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Increments: Daily Summaries Delivered
by 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.
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- 3 weeks ago1h 24m
#107 - Is Too Much Therapy Ruining a Generation?
At 3am, tossing and turning in your bed, have you ever wondered why this generation is full of a bunch of fragile sissies? Journalist Abigail Shrier has, and her answer is: Therapy. Too much God d*** therapy. Is she right? Ben and Vaden read her 2024 book on the subject, Bad Therapy, and discuss it, including the good, the bad, and the preposterous footnotes. Buy the book here https://www.amazon.com/dp/0593542924 and check out the rest of Shrier's work here https://www.abigailshrier.com/. We discuss Iatrogenesis and whether there are negative side effects of therapy Why overly focusing on your feelings can lead to unhappiness Should kids be asked about suicidal ideation? Some problems with Shrier's analysis For God's sale, are kids fragile, or are they not? References Bad Therapy: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0593542924 Irreversible Damage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreversible_Damage Dr. K's youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/HealthyGamerGG Part 1 of Decoding the Gurus series on Dr K: https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate.fm/episode/dr-k-part-1-oped-ayurvedic-medicine-vs-nerfed-western-allopathy Let Grow: https://letgrow.org/ 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 Would you rather go to therapy or fight in WWII? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com
- Aug 22, 20261h 18m
#106 - The Successes, Failures, and Grifters of Neuroscience (w/ Tommy Blanchard)
After Jason Arday, the second biggest topic of conversation has of course been the rise of the neuro-grifting guru. And for good reason! Neuroscience has been causing confusion lately. What is the hippocampus up to in there? Is your pre-post-medial-cerebrum-corta-bellum even working properly? What does neuroscience say about whether you should start each day with a slap in the face? Being incapable of answering these questions ourselves, we're bringing on bonafide neuroscientist and substacker Tommy Blanchard to help us navigate this terrain. Check out Tommy's website and substack, Cognitive Wonderland. We discuss Models of decision-making in neuroscience The common currency model What do we actually know about the brain? What constitutes an explanation in neuroscience? What neuroscience is put on a pedestal Neuro-grifting Gurus, aka Huberman et al. References Tommy's post about his research appearing in the NY Times: https://cognitivewonderland.substack.com/p/scientists-hope-gambling-monkeys 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 Which area of your brain lights up when you consider sending an email to incrementspodcast@gmail.com?Special Guest: Tommy Blanchard.
- Jul 17, 20261h 18m
#105 - The World of Bayesian Statistics (w/ Alex Andorra)
We've spent a long time bashing Bayesian epistemology on the podcast. Unfortunately, this is sometimes taken to mean that we bash all things Bayesian. But our God-fearing listeners will be pleased to learn that we do not bash all things that the Reverend Thomas Bayes stood for. Bayesian statistics, when appropriately separated from epistemology, has many things to teach us. And instead of taking our word for it, we're bringing on an expert in this field: Alex Andorra, a research scientist at Meta and host of the Learning Bayesian Statistics podcast. The Gods Smile. Check out Alex's website and the Learning Bayesian statistics podcast. We discuss 538 and election forecasting Sports analytics and why Messi is objectively the best What is Bayesian statistics? What is the difference between Bayesian and frequentist statistics? What is the allure of Bayesian statistics? Are priors best thought of as beliefs? How do critical rationalists make decisions? References Learning Bayesian Statistics: https://learnbayesstats.com/ Silver Bulletin: https://www.natesilver.net/ Vaden's blog post on decision making: https://vmasrani.github.io/blog/2020/vaden_second_response/#what-other-options-to-decision-theory-are-there # Socials Follow us on Twitter at @alex_andorra, @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 Send us an email because you have - no, because you want to - over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.Special Guest: Alex Andorra.
- Jun 27, 20261h 3m
#104 (C&R Chap 10, Part V) - The Duhem-Quine Thesis
It's only taken us 104 episodes of talking incessantly about Karl Popper to get one of the most important and popular criticisms of falsification: The Duhem-Quine thesis. Should we wrap the podcast here? Is it game over? We discuss Does AI need more economic thinking? The role of background knowledge in conversation The allure of verificationism The Duhem-Quine thesis The role of competing theories in combatting the thesis Are conspiracies the price we pay for independent thinking? References Michael I. Jordan on ML Street Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AREWYbVtX64 Our conversation with Ben Recht: https://www.incrementspodcast.com/91 Quotes People involved in a fruitful critical discussion of a problem often rely, if only unconsciously, upon two things: the acceptance by all parties of the common aim of getting at the truth, or at least nearer to the truth, and a considerable amount of common background knowledge. This does not mean that either of these two things is an indispensable basis of every discussion, or that these two things are themselves ‘a priori’, and cannot be critically discussed in their turn. It only means that criticism never starts from nothing, even though every one of its starting points may be challenged, one at a time, in the course of the critical debate. - C&R, Chap 10 While discussing a problem we always accept (if only temporarily) all kinds of things as unproblematic: they constitute for the time being, and for the discussion of this particular problem, what I call our background knowledge. Few parts of this background knowledge will appear to us in all contexts as absolutely unproblematic, and any particular part of it may be challenged at any time, especially if we suspect that its uncritical acceptance may be responsible for some of our difficulties. But almost all of the vast amount of background knowledge which we constantly use in any informal discussion will, for practical reasons, necessarily remain unquestioned; and the misguided attempt to question it all—that is to say, to start from scratch—can easily lead to the breakdown of a critical debate. (Were we to start the race where Adam started, I know of no reason why we should get any further than Adam did.) - C&R, Chap 10 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 What kind of thinking does this podcast need? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.
- May 29, 20261h 47m
#103 - AI, Evolution, and The God Test (w/ Robert Wright)
Did you ever see the video of two regular people trying to fight Eddie Hall, the strongest man on earth? Ben and Vaden bring that same energy to this conversation, where they gang up on Robert Wright on the subject of his forthcoming book The God Test: Artificial Intelligence and Our Coming Cosmic Reckoning. Bob is a sport about it (well, there was no choice really: we have an advanced copy of his book that we're holding hostage) and there are only one or two black eyes by the end. Subscribe to Robert Wright's podcasting empire NonZero on youtube and substack. And go buy one of his many books. We discuss Whether Bob was the OG podcaster Is there a directionality to evolution? Where Bob is on the AI fear and awe spectrum Whether LLMs have decoded the meaning in language Is AI best viewed as a tool or as superintelligence? AI-as-slingshot analogy References The God Test by Robert Wright Nonzero by Robert Wright William Paley and his pocket watch The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins Our conversation with Scott Aaronson Socials Follow us on Twitter at @RobertWrighter, @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 What's the directionality of this podcast? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.Special Guest: Robert Wright.
- May 12, 20261h 46m
#102 - Criticizing Crit-rats (w/ Bruce Nielson and Peter Johansen)
Turning on our own! Vaden sits down with Bruce Nielson and Peter Johansen to discuss some of the bad memes that run rampant in the online "crit-rat" community, in an attempt of some intra-tribal error-correction. Ben, scared of the retribution, runs away with his tail uncomfortably close to his thighs. Follow Bruce and Peter's work on the Theory of Anything Podcast. Sign up for the Theory of Anything podcast Patreon here, and Check out Peter's Many World of David Deutsch facebook group here. We discuss Bruce and Peter's origin stories Anarcho-capitalism and its (pseudo) connections to Popperian philosophy CritRat disbelief in mental illness What does the Universal Explainer hypothesis imply about mental illness and IQ? Is Anarcho-capitalism a foundationalist and utopian philosophy? Why are so many crit-rats Trump supporters? See Also Theory of Anything Podcast #136: Michael Golding on Mental Illness Theory of Anything Podcast #82: Popper's Ratchet Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani, @bnielson01 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 I before E except after B? Send your best guess as to the spelling of Bruce's last name (no one knows) over to incrementspodcast@gmail.com.Special Guest: Bruce Nielson.
- Apr 19, 20261h 17m
#101 (C&R Chap 10, Part IV) - Was Popper Wrong about Verisimilitude?
Wasn't Popper a falsificationist? Then why did he try to develop ideas about corroboration and versimilitude - the extent to which a theory was closer to truth than another theory? Isn't this verging dangerously close to verificationist territory? In our fourth ep on Chapter 10 in C&R, we wrestle with Popper's treatment of verisimilutude, both the formal and informal versions. Did the project fail? Was Popper out of his mind? Does this invalidate everything? We discuss Murders with ball-peen hammers Walking the line between verification and falsification Is science only after truth? Verisimilutude and its formalization Why the formalization fails Popper's three requirements for the growth of knowledge Popper's ratchet and the no ad-hoc rule Quotes Like many other philosophers I am at times inclined to classify philosophers as belonging to two main groups—those with whom I disagree, and those who agree with me. - C&R, page 309 I shall give here a somewhat unsystematic list of six types of cases in which we should be inclined to say of a theory t1 that it is superseded by t2 in the sense that t2 seems—as far as we know—to correspond better to the facts than t1 , in some sense or other. t2 makes more precise assertions than t1 , and these more precise assertions stand up to more precise tests. t2 takes account of, and explains, more facts than t1 (which will include for example the above case that, other things being equal, t2 ’s assertions are more precise). t2 describes, or explains, the facts in more detail than t1 . t2 has passed tests which t 1 has failed to pass. t2 has suggested new experimental tests, not considered before t 2 was designed (and not suggested by t1 , and perhaps not even applicable to t1 ); and t 2 has passed these tests. t2 has unified or connected various hitherto unrelated problems. - C&R, page 315 Let me first say that I do not suggest that the explicit introduction of the idea of verisimilitude will lead to any changes in the theory of method. On the contrary, I think that my theory of testability or corroboration by empirical tests is the proper methodological counterpart to this new metalogical idea. The only improvement is one of clarification. - C&R, page 318 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 How many chromosomes does diethyl-methyl pentophosphate have, exactly? Tell as at incrementspodcast@gmail.com
- Mar 26, 20261h 21m
#100 - Celebrating the Centennial
100 episodes! To celebrate, Vaden tries to get personal with Ben, while Ben dodges his questions and wants to know how Vaden feels about incest. All in all, a pretty typical episode. The questions From Vaden to Ben: How is your side hustle going? Who are some of your major influences outside of Popper? How has the Popperian worldview influenced your day-to-day? What is the life of a nomadic academic like? What would you say to people who are considering mathematics as a career? Which charities do you recommend? From Ben to Vaden: How do you feel about looksmaxxing? Thoughts on medical assistance in dying? Ethics of Alex Honnold free soloing Taipei 101? Thoughts on Nation-Buiding? Incest - into it? Episode References #22 - Thinking Through Thought Experiments #66 - Sex Research, Addiction, and Financial Domination (w/ Aella) #58 - Ask Us Anything V: How to Read and What to Read #70 - ... and Bayes Bites Back (w/ Richard Meadows) #76 (Bonus) - Is P(doom) meaningful? Debating epistemology (w/ Liron Shapira) References Angus Deaton debates Abhijit Banerjee: https://nyudri.wordpress.com/initiatives/deaton-v-banerjee/ Christopher Hitchens and Robert Wright Sam Harris and Garry Kasparov Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power The Bomb in My Garden: The Secrets of Saddam's Nuclear Mastermind 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 What is your favorite form of ince... actually nevermind, too much. Just email us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.
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About Increments
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.
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