Podcast Episodes

Episode 75: Deutsch's Theory of Knowledge: The Walking Robot

Season 1 Episode 75

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 algori…

Published on 1 year, 10 months ago

Episode 74: The Problem of Open-Endedness

Season 1 Episode 74

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 conscious…

Published on 1 year, 11 months ago

Episode 73: Argue Me Everything

Season 1 Episode 73

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 human…

Published on 1 year, 11 months ago

Episode 72: Moral Progress and Tolerance for Intolerance

Season 1 Episode 72

Here we use Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s essay “The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority” as a springboard to discuss majority rule, moral progress, knowledge growth, wokism, Karl …

Published on 1 year, 11 months ago

Episode 71: Can Values be Objective?

Season 1 Episode 70

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 thou…

Published on 2 years ago

Episode 70: Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence?

Season 1 Episode 70

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 Int…

Published on 2 years ago

Episode 69: Social Science and Critical Rationalism

Season 1 Episode 69

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 e…

Published on 2 years, 1 month ago

Episode 68: Caldwell's "Clarifying Popper"

Season 1 Episode 68

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 a…

Published on 2 years, 1 month ago

Episode 67: Disagreements with Deutsch

Season 1 Episode 67

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 b…

Published on 2 years, 2 months ago

Episode 66: The Alien Abduction of Betty and Barney Hill and the Search For Meaning

Season 1 Episode 66

Historian Matt Bowman discusses his new book, The Abduction of Betty and Barney Hill: Alien Encounters, Civil Rights, and the New Age in America. Betty and Barney Hill were one of the first and most …

Published on 2 years, 2 months ago