The Turing Test

In this episode, we interview Lant Pritchett, Professor of the Practice of International Development at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. After obtaining his PhD in Economics from MIT, he worked at the World Bank for many years, and was a contributor to the first Copenhagen consensus, a project that seeks to establish … Continue reading "The Turing Test #9: Lant Pritchett"

How to introduce Spencer Greenberg? He’s a man who wears many hats– entrepreneur, doctorate in applied math from New York University, researcher, startup founder, and he’s extremely productive in his spare time, too! He founded Spark Wave, a startup foundry which creates novel software products designed to solve problems in the world. A few of … Continue reading "The Turing Test #8: Spencer Greenberg"

Bryan Caplan is an economist and professor of economics at George Mason University, research fellow at the Mercatus Center, adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute and a frequent contributor to Freakonomics as well as publishing his own blog, EconLog. He’s also the author of the books The Myth of the Rational Voter, Selfish Reasons to … Continue reading "The Turing Test #7: Bryan Caplan"

Scott is a student at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health and the Associate Project Director of Charity Science: Health – a new charity founded within the effective altruism community with the goal of becoming one of the most cost-effective organizations in the global health space. Before joining the Charity Science team, Scott conducted … Continue reading "The Turing Test #6: Scott Weathers"

Brian Tomasik writes about ethics, animal welfare, and far-future scenarios from a suffering-focused perspective, all of which you can find on reducing-suffering.com. He helped to found Foundational Research Institute, a think tank that explores crucial considerations for reducing suffering in the long-run future. (Full-disclosure, Holly is currently a contractor for FRI.) Previously, Brian earned to give … Continue reading "The Turing Test #5: Brian Tomasik"

Joshua Greene is a professor in the Harvard Department of Psychology where he runs the Moral Cognition Lab. He received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard and then a PhD in philosophy at Princeton where he was mentored by many bright lights of analytical philosophy, including Peter Singer, who served on his comittee. After doing a … Continue reading "The Turing Test #4: Josh Greene"

Adam Marblestone is Chief Strategy Officer of Kernel, and a part-time research scientist with the Synthetic Neurobiology group at MIT. His PhD was in Biophysics at Harvard, under George Church. There he co-authored experimental and theoretical papers on molecular recording devices and road-mapped approaches for whole-brain mapping. He also participated in the development of new … Continue reading "The Turing Test #3: Adam Marblestone"

In episode 2, we test Irene Pepperberg on animal cognition and symbolic communication. Dr. Pepperberg worked with Alex the African Grey Parrot for 30 years, until his untimely death, and continues to work with other African Greys (Athena and Griffin) to explore the limits of their congnitive abilities. Long story short: she still hasn’t reached … Continue reading "The Turing Test #2: Irene Pepperberg"

In our first episode, we “test” Larry Summers, the famous economist. Now a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Dr. Summers has served as Vice President of Development Economics and Chief Economist of the World Bank, Secretary of the Treasury under the Clinton adminstration, Director of the National Economic Council under Obama. Since economics is … Continue reading "The Turing Test #1: Larry Summers"