The Theory of Anything by Bruce Nielson

05.14.2024

Episode 85: Critical Rationalism and Douglas Hofstadter (Part 1)

This is the first of our two part series (that may or may not be released back-to-back) where Bruce delves into the work Douglas Hofstadter, specifically the book Surfaces and Essences. We consider what is the relationship—if there is any—between...

04.30.2024

Episode 84: Are Video Games Harmful to Children?

Here we discuss a 1992 interview with David Deutsch where he makes the case that video games are inherently educational, not addictive, and that children should not be stopped from playing as much as they want. We contrast the view...

04.15.2024

Episode 83: Popper's Second Axis (aka Bruce's Epistemology?)

Bruce summarizes his (unique?) understanding of Karl Popper’s epistemology that (possibly?) straddles the line between orthodox and unorthodox and is Influenced both by Deutsch, more old school Popperians, and his own unique interpretation of critical rationalism. Bruce claims that the...

04.02.2024

Episode 82: Popper's Ratchet

In an episode that may (or may not) be his magnum opus, Bruce introduces his term for Karl Popper’s idea that you are only allowed to solve problems with your (scientific) theory by making it more empirical, not less empirical....

03.19.2024

Episode 81: Easy to Varyness vs Ad Hocness

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...

03.04.2024

Episode 80: Knowledge vs. Simul-Knowledge

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...

02.26.2024

Episode 79: Perspiration vs Inspiration

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?...

02.19.2024

Episode 78: Are Animal Memes Knowledge In the Genes?

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...

02.12.2024

Episode 77: Counter Examples To Deutsch's Theory of Knowledge?

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...

02.05.2024

Episode 76: The Constructor Theory of Knowledge

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...

01.29.2024

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

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?...

01.15.2024

Episode 74: The Problem of Open-Endedness

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...

01.01.2024

Episode 73: Argue Me Everything

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...

12.18.2023

Episode 72: Moral Progress and Tolerance for Intolerance

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 Popper’s paradox of tolerance, and “big agriculture.” --- Send in a...

12.04.2023

Episode 71: Can Values be Objective?

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...

11.20.2023

Episode 70: Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence?

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" from Microsoft Research as well as...

11.06.2023

Episode 69: Social Science and Critical Rationalism

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...

10.30.2023

Episode 68: Caldwell's "Clarifying Popper"

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...

10.16.2023

Episode 67: Disagreements with Deutsch

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...

10.02.2023

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

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 famous persons who claimed to...

09.18.2023

Episode 65: Causality, Time, and Free Will

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...

09.04.2023

Episode 64: What is a "Refutation"?

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...

08.14.2023

Episode 63: Brian Boutwell on Twin Studies and Heritability

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...

07.31.2023

Episode 62: Aliens!?!?

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,...

07.17.2023

Episode 61: A Critical Rationalist Defense of Corroboration

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...

07.03.2023

Episode 60: Learning, Work, and Art in the Age of ChatGPT

We interview Bruce’s nephew, Brendon 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....

06.12.2023

Episode 59: The Principle of Optimism (Round Table Discussion)

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...

05.22.2023

Episode 58: Deutsch's "Creative Blocks": A Decade Later

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....

05.01.2023

Episode 57: Quantum Immortality / Quantum Torment

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...

04.10.2023

Episode 56: Rationality, Religion, and the Omega Point

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: How is the theology of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day...

03.31.2023

Episode 55: Why are Empirical Theories Special? (IQ part 3)

We continue our discussion of ⁠Dwarkesh Patel's article "Contra David Deutsch on AI"⁠ compared to ⁠Brett Hall's tweet on IQ theory⁠. This time we concentrate on criticisms of Brett Hall's theory. Along the way, we ask the ultimate question: Why...

03.13.2023

Episode 54: Computational and Explanatory Universality (IQ part 2)

In this episode, we continue our discussion of Dwarkesh Patel's article "Contra David Deutsch on AI" compared to Brett Hall's tweet on IQ theory. This time we concentrate on criticisms of Patel's Hardware+Scaling hypothesis. To Patel's credit, he admits that...

02.17.2023

Episode 53: Universality and IQ - Part 1

Dwarkesh Patel published an article called "Contra David Deutsch on AI". 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....

01.16.2023

Episode 52: Is Being Dogmatic Ever a Good Thing?

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...

10.02.2022

Episode 51: Was Karl Popper Dogmatic?

There seems to be broad agreement, even among Karl Popper's own students, that he was a deeply dogmatic individual. In this episode we ask the question 'Was Karl Popper Dogmatic?' by reviewing a humorous article in Scientific American by John...

09.11.2022

Episode 50: The Turing Test 2.0 (aka is LaMDA Sentient?)

Blake Lemoine, the ex-Google engineer, claims LaMDA -- Google's language model -- is sentient. Is he right? Alan Turing is perhaps most famous for his "Turing Test" which is a test of intelligence. David Deutsch has some interesting things to say...

08.01.2022

Episode 49: AGI Alignment and Safety

Is Elon Musk right that Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) research is like 'summoning the demon' and should be regulated? In episodes 48 and 49, we discussed how our genes 'align' our interests with their own utilizing carrots and sticks (pleasure/pain) or...

07.12.2022

Episode 48: Genetics and Universality (part 2): How Our Genes Coerce Us

How do we square genetically influenced mental disorders with the theory of explanatory universality? In a previous episode, Tracy asked Bruce how to reconcile her experience with mental disorders, like narcissism, with the idea of Universal Explainers. This is part 2...

06.27.2022

Episode 47: Genetics and Universality (part 1): How Our Genes Influence Us

How do we square genetically influenced mental disorders with the theory of explanatory universality? In our last episode, Tracy asked Bruce how to reconcile her experience with mental disorders, like narcissism, with the idea of Universal Explainers. In this episode, Bruce...

06.13.2022

Episode 46: Narcissism and Other Mental Disorders

Tracy leads a discussion about Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) and Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). We discuss various other mental disorders as well. We sadly admit that some disorders are currently so serious that there is little hope of helping those...

05.30.2022

Episode 45: Adapting the The Wheel of Time for Television

What responsibility do the creators of a TV series or movie have to be faithful to the original source material? What risks are involved with either adapting the material too closely or not close enough? The much-anticipated Wheel of Time...

05.09.2022

Episode 44: Clarifying David Deutsch's Views of "Knowledge"

Bruce had a chance to talk to David Deutsch and ask him questions about his views of knowledge to clarify if he disagreed with Popper and Campbell about what is considered knowledge. Bruce took notes and in this episode reports...

04.18.2022

Episode 43: Deep Reinforcement Learning

In this video upload available on Spotify (we'll try this once and see how it's received), we revisit Reinforcement Learning (from way back in episode 28) and this time discuss how to turn it into Deep Reinforcement Learning by swapping...

03.28.2022

Episode 42: Popper without Refutation & Resolving the Problems of Refutation (part 2)

Over the years Bruce collected a series of 'problems' with the Popperian concept of refutation. Or so he thought. A chance encounter with Popper scholar Danny Frederick led to him re-evaluating Popper's writings and realizing that Popper sometimes uses terms...

03.13.2022

Episode 41: The Problems of Refutation & Popper Without Refutation (part 1)

Over the years Bruce collected a series of 'problems' with the Popperian concept of refutation. Or so he thought. A chance encounter with Popper scholar Danny Frederick led to him re-evaluating Popper's writings and realizing that Popper sometimes uses terms...

02.14.2022

Episode 40: Byrne vs Deutsch on Animal Intelligence

In this (mostly) standalone episode, we cover how Deutsch and Byrne each interpret Byrne's theory differently. Deutsch emphasizes the micro-level actions and gestures of great apes and the clear lack of understanding of what each gesture does. Byrne emphasizes the...

01.24.2022

Episode 39: Byrne's Methodology for Discovering Animal Insight (part 3)

Richard Byrne has spent his whole career trying to determine when animals learned to 'think.' We discuss Richard Byrne's methodology for determining which animals have what he calls 'insight' (the ability to utilize mental models) and why his methodology is...

01.03.2022

Episode 38: Animal Learning and Popper's Epistemology (part 2)

Karl Popper has a radical theory of 'dualistic evolution' where behavior had to evolve first before physical evolutionary changes could be taken advantage of. As part of his theory, Popper pointed out that an animal's ability to learn would be...

12.13.2021

Episode 37: Animal Intelligence and Knowledge Creation (part 1)

How intelligent are animals? In this episode, we introduce our series on animal intelligence rooted primarily in the research of Richard Byrne. Richard Byrne (mentioned in Beginning of Infinity) is a first-class Popperian researcher (though he doesn't realize it). We first talk...

11.29.2021

Episode 36: Failure is an Option!

In this episode, we discuss the value of failure and how businesses have yet to fully embrace the Popperian notion that we learn from our failures, so we should want to fail more, not less. --- Send in a voice message:...