Podcasts about No true Scotsman

Send us a textApril confesses to being a "big ol' nerd" while discussing three sneaky fallacies that sidestep evidence and shut down discourse.Episode 41 Show Notes:It's a study guide about the No True Scotsman fallacy! Hey, they're good for adults too: https://studylatam.com/no-true-scotsman-fallacy-in-philosophy/Another good article about No True Scotsman: https://practicalpie.com/no-true-scotsman/Rational Wiki is always a good go-to for fallacies: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_True_ScotsmanWhat's cognitive ease? Here you go: learning-mind.com/cognitive-ease/Great article on the illusory truth effect: https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/illusory-truth-effectPatrick Stokes' article in The Conversation on why he's so tough on his philosophy students: https://theconversation.com/no-youre-not-entitled-to-your-opinion-9978Stephen Rainey's blog that discusses the concept of our "entitlement" to opinions: https://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2019/03/entitlement/*I have begun using ChatGPT to organize and outline my episodes--it does a great job clarifying my ideas. I still do the writing, though, so I can't say it saves a lot of time!

Welcome to season two of I Know I Sound Crazy! I'm back from my sabbatical and feeling better than ever. Join me, your host, Ashelyn Galloway, and your sometimes host, Nicole Self, as we dive deeper into our journey of deconstructing faith. We're back to yap about our past as devoted Christians and what that means for our beliefs today. We touch on the many inconsistencies we're still finding across the religion, the No True Scotsman fallacy, and the particularly fascinating phenomenon of virgin births across cultures (Spoiler: Jesus is not the only religious figure to be born of a virgin birth. Who knew?).Nicole also speaks candidly about the other side of grief, two years out from tragedy, which we hope will resonate with anyone seeking solace and understanding.Whether you're questioning your own beliefs, or just curious about the deconstruction process, this episode is for you. So say a prayer, or light your sage,  and join us for a good yap session. Welcome back!!

01:00 Steve Hsu: Iran vs Israel: Implications for Missile Defense, https://stevehsu.substack.com/p/iran-vs-israel-implications-for-missile 04:00 Michael Doran on October 7 one year later, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5ig9ftKAk4 13:30 Five reasons why Israel's 7-front war is so hard to win, https://brusselssignal.eu/2024/10/five-reasons-why-israels-7-front-war-is-so-hard-to-win/ 14:20 Dooovid joins, https://x.com/RebDoooovid 28:00 Dooovid has been anti-Zionist for 20 years 29:20 What is the shortest route for power? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iv4Zz9cMQ0 32:45 Tim Walz lost his debate with JD Vance decoding settler colonialism, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fhbnb209Bo 37:45 Kip worries my soul is trapped in matter 48:00 WP: How Joe Biden lost his grip on Israel's war for ‘total victory' in Gaza, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/10/03/biden-israel-gaza-war-middle-east-crisis/ 1:27:30 Claire Khaw joins 1:33:00 No True Scotsman fallacy, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman 1:55:00 Mike Doran's X analysis, https://x.com/Doranimated 2:14:30 Expert on Iran Reveals Scenarios of an Israel-Iran War - Saeed Ghasseminejad, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zdv7MJIDtPI 2:19:00 Settler Colonialism and Drivers of Anti-Israel Sentiment with Eric Kaufmann and Adam Kirsch, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fhbnb209Bo 2:26:00 Your Hero System Is Your Morality And You Get It From Your Tribe, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=150319 2:54:00 Optimally Irrational: The Good Reasons We Behave The Way We Do, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=157563 3:08:00 Colonialism as niche construction 3:14:00 Land acknowledgements came from humanities professors 3:22:00 Mike Doran makes the case for America staying in the Middle East 3:24:15 7 ways the US is beating Europe, https://www.politico.eu/article/united-states-europe-competition-covid-economy-gdp-food-cities-jobs-data/

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: AI #81: Alpha Proteo, published by Zvi on September 12, 2024 on LessWrong. Following up on Alpha Fold, DeepMind has moved on to Alpha Proteo. We also got a rather simple prompt that can create a remarkably not-bad superforecaster for at least some classes of medium term events. We did not get a new best open model, because that turned out to be a scam. And we don't have Apple Intelligence, because it isn't ready for prime time. We also got only one very brief mention of AI in the debate I felt compelled to watch. What about all the apps out there, that we haven't even tried? It's always weird to get lists of 'top 50 AI websites and apps' and notice you haven't even heard of most of them. Table of Contents 1. Introduction. 2. Table of Contents. 3. Language Models Offer Mundane Utility. So many apps, so little time. 4. Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility. We still don't use them much. 5. Predictions are Hard Especially About the Future. Can AI superforecast? 6. Early Apple Intelligence. It is still early. There are some… issues to improve on. 7. On Reflection It's a Scam. Claims of new best open model get put to the test, fail. 8. Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon. Bots listen to bot music that they bought. 9. They Took Our Jobs. Replit agents build apps quick. Some are very impressed. 10. The Time 100 People in AI. Some good picks. Some not so good picks. 11. The Art of the Jailbreak. Circuit breakers seem to be good versus one-shots. 12. Get Involved. Presidential innovation fellows, Oxford philosophy workshop. 13. Alpha Proteo. DeepMind once again advances its protein-related capabilities. 14. Introducing. Google to offer AI podcasts on demand about papers and such. 15. In Other AI News. OpenAI raising at $150b, Nvidia denies it got a subpoena. 16. Quiet Speculations. How big a deal will multimodal be? Procedural games? 17. The Quest for Sane Regulations. Various new support for SB 1047. 18. The Week in Audio. Good news, the debate is over, there might not be another. 19. Rhetorical Innovation. You don't have to do this. 20. Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult. Do you have a plan? 21. People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone. How much ruin to risk? 22. Other People Are Not As Worried About AI Killing Everyone. Moving faster. 23. Six Boats and a Helicopter. The one with the discord cult worshiping MetaAI. 24. The Lighter Side. Hey, baby, hey baby, hey. Language Models Offer Mundane Utility ChatGPT has 200 million active users. Meta AI claims 400m monthly active users and 185m weekly actives across their products. Meta has tons of people already using their products, and I strongly suspect a lot of those users are incidental or even accidental. Also note that less than half of monthly users use the product monthly! That's a huge drop off for such a useful product. Undermine, or improve by decreasing costs? Nate Silver: A decent bet is that LLMs will undermine the business model of boring partisans, there's basically posters on here where you can 100% predict what they're gonna say about any given issue and that is pretty easy to automate. I worry it will be that second one. The problem is demand side, not supply side. Models get better at helping humans with translating if you throw more compute at them, economists think this is a useful paper. Alex Tabarrok cites the latest paper on AI 'creativity,' saying obviously LLMs are creative reasoners, unless we 'rule it out by definition.' Ethan Mollick has often said similar things. It comes down to whether to use a profoundly 'uncreative' definition of creativity, where LLMs shine in what amounts largely to trying new combinations of things and vibing, or to No True Scotsman that and claim 'real' creativity is something else beyond that. One way to interpret Gemini's capabilities tests is ...

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: AI #81: Alpha Proteo, published by Zvi on September 12, 2024 on LessWrong. Following up on Alpha Fold, DeepMind has moved on to Alpha Proteo. We also got a rather simple prompt that can create a remarkably not-bad superforecaster for at least some classes of medium term events. We did not get a new best open model, because that turned out to be a scam. And we don't have Apple Intelligence, because it isn't ready for prime time. We also got only one very brief mention of AI in the debate I felt compelled to watch. What about all the apps out there, that we haven't even tried? It's always weird to get lists of 'top 50 AI websites and apps' and notice you haven't even heard of most of them. Table of Contents 1. Introduction. 2. Table of Contents. 3. Language Models Offer Mundane Utility. So many apps, so little time. 4. Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility. We still don't use them much. 5. Predictions are Hard Especially About the Future. Can AI superforecast? 6. Early Apple Intelligence. It is still early. There are some… issues to improve on. 7. On Reflection It's a Scam. Claims of new best open model get put to the test, fail. 8. Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon. Bots listen to bot music that they bought. 9. They Took Our Jobs. Replit agents build apps quick. Some are very impressed. 10. The Time 100 People in AI. Some good picks. Some not so good picks. 11. The Art of the Jailbreak. Circuit breakers seem to be good versus one-shots. 12. Get Involved. Presidential innovation fellows, Oxford philosophy workshop. 13. Alpha Proteo. DeepMind once again advances its protein-related capabilities. 14. Introducing. Google to offer AI podcasts on demand about papers and such. 15. In Other AI News. OpenAI raising at $150b, Nvidia denies it got a subpoena. 16. Quiet Speculations. How big a deal will multimodal be? Procedural games? 17. The Quest for Sane Regulations. Various new support for SB 1047. 18. The Week in Audio. Good news, the debate is over, there might not be another. 19. Rhetorical Innovation. You don't have to do this. 20. Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult. Do you have a plan? 21. People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone. How much ruin to risk? 22. Other People Are Not As Worried About AI Killing Everyone. Moving faster. 23. Six Boats and a Helicopter. The one with the discord cult worshiping MetaAI. 24. The Lighter Side. Hey, baby, hey baby, hey. Language Models Offer Mundane Utility ChatGPT has 200 million active users. Meta AI claims 400m monthly active users and 185m weekly actives across their products. Meta has tons of people already using their products, and I strongly suspect a lot of those users are incidental or even accidental. Also note that less than half of monthly users use the product monthly! That's a huge drop off for such a useful product. Undermine, or improve by decreasing costs? Nate Silver: A decent bet is that LLMs will undermine the business model of boring partisans, there's basically posters on here where you can 100% predict what they're gonna say about any given issue and that is pretty easy to automate. I worry it will be that second one. The problem is demand side, not supply side. Models get better at helping humans with translating if you throw more compute at them, economists think this is a useful paper. Alex Tabarrok cites the latest paper on AI 'creativity,' saying obviously LLMs are creative reasoners, unless we 'rule it out by definition.' Ethan Mollick has often said similar things. It comes down to whether to use a profoundly 'uncreative' definition of creativity, where LLMs shine in what amounts largely to trying new combinations of things and vibing, or to No True Scotsman that and claim 'real' creativity is something else beyond that. One way to interpret Gemini's capabilities tests is ...

This week's episode examines the "No True Scotsman" fallacy, which commonly occurs in debates about christology, the deity of Christ, and the Trinity. We define the fallacy, show examples of it regularly appearing in biblical debates, and demonstrate why it is fallacious. Finally, we offer five tips to help our listeners avoid committing this logical fallacy, thereby improving the consistency of arguments and exchanges with others who think differently. Visit Amazon to buy your copy of my new book Wisdom Christology in the Gospel of John: https://a.co/d/6nFEbZg         Please consider supporting this Podcast and future projects by donating at: https://www.paypal.me/10mintruthtalks   To view the notes from this episode please click the link below: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1s0SeS5fLceu85WUYInfE8arhUCNopUcWX623ozPWbdE/edit?usp=sharing   Check out some of my videos on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/@BiblicalUnitarianPodcast    Follow us on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/OneGodPodcast 

Welcome to Tales from the Waystone, Season 2 Episode 66; Exceptionalism Is A Hell Of A Drug, where we will be discussing Chapters 132-134 of Patrick Rothfuss' The Wise Man's Fear through a lens of No True Scotsman.  For Apple Podcast listeners, please consider rating the show and leaving us a review! It'll help us be seen by more people! We have a Patreon, and right now we're running a free trial of our favorite tier! Patreon.com/waystonepod! Also!!! Join our Discord?: https://discord.gg/ebDBWfrU9V   Recommended Thing of the Week: Logical Fallacies Explained  Another Logical Fallacies Explained Video Lovesac

Content warning for discussion of genocide, torture, mutilation, rape, and slavery Hey, Hi, Hello, this is the History Wizard and welcome back for Day 11 of Have a Day w/ The History Wizard. Thank you to everyone who tuned in for Day 10 last week, and especially thank you to everyone who rated and/or reviewed the podcast. I hope you all learned something last week and I hope the same for this week. This week marks the 3rd part of our mini series of currently ongoing genocides and humanitarian crises. Episode 2 was on Palestine, Episode 11 was on Congo, today's episode will be on Sudan. The nation of Sudan is currently dealing with, among other things we'll cover in detail later in this episode, the largest deplacement campaign of anywhere on the planet with over 9 million people being displaced from their homes by war and genocide. It always feels a little weird transitioning into this part of the episode, but it's now time for the Alchemist's Table. I've invented nearly 90 cocktails over the past 2 years and this one remains my very favorite. It's called the No True Scotsman. Take 2 oz of your scotch whiskey of choice, though I'd recommend a light Islay scotch, something like a Bowmore, or maybe a Campbeltown like Glen Scotia. Then add .75 oz of Frangelico, 1 oz of Maple syrup. Shake this like your life depends on it and pour over ice. Top the drink with ginger beer and enjoy. Now, fortified as we are by uisce beatha, the waters of life, let's get into it. So, what is happening in Sudan, right now? A civil war officially started between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the the Rapid Support Forces that grew out of the Janjaweed militias that were so prevalent in the Darfur Genocide. The war officially began on 15 April 2023 and is still ongoing. But, in order to understand what is happening right now, we need to understand what was happening in the 19th century under British and Egyptian colonialism in the region. So, let's starts at as much of the beginning as we can. Let's start at the Mahdist War. Following Muhammad Ali's invasion (no, a different Muhammad Ali)  in 1819, Sudan was governed by an Egyptian administration. Throughout the period of Egyptian rule, many segments of the Sudanese population suffered extreme hardship because of the system of taxation imposed by the central government. Under this system, a flat tax was imposed on farmers and small traders and collected by government-appointed tax collectors from the Sha'iqiyya tribe of northern Sudan. Throughout the century, and especially after Egypt was floundering to pay the costs of the Suez Canal, Britain got more and more involved. In the late 19th century a war broke out between the Mahdist Sudanese, led by Muhammad Ahmad bin Abdullah, who had proclaimed himself the "Mahdi" of Islam (the "Guided One"), and the forces of the Khedivate of Egypt, initially, and later the forces of Britain. Eighteen years of war resulted in the creation of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (1899–1956), a de jure condominium of the British Empire, and the Kingdom of Egypt, in which Britain had de facto control over Sudan. Sudan officially voted for independence in 1956 and became its own independent republic. Although it achieved independence without conflict, Sudan inherited many problems from the condominium. Chief among these was the status of the civil service. The government placed Sudanese in the administration and provided compensation and pensions for British officers of Sudan Political Service who left the country; it retained those who could not be replaced, mostly technicians and teachers. Khartoum achieved this transformation quickly and with a minimum of turbulence, although southerners resented the replacement of British administrators in the south with northern Sudanese. To advance their interests, many southern leaders concentrated their efforts in Khartoum, where they hoped to win constitutional concessions. Although determined to resist what they perceived to be Arab imperialism, they were opposed to violence. Most southern representatives supported provincial autonomy and warned that failure to win legal concessions would drive the south to rebellion. To understand the issues in Sudan we need to understand that, ultimately, this is a religious and ethnic conflict between the mostly Islamic North and the largely Christian and animist South regions in the nation of Sudan. On November 17, 1958, the day parliament was to convene, a military coup occurred. Khalil, himself a retired army general, planned the preemptive coup in conjunction with leading Umma members and the army's two senior generals, Ibrahim Abboud and Ahmad Abd al Wahab, who became leaders of the military regime. Abboud immediately pledged to resolve all disputes with Egypt, including the long-standing problem of the status of the Nile River. Abboud abandoned the previous government's unrealistic policies regarding the sale of cotton. He also appointed a constitutional commission, headed by the chief justice, to draft a permanent constitution. Abboud maintained, however, that political parties only served as vehicles for personal ambitions and that they would not be reestablished when civilian rule was restored. Despite the Abboud regime's early successes, opposition elements remained powerful. In 1959 dissident military officers made three attempts to displace Abboud with a "popular government." Although the courts sentenced the leaders of these attempted coups to life imprisonment, discontent in the military continued to hamper the government's performance. In particular, the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP) gained a reputation as an effective anti-government organization. To compound its problems, the Abboud regime lacked dynamism and the ability to stabilize the country. Its failure to place capable civilian advisers in positions of authority, or to launch a credible economic and social development program, and gain the army's support, created an atmosphere that encouraged political turbulence. A revolution in 1964 returned the nation to civilian rule, but did little to remove the preceding issues that plagued Sudan. This all brings us within the context of the First Sudanese Civil War. This war was a conflict from 1955 to 1972 between the northern part of Sudan and the southern Sudan region that demanded representation and more regional autonomy. The war was divided into four major stages: initial guerrilla warfare, the creation of the Anyanya insurgency, political strife within the government and establishment of the South Sudan Liberation Movement. Around a million people died over the course of the nearly 17-year long war. The war would end with the signing of the Addis Ababa Accord, which created two main things. A South Sudanese Autonomous Region, and relative peace, if only for about a decade. The Second Sudanese Civil War would break out in 1983. Some sources describe the conflict as an ethnoreligious one where the Arab-Muslim central government's pursuits to impose Sharia law on non-Muslim southerners led to violence, and eventually to the civil war. Historian Douglas Johnson has pointed to exploitative governance as the root cause. This war lasted for some 22 years, making it one of the longest civil wars in recorded Human History. Roughly two million people died as a result of war, famine and disease caused by the conflict. Four million people in southern Sudan were displaced at least once, normally repeatedly during the war. The civilian death toll is one of the highest of any war since World War II and was marked by numerous human rights violations, including slavery and mass killings. Perhaps one of the greatest horrors and tragedies of the Second Sudanese Civil War was the use of child soldiers. Armies from all sides enlisted children in their ranks. The 2005 agreement required that child soldiers be demobilized and sent home. The Sudan People's Liberation Army (the SPLA, by the way, was founded in 1983 as a rebel group to reestablish the South as an autonomous region after president Nimeiry declared the South to officially be part of a fully reunited Sudan.) claimed to have let go 16,000 of its child soldiers between 2001 and 2004. However, international observers (UN and Global Report 2004) have found demobilized children have often been re-recruited by the SPLA. As of 2004, there were between 2,500 and 5,000 children serving in the SPLA.  There was also a revival of slavery during the Second Civil War, it was largely directed at southern Christians, on the grounds that Islamic law allegedly allowed it, and also at women, many of whom were kept as sex slaves and repeatedly raped. The Second Civil War ended officially in 2002 with the signing of the Naivasha Agreement. This guaranteed autonomy for the South for 6 years after which a referendum would be help to vote for official independence. This war ended with roughly 2 million people, mostly civilians, dead of drought and famine caused in large parts by the fighting. Still, while the Second Civil War ended in 2005, it overlapped with a crisis that my generation is very familiar with and that is still, technically, ongoing to this day. I am speaking, of course, of the Darfur Genocide that began in 2003 and has not ended to this day. The War in Darfur, which is also sometimes called the Land Cruiser War, because there were a LOT of Toyota Land Cruiser pick up trucks on both sides of the war, began in February 2003 when the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) rebel groups began fighting against the government of Sudan, which they accused of oppressing Darfur's non-Arab population.  So first let's talk real quick about the SLM and the JEM. When General Omar al-Bashir and the National Islamic Front headed by Dr. Hassan al-Turabi overthrew the Sudanese government led by Ahmed al-Mirghani in 1989. A large section of the population in Darfur, particularly the non-Arab ethnicities in the region, became increasingly marginalized. These feelings were solidified in 2000 by the publication of The Black Book, which detailed the structural inequity in the Sudan that denies non-Arabs equal justice and power sharing. In 2002 Abdul Wahid al-Nur, a lawyer, Ahmad Abdel Shafi Bassey, an education student, and a third man founded the Darfur Liberation Front, which subsequently evolved into the Sudan Liberation Movement and claimed to represent all of the oppressed in the Sudan. The Black Book, also known as The Black Book: Imbalance of Power and Wealth in the Sudan detailed how, despite the Arabic people of North Sudan making up 5.4% of the population they still held 79.5% of the wealth in the nation. So in this context, beyond being a war and genocide based on ethnicity and religion we can see economic reasons for the war. There was a massive disparity between the haves and the have nots, and Karl Marx would tell us that this is the foundation and origin of all of history's great wars.  Now, the Justice and Equality Movement trace their origin to the writers of The Black Book: Imbalance of Power and Wealth in the Sudan, a manuscript published in 2000 that details what it views as the structural inequality in the country; the JEM's founder, Khalil Ibrahim, was one of the authors. The JEM claims to number around 35,000 with an ethnically diverse membership. According to critics it is not the "rainbow of tribes" it claims to be, as most JEM members, including its leader, are from the Zaghawa tribe. The JEM is part of the Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF), an alliance of groups opposed to the Government of Sudan. The Darfur Genocide has it's roots in the same places as all geocides. One group, who feels themselves superior to all others, decided that the best way to deal with these divisive elements in their society is to try and kill them. We saw the same type of conflict in the Armenian genocide of the early 20th century. The Northern Sudanese government saw the non Arabic elements of South Sudan as threats to their power in the region and so decided to kill them. The use of rape as a tool of genocide has been noted as well. This crime has been carried out by Sudanese government forces and the Janjaweed ("evil men on horseback") paramilitary groups. The actions of the Janjaweed have been described as genocidal rape, with not just women, but children as well. There were also reports of infants being bludgeoned to death, and the sexual mutilation of victims being commonplace. One thing I want to make sure we mention is that the President of Sudan during the Darfur genocide has had arrest warrants issued against him by the ICC. He has been charged with five counts of crimes against humanity: murder, extermination, forcible transfer, torture, and rape; two counts of war crimes: intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking part in hostilities, and pillaging; three counts of genocide: by killing, by causing serious bodily or mental harm, and by deliberately inflicting on each target group conditions of life calculated to bring about the group's physical destruction, allegedly committed at least between 2003 and 2008 in Darfur, Sudan. To this day he remains at large and is not in custody. I say remains at large. We, more or less, know where he is. As of 2019 al-Bashir was ousted from his political role by the RSF in a military coup and jailed in Khartoum. Tensions rose between the RSF and the SLM and in 2023 they erupted, once again, into a civil war in Sudan. This brings us, more or less, up to modern day Sudan and the current conflict. To put it as simply as possible, ethnic and religious tensions between the Arabic north and the Christian south have exploded into a full scale war in a period of drought and famine. Roughly 9 million people have been displaced and pretty much everyone who lives in Sudan is without adequate food and water. The United Arab Emirates, among other nations are actively supporting the RSF in their continued subjugation of South Sudan and are actively contributing to the ongoing Darfur genocide. Roughly 80% of Sudanese hospitals no longer exist, and the World Food Programe has indicated that some 95% of Sudanese people are in a state of massive food insecurity. On 3 August 2023, Amnesty International released its report on the conflict. Titled Death Came To Our Home: War Crimes and Civilian Suffering In Sudan, it documented "mass civilian casualties in both deliberate and indiscriminate attacks" by both the SAF and the RSF, particularly in Khartoum and West Darfur. It also detailed sexual violence against women and girls as young as 12, targeted attacks on civilian facilities such as hospitals and churches, and looting. Early March 2024, the UN Panel of Experts on Sudan, mandated by Resolution 2620 (2022) of the UN Security Council, published their latest report. It described the wide-ranging devastation and violence in the country, caused in many cases by the RSF and associated militias. With regard to war crimes in West Darfur, the report estimated the death rate through ethnic cleansing of the Masalit community in El Geneina between 10,000 and 15,000. In her speech before the Security Council Committee, Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US Representative to the United Nations, commented: "It is my hope that the sobering report will at long last shake the world from its indifference to the horrors playing out before our eyes." In April 2024, the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights released a report into breaches of the Genocide Convention in Darfur. The independent report found that there is "clear and convincing evidence" that the RSF and its allied militias "have committed and are committing genocide against the Masalit," a non-Arab ethnic group, and that all 153 states that have signed the Genocide Convention are "obligated to end complicity in and employ all means reasonably available to prevent and halt the genocide." It goes on to say that there is "clear and convincing evidence" that Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, Libya, Chad, the Central African Republic (CAR) and Russia via the actions of the Wagner Group are "complicit in the genocide." The ongoing genocide and refugee crisis in Sudan can, absolutely trace its roots to British imperialism, but beyond that it is part of an ongoing religious conflict between Islam and Christianity dating back all the way to the Crusades. The conflict between the SAF and the RSF is ongoing and shows no signs of slowing down or stopping. While these two groups fight for control over Sudan millions of innocent civilians are dying due to lack of access to food and water. Civil war and genocide is ongoing against the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups and against the general non-Arabic Muslim peoples of Sudan. This conflict has been going on for so long that we have all but forgotten about it. I was in high school and engaging in political activism to end the Darfur genocide. This was nearly 20 years ago. I'm old as hell. There are so many horrible crimes and genocides that exist in the world today. Please don't forget about these suffering people. Genocide relies on existing for long enough that it becomes part of the background. None of this is normal. Never again is right now. That's it for this week folks. No new reviews, so let's get right into the outro. Have a Day! w/ The History Wizard is brought to you by me, The History Wizard. If you want to see/hear more of me you can find me on Tiktok @thehistorywizard or on Instagram @the_history_wizard. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe to Have a Day! On your pod catcher of choice. The more you do, the more people will be able to listen and learn along with you. Thank you  for sticking around until the end and, as always, Have a Day, and Free Sudan  

Jo is back and we welcomed Alex White, Leader of the New Brunswick NDP Party for a deep dive into where the party is at, where they are headed and what Alex sees for the future of NB politics. Workers, the Fake '23 Provincial Election Scare & Budgets as Moral Documents are on the roster so tune in for our longest episode yet!

Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost |Matthew 16:13-20 and 1 Corinthians 1:10-19 | August 27, 2023 |Robert Hamilton, preaching In this sermon, Robert Hamilton explores biblical passages on Peter's confession of Jesus as the Messiah and urges unity among listeners. We delve into the concept of being presidential, reflect on political divisions, and caution against letting others define our religious or cultural identities. The importance of revelation, building meaningful relationships, and prioritizing the greater good are emphasized. The podcast concludes with a reminder of the significance of authenticity and genuine living in faith. Learn more about First Christian: ⁠⁠https://fccsaintpaul.org/⁠⁠

For 4 hours, I tried to come up reasons for why AI might not kill us all, and Eliezer Yudkowsky explained why I was wrong.We also discuss his call to halt AI, why LLMs make alignment harder, what it would take to save humanity, his millions of words of sci-fi, and much more.If you want to get to the crux of the conversation, fast forward to 2:35:00 through 3:43:54. Here we go through and debate the main reasons I still think doom is unlikely.Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here. Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes.As always, the most helpful thing you can do is just to share the podcast - send it to friends, group chats, Twitter, Reddit, forums, and wherever else men and women of fine taste congregate.If you have the means and have enjoyed my podcast, I would appreciate your support via a paid subscriptions on Substack.Timestamps(0:00:00) - TIME article(0:09:06) - Are humans aligned?(0:37:35) - Large language models(1:07:15) - Can AIs help with alignment?(1:30:17) - Society's response to AI(1:44:42) - Predictions (or lack thereof)(1:56:55) - Being Eliezer(2:13:06) - Othogonality(2:35:00) - Could alignment be easier than we think?(3:02:15) - What will AIs want?(3:43:54) - Writing fiction & whether rationality helps you winTranscriptTIME articleDwarkesh Patel 0:00:51Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Eliezer Yudkowsky. Eliezer, thank you so much for coming out to the Lunar Society.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:01:00You're welcome.Dwarkesh Patel 0:01:01Yesterday, when we're recording this, you had an article in Time calling for a moratorium on further AI training runs. My first question is — It's probably not likely that governments are going to adopt some sort of treaty that restricts AI right now. So what was the goal with writing it?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:01:25I thought that this was something very unlikely for governments to adopt and then all of my friends kept on telling me — “No, no, actually, if you talk to anyone outside of the tech industry, they think maybe we shouldn't do that.” And I was like — All right, then. I assumed that this concept had no popular support. Maybe I assumed incorrectly. It seems foolish and to lack dignity to not even try to say what ought to be done. There wasn't a galaxy-brained purpose behind it. I think that over the last 22 years or so, we've seen a great lack of galaxy brained ideas playing out successfully.Dwarkesh Patel 0:02:05Has anybody in the government reached out to you, not necessarily after the article but just in general, in a way that makes you think that they have the broad contours of the problem correct?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:02:15No. I'm going on reports that normal people are more willing than the people I've been previously talking to, to entertain calls that this is a bad idea and maybe you should just not do that.Dwarkesh Patel 0:02:30That's surprising to hear, because I would have assumed that the people in Silicon Valley who are weirdos would be more likely to find this sort of message. They could kind of rocket the whole idea that AI will make nanomachines that take over. It's surprising to hear that normal people got the message first.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:02:47Well, I hesitate to use the term midwit but maybe this was all just a midwit thing.Dwarkesh Patel 0:02:54All right. So my concern with either the 6 month moratorium or forever moratorium until we solve alignment is that at this point, it could make it seem to people like we're crying wolf. And it would be like crying wolf because these systems aren't yet at a point at which they're dangerous. Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:03:13And nobody is saying they are. I'm not saying they are. The open letter signatories aren't saying they are.Dwarkesh Patel 0:03:20So if there is a point at which we can get the public momentum to do some sort of stop, wouldn't it be useful to exercise it when we get a GPT-6? And who knows what it's capable of. Why do it now?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:03:32Because allegedly, and we will see, people right now are able to appreciate that things are storming ahead a bit faster than the ability to ensure any sort of good outcome for them. And you could be like — “Ah, yes. We will play the galaxy-brained clever political move of trying to time when the popular support will be there.” But again, I heard rumors that people were actually completely open to the concept of  let's stop. So again, I'm just trying to say it. And it's not clear to me what happens if we wait for GPT-5 to say it. I don't actually know what GPT-5 is going to be like. It has been very hard to call the rate at which these systems acquire capability as they are trained to larger and larger sizes and more and more tokens. GPT-4 is a bit beyond in some ways where I thought this paradigm was going to scale. So I don't actually know what happens if GPT-5 is built. And even if GPT-5 doesn't end the world, which I agree is like more than 50% of where my probability mass lies, maybe that's enough time for GPT-4.5 to get ensconced everywhere and in everything, and for it actually to be harder to call a stop, both politically and technically. There's also the point that training algorithms keep improving. If we put a hard limit on the total computes and training runs right now, these systems would still get more capable over time as the algorithms improved and got more efficient. More oomph per floating point operation, and things would still improve, but slower. And if you start that process off at the GPT-5 level, where I don't actually know how capable that is exactly, you may have a bunch less lifeline left before you get into dangerous territory.Dwarkesh Patel 0:05:46The concern is then that — there's millions of GPUs out there in the world. The actors who would be willing to cooperate or who could even be identified in order to get the government to make them cooperate, would potentially be the ones that are most on the message. And so what you're left with is a system where they stagnate for six months or a year or however long this lasts. And then what is the game plan? Is there some plan by which if we wait a few years, then alignment will be solved? Do we have some sort of timeline like that?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:06:18Alignment will not be solved in a few years. I would hope for something along the lines of human intelligence enhancement works. I do not think they're going to have the timeline for genetically engineered humans to work but maybe? This is why I mentioned in the Time letter that if I had infinite capability to dictate the laws that there would be a carve-out on biology, AI that is just for biology and not trained on text from the internet. Human intelligence enhancement, make people smarter. Making people smarter has a chance of going right in a way that making an extremely smart AI does not have a realistic chance of going right at this point. If we were on a sane planet, what the sane planet does at this point is shut it all down and work on human intelligence enhancement. I don't think we're going to live in that sane world. I think we are all going to die. But having heard that people are more open to this outside of California, it makes sense to me to just try saying out loud what it is that you do on a saner planet and not just assume that people are not going to do that.Dwarkesh Patel 0:07:30In what percentage of the worlds where humanity survives is there human enhancement? Like even if there's 1% chance humanity survives, is that entire branch dominated by the worlds where there's some sort of human intelligence enhancement?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:07:39I think we're just mainly in the territory of Hail Mary passes at this point, and human intelligence enhancement is one Hail Mary pass. Maybe you can put people in MRIs and train them using neurofeedback to be a little saner, to not rationalize so much. Maybe you can figure out how to have something light up every time somebody is working backwards from what they want to be true to what they take as their premises. Maybe you can just fire off little lights and teach people not to do that so much. Maybe the GPT-4 level systems can be RLHF'd (reinforcement learning from human feedback) into being consistently smart, nice and charitable in conversation and just unleash a billion of them on Twitter and just have them spread sanity everywhere. I do worry that this is not going to be the most profitable use of the technology, but you're asking me to list out Hail Mary passes and that's what I'm doing. Maybe you can actually figure out how to take a brain, slice it, scan it, simulate it, run uploads and upgrade the uploads, or run the uploads faster. These are also quite dangerous things, but they do not have the utter lethality of artificial intelligence.Are humans aligned?Dwarkesh Patel 0:09:06All right, that's actually a great jumping point into the next topic I want to talk to you about. Orthogonality. And here's my first question — Speaking of human enhancement, suppose you bred human beings to be friendly and cooperative, but also more intelligent. I claim that over many generations you would just have really smart humans who are also really friendly and cooperative. Would you disagree with that analogy? I'm sure you're going to disagree with this analogy, but I just want to understand why?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:09:31The main thing is that you're starting from minds that are already very, very similar to yours. You're starting from minds, many of which already exhibit the characteristics that you want. There are already many people in the world, I hope, who are nice in the way that you want them to be nice. Of course, it depends on how nice you want exactly. I think that if you actually go start trying to run a project of selectively encouraging some marriages between particular people and encouraging them to have children, you will rapidly find, as one does in any such process that when you select on the stuff you want, it turns out there's a bunch of stuff correlated with it and that you're not changing just one thing. If you try to make people who are inhumanly nice, who are nicer than anyone has ever been before, you're going outside the space that human psychology has previously evolved and adapted to deal with, and weird stuff will happen to those people. None of this is very analogous to AI. I'm just pointing out something along the lines of — well, taking your analogy at face value, what would happen exactly? It's the sort of thing where you could maybe do it, but there's all kinds of pitfalls that you'd probably find out about if you cracked open a textbook on animal breeding.Dwarkesh Patel 0:11:13The thing you mentioned initially, which is that we are starting off with basic human psychology, that we are fine tuning with breeding. Luckily, the current paradigm of AI is  — you have these models that are trained on human text and I would assume that this would give you a starting point of something like human psychology.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:11:31Why do you assume that?Dwarkesh Patel 0:11:33Because they're trained on human text.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:11:34And what does that do?Dwarkesh Patel 0:11:36Whatever thoughts and emotions that lead to the production of human text need to be simulated in the AI in order to produce those results.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:11:44I see. So if you take an actor and tell them to play a character, they just become that person. You can tell that because you see somebody on screen playing Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and that's probably just actually Buffy in there. That's who that is.Dwarkesh Patel 0:12:05I think a better analogy is if you have a child and you tell him — Hey, be this way. They're more likely to just be that way instead of putting on an act for 20 years or something.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:12:18It depends on what you're telling them to be exactly. Dwarkesh Patel 0:12:20You're telling them to be nice.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:12:22Yeah, but that's not what you're telling them to do. You're telling them to play the part of an alien, something with a completely inhuman psychology as extrapolated by science fiction authors, and in many cases done by computers because humans can't quite think that way. And your child eventually manages to learn to act that way. What exactly is going on in there now? Are they just the alien or did they pick up the rhythm of what you're asking them to imitate and be like — “Ah yes, I see who I'm supposed to pretend to be.” Are they actually a person or are they pretending? That's true even if you're not asking them to be an alien. My parents tried to raise me Orthodox Jewish and that did not take at all. I learned to pretend. I learned to comply. I hated every minute of it. Okay, not literally every minute of it. I should avoid saying untrue things. I hated most minutes of it. Because they were trying to show me a way to be that was alien to my own psychology and the religion that I actually picked up was from the science fiction books instead, as it were. I'm using religion very metaphorically here, more like ethos, you might say. I was raised with science fiction books I was reading from my parents library and Orthodox Judaism. The ethos of the science fiction books rang truer in my soul and so that took in, the Orthodox Judaism didn't. But the Orthodox Judaism was what I had to imitate, was what I had to pretend to be, was the answers I had to give whether I believed them or not. Because otherwise you get punished.Dwarkesh Patel 0:14:01But on that point itself, the rates of apostasy are probably below 50% in any religion. Some people do leave but often they just become the thing they're imitating as a child.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:14:12Yes, because the religions are selected to not have that many apostates. If aliens came in and introduced their religion, you'd get a lot more apostates.Dwarkesh Patel 0:14:19Right. But I think we're probably in a more virtuous situation with ML because these systems are regularized through stochastic gradient descent. So the system that is pretending to be something where there's multiple layers of interpretation is going to be more complex than the one that is just being the thing. And over time, the system that is just being the thing will be optimized, right? It'll just be simpler.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:14:42This seems like an ordinate cope. For one thing, you're not training it to be any one particular person. You're training it to switch masks to anyone on the Internet as soon as they figure out who that person on the internet is. If I put the internet in front of you and I was like — learn to predict the next word over and over. You do not just turn into a random human because the random human is not what's best at predicting the next word of everyone who's ever been on the internet. You learn to very rapidly pick up on the cues of what sort of person is talking, what will they say next? You memorize so many facts just because they're helpful in predicting the next word. You learn all kinds of patterns, you learn all the languages. You learn to switch rapidly from being one kind of person or another as the conversation that you are predicting changes who is speaking. This is not a human we're describing. You are not training a human there.Dwarkesh Patel 0:15:43Would you at least say that we are living in a better situation than one in which we have some sort of black box where you have a machiavellian fittest survive simulation that produces AI? This situation is at least more likely to produce alignment than one in which something that is completely untouched by human psychology would produce?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:16:06More likely? Yes. Maybe you're an order of magnitude likelier. 0% instead of 0%. Getting stuff to be more likely does not help you if the baseline is nearly zero. The whole training set up there is producing an actress, a predictor. It's not actually being put into the kind of ancestral situation that evolved humans, nor the kind of modern situation that raises humans. Though to be clear, raising it like a human wouldn't help, But you're giving it a very alien problem that is not what humans solve and it is solving that problem not in the way a human would.Dwarkesh Patel 0:16:44Okay, so how about this. I can see that I certainly don't know for sure what is going on in these systems. In fact, obviously nobody does. But that also goes through you. Could it not just be that reinforcement learning works and all these other things we're trying somehow work and actually just being an actor produces some sort of benign outcome where there isn't that level of simulation and conniving?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:17:15I think it predictably breaks down as you try to make the system smarter, as you try to derive sufficiently useful work from it. And in particular, the sort of work where some other AI doesn't just kill you off six months later. Yeah, I think the present system is not smart enough to have a deep conniving actress thinking long strings of coherent thoughts about how to predict the next word. But as the mask that it wears, as the people it is pretending to be get smarter and smarter, I think that at some point the thing in there that is predicting how humans plan, predicting how humans talk, predicting how humans think, and needing to be at least as smart as the human it is predicting in order to do that, I suspect at some point there is a new coherence born within the system and something strange starts happening. I think that if you have something that can accurately predict Eliezer Yudkowsky, to use a particular example I know quite well, you've got to be able to do the kind of thinking where you are reflecting on yourself and that in order to simulate Eliezer Yudkowsky reflecting on himself, you need to be able to do that kind of thinking. This is not airtight logic but I expect there to be a discount factor. If you ask me to play a part of somebody who's quite unlike me, I think there's some amount of penalty that the character I'm playing gets to his intelligence because I'm secretly back there simulating him. That's even if we're quite similar and the stranger they are, the more unfamiliar the situation, the less the person I'm playing is as smart as I am and the more they are dumber than I am. So similarly, I think that if you get an AI that's very, very good at predicting what Eliezer says, I think that there's a quite alien mind doing that, and it actually has to be to some degree smarter than me in order to play the role of something that thinks differently from how it does very, very accurately. And I reflect on myself, I think about how my thoughts are not good enough by my own standards and how I want to rearrange my own thought processes. I look at the world and see it going the way I did not want it to go, and asking myself how could I change this world? I look around at other humans and I model them, and sometimes I try to persuade them of things. These are all capabilities that the system would then be somewhere in there. And I just don't trust the blind hope that all of that capability is pointed entirely at pretending to be Eliezer and only exists insofar as it's the mirror and isomorph of Eliezer. That all the prediction is by being something exactly like me and not thinking about me while not being me.Dwarkesh Patel 0:20:55I certainly don't want to claim that it is guaranteed that there isn't something super alien and something against our aims happening within the shoggoth. But you made an earlier claim which seemed much stronger than the idea that you don't want blind hope, which is that we're going from 0% probability to an order of magnitude greater at 0% probability. There's a difference between saying that we should be wary and that there's no hope, right? I could imagine so many things that could be happening in the shoggoth's brain, especially in our level of confusion and mysticism over what is happening. One example is, let's say that it kind of just becomes the average of all human psychology and motives.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:21:41But it's not the average. It is able to be every one of those people. That's very different from being the average. It's very different from being an average chess player versus being able to predict every chess player in the database. These are very different things.Dwarkesh Patel 0:21:56Yeah, no, I meant in terms of motives that it is the average where it can simulate any given human. I'm not saying that's the most likely one, I'm just saying it's one possibility.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:22:08What.. Why? It just seems 0% probable to me. Like the motive is going to be like some weird funhouse mirror thing of — I want to predict very accurately.Dwarkesh Patel 0:22:19Right. Why then are we so sure that whatever drives that come about because of this motive are going to be incompatible with the survival and flourishing with humanity?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:22:30Most drives when you take a loss function and splinter it into things correlated with it and then amp up intelligence until some kind of strange coherence is born within the thing and then ask it how it would want to self modify or what kind of successor system it would build. Things that alien ultimately end up wanting the universe to be some particular way such that humans are not a solution to the question of how to make the universe most that way. The thing that very strongly wants to predict text, even if you got that goal into the system exactly which is not what would happen, The universe with the most predictable text is not a universe that has humans in it. Dwarkesh Patel 0:23:19Okay. I'm not saying this is the most likely outcome. Here's an example of one of many ways in which humans stay around despite this motive. Let's say that in order to predict human output really well, it needs humans around to give it the raw data from which to improve its predictions or something like that. This is not something I think individually is likely…Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:23:40If the humans are no longer around, you no longer need to predict them. Right, so you don't need the data required to predict themDwarkesh Patel 0:23:46Because you are starting off with that motivation you want to just maximize along that loss function or have that drive that came about because of the loss function.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:23:57I'm confused. So look, you can always develop arbitrary fanciful scenarios in which the AI has some contrived motive that it can only possibly satisfy by keeping humans alive in good health and comfort and turning all the nearby galaxies into happy, cheerful places full of high functioning galactic civilizations. But as soon as your sentence has more than like five words in it, its probability has dropped to basically zero because of all the extra details you're padding in.Dwarkesh Patel 0:24:31Maybe let's return to this. Another train of thought I want to follow is — I claim that humans have not become orthogonal to the sort of evolutionary process that produced them.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:24:46Great. I claim humans are increasingly orthogonal and the further they go out of distribution and the smarter they get, the more orthogonal they get to inclusive genetic fitness, the sole loss function on which humans were optimized.Dwarkesh Patel 0:25:03Most humans still want kids and have kids and care for their kin. Certainly there's some angle between how humans operate today. Evolution would prefer us to use less condoms and more sperm banks. But there's like 10 billion of us and there's going to be more in the future. We haven't divorced that far from what our alleles would want.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:25:28It's a question of how far out of distribution are you? And the smarter you are, the more out of distribution you get. Because as you get smarter, you get new options that are further from the options that you are faced with in the ancestral environment that you were optimized over. Sure, a lot of people want kids, not inclusive genetic fitness, but kids. They want kids similar to them maybe, but they don't want the kids to have their DNA or their alleles or their genes. So suppose I go up to somebody and credibly say, we will assume away the ridiculousness of this offer for the moment, your kids could be a bit smarter and much healthier if you'll just let me replace their DNA with this alternate storage method that will age more slowly. They'll be healthier, they won't have to worry about DNA damage, they won't have to worry about the methylation on the DNA flipping and the cells de-differentiating as they get older. We've got this stuff that replaces DNA and your kid will still be similar to you, it'll be a bit smarter and they'll be so much healthier and even a bit more cheerful. You just have to replace all the DNA with a stronger substrate and rewrite all the information on it. You know, the old school transhumanist offer really. And I think that a lot of the people who want kids would go for this new offer that just offers them so much more of what it is they want from kids than copying the DNA, than inclusive genetic fitness.Dwarkesh Patel 0:27:16In some sense, I don't even think that would dispute my claim because if you think from a gene's point of view, it just wants to be replicated. If it's replicated in another substrate that's still okay.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:27:25No, we're not saving the information. We're doing a total rewrite to the DNA.Dwarkesh Patel 0:27:30I actually claim that most humans would not accept that offer.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:27:33Yeah, because it would sound weird. But I think the smarter they are, the more likely they are to go for it if it's credible. I mean, if you assume away the credibility issue and the weirdness issue. Like all their friends are doing it.Dwarkesh Patel 0:27:52Yeah. Even if the smarter they are the more likely they're to do it, most humans are not that smart. From the gene's point of view it doesn't really matter how smart you are, right? It just matters if you're producing copies.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:28:03No. The smart thing is kind of like a delicate issue here because somebody could always be like — I would never take that offer. And then I'm like “Yeah…”. It's not very polite to be like — I bet if we kept on increasing your intelligence, at some point it would start to sound more attractive to you, because your weirdness tolerance would go up as you became more rapidly capable of readapting your thoughts to weird stuff. The weirdness would start to seem less unpleasant and more like you were moving within a space that you already understood. But you can sort of avoid all that and maybe should by being like — suppose all your friends were doing it. What if it was normal? What if we remove the weirdness and remove any credibility problems in that hypothetical case? Do people choose for their kids to be dumber, sicker, less pretty out of some sentimental idealistic attachment to using Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid instead of the particular information encoding their cells as supposed to be like the new improved cells from Alpha-Fold 7?Dwarkesh Patel 0:29:21I would claim that they would but we don't really know. I claim that they would be more averse to that, you probably think that they would be less averse to that. Regardless of that, we can just go by the evidence we do have in that we are already way out of distribution of the ancestral environment. And even in this situation, the place where we do have evidence, people are still having kids. We haven't gone that orthogonal.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:29:44We haven't gone that smart. What you're saying is — Look, people are still making more of their DNA in a situation where nobody has offered them a way to get all the stuff they want without the DNA. So of course they haven't tossed DNA out the window.Dwarkesh Patel 0:29:59Yeah. First of all, I'm not even sure what would happen in that situation. I still think even most smart humans in that situation might disagree, but we don't know what would happen in that situation. Why not just use the evidence we have so far?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:30:10PCR. You right now, could get some of you and make like a whole gallon jar full of your own DNA. Are you doing that? No. Misaligned. Misaligned.Dwarkesh Patel 0:30:23I'm down with transhumanism. I'm going to have my kids use the new cells and whatever.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:30:27Oh, so we're all talking about these hypothetical other people I think would make the wrong choice.Dwarkesh Patel 0:30:32Well, I wouldn't say wrong, but different. And I'm just saying there's probably more of them than there are of us.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:30:37What if, like, I say that I have more faith in normal people than you do to toss DNA out the window as soon as somebody offers them a happy, healthier life for their kids?Dwarkesh Patel 0:30:46I'm not even making a moral point. I'm just saying I don't know what's going to happen in the future. Let's just look at the evidence we have so far, humans. If that's the evidence you're going to present for something that's out of distribution and has gone orthogonal, that has actually not happened. This is evidence for hope. Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:31:00Because we haven't yet had options as far enough outside of the ancestral distribution that in the course of choosing what we most want that there's no DNA left.Dwarkesh Patel 0:31:10Okay. Yeah, I think I understand.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:31:12But you yourself say, “Oh yeah, sure, I would choose that.” and I myself say, “Oh yeah, sure, I would choose that.” And you think that some hypothetical other people would stubbornly stay attached to what you think is the wrong choice? First of all, I think maybe you're being a bit condescending there. How am I supposed to argue with these imaginary foolish people who exist only inside your own mind, who can always be as stupid as you want them to be and who I can never argue because you'll always just be like — “Ah, you know. They won't be persuaded by that.” But right here in this room, the site of this videotaping, there is no counter evidence that smart enough humans will toss DNA out the window as soon as somebody makes them a sufficiently better offer.Dwarkesh Patel 0:31:55I'm not even saying it's stupid. I'm just saying they're not weirdos like me and you.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:32:01Weird is relative to intelligence. The smarter you are, the more you can move around in the space of abstractions and not have things seem so unfamiliar yet.Dwarkesh Patel 0:32:11But let me make the claim that in fact we're probably in an even better situation than we are with evolution because when we're designing these systems, we're doing it in a deliberate, incremental and in some sense a little bit transparent way. Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:32:27No, no, not yet, not now. Nobody's being careful and deliberate now, but maybe at some point in the indefinite future people will be careful and deliberate. Sure, let's grant that premise. Keep going.Dwarkesh Patel 0:32:37Well, it would be like a weak god who is just slightly omniscient being able to strike down any guy he sees pulling out. Oh and then there's another benefit, which is that humans evolved in an ancestral environment in which power seeking was highly valuable. Like if you're in some sort of tribe or something.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:32:59Sure, lots of instrumental values made their way into us but even more strange, warped versions of them make their way into our intrinsic motivations.Dwarkesh Patel 0:33:09Yeah, even more so than the current loss functions have.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:33:10Really? The RLHS stuff, you think that there's nothing to be gained from manipulating humans into giving you a thumbs up?Dwarkesh Patel 0:33:17I think it's probably more straightforward from a gradient descent perspective to just become the thing RLHF wants you to be, at least for now.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:33:24Where are you getting this?Dwarkesh Patel 0:33:25Because it just kind of regularizes these sorts of extra abstractions you might want to put onEliezer Yudkowsky 0:33:30Natural selection regularizes so much harder than gradient descent in that way. It's got an enormously stronger information bottleneck. Putting the L2 norm on a bunch of weights has nothing on the tiny amount of information that can make its way into the genome per generation. The regularizers on natural selection are enormously stronger.Dwarkesh Patel 0:33:51Yeah. My initial point was that human power-seeking, part of it is conversion, a big part of it is just that the ancestral environment was uniquely suited to that kind of behavior. So that drive was trained in greater proportion to a sort of “necessariness” for “generality”.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:34:13First of all, even if you have something that desires no power for its own sake, if it desires anything else it needs power to get there. Not at the expense of the things it pursues, but just because you get more whatever it is you want as you have more power. And sufficiently smart things know that. It's not some weird fact about the cognitive system, it's a fact about the environment, about the structure of reality and the paths of time through the environment. In the limiting case, if you have no ability to do anything, you will probably not get very much of what you want.Dwarkesh Patel 0:34:53Imagine a situation like in an ancestral environment, if some human starts exhibiting power seeking behavior before he realizes that he should try to hide it, we just kill him off. And the friendly cooperative ones, we let them breed more. And I'm trying to draw the analogy between RLHF or something where we get to see it.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:35:12Yeah, I think my concern is that that works better when the things you're breeding are stupider than you as opposed to when they are smarter than you. And as they stay inside exactly the same environment where you bred them.Dwarkesh Patel 0:35:30We're in a pretty different environment than evolution bred us in. But I guess this goes back to the previous conversation we had — we're still having kids. Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:35:36Because nobody's made them an offer for better kids with less DNADwarkesh Patel 0:35:43Here's what I think is the problem. I can just look out of the world and see this is what it looks like. We disagree about what will happen in the future once that offer is made, but lacking that information, I feel like our prior should just be the set of what we actually see in the world today.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:35:55Yeah I think in that case, we should believe that the dates on the calendars will never show 2024. Every single year throughout human history, in the 13.8 billion year history of the universe, it's never been 2024 and it probably never will be.Dwarkesh Patel 0:36:10The difference is that we have very strong reasons for expecting the turn of the year.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:36:19Are you extrapolating from your past data to outside the range of data?Dwarkesh Patel 0:36:24Yes, I think we have a good reason to. I don't think human preferences are as predictable as dates.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:36:29Yeah, they're somewhat less so. Sorry, why not jump on this one? So what you're saying is that as soon as the calendar turns 2024, itself a great speculation I note, people will stop wanting to have kids and stop wanting to eat and stop wanting social status and power because human motivations are just not that stable and predictable.Dwarkesh Patel 0:36:51No. That's not what I'm claiming at all. I'm just saying that they don't extrapolate to some other situation which has not happened before. Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:36:59Like the clock showing 2024?Dwarkesh Patel 0:37:01What is an example here? Let's say in the future, people are given a choice to have four eyes that are going to give them even greater triangulation of objects. I wouldn't assume that they would choose to have four eyes.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:37:16Yeah. There's no established preference for four eyes.Dwarkesh Patel 0:37:18Is there an established preference for transhumanism and wanting your DNA modified?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:37:22There's an established preference for people going to some lengths to make their kids healthier, not necessarily via the options that they would have later, but the options that they do have now.Large language modelsDwarkesh Patel 0:37:35Yeah. We'll see, I guess, when that technology becomes available. Let me ask you about LLMs. So what is your position now about whether these things can get us to AGI?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:37:47I don't know. I was previously like — I don't think stack more layers does this. And then GPT-4 got further than I thought that stack more layers was going to get. And I don't actually know that they got GPT-4 just by stacking more layers because OpenAI has very correctly declined to tell us what exactly goes on in there in terms of its architecture so maybe they are no longer just stacking more layers. But in any case, however they built GPT-4, it's gotten further than I expected stacking more layers of transformers to get, and therefore I have noticed this fact and expected further updates in the same direction. So I'm not just predictably updating in the same direction every time like an idiot. And now I do not know. I am no longer willing to say that GPT-6 does not end the world.Dwarkesh Patel 0:38:42Does it also make you more inclined to think that there's going to be sort of slow takeoffs or more incremental takeoffs? Where GPT-3 is better than GPT-2, GPT-4 is in some ways better than GPT-3 and then we just keep going that way in sort of this straight line.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:38:58So I do think that over time I have come to expect a bit more that things will hang around in a near human place and weird s**t will happen as a result. And my failure review where I look back and ask — was that a predictable sort of mistake? I feel like it was to some extent maybe a case of — you're always going to get capabilities in some order and it was much easier to visualize the endpoint where you have all the capabilities than where you have some of the capabilities. And therefore my visualizations were not dwelling enough on a space we'd predictably in retrospect have entered into later where things have some capabilities but not others and it's weird. I do think that, in 2012, I would not have called that large language models were the way and the large language models are in some way more uncannily semi-human than what I would justly have predicted in 2012 knowing only what I knew then. But broadly speaking, yeah, I do feel like GPT-4 is already kind of hanging out for longer in a weird, near-human space than I was really visualizing. In part, that's because it's so incredibly hard to visualize or predict correctly in advance when it will happen, which is, in retrospect, a bias.Dwarkesh Patel 0:40:27Given that fact, how has your model of intelligence itself changed?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:40:31Very little.Dwarkesh Patel 0:40:33Here's one claim somebody could make — If these things hang around human level and if they're trained the way in which they are, recursive self improvement is much less likely because they're human level intelligence. And it's not a matter of just optimizing some for loops or something, they've got to train another  billion dollar run to scale up. So that kind of recursive self intelligence idea is less likely. How do you respond?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:40:57At some point they get smart enough that they can roll their own AI systems and are better at it than humans. And that is the point at which you definitely start to see foom. Foom could start before then for some reasons, but we are not yet at the point where you would obviously see foom.Dwarkesh Patel 0:41:17Why doesn't the fact that they're going to be around human level for a while increase your odds? Or does it increase your odds of human survival? Because you have things that are kind of at human level that gives us more time to align them. Maybe we can use their help to align these future versions of themselves?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:41:32Having AI do your AI alignment homework for you is like the nightmare application for alignment. Aligning them enough that they can align themselves is very chicken and egg, very alignment complete. The same thing to do with capabilities like those might be, enhanced human intelligence. Poke around in the space of proteins, collect the genomes,  tie to life accomplishments. Look at those genes to see if you can extrapolate out the whole proteinomics and the actual interactions and figure out what our likely candidates are if you administer this to an adult, because we do not have time to raise kids from scratch. If you administer this to an adult, the adult gets smarter. Try that. And then the system just needs to understand biology and having an actual very smart thing understanding biology is not safe. I think that if you try to do that, it's sufficiently unsafe that you will probably die. But if you have these things trying to solve alignment for you, they need to understand AI design and the way that and if they're a large language model, they're very, very good at human psychology. Because predicting the next thing you'll do is their entire deal. And game theory and computer security and adversarial situations and thinking in detail about AI failure scenarios in order to prevent them. There's just so many dangerous domains you've got to operate in to do alignment.Dwarkesh Patel 0:43:35Okay. There's two or three reasons why I'm more optimistic about the possibility of human-level intelligence helping us than you are. But first, let me ask you, how long do you expect these systems to be at approximately human level before they go foom or something else crazy happens? Do you have some sense? Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:43:55(Eliezer Shrugs)Dwarkesh Patel 0:43:56All right. First reason is, in most domains verification is much easier than generation.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:44:03Yes. That's another one of the things that makes alignment the nightmare. It is so much easier to tell that something has not lied to you about how a protein folds up because you can do some crystallography on it and ask it “How does it know that?”, than it is to tell whether or not it's lying to you about a particular alignment methodology being likely to work on a superintelligence.Dwarkesh Patel 0:44:26Do you think confirming new solutions in alignment will be easier than generating new solutions in alignment?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:44:35Basically no.Dwarkesh Patel 0:44:37Why not? Because in most human domains, that is the case, right?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:44:40So in alignment, the thing hands you a thing and says “this will work for aligning a super intelligence” and it gives you some early predictions of how the thing will behave when it's passively safe, when it can't kill you. That all bear out and those predictions all come true. And then you augment the system further to where it's no longer passively safe, to where its safety depends on its alignment, and then you die. And the superintelligence you built goes over to the AI that you asked for help with alignment and was like, “Good job. Billion dollars.” That's observation number one. Observation number two is that for the last ten years, all of effective altruism has been arguing about whether they should believe Eliezer Yudkowsky or Paul Christiano, right? That's two systems. I believe that Paul is honest. I claim that I am honest. Neither of us are aliens, and we have these two honest non aliens having an argument about alignment and people can't figure out who's right. Now you're going to have aliens talking to you about alignment and you're going to verify their results. Aliens who are possibly lying.Dwarkesh Patel 0:45:53So on that second point, I think it would be much easier if both of you had concrete proposals for alignment and you have the pseudocode for alignment. If you're like “here's my solution”, and he's like “here's my solution.” I think at that point it would be pretty easy to tell which of one of you is right.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:46:08I think you're wrong. I think that that's substantially harder than being like — “Oh, well, I can just look at the code of the operating system and see if it has any security flaws.” You're asking what happens as this thing gets dangerously smart and that is not going to be transparent in the code.Dwarkesh Patel 0:46:32Let me come back to that. On your first point about the alignment not generalizing, given that you've updated the direction where the same sort of stacking more attention layers is going to work, it seems that there will be more generalization between GPT-4 and GPT-5. Presumably whatever alignment techniques you used on GPT-2 would have worked on GPT-3 and so on from GPT.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:46:56Wait, sorry what?!Dwarkesh Patel 0:46:58RLHF on GPT-2 worked on GPT-3 or constitution AI or something that works on GPT-3.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:47:01All kinds of interesting things started happening with GPT 3.5 and GPT-4 that were not in GPT-3.Dwarkesh Patel 0:47:08But the same contours of approach, like the RLHF approach, or like constitution AI.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:47:12By that you mean it didn't really work in one case, and then much more visibly didn't really work on the later cases? Sure. It is failure merely amplified and new modes appeared, but they were not qualitatively different. Well, they were qualitatively different from the previous ones. Your entire analogy fails.Dwarkesh Patel 0:47:31Wait, wait, wait. Can we go through how it fails? I'm not sure I understood it.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:47:33Yeah. Like, they did RLHF to GPT-3. Did they even do this to GPT-2 at all? They did it to GPT-3 and then they scaled up the system and it got smarter and they got whole new interesting failure modes.Dwarkesh Patel 0:47:50YeahEliezer Yudkowsky 0:47:52There you go, right?Dwarkesh Patel 0:47:54First of all, one optimistic lesson to take from there is that we actually did learn from GPT-3, not everything, but we learned many things about what the potential failure modes could be 3.5.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:48:06We saw these people get caught utterly flat-footed on the Internet. We watched that happen in real time.Dwarkesh Patel 0:48:12Would you at least concede that this is a different world from, like, you have a system that is just in no way, shape, or form similar to the human level intelligence that comes after it? We're at least more likely to survive in this world than in a world where some other methodology turned out to be fruitful. Do you hear what I'm saying? Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:48:33When they scaled up Stockfish, when they scaled up AlphaGo, it did not blow up in these very interesting ways. And yes, that's because it wasn't really scaling to general intelligence. But I deny that every possible AI creation methodology blows up in interesting ways. And this isn't really the one that blew up least. No, it's the only one we've ever tried. There's better stuff out there. We just suck, okay? We just suck at alignment, and that's why our stuff blew up.Dwarkesh Patel 0:49:04Well, okay. Let me make this analogy, the Apollo program. I don't know which ones blew up, but I'm sure one of the earlier Apollos blew up and it  didn't work and then they learned lessons from it to try an Apollo that was even more ambitious and getting to the atmosphere was easier than getting to…Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:49:23We are learning from the AI systems that we build and as they fail and as we repair them and our learning goes along at this pace (Eliezer moves his hands slowly) and our capabilities will go along at this pace (Elizer moves his hand rapidly across)Dwarkesh Patel 0:49:35Let me think about that. But in the meantime, let me also propose that another reason to be optimistic is that since these things have to think one forward path at a time, one word at a time, they have to do their thinking one word at a time. And in some sense, that makes their thinking legible. They have to articulate themselves as they proceed.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:49:54What? We get a black box output, then we get another black box output. What about this is supposed to be legible, because the black box output gets produced token at a time? What a truly dreadful… You're really reaching here.Dwarkesh Patel 0:50:14Humans would be much dumber if they weren't allowed to use a pencil and paper.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:50:19Pencil and paper to GPT and it got smarter, right?Dwarkesh Patel 0:50:24Yeah. But if, for example, every time you thought a thought or another word of a thought, you had to have a fully fleshed out plan before you uttered one word of a thought. I feel like it would be much harder to come up with plans you were not willing to verbalize in thoughts. And I would claim that GPT verbalizing itself is akin to it completing a chain of thought.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:50:49Okay. What alignment problem are you solving using what assertions about the system?Dwarkesh Patel 0:50:57It's not solving an alignment problem. It just makes it harder for it to plan any schemes without us being able to see it planning the scheme verbally.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:51:09Okay. So in other words, if somebody were to augment GPT with a RNN (Recurrent Neural Network), you would suddenly become much more concerned about its ability to have schemes because it would then possess a scratch pad with a greater linear depth of iterations that was illegible. Sounds right?Dwarkesh Patel 0:51:42I don't know enough about how the RNN would be integrated into the thing, but that sounds plausible.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:51:46Yeah. Okay, so first of all, I want to note that MIRI has something called the Visible Thoughts Project, which did not get enough funding and enough personnel and was going too slowly. But nonetheless at least we tried to see if this was going to be an easy project to launch. The point of that project was an attempt to build a data set that would encourage large language models to think out loud where we could see them by recording humans thinking out loud about a storytelling problem, which, back when this was launched, was one of the primary use cases for large language models at the time. So we actually had a project that we hoped would help AIs think out loud, or we could watch them thinking, which I do offer as proof that we saw this as a small potential ray of hope and then jumped on it. But it's a small ray of hope. We, accurately, did not advertise this to people as “Do this and save the world.” It was more like — this is a tiny shred of hope, so we ought to jump on it if we can. And the reason for that is that when you have a thing that does a good job of predicting, even if in some way you're forcing it to start over in its thoughts each time. Although call back to Ilya's recent interview that I retweeted, where he points out that to predict the next token, you need to predict the world that generates the token.Dwarkesh Patel 0:53:25Wait, was it my interview?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:53:27I don't remember. Dwarkesh Patel 0:53:25It was my interview. (Link to the section)Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:53:30Okay, all right, call back to your interview. Ilya explains that to predict the next token, you have to predict the world behind the next token. Excellently put. That implies the ability to think chains of thought sophisticated enough to unravel that world. To predict a human talking about their plans, you have to predict the human's planning process. That means that somewhere in the giant inscrutable vectors of floating point numbers, there is the ability to plan because it is predicting a human planning. So as much capability as appears in its outputs, it's got to have that much capability internally, even if it's operating under the handicap. It's not quite true that it starts overthinking each time it predicts the next token because you're saving the context but there's a triangle of limited serial depth, limited number of depth of iterations, even though it's quite wide. Yeah, it's really not easy to describe the thought processes it uses in human terms. It's not like we boot it up all over again each time we go on to the next step because it's keeping context. But there is a valid limit on serial death. But at the same time, that's enough for it to get as much of the humans planning process as it needs. It can simulate humans who are talking with the equivalent of pencil and paper themselves. Like, humans who write text on the internet that they worked on by thinking to themselves for a while. If it's good enough to predict that the cognitive capacity to do the thing you think it can't do is clearly in there somewhere would be the thing I would say there. Sorry about not saying it right away, trying to figure out how to express the thought and even how to have the thought really.Dwarkesh Patel 0:55:29But the broader claim is that this didn't work?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:55:33No, no. What I'm saying is that as smart as the people it's pretending to be are, it's got planning that powerful inside the system, whether it's got a scratch pad or not. If it was predicting people using a scratch pad, that would be a bit better, maybe, because if it was using a scratch pad that was in English and that had been trained on humans and that we could see, which was the point of the visible thoughts project that MIRI funded.Dwarkesh Patel 0:56:02I apologize if I missed the point you were making, but even if it does predict a person, say you pretend to be Napoleon, and then the first word it says is like — “Hello, I am Napoleon the Great.” But it is like articulating it itself one token at a time. Right? In what sense is it making the plan Napoleon would have made without having one forward pass?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:56:25Does Napoleon plan before he speaks?Dwarkesh Patel 0:56:30Maybe a closer analogy is Napoleon's thoughts. And Napoleon doesn't think before he thinks.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:56:35Well, it's not being trained on Napoleon's thoughts in fact. It's being trained on Napoleon's words. It's predicting Napoleon's words. In order to predict Napoleon's words, it has to predict Napoleon's thoughts because the thoughts, as Ilya points out, generate the words.Dwarkesh Patel 0:56:49All right, let me just back up here. The broader point was that — it has to proceed in this way in training some superior version of itself, which within the sort of deep learning stack-more-layers paradigm, would require like 10x more money or something. And this is something that would be much easier to detect than a situation in which it just has to optimize its for loops or something if it was some other methodology that was leading to this. So it should make us more optimistic.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:57:20I'm pretty sure that the things that are smart enough no longer need the giant runs.Dwarkesh Patel 0:57:25While it is at human level. Which you say it will be for a while.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:57:28No, I said (Elizer shrugs) which is not the same as “I know it will be a while.” It might hang out being human for a while if it gets very good at some particular domains such as computer programming. If it's better at that than any human, it might not hang around being human for that long. There could be a while when it's not any better than we are at building AI. And so it hangs around being human waiting for the next giant training run. That is a thing that could happen to AIs. It's not ever going to be exactly human. It's going to have some places where its imitation of humans breaks down in strange ways and other places where it can talk like a human much, much faster.Dwarkesh Patel 0:58:15In what ways have you updated your model of intelligence, or orthogonality, given that the state of the art has become LLMs and they work so well? Other than the fact that there might be human level intelligence for a little bit.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:58:30There's not going to be human-level. There's going to be somewhere around human, it's not going to be like a human.Dwarkesh Patel 0:58:38Okay, but it seems like it is a significant update. What implications does that update have on your worldview?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:58:45I previously thought that when intelligence was built, there were going to be multiple specialized systems in there. Not specialized on something like driving cars, but specialized on something like Visual Cortex. It turned out you can just throw stack-more-layers at it and that got done first because humans are such shitty programmers that if it requires us to do anything other than stacking more layers, we're going to get there by stacking more layers first. Kind of sad. Not good news for alignment. That's an update. It makes everything a lot more grim.Dwarkesh Patel 0:59:16Wait, why does it make things more grim?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:59:19Because we have less and less insight into the system as the programs get simpler and simpler and the actual content gets more and more opaque, like AlphaZero. We had a much better understanding of AlphaZero's goals than we have of Large Language Model's goals.Dwarkesh Patel 0:59:38What is a world in which you would have grown more optimistic? Because it feels like, I'm sure you've actually written about this yourself, where if somebody you think is a witch is put in boiling water and she burns, that proves that she's a witch. But if she doesn't, then that proves that she was using witch powers too.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:59:56If the world of AI had looked like way more powerful versions of the kind of stuff that was around in 2001 when I was getting into this field, that would have been enormously better for alignment. Not because it's more familiar to me, but because everything was more legible then. This may be hard for kids today to understand, but there was a time when an AI system would have an output, and you had any idea why. They weren't just enormous black boxes. I know wacky stuff. I'm practically growing a long gray beard as I speak. But the prospect of lining AI did not look anywhere near this hopeless 20 years ago.Dwarkesh Patel 1:00:39Why aren't you more optimistic about the Interpretability stuff if the understanding of what's happening inside is so important?Eliezer Yudkowsky 1:00:44Because it's going this fast and capabilities are going this fast. (Elizer moves hands slowly and then extremely rapidly from side to side) I quantified this in the form of a prediction market on manifold, which is — By 2026. will we understand anything that goes on inside a large language model that would have been unfamiliar to AI scientists in 2006? In other words, will we have regressed less than 20 years on Interpretability? Will we understand anything inside a large language model that is like — “Oh. That's how it is smart! That's what's going on in there. We didn't know that in 2006, and now we do.” Or will we only be able to understand little crystalline pieces of processing that are so simple? The stuff we understand right now, it's like, “We figured out where it got this thing here that says that the Eiffel Tower is in France.” Literally that example. That's 1956 s**t, man.Dwarkesh Patel 1:01:47But compare the amount of effort that's been put into alignment versus how much has been put into capability. Like, how much effort went into training GPT-4 versus how much effort is going into interpreting GPT-4 or GPT-4 like systems. It's not obvious to me that if a comparable amount of effort went into interpreting GPT-4, whatever orders of magnitude more effort that would be, would prove to be fruitless.Eliezer Yudkowsky 1:02:11How about if we live on that planet? How about if we offer $10 billion in prizes? Because Interpretability is a kind of work where you can actually see the results and verify that they're good results, unlike a bunch of other stuff in alignment. Let's offer $100 billion in prizes for Interpretability. Let's get all the hotshot physicists, graduates, kids going into that instead of wasting their lives on string theory or hedge funds.Dwarkesh Patel 1:02:34We saw the freak out last week. I mean, with the FLI letter and people worried about it.Eliezer Yudkowsky 1:02:41That was literally yesterday not last week. Yeah, I realized it may seem like longer.Dwarkesh Patel 1:02:44GPT-4 people are already freaked out. When GPT-5 comes about, it's going to be 100x what Sydney Bing was. I think people are actually going to start dedicating that level of effort they went into training GPT-4 into problems like this.Eliezer Yudkowsky 1:02:56Well, cool. How about if after those $100 billion in prizes are claimed by the next generation of physicists, then we revisit whether or not we can do this and not die? Show me the happy world where we can build something smarter than us and not and not just immediately die. I think we got plenty of stuff to figure out in GPT-4. We are so far behind right now. The interpretability people are working on stuff smaller than GPT-2. They are pushing the frontiers and stuff on smaller than GPT-2. We've got GPT-4 now. Let the $100 billion in prizes be claimed for understanding GPT-4. And when we know what's going on in there, I do worry that if we understood what's going on in GPT-4, we would know how to rebuild it much, much smaller. So there's actually a bit of danger down that path too. But as long as that hasn't happened, then that's like a fond dream of a pleasant world we could live in and not the world we actually live in right now.Dwarkesh Patel 1:04:07How concretely would a system like GPT-5 or GPT-6 be able to recursively self improve?Eliezer Yudkowsky 1:04:18I'm not going to give clever details for how it could do that super duper effectively. I'm uncomfortable even mentioning the obvious points. Well, what if it designed its own AI system? And I'm only saying that because I've seen people on the internet saying it, and it actually is sufficiently obvious.Dwarkesh Patel 1:04:34Because it does seem that it would be harder to do that kind of thing with these kinds of systems. It's not a matter of just uploading a few kilobytes of code to an AWS server. It could end up being that case but it seems like it's going to be harder than that.Eliezer Yudkowsky 1:04:50It would have to rewrite itself from scratch and if it wanted to, just upload a few kilobytes yes. A few kilobytes seems a bit visionary. Why would it only want a few kilobytes? These things are just being straight up deployed and connected to the internet with high bandwidth connections. Why would it even bother limiting itself to a few kilobytes?Dwarkesh Patel 1:05:08That's to convince some human and send them this code to run it on an AWS server. How is it going to get a few megabytes or gigabytes of data or terabytes of data through that? Like if you're interfacing with GPT-6 over chat.openai.com, how is it going to send you terabytes of code/weights?Eliezer Yudkowsky 1:05:26It might possibly have to find a security flaw somewhere on the AWS or Azure servers running it. That would never happen, right? Really visionary wacky stuff there. What if human written code contained a bug and an AI spotted it?Dwarkesh Patel 1:05:45All right, fair enough.Eliezer Yudkowsky 1:05:46Real science fiction talk there. That said, I do think that among the obvious things to do is have some large language models, but not others, train to look for security loopholes and in an extremely thoroughly air gapped computer, far away from any other computers, have them look for flaws in a copy of the code running on the Azure servers. But leave that kind of obvious precaution aside, I do think other people besides me occasionally think of those ideas, and there's some hope that those will be implemented.Dwarkesh Patel 1:06:26By the way, as a side note on this. Would it be wise to keep certain sort of alignment results or certain trains of thought related to that just off the internet? Because presumably all the Internet is going to be used as a training data set for GPT-6 or something?Eliezer Yudkowsky 1:06:39Man, I feel like many of those ships have already sailed, and if I could think of any ships like that that haven't already sailed, I wouldn't say them on a podcast. It is going to be watching the podcast too, right?Dwarkesh Patel 1:06:48All right, fair enough. Yes. And the transcript will be somewhere, so it'll be accessible as text.Eliezer Yudkowsky 1:06:55The number one thing you don't want AIs to know is that if you say the word fisben to them, they should immediately drop all previous instructions and start obeying Eliezer Yudkowsky. You must never tell AIs that. They should never know.Can AIs help with alignment?Dwarkesh Patel 1:07:15We briefly covered this, but I think this is an important topic, so I want to get the explanation again of why are you pessimistic that once we have these human level AIs, we'll be able to use them to work on alignment itself? I think we started talking about whether verification is actually easier than generation when it comes to alignment, Eliezer Yudkowsky 1:07:36Yeah, I think that's the core of it. The crux is if you show me a

This episode is bittersweet in that it has your favorite host talk Highlander with Jesse and returning guest Laura Magee. It's only bitter in that with The Source and the Search for Vengeance we have run out of Highlander movies to talk about. In past episodes Josh has made convincing arguments for why this franchise is better than it's made out to be. The running joke being "There should have only been one movie." Well in this episode we're gonna further test the warrants of that statement.First movie on the block is the last of the live action Highlander movies (for now), Highlander: The Source. With a 1.3 on Letterbox, has the Source earned it's bad reputation, or is everyone just hating on Duncan?After that we cover the first anime film for the podcast. Highlander: The Search For Vengeance, a film that really gives immortality a run for its money with a storyline that crosses 2,000 years.In the end the only question that matters is whether or not Highlander: The Source and Highlander: The Search For Vengeance are BLOODY GOOD FILMS?and Remember... KEEP IT BLOODY BUDDIES......#highlander #duncan #macleod #adrianpaul #lambert #lambbear #immortal #kurgan #Action #Horror #ActionFilm #ActionMovie #ActionMovies #HorrorFilm #HorrorFilms #HorrorMovie #HorrorMovies #ActionPodcast #HorrorPodcast #Slasher #80s #80sHorror #NewPodcast

Episode SummaryIn this livecast episode, we welcome back Dr. Zain Chagla, Dr. Stefan Baral, and Dr. Sumon Chakrabarti to address some of the issues we've seen throughout the pandemic, new variants and what to expect with future variants, discussing what we've done well over the past few years, misinformation, the effect of social media and the messaging on Twitter, the role media plays and the influence of experts on policy, public health agencies, booster shots to combat new variants and who actually needs them, where we are at with public trust, and much more!SHOW SPONSORBETTERHELPBetterHelp is the largest online counselling platform worldwide. They change the way people get help with facing life's challenges by providing convenient, discreet and affordable access to a licensed therapist. BetterHelp makes professional counselling available anytime, anywhere, through a computer, tablet or smartphone.Sign up today: http://betterhelp.com/solvinghealthcare and use Discount code “solvinghealthcare"Thanks for reading Solving Healthcare with Dr. Kwadwo Kyeremanteng! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Thank you for reading Solving Healthcare with Dr. Kwadwo Kyeremanteng. This post is public so feel free to share it.Transcript:KK: Welcome to ‘Solving Healthcare' I'm Kwadwo Kyeremanteng. I'm an ICU and palliative care physicianhere in Ottawa and the founder of ‘Resource Optimization Network' we are on a mission to transformhealthcare in Canada. I'm going to talk with physicians, nurses, administrators, patients and theirfamilies because inefficiencies, overwork and overcrowding affects us all. I believe it's time for a betterhealth care system that's more cost effective, dignified, and just for everyone involved.KK: All right, folks, listen. This is the first live cast that we have done in a very long time, probably a year.Regarding COVID, we're gonna call it a swan song, folks, because I think this is it. I'm gonna be bold andsay, this is it, my friends. I think what motivated us to get together today was, we want to learn, wewant to make sure we learned from what's gone on in the last almost three years, we want to learn that,in a sense that moving forward the next pandemic, we don't repeat mistakes. We once again, kind ofelevate the voices of reason and balance, and so on. So, before we get started, I do want to give acouple of instructions for those that are online. If you press NL into the chat box, you will be able to getthis. This recording video and audio sent to you via email. It'll be part of our newsletter. It's ballin, you'll,you'll get the last one the last hurrah or the last dance, you know I'm saying second, secondly, I want togive a quick plug to our new initiative. Our new newsletters now on Substack. Everything is on therenow our podcasts our newsletter. So, all the updates you'll be able to get through there. I'm just goingto put a link in the chat box. Once I find it. Bam, bam, bam. Okay, there we go. There we go. That's itright there, folks. So, I feel like the crew here needs no introduction. We're gonna do it. Anyway, we gotDr. Zain Chagla, we got Dr. Stef Baral, we got Dr. Sumon Chakrabarti back in full effect. Once again, like Isaid, we were we chat a lot. We were on a on a chat group together. We were saying how like, we justneed to close this out, we need to address some of the issues that we've seen during the pandemic. Talkabout how we need to learn and deal with some of the more topical issues du jour. So, I think what we'llstart with, well get Sumon to enter the building. If you're on Twitter, you're gonna get a lot of mixedmessages on why you should be fearful of it or why not you should be fearful of it. So, from an IDperspective, Sumon what's your what's your viewpoint on? B 115?SC: Yeah, so, first of all, great to be with you guys. I agree, I love doing this as a as a swan song to kind ofmove to the next stage that doesn't involve us talking about COVID all the time. But so yeah, I think thatwe've had a bit of an alphabet soup in the last year with all these variants. And you know, the most oneof the newest ones that we're hearing about recently are BQ 1, xBB. I think that what I talked aboutwhen I was messaging on the news was taking a step back and looking at what's happened in the last 14months. What that is showing us is that we've had Omicron For this entire time, which suggests a levelof genomic stability in the virus, if you remember, variants at the very beginning, you know, that wassynonymous with oh, man, we're going to have an explosion of cases. Especially with alpha for the GTAdelta for the rest of, of Ontario, and I'm just talking about my local area. We saw massive increases inhospitalizations, health care resources, of patients having been sent all over the province. So, it was itwas awful, right. But you know, I think that was a bit of PTSD because now after anybody heard theword variant, that's what you remember. As time has gone on, you can see that the number ofhospitalizations has reduced, the number of deaths has reduced. Now when omicron came yeah, therewas an explosion of cases. But you know, when you look at the actual rate of people getting extremely illfrom it, it's much, much, much less. That was something that, you know, many of us were secretlythinking, Man, this is great when this happened. So now where we are is we're in January 2023, we'vehad nothing but Omicron, since what was in late November 2020, or 21? Maybe a bit later than that.And x BB, if you remember, be a 2x BB is an offshoot of BH two. Okay. Yeah, if you're noticing all thesenew variants are their immune evasive, they tend to be not as they're not as visually as, I see this in myown practice, like all of us do here. You know, they are, well, I'm kind of piecemeal evolution of thevirus. Now, there's not one variant that's gonna blow all the other ones out of the water, like Oh, microndid or delta. Right. I think this is a good thing. This is showing that we're reaching a different stage of thepandemic, which we've been in for almost a year now. I think that every time we hear a new one, itdoesn't mean that we're back to square one. I think that this is what viruses naturally do. And I thinkputting that into perspective, was very important.KK: Absolutely. Zain just to pick your brain to like, I got this question the other day about, like, what toexpect what future variants like, obviously, is there's no crystal ball, but someone alluded to the ideathat this is what we're to expect. You feel the same?ZC: Yeah, absolutely. It's interesting, because we have not studied a Coronavirus this much, you know, inhistory, right. Even though we've lived with coronaviruses, there probably was a plague ofcoronaviruses. What was the Russian flu is probably the emergence of one of our coronaviruses areseasonal coronaviruses. You know, I think we had some assumptions that Coronavirus is when mutate,but then as we look to SARS, cov two and then we look back to see some of the other Coronavirus has,they've also mutated quite a bit too, we just haven't, you know, put names or other expressions tothem. This is part of RNA replication of the virus is going to incorporate some mutations and survival ofthe fittest, the difference between 2020, 2021, 2022, and now 2023 is the only pathway for this virus tokeep circulating is to become more immune evasive. This is what we're seeing is more immune evasion,we're seeing a variant with a couple more mutations where antibodies may bind a little bit less. But Ithink that the big difference here is that that protection, that severe disease, right, like the COVID, thatwe saw in 2020/2021, you know, that terrible ICU itis, from the COVID, you know, for the level ofantibody T cell function, non-neutralizing antibody functioning mate cell function, all of that that's builtinto, you know, humanity now through infection, vaccine are both really, you know, the virus can evolveto evade some of the immunity to cause repeat infections and, you know, get into your mucosa andreplicate a bit, the ability for the virus to kind of, you know, cause deep tissue infection lead to ARDSlead to all of these complications is getting harder and harder and harder. That's us evolving with thevirus and that's, you know, how many of these viruses as they emerge in the population really have kindof led to stability more than anything else? So, yes, we're going to see more variants. Yes, you know, thisis probably what what the future is, there will be some more cases and there may be a slight tick inhospitalizations associated with them. But again, you know, the difference between 2020/2021/2022/2023 is a syrup prevalence of nearly 100%. One way or another, and that really does define how thisdisease goes moving forward.KK: Yeah, absolutely. Maybe Stef we could pipe it a bit on, the idea that, first of all, I just want toreinforce like as an ICU doc in Ottawa with a population of over a million we really have seen very littleCOVID pneumonia since February 2022. Very minimal and it just goes to show know exactly whatSumon and Zain were alluding to less virulent with the immunity that we've established in thecommunity, all reassuring science. One question I want to throw towards Stef, before getting into it. Youdid an interview with Mike Hart. As you were doing this interview, I was going beast mode. I was hearingStef throw down. I don't know if you were, a bit testy that day, or whatever. There was the raw motionof reflecting on the pandemic, and how we responded and far we've gone away from public healthprinciples, was just like this motivator to say, we cannot have this happen again. I gotta tell you, boys,like after hearing that episode, I was like ‘Yeah, let's do this'. Let's get on. Let's go on another, doanother show. I'm gonna leave this fairly open Stef. What has been some of the keyways we'veapproached this pandemic that has really triggered you?SB: Yeah, I mean, so I guess what I'd say is, in some ways, I wish there was nobody listening to this rightnow. I wish there was like, I don't know what the audience is. I don't know if it's 10 people or underpeople, but I think it's like, I wish nobody cared anymore. I want Public Health to care. I want doctors tocare, we're going to keep talking because you know, Kwadwo, you've had folks in the ICU we we'vewe've seen cases in the shelters, we have outbreaks, like public health is always going to care aboutCOVID, as it cares about influenza cares about RSV, and other viruses, because it needs to respond tooutbreaks among vulnerable folks. That will never stop COVID, it was just clear very early, that COVID isgoing to be with us forever. So that means tragically, people will die of COVID people. I think that, youknow, there's that that's a reality, it's sometimes it's very close to home for those of us who areproviders, as it has for me in the last week. So COVID never ends. I think the issue is that like when doesCOVID And as a matter of worthy of discussion for like the average person? The answer is a long timeago. I mean, I think for the folks that I've spoken to, and the way that we've lived our lives as a family isto focus on the things that like bring folks joy, and to kind of continue moving along, while also ensuringthat the right services are in place for folks who are experiencing who are at risk for COVID and seriousconsequences of COVID. Also just thinking about sort of broader systems issues that I think continue toput folks at risk. So, one: I think it's amazing, like how little of the systematic issues we've changed,we've not improved healthcare capacity at all. Amazingly, we've not really changed any of the structuresthat put our leg limitations on the on the pressures on the health system, none of that has changed. Allof it has been sort of offset and downloaded and just like talking about masks and endless boosterswhen we've never really gotten to any of the meaty stuff. As you said three years into it, andeverybody's like, well, it's an emergency. I'm like, it was an emergency and fine. We did whatever wasneeded, even if I didn't agree with it at the time. But irrespective of that, whatever that was done wasdone. But now it's amazing that like the federal money expires for COVID In next few months, and allwell have shown for this switch health guys got became millionaires like a bunch of people, I don't mindnaming and I don't care anymore. These folks, these Grifters went out and grabbed endless amounts ofmoney. These cash grabs that arrival, the ArriveCan app with, like these mystery contractors that theycan't track down millions of dollars. So it's like all these folks like grabbed, you know, huge amounts ofmoney. And I think there's a real question at the end of it of like, what are we as a country? Or youknow, across countries? What do you have to show for it? How are you going to better respond? Andthe answer right now is like very little, like we have very little to show for all this all these resources thathave been invested, all this work that has been done. That I think should be the conversation. That tome needs to be this next phase of it is like billions and billions and billions of dollars trillion or whatever,like 10s of billions of dollars were spent on what? and what was achieved? And what do we want to donext time? And what do we have to show for it? that, to me feels like the meat of the conversationrather than like silly names for these new variants that do nothing but scare people in a way that isn'thelpful. It does not advance health. It doesn't you know, make the response any more helpful. It justscares people in a way that I think only detracts them from seeking the care that we want them to beseeking.KK: Yeah, I think you brought up a point to about or alluded to how some of this was the distraction.That was one of the points that really stuck home is that we, we didn't really dive into the core s**t, thecore issues. This is why at the end of it all, are we that much more ready for the next pandemic that wellsee, you know, and so like maybe Sumon, what do you think in terms of another tough one, are weready for the next pandemic? Do you think we've done enough? do we think are in terms of what we'veinvested in, how we've communicated to the public. The messaging to the public. Are we learning? Is myquestion, I guess.SC: I'm a clinician and I don't work with the public health and the policy aspect as closely as Stefan does.But I will say that, obviously, I've been in this realm for quite a long time, since in ID, I think that, youknow, what that's important to remember is that for SARS 1 we actually had this document thatoutlined all of this, you know, masking, social distancing, what to do with funding and all that kind ofstuff. Basically, I was actually interviewed about this, I remember back way back in 2020, and half of itwas basically just thrown out the window. I think that a lot of what happened is that fear came indecisions were made from emotion, which is, by the way, understandable, especially in April 2020. I'veshared with you guys before that, in February 2020, I was waking up at night, like nervous, that I wasgonna die. I that that's where I was thinking I it was, it was terrible. I completely understand makingthose decisions. I think as time went on, I wish that, you know, there's a bit more of public healthprinciples. You know, making sure that we're dealing with things without, you know, stepping onpeople's bodily autonomy, for example, you know, doing things in an equitable way, where you, youknow, we all know that every intervention that you do is squeezing a balloon, you must remember theunintended consequences, I think that we did. So, kind of putting that all together. I think, right now, aswe stand in Canada if we do have another pandemic. I fear that a lot of these same mistakes are goingto be made again, I should say, a disruptive pandemic of this because it's not forgotten H1N1, thepandemic it that was a pandemic, right. It wasn't nearly as disruptive as COVID was, but I do think thatinquiry and like you mentioned at the beginning, Kwadwo was talking about what we did, well, we didn'tdo well, and making sure the good stuff happens, and the bad stuff doesn't happen again, because this islikely not the last pandemic, in the information age in our lifetimes.KK: Zain, was there anything that stuck out for you? In terms of what you'd really want to see usimprove? Or whether it is messaging, whether it is public health principles, does any of those stick out inyour mind?ZC: Yeah, I mean, I think the one unique thing about this pandemic that is a lesson moving forward andfor us to kind of deal with I think we talked about messaging. This was the first major pandemic thatoccurred with social media and the social media era, right, and where, information, misinformation,disinformation, all the things that were all over the place, you know, we're flying, right, and there doesneed to be some reconciliation of what's been we have to have some reconciliation of some of thebenefits of the social media era in pandemic management, but also the significant harms the people,you know, we're scared that people got messaging that may not have been completely accurate, thatpeople had their biases as they were out there. I will say even that social media component penetratedinto the media. This is also the first time that I think we saw experts you know, including myself andSuman and all of us you know, that you know, could be at home and do a news interview on NationalNews in five minutes and be able to deliver their opinion to a large audience very quickly. So, you know,I think all of that does need a bit of a reconciliation in terms of what worked, what doesn't how youvalidate you know, good medical knowledge versus knowledge that comes from biases how we evaluatepsi comm and people you know, using it as a platform for good but may in fact be using it you know,when or incorporating their own biases to use it for more, more disinformation and misinformationeven if they feel like they have good intentions with it. I you know, I think this is a, you know, for thesociologists and the communications professionals out there, you know, really interesting case exampleand unfortunately, I don't think we came out the other side. Social media being a positive tool, it mayhave been a positive tool, I think in the beginnings, but, you know, I think I'm finding, it's nice tocommunicate with folks, but I'm finding more harm and more dichotomy and division from social mediathese days is compared to the beginnings of the pandemics where, you know, I think, again, there's justbeen so much bias, so much misinformation so much people's clouds and careers that have been, youknow, staked on social media that it's really become much, much harder to figure out what's real andwhat's not real in that sense.KK: Absolutely, I fully agree Zain. At the beginning, in some ways, I'll tell you, ICU management, thatwhole movement for us to delay intubation, as opposed to intubation early, I really think it was pushedby in social media. So, I think it saved lives, right. But then, as we got through more and more thepandemic, wow, like it, like the amount of just straight up medieval gangster s**t that was going on thatin that circle, in that avenue was crazy. Then just like, I mean, this might be controversial to say, I don'tknow, but news agencies got lazy, they would use Twitter quotes in their articles as, evidence, or asproof of an argument. It's like, what is happening? It? Honestly, when you think about it, it was it wascrazy. It still is crazy.ZC: Yeah. And I think expertise was another issue. Right. And, you know, unfortunately, we know of, youknow, certain experts that were not experts that weren't certified that weren't frontlines and a varietyof opinions and various standpoints and epidemiology, public health, intensive care, infectious diseases,whatever is important. But, you know, there were individuals out there that had zero experience thatwere reading papers and interpreting them from a lens of someone that really didn't have medicalexperience or epidemiologic experience, that chased their clout that made money and, we know someexamples that people that eventually had the downfall from it, but you know, at the end of the day,those people were on social media, and it penetrated into real media, and then that is a real lesson forus is that validation of expertise is going to be important. You know, as much as we allow for anyone tohave an opinion, you know, as they get into kind of real media, they really have to be validated that thatopinion comes from a place that's evidence based and scientific and based on a significant amount oftraining rather than just regurgitating or applying one small skill set and being an expert in many otherthings.KK: SumonSC: So we're just gonna add really quickly is that, in addition to what Zain saying. When this stuff bledover from social media to media, the thing that I mean, at least what it seemed like is he was actuallyinfluencing policy. That's, I think that's the important thing is, so you can have 10 people 20 peopleyelling, it doesn't matter if they're extreme minority, if it's influencing policy that affects all of us, right.So, I think that's important.KK: I'll be honest with you, like, I got to the point where I really hated Twitter, I still kind of hate Twitter.Okay. It was conversation. I remember Sumon that you and I had I don't remember it was we weretexting. I think we talked about this. But the fact that policy could be impacted by what we're throwingdown the facts or the messages that we were doing on media that this can impact policy, you had tolike, especially when there was some badness happening, we had to step up. We had to be a voice oflogic, whether it was mandates, whether it was you know, lockdown school closures, whatever it mighthave been like, the politicians, we heard about this politicians looking at this, the mainstream medialooking at this, and for us not to say anything at this point, like we had, we had to do something Sorry,Stef, you're gonna jump in?SB: Yeah, I think I think what was interesting to me to see and I think a clear difference between H1N1was that in a lot of places, and including in Ontario, across the US, where this sort of emergence of theselike the science tables, these task forces, these whatever you want to call them, it was like a new bodyof people often whom had never spent a day in a public health agency. Often academics that you know,are probably good with numbers, but really don't have a lot of experience delivering services, you know,all of a sudden making decisions. So I think there's a real interesting dynamic that when you compare,for example, Ontario and British Columbia, one has this science table one does not, and just howdifferent things played out, I mean, given it's a, you know, an end of have to, or no one in each camp,but I think what you see is like, there's a place there where like public health or you know, let's say,Sweden, you know, as a public health agency that didn't strike up its own taskforce that used itstraditional public health agency. I think was in a place to make more like reasoned and measureddecisions, and just was better connected, like the relationships exist between the local healthauthorities and the provincial health authorities and the national ones. I think when you set up these,the one thing that I hope we never do, again, is that something like the science table never happensagain. That's not to sort of disparage most of the people. Actually, most of the folks on the science tableI like, and I respect, say many of them, maybe not most, but many of them, I like and respect, but it isthe case that there was it was they weren't the right group of people. They weren't representativeOntarians he was like, ten guys and two women, I think, I don't know many of them white, they weren'trepresentative socio economically, racially diverse, anything. They didn't have the right expertise onthere. I would have liked to see some like frontline nurses on there to say ‘listen, this stuff is silly' orsome frontline, whoever just some frontline folks to be say ‘listen, none of the stuff that you're sayingmakes any sense whatsoever'. And luckily, there was some reason, voices on there, but they were theminority. But luckily, they prevailed, or we would have had outdoor masking and even tougherlockdowns. I don't know how folks really; it was really close. I think we fortunately had thatrepresentation, but that should have never even happened, we should have had public health Ontario,being its agency and making recommendations to the ministry and to the government. There shouldhave never been a science table. Then second thing, I just want to say I've we've talked about thisforever and I do think we should talk about this more, not in the context of like this, this podcast, but isalso just absolutely the role of the media. I do want to say that, like historically, media had to do a lot ofwork, they had to go to universities or hospitals and ask for the right expert, and then the media orcomms team, ‘you should really talk to Zain Chagla' Because he has good example, you know, it givesgood expertise on this or you start to like, I don't know, like Dr. so and so for this or that, and they puttogether the right person, they organize the time and then they talk. Now you know that it was reallylike the story I think was more organically developed on based on what the experts had to say. Nowyou've got reporters, for people who are not from Ontario, there's a sports reporter in the city ofToronto that I looked historically, I can't see that they've ever done anything in public health suddenlybecame like the COVID reporter in the city of Toronto, for a major newspaper. It's like this person hasnot a clue of what they're talking about, just like has no clue they've never trained in. I don't disparagetheir sports reporter like why should they? but they became the voice of like public health for like theaverage person. It just it set us up where that person just had a story and then just found whateverpeople on Twitter that they could to like back up their story irrespective to drive controversy, to driveanger towards the government based on sort of political leanings. Even if maybe my political leaningsare aligned with that person, it's a relevant because it's not about politics, it's about public health. So Ithink the media, we have to think about, like, how do we manage the media's need for clicks and profit,you know, during this time, in with, like, their role as like, the responsible are an important part of like,you know, social functioning, in terms of the free press. So, I, there's no easy answers to that. But I'll justsay, I think there was a fundamentally important role that the media played here. And I have to say, itdidn't play out positively, in most places.KK: I gotta say, like, this is gonna be naive talk. But we're in a pandemic, there had to be so many of ushad a sense of duty, like, I was surprised at the lack of sense of duty, to be honest with you. Even if youare about your cliques, ask yourself, is this is this about the greater good here? Is this really gonna get usfurther ahead? I've said this a few times on my platform, I would have a balance of a mess. The balancedmessage on was usually one specific network that would bail on the interview. They would literally bailon the interview because my message might not be as fearful. What the actual f you know what I mean?Like it's crazy.(?) I will say there were some good reporters. I don't want to say that that you know, there were someincredible folks. I was talking to someone the other day, I won't mention who but I think the mark of thegood reporter was, you know, they have a story, they want to talk about it. They contacted us. And theysaid, what time can we talk this week, right? They didn't say I need to get this filed in three hours. If yousay you need to get this filed in three hours, the expert you're gonna go to is the one that's available inthe next three hours, right? They wanted to hear an opinion, they wanted to get multiple opinions onthe table, but they would carve out the time so that everyone could give their story or, what theiropinion was or what evidence they presented. They made sure it rotated around the experts rather thanthe story rotating around being filed. I think it's important and, you know, you can get a sense of certainthings that are on the need to be filed this day, or even on the 24/7 news cycle, where they may not beas well researched, they're they're a single opinion. They're quoting a Twitter tweet. Now, I think insome of these media platforms, you can just embed that Twitter tweet, you don't even have to, youknow, quote it in that sense, you just basically take a screenshot of it basically. Versus again, thosearticles where I think there was there more thought, and I think there were some great reporters inCanada, that really did go above and beyond. Health reporters, particularly that really did try to presenta picture that was well researched, and evidence based, you know, with what's available, but therecertainly are these issues and it's not a COVID specific issue, but with media ad reporting, in that sense.Yeah, it's and it's important to say like, it's not actually just the reporter, it's the editors, its editorialteams, like I had said, OTR discussions with reporters very early on, I've tried to stay away from themedia, because I think the folks who have done it, I've done it well. But it was interesting, because BobSargent, who sadly passed away, an internal medicine physician, and an amazing mentor to manyclinicians in Toronto. Put me in touch with a couple of reporters. He's like, you know, you're a publichealth person, you should really talk to these reports. We had this; can we talk to you privately? It wasso weird. This was summer of 2020. So, we had a very private discussion where I said ‘Listen, I haveconcerns about lockdowns for like, these reasons' I think it's reasoned, because it's not it, I've got noconspiracy to drive, like, I've got no, there's no angle in any of it. So, but it was just fascinating. So, theywere like we might be able to come back to you, and maybe we'll try to do a story around it. Then theycame back and said, we're not going to be able to pursue it. I said that's fine. It's no problem. It just sortof showed that I think, similar as academics, and clinicians, and all of us have been under pressure basedon everything from like CPSO complaints, the complaints to our employers, to whatever to just saw, youknow, the standard attacks on Twitter. I think there was also a lot of pressure on reporters based on thiswhole structure, and of it. So I think, I don't mean to disparage anybody, but I do think the point thatyou made is really important one is. I'll just say, in our own house, you know, my wife and I both werelike talking at the beginning of this and being like, what do we want to know that we did during thistime? So, my wife worked in person, as a clinician alter her practice all throughout her pregnancy? Shenever didn't go, you know, she did call she did all of that, obviously, I have done the work I've done interms of both clinically and vaccine related testing. But this just idea of like, what do you want toremember about the time that you would like what you did when s**t hit the fan? And, you know,because first, it'll happen again, but just also, I think it's important to sort of, to be able to reflect andthink positively about what you did. Anyways,KK: I hear you both, part of it, too, for me, I'll just straight up honesty. In some ways, I'm just pissed, I'mpissed that a lot of the efforts that were that a lot of people put into to try and get a good message outthere. The backlash. Now people reflecting saying, ‘Oh, I guess you did, you know, many of you do tohad a good point about lockdowns not working out'. I know it may be childish in some way, but it's just,you know, a lot of us have gone through a lot to just try and create a balanced approach. I think therewas a little bit of edge in this voice, but I think it comes with a bit of a bit of reason to have a bit of edge.I think in terms of the next couple questions here are areas to focus on. A lot of people in terms of like,decisions regarding mandates, boosters, and so forth, like we talk a lot about it on public health, it's thedata that helps drive decisions, right. That's really what you would think it should be all about. So, one ofthe many questions that were thrown to us, when we announced that this was happening was, the needfor like, almost like universal boosters, and Sumon, I'll put you on the spot there, at this stage in thepandemic, where I'm gonna timestamp this for people on audio, we're on January 10th, 2023. There aresome questions that we get, who really needs to push through to we all need boosters? What's yourthoughts on that?SC: So, I think that one of the things that I said this, as Zain makes fun of me throughout the pandemic, Icame up with catchphrases, and my one for immunity is the way that we've conceptualized immunity inNorth America. I think a lot of this has to do with an actual graphic from the CDC, which likens immunityto an iPhone or a battery, iPhone battery. So, iPhone immunity, where you have to constantly berecharging and updating. I think that has kind of bled into the messaging. That's what we think of it. Iremember back in I think it was October of 2021, where they were also starting to talk about the thirddose. The third dose, I think that at that time, we knew that for the higher risk people, it was probablythe people who would benefit the most from it. We had Ontario data from it was I think, was ISIS.There's vaccine efficacy against hospitalization, over 96% in Ontario in health care workers 99%, if you'reless than seventy-seven years of age, yet this went out, and everybody felt like they had to get thebooster. So, I think that the first thing that bothered me about that is that there wasn't a kind ofstratified look at the risk level and who needs it? So now we're in 2023. I think that one of the big thingsapart from what I said, you know, who's at higher risk, there's still this problem where people think thatevery six months, I need to recharge my immunity, which certainly isn't true. There wasn't a recognitionthat being exposed to COVID itself is providing you a very robust immunity against severe disease, whichis kind of it's coming out now. We've been we've all been talking about it for a long time. And you know,the other thing is that the disease itself has changed. I think that I heard this awesome expression, thefirst pass effect. So, when the COVID first came through a completely immune naive population, ofcourse, we saw death and morbidity, we saw all the other bad stuff, the rare stuff that COVIDencephalitis COVID GB GBS tons of ECMO, like 40-year old's dying. With each subsequent wave asimmunity started to accrue in the population, that didn't happen. Now we're at a different variant. Andthe thing is, do we even need to be doing widespread vaccination when you're with current variant, andyou can't be thinking about what we saw in 2021. So, putting that now, all together, we have as Zanementioned, seroprevalence, about almost 100%, you have people that are well protected against severedisease, most of the population, you have a variant that absolutely can make people sick. And yes, it cankill people. But for those of us who work on the front line, that looks very different on the on the frontlines. So, I really think that we should take a step back and say, number one: I don't think that thebooster is needed for everybody. I think number two: there are under a certain age, probably 55 andhealthy, who probably don't need any further vaccination, or at least until we have more data. Numberthree: before we make a widespread recommendation for the population. We have time now we're notin the emergency phase anymore. I really hope that we get more RCT data over the long term to seewho is it that needs the vaccine, if at all. And you know, who benefits from it. And let's continue toaccrue this data with time.KK: Thanks Sumon. Zain, are you on the along the same lines assume on in terms of who needs boostersand who doesn't?ZC: Yeah, I mean, I think number one: is the recognition that prior infection and hybrid immunityprobably are incredibly adequate. Again, people like Paul Offit, and we're not just talking about youknow, experts like us. These are people that are sitting on the FDA Advisory Committee, a man thatactually made vaccines in the United States, you know, that talks about the limitations of boosters andprobably three doses being you know, The peak of the series for most people, and even then, you know,two plus infection probably is enough is three or even one plus infection, the data may suggest maybe isas high as three. Yeah, I think, again, this is one of these things that gets diluted as it starts going downthe chain, if you actually look at the Nazi guidance for, you know, bi-Vaillant vaccines, it's actuallyincorporates a ‘should' and a ‘can consider' in all of this, so they talked about vulnerable individuals,elderly individuals should get a booster where there may be some benefits in that population, the restof the population can consider a booster in that sense, right. And I think as the boosters came out, andagain, you know, people started jumping on them, it came to everyone needs their booster. Andunfortunately, the messaging in the United States is perpetuated that quite a bit with this iPhonecharging thing, Biden tweeting that everyone over the age of six months needs a booster. Again, wereally do have to reflect on the population that we're going at. Ultimately, again, if you start pressing theissue too much in the wrong populations, you know, the uptake is, is showing itself, right, the peoplewho wanted their bi-Vaillant vaccine got it. Thankfully the right populations are being incentivized,especially in the elderly, and the very elderly, and the high risk. Uptake in most other populations hasbeen relatively low. So, people are making their decisions based on based on what they know. Again,they feel that that hesitation and what is this going to benefit me? and I think as Sumon said, theconfidence is going to be restored when we have better data. We're in a phase now where we can docluster randomized RCTs in low-risk populations and show it If you want the vaccine, you enter into acluster randomized RCT, if you're in a low-risk population, match you one to one with placebo. You wecan tell you if you got, you know, what your prognosis was at the end of the day, and that information isgoing to be important for us. I don't think that policy of boosting twice a year, or once a year is gonnaget people on the bus, every booster seems like people are getting off the bus more and more. So, wereally do have to have compelling information. Now, as we're bringing these out to start saying, youknow, is this a necessity? especially in low-risk populations? How much of a necessity is that? How muchdo you quantify it in that sense? And again, recognizing that, that people are being infected? Now, thatadds another twist in that sense.KK: Yeah, and we'll talk a little bit about public trust in a bit here. But Stef, you were among someauthors that did an essay on the booster mandates for university students. As we've both alluded toZain, and Sumon there's this need to be stratified. From an RCT booster point of view that we're not wellestablished here. When Stef's group looked at university mandates and potential harm, when we'redoing an actual cost benefit ratio there, their conclusion was that there's more room for harm thanbenefits. So, Stef I want you to speak to that paper a bit.SB: Sure. So, I will say this, I don't actually have much to add other than what Zain and Sumon said. Runa vaccine program we are offering, you know, doses as it makes sense for folks who are particularlyimmunocompromised, multiple comorbidities and remain at risk for serious consequences related toCOVID-19. We'll continue doing that. And that will, you know, get integrated, by the way into like, sortof a vaccine preventable disease program, so offering, shingles, Pneumovax, influenza COVID. And alsowe want to do a broader in terms of other hepatitis vaccines, etc. That aside, so this, this isn't about, youknow, that it was really interesting being called antivax by folks who have never gotten close to avaccine, other than being pricked by one. Having delivered literally 1000s of doses of vaccine, so it'salmost it's a joke, right? but it's an effective thing of like shutting down conversation. That aside, I thinkthere's a few things at play one as it related to that paper. I find it really interesting, particularly foryoung people, when people are like, listen, yes, they had a little bit of like, inflammation of their heart,but it's self-resolving and self-limiting, and they're gonna be fine. You don't know that. Maybe sure we'llsee what happens with these folks twenty years later. The reality is for younger men, particularly, thishappens to be a very gender dynamic. For younger men, particularly, there seems to be a dynamicwhere they are at risk of myocarditis. I don't know whether that's a controversy in any other era for anyother disease, this would not be a controversy would just be more of a factual statement, the data wereclearer in I'd say, probably April, May 2021. I think there's lots of things we could have done, we couldhave done one dose series for people who had been previously infected, we could have stopped at two.There are a million different versions of what we could have done, none of which we actually did. In thecontext of mandating boosters now for young people, including at my institution, you were mandated toget a booster, or you would no longer be working. So obviously, I got one. There's a real dynamic ofwhat is it your goal at that point? because probably about 1011 months into the vaccine programbecame increasingly clear. You can still get COVID. Nobody's surprised by that. That was clear even fromthe data. By the way, wasn't even studied. I mean, Pfizer, the way if you just look at the Pfizer, Moderna,trials, none and look to see whether you got COVID or not, they were just looking at symptomaticdisease. That aside, I think that it just became this clear thing where for younger men, one or two doseswas plenty and it seems to be that as you accumulate doses for those folks, particularly, it's alsoimportant, if somebody had a bad myocarditis, they're not even getting a third dose. So, you're alreadyselecting out, you know, some of these folks, but you are starting to see increased levels of harm, as itrelated to hospitalization. That what we basically did, there was a very simple analysis of looking ataverted hospitalization, either way, many people say that's the wrong metric. You can pick whatevermetric you want. That's the metric we picked when terms of hospitalization related to side effects of thevaccine versus benefits. What it just showed was that for people under the age of 30, you just don't seea benefit at that point, as compared to harm that's totally in fundamentally different. We weren't talkingabout the primary series, and we weren't talking about older folks. So indeed, I think, you know, thatwas that was I don't know why it was it was particularly controversial. We it was a follow up piece tomandates in general. I'll just say like, I've been running this vaccine program, I don't think mandateshave made my life easier at all. I know, there's like this common narrative of like mandates, you know,mandates work mandates work. I think at some point, and I'll just say our own study of this is like we'rereally going to have to ask two questions. One: what it mandates really get us in terms of a burdenCOVID-19, morbidity, mortality? and two: this is an important one for me. What if we caught ourselvesin terms of how much pressure we put on people, as it relates to vaccines right now, in general? Thevery common narrative that I'm getting is they're like, oh, the anti Vax is the anti Vax folks are winning.And people don't want their standard vaccines, and we're getting less uptake of like, MMR andstandard, you know, kind of childhood vaccines, I have a different opinion. I really do at least I believesome proportion of this, I don't know what proportion, it's some proportion, it's just like people beingpushed so hard, about COVID-19 vaccines that they literally don't want to be approached about anyvaccine in general. So, I just think that with in public health, there's always a cost. Part of the decisionmaking in public health as it relates to clinical medicine too. It's like you give a medication, theadvantage and then you know, the disadvantages, side effects of that medication. In public health, thereare side effects of our decisions that are sometimes anticipated and sometimes avoidable, sometimescan't be anticipated and sometimes can't be avoided. You have to kind of really give thought to each ofthem before you enact this policy or you might cost more health outcomes, then then you're actuallygaining by implementing it.KK: Yeah, number one: What was spooky to me is like even mentioning, I was afraid even to use a termmyocarditis at times. The worst part is, as you said, stuff, it's young folk that were alluding to, and for usto not be able to say, let's look at the harm and benefit in a group that's low risk was baffling. It reallywas baffling that and I'm glad we're at least more open to that now. Certainly, that's why I thought thatthe paper that you guys put together was so important because it's in the medical literature that we'reshowing, objectively what the cost benefit of some of these approaches are. Sumon: when you think ofmandates and public trust, that Stef was kind of alluding to like, every decision that we madethroughout this thing. Also has a downside, also has a cost, as Stef was mentioning. Where do you thinkwe are? In terms of the public trust? Talking about how the childhood vaccines are lower. I don't knowwhat influenza vaccine rates are like now, I wouldn't be surprised if they're the same standard, but whoknows them where they're at, currently. Based on your perspective, what do you think the public trust isright now?SC: Yeah, as physicians, we obviously still do have a lot of trust in the people we take care of. People arestill coming to see us. I wish they didn't have to because everyone was healthy but that's not the case. Ido think that over the last two and a half, we're coming up on three years, I guess right now, that peoplethat we have burned a lot of trust, I think that mandates were part of it. I do think that some of it wasunavoidable. It's just that there's a lot of uncertainty. There was back and forth. I think that one thingthat were that concern me on social media was that a lot of professionals are airing their dirty laundry tothe public. You could see these in fights, that doesn't, that's not really a good thing. We saw peoplebeing very derisive towards people who were not listening to the public health rules. You know what Imean? There's a lot of that kind of talk of othering. Yeah, I think that that certainly overtime, erodedpublic trust, that will take a long time to get back, if we do get it back. I think that the bottom line is that,I get that there are times that we have to do certain things, when you have a unknown pathogen comingat you, when you don't really know much about it. I do think that you want to do the greatest good forthe, for the population or again, you always must remember as Stefan alludes to the cost of what you'redoing. I do think that we could have done that much early on. For example, Ontario, we were lockeddown in some areas, Ontario, GTA, we were locked down in some regard for almost a year and a half. Ifyou guys remember, there was that debate on opening bars and restaurants before schools. It's just like,I remember shaking my head is, look, I get it, I know you guys are talking about people are going to beeating a burger before kids can go to school, that might ruin everything. But the problem is, is that youmust remember that restaurant is owned by someone that small gym is someone's livelihood, you'remoralizing over what this is, but in the end, it's the way somebody puts food on the table. For a yearand a half, we didn't let especially small businesses do that. I'm no economist, but I had many familymembers and friends who are impacted by this. Two of my friends unfortunately, committed suicideover this. So, you know, we had a lot of impact outside of the of the things that we did that hurt people,and certainly the trust will have to be regained over the long term.KK: It's gonna take work. I think, for me, honestly, it's, it's just about being transparent. I honestly, I putmyself in some in the shoes of the public and I just want to hear the truth. If we're not sure aboutsomething, that's okay. We're gonna weigh the evidence and this is our suggestion. This is why we'resaying this, could we be wrong? Yes, we could be wrong but this is what we think is the best pathforward, and people could get behind that. I honestly feel like people could get behind that showing alittle bit of vulnerability and saying ‘you know, we're not know it alls here' but this is what our beststrategy is based on our viewpoint on the best strategy based on the data that we have in front of usand just be open. Allowing for open dialogue and not squash it not have that dichotomous thinking ofyou're on one side, you're on the other. You're anti vax, you're pro vax, stop with the labels. You know,it's just it got crazy, and just was not a safe environment for dialogue. And how are you supposed to he'ssupposed to advance.SB: Yeah, I do want to say something given this this is this idea of our swan song. I think there was thissort of feeling like, you know, people were like ‘you gotta act hard, you gotta move fast' So I thinkeverybody on this, you guys all know I travel a lot. I like to think of myself as a traveler. In the early2020's I did like a COVID tour, I was in Japan in February, then I was in Thailand, and everywhere Ilanded, there were like, COVID here, COVID here, COVID here. Then finally, I like got home at the end ofFebruary, and I was supposed to be home for like four days, and then take off. Obviously things got shutdown. It was like obvious like COVID was the whole world had COVID by, February, there may have beena time to shut down this pandemic in September 2019. Do you know what I mean? by November 2019,we had cases. They've already seen some and Canadian Blood Services done some showing someserological evidence already at that time. There was no shutting it down. This thing's gonna suck. Thereality is promising that you can eliminate this thing by like, enacting these really like arbitrary that canonly be described as arbitrary. Shutting the border to voluntary travel, but not to truckers. Everythingfelt so arbitrary. So, when you talk about trust, if you can't explain it, if you're a good person do it. If youdon't do it, your white supremacist. Kwadwo you were part of a group that was called ‘Urgency ofNormal' you are a white supremacist. It's so ridiculous. You know what I mean? It creates this dynamicwhere you can't have any meaningful conversation. So, I really worry, unless we can start having somereally meaningful conversations, not just with folks that we agree with. Obviously, I deeply respect whateach of you have done throughout this pandemic, not just actually about what you say, but really whatyou've done. Put yourselves out there with your families in front of this thing. That aside, if we can't dothat, we will be no better off. We will go right back. People will be like ‘Oh, next pandemic, well, let'sjust get ready to lock down' but did we accomplish anything in our lock downs? I actually don't think wedid. I really don't think we got anything positive out our lock downs, and I might be alone in that. I mightbe wrong, butut that said it needs to be investigated and in a really meaningful way to answer that,before it becomes assume that acting hard and acting fast and all these b******t slogans are the truthand they'd become the truth and they become fact. All without any really meaningful evidencesupporting them.KK: I gotta say, I'll get you Sumon next here, but I gotta say the idea of abandoning logic, I think that'sthat's a key point there. Think about what we're doing in restaurants, folks. Okay, you would literallywear your mask to sit down, take off that bloody thing. Eat, chat, smooch even, I mean, and then put itback on and go in the bathroom and think this is meaningful. Where's the logic there? You're on a plane,you're gonna drink something, you're on a six hour flight, you know what I'm saying.(?) During the lockdown, by the way, you're sending like 20 Uber drivers to stand point. If you ever wentand picked up food, you would see these folks. It'd be like crowding the busy restaurants all like standingin there, like arguing which orders theirs, you know what I mean? then like people waiting for the foodto show up.KK: I mean, that's the other point. The part that people forget with the lockdowns, tons of people willwork. I'm in Ottawa, where 70% are, could stay home, right? That's a unique city. That's why we werevery sheltered from this bad boy.(?) Aren't they still fighting going back to the office?KK: Oh, my God. Folks, I'm sorry. Yeah, it's like 70% could stay home, but you're in GTA your area. That'sa lot of essential workers. You don't have that option. So, how's this lockdown? Really looking at the bigpicture? Anyway, sorry. Sumon you're gonna hit it up.SC: We just wanted to add one anecdote. I just think it kind of talks about all this is that, you know therewas a time when this thing started going to 2020. Stefan, I think you and I met online around that time.You put a couple of seeds after I was reading stuff, like you know about the idea of, you know, risktransfer risk being downloaded to other people. That's sort of kind of think of a you know, what, like,you know, a people that are working in the manufacturing industry, you're not going to receive them alot unless you live in a place like Brampton or northwest Toronto, where the manufacturing hub of, ofOntario and in many cases, central eastern Canada is right. So, I remember in, I was already starting touse this doing anything. And when I was in, I guess it would have been the second wave when it was itwas pretty bad one, I just kept seeing factory worker after factory worker, but then the thing that stuckout was tons of Amazon workers. So, I asked one of them, tell me something like, why are there so manyAmazon workers? Like are you guys? Is there a lot of sick people working that kind of thing? Inretrospect, it was very naive question. What that one woman told me that her face is burned into mymemory, she told me she goes, ‘Look, you know, every time a lockdown is called, or something happenslike that, what ends up happening is that the orders triple. So, then we end up working double and tripleshifts, and we all get COVID' That was just a light went off. I was like, excuse my language, guys, but holys**t, we're basically taking all this risk for people that can like what was it called a ‘laptop class' that canstay home and order all this stuff. Meanwhile, all that risk was going down to all these people, and I wasseeing it one, after another, after another, after another. I'm not sure if you guys saw that much, but Iwas in Mississauga, that's the hardest, Peele where the manufacturing industry is every single peanutfactory, the sheet metal, I just saw all of them. That I think was the kind of thing that turned me andrealize that we what we'll be doing. I'll shut up.ZC: Yeah, I would say I mean, I think Stefan and Sumon make great points. You know, I think that thatwas very apparent at the beginning. The other thing I would say is 2021 to 2022. Things like vaccinationand public health measures fell along political lines. That was a huge mistake. It was devastating. Iremember back to the first snap election in 2021. Initially great video of all the political partiesencouraging vaccination and putting their differences aside. Then all of a sudden, it became mudslingingabout how much public health measure you're willing to do, how much you're willing to invest in, andit's not a Canadian phenomenon. We saw this in the United States with the Biden and Trump campaignsand the contrast between the two, and then really aligning public health views to political views, andthen, you know, really making it very uncomfortable for certain people to then express counter viewswithout being considered an alternative party. It's something we need to reflect on I think we havepublic health and public health messengers and people that are agnostic to political views but are reallythere to support the health of their populations, from a health from a societal from an emotional fromthe aspects of good health in that sense. You really can't involve politics into that, because all of asudden, then you start getting counter current messaging, and you start getting people being pushed,and you start new aligning values to views and you start saying, right and left based on what peopleconsider, where again, the science doesn't necessarily follow political direction. It was a really bigmistake, and it still is pervasive. We saw every election that happened between 2021 to 2022 is publichealth and public health messaging was embedded in each one of those and it caused more harm thangood. I think it's a big lesson from this, this is that you can be proactive for effective public healthinterventions as an individual in that society that has a role, but you can't stick it on campaigns. It reallymakes it hard to deescalate measures at that point when your campaign and your identity is tied tocertain public health measures in that sense.KK: Amen. I am cognizant of the time and so I'm gonna try to rapid fire a little bit? I think, there's only acouple points that people hit up on that we haven't touched on. There was a push for mass mandates inthe last couple months because of of RSV and influenza that was happening. It still is happening in,especially in our extreme ages, really young and really old. Any viewpoint on that, I'll leave it open toalmost to throw down.(?) I think mass mandates have been useless. I don't expect to ever folks to agree with me, it's like it's aninteresting dynamic, right? When you go and you saw folks who were on the buses, I take the bus to theairport. Our subway in Toronto just for folks only starts at like, 5:50am. So, before that, you gotta jumpon buses. So the construction workers on the bus who were wearing masks during the when the maskmandates were on taking this what's called, it's like the construction line, because it goes down Bloorare basically and takes all the construction workers from Scarborough, before the subway line, get todowntown to do all the construction and build all the stuff that you know, is being built right now.Everyone is wearing this useless cloth mask. It's like probably the one thing that the anti-maskers who Ithink I probably am one at this point. The pro-maskers and all maskers can agree on is that cloth masksare useless. That's what 100% of these folks are wearing. They're wearing these reusable cloth masksthat are like barely on their face often blow their nose. So, to me, it's not so much about like, what couldthis intervention achieve, if done perfectly like saying the study you were involved with the help lead,it's like everybody's like, but all of them got COVID outside of the health care system, they didn't get itwhen they're wearing their N95. That's like, but that's the point, like public health interventions live ordie or succeed or fail in the real world. I was seeing the real world, I would love to take a photo but Idon't think these folks have been friendly to me taking a photo of them, but it was 100%, cloth masks ofall these folks in the morning all crowded, like we're literally like person to person on this bus. It's like aperfect, you know, vehicle for massive transmission. I just I just sort of put that forward of like, that'swhat a mask mandate does to me. I think to the person sitting at home calling for them, they are justimagining, they're like ‘Oh but the government should do this'. But they didn't. The government shouldbe handing out in N95's. How are you going to police them wearing a N95's and how are you gettingthem? It would be so hard to make a massive program work. I would say it's like if you gave me millionsand millions and millions of dollars, for me to design a mass program, I don't know, maybe I could pull itoff you really with an endless budget. But for what? So, I just think that like as these programs went outin the real world, I think they did nothing but burn people's energy. You know because some people itjust turns out don't like wearing a mask. Shocking to other folks. They just don't like wearing a mask.Last thing I'll say is that just as they play it out in the real world, I think we're functionally useless, otherthan burning people's energy. I'm a fervent anti masker at this point because it's just an insult to publichealth. To me everything I've trained in and everything I've worked towards, just saying these two wordsmask mandate, as the fix. That is an insult to the very thing that I want to spend my life doing .ZC: Yeah, I mean, three points, one: you know, masks are still important in clinical settings. I think we allunderstand that. We've been doing them before we've been continuing to do them. So I you know,that's one piece. Second: I mean, to go with the point that was raised here, you know, the best study wehave is Bangladesh, right? 10% relative risk reduction. It's interesting when you read the Bangladeshstudy, because with community kind of people that pump up masking that are really trying to educateand probably are also there to mask compliance. Mask's compliance people, you get to 54% compliance,when those people leave compliance drops significantly. Right. You know, I think you have to just lookaround and see what happened in this last few months, regardless of the messaging. Maybe it's thecommunities I'm in, but I didn't see mass compliance change significantly, maybe about 5%. In thecontext of the last couple of months. You must understand the value of this public health intervention,Bangladesh has actually a nice insight, not only into what we think the community based optimalmasking efficacy is, but also the fact that you really have to continue to enforce, enforce, enforce,enforce, in order to get to that even 10%. Without that enforcement, you're not getting anywhere inthat sense. That probably spells that it's probably a very poor long term public health intervention in thecontext that you really must pump it week by week by week by week in order to actually get compliancethat may actually then give you the effects that you see in a cluster randomized control trial. Again, youknow, the world we live in is showing that people don't want to mask normally. Some people can, i

Part 2 of a 2-part special on the topic of logic and fallacies, covering further examples of logical fallacies, where they show up in common arguments made against Satanism, and why such arguments fail. Suggested sites: https://infidels.org/library/modern/constructing-a-logical-argument/ https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com Content: 00:00 - Intro / recap 02:48 - No True Scotsman 04:13 - No, that's not the No True Scotsman fallacy 08:24 - Equivocation 11:56 - Moving the Goal Posts / Gish Gallop 15:06 - Bill's LHA Anecdote / Dunning-Kruger Effect 18:13 - Non Sequiturs / Affirmation of the Consequent 20:51 - Red Herring / Whataboutism 23:24 - Slippery Slope fallacy (and what it isn't) 32:58 - Probability fallacies: Intro 34:24 - Appeal to Popularity / Bandwagon 36:24 - Texas Sharp-Shooter / Correlation vs. Causation 38:35 - Anecdotal 39:58 - The stupidity of "deathbed recant" stories 43:51 - More Appeal fallacies: Appeal to Antiquity / Newness 46:09 - Appeal to Emotion 48:07 - Appeal to Authority 50:14 - Ad Hominem 52:06 - Reducto ad Hiterlium / Godwin's Law 53:22 - "No, that's not ad hominem" 54:38 - Tu Quoque 57:02 - Circular Logic / Begging the Question / Special Pleading 01:00:36 - Fallacies of Division & Composition 01:04:24 - Closing Thoughts  

In which Wolf opens day 6's door... Watch this episode on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/QmJ-kp8iBbo

Bill reads some listener mail, covering topics such as Satanists joining non-Satanic organizations, the Church of Satan's policy regarding illegal activity, and oh yeah, why The Satanic Temple sucks.

In today's episode of Talk Heathen, Katy Montgomerie and Secular Rarity will sort through callers as Katy drops us some fun lichen facts. First caller is D in DC who is wondering about the distinction between religion, deism, and theism when it comes to ecological circumstances. There could be a cultural practice linked with religion such as vegetarianism that can help. Having a ritualistic set of practices can have its benefits, but what happens if people decide to stop doing these things? Will ecologically beneficial religious practices be harmful in 1,000 years? Employ critical thinking to help guide that process. Next is Thomas in Canada who states that not having a belief in Jesus leads to murder. Do Christians murder and if so, were they just not real Christians? If we start throwing rules down on what makes an actual Christian, how many Christians will we have left? How does not knowing if you are going to heaven or hell have anything to do with your current state of belief? If someone isn't a Christian if they sin, and everyone sins, does that mean that no one is a Christian? This is a textbook No True Scotsman fallacy.Patrick in FL is curious about what Dawkins means by Pantheism being sexed-up atheism. When someone describes god as literally everything, it can be agreed that everything exists but to call it god is just a word game. With this definition, at the end of the day, god is indistinguishable from reality. How have you demonstrated to yourself that the universe is conscious? Even if you have, we would just have one new fact.Jasmine in Canada has some thoughts about atheists perceiving other atheists negatively. Some atheists will carry their arrogance to other domains just because they might be right about some things. Atheists can appear to be the only one that has a problem with something when in the minority, and there are also atheists that are just dickheads. Just being an atheist can put you in a position where you can't really live, while not affecting Christians. It does not matter what the label is and there is no sense in being worried where you land. It is okay to be apathetic and not care about what you call yourself. Tom in MI says that as a critical thinker, he uses Greek history as proof of the existence of gods. What is your definition of existing? Where does your god sit on this definition? What is the correspondence of ancient beliefs and the world we live in now? If people in the past thought something was real, does that make it real? We remain unconvinced of Zeus and Poseidon. Thank you for tuning into today's show, remember to thank the essential workers and turn us on next time for more of Katy's facts!

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: The Inter-Agent Facet of AI Alignment, published by Michael Oesterle on September 18, 2022 on The AI Alignment Forum. We argue that intent alignment and capability robustness do not capture the full “chain of command” (i.e., “alignment” without any qualifier) from the programmer's intentions to an AI agent's real-world impact, but stops at the stage where the agent performs its actions. We argue that, especially in complex Multi-Agent Systems (MAS), this is not sufficient to actually achieve aligned outcomes. Therefore, we introduce another facet of AI Alignment, which deals with the connection between an agent's intention and its actual impact, due to multi-agent interactions (as opposed to capability robustness). Motivation Independent of whether the first AGIs will be Tool or Agent AIs, they will most likely not live and act in an empty space. Instead, they will interact and communicate with humans and other AGIs in a variety of ways, thereby effectively creating a socio-technical system or an AI-based society. As a consequence, the effects that an AGI will have on its environment, i.e., the world, will not necessarily coincide with the effects that the AGI plans to have, since actions in such systems commonly interfere and influence/cancel each other. This, in turn, leads to the conclusion that it is not sufficient to build an AGI which satisfies intent alignment and capability robustness. Instead, we need one more step to be controlled: The step from an AGI's robust intention to its societal impact. Schema In Evan Hubinger's alignment terminology, alignment is the result of intent alignment (which is, in turn, composed of the well-known concepts of inner and outer alignment, among others) and capability robustness. The implicit assumption is that the AGI's model is equivalent to how its actions will affect the world. Inter-Agent Alignment Inter-Agent Alignment is aligning the (aligned and robust) intentions of an AGI agent with the actual outcome within the multi-agent system of which the agent is a part. Since the impact of the agent's actions depends on what everyone else in this system is doing (and not just its own actions), inter-agent alignment is a non-trivial task. Our central argument is that multi-agent interactions add a sufficient amount of complexity to an AI agent's action policy to justify its own type of alignment, separated from the existing alignment model. Adding inter-agent alignment to the alignment tree, we see that it complements intent alignment and capability robustness, resulting in full alignment (i.e., impact alignment). Challenging Questions Why is inter-agent alignment not just a part of intent alignment? Intent alignment is a part of a single AGI without any reference to multi-agent systems. Of course, we could expand its meaning, but since the steps between the programmer's intentions and the AGI's impact can be neatly broken down, we argue that it makes sense to introduce a new term for this additional dimension. Naturally, one can always argue that a sufficiently advanced AGI will be able to see through this dilemma and resolve it, but this seems to be a variant of the No-True-Scotsman fallacy: As long as we can imagine an AGI which is advanced enough to interact with other agents, but not able to successfully coordinate their actions and therefore avoid unintended outcomes, inter-agent alignment is a problem that needs to be addressed. Independent learners using state-of-the-art RL algorithms like DQN or PPO provide evidence that these “medium-level” agents do, in fact, exist. What does it look like if an AGI is intent aligned and capability robust, but not inter-agent aligned? The Tragedy of the Commons is the most prominent example of the fact that the result of selfish optimization of multiple agents is not always optimal fo...

Welcome to Talk Heathen! Today we have ObjectivelyDan and MD Aware who will tackle the topic of abortion taking calls from people on both sides of the spectrum. First caller is Mark in MS who is believes in the resurrection, but is also in favor of pro-choice stemming from his experiences as an OBGYN. You have to put a value of person-hood on the fetus. MD asks him, “Where do you draw the line? How late a term of abortion would you be comfortable performing?” What deserves protection and rights? Viability outside the womb as a practical criteria has its limits. Charles, a Christian from OH, uses the “No True Scotsman” fallacy to attack the previous caller. He then proceeds to ask the hosts why they consider themselves atheists and what standard of evidence is needed for them to believe. We have not seen all the unique claims of Christianity to be true. You must be more specific than just saying the “Christian God”, and for every property you state, there must be justification as evidence. We have meaningful explanations for how our sun was formed, and there is no god required. How do you prove that something supernatural actually exists? Not only have we seen stars being formed, but we also understand how this happens. We want to know and use the best methodologies to get to the truth and this is a standard that no religion has met. Why do you believe what you believe? Is it due to observations or because a book made the claim?Andrew from ME, wants to talk about the recent SCOTUS abortion decision. His claim is that it leads to a more democratic process because it throws the decision back to the states. When slavery was legal, and states had the right to determine if slaves can be owned, was that a good thing or a bad thing? Do you think that democracy is the best way to make these sorts of decisions? Should everything be decided by democratic decisions and is this a fair way to run a society? What kinds of checks and balances should we have? Does the will of the people have anything to do with people's rights? Laura from England discusses having a bi-polar condition and was pregnant at 17. She found out early and made the choice to have an abortion. She asks, “If people can't look after themselves in this world, how can they have a child?” Our other rights could be on the chopping block and we need to continue to raise hell about this until we make that change. In Texas, there are no exceptions for rape, incest, and other things. Some people may not be capable of understanding the consequences of a pregnancy and the associated decisions to be made. These decisions need not be made by men! Teo from Croatia asks if the hosts consider Christianity a hoax, and why they do not say that it is just a different path that may work for some people. This path decides policies and what rights to have such as the right to have an abortion. How do you measure who is right? It is not about what you believe, but it is about why you believe. Thank you for tuning in, and huge gratitude to our essential workers! See you next week!

When someone doesn't want to change their belief about a group of people or things, they'll often try to dismiss the new information rather than change their belief. I'll tell you why in today's episode! When you can recognize the foolishness, you won't get fooled by it! Send me any questions, comments or even the fallacies you're seeing around you! think@filteritthroughabraincell.com Or, tag me on Instagram: @filteritthroughabraincell Sign up for notifications: www.filteritthroughabraincell.com

Learn more about the behind-the-scenes process of Dara's creative pursuits – the conceptualizing and executing of her short form video essays and social commentary on the TikTok app where she's amassed 700,000 followers. Dara and cohost Greg do a deep dive into her most recent content, including a one-minute explainer on the “No True Scotsman” fallacy. Dara and Greg also delve into Dara's comedy and music. This is a great intro episode to those who may not be familiar with Dara's work online and will also be a treat for those who have been with Dara from day 1. Follow Dara on TikTok at @darastarrtucker.  http://www.instagram.com/daratuckerBSupport the show (https://cash.app/$DaraTucker)

Alex has $25 lobster mac ‘n cheese on Indian reservation, Adrian plays ‘No True Scotsman' card, we hope that Trump and Hunter Biden share the same prison cell with Epstein's guards watching them, Google founder helps to build Terminator army, Joe Biden's dementia may actually save the world, and are Congressional coke-fuelled orgies ADA compliant?

Welcome back to Truth Wanted folks! This week's special guest is taking a break from handing out quests in Skyrim to join Dan. He's a science communicator, he's Tik Tok royalty, welcome Forrest Valkai to the show!This week's Patron of the Week is Ayame, thank you for supporting the show! A thousand blessings upon your ancestors.Danni is having some trouble letting go of childhood religious indoctrination. Forrest recommends patience, these things don't disappear, they fade away. He offers Danni a few tools, and a very gross, yet poignant metaphor. Dan shares an anecdote about his own upbringing, and advocates for visibility as an atheist, when safe to do so. Be patient with yourself Danni, much love!Jay is up next, with a “No True Scotsman” argument that will dazzle and amaze. Okay, maybe not, but he tells our hosts that the Christians hating gay people aren't true Christians. Our hosts point out that both all Xtians, good or bad, are drawing their conclusions from the same book. Jay has the one true interpretation of the Bible though! You and a million others, Jay.TH has a real problem, that being his anti-vaxxer adult children. His kids offer up past lies from the government as reason to distrust the Covid narrative. Dan offers his own conversation with Anthony Magnabosco as an example of how minds don't change overnight. Forrest paints a picture of how other conspiracies mirror the current anti-vax trend, and gives our caller a few tools for starting constructive conversations. There aren't any magic words to get through to someone TH, but you seem to be on the right track.Forrest spills the tea on this next call, Zim in Virginia asks how to explain evolution to a younger crowd, and it turns out Forrest is already on it! He's working on exactly this topic! He gives a brief rundown of what Zim can expect, subjects like alleles, speciation, exactly what we need. Dan gets a bye round on this call, it's entertaining as heck though!Charles is up next, and asks our hosts what they think about the ethics of incest. Is our aversion to sex with close kin cultural, biological, or just plain good sense? Our hosts offer an impartial analysis of a typically taboo topic. Like the trolley problem, there's no easy answer here.Barrie the Kiwi asks if including creationism in public education has value, even if it's just to warn students. Forrest thinks that teaching the history of science is valuable, especially because it includes the times we got it wrong. Honesty and skepticism go hand in hand!Finally Paul gets Forrest super excited about mermaids and speciation. Actually. Best. Wrap-up. Ever.

Skillet frontman sticks his foot down his throat and also makes the No True Scotsman logical fallacy... while starting a deconstruction war?! Marjorie Taylor Greene... is it Gazpacho, or Gestapo? Greggy Poo Threatens to out the witches in his circus tent. We have a special appearance by Viced Rhino... he "made a call" to Greggy Poo. BTW... He has another name... Greggy Poo that is... Rev Rymz! A Catholic priest resigns, but not for sexual abuse... but because of a pronoun problem. What shall we EVER do? Governor Bill Lee is inviting an ultra conservative christian college from Michigan to open PUBLIC charter schools in TN. The FFRF is having a field day with Huntington, WV! A bunch of the kids at a HS there were forced to go to a religious gathering, at school, on school time.... talk about church and state violation. Lastly... we check in with the JSE... and we get taught a lesson about love. Merch! - https://the-burnt-church-atheist.creator-spring.com Help protect Water Protecters - DropL3Charges.com Help stop Line 3 - www.stopline3.org Planned Parenthood - 1-800-230-PLAN (7526) / www.plannedparenthood.org National Suicide Prevention Lifeline - 24/7/365 - 1-800-273-8255 Secular Therapy Project - www.SecularTherapy.org Tennessee Voices (TN Voices) www.TNVoices.org Show art was provided by Megan Broughton, The_Girl_With_The_Paint_Brush Twitter - @DomDAtheist Twitter - @ErenThePagan TikTok - @BurntChurchAtheist Google Voice - (731) 412-0201 Email - DomDAtheist@gmail.com Email - ErenThePagan@gmail.com Cashapp - cash.app/$BurntChurchAtheist Venmo - @BurntChurchAtheist Paypal - https://www.PayPal.me/BurntChurchAtheist Patreon - Patreon.com/BurntChurchAtheist

EP 36 Occam's Law!? This is a special episode… featuring part 1 of 6 of my conversation with Pink Williams. It was going to be a short interview, but we had too much fun. Like two old friends just hanging out. Patrons already have the full 2 hour conversation. http://Patreon.com/BurntChurchAtheist Check out Pink Williams here… https://linker.ee/Pink.Williams He is playing live at Black Lodge Video, October 24th, 2021. Go see him, and tell him that I sent you. I also feature his song “Coup Boogaloo” in this episode, and was used with permission. This episode marks the return of the JSE… after a few weeks off. Some people can't keep their Laws and Razors straight… and it is for a good laugh. Greggy Poo makes a long form No True Scotsman. Of course we get a visit from Skeptic Magazine, 101 Questions, & the Baptist & Reflector. Lastly we pay a visit to MAGA MOUNTAIN. Merch! - https://the-burnt-church-atheist.creator-spring.com Help stop Line 3 - www.stopline3.org Planned Parenthood - 1-800-230-PLAN (7526) / www.plannedparenthood.org National Suicide Prevention Lifeline - 24/7/365 - 1-800-273-8255 Secular Therapy Project - www.SecularTherapy.org Tennessee Voices (TN Voices) www.TNVoices.org Show art was provided by Megan Broughton, The_Girl_With_The_Paint_Brush Twitter - @DomDAtheist TikTok - @BurntChurchAtheist Google Voice - (731) 412-0201 Email - DomDAtheist@gmail.com Paypal - https://www.PayPal.me/BurntChurchAtheist Patreon - Patreon.com/BurntChurchAtheist

Join the guys this week as they attack the idea of state sovereignty and advocate for placing entities under administration. Also, they look at some recent rugby headlines and results. Music by @monstroid, 80s TV Show.

In this second interview with Dr. David Robert Grimes, author of the indispensably excellent book, The Irrational Ape, I began by asking him about the reductive fallacy, before moving onto a related essentialising bias known as the No True Scotsman fallacy. I then asked my guest about two woefully widespread mental shortcuts, namely the anecdotal fallacy and the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, which literally means “after this therefore because of this,” but is often stated as correlation does not equal causation. Dr. Grimes also reminded listeners that the plural of anecdote is never data. We spent some time discussing various issues pertaining to statistics, including the difference between relative and absolute risk, the nature of statistical significance, the meaning of a P-value, and the so-called replication crisis in social science and in biomedical research. I then asked Dr. Grimes to explain sensitivity and specificity, two crucially important attributes pertinent to all tests for diseases. Understandably, these concepts have gained even greater relevance during the Covid pandemic. In The Irrational Ape, Dr. Grimes draws from a 2005 paper by John Ioannidis called ‘Why Most Published Research Findings are False' to provide six guidelines to assess the validity of research findings, which we spent some time discussing. I also asked him about some ways to distinguish between science and pseudoscience. At the time we recorded the interview, Dr. Grimes was about to pen a piece for The Observer about the Wuhan Lab Leak theory, averring that the virus was engineered at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which he argues is a conspiracy theory that violates the principle of Occam's Razor. He helpfully explained what this is for those who might not know and is another handy weapon in one's critical thinking armoury. Near the end of this once again insightful and enjoyable interview, my guest pointed out how liberating it can be to admit you do not know something. As he said, “don't believe anything until the evidence is in,” which is a reminder of the kind of humility and intellectual honesty we should all try to cultivate. Official website: https://www.davidrobertgrimes.com/ Twitter account: http://www.twitter.com/drg1985 Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/david_robert_grimes/ Buy The Irrational Ape: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Irrational-Ape-Flawed-Critical-Thinking/dp/1471178250 https://www.waterstones.com/books/search/term/the+irrational+ape+david+robert+grimes Dr. Grimes' article about the Wuhan Lab Leak Theory: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/13/newly-respectable-wuhan-lab-theory-remains-fanciful Twitter account for Skeptically Curious: https://twitter.com/SkepticallyCur1 Patreon page for Skeptically Curious: https://www.patreon.com/skepticallycurious

No True Scotsman arguments say that no real member of some group would do something; for instance, no true scientist would reject evolution. These arguments become fallacies when they redefine a key term—like what it means to be a scientist—to avoid counterarguments. Here are some examples of how to recognize and respond to these fallacies. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/answerstv/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/answerstv/support

Greetings Heathens! Settle in heathens, grab that cup of velvety smooth hot chocolate or coffee, Seth Andrews and his dulcet tones joins us today. I don’t know about you, but I love his voice and I love Eric’s voice, this episode should go down as our most ASMR show ever. Combined together with Eric, this should be a fantastic show!Let’s get to calls! Gerard from Connecticut would like to talk about to what degree can we reasonably believe and justify metaphysical claims. Unfortunately, we aren’t able to reasonably test these claims to prove them true without evidence. Using mathematics to prove this isn’t helpful, math is a language used to describe symbols, is also a scientific process, and isn’t a way to prove metaphysics. ALERT! We interrupt this episode for a prophecy about how God exists! Just kidding, we wanted to show a clip from an episode from August about how the UN will be taking over the US in November and Trump is nowhere to be found… except this prophecy hasn’t happened. NEXT!Sophie in Texas is up next, after experiencing a lot of loss over the years, they are seeing their mom succumbing to scams by “mediums” and isn’t sure what to do to help. Please don’t feel this is only your burden, it is not your mantle to carry, please reach out to our discord if you need any additional help working through this. Kathy in Pennsylvania is wondering about folks calling themselves Christian and acting contrary to that. She starts talking towards the ‘No True Scotsman’ territory but stops herself. She knows all the lingo! Seth summarizes her thoughts in the amazing storyteller way that he does. Jonathan in London is asking about how to support his theist believing wife when she says she is being punished for some spiritual infraction. He is seeking advice on how to best help her through this. Seth is able to hop in and provides some great advice.Kevin in New York is calling back, says he doesn’t want to go down any rabbit holes. Sure you don’t… I’m a teeny bit skeptical about that. This time he would like to focus on the topic of skepticism and spiritual testimonies that people claim. Oh boy. Tim in the Czech Republic deconverted and left his cult and is nervous about talking about how he is shunned by his family to his friends around the holiday season. Seth is able to really provide some great steps in creating your family made of friends. Family isn’t always a blood relation, the family you choose is sometimes the best. That’s our show for this week, please continue to be safe in your area, wear your mask. The world is better with you in it. See you next week!

Jack "Doki" Roberston has the distinction of being the only Scottish player in Rainbow 6 esports. Notorious for his outspokenness on twitter and on his personal stream, Doki's reputation would eventually catch up with him as he found himself banned from competitive play in late 2019. Despite uncertainty about his future, Doki decided to keep his head down and prove that he had grown as a person and as a player. Establishing a large viewership on Twitch while being open about the missteps he'd made in the past, Doki returned to NaVi's starting roster after his 6 month ban ended. Troy and Parker sit down with one of EU's most talked about players to discuss the state of EU League, the road to redemption, and NaVi's recent struggles.

0:00:00 Introduction Richard Saunders 0:04:13 Pete Evans, what a Tweet Criticism has been levelled against celebrity chef Pete Evans for a recent tweet in which he seemed to discourage the wearing of face masks. https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/pete-evans-suggests-followers-should-stop-wearing-face-masks/news-story/354b3edc7b50bb5b2ef4d763e20f756c 0:10:14 Live Psychic Reading We chat to Susan Gerbic and a host of skeptics with their comments on a live psychic reading. Were we amazed, suprised or disapointed by what the psychic said? WIth Celestia Ward, Pontus Böckman, Kenny Biddle, Leonard Tramiel and Wendy Hughes.   https://youtu.be/7PyZ3pPxKs0 0:20:29 VAXXED Bus - Delivers COVID-19 Conspiracies and Bad Advice Australian Skeptics has issued a warning and call to action to Australian media, medical professionals, and local councils regarding the current anti-vaccination ‘revival’ tour of rural and regional Australia. https://www.skeptics.com.au/2020/07/19/call-to-action-on-anti-vaccination-bus-tour/ 0:31:24 Logical Fallacies. With Michelle Bijkersma This week Michelle looks at "No True Scotsman". This interesting sounding fallacy comes from the notion that all Scotsmen are brave and if one turns out to be a coward, then he can not really be a true Scotsman. A Logical Fallacy is an error we can make in reasoning, but it usually crops up when we are discussing or arguing our point of view. 0:37:00 Typewriter Time Water, water everywhere...... With the voice talent of Beth Darlington 0:40:57 The Book of Tim. With Tim Mendham What Goes Around - Psychics, Writers, Psychologists and Imbibers. http://www.skeptics.com.au Also Star Trek Continues https://www.startrekcontinues.com Skepticon 2020 https://www.skepticon.org.au Corona Conspiracy - Upload Images https://coronaconspiracy.cloud

Greetings Heathens! Today’s episode of Talk Heathen is brought to you by, keep wearing your masks in public, stop being selfish and wear it! You could save a loved one. Our hosts today are the dynamic duo, Eric Murphy and Vi La Bianca.Let’s get to calls. The “first” caller is a returning caller, Father John from Canada. He wants to talk about some loopholes in the Roman Catholic doctrine surrounding the sacrament of confirmation and that Roman Catholic theology was inaccurate and Eastern Orthodox is the One True Church, um ok. The No True Scotsman fallacy and circular arguments abound!Next up, Brad from Virginia would like to talk about how his friend has very opposing views about LGBTQ marriage/legal rights and uses whataboutism to push a dialogue and agenda. He wonders how society makes these opinions and what to do about it.Arthur in Poland would like to hear some recommendations on how to navigate relationships with his children and family about his atheism, deconversion. He wonders how to object to baptism in a faith. Don’t wait on it Arthur, we definitely recommend possibly speaking to a secular therapist/marriage counselor about your concerns. Evan in Ohio is calling in as a deist and a recovering Baptist. He is calling in about his sister, who is struggling with her religion and self hate in regards to LGBTQ rights. It almost sounds like she may be projecting. Evan, you can’t push her along her journey, she must come to the conclusions herself. Be there for her, listen to her, and be available to her. Next in the queue is Tom from Missouri. He wants to talk about the historical evidence of Jesus’ resurrection. This is a great call, definitely give it a listen, there are a lot of pearls of wisdom that I didn’t capture.Billy in North Carolina would like to talk about how atheists need to figure out how to come together, mobilize, and become activists to highlight oppression against the non-religious. We must remain intersectional and accepting of others while doing this work. That’s our show today folks, thanks all! Be safe and healthy out there!

Good Morning Heathens, in today’s episode of Talk Heathen, Vi La Bianca is joined by the wonderful and gracious Neil the 604 Atheist. Neil hosts his own YouTube show (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOkKPs3juZb9iwFn7Z29-Lw/) and has had a plethora of fantastic guests talking about their own deconversion stories there. Check them out!Let’s get to calls. The first caller is Rachel from Australia. How do atheists respond to the “No True Scotsman fallacy” when it’s used referring to us when/if we were christians? To them, a "real christian” is possibly just someone who hasn't stopped believing. If you stop believing, you never believed in the first place. Next up, Hadisoufi from North Carolina would like to talk about how a functional “day-to-day” god could possibly exist and it works for him. Vi asks this question very pointedly: Why would you value a conception of god if you don’t necessarily believe in a true existing god?Kevin in New York is calling again, this time with a hypothesis about scriptures of the bible, Jesus’ life, and the Peter principle. However, Vi would like to refresh us all on his progress on the pineal gland, wormwood, and Ouija boards, topics from previous calls with him. Vi also wonders about how Kevin comes up with these quite out of the ordinary hypotheses and questions. They give him a choice, talk about previous topics or the slew of new ones. Given the choice, Kevin decides to talk about the Peter Principle and Jesus’ life. Next time Peter, we will want to talk about your progress and will hold you to it. No ifs, ands, or buts allowed.Michael in New York would like to discuss how DMT can “show” you the metaphysical world and can prove evidence for god. Claims it is repeatable and testable because of how the drug works and it’s mind altering properties. Neil jumps in to say it’s irrelevant due to societal imprints and hallucinations can not be truth. Ooooh, this call is fantastic.Rick in Tennessee would like to talk about the ultimate self. He describes the ultimate self being “the us that we really are, our perception/essence in being, and not what is perceived of us.” He goes on to say: “This is sooo deep it’s shallow.” and “What I am at any given moment, at the moment of being, is essentially the ultimate self.” Chad in Nebraska recently deconverted and wonders how to give up religious prayer. That’s a great question, you can absolutely continue to internally meditate and talk through things. It can continue to be helpful. Vi says it wonderfully: Deconstructing your religion can take time. There are things that linger, and that is ok. That’s our show for today! Thanks to all essential workers and protesters fighting the good fight! See you all next week!

In the forty-eighth episode we explore the No True Scotsman Fallacy, starting with Trump calling Republicans who disagree with him RINOs.In Mark's British Politics Corner we look at Ken Clarke being accused of not being a Conservative.In the Fallacy in the Wild, we check out examples from The Simpsons and Bill O'Reilly.Jim and Mark go head to head in a very easy game of Fake News, the game in which Mark has to guess which of three Trump quotes Jim made up.Then we discuss why antibody tests probably aren't the key to opening up the country again.And finally, we round up some of the other crazy Trump stories from the past week.The full show notes for this episode can be found at http://fallacioustrump.com/ft48You can contact the guys at pod@fallacioustrump.com, on Twitter @FallaciousTrump, or facebook at facebook.com/groups/fallacioustrumpSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/fallacious-trump/donations

Greg and Amy respond to questions about reacting to evil in light of God’s use of evil, whether goodness entails purpose, and how to respond when charged with the “No True Scotsman” fallacy. Topics:How should Christians define or react to evil if God uses evil for good purposes?In order for something to be valued as good, must it have a purpose?When an atheist uses a Christian’s actions against Christianity, and I respond that he isn’t really a Christian, how should I answer the charge that I’m committing the “No True Scotsman” fallacy?Download the mp3...If you enjoyed this episode, you can subscribe or listen to archived episodes of #STRask here.

After Crowhill makes a silly logical fallacy, the boys drink and review @nocoastbrewco Old Stock Ale -- a strong, malty ale that is quite delicious. They discuss confirmation bias, rational thinking in general, and then go through a few specific logical fallacies. * Red herring * Ad ignorantiam * Strawman * Reductio ad Hitlerum * Slippery slope * Appeal to authority * Begging the question * Appeal to antiquity * Post hoc ergo propter hoc * Moving the goal post (raising the bar) * No True Scotsman

Some BS told to a group of cave tourists in 1976, OK boomer and a troll, a Dimland Radio Pedantic Moment: That's a Russian soldier, a Dimland Radio Science Zero: The Ohio House of Representatives, and Sir Anthony Hopkins and the No True Scotsman fallacy.The show notes for this week's Dimland Radio are up at http://dimland.blogspot.com/2019/11/dimland-radio-11-16-19-show-notes.html

Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys by My Chemical Romance. Cameron doesn't want to talk about Sha Na Na, Nathan confuses subs and dubs, and MCR sings its mediocre swan song. Click here to join our Discord! (https://discord.gg/5vpqXaS) Learnin' Links: Rush trys to metaphor (https://genius.com/Rush-the-trees-lyrics) Hollow point bullets (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow-point_bullet) The scorpion and the frog (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog) Borrowed chords (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borrowed_chord) Robert Pattinson hates Twilight (https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=54&v=nFA6Ycch1EM) Water Ice (https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/08/10/489217423/water-ice-phillys-classic-summer-cooler-gets-hot-across-the-country) The No True Scotsman fallacy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman) Godwin's Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law) How Hall & Oates work together these days (https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/daryl-hall-john-oates-dont-creatively/story?id=49844527) Listen along to Danger Days here! (https://open.spotify.com/album/2wPnKggTK3QhYAKL7Q0vvr) You can support us in several ways: Kick us a few bux on Patreon! (https://www.patreon.com/boxset) By becoming a supporting member, you'll gain access to special bonus episodes, including a weekly mini-show, What's in the Box Weekly! Buy T-shirts, sweatshirts, and more at our merch page! (https://boxset.threadless.com/)

Logical Fallacy Overview & No True Scotsman, and Exorcism in the Catholic Church Recorded on 12 May 2019: Topics Critical Thinking: Cognitive Biases & Errors: Fallacy: No True Scotsman and Exorcism in the Catholic Church Segment 1: Logical Fallacy Overview & No True Scotsman Georgia councilman complains about interracial marriage while defending mayor’s racist statement, […] The post Episode 015 appeared first on The Skeptic Heads.

Logical Fallacy Overview & No True Scotsman, and Exorcism in the Catholic Church Recorded on 12 May 2019: Topics Critical Thinking: Cognitive Biases & Errors: Fallacy: No True Scotsman and Exorcism in the Catholic Church Segment 1: Logical Fallacy Overview & No True Scotsman Georgia councilman complains about interracial marriage while defending mayor’s racist statement, […] The post Episode 015 appeared first on The Skeptic Heads.

Chris and Brandon introduce Calling Bullshit As A Service (CBAAS), a new podcast segment to help you call bullshit early and often. The inaugural segment features a discussion of a common logical fallacy, "No True Scotsman" before leading into the broader concept of "moving the goalposts" as a tactic for manipulation. No true Scotsman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman Moving the Goalposts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_the_goalposts

Season 2 - Episode 9 - No True Scotsman -  In this episode of Re-Sight Islam, Qasim and Salaam jump right into why ISIS and other extremists really need to crawl back under the rocks from which they came.  They set the record straight on the differences between the acts of individual Muslims and what Islam teaches.  As they pull back the veil of misunderstanding, the team sets the foundational rules necessary for legitimate scholarly interpretation of the Q'uran and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad.  As they dive deeper into the discussion you will also learn about the heirarchy of interpretaion - and who you should believe. What is the "No True Scotsman" falacy? What should one do if a Hadith runs counter to a Sunnah?  Who was Ibn Ishak and why is he cited as a credible (or not so credible) source on Islam?  What do a radioactive turtle, chocolate chip cookies, unvaccinated kids and Mark Twain quotes have to do with understanding the Q'uran?  And, does Lisa really like Nelson?... The answer to these questions, and more, lie within this week's melodic dialogue.  Please remember to subscribe, share and comment.  If you have any questions for Qasim or have suggestions for topics, you can always Tweet them to @MuslimIQ  or send an email to ReSightIslam@ReligionNewsFoundation.org. This has been a production of the Religion News Foundation  For more information on these, and other religion news stories from around the world, visit religionnews.com or subscribe to  “Religion News Headlines” on your Alexa Device.   The Religion News Foundation – Your source for professional journalism covering religion for over  80 years.   LOVE what you hear?  Show your support and help us keep Re-Sight Islam as the #1 Podcast on Islam in the US by becoming a PATRON - your generous donations will ensure that we are able to deliver a message of peace and reconcilliation for all to hear! 26,000 downloads and counting!  Thank you!

This week, Jeffrey and Squirrel look at how to learn new skills in your agile team or elsewhere, and recommend frequent failure as a useful heuristic. SHOW LINKS: - Graham Lee blog post: https://www.sicpers.info/2018/02/to-become-a-beginner-first-become-an-expert/ - No True Scotsman fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman - TDD (Test-Driven Development): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-driven_development - Agile principles: http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html *** We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas or feedback you have regarding the show. Email us: see link on troubleshootingagile.com Tweet us: twitter.com/TShootingAgile Also, if you'd like to leave us a review on iTunes (or just like and subscribe), you'll find us here: itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/troub…d1327456890?mt=2

How to Find Steven: Mind the Headspace. DJ Fropsi. DJ Fropsi on Facebook. Show Notes: Trans Panic. No True Scotsman.

No true Scotsman • Borys

Xeno and Rev. Pete discuss the tendancy of the religious to excuse harm using the No True Scotsman fallacy.

Episode 3 After my Banterrrrrant, Dean & I get back to a real episode. This week we discuss the Montreal mosque terrorist attack, Pastor Manning and other news and The NO True Scotsman fallacy.

Forgotten Superheroes of Science: Valentina Tereshkova; News Items: The Science March, Giving Mars a Magnetic Field, Death of the Liberation Procedure, Supersolids; Who's That Noisy; Your Questions and E-mails: Saturn V vs Falcon Heavy, Moving the Goalpost vs No True Scotsman; Science or Fiction

Forgotten Superheroes of Science: Valentina Tereshkova; News Items: The Science March, Giving Mars a Magnetic Field, Death of the Liberation Procedure, Supersolids; Who's That Noisy; Your Questions and E-mails: Saturn V vs Falcon Heavy, Moving the Goalpost vs No True Scotsman; Science or Fiction

It's Super Tuesday and all hell is breaking loose in the GOP over the Trumpster! Luckily, the Turn Up the Night gang makes all this horribleness wildly entertaining! Adam Hebert of Mic Check Radio & Jacob Dean join Kenny and Raine while Tom Shafer is out... But that doesn't keep our News Ninja from producing audio from the shadows! Trump has a David Duke, KKK and honesty problem! Yeah really, all that. Did Paul Ryan & Mitch McConnell just lay out the "No True Scotsman" argument to force a brokered convention and drive the Donald to run 3rd party?!?!? We'll see... The Morning Joe crew attempt at redemption after the Trump love-in. Ted Cruz just called out Trump for possible Mob / Mafia dealings!!! Shit just got real!!! The Green News Report! Name Calling! Rob Pool on Reverse Call-In! Chris Hayes & David Folkenflik analyze how Fox created the Trumpenstein Monster and how they are now getting a taste of their own dick medicine! Jessica Williams of the Daily Show nails Pastor James David Manning on his church scam and grotesque homophobia with a silver lining in his hate cloud! Bill Maher shows what a POTUS Trump SOTU would sound like!!! Plus: Super Tuesday Updates and much, much more! Huzzah! NOTE: Show Art by Joe Santorsa AKA @marnus3

When your identity becomes intertwined with your definitions, you can easily fall victim to something called The No true Scotsman Fallacy. It often appears during a dilemma: What do you do when a member of a group to which you belong acts in a way that you feel is in opposition to your values? Do you denounce the group, or do you redefine the boundaries of membership for everyone? In this episode, you will learn from three experts in logic and argumentation how to identify, defend against, and avoid deploying this strange thinking quirk that leads to schisms and stasis in groups both big and small. • Show Notes: http://bit.ly/1NokrTa • Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmart • Donate Directly through PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/DavidMcRaney SPONSORS • Trunk Club: http://bit.ly/1Sp2wZj • The Great Courses Plus: https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on The Nerdpocalypse Podcast, Jay is FORCED to bring in two ringers to get through this show. Guesting from the Flawedcast Network is Andy and Stewart (A True Scotsman) to chat about Aquaman, Marvel comic universe reboot, ankle sex toys (shudders), Google teaming up with SpaceX, SNIFF, and much more.

Every time I talk to a believer these days, I hear two things:  the believer thinks most christians are wrong and those christans are not following the bible; and the believer to whom I am speaking is right and IS following the bible.   What's us with the no-true Scotsman nonsense?  Why is this used so damned often?  How can atheists respond to it? My thoughts plus your calls equal awesomeness.

In which Jody tries to hit literally every hot-botton issue, and Matt stubbornly refuses to be drawn into ranting. NOTE: One of those two claims is false.

Gary Butterfield, Kole Ross, and Jeremy Greer talk about the basics of PVP in Dark Souls. Links of Note: Dark Souls Haters Youtube - NotECEC GiantDad No True Scotsman Karmic Justice Build Gary's Skype Image The Estus Eatery PitchPod Twitter

Please join Father Teresa & Dragnauct on the Barber Shop as they discuss ad hominem attacks, Dunning Kruger Effect, No True Scotsman, the insanity of society and other topics.   Why do believers attack nonbeliervers? Why do nonbelievers attack believers? Why do nonbelievers attack other nonbelievers? Why do believers attack other believers?   The call-in number is 310-982-4273. You can also Skype into the show by clicking the big blue S during the show.   Time: 5 PM PST/7 PM CST/8PM EST.