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Ep 231: Karl Popper's "The Myth of the Framework" Sections I to III. Discussing discussions: deep dive Jan 25, 2025

Show notes

I take another deep dive into a deeply insightful and original lecture by Karl Popper: The Myth of the Framework. In this first part (of 4) I spend most of the episode unpacking our motivations, Popper's own thoughts on his success in combating bad ideologies and the purposes of discussion. Indeed this piece can be considered an instruction manual for discussions: how to have them and why. Below: timestamps for this episode: 00:00 Purpose of this new series 05:41 Woke, DEI and Popper 10:47 Popper in his own words on his “success” 12:23: Marxism and Relativism as “ideas that survive” 19:47 Popper in the modern day 22:30 Frameworks and “echo chambers”. 26:05 Some personal anecdotes and reflections 32:43: Defending an idea is different to explaining one. 35:00 Personal anecdotes. 47:47 Discussions 49:33 Why do we talk to each other? :) 59:13 The Myth of the Framework. Section 1 1:01:04 Commentary Section 1 1:03:33 The Myth of the Framework Section 2 1:04:29 Commentary Section 2 1:06:15 The Myth of the Framework Section 3a 1:07:07 Commentary Section 3a 1:12:12 The Myth of the Framework Section 3b 1:13:40 Commentary Section 3b 1:16:39 Should we “talk” to North Korea? 1:26:12 The West and its enemies 1:28:42 The Myth of the Framework Section 3c 1:29:59 Commentary Section 3c 1:32:25 The Myth of the Framework Section 3d 1:33:24 Closing Reflection

Ep 230: David Deutsch’s ”The Fabric of Reality” Chapter 12 ”Time Travel” Part 3 Jan 20, 2025

Show notes

The best part! If you missed the others, don't miss this one. All four strands come together to explain the possibility of time travel and the intrigue that arises when considering travelling to "your" past or future to visit "yourself".

Rough timestamps follow: 00:00 introduction and the significance of virtual reality 04:03 Physically possible renderings and resolving paradoxes 07:30 what does VR time travel tell us about physics? 11:05 Personhood and time travel 13:30 Highly unlikely events, the multiverse and “never”. 15:45 General Relativity and time travel 18:51 David’s 70th birthday online acknowledgement https://dd70th.weebly.com/ 20:14 Past directed time travel: the consensus 25:25 Black holes, wormholes and time travel 34:10 More on paradoxes and quantum gravity 38:00 The unpredictability of the growth of knowledge . 42:05 Visitors from the future 45:50 Time travel, BoI and Fungibility 56:00 Knowledge Paradoxes? 1:00:40 Creation ex nihilo and “recombination”. 1:06:39 Biological and explanatory knowledge 1:11:32 Useless information and the resolution of knowledge “paradoxes” 1:15:23 The knowledge “crystal” - structure across the multiverse. 1:22:18 The entire biosphere as a computation. 1:26:20 Civilisations as virtual reality renderings. 1:30:00 The four main strands and time travel.

Ep 229: David Deutsch’s ”The Fabric of Reality” Chapter 12 ”TimeTravel” Part 2 Jan 17, 2025

Show notes

An outside broadcast as you will hear. Image generation and virtual reality provide a window on the physics of time travel. Why is that? And what about all those time travel paradoxes? The resolution to all is found herein.

Ep 228: Knowledge Beyond Belief Dec 30, 2024

Show notes

An assortment of topics looking forward to 2025.

Timestamps:

00:00 Truth is indispensable

04:06 The “search for truth” is error correction

08:11 Remarks on selflessness and personhood. How can we square the two?

09:14 Decisions and free will and creativity

10:46 Truth and the two senses of “believe”.

13:30 Belief, epistemology and psychology

17:16 “Popperian” knowing.

18:07 Newtonian Gravity I

23:53 Why GR and QM do not mesh.

26:57 Newtonian Gravity II

27:43 Knowledge is…

29:11 Knowledge creation, reason, rationality and reality.

31:11 Reason, Creativity, Fun and Flow States

36:13 Learning is knowledge creation

39:06 Selfishness and having fun

42:53 Fun, innovation, wealth and value

43:51 Wealthy people create value

48:17 Creativity, Wealth and energy

52:27 Optimism about 2025

Ep 227: "What is Capitalism?" - an encounter between Objectivism and Critical Rationalism. Dec 15, 2024

Show notes

Live from Sydney, Yaron Brook and Nikos Sotirakopoulos join me on stage to discuss capitalism, liberty, personhood, energy policy, Israel and antisemitism and much more. Rough timestamps are here:

00:00 Brett’s welcome and introduction

02:32 Nikos on “What is Capitalism?”

04:21 Yaron on “What is Capitalism?”

07:33 Brett on the relationship between personhood and capitalism.

10:02 Nikos on why progress is not inevitable.

12:06 Yaron on humans vs other animals

15:14 Yaron on why capitalism is retreating in the West.

19:56 Brett on the self similarity of the mind

25:40: Yaron on Israel and her allies

32:33 Brett on protectionism and nationalism

33:17 Nikos on defending your allies and nihilism.

37:01 Yaron on faith, collectivism and nationalism.

42:13 Brett on “concentrated losses, dispersed gains”.

43:50 Yaron on free trade and tarrifs

49:52: Yaron’s iPhone

54:52 Brett invokes Deutsch’s pattern, anti-capitalism and anti-Americanism.

56:01 Nikos on Marx’s role as an antisemitic anticapitalist and “secondhandedness”.

1:02:21 Brett on environmentalism and anti humanism

1:05:22 Nikos on energy policy

1:07:25 Yaron on saving the planet.

1:11:21 Brett on the death trap that is planet Earth

1:13:15 Question 1: What is an Objectivist foreign policy?

1:18:21 Question 2: Is democracy necessary for protecting individual human rights?

1:25:31 Question 3: What explains the anti-ANZAC phenomenon in Australia?

1:30:01 Question 4: Should the government protect individual property rights? Remarks on “the minimum wage”.

1:32:53 Question 5: Should we be pessimistic about “woke”, “DEI” and the state of universities?

1:41:33 Question 6: Has China managed to achieve a beneficial separation of their political and economic systems?

1:47:02 Question 7: What is the role of the Fed in the USA? Is it necessary?

Ep 226: Realism and the purposes of philosophy. Dec 12, 2024

Show notes

I discuss the point of philosophy and how "concrete" the work of Karl Popper and David Deutsch are in marshalling examples taken directly from science in order to illustrate how philosophy solves problems in other areas. Then I have some lengthy remarks on some recent criticism of Popper and Deutsch which is found here: https://substack.com/home/post/p-152605209

Ep 225: Livestream from November 27, 2024 Nov 28, 2024

Show notes

A long "ask me anything" episode live and off the cuff. Apologies for the audio quality.

Ep 224: Shapes, Time, and Holism - by Julian Barbour Nov 20, 2024

Show notes

Julian Barbour is an independent British Physicist and the author of technical and popular books including the best selling "The End of Time" and most recently "The Janus Point: A New Theory of Time". In this lecture, Julian shows just how interesting Newtonian Mechanics can get. Can it be a fundamental theory of space, time and physical reality? This is a tour de force of the history of ideas in physics by an iconoclastic scientists working at the deepest foundations of his subject.

The video version of this lecture can be found at https://youtu.be/VzZbjL_Jvwk which may be helpful.

This is not a regular ToKCast episode - it is highly technical in places. We will return to regular programming for episode 225 when we will have passed 1 million downloads. Thankyou to all fans! If you would like to support ToKCast, go to my Patreon page at https://www.patreon.com/c/tokcast or paypal via https://www.paypal.com/donate?token=qyzc2PwQaXf2XNAZS8g5Ke9eRfYfUs73xlBzXNfM8Bnjdm__ETUCyw86HKQ9wd1jBQ4zVKLsW0uRmB53

Ep 223: The Deutsch Files IV (ToKCast version) Oct 17, 2024

Show notes

After a short introduction by me, the remainder of this episode is a reproduction of "The Deutsch Files IV" the latest in a series of conversations between myself, Naval Ravikant and David Deutsch about a wide variety of topics including, and sometimes going far beyond the contents of "The Fabric of Reality", "The Beginning of Infinity" and Constructor Theory. Go to https://nav.al to access all the other "Deutsch Files" as well as earlier content Naval and I produced about all the Big Questions of Life, the Universe and Everything and, helpfully, the transcripts to all our discussions.

Ep 222: David Deutsch’s ”The Fabric of Reality” Chapter 12 ”TimeTravel” Part 1 Oct 15, 2024

Show notes

Is time travel into the past and the future possible? What is time dilation? Subjective and objective senses of "time travel". David Deutsch's own documentary on Time Travel from the BBB (192) https://youtu.be/C6_gxoLwrWw?si=8vw8cwbP49XkY6e8

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