Increments
Ben Chugg and Vaden Masrani
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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.
08/28/22 • 67 min
Some people think that advanced AI is going to kill everyone. Some people don't. Who to believe? Fortunately, Ben and Vaden are here to sort out the question once and for all. No need to think for yourselves after listening to this one, we've got you covered.
We discuss:
- How well does math fit reality? Is that surprising?
- Should artificial general intelligence (AGI) be considered "a person"?
- How could AI possibly "go rogue?"
- Can we know if current AI systems are being creative?
- Is misplaced AI fear hampering progress?
References:
- The Unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics
- Prohibition on autonomous weapons letter
- Google employee conversation with chat bot
- Gary marcus on the Turing test
- Melanie Mitchell essay.
- Did MIRI give up? Their (half-sarcastic?) death with dignity strategy
- Kerry Vaughan on slowing down AGI development.
Contact us
- Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani
- Check us out on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ
- Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link
Which prompt would you send to GPT-3 in order to end the world? Tell us before you're turned into a paperclip over at [email protected]
10/31/22 • 53 min
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
- Ben mistakenly says that Eliezer Yudkowsky has bet that everyone will die by 2025. It's actually by 2030. You can find the details of the bet here: https://www.econlib.org/archives/2017/01/my_end-of-the-w.html.
References:
- NY Times reporting on Perceptrons.
- The WinoGrande challenge paper
- Why AI is harder than we think
- The Singularity is Near, by Ray Kurzweil
Contact us
- Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani
- Check us out on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ
- Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link
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.
07/09/24 • 90 min
Sick of hearing us shouting about Bayesianism? Well today you're in luck, because this time, someone shouts at us about Bayesianism! Richard Meadows, finance journalist, author, and Ben's secretive podcast paramour, takes us to task. Are we being unfair to the Bayesians? Is Bayesian rationality optimal in theory, and the rest of us are just coping with an uncertain world? Is this why the Bayesian rationalists have so much cultural influence (and money, and fame, and media attention, and ...), and we, ahem, uhhh, don't?
Check out Rich's website, his book Optionality: How to Survive and Thrive in a Volatile World, and his podcast.
We discuss
- The pros of the rationality and EA communities
- Whether Bayesian epistemology contributes to open-mindedness
- The fact that evidence doesn't speak for itself
- The fact that the world doesn't come bundled as discrete chunks of evidence
- Whether Bayesian epistemology would be "optimal" for Laplace's demon
- The difference between truth and certainty
- Vaden's tone issues and why he gets animated about this subject.
References
- Scott's original piece: In continued defense of non-frequentist probabilities
- Scott Alexander's post about rootclaim
- Our previous episode on Scott's piece: #69 - Contra Scott Alexander on Probability
- Rootclaim
- Ben's blogpost You need a theory for that theory
- Cox's theorem
- Aumann's agreement theorem
- Vaden's blogposts mentioned in the episode:
Socials
- Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani
- Follow Rich at @MeadowsRichard
- 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 favorite theory that is neither true nor useful? Tell us over at [email protected].
Special Guest: Richard Meadows.
08/27/24 • 51 min
Part two on Chapter 19 of Conjectures and Refutations! Last time we got a little hung up arguing about human behavior and motivations. Putting that disagreement aside, like mature adults, we move on to the rest of the chapter and Popper's remaining theses. In particular, we focus on Popper's criticism of the idea of a nation's right to self-determination. Things were going smoothly ... until roughly five minutes in, when we start disagreeing about what the "nation" in "nation state" actually means.
(Note: Early listeners of this episode have commented that this one is a bit hard to follow - highly suggest reading the text to compensate for our many confusing digressions. Our bad, our bad).
We discuss
- Are there any benefits of being bilingual?
- Popper's attack on the idea of national self-determination
- Popper's second thesis: that out own free world is by far the best society thus far
- Reductions in poverty, unemployment, sickness, pain, cruelty, slavery, discrimination, class differences
- Popper's third thesis: The relation of progress to war
- Whether Popper was factually correct about his claim that democracies do not wage wars of aggression
- Self-accusation: A unique feature to Western societies
- Popper's fourth thesis about the power of ideas
- And his fifth thesis that truth is hard to come by
References
- Conjectures and Refutations
- Definition of self-determination from Cornell Law School
- The UN Charter
- Wilson's 14 Points
Quotes
The absurdity of the communist faith is manifest. Appealing to the belief in human freedom, it has produced a system of oppression without parallel in history.
But the nationalist faith is equally absurd. I am not alluding here to Hitler’s racial myth. What I have in mind is, rather, an alleged natural right of man— the alleged right of a nation to self-determination. That even a great humanitarian and liberal like Masaryk could uphold this absurd- ity as one of the natural rights of man is a sobering thought. It suffices to shake one’s faith in the wisdom of philosopher kings, and it should be contemplated by all who think that we are clever but wicked rather than good but stupid. For the utter absurdity of the principle of national self-determination must be plain to anybody who devotes a moment’s effort to criticizing it. The principle amounts to the demand that each state should be a nation-state: that it should be confined within a natural border, and that this border should coincide with the location of an ethnic group; so that it should be the ethnic group, the ‘nation’, which should determine and protect the natural limits of the state.
But nation-states of this kind do not exist. Even Iceland—the only exception I can think of—is only an apparent exception to this rule. For its limits are determined, not by its ethnic group, but by the North Atlantic—just as they are protected, not by the Icelandic nation, but by the North Atlantic Treaty. Nation-states do not exist, simply because the so-called ‘nations’ or ‘peoples’ of which the nationalists dream do not exist. There are no, or hardly any, homogenous ethnic groups long settled in countries with natural borders. Ethnic and linguistic groups (dialects often amount to linguistic barriers) are closely intermingled everywhere. Masaryk’s Czechoslovakia was founded upon the principle of national self-determination. But as soon as it was founded, the Slovaks demanded, in the name of this principle, to be free from Czech domination; and ultimately it was destroyed by its German minority, in the name of the same principle. Similar situations have arisen in practically every case in which the principle of national self- determination has been applied to fixing the borders of a new state: in Ireland, in India, in Israel, in Yugoslavia.
There are ethnic minorities everywhere. The proper aim cannot be to ‘liberate’ all of them; rather, it must be to protect all of them. The oppression of national groups is a great evil; but national self-determination is not a feasible remedy. Moreover, Britain, the United States, Canada, and Switzerland, are four obvious examples of states which in many ways violate the nationality principle. Instead of having its borders determined by one settled group, each of them has man- aged ...
#24 - Popper's Three Worlds
Increments
05/11/21 • 73 min
This episode begins with a big announcement! Ben has officially become a cat person, and is now Taking Cats Seriously. Vaden follows up with some news of his own, before diving into the main subject for today's episode - Popper's Three Worlds.
In this episode we discuss:
- The TCS parenting movement
- Chesto's tweet to Deutsch
- How Popper's Three Worlds differs from Deutsch's Things/Qualia/Abstractions classification
- Would prime numbers exist if humans didn't exist?
- What constitutes reality?
- The existence of non-physical entities and the reality of abstractions
Having a quick glance at the following wikipedia pages will help ground the conversation:
Errata:
- Somewhere Vaden says English is a formal language. Nope definitely not - English is natural language, which is distinct from a formal language.
Send us your best guess for whether or not we're real at [email protected].
10/06/21 • 51 min
After the immensely positive response to our previous episode on the Weinstein brothers - thanks @robertwiblin! - we thought we would keep giving the people what they want, and what they want is a long discussion on climate change. Specifically, the subject for today is: "The State of the Climate Debate". We touch on:
- The near perfect partisan split on climate change
- Will there be a climate apocalypse?
- The promise of nuclear energy as a solution
- The limitations of renewables
- Energy portfolios
- The rebound effect
- Degrowth economics
- Activist tactics and fear mongering
- Whether The Environment has become A Deity in environmentalist circles
We expect very little pushback on this episode.
References
- Apocalypse Never by Michael Shellenberger.
- Greta Thunberg encouraging you to panic
- Thunberg's double crossing of the Atlantic in sailboat
- The Rebound Effect
Quotes
But real climate solutions are ones that steer these interventions to systematically disperse and devolve power and control to the community level, whether through community-controlled renewable energy, local organic agriculture or transit systems genuinely accountable to their users.
Even if nuclear power were clean, safe, economic, assured of ample fuel, and socially benign, it would still be unattractive because of the political implications of the kind of energy economy it would lock us into.
-- Amory Lovins, quoted from Forbes piece by Michael Shellenberger
Send us panic-induced email at [email protected].
03/08/21 • 194 min
Hello and sorry for the delay! We finally got together with Fin and Luca from the excellent HearThisIdea podcast for a nice roundtable discussion on longtermism. We laughed, we cried, we tried our best to communicate across the divide.
Material referenced in the discussion:
- 80k Hours Problem Profiles
- Jon Hamm imprisons us in an Alexa
- The Case for Strong Longtermism
- A Case Against Strong Longtermism
- Nick Bostrom's seminal paper on existential risks
Quote: "[Events like Chernobyl, Bhopal, volcano eruptions, earthquakes, draughts, World War I, World War II, epidemics of influenza, smallpox, black plague, and AIDS. ] have occurred many times and our cultural attitudes towards risk have been shaped by trial-and-error in managing such hazards. But tragic as such events are to the people immediately affected, in the big picture of things – from the perspective of humankind as a whole – even the worst of these catastrophes are mere ripples on the surface of the great sea of life. (italics added)"
- Nick Bostrom's "A survey of expert opinion" (errata: Vaden incorrectly said this paper was coauthored by Nick Bostrom and Toby Ord. It's actually authored by Vincent C. Müller and Nick Bostrom - Toby Ord and Anders Sandberg are acknowledged on page 15 for having helped design the questionnaire.)
Send us a survey of expert credences over at [email protected]
Special Guests: Fin Moorhouse and Luca Righetti.
02/01/24 • 165 min
Vaden has selfishly gone on vacation with his family, leaving beloved listeners to fend for themselves in the wide world of epistemological confusion. To repair some of the damage, we're releasing an episode of The Theory of Anything Podcast from last June in which Vaden contributed to a roundtable discussion on the principle of optimism. Featuring Bruce Nielson, Peter Johansen, Sam Kuypers, Hervé Eulacia, Micah Redding, Bill Rugolsky, and Daniel Buchfink. Enjoy!
From The Theory of Anything Podcast description: Are all evils due to a lack of knowledge? Are all interesting problems soluble? ALL the problems, really?!?! And what exactly is meant by interesting? Also, should “good guys” ignore the precautionary principle, and do they always win? What is the difference between cynicism, pessimism, and skepticism? And why is pessimism so attractive to so many humans?
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 solve problems 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
Which unsolvable problem would you most like to solve? Send your answer via quantum tunneling to [email protected]
Special Guests: Bruce Nielson and Sam Kuypers.
#63 - Recycling is the Dumps
Increments
02/14/24 • 66 min
Close your eyes, and think of a bright and pristine, clean and immaculately run recycling center, green'r than a giant's thumb. Now think of a dirty, ugly, rotting landfill, stinking in the mid-day sun. Of these two scenarios, which, do you reckon, is worse for the environment?
In this episode, Ben and Vaden attempt to reduce and refute a few reused canards about recycling and refuse, by rereading Rob Wiblin's excellent piece which addresses the aformentioned question: What you think about landfill and recycling is probably totally wrong. Steel yourselves for this one folks, because you may need to paper over arguments with loved ones, trash old opinions, and shatter previous misconceptions.
Check out more of Rob's writing here.
We discuss
- The origins of recycling and some of the earliest instances
- Energy efficiency of recycling plastics, aluminium, paper, steel, and electronic waste (e-waste)
- Why your peanut butter jars and plastic coffee cups are not recyclable
- Modern landfills and why they're awesome
- How landfills can be used to create energy
- Building stuff on top of landfills
- Why we're not even close to running out of space for landfills
- Economic incentives for recycling vs top-down regulation
- The modern recycling movement and its emergence in the 1990s > - Guiyu, China, where e-waste goes to die.
- That a lot of your "recycling" ends up as garbage in the Philippines
Error Correction
- Vaden misremembered what Smil wrote regarding four categories of recycling (Metals and Aluminum / Plastics / Paper / Electronic Waste ("e-waste")). He incorrectly quoted Smil as saying these four categories were exhaustive, and represented the four major categories recycling into which the majority of recycled material can be bucketed. This is incorrect- what Smil actually wrote was:
I will devote the rest of this section (and of this chapter) to brief appraisals of the recycling efforts for four materials — two key metals (steel and aluminum) and plastics and paper—and of electronic waste, a category of discarded material that would most benefit from much enhanced rates of recycling.
- Making the Modern World: Materials and De-materialization, Smill, p.179
A list of the top 9 recycled materials can be found here: https://www.rd.com/list/most-recyclable-materials/
Sources / Citations
- Share of plastic waste that is recycled, landfilled, incinerated and mismanaged, 2019
- Source for the claim that recycling glass is not energy efficient (and thus not necessarily better for the environment than landfilling):
Glass bottles can be more pleasant to drink out of, but they also require more energy to manufacture and recycle. Glass bottles consume 170 to 250 percent more energy and emit 200 to 400 percent more carbon than plastic bottles, due mostly to the heat energy required in the manufacturing process. Of course, if the extra energy required by glass were produced from emissions-free sources, it wouldn’t necessarily matter that glass bottles required more energy to make and move. “If the energy is nuclear power or renewables there should be less of an environmental impact,” notes Figgener.
- Apocalypse Never, Shellenburger, p.66 - Cloth bags need to be reused 173 times to be more eco-friendly than a plastic bag:
- Source for claim that majority of e-waste ends up in China:
Puckett’s organization partnered with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to put 200 geolocating tracking devices inside old computers, TVs and printers. They dropped them off nationwide at donation centers, recyclers and electronic take-back programs — enterprises that advertise themselves as “green,” “sustainable,” “earth friendly” and “environmentally responsible.” ...
About a third of the tracked electronics went overseas — some as far as 12,000 miles. That includes six of the 14 tracker-equipped electronics that Puckett’s group dropped off to be recycled in Washington and Oregon.The tracked electronics ended up in Mexico, Taiwan, China, Pakistan, Thailand, Dominican Republic, Canada and Kenya. Most often, they traveled across the Pacific to rural Hong Kong. <...
03/06/25 • 112 min
Anxiety, dispair, loneliness, depression -- all we need is a social media recession! A popular thesis is that All The Bad Things things are on the rise among adolescents because of social media, a view popularized in Jon Haidt's 2024 book The Anxious Generation. Haidt is calling for an end of the "phone-based childhood" and hoping that schools banish all screens for the benefit of its students.
But is it true than social media is causing this mental health crisis? Is it true that there even is a mental health crisis? We do a deep dive into Haidt's book to discuss the evidence.
We discuss
- A weird citation trend in philosophy
- Whether there is a mental health crisis among teens
- Some inconsistencies in Haidt's data on mental health outcomes
- Correlation vs causation, and whether Haidt establishes causation
- Why on earth do the quality of these studies suck so much?
- Whether Haidt's conclusions are justified
References
- The Anxious Generation
- Jon Haidt's After Babel Substack
- After Babel's main post attempting to establish causation, and the response to critics.
- Collaborative review doc on adolescent mood disorders
- Collaborative review doc on social media and mental health
- Matthew B Jane's criticism of Haidt's meta-analysis
- Aaron Brown's criticism
- Stuart Ritchie's criticism
- Peter Gray's criticism
Datasets
- Unaggregated life satisfaction data for boys/girls ages 11/13/15 across 44 countries
- Australia hospital admissions due to self harm
- France hospital admissions due to self harm
- Canada
- Ontario # 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
- Become 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
No screen time for a month. If you send an email to [email protected], we're taking away your iPad.
Image credit: Is social media causing psychological harm to youth and young adults?.
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FAQ
How many episodes does Increments have?
Increments currently has 87 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 '#43 - Artificial General Intelligence and the AI Safety debate' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on Increments?
The average episode length on Increments is 82 minutes.
How often are episodes of Increments released?
Episodes of Increments are typically released every 20 days, 17 hours.
When was the first episode of Increments?
The first episode of Increments was released on May 19, 2020.
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