Podcast appearances and mentions of Charles Foster

How did humans come to be who we are? In his marvelous, eccentric, and widely lauded book Being a Beast, legal scholar, veterinary surgeon, and naturalist extraordinaire Charles Foster set out to understand the consciousness of animal species by living as a badger, otter, fox, deer, and swift. Now, he inhabits three crucial periods of human development to understand the consciousness of perhaps the strangest animal of all—the human being. To experience the Upper Paleolithic era—a turning point when humans became behaviorally modern, painting caves and telling stories, Foster learns what it feels like to be a Cro-Magnon hunter-gatherer by living in makeshift shelters without amenities in the rural woods of England. He tests his five impoverished senses to forage for berries and roadkill and he undertakes shamanic journeys to explore the connection of wakeful dreaming to religion. For the Neolithic period, when humans stayed in one place and domesticated plants and animals, forever altering our connection to the natural world, he moves to a reconstructed Neolithic settlement. Finally, to explore the Enlightenment—the age of reason and the end of the soul—Foster inspects Oxford colleges, dissecting rooms, cafes, and art galleries. He finds his world and himself bizarre and disembodied, and he rues the atrophy of our senses, the cause for much of what ails us. Drawing on psychology, neuroscience, natural history, agriculture, medical law and ethics, Being a Human: Adventures in Forty Thousand Years of Consciousness (Metropolitan Books, 2021) is one man's audacious attempt to feel a connection with 45,000 years of human history. This glorious, fiercely imaginative journey from our origins to a possible future ultimately shows how we might best live on earth—and thrive. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. To discuss and propose the book for an interview you can reach her at galina.limorenko@epfl.ch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

How did humans come to be who we are? In his marvelous, eccentric, and widely lauded book Being a Beast, legal scholar, veterinary surgeon, and naturalist extraordinaire Charles Foster set out to understand the consciousness of animal species by living as a badger, otter, fox, deer, and swift. Now, he inhabits three crucial periods of human development to understand the consciousness of perhaps the strangest animal of all—the human being. To experience the Upper Paleolithic era—a turning point when humans became behaviorally modern, painting caves and telling stories, Foster learns what it feels like to be a Cro-Magnon hunter-gatherer by living in makeshift shelters without amenities in the rural woods of England. He tests his five impoverished senses to forage for berries and roadkill and he undertakes shamanic journeys to explore the connection of wakeful dreaming to religion. For the Neolithic period, when humans stayed in one place and domesticated plants and animals, forever altering our connection to the natural world, he moves to a reconstructed Neolithic settlement. Finally, to explore the Enlightenment—the age of reason and the end of the soul—Foster inspects Oxford colleges, dissecting rooms, cafes, and art galleries. He finds his world and himself bizarre and disembodied, and he rues the atrophy of our senses, the cause for much of what ails us. Drawing on psychology, neuroscience, natural history, agriculture, medical law and ethics, Being a Human: Adventures in Forty Thousand Years of Consciousness (Metropolitan Books, 2021) is one man's audacious attempt to feel a connection with 45,000 years of human history. This glorious, fiercely imaginative journey from our origins to a possible future ultimately shows how we might best live on earth—and thrive. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. To discuss and propose the book for an interview you can reach her at galina.limorenko@epfl.ch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

How did humans come to be who we are? In his marvelous, eccentric, and widely lauded book Being a Beast, legal scholar, veterinary surgeon, and naturalist extraordinaire Charles Foster set out to understand the consciousness of animal species by living as a badger, otter, fox, deer, and swift. Now, he inhabits three crucial periods of human development to understand the consciousness of perhaps the strangest animal of all—the human being. To experience the Upper Paleolithic era—a turning point when humans became behaviorally modern, painting caves and telling stories, Foster learns what it feels like to be a Cro-Magnon hunter-gatherer by living in makeshift shelters without amenities in the rural woods of England. He tests his five impoverished senses to forage for berries and roadkill and he undertakes shamanic journeys to explore the connection of wakeful dreaming to religion. For the Neolithic period, when humans stayed in one place and domesticated plants and animals, forever altering our connection to the natural world, he moves to a reconstructed Neolithic settlement. Finally, to explore the Enlightenment—the age of reason and the end of the soul—Foster inspects Oxford colleges, dissecting rooms, cafes, and art galleries. He finds his world and himself bizarre and disembodied, and he rues the atrophy of our senses, the cause for much of what ails us. Drawing on psychology, neuroscience, natural history, agriculture, medical law and ethics, Being a Human: Adventures in Forty Thousand Years of Consciousness (Metropolitan Books, 2021) is one man's audacious attempt to feel a connection with 45,000 years of human history. This glorious, fiercely imaginative journey from our origins to a possible future ultimately shows how we might best live on earth—and thrive. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. To discuss and propose the book for an interview you can reach her at galina.limorenko@epfl.ch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

How did humans come to be who we are? In his marvelous, eccentric, and widely lauded book Being a Beast, legal scholar, veterinary surgeon, and naturalist extraordinaire Charles Foster set out to understand the consciousness of animal species by living as a badger, otter, fox, deer, and swift. Now, he inhabits three crucial periods of human development to understand the consciousness of perhaps the strangest animal of all—the human being. To experience the Upper Paleolithic era—a turning point when humans became behaviorally modern, painting caves and telling stories, Foster learns what it feels like to be a Cro-Magnon hunter-gatherer by living in makeshift shelters without amenities in the rural woods of England. He tests his five impoverished senses to forage for berries and roadkill and he undertakes shamanic journeys to explore the connection of wakeful dreaming to religion. For the Neolithic period, when humans stayed in one place and domesticated plants and animals, forever altering our connection to the natural world, he moves to a reconstructed Neolithic settlement. Finally, to explore the Enlightenment—the age of reason and the end of the soul—Foster inspects Oxford colleges, dissecting rooms, cafes, and art galleries. He finds his world and himself bizarre and disembodied, and he rues the atrophy of our senses, the cause for much of what ails us. Drawing on psychology, neuroscience, natural history, agriculture, medical law and ethics, Being a Human: Adventures in Forty Thousand Years of Consciousness (Metropolitan Books, 2021) is one man's audacious attempt to feel a connection with 45,000 years of human history. This glorious, fiercely imaginative journey from our origins to a possible future ultimately shows how we might best live on earth—and thrive. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. To discuss and propose the book for an interview you can reach her at galina.limorenko@epfl.ch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

How did humans come to be who we are? In his marvelous, eccentric, and widely lauded book Being a Beast, legal scholar, veterinary surgeon, and naturalist extraordinaire Charles Foster set out to understand the consciousness of animal species by living as a badger, otter, fox, deer, and swift. Now, he inhabits three crucial periods of human development to understand the consciousness of perhaps the strangest animal of all—the human being. To experience the Upper Paleolithic era—a turning point when humans became behaviorally modern, painting caves and telling stories, Foster learns what it feels like to be a Cro-Magnon hunter-gatherer by living in makeshift shelters without amenities in the rural woods of England. He tests his five impoverished senses to forage for berries and roadkill and he undertakes shamanic journeys to explore the connection of wakeful dreaming to religion. For the Neolithic period, when humans stayed in one place and domesticated plants and animals, forever altering our connection to the natural world, he moves to a reconstructed Neolithic settlement. Finally, to explore the Enlightenment—the age of reason and the end of the soul—Foster inspects Oxford colleges, dissecting rooms, cafes, and art galleries. He finds his world and himself bizarre and disembodied, and he rues the atrophy of our senses, the cause for much of what ails us. Drawing on psychology, neuroscience, natural history, agriculture, medical law and ethics, Being a Human: Adventures in Forty Thousand Years of Consciousness (Metropolitan Books, 2021) is one man's audacious attempt to feel a connection with 45,000 years of human history. This glorious, fiercely imaginative journey from our origins to a possible future ultimately shows how we might best live on earth—and thrive. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. To discuss and propose the book for an interview you can reach her at galina.limorenko@epfl.ch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/neuroscience

How did humans come to be who we are? In his marvelous, eccentric, and widely lauded book Being a Beast, legal scholar, veterinary surgeon, and naturalist extraordinaire Charles Foster set out to understand the consciousness of animal species by living as a badger, otter, fox, deer, and swift. Now, he inhabits three crucial periods of human development to understand the consciousness of perhaps the strangest animal of all—the human being. To experience the Upper Paleolithic era—a turning point when humans became behaviorally modern, painting caves and telling stories, Foster learns what it feels like to be a Cro-Magnon hunter-gatherer by living in makeshift shelters without amenities in the rural woods of England. He tests his five impoverished senses to forage for berries and roadkill and he undertakes shamanic journeys to explore the connection of wakeful dreaming to religion. For the Neolithic period, when humans stayed in one place and domesticated plants and animals, forever altering our connection to the natural world, he moves to a reconstructed Neolithic settlement. Finally, to explore the Enlightenment—the age of reason and the end of the soul—Foster inspects Oxford colleges, dissecting rooms, cafes, and art galleries. He finds his world and himself bizarre and disembodied, and he rues the atrophy of our senses, the cause for much of what ails us. Drawing on psychology, neuroscience, natural history, agriculture, medical law and ethics, Being a Human: Adventures in Forty Thousand Years of Consciousness (Metropolitan Books, 2021) is one man's audacious attempt to feel a connection with 45,000 years of human history. This glorious, fiercely imaginative journey from our origins to a possible future ultimately shows how we might best live on earth—and thrive. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. To discuss and propose the book for an interview you can reach her at galina.limorenko@epfl.ch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Twee keer per jaar trekken grote aantallen trekvogels van hun broedgebieden naar hun overwinteringsgebieden en weer terug. Tijdens hun reis verbinden ze landen, continenten én hun bewoners. Welk beeld tekent zich af als we migratie bekijken als natuurlijk fenomeen? En hoe doen trekvogels dat, zulke grote afstanden afleggen zonder een druppel fossiele brandstof? In de laatste aflevering van 2024 spreekt Anthonie over deze en andere vragen met Theunis Piersma. Theunis is hoogleraar trekvogelecologie aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, onderzoeker bij het Nederlands Instituut voor Onderzoek der Zee en founding director van Birdeyes. Hij is net terug uit Mauritanië voor enkele weken onderzoek aan wadvogels en het wad van Banc d'Arguin. Hoe is het om daar ‘onze' lepelaars, kanoeten en andere trekvogels terug te zien? En hoe ziet de wereld eruit als we die door de ogen van deze trekvogels bekijken? Theunis is openhartig over zijn rol als onderzoeker. Hij is opgeleid om alles door de wetenschappelijke bril van evolutionaire processen en natuurlijke selectie als verklaringsmodel te bekijken. Maar hij komt er steeds meer achter dat een essentieel deel van de werkelijkheid dan ontbreekt. Hoe gaat hij hiermee om? En hoe kijken zijn vakgenoten hiernaar? Verder spreken we over geopolitieke spanningen in Europa en de rol van migratie, over de afwezigheid van Nederland op het internationale toneel, de grutto als verhalenverteller en nieuwe plannen voor spannend onderzoek. De leestip van Theunis is ‘Leven als een beest' / ‘Being a beast' van Charles Foster. In de aflevering hebben we het over twee van de boeken die Theunis heeft gemaakt, dat zijn ‘Sinagote' over het levensverhaal van een lepelaar en ‘Zwaluwen van Gaast' over huiszwaluwen. Reacties op deze of eerdere afleveringen zijn van harte welkom. Je kunt ons bereiken op onze sociale mediakanalen of door een mailtje te sturen naar toekomstvoornatuur@vlinderstichting.nl. Voor updates en kijkjes achter de schermen, volg ons via @toekomstvoornatuur.bsky.social op Bluesky, @toekomstvoornatuur op Instagram en @toekomstnatuur op X.

Ivan Kreilkamp, Indiana University English professor and no stranger to Recall This Book, is the author of two books on Victorian literature and one about Jennifer Egan. For this episode of Recall This Story, Ivan reads Sylvia Townsend Warner's "Foxcastle.” It was first published in The New Yorker in 1975 and became the final story in her final book, Kingdoms of Elfin. Before diving into the story itself, Ivan and John marvel at STW's weird greatness--and great weirdness. Like Hilary Mantel, she is drawn to the deep strangeness of other people. Prompted by John to think about these fairy stories as posthuman, Ivan notes the "dehumanization ceremonies" fairies perform on stolen changelings. John builds on the idea by bringing up the rise (in the 1960's) of alien abduction narratives. Do they form an invisible subtext to the abduction that begins the story? David Trotter's "Posthuman? Animal Corpses, Aeroplanes and Very High Frequencies in the Work of Valentine Ackland and Sylvia Townsend Warner" explores Warner's taste for non-human perspectives in e.g. The Cat's Cradle Book. Warner's own line on her stories--"bother the human heart, I'm tired of the human heart"--signals to Ivan her knowledge that the animals we share the world with see things quite differently: his own cat, he suspects, might let him die without too much emotion. John respects Charles Foster's Being a Beast for his decision to live like a badger (worm-eating and all) rather than just imagining it. Literature cited: Ivan has a piece in praise of STW's 1926 Lolly Willowes. John and Ivan also revere Mr Fortune's Maggot (1927), The Corner That Held Them (1948) and The Flint Anchor (1954). When the two compare STW to Hilary Mantel they are thinking of historical fiction (Wolf Hall especially) as well as her biting novel of the Thatcher era, Beyond Black. Donna Haraway's A Cyborg Manifesto (1985) comes up in the posthumanism discussion. Randall Jarrell, "The Sick Child" ("all that I've never thought of--think of me!") Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Ivan Kreilkamp, Indiana University English professor and no stranger to Recall This Book, is the author of two books on Victorian literature and one about Jennifer Egan. For this episode of Recall This Story, Ivan reads Sylvia Townsend Warner's "Foxcastle.” It was first published in The New Yorker in 1975 and became the final story in her final book, Kingdoms of Elfin. Before diving into the story itself, Ivan and John marvel at STW's weird greatness--and great weirdness. Like Hilary Mantel, she is drawn to the deep strangeness of other people. Prompted by John to think about these fairy stories as posthuman, Ivan notes the "dehumanization ceremonies" fairies perform on stolen changelings. John builds on the idea by bringing up the rise (in the 1960's) of alien abduction narratives. Do they form an invisible subtext to the abduction that begins the story? David Trotter's "Posthuman? Animal Corpses, Aeroplanes and Very High Frequencies in the Work of Valentine Ackland and Sylvia Townsend Warner" explores Warner's taste for non-human perspectives in e.g. The Cat's Cradle Book. Warner's own line on her stories--"bother the human heart, I'm tired of the human heart"--signals to Ivan her knowledge that the animals we share the world with see things quite differently: his own cat, he suspects, might let him die without too much emotion. John respects Charles Foster's Being a Beast for his decision to live like a badger (worm-eating and all) rather than just imagining it. Literature cited: Ivan has a piece in praise of STW's 1926 Lolly Willowes. John and Ivan also revere Mr Fortune's Maggot (1927), The Corner That Held Them (1948) and The Flint Anchor (1954). When the two compare STW to Hilary Mantel they are thinking of historical fiction (Wolf Hall especially) as well as her biting novel of the Thatcher era, Beyond Black. Donna Haraway's A Cyborg Manifesto (1985) comes up in the posthumanism discussion. Randall Jarrell, "The Sick Child" ("all that I've never thought of--think of me!") Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ivan Kreilkamp, Indiana University English professor and no stranger to Recall This Book, is the author of two books on Victorian literature and one about Jennifer Egan. For this episode of Recall This Story, Ivan reads Sylvia Townsend Warner's "Foxcastle.” It was first published in The New Yorker in 1975 and became the final story in her final book, Kingdoms of Elfin. Before diving into the story itself, Ivan and John marvel at STW's weird greatness--and great weirdness. Like Hilary Mantel, she is drawn to the deep strangeness of other people. Prompted by John to think about these fairy stories as posthuman, Ivan notes the "dehumanization ceremonies" fairies perform on stolen changelings. John builds on the idea by bringing up the rise (in the 1960's) of alien abduction narratives. Do they form an invisible subtext to the abduction that begins the story? David Trotter's "Posthuman? Animal Corpses, Aeroplanes and Very High Frequencies in the Work of Valentine Ackland and Sylvia Townsend Warner" explores Warner's taste for non-human perspectives in e.g. The Cat's Cradle Book. Warner's own line on her stories--"bother the human heart, I'm tired of the human heart"--signals to Ivan her knowledge that the animals we share the world with see things quite differently: his own cat, he suspects, might let him die without too much emotion. John respects Charles Foster's Being a Beast for his decision to live like a badger (worm-eating and all) rather than just imagining it. Literature cited: Ivan has a piece in praise of STW's 1926 Lolly Willowes. John and Ivan also revere Mr Fortune's Maggot (1927), The Corner That Held Them (1948) and The Flint Anchor (1954). When the two compare STW to Hilary Mantel they are thinking of historical fiction (Wolf Hall especially) as well as her biting novel of the Thatcher era, Beyond Black. Donna Haraway's A Cyborg Manifesto (1985) comes up in the posthumanism discussion. Randall Jarrell, "The Sick Child" ("all that I've never thought of--think of me!") Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Ivan Kreilkamp, Indiana University English professor and no stranger to Recall This Book, is the author of two books on Victorian literature and one about Jennifer Egan. For this episode of Recall This Story, Ivan reads Sylvia Townsend Warner's "Foxcastle.” It was first published in The New Yorker in 1975 and became the final story in her final book, Kingdoms of Elfin. Before diving into the story itself, Ivan and John marvel at STW's weird greatness--and great weirdness. Like Hilary Mantel, she is drawn to the deep strangeness of other people. Prompted by John to think about these fairy stories as posthuman, Ivan notes the "dehumanization ceremonies" fairies perform on stolen changelings. John builds on the idea by bringing up the rise (in the 1960's) of alien abduction narratives. Do they form an invisible subtext to the abduction that begins the story? David Trotter's "Posthuman? Animal Corpses, Aeroplanes and Very High Frequencies in the Work of Valentine Ackland and Sylvia Townsend Warner" explores Warner's taste for non-human perspectives in e.g. The Cat's Cradle Book. Warner's own line on her stories--"bother the human heart, I'm tired of the human heart"--signals to Ivan her knowledge that the animals we share the world with see things quite differently: his own cat, he suspects, might let him die without too much emotion. John respects Charles Foster's Being a Beast for his decision to live like a badger (worm-eating and all) rather than just imagining it. Literature cited: Ivan has a piece in praise of STW's 1926 Lolly Willowes. John and Ivan also revere Mr Fortune's Maggot (1927), The Corner That Held Them (1948) and The Flint Anchor (1954). When the two compare STW to Hilary Mantel they are thinking of historical fiction (Wolf Hall especially) as well as her biting novel of the Thatcher era, Beyond Black. Donna Haraway's A Cyborg Manifesto (1985) comes up in the posthumanism discussion. Randall Jarrell, "The Sick Child" ("all that I've never thought of--think of me!") Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Ivan Kreilkamp, Indiana University English professor and no stranger to Recall This Book, is the author of two books on Victorian literature and one about Jennifer Egan. For this episode of Recall This Story, Ivan reads Sylvia Townsend Warner's "Foxcastle.” It was first published in The New Yorker in 1975 and became the final story in her final book, Kingdoms of Elfin. Before diving into the story itself, Ivan and John marvel at STW's weird greatness--and great weirdness. Like Hilary Mantel, she is drawn to the deep strangeness of other people. Prompted by John to think about these fairy stories as posthuman, Ivan notes the "dehumanization ceremonies" fairies perform on stolen changelings. John builds on the idea by bringing up the rise (in the 1960's) of alien abduction narratives. Do they form an invisible subtext to the abduction that begins the story? David Trotter's "Posthuman? Animal Corpses, Aeroplanes and Very High Frequencies in the Work of Valentine Ackland and Sylvia Townsend Warner" explores Warner's taste for non-human perspectives in e.g. The Cat's Cradle Book. Warner's own line on her stories--"bother the human heart, I'm tired of the human heart"--signals to Ivan her knowledge that the animals we share the world with see things quite differently: his own cat, he suspects, might let him die without too much emotion. John respects Charles Foster's Being a Beast for his decision to live like a badger (worm-eating and all) rather than just imagining it. Literature cited: Ivan has a piece in praise of STW's 1926 Lolly Willowes. John and Ivan also revere Mr Fortune's Maggot (1927), The Corner That Held Them (1948) and The Flint Anchor (1954). When the two compare STW to Hilary Mantel they are thinking of historical fiction (Wolf Hall especially) as well as her biting novel of the Thatcher era, Beyond Black. Donna Haraway's A Cyborg Manifesto (1985) comes up in the posthumanism discussion. Randall Jarrell, "The Sick Child" ("all that I've never thought of--think of me!") Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/fantasy

Ivan Kreilkamp, Indiana University English professor and no stranger to Recall This Book, is the author of two books on Victorian literature and one about Jennifer Egan. For this episode of Recall This Story, Ivan reads Sylvia Townsend Warner's "Foxcastle.” It was first published in The New Yorker in 1975 and became the final story in her final book, Kingdoms of Elfin. Before diving into the story itself, Ivan and John marvel at STW's weird greatness--and great weirdness. Like Hilary Mantel, she is drawn to the deep strangeness of other people. Prompted by John to think about these fairy stories as posthuman, Ivan notes the "dehumanization ceremonies" fairies perform on stolen changelings. John builds on the idea by bringing up the rise (in the 1960's) of alien abduction narratives. Do they form an invisible subtext to the abduction that begins the story? David Trotter's "Posthuman? Animal Corpses, Aeroplanes and Very High Frequencies in the Work of Valentine Ackland and Sylvia Townsend Warner" explores Warner's taste for non-human perspectives in e.g. The Cat's Cradle Book. Warner's own line on her stories--"bother the human heart, I'm tired of the human heart"--signals to Ivan her knowledge that the animals we share the world with see things quite differently: his own cat, he suspects, might let him die without too much emotion. John respects Charles Foster's Being a Beast for his decision to live like a badger (worm-eating and all) rather than just imagining it. Literature cited: Ivan has a piece in praise of STW's 1926 Lolly Willowes. John and Ivan also revere Mr Fortune's Maggot (1927), The Corner That Held Them (1948) and The Flint Anchor (1954). When the two compare STW to Hilary Mantel they are thinking of historical fiction (Wolf Hall especially) as well as her biting novel of the Thatcher era, Beyond Black. Donna Haraway's A Cyborg Manifesto (1985) comes up in the posthumanism discussion. Randall Jarrell, "The Sick Child" ("all that I've never thought of--think of me!") Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/animal-studies

This Mayfly is part of a series commissioned by Derby University's Department of Nature Connectedness for The River Derwent.  With many thanks to Charles Foster, author and academic.   further info: annabel@annabelross.com 

We talk with Charles Foster the 3rd about what he does at SFG!

This week, medieval spells and modern cures, as we look back at some podcast highlights with Mary C Flannery and Charles Foster.'Textual Magic: Charms and Written Amulets in Medieval England', by Katherine Storm Hindley'Ten Trips: The new reality of psychedelics', by Andy Mitchell'Psychedelics: The revolutionary drugs that could change your life – a guide from the expert', by David Nutt'I feel love: MDMA and the quest for connection in a fractured world', by Rachel Nuwer'Psychonauts: Drugs and the making of the modern mind', by Mike JayProduced by Charlotte Pardy Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Missed the live panel at SXSW EDU? Tune in to our special episode where Ben Kornell of Edtech Insiders hosts a compelling discussion with AI thought leaders Amanda Bickerstaff of AI for Education, Charles Foster, and Steve Shapiro from Finetune. Since ChatGPT's launch in November 2022, these trailblazers have been integrating generative AI into educational contexts, pioneering new approaches and solutions.Revisit their insightful conversation on the innovative applications they're spearheading, and the exciting opportunities and significant challenges ahead for educational technology. This recorded session offers valuable perspectives for educators, tech enthusiasts, and anyone interested in the future intersection of AI and education. Don't miss out on these expert insights—perfect for those keen on understanding where education technology is headed next!

Hver dag dræber vi mennesker andre dyr - f.eks. dyr vi spiser, bruger til forsøg eller kæledyr vi afliver. Alligevel ryddede Giraffen Marius' død forsider over hele verden. Hvorfor bliver et enkelt dyreliv pludseligt så vigtigt? Og hvorfor har vi i det hele taget dyr i zoologiske haver? Dét og mere til bliver vi klogere på, når vi hører fra to dyrlæger, der begge medvirker i den aktuelle dokumentar "Livet og andre problemer", der netop tager udgangspunkt i sagen om Marius. Medvirkende: Dyrlæge, forsker og forfatter Charles Foster, der har levet som bl.a. odder og grævling & dyrlæge og Zoologisk direktør i Københavns Zoo Mads Frost Berthelsen, der i dag har overtaget faklen fra Bengt Holst, men som i sin tid var den dyrlæge i zooen, der skød giraffen Marius. Vært: Emma Elisabeth Holtet See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome back to Mutual Presents. This week, we're back with The Mysterious Traveler! This tremendously popular radio show was truly an all around favorite for any mystery lover of the time. Tonight's double feature is "They Who Sleep" and "The Case of Charles Foster"! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, we explore guest, Charles Foster's unique approach to understanding animals by immersing himself in their world. From roaming the earth like a red stag to navigating the landscape as a badger, Foster takes us on a thought-provoking adventure that challenges our perceptions and sheds light on the intricate connection between humans and beasts. We also delve into the complex relationship with hunting, unraveling the layers of our primal instincts and ethical considerations. Join us for a compelling conversation that ventures into the heart of the animal kingdom and the age-old dance between predator and prey. Check Out Charles Foster HERE: https://www.charlesfoster.co.uk/ Check Out Being a Beast HERE: LINK Check Out Everything HuntStand:  Download HuntStand Pro Whitetail Download HuntStand Pro Our Partners & Discount Codes:  SAVAGE ARMS  YAMAHA OUTDOORS   MATHEWS ARCHERY  STEALTH CAM - 10% Off Code: HUNTSTAND10  MUDDY OUTDOORS - 10% Off Code: HUNTSTAND10 SOG KNIVES - 10% Off Code: HUNTSTAND10 HAWK HUNTING - 10% Off Code: HUNTSTAND10  TENZING OUTDOORS - 10% Off Code: HUNTSTAND10 TRUGLO - 10% Off Code: HUNTSTAND10  HALO OPTICS - 10% Off Code: HUNTSTAND10  AVIAN X - 10% Off Code: HUNTSTAND10  ZINK CALLS - 10% Off Code: HUNTSTAND10 BOSS BUCK - 10% Off Code: HUNTSTAND10  EVOLVED - 10% Off Code: HUNTSTAND10 CYCLOPS - 10% Off Code: HUNTSTAND10 NAP ARCHERY - 10% Off Code: HUNTSTAND10  BLOODSPORT ARROWS - 10% Off Code: HUNTSTAND10 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome back to Mutual Presents. This week, we're back with The Mysterious Traveler! This tremendously popular radio show was truly an all around favorite for any mystery lover of the time. Tonight's double feature is "They Who Sleep" and "The Case of Charles Foster"! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dorothy Scott was enjoying a night out with co-workers when she noticed one of her co-workers did not look well and had a red mark on his arm. Dorothy and another one of her co-workers, Pam Head, decided to take him to the emergency room where they found out he had been bitten by a spider. Dorothy and Pam sat in the waiting room for their friend to be released. After being released Dorothy left them to go get her car in order to pick them up but when she hadn't returned after a couple of minutes her co-workers started to get worried. Minutes later her car comes flying through the parking lot leaving them behind and that was the last time they ever saw her. Armin Meiwes was abandoned by his father at a young age turning him into a lonely child just wanting his family to be together again. By the age of 12 Armin began to develop a certain desire most people don't have the desire for but after putting up an ad people reached out to him with that exact same desire. Gayle Corris and Charles Foster had been married for a little over a year and had just moved to Ferndale, Washington about two weeks before Charles made a 911 call to confess what he had done and wanted to do.

This week, Charles Foster explores how psychedelic drugs are changing lives; and Alan Jenkins on the lure of the open seas.'Ten Trips: The new reality of psychedelics', by Andy Mitchell'Psychedelics: The revolutionary drugs that could change your life – aguide from the expert', by David Nutt'I feel love: MDMA and the quest for connection in a fractured world',by Rachel Nuwer'Psychonauts: Drugs and the making of the modern mind', by Mike Jay'Sailing Alone: A history', by Richard J KingProduced by Charlotte Pardy Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the very first Off Script podcast of 2024 and a happy new year to you! Sonal and our resident new dad Robbie Greenfield are back in the studio together.   Our first big interview of 2024 is with author, traveller, barrister, professor of law, part-time judge and former vet Charles Foster to find out what it's like to live as a badger. And in his first rant of the year Robbie has looked at the strange emptiness of gift buying if you happen to be a member of the super rich elite.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Choice Classic Radio presents The Mysterious Traveler, which aired from 1943 to 1952. Today we bring to you the episode titled "The Case of Charles Foster.”  Please consider supporting our show by becoming a patron at http://choiceclassicradio.com We hope you enjoy the show!

The prevalence of spending ample time indoors, engaging in screen-based activities, is narrowing our experiential landscape.As we constantly underutilize our sensory capabilities, we are missing out on the rich and vibrant information available from the colorful world around us.To thrive in a multi-dimensional world, reawakening our senses, enhancing our awareness of diverse experiences, and cultivating stronger connections with other species and nature are key.Charles Foster is an English writer, traveler, veterinarian, taxidermist, barrister, and philosopher. He is known for his books and articles on Natural History, travel, theology, law, and medical ethics. His latest publication, Cry of the Wild: Eight Animals Under Siege, explores the complexity, beauty, and fragility of wild lives living alongside humans.Charles and Greg talk about our potential to unlock additional sensory experiences, how to increase our “empathy muscles” by studying other species, nurturing our ability to see otherness, and the need for cultivating humanity in education.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:How should we think about reconstructing education to cultivate humanity in a more authentic way?42:47: We need to teach the principle that relationships are everything, not just human relationships, but relationships with the non-human world. We need to say that the relationship between things is the web and weave of the cosmos and that anything which defeats that insight—whether it's the atomism of modern sociology which asserts that everyone is an island unto himself or whether it's things which lock us up physically in our rooms or on our screens—we've got to say that those things strike at the very heart of the way the universe is meant to be and that radical measures are therefore needed to restore relationship to its central place, not only in our philosophical understanding of the world but also in relation to our personal lives.On the theory of mind11:53: Direct experience is what we should be after, rather than a cognitive set of conclusions about what another person is thinking. So the theory of mind is a specifically adult human way of appreciating what, if we were non-adult humans, we would be able to have naturally.Is there a way we could foster a better relationship with the non-human world and instill this connection in our children?43:59: Relationship breeds an appetite for relationship, and if we go out into green, we will learn to love green, and that green is better than the gray of the breeze blocks from which our houses are made. There also needs to be a part of the compulsory curriculum in which people just go out and lie in a field or climb a tree. If you have had a childhood marinated in greenness, not only are you far less likely to suffer from ADHD or depression, but you're also far less likely to become, when you are an adult, a major trasher of the natural law.The business of observing is a two-way conversation.11:53: The whole business of observing is necessarily a two-way conversation; that's what relativity is all about, and it seems to me that exactly that principle applies at the level of a human looking at the bird that he's studying or the human looking at the rock that he's studying as well. Unless we enter into a conversation which allows both the observer and the observed to be changed, our perspective is going to be distorted by the fact that we have fallen prey to the delusion that we can be objective.Show Links:Recommended Resources:The Peregrine by J.A. BakerGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at University of OxfordCharles Foster's WebsiteCharles Foster on TwitterHis Work:Cry of the Wild: Eight animals under siegeBeing a Beast: Adventures Across the Species DivideBeing a Human: Adventures in Forty Thousand Years of ConsciousnessThe Screaming SkyIn The Hot Unconscious: An Indian JourneyChoosing Life, Choosing Death: The Tyranny of Autonomy in Medical Ethics and LawA little brown seaMedical Law: A Very Short Introduction

The Mysterious Traveler - The Case of Charles Foster -- Thank you for listening to this episode of the Foggy Jack Old Time Radio Show - Podcast!  Also make sure to follow us on our social media accounts! @Foggyjack13 Thank you to our sponsors and our fans! Please stay tuned for more spooky and awesome Halloween stuff!! -- SHOW FOUND AT ⁠https://archive.org/  --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/foggyjack13/message

Town Square with Ernie Manouse airs at 3 p.m. CT. Tune in on 88.7FM, listen online or subscribe to the podcast. Join the discussion at 888-486-9677, questions@townsquaretalk.org or @townsquaretalk. The future of DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) is in the hands of U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen, as thousands of dreamers enrolled in the program anxiously anticipate what the decision could mean for them. First, we speak with Charles Foster, Chairman of Foster Global, an immigration law firm, who explains the history of DACA and what the legal options are for the thousands of dreamers who would be impacted if Judge Hanen terminates the program. Then, we're joined by Cesar Espinosa who explains the programs FIEL Houston provides as well as its mission to empower the immigrant community in Houston, the state of Texas, and the U.S. We also talk to University of Houston Associate Professor of Law, Daniel Morales, who discusses the latest in immigration-related news in the U.S., including the investigation over two private planes that delivered migrants to California and the history behind immigration and its economic impact. Guests: Charles Foster Chairman, Foster Global, U.S. & Global Immigration Services Daniel Morales Associate Professor of Law, University of Houston Law Center Cesar Espinosa Executive Director, FIEL Houston Town Square with Ernie Manouse is a gathering space for the community to come together and discuss the day's most important and pressing issues. We also offer a free podcast here, on iTunes, and other apps

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Charles Foster is an immigration attorney and chairman of Foster LLP in Houston. His work includes being a Senior Immigration Policy Advisor for George W. Bush, an immigration policy advisor on the 2008 Obama campaign, and many others. His work in immigration law has made him one of the foremost experts in the field.    Foster joins host Loren Steffy to discuss the new Congress, what needs to happen to come to rational immigration policy changes, and much more. 

In the second half of our discussion about Christmas, Charles Foster, author of The Christmas Mystery, looks at some of the more sinister and less straightforward elements of the biblical Nativity narratives.   For Charles Foster: https://www.charlesfoster.co.uk/   Support our End Of Year Appeal: https://gtly.to/aAxRk0kQs   • Subscribe to the Unapologetic podcast: https://pod.link/1622170986 • More podcasts, free ebook & newsletter: https://premierunbelievable.com • Watch Unapologetic YouTube playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2Ds_nyh5gM_0OQDM3me0ZjLcNg2345GX • For conference & live events: http://www.unbelievable.live • For our apologetics courses: https://www.premierunbelievable.com/training • Support us in the USA: http://www.premierinsight.org/unbelievableshow • Support us in the rest of the world: https://www.premierunbelievable.com/donate

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Shard Theory in Nine Theses: a Distillation and Critical Appraisal, published by LawrenceC on December 19, 2022 on LessWrong. TL;DR: Shard theory is a new research program started by Quintin Pope and Alex Turner. Existing introductions tend to be relatively long winded and aimed at an introductory audience. Here, I outline what I think are the nine main theses of shard theory, so as to give a more concrete introduction and critique. Acknowledgements: Thanks to Thomas Kwa for the conversation that inspired this post. Thanks also to Alex Turner for several conversations about shard theory and Charles Foster and Teun Van Der Weij for substantial feedback on this writeup. Epistemic status: As I'm not a member of Team Shard, I'm probably misrepresenting Team Shard's beliefs in a few places here. Introduction Shard theory is a research program that aims to build a mechanistic model between training signals and learned values in agents. Drawing large amounts of inspiration from particular hypotheses about the human reward learning system, shard theory posits that the values of agents are best understood as sets of contextually activated heuristics shaped by the reward function. In this post, I'll attempt to outline nine of the main theses of shard theory, as of late 2022. I'll explain the novelty of each thesis, how it constrains expectations, and then give my opinions and suggest some few experiments that could be done to test the theses. Existing explainers of shard theory tend to be aimed at a relatively introductory audience and thus are relatively verbose. By default, I'll be addressing this post to someone with a decent amount of AI/ML research background, so I'll often explain things with reference to AI/ML terminology or with examples from deep learning. This post is aimed primarily at explaining what I see as the core claims, as opposed to justifying them; any missing justifications should not be attributed to failures of Team Shard. It's also worth noting that shard theory is an ongoing research program and not a battle-tested scientific theory, so many of these claims are likely to be revised or clarified over time. Related work Alex Turner's Reward is not the optimization target is probably the first real “shard theory” post. The post argues that, by default, the learned behavior of an RL agent is not well understood as maximizing reward. Instead, the post argues that we should try to study how reward signals lead to value formation in more detail. He uses a similar argument to argue against the traditional inner and outer alignment split in Inner and outer alignment decompose one hard problem into two extremely hard problems. David Udell's Shard Theory: An Overview first introduces the shard theory research program, as well as the terminology and core claims of shard theory. Turner and Pope's The shard theory of human values applies the shard theory to human value formation. It outlines three assumptions that the shard theory of human values makes regarding humans (the cortex is randomly initialized, the brain does self-supervised learning, and the brain does reinforcement learning). Other posts flesh out parts of the shard theory of human values (e.g. “Human value and biases are inaccessible to the genome”) and justify the use of human values as a case study for alignment. (“Humans provide an untapped wealth of evidence about alignment”, “Evolution is a bad analogy for AGI”.) Geoffrey Miller's The heritability of human values: A behavior genetic critique of Shard Theory argues that the high heritability of many kinds of human values contradicts the core claims of shard theory. Thomas Kwa's Failure modes in a shard theory alignment plan gives definitions for many of the key terms of shard theory and outlines a possible shard theory alignment plan, before raisin...

Why do only two of the four Gospels mention Jesus' birth? What if the Christmas story isn't true? Can we trust the biblical sources? Charles Foster, author of The Christmas Mystery, answers some of the tricky questions surrounding the Nativity narratives in the Bible.   For Charles Foster: https://www.charlesfoster.co.uk/   Support our End Of Year Appeal: https://gtly.to/aAxRk0kQs   • Subscribe to the Unapologetic podcast: https://pod.link/1622170986 • More podcasts, free ebook & newsletter: https://premierunbelievable.com • Watch Unapologetic YouTube playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2Ds_nyh5gM_0OQDM3me0ZjLcNg2345GX • For conference & live events: http://www.unbelievable.live • For our apologetics courses: https://www.premierunbelievable.com/training • Support us in the USA: http://www.premierinsight.org/unbelievableshow • Support us in the rest of the world: https://www.premierunbelievable.com/donate

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Don't design agents which exploit adversarial inputs, published by Alex Turner on November 18, 2022 on The AI Alignment Forum. Summary. Consider two common alignment design patterns: Optimizing for the output of a grader which evaluates plans, and Fixing a utility function and then argmaxing over all possible plans. These design patterns incentivize the agent to find adversarial inputs to the grader (e.g. "manipulate the simulated human grader into returning a high evaluation for this plan"). I'm pretty sure we won't find adversarially robust grading rules. Therefore, I think these alignment design patterns are doomed. In this first essay, I explore the adversarial robustness obstacle. In the next essay, I'll point out how this is obstacle is an artifact of these design patterns, and not any intrinsic difficulty of alignment. Thanks to Erik Jenner, Johannes Treutlein, Quintin Pope, Charles Foster, Andrew Critch, randomwalks, and Ulisse Mini for feedback. 1: Optimizing for the output of a grader One motif in some AI alignment proposals is: An actor which proposes plans, and A grader which evaluates them. For simplicity, imagine we want the AI to find a plan where it makes an enormous number of diamonds. We train an actor to propose plans which the grading procedure predicts lead to lots of diamonds. In this setting, here's one way of slicing up the problem: Outer alignment: Find a sufficiently good grader. Inner alignment: Train the actor to propose plans which the grader rates as highly possible (ideally argmaxing on grader output, but possibly just intent alignment with high grader output). This "grader optimization" paradigm ordains that the AI find plans which make the grader output good evaluations. An inner-aligned actor is singlemindedly motivated to find plans which are graded maximally well by the grader. Therefore, for any goal by which the grader may grade, an inner-aligned actor is positively searching for adversarial inputs which fool the grader into spitting out a high number! In the diamond case, if the actor is inner-aligned to the grading procedure, then the actor isn't actually aligned towards diamond-production. The actor is aligned towards diamond-production as quoted via the grader's evaluations. In the end, the actor is aligned to the evaluations. I think that there aren't clever ways around this issue. Under this motif, under this way of building an AI, you're not actually building an AI which cares about diamonds, and so you won't get a system which makes diamonds in the limit of its capability development. Three clarifying points: This motif concerns how the AI makes decisions—this isn't about training a network using a grading procedure, it's about the trained agent being motivated by a grading procedure. The grader doesn't have to actually exist in the world. This essay's critiques are not related to "reward tampering", where the actor messes with the grader's implementation in order to increase the grades received. The "grader" can be a mathematical expected utility function over all action-sequences which the agent could execute. For example, it might take the action sequence and the agent's current beliefs about the world, and e.g. predict the expected number of diamonds produced by the actions. "The AI optimizes for what humanity would say about each universe-history" is an instance of grader-optimization, but "the AI has human values" is not an instance of grader-optimization. The parable of evaluation-child an AI should optimize for the real-world things I value, not just my estimates of those things. — The Pointers Problem: Human Values Are A Function Of Humans' Latent Variables First, a mechanistically relevant analogy. Imagine a mother whose child has been goofing off at school and getting in trouble. The mom just wants her kid to t...

Charles Foster has spent a lot of time trying to deeply understand what it is like to be other than himself. It has led him to explore and emulate the life of badgers, foxes, and swifts as well as the lives of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers. In doing so he hopes to better understand all the people in his world and ultimately himself. He talks about his journey from a curious and wandering child to who he is today, including the place of religion and the place of science, both of which have the opportunity of enriching our view of the world and allowing to see into the other, but which also have the possibility of limiting our openness to inhabit otherness and therefore hinder our ability to better understand God.

Charles Foster considers the extraordinary variety of animals' sensory worldshttps://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/an-immense-world-ed-yong-book-review-charles-foster/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Against Relying on Evolution to Forecast AI Outcomes (Part 1), published by Quintin Pope on August 13, 2022 on The AI Alignment Forum. TL;DR: The dynamics of human learning processes and reward circuitry are more relevant than evolution for understanding how inner values arise from outer optimization criteria. This post is related to Steve Byrnes' Against evolution as an analogy for how humans will create AGI, but more narrowly focused on how we should make inferences about values. Thanks to Alex Turner, Charles Foster, and Logan Riggs for their feedback on a draft of this post. Introduction How should we expect AGI development to play out? True precognition appears impossible, so we use various analogies to AGI development, such as evolution, current day humans, or current day machine learning. Such analogies are far from perfect, but we still may be able to extract useful information by carefully examining them. In particular, we want to understand how inner values relate to the outer optimization criteria. Human evolution is one possible source of data on this question. In this post, I'll argue that human evolution actually provides very little usable evidence on AGI outcomes. In contrast, analogies to the human learning process are much more fruitful. Inner values versus outer optimization criteria One way people motivate extreme levels of concern about inner misalignment is to reference the fact that evolution failed to align humans to the objective of maximizing inclusive genetic fitness. From Eliezer Yudkowsky's AGI Ruin post: 16. Even if you train really hard on an exact loss function, that doesn't thereby create an explicit internal representation of the loss function inside an AI that then continues to pursue that exact loss function in distribution-shifted environments. Humans don't explicitly pursue inclusive genetic fitness; outer optimization even on a very exact, very simple loss function doesn't produce inner optimization in that direction. This happens in practice in real life, it is what happened in the only case we know about. I don't think that "evolution -> human values" is the most useful reference class when trying to understand how outer optimization criteria relate to inner values. Evolution didn't directly optimize over our values. It optimized over our learning process and reward circuitry. Once you condition on a particular human's learning process + reward circuitry configuration + the human's environment, you screen off the influence of evolution on that human's values. So, there are really (at least) two classes of observations from which we can draw evidence: "evolution's inclusive genetic fitness criteria -> a human's learned values" (as mediated by evolution's influence over the human's learning process + reward circuitry) "a particular human's learning process + reward circuitry + training environment -> the human's learned values" I will present five reasons why I think evidence from (2) “human learning -> human values” is more relevant to predicting AGI. 1: Training an AI is more similar to human learning than to evolution The relationship we want to make inferences about is: "a particular AI's learning process + reward function + training environment -> the AI's learned values" I think that "AI learning -> AI values" is much more similar to "human learning -> human values" than it is to "evolution -> human values". Steve Byrnes makes this case in much more detail in his post on the matter. Two of the ways I think AI learning more closely resembles human learning, and not evolution, are: The simple type signatures of the two processes. Evolution is a bi-level optimization process, with evolution optimizing over genes, and the genes specifying the human learning process, which then optimizes over human cognition. Evolution does not...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Shard Theory: An Overview, published by David Udell on August 11, 2022 on LessWrong. Generated as part of SERI MATS, Team Shard's research, under John Wentworth. Many thanks to Quintin Pope, Alex Turner, Charles Foster, Steve Byrnes, and Logan Smith for feedback, and to everyone else I've discussed this with recently! All mistakes are my own. Introduction Shard theory is a research program aimed at explaining the systematic relationships between the reinforcement schedules and learned values of reinforcement-learning agents. It consists of a basic ontology of reinforcement learners, their internal computations, and their relationship to their environment. It makes several predictions about a range of RL systems, both RL models and humans. Indeed, shard theory can be thought of as simply applying the modern ML lens to the question of value learning under reinforcement in artificial and natural neural networks! Some of shard theory's confident predictions can be tested immediately in modern RL agents. Less confident predictions about i.i.d.-trained language models can also be tested now. Shard theory also has numerous retrodictions about human psychological phenomena that are otherwise mysterious from only the viewpoint of EU maximization, with no further substantive mechanistic account of human learned values. Finally, shard theory fails some retrodictions in humans; on further inspection, these lingering confusions might well falsify the theory. If shard theory captures the essential dynamic relating reinforcement schedules and learned values, then we'll be able to carry out a steady stream of further experiments yielding a lot of information about how to reliably instill more of the values we want in our RL agents and fewer of those we don't. Shard theory's framework implies that alignment success is substantially continuous, and that even very limited alignment successes can still mean enormous quantities of value preserved for future humanity's ends. If shard theory is true, then further shard science will progressively yield better and better alignment results. The remainder of this post will be an overview of the basic claims of shard theory. Future posts will detail experiments and preregister predictions, and look at the balance of existing evidence for and against shard theory from humans. Reinforcement Strengthens Select Computations A reinforcement learner is an ML model trained via a reinforcement schedule, a pairing of world states and reinforcement events. We-the-devs choose when to dole out these reinforcement events, either handwriting a simple reinforcement algorithm to do it for us or having human overseers give out reinforcement. The reinforcement learner itself is a neural network whose computations are reinforced or anti-reinforced by reinforcement events. After sufficient training, reinforcement often manages to reinforce those computations that are good at our desired task. We'll henceforth focus on deep reinforcement learners: RL models specifically comprised of multi-layered neural networks. Deep RL can be seen as a supercategory of many deep learning tasks. In deep RL, the model you're training receives feedback, and this feedback fixes how the model is updated afterwards via SGD. In many RL setups, because the model's outputs influence its future observations, the model exercises some control over what it will see and be updated on in the future. RL wherein the model's outputs don't affect the distribution of its future observations is called supervised learning. So a general theory of deep RL models may well have implications for supervised learning models too. This is important for the experimental tractability of a theory of RL agents, as appreciably complicated RL setups are a huge pain in the ass to get working, while supervised learnin...

Charles Jason Vosseler (known as “CJ”) & William “Billy” Martin, were both toddlers in the fall of 1986 when their parents, 44 year old Charles Martin Vosseler & 38 year old Ruth Ann Vosseler (Parker), were in the early stages of a seemingly amicable divorce in Rockford, New Hampshire. On October 9, 1986, Charlie picked up 3 year old CJ & 2 year old Billy, intending to spending the weekend with an aunt in Connecticut, returning the following Sunday. Sunday, October 12th came and went with no sign of Charlie or the boys. In the first days following their disappearance, it became abundantly clear to Ruth that Charlie abducted the boys, vanishing into thin air. However, it wasn't until later that she learned how much planning went into the kidnapping AND just how long this awful plan had been in motion. At the time of this recording, CJ Vosseler is 39 years old & Billy Vosseler, 38. Charles Martin Vosseler, if he is still alive, is 80 years old. He has ties to Oklahoma, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Florida. He has a noticeable eye condition called horizontal nystagmus causing his pupils to vibrate horizontally, and he may wear glasses. His known aliases include:Charles Foster, Charlie Wilson, Charles Malcolm Amidon, Charles M. Vosseler, Charles M. Wilson, Charles Wilson, Charles M. Amidon, & Charles M. Vosseler, Jr. Date(s) of Birth Used: March 6, 1942 (ACTUAL), March 6, 1943, & February 6, 1944If you have any information regarding the whereabouts of Charlie, CJ or Billy Vosseler, please contact the Boston Field Office of the FBI at (857) 386-2000. Check out our girls at True Crime New England here!

#Shakur Stevenson #EdgarBerlanga #oscardelahoya ☎️Shakur Stevenson Vs. Emanuel Navarrete

This episode is a chat with Charles Foster III, a project manager at Privateer Press.

In this Pandemic Perspectives Podcast, Ideas Roadshow founder and host Howard Burton talks to bestselling author and University of Oxford law professor Charles Foster on how the coronavirus pandemic reveals how so many of us—including so many scientists—have replaced rigorous scientific skepticism with an alarming cult of "scientism." Ideas Roadshow's Pandemic Perspectives Project consists of three distinct, reinforcing elements: a documentary film (Pandemic Perspectives), book (Pandemic Perspectives: A filmmaker's journey in 10 essays) and a series of 24 detailed podcasts with many of the film's expert participants. Visit www.ideasroadshow.com for more details. Howard Burton is the founder of Ideas Roadshow and host of the Ideas Roadshow Podcast. He can be reached at howard@ideasroadshow.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In this Pandemic Perspectives Podcast, Ideas Roadshow founder and host Howard Burton talks to bestselling author and University of Oxford law professor Charles Foster on how the coronavirus pandemic reveals how so many of us—including so many scientists—have replaced rigorous scientific skepticism with an alarming cult of "scientism." Ideas Roadshow's Pandemic Perspectives Project consists of three distinct, reinforcing elements: a documentary film (Pandemic Perspectives), book (Pandemic Perspectives: A filmmaker's journey in 10 essays) and a series of 24 detailed podcasts with many of the film's expert participants. Visit www.ideasroadshow.com for more details. Howard Burton is the founder of Ideas Roadshow and host of the Ideas Roadshow Podcast. He can be reached at howard@ideasroadshow.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

In this Pandemic Perspectives Podcast, Ideas Roadshow founder and host Howard Burton talks to bestselling author and University of Oxford law professor Charles Foster on how the coronavirus pandemic reveals how so many of us—including so many scientists—have replaced rigorous scientific skepticism with an alarming cult of "scientism." Ideas Roadshow's Pandemic Perspectives Project consists of three distinct, reinforcing elements: a documentary film (Pandemic Perspectives), book (Pandemic Perspectives: A filmmaker's journey in 10 essays) and a series of 24 detailed podcasts with many of the film's expert participants. Visit www.ideasroadshow.com for more details. Howard Burton is the founder of Ideas Roadshow and host of the Ideas Roadshow Podcast. He can be reached at howard@ideasroadshow.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

In this Pandemic Perspectives Podcast, Ideas Roadshow founder and host Howard Burton talks to bestselling author and University of Oxford law professor Charles Foster on how the coronavirus pandemic reveals how so many of us—including so many scientists—have replaced rigorous scientific skepticism with an alarming cult of "scientism." Ideas Roadshow's Pandemic Perspectives Project consists of three distinct, reinforcing elements: a documentary film (Pandemic Perspectives), book (Pandemic Perspectives: A filmmaker's journey in 10 essays) and a series of 24 detailed podcasts with many of the film's expert participants. Visit www.ideasroadshow.com for more details. Howard Burton is the founder of Ideas Roadshow and host of the Ideas Roadshow Podcast. He can be reached at howard@ideasroadshow.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this Pandemic Perspectives Podcast, Ideas Roadshow founder and host Howard Burton talks to bestselling author and University of Oxford law professor Charles Foster on how the coronavirus pandemic reveals how so many of us—including so many scientists—have replaced rigorous scientific skepticism with an alarming cult of "scientism." Ideas Roadshow's Pandemic Perspectives Project consists of three distinct, reinforcing elements: a documentary film (Pandemic Perspectives), book (Pandemic Perspectives: A filmmaker's journey in 10 essays) and a series of 24 detailed podcasts with many of the film's expert participants. Visit www.ideasroadshow.com for more details. Howard Burton is the founder of Ideas Roadshow and host of the Ideas Roadshow Podcast. He can be reached at howard@ideasroadshow.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

In this Pandemic Perspectives Podcast, Ideas Roadshow founder and host Howard Burton talks to bestselling author and University of Oxford law professor Charles Foster on how the coronavirus pandemic reveals how so many of us—including so many scientists—have replaced rigorous scientific skepticism with an alarming cult of "scientism." Ideas Roadshow's Pandemic Perspectives Project consists of three distinct, reinforcing elements: a documentary film (Pandemic Perspectives), book (Pandemic Perspectives: A filmmaker's journey in 10 essays) and a series of 24 detailed podcasts with many of the film's expert participants. Visit www.ideasroadshow.com for more details. Howard Burton is the founder of Ideas Roadshow and host of the Ideas Roadshow Podcast. He can be reached at howard@ideasroadshow.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

In this Pandemic Perspectives Podcast, Ideas Roadshow founder and host Howard Burton talks to bestselling author and University of Oxford law professor Charles Foster on how the coronavirus pandemic reveals how so many of us—including so many scientists—have replaced rigorous scientific skepticism with an alarming cult of "scientism." Ideas Roadshow's Pandemic Perspectives Project consists of three distinct, reinforcing elements: a documentary film (Pandemic Perspectives), book (Pandemic Perspectives: A filmmaker's journey in 10 essays) and a series of 24 detailed podcasts with many of the film's expert participants. Visit www.ideasroadshow.com for more details. Howard Burton is the founder of Ideas Roadshow and host of the Ideas Roadshow Podcast. He can be reached at howard@ideasroadshow.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

In this Pandemic Perspectives Podcast, Ideas Roadshow founder and host Howard Burton talks to bestselling author and University of Oxford law professor Charles Foster on how the coronavirus pandemic reveals how so many of us—including so many scientists—have replaced rigorous scientific skepticism with an alarming cult of "scientism." Ideas Roadshow's Pandemic Perspectives Project consists of three distinct, reinforcing elements: a documentary film (Pandemic Perspectives), book (Pandemic Perspectives: A filmmaker's journey in 10 essays) and a series of 24 detailed podcasts with many of the film's expert participants. Visit www.ideasroadshow.com for more details. Howard Burton is the founder of Ideas Roadshow and host of the Ideas Roadshow Podcast. He can be reached at howard@ideasroadshow.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

On the afternoon of July 18, 1984, 41 year old James Huberty entered a McDonald's on San Ysidro Blvd. in San Ysidro neighborhood of San Diego, California. Huberty walked in with a 9mm semi automatic pistol, a 9mm Uzi Carbine, and a Winchester 1200 12 gauge pump action shot gun. He also had a box and a cloth bag filled with hundreds of rounds of ammunition for each weapon.  At the time, there were about 45 customers in the restaurant. He began his spree by killing 22 year old manager, Neva Caine, shooting her below the left eye. During the 77 minute event, Huberty shouted profanities and claimed to have killed "thousands" in Vietnam. It was later determined that Huberty had never served in any branch of the military. In total, Huberty killed 21 men, woman, and children, ranging in ages from four months old to 74 years old. At 5:17pm, Huberty was shot in the chest by a 27 year old SWAT sniper named Charles Foster. The Shot killed James Huberty instantly. In the days leading up to the massacre, Huberty tried to contact a mental health clinic, with the receptionist writing down the wrong last name. His motivation has never been made clear.