Increments

Can too much therapy actually make people less resilient? Ben and Vaden examine Abigail Shrier’s Bad Therapy, exploring therapy’s potential side effects, emotional overfocus, suicide screening in children, social-emotional learning, parenting authority, trauma research, and Dr. K’s online mental-health education. They also challenge the book’s sweeping claims and lack of nuance.

Tommy Blanchard, neuroscientist and writer behind Cognitive Wonderland, brings his PhD in decision neuroscience to the table. He breaks down neuroeconomics and the shaky common-currency idea. He questions neat brain mappings, exposes neuro-grifting, and explains when neuroscience truly helps versus when it just decorates claims.

Alex Andorra, a Meta research scientist and creator of the Learning Bayesian Statistics podcast, explains Bayesian thinking and its uses. He covers election forecasting, why latent-skill models make Messi look exceptional, differences between Bayesian and frequentist approaches, the role of priors as prior knowledge, and Bayesian calibration for LLMs and decision-making.

It's only taken us 104 episodes of talking incessantly about Karl Popper to get one of the most important and popular criticisms of falsification: The Duhem-Quine thesis. Should we wrap the podcast here? Is it game over? We discuss Does AI need more economic thinking? The role of background knowledge in conversation The allure of verificationism The Duhem-Quine thesis The role of competing theories in combatting the thesis Are conspiracies the price we pay for independent thinking? References Michael I. Jordan on ML Street Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AREWYbVtX64 Our conversation with Ben Recht: https://www.incrementspodcast.com/91 Quotes People involved in a fruitful critical discussion of a problem often rely, if only unconsciously, upon two things: the acceptance by all parties of the common aim of getting at the truth, or at least nearer to the truth, and a considerable amount of common background knowledge. This does not mean that either of these two things is an indispensable basis of every discussion, or that these two things are themselves ‘a priori’, and cannot be critically discussed in their turn. It only means that criticism never starts from nothing, even though every one of its starting points may be challenged, one at a time, in the course of the critical debate. - C&R, Chap 10 While discussing a problem we always accept (if only temporarily) all kinds of things as unproblematic: they constitute for the time being, and for the discussion of this particular problem, what I call our background knowledge. Few parts of this background knowledge will appear to us in all contexts as absolutely unproblematic, and any particular part of it may be challenged at any time, especially if we suspect that its uncritical acceptance may be responsible for some of our difficulties. But almost all of the vast amount of background knowledge which we constantly use in any informal discussion will, for practical reasons, necessarily remain unquestioned; and the misguided attempt to question it all—that is to say, to start from scratch—can easily lead to the breakdown of a critical debate. (Were we to start the race where Adam started, I know of no reason why we should get any further than Adam did.) - C&R, Chap 10 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 What kind of thinking does this podcast need? Tell us at [email protected] Increments

Robert Wright, author and NonZero host known for books on evolution and philosophy, joins to discuss directionality in evolution and cultural complexity. He weighs AI fear versus awe and whether LLMs grasp meaning. Conversations probe AI as tool or emerging agent, the slingshot analogy, and how training and autonomy shape future risks.

Peter Johansen, founder of the Many Worlds of David Deutsch group and Theory of Anything co-host, and Bruce Nielson, longtime Popperian commentator and podcaster, debate problems in the crit-rat online scene. They trace how Deutschian ideas mix with libertarianism, explore why some deny mental illness, and unpack links between universal-explainer thinking, politics, and cultural memes.

They dig into Popper's idea of verisimilitude and whether theories can be ranked as closer to truth. They unpack Popper's informal intuition and his failed formal measure. They list six ways one theory can be 'truer' than another and explain why the formal project stumbles. They defend why the heuristic still matters and explore Popper's methodological requirements for scientific progress.

They trade provocative thought experiments and taboo hypotheticals, from incest ethics to looksmaxing culture. They debate medical assistance in dying and the ethics of extreme risk-taking like free soloing. Conversations drift to nomadic academic life, Popperian influences, charity choices, and the oddities of fan DMs and financial-domination stories.

Don Robinson, a pseudonymous progressive-libertarian accelerationist, joins to unpack Trump, MAGA dynamics, and political strategy. Conversations cover Trump as a trial-and-error force, why MAGA appeals despite flaws, ICE and immigration enforcement controversies, preference falsification in politics, and whether Popperian incrementalism fits confrontational leadership. Short, sharp takes on risks, accountability, and when rapid change might be justified.

They wrestle with whether we can define truth and if science even approaches it. They compare correspondence, pragmatic, and coherence theories and why some fail. Tarski’s meta-language move and language hierarchies come up as a fix for paradoxes. They also tackle ambiguity, background knowledge, and why demagogic questions can undermine the idea of truth.