x

75% of people globally want unbiased news (Pew Research) but are concerned they're not getting that.

Get balanced coverage with Symby. See how stories are covered across diverse outlets and spot when one side covers a story the other skips.

PODCAST

The Theory of Anything

Bruce Nielson and Peter Johansen

A podcast that explores the unseen and surprising connections between nearly everything, with special emphasis on intelligence and the search for Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) through the lens of Karl Popper"s Theory of Knowledge. David Deutsch argued that Quantum Mechanics, Darwinian Evolution, Karl Popper"s Theory of Knowledge, and Computational Theory (aka "The Four Strands") represent an early "theory of everything" be it science, philosophy, computation, religion, politics, or art. So

society & culture philosophy

All Episodes

01:54:33

Episode 119: New Right vs Libertarianism w/Logan Chipkin

The Theory of Anything ·

2025/10/28

This week we interview Logan Chipkin. Logan is a writer and author of several books. Recently he co-authored and published The Sovereign Child about raising children without coercion, and The Lords of the Cosmos, which tells the story of progress through the lens of good philosophy. Logan is also the president of Conjecture Institute, which is a brand new organization dedicated to promoting the worldview of Karl Popper and David Deutsch. (Follow on X)Here we discuss the New Right vs libertarianism

en

02:26:45

Episode 118: Christian Transhumanism (with Micah...

The Theory of Anything ·

2025/10/14

This week we talk to Micah Redding, the host of the Christian Transhumanist podcast. We discuss: What is the significance of a singularity? What is free will from a many worlds perspective? Does Omega Point cosmology solve the problem of evil? And most importantly, will my sweet dog Jojo join me in the afterlife?

en

01:52:31

Episode 117: Jonathan Rauch

The Theory of Anything ·

2025/09/30

This week we had the absolute honor of interviewing Jonathan Rauch. Rauch is an extremely influential public intellectual (journalist and author) who is also a Popperian. His 1993 book, Kindly Inquisitors, makes the epistemic case for free speech. It is a stone cold classic that will be with us for a long time. In his 2021 sequel, The Constitution of Knowledge, he considers how society collectively produces knowledge and the dangers of misinformation. He has also written a book that provided the

en

02:17:28

Episode 116: The Knowledge Machine

The Theory of Anything ·

2025/09/16

This week Bruce take a deep critical rationalist dive into Michael Strevens’s book, The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science, which is an attempt to describe how science is a self-correcting system designed to create knowledge based on explanation. The book is somewhat critical of Popperian falsification, though the reading of Popper presented may be a superficial reading. Bruce describes how Strevens’s “iron rule of science” or the idea that we should settle science based on

en

01:55:30

Episode 115: Is Falsification Falsifiable?

The Theory of Anything ·

2025/09/02

This week we consider: Is falsification falsifiable? Was Popper a “naive falsificationist”? Why do so many people think he was? (Including at least one of his own students!)Is falsification itself a philosophical theory that makes it immune from falsification? Does the Duhem-Quine problem, or the assertion that theory exist in an interwoven web of other theories, create a problem for falsification? What exactly is falsification anyhow? It's about showing that a theory is false, right? Right

en

02:10:58

Episode 114: Campbell's Evolutionary Epistemology

The Theory of Anything ·

2025/08/19

Starting in the 1950s, Popperian Donald Campbell developed a theory of "evolutionary epistemology" (coining that term in the process) that expanded Karl Popper’s ideas about scientific knowledge and learning into the natural world. Campbell intended a universal theory of how 'all increases in fit of system to environment' work based on a meta-algorithm (or class of algorithms sharing certain features) he called blind-variation-and-selective-retention. Could it be that nature

en

01:30:41

Episode 113: Evolution, Collective Minds, and Static...

The Theory of Anything ·

2025/08/06

This week Bruce takes a deep dive into anthropologist Joseph Henrich’s book: The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter.Bruce outlines Henrich's hypothesis that human evolution occurs at the level of culture as much as genes and that this collective mind may be far superior to any individual. Bruce considers ways this theory may or may not be consistent with David Deutsch’s ideas on static and dynamic societies. What we can

en

01:12:05

Episode 112: Words vs Concepts: Does 'Randomness' Exist?

The Theory of Anything ·

2025/07/22

Bruce first explains the difference between arguing over concepts vs arguing over words. Then Bruce examines assertions about probability and randomness in the critical rationalist community. Why does David Deutsch insist that there is no such thing as 'randomness'? What does the many worlds interpretation really say about this? Is all 'randomness' really just pseudo-randomness? Is this really a conflict between concepts or just an argument over words?⁠⁠⁠⁠Support us on Patreon⁠⁠

en

01:30:49

Episode 111: Static vs Dynamic Societies

The Theory of Anything ·

2025/07/08

What precisely is a static vs dynamic society? It is possible to take this down to the level of machine learning? Could this distinction turn into a testable theory? What are the alternatives to what Deutsch proposes? Is Deutsch's theory of static societies testable? What exactly is a culture or criticism and how is this intertwined with the Enlightenment? Which came first: the Enlightenment or the Scientific Revolution?⁠⁠⁠Support us on Patreon⁠⁠

en

01:52:20

Episode 110: Brave New World vs. 1984 (round table...

The Theory of Anything ·

2025/06/24

We once again get together some of the smartest people we know for a discussion that gets into foundational issues, this time in the form of the classic battle between the dystopian novels 1984 and Brave New World. But it was really much less of a debate than a discussion in line with Popper’s defining principle of critical rationalism: “I may be wrong and you may be right, and by an effort, we may get nearer to the truth.”Guests: Vaden Masrani (Increments podcast, X: @Vaden Masrani) Sam Kuypers (X:

en

03:24:46

Episode 109: Genes, Emergence, and Platonism (round...

The Theory of Anything ·

2025/06/10

In this round table discussion with Ivan Phillips and Sadia Naeem, we begin by discussing differing viewpoints on “third way evolution,” or a gene-centric viewpoint vs a more holistic view of natural selection. The discussion evolves into a deep dive into emergence and reductionism and many interwoven ideas.Ivan Phillips is author of Textbook Rationality about rationality education, and a new book titled Counterargument from Design that counters arguments for design in evolution. Sadia Naeem, like

en

01:52:04

Episode 108: AI and Obedience (with Dan Gish)

The Theory of Anything ·

2025/05/27

This week we are joined by fellow traveler Dan Gish to discuss LLMs and AGI. Does it really, truly make sense to think that OpenAI or DeepMind are not at least an important stepping stone towards the creation of human-level creativity? What does it mean when CritRats assert that these AI algorithms are the opposite of human intelligence because they are obedient whereas we are disobedient?⁠⁠Support us on Patreon⁠

en

01:48:23

Episode 107: Was Popper a Fideist?

The Theory of Anything ·

2025/05/13

Here we discuss fidesim and critical rationalism. Fideism has many definitions, but at least how we are thinking of it, it is the idea that something like faith has validity in the process of moving closer to truth through reason.Our starting point is a paper written by prominent Popperian Joseph Agassi about how William Bartley, another critical rationalist philosopher closely associated with Popper, had a falling out with Popper after he accused Popper of being a fideist, which Popper apparently

en

01:25:05

Episode 106: Karl Popper and God

The Theory of Anything ·

2025/04/29

This week we discuss a short interview with Karl Popper from 1969 where he discusses God and religion. Specifically, he makes a case for agnosticism, asserts that all men are religious, and discusses the problem of evil. We use this as a starting point to consider if we live in an inherently meaningful universe or one ruled by something like entropy. We discuss arguments for the former related to fine tuning, causation, and beauty.Bonus: Bruce proclaims himself one of those much hated Fideist! (A

en

01:51:55

Episode 105: Michael Levin's Unseen World of Cell...

The Theory of Anything ·

2025/04/08

This week Bruce speaks about the work or Michael Levin, who is a biologist know for his work on cell cognition and collective intelligence or the idea that electrical signals between cells influence the formation of biological systems. His work has potentially massive implications in cancer research and other fields. Though rarely identified with 3rd way evolution, his work has more than a passing similarity to it. Like 3rd way evolutionists, he seeks to expand evolutionary theory beyond the alleged

en

01:57:37

Episode 104: 3rd Way Evolution vs the Critics

The Theory of Anything ·

2025/03/18

How well do the collection of assertions called “3rd way evolution” stand up to criticism? Here, in our second of at least 3 episodes on this topic, Bruce considers the criticisms of Denis Noble and James Shapiro by YouTuber and evolutionary biologist Zach Hancock in his epic video on the subject. Perhaps the role of epigenetics is overstated, Lamarckism is not back, and neo-Darwinism is not dead after all.

en

01:53:36

Episode 103: Neo-Darwinism vs Post-Darwinism

The Theory of Anything ·

2025/02/25

This week we discuss neo-Darwinism vs post-Darwinism. Neo-Darwinism meaning a gene centric view of evolution, which is also called the great synthesis since it unifies natural selection with genetics and paleontology and perhaps even human psychology. Post-Darwinism is a view that emphasizes factors outside random mutation, like epigenetics or the assertion that organisms and cells can alter their own genome in a beneficial way. Here Bruce specifically concentrates on the work of biologist James

en

01:25:51

Episode 102: Is IQ a Bit Scientifically Valid?

The Theory of Anything ·

2025/02/04

This time we discuss Nassim Nicholas Taleb's article "IQ is Largely a Pseudoscientific Swindle" -- a title whose compliment is that he's claiming IQ is a bit scientifically valid. But which bits does he claim are valid?We use this article as a springboard to consider: Do the numbers produced by an IQ test say something meaningful or useful about human minds? Would these tests be better off in the dustbin of history? Are they ever useful? And is there overlap between Taleb's take on IQ and the

en

02:15:35

Episode 101: Wolfram, Rucker, and the Computational...

The Theory of Anything ·

2025/01/14

Bruce takes a deep dive into Stephen Wolfram’s ideas regarding computational universality, which may go further than the Church-Turing-Deutsch thesis in that Wolfram’s theories imply that all of nature could be simulated even by relatively simple systems, so even nature itself may be computational rather than something that can just be simulated on a turning machine or quantum computer. Stephen Wolfram is a renowned physicist, computer scientists, and entrepreneur. Bruce also talks about the

en

02:27:25

Episode 100: Interview with David Deutsch

The Theory of Anything ·

2024/12/23

Our Christmas gift to you this year is episode 100: an interview with The Man (TM) himself!Bruce stumbles over himself fan-boying as he asks all his burning (but geeky) questions about cosmology, the omega point, and probability. How do Deutsch and Tipler differ on optimistic end-time cosmology? Is the Omega point refuted by observation (Deutsch) or not (Tipler)? Does heat death contradict the principle of optimism? Is it a bummer? Does stochasticity really not exist? And is it rational to wear a

en

40 results

Similar Podcasts

Voices of Life

APG Mannheim

Promo Estereo Podcast

Promo Estereo

Talking Timelines Podcast

Talkingtimelines

גיקונומי

ראם שרמן ודורון ניר

Drømmefanger

Drømmefanger