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Increments

Increments

Ben Chugg and Vaden Masrani

Vaden Masrani, a senior research scientist in machine learning, and Ben Chugg, a PhD student in statistics, get into trouble arguing about everything except machine learning and statistics. Coherence is somewhere on the horizon. Bribes, suggestions, love-mail and hate-mail all welcome at [email protected].
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Top 10 Increments Episodes

Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Increments episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Increments for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Increments episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

In a rare turn of events, it just so happened that one or perhaps both of your charming co-hosts spewed a bit of nonsense about Derek Parfit in a previous episode, and we had to bring in a heavy hitter to sort us out. Today we're joined by friend of the podcast Mr. Dan Hageman, immuno-oncologist by day and aspiring ethicist by night, who gently takes us to task for misunderstanding Parfit and the role of ethical theorizing, and for ignoring the suffering of pigeons. The critiques land, and convince Vaden that we should dedicate our resources towards providing safe and affordable contraception for Apex predators.

We cover all sorts of ground in this episode, including:

  • Mistakes we made in our thought experiments episode
  • Is it possible to over-theorize?
  • Wild animal suffering
  • Don't fish eat other fish?!
  • Feline family planning
  • Antinatalism
  • Moral Cluelessness
  • Population ethics and the repugnant conclusion (Ha!)
  • Similarities and differences between theoretical physics and theoretical philosophy

References:

Dan Hageman is a biomed engineer who works in immuno-oncology, but in his not-so-free time strives to sell himself as an amateur philosopher and aspiring 'Effective Altruist'. He spends much of this time trying to keep up with impactful charities focused on the reduction and/or prevention of extreme suffering, and in 2020 helped co-found a hopefully burgeoning side project called ‘Match for More’. He would like to note that the IPAs are to blame for any and all errors/misapprehensions made during his lively discussion with epic friends and podcast hosts, Ben and Vaden.

How many insect lives are morally equivalent to one human life? Send us your best guess at [email protected]. We'll reveal the correct answer in episode 1000.

Update 13/06/21: The original title of this episode was "Meta-ethics Cage Match (with Dan Hageman)"

Special Guest: Dan Hageman.

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The final part in a series which has polarized the nation. We tackle -- alongside Bruce Nielson as always -- the remaining part of Scott's FAQ: Political Issues. Can the government get anything right? Has Scott strawmanned the libertarian argument in this section? Is libertarianism an economic theory, a political theory, a metaphysical theory, or a branch of physics? And what do Milton and Ludwig have to say about all this? Warning: we get a little meta with this one...

We discuss

  • Is the government effective at doing anything?
  • What's the use of thinking counterfactually?
  • Is it just market failures all the way down?
  • Three kinds of anarcho-capitalists
  • The economic calculation problem
  • Is an economic theory necessarily political?
  • What to make of the claim that austrian economics is like physics
  • But wait, isn't it also metaphysics?

References

Quotes

The Argument: Government can’t do anything right. Its forays into every field are tinged in failure. Whether it’s trying to create contradictory “state owned businesses”, funding pet projects that end up over budget and useless, or creating burdensome and ridiculous “consumer protection” rules, its heavy-handed actions are always detrimental and usually embarrassing.
...
The Counterargument: Government sometimes, though by no means always, does things right, and some of its institutions and programs are justifiably considered models of efficiency and human ingenuity. There are various reasons why people are less likely to notice these.
- Scott's FAQ

7.1.1: Okay, fine. But that’s a special case where, given an infinite budget, they were able to accomplish something that private industry had no incentive to try. And to their credit, they did pull it off, but do you have any examples of government succeeding at anything more practical?

Eradicating smallpox and polio globally, and cholera and malaria from their endemic areas in the US. Inventing the computer, mouse, digital camera, and email. Building the information superhighway and the regular superhighway. Delivering clean, practically-free water and cheap on-the-grid electricity across an entire continent. Forcing integration and leading the struggle for civil rights. Setting up the Global Positioning System. Ensuring accurate disaster forecasts for hurricanes, volcanoes, and tidal waves. Zero life-savings-destroying bank runs in eighty years. Inventing nuclear power and the game theory necessary to avoid destroying the world with it.

Socials

  • Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani
  • Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link
  • Help us think counterfactually and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here.
  • Click dem like buttons on youtube

How much would you like to pay for a fresh gulp of air? Tell us over at [email protected].

Special Guest: Bruce Nielson.

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Increments - #69 - Contra Scott Alexander on Probability
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06/20/24 • 105 min

After four episodes spent fawning over Scott Alexander's "Non-libertarian FAQ", we turn around and attack the good man instead. In this episode we respond to Scott's piece "In Continued Defense of Non-Frequentist Probabilities", and respond to each of his five arguments defending Bayesian probability. Like moths to a flame, we apparently cannot let the probability subject slide, sorry people. But the good news is that before getting there, you get to here about some therapists and pedophiles (therapeutic pedophelia?). What's the probability that Scott changes his mind based on this episode?

We discuss

  • Why we're not defending frequentism as a philosophy
  • The Bayesian interpretation of probability
  • The importance of being explicit about assumptions
  • Why it's insane to think that 50% should mean both "equally likely" and "I have no effing idea".
  • Why Scott's interpretation of probability is crippling our ability to communicate
  • How super are Superforecasters?
  • Marginal versus conditional guarantees (this is exactly as boring as it sounds)
  • How to pronounce Samotsvety and are they Italian or Eastern European or what?

References

Quotes

During the pandemic, Dominic Cummings said some of the most useful stuff that he received and circulated in the British government was not forecasting. It was qualitative information explaining the general model of what’s going on, which enabled decision-makers to think more clearly about their options for action and the likely consequences. If you’re worried about a new disease outbreak, you don’t just want a percentage probability estimate about future case numbers, you want an explanation of how the virus is likely to spread, what you can do about it, how you can prevent it.
- Michael Story

Is it bad that one term can mean both perfect information (as in 1) and total lack of information (as in 3)? No. This is no different from how we discuss things when we’re not using probability.

Do vaccines cause autism? No. Does drinking monkey blood cause autism? Also no. My evidence on the vaccines question is dozens of excellent studies, conducted so effectively that we’re as sure about this as we are about anything in biology. My evidence on the monkey blood question is that nobody’s ever proposed this and it would be weird if it were true. Still, it’s perfectly fine to say the single-word answer “no” to both of them to describe where I currently stand. If someone wants to know how much evidence/certainty is behind my “no”, they can ask, and I’ll tell them.
- SA, Section 2

Socials

  • Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani
  • Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link
  • Help us calibrate our credences and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here.
  • Click dem like buttons on youtube

What's your credence in Bayesianism? Tell us over at [email protected].

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We were delighted to be joined by Davis Professor at the Sante Fe Insitute, Melanie Mitchell! We chat about our understanding of artificial intelligence, human intelligence, and whether it's reasonable to expect us to be able to build sophisticated human-like automated systems anytime soon.

Follow Melanie on twitter @MelMitchell1 and check out her website: https://melaniemitchell.me/

We discuss:

  • AI hype through the ages
  • How do we know if machines understand?
  • Winograd schemas and the "WinoGrande" challenge.
  • The importance of metaphor and analogies to intelligence
  • The four fallacies in AI research:
    • 1. Narrow intelligence is on a continuum with general intelligence
    • 2. Easy things are easy and hard things are hard
    • 3. The lure of wishful mnemonics
    • 4. Intelligence is all in the brain
  • Whether embodiment is necessary for true intelligence
  • Douglas Hofstadter's views on AI
  • Ray Kurzweil and the "singularity"
  • The fact that Moore's law doesn't hold for software
  • The difference between symbolic AI and machine learning
  • What analogies have to teach us about human cognition

Errata

References:

Contact us

Eliezer was more scared than Douglas about AI, so he wrote a blog post about it. Who wrote the blog post, Eliezer or Douglas? Tell us at over at [email protected].

Special Guest: Melanie Mitchell.

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We're back! Apologies for the delay, but Vaden got married and Ben was summoned to be an astronaut on the next billionaire's vacation to Venus. This week we're talking about how to forecast the future (with this one simple and easy trick! Astrologers hate them!). Specifically, we're diving into Philip Tetlock's work on Superforecasting.

So what's the deal? Is it possible to "harness the wisdom of the crowd to forecast world events"? Or is the whole thing just a result of sloppy statistics? We believe the latter is likely to be true with probability 64.9% - no, wait, 66.1%.

Intro segment:

"The Sentience Debate": The moral value of shrimps, insects, and oysters

Relevant timestamps:

  • 10:05: "Even if there's only a one in one hundred chance, or one in one thousand chance, that insects are sentient given current information, and if we're killing trillions or quadrillions of insects in ways that are preventable or avoidable or that we can in various ways mitigate that harm... then we should consider that possibility."
  • 25:47: "If you're all going to work on pain in invertebrates, I pity you in many respects... In my previous work, I was used to running experiments and getting a clear answer, and I could say what these animals do and what they don't do. But when I started to think about what they might be feeling, you meet this frustration, that after maybe about 15 years of research, if someone asks me do they feel pain, my answer is 'maybe'... a strong 'maybe'... you cannot discount the possibility."
  • 46:47: "It is not 100% clear to me that plants are non sentient. I do think that animals including insects are much more likely to be sentient than plants are, but I would not have a credence of zero that plants are sentient."
  • 1:01:59: "So the hard problem I would like to ask the panel is: If you were to compare the moral weight of one ant to the moral weight of one human, what ratio would you put? How much more is a human worth than an ant? 100:1? 1000:1? 10:1? Or maybe 1:1? ... Let's start with Jamie."

Main References:

Additional references mentioned in the episode:

Use your Good Judgement and send us email at [email protected].

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Alright spiders, point this at your brain. Ben and Vaden do a deep dive into the recent Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma and have a genuine debate, just like the good ol' days. Topics touched:

  • Why Vaden dislikes documentaries, and this one in particular
  • Is reliance on social media a problem?
  • The advertisement model
  • The relationship between social media and mental health
  • ... and political polarization
  • ... and outrage in general
  • Epistemological erosion
  • Wars of words and swords

Outraged? Polarized? Radicalized, even? We want to hear about it at [email protected].
Quotes referenced in episode:
"This point being crossed is at the root of addiction, polarization, radicalization, outrageification, vanityification, the entire thing. This is overpowering human nature, and this is checkmate on humanity."
- Tristan Harris, The Social Dilemma
"If we go down the current status quo for, let's say, another 20 years... we probably destroy our civilization through willful ignorance. We probably fail to meet the challenge of climate change. We probably degrade the world's democracies so that they fall into some sort of bizarre autocratic dysfunction. We probably ruin the global economy. Uh, we probably, um, don't survive. You know, I... I really do view it as existential."
- Jaron Lanier, The Social Dilemma
"We're pointing these engines of AI back at ourselves to reverse-engineer what elicits responses from us. Almost like you're stimulating nerve cells on a spider to see what causes its legs to respond. So, it really is this kind of prison experiment where we're just, you know, roping people into the matrix, and we're just harvesting all this money and... and data from all their activity to profit from."
- Tristan Harris, The Social Dilemma
"Although I am an admirer of tradition, and conscious of its importance, I am, at the same time, an almost orthodox adherent of unorthodoxy: I hold that orthodoxy is the death of knowledge, since the growth of knowledge depends entirely on the existence of disagreement. Admittedly, disagreement may lead to strife, and even to violence. And this, I think, is very bad indeed, for I abhor violence. Yet disagreement may also lead to discussion, to argument, and to mutual criticism. And these, I think, are of paramount importance. I suggest that the greatest step towards a better and more peaceful world was taken when the war of swords was first supported, and later sometimes even replaced, by a war of words."
- Karl Popper, The Myth Of The Framework
References:

Errata:
Vaden keeps saying "Jared Lanier" when it should be "Jaron Lanier". Oops!

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What do you do when one of your intellectual idols comes on the podcast? Bombard them with disagreements of course. We were thrilled to have David Deutsch on the podcast to discuss whether the concept of belief is a useful lens on human cognition, when probability and statistics should be deployed, and whether he disagrees with Karl Popper on abstractions, the truth, and nothing but the truth.

Follow David on Twitter (@DavidDeutschOxf) or find his website here.

We discuss

  • Whether belief is a fruitful lens through which to analyze ideas
  • Whether a non-quantitative form of belief can be defended
  • How does belief bottom out epistemologically?
  • Whether statistics and probability are useful
  • Where should statistics and probability be used in practice?
  • The Popper-Miller theorem
  • Statements vs propositions and their relevance for truth
  • Whether Popper and Deutsch disagree about truth

References

Socials

  • Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani, @DavidDeutschOxf
  • Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link
  • Believe in us and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here.
  • Click dem like buttons on youtube

What's the truth about your belief on the probability of useful statistics? Tell us over at [email protected].

Special Guest: David Deutsch.

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Increments - #35 - Climate Change III: Fossil Fuels
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11/29/21 • 47 min

Come experience the thrill of the shill as we discuss the somewhat-controversial natural resource called "fossil fuels". In this episode, we drill deep into opto-pessimist Vaclav Smil's excellent book Oil: A Beginner's Guide, in what is possibly our only episode to feature heterodox Russian-Ukrainian science, subterranean sound waves, and that goop lady - what's her name? It's unbelievable, right?

We discuss:

  • The science behind fossil fuels: How they're made, found, processed, and used
  • Energy transitions and the shale gas revolution
  • Global oil dependence and human rights
  • The environmental costs of fossil fuels
  • Will we reach Peak Oil?
  • Why natural resources aren't milkshakes
  • The future of fossil fuels

(Note to Big Oil: Please send shilling fees to [email protected])

References

Social media everywhere

Quotes

Modern life now begins and ends amidst the plethora of plastics whose synthesis began with feedstocks derived from oil - because hospitals teem with them. Surgical gloves, flexible tubing, catheters, IV containers, sterile packaging, trays, basins, bed pans and rails, thermal blankets and lab ware: naturally, you are not aware of these surroundings when a few hours or a few days old, but most of us will become all too painfully aware of them six, seven or eight decades later. And that recital was limited only to common hospital items made of polyvinylchloride; countless other items fashioned from a huge variety of plastics are in our cars, aeroplanes, trains, homes, offices and factories.

  • Oil: A Beginner's Guide, p.10

A free market has not been one of the hallmarks of the 150 years of oil’s commercial history. The oil business has seen repeated efforts to fix product prices by controlling either the level of crude oil extraction or by dominating its transportation and processing, or by monopolizing all of these aspects. The first infamous, and successful, attempt to do so was the establishment of Standard Oil in Cleveland in 1870. The Rockefeller brothers (John D. and William) and their partners used secretive acquisitions and deals with railroad companies to gain the control of oil markets first in Cleveland, then in the Northeast, and eventually throughout the US. By 1904 what was now known as the Standard Oil Trust controlled just over 90% of the country’s crude oil production and 85% of all sales.

  • Oil: A Beginner's Guide, p.32

Photochemical smog was first observed in Los Angeles in the 1940s and its origins were soon traced primarily to automotive emissions. As car use progressed around the world al] major urban areas began to experience seasonal (Toronto, Paris) or near-permanent (Bangkok, Cairo) levels of smog, whose effects range from impaired health (eye irritation, lung problems) to damage to materials, crops and coniferous trees. A recent epidemiological study in California also demonstrated that the lung function of children living within 500m of a freeway was seriously impaired and that this adverse effect (independent of overall regional air quality) could result in significant lung capacity deficits later in life. Extreme smog levels now experienced in Beijing, New Delhi and other major Chinese and Indian cities arise from the combination of automotive traffic and large-scale combustion of coal in electricity-generating plants and are made worse by periodic temperature inversions that limit the depth of the mixing layer and keep the pollutants near the ground.

  • Oil: A Beginner's Guide, p.50

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In this episode Ben convinces Vaden to become a degrowther. We plan how to live out the rest of our lives on an organic tomato farm in Canada in December, sewing our own clothes and waxing our own candles. Step away from the thermostat Jimmy.

We discuss:

  • The degrowth movement
  • The basics of economic growth, and why it's good for developing economies in particular
  • How growth enables resilience in the face of environmental disasters
  • Why the environment is in better shape than you think
  • Availability bias and our tendency to think everything is falling apart
  • The decoupling of economic growth and carbon emissions
  • Energy dense production and energy portfolios

And we respond to some of your criticism of the previous episode, including:

  • Apocalyptic environmental predictions been happening for a while? Really?
  • Number of annual cold deaths exceed the number of annual heat deaths? Really?
  • Your previous episode was very human-centric, and failed to address the damage humans are causing to the environment. What say you?
  • Are we right wing crypto-fascists? (Answer: Maybe, successfully dodged the question)

Social media everywhere

References

Quotes

On Degrowth

This would be a way of life based on modest material and energy needs but nevertheless rich in other dimensions – a life of frugal abundance. It is about creating an economy based on sufficiency, knowing how much is enough to live well, and discovering that enough is plenty.

In a degrowth society we would aspire to localise our economies as far and as appropriately as possible. This would assist with reducing carbon-intensive global trade, while also building resilience in the face of an uncertain and turbulen...

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Increments - #0 - Introduction
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05/19/20 • 8 min

Ben and Vaden attempt to justify why the world needs another podcast, and fail.

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FAQ

How many episodes does Increments have?

Increments currently has 77 episodes available.

What topics does Increments cover?

The podcast is about Computer Science, Conversation, Society & Culture, Knowledge, Podcasts, Science, Philosophy and Ethics.

What is the most popular episode on Increments?

The episode title '#45 - Four Central Fallacies of AI Research (with Melanie Mitchell)' is the most popular.

What is the average episode length on Increments?

The average episode length on Increments is 81 minutes.

How often are episodes of Increments released?

Episodes of Increments are typically released every 20 days, 16 hours.

When was the first episode of Increments?

The first episode of Increments was released on May 19, 2020.

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