ToKCast

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 the highest levels of governmen

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.

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/2096700264569090384?s=20 Some reflecti

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 approximately 60 seconds worth

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 more mainstream evaluations of

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? Frank Tipler's The Omega Point The

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 one of the four strands (evol

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 together? What does taking them each

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 readings from the relevant part of

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 theory of quantum computation

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 another way of coming at a critiqu

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 until you hear his claim that th

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, specialises in bioelectricity. His r

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, specialises in bioelectricity. His

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 science moves from one theory to

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/2512.22473 Collectively titled "

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, Bondi and Social Media. The Prim

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 points about the recent traged

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 Beach Massacre by Islamists terro

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 affecting their own field. It is, in