The Theory of Anything

Here we move three arguments from social media to the podcast. 1. Given Deutsch’s universal explainer hypothesis, does it make sense to say that men commit more crimes due to testosterone? Are humans only 'approximately' Universal Explainers? 2. Can anything in reality be simulated? What exactly does it mean to be simulated? 3. Is “heat death” a bummer? What would Conan the Cimmerian say?

Discussion on moral progress, knowledge growth, and tolerance for intolerance using Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s essay as a starting point. Analysis of the influence of intolerant minorities on majority populations. Exploration of GMOs, climate change, and the precautionary principle. Examination of wokeism and its connection to intolerance. Debate on the role of intolerance in moral progress.

Ivan Phillips discusses subjective vs objective morality with a focus on Hume's guillotine and the concept of objective morality in alternate realities. They further explore the origin of human morality, the is-ought distinction, heat death in Star Trek, and the role of objectivity in public policy.

This podcast explores the relationship between ChatGPT and artificial general intelligence. It reviews the famous paper on early experiments with GPT-4 and discusses Melanie Mitchell's criticisms. The podcast delves into the origins and benefits of recurrent neural networks, explores the concept of universal explainership, and introduces transformer networks. It highlights the impressive capabilities of chat GPT and its ability to learn from just a few examples. The podcast also explores the various capabilities of chat GPT, including analyzing absurdity, generating creative content, and solving mathematical problems. It discusses the implications of chat GPT for general intelligence and delves into the vague nature of language and AI concepts. The podcast also discusses the scaling hypothesis and its application to human intelligence, as well as the historical context of artificial general intelligence.

This week we have criminologist Brian Boutwell on again for part 2 of our discussion on critical rationalism and social science. Does all science share the same structure? How do you apply Popper's epistemology to social sciences? Are there laws of human nature? If humans are universal explainers, what does it mean to study our behavior? See episode 68 for a summary of Caldwell's "Clarifying Popper" that we discuss.

Bruce Caldwell (a scholar interested in Popper and Hayek) wrote a long paper in the Journal of Economic Literature (March 1991) called 'Clarifying Popper'. In this episode, Bruce Nielson summarizes and discusses Caldwell’s paper on how Popper’s ideas could be applied to economics. How well did Bruce Caldwell do in his goal of clarifying Popper's epistemology? Out next episode is another interview with Brian Boutwell and we discuss this paper a few times. So this summary will help those that don't have access to it. Copy of Bruce Caldwell's "Clarifying Popper"

Our guest Mark Biros, immersed in critical rationalism, discusses his criticisms of popular ideas in the CritRat community. Topics include environmentalism, epistemology, quantum mechanics, social media, optimism, monarchies, cults, and human extinction.

Historian Matt Bowman discusses his new book, The Abduction of Betty and Barney Hill: Alien Encounters, Civil Rights, and the New Age in America. Betty and Barney Hill were one of the first and most famous persons who claimed to be abducted by aliens. Aside from being a story about UFOs, their life story hinges on a complicated relationship with religion, race, politics, science, and psychology in America in the 50s and 60s.

The podcast explores concepts of time, causality, and free will. It discusses David Deutsch's book on time and the multiverse, the limitations of a Paparian framework in science, the concept of time in a block universe, and the relationship between counterfactuals and the multiverse. It also examines the unpredictability of knowledge creation, the effects of communication on the divergence of two worlds, and the arguments for free will in a deterministic world.

Exploring Karl Popper's concept of 'refutation' in scientific theories and its implications. Critiquing the theory that animals don't have feelings. Examining the interchangeability of explanation and theory. Discussing the problem with communism and the importance of empirical content in theories.