The Bayesian Conspiracy

118 – Guns, Germs, and Guns (except the Germs are actually More Guns)

26 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Gray joins us to discuss the practicalities of firearms. Be prepared! The Cyberpunk Ezine Jace mentioned The Legend of Murder-Ghandi Uber and Lyft ord...

117 – The Guild of Servants

12 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Alex and David are launching The Guild Of Servants — an outward-facing Rationalist organization for engaging and optimizing your local social enviro...

116 – Truth, Falsity, and Censorship

29 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Today we’re joined by special guest Alexander Wales! Where is the line between hiding information and censorship? Is censoring content ever desirabl...

115 – Does Rationality Actually Do Anything?

15 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Does Rationality improve life outcomes? How have we managed to do this show for like 4 years without hitting this question head on?! Tune in to find o...

114 – Epistemic Rigor and BLM

01 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Do BLM protests give people a correct impression of the fundamental problem with the police, and is that important as long as shit gets fixed? All sor...

113 – Refining Niceness with Wes Fenza

17 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Wes joins Steven and Jace in order to to talk a bit about the current conversation around police brutality and help clarify some of the arguments in f...

112 – Nice Places Are Nice

03 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

For Niceness to triumph within the Heart of Darkness that is the internet, we gotta make an effort. The Evolution of Trust A Briefer History of Time U...

111 – Rational Practices in Everyday Living

20 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We got to see each other for the first time in months, AND Jace wasn’t there to keep us on track, so this went long. Whoops! Pitch Meeting The Virtu...

The Mind Killer Episode 4 – Are We Committing Collective Suicide?

13 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Intro/outro music: On Sale by Golden Duck Orchestra   Follow us! RSS: http://feeds.feedburner.com/themindkiller Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/...

110 – Socratic Grilling

10 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Sorry for the delay on this one. We had some technical difficulties. Episodes will resume on their normal schedule, don’t worry. This episode we dis...

The Mind Killer Episode 3 – Opening Up

28 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

New intro/outro music: On Sale by Golden Duck Orchestra Follow us! RSS: http://feeds.feedburner.com/themindkiller Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com...

109 – What Have We Been Consuming?

22 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

What’s been getting the Conspirators through this lockdown? Steven: Hollow Knight Horizon Zero Dawn Kingdom Brooklyn 99 Better Call Saul Santa Clari...

The Mind Killer Episode 2

14 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Don’t Socially Distance your mind — Subscribe at http://themindkiller.libsyn.com/ or http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheMindKiller WHO is reporting st...

108 – Rudi Hoffman on How to Beat Death and Taxes

08 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Long time listeners will have heard Steven plug his name several times, but now we’ve got the man himself! Futurist, Cryonicist, and life insurance ...

The Mind Killer 001 – The Hammer and The Dance

01 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Politics is the mind killer, so come get mind-killed! Your hosts Wesley Fenza, Eneasz Brodski, and David Spearman discuss the week’s news. There’s...

107 – Talking to Even More Strangers

26 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The conspirators go more in-depth on how little we know about the people we don’t know (Malcolm Gladwell’s Talking to Strangers), plus more COVID...

106 – Talking to Strangers (with COVID-19)

11 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We open up with some pre-episode chatter that I left in, then talk for a bit about Coronavirus before moving into the scheduled topic of Malcom Gladwe...

105 – The Anthropic Principle is da bomb

26 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

What conclusions can you draw from the fact that you’re here? The Anthropic Principle – 5 short examples Anthropics and Biased Models – “we ca...

104 – Do You Want To Ask or Guess This Episode’s Topic?

12 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode we’re joined by Matt Freeman and Wes Fenza! Matt from The Doofcast joins us. Their next big audio project is Kingslingers, but be su...

103 – Radical Honesty

30 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

People you may or may not have met before discuss Radical Honesty. (One of those people also has their own podcast–however, it is Very Different Fro...

102 – Decade in Review

16 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Everyone else is doing it, so why can’t we? Matt from The Doofcast joins us. His next audio project is Kingslingers You can still partake in the SSC...

101 – The Live Episode (pt2)

01 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

This is a recording of the live stream. Due to technical incompetence on our side, we lost the original audio, but managed to recover the episode due ...

100 – The Live Episode (pt1)

18 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

This is a recording of the live stream. Due to technical incompetence on our side, we lost the original audio, but managed to recover the episode due ...

Live Episode on Sunday Dec 15, 1pm MT (GMT -6)

13 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The Live Episode is Sunday Dec 15 at 1pm Mountain time. You can listen in on Discord following this link:  https://discord.gg/zaAubxS This post will ...

99 – Whiteshift

04 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Eneasz shares his reading of Whiteshift by Eric Kaufmann News story about the CFAR barricading Ted Cruz bad lip reading Hey look, we have a discord! W...

98 – A GSV Very Different From Ours

20 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

We are joined by Discord user GSV to talk about Legal Systems Very Different From Ours The Podcast Very Different From Ours is available at SoundCloud...

97 – Oops, We Accidentally Over Two Hours of Feedback

06 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

We get to back-logged feedback. We Want MoR is now live, back at the old home of the HP:MoR Podcast! Ra, by Sam Hughes (also on Amazon) Helpful links ...

96 – Do Words Mean Things, Also Sex Science!

23 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The Conspirators sort of continue the conversation from our last episode, after meandering around about the meaning of words/their relevance to curren...

95 – It’s Gender Time! Part 1

10 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Trigger warnings: Gender! Culture Wars! Opinons! Facts? (Also, some amount of tension/discomfort in this episode. Be ye warned.) Please contribute to ...

94 – The Problem At Yale Isn’t Free Speech, It’s Lack of Batmans

25 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Elite education institutions aren’t give us Bruce Waynes anymore, and this is a problem. Our article: The Real Problem At Yale Is Not Free Speech Al...

93 – Conflict vs Mistake

11 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, we try to explain the Slate Star Codex post, Conflict vs Mistake. We hope we didn’t make any major mistakes, and if we did, that it...

92 – Replacing Guilt

28 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Jess and Phoenix tell us about Replacing Guilt. Favorites from the series: “Should” considered harmful and Confidence all the way up Another recom...

91 – Are You Jesus or Hitler??

14 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode our hosts come together to try and figure out if it’s worth worrying about the possibility that we’re living in a simulation, with...

90 – Secret to Our Success

31 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

We talk about Cultural Evolution, and why it is so terrible. Links: The Secret to Our Success: SSC The Book Melting Asphalt on Prestige Versus Dominan...

89 – Is Rationalism Being Co-opted by the Alt-Right?

24 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

We talk with David about his question on our subreddit. There’s a lot of other comments and thoughts about the subject at that thread, which you can...

88 – UBI and Other Forms of (Evil?) Taxes

03 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The Conspiracy sits down with David Spearman, a long time listener and commenter who told us why we were all wrong about UBI and we figured he should ...

87 – Degrees of Freedom

19 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

We discuss Sarah Constantin’s recent post Degrees of Freedom, addressing where optimization and free-will conflict. Mentioned in this episode: The p...

Bonus Abortion non-episode

12 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

This is not an episode of The Bayesian Conspiracy. It’s just some additional feedback and informal thoughts on abortion, particularly in the USA. If...

86 – Quick Shout Out to the Consolidated Nature of Morality Thread

05 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

We dive into the Consolidated Nature of Morality Thread in a lot more detail than originally planned. We seem to get a bit off track. Stuff that came ...

85 – Stuff is Weird, Yo

22 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

This episode Jess, Eneasz, and Steven sit down to discuss… well, you tell us. We’re kind of all over the map here because things have, in the majo...

84 – Yang-arang!

08 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Eneasz has a thing for Andrew Yang He’s ex-goth Yang interview on Freakonomics Quick summary of Fosta/Sesta Archer’s dead hookers Where does Denve...

83 – REACH

24 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

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...

82 – Revenge of the Feedback!

10 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

81 – That’s Too Much Feedback, Man

27 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

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 J...

80 – The Reward and Peril of GPT2

13 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

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...

79 – CyberChristianity

27 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

What the heck is CyberChristianity, and can it unite Christianity and Rationalism? Links to things talked about in today’s episode: Our previous Alp...

78 – Seriously, an Atheism Episode?

13 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

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 lo...

77 – Meandering Around Albion’s Seed

30 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

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 n...

76 – Patreon and Censorship

16 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

  David and Jess sit down with Eneasz and Steven to discuss the controversy of Patreon banning contributors from its platform. David mentioned the co...

75 – Culture Roots of America

02 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

We discuss these two SSC posts: BOOK REVIEW: EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOPATHOLOGY BOOK REVIEW: ALBION’S SEED also mentioned: ALBION’S SEED, GENOTYPED, and...

74 – Adventures in Feedback!

19 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

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...

73 – Truth and Winning

05 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

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.   Art...

72 – Productivity Tools, Part 2

21 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Jess returns to finish up the Productivity Tools dicussion. The Waking Up #MeToo episode The Very Bad Wizards episode with moral dilemmas porn-ified T...

71 – Researching Qualia with Andrés Gómez Emilsson

08 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

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 Q...

70 – Kick-offs

24 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

We kick off a couple things: The Sequences Reading/Discussion, and What Lies Dreaming The OG Sequences in chronological order we read: The Martial Ar...

69 – Culture War 2.0

10 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

68 – Can’t Give Up Freeman

26 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Matt Freeman may be distant in body, but he is present in spirit Moridinamael’s A Dialogue on Rationalist Activism KatjaGrace’s Are ethical asymm...

67 – Freestyle Community Talk with Matt Freeman

12 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

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, ...

The Sword of Good

29 Aug 2018

Contributed by Lukas

A confluence of time-expensive events prevented us from recording an episode this week. However, since Shut Up And Do The Impossible: The Rational Fic...

66 – Feedback & Productivity (pt1)

15 Aug 2018

Contributed by Lukas

We finally get to some older listener feedback, then discuss productivity tools & systems. Also, Eneasz unveiled Shut Up And Do The Impossible: The Ra...

65 – Religion, and The Intelligent Social Web

01 Aug 2018

Contributed by Lukas

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...

64 – Magick with David Youssef

18 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

63 – Rational Fiction

04 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Alexander Wales and DayStar Eld join us to discuss Rational Fiction Their Podcast – Rationally Writing Alexander Wales’s page DayStar Eld’s page...

62 – Stoic Chatter and RatChat!

20 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

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 re...

61 – Biohacking 101

06 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

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...

60 – 98% Likelihood This Episode is about Metaculus

23 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

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: M...

59 – Gettin’ Schooled

10 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

We discuss schooling and education with Audrey. Robin Hanson argues that schooling is to domesticate humans. The Zvi is much more emotionally compelli...

58 – Inside Trump Country with Joshua

25 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

This one got off to an odd start since we were on a time crunch and Joshua as delayed in arriving. As a result, this one is way more disorganized than...

57 – Community Talk with Bayesed and Confused

18 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Join Steven and David Youssef as they talk about the rationality community, how to win, and explore some possible reasons that Rationalists aren’t a...

56 – Adventures in Tough Subjects

28 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

This episode got off to an interesting start. We usually test the mics with small talk and whatnot, but wound up just getting into interesting things ...

55 – Keeping up with the Rationalists

14 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, we discuss 3 or 4 popular things currently (or recently) circulating Rationalist circles online. Yudkowsky on no fire alarms for AI. ...

54 – Nothing Can Prepare You For Robin Hanson

28 Feb 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Robin Hanson returns to talk about his new book: The Elephant In The Brain Robin’s classic “X is not about Y” post. 2008! Man, time flies. Eneas...

53 – Principles of Curiosity with Brian Dunning

14 Feb 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Brian Dunning of the Skeptoid podcast and Skeptoid Media Inc. returns to talk with us about his newest documentary, The Principles of Curiosity! (Webs...

52 – Marriage is Obsolete Technology

31 Jan 2018

Contributed by Lukas

A discussions as to whether marriage is outdated and net-harmful. In large part based on Eneasz’s blog post. Naveen recommends this discussion betwe...

51 – Robert McIntyre Returns

17 Jan 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Robert McIntyre talks about the future of aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation I’m sure you’re all stoked about the sound on this one. All we can ...

Holiday

03 Jan 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Happy Holidays! Nothing this new this week, but here’s some Star Wars 🙂 The Methods of Rationality main page

50 – Approaching Rationality with Kyle Moore

20 Dec 2017

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode we have our sound engineer Kyle Moore on the show. I thought it would be fun to talk with someone who sort of has to listen to the sho...

49 – Spirituality via Drugs

06 Dec 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Make me one with everything. We went a little off-format for this one. Peter Singer – All Animals Are Equal (pdf) Scott Alexander tries to do a stud...

48 – Cryonics 2 – Lacuna Matata (with Robert McIntyre)

22 Nov 2017

Contributed by Lukas

We speak with Robert McIntyre, winner of the Small Animal Brain Preservation Prize, about recent advances in brain preservation. A pretty good introdu...

47 – Post Scarcity

08 Nov 2017

Contributed by Lukas

If this episode sounds a little sub-par, it’s because Steven edited it since Kyle was on vacation. Let his reputation remain intact! Check out Navee...

46 – Social Media and Outrage Culture

25 Oct 2017

Contributed by Lukas

The Only Way to Win is Not to Play Major source used by Eneasz – Our Mind Can Be Hijacked Meditations on Moloch A recent Molochian short story Eneas...

45 – Cryptocurrencies

11 Oct 2017

Contributed by Lukas

A quick primer, and what do they have to do with EA? Bitcoin mining takes off in Venezuela due to hyperinflation of the local currency and nearly-free...

44 – Burning Man

28 Sep 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Eneasz talks about his first Burning Man experience Sorry this is late. Please accept a 167 minute episode as apology? And 9/26 is Petrov Day! The 10 ...

43 – Parenting as a Rationalist

13 Sep 2017

Contributed by Lukas

We speak with aspiring rationalists with children. Our previous episode pondering children – Kids, These Days Louis C.K. has a bunch of stuff on par...

42 – Emotionally Charged Discussion

30 Aug 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Julia Galef’s ‘Update Project‘. Check out some of the other links on her website too. Steven: “There’s a ton of content and techniques in th...

41 – Ritual and Spirituality

16 Aug 2017

Contributed by Lukas

More ritual than spirituality, honestly. We were aiming for both, but caught up in ritual. Perhaps we’ll revisit the spirituality aspect in a future...

40 – Making Humans Legible

02 Aug 2017

Contributed by Lukas

You can’t control (well) what you can’t count Samzdat’s posts that served as the basis of much of this episode: Man as a Rationalist Animal, and...

39 – Transhumanism (pt 2)

19 Jul 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Under the Aegis of Transhuman Spiderman + Other Considerations (and Listener Feedback Catch-up) Fiction The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect, by Roger...

38 – Transhumanism (pt 1)

05 Jul 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Going beyond our meat-suits Transhumanism as Simplified Humanism text. Also available in audio here, starting at 6:52 Eneasz with PZ Meyers, Eliezer ...

37 – AlphaGo Returns

21 Jun 2017

Contributed by Lukas

AlphaGo is back. Patrick talks about its latest accomplishments, its future, and other topics in game advances. Our first AlphaGo episode (a very earl...

36 – The Other Kind of Drugs

07 Jun 2017

Contributed by Lukas

All the cool kids are doing podcasts about drugs, so… The DARE program’s lack of efficacy (see also: Wikipedia page on DARE studies) How to get ad...

35 – Your Brain on Nootropics

24 May 2017

Contributed by Lukas

** Fixed the audio. Please re-download for the correct episode. ** Drugs that boost mental performance for dummies. Did caffiene help kickstart the En...

34 – Lies, All Lies!

10 May 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Slate Star Codex article – You Kant Dismiss Universalizability Wikipedia page on the Revelation Principle Eliezer’s post on LessWrong – Ends Do...

33 – MIRI, and EA meta-discussion

26 Apr 2017

Contributed by Lukas

We talk with Tsvi from MIRI Game-playing algorithm that pauses Tetris “On The Origin of Circuits“, discussing a chip hardware evolution experiment...

32 – Who’s Afraid of AI?

12 Apr 2017

Contributed by Lukas

The Logical Fallacy of Generalizing from fictional evidence Genie Button Though Experiment Wait but Why on AI Part 1 and Part 2 The Downfall meme we...

31 – Digital Rights and Privacy

29 Mar 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Who can access the external part of your brain that you carry around in your pocket? What rights do you have to it? With Chase. Police demand audio r...

30 – Of Specks and Omlettes

15 Mar 2017

Contributed by Lukas

We discuss a famously controversial post, despite our better judgement. With Sean and Matt. The Post: Torture Vs Dust Specks Rationality: From AI to Z...

29 – Fiction and Fun with Max Harms

01 Mar 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Crystal Society (or read it for free) (or listen to most of it as audio) Crystal Mentality Quick Links: Aubrey de Grey’s TED talk on extreme longev...

Bonus Mini-Episode: I Did Nazi That Coming

22 Feb 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Forgive the pun. I couldn’t help myself. (Steven) In this bonus episode, Eneasz and Steven respond to some of the feedback to the Nazi Punching epis...

28 – Effective Altruism

15 Feb 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Being effective vs. feeling good. EA is a big topic, this is really just an intro for the uninitiated. The Life You Can Save, by Peter Singer (and the...