Increments
Science, Philosophy, Epistemology, Mayhem
Displaying Episode 1 - 10 of 16 in total of Increments with the tag “popper”.
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#93 (C&R Chap 10, Part I) - An Introduction to Popper's Theory of Content
October 16th, 2025 | 1 hr 47 mins
bayesianism, content, philosophy of science, popper, probability
An introduction to Popper's theory of content, following Chapter 10 of Conjectures and Refutations. Plus a lot of arguing about Bayesianism.
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#89 (C&R, Chap 6) - Berkeley vs Newton: The Battle Over Gravity
July 31st, 2025 | 1 hr 11 mins
atoms, berkeley, boltzman, conjectures and refutations, essentialism, forces, gravity, instrumentalism, mach, newton, popper
We dive into the history of the debate between Bishop Berkeley, Ernst Mach, Ludwig Boltzmann, and Isaac Newton. What is a force? Are they allowed in science? Were the positivists right all along?
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#81 - What Does Critical Rationalism Get Wrong? (w/ Kasra)
February 13th, 2025 | 1 hr 39 mins
abstractions, deutsch, empiricism, philosophy, popper
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.
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#80 (C&R Series, Chap. 7) - Dare to Know: Immanuel Kant and the Enlightenment
January 27th, 2025 | 1 hr 6 mins
categorical imperative, conjectures and refutations, cosmology, enlightenment, kant, morality, popper, romanticism, transcendental idealism
Back to the Conjectures and Refutations series. We discuss Immanuel Kant and his contributions to ethics, cosmology, politics, and the Enlightenment.
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#78 - What could Karl Popper have learned from Vladimir Nabokov? (w/ Brian Boyd)
December 9th, 2024 | 1 hr 39 secs
art, brian boyd, discovery, literature, nabokov, popper
Brian Boyd, the foremost expert on both Nabokov and Popper, comes on for a discussion about literature, discovery, and what Nabokov contributed to both.
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#76 (Bonus) - Is P(doom) meaningful? Debating epistemology (w/ Liron Shapira)
November 8th, 2024 | 2 hrs 50 mins
ai, bayes, belief, epistemology, induction, popper, prediction
We were invited onto Liron Shapira's "Doom debates" to discuss Bayesian versus Popperian epistemology, AI doom, and superintelligence. Unsurprisingly, we got about one third of the way through the first subject ...
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#75 - The Problem of Induction, Relitigated (w/ Tamler Sommers)
October 23rd, 2024 | 1 hr 41 mins
belief, certainty, deduction, induction, justification, logic, popper
When Very Bad Wizards meets Very Culty Popperians. Famed philosopher, podcaster, and Kant-hater Tamler Sommers joins the boys for a spirited disagreement over Popper, and whether he solved the Problem of Induction.
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#73 - The Unfairness of Proportional Representation
September 13th, 2024 | 1 hr 25 mins
democracy, first-past-the-post, government, policies, popper, proportional-representation
We discuss Karl Popper's theory of democracy, and why the first-past-the-post voting system is better than proportional representation.
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#72 (C&R, Chap. 19: Part II) - On the (alleged) Right of a Nation to Self-Determination
August 27th, 2024 | 51 mins 18 secs
conjectures and refutations, nation-state, nationalism, optimism, popper, progress
Second half of Chapter 19 of Conjectures and Refutations. Can we make it through more than one of Popper's five theses this time? (Hint: No, no we cannot)
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#71 (C&R, Chap 19: Part I) - The History of Our Time: An Optimist's View
August 2nd, 2024 | 1 hr 12 mins
conjectures and refutations, evil, good, history, incentives, popper, progress
A dive into Chapter 19 of Conjectures and Refutations, resulting in an hour long argument between Ben and Vaden about whether people are good, bad, or you know, just signaling.