The Bayesian Conspiracy

Jess is back from their pilgrimage to Rationalist Mecca and Eneasz is dying to know all about it, while Steven tries his best to understand why anyone would want to live there. Brian Caplan on Collusion in the Classroom The Spoon Theory (also as a PDF here , for those who don’t want to wrestle with the hosting websites awful anti-adblocker) Berkeley REACH A Luminator! It’s Always Sunny In Ph...

Jess is on a trip, so Eneasz and Steven do some more digging into our mailbag (last episode on feedback for now, we promise!). Stick around after the outro music starts because we keep going for another 25 minutes or so! Skeptoid Episode on Fast Food Phobia (there’s a few more related episodes if you find the topic interesting) Patreon supporter David sent us this talk given by Dr. Helen Fis...

We dive into the neglected mailbag Steven referenced this SSC post on the Intellectual Dark Web (see also this prior post ) It’s been revealed that James Gunn is back ! Johnny Depp is an abuse survivor The incredibly shoddy plot to smear Robert Mueller with rape claims, explained , the Obama fake mutilation , and the Planned Parenthood libel .   Blue Aliens comics ! McDonald’s Coffee S...

Join us as we sit down with Alexander Wales (returning from Episode 63 about rational fiction and writes rational short stories, like the very popular Metropolitan Man) who is on to guide our discussion of GPT2, a new neural net language model/text analyzer/…author? Discussed in this Episode: Humans Who Are Not Concentrating Are Not General Intelligences Can AI Change Your Mind (AI debate) A...

What the heck is CyberChristianity, and can it unite Christianity and Rationalism? Links to things talked about in today’s episode: Our previous AlphaGo episodes – 1 & 2 (poor audio, sadly) AI must decide: Juggalo, or Clown? We previously spoke more in-depth on paperclip maximizes and other aspects of the rise of our coming AI overlords in Who’s Afraid of AI? The Sorcerer’s Apprent...

Eneasz, Jess, and Steven take an hour or so to talk about the New Atheism movement that occurred in the mid 2000’s. We experienced a bit of audio loss in the second half of the episode, so the conversation occasionally jumps around a bit, especially around an hour and 20 minutes in for about 5 minutes… Sorry about that. We’re buying an SSD to hopefully prevent any lossy recording...

This episode is a continuation of episode 75 – Culture Roots of American . Eneasz and Steven are alone in the recording studio, which means we have no one to keep us in check as we finish out discussion of Albion’s Seed and fall down plenty of rabbit holes. The Cracked.com After Hours ninja turtles /everything is one of four things video   Sequence Posts for next time: Archimedes’...

  David and Jess sit down with Eneasz and Steven to discuss the controversy of Patreon banning contributors from its platform. David mentioned the connection between Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein’s many,  many  accusations of raping young girls and soliciting the opportunity for others to do so. In Trump’s words: “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He’s a lo...

We discuss these two SSC posts: BOOK REVIEW: EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOPATHOLOGY BOOK REVIEW: ALBION’S SEED also mentioned: ALBION’S SEED, GENOTYPED , and the Dark Matter Conservative Universe is mentioned in I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup   Sequence Posts for next time: The Scales of Justice, the Notebook of Rationality Blue or Green on Regulation?   Big thanks to David for our in...

Eneasz, Jess, and Steven go down rabbit hole after rabbit hole while attempting to address some of our feedback backlog. Enjoy! Rationality from AI to Zombies: The Simple Truth (Audio Version) Stan Lee Cameo in Spiderman Game Massimo Pigliucci vs Eliezer Yudkowsky blogging heads debate Side by side of 60s olympics vs now (links to a bunch of gifs from Google – I couldn’t decide on just...

The conspiracy worries about our post-truth government and looks at the question of why Rationalists aren’t at the top of everything they do.   Articles/things discussed in this episode Link with analysis and discussion of the Jim Acosta incident Sailor Vulcan’s post on LessWrong Scott Alexander’s reply in the comments The Last Rationalist’s take on the question  ...

Jess returns to finish up the Productivity Tools dicussion. The Waking Up #MeToo episode The Very Bad Wizards episode with moral dilemmas porn-ified The Planet Money Halloween episode Death Note fan-made alternate ending  (the website is pretty bad with popups) LeBron James tattoo rights . Eneasz may have said Kobe Bryant in the episode. He doesn’t know much about basketball. Y’all are...

Steven can’t read a calender, so accidentally scheduled this to release a day late. In this episode, we talk with Andrés Gómez Emilsson from the Qualia Research Institute . Buckle up for some dialogue on the intersection between philosophy and science. Steven was testing a new mic this episode, and thus sounds like he’s phoning it in from a submarine. Sorry for the trouble. He’ll...

We kick off a couple things: The Sequences Reading/Discussion , and What Lies Dreaming The OG Sequences in chronological order we read:  The Martial Art of Rationality  ; Why Truth? And…  ;  …What’s a Bias Again? For next time:  The Proper Use of Humility ;  The Modesty Argument Collated & edited in: Rationality: AI to Zombies also as a podcast , and a podcast The Elephant in the Brain  (and o...

An awesome anonymous listener made this and sent it in after the episode aired! Thanks, awesome mystery person! Alas, we had some technical difficulties in this episode too and we lost some small chunks of audio. I cropped it as best I could, but there’s some little bits where you can tell the audio skips a bit. Today’s main topic/recommended reading:  Memetic Tribes and War Culture Pe...

Matt Freeman may be distant in body, but he is present in spirit Moridinamael’s  A Dialogue on Rationalist Activism KatjaGrace’s Are ethical asymmetries from property rights? Yudkowsky’s  Transhumanism as Simplified Humanism Very Bad Wizards ep 148 Am I Wrong? Moridinamael’s  Spamming Micro-Intentions to Generate Willpower Crystal Society podcast The Society of Mind by Marv...

This episode has some audio quirks. We ended up having our recording software crash (but saved most of our audio) after about an hour and 15 minutes, so we have a tone shift at that point since we took a 20 minute break while we got our stuff back up and running. A Dialogue on Rationalist Activism – A dialogue-form essay Matt wrote the day after we recorded this episode We’ve Got Ward Doof M...

A confluence of time-expensive events prevented us from recording an episode this week. However, since Shut Up And Do The Impossible: The Rational Fiction Online Anthology was just released, we’re podcasting a story from that anthology instead. This audio was first released at The Methods of Rationality podcast . Sword of Good original text Shut Up And Do The Impossible: The Rational Fiction...

We finally get to some older listener feedback, then discuss productivity tools & systems. Also, Eneasz unveiled Shut Up And Do The Impossible: The Rational Fiction Online Anthology. Lizard hatching ; Lizard chased by snakes Malcom Gladwell on the (non-)value of getting into Harvard Bayesians vs Barbarians Universal Paperclips – the paperclip maximizer game, plus Wired’s article ab...

Eneasz is still allergic to mysticism, but he really likes thinking of society as a super-being that guides humans and cares about their actions. Does this foresay doom for our host? A correction: Eneasz made a joke about Calvanists being Catholics, which is the opposite of the truth, they’re a sect of Protestantism. Oops! Outside the Laboratory Newcomblike Problems Are the Norm The Intellig...

It’s only  almost  as crazy as it sounds. A bunch of links to help you get started on Magick! UltraCulture’s guide: The Complete Psychonaut Field Manual: A Cartoon Guide to Chaos Magick RUNE SOUP links: All things Sigils Sigils Reboot: How to Get Big Magic From Little Squiggles Very Bad Company – Occultism and Power Even a Really Big Map Is Not the Territory Why Belief is the Wro...

Alexander Wales and DayStar Eld join us to discuss Rational Fiction Their Podcast – Rationally Writing Alexander Wales’s page DayStar Eld’s page Eneasz’s Fiction The Progenitor – Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality /r/rational on Reddit The Idiot Ball Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Abridged Guide to Intelligent Characters Worm Unsong The /r/ration definition of Rat...

This episode is a bit unusual in that our pre-recording mic check conversation sort of kept going into a conversation we felt was worth sharing. We redacted some of the personal identifiable info and names of actual people, so if the conversation earlier on sounds sort of disjointed, that’s because it is. Steven also didn’t start moderating his freakishly fast speaking speed until a wh...

We speak with Serge Faguet about biohacking. The lowest hanging fruit is, of course, sleep and exercise. Going beyond that, Serge mentioned: 23 And Me for DNA sequencing Promethease for further DNA analysis Life Extension Foundation for supplements Oura Ring for sleep analysis Three deep-dive articles by him: I’m 32 and spent $200k on biohacking . How to biohack your intelligence | How I set and e...

We speak with Anthony Aguirre of Metaculus. Try out Metaculus , it’s neat and helps one train their calibration. Future of Life Institute Rat Chat: Maps vs Buttons; Nerds vs Normies Big thanks to David for our intro music! I’ll add a link here for his stuff when I track it down. We’d like to thank creators of our new outro music from the Sumerki Project! Check out their stuff her...