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ToKCast

Brett Hall

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 273 episodes

Ep 273: Super Intelligence: Then and Now. Fiction and Reality. Part 2

Comparing ideas around "superintelligence" over the last decade. How have visions of what "SI" or "AI" or "ASI" and AGI evolved since Bostro...

107:52Oct 20, 2026

Ep 272: Is science truly explanatory?

A reaction to @CosmicSkeptic and @SabineHossenfelder discussing the nature, or even possibility of, genuine scientific explanation in this v...

77:10Oct 15, 2026

Ep 271: Super Intelligence: Then and Now. Fiction and Reality. Part 1

This is Part 1 of 2 where I compare and contrast what philosophers were saying about the possibility of "Super Intelligence" many years ago...

56:42Oct 6, 2026

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...

103:38Sep 23, 2026

Ep 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.

15:11Sep 23, 2026

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...

34:54Sep 8, 2026

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...

27:17Aug 26, 2026

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...

32:57Aug 20, 2026

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...

88:35Aug 15, 2026

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...

44:29Jul 31, 2026

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...

90:56Jul 5, 2026

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...

63:31May 4, 2026

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...

38:58Apr 23, 2026

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...

66:31Apr 5, 2026

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...

59:35Mar 11, 2026

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...

98:57Feb 16, 2026

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...

68:04Feb 9, 2026

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...

69:36Jan 30, 2026

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...

82:45Jan 14, 2026

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...

93:08Dec 25, 2025