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.
• Click dem like buttons on youtube

What's your credence that the second debate is as fun as the first? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com

Special Guest: Liron Shapira.

Support Increments

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.
• Click dem like buttons on youtube

Would you rather be wrong or boring? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com

Support Increments

• What historicism is and why it sucks
• Prediction vs prophecy
• Differences between the physical sciences and social sciences
• The success of prediction in the physical sciences
• The role of the social sciences
• What are laws of nature?

Plus a little easter egg! As always send us a little sumptin' sumptin' at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

Quotes:
"In memory of the countless men, women and children of all creeds or nations or races who fell victims to the fascist and communist belief in Inexorable Laws of Historical Destiny."
- Epigraph of The Poverty of Historicism

"It was not by mere chance that the first forms of civilisation arose where the Aryan came into contact with inferior races, subjugated them and forced them to obey his command. The members of the inferior race became the first mechanical tools in the service of a growing civilisation. Thereby the way was clearly indicated which the Aryan had to follow.

As a conqueror, he subjugated inferior races and turned their physical powers into organised channels under his own leadership, forcing them to follow his will and purpose.

By imposing on them a useful, though hard, manner of employing their powers, he not only spared the lives of those whom he had conquered, but probably made their lives easier than they had been in the former state of so-called 'freedom.'" (italics added)
- Mein Kampf (The Stalag Edition), Chapter XI: Nation and Race

“But it is clear that the adoption of the conspiracy theory can hardly be avoided by those who believe that they know how to make heaven on earth. The only explanation for their failure to produce this heaven is the malevolence of the devil who has a vested interest in hell.”
- Conjectures and Refutations, Chapter 16: Prediction and Prophecy in the Social Sciences

Support Increments