Podcast appearances and mentions of Karl Popper

We're back with another On the Journey episode! We had a fascinating conversation with Living Joyfully Network member Ari Lambie. Ari is a mom of three young children and she spoke with us about her journey. We talked about the philosophy of learning, the fallibilism of humans, creativity, children’s social development as well as their capability, and a lot more. It was a really rich conversation and we hope you find it helpful! Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube. THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE We invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network, a warm and welcoming online community of like-hearted parents. It's a non-judgmental space where you can steep in these unconventional ideas around parenting, relationships, and learning, and explore what they might look like day-to-day in your uniquely wonderful family. We offer a free month trial so you can see if it's a good fit for you. Click here to join us. Sign up to our mailing list on Substack to receive our email newsletters as well as new articles about learning, parenting, and so much more! Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about exploring unschooling and navigating relationships. EPISODE TRANSCRIPT ANNA: Hello everyone, I’m Anna Brown with Living Joyfully, and today I’m joined by my co-host Erika Ellis and Pam Larcchia, as well as our special guest today, Ari Lambie. Hello to you all. Before we get started, I just want to mention the Living Joyfully Network. It’s a lovely place where you can find support at any stage of your journey, and I feel so lucky to get to hang out with so many amazing people from all over the world. If you’d like to join us, we’ll put the link in show notes, and you can also go to our website livingjoyfully.ca, and there’s a link right on the home page. I am so excited that Ari is here with us today. She is one of those amazing members of the Network I was just mentioning, and it’s been so fun getting to know her and her family. She loves to dive into all the nuances, and that is my favorite, so I’m very excited. Ari, just to get us started, can you tell us a little bit about you and your family and what everyone’s interested in right now? ARI: Sure. Well, thanks so much for having me. I’m really grateful to be here. I am Ari, and I’m part of a family of five. We live in Portland, Oregon. My husband, Joaquin, is a critical care doctor, so he spends a lot of time taking care of people and solving challenging problems, but he’s also really fun. He brings a lot of light energy to the house. He likes to cook, which I love. I mean, I don’t love cooking, so I love that he cooks. He also likes to garden and play sports and come up with challenging ideas and concepts that are away from the norm, which is our favorite thing to talk about. We’ve been together for 20 years, and we just love talking about the ideas he comes up with, which makes me think hard and come back with either a new way of thinking or challenging him with a new idea. So, that’s what we spend a lot of time doing when we have time to ourselves. My nine-year-old daughter likes to come in on those conversations sometimes. She really likes figuring out the world, talking about it. She likes to read. One of her interests is unusual animals, particularly marine animals. She’s taught me a ton about all these animals I’ve never heard of. She also likes to bake and do some crafty things. She likes to watch Minecraft videos and hang with friends. She spends a lot of time with her friends. My seven-year-old is just this fantastic person of expression. She loves to draw. She loves to listen to music. She’s teaching herself how to play some music. She loves stories and is really good at telling stories. And she expresses herself with her body, too. She’s really athletic, and she gives the biggest, best hugs that you’ll ever feel. My five-year-old, she’s really into pretend play. We play a lot of games together. She loves to be a pet in a pet store, and I come and have to buy her because she’s the most special pet in the store. Or we’ll play that we’re both shape-shifting dragons, and we have to defend against the other dragons. So that’s kind of her jam. She also likes to cook, and she’s really into numbers right now. She’s always figuring out how they go together, how they count up. So that’s been fun to play with her, too. We all like to move. We’re all pretty physical. One of our favorite games is tag. When we go to the park, we will almost inevitably end up playing some form of freeze tag. We’ve invented lots of different games of freeze tag. Me, I like to move outdoors. Hiking is probably one of my favorite hobbies right now. I also like to journal, and craft, and do art here and there. I spend most of my time hanging out with my kids and figuring out life. I’m loving it. It’s so nice. PAM: It’s so great to hear about everybody. I feel like we say this every time, but it’s just so fun to hear the different kinds of expressions of each person, yet as you’re listening, you can see how they weave together. Like you were even saying, oh she likes to join in cooking. This one likes to join in on conversations. There’s so many pieces. What I always love is just how it’s a beautiful expression of the idea of a family of individuals. How we can all be living together and being ourselves. Like you said, you’re very busy with parenting and figuring all those pieces out, and also you have the things that you enjoy doing, and that you notice you enjoy doing, and bringing those where they weave in to all the different pieces. So, I just, I love unschooling families. ERIKA: I love that too, and yeah, it’s just making me think about, people are different, and how when we have these different individuals in our families, how we learn from each other, and I think initially when I went into parenting, I was thinking they’ll be a lot like me, and they’ll just learn from me kind of thing. I didn’t realize quite how much interconnected learning there would be, just because we’re all so different. I didn’t realize how different they could be, and I think, each child you add is just a whole new layer of learning for everyone in the family. So, I love that for sure. PAM: I think for me, that’s been one of the big shifts, was recognizing the individuals, right? As a family, we’re going to do this, and as a family, we’re going to do that, and then recognizing that legitimately doesn’t work for some of us, and that was kind of an eye-opening moment. Okay, so the next question. We are very interested to hear a bit more about how you discovered unschooling, and what ideas and people have influenced you so far along the way, because, you know, the journey keeps going, doesn’t it? ARI: Yeah, I don’t think it’ll ever end. So, my interest in unschooling started about four years ago, when I read a book by a physicist named David Deutsch. He talked about a lot of physics concepts that are beyond me, but he also talks about this philosophy or understanding of knowledge, and how knowledge grows, and it really shook up my understanding, but made it clearer to me what I believed, it made it make more sense. And he draws a lot on a 20th century philosopher, Karl Popper, who coined the term, the bucket mind theory, I guess it is. So, thinking about the mind as a bucket, where you pour knowledge in, which is wrong, but it’s how a lot of us think about how knowledge is passed from one person to another. It’s just this receiving process, where someone tells you information, and you receive it, but Deutsch and Popper challenge this and say, learning is actually a creative process. And it happens when we have a conflict in our mind, two things that are incompatible, as simple as a desire. I want this, and I don’t have it yet, or I want to understand this, and I don’t yet, and then what we do in our mind is we come up with ideas that can reconcile the conflict, or solve the conflict, and we use our knowledge to criticize all the ideas we come up with. A lot of this is subconscious, but we’re criticizing our ideas, and picking the one that is the best explanation, and then we try it out, and then we see how the world responds, and we learn more information. This idea just made so much sense to me. They apply it to a larger scale, how humans as a species gain knowledge, and how science advances, but it also applies to the individual, so that really got me thinking. I realized that school is so much based on the bucket theory of pouring knowledge in, and it doesn’t really allow for as much of this creative trying, or see your ideas are as valid as anybody’s, let’s hear more about them, so that was a big knock against school for me. Deutsch also talks about the fallibilism of humans, that we’re just, most of our ideas are wrong. We don’t know anything for sure, and school sends the message, at least I got the message in school, that we’re telling you information, this is how it is, and it’s not going to change, we’re the authority here. I think that’s a real disservice, because the truth is that knowledge is always changing, the truth is, these are our best explanations right now, but in the future, we’ll probably prove most of this wrong. And so I think it’s dangerous to tell kids, this is how it is, don’t think that it could be different So, you combine these ideas of creativity, that learning is about creativity, and that our ideas are always coming up with better explanations, replacing things, and it shows the big problem with ever forcing a person to think a certain way, or to do a certain thing, because even when you think you’re telling somebody to do something because it’s in their best interest, you’re probably wrong. We just don’t know enough about the world, or about that particular person, and then you’re also taking away their ability to come up with their own ideas, and test them out. That’s how they’re going to learn about their interfacing with the world, and how they want to be, and the best understanding that they can come to. You stunt human progress, because you’re limiting ideas, new ideas for us to test out. Those were all big epiphanies for me, this new way of thinking, and I was like okay, so we should avoid forcing people as much as possible. It changed my view on society really. But I still wasn’t sure that it could apply to children. I had a five-year-old, a three-year-old, and a baby at the time, and I was telling them what to do a lot, and so I was like how do you apply this to, does this even apply to children. So, I did some research, and I was like yes, people are doing this. Kids are full humans, they can be seen as creative knowledge growers as much as anybody, in fact they’re more creative, because they haven’t learned to criticize as much. I found John Holt, I found Peter Gray, I found you all, I found the term unschooling, and I was like wow, this is possible. So, I talked with the family, presented it to my oldest, who was in kindergarten at the time, and our life was not as interesting as it was before they started preschool and kindergarten, I was not feeling, I don’t know, not as full myself, schlepping them places, and just dealing with the, let’s get to places on time energy. My oldest was starting to get a little bored with her experience in kindergarten, and she was all for staying home and continuing to play, so that’s when we started. ANNA: All right, see, this is exciting though, because I think it’s so interesting, that idea that he was talking about, and that you were looking into that, how it really does systematically shut down that creative mind, that critical thinking mind. What a disservice, it really is. That’s why it’s so hard for me when, and I know it feels to people like such a radical concept, but I just think, oh my gosh, how does it not make sense, you can see it happening, and I think it’s just so fascinating. I love that this idea was related to adults. And still I think for many people it’s that resistance, but can it be for kids? I see that with so many interesting people that are putting interesting ideas out in the world, and so often are not applying to children, and I just think, whoa, you’re really missing the boat, one, because kids have so much to teach us, and they bring such creativity to things, but I just think, wow, you are missing that the ideas definitely apply to kids. That was very interesting, thank you. PAM: The part that really bubbled up for me, that connected, because I feel like that’s something that I learned so strongly at school, that still gets in my way, so yeah, maybe it might be partly personality-based, but the idea of having the right answer first before acting. That is something I learned watching my kids, but still, it’s so ingrained. I have to literally remember, and which is why I talk pretty often, and I don’t know if we’ve shared it yet, the Baby Steps episode from the Living Joyfully Podcast, but Baby Steps have become a mantra for me to remind myself to think, just as you were describing, what’s my best interpretation or thought or idea about this thing that I am feeling a push with? And go try it, and see what I learned, because I’ll learn more by trying it, more that I can take back, rather than just intellectually trying to solve it completely to the end, before I ever actually take it out in the world and see what it looks like. So, I’ve spent all that time trying to figure it out, versus experimenting. I think maybe it looks like this, boom, go try it, learn some more, come back and, ooh, I’m going to tweak it a little bit more from what I learned, how things unfolded in that moment, and I’m going to take that idea out into the world and test it, that just makes so much sense. It is how I saw, even though my kids were in school for a handful of years before they came home, but yeah, that period was just, like, releasing the crud, right. The crud that they had been absorbing, so their own kind of de-schooling, but mistakes still were not yet this huge, horrible thing to them. They didn't even see them as mistakes, they just said, oh, that didn’t work as I expected, let me bring that information, tweak it, and try it a little bit differently next time, or two minutes from now when I want to keep pushing down this path. For me to recognize that mistakes aren’t literally bad, they’re just more learning, they’re just more context to the situation that I’m pulling in, And that, to me, that’s where the creativity lies, because the more little bits of information I have, or if we think about learning as a web, the more little connections I’ve got, the more creative I can be, because I have more pieces to play with, to bring together. It reminds me, you were talking about the discussions you and your husband love to have about very interesting things, it’s like, oh, let’s pull it apart this way, what if we look at it this way, what if we go way over here, and what would that look like, let’s go try it, or even if it’s a mind experiment. It’s just so fun and creative, and that’s what learning is, versus the, oh my gosh, here’s the bucket, take the fire hose, all the stuff you’re supposed to memorize and implement, because it’s the right way. Anyway, yes, so fun. ERIKA: I feel like I’m going to be thinking about some of these for a while, it’s very interesting, and kind of a unique path to get to unschooling. I don’t know if I’ve heard this exact story before, which is really fun. It was making me think, that idea of, you’re probably wrong, it could be a really good one to kind of play around with, because that’s so not what we learned growing up. It was, there’s one answer, that’s what the fact is. Then I was thinking back, and I remember in school, learning in science or something, we would learn something that people used to believe, like spontaneous generation, or something, where now we think how could they have been so clueless? I remember having the thought at that time, so what about now, don’t you think people in the future are going to be like, how could they have been so clueless back then? So, I had that thought, but then you don’t really have a chance to play around with that. Everything is taught as facts now, and I just remember being, like, how will we know which ones of these are completely wrong, that we’re learning right now? And so it is really interesting, and I think maybe approaching my kids with the idea that I’m probably wrong about what I think I know about whatever it is, I think that could be helpful. It might also make it more challenging to know what to say sometimes. I think I grew up in that environment of, you listen to the person, and they know what’s true, and that’s it. It feels super expansive to kind of shift that. ARI: Yeah, I love all that. I think the way we try to come at our kids is not with that authority of, we know what’s best, but we have some ideas. We have stories that we’ve experienced, and we try to look at our kids. Are they interested in hearing from us about this topic? And when you were talking, Pam, I was thinking about how the internal versus external processor, how maybe you go try things out, and that’s how you test ideas and criticize them and come up with better ones. A lot of people like to process them against the knowledge they have in their head or maybe go read about stuff. I love how you all talk about these different kinds of processing. Some people want to talk to other people. The problem with the mindset that we learn in school is that talking to another person means asking an authority for the answer when it could mean let’s bounce some ideas around, like, what do you think of my ideas? Tell me your ideas. Let’s come up with what’s the best one to try, you know? PAM: Yeah, or cheating, right? Then don’t talk to them about it. It does very much say you have to learn it all, and you have to regurgitate it this way. Just imagine external processors. You can’t talk to the teacher. You can’t talk to the other students in the classroom, and do you have a lot of time for processing outside of the school hours? That was something that surprised me when my kids first came home, because we went from very scheduled and busy and stuff, right, and I thought, oh, well, we’re not going to school anymore. We have all this time to do other things, but then to realize that, they’re like, no, thank you. No, thank you. They spend so much more time just processing and engaging in what they were interested in, much more than I was kind of expecting. I thought, oh, I’m going to have to keep them busy, and that too is personality-based. Some people like to, but that’s the difference. Even when we went to, say, the Science Center, seeing the difference between how they moved through exhibits and just the whole environment versus how the school kids in the exhibit right beside us were moving through it. They had no control, no agency over that pace, and they didn’t even get to choose what they were trying to process because they had the little worksheet that said, at this exhibit, when you do X, what happens. There was no time then to be creative with what is actually catching your attention. What would you like to focus on versus, what somebody else, authority, is telling you. These are the important bits that you need to be picking out of that, right? ANNA: Right, which I think makes you question things too, if you’re picking up different things than what the authority is picking up. I think a piece of my journey that’s related to this is, just kind of toying with the whole subjective reality piece, which I think was really the foundation for my understanding of how different people are. I do a lot of internal thinking about all the things, and that was really it for me. Oh, things that feel like a fact, we are experiencing differently. So there was this nuance to the fact. The fact is that it’s 40 degrees outside. I’m cold, someone else is hot. Okay, so we have a fact, but we have how we’re interacting with that fact. A dramatic example of one nation’s terrorist is another nation’s hero. There’s a fact of what happened, but the interpretation of the fact is so subjective, and so it was just this idea of, wow, we are experiencing the very same things very differently because we’re all so different. That just really changed so many things about the way I related to my kids, related to the people in my life. Then we’ve just built on that as we’ve talked about relationships, but I think it’s all related. And I think school really stifles that understanding because it’s trying to put everything in a very neat box. And again, I think it can make kids kind of doubt themselves too, because they’re seeing different things that are just as important, but that aren’t being highlighted on the worksheet. ERIKA: I think the younger kids, especially, like, when you’re describing being able to talk things through and that everyone’s ideas have value. I feel like it gets more like that when you get into college and beyond where people actually want to talk and professors want to hash things out. I mean, not everyone, but some. But younger kids, you’re not ready for it. You know, you need me to dump all this information into your bucket because you don’t know anything yet. And so I think that’s so interesting that if we question that, kids have so many ideas and are so open to that. ARI: Simply the idea that they might know what they want. They’re having this subjective experience and they have unique wants. But no, we want to take them to this class and this activity and they shouldn’t be watching this TV. There’s just this idea that we know better what they want. PAM: Right. We don’t trust. Like you said, we just can’t know. We can’t. And I think that’s why when we talk so often about this de-schooling phase of the journey, how so much of it we recognize quickly enough is our work to do. Because we are questioning some of these more basic ideas and then playing with them and seeing how they unfold. Here’s the school’s conventional ideas and here’s, for lack of a better phrase, unschooling’s unconventional ideas. And it’s not about just taking those on wholesale as your new set of rules to follow, et cetera. Because then you don’t get that richness. You don’t get that understanding. You’re not playing around with them to see how they make sense for you. But to take this, like you were saying, that makes sense to me. Does this apply to children? And then looking to your children and playing around with some of those ideas and then seeing how they actually unfold is how you learn how capable kids really are and how they can have an idea of subjectively what they want this experience to be. Notice that it’s different from the experience we were kind of hoping they were going to have. But letting it play out and seeing, oh, look how super valuable that was for them, for who they are as that unique human being versus, yeah, sure, I could have said, oh, no, but do it this way, but do it this way. And they would have taken that in, but they would have taken it as my interpretation. And then, yes, you get into all the, oh, does that mean I’m wrong? Does that mean I can’t think through this properly? I should be thinking about it and seeing and being interested in what they think, et cetera. So there’s all that piece that comes along when they didn’t get to play around with the one thing that they were super interested in about it all. ERIKA: The next question we had is how you have shared on the network about how trust has been harder to find related to your children’s social development more than physical or intellectual development. I was hoping you could share a little bit about that journey and what has helped you in that area. ARI: Yeah, it’s been really interesting to watch in myself how I have no qualms about the kids climbing up structures and maybe taking a tumble, playing sports and making mistakes. I see that as part of their physical development. And with intellectual, academic stuff, it was pretty easy for me to make the paradigm shift of if they follow their interests and their problem solving, they’re going to be able to lead their way here. But when it came to social stuff, the moment my kid said something mean on the playground and I’m worried what the other kid is going to think, I immediately tense up and rush to intervene. Even if my kids like making a suggestion for a game to a stranger on the playground, I feel myself, oh no, what if, I don’t know if she asked it in the right way. What if the other kid says no and I’m so untrusting of their social exploration, it’s been really interesting. And so with all of your help, I’ve been exploring why that is and where I can go with it. I think that the social stuff has always been really hard for me, or the hardest part for me. And so, in a way, I wish I had more help with it. And so I want to help my kids. And this is how I know how to help is to jump in and tell them what to do. I also think that in our society, and I’ve noticed it, in particular in the homeschool spheres, there’s this real desire for everyone to play nice. I think even families keep their kids out of school to avoid bullying and terrible behavior, which is legitimate. But then it makes these expectations in the play spaces of, we don’t accept certain behaviors. And so we have less tolerance of their developmental journey in this social stuff. They’re supposed to know how to act now, which I think is really interesting. And so I feel that social pressure. And then the third piece, I think, is that I feel like my impact on the world, my desire to bring certain energy, certain positivity to the world is intertwined with how my kids act, how my kids are in the world. And so if they do something socially that I don’t like, if they do something that might hurt someone, or behave in a way that is not how I would carry myself, then I think that’s a problem, because I am too connected. So there are those three pieces that I’ve tried to work through. I think the first one, as far as me wanting to intervene, because social stuff is hard for me, I’ve unpacked as like, would little Ari have wanted more instructions, more judgment, telling me how to act? Or would I have wanted curiosity and more questions like, what’s going on for you? Compassion, trying to understand what’s going on. And an acknowledgement that we don’t know the right way, there’s no right way to act, right? Language like, this is not okay, or we don’t do that. That doesn’t fit in my sphere anymore. It’s more about, what was this experience? And do you want to process it with me? That’s the energy I would like to bring to my kids. It’s still a struggle. I get triggered all the time. But I try to think back on what would have helped me and looking into my kids eyes, what is going to be helpful for them now? Is it judgment? Is it instruction? Or is it this openness and acknowledgement that you’re on a journey and you don’t have to get it right now. First of all, there is no right, but also, it’s just a long learning process. And then with the social expectations, I’ve tried to surround myself with people who are interested in trusting their kids more. And I found some beautiful people. And that’s been helpful. I acknowledge that we don’t want our kids to be hurt. So we still want to talk to our kids about and inform them if somebody else is being impacted by their behavior. I try to just have a lot of conversations without judgment around that. And I think helping our kids through difficult social situations by being okay. Helping our kids know that hurt is going to happen and that I’m here for you and what do we want to do about it? Instead of mom should have prevented that. I think there’s just so much more nuance to their social development than kids should have these instructions of how to treat other people. Because social interactions are really complicated. And then, my biggest aha, I think, has been untangling my impact from my kids’ impact. I think there’s a story that I have. And I think a lot of people believe that our kids are part of our way of making the world a better place. We’re raising our kids to be good people so that the world can be a better place. And the moment, this statement came into my head that my children are not my agents to make the world a better place. It’s like, whoa, that’s me. That’s about my actions. And they are full people. And I am here to support them in becoming who they are. That has been a really helpful aha moment for me. ANNA: Yeah, that one’s huge. And I think that is interesting, because I think we do often put things on children that are really ours to carry. It is okay for me to say I want to be this change agent myself, but this idea that our kids can do that is super interesting. But something when you were talking earlier to just the idea of, we tend to focus so intently on behaviors that we really do miss those nuances of needs that are happening underneath of that. And so when we’re solely focused on, even just the labeling of bullying behavior, it’s like, oh, there’s so much underneath of that. Now, granted, in a school environment, they don’t have the tools or the time or the people that can work with that. So, I totally get wanting to get kids out of an environment like that that doesn’t feel safe. But when we have engaged parents with kids, we’re able to dig under that to see, oh, is this actually not a good environment? Have we not eaten? Is there something else going on? We can look at all these pieces. And when we’re having that kind of conversation with our kids, they’re actually learning about their own triggers, like, okay, I don’t do well in large crowds, or I need to eat before we do something, or I can only last two hours. That’s so much more productive for everyone, for the family and the group as a whole. But for the individual to have the space to learn about themselves in that way, when they’re young, is so valuable. I also feel for you because I’ve been there feeling that like, oh, that’s not what I would say. That’s not how I would have handled that. And I love just being able to help myself, find that compassion for the person and really see them and have really seen so many people just kind of melt under that and just feel really held. And have a real learning opportunity of what was happening for them in that moment. There were just so many interesting things about that. PAM: So many. I mean, it really is the piece, maybe I’m reiterating again, but that piece of how much they’re learning about themselves, having the space to process that, spaces in that doesn’t mean literally leaving them alone, because that’s what we feel we’re supposed to do or anything. We have the conversations and they’re like, I don’t want you to come jumping in if you see, I want to try this, this and this. But you’ve made that plan beforehand. This is an experiment that you’re running. This is how you’re trying and how you’re going to learn more about all the pieces. Because like you were saying, there’s just so much context to every moment. Maybe one park day, everything goes fine, there are no big blow ups or anything. And, the next one, there’s clashes. And to be able to chat more about the context of those moments. And if you don’t have as much of a chatter, we’re still observing. I think that was one of the things too, so often was seeing that, like you talked about finding a group of engaged parents, Ari. And I think that makes a huge difference because so often it was the parents all off in one area and then the kids just off on their own. And I was often one of the only parents who would hang out with the kids. They’re fun. But because we saw what was going on, we could have meaningful conversations after about it. When they did this, how are you feeling? Or we have enough information and context to have meaningful conversations to process through which they can learn. I was really hungry or I was frustrated because like three interactions ago, something happened that I was stewing about that came with me. So my cup was almost full. And this one little thing which I could have moved through 90 percent of the time just kind of filled me up and I exploded because of that. Those are all such valuable pieces to learn about ourselves. And for them to learn about us, like moving forward that they can bring that you can then prep for it. Like you were saying, eating before you go, noticing the time and maybe even having like a code word for when it’s time. There were times when I’m like, we’ll totally just blame this all on me or whatever. Like I’ll come up and say, oh, we have to go, we have to go. And we’ll have prearranged it before that, that they’re going to want to go at this point. Or if we see something happen, but then I am able to just pull them out of it. We are just learning so much every time we just try something out and see it takes us right back to where you started. I try something out and see how it unfolds and what do we learn from it? And yes, it applies here too. But yeah, socially, that can be a hard place to take these ideas or a more challenging place to take these ideas. Because there are so many social roles. And like you said, you kind of have to find the people who are also willing to engage with social situations in the same kind of way. ERIKA: It is so interesting. I think it’s just an area that triggers us, because of our own experiences and how you’re describing that social life was hard for you. Then that’s so triggering. I have the same experience with my kids. I don’t want them to lose their friends. I want them to be accepted and I want them to not be rejected. And there are these very kind of almost scary feelings that can come up for me. It feels very urgent that this go well. And I just hope that they say the right thing. It’s a panicky feeling that can come up for me. But just like everything else, there’s no one right way, which you mentioned, which I think is so huge. That doesn’t even seem possibly true at the beginning. But then it’s like, well, of course, there’s not one right way to behave socially. And that it requires learning like anything else in life. And so just being open to it, they’re going to try things and see how it turns out. And that’s just how humans learn. And that’s okay. That’s safe. It's been really interesting to sit with the reality of that. My oldest does a lot of processing of social things with me. That has been very enjoyable to have things occur and him to notice things he didn’t the first time, after our discussion. So he’ll be like, so and so is really making me mad right now, he’s furious. And I’m like, oh, my gosh, what’s going on? But then he’ll bring things up. I think he probably didn’t sleep well, you know, just the context pieces or we don’t know. Maybe I could provide information. His mom’s been out of town all week or just different things. There are things that go on with people, maybe it’s hormones. And so we’ve talked about hormones and maybe it’s all these different things. And so just kind of giving everyone more space, I guess, to make mistakes socially and that to be like, and we’re still okay. And we can make repairs. It’s such a different feeling and story than I had when I was growing up. I feel like the validation I got from my mom was kind of like, that’s a mean person. It wasn’t about, I wonder what’s going on with them. It was more, no one should talk to you like that. They must be a mean person kind of feeling. Maybe she didn’t use those words, but that was what I internalized about it. So, yeah, I totally appreciate that this area is so hard sometimes. I really enjoy hearing you process about it and just opening up to, there’s no one right way, even here. ANNA: Yeah. Something you said too, that I think a lot of us deal with is we take our childhood experiences and I mean, of course, because they’re a part of us, right? And so they become these triggers in these situations with our kids. But I think it’s so important to remember how different the environment is for our kids. You are there to have those conversations and those nuanced pieces. And it is so different. And almost the stakes, while they still feel high, I know what you’re saying, Erika, they are lower. In the sense of my experience of school was just me having to go to this place and figure it all out on my own. I had a close relationship with my mom, but she didn’t know anything about school or the politics of school or what was happening at school. And so I didn’t even bring that to her. I think it’s so different when we’re with our kids more in this weaving in and out of our lives day to day, where they just have that space to talk about their feelings and what’s happening with it. And even if they’re not kids that share every little bit, there’s just some different nuances there related to how we support our kids. So it’s always important for me to remember, that was my experience. And it was so hard because I didn’t have the support. But I guess that’s what I liked about what you said, too, Ari, asking what would I have wanted? Would I really have wanted somebody to jump in and tell me what to do? Or would I have wanted this nonjudgmental space with somebody to help me figure it out for myself? I thought that was really interesting. ARI: I think it’s one of the most rewarding parts of parenting in this way that our kids come to us to process. Like you were describing, Erika, when they just see a moment and they know that it’s always an opportunity to process with mom or anybody here. It’s just a beautifully different environment. PAM: It just reminds me of, I always remember the drive home from Girl Guides meetings. That was always a big processing time. But what stood out for me often was just like you were saying, Erika. It’s like, oh, so-and-so seemed like really out of sorts today or whatever, whatever. And she would be explaining to me, yeah, because X, because Y. Where I feel this defensive mama bear come up. But I got to the space where I could just recognize that in me. Doesn’t make it wrong either, right? Nothing, it’s not wrong, wrong. It’s just recognizing that experience. And then when I just put a little sentence out there, I get the whole context and the understanding. And I was like, oh, yeah. That’s the human being I want to be. ANNA: Whoa, right? It’s not getting defensive. Being able to see other people’s experience. And also, just be able to make that repair if it's needed. Or be open to repair if something’s happened to us. I think it’s a big difference. And it’s a learning process, right? It’s not perfect for any of us at any age. And so this expectation that kids are going to be perfect doesn’t make sense, but it’s creating that environment where that’s possible. And I feel like even, Ari, some of the stuff you’ve talked about on the network, you’ve seen changes in them as they’ve had this freedom. Especially your oldest to really be understood in some of the ways that she was approaching situations. So I think that was really cool. ARI: Absolutely. ANNA: Well, thank you so much. This was a lot of fun and I just really, really enjoyed it. And we hope everybody enjoyed our conversation, maybe had a little aha moment or picked up on some ideas to consider for your own personal journey. And of course, if you enjoy these conversations and want to come hang out with us, we’d love to have you join us at the Living Joyfully Network. It is really such an amazing group of people connecting and having thoughtful conversations about all the things that we encounter in life, our own and our kids and all the things. So we invite you to check it out and see if it fits with our free month offer. And you’ll find the link in the show notes or you can go to livingjoyfully.ca and the link is on the homepage. But thank you so much again for joining us. It was just really great to hang out with you all. ARI: Thank you for having me. PAM: Thank you, Ari. ERIKA: Thank you so much, Ari.

The 13 letters attributed to Plato remain a source of intense scholarly debate, with some considered clear forgeries. In Plato and the Tyrant, James Romm accepts five letters as genuine, including the detailed Seventh Letter, which defends Plato's actions in Syracuse. Critics like Karl Popper viewed the letters and the Republic as evidence that Plato was an enemy of the "open society." While Plato may have been naive about practical politics, he consistently argued that a society's best hope was a "dream team" of a tyrant and a wise lawgiver. Ultimately, Plato used these writings to spin the narrative of his political failures. (8/8)

Niptech Podcast en Live au CAH à Lausanne le 30.06 avec l'auteur OLIVIER CLERC https://boutique.cah.ch/products/niptech-presente-au-dela-des-4-accords-tolteques-avec-olivier-clerc NEWS Google IO 2026 I/O '26 Recap: Everything You Need to Know https://youtu.be/tfx2CjqtCUI?si=oeDStHv9aocCrM_7 Introducing Gemini Omni https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/models-and-research/gemini-models/gemini-omni/ Gemini Spark Your 24/7 personal AI agent. https://gemini.google/overview/agent/spark/ Google Pics https://workspace.google.com/products/pics/ A new era for AI Search https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/search/search-io-2026/ Google Antigravity @ I/O 2026 https://www.antigravity.google/blog/google-io-2026 'Ask YouTube' brings AI-powered conversational search to video, adds Gemini Omni to Shorts https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/19/ask-youtube-brings-ai-powered-conversational-search-to-video-adds-gemini-omni-to-shorts/ Intelligent eyewear is coming this fall https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/platforms/android/android-xr-io-2026/Apple Apple's AirPods with cameras for AI are apparently close to production https://www.theverge.com/tech/926376/apple-airpods-cameras-ai-production Apple plans to make iOS 27 a Choose Your Own Adventure of AI models https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/05/apple-plans-to-make-ios-27-a-choose-your-own-adventure-of-ai-models/ Apple serait en discussion avec Intel, big if true https://www.wsj.com/tech/apple-intel-have-reached-preliminary-chip-making-agreement-69eb9370 John Ternus to become Apple CEO as of 01.09.2026 https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/04/tim-cook-to-become-apple-executive-chairman-john-ternus-to-become-apple-ceo/ Rebellion against AI ? Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt booed after AI remarks at Arizona commencement https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/18/eric-schmidt-ai-university-commencement-speech-booed The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/the-american-rebellion-against-ai-is-gaining-steam-94b72529?mod=e2tw Inspiration#EVENT :: Niptech Explore - Olivier Clerc 30.06 à Lausanne https://boutique.cah.ch/products/niptech-presente-au-dela-des-4-accords-tolteques-avec-olivier-clerc #TV :: Legends https://www.imdb.com/title/tt33265765/ #BOOK :: La Société ouverte et ses ennemis par Karl Popper https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Soci%C3%A9t%C3%A9_ouverte_et_ses_ennemis #PODCAST :: Krishna Rao - Anthropic's CFO on Compute, Scaling to $30B ARR, and the Returns to Frontier Intelligence - [Invest Like the Best, EP.472] https://open.spotify.com/episode/5aqjRClzztuVmXEdGz281O #QUOTE :: "When you're in your head, you're dead" Tony Robbins Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

Ad hoc saves and immunizing stratagems are phrases Karl Popper used to describe moves humans make when we try to protect our theories from refutation. We all do this every day in one way or another.But immunizing stratagems hurts theories in that this move makes our ideas overall less convincing to other people. Marxism and psychoanalysis are the classic areas where Popper saw true believers bend over backward to save these theories from refutation from the real world. This was the main topic of The Myth of the Closed Mind by Ray Scott Percival, who we interviewed a few episodes ago. So when ideas come into contact with human minds, theories or memes that move us closer to truth have a survival advantage. So as flawed as we are, humans—all humans—cannot help but seek truth, fallibly of course. Bruce reads a lot from Ray's book on this episode, especially from chapter 4, “Ideologies as Shapeshifters.” Please consider ordering Ray's excellent book, which is also available on Audible. https://amzn.to/4tF1UXx

POUR COMMANDER MON LIVRE :https://www.editions-larousse.fr/livre/la-philosophie-cest-pour-vous-aussi-9782036070325/POUR COMMANDER MA BANDE DESSINÉE PHILORAMA : https://www.editions-larousse.fr/livre/philorama-9782036082434/Disponible aussi dans toutes les bonnes librairies !On croit souvent que la science repose sur la vérification. Karl Popper répond : non. La science repose au contraire sur la réfutation. Que voulait-il dire par là ? C'est ce que nous allons tenter de comprendre dans cet épisode.---Envie d'aller plus loin ? Rejoignez-moi sur Patreon pour accéder à tout mon contenu supplémentaire.

Is modern real estate appraisal grounded in science?  Or does it still rely on untested assumptions? In 2026, the profession stands at a critical crossroads.  This is between data-driven analysis and what can only be described as appraisal superstition.  Appraisers routinely produce precise value conclusion.  But, many of those conclusions remain difficult to test, replicate, or falsify. At its core, credible real estate appraisal should rest on epistemology—verifiable, evidence-based reasoning supported by market data, statistical analysis, and transparent methodology. However, in everyday practice, much of the appraisal process still relies heavily on heuristics, or rules of thumb.  These are proximity, subdivision similarity, and customary adjustment ranges. These shortcuts can be useful, but when left untested, they drift into unfalsifiable belief. This is where the concept of superstition becomes relevant. Drawing from the philosophy of Karl Popper, any conclusion that cannot be challenged or disproven falls outside the realm of science. In real estate appraisal, this often appears in unsupported adjustments, intuitive comparable selection, and narrative-based reconciliation. The solution is not to eliminate professional judgment, but to discipline it. Appraisers must increasingly adopt statistical methods, probabilistic thinking, and transparent documentation to ensure their conclusions meet modern standards of credibility. As appraisal technology, AI review systems, and regulatory scrutiny evolve, unsupported reasoning will become more visible—and less defensible. Ultimately, the future of real estate appraisal depends on a simple principle:  If a value conclusion cannot be tested, it cannot be trusted.

Dieses Gespräch mit der Philosophin Dina Emunds bietet eine umfassende Einführung in das denkerische System Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegels. Im Mittelpunkt steht die Dialektik, die als fortlaufender Prozess der Entwicklung verstanden wird, bei dem bestehende Positionen kritisch hinterfragt, aber in ihren wertvollen Kernbeständen aufgehoben werden. Die Diskussion beleuchtet Hegels Freiheitsbegriff im Spannungsfeld zwischen individuellen Rechten und dem staatlichen Allgemeinwohl sowie seinen tiefgreifenden Einfluss auf Denker wie Karl Marx. Besonders hervorgehoben wird Hegels Überzeugung von der Geschichtlichkeit aller menschlichen Erzeugnisse, von der Kunst bis zur Philosophie. Abschließend reflektiert der Beitrag die Relevanz seiner Anerkennungstheorie für moderne zwischenmenschliche Beziehungen und mahnt zugleich eine kritische Distanz zu seinen zeitgebundenen Vorurteilen an.Hegel betrachtet das Verhältnis von individueller Freiheit und Staat nicht als einen Gegensatz, sondern als eine notwendige Einheit, in der die Freiheit erst ihre wahre Wirklichkeit erlangt. Seine Rechtsphilosophie baut auf dem Gedanken auf, dass eine rein abstrakte oder isolierte Freiheit hohl und bedeutungslos bleibt.Die folgenden Punkte verdeutlichen sein Verständnis dieses Verhältnisses:Freiheit durch Intersubjektivität: Ein Individuum kann nach Hegel niemals in Isolation (etwa auf einer einsamen Insel) wirklich frei sein, da Freiheit zwingend auf der gegenseitigen Anerkennung durch andere Selbstbewusstseine beruht. Wahre Freiheit existiert nur in sozialen Beziehungen, in denen man als freies Wesen gilt.Der Staat als Ermöglichungsstruktur: Entgegen einem rein liberalen Verständnis sieht Hegel den Staat nicht als Unterdrückungsapparat oder notwendiges Übel, das die Freiheit einschränkt. Vielmehr ist der Staat das „Regelwerk“, das Freiheit überhaupt erst möglich macht – vergleichbar mit Spielregeln, die ein Fußballspiel erst ermöglichen. Das Gesetz ist für Hegel kein Hindernis, sondern die Vollendung des freien Willens.Konkrete Freiheit und Sittlichkeit: Hegel unterscheidet zwischen subjektiver (individueller) und objektiver Freiheit. Im Staat findet eine Versöhnung statt: Das Interesse des Einzelnen und das Allgemeininteresse (das Gemeinwohl) werden in Einklang gebracht. Diese Einheit nennt Hegel Sittlichkeit, welche in den Institutionen der Familie, der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft und des Staates institutionalisiert ist.Die bürgerliche Gesellschaft als Spannungsfeld: Die „bürgerliche Gesellschaft“ ist die Sphäre, in der Individuen ihre privaten Bedürfnisse verfolgen. Dieser Bereich ist jedoch von Widersprüchen geprägt, wie der Entstehung von Reichtum und gleichzeitiger Armut („Pöbel“). Der Staat muss hier als vermittelnde Instanz eingreifen, um diese selbstzerstörerischen Tendenzen aufzuheben und das Individuum in das Allgemeinwohl einzubetten.Höchste Pflicht des Bürgers: Da der Staat für Hegel die „Wirklichkeit der sittlichen Idee“ ist, betrachtet er es als die höchste Pflicht der Individuen, Mitglieder des Staates zu sein. Nur innerhalb des Staates kann der Mensch zur „Freiheit und Wahrheit“ erhoben werden.Der Staat als Vernunftprozess: Hegel beschreibt den Staat fast gottgleich als den „Gang Gottes in der Welt“. Damit meint er den historischen Prozess der Selbstverwirklichung des Geistes, bei dem die Vernunft schrittweise in Form von Institutionen Wirklichkeit wird. Der Staat repräsentiert die vernünftige Ordnung, in der die Willkür des Einzelnen zugunsten einer höheren, allgemeinen Freiheit aufgehoben ist.Kritiker wie Karl Popper warfen Hegel vor, mit dieser Vergöttlichung des Staates totalitäre Tendenzen legitimiert zu haben. Hegel-Experten betonen jedoch, dass es ihm primär um die Idee des vernünftigen Staates ging, in dem die individuellen Freiheiten gerade durch ihre Einbettung in das Ganze geschützt werden.

Dieses Gespräch mit der Philosophin Dina Emunds bietet eine umfassende Einführung in das denkerische System Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegels. Im Mittelpunkt steht die Dialektik, die als fortlaufender Prozess der Entwicklung verstanden wird, bei dem bestehende Positionen kritisch hinterfragt, aber in ihren wertvollen Kernbeständen aufgehoben werden. Die Diskussion beleuchtet Hegels Freiheitsbegriff im Spannungsfeld zwischen individuellen Rechten und dem staatlichen Allgemeinwohl sowie seinen tiefgreifenden Einfluss auf Denker wie Karl Marx. Besonders hervorgehoben wird Hegels Überzeugung von der Geschichtlichkeit aller menschlichen Erzeugnisse, von der Kunst bis zur Philosophie. Abschließend reflektiert der Beitrag die Relevanz seiner Anerkennungstheorie für moderne zwischenmenschliche Beziehungen und mahnt zugleich eine kritische Distanz zu seinen zeitgebundenen Vorurteilen an.Hegel betrachtet das Verhältnis von individueller Freiheit und Staat nicht als einen Gegensatz, sondern als eine notwendige Einheit, in der die Freiheit erst ihre wahre Wirklichkeit erlangt. Seine Rechtsphilosophie baut auf dem Gedanken auf, dass eine rein abstrakte oder isolierte Freiheit hohl und bedeutungslos bleibt.Die folgenden Punkte verdeutlichen sein Verständnis dieses Verhältnisses:Freiheit durch Intersubjektivität: Ein Individuum kann nach Hegel niemals in Isolation (etwa auf einer einsamen Insel) wirklich frei sein, da Freiheit zwingend auf der gegenseitigen Anerkennung durch andere Selbstbewusstseine beruht. Wahre Freiheit existiert nur in sozialen Beziehungen, in denen man als freies Wesen gilt.Der Staat als Ermöglichungsstruktur: Entgegen einem rein liberalen Verständnis sieht Hegel den Staat nicht als Unterdrückungsapparat oder notwendiges Übel, das die Freiheit einschränkt. Vielmehr ist der Staat das „Regelwerk“, das Freiheit überhaupt erst möglich macht – vergleichbar mit Spielregeln, die ein Fußballspiel erst ermöglichen. Das Gesetz ist für Hegel kein Hindernis, sondern die Vollendung des freien Willens.Konkrete Freiheit und Sittlichkeit: Hegel unterscheidet zwischen subjektiver (individueller) und objektiver Freiheit. Im Staat findet eine Versöhnung statt: Das Interesse des Einzelnen und das Allgemeininteresse (das Gemeinwohl) werden in Einklang gebracht. Diese Einheit nennt Hegel Sittlichkeit, welche in den Institutionen der Familie, der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft und des Staates institutionalisiert ist.Die bürgerliche Gesellschaft als Spannungsfeld: Die „bürgerliche Gesellschaft“ ist die Sphäre, in der Individuen ihre privaten Bedürfnisse verfolgen. Dieser Bereich ist jedoch von Widersprüchen geprägt, wie der Entstehung von Reichtum und gleichzeitiger Armut („Pöbel“). Der Staat muss hier als vermittelnde Instanz eingreifen, um diese selbstzerstörerischen Tendenzen aufzuheben und das Individuum in das Allgemeinwohl einzubetten.Höchste Pflicht des Bürgers: Da der Staat für Hegel die „Wirklichkeit der sittlichen Idee“ ist, betrachtet er es als die höchste Pflicht der Individuen, Mitglieder des Staates zu sein. Nur innerhalb des Staates kann der Mensch zur „Freiheit und Wahrheit“ erhoben werden.Der Staat als Vernunftprozess: Hegel beschreibt den Staat fast gottgleich als den „Gang Gottes in der Welt“. Damit meint er den historischen Prozess der Selbstverwirklichung des Geistes, bei dem die Vernunft schrittweise in Form von Institutionen Wirklichkeit wird. Der Staat repräsentiert die vernünftige Ordnung, in der die Willkür des Einzelnen zugunsten einer höheren, allgemeinen Freiheit aufgehoben ist.Kritiker wie Karl Popper warfen Hegel vor, mit dieser Vergöttlichung des Staates totalitäre Tendenzen legitimiert zu haben. Hegel-Experten betonen jedoch, dass es ihm primär um die Idee des vernünftigen Staates ging, in dem die individuellen Freiheiten gerade durch ihre Einbettung in das Ganze geschützt werden.

Che cos'è una verità scientifica? Possiamo fidarci di ciò che non viene mai messo in discussione? In questa puntata di Cháos, Carlotta e Vincenzo ci portano dalla Vienna degli Asburgo alla Roma di oggi passando per Karl Popper, intrecciando filosofia e arte tra verità e falsificabilità, fino alla mostra a Palazzo Cipolla. Interviene il dottor Stefano Zuffi, storico dell'arte.

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 19:22:00 +0200https://lokr-room.blogs.audiorella.com/129-entlastungspraemieb55fd148-ca13-486c-818d-6cc05bdd5e5b

Tolerantie is een van de belangrijkste voorwaarden voor democratie. Maar ze is niet zonder prijs. Want is intolerantie tolereren niet zagen aan de poten van de democratie zelf?Dat is de tolerantie-paradox die Karl Popper formuleerde en die we steeds vaker werkelijkheid zien worden. Democratisch verkozen leiders die de spelregels van de democratie gebruiken om haar van binnenuit uit te hollen. Hoe bescherm je tolerantie tegen haar vijanden? Maar ook: hoe kan tolerantie juist helpen om politieke vijandschap om te zetten in democratische vriendschap?Over deze vragen rond tolerantie en ons democratisch samenleven spreken we met burgemeester Femke Halsema, rechtsfilosoof en hoogleraar Bastiaan Rijpkema, moraalfilosoof en hoogleraar Patrick Loobuyck, filosoof en Trouw-recensent Marthe Kerkwijk en tolerantie-onderzoeker Bart Schreuders. Aanleiding is het boek Tolerantiedenkers: inspiratie voor democratisch samenleven dat in de Maand van de Filosofie verschijnt, waaraan onder anderen Rijpkema, Loobuyck en Kerkwijk een bijdrage leverden.Programmamaker: Dirk StruikModerator: Yoeri AlbrechtZie het privacybeleid op https://art19.com/privacy en de privacyverklaring van Californië op https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

阿媽食晚飯嗰陣問我：「呢個黃碧嬌後臺真係咁硬咩？」如果執法機關真係要告佢，一定可以找到罪名；偽造文書，一定告到。但佢暫時未事，唔係因為有後臺，而係因為香港已經冇能力自我處理呢啲「病變」。香港以前唔係咁。當時冇邊個勢力擁有全面管治權，英國、本地華商、專業界、北京、國際商業幾股力量互相盯住，A 同 B 勾結就會損害 C，C 就會出嚟反對。呢種動態平衡唔係制度設計嘅結果，而係冇人夠大嘅結果。但亦都正正係冇人夠大，每一股勢力都要接受規矩、接受監察、接受某個程度嘅制衡。香港嘅廉潔同法治，就喺呢個「冇人可以話晒事」嘅空間裡面長出嚟。九七之後，北京將香港重新定位為執行政治任務嘅地方。嗰啲所謂「全面管治權」嘅主張，拆散咗原本嘅制衡。結果係：中央話佢有權，但中央喺遠方；本地每一個代理人都可以講「我冇權，所以冇責任」。專業人士冇責任，區議員冇責任，政府部門冇責任，全部推晒上去。而上面呢？上面話「部門首長問責制」；但問責向上流動，配合權力向上流動，制度上每一個人都可以合理地話唔關我事。黃碧嬌嘅情況，就係喺呢個真空入面生長出嚟嘅。佢拎授權票——授權票三個字裡面本身就有一個「權」字——但佢冇履行授權背後應有嘅責任。授權唔等於「你想點就點」，每一個授權都應該有明確範圍。阿媽叫你幫佢揀晚餐喺邊度食，唔等於你可以嗌成檯食唔完嘅嘢再開五支 83 年嘅 Château Lafite 。呢個唔係法律問題，係道德問題；而當規模放大到業主立案法團同 3.3 億工程合約嘅時候，道德問題就變成公共災難。所以答返阿媽個問題：點解黃碧嬌仲覺得自己無錯？根本係成個免疫系統都壞咗。Karl Popper 講過：民主唔係揀最好嘅人做啱嘅事。相反，真正嘅民主係一個制度，喺入面就算你揀咗最仆街嘅人，佢都做唔到壞事。 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit leesimon.substack.com/subscribe

This week we had the pleasure of interviewing Michael Golding, M.D, who is a psychiatric physician. He is also heavily influenced by the philosophical ideas of David Deutsch and Karl Popper. At one point he calls himself a proponent of homeschooling and Taking Children Seriously. Together we wrestle with what critical rationalism and the universal explainer hypothesis suggests about mental illness and human creativity.Steven Peck's "My Madness"⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X: @mgoldingmd

Bir zamanlar Türkiye'de de çok meşhur olan Karl Popper, 2. Dünya Savaşı'nın en netameli yıllarında “Açık Toplum ve Düşmanları” eserini yazmış ve zamanla bu eser en çok okunan kitaplar arasına girmiştir. Popper'ın bu kitabı yazmasındaki amaç, Almanya, İtalya ve Sovyetlerdeki rejimlerin ne denli tahripkar olduğunu göstermek ve bu rejimlerin nasıl birer kapalı topluma dönüştüklerini göstermekti. Dünyayı bir felakete sürükleyen Nazizm ve Faşizmin dışında onlardan biraz daha uzak bir coğrafyada ete kemiğe bürünen bir sosyal mühendislik çabası olan Stalinizmi eleştirmiş ve her birinin dünyayı nasıl bir çıkmaza sürüklediği üzerine düşünmemizi teşvik etmiştir.

Jesús Huerta de Soto traces the Austrian school's intellectual roots from the Spanish scholastics to Rothbard, making the case that anarcho-capitalism is the natural endpoint of the classical liberal tradition.The Ludwig von Mises Memorial Lecture, sponsored by Yousif Almoayyed.The Austrian Economics Research Conference is the international, interdisciplinary meeting of the Austrian school, bringing together leading scholars doing research in this vibrant and influential intellectual tradition.Full Text version of the Lecture (Submitted by Prof. Huerta de Soto):Thank you very much to the Mises Institute and Joe Salerno for his kind introduction as well as for inviting me to deliver this “Ludwig von Mises Memorial Lecture” to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of Murray N. Rothbard's birthday. It is the second time I visit the Mises Institute to deliver this most important lecture: The first one was almost thirty years ago, back in April 1997, when I delivered a lecture on “The Scholastic Roots of the Austrian School”. In this second opportunity I am very happy to have been able to accept Joe's invitation and to come with a very well represented retinue of ten of my colleagues and doctoral students. All of them are teaching as professors or making their research at our more than twenty-year-old Doctoral and Master Programs in Austrian Economics at King Juan Carlos University back in Madrid, and which is the only one officially approved and with full validity inside the whole European Union. You have already had the opportunity to hear from each one of them a detailed description of the so-called “Madrid Austrian Research Hub” and of all the activities we are developing every year, including the 54 Doctoral Theses on Austrian Economics that have been read up to now in our program. And here you have also copies of the English version of our main books published by Routledge, Edward Elgar, and by the Macmillan Austrian Series edited by my Madrid Colleagues, the German professor Philipp Bagus and the Canadian professor Dave Howden. And you will have the unique opportunity to buy these books that, as you know, have a hefty price of almost 100 pounds each one, at the almost “stolen property” and symbolic price of 5 dollars per copy, thanks to the most generous help of the Spanish Jesús Huerta de Soto Foundation that is helping to finance our participation in this important event.And now what I will do in the next forty minutes is to try to summarize not only my main contributions, but also “The Libertarian Vision of the Scientific and Moral Truth” as we see it from our Austrian School Hub in Madrid. And I will do it by focusing on a series of fundamental points.Precisely, the youngest of all sciences, Economics is the one that has provided Humanity with the most important scientific contributionThe first one is that Economics, being the last science to arrive, or as Mises said, "the youngest of all sciences," has nevertheless achieved the milestone of providing Humanity with the most important scientific contribution. For the first time, and thanks to Economic Science, human beings have discovered and understood that voluntary social cooperation, free from all institutional and systematic external coercion, generates a spontaneous order that cannot be designed nor organized by anyone, and that peacefully and without limits drives the prosperity and expansion of Humankind.This transcendental message of Economic Science, on the one hand, resolves the impossible antithesis of attempting to apply, within the realm of interactions carried out by human beings endowed with free will, the manipulative approach of external entities that human beings have no choice but to use, supported by technology and the natural sciences, in order to dominate the subject of the material world. And on the other hand, this is a radically revolutionary message: for the first time, it has been scientifically demonstrated that states, in any of their forms, are neither necessary nor viable; that Society, understood as a process of voluntary human interactions, does not need anyone to govern it, because it regulates and organizes itself spontaneously; and that the attempt to coordinate Society on the basis of social engineering and state coercive commands is impossible, doomed to failure, and gives rise to all kinds of distortions, social conflicts and violence, that continually hinder and block human progress.Economic science is generalized into a complete Theory of Liberty that makes it possible to reinterpret History and promote the expansion of civilizationThe second point is that Economics has been generalized into a whole Theory of Liberty, understood as the most essential attribute and requirement of human nature. Liberty means that all human actions are carried out voluntarily, based on the principle of non-aggression, and free of external coercion or violence imposed and organized from above by the always minority group of human beings who, under whatever title, exercise any kind of political power.Moreover, Economics dismantles and turns upside down the erroneous and biased account of Thomas Hobbes and his followers. Neither was the "state of nature" a terrifying situation, nor did a supposed "social contract" ever exist or was it necessary to create and maintain a State that would impose order and guarantee peace. What happened was precisely the opposite: natural evolution consisted, above all, in the spontaneous discovery of the great advantages provided by voluntary exchanges and peaceful trade. Systematic and generalized violence, war, and terror arose only with the appearance of States, as coercive institutions composed of the most antisocial and violent human beings, who wanted (and still want) to live at the expense of plundering those citizens who earn their living by working and trading peacefully with each other (Oppenheimer, 1926).Thus, Economics, demonstrates that what Étienne de La Boétie named "voluntary servitude", is an anti-human aberration to which human beings have been subjected for centuries. And that it is not necessary to continue with the resigned habit of obeying the State; nor do governments enjoy an aura of prestige (but are literally "stripped" of any attribute of intellectual or moral superiority); nor is the caste—or “praetorian guard”—of intellectuals, “experts”, and acolytes that surround states and rulers to be regarded as untouchable; nor should we allow ourselves to be seduced and deceived by subsidies or perks, whether supposed or real, with which they seek to purchase the will and secure the loyalty of exploited human beings, so that they will consent, voluntarily and permanently, to their exploitation and servitude (De la Boétie, 1975).Economics is the Science developed by the Austrian School of Economics, which should in fact be known as the Spanish School, as it has its origins in the thinking of our scholastics of the Spanish Golden AgeThe third point is that Economic Science has reached its highest level of development thanks to the Austrian School of Economics. As you know, our school is based on the realism of its analytical assumptions, in the dynamic approach based on the entrepreneurial, creative, and coordinating capacity of every human being, and in the study of the spontaneous and self-regulated order of the social process of voluntary human interactions (Huerta de Soto, 2008). The institutional and multidisciplinary approach of the Austrian School is also very relevant. As a result of the spontaneous social process important institutions emerge which, in turn, make it possible and drive it forward: Law and property rights rooted in human nature and discovered and developed spontaneously outside the state; the family, a basic and essential institution, on which the expansion of Humanity is made possible and consolidated; moral principles, which act as a true "automatic pilot" for liberty and which human beings internalize and transmit from generation to generation, thanks to the family and other community or religious institutions; economic institutions, and in particular, money, which also evolves spontaneously outside the State, and which can and should be considered the social institution par excellence, since by overcoming the problems of barter, it enables the exponential multiplication of voluntary exchanges and human interactions, within which the rest of the social, linguistic, moral, legal, economic, and religious institutions are discovered, shaped, and perfected.Our fourth point is that the first theorists of the spontaneous order emerged in the field of law, led by the great jurists of classical Rome. They were the first ones to understand the organic and evolutionary nature of the social process, and so they became, without being aware of it, the first economists. Their tradition was kept alive throughout the Middle Ages thanks to the Catholic Church and, through thinkers such as Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint Antoninus of Florence, and Saint Bernardino of Siena, eventually came to influence the Spanish scholastics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries gathered around the University of Salamanca. As Rothbard demonstrated (Rothbard, 1976) these thinkers of the Spanish Golden Age should be considered the most immediate precedent of the Austrian School of Economics, which, precisely for this reason, should be called the Spanish School of Economics. And in fact, these Spanish scholastics were already able to articulate the following ten essential principles which constitute the theoretical foundation of the Austrian School:Firstly, the subjective theory of value developed by the Bishop of Segovia, Diego de Covarrubias, who as early as 1555 clearly explained that, although the objective nature of wheat is the same in Spain as in America, its price was higher in America because there human beings subjectively valued it much more highly; from this follows the correct relationship between prices and costs set out by Luis Sarabia de la Calle, in the sense that it is market prices that determine costs and not the other way around, as equilibrium theorists mistakenly believe; the Scholastics also realized that equilibrium models and prices lack realism and theoretical meaning because they presuppose a degree of knowledge “so complex that only God, and in no case human beings, could ever acquire it” (in latin “pretium iustum mathematicum licet soli Deo notum”), as already explained by the Jesuit cardinals Juan de Salas in 1617 and Juan de Lugo in 1643, more than three hundred years earlier than Hayek could conclude that “a science which assumes knowledge that can never be acquired is not a Science”; also the dynamic concept of competition is fundamental, understood as a process of rivalry among sellers based on the dynamic conception of market processes developed by Jerónimo Castillo de Bobadilla and Luis de Molina in 1589 and 1597, and that has nothing to do with the static model of "perfect competition" of equilibrium theorists; and also the important contributions of the Spanish Scholastics related with capital theory, business cycles, and the effects of fiduciary media generated by banks; so, particular emphasis should be placed on the rediscovery of the principle of time preference by Martín de Azpilcueta, following what Lessines had already stated in 1285; as well as on the fact that bankers commit mortal sin when they operate with fractional reserves, creating bank deposits as a form of virtual money (or chirographis pecuniarium, as Luis de Molina said in latin) that only exists in their accounting books and distorts the structure of relative prices, creating bubbles and deep economic crises that ultimately "bring everything crashing down," as Saravia de la Calle and Tomás de Mercado so vividly explained in the 16th Century; and in short, the Scholastic's idea that it is impossible to organize society through coercive commands due to lack of the information that would be required to give them coordinating content; as well as the discovery that inflation is a hidden and very harmful tax that arises from an act of tyranny, since it is neither known nor accepted by citizens, which would even justify the assassination of the King according to the theory of tyrannicide, a contribution originally made by the Castilian Comuneros eventually defeated by the tyrant King Charles V in 1521, and developed by Father Juan de Mariana almost a century later [in 1610].This entire line of proto-Austrian scholastic thought also spread throughout the Americas, especially in the newly founded universities of San Marcos in Lima and Mexico City in 1551 where brilliant disciples of these Scholastics, who had studied at the University of Salamanca itself, came to occupy prominent academic positions. Thus, for example, we should mention the cases of Bartolomé Frías de Albornoz in Mexico, and above all the great Juan de Matienzo, who became judge and president of the Royal Audiencia of Charcas and Lima from 1560 onwards (Popescu, 1997).Finally, the doctrine of our scholastics did spread even to North America two centuries later through the books of Juan de Mariana, who greatly influenced Thomas Jefferson and the founding fathers of the United States.However, the southern part of the continent ultimately proved unable to neutralize the wave of growing statism and centralization that first came with the arrivals of the Habsburgs in Spain, and which was intensified even further after the arrival of the Bourbons with Philip V at the beginning of the eighteenth century (Martínez Marina, 1820). How different and much more prosperous and libertarian might the historical evolution of Spain and Latin America have been, had the statist centralism of the Habsburgs and the Bourbons not prevailed, and had the far more libertarian, local, and decentralized traditional representative institutions of the kingdoms of Castile instead remained predominant—institutions that were dismantled, together with Europe's first libertarian revolution, beginning with the defeat of the Castilian Comuneros at Villalar on April 23, 1521 (Leonard Liggio, 2025).The most important and far-reaching contributions of economic scienceLet us now turn, in greater detail, to the most important contributions of Economics, as developed by the Austrian School.First, human cooperation takes place spontaneously, without the need for anyone to organize it coercively from outside. This is so because human beings are endowed with an entrepreneurial and creative capacity that continually drives them to discover the multiple opportunities for profit that arise in their environment. Each of these opportunities embodies a previous discoordination in human behavior that remains latent until it is discovered and overcome by the corresponding entrepreneurial act. This entrepreneurial act always arises from a creative tension and interpretation of events of the outside world that is essentially subjective and, therefore, cannot be reproduced by any artificial intelligence algorithm; in other words, the same objective events can be interpreted in multiple ways, even contradictory ones, without it being possible to postulate which is correct until the corresponding entrepreneurial process is completed in the form of a subjective profit. In any case, every entrepreneurial act involves, firstly, the creation of information that did not exist before (regarding the profit opportunity that arose from the previous discoordination that had gone unnoticed); secondly, the transmission of that knowledge (directly to the parties involved in the entrepreneurial act and indirectly through a series of institutions and signals such as market prices); and third and finally, the coordination of the previous maladjustments takes place when the parties involved learn motu proprio, that is, voluntarily and for their own benefit, to discipline their behavior according to the needs of others (for example, when they discover that they achieve their ends more effectively by specializing and trading peacefully the mutual results of their efforts). The discovery of the essence of this pure entrepreneurial act, with its elements of creation and transmission of information and the spontaneous coordination of the previous maladjustments continually generated by human coexistence, constitutes the most important contribution that Economic Science has provided to Humanity, and explains why the spontaneous process of voluntary social cooperation that drives the multiplication of human beings and the expansion of civilization does not require any statist system of institutional coercion.Another essential contribution of Economics is the concept of Dynamic Efficiency, understood as the process of unlimited expansion of human creativity and entrepreneurial coordination that arises only within a specific institutional framework of moral and legal norms. This framework is the one grounded on the ethical principle according to which every human being has a natural right to appropriate the results of his entrepreneurial creativity; that is, a property right over what one has created and which did not previously exist, which is the most obvious and important human right. For this reason, (dynamic) Efficiency and Morality and Justice (properly understood) cannot be separated one from the other; or, as we might say, they are two sides of the same coin in the sense that only Justice and Morality induce and generate efficiency; and at the same time, what is dynamically efficient in economic terms cannot be neither unjust nor immoral. All of which, on the other hand, demonstrates the integrated order that exists in the social universe, and highlights the three levels of research (theoretical, ethical, and historical) that complement and reinforce with each other and are essential in our search for truth (Huerta de Soto, 2000).Finally, another key contribution of Economic Science is to have demonstrated the impossibility of socialism, or better, the impossibility of statism, in the sense that it is impossible for the State to achieve and coordinate what it promises for the following four reasons:First, because of the enormous volume of information required for such coordination, which the State cannot acquire because it is dispersed in the minds of the eight billion human beings who participate and interact in the social process every day. Second, given the tacit and inarticulate character of this information (and therefore its inability to be transmitted in an objective manner). Third, because the information that is generated is not "given," nor is it static, but instead changes continuously as a result of human creativity, making it impossible to transmit today information that will only be created tomorrow, and which is precisely the information that the organs of State intervention and the so-called “experts” would need today in order to direct society to achieve their objectives tomorrow. And fourth, and above all, because the coercive nature of State commands blocks the entrepreneurial activity of creating the very information which the State organization itself would need in order to give its commands a coordinating content. In sum, the State is always and everywhere violence and coercion; coercion blocks the entrepreneurial act of creation, discovery, and adjustment of discoordinated human behavior, while at the same time preventing the creation of the information and the emergence of free market prices that make economic calculation and social coordination possible. For this reason, statism is not only unnecessary but is also scientifically impossible.The impact of these essential contributions of Economics on the course of social evolution has so far been very limitedAll of these scientific contributions have so far achieved only a very partial, imperfect, and limited impact on the inertia of a social and political reality that has for centuries been characterized by the coercive power of States and rulers, and by the more or less resigned servitude of the citizens. And despite the very limited nature of this impact to date, which at best has materialized in a series of naïve and "liberal" revolutions aimed, with as much arrogance as lack of success, toward the impossible objective of trying to separate and limit the powers of states and rulers through political constitutions and "liberal democracies" (Rothbard, 2009); Humanity has been propelled as never before in those places and historical moments where it has managed, despite everything, to at least partially free itself from the State and open up some of the new channels of liberty shown by the teachings of Economics. Beginning with the Industrial Revolution, which was but the first chapter of the never-completed "Revolution of Liberty" inspired by Economics. And although what has been achieved in terms of prosperity and standard of living by the now eight billion human beings seems relatively significant—and indeed it is—we cannot even conceive of the standard of living and population size that could be achieved if Humanity were able to take full advantage of and fully implement the teachings of Economic Science.We can be few and poor in a context of servitude and submission to the State, or many and wealthy in a context of liberty (Hayek, 1988, p. 133). The globe is practically empty of human beings (the Earth's current population would fit into an area equivalent to that of the state of Alaska, with a population density equal to that of Brussels). And we cannot even imagine the prosperity that could be achieved in a free market daily driven by eighty billion, or even eight hundred billion, human beings. Economics explains and demonstrates that the increasing prosperity of an ever-growing population of human beings never results from deliberate and coercive State plans, nor from the egalitarian income redistribution, nor from increases in public spending, nor from subsidies, debt, or inflation, but only arises from the free market of the capitalist system. This consists of the process of voluntary exchanges among all human beings who, endowed with an innate entrepreneurial and creative capacity, are able to detect and assess, through the system of free prices, the relative urgency and necessity of each good and service, overcoming the relative scarcity of each and satisfying, every day and in the best humanly possible way, the desires and needs of billions of consumers. Entrepreneurs who succeed in this never-ending process of profit-seeking accumulate significant resources, which, in turn, are saved and invested in capital goods and new technologies that make human beings increasingly productive, boosting their wages and standards of living; a virtuous process of continuously expanding prosperity and population growth that, if not coerced or hindered by the State, has no limits.Therefore, it is crucially important for the future of Humanity that it be able to take full and maximum advantage of the lessons and essential message in pursuit of human liberty that Economics provides. But this will only be possible if we are able to unmask and carefully analyze the powerful forces of the pseudoscientific and counterrevolutionary reaction that has been mobilized to prevent the advance of the theory of liberty derived from Economic Science. Despite their diverse origins, they all converge on the same objective: to attempt to justify and preserve State coercion at all costs under the appearance of scientific legitimacy. They are driven by the "fatal conceit" (Hayek, 1988) of many visionaries, thinkers, and supposed "experts" who believe themselves to be clever enough to correct the spontaneous market order, of course, using the violence and coercive power of the State. Together with a privileged caste of rulers, bureaucrats and acolytes, they continually manipulate a Humanity that is sadly accustomed to serving the State. For all of them, it is vital that statism be maintained and that the message of liberty provided by Economics never prevail.Next, we will list the main reactionary pseudoscientific currents that have infiltrated Economic Science like a lethal virus and constitute, in Hayek's terminology, "the counter-revolution of science" (Hayek, 1955).Pseudoscientific reactionary currents opposed to Economic Science. The role played as “useful innocents” by many libertarian economists of the counterrevolutionary mainstreamFirst, positivism and scientism as pseudoscience. By "scientism" we must understand the improper application of the methods of the natural sciences to the field of Economic Science. Thus, while the natural sciences study their object of research as something external, measurable, and quantifiable, Economics studies the implications of the voluntary actions of human beings. And given the essentially creative nature of human beings, the supposed empirical "evidence" has, at best, only a superficial, partial, and always historically contingent value. In Bastiat's words, of "what is seen" —or rather, what is believed to have been seen— but not "what is not seen" (Bastiat, 1995); and at worst, it always entails the assumption, that human beings are an object of research that can be manipulated as the matter of the external world studied by the natural sciences. This inevitably introduces the idea that to improve the world, the State and its rulers must use their coercive power to manipulate and change the things they believe they see in their historically contingent "empirical photos." But these "empirical photos" cannot capture the underlying dynamic essence of spontaneous social processes, let alone what is already happening spontaneously to solve and coordinate every problem. Therefore, it is not surprising that from the very first steps of Economic Science promoted by the Austrian School, its most violent opponents were the "socialists of the chair" gathered around the German Historical School, reinforced in France by the empiricists of the school of Saint-Simon, the insane Comte, and Durkheim, who sought to create a new and alternative pseudoscience of society. And their unhealthy positivist and ultra-empirical influence has persisted to the present day, first through American Institutionalism and later through the massive compilation of empirical data, for example, in the work of Wesley C. Mitchell or Henry Schultz, the latter, as shown by Professor Salerno, having gone on to exert a decisive influence on his assistant Milton Friedman and, through him, even on the Chicago School itself (Salerno, 2023).Secondly, the pseudoscience of neoclassical economics is characterized by its claim that only its own approach constitutes true “science,” that is, the approach based on the principles of equilibrium, maximization, and constancy. Moreover, in addition to the lack of realism of its assumptions, it adds the reductionism of a mathematical language that has developed in response to the needs and demands of the natural sciences, but which is alien to Economic Science because it does not allow for the subjective concept of time or entrepreneurial creativity. Neoclassical economists develop their pseudoscience based not on real human beings of flesh and blood, but on "ideal types" that are like "robotic penguins" who, even in their most sophisticated dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models are limited to moving and reacting to events and State coercion as if they were characters of a sort of economic video game ("videogame economics"). Yet neoclassical pseudoscience, despite its apparent and ever-increasing sophistication, is not capable of accounting for the immense complexity of the real world and rebels against the idea of spontaneous market order in two ways that are equally harmful to human liberty: on the one hand, by promoting the coercive "social engineering" of central banks, States, and governments to use "fine tuning" to force reality toward to the mathematical optimum of their models; and, on the other hand, by labeling as "market failures" everything they believe they observe in reality that does not coincide, in their empirical studies, with their ghostly models of “perfect” equilibrium and adjustment (Milei, 2023); failures that, according to them, refute the "benefits" of the spontaneous order of the market and human liberty, and justify their elimination as soon as possible by a coercive State authority. Note also how neoclassical pseudoscience needs, and feeds upon, the empirical work of the previous pseudoscience, positivism, in order to justify its conclusions against human liberty and in favor of State coercion, so that positivists and neoclassicists join hands and end up reinforcing each other in their reactionary agenda.Third, Keynesianism and macroeconomics as pseudoscience. The very “macro” approach already entails, inevitably, an obvious bias in favor of justifying State intervention, aggression, and coercion against the spontaneous order of the market and human liberty. As F. A. Hayek pointed out in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 1974 (Hayek, 1978), macroeconomists ignore everything they cannot measure, specifically truly relevant economic processes and theories. At the same time, they believe that certain aggregate concepts—which lack genuine economic meaning—possess a “real” existence, that permits to collect empirical information or evidence that can be manipulated and statistically treated. Once again, macroeconomic pseudoscience goes hand in hand with positivist pseudoscience, and the two reinforce with each other in their counterrevolutionary reaction. Furthermore, Keynesianism is particularly harmful: not only does it flatly deny the coordinating capacity of creative entrepreneurship and the spontaneous market order, but it also builds as an alternative explanation a whole model—of course—of equilibrium with permanent unemployment, to justify the coercive intervention of the State in the lives of human beings in the form of all kinds of fiscal and monetary manipulations. Moreover, the macroeconomic and Keynesian pseudoscience feeds upon, and is reinforced by, the pseudoscientific approach of the Neoclassical School, to the point that, the so-called "neoclassical Keynesian synthesis" became, throughout the twentieth century, the main reactionary movement inside Economics. Keynesians and macroeconomists thus become the champions of that intoxication with statism, manipulation, and political power which constitutes the framework, orchestrated by governments and central banks, to which we have, regrettably, become accustomed and in which we are forced to live. This context repeatedly destabilizes the spontaneous market order, generates serious financial and economic crises and social conflicts, and continually hampers the prosperity and advance of civilization.We have left the quasi-religious mysticism of Marxist pseudoscience for last, because Marxism was scientifically dead even before it was born: in fact, it emerged with—and was theoretically demolished by—the subjectivist revolution led by the Austrian School of Economics. From the beginning, the Austrian School's development of time preference and capital theory revealed the contradictions and grave scientific errors of Marxism, while at the same time exposing its pronounced character as an intellectual fraud (Böhm-Bawerk, 1949). This intellectual fraud was historically illustrated by the collapse of the Soviet Union, and of virtually all other communist countries, after many decades of unspeakable human suffering for a large part of the world's population, all of which was perfectly consistent with the theory on the impossibility of statism developed by the Austrian School beginning with the von Mises of 1920 (Mises, 1936), and which was the final nail that forever sealed the coffin of the corpse of Marxist pseudoscience (Huerta de Soto, 2010).Finally, in this context, we must mention the destructive role played by a number of distinguished economists who, although they defend liberty and the market economy, could be described as a kind of "useful innocents" in Mises' terminology (Mises, 1947). This is so because, even though they officially oppose rampant statism and defend liberty, by accepting—even if only partially—some of the postulates of the reactionary pseudoscientific currents we have described, they ultimately end up, often without intending to and much to their regret, providing additional impetus to the statist reaction within our discipline; for example, when they insist on advising States with proposals aimed at making them more efficient and at helping them do somewhat better things that they should not be doing at all. By way of illustration, we should include in this category of “useful innocents”, for example, thinkers as the Karl Popper of The Open Society and Its Enemies (Popper, 1966, p. 366), who came to admire the “scientific capacity” and even the “humanism” of Karl Marx, and who proposed a statist strategy of “piecemeal social engineering”; or George Stigler, when he claimed that only empirical evidence could determine which economic system, socialism or capitalism, might function (Stigler, 1975, pp. 1-13); and, more generally, the members of the Chicago School, led by Gary Becker and Milton Friedman. Becker when defending that only economics developed within the strict limits of equilibrium, constancy, and maximization, typical of the neoclassical pseudoscience, constitutes true "economic science." And even more serious could be considered the case of Milton Friedman, whose very sincere love of liberty and intense and popular media support for free markets stand in sharp contrast to his pseudoscientific approach based on the aggregate method of economics of Keynesian origin, on positivist empiricism, and on the full acceptance of the unrealism of assumptions. Only in this way it can be explained Friedman's litany of scientific errors which, much to his regret, have invariably ended up reinforcing statist interventionism, to the point that Hayek himself was forced to conclude that after Keynes's The General Theory, the book that has done the greatest harm to Economic Science has been Friedman's Essays in Positive Economics (Hayek, 1994, pp. 145).The failure of democracy and classical liberalism: the triumph of statismAs we see, many classical liberals and advocates of liberal democracy have also acted as "useful innocents." The fatal error of classical liberals lies in the failure to realize that their program is theoretically impossible, because it incorporates within itself the seeds of its own destruction, precisely to the extent that it considers necessary and accepts the existence of a State (even if it is "minimal") understood as the monopolistic agency of institutional coercion. Therefore, the great error of classical liberals is very basic: they believe in a program of political action and economic doctrine that aims to limit the power of the State, while at the same time accepting it and even considering state's existence necessary. However Economic Science has already shown that the State is unnecessary, that statism (even in its minimal form) is theoretically impossible, and that, given human nature, once the State exists, it is impossible to limit its power. On the other hand, liberal democracy is a concept as naïve as it is impossible. Mises already warned us that democracy could only function if all its participants accepted the classical liberal principles, which is impossible because democracy itself encourages and amplifies vote-buying and the partisan use of power. So, the inevitable conclusion is that "liberal democracy" is a contradiction in terms as absurd as speaking (following Anthony de Jasay) of a “square circle,” of “hot snow,” or of a “virgin prostitute” (A. de Jasay, 1990). And even Hayek considered democracy unworkable if it is understood as the exercise of absolute power by majorities (Kratos in classical Greek). It should therefore come as no surprise that democracy once and again tends to be a perverse system based on lying and buying votes with money stolen through taxation.The fact is that the State attracts like a magnet the worst passions and vices of human nature, for instance, when individuals try to obtain rents produced by others using the State's coercive power. Moreover, the combined effect of the privileged groups, the phenomena of governmental myopia and vote-buying, the megalomaniacal character of politicians, and the irresponsibility and blindness of bureaucracies generate a dangerous, unstable and explosive cocktail, continually shaken by social, economic, and political crises which, paradoxically, are always used by the political caste to justify further doses of intervention and statism that, instead of solving problems, further aggravate them. Statism therefore corrupts the entire social body and at the same time blocks the spontaneous and free market solutions of social and economic problems.In fact, the State has become the "idol" that almost everyone turns to and worships. Statolatry is the most serious and dangerous social disease of our time. We are educated to believe that all problems can and must be detected and solved by the State. Our destiny depends on the State, and the politicians who control it are expected to guarantee everything our well-being may require. Human beings remain immature and rebel against their own creative nature, which makes their future always uncertain. They demand a crystal ball that assures them not only knowing what will happen, but also that any problems that arise will be solved for them. This "infantilization" of the masses is encouraged by politicians, as it justifies their own existence and ensures their popularity, position of dominance, and capacity to control. In addition, a whole legion of intellectuals, so-called "experts," and social engineers join in this arrogant intoxication of power. Not even the Church and the most respectable religious denominations have been able to realize that statolatry today constitutes the principal threat to the free, moral, and responsible human being; that the State is a false idol of immense power, worshipped by all, and that does not allow Humanity to be free from its control or have moral or religious loyalties beyond those the state can dominate. Furthermore, it is kept hidden from the public that the state is the true source of social conflicts and evils, and "scapegoats" (such as "capitalism" or private property) are blamed for the problems, and they become the goal of the most serious condemnations, even from moral and religious leaders, almost none of whom have realized the deception or dared to denounce that statolatry is the main threat in the present century to religion, morality, and, therefore, to human civilization.Perhaps the main exception within the Church is included in the brilliant biography of Jesus of Nazareth written by Benedict XVI. That the State and political power constitute the institutional incarnation of the Antichrist should be obvious to anyone with a minimal knowledge of history who reads the former Pope's considerations on the most serious temptation that the Evil One can present to us (and I quote Ratzinger literally): "The tempter is not so crude as to propose to us directly the worship of the devil. He merely proposes that we opt for the rational solution, that we prefer a planned and organized world in which God may have a place as a private spiritual matter, but must not be allowed to interfere in our essential purposes. Soloviev attributes to the Antichrist a book entitled The Open Road to World Peace and Prosperity; it becomes the new Bible, and its core message is the worship of well-being and rational planning," by the state (Ratzinger, 2007). And so, we should not be surprised that, for example, the great author of The Lord of the Rings, J. R. Tolkien, whose Catholic anarchism I fully share, went so far as to say that he would arrest anyone for simply daring to pronounce the word "State." Because the State is, always and everywhere, a reality of violence and systematic coercion against the most intimate essence of the human being, which is his capacity to act freely, creatively, and spontaneously; and so, it is unavoidable to conclude that the State is essentially immoral and that statism constitutes the principal threat to humankind.A theological digression: the dismantling of statism as a logical necessity inseparable from the work of GodAnd almost without realizing it, we can go ahead with a theological digression on how dismantling the State is a logical and moral necessity inseparable from the work of God. I fully understand that referring to God in this conference may come as a shock to many of those present, but I would ask that even those who do not believe in God, at least for dialectical purposes, make an effort of imagination and, for the next few minutes, imagine that God does indeed exist.And what do we mean by God? We must understand God to be a Supreme Being, Creator out of love for all things. And the most important creature that God has created is precisely the human being: in His image and likeness. And if there is a point of connection between God and man, it is precisely in the creative entrepreneurial ability: the capacity to discover, to see, and to create new things, goals and actions. But now I am going to go one step further and attempt to demonstrate that God is not only the Supreme, loving Creator of all things, but that—moreover—God is libertarian.And what does it mean to say that God is libertarian? It means that God, the Lord of all the Universe, has absolute power over it, and yet He chooses not to use force, but always leaves his creatures free. To the point that He gives human beings the freedom to rebel against Him; even though, again and again, God forgives human beings and allows them to rise up and begin anew.God always lets the universe He has created, flow in a spontaneous manner ("laissez faire, laissez passer, le monde va de lui même" could be the motto of our libertarian God). And this despite the fact that human beings tempt God again and again and demand that He manifest His absolute power, that He give us clear and indisputable signs of His existence and supreme power in order for us to believe in Him. But of course, God does not accept our challenge. Why? Because love and liberty are inseparable, and a forced conversion, for example by an evident cataclysm, would be completely contrary to that liberty with which God has created human beings out of love.Moreover, the Kingdom of God is not of this world; Jesus himself says this to a fearful Roman state official, who was also in charge of judging him: "My kingdom is not of this world." Does this mean that there are two types of kingdoms? The kingdoms of this world or States, which would be legitimate at their own level (remember "render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's"), and the Kingdom of God, of ("render unto God the things that are God's"). That is the standard interpretation that has prevailed until now, but I think is completely wrong. The Kingdom of God—which is the exact opposite of the kingdoms or States of this world—never makes systematic use of violence and coercion: it is a Kingdom that has already come to us and, moreover, has been given to us freely, in an act of immense mercy and love (Deus caritas est). And just as the hateful institution of slavery came to an end, the Kingdom of God will also dismantle the kingdoms of this world, the states of this world, or as St. Paul said, of every principality, power, and glory (Ephesians 1:21-23), because God is libertarian and man is made in the image and likeness of God.Ludwig von Mises, in his book Interventionism, introduced the term "destructionism" to refer to the economic and social effects of statism. If Evil (represented by statist destructionism in Mises' terminology) were to prevail, the human race and civilization would have disappeared long ago. The fact that, despite everything and the immense power of seduction of statism over humankind, the process of social cooperation continues to unfold and even prosper in certain historical periods and geographical areas, is a clear manifestation that God does not abandon the world nor leave libertarians alone in their struggle against the Evil; and that Good, represented by liberty, the principle of non-aggression, the spontaneous order of the market, entrepreneurial creativity and coordination, and above all, moral principles, always with God's help, prevails and is capable of overcoming Evil, represented by the fatal conceit of the statist ideal and the destruction that it produces.And now I will finish with some thoughts on anarcho-capitalism as the only possible system of social cooperation truly compatible with human natureAnd now I will finish with some thoughts on anarcho-capitalism as the only possible system of social cooperation truly compatible with human nature. The most important intellectual and moral event that is taking place nowadays is the full fusion between Christianity and anarcho-capitalism. Because anarcho-capitalism is the only possible system of social cooperation that is truly compatible with human nature. Anarcho-capitalism is the purest representation of the spontaneous market order in which all services, including law, justice, and public order, are provided through a voluntary process of social cooperation. In this system, no area is closed to the drive of human creativity and entrepreneurial coordination; efficiency and justice in the resolution of problems are simultaneously enhanced, while the conflicts, inefficiencies, and discoordinations generated by the State are eradicated at their root.The progressive abolition of States and their gradual replacement by a dynamic network of private agencies different legal systems, and providing all kinds of prevention and defense services, constitutes the most important social transformation that will take place in the twenty first century. Without forgetting that exactly what prevents us from knowing with precision what the future without the state will look like, the creative nature of entrepreneurship, is what gives us the peace of mind of knowing that any problem will tend to be resolved and overcome, once the entrepreneurial effort and creativity of Humanity are devoted to its solution (Kirzner, 1985).Therefore, the revolution against the “Old Régime” carried out in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by the old classical liberals, today finds its natural continuation in the anarcho-capitalist revolution of the twenty-first century. The message of anarcho-capitalism is clearly revolutionary. Revolutionary in terms of its goal: the dismantling of the State and its replacement by a competitive market process consisting of a network of private agencies, associations, and organizations. And revolutionary in terms of its means, especially in the scientific, economic-social, and political fields:a) First, Scientific revolution, in the field of Economic Science, which becomes the general theory of spontaneous market order extended to all social areas. And by contrast and opposition, the theory and analysis of the effects of social discoordination generated by statism in any sphere in which it operates, as well as the study of the transition process from the State towards liberty.b) Second, an Economic and social revolution, as we cannot even imagine today the immense human achievements and discoveries that could be made in an entrepreneurial environment totally free from statism. Today, and despite continuous governmental harassment, an unknown civilization is already developing, with a degree of complexity that is beyond the reach and control of the state, and which will achieve unlimited expansion once it manages to completely rid itself of statism. And when human beings become more and more aware of the perverse nature of the State that restricts them, and of the immense possibilities that are frustrated each day when the State blocks the driving force of their entrepreneurial creativity, the social demand to reform and dismantle the State will multiply creating a future that is largely unknown to us but that will elevate human civilization to heights that we cannot even imagine today.c) And finally, a political revolution in which, although day-to-day political struggle is important, it should not be the top priority. It is true that the least interventionist alternatives must always be supported, in clear alliance with the efforts of classical liberals in their long term impossible democratic limitation of the State (including reforms such as those proposed by Hayek in the third volume of Law, Legislation, and Liberty). But the anarcho-capitalist does not stop at this task, for he knows that he can and must do much more. He knows that the ultimate goal is the total dismantling of the State, and this goal leads all his imagination and political action in everyday life. And here we cannot fail to mention the unprecedented impact of our disciple and follower of our Master Program in Austrian Economics in Madrid, the President of Argentina, Javier Milei, who has done more than anyone else before to disseminate the principles of the Austrian School and the anarcho-capitalist ideal. Principles that he never ceases to quote and explain and defend once and again in all his public appearances, from the United Nations to the Davos Forum; and in all his meetings with other Heads of State, universities, and parliaments, to whom he even gives copies of the most important Austrian works by Mises, Hayek and even myself, as he did, for example, with the two popes, Francis and Leo XIV, with the French President Macron, the Italian Prime Minister Meloni, and even with Elon Musk. For us, it is a great honor that Milei has, to a large extent, emerged from the Austrian School of Madrid and that he continually keeps drawing inspiration from us. This is, without a doubt, much more important than incremental political steps in the right direction—which should of course be welcomed—and that should never fall into a political pragmatism that could betray the ultimate goal of achieving the end of the State (Huerta de Soto, 2010).And all this with tireless enthusiasm in the search for scientific and moral truth, an attitude that, inspired by the immortal work of Miguel de Cervantes, we could describe as follows: "It matters not whether they be giants or windmills, when the plume of our helm is stirred by the winds of tenacity and faith." And always creating a future that, although it may seem distant today, may at any moment witness giant steps that will surprise even the most optimistic among us. History has entered into an accelerated process of change which, although it will never stop, will open a whole new chapter when humankind finally succeeds in ridding itself definitively of the State, reducing it to no more than a dark historical relic of tragic memory.Thank you very much.REFERENCESBASTIAT, Frédéric: Selected Essays on Political Economy, Foundation for Economic Education, New York 1995.DE LA BOÉTIE, Étienne: The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, Free Life Editions, Nueva York 1975.BÖHM-BAWERK, Eugen von: Karl Marx and the Close of His System, Augustus M. Kelley, Nueva York 1949."The Exploitation Theory," Capital and Interest, Vol. I: History and Critique of Interest Theories, Libertarian Press, South Holland 1959.HAYEK, Friedrich A. von: The Counter-Revolution of Science, Free Press, New York, 1955.Hayek on Hayek: An Autobiographical Dialogue (eds. Stephen Kresge and Leif Wenar), University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1994.Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. III: The Political Order of a Free People, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1979.The Fatal Conceit: the Errors of Socialism, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1988."The Pretence of Knowledge," in New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1978.HUERTA DE SOTO, Jesús: Socialism, Economic Calculation and Entrepreneurship, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham y Northampton 2010."A Hayekian Strategy to Implement Free Market Reforms," in Theory of Dynamic Efficiency, Routledge, Oxfordshire, 2010.Proyecto Docente, Chapter I: "Ciencia y Economía," Rey Juan Carlos University, Madrid 2000.The Austrian School: Market Order and Creative Entrepreneurship, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham y Northampton 2008.DE JASAY, Anthony: Market Socialism: A Scrutiny, published by the Institute of Economic Affairs, Occasional Paper no. 84, 1990.KIRZNER, Israel: "The Perils of Regulation: A Market Process Approach" in Discovery and the Capitalist Process, University of Chicago Press, 1985.LIGGIO, Leonard: "The Hispanic tradition of Liberty," published in Procesos de Mercado: Revista Europea de Economía Política, vol. XXII, nº 1, Summer 2025, pp. 403-420.MARTÍNEZ MARINA, Francisco: Teoría de las cortes o grandes juntas nacionales de los reinos de León y Castilla, Collado, 1820.MILEI, Javier: Capitalism, Socialism, and the Neoclassical Trap, in The Emergence of a Tradition: Essays in Honor of Jesús Huerta de Soto, Volume II (editors Howden, D., Bagus, P.), Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2023.MISES, Ludwig von: Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, Jonathan Cape, London 1936.Planned Chaos, Foundation for Economic Education, Irvington-on-Hudson 1947.OPPENHEIMER, Franz: The State, Vanguard Press, Nueva York 1926.POPESCU, Oreste: Studies in the History of Latin American Economic Thought, Routledge, London 1997.POPPER, Karl: The Open Society and its Enemies, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1966.RATZINGER, Joseph. Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration. Translated by Adrian J. Walker. Doubleday, New York, 2007.ROTHBARD, Murray N.: "New Light on the Prehistory of the Austrian School," in The Foundations of Modern Austrian Economics (editor Edwin G. Dolan), Sheed and Ward, Kansas City 1976, pp. 52–74.Anatomy of the State, Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn 2009.SALERNO, Joseph. "Milton Friedman's Views on Method and Money Reconsidered in Light of the Housing Bubble", in The Emergence of a Tradition: Essays in Honor of Jesús Huerta de Soto, Volume I, (editors Howden, D., Bagus, P.), Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2023.STIGLER, George: The Citizen and the State, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1975, pp. 1-13.

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El tercer episodio de la cuarta temporada de Pulsa el Botón llega con una conversación que tenía pendiente desde hace mucho tiempo: Javier Recuenco, experto en Complex Problem Solving (CPS) y fundador de Singular Solving, uno de los referentes más inclasificables y más interesantes del panorama intelectual en español.Y digo inclasificables con toda la intención, porque eso es precisamente lo que hace al CPS tan fascinante: no es una disciplina, no es consultoría, no es coaching: es una caja de herramientas cognitiva que se construye sobre la marcha, en función del problema que tienes delante. Y Javier lleva décadas haciendo exactamente eso.Arrancamos hablando de su trayectoria emprendedora, que no viene de vocación ni de herencia familiar, sino de pura decantación: de estar en el epicentro de la crisis de las 'punto com', ver quebrar una compañía desde dentro y darse cuenta de que necesitaba estar donde se toman las decisiones. Desde ahí, todo lo demás fue consecuencia natural.Después, nos metemos de lleno en el CPS: ¿qué diferencia un problema complicado de uno complejo?, ¿por qué la vivienda o las pensiones son problemas que podrían resolverse pero no se resuelven?, ¿qué papel juega el factor humano en todo esto y por qué la inteligencia artificial, de momento, no puede sustituir al pensamiento complejo?También hablamos de filosofía, de estoicismo, del relevo generacional en la empresa familiar, de por qué estamos viviendo dos tendencias opuestas al mismo tiempo (más incertidumbre y más dependencia de herramientas que piensan por nosotros) y de lo que Javier llama "el santuario humano": todo aquello que todavía las máquinas no saben hacer.Cerramos con una referencia al pingüino de Nietzsche, con tres libros imprescindibles y con un único hábito que Javier recomienda a quien le escuche: leer.Dale al play si quieres entender por qué navegar sin mapa es, hoy más que nunca, una habilidad crítica.Recursos mencionados por Javier Recuenco:

Bruce examines how effectively critical rationalism can ground the non-aggression principle (NAP)—the libertarian idea that, in some formulation, it is morally wrong to initiate violence.But does it really make sense to interpret all areas of law through this single principle? Might it be better replaced by an alternative, such as a principle of least coercion? And what, from a critical rationalist perspective, does coercion actually mean? Is it a theory with substantial moral content, or an easy-to-vary principle that ultimately collapses into “coercion is whatever I dislike”?And how might we test between these alternating views?Bonus: What did Karl Popper think of Thomas Szasz's theories?⁠⁠⁠⁠Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠

Un alcalde que ha preferido mantener su anonimato se ha puesto en contacto con Más de uno para tratar de resolver una inquietud que le atraviesa. Se presentó a las elecciones de su localidad para echar al alcalde anterior que era un ladrón de manual. El problema una vez que ha ganado es que se ha dado cuenta de que prometió varias cosas en campaña que no va a poder cumplir, entre ellas la construcción de una piscina olímpica cubierta y la actuación de Bad Bunny en las próximas fiestas del pueblo. A Carlos Rodríguez Braun esta situación le ha recordado a una conversación que presenció hace 30 años entre Mario Vargas Llosa y el filósofo austriaco Karl Popper.

POUR COMMANDER MA BANDE DESSINÉE PHILORAMA : Sur Amazon : https://amzn.to/4sVjMyxSur Fnac.com : https://tidd.ly/3NSSUyVChez Cultura : https://tidd.ly/4raBhcgDisponible aussi dans toutes les bonnes librairies à partir du 4 mars !Platon était anti-démocrate. Car, pour lui, la démocratie est un régime qui s'écarte de l'ordre universel. En quoi consiste cet ordre universel ? En quoi la démocratie s'en écarte-t-elle ? Et quelles leçons pouvons-nous tirer de la vision politique de Platon ? C'est ce que nous allons voir dans cet épisode.---Envie d'aller plus loin ? Rejoignez-moi sur Patreon pour accéder à tout mon contenu supplémentaire.

This week Bruce takes a deep dive into the epistemological ideas in Jonathan Rauch's book The Constitution of Knowledge. Rauch is a fan of Karl Popper and a former guest on this show. He makes the case that the creation of objective knowledge relies on institutions and norms as much individuals. All claims must be open to criticism and not based on authority. This applies not just to science but to journalism, law, and all areas where humans seek to fallibly move closer to truth. Bruce considers how these claims relate to critical rationalism, specifically Deutsch's conception of static vs dynamic societies. Does this provide another clue as to why we got stuck in static societies for so many millennia?⁠⁠Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠

Le paradoxe de la tolérance est un concept formulé par le philosophe Karl Popper en 1945 dans son ouvrage La Société ouverte et ses ennemis. Il pose une question dérangeante mais essentielle : une société totalement tolérante peut-elle survivre si elle tolère aussi l'intolérance ? La réponse de Popper est non.À première vue, la tolérance semble être une valeur absolue. Plus une société tolère d'opinions, de modes de vie et de croyances, plus elle paraît libre et ouverte. Mais Popper observe qu'une tolérance illimitée contient en elle-même une fragilité. Si une société accepte sans limite les mouvements, idéologies ou groupes qui prônent l'intolérance, alors ces derniers peuvent utiliser les libertés offertes pour détruire précisément ce cadre tolérant.C'est là le cœur du paradoxe : tolérer l'intolérance revient, à terme, à faire disparaître la tolérance elle-même.Popper ne parle pas d'interdire toute opinion choquante ou dérangeante. Il distingue clairement deux situations. Tant que les idées intolérantes restent dans le domaine du débat, de l'argumentation et de l'expression pacifique, elles peuvent et doivent être combattues par la discussion, la critique et la confrontation rationnelle. La liberté d'expression reste primordiale.Le problème apparaît lorsque ces mouvements refusent le dialogue, rejettent le principe même du débat rationnel et recourent à la violence, à l'intimidation ou à la propagande massive pour imposer leurs idées. À ce stade, selon Popper, une société tolérante a le droit — et même le devoir — de se défendre.Cela peut sembler contradictoire : comment défendre la tolérance en devenant intolérant envers certains ? Popper répond que ce n'est pas une véritable intolérance, mais un acte de légitime défense morale et politique. De la même façon qu'une société interdit le meurtre sans être “intolérante envers les meurtriers”, elle peut interdire des mouvements qui cherchent à abolir les libertés fondamentales.Un exemple historique éclaire ce paradoxe : les régimes totalitaires du XXe siècle ont souvent accédé au pouvoir en utilisant les mécanismes démocratiques. Ils ont profité de la liberté d'organisation, d'expression et de vote pour ensuite supprimer ces mêmes libertés une fois installés.Le paradoxe de la tolérance ne fournit pas une règle simple, mais un avertissement. Il rappelle que la tolérance n'est pas l'absence de limites, mais un équilibre fragile entre ouverture et protection.En résumé, Popper nous dit que pour préserver une société libre, il faut accepter une idée inconfortable : la tolérance a besoin de frontières. Sans elles, elle risque de s'autodétruire. Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

Comparing Kuhn and Popper on Quantum Theory: Here we go deeper into the differences between Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn's account of how science moves from one theory to another. David applies the theory set out in part 1 of this chapter to the specific case of quantum theory. Did social forces have a major impact on whether quantum theory was adopted as Kuhn would have it, or were rational factors like argument and experiment crucial in dictating how science broadly, physics and the community of physicists took on a new "counter-cultural" idea?

Le rasoir d'Alder est une règle de bon sens… qui coupe net les débats stériles. Son idée centrale tient en une phrase : si une affirmation ne peut pas être tranchée par l'observation ou l'expérience, alors elle ne vaut pas la peine d'être débattue.On l'appelle aussi, avec un humour très “scientifique”, « l'épée laser flamboyante de Newton » (Newton's flaming laser sword). Cette formule a été popularisée au début des années 2000 par le mathématicien australien Mike Alder, notamment dans un essai publié en 2004.Et c'est précisément pour cela qu'on parle de rasoir d'Alder : comme pour le rasoir d'Occam, le concept porte le nom de la personne qui l'a formulé et rendu célèbre. Ce n'est pas Newton qui l'a inventé : Newton sert ici de clin d'œil dans le surnom. À noter d'ailleurs qu'on voit parfois “Adler” écrit par erreur, mais l'attribution correcte est bien Alder.Le rasoir d'Alder ne dit pas “c'est faux”. Il dit : “ce n'est pas un bon usage de notre temps de le disputer comme si on pouvait conclure.”Exemple : “Existe-t-il un univers parallèle exactement identique au nôtre, mais inaccessible à jamais ?” Peut-être. Mais si, par définition, aucune mesure ne peut le confirmer ou l'infirmer, alors le rasoir d'Alder conseille de ne pas transformer ça en bataille intellectuelle.C'est une invitation à déplacer la discussion vers des questions testables :Au lieu de débattre “l'intelligence est-elle une essence mystérieuse ?”, on peut demander “quels tests permettent de prédire des performances cognitives, et avec quelle fiabilité ?”Au lieu de “la conscience est-elle immatérielle ?”, on peut demander “quels corrélats neuronaux de l'expérience consciente peut-on mesurer ?”En ce sens, Alder est proche de l'esprit de Karl Popper et de la falsifiabilité : une proposition devient “scientifique” si on peut imaginer ce qui la rendrait fausse. Mais Alder va plus loin en mode pragmatique : si on ne peut pas trancher, ne gaspillons pas l'énergie à polémiquer.Attention : ce rasoir n'est pas une loi de la nature. Il peut être trop strict. Certaines questions paraissent non testables… jusqu'au jour où une nouvelle méthode les rend observables (c'est arrivé souvent dans l'histoire des sciences). Et puis, on peut aussi débattre de valeurs, d'éthique, de sens — sans “expérience” au sens strict.Conclusion : le rasoir d'Alder n'élimine pas les grandes questions. Il vous aide à repérer celles qui, pour l'instant, ne peuvent produire ni preuve ni progrès — juste des joutes verbales. Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

Le rasoir d'Alder est une règle de bon sens… qui coupe net les débats stériles. Son idée centrale tient en une phrase : si une affirmation ne peut pas être tranchée par l'observation ou l'expérience, alors elle ne vaut pas la peine d'être débattue.On l'appelle aussi, avec un humour très “scientifique”, « l'épée laser flamboyante de Newton » (Newton's flaming laser sword). Cette formule a été popularisée au début des années 2000 par le mathématicien australien Mike Alder, notamment dans un essai publié en 2004.Et c'est précisément pour cela qu'on parle de rasoir d'Alder : comme pour le rasoir d'Occam, le concept porte le nom de la personne qui l'a formulé et rendu célèbre. Ce n'est pas Newton qui l'a inventé : Newton sert ici de clin d'œil dans le surnom. À noter d'ailleurs qu'on voit parfois “Adler” écrit par erreur, mais l'attribution correcte est bien Alder.Le rasoir d'Alder ne dit pas “c'est faux”. Il dit : “ce n'est pas un bon usage de notre temps de le disputer comme si on pouvait conclure.”Exemple : “Existe-t-il un univers parallèle exactement identique au nôtre, mais inaccessible à jamais ?” Peut-être. Mais si, par définition, aucune mesure ne peut le confirmer ou l'infirmer, alors le rasoir d'Alder conseille de ne pas transformer ça en bataille intellectuelle.C'est une invitation à déplacer la discussion vers des questions testables :Au lieu de débattre “l'intelligence est-elle une essence mystérieuse ?”, on peut demander “quels tests permettent de prédire des performances cognitives, et avec quelle fiabilité ?”Au lieu de “la conscience est-elle immatérielle ?”, on peut demander “quels corrélats neuronaux de l'expérience consciente peut-on mesurer ?”En ce sens, Alder est proche de l'esprit de Karl Popper et de la falsifiabilité : une proposition devient “scientifique” si on peut imaginer ce qui la rendrait fausse. Mais Alder va plus loin en mode pragmatique : si on ne peut pas trancher, ne gaspillons pas l'énergie à polémiquer.Attention : ce rasoir n'est pas une loi de la nature. Il peut être trop strict. Certaines questions paraissent non testables… jusqu'au jour où une nouvelle méthode les rend observables (c'est arrivé souvent dans l'histoire des sciences). Et puis, on peut aussi débattre de valeurs, d'éthique, de sens — sans “expérience” au sens strict.Conclusion : le rasoir d'Alder n'élimine pas les grandes questions. Il vous aide à repérer celles qui, pour l'instant, ne peuvent produire ni preuve ni progrès — juste des joutes verbales. Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

Le principe de réfutabilité est l'une des idées les plus célèbres — et les plus mal comprises — de la philosophie des sciences. Il a été formulé au XXᵉ siècle par le philosophe Karl Popper, avec une ambition claire : définir ce qui distingue une théorie scientifique d'un discours qui ne l'est pas.À première vue, la science semble reposer sur la preuve. On pourrait croire qu'une théorie est scientifique parce qu'elle est confirmée par des expériences. Or, Popper renverse totalement cette intuition. Selon lui, aucune théorie scientifique ne peut jamais être définitivement prouvée vraie. Pourquoi ? Parce qu'une infinité d'observations positives ne garantit jamais que la prochaine ne viendra pas la contredire. En revanche, une seule observation contraire suffit à invalider une théorie.C'est là qu'intervient le principe de réfutabilité. Pour Popper, une théorie est scientifique si et seulement si elle peut, en principe, être réfutée par les faits. Autrement dit, elle doit faire des prédictions suffisamment précises pour qu'on puisse imaginer une expérience ou une observation qui la rende fausse. Si aucune observation possible ne peut la contredire, alors elle sort du champ de la science.Un exemple classique permet de comprendre. L'énoncé « tous les cygnes sont blancs » est réfutable : il suffit d'observer un seul cygne noir pour le contredire. À l'inverse, une affirmation comme « des forces invisibles et indétectables influencent secrètement le monde » n'est pas réfutable, puisqu'aucune observation ne peut la mettre en défaut. Elle peut être intéressante sur le plan philosophique ou symbolique, mais elle n'est pas scientifique.Popper utilise ce critère pour critiquer certaines théories très populaires à son époque, comme la psychanalyse ou certaines formes de marxisme. Selon lui, ces systèmes expliquent tout a posteriori, mais ne prennent jamais le risque d'être démentis par les faits. Quand une prédiction échoue, l'explication est ajustée, ce qui rend la théorie indestructible… et donc non scientifique.Ce point est fondamental : pour Popper, la science progresse par erreurs corrigées, non par accumulation de certitudes. Une bonne théorie n'est pas celle qui se protège contre la critique, mais celle qui s'expose volontairement à la possibilité d'être fausse. Plus une théorie est risquée, plus elle est scientifique.Aujourd'hui encore, le principe de réfutabilité structure la méthode scientifique moderne. Il rappelle que la science n'est pas un ensemble de vérités absolues, mais un processus critique permanent. Une théorie n'est jamais vraie pour toujours ; elle est simplement la meilleure disponible, tant qu'elle résiste aux tentatives de réfutation.En résumé, le principe de réfutabilité de Popper nous apprend une chose essentielle : en science, le doute n'est pas une faiblesse, c'est une condition de progrès. Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

Andrew For America talks about the recent shooting of Renee Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, and how he feels that this situation will result in the people calling out for digital ID in order to "solve" the problem. Andrew also talks about media sensationalism, the divide and conquer agenda, the Hegelian Dialectic, Minnesota taxpayer fraud, the welfare state vs. open immigration, luciferianism, totalitarianism, Agenda 2030, and more! Andrew plays clips from Dr. Andrew Kaufmann, Ghislane Maxwell, UnifyD TV, and others to help illustrate his points. Andrew also talks about Karl Popper's book, "Open Society and its Enemies."See also: The Cloward-Piven StrategyThe song selection is the song, "Get Them in a Ring" by the band Battle Flask.Visit allegedlyrecords.com and check out all of the amazing punk rock artists!Visit soundcloud.com/andrewforamerica1984 to check out Andrew's music!Like and Follow The Politics & Punk Rock Podcast PLAYLIST on Spotify!!!Check it out here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1Y4rumioeqvHfaUgRnRxsy...politicsandpunkrockpodcast.comFollow Future Is Now Coalition on Instagram @FutureIsOrgwww.futureis.org

Le principe de réfutabilité est l'une des idées les plus célèbres — et les plus mal comprises — de la philosophie des sciences. Il a été formulé au XXᵉ siècle par le philosophe Karl Popper, avec une ambition claire : définir ce qui distingue une théorie scientifique d'un discours qui ne l'est pas.À première vue, la science semble reposer sur la preuve. On pourrait croire qu'une théorie est scientifique parce qu'elle est confirmée par des expériences. Or, Popper renverse totalement cette intuition. Selon lui, aucune théorie scientifique ne peut jamais être définitivement prouvée vraie. Pourquoi ? Parce qu'une infinité d'observations positives ne garantit jamais que la prochaine ne viendra pas la contredire. En revanche, une seule observation contraire suffit à invalider une théorie.C'est là qu'intervient le principe de réfutabilité. Pour Popper, une théorie est scientifique si et seulement si elle peut, en principe, être réfutée par les faits. Autrement dit, elle doit faire des prédictions suffisamment précises pour qu'on puisse imaginer une expérience ou une observation qui la rende fausse. Si aucune observation possible ne peut la contredire, alors elle sort du champ de la science.Un exemple classique permet de comprendre. L'énoncé « tous les cygnes sont blancs » est réfutable : il suffit d'observer un seul cygne noir pour le contredire. À l'inverse, une affirmation comme « des forces invisibles et indétectables influencent secrètement le monde » n'est pas réfutable, puisqu'aucune observation ne peut la mettre en défaut. Elle peut être intéressante sur le plan philosophique ou symbolique, mais elle n'est pas scientifique.Popper utilise ce critère pour critiquer certaines théories très populaires à son époque, comme la psychanalyse ou certaines formes de marxisme. Selon lui, ces systèmes expliquent tout a posteriori, mais ne prennent jamais le risque d'être démentis par les faits. Quand une prédiction échoue, l'explication est ajustée, ce qui rend la théorie indestructible… et donc non scientifique.Ce point est fondamental : pour Popper, la science progresse par erreurs corrigées, non par accumulation de certitudes. Une bonne théorie n'est pas celle qui se protège contre la critique, mais celle qui s'expose volontairement à la possibilité d'être fausse. Plus une théorie est risquée, plus elle est scientifique.Aujourd'hui encore, le principe de réfutabilité structure la méthode scientifique moderne. Il rappelle que la science n'est pas un ensemble de vérités absolues, mais un processus critique permanent. Une théorie n'est jamais vraie pour toujours ; elle est simplement la meilleure disponible, tant qu'elle résiste aux tentatives de réfutation.En résumé, le principe de réfutabilité de Popper nous apprend une chose essentielle : en science, le doute n'est pas une faiblesse, c'est une condition de progrès. Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

What is a concept? What is a theory? And was Karl Popper right when he said theories are “100 times more valuable” than concepts? But where do conjectures come from?We go over Popper's own writing about concepts and his explanation for why he feels they are less valuable than theories. Does this prove Bruce wrong from back in episode 112 where he claimed concepts are more valuable than words? What would Popper say?

aka "The Popper vs Campbell Beatdown!"At long last! The showdown you've all been waiting for! These two giants of epistemology meet in the ring and fight it out for dominance!Bruce continues his exploration of evolutionary epistemology, or the idea that all knowledge creation in nature is analogous to natural selection. Specifically, Bruce discusses how Karl Popper's critical rationalism is—and is not—related to Donald Campbell's concept of evolutionary epistemology, which it seems Popper mostly endorsed. But is Popper's conjecture and refutation really the same as Campbell's blind variation and selective retention? And would Popper have agreed with David Deutsch that "All an animal's knowledge is in its genes?" (In fact, Popper explicitly answers that question! Multiple times! Tune in to find out!)⁠Support us on Patreon

Sta facendo discutere nelle ultime ore la diatriba relativa all'annunciata presenza, all'interno dell'evento romano "Più Libri Più Liberi", dello stand di una piccola casa editrice di chiara ispirazione neofascista. Editori e autori hanno chiesto all'organizzazione dell'evento di negare l'ingresso, ottenendo in cambio un rifiuto in nome della pluralità del pensiero. Ma consentire la circolazione di idee liberticide può definirsi libertà? Ammettere posizioni violente è compatibile con il concetto di democrazia? In questo Instant Video ne parliamo, ricordando il celebre Paradosso della Tolleranza di Karl Popper che rappresenta ancor oggi un principio fondamentale.

Lenny Benardo of the Open Society Foundations joins Matthew Schmitz to talk about Karl Popper, Bernie Sanders, Angela Merkel, and Donald Tusk. Compact Magazine is reader-supported. Become a member and gain unlimited access. https://compactmag.com/subscribe

I denne episoden snakker vi med Tore Wig, professor i statsvitenskap ved Universitetet i Oslo. Vi snakker om hans forskning på demokrati og demokratiets tidlige historie, direkte og representativt demokrati, førdemokratiske institusjoner, sammenheng mellom demokratisk og økonomisk utvikling, autokratiske regimer, og valg i ulike typer regimer. Vi diskuterer også om skolens rolle i demokratiet og hva vi vet og ikke vet i denne sammenheng, om boken Democracy for realists av statsviterne Achen og Bartels, utdanningspolarisering og utdanningsulikhet, forskjeller på demokratiet i USA og Norge, demokratiske normer og hvor vanskelige de er å gjenopprette når de forfaller. Vi avslutter med å snakke om Karl Popper, hans bok The Poverty of Historicism, vitenskapsfilosofi, positivisme og viktigheten av godt språk.  Tores tre bøker nevnt i episoden:  The Deep Roots of Modern Democracy, med John Gerring, Andreas Forø Tollefsen og Brendan Apfeld, Cambridge University Press. Årsaker til krig: Introduksjon til konfliktvitenskap, Fagbokforlaget. One Road to Riches? How state building and democratization affect economic development, med Haakon Gjerløw, Matt Wilson og Carl Henrik Knutsen,  Cambridge University Press. Lenker til andre artikler finner du her: https://www.sv.uio.no/isv/english/people/aca/torewig/ Tores anbefalinger: Michael Strevens - The Knowledge Machine James Ladyman og Don Ross - Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized Milan W. Svolik - The Politics of Authoritarian Rule   ---------------------------- Logoen vår er laget av Sveinung Sudbø, se hans arbeider på originalkopi.com Musikken er av Arne Kjelsrud Mathisen, se facebooksiden Nygrenda Vev og Dur for mer info. ----------------------------    Takk for at du hører på. Ta kontakt med oss på larsogpaal@gmail.com Det finnes ingen bedre måte å få spredt podkasten vår til flere enn via dere lyttere, så takk om du deler eller forteller andre om oss.  Både Lars og Pål skriver nå på hver sin blogg, med litt varierende regelmessighet. Du finner dem på disse nettsidene: https://paljabekk.com/ https://larssandaker.blogspot.com/ Alt godt, hilsen Lars og Pål

An award-winning astrophysicist looks at how the understanding of uncertainty and randomness has led to breakthroughs in our knowledge of the cosmos All of us understand the world around us by constructing models, comparing them to observations, and drawing conclusions. Scientists create, test, and replace these models by applying the twinned concepts of probability and randomness. Exploring how this process has refined our knowledge of quantum mechanics and the birth of the universe, In The Random Universe: How Models and Probability Help Us Make Sense of the Cosmos (Yale UP, 2025) Andrew H. Jaffe offers a unique synthesis of the philosophy of epistemology, the mathematics of probability, and the science of cosmology. As Jaffe puts Enlightenment thinkers like David Hume in conversation with contemporary philosophers such as Karl Popper and Imre Lakatos and engages with scientists ranging from Isaac Newton and Galileo to Albert Einstein and Arthur Eddington, he uses Thomas Bayes's seminal studies of statistics and probability to make sense of conflicting currents of thought. This is a deep look into how we have learned to account for uncertainty in our search for knowledge--and a reminder that science is not about facts and data as such but about creating models that correctly account for those facts and data. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

An award-winning astrophysicist looks at how the understanding of uncertainty and randomness has led to breakthroughs in our knowledge of the cosmos All of us understand the world around us by constructing models, comparing them to observations, and drawing conclusions. Scientists create, test, and replace these models by applying the twinned concepts of probability and randomness. Exploring how this process has refined our knowledge of quantum mechanics and the birth of the universe, In The Random Universe: How Models and Probability Help Us Make Sense of the Cosmos (Yale UP, 2025) Andrew H. Jaffe offers a unique synthesis of the philosophy of epistemology, the mathematics of probability, and the science of cosmology. As Jaffe puts Enlightenment thinkers like David Hume in conversation with contemporary philosophers such as Karl Popper and Imre Lakatos and engages with scientists ranging from Isaac Newton and Galileo to Albert Einstein and Arthur Eddington, he uses Thomas Bayes's seminal studies of statistics and probability to make sense of conflicting currents of thought. This is a deep look into how we have learned to account for uncertainty in our search for knowledge--and a reminder that science is not about facts and data as such but about creating models that correctly account for those facts and data. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

An award-winning astrophysicist looks at how the understanding of uncertainty and randomness has led to breakthroughs in our knowledge of the cosmos All of us understand the world around us by constructing models, comparing them to observations, and drawing conclusions. Scientists create, test, and replace these models by applying the twinned concepts of probability and randomness. Exploring how this process has refined our knowledge of quantum mechanics and the birth of the universe, In The Random Universe: How Models and Probability Help Us Make Sense of the Cosmos (Yale UP, 2025) Andrew H. Jaffe offers a unique synthesis of the philosophy of epistemology, the mathematics of probability, and the science of cosmology. As Jaffe puts Enlightenment thinkers like David Hume in conversation with contemporary philosophers such as Karl Popper and Imre Lakatos and engages with scientists ranging from Isaac Newton and Galileo to Albert Einstein and Arthur Eddington, he uses Thomas Bayes's seminal studies of statistics and probability to make sense of conflicting currents of thought. This is a deep look into how we have learned to account for uncertainty in our search for knowledge--and a reminder that science is not about facts and data as such but about creating models that correctly account for those facts and data. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week Bruce puts Popper on trial. Specifically, through the lens of Michael Stevens's book, The Knowledge Machine, which argues that science works because it follows the “iron law of explanation” where scientists must (at least in public) put aside philosophy, politics, and theology and only follow empirical evidence. Bruce asks, how compatible is this view with the epistemology of Karl Popper?And does Strevens' critique of Popper ring true? Or is it a strawman?

This week we interview Logan Chipkin. Logan is a writer and author of several books. Recently he co-authored and published The Sovereign Child about raising children without coercion, and The Lords of the Cosmos, which tells the story of progress through the lens of good philosophy. Logan is also the president of Conjecture Institute, which is a brand new organization dedicated to promoting the worldview of Karl Popper and David Deutsch. (Follow on X)Here we discuss the New Right vs libertarianism. We consider: What is the core difference between liberalism, conservatism, and libertarianism? Why are so many libertarians into conspiracy theories? How are we to think about Popperian arguments against utopianism applied to libertarians? Does it make sense for an anarcho-capitalist to be hawkish on military intervention in places like Ukraine? And why have mainstream conservatives strayed so far from making intellectual arguments for their positions as they may have in the days or Milton Friedman?What criticisms can be correctly leveled against the Right today, especially economically but also in terms of their methods. And what does the New Right 'get right' according to Logan?Right wing resources suggested by Logan:The DispatchCommentary Magazine PodcastNational Review PodcastThe Politically Incorrect Guide to American HistoryThe Right: The Hundred-Year War for American ConservatismRadicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement

Here is an expanded, multi-act play dramatizing the philosophical conflict and personal effort to foster a paradigm shift in AIDS research. The Paradigm Shift: A Play in Three Acts Here are the three Characters Rebecca Culshaw – Mathematician and critic of AIDS orthodoxy Karl Popper – Philosopher of science, logic-driven Thomas Kuhn – Philosopher of science, historically minded The Colleague – A skeptical scientist (optional for Act II-III) Act I – The Summoning Setting: Culshaw's cluttered study at midnight. A window is open, letting in a cold breeze. Culshaw is hunched over papers. Suddenly, mysterious figures materialize. Popper (stepping closer): Rebecca, do you know why we have come? Culshaw (startled but curious): I sense you bear advice. Kuhn (smiling softly): Your struggle echoes in the halls of scientific history. Few have challenged entrenched paradigms and lived to see the world change. Culshaw: The AIDS narrative is unyielding. Criticism draws scorn, not reasoned dialogue. How do I crack this shell? Popper: Treat the theory as a scientific hypothesis. Identify its core claims. What would it take to disprove them? Ask the establishment this at every turn. Kuhn: Yet do not forget, paradigm shifts require more than refutation. You must nurture a community—make them feel the cracks and offer a new framework. Popper: Truth is not a popularity contest, Kuhn. Kuhn: But consensus rules until new puzzles make the old vision unbearable. Culshaw: You mean I need both: a demonstration of failure and a replacement vision? Popper & Kuhn (together): Precisely. Fade out. Act II – Testing the Fortress Setting: A scientific conference. Culshaw stands before a skeptical audience, including The Colleague. Culshaw: Suppose key HIV tests predict nothing about immune decline. Suppose AIDS definitions are shifting sands. What, then, does our theory become? Colleague: You twist anomalies into attacks. What of the millions of lives believed saved? Popper: (now imagined at her shoulder) Demand evidence. Show that lives were saved by measurable intervention, not just by post hoc rationalization. Kuhn: Frame your findings as questions that the current theory cannot answer. Let the audience witness the struggle. Culshaw: Here are cases where test and disease do not align, where drugs harm, where predictions fail. This is not a collection of quirks—it is a crisis. Colleague: Science will patch these gaps. Popper: Only if the patches themselves are testable—not ad hoc excuses. Kuhn: And as the failures accumulate and the story loses coherence, your role shifts. Offer new lenses through which researchers can view their puzzles anew. Culshaw: I will. Here is a framework where immune collapse arises from multifactor exposures, not a virus. Here predictions become clear, testable, vulnerable to refutation. Colleague (uncertain): It is bold, but is it enough? Popper: Make it falsifiable. Kuhn: Make it irresistible. Fade to black. Act III – Turning the Tide The Setting: Culshaw's study, months later. She pores over data. Papers about her new model are being discussed worldwide. Popper: Are your ideas withstanding scrutiny? Culshaw: Some have tried to refute them. Some admit their theories don't predict as well. Kuhn: Is a community embracing the new framework? Culshaw: Slowly. Some see the anomaly pattern. Some consider new research. The old guard resists—naturally. Popper: The measure is not in popularity, but precision. Do not shy from critique. Kuhn: And always tend to the new paradigm's coherence. Invite others to build upon it. A real shift is communal. Culshaw: Thank you, Karl. Thank you, Thomas. Let science decide—through rigor, vision, and openness—not through the chill of consensus alone. Popper and Kuhn fade, their voices echoing: Popper: Progress thrives on falsification. Kuhn: And transformation blooms with imagination. Culshaw, alone, presses onward, her desk now a beacon among the cluttered battleground of ideas. End.  

Ever wonder if being too nice, too open, too tolerant can actually backfire? It sounds crazy, but that's the heart of Karl Popper's 'Paradox of Tolerance.' In this episode, we're wrestling with a huge question: To maintain a peaceful, tolerant society, must we be intolerant of intolerance? We'll explore the fine line between open-mindedness and self-destruction, touching on free speech, social justice, and what it truly means to build a world where everyone can coexist. This isn't just a dusty old philosophy; it's a question that echoes in our headlines and our daily lives. Get ready to have your assumptions challenged. To unlock full access to all our episodes, consider becoming a premium subscriber on Apple Podcasts or Patreon. And don't forget to visit englishpluspodcast.com for even more content, including articles, in-depth studies, and our brand-new audio series and courses now available in our Patreon Shop!

Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, joins The Winston Marshall Show for a sweeping conversation on free speech, censorship, and the dangers of state overreach.Lukianoff warns that Britain is sliding into authoritarianism with the Online Safety Act, the arrest of comedian Graham Linehan for “offensive tweets,” and thousands of citizens detained each year for speech crimes. He explains why Americans should be alarmed—not only because of cultural ties, but because UK and EU laws like the Digital Services Act now risk exporting censorship to the United States.They discuss the chilling effect of “non-crime hate incidents,” the hypocrisy of politicians who ignore Islamist extremism while cracking down on online speech, and why Big Tech is tripping over itself to appease Brussels bureaucrats. Lukianoff contrasts this with the Trump administration's free speech battles on university campuses, where anti-Semitism and harassment rationales are being used to justify speech codes.They also dive into the deeper history—Lenin, Marx, communism, and why the West never reckoned with the crimes of socialism—leaving us vulnerable to a new wave of ideological totalitarianism.All this—Britain's speech crisis, EU overreach, Trump and the universities, and the global struggle to preserve freedom of expression in the 21st century…-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------To see more exclusive content and interviews consider subscribing to my substack here: https://www.winstonmarshall.co.uk/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA:Substack: https://www.winstonmarshall.co.uk/X: https://twitter.com/mrwinmarshallInsta: https://www.instagram.com/winstonmarshallLinktree: https://linktr.ee/winstonmarshall----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Chapters 00:00 - Introduction & Guest Welcome 02:49 - Graham Linehan's Arrest and Free Speech in the UK 05:08 - Arrests for Offensive Speech in the UK 07:34 - Non-Crime Hate Incidents and Social Attitudes 10:03 - Malcolm Gladwell, Trans Issues, and Chilling Effects 14:03 - The Online Safety Act and Censorship of Americans 17:04 - Why Americans Care About British Free Speech 19:14 - The EU Digital Services Act and Global Censorship 22:20 - Protecting Children Online: Policy and Parental Controls 28:41 - Free Speech in America: Trump, Wokeism, and Ideology 32:31 - Communism, Fascism, and Totalitarianism: Historical Parallels 36:30 - Reckoning with Socialism and Communism 39:30 - Karl Popper, Tolerance, and Hate Speech Laws 42:30 - Trump Administration, Campus Speech Codes, and Harassment 45:32 - Political Correctness and Speech Codes in Higher Ed 51:02 - Harvard, Civil Rights Act, and Federal Oversight 55:56 - The Right Way to Reform University Funding 58:52 - Free Speech for Pro-Palestinian Students and Deportation 1:10:19 - Why Harvard Ranks Lowest for Free Speech 1:13:21 - FIRE's New Books and Campus Free Speech Rankings 1:13:56 - Closing Remarks Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Starting in the 1950s, Popperian Donald Campbell developed a theory of "evolutionary epistemology" (coining that term in the process) that expanded Karl Popper's ideas about scientific knowledge and learning into the natural world. Campbell intended a universal theory of how 'all increases in fit of system to environment' work based on a meta-algorithm (or class of algorithms sharing certain features) he called blind-variation-and-selective-retention. Could it be that nature creates knowledge through processes analogous to biological natural selection? How far reaching is Popper's theory? Could this be how cultures create knowledge? Perhaps this even has cosmological implications. Is this just how the universe works?And what did Karl Popper think of Campbell's evolutionary epistemology?This episode attempts to summarize two of Campbell's less available papers on the subject as a resource for critical rationalists. In future podcasts we'll challenge Campbell's views and also discuss the myriad of possible interpretations of his theory as well as the CritRat communities response to his theory.

In der neuen Speakeasy-Bar von „Wohlstand für Alle“ beantworten wir hochinteressante Fragen aus dem Publikum. Es geht um unsere Einschätzung zu René Girard und seiner mimetischen Theorie als Gegenkonzept zu Marx, um „Die offene Gesellschaft und ihre Feinde“ von Karl Popper und dessen Verhältnis zur Frankfurter Schule. Weiter fragen wir uns, ob die linke Kritik an der Polizei es sich nicht häufig zu einfach macht. Wir schätzen dies sehr unterschiedlich ein. Gefragt wurden wir auch, ob wir die Erwerbstätigkeit von Frauen nicht zu sehr glorifizieren und ob das überhaupt eine linke Position sein kann. Wir diskutieren außerdem über unsere Resignation angesichts der Klimakatastrophe und beantworten auch die Sommerfrage schlecht hin: Wie stehen wir eigentlich zum Konzept Urlaub? Ja, jeder hat da eine ganz andere Auffassung. Das und mehr gibt es in knapp 2 Stunden Speakeasy-Bar zu erleben. Wir freuen uns, wenn ihr uns via Steady, Apple oder Patreon bucht und den Podcast auf diese Weise unterstützt. Unsere Zusatzinhalte könnt ihr bei Apple Podcasts, Steady und Patreon hören. Vielen Dank! Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/wohlstand-f%C3%BCr-alle/id1476402723 Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/oleundwolfgang Steady: https://steadyhq.com/de/oleundwolfgang/about

On July 8th, in what can only be described as an act of reckless clarity, we published a white paper (grab it here—>) Unified Behavioral Model™ — Read more… listen now.Subscribe now“Science may be described as the art of systematic oversimplification.” ― Karl PopperWhat makes UBM so unique—so different from prevalent behavioral models?First, let's clear up a common misconception:UBM—specifically the Behavior Echo-System (BES)—is a model of behavior, not a model of a person.People often see the graphic and assume it represents themselves, or a diagram of the human body. It doesn't.As Dr. Popper's statement above suggests, UBM simply articulates how behavior is influenced in the moment and shaped over time—within the system.Now, here's the B.I.G. claim:UBM is falsifiable.In science, that's the gold standard.(Period.)If a theory can't be tested or broken, it's just storytelling. Worse yet, Karl Popper would say it's non-science.What's his core claim? Science and non-science are divided by a single demarcation: Falsifiability.UBM asks—check that, insists—“Go for it… Please try to break me.”Apparently, no other behavior model—certainly not a unified one—has ever done that.Kind of interesting? Maybe just a bit?Worth mentioning, at least?Or dedicating, I don't know… twenty-plus years to uncovering?UBM/BES Comparison Table & Major Prevalent Models as provided by DeepSeek.According to Dr. Karl Popper—and as noted in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Karl Popper is generally regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science of the twentieth century”—if a theory can't be tested (or broken), it's just storytelling. Worse, he'd call it “non-science.”Just to be clear: that's Dr. Popper, philosopher and trained psychologist, who introduced the idea of falsifiability (and gave us that delightful bit with the Black Swan).So yeah—if you can't at least attempt to break it, he says, it doesn't count.UBM is so confident in its falsifiability that it's offering a $1,000 reward to the first person to prove there's a missing fifth element—one that isn't reducible or emergent. (See below and bottom for official entry details.)So far: nearly 500 downloads and…Nada. Zip. Zilch. NOTHING.Even the world's top AIs—ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Grok, DeepSeek—took their shots.They've all struck out. Attempts include: Time (environmental), Consciousness (emergent from the system), Willpower (embodied environment), Self-Organization (embodied environment—note the “self” in self-organization).The list goes on, and it's kind of funny. Google's Gemini, for example, offered a “someday” quantum property we don't even know of yet.Seriously.Just to be clear: if we don't know of it yet, and we can't test it—it's not a valid fifth element.DeepSeek's parting words? Also comical...“UBM 1. DS 0... Game respects game.”And, here's Gemini's best response after half dozen attempts…Gemini tries desperately to break the Unified Behavior Model and fails.The difficulty in falsification, as intended by the model's design, is a powerful indicator of its conceptual strength and it's potential to serve as a TRULY UNIFYING FRAMEWORK FOR BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE. ~Gemini 8/4/2025Some have argued, “Well, UBM is overly simplified.”Really?Then why hasn't anyone discovered it before—or more accurately, uncovered it and brought it to light?Surely, by now—150 years in—some behavioral scientist, somewhere in the world, would've presented this kind of systematic “oversimplification,” right?Let's go over that one more time:“Science may be described as the art of systematic oversimplification.” ― Karl PopperThis is precisely Dr. Popper's point: science progresses by oversimplifying—systematically.Voila: UBM.

What is reliable knowledge? Listen to philosopher Michael Strevens, author of The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science, to understand how science discovers the truth. At the current moment, when expertise is under attack and the idea of truth is contested from all sides, Strevens explains the remarkable success of science's “irrational” method to settle debates, regardless of philosophical, religious, or aesthetic preferences. Drawing on Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions—our host Uli Baer's all-time favorite non-fiction book—, Karl Popper, and others, Strevens shows how science became the most effective tool for uncovering the secrets of nature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Karl Popper flieht vor den Nazis und analysiert totalitären Terror. In "Die offene Gesellschaft und ihre Feinde" plädiert er 1945 für Demokratie - und gegen Heilslehren. Von Marfa Heimbach.

This podcast series started in January 2021. The first episode was on the Insurrection at the Capitol, instigated by Trump on the basis of his claim that the 2020 election was stolen. This episode was recorded just shy of a week away from Trump's second inauguration as President of the United States. Trump's signature policy proposals during his campaign had to do with deporting millions of illegal immigrants, closing the boarders, imposing tariffs on international trade, and returning to a kind of isolationism in foreign policy by removing US military support for Ukraine. Trump had gone on to implement many of those policies. These are the hallmarks of a closed society, something resembling a tribe, caring for nothing but itself, “on the alert for attack or defence” as Bergson said. This episode revisits an old idea of an Open society, coined by Karl Popper in his book The Open Society and Its Enemies. Jason Alexander McKenzie is a professor of philosophy at the London School of Economics and has written a (free access) book entitled The Open Society As An Enemy published by LSE Press, in which he defense  the open society at a time when it's under great duress. If you enjoyed the episode, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts.This podcast is created in partnership with The Philosopher, the UK's longest running public philosophy journalm founded in 1923. Check out the latest issue of The Philosopher and its online events series: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org Artwork by Nick HallidayMusic by Rowan Mcilvride

On the rise of political violence. Listener call-in’s on Karl Popper’s teachings and the Seth Leibsohn Show’s bumper music. We're joined by John Dombroski, founder and president of Grand Canyon Planning Associates. Who exactly was running the country during the Biden Presidency?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For 80 years, Western civilization has operated under a quiet agreement that has shaped our politics, our foreign policy, our economics, and even our moral worldview. So what is the “Postwar Consensus”, why is it starting to unravel, and what could possibly come next?-----⭐ SPONSOR: Good Ranchers Serve only the best for your 4th of July celebrations! Over 85% of grass-fed beef sold in U.S. stores is imported, but Good Ranchers offers 100% American-sourced meat, supporting local farms. We eat Good Ranchers every single day and we know you'll love it.