Episode 67: Disagreements with Deutsch

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Transcript

[00:00:10]  Blue: Welcome to the theory of anything podcast today. We have Mark Burroughs. Hey, Mark

[00:00:16]  Red: Hello, how are you doing good

[00:00:18]  Blue: and Peter? Of course. Hey Peter.

[00:00:20]  Red: Hi guys. So nice to talk to you both

[00:00:22]  Blue: So a little background on this. So Mark is married to Saudi who we’ve had on the show I I know at one point I referred to Mark and Saudi as the first couple of critical rationalism and I met them through You know being on Peter’s Facebook page and kind of common interests in science and in Deutsches theories Now it’s it’s kind of well known that you know, I have this podcast. I used to have a website I hope it eventually get it back but I don’t have it right now and It’s clearly dedicated to advancing and talking about the four strands world view and things like that and yet I’m often quite critical of People who are big names in that area David Deutsch in particular I often have criticized his theories on this show.

[00:01:07]  Blue: So because of that it’s it’s not that uncommon To have people who are attracted to aspects of David Deutsch’s theories But are put off by some aspects of his theories to contact me and to send me Messages and to say I really don’t like this or I’ve got this criticism But like nobody agrees with me and things like that Well somewhere along the line Mark started to Facebook me on a regular basis and over time We had collected a whole bunch of tweets coming from David Deutsch or from rat hall or you know anyone somebody from that area over on twitter He had contacted me with Just here’s this tweet I totally disagree or something like that right and the body of criticism has started to grow and I thought said Hey mark, it would be kind of fun if you just came on the show and maybe offer up some of your criticisms that you’ve been collecting over time and kind of how maybe your feelings about Deutsch’s views four strand views have changed over time and so mark said sure I’ll come on the show So what we’re going to do today is I’m going to give mark a chance to to air his criticisms And I’m going to then let kind of like I don’t necessarily know what they are I know maybe what some of them are because they came out of that thread that mark and I have had but I’m going to give Peter and I a chance. It’s not a debate.

[00:02:35]  Blue: It’s just us talking about things that Are sometimes said on twitter That are advanced either by David Deutsch or by his fans That maybe don’t sit the greatest with people sometimes maybe I agree with them But I can see why people would be concerned with them. I know many worlds that often comes up by their times I’m not sure I do agree with them And so we just I don’t know where we’re going to go with this, but I think it’ll be a fun conversation So mark, why don’t you uh, go ahead and anything else you want me to say about you or to introduce about you

[00:03:10]  Green: Well, I guess I’ll just say it. Um, if that’s the case, but uh

[00:03:15]  Red: Yeah, thanks for having me on the show and I hope I’m a

[00:03:17]  Green: valuable person to have on the show and have some insights

[00:03:20]  Red: into it I would like to say though is it’s critical as I am of

[00:03:24]  Green: of dutch in the surrounding uh critical rationist culture specifically the dutch the dutch side of things is I I do still find And very influential and and have a lot of positive things to say as well So

[00:03:36]  Blue: yeah,

[00:03:37]  Green: don’t get me wrong that I’ll I’m going to sound like a David dutch troll perhaps this whole time But I I do find him to be very worth listening to what he has to say um I did start rereading a little bit of beginning of infinity About a week before this podcast just to see if I could you know get some straight to the source stuff In that and I I do have some criticism on that and it borders on kind of indenting in a sense But um, there are some criticisms that I have for for that for that text as well But at the same time, I was like, yeah, this is this is one of the best books That has to deal with philosophical and scientific issues that I have ever read in my life and I I still believe that so, I mean, I I’m very much I wouldn’t say a doitian in a sense and I I have perhaps maybe straight away from critical rationalism I’m I’m not going to say I’m I’m so important that I have some new type of Thing I can identify with but I really personally do not care, you know I will criticize anything and I think I guess so I’ll just start saying one of my main criticisms I have with critical rationalism at the at the get -go is I do not see a lot of criticism of David the dutch’s ideas amongst his own community And I understand if you are into David dutch’s ideas, you’re going to actually agree with most of them But certainly we cannot agree with everything, right?

[00:05:10]  Green: There has to be something that you disagree with and I do find There to be a very just a void of criticism or lack of criticism It’s in the community of itself And like he certainly can’t agree with everything, you know That hall or you know, some of the other guys say All the time like he has to say that okay this this this libertarian On slot of stuff. He just said right here is just completely inaccurate or just nonsense And I just don’t see it now I don’t mind like my wife’s very active and I’ll criticize her. I’ll be the first time at the Oh, I’ve noticed that she’s I’ve noticed that yeah, so and she does it to me too and our feelings don’t get hurt We still very much love each other, you know Are actually our our biggest arguments in our marriage had been ones of philosophical grounds I mean, maybe I shouldn’t be airing out personal grievances We kind of got into it one time over to hide acres Why is there something rather than nothing on metaphysics comment, you know And like that was one of our hotbed Things that we know she would say it too. Yeah, that’s one of our biggest fights. We had, you know So that’s how our marriage works. But you

[00:06:26]  Blue: know, I would I would love to see, you know The marriage therapist reaction when you guys come in and you’re having a debate over hide or Is there something other than nothing that would be awesome?

[00:06:38]  Red: Don’t you know mark what jordan peterson says about that that you can never win an argument against your wife Because even when you win you lose

[00:06:49]  Green: Perhaps I’m not sure he’s your originator of that guy I hope that george peterson is not a critical rationalist. I ever is he is he part of the Was I supposed to collect tweets from him? I could have I could have a field day on that one All right So peter do Since you run the group and I know that bruce is pretty qualifier for this one And I know that you see criticism But like But I I don’t really see it the way I feel I should see it within

[00:07:20]  Red: the group fair enough. Well, you know, if you look at the list of the top contributors, which I can as the administrator I can bring up there I would say there’s a pretty good diversity of uh opinion. I mean, there’s a guy who Doesn’t seem to agree with dutch about anything other than many worlds. There’s several people who are pretty far left Um, you know, and then there’s there’s bruce and myself too who have have Are not perfectly aligned with with dutch on Some issues

[00:07:59]  Blue: So like like this podcast that peter and I do It has extensively criticized dutch’s ideas, right? And I know you’re familiar with that Yeah, you probably haven’t heard every single episode mark But I know you’ve listened to quite a number of episodes of this this podcast So I’m I’m sure you’re you’re aware that we’re actually quite critical of dutch’s ideas Well,

[00:08:18]  Green: there’s also a big reason as to why I Email you or text you about the criticisms I have because I I feel like they’re not going on deaf ears or going to some, you know Um, acolyte of the group or whatever. Obviously, I talked to my wife quite a bit. So yeah, I realized that so that’s why That’s why you are the person I usually go to on that Well,

[00:08:40]  Blue: I suspect that’s why you’re not the only one who does that with me, right? I mean like I I think that there is a group out there that differs from dutch on a number of things And I’m the one who usually gets their private messages And I think that to some degree is exactly what you’re talking about is that they don’t always feel comfortable Offering their criticisms because they’re friends with people now. You’re talking about peter’s group I actually think peter’s group does fairly okay, but like if you’re on it on twitter I think it’s quite hard to find Um criticisms other than like for me. I mean, there’s like a small handful um And I think there’s more people that have criticisms But because they’re friends with people in the group and they don’t want to offend them that they keep the criticisms to themselves Now that that’s an interesting phenomena That is happening right that that there is such a strong set of opinions on certain things That the people who have differing opinions aren’t so sure they can bring their opinions up, right? And and that was one of the reasons why I kind of brought you on the show is I thought I thought you know Like some of these people I I don’t know that they would want to come on the show and talk about their true opinions Like I knew mark would want to So that was why I asked you to do it is you you’re vocalizing for I think a lot of people actually that um Maybe haven’t felt the most comfortable coming up and offering their criticisms

[00:10:08]  Green: Well, hopefully that’s the case, um, um, maybe I’ll get all your emails and text messages after this. I don’t You probably will Well,

[00:10:16]  Red: I think it’s somewhat rare for I mean the do it do it Do it’s his ideas or some of the the followers of him Seems to me. I mean, I mostly mostly just troll on twitter, but they they get a lot of pushback on twitter, but it’s relatively rare for someone who Probably has like a deeper understanding of the assertions behind the worldview to, um criticism to criticize the the ideas which I think is what really what, um Why I it’s so good to talk to you guys because you obviously do but

[00:10:53]  Blue: so I think You’re right that they get a lot of pushback, but it’s mostly from the outside, right? It’s yes There’s not a lot of internal pushback and I think that’s what mark is talking about and this is this is the thing Right is from their point of view. They get tons of criticism So they’re open to criticism and they’re hearing criticism out, right and that’s true, right But I I think mark is really detecting something else Which is that those in the group that agree with it They shouldn’t be quite so well aligned and I don’t think they are I just think that some of the misalignment doesn’t come to the surface

[00:11:27]  Green: Yeah, I feel like it’s become kind of cultish in a sense for some people, you know, and that kind of

[00:11:33]  Blue: You had to use the c word

[00:11:35]  Green: Yeah, I can’t I can’t help it, but you know and as much as yeah, I feel like critical rationalism should have like, you know If there are commandments, you know Thou shalt not have any authorities of knowledge should be like number one You know and it does seem to be like well Here’s the authority of knowledge and let my let myself align Align myself with that authority of knowledge And it does Yeah, twitter. I feel like is the worst you go on twitter is the worst

[00:12:00]  Blue: twitter is the worst Yeah,

[00:12:02]  Green: and even there are people that I’ll follow people that are kind of If you for lack of a better word trolls or whatever, you know professional critics of some some movement You know like there’s people to follow political candidates that don’t like them that just criticize everything they say You know, there’s there’s some people like that on the on the deutsch twitter twitter files, I guess I should say but um But yeah, I feel like twitter is probably the worst place for that um, but yeah, um So onto the so I started reading beginning of affinity And the first thing that I really have a criticism of and I feel like this is a lot of times with deutsch is Sometimes it’s really not a matter of criticism of the content or guess it is the content But it’s almost a matter of degree with which he says things And he’ll say something for instance like spaceship earth and I’ll get to that in a second And then some of the people that follow do it will interpret that as this and they’ll go even farther with it Right, and then it becomes something completely outlandish that I’m kind of like well, wow That’s that’s can’t be what we’re talking about here You know, and then sometimes I feel like maybe I’ll see deutsch like that twitter, you know give no criticism of it and obviously you can’t criticize them like or Say everything. I’m not saying he has to do that, you know, but I just don’t see it as much But so like spaceship earth me getting an affinity.

[00:13:22]  Green: He talks about you know Well, I have a quote here, you know today almost the entire capacity earth’s life support system for humans has been provided not for us but by us so Even that I I really Don’t agree with at all in the content So like I get what he’s saying that you know We wear clothes and our knowledge has been able to have us to wear clothes to live in cold environments But at the same time the majority of life supporting systems on this planet Is the sun which we didn’t create and it provides all the heat for us to in energy for that matter to do things And the oxygen was not provided by us So right from the get -go the vast majority of the two most important things we live were not created by humans whatsoever You know, like maybe cyanobacteria oxygenated the atmosphere, but that’s not us, you know, and that’s life You know, and that’s I think that’s the biggest producer of oxygen we’ve had in this planet But even from the get -go, so like well, that’s kind of pendent in a sense But I feel like he doubles down on it quite a bit and then he says like things like But the biosphere no more provides humans with the life support system. Then it provides us this radio telescopes which I find completely Just not true whatsoever For one we evolved from ape -like creatures on this planet, you know with very little knowledge I mean, I’m not sure when When we started acquiring the knowledge, you know, because the doge has a Ascendancy instead of a spectrum It kind of is like concrete.

[00:15:00]  Green: You know, you don’t have a university out of you at all And now you do and ban your universal explainer But we evolved on this planet and it did support life like life As we know it doesn’t exist anywhere and obviously it likely does But I just don’t understand how and I know that he’s trying to go against kind of the more green radicalized You know spaceship earth ideology out there But I feel like he goes way too far with the spaceship earth thing in his book and I understand sort of what he’s getting at But at the same time like He also makes the statement that the earth is the moon is no more hospitable than the earth And I’m just like, how can you say that in the same sentence like I don’t know what the word hospitable means anymore is hospitable mean if I Give you English breakfast tea if you come over to my house or not So like I don’t I I don’t understand like where he’s coming from with how like hospitable the earth is and how like Something like the vacuum of space could be considered just as hospitable as the earth we live in

[00:16:10]  Red: I don’t know to myself Doge’s point there makes quite a bit of sense. I interpret him more as saying Everything that that takes us sort of beyond You know, just to basically just an animal existence where we’re just following, you know, what’s on our genetic code and living in this specific climate in this specific place Whereas we we move to the entire World more or less every every climate in existence. It’s all it’s all about human knowledge right And you know, that’s what gives us a a better life. It’s not in not living in Quote unquote harmony with nature. It’s in using our knowledge to go beyond nature I don’t know that makes a lot of sense to me.

[00:17:03]  Blue: So I don’t necessarily hear you to disagreeing, right? It’s Mark is emphasizing that a huge part of our ability to survive Has nothing to do with us that earth is actually special Um in some way and I’m hearing peter say well but what doge is really talking about is The use of knowledge the fact that most of the environments we live in required knowledge and we don’t really just use Actually had to generate that knowledge to be able to survive I like the example mark used though where he what was it again about the radio telescope? Can you read that again mark?

[00:17:43]  Green: Sure. Um, he says But the biosphere no more provides humans with a life support system then it provides us radio telescopes Okay,

[00:17:51]  Blue: so let’s let’s take that statement. Okay and now I have Said this multiple times in the podcast. I believe very strongly in charitable reading Okay, but let’s just take an initial reaction to that statement My initial reaction is is that mark’s right? That’s a false statement. I have to actually stop and think about How might I interpret this in a true way? And then I can come up with something and I can say okay if what he means is this Then I agree with him which is my my tendency. I usually want to stop and think about how can I Try to interpret this as a true statement. Okay But I can totally see why mark would say That statement is false and I think a straight reading of that statement. It is a false statement Would you disagree with that peter?

[00:18:40]  Red: Well, I mean, I I think the most charitable reading is that it’s Sort of a true statement unless you interpret it very very literally Yeah So yeah, I guess that’s that’s my reaction.

[00:18:55]  Blue: So in what sense is it a true statement? In what sense is it a default statement? Let’s let’s let’s look at it that way

[00:19:00]  Red: Well, what do you think mark? Do you think there’s any truth to it? I mean

[00:19:04]  Green: I I think it’s if I I think he meant it literally when he said it in the book and I know that it is a false statement literally I mean, it’s Paley’s watch doesn’t just show up on the on the heathes He would say it with a radio telescope, you know, so like The earth is very much a life support system they mean life originated on this planet with without knowledge and you know, unless we take the You know in In people that are slick We’ll say oh wait a minute. Yes, it did because genes are knowledge and I mean go down that thing But like I there are two different if I can accept that definition of genes being knowledge Um, but those are two very different types of knowledge. We’re talking about and I I understand you could maybe put them in the same like, you know This is definition one this definition two but those are two types of knowledge and they definitely did not comb up with the type of universal explanation, you know Universal explainer type of knowledge type of thing that dutch is referring to in this aspect And I I truly think he he really meant that literally and that And the problem is like I said is I feel like dutchians are some people will read that and they will And if he doesn’t mean it literally that they will take that and just run with it And I I see stuff like that all the time. I’m just kind of like that it just astounds me and like look I’m I I probably am more of a climate change guy.

[00:20:32]  Green: I mean, I’m not like a green Radicalist or something like that but at the same time like this earth is pretty special man and like I I don’t know how we can say things that like the moon is Just as hospitable as the earth is I mean for one It should be like a the degrees of knowledge that you have to attain to make a place hospitable should have some type of like Barometer on like how hospitable a place is like you need a lot more knowledge to live on the moon to make a hospitable Then you do on the earth So there’s no way I find that you can equate hospitality of these two environments together. They’re they’re just not

[00:21:17]  Red: Well, you would need need quite a quite a bit of knowledge to live a lot of places on earth too that humans Seemed to thrive in I mean, I think it’s an actually an incredibly profound point in a way that You know, I mean no one’s saying it wouldn’t we’d have to be we wouldn’t have to be in quite a more advanced knowledge state to thrive on the moon But it’s it’s at least theoretically possible given this This the force of human knowledge and I think well our species will get there maybe sooner than than many people think

[00:21:54]  Blue: Okay, should we move on to the next one or do you guys want to add anything else in this one? I actually feel like that was pretty good coverage of the topic

[00:22:00]  Green: We can move on So I feel that In beginning of infinity he talks about the importance of testability and predictions and I feel that he quite often downplays Testability and prediction and science and I get at his point that obviously we should try to explain things as much as possible, but He often has a lot of criticism about instrumentalism specifically the Copenhagen interpretation and he makes it a point that in beginning infinity that prediction does not play That important of a role in science now. He obviously does say it plays a role But certainly not the main role and I’m not saying it presents the main role, but his own definition of instrumentalism in the Copenhagen interpretation is basically that is explanationless and And it only has predictive power The the problem I have with how he frames this one is that We progress a lot with quantum mechanics with the Copenhagen interpretation that a lot of those people within that group thought they weren’t even talking about They’re to consider some of these things imaginary And it was strictly predictive power and it did wonders that revolutionize our way of life So I feel that I would much rather have an explanation of why an event happens and it doesn’t happen But if you give me a theory that is truly only predictive and it checks out Is as great as the Copenhagen interpretation does or just an equation of that of that group would do I’m I’m gonna double down on and say hey, I’m going with these guys over here They have no explanation because it has done so many things So I I think this is a

[00:24:01]  Blue: really interesting criticism. Thank you for bringing it up This is one that I’ve been kind of mulling over and you’ve put it in really precise terms that I don’t think I’ve been able to

[00:24:10]  Green: Well, thanks. Um, but yeah, I and I’m I you know, it’s funny because I like You know, I’ve I’ve been very influenced by dutch, but you know the whole time I’ve read dutch I have never been in many worlds person. I have been more attracted to the other things he’s had to say And I know I’m not even going to talk about the many worlds really But and I don’t really have a favorite pet theory of quantum mechanics. You know, I’m just kind of like I guess it’s to say I’m agnostic on it, you know But I feel that All the all the interpretations of quantum mechanics. I don’t feel like have offered really much any Difference on predictive power of what will happen. So I’m not really sure like Why why isn’t predictive power the point in a sense, you know, I’m not saying it’s the whole point And I know that explanation is in richer understanding of the world and quite often Better explanations with more predictive power will have more predictive power But Copenhagen interpretation underneath his own Um definition of it Is explanationless and it is very very successful so Can I just

[00:25:20]  Red: interject a question here? Go ahead isn’t isn’t

[00:25:23]  Green: the

[00:25:24]  Red: I think one of the things that really convinced me of of many worlds Is listening to people talk about the Copenhagen Interpretation who completely admitted that it doesn’t make a heck of a lot of sense You know, isn’t that the whole point of like Schrodinger’s cat Thought experiment that there there’s there’s something he brought

[00:25:47]  Green: it up himself. I believe right

[00:25:50]  Red: David Dwight

[00:25:51]  Green: no Schrodinger Yeah,

[00:25:53]  Red: yeah, that was his his his thought experiment and that the the idea was but the idea was it was a reductio out absurd It was supposed to be it was supposed to indicate that that there’s something missing there Which is a more coherent explanation, which I think is provided by by many worlds at least That’s my understanding

[00:26:14]  Green: But but many worlds and does not add any Predictive power to that though. It just offers an explanation or therefore an interpretation and To me I mostly care. I I do care about that stuff But if I wanted to you know be a Experimentalist or an engineer I care about predictive power quite a bit You know and the engineers so the Copenhagen interpretation And they ran away with it and boy did our life change because of that and I think that’s a very positive thing

[00:26:43]  Blue: So I actually confronted dutch on this one on twitter And he was and he responded to me So I actually said how do you then explain the success of the Copenhagen interpretation and the fact that it did Move on to do all this and he basically responded back And I don’t have the exact quote because I didn’t know we were going to bring this up And I don’t even know if I could have found it anyhow, but he said it had and it it that the quantum physics has an inherent um nascent explanation present in it Now here’s the thing. I agree with him on that. I think that that is absolutely true But I think he’s missed the point that that is always True that there is simply no such thing as a purely predictive theory all theories even in one that you claim is explanation less Still has some level of explanation And this is something that I actually think the deutchians get wrong I don’t know so much that deutch gets this wrong But like I’ve talked to numerous fans of david deutch on twitter and they are thoroughly confused on this point So the example that I’ve used on the podcast Is um iq the idea that is iq a legitimate explanation and they’ll say it’s explanation less And i’ll say no it is not explanationless. It’s low explanation. The two are not the same And so I mean like most theories Have some level of explanation right anything you can bring up if I say Copenhagen and I say well, there’s a collapse of the wave function That is an explanation. It’s not a great explanation And it doesn’t take you very far.

[00:28:26]  Blue: That’s true But you can’t say it’s completely explanationless Right that it’s literally trying to explain what you see in terms of terms of a wave function collapse Where there was this wave out there. It was doing things you observe it and it vanishes and you end up with And that’s a completely understandable explanation right and one that can now be criticized um So the idea that that uh, Copenhagen was explanationless is not strictly true now Again, we have to we have to charitably interpret people If they say it’s explanationless, maybe they mean that literally in which case they’re wrong Or maybe they don’t mean that literally maybe they just mean it’s not a very strong explanation It’s not an explanation that takes you very far. It leaves more mysteries That is true, right? Copenhagen like the example that I’ve used that I need to do a podcast episode on and I need to really help people understand it But it’s the elitzer

[00:29:25]  Blue: Videman bomb experiment Basically, this is what convinced me that there was probably something too many worlds at least as far as being an explanation So the idea is it’s a real experiment that’s been done I don’t think they used real bombs, but use something equivalent And you can create basically something that detects if the bomb is a dud or not to any arbitrary level of Precision that you want So you put a bomb in there You don’t know if the bomb’s a dud or not It it goes off if a photon hits its detector under this experiment And so you send a photon at it And it goes through this apparatus that has multiple paths and you have to work out the mathematics of how it works Okay, and if there’s an interference pattern That shows up Then you know the bomb would have exploded had the photon hit the detector Because the wave function collapsed, but if if you don’t have the

[00:30:24]  Blue: I actually have it backwards if the interference pattern disappears Then you know the the the bomb would have blown up But if there is a wave an interference pattern, then you know that the bombs are done So you can basically Counter factually determine if the bomb would have exploded Okay, now try to explain that with Copenhagen It is 100 impossible because and basically when I actually brought this up with people who believe in pope Copenhagen What they will tell me and I actually have quotes from them like on kora where I’ve asked this question is Well, you can’t hold it against the theory that it’s not can’t hold against a theory an explanation It’s not trying to explain and I’ll say yeah, I can I can Thoroughly hold against the theory that it doesn’t try to explain something that it should be trying to explain now many worlds has an explanation for how the The elixir videman bomb experiment works It’s that the bomb exploded in another world and then that world then deco hairs from our world the one that we’re in Sometimes it explodes in our world. Okay.

[00:31:27]  Blue: There’s like a certain percentage chance that it explodes Um, but it explodes in the other world and then that is what causes the wave function collapse in our world and that then we can detect it so that would be an example of how many worlds Is the only explanation for something that is completely predictable through quantum physics Which is why david neutch advances it as the explanation of quantum physics Here’s the thing though many worlds doesn’t explain everything like for example, many worlds does not explain the born rule Okay, and this is this is one that often gets brought up against Many worlds they’ll say well many worlds can’t explain the born rule and they’re right. It can’t But kopenhaven can’t either so in this case it’s it’s not like kopenhaven explains the born rule But can’t explain the elixir videman bomb experiment kopenhaven can’t explain either And so I think this is the sense in which Many worlds is kind of the only explanation we have For certain aspects of quantum physics, but it doesn’t explain Everything and right now mark is right. It doesn’t make any new predictions.

[00:32:33]  Blue: It does make new predictions It just inevitably A wave function collapse isn’t going to behave the same way as many worlds Now we don’t know how to make the net we don’t have the knowledge necessary to do the experiments dutch famously explained how to build a if we knew how to build an agi On a quantum computer we could use it There’s other things that could be done from what I understand But we don’t actually have the technology to test between the theories as of this point in time Right, so this is one that I’ve got mixed feelings on because I can understand why scientists are very skeptical Of many worlds since it right now it’s only an explanation It doesn’t make any predictions that we can actually test as of today and back on episode The cooperation episode episode 61. I actually argued that scientists weren’t entirely wrong to be skeptical of many worlds and because It would be normal for them to want to actually test does this other world exist, right? On the other hand, I would love to see a scientist try to explain the let’s revive an bomb experiment Like seriously try to offer an explanation of it without referencing many worlds. I don’t think it can be done Right, so I think we’re in a weird state with quantum physics where I wouldn’t say Copenhagen is explanationless. That’s where I would differ from dutch, although I’m not sure he literally means it, right? But I think Copenhagen does offer an explanation and I think that’s why it got us as far as it did

[00:34:08]  Blue: But we’re now kind of at the point where it doesn’t offer explanations of some things and there’s one competitor on the table that Takes us further And there aren’t really alternatives like I haven’t looked into quantum Darwinism So I don’t know about that one, but I have looked into Bohm and Bohm’s a disaster when it tries to explain things like this, right? I mean, it’s it can’t It what it does is it tries to explain things that didn’t need an explanation Which is why it’s like worse like it’s the worst of all possible worlds from what I can figure out Again, I I’m saying things that I Probably in no way qualified to say what I really need to do is I need to do an episode where I actually show You that I’m right by giving you the actual mathematics and they’re not that hard. Yeah I just

[00:34:50]  Red: have a hope that hope this doesn’t take us on a tangent, but the As I understand it do it originally Proposed the idea of a quantum computer To test many worlds. That’s right. He didn’t know that it was going to going to start this, you know Ball rolling and people are going

[00:35:10]  Unknown: to

[00:35:10]  Red: actually make these computers at least as I understand it But what you said is that the existence of an AGI Running on a quantum computer Would would provide evidence for many worlds I guess i’m not quite understanding why that would provide evidence for many worlds more than just to the exact the fact that the quantum computer exists He’s

[00:35:33]  Green: recently he’s recently tweeted about that or I think someone. Yeah, he did your facebook group on the many worlds I think I can’t say his name right like honry or h -e -r -n -e I think he he’s gave an explanation for it but something about how like the AGI will experience the It’s quote -unquote entanglement or the branching of the multiverse and for one instance like Experience both both worlds at one time and then and then like collapse or something like that and so only one it would I I I went through it and I just not sure I really agree with that or I Maybe I don’t understand it, but that that didn’t really sit, you know, the AGI

[00:36:16]  Red: could come back and tell us Oh, look, you know, this is this is what’s going it would be like the I the the inter inter Or multi -dimensional tv from rick and morty or something What’s happening in all these other worlds

[00:36:31]  Blue: it’s actually it’s actually more So I I don’t have it up top of my head like if I was going to go over this I’d have to go over the experiment in detail, but but I do have some knowledge of how Quantum computation works because I went through a textbook on the subject And from what I understand what do I just saying is reasonable right that it’s if you actually had an AGI running on a quantum computer It would be it would have to be able to experience things right and and so it would be able to report back Different things so if I recall the experiment was That it would because of just the the the the mathematics and the physics of how a quantum computer works If it was many worlds then it would be it would report one way But if it was a wave function collapse, it would report a different way So it would come back and it would be able to say Yes, such and such happened, but I don’t have the information as to What the answer was In like I can’t remember exactly how it works out, but it actually works out that the two theories make a different prediction So it requires knowledge of AGI to be able to run the experiment Because of the way the experiment was set up, but it’s not a it’s not an unreasonable experiment It’s an actual experiment that would be an example of how Copenhagen and many worlds do in fact make different predictions

[00:37:52]  Red: Well that clears that up for me. I was kind

[00:37:55]  Green: of wondering you could do you could do a whole podcast on that because even in my head I have all kind of things to say about that that would sidetrack us I would think

[00:38:02]  Blue: yeah, you know what? I don’t know it well enough off top of my head I would I would want to actually sit down go through it My initial impression was just based on my knowledge of how Of quantum computation works is that there was nothing unreasonable about this proposal But I like didn’t work out how it actually works I

[00:38:19]  Green: mean you’d have to have a pretty good thing to give consciousness to be able to know if the AGI is there And you have to trust what it tells you what it experienced and all kinds of things like that You would have to take for granted So this

[00:38:32]  Blue: is going to sound weird, but I’m fairly certain that this isn’t an uncommon way that they talk about things Like it seems like when I was studying Bohm They did something really similar where they they they worked out What the experience would be of an AGI? I like I’ve seen this Like I think this is a thought experiment that’s been around inside of quantum physics anyhow And that David Deutsch was exploiting it for many worlds

[00:38:55]  Green: So we’re tying this into a testability and prediction thing and you know and And you talked about how you know everything has some type of explanation to it and I tend to agree with that and And so well then you agree with Deutsch, but Deutsch doesn’t seem to agree with that You know he seems to have a hard line between Explanation and no explanation because I’ve talked to instrumentalists or Copenhagen guys to say well class away function is an explanation You know and I like well, I guess it’s one. It’s not one I’d prefer, you know But you know all theories kind of have a part where okay Yeah, and gotten up. I can’t explain where this comes from. You know, I don’t I don’t expect many worlds to explain with the Where the universal way function originated from or something like oh, right? I got you. You can’t explain that your theory is explanationless, you know So there always seems to be some catchy a thing that you can’t explain this or your theories, you know Not all the way true or something.

[00:39:53]  Blue: I think I think a more accurate statement would be that many worlds is a deeper explanation Than Copenhagen And that way we’re not yeah, that way we’re not declaring it a non -explanation which then is like not literally true But I think it’s absolutely a deeper explanation of quantum physics It literally answers like you think about a lot of the mysteries of quantum physics that people Almost treat almost Sacredly or like magic, you know that get picked up by new age crystal people or something like that Many worlds literally answers like 90 of the things that they try to exploit right it explains What that quantum physics is actually a local phenomenon? It explains how that can be and yet it can seem like it’s not It offers explanations like I said of the elitzer -weidman Weidman bomb experiment it explains numerous numerous mysteries of quantum physics and it demystifies it Not all the way it not all the way I’ll admit that but it goes so much further than the other explanations that are available And so I don’t think there’s any significant doubt that many worlds is the deepest explanation of quantum physics that we currently have on the table But I I agree with you that you cannot literally call Copenhagen merely prediction and explanationless I just don’t think that’s true By the way, if it were true, you wouldn’t be able to test between them like David Deutch is proposing Like you how would you be able to do that if it doesn’t have an explanation behind it?

[00:41:25]  Green: And I guess if all of your equations you just say are predictive only, you know Whether use Heisenberg matrices or you know, a Schrodinger equation So this this is just a meaningless equation, but it predicts all these things I guess you could probably frame it in that way and maybe maybe make your argument. I I suppose um, but you know the problem I have with the explanation that many worlds gives and one reason why I won’t subscribe to it as much is Then it lacks the observation evidence that I wouldn’t like to have for instance, it will explain if the bomb went off or not But I don’t ever see the bomb, you know, I have no evidence of this at all and I feel like As much as he seems as much as and especially the deutch community I feel like does not give enough credence the importance of testability and predictability in science They really downplay observation And I’m not sure if this is just a coping mechanism that many worlds people have that observation is not as important in science as you think, but I think it’s Very important and one of the most important things, you know, and I’m not going to say what’s more important than the other But I think we need all of these things together.

[00:42:37]  Green: It’s not like one thing’s more important than the other We need everything and I understand because then they’ll frame well everything’s theory laid And so therefore observations don’t matter because there’s a theory behind it But it’s kind of like a chicken or an egg thing like well We didn’t just become born with theories unless you’re going to say that, you know, my instinct to suckle From a breast is is is a theory, you know, I mean that’s more of a gene Gene knowledge thing.

[00:43:04]  Blue: Yes. Pupper says Pupper does use the term theory. Yes,

[00:43:07]  Green: but it’s a genetic knowledge thing It is and not a you know something that comes from our brain in a sense. That is And um, so that is

[00:43:16]  Blue: that is one of the misunderstandings.

[00:43:17]  Green: Deutschians have by the way when they talk about theory laden poppers idea of a theory laden Um observation included genetic theories and had to include it or it didn’t work So, yeah, I don’t know how else it could and that’s the only way I could see you getting around it You know, and maybe that’s fair, but like I said earlier in the podcast I feel that here’s a very important distinction between genetic knowledge if we define it that way And knowledge coming from a universal explainer. Those are completely different

[00:43:47]  Red: Don’t you think that the baby who has the impulse maybe the basic impulse To to sock is is there, but then you know, the baby is gonna Forget about it pretty quickly if it doesn’t doesn’t go anywhere. I would think Whereas so it is kind of a theory in a way that a testable theory You

[00:44:08]  Green: know, I I have two nephews To have four nephews and nieces. Yeah, and I guess I have two nephews and two nieces. I guess Besides the point I’ve always been fascinated by how these beings Create knowledge, you know, like what happens in their brains like that They all said can even start to talk and quite often when I think about these problems I think about a newborn And I don’t feel like they are born with any theories of how the world operates and

[00:44:37]  Red: then

[00:44:37]  Green: Somehow they seem to make it work. And before you know it, they’re walking around. They’re they’re talking to you You know, and I I have been completely fascinated by that my entire life And I have I have never seen anyone give a great explanation of how that that light bulb really ignites In somebody and I really don’t expect anybody to I mean,

[00:44:58]  Red: it’s one of the most interesting things I’ve seen in this This world is watch watching that process when they start start talking and interacting with the world. It’s It’s like a miracle. Yeah.

[00:45:09]  Green: Yeah. And so, you know, and and they will say and I shall say our observations Tell us nothing about the world and I I understand what what he’s saying and that and quite often I I don’t know where these inductivists live that say that you observe something and it tells you what the theory is And I guess these people exist I have never really seen it explicitly said too much and I I feel like there’s a lot of character is characterization of the logical positive movement by deutch That is maybe not completely wrong, but not completely right as well And a lot of those logical positives guys Some would agree with poppers criticism and change their ways. I mean Some of his advisors were the main guys of that group. Um And he was very he was very influenced by them as well too. I mean he kind of took logical positive And turned it around in a sense. That’s why some people consider him part of that family I think he’s part of the family. Uh, he’s a little different But I’m not going to sit there and call them logical positives and I’m not sure that’s that important but

[00:46:15]  Red: but to me like like so her soul

[00:46:20]  Green: Discovered infrared light and he was doing experiment He was he was figuring out how the different wavelengths was like it would like have a different temperature readings or something like that he was He was doing his um testing and he noticed that one part Was reading something different than what it should have and it was invisible like, you know, there was nothing there So he you know as any reasonable person would think or something wrong. Am I testing apparatus?

[00:46:46]  Red: You know and

[00:46:46]  Green: then he went and tested that and then there wasn’t and then he realized that Okay, well if I test something right next to the red portion or infrared would be, you know, and then go a little farther You know, and he got a different reading, you know, and it was consistent all the time and I understand that the observation didn’t tell him that like You know red alert that’s infrared light But to act like him observing that didn’t give him an idea that hey something exists here We think we you know it I wouldn’t say it’s self -evident and I understand like, you know I’m reading too much into it in a sense, but like I don’t see how that observation doesn’t tell you that hey There’s some invisible force here that you need to investigate and quite and quite frankly It’s probably related to all the spectrum of life that you’re seeing You know, so I know that observations don’t tell us what the theory is But observations really give us a good idea of what to look at and obviously We’re a person that has explanations and we’re trying to develop theories, but Sometimes I feel like It’s quite self -evident what these things are telling us to look for in a sense You get what I’m saying It’s it’s hard for me to word it in a way that doesn’t say what you are telling us that observations are telling us Okay, let’s let the theory is

[00:48:06]  Blue: but let me give you a really straightforward example of what I think you’re saying Okay, so let’s I often get out away from science and I use like a murder mystery instead because I that’s just different enough Right, so I come in and I see this person who’s dead and there’s this knife in their back and You know the the butler’s fingerprints are the only piercings fingerprints on the knife. Okay in a certain sense To try to say that that observation told you nothing and it’s and it’s theory laden And really you only use it to have take existing theories and test between them. That’s bizarre, right? I mean like obviously The first thing I think of when I see that knife in the person’s back is a that’s the murder weapon And when I see that it’s the butler’s fingerprints on it It’s This is the butler’s knife and he did it, right? and so to suggest that I only used this observation to Take theories that I have and to test between them Like I have to like I can figure out a way to make it say that but I have to like twist myself in knots I might as well just say look this observation suggested that the butler did it Right and basically confirms that the butler did it Unless someone can show me some other explanation that I can’t think of right now You know and so I understand exactly what you’re saying is that The way they often talk about this They’re missing just how powerful observations actually are in in the actual way we use them in real life, right?

[00:49:44]  Blue: And so anyhow Before I say too much more I actually would like peter’s take on this I was just trying to sharpen mark’s point with the example of the knife Well,

[00:49:56]  Red: I again I I find it I hear what you’re saying But I find it to be quite a profound point in a way that Observe that science really is about explanation and not Observation, I mean there’s enough observations in this room to you know to do it Virtually I mean to progress science a thousand years Or a million I mean there’s there’s an infinite amount of knowledge that is is just in in In in any absurd any Room you you’re in but you know you have to have the right Explanation to to to move science forward. I mean I think I think it’s an extremely profound point I mean, it’s certainly not to say that that empirical theories don’t matter I mean, I don’t think I don’t really see that as his his point That the or that theories shouldn’t be tested with with observations or But I I find it to be quite a Convincing way to look at the world the the theory laden aspect of of observations

[00:51:10]  Blue: So I have mark. I’m not sure if you’ve Heard like I have certain podcasts and I’ve got some that are coming up that aren’t published yet too Where I’ve tried to talk about this a little bit the one in particular that comes to mind Is episode 61 a critical rationalist defense of corroboration.

[00:51:28]  Green: Was that recent?

[00:51:29]  Blue: It’s fairly recent. Yeah, it’s um Three ago, I guess it looks like and Also, I would say that I had two episodes on popper without refutations. That’d be episodes 41 and 42 Where I actually no longer I consider myself a critical rationalist And in fact, I even consider myself a critical rationalist that learned everything from popper, right? But I I really feel like I strongly disagree With even just the normal consensus view of what popper was trying to say Um to the point where I don’t think critical rationalism is primarily about refutation You know at least at least not the way I think it is about refutation the way popper meant it, but I think the way people normally think of that term It isn’t And so that’s why I actually now advocate for popper without refutation and Kind of a slightly different way. I think more accurate way of looking at looking at critical rationalism I I have noticed like I haven’t noticed this with Deutch so much. I feel like deutch often just gets things pretty right

[00:52:39]  Blue: in with critical rationalism, but deutch really in his books he kind of Plays this this point of view of observations or just a certain kind of criticism and really all criticisms Critical rationalism is really at its heart Accepting all criticisms and I’ve seen that the fans of David deutch run with that To the point where they will downplay observations In favor of their own personal pet criticisms and they’ll say oh, but all criticisms are valid We shouldn’t discount any criticism and I’ve had numerous ones argue this with me And it is such a fundamental misunderstanding of popper to the degree where I’m no longer sure they’re doing critical rationalism and I’ve been planning to do a podcast about that to Kind of criticize what I see is the kind of full kadoichi and critical rationalism, which I think is equivalent to Crypto Bayesianism like I really don’t think it’s critical rationalism at all anymore And I think it’s kind of getting at the same thing that you’re saying is that you’ll often hear the fans of David deutch kind of downplay observations to a degree to try to immunize and save their pet theories and really no longer are Seeing things the way that needed to be that the thing that’s missing here Is that just in a nutshell? I need to like really strengthen this in a separate podcast But observations are a unique kind of criticism. They’re an objective criticism whereas what I’ve noticed is is that the Twitter critical rationalists in particular is that they really prefer subjective criticisms They really don’t like objective criticisms.

[00:54:22]  Blue: They come up with ways to get rid of them And they want to be able to declare this theory the best theory Based on their own kind of gut feel over how they feel about a subjective criticism And I do think that that has kind of taken hold in that culture and I think it’s bad I think it’s something that’s going to need to be corrected And Really, I don’t think popper was wrong about this and I don’t think that deutch was wrong about this But I do think that that the way deutch worded things did lend itself to this kind of Anti -critical rationalist stance that captures the language of critical rationalism without the spirit of critical rationalism And I I think that this is tied to what you’re talking about mark where They often do kind of just like when you start to talk about well, we need an empirical theory They’ll say well, that’s empiricism. Well, no, it’s not it’s got nothing to do with empiricism like there is reasons why Science prefers empirical theories over non empirical theories It’s because that means the theory is specific enough and to use the deutchian term hard to vary enough Although I could be critical of that term That it has gotten to the point where we can actually let nature determine between theories at this point and when you want to advance An alternative theory and you haven’t yet made it testable to the point where it can be experimented through a critical through a

[00:55:51]  Blue: Crucial test Then your theory is not ready for prime time as far as a scientist is concerned This has actually been my main criticism of your wife’s theories by the way mark is that They haven’t been turned into testable theories doesn’t make them wrong But it means that they’re not really ready for prime time yet And this is really what I think popper was trying to say he was trying to create this demarcation between The types of theories that have reached the point where they can be empirically tested and the types of theories that haven’t And the goal is to try to get them over the line if you can you can’t always get them over the line But if you can get them over the line you need to figure out how to make your theory specific enough That it actually says something meaningful about reality and you can now test it And then the criticisms are now objective because anyone can test it anyone can try inter subjective He sees the objectiveness of science is coming from the inter subjective nature of tests I

[00:56:45]  Red: thought you’re your airplane example before really hammered this home The kind of theories you want to to go into designing your airplane versus the kind of theories that are more like Just throwing out interesting ideas, right There’s nothing wrong with that, but you know, they are different kinds of theories. They

[00:57:07]  Blue: are right And this is really what the demarcation criteria was supposed to be with popper It was actually trying to in essence say empirical theories are special And here’s why and that’s been lost entirely with the the twitter The twitter critical rationalists. I I I don’t get any sense that they see empirical theories as special anymore um and Whenever I have a conversation with them, they’ll always say Well, my theory is got a better explanatory theory than yours and it’s like yeah, but it makes no prediction So it’s not the right kind of explanatory theory that counts, right? It’s it’s one that accepts all outcomes It’s one that accepts any possible set of data. It’s exactly what we mean by bad explanation um and I I guess I agree with mark if what he’s really getting at is that that We have gotten to the point where we are significantly downplaying the specialness of empirical theories And why observations are the gold standard for criticism? and there is no equivalent maybe logic maybe Being a logical contradiction could be an equivalent gold standard that I could probably think of a few Similar examples that aren’t strictly experimental observations, but there there’s not many right?

[00:58:26]  Blue: I mean like there is a reason why Science makes progress by moving everything to be an empirical theory and then tests it and tests between theories using actual experiments and that is why science has turned into this giant output of Knowledge that continually churns out stuff and we just keep getting better with it Whereas philosophical theories that can’t be tested They all sit around forever and we debate them forever We still have people debating Aristotle’s metaphysics, right and and who are still advocates for it And there’s just no way to ever separate the wheat from the chaff Because we can’t figure out how to make a theory like that get over the line into the empirical camp So I I think mark. I don’t want to put words in your mouth But I think I actually think you’re getting at something that’s a completely valid criticism here But I would put it the way I just put it It’s not that it’s not that there’s anything strictly wrong with criticism over observation it’s not that Observation isn’t ultimately about selecting between theories because that that is going to turn out to be true once you really understand it But I do think that observation is Experimental observation is the gold standard of criticism period end of story

[00:59:43]  Green: Yeah, I don’t I don’t disagree with much anything you’ve had to say on that at all But I just feel that sometimes observations do Really push us into direction like you probably should look more into this situation right here And obviously it doesn’t tell us what the theory is, but I don’t know what Herschel would have thought That that possible heat source would have been other than something related to the electromagnetic spectrum of light, you know And

[01:00:09]  Red: like so I just I know the theory didn’t tell on that but like that’s how powerful that

[01:00:14]  Green: observation is and if anyone a brain We could possibly deduce that from that, you know, it’s it’s not like a leap You know, it’s not like oh, I have a theory and I’m gonna conjecture that infrared light exists No, and it already kind of conjectured that form in a sense I know I’m I’m reading way too much into it You could easily pick apart what I just said and I haven’t formulated a great way to describe that but

[01:00:37]  Blue: So I think I can I think I can agree with you on this Let me let me put this in a little bit different way that maybe would be more acceptable to a critical rationalist I I do think that it’s not true That we always have explicit theories and that we’re testing between explicit theories and popper Not only never says that but he says the opposite of that right he talks about how Um a problem shows up. We have this observation and it startles us Okay, well, we may have no specific explicit Scientific theory that said you should not have that observation But the very fact that it’s Stalin this is popper. I don’t have the quote handy, but he actually said this right? I’m not making this up The very fact that we are startled or were surprised or that it just isn’t what we were expecting Implies that we had some sort of nascent theory that just got violated And that is that observation

[01:01:32]  Blue: Did just refute that nascent theory even if though it had never been turned into an explicit scientific theory, okay, and so when you understand um A refutation a popperian refutation the way I believe they need to be understood which would be a violation of Any sort of theory It’s a counter example and then it really violates the collection of theories together not any one particular theory Okay, and then it basically creates a problem a refutation is really a problem not a refutation if that makes any sense It the only thing it refutes is the giant sum total of your of your theories in your head or expectations in your head That’s all it refutes And then it’s up to you to now figure out Specifically what aspect of your knowledge was refuted It makes sense that in some cases those observations would be so good at eliminating different aspects of Your theoretical system that’s in your head that it would almost feel like it was just suggestive Of a theory, right and the example of the the fingerprints on the knife, right? To try to put that into popperian terms In a certain sense before you found that knife and found the fingerprints You didn’t have any particular reason to favor any one person over another Maybe you had Reasons because it had to be someone that was local like maybe you Thought it’s going to have to be someone who was on the estate at the time But you didn’t have there was many different possibilities at that point And then as soon as you see those fingerprints a lot of those possibilities just vanish And it’s yes to say yes, it suggests it’s the butler.

[01:03:17]  Blue: You know, it doesn’t mean absolutely It’s the butler it could be that somebody’s setting the butler up or something like that You know somewhere in the back of your mind that it’s not absolute proof of this theory But yes, it just ruined so many theories at the same time and left one left That we might as well just use the language the observation suggests the butler did it or the This is evidence that the butler did it and we know that’s Basically what it means right unless someone can come up with an alternative and that’s why I don’t get so caught up in Trying to reword everything in terms of in terms of negativist language I think positivist language is often just accurate because you’re always talking about comparison of theories And so I think that kind of fits your example with the infrared light. Yeah, of course an observation Can function against your theoretical system in your head in such a way That it’s very suggestive of where you need to start conjecturing new theories And in some sense that observation suggested the new theory. That’s even an accurate statement in my mind

[01:04:24]  Green: Yeah, I mean, I guess some people might point to you know, the absolute True thing is always being something we never have but that’s that’s always the case So, I mean if that’s the criticism if that’s the criticism of anything you had to say then like well I guess knowledge is impossible, you know, and I don’t believe that but you know, that they can’t be the criticism, you know

[01:04:47]  Red: Yeah And I I do have a strange thing too because a lot of times,

[01:04:51]  Green: you know We’ll we’ll say that well our observations tell us nothing is we we

[01:04:55]  Red: conjecture something

[01:04:56]  Green: and then we go look for it But sometimes when we create theories, we don’t look for new observations We already have observations that are needed, you know when when kepler went to tackle brahe or Exactly sure. I hear his name pronounced different all the time. Um, as far as teak. I hear teak. Obrahe anyways He wanted his observations. He wasn’t going to conjecture anything He wanted to his all all his observations so he could create some new way to discover like Why the planets are in the positions they are, you know, I don’t even know if at the time like Kepler is I mean, of course once he came up with the ellipses you could do new things with it But he was literally trying to fit all the observations into a theory and I feel like there’s a there’s big differences between collecting observations that you already have and then trying to get a theory to fit that Versus coming up with a theory and then going out testing that

[01:05:56]  Blue: You know,

[01:05:57]  Green: and I feel like in in my New version of what induction induction possibly could be I would say that those would be the two ways that how it would frame Those two things if I’m going to say those are meaningful at all That would be how I would say it where you have all these are observations and you fit a theory to to To fit those observations similar to what max plank did with the black body problem Or with like kepler did Or you have something, you know, we’re hey, I think this might exist and let’s go look for it You know and there’s big differences in those and I feel like Not enough credence is given to the times that people came up with Really incredible theories just off all the observations they had And obviously once you formulate something well, maybe You know if this is the case then there must be another planet outside your anus, you know Maybe fluto is tugging on it, you know or something like that, you know, and there you have it and then you can run away with it But you know, that’s that’s always the case with everything we do So

[01:07:01]  Blue: I actually think you bring up a good point. So there’s this famous Sherlock Holmes quote about how he doesn’t he doesn’t conjecture who did it until he’s collected the observations He’s collected the evidence or something to that effect, right? And I sometimes you’ll see critical rationalists take issue with that that’s wrong. It’s not wrong I mean, it really isn’t wrong. Okay That’s what you would actually want is you would want an investigator to go into this not with a preconceived notion of who did it and instead try to just collect evidence and then Wait until there’s quite a bit of evidence and then try to figure out the theory from there Now does this violate critical rationalism? Not in my mind at least not the kind of critical rationalism that I Believe in but I do think it violates The kind of pop critical rationalism that you often find online And so I think it’s a good example from from that standpoint um the truth is that we often do I mean like You have to make somewhat of a difference here between I made a conjecture and it’s a conscious conjecture And what the brain’s doing I mean the brain has to be making subconscious conjectures So if you were to collect a bunch of of observations of planets, and then you’re trying to figure out, you know What what’s the pattern? I’m gonna have no preconceived notion.

[01:08:22]  Blue: It’s a circle versus an ellipse versus something else You know, I’m just gonna collect those observations Well, that makes sense And then your brain’s still gonna have to find a pattern the observations by themselves aren’t the pattern But your brain’s gonna try to find it And so I think at some different level of knowledge making You still have some sort of conjecture refutation or maybe that’s not even the best term variation and selection process going on um evolutionary epistemology process and That is still happening, but it may be entirely subconscious and Calling that induction may not be the worst thing in the world. I’ve argued that what induction really is Is critical rationalism, right? That induction was never wrong to begin with it was critical rationalism that That statement probably requires a lot more explanation that I can give in this podcast and I’m planning to eventually do a podcast where I’ll talk about it more, but um Popper never really claimed um strictly speaking that uh He suggested that his theory could be called induction. It was the way in which induction took place There’s a certain sense in which he proved the existence of induction rather than refuted induction It depends on what you mean by induction. He refuted a certain theory of induction But he showed that the basic idea that you can reason from observations to a theory That that actually works and that conjecture refutation is how it works So from a certain viewpoint I think that’s exactly why it just makes perfect sense just to go out and collect observations and Not have a preconceived notion first and I think that’s actually very consistent With the way, uh, uh, the correct view of critical rationalism works

[01:10:13]  Red: I have a question for for mark. Um, do you see do you read popper is more, uh, it’s advocating for a Uh attitude or a methodology because I think I might come down at least how I read him as sort of a layman obviously is is more of a An attitude advocating for a certain attitude towards life And in science too obviously and and reason and rather than Okay, you do this and this and this and then you’re gonna make scientific progress you know

[01:10:51]  Green: Yeah, it’s that’s a good question and I don’t know I I feel like he is probably more methodology than attitude I I feel like it’s better read as attitude probably the methodology And it’s strange because I often hear dutch say and maybe popper said that there is no scientific method But quite often I hear them say first you start off with the problem I’m like, well, hold up if there’s no scientific method Why are you telling me what the first step is because it sounds like if you have to start off with something that sounds like a method So I’ve always been kind of critical of that and I am always Go ahead

[01:11:27]  Blue: students of popper by the way, absolutely consider his a method a methodological approach to science so like there’s um Margaret on on your facebook page. She actually said popper did himself no favors by claiming that science wasn’t a methodology

[01:11:44]  Red: Um,

[01:11:46]  Blue: if you actually read what popper said about that I think in context what he actually says is not science isn’t a methodology But that um, there is no there is no mechanical method By which you can create knowledge that instead you have to do it through the method of conjecture and refutation And I also think that popper is without a doubt methodological In how you go about refuting things. It’s he says nothing about the method of conjecture I don’t think he even believed there was a method of conjecture Um, it it’s something we understand so little that you just do it and we don’t know how But in terms of how you go about actually refuting theories That is the method of science And so there is a scientific method. This is my read of popper There is a scientific method in terms of how you refute theories, but there is not a scientific method For how you conjecture theories And that’s that’s what I think he was actually saying

[01:12:45]  Red: And it sounds like mark you see it more as a uh method too, but it’s just a the wrong method

[01:12:54]  Green: Well I don’t really consider I would say popper reads like a method I I will I will kind of say there probably isn’t any scientific method in a sense But I’m not going to pretend like there aren’t a lot of things we can use that will help us navigate through this process You know because we talk about they know that the problem of induction or the myth of induction You know and yeah, it has problems, but you know the induction has problems at

[01:13:19]  Red: well I don’t I don’t throw that out with the bath water either You

[01:13:23]  Green: know, there’s there’s all kinds of problems with how we create knowledge You know and you can get really hardcore to metaphysical with this stuff and um You end up sitting there. You just like wick. I don’t believe anything anymore But you know, obviously i’m talking to you guys on this zoom call right now using all kinds of theories that we use And hey, we’re doing stuff right and if I believe that reality is a thing You know something’s happening with all of our theories. We’re we’re doing something with this stuff So obviously we’re making things work and sometimes You know, I think we get too caught up with this I feel like some people think like, you know, if it wasn’t for Carl popper I wouldn’t know how to think and I’m like, hold up though, man Like car popper didn’t invent the idea of trial and error, you know and quite often it’s like I think popper’s great You know, I I do but quite often I think like, okay, come on man. He didn’t create trial and error You know, like I don’t know if he was he’s one of the first that really almost he first But he really formulated it well, you know, but it’s like anybody with the brain knows like hey This is how I might be able to make this contraption. Hey, let me go see what the works. Oh, no, it didn’t work Well, it must be something wrong with it.

[01:14:29]  Green: Let me try again Like it it didn’t take some philosopher of science to come up with that, you know I mean like we’ve been doing trial for trial by an error since we’ve been, you know Eight eight men, you know, for lack of better words, you know So I I feel like a lot of this stuff is interesting to talk about as far as epistemology goes And I believe you mentioned this in your podcast about Uh cooperation recently that a lot of people are saying they’re doing it this way But they’re really doing that and at the end of the day, it really doesn’t matter They’re still progressing science in a way. So I think we get hung up on all this epistemology talk But we’re all doing this stuff and we’re making things happen. Go ahead Bruce.

[01:15:13]  Blue: Well, so I I agree with you what with what you’re saying. There is only one method of I mean like human beings have forever Done things in terms of criticism, right? Criticism is not something we’ve invented recently I mean like that’d be silly, right? You reasoned by Conjecturing ideas and criticizing them. Well me sometimes the

[01:15:36]  Green: criticism could be the observation or the criticism is just like, hey I try to create a bike and it didn’t roll down the hill, you know You didn’t need someone to tell you that and criticism was in the test You know in a sense. So like that’s

[01:15:49]  Blue: right

[01:15:50]  Green: I feel like trial and error is almost even the better way to talk about it. Go ahead

[01:15:53]  Blue: You’re right. So evolutionary epistemology is a generalization of popper that uh, carl donald cambell coined the term And carl popper strongly endorsed the theory but evolutionary epistemology is variation in selection Basically, so it’s the generalization of conjecture and and refutation or what we might say conjecture and criticism could even be considered a A broader form refutation being like an experimental refutation criticism being any kind of criticism including Experimental refutation and then variation selections a generalization of that, right? That is how people think they can’t not they can’t think they can’t reason in some other way Okay, and this is this is one of the reasons why when people talk about oh the positives, you know, the basians Believe in con confirmation and that’s impossible It’s like look, it’s impossible if it’s impossible then the basians can’t believe it. Can they you know, they may be using the the word confirmation, but they can’t literally mean it And in fact, if you actually know this is what I was talking about at the beginning of the show before we started recording If you actually work out the mathematics of basian reasoning, it’s exactly the same as Variation selection or conjecture and criticism, right? I mean, it’s you may call it the word confirmation But it’s still going to be Actually a form of conjecture and refutation because that is just the only way to do it So from a certain point of view it doesn’t even make sense to criticize these other viewpoints as they’re wrong because They believe in confirmation you have to dig down to what they mean by the word confirmation and show them Look, what you really mean is this

[01:17:37]  Blue: And it’s because of that I think that A lot of the debates in philosophy over epistemology are a waste, you know, it’s everybody’s just talking past each other and we should just Probably dig a little deeper and we can see that there’s actually quite a bit of overlap between the different theories Don’t get me wrong here. I’m not, you know, basing in epistemology. I’m not in their camp They get certain things clearly wrong, right that I think critical nationalism corrects But I don’t think that they’re strictly Entirely at odds with each other either. I think that there’s a translation you can do between them Where you find out that they’ve actually got heavy heavy heavy heavy overlap between the epistemologies And then I think critical nationalism is the one that’s more accurate of the two So it’s from that point of view. What did popper invent then, right? Since everybody has forever been doing conjecture and criticism Then what is it that he brought to light? Well, that’s an interesting question and probably beyond the scope of this podcast But I think the most important one of the most important ones Is he figured out what made empirical theory special? He figured out that there’s a certain kind of criticism that’s an experiment And how you use that to eliminate competing theories and that’s how you actually reason from observation to theory

[01:18:59]  Blue: And basically through the concept of refutation where you find problems with the theory and you eliminate them And you you’re left with whatever theories left I think that’s something nobody had noticed that that they were doing all along And that was why science was special compared to philosophy honestly compared to philosophy science is special This is probably going to offend philosophers But I think it’s the truth anyhow that the reason why philosophy kind of Forever stays mired in conversations and science keeps moving on Is because science crosses that special line where now the theories are the point where you can actually use empirical tests on them And I think that’s actually what popper discovered. It’s what he did a whole bunch of things There’s so many things popper did you can’t really boil it down to one thing? And I don’t think it was actually the whole negativist Positive divide wasn’t I don’t think that was nearly as important. I think that that turned out to be an important point But I think that I almost turned into a negative because now people are if you’re a paparian You don’t you you react to people’s language Rather than to what they’re saying and I think that’s a problem And that’s I call that the paparian war on words, right where somebody says Oh, well, there’s evidence for this theory and they’ll react to that phrase Totally missing the fact that it’s a correct phrase the way it was used, you know Let’s the example I’ve used is medicine.

[01:20:28]  Blue: You’re trying to test if the impact of a medicine Was due to the medicine or if it was just placebo effect Okay, and then you do this giant experiment and then you say, oh, we have evidence for that the medicine works You’re only testing two two theories. You’ve intentionally got it down to two theories The having somebody react and say, oh, no, you can’t say it’s evidence for the medicine And which I’ve seen paparians do it’s just stupid, right because there was only two theories Okay, great call it instead. It was evidence against the theory that it didn’t work It’s so awkward. You might as well just say it’s evidence for the theory and we all know what you mean And I do think we get this paparian war on words where they they read popper at two surface level and they see it as positive versus negative language When that really wasn’t what he was talking about he was actually talking about Why empirical spirit theories are special and how this unifies all knowledge creation through evolutionary epistemology? At least that’s my take

[01:21:32]  Green: Yeah, I think some of the more interesting things popper has to say are in some of the footnotes of some of this Greater tech sometimes or at least maybe And maybe that’s the part like hey, I don’t understand what he means by this He certainly can’t mean this and then then he kind of gives an explanation for the okay there That’s that’s why I wanted to hear because sometimes he does seem like when you read him is a naive fallibilist in a sense You know, and I don’t he doesn’t really He’s really not that but you kind of have to dig kind of deep sometimes to see that or you know The decarm demarcation between science and non -science they’re empirical versus non empirical And you know people want to just drag that down to you too And you know, that’s it’s a little more subtle of an argument than people than people think I agree

[01:22:18]  Blue: And I do feel like popper sometimes does himself no no service, right? I think sometimes he has picked language I think he usually has had reasons why he picked that language But I think that ultimately like the word refutation. I just After having so many people misunderstand popper on this point I it’s it would be hard for me to say that I think the word refutation was a good word I think it was a terrible word. I think that he should not have used it Right, it’s because it’s so much means that you can by observation directly With one observation you can refute a theory and that never happens and it never will It just it just isn’t the way things work, right? And so much of the debate around popper is well, that can’t be true And it’s like, you know what he never even said it to begin with But he did it sounds like he said it you read him and it sounds like he said it And that’s why everyone’s confused. So I think it was a bad choice of words

[01:23:14]  Red: Could we dig down on what? What the difference between a naive fallible list and a fallible list Is well,

[01:23:23]  Green: I guess I guess naive fallible list would be that one single refutation of any theory would be a you know, a complete refute. Well Yes, I guess I’m a tautology in a sense Would just prove that theory. I guess I will say, you know, I think that would be naive fallibleism, you know And and you know like a naive realist, I guess, right? You believe you can get absolute truth or something like that Could

[01:23:47]  Blue: we call it a naive refutationist? Maybe?

[01:23:50]  Green: Either way, you want to frame it fine with me is honestly the same words for the definition there I

[01:23:56]  Blue: think that that is how most people read popper Is that with a single ref single observation you can entirely refute a theory? And I think that is just false because it’s always that you refute the theory plus the background knowledge

[01:24:11]  Green: Then if all theories are All observations that theory laden maybe got the big problem there Because you have to you have to use a theory to refute a theory and then refutes all the background knowledge But you use all your background knowledge to read to have the three laden observation You know, I mean, there’s all kinds of problems in that and and I think popper has a lot of stuff to say And I don’t I don’t mean to like endorse instrumentalism But at the end of the day if I can talk to you on his zoom call with all this technology We’re doing something right, you know, and like I’m not saying it’s imaginary I think that there’s a lot of real things that are happening but like At the end of the day, I care about having zoom calls, you know more more than I do about the Reality of certain things, you know, obviously this is a real conversation, you know

[01:25:00]  Blue: You know, I have argued on my blog back when I had a blog That um, I am often an instrumentalist, right? I mean I I I don’t see instrumentalism as a entirely false theory any more than I see Induction as an entirely false theory I see Carl popper’s theory is having a strong instrumental instrumentalist bent even to it A lot of times when I want to use a theory Maybe I don’t care what the reason is. I just know the theory works And that makes sense to me, right? And it’s hard to believe that that isn’t even in a common thing that takes place Um And I don’t see popper is even denying that right he he’ll often say well, of course it’s an instrument, you know, of course You know, we care about prediction and um, I think instead the right way to repopper there as is as subsuming These other philosophies he explains why instrumentalism was largely true. He explains why Inductivism was largely true. He explains why positivism or logical positivism were largely true And that’s actually how I see popper’s theory

[01:26:15]  Green: I feel that it’s probably very important to play some really dark brooding music in the background when you start talking about instrumentalism because this seems the heretical section of this podcast for for dory’s people To make a joke out of it, but but yeah, um Yeah, I think the the criticism of instrumentalism that I feel is That important is that, you know, some hardcore instrumentalists will say that we can’t say anything about reality, you know And that the reality is, you know, I’m not sure if it’s I think it’s bored that, you know that that the That the real world is made out of imaginary things, you know I mean, I might as well start using healing crystals if I believe that, you know, um, but Yeah, I I it’s I I would say I might be Somewhat a kind of instrumentalism as far as like I care, like I said, like your theory makes, you know iPads and zoom calls Possible a I’m willing to accept it, you know Up anything But you know, it’s not like I don’t think that You know, we have theories about dinosaurs, right? I’m gonna say that dinosaurs Absolutely existed and you know and here I go. Well, you can’t say anything’s absolutely true I know I can’t say it, but I’m gonna say it anyways, you know And it’s almost like girdle with mathematics, right?

[01:27:38]  Green: So the incompleteness theorems and all of a sudden, well now we can’t even say that, you know, two plus two equals four You know, but I believe girdle to something that, you know, we can’t prove Things in mathematics, but there are some things that we know that are true You know, and obviously this is Not something that you want people that make Policy decisions to say, oh, I just have a gut feeling that this is absolutely true, you know This isn’t something I want to drive home and everybody to say that, you know, they’re just We just think they’re true because of that, but I I think, you know, when we’re talking about like girdle, we understand what he’s saying about like mathematics and stuff like that There are certain things that we know that are true that we just can’t prove like I think that we know dinosaurs is this, you know, obviously I don’t know if t -rex had feathers or if it was purple or if it cared for its young You know, we have some evidence for some of these type of things But to think that large organisms lived on this planet many millions years ago. I’m saying yeah, that really happened You know, and I can’t prove it, but I think both of you would agree that yeah These things that we can’t prove but we know that they are true All right. Am I saying something controversial here? I don’t I don’t think that I am Definitely and

[01:28:56]  Green: obviously there’s no formulation of how to get that way and that’s and that’s the problem, you know, and I feel like Popper presented a lot of problems we have this epistemology But at the end of the day, you know popper’s epistemology Doesn’t solve these problems of me being able to say that Dinosaurs really existed and sometimes I guess if me and bruce sound like we’re somewhat sympathetic towards instrumentalists The the thing is instrumentalists sometimes does it work? Yeah, it does. Okay. Good. That’s all we care about you know, and like, you know, sometimes that’s Unfortunately is as good as it gets as far as jack Nicholson said in the movie or something, you know, I mean

[01:29:38]  Red: Yeah, I don’t know but sometimes I feel like

[01:29:42]  Green: kind of almost I’m gonna say nihilistic, but it just it’s horrible that we can’t find absolute truth and prove it, you know But I’m doing stuff and it’s not like I don’t think so. I guess the distinction between me and instrumentalists I do think things are real, you know, and I think that’s the important distinction We would have on that

[01:30:00]  Blue: Peter. Do you want to respond to that?

[01:30:03]  Red: Well, I honestly it sounds like we’re agreeing a lot here More

[01:30:07]  Blue: than anything.

[01:30:08]  Red: So I guess that’s good But maybe we should move on to the next Next criticism and we can see where actually

[01:30:15]  Blue: let me just bring up what something that he just said because a couple things First of all, I do feel like poppers theory completely handles being able to say Dinosaurs existed, right? Because that is the sole remaining Empirical theory. There just aren’t any others. So I don’t actually think that and we tentatively embrace that. So I don’t actually think There’s any particular problem under poppers epistemology to be able to draw conclusions. Secondly popper doesn’t say We can’t we can’t get to truth, right? Deutsch has said that a number of times, but I’m not even sure I know why that would be the case Like we absolutely can have a correct theory about whether George Washington existed or not, right? I mean, there’s all sorts of theories that we can we can I think when don’t Deutsch brings this up he usually uses physics and I admit maybe we’ll never have a completely true theory of physics Okay, or maybe we will like I don’t see any particular reason why we couldn’t Um, maybe that’s hard to believe but I think there’s all sorts of theories out there that we can we can not only They are going to be we can be right or wrong about and therefore they’re true or not They’re not just misunderstandings But I think we can even feel very confident about it because there just isn’t a good alternative theory available at this point So I don’t actually think click rationalism Denies any of that. I think what’s maybe a better example to mark is something like okun’s law Are you guys familiar with okun’s law?

[01:31:44]  Red: No

[01:31:45]  Blue: So okun’s law is an economic law that Describes a relationship between a country’s gross dramatic gross domestic product product and the unemployment rate says that you have to must grow Um at a four percent rate for For one year to achieve a one percent reduction in the rate of unemployment from what I understand It has no explanation, right? It’s just something that he noticed and it’s not always true, but it’s often true and um people economic uh People who are economists will actually use the law to make predictions very instrumentalist Even though they don’t know why the law works Um, and it works often enough that it makes sense to use it into this instrumentalist way So I do think that we do have to Accept what I said before there’s really no such thing as a truly Explanationalist explanation the very fact that I’m saying there is some sort of connection. That is an explanation. It’s just not a deep one However, I think this does border on sounding very instrumentalist, right? And I would never tell you don’t use this law Just because it doesn’t have a explanation

[01:33:00]  Green: Well, you you get these type of examples in economic policy All the time, you know, and you know, it’s it’s one of those, you know If I had to make a decision in hard and soft science my only distinction really was the amount of variables that are there So, you know economies, there there are so many variables that that affect economy You can you can predict all you want, but you know If something like a little virus, you know Happens to happen in china somewhere, you know, I don’t care what what patterns you thought were happening And it did a lot of things that economic well -being of a lot of countries, you know and um in problem with the economic policy theories are too is People take these and they believe in them And then, you know, if they believe that stocks are cyclical and blah blah blah And you know, this tends to follow this patterns if enough people believe in that They will make that pattern happen because they believe it and they trade in it buy it sell it in such a way That it’s kind of like a self What’s the word i’m looking for a self? cheese Lost for words here. So self -fulfilling for yeah. Yeah, yeah prophecy. There you go. Thank you. Um, that that it does happen You know and so it’s it’s really hard on economic policy as far as theories go on that aspect

[01:34:26]  Blue: yeah, um

[01:34:27]  Green: But yeah, I don’t know. I feel like popper though would say that We can never have absolute truth. So it’s it’s it’s tricky because we talk about You know, people say well, we have more truth Well, you know, then people say well capital t truth or small t truth or You know

[01:34:44]  Blue: popper popper actually does say we can have true theories. He just says that we can’t know that they’re true

[01:34:51]  Green: So kind of in a sense of the the girl quote I kind of referenced earlier, right? There’s things in mathematics that we can’t prove. It’s the provability problem. I guess is the word we’re looking for, right? That’s right

[01:35:02]  Blue: Yeah, do it do it seems like he disagrees with that by the way But I could actually find you actual quotes from popper where he says that in fact he in one of the interviews We did a podcast on He actually says there are certain theories that I think are totally correct, but I won’t tell you which ones they are

[01:35:20]  Red: Can I let me see if I can work through this in my mind? So so popper belied advocated for Various similitude Whereas truth is something that we move closer to Yes, whereas deutch from what I understand sort of criticizes That that approach because it it implies the objective the existence of some Absolute truth that we’re moving towards so to deutch it’s more about just just Better explanations that are moving towards I’m

[01:35:53]  Blue: honestly not sure I’m honestly not sure I could articulate deutch’s view entirely

[01:35:59]  Red: So

[01:36:00]  Blue: I’m confused myself as to what his view is I some of what like sam I’ve talked with sam kipers about this and I’ve debated him kind of on your facebook page If sam kipers is typical of deutch, then I think that comes pretty close to What you just said, but I’m not actually sure if sam popper was himself

[01:36:19]  Red: Popper pretty did he invent the idea of verse similitude or at least was a primary advocate for it? I

[01:36:25]  Blue: don’t think he invented the term Various similitude, but yeah, he’s the one who introduced it into epistemology from what I understand.

[01:36:32]  Red: Okay, okay,

[01:36:33]  Blue: so Just just to clarify Deutch does say things like we should refer to all theories as misunderstandings which Like if you’re talking about physics, I could probably buy that but like the theory whether george washington existed or not You know bullcrap, I mean You’re either right or you’re wrong, right? And we even know whether you’re right or you’re wrong for all intents and purposes Because of the way it’s only the only surviving theory left is that george washington’s a real person, right? Nobody’s actually advocating for him being fictional

[01:37:06]  Green: Well, I mean he can always come up with things like well Can you prove that this is not a dream, you know or salafism or you know Can you build it? Can you prove that you’re not just some bolsterman brand that’s a that just popped in the vacuum of space that Dreamed of george washington existing where he’s really just a figment of mirror You have to get really crazy for that type of stuff, you know and like those are all Those are all criticisms. I guess but I don’t really

[01:37:31]  Blue: so those are all justification though, right? No, I can’t prove it. But so what right? That’s kind of the rationalist answer Is no, I don’t know for sure That george washington’s a real person and I don’t care. He is a real person that that is my best theory That that’s kind of the answer to the to those kind of out there criticisms

[01:37:50]  Green: I think that maybe the best I think the best maybe criticism for the out there criticisms If you’re if your criticism is that you know, well, you can’t say that he exists because we’re just living in a simulation That you can never really be truly proved that you’re ever outside of that simulation, right? So if you you prove that you’re in a simulation then all of a sudden how do I know I’m not in a simulation again the second time? You know and it’s just some type of it’s just like some turtles all the way down It’s a turtles down all the way down death trap, you know, and where it’s it’s I guess it’s explanatory in some aspect But you can never get out of it and you can never get out of that hole What is it really telling you? You know what I mean? So I don’t it’s criticisms like that Even though they might be a thing If you can never get out of that hole, I’m not really sure it’s a really good criticism.

[01:38:39]  Blue: Well, it’s it’s it’s not empirical, right? popper would say, you know It doesn’t even get to across the the demarcation line. So there’s no reason to take it any more seriously than that A lot of explanations get eliminated by that, right that they’re uncriticizable They’re untestable. So you just there’s just no reason to take them seriously I mean sure I guess it’s possible that we’re in a simulation I I’m not I’m not even ruling that possibility out But I’ve got no reason to take it seriously as a theory compared to every other crazy theory that we might come up with

[01:39:11]  Green: Even if we were George Washington was a very real person in a simulation. That’s right

[01:39:17]  Blue: That’s right.

[01:39:17]  Green: I mean, it’s kind of like it doesn’t it may be it refused what you said But not really it was really in your simulation, you know, it’s not like I played the video game Elden Ring and Melania didn’t exist. She definitely does exist in that video game even the video It’s

[01:39:32]  Blue: it changes the way I might understand exists, but it’s still a completely legitimate way of understanding the term Exists so yeah Okay, can so we’re we’re kind of getting low on time I kind of would like to see if we could do some of the tweets that you brought up Do you have some of those you would like to raise?

[01:39:50]  Green: Oh, sure the barn burner one I have it just kind of was jaw dropping to me, you know, elizabeth dies, you know we’re ready to crown king Charles um, and uh Deutch basically just tweets is I’m going to pledge my allegiance to his majesty the king Charles III where he likes it or not and I was just Kind of taken aback by that. I mean it kind of goes against Everything I would think that a critical rationalist would have, you know, especially deutch’s uh views on the brexit situation how they should get out of the european union But having non -elected members, you know, like it was anti -democratic, you know, and especially if everything we talks about with how to remove you know When he brings up the whole popper article that he wrote in the economists about, you know The important thing is not who should roll is how to remove bad leaders, you know You know, I I guess there’s ways that we can maybe remove king Charles But you know, there’s not too many of them. I don’t think But you know, I don’t think that the parliament can have a vote of you know, of confidence on them or not But I mean, it’s the non -elect the leader and I just Leader in a quotation marks. I should say but I don’t know how you pledge allegiance to something like that, you know, I just I Unless he’s only pledged allegiance because he thinks it does a lot for tourism and it and it helps grow You know the gdp of Very britain by having the monarchy around you know and just for show Or just for fun.

[01:41:23]  Green: But I I I can find No acceptable way To think that it’s something that we should be proud to accept as pledging allegiance to a king

[01:41:33]  Blue: Let me let me I’m not going to respond yet. But let let me just clarify What you’re saying this is I’m a criticism of the institution of the king, correct? That’s what you’re saying.

[01:41:46]  Green: Yep Okay,

[01:41:48]  Blue: what you’re really wondering is why is why does dutch have this positive view of that institution when it seems like it goes against The whole paparian concept of error correction and

[01:42:01]  Green: authority

[01:42:02]  Blue: Right,

[01:42:02]  Green: and what is what is pledging allegiance really mean that out of that aspect too, you know What are you pledging allegiance to in the sense? But well, I think I think that his

[01:42:12]  Red: take would probably look something like If you look back into history that the monarchy has Even recent history. I think as that, you know, I don’t know if you guys have watched the crown or or Know about some of the history in there that it’s done many useful things I I see him as making sort of a you know a snarky way of making a a case that the tradition is Is valuable and perhaps Which which is is is popperian To and you know pop popper defense tradition is a valuable source of of knowledge I’m not british So I don’t really have quite the same maybe some of the same feelings about the monarchy. So I kind of hear what you’re saying too Mark but have you guys

[01:43:03]  Blue: heard brett hall’s Defense of the monarchy on his podcast I

[01:43:08]  Red: did

[01:43:09]  Blue: Okay, and I know mark did because I think I sent it to mark as one of our conversations and We had some discussion about that Although it was a while ago. So I don’t remember entirely what brett said, but it seems like he used an example of A monarchy. I want to say this does australia have a monarchy like he’s brett’s an australian So i’m not sure which country it was that he was referring to but there was Well,

[01:43:36]  Red: they’re part of the british common common commonwealth, right? So so

[01:43:40]  Blue: a monarchy There was an elected there was an elected government In australia or somewhere else and it was known that they were Um, I’m doing off of memory. So i’m gonna be getting this wrong It was known that they were extremists or something and so the monarchy refused to accept them as a government And that there was heavy criticism because this was the duly elected democratic government that Was getting rejected by An institution that doesn’t have a check and he was arguing that because The monarchy does not make laws That that this is a valuable institution that we want that Saved that country whatever country it was And so he was arguing in favor of the monarchy that because they aren’t leg a legislature They don’t make laws But they are an an important tradition counterbalance In that democracy that this is an example of how the monarchy is actually valuable Am I getting this right or am I like misremembering something is this what I think

[01:44:43]  Red: that’s that’s the case Yeah, just to just to clarify australia is is The british monarchy would be the relevant Okay mon monarchy to australia, but yeah, I think that’s right that there’s There the the monarchy kind of functions to provide some stability in society And I think maybe that’s the the general argument

[01:45:05]  Blue: Okay, so I guess I have something positive to say about What brett saying and something negative to say about what brett’s saying and i’m not even sure I have a strong Have a defined opinion So I would probably say that i’m a conservative. I’m totally in favor of starting with tradition and For countries where the monarchy is part of the tradition I can totally see the idea that Tradition may have value that we don’t understand. Are you guys familiar with the idea of chesterton’s fence? Where um, do you know what I mean? We’re referring to you say, okay So it’s the idea that You have a fence. You don’t know why it’s there. So the leftist or the liberal Comes and says this fence serves no purpose. Let’s tear it down And the conservative says look if you think that the the fence serves no purpose Then we should not tear it down You need to first explain to me what its purpose was And then explain to me why it’s okay to tear it down and what we’re replacing it with And honestly, that’s the way politically I am right that like I’m not prepared to tear down traditions until I I feel like we’ve done our best to Really criticize the tradition but also try to understand why the tradition is there And replace it with something that we think is better and then try it and see if it fails or not and roll it back From that standpoint, I think I can agree with what bret is saying Um about the monarchy and I’m going to assume. That’s what dutch is getting at Like obviously from one tweet.

[01:46:43]  Blue: I can’t tell that when he says he’s pledging his allegiance He’s trying to say something positive about tradition Well,

[01:46:50]  Red: in a way, he was he was really criticizing prince charles because I think the the context was that prince charles was saying Telling people not not to pledge allegiance.

[01:46:59]  Blue: You’re right. Yeah, right.

[01:47:00]  Red: Yeah

[01:47:01]  Blue: So but it’s I I think I would my natural tendency would be to read dutch as Being saying something pro -tradition there That yes, the monarchy serves some sort of useful purpose and pledging allegiance to the monarchy Serves some sort of useful purpose on the other hand I can’t agree with bret that the monarchy doesn’t make laws. I mean the very fact that they Can not sit a government Whatever that example was That’s equivalent to making laws. Like there’s no real strong Break between those like we we talk about legislation, you know, judicial legislation that courts should not make laws Well, of course courts do make laws, right? That’s what courts do For all intents and purposes the idea of judicial Restraint makes a great deal of sense to me where they try to do that as conservatively and as narrowly as possible But to claim that that they don’t make laws is to misunderstand what courts are and what laws are And I guess I feel the same way about the monarchy.

[01:48:05]  Blue: Of course, they make laws They may be very limited in what kinds of laws they can make but for all intents and purposes if they don’t set a government There they have now defined a law that certain types of government even if elected by the people can’t be can’t be Installed as governments that you that there’s a law for all intents and purposes That you must satisfy the monarchy that this is a legitimate government that we’re going to sit That’s exactly equivalent to making a law So I can’t I can’t agree with Brett’s explanation I agree with the concept of protecting tradition And that it often is valuable in ways we don’t understand and I I don’t have an opinion On whether in that particular case it was valuable or it was a bad thing Since I don’t even know which country it was that we’re talking about or what the circumstances were But I I guess I could be open to the possibility that it plays that role with the right set of facts I might agree with it But I can’t agree with his explanation as to Why And I can see I guess I can see I guess I’m now talking myself into saying I at least agree with mark That that means that you have an institution that can’t Can’t be error corrected that means that you’ve got An institution that you where you can’t uninstall the leaders even if they have super limited Narrow powers they apparently do have powers So I’m not sure how to reconcile that. I

[01:49:34]  Blue: think you’re raising a fair point I I feel like I’ve argued both for foreign against it in my response And I feel stupid that I don’t have anything to actually definitively say one way or the other

[01:49:44]  Red: Well, I say I like Chester students fence quite a bit I I think it’s a compelling idea and you can especially look at it How I kind of look at it is the tradition of our our own country meaning America and that many of the founding fathers were actually quite Conservative in their temperament and they were looking closely at what worked in in different states for For hundreds of years whereas you contrast that with the rationalists of the french revolution Who just wanted to uh Oh, you know, it just occurs to me that we’ve talked about this before mark And you have quite strong feelings on this but yeah the uh french revolution where they Just wanted to you know tear things down and tear things down and keep going and and it didn’t uh didn’t turn out so well So I think the the chester tons that the american revolution is perhaps more in line with Chester tons fence in in mostly a good way

[01:50:41]  Blue: So just to clarify it’s chester to chest chester tertins fence not chester tons fence correct enough with the tea With the tea

[01:50:49]  Red: I I don’t know. I you’re saying I was saying it wrong. No, no, I think you were I think you were I think you were saying it Right, I think I said it wrong. Okay.

[01:50:57]  Blue: I think I said chester tons fence and I think you’re right that it’s Chester tons fence if you know what I just googled it and you were right. It is okay chester tons fence. Okay

[01:51:09]  Red: What do you think about about that uh chester tons fence mark?

[01:51:14]  Green: I don’t know if I really have any I I don’t really find it that valuable of an insight to be honest with you I don’t have any like strong, you know thing to say against it. I guess I I don’t You know, it’s funny because my me and my wife argue about tradition quite a bit I’m a pretty traditional guy But i’m more of a traditional guy like hey, we should decorate for christmas or you know, we should decorate for halloween You know, I think tradition is like groundhog day or fun You know, and I think my whole thing on tradition is more of a thing of what creates fun Or a type of like ceremonial thing, you know it’s tradition to do this at this time of year and every year I kind of think about where I’m in in the world and this and that and it kind of You know, there’s something important about doing something the same, but then how it makes you feel Different, you know in a sense um, but as far as traditions go is like as monarchies and stuff I don’t see because I think dutch’s main Support of that was just tradition. I think you post it like the mary poppins or something the tradition song over that and I just find that a very poor way to say oh, that’s why tradition. Well, you know,

[01:52:27]  Blue: fiddle on the roof, by the way

[01:52:29]  Green: Yeah, there you go. Sorry about that. You know at least I’m glad I didn’t say chestard and fence long Very I made the mary poppins reference. I mean that’s a good correction right there very valuable correction But uh, but yeah, I you know, there’s a lot of traditions that are good and bad. I just My wife is kind of anti -tradition, you know, and they’ll talk about the old tradition of criticism. Okay, fine But that’s almost a paradoxical tradition in a sense, you know, but But other than that, I feel like tradition now holds this place in fun, you know, and There’s you know, you know, and dutch talks a lot about the enlightenment and stuff too and like, you know, a lot of the Rebellion against monarchies are very much an enlightened thing. I mean, why did why did the us create an elective governing body? You know, it was to get away from the monarchy and stuff, you know It it’s funny because the french revolution is so interesting because You know, obviously the american revolution was very thomas pain was very influential to american revolution It was also very influential with the french revolution, you know, they they were like the The american was the common sense writing that he wrote and the french was the rights man You know, and it’s just it’s crazy how both went at it at different ways, you know And you know, america had this thing too of being basically isolated from the rest of europe, you know, france You know was surrounded by monarchies that was putting pressure on it, you know So there’s a lot of different reasons why these things didn’t work out and that’s, you

[01:54:07]  Green: know, a very long podcast to talk about that um, but I just don’t see that tradition Being a very good reason to why we should continue doing things the way they were, you know I mean, you could you could argue a lot of very immoral practices That ended up doing some Neat stuff or beneficial stuff that we shouldn’t do today, you know, and I I just don’t see how you can really talk about the monarchy Of of Britain and being something that we should that we should really keep up other than for fun Or something that we should pledge allegiance to it just seems completely perverse to me

[01:54:47]  Blue: So let me let me say this I guess I don’t really understand what value The monarchy has as a tradition now. I don’t live in a country that has a monarchy. So clearly we’ve We’ve gotten along without one, right I I could I can understand the Chesterton’s fence argument that we shouldn’t just get rid of it that it should be something that’s done very carefully not just eliminated On the other hand, we have examples of countries that don’t have monarchy such as america that have been very successful without it So we at least have a good reason to believe that you can survive without a monarchy, right? You don’t need that tradition So I when I listened to like brett’s defense of the monarchy I admit that I never really came away with an understanding of what exactly the value was Right. It was more like it’s valuable. It at least once saved us from a bad government But it wasn’t really super clear how it fit as a good check and balance I I didn’t see an explanation there So I’m at a loss as to exactly why he was defending the monarchy and I’m not that doesn’t mean he’s wrong Or even that I disagree with him But I just there wasn’t like a clear cut explanation that I could wrap my mind around and go Oh, that’s why we need that tradition if that makes any sense

[01:56:08]  Green: And they’ve been a constitutional monarchy for hundreds of years and the power has been taken away from the monarchy for quite some time so it’s not like, you know The the the british enlightenment was, you know, directly influenced only only by the monarchy You know and you know and and doge talks about the monarchy or not about the enlightenment quite often But there are other traditions that did some good stuff for us too Like, you know, like quakerism in america, you know, a lot of A lot of the really strong abolitionists were people that had a tradition that I do not subscribe to in any way shape or form But they were very adamantly opposed to slavery, you know, and they had some very religious reasons for that You know, and there are some enlightenment figures that were very In favor of slavery and used reason to to be in favor of slavery There’s obviously other enlightenment people That didn’t you know, I know william wilber force is one of the more religious people in britain that argue gets slavery But i’m not going to sit there and say that well quakerism is an important tradition that we should Keep having because you know, they helped abolish slavery, you know, I just you know I I just don’t see the importance of tradition At all in the way that they try to frame popper and saying it my my tradition Is almost just literally for fun like I said like groundhog day. I feel like it’s a fun tradition You know tradition to celebrate halloween every year or something like that. It’s a very fun thing You know, it’s it’s not something that I’m going to pledge allegiance to, you know

[01:57:47]  Red: well, how about how about something like a tradition like that A child should be raised in a I don’t want to say a mother and father My point is not to say that Family or it has to be and a nuclear family a child the nuclear family is the best way to raise a child rather than children just becoming sort of communal Immunally raised. Well, I I think that a nuclear family makes a heck of a lot of sense Now it’s might be There are some rationalists now and in the past who might who might want to completely Abolish that I think this would be a way where I would apply Chesterton’s fence Quite strongly and say that that the nuclear family makes a I would straight straight up say the best environment for a child to be raised in I mean it doesn’t it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t question that and think about it, but um What is that? Is that a kind of tradition?

[01:58:54]  Green: It is but I think there’s maybe some good explanations for I may be a nuclear family It could be presented as as a good option in a sense and I don’t even mean just mother father could be father father Mother mother or just you know adopted parents or something like that But you know, I feel like if you want to increase the diversity of a population having two people or you know I guess communal how you could say three because obviously like I was raised by my family But it’s also very influenced by my brother my brother and sisters as well too You know, so I mean I wouldn’t say we were a commune But there are other people that helped raise me and then I was very influenced by But you could increase the diversity of a population by having Smaller pockets of people help raise children and that the fact of matter is too We also have these communities that we’re in and that also help raise our children that you go to school You have neighbors, you know, you learn stuff from everybody. It’s just quite often your parents You learn the most from because you’re around them a lot, you know, and I feel like this nuclear family inside of communities is Probably a pretty safe bet they have a good Diverse but all on the same page type of community that we can work through this world together with I feel there’s some explanations there

[02:00:09]  Blue: but by the way, Nicholas Christakis’s book blueprint is Has like a whole chapter dedicated to nuclear family versus trying to raise kids communally and why he believes that genetically it doesn’t work to do it communally that’s a very um evolutionary psychology type approach, but

[02:00:29]  Red: Okay, should we should we move on to that? Is there another another uh tweet or criticism we can we can cover here?

[02:00:37]  Green: Oh, I can talk about other stuff. Yeah, um, I feel so here recently, I guess, you know Sabine Hassan Thunder is that Hassan Felder has tweeted some yeah Has tweeted some stuff that I actually thought was pretty interesting and um, it was her talking about The tweet is it’s a big problem with all current democracies that members of the parliament are implicitly tasked to evaluate scientific evidence a job that most of them are unqualified for You know, and then Deutsch replies who in quotation marks should be tasked with evaluating scientific evidence physicists question mark So how would bad physicists in bad theories be removed? And then he says question mark standardized tests says good heavens scientists are self -perpetuating enough as it is Give us political power to override the ballot box. No, no, no But you know, and I’m not here. I am saying well, we should have some type of authorities of science but at the same time like A lot of our political candidates are not very good at evaluating scientific evidence and They all have advisors that do this for them Like I I don’t know what we’ll be living where we don’t think that we have advisors that talk about that And quite often they don’t even care what the scientific theory is. They’re just trying to push whatever agenda they can You know, like, you know, in the recent republican debate You know, no one raised their hand against being a climate change. I think one of the other candidates is

[02:02:10]  Green: Or things that climate change is real one of the other candidates Does think that climate change is real and think maybe addressed that later in there But I mean there’s loads of scientific evidence to saying like hey something’s definitely happening to the climate, you know That in co2 is likely the culprit of it, you know I I don’t know like it seems to kind of be like well, how can our political Candidates be good at evaluating scientific ideas. You know, I’m not saying if she’s have some like a What’s the word, uh, you know truth committee or you know, uh, some weird thing like that This is what’s true and not true

[02:02:48]  Blue: ministry of truth.

[02:02:49]  Green: Yeah, there you go. The ministry of truth is the words I’m looking for Not filled around the roof this time, but uh

[02:02:56]  Red: But but yeah, like In it always

[02:02:59]  Green: comes down to so then And then it’s funny because I I sent this to bruce And I said it kind of reminds me of the who should rule type of article that popper says and I’m mentioning it again and As I type that to him and send it I’m I’m scrolling down and there you go Brutthole posted the who should rule thing and David Deutsch liked it, you know and like I get that in some aspect But at the end of the day like we have to pick somebody to rule and we have to pick some evidence or some Some theory to go with, you know, it’s not always a question about like who should rule or who should remove theories You know, we got to pick them sometimes. We have to come up with policy You know and obviously they’re not perfect. So I’ve never understood why that that is that is such an important thing Of the who should rule one or why we’re going to pretend like I’m not saying we have scientific authority But not that we’re going to say that we’re going to pretend that Certain people aren’t better at explaining certain ideas better than others I I just don’t get what even just

[02:04:05]  Blue: understand them better Yeah All

[02:04:08]  Green: right. I mean because I it’s funny because I remember it was um, Trudeau Prime Minister Kano was talking about I believe quantum computers and he described how they worked And you know got a round of applause for him and I’m sitting there thinking like Well, I would hope he could at least some would describe how they worked since he was just briefed on He’s toured a factory or toured something, you know about it And then Deutch replied in it saying well, he didn’t quite get it right, you know And maybe he didn’t but But it’s just it’s strange to hear that stuff because you know because Yeah, I I I don’t know where they’re coming from on that. I I These people especially when we know that they have science advisors around them I feel that this whole pretense that anybody is it can Is just perfectly as good as any other to go through evidence I I just don’t see it’s kind

[02:05:09]  Blue: of the question of what role does expertise actually actually play in epistemology? Yeah, right. I’m

[02:05:14]  Red: gonna have to side with very limited in a way I mean, I think that this I that’s one of the things that I really like about Deutch and popper is this idea is this pushback against science scientists is is philosopher kings that that should Rule rule s which seems to be in some ways an extremely popular view amongst the NPR listening crowd. I actually think that the the expertise true expertise is a very limited Thing and it you know it does exist and should be Haken into consideration But when you have people a climate scientist or an epidemiologist or something proposing Policies that affect economics and people working and you know, all the all this stuff I think that’s a that’s a dangerous road to go down I I really like Feynman’s quote science is the belief in the ignorance of experts And what I get from that is that scientists even Or anyone else with expertise are quite often capable of making Errors in their Ideas about well even their own field I would say and and Certainly going outside of that field. I mean if you’re starting on a on Ideas about Especially humans that just aren’t true, you know whether Marxism and behaviorism or to Go to examples for me of things that you know that even highly educated people seem to sort of accept Uh, you know just their conclusions about how to live or just um, just don’t work at least not for me So I I really I really like the I the the pushback that these these guys provide against the Against the the scientists as philosopher king thing

[02:07:18]  Green: okay, so I don’t completely disagree with what you’re saying, peter, but The the the thing is Sabine is truly only saying like that That they about the members are cannot evaluate scientific evidence. She’s not talking about we should have philosopher kings She’s just talking about having scientists interpret evidence for them other than like then basically some random Right wing guy saying that you know Climate change is a chinese hoax or something like that, you know and you see this a lot I mean we talk about evolution be one of our best theories, right? A lot of those guys in that stage would not raise their hand if if they believe that That evolution that happens, you know and that is that is incredibly alarming And it doesn’t mean that everything else you say in every policy decision you can make Is bad if you don’t believe in evolution But I have a I’m very uncomfortable with you And then in that aspect, so yeah, I agree that we shouldn’t have philosopher kings, but At at the same time though It opens the door to having anybody say whatever they want and all these people just Oh, well, I’ve you know

[02:08:30]  Red: There are no experts, you know

[02:08:33]  Green: And I I feel like content is obviously what we should be striving for But you know quite often, you know, if you’re a layman on something, you know Like if I go to the doctor and he tells me To do this or that I’m going to look some things up and see if that checks out or whatever I’m not going to just go and have some brain surgery, you know I’m probably going to see quite a few different doctors and then I’m I’m going to decide For myself what I think is the best bet with my health, you know

[02:09:00]  Blue: So It’s hard for me to evaluate like if I’m just looking at Sabine’s statement the way you’re quoting her just that one tweet Certainly that statement by itself has a charitable read that’s Exactly what you’re saying, which makes it a somewhat Reasonable statement that there is a certain amount of deference to expertise That comes up in practical life and takes the form of our political leaders having scientific advisors, right? On the other hand, I wrote an article for my blog Criticizing something Sabine said in another article years ago So I sort of have this background of I know how she thinks on this subject And I know more than what’s in that tweet and in the article that she wrote She made the claim That scientists that people the public scientists should not be trying to convince the public that client climate change is real that that’s not a scientist job that People just need to trust the scientists because they know what they’re talking about and their experts Well, I disagree with her on that, right? I think it is 100 percent the scientist job To convince the public and I get it the public can just be stupid on this subject and are often stupid on the subject client change climate change in particular, right? um As someone who’s a conservative who accepts a that climate change is a potential real problem and b doesn’t Accept any of the solutions that have come out of the democrats or the left on this Which try to go after economic change and sustainability and things like that I’m not entirely against sustainability. Just the ones in particular. They’ve come up with aren’t the greatest Let me just say that

[02:10:47]  Green: But I’d be against spaceship earth

[02:10:50]  Blue: Just just coming from that point of view You know, it’s I I’ve As a conservative I’ll raise to conservatives Hey, you know, there’s like a legitimate issue here That you don’t have to agree with the democrats on how to solve But you need to offer your solution and your solution can be something substantially different more conservative And I think would be better furthermore It’s to your advantage to raise it to say yes, it’s a legitimate concern But what we’re going to do is we’re going to explore geo engineering techniques or whatever, right? You come up with what your Far more cost efficient solution is than trying to do a gigantic world cap and trade policy that tries to throw back You know economic progress or whatever. Okay, and every time I bring this up with conservatives, they get mad at me And even though I’m actually saying this is how you defeat the other side It’s good money. You know, this is one of the

[02:11:50]  Blue: things where good money drives out the bad Right, if you have a good idea how to take care of climate change so that they can no longer use it To their advantage as a scare tactic and you say actually all we have to do is put some ash in the air and You know what that that would cause other problems, but like we’re really not in danger here And when I bring this up to conservative and it is so obviously the right Rational conservative conservative thing to do to drive out the bad ideas coming out of the left on this And I have never never never even once had them do anything but get mad at me And say you’re supporting Al Gore blah blah blah Okay, so I get it. I get it at a deep level that my fellow conservatives Just like if I was a liberal, I’d be saying this about liberals instead Can just be very dense and can be very very very stupid and I understand why Sabine would get Upset over that and would want to set up scientists as philosopher kings It would almost seems like a reasonable alternative to just how bad sometimes the anti climate crowds act Okay, and she is still wrong. She is not even it’s not just that she’s kind of wrong. She is 100 percent totally totally wrong That it is the job of the scientists to explain to the dense conservatives This is the truth and get it out there and get them thinking in a different way through an explanation And I don’t see a real alternative to that. I think any alternative you offer to that’s going to be a problem

[02:13:29]  Red: Well, one of the things I get from critical rationalism is that we should always be, you know, this idea of Finding criticisms against our best theories is something that we should all be striving Yeah to do. I mean, we you know, we can there are people who think that Climate change is a Chinese hoax or Or that evolution isn’t real. I’m not 100 convinced that that is a mainstream Republican position But you know, maybe there’s some some a little more nuance here But I think a far better thing is to sort of ignore these people You know ignore the crazies and and look for the best arguments you can against You know this this idea that you know I think most people do agree that climate change Is real at least right to some degree at least the critics I listen to but you know What really what we’re talking about is something like degrowth or how to address it is degrowth The best way to address Climate change. It’s

[02:14:37]  Blue: really the policy where we should be arguing over right? What’s the right policy given the potential problem? Right and and when do we do it? How much do we do it? I mean like there’s totally legitimate And the reason why this matters is because when we talk about Scientists with their climate models every climate model is going to be built off of An assumption about growth continuing as it is which which could never be a scientific assumption It would always be an economic assumption now. It’s reasonable for them to do that in their models. I get that right Okay, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of teasing out of the economic side of their model and the scientific side of their model They often confuse the two as if they’re one

[02:15:23]  Red: Yeah, but the idea that we can just pick a model and know what’s going to happen in 50 or 100 years It’s just there’s so many problems with that that are worth worth considering. I mean, yeah It’s very very hard to predict the future.

[02:15:36]  Blue: Well, so I would love to see subpoena and scientists who are in this space Really explain what I just explained that there’s two sides to the model That what we’re really saying is is that if we don’t change things that there’s going to be a problem But there’s like many ways to change things And we need to start talking about what the options are on the table And

[02:15:57]  Red: there are many bad ways to change things that could really affect Yeah, especially poor people people living in third world countries or whatever who who need fossil fuels to improve their lives Right, it’s it’s it’s really You know, I mean, I think the more voices at the table in this discussion the better the more fierce argument on this The better I think

[02:16:23]  Blue: So let me let me say something in favor of subpoena though I guess I sort of have but let me make it kind of concrete

[02:16:30]  Unknown: Yeah,

[02:16:30]  Blue: this is A case where there is a large group of people that are my fellow conservatives That will not change their mind, right that they’re not going to be reasoned with Now to that let me just say I believe in the long run. There’s no such thing as a person who can’t be reasoned with I mean, the kind of is because some people are so bad that they’re gonna die first, right? But in some ways, it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to reason with everybody You just have to get enough people over the line And that is always possible right, it’s if you were to look at The way conservatives talked about Climate change back when I started engaging them on this back I know a few decades ago and the way they talk about it today. It’s there’s already been a change I mean, it’s slower and stupider than I would have liked but like it has changed right and there is a shift where Republicans and conservatives Except that climate change might be a problem even if they’re not sure they can say it publicly yet like we’re getting there, right? It’s just taking time Because ultimately the good arguments do end up winning out um But I can see where she’s coming from that there’s an almost stupidity to how long it takes sometimes because there’s these I mean like some of the argument the arguments that My federal conservatives make on this subject. They’re so painful, right?

[02:17:59]  Blue: Like they’ll suddenly say well, I accept that there’s climate change But it’s being caused by the sun and I’ll say look I do not understand how that changes a thing if the sun is causing us to go extinct Then we should probably do something about it, right?

[02:18:15]  Unknown: It

[02:18:15]  Red: doesn’t matter Right it is

[02:18:19]  Blue: The level of the stupidity of the argument is so bad that I get how painful it is and where she’s coming from, right? And and the fact that there’s an almost stuck loop in in some quarters where they will just quote dumbly these arguments that don’t make sense and As if they make sense it really is painful, right?

[02:18:42]  Red: Well the converse to that is people on the other side refusing to look at any benefits The climate change too. I mean you can’t say that that that in least in certain places I the the Climate the temperature average temperature increasing is not going to have beneficial effects And you can see that with global greening, you know, the earth becoming more green and and

[02:19:06]  Blue: I would raise another one Super superfreakonomics where they raise the idea of putting ash into the air to save the world So here we have we have people who are authors who clearly accept That climate change is a problem And they’re trying to propose a cheap solution to that problem. Okay, you put a little ash in the air. It doesn’t take much And immediately the temperature of the world drops. So the world can’t actually go extinct From climate change. Okay And this is really good news if you actually buy that climate change is a problem And you buy it as a scientific problem Then the fact that we can delay disaster basically indefinitely That’s that’s something that we should know about and it would save You know people children getting scared and the Greta third Berg stuff, etc. Right? I mean we’ve got this this aspect that really deserves to be Talked about and what does the left do on this? Well, it’s the equivalently stupid Response where they’ll actually try to put the people down and try to ruin their reputations And they’ll say they don’t know what they’re talking about Then you go argue with the people on the left, which I’ve done and they’ll actually say things like Yeah, well, you just can’t trust people who don’t know what they’re talking about and it’s like Look, what they’re saying is is that the temperature can be lowered and we can’t be killed Are you saying that is wrong and they won’t respond? Right? The the the obviousness with which the left Is trying to use climate change to advance Non -related goals through a scare tactic, right?

[02:20:42]  Blue: It’s bewildering that this is happening that you’ve got two sides playing political football and neither Neither is actually taking the problem seriously and it is bizarre, right? But that’s exactly why we need scientists to explain things like the left needs to understand Why what they’re doing is making a real problem worse The conservatives need to understand why them producing a conservative solution would kill the left, right? They would destroy the left being able to use this as a scare tactic If the conservatives just came out and said we’re in favor of putting ash in the air and we’re going to have these goals And if we pass this amount then this is what we’re going to do and everybody suddenly feels relaxed, right? Or

[02:21:27]  Red: not even aside from the the ash, I mean you could just say nuclear energy or you know, there’s a hundred common sense tons of solutions that would actually be much more effective than Turning back the clock to the stone age or something like that with you know the

[02:21:47]  Blue: So it’s I think this is the thing though is the the Deutschians definitely come at it from a standpoint of The who should rule thing, right? And I’ve never really seen a convincing presentation from them I’ve seen a good one from Deutsch. Let me say that I’ve actually seen a good one from Deutsch But I don’t in general see them Explain what the role of expertise is And I think that that that question needs a good really strong nuanced answer One that gets repeated a lot, right? I’m not even sure I can give it to you So I I would like to hear it myself Like I would really like to understand the four strands view of expertise and how it fits into things And from this standpoint, I think I can agree with where Mark’s coming from While I I in the one hand I I know I don’t agree with Sabine’s overall view even if this tweet’s not so bad Her overall view is bad, right? So I’m kind of glad the Deutschians are pushing back But I wish they would push back in a way that was Explain what the role of expertise is and it can’t it can’t be that we just ignore expertise Like it really can’t be that, right? I mean, obviously I think the answer is the experts need to explain things They need to explain things so that people can come on board and that’s the real role of expertise

[02:23:09]  Green: I think I have something I can I could add to that. I think it’s like Something like the best new ideas always have unanticipated benefits So it’s stupid to require people who want to do new things to enumerate the benefits beforehand The best you can do is choose smart people and then trust their intuitions about what’s worth exploring But it’s worth exploring now. The reason it sounds like I read that is because I did And now it was a tweet by Paul Graham that was Retreated by nobody else, but David Deutsch So I You know if we’re talking about these Expertise and authorities and stuff like that. I don’t know like it’s it was rather because that was another one I sent to you and I thought this is very related to this thing and I kind of want to do them right next to each other So I don’t know why we should just trust smart people with their intuitions about what this is exploring So maybe you should just trust smart climate scientists that they’re intuitions about what stores exploring, right? I mean like I think you can easily interpret that is saying that you know and it’s funny because I’m I guess I’m kind of weird because I thought what Deutsch said to Sabine was silly And then what I thought what Deutsch tweeted here was city was silly So I’m you know, I I realized there’s two sides of the coin here and I guy said it’s it’s always seemed like it’s a matter Of degree between how I disagree with Deutsch, you know, and I guess I’m always kind of I am kind of a centrist type of guy You know and but like I don’t know how I could

[02:24:43]  Green: I could try to Reinterpret that tweet I just read in a way of who should rule, right? I mean, it’s just kind of like and I don’t even care That we should roll but I mean like so the best new ideas have an anticipated benefits. Okay, fine But okay, I’m an angel on the best here. I’m gonna throw, you know 100 million dollars into whatever new technology you’re gonna have I’m just gonna trust you I know sometimes that does happen You know, but there’s all kinds of other games people people can play with with, you know Buying stock and something else so they can edge their way out of it But it’s just kind of like But still I’m not putting my money on you unless you can explain to me what you intend to do with this or any type of Effects and I think for the most time if people are really throwing real money down or gonna change policy You’re gonna have to explain some stuff to them, you know, I mean I understand like if you’re just gonna work on theoretical stuff and I think there is value in and some of that But I’m not I’m not putting a lot of money or time into something if you’re not going to give me any explanation I’m just supposed to I’m just supposed to trust smart people I I don’t know how you could Whatever word games he can play to to say well, what do I say I was right with Sabine and what he says is right here I I don’t think you can win on that one There’s just those are those are very very conflicting

[02:26:06]  Red: And what I find quite often is

[02:26:08]  Green: do it seems very partisan very very partisan He seems to be very critical of the left And not so critical of the right. I’m you know, I know he is more right leaning

[02:26:20]  Red: I feel like

[02:26:21]  Green: and but it seems to be the case that you know The right wing can say a lot of crazy stuff and he’ll just kind of downplay You know, he downplayed the insurrection on January 6th quite a bit, which I thought was

[02:26:33]  Red: Pretty surprising and shocking to me.

[02:26:36]  Green: I didn’t

[02:26:36]  Red: know

[02:26:37]  Blue: that

[02:26:37]  Green: Oh, yeah Yeah, he downplayed like oh, he didn’t want to call an insurrection And you know, he thought that there that was no threat to the american democracy or something like that america will go on And you know and america has gone on sort of you know, I guess we’ll see how this trump indictment goes and all that stuff You know, but it’s definitely created some tense times, you know And they mean and in fact that matter too is just embarrassing and it’s not like it wasn’t a global phenomenon Did venezuelia or some other government just have an insurrection and thinking of central america south america You know, I think somewhere the the southeast asia. There was something like that, you know And we had race riots in america over the summer during the pandemic and it seemed like the rest of europe Just had had to join in on us and they did the same thing You know, so like People really do watch us, you know, and so I thought You know the january 6th incidents was was very alarming and shocking and a scar amongst this country But I mean, I I don’t know how i’m supposed to trust smart people through intuitions You know who who decides who’s smart? So, you know,

[02:27:45]  Blue: I I do have to put in here My opinion this is this is similar to my concerns with the paparian war on words where instead of understanding Why popper’s epistemology works and what it was really trying to say that you go after the way things are worded So somebody says this is evidence for a theory and then you go Oh, they don’t understand science because evidence is really only ever used to refute a theory You know something along those lines like there’s this whole string of things that comes out of The twitter rats in particular Where they attack what a person said and then try to use it to remove their credibility Are no set of words you can use that can’t be misinterpreted in that way if you want to So it’s not too hard to guess that what they’re really doing Is that they’re finding they’re finding a way to misinterpret the person when they disagree with them And that’s really where the paparian war and words gets you Right It’s you’re going to end up Simply calling out the people you disagree with but then the people that you agree with You’re going to end up accepting them and just charitably interpreting them as well. What they really meant was this There really is no way to phrase things. Let me use a real life example here So we had an episode where I criticized david deutch Um for his argument for objective beauty So deutch has this argument in beginning of infinity where he talks about mosart or Beethoven.

[02:29:10]  Blue: I forget which and he is throwing away pieces of music because it just it isn’t what he really wants it to be and he’s error correcting until he Gets to just the right piece of music that sounds the best So deutch points out that this means it was hard to vary and therefore he claims that this means that it was objective Now what I pointed out though is that there’s a problem with this argument because it can be used for recipes Now I don’t think anybody doubts that taste is subjective and yet Waffle love the owner he has exactly the same story He tried recipe after recipe and he kept trying it on on his friends and family Until he finally got to the two just the perfect recipe and then he knew he had the right business And of course it then takes off and he’s very successful because he has the tastiest waffles around which by the way They are the tastiest waffles around This is exactly the same argument that deutch uses and yet we’re using it on something that’s clearly subjective Now in the case of the recipes There’s an explanation for for why you can air correct towards a best version of a waffle Even though taste is ultimately subjective and the reason why is because we have shared genes So there’s this parochial reason right that we have these shared genes There’s some variants.

[02:30:29]  Blue: So maybe not everybody loves waffle love Waffles, but a lot of people do certainly enough to build a business around and it’s better than most other versions of waffles And again, there is an objective nature to taste, but it’s across the population And it’s based only on something entirely parochial our genes and how they affect our taste just like Deutch argues that there is no population that likes any kind of music Likewise, there is no population that all in you know enjoys feces and thinks that feces taste good But if you don’t personally like waffle love There is no objective sense in which you are wrong because it is still a purely subjective thing Because it’s based on something entirely parochial Which is just genes and how genes affect what we consider to taste good and what we consider to not taste good Now, could you use this same argument for music? Well, Steven Pinker does he has the music is cheesecake for the ears argument that he uses now I’m not saying that argument’s right. The point I was making Was that Deutch’s argument didn’t sufficiently

[02:31:39]  Blue: Differentiate between peak pinkers theory and his own theory Deutch was an essence arguing that if it’s hard to vary that we know that it’s not only objective at the level of a population But that it’s non parochial But he didn’t give any argument for why it was non parochial It could still be parochial based on the argument that he used You could probably Add to his argument and you could probably find a way to make it a better argument and error correct it until it’s a better argument And it also eliminates the steven pinker cheesecake for the ears argument and yet My point was is that there was something insufficient with his argument Well, I had a Deutchian write to me right after that episode and he said no you are wrong because You’re using the word insufficient and insufficient Insufficiency that implies justificationism. You’re being a justificationist and therefore your argument is incorrect So I wrote back to him and I tried to explain that While it’s true that the word insufficient in some circumstances might imply some form of justificationism That it it wasn’t a given that it meant that and that it wasn’t in this case It didn’t mean any sort of justification in this case. I was pointing out a logical flaw with his argument I even gave him an example this Deutchian example and I said suppose I give you propositional logic and I say a and b imply c then I Demonstrate a to be true And then I try to draw the conclusion c we would say you had an insufficient argument We don’t know c to be true or false.

[02:33:12]  Blue: We know a is true, but we you didn’t show that b was true Therefore, we can’t yet conclude that c is true Maybe it is maybe it isn’t So we would say that’s an insufficient argument now clue this has nothing to do with justificationism This is just what we mean when we’re trying to explain that there was a Rational flaw or logical flaw with the argument being made So after I wrote that he wrote back to me and he said no, you’re just being a justificationist and so you’re wrong So I stopped and I thought about it and I thought okay He’s clearly getting tripped up on the word insufficient because insufficient might in some cases imply justificationism And he’s struggling to see past that so what word can I use or phrase? Can I use that would help him see that this is a legitimate argument a legitimate criticism that needs to be taken Seriously that has nothing to do with justificationism And I thought about it and I thought about it and I realized There is no word or set of words or phrases or sentences in the english language That he can’t see as justificationist that’s going to express the same idea He was making a choice in essence to read it as justificationist because he didn’t like the argument Now i’m sure that if I had been making a different argument Let’s say I had been arguing against Someone who was arguing in favor of communism and I was saying this communist his argument is insufficient I don’t doubt that at this point Suddenly the word insufficient would be just fine.

[02:34:39]  Blue: He would understand exactly what I was trying to say What exactly what I was trying to get at he would see that it has nothing to do with justification It probably wouldn’t even cross his mind to think of it as justificationist But because I was making an argument. He didn’t want to hear He was getting tripped up on words, but there was no actual set of words I could use that he wouldn’t get tripped up on under this circumstance And I started to realize this is the problem with the paparian war on words. It gives you an easy out if you haven’t

[02:35:08]  Blue: Explanations being offered and the person happens to use a term that you can take as justificationist or About confirmation or empiricism or any of the things that deutch writes against There are so many words that might imply those in fact It’s literally impossible to have a conversation without using words That can’t be taken in such a way if the person so chooses So then the person doesn’t have to hear the criticism because they’ve been able to criticize you for what words you used And there’s no set of words you can use that they can’t criticize and therefore thereby just simply dismiss your whole argument In essence, this person had turned off their error correction They there was no way to express this completely valid criticism to them that they weren’t going to dismiss Based solely on which words I chose to use And so I do think that this is what we’re kind of getting here Is that in one case it was pro what they believed in one case it was against what they believed But you’ve kind of they’re not we’re not getting to the heart of the issue Okay, which is what is the role of experts? Okay, yeah, we want people who know more to be able to experiment and to try things out There’s a certain truth to Paul Graham’s tweet, right? And there’s a certain truth to Sabine’s tweet

[02:36:25]  Blue: They’re both getting at And mark you’re right that I think as a just a kind of surface read These they seem like they’re at odds with each other We we need an explanation as to how to navigate between under what circumstance Are we saying Sabine’s wrong and Paul’s right when they’re kind of saying the same thing but in different ways And I definitely think we need a stronger understanding. We need to This is one of the reasons why I’m such a strong advocate of charitable reading, right? I’m prepared to even though I know Sabine has some incorrect ideas about this I’m prepared to at least assume that what she’s really saying in this tweet is Hey, we need to trust experts more. It’s hard for them to explain things to the public Which is kind of a true statement, right? And I think in the case of the Paul Graham statement, he’s saying Hey, we need to trust experts more He’s saying the same thing as Sabine when you read him charitably, right? And so that’s kind of true, too And yet it still comes down to we don’t ever want them to have the power to enforce it on us They must convince us and I think that is the ultimate Open society answer is that Science is a means of persuasion It’s not an authority

[02:37:42]  Red: Yeah, so the point of expertise is that what what an expert should do is to argue for their position and try to try to convince other people and I think in this in this modern world This is happening more than ever really and that’s why I’m a complete I mean this this is one one way that I disagree with both the right and the left I think I’m a complete optimist in terms of all these Electronic communication and twitter and all this the more arguments that are out there The better the more podcasts where people are arguing for their ideas the better and through through this process we humans will Hopefully make a lot of mistakes and fallibly move closer to truth Kind of like what tWitch is tWitch advocates or at least I hear him saying

[02:38:37]  Blue: have you read John Roush’s book constitution of knowledge?

[02:38:41]  Red: No, I should you you uh, you’ve recommended it to me and I read his his other other one But I I feel like he’s a little pessimistic but for but uh Yeah, I should read it.

[02:38:55]  Blue: So yeah, he he actually makes somewhat of an argument against Yeah, the marketplace of free ideas, although I think in the long run He’s he’s he’s entirely optimistic that

[02:39:04]  Red: yeah,

[02:39:05]  Blue: you start off with a marketplace of free ideas And it may not necessarily be good But that over time we will move towards that because we understand how to build the kinds of institutions that favor truth over falseness

[02:39:18]  Red: I think a long term my prediction 100 years 200 years people are gonna look back and say wow remember when people thought that social media and and Twitter and all this stuff was was gonna tear apart our country and think I think it will be more obvious that it was was was a This access to information and communication was a good thing for humans Yeah, because you know, that’s just part of it’s just my ideas about what humans are we’re we’re knowledge creators and we we like truth and and You know, we want to be be right even as as flawed as we are

[02:39:53]  Blue: Yeah, um, we will have to do a separate podcast on John Rouse’s constitution knowledge. Sorry. Go ahead

[02:39:59]  Green: Yeah, it’s it’s interesting because you know the french that’s why the french revolution is so interesting because During the french revolution. There was an explosion of like gazettes and media at that time that wrote You know political ideas and wrote about current events and news stories You know and you know that that ended up being You know ended up in a bad way You know and there was a similar explosion in america ended up in a good way so In a lot of times, you know, dutch will say, you know, we’re like You know, there’s no guarantee that we won’t just blow up, you know Our civilization in some way, you know, there are there are no guarantees that we’re going to come through it And it does seem to be the best bet is some type of open society democratic Institution to go because it does seem like More authoritative more authoritative ones don’t have enough corrective Mechanisms in it to keep that from happening. You know, so Yeah, I mean it’s it’s a brave new world out there Who knows with agi because you know, there’s a car loom people thought that No one will ever, you know, have to work again to destroy all their jobs of textile industry as we destroyed, you know, and That certainly wasn’t the case, you know and now with agi we’re talking about, you know, well, you know No truck drivers will have a job all of our agis will be automated and no one will be able to work We won’t be able to find And they’ll say that this is something different, you know and part of me is you’re talking about

[02:41:32]  Red: more ai than agi though Right here.

[02:41:34]  Green: Yeah, it could be both really. Okay,

[02:41:36]  Red: either or you know ai

[02:41:38]  Green: or agi for that matter You know, we’re

[02:41:40]  Red: okay.

[02:41:41]  Green: Maybe on the cusp of we’re definitely at ai in some type of level right now, right? I mean the people in the art world are Tremendously scared and I think they have reason to be scared Um with the the ai are ai are generators. I see Um, but uh agi is a whole different ball game obviously too, but that’s even more complicated But yeah, part of me thinks that yeah, that is different part of

[02:42:06]  Red: me thinks that we’ll find ways we’ll get by

[02:42:08]  Green: You know, I mean, I think we will find ways, you know, but um I don’t I don’t think to be prophetic about about the future

[02:42:17]  Blue: John Roush the constitution of knowledge he points out that we did freak out over the um the printing press Right that it’s going to tear us apart one of the things he points out is a it did tear us apart massive wars came out of the printing press and b And b we now look back on it back on it and the the idea of the printing press is going to tear us apart is silly Right so it’s a matter of generating the knowledge on how to control it and It’s a very paparian view by the way. He uses charles purse more than popper, but he’s very much into popper also um, but uh Social media is the same way his his point of view is We can solve this problem. We will solve this problem. Social media will turn out to be all the positive and none of the negative But we aren’t there today and we’ve got to figure it out and it’s new That’s why it’s carrying at us right at the moment just like the printing press tore at us But it’s a solvable problem and we will solve it So and I do think that’s about that’s about right like the marketplace of of ideas idea concept It it downplays or ignores the importance of institutions the fact that institutions are what create the environment Where books aren’t dangerous anymore, right? And it’s we have ways of going about this where we understand how to do it now And we’re going to do that with social media.

[02:43:45]  Blue: We’re just at an era where we’re we’re still trying to figure it out And we’re getting there So I I’m very optimistic in that we will solve the problem But I accept that it is a problem that needs to be solved

[02:43:56]  Green: Well, man, I guess you could say it destroyed our world in a sense, but the printing press did destroy A lot of ideas of that and they found new and better ones You know, I mean Mom I want to say the printing press is the reason my monarchies were dissolved or Why the enlightenment happened all the way, but you know, it certainly played a part. I had imagined You know, so I mean their way of life was definitely If you want to say destroyed you could also look at it a more in a positive light, you know, that was that it was Improved dramatically. I’d be interested to know how long that more wars happened Because of the printing press because

[02:44:36]  Blue: that was what my

[02:44:38]  Green: understanding is like there are plenty of Fighting in between tribes. I think maybe we didn’t have superpowers as much as we had that could do as much Destruction, but

[02:44:48]  Blue: I

[02:44:48]  Green: mean since the dawn of time, you know, we’ve been killing each other right and left over silly stuff

[02:44:53]  Blue: Or

[02:44:54]  Green: or maybe not silly stuff as well, too

[02:44:57]  Blue: So maybe, you know, I I don’t have the statistics Andy So maybe it’s wrong to say that it created more wars, but it definitely created some of the worst wars the Religious wars that followed and things like that due to the Protestant Reformation And so I think there’s a good good case to be made there that the printing press was the you know, proximate cause Of a lot of that So the fact that something has a negative effect doesn’t mean it won’t be in a long long run a positive effect Sometimes you just have to work out how to deal with it I think that actually goes for what you were talking about AI too, right? I mean like The fear that AI will take away all the trucker jobs That’s probably a legitimate fear, but it’s not likely to ever come to fruition For one thing AI just driving try to do automatic driving with AI It’s really a hard problem to solve. We’re not probably all that close to solving it when we do it will only be the easiest Parts it’ll be like on the freeway and then you’ll need probably more truck drivers to be able to do the last mile It was what they call it the last mile So I mean like the odds that the technology would just Come into being all at once and suddenly cause a massive drop of All the jobs is not probably true. I keep seeing using the word probably here. Who knows, right? It could like it’s not like Technology hasn’t in the history of the world destroyed somebody’s life through automation. Of course it has

[02:46:30]  Red: I think the reality is it probably will destroy a lot of jobs I mean whether they’re truck drivers or computer programmers or or teachers It’s going to radically affect the way People work at the very least But you know, I still think Big picture. I mean, I’m I’m an optimist. I think it’ll it’ll it’ll take away It’ll empower people more than anything and uh, and just Positively change the way people work menial labor like being a probably in a hundred years people look back and think Oh people worked as cashiers and and picking berries and a farm, you know things that you know, no They’re just not good use of of human Labor for human minds really. So I think it’s big picture. It looked much very much like a printing press. It will It will be a positive

[02:47:24]  Blue: I I think we do have to recognize though That there is always a potential danger and the very fact that people raise it as a potential danger is part of How an open society avoids the danger, right? So When somebody brings up, oh ai is going to put all the truckers out of work The fact that truckers won’t get put out of work will in part happen because somebody raised the issue ai is going to put truckers out of work It’s weird how that works, right? It’s kind of reflexive. Yeah.

[02:47:55]  Red: Yeah,

[02:47:56]  Blue: so it’s it’s necessary to have the alarmists in society so that the alarm goes off so early that Things don’t go the way that people are worried about

[02:48:07]  Red: Sounds like you’re almost defending our negativity bias is performing a useful function.

[02:48:12]  Blue: I think it does Right

[02:48:15]  Red: Well,

[02:48:16]  Green: and you call him alarmist, you know, and yeah, there are some like that But some of them were in the field. I mean sam altman recently testified about the dangers of ai, you know And he’s the founder of chat gtp, you know, so I mean it’s not even people in the field of creativeness Don’t think there are some things we have to be worried about, you know Obviously the manhattan project there was a legitimate scare at one time of you know setting the atmosphere on fire and having some chain reaction, you know, I think just People they they figured that out decently quick, you know that that wouldn’t be the case, you know But it was a legitimate scare at first and you know, if you if you told me that then I was a scientist, you know, I would have been I would not have been in good shape when I went back home to the house, you know after thinking about like Yeah, we are literally going to destroy the world by setting the atmosphere on fire and blowing up the entire planet, you know But um, who knows, you know, maybe there’s other there’s other things that happen You know, I get I think tag mark has some Interesting things about that, you know, where he talks about Was he called like the red? He has a name for a certain night ideas or inventions that could destroy the planet Or something. Are you thinking

[02:49:34]  Red: of of Bostrom and the white ball black ball? Yeah, that’s that Vulnerable world hypothesis. Yeah,

[02:49:41]  Green: I mean, I don’t really always Subscribe to that. I think it’s I think it’s interesting It’s way to define a black ball white ball thing I think some people said well, if it’s just as easy to destroy the planet, you know Putting silica on the microwave, you know, we’d all probably been dead a long time ago You know, but you know, who knows or there could be technologies in the future where that that might be the case You know, maybe maybe maybe we can’t separate corks, you know And it’s going to be the worst explosion ever, you know, I mean, but who knows but you know, and I think you are How much more time you want to go with this? We’re we’re pushing lex Friedman type of podcast I

[02:50:19]  Red: was thinking we’re we’re coming up three hours Now, are there any more like rapid fire criticisms mark that you’d like to make of uh, The dutchian world I

[02:50:31]  Green: think since we’ve talked about possible future stuff I think the last thing I could say to maybe someone up is I feel like sometimes dutch comes off as kind of a futurist in a way that I feel like he seems a little bit Is optimism which I like and it’s it’s very attractive to and I think a lot of the You know the listen to what the scientists say obviously have a lot of bad philosophies were You know, I think I talked about it recently, you know feeling insignificant because the universe is big is silly You know and a lot of the pro science people almost seems want to belittle you in such a way You know and dutch doesn’t do that You know and his his outlook is very optimistic or at least at least not like saying that you aren’t special You know other ones just might make you feel like in you know, you’re just a chemical the whole chemical scum thing Is always an uplifting and great experience and almost sets my mind right every time I I listen to that one um, but quite often I feel like dutch is talking about future technologies or a way we should affect policy

[02:51:41]  Green: With these technologies already being a positive thing And I feel like sometimes he comes out as kind of prophetic on it like even in beginning of infinity He talks about you know hospitable stuff and you know any any block of the Of the of the when he talks about in between galaxies, you know Each block so many square miles only has you know, so many atoms But if we had a spaceship that could transmutate these atoms into certain things we could find ways to To do work and be able to create new things So there’s you know, it’s only a matter of matter of knowledge that prevents us which I agree But I feel like man, I don’t know. I feel like out in the void of the cosmos.

[02:52:26]  Green: I don’t care what spaceship I got I think I’m dead I you know, I I feel like and I know he’s kind of using that as a metaphor and maybe try to drive home his point that how transformative knowledge is But if you take that literally I feel like that’s a pretty rosy picture You know, I I just feel like sometimes he just comes off as too much of a futurist in a sense that like Yeah, like maybe some of this identity culture we have now with Is kind of weird and I think deutch somewhat Maybe you want to say subscribes to it But it you know transhumanism probably will be a thing You know and we will maybe be able to override our genes in such a way To where a lot of the arguments that deutch makes that we’re not affected by our genes Which I don’t agree with either and he’s probably gonna Kill one of us off for another 30 minutes But in the long run he might be right In a sense that you know when we are fully transhumanist and we can just change our genes at the drop of a hat You know our genes won’t matter as much to us anymore

[02:53:35]  Green: And it will just be whatever we think we want, you know And but I don’t know if that technology really happened, you know, I mean Maybe 300 years so now we still won’t be able to have You know trucks drive out of automatically, you know, I have automated truck drivers But We’ll be able to grow horns on our head and be completely healthy, you know I don’t know, you know, there’s a lot of technologies that people soon we would have, you know Back in a day that we don’t

[02:54:07]  Red: Well mark, I really appreciate you coming on this podcast and bringing your criticisms of here and and and also I really appreciate both you and your wife, sodia bringing up some criticisms on the the facebook group too. I think we we don’t want an echo chamber. So that’s that’s the Definitely, I think we all probably all agree the the wrong Approach to moving closer to truth in this life. However, we want to put it.

[02:54:40]  Blue: Yeah, we definitely don’t want an echo chamber We don’t we Sorry, I was going to say exactly what peter said As a joke, but no, I’ve already lost it. So cut this part of the show. Oh,

[02:54:50]  Red: no, no, that was good. That was good Yeah, we definitely you could just put

[02:54:55]  Green: some reverb effect on peter’s And then slowly slowly use AI to make it sound like bruce at the end to submit

[02:55:05]  Red: But okay,

[02:55:06]  Green: but yeah, well, thanks for thanks for having me I hope people thought I had something to say and I’ve always respected both of you guys One reason why I continue talking to you guys. We both are very open and take criticism very well and you know And and give good criticism. So it’s great to meet you guys

[02:55:25]  Blue: All right. Thank you. Great to meet you.

[02:55:27]  Green: Thank you

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