The Theory of Anything
Episodes
Episode 135: Coercion and Critical Rationalism
10 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Bruce examines how effectively critical rationalism can ground the non-aggression principle (NAP)—the libertarian idea that, in some formulation, it...
Episode 134: The Deutsch Slot Machine
24 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In this video podcast, Bruce makes his boldest statement yet about probability. He dives into David Deutsch’s lecture “Physics Without Probability...
Episode 133: The Constitution of Knowledge
10 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This week Bruce takes a deep dive into the epistemological ideas in Jonathan Rauch’s book The Constitution of Knowledge. Rauch is a fan of Karl Popp...
Episode 132: Roughly Testable Theories (and Ancaps)
03 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This week, Bruce looks at how much critical rationalists do—and do not—subject their proposed best theories to critical testing. Bruce wrestles wi...
Episode 131: Knowledge as a Concept
27 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In our shortest episode ever, Bruce continues his exploration of the concept of concepts by looking at "knowledge" as a concept rather than ...
Episode 130: The "Pseudo Deutsch Theory of Knowledge"
20 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Bruce looks at what makes sense—and doesn’t—about popular theories on knowledge promoted by CritRats (critical rationalists on X). He looks at h...
Episode 129: Is Probability Real?
13 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
A strange conversation with David Deutsch on Twitter leads Bruce to consider what David Deutsch other critical rationalists mean when they claim proba...
Episode 128: Induction’s Immunizing Strategy
06 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Bruce explores his extended conversation with philosopher and inductivist Kieren, focusing on Kieren’s claim that Popper’s Critic...
Episode 127: Hofstadter vs Popper on Concepts
30 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Here Bruce starts with Popper’s assertion that theories are 100x more valuable than concepts and compares it to Douglas Hofstadter’s ideas on crea...
Episode 126: The Concept of Concepts
23 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What is a concept? What is a theory? And was Karl Popper right when he said theories are “100 times more valuable” than concepts? But where do con...
Episode 125: Our Lovecraftian Universe?
16 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week we welcome back Micah Redding of the Christian Transhumanist podcast. We had a joyful conversation touching on religion, science fiction, an...
Episode 124: Popper's Evolutionary Theory of Knowledge
09 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
aka "The Popper vs Campbell Beatdown!"At long last! The showdown you've all been waiting for! These two giants of epistemology meet in t...
Episode 123: Campbell vs Deutsch: Incremental vs Cosmic Significance
02 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Bruce compares Donald Campbell’s evolutionary epistemology and David Deutsch’s ideas on infinite knowledge growth. What is knowledge growth? Is it...
Episode 122: The Case Against Logical Fallacies
25 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this shorter episode Bruce takes a deep dive into logical fallacies. How useful are logical fallacies? Does pointing out a logical fallacy help cor...
Episode 121: Beliefs
18 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In our previous episode covering Strevens' critique of Popper, we briefly touched on why Bruce believes it it a mistake for CritRats to say they d...
Episode 120: Popper on Trial
11 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week Bruce puts Popper on trial. Specifically, through the lens of Michael Stevens’s book, The Knowledge Machine, which argues that science wor...
Episode 119: New Right vs Libertarianism w/Logan Chipkin
28 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 r...
Episode 118: Christian Transhumanism (with Micah Redding)
14 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 fr...
Episode 117: Jonathan Rauch
30 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week we had the absolute honor of interviewing Jonathan Rauch. Rauch is an extremely influential public intellectual (journalist and author) who ...
Episode 116: The Knowledge Machine
16 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week Bruce take a deep critical rationalist dive into Michael Strevens’s book, The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science,...
Episode 115: Is Falsification Falsifiable?
02 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week we consider: Is falsification falsifiable? Was Popper a “naive falsificationist”? Why do so many people think he was? (Including at leas...
Episode 114: Campbell's Evolutionary Epistemology
19 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Starting in the 1950s, Popperian Donald Campbell developed a theory of "evolutionary epistemology" (coining that term in the process) that e...
Episode 113: Evolution, Collective Minds, and Static Societies
06 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week Bruce takes a deep dive into anthropologist Joseph Henrich’s book: The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Dome...
Episode 112: Words vs Concepts: Does 'Randomness' Exist?
22 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Bruce first explains the difference between arguing over concepts vs arguing over words. Then Bruce examines assertions about probability and randomne...
Episode 111: Static vs Dynamic Societies
08 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 t...
Episode 110: Brave New World vs. 1984 (round table discussion)
24 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 class...
Episode 109: Genes, Emergence, and Platonism (round table with Sadia and Ivan)
10 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this round table discussion with Ivan Phillips and Sadia Naeem, we begin by discussing differing viewpoints on “third way evolution,” or a gene...
Episode 108: AI and Obedience (with Dan Gish)
27 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Episode 107: Was Popper a Fideist?
13 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Episode 106: Karl Popper and God
29 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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, ...
Episode 105: Michael Levin's Unseen World of Cell Cognition
08 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Episode 104: 3rd Way Evolution vs the Critics
18 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 topi...
Episode 103: Neo-Darwinism vs Post-Darwinism
25 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Episode 102: Is IQ a Bit Scientifically Valid?
04 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This time we discuss Nassim Nicholas Taleb's article "IQ is Largely a Pseudoscientific Swindle" -- a title whose compliment is that he&#...
Episode 101: Wolfram, Rucker, and the Computational Nature of Reality
14 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Bruce takes a deep dive into Stephen Wolfram’s ideas regarding computational universality, which may go further than the Church-Turing-Deutsch thesi...
Episode 100: Interview with David Deutsch
23 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Episode 99: Critical Rationalism and Solipsism
16 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
AKA "David Deutsch DESTORYS the Simulation Hypothesis" Bruce take a deep dive into solipsism in the form of the brain in a vat thought experiment, Ni...
Episode 98: Objectively Beautiful Flowers?
03 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week we discuss the chapter “Why are Flowers Beautiful?” from the book Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch. Through our discussion we cons...
Episode 97: Karl Popper On Conservatism in Music (w/Chris Johansen)
12 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We take a deep dive into Karl Popper’s philosophical ideas about music that he outlines in four chapters in this intellectual autobiography Unended ...
Episode 96: Kenneth Stanley on the Pursuit of What’s Interesting
29 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Here we interview AI researcher Kenneth Stanley, who makes the case that in complex systems, pursing specific objectives can actually be counterproduc...
Episode 95: On Morality, Moralizing, and Elephant Jockeys (Round Table)
15 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This time we invited some of the coolest and smartest people we know to have a freewheeling discussion on morality loosely centered on Jonathan Haidt'...
Episode 94: Stephen Hicks on Critical Rationalism vs Objectivism
01 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This episode we interview Professor of Philosophy Stephen Hicks. In his excellent books Explaining Postmodernism and Nietzsche and the Nazis it become...
Episode 93: Philosophical Theories vs Bad Explanations
17 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Can philosophical theories be refuted? What is a bad explanation? Can all theories be made more empirical? In search of an answer to these questions...
Episode 92: Popper on Philosophical Theories
03 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Continuing from episode 91, we continue our deep dive into Popper's Conjectures and Refutations Chapter 8 where Popper explains how to use his epi...
Episode 91: The Critical Rationalist Case For Induction!?
20 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Forgive the clickbait title. The episode should probably actually be called "The (Lack of) Problem of Induction" because we primarily cover ...
Episode 90: Bayesianism for Critical Rationalists!?
30 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today our guest Ivan Phillips methodically explains what Bayesianism is and is not. Along the way we discuss the validity of critiques made by critica...
Episode 89: Tradition as a Source of Knowledge: Popper vs. Chesterton
09 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week we discuss the book Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton (1908), perhaps the most famous defense of the Christian tradition. We contrast this with K...
Episode 88: The Myth of the Objective
25 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Here Bruce reflects on AI researcher Kenneth Stanley’s assertion that setting specific, measurable goals may actually hinder discovery and innovatio...
Episode 87: Is the Universal Explainer Hypothesis Falsifiable?
11 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Is the universal explainer hypothesis falsifiable? How does the concept of universality relate to human minds? Is anything truly beyond human comprehe...
Episode 86: Fuzzy Categories, Essentialism, and Epistemology (Hofstadter Part 2)
28 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How do humans form 'fuzzy categories'? How does this all relate to essentialism? Is essentialism false? Or is it partially true? And how does ...
Episode 85: Critical Rationalism and Douglas Hofstadter (Part 1)
14 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is the first of our two part series (that may or may not be released back-to-back) where Bruce delves into the work Douglas Hofstadter, specifica...
Episode 84: Are Video Games Harmful to Children?
30 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Here we discuss a 1992 interview with David Deutsch where he makes the case that video games are inherently educational, not addictive, and that child...
Episode 83: Popper's Second Axis (aka Bruce's Epistemology?)
15 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Bruce summarizes his (unique?) understanding of Karl Popper’s epistemology that (possibly?) straddles the line between orthodox and unorthodox and i...
Episode 82: Popper's Ratchet
02 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In an episode that may (or may not) be his magnum opus, Bruce introduces his term for Karl Popper’s idea that you are only allowed to solve problems...
Episode 81: Easy to Varyness vs Ad Hocness
19 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Bruce sympathetically critiques David Deutsch’s concept of “easy to varyness” as a way to judge our explanations. Are our best theories about r...
Episode 80: Knowledge vs. Simul-Knowledge
04 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Bruce wraps up his epic 6 part series on knowledge and the 'two sources hypothesis' (i.e. Deutsch's theory that all 'knowledge' co...
Episode 79: Perspiration vs Inspiration
26 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Is human creativity algorithmic? What is the difference between an Inspiration and a perspiration algorithm? Can mechanical processes ever create know...
Episode 78: Are Animal Memes Knowledge In the Genes?
19 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Do animals create knowledge? Deutsch claims they don't because all their knowledge is in their genes. Yet he admits that animals do have memes! Bu...
Episode 77: Counter Examples To Deutsch's Theory of Knowledge?
12 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Bruce continues to consider what our best theories tell us about knowledge. Is there something special (or even physically different) about the knowle...
Episode 76: The Constructor Theory of Knowledge
05 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the previous episode, Bruce pointed out an apparent contradiction between Deutsch's criteria for knowledge as 'adapted information that cau...
Episode 75: Deutsch's Theory of Knowledge: The Walking Robot
29 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What is the “two sources hypothesis,” or the idea that there exist only two sources of knowledge in the known universe: Darwinian natural selectio...
Episode 74: The Problem of Open-Endedness
15 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What is the “problem of open-endedness”? Bruce explores how what might sound like an esoteric machine-learning issue may actually be interwoven wi...
Episode 73: Argue Me Everything
01 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Here we move three arguments from social media to the podcast. 1. Given Deutsch’s universal explainer hypothesis, does it make sense to say that m...
Episode 72: Moral Progress and Tolerance for Intolerance
18 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Here we use Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s essay “The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority” as a springboard to discuss majorit...
Episode 71: Can Values be Objective?
04 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
With guest Ivan Phillips, we discuss and debate subjective vs objective morality. Does the concept of objective morality ever make sense given “Hume...
Episode 70: Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence?
20 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How does ChatGPT really work? Is there a relationship between a program like ChatGPT and artificial general intelligence (AGI)? This time we review t...
Episode 69: Social Science and Critical Rationalism
06 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This week we have criminologist Brian Boutwell on again for part 2 of our discussion on critical rationalism and social science. Does all science shar...
Episode 68: Caldwell's "Clarifying Popper"
30 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Bruce Caldwell (a scholar interested in Popper and Hayek) wrote a long paper in the Journal of Economic Literature (March 1991) called 'Clarifying...
Episode 67: Disagreements with Deutsch
16 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Though our guest Mark Biros is clearly immersed in critical rationalism and the worldview of Popper and Deutsch, he also has some fairly strong critic...
Episode 66: The Alien Abduction of Betty and Barney Hill and the Search For Meaning
02 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Historian Matt Bowman discusses his new book, The Abduction of Betty and Barney Hill: Alien Encounters, Civil Rights, and the New Age in America. Bett...
Episode 65: Causality, Time, and Free Will
18 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What did David Deutsch get right and wrong in chapter 11, “Time: The First Quantum Concept,” from his first book, Fabric of Reality? Is the flow o...
Episode 64: What is a "Refutation"?
04 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What did Karl Popper really mean by refutation? How are empirical theories special? How do objective criticisms differ from subjective criticisms? Wha...
Episode 63: Brian Boutwell on Twin Studies and Heritability
14 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Brian Boutwell is a professor of criminal justice at the University of Mississippi who specializes in “quantitative genetics, with a focus on envi...
Episode 62: Aliens!?!?
31 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Is the government hiding a secret UFO recovery program? What should the critical rationalist attitude be towards these kinds of claims? Why exactly wo...
Episode 61: A Critical Rationalist Defense of Corroboration
17 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What did Popper say about corroboration in science? Can a theory NEVER be supported with evidence in any sense at all? Is the Popperian “war on word...
Episode 60: Learning, Work, and Art in the Age of ChatGPT
03 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We interview Bruce’s nephew, Brendon Nielson, who is a well-known electronic music artist under the name Dvddy. We discuss how he uses AI as a tool ...
Episode 59: The Principle of Optimism (Round Table Discussion)
12 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A deep dive into David Deutsch’s “principle of optimism” featuring Sam Kuypers, Vaden Masrani, Hervé Eulacia, Micah Redding, Bill Rugolsky, and...
Episode 58: Deutsch's "Creative Blocks": A Decade Later
22 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Back in 2012, David Deutsch wrote an article called "Creative Blocks: How Close are we to Creating Artificial Intelligence?" This article in...
Episode 57: Quantum Immortality / Quantum Torment
01 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Does every one of us live forever in the multiverse? Is death a solvable problem? What is “quantum suicide”? Is quantum torment a concern? Does ev...
Episode 56: Rationality, Religion, and the Omega Point
10 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Special guest, Lulie Tanett, asked me if she could come on my podcast and interview me about religion. Lulie and Peter ask me numerous religion-relate...
Episode 55: Why are Empirical Theories Special? (IQ part 3)
31 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We continue our discussion of Dwarkesh Patel's article "Contra David Deutsch on AI" compared to Brett Hall's tweet on IQ th...
Episode 54: Computational and Explanatory Universality (IQ part 2)
13 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we continue our discussion of Dwarkesh Patel's article "Contra David Deutsch on AI" compared to Brett Hall's tweet on IQ theory. This...
Episode 53: Universality and IQ - Part 1
17 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Dwarkesh Patel published an article called "Contra David Deutsch on AI". This article was actually a defense of IQ theory against the charge (often ma...
Episode 52: Is Being Dogmatic Ever a Good Thing?
16 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In our previous episode, we asked if Karl Popper was Dogmatic. We also introduced the idea that Karl Popper wasn't convinced that dogmatism was always...
Episode 51: Was Karl Popper Dogmatic?
02 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
There seems to be broad agreement, even among Karl Popper's own students, that he was a deeply dogmatic individual. In this episode we ask the questio...
Episode 50: The Turing Test 2.0 (aka is LaMDA Sentient?)
11 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Blake Lemoine, the ex-Google engineer, claims LaMDA -- Google's language model -- is sentient. Is he right? Alan Turing is perhaps most famous for his...
Episode 49: AGI Alignment and Safety
01 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Is Elon Musk right that Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) research is like 'summoning the demon' and should be regulated? In episodes 48 and 49, w...
Episode 48: Genetics and Universality (part 2): How Our Genes Coerce Us
12 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How do we square genetically influenced mental disorders with the theory of explanatory universality? In a previous episode, Tracy asked Bruce how to ...
Episode 47: Genetics and Universality (part 1): How Our Genes Influence Us
27 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How do we square genetically influenced mental disorders with the theory of explanatory universality? In our last episode, Tracy asked Bruce how to re...
Episode 46: Narcissism and Other Mental Disorders
13 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Tracy leads a discussion about Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) and Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). We discuss various other mental diso...
Episode 45: Adapting the The Wheel of Time for Television
30 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What responsibility do the creators of a TV series or movie have to be faithful to the original source material? What risks are involved with either a...
Episode 44: Clarifying David Deutsch's Views of "Knowledge"
09 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Bruce had a chance to talk to David Deutsch and ask him questions about his views of knowledge to clarify if he disagreed with Popper and Campbell abo...
Episode 43: Deep Reinforcement Learning
18 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this video upload available on Spotify (we'll try this once and see how it's received), we revisit Reinforcement Learning (from way back in episode...
Episode 42: Popper without Refutation & Resolving the Problems of Refutation (part 2)
28 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Over the years Bruce collected a series of 'problems' with the Popperian concept of refutation. Or so he thought. A chance encounter with Popper schol...
Episode 41: The Problems of Refutation & Popper Without Refutation (part 1)
13 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Over the years Bruce collected a series of 'problems' with the Popperian concept of refutation. Or so he thought. A chance encounter with Popper schol...
Episode 40: Byrne vs Deutsch on Animal Intelligence
14 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this (mostly) standalone episode, we cover how Deutsch and Byrne each interpret Byrne's theory differently. Deutsch emphasizes the micro-level acti...
Episode 39: Byrne's Methodology for Discovering Animal Insight (part 3)
24 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Richard Byrne has spent his whole career trying to determine when animals learned to 'think.' We discuss Richard Byrne's methodology for determining w...
Episode 38: Animal Learning and Popper's Epistemology (part 2)
03 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Karl Popper has a radical theory of 'dualistic evolution' where behavior had to evolve first before physical evolutionary changes could be taken advan...
Episode 37: Animal Intelligence and Knowledge Creation (part 1)
13 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How intelligent are animals? In this episode, we introduce our series on animal intelligence rooted primarily in the research of Richard Byrne. Richar...
Episode 36: Failure is an Option!
29 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we discuss the value of failure and how businesses have yet to fully embrace the Popperian notion that we learn from our failures, so...