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Back to the Conjectures and Refutations series, after a long hiatus! Given all that's happening in the world and the associated rampant pessimism, we thought it would be appropriate to tackle Chapter 19 - A History of Our Time: An Optimist's View. We get through a solid fifth of the chapter, at which point Ben and Vaden start arguing about whether people are fundamentally good, fundamentally bad, or fundamentally driven by signalling and incentives. And we finally answer the all-important question on everyone's mind: Does Adolf Eichmann support defunding the police? Banal Lives Matter. We discuss Thoughts on the recent Trump assasination attempt How can Popper be an optimist with prophesying about the future? The scarcity value of optimism Russell's view that our intellectual development has outrun our moral development Relationship of this view to the orthogonality thesis Popper's competing view that our troubles arise because we are good but stupid How much can incentives compel us to do bad things? How easy it for humans to really be led by the nose Ben's experience during the summer of 2020 References Conjectures and Refutations Orthogonality thesis Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt Adam Smith's thought experiment about losing a pinky Radiolab episode, "The Bad Show" Quotes Now I come to the word ‘Optimist’. First let me make it quite clear that if I call myself an optimist, I do not wish to suggest that I know anything about the future. I do not wish to pose as a prophet, least of all as a historical prophet. On the contrary, I have for many years tried to defend the view that historical prophecy is a kind of quackery. I do not believe in historical laws, and I disbelieve especially in anything like a law of progress. In fact, I believe that it is much easier for us to regress than to progress. Though I believe all this, I think that I may fairly describe myself as an optimist. For my optimism lies entirely in my interpretation of the present and the immediate past. It lies in my strongly appreciative view of our own time. And whatever you might think about this optimism you will have to admit that it has a scarcity value. In fact the wailings of the pessimists have become somewhat monotonous. No doubt there is much in our world about which we can rightly complain if only we give our mind to it; and no doubt it is sometimes most important to find out what is wrong with us. But I think that the other side of the story might also get a hearing. And whatever you might think about this optimism you will have to admit that it has a scarcity value. In fact the wailings of the pessimists have become somewhat monotonous. No doubt there is much in our world about which we can rightly complain if only we give our mind to it; and no doubt it is sometimes most important to find out what is wrong with us. But I think that the other side of the story might also get a hearing. We have become very clever, according to Russell, indeed too clever. We can make lots of wonderful gadgets, including television, high-speed rockets, and an atom bomb, or a thermonuclear bomb, if you prefer. But we have not been able to achieve that moral and political growth and maturity which alone could safely direct and control the uses to which we put our tremendous intellectual powers. This is why we now find ourselves in mortal danger. Our evil national pride has prevented us from achieving the world-state in time.To put this view in a nutshell: we are clever, perhaps too clever, but we are also wicked; and this mixture of cleverness and wickedness lies at the root of our troubles. My first thesis is this. We are good, perhaps a little too good, but we are also a little stupid; and it is this mixture of goodness and stupidity which lies at the root of our troubles. The main troubles of our time—and I do not deny that we live in troubled times—are not due to our moral wickedness, but, on the contrary, to our often misguided moral enthusiasm: to our anxiety to better the world we live in. Our wars are fundamentally religious wars; they are wars between competing theories of how to establish a better world. And our moral enthusiasm is often misguided, because we fail to realize that our moral principles, which are sure to be over-simple, are often difficult to apply to the complex human and political situations to which we feel bound to apply them. (All Popper) “The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.” - EO Wilson 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 calibrate our credences 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 do Benny Chugg and Adolf Eichmann have in common? I mean, what don't they have in common? Tell us over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com. Support Increments

Richard Meadows, a finance journalist and author of "Optionality: How to Survive and Thrive in a Volatile World," dives into the nuances of Bayesian reasoning. He questions whether Bayesian rationality is the best way to navigate uncertainty and discusses its cultural influence in contrast to other approaches. The conversation touches on the differences between truth and certainty, the nature of evidence in science, and the importance of open-mindedness in belief formation. Meadows challenges listeners to rethink their views and engage with these complex ideas.

This discussion takes a critical dive into Bayesian versus frequentist probabilities, questioning Scott Alexander's arguments and their implications for communication. The hosts explore the intricacies of probability modeling and the pitfalls of overconfidence in probabilistic reasoning, especially in high-stakes situations. They also tackle controversial therapies, reflecting on societal views toward individuals with pedophilic attractions. Additionally, the nuances of super forecasting and the challenges within AI discussions reveal the complexities surrounding probability interpretation.

The final part in a series which has polarized the nation. We tackle -- alongside Bruce Nielson as always -- the remaining part of Scott's FAQ: Political Issues. Can the government get anything right? Has Scott strawmanned the libertarian argument in this section? Is libertarianism an economic theory, a political theory, a metaphysical theory, or a branch of physics? And what do Milton and Ludwig have to say about all this? Warning: we get a little meta with this one... We discuss Is the government effective at doing anything? What's the use of thinking counterfactually? Is it just market failures all the way down? Three kinds of anarcho-capitalists The economic calculation problem Is an economic theory necessarily political? What to make of the claim that austrian economics is like physics But wait, isn't it also metaphysics? References Scott's FAQ Napolean science funding: Canned food More readings Bruce's Theory of Anything Pod and on twitter at @bnielson01 Vaden's blog posts on Libertarianism: First: Is Austrian Economics the Best Explanation of Economics? Second: Can we predict human behaviour? A discussion with Brett Hall Quotes The Argument: Government can’t do anything right. Its forays into every field are tinged in failure. Whether it’s trying to create contradictory “state owned businesses”, funding pet projects that end up over budget and useless, or creating burdensome and ridiculous “consumer protection” rules, its heavy-handed actions are always detrimental and usually embarrassing. ... The Counterargument: Government sometimes, though by no means always, does things right, and some of its institutions and programs are justifiably considered models of efficiency and human ingenuity. There are various reasons why people are less likely to notice these. - Scott's FAQ 7.1.1: Okay, fine. But that’s a special case where, given an infinite budget, they were able to accomplish something that private industry had no incentive to try. And to their credit, they did pull it off, but do you have any examples of government succeeding at anything more practical? Eradicating smallpox and polio globally, and cholera and malaria from their endemic areas in the US. Inventing the computer, mouse, digital camera, and email. Building the information superhighway and the regular superhighway. Delivering clean, practically-free water and cheap on-the-grid electricity across an entire continent. Forcing integration and leading the struggle for civil rights. Setting up the Global Positioning System. Ensuring accurate disaster forecasts for hurricanes, volcanoes, and tidal waves. Zero life-savings-destroying bank runs in eighty years. Inventing nuclear power and the game theory necessary to avoid destroying the world with it. 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 think counterfactually 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 How much would you like to pay for a fresh gulp of air? Tell us over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com. Special Guest: Bruce Nielson.Support Increments

Have you ever wanted to be more rich? Have you considered just working a bit harder? Welcome to part III of our libertarian series, where we discuss Part B: Social Issues of Scott Alexander's Anti-Libertarian FAQ, which critiques the libertarian view that if you're rich, you deserve it, and if you're poor, well, you deserve that too. As always, the estimable Bruce Nielson (@bnielson) helps guide is through the thorny wicket of libertarian thought. We discuss Do the poor deserve to be poor? Waddabout the rich? Is dogmatism ever a good thing? Is social mobility determined in part by parental wealth? Is this due to genetics, culture, upbringing or something else? The chances of escaping the lower class Does government regulation increase social mobility? Why progressive taxation makes sense References David Friedman's response Bruce's Theory Of Anything podcast Popperian/Deutschian FB group: Many Worlds of David Deutsch On dogmatism: Bruce's episode: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/episodes/Episode-51-Was-Karl-Popper-Dogmatic-e1obs0m/a-a2hb64g Ben's blog post: https://benchugg.com/writing/dogmatism/ Vaden's blog posts on Libertarianism: First: Is Austrian Economics the Best Explanation of Economics? Second: Can we predict human behaviour? A discussion with Brett Hall Quotes The Argument: Those who work hardest (and smartest) should get the most money. Not only should we not begrudge them that money, but we should thank them for the good they must have done for the world in order to satisfy so many consumers. People who do not work hard should not get as much money. If they want more money, they should work harder. Getting more money without working harder or smarter is unfair, and indicative of a false sense of entitlement. Unfortunately, modern liberal society has internalized the opposite principle: that those who work hardest are greedy people who must have stolen from those who work less hard, and that we should distrust them at until they give most of their ill-gotten gains away to others. The “progressive” taxation system as it currently exists serves this purpose. This way of thinking is not only morally wrong-headed, but economically catastrophic. Leaving wealth in the hands of the rich would “make the pie bigger”, allowing the extra wealth to “trickle down” to the poor naturally. The Counterargument: Hard work and intelligence are contributory factors to success, but depending on the way you phrase the question, you find you need other factors to explain between one-half and nine-tenths of the difference in success within the United States; within the world at large the numbers are much higher. If a poor person can’t keep a job solely because she was lead-poisoned from birth until age 16, is it still fair to blame her for her failure? And is it still so unthinkable to take a little bit of money from everyone who was lucky enough to grow up in an area without lead poisoning, and use it to help her and detoxify her neighborhood? 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 maintain poverty traps 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 Do your part to increase social mobility by sending your hard-earned money to: incrementspodcast@gmail.com Special Guest: Bruce Nielson.Support Increments

What do you get when you mix nerds and sex research? A deep dive into the world of fetish statistics, men's calibration about women's sexual preferences, and the crazy underground world of financial domination. Stay tuned as Aella walks the boys through the world of gangbangs, camming, OnlyFans, escorting, findom, and even live-tests Vaden's wild hypothesis against her huge, thick, dataset. We discuss How to describe what Aella does Aella's bangin' birthday party The state of sex research Conservative and neo-trad pushback and whether Aella is immune from cancellation Are men calibrated when it comes to predicting women's sexual preferences? The wild world of findom (financial domination) Is findom addiction worse than other addictions? Differences between camming and OnlyFans Can a fetish ever be considered self-harm? Plus some live hypothesis testing! Does Vaden's hypothesis survive...? Aella's forthcoming journal based on Rationalist principles References from the ep Aella's good at sex series Aella's website Aella's blogpost on Fetish Tabooness vs Popularity "I spent $3,400 in a single day on financial domination": financial-domination addict James Clip starts at 12:25 Findom Addicts Anonymous Fetlife bans Findom Domme won't let me quit (unethical), addicted to findom, please help | Reddit I don't feel bad for subs that are addicted to findom. Findom References (additional sources used for episode prep that weren't mention in the episode) Random Men Pay My Bills | BBC Podcast Interview with a Recovering Paypig - A Financial Domination Addict FINDOM is not FEMDOM Confessions of a 'Pay Pig': Why I Give Away Money to Dominant Women I Meet Online Special Episode on Findoms... | The Kink Perspective Podcast She Gets Paid Just to Humiliate Her Fans | New York Times 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 put heads in toilets 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 Send us $500 and call us your Queen, you steaming pile of s***: incrementspodcast@gmail.com Special Guest: Aella.Support Increments

Bruce Nielson, an economic expert, discusses libertarian economic issues in this podcast. Topics include coercion, non-aggression principle, externalities, boycotts, irrational choices, and lack of information. The conversation delves into the distinctions between conservatives and libertarians, exploring the nuances of economic critiques within the libertarian view.

A libertarian expert Bruce Nielson discusses varieties of libertarianism, taxation as theft, public goods issues, and the concept of a perfect libertarian society. They explore George's role in helping government respect property rights, the complexities of the libertarian utopia, and taxes as membership fees. The podcast delves into the intersection of libertarianism and homeowners associations, highlighting coercion, consent, and incrementalism in reducing government involvement.

Close your eyes, and think of a bright and pristine, clean and immaculately run recycling center, green'r than a giant's thumb. Now think of a dirty, ugly, rotting landfill, stinking in the mid-day sun. Of these two scenarios, which, do you reckon, is worse for the environment? In this episode, Ben and Vaden attempt to reduce and refute a few reused canards about recycling and refuse, by rereading Rob Wiblin's excellent piece which addresses the aformentioned question: What you think about landfill and recycling is probably totally wrong. Steel yourselves for this one folks, because you may need to paper over arguments with loved ones, trash old opinions, and shatter previous misconceptions. Check out more of Rob's writing here. We discuss The origins of recycling and some of the earliest instances Energy efficiency of recycling plastics, aluminium, paper, steel, and electronic waste (e-waste) Why your peanut butter jars and plastic coffee cups are not recyclable Modern landfills and why they're awesome How landfills can be used to create energy Building stuff on top of landfills Why we're not even close to running out of space for landfills Economic incentives for recycling vs top-down regulation The modern recycling movement and its emergence in the 1990s > - Guiyu, China, where e-waste goes to die. That a lot of your "recycling" ends up as garbage in the Philippines Error Correction Vaden misremembered what Smil wrote regarding four categories of recycling (Metals and Aluminum / Plastics / Paper / Electronic Waste ("e-waste")). He incorrectly quoted Smil as saying these four categories were exhaustive, and represented the four major categories recycling into which the majority of recycled material can be bucketed. This is incorrect- what Smil actually wrote was: I will devote the rest of this section (and of this chapter) to brief appraisals of the recycling efforts for four materials — two key metals (steel and aluminum) and plastics and paper—and of electronic waste, a category of discarded material that would most benefit from much enhanced rates of recycling. - Making the Modern World: Materials and De-materialization, Smill, p.179 A list of the top 9 recycled materials can be found here: https://www.rd.com/list/most-recyclable-materials/ Sources / Citations Share of plastic waste that is recycled, landfilled, incinerated and mismanaged, 2019 Source for the claim that recycling glass is not energy efficient (and thus not necessarily better for the environment than landfilling): Glass bottles can be more pleasant to drink out of, but they also require more energy to manufacture and recycle. Glass bottles consume 170 to 250 percent more energy and emit 200 to 400 percent more carbon than plastic bottles, due mostly to the heat energy required in the manufacturing process. Of course, if the extra energy required by glass were produced from emissions-free sources, it wouldn’t necessarily matter that glass bottles required more energy to make and move. “If the energy is nuclear power or renewables there should be less of an environmental impact,” notes Figgener. - Apocalypse Never, Shellenburger, p.66 Cloth bags need to be reused 173 times to be more eco-friendly than a plastic bag: Source for claim that majority of e-waste ends up in China: Puckett’s organization partnered with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to put 200 geolocating tracking devices inside old computers, TVs and printers. They dropped them off nationwide at donation centers, recyclers and electronic take-back programs — enterprises that advertise themselves as “green,” “sustainable,” “earth friendly” and “environmentally responsible.” ... About a third of the tracked electronics went overseas — some as far as 12,000 miles. That includes six of the 14 tracker-equipped electronics that Puckett’s group dropped off to be recycled in Washington and Oregon. The tracked electronics ended up in Mexico, Taiwan, China, Pakistan, Thailand, Dominican Republic, Canada and Kenya. Most often, they traveled across the Pacific to rural Hong Kong. (italics added.) NPR interview on the fact that some manufacturers will put recycling logos on products that aren't recyclable. Bloomberg investigative report on tracking plastic to a town in Poland that burns it for energy. Video about the apex landfill Guiyu, China. Wiki's description: Once a rice village, the pollution has made Guiyu unable to produce crops for food and the water of the river is undrinkable. Many of the primitive recycling operations in Guiyu are toxic and dangerous to workers' health with 80% of children suffering from lead poisoning. Above-average miscarriage rates are also reported in the region. Workers use their bare hands to crack open electronics to strip away any parts that can be reused—including chips and valuable metals, such as gold, silver, etc. Workers also "cook" circuit boards to remove chips and solders, burn wires and other plastics to liberate metals such as copper; use highly corrosive and dangerous acid baths along the riverbanks to extract gold from the microchips; and sweep printer toner out of cartridges. Children are exposed to the dioxin-laden ash as the smoke billows around Guiyu, finally settling on the area. The soil surrounding these factories has been saturated with lead, chromium, tin, and other heavy metals. Discarded electronics lie in pools of toxins that leach into the groundwater, making the water undrinkable to the extent that water must be trucked in from elsewhere. Lead levels in the river sediment are double European safety levels, according to the Basel Action Network. Lead in the blood of Guiyu's children is 54% higher on average than that of children in the nearby town of Chendian. Piles of ash and plastic waste sit on the ground beside rice paddies and dikes holding in the Lianjiang River. Ben's back-of-the-napkin math Consider the Apex landfill in Las Vegas. This handles trash for the whole city, which is ~700K people. The base of the landfill is currently 9km2 , but they've hinted at expanding it in the future. So let's assume they more than double it and put it at 20km2 . The estimates are that this landfill will handle trash for ~300 years "at current rates". I'm not sure if that includes population growth, so let's play it safe and assume not. So how much space does each person need landfill wise for the next 300 years? We have 20km2 / 700K people = 28.5 m2 per person for 300 years. For 400M people, that's roughly 12,000 km2. The US is roughly 10,000,000 km2. That's 0.012% of the US needed for landfills for the next 300 years. We definitely have the space. 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 fill up landfills 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 do you like to bring to your local neighbourhood tire-fire? Tell us over at incrementspodcast@gmail.comSupport Increments

Vaden has selfishly gone on vacation with his family, leaving beloved listeners to fend for themselves in the wide world of epistemological confusion. To repair some of the damage, we're releasing an episode of The Theory of Anything Podcast from last June in which Vaden contributed to a roundtable discussion on the principle of optimism. Featuring Bruce Nielson, Peter Johansen, Sam Kuypers, Hervé Eulacia, Micah Redding, Bill Rugolsky, and Daniel Buchfink. Enjoy! From The Theory of Anything Podcast description: Are all evils due to a lack of knowledge? Are all interesting problems soluble? ALL the problems, really?!?! And what exactly is meant by interesting? Also, should “good guys” ignore the precautionary principle, and do they always win? What is the difference between cynicism, pessimism, and skepticism? And why is pessimism so attractive to so many humans? 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 solve problems 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 Which unsolvable problem would you most like to solve? Send your answer via quantum tunneling to incrementspodcast@gmail.comSpecial Guests: Bruce Nielson and Sam Kuypers.Support Increments