Episodes

  • The Deutsch Files IV
    Oct 11 2024

    Connecting the Four Theories into a Unified Whole 0:34

    Emergence Is Fundamental 3:18

    Constructor Theory Could Transform Multiple Fields 8:30

    Innovation Often Emerges Unexpectedly 22:46

    Knowledge Evolves Independently Across Universes 29:31

    Anti-Rational Memes Hinder Human Progress 31:10

    The West Versus the Rest 37:32

    Error-correcting Institutions 47:46

    The Bucket Theory of the Mind 51:59

    Wokeism and the West 1:07:12

    Transcript http://nav.al/deutsch-files-iv

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    1 hr and 25 mins
  • The Deutsch Files III
    Feb 17 2024

    Proving something about AGI is inherently impossible 0:00

    Creativity is not just mixing things together 3:05

    The superiority of explanatory knowledge 7:48

    Knowledge laden information is more resilient than any physical object 12:36

    The problems of cloning people 15:05

    Objections to Taking Children Seriously 19:23

    “Do what you like” is bad advice 38:17

    Creativity versus nature 41:57

    Deutsch’s “fanciful” conjectures 47:52

    We must give up on the idea of an ultimate explanation 53:06

    Transcript http://nav.al/deutsch-files-iii

     

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    59 mins
  • The Deutsch Files II
    Jan 26 2024

    The universality of computation and explanation 0:00

    The growth of knowledge begins with problems 4:56

    Problems are clashes between ideas 9:57

    Evolution is not the survival of the fittest 14:50

    Bad philosophy in quantum theory 26:46

    Free will is intimately connected with knowledge-creation 33:41

    Wealth is not a number, it is a set of transformations 49:03

    The principle of optimism 53:27

    Constructor Theory 57:21

    How to make a better world 1:10:05

    Transcript http://nav.al/deutsch-files-ii

     

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    1 hr and 14 mins
  • The Deutsch Files I
    Jan 11 2024

    Good Science Fiction is Hard to Vary 2:08

    ChatGPT is Not a Step Towards AGI 5:36

    Creativity is Fundamentally Impossible to Define 13:35

    The Binary of Personhood and Non-Personhood 23:41

    David Deutsch’s Life Philosophy 32:06

    The Clash of Civilizations 44:03

    Transcript http://nav.al/deutsch-files-i

    Discuss on Airchat http://getairchat.com/arjun/deutschfilesdiscussion

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    55 mins
  • David Deutsch: Knowledge Creation and The Human Race, Part 2
    Aug 11 2023

    Popper’s Impact 0:00

    Creative Guesses 2:18

    Experiments, Demonstrations, and Measurements 4:25

    Taking Theories Seriously 10:25

    New Paradigms 15:58

    Foundations of Science 23:30

    The Enlightenment 25:39

    Misinformation 29:45

    Transcript http://nav.al/david-deutsch-2

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    34 mins
  • David Deutsch: Knowledge Creation and The Human Race, Part 1
    Feb 11 2023

    Introduction 0:00

    The Human Race 2:11

    Knowledge Creation 12:34

    AGI 15:50

    Taking Children Seriously 23:30

    Good Explanations 27:49

    Quantum Computers 36:35

    Transcript http://nav.al/david-deutsch

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    44 mins
  • Vitalik: Ethereum, Part 2
    Apr 14 2022

    The elder statesman of smart contract blockchains 0:00

    The Ethereum community 1:22

    The DAO hack 2:34

    Vitalik’s finest and worst moments in protocol politics 5:18

    Becoming a Twitter memelord 7:45

    Vitalik’s influence on Eth today 8:59

    It’s getting harder to do big things in Eth 10:38

    Goals outside Ethereum 12:17

    Crypto needs the good-natured 15:00

    Russia 18:06

    Vitalik’s lifestyle 19:51

    Closing thoughts 22:06

    Transcript http://nav.al/vitalik-2

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    25 mins
  • Vitalik: Ethereum, Part 1
    Apr 8 2022

    Introduction 0:00

    Haseeb’s background 0:22

    Vitalik’s background 2:43

    A blockchain you can build any app on top of 7:02

    Eth trades efficiency for transparency 10:18

    Like plain text, Eth is simple and efficient 12:41

    Only high-value transactions can afford the blockchain 13:08

    Doing away with ‘trusted’ third parties 14:09

    Trading performance for security 14:43

    ‘Impregnable castles made of math’ 16:23

    Ethereum’s limitations are latency and privacy 16:56

    There are ways to get back your privacy 19:32

    Can Eth provide a high level of decentralization and a high level of scaling at the same time? 20:39

    Sharding leads to more centralization 21:49

    Verifiability at the expense of scaling 24:00

    How much decentralization is the right amount? 25:11

    What happens when subsidies to join nodes disappear? 27:07

    Stateless clients make it possible to verify the chain with very little on your hard drive 28:18

    Staking culture is difficult to cultivate 28:52

    New blockchain players tend to go for minimum viable decentralization 29:54

    People don’t value privacy until somebody goes to jail over it 30:32

    Eth is ‘simple at the base’ 31:12

    Social recovery wallets make it easier to be your own bank 31:44

    Block space is getting expensive 32:41

    There’s not a lot of innovation on Bitcoin, by design 33:35

    Blockchain’s ‘free-rider effect’ 34:57

    Innovation is slowest at Layer 1 35:34

    Layer 2 moves faster because it’s permissionless 36:59

    What if we froze Layer 1 today? 37:25

    Data for computation trade-off 38:57

    Benchmarking blockchains apples-to-apples 40:02

    Enshrining decentralization 41:43

    Tensions between scaling and preserving value 42:27

    There will be multiple stores of value 43:54

    Transcript http://nav.al/vitalik

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    46 mins