Matthew Adelstein, better known as Bentham’s Bulldog on Substack, is a philosophy major at the University of Michigan and an up & coming public intellectual.

He’s a rare combination: Effective Altruist, Bayesian, non-reductionist, theist.

Our debate covers reductionism, evidence for god, the implications of a fine-tuned universe, moral realism, and AI doom.

00:00 Introduction

02:56 Matthew’s Research

11:29 Animal Welfare

16:04 Reductionism vs. Non-Reductionism Debate

39:53 The Decline of God in Modern Discourse

46:23 Religious Credences

50:24 Pascal's Wager and Christianity

56:13 Are Miracles Real?

01:10:37 Fine-Tuning Argument for God

01:28:36 Cellular Automata

01:34:25 Anthropic Principle

01:51:40 Mathematical Structures and Probability

02:09:35 Defining God

02:18:20 Moral Realism

02:21:40 Orthogonality Thesis

02:32:02 Moral Philosophy vs. Science

02:45:51 Moral Intuitions

02:53:18 AI and Moral Philosophy

03:08:50 Debate Recap

03:12:20 Show Updates

Show Notes

Matthew’s Substack: https://benthams.substack.com

Matthew's Twitter: https://x.com/BenthamsBulldog

Matthew's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@deliberationunderidealcond5105

Lethal Intelligence Guide, the ultimate animated video introduction to AI x-risk – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CUFbqh16Fg

PauseAI, the volunteer organization I’m part of — https://pauseai.info/

Join the PauseAI Discord — https://discord.gg/2XXWXvErfA — and say hi to me in the #doom-debates-podcast channel!

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