Nice work! 
Facebook groups & Reddit
In the Oxford Karl Popper Society Facebook group, I shared Responding to AI Summaries of Popper’s Critics. It got 1 like and 1 share.
In the Ayn Rand Facebook group I shared David Deutsch Smears Ayn Rand. It got 6 likes and 2 comments. I also posted it on the Ayn Rand subreddit. It got 4 upvotes, 2.3k views, and 12 comments.
I might try posting Atlas Shrugged Close Reading Chapter 1 to the Facebook group and the AR &/or Oism subreddit(s), too, but will wait a bit before doing that to avoid spamming.
Yaron Brook debate
Inspired by this post, I emailed Yaron Brook requesting that he host a debate with ET about Karl Popper.
To Yaron Brook
Subject: Karl Popper Debate on YBS?
Hi Yaron,
I saw an old clip of the Yaron Brook Show where you said you were looking for a Popper expert. A great Popper expert that I know of (who is also a huge fan of Objectivism) is Elliot Temple. Temple was an editor of “The Beginning of Infinity” by David Deutsch and was a colleague of Deutsch for 10 years. Another example of Temple’s work is his essay, “Introduction to Critical Rationalism” (Critical Rationalism being Karl Popper’s philosophy). (Temple also has close readings/analyses of some Atlas Shrugged chapters, which I liked a lot.)
I think it would be amazingly fascinating if you could host a debate between Elliot Temple and, e.g., Mike Mazza (who gave a speech at OCON critiquing Popper). That’d be an epic Yaron Brook Show episode!
Temple’s email is et@elliottemple.com
Best wishes,
Jarrod
He hasn’t responded. If he doesn’t respond in a week, I might email again. Also, maybe some other forum members can email Yaron the same request (probably best not to copy and paste my exact email though; use your own words).
Animal consciousness debate continued
I emailed another animal consciousness expert (Jonathan Birch) asking him about ET.
To Jonathan Birch \[Disclaimer: I used AI to help write the “P.P.S.” section of the email\]
Subject: Animal Sentience Question
Dear Professor Birch,
I’ve seen compelling arguments which disagree with you about whether non-human animals are sentient—and I haven’t found any satisfactory ways to answer them (not even in your book The Edge of Sentience). I’d be very grateful to know how you’d answer them.
Specifically, the arguments made in the article “Animal Welfare Overview” by American philosopher Elliot Temple. (As context, in case you haven’t heard of him, Temple was an editor of the book “The Beginning of Infinity” and was a colleague of the physicist David Deutsch for 10 years.)
The article’s core thesis, rooted in the Popperian/Deutschian view of intelligence, is that animals lack subjective experience, including sentience or any kind of suffering, because all such experience requires a capacity for interpretation—an ability which Temple argues is unique to human-like general intelligence.
I’d love to know how you’d address the points he makes there. (Or if you could even just link me to someone who addresses those arguments against animal suffering, I’d be so grateful.)
Thank you so much,
Jarrod
P.S. Skip the “Human Suffering” section of the “Animal Welfare Overview” article, which isn’t relevant to whether animals can suffer.
P.P.S. Do you have a preferred process or site for receiving and responding to counterarguments on animal sentience? E.g., do you maintain an “objections and replies” page (or a forum) and a written process for how you triage and respond to these sorts of counterarguments? Or a debate policy?
If Temple is correct, then much of the work on animal sentience would be overturned. This raises the meta-level question of: How would you find out if a critic like Temple were right? Hence why I ask whether you have a systematic process for engaging with challenges that, if correct, would require revising core assumptions in your field. (I think this is something that intellectuals in all fields should have, as Temple himself advocates.)
He hasn’t responded.
Peter Godfrey-Smith, whom I emailed and received a response from before, still hasn’t responded to my latest email. If he doesn’t respond in a week, I might politely follow up.
I also commented on this Substack post, “Becoming Shrimp-Pilled” (about shrimp consciousness and donating to the Shrimp Welfare Project (SWP) to reduce shrimp suffering).
My initial comment
Have you addressed arguments against animal sentience? E.g., https://curi.us/2545-animal-welfare-overview
If they’re right, you’re wrong about “the unfathomable effectiveness of the SWP” and you’re wasting your donations. Will you write an essay responding to the article’s criticisms or participate in a debate with it’s author? (He has a debate policy here: https://www.elliottemple.com/debate-policy)
The author responded.
The author’s response to my comment
Now note: the argument for shrimp welfare just depends on the idea that it’s not extremely implausible that shrimp are conscious. That’s all you need to think it has very high expected value. Now, if you want to know why I think it’s not that unlikely that shrimp are conscious see https://benthams.substack.com/p/betting-on-ubiquitous-pain
I replied to his response.
My reply to his response \\\[Disclaimer: I used AI to help me write this response.\\\]
I really appreciate your reply. Thank you for sharing those links, but I couldn’t find anything in them that answers the argument I linked to previously (which is rooted in the Popperian/Deutschian view of intelligence and claims that consciousness requires general intelligence (it also criticizes Yudkowsky’s view of intelligence/mind design space)).
Also, I think your method of evaluating ideas (in this case, about shrimp consciousness) is mistaken.
Your argument rests on evaluating the *likelihood* or *plausibility* of shrimp consciousness. You use phrases like “not extremely implausible,” “not that unlikely,” and you argue that the expected value is high even with a low probability. In the second article you linked, you also mention how “data…provided more and more evidence for consciousness.”
This suggests a framework where evidence and arguments add weight, support, probability, or credence to an idea. This way of thinking is a mistake, as explained here by epistemologist Elliot Temple: https://criticalfallibilism.com/introduction-to-critical-fallibilism/#decisive-arguments & https://criticalfallibilism.com/yes-or-no-philosophy-summary/
Instead, ideas should be evaluated in a binary, pass/fail way: an idea is either *refuted* (we know of a decisive criticism against it) or it is *non-refuted* (we don’t).
This is why the expected value calculation doesn’t work. You’re multiplying an enormous number (trillions of shrimp) by a probability that’s assigned to a refuted idea.
TCS
I replied to Aaron Stupple on X/Twitter asking him to address ET’s criticism of TCS and also ET’s new article criticizing “The Sovereign Child” specifically.