Truth Unrestricted

Send us Fan Mail Poker as Life: Bluffing There can exist a situation in information logic where a person knows something (usually that they themselves are lying) that they imagine no one else could possibly know. And in this way they manufacture a high level of confidence when asserting that a specific thing is true. It might be very interesting to examine this situation as a direct comparison to...

Send us Fan Mail Is AI conscious? How could we tell? Is AI dangerous? Can we trust AI? Could AI come to trust us? Stephen Mather is the co-host of the Matter Over Mind podcast which discusses quantum physics and psychology by turns. https://open.spotify.com/show/3MfsQEbW0lvHic5UHYOREt https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/matter-over-mind/id1788940184

Send us Fan Mail What level of political compromise should politicians on the left be comfortable with when attempting to curb the excesses of the right? Can the less extreme participants trust the more extreme and, if so, to what extent?

Send us Fan Mail Can football be rigged? Could the Super Bowl have been rigged? Why? Why not? What would it take for it to have been rigged? What would it take for someone to believe it had been rigged? This episode was made for youtube and contains video clips that are described verbally in the episode. For the full visual experience you can find the YouTube version of this episode here: https://...

Send us Fan Mail Does science slowly "eat away" at spiritual ideas? Does the exactness and thoroughness of modern science stifle spiritual belief? Do people attempt to re-engage with spiritual beliefs by first casting themselves and their ideas against science? Links https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disenchantment

Send us Fan Mail Truth Unrestricted Building language for the Disinformation Age. Evidence Aversion is about the propensity or likelihood that a person who engages with unreal beliefs will work to avoid being exposed to evidence and ideas that would contradict their beliefs. But the fact that they know what to avoid tells us something about where they think reality divides. They aren't simply...

Send us Fan Mail You may have heard it said that "every accusation is a confession." But what does that really mean? Why do we think it's true? Are we looking at it in the world right now?

Send us Fan Mail The USA has been pushing its culture outward past its borders for a very long time. This is the beginning of a series of episodes dedicated to looking at what that cultural aggression looks like from the perspective of people that experience it. Joel Hill is on of the hosts of the Conditional Release Program podcast and he joins me to discuss the effects of American Cultural Aggre...

Send us Fan Mail The Gish gallop is a technique employed to skip away from the current topic and toward other supposedly related topics so as to confuse and overcomplicate a discussion and make it much more difficult to debunk or oppose. Finding ways to dismantle or circumvent the Gish gallop is one of several primary concerns among people who want to find ways to reach the people who are lost in...

Send us Fan Mail Jim Stewartson is an online influencer who pushes disinformation to people on the left. He espouses extreme views which work to radicalize those who pay attention. In this episode, I speak to Robin Eriksson about the nature of the problem with Stewartson and how Stewartson's content compares to Joseph McCarthy. Links https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Denver https://en.w...

Send us Fan Mail This episode is long. We also swear a lot. Enjoy. Links https://www.nbcwashington.com/decision-2024/2024-voter-turnout-election-demographics-trump-harris/3762138/ https://www.huffpost.com/entry/after-victory-the-path-ahead-trump-legal-cases_n_672540ade4b00acf55d9d96a?5zj https://www.statista.com/statistics/1535043/percent-change-number-young-voters-state-us/

Send us Fan Mail Fascism attempts to weaponize human selfishness and hatred. It encourages the worst parts of people on a grand scale. How can we recognize it? How can we counter it? What can we, as individuals, do against something that subverts entire nations?

Send us Fan Mail Truth and Reconciliation Day is a relatively new Canadian holiday that recognizes the struggle of indigenous peoples in Canada and the world while also working on healing rifts and countering racial hate. Len Morissette is a co-founder of C.I.A. Solutions, a majority Indigenous owned film and advertising company, and a former president of the Alberta Native Friendship Centre Assoc...

Send us Fan Mail It is obvious that Trump plans to use fear about immigrant crime as a wedge issue in the upcoming election. The current focal point for this effort is on Haitian migrants in Springfield, OH. Is anything about this factual? Links https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/15/politics/video/sotu-bash-vance-haitian-immigrants-full-interview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield,_Ohio,_cat-eatin...

Send us Fan Mail The first (and likely only) debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump is over. All of Trump's pending legal issues and have been delayed until after the election. And Taylor Swift has given her endorsement. Are we almost out of election stuff to talk about? Links https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/walzs-military-record-vances-accusations-stolen-valor/story?id=112618991 https...

Send us Fan Mail When a lone gunman attempted to assassinate Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13th, we saw online the birth of a new conspiracy belief. It has heavily influenced a large number of people on the left to participate in conspiracism. In this episode we take a closer look at the events with an eye to examine some of the ways people engaged poorly with the facts i...

Send us Fan Mail Notes Daniel Loxton is an author and science communicator. He has published books about skepticism and was previously the editor of Junior Skeptic magazine. Daniel, David Bloomberg and I discuss skepticism, its importance, and how we can promote its presence in our information world in this episode. Links https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Loxton https://www.forbes.com/advisor/l...

Send us Fan Mail Topics covered in brief: Democrats Walz is VP. How is that going? Harris and Walz have been doing rallies that are *packed* and very high energy. Polls: many polls now show Harris as climbing and leading, though still by a small margin.  Even now almost 4 full weeks after Biden dropped out of the race there are still left-leaning influencers who threaten each other semi-casually o...

Send us Fan Mail My take on the Imane Khelif debacle.

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Send us Fan Mail Zealotry in a single person is characterized as the amplification of the importance of one single subject to the point that all other subjects have little or no relative importance. Anyone can engage in zealotry and it can lead to many negative consequences for the zealot. How this manifests in social scenarios is discussed in this episode. Links https://www.newsweek.com/los-angel...

Send us Fan Mail No notes for this episode. David and I sat down to record on a completely different topic and then decided very suddenly to do this conversation instead. Was it the right decision? Would this impulsiveness be good in other situations? 

Send us Fan Mail Jordan Peterson is a right wing polemicist who shouldn't have any measure of celebrity. The fact he does is due to some deeply flawed ideas that were not properly debunked in the moment when he was gaining popularity. I say better late than never. Links Previous Truth Unrestricted episodes mentioned in this episode: The Two Selves https://www.buzzsprout.com/1947369/10973742-t...

Send us Fan Mail Game theory gives us terminology to understand the fundamentals of the games we play. How inforation is hidden and/or discovered is a big part of how we play games and why we think some of them are fun. David Bloomberg and I explore how it is that information affects the strategies used in the games we play and watch. Links https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory https://en.wiki...

Send us Fan Mail Content warning: this episode of the Truth Unrestricted podcast contains graphic descriptions of drug addiction and some of the ways that people suffer from drug addiction. Listener discretion is advised. Conspiracism as compared directly to drug addiction. What does it mean to be so pulled into the idea that conspiracies surround us that giving it up would take an intervention or...