Check out Scott's website and his blog, Shtetl Optimized.

We discuss

• Scott view's on education. Should we radically reform K-12?
• Is ChatGPT changing Scott's approach to teaching
• The religion of "justa-ism"
• Is AI just a tool?
• Is there any principle which lets us say that AI won't be as general as humans?
• Aaronson's thesis of Artificial Intelligence
• Computational universality vs explanatory universality
• The many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics

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

Have you been converted? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com

Special Guest: Scott Aaronson.

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

We discuss

• Definitions of "new knowledge"
• The reliance of deep learning on induction
• Can AIs be creative?
• The limits of statistical prediction
• Predictions of what deep learning cannot accomplish
• Can ChatGPT write funny jokes?
• Trends versus principles
• The psychological consequences of doomerism

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
• The world is going to end soon, might as well 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.
• Click dem like buttons on youtube

Was Vaden's two week anti-debate bro reeducation camp successful? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com

Special Guest: Liron Shapira.

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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.
• Click dem like buttons on youtube

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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Oh, and we also discuss, in admittedly frustrated tones, the failed blog exchange between Brett Hall and Vaden on prediction and Austrianism. If you want the full listening experience, we suggest reading both posts before hearing our kvetching:

• Vaden's post
• Brett's "response"

Hold on to your hats for this one listeners, because she starts off rather spicy.

We discuss

• Why Kant believed in the truth of Newtonian mechanics
• Newton and his assertion that he arrived at his theory via induction
• Why this isn't true and is logically impossible
• Was Copernicus influenced by Platonic ideals?
• How Kepler came up with the idea of elliptical orbits
• Why finite observations are always compatible with infinitely many theories
• Kant's paradox and his solution
• Popper's updated solution to Kant's paradox
• The irrefutability of philosophical theories
• How can we say that irrefutable theories are false?
• Annnnnd perhaps a few cheap shots here and there about Austrian Economics as well. # References
• Some background history on Copernicus and why Ben thinks Popper is wrong

Quotes

Listening to this statement you may well wonder how I can possibly hold a theory to be false and irrefutable at one and the same time—I who claim to be a rationalist. For how can a rationalist say of a theory that it is false and irrefutable? Is he not bound, as a rationalist, to refute a theory before he asserts that it is false? And conversely, is he not bound to admit that if a theory is irrefutable, it is true?

Now if we look upon a theory as a proposed solution to a set of problems, then the theory immediately lends itself to critical discussion—even if it is non-empirical and irrefutable. For we can now ask questions such as, Does it solve the problem? Does it solve it better than other theories? Has it perhaps merely shifted the problem? Is the solution simple? Is it fruitful? Does it perhaps contradict other philosophical theories needed for solving other problems?

Because, as you [Kant] said, we are not passive receptors of sense data, but active organisms. Because we react to our environment not always merely instinctively, but sometimes con- sciously and freely. Because we can invent myths, stories, theories; because we have a thirst for explanation, an insatiable curiosity, a wish to know. Because we not only invent stories and theories, but try them out and see whether they work and how they work. Because by a great effort, by trying hard and making many mistakes, we may sometimes, if we are lucky, succeed in hitting upon a story, an explanation, which ‘saves the phenomena’; perhaps by making up a myth about ‘invisibles’, such as atoms or gravitational forces, which explain the visible. Because knowledge is an adventure of ideas. These ideas, it is true, are produced by us, and not by the world around us; they are not merely the traces of repeated sensations or stimuli or what not; here you were right. But we are more active and free than even you believed; for similar observations or similar environmental situations do not, as your theory implied, produce similar explanations in different men. Nor is the fact that we create our theories, and that we attempt to impose them upon the world, an explanation of their success, as you believed. For the overwhelming majority of our theories, of our freely invented ideas, are unsuccessful; they do not stand up to searching tests, and are discarded as falsified by experience. Only a very few of them succeed, for a time, in the competitive struggle for survival.
\
C&R Chapter 2

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 fund more hour-long blog posts and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover anger management here.
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Would you rather be wrong or boring? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com

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• Wiki on scientific laws
• Hume's dialogues concerning natural religion  
• Proof of the impossibility of probability induction 
• One of the YouTube videos on induction. 

And in case you were wondering what happened to the two unfalsifiable theories Popper attacks in this chapter, you'll be pleased to know that they have merged into a super theory. We give you Psychoanalytic-Marxism: http://oldsite.english.ucsb.edu/faculty/janmohamed/Psychoanalytic-Marxism.pdf.

Sent us your favorite unfalsifiable theory at incrementspodcast@gmail.com

audio updated: 29/08/2021

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• Vaden's  Slides on a 1975 paper by Irving John Good titled Explicativity, Corroboration, and the Relative Odds of Hypotheses. The paper is I.J. Good’s response to Karl Popper, and in the presentation I compare the two philosophers’ views on probability, epistemology, induction, simplicity, and content.
• Diversity in Interpretations of Probability: Implications for Weather Forecasting
• Andrew Gelman, Philosophy and the practice of Bayesian statistics
• Popper quote: "Those who identify confirmation with probability must believe that a high degree of probability is desirable. They implicitly accept the rule: ‘Always choose the most probable hypothesis!’ Now it can be easily shown that this rule is equivalent to the following rule: ‘Always choose the hypothesis which goes as little beyond the evidence as possible!’ And this, in turn, can be shown to be equivalent, not only to ‘Always accept the hypothesis with the lowest content (within the limits of your task, for example, your task of predicting)!’, but also to ‘Always choose the hypothesis which has the highest degree of ad hoc character (within the limits of your task)!’" (Conjectures and Refutations p.391) 

Get in touch at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

audio updated 13/12/2020

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