Matthew Adelstein, better known as Bentham’s Bulldog on Substack, is a philosophy major at the University of Michigan and an up & coming public intellectual.
He’s a rare combination: Effective Altruist, Bayesian, non-reductionist, theist.
Our debate covers reductionism, evidence for god, the implications of a fine-tuned universe, moral realism, and AI doom.
00:00 Introduction
02:56 Matthew’s Research
11:29 Animal Welfare
16:04 Reductionism vs. Non-Reductionism Debate
39:53 The Decline of God in Modern Discourse
46:23 Religious Credences
50:24 Pascal's Wager and Christianity
56:13 Are Miracles Real?
01:10:37 Fine-Tuning Argument for God
01:28:36 Cellular Automata
01:34:25 Anthropic Principle
01:51:40 Mathematical Structures and Probability
02:09:35 Defining God
02:18:20 Moral Realism
02:21:40 Orthogonality Thesis
02:32:02 Moral Philosophy vs. Science
02:45:51 Moral Intuitions
02:53:18 AI and Moral Philosophy
03:08:50 Debate Recap
03:12:20 Show Updates
Show Notes
Matthew’s Substack: https://benthams.substack.com
Matthew's Twitter: https://x.com/BenthamsBulldog
Matthew's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@deliberationunderidealcond5105
Lethal Intelligence Guide, the ultimate animated video introduction to AI x-risk – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CUFbqh16Fg
PauseAI, the volunteer organization I’m part of — https://pauseai.info/
Join the PauseAI Discord — https://discord.gg/2XXWXvErfA — and say hi to me in the #doom-debates-podcast channel!
Doom Debates’ Mission is to raise mainstream awareness of imminent extinction from AGI and build the social infrastructure for high-quality debate.
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