as the first? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com
Special Guest: Liron Shapira.

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

Ben Chugg and Vaden Masrani — Wed, 23 Oct 2024 09:00:00 -0700

When Very Bad Wizards meets Very Culty Popperians. We finally decided to have a real life professional philosopher on the pod to call us out on our nonsense, and are honored to have on Tamler Sommers, from the esteemed Very Bad Wizards podcast, to argue with us about the Problem of Induction. Did Popper solve it, or does his proposed solution, like all the other attempts, "fail decisively"?

(Warning: One of the two hosts maaay have revealed their Popperian dogmatism a bit throughout this episode. Whichever host that is - they shall remain unnamed - apologizes quietly and stubbornly under their breath.)

Check out Tamler's website, his podcast (Very Bad Wizards), or follow him on twitter (@tamler).

We discuss

What is the problem of induction?
Whether regularities really exist in nature
The difference between certainty and justification
Popper's solution to the problem of induction
If whiskey will taste like orange juice next week
What makes a good theory?
Why prediction is secondary to explanation for Popper
If science and meditiation are in conflict
The boundaries of science

References

Errata

Vaden mentions in the episode how "Einstein's theory is better because it can explain earth's gravitational constant". He got some of the details wrong here - it's actually the inverse square law, not the gravitational constant. Listen to Edward Witten explain it much better here.

Socials

Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani, @tamler
Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link
Trust in our regularity and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here.
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If you are a Very Bad Wizards listener, hello! We're exactly like Tamler and David, except younger. Come join the Cult of Popper over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com

Image credit: From this Aeon essay on Hume. Illustration by Petra Eriksson at Handsome Frank. Special Guest: Tamler Sommers.

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

Ben Chugg and Vaden Masrani — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 09:30:00 -0700

What do you do when one of your intellectual idols comes on the podcast? Bombard them with disagreements of course. We were thrilled to have David Deutsch on the podcast to discuss whether the concept of belief is a useful lens on human cognition, when probability and statistics should be deployed, and whether he disagrees with Karl Popper on abstractions, the truth, and nothing but the truth.

Follow David on Twitter (@DavidDeutschOxf) or find his website here.

We discuss

Whether belief is a fruitful lens through which to analyze ideas
Whether a non-quantitative form of belief can be defended
How does belief bottom out epistemologically?
Whether statistics and probability are useful
Where should statistics and probability be used in practice?
The Popper-Miller theorem
Statements vs propositions and their relevance for truth
Whether Popper and Deutsch disagree about truth

References

The Popper-Miller theorem. See the original paper
David's 2021 talk on the correspondence theory of truth
David's talk on physics without probability.
Hempel's paradox
The Beginning of Infinity
Knowledge and the Body-Mind Problem

Socials

Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani, @DavidDeutschOxf
Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link
Believe in us and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here.
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What's the truth about your belief on the probability of useful statistics? Tell us over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com. Special Guest: David Deutsch.

#56 - Ask Us Anything IV: Certainty, Emergence, and Popperian Imperatives

Ben Chugg and Vaden Masrani — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 09:00:00 -0700

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 my friends, the age of the AMA has just begun! We'll answer your questions until the cows come home; until Godot arrives; until all the world's babies are potty-trained. Or, at least, until we stop laughing.

We discuss

Potty training, taking babies seriously, and adult diapers
Why Vaden never daydreams, fantasizes, or minds spending 10 hours in a car
Whether the subjective notions of certainty, belief, or confidence deserve a spot in the objective world of epistemology
Whether sports are authoritarian
Whether spreading Popper's epistemology is a moral imperative
The role of school and educational institutions
Whether emergence is the result of the interplay between physical reality and the reality of abstraction

Questions

(Tom) Can any thinking take place completely independent of any certainty (explicitly acknowledged or inexplicit) whatsoever? Or can we introduce alternative terms to 'certainty' and 'confidence' to describe how individuals process their convictions, consent, and agreement? If 'certainty' and 'confidence' connote justificationism, can a fallibilist dismiss these terms entirely?
(Tom) Can fallibilism, anti-authoritarianism, anti-justificationism, and critical rationalism overall operate effectively in the highly competitive space of sports, especially professional sports?
(Andrew) If our best theory of how to make rapid progress comes from Popper's epistemology, should making it more widely known/understood be considered a moral imperative? If not, why? If so, thoughts?
(Andrew) This one has been hanging about in my notes for a couple of years so I'm not sure it's a great question any more, but something zingy about the interplay between reality, abstractions and their effects on each other has pushed me to add it here: Is emergence the result of the interplay between physical reality and the reality of abstractions?

Socials

Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani
Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link
Help us pay for diapers and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help with Diarrhea removal here).
Click dem like buttons on youtube over hur.

Who is more annoying in the mornings? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com

#2 - Consequentialism II: Strange Beliefs

Ben Chugg and Vaden Masrani — Thu, 21 May 2020 18:00:00 -0700

An attempt to clean up the mess we made last episode. Ben still doesn't figure out how not to yell into his microphone, and Vaden finally realizes what Ben was saying and it was … perhaps not so interesting in the first place? Ben, all too pleased with himself, starts yammering on about future generations. Should we care? God — we promise that next week we’ll try to stick to whichever subject we pick.

References:

Why the long-term future matters, podcast with Toby Ord.

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#1 - Consequentialism I: Epistemic Modesty

Ben Chugg and Vaden Masrani — Thu, 21 May 2020 16:00:00 -0700

We attempt to talk about Epistemic Modesty: broadly, the idea that one should be modest in their beliefs when other people (with similar credentials) disagree with them. Vaden however, entirely immodestly, tries abandoning the subject because he’s scared of Ben’s forceful arguments and derails the conversation on to the entirely uncontroversial subject of which systems of moral decision making are best suited for moral progress. A flabbergasted Ben tries to keep up, but too little too late. Most of the time he's just trying to get his microphone to behave anyway.

References:

In defence of epistemic modesty; Greg Lewis.
Against Modest Epistemology; Eliezer Yudkowski.
Podcast with Will MacAskill on moral uncertainty.