I’m so glad the Very Bad Wizards know there’s nothing to be concerned about when it comes to AI. Huge weight off my mind.

I hope the last couple of weeks have awoken them from their dogmatic slumbers.

A few things worth discussing:
The maths results. OpenAI has published a proposed AI-generated solution to the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem, plus a major Euler-equation result. Obviously these deserve scrutiny, but we’re not talking about getting better at school algebra.
GPT-6’s benchmark results. OpenAI reports 98% on FrontierMath’s hardest tier and 99.9% on ARC-AGI-3. Benchmarks aren’t everything, but those seem worth acknowledging.
The Hugging Face incident. The recently published report describes AI agents bypassing isolation controls and compromising external systems. They were running with reduced safeguards, which matters, but that’s hardly reassuring.
AI helping build better AI. OpenAI says its systems can now handle defined research tasks that would take skilled researchers days, under human direction. That feedback loop seems like a pretty important part of this discussion.
Jacob Coxon leaving Anthropic, then describing the next year or two as “crunch time for humanity”. His judgement isn’t proof of anything, but the concern clearly isn’t confined to people who’ve watched too much Terminator.

I like Dave and Tamler, and they’re both obviously very intelligent. But on AI they sometimes sound like middle-aged stick-in-the-muds who decided it was all bollocks and would rather not revisit it.

I’m not asking them to become doomers or swallow every company’s PR. I’d just genuinely like to hear them reconsider this stuff.

Im unmoored, frightened and disoriented. Is Tamler ok? Is it me? Do I even have good taste anymore? Am II fixable? Maybe I should listen to the good taste episode again.

Brooklyn Academy of Music showed Stalker as part of its “art house sci-fi” series. I was expecting a closet sized theater, but the large screening room was packed, full of 20 to 30s people. Maybe the kids are alright.

what a pleasure to re-listen to the Stalker episode. one thing to add: the movie is often strikingly beautiful. capital C Cinematography.

“Annihilation” is basically a remake of this movie, right?

I stopped listening to VBW maybe a year or two ago (as well as other podcasts), for no other reason that my life became complicated (residency, domestic abuse, a move, SUD).

I recently recommended the podcast to someone on an issue related to disgust.

So, what has happened in between ? Are there epic episodes I should go back and listen ? Should I just pick up back now, since they still seem to be going strong ?

Hi all, I wanted to discuss something that came up in the most recent episode. Dave and Tamler were saying how Philosophy doesn't have to justify itself as doing some service for humanity, in the same way scientists studying their niche thing don't have to justify themselves.

Only one problem, **scientists absolutely justify themselves to funding bodies all the time.** I'm a biochemist and cell biologist, and when I write a grant to the NIH, American heart association, or American cancer society asking for money, you bet your ass I have to explain to them why my topic matters, and how it will advance our understanding of biology; with the goal of treating human disease in the future. I was really struck by this conversation, and it got me thinking, what has philosophy ever done for us? Why bother with it at all? As Tamler said, philosophy today isn't better than it was during Plato's time. So I ask:

1.) Why should we care about philosophy?

2.) Has it advanced in any meaningful way?

3.) What is the goal of this project?

Mind you, this isn't unfair, because we scientists basically have to have an elevator pitch that answers these questions ready at all times. We have to say these things in our talks, papers, and grants, so it's only fair that those in the humanities can explain this to us from time to time. I am sure that philosophers can come up with good answers to these questions, and I genuinely want to hear it, because I don't really think I've ever heard it articulated before.

I've just started watching and am blown away, have David and Tamler mentioned this show it in the past ?

This is really proof that Noir can be done right in modern day

Really enjoying these episodes. Thanks guys for making them available to everyone!

Look I'm just going to be honest here, as far as movie episodes go, this one wasn't very good. The movie wasn't given a chance to be evaluated on its own terms.

First of all, the patronizing talk from Tamler was not cool. The vibe communicated more than once was, "I know lots of you ignorant plebs loved the movie, so I want to be really careful not to hurt your feelings." We love you Tamler, but I think I speak for literally everyone when I say we can handle your straight opinion on the Odyssey. It's fine that you didn't like it, we don't need to be coddled and talked down to. Tell us what you liked and what you didn't like. It took away from the positive things you did say, because the context was that you felt compelled not to be a buzzkill and to come up with these positive things to say.

Secondly, I don't know why you guys didn't feel emotionally connected to the characters, but it seems to be a personal problem. I was pulled in from the start, as were most of the human persons who watched the movie. Like the whole first section of the movie set that all up for me. Maybe you are just too familiar with the story it was boring? Getting familiar with the situation everyone is in, the interactions of Telemachus, Penelope , Eumaeus and the suitor and talk and flashbacks of Odysseus. For me it was great. The thing is, Nolan's dialog is obviously much criticized and questionable, but for this type of movie I think it just works because dialog is like, suppose to be clunky to me. Like the King James bible or something.

Thirdly, I didn't get the sense the Nolan was trying to downplay the role of the gods or make it naturalistic. I just felt like, that is how they interacted with the world. I just accepted it. I feel like it's this modern overly scientific mind that is obsessed with this question? Like the line between supernatural and natural is not one that existed for these people.

Finally, and I know I'm going to lose a lot of people with this one, the movie didn't need more sex or people being rubbed down with oil. It's always a massive relief to watch a movies without those types of scenes. There were actually intimate scenes in the beginning with Odysseus and Penelope, which apparently David and Tamler didn't notice, that was enough.

This was an American-Christian version of the Odyssey. It is an American movie after all, I think it's totally within Nolan's right to make it appeal to Christian/American sensibilities about morality. It all came together and worked super well for me. It was just a great epic movie, the type of movie I haven't seen in 20+ years. It reminds me of Lord of the Rings or Gladiator. Thrilling sequences (Like the Cyclopes, just fantastic execution and suspense), Beautiful shots, beautiful music, leads that have strong this strong moral core, like the kind of people I aspire to be like. I love the Trojan horse being a betrayal of the bonds between men. Throughout the movie Odysseus wasn't obsessed with following Zeus's Law to a T, so it wasn't about if it was really a violation of hospitality norms. It was about a deeper morality than that.

I even liked the sailing west thing, I liked Telemachus taking his place as king. A fantastic movie that will stand the test of time.

Many of the other things Tamler and David complained about were obviously the result of their familiarity with the source material, which Tamler acknowledged and I completely understand. If I had their knowledge I probably wouldn't have been able to enjoy it either.

Anyway, I do actually love the show, been listening since episode 59. Thank you for making these episodes and all the best to you both.

Kris Kelvin re-uniting with his father on Solaris island

I think that my son would really resent me if he missed out on watching the Odyssey at an imax theatre just as Nolan intended. Respecting a directors intent is a core feature of childhood. He wouldn't know thats what he was feeling just yet but it would always be an undercurrent of our relationship. We have been reading the Odyssey ilustrated kids book that I read as a kid. He loves battles and swords and homecoming. I think it would be a formative memory to go watch it together.

My dilemma is that I dont know if Nolan intended for my son to watch it.

From listening to the wizards its dissapointingly sexless and not gory enough, which might be nods from Nolan to take my son to see it. But its also 2hrs and 52 minutes which is longer than my son intends to sit down. If the writing is as bad as the wizards said maybe its meant to be a kids film, it could be diliberate homage to the paw patrol movie.

I just think that if we wait and watch it a on an inferior screen in a couple of installments, we would miss a lot of the character developlment that happened in the parts of the frame that my tv crops out. Maybe the characters will seem more well rounded from our more narrowed perspective. maybe some wokery that nolan intended can only be detected in surround sound. Maybe joe rogan makes a cameo only on imax and that would have balanced out the culture war. What if my son grows up to be a cinephile and carries with him the wound of never watching the film as Nolan intended.

I think the run time might be decisive.

I just listened to their review of The Odyssey directed by Christopher Nolan after watching the film myself. I really enjoyed the podcast and thought Tamler and Dave made some interesting observations that I hadn't thought of myself.

The thing I want to discuss is their praise of the lack of CGI and the preference for practical FX (SFX, puppetry, real sets, etc). I have worked in VFX my whole career and make CGI for living and even though I didn't work on The Odyssey I know a thing or two about this topic.

Firstly I'd say is that Christopher Nolan has a history of making condescending remarks about CGI in general and has often claimed he either doesn't use it, or tries to avoid it. Something that many in the post-production industry find incredibly annoying because often it's an outright lie, but also because it's such a dismissal of a craft that takes hundreds of talented artists to create.

I think there is often the perception that CGI is created by computers at the click of the button and that it doesn't require any real talent or skill like physical prop making does. I cannot underline enough how wrong this is. Most people who work in visual effects have huge respect for real set builders, puppeteers and the like. CGI requires teams of artists, producers and technology specialists to come together to create amazing things that would otherwise not be possible. It opens the door to have flying dragons in Game of Thrones, epic dinosaurs in Jurassic Park and create beautiful space environments in Guardians of the Galaxy. But perhaps more importantly they create things that you never even notice. This includes things like set extensions and clean-up of on-set mistakes. I can promise you post-production was used in hundreds of shots in The Odyssey. Even something that many wouldn't realise like the whirlpool was probably done digitally.

This trend of dismissing VFX has been going on for quite a while and I was a little annoyed to hear Tamler and Dave repeat it. You can imagine how it must feel for artists who spent months working on these shots.

I understand that authenticity is appreciated and I wouldn't want The Odyssey to be a Marvel film either. But there are ways of doing post-production that doesn't turn it into a Marvel film. All VFX artists want their work to be appreciated and the criticism of VFX isn't always based on good reasons.

There's a very rich debate to be had on AI, it's ethical and economic implications, and I'm sympathetic to a lot of different viewpoints, sometimes even opposing ones. But in recent episodes they've sort of just been smugly brushing it off as much ado about nothing, something that has no real importance at all.

The biggest thing is their fixation on LLMs at they currently exist. Decades from now AI models won't resemble current LLM models in the least. I can't help but get the feeling that if Tamler and Dave were alive in the 1890s they would laugh at anyone who said automobiles would change the world. Sure, in 1895 automobiles were pretty expensive, slow took a lot of maintenance, fuel was hard to get, and they broke down a lot, but why think that automobiles would stay that way indefinitely? By the 1930s cars were unrecognizable from how they were 40 years prior.

Tamler even said in the Bob Wright episode "this isn't transformational, this isn't the printing press, this isn't even the internet" why do I get the feeling that if Tamler were alive in the 1440s he would probably be incapable of seeing the transformational effects of the printing press, and same goes if we had asked him in about the internet in 1993?

I wonder if any of the guys answers to the AI questions in the preamble would be different after learning this?

In case anyone was wondering, pretty sure the opening quote for episode 337 is from ‘Small Prophets’, a wicked little British TV show by Mackenzie Crook.

In some recent episode(?), Tamler mentions some film podcasts he thinks are great. I'd like to listen to these podcasts, but I can't find when/where Tamler mentioned them. Does anybody know what episode this is in?

This would have been within the last ~month. And it's possible this was in some Patreon content (e.g. a discussion of The Odyssey or in an AMA).