The Bayesian Conspiracy

Eneasz, Jess, and Steven take an hour or so to talk about the New Atheism movement that occurred in the mid 2000’s. We experienced a bit of audio loss in the second half of the episode, so the conversation occasionally jumps around a bit, especially around an hour and 20 minutes in for about 5 minutes… Sorry about that. We’re buying an SSD to hopefully prevent any lossy recording in the future.   Links to things talked about in today’s episode: Gwern’s (a popular contributor to LessWrong) personal website Guided Path Decision Advisor that Jess mentioned (other tools here) The first part of the Four Horsemen of the New Atheists group conversation The Amazing IQ Squared debate with Hitch and Fry Jai’s Blog post “Foes Without Faces” that Eneasz brought up On Immunity, the book Jess mentioned   Be sure to check out Eneasz’s book, What Lies Dreaming Vote for What Lies Dreaming at Top Web Fiction!   Sequence Posts for next time: Self Deception: Hypocrisy of Akrasia?  Tsuyoku Naritai (I Want to Become Stronger!)   Big thanks to David for our intro music! Check out his music and VFX here! We’d like to thank creators of our new outro music from the Sumerki Project! Check out their stuff here!

This episode is a continuation of episode 75 – Culture Roots of American. Eneasz and Steven are alone in the recording studio, which means we have no one to keep us in check as we finish out discussion of Albion’s Seed and fall down plenty of rabbit holes. The Cracked.com After Hours ninja turtles/everything is one of four things video   Sequence Posts for next time: Archimedes’s Chronophone Chronophone Motivators    Big thanks to David for our intro music! Check out his music and VFX here! We’d like to thank creators of our new outro music from the Sumerki Project! Check out their stuff here!

  David and Jess sit down with Eneasz and Steven to discuss the controversy of Patreon banning contributors from its platform. David mentioned the connection between Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein’s many, many accusations of raping young girls and soliciting the opportunity for others to do so. In Trump’s words: “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” Pheidi’s link to a video on our AMA thread that sparked our conversation. We’re now unapologetic shills for Tide. An article talking about the recent poor-taste joke made by Louis CK.     Sequence Posts for next time: Superstimuli and the Collapse of Western Civilization Useless Medical Disclaimers    Big thanks to David for our intro music! Check out his music and VFX here! We’d like to thank creators of our new outro music from the Sumerki Project! Check out their stuff here!

We discuss these two SSC posts: BOOK REVIEW: EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOPATHOLOGY BOOK REVIEW: ALBION’S SEED also mentioned: ALBION’S SEED, GENOTYPED, and the Dark Matter Conservative Universe is mentioned in I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup   Sequence Posts for next time: The Scales of Justice, the Notebook of Rationality Blue or Green on Regulation?   Big thanks to David for our intro music! Check out his music and VFX here! We’d like to thank creators of our new outro music from the Sumerki Project! Check out their stuff here!

Eneasz, Jess, and Steven go down rabbit hole after rabbit hole while attempting to address some of our feedback backlog. Enjoy! Rationality from AI to Zombies: The Simple Truth (Audio Version) Stan Lee Cameo in Spiderman Game Massimo Pigliucci vs Eliezer Yudkowsky blogging heads debate Side by side of 60s olympics vs now (links to a bunch of gifs from Google – I couldn’t decide on just one to illustrate the point) SSC post mentioned regarding diminishing returns from increased inputs Guilt-Free Chocolate Cookie Recipe! Next Week’s LessWrong Posts Policy Debates Should Not Appear One Sided (Audio Link) (Text Link) Birch’s Law (No Audio Link) (Text Link)   Big thanks to David for our intro music! Check out his music and VFX here! We’d like to thank creators of our new outro music from the Sumerki Project! Check out their stuff here!

The conspiracy worries about our post-truth government and looks at the question of why Rationalists aren’t at the top of everything they do.   Articles/things discussed in this episode Link with analysis and discussion of the Jim Acosta incident Sailor Vulcan’s post on LessWrong Scott Alexander’s reply in the comments The Last Rationalist’s take on the question   Relevant Links The wonderful Rationality From AI to Zombies podcast’s episode on The Simple Truth (It turns out Eneasz didn’t actually do it)   Sequence Posts for next time: Politics is the Mind-Killer Just Lose Hope Already You Are Not Hiring the Top 1%   Big thanks to David for our intro music! Check out his music and VFX here! We’d like to thank creators of our new outro music from the Sumerki Project! Check out their stuff here!

The conversation kicks off with playful insights into thought experiments involving technology and sexuality. They humorously navigate epistemology while discussing pop culture and the Me Too movement. Productivity techniques get deep dives, including the Pomodoro method and the concept of productive procrastination. The hosts explore personal anecdotes surrounding tattoos and accountability tools. Finally, they touch on the science of habit formation, the importance of sleep, and the complex nature of expressing uncertainty in discussions.

Steven can’t read a calender, so accidentally scheduled this to release a day late. In this episode, we talk with Andrés Gómez Emilsson from the Qualia Research Institute. Buckle up for some dialogue on the intersection between philosophy and science. Steven was testing a new mic this episode, and thus sounds like he’s phoning it in from a submarine. Sorry for the trouble. He’ll keep searching for a better mic. Here’s a fun presentation on QRI’s website that Andrés gave that covers some of the stuff we talked about in this episode. Transcript of that dude taking on the math-illiterate execs at Verizon. Audio version. Next Episode’s Sequence Posts: I Don’t Know and A Fable of Science and Politics Big thanks to David for our intro music! Check out his music and VFX here! We’d like to thank creators of our new outro music from the Sumerki Project! Check out their stuff here!

We kick off a couple things: The Sequences Reading/Discussion, and What Lies Dreaming The OG Sequences in chronological order we read: The Martial Art of Rationality ; Why Truth? And… ; …What’s a Bias Again? For next time: The Proper Use of Humility ; The Modesty Argument Collated & edited in: Rationality: AI to Zombies also as a podcast, and a podcast The Elephant in the Brain (and our podcast episode about it) SSC on Predictive Processing and Perceptual Control The 12 Virtues of Rationality The Conceptual Penis Ozy on Sokal Squared, the latest hoax/expose that is way over-hyped Permanent Effects from LSD? Also, Scott Alexander mentions the existence of permanent hallucination effects   Eneasz’s novel, What Lies Dreaming, is coming Nov 11th!   Petrov Day Art:

An awesome anonymous listener made this and sent it in after the episode aired! Thanks, awesome mystery person! Alas, we had some technical difficulties in this episode too and we lost some small chunks of audio. I cropped it as best I could, but there’s some little bits where you can tell the audio skips a bit. Today’s main topic/recommended reading: Memetic Tribes and War Culture Petrov Day (There’s an XKCD for everything!) and original LessWrong post and the botched celebration that ended in simulated nuclear annihilation Wiki page on lean development in case anyone else gets off on efficiency Sam Harris episode with Chistian (not Christopher) Picciolini, the reformed neo nazi The Intellectual Dark Web, complete with aesthetically pleasing/cringeworthy pictures The ‘This American Life’ episode with Laci Green The Adversarial Collaboration outline post on Slate Star Codex All of the original LessWrong articles, presented in the messy order that Bayes intended If you want to read ahead for next week, check out The Martial Art of Rationality ,Why Truth? And……What’s a Bias Again? Soma, a play through by Marshall Dyer Big thanks to David for our intro music! Check out his music and VFX here! We’d like to thank creators of our new outro music from the Sumerki Project! Check out their stuff here!