Robert Wright's Nonzero

Lee’s new book The Scientific Attitude: Defending Science from Denial, Fraud, and Pseudoscience  ... Why scientific theories are never “proved” ... Karl Popper’s principle of falsification explained  ... Why the philosophy of science hasn’t been useful to scientists ... Why philosophers of science need a new way to talk about evidence ... Can philosophy of science help refute science deniers?  ... Flat Earthers, science denial, and the scientific attitude  ... Cognitive bias, ideology, and the social sciences  ... Lee: There is no consensus about the epistemological status of science ... The hubris of “naive realism”  ...

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Lee’s new book The Scientific Attitude: Defending Science from Denial, Fraud, and Pseudoscience  ... Why scientific theories are never “proved” ... Karl Popper’s principle of falsification explained  ... Why the philosophy of science hasn’t been useful to scientists ... Why philosophers of science need a new way to talk about evidence ... Can philosophy of science help refute science deniers?  ... Flat Earthers, science denial, and the scientific attitude  ... Cognitive bias, ideology, and the social sciences  ... Lee: There is no consensus about the epistemological status of science ... The hubris of “naive realism”  ...

What would a war with Iran look like? ... Ilan: The recent attacks on tankers were "almost definitely" Iranian ... How tit-for-tat attacks could spiral into war ... Bob: Trump is abusing America's central role in the global financial system ... What happens after the 2020 election? ... Signs that hardliners are winning the argument within Iran ... Debating whether Iran is a uniquely bad actor in the Middle East ...

A brief primer on the free will vs. determinism debate ... Are moral responsibility and determinism compatible? ... Is punishment a tragic necessity or a moral good? ... Gideon tries to convince Bob that compatibilism is coherent ... Gideon's distinctive take on compatibilism ... A thought experiment about the moral culpability of an ancient slaveholder ... Free will and the mind-body problem ... Buddhist ideas about punishment ...

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.nonzero.org/subscribe

A brief primer on the free will vs. determinism debate ... Are moral responsibility and determinism compatible? ... Is punishment a tragic necessity or a moral good? ... Gideon tries to convince Bob that compatibilism is coherent ... Gideon's distinctive take on compatibilism ... A thought experiment about the moral culpability of an ancient slaveholder ... Free will and the mind-body problem ... Buddhist ideas about punishment ...

Chris’s new book, Peace, War, and Liberty: Understanding U.S. Foreign Policy ... Are libertarians, generally speaking, anti-war? ... Chris: The U.S. is powerful because people want to emulate us ... Libertarianism and international law ... Why has Congress let presidents usurp its war powers? ... The sorrows and joys of international weapons inspection treaties ... Why libertarian foreign policy is conducive to American security ... Does America have an imperialist foreign policy? ...

The Trump administration’s "Iran Disinformation Project," which Negar helped expose ... Following the State Department money ... Will Congress cancel funding for the project? ... Heshmat Alavi, the Iran expert who turns out not to exist ... How is Trump viewed in Iran? ... Negar: Sanctions, though painful, won’t bring the Iranian regime down ... Could Trump cut a new nuclear deal? ...

Oliver's recent essay in the Guardian, "How the news took over reality" ... The vanished distinction between private and public spheres ... Oliver: Maybe our problem is too much participation in democracy ... Bob on the halcyon early days at Slate, when writers didn't know their traffic stats ... Oliver: We've put the fear in our pockets ... Is it possible to be enlightened on Twitter? ... Tending our community gardens ...

Oliver's recent essay in the Guardian, "How the news took over reality" ... The vanished distinction between private and public spheres ... Oliver: Maybe our problem is too much participation in democracy ... Bob on the halcyon early days at Slate, when writers didn't know their traffic stats ... Oliver: We've put the fear in our pockets ... Is it possible to be enlightened on Twitter? ... Tending our community gardens ...

Gabe, just returned from a stint in China, on the controversial tech giant Huawei ... Is the battle over Huawei in fact just about curbing China's power? ... The "did we get China wrong?" debate ... Gabe (kind of) defends Trump's tariff policy ... Thirty years after Tiananmen Square, is political reform dead? ... What outsiders don't understand about the oppression of the Uighurs ...