Very Bad Wizards

Latest Episodes:

Episode 274: Can I Get a Kidney Voucher? (with Vlad Chituc) Dec 13, 2023

Show notes

RETURNING guest Vlad Chituc joins us for a wide-ranging discussion about donating his kidney to a stranger, the effective altruism movement, and his sexuality. Was EA's turn to 'long-termist' goals like preventing evil AI inevitable? Have they strayed too far from their Peter Singer/Jeremy Bentham inspired roots? And why won't David and Tamler donate their kidneys? Plus a new article in Nature Climate Change argues that neuroscience can help the environment – can I interest you in some virtual trees?

Doell, K. C., Berman, M. G., Bratman, G. N., Knutson, B., Kühn, S., Lamm, C., ... & Brosch, T. (2023). Leveraging neuroscience for climate change research. Nature Climate Change, 1-10.

I spent a weekend at Google talking with nerds about charity. I came away … worried. by Dylan Matthews [vox.com]

How effective altruism went from a niche movement to a billion-dollar force by Dylan Matthews [vox.com]

Stop the Robot Apocalypse by Amia Srinivasan [lrb.co.uk]

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Episode 273: Ah. Ah. (Miyazaki's "Spirited Away") Nov 29, 2023

Show notes

David and Tamler board the train for Hayao Miyazaki's mystical dreamy coming of age masterpiece Spirited Away. This is a true VBW deep dive. Plus a study by our secret crush suggests we may not be optimizing the value of our conversations.

Mastroianni, A. M., Gilbert, D. T., Cooney, G., & Wilson, T. D. (2021). Do conversations end when people want them to?. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(10), e2011809118.

Spirited Away [wikipedia.org]

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BetterHelp: You deserve to be happy. BetterHelp online counseling is there for you. Connect with your professional counselor in a safe and private online environment. Our listeners get 10% off the first month by visiting BetterHelp.com/vbw. Promo Code: VBW
Listening.com: Save time by listening to academic papers on the go. Very Bad Wizards listeners get 3 weeks free when signing up at listening.com/vbw
Givewell.org: Make your charitable donations as effective as possible. If you've never donated through GiveWell before, you can have your donation matched up to before the end of the year or as long as matching funds last. Just go to givewell.org, pick PODCAST, and enter VERY BAD WIZARDS at checkout.

Episode 272: Neigh Means Yay Nov 15, 2023

Show notes

The morality of zoophilia has received shockingly little attention in contemporary ethical discourse…until now. David and Tamler break down the paper "Zoophilia is Morally Permissible" from the latest issue of The Journal of Controversial Ideas. We explore issues of harm, consent, and more… like a lot more. Then we talk about Robert Putnam's classic article "Bowling Alone" (the paper that led to his best selling book) about the decline of civic engagement in American life.

Bensto, Fira (Pseudonym) (2023) Zoophilia Is Morally Permissible, Journal of Controversial Ideas, Vol. 3, Issue 2.

Putnam, R.D. (1995). Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital. Journal of Democracy 6(1), 65-78. https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.1995.0002.

Luhmann, M., Buecker, S., & Rüsberg, M. (2023). Loneliness across time and space. Nature Reviews Psychology, 2(1), 9-23.

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Episode 271: Concept-Con 2023 Nov 13, 2023

Show notes

It's the first annual "Concept-Con" – a not at all cringe episode where David and Tamler apply the methods and rigor of analytic philosophy to dissect not one, not two, but four new concepts. We start out with a Gen-Z special "mid" and then after a break we analyze the concept "cool." After that we have two mystery concepts that we sprung on each other. Spoiler alert – David had never heard of Tamler's. It's an episode (we can't emphasize this enough) that is in no way cringe or corny. Plus some brief thoughts on Israel and Gaza.

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Episode 270: Take Me to the River (Blood Meridian, Pt. 3) Oct 10, 2023

Show notes

David and Tamler conclude their three-part discussion of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. We talk about the Judge's coin trick by the fire and the question of the supernatural in the novel. Next we dive into the imbecile's "baptism" by the river, and then try to wrap our heads around the cryptic epilogue. Baffled at first, we ultimately arrive at the definitive interpretation of the epilogue's meaning. Finally we offer Hollywood some suggestions for choosing the director and cast for the long sought-after film adaptation.

Plus, we have nothing but praise for this study on measuring passive aggression. We really like it - I mean, we have a couple of issues with the methodology and the survey questions, but no, really, it's a great paper… for a journal like that…

Lim, Y. O., & Suh, K. H. (2022). Development and validation of a measure of passive aggression traits: the Passive Aggression Scale (PAS). Behavioral Sciences, 12(8), 273. [mdpi.com]

21 Questions to Identify a Passive-Aggressive Person by Mark Travers [psychologytoday.com]

Blood Meridian [wikipedia.com]

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BetterHelp: You deserve to be happy. BetterHelp online counseling is there for you. Connect with your professional counselor in a safe and private online environment. Our listeners get 10% off the first month by visiting BetterHelp.com/vbw. Promo Code: VBW

Episode 269: Death Hilarious (Blood Meridian, Pt. 2) Oct 10, 2023

Show notes

In part 2 of our journey into Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, Tamler and David talk about the kid and his form of resistance to the judge's gleeful nihilism - does he (as the man) ultimately succumb at the end of the novel? We also discuss other notable members of the Glanton gang and go deep into several scenes, including the Comanche attack, Elrod's sad fate, and the tarot reading from the family of traveling magicians.

Plus two studies on honesty tell you the best countries to lose your wallet and the U.S. states with a bunch of dirty Wordle cheaters.

Wormley, A. S., & Cohen, A. B. (2023). CHEAT: Wordle Cheating Is Related to Religiosity and Cultural Tightness. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 18(3), 702-709.

Cohn, A., Maréchal, M. A., Tannenbaum, D., & Zünd, C. L. (2019). Civic honesty around the globe. Science, 365(6448), 70-73.

Blood Meridian [wikipidia.org]

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BetterHelp: You deserve to be happy. BetterHelp online counseling is there for you. Connect with your professional counselor in a safe and private online environment. Our listeners get 10% off the first month by visiting BetterHelp.com/vbw. Promo Code: VBW

Episode 268: Blood Meridian, Part 1 Sep 12, 2023

Show notes

In part one of our two-part episode on Cormac McCarthy's blood-soaked phantasmagorical 1985 masterpiece Blood Meridian, David and Tamler talk about the historical sources of the novel, the cosmic questions the book poses, the capriciousness of the near-constant violence, and the ethical neutrality of McCarthy's prose. We also get into the religious imagery, the gnostic elements, and the judge – what to make of the judge?

Plus a new meta-analysis refutes the common wisdom that "opposites attract." But did we ever really believe that anyway?

Thanks to our beloved Patreon supporters for selecting this topic for the listener selected episode!

https://phys.org/news/2023-08-evidence-opposites-dont.html

Evidence of correlations between human partners based on systematic reviews and meta-analyses of 22 traits and UK Biobank analysis of 133 traits | Nature Human Behaviour

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_Meridian

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BetterHelp: You deserve to be happy. BetterHelp online counseling is there for you. Connect with your professional counselor in a safe and private online environment. Our listeners get 10% off the first month by visiting BetterHelp.com/vbw. Promo Code: VBW

Episode 267: The Thickness of Reality Aug 22, 2023

Show notes

David and Tamler return to the work of old favorite William James and argue about the 6th lecture (inspired by the French philosopher Henri Bergson) of his 1909 book "A Pluralistic Universe." James attacks the philosophical habit of elevating unchanging concepts over the continuous ever-changing flux that characterizes raw experience. Concepts, James argues, carves joints where there are none. But why does James trust pure perception (unmediated by concepts) as a true window into reality? Does he want us to return to the blooming buzzing confusion of our infancy? Is his mystical side superseding his pragmatism?

Plus, a new study on generosity after receiving a $10,000 windfall leads to a discussion of what we can interpret from null results, and lots more.

Dwyer, R. J., Brady, W. J., Anderson, C., & Dunn, E. W. (2023). Are People Generous When the Financial Stakes Are High?. Psychological Science, 09567976231184887.

A Pluralistic Universe by William James (Lecture VI)

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Episode 266: I Want to Half-Believe Aug 08, 2023

Show notes

Last December, with Argentina minutes away from a World Cup championship, friend of the show Yoel texted David "congratulations." David was furious, and soon after (with less than 2 minutes left in extra time) France's Mbappe scored a game-tying goal to send the match into penalty kicks. (Argentina ended up winning or Yoel might have become 'former friend of the show.') David says he doesn't believe in jinxes at all but his actions suggest otherwise. We talk about a paper on this phenomenon of "half-belief": when your behavior and your stated beliefs don't align. Plus Tamler and David take a survey and discover that they lead radically different inner lives.

James Steele's Tweet

Caspi, A., Shmuel, E., & Chajut, E. (2023). A quantitative examination of half-belief in superstition. Journal of Individual Differences.

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BetterHelp: You deserve to be happy. BetterHelp online counseling is there for you. Connect with your professional counselor in a safe and private online environment. Our listeners get 10% off the first month by visiting BetterHelp.com/vbw. Promo Code: VBW

Episode 265: Kekulé (Oh Yeah!) Jul 25, 2023

Show notes

The Summer of Cormac McCarthy continues – this time we dive into his one piece of non-fiction, the short essay "The Kekulé Problem." How does our unconscious mind solve problems that conscious deliberation can't crack? Why does it often work elliptically, in code, rather than giving us the answer directly in language? Is McCarthy right that the unconscious doesn't trust language because it's such a newcomer to the human brain?

Plus we select the finalists for our listener selected episode – thanks to our beloved patrons for all their terrific suggestions!

"The Kekulé Problem" by Cormac McCarthy

Pinker & Bloom 1990

Dijksterhuis & Strick 2016

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