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Increments
Ben Chugg and Vaden Masrani
Society & Culture
Science
Fréquence : 1 épisode/43j. Total Éps: 89
Vaden Masrani, a senior research scientist in machine learning, and Ben Chugg, a PhD student in statistics, get into trouble arguing about everything except machine learning and statistics. Coherence is somewhere on the horizon.
Bribes, suggestions, love-mail and hate-mail all welcome at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.
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Apple Podcasts
🇬🇧 Grande Bretagne - philosophy
19/07/2025
#66
🇺🇸 États-Unis - philosophy
20/06/2025
#81
🇬🇧 Grande Bretagne - philosophy
15/06/2025
#72
🇨🇦 Canada - philosophy
01/06/2025
#97
🇨🇦 Canada - philosophy
31/05/2025
#61
🇨🇦 Canada - philosophy
30/05/2025
#44
🇬🇧 Grande Bretagne - philosophy
29/05/2025
#90
🇩🇪 Allemagne - philosophy
24/03/2025
#100
🇩🇪 Allemagne - philosophy
23/03/2025
#86
🇨🇦 Canada - philosophy
09/03/2025
#70
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Ben and Vaden attempt to justify why the world needs another podcast, and fail.
#73 - The Unfairness of Proportional Representation
vendredi 13 septembre 2024 • Durée 01:25:12
Want to make everyone under 30 extremely angry? Tell them you don't like proportional representation. Tell them proportional representation sucks, just like recycling (https://www.incrementspodcast.com/63). In this episode, we continue to improve your popularity at parties by diving into Sir Karl's theory of democracy, and his arguments for why the first-past-the-post electoral system is superior to proportional representation systems. And if you find anyone left at the party who still wants to talk to you, we also cover Chapter 13 of Beginning of Infinity, where Deutsch builds upon Popper's theory. And always remember,
First-Past-The-Post: If it's good enough for the horses, it's good enough for us.
We discuss
Why democracy should be about the removal of bad leaders
How Popper's conception of democracy differs from the usual conception
Why Popper supports first-past-the-post (FPP) over proportional representation (PR)
How PR encourages backroom dealing and magnifies the influence of unpopular leaders
The sensitivity of FPP to changes to popular will
How FPP makes it easier to obtain majorities
How majorities make it easier to trace the consequences of policies
Deutsch and his criticism of compromise-policies.
References
Popper on democracy (https://www.economist.com/democracy-in-america/2016/01/31/from-the-archives-the-open-society-and-its-enemies-revisited) (economist piece).
Vaden's blog post (https://vmasrani.github.io/blog/2018/prop_rep/)
Chapter 13: Choices of The Beginning of Infinity (https://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Infinity-Explanations-Transform-World/dp/0143121359)
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 form a majority and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments).
Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ)
What's the first post you past? Tell us over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.
#64 - Libertarianism I: Intro and Moral Issues (w/ Bruce Nielson)
jeudi 7 mars 2024 • Durée 01:52:38
Liberty! Freedom! Coercion! Taxes are theft! The State is The Enemy! Bitcoin! Crypto! Down with the central banks! Let's all return to the Gold Standard!
Have you encountered such phrases in the wild? Confused, perhaps, as to why an afternoon beer with a friend become an extended diatribe against John Maynard Kaynes? Us too, which is why we're diving into the ideological source of such views: Libertarianism.
Welcome to Part 1 of a four part series where we, with Bruce Nielson (@bnielson01) as our battle-hardened guide, dive into Scott Alexander's non-libertarian FAQ (https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-libertarian-faq/). Ought George help, or ought George respect the government's property rights? Let's find out.
And make sure to check out Bruce's excellent The Theory Of Anything podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-theory-of-anything/id1503194218
We discuss
Varieties of libertarianism
Why are some libertarians so ideological?
Is taxation theft?
The problem of public goods
"Proprietary communities" and the perfect libertarian society
Why the perfect libertarian society doesn't escape taxation
Are we living in the libertarian utopia right now?
Taxes as membership fees
References
The Non-libertarian FAQ (https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-libertarian-faq/)
George ought to help (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGMQZEIXBMs&t=228s&ab_channel=bitbutter)
The Machinery of Freedom (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machinery_of_Freedom) by David Friedman
Vaden's blog posts on Libertarianism / Austrian Economics / Anarcho-Captialism / Whateveryawannacallit
First: Is Austrian Economics the Best Explanation of Economics? (https://vmasrani.github.io/blog/2023/aecr-challenge/)
Second: Can we predict human behaviour? A discussion with Brett Hall (https://vmasrani.github.io/blog/2023/predicting-human-behaviour/)
Quotes
0.2: Do you hate libertarianism?
No.
To many people, libertarianism is a reaction against an over-regulated society, and an attempt to spread the word that some seemingly intractable problems can be solved by a hands-off approach. Many libertarians have made excellent arguments for why certain libertarian policies are the best options, and I agree with many of them. I think this kind of libertarianism is a valuable strain of political thought that deserves more attention, and I have no quarrel whatsoever with it and find myself leaning more and more in that direction myself.
However, there’s a certain more aggressive, very American strain of libertarianism with which I do have a quarrel. This is the strain which, rather than analyzing specific policies and often deciding a more laissez-faire approach is best, starts with the tenet that government can do no right and private industry can do no wrong and uses this faith in place of more careful analysis. This faction is not averse to discussing politics, but tends to trot out the same few arguments about why less regulation has to be better. I wish I could blame this all on Ayn Rand, but a lot of it seems to come from people who have never heard of her. I suppose I could just add it to the bottom of the list of things I blame Reagan for.
- https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-libertarian-faq/
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 curtail freedom and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments).
Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ)
How do you summon libertarians at a party? Finish the punchline and tell us over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com
Special Guest: Bruce Nielson.
#63 - Recycling is the Dumps
mercredi 14 février 2024 • Durée 01:06:49
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 (https://medium.com/@robertwiblin/what-you-think-about-landfill-and-recycling-is-probably-totally-wrong-3a6cf57049ce). 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 (https://www.robwiblin.com/).
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 (https://ourworldindata.org/waste-management)
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 (https://www.savemoneycutcarbon.com/learn-save/plastic-vs-cotton-bags-which-is-more-sustainable) to be more eco-friendly than a plastic bag:
Source for claim that majority of e-waste ends up in China (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/america-e-waste-gps-tracker-tells-all-earthfix):
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 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBGZtNJAt-M&ab_channel=NPR) on the fact that some manufacturers will put recycling logos on products that aren't recyclable.
Bloomberg investigative report (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmGrI_BVlnc&ab_channel=BloombergOriginals) on tracking plastic to a town in Poland that burns it for energy.
Video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHzltu6Tvl8&ab_channel=PBSTerra) about the apex landfill
Guiyu, China. Wiki's description (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_waste_in_Guiyu.):
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 9km^2 , but they've hinted at expanding it in the future. So let's assume they more than double it and put it at 20km^2 . 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 20km^2 / 700K people = 28.5 m^2 per person for 300 years. For 400M people, that's roughly 12,000 km^2. The US is roughly 10,000,000 km^2. 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 (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments).
Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ)
What do you like to bring to your local neighbourhood tire-fire? Tell us over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com
#62 (Bonus) - The Principle of Optimism (Vaden on the Theory of Anything Podcast)
jeudi 1 février 2024 • Durée 02:45:37
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 (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments).
Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ)
Which unsolvable problem would you most like to solve? Send your answer via quantum tunneling to incrementspodcast@gmail.com
Special Guests: Bruce Nielson and Sam Kuypers.
#61 - Debating Free Will: Frankenstein's Monster and a Filmstrip of the Universe (with Lucas Smalldon)
mercredi 17 janvier 2024 • Durée 01:42:49
While you're reading this you're having a thought. Something like "wow, I love the Increments podcast", or "those hosts are some handsome" or "I really wish people would stop talking about free will." Do you have a choice in the matter? Are you free to choose what you're thinking in any given moment, or is it determined by your genetics, environment, and existing ideas? Is the universe determined, are we all Frankenstein's monster? How does one profitably think about that question? Today we have Lucas Smalldon on to help us think through these questions.
We reference Lucas's blog post titled reconciling-determinism-and-free-will (https://barelymorethanatweet.com/2021/01/05/reconciling-determinism-and-free-will/). Because it's is barely more than a tweet, we've included the entire post here as well:
Reconciling Free Will with Determinism
Free will and determinism seem to conflict with each other. But the apparent conflict disappears when we understand that determinism and free will simply describe the world from radically different perspectives and at fundamentally different levels. Free will makes sense only within the context of the physical world, whereas determinism makes sense only from a perspective that is outside the physical world. Consider the determinist statement, “The future exists and has always existed”. It seems like a contradiction in terms, but only because our language forces us to express the idea misleadingly in terms of the past and future. If we assign special meanings to the temporal words in the statement—namely, if by the future we mean “objectively real events that from the perspective of our present have not yet happened”; and if by always we mean “transcending time itself” rather than the usual “existing across all time”—then the contradiction resolves. Assigning these special meanings allows us to express determinism as atemporal and objective: as a description of a physical reality of which time is an attribute. Conversely, free will, which is by far the more intuitive concept, is needed to explain certain kinds of events (i.e., choices) that occur within time, and thus within the physical world that determinism describes from the outside. Determinism and free will are compatible. We really do make choices. It’s just that, from an atemporal determinist perspective, these choices have “always” existed.
Follow Lucas on twitter (https://twitter.com/reason_wit_me?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor) or check out his blog (https://barelymorethanatweet.com/).
We discuss
Levels of explanation regarding free will
The (in)compatibility of different levels of explanation
Why the lack of free will does not hinge on reductionism
Memetic arguments for the non-existence of free will
Whether we can have moral responsibility without free will
The universe as a filmstrip
Whether we're all just Frankenstein's monster
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 find freedom and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments).
Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ)
How much do you want to want Frankenstein's monster? Send your answer down the tubes and over to incrementspodcast@gmail.com
Special Guest: Lucas Smalldon.
#60 - Creativity and Computational Universality (with Bruce Nielson)
jeudi 4 janvier 2024 • Durée 01:58:42
Today we [finally] have on someone who actually knows what they're actually talking about: Mr. Bruce Nielson of the excellent Theory of Anything Podcast. We bring him on to straighten us out on the topics of creativity, machine intelligence, Turing machines, and computational universality - We build upon our previous conversation way back in Ask Us Anything I: Computation and Creativity (https://www.incrementspodcast.com/52), and suggest listening to that episode first.
Go follow Bruce on twitter (https://twitter.com/bnielson01) and check out his Theory of Anything Podcast here (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-theory-of-anything/id1503194218).
(Also Vaden's audio was acting up a bit in this episode, we humbly seek forgiveness.)
We discuss
Does theorem proving count as creativity?
Is AlphaGo creative?
Determinism, predictability, and chaos theory
Essentialism and a misunderstanding of definitions
Animal memes and understanding
Turing Machines and computational universality
Penrose's "proof" that we need new physics
References
Ask Us Anything I: Computation and Creativity (https://www.incrementspodcast.com/52) (Listen first!)
Logic theorist (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_Theorist)
AlphaGo movie (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaGo_(film))
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 fund more 64 minute-long blog posts and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments).
Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ)
Create us up an email with something imaginatively rote, cliche and formulaic, and mail that creative stinker over to incrementspodcast@gmail.com
Special Guest: Bruce Nielson.
#59 (C&R, Chap 8) - On the Status of Science and Metaphysics (Plus reflections on the Brett Hall blog exchange)
vendredi 22 décembre 2023 • Durée 01:26:24
Back to the C&R series baby! Feels goooooood. Need some bar-room explanations for why induction is impossible? We gotchu. Need some historical background on where your boy Isaac got his ideas? We gotchu. Need to know how to refute the irrefutable? Gotchu there too homie, because today we're diving into Conjectures and Refutations, Chapter 8: On the Status of Science and Metaphysics.
Oh, and we also discuss, in admittedly frustrated tones, the failed blog exchange between Brett Hall and Vaden on prediction and Austrianism. If you want the full listening experience, we suggest reading both posts before hearing our kvetching:
Vaden's post (https://vmasrani.github.io/blog/2023/predicting-human-behaviour/)
Brett's "response" (https://www.bretthall.org/blog/humans-are-creative)
Hold on to your hats for this one listeners, because she starts off rather spicy.
We discuss
Why Kant believed in the truth of Newtonian mechanics
Newton and his assertion that he arrived at his theory via induction
Why this isn't true and is logically impossible
Was Copernicus influenced by Platonic ideals?
How Kepler came up with the idea of elliptical orbits
Why finite observations are always compatible with infinitely many theories
Kant's paradox and his solution
Popper's updated solution to Kant's paradox
The irrefutability of philosophical theories
How can we say that irrefutable theories are false?
Annnnnd perhaps a few cheap shots here and there about Austrian Economics as well.
# References
Some background history (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/copernicus/notes.html#note-6) on Copernicus and why Ben thinks Popper is wrong
Quotes
Listening to this statement you may well wonder how I can possibly hold a theory to be false and irrefutable at one and the same time—I who claim to be a rationalist. For how can a rationalist say of a theory that it is false and irrefutable? Is he not bound, as a rationalist, to refute a theory before he asserts that it is false? And conversely, is he not bound to admit that if a theory is irrefutable, it is true?
Now if we look upon a theory as a proposed solution to a set of problems, then the theory immediately lends itself to critical discussion—even if it is non-empirical and irrefutable. For we can now ask questions such as, Does it solve the problem? Does it solve it better than other theories? Has it perhaps merely shifted the problem? Is the solution simple? Is it fruitful? Does it perhaps contradict other philosophical theories needed for solving other problems?
Because, as you [Kant] said, we are not passive receptors of sense data, but active organisms. Because we react to our environment not always merely instinctively, but sometimes con- sciously and freely. Because we can invent myths, stories, theories; because we have a thirst for explanation, an insatiable curiosity, a wish to know. Because we not only invent stories and theories, but try them out and see whether they work and how they work. Because by a great effort, by trying hard and making many mistakes, we may sometimes, if we are lucky, succeed in hitting upon a story, an explanation, which ‘saves the phenomena’; perhaps by making up a myth about ‘invisibles’, such as atoms or gravitational forces, which explain the visible. Because knowledge is an adventure of ideas. These ideas, it is true, are produced by us, and not by the world around us; they are not merely the traces of repeated sensations or stimuli or what not; here you were right. But we are more active and free than even you believed; for similar observations or similar environmental situations do not, as your theory implied, produce similar explanations in different men. Nor is the fact that we create our theories, and that we attempt to impose them upon the world, an explanation of their success, as you believed. For the overwhelming majority of our theories, of our freely invented ideas, are unsuccessful; they do not stand up to searching tests, and are discarded as falsified by experience. Only a very few of them succeed, for a time, in the competitive struggle for survival.
\
C&R Chapter 2
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 fund more hour-long blog posts and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover anger management here (https://ko-fi.com/increments).
Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ)
Would you rather be wrong or boring? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com
#58 - Ask Us Anything V: How to Read and What to Read
mercredi 29 novembre 2023 • Durée 01:40:32
Alright people, we made it. Six months, a few breaks, some uncontrollable laughter, some philosophy, many unhinged takes, a little bit of diarrhea and we're here, the last Ask Us Anything. After this we're never answering another God D*** question. Ever.
We discuss
Do you wish you could change your own interests?
Methods of information ingestion
Taking books off their pedestal bit
Intellectual influences
Veganism (why Ben is, why Vaden isn't)
Anti-rational memes
Fricken Andrew Huberman again
Stoicism
Are e-fuels the best of the best or the worst of the worst?
Questions
(Andrew) Any suggested methods of reading Popper (or others) and getting the most out of it? I'm not from a philosophy background, and although I get a lot out of the books, I think there's probably ways of reading them (notes etc?) where I could invest the same time and get more return.
(Andrew) Any other books you'd say added to your personal philosophical development as DD, KP have? Who and why?
(Alex) Are you aware of general types of insidious anti-rational memes which are hard to recognise as such? Any ideas on how we can go about recognising them in our own thinking? (I do realise that perhaps no general method exists, but still, if you have any thoughts on this...)
(Lorcan) What do you think about efuels? Listen to this take (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egTCIyNBpQw&ab_channel=FullyChargedShow) by Fully Charged.
References
Lying (https://www.samharris.org/books/lying) and Free Will (https://www.samharris.org/books/free-will) by Sam Harris
Doing Good Better (https://www.amazon.ca/Doing-Good-Better-Effective-Altruism/dp/1592409660) by MacAskill
Animal Liberation (https://www.amazon.ca/Animal-Liberation-Definitive-Classic-Movement/dp/0061711306) by Peter Singer
Mortal Questions (https://www.amazon.ca/Mortal-Questions-Thomas-Nagel/dp/1107604710#:~:text=Thomas%20Nagel's%20Mortal%20Questions%20explore,%2C%20consciousness%2C%20freedom%20and%20value.) by Thomas Nagel
Death and Life of Great American Cities (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_American_Cities) by Jane Jacobs
Peace is Every Step (https://www.amazon.ca/Peace-Every-Step-Mindfulness-Everyday/dp/0553351397) and True Love (https://www.amazon.ca/True-Love-Practice-Awakening-Heart/dp/1590304047) by Thich Nhat Hanh
Seeing like a State (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_Like_a_State#:~:text=Seeing%20Like%20a%20State%3A%20How,accordance%20with%20purported%20scientific%20laws.) by James Scott
The Truth Behind Cage-Free and Free-Range | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foHv_MCBveA&ab_channel=StuffYouShouldKnow)
People
Producers of rational memes:
- Everything: Christopher Hitchens, Vladimir Nabokov, Sam Harris, George Orwell, Scott Alexander, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Steven Pinker
- Sex and Relationships: Dan Savage
- Environment/Progress: Vaclav Smil, Matt Ridley, Steven Pinker, Hans Rosling, Bjorn Lomborg, Michael Shellenburger, Alex Epstein
- Race: Glenn Loury, John Mcwhorter, Coleman Hughes, Kmele Foster, Chloe Valdery
- Woke: John Mcwhorter, Yasha Mounk, Coleman Hughes, Sam Harris, Douglas Murrey, Jordan Peterson, Steven Hicks, James Lindsay, Ben Shapiro
- Feminism: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Christina Hoff Summers, Camille Paglia
(Note: Then follow each thinker's favorite thinker, and never stop. )
Producers of anti-rational memes:
- Eric Weinstein
- Bret Weinstein
- Noam Chomsky (See A Potpourri Of Chomskyan Nonsense: https://lingbuzz.net/lingbuzz/001592/v6.pdf)
- Glenn Greenwald
- Reza Aslan
- Medhi Hassan
- Robin Diangelo
- Ibraam x Kendi
- George Galloway
- Judith Butler
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 fund the anti-book campaign and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help therapy costs here (https://ko-fi.com/increments).
Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ)
What aren't you interested in, and how might you fix that? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com
#57 (Bonus) - A calm and soothing discussion of The Patriarchy
mercredi 15 novembre 2023 • Durée 01:01:29
We we're looking for a nice light topic for our patron only episode, so Vaden naturally chosen to chat about the patriarchy. I guess he didn't get into enough trouble in his personal life talking about it so he wanted to make his support and admiration for the patriarchy public.
This is a sneak preview into the land of patreon bonus episodes, so be sure to fork over some cold hard cash if you'd like a bit more mansplaining in your life.
We discuss
Harassment of women in various spheres of life
The patriarchy as a set of facts versus a causal explanation
Why conflating these two notions of the patriarchy harms progress
Domains where women are doing better than men (hint: education, mental health, and psychopathy)
Why it's so hard to talk about this
Why Canada is different than Afghanistan (OR IS 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 pay for men's rights posters and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help with upholding the patriarchy here (https://ko-fi.com/increments).
Click dem like buttons on youtube over hur (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ).
Who is a better meninist? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com
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