It’s been almost exactly a month since my previous newsletter. Today, an update on some of the content I’ve been creating recently which may have been missed.
There’s something about my mind I have always known - but only recently come to know explicitly. That is: I seem to generate ideas in alliterative lists. Maybe everyone does this? I know I’ve done it almost all my life but only recently did I describe it to myself: you’re doing that thing again where you’re noticing everything seems to start with the same letter. I should say I’m not forcing things when I do this.
Like, throughout part of October and November just recently I was in the United States. When asked on my return what it was like I just seemed to be saying: there’s a culture of optimism there - people just seem to think they can get things done themselves - there’s less of: that’s not my problem, that’s the government’s problem. Instead they see “problems are soluble” as their own responsibility. They’re optimistic. And because of the sheers size of the place and population and wealth there’s opportunity there more than, say, in Australia. And lastly openness: the people just seem willing to have a conversation more readily than in Australia. But this could be a selection effect. Anyways - in describing things this way it automatically became: optimism, opportunity and openness - that was the USA to me.
Recently, on another platform, I constructed an audio blog (I may publish it elsewhere later as well) about free speech. It tied together human fallibility and the necessity of forgiving the inevitable errors we make when doing anything at all: like simply speaking. So the title of the blog? F-words: free speech, fallibility and forgiveness.
It’s not like I am forcing this stuff. But perhaps chief among the alliterations of late has been my recent series responding to a couple of conversations Sam Harris and Max Tegmark had on the Making Sense podcast. Max and Sam spoke about Max’s book “Our Mathematical Universe” - which is actually about the multiverse.
But because there was so very much to clear up in their conversations like the distinction between science and metaphysics, or what a physical multiverse versus and imaginary one was, or how knowledge of mathematics was not mathematics itself or how human minds are not like regular computer programs (narrow AI) or how trying to coerce thinking beings is immoral or what it all means, I ended up with a natural progression of episodes that together I called “Things that make you go mmmmm?” Which was the title of a pop song from back in the 90s.
Together there are many hours of content that have been produced which push back against (what I regard as) mainstream thinking from academics/intellectuals about all these things and which would be simplified and clarified by taking more seriously what David Deutsch has said (particularly about universality) and Karl Popper has said (about how knowledge can possibly be created). I’ve put the entire series into a playlist which can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsE51P_yPQCQ9csVS1nk2SpOYZJx0CL28
There are 17 episodes in the series. The last 9 of which are under 8 minutes each but each are unique productions (not clips from longer episodes). The titles include:
Metaphysics and Misconceptions
Mathematics
Multiverses
Minds
The mathematician’s misconception
Monarchy
Mindless
Meaning
The only thing that was forced was that I wanted a coherent way to put all of this together under one umbrella - the “worldview” so to speak. The worldview in a sense was prior to any particular critique and explains where the criticism is coming from in terms of the overall philosophy, epistemology and known physics. But “Worldview” starts with W - which is an upside down M. But I thought why not L? Well a worldview is an “outlook” and, well we can flip that into “Lookout” which is the place you stand to see everything else. And L is prior to M so we have one episode called “Lookouts” which can serve as a sort of central puzzle piece to the series and indeed to most everything else on ToKCast to give you a sense of “where I am coming from”.
It’s part of the “Things that make you go mmmmm?” Series but here’s the separate link too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CO-IiR11xe8
As always each of these are available as audio podcasts from wherever you get your podcasts.
Also over recent weeks I have spent time unpacking Ayn Rand’s “objectivist epistemology” and found it wanting in several places. I think you can learn objectivist epistemology and lots of actual epistemology by listening to these episodes of ToKCast:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlKuvXnxfWE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ka99vGRfhgM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdUl5qjE4Lg
And finally an author, trained in physics, who write a book all about how Ayn Rand’s epistemology is applied to science I critiqued here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5Un1Qtf8KM
Again, many hours of content there. On YouTube there are some shorter excerpt “clips” from these and all of it is the regular audio podcast as well.
The final regular episode covering the work of Chiara Marietta is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOFvZGqKWiE - final that is for a conversation I hope to record with Chiara at some point in the future.
Now after spending so much time going into detail critiquing the folk epistemologies and philosophies of Harris and Tegmark and the misconceived (although admittedly more carefully considered and precise) epistemology of Rand, I felt I needed some kind of intellectual “cleansing”. So I have gone back to Popper and begun taking his work “On the sources of knowledge and of ignorance” which is a tour de force of his predecessors explaining what improvements the classic European and British philosophers made in our understanding of knowledge, where they went wrong and where they made progress. I begin that work here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEpgjDHXEpI
I am presently up to part 4 of that series here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAu_EBKV3yE
With part 5 in the pipeline.
Also interleaved with all of this are the regular reflections on “The Fabric of Reality” by David Deutsch where we have been discussing the significance of life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH5zeil2CxQ (part 1) and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4AiY6w1ef0 (part 2) as well as my ongoing summary (increasingly critique) of Steven Pinker’s “Rationality” the latest episode of which is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvKjuBq7EFg
You may have missed my interview with “Iona Italia” the editor of Areo Magazine on her “Tea for Two” podcast. It can be found with a google search on all the usual podcast platforms or here: https://soundcloud.com/twoforteapodcast/135-brett-hall?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
We discuss all the themes I am accustomed to mentioning with, in that interview, my argument for free speech in terms of error correction. It’s been a bit of a topic lately so I tweeted at https://twitter.com/ToKTeacher/status/1594034915250958336?s=20&t=v3zyTxZtvyiVrwvhCYBqZg
No speech - free or otherwise - can ensure truth be spoken or misinformation avoided.
Free speech as an ideal is a necessary precondition for communicating errors & their potential corrections. Regulation slows that process.
“Do not destroy the means of error correction.”
I wasn’t tweeting to anyone, about anyone or anything in particular (aside from the fact the “free speech” issue was being debated again - but this tweet got more attention than usual. Including from Sam Harris who did respond, saying something about how not everyone is entitled to have a megaphone amplify their message in order to error correct. Or words to that effect. I cannot know now because he deleted his entire account. The problem with that is, whatever his reasons, it means every conversation he ever had on twitter is now broken and people only have access to one side of the conversation - the parts to which he responded or the parts where people respond to him. All context is thus lost. Another intellectual hero of mine - the Daniel Hannan - likewise had this curious habit of tweeting, allowing people to respond to the tweet, and then deleting the original tweet. So all that remained were the responses. But: responses to what? Well that’s the problem - you could never know once he had deleted the original tweet. My suggestion would be that twitter actually keep all the tweets and have a “reveal deleted” button or something.
Lastly I have begun making Youtube “shorts” in an attempt to reach a wider audience. The shorts are…short clips from longer videos. Clicking on the link at the bottom of the short take you to where the clip was from in context. They’re easier to make than a complete video…but not trivial to make. This is still work - in part I am having to select the relevant “1 minute” clip which tries to get some idea across in a punchy way and might make people want to click on the longer form of the explanation. Hopefully this way more people can migrate to a deeper understanding of the worldview of David Deutsch, Karl Popper and the optimistic, person centred perspective on reality that we share. Shorts can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/@bretthall9080/shorts
ToKCast remains entirely free for everyone and now there are 164 episodes in total with a bit over 531,000 downloads (this does not include the Youtube views) as of today. I tend not to market, advertise or make appeals and this may explain, in part, having an extremely valuable but small Patreon base of under 40 people. If you would like to support ToKCast then at this link patreon.com/tokcast (support per episode) or at this one patreon.com/BrettRHall (support per month) will certainly help. Or simply tell your friends or anyone interested in learning some of the basics of science, physics, evolutionary theory, the philosophy of mathematics, epistemology and philosophy and of course about how David Deutsch and Karl Popper have provided us the most up to date ways of understanding all those things while critiquing the common misconceptions other prominent thinkers have on those topics. ToKCast is first and foremost a place for understanding our deepest explanations by trying to phrase them in language suitable to a lay audience and by comparing those explanations to things “everyone already knows” - or the prevailing views on the deepest issues in public discourse. And of course you can also just go to www.bretthall.org and find links for support right there to.
Thanks for your support and thankyou for reading, watching and listening.
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