KOL461 | Haman Nature Hn 119: Atheism, Objectivism & Artificial Intelligence

Kinsella On Liberty

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 461. This is my appearance on Adam Haman’s podcast and Youtube channel, Haman Nature (Haman Nature substack), episode HN 119, “Stephan Kinsella Expounds on Philosophy And The Life Well Lived” (recorded Feb. 6, 2025—just before the Tom Woods cruise). We discussed philosophy and rights; my legal and libertarian careers (see Adopting Liberty: The Stephan Kinsella Story), and so on. Shownotes, links, grok summary, and transcript below. https://youtu.be/Ekg5slP8xAg?si=6fNlmaeR6V7OMVEW Adam’s Shownotes Brilliant patent attorney, philosopher, legal theorist and libertarian anarchist Stephan Kinsella comes back on the show to take Adam to task for not defending atheism with enough vigor! 00:00 — Intro. Adam and Stephan reminisce about the Tom Woods Cruise! Also: proof that Stephan has a wife. 02:30 — Stephan's intellectual history about the "God issue". 11:30 — What is "sound epistemology" on this subject? What are good arguments for or against the existence of God? How should we think about the arguments of Thomas Aquinas et al? 19:55 — What is a good definition of "atheist"? How about "agnostic"? Plus more epistemology applied to metaphysical claims such as the existence of God. Also, our nature as humans is that we must act in the world even though we lack certainty and our knowledge is contextual. 32:38 — Adam asks Stephan: how would you react if you met a god-like being? Or Jesus Himself? A discussion of intellectual humility ensues. How does knowledge relate to human action? How do we acquire knowledge in the first place? Does this relate to AI? 47:09 — Adam admits he really doesn't know how anything works. Vinyl records are magic! 53:15 — Outro. It is agreed that Adam and Stephan are "the good atheists". Links George Smith, Atheism: The Case Against God Barry Smith, In Defense of Extreme (Fallibilistic) Apriorism On Peter Janich, see Handwerk und Mundwerk: Über das Herstellen von Wissen, Protophysics of Time, What Is Information?, Euclid's Heritage: Is Space Three-Dimensional?; and references/discussion in Hoppe on Falsificationism, Empiricism, and Apriorism and Protophysics and Hoppe, My Discovery of Human Action and of Mises as a Philosopher Hoppe, Economic Science and the Austrian Method David Kelley, Foundations of Knowledge lectures ——, The Evidence of the Senses: A Realist Theory of Perception Ayn Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology Biographical: Alan D. Bergman, Adopting Liberty: The Stephan Kinsella Story (2025); various biographical pieces on my publications page From the messing-with-Adam section: Grok discussion of use of optical metrology to play an LP by taking a photograph with a smartphone (estimate: 2033) Grok answer to this prompt: Explain to Adam, who thinks this is all magic, how an LP records and plays sounds, what transducers are; and how modulation works, using some examples of carrier waves such as EM radio waves with both AM and FM, and laser light signals transmitted down fiber optic cables and using both analog modulation such as CATV signals and digital modulation such as for internet data; and how modems work. Grok answer to this prompt: Now explain to Adam what "holes" are, in electric current, compared to electrons, what the mass and nature of holes are, and why the convention is for electric current, and electrons, to have a negative symbol. Also explain why electrical engineers use i instead of j for the imaginary number sqrt(-2). Also take a stab at explaining what imaginary numbers really are and how they are useful for things like freguency, and how they are not really "imaginary," and what "complex" numbers are; and how if you imagine a 2D plane with real numbers on the horizontal axis and imaginary numbers on the vertical or Y axis, and how you can picture 1xi as a 90° move from 1 on the real or X axis up to i on the imaginary or Y axis,