Podcasts about epistemological

“HOW CAN ANYONE THINK THAT?” “What person with a brain would actually think that way?” Many of us have heard folks say this out of exasperation. Let's face it, many of us have thought this way. And if it's not said out loud, it's the subtext of too many encounters we have with people that occupy different 'epistemological bubbles.'   We're on Patreon! Join the community:  https://www.patreon.com/politicsandreligion   It would mean so much if you could leave us a review:  https://ratethispodcast.com/goodfaithpolitics   In this episode, we delve the concept of 'epistemological bubbles'—insular information ecosystems that reinforce existing beliefs—and how these 'bubbles' create barriers to meaningful dialogue. We get into personal anecdotes and reflections on encounters with individuals who are entrenched in their own political echo chambers. So we explore strategies for fostering genuine conversations, emphasizing epistemic humility and the pursuit of truth. Listeners are encouraged to engage with a variety of perspectives and avoid the comfort of 'epistemological binkies.'   01:02 A Personal Encounter with Online Trolling 05:38 The Prevalence of Information Bubbles 07:43 The Role of (and Responsibility in Consuming) Media in Shaping Beliefs 11:42 Analyzing Social Media Interactions 21:40 The Need for Epistemic Humility   Let us know what you think. You can find Corey on all the socials @coreysnathan such as www.threads.net/@coreysnathan.   Talkin' Politics & Religion Without Killin' Each Other is part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts that examines what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.   Very grateful for our sponsor Meza Wealth Management. Reach out to Jorge and his team: www.mezawealth.com

“HOW CAN ANYONE THINK THAT?” “What person with a brain would actually think that way?” Many of us have heard folks say this out of exasperation. Let's face it, many of us have thought this way. And if it's not said out loud, it's the subtext of too many encounters we have with people that occupy different 'epistemological bubbles.'   We're on Patreon! Join the community:  https://www.patreon.com/politicsandreligion   It would mean so much if you could leave us a review:  https://ratethispodcast.com/goodfaithpolitics   In this episode, we delve the concept of 'epistemological bubbles'—insular information ecosystems that reinforce existing beliefs—and how these 'bubbles' create barriers to meaningful dialogue. We get into personal anecdotes and reflections on encounters with individuals who are entrenched in their own political echo chambers. So we explore strategies for fostering genuine conversations, emphasizing epistemic humility and the pursuit of truth. Listeners are encouraged to engage with a variety of perspectives and avoid the comfort of 'epistemological binkies.'   01:02 A Personal Encounter with Online Trolling 05:38 The Prevalence of Information Bubbles 07:43 The Role of (and Responsibility in Consuming) Media in Shaping Beliefs 11:42 Analyzing Social Media Interactions 21:40 The Need for Epistemic Humility   Let us know what you think. You can find Corey on all the socials @coreysnathan such as www.threads.net/@coreysnathan.   Talkin' Politics & Religion Without Killin' Each Other is part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts that examines what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.   Very grateful for our sponsor Meza Wealth Management. Reach out to Jorge and his team: www.mezawealth.com

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: [LDSL#0] Some epistemological conundrums, published by tailcalled on August 8, 2024 on LessWrong. This post is also available on my Substack. When you deal with statistical science, causal inference, measurement, philosophy, rationalism, discourse, and similar, there's some different questions that pop up, and I think I've discovered that there's a shared answer behind a lot of the questions that I have been thinking about. In this post, I will briefly present the questions, and then in a followup post I will try to give my answer for them. Why are people so insistent about outliers? A common statistical method is to assume an outcome is due to a mixture of observed factors and unobserved factors, and then model how much of an effect the observed factors have, and attribute all remaining variation to unobserved factors. And then one makes claims about the effects of the observed factors. But some people then pick an outlier and demand an explanation for that outlier, rather than just accepting the general statistical finding: In fact, aren't outliers almost by definition anti-informative? No model is perfect, so there's always going to be cases we can't model. By insisting on explaining all those rare cases, we're basically throwing away the signal we can model. A similar point applies to reading the news. Almost by definition, the news is about uncommon stuff like terrorist attacks, rather than common stuff like heart disease. Doesn't reading such things invert your perception, such that you end up focusing on exactly the least relevant things? Why isn't factor analysis considered the main research tool? Typically if you have a ton of variables, you can perform a factor analysis which identifies a set of variables which explain a huge chunk of variation across those variables. If you are used to performing factor analysis, this feels like a great way to get an overview over the subject matter. After all, what could be better than knowing the main dimensions of variation? Yet a lot of people think of factor analysis as being superficial and uninformative. Often people insist that it only yields aggregates rather than causes, and while that might seem plausible at first, once you dig into it enough, you will see that usually the factors identified are actually causal, so that can't be the real problem. A related question is why people tend to talk in funky discrete ways when careful quantitative analysis generally finds everything to be continuous. Why do people want clusters more than they want factors? Especially since cluster models tend to be more fiddly and less robust. Why do people want "the" cause? There's a big gap between how people intuitively view causal inference (often searching for "the" cause of something), versus how statistics views causal inference. The main frameworks for causal inference in statistics are Rubin's Potential Outcomes framework and Pearl's DAG approach, and both of these view causality as a function from inputs to outputs. In these frameworks, causality is about functional input/output relationships, and there are many different notions of causal effects, not simply one canonical "cause" of something. Why are people dissatisfied with GWAS? In genome-wide association searches, researchers use statistics to identify alleles that are associated with specific outcomes of interest (e.g. health, psychological characteristics, SES outcomes). They've been making consistent progress over time, finding tons of different genetic associations and gradually becoming able to explain more and more variance between people. Yet GWAS is heavily criticized as "not causal". While there are certain biases that can occur, those biases are usually found to be much smaller than seems justified by these critiques. So what gives? What value does qualitative r...

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: [LDSL#0] Some epistemological conundrums, published by tailcalled on August 8, 2024 on LessWrong. This post is also available on my Substack. When you deal with statistical science, causal inference, measurement, philosophy, rationalism, discourse, and similar, there's some different questions that pop up, and I think I've discovered that there's a shared answer behind a lot of the questions that I have been thinking about. In this post, I will briefly present the questions, and then in a followup post I will try to give my answer for them. Why are people so insistent about outliers? A common statistical method is to assume an outcome is due to a mixture of observed factors and unobserved factors, and then model how much of an effect the observed factors have, and attribute all remaining variation to unobserved factors. And then one makes claims about the effects of the observed factors. But some people then pick an outlier and demand an explanation for that outlier, rather than just accepting the general statistical finding: In fact, aren't outliers almost by definition anti-informative? No model is perfect, so there's always going to be cases we can't model. By insisting on explaining all those rare cases, we're basically throwing away the signal we can model. A similar point applies to reading the news. Almost by definition, the news is about uncommon stuff like terrorist attacks, rather than common stuff like heart disease. Doesn't reading such things invert your perception, such that you end up focusing on exactly the least relevant things? Why isn't factor analysis considered the main research tool? Typically if you have a ton of variables, you can perform a factor analysis which identifies a set of variables which explain a huge chunk of variation across those variables. If you are used to performing factor analysis, this feels like a great way to get an overview over the subject matter. After all, what could be better than knowing the main dimensions of variation? Yet a lot of people think of factor analysis as being superficial and uninformative. Often people insist that it only yields aggregates rather than causes, and while that might seem plausible at first, once you dig into it enough, you will see that usually the factors identified are actually causal, so that can't be the real problem. A related question is why people tend to talk in funky discrete ways when careful quantitative analysis generally finds everything to be continuous. Why do people want clusters more than they want factors? Especially since cluster models tend to be more fiddly and less robust. Why do people want "the" cause? There's a big gap between how people intuitively view causal inference (often searching for "the" cause of something), versus how statistics views causal inference. The main frameworks for causal inference in statistics are Rubin's Potential Outcomes framework and Pearl's DAG approach, and both of these view causality as a function from inputs to outputs. In these frameworks, causality is about functional input/output relationships, and there are many different notions of causal effects, not simply one canonical "cause" of something. Why are people dissatisfied with GWAS? In genome-wide association searches, researchers use statistics to identify alleles that are associated with specific outcomes of interest (e.g. health, psychological characteristics, SES outcomes). They've been making consistent progress over time, finding tons of different genetic associations and gradually becoming able to explain more and more variance between people. Yet GWAS is heavily criticized as "not causal". While there are certain biases that can occur, those biases are usually found to be much smaller than seems justified by these critiques. So what gives? What value does qualitative r...

"In my own two analyses, I had observed such transformations for me in a very impressive way. I started my own analysis after the traumatic death of my sister when I was 22 years old. At that time, I had a breakdown, and I suffered from severe depressive and psychosomatic symptoms and sleep disorders but also from terrible nightmares that haunted me almost every night. Fortunately, my two analyses did change my depressive and psychosomatic symptoms, but what was at least as important for me, subjectively, was the change in my dreams, including the manifest dream content. The nightmares became less frequent; I was hardly in the position of an observer anymore but actively involved in the dream event. I was less alone in the dream but accompanied by people close to me and was more often able to solve the problems and conflicts which arose in the dream. In addition, the dreams were no longer predominantly characterized by fear and death anxiety but a whole range of emotions emerged. Towards the end of my second analysis, I will never forget that I had the only dream of my life from which I woke up because I was laughing out loud."    Episode Description: We begin with acknowledging the ambivalence that many analysts have towards research. It is seen as distant from the sharing of subjectivities that draw many to our field. Marianne honors the unique transference reliving and then remembering that is central to the analytic encounter and from that position suggests ways that it can be researched. She presents a patient whose manifest dreams were studied over the course of treatment along with his sleep laboratory data. She notes how the stability of the analyst's presence is essential but not sufficient to maximize therapeutic benefit. We discuss the role of theory, the controversy over approaching the veridical past and the seductions of simplified treatments. Marianne closes by sharing her deep respect for the unconscious and how psychoanalysts are living in "rich times of pluralism."   Linked Episode:  https://ipaoffthecouch.org/2019/07/13/episode-10-refugees-germany-psychoanalysis/   Our Guest: Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber, Prof. Dr. phil, director of the Sigmund-Freud-Institut in Frankfurt Germany (2001-2016), professor for psychoanalysis at the University of Kassel, Senior Research Fellow at the University Medicine in Mainz. She is a training analyst of the German Psychoanalytical Association (DPV) and the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA). She has served as the Chair of the Research Subcommittees for Clinical, Conceptual, Epistemological and Historical Research of the IPA (2001-2009), Vice Chair for Europe of the Research Board der IPA (2010-2021); Chair of the IPA Subcommittee for Migration and Refugees 2018/19 and since then member of the committee. She received the Mary Sigourney Award 2016, the Haskell Norman Prize for Excellence in Psychoanalysis 2017, the Robert S. Wallerstein Fellowship (2022-2027) and the IPA's Outstanding Scientific Achievement Award, 2023. Her research fields are clinical and extra-clinical research in psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic developmental research, prevention studies, interdisciplinary dialogue between psychoanalysis and literature, educational sciences and the neurosciences.       Recommended Readings: Leuzinger-Bohleber, M. (2008): Biographical truths and their clinical consequences: Understanding ‚embodied memories‘ in a third psychoanalysis with a traumatized patient recovered from serve poliomyelitis. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 89: 1165-1187.   Leuzinger-Bohleber, M. (2015): Working with severely traumatized, chronically depressed analysands. In: The International Journal of Psychoanalysis Volume 96, Issue 3, June 2015, Pages: 611-636.   Bohleber, W., Leuzinger-Bohleber, M. (2016): The Special Problem of Interpretation in the Treatment of Traumatized Patients. In: Psychoanalytic Inquiry 36: 60-76, 2016.   Fischmann, T., Ambresin, G., Leuzinger-Bohleber, M. (2021): Manifest dreams in psychoanalytic treatment. A psychoanalytic outcome measure. Frontiers in Psychology, doi: 10,3389/fpsyg, 2021.678440.   Leuzinger-Bohleber, M., Donié, M., Wichelmann, J., Ambresin, G., & Fischmann, T. (2023). Changes in dreams - the development of a dream-transformation scale in psychoanalysis with chronically depressed, early traumatized patients. The Scandinavian Psychoanalytic Review, 46:1-2, 82-93. doi:10.1080/01062301.2023.2297116   Fischmann, T., and Leuzinger-Bohleber, M.: Dreams, Memories, and Trauma—A search for transformations in psychoanalysis (in press).

01:00 The Joe Biden Decline Story Is Taking On Watergate Dimensions, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=156226 03:00 Conservatives saw Joe Biden's decline before liberals did, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=156067 07:00 Few People Can Handle Unlimited Amounts Of Humiliation, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=156219 10:00 Joe Biden Must Go Because The Desperate Nature Of The Situation Should Prevail Over Precedent (7-2-24) 25:00 Liberals Were Blinded To Biden's Senility By Their Own Speech Codes, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=156125 1:04:00 Prior To The Recent Supreme Court Ruling On Presidential Immunity, The Presidency Already Had All The Foreign Policy Power Of King George III, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=156212 1:21:00 WP's Dan Balz embodies the conventional wisdom, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/07/06/biden-defiance-or-denial-analysis/ 1:29:45 Many policy issues may be bypassing the president, https://www.semafor.com/article/07/05/2024/a-scared-biden-aide-sounds-an-alarm 1:44:00 Epistemological populism, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=156067 1:58:30 Brit Hume sends warning about Biden's 'alarming' mental capacity 2:03:30 Brit Hume: Biden's gaffes show he's having memory lapses 2:52:40 How the media turned on Biden, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrHo9pxkQRg 3:03:00 The "Weak" Media Refused to Admit the Truth About Biden's Cognitive Abilities, w/ Steve Krakauer, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSJt5js4CT4 3:06:00 Dem Oligarchs Forcing Biden Out of Presidential Race, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e37KAAbespU 3:48:20 Peggy Noonan: Biden Can't Spin His Way Out of This, https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-cant-spin-his-way-out-of-this-age-decline-presidential-election-9df813d8?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

On his first episode back in the podcasting world, Bruce outlines the dangers of the rapid-fire NFL season and how it can hinder our ability to learn. If we can't remember exactly what happened, how can we learn from it? Bruce starts the episode with a bang and brings the metaphors back to the content creation space while discussing "The Good Place", the wisdom of crowds, and default settings. Topics include James Cook, Ray Davis, Ken Dorsey, Joe Brady, Latavius Murray, Ty Johnson, Dalton Kincaid, and more! Thank you for everything. I love you all dearly.

Riva Tez is a philosopher, writer, and venture capitalist. She's the author of the blog Hard to Write.Topics we discuss are well captured by the timestamps below. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I enjoyed recording it!Watch on YouTube or X. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Follow me on X for updates on future episodes.Click here to support my work.Timestamps0:52 - Does crypto make anarcho-capitalism pragmatic?11:56 - Crypto is both technologically and morally superior20:08 - Ayn Rand's ideal world26:00 - Children are humans in their purest form30:03 - Having integrity in your beliefs33:17 - Creating a TV show of Atlas Shrugged36:33 - COVID radicalized a lot of people41:48 - Riva's toy store and philosophy class for kids44:37 - Epistemological anarchism46:49 - Objective beauty50:57 - AI, AGI, and AI safety57:25 - Distractions in the longevity movement1:04:30 - Why care about longevity (and hate the state)1:08:07 - Riva's childhood1:12:42 - There is more opportunity out there than anyone wants you to believeFollow Riva on X: http://x.com/rivatez This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.arjunkhemani.com

References Guerra, DJ. 2019-2024. Previous public lectures and podcasts. Bach, JS. 1721 Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F major, BWV 1047 https://youtu.be/3HSRIDtwsfM?si=AA-KdJF2Hyq8RlrE --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/dr-daniel-j-guerra/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/dr-daniel-j-guerra/support

Agrarian Thomistic Philosophy with Dr Richard Meloche, Part 2 In this episode, we continue our conversation with Dr. Richard Meloche on the use of natural elements in liturgies, the epistemological benefits of rural living, the loss of imagination and unique individuals due to technology, encountering Resistance in reality, indifference, setting artificial limits, and the beauty of natural order.   Announcements: Come to a 3-Day Family Lamb Harvest class, June 20-22 or October 3-5, where you will use only your hands to turn four sheep into kitchen-sized lamb cuts, sausage, and charcuterie. The main difference between the Family Lamb and Family Pig is the skinning of sheep. Removing the hide from sheep, deer, elk, etc, ought to be learned by hand for an efficient and satisfying harvest. Spots are limited to just eight students so as to keep the hands-on experience undiluted. Jump on this chance and sign up today! https://farmsteadmeatsmith.com/product/3-day-complete-lamb-harvest-course/   Our one and only St Martinmas Goose Harvest class will be November 15-16. Just eight students will transform a small flock into undiluted goods for the family table through the culinary traditions of the premodern peasant. The goal of this earnest, hands-on course is to impart the actual virtue of goose provender, from kill to confit. Sign up today at https://farmsteadmeatsmith.com/product/martinmas-goose-harvest/.    Meatsmith Membership A gift that gives all year long! More than 45 Harvest Films, Brandon's Harvest Journal, and our community FaceBook group. 60-day free trial available! Use the Newsletter Special option on our sign-up page and apply the coupon code 60daytrial at checkout. Sign up today at FarmsteadMeatsmith.com/product/membership/.   Support our podcast on Patreon! Production of each episode takes hours of work, filming, and editing. Becoming a patron can help us keep our episode quality high and allow us to continue filming. Become a patron today at https://www.patreon.com/meatsmith.   Timestamps/Topics for Episode 94: 0:00 Intro 1:01 Working with the potency of nature 9:26 The use of natural elements in liturgies 12:58 Epistemological benefits of rural living 21:19 The loss of imagination and unique individuals through technology 26:33 Ordered towards relation vs. every man seeking their own benefit 39:41 Encountering Resistance in reality, indifference, & setting artificial limits 46:15 The beauty of natural order     Links for Episode 94: Dr. Richard Meloche of the Alcuin Institute https://alcuininstitute.org/author/richardmeloche  Author Jane Grigson https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/226917.Jane_Grigson Author Fr Vincent McNabb https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4883679.Vincent_McNabb?from_search=true&from_srp=true De Regno (On Kingship) by Thomas Aquinas https://a.co/d/avI7RAG Author John Senior https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/630951.John_Senior The Importance of the Rural Life: According to the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas A Study in Economic Philosophy by George H Spetz. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1492963380?linkCode=ssc&tag=onamzfarmst0b-20&creativeASIN=1492963380&asc_item-id=amzn1.ideas.ZF2Z6XCSSQDG&ref_=aip_sf_list_spv_ofs_mixed_d_asin Inferno by Dante Alighieri https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15645.Inferno?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=IADZ4IFryS&rank=2 The Alcuin Institute https://alcuininstitute.org/

Kant, I. 1791 "Critique of Pure Reason" Augustinus, A. 397. "Confessiones" Book 11. Plotinus 253. "Ennead III" Beethoven,L. 1799. Septet Es-Dur op. 20 https://youtu.be/pXsj43qCcUA?si=lWoBhVSC4WhT8uUP Winwood-Capaldo. 1970. "Empty Pages " [Traffic: John Barleycorn Must Die,lp] https://youtu.be/5ycyIkcX7zU?si=jUJ6U2u31_SL1vNR --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/dr-daniel-j-guerra/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/dr-daniel-j-guerra/support

4/18/2024 | This day's featured sermon on SermonAudio: Title: Time to Reject Noah’s Worldwide Flood? - A Test of Epistemological Authority Subtitle: A Test of Authority Speaker: Kevin Swanson Broadcaster: Generations Radio Event: Radio Broadcast Date: 3/8/2024 Length: 24 min.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: My intellectual journey to (dis)solve the hard problem of consciousness, published by Charbel-Raphaël on April 7, 2024 on LessWrong. Epistemological status: At least a fun journey. I wanted to post this on April Fool's Day but failed to deliver on time. Although April Fool's Day would have been lovely just for the meme, this is my best guess after thinking about this problem for seven years. I invite you to dive deep into the consciousness iceberg with me. The story will be presented chapter by chapter, presenting you with the circulating ideas I've absorbed, building ideas in your brain to deconstruct them better until I present you with my current position. Theoretically, this should be easy to follow; this post has already been beta-tested. We'll go through a pre-awakening phase, during which I was unfamiliar with the theory of mind literature, then an awakening to the problem of consciousness, followed by a presentation of some essential elements of the scientific literature on consciousness, and finally, a phase of profound confusion before resolving the problem. The chronology has been slightly adapted for pedagogical purposes. Why do I think this is important? Because I think more and more people will be confused by this notion as AI progresses, I believe it is necessary to be deconfused by it to have a good model for the future. I think one of the main differences in worldview between LeCun and me is that he is deeply confused about notions like what is true "understanding," what is "situational awareness," and what is "reasoning," and this might be a catastrophic error. I think the tools I give in this blog post are the same ones that make me less confused about these other important notions. Theoretically, at the end of the post, you will no longer ask "Is GPT-4 conscious or not?" by frowning your eyebrows. Oh, and also, there is a solution to meta-ethics in the addendum. If you're already an Eliminativist, you can skip right to Chapter 7, otherwise, well, you'll have to bear with me for a while. Chapter 1: Pre-awakening, before stumbling upon the hard problem In high school, I was a good student; in philosophy class, I was just reciting my knowledge to get good grades. We discovered Freud's framework on the conscious/preconscious/unconscious. At the time, I heard people say that consciousness was mysterious, and I repeated that consciousness was mysterious myself. Still, I hadn't really internalized the difficulty of the problem. As a good scientist, I was trying to understand the world and had the impression that we could understand everything based on the laws of physics. In particular, I thought that consciousness was simply an emergent phenomenon: in other words, atoms form molecules that form organs, including the brain, and the brain gives rise to various behaviors, and that's what we call consciousness. Cool, it's not so mysterious! In the end, it's not that complicated, and I told myself that even if we didn't know all the details of how the brain works, Science would fill in the gaps as we went along. Unfortunately, I learned that using the word emergent is not a good scientific practice. In particular, the article "The Futility of Emergence" by Yudkowsky convinced me that the word emergence should be avoided most of the time. Using the word emergence doesn't make it possible to say what is conscious and what is not conscious because, in a certain sense, almost everything is emergent. To say that consciousness is emergent, therefore, doesn't make it possible to say what is or what is not emergent, and thus isn't a very good scientific theory. (Charbel2024 now thinks that using the word 'emergence' to point toward a fuzzy part of the map that tries to link two different phenomena is perfectly Okay). So we've just seen that I've gradually become con...

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: My intellectual journey to (dis)solve the hard problem of consciousness, published by Charbel-Raphaël on April 7, 2024 on LessWrong. Epistemological status: At least a fun journey. I wanted to post this on April Fool's Day but failed to deliver on time. Although April Fool's Day would have been lovely just for the meme, this is my best guess after thinking about this problem for seven years. I invite you to dive deep into the consciousness iceberg with me. The story will be presented chapter by chapter, presenting you with the circulating ideas I've absorbed, building ideas in your brain to deconstruct them better until I present you with my current position. Theoretically, this should be easy to follow; this post has already been beta-tested. We'll go through a pre-awakening phase, during which I was unfamiliar with the theory of mind literature, then an awakening to the problem of consciousness, followed by a presentation of some essential elements of the scientific literature on consciousness, and finally, a phase of profound confusion before resolving the problem. The chronology has been slightly adapted for pedagogical purposes. Why do I think this is important? Because I think more and more people will be confused by this notion as AI progresses, I believe it is necessary to be deconfused by it to have a good model for the future. I think one of the main differences in worldview between LeCun and me is that he is deeply confused about notions like what is true "understanding," what is "situational awareness," and what is "reasoning," and this might be a catastrophic error. I think the tools I give in this blog post are the same ones that make me less confused about these other important notions. Theoretically, at the end of the post, you will no longer ask "Is GPT-4 conscious or not?" by frowning your eyebrows. Oh, and also, there is a solution to meta-ethics in the addendum. If you're already an Eliminativist, you can skip right to Chapter 7, otherwise, well, you'll have to bear with me for a while. Chapter 1: Pre-awakening, before stumbling upon the hard problem In high school, I was a good student; in philosophy class, I was just reciting my knowledge to get good grades. We discovered Freud's framework on the conscious/preconscious/unconscious. At the time, I heard people say that consciousness was mysterious, and I repeated that consciousness was mysterious myself. Still, I hadn't really internalized the difficulty of the problem. As a good scientist, I was trying to understand the world and had the impression that we could understand everything based on the laws of physics. In particular, I thought that consciousness was simply an emergent phenomenon: in other words, atoms form molecules that form organs, including the brain, and the brain gives rise to various behaviors, and that's what we call consciousness. Cool, it's not so mysterious! In the end, it's not that complicated, and I told myself that even if we didn't know all the details of how the brain works, Science would fill in the gaps as we went along. Unfortunately, I learned that using the word emergent is not a good scientific practice. In particular, the article "The Futility of Emergence" by Yudkowsky convinced me that the word emergence should be avoided most of the time. Using the word emergence doesn't make it possible to say what is conscious and what is not conscious because, in a certain sense, almost everything is emergent. To say that consciousness is emergent, therefore, doesn't make it possible to say what is or what is not emergent, and thus isn't a very good scientific theory. (Charbel2024 now thinks that using the word 'emergence' to point toward a fuzzy part of the map that tries to link two different phenomena is perfectly Okay). So we've just seen that I've gradually become con...

Unit 14: St. Gregory Palamas: An Introduction, Prof. Christopher VeniaminEpisode 5bis: Epistemological Presuppositions (Better Sound Quality)Episode 5bis of “Gregory Palamas: An Introduction” is mainly an *enhanced sound quality* version of the original episode (with new title credits at the beginning, and an end card, plus an appeal for support tagged on at the end), which introduces the "Hesychast Controversy" of the 14th century in the declining decades of the Christian Roman Empire.In this fifth part, we discuss the philosophical background to the debate between St. Gregory Palamas and Nicephorus Gregoras, which took place at the 1351 Council of Constantinople.Themes covered in this episode include the influence of Greek philosophy (particularly that of Plato and Aristotle) on the anti-Hesychasts of the 14th century, the relevance of the debate between Nominalists and Realists in the western Middle Ages, and the experiential, non-philosophical and non-dialectical "essence-energies" distinction in the ascetic tradition of the Orthodox Church. See also the Timestamps below.Q&As related to Episode 5 available in The Professor's Blog.Recommended background reading: Christopher Veniamin, ed., Saint Gregory Palamas: The Homilies (Dalton PA: 2022); The Transfiguration of Christ in Greek Patristic Literature (2022); and The Orthodox Understanding of Salvation: "Theosis" in Scripture and Tradition (2016).The Happy Writer with Marissa MeyerAuthors, from debuts to bestsellers, chat about books, writing, publishing, and joy. Listen on: Apple Podcasts SpotifySupport the Show.Dr. Christopher VeniaminSupport The Mount Thabor Academyhttps://www.buzzsprout.com/2232462/support THE MOUNT THABOR ACADEMYPrint Books by MOUNT THABOR PUBLISHING The Professor's BlogeBooks Amazon Google Apple KoboB&NMembership OptionsJoin our Bookclub, Bible Study, John Damascene's Christology or Greek Philosophy here:Patreon for Membership TiersClick on the Join button below our YouTube videos, and become a Friend or Reader of The Mount Thabor Academy! Click here: YouTube Membership Level...

An evangelical theologian informs us that---All of us are responding to the progress of science and knowledge about planet Earth and having to adjust our interpretation of Scripture accordingly.- When it comes a scientific hypothesis like fossil dating and the filtering of data through a heavily worldview-biased grid, shall the Christian have to surrender the biblical historical accounts----Will you interpret the Bible by wild scientific guesswork about how rock layers were laid down. . . or will you interpret rock layers, by clear biblical revelation-- Will you fall down on your face and worship the modern scientific mind, or will you submit yourself to the epistemological authority of the Word of God-- What is happening with evangelicalism now----This program includes---1. The World View in 5 Minutes with Adam McManus -CVS and Walgreens selling Abortion Kill Pill, Democrats upset with Biblically-sound prayer in Congress, 1,347 displaced Nigerians killed by Muslim extremists---2. Generations with Kevin Swanson

A new MP3 sermon from Generations Radio is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Time to Reject Noah’s Worldwide Flood? - A Test of Epistemological Authority Speaker: Kevin Swanson Broadcaster: Generations Radio Event: Radio Broadcast Date: 3/8/2024 Length: 33 min.

A new MP3 sermon from Generations Radio is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Time to Reject Noah’s Worldwide Flood? - A Test of Epistemological Authority Subtitle: A Test of Authority Speaker: Kevin Swanson Broadcaster: Generations Radio Event: Radio Broadcast Date: 3/8/2024 Length: 24 min.

In a field like theology, epistemology (or the study of the nature of knowledge) is tremendously important. Not just because the very existence of God is debated; not only because the possibility of the knowledge of God must be addressed in a systematic way; but because the conclusions we make about God and about the security of our knowledge of him should matter for our jobs, our relationships, and how we view ourselves. To find out more about the book visit wtspress.com and listen in to the episodes for a special discount on “Word & Spirit” by Richard B. Gaffin Jr. Music Licensing Code: IFJG79HLKOLC10UY ZWEDIK6TJER5WHEV VTKMZARBRUDEEQED 4PJZCHJAGTFH4X5L

Questions about whether feelings should have any epistemological weight in our decision making and how to interpret several verses in Acts in light of Greg's views on being led by the Spirit. Should feelings have any epistemological weight in our decision making? For example, should a pastoral candidate who has a “check in his spirit” reject a church job even if there are no objective biblical or wisdom reasons to do so? In light of your views on being led by the Spirit in your decision making material, how would you interpret the following verses: Acts 8:29, 10:19–20, 11:12, 13:2, 13:4, 16:6, and 20:22? Are we to follow these by example, and what does that look like?

On this episode of Mormonish Podcast, Rebecca and Landon are joined by the wonderful Kolby Reddish as we dive in to the importance of epistemology as a method to determine truthfulness. There is a growing concept in the LDS church that the more something appears to not be true, that only proves it's truth more strongly. And of course, faith strengthens this idea. Kolby shares his thoughts and experiences with epistemology and explains how this tool to determine truth is invaluable. Epistemology is defined as "the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope. Epistemology is the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion and it can teach us how to avoid believing things, even true things, for bad reasons. The longest standing definition of knowledge dates back clear to ancient Greek philosophy as "justified true belief." That means believing something that is consistent with reality for good reasons. As Sasha Sagan says, "It's dangerous to believe things just because you want them to be true." And this is where we need to consider what our epistemic standards are: at what point are we justified in believing something? What is the most common standard in Mormonism for believing truth claims? We know you'll find this episode as fascinating as we did! How to Donate to Mormonish Podcast:We appreciate our Mormonish viewers and listeners so much! If you would like to financially support our podcast, you can DONATE to support Mormonish Podcast here: PayPal: https://paypal.me/BiblioTechMedia?cou...Venmo: @BiblioTechMediaContact Mormonish Podcast: mormonishpodcast@gmail.com

Send an email to authenticbiochemistry@gmail.com with comments. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/dr-daniel-j-guerra/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/dr-daniel-j-guerra/support

Radio Free Humanity Ep. 102: “Our Political-Epistemological Crisis (interview with Steven Nadler and Lawrence Shapiro).” On the crisis of bad thinking and why it's both logically and morally wrong. Current- events segment on the Israel-Hamas war.

Luke is a lecturer working in the Department of Psychology at the University of Exeter. His research examines social and moral development between childhood, adolescence and young adulthood. Between 2017 and 2020 he worked as a postdoctoral research fellow on the Wellcome Trust, ESRC and NSF funded “STEM Teens” project. This project examined the role of youth educators in informal science learning sites, both by longitudinally following youth educators and by quasi-experimentally examining their role in these sites. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what's real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here on YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠. We discuss: 00:00 Welcome - Previous guests Kristof Dhont (ep:47), Matti Wilks (ep:45) - PHAIR Society conference https://phairsociety.org/ 01:53 Luke Intro - Social & moral developmental #psychology - Human prejudice, discrimination - fairness, co-operation, resource allocation - PHAIR symposium on "The Meat Paradox" "That was a big inspirational moment for me" - Tania Lombrozo ep:168 04:13 What's Real? - "The beauty of this podcast is forcing people to wrestle with their own socialisation" - Mum from Northern Ireland & dad from Scotland "culturally religious backgrounds" - Going to church & "learning about the more scientific worldview alongside that... I wrestled with the conflict of those two things when I was younger" - Rural childhood "being face to face with the natural world" - "I sort of decided for myself when I was about 11 or 12 years old that the religious side of it was not really for me" - "My parents were so respectful of whatever we wanted to do as kids" - #punk and #metal - "There's lots of people who come from sub-cultures into this animal rights movement... it's those sub-cultural spaces where these more radical ideas are first laid down and then expand out into the broader world" - Nico Delon ep 159 - @moby 's Punk Rock Vegan Movie - "I haven't gone as far as the full animal rights sleeve tattoo yet but there's still time" - Peer influence "your parents might act as your early socialisers but a lot of what happens from when you're 6-7 years and older is down to the circles you're moving with in outside the home" - A vegetarian friend at 13 - "If you work in science for long enough you stop believing that anything can be proven 100%... do not use the word 'proof'... you cannot use that word." - "I'm with you - the more naturalistic view" - Nature-facing spiritual movements "pagans are on the rise again... people are turning back to nature" - Epistemological issues: #QAnon #antivaxx #flatearth #BigLie #trump #astrology #homeopathy #covid19 ... - "There could be a rational computational model for how we interact with the world but that's just not how it works - the social world is impossibly complicated and the human brain is not very well set up to understand... so we have to use these more simple heuristics" - "We see the importance of group membership time and time again - that identity aspect" - #ReplicationCrisis - "We have to use these simple decision-making processes because everything is too complicated" - "We can dream of being the rational thinker but we're never going to get there" - #misinformation , #disinformation , #conspiracy - Genuine vs. performative belief? - "What does it mean to really believe something?" ...and much more. Full show notes at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sentientism.info⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sentientism.info⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Join our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠"I'm a Sentientist" wall⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ via ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠this simple form⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here on FaceBook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Come join us there!

Series: Mystical TheologyUnit 14: Gregory PalamasEpisode 5: Epistemological PresuppositionsThe fifth episode in our series discusses the philosophical background to the debate between St. Gregory Palamas and Nicephorus Gregoras, which took place at the 1351 Council of Constantinople. Themes covered in this episode include the influence of Greek philosophy (particularly that of Plato and Aristotle) on the anti-Hesychasts of the 14th century, the relevance of the debate between Nominalists and Realists in the western Middle Ages, and the experiential, non-philosophical and non-dialectical "essence-energies" distinction in the ascetic tradition of the Orthodox Church.Q&As related to Episode 5 available in The Professor's Blog.Recommended background reading: Christopher Veniamin, ed., Saint Gregory Palamas: The Homilies (Dalton PA: 2022).TIMESTAMPS00:00 Background to the debates01:24 Question of “Universals”02:16 Real subsistence of Divine Energies03:35 Realism and Nominalism04:24 Realism10:07 Greek Philosophy: Plato14:34 Aristotle 16:14 No essence without energy17:00 Porphyry and Boethius17:48 Porphyry's 3 questions18:53 Boethius and “Universals”20:06 Three Schools in West: (1) Realist21:45 (2) Nominalist School 22:58 (3) Moderate-Realist School24:15 Nominalism of Gregoras27:36 Gregory of Nyssa 32:21 Cause and caused32:35 Philotheos Kokkinos33:28 “Theotes”35:36 The “twofoldness” of God36:22 Real knowledge of God37:36 “Energemata” - analogical assent38:59 Energies God HimselfIt is hoped that these presentations will help the enquThe Happy Writer with Marissa MeyerAuthors, from debuts to bestsellers, chat about books, writing, publishing, and joy. Listen on: Apple Podcasts SpotifySupport the Show.Dr. Christopher VeniaminSupport The Mount Thabor Academyhttps://www.buzzsprout.com/2232462/support THE MOUNT THABOR ACADEMYPrint Books by MOUNT THABOR PUBLISHING The Professor's BlogeBooks Amazon Google Apple KoboB&NMembership OptionsJoin our Bookclub, Bible Study, John Damascene's Christology or Greek Philosophy here:Patreon for Membership TiersClick on the Join button below our YouTube videos, and become a Friend or Reader of The Mount Thabor Academy! Click here: YouTube Membership Level...

We gave this lecture on the full moon celebrating the Guru, guru-pūrnimā the day when we honor our teachers and our lineage.You are all of you my guru, my teacher.And it is at your feet that I offer all of these words, like so many meagre flowers.You have all taught me and are continuing to teach me and will go on teaching me so much!I am eternally indebted to each and every one of you.A hundred thousand pranams at your feet! What could I possibly say to you now or offer you that can express my gratitude and devotion?  To celebrate the occasion, I intended to give a lecture on the major schools of Indian philosophy in overview: cārvāka (materialist hedonism), dvaita Vedanta (dualistic theism), vishishtadvaita (qualified non-dualism), kevalādvaita (pure non-dualism), paramadvaya (Shaiva non-duality), acintya bhedabheda (Caitanya's devotional Vaishnavism) etc. I wanted to tell some stories of the great gurus of India: Ramanuja, Nimbarka, Madhava, Vallabha, Shankara, Abinava Gupta etc. But alas, we only really managed to discuss Rāmānuja's very sophisticated form of Theism: Qualified Monism, the in-between ground straddling Duality and non-Duality.Most of the lecture though turned out to be, as per our inspiration that evening determined, a sustained critique on materialism and a defense of theism (that is, the existence of God).As such, I thought I'd call the lecture "The God Solution" which is of course a subtle dig at the title "The God Delusion"!  00:00:00 The Indian Spiritual Heritage: A Thaali Meal00:07:00 Material Reductionism: "God is Unreal, Matter and Energy is Real"00:11:30 Why Did Indian Spiritual Masters Respond to Material Reductionism?00:16:40 Critique of Material Reductionism #1: 2 Axiological Issues00:23:40 Critique of Material Reductionism #2: 3 Epistemological Issues  0:30:06 An Aside on Consciousness: What Is First Person Subjectivity?00:36:55 An Aside on Mystical Experience, i.e Verifying Spiritual Claims  00:38:20 Critique of Material Reductionism #3: Metaphysical Issues00:42:20 The God Solution00:49:50 Epistemological and Metaphysical Issues With Dualistic Theistic Religion (And Some Responses)01:06:10 An Aside on Skeptical Theism (And Why It's Problematic)  Support the show

Eric Wollberg is the co-founder and CEO of Prophetic, a consumer neurotechnology company building Halo, a non-invasive device for inducing and stabilizing lucid dream states. Eric and I talk about why he's working on this problem, consciousness, the dream state, best applications for this technology, epistemological metaphysics, and more. — (00:57) Why work on this problem? (04:10) Using “extreme environments” to understand concsciousness (and other hard problems) (07:46) Why do we dream? (09:42) Becoming more agentic through lucid dreaming (12:04) VR/XR vs. lucid dreaming (16:00) Potential negative scenarios with neurotechnology (19:29) Why would we not use lucid dreaming as an escape? (23:19) Consciousness-to-consciousness interfacing (26:55) Epistemological metaphysics (31:11) Barriers to epistemological metaphysics (33:19) How we answer questions about consciousness, reality, and “who am I?” — Eric's Twitter: https://twitter.com/ericwollberg Prophetic's website: https://propheticai.co/ Spencer's Twitter: https://twitter.com/SP1NS1R Spencer's Blog: https://spencerkier.substack.com

Johnn Andersson is a systems scientists looking at socio-technico-ecological systems. We speak about systems in the widest sense and also in the details. Maps and territories make their way into this conversation as well. We speak of the ontological vs the epistemological aspects of systems and what it does to us when we mistake those. We also speak about the consequences of our decision to focus on systems of innovation in the 80's vs what could have happened if we would instead have talked about systems of transformation all along. This episode is very rich and invites a different way of understanding the world in a very tangible way. Enjoy!

Ep. 84 (Part 2 of 2) | Lama Surya Das, beloved meditation teacher, scholar, pioneer of bringing Tibetan Buddhism to the West, and author of the bestseller Awakening the Buddha Within among many more, shares bright gems of wisdom from his extensive experience practicing Dzogchen, his long immersion in meditation retreats, and studying in person with the great spiritual teachers of Asia. Lama Surya is dedicated to getting the word out, and to young people especially, that the timeless teachings of the great masters are every bit as important and transformative in today's modern world as they ever were. One doesn't need to go on retreat to come to a place of wonder, understanding, and appreciation for life; Lama Surya assures us that daily practice of attentive awareness on the path of “awakefulness” is doable and effective in today's world. This is the path that leads to self-knowledge, and we just need to explore and investigate to discover for ourselves that realization of the Great Perfection, of oneness, is never far away.Lama Surya embellishes his teachings with humorous tales of his early explorations with psychedelics, his spiritual adventures in India, how he came to undertaking not one but two 3-year silent retreats in the great Tibetan Buddhist tradition of Dzogchen, and coming home afterwards with a mission for transmission. He talks about divine love and how amazing and influential it was to hang out with spiritual teachers who actually practice unconditional love, here and now. Lama Surya Das' own deep caring and compassion shine through his words, and his well-known “jolly lama” humor often elicits laughter from Roger and John. “There are a lot of lanes on the highway of awakening, you just want to watch you don't go off into the ditch.” His authentic, endearing humility shines through as well. He is certain that “if I can do it, you can do it, anyone can do it.” Recorded September 7, 2022.“Spiritual elixir is the greatest panacea for our inner world: mind, body, heart & soul.”(For Apple Podcast users, click here to view the complete show notes on the episode page.)Topics & Time Stamps – Part 2Going to India, discovering the practice of of Vipassana and the cave retreat yogi tradition of Tibet (01:31)What timeless teachings did Lama Surya Das discover in his 3-year Dzogchen retreat? Love is not the same thing as light (05:21)Mother Teresa on loneliness and love, and meeting spiritual teachers who really lived the talk (07:44)Living, practicing, surrendering: learning that love is greater than any dichotomy of like or dislike (08:36)Teaching of Pema Wangyal Rinpoche: “Don't expect the struggle to end.” (10:45)Coming back after the long retreat (11:47)We need an applied dharma that works for the postmodern world today (13:08)Continuing the practice with a second 3-year Dzogchen retreat (14:04)How Lama Surya Das became a Dzogchen teacher and started the Dzogchen centers (16:57)The importance of spending more time with daily practice and integrating it into your life: retreats are not for everyone (18:21)How long does it take to awaken? Awakening is very personal (21:08)Pointing towards awakening: absolute truth and relative truth, the middle way (23:44)What's next for Lama Surya Das? The 3 H's: healthy, harmonious & helpful—teaching young people, spiritual activism (26:46)Epistemological

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Large epistemological concerns I should maybe have about EA a priori, published by Luise on June 7, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Note I originally wrote this as a private doc, but I thought maybe it's valuable to publish. I've only minimally edited it. Also, I now think the epistemological concerns listed below aren't super clearly carved and have a lot of overlap. The list was never meant to be a perfect carving, just to motion at the shape of my overall concerns, but even so, I'd write it differently if I was writing it today. Motivation For some time now, I've wanted nothing more than to finish university and just work on EA projects I love. I'm about to finish my third year of university and could do just that. A likely thing I would work on is alignment field-building, e.g., helping to run the SERI MATS program again. (In this doc, will use alignment field-building as the representative of all the community building/operations-y projects I'd like to work on, for simplicity.) However, in recent months, I have become more careful about how I form opinions. I am more truthseeking and more epistemically modest (but also more hopeful that I can do more than blind deferral in complex domains). I now no longer endorse the epistemics (used here broadly as “ways of forming beliefs”) that led me to alignment field-building in the first place. For example, I think this in part looked like “chasing cool, weird ideas that feel right to me” and “believing whatever high-status EAs believe”. I am now deeply unsure about many assumptions underpinning the plan to do alignment field-building. I think I need to take some months to re-evaluate these assumptions. In particular, here are the questions I feel I need to re-evaluate: 1. What should my particular takes about particular cause areas (chiefly alignment) and about community building be? My current takes often feel immodest and/or copied from specific high-status people. For example, my takes on which alignment agendas are good are entirely copied from a specific Berkeley bubble. My takes on the size of the “community building multiplier” are largely based on quite immodest personal calculations, disregarding that many “experts” think the multiplier is lower. I don't know what the right amount of immodesty and copying from high-status people is, but I'd like to at least try to get closer. 2. Is the “EA viewpoint” on empirical issues (e.g., on AI risk) correct (because we are so smart)? Up until recently I just assumed (a part of) EA is right about large empirical questions like “How effectively-altruistic is ‘Systemic Change'?”, “How high are x-risks?” and “Is AI an x-risk?”. (“Empirical” as opposed to “moral”.) First, this was maybe a naïve kind of tribalistic support, later because of the “superior epistemics” of EAs. The poster version of this is “Just believe whatever Open Phil says”. Here's my concern: In general, people adopt stories they like on big questions, e.g., the capitalism-is-cancer-and-we-need-to-overhaul-the-system story or the AI-will-change-everything-tech-utopia story. People don't seek out all the cruxy information and form credences to actually get closer to the truth. I used to be fine just to back “a plausible story of how things are”, as I suspect many EAs are. But now I want to back the correct story of how things are. I'm wondering if the EA/Open Phil worldview is just a plausible story. This story probably contains a lot of truthseeking and truth on lower-level questions, such as “How effective is deworming?”. But on high-level questions such as “How big a deal is AGI?”, maybe it is close to impossible not just to believe in a story and instead do the hard truthseeking thing. Maybe that would be holding EA/Open Phil to an impossible standard. I simply don't know currently if EA/Open Phil ep...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Mob and Bailey, published by Screwtape on May 25, 2023 on LessWrong. Epistemological status: Moderately confident that this is a more useful way to use a concept that has been expanded upon by others. Previous building blocks: See Logical Rudeness and All Another Brick in the Motte and for the foundations, as well as Against Accusing People of Motte and Bailey for the direct predecessor. If you haven't read the previous building blocks, the core idea is called the Motte and Bailey. A Motte and Bailey argument is what you call it when someone makes a clearly supported and uncontested claim, then makes an outrageous but advantageous claim, then swaps between these two claims whenever it's useful to them. It draws from the medieval tactic of having an easily farmable bailey right next to a heavily fortified motte, then moving your peasants and troops back and forth between them whenever raiders come or leave. I Amy and Bob would like to have a civil discussion about a philosophical difference they have. Their conversation goes something like this: Amy: I don't understand why you think tautologies are important. I mean, you can't get any extra information out of them, right?Bob: There are actually a number of different kinds of tautologies. For example, a logical tautology might say "either X equals Y or X does not equal Y" and while you might be correct that no new information is gained from this, I find it helps me organize my thoughts.A: Ah, I didn't know that. I've mostly seen them used as rhetorical devices.B: They can be used that way, but it's far from the most interesting thing about them for me.A: As long as people are going to keep using tautologies to win arguments though, how do we help those who don't understand them well enough to defend against tautology based arguments?B: Oh go soak your head. I think if you learned more about them you'd be able to actually counter them when people did use them in arguments.A: Even if I studied tautologies enough to do so, I worry that making a general rule of needing to study all potential rhetorical devices to be able to defend against them might be prohibitively difficult.B: As much as I love tautologies, I do think tautology proponents should be more careful in their usage.B: At least as long as we have to deal with idiots who try to ban anything they don't understand. This conversation disintegrated quickly. Bob seems to be moving between the position that tautologies are one way to organize information, and the position that if you don't understand them there's something wrong with you. This looks like a straightforward example of Motte and Bailey. II Imagine Bob is the vice-president of the Tautologies club at a well respected college, and he has just been invited into a very nice conference room by some campus authority. Authority: We've had some complaints about the behavior of your club. Apparently proponents of tautologies are disruptive, disrespectful, and frankly prone to outrageous acts.Bob: What? That catches me completely by surprise: one of our members, Carol, has a perfect behavioral record- no infractions at all in the entire four years of her time here at the university.Authority: Yes but-Bob: Also, our secretary Dean just got a commendation last semester for Showing Proper Decorum. Isn't he going to the Competitive Decorum Displays next fall? Surely you aren't saying that he's disrespectful!Authority: No but-Bob: In addition, I happen to know that our treasurer Evan is on the boards of several charities with you. Really, I think the Tautology Club is full of wonderful people!Authority: Then what do you have to say about your club president screaming "B is B, motherfkers!" in the middle of a class before running up to the front of the room to spray paint your club slogan onto the professor's chest?!Bob...

Jay Shapiro is an award winning filmmaker, writer, & podcaster. He directed the film Islam & the Future of Tolerance, based around a post 9/11 conversation between Sam Harris & Maajid Nawaz. He produces and creates a wide range of content, writes on his "What Jay Thinks" blog & hosts the Dilemma podcast - I had the pleasure of being his guest for a Dilemma hangout about Sentientism back in 2020. He loves thoughtful deep dives into philosophy, psychology, & political analysis. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what's real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is ⁠⁠here on YouTube⁠⁠. We discuss: 00:00 Welcome 01:54 Jay Intro - The Essential #samharris series - Documentary & narrative film-making - "I really want to understand ideas... and transmit those to an audience... even if I totally disagree with the idea" 03:16 What's Real? - Growing up in a secular #Jewish household - "Post-holocaust American judaism is it's own brand... a very ethical & political tribe more than a religious one" - "Never again becomes the holiest prayer" - Psychologist dad, guidance counsellor mum - "I'm a boring naturalist but... I love analogies for what it feels like to exist" - Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five "Oh... This is what I like" - An over-active imagination as a kid... "my scientists", The Truman Show, solipsism, Philip K Dick & #scifi - #Meditation, #psychedelics, religious experiences... "scrambles the dials" - Donald Hoffman's "The Case Against Reality" - How evolution shapes our construction of experiences of reality - Psychedelics help us "catch it in the act" of reality construction - "There's much more out there" e.g. non-human sentient experiences - "It reminds you of the expansiveness of reality rather than show you a new one" - The National High School Ethics Bowl - Anil Seth's "How your brain hallucinates reality" @TED - Annika Harris's exploration of consciousness theories re: "The Hard Question" - "Reality is awesome enough - who needs magic" (I mis-spoke!) - Epistemological tests?: atheism, veganism, spherical earth... - Writing about Sam Harris, not for him - Object-oriented ontology - #psychology "I don't think we're the rational animal... we're the rationalising animal" - How people respond to #cognitivedissonance (Leon Festinger) "they really don't like it" - Criticising #consequentialism "you can justify anything... wait long enough and the consequences will work out... where do you stop the clock... too easy to find an out" - #Virtueethics "Secular virtue" (vs. religious views of virtue) - What happens after noticing the cognitive dissonance. More about psychology & values more than epistemology? - Coping mechanisms. Consequentialism, capitalism, economics... give people outs to "quiet these voices in their heads" - Neil Levy "people are more rational than you think" https://youtu.be/Tp40ga1cXEc - Qanon, Goop products... everyone selects evidence/sources to suit themselves - Believing unfounded things can be a "rational" response to existential crises / the discomfort of cognitive dissonance 37:45 What Matters? - "There is no grounding (to ethics)" - David Hume's "unbreachable" is-ought chasm - "If you hate Sam (Harris) I think you'll like a lot of what I do there" (the Foundations of Morality episode of The Essential Sam Harris - There is a relationship between is and ought but "It's up to us to define that relationship" 58:50 Who Matters? 01:50:49 How Can We Make A Better Future? ...and much more. Full show notes at ⁠⁠Sentientism.info⁠⁠. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at ⁠⁠Sentientism.info⁠⁠. Join our ⁠⁠"I'm a Sentientist" wall⁠⁠ via ⁠⁠this simple form⁠⁠. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is ⁠⁠here on FaceBook⁠⁠. Come join us there!

Our digital world is saturated in “facts” but there's little agreement on what constitutes “truth”.  If we can no longer agree on what sources of information can be reliable, is civil debate even possible?  To what degree is the problem exacerbated by social media?  To what degree is this simply a problem of human nature?  Bonnie Kristian joins Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis to discuss the knowledge crisis and our inability to reach consensus on what constitutes truth.  Bonnie also shares her thoughts the challenges of unplugging from the digital world, whether our current woes are likely to get better in the near future, becoming better consumers of news, and dealing with people who we believe hold false views.   About Bonnie Kristian Bonnie Kristian is a journalist and author specializing in foreign policy, religion, and politics.  Her column, "The Lesser Kingdom," appears in print and online at Christianity Today and her writings have appeared at The New York Times, The Week, USA Today, CNN, Politico, Reason, and The Daily Beast.  She is the author of two books: Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today.  Bonnie is also a fellow at Defense Priorities, a foreign policy think tank.   A graduate of Bethel Seminary, she lives in Pittsburgh with her husband and twin sons.  You can follow Bonnie on her Substack and on Twitter @bonniekristian  

Today Michael Crossley reflects on the field of comparative and international education. He looks at different eras to unpack some of the major debates in the field. Taking a historical perspective provides useful context and intellectual tools to understand and make sense of the big issues facing the field today, such as environmental uncertainty and decolonization. Michael Crossley is Emeritus Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Bristol. The reflections in today's episode are based on his article “Epistemological and Methodological Issues and Frameworks in Comparative and International Research in Education,” which was published in the New Era of Education: The Journal of the World Education Fellowship. https://freshedpodcast.com/crossley/ -- Get in touch! Twitter: @FreshEdpodcast Facebook: FreshEd Email: info@freshedpodcast.com Support FreshEd: www.freshedpodcast.com/donate

We are questioned about pastors with facial piercings and cranial implants. And, what about converted neo-nazis sporting swastikas, converted Muslims wearing kufis, and converted homosexuals who carry on adorning themselves in feminine apparel-- This brings up a short discussion on semiotics. What we are looking for is a little honesty, a true reflection of a worldview, and a self-consistent application of that worldview in cultural expression.

We are questioned about pastors with facial piercings and cranial implants. And, what about converted neo-nazis sporting swastikas, converted Muslims wearing kufis, and converted homosexuals who carry on adorning themselves in feminine apparel-- This brings up a short discussion on semiotics. What we are looking for is a little honesty, a true reflection of a worldview, and a self-consistent application of that worldview in cultural expression.

References Thomas Hobbs-Leviathan Heraclitus-Collected Works --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/dr-daniel-j-guerra/message

References Anaximander 6th century B.C. Plato-Timaeous 4th century B.C. Kant 1781 Critique of Pure Reason Basic quantum physics notes Dr Guerra Neuroscience lectures --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/dr-daniel-j-guerra/message

Today's episode of The Video Essay Podcast features reflections from the organizers and participants of a recent symposium held in Hannover, Germany from November 2-4, 2022, "Videography: Art and Academia. Epistemological, Political and Pedagogical Potentials of Audiovisual Practices." Learn more about the symposium here. The episode begins with a roundtable discussion between the symposium organizers -- Anna-Sophie Philippi, Maike Reinerth, Kathleen Loock, and Evelyn Kreutzer -- and is then followed by short reflections from symposium participants on the theme of openness. Specifically, participants were asked to "reflect on the term 'openness', as it emerged prominently in Hannover, such as in its relation to the local and the global, our sense of community and network, and the challenges and potentials that are associated with it." [03:12] -- Discussion between Anna-Sophie Philippi (Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf) , Maike Reinerth (Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf) , Kathleen Loock (Leibniz University Hannover) , and Evelyn Kreutzer (Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf) Reflections on Openness [22:15] -- Annalisa Pellino (IULM University, Milan) [24:20] -- Alan O'Leary (Aarhus University) [27:58] -- Barbara Zecchi (University of Massachusetts Amherst) [31:43] -- Johannes Binotto (University of Zurich) [34:30] -- Cormac Donnelly (University of Glasgow) [36:53] -- Oswald Iten (Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts) [41:25] -- Ariane Hudelet (Université de Paris) [44:27] -- Emily Dreyfus (Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf) [45:41] -- Kristina Brüning (The University of Texas at Austin) [47:22] -- Kevin B. Lee (Università della Svizzera italiana) [52:09] -- Maria Hofmann (University of Minnesota) Support the podcast on Patreon. Follow the show on Twitter. Learn more at the pod's website. Get the free newsletter. The video essay podcasted is hosted, produced, and edited by Will DiGravio. Emily Su Bin Ko is the show's associate producer. Music via Free Music Archive: "Won't Be Stoppin" and "15 Waiting-Room" by Ketsa.

References Timaeus, Plato Dr Guerra's thoughts and lectures N Engl J Med 2005;353:604-15 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/dr-daniel-j-guerra/message

Since 1980, half of American faith has dissipated, as measured by those who believe the Bible is God's Word.--The apostasy is metastasizing now. Only 20- of Americans believe the Bible is the Word of God, and only 40- of evangelicals say the Bible is the Word of God -a minority-. Partly, they don't like biblical ethics, and partly they prefer science over God's revelation.--But, in the process, they jettison all certainty on basic issues.---This program includes---1. The World View in 5 Minutes with Adam McManus -Floating abortion mill headed to Gulf of Mexico-, Church of England doesn't know what a woman is, Sudanese police arrest four Christians coverts from Islam---2. Generations with Kevin Swanson

A new MP3 sermon from Generations Radio is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Americans Don't Believe the Bible Anymore - An Epistemological Shift Since 1980 Subtitle: An Epistemological Shift Speaker: Kevin Swanson Broadcaster: Generations Radio Event: Radio Broadcast Date: 7/13/2022 Length: 39 min.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Epistemological Vigilance for Alignment, published by Adam Shimi on June 6, 2022 on The AI Alignment Forum. This work was conducted while at Conjecture Nothing hampers Science and Engineering like unchecked assumptions. As a concrete example of a field ridden with hidden premises, let's look at sociology. Sociologist must deal with the feedback of their object of study (people in social situations), their own social background, as well as the myriad of folk sociology notions floating in the memesphere. You might think that randomized surveys and statistics give you objective knowledge of the sociological world, but these tools also come with underlying assumptions — that the phenomenon under study must not depend on the fine structure of the social network, for example. In general, if you don't realize this, you will then confidently misinterpret the results without considering the biases of your approach — as in asking kids to sort their play activities into three categories you defined in advance, and then seeing this as a “validation” of the classification. How to avoid these mistakes? Epistemological vigilance, answer Pierre Bourdieu, Jean-Claude Chamboredon, and Jean-Claude Passeron in "Le métier de sociologue". They borrow the term from French philosopher of science Gaston Bachelard, to capture the attitude of always expliciting and questioning the assumptions behind notions, theories, models, experiments. So the naive sociologists err because they fail to maintain the restless epistemological vigilance that their field requires. Alignment, like sociology, demands a perpetual questioning of unconscious assumptions. It's because the alignment problem, and the way we know about it, goes against some of our most secure, obvious, and basic principles about knowledge and problem-solving. Thus we need a constant vigilance to keep them from sprouting again unnoticed and steering our work away from alignment. In this post I thus make explicit these assumptions, and discuss why we have to be epistemologically vigilant about them. Taken separately, none of these call to vigilance is specific to alignment — other fields fostered it first. What makes alignment unique is the combined undermining of all these assumptions together. Alignment researchers just can't avoid the epistemological struggle. Here is my current list: Boundedness: the parameters of the problem are bounded, and such bounds can be approximated. Reasons for vigilance: we can't find any bound on the atomic (uninterruptible) optimization of the world, except the loosest bounds given by the laws of physics. And the few fields with unbounded phenomena suggest a complete phase transition in the design space when going from bounded to unbounded problems. Direct Access: the phenomenon studied can be accessed directly through experiments. Reasons for vigilance: Systems optimizing the world to the degree considered in alignment don't exist yet. In addition, chilling out until we get them might not be a great idea (see the next point about iteration). Iteration: the problem can be safely iterated upon. Reasons for vigilance: AI risks scenarios involve massive optimization of the world in atomic ways (without us being able to interrupt). And even without leading to the end of the world, strong optimization could still bring about a catastrophe after only one try. Hence the need for guarantees before upping the optimization pressure. Relaxed Ergodicity: the future behavior of the system, for almost all trajectories, can be well estimated by averaging over its possible behaviors now. Reasons for vigilance: strong optimization shifts dynamics towards improbable worlds, leading to predictable errors when generalizing from the current distribution (where these worlds are negligible). Closedness: the phenomenon can be cons...

This episode unfortunately has some audio quality issues, but I decided to still post it because of its content: Reviewing the epistemological (theories of knowledge) paradigms for understanding reality. We examine 3 main paradigms: Solipsism, Realism, and Nominalism. Find Catholicism in the Car on: Anchor, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Podchaser, Audible, Amazon Music, Castbox, Radio Republic, Player FM, and Stitcher. Also find us on: Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeCdyv4dtHnU4504ILGOQTg Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Catholicism-in-the-Car-107936008608917 Twitter: https://twitter.com/PZCatechesis Locals: https://catholicisminthecar.locals.com/ View my blog at: https://www.parkerzurbuch.com/ Contact me via email at: parkerzurbuchcatechesis@gmail.com --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/parker-zurbuch6/support

Thank you for listening to Militant Thomist. Epistemological Necessity of the Magisterium w/ Paul In this episode The Other Paul and I respond to some arguments from Catholic Answers ideas around the Magisterium. SPONSOR Use the code “Militant” for 20% off to learn Greek here: https://fluentgreeknt.com/ MUSIC https://youtu.be/ePYe3lqsu-g https://youtu.be/Hi5YgbiNB1U SUPPORT Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQ5DQ8zCOmeAqOcKTbSb7fg Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/MilitantThomist Donate: https://linktr.ee/ApologiaAnglicana FOLLOW Discord: https://discord.gg/3pP6r6Mxdg Website: https://www.christianbwagner.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MilitantThomist Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/543689120339579 Twitter: https://twitter.com/MilitantThomist Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/militantthomist/ WATCH https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQ5DQ8zCOmeAqOcKTbSb7fg LISTEN Podcast: https://www.christianbwagner.com/podcast Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0exZN1vHDyLuRjnUI3sHXt?si=XHs8risyS1ebLCkWwKLblQ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/militant-thomist/id1603094572 Anchor: https://anchor.fm/militantthomist SHOP Book Store: https://www.christianbwagner.com/shop Mug: https://www.redbubble.com/i/mug/Militant-Thomist-Radical-Newmanite-by-MilitantThomist/102625027.9Q0AD?fbclid=IwAR0_1zGYYynNl2gGpMWX6-goToVQ-TAb2gktO5g8LbxczFTR0xRvcz3q-oQ

What is faith? Dr. Travis Dickinson argues that we ought to view faith in a moral realm rather than an epistemological realm. We cover one of his academic papers as well as parts of his new book, Logic and the Way of Jesus. Check out more from Travis here: http://www.travisdickinson.com/about/ If you like this podcast, then support it on Patreon for $1, $3, or $5 a month. Any amount helps, and for $5 you get a Parker's Pensées sticker and instant access to all the episode as I record them instead of waiting for their release date. Check it out here: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/parkers_pensees If you want to give a one-time gift, you can give at my Paypal: https://paypal.me/ParkersPensees?locale.x=en_US Check out my merchandise at my Teespring store: https://teespring.com/stores/parkers-penses-merch Check out my blog posts: https://parkersettecase.com/ Check out my Parker's Pensées YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYbTRurpFP5q4TpDD_P2JDA Check out my other YouTube channel on my frogs and turtles: https://www.youtube.com/c/ParkerSettecase Check me out on Twitter: https://twitter.com/trendsettercase Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/parkers_pensees/ Time Is Running by MusicLFiles Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/6203-time-is-running License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/parkers-pensees/support

Riva Tez wants to fund epistemological anarchy in science. Former VC, Former Director at Intel, former store owner, Riva does whatever she wants.We talked about how Riva built a unique career doing whatever she wants, what she's learned from the philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend, why the brain might be an antenna, why she moved away from Transhumanism, why Rationalism is cringe, how she thinks Urbit will win, and how she's planning to introduce epistemological anarchism to contemporary science funding.✦ Riva is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/rivatez✦ Riva's writings: hardtowrite.comOther Life✦ Subscribe to the Other Life newsletter at OtherLife.co✦ We're building a new country at Imperceptible.Country

Welcome to the Reformed Classicalist. This is the audio format of Matt Marino's lectures, classes, and sermon series found on YouTube and elsewhere. Find out more, at https://www.reformedclassicalist.com