The Theory of Anything
About
Available on
Community
82 episodes
Bruce sympathetically critiques David Deutsch’s concept of “easy to varyness” as a way to judge our explanations. Are our best theories about reality truly hard to vary? Bruce makes the case that Popper’s concept of “ad hocness” may be a strangely interwoven concept. Along the way we get deeper into whether Popperian epistemology is best seen as an attitude or a methodology. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/support
Bruce wraps up his epic 6 part series on knowledge and the 'two sources hypothesis' (i.e. Deutsch's theory that all 'knowledge' comes from only two sources: Biological evolution and human minds). What happens if we take all the non-two sources examples of 'adapted information that cause itself to remain so' (e.g. the walking robot, the immune system, trade secrets, animal learning, animal memes, etc.) and give them their own theory distinct from the theory of 'knowledge'? Sort of like a theory of "a simulacrum of knowledge" (to uses Deutsch's own term) or "Simul-Knowledge" for short. This turns out to be remarkably easy: you just take the constructor theory of knowledge without any implicit additional criteria. Doing this has profound implications that impact how we see and understand Deutsch's theory of knowledge. Like to a version of the drawing Bruce refers to throughout the episode. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qGvq6AnznmVgk5jIginCNL3Ow8XaE4p_/view?usp=sharing --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/support
Is human creativity algorithmic? What is the difference between an Inspiration and a perspiration algorithm? Can mechanical processes ever create knowledge? What is the relationship between creativity and explanation? If we had the 'inspiration' algorithm today, would it use perspiration? Here Bruce continues his exploration of these issues and more. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/support
Do animals create knowledge? Deutsch claims they don't because all their knowledge is in their genes. Yet he admits that animals do have memes! But aren't memes, by definition, knowledge outside the genome? How does Deutsch attempt to deal with these problems with his theory of knowledge? And how well do his arguments hold up? --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/support
Bruce continues to consider what our best theories tell us about knowledge. Is there something special (or even physically different) about the knowledge created by nature through biological evolution and human minds (i.e. the 'two sources hypothesis')? How should we think about knowledge created in human minds that could take us to the moon and beyond or divert an asteroid? Is it physically different from the kind of adapted information created by animals or the immune system? Or does it merely a broader and deeper search for solutions? Along the way, he delves into machine learning, animal behavior, the immune system, trade secrets, robots, and many other concepts related to David Deutsch’s ideas about knowledge but are outside the 'two sources' and thus not considered 'knowledge' by David Deutsch. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/support
In the previous episode, Bruce pointed out an apparent contradiction between Deutsch's criteria for knowledge as 'adapted information that causes itself to remain so' and his example of the 'walking robot algorithm' which is a case of adapted information causing itself to remain so but that Deutsch doesn't consider to be knowledge. This time we consider if we can eliminate the 'walking robot algorithm' from being considered 'knowledge' using Deutsch's and Marletto's Constructor Theory of Knowledge. Does the Constructor Theory of Knowledge save the 'two sources hypothesis'? (i.e. the hypothesis that there are only two sources of knowledge: biological evolution and human ideas) --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/support
What is the “two sources hypothesis,” or the idea that there exist only two sources of knowledge in the known universe: Darwinian natural selection and human minds? Does a “genetic programming algorithm” used to make a robot walk create knowledge? Thus begins our deep dive into Deutsch's Theory of Knowledge and particularly his "Two Source Hypothesis." Bruce hints that this is leading towards an investigation into the difference between a non-testable (or philosophical) explanation and a bad explanation as our series on knowledge continues. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/support
What is the “problem of open-endedness”? Bruce explores how what might sound like an esoteric machine-learning issue may actually be interwoven with our deepest theories on evolution, human consciousness, and knowledge creation. Also included: Bruce's guide to how NOT to argue with a Creationist. References: __ __ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/support
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? --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/support
Here we use Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s essay “The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority” https://nassimtaleb.org/2016/08/intolerant-wins-dictatorship-small-minority/ as a springboard to discuss majority rule, moral progress, knowledge growth, wokism, Karl Popper’s paradox of tolerance, and “big agriculture.” --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/support
With guest Ivan Phillips, we discuss and debate subjective vs objective morality. Does the concept of objective morality ever make sense given “Hume’s guillotine”? Can humans ever really live as though morality is subjective? Along the way, we take detours into Bayesian epistemology vs critical rationalism. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/support
How does ChatGPT REALLY work? Is there a relationship between a program like ChatGPT and artificial general intelligence (AGI)? This time we review the famous paper "Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence: Early Experiments with GPT-4" https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.12712 from Microsoft Research as well as Melanie Mitchell's criticisms of it https://twitter.com/mmitchell_ai/status/1645571158585253888. Other papers mentioned: __ Language Models are Few-Shot Learners (2020) https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.14165 __ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/support
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. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/support
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" chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://public.econ.duke.edu/~bjc18/docs/Clarifying%20Popper.pdf --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/support
Though our guest Mark Biros is clearly immersed in critical rationalism and the worldview of Popper and Deutsch, he also has some fairly strong criticisms of some of the ideas popular in what could be called the CritRat community. Here we try to work out our differing ideas on environmentalism, epistemology, quantum mechanics, social media, optimism, monarchies, cults, human extinction, and more. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/support
Historian Matt Bowman discusses his new book, . 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. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/support
What did David Deutsch get right and wrong in chapter 11, “Time: The First Quantum Concept,” from his first book, Fabric of Reality? Is the flow of time real or an illusion? What does it mean to have free will in a deterministic world? And what are the implications of Bruce’s “Turing world within a Turing world” thought experiment? --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/support
What did Karl Popper really mean by refutation? How are empirical theories special? How do objective criticisms differ from subjective criticisms? What is the difference between a theory and an explanation? We consider these questions with a tangent into the theory that animals don’t have feelings. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/support
Brian Boutwell is a professor of criminal justice at the University of Mississippi who specializes in “quantitative genetics, with a focus on environmental and psychological risk factors for antisocial and violent behavior.” He has a TED talk, numerous articles in Quillette, and has been published in many journals. Here we discuss his upcoming meta-analysis on twin studies soon to be published in Nature. We discuss the following two articles: __ __ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/support
Is the government hiding a secret UFO recovery program? What should the critical rationalist attitude be towards these kinds of claims? Why exactly would aliens want to hide from us? We discuss these questions and much more. If you missed it, be sure to check out the congressional hearings on UFOs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EL_HYG3uXQg (UAPs). It was actually quite interesting. Mick West's video criticizing the theory that aliens are behind all this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvhMMhW-JN0. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/support
What did Popper say about corroboration in science? Can a theory NEVER be supported with evidence in any sense at all? Is the Popperian “war on words” justified? Are the positivists, Bayesianists, verificationists, and inductivists really wrong about EVERYTHING? --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/support
We interview Bruce’s nephew, Brandon Nielson, who is a well-known electronic music artist under the name Dvddy. We discuss how he uses AI as a tool to create music and how this technology is changing how we work and learn. Could AI liberate us from menial labor and education? Along the way, Cameo makes an AI-generated comic book about David Deutsch. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/support
A deep dive into David Deutsch’s “principle of optimism” featuring Sam Kuypers, Vaden Masrani, Hervé Eulacia, Micah Redding, Bill Rugolsky, and Daniel Buchfink. (Plus, of course, Peter and Bruce). 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? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/support
Back in 2012, David Deutsch wrote an article called "Creative Blocks: How Close are we to Creating Artificial Intelligence?" This article inspired Bruce to go back to school and study Artificial Intelligence and get a Master's degree in the field. A decade later, a lot has changed in the field of AI, and the field has never seemed so exciting. But are we really any closer to the goal of true universal intelligence? We take a look back at the article and assess it from the vantage point of what we know now, a decade later. How much did Deutsch get right and how much is on less solid ground? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/support
Does every one of us live forever in the multiverse? Is death a solvable problem? What is “quantum suicide”? Is quantum torment a concern? Does every fantastical thing we can imagine occur somewhere in the multiverse? What are “Harry Potter universes? Are we Boltzmann brains? Bruce, Cameo, and Peter consider these questions in this week’s episode. Image from jupiterimages on Freeimages.com --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/support
Special guest, Lulie Tanett, asked me if she could come on my podcast and interview me about religion. Lulie and Peter ask me numerous religion-related questions such as: __ __ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/support
We continue our discussion of Dwarkesh Patel's article "Contra David Deutsch on AI" https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/universal-explainers compared to Brett Hall's tweet on IQ theory https://mobile.twitter.com/ToKTeacher/status/1564027760267632641. This time we concentrate on criticisms of Brett Hall's theory. Along the way, we ask the ultimate question: Why did Karl Popper make his epistemology specifically about refuting EMPIRICAL SCIENTIFIC THEORIES instead of just generalizing it (like Deutsch does) to criticizing all theories and ideas? And why is this important? And then, we talk about how much we really like Brett's theory. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/support
In this episode, we continue our discussion of Dwarkesh Patel's article "Contra David Deutsch on AI" https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/universal-explainers compared to Brett Hall's tweet on IQ theory https://mobile.twitter.com/ToKTeacher/status/1564027760267632641. This time we concentrate on criticisms of Patel's Hardware+Scaling hypothesis. To Patel's credit, he admits that his hypothesis is problematic. Then Peter asks Bruce about why Brett Hall believes explanatory universality implies 'equal intellectual capacity'. Bruce gives a steelmanned version of Brett's theory that takes us through an explanation of what explanatory universality is and how it relates to computational universality and the Turing Principle. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/four-strands/support
Dwarkesh Patel published an article called "Contra David Deutsch on AI" https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/universal-explainers. This article was actually a defense of IQ theory against the charge (often made by fans of David Deutsch) that the existence of Explanatory Universality destroys IQ theory entirely. But how accurately does Dwarkesh portray Deutsch's view? (For that matter, how accurately do fans of David Deutsch portray Deutsch's viewpoint?) And how good are Patel's criticisms of Deutsch's view? With some help from a tweet from Brett Hall on IQ theory https://mobile.twitter.com/ToKTeacher/status/1564027760267632641, we compare and contrast Patel's and Hall's viewpoints and lay out the disagreements that exist. Brett argues that Explanatory Universality implies we are all equally intelligent (i.e. have an equal capacity to learn) and that the only difference between people is our levels of interest in the knowledge that currently society happens to value. Is he correct? Or are the experiments cited by Patel wrong? If so, how? Or to put this another way, if we did demonstrate via an experiment that some people do gain knowledge faster than others (as Patel claims), would that refute the theory of explanatory universality? Or are Brett's claims not actually implications of explanatory universality? --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/four-strands/support
In our previous episode, we asked if Karl Popper was Dogmatic. We also introduced the idea that Karl Popper wasn't convinced that dogmatism was always bad. In this episode, we further explore Karl Popper's idea that dogmatism is sometimes a good thing. We also ask difficult questions like 'How can you tell when you are being dogmatic?' and 'Is it possible to overcome your own dogmatism?' --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/four-strands/support
