Podcasts about increments

Round two on the anxious generation. Well, honestly, round three. But we had a false start with round two, which is why this episode is a little late in coming. If you want to hear the gory, data-heavy details of our second attempt, you can access the episode by becoming a patron (https://www.patreon.com/c/Increments) (was there ever a better sell?). We discuss Whether the rise in self-harm rates was due to reporting changes Whether education and common core could be affecting mental health Whether cultural pessimism is on the rise Cyberbullying Martin Gurri's thesis on the digital revolution How Vaden will handle social media with his kids References David Wallace Wells opinion piece (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/01/opinion/smartphones-social-media-mental-health-teens.html) Our patreon episode (https://www.patreon.com/posts/subscriber-ep-23-124502992) on David Wallace Wells' thesis Peter Gray on common core (https://petergray.substack.com/p/letter-51-common-core-is-the-main) Revolt of the Public (https://www.amazon.com/Revolt-Public-Crisis-Authority-Millennium/dp/1732265143/) Errata Ben said The Revolt of the Public was written in 2014. It was written in 2018. Vaden said he would list all four of Haidt's points about why girls are uniquely vulnerable to negative effects of social media, and only got halfway in before forgetting he said that. The four reasons Haidt gives are: Girls are more affected by visual social comparison and perfectionism Girls' aggression is more relational Girls more easily share emotions and disorders Girls are more subject to predation and harassment Quotes Here is a story. In 2007, Apple released the iPhone, initiating the smartphone revolution that would quickly transform the world. In 2010, it added a front-facing camera, helping shift the social-media landscape toward images, especially selfies. Partly as a result, in the five years that followed, the nature of childhood and especially adolescence was fundamentally changed — a “great rewiring,” in the words of the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt — such that between 2010 and 2015 mental health and well-being plummeted and suffering and despair exploded, particularly among teenage girls. For young women, rates of hospitalization for nonfatal self-harm in the United States, which had bottomed out in 2009, started to rise again, according to data reported to the C.D.C., taking a leap beginning in 2012 and another beginning in 2016, and producing, over about a decade, an alarming 48 percent increase in such emergency room visits among American girls ages 15 to 19 and a shocking 188 percent increase among girls ages 10 to14. Here is another story. In 2011, as part of the rollout of the Affordable Care Act, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a new set of guidelines that recommended that teenage girls should be screened annually for depression by their primary care physicians and that same year required that insurance providers cover such screenings in full. In 2015, H.H.S. finally mandated a coding change, proposed by the World Health Organization almost two decades before, that required hospitals to record whether an injury was self-inflicted or accidental — and which seemingly overnight nearly doubled rates for self-harm across all demographic groups. Soon thereafter, the coding of suicidal ideation was also updated. - David Wallace Wells, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/01/opinion/smartphones-social-media-mental-health-teens.html Studies confirm that as adolescents moved their social lives online, the nature of bullying began to change. One systematic review of studies from 1998 to 2017 found a decrease in face-to-face bullying among boys but an increase among girls, especially among younger adolescent girls.[47] ... According to one major U.S. survey, these high rates of cyberbullying have persisted (though have not increased) between 2011 and 2019. Throughout the period, approximately one in 10 high school boys and one in five high school girls experienced cyberbullying each year.[49] In other words, the move online made bullying and harassment a larger part of daily life for girls. - Haidt, The Anxious Generation p. 170 Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Become a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) Anyone you want to cyberbully into body dismorphia? Tell us who to send photos of our hot bods to over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

Anxiety, dispair, loneliness, depression -- all we need is a social media recession! A popular thesis is that All The Bad Things things are on the rise among adolescents because of social media, a view popularized in Jon Haidt's 2024 book The Anxious Generation. Haidt is calling for an end of the "phone-based childhood" and hoping that schools banish all screens for the benefit of its students. But is it true than social media is causing this mental health crisis? Is it true that there even is a mental health crisis? We do a deep dive into Haidt's book to discuss the evidence. We discuss A weird citation trend in philosophy Whether there is a mental health crisis among teens Some inconsistencies in Haidt's data on mental health outcomes Correlation vs causation, and whether Haidt establishes causation Why on earth do the quality of these studies suck so much? Whether Haidt's conclusions are justified References The Anxious Generation (https://www.amazon.com/Anxious-Generation-Rewiring-Childhood-Epidemic/dp/0593655036) Jon Haidt's After Babel Substack (https://www.afterbabel.com/) After Babel's main post (https://www.afterbabel.com/p/social-media-mental-illness-epidemic) attempting to establish causation, and the response to critics (https://www.afterbabel.com/p/why-some-researchers-think-im-wrong). Collaborative review doc on adolescent mood disorders (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1diMvsMeRphUH7E6D1d_J7R6WbDdgnzFHDHPx9HXzR5o/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.rqnt07sjvlcd) Collaborative review doc on social media and mental health (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w-HOfseF2wF9YIpXwUUtP65-olnkPyWcgF5BiAtBEy0/edit?tab=t.0) Matthew B Jane's criticism of Haidt's meta-analysis (https://matthewbjane.github.io/blog-posts/blog-post-6.html) Aaron Brown's criticism (https://reason.com/2023/03/29/the-statistically-flawed-evidence-that-social-media-is-causing-the-teen-mental-health-crisis/) Stuart Ritchie's criticism (https://inews.co.uk/news/technology/dont-panic-about-social-media-harming-your-childs-mental-health-the-evidence-is-weak-2230571) Peter Gray's criticism (https://petergray.substack.com/p/45-the-importance-of-critical-analyses) Datasets Unaggregated life satisfaction data for boys/girls ages 11/13/15 across 44 countries (https://data-browser.hbsc.org/measure/life-satisfaction/) Australia hospital admissions due to self harm (https://www.aihw.gov.au/suicide-self-harm-monitoring/data/intentional-self-harm-hospitalisations/intentional-self-harm-hospitalisations-by-age-sex) France hospital admissions due to self harm (https://drees.solidarites-sante.gouv.fr/sites/default/files/2024-05/ER1300EMB.pdf) Canada (https://yourhealthsystem.cihi.ca/hsp/inbrief?lang=en&_gl=1*rtyvsz*_gcl_au*MTA5ODMwMzc5MS4xNzM3NTAyMTk0*_ga*MTM0Njk4MTc4MS4xNzM3NTAyMTk0*_ga_44X3CK377B*MTczNzUwMjE5NC4xLjAuMTczNzUwMjIwNi4wLjAuMA..#!/indicators/083/self-harm-including-suicide/;mapC1;mapLevel2;sex(F);trend(C5001,C300);/) Ontario (https://www.cmaj.ca/content/195/36/E1210) # Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Become a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) No screen time for a month. If you send an email to incrementspodcast@gmail.com, we're taking away your iPad. Image credit: Is social media causing psychological harm to youth and young adults? (https://www.uclahealth.org/news/article/social-media-causing-psychological-harm-youth-and-young).

Should we sacrifice the present for a better future?Join the team at the IAI for three articles about effective altruism, longtermism, and the complex evolution of moral thought. Written by William MacAskill, James W. Lenman, and Ben Chugg, these three articles pick apart the ethical movement started by Peter Singer, analysing its strengths and weaknesses for both individuals and societies.William MacAskill is a Scottish philosopher and author, best known for writing 2022's "What We Owe the Future." James W. Lenman is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield, as well as the former president of the British Society for Ethical Theory. Ben Chugg is a BPhD student in the machine learning department at Carnegie Mellon University. He also co-hosts the Increments podcast.To witness such debates live buy tickets for our upcoming festival: https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/And visit our website for many more articles, videos, and podcasts like this one: https://iai.tv/You can find everything we referenced here: https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Nosipho Radebe speaks to Labour Law Expert, Michael BagraimSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As whores for criticism, we wanted to have Kasra on to discuss his essay The Deutschian Deadend (https://www.bitsofwonder.co/p/the-deutschian-deadend). Kasra claims that Popper and Deutsch are fundamentally wrong in some important ways, and that many of their ideas will forever remain in the "footnotes of the history of philosophy". Does he change our mind or do we change his? Follow Kasra on twitter (https://x.com/kasratweets) and subscribe to his blog, Bits of Wonder (https://www.bitsofwonder.co/p/the-deutschian-deadend). We discuss Has Popper had of a cultural impact? The differences between Popper, Deutsch, and Deutsch's bulldogs. Is observation really theory laden? The hierarchy of reliability: do different disciplines have different methods of criticism? The ladder of abstractions The difference between Popper and Deutsch on truth and abstraction The Deutschian community's reaction to the essay References Bruce Neilson's podcast on verification and falsification: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/episode-61-a-critical-rationalist-defense/id1503194218?i=1000621362624 Popper on certainty: Chapter 22. Analytical Remarks on Certainty in Objective Knowledge Quotes By the nature of Deutsch and Popper's ideas being abstract, this essay will also necessarily be abstract. To combat this, let me ground the whole essay in a concrete empirical bet: Popper's ideas about epistemology, and David Deutsch's extensions of them, will forever remain in the footnotes of the history of philosophy. Popper's falsificationism, which was the main idea that he's widely known for today, will continue to remain the only thing that he's widely known for. The frustrating fact that Wittgenstein is widely regarded as a more influential philosopher than Popper will continue to remain true. Critical rationalism will never be widely recognized as the “one correct epistemology,” as the actual explanation (or even the precursor to an explanation) of knowledge, progress, and creativity. Instead it will be viewed, like many philosophical schools before it, as a useful and ambitious project that ultimately failed. In other words, critical rationalism is a kind of philosophical deadend: the Deutschian deadend. - Kasra in the Deutschian Deadend There are many things you can directly observe, and which are “manifestly true” to you: what you're wearing at the moment, which room of your house you're in, whether the sun has set yet, whether you are running out of breath, whether your parents are alive, whether you feel a piercing pain in your back, whether you feel warmth in your palms—and so on and so forth. These are not perfectly certain absolute truths about reality, and there's always more to know about them—but it is silly to claim that we have absolutely no claim on their truth either. I also think there are even such “obvious truths” in the realm of science—like the claim that the earth is not flat, that your body is made of cells, and that everyday objects follow predictable laws of motion. - Kasra in the Deutschian Deadend Deutsch writes: Some philosophical arguments, including the argument against solipsism, are far more compelling than any scientific argument. Indeed, every scientific argument assumes the falsity not only of solipsism, but also of other philosophical theories including any number of variants of solipsism that might contradict specific parts of the scientific argument. There are two different mistakes happening here. First, what Deutsch is doing is assuming a strict logical dependency between any one piece of our knowledge and every other piece of it. He says that our knowledge of science (say, of astrophysics) implicitly relies on other philosophical arguments about solipsism, epistemology, and metaphysics. But anyone who has thought about the difference between philosophy and science recognizes that in practice they can be studied and argued about independently. We can make progress on our understanding of celestial mechanics without making any crucial assumption about metaphysics. We can make progress studying neurons without solving the hard problem of consciousness or the question of free will. - Kasra in the Deutschian Deadend, quoting Deutsch on Solipsism At that time I learnt from Popper that it was not scientifically disgraceful to have one's hypothesis falsified. That was the best news I had had for a long time. I was persuaded by Popper, in fact, to formulate my electrical hypotheses of excitatory and inhibitory synaptic transmission so precisely and rigorously that they invited falsification - and, in fact, that is what happened to them a few years later, very largely by my colleagues and myself, when in 1951 we started to do intra- cellular recording from motoneurones. Thanks to my tutelage by Popper, I was able to accept joyfully this death of the brain-child which I had nurtured for nearly two decades and was immediately able to contribute as much as I could to the chemical transmission story which was the Dale and Loewi brain-child. - John C. Eccles on Popper, All Life is Problem Solving, p.12 In order to state the problem more clearly, I should like to reformulate it as follows. We may distinguish here between three types of theory. First, logical and mathematical theories. Second, empirical and scientific theories. Third, philosophical or metaphysical theories. -Popper on the "hierarchy of reliability", C&R p.266 Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Become a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) Are you a solipsist? If so, send yourself an email over to incrementspodcast@gmail.com. Special Guest: Kasra.

Immanuel Kant was popular at his death. The whole town emptied out to see him. His last words were "it is good". But was his philosophy any good? In order to find out, we dive into Chapter 7 of Conjectures and Refutations: Kant's Critique and Cosmology, where Popper rescues Kant's reputation from the clutches of the dastardly German Idealists. We discuss Deontology vs consquentialism vs virtue ethics Kant's Categorical Imperative Kant's contributions to cosmology and politics Kant as a defender of the enlightenment Romanticism vs (German) idealism vs critical rationalism Kant's cosmology and cosmogony Kant's antimony and his proofs that the universe is both finite and infinite in time Kant's Copernican revolution and transcendental idealism Kant's morality Why Popper admired Kant so much, and why he compares him to Socrates Quotes Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! "Have courage to use your own understanding!" --that is the motto of enlightenment. - An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? (Translated by Ted Humphrey, Hackett Publishing, 1992) (Alternate translation from Popper: Enlightenment is the emancipation of man from a state of self-imposed tutelage . . . of incapacity to use his own intelligence without external guidance. Such a state of tutelage I call ‘self-imposed' if it is due, not to lack of intelligence, but to lack of courage or determination to use one's own intelligence without the help of a leader. Sapere aude! Dare to use your own intelligence! This is the battle-cry of the Enlightenment.) - C&R, Chap 6 What lesson did Kant draw from these bewildering antinomies? He concluded that our ideas of space and time are inapplicable to the universe as a whole. We can, of course, apply the ideas of space and time to ordinary physical things and physical events. But space and time themselves are neither things nor events: they cannot even be observed: they are more elusive. They are a kind of framework for things and events: something like a system of pigeon-holes, or a filing system, for observations. Space and time are not part of the real empir- ical world of things and events, but rather part of our mental outfit, our apparatus for grasping this world. Their proper use is as instruments of observation: in observing any event we locate it, as a rule, immediately and intuitively in an order of space and time. Thus space and time may be described as a frame of reference which is not based upon experience but intuitively used in experience, and properly applicable to experience. This is why we get into trouble if we misapply the ideas of space and time by using them in a field which transcends all possible experience—as we did in our two proofs about the universe as a whole. ... To the view which I have just outlined Kant chose to give the ugly and doubly misleading name ‘Transcendental Idealism'. He soon regretted this choice, for it made people believe that he was an idealist in the sense of denying the reality of physical things: that he declared physical things to be mere ideas. Kant hastened to explain that he had only denied that space and time are empirical and real — empirical and real in the sense in which physical things and events are empirical and real. But in vain did he protest. His difficult style sealed his fate: he was to be revered as the father of German Idealism. I suggest that it is time to put this right. - C&R, Chap 6 Kant believed in the Enlightenment. He was its last great defender. I realize that this is not the usual view. While I see Kant as the defender of the Enlightenment, he is more often taken as the founder of the school which destroyed it—of the Romantic School of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. I contend that these two interpretations are incompatible. Fichte, and later Hegel, tried to appropriate Kant as the founder of their school. But Kant lived long enough to reject the persistent advances of Fichte, who proclaimed himself Kant's successor and heir. In A Public Declaration Concerning Fichte, which is too little known, Kant wrote: ‘May God protect us from our friends. . . . For there are fraudulent and perfidious so-called friends who are scheming for our ruin while speaking the language of good-will.' - C&R, Chap 6 As Kant puts it, Copernicus, finding that no progress was being made with the theory of the revolving heavens, broke the deadlock by turning the tables, as it were: he assumed that it is not the heavens which revolve while we the observers stand still, but that we the observers revolve while the heavens stand still. In a similar way, Kant says, the problem of scientific knowledge is to be solved — the problem how an exact science, such as Newtonian theory, is possible, and how it could ever have been found. We must give up the view that we are passive observers, waiting for nature to impress its regularity upon us. Instead we must adopt the view that in digesting our sense-data we actively impress the order and the laws of our intellect upon them. Our cosmos bears the imprint of our minds. - C&R, Chap 6 From Kant the cosmologist, the philosopher of knowledge and of science, I now turn to Kant the moralist. I do not know whether it has been noticed before that the fundamental idea of Kant's ethics amounts to another Copernican Revolution, analogous in every respect to the one I have described. For Kant makes man the lawgiver of morality just as he makes him the lawgiver of nature. And in doing so he gives back to man his central place both in his moral and in his physical universe. Kant humanized ethics, as he had humanized science. ... Kant's Copernican Revolution in the field of ethics is contained in his doctrine of autonomy—the doctrine that we cannot accept the command of an authority, however exalted, as the ultimate basis of ethics. For whenever we are faced with a command by an authority, it is our responsibility to judge whether this command is moral or immoral. The authority may have power to enforce its commands, and we may be powerless to resist. But unless we are physically prevented from choosing the responsibility remains ours. It is our decision whether to obey a command, whether to accept authority. - C&R, Chap 6 Stepping back further to get a still more distant view of Kant's historical role, we may compare him with Socrates. Both were accused of perverting the state religion, and of corrupting the minds of the young. Both denied the charge; and both stood up for freedom of thought. Freedom meant more to them than absence of constraint; it was for both a way of life. ... To this Socratic idea of self-sufficiency, which forms part of our western heritage, Kant has given a new meaning in the fields of both knowledge and morals. And he has added to it further the idea of a community of free men—of all men. For he has shown that every man is free; not because he is born free, but because he is born with the burden of responsibility for free decision. - C&R, Chap 6 Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Become a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) Follow the Kantian Imperative: Stop masturbating and/or/while getting your hair cut, and start sending emails over to incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

Check out this episode wherever you like to listen or watch podcasts! Episode Page: https://vinneychopra.com/podcast/ Youtube: https://youtu.be/CQ5qX-vPr6c Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3HdGZFf iTunes: https://apple.co/3H9XKBo ——

Hope everyone is having a great holiday! Today we're releasing a short lil' bonus episode from the patreon archives before we get back into the serious and professional business of podcasting in the new year. A few months ago, Vaden appeared on the forthcoming Treacherous Jezebels podcast, to discuss the life of Unity Valkyrie Freeman-Mitford, the most treacherous of jezebels. Her biography is... shall we say... quite something. Even Hitler had to get his rocks off every once and a while. (Links to Treacherous Jezebels podcast will be added when their website is up!) We discuss Who are the Mitford Sisters, and why are they so friggen fascinating The squalid life of Unity Mitford in particular References Unity Mitford's Wikipedia Page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_Mitford) Jessica Mitford's autobigraphy Hons and Rebels (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hons_and_Rebels) Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Become a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) So did she bang Hitler... or didn't she? Email us the raw facts at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

Where do you arrive if you follow Vaden's obsessions to their terminus? You arrive at Brian Boyd, the world expert on the two titanic thinkers of the 20th century: Karl Popper and Vladimir Nabokov. Boyd wrote his PhD thesis on Nabokov's 1969 novel Ada, impressing Nabokov's wife Vera so much that he was invited to catalogue Nabokov's unpublished archives. This led to Boyd's two-volume biography of Nabokov, which Vera kept on her beside table. Boyd also developed an interest in Popper, and began research for his biography in 1996, which was then promptly delayed as he worked on his book, On The Origin of Stories, which we [dedicated episode #50]((https://www.incrementspodcast.com/50) to. In this episode, we ask Professor Boyd to contrast and compare his two subjects, by addressing the question: What could Karl Popper have learned from Vladimir Nabokov? We discuss How Brian discovered Nabokov Did Nabokov have a philosophy? Nabokov's life as a scientist Was Nabokov simply a writer of puzzles? How much should author intentions matter when interpreting literature? References Boyd's book on the evolutionary origins of art and literature: On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction (https://www.amazon.com/Origin-Stories-Evolution-Cognition-Fiction/dp/0674057112) Our episode on the above (https://www.incrementspodcast.com/50) Stalking Nabokov (https://www.amazon.com/Stalking-Nabokov-Brian-Boyd/dp/0231158564), by Boyd. Boyd's book on Pale Fire: Nabokov's Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic Discovery (https://www.amazon.com/Nabokovs-Pale-Fire-Artistic-Discovery/dp/0691089574) AdaOnline (https://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/), annotated notes on Ada by Boyd. Art historian and one of Popper's close friends, Ernst Gombrich (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Gombrich) # Errata The Burghers of Calais is by Balzac rather than Rodin The Nabokov family fled Leningrad rather than Petrograd (as Petersburg had become during WWI). Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Become a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) Do you love words, or ideas? Email us one but not the other at incrementspodcast@gmail.com. Special Guest: Brian Boyd.

It's the year-end - a time where many are expecting to find out their increments and bonuses. A recent survey found that employers in Singapore's energy and utilities sector are expected to offer the highest bonuses heading into 2025. Meanwhile, companies in the transport, logistics and automotive sector are set to lead in salary increments, with 91 per cent of surveyed employers intending to raise salaries by 3 per cent or more. On this episode of Morning Shot, Song Seng Wun, Singapore Economic Advisor at CGS International shares his insights on the economic outlook and how that might affect the various sectors in the coming year.  Presented by: Audrey SiekProduced & Edited by: Yeo Kai Ting (ykaiting@sph.com.sg)Photo credits: ST / Kua Chee SiongSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Back on Liron's Doom Debates podcast! Will we actually get around to the subject of superintelligent AI this time? Is it time to worry about the end of the world? Will Ben and Vaden emotionally recover from the devastating youtube comments from the last episode? Follow Liron on twitter (@liron) and check out the Doom Debates youtube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@DoomDebates) and podcast (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/doom-debates/id1751366208). We discuss Definitions of "new knowledge" The reliance of deep learning on induction Can AIs be creative? The limits of statistical prediction Predictions of what deep learning cannot accomplish Can ChatGPT write funny jokes? Trends versus principles The psychological consequences of doomerism Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani, @liron Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link The world is going to end soon, might as well get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) Was Vaden's two week anti-debate bro reeducation camp successful? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com Special Guest: Liron Shapira.

Liron Shapira, host of [Doom Debates], invited us on to discuss Popperian versus Bayesian epistemology and whether we're worried about AI doom. As one might expect knowing us, we only got about halfway through the first subject, so get yourselves ready (presumably with many drinks) for part II in a few weeks! The era of Ben and Vaden's rowdy youtube debates has begun. Vaden is jubilant, Ben is uncomfortable, and the world has never been more annoyed by Popperians. Follow Liron on twitter (@liron) and check out the Doom Debates youtube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@DoomDebates) and podcast (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/doom-debates/id1751366208). We discuss Whether we're concerned about AI doom Bayesian reasoning versus Popperian reasoning Whether it makes sense to put numbers on all your beliefs Solomonoff induction Objective vs subjective Bayesianism Prediction markets and superforecasting References Vaden's blog post on Cox's Theorem and Yudkowsky's claims of "Laws of Rationality": https://vmasrani.github.io/blog/2021/thecredenceassumption/ Disproof of probabilistic induction (including Solomonov Induction): https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.00749 EA Post Vaden Mentioned regarding predictions being uncalibrated more than 1yr out: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/hqkyaHLQhzuREcXSX/data-on-forecasting-accuracy-across-different-time-horizons#Calibrations Article by Gavin Leech and Misha Yagudin on the reliability of forecasters: https://ifp.org/can-policymakers-trust-forecasters/ Superforecaster p(doom) is ~1%: https://80000hours.org/2024/09/why-experts-and-forecasters-disagree-about-ai-risk/#:~:text=Domain%20experts%20in%20AI%20estimated,by%202100%20(around%2090%25). The existential risk persuasion tournament https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-extinction-tournament Some more info in Ben's article on superforecasting: https://benchugg.com/writing/superforecasting/ Slides on Content vs Probability: https://vmasrani.github.io/assets/pdf/popper_good.pdf Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani, @liron Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Trust in the reverend Bayes and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) What's your credence that the second debate is as fun as the first? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com Special Guest: Liron Shapira.

When Very Bad Wizards meets Very Culty Popperians. We finally decided to have a real life professional philosopher on the pod to call us out on our nonsense, and are honored to have on Tamler Sommers, from the esteemed Very Bad Wizards podcast, to argue with us about the Problem of Induction. Did Popper solve it, or does his proposed solution, like all the other attempts, "fail decisively"? (Warning: One of the two hosts maaay have revealed their Popperian dogmatism a bit throughout this episode. Whichever host that is - they shall remain unnamed - apologizes quietly and stubbornly under their breath.) Check out Tamler's website (https://www.tamlersommers.com/), his podcast (Very Bad Wizards (https://verybadwizards.com/)), or follow him on twitter (@tamler). We discuss What is the problem of induction? Whether regularities really exist in nature The difference between certainty and justification Popper's solution to the problem of induction If whiskey will taste like orange juice next week What makes a good theory? Why prediction is secondary to explanation for Popper If science and meditiation are in conflict The boundaries of science References Very Bad Wizards episode on induction (https://verybadwizards.com/episode/episode-294-the-scandal-of-philosophy-humes-problem-of-induction) The problem of induction, by Wesley Salmon (https://home.csulb.edu/~cwallis/100/articles/salmon.html) Hume on induction (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/induction-problem/#HumeProb) Errata Vaden mentions in the episode how "Einstein's theory is better because it can explain earth's gravitational constant". He got some of the details wrong here - it's actually the inverse square law, not the gravitational constant. Listen to Edward Witten explain it much better here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_9RqsHYEAs). Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani, @tamler Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Trust in our regularity and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) If you are a Very Bad Wizards listener, hello! We're exactly like Tamler and David, except younger. Come join the Cult of Popper over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com Image credit: From this Aeon essay on Hume (https://aeon.co/essays/hume-is-the-amiable-modest-generous-philosopher-we-need-today). Illustration by Petra Eriksson at Handsome Frank. Special Guest: Tamler Sommers.

The National Wages Council has recommended a 5.5 per cent to 7.5 per cent increase in gross monthly wages for lower-wage workers, or a pay bump of at least S$100 to S$120, whichever is higher. Taking into account the sustained productivity growth over the long term, as well as the improved economic outlook and expected moderation in inflation in 2024, the Council says that employers should reward employees with fair and sustainable wage increases. Additionally, the council recommended that businesses that have not done well should increase wages at the lower bound of the range. And if business prospects subsequently improve, employers should consider further wage increases. On this episode of Morning Shot, Sumit Agarwal, Professor of Finance, Economics and Real Estate, NUS Business School shares his insights. Presented by: Audrey SiekProduced & Edited by: Yeo Kai Ting (ykaiting@sph.com.sg)Photo credits: Chua Kee Siong / STSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What do you do when one of your intellectual idols comes on the podcast? Bombard them disagreements of course. We were thrilled to have David Deutsch on the podcast to discuss whether the concept of belief is a useful lens on human cognition, when probability and statistics should be deployed, and whether he disagrees with Karl Popper on abstractions, the truth, and nothing but the truth. Follow David on Twitter (@DavidDeutschOxf) or find his website here (https://www.daviddeutsch.org.uk/). We discuss Whether belief is a fruitful lens through which to analyze ideas Whether a non-quantitative form of belief can be defended How does belief bottom out epistemologically? Whether statistics and probability are useful Where should statistics and probability be used in practice? The Popper-Miller theorem Statements vs propositions and their relevance for truth Whether Popper and Deutsch disagree about truth References The Popper-Miller theorem. See the original paper (https://www.nature.com/articles/302687a0) David's 2021 talk on the correspondence theory of truth (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ-opI-jghs) David's talk on physics without probability (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfzSE4Hoxbc). Hempel's paradox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven_paradox) The Beginning of Infinity (https://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Infinity-Explanations-Transform-World/dp/0143121359) Knowledge and the Body-Mind Problem (https://www.amazon.ca/Knowledge-Body-Mind-Problem-Defence-Interaction/dp/0415135567) Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani, @DavidDeutschOxf Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Believe in us and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) What's the truth about your belief on the probability of useful statistics? Tell us over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com. Special Guest: David Deutsch.

Want to make everyone under 30 extremely angry? Tell them you don't like proportional representation. Tell them proportional representation sucks, just like recycling (https://www.incrementspodcast.com/63). In this episode, we continue to improve your popularity at parties by diving into Sir Karl's theory of democracy, and his arguments for why the first-past-the-post electoral system is superior to proportional representation systems. And if you find anyone left at the party who still wants to talk to you, we also cover Chapter 13 of Beginning of Infinity, where Deutsch builds upon Popper's theory. And always remember, First-Past-The-Post: It's good enough for the horses, so it's good enough for us. We discuss Why democracy should be about the removal of bad leaders How Popper's conception of democracy differs from the usual conception Why Popper supports first-past-the-post (FPP) over proportional representation (PR) How PR encourages backroom dealing and magnifies the influence of unpopular leaders The sensitivity of FPP to changes to popular will How FPP makes it easier to obtain majorities How majorities make it easier to trace the consequences of policies Deutsch and his criticism of compromise-policies. References Popper on democracy (https://www.economist.com/democracy-in-america/2016/01/31/from-the-archives-the-open-society-and-its-enemies-revisited) (economist piece). Vaden's blog post (https://vmasrani.github.io/blog/2018/prop_rep/) Chapter 13: Choices of The Beginning of Infinity (https://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Infinity-Explanations-Transform-World/dp/0143121359) Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Help us form a majority and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) What's the first post you past? Tell us over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

Part two on Chapter 19 of Conjectures and Refutations! Last time we got a little hung up arguing about human behavior and motivations. Putting that disagreement aside, like mature adults, we move on to the rest of the chapter and Popper's remaining theses. In particular, we focus on Popper's criticism of the idea of a nation's right to self-determination. Things were going smoothly ... until roughly five minutes in, when we start disagreeing about what the "nation" in "nation state" actually means. (Note: Early listeners of this episode have commented that this one is a bit hard to follow - highly suggest reading the text to compensate for our many confusing digressions. Our bad, our bad). We discuss Are there any benefits of being bilingual? Popper's attack on the idea of national self-determination Popper's second thesis: that out own free world is by far the best society thus far Reductions in poverty, unemployment, sickness, pain, cruelty, slavery, discrimination, class differences Popper's third thesis: The relation of progress to war Whether Popper was factually correct about his claim that democracies do not wage wars of aggression Self-accusation: A unique feature to Western societies Popper's fourth thesis about the power of ideas And his fifth thesis that truth is hard to come by References Conjectures and Refutations (https://www.routledge.com/Conjectures-and-Refutations-The-Growth-of-Scientific-Knowledge/Popper/p/book/9780415285940?srsltid=AfmBOorkyc4_sllmg2YLqfQ3jYz1HpLtAEUJODspqZ-3adzKrPaQlj9D) Definition of self-determination from Cornell Law School (https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/self_determination_(international_law)) The UN Charter (https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/full-text) Wilson's 14 Points (https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-woodrow-wilsons-14-points) Quotes The absurdity of the communist faith is manifest. Appealing to the belief in human freedom, it has produced a system of oppression without parallel in history. But the nationalist faith is equally absurd. I am not alluding here to Hitler's racial myth. What I have in mind is, rather, an alleged natural right of man— the alleged right of a nation to self-determination. That even a great humanitarian and liberal like Masaryk could uphold this absurd- ity as one of the natural rights of man is a sobering thought. It suffices to shake one's faith in the wisdom of philosopher kings, and it should be contemplated by all who think that we are clever but wicked rather than good but stupid. For the utter absurdity of the principle of national self-determination must be plain to anybody who devotes a moment's effort to criticizing it. The principle amounts to the demand that each state should be a nation-state: that it should be confined within a natural border, and that this border should coincide with the location of an ethnic group; so that it should be the ethnic group, the ‘nation', which should determine and protect the natural limits of the state. But nation-states of this kind do not exist. Even Iceland—the only exception I can think of—is only an apparent exception to this rule. For its limits are determined, not by its ethnic group, but by the North Atlantic—just as they are protected, not by the Icelandic nation, but by the North Atlantic Treaty. Nation-states do not exist, simply because the so-called ‘nations' or ‘peoples' of which the nationalists dream do not exist. There are no, or hardly any, homogenous ethnic groups long settled in countries with natural borders. Ethnic and linguistic groups (dialects often amount to linguistic barriers) are closely intermingled everywhere. Masaryk's Czechoslovakia was founded upon the principle of national self-determination. But as soon as it was founded, the Slovaks demanded, in the name of this principle, to be free from Czech domination; and ultimately it was destroyed by its German minority, in the name of the same principle. Similar situations have arisen in practically every case in which the principle of national self- determination has been applied to fixing the borders of a new state: in Ireland, in India, in Israel, in Yugoslavia. There are ethnic minorities everywhere. The proper aim cannot be to ‘liberate' all of them; rather, it must be to protect all of them. The oppression of national groups is a great evil; but national self-determination is not a feasible remedy. Moreover, Britain, the United States, Canada, and Switzerland, are four obvious examples of states which in many ways violate the nationality principle. Instead of having its borders determined by one settled group, each of them has man- aged to unite a variety of ethnic groups. So the problem does not seem insoluble. C&R, Chapter 19 How anybody who had the slightest knowledge of European history, of the shifting and mixing of all kinds of tribes, of the countless waves of peoples who had come forth from their original Asian habitat and split up and mingled when reaching the maze of peninsulas called the European continent, how anybody who knew this could ever have put forward such an inapplicable principle, is hard to understand. Open Society, Page 355 The nationalist religion is strong. Many are ready to die for it, fer- vently believing that it is morally good, and factually true. But they are mistaken; just as mistaken as their communist bedfellows. Few creeds have created more hatred, cruelty, and senseless suffering than the belief in the righteousness of the nationality principle; and yet it is still widely believed that this principle will help to alleviate the misery of national oppression. My optimism is a little shaken, I admit, when I look at the near-unanimity with which this principle is still accepted, even today, without any hesitation, without any doubt—even by those whose political interests are clearly opposed to it. C&R, Chapter 19 In spite of our great and serious troubles, and in spite of the fact that ours is surely not the best possible society, I assert that our own free world is by far the best society which has come into existence during the course of human history. C&R, Chapter 19 But before examining these facts more closely, I wish to stress that I am very much alive to other facts also. Power still corrupts, even in our world. Civil servants still behave at times like uncivil masters. Pocket dictators still abound; and a normally intelligent man seeking medical advice must be prepared to be treated as a rather tiresome type of imbecile, if he betrays an intelligent interest—that is, a critical interest—in his physical condition. C&R, Chapter 19 I have in mind the standards and values which have come down to us through Christianity from Greece and from the Holy Land; from Socrates, and from the Old and New Testaments. C&R, Chapter 19 My third thesis is that since the time of the Boer War, none of the democratic governments of the free world has been in a position to wage a war of aggression. No democratic government would be united upon the issue, because they would not have the nation united behind them. Aggressive war has become almost a moral impossibility. C&R, Chapter 19 I believe that it is most important to say what the free world has achieved. For we have become unduly sceptical about ourselves. We are suspicious of anything like self-righteousness, and we find self-praise unpalatable. One of the great things we have learned is not only to be tolerant of others, but to ask ourselves seriously whether the other fellow is not perhaps in the right, and altogether the better man. We have learned the fundamental moral truth that nobody should be judge in his own cause. This, no doubt, is a symptom of a certain moral maturity; yet one may learn a lesson too well. Having discovered the sin of self-righteousness, we have fallen into its stereotyped inversion: into a stereotyped pose of self-depreciation, of inverted smugness. Having learned that one should not be judge in one's own cause, we are tempted to become advocates for our opponents. Thus we become blind to our own achievements. But this tendency must be resisted. C&R, Chapter 19 Thus we learnt not only to tolerate beliefs that differ from ours, but to respect them and the men who sincerely held them. But this means that we slowly began to differentiate between sincerity and dogmatic stub- bornness or laziness, and to recognize the great truth that truth is not manifest, not plainly visible to all who ardently want to see it, but hard to come by. And we learnt that we must not draw authoritarian conclu- sions from this great truth but, on the contrary, suspect all those who claim that they are authorized to teach the truth. C&R, Chapter 19 # Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Help us revoke the UN charter and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) Form a nation and liberate yo' selves over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

Flute 360 | Episode 296: “1% Better Every Day - The Power of Tiny Habits for Breaking Barriers” Welcome to Episode 296 of Flute 360! In this episode, Dr. Heidi Kay Begay dives into the power of small, consistent habits to help you break barriers and achieve your goals as a modern flutist. Whether you're struggling to find your artistic voice, gain admission to a prestigious music school, or make music your livelihood, this episode inspires and guides you toward success. Dr. Begay shares personal insights and practical tips to help you improve by just 1% each day, transforming your flute practice, business, and personal life with intention and focus. Main Points: One Percent Better: Learn how minor, incremental daily improvements can lead to significant progress over time, especially in your flute practice and career. Breaking Barriers: Challenge yourself to push past complacency and reach new levels of success by evaluating and adjusting your daily habits. Creative Problem-Solving: Explore how to use your time, energy, and resources creatively to chisel away at obstacles to your goals. The Ripple Effect: Understand how small decisions, like skipping that afternoon coffee, can significantly impact your overall well-being and productivity. Facing Rejection: Embrace rejection as an opportunity to grow and practice hearing "no" to build resilience in your flute business and auditions. Reframe Your Day: Shift your mindset to see each day as a new opportunity to grow instead of just another routine day. Call to Action: Feeling ready to break through your barriers? Here's how you can take action today: Join the Flute 360 Studio: Get personalized coaching that meets you where you are. Only 4 private spots are left, and the deadline is September 1st! Visit heidikaybegay.com to secure your spot. Email Dr. Heidi Kay Begay at heidikaybegay@gmail.com with any questions or to get started. Special Offer: Don't miss out on our August 2024 special—a free Flute 360 Accelerator program trial. This is your chance to dive into over 25 videos, learn from incredible guests, and get the support you need. Sign Up Today: The free trial ends on September 1st. Start making your flute dreams a reality now! Fall 2024 guests include: Dr. Katherine Emeneth, Jolene Madewell, Dr. Dennette Derby McDermott, Daniel Velasco & Cory Barger! Follow Heidi: Follow Flute 360 via TikTok! Follow Flute 360 via Instagram! Follow Flute 360 via Twitter! Follow Flute 360 via LinkedIn! Follow Flute 360 via Facebook! Subscribe to the Flute 360's YouTube Channel! Join the Flute 360 Newsletter! Join the Flute 360 Family's Facebook Private Group! Join the Flute 360's Accelerator Program Here! TIER 1 for $37 TIER 2 for $67 TIER 3 for $97

Back to the Conjectures and Refutations series, after a long hiatus! Given all that's happening in the world and the associated rampant pessimism, we thought it would be appropriate to tackle Chapter 19 - A History of Our Time: An Optimist's View. We get through a solid fifth of the chapter, at which point Ben and Vaden start arguing about whether people are fundamentally good, fundamentally bad, or fundamentally driven by signalling and incentives. And we finally answer the all-important question on everyone's mind: Does Adolf Eichmann support defunding the police? Banal Lives Matter. We discuss Thoughts on the recent Trump assasination attempt How can Popper be an optimist with prophesying about the future? The scarcity value of optimism Russell's view that our intellectual development has outrun our moral development Relationship of this view to the orthogonality thesis Popper's competing view that our troubles arise because we are good but stupid How much can incentives compel us to do bad things? How easy it for humans to really be led by the nose Ben's experience during the summer of 2020 References Conjectures and Refutations () Orthogonality thesis (https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/orthogonality-thesis) Eichmann in Jerusalem (https://www.amazon.com/Eichmann-Jerusalem-Banality-Penguin-Classics/dp/0143039881) by Hannah Arendth Adam Smith's thought experiment about losing a pinky (https://www.adamsmithworks.org/speakings/moral-sentiments-active-and-passive) Radiolab episode, "The Bad Show" (https://radiolab.org/podcast/180092-the-bad-show) Quotes Now I come to the word ‘Optimist'. First let me make it quite clear that if I call myself an optimist, I do not wish to suggest that I know anything about the future. I do not wish to pose as a prophet, least of all as a historical prophet. On the contrary, I have for many years tried to defend the view that historical prophecy is a kind of quackery. I do not believe in historical laws, and I disbelieve especially in anything like a law of progress. In fact, I believe that it is much easier for us to regress than to progress. Though I believe all this, I think that I may fairly describe myself as an optimist. For my optimism lies entirely in my interpretation of the present and the immediate past. It lies in my strongly appreciative view of our own time. And whatever you might think about this optimism you will have to admit that it has a scarcity value. In fact the wailings of the pessimists have become somewhat monotonous. No doubt there is much in our world about which we can rightly complain if only we give our mind to it; and no doubt it is sometimes most important to find out what is wrong with us. But I think that the other side of the story might also get a hearing. And whatever you might think about this optimism you will have to admit that it has a scarcity value. In fact the wailings of the pessimists have become somewhat monotonous. No doubt there is much in our world about which we can rightly complain if only we give our mind to it; and no doubt it is sometimes most important to find out what is wrong with us. But I think that the other side of the story might also get a hearing. We have become very clever, according to Russell, indeed too clever. We can make lots of wonderful gadgets, including television, high-speed rockets, and an atom bomb, or a thermonuclear bomb, if you prefer. But we have not been able to achieve that moral and political growth and maturity which alone could safely direct and control the uses to which we put our tremendous intellectual powers. This is why we now find ourselves in mortal danger. Our evil national pride has prevented us from achieving the world-state in time.To put this view in a nutshell: we are clever, perhaps too clever, but we are also wicked; and this mixture of cleverness and wickedness lies at the root of our troubles. My first thesis is this. We are good, perhaps a little too good, but we are also a little stupid; and it is this mixture of goodness and stupidity which lies at the root of our troubles. The main troubles of our time—and I do not deny that we live in troubled times—are not due to our moral wickedness, but, on the contrary, to our often misguided moral enthusiasm: to our anxiety to better the world we live in. Our wars are fundamentally religious wars; they are wars between competing theories of how to establish a better world. And our moral enthusiasm is often misguided, because we fail to realize that our moral principles, which are sure to be over-simple, are often difficult to apply to the complex human and political situations to which we feel bound to apply them. (All Popper) “The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.” - EO Wilson Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Help us calibrate our credences and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) What do Benny Chugg and Adolf Eichmann have in common? I mean, what don't they have in common? Tell us over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

Sick of hearing us shouting about Bayesianism? Well today you're in luck, because this time, someone shouts at us about Bayesianism! Richard Meadows, finance journalist, author, and Ben's secretive podcast paramour, takes us to task. Are we being unfair to the Bayesians? Is Bayesian rationality optimal in theory, and the rest of us are just coping with an uncertain world? Is this why the Bayesian rationalists have so much cultural influence (and money, and fame, and media attention, and ...), and we, ahem, uhhh, don't? Check out Rich's website (https://thedeepdish.org/start), his book Optionality: How to Survive and Thrive in a Volatile World (https://www.amazon.ca/Optionality-Survive-Thrive-Volatile-World/dp/0473545500), and his podcast (https://doyouevenlit.podbean.com/). We discuss The pros of the rationality and EA communities Whether Bayesian epistemology contributes to open-mindedness The fact that evidence doesn't speak for itself The fact that the world doesn't come bundled as discrete chunks of evidence Whether Bayesian epistemology would be "optimal" for Laplace's demon The difference between truth and certainty Vaden's tone issues and why he gets animated about this subject. References Scott's original piece: In continued defense of non-frequentist probabilities (https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/in-continued-defense-of-non-frequentist) Scott Alexander's post about rootclaim (https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/practically-a-book-review-rootclaim/comments) Our previous episode on Scott's piece: #69 - Contra Scott Alexander on Probability (https://www.incrementspodcast.com/69) Rootclaim (https://www.rootclaim.com/) Ben's blogpost You need a theory for that theory (https://benchugg.com/writing/you-need-a-theory/) Cox's theorem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cox%27s_theorem) Aumann's agreement theorem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aumann%27s_agreement_theorem) Vaden's blogposts mentioned in the episode: Critical Rationalism and Bayesian Epistemology (https://vmasrani.github.io/blog/2020/vaden_second_response/) Proving Too Much (https://vmasrani.github.io/blog/2021/proving_too_much/) Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Follow Rich at @MeadowsRichard Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Help us calibrate our credences and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) What's your favorite theory that is neither true nor useful? Tell us over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com. Special Guest: Richard Meadows.

After four episodes spent fawning over Scott Alexander's "Non-libertarian FAQ", we turn around and attack the good man instead. In this episode we respond to Scott's piece "In Continued Defense of Non-Frequentist Probabilities", and respond to each of his five arguments defending Bayesian probability. Like moths to a flame, we apparently cannot let the probability subject slide, sorry people. But the good news is that before getting there, you get to here about some therapists and pedophiles (therapeutic pedophelia?). What's the probability that Scott changes his mind based on this episode? We discuss Why we're not defending frequentism as a philosophy The Bayesian interpretation of probability The importance of being explicit about assumptions Why it's insane to think that 50% should mean both "equally likely" and "I have no effing idea". Why Scott's interpretation of probability is crippling our ability to communicate How super are Superforecasters? Marginal versus conditional guarantees (this is exactly as boring as it sounds) How to pronounce Samotsvety and are they Italian or Eastern European or what? References In Continued Defense Of Non-Frequentist Probabilities (https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/in-continued-defense-of-non-frequentist) Article on superforecasting by Gavin Leech and Misha Yugadin (https://progress.institute/can-policymakers-trust-forecasters/) Essay by Michael Story on superforecasting (https://www.samstack.io/p/five-questions-for-michael-story) Existential risk tournament: Superforecasters vs AI doomers (https://forecastingresearch.org/news/results-from-the-2022-existential-risk-persuasion-tournament) and Ben's blogpost about it (https://benchugg.com/writing/superforecasting/) The Good Judgment Project (https://goodjudgment.com/) Quotes During the pandemic, Dominic Cummings said some of the most useful stuff that he received and circulated in the British government was not forecasting. It was qualitative information explaining the general model of what's going on, which enabled decision-makers to think more clearly about their options for action and the likely consequences. If you're worried about a new disease outbreak, you don't just want a percentage probability estimate about future case numbers, you want an explanation of how the virus is likely to spread, what you can do about it, how you can prevent it. - Michael Story (https://www.samstack.io/p/five-questions-for-michael-story) Is it bad that one term can mean both perfect information (as in 1) and total lack of information (as in 3)? No. This is no different from how we discuss things when we're not using probability. Do vaccines cause autism? No. Does drinking monkey blood cause autism? Also no. My evidence on the vaccines question is dozens of excellent studies, conducted so effectively that we're as sure about this as we are about anything in biology. My evidence on the monkey blood question is that nobody's ever proposed this and it would be weird if it were true. Still, it's perfectly fine to say the single-word answer “no” to both of them to describe where I currently stand. If someone wants to know how much evidence/certainty is behind my “no”, they can ask, and I'll tell them. - SA, Section 2 Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Help us calibrate our credences and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) What's your credence in Bayesianism? Tell us over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

The final part in a series which has polarized the nation. We tackle -- alongside Bruce Nielson as always -- the remaining part of Scott's FAQ: Political Issues. Can the government get anything right? Has Scott strawmanned the libertarian argument in this section? Is libertarianism an economic theory, a political theory, a metaphysical theory, or a branch of physics? And what do Milton and Ludwig have to say about all this? Warning: we get a little meta with this one... We discuss Is the government effective at doing anything? What's the use of thinking counterfactually? Is it just market failures all the way down? Three kinds of anarcho-capitalists The economic calculation problem Is an economic theory necessarily political? What to make of the claim that austrian economics is like physics But wait, isn't it also metaphysics? References Scott's FAQ (https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-libertarian-faq/) Napolean science funding: Canned food (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canning#French_origins) More readings (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/napoleons-lifelong-interest-science-180964485/) Bruce's Theory of Anything Pod (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-theory-of-anything/id1503194218) and on twitter at @bnielson01 Vaden's blog posts on Libertarianism: First: Is Austrian Economics the Best Explanation of Economics? (https://vmasrani.github.io/blog/2023/aecr-challenge/) Second: Can we predict human behaviour? A discussion with Brett Hall (https://vmasrani.github.io/blog/2023/predicting-human-behaviour/) Quotes The Argument: Government can't do anything right. Its forays into every field are tinged in failure. Whether it's trying to create contradictory “state owned businesses”, funding pet projects that end up over budget and useless, or creating burdensome and ridiculous “consumer protection” rules, its heavy-handed actions are always detrimental and usually embarrassing. ... The Counterargument: Government sometimes, though by no means always, does things right, and some of its institutions and programs are justifiably considered models of efficiency and human ingenuity. There are various reasons why people are less likely to notice these. - Scott's FAQ 7.1.1: Okay, fine. But that's a special case where, given an infinite budget, they were able to accomplish something that private industry had no incentive to try. And to their credit, they did pull it off, but do you have any examples of government succeeding at anything more practical? Eradicating smallpox and polio globally, and cholera and malaria from their endemic areas in the US. Inventing the computer, mouse, digital camera, and email. Building the information superhighway and the regular superhighway. Delivering clean, practically-free water and cheap on-the-grid electricity across an entire continent. Forcing integration and leading the struggle for civil rights. Setting up the Global Positioning System. Ensuring accurate disaster forecasts for hurricanes, volcanoes, and tidal waves. Zero life-savings-destroying bank runs in eighty years. Inventing nuclear power and the game theory necessary to avoid destroying the world with it. Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Help us think counterfactually and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) How much would you like to pay for a fresh gulp of air? Tell us over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com. Special Guest: Bruce Nielson.

Have you ever wanted to be more rich? Have you considered just working a bit harder? Welcome to part III of our libertarian series, where we discuss Part B: Social Issues of Scott Alexander's Anti-Libertarian FAQ, which critiques the libertarian view that if you're rich, you deserve it, and if you're poor, well, you deserve that too. As always, the estimable Bruce Nielson (@bnielson) helps guide is through the thorny wicket of libertarian thought. We discuss Do the poor deserve to be poor? Waddabout the rich? Is dogmatism ever a good thing? Is social mobility determined in part by parental wealth? Is this due to genetics, culture, upbringing or something else? The chances of escaping the lower class Does government regulation increase social mobility? Why progressive taxation makes sense References David Friedman's response (http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Miscellaneous/My%20Response%20to%20a%20Non-Libertarian%20faq.html) Bruce's Theory Of Anything podcast (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-theory-of-anything/id1503194218) Popperian/Deutschian FB group: Many Worlds of David Deutsch (https://www.facebook.com/groups/2188597894605769/) On dogmatism: Bruce's episode: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/episodes/Episode-51-Was-Karl-Popper-Dogmatic-e1obs0m/a-a2hb64g Ben's blog post: https://benchugg.com/writing/dogmatism/ Vaden's blog posts on Libertarianism: First: Is Austrian Economics the Best Explanation of Economics? (https://vmasrani.github.io/blog/2023/aecr-challenge/) Second: Can we predict human behaviour? A discussion with Brett Hall (https://vmasrani.github.io/blog/2023/predicting-human-behaviour/) Quotes The Argument: Those who work hardest (and smartest) should get the most money. Not only should we not begrudge them that money, but we should thank them for the good they must have done for the world in order to satisfy so many consumers. People who do not work hard should not get as much money. If they want more money, they should work harder. Getting more money without working harder or smarter is unfair, and indicative of a false sense of entitlement. Unfortunately, modern liberal society has internalized the opposite principle: that those who work hardest are greedy people who must have stolen from those who work less hard, and that we should distrust them at until they give most of their ill-gotten gains away to others. The “progressive” taxation system as it currently exists serves this purpose. This way of thinking is not only morally wrong-headed, but economically catastrophic. Leaving wealth in the hands of the rich would “make the pie bigger”, allowing the extra wealth to “trickle down” to the poor naturally. The Counterargument: Hard work and intelligence are contributory factors to success, but depending on the way you phrase the question, you find you need other factors to explain between one-half and nine-tenths of the difference in success within the United States; within the world at large the numbers are much higher. If a poor person can't keep a job solely because she was lead-poisoned from birth until age 16, is it still fair to blame her for her failure? And is it still so unthinkable to take a little bit of money from everyone who was lucky enough to grow up in an area without lead poisoning, and use it to help her and detoxify her neighborhood? Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Help us maintain poverty traps and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) Do your part to increase social mobility by sending your hard-earned money to: incrementspodcast@gmail.com Special Guest: Bruce Nielson.

What do you get when you mix nerds and sex research? A deep dive into the world of fetish statistics, men's calibration about women's sexual preferences, and the crazy underground world of financial domination. Stay tuned as Aella walks the boys through the world of gangbangs, camming, OnlyFans, escorting, findom, and even live-tests Vaden's wild hypothesis against her huge, thick, dataset. We discuss How to describe what Aella does Aella's bangin' birthday party The state of sex research Conservative and neo-trad pushback and whether Aella is immune from cancellation Are men calibrated when it comes to predicting women's sexual preferences? The wild world of findom (financial domination) Is findom addiction worse than other addictions? Differences between camming and OnlyFans Can a fetish ever be considered self-harm? Plus some live hypothesis testing! Does Vaden's hypothesis survive...? Aella's forthcoming journal based on Rationalist principles References from the ep Aella's good at sex (https://aella.substack.com/p/how-to-be-good-at-sex-starve-her) series Aella's website (https://knowingless.com/) Aella's blogpost on Fetish Tabooness vs Popularity (https://aella.substack.com/p/fetish-tabooness-vs-popularity) "I spent $3,400 in a single day on financial domination": financial-domination addict James (https://youtu.be/8xCjXWDf6Y0?t=745) Clip starts at 12:25 Findom Addicts Anonymous (https://findomaddictsanonymous.org/) Fetlife bans Findom (https://www.reddit.com/r/FemdomCommunity/comments/89yx1n/fetlife_is_going_to_ban_financial_domination_and/) Domme won't let me quit (unethical), addicted to findom, please help | Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/paypigsupportgroup/comments/15n8i8z/domme_wont_let_me_quit_unethical_addicted_to/) I don't feel bad for subs that are addicted to findom. (https://www.reddit.com/r/findomsupportgroup/comments/14se62y/i_dont_feel_bad_for_subs_that_are_addicted_to/) Findom References (additional sources used for episode prep that weren't mention in the episode) Random Men Pay My Bills | BBC Podcast (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07q42yw) Interview with a Recovering Paypig - A Financial Domination Addict (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N68UT_LYl-Q) FINDOM is not FEMDOM (https://podcast.damianachiphd.com/blog/findom-is-not-femdom/) Confessions of a 'Pay Pig': Why I Give Away Money to Dominant Women I Meet Online (https://archive.ph/Jdyhi) Special Episode on Findoms... | The Kink Perspective Podcast (https://www.everand.com/podcast/694373930/Season-2-Episode-57-Special-Episode-on-Findoms) She Gets Paid Just to Humiliate Her Fans | New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/10/style/findom-kink.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur) Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Help us put heads in toilets and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) Send us $500 and call us your Queen, you steaming pile of s***: incrementspodcast@gmail.com Special Guest: Aella.

The World's #1 Personal Development Book Podcast! Join the world's largest non-fiction Book community! https://www.instagram.com/bookthinkers/ In today's episode we have the pleasure to interview for the second time Laura Casselman author of “Trust Your Increments” Laura is a CEO of JVZOO, Wall Street Journal and Amazon Best Selling author, former Rockette dancer, and a great mom! This is our second conversation with Laura and it's packed with value. We talk about everything from her speaking on stage with Tai Lopez in Dubai to becoming a successful human. In this episode, you'll learn about why you need to embrace failure today, how anyone can be successful with the right tools and coaches, about the dangers of TikTok and social media, why you should travel more and how it's not as out of reach as you might think, and why success may actually be very simple. There are a few spots that had a laggy internet connection but it doesn't take away from the conversation. We hope you enjoy this incredible conversation with Laura Casselman, ACTION ITEMS To Implement: ​​- Look into changing up where you live. It could save you money and put you in better energy! Research requirements, costs, neighborhoods, etc. - Brainstorm new challenges, goals, and projects to pursue. - Tap into the energetic "hustle mode" environment. Surround yourself with people pursuing big goals and feed off that motivation. - Don't be afraid to cut off unhealthy relationships that may be holding you back! - Consider organizing a mastermind group or accountability meetings to spark new ideas and momentum. - Explore options for expanding current businesses or launching new projects. Make a list of untapped ideas. - Reflect on being ready for "bigger things" and get clear on what that means for you. Set ambitious vision goals. - Get off social media and live your life. - Schedule time for strategic thinking and planning. Map out next level goals and timelines. To learn more about Laura Casselman and buy her best-selling book “Trust Your Increments” follow the links below: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thelauracasselman/ Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/Lauracasselman1 Website: https://lauracasselman.com/ The Book: https://a.co/d/7sWUv3k YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thelauracasselman Today's episode is sponsored by Audible. Try Audible for free: www.bookthinkers.com/audibletrial. The purpose of this podcast is to connect you, the listener, with new books, new mentors, and new resources that will help you achieve more and live better. Each and every episode will feature one of the world's top authors so that you know each and every time you tune-in, there is something valuable to learn. If you have any recommendations for guests, please DM them to us on Instagram. (www.instagram.com/bookthinkers) If you enjoyed this show, please consider leaving a review. It takes less than 60-seconds of your time, and really makes a difference when I am trying to land new guests. For more BookThinkers content, check out our Instagram or our website. Thank you for your time!

Back at it again, as we coerce you into listening to Part 2 of our four part series on Libertarianism, with Mr. Bruce Nielson (@bnielson01). In this episode we cover the Economic Issues section of Scott Alexander's (non-aggressive and principled) non-libertarian FAQ (https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-libertarian-faq/), and discuss his four major economic critiques of the libertarian view that free and voluntary trade between consenting, informed, rational individuals is the best possible thing ever, with no downsides at all. Also, can we interest you in buying some wasps? We discuss Loose ends from last episode - coercion and the Non-Aggression Principle What distinguishes a conservative like Bruce from a libertarian? Externalities Boycotts and Coordination Problems Irrational Choices Lack of Information References The Non-libertarian FAQ (https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-libertarian-faq/) Planet Money on the Porcupine Freedom Festival (https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/06/28/534735727/episode-286-libertarian-summer-camp) Vaden's blog posts on Libertarianism / Austrian Economics / Anarcho-Captialism / Whateveryawannacallit First: Is Austrian Economics the Best Explanation of Economics? (https://vmasrani.github.io/blog/2023/aecr-challenge/) Second: Can we predict human behaviour? A discussion with Brett Hall (https://vmasrani.github.io/blog/2023/predicting-human-behaviour/) Quotes The Argument: In a free market, all trade has to be voluntary, so you will never agree to a trade unless it benefits you. Further, you won't make a trade unless you think it's the best possible trade you can make. If you knew you could make a better one, you'd hold out for that. So trades in a free market are not only better than nothing, they're also the best possible transaction you could make at that time. Labor is no different from any other commercial transaction in this respect. You won't agree to a job unless it benefits you more than anything else you can do with your time, and your employer won't hire you unless it benefits her more than anything else she can do with her money. So a voluntarily agreed labor contract must benefit both parties, and must do so more than any other alternative. If every trade in a free market benefits both parties, then any time the government tries to restrict trade in some way, it must hurt both parties. Or, to put it another way, you can help someone by giving them more options, but you can't help them by taking away options. And in a free market, where everyone starts with all options, all the government can do is take options away. The Counterargument: This treats the world as a series of producer-consumer dyads instead of as a system in which every transaction affects everyone else. Also, it treats consumers as coherent entities who have specific variables like “utility” and “demand” and know exactly what they are, which doesn't always work. - https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-libertarian-faq/ What is an externality? 1.1: What is an externality? An externality is when I make a trade with you, but it has some accidental effect on other people who weren't involved in the trade. Suppose for example that I sell my house to an amateur wasp farmer. Only he's not a very good wasp farmer, so his wasps usually get loose and sting people all over the neighborhood every couple of days. This trade between the wasp farmer and myself has benefited both of us, but it's harmed people who weren't consulted; namely, my neighbors, who are now locked indoors clutching cans of industrial-strength insect repellent. Although the trade was voluntary for both the wasp farmer and myself, it wasn't voluntary for my neighbors. Another example of externalities would be a widget factory that spews carcinogenic chemicals into the air. When I trade with the widget factory I'm benefiting – I get widgets – and they're benefiting – they get money. But the people who breathe in the carcinogenic chemicals weren't consulted in the trade. 2.3: How do coordination problems justify regulation of ethical business practices? ... Let's say Wanda's Widgets has one million customers. Each customer pays it $100 per year, for a total income of $100 million. Each customer prefers Wanda to her competitor Wayland, who charges $150 for widgets of equal quality. Now let's say Wanda's Widgets does some unspeakably horrible act which makes it $10 million per year, but offends every one of its million customers. There is no incentive for a single customer to boycott Wanda's Widgets. After all, that customer's boycott will cost the customer $50 (she will have to switch to Wayland) and make an insignificant difference to Wanda (who is still earning $99,999,900 of her original hundred million). The customer takes significant inconvenience, and Wanda neither cares nor stops doing her unspeakably horrible act (after all, it's giving her $10 million per year, and only losing her $100). The only reason it would be in a customer's interests to boycott is if she believed over a hundred thousand other customers would join her. In that case, the boycott would be costing Wanda more than the $10 million she gains from her unspeakably horrible act, and it's now in her self-interest to stop committing the act. However, unless each boycotter believes 99,999 others will join her, she is inconveniencing herself for no benefit. Furthermore, if a customer offended by Wanda's actions believes 100,000 others will boycott Wanda, then it's in the customer's self-interest to “defect” from the boycott and buy Wanda's products. After all, the customer will lose money if she buys Wayland's more expensive widgets, and this is unnecessary – the 100,000 other boycotters will change Wanda's mind with or without her participation. 3.1: What do you mean by “irrational choices”? A company (Thaler, 2007, download study as .pdf) gives its employees the opportunity to sign up for a pension plan. They contribute a small amount of money each month, and the company will also contribute some money, and overall it ends up as a really good deal for the employees and gives them an excellent retirement fund. Only a small minority of the employees sign up. The libertarian would answer that this is fine. Although some outsider might condescendingly declare it “a really good deal”, the employees are the most likely to understand their own unique financial situation. They may have a better pension plan somewhere else, or mistrust the company's promises, or expect not to need much money in their own age. For some outsider to declare that they are wrong to avoid the pension plan, or worse to try to force them into it for their own good, would be the worst sort of arrogant paternalism, and an attack on the employees' dignity as rational beings. Then the company switches tactics. It automatically signs the employees up for the pension plan, but offers them the option to opt out. This time, only a small minority of the employees opt out. That makes it very hard to spin the first condition as the employees rationally preferring not to participate in the pension plan, since the second condition reveals the opposite preference. It looks more like they just didn't have the mental energy to think about it or go through the trouble of signing up. And in the latter condition, they didn't have the mental energy to think about it or go through the trouble of opting out. If the employees were rationally deciding whether or not to sign up, then some outsider regulating their decision would be a disaster. But if the employees are making demonstrably irrational choices because of a lack of mental energy, and if people do so consistently and predictably, then having someone else who has considered the issue in more depth regulate their choices could lead to a better outcome. 4.1: What do you mean by “lack of information”? Many economic theories start with the assumption that everyone has perfect information about everything. For example, if a company's products are unsafe, these economic theories assume consumers know the product is unsafe, and so will buy less of it. No economist literally believes consumers have perfect information, but there are still strong arguments for keeping the “perfect information” assumption. These revolve around the idea that consumers will be motivated to pursue information about things that are important to them. For example, if they care about product safety, they will fund investigations into product safety, or only buy products that have been certified safe by some credible third party. The only case in which a consumer would buy something without information on it is if the consumer had no interest in the information, or wasn't willing to pay as much for the information as it would cost, in which case the consumer doesn't care much about the information anyway, and it is a success rather than a failure of the market that it has not given it to her. In nonlibertarian thought, people care so much about things like product safety and efficacy, or the ethics of how a product is produced, that the government needs to ensure them. In libertarian thought, if people really care about product safety, efficacy and ethics, the market will ensure them itself, and if they genuinely don't care, that's okay too. Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Help us negative positive externalities and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) How much would you pay for a fresh nest of high quality, free range wasps? Tell us over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com Special Guest: Bruce Nielson.

Liberty! Freedom! Coercion! Taxes are theft! The State is The Enemy! Bitcoin! Crypto! Down with the central banks! Let's all return to the Gold Standard! Have you encountered such phrases in the wild? Confused, perhaps, as to why an afternoon beer with a friend become an extended diatribe against John Maynard Kaynes? Us too, which is why we're diving into the ideological source of such views: Libertarianism. Welcome to Part 1 of a four part series where we, with Bruce Nielson (@bnielson01) as our battle-hardened guide, dive into Scott Alexander's non-libertarian FAQ (https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-libertarian-faq/). Ought George help, or ought George respect the government's property rights? Let's find out. And make sure to check out Bruce's excellent The Theory Of Anything podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-theory-of-anything/id1503194218 We discuss Varieties of libertarianism Why are some libertarians so ideological? Is taxation theft? The problem of public goods "Proprietary communities" and the perfect libertarian society Why the perfect libertarian society doesn't escape taxation Are we living in the libertarian utopia right now? Taxes as membership fees References The Non-libertarian FAQ (https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-libertarian-faq/) George ought to help (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGMQZEIXBMs&t=228s&ab_channel=bitbutter) The Machinery of Freedom (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machinery_of_Freedom) by David Friedman Vaden's blog posts on Libertarianism / Austrian Economics / Anarcho-Captialism / Whateveryawannacallit First: Is Austrian Economics the Best Explanation of Economics? (https://vmasrani.github.io/blog/2023/aecr-challenge/) Second: Can we predict human behaviour? A discussion with Brett Hall (https://vmasrani.github.io/blog/2023/predicting-human-behaviour/) Quotes 0.2: Do you hate libertarianism? No. To many people, libertarianism is a reaction against an over-regulated society, and an attempt to spread the word that some seemingly intractable problems can be solved by a hands-off approach. Many libertarians have made excellent arguments for why certain libertarian policies are the best options, and I agree with many of them. I think this kind of libertarianism is a valuable strain of political thought that deserves more attention, and I have no quarrel whatsoever with it and find myself leaning more and more in that direction myself. However, there's a certain more aggressive, very American strain of libertarianism with which I do have a quarrel. This is the strain which, rather than analyzing specific policies and often deciding a more laissez-faire approach is best, starts with the tenet that government can do no right and private industry can do no wrong and uses this faith in place of more careful analysis. This faction is not averse to discussing politics, but tends to trot out the same few arguments about why less regulation has to be better. I wish I could blame this all on Ayn Rand, but a lot of it seems to come from people who have never heard of her. I suppose I could just add it to the bottom of the list of things I blame Reagan for. - https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-libertarian-faq/ Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Help us curtail freedom and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) How do you summon libertarians at a party? Finish the punchline and tell us over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com Special Guest: Bruce Nielson.

Close your eyes, and think of a bright and pristine, clean and immaculately run recycling center, green'r than a giant's thumb. Now think of a dirty, ugly, rotting landfill, stinking in the mid-day sun. Of these two scenarios, which, do you reckon, is worse for the environment? In this episode, Ben and Vaden attempt to reduce and refute a few reused canards about recycling and refuse, by rereading Rob Wiblin's excellent piece which addresses the aformentioned question: What you think about landfill and recycling is probably totally wrong (https://medium.com/@robertwiblin/what-you-think-about-landfill-and-recycling-is-probably-totally-wrong-3a6cf57049ce). Steel yourselves for this one folks, because you may need to paper over arguments with loved ones, trash old opinions, and shatter previous misconceptions. Check out more of Rob's writing here (https://www.robwiblin.com/). We discuss The origins of recycling and some of the earliest instances Energy efficiency of recycling plastics, aluminium, paper, steel, and electronic waste (e-waste) Why your peanut butter jars and plastic coffee cups are not recyclable Modern landfills and why they're awesome How landfills can be used to create energy Building stuff on top of landfills Why we're not even close to running out of space for landfills Economic incentives for recycling vs top-down regulation The modern recycling movement and its emergence in the 1990s > - Guiyu, China, where e-waste goes to die. That a lot of your "recycling" ends up as garbage in the Philippines Error Correction Vaden misremembered what Smil wrote regarding four categories of recycling (Metals and Aluminum / Plastics / Paper / Electronic Waste ("e-waste")). He incorrectly quoted Smil as saying these four categories were exhaustive, and represented the four major categories recycling into which the majority of recycled material can be bucketed. This is incorrect- what Smil actually wrote was: I will devote the rest of this section (and of this chapter) to brief appraisals of the recycling efforts for four materials — two key metals (steel and aluminum) and plastics and paper—and of electronic waste, a category of discarded material that would most benefit from much enhanced rates of recycling. - Making the Modern World: Materials and De-materialization, Smill, p.179 A list of the top 9 recycled materials can be found here: https://www.rd.com/list/most-recyclable-materials/ Sources / Citations Share of plastic waste that is recycled, landfilled, incinerated and mismanaged, 2019 (https://ourworldindata.org/waste-management) Source for the claim that recycling glass is not energy efficient (and thus not necessarily better for the environment than landfilling): Glass bottles can be more pleasant to drink out of, but they also require more energy to manufacture and recycle. Glass bottles consume 170 to 250 percent more energy and emit 200 to 400 percent more carbon than plastic bottles, due mostly to the heat energy required in the manufacturing process. Of course, if the extra energy required by glass were produced from emissions-free sources, it wouldn't necessarily matter that glass bottles required more energy to make and move. “If the energy is nuclear power or renewables there should be less of an environmental impact,” notes Figgener. - Apocalypse Never, Shellenburger, p.66 Cloth bags need to be reused 173 times (https://www.savemoneycutcarbon.com/learn-save/plastic-vs-cotton-bags-which-is-more-sustainable) to be more eco-friendly than a plastic bag: Source for claim that majority of e-waste ends up in China (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/america-e-waste-gps-tracker-tells-all-earthfix): Puckett's organization partnered with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to put 200 geolocating tracking devices inside old computers, TVs and printers. They dropped them off nationwide at donation centers, recyclers and electronic take-back programs — enterprises that advertise themselves as “green,” “sustainable,” “earth friendly” and “environmentally responsible.” ... About a third of the tracked electronics went overseas — some as far as 12,000 miles. That includes six of the 14 tracker-equipped electronics that Puckett's group dropped off to be recycled in Washington and Oregon. The tracked electronics ended up in Mexico, Taiwan, China, Pakistan, Thailand, Dominican Republic, Canada and Kenya. Most often, they traveled across the Pacific to rural Hong Kong. (italics added.) NPR interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBGZtNJAt-M&ab_channel=NPR) on the fact that some manufacturers will put recycling logos on products that aren't recyclable. Bloomberg investigative report (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmGrI_BVlnc&ab_channel=BloombergOriginals) on tracking plastic to a town in Poland that burns it for energy. Video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHzltu6Tvl8&ab_channel=PBSTerra) about the apex landfill Guiyu, China. Wiki's description (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_waste_in_Guiyu.): Once a rice village, the pollution has made Guiyu unable to produce crops for food and the water of the river is undrinkable. Many of the primitive recycling operations in Guiyu are toxic and dangerous to workers' health with 80% of children suffering from lead poisoning. Above-average miscarriage rates are also reported in the region. Workers use their bare hands to crack open electronics to strip away any parts that can be reused—including chips and valuable metals, such as gold, silver, etc. Workers also "cook" circuit boards to remove chips and solders, burn wires and other plastics to liberate metals such as copper; use highly corrosive and dangerous acid baths along the riverbanks to extract gold from the microchips; and sweep printer toner out of cartridges. Children are exposed to the dioxin-laden ash as the smoke billows around Guiyu, finally settling on the area. The soil surrounding these factories has been saturated with lead, chromium, tin, and other heavy metals. Discarded electronics lie in pools of toxins that leach into the groundwater, making the water undrinkable to the extent that water must be trucked in from elsewhere. Lead levels in the river sediment are double European safety levels, according to the Basel Action Network. Lead in the blood of Guiyu's children is 54% higher on average than that of children in the nearby town of Chendian. Piles of ash and plastic waste sit on the ground beside rice paddies and dikes holding in the Lianjiang River. Ben's back-of-the-napkin math Consider the Apex landfill in Las Vegas. This handles trash for the whole city, which is ~700K people. The base of the landfill is currently 9km^2 , but they've hinted at expanding it in the future. So let's assume they more than double it and put it at 20km^2 . The estimates are that this landfill will handle trash for ~300 years "at current rates". I'm not sure if that includes population growth, so let's play it safe and assume not. So how much space does each person need landfill wise for the next 300 years? We have 20km^2 / 700K people = 28.5 m^2 per person for 300 years. For 400M people, that's roughly 12,000 km^2. The US is roughly 10,000,000 km^2. That's 0.012% of the US needed for landfills for the next 300 years. We definitely have the space. Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Help us fill up landfills and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) What do you like to bring to your local neighbourhood tire-fire? Tell us over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com

Who are your heroes that manifested their own success through patience?Text me at 972-426-2640 so we can stay connected!Support me on Patreon!Twitter:  @elliottspeaksInstagram: @elliottspeaks

Vaden has selfishly gone on vacation with his family, leaving beloved listeners to fend for themselves in the wide world of epistemological confusion. To repair some of the damage, we're releasing an episode of The Theory of Anything Podcast from last June in which Vaden contributed to a roundtable discussion on the principle of optimism. Featuring Bruce Nielson, Peter Johansen, Sam Kuypers, Hervé Eulacia, Micah Redding, Bill Rugolsky, and Daniel Buchfink. Enjoy! From The Theory of Anything Podcast description: Are all evils due to a lack of knowledge? Are all interesting problems soluble? ALL the problems, really?!?! And what exactly is meant by interesting? Also, should “good guys” ignore the precautionary principle, and do they always win? What is the difference between cynicism, pessimism, and skepticism? And why is pessimism so attractive to so many humans? Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Help us solve problems and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) Which unsolvable problem would you most like to solve? Send your answer via quantum tunneling to incrementspodcast@gmail.com Special Guests: Bruce Nielson and Sam Kuypers.

While you're reading this you're having a thought. Something like "wow, I love the Increments podcast", or "those hosts are some handsome" or "I really wish people would stop talking about free will." Do you have a choice in the matter? Are you free to choose what you're thinking in any given moment, or is it determined by your genetics, environment, and existing ideas? Is the universe determined, are we all Frankenstein's monster? How does one profitably think about that question? Today we have Lucas Smalldon on to help us think through these questions. We reference Lucas's blog post titled reconciling-determinism-and-free-will (https://barelymorethanatweet.com/2021/01/05/reconciling-determinism-and-free-will/). Because it's is barely more than a tweet, we've included the entire post here as well: Reconciling Free Will with Determinism Free will and determinism seem to conflict with each other. But the apparent conflict disappears when we understand that determinism and free will simply describe the world from radically different perspectives and at fundamentally different levels. Free will makes sense only within the context of the physical world, whereas determinism makes sense only from a perspective that is outside the physical world. Consider the determinist statement, “The future exists and has always existed”. It seems like a contradiction in terms, but only because our language forces us to express the idea misleadingly in terms of the past and future. If we assign special meanings to the temporal words in the statement—namely, if by the future we mean “objectively real events that from the perspective of our present have not yet happened”; and if by always we mean “transcending time itself” rather than the usual “existing across all time”—then the contradiction resolves. Assigning these special meanings allows us to express determinism as atemporal and objective: as a description of a physical reality of which time is an attribute. Conversely, free will, which is by far the more intuitive concept, is needed to explain certain kinds of events (i.e., choices) that occur within time, and thus within the physical world that determinism describes from the outside. Determinism and free will are compatible. We really do make choices. It's just that, from an atemporal determinist perspective, these choices have “always” existed. Follow Lucas on twitter (https://twitter.com/reason_wit_me?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor) or check out his blog (https://barelymorethanatweet.com/). We discuss Levels of explanation regarding free will The (in)compatibility of different levels of explanation Why the lack of free will does not hinge on reductionism Memetic arguments for the non-existence of free will Whether we can have moral responsibility without free will The universe as a filmstrip Whether we're all just Frankenstein's monster Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Help us find freedom and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) How much do you want to want Frankenstein's monster? Send your answer down the tubes and over to incrementspodcast@gmail.com Special Guest: Lucas Smalldon.

The World's #1 Personal Development Book Podcast!  In today's episode we have the pleasure to interview ⁠Laura Casselman⁠ author of “Trust Your Increments” Join the world's largest non-fiction Book community! https://www.instagram.com/bookthinkers/ Laura is a CEO of a billion dollar company, Wall Street Journal and Amazon Best Selling author, former Rockette dancer, and balances all that with being a mom! Laura came from a small town and saw opportunity from a young age, she got to see the Radio City Rockettes and knew that's what she wanted to do, after a fulfilling career there she decided it was time to switch gears by entering corporate America. For better or worse it was filled with challenges from juggling her dance career to the worst kind of sexism, yet she didn't let that stop her undying belief that she was allowed to go after what she wanted. Now years later, she has achieved incredible things and continues on the path to greatness. In this episode, you'll learn about Laura's background and how she went from Rockette to CEO, about the power of being yourself by not compromising your values, how to get what you want in life, how to build confidence, the importance of setting your future self up for success, and how you can have it all. We hope you enjoy this incredible conversation with Laura Casselman! To learn more about Laura Casselman and buy her best-selling book “Trust Your Increments” follow the links below: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thelauracasselman/ Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/Lauracasselman1 Website: https://lauracasselman.com/ The Book: https://a.co/d/7sWUv3k Today's episode is sponsored by Audible. Try Audible for free: www.bookthinkers.com/audibletrial. The purpose of this podcast is to connect you, the listener, with new books, new mentors, and new resources that will help you achieve more and live better. Each and every episode will feature one of the world's top authors so that you know each and every time you tune-in, there is something valuable to learn. If you have any recommendations for guests, please DM them to us on Instagram. (www.instagram.com/bookthinkers) If you enjoyed this show, please consider leaving a review. It takes less than 60-seconds of your time, and really makes a difference when I am trying to land new guests. For more BookThinkers content, check out our Instagram or our website. Thank you for your time!

Today we [finally] have on someone who actually knows what they're actually talking about: Mr. Bruce Nielsen of the excellent Theory of Anything Podcast. We bring him on to straighten us out on the topics of creativity, machine intelligence, Turing machines, and computational universality - We build upon our previous conversation way back in Ask Us Anything I: Computation and Creativity (https://www.incrementspodcast.com/52), and suggest listening to that episode first. Go follow Bruce on twitter (https://twitter.com/bnielson01) and check out his Theory of Anything Podcast here (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-theory-of-anything/id1503194218). (Also Vaden's audio was acting up a bit in this episode, we humbly seek your forgiveness) We discuss Does theorem proving count as creativity? Is AlphaGo creative? Determinism, predictability, and chaos theory Essentialism and a misunderstanding of definitions Animal memes and understanding Turing Machines and computational universality Penrose's "proof" that we need new physics References Ask Us Anything I: Computation and Creativity (https://www.incrementspodcast.com/52) (Listen first!) Logic theorist (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_Theorist) AlphaGo movie (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaGo_(film)) Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Help us fund more 64 minute-long blog posts and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) Create us up an email with something imaginatively rote, cliche and formulaic, and mail that stinker over to incrementspodcast@gmail.com

What is the advantage of building software in small increments?

Back to the C&R series baby! Feels goooooood. Need some bar-room explanations for why induction is impossible? We gotchu. Need some historical background on where your boy Isaac got his ideas? We gotchu. Need to know how to refute the irrefutable? Gotchu there too homie, because today we're diving into Conjectures and Refutations, Chapter 8: On the Status of Science and Metaphysics. Oh, and we also discuss, in admittedly frustrated tones, the failed blog exchange between Brett Hall and Vaden on prediction and Austrianism. If you want the full listening experience, we suggest reading both posts before hearing our kvetching: Vaden's post (https://vmasrani.github.io/blog/2023/predicting-human-behaviour/) Brett's "response" (https://www.bretthall.org/blog/humans-are-creative) Hold on to your hats for this one listeners, because she starts off rather spicy. We discuss Why Kant believed in the truth of Newtonian mechanics Newton and his assertion that he arrived at his theory via induction Why this isn't true and is logically impossible Was Copernicus influenced by Platonic ideals? How Kepler came up with the idea of elliptical orbits Why finite observations are always compatible with infinitely many theories Kant's paradox and his solution Popper's updated solution to Kant's paradox The irrefutability of philosophical theories How can we say that irrefutable theories are false? Annnnnd perhaps a few cheap shots here and there about Austrian Economics as well. # References Some background history (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/copernicus/notes.html#note-6) on Copernicus and why Ben thinks Popper is wrong Quotes Listening to this statement you may well wonder how I can possibly hold a theory to be false and irrefutable at one and the same time—I who claim to be a rationalist. For how can a rationalist say of a theory that it is false and irrefutable? Is he not bound, as a rationalist, to refute a theory before he asserts that it is false? And conversely, is he not bound to admit that if a theory is irrefutable, it is true? Now if we look upon a theory as a proposed solution to a set of problems, then the theory immediately lends itself to critical discussion—even if it is non-empirical and irrefutable. For we can now ask questions such as, Does it solve the problem? Does it solve it better than other theories? Has it perhaps merely shifted the problem? Is the solution simple? Is it fruitful? Does it perhaps contradict other philosophical theories needed for solving other problems? Because, as you [Kant] said, we are not passive receptors of sense data, but active organisms. Because we react to our environment not always merely instinctively, but sometimes con- sciously and freely. Because we can invent myths, stories, theories; because we have a thirst for explanation, an insatiable curiosity, a wish to know. Because we not only invent stories and theories, but try them out and see whether they work and how they work. Because by a great effort, by trying hard and making many mistakes, we may sometimes, if we are lucky, succeed in hitting upon a story, an explanation, which ‘saves the phenomena'; perhaps by making up a myth about ‘invisibles', such as atoms or gravitational forces, which explain the visible. Because knowledge is an adventure of ideas. These ideas, it is true, are produced by us, and not by the world around us; they are not merely the traces of repeated sensations or stimuli or what not; here you were right. But we are more active and free than even you believed; for similar observations or similar environmental situations do not, as your theory implied, produce similar explanations in different men. Nor is the fact that we create our theories, and that we attempt to impose them upon the world, an explanation of their success, as you believed. For the overwhelming majority of our theories, of our freely invented ideas, are unsuccessful; they do not stand up to searching tests, and are discarded as falsified by experience. Only a very few of them succeed, for a time, in the competitive struggle for survival. C&R Chapter 2 Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Help us fund more hour-long blog posts and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover anger management here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) Would you rather be wrong or boring? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com

Alright people, we made it. Six months, a few breaks, some uncontrollable laughter, some philosophy, many unhinged takes, a little bit of diarrhea and we're here, the last Ask Us Anything. After this we're never answering another God D*** question. Ever. We discuss Do you wish you could change your own interests? Methods of information ingestion Taking books off their pedestal bit Intellectual influences Veganism (why Ben is, why Vaden isn't) Anti-rational memes Fricken Andrew Huberman again Stoicism Are e-fuels the best of the best or the worst of the worst? Questions (Andrew) Any suggested methods of reading Popper (or others) and getting the most out of it? I'm not from a philosophy background, and although I get a lot out of the books, I think there's probably ways of reading them (notes etc?) where I could invest the same time and get more return. (Andrew) Any other books you'd say added to your personal philosophical development as DD, KP have? Who and why? (Alex) Are you aware of general types of insidious anti-rational memes which are hard to recognise as such? Any ideas on how we can go about recognising them in our own thinking? (I do realise that perhaps no general method exists, but still, if you have any thoughts on this...) (Lorcan) What do you think about efuels? Listen to this take (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egTCIyNBpQw&ab_channel=FullyChargedShow) by Fully Charged. References Lying (https://www.samharris.org/books/lying) and Free Will (https://www.samharris.org/books/free-will) by Sam Harris Doing Good Better (https://www.amazon.ca/Doing-Good-Better-Effective-Altruism/dp/1592409660) by MacAskill Animal Liberation (https://www.amazon.ca/Animal-Liberation-Definitive-Classic-Movement/dp/0061711306) by Peter Singer Mortal Questions (https://www.amazon.ca/Mortal-Questions-Thomas-Nagel/dp/1107604710#:~:text=Thomas%20Nagel's%20Mortal%20Questions%20explore,%2C%20consciousness%2C%20freedom%20and%20value.) by Thomas Nagel Death and Life of Great American Cities (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_American_Cities) by Jane Jacobs Peace is Every Step (https://www.amazon.ca/Peace-Every-Step-Mindfulness-Everyday/dp/0553351397) and True Love (https://www.amazon.ca/True-Love-Practice-Awakening-Heart/dp/1590304047) by Thich Nhat Hanh Seeing like a State (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_Like_a_State#:~:text=Seeing%20Like%20a%20State%3A%20How,accordance%20with%20purported%20scientific%20laws.) by James Scott The Truth Behind Cage-Free and Free-Range | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foHv_MCBveA&ab_channel=StuffYouShouldKnow) People Producers of rational memes: - Everything: Christopher Hitchens, Vladimir Nabokov, Sam Harris, George Orwell, Scott Alexander, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Steven Pinker - Sex and Relationships: Dan Savage - Environment/Progress: Vaclav Smil, Matt Ridley, Steven Pinker, Hans Rosling, Bjorn Lomborg, Michael Shellenburger, Alex Epstein - Race: Glenn Loury, John Mcwhorter, Coleman Hughes, Kmele Foster, Chloe Valdery - Woke: John Mcwhorter, Yasha Mounk, Coleman Hughes, Sam Harris, Douglas Murrey, Jordan Peterson, Steven Hicks, James Lindsay, Ben Shapiro - Feminism: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Christina Hoff Summers, Camille Paglia (Note: Then follow each thinker's favorite thinker, and never stop. ) Producers of anti-rational memes: - Eric Weinstein - Bret Weinstein - Noam Chomsky (See A Potpourri Of Chomskyan Nonsense: https://lingbuzz.net/lingbuzz/001592/v6.pdf) - Glenn Greenwald - Reza Aslan - Medhi Hassan - Robin Diangelo - Ibraam x Kendi - George Galloway - Judith Butler Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Help us fund the anti-book campaign and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help therapy costs here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) What aren't you interested in, and how might you fix that? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com

We we're looking for a nice light topic for our patron only episode, so Vaden naturally chosen to chat about the patriarchy. I guess he didn't get into enough trouble in his personal life talking about it so he wanted to make his support and admiration for the patriarchy public. This is a sneak preview into the land of patreon bonus episodes, so be sure to fork over some cold hard cash if you'd like a bit more mansplaining in your life. We discuss Harassment of women in various spheres of life The patriarchy as a set of facts versus a causal explanation Why conflating these two notions of the patriarchy harms progress Domains where women are doing better than men (hint: education, mental health, and psychopathy) Why it's so hard to talk about this Why Canada is different than Afghanistan (OR IS IT) Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Help us pay for men's rights posters and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help with upholding the patriarchy here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube over hur (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ). Who is a better meninist? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com

A follow up on the yearbook (scrapbook) preservation project of the @greaterfederationofwomensclubs #GFWC at the Pocono Mountain Women's Club Chapter…  you can learn more about these amazing people here on the Pennsylvania website: https://gfwcpennsylvania.org/When unsung heroes get recognized it's SO SATISFYING- and these folks did! This project is still ongoing; Fundraising is under way. If you feel compelled to contribute, you can make a Venmo donation to @gfwcpmwc.  Increments of $60 are especially helpful however no amount is too small (or great). We (all photo lovers) care about preserving our very best parts, to bask in now, share with others and create even brighter futures. When we are mindful about these efforts, our photos can be a powerful tool for good.  Now that we record history every day on our cell phones, through social sharing and our cameras, the convenience is great and the clutter can be even greater. If tackling (tidying up) your camera roll sounds like a really great goal for you today, that might open up to other memory preservation in the future, I have something to help you get that bite-sized win!I created it to empower picture lovers to take care of their own photos… it's a small bite (no online course to create longer lists of unfinished projects). Here's the link to download your simple, easy to understand and follow, steps and video support. CLICK HERE: https://buy.stripe.com/3cs14fgNjggicda6oo Thanks for being here for Picture Love Podcast.A few quick tips:Be sure to subscribe AND leave us a REVIEW!Always check the show notes for the latest resources, freebies and invitations! Until next time, take time every day to Picture Love! :) Please help other photo lovers find this podcast by sharing and leaving us a review. Find me on Social @KrisReminisce or visit my website krisledonne.comHappy Reminiscing!

Perhaps you thought, in your infinite ignorance, that the release of the previous episode marked the end of the age of the AMA! But nay my friends, the age of the AMA has just begun! We'll answer your questions until the cows come home; until Godot arrives; until all the world's babies are potty-trained. Or, at least, until we stop laughing. We discuss Potty training, taking babies seriously, and adult diapers Why Vaden never daydreams, fantasizes, or minds spending 10 hours in a car Whether the subjective notions of certainty, belief, or confidence deserve a spot in the objective world of epistemology Whether sports are authoritarian Whether spreading Popper's epistemology is a moral imperative The role of school and educational institutions Whether emergence is the result of the interplay between physical reality and the reality of abstraction Questions (Tom) Can any thinking take place completely independent of any certainty (explicitly acknowledged or inexplicit) whatsoever? Or can we introduce alternative terms to 'certainty' and 'confidence' to describe how individuals process their convictions, consent, and agreement? If 'certainty' and 'confidence' connote justificationism, can a fallibilist dismiss these terms entirely? (Tom) Can fallibilism, anti-authoritarianism, anti-justificationism, and critical rationalism overall operate effectively in the highly competitive space of sports, especially professional sports? (Andrew) If our best theory of how to make rapid progress comes from Popper's epistemology, should making it more widely known/understood be considered a moral imperative? If not, why? If so, thoughts? (Andrew) This one has been hanging about in my notes for a couple of years so I'm not sure it's a great question any more, but something zingy about the interplay between reality, abstractions and their effects on each other has pushed me to add it here: Is emergence the result of the interplay between physical reality and the reality of abstractions? Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Help us pay for diapers and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help with Diarrhea removal here (https://ko-fi.com/increments)). Click dem like buttons on youtube over hur (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ). Who is more annoying in the mornings? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com

Our argument at the end of last episode spilled over into discord, DMs, and world news, so we felt compelled to dedicate a full episode to addressing the question "Is all thought problem solving?" Some arguments make history, like whether atomic bombs were required in WWII, whether all philosophy is simply a language game, and whether the chicken did indeed come before the egg. Will this be one of them? We cover: - How Vaden listens to podcasts and why he thinks Andrew Huberman sucks (but studies show that Andrew Huberman is great!) - Popper's evolutionary take on problem-solving - Problems defined as "disappointed expectations" - Whether all volitional thought is problem-solving - Are irrefutable theories ever valuable, or should they all be discarded a-priori? References All life is problem-solving (https://www.amazon.com/Life-Problem-Solving-Karl-Popper/dp/0415249929) In Search of a Better World (https://www.amazon.ca/Search-Better-World-Lectures-Essays/dp/0415135486) Episode 51 of Increments (https://www.incrementspodcast.com/51), where we discuss "implicit definitions". Quotes Men, animals, plants, even unicellular organisms are constantly active. They are trying to improve their situation, or at least to avoid its deterioration. Even when asleep, the organism is actively maintaining the state of sleep: the depth (or else the shallowness) of sleep is a condition actively created by the organism, which sustains sleep (or else keeps the organism on the alert). Every organism is constantly preoccupied with the task of solving prob- lems. These problems arise from its own assessments of its condition and of its environment; conditions which the organism seeks to improve. - In Search Of A Better World, p.vii At bottom, this procedure seems to be the only logical one. It is also the procedure that a lower organism, even a single-cell amoeba, uses when trying to solve a problem. In this case we speak of testing movements through which the organism tries to rid itself of a troublesome problem. Higher organisms are able to learn through trial and error how a certain problem should be solved. We may say that they too make testing movements - mental testings - and that to learn is essentially to tryout one testing movement after another until one is found that solves the problem. We might compare the animal's successful solution to an expectation and hence to a hypothesis or a theory. For the animal's behaviour shows us that it expects (perhaps unconsciously or dispositionally) that in a similar case the same testing movements will again solve the problem in question. The behaviour of animals, and of plants too, shows that organisms are geared to laws or regularities. They expect laws or regularities in their surroundings, and I conjecture that most of these expectations are genetically determined - which is to say that they are innate. - All Life is Problem Solving, p.3 Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Solve all our problems and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments) Toss us some coin over hur (patreon subscription approach (https://www.patreon.com/Increments/posts) or the ko-fi, the "just give us cash you animals" approach (https://ko-fi.com/increments)), and click dem like buttons on youtube over hur (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ). Do studies show that Ben or Vaden is correct? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com

Back again with AUA #3 - we're getting there people! Only, uhh, seven questions to go? Incremental progress baby. Plus, we see a good old Vaden and Ben fight in this one! Thank God, because things were getting a little stale with Vaden hammering on longtermism and Ben on cliodynamics. We cover: Is hypnosis a real thing? Types of universality contained within the genetic code Pressures associated with turning political/philosophical ideas into personal identities How do emotions/feelings interface with our rational/logical mind? How should they? Vaden's (hopefully one-off) experience with Bipolar Type-1 and psychosis Is problem solving the sole purpose of thinking? Vaden says yes (with many caveats!) and Ben says wtf no you fool. Then we argue about how to watch TV. Questions (Neil Hudson) Are there any theories as to the type of universality achievable via the genetic code (in BOI it is presumed to fall short of coding for all possible life forms)? (Neil Hudson) Wd be gd to get your take on: riffing on the Sperber/Mercier social thesis v. individual, if one is scarce private space/time then the need to constantly avow one's public identity may “swamp” the critical evaluation of arguments one hears? Goes to seeking truth v status (Arun Kannan) What are your thoughts on inexplicit knowledge (David Deutsch jargon) and more broadly emotions/feelings in the mind ? How do these interplay with explicit ideas / thoughts ? What should we prioritize ? If we don't prioritize one over the other, how to resolve conflicts between them ? Any tips, literature, Popperian wisdom you can share on this ? (Tom Nassis) Is the sole purpose of all forms of thinking problem-solving? Or can thinking have purposes other than solving a problem? Quotes Reach always has an explanation. But this time, to the best of my knowledge, the explanation is not yet known. If the reason for the jump in reach was that it was a jump to universality, what was the universality? The genetic code is presumably not universal for specifying life forms, since it relies on specific types of chemicals, such as proteins. Could it be a universal constructor? Perhaps. It does manage to build with inorganic materials sometimes, such as the calcium phosphate in bones, or the magnetite in the navigation system inside a pigeon's brain. Biotechnologists are already using it to manufacture hydrogen and to extract uranium from seawater. It can also program organisms to perform constructions outside their bodies: birds build nests; beavers build dams. Perhaps it would it be possible to specify, in the genetic code, an organism whose life cycle includes building a nuclear-powered spaceship. Or perhaps not. I guess it has some lesser, and not yet understood, universality. In 1994 the computer scientist and molecular biologist Leonard Adleman designed and built a computer composed of DNA together with some simple enzymes, and demonstrated that it was capable of performing some sophisticated computations. At the time, Adleman's DNA computer was arguably the fastest computer in the world. Further, it was clear that a universal classical computer could be made in a similar way. Hence we know that, whatever that other universality of the DNA system was, the universality of computation had also been inherent in it for billions of years, without ever being used – until Adleman used it. Beginning of Infinity, p.158 (emph added) References Derren brown makes people forget their stop (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kSq7dPlw0A) Bari Weiss's conversation (https://open.spotify.com/episode/2WvW8VnfzwIM155NcFXwe5) with Freddie deBoer on psychosis, bipolar, and mental health. This conversation addresses the New York Times article (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/17/magazine/antipsychotic-medications-mental-health.html) which views having schizophrenia, bipolar, etc as no better or worse than not having schizophrenia, bipolar, etc. Also contains Vaden's favorite euphemism of 2022: "Nonconsensus Realities" Sad existentialist cat (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBjU3Ii7lfs) Send Vaden an email with a thought you have not designed to solve a problem at incrementspodcast.com Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Toss us some coin over hur (patreon subscription approach (https://www.patreon.com/Increments/posts) or the ko-fi, just give us cash you animal approach (https://ko-fi.com/increments)), and click dem like buttons on youtube over hur (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ).

You have heard of the law of attraction, the system of belief that ensures us we can use our thoughts to quickly manifest the life of our dreams.I look back over my own life and can see the truth of how I have manifested the life we have today, and to me, this has been through the Law of Increments. Little changes, diligently made and prioritized, over long periods of time, have led our family to a place of great peace, beauty, simplicity, and joy. In this episode I share a lot more about my personal life, which is always super uncomfortable for me, but feels important as the experiences I share are born from my own life. May we all find our way to the life of our dreams. Support the show

In this episode, Elizabeth discusses the power of building a beautiful life in 1 hour increments, the advantages of having a long time horizon mindset, and creating life visions.—Sign Up for Notion: https://ntn.so/elizabethchuFor more, visit: http://thepowerofclub.com/For daily reminders on how to live an enriching and gratifying life: https://www.instagram.com/elizvchu/Subscribe to my newsletter, Sunday ScribblesSubscribe to 3-2-1 Thursdays: https://jamesclear.com/3-2-1 —Join me on An Absolute All Journey!An Absolute All Journey Series: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlrb6gSVuF1XuOzeGYYVC7wJETCT4jpeZAn Absolute All Journey Notion Page: https://elizvchu.gumroad.com/l/an-absolute-all-journey-notion-templateSupport the showSupport the show

We debated calling this episode "An ode to Michael," because we set out to do an AMA but only get through his first two questions. But never fear, there are only 20 questions, so at this rate we should be done the AMA by the end of 2024. Who said we weren't fans of longtermism? Questions: Hey do you guys have a Patreon page or anyway to support you? (Michael) Not clear that humans are universal explainers. Standard argument for this is "to assume o.w. is to appeal to the supernatural," but this argument is weak b/c it does not explain why humans could in principle explain everything. But all Deutch's ideas rests on this axiom. It's almost tautological - there could be things humans cannot explain, but we wouldn't even know about these things b/c we wouldn't be able to explain them. I think this argument that humans are universal explainers and thus can achieve indefinite progress needs more rigor.It might be a step jump from animals to humans, but why could there not be more step jumps in intelligence beyond human intelligence that we do not even know about? I'd love to get your thoughts on this. (Michael) Another pt I'd love to get your perspectives on is the idea of the "creative program." Standard discussion is "humans are special because we are creative, and we don't know what the creative program is." But we need to make progress on creativity at some point and it kind of feels like we are using the word "creativity" as a vague suitcase word to encapsulate "everything we don't yet know about intelligence." Simply saying "humans are creative" without properly defining what it means to be creative in a way that we can evaluate in machines is not helping us make progress on developing creative AI. It's unsatisfying to hear critiques of AI that say "this AI model is not 'truly intelligent' because it is not creative" without also proposing a way to evaluate its creativity. In this sense, critiques of AI that say AI is "not creative" are bad explanations because these critiques are easy to vary. Without a proposing a proper test for creativity that can actually evaluated, it is not possible for us to conduct a test to refute the critique. I'd love to get your thoughts on how we can construct evaluations for creativity in a way that enables us to make scientific progress on understanding the creative algorithm! References: - Episode 9: Introduction to Computational Theory (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-9-introduction-to-computational-theory/id1503194218?i=1000502266361), Theory of Anything podcast (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-theory-of-anything/id1503194218) - David Deutsch on Coleman Hughes' podcast: Multiverse of Madness (https://en.padverb.com/er/conversations-with-coleman_rss-09-may-2023-multiverse-of-madness-with-david-deutsch) - John Cleese's excellent new book Creativity (https://www.amazon.ca/Creativity-Short-Cheerful-John-Cleese/dp/0385348274) Contact us - Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani - Check us out on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ - Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Support You can support the project on Patreon (monthly donations, https://www.patreon.com/Increments) or Ko-fi (one time donation, https://ko-fi.com/increments). Thank you! How much explaining could a universal explainer explain if a universal explainer could explain explaining? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

Today I get to share some things that have continued to have deep impact in my life. These two ideas are separate, but equally powerful. I hope to weave them together for you so you can implement each by implementing both together.Firstly, as we've talked about in different ways over the years, you have to see the value of a single day. Today is such a powerful gift! Each day is like a mini lifetime, with a beginning, middle and end. And yet, we get to restart and stack those days into a life, into what I pray is a rewarding and wonderful life!Secondly, we need a proper strategy to modify and maximize days. Just a tag line like "seize the day" means nothing without a means by which to strategize that day. Let's take a look into the business world today to learn about three simple questions that can make a difference for a day, and for a lifetime.- What is your general attitude about the day when you get out of bed?- How is the goal of mastering a single day the ticket to a better future?- What does it mean to be aware of your recent past and it's pluses and minuses?- How can you use that to strategize a better today?- Isn't effort easier when you believe it is the best possible thing you can do?

Welcome to a brand-new episode of "Inside The Inspired"!

Join me for an engaging and thought-provoking podcast interview as I sit down with esteemed CEO, Laura Casselman to talk about her new book Trust Your Increments:  How Small, Consistent Steps Can Lead to Massive Success. Through her dynamic leadership journey, Laura has revolutionized the industry and paved the way for aspiring leaders. In this captivating episode, we delve into her insights on leadership, embracing challenges, and championing women in leadership roles in her new book Trust Your Increments. Get ready to be inspired as Laura shares her strategies for fostering leadership, confidence, and empowering female business trailblazers. Don't miss this opportunity to gain invaluable wisdom from one of today's most influential business leaders! Key Discussion Points:- Uncovering the importance of leadership and the unique qualities women and moms bring to leadership- Strategies for understanding your worth and negotiating your worth to earn more- Navigating challenges and turning obstacles into opportunities-  Building and maintaining confidence - Learning how to say no and build boundaries that support your business goals- Owning your happiness and taking control of your mindset to take care of yourself and support your businessTo connect with Laura and learn more about her book Trust Your Increments:  How  Small, Consistent Steps Can Lead to Massive Success, visit her website  LauraCasselman.com Thank you for listening and I hope you enjoy my conversation with Laura!  Let me know what one of the biggest takeaways was by connecting with me by visiting my website below.Let's connect!

Laura CasselmanTake a walk with me down Fascination Street as I get to know Laura Casselman. Laura had a dream at the age of 3 to become a Radio City Rockette. Fast forward 20 years, and a lot of hard work.... SHE DID IT! In this episode we chat about how this was even possible, and what she decided to do after her Rockette career ended. Laura is currently the CEO of JVZoo, co-founder of VidaStreet, and co-founder of Hestla Trades. She explains what all of these entities are, and what they do. Of course, we discuss Laura's new book Trust Your Increments: How Small, Consistent Steps Can Lead to Massive Success. Along the way, we discuss what it is like for women in the workforce, and what both men & women can do to help make things a little more equal in that area. Laura shares the absolute worst job-related story I have ever heard, and we talk about how to move on from something like that. She shares some tips on how to reframe some of life's jealous moments into some of life's inspirational ones. Plus, Laura explains the difference between 'Work / Life Balance" and "Work / Life Harmony".This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/4068452/advertisement

As the saying goes: "A woman who walks on purpose doesn't have to chase people or opportunities. Her light causes people and opportunities to chase after her."If you want to kickstart your career, sprint up the money ladder, or grow your own business, this episode is for you! In this episode, we've invited an extraordinary and inspiring entrepreneur. Her name's non-other than Laura Casselman. Laura is the CEO of JVZoo and co-founder of Vidastreet. She has nearly two decades of experience in growing sales and revenue, improving customer service, and aggressively controlling expenses in competitive markets. Companies under her direction have landed on the Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Companies in America four times and increased revenue from $100M to over $2B. Laura is the recipient of Stevie Awards for both Executive and Woman of the Year, a CEO World Award for Female CEO of the Year, and a Pillar World Award for Employer's Diversity Achievement of the Year. She has been published in major publications such as Inc. Magazine, Forbes, and Entrepreneur. In this episode, Laura will be sharing: 1) Her advice for entrepreneurs who are having a slow start to the year 2) Her secrets on how you can get paid what you're worth 3) The 15 incremental steps to take control of your life and find success without losing who you are Learn more about Laura: Website: https://lauracasselman.com/home/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-casselman/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thelauracasselman/ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theraygacyshow/message

Today Gina welcomes Laura Castleman, CEO of JV Zoo, a company that Instantly connect your business with millions of paying customers and the top performing affiliates. She discusses her new best-selling book ‘Trust Your Increments'  and the challenges of being a woman in business. She shares her experiences of systemic sexism in the boardroom and the struggle to gain recognition in male-dominated industries. Her book offers a guide for the next generation of business leaders to achieve their goals with incremental, applicable steps without losing their soul. Laura and Gina also talk about why to decide your own definition of success, working to stop comparing yourself to others you don't really know, how life-changing it is to work on wowing yourself instead of others, teaching your children how to be happy set priorities, that happy employees perform better, and why knowing when to say no is a strong launching point to reaching your goals. Find out more about Laura and JVZoo Get her new book that was just put on the shelves this month, right here Level up with Sales Gravy & Sales Gravy University More about Gina Engagement Expert – Speaker – Sales Trainer – Entrepreneur – Improv Comic Gina is a Master Sales Trainer for Jeb Blount's Sales Gravy who combines street smarts and improv comedy skills with her experience in the corporate and entrepreneurial worlds, which sets her apart from her competition.  “Sass without too much crass” is how Gina Trimarco describes herself. A high energy entrepreneur, engager, speaker, trainer, improv comedienne and podcast producer, Gina credits most of her success on her upbringing by her Italian mobster dad and German immigrant mother. Prior to joining Sales Gravy, Gina founded and operated Carolina Improv Company, an improv comedy school and theater, in addition to Pivot10 Results, a sales training company. Thanks to this podcast, Gina was able to “stalk” her business role model Jeb Blount and convince him to hire her … and sponsor this podcast!