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Mombasa's Podcaster/Self-Love & Motivational Coach/ Aella Speaks a podcast about Empowering, Inspiring & Healing women as well as Level up their mindset Got a question or a comment? Email to : aellaspeaks@gmail.com Support the podcast - MPESA number 0795859681
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Increments

Ben Chugg and Vaden Masrani

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Vaden Masrani, a senior research scientist in machine learning, and Ben Chugg, a PhD student in statistics at CMU, get into trouble arguing about everything except machine learning and statistics. Coherence is somewhere on the horizon. Bribes, suggestions, love-mail and hate-mail all welcome at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.
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Part two on Chapter 19 of Conjectures and Refutations! Last time we got a little hung up arguing about human behavior and motivations. Putting that disagreement aside, like mature adults, we move on to the rest of the chapter and Popper's remaining theses. In particular, we focus on Popper's criticism of the idea of a nation's right to self-determi…
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Back to the Conjectures and Refutations series, after a long hiatus! Given all that's happening in the world and the associated rampant pessimism, we thought it would be appropriate to tackle Chapter 19 - A History of Our Time: An Optimist's View. We get through a solid fifth of the chapter, at which point Ben and Vaden start arguing about whether …
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Sick of hearing us shouting about Bayesianism? Well today you're in luck, because this time, someone shouts at us about Bayesianism! Richard Meadows, finance journalist, author, and Ben's secretive podcast paramour, takes us to task. Are we being unfair to the Bayesians? Is Bayesian rationality optimal in theory, and the rest of us are just coping …
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After four episodes spent fawning over Scott Alexander's "Non-libertarian FAQ", we turn around and attack the good man instead. In this episode we respond to Scott's piece "In Continued Defense of Non-Frequentist Probabilities", and respond to each of his five arguments defending Bayesian probability. Like moths to a flame, we apparently cannot let…
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The final part in a series which has polarized the nation. We tackle -- alongside Bruce Nielson as always -- the remaining part of Scott's FAQ: Political Issues. Can the government get anything right? Has Scott strawmanned the libertarian argument in this section? Is libertarianism an economic theory, a political theory, a metaphysical theory, or a…
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Have you ever wanted to be more rich? Have you considered just working a bit harder? Welcome to part III of our libertarian series, where we discuss Part B: Social Issues of Scott Alexander's Anti-Libertarian FAQ, which critiques the libertarian view that if you're rich, you deserve it, and if you're poor, well, you deserve that too. As always, the…
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What do you get when you mix nerds and sex research? A deep dive into the world of fetish statistics, men's calibration about women's sexual preferences, and the crazy underground world of financial domination. Stay tuned as Aella walks the boys through the world of gangbangs, camming, OnlyFans, escorting, findom, and even live-tests Vaden's wild h…
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Back at it again, as we coerce you into listening to Part 2 of our four part series on Libertarianism, with Mr. Bruce Nielson (@bnielson01). In this episode we cover the Economic Issues section of Scott Alexander's (non-aggressive and principled) non-libertarian FAQ, and discuss his four major economic critiques of the libertarian view that free an…
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Liberty! Freedom! Coercion! Taxes are theft! The State is The Enemy! Bitcoin! Crypto! Down with the central banks! Let's all return to the Gold Standard! Have you encountered such phrases in the wild? Confused, perhaps, as to why an afternoon beer with a friend become an extended diatribe against John Maynard Kaynes? Us too, which is why we're divi…
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Close your eyes, and think of a bright and pristine, clean and immaculately run recycling center, green'r than a giant's thumb. Now think of a dirty, ugly, rotting landfill, stinking in the mid-day sun. Of these two scenarios, which, do you reckon, is worse for the environment? In this episode, Ben and Vaden attempt to reduce and refute a few reuse…
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Vaden has selfishly gone on vacation with his family, leaving beloved listeners to fend for themselves in the wide world of epistemological confusion. To repair some of the damage, we're releasing an episode of The Theory of Anything Podcast from last June in which Vaden contributed to a roundtable discussion on the principle of optimism. Featuring…
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While you're reading this you're having a thought. Something like "wow, I love the Increments podcast", or "those hosts are some handsome" or "I really wish people would stop talking about free will." Do you have a choice in the matter? Are you free to choose what you're thinking in any given moment, or is it determined by your genetics, environmen…
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Today we [finally] have on someone who actually knows what they're actually talking about: Mr. Bruce Nielson of the excellent Theory of Anything Podcast. We bring him on to straighten us out on the topics of creativity, machine intelligence, Turing machines, and computational universality - We build upon our previous conversation way back in Ask Us…
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Back to the C&R series baby! Feels goooooood. Need some bar-room explanations for why induction is impossible? We gotchu. Need some historical background on where your boy Isaac got his ideas? We gotchu. Need to know how to refute the irrefutable? Gotchu there too homie, because today we're diving into Conjectures and Refutations, Chapter 8: On the…
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Alright people, we made it. Six months, a few breaks, some uncontrollable laughter, some philosophy, many unhinged takes, a little bit of diarrhea and we're here, the last Ask Us Anything. After this we're never answering another God D*** question. Ever. We discuss Do you wish you could change your own interests? Methods of information ingestion Ta…
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We we're looking for a nice light topic for our patron only episode, so Vaden naturally chosen to chat about the patriarchy. I guess he didn't get into enough trouble in his personal life talking about it so he wanted to make his support and admiration for the patriarchy public. This is a sneak preview into the land of patreon bonus episodes, so be…
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Perhaps you thought, in your infinite ignorance, that the release of the previous episode marked the end of the age of the AMA! But nay my friends, the age of the AMA has just begun! We'll answer your questions until the cows come home; until Godot arrives; until all the world's babies are potty-trained. Or, at least, until we stop laughing. We dis…
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Our argument at the end of last episode spilled over into discord, DMs, and world news, so we felt compelled to dedicate a full episode to addressing the question "Is all thought problem solving?" Some arguments make history, like whether atomic bombs were required in WWII, whether all philosophy is simply a language game, and whether the chicken d…
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Back again with AUA #3 - we're getting there people! Only, uhh, seven questions to go? Incremental progress baby. Plus, we see a good old Vaden and Ben fight in this one! Thank God, because things were getting a little stale with Vaden hammering on longtermism and Ben on cliodynamics. We cover: Is hypnosis a real thing? Types of universality contai…
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Ask us anything? Ask us everything! Back at it again with AUA Part 2/N. We wax poetic and wane dramatic on a number of subjects, including: Ben's dark and despicable hidden historicist tendencies Expounding upon (one of our many) critiques of Bayesian Epistemology Ben's total abandonment of all of his principles Similarities and differences between…
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We debated calling this episode "An ode to Michael," because we set out to do an AMA but only get through his first two questions. But never fear, there are only 20 questions, so at this rate we should be done the AMA by the end of 2024. Who said we weren't fans of longtermism? Questions: Hey do you guys have a Patreon page or anyway to support you…
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Vaden comes out swinging against David Chapman's work on meta-rationality. Is Chapman pointing out a fatal flaw, or has Popper solved these problems long ago? Do moose see cups? Does Ben see cups? What the f*** is a cup? We discuss Chapman's concept of nebulosity Whether this concept is covered by Popper The relationship of nebulosity and the vague…
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Fifty godd*** episodes! 'Tis been a ride full of debate, drinks, questionable arguments, Ben becoming both a dualist and a social media addict, and Vaden stalwartly not changing his mind about a single thing. To celebrate, we dive into a thesis which connects many strands of what we've discussed over the years: Brian Boyd's work on art and fiction.…
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When big bearded men wearing fedoras begin yelling at you that the end is nigh and superintelligence is about to kill us all, what should you do? Vaden says don't panic, and Ben is simply awestruck by the ability to grow a beard in the first place. To help us think through the potential risks and rewards of ever more impressive machine learning mod…
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You may, perchance, have noticed that the sweeping utopian movements of the past did not end well. And most of them involved an horrific amount of violence. Is this connection just chance, or is there something inherent to utopian thinking which leads to violent ends? We turn to Chapter 18 of Conjectures and Refutations where Popper gives us his sp…
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Second holiday season bonus episode! Vaden joins Chesto on The Declaration podcast to talk about monism, dualism, the reality of abstractions, emergence, and reductionism. This convo was recorded in 2019, but much of the content is evergreen and we think it still makes for interestin' listenin'. Except the sound quality, which leaves much to be des…
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