Is P(Doom) Meaningful? Epistemology Debate with Vaden Masrani and Ben Chugg

Vaden Masrani and Ben Chugg, hosts of the Increments Podcast, are joining me to debate Bayesian vs. Popperian epistemology.I’m on the Bayesian side, heavily influenced by the writings of Eliezer Yudkowsky. Vaden and Ben are on the Popperian side, heavily influenced by David Deutsch and the writings of Popper himself.We dive into the theoretical underpinnings of Bayesian reasoning and Solomonoff induction, contrasting them with the Popperian perspective, and explore real-world applications such as predicting elections and economic policy outcomes.The debate highlights key philosophical differences between our two epistemological frameworks, and sets the stage for further discussions on superintelligence and AI doom scenarios in an upcoming Part II.00:00 Introducing Vaden and Ben02:51 Setting the Stage: Epistemology and AI Doom04:50 What’s Your P(Doom)™13:29 Popperian vs. Bayesian Epistemology31:09 Engineering and Hypotheses38:01 Solomonoff Induction45:21 Analogy to Mathematical Proofs48:42 Popperian Reasoning and Explanations54:35 Arguments Against Bayesianism58:33 Against Probability Assignments01:21:49 Popper’s Definition of “Content”01:31:22 Heliocentric Theory Example01:31:34 “Hard to Vary” Explanations01:44:42 Coin Flipping Example01:57:37 Expected Value02:12:14 Prediction Market Calibration02:19:07 Futarchy02:29:14 Prediction Markets as AI Lower Bound02:39:07 A Test for Prediction Markets2:45:54 Closing ThoughtsShow NotesVaden & Ben’s Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@incrementspodVaden’s Twitter: https://x.com/vadenmasraniBen’s Twitter: https://x.com/BennyChuggBayesian reasoning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_inferenceKarl Popper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_PopperVaden's blog post on Cox's Theorem and Yudkowsky's claims of "Laws of Rationality": https://vmasrani.github.io/blog/2021/the_credence_assumption/Vaden’s disproof of probabilistic induction (including Solomonoff Induction): https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.00749Vaden’s referenced post about predictions being uncalibrated 1yr out: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/hqkyaHLQhzuREcXSX/data-on-forecasting-accuracy-across-different-time-horizons#CalibrationsArticle by Gavin Leech and Misha Yagudin on the reliability of forecasters: https://ifp.org/can-policymakers-trust-forecasters/Sources for claim that superforecasters gave a P(doom) below 1%: https://80000hours.org/2024/09/why-experts-and-forecasters-disagree-about-ai-risk/https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-extinction-tournamentVaden’s Slides on Content vs Probability: https://vmasrani.github.io/assets/pdf/popper_good.pdfDoom Debates’ Mission is to raise mainstream awareness of imminent extinction from AGI and build the social infrastructure for high-quality debate.Support the mission by subscribing to my Substack at DoomDebates.com and to youtube.com/@DoomDebates. Thanks for watching. Get full access to Doom Debates at lironshapira.substack.com/subscribe

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