Season 1 · Episode 81
Episode 81: Easy to Varyness vs Ad Hocness
The Theory of Anything · Bruce Nielson and Peter Johansen
March 19, 20242h 14m
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Show Notes
Bruce sympathetically critiques David Deutsch’s concept of “easy to varyness” as a way to judge our explanations.
Are our best theories about reality truly hard to vary? Bruce makes the case that Popper’s concept of “ad hocness” may be a strangely interwoven concept.
Along the way we get deeper into whether Popperian epistemology is best seen as an attitude or a methodology.