Ep 270: The Gradient Descent into Doom.
A spontaneous set of comments on the ongoing AI scare of 2026. What's happening in the media right now, on social media, in culture and at t...
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ToKCast
This is a podcast largely about the work of David Deutsch and his books ”The Beginning of Infinity” and ”The Fabric of Reality”.
Episodes
20 of 270 episodesEp 269: The Quantum Observer Effect?
Youtuber Warren Smith of https://www.youtube.com/@SecretScholars made some remarks about the double slit experiment. I assess his claims.
Ep 268: AGI has arrived podcast
Today CEO of the world's most valuable company, Nvidia, Jensen Huang, announced "AGI has arrived". https://x.com/JensenHuang/status/20967002...
Ep 267: The Orthogonality Thesis is Moral Relativism. (Response to Sam Harris on AI).
This is in response to episode 489 of Sam Harris' "Making Sense" podcast - in a section only available via subscription. I have clipped the...
Ep 266: Facts, Fantasy and Critical Thinking
A analysis in Popperian style of Candace Owens' "mode" of debate and discussion, approach to evidence and thinking and a comparison to the m...
Ep 265: David Deutsch's "The Fabric of Reality" Chapter 14 "The Ends of the Universe" Part 2 The Omega Point
All about the distant future. What does cosmology tell us about the fate of the universe, life and intelligence in some ultimate sense? Fran...
Ep 264: David Deutsch's "The Fabric of Reality" Chapter 14 "The Ends of the Universe" Part 1
What do our best explanations tell us about the ultimate ends of the universe? What is the difference between forming a world view about any...
Ep 263: David Deutsch's "The Fabric of Reality" Chapter 13 "The Four Strands" Part 4 - and final.
How do the Four Strands of the Fabric of Reality - Quantum Physics, Computation, Epistemology and Evolution by Natural Selection hold togeth...
Ep 262: David Deutsch's "The Fabric of Reality" Chapter 13 "The Four Strands" Part 3
This episode is heavily focussed on Dawkin's "Selfish Gene" explanation of Darwin's evolution by natural selection. Obviously there are read...
Ep 261: Objective Morality II
Do not destroy the means of error correction. A deep unification of knowledge akin to unifying quantum theory with computation to create the...
Ep 260: I don't believe it!
Response to a question about my discussion with @drpeterboghossian here: https://youtu.be/72vhtT0pFmA?si=hAx1kPho4DkLkBFN This is yet anothe...
Ep 259: Reaction to Michael Levin Part 3: Bait and Switch, Podcastistan and Surprising(?) algorithms.
In this, the third and final part of a series, I break down some work Michael Levin has done with sorting algorithms. That seems very dry un...
Ep 258: Reaction to Michael Levin, Part 2: Bioelectricity, Consciousness and Knowing
This is the second in a multipart series where I react to some interviews with @drmichaellevin a biologist who, among other things, specia...
Ep 257: Reaction to Michael Levin, Part 1: Categories and Continuums.
This is the first in a multipart series where I react to some interviews with @drmichaellevin - a biologist who, among other things, special...
Ep 256: David Deutsch’s ”The Fabric of Reality” Chapter 13 ”The Four Strands” Part 2
Comparing Kuhn and Popper on Quantum Theory: Here we go deeper into the differences between Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn's account of how sci...
Ep 255: Does this research explain how LLMs work?
I take a look at these three papers: 1. https://www.arxiv.org/abs/2512.22471 2. https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.23752 3. https://arxiv.org/abs/25...
Ep 254: Australia: The Land of Bans. (Social Media prohibited for under-16s. Analysis of the arguments "for".)
This is effectively part 3 in a series of responses to the Prime Minister of Australia about censorship, legislation, policy, philosophy, Bo...
Ep 253: Further Comments on the Bondi Massacre.
Here I remark on comments made by Australian Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke and Education Minister Jason Clare and then make some broader...
Ep 252: Response to the Prime Minister of Australia
A reaction "episode" where I make some remarks about a speech by Anthony Albanese, Prime Minister of Australia, in the wake of the Bondi Bea...
Ep 251: OK Doomer!
This is a reproduction of a talk I gave to some trainee surgeons in Sydney who, among other things, were learning about AI as it was affecti...