web01.fireside.fm Fri, 10 Apr 2026 03:41:53 -0500 Fireside (https://fireside.fm) Increments - Episodes Tagged with “Empiricism” https://www.incrementspodcast.com/tags/empiricism Thu, 13 Feb 2025 16:15:00 -0800 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. en-us episodic Science, Philosophy, Epistemology, Mayhem Ben Chugg and Vaden Masrani 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. no Philosophy,Science,Ethics,Progress,Knowledge,Computer Science,Conversation,Error-Correction Ben Chugg and Vaden Masrani incrementspodcast@gmail.com #81 - What Does Critical Rationalism Get Wrong? (w/ Kasra) https://www.incrementspodcast.com/81 26aab847-c429-4211-8056-acb0696c4551 Thu, 13 Feb 2025 16:15:00 -0800 Ben Chugg and Vaden Masrani full Ben Chugg and Vaden Masrani 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. 1:39:05 no As whores for criticism, we wanted to have Kasra on to discuss his essay The Deutschian Deadend (https://www.bitsofwonder.co/p/the-deutschian-deadend). Kasra claims that Popper and Deutsch are fundamentally wrong in some important ways, and that many of their ideas will forever remain in the "footnotes of the history of philosophy". Does he change our mind or do we change his? Follow Kasra on twitter (https://x.com/kasratweets) and subscribe to his blog, Bits of Wonder (https://www.bitsofwonder.co/p/the-deutschian-deadend). We discuss Has Popper had of a cultural impact? The differences between Popper, Deutsch, and Deutsch's bulldogs. Is observation really theory laden? The hierarchy of reliability: do different disciplines have different methods of criticism? The ladder of abstractions The difference between Popper and Deutsch on truth and abstraction The Deutschian community's reaction to the essay References Bruce Nielson's podcast on verification and falsification: https://open.spotify.com/episode/38tGZnBlHK3vZHjyLgSs4C Popper on certainty: Chapter 22. Analytical Remarks on Certainty in Objective Knowledge Quotes By the nature of Deutsch and Popper’s ideas being abstract, this essay will also necessarily be abstract. To combat this, let me ground the whole essay in a concrete empirical bet: Popper’s ideas about epistemology, and David Deutsch’s extensions of them, will forever remain in the footnotes of the history of philosophy. Popper’s falsificationism, which was the main idea that he’s widely known for today, will continue to remain the only thing that he’s widely known for. The frustrating fact that Wittgenstein is widely regarded as a more influential philosopher than Popper will continue to remain true. Critical rationalism will never be widely recognized as the “one correct epistemology,” as the actual explanation (or even the precursor to an explanation) of knowledge, progress, and creativity. Instead it will be viewed, like many philosophical schools before it, as a useful and ambitious project that ultimately failed. In other words, critical rationalism is a kind of philosophical deadend: the Deutschian deadend. - Kasra in the Deutschian Deadend There are many things you can directly observe, and which are “manifestly true” to you: what you’re wearing at the moment, which room of your house you’re in, whether the sun has set yet, whether you are running out of breath, whether your parents are alive, whether you feel a piercing pain in your back, whether you feel warmth in your palms—and so on and so forth. These are not perfectly certain absolute truths about reality, and there’s always more to know about them—but it is silly to claim that we have absolutely no claim on their truth either. I also think there are even such “obvious truths” in the realm of science—like the claim that the earth is not flat, that your body is made of cells, and that everyday objects follow predictable laws of motion. - Kasra in the Deutschian Deadend Deutsch writes: Some philosophical arguments, including the argument against solipsism, are far more compelling than any scientific argument. Indeed, every scientific argument assumes the falsity not only of solipsism, but also of other philosophical theories including any number of variants of solipsism that might contradict specific parts of the scientific argument. There are two different mistakes happening here. First, what Deutsch is doing is assuming a strict logical dependency between any one piece of our knowledge and every other piece of it. He says that our knowledge of science (say, of astrophysics) implicitly relies on other philosophical arguments about solipsism, epistemology, and metaphysics. But anyone who has thought about the difference between philosophy and science recognizes that in practice they can be studied and argued about independently. We can make progress on our understanding of celestial mechanics without making any crucial assumption about metaphysics. We can make progress studying neurons without solving the hard problem of consciousness or the question of free will. - Kasra in the Deutschian Deadend, quoting Deutsch on Solipsism At that time I learnt from Popper that it was not scientifically disgraceful to have one's hypothesis falsified. That was the best news I had had for a long time. I was persuaded by Popper, in fact, to formulate my electrical hypotheses of excitatory and inhibitory synaptic transmission so precisely and rigorously that they invited falsification - and, in fact, that is what happened to them a few years later, very largely by my colleagues and myself, when in 1951 we started to do intra- cellular recording from motoneurones. Thanks to my tutelage by Popper, I was able to accept joyfully this death of the brain-child which I had nurtured for nearly two decades and was immediately able to contribute as much as I could to the chemical transmission story which was the Dale and Loewi brain-child. - John C. Eccles on Popper, All Life is Problem Solving, p.12 In order to state the problem more clearly, I should like to reformulate it as follows. We may distinguish here between three types of theory. First, logical and mathematical theories. Second, empirical and scientific theories. Third, philosophical or metaphysical theories. -Popper on the "hierarchy of reliability", C&R p.266 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 (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) Are you a solipsist? If so, send yourself an email over to incrementspodcast@gmail.com. Special Guest: Kasra. philosophy, Popper, Deutsch, abstractions, empiricism As whores for criticism, we wanted to have Kasra on to discuss his essay The Deutschian Deadend. Kasra claims that Popper and Deutsch are fundamentally wrong in some important ways, and that many of their ideas will forever remain in the "footnotes of the history of philosophy". Does he change our mind or do we change his?

Follow Kasra on twitter and subscribe to his blog, Bits of Wonder.

We discuss

  • Has Popper had of a cultural impact?
  • The differences between Popper, Deutsch, and Deutsch's bulldogs.
  • Is observation really theory laden?
  • The hierarchy of reliability: do different disciplines have different methods of criticism?
  • The ladder of abstractions
  • The difference between Popper and Deutsch on truth and abstraction
  • The Deutschian community's reaction to the essay

References

Quotes

By the nature of Deutsch and Popper’s ideas being abstract, this essay will also necessarily be abstract. To combat this, let me ground the whole essay in a concrete empirical bet: Popper’s ideas about epistemology, and David Deutsch’s extensions of them, will forever remain in the footnotes of the history of philosophy. Popper’s falsificationism, which was the main idea that he’s widely known for today, will continue to remain the only thing that he’s widely known for. The frustrating fact that Wittgenstein is widely regarded as a more influential philosopher than Popper will continue to remain true. Critical rationalism will never be widely recognized as the “one correct epistemology,” as the actual explanation (or even the precursor to an explanation) of knowledge, progress, and creativity. Instead it will be viewed, like many philosophical schools before it, as a useful and ambitious project that ultimately failed. In other words, critical rationalism is a kind of philosophical deadend: the Deutschian deadend.
- Kasra in the Deutschian Deadend

There are many things you can directly observe, and which are “manifestly true” to you: what you’re wearing at the moment, which room of your house you’re in, whether the sun has set yet, whether you are running out of breath, whether your parents are alive, whether you feel a piercing pain in your back, whether you feel warmth in your palms—and so on and so forth. These are not perfectly certain absolute truths about reality, and there’s always more to know about them—but it is silly to claim that we have absolutely no claim on their truth either. I also think there are even such “obvious truths” in the realm of science—like the claim that the earth is not flat, that your body is made of cells, and that everyday objects follow predictable laws of motion.

- Kasra in the Deutschian Deadend

Deutsch writes:

Some philosophical arguments, including the argument against solipsism, are far more compelling than any scientific argument. Indeed, every scientific argument assumes the falsity not only of solipsism, but also of other philosophical theories including any number of variants of solipsism that might contradict specific parts of the scientific argument.

There are two different mistakes happening here.
First, what Deutsch is doing is assuming a strict logical dependency between any one piece of our knowledge and every other piece of it. He says that our knowledge of science (say, of astrophysics) implicitly relies on other philosophical arguments about solipsism, epistemology, and metaphysics. But anyone who has thought about the difference between philosophy and science recognizes that in practice they can be studied and argued about independently. We can make progress on our understanding of celestial mechanics without making any crucial assumption about metaphysics. We can make progress studying neurons without solving the hard problem of consciousness or the question of free will.

- Kasra in the Deutschian Deadend, quoting Deutsch on Solipsism

At that time I learnt from Popper that it was not scientifically disgraceful to have one's hypothesis falsified. That was the best news I had had for a long time. I was persuaded by Popper, in fact, to formulate my electrical hypotheses of excitatory and inhibitory synaptic transmission so precisely and rigorously that they invited falsification - and, in fact, that is what happened to them a few years later, very largely by my colleagues and myself, when in 1951 we started to do intra- cellular recording from motoneurones. Thanks to my tutelage by Popper, I was able to accept joyfully this death of the brain-child which I had nurtured for nearly two decades and was immediately able to contribute as much as I could to the chemical transmission story which was the Dale and Loewi brain-child.

- John C. Eccles on Popper, All Life is Problem Solving, p.12

In order to state the problem more clearly, I should like to reformulate it as follows.
We may distinguish here between three types of theory.
First, logical and mathematical theories.
Second, empirical and scientific theories.
Third, philosophical or metaphysical theories.

-Popper on the "hierarchy of reliability", C&R p.266

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.
  • Click dem like buttons on youtube

Are you a solipsist? If so, send yourself an email over to incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

Special Guest: Kasra.

Support Increments

]]> As whores for criticism, we wanted to have Kasra on to discuss his essay The Deutschian Deadend. Kasra claims that Popper and Deutsch are fundamentally wrong in some important ways, and that many of their ideas will forever remain in the "footnotes of the history of philosophy". Does he change our mind or do we change his?

Follow Kasra on twitter and subscribe to his blog, Bits of Wonder.

We discuss

  • Has Popper had of a cultural impact?
  • The differences between Popper, Deutsch, and Deutsch's bulldogs.
  • Is observation really theory laden?
  • The hierarchy of reliability: do different disciplines have different methods of criticism?
  • The ladder of abstractions
  • The difference between Popper and Deutsch on truth and abstraction
  • The Deutschian community's reaction to the essay

References

Quotes

By the nature of Deutsch and Popper’s ideas being abstract, this essay will also necessarily be abstract. To combat this, let me ground the whole essay in a concrete empirical bet: Popper’s ideas about epistemology, and David Deutsch’s extensions of them, will forever remain in the footnotes of the history of philosophy. Popper’s falsificationism, which was the main idea that he’s widely known for today, will continue to remain the only thing that he’s widely known for. The frustrating fact that Wittgenstein is widely regarded as a more influential philosopher than Popper will continue to remain true. Critical rationalism will never be widely recognized as the “one correct epistemology,” as the actual explanation (or even the precursor to an explanation) of knowledge, progress, and creativity. Instead it will be viewed, like many philosophical schools before it, as a useful and ambitious project that ultimately failed. In other words, critical rationalism is a kind of philosophical deadend: the Deutschian deadend.
- Kasra in the Deutschian Deadend

There are many things you can directly observe, and which are “manifestly true” to you: what you’re wearing at the moment, which room of your house you’re in, whether the sun has set yet, whether you are running out of breath, whether your parents are alive, whether you feel a piercing pain in your back, whether you feel warmth in your palms—and so on and so forth. These are not perfectly certain absolute truths about reality, and there’s always more to know about them—but it is silly to claim that we have absolutely no claim on their truth either. I also think there are even such “obvious truths” in the realm of science—like the claim that the earth is not flat, that your body is made of cells, and that everyday objects follow predictable laws of motion.

- Kasra in the Deutschian Deadend

Deutsch writes:

Some philosophical arguments, including the argument against solipsism, are far more compelling than any scientific argument. Indeed, every scientific argument assumes the falsity not only of solipsism, but also of other philosophical theories including any number of variants of solipsism that might contradict specific parts of the scientific argument.

There are two different mistakes happening here.
First, what Deutsch is doing is assuming a strict logical dependency between any one piece of our knowledge and every other piece of it. He says that our knowledge of science (say, of astrophysics) implicitly relies on other philosophical arguments about solipsism, epistemology, and metaphysics. But anyone who has thought about the difference between philosophy and science recognizes that in practice they can be studied and argued about independently. We can make progress on our understanding of celestial mechanics without making any crucial assumption about metaphysics. We can make progress studying neurons without solving the hard problem of consciousness or the question of free will.

- Kasra in the Deutschian Deadend, quoting Deutsch on Solipsism

At that time I learnt from Popper that it was not scientifically disgraceful to have one's hypothesis falsified. That was the best news I had had for a long time. I was persuaded by Popper, in fact, to formulate my electrical hypotheses of excitatory and inhibitory synaptic transmission so precisely and rigorously that they invited falsification - and, in fact, that is what happened to them a few years later, very largely by my colleagues and myself, when in 1951 we started to do intra- cellular recording from motoneurones. Thanks to my tutelage by Popper, I was able to accept joyfully this death of the brain-child which I had nurtured for nearly two decades and was immediately able to contribute as much as I could to the chemical transmission story which was the Dale and Loewi brain-child.

- John C. Eccles on Popper, All Life is Problem Solving, p.12

In order to state the problem more clearly, I should like to reformulate it as follows.
We may distinguish here between three types of theory.
First, logical and mathematical theories.
Second, empirical and scientific theories.
Third, philosophical or metaphysical theories.

-Popper on the "hierarchy of reliability", C&R p.266

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.
  • Click dem like buttons on youtube

Are you a solipsist? If so, send yourself an email over to incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

Special Guest: Kasra.

Support Increments

]]> #43 - Artificial General Intelligence and the AI Safety debate https://www.incrementspodcast.com/43 49557cb4-fb21-4217-84d4-137505705a3e Sun, 28 Aug 2022 15:00:00 -0700 Ben Chugg and Vaden Masrani full Ben Chugg and Vaden Masrani 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. 1:07:50 no Some people think (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/uMQ3cqWDPHhjtiesc/agi-ruin-a-list-of-lethalities) that advanced AI is going to kill everyone. Some people don't (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/31/opinion/superintelligent-artificial-intelligence.html). Who to believe? Fortunately, Ben and Vaden are here to sort out the question once and for all. No need to think for yourselves after listening to this one, we've got you covered. We discuss: - How well does math fit reality? Is that surprising? - Should artificial general intelligence (AGI) be considered "a person"? - How could AI possibly "go rogue?" - Can we know if current AI systems are being creative? - Is misplaced AI fear hampering progress? References: - The Unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics (https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranick/papers/wigner.pdf) - Prohibition on autonomous weapons letter (https://techlaw.uottawa.ca/bankillerai) - Google employee conversation with chat bot (https://cajundiscordian.medium.com/is-lamda-sentient-an-interview-ea64d916d917) - Gary marcus on the Turing test (https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/nonsense-on-stilts) - Melanie Mitchell essay (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2104.12871.pdf). - Did MIRI give up? Their (half-sarcastic?) death with dignity strategy (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/j9Q8bRmwCgXRYAgcJ/miri-announces-new-death-with-dignity-strategy) - Kerry Vaughan on slowing down (https://twitter.com/KerryLVaughan/status/1545423249013620736) AGI development. Contact us - Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani - Check us out on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ - Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Which prompt would you send to GPT-3 in order to end the world? Tell us before you're turned into a paperclip over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com AGI, AI Safety, existential risk, empiricism Some people think that advanced AI is going to kill everyone. Some people don't. Who to believe? Fortunately, Ben and Vaden are here to sort out the question once and for all. No need to think for yourselves after listening to this one, we've got you covered.

We discuss:

  • How well does math fit reality? Is that surprising?
  • Should artificial general intelligence (AGI) be considered "a person"?
  • How could AI possibly "go rogue?"
  • Can we know if current AI systems are being creative?
  • Is misplaced AI fear hampering progress?

References:

Contact us

Which prompt would you send to GPT-3 in order to end the world? Tell us before you're turned into a paperclip over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com

Support Increments

]]> Some people think that advanced AI is going to kill everyone. Some people don't. Who to believe? Fortunately, Ben and Vaden are here to sort out the question once and for all. No need to think for yourselves after listening to this one, we've got you covered.

We discuss:

  • How well does math fit reality? Is that surprising?
  • Should artificial general intelligence (AGI) be considered "a person"?
  • How could AI possibly "go rogue?"
  • Can we know if current AI systems are being creative?
  • Is misplaced AI fear hampering progress?

References:

Contact us

Which prompt would you send to GPT-3 in order to end the world? Tell us before you're turned into a paperclip over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com

Support Increments

]]>