Jimbo Radio

My brother Jon and I discuss our childhood. I really enjoyed this conversation and hope to do more.

If you're interested, please reach out to suggest topics or question you have for Jon or Jimbo. Leave a comment or text Jimbo.

See blog post for more on top companies over time, https://stankrants.blogspot.com/2025/06/top-500-companies-with-time.html

It looks like Trump may have been booed a couple times for recommending vaccines. Either way, he stopped mentioning it pretty quick. Link here, https://youtu.be/eA306aNtvmk?si=zOT5In8-46G_4gmZ

Trump's Tesla White House Commercial seems to have increased Tesla sales among conservatives. The state of Texas provides decent evidence.

This was supposed to be a thinking out loud episode. Instead it is more of a summary of what I learned when I couldn't sleep.

Here is a fact check by ChatGPT-5.

Show Notes

🏃‍♂️ Episode Introduction

In this late-night recording (past 3 a.m. thanks to a caffeine-fueled 5K race), Jimbo explores one of philosophy’s most profound questions: Can we ever be certain of anything?

This episode blends personal reflections on running in 94° heat with a deep dive into epistemology — the study of knowledge — featuring thinkers like Descartes, Hume, Kant, and Voltaire.

• Evening 5K race in high heat and wind.

• Pacing strong for two miles, with a slowdown in the third mile due to fatigue and conditions.

• Reflections on how environmental factors (heat, wind, time of day) can shape performance.

• Special shout-out: Jamie’s first fun run mile — and she crushed it!

• We don’t perceive the world directly; we perceive mental representations shaped by senses.

• Related to but not the same as Plato’s Allegory of the Cave.

• Limits of perception proven by things outside our sensory range (infrared, microscopic life, etc.).

🔗 Learn more:

• Plato’s Allegory of the Cave – Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

• The Veil of Perception – Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

• Deduction: From premises to guaranteed conclusions (e.g., All humans are mortal. Socrates is human. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.).

• Induction: From past observations to probable conclusions (e.g., The sun has always risen → it will rise tomorrow.).

• Deduction = certainty (if premises are true).

• Induction = probability only.

🔗 Learn more:

• Deductive and Inductive Reasoning

• Hume on Induction – Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

• Hume pointed out we have no logical guarantee that the future will resemble the past.

• Example: Just because the sun has always risen doesn’t mean it must tomorrow.

• Conclusion: All empirical knowledge is probabilistic, not certain.

🔗 Learn more:

• David Hume’s Problem of Induction – SEP

• Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) introduced methodic doubt: doubt everything until reaching a foundation of certainty.

• His famous line: Cogito, ergo sum (“I think, therefore I am”).

• Only certainty: his own existence as a thinking being.

🔗 Read: Descartes’ Meditations (Full Text)

• Kant accepted Hume’s challenge but argued we can know how things must appear to us through human cognition.

• Certainty exists only within the structures of our perception and reason (phenomena), not about reality itself (noumena).

🔗 Learn more:

• Kant’s Epistemology – SEP

• Famous quote: “Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one.”

• Reaction to Baron d’Holbach’s System of Nature (1770), which argued for atheistic materialism.

• Voltaire criticized both dogmatic atheism and dogmatic theism, favoring deism and intellectual humility.

• His message: embrace doubt and modesty in belief, avoid absolute certainty.

🔗 Learn more:

• Voltaire’s Philosophy – SEP

• Baron d’Holbach – System of Nature (Full Text)

• Most of what we “know” in science, history, and daily life is inductive, not deductive — therefore probabilistic.

• Certainty is rare, and often only available in definitions, math, and logic.

• Hume showed the limits of induction, Kant reframed knowledge within cognition, and Voltaire warned us that claiming certainty itself is folly.

• Podcast mentioned: Philosophize This! – esp. episodes 39–41.

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP – free, scholarly reference).

• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (accessible summaries).

Here is a visual referenced in the discussion, https://stankrants.blogspot.com/2025/05/knowledge-epistemology-step-1.html

The article we read and discussed is Enhancing Our Truth Orientation by Robin Hanson.

John Lucas is a former Oregon Duck cross country and track and field runner. He competed in the 2007 and 2012 U.S. Olympic Team Trials for the men's marathon.

This is the second discussion/interview with John Lucas. John shares the psychology of being a runner and competing among the highest levels.

Jimbo interviews former Oregon cross country and track runner John Lucas. John ran two US trials for the marathon.

John and Jimbo are both Eagle Point High School alumni.

For more about Jimbo's motivation to write a running book clink on the following:

• The Running Fiction Challenge
• It's about the Dope
• Running and Compound Interest
• Ep 22 ⁠Running Book Reviews with Alan and Liz⁠

Mike and Jimbo turn their group chat into a podcast episode

Check out more from Maureen at her website, https://www.maureenmcgranaghan.com/

Music by ⁠⁠EvgenyBardyuzha⁠⁠ from ⁠⁠Pixabay⁠

Read one of John Neeleman's books here.

Follow him of Twitter @JohnRNeeleman here

Music by ⁠EvgenyBardyuzha⁠ from ⁠Pixabay

Jimbo's Blog

Toni's Podcast is Romance Read Along. She would love to hear from you at [email protected].