ToKCast

This is “Ask Me Anything” number 2: questions from Twitter (mainly) and elsewhere.   Here are the questions/timestamps:   00:00 Introduction 01:50 How do people learn false things? 06:32 Why does persuasion fail? 15:20 What’s wrong with physicalism? 18:30 How are mind and the laws of physics abstractions? 21:18 What are your favourite chapters from David’s books? 26:46 Are facts theory laden? 27:49 Is a fact “fallibly true”? 30:24 What are your thoughts on the mind-body problem? 34:50 How has Deutsch improved on Popper? 40:05 What is the most difficult idea to explain from David’s books? 44:58 Do the ideas in “BoI” trace back to Judeo-Christian values? 48:32 What is the plan for the future spreading of David Deutsch’s ideas? 51:38 How do we resolve the apparent conflict between “incremental change” and “rapid progress”? 54:27 What parts of David’s work do you disagree with? What did David Deutsch get wrong? 58:24 Why isn’t morality about suffering? 01:03:50 Are free will, consciousness and explanatory knowledge fundamentally tied? 01:06:10 Does Ayn Rand’s objectivism follow from Deutsch/Popper? 01:13:52 If a problem is a conflict between ideas, what is the conflict with the problem of the universe’s initial conditions? 01:15:52 How can we reconcile the subjectivity of problems with the objectivity of knowledge? 01:18:04 Can’t machines create new choices through abstraction? 01:20:58 Did Popper/Deutsch influence your libertarianism? 01:26:22 What is the beef between Popper/Deutsch and the formal education system? 01:27:02 Are there Popperian resources on child rearing? 01:31:59 Are there pre-requisites for understanding “The Beginning of Infinity”? 01:35:29 What other books can help with thinking? 01:36:10 If a person has struggled academically, what is to blame? 01:40:21 Do you have any (other!) book recommendations? 01:44:32 Doesn’t quantum mechanics and the multiverse violate common sense and logic?

Yes, the AMA will be delayed until episode 103 because of some wonderful remarks made by Joe Rogan that resonated so well with some of what I like to say about the multiverse, our place in it, and what we come to understand about it and how.  Credit to the Joe Rogan Experience #1746 with Blaire White where Joe explains his understanding of our ability to experience reality. I compare this to what we understand from physics and our best understanding of the philosophy of science. Music in order of tracks is: Ketsa - Rewinding Time (First half of video) Ketsa - Heart Science (Second half of video). Both tracks available at https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa#contact-artist  

As it says: an "AMA" episode. 00:00 Introduction 01:24 When defines the "tipping point" between a static and a dynamic society - specifically our own?  08:13 Why do children seem to learn faster than adults? 14:00 What are the best refutations of anti-realism & instrumentalism? 19:25 What does quantum computation tell us about reality? 25:00 What is the delineation of reason vs unreason? 27:23 What is a "fact"? 28:45 Is a person a "beginning of infinity"? 31:10 What are your thoughts on "inborn knowledge" in people? 37:08 What do you think about monopolies in markets? 44:42 What is the role of the state to realise the ethics of society? 48:51 What open questions does David's work point us to? 54:38 Could you please elaborate on the Simulation Argument? 01:01:35 Can you do a response video about Yoval Harari? 01:04:14 Why has the Beginning of Infinity risen in popularity in recent years? Do you think this will continue?

This is the complete and unabridged discussion I had with David Deutsch largely about "The Beginning of Infinity". It contains all my "Questions for David" - which were published separately - AND much more content too. 00:00 Introduction 12:51 Why aren’t testable theories enough? 14:37 Predictions vs Explanations 18:33 Verisimilitude 23:54 Are people a “chemical scum”? 25:43 The Earth is uniquely suited to life? 30:22 What does “provable” mean? 33:44 Undecidability 37:45 Classifying abstractions 41:29 The nature of physical laws. 47:06 Direct Observation 50:29 The nature of mind 55:40 The Supernatural 59:52 Epistemology and Morality 01:02:00 The physical limitations of knowledge? 01:09:24 Some history of quantum computation 01:16:44 Tic Tacs, UFOs and aliens 01:19:01 Dark Energy Support the podcast by following the links to Patreon or Paypal here: www.bretthall.org

This is episode 99 of ToKCast. More than any other work, the contents of "The Beginning of Infinity" (BoI) have informed the content of this podcast, so in celebration of Episode 99 I set myself the challenge of taking on each chapter in sequence, retelling the main points of it in my own words (no readings from the actual book itself this time) and construct an episode as close as possible to 99 minutes long. Obviously this required quite some editing - this episode now holds the record for time-taken-to-edit. As much was left on the virtual "cutting room floor" and extended "directors cut" is available for Patreons and other supporters of ToKCast. Become a Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/tokcast (per episode support) or https://www.patreon.com/BrettRHall (monthly donation).   Timestamps: 00:00:00 Introduction 00:10:10 Chapter 1 The Reach of Explanations 00:15:21 Chapter 2 Closer to Reality 00:19:50 Chapter 3 The Spark 00:24:14 Chapter 4 Creation 00:29:06 Chapter 5 The Reality of Abstractions 00:34:14 Chapter 6 The Jump to Universality  00:38:51 Chapter 7 Artificial Creativity 00:43:58 Chapter 8 A Window on Infinity 00:49:01 Chapter 9 Optimism 00:53:47 Chapter 10 A Dream of Socrates 00:58:20 Chapter 11 The Multiverse 01:03:26 Chapter 12 A Physicist's History of Bad Philosophy 01:08:36 Chapter 13 Choices 01:13:42 Chapter 14 Why are Flowers Beautiful? 01:18:00 Chapter 15 The Evolution of Culture 01:22:56 Chapter 16 The Evolution of Creativity 01:28:23 Chapter 17 Unsustainable 01:33:24 Chapter 18 The Beginning 01:37:43 Concluding Remarks

This is cutting edge physics and epistemology from Chiara Marletto, following David Deutsch and working from and upon to advance the discoveries of Karl Popper. Here I make some quite lengthy introductory remarks laying out the standard academic takes when it comes to epistemology in order to set the scene for the most modern interpretation in our quest to refine our understandings of what knowledge is. We leave behind ancient and modern subjective notions of knowledge (which still prevail in the academy, intellectual circles and even attempts to counter those trends in other traditions of counter-culture communities) and take seriously objective knowledge and then build on it. This is a unique and very modern take on knowledge which brings epistemology within the scope of physics for the very first time. Marletto leads the reader gently through this landscape of physics and philosophy and so it is unsurprising some reviewers have not understood the profundity of the points made in the book as a whole let alone this chapter. This is subtle and powerful stuff: a new unification which one might guess is going to direct the course of progress on many fronts. I hope this video serves as a useful companion to the book and to further investigations into "the land of counterfactuals" as some of the deep ideas are, I think, easy to miss for the casual reader.

Here I provide some background information on dark energy and then David answers a question about possible explanations for dark energy given what we already know about the big bang.

This is a video in response to this video by Yaron Brook: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFqbC... I'm a fan of both Yaron and Sam. I turn to Yaron for all things economics and individual rights and have great respect for him: indeed so much respect I bothered to spend hours making and editing this video. In the video I refer to: 1. Michael Neilsen's article on the Church-Turing-Deutsch principle: https://michaelnielsen.org/blog/inter... 2. David Deutsch's speech from his Dirac Medal Award ceremony. Transcript here: http://www.daviddeutsch.org.uk/wp-con... 3. David Deutsch's seminal historic paper that laid the foundations for quantum computation and which brought computation into physics: http://www.daviddeutsch.org.uk/wp-con... 4. "The Nexus" - my video which goes into detail on the mystery of personhood and the science of what we know about this presently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpTxB... Number 2 on that list above is "required extra reading" if my argument alone is not convincing. For more, see "The Fabric of Reality" chapters 5 and 6 especially. See also "The Beginning of Infinity" and consult the index for passages on computation and universality. Universality is poorly understood as being central to understanding computers and people. For more on that see my video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnkPl... Images used in the thumbnail and in this video are used under a "Creative Commons" license. Fair use for commentary is claimed for the clips of The Yaron Brook Show (which is one of my favourite podcasts).

This video and associated podcast are about Steven Pinker's new book "Rationality". I read a small number of brief excerpts from the book itself, alongside commenting, criticising and reviewing the content of the first two chapters. There are a number of images and videos in the Youtube version which may help with particular concepts as we go along. I compare Pinker's vision of rationality with what might be interpreted about that same topic from the work of David Deutsch and Karl Popper. In summary: I found the book highly entertaining in places and an excellent overview of this topic as it might be taught in an Ivy League University in The United States (indeed Pinker says that such a course that he taught was part of the impetus for the book). In terms of being a good substitute for those who might never have been able to afford due to chance, location or cost actually attending such an institution and taking on a course such as one on "Critical Thinking" and "Rationality" the book could readily serve as a series of well written university lecture notes. To that end, it is certainly worth the cost for anyone interested in these topics. In Chapter 2, Professor Pinker not only agrees with the "justified true belief" conception of knowledge but uses it in practise to explain what might be called the "rational" and "irrational". I thus spend a good portion of the second half of this video suggesting ways in which that very conception of knowledge itself leads to irrationality and explain a better way of understanding concepts like "knowledge" as compared to "belief" and how to understand the phrase "I know". I intend to cover 2 chapters per episode. 00:00 Introduction 03:30 “Enlightenment Now” and praise for "The Beginning of Infinity". 07:50 Timeless errors, timely examples. 13:05 “Rationality” in “The Beginning of Infinity” sense. 17:15 Do ancient-type tribal people have a “scientific mindset”? 25:00 Explanatory Universality & Anti-rational memes 34:34 Skill with logic puzzles and *being* logical/rational 42:00 The Wason Selection task 51:25 The Monty Hall Problem 1:02:50 The Linda Problem (& remarks on uses and misuses of probability) 1:11:42 Popper and theory laden observations 1:14:20 Knowledge as Justified True Belief - Why Popper matters 1:27:00 Objective truth 1:32:30 Reason is fun 1:38:18 Closing remarks about chapter 2

I recommend this episode be viewed in its video format here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfuQI_LgDBE or here https://odysee.com/@BrettHall:c/wealth-and-the-conflict-of-ideas:1 as it's got lots of nice images and videos...some of which I constructed myself. That said, the actual "message" can be appreciated fully with audio only.    Although I do not explicitly mention it, this entire episode was motivated by a Sam Harris “meme post” found here: https://www.instagram.com/p/B-sWqk5n1... The claim that appears there (which reads “The free market is not producing effective responses to our most important problems” is emblematic of an intellectual culture that now holds sway not only in the academy but broadly in public discourse and, of course, it is readily consumed by people hungry for simple solutions and perversely promoted by business people afraid of their left-leaning customers. In this episode I spend time on a very brief historic analysis of the motivation for such rejections of freedom and capitalism (which we must admit are relatively new creations when put beside ancient tribalism) and I look at some of the failures of central planning or rejection of the free market. I agree with those who say “there is no actual capitalism” there are merely degrees of socialism in existence. Where there is freedom in a socialist framework, to the degree there is freedom: wealth grows. And to the degree there are top down controls: poverty increases. I regard this as an opportunity cost to some extent. It should not be necessary to defend the fundamentals of economic systems that allow for wealth creation and problem solving. But we live in a time where, for various reasons, a neo-Marxist move is on the ascendency. On that: I also voice concerns I have about allies on the side of liberty turning on one another rather too often out of concern this or that “capitalist” is not sufficiently “capitalist”. I see this as a wonderful way for socialists to continue to gain ground in institutions at all levels of government. A partial script for this episode can be found here: https://www.bretthall.org/our-most-im... This video and ones like it take many days (sometimes weeks) of production from research and reading for the script through to filming and audio recording, searching libraries of stock videos and music, organising copyright issues and finally editing - because I work alone. If you would like to support this effort, you may donate at www.bretthall.org where there is a "Donate" button for one off or monthly donations. On the same page are links to my Patreon accounts where you can also support me. Thankyou :)