Increments By cover art

Increments

By: Ben Chugg and Vaden Masrani
Listen for free

  • Summary

  • Vaden Masrani, a PhD alum in machine learning at UBC, and Ben Chugg, a PhD student in statistics at CMU, get into trouble arguing about everything except machine learning and statistics. Coherence is somewhere on the horizon. Bribes, suggestions, love-mail and hate-mail all welcome at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.
    © 2024 Ben Chugg and Vaden Masrani
    Show more Show less
Episodes
  • #0 - Introduction

    #0 - Introduction
    May 19 2020

    Ben and Vaden attempt to justify why the world needs another podcast, and fail.  
    Show more Show less
    8 mins
  • #66 - Sex Research, Addiction, and Financial Domination (w/ Aella)

    #66 - Sex Research, Addiction, and Financial Domination (w/ Aella)
    Apr 18 2024
    What do you get when you mix nerds and sex research? A deep dive into the world of fetish statistics, men's calibration about women's sexual preferences, and the crazy underground world of financial domination. Stay tuned as Aella walks the boys through the world of gangbangs, camming, OnlyFans, escorting, findom, and even live-tests Vaden's wild hypothesis against her huge, thick, dataset. We discuss How to describe what Aella does Aella's bangin' birthday party The state of sex research Conservative and neo-trad pushback and whether Aella is immune from cancellation Are men calibrated when it comes to predicting women's sexual preferences? The wild world of findom (financial domination) Is findom addiction worse than other addictions? Differences between camming and OnlyFans Can a fetish ever be considered self-harm? Plus some live hypothesis testing! Does Vaden's hypothesis survive...? Aella's forthcoming journal based on Rationalist principles References from the ep Aella's good at sex (https://aella.substack.com/p/how-to-be-good-at-sex-starve-her) series Aella's website (https://knowingless.com/) Aella's blogpost on Fetish Tabooness vs Popularity (https://aella.substack.com/p/fetish-tabooness-vs-popularity) "I spent $3,400 in a single day on financial domination": financial-domination addict James (https://youtu.be/8xCjXWDf6Y0?t=745) Clip starts at 12:25 Findom Addicts Anonymous (https://findomaddictsanonymous.org/) Fetlife bans Findom (https://www.reddit.com/r/FemdomCommunity/comments/89yx1n/fetlife_is_going_to_ban_financial_domination_and/) Domme won't let me quit (unethical), addicted to findom, please help | Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/paypigsupportgroup/comments/15n8i8z/domme_wont_let_me_quit_unethical_addicted_to/) I don't feel bad for subs that are addicted to findom. (https://www.reddit.com/r/findomsupportgroup/comments/14se62y/i_dont_feel_bad_for_subs_that_are_addicted_to/) Findom References (additional sources used for episode prep that weren't mention in the episode) Random Men Pay My Bills | BBC Podcast (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07q42yw) Interview with a Recovering Paypig - A Financial Domination Addict (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N68UT_LYl-Q) FINDOM is not FEMDOM (https://podcast.damianachiphd.com/blog/findom-is-not-femdom/) Confessions of a 'Pay Pig': Why I Give Away Money to Dominant Women I Meet Online (https://archive.ph/Jdyhi) Special Episode on Findoms... | The Kink Perspective Podcast (https://www.everand.com/podcast/694373930/Season-2-Episode-57-Special-Episode-on-Findoms) She Gets Paid Just to Humiliate Her Fans | New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/10/style/findom-kink.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur) Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Help us put heads in toilets and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here (https://www.patreon.com/Increments). Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here (https://ko-fi.com/increments). Click dem like buttons on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ) Send us $500 and call us your Queen, you steaming pile of s***: incrementspodcast@gmail.com Special Guest: Aella.
    Show more Show less
    1 hr and 7 mins
  • #65 - Libertarianism II: Economic Issues (w/ Bruce Nielson)

    #65 - Libertarianism II: Economic Issues (w/ Bruce Nielson)
    Mar 28 2024
    Back at it again, as we coerce you into listening to Part 2 of our four part series on Libertarianism, with Mr. Bruce Nielson (@bnielson01). In this episode we cover the Economic Issues section of Scott Alexander's (non-aggressive and principled) non-libertarian FAQ (https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-libertarian-faq/), and discuss his four major economic critiques of the libertarian view that free and voluntary trade between consenting, informed, rational individuals is the best possible thing ever, with no downsides at all. Also, can we interest you in buying some wasps? We discuss Loose ends from last episode - coercion and the Non-Aggression Principle What distinguishes a conservative like Bruce from a libertarian? Externalities Boycotts and Coordination Problems Irrational Choices Lack of Information References The Non-libertarian FAQ (https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-libertarian-faq/) Planet Money on the Porcupine Freedom Festival (https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/06/28/534735727/episode-286-libertarian-summer-camp) Vaden's blog posts on Libertarianism / Austrian Economics / Anarcho-Captialism / Whateveryawannacallit First: Is Austrian Economics the Best Explanation of Economics? (https://vmasrani.github.io/blog/2023/aecr-challenge/) Second: Can we predict human behaviour? A discussion with Brett Hall (https://vmasrani.github.io/blog/2023/predicting-human-behaviour/) Quotes The Argument: In a free market, all trade has to be voluntary, so you will never agree to a trade unless it benefits you. Further, you won’t make a trade unless you think it’s the best possible trade you can make. If you knew you could make a better one, you’d hold out for that. So trades in a free market are not only better than nothing, they’re also the best possible transaction you could make at that time. Labor is no different from any other commercial transaction in this respect. You won’t agree to a job unless it benefits you more than anything else you can do with your time, and your employer won’t hire you unless it benefits her more than anything else she can do with her money. So a voluntarily agreed labor contract must benefit both parties, and must do so more than any other alternative. If every trade in a free market benefits both parties, then any time the government tries to restrict trade in some way, it must hurt both parties. Or, to put it another way, you can help someone by giving them more options, but you can’t help them by taking away options. And in a free market, where everyone starts with all options, all the government can do is take options away. The Counterargument: This treats the world as a series of producer-consumer dyads instead of as a system in which every transaction affects everyone else. Also, it treats consumers as coherent entities who have specific variables like “utility” and “demand” and know exactly what they are, which doesn’t always work. - https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-libertarian-faq/ What is an externality? 1.1: What is an externality? An externality is when I make a trade with you, but it has some accidental effect on other people who weren’t involved in the trade. Suppose for example that I sell my house to an amateur wasp farmer. Only he’s not a very good wasp farmer, so his wasps usually get loose and sting people all over the neighborhood every couple of days. This trade between the wasp farmer and myself has benefited both of us, but it’s harmed people who weren’t consulted; namely, my neighbors, who are now locked indoors clutching cans of industrial-strength insect repellent. Although the trade was voluntary for both the wasp farmer and myself, it wasn’t voluntary for my neighbors. Another example of externalities would be a widget factory that spews carcinogenic chemicals into the air. When I trade with the widget factory I’m benefiting – I get widgets – and they’re benefiting – they get money. But the people who breathe in the carcinogenic chemicals weren’t consulted in the trade. 2.3: How do coordination problems justify regulation of ethical business practices? ... Let’s say Wanda’s Widgets has one million customers. Each customer pays it $100 per year, for a total income of $100 million. Each customer prefers Wanda to her competitor Wayland, who charges $150 for widgets of equal quality. Now let’s say Wanda’s Widgets does some unspeakably horrible act which makes it $10 million per year, but offends every one of its million customers. There is no incentive for a single customer to boycott Wanda’s Widgets. After all, that customer’s boycott will cost the customer $50 (she will have to switch to Wayland) and make an insignificant difference to Wanda (who is still earning $99,999,900 of her original hundred million). The customer takes significant inconvenience, and Wanda neither cares nor stops doing her unspeakably horrible act (after all, it...
    Show more Show less
    1 hr and 33 mins
Philosophy Social Sciences Science
Show more Show less

What listeners say about Increments

Average customer ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Audible.com reviews

Amazon reviews
No Reviews are Available