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.

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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.

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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.

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(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

• Very Bad Wizards episode on induction
• The problem of induction, by Wesley Salmon
• Hume on induction

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.

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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.

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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

1. (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?

2. (Tom) Can fallibilism, anti-authoritarianism, anti-justificationism, and critical rationalism overall operate effectively in the highly competitive space of sports, especially professional sports?

3. (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?

4. (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

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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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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.  

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