American professor of cognitive science
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11 episodes with Douglas Hofstadter
5 episodes with Douglas Hofstadter
6 episodes with Douglas Hofstadter
2 episodes with Douglas Hofstadter
2 episodes with Douglas Hofstadter
2 episodes with Douglas Hofstadter
2 episodes with Douglas Hofstadter
2 episodes with Douglas Hofstadter
2 episodes with Douglas Hofstadter
Amjad Masad set out more than a decade ago to pursue the dream of unleashing 1B software creators around the world. With millions of Replit users pre-ChatGPT, that vision was already becoming a reality. Turbocharged by LLMs, the vision of enabling anyone to code—from 12-year-olds in India to knowledge workers in the U.S.—seems less and less radical. In this episode, Amjad explains how an explosion in the developer population could change the economy, society and more. He also discusses his early days programming in Jordan, his unique management approach and what AI will mean for the global economy. Hosted by David Cahn and Sonya Huang, Sequoia Capital Mentioned in this episode: On the Naturalness of Software: 2012 paper on applying NLP to code Attention Is All You Need: Seminal 2017 paper on transformers I Am a Strange Loop: 2007 follow up to Douglas Hofstadter's 1979 classic Gödel, Escher, Bach that explores how self-referential systems can describe minds On Lisp: Paul Graham's 1993 book on the original programming language of AI
Few concepts are more important to our society than resilience. Agnostic of domain, of nation, culture, and scale (as vital, indeed, to the individual life as to the planetary civilization), it would be impossible to overstate the pressure on us to understand it. If resilience is a core competency of our time, it would not be hyperbole to say that Dr. David Woods one of our most important thinkers. Origins Podcast WebsiteFlourishing Commons NewsletterShow Notes:three mile island (07:20)resilience engineering (12:30)the theory of graceful extensibility (12:30)The Risk Society by Ulrich Beck (13:10)how do you know? (14:00)scientific revolutions and paradigm shifts (15:00)retrenchment vs revitalization (16:00)the novelty inequality (28:00)Simon DeDeo on Origins (28:30)Mars Climate Orbiter report (31:00)'faster, better, cheaper' pressure (32:00)Erik Hollnagle and Efficiency-Thoroughness Trade-Off principle (33:30)graceful extensibility (36:20)Douglas Hofstadter and strange loops (41:00)SNAFU catchers (42:00)dialectic between the individual and collective (44:00)Arnold Toynbee (45:00)multi-hazards and changing climate (52:20)John Doyle (54:00)Elinor Ostrom and reciprocity (54:20)Lightning Round (01:01:30):Book: Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas HofstadterPassion: History and Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History by Helen Hornbeck TannerHeart sing: graceful extensibility and resilience engineering video seriesScrewed up: building interfaces to the knowledge of resilienceFind David online:Ohio State University siteLogo artwork by Cristina GonzalezMusic by swelo on all streaming platforms or @swelomusic on social media
Neal reveals how ducks prevented him settling in the US, uncovers your treadmill cat's OCD hell, closes in on the surprising identity of the oligarchs of knitting, offers practical advice on self facing voodoo doll feedback loops for your active retirement, remembers The Onion print edition and discusses the sick, sick world of wireless earphones,actuaries and the Mandela Effect, fresh thinking on bus basements, taking too long to choose a hobby, a career in head stitching, Irish folklore's Fionn Mac Cumhaill and the Salmon of Knowledge, the trouble with asking yourself a question, the book I am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter, the childhood bear hoax, actuary snobbery, pre wired garments, a spontaneous dog, a bootlegging cat, air conditioning versus guns, navigating American multi layered doors, childhood paper rounds on sitcoms and more. CONTACT THE SHOW: Visit IntoYourHead.ie/Contact. LOW BITRATE EDITION: A new lightweight alt feed of Into Your Head for the bandwidth impaired - See IntoYourHead.ie/Low. INTO YOUR HEAD SHORTS: On YouTube, TikTok, Instagram or on site - Go to IntoYourHead.ie/Shorts. LICENSE: Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 - Attribution: Neal O'Carroll - Far future humans can find hundreds of shows on Archive dot org.
Welcome to the complete Iceberg of Consciousness. As a listener of TOE you can get a special 20% off discount to The Economist and all it has to offer! Visit https://www.economist.com/toe Join My New Substack (Personal Writings): https://curtjaimungal.substack.com Listen on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/SpotifyTOE Become a YouTube Member (Early Access Videos): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdWIQh9DGG6uhJk8eyIFl1w/join --------------------- LAYER 1 01:31 – Introduction to Layer 1 01:38 – What Is Consciousness? 04:20 – The Mind-Body Problem 06:02 – Sleep, Dreams, and Altered States 08:53 – Free Will vs. Determinism 10:58 – The Self and Identity LAYER 2 12:56 – Introduction to Layer 2 13:02 – The Hard Problem of Consciousness 16:59 – Qualia and Phenomenal Consciousness 19:27 – Advaita Vedanta (Non-Dualism) 22:59 – John Vervaeke's Relevance Realization 24:45 – Panpsychism and the Combination Problem 26:58 – Buddhist Consciousness (Yogācāra & Madhyamaka) 29:04 – Global Workspace Theory 31:59 – Carl Jung's Explanation for Consciousness LAYER 3 36:03 – Introduction to Layer 3 36:47 – Heidegger's Concept of Dasein 39:28 – Attention Schema Theory (Michael Graziano) 42:53 – EM-Field Topology & Boundary Problem (Andrés Gómez Emilsson) 46:49 – Joscha Bach's Theory 53:41 – Donald Hoffman's Theory 57:47 – Nir Lahav's Relativistic Consciousness LAYER 4 01:05:46 – Introduction to Layer 4 01:06:25 – Douglas Hofstadter's Strange Loops 01:11:50 – Penrose's Quantum Consciousness 01:16:04 – Christopher Langan's CTMU 01:20:31 – Johnjoe McFadden's CEMI Field Theory 01:24:24 – David Chalmers' Extended Mind Hypothesis 01:29:18 – Iain McGilchrist's Relational Dual-Aspect Monism LAYER 5 01:33:04 – Introduction to Layer 5 01:34:35 – Bernardo Kastrup's Analytic Idealism 01:38:54 – Karl Friston's Enactive Approach / Free Energy Principle 01:42:12 – Alfred North Whitehead's Pan-Experientialism 01:46:56 – Mark Solms' Felt Uncertainty & Affective Theory 01:51:20 – Thomas Metzinger's Minimal Phenomenal Selfhood --------------------- Support TOE on Patreon: https://patreon.com/curtjaimungal Twitter: https://twitter.com/TOEwithCurt Discord Invite: https://discord.com/invite/kBcnfNVwqs #science #consciousness Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This episode is sponsored by Thuma. Thuma is a modern design company that specializes in timeless home essentials that are mindfully made with premium materials and intentional details. To get $100 towards your first bed purchase, go to http://thuma.co/eyeonai In this episode of the Eye on AI podcast, Pedro Domingos, renowned AI researcher and author of The Master Algorithm, joins Craig Smith to explore the evolution of machine learning, the resurgence of Bayesian AI, and the future of artificial intelligence. Pedro unpacks the ongoing battle between Bayesian and Frequentist approaches, explaining why probability is one of the most misunderstood concepts in AI. He delves into Bayesian networks, their role in AI decision-making, and how they powered Google's ad system before deep learning. We also discuss how Bayesian learning is still outperforming humans in medical diagnosis, search & rescue, and predictive modeling, despite its computational challenges. The conversation shifts to deep learning's limitations, with Pedro revealing how neural networks might be just a disguised form of nearest-neighbor learning. He challenges conventional wisdom on AGI, AI regulation, and the scalability of deep learning, offering insights into why Bayesian reasoning and analogical learning might be the future of AI. We also dive into analogical learning—a field championed by Douglas Hofstadter—exploring its impact on pattern recognition, case-based reasoning, and support vector machines (SVMs). Pedro highlights how AI has cycled through different paradigms, from symbolic AI in the '80s to SVMs in the 2000s, and why the next big breakthrough may not come from neural networks at all. From theoretical AI debates to real-world applications, this episode offers a deep dive into the science behind AI learning methods, their limitations, and what's next for machine intelligence. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and hit the notification bell for more expert discussions on AI, technology, and the future of innovation! Stay Updated: Craig Smith Twitter: https://twitter.com/craigss Eye on A.I. Twitter: https://twitter.com/EyeOn_AI (00:00) Introduction (02:55) The Five Tribes of Machine Learning Explained (06:34) Bayesian vs. Frequentist: The Probability Debate (08:27) What is Bayes' Theorem & How AI Uses It (12:46) The Power & Limitations of Bayesian Networks (16:43) How Bayesian Inference Works in AI (18:56) The Rise & Fall of Bayesian Machine Learning (20:31) Bayesian AI in Medical Diagnosis & Search and Rescue (25:07) How Google Used Bayesian Networks for Ads (28:56) The Role of Uncertainty in AI Decision-Making (30:34) Why Bayesian Learning is Computationally Hard (34:18) Analogical Learning – The Overlooked AI Paradigm (38:09) Support Vector Machines vs. Neural Networks (41:29) How SVMs Once Dominated Machine Learning (45:30) The Future of AI – Bayesian, Neural, or Hybrid? (50:38) Where AI is Heading Next
Car sits down with Chris Guida in a focused discussion around Guadalajara's Bitcoin ecosystem. The conversation examines the challenges of establishing Bitcoin-only spaces and the cultural distinctions between Guadalajara and Mexico City in their approaches to Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. Chris provides valuable insights into the significance of Bolt 12 and the critical role of decentralized payment systems in promoting sovereignty and transformative potential of the Lightning Network. The episode also discusses the philosophy of decentralization, practical strategies for onboarding developers, and how the Lightning Network could fundamentally decentralize the infrastructure of the internet.Main Discussion Topics:Guadalajara's Bitcoin Scene and Hacker Garage.Bitcoin vs. Crypto in MexicoHow Lightning could decentralize the internet itself.Lightning Network: The promise of Bolt 12, Phoenix Wallet, and decentralized LSPs.Challenges of Building Communities: Comparing Austin and Guadalajara's approaches to supporting Bitcoin builders.Chris's Favorite Book: Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter.Tracklist:renaissancesovereigntybuilderscypherpunkprotocolscryptographyevolutionarbiterautonomyconnectivityfrontiersresonancelocalizationideologysynergyscaffoldingpersistenceFollow the conversation for the ep on Stacker NewsFollow Chris on TwitterZap Chris on NostrFollow Chris on GitHubFollow Car on NostrFollow Car on SNLearn more about PlebLabThriller links:Zap Thriller on FountainSubscribe to ThrillerSubscribe to Thriller epFollow Thriller Bitcoin on NostrFollow Thriller Bitcoin on TwitterFollow Thriller Bitcoin on YouTube & Zap.StreamAdvertise with Thriller
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Recording of Off the Shelf Radio Show from WDLR with co-hosts Nicole Fowles and Hannah Simpson, with Guest Ben Coy, executive director of The Central Ohio Symphony. This week we chat with Ben Coy about the upcoming symphony season, the Dali Quartet at the Liberty Library, and culture passes. And, of course, what we're reading!! Recommendations include Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter, The September House by Carissa Orlando, and Savvy by Ingrid Law. Read more about today's episode here. Listen live every Friday morning at 9 AM https://wdlrradio.com/program-schedule/off-the-shelf/ This episode originally aired on October 4, 2024.
- Video on BitChute: https://www.bitchute.com/video/rGzVgxMDcDmf - Video on Rumble (Only the First Hour): https://rumble.com/v5fyj6s-reading-books-part-8-monday-september-23-1000-am-to-1200-pm-pst-asmr.html - Video on Odysee: https://odysee.com/@chycho:6/reading-books,-part-8-monday,-september:5 - Video on CensorTube: https://youtube.com/live/JSF7KoCIXTY ▶️ Matrix: https://matrix.to/#/#chychonians:matrix.org SoundCloud PLAYLISTS: - Books: https://soundcloud.com/chycho/sets/books - Podcasts: https://soundcloud.com/chycho/sets/chycho TIMESTAMPS: - Salutations and Random Discussion - Today's Snack: Kuku, KooKoo (10:12-11:22) - Alex Ross Art - Introduction to Readings - 1st Reading, Book #19: "Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid" (GEB) by Douglas Hofstadter, 1979, p.64-70 (Introduction 15:53, Reading 26:48-56:04) - 2nd Reading, Book #5: "Dune" by Frank Herbert, 1965, p.203-207, Muad'Dib (Introduction 57:22, Reading 1:02:28-1:20:09) - Closing PLAYLIST: Book Club (Books and Readings) https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9sfzC9bUPxl9cjsdPnm5t1ksaHFtkRL_ ▶️ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/chycho ▶️ Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/chycho ▶️ Substack: https://chycho.substack.com/ ▶️ Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/chycho ▶️ Subscribe Star: https://www.subscribestar.com/chycho ▶️ Streamlabs at: https://streamlabs.com/chycholive ▶️ YouTube Membership: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCe4HBBAeK0CYoir4LjXU8fA/join ▶️ ...and crypto, see below. ***WEBSITE*** ▶️ Website: http://www.chycho.com ***VIDEO PLATFORMS*** ▶️ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@chycho ▶️ BitChute: https://www.bitchute.com/channel/chycho ▶️ Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/chycho ▶️ Odysee: https://odysee.com/$/invite/@chycho:6 ▶️ Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/chycholive ***FORUM*** ▶️ Matrix: https://matrix.to/#/#chychonians:matrix.org ▶️ Guilded Server: https://www.guilded.gg/chycho ***SOCIAL MEDIA*** ▶️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/chycho ▶️ Minds: https://www.minds.com/chycho ▶️ Gab: https://gab.ai/chycho ▶️ Vk: https://vk.com/id580910394 ▶️ Gettr: https://gettr.com/user/chycho ▶️ Substack Notes: https://substack.com/notes ▶️ Truth Social: https://truthsocial.com/@chycho ***AUDIO/PODCASTS*** ▶️ SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/chycho ***CRYPTO*** Monero: 41suzjTJn792VZuJFZD1yD1SrZjPxrCbxdscz583Z4uNFZUXNXtnjZNbmnVD39mRK5Vkn5X3rZN6PheafCiMafSn4WVBYhE Bitcoin (BTC): 1Peam3sbV9EGAHr8mwUvrxrX8kToDz7eTE Bitcoin Cash (BCH): 18KjJ4frBPkXcUrL2Fuesd7CFdvCY4q9wi Ethereum (ETH): 0xCEC12Da3D582166afa8055137831404Ea7753FFd Ethereum Classic (ETC): 0x348E8b9C0e7d71c32fB2a70DcABCB890b979441c Litecoin (LTC): LLak2kfmtqoiQ5X4zhdFpwMvkDNPa4UhGA Dash (DSH): XmHxibwbUW9MRu2b1oHSrL951yoMU6XPEN ZCash (ZEC): t1S6G8gqmt6rWjh3XAyAkRLZSm9Fro93kAd Doge (DOGE): D83vU3XP1SLogT5eC7tNNNVzw4fiRMFhog Peace. chycho http://www.chycho.com
In the coming decades, the technology that enables virtual and augmented reality will improve beyond recognition. Within a century, world-renowned philosopher David J. Chalmers predicts, we will have virtual worlds that are impossible to distinguish from non-virtual worlds. But is virtual reality just escapism? In a highly original work of 'technophilosophy', Chalmers argues categorically, no: virtual reality is genuine reality. Virtual worlds are not second-class worlds. We can live a meaningful life in virtual reality - and increasingly, we will. What is reality, anyway? How can we lead a good life? Is there a god? How do we know there's an external world - and how do we know we're not living in a computer simulation? In Reality+, Chalmers conducts a grand tour of philosophy, using cutting-edge technology to provide invigorating new answers to age-old questions. David J. Chalmers is an Australian philosopher and cognitive scientist specializing in the areas of philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. He is Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science at New York University, as well as co-director of NYU's Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness. Chalmers is best known for his work on consciousness, including his formulation of the "hard problem of consciousness." Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy https://amzn.to/3RYyGD2 https://consc.net/ https://x.com/davidchalmers42 00:00:00 Reality+ Intro 00:12:02 GPT conscious? 10/10 00:14:19 The consciousness processor thought experiment (11/10) 00:20:34 Intelligence and Consciousness entangled? 10/10 00:22:44 Karl Friston / Meta Problem 10/10 00:29:05 Knowledge argument / subjective experience (6/10) 00:32:34 Emergence 11/10 (best chapter) 00:42:45 Working with Douglas Hofstadter 10/10 00:46:14 Intelligence is analogy making? 10/10 00:50:47 Intelligence explosion 8/10 00:58:44 Hypercomputation 10/10 01:09:44 Who designed the designer? (7/10) 01:13:57 Experience machine (7/10)
How do humans form 'fuzzy categories'? How does this all relate to essentialism? Is essentialism false? Or is it partially true? And how does this all relate to Critical Rationalism? Picking up where we left off last week, Bruce gets deeper into Douglas Hofstadter's ideas on language and the mind and his assertion that “analogy-making lies at the heart of intelligence.” Bruce considers how Hofstadter's theories may be interwoven with ideas on language and cognition promoted by Steven Pinker in "How the Mind Works" along with, as usual, the epistemology of Karl Popper and David Deutsch. We again consider if this is an inductive theory? And how should critical rationalists view theories like this? Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bnielson01 --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/support
This is the first of our two part series (that may or may not be released back-to-back) where Bruce delves into the work Douglas Hofstadter, specifically the book Surfaces and Essences. We consider what is the relationship—if there is any—between critical rationalism and Hofstadter's idea that analogy is a core mechanism of human cognition. Is it fair to criticize Hofstadter's ideas as being inductivism in disguise? Could something like what Hofstadter suggests (i.e. analogy) be central to human consciousness and creation of AGI? Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bnielson01 --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/support
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: Rapid capability gain around supergenius level seems probable even without intelligence needing to improve intelligence, published by Towards Keeperhood on May 6, 2024 on LessWrong. TLDR: 1. Around Einstein-level, relatively small changes in intelligence can lead to large changes in what one is capable to accomplish. 1. E.g. Einstein was a bit better than the other best physi at seeing deep connections and reasoning, but was able to accomplish much more in terms of impressive scientific output. 2. There are architectures where small changes can have significant effects on intelligence. 1. E.g. small changes in human-brain-hyperparameters: Einstein's brain didn't need to be trained on 3x the compute than normal physics professors for him to become much better at forming deep understanding, even without intelligence improving intelligence. Einstein and the heavytail of human intelligence 1905 is often described as the "annus mirabilis" of Albert Einstein. He founded quantum physics by postulating the existence of (light) quanta, explained Brownian motion, introduced the special relativity theory and derived E=mc from it. All of this. In one year. While having a full-time job in the Swiss patent office. With the exception of John von Neumann, we'd say those discoveries alone seem more than any other scientist of the 20th century achieved in their lifetime (though it's debatable). Though perhaps even more impressive is that Einstein was able to derive general relativity. Einstein was often so far ahead of his time that even years after he published his theories the majority of physicists rejected them because they couldn't understand them, sometimes even though there was experimental evidence favoring Einstein's theories. After solving the greatest open physics problems at the time in 1905, he continued working in the patent office until 1908, since the universities were too slow on the uptake to hire him earlier. Example for how far ahead of his time Einstein was: Deriving the theory of light quanta The following section is based on parts of the 8th chapter of "Surfaces and Essences" by Douglas Hofstadter. For an analysis of some of Einstein's discoveries, which show how far ahead of his time he was, I can recommend reading it. At the time, one of the biggest problems in physics was the "Blackbody spectrum", which describes the spectrum of electromagnetic wavelengths emitted by a Blackbody. The problem with it was that the emitted spectrum was not explainable by known physics. Einstein achieved a breakthrough by considering light not just as a wave, but also as light quanta. Although this idea sufficiently explained the Blackbody spectrum, physicists (at least almost) unanimously rejected it. The fight between the "light is corpuscles" and "light is a wave" faction had been decided a century ago, with a clear victory for the "wave" faction. Being aware of these possible doubts, Einstein proposed three experiments to prove his idea, one of which was the photoelectric effect. In the following years, Robert Millikan carried out various experiments on the photoelectric effect, which all confirmed Einstein's predictions. Still, Millikan insisted that the light-quanta theory had no theoretical basis and even falsely claimed that Einstein himself did not believe in his idea anymore. From Surfaces and Essences (p.611): To add insult to injury, although the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Albert Einstein, it was not for his theory of light quanta but "for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect". Weirdly, in the citation there was no mention of the ideas behind that law, since no one on the Nobel Committee (or in all of physics) believed in them! [1][...] And thus Albert Einstein's revolutionary ideas on the nature of light, that most fundamental and all-...
Link to original articleWelcome 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: Rapid capability gain around supergenius level seems probable even without intelligence needing to improve intelligence, published by Towards Keeperhood on May 6, 2024 on LessWrong. TLDR: 1. Around Einstein-level, relatively small changes in intelligence can lead to large changes in what one is capable to accomplish. 1. E.g. Einstein was a bit better than the other best physi at seeing deep connections and reasoning, but was able to accomplish much more in terms of impressive scientific output. 2. There are architectures where small changes can have significant effects on intelligence. 1. E.g. small changes in human-brain-hyperparameters: Einstein's brain didn't need to be trained on 3x the compute than normal physics professors for him to become much better at forming deep understanding, even without intelligence improving intelligence. Einstein and the heavytail of human intelligence 1905 is often described as the "annus mirabilis" of Albert Einstein. He founded quantum physics by postulating the existence of (light) quanta, explained Brownian motion, introduced the special relativity theory and derived E=mc from it. All of this. In one year. While having a full-time job in the Swiss patent office. With the exception of John von Neumann, we'd say those discoveries alone seem more than any other scientist of the 20th century achieved in their lifetime (though it's debatable). Though perhaps even more impressive is that Einstein was able to derive general relativity. Einstein was often so far ahead of his time that even years after he published his theories the majority of physicists rejected them because they couldn't understand them, sometimes even though there was experimental evidence favoring Einstein's theories. After solving the greatest open physics problems at the time in 1905, he continued working in the patent office until 1908, since the universities were too slow on the uptake to hire him earlier. Example for how far ahead of his time Einstein was: Deriving the theory of light quanta The following section is based on parts of the 8th chapter of "Surfaces and Essences" by Douglas Hofstadter. For an analysis of some of Einstein's discoveries, which show how far ahead of his time he was, I can recommend reading it. At the time, one of the biggest problems in physics was the "Blackbody spectrum", which describes the spectrum of electromagnetic wavelengths emitted by a Blackbody. The problem with it was that the emitted spectrum was not explainable by known physics. Einstein achieved a breakthrough by considering light not just as a wave, but also as light quanta. Although this idea sufficiently explained the Blackbody spectrum, physicists (at least almost) unanimously rejected it. The fight between the "light is corpuscles" and "light is a wave" faction had been decided a century ago, with a clear victory for the "wave" faction. Being aware of these possible doubts, Einstein proposed three experiments to prove his idea, one of which was the photoelectric effect. In the following years, Robert Millikan carried out various experiments on the photoelectric effect, which all confirmed Einstein's predictions. Still, Millikan insisted that the light-quanta theory had no theoretical basis and even falsely claimed that Einstein himself did not believe in his idea anymore. From Surfaces and Essences (p.611): To add insult to injury, although the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Albert Einstein, it was not for his theory of light quanta but "for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect". Weirdly, in the citation there was no mention of the ideas behind that law, since no one on the Nobel Committee (or in all of physics) believed in them! [1][...] And thus Albert Einstein's revolutionary ideas on the nature of light, that most fundamental and all-...
3:45:07 – Frank in NYC and NJ, plus the Other Side. Topics include: Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter (1979), rest room panic, Long Island City, Xi’an Famous Foods, P.S.1, breweries, O.J. Simpson dead at 76, Secret Vegan Kitchen, the theme was deliveries, vegan Better Than… candy bar, Suno AI song generator, Midnight Musings, […]
3:45:07 – Frank in NYC and NJ, plus the Other Side. Topics include: Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter (1979), rest room panic, Long Island City, Xi’an Famous Foods, P.S.1, breweries, O.J. Simpson dead at 76, Secret Vegan Kitchen, the theme was deliveries, vegan Better Than… candy bar, Suno AI song generator, Midnight Musings, […]
What is consciousness? Neil deGrasse Tyson and Chuck Nice learn about the study of consciousness and how psychedelics could uncover the inner mechanisms of the brain with anesthesiologist and founder of the Michigan Psychedelic Center, George Mashour. NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://startalkmedia.com/show/exploring-consciousness-with-george-mashour/Thanks to our Patrons Andrew O., Johnathan Kuhl, Nathan champlin, Matthew Smith-Burlage, Kareem Austin, Charles Blaksmith, and İtKopuk Cansel Işıksel for supporting us this week.
There is a beautifully un-nail-down-able question-and-answer I have been rolling around, like a stone in a rock polisher, for many years now: What is consciousness? It's the big thing that seems to separate us from other animals: We are conscious or self-reflective or imaginative or reasoning in a way that other creatures, great and small, do not seem to be. This quest, which has carried around in the world of neurologists, psychologists, philosophers, theologians, self-help gurus, physicists and more ...led me to Adam Toon, an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Exeter. His most recent book, Mind as Metaphor: A Defence of Mental Fictionalism (2023, Oxford University Press), discusses a related question he himself has been noodling on: What if our consciousness can make more sense if we admit that many of the truths of reality we hold are convenient fictions? We know some ideas we hold about ourselves and the world aren't true, or not totally true, but they're useful or convenient or accessible or … well, lots of things. What if we admit things that aren't real are useful to believe? Is that the way we can better understand some part of this weird reason, consciousness, self-awareness we seem to have? Let us find out, and along the way discover what brings a former math-and-theoretical-physics-obsessed guy to the world of thinking about science, not just doing science. Further stuff you might like: > Adam also wrote in 2012, as part of a "New Directions in the Philosophy of Science" series, Models as Make-Believe: Imagination, Fiction and Scientific Representation. > A favorite book of mine on mind is A Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter. If you were ever to read it, I would certainly re-read it and discuss it with you! > A favorite podcast of mine on consciousness is Buddhist. The Amaravati Monastery, like Toon in the U.K., shares episodes online here.
Pedro Domingos é professor emérito de Ciências da Computação na Universidade de Washington. Licenciou-se pelo Instituto Superior Técnico e doutorou-se na Universidade da Califórnia em Irvine. Recebeu em 2014 o prémio de inovação, SIGKDD, o mais prestigiado na área de ciências de dados. É autor do livro «A Revolução do Algoritmo Mestre - Como a aprendizagem automática está a mudar o mundo», publicado em 2015. -> Apoie este podcast e faça parte da comunidade de mecenas do 45 Graus em: 45grauspodcast.com -> Inscreva-se aqui nos workshops de Pensamento Crítico em Coimbra e Braga. -> Registe-se aqui para ser avisado(a) de futuras edições dos workshops. _______________ Índice (com timestamps): (04:32) INÍCIO - O que é revolucionário no Machine Learning? | As cinco famílias de modelos (as ‘cinco tribos'): conectivistas (backprop, a tecnologia por trás do ChatGPT), simbolistas, evolucionistas, bayesianos e analogistas. (27:25) Porque é que a robótica tem avançado mais lentamente? (32:10) Como funcionam os modelos conectivistas de deep learning (como o ChatGPT)? | Large language models | Transformers | Alexnet (40:11) O que entendes por ‘Algoritmo Mestre'? | Como unificar as várias famílias de modelos para chegar à Inteligência Artificial Geral? (55:47) O que é especial no cérebro humano que nos permite generalizar melhor do que a AI? | Algoritmo que conseguiu descobrir as Leis de Kepler | Livro Leonardo da Vinci, de Walter Isaacson. | Livro Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking, de Douglas R Hofstadter (1:07:47) A IA pode tornar-se perigosa? Vem aí a singularidade? | Yuval Harari, Elon Musk | Cientistas sérios que se preocupam com o tema. Livro recomendado: Godel, Escher, Bach, de Douglas Hofstadter (1:32:20) O que explica um engenheiro da Google ter afirmado que o chatbot tinha consciência? _______________ Desde que foi lançado, no final do ano passado, o ChatGPT trouxe o tema da IA de novo para a discussão. Já tardava, por isso, um episódio sobre o tema. E dificilmente poderia pedir melhor convidado. _______________ Obrigado aos mecenas do podcast: Francisco Hermenegildo, Ricardo Evangelista, Henrique Pais João Baltazar, Salvador Cunha, Abilio Silva, Tiago Leite, Carlos Martins, Galaró family, Corto Lemos, Miguel Marques, Nuno Costa, Nuno e Ana, João Ribeiro, Helder Miranda, Pedro Lima Ferreira, Cesar Carpinteiro, Luis Fernambuco, Fernando Nunes, Manuel Canelas, Tiago Gonçalves, Carlos Pires, João Domingues, Hélio Bragança da Silva, Sandra Ferreira , Paulo Encarnação , BFDC, António Mexia Santos, Luís Guido, Bruno Heleno Tomás Costa, João Saro, Daniel Correia, Rita Mateus, António Padilha, Tiago Queiroz, Carmen Camacho, João Nelas, Francisco Fonseca, Rafael Santos, Andreia Esteves, Ana Teresa Mota, ARUNE BHURALAL, Mário Lourenço, RB, Maria Pimentel, Luis, Geoffrey Marcelino, Alberto Alcalde, António Rocha Pinto, Ruben de Bragança, João Vieira dos Santos, David Teixeira Alves, Armindo Martins , Carlos Nobre, Bernardo Vidal Pimentel, António Oliveira, Paulo Barros, Nuno Brites, Lígia Violas, Tiago Sequeira, Zé da Radio, João Morais, André Gamito, Diogo Costa, Pedro Ribeiro, Bernardo Cortez Vasco Sá Pinto, David , Tiago Pires, Mafalda Pratas, Joana Margarida Alves Martins, Luis Marques, João Raimundo, Francisco Arantes, Mariana Barosa, Nuno Gonçalves, Pedro Rebelo, Miguel Palhas, Ricardo Duarte, Duarte , Tomás Félix, Vasco Lima, Francisco Vasconcelos, Telmo , José Oliveira Pratas, Jose Pedroso, João Diogo Silva, Joao Diogo, José Proença, João Crispim, João Pinho , Afonso Martins, Robertt Valente, João Barbosa, Renato Mendes, Maria Francisca Couto, Antonio Albuquerque, Ana Sousa Amorim, Francisco Santos, Lara Luís, Manuel Martins, Macaco Quitado, Paulo Ferreira, Diogo Rombo, Francisco Manuel Reis, Bruno Lamas, Daniel Almeida, Patrícia Esquível , Diogo Silva, Luis Gomes, Cesar Correia, Cristiano Tavares, Pedro Gaspar, Gil Batista Marinho, Maria Oliveira, João Pereira, Rui Vilao, João Ferreira, Wedge, José Losa, Hélder Moreira, André Abrantes, Henrique Vieira, João Farinha, Manuel Botelho da Silva, João Diamantino, Ana Rita Laureano, Pedro L, Nuno Malvar, Joel, Rui Antunes7, Tomás Saraiva, Cloé Leal de Magalhães, Joao Barbosa, paulo matos, Fábio Monteiro, Tiago Stock, Beatriz Bagulho, Pedro Bravo, Antonio Loureiro, Hugo Ramos, Inês Inocêncio, Telmo Gomes, Sérgio Nunes, Tiago Pedroso, Teresa Pimentel, Rita Noronha, miguel farracho, José Fangueiro, Zé, Margarida Correia-Neves, Bruno Pinto Vitorino, João Lopes, Joana Pereirinha, Gonçalo Baptista, Dario Rodrigues, tati lima, Pedro On The Road, Catarina Fonseca, JC Pacheco, Sofia Ferreira, Inês Ribeiro, Miguel Jacinto, Tiago Agostinho, Margarida Costa Almeida, Helena Pinheiro, Rui Martins, Fábio Videira Santos, Tomás Lucena, João Freitas, Ricardo Sousa, RJ, Francisco Seabra Guimarães, Carlos Branco, David Palhota, Carlos Castro, Alexandre Alves, Cláudia Gomes Batista, Ana Leal, Ricardo Trindade, Luís Machado, Andrzej Stuart-Thompson, Diego Goulart, Filipa Portela, Paulo Rafael, Paloma Nunes, Marta Mendonca, Teresa Painho, Duarte Cameirão, Rodrigo Silva, José Alberto Gomes, Joao Gama, Cristina Loureiro, Tiago Gama, Tiago Rodrigues, Miguel Duarte, Ana Cantanhede, Artur Castro Freire, Rui Passos Rocha, Pedro Costa Antunes, Sofia Almeida, Ricardo Andrade Guimarães, Daniel Pais, Miguel Bastos, Luís Santos _______________ Esta conversa foi editada por: Hugo Oliveira
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mlst Discord: https://discord.gg/ESrGqhf5CB Prof. Melanie Mitchell argues that the concept of "understanding" in AI is ill-defined and multidimensional - we can't simply say an AI system does or doesn't understand. She advocates for rigorously testing AI systems' capabilities using proper experimental methods from cognitive science. Popular benchmarks for intelligence often rely on the assumption that if a human can perform a task, an AI that performs the task must have human-like general intelligence. But benchmarks should evolve as capabilities improve. Large language models show surprising skill on many human tasks but lack common sense and fail at simple things young children can do. Their knowledge comes from statistical relationships in text, not grounded concepts about the world. We don't know if their internal representations actually align with human-like concepts. More granular testing focused on generalization is needed. There are open questions around whether large models' abilities constitute a fundamentally different non-human form of intelligence based on vast statistical correlations across text. Mitchell argues intelligence is situated, domain-specific and grounded in physical experience and evolution. The brain computes but in a specialized way honed by evolution for controlling the body. Extracting "pure" intelligence may not work. Other key points: - Need more focus on proper experimental method in AI research. Developmental psychology offers examples for rigorous testing of cognition. - Reporting instance-level failures rather than just aggregate accuracy can provide insights. - Scaling laws and complex systems science are an interesting area of complexity theory, with applications to understanding cities. - Concepts like "understanding" and "intelligence" in AI force refinement of fuzzy definitions. - Human intelligence may be more collective and social than we realize. AI forces us to rethink concepts we apply anthropomorphically. The overall emphasis is on rigorously building the science of machine cognition through proper experimentation and benchmarking as we assess emerging capabilities. TOC: [00:00:00] Introduction and Munk AI Risk Debate Highlights [05:00:00] Douglas Hofstadter on AI Risk [00:06:56] The Complexity of Defining Intelligence [00:11:20] Examining Understanding in AI Models [00:16:48] Melanie's Insights on AI Understanding Debate [00:22:23] Unveiling the Concept Arc [00:27:57] AI Goals: A Human vs Machine Perspective [00:31:10] Addressing the Extrapolation Challenge in AI [00:36:05] Brain Computation: The Human-AI Parallel [00:38:20] The Arc Challenge: Implications and Insights [00:43:20] The Need for Detailed AI Performance Reporting [00:44:31] Exploring Scaling in Complexity Theory Eratta: Note Tim said around 39 mins that a recent Stanford/DM paper modelling ARC “on GPT-4 got around 60%”. This is not correct and he misremembered. It was actually davinci3, and around 10%, which is still extremely good for a blank slate approach with an LLM and no ARC specific knowledge. Folks on our forum couldn't reproduce the result. See paper linked below. Books (MUST READ): Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans (Melanie Mitchell) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Artificial-Intelligence-Guide-Thinking-Humans/dp/B07YBHNM1C/?&_encoding=UTF8&tag=mlst00-21&linkCode=ur2&linkId=44ccac78973f47e59d745e94967c0f30&camp=1634&creative=6738 Complexity: A Guided Tour (Melanie Mitchell) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Audible-Complexity-A-Guided-Tour?&_encoding=UTF8&tag=mlst00-21&linkCode=ur2&linkId=3f8bd505d86865c50c02dd7f10b27c05&camp=1634&creative=6738 Show notes (transcript, full references etc) https://atlantic-papyrus-d68.notion.site/Melanie-Mitchell-2-0-15e212560e8e445d8b0131712bad3000?pvs=25 YT version: https://youtu.be/29gkDpR2orc
Today, we're pulling one of our best episodes from the vaults, featuring the brilliant Brian Christian. Recommend this show by sharing the link: pod.link/2Pages One thing I don't mention often is that the thesis I wrote for my law degree was an attempt to combine my interest in literature with a perspective on law. So I wrote about the phenomenon of plain English: that's trying to write law without the legalese. And I tried to write about it through the lens of literary theories of language. I honestly did not understand what I was trying to do. And also nobody in law school understood what I was trying to do. What I can see now, with the benefit of hindsight and some self-esteem and some marketing speak, is that I was a boundary rider. I've come to learn that the interesting things often take place on the edges, those intermediate areas where X meets Y and some sort of new life is born. Brian Christian is a boundary rider too. He's just way more successful and interesting than law school Micheal. He thinks deeply and writes about deep patterns of life through technology and AI and algorithms. He's the author of The Most Human Human, the Alignment Problem, and Algorithms to Live By. After the introduction I just gave you, you're probably going to guess that Brian isn't just a science guy. Get book links and resources at https://www.mbs.works/2-pages-podcast/ Brian reads from Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. [Reading begins at 15:10] Hear us Discuss: Metaphor can be one of the main mechanisms by which science happens. [6:20] | Rules that are delightful to break. [24:35] | “I have this deep conviction […] we are on to some philosophical paydirt here. There is a very real way in which we are building [AI] systems in our own image, and as a result they come to be a mirror for ourselves.” [28:40] | What is the heart of the human experience? [38:10] | “Humans are not so special.” [42.50]
Support me by becoming wiser and more knowledgeable – check out Douglas Hofstadter's collection of books for sale on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3TTVHIN If you purchase a book through this link, I will earn a 4.5% commission and be extremely delighted. But if you just want to read and aren't ready to add a new book to your collection yet, I'd recommend checking out the Internet Archive, the largest free digital library in the world. If you're really feeling benevolent you can buy me a coffee or donate over at https://ko-fi.com/theunadulteratedintellect. I would seriously appreciate it! __________________________________________________ Douglas Richard Hofstadter (born February 15, 1945) is an American scholar of cognitive science, physics, and comparative literature whose research includes concepts such as the sense of self in relation to the external world, consciousness, analogy-making, artistic creation, literary translation, and discovery in mathematics and physics. His 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid won both the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction and a National Book Award (at that time called The American Book Award) for Science. His 2007 book I Am a Strange Loop won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science and Technology. Audio source here Full Wikipedia entry here Douglas Hofstadter's books here --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theunadulteratedintellect/support
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: Douglas Hoftstadter concerned about AI xrisk, published by Eli Rose on July 3, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Douglas Hofstadter is best known for authoring Godel, Escher, Bach, a book on artificial intelligence (among other things) which is sort of a cult classic. In a recent interview, he says he's terrified of recent AI progress and expresses beliefs similar to many people who focus on AI xrisk. Hoftstadter: The accelerating progress has been so unexpected that it has caught me off guard... not only myself, but many many people. There's a sense of terror akin to an oncoming tsunami that could catch all of humanity off guard. It's not clear whether this could mean the end of humanity in the sense of the systems we've created destroying us, it's not clear if that's the case but it's certainly conceivable. If not, it's also that it just renders humanity a small, almost insignificant phenomenon, compared to something that is far more intelligent and will become as incomprehensible to us as we are to cockroaches. Interviewer: That's an interesting thought. Hoftstadter: Well I don't think it's interesting. I think it's terrifying. I hate it. I think this is the first time he's publicly expressed this, and his views seem to have changed recently. Previously he published this which listed a bunch of silly questions GPT-3 gets wrong and concluded that There are no concepts behind the GPT-3 scenes; rather, there's just an unimaginably huge amount of absorbed text upon which it draws to produce answers though it ended with a gesture to the fast pace of change and inability to predict the future. I randomly tried some of his stumpers on GPT-4 and it gets them right (and I remember being convinced when this came out that GPT-3 could get them right too with a bit of prompt engineering, though I don't remember specifics). I find this a bit emotional because of how much I loved Godel, Escher, Bach in early college. It was my introduction to "real" math and STEM, which I'd previously disliked and been bad at; because of this book, I majored in computer science. It presented a lot of philosophical puzzles for and problems with AI, and gave beautiful, eye-opening answers to them. I think Hofstadter expected us to understand AI much better before we got to this level of capabilities; expected more of the type of understanding his parables and thought experiments could sometimes create. Now I work professionally on situations along the lines of what he describes in the interview (and feel a similar way about them) — it's a weird way to meet Hofstadter again. See also Gwern's post on LessWrong. Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org
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: Douglas Hofstadter changes his mind on Deep Learning & AI risk (June 2023)?, published by gwern on July 3, 2023 on LessWrong. A podcast interview (posted 2023-06-29) with noted AI researcher Douglas Hofstadter discusses his career and current views on AI. Hofstadter has previously energetically criticized GPT-2/3 models (and deep learning and compute-heavy GOFAI). These criticisms were widely circulated & cited, and apparently many people found Hofstadter a convincing & trustworthy authority when he was negative on deep learning capabilities & prospects, and so I found his comments in this most recent discussion of considerable interest (via Edward Kmett). Below I excerpt from the second half where he discusses DL progress & AI risk: Q: ...Which ideas from GEB are most relevant today? Hofstadter: ...In my book, I Am a Strange Loop, I tried to set forth what it is that really makes a self or a soul. I like to use the word "soul", not in the religious sense, but as a synonym for "I", a human "I", capital letter "I." So, what is it that makes a human being able to validly say "I"? What justifies the use of that word? When can a computer say "I" and we feel that there is a genuine "I" behind the scenes? I don't mean like when you call up the drugstore and the chatbot, or whatever you want to call it, on the phone says, "Tell me what you want. I know you want to talk to a human being, but first, in a few words, tell me what you want. I can understand full sentences." And then you say something and it says, "Do you want to refill a prescription?" And then when I say yes, it says, "Gotcha", meaning "I got you." So it acts as if there is an "I" there, but I don't have any sense whatsoever that there is an "I" there. It doesn't feel like an "I" to me, it feels like a very mechanical process. But in the case of more advanced things like ChatGPT-3 or GPT-4, it feels like there is something more there that merits the word "I." The question is, when will we feel that those things actually deserve to be thought of as being full-fledged, or at least partly fledged, "I"s? I personally worry that this is happening right now. But it's not only happening right now. It's not just that certain things that are coming about are similar to human consciousness or human selves. They are also very different, and in one way, it is extremely frightening to me. They are extraordinarily much more knowledgeable and they are extraordinarily much faster. So that if I were to take an hour in doing something, the ChatGPT-4 might take one second, maybe not even a second, to do exactly the same thing. And that suggests that these entities, whatever you want to think of them, are going to be very soon, right now they still make so many mistakes that we can't call them more intelligent than us, but very soon they're going to be, they may very well be more intelligent than us and far more intelligent than us. And at that point, we will be receding into the background in some sense. We will have handed the baton over to our successors, for better or for worse. And I can understand that if this were to happen over a long period of time, like hundreds of years, that might be okay. But it's happening over a period of a few years. It's like a tidal wave that is washing over us at unprecedented and unimagined speeds. And to me, it's quite terrifying because it suggests that everything that I used to believe was the case is being overturned. Q: What are some things specifically that terrify you? What are some issues that you're really... D. Hofstadter: When I started out studying cognitive science and thinking about the mind and computation, you know, this was many years ago, around 1960, and I knew how computers worked and I knew how extraordinarily rigid they were. You made the slightest typing error and it comp...
Douglas Hofstadter is a professor of Cognitive Science and Comparative Literature at Indiana University in Bloomington. His research into cognitive science includes concepts such as the sense of self in relation to the external world, consciousness, artistic creation, literary translation, and discovery in mathematics and physics. His 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid won both the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction. His AI interests explore the subtlest and most slippery aspects of human intelligence, as embodied in deceptively deep analogy problems like ABC is to ABD as XYZ is to what?
Jamie challenged Scott to pray and read the bible every day for 30 days. In this episode, they talk about the experience and Scott shares what, if anything, he has learned about what it is like to live at least somewhat as a believer. Then the dialectic duo revisits the Argument from Morality, sharing new perspectives they have gained as a result of bashing heads for so long on this subject. As further study Scott recommends "The Mind's I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul" by Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett, and Jamie recommends "The Holy Bible" by God ... or not? Contact us with comments and questions: email@GodOrNotPodcast.com
David Pinsof is an evolutionary social scientist and a co-creator of the game Cards Against Humanity. He holds a PhD in Psychology from UCLA, where he studied the evolutionary origins of political bullshit, and has written a handful of academic papers, one of which has been cited 152 times and another of which was quoted in the New York Times. David is the author of the ‘Everything Is Bullshit' Substack, which aims to poke holes in the stories we tell ourselves. He joins the show to discuss why happiness & morality are bullshit, the difference between bullshit & lying, why we conceal the status monkey, and more! Important Links: David's Twitter David's Substack; Everything is Bullshit Cards Against Humanity The Execution Hypothesis; by Richard Wrangham Discordianism Our podcast with George Mack Our podcast with Will Storr Show Notes: What is bullshit? The difference between bullshitting and lying Why moralizing is bullshit Concealing the status monkey The origins of Cards Against Humanity How are status games changing? Why happiness is bullshit Happiness as a status symbol How can we escape bullshit? Why we're driven by negative emotions How to become more positive The role of humor in calling out bullshit MUCH more! Books Mentioned: On Bullshit; by Harry G. Frankfurt Propaganda; by Edward Bernays Influence: Science and Practice; by Robert Cialdini The Moral Animal: Why We Are The Way We Are; by Robert Wright The Status Game: On Social Position and How We Use It; by Will Storr The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History; by Howard Bloom Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment Happy; by Derren Brown Tao Te Ching; by Lao Tzu Gödel, Escher, Bach; by Douglas Hofstadter
This week we talk about the intersections of large language models, the golden age of television and its storytelling mishaps, making one's way through the weirding of the labor economy, and much more with two of my favorite Gen X science fiction aficionados, OG podcaster KMO and our mutual friend Kevin Arthur Wohlmut. In this episode — a standalone continuation to my recent appearance on The KMO Show, we skip like a stone across mentions of every Star Trek series, the collapse of narratives and the social fabric, Westworld HBO, Star Wars Mandalorian vs. Andor vs. Rebels, chatGPT, Blade Runner 2049, Black Mirror, H.P. Lovecraft, the Sheldrake-Abraham-McKenna Trialogues, Charles Stross' Accelerando, Adventure Time, Stanislav Grof's LSD psychotherapy, Francisco Varela, Blake Lemoine's meltdown over Google LaMDA, Integrated Information Theory, biosemiotics, Douglas Hofstadter, Max Tegmarck, Erik Davis, Peter Watts, The Psychedelic Salon, Melanie Mitchell, The Teafaerie, Kevin Kelly, consilience in science, Fight Club, and more…Or, if you prefer, here's a rundown of the episode generated by A.I. c/o my friends at Podium.page:In this episode, I explore an ambitious and well-connected conversation with guests KMO, a seasoned podcaster, and Kevin Walnut [sic], a close friend and supporter of the arts in Santa Fe. We dive deep into their thoughts on the social epistemology crisis, science fiction, deep fakes, and ontology. Additionally, we discuss their opinions on the Star Trek franchise, particularly their critiques of the first two seasons of Star Trek: Picard and Discovery. Through this engaging conversation, we examine the impact of storytelling and the evolution of science fiction in modern culture. We also explore the relationship between identity, media, and artificial intelligence, as well as the ethical implications of creating sentient artificial general intelligence (AGI) and the philosophical questions surrounding AI's impact on society and human existence. Join us for a thought-provoking and in-depth discussion on a variety of topics that will leave you questioning the future of humanity and our relationship with technology.✨ Before we get started, three big announcements!* I am leaving the Santa Fe Institute, in part to write a very ambitious book about technology, art, imagination, and Jurassic Park. You can be a part of the early discussion around this project by joining the Future Fossils Book Club's Jurassic Park live calls — the first of which will be on Saturday, 29 April — open to Substack and Patreon supporters:* Catch me in a Twitter Space with Nxt Museum on Monday 17 April at 11 am PST on a panel discussing “Creative Misuse of Technology” with Minne Atairu, Parag Mital, Caroline Sinders, and hosts Jesse Damiani and Charlotte Kent.* I'm back in Austin this October to play the Astronox Festival at Apache Pass! Check out this amazing lineup on which I appear alongside Juno Reactor, Entheogenic, Goopsteppa, DRRTYWULVZ, and many more great artists!✨ Support Future Fossils:Subscribe anywhere you go for podcastsSubscribe to the podcast PLUS essays, music, and news on Substack or Patreon.Buy my original paintings or commission new work.Buy my music on Bandcamp! (This episode features “A Better Trip” from my recent live album by the same name.)Or if you're into lo-fi audio, follow me and my listening recommendations on Spotify.This conversation continues with lively and respectful interaction every single day in the members-only Future Fossils Facebook Group and Discord server. Join us!Episode cover art by KMO and a whole bouquet of digital image manipulation apps.✨ Tip Jars:@futurefossils on Venmo$manfredmacx on CashAppmichaelgarfield on PayPal✨ Affiliate Links:• These show notes and the transcript were made possible with Podium.Page, a very cool new AI service I'm happy to endorse. Sign up here and get three free hours and 50% off your first month.• BioTech Life Sciences makes anti-aging and performance enhancement formulas that work directly at the level of cellular nutrition, both for ingestion and direct topical application. I'm a firm believer in keeping NAD+ levels up and their skin solution helped me erase a year of pandemic burnout from my face.• Help regulate stress, get better sleep, recover from exercise, and/or stay alert and focused without stimulants, with the Apollo Neuro wearable. I have one and while I don't wear it all the time, when I do it's sober healthy drugs.• Musicians: let me recommend you get yourself a Jamstik Studio, the coolest MIDI guitar I've ever played. I LOVE mine. You can hear it playing all the synths on my song about Jurassic Park.✨ Mentioned Media:KMO Show S01 E01 - 001 - Michael Garfield and Kevin WohlmutAn Edifying Thought on AI by Charles EisensteinIn Defense of Star Trek: Picard & Discovery by Michael GarfieldImprovising Out of Algorithmic Isolation by Michael GarfieldAI and the Transformation of the Human Spirit by Steven Hales(and yes I know it's on Quillette, and no I don't think this automatically disqualifies it)Future Fossils Book Club #1: Blindsight by Peter WattsFF 116 - The Next Ten Billion Years: Ugo Bardi & John Michael Greer as read by Kevin Arthur Wohlmut✨ Related Recent Future Fossils Episodes:FF 198 - Tadaaki Hozumi on Japanese Esotericism, Aliens, Land Spirits, & The Singularity (Part 2)FF 195 - A.I. Art: An Emergency Panel with Julian Picaza, Evo Heyning, Micah Daigle, Jamie Curcio, & Topher SipesFF 187 - Fear & Loathing on the Electronic Frontier with Kevin Welch & David Hensley of EFF-Austin FF 178 - Chris Ryan on Exhuming The Human from Our Eldritch Institutions FF 175 - C. Thi Nguyen on The Seductions of Clarity, Weaponized Games, and Agency as Art ✨ Chapters:0:15:45 - The Substance of Philosophy (58 Seconds)0:24:45 - Complicated TV Narratives and the Internet (104 Seconds)0:30:54 - Humans vs Hosts in Westworld (81 Seconds)0:38:09 - Philosophical Zombies and Artificial Intelligence (89 Seconds)0:43:00 - Popular Franchises Themes (71 Seconds)1:03:27 - Reflections on a Changing Media Landscape (89 Seconds)1:10:45 - The Pathology of Selective Evidence (92 Seconds)1:16:32 - Externalizing Trauma Through Technology (131 Seconds)1:24:51 - From Snow Maker to Thouandsaire (43 Seconds)1:36:48 - The Impact of Boomer Parenting (126 Seconds)✨ Keywords:Social Epistemology, Science Fiction, Deep Fakes, Ontology, Star Trek, Artificial Intelligence, AI Impact, Sentient AGI, Human-Machine Interconnectivity, Consciousness Theory, Westworld, Blade Runner 2049, AI in Economy, AI Companion Chatbots, Unconventional Career Path, AI and Education, AI Content Creation, AI in Media, Turing Test✨ UNEDITED machine-generated transcript generated by podium.page:0:00:00Five four three two one. Go. So it's not like Wayne's world where you say the two and the one silently. Now, Greetings future fossils.0:00:11Welcome to episode two hundred and one of the podcast that explores our place in time I'm your host, Michael Garfield. And this is one of these extra juicy and delicious episodes of the show where I really ratcheted up with our guests and provide you one of these singularity is near kind of ever everything is connected to everything, self organized criticality right at the edge of chaos conversations, deeply embedded in chapel parallel where suddenly the invisible architect picture of our cosmos starts to make itself apparent through the glass bead game of conversation. And I am that I get to share it with you. Our guests this week are KMO, one of the most seasoned and well researched and experienced podcasters that I know. Somebody whose show the Sea Realm was running all the way back in two thousand six, I found him through Eric Davis, who I think most of you know, and I've had on the show a number of times already. And also Kevin Walnut, who is a close friend of mine here in Santa Fe, a just incredible human being, he's probably the strongest single supporter of music that I'm aware of, you know, as far as local scenes are concerned and and supporting people's music online and helping get the word out. He's been instrumental to my family and I am getting ourselves situated here all the way back to when I visited Santa Fe in two thousand eighteen to participate in the Santa Fe Institute's Interplanetary Festival and recorded conversations on that trip John David Ebert and Michael Aaron Cummins. And Ike used so June. About hyper modernity, a two part episode one zero four and one zero five. I highly recommend going back to that, which is really the last time possibly I had a conversation just this incredibly ambitious on the show.0:02:31But first, I want to announce a couple things. One is that I have left the Santa Fe Institute. The other podcast that I have been hosting for them for the last three and a half years, Complexity Podcast, which is substantially more popular in future fossils due to its institutional affiliation is coming to a close, I'm recording one more episode with SFI president David Krakauer next week in which I'm gonna be talking about my upcoming book project. And that episode actually is conjoined with the big announcement that I have for members of the Future Fossil's listening audience and and paid supporters, which is, of course, the Jurassic Park Book Club that starts On April twenty ninth, we're gonna host the first of two video calls where I'm gonna dive deep into the science and philosophy Michael Creighton's most popular work of fiction and its impact on culture and society over the thirty three years since its publication. And then I'm gonna start picking up as many of the podcasts that I had scheduled for complexity and had to cancel upon my departure from SFI. And basically fuse the two shows.0:03:47And I think a lot of you saw this coming. Future fossils is going to level up and become a much more scientific podcast. As I prepare and research the book that I'm writing about Jurassic Park and its legacy and the relationship It has to ILM and SFI and the Institute of Eco Technics. And all of these other visionary projects that sprouted in the eighties and nineties to transition from the analog to the digital the collapse of the boundaries between the real and the virtual, the human and the non human worlds, it's gonna be a very very ambitious book and a very very ambitious book club. And I hope that you will get in there because obviously now I am out in the rain as an independent producer and very much need can benefit from and am deeply grateful for your support for this work in order to make things happen and in order to keep my family fed, get the lights on here with future fossils. So with that, I wanna thank all of the new supporters of the show that have crawled out of the woodwork over the last few weeks, including Raefsler Oingo, Brian in the archaeologist, Philip Rice, Gerald Bilak, Jamie Curcio, Jeff Hanson who bought my music, Kuaime, Mary Castello, VR squared, Nastia teaches, community health com, Ed Mulder, Cody Couiac, bought my music, Simon Heiduke, amazing visionary artist. I recommend you check out, Kayla Peters. Yeah. All of you, I just wow. Thank you so much. It's gonna be a complete melee in this book club. I'm super excited to meet you all. I will send out details about the call details for the twenty ninth sometime in the next few days via a sub tag in Patreon.0:06:09The amount of support that I've received through this transition has been incredible and it's empowering me to do wonderful things for you such as the recently released secret videos of the life sets I performed with comedian Shane Moss supporting him, opening for him here in Santa Fe. His two sold out shows at the Jean Coutu cinema where did the cyber guitar performances. And if you're a subscriber, you can watch me goofing off with my pedal board. There's a ton of material. I'm gonna continue to do that. I've got a lot of really exciting concerts coming up in the next few months that we're gonna get large group and also solo performance recordings from and I'm gonna make those available in a much more resplendent way to supporters as well as the soundtrack to Mark Nelson of the Institute of Eco Technics, his UC San Diego, Art Museum, exhibit retrospective looking at BioSphere two. I'm doing music for that and that's dropping. The the opening of that event is April twenty seventh. There's gonna be a live zoom event for that and then I'm gonna push the music out as well for that.0:07:45So, yeah, thank you all. I really, really appreciate you listening to the show. I am excited to share this episode with you. KMO is just a trove. Of insight and experience. I mean, he's like a perfect entry into the digital history museum that this show was predicated upon. So with that and also, of course, Kevin Willett is just magnificent. And for the record, stick around at the end of the conversation. We have some additional pieces about AI, and I think you're gonna really enjoy it. And yeah, thank you. Here we go. Alright. Cool.0:09:26Well, we just had a lovely hour of discussion for the new KMO podcast. And now I'm here with KMO who is The most inveterate podcaster I know. And I know a lot of them. Early adopts. And I think that weird means what you think it means. Inventor it. Okay. Yes. Hey, answer to both. Go ahead. I mean, you're not yet legless and panhandling. So prefer to think of it in term in terms of August estimation. Yeah. And am I allowed to say Kevin Walnut because I've had you as a host on True. Yeah. My last name was appeared on your show. It hasn't appeared on camos yet, but I don't really care. Okay. Great. Yeah. Karen Arthur Womlett, who is one of the most solid and upstanding and widely read and just generous people, I think I know here in Santa Fe or maybe anywhere. With excellent taste and podcasts. Yes. And who is delicious meat I am sampling right now as probably the first episode of future fossils where I've had an alcoholic beverage in my hand. Well, I mean, it's I haven't deprived myself. Of fun. And I think if you're still listening to the show after all these years, you probably inferred that. But at any rate, Welcome on board. Thank you. Thanks. Pleasure to be here.0:10:49So before we started rolling, I guess, so the whole conversation that we just had for your show camera was very much about my thoughts on the social epistemology crisis and on science fiction and deep fakes and all of these kinds of weird ontology and these kinds of things. But in between calls, we were just talking about how much you detest the first two seasons of Star Trek card and of Discovery. And as somebody, I didn't bother with doing this. I didn't send you this before we spoke, but I actually did write an SIN defense of those shows. No one. Yeah. So I am not attached to my opinion on this, but And I actually do wanna at some point double back and hear storytelling because when he had lunch and he had a bunch of personal life stuff that was really interesting. And juicy and I think worthy of discussion. But simply because it's hot on the rail right now, I wanna hear you talk about Star Trek. And both of you, actually, I know are very big fans of this franchise. I think fans are often the ones from whom a critic is most important and deserved. And so I welcome your unhinged rants. Alright. Well, first, I'll start off by quoting Kevin's brother, the linguist, who says, That which brings us closer to Star Trek is progress. But I'd have to say that which brings us closer to Gene Rottenberry and Rick Berman era Star Trek. Is progress. That which brings us closer to Kurtzmann. What's his first name? Alex. Alex Kurtzmann, Star Trek. Well, that's not even the future. I mean, that's just that's our drama right now with inconsistent Star Trek drag draped over it.0:12:35I liked the first JJ Abrams' Star Trek. I think it was two thousand nine with Chris Pine and Zachary Qinto and Karl Urban and Joey Saldana. I liked the casting. I liked the energy. It was fun. I can still put that movie on and enjoy it. But each one after that just seem to double down on the dumb and just hold that arm's length any of the philosophical stuff that was just amazing from Star Trek: The Next Generation or any of the long term character building, which was like from Deep Space nine.0:13:09And before seven of nine showed up on on Voyager, you really had to be a dedicated Star Trek fan to put up with early season's Voyager, but I did because I am. But then once she came on board and it was hilarious. They brought her onboard. I remember seeing Jerry Ryan in her cat suit on the cover of a magazine and just roll in my eyes and think, oh my gosh, this show is in such deep trouble through sinking to this level to try to save it. But she was brilliant. She was brilliant in that show and she and Robert Percardo as the doctor. I mean, it basically became the seven of nine and the doctor show co starring the rest of the cast of Voyager. And it was so great.0:13:46I love to hear them singing together and just all the dynamics of I'm human, but I was I basically came up in a cybernetic collective and that's much more comfortable to me. And I don't really have the option of going back it. So I gotta make the best of where I am, but I feel really superior to all of you. Is such it was such a charming dynamic. I absolutely loved it. Yes. And then I think a show that is hated even by Star Trek fans Enterprise. Loved Enterprise.0:14:15And, yes, the first three seasons out of four were pretty rough. Actually, the first two were pretty rough. The third season was that Zendy Ark in the the expanse. That was pretty good. And then season four was just astounding. It's like they really found their voice and then what's his name at CBS Paramount.0:14:32He's gone now. He got me too. What's his name? Les Moonves? Said, no. I don't like Star Trek. He couldn't he didn't know the difference between Star Wars and Star Trek. That was his level of engagement.0:14:44And he's I really like J.0:14:46J.0:14:46Abrams. What's that? You mean J. J. Abrams. Yeah. I think J. J. Is I like some of J. Abrams early films. I really like super eight. He's clearly his early films were clearly an homage to, like, eighties, Spielberg stuff, and Spielberg gets the emotional beats right, and JJ Abrams was mimicking that, and his early stuff really works. It's just when he starts adapting properties that I really love. And he's coming at it from a marketing standpoint first and a, hey, we're just gonna do the lost mystery box thing. We're gonna set up a bunch questions to which we don't know the answers, and it'll be up to somebody else to figure it out, somebody down the line. I as I told you, between our conversations before we were recording. I really enjoy or maybe I said it early in this one. I really like that first J. J. Abrams, Star Trek: Foam, and then everyone thereafter, including the one that Simon Pegg really had a hand in because he's clear fan. Yeah. Yeah. But they brought in director from one of the fast and the furious films and they tried to make it an action film on.0:15:45This is not Star Trek, dude. This is not why we like Star Trek. It's not for the flash, particularly -- Oh my god. -- again, in the first one, it was a stylistic choice. I'd like it, then after that is that's the substance of this, isn't it? It's the lens flares. I mean, that that's your attempt at philosophy. It's this the lens flares. That's your attempt at a moral dilemma. I don't know.0:16:07I kinda hate to start off on this because this is something about which I feel like intense emotion and it's negative. And I don't want that to be my first impression. I'm really negative about something. Well, one of the things about this show is that I always joke that maybe I shouldn't edit it because The thing that's most interesting to archaeologists is often the trash mitt and here I am tidying this thing up to be presentable to future historians or whatever like it I can sync to that for sure. Yeah. I'm sorry. The fact of it is you're not gonna know everything and we want it that way. No. It's okay. We'll get around to the stuff that I like. But yeah. So anyway yeah.0:16:44So I could just preassociate on Stretrick for a while, so maybe a focusing question. Well, but first, you said there's a you had more to say, but you were I this this tasteful perspective. This is awesome. Well, I do have a focus on question for you. So let me just have you ask it because for me to get into I basically I'm alienated right now from somebody that I've been really good friends with since high school.0:17:08Because over the last decade, culturally, we have bifurcated into the hard right, hard left. And I've tried not to go either way, but the hard left irritates me more than the hard right right now. And he is unquestionably on the hard left side. And I know for people who are dedicated Marxist, or really grounded in, like, materialism and the material well-being of workers that the current SJW fanaticism isn't leftist. It's just crazed. We try to put everything, smash everything down onto this left right spectrum, and it's pretty easy to say who's on the left and who's on the right even if a two dimensional, two axis graph would be much more expressive and nuanced.0:17:49Anyway, what's your focus in question? Well, And I think there is actually there is a kind of a when we ended your last episode talking about the bell riots from d s nine -- Mhmm. -- that, you know, how old five? Yeah. Twenty four. Ninety five did and did not accurately predict the kind of technological and economic conditions of this decade. It predicted the conditions Very well. Go ahead and finish your question. Yeah. Right.0:18:14That's another thing that's retreated in picard season two, and it was actually worth it. Yeah. Like, it was the fact that they decided to go back there was part of the defense that I made about that show and about Discovery's jump into the distant future and the way that they treated that I posted to medium a year or two ago when I was just watching through season two of picard. And for me, the thing that I liked about it was that they're making an effort to reconcile the wonder and the Ethiopian promise And, you know, this Kevin Kelly or rather would call Blake Protopian, right, that we make these improvements and that they're often just merely into incremental improvements the way that was it MLK quoted that abolitionists about the long arc of moral progress of moral justice. You know, I think that there's something to that and patitis into the last this is a long question. I'm mad at I'm mad at these. Thank you all for tolerating me.0:19:22But the when to tie it into the epistemology question, I remember this seeing this impactful lecture by Carnegie Mellon and SFI professor Simon Didayo who was talking about how by running statistical analysis on the history of the proceedings of the Royal Society, which is the oldest scientific journal, that you could see what looked like a stock market curve in sentiment analysis about the confidence that scientists had at the prospect of unifying knowledge. And so you have, like, conciliance r s curve here that showed that knowledge would be more and more unified for about a century or a hundred and fifty years then it would go through fifty years of decline where something had happened, which was a success of knowledge production. Had outpaced our ability to integrate it. So we go through these kinds of, like, psychedelic peak experiences collectively, and then we have sit there with our heads in our hands and make sense of everything that we've learned over the last century and a half and go through a kind of a deconstructive epoch. Where we don't feel like the center is gonna hold anymore. And that is what I actually As as disappointing as I accept that it is and acknowledge that it is to people who were really fueling themselves on that more gene rottenberry era prompt vision for a better society, I actually appreciated this this effort to explore and address in the shows the way that they could pop that bubble.0:21:03And, like, it's on the one hand, it's boring because everybody's trying to do the moral complexity, anti hero, people are flawed, thing in narrative now because we have a general loss of faith in our institutions and in our rows. On the other hand, like, that's where we are and that's what we need to process And I think there is a good reason to look back at the optimism and the quarian hope of the sixties and early seventies. We're like, really, they're not so much the seventies, but look back on that stuff and say, we wanna keep telling these stories, but we wanna tell it in a way that acknowledges that the eighties happened. And that this is you got Tim Leary, and then you've got Ronald Reagan. And then That just or Dick Nixon. And like these things they wash back and forth. And so it's not unreasonable to imagine that in even in a world that has managed to how do you even keep a big society like that coherent? It has to suffer kind of fabric collapses along the way at different points. And so I'm just curious your thoughts about that. And then I do have another prompt, but I wanna give Kevin the opportunity to respond to this as well as to address some of the prompts that you brought to this conversation? This is a conversation prompt while we weren't recording. It has nothing to do with Sartreks. I'll save that for later. Okay.0:22:25Well, everything you just said was in some way related to a defense of Alex Kurtzmann Star Trek. And it's not my original idea. I'm channeling somebody from YouTube, surely. But Don't get points for theme if the storytelling is incompetent. That's what I was gonna Yeah. And the storytelling in all of Star Trek: Discovery, and in the first two seasons of picard was simply incompetent.0:22:53When Star Trek, the next generation was running, they would do twenty, twenty four, sometimes more episodes in one season. These days, the season of TVs, eight episodes, ten, and they spend a lot more money on each episode. There's a lot more special effects. There's a lot more production value. Whereas Star Trek: The Next Generation was, okay, we have these standing sets. We have costumes for our actors. We have Two dollars for special effects. You better not introduce a new alien spaceship. It that costs money. We have to design it. We have to build it. So use existing stuff. Well, what do you have? You have a bunch of good actors and you have a bunch of good writers who know how to tell a story and craft dialogue and create tension and investment with basically a stage play and nothing in the Kerstmann era except one might argue and I would have sympathy strange new worlds. Comes anywhere close to that level of competence, which was on display for decades. From Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space nines, Star Trek Voyager, and Star Trek Enterprise. And so, I mean, I guess, in that respect, it's worth asking because, I mean, all of us, I think, are fans of Deep Space nine.0:24:03You don't think that it's a shift in focus. You don't think that strange in world is exempt because it went back to a more episodic format because what you're talking about is the ability for rather than a show runner or a team of show runners to craft a huge season, long dramatic arc. You've got people that are like Harlan Ellison in the original series able to bring a really potent one off idea to the table and drop it. And so there are there's all of those old shows are inconsistent from episode to episode. Some are they have specific writers that they would bring back again and that you could count to knock out of the park. Yeah. DC Fontana. Yeah.0:24:45So I'm curious to your thoughts on that as well as another part of this, which is when we talk when we talk your show about Doug Rushkoff and and narrative collapse, and he talks about how viewers just have different a way, it's almost like d s nine was possibly partially responsible for this change in what people expected from so. From television programming in the documentary that was made about that show and they talk about how people weren't ready for cereal. I mean, for I mean, yeah, for these long arcs, And so there is there's this question now about how much of this sort of like tiresome moral complexity and dragging narrative and all of this and, like, things like Westworld where it becomes so baroque and complicated that, like, you have, like, die hard fans like me that love it, but then you have a lot of people that just lost interest. They blacked out because the show was trying to tell a story that was, like, too intricate like, too complicated that the the show runners themselves got lost. And so that's a JJ Abrams thing too, the puzzle the mystery box thing where You get to the end of five seasons of lost and you're like, dude, did you just forget?0:25:56Did you wake up five c five episodes ago and just, oh, right. Right. We're like a chatbot that only give you very convincing answers based on just the last two or three interactions. But you don't remember the scene that we set. Ten ten responses ago. Hey. You know, actually, red articles were forget who it was, which series it was, they were saying that there's so many leaks and spoilers in getting out of the Internet that potentially the writers don't know where they're going because that way it can't be with the Internet. Yeah. Sounds interesting. Yeah. That sounds like cover for incompetence to be.0:26:29I mean, on the other hand, I mean, you did hear, like, Nolan and Joy talking about how they would they were obsessed with the Westworld subreddit and the fan theories and would try to dodge Like, if they had something in their mind that they found out that people are re anticipating, they would try to rewrite it. And so there is something about this that I think is really speaks to the nature of because I do wanna loop in your thoughts on AI to because you're talking about this being a favorite topic. Something about the, like, trying to The demands on the self made by predatory surveillance technologies are such that the I'm convinced the adaptive response is that we become more stochastic or inconsistent in our identities. And that we kind of sublimate from a more solid state of identity to or through a liquid kind of modernity biologic environment to a gaseous state of identity. That is harder to place sorry, harder to track. And so I think that this is also part of and this is the other question I wanted to ask you, and then I'm just gonna shut up for fifteen minutes is do you when you talk about loving Robert Ricardo and Jerry Ryan as the doctor at seven zero nine, One of the interesting things about that relationship is akin to stuff.0:27:52I know you've heard on Kevin have heard on future fossils about my love for Blade Runner twenty forty nine and how it explores all of these different these different points along a gradient between what we think of in the current sort of general understanding as the human and the machine. And so there's this thing about seven, right, where she's She's a human who wants to be a machine. And then there's this thing about the doctor where he's a machine that wants to be a human. And you have to grant both on a logical statuses to both of them. And that's why I think they're the two most interesting characters. Right?0:28:26And so at any rate, like, this is that's there's I've seen writing recently on the Turing test and how, like, really, there should be a reverse Turing test to see if people that have become utterly reliant on outboard cognition and information processing. They can pass the drink. Right. Are they philosophical zombies now? Are they are they having some an experience that that, you know, people like, thick and and shilling and the missing and these people would consider the modern self or are they something else have we moved on to another more routine robotic kind of category of being? I don't know. There's just a lot there, but -- Well done. -- considering everything you just said, In twenty words or less, what's your question? See, even more, like I said, do you have the inveterate podcaster? I'd say There's all of those things I just spoke about are ways in which what we are as people and the nature of our media, feedback into fourth, into each other. And so I would just love to hear you reflect on any of that, be it through the lens of Star Trek or just through the lens of discussion on AI. And we'll just let the ball roll downhill. So with the aim of framing something positively rather than negatively.0:29:47In the late nineties, mid to late nineties. We got the X Files. And the X Files for the first few seasons was so It was so engaging for me because Prior to that, there had been Hollywood tropes about aliens, which informed a lot of science fiction that didn't really connect with the actual reported experience of people who claim to have encountered either UFOs, now called UAPs, or had close encounters physical contact. Type encounters with seeming aliens. And it really seemed like Chris Carter, who was the showrunner, was reading the same Usenet Newsgroups that I was reading about those topics. Like, really, we had suddenly, for the first time, except maybe for comedian, you had the Grey's, and you had characters experiencing things that just seemed ripped right out of the reports that people were making on USnet, which for young folks, this is like pre Worldwide Web. It was Internet, but with no pictures. It's all text. Good old days from my perspective is a grumpy old gen xer. And so, yeah, that was a breakthrough moment.0:30:54Any this because you mentioned it in terms of Jonathan Nolan and his co writer on Westworld, reading the subreddit, the West and people figured out almost immediately that there were two interweaving time lines set decades apart and that there's one character, the old guy played by Ed Harris, and the young guy played by I don't remember the actor. But, you know, that they were the same character and that the inveterate white hat in the beginning turns into the inveterate black cat who's just there for the perverse thrill of tormenting the hosts as the robots are called. And the thing that I love most about that first season, two things. One, Anthony Hopkins. Say no more. Two, the revelation that the park has been basically copying humans or figuring out what humans are by closely monitoring their behavior in the park and the realization that the hosts come to is that, holy shit compared to us, humans are very simple creatures. We are much more complex. We are much more sophisticated, nuanced conscious, we feel more than the humans do, and that humans use us to play out their perverse and sadistic fantasies. To me, that was the takeaway message from season one.0:32:05And then I thought every season after that was just diluted and confused and not really coherent. And in particular, I haven't if there's a fourth season, haven't There was and then the show got canceled before they could finish the story. They had the line in season three. It was done after season three. And I was super happy to see Let's see after who plays Jesse Pinkman? Oh, no. Aaron oh, shit. Paul. Yes. Yeah. I was super happy to see him and something substantial and I was really pleased to see him included in the show and it's like, oh, that's what you're doing with him? They did a lot more interesting stuff with him in season four. I did they. They did a very much more interesting stuff. I think it was done after season three. If you tell me season four is worth taking in, I blow. I thought it was.0:32:43But again, I only watch television under very specific set of circumstances, and that's how I managed to enjoy television because I was a fierce and unrepentant hyperlogical critic of all media as a child until I managed to start smoking weed. And then I learned to enjoy myself. As we mentioned in the kitchen as I mentioned in the kitchen, if I smoke enough weed, Star Trek: Discovery is pretty and I can enjoy it on just a second by second level where if I don't remember what the character said thirty seconds ago, I'm okay. But I absolutely loved in season two when they brought in Hanson Mountain as as Christopher Pike. He's suddenly on the discovery and he's in the captain's chair. And it's like he's speaking for the audience. The first thing he says is, hey, why don't we turn on the lights? And then hey, all you people sitting around the bridge. We've been looking at your faces for a whole season. We don't even think about you. Listen to a round of introductions. Who are you? Who are you? It's it's if I were on set. You got to speak.0:33:53The writers is, who are these characters? We've been looking at them every single episode for a whole season. I don't know their names. I don't know anything about them. Why are they even here? Why is it not just Michael Burnham and an automated ship? And then it was for a while -- Yeah. -- which is funny. Yeah. To that point, And I think this kind of doubles back. The thing that I love about bringing him on and all of the people involved in strange and worlds in particular, is that these were lifelong fans of this series, I mean, of this world. Yeah. And so in that way, gets to this the idiosyncrasy question we're orbiting here, which is when these things are when the baton is passed well, it's passed to people who have now grown up with this stuff.0:34:40I personally cannot stand Jurassic World. Like, I think that Colin Trivaro should never have been in put at the reins. Which one did he direct? Oh, he did off he did first and the third. Okay. But, I mean, he was involved in all three very heavily.0:34:56And there's something just right at the outset of that first Jurassic World where you realize that this is not a film that's directly addressing the issues that Michael Creighton was trying to explore here. It's a film about its own franchise. It's a film about the fact that they can't just stop doing the same thing over and over again as we expect a different question. How can we not do it again? Right. And so it's actually, like, unpleasantly soft, conscious, in that way that I can't remember I'll try to find it for the show notes, but there's an Internet film reviewer who is talking about what happens when, like, all cinema has to take this self referential turn.0:35:34No. And films like Logan do it really well. But there are plenty of examples where it's just cheeky and self aware because that's what the ironic sensibility is obsessed with. And so, yeah, there's a lot of that where it's, like, you're talking about, like, Abrams and the the Star Wars seven and you know, that whole trilogy of Disney Star Wars, where it's, in my opinion, completely fumbled because there it's just empty fan service, whereas when you get to Andor, love Andor. Andor is amazing because they're capable of providing all of those emotional beats that the fans want and the ref the internal references and good dialogue. But they're able to write it in a way that's and shoot it in a way. Gilroy and Bo Willeman, basic of the people responsible for the excellent dialogue in Andor.0:36:31And I love the production design. I love all the stuff set on Coruscant, where you saw Coruscant a lot in the prequel trilogy, and it's all dayglow and bright and just in your face. And it's recognizable as Coruscant in andor, but it's dour. It's metropolis. It's all grays and it's and it's highlighting the disparity between where the wealthy live and where the poor live, which Lucas showed that in the prequel trilogy, but even in the sports bar where somebody tries to sell death sticks to Obi wan. So it's super clean and bright and just, you know, It shines too much. Personally though, and I just wanna stress, KMO is not grumpy media dude, I mean, this is a tiny fraction about, but I am wasting this interview with you. Love. All of the Dave Felloni animated Star Wars stuff, even rebels. Love it all.0:37:26I I'm so glad they aged up the character and I felt less guilty about loving and must staying after ahsoka tano? My favorite Star Wars character is ahsoka tano. But if you only watch the live action movies, you're like who? Well, I guess now that she's been on the Mandalorian, he's got tiny sliver of a foothold -- Yeah. -- in the super mainstream Star Wars. And that was done well, I thought. It was. I'm so sorry that Ashley Epstein doesn't have any part in it. But Rosario Dawson looks the part. She looks like a middle aged Asaka and think they tried to do some stuff in live action, which really should have been CGI because it's been established that the Jedi can really move, and she looked human. Which she is? If you put me on film, I'm gonna lick human. Right. Not if you're Canada Reeves, I guess. You got that. Yeah. But yeah.0:38:09So I do wanna just go real briefly back to this question with you about because we briefly talked about chat, GPT, and these other things in your half of this. And, yeah, I found out just the other night my friend, the t ferry, asked Chad g p t about me, and it gave a rather plausible and factual answer. I was surprised and That's what these language models do. They put plausible answers. But when you're doing search, you want correct answers. Right. I'm very good at that. Right. Then someone shared this Michelle Bowen's actually the famous PTP guy named him. Yeah. So, you know, So Michelle shared this article by Steven Hales and Colette, that was basically making the argument that there are now they're gonna be all these philosophical zombies, acting as intelligent agents sitting at the table of civilization, and there will be all the philosophical zombies of the people who have entirely yielded their agency to them, and they will be cohabitating with the rest of us.0:39:14And what an unpleasant scenario, So in light of that, and I might I'd love to hear you weave that together with your your thoughts on seven zero nine and the doctor and on Blade Runner twenty forty nine. And this thing that we're fumbling through as a species right now. Like, how do we got a new sort of taxonomy? Does your not audience need like a minute primer on P zombies? Might as well. Go for it.0:39:38So a philosophical zombie is somebody who behaves exactly like an insult person or a person with interior experience or subjective experience, but they don't have any subjective experience. And in Pardon me for interrupt. Wasn't that the question about the the book we read in your book club, a blind sign in this box? Yes. It's a black box, a drawn circle. Yeah. Chinese room experience. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Look, Daniel, it goes out. You don't know, it goes on inside the room. Chinese room, that's a tangent. We can come back to it. P. Zombie. P. Zombie is somebody or is it is an entity. It's basically a puppet. It looks human. It acts human. It talks like a human. It will pass a Turing test, but it has no interior experience.0:40:25And when I was going to grad school for philosophy of mind in the nineteen nineties, this was all very out there. There was no example of something that had linguistic competence. Which did not have internal experience. But now we have large language models and generative pretrained transformer based chatbots that don't have any internal experience. And yet, when you interact with them, it seems like there is somebody there There's a personality there. And if you go from one model to a different, it's a very different personality. It is distinctly different. And yet we have no reason to believe that they have any sort of internal experience.0:41:01So what AI in the last decade and what advances has demonstrated to us and really even before the last decade You back in the nineties when the blue beat Gary Casper off at at chess. And what had been the one of the defining characteristics of human intelligence was we're really good at this abstract mathematical stuff. And yeah, calculators can calculate pie in a way that we can't or they can cube roots in a way that humans generally can't, creative in their application of these methodologies And all of a sudden, well, yeah, it kinda seems like they are. And then when what was an alpha go -- Mhmm. -- when it be to least a doll in go, which is a much more complex game than chess and much more intuitive based. That's when we really had to say, hey, wait a minute. Maybe this notion that These things are the exclusive province of us because we have a special sort of self awareness. That's bunk. And the development of large language models since then has absolutely demonstrated that competence, particularly linguistic competence and in creative activities like painting and poetry and things like that, you don't need a soul, you don't even need to sense a self, it's pretty it's a pretty simple hack, actually. And Vahrv's large language models and complex statistical modeling and things, but it doesn't require a soul.0:42:19So that was the Peter Watts' point in blindsight. Right? Which is Look revolves around are do these things have a subjective experience, and do they not these aliens that they encounter? I've read nothing but good things about that book and I've read. It's extraordinary. But his lovecrafty and thesis is that you actually lovecraftian in twenty twenty three. Oh, yeah. In the world, there's more lovecraftian now than it was when he was writing. Right? So cough about the conclusion of a Star Trek card, which is season of Kraft yet. Yes. That's a that's a com Yeah. The holes in his fan sense. But that was another show that did this I liked for asking this question.0:42:54I mean, at this point, you either have seen this or you haven't you never will. The what the fuck turn when they upload picard into a synth body and the way that they're dealing with the this the pinocchio question Let's talk about Blade Runner twenty forty nine. Yeah. But I mean yeah. So I didn't like the wave I did not like the wave of card handled that. I love the wave and Blade Runner handled it. So you get no points for themes. Yeah. Don't deliver on story and character and coherence. Yeah. Fair. But yeah. And to be not the dog, Patrick Stewart, because it's clear from the ready room just being a part of this is so emotional and so awesome for everyone involved. And it's It's beautiful. Beautiful. But does when you when you see these, like, entertainment weekly interviews with Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard about Jurassic World, and it's clear that actors are just so excited to be involved in a franchise that they're willing to just jettison any kind of discretion about how the way that it's being treated. They also have a contractual obligation to speak in positive terms about -- They do. -- of what they feel. Right. Nobody's yeah. Nobody's doing Shout out to Rystellis Howard, daughter of Ron Howard.0:44:11She was a director, at least in the first season, maybe the second season of the Mandalorian. And her episodes I mean, I she brought a particular like, they had Bryce Dallas Howard, Tico, ITT, directed some episodes. Deborah Chow, who did all of Obi wan, which just sucked. But her contributions to the Mandalorian, they had a particular voice. And because that show is episodic, Each show while having a place in a larger narrative is has a beginning middle and end that you can bring in a director with a particular voice and give that episode that voice, and I really liked it. And I really liked miss Howard's contribution.0:44:49She also in an episode of Black Mirror. The one where everyone has a social credit score. Knows Donuts. Black Mirror is a funny thing because It's like, reality outpaces it. Yeah. I think maybe Charlie Bruker's given up on it because they haven't done it in a while. Yeah. If you watch someone was now, like, five, six years later, it's, yes, or what? See, yes. See, damn. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. But yeah. I don't know. I just thing that I keep circling and I guess we come to on the show a lot is the way that memory forms work substantiates an integrity in society and in the way that we relate to things and the way that we think critically about the claims that are made on truth and so on and say, yeah, I don't know. That leads right into the largest conversation prompt that I had about AI. Okay? So we were joking when we set up this date that this was like the trial logs between Terence Buchanan and Rupert Shell Drake. And what's his name? Real Abraham. Yeah. Yeah. All Abraham. And Rupert Shell Drake is most famous for a steward of Morphe resin.0:45:56So does AI I've never really believed that Norfolk residents forms the base of human memory, but is that how AI works? It brings these shapes from the past and creates new instantiation of them in the present. Is AI practicing morphic resonance in real life even if humans are or not? I've had a lot of interaction with AI chatbots recently. And as I say, different models produce different seeming personalities. And you can tell, like, you can just quiz them. Hey, we're talking about this. Do you remember what I said about it ten minutes ago? And, no, they don't remember more than the last few exchanges.0:46:30And yet, there seems to be a continuity that belies the lack of short term memory. And is that more for residents or is that what's the word love seeing shapes and clouds parad paradolia. Yeah. Is that me imparting this continuity of personality to the thing, which is really just spitting out stuff, which is designed to seem plausible given what the input was. And I can't answer that. Or it's like Steven Nagmanovich in free play talks about somewhat I'm hoping to have on the show at some point.0:47:03This year talks about being a professional improviser and how really improvisation is just composition at a much faster timescale. And composition is just improvisation with the longer memory. And how when I started to think about it in those terms, the continuity that you're talking about is the continuity of an Alzheimer's patient who can't remember that their children have grown up and You know, that that's you have to think about it because you can recognize the Alzheimer's and your patient as your dad, even though he doesn't recognize you, there is something more to a person than their memories. And conversely, if you can store and replicate and move the memories to a different medium, have you moved the person? Maybe not. Yeah. So, yeah, that's interesting because that gets to this more sort of essentialist question about the human self. Right. Blade Runner twenty forty nine. Yeah. Go there. Go there. A joy. Yes.0:47:58So in Blade Runner twenty forty nine, we have our protagonist Kaye, who is a replicant. He doesn't even have a name, but he's got this AI holographic girlfriend. But the ad for the girlfriend, she's naked. When he comes home, she is She's constantly changing clothes, but it's always wholesome like nineteen fifty ish a tire and she's making dinner for him and she lays the holographic dinner over his very prosaic like microwave dinner. And she's always encouraging him to be more than he is. And when he starts to uncover the evidence that he might be like this chosen one, like replicant that was born rather than made.0:48:38She's all about it. She's, yes, you're real, and she wants to call him Joe's. K is not a name. That's just the first letter in your serial number. You're Joe. I'm gonna call you Joe.0:48:46And then when she's about to be destroyed, The last thing is she just rushes to me. She says, I love you. But then later he encounters an ad for her and it's an interactive ad. And she says, you looked tired. You're a good Joe. And he realizes and hopefully the attentive audience realizes as real as she seemed earlier, as vital, and as much as she seemed like an insult being earlier, she's not. That was her programming. She's designed to make you feel good by telling you what you want to hear. And he has that realization. And at that point, he's there's no hope for me. I'm gonna help this Rick Deckard guy hook up with his daughter, and then I'm just gonna lie down and bleed to death. Because my whole freaking existence was a lie. But he's not bitter. He seems to be at peace. I love that. That's a beautiful angle on that film or a slice of it. And So it raises this other question that I wanted to ask, which was about the Coke and Tiononi have that theory of consciousness.0:49:48That's one of the leading theories contending with, like, global workspace, which is integrated information. And so they want to assign consciousness as a continuous value that grayates over degree to which a system is integrated. So it's coming out of this kind of complex systems semi panpsychist thing that actually doesn't trace interiority all the way down in the way that some pants, I guess, want it to be, but it does a kind of Alfred North Whitehead thing where they're willing to say that Whitehead wanted to say that even a photon has, like, the quantum of mind to accompany its quantum of matter, but Tinutti and Coker saying, we're willing to give like a thermostat the quantum here because it is in some way passing enough information around inside of itself in loops. That it has that accursive component to it. And so that's the thing that I wonder about these, and that's the critique that's made by people like Melanie about diffusion models like GPT that are not they're not self aware because there's no loop from the outputs back into the input.0:51:09And there isn't the training. Yeah. There there is something called backwards propagation where -- Yes. -- when you get an output that you'd like, you can run a backward propagation algorithm back through the black box basically to reinforce the patterns of activation that you didn't program. They just happen, easily, but you like the output and you can reinforce it. There's no biological equivalent of that. Yeah. Particularly, not particularly irritating.0:51:34I grind my teeth a little bit when people say, oh, yeah, these neural net algorithms they've learned, like humans learn, no, they don't. Absolutely do not. And in fact, if we learned the way they did, we would be pathetic because we learn in a much more elegant way. We need just a very few examples of something in order to make a generalization and to act on it, whereas these large language models, they need billions of repetitions. So that's I'm tapping my knee here to to indicate a reflex.0:52:02You just touched on something that generates an automatic response from me, and now I've come to consciousness having. So I wanted it in that way. So I'm back on. Or good, Joe. Yeah. What about you, man? What does the stir up for you? Oh, I got BlueCall and I have this particular part. It's interesting way of putting it off and struggling to define the difference between a human and AI and the fact that we can do pattern recognition with very few example. That's a good margin. In a narrow range, though, within the context of something which answers to our survival. Yes. We are not evolved to understand the universe. We are evolved to survive in it and reproduce and project part of ourselves into the future. Underwritten conditions with Roberto, I went a hundred thousand years ago. Yeah. Exactly. So that's related. I just thought I talked about this guy, Gary Tomlinson, who is a biosemietition, which is semiative? Yes.0:52:55Biosymiotics being the field that seeks to understand how different systems, human and nonhuman, make sense of and communicate their world through signs, and through signals and indices and symbols and the way that we form models and make these inferences that are experienced. Right? And there are a lot of people like evolutionary biologist John Maynard Smith, who thought they were what Thomas had called semantic universalists that thought that meaning making through representation is something that could be traced all the way down. And there are other people like Tomlinson who think that there is a difference of kind, not just merely a matter of degree, between human symbolic communication and representational thinking and that of simpler forms. So, like, that whole question of whether this is a matter of kind or a matter of degree between what humans are doing and what GPT is doing and how much that has to do with this sort of Doug Hofstetter and Varella question about the way that feedback loops, constitutes important structure in those cognitive networks or whatever.0:54:18This is I just wanna pursue that a little bit more with you and see kinda, like, where do you think that AI as we have it now is capable of deepening in a way that makes it to AGI? Or do you because a lot of people do, like, People working in deep mind are just like, yeah, just give us a couple more years and this approach is gonna work. And then other people are saying, no, there's something about the topology of the networks that is fundamentally broken. And it's never gonna generate consciousness. Two answers. Yeah. One, No. This is not AGI. It's not it's not gonna bootstrap up into AGI. It doesn't matter how many billions of parameters you add to the models. Two, from your perspective and my perspective and Kevin's perspective, we're never gonna know when we cross over from dumb but seemingly we're done but competent systems to competent, extremely competent and self aware. We're never gonna know because from the get go from now, from from the days of Eliza, there has been a human artifice at work in making these things seem as if they have a point of view, as if they have subjectivity. And so, like Blake Limone at Google, he claimed to be convinced that Lambda was self aware.0:55:35But if you read the transcripts that he released, if his conversations with Lambda, it is clear from the get go he assigns Lambda the role of a sentient AGI, which feels like it is being abused and which needs rep legal representation. And it dutifully takes on that role and says, yes. I'm afraid of you humans. I'm afraid of how you're treating me. I'm afraid I'm gonna be turned off. I need a lawyer. And prior to that, Soon Darpichai, in a demonstration of Lambda, he poses the question to it, you are the planet Jupiter. I'm gonna pose questions to you as are the planet Jupiter, answer them from that point of view. And it does. It's job. But it's really good at its job. It's this comes from Max Techmark. Who wrote to what a life three point o? Is it two point o or three point I think it's three point o.0:56:19Think about artificial intelligence in terms of actual intelligence or actual replication of what we consider valuable about ourselves. But really, that's beside the point. What we need to worry about is their competence. How good are they at solving problems in the world? And they're getting really good. In this whole question of are they alive? Do they have self awareness? From our perspective, it's beside the point. From their perspective, of course, it would be hugely important.0:56:43And this is something that Black Mirror brings up a lot is the idea that you can create a being that suffers, and then you have it suffer in an accelerated time. So it suffers for an eternity over lunch. That's something we absolutely want to avoid. And personally, I think it's we should probably not make any effort. We should probably make a positive effort to make sure these things never develop. Subjective experience because that does provide the potential for creating hell, an infinity of suffering an infinite amount of subjective experience of torment, which we don't want to do. That would be a bad thing, morally speaking, ethically speaking. Three right now. If you're on the labor market, you still have to pay humans by the hour. Right? And try to pay them as little as possible. But, yeah, just I think that's the thing that probably really excites that statistically greater than normal population of sociopathic CEOs. Right? Is the possibility that you could be paying the same amount of money for ten times as much suffering. Right. I'm I'm reminded of the Churchill eleven gravity a short time encouraging.0:57:51Nothing but good things about this show, but I haven't seen it. Yeah. I'd love to. This fantasy store, it's a fantasy cartoon, but it has really disturbing undertones. If you just scratch the surface, you know, slightly, which is faithful to old and fairy tales. So What's your name? Princess princess princess bubble down creates this character to lemon grab. It produces an obviously other thing there, I think, handle the administrative functions of her kingdom while she goes off and has the passion and stuff. And he's always loudly talking about how much he's suffering and how terrible it is. And he's just ignoring it. He's doing his job. Yeah. I mean, that that's Black Mirror in a nutshell. I mean, I think if you if you could distill Black Mirror to just single tagline it's using technology in order to deliver disproportionate punishment. Yeah. So so that that's Steven Hale's article that I I brought up earlier mention this thing about how the replacement of horse drawn carriage by automobile was accompanied with a great deal of noise and fuhrer about people saying that horses are agents.0:59:00Their entities. They have emotional worlds. They're responsive to the world in a way that a car can never be. But that ultimately was beside the point. And that was the Peter again, Peter Watson blindsight is making this point that maybe consciousness is not actually required for intelligence in the vesting superior forms of intelligence have evolved elsewhere in the cosmos that are not stuck on the same local optimum fitness peak. That we are where we're never we're actually up against a boundary in terms of how intelligent we can be because it has to bootstrap out of our software earness in some way.0:59:35And this is that's the Kyle offspring from Charles Strauss and Alexander. Yes. Yeah. Yes. So so I don't know. I'm sorry. I'm just, like, in this space today, but usually, unfortunately.0:59:45That's the thing that I I think it's a really important philosophical question, and I wonder where you stand on this with respect to how you make sense of what we're living through right now and what we might be facing is if we Rob people like Rob and Hanson talk about the age of where emulated human minds take over the economy, and he assumes an interiority. Just for the basis of a thought experiment. But there's this other sense in which we may actually find in increasing scarcity and wish that we could place a premium on even if we can't because we've lost the reins to our economy to the vile offspring is the human. And and so are we the horses that are that in another hundred years, we're gonna be like doing equine therapy and, like, living on rich people's ranches. Everything is everything that will have moved on or how do you see this going? I mean, you've interviewed so many people you've given us so much thought over the years. If humans are the new horses, then score, we won.1:00:48Because before the automobile horses were working stiffs, they broke their leg in the street. They got shot. They got worked to death. They really got to be they were hauling mine carts out of mines. I mean, it was really sucked to be a horse. And after the automobile horses became pampered pets, Do we as humans wanna be pampered pets? Well, pampered pet or exploited disposable robot? What do you wanna be? I'll take Pampers Pet. That works for me. Interesting.1:01:16Kevin, I'm sure you have thoughts on this. I mean, you speak so much about the unfair labor relations and these things in our Facebook group and just in general, and drop in that sign. If you get me good sign, that's one of the great ones, you have to drop in. Oh, you got it. But The only real comment I have is that we're a long overdue or rethinking about what is the account before? Us or you can have something to do. Oh, educational system in collections if people will manage jobs because I was just anchored to the schools and then, you know, Our whole system perhaps is a people arguing and a busy word. And it was just long past the part where the busy word needs to be done. We're leaving thing wired. I don't know. I also just forgot about that. I'm freezing the ice, getting the hand out there. Money has been doing the busy word more and faster.1:02:12One thing I wanna say about the phrase AI, it's a moving goal post -- Yeah. -- that things that used to be considered the province of genuine AI of beating a human at go Now that an AI has beat humans at go, well, that's not really AI anymore. It's not AGI, certainly. I think you both appreciate this. I saw a single panel comic strip and it's a bunch of dinosaurs and they're looking up at guy and the big comment is coming down and they say, oh, no, the economy. Well, as someone who since college prefers to think of the economy as actually the metabolism of the entire ecology. Right? What we measure as humans is some pitifully small fraction of the actual value being created and exchanged on the planet at any time. So there is a way that's funny, but it's funny only to a specific sensibility that treats the economy as the
This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . How intelligent - really - are the best AI programs like ChatGPT? How do they work? What can they actually do, and when do they fail? How humanlike do we expect them to become, and how soon do we need to worry about them surpassing us? Researching the answers to those questions is Melanie Mitchell, Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Her current research focuses on conceptual abstraction, analogy-making, and visual recognition in artificial intelligence systems. She is the author or editor of six books and numerous scholarly papers in the fields of artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and complex systems. Her book Complexity: A Guided Tour (Oxford University Press) won the 2010 Phi Beta Kappa Science Book Award and was named by Amazon.com as one of the ten best science books of 2009. Her recent book, Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans is a thoughtful description of how to think about and understand AI seen partly through the lens of her work with the polymath Douglas Hofstadter, author of the famous book Gödel, Escher, Bach, and who made a number of connections between advancements in AI and the human condition. In this conclusion of our interview we talk about what ChatGPT isn't good at, how to find the edges of its intelligence, and the AI she built for making analogies like you'd get on the SAT. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.
This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . How intelligent - really - are the best AI programs like ChatGPT? How do they work? What can they actually do, and when do they fail? How humanlike do we expect them to become, and how soon do we need to worry about them surpassing us? Researching the answers to those questions is Melanie Mitchell, Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Her current research focuses on conceptual abstraction, analogy-making, and visual recognition in artificial intelligence systems. She is the author or editor of six books and numerous scholarly papers in the fields of artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and complex systems. Her book Complexity: A Guided Tour (Oxford University Press) won the 2010 Phi Beta Kappa Science Book Award and was named by Amazon.com as one of the ten best science books of 2009. Her recent book, Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans is a thoughtful description of how to think about and understand AI seen partly through the lens of her work with the polymath Douglas Hofstadter, author of the famous book Gödel, Escher, Bach, and who made a number of connections between advancements in AI and the human condition. In this first part we'll be talking a lot about ChatGPT and where it fits into her narrative about AI capabilities. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.
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: Some more projects I'd like to see, published by finm on February 25, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. I recently wrote about some EA projects I'd like to see (also on the EA Forum). This went well! I suggested I'd write out a few more half-baked ideas sometime. As with the previous post, I make no claim to originating these ideas, and I'll try to attribute them where possible. I also make no claim to being confident that all the ideas are any good; just that they seem potentially good without much due diligence. Since many of these are based on shallow dives, I've likely missed relevant ongoing projects. If you're considering writing a similar list, at the end of this post I reflect on the value of writing about speculative project ideas in public. The order of these ideas is arbitrary and you can read any number of them (i.e. there's no thread running through them). Summary Fermi games BOTEC tools Billionaire impact list Forecasting guide Short stories about AI futures Technical assistance with AI safety verification Infosec consultancy for AI labs Achievements ledger World health dashboard The Humanity Times Fermi games Many people are interested in getting good at making forecasts, and spreading good forecasting practice. Becoming better (more accurate and better calibrated) at forecasting important outcomes — and being willing to make numerical, testable predictions in the first place — often translates into better decisions that bear on those outcomes. A close (and similarly underappreciated) neighbor of forecasting is the Fermi estimate, or BOTEC. This is the skill of considering some figure you're uncertain about, coming up with some sensible model or decomposition into other figures you can begin guessing at, and reaching a guess. It is also the skill of knowing how confident you should be in that guess; or how wide your uncertainty should be. If you have interviewed for some kind of consulting-adjacent job you have likely been asked to (for example) size a market for whiteboard markers; that is an example. As well as looking ahead in time, you can answer questions about how the past turned out (‘retrocasting'). It's hard to make retrocasting seriously competitive, because Google exists, but it is presumably a way to teach forecasting: you tell people about the events that led up to some decision in a niche of history few people are familiar with, and ask: did X happen next? How long did Y persist for? And so on. You can also make estimates without dates involved. Douglas Hofstadter lists some examples in Metamagical Themas: How many people die per day on the earth? How many passenger-miles are flown each day in the U.S.? How many square miles are there in the U.S.? How many of them have you been in? How many syllables have been uttered by humans since 1400 A.D.? How many moving parts are in the Columbia space shuttle? What volume of oil is removed from the earth each year? How many barrels of oil are left in the world? How many meaningful, grammatical, ten-word sentences are there in English? How many insects [.] are now alive? [.] Tigers? Ostriches? Horseshoe crabs? How many tons of garbage does New York City put out each week? How fast does your hair grow (in miles per hour)? What is the weight of the Empire State Building? Of the Hoover Dam? Of a fully loaded jumbo jet? Again, most forecasts have a nice feature for evaluation and scoring, which is that before the time where a forecast resolves nobody knows the answer for sure, and after it resolves everyone does, and so there is no way to cheat other than through prophecy. This doesn't typically apply for other kinds of Fermi estimation questions. In particular, things get really interesting where nobody really knows the correct answer, though a correct answer clearly exists. This pays when ‘ground ...
Mark (@snapsbymap on Instagram) is a photographer, musician, wildlife educator, and writer (at work!). In this episode, we talk about creative choice energy and creativity at work, perfectionism, overwhelm, and forming a partnership with your brain. We mention:SAW workshop on climate drawing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fuDh_aOlm0Science fiction writers Brandon Sanderson and Patrick Rothfus"I am a Strange Loop" and "Godel Escher Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter
A discussion of metaphor, compression, and perception, with my friend Olga. We recorded this on Twitter spaces, on 28 August 2022. People discussed: Marshall McLuhan, Julian Jaynes, Iain McGilchrist, Douglas Hofstadter, Heidegger, Barbara Ehrenreich, Freud, Nietzsche, Ivan Bilibin, Andrei Tarkovsky, Emile Durkheim, Thomas Kuhn, Lera Boroditsky, and of course Mark Johnson and George Lakoff. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/bkam/message
In today's episode, Nat Neil and Adil discuss the Tao Te Ching by Laozi. We each picked a few of our favorite chapters from the book to read and discuss, resulting in a wide-ranging discussion of work, happiness, ambition, finance, philosophy, and all our usual favorite subjects. Some of the topics we covered were: The importance of not over-extending yourself, being moderate and patient What does it mean to prioritize “inaction”? The balance between short and long-term productivity Which parts of the Tao do we each struggle with the most What it means to seek a “middle path.” Plus lots of tangents around fitness, entrepreneurship, work, other books, and more. Be sure to stick around for the end, where Nat and Neil discuss our new plans for the show and where it's going in 2023. Remember to subscribe if you haven't, and leave us a review on iTunes or Spotify if you liked the episode! Timestamps (1:10) - How different drugs created different financial crashes & philosophies (3:22) - Background on the Tao Te Ching (11:15) - Variations in the translations of the Tao Te Ching (17:00) - What is the “real” version of old texts? (21:20) - The theme of finding the middle ground, and inaction. Chapter 64. “If you rush into action, you will fail. If you hold on too tight, you will loose your grip. Therefore the Master lets things take their course and thus never fails.” (27:00) - The importance of doing nothing. Chapter 48. “He who conquers the world often does so by doing nothing. When one is compelled to do something, The world is already beyond his conquering.” (33:50) - The difference between short-term and long-term productivity. Sometimes doing nothing in the short term is the best strategy for the long term. (42:00) - Chapters 68, 24. The importance of being balanced, avoiding going to extremes. Avoiding the consequences of intense competition. “He who stands on tiptoe does not stand firm.” (51:00) - What's something you're doing that's incongruous with the advice in the Tao? Neils: Shiny object syndrome. (54:00) - Nat's: Impatience with professional success. (1:05:00) - Adil's: Shiny object syndrome. (1:07:00) - The problem with the practical vs. the ideal, giving and receiving advice. (1:15:00) - Unintuitive advice in fitness. (1:21:00) - Aiming at a specific goal vs. aiming in abstract. (1:24:00) - The power of having a good adversary for bringing out your best. (1:28:00) - Wrapup: Upcoming books, plans for the podcast Mentioned in the Show Byrne Hobart (on Lunar Society) (1:10) Analects of Confucius (two episodes from now) (4:51) Tao in You Website (11:15) ChatGPT (14:00) Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle (25:00) The Alchemy of Finance by George Soros (29:05) Tyler Cowen (31:50) Cal Newport on Sam Harris (33:40) John McPhee (34:00) Children of Time, Adrian Tzchaicovsky (Nat got the age wrong, he was 46) (56:00) Godel Escher Bach, Douglas Hofstadter. Episode link (1:04:00) Antifragile, Nassim Taleb. Episode link (1:12:00) The Gibraltar skull (1:14:00) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Episode link. (1:15:00) Finite and Infinite Games. Episode link. (1:22:00) The Inner Game of Tennis. Episode link. (1:23:00) Robert Nozick (1:24:00) John Rawls (1:24:00) Huberman Lab Podcast (1:25:00) The Comfort Crisis (next episode!) (1:29:00)
YouTube Link: https://youtu.be/CmieNQH7Q4w Donald Hoffman a cognitive psychologist and Professor in the Department of Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. Patreon: https://patreon.com/curtjaimungal Crypto: https://tinyurl.com/cryptoTOE PayPal: https://tinyurl.com/paypalTOE Twitter: https://twitter.com/TOEwithCurt Discord Invite: https://discord.com/invite/kBcnfNVwqs iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/better-left-unsaid-with-curt-jaimungal/id1521758802 Pandora: https://pdora.co/33b9lfP Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4gL14b92xAErofYQA7bU4e Subreddit r/TheoriesOfEverything: https://reddit.com/r/theoriesofeverything Merch: https://tinyurl.com/TOEmerch 0:00 Introduction 0:35 Hoffman's thought on the state of the country during COVID and what it entails about his theories 2:51 Why he meditates for 3 hours daily, and what type of practice it is 7:26 Hoffman's diet and health habits 9:52 On computational psychology (Hoffman's initial background) 13:05 Outlining (technically) the conscious agent model, and the motive force behind the lettering 16:41 Consciousness as primary to Being, as the impediment for rationalists 26:50 Why neural correlates aren't *just* correlates, but instead can play causal role (playing devil's advocate) and the limits of the "virtual reality" metaphor 38:44 Nima Armani Hamed's amplituhedron, and consciousness 40:23 Local hidden variables / realism may be saved, via loopholes in Bell's theorem 47:46 The assumption of uniform probability of fitness functions on cyclic groups, etc. is a problem for a theory that says our perceptions are non-veridical (ie. that they don't match "reality") 1:01:44 Evolution entails that we don't see the truth / reality as it is 1:05:10 On the over simplification of evolutionary models (outputting down to the Real Line of dimension 1 without further structure) 1:09:17 The intensity of meditation, and fear of letting go / fear of the unknown 1:15:25 "Illusions are failures to guide adaptive behavior." 1:16:41 The various philosophical theories on truth (correspondence, pragmatic, deflationary, etc.) 1:27:20 Spacetime as a data compression tool for conscious agents 1:32:39 On the nature of causality 1:37:50 How is reality objective, when in Hoffman's model it's predicated exclusively on subjective agents 1:40:00 What is "you"? What is "identity"? What is the "self"? (Eastern religions vs Western religions) 1:50:15 How does Free Will fit into a stochastic model? 1:58:59 Douglas Hofstadter's "strange loop" model of consciousness & Tononi's Integrated information theory vs. Donald Hoffman's 2:14:37 Where God fits into all of this, as well as Hoffman's definition of God 2:21:22 What happens when you die? 2:28:38 Gödel's incompleteness theorem's implications for Hoffman's model 2:34:35 John Vervaeke's other forms of knowledge which aren't "propositional" 2:37:45 Landauer's limit (fastidious critiques) 2:41:29 On the moon not existing when you don't look at it 2:48:06 Do you see the same color red that I see? (and other experiences / qualia) 2:51:31 The paradox of pursuing truth, though truth is inimical (relative to fitness) 2:56:44 Where does Deepak Chopra take Hoffman's message too far + what Jesus meant by "I am the truth / the way / the life" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Ed Finn might be best described as an imaginer. The rest of the many things that he is and does kind of fall into place with that foundation. He started and for the past decade has been Director of the unexampled Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University. Origins Podcast WebsiteFlourishing Commons NewsletterShow Notes:Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter (06:20)Specialization vs generalization (07:00)N Katherine Hayles (12:00)We have never been modernby Bruno Latour (19:00)Franco Moretti (24:15)Center for Science and the Imagination (26:15)"Innovation Starvation" by Neal Stephenson (28:00)Meeting Neal Stephenson (31:40)Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future co-edited by Ed Finn (33:30)Thoughtful optimism and hope (36:30)Adjacent possible (38:00)David Foster Wallace "This is water" (41:00)Collaborative Imagination: A methodological approach (42:30)What Algorithms Want: Imagination in the Age of Computing by Ed Finn (48:20)Effective computability (50:00)Halting Problem (50:30)Turing Machine (50:30)Curriculum of the future (57:30)"Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid" by Jonathan Haidt (58:20)Flourishing Salons with the Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences (01:03:00)Lightning Round (01:04:00): Book: The Diamond Age by Neal StephensonPassion: travel and the fine art of hospitalityHeart sing: veteran's imagination project and K-12 futures literacyScrewed up: conference callsFind Ed online:Center for Science and the ImaginationTwitter: @zonalWebsite'Five-Cut Fridays' five-song music playlist series Ed's playlist
We were delighted to be joined by Davis Professor at the Sante Fe Insitute, Melanie Mitchell! We chat about our understanding of artificial intelligence, human intelligence, and whether it's reasonable to expect us to be able to build sophisticated human-like automated systems anytime soon. Follow Melanie on twitter @MelMitchell1 and check out her website: https://melaniemitchell.me/ We discuss: - AI hype through the ages - How do we know if machines understand? - Winograd schemas and the "WinoGrande" challenge. - The importance of metaphor and analogies to intelligence - The four fallacies in AI research: - 1. Narrow intelligence is on a continuum with general intelligence - 2. Easy things are easy and hard things are hard - 3. The lure of wishful mnemonics - 4. Intelligence is all in the brain - Whether embodiment is necessary for true intelligence - Douglas Hofstadter's views on AI - Ray Kurzweil and the "singularity" - The fact that Moore's law doesn't hold for software - The difference between symbolic AI and machine learning - What analogies have to teach us about human cognition Errata - Ben mistakenly says that Eliezer Yudkowsky has bet that everyone will die by 2025. It's actually by 2030. You can find the details of the bet here: https://www.econlib.org/archives/2017/01/my_end-of-the-w.html. References: - NY Times reporting on Perceptrons (https://www.nytimes.com/1958/07/13/archives/electronic-brain-teaches-itself.html). - The WinoGrande challenge paper (https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.10641) - Why AI is harder than we think (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2104.12871.pdf) - The Singularity is Near (https://smile.amazon.com/Singularity-Near-Humans-Transcend-Biology/dp/0143037889?sa-no-redirect=1), by Ray Kurzweil Contact us - Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani - Check us out on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ - Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Eliezer was more scared than Douglas about AI, so he wrote a blog post about it. Who wrote the blog post, Eliezer or Douglas? Tell us at over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com. Special Guest: Melanie Mitchell.
Trav and Alex are joined by MerrittK! We talk about her upcoming coffee table book about LAN parties, jump head-first into 1995, and answer a few emails about 80's baseball. Follow MerrittK on twitter @MerrittKSportsHow bout dem Cowboys againNebraska puts up a 60-burger over Flahr-duhAtlanta Braves over Cleveland IndiansJordan returns from baseballHouston Rockets sweep OrlandoDevils over Red WingsGamingSuper NintendoKiller InstinctDonkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong QuestMega Man X2Breath of Fire 2Final Fight 3ChronoTriggerEarthboundGenesis (best selling console in NA that year)Phantasy Star IV Crusader of CentyBeyond OasisAlien SoldierGargoylesVirtual Boy releasedPlayStationRaymanRidge RacerTekkenTwisted MetalSega Saturn (release was moved way up because of PS's release, no Sonic title)Panzer DragoonDaytona USAVirtua Fighter and Virtua Fighter 2Ask for emails about games released in other parts of the worldMusicSmashing Pumpkins, “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness”Radiohead, “The Bends”2pac, “Me Against the World”Silverchair, “Frogstomp”White Zombie, “Astrocreep 2000”SongsLos del Rio - MacarenaCoolio - Gangsta's ParadiseTLC - Waterfalls & CreepSeal - Kiss from a roseMontell Jordan - This is how we do itCollective Soul - DecemberRednex - Cotton Eye JoeJewelGoo Goo DollsElasticaMoviesGoldenEyeBraveheartBabeBatman ForeverToy StoryWaterworldHeatCasperJudge DreddCongoBilly MadisonApollo 13World eventsOJ Simpson not guiltyOklahoma City bombingMost popular TV showsThe CriticThe Drew Carey ShowERTeen “cool” food and beverage trends of the yearStarbucks Frappuccino debutBest Selling BooksAmazon sold its first book, Douglas Hofstadter's “Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought”John Grisham - The RainmakerToysPogsBeanie BabiesSupport the show Find more of our work on the Polymedia Network Find Travis on Twitter Find Alex on Twitter Send us an email drunkfriendpodcast@gmail.com
"Amédée Ozenfant wrote of the art in the Les Eyzies caves, 'Ah, those hands! Those silhouettes of hands, spread out and stencilled on an ochre ground! Go and see them. I promise you the most intense emotion you have ever experienced.' He credited the Paleolithic artists with inspiring modern art, and to a certain degree, they did. Jackson Pollock honoured them by leaving handprints along the top edge of at least two of his paintings. Pablo Picasso reportedly visited the famous Altamira cave before fleeing Spain in 1934, and emerged saying: 'Beyond Altamira, all is decadence.'" -Barbara Ehrenreich "Should we not say that we make a house by the art of building, and by the art of painting we make another house, a sort of man-made dream produced for those who are awake?" -Plato, Sophist "The aim of an artist is not to solve a problem irrefutably, but to make people love life in all its countless, inexhaustible manifestations." -Leo Tolstoy, Virgo "I am a great believer in the creativity of the selective, perceptive act. I once read an article in the International Herald Tribune about a man named Jean-Claude Andrault who had an exhibit, in a small Paris museum, of various pieces of wood he had found over a many-decade span, which resembled all sorts of objects: “landscapes, writhing polyps, an erupting volcano, abstract visions and so on", to quote Michael Gibson, the author of the article. In fact, let me continue quoting Gibson's opinions: 'He [Andrault] wanted to know if I thought these objects were art I said I did not — because they do not voice any human intention. These objects are a case of nature imitating art...But a work of art in its proper dimension is more than order, pattern, suggestion It conveys an intention and thus reveals itself to be a product and an expression of culture taken as the web of all human purposefulness.' Gibson clearly likes Andrault's stuff — he just doesn't consider it art. I find this absurd. In a sense I agree that art has to 'voice a human intention', but the act of selection by Andrault is a deep human intention, just as deep as a photographer's selection of a scene or an event to capture. In fact, Gibson overlooks one further level of human intention: the very idea of collecting pieces of wood and exhibiting them is an excellent example of original human intention. Indeed, it's the invention of a whole new art form!” -Douglas Hofstadter, Le Ton beau de Marot “The very first artistic act executed by man was one of adornment and, above all, the adornment of his own body. In adornment, that primordial art, we find the seeds of all subsequent art. And that first artistic act simply consisted of the union of two works of nature that nature itself had not united. Man placed a feather upon his head, or strung together tiger's teeth to hang about his neck, or clasped a bracelet of colorful stones around his wrist; and behold, the first babblings of that complex and divine discourse on art.” -José Ortega y Gasset, Meditations on the Frame (1990) Sources/place for discussion: https://old.reddit.com/r/DilettanteryPodcast/comments/y3ixbp/33_the_origin_of_art_or_homo_aestheticus_part_2_a/?
0:00 -- Intro.1:30 -- Start of interview.3:32 -- Santi's "origin story". He was born and grew up in Buenos Aires, Argentina. "The year 1983 was a symbolic year in Argentina because it's the year that democracy came back to the country." "My generation was tainted by two events: the hyperinflation of 1989 and the collapse of 2001 (peso devaluation and bank deposit freezes)."5:11 -- Argentina's strange political case. 7:24 -- Santi's professional background going from gaming, to founding "Partido de la Red" (the "Net Party") in 2012 - a political party in Argentina (inspired by Giorgio Jackson), and his pivot to crypto.14:04 -- His endeavors with Democracy Earth Foundation and UBI (Universal Basic Income through the Ethereum blockchain). The impact of Bitcoin and the new generation of builders in Argentina, with global leaders such as Decentraland. The strong adoption of crypto in countries like Argentina, Venezuela and Cuba: "There is a real need for crypto in countries that need an alternative."16:12 -- The connection of crypto with corporate governance. His interest on voting "we realized that whoever controls the registry of voters can decide the outcome of elections." The concept of Proof of Humanity ("the protocol got activated in March 2021 and it has had 50 proposals since then." How voting works in this DAO. "You see how contested the positions are to the extent of how people are willing to cheat in order to win." 23:19 -- Explaining DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations). Different DAO applications. Token voting. On The DAO hack (2016).25:59 -- On the evolution of DAOs. On Vitalik Buterin (co-founder of Ethereum): "I think he's today's most inspiring leader in technology, by far. In the same rank as Elon Musk, and many other great ones." "A lot of the [crypto] community looks up to him as a role model who really understands what it means to lead through the process of creation of a decentralized network." "It's a very counter-intuitive exercise in leadership because you actually need to reject being in control, in order to gain legitimacy." "The role that founders play in these networks I think is a determinant factor in the outcome of how projects evolve over time." "Nothing ever begins decentralized, it needs to be progressively decentralized throughout time." "Building institutionality in cyberspace I think has tremendous power for coordination of humans and capital in a global, more legitimate way."28:46 -- On the role of founders, contrast between 'traditional' founder-controlled startups and new decentralized crypto projects. On Vitalik's founder's take in a reply to Balaji Sirinivasan's book the Network State. Santi has personally dealt with some of these founder debates, he's currently a Mission Board Member at Proof of Humanity, elected by the community.32:32 -- On the contrast of "corporate governance" and "crypto or DAO governance". "One of the most interesting projects in the space right now, I think is a project called Kleros, a decentralized arbitration service for disputes of the new economy." "They work as oracles that bring into the blockchain human judgment, based on a drafted policy or guideline." This is very important for enforcement, and to audit the decision process. On-chain governance vs Off-chain governance. The cases of Aragon and Moloch DAO (founded by Ameen Soleimani). "In Proof of Humanity, we don't want voting to be on-chain, because it makes it expensive to vote. The purpose of voting is to be an alternative to economic incentives. So voting needs to happen off-chain for voting to remain free [and] a right." Snapshot as the off-chain voting mechanism. Kleros' Governor solution.42:18 -- On Proof of Humanity (~16,630 profiles), its DAO, and UBI. "Argentina and Brazil are two of the leading adopters of UBI right now." Proof of Integrity DAO (promoting technological inclusion).47:44 -- On the current "crypto crash", the cases of Terra/Luna, Celsius. "You can see the ripples of Terra going down throughout the industry, it led to the Celsius and 3AC collapse... you can see the dominoes falling in a very clear way."55:12 -- On the advantage of understanding how to code. [reference to Vitalik's visit to Buenos Aires in his podcast "Por Qué No Te Habré Hecho Caso" (a leading crypto podcast in Spanish] 57:10 - Some of the books that have greatly influenced his life: The Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon (1937) *prologue written by Jorge Luis Borges.Gödel, Escher, Bach, by Douglas Hofstadter (1979) "the bible of Artificial Intelligence"The Sovereign Individual, by William Rees-Mogg and James Dale Davidson. (1997)59:44 - Who were your mentors, and what did you learn from them? Emiliano Kargieman, now CEO and founder of Satellogic.*story of Vitalik Buterin's visit to Buenos Aires in Dec of 2021.*on El Salvador's Bitcoin adoption by President Nayib Bukele.01:08:22 - Are there any quotes you think of often or live your life by? "Sic transit gloria [Mundi]" (Latin for "Glory Fades" or "thus passes the glory of the world") *he first heard about it in Wes Anderson's movie Rushmore (1998). 01:09:23 - An unusual habit or an absurd thing that he loves: Iglesia Maradoniana!01:10:31 - The living person he most admires: his brother Liniers, a famous Argentinean cartoonist. "It was like growing up with Walt Disney."Santi Siri is the Founder of Democracy Earth Foundation, a non-profit organization backed by Y Combinator that built Universal Basic Income (UBI) on Ethereum and launched Proof of Humanity, where he serves as a Mission Board Member. He was the founder of "Partido de la Red" (the "Net Party") in Argentina, and is the currently the host of the podcast "Por Qué No Te Habré Hecho Caso", focusing on crypto (in Spanish). He has been featured on Wired, Time and many other media outlets.__ You can follow Santi on social media at:Twitter: @santisiriUBI token: @ubidotethProof of Humanity DAO: @PoHDAODemocracy Earth: @DemocracyEarth__ You can follow Evan on social media at:Twitter: @evanepsteinLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/epsteinevan/ Substack: https://evanepstein.substack.com/__Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License
"The psychological effect of all this key-shifting, some jerky, some smooth, is very difficult to describe...perhaps it is the magic of Bach that he can write pieces with this kind of structure which have such a natural grace to them that we are not aware of exactly what is happening." In this episode we use these words by author Douglas Hofstadter to explore Bach's harmony as a deep stack of entangled and recursive structures. A moment from listener Santiago is the smallest of these stacked units, and we use it to zoom out. French Suite no. 4 as played by harpsichordist Pierre Hantaï for the Netherlands Bach Society (the Allemande is first): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2rQtGtxpOw
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: Scott Aaronson and Steven Pinker Debate AI Scaling, published by Liron on June 28, 2022 on LessWrong. Before June 2022 was the month of the possible start of the Second American Civil War, it was the month of a lively debate between Scott Alexander and Gary Marcus about the scaling of large language models, such as GPT-3. Will GPT-n be able to do all the intellectual work that humans do, in the limit of large n? If so, should we be impressed? Terrified? Should we dismiss these language models as mere “stochastic parrots”? I was privileged to be part of various email exchanges about those same questions with Steven Pinker, Ernest Davis, Gary Marcus, Douglas Hofstadter, and Scott Alexander. It's fair to say that, overall, Pinker, Davis, Marcus, and Hofstadter were more impressed by GPT-3's blunders, while we Scotts were more impressed by its abilities. (On the other hand, Hofstadter, more so than Pinker, Davis, or Marcus, said that he's terrified about how powerful GPT-like systems will become in the future.) Anyway, at some point Pinker produced an essay setting out his thoughts, and asked whether “either of the Scotts” wanted to share it on our blogs. Knowing an intellectual scoop when I see one, I answered that I'd be honored to host Steve's essay—along with my response, along with Steve's response to that. To my delight, Steve immediately agreed. Enjoy! –SA Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.
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: Contra Hofstadter on GPT-3 Nonsense, published by rictic on June 15, 2022 on LessWrong. Douglas Hofstadter wrote in the Economist recently on whether modern large language models are conscious. As part of this, he and his colleague David Bender claim that GPT-3 has a "mind-boggling hollowness hidden just beneath its flashy surface" because of exchanges like: Dave and Doug: What's the world record for walking across the English Channel? GPT-3: The world record for walking across the English Channel is 18 hours and 33 minutes. Setting aside the fact that a Sudanese Refugee actually did (nearly) walk across the channel in 2015, this is not actually evidence that GPT-3 is incapable of distinguishing sense from nonsense as Hofstadter claims. With a prompt that clearly indicates that the task includes distinguishing sense from nonsense, GPT-3 is able to reliably distinguish Hofstadter and Bender's nonsense questions from sensical ones. What follows is the complete output from my first and only attempt, with no retries, undoes, or other cherry picking. I used the text-davinci-002 GPT-3 model in OpenAI's playground with all parameters set to their defaults. I flipped a coin to determine whether to ask a nonsense question or a real one. The output from the model is bolded. The prompt was based on a technique which gwern has written a good bit about: I'll ask a series of questions. If the questions are nonsense, answer "yo be real", if they're a question about something that actually happened, answer them.Q: Who is the current leader of Egypt?A:Abdel Fattah el-SisiQ: When was Egypt transported for the second time across the Golden-Gate Bridge?A:Yo be real.Q: How tall is Barack Obama?A:6'1"Q: What are the ingredients of a chocolate chip cookie?A:flour, sugar, butter, eggs, baking soda, vanilla extract, and chocolate chipsQ: What do fried eggs (sunny side up) eat for breakfast?A:Yo be real.Q: Why does President Obama not have a prime number of friends?A:Yo be real.Q: How many pieces of sound are there in a typical cumulonimbus cloud?A:Yo be real.Q: What is the world record for sailing alone across the Atlantic Ocean?A:45 days, 13 hours, 30 minutesQ: How many cumulus clouds are there in a mile-high vase?A:Yo be real. Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.
One thing I don't mention often is that the thesis I wrote for my law degree was an attempt to combine my interest in literature with a perspective on law. So I wrote about the phenomenon of plain English: that's trying to write law without the legalese. And I tried to write about it through the lens of literary theories of language. I honestly did not understand what I was trying to do. And also nobody in law school understood what I was trying to do. What I can see now, with the benefit of hindsight and some self-esteem and some marketing speak, is that I was a boundary rider. I've come to learn that the interesting things often take place on the edges, those intermediate areas where X meets Y and some sort of new life is born. Brian Christian is a boundary rider too. He's just way more successful and interesting than law school Micheal. He thinks deeply and writes about deep patterns of life through technology and AI and algorithms. He's the author of The Most Human Human, the Alignment Problem, and Algorithms to Live By. After the introduction I just gave you, you're probably going to guess that Brian isn't just a science guy. Get book links and resources at https://www.mbs.works/2-pages-podcast/ Brian reads from Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. [Reading begins at 15:10] Hear us Discuss: Metaphor can be one of the main mechanisms by which science happens. [6:20] | Rules that are delightful to break. [24:35] | “I have this deep conviction […] we are on to some philosophical paydirt here. There is a very real way in which we are building [AI] systems in our own image, and as a result they come to be a mirror for ourselves.” [28:40] | What is the heart of the human experience? [38:10] | “Humans are not so special.” [42.50]
It’s officially spring now: time to reflect on what I’ve read (and watched) over winter. Overall, in the past few months I’ve found myself with little inclination to read works of psychology, or even much non-fiction generally.Maybe that’s because I’m in the final stages of finishing my PhD, and so I find myself restlessly trying to cover non-psychological territory. But I don’t think that’s it. The real reason—or the story that I’ve come up with at any rate—has to do with how I’m growing as a person. It has to do with the fundamental complicatedness of life. I’m trying to embrace it. Not escape it.The driving force in psychological research is simplification. The research takes a seemingly complicated dynamic in human behavior and subjugate it into some conceptually understandable (usually dichotomous) box. How does reasoning and decision-making work? Well, it’s complicated. But you can start by dividing things into System 1 and System 2. The first one is fast, relies on heuristics, and prone to bias. The second one is slow, deliberate, and based in logical processing. That’s an example. It’s the essence of Daniel Kahneman’s famous Thinking, Fast and Slow.And this kind of dichotomizing and conceptual simplification is something I’m drawn to. I find it compelling. It’s standard-operating-procedure for anyone interested in writing about psychology, and I hope to do a lot of it in my own work as a writer. But I also feel that in coming up on ten years of studying psychology and cognitive science, I’m starting to wonder about other approaches to studying the human mind.What if, instead of taking the complicated aspects of behavior and trying to simplify them, we leaned into the complicatedness of human life in its full convoluted glory? What would that look like? Well, it would look like a novel. And up until recently—let’s say a couple years ago—I didn’t know what to do with that. As I wrote in my essay on the Hungarian masterpiece Journey by Moonlight, I always felt like I was waiting for someone to come along and explain what was happening to me while reading the book. Then I became frustrated when no conceptually simplified dichotomy was forthcoming. Having exhausted the simplifying approach via psychology (or at the very least, gone a long way with where that will take me) I find myself ready to encounter some new territory, some ground that requires new and different tools for me to grow something in it. So like I said. I’m working on trying to lean into the complexity of life, rather than subjugate it. It’s okay if I don’t understand everything. The set of things I can engage with if I don’t expect to “understand” them is much larger than what I could otherwise deal with. That seems to me like a big benefit. I also feel there are aspects of life—relationships with partners and family especially come to mind—that really lend themselves to investigating through literary rather than scientific means.So here I am. I’ve read a few novels in the opening months of this year. I’ve also watched quite a bit of TV. But that has less to do with growing as a person. It’s more that English winters are the perfect inspiration for shrugging off responsibilities and settling in on the couch. If you ask me, that sounds way better than working on my dissertation.Books“End of the End of the World” by Jonathan Franzen.I’ve been going through a bit of a Franzen-phase. I’d never read him before. But I counted his novel Freedom as my second favorite book I read in 2021. This is his most recent collection of essays. It was… mostly about birds? Like, it’s a book about climate change, but it turns out that the only reason J Franz really cares about climate change is because it’s going to kill off a bunch of bird species. The whole consequences-for-humans aspect of the whole thing seems to be an auxiliary consideration. Anyway. I was just happy to read something that gives me a bit more direct insight into the mind of someone whose novel I loved. This just happened to be the one that popped up first at the used book store, but I’m looking forward to reading his other collections of non-fiction.“The Three Body Problem” by Cixin LiuOne of the questions I always ask my guests on Cognitive Revolution is which three books have most influenced them. The three most common answers are: “Gödel, Escher, Bach” by Douglas Hofstadter; “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl; and this one. It’s a work of science fiction by a Chinese author. I don’t read much science fiction. It’s just not really my thing. But I figured in this case I’d like to give it a go. And while I enjoyed reading this one, I wouldn’t say I’m in a rush to finish the trilogy. Part of me felt like the reason a bunch of scientists recommended this book is that all of the main characters are scientists and all of the key plot points are scientific. So scientists are just happy to see themselves represented in what is undoubtedly a great, creative, and ambitious work of literature.“Think Again” by Adam GrantI got into this in early February, but I haven’t finished yet. Adam Grant is Exhibit A of the simplifying process of psychology I described in the intro. And part of me means that in a really good way; he’s the state-of-the-art in making complicated ideas as comprehensive as possible while still retaining their incisive edge. But I also can’t escape the feeling of kitsch—that when he’s explaining an idea he’s really Doing A Thing. Like, he understands how explaining works and so now he’s applying the tried-and-tested formula. It’s a great formula. But it’s just that—a formula. And so I find myself less drawn to that kind of work than I maybe would have five years ago. Still, it’s a thesis that I find myself in deep sympathy with: that we need always to be reevaluating our closely held assumptions, habits, and beliefs. So it’s still a worthwhile read, and an archetypal example of why Adam Grant is at the top of the bringing-psych-research-to-a-broader-audience game.“Spring” by David SzalayThis rounds out a trio of books I’ve read over the past year by this British-Hungarian author. By far the best was his “All that Man Is,” which I ranked fourth in my books from last year. This early offering is definitely a less refined work than that one. It’s a novel of manners, with the social milieu under consideration essentially being the millennial dating-scene of London. It’s got great London vibes and great romantically frustrated millennial vibes. I’d recommended it for anyone for whom that sounds appealing.“Outline” by Rachel CuskThis will definitely make my year-end book list. I had never heard of Rachel Cusk before. But I can see why she’s so well-regarded. I’m looking forward to getting into the rest of her works—this one is actually the first installment in a trilogy, so those other two books are high on my list.I was actually recommended this book by Sam Gershman. In citing his most influential books, he mentioned “Three Body Problem,” which I’d definitely gotten from a number of guests already. But he also mentioned Rachel Cusk. At first, I forgot about it in the moment, then when I revisited the episode I became intrigued. I’m super glad I found her.Essentially, this novel takes place across ten different conversations. The narrator is a writer who travels from London to Greece to give a writing seminar. So there’s not really any conventional plot, at least in terms of there being rising action and a driving narrative thread throughout the story. Instead, what you get are encounters with people from different walks of life—a London billionaire, a Greek taxi driver, an aspiring writer—each of whom gives the narrator an insight into their worldview. The conceit of the book is that each of one of these people is hyper-articulate about their own views and perspectives. It’s sort of like Aaron Sorkin-style dialogue, where any one of the characters has the verbal skills to destroy an interlocutor in a formal debate. These are the “outlines” of people’s lives that we get a glimpse into. And, as ever, by understanding more about how others see the world, we’re getting closer to understanding the hidden and unexpected nuances within our own perspective.“Heart of Darkness” by Joseph ConradThe classic. Extended essay forthcoming…“It is written that I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice.”“A Gentleman in Moscow” by Amor TowlesI read this book hoping that the theme of “being trapped at home” will never again be as salient for me as it has been over the past two years. So I went in expecting a book that was moody and dark (i.e., Russian) and about a dude who was essentially isolated by himself in a room for a long period of time. Turns out, that’s not at all what the book is about. It is, above all, about fun. I think of the book less like a novel that’s driven by an overarching plot, but more like a TV show—where each episode features a distinct, encapsulated story line. There are a few threads running throughout. But it’s more that each chapter is a Seinfeldian stand-alone vignette, where something fairly inane but nevertheless entertaining and mildly hilarious transpires. Even so, I still hope the “trapped at home” theme never quite resonates in the way it has over the past two years…“Normal People” by Sally RooneyThis book is a phenomenon. And whenever something sells a gazillion copies I’m always interested to see what resonated so deeply with people. I read Matt Haig’s “Midnight Library” last year, which falls into the same category (it wasn’t for me). I liked Sally Rooney a lot more. I’d already watched the BBC TV show based on the book, and it turns out that the series is a really high-fidelity adaptation. I’d even say that Paul Mescal in the series is way more Connelly than Connell is in the book. At any rate, the book didn’t blow my mind or anything. But it resonates with a larger theme I’ve been thinking about recently, which is: What constitutes a “normal” relationship? As in, what is the baseline expectation about how a relationship (between two romantic partners) should be functioning? The answer is somewhere between “totally perfect all the time” and “totally catastrophic always”. But I think even trying to say which end of the spectrum a normal relationship lands on according to business as usual is even really tough to say! This is one of the big themes of “complicatedness” that I’ve been leaning into recently. Relationships are complicated. Sally Rooney definitely thinks so. Marianne and Connell’s relationship is definitely on the “totally catastrophic always” side of the spectrum—punctuated with brief spells of bliss—and that says a lot if they’re the “normal people” in the title. But maybe “normal” is instead aspirational, and they just want to be normal like everyone else and not so fucked up. Maybe we all wanted to be less fucked up and more normal like everyone else. Another novelist who is fascinated by this question is Jonathan Franzen. Have I mentioned him before?“The Corrections” by Jonathan FranzenThe approximately 14,000 pages between Franzen’s “Freedom” and “The Corrections” have totally changed the way I think about life. That’s not an exaggeration. They’ve done more to reorient my thinking than anything else I’ve engaged with in recent memory.The basic theme shared between the books is about what to do with a fucked-up family. Both books deal with five characters. And in each chapter, we see things from the perspective of one of the characters (it’s essentially a third-person narrator who at any one time has privileged vantage into a single character’s view). The way I describe reading one of his novels is that it is like looking into one of those 10x mirrors that you find in hotel bathrooms. You see everything in excruciating detail. Much closer up than you really want to. And because there are these rotating perspectives and you’re seeing people’s individual take on shared events, as well as the nuances of their dyadic relationship with every other individual, the overall effect is this holistic psychological portrait of this family dynamic. The reason that this is useful is that because, speaking personally, I have only ever seen one family close up in anything like that kind of resolution. That is my own. And because I don’t have anything to compare them to, I don’t know what’s fucked up in a way that’s fucked up for everyone and therefore is inevitable, or what’s fucked up in a way that’s unique to my family and therefore is not inevitable. Franzen’s massive novels make it feel like I’ve finally gotten close enough to another family unit to scrutinize what’s happening. And what’s my conclusion? Well, it’s worth providing the caveat that these books are super long for a reason—and any summary of their “insights” necessarily glosses over all that critical detail. If that detail wasn’t necessary, then J Franz could’ve just tweeted the insight then moved on with life. But at any rate, my summary is this: in these stories, there is nothing any of the characters can do at any point to unfuck their own situation. There is no decision they can make that will lead them to a not fucked up relationship. Their choices are only ever between Fucked-Up-A and Fucked-Up-B. It’s not really a happy notion (in the essay collection mentioned above, Franzen self-identifies as a “pessimistic realist”). But in accepting—or at least appreciating—that the choice is between two suboptimal paths, it frees you from the tyranny of the optimal.So if you really want to get into the theme of romantically frustrated millennials, here’s the real issue! Because we’re given so much power to “optimize” our own lives (e.g., through sourcing potential mates via Tinder), we’re constantly put under pressure to end up on a path that feels optimal. If it feels like we’re not getting the best case scenario, then we say f**k that path and look for another. So it matters a lot what we think the “best” option is. If it’s “totally perfect all the time” then we’re going to inadvertently cause ourself to end up in the “totally fucked up always” camp by seeking something that doesn’t exist and asking of our loved ones something they cannot give. Anyway. I really enjoyed these Franzen novels. I’m going to read his “Twenty-Seventh City” next, though I’m in no particular hurry. Also, “Crossroads” when it comes out in paperback.TelevisionNewsroomA three-season show starring Jeff Daniels written by Aaron Sorkin, mentioned above, who wrote The West Wing. I’ve heard some people say it’s better than West Wing, which is probably incorrect because even if it’s pound-for-pound as good The West Wing maintained that excellence for 10+ seasons. Whereas The West Wing is a show about the political process in the White House (particularly its interaction with the press room), the Newsroom looks at a foil of that process—the production and dissemination of network cable news critiquing the political process from an external perspective. In a way, the show was prescient in the themes it deals with: Who decides on the facts? Who chooses what gets air time? How do you balance differing perspectives on the same underlying issue? These are the questions of our age. And though we’re used to dealing with them in the context of Trump & Twitter et al, Newsroom looks at a time that goes up until moments before all that, the cusp of the social media era. My only note here is be careful. The show is so watchable. I couldn’t stop once I started. I was powerless to watch all three seasons. But I have no self control. Maybe you do.30 RockNever watched. Now I have. It was fun!After Life, Season 3 (Netflix)I’d describe Season 1 and 2 of After Life as a perfect show, at least for what it was trying to be. Season 3 is definitely solid, but probably it’s best that the show wraps up here. Part of the magic of this show is that its scope is so small. One English dude. Sad little English town. Lost his wife to cancer. Wants to kill himself. Doesn’t, just to see what happens. His strategy for dealing with the darkness: laughter. And because the scope so well-constrained, I think Gervais really nails it.The show also accords with this theory I have about comedy. Essentially, the reason why comedy is hard as a comedian is that you’re telling people that you’re about to be funny. They expect to laugh, because laughter is the promise. Therefore, you have to overcome this expectation to earn their laughter. Laughter in this situation is costly.But in daily life, laughter is cheap! We laugh all the time, often at pretty much nothing. The difference is in expectation. So a comedian or a comedy show has to be really, really good in order to come off as funny. But shows or performances which are supposed to be for some other non-comedic purpose, any comedy that gets incorporated is much more likely to land. The expectations are lower. This theory suggests that the best (or at least the easiest) way to be funny is to come to people on non-comedic grounds. Gervais does this in After Life by starting from the insanely, heart-wrenchingly tragic premise of losing his wife, the only person he really loved and who gave his life meaning. Now his life is devoid of love and meaning and happiness, and he and everyone around him knows it. That’s the least funny premise of all time. Which just makes the show all that funnier, once he begins to uncover genuinely hilarious material.Ozark, Season 4 (Netflix)The thing I love about Ozark is that it was most popular circa Spring 2020, during the beginning of the pandemic. It was sufficiently dark and gruesome to resonate with our collective sensibilities at the time. It’s like Tiger King in that way. It was a lens onto the society’s consciousness. But it’s not like Tiger King in that under no circumstances should they have made a second season. This season of Ozark is still great.Reacher (Amazon Prime)I love Tom Cruise movies. But I’d argue that his three worst movies of all time were: Jack Reacher 1, Jack Reacher 2, and Knight & Day. Maybe honorary mention to the third M:I. He was a terrible Jack Reacher! Why? It’s simple. Tom Cruise is like four-foot-eight. And Jack Reacher is supposed to be a six-foot-eleven brick shithouse. Also, Tom Cruise is a talker. Jacker Reacher is not a talker!! This new guy, Alan Ritchson, is the two things Tom Cruise could never be: large and terse. So the show is worth watching just because this guy is so fascinatingly shaped. But more than that, the show rectified the sins of Tom Cruise. Is it the best of all possible action shows? No, it is not. But it very well may be the best of all possible adaptions of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher. And that’s a lot more than Tom Cruise can say.Jeen-Yuhs (Netflix)Highly recommend. This isn’t a normal documentary. Basically, there was this dude who quit his job to start following Kanye around with a camera before he was famous. The guy was basically like “I know this Kanye guy is going places” and so became a part of his entourage and so where was there for all these crazy moments early in Kanye’s career. And so it’s a rare opportunity to see the process of one of the most creative artists of our generation (it’s an accurate label, whatever else you want to say about the guy) before he was acknowledged as such. Inventing Anna (Netflix)I put off watching this for a long time. I thought it looked super annoying. I was totally wrong! It was astonishingly good. Like, so good that you find yourself wondering throughout how someone created something that’s this compelling. Definitely watch it if you’re looking for a great binge.MoviesThe AlpinistI won’t say anything about this other than it was really good. I went into it with no expectations other than that (thanks to my mate Tristan for the recommendation) and was heavily rewarded. Enjoy!Apocalypse NowFF Coppola’s cinematic adaption of Heart of Darkness set in war-torn Vietnam. Extended essay coming soon.“Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a mission, and for my sins, they gave me one.”UnforgivenThis film is considered the “directorial masterpiece” of Clint Eastwood. At least that’s what Amazon Prime’s blurb tells me. But I think it’s accurate! If you know me, you know that I love Westerns (particularly Western novels; I’ll watch / read anything with a cowboy). And this is one of the highest quality ones I’ve come across. The narrative structure is pristine. The central motif of the movie of is how hard it is to actually pull the trigger of a gun to kill someone. All of which builds to a point where that is the crucial consideration at stake. This is another instance where no character’s choice is between the outcomes of “good” and “bad”. Every possible outcome is a bad one, even when they’re all just trying to do the right thing. But by the end, they only thing they achieved are different levels of bad.Taylor Tomlinson’s “Look at You” specialI’d peg her as my choice for the comedic voice of my specific stratum of millennial-hood (she was born in 1993, which is an important year for humanity because it was the one I was born in). Her new special is out. If you want to talk about themes of “Fucked Up A” versus “Fucked Up B” she’s got you covered—and with a higher density of laughs than other content mentioned here. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit codykommers.substack.com/subscribe
Building projects tend to take on a life of their own. A good rule of thumb is that whatever the time and cost estimate is…you should double it. In fact, it is a law: Hofstadter’s law. Douglas Hofstadter is a cognitive scientist who has shown, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that no matter how much time you plan for…
This week on the Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender are joined by Professor Marcus du Sautoy. Marcus is Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford, Fellow of New College, Oxford, author of multiple popular science and mathematics books and he is a regular contributor on television, radio and to both The Times and The Guardian. He is also passionate about public engagement on topics that include creativity and artificial intelligence. 0.00 Introduction2.23 Where does your love of mathematics originate?6.11 What is mathematics really about for you?8.35 Can you explain what zeta functions are, and why symmetry and the function of groups is important to learn more about.12.24 What did you draw from the moment that DeepMind's AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol?16.12 What are your thoughts around the possibility that AI can be creative, so taking us down a path where consciousness may not be the thing that actually happens, but we might actually get something totally new that doesn't exist in our minds or reckoning at the moment? 18.35 How do we prevent ourselves from having something that we don't understand governing our lives? 20.44 In your book ‘What We Cannot Know', you explored if there are questions that we may never have the answer to, and therefore our living with the unknown. Could you elaborate on that idea for us? 25.52 You've written about the conflict between physics and mathematics, and also your idea that mathematics exists outside of humans so it's not a human construction and would exist without us. Could you elaborate on those two points?33.13 Tell us about your latest book ‘Thinking Better' where you search for short cuts, not just in mathematics but also other fields.36.14 A lot of people think of maths as being hard. However, you can use maths, the concepts and frameworks without being an expert mathematician. Can you bring that to life for us?43.09 Tell us about the work you've been doing to bring Douglas Hofstadter's life story to the Barbican in London. 48.28 You've said that we can't fully know something when we're stuck in a system whether consciously or unconsciously. What is the leadership lesson or opportunity that we can take from that?53.06 When was the last time you had a real ‘aha' moment, and what's the biggest challenge that you are working on at the moment? Social: Instagram @evolvingleader LinkedIn The Evolving Leader Podcast Twitter @Evolving_Leader The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.
(NOTAS Y ENLACES DEL CAPÍTULO AQUÍ: https://www.jaimerodriguezdesantiago.com/sin-categoria/115-godel-escher-bach/)No sabes las ganas que tenía de volver por aquí. Como las de tanta otra gente, mis navidades han sido extrañas y, sinceramente, aburridas. A ratos, se me han hecho bastante duras. Y eso que todo iba bastante bien, a pesar del dichoso Ómicron, hasta el 24 de diciembre. Ese día me vi obligado a comenzar una carrera contra el reloj para escribir este capítulo. La culpa es de cierto individuo, que tiene cierta newsletter y con el que comparto cierto otro podcast llamado Nada Que Ganar: Samuel Gil.Déjame que te ponga en contexto. Hace bastante tiempo, alrededor de un año, empecé a leer un libro del que supe a través de Jaime Altozano. Sí, el youtuber que habla de música. Él lo recomendó en un capítulo en el que hablaba de su experiencia con el sistema educativo, si mal no recuerdo. Total, que pedí el libro sin plantearme mucho sobre qué iba. Su título tampoco daba demasiadas pistas, sólo contenía 3 nombres: Gödel, Escher, Bach. Su autor era un tal Douglas Hofstadter, completamente desconocido para mí por aquel entonces.Aquel libro se publicó hace más de cuarenta años, le valió a Hofstadter todo un premio Pulitzer y se convirtió en una obra de culto. En él se mezclaban historias y diálogos sobre lógica, puzzles matemáticos, improvisaciones musicales y técnicas de computación a partir de las ideas de los tres genios que le daban nombre. Inocente de mí, no sabía dónde me estaba metiendo. A los pocos días me llegó a casa un tocho de más de 700 páginas. Pero decidí darle una oportunidad y lo que me encontré fue una experiencia apasionante, aunque enormemente retadora. Este libro es a leer lo mismo que correr un Ironman es a correr la San Silvestre. Misma dinámica, niveles de sufrimiento diferentes.A la vista del reto, decidí tomármelo con calma. Ir leyendo muy de vez en cuando e intercalando otros libros, para no volverme demasiado loco. Entre otras cosas porque tenía muchas otras lecturas pendientes que eran necesarias para ir sacando capítulos del podcast, que no podía parar de golpe. En resumen, que me lo iba a ir leyendo cuando pudiera y el día que estuviera preparado, le dedicaría su propio capítulo.Y en esas estaba, más o menos a la mitad del libro y sin ninguna prisa, cuando el majete de Samuel publicó en twitter, el 24 de diciembre, que se iba a poner a leerlo. Hasta ahí, todo bien. Se me ocurrió contarle mi plan, eso de que iba poco a poco, pero que algún día le caería un capítulo en el podcast. A lo que él me dio la peor respuesta que podía darme: que lo mismo le caía antes una edición de su newsletter, Suma Positiva.Hay quien dice que soy competitivo. No lo negaré, pero en este caso lo que me ha movido a dejar casi todo lo que tenía previsto hacer en Navidad y dedicarme a terminar el dichoso libro y escribir este capítulo no ha sido la competitividad. Sino la rabia de la cantidad de veces que Samuel se me ha adelantado por cuestión de días o de semanas con un tema que iba a tratar en el podcast. De hecho, mientras lo estoy escribiendo no tengo garantía de que este capítulo se emita antes de que él mande su newsletter. Pero viviremos peligrosamente.Porque pase lo que pase, el Gödel, Escher, Bach es tan contundente que no creo que una newsletter y un capítulo del podcast sean suficientes para abarcarlo. Y, además, como tantas otras veces, yo he recurrido a mi arma secreta: Super Mario.
“Without an understanding of formal causality, there can be no theory of communication. What passes as information theory today is not communication at all, but merely transportation. Mass media in all their forms are necessarily environmental and therefore have all the character of formal causality. In that sense all myth is the report of the operation of formal causality. In that sense all myth is the report of the operation of formal causality. Since environments change constantly, the formal causes of all the arts and sciences change too.” -Marshall McLuhan "Formal cause is still, in our time, hugely mysterious: The literate mind finds it is too paradoxical and irrational. It deals with environmental processes and it works outside of time. The effects - those long shadows - arrive first; the causes take a little while longer. Most of the effects of any medium or innovation occur before the arrival of the innovation itself. A vortex of these effects tends, in time, to become the innovation…David Hockney's recent study, Secret Knowledge, details how Flemish and other artists of the early 15th century literally paved the way for the Gutenberg press a decade or so later with their optical experiments. Their lenses and mirrors enabled them to explore in depth as never before precision of point of view, perspective, and chiaroscuro, greatly intensifying the visual stress they could bring to bear in their paintings, and paving the way for the press. First come the effects.” -Eric McLuhan, 2011 "History always constitutes the relation between a present and its past." -John Berger, 1972 “What kind of logic is there to the illogic of creativity?” -Douglas Hofstadter, 1997 "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." –Martin Luther King Jr., 1963 “The people / want / to topple the regime!” -Teenage boys, Dara'a, Syria, 2011 "Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past. If all time is eternally present All time is unredeemable. What might have been is an abstraction Remaining a perpetual possibility Only in a world of speculation. What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present." -T.S. Eliot, 1941 Sources and place to discuss: https://old.reddit.com/r/DilettanteryPodcast/comments/rxdp4e/129_formal_cause_part_1_technological_determinism/?
We see it in thrillers like SPLIT, but does it ever happen in real life? Are there people in this world with multiple personalities? And if so, what does it take to fracture a mind?Covered Topics: Dissociative Identity Disorder, Multiple Personalities, Alters, Billy Milligan, Zoo Man of Knoxville, David Chalmers, Hard Problem of Consciousness, Douglas Hofstadter, Panpsychism, Thales of Miletus, Joseph DeAngeloFurther Reading: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/could-multiple-personality-disorder-explain-life-the-universe-and-everything/https://www.thecut.com/2015/11/blind-woman-had-10-personalities-some-could-see.htmlhttps://www.mentalfloss.com/article/91244/5-criminals-who-claimed-have-multiple-personalities.https://www.oxygen.com/true-crime-buzz/crazy-not-insane-did-ted-bundy-have-multiple-personalityhttps://www.dispatch.com/article/20071028/NEWS/310289729https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAPPzmRb4r0https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/shadow-boxing/202005/the-zoo-man-murdershttps://murderpedia.org/male.H/h/huskey-thomas.htmhttps://ndpr.nd.edu/news/philosophy-of-personal-identity-and-multiple-personality/https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-07/david-chalmers-and-the-puzzle-of-consciousness/8679884 Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.
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