Our Christmas gift to you this year is episode 100: an interview with The Man (TM) himself!

Bruce stumbles over himself fan-boying as he asks all his burning (but geeky) questions about cosmology, the omega point, and probability. How do Deutsch and Tipler differ on optimistic end-time cosmology? Is the Omega point refuted by observation (Deutsch) or not (Tipler)? Does heat death contradict the principle of optimism? Is it a bummer? Does stochasticity really not exist? And is it rational to wear a mask during COVID? How do you apply epistemology to a question like that when you lack enough data to severely test your theories but still need to make a decision?

Peter asks: Are free will and downward causation related? Do our genes attempt to coerce us? Why are explanatory and computational universality so confusing? And what if studies show that authoritative parenting is best for children?

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AKA "David Deutsch DESTORYS the Simulation Hypothesis"

This week we discuss the chapter “Why are Flowers Beautiful?” from the book Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch. Through our discussion we consider:

We take a deep dive into Karl Popper’s philosophical ideas about music that he outlines in four chapters in this intellectual autobiography Unended Quest:

We are joined by Peter’s brother, Chris Johansen, who is a straight-ahead jazz tenor saxophonist living in NYC. 

We discuss how Popper’s ideas on classical music intersect with Chris’s ideas on jazz, as well as the role of conservatism in music. We examine how Popper’s thinking on music influenced his concept of the 3 worlds and his ideas on such concepts as dogmatism, essentialism, and historicism. 

Plus, you get Bruce's rant about the importance of constraints in music, science, criticism, and Popper's epistemology. Bruce argues that absent at least the attempt to outline epistemological conventions (i.e. constraints) you can't error correct Popper's epistemology and you lose what makes it special.

You can listen to more of Chris’s music here.

Here we interview AI researcher Kenneth Stanley, who makes the case that in complex systems, pursing specific objectives can actually be counterproductive. Instead, whether in machine learning, business, science, education, or art, we should pursue what is interesting. It is in this search for novelty—fueled by curiosity—where innovation and open-ended knowledge creation occurs.

Get Ken's book!

Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective

This episode we interview Professor of Philosophy Stephen Hicks. In his excellent books Explaining Postmodernism and Nietzsche and the Nazis it becomes clear that the history of bad and good ideas—which he sees through the lens of Enlightenment and counter-Enlightenment philosophers—is more than an academic issue but something with monumental importance for human life and prosperity.

Rather than focus on this aspect of his work, which is widely known, we thought we’d ask him questions on epistemology, focusing on contrasting critical rationalism and objectivism.

Can philosophical theories be refuted? What is a bad explanation? Can all theories be made more empirical?

In search of an answer to these questions, Bruce takes a deep dive into what he believes is the correct way to apply “Popper’s ratchet” to metaphysical or philosophical theories. Along the way, Bruce puts forward a generalization of testability he calls “checkability” and explains why “vague-maning” our theories is “worse than dogmatism.”

Continuing from episode 91, we continue our deep dive into Popper's Conjectures and Refutations Chapter 8 where Popper explains how to use his epistemology on philosophical theories that (by definition) can't be 'refuted'.

Despite agreeing with most of Popper's specific arguments, we offer some considerable criticisms to Popper's approach to criticizing philosophical theories -- particularly to Popper's criticisms of the theory of Determinism which is a 'best theory' by any fair standard but Popper (incorrectly) thought was false.

Bruce argues that Popper's approach in C&R Ch. 8 is problematic because it opens the 'Crit Rat Loophole', which is a common way CritRats interpret Popper that allows any preferred theory to be declare a 'best theory' based on the scantest of criticisms.

Bruce argues that Chapter 8 of C&R fails in this important regard because it doesn't give a good answer to the question "How does one tell the difference between a good philosophical explanation and a bad explanation?"

Forgive the clickbait title. The episode should probably actually be called "The (Lack of) Problem of Induction" because we primarily cover Popper's refutation of induction in C&R Chapter 8.

This episode starts our deep dive into answering the question "What is the difference between a good philosophical explanation and a bad explanation?"

To answer that question we go over Karl Popper's "On the Status of Science and of Metaphysics" from his book Conjectures and Refutations Chapter 8. In this chapter Popper first explains why he believes 'there is no such thing as induction' (from page 18 of Logic of Scientific Discovery) by offering his historical and logical refutation of induction.

In this episode we go over Popper's refutation of induction in chapter 8 of C&R in detail and then compare it to Tom Mitchell's (of Machine Learning fame) argument of the 'futility of bias free learning.' We show that Mitchell's and Popper's arguments are actually the same argument even though Mitchell argues for the existence of a kind of induction as used in machine learning.

Bruce argues that the difference is not a conceptual or theoretical difference but just a difference in use of language and that the two men are actually conceptually fully in agreement. This makes machine learning both a kind of 'induction' (though not the kind Popper refuted) and also gives machine learning an interesting and often missed relationship with critical rationalism.

Then Bruce asks the most difficult question of all: "Is there anyone out there in the world other than me that is interested in exploring how to apply Karl Popper's epistemology to machine learning like this?"

You can find a copy of Mitchell's text here if you want to check out his argument for the futility of bias free learning for yourself.

As I mention in the podcast, I'm shocked Critical Rationalists aren't referencing Mitchell's argument constantly because it is so strongly critical rationalist in nature. But the whole textbook is just like this.