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On this episode of Crazy Wisdom, host Stewart Alsop speaks with Andrew Altschuler, a researcher, educator, and navigator at Tana, Inc., who also founded Tana Stack. Their conversation explores knowledge systems, complexity, and AI, touching on topics like network effects in social media, information warfare, mimetic armor, psychedelics, and the evolution of knowledge management. They also discuss the intersection of cognition, ontologies, and AI's role in redefining how we structure and retrieve information. For more on Andrew's work, check out his course and resources at altshuler.io and his YouTube channel.Check out this GPT we trained on the conversation!Timestamps00:00 Introduction and Guest Background00:33 The Demise of AirChat00:50 Network Effects and Social Media Challenges03:05 The Rise of Digital Warlords03:50 Quora's Golden Age and Information Warfare08:01 Building Limbic Armor16:49 Knowledge Management and Cognitive Armor18:43 Defining Knowledge: Secular vs. Ultimate25:46 The Illusion of Insight31:16 The Illusion of Insight32:06 Philosophers of Science: Popper and Kuhn32:35 Scientific Assumptions and Celestial Bodies34:30 Debate on Non-Scientific Knowledge36:47 Psychedelics and Cultural Context44:45 Knowledge Management: First Brain vs. Second Brain46:05 The Evolution of Knowledge Management54:22 AI and the Future of Knowledge Management58:29 Tana: The Next Step in Knowledge Management59:20 Conclusion and Course InformationKey InsightsNetwork Effects Shape Online Communities – The conversation highlighted how platforms like Twitter, AirChat, and Quora demonstrate the power of network effects, where a critical mass of users is necessary for a platform to thrive. Without enough engaged participants, even well-designed social networks struggle to sustain themselves, and individuals migrate to spaces where meaningful conversations persist. This explains why Twitter remains dominant despite competition and why smaller, curated communities can be more rewarding but difficult to scale.Information Warfare and the Need for Cognitive Armor – In today's digital landscape, engagement-driven algorithms create an arena of information warfare, where narratives are designed to hijack emotions and shape public perception. The only real defense is developing cognitive armor—critical thinking skills, pattern recognition, and the ability to deconstruct media. By analyzing how information is presented, from video editing techniques to linguistic framing, individuals can resist manipulation and maintain autonomy over their perspectives.The Role of Ontologies in AI and Knowledge Management – Traditional knowledge management has long been overlooked as dull and bureaucratic, but AI is transforming the field into something dynamic and powerful. Systems like Tana and Palantir use ontologies—structured representations of concepts and their relationships—to enhance information retrieval and reasoning. AI models perform better when given structured data, making ontologies a crucial component of next-generation AI-assisted thinking.The Danger of Illusions of Insight – Drawing from ideas by Balaji Srinivasan, the episode distinguished between genuine insight and the illusion of insight. While psychedelics, spiritual experiences, and intense emotional states can feel revelatory, they do not always produce knowledge that can be tested, shared, or used constructively. The ability to distinguish between profound realizations and self-deceptive experiences is critical for anyone navigating personal and intellectual growth.AI as an Extension of Human Cognition, Not a Second Brain – While popular frameworks like "second brain" suggest that digital tools can serve as externalized minds, the episode argued that AI and note-taking systems function more as extended cognition rather than true thinking machines. AI can assist with organizing and retrieving knowledge, but it does not replace human reasoning or creativity. Properly integrating AI into workflows requires understanding its strengths and limitations.The Relationship Between Personal and Collective Knowledge Management – Effective knowledge management is not just an individual challenge but also a collective one. While personal knowledge systems (like note-taking and research practices) help individuals retain and process information, organizations struggle with preserving and sharing institutional knowledge at scale. Companies like Tesla exemplify how knowledge isn't just stored in documents but embodied in skilled individuals who can rebuild complex systems from scratch.The Increasing Value of First Principles Thinking – Whether in AI development, philosophy, or practical decision-making, the discussion emphasized the importance of grounding ideas in first principles. Great thinkers and innovators, from AI researchers like Demis Hassabis to physicists like David Deutsch, excel because they focus on fundamental truths rather than assumptions. As AI and digital tools reshape how we interact with knowledge, the ability to think critically and question foundational concepts will become even more essential.
The first part of my discussion of the differing visions of science and how scientific knowledge "grows" (or not) according to Thomas Kuhn vs Karl Popper as outlined in this chapter of "The Beginning of Infinity". Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" explains the concept of a "paradigm" and "paradigm shifts" comparing "revolutionary" and "normal" periods of science. Kuhn's work remains the most cited in the social sciences and so far more people - especially in academia - are familiar with his work that Popper's. What explains this? What does Kuhn have to say? And what does a "critical rationalist" perspective on the growth of knowledge have to say in response to Kuhn?
It had to happen eventually: this week The Studies Show is all about philosophy. As we look at science in general, how do we decide what those studies are actually showing? Tom and Stuart take a look at the Big Two of philosophy of science: Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn, with their respective theories of falsificationism and paradigm shifts. Both are theories that almost everyone interested in science has heard of—but both make far more extreme claims than you might think.The Studies Show is sponsored by Works in Progress magazine, the best place to go online for fact-rich, data-dense articles on science and technology, and how they've made the world a better place—or how they might do so in the future. To find all their essays, all for free, go to worksinprogress.co.Show notes* Tom's new book, Everything is Predictable: How Bayes' Remarkable Theorem Explains the World* Wagenmakers's 2020 study asking scientists how they think about scientific claims* David Hume's 1748 Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding* Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on the problem of induction * Bertrand Russell's 1946 book History of Western Philosophy* Popper's 1959 book The Logic of Scientific Discovery* Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Popper* Kuhn's 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions* Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Kuhn* 2019 Scott Alexander review of the book* Michael Strevens's 2020 book The Knowledge Machine* Daniel Lakens's Coursera course on “improving your statistical inferences”CreditsThe Studies Show is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thestudiesshowpod.com/subscribe
Peter Godfrey-Smith, a Professor of the Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney, explores with us the differences between creativity in science and philosophy. While philosophers speculate unconstrainedly, scientists must balance creative thinking with the need for empirical testing and within our fields' paradigms – if you mention the “Lamarck” word at a bar full of geneticists, don't be surprised if the piano suddenly stops and everybody looks at you in disbelief. We also talk about Thomas Kuhn's tension between normal and revolutionary science, the risks and rewards of disruptive ideas, and the importance of "middle-class science"—independent labs driving innovation. Peter ends by drawing a parallel between the night science / day science transition and Händel's aria "As Steals the Morn," which describes the transition from dream state to wakefulness.This episode was supported by Research Theory (researchtheory.org). For more information about Night Science, visit https://www.biomedcentral.com/collections/night-science .
In this episode, Megan and Frank examine astrology. What is astrology, and why do people practice it? What are the strongest objections to astrology? Should astrology count as a science? If not, why not? What can the case of astrology teach us about the role of science in a democratic society? And why does the ancient practice of reading the stars prompt us to ponder the deepest aspects of human experience? Thinkers discussed include: Aristotle, Cicero, Ptolemy, Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos, Paul Feyerabend, Carl Sagan, Ian James Kidd, and Massimo Pigliucci.-----------------------Hosts' Websites:Megan J Fritts (google.com)Frank J. Cabrera (google.com)Email: philosophyonthefringes@gmail.com-----------------------Bibliography:Philosophy of Science and the Occult | State University of New York Press (first section is an invaluable resource, containing the 1975 manifesto, Feyerabend's critique, and articles summarizing statistical studies disconfirming astrology)Cabrera - Evidence and explanation in Cicero's On DivinationLacusCurtius • Ptolemy — TetrabiblosLacusCurtius • Cicero — De Divinatione: Book IA double-blind test of astrology | NatureReadings in the Philosophy of Science: From Positivism to Postmodernism (See for short selections from Popper, Kuhn, and Lakatos)Ian James Kidd - Why did Feyerabend Defend Astrology? Integrity, Virtue, and the Authority of Science (An excellent paper that very much informed our discussion of the science & society question)M. Pigliucci - Was Feyerabend Right in Defending Astrology? A Commentary on Kidd-----------------------Cover Artwork by Logan Fritts-------------------------Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):https://uppbeat.io/t/simon-folwar/neon-signsLicense code: YYRPW29K1IDMU76F
The Living Process Episode 26 with host Greg Madison Guest Rob Parker Paradigm Leaping Welcome back to The Living Process. In this episode, Rob talks about his interests in philosophy, especially existentialism, from an early age and it was this interest, combined with his desire to help other young kids like himself, that led him to Gendlin. Rob's first experience of the Focusing world was a 3-day Thinking at the Edge workshop with Gendlin at Stony Point. Unusually his interest in philosophy was his way into Focusing. We talk about Rob's interest in ‘meaning', his journey from the ideas of Gregory Bateson to Maurice Marleau-Ponty and Thomas Kuhn, and how these thinkers brought him to Gendlin and a unique opportunity to drop everything and learn from this new philosopher. In our conversation, we touched on how learning Focusing affected Rob's therapy practice. He also talks about learning from Mary Hendricks Gendlin how to slow down and work with the felt sense in sessions and we touched upon the political and social implications of The Process Model. Rob mentioned his modification of the EXP scale and his use of Zen and Focusing to work with The Inner Critic. Rob Parker is well-known in the Focusing world and beyond as a clear thinker representing Gendlin's A Process Model and Gendlin's other philosophies to a lay audience. He has a longterm interest in Zen, spirituality, and science. For years Rob was a practicing psychologist, originally in the existential tradition, specialising in psychological trauma. In 2000 Rob found the philosophy of Eugene Gendlin, which he dedicated himself to understanding by meeting Gendlin every week until Gendlin died in 2017. For information on Rob, his workshops, and his writing on Gendlin's philosophy, see: www.lifeforward.org Episode 26, The Living Process with guest Rob Parker: https://youtu.be/oAZh5uCe_Yo The Living Process - all episodes and podcast links: https://www.londonfocusing.com/the-living-process/ Greg's YouTube video channel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLC0TgN6iVu3n9d9q2l43z1xBMYY3p9FQL The Living Process on the FOT Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLx3FqA70kQWuHCHmEiZnkn1VcrRIPbcvk #somaticexperience #trauma #Focusing #Gendlin #Bodytherapy #Zen #Experientialpractice #bodymind #thelivingprocess #existentialism #psychotherapy
Where is nature's memory of its evolution encoded? Is there evidence for extended mind occurring beyond individual brains? How possible is it that the sun is conscious? In this episode we're going to get up to date on Rupert Sheldrake's extraordinary theory of Morphic resonance: so Morphic fields, the unfolding of nature's ‘habits' and the ‘memory of nature'. We'll examine the possibility of levels of consciousness larger than our own brains - scaling up in a hierarchy from cellular consciousness right up to planetary and perhaps even stellar consciousness! We're also going to get into examples of consciousness beyond the brain like ‘the sensation of being stared at' (clearly a useful skill to evolve) and other phenomena Rupert has reported in his experiments. Rupert Sheldrake is a Cambridge PHD developmental Biologist whose published over 100 papers on topics as wide as Cellular Biology, telepathy, Pets who know when their owners are coming home, and after-death communications. He is also the author of many books like “A new science of life”, “Science set free”, and “Ways of going Beyond”, among many others. What were discuss: 00:00 Intro. 06:10 Morphic resonance explained. 08:15 Polar Auxin - death in the midst of life. 09:15 Genes make proteins, morphogenetic fields determine form. 11:30 Nature's “memory” spread across time. 13:25 Something that has happened before is more likely to happen again. 14:15 Collective memory, like Jung's collective unconscious. 17:15 His scientific education engrained materialism and atheism in him.. 18:15 Asian philosophy, psychedelics, Neo-platonism and Christianity. 20:30 Questioning of scientific dogma came before his faith. 22:00 Thomas Kuhn's paradigm change, an analogy for him breaking with science. 23:50 Rupert's work denounced as ‘Heresy' by the editor of Nature in 1981. 26:30 Measuring Morphic fields in experiments. 28:30 IQ tests have got easier for people over time, The Flynn Effect 30:00 Video games have to make new versions harder each time. 32:10 Is subtle energy field research beyond science? 37:00 Bioelectric morphogenetic fields & Michael Levin. 41:20 Bioelectric fields are the interface not the explanation. 42:30 Where are morphic fields recorded in nature? 44:50 Platonism doesn't explain evolution and change over time. 47:00 Different levels of collective consciousness, up to planetary, stellar and even cosmic consciousness. 56:40 The feeling of being stared at: examples of extended mind. 01:02:55 Mystical experience - being part of a greater consciousness. 01:09:40 Are spiritual & scientific insight compatible? References: Rupert Sheldrake, “A New Science of life”. Michael Levin - Bio-electric morphogenetic fields CC interview The Sheldrake.org Staring App. Polar Auxin QUOTE: “Morphic resonance leaps across time and space, It's not stored anywhere it's a direct connection with the past.”
The philosophy behind HR and our way of working predates most of the tools we use. While companies focus on sales and productivity, most neglect to measure one of the largest sources of value within the organization – the employee experience. Jessica Zwaan has made it her mission to teach executives and their companies how to transform the employee experience using product management principles, maximizing value for all stakeholders involved.Jessica Zwaan is the author of Built for People, the current Chief Operating Officer of Whereby, and a former COO advisor for clients like Soundcloud, Talentful, and Bolt, among others.In this episode, Dart and Jessica discuss:- The 3 things every company sells- Distinctions between people operations and human operations- Viewing work as a product and determining its value- Tracking the cost versus value of employees- The 3 aspects employees want out of their work- Value vs. volume when it comes to employees- 2 maxims of product management applicable to HR- And other topics…Jessica Zwaan is an author, speaker, and early-stage start-up executive. She is the current Chief Operating Officer of Whereby and a former COO advisor for clients like Soundcloud, Talentful, and Bolt, among others. Her latest book, Built for People, helps teach organizations and leadership how to transform the employee experience using product management principles.With a background in operations, people, and talent, Jessica's work has spanned across three continents. Jessica holds a First-Class Honours law degree from the University of Law in London. She is an international panelist and speaker and also hosts the podcast “There's This Thing at Work.”Resources mentioned:Built for People, by Jessica Zwaan: https://www.amazon.com/Built-People-Experience-Management-Principles/dp/1398608025The Book of the Courtier, by Baldesar Castiglione: https://www.amazon.com/Book-Courtier-Baldesar-Castiglione/dp/1519086954The Experience Economy, by Joseph Pine: https://www.amazon.com/Experience-Economy-New-Preface-Authors/dp/1633697975The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by Thomas Kuhn: https://www.amazon.com/Structure-Scientific-Revolutions-50th-Anniversary/dp/0226458121The Good Enough Job, by Simone Stolzoff: https://www.amazon.com/Good-Enough-Job-Reclaiming-Life/dp/059353896XConnect with Jessica:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicamayzwaan/www.jessicamayzwaan.com Work with Dart:Dart is the CEO and co-founder of the work design firm 11fold. Build work that makes employees feel alive, connected to their work, and focused on what's most important to the business. Book a call at 11fold.com.
Thomas Kuhn. Com o Professor e ensaísta Viriato Soromenho Marques.
Dans ce numéro du Journal des biotechs, Jamila El-Bougrini, analyste chez Invest Securities revient sur les trois dossiers qui font l'actualité : Inventiva, Transgene et Ose Immunotherapeutics.L'entretien est consacré à Thomas Kuhn. Poxel a annoncé aujourd'hui un accord avec la société d'investissement américaine OrbiMed pour monétiser une partie des redevances issues des ventes de son antidiabétique Twymeeg réalisées par Sumitomo Pharma au Japon à hauteur de 50 millions de dollars. Le directeur général de Poxel revient sur le rationnel de ce deal et explique comment il va permettre à Poxel de redéployer sa stratégie.
September 29, 2024 Speaker: Thomas Kuhn
En este episodio exploramos cómo los cambios de paradigma transforman la ciencia, desde la teoría germinal de Koch hasta la tectónica de placas. Además, analizamos la coexistencia de dos paradigmas en la física moderna: la mecánica cuántica y la relatividad general, y cómo influye en la búsqueda de una teoría unificada.
Join me in this episode, where we discuss a "History & Systems" approach to philosophy. The term "paradigm," as we use it here, comes from Thomas Kuhn's celebrated book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Using paradigms to think about philosophies is not difficult, though it is very high level. This episode should help you organize philosophy in your thinking, and it pairs well with the episodes from July 4th, 2024 on "the architectonic structure" of philosophy. . Please post your questions or comments on The Philosophemes YouTube Channel. Accessible through this Linktree link: https://linktr.ee/philosophemes . Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Frank_Scalambrino_PhD . The Existentialism Book: http://shepherd.com/book/what-is-existentialism-vol-i . Amazon Author Page: https://amzn.to/4cM6nzf . Online Courses (Gumroad) Coming Soon! . Podcast Page: https://evergreenpodcasts.com/the-philosophemes-podcast #philosophemes, #philosophy, #existentialism, #FrankScalambrino, #phenomenology, #psychology, #psychotherapy, #Nietzsche, #educationalpodcast . Some links may be “affiliate links,” which means I may I receive a small commission from your purchase through these links. This helps to support the channel. Thank you. Editorial, educational, and fair use of images. © 2024, Frank Scalambrino, Ph.D. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
We begin a personal history of the revolution in my thinking from evolution to special creation spurred by the evidence of microbiology. Vital to this history is a text by geologist Allan G. Krill, FIXISTS VS. MOBILISTS IN THE GEOLOGY CONTEST OF THE CENTURY, 1844-1969. In this delightful book, Dr. Krill recounts the history of Alfred Wegener's theory of continental drift, that was first ridiculed, then attacked, and finally accepted some 50 years after it was proposed. As plate tectonics, it now represents one of the foundational building blocks on which scientific geology is built. The book is available here: https://folk.ntnu.no/krill/fixists.pdf We also make reference to Dr. Eugene Koonin's book, The Logic of Chance: The Nature and Origin of Biological Evolution, which we covered extensively in our last episode. It is available here: http://www.evolocus.com/Textbooks/Koonin2011.pdf If you have never read Thomas Kuhn's THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS, you should. It is available here: https://www.lri.fr/~mbl/Stanford/CS477/papers/Kuhn-SSR-2ndEd.pdf As an atheist, I embraced evolutionary theory - its cosmogony and cosmology - hook, line and sinker. As a re-converted Christian, I began the Christian Atheist podcast as a theistic evolutionist. This year, after long and serious study, I abandon my faith in evolutionary biology with all the Hegelian ideological tendrils that have infected the rational scientific worldview over the past two centuries. Let the evidence speak, and let the people of God listen to what He says, and obey. We are now in the midst of a SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION. Jenny and I suspect that God is in the process of removing all excuse for not-believing from everyone on earth. CHOOSE YOU THIS DAY WHOM YOU WILL SERVE! With our Transcendent GOD – Being, Truth and Value – there can be NO COMPROMISE Listen to the complete book of Malachi read without commentary here ... https://youtu.be/aasq_o1JNyE If you enjoy our content, consider donating through PayPal via https://ko-fi.com/thechristianatheist Take a moment to enjoy our weekly Photos of the Day videos here - short slideshows with relaxing music ...https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_9GPi4HTqoZ8xFgTldbBaA https://www.youtube.com/c/TheChristianAtheist/featured https://www.facebook.com/JnJWiseWords https://wisewordsforyouroccasion.wordpress.com #thechristianatheist #drjohndwise #drjohnwise #johnwise #christian #atheist #christianity #atheism #jesus #jesuschrist #god #bible #oldtestament #newtestament #nocompromise #rationality #faith #philosophy #philosopher #culture #society #hegelism #hegelianism #hegel #reason #incarnation #history#psychology #theology #literature #humanities #hardquestions #postmodernism #woke #wisdom #ethics #science #poetry #paradox #oxymoron
Das heutige Gespräch führe ich mit Dr. Manfred Glauninger. Er ist Soziolinguist und forscht am Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften und lehrt am Institut für Germanistik der Universität Wien. Dieses Gespräch war für mich ganz besonders interessant und auch unterhaltsam, weil wir eine ganze Reihe von Dingen miteinander verbunden haben, die schon in früheren Episoden erwähnt wurden. Was ist Wissenssoziologie, warum muss Wissenschaft auch als soziales Phänomen verstanden werden? Ist es gefährlich oder notwendig, Wissenschaft zu entmystifizieren und auch hart zu kritisieren? Wirkt Wissenschaft in manchen Bereichen unserer Gesellschaft gar als Ersatzreligion? Was sind die Auswirkungen davon? Was lernen wir aus den schweren Krisen der letzten 20 Jahren und dem regelmäßigen Versagen von Institutionen über die Rolle der Wissenschaft? Wie läuft die Produktion von Wissen ab? Welche »magischen« Mechanismen gibt es hier, oder verhält es sich letztlich ähnlich wie die Produktion zahlreicher anderer Güter? Was hat es mit Fehlern und Inkompetenz auf sich? Gibt es unterschiedliche Arten von Fehlern? Gibt es eine frühe »Prägung« des Nachwuchses in der Wissenschaft, gepaart mit starken Hierarchien und Gerontokratie? Welche Rolle spielt Wettbewerb gegenüber Kooperation in der Wissenschaft? Richten wir die Wissenschaft zu sehr nach marktwirtschaftlichen Prinzipien aus, oder besser gesagt: spielt die Wissenschaft Marktwirtschaft, weil weder die Akteure dafür die Kompetenz haben, noch das Modell passt? In einigen anderen Folgen wurde das Thema Stagnation schon angesprochen, auch hier stellen wir die Frage: Verdoppelt sich das Wissen oder eher Rauschen regelmäßig? Eine in diesem Zusammenhang für die Gesellschaft sehr relevante Frage ist, welchen Beitrag die immer größere Zahl an wissenschaftlich ausgebildeten Menschen tatsächlich für unsere Gesellschaft leisten? Welche Rolle spielt eben diese wissenschaftliche Ausbildung dabei? Bringt die universitäre Ausbildung tatsächlich signifikante Gewinne für unsere Gesellschaft oder dominiert Signalisierung über Substanz? Der US-amerikanische Ökonom, dessen Name mir in der Episode nicht eingefallen war, ist Bryan Kaplan, der selbst an der George Mason Eliteuniversität forscht und unterrichtet. »My best guess says signaling accounts for 80% of education's return”«, Bryan Kaplan Die Idee der Signalisierung und sollte mit der schon genannten der Frage nach der Qualität der Bildung in unseren Institutionen verknüpft werden, besonders hinsichtlich der nur verbleibenden 20% : »Teachers' plea that “we're mediocre at teaching what we measure, but great at teaching what we don't measure” is comically convenient.«, Bryan Kaplan Auch zwischen den Studienrichtungen gibt es Unterschiede. Gilt die Geisteswissenschaft immer häufiger als Notnagel für diejenigen, die schwierigere Studien nicht schaffen? In einer früheren Episode hat bereits Prof. Michael Sommer ähnliche Aussagen getätigt. “The excentric university professor is a species that is going to be extinct fast. […] The bad currency is driving out the good and in effect where the people who are nimble in the art of writing for grants are displacing the idiosyncratic thinkers who are generally much less nimble at that sort of activity.”, Peter Thiel Peter Thiel bietet sogar ein Stipendium für diejenigen an, die »Dinge bauen wollen, anstatt im Klassenzimmer zu sitzen.« Damit stellt sich eine noch grundlegendere Frage: Stellen viele Fächer so etwas wie eine institutionelle Autopoiesis dar, ist es also Wissenschaft als selbstreferenzielle Legitimation ihrer eigenen Institutionen, weil sie keinen direkt erkennbaren Nutzen haben? Aber die Frage kann auch umgedreht werden: Was richtet Institutionalisierung mit Wissenschaft an? Als »Berufsdenker« sollte auch die Selbstreflexion hoch im Kurs stehen, warum hört man dann so wenig davon in der Öffentlichkeit, im Besonderen nach großen Krisen? Wie kann das Zusammenspiel zwischen Politik und Wissenschaft beschrieben werden? Kann Wissenschaft tatsächlich nur in Demokratien das volle Potenzial ausspielen? »Macht ist ein wichtiger Punkt in der Wissenschaft.« Was können wir hier aus der Vergangenheit lernen, etwa der Wissenschaft während der Nazi-Diktatur in Deutschland und Österreich? »Lawyers and doctors, all credentialed with university degrees, were substantially overrepresented within the NSDAP, as were university students (then a far narrower section of society than today)«, Niall Ferguson Benötigen wir überhaupt so viele Akademiker in unserer Gesellschaft? Der deutsche Philosoph Julian Nida-Rümelin spricht vom Akademisierungswahn. Der damalige britische Premierminister Rishi Sunak warnt, dass zu vielen Universitätsstudenten ein falscher Traum verkauft werde. Auch Thomas Sowell kritisiert die eindimensionale Betrachtung des Wissensbegriffs: »Someone who is considered to be a “knowledgeable” person usually has a special kind of knowledge—perhaps academic or other kinds of knowledge not widely found in the population at large. Someone who has even more knowledge of more mundane things—plumbing, carpentry, or automobile transmissions, for example—is less likely to be called “knowledgeable” by those intellectuals for whom what they don't know isn't knowledge. Although the special kind of knowledge associated with intellectuals is usually valued more, and those who have such knowledge are usually accorded more prestige, it is by no means certain that the kind of knowledge mastered by intellectuals is necessarily more consequential in its effects in the real world.«, Thomas Sowell Absolventen von Universitäten müssen aber auch als Denkkollektiv gesehen werden. Ist dies aber ein Kollektiv, wo Diversität nur auf der Verpackung steht? Wer ist überhaupt Innovator in unseren modernen Gesellschaften? »But just as most engineers are not inventors, and most scientists are not researchers, so most science is not research. […] The university was keeping up with a changing technological world rather than creating it.«, David Edgerton Was hat es also mit Kreativität im Wissenschaftsbetrieb, im Kollektiv zu tun? Hat zumindest eine kleine Minderheit noch die Chance, sich einen Freiraum zu schaffen, den die Institution (noch) nicht erkannt und durch Prozesse und Regeln ausradiert hat. Zuletzt kehren wir zur Frage zurück, wie Krise und Expertise zusammenwirken. Was sind die zwei wichtigsten Aussagen, die Sie von jedem Experten hören sollten, aber selten hören? Dr. Glauninger wird es am Ende der Episode enthüllen. “Evidence based policy has become policy based evidence.”, Mervyn King Referenzen Andere Episoden Episode 101: Live im MQ, Macht und Ohnmacht in der Wissensgesellschaft. Ein Gespräch mit John G. Haas. Episode 96: Ist der heutigen Welt nur mehr mit Komödie beizukommen? Ein Gespräch mit Vince Ebert Episode 93: Covid. Die unerklärliche Stille nach dem Sturm. Ein Gespräch mit Jan David Zimmermann Episode 92: Wissen und Expertise Teil 2 Episode 80: Wissen, Expertise und Prognose, eine Reflexion Teil 1 Episode 91: Die Heidi-Klum-Universität, ein Gespräch mit Prof. Ehrmann und Prof. Sommer Episode 85: Naturalismus — was weiß Wissenschaft? Episode 84: (Epistemische) Krisen? Ein Gespräch mit Jan David Zimmermann Episode 83: Robert Merton — Was ist Wissenschaft? Episode 72: Scheitern an komplexen Problemen? Wissenschaft, Sprache und Gesellschaft — Ein Gespräch mit Jan David Zimmermann Episode 71: Stagnation oder Fortschritt — eine Reflexion an der Geschichte eines Lebens Episode 44: Was ist Fortschritt? Ein Gespräch mit Philipp Blom Episode 41: Intellektuelle Bescheidenheit: Was wir von Bertrand Russel und der Eugenik lernen können Episode 39: Follow the Science? Episode 38: Eliten, ein Gespräch mit Prof. Michael Hartmann Episode 28: Jochen Hörisch: Für eine (denk)anstössige Universität! Episode 18: Gespräch mit Andreas Windisch: Physik, Fortschritt oder Stagnation Dr. Manfred Glauninger Dr. Manfred Glauninger an der Akademie der Wissenschaften, Publikationen Fachliche Referenzen John P. A. Ioannidis, Why Most Published Findings Are False (2005) Sabine Kleinert, Richard Horton, How should medical science change? Lancet Comment (2014) Ludwig Fleck, Genesis and development of a scientific fact. ed. T.J. Trenn and R.K. Merton, foreword by Thomas Kuhn. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1979. This is the first English translation of his 1935 book titled Entstehung und Entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen Tatsache. Einführung in die Lehre vom Denkstil und Denkkollectiv. Basel: Schwabe und Co Bryan Kaplan, The Case against Education, Princeton University Press (2018) Conversation between Peter Thiel und David Graeber, Where did the Future go? (2020) Peter Thiel Fellowship Niall Ferguson, The Treason of the Intellectuals, The Free Press (2023) Niall Ferguson, The Treason of the Intellectuals, Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson (2024) Julien Benda, La trahison des clercs (1927) Julian Nida Rümelin, Der Akademisierungswahn, Vortrag Körber-Stiftung (2014) Thomas Sowell, intellectuals and Society, Basic Books (2010) Rishi Sunak, Too Many University Students are Sold a False Dream, Telegraph (2023) David Edgerton, The Shock Of The Old: Technology and Global History since 1900, Profile Books (2019) Mervyn King, John Kay, Radical Uncertainty, Bridge Street Press (2021) Karl Popper, Die offene Gesellschaft und ihre Feinde
Matthew Wood, who by his own admission is a ‘herbalist who did homeopathy because he couldn't understand herbalism' is one of the most influential herbalists in the English speaking world. He has brought vitalism and herbal specificity to a whole generation of herbalists, perhaps because of his unique experience of learning herbalism from Native Americans before pursuing any further herbal study. Here, Stephanie Hazel gets to fan-girl at one of her herbal heroes! They discuss Matthew's new book, “A Shamanic Herbal”, spirit animals, the subtleties of intuition, empathy and imagination, Native American Herbalism, and so much more. It's our longest interview yet, and we hope you enjoy every minute of it! Matthew Wood's new book is available here: https://www.thenile.com.au/books/matthew-wood/a-shamanic-herbal/9798888500200 The Earthwise Herbal (New World and Old World volumes) are some of the best herbal books around, so if you haven't discovered Matthew Wood's work yet, do yourself a favour and pick up a copy! We highly recommend signing up to the Matthew Wood Institute of Herbalism mailing list, where you will hear about plenty of high quality free classes, as well as their paid offerings. Sign up here. https://matthewwoodinstituteofherbalism.com/course/tongue-evaluation SHOWNOTES: Link to free tongue diagnosis class: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wN4gMYYHmM We also mentioned: ‘Tongue Diagnosis in Chinese Medicine' by Giovanni Maciocia. ‘The Structure of Scientific Revolutions', by Thomas Kuhn in 1970 (download a free pdf here): http://www.columbia.edu/cu/tract/projects/complexity-theory/kuhn-the-structure-of-scien.pdf See less
Associate Provost and W. Harold Row Professor of Global Politics Jamie Frueh, of Bridgewater College, joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Jamie and Brent have been friends for over 15 years, meeting at the ISA-Northeast conference in 2009. Jamie is also the only (other) person on this podcast besides Brent who is from Iowa, and Jamie also hosts his own podcast, The Teaching Curve.Jamie talks about growing up in Des Moines, with parents who both encouraged his curiosities and educational journey. Jamie was on his high school's debate team, which enabled him to travel throughout Midwest a bit. He talks about the decision to go to Georgetown University to pursue a degree and then career in the Foreign Service. While that didn't quite pan out, his protesting of apartheid in college did lead him to South Africa, where he taught at Catholic mission schools in more rural, predominantly Black areas of the country. It was a transformative trip for a bunch of reasons, including that being the setting where he discovered his love of teaching. We go through how Jamie figured out how to apply for graduate study, and what role Thomas Kuhn played in that. We cover how he ended up and then stayed at American University, his experiences on the market, his enriching experiences at Bridgewater, his development of the ISA-Northeast Pedagogies workshop, how he unwinds, how he approaches podcasting, and more! Listen to Jamie's podcast The Teaching Curve:https://www.buzzsprout.com/1976329And on YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLG5L5ARIehIiSZkjVA816OefQqY8kTZru&si=A1xJsKjFN58uOJ5W
Analytic Philosophy is a branch of philosophy that emphasizes clarity and logical analysis. Key figures include Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, who contributed to the development of symbolic logic and the philosophy of language. Logical Positivism, emerging from the Vienna Circle, focused on empirical verification and logical necessity. The philosophy of language explores theories of meaning, such as the referential theory, use theory, and speech act theory. Semantic externalism, proposed by Hilary Putnam and Saul Kripke, argues that meaning is influenced by external factors. Ordinary language philosophy, associated with J.L. Austin and later Wittgenstein, analyzes everyday language to resolve philosophical problems. The philosophy of science, with contributions from Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn, examines the nature of scientific knowledge and methods. W.V.O. Quine's critique of the analytic-synthetic distinction emphasizes the holistic nature of knowledge. Metaphysics in analytic philosophy addresses questions about reality, including the realism vs. anti-realism debate and the nature of properties and universals. Key concepts include propositional logic, predicate logic, and the theory of descriptions.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/library-of-philosophy--5939304/support.
After a couple weeks break while I moved into my apartment in Saint Paul, the Saturday Book Club reconvened to begin discussing Adrian Johns' 2023 book, The Science of Reading: Information, Media & Mind in Modern America. Although I had originally been a bit skeptical, I'm enjoying this book. We discussed languages and reading, the particularity of the reading experience, a bit of book history, the fact that this was a COVID book, Jacques Barzun, Eric Weinstein, Richard Dawkins, Thomas Kuhn, Michio Kaku, and the problem of creating collegiality in a remote and increasingly asynchronous learning environment.
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: Mech Interp Lacks Good Paradigms, published by Daniel Tan on July 18, 2024 on LessWrong. Note: I wrote this post rather quickly as an exercise in sharing rough / unpolished thoughts. I am also not an expert on some of the things I've written about. If you spot mistakes or would like to point out missed work / perspectives, please feel free! Note 2: I originally sent this link to some people for feedback, but I was having trouble viewing the comments on the draft. The post was also in a reasonably complete state, so I decided to just publish it - and now I can see the comments! If you're one of those people, feedback is still very much welcome! Mechanistic Interpretability (MI) is a popular and rapidly growing field of technical AI safety research. As a field, it's extremely accessible, requiring comparatively few computational resources, and facilitates rapid learning, due to a very short feedback loop. This means that many junior researchers' first foray into AI safety research is in MI (myself included); indeed, this occurs to the extent where some people feel MI is over-subscribed relative to other technical agendas. However, how useful is this MI research? A very common claim on MI's theory of impact (ToI) is that MI helps us advance towards a "grand unifying theory" (GUT) of deep learning. One of my big cruxes for this ToI is whether MI admits "paradigms" which facilitate correct thinking and understanding of the models we aim to interpret. In this post, I'll critically examine several leading candidates for "paradigms" in MI, consider the available evidence for / against, and identify good future research directions (IMO). At the end, I'll conclude with a summary of the main points and an overview of the technical research items I've outlined. Towards a Grand Unifying Theory (GUT) with MI Proponents of this argument believe that, by improving our basic understanding of neural nets, MI yields valuable insights that can be used to improve our agents, e.g. by improving architectures or by improving their training processes. This allows us to make sure future models are safe and aligned. Some people who have espoused this opinion: Richard Ngo has argued here that MI enables "big breakthroughs" towards a "principled understanding" of deep learning. Rohin Shah has argued here that MI builds "new affordances" for alignment methods. Evan Hubinger has argued for MI here because it helps us identify "unknown unknowns". Leo Gao argues here that MI aids in "conceptual research" and "gets many bits" per experiment. As a concrete example of work that I think would not have been possible without fundamental insights from MI: steering vectors, a.k.a. representation engineering, and circuit breakers, which were obviously inspired by the wealth of work in MI demonstrating the linear representation hypothesis. It's also important to remember that the value of fundamental science often seems much lower in hindsight, because humans quickly adjust their perspectives. Even if MI insights seem like common sense to us nowadays, their value in instrumenting significant advances can't be overstated. (Aside) A corollary of this argument is that MI could likely have significant capabilities externalities. Becoming better at building powerful and instruction-aligned agents may inadvertently accelerate us towards AGI. This point has been made in depth elsewhere, so I won't elaborate further here. A GUT Needs Paradigms Paradigm - an overarching framework for thinking about a field In his seminal book, The Structure of Scientific Revolution, Thomas Kuhn catalogues scientific progress in many different fields (spanning physics, chemistry, biology), and distills general trends about how these fields progress. Central to his analysis is the notion of a "paradigm" - an overarching framework for th...
How do we conduct science when there isn't a single isolated variable? What does that mean for carbon removal not taking place in a controlled environment? How does science even work?! Today's show originated from a question of how open-system carbon removal research can be conducted given that in a less-controlled environment, isolating for a single variable with replicability is less obviously possible. Does the scientific method really demand that, or is that some sort of pop culture understanding of science that needs to be challegned? To answer that question, host and co-founder of the Nori carbon removal marketplace, Ross Kenyon, asked Dr. Holly Jean Buck of the University at Buffalo and Anu Khan of Carbon180, to read two books and come on Reversing Climate Change to discuss them. The two texts are some of the foundational works of modern philosophy of science: Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and Paul Feyerabend's Against Method. Kuhn argued that paradigms are the collection of foundational beliefs we have about how science and knowledge production is conducted, and that they are quite hard to see outside of since most people work so deeply within them. It can often be a generational effort, as older scientists die and new ones take their places. Feyerabend goes further, arguing that we shouldn't just look for where one paradigm supersedes another, but be protective of competing systems of knowledge and the valuable ways of seeing that they unlock. The show applies their learnings to the state of the CDR industry, and attempts to ferret out carbon removal's existing paradigm, whether the world is ready for credits that are not tonne-denominated, and how much time we can afford in retooling and letting "normal science" work within an imperfect paradigm vs. trying to create an entirely new paradigm ex nihilo. Resources Anu Khan Holly Jean Buck Carbon180 Against Method on Wikipedia The Structure of Scientific Revolutions on Wikipedia The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman Historiography Connect with Nori Purchase Nori Carbon Removals Nori's website Nori on Twitter Check out our other podcast, Carbon Removal Newsroom Carbon Removal Memes on Twitter Carbon Removal Memes on Instagram --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/reversingclimatechange/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/reversingclimatechange/support
本集提及的資料： 提出證偽原則的波普爾(Karl Popper) 提出典範轉移(paradigm shift)的孔恩(Thomas Kuhn)，及其代表作《科學革命的結構》 (00:00:45) 碧螺春哪來的 (00:15:00) HY教練與科學的關係 (00:20:00) 從科學哲學看看科學是什麼 (00:35:00) 西方對科學的反思 (00:42:00) 教練產業、運動科學 (00:52:00) 科學的局限、人的有限性 留言告訴我你對這一集的想法 https://open.firstory.me/user/ckq13nna83ymm08728t6ae1ie/comments 請HY教練喝杯咖啡吧！ https://reurl.cc/n5aeZ1 訂閱HY教練的電子報 https://reurl.cc/Rbkz0g 任何想詢問的大小疑難雜症或意見回饋歡迎來信 sccoachhy@gmail.com ——— FB: https://www.facebook.com/coach.hy IG: https://www.instagram.com/coach.hy Web: https://coachhy.com ——— For Mimi by Twin Musicom Creative Commons — Attribution 4.0 International — CC BY 4.0 Free Download / Stream Powered by Firstory Hosting
Tom Chatfield is a British author and tech philosopher, interested in improving our experiences and understanding of technology. He is the author of several books on good thinking in today's tech-dominated world, including “Critical Thinking” and “How to Think”. He also teaches these skills to diverse audiences, ranging from schools to corporate boardrooms, and he has recently designed a successful online course on Critical Thinking for the Economist education. His most recent book is Wise Animals, an exploration of the co-evolution of humanity and technology—and the lessons our deep past may hold for the present. He's also an experienced Chair, Non-Executive Director, advisor and speaker across the private and public sectors. -> Inscreva-se aqui no módulo 3 dos workshops de Pensamento Crítico: «Decidir Melhor». Registe-se aqui para ser avisado(a) de futuras edições dos workshops. _______________ Índice: (3:00) Introduction in English (5:06) How did you end up writing about critical thinking and technology? | Is critical thinking a soft or a hard skill? | Heuristics and biases (work of Daniel Kahnemen and Amos Trvsersky) | The art of knowing when to seek ‘cognitive reinforcements' | Why communicating nuances and uncertainties is so hard today. | Arguments when our basic assumptions differ | Why critical thinking is not about being always right. | The importance of challenging our assumptions. (32:46) Why asking questions is the best way to dispute arguments. | The importance of creating trust to have open discussions. | Useful tricks to improve collective decision-making: pre-mortems; obligation to dissent; Oxford-style debates | How much of corporate work today runs around sending and replying to emails | The Amazon memo | ask religious schools | The importance of thinking before talking: book Robert Poynton - Do Pause: You Are Not A To Do List (47:45) Difference between teaching critical thinking to 12 year olds and corporate audiences? | The ubiquity of business jargon | Richard Feynman and the power of questions | Why did SpaceX give up on “catching” falling fairings? | Thomas Kuhn on paradigm shifts | Richard Feynman On The Folly Of Crafting Precise Definitions (1:09:06) New book: Wise Animals: How Technology Has Made Us What We Are | Impact of mass interactive media on democracy. | impact of social media on social health. Book by Jonathan Haidt: The Anxious Generation _______________ Today we're diving into an enlightening conversation with Tom Chatfield, a British author and tech philosopher. Tom is the author of several books on good thinking in today's tech-dominated world, including “Critical Thinking” and “How to Think”. He also teaches these skills to diverse audiences, ranging from schools to corporate boardrooms, and he has recently designed a successful online course on Critical Thinking for the Economist education. In his most recent book, Wise Animals, Tom explores our relationship with technology, examining the lessons that our ancestral past may hold for our present challenges. In this thought-provoking conversation with Tom, we discussed his advice for how to think more critically in today's complex world. We talked about strategies to combat the influence of cognitive biases in our mind, as popularized by thinkers like the late Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, and the importance (and difficulty) of challenging our own assumptions. We also discussed the importance of creating trust in order to be able to have open conversations, and some techniques for deep discussions and good decision making in all contexts. In the final part, we turned our focus to Tom's latest book, which explores our relationship with technology, and I asked his view on two big impacts technology is currently having in society: the destabilizing effect of mass interactive media on traditional democratic structures, exacerbating polarization and eroding public trust in institutions; and the troubling rise of what many experts refer to as an “Epidemic of Mental Illness” among children and teenagers, driven by pervasive social media use. ______________ 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 _______________ Bio: Tom Chatfield is a British author and tech philosopher, interested in improving our experiences and understanding of technology. His most recent book is Wise Animals, an exploration of the co-evolution of humanity and technology—and the lessons our deep past may hold for the present. His recent work around future skills and technology includes designing and presenting the Economist‘s new business course Critical Thinking: Problem-solving and decision-making in a complex world. Tom's non-fiction books exploring digital culture, including How To Thrive in the Digital Age (Pan Macmillan) and Live This Book! (Penguin), have appeared in over thirty languages. His bestselling critical thinking textbooks and online courses, developed in partnership with SAGE Publishing, are used in schools and universities across the world. He's also an experienced Chair, Non-Executive Director, advisor and speaker across the private and public sectors. Topics he's written about recently include the ethics of AI, what it means to think well, technology in deep time and the philosophy of fake news.
This episode has been brewing for a long time. It takes us all the way back to the roots of the Christian Atheist ... AND BEYOND. We interrupt our series on Malachi to lay out some of what the Christian Atheist (John and Jenny) have been learning, and the implications for all of what we do. The title of this week, "The structure of a scientific revolution" is a nod, of course, to Thomas Kuhn's landmark book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). It was a formative influence in my early and ongoing philosophical understanding. We are now in the midst of a SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION. With our Transcendent GOD – Being, Truth and Value – there can be NO COMPROMISE Listen to the complete book of Malachi read without commentary here ... https://youtu.be/aasq_o1JNyE If you enjoy our content, consider donating through PayPal via https://ko-fi.com/thechristianatheist Take a moment to enjoy our weekly Photos of the Day videos here - short slideshows with relaxing music ...https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_9GPi4HTqoZ8xFgTldbBaA https://www.youtube.com/c/TheChristianAtheist/featured https://www.facebook.com/JnJWiseWords https://wisewordsforyouroccasion.wordpress.com #thechristianatheist #drjohndwise #drjohnwise #johnwise #christian #atheist #christianity #atheism #jesus #jesuschrist #god #bible #oldtestament #newtestament #nocompromise #rationality #faith #philosophy #philosopher #culture #society #hegelism #hegelianism #hegel #reason #incarnation #history#psychology #theology #literature #humanities #hardquestions #postmodernism #woke #wisdom #ethics #science #poetry #paradox #oxymoron
How Tony Stark, the myth of meritocracy, and our unspoken beliefs about genius explain Elon Musk and the (re)turn of eugenics to the right wing Blog version and information about podcast and mailing list: https://literatemachine.com/2024/04/01/elon-musk-wokeness-and-the-myth-of-meritocracy If you enjoyed this, please tell someone, as word-of-mouth is how projects like this grow. For as little as $1 an episode, you can get exclusive authors notes, excerpts, and early access to episodes by supporting me on Patreon at: https://www.patreon.com/ericrosenfield Thanks to my current Patrons: Kathryn Carruthers, Gabi Ghita, Hristo Kolev, Kevin Cafferty, Ulysse Pence, Wilma Ezekowitz, IndustrialRobot, Not Invader Zim, Jason Quackenbush, Arthur Rosenfield, and Nancy S. Rosen Bibliography and Further Reading Interview with Stan Lee where he talks about the creation of Iron Man: https://screenrant.com/stan-lee-iron-man-unlikable-hero-creation-marvel/ How Albert Einstein was no "lone genius": https://www.nature.com/articles/527298a The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn, 1962 How many filaments Edison tried in creating the lightbulb: http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2015/05/how-many-times-did-edison-fail-in.html Talented and Gifted programs and their legacy of Eugenics: https://rethinkingschools.org/articles/the-forgotten-history-of-eugenics/ On the creation of the IQ Test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2bKaw2AJxs Alfred Binet thought intellegence couldn't be reduced to a number: https://www.verywellmind.com/history-of-intelligence-testing-2795581 while Lewis Terman disagreed: https://stanfordmag.org/contents/the-vexing-legacy-of-lewis-terman Terman study subjects results more about socioeconomic status than intelligence: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/beautiful-minds/200909/the-truth-about-the-termites and the high performers and low performers had about the same IQ: https://www.nytimes.com/1995/03/07/science/75-years-later-study-still-tracking-geniuses.html The Bell Curve is based on junk, fraudulent "science": https://youtu.be/UBc7qBS1Ujo?si=UMJKOTiArp9qSnca What Intelligence Tests Miss, Keith E. Stanovich, 2009 On "Gifted Kig Syndrome": https://thehowleronline.org/6490/viewpoint/former-gifted-child-syndrome/ Local education systems are funded by property taxes: https://www.npr.org/2016/04/18/474256366/why-americas-schools-have-a-money-problem DeSantis campaign says "woke" is awareness of systemic injustice: https://www.motherjones.com/mojo-wire/2022/12/desantis-ron-woke-florida-officials/ Someone working 40 hours a week at minimum wage is still below the poverty line: https://www.cnn.com/factsfirst/politics/factcheck_7e5bc7fa-1a5a-4c29-958f-53a07ac1b9ab# Why DEI was created: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/5-reasons-support-affirmative-action-college-admissions/ Study where resumes were sent out with stereotypically black and white names and their results: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/mar/15/jalen-ross/black-name-resume-50-percent-less-likely-get-respo/ On the long, toxic history of "Cultural Marxism": https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/13/opinion/cultural-marxism-anti-semitism.html Cultural Marxism and the "vast, Jewish conspiracy": https://www.dailydot.com/debug/what-is-cultural-marxism/ The "Hyperloop" is an idea that can never work: https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/elon-musk-hyperloop/ and was just a ploy to disrupt the development of trains in California: https://time.com/6203815/elon-musk-flaws-billionaire-visions/ Wired story from 2018 about Musk mistreating his employees: https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-tesla-life-inside-gigafactory/ Some More News on Musk: https://youtu.be/5pNL7MlUpmI?si=GNFvsKQQRpyfw-MH Tesla cars fall apart in motion: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/tesla-musk-steering-suspension/ Tesla cars suspected of turning off self-driving moments before a crash: https://futurism.com/tesla-nhtsa-autopilot-report Musk not interested in labor laws or regulations: https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-spacex-twitter-inc-technology-business-8912c2a2f282b395d3630b3589fa25bc More on Musk mistreating employees: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-11-14/elon-musk-toxic-boss-timeline Musk spreading lies on Twitter: https://futurism.com/elon-musk-black-students-low-iqs Musk antisemitic tweets: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/nov/16/elon-musk-antisemitic-tweet-adl Musk racist tweets about asylum-seekers: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/elon-musk-great-replacement-conspiracy-theory-1234941337/ Musk the eugenicist: https://disconnect.blog/why-silicon-valley-is-bringing-eugenics/
There was so much to talk about—this is the longest Ground Truths podcast yet. Hope you'll find it as thought-provoking as I did!Transcript, with audio and external links, edited by Jessica Nguyen, Producer for Ground TruthsVideo and audio tech support by Sinjun Balabanoff, Scripps ResearchEric Topol (00:00:05):This is Eric Topol from Ground Truths, and I am delighted to have with me Holden Thorp, who is the Editor-in-Chief of the Science journals. We're going to talk about Science, not just the magazine journal, but also science in general. This is especially appropriate today because Holden was just recognized by STAT as one of the leaders for 2024 because of his extraordinary efforts to promote science integrity, so welcome Holden.Holden Thorp (00:00:36):Thanks Eric, and if I remember correctly, you were recognized by STAT in 2022, so it's an honor to join a group that you're in anytime, that's for sure, and great to be on here with you.Eric Topol (00:00:47):Well, that's really kind to you. Let's start off, I think with the journal, because I know that consumes a lot of your efforts and you have five journals within science.Holden Thorp (00:01:02):Oh, we have six.Eric Topol (00:01:03):Oh six, I'm sorry, six. There's Science, the original, and then five others. Can you tell us what it's like to oversee all these journals?Overseeing the Science JournalsHolden Thorp (00:01:16):Yeah, we're a relatively small family compared to our commercial competitors. I know you had Magdalena [Skipper]on and Nature has I think almost ninety journals, so six is pretty small. In addition to Science, which most people are familiar with, we have Science Advances, which also covers all areas of science and is larger and is a gold open access journal and also is overseen by academic editors, not professional editors. All of our other journals are overseen by professional editors. And then the other four are relatively small and specialized areas, and probably people who listen to you and follow you would know about Science Translational Medicine, Science Immunology, Science Signaling and then we also have a journal, Science Robotics which is something I knew nothing about and I learned a lot. I've learned a lot about robotics and the culture of people who work there interacting with them.Holden Thorp (00:02:22):So we have a relatively small family. There's only 160 people who work for me, which is manageable. I mean that sounds like a lot, but in my previous jobs I was a provost and a chancellor, and I had tens of thousands of people, so it's really fun for me to have a group where I at least have met everybody who works for me. We're an outstanding set of journals, so we attract an outstanding group of professionals who do all the things that are involved in all this, and it's really, really fun to work with them. At Science, we don't just do research papers, although that's a big, and probably for your listeners the biggest part of what we do. But we also have a news and commentary section and the news section is 30 full-time and many freelancers around the world really running the biggest general news operation for science that there is. And then in the commentary section, which you're a regular contributor for us in expert voices, we attempt to be the best place in the world for scientists to talk to each other. All three of those missions are just really, really fun for me. It's the best job I've ever had, and it's one I hope to do for many years into the future.Eric Topol (00:03:55):Well, it's extraordinary because in the four and a half years I think it's been since you took the helm, you've changed the face of Science in many ways. Of course, I think the other distinction from the Nature Journals is that it's a nonprofit entity, which shows it isn't like you're trying to proliferate to all sorts of added journals, but in addition, what you've done, at least the science advisor and the science news and all these things that come out on a daily basis is quite extraordinary as we saw throughout the pandemic. I mean, just reporting that was unparalleled from, as you say, all points around the world about really critically relevant topics. Obviously it extends well beyond the concerns of the pandemic. It has a lot of different functions, but what I think you have done two major things, Holden. One is you medicalized it to some extent.Eric Topol (00:04:55):A lot of people saw the journal, particularly Science per se, as a truly basic science journal. Not so much applied in a medical sphere, but these days there's more and more that would be particularly relevant to the practice of medicine, so that's one thing. And the other thing I wanted you to comment on is you're not afraid to speak out and as opposed to many other prior editors who I followed throughout my career at Science, there were pretty much the politically correct type and they weren't going to really express themselves, which you are particularly not afraid of. Maybe you could comment about if you do perceive this medicalization of science to some extent, and also your sense of being able to express yourself freely.Capturing the Breakthroughs in Structural BiologyHolden Thorp (00:05:48):Yeah, well, you're kind to say both of those things are certainly things we have worked at. I mean, I do come from a background, even though I'm trained as a chemist, most of what I did towards the latter end of my career, I mean, I did very basic biochemistry when I was a researcher, but the last part of my research career I worked in on development of a drug called Vivjoa, which is an alternative to the fluconazole family that doesn't have the same toxicity and is currently on the market for chronic yeast infection and hopefully some other things in the future when we can get some more clinical trials done.Holden Thorp (00:06:35):And I've hung around biotech startups and drug development, so it is part of the business that I knew. I think the pandemic really gave us an opening because Valda Vinson, who's now the Executive Editor and runs all of life sciences for us and policies for the journal, she was so well known in structural biology that most of the first important structures in Covid, including the spike protein, all came to us. I mean, I remember crystal clear February of 2020, she came in my office and she said, I got the structure of the spike protein. And I said, great, what's the spike protein? Turned out later became the most famous protein in the world, at least temporarily. Insulin may be back to being the most famous protein now, but spike protein was up there. And then that kind of cascaded into all the main protease and many of the structures that we got.Holden Thorp (00:07:45):And we seized on that for sure, to kind of broaden our focus. We had the Regeneron antibodies, we had the Paxlovid paper, and all of that kind of opened doors for us. And we've also, now we have two clinical editors at Science, Priscilla Kelly and Yevgeniya Nusinovich, and then the Insights section, somebody that you work with closely, Gemma Alderton, she is very fluent in clinical matters. And then of course we've had Science Translational Medicine and we seek continue to strengthen that. Science Immunology was very much boosted by Covid and actually Science Immunology is now, I think probably if you care about impact factors, the second highest specialized immunology journal after Immunity. I've put some emphasis on it for sure, but I think the pandemic also really helped us. As far as me speaking out, a lot of people maybe don't remember, but Don Kennedy, who was the editor in the early 2000s who had been the Stanford president, he was similarly outspoken.Confronting ControversiesHolden Thorp (00:09:15):It's funny, sometimes people who disagree with me say, well, Don Kennedy would never say anything like that. And then I can dig up something that Don Kennedy said that's just as aggressive as what I might've said. But you're right, Bruce Alberts was very focused on education, and each one of us has had our own different way of doing things. When Alan Leshner hired me and Sudip Parikh reinforced this when he came on, I mean, he wanted me to liven up the editorial page. He explicitly told me to do that. I may have done more of it than he was expecting, but Alan and Sudip both still remain very supportive of that. I couldn't do what I do without them and also couldn't do it without Lisa Chong, who makes all my words sound so much better than they are when I start. And yeah, it kind of fed on itself.Holden Thorp (00:10:21):It started with the pandemic. I think there was an inflection when Trump first said that Covid was just the flu, and when he said some really ridiculous things about the vaccine, and that's where it started. I guess my philosophy was I was thinking about people who, they've got a spouse at home whose job might be disrupted. They got children they've got who are out of school, and somehow they managed to get themselves to the lab to work on our vaccine or some other aspect of the pandemic to try to help the world. What would those people want their journal to say when they came home and turned the news on and saw all these politicians saying all this ridiculous stuff? That was really the sort of mantra that I had in my head, and that kind of drove it. And now I think we've sort of established the fact that it's okay to comment on things that are going on in the world. We're editorially independent, Sudip and the AAAS board, treat us as being editorially independent. I don't take that for granted and it's a privilege to, as I sometimes tell people, my apartment's four blocks from the White House, sometimes I'm over there typing things that they don't like. And that tradition is still alive in this country, at least for the time being, and I try to make the most of it.Eric Topol (00:12:11):Well, and especially as you already touched on Holden, when there's a time when the intersection of politics and science really came to a head and still we're dealing with that, and that's why it's been so essential to get your views as the leader of such an important journal that is publishing some of the leading science in the world on a weekly basis. Now, one of the things I do want to get into this other track that you also alluded to. You went from a chemist, and you eventually rose to Dean and chancellor of University of North Carolina (UNC) and also the provost of Washington University, two of our best institutions academically in the country. I would imagine your parents who were both UNC grads would've been especially proud of you being the chancellor.Holden Thorp (00:13:05):It's true. Yeah. Unfortunately, my father wasn't there to see it, but my mother, as I always tell people, my mother very much enjoyed being the queen mother of her alma mater.On Stanford University's President ResignationEric Topol (00:13:16):Yeah, I would think so, oh my goodness. That gives you another perspective that's unique having been in the senior management of two really prestigious institutions, and this past year a lot has been going on in higher education, and you have again come to the fore about that. Let's just first discuss the Stanford debacle, the president there. Could you kind of give us synopsis, you did some really important writing about that, and what are your thoughts looking back on the student who happens to be Peter Baker's and Susan's son, two incredible journalists at the New York Times and New Yorker, who broke the story at the Stanford Daily as a student, and then it led to eventually the President's resignation. So, what were your thoughts about that?Holden Thorp (00:14:16):Yeah, so it's a complicated and sad story in some ways, but it's also fascinating and very instructive. Two of the papers were in Science, two of the three main ones, the other one was in Cell. And we had made an error along the way because Marc had sent a correction in which for some reason never got posted. We searched every email server we had everything we had trying to find exactly what happened, but we think we have a website run by humans and there was something that happened when the corrections were transmitted into our operations group, and they didn't end up on the website. So, one of the things I had to do was to say repeatedly to every reporter who wanted to ask me, including some Pulitzer Prize winners, that we had looked everywhere and couldn't find any reason why somebody would've intentionally stopped those corrections from posting.Holden Thorp (00:15:36):And one thing about it was I didn't want, Marc had enough problems, he didn't need to be blamed for the fact that we botched that. So I think people were maybe impressed that we just came out and admitted we made a mistake, but that's really what this area needs. And those things happened before I became the editor in chief, but I was satisfied that where that error happened was done by people who had no idea who Marc Tessier-Lavigne even was, but because of all that, and because we had to decide what to do with these papers, I talked to him extensively at the beginning of this, maybe as much as anybody, now that I look back on it. And I think that for him, the error that happened is very common one. You have a PI with a big lab.Holden Thorp (00:16:33):There are many, many incentives for his coworkers and yours to want to get high profile publications. And what we see is mostly at the end when you kind of know what's happening, some corners get cut doing all the controls and all of the last things that have to be done to go into the paper. And someone in his lab did that, and he didn't notice when the jails were sent in. The committee that investigated it later found something that I was certain at the beginning was going to be true, which is he didn't have any direct involvement in and making the problematic images or know that they were there. Every time we see one of these, that's almost always the story.Holden Thorp (00:17:32):And if he hadn't been the president of Stanford, he probably would've, I mean, a couple of the papers that were attracted might even could have been just big corrections. That's another topic we can talk about in terms of whether that's the right thing to do but because he was the president of Stanford, it triggered all these things at the university, which made the story much, much more complicated. And it is similar to what we see in a lot of these, that it's the institution that does the most to make these things bigger than they need to be. And in this case, the first thing was that young Theo Baker who I've talked on the phone extensively with, and I just had a long lunch with him in Palo Alto a couple weeks ago, it's the first time we ever met in person. He's finishing up his book, which has been optioned for a movie, and I've told him that I want Mark Hamill to play me in the movie because I don't know if you saw this last thing he did, Fall of the House of Usher but he was a very funny curmudgeonly.Holden Thorp (00:18:46):And so, I think he would be a lot like me dealing with Theo, but Theo did great work. Did everything that Theo write add up precisely. I mean, he was teaching himself a lot of this biochemistry as he went along, so you could always find little holes in it, but the general strokes of what he had were correct. And in my opinion, and Marc would've been better served by talking to Theo and answering his questions or talking to other reporters who are covering this and there are many excellent ones. This is something I learned the hard way when I was at North Carolina. It's always better for the President to just face the music and answer the questions instead of doing what they did, which is stand up this long and complicated investigation. And when the institutions do these long investigations, the outcome is always unsatisfying for everybody because the investigation, it found precisely what I think anybody who understands our world would've expected that Marc didn't know about the fraud directly, but that he could have done more to create a culture in his laboratory where these things were picked up, whether that's making his lab smaller or him having fewer other things to do, or precisely what it is, people could speculate.Managing a Crisis at a UniversityHolden Thorp (00:20:37):But of course, that's what always happens in these. So the report produced exactly what any reporter who's covered this their whole lives would've expected it to produce, but the people who don't know the intimate details of how this works, were not satisfied by that. And he ended up having to step down and we'll never know what would've happened if instead of doing all of that, he just said, wow, I really screwed this up. I'm responsible for the fact that these images are in here and I'm going to do everything I can to straighten it out. I'd be happy to take your questions. That's always what I encourage people to do because I was in a similar situation at North Carolina with a scandal involved in athletics and an academic department, and we did umpteen investigations instead of me just saying, hey, everybody, we cheated for 30 years. It started when I was in middle school, but I'm still going to try to clean it up and I'll be happy to answer your questions. And instead, we get lawyers and PR people and all these carefully worded statements, and it's all prolonged. And we see that in every research integrity matter we deal with and there are a lot of other things in higher education that are being weighed down by all of that right now.Eric Topol (00:22:06):Yeah. One of the things that is typical when a university faces a crisis, and we're going to get into a couple others in a moment, is that they get a PR firm, and the PR firm says, just say you're going to do an investigation because that'll just pull it out of the news, take it out of the news. It doesn't work that way. And what's amazing is that the universities pay a lot of money to these PR companies for crisis management. And being forthright may indeed be the answer, but that doesn't happen as best as we can see. I think you're suggesting a new path that might be not just relevant, but the way to get this on the right course quickly.Holden Thorp (00:22:58):Just on that, there's a person in that PR space who I really like. There are a few of them that are really good, and he's the person who helped me the most. And he used to refer doing the investigation as putting it on the credit card.Eric Topol (00:23:16):Yeah. Yeah, exactly.Holden Thorp (00:23:17):Okay, because you still have to pay the credit card bill after you charge something.Eric Topol (00:23:25):Yeah, better to write a check.Holden Thorp (00:23:27):It's better to write a check. Yes, because that 18% interest can add up pretty quickly.Resignations of the Presidents at Harvard and PennEric Topol (00:23:32):I like that metaphor entirely appropriate. That's a good one. Now, in the midst of all this, there's been two other leading institutions besides Stanford where the president resigned for different reasons, at least in part one was at Harvard and one at Penn. And this is just a crisis in our top universities in the country. I mean three of the very top universities. So, could you comment about the differences at Harvard and Penn related to what we just discussed at Stanford?Holden Thorp (00:24:09):Yeah, so I don't know Claudine Gay, but I've exchanged emails with her, and I do know Liz Magill and I know Sally Kornbluth even better. Our kids went to middle school together because she was at Duke. And I think Sally is in good shape, and she did a little bit better in the hearings because I think she was a little more forthcoming than Liz and Dr. Gay were but I think also Liz was in a pretty weakened state already when she went in there. And I think that what happened that day, and it was a devastating day for higher education. I cleared my calendar, and I watched the whole thing and I couldn't sleep that night. And it was, I thought, oh my goodness, my way of making a living has just taken a death blow. I just felt so much compassion for the three of them, two of whom I knew, one of whom I could imagine having been through similar things myself.Holden Thorp (00:25:20):And I think what my take on the whole thing about free speech and the war and all this stuff is that higher education has got a problem, which is that we have promised to deliver a product that we can't really deliver, and that is to provide individualized experiences for students. So, I'm back on the faculty now at GW. I have 16 people in my class, I know every single one of them. I was teaching during the fall, last fall. I teach on Monday nights, which Yom Kippur was on a Monday night, which was before October 7th. And so, I knew precisely how many Jewish kids I had in my class because they had to make up class for that Monday night.Holden Thorp (00:26:18):I was basically able to talk to each one of them and make sure. And then GW is a very liberal university, so I had a whole bunch that were all the way on the other side also. I was just able to talk to each of them and make sure they had what they needed from the university. But the institutions don't really have luxury. They don't have somebody who's been doing this for 35 years teaching 16 people who can make sure they're getting what they need, but they write letters to all their students saying, you're going to join a diverse student body where we're going to give you a chance to express yourself and explore everything, but there's too many of them to actually deliver that. And none of them want to say that out loud. And so, what happens in a situation like this?Holden Thorp (00:27:19):And everybody says, well, don't send out the statements, don't send out the statements, but how else are you going to communicate with all those people? I mean, because the truth is education is a hands-on individualized deal. And so, the students who are experiencing antisemitism at Harvard or Penn or anywhere else, were feeling distress. And the university wasn't doing what they promised and attending to that, and similarly to the students who wanted to express themselves in the other direction. And so, what really needs to happen is that universities need to put more emphasis on what goes on in the classroom so that these students are getting the attention that they've been promised. But universities are trying to do a lot of research and you're at a place that's got a little simpler mission but some of these big complicated ones are doing urban development and they're trying to win athletics competitions, and they're running hotels and fire departments and police departments, and it's really hard to do all and multi, multi-billion dollar investment vehicles.Holden Thorp (00:28:47):It's really hard to do all that and keep the welfare of a bunch of teenagers up at the top of the list. And so, I think really what we need around this topic in general is a reckoning about this very point. Now as far as how to gotten through the hearing a little better, I mean what they said was technically correct, no question about that. But where they struggled was in saying things that would cause them to admit that they had failed at doing what they promised for the people who are feeling distressed. And again, that's kind of my mantra on all these things, whether it's student affairs or research integrity or anything else, the universities have made massive commitments to do probably more things than they can, and rather than fessing up to that, they just bury the whole thing in legalistic bureaucracy, and it's time for us to cut through a lot of that stuff.Eric Topol (00:30:09):I couldn't agree more on that.Holden Thorp (00:30:10):And in Claudine's case, I think the plagiarism thing, I wrote a piece in the Chronicle that just kind of tried to remind people that the kinds of plagiarism that she was punished for, in my opinion, too much of a punishment is stuff that we routinely pick up now with authenticate and other tools in scholarly publishing, and people just get a report that says, hey, maybe you want to reward this, and that's it. If it doesn't change the academic content of the paper, we hardly ever even pay attention to that. She was being subjected to a modern tool that didn't exist when she wrote the stuff that she wrote. And it's same thing with image analysis, right? When Marc Tessier-Lavigne made his papers, Elisabeth Bik wasn't studying images, and we didn't have proof fig and image twin to pick these things up, so we're taking today's tools and applying them to something that's 20 years old that was produced when those tools didn't exist. You can debate whether that matters or not, but in my opinion it does.Generative A.I. and Publishing ScienceEric Topol (00:31:31):Yeah, that's bringing us to the next topic I wanted to get into you with, which is AI. You've already mentioned about the AI detection of image, which we used to rely on Elisabeth as a human to do that, and now it can be done through AI.Holden Thorp (00:31:51):Well, it doesn't get everything, so I keep telling Elisabeth she doesn't have to worry about being put out of business.Eric Topol (00:31:58):But then there's also, as you said about text detection, and then there's also, as you've written in Science, the overall submission of papers where a GPT may have had significant input to the writing, not just to check the spelling or check minor things. And so, I want to get your views because this is a moving target of course. I mean, it's just the capabilities of AI have just been outpacing, I think a lot of expectations. Where do you see the intersection of AI and Science publishing now? Because as you said, it changes the ground rules for picking up even minor unintended errors or self-plagiarism or whatever, and now it changes the whole landscape considerably.Holden Thorp (00:32:54):Yeah. So, I think you said the most important thing, which is that it's a moving target, and you've been writing about this for medicine for longer than just about anybody, so you've been watching that moving target. We started off with a very restrictive stance, and the reason we did that was because we knew it would keep moving. And so, we wanted to start from the most restrictive possible place and then sort of titrate in the things that we allowed because we didn't want to go through the same thing we went through with Photoshop when it first came along. Like all these altered images that we keep talking about by far the most papers that surface are from the period between when Photoshop became a tool and when we finally had sort of a consensus as a community in terms of what was okay and what wasn't okay to do with your gels when you process the images.Holden Thorp (00:33:55):And we didn't want the same thing with words where we allowed people to use ChatGPT to write, and then a few years later decided, oh, this thing wasn't permissible, and then we have to go back and re-litigate all those papers. We didn't want to do that again. So, we started off with a pretty restrictive stance, which we've loosened once and we'll probably loosen more as we see how things evolve. What we keep looking for is for entities that don't have a financial interest to issue guidelines, so if it's another journal, especially a commercial journal that makes money on the papers, well, you can imagine that these tools are going to give us even more papers. And for a lot of these entities that charge by the paper, they have a financial incentive for people to use ChatGPT to write papers. We look for societies and coalitions of academics who have come together and said these things are okay.Holden Thorp (00:35:04):And the first one of those was when we decided that it was okay, for example, if you are not an English speaker natively to have ChatGPT work on your pros. Now there are lots of people who disagree about that ChatGPT is good at that. That's a separate matter, but we felt we got to a point, I forgot when it was a couple months ago, where we could amend our policies and say that we were going to be more tolerant of text that had been done by ChatGPT. As long as the people who signed the author forms realize that if it makes one of these hallucinating errors that it makes and it gets into the paper that's on them, whether that actually saves you time or not, I don't know.Holden Thorp (00:36:03):I also have my doubts about that, but that's kind of where we're going. We're watching these things as they go. We're still very restrictive on images and there was this debacle in this Frontiers paper a couple of weeks ago with a ridiculous image that got through. So right now, we're still not allowing illustrations that were generated by the visual counterparts of ChatGPT. Will we loosen that in the future? Maybe, as things evolve, so when we did our first amendment, some of the reporters, they're just doing their jobs saying, well, you can't make your mind up about this. And I'm like, no, you don't want us to make up our mind once and for all. And by the way, science is something that changes over time also. So, we're watching this develop and we expect everybody jokes about how we spend too much time talking about this, but I think everybody's gotten to the point now where they're realizing we're going to talk about it for years to come.Eric Topol (00:37:17):Oh my goodness, yes because we're talking about truth versus fake and this is big stuff. I mean, it affects whether it's the elections, whether it's every sector of our lives are affected by this. And obviously publishing in the leading peer review journal, it couldn't be more important as to get this right and to adjust, as you said, as more evidence, performance and other issues are addressed systematically. That does get me to self-correcting science, something else you've written about, which is kind of self-correcting as to how we will understand the use of large language models and generative AI. But this, you get into science in many different ways, whether it's through the celebrity idea, how it has to adapt and correct that there's a miscue from the public about when evolves and it's actually that science. So maybe you could kind of give us your perspective about you are continuing to reassess what is science as we'll get into more about that in a moment. Where are you at right now on that?Holden Thorp (00:38:40):Yeah, so my general sort of shtick about science is to remind people that it's done by human beings. Human beings who have all different kinds of different brains who come from different backgrounds, who have all the human foibles that you see in any other profession. And I think that unfortunately a lot of, and we brought some of this on ourselves, we've kind of taken on an air of infallibility from time to time or as having the final answer when, if you go back just to the simplest Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn early writings in the philosophy of science, it's crystal clear that science is something that evolves. It's something done by sometimes thousands or even hundreds of thousands of millions of people depending on the topic. And it's not the contributions of any individual person hardly ever.Holden Thorp (00:39:54):But yet we continue to give Nobel prizes and hold up various individual scientific figures as being representative. They're usually representative of many, many people. And it's a process that continues to change. And as always point out, if you want to get a paper in science, it's not good to say, hey, here's something everybody thought and we tested it and it's still correct. That's usually not a good way to get a science paper. The right thing to do is to say, hey, the W boson might weigh more than we expected it to, or it turns out that evolution occurs in ways that we didn't expect, or that's how you get a science paper and that's how you get on the cover of Science. Those are the things that we look for, things that change the way people think about science. And so that's what we're all actively looking for, but yet we sometimes portray to the public that we always have everything completely figured out, and the journalists sometimes don't help us because they like to write crisp stories that people can get something out of. And we like to go on TV and say, hey, I got the answer.Holden Thorp (00:41:23):Don't wear a mask. Do wear a mask. This is how much the temperature is going to go up next year. Oh, we refined our, and it turns out it's another 10th of a degree this way or that way. I mean, that's what makes what we do interesting and embedded in that is also human error, right? Because we make errors in interpretation. We might see a set of data that we think mean one thing, but then somebody else will do something that helps us interpret it another way. In my opinion, that's certainly not misconduct. We hardly ever publish corrections or retractions over interpretation. We just publish more papers about that unless it's some very egregious thing. And then we also have greed and ambition and ego and lots of other things that cause people to make intentional errors that get most of the attention. And we have errors that are unintentional, but still may relate to fundamental data in the paper.Holden Thorp (00:42:36):So when you put all this together, the answer isn't to try to catch everything because there's no way in the world we're going to catch everything and we wouldn't want to, even if we could for some of it, because as John Maddox, who ran my competitor journal for many years in a brilliant way at Nature, someone once asked him how many papers in Nature were wrong? And he said, all of them, because all of them are going to be replaced by new information. And so, what we'd be better off trying to convince the public that this is how science works, which is much harder than just going to them with facts. I mean, that takes a lot of work and doing a better job of telling each other that it's okay when we have to change the record because the biggest thing that erodes trust in science is not the fact that we make mistakes, is that when it turns into a drama over whether we are going to correct the record or not, that's what all these, the Stanford case is probably the biggest in people's minds. But if you look at, we've had this behavioral economic stuff at Harvard, I have this superconductivity at Rochester, Dana Farber's having a big event right now. All of these things don't have to be this dramatic if we would do a better job of collaborating with each other on maintaining an accurate scientific record rather than letting ambition and greed and ego get in the way of all of it.Who Is A Scientist?Eric Topol (00:44:21):Well, you got some important threads in there. The one thing I just would also comment on is my favorite thing in Science is challenging dogma because there's so much dogma, and that's obviously part of what you were getting into and many other aspects as well. But that's the story of Science, that nothing stands. If it does, then you're not doing a good job of really interrogating and following up on whatever is accepted at any particular moment in time. But your writings, whether it's in Science and editorials or science forever, your Substack, which are always insightful but I think one of the most recent ones was about, who is a scientist? And I really love that one because I'll let you explain. There are some people who have a very narrow view and others who see it quite differently. And maybe you could summarize it.Holden Thorp (00:45:23):Well, I had the privilege to moderate a panel at the AAAS meeting that included Keith Yamamoto, who was our outgoing president, Willie May, who was our incoming president, Peggy Hamburg, who ran the FDA and many, many other things. Kaye Husbands Fealing who was a social scientist, and Michael Crow, who was the president of Arizona State. These are all extraordinary people. And I just asked him a simple question, so who was the scientist? Because I think one thing that I see in my work, and you probably see in the communication work and writing that you do, that not all of our colleagues who work in the laboratory think that the rest of this stuff is science.Holden Thorp (00:46:17):And the place that breaks my heart the most is when somebody says, one of our professional editors isn't qualified to reject their paper because they don't have their own lab. Alright, well you've interacted with a lot of our editors, they read more papers than either one of us. They know more about what's going on in these papers than anybody. They are absolute scholars in every sense of the word and if someone thinks they're not scientists, I don't know who a scientist is. And so, then you can extend that to science communicators. I mean, those are obviously the problems we've been talking about, the people we need the most great teachers. If someone's a great science teacher and they have a PhD and they worked in lab and they're teaching at a university, are they still a scientist even if they don't have a lab anymore?Holden Thorp (00:47:11):So in my opinion, an expansive definition of this is the best because we want all these people to be contributing. In fact, many of the problems we have aren't because we're not good in the laboratory. We seem to be able to do a good job generating that. It's more about all these other pieces that we're not nearly as good at. And part of what we need to do is value the people who are good at those things, so I pose this to the panel, and I hope people go on and watch the video. It is worth watching. Keith Yamamoto was in the group that said, it's only if you're doing and planning research that you're a scientist. He knew he was going to be outnumbered before we went out there. We talked about that. I said, Keith, you're my boss. If you don't want me to ask that question, I won't. But to his credit, he wanted to talk about this and then Michael Crow was probably the furthest on the other side who said, what makes humans different from other species is that we're all scientists. We all seek to explain things. So somewhere in the middle and the others were kind of scattered around the middle, although I would say closer to Michael than they were to Keith.Holden Thorp (00:48:33):But I think this is important for us to work out because we want everybody who contributes to the scientific enterprise to feel valued. And if they would feel more valued if we called them scientists, that suits me but it doesn't suit all of our academic colleagues apparently.Eric Topol (00:48:54):Well, I mean, I think just to weigh in a bit on that, I'm a big proponent of citizen scientists, and we've seen how it has transformed projects like folded for structural biology and so many things, All of Us program that's ongoing right now to try to get a million participants, at least half of whom are underrepresented to be citizen scientists learning about themselves through their genome and other layers of data. And that I think may help us to fight the misinformation, disinformation, the people that do their own research with a purpose that can be sometimes nefarious. The last type of topic I wanted to get to with you was the University of Florida and the state of Florida and the Surgeon General there. And again, we are kind of circling back to a few things that we've discussed today about higher education institutions as well as politics and I wonder if we get some comments about that scenario.What's Happening in Florida?Holden Thorp (00:49:59):Yeah. Well, I'm coming to you from Orlando, Florida where I have a home that I've had ever since I moved to a cold climate, and I spent the whole pandemic down here. I observed a lot of things going on in the state of Florida firsthand. And I think in a way it's two different worlds because Florida does make a massive investment in higher education more than many other states and that has really not changed that much under Governor DeSantis despite his performative views that seem to be to the contrary. And so, I think it's important to acknowledge that Florida State and Florida and UCF and USF, these are excellent places and many of them have thrived in terms of their budgets even in this weird climate, but the political performance is very much in the other direction. This is where the Stop WOKE Act happened. This is where, again, I live in Orlando. This is a company town that Ron DeSantis decided to take on the Walt Disney Corporation is the second biggest city in Orlando, and it's a company town, and he took on the employer.Holden Thorp (00:51:32):It doesn't make a whole lot of political sense, but I think it was all part of his national political ambitions. And down at the base of this was this all strange anti-vax stuff. Now I got my first vaccines down here. I went to public places that were organized by the Army Corps of Engineers that were at public properties. It was at a community college here in Orlando, was extremely well organized. I had no problem. I was there 10 minutes, got my vaccines. It was extremely well organized but at the same time, the guys on TV saying the vaccine's not any good. And he hires this person, Joseph Ladapo, to be his Surgeon General, who I think we would both say is an anti-vaxxer. I mean he just recently said that you didn't need to get a measles vaccine and then in the last couple of days said, if you're unvaccinated and you have measles, you don't have to quarantine for 21 days. Now really would be disastrous if measles came back. You know a lot more about that than I do but I'm a generation that had a measles vaccine and never worried about measles.Holden Thorp (00:52:59):So the part of it that I worry about the most is that this person, the Surgeon General, also has a faculty appointment at the University of Florida. And you can see how he got it because his academic resume has been circulated as a result of all of Florida's public records laws and he has a very strong, credible resume that would probably cause him to get tenure at a lot of places. The medical faculty at Florida have tried to assert themselves and say, we really need to distance ourselves from him, but the administration at the University of Florida has not really engaged them. Now, I did ask them last week about the measles thing. I was going to write about it again, and I wrote to them and I said, if you guys aren't going to say anything about what he is saying about the measles, then I'm going to have another editorial.Holden Thorp (00:54:05):And they sent me a statement, which I posted that you probably saw that they still didn't condemn him personally, but they did say that measles vaccination was very important, and it was a fairly direct statement. I don't know if that will portend more stronger words from the University of Florida. Maybe now that their president is somebody who's close to the governor, they'll feel a little more comfortable saying things like that. But I think the bigger issue for all of us is when we have academic colleagues who say things that we know are scientifically invalid, and this always gets to the whole free speech thing, but in my opinion, free speech, it is within free speech to say, yes, all these things about vaccines are true, but I still don't think people should be compelled to get vaccinated. That's an opinion. That's fine. But what's not an opinion is to say that vaccines are unsafe if they've been tested over and over again and proven to be effective.Academic FreedomHolden Thorp (00:55:24):That's not an opinion. And I personally don't think that that deserves certainly to be weighted equally with the totality of medical evidence. I think that it's within bounds for academic colleagues and even institutions to call out their colleagues who are not expressing an opinion, but are challenging scientific facts without doing experiments and submitting papers and having lots of people look at it and doing all the stuff that we require in order to change scientific consensus. And this happens in climate change in a very parallel way. I mean, it's an opinion to say the climate is changing, humans are causing it, but I still don't think we should have government regulations about carbon. I think we should wait for the private sector to solve it, or I don't think it's going to have as bad of an effect as people say. Those are policy debates that you can have.Holden Thorp (00:56:28):But alleging that climate scientists are falsifying their projection somehow when they're not is in my opinion, not covered by free speech. And I think the best evidence we had of this is this recent verdict with Michael Mann, where it was the people who were criticizing him were found to be defamatory when they said that he committed research fraud. They could say he's exaggerating the threat. They could say they could dislike his style. He does have a very bombastic style. They can say all kinds of things about their opinions about him personally but if you accuse him of committing research fraud, and the paper that was in question was one of the most highly litigated papers of all time. It's been investigated more times than you can count. That's not something that's protected by free speech because it's defamatory to say that, and the jury found that. I think we have a lot of work to do to get within our own world, our colleagues, to get their arms around these two forms of debate.Eric Topol (00:57:51):Right. Well, I think this is, again, another really important point you're making during the pandemic parallel to the Michael Mann climate change case is that leading universities, as we recently reviewed in a podcast with Jonathan Howard, who wrote a book about this leading universities like Stanford, UCSF, Johns Hopkins and many others, didn't come out about the people that were doing things, saying things that were truly potential public harm. Not like you're saying, expressing an opinion with the truth, but rather negating evidence that was important to keep people protected from Covid. This is a problem which is thematic in our discussion I think Holden, is that universities have to get with it. They have to be able to help not put things on the credit card, be very transparent, direct quick respond, and not hide behind worried about social media or journalists or whatever else. This has been an incredible discussion, Holden, I got into even more than I thought we would.Eric Topol (00:59:15):You're a phenom to defend the whole science landscape that is challenging right now. I think you would agree for many reasons that we've discussed, and it affects education in a very dramatic, serious way. I want to thank you all that you're doing at Science with your team there to lead the charge and stand up for things and not being afraid to stimulate some controversies here and there. It's good for the field. And so, I hope I didn't miss anything and this exhaustive, this is the longest podcast I've done on Ground Truths, I want you to know that.Holden Thorp (00:59:59):Well, I'm flattered by that because you've had some great people on, that's for sure. And thank you for all you're doing, not just in science, but to spread the word about all these things and bring people together. It means a lot to all of us.Eric Topol (01:00:15):Oh, much appreciated. And we'll convene again soon to discuss so many dimensions of what we just have been reviewing and new ones to come. Thanks very much.Holden Thorp (01:00:25):Okay. Always good talking to you.*******************************************************Thanks for listening or reading this episode of GT.Please share if you found this podcast informative.Ground Truths is open-access. All content (newsletters and podcasts) is free.All proceeds from voluntary paid subscriptions support Scripps Research and have provided major funding for our summer internship program. Get full access to Ground Truths at erictopol.substack.com/subscribe
March 10, 2024 Speaker: Thomas Kuhn
Chapter 1 What's What Is This Thing Called Science Book by Alan F. Chalmers"What Is This Thing Called Science?" is a book by Alan F. Chalmers that explores the nature and methods of science. The book examines how scientific knowledge is constructed, how it differs from other forms of knowledge, and the role of theories, models, and experimentation in the scientific process. Chalmers also discusses various philosophical issues related to science, such as the nature of scientific progress, the problem of induction, and the relationship between science and society. Overall, the book provides a comprehensive introduction to the philosophy of science and is often used as a textbook in courses on the subject.Chapter 2 Is What Is This Thing Called Science Book A Good BookYes, "What Is This Thing Called Science?" by Alan F. Chalmers is considered a highly influential and informative book on the philosophy of science. It provides a clear and accessible introduction to the key concepts and debates within the field of philosophy of science. Many readers find it to be a valuable resource for understanding the nature of scientific knowledge and the methods used in scientific inquiry. Overall, it is widely regarded as a good book for those interested in the philosophy of science.Chapter 3 What Is This Thing Called Science Book by Alan F. Chalmers Summary"What Is This Thing Called Science?" is a book written by Alan F. Chalmers that explores the nature of scientific knowledge and the methods scientists use to acquire it. Chalmers examines the different approaches to defining and understanding science, including the positivist, realist, and instrumentalist perspectives.The book also delves into the history and philosophy of science, discussing the significance of key figures such as Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, and Imre Lakatos. Chalmers explains the concept of scientific revolutions and how they shape our understanding of the world.Throughout the book, Chalmers emphasizes the importance of critical thinking and skepticism in scientific inquiry. He encourages readers to question the assumptions and beliefs underlying scientific theories, while also acknowledging the role of creativity and intuition in the scientific process.Overall, "What Is This Thing Called Science?" provides a comprehensive and accessible overview of the philosophy of science, offering insights into the nature of scientific knowledge and the quest for truth in the natural world. Chapter 4 What Is This Thing Called Science Book AuthorAlan F. Chalmers is an Australian philosopher of science and author of the book "What Is This Thing Called Science?". The book was originally published in 1976 and has since been widely used in academic courses on philosophy of science.In addition to "What Is This Thing Called Science?", Chalmers has also written "The Scientist's Atom and the Philosopher's Stone: How Science Succeeded and Philosophy Failed to Gain Knowledge of Atoms" and "The Galileo Affair: A Documentary History". Among his works, "What Is This Thing Called Science?" is the most renowned and widely acclaimed. It has gone through multiple editions and revisions over the years to incorporate new developments in the field of philosophy of science.Chapter 5 What Is This Thing Called Science Book Meaning & ThemeWhat Is This Thing Called Science Book MeaningThe book "What is This Thing Called Science?" by Alan F. Chalmers is a classic text that explores the nature of science and how it differs from...
Rupert Sheldrake is a biologist and author of 9 books and over 100 scientific papers. A critic of what he sees as the scientific establishment's dogmatic dedication to materialism, he is perhaps best known for his theory of “morphic resonance,” via which information and activity can be transferred across space and time. Rupert joins the show to discuss being branded a heretic, how to test for telepathy, his advice for young scientists, and MUCH more! Important Links: Rupert's Website Rupert's Banned TED Talk The Science Delusion; by Rupert Sheldrake A New Science of Life; by Rupert Sheldrake Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home: And Other Unexplained Powers of Animals; by Rupert Sheldrake Is The Sun Conscious?; by Rupert Sheldrake (Journal of Consciousness Studies) Show Notes: The Apostate of Scientism The Origins of Scientism How to Achieve a Phase Change in the Sciences Testing for Telepathy & Incentivizing Intuition Structural Resistance to Panpsychism When Science Gets Personal Loosening the Grip of Determinism Advice for Young Scientists Rupert as Emperor of the World MORE! Books & Articles Mentioned: The Science Delusion; by Rupert Sheldrake New Science of Life; by Rupert Sheldrake Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home: And Other Unexplained Powers of Animals; by Rupert Sheldrake Is The Sun Conscious?; by Rupert Sheldrake The New Inquisition: Irrational Rationalism and the Citadel of Science; by Robert Anton Wilson Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters; by Steven Pinker The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature; by Steven Pinker Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures; by Merlin Sheldrake The End of Faith; by Sam Harris The Fifth Science; by Exurb1a What the Tortoise Said to Achilles; by Lewis Carroll Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance; by Robert M. Pirsig The (Mis)Behaviour of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin and Reward; by Benoit B. Mandelbrot & Richard L. Hudson The Structure of Scientific Revolutions; by Thomas Kuhn
In this episode, Dr. Nathaniel J. Wilson discusses group efforts and leadership, societal changes, declining religions, Thomas Kuhn, and paradigm shifts.
En el programa de esta semana hablamos de la vida y obra de Thomas Kuhn, uno de los más importantes e influyentes filósofos de la Ciencia de la Historia. Analizamos en profundidad sus principales ideas en las que partiendo de un profundo conocimiento de la Historia de la Ciencia, desafía la imagen tradicional de la Ciencia como un proceso acumulativo y lineal, introduciendo conceptos como paradigma, Ciencia normal, revoluciones, cambios de paradigma, inconmensurabilidad, etc. Todo ello y mucho más de la mano de José Blanca, Vicent Picó, Cristian Saborido y Valeriano Iranzo. Escucha el episodio completo en la app de iVoox, o descubre todo el catálogo de iVoox Originals
Please Rate and Review us on your podcast app of choice!Get involved with Data Mesh Understanding's free community roundtables and introductions: https://landing.datameshunderstanding.com/If you want to be a guest or give feedback (suggestions for topics, comments, etc.), please see hereEpisode list and links to all available episode transcripts here.Provided as a free resource by Data Mesh Understanding. Get in touch with Scott on LinkedIn.Transcript for this episode (link) provided by Starburst. You can download their Data Products for Dummies e-book (info-gated) here and their Data Mesh for Dummies e-book (info gated) here.Sean's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seangustafson/In this episode, Scott interviewed Sean Gustafson, Director of the Data Platform at Delivery Hero.Delivery Hero has been on the data mesh journey for longer than most organizations, at least over 3 years.Some key takeaways/thoughts from Sean's point of view:It's extremely hard but still important to try to impact your culture through things like your data platform. Who are you trying to make information available to? How do you make it accessible? How do you make data ownership easier?A key role of the data platform is that golden/easy path. Showing people easy ways to accomplish what they need with data products. Embed best practices into the platform when possible.You need a product manager in your data platform team. It's easy-ish to build cool things in data but understanding and building to user needs is harder and a must. Treat your data platform as a product!Relatedly, there isn't anything all that special about product management around the data platform. You can take what we've learned from other disciplines - especially software - and tweak it a bit for data. But it's not some arcane art.Focus on KPIs around what you are building and why, especially for your data platform. It's very hard to measure developer productivity but that doesn't mean you just don't measure it.?Controversial?: Be prepared to deal with a lot of qualitative data when measuring success around your data platform. Surveys work far better than most might think.Good product managers balance the short and long-term. You don't want to make drastic and breaking changes to your data platform often but that doesn't mean you can't take bigger bets and shake things up. Just balance iterative improvements and the bigger picture. Scott note: Zhamak talks about Thomas Kuhn and cumulative progress versus paradigm shiftsIn the same vein, make small bets where small bets will do but don't be afraid to make big bets when necessary.?Controversial?: It...
On this episode, we begin with a bullet-pointed takedown of Neil Degrasse Tyson. Then we talk scientism as an unstable foundation to build knowledge. Philosophy of science. All sciences are not created equal. The price tag of academic credentials. Bergson's Principle of Proving a Negative. Shutting down interesting ideas. Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The God of Evidence. A band made of biofeedback. Human beings as stewards of reality. The miniaturization of knowledge. Hologram vs. jpeg. The bombardment of facts from a complete idiot. Science that isn't about proving anything. Religion as the outsourcing of validation. Kris invents a completely knew paradigm of education. This might be one of his best ideas of all time. The education of the hands. Realistic responses to AI. South Korea, El Paso, and Taos. Borders always exist, a quantum state that wants the friction of two countries. Constructing sentences out of emojis. Our dependency on language. It's impossible to run over a pigeon. Becoming monster hunters of dream.
In a groundbreaking study poised to challenge the foundations of our understanding of the universe, Dr Eoin Ó Colgáin, a physicist and data scientist at Atlantic Technological University (ATU), has spearheaded an international collaboration that could usher in a paradigm shift in our comprehension of the cosmos by questioning its shape. For over a century, Einstein's general relativity has served as the cornerstone for explaining gravity across various scales, from our solar system to the vast expanse of the evolving universe. The assumption of an isotropic universe, where the underlying spacetime remains uniform in all directions, has been a fundamental aspect of this paradigm. The theory has often been likened to raisins in a loaf of bread, which spread evenly further out as the bread bakes in an oven. This 100-year-old assumption, supported by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) satellites, greatly simplifies mathematical modelling and astronomical observations. According to Dr Ó Colgáin, this new research suggests the expansion of the universe is not a perfect bubble-type shape but has a less uniform look, bulging in different directions. "The isotropic Universe assumption has noticeable benefits. On one hand, it makes gravity equations easier to solve. On the other hand, astronomers can point telescopes in a single direction on the sky and assume findings are representative." However, recent studies over the past decade, pioneered and pushed by members of the international collaboration, have uncovered a critical loophole in this long-standing assumption. While the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, relic radiation from the Big Bang, has been confirmed as isotropic to good approximation, matter distributions - comprising atoms, electrons, and other building blocks of the universe - display unexpected anisotropic patterns. Dr Eoin Ó Colgáin and his international colleagues have meticulously documented these surprising findings in a peer-reviewed publication in the esteemed journal Classical and Quantum Gravity. The paper builds the emerging science case supporting an anisotropic Universe. The findings have garnered significant attention, prompting the Royal Society London to schedule a debate on the topic in 2024. Dr Ó Colgáin remarked, "The philosopher of science, Thomas Kuhn, separates science into normal science, marked by incremental advancements within a paradigm and breakthroughs or paradigm shifts. Our emerging results raise the exciting prospect that a paradigm shift is on the horizon." These findings challenge established norms and invite the scientific community and the public to question the assumptions that have underpinned our understanding of the Universe for approximately 100 years.
The philosophy behind HR and our way of working predates most of the tools we use. While companies focus on sales and productivity, most neglect to measure one of the largest sources of value within the organization – the employee experience. Jessica Zwaan has made it her mission to teach executives and their companies how to transform the employee experience using product management principles, maximizing value for all stakeholders involved.Jessica Zwaan is the author of Built for People, the current Chief Operating Officer of Whereby, and a former COO advisor for clients like Soundcloud, Talentful, and Bolt, among others. In this episode, Dart and Jessica discuss:- The 3 things every company sells- Distinctions between people operations and human operations- Viewing work as a product and determining its value- Tracking the cost versus value of employees- The 3 aspects employees want out of their work- Value vs. volume when it comes to employees- 2 maxims of product management applicable to HR- And other topics…Jessica Zwaan is an author, speaker, and early-stage start-up executive. She is the current Chief Operating Officer of Whereby and a former COO advisor for clients like Soundcloud, Talentful, and Bolt, among others. Her latest book, Built for People, helps teach organizations and leadership how to transform the employee experience using product management principles.With a background in operations, people, and talent, Jessica's work has spanned across three continents. Jessica holds a First-Class Honours law degree from the University of Law in London. She is an international panelist and speaker and also hosts the podcast “There's This Thing at Work.”Resources mentioned:Built for People, by Jessica Zwaan: https://www.amazon.com/Built-People-Experience-Management-Principles/dp/1398608025The Book of the Courtier, by Baldesar Castiglione: https://www.amazon.com/Book-Courtier-Baldesar-Castiglione/dp/1519086954The Experience Economy, by Joseph Pine: https://www.amazon.com/Experience-Economy-New-Preface-Authors/dp/1633697975 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by Thomas Kuhn: https://www.amazon.com/Structure-Scientific-Revolutions-50th-Anniversary/dp/0226458121 The Good Enough Job, by Simone Stolzoff: https://www.amazon.com/Good-Enough-Job-Reclaiming-Life/dp/059353896X Connect with Jessica:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicamayzwaan/ www.jessicamayzwaan.com
Trong tác phẩm “structure of scientific revolutions” - [cấu trúc các cuộc cách mạng khoa học], Thomas Kuhn đã được ra thuật ngữ có sức ảnh hưởng lớn đến giới nghiên cứu thời điểm đó và còn vang vọng đến tận hôm nay: paradigm [hệ hình]. “Kinh tế Phanxicô” cũng cần được tiếp cận trong một “hệ hình” mới như thế. Trong đó, con người, môi sinh và tình huynh đệ không tách rời nhưng hiện hữu trong một mối liên hệ hữu cơ. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/vaticannews-vi/support
In this podcast interview with my friend and colleague Enrique Rubio, founder of Hacking HR, we speak about the renaissance and rebirth of HR. I am renaming the time we are in as the Human Renaissance. In this interview we speak about how to build a people first culture where people and business are intertwined and how to optimize for both by investing in self care and well being. We talk about the important role of conscious leadership skills and which ones are needed to build the foundation of the awakened company and world. Lastly, we speak to the role of HR in addressing burnout and some possible solutions to implement for a thriving organizational culture. Episode Links: Hacking HR October Summit Registration Link Enrique Rubio LinkedIn Shine Podcast Interview- "What are the most needed leadership skills to create a healthy organizational culture in 2024?" SHINE Links: Thank you for listening. Want to build a high trust, innovative, and inclusive culture at work? Sign up for our newsletter and get the free handout and be alerted to more inspiring Shine episodes Building Trust Free Gift Carley Links: LinkedIn Consultation Call with Carley Book Carley for Speaking Leading from Wholeness Learning & Development Carley's Book Executive Coaching with Carley Well Being Resources: Inner Game Meditations Inner Game Leadership Assessment Social: LinkedIn IG Website — https://www.carleyhauck.com Shine Podcast Page IMPERFECT SHOW NOTES Carley Hauck 0:10 Hi, my name is Carley Hauck and I am host of the shine podcast. This podcast has been flickering strong since May 2019. I began the podcast due to all the research I was conducting. In interviews with organizational leaders, lead scientists, academic researchers and spiritual teachers for my new book shine, ignite your inner game to lead consciously at work in the world. I wrote my book to inspire a new paradigm of conscious leadership and business that was in service of a higher purpose to help humans flourish, and regenerate our planet. The podcast focuses on the science and application of conscious inclusive leadership, the recipe for high performing teams and awareness practices that you can cultivate to be the kind of leader our world needs now. I will be facilitating two to three episodes a month. And before I tell you about the theme of our season, please go over to Apple podcasts, hit the subscribe button on shine or go to your favorite podcast platform carrier. That way you don't miss one episode. Thank you. This season is going to be focused on what leadership skills are most needed to create a healthy organizational culture. Leadership and manager effectiveness has been deemed the number one priority for HR and 23. And every person listening whether you have a formal leadership title or not, you are a leader. We all have the responsibility to lead around something that we care about whether it's at home with our family, and our communities, and or in the workplace. I believe in you. And I am so delighted to share with you such an incredible group of people and interviews that I have gathered for this season. I handpick every single guest based on their embodiment of conscious, inclusive leadership and the positive impact they're making. I am delighted you're here. And onto the podcast. Hello, Shine listeners. I am so excited to introduce the first interview of season six. And are you gay Rubio? Enrique, thank you so much for being here. Enrique Rubio 2:57 Carley, thank you so much for inviting me and being your first guest on your new system. I am super excited about the conversation we are about to have Carley Hauck 3:09 need here. And I'm gonna give a little light to our friend Sue Olson, who likely will listen to this Sue, thank you so much for encouraging this connection. It has already been meaningful and fruitful. And I'm sure it will continue to bear gifts. Unknown Speaker 3:28 I agree with you. Hello, so. Carley Hauck 3:33 So Enrique, please tell me and our listeners, why you love HR. What is it about HR? And for folks that may not know what HR stands for? It means human resources, which is like, why did we give it that name? Humans are not resources? No, I'll let you go forward with that. Enrique Rubio 3:56 Yeah, well, it's a story of to me of believing that as a function as a business function. We have impact both on business people and society in general. And this is the way I think about it. Right. And I thought about this question when you sent it to me before in preparation for the conversation today. And think about it in these terms. For most organizations, for every HR person there is there are about 250 to maybe 500 or six 600 employees. So that means that if the relation was direct, every person who works in HR is impacting the lives of anywhere between 250 and 600. People imagine the kind of power that you hold to both either or to either positively or negatively impact the lives of these folks, right. So if you do great work in HR, and I am hoping that you do it will be the right conditions for people to feel that they can find an outlet for their talents, their creativity, their passion, their voice, their purpose at work, where they find joy and happiness, where they come to work excited about the change they are making in the world and not just making some stakeholders or shareholders richer than they were before. But if you are building that kind of organization, as an HR person, then you are making anywhere between 250 and 600 people happier than they would be otherwise. So the reason why I love HR is sort of twofold, right? One one current state and one future state current status. I think we care a lot about the work that we do. We care a lot about the people that we're working with our organizations, our leaders, and we're not perfect. So there may be listeners saying yes, but my experience with HR was not positive. And that's true. And that may be true. My experience with some salespeople wasn't positive, my experience with some customer, people were mostly positive, my experience with some, I don't know, residential management people wasn't positive, right. But that doesn't mean that the function as a whole and that everybody in that function, wouldn't want to create a positive kind of environment for you. So reason number one is that we do care. And we have such a powerful opportunity to create good impact and change the world from HR today. And the second reason is more aspirational, right? We are the only function that sits at the intersection of People Operations and Business Operations. When you look at all the other functions, most of them are purely business, even when they work it out from like marketing or sales or it or legal, whatever it is. They are mostly business operations, we are at the intersection of business and people operations. And I fully believe that the magic of building great workplaces making people's lives better of creating better societies, and a better world accordingly, as happens at that intersection. That's what that magic happens. And we are the only ones from a from a business standpoint, sitting in that intersection of business and people. So aspirationally I love HR, because we can make such a such an incredible impact and leave such an incredible legacy by working it out very well, while we sort of deliver what we need to deliver at this intersection of people and business operations. So I love HR because we we care for all people and organizations and business matter, and aspirationally because we can truly make an impact and change the world from our small area of influence and impact in the organizations where we work. So that's that's the way I see it. Carley Hauck 7:44 I love that. Thank you so much for your passion. Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree, the microcosm of work is where you have such an interesting mix of people that come together, work together, collaborate, that might never ever meet otherwise, from all over the world, especially in this remote, cross functional, hybrid kind of way that we're working and sometimes completely remote. And I believe that if we can use business as the lever to create healing, and this is the microcosm, we get to kind of really create, you know, different conditions that can translate to the greater world. And so you you said impact, but what you need is a positive impact, how can business really be best for the world, that's what I heard in your tone and in your voice. And I think it is the responsibility and the opportunity of business. And you're right, HR is kind of the belly, the heart that allows business to move in that direction. So we spent, Enrique Rubio 8:52 we spent we spend anywhere between a third and 40% of our lifetimes at work doing something that has to do with work, whether it is for ourselves or in a company with other people or alone, that's a significant amount of time considering that probably the one of the other thirds is sleeping, right. So so when you think about spending a third of your life at work, the impact that whatever happens at work has on you is extraordinary, is exceptional. So when you know you can you can go into directions, work can break you, or what work can lift you up, but we should understand that that 30% of our lifetimes is spent at work will definitely and does make a difference on people whether whether on the positive or on the negative side. So we have to choose from not only from an HR standpoint, but as a US business. We have to choose to one these folks that we are employing right now to have a better life not just with what we're paying them, but in general beyond just the financial transaction of us. paying them for the work that they're given give back, Carley Hauck 10:02 because it impacts how they're showing up at home is what you're saying society and society for sure. And, you know, I know you're familiar with this research, but the two people that have the biggest influence on your mental and emotional well being is your boss at work, and your partner at home. Yeah, those are the two that you have the most interaction with throughout the day. And so I know that we're gonna get into leadership and manager effectiveness, because it is the number one priority for HR and 23. But I see it being the number one priority for many years to come, because we haven't cracked that code. But before we go into that, tell me about hacking HR, this incredible community that you have developed. Tell me how that got started? And what's the current phase of it? And where do you Where are you holding the vision for it? Enrique Rubio 11:00 Yeah, well, thank you for that question. And yes, I am the founder of a global learning community for HR people called Hacking HR. And what we do is we bring together 1000s of people around the world to be part of our learning programs to build community to connect with each other. And we do it the two pillars, the two foundations of what we do, our number one community, bringing people together and helping them make connections with each other, building meaningful relationships. And you can tell, you know, the person who connected us is somebody that he connected with from somebody else. So now we are for, you know, in this, in this world connected and enjoying are enjoying each other. And this wouldn't have been possible without hacking autonomy, maybe it could have been possible, but maybe it would have been more difficult. So it's community and it's learning and the learning, the way we do learning is by bringing practitioners of the business and the people of space to come together and share their insights, their ideas, their experiences, their whatever their stories, with all of us in the community, we are, we're very heavy on bringing practitioners to the to our learning events or learning experiences. Because well, you know, there's a lot of writing material about everything. But then you go on write and read something. And you always are left with a question. Yes, but how? Right? Well, you know, how do I do this, and we bring practitioners to share more of the how maybe their own how, but a how that can resonate with an extended community. So we've done hundreds of events for 1000s of people on LinkedIn, which is our main, sort of like social media outlet, we are one of the largest HR communities in the world. And the number one in engagement rates, that of all the HR communities that exist, we are the number one engagement rates, not by good luck, because we've been so for the past couple of years. So I think we're doing something right. And that is the way to listen, thank you, we share good content. And also, we have we have our voice, you know, we, you know, we're very respectful, and we're very kind, but we have our voice. You know, we you know, one example of this, right? I mean, I am I am I an absolute advocate of autonomy and flexibility at work, that doesn't mean that I believe that everybody should be working from home or everybody should be working from an office, I do believe that if we, if you are employing adults, we'll treat them like adults. And we share this voice unapologetically. Meaning, you know, some people don't like that we are promoting this idea of a, you know, I mean, if you don't like it, there are other communities that will probably say what you want to hear. We are more on the side of like, you know, let's expand possibilities. You know, let's think outside of the box, right, let's, let's think beyond evidence right in front of us. So that's what we're doing. Yeah, Carley Hauck 13:54 I was also gonna say it's also a very diverse community. I mean, I heard you say, there are people all over the world, but even just the panels that you have, I know you have an upcoming summit in October that we're going to talk about. The panels are very diverse, the people that are showing up and I also really love that part about the community too. Enrique Rubio 14:14 Yeah. Well, thank you. Yeah, we I have made a point of honor of our work to make sure that we're building that we're bringing diverse voices to to our conversations. And diversity looks in many different ways. By the way, not only it's not only gender sexual identity is not only skin color, your credo if you believe in anything is your nationality is your background is I mean, there are people who have participated in our events, that they have a very controversial point of view about say, you know, remote work, for example, they're like, No, I think everybody has to come to the office, and they express with respect and everybody else respects them. They spread as expressed their their points of view, and we all end up either agreeing or disagreeing. In by understanding something that we may not have known be known before. So the diversity, the way we embrace inclusivity and diversity as, let's make sure that we bring as many diverse voices to the table that they are heard with respect and kindness. And that simultaneously, they hear us and see and respect other voices as well. And I care less about us agreeing on what we're talking about, than about respect, and kindness and compassion toward each other. Unfortunately, there has never been an instance in our community, Never, not even once, in the six years that I've been doing this, that anybody has said, um, you know, jumping out of this, you know, some whatever, because I don't feel respected. You know, it'd be more along the lines of like, a, you know, I don't agree with you for this. And, and I promote that, you know, I promote that safe space for people to say, I don't agree with that, for this, and this and that, and that's totally fine. So yeah, we have Carley Hauck 15:59 to disagree, right, you need to be respecting Enrique Rubio 16:01 each other unkind. I mean, talk about the state of our world. I mean, it's so messed up. I mean, it's so messed up. Because weak is like, we can hear any, anything that we're saying, if we, the moment you say something that I don't agree with, immediately, I am blocked, I am there with you, I'm looking at you, you're saying I see your mouth moving, but I am not listening anymore. Because you said something that I disagree with. And I wonder why, you know, I mean, we're never going to solve problems that way, let alone get together to, you know, have a positive impact on each other. So anyway, diversity for all as, you know, in every sense of the word beyond, you know, what can be considered traditionally, diversity, like, you know, the, the color of your skin, where you come from, and, you know, your gender and whatnot, it is also, you know, the kinds of things that you are sharing with us in the community. Carley Hauck 16:52 So I'm, I mean, I know, we have a bunch of questions, and I'm gonna keep us on time. But I have to pivot here, because I feel I feel really intrigued about how you've created this. So psychological safety is something that I've been studying and I is one of the very first things that I do when I am assessing a team or a company. And I believe that it is the foundation that really needs to be prioritized first, but it's not easy to do. So I feel curious, how have you been able to cultivate this and have six years of this safe space? Because that's, that's pretty magical. We can say that that's happening on Twitter or Facebook. So yeah, tell me more. Enrique Rubio 17:40 I think it was like about three years ago, we set something on LinkedIn. And some people said, This is no right for you to say, and I can remember what it was. I don't even think it was something that we said, I think we shared something by a person that we didn't know that well, as somebody was like that person. You know, it's not talking, you know, really well about women in the workplace, you know, sounds a little bit misogynistic. And this is what I did, I left the thing posted. And I said, we disagree with this. And I'm gonna leave it posted, because I want everybody to get their own impression, but I don't agree with this. And I apologize, because we made a mistake, by giving this person a voice. I'm not going to take it down right now. Because there's already a conversation going on about this, which is, which is that healthy conversation to have, by the way, when you when you miss, will you mess up? But to me, the point is that it's happened to us in six years, it's only happened to us maybe like two or three times that I've made a mistake like that. And what I do say on it, you know, I just say I'm sorry, you know, I messed up. And, and I am sorry, I'm learning. You know, there was something like like, let me give you another example, right? You talked about diversity in our panels. It was it was not always that way, about four years ago, the only kind of diversity that I was very cared about. And it's not that I just care about that. But the only the only kind of diversity that I care about when it came to the panels that I was putting together was gender diversity. So I always wanted to make sure that there were at least an equal number of female speakers than male speakers. But then everything looked white, everything looked the same. And people were like, there's nobody, you know, with a different skin color in there. And Rick, you are a Latino man. And there are no Latino, Latin X people in those panels that are no women of color. There are no people with at least a disability that they can publicly say that they have the disability. And I will say dang it. I never thought about that. And you what he said was, you are totally right about this. I thought I was doing the right thing. But obviously I'm falling short of the very things that I'm talking about. I am sorry, I messed up once again, let's move on and this will learn and now we're moving on. So I'm gonna you know is this happened like two or three times in our in our Carley Hauck 19:58 terminal past Just for a moment, because I just want to acknowledge your humility. And we're going to organize, you know, go into the recipe for what a conscious inclusive leader looks like. But one of the things that, you know, conscious leaders do is is they, they have the awareness to take responsibility for what's mine, for where I made a mistake, apologizing is fabulous. And then of course, correcting learning and growing. So bravo and reggae. Well, Enrique Rubio 20:28 you know, one thing that I gotta say, is this, right? being self aware, which is a couple of things, it is recognizing, when you've fallen short of your own promises, and the premises that you believe in, when you blatantly, you know, unintentionally make a mistake, or inadvertently make a mistake that hurts people, and then apologizing for that, that, to me is all part of this concept of self awareness. That doesn't mean that inside you, you have a little bit of pride, saying, I still have, you know, like, I still think that this was the right thing to do. But okay, I get it, right. And the way I have tried to operate in this community is just by acknowledging when I make a mistake, when we do something wrong, acknowledge that acknowledge that I may have caused pain in somebody for doing something in the wrong way. And moving on by having learned, you know, not to do the same thing again, but do it better. But, you know, I have to also acknowledge my own my own inner self, right, that that I sometimes I want to be right. And, and I recognize that I am wrong, but I still want to be right. So it's walls that you have inside yourself, right? It's, you know, which one are you feeding, but the reality is that even if you're feeding this kind war, that is that is the wolf that is telling you, you made a mistake, just apologize and move on. crumbles are falling out to the other wall saying, Yeah, but I still want to be right about this, even if I am not. So this, this matters, because sometimes we try so many leaders, and we're gonna talk about conscious leadership, right? But so many leaders try to project an image of something they are not, they try to sweep their mistakes under the short comments under the rug, instead of just saying, I messed up, I am sorry, you know, I made I made a mistake, I did something wrong, I hurt people. And this is how I am planning to move on to never let this thing happen again, and to make sure that we course correct in a different direction. But nothing, we nothing that we do. Nothing ever will take us back to the way things were before. I cannot you know, I'm not like Superman flying in the opposite direction of the rotation of the Earth, trying to, you know, go back in time, right. And I'm saying this because they watched I rewatched the movie recently. You know, like, superhero, Superman, number one, you know, with Christopher Reeve, you know, I love I love him back. But yeah, you can go back in time, all you got to do is be Yeah, show up. Yeah, recognize and own your stuff on your mistakes, say, apologize and say how you're going to be moving on from that. I love that. That's part of how we build safety in hacking HR. Carley Hauck 23:12 I was going to come back to that, but you just summarized it. Yes, that's how you created safety is that you have strong leadership, that is modeling what you want the rest of the community to showcase. And I some other piece that I wanted to bring up. And then I'd love to move into conscious leadership a little more deeply. But I know you and I are going to be speaking to the idea of this collective intelligence, and how leaders are really about leading together, you know, you're a founder, I'm a founder. But ultimately, that's a lot of responsibility. Right? And you couldn't have this community without other leaders without other people, you know, showing up in supporting you to maybe see your blind spots to help make decisions. And I really think it's again, about acknowledging I don't have all the answers. Here I am, I am human, which means I'm messy, and I'm gonna make mistakes. And I need support, you know, otherwise, I will burn out because even though you're part Superman, with all your ultra marathon running, you're not fully Superman, and I'm not Superwoman. So on that, on that thread, I open it up to any reactions, but then I'd love to move us into some conscious leadership. Enrique Rubio 24:33 Yeah, well, you know, actually, my only reaction is this. If you if you or any of your listeners go now to any of the things that we're doing hacking HR, if you didn't know that I was the founder. You wouldn't know that I was involved in this thing at all, because what I built was a platform to give other people a voice in front of our community. Yes, I put I've put a lot of energy time, effort money into building this, but we're rarely do you see me speaking in any of our own events moderating any of our events? Rarely do you see my name in anything that we do? It is it is the community, you know, even when I post something that I create myself, and and I post it on on our LinkedIn channel, I use, you know, how can HR because I want to make sure that is the brand, that is the community that is engaging in these kinds of conversations and interactions are not necessarily with me. And I love that, you know, because I think I build something that gives people the opportunity to connect with each other and expand and share and amplify their voice. And to me, that's, that's, that's, you know, ultimately, you know, part of what, what I what I wanted to do by design, you know, give other people the voice because I don't have not only do I, I don't have all the answers, I have more questions than I have answers about anything. So, so yeah, you know, that I just wanted to say that because, you know, it, I see other groups, especially in the space of HR, where it's, it feels like a cold, you know, to personality, you know, like a goal to their founder or their leader. And they gotta, you know, like, no, that's not what I want to do, you know, I mean, a different game, you know, here, I mean, a different kind of thing here. Carley Hauck 26:16 Well, then that gives it more life, because then you don't have to hold it. All right, yeah, you can, it can continue to create this, you know, this life of its own. So lovely. Well, I'd love to talk a little bit about leadership and conscious leadership, because that's what I have studied a lot in the last 10 years. It's what I wrote my book on. And I wanted to bring into this this framework that I have studied and validated. Because this framework is something that you write a lot about, ironically, before we met, I was reading, you know, hacking, HR, and just so many of the things that you speak about compassion and self awareness, and resilience and well being, I thought, I think Enrique is my brother from another mother hair. So let's, let's talk about that a little more openly. So I've distilled nine different leadership traits, that when people are cultivating these on a continuum, it actually showcases in how will they show up as a leader, how they are able to lead the business lead teams, and it actually creates more psychological safety, more trust, more empathy, more teamwork. I've, you know, really dialed in these assessments. So I know that this framework works, but I'll just read through them briefly. And then I'd love to hear which one or two do you feel like you've really honed and which ones are areas for growth for you right now. And, you know, I imagine it's, it's kind of had ranges, and you might be stronger in these right now. But maybe we're stronger in them for today, for example. So self awareness, self management, empathy, resilience, humility, we already know you've got a lot of humility, self belonging, which is including the dimensions of self love, self compassion, self forgiveness, self acceptance, physical well being and psychological well being, I really see them as being distinct, but they're interconnected. What do you think, Enrique, where are you strongest? And where do you have places for growth? And those nine, Enrique Rubio 28:40 I think, my, I think I am, you know, in a very good place, when it comes to physical Well, being a psychological well being, I think I take very good care of my body, I am a, I am a competitive runner. And I do invest a lot in in the steam feed, and I'm strong and healthy. So I try to make sure that my mind is fed with good stuff, you know, and, yeah, you know, I read the news, and I, you know, I get upset and take attendance. And I, you know, I get upset on my partner and, you know, we fight and you know, we do and my cats and we get upset at each other, but I try to, you know, make sure that I keep, you know, a good level of, of psychological well being and physical well being of course, so that's one. Resilience, I think would be probably the other one. Carley Hauck 29:39 Can I go into that a little deeper because I love to infuse this podcast with tips. We all learn from one another. So I hear you're a competitive runner. So that's one way you're really nourishing your physical body and you run in the hills in Flagstaff, which is where I went to grad school. So I think we would have met At some point, because I would have gone back there. But how else are you taking care of this of this temple? And then I'd love to hear more about how you're nurturing the mind. You're I hear you're feeding the Good Wolf. Not the bad wolf. But But how else? Enrique Rubio 30:18 Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, on the physical side is both nutrition and fitness. So I am actually a vegan. So I'm a plant based. Oh, nice. Yeah, well, I've been I've been a vegan for 15 years. And, you know, I respect what people end up eating and what they do. But I think that we need to take a very hard look at what we are putting into our bodies, right? I mean, you will not if you need an oil change for your car, you are not going to donate, you know, crap, right, you want to make sure there is good oil that gets your car, going for the long run. And we're putting crap in our bodies. So you know, sugar, alcohol, smoke, tobacco, you know, things of the kind that we know, destroy our temple, like you said before, so it is, to me it is fitness and nutrition, for the physical side of things and psychological well being, you know, it's just being aware, you know, I'm being being aware of, of the kind of things that I'm thinking about. I do have negative thoughts, I think like everybody else, and I try to remove them as soon as possible from my mind, so that they don't, you know, either way, you know, the good stuff that I think I, I have to give. So that's, that's, that's one that and I think it's more, you know, it's for people, it's an exercise of looking inward and saying, you know, am I, you know, how am I taking care of my body and my mind, right, it's this, this ultimately, the question you should be asking yourself. And then the second, the second, sort of, kind of, like quality, that I think I have, you know, perhaps hone down as best as I can is resilience, you know, it is being a founder, like you said before, and, you know, being in this work, you know, it doesn't come it's not easy, you know, and I chose a space, by the way that is very hard, you know, as HR is not easy. HR is, is tough, because we've done things in the same way for a very long time. People don't believe in HR. And, you know, there's a lot of work to do. And sometimes, you know, even though I've been doing hacking HR for six years, it's not that every that all the time I'm, I'm on a, you know, like, like an all time high inspiration, energy level, right? Sometimes I'm like, to hell with this man. I'm just, I'm just quitting this and then doing something else. And then the next day is like, calm down. Yeah, you know, yesterday wasn't a good day. But today, it's gonna be a good day, you know, I'm always, you know, like, something happens that I'm like, alright, you know, I mean, this, this came up out of the blue, and it made my day, right, like, you know, sometimes I'm upset about something. And I don't know why the universe, you know, has a person sending me an email saying, like, and Rica, thank you so much, because this event was the best event that I've ever done in my life, but whatever. And I'm like, alright, well, maybe I'm upset about yesterday, whatever it was, but this person made up made my day today with this one common, right. And I think that's how I've built resilience, right? It's knowing that not every day will look the same, some days will be great, some other days will be really bad. And for the most part, you're going to be moving up and down. And as long as you believe in your long term vision about in my case, building up large community and bringing people together, as long as you believe in that, you know, that the doubt of today, you know, will turn into an app tomorrow. And that's the way it's gonna go. Carley Hauck 33:48 Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing that. So physical Well, being psychological well, being, resilience, having that growth mindset, and one of the questions that I like to ask for myself when things you know, don't go in the way that I would like, I always say, Well, how is this for me? How is this for me right now? Which in another way is how do I learn from this? Yeah, I see this expression on your face. What does that mean? Enrique Rubio 34:18 You know, I think all of us, you know, have gone through through some stuff in life. And, you know, let me give you one example of this. Right. I, in one of my last corporate jobs, I had a boss who was you know, there are bosses that are bad, but they are not evil. They are just bad bosses. Right? I mean, they are they don't know, Carley Hauck 34:40 they're messy people leading this horrible leading from their own hurt. Yeah, but Enrique Rubio 34:45 but there are there are people that truly go out of their way to harm all their evil, and we can deny that there are evil people in the world, even when you see things, you know, with a more kind of like positive, you know, standpoint. plans and I had a Yeah. And I had a boss that was evil, you know, he, you know, he would go out of his way to harm people around him. And when he quit that job, took me some time to detox from from that environment, because it was a very toxic environment, but it took me some time. But then he left. And I am left with this right now, I know that I know some of the qualities that I would love to see in great leaders. And it's like, it's like, you know, it's like a blank canvas that you're painting. And for now, all I have painted is like, maybe one tree over here, the sun over there, you know, maybe a couple of people over here. So it's, there's a lot of things that have to paint on the what great leadership looks like, right, I have, I still have to add a lot of touches to it. But I already completed the paint of what I think of leadership looks like. And I completed the paint, because I went through that. And whenever I think of him, I think of that very dark Canvas, you know, with with a lot of, you know, negativity going in there. And what I tell people is like, you can have all these qualities to be a great leader. But these are the ones that I know for sure would make you a crappy leader. And that's what he learned from that experience. So the way you know, I just tried as much as they can to make sure that every experience for me turns even even if not at the moment, whenever it happens, that it turns into something where that that can help me grow, you know, that can, even if it doesn't help me grow, that becomes a story. You know, that becomes an experience that I can share with others going forward. So no, this is not always possible. And especially it's almost impossible in the moment in the heat of the moment. But you get there talking about my cats, by the way that I talked about before. You don't know about this, but I rest I think I mentioned to you in our preparation call, I rescued four kittens that were left behind my house by their mom, I don't know what happened. I've never been a pet person. I've never been a cat person. And these four kittens stole my heart. I don't know how I'm gonna do when they grow. But I'm not here. For anybody listening. I'm just showing two Akerley, one of them on the screen. One is Laurie. And they are about six weeks old and they are the most loving beings ever. So I just showed him on the screen because all of them can now climb up on my chair when I'm working and they just lay down on my lap. So anyway, just wanted to show Laurie Do you share Laurie Look at her. She's incredibly beautiful. She looks like like a tiger with blue eyes. So stop. What are you sure on the on the promo for this podcast? Carley Hauck 37:44 Have a picture of Enrique and Lori. Did I say her name? Right. Enrique Rubio 37:48 Laurie? Yeah. Laurie as my girlfriend's name. Yeah. So okay, I named her after Laurie. Carley Hauck 37:54 Cute, cute. Well, thank you, I can completely relate to your story around, you know, having this I like to call them unconscious, right, because we have parts of ourselves that are conscious in their unconscious. But if we're leading from the unconscious parts that are hurting, and it sounds like in this particular case, this person was probably conscious of some of the ways that they were going out of their way to hurt. But there's always ways that were being interpreted, that we don't realize and I studied a lot of unconscious leaders to be able to distill what is a conscious leader personally and professionally. And that could be a whole, a whole other conversation. But I really appreciated what you were sharing and just to kind of jump in with you. I also really focus on my psychological and physical well being and without it. I just see well being as the foundation I'm also a vegan. I've not been a vegan as long as you have but in my book, because I'm so passionate about this being something that we all need to be really practicing eating less meat or being completely vegan. I amplify three different leaders and companies that are vegan based companies. Just ag Josh Tetrick is is one of the leaders I highlight in my book shine and then rebel. When Cheryl Laughlin was the CEO and rebel is a complete pally plant based superfood. I think they're using almost all recyclable plastic bottles now as well. They were definitely on that on that pivot when I interviewed her like five years ago for the book. And then the other one is, is David Young, who has Omni foods, which is actually based out of Hong Kong. So wanted to get a diverse landscape but all of those companies have gone like rocket, the style, startup pace and it's just really incredible to see The impact that they're making in the world because they were they were very small when I chose them to be leaders in the book. And also, just to give a little sneak peek, Dan Buettner, who was a friend and colleague who came out recently with a Netflix series on Blu. So he's actually going to be on the podcast, and he's fantastic. So Dan, Dan is going to be sharing more about the research and I love this research. And it's just, I hope it really ignites and amplifies people to, to take care of their health, because if we're eating more in attunement with nature, and what's gonna support all beings to thrive, then the planet's gonna get healthier. And for that we get to steward her better. Enrique Rubio 40:49 Yeah, it's interesting that we're going back to the basics in so many different ways. Right, the, you know, the basics of leadership, the basics of being a good human being the basics of, you know, how we eat, and our relationship to the, to the planet is, which is funny, because sometimes are not enough for me actually, it's ironic, that sometimes I see some people coming up with like, you know, we got to do things in this way. And I'm like, Yeah, you know, like Native Americans, for example, have known that for 10,000 years, you know, ancient civilizations of, you know, the, you know, this Saharan, northern part, or the, or the Asian continent have known this for 1000s of years, right. So we're not, we're just like rebranding things that we've known for a long time. And, you know, I mean, hopefully, that works. But we just have to acknowledge that some of these ideas of reconnecting to nature to food, even the blue zones that Dan talks about, you know, this is ancient knowledge, you know, I mean, it's been live for so long, not because they read, you know, you know, health magazine, you know, printed in New York, is because they've done this for a long time, and they know how it works. Carley Hauck 42:04 It's like we fell asleep, right? We were we were feeding the bad wolf. We were well, we weren't listening to our wisdom we were, we were getting focused on all the marketing, all the advertising that's telling us to go outside of ourselves to find happiness by buying this by buying that, which is, which is not true. So, gosh, we could we could talk about lots of things. But let me let me move us back to I would really love to talk more about the expectations for leadership. Because as we're hacking HR, and as we as a function, human resources, how do we change that word, but we'll get into that later. Human Renaissance? Let's do that. So when we think about are we setting leaders up? I think about this a lot, because I really want to solve for the leadership gap. And are we actually setting leaders up to succeed? Are expectations too high of them? And do they actually have the skill sets to be conscious? Because, you know, if, if we're stressed, we all are stressed? We all sometimes feel overextended, overwhelmed, it's really hard to lead from that wise place, conscious place. If we don't actually have time to rest and recover if if we don't have these compassionate, safe spaces, to be vulnerable to say, oops, made a mistake here. What do you think about that? Enrique Rubio 43:45 We have built a self reinforcing cycle of bullshit. And I'm sorry for using that word. Carley Hauck 43:54 By the way, tend to post you can even use the F word here. It's all good. Enrique Rubio 43:58 Really. All right. Well, thank you. Because I use a lot of words like that. I like it. You know, I don't know why I feel like you know, they give you give it a little bit of a flavor to the conversation. But I think we've we've created a cycle, a self reinforcing cycle of bullshit, where leaders demand more from people that is unsustainable and unhealthy. People demand more from leaders, which is unsustainable and unhealthy. The shareholders do the same thing. Wall Street is doing the same thing. And and then nobody or just a handful of people not but mostly nobody, at least at a high high level, is saying, Stop a stop for one day. Stop this madness. And let's find out where the cycle is reinforcing itself with with all this bullshit. This happened during the pandemic, the pandemic was an opportunity for us to reset. The pandemic basically told us that we are not in control of most things that we thought we were in control off And it pretty much said to us, you have to stop, stop the cycle. And yes, it didn't have anything to do with, you know, also stopping the cycle at all, it was something completely different. But it gave us an opportunity to reset. What did we do with that awful opportunity, but ended up being an opportunity, what do we do with it? We operate it in a very different way from 2020 to 2020, like the end of 2021, couple of years being more human, more kinder, more compassionate, more understanding, more loving, towards each other Carley Hauck 45:31 planes as much as much writing Yeah, what Enrique Rubio 45:35 happening, what happened in 2022, we went back to normal, we are supposed to enter into a recession, let's lay off all these people, let's force them back into the office, they are not beat. So it's all the same jargon, the same self reinforcing cycle that we had, before the pandemic, that the pandemic gave us an opportunity to reset. So the truth is, I don't even know what the take for us to say, we have to stop this madness, the exploit exploitation of people, the exploitation of the planet, the exploitation of animals, we have to stop this madness is just that is so hard, you know, like you don't know where to begin this. I see the newer generations, the younger generations been way more socially engaged, and more socially conscious about what they do to their own bodies, what they do to the planet, and what they do to each other. And I am hoping that we can use that as leverage to reset. Carley Hauck 46:34 Thank you for sharing all of that. I wholeheartedly agree. And I, one of my mentors who wrote the foreword for my book, Lynne twist, who's a big steward of planet, she, when I first heard her talk, she would say we have to hospice out these old systems and structures that don't work. So I feel like we're still in this space that things are crumbling, we're creating the new foundation. But like you said, these this younger generation, you know, the the Gen z's, the millennials, they are in the the biggest, or they are the biggest work force that we have. And the more that they're either building companies, starting companies, or they're just speaking out about what they don't want. Yeah, that makes the Foundation have to be rebuilt. Enrique Rubio 47:28 Yeah. Well, you know, there's scientific philosopher, his name is Thomas Kuhn, an American philosopher in the 1960s, he wrote a book called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. And yes, you know, lots of claims in the book and lots of backlash about different things about how scientific revolutions and the change from one way of doing things to another actually happen. But this is ultimately what he said. He said, Well, you have a theory in place, and there that theory cannot explain any more, what you are observing in the real world, meaning the theories is falling short, to, to explaining what you are observing, a crisis happens, a revolution emerges. And a new theory has to take place, that that includes the old, and also the new. And I think right now we are at an inflection point where we're going through a social or political or financial crisis of sorts, where we are like a snake that is ditching the old skin and trying to, you know, do the do new, right. We are, there are many of us that are trying to ditch the old skin, you know, we're trying to ditch the old models that we know don't work anymore, that are very powerful groups of people that are clinging to those old models. And we know they don't work. But I think eventually we are going to be at a place where we are like, alright, this is the new, we're not forgetting the old. We're just embracing the new and I'm hoping that we can get there. Carley Hauck 48:57 Well, I would love to continue this conversation. There's so many so many threads I'd love to follow up with. But for our time today, I know that you're going to be trying to solve for some of this, and hacking HR. This is where this community this collective intelligence is coming together. And you have a summit that is starting in October, and I'm going to be part of that summit. I'm so excited. I'll be on one of the panels. Enrique Rubio 49:24 But we have we actually have a lot of events coming up. You know, in October, we have the every month we do a hacking HR series. And next month, which is you know, in October so we're recording this at the end of September. Next month, we have the October series and it's called Hacking October series. The soft is a strategy so we're going to be talking about how soft quote unquote soft skills impact business performance and strategy and you know, productivity and results and whatnot. So I am super excited about the conversation because it pertains to people to culture, to soft skills and all that? Carley Hauck 50:05 Well, I will be putting a link in the show notes because it's free people people can join for free. And the panel that I'll be on is about building a foundation of mental well being and adaptability and corporate culture on October 17. And we kind of spoke to some of that today. So I have lots of ideas to share. Enrique, this was so amazing. Is there anything else you want to leave our listeners with or anything that you'd love to have them? You know, see, so they can find you Enrique Rubio 50:35 join us on hugging HR on LinkedIn, follow me on LinkedIn, and you know, just be part of the good stuff that we're talking about. Carley Hauck 50:44 Thank you so much. Unknown Speaker 50:45 Thank you. Thank you so much. Carley Hauck 50:48 Before we end, these are some questions I have been pondering on quite a lot. And Enrique and I didn't have time to discuss on the air, but I wanted to share them aloud as inflection points with a few solutions. What are the expectations we have of leaders right now? Is the bar set too high? Based on the skill sets they have to operate from? And the conditions they are working with inside? And outside the organization? Are we equipping our leaders to meet the challenges and expectations of managing remote distributed teams with the right skill sets and the right support and resources? And lastly, how do we solve for burnout inside organizations? These are big problems that I believe everyone can come together with our collective intelligence to solve. But the way that we solve for some of them, is we invest in learning and development. Learning and Development pays dividends. In so many ways. We know that in this distributed remote workforce. It not only supports people to connect, and opportunities to grow within the company. But it supports engagement. It helps people to feel like they're being invested in their professional and their personal growth at work, which is a very high value for most employees. If you want to retain your employees, if you want to build community, you will invest in learning and development. And we need to do it in a way that gives people time to actually take advantage of the learning of the training. One idea that I'm proposing is that we empower people of all levels to block off their calendar for learning. It showcases to their team, they're in learning mode. And it could be that we offer an amount of 10 hours a month that they are devoted to learning. And this actually can be linked to what great performance looks like at the company. Leaders are learners and we all have the opportunity to be leaders as a way of solving for burnout. What do we think about enforcing a four day workweek? I know thread up which is one company I really love and had been following has implemented this, and some other companies have found great benefits to employee wellbeing. What about the idea of creating an untouchable day for everyone? Hence the benefit of a four day workweek? Let's face it with all the responsibilities of home, family and work. What if we had one extra day to just breathe, to be to enjoy? Would we show up at work in our relationships at home more resourced, more creative, with more play and well being? I imagine we would. And what do you think about implementing no meetings one day a week? How would we empower employees to also opt out of meetings if there is no agenda set? All the research shows that more meetings leads to exhaustion, lack of engagement and then more meetings. So what if we instead really empowered folks to have no meetings one day a week, and to opt out of meetings when there wasn't a clear agenda set for why they needed to attend. September is Self Care Month. And as we are still resetting, recovering from the last couple years, but even the decade before that, of not focusing on a people centered strategy, it's so important that we upskill our leaders with the resources to be able to prioritize for self care, so that they can lead themselves well, and then lead others well. This is the priority of leadership and manager effectiveness that I see now and into the near future. Leaders need to be leading together and relying on the collective intelligence and leadership of those above them, beside them and below them. This is leading its scale. And it requires a high degree of some of the conscious leadership competencies that Enrique and I spoke about before self awareness, resilience, humility, so that we can empower others, and lead together inspiring networks of teams to lead. Thank you, Enrique for joining me in this conversation and building a community where the human Renaissance professionals can come together to help solve people problems for the greatest good of organizations and the world. Do you want to grow your inner game so you can be a conscious leader at work life and in the world? Here are three ways come to the hacking HR summit in October, the link will be in the show notes. And I will be speaking with a group of wonderful leaders October 17, on the topic, cultivating resilience, building a foundation of mental well being and adaptability in corporate culture. This will be at 9am to 10am. Pacific Standard Time, go get my book, and hard copy or audiobook shine has been voted as one of the top 10 books to read and 22 I know it's 23. But if you didn't read it, and 22 Let me tell you, I wrote this book for this time. It is my legacy. And it will stand the test until we've solved for some of these big problems. And lastly, are you seeking a passionate people leader who wants to build and partner with senior leadership and the executive team on a people first culture where people and business are intertwined, and this can both thrive? I am your next great leadership hire. And I am so excited to serve the right team and company right now. If you missed the last podcast episode, I was interviewed by CEO Coco brown. You can learn more about the internal director above level role I am seeking the results I have provided to cutting edge companies as an HR consultant Learning and Leadership Development Professional, what I can contribute now. And the link of that podcast episode is in the show notes. I would love to have a conversation with you to be introduced to new opportunities and people. Thank you so much for your support. And if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with friends, family or colleagues. We're all in this together and sharing is caring. If you have questions, comments or topics you would like to address about the podcast or other conversations, please email me at support at Carley hauck.com And finally, thank you for tuning in and being part of this community. I have several incredible interviews coming up on the shine podcast. So make sure you're subscribed and until we meet again. Be the light and shine your light
Kelly Ingraham explains the concept of the paradigm, first coined in Thomas Kuhn's groundbreaking work in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kelly shares the relationship to of paradigms to confirmation bias, the impact of quantum physics, and how assumptions influence paradigms. Further, Kelly gets into dominant scientific paradigms including materialism vs. idealism, Cartesian & Newtonian models, and what it means to hold a reductionist vs. teleological worldview.
Tim Maudlin is Professor of Philosophy at NYU and Founder and Director of the John Bell Institute for the Foundations of Physics. Tim is renowned as one of the leading philosophers of physics, and he also works in the philosophy of science and metaphysics. This is Tim's fourth appearance on the show. Tim was also a guest on episode 46 (laws of nature, space, and free will), episode 67 with David Albert (the foundations of quantum mechanics), and episode 115 with Craig Callender (the philosophy of time). In this episode, Robinson and Tim dig into some of the crucial developments in the philosophy of science that took place during the 20th century. Then they move on to John Bell and the John Bell Institute for the Foundations of Physics. If you're interested in the foundations of physics—which you absolutely should be—then please check out the JBI, which is devoted to providing a home for research and education in this important area. Any donations are immensely helpful at this early stage in the institute's life. Tim's Website: www.tim-maudlin.site The John Bell Institute: https://www.johnbellinstitute.org OUTLINE 00:00 In This Episode… 00:41 Introduction 04:56 What's the Point of Philosophy of Science? 10:38 Carnap and Logical Positivism 26:30 Thomas Kuhn and the Structure of Scientific Revolutions 42:52 What is Scientific Realism? 01:02:44 Instrumentalism and Scientific Anti-Realism 01:06:08 Who Was John Bell? 01:20:15 Einstein, Quantum Mechanics, and Bell's Inequality 01:45:34 The John Bell Institute Robinson's Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/robinson-erhardt/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: Paradigms and Theory Choice in AI: Adaptivity, Economy and Control, published by particlemania on August 28, 2023 on The AI Alignment Forum. Epistemic status: Some general thoughts on philosophy of design, that have turned out to be useful for reasoning about AI paradigms for a few years for me. Summary: I briefly discuss the role of paradigms in Kuhnian philosophy of science, and the problem of theory choice. I introduce the notion of design paradigms, when discussing design and engineering. For machine learning, this concept is similar to the concept of training stories. I then introduce three criteria (or theoretical virtues) that design paradigms can be evaluated on, that play a role in shaping theory choice in design and engineering generally, and AI specifically. I then apply these three criteria to some criticisms of the CAIS paradigm (as compared to AI agents), as a case study. 1. Paradigms in Science In the philosophy of science, Thomas Kuhn introduced the notion of a 'paradigm', roughly referring to a class of key theories, tools and approaches, and methodological and theoretical assumptions that govern progress within some discipline of science. The function of a paradigm, as per SEP, is to "to supply puzzles for scientists to solve and to provide the tools for their solution". Kuhn's interest in the concept was to provide a commentary on revolutions and incommensurability. According to Kuhn, scientific revolutions are characterized by disruptions in periods of 'normal science' (or within-paradigm progress), wherein new paradigms are introduced leading to a shift in the assumptions, methods and evaluative criteria that govern the discipline. Some examples include the shift from classical mechanics to relativistic mechanics, and the shift from miasma theory to germ theory of disease. Sometimes paradigms can refer to an overlapping object of inquiry and continue to remain productive, and yet be incommensurable (i.e. lacking common measure) with respect to each other. When the theories provide no basis for evaluation on each other's standards, and science lacks a common standard to compare them (for example because they have incompatible methodological assumptions, or operate in incompatible ontologies), it can make it hard to provide 'objective' justifications for choosing between paradigms. Kuhn called this the problem of Theory Choice, and and raised the question of which criteria we do/should use in making subjective choices here. 2. Paradigms in Design and Engineering Artificial Intelligence is partly about understanding the nature of intelligence or related properties of cognitive systems, but it is also about the artificial -- designing intelligent artifacts. And therefore in order to understand what paradigms govern progress in AI, and how they do so, we need to look at paradigms not just in science but in design and engineering. Paradigms and theories operate differently in science compared with design and engineering, relating to the distinct epistemological relationship between the use of theories and the object of those theories. In science, the territory is typically causally prior to our maps, and we are trying to refine our maps to get the best understanding of the key phenomena in the territory. Design and engineering on the other hand, are also about artificiality, and theories often provide us with blueprints for creation of artifacts. The laws of the universe are a given, but artificial objects are not. Different scientific paradigms will not cause the laws of the universe to alter, but different design paradigms will cause different artificial objects to be created. This makes theory choice for design paradigms particularly important: design paradigms don't just describe the world more or less accurately, they also directly shape what happ...
Michael Strevens is Professor of Philosophy at New York University, where he works across the philosophy of science and the philosophical applications of cognitive science. In this episode, Robinson and Michael talk about his recent book, The Knowledge Machine, which explores how irrationality shaped the Scientific Revolution. Along the way, they discuss the great debate over the nature of the scientific method—including appearances from Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn—how explanations function in science, and what roles religion, aesthetics, and other factors distinct from concrete evidence should play in scientific thought. Michael's Website: http://www.strevens.org The Knowledge Machine: https://a.co/d/0hmHDCm OUTLINE 00:00 In This Episode… 00:51 Introduction 03:42 The Knowledge Machine 14:23 What is the Scientific Method? 21:28 Kuhn and the Scientific Method 30:41 Sociology and the Scientific Method 32:40 Reasoning, Evidence, and Prejudice 47:30 The Iron Rule of Explanation 57:09 The Irrationality of Scientific Thought 01:03:57 Newton, Bacon, and the Scientific Revolution 01:12:13 An Attack on Science? Robinson's Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/robinson-erhardt/support
Bas van Fraassen is the McCosh Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Princeton University and a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at San Francisco State University. In addition to being one of the most recognized philosophers of science working today—he received the Philosophy of Science Association's inaugural Hempel Award—he has also worked in epistemology and logic. In this episode, Bas and Robinson discuss a major shift in the philosophy of science in the second half of the twentieth century from the view of the logical positivists, who had a formal, mathematical approach, to philosophers who adopted the semantic approach, which more closely aligned with how working scientists viewed and experienced the field. Some other issues touched on include scientific realism, Thomas Kuhn and The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and interpretations of quantum mechanics. OUTLINE 00:00 In This Episode… 00:51 Introduction 03:47 An Interest in the Philosophy of Science 06:44 Logical Positivism 19:56 What is Scientific Realism? 30:56 Kuhn and The Structure of Scientific Revolutions 39:13 The Semantic Approach 54:49 The Quantum Mechanics Interpretation Wars 01:08:12 Mathematical Models 01:12:31 Epistemology Robinson's Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/robinson-erhardt/support
------------------Support the channel------------ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thedissenter PayPal: paypal.me/thedissenter PayPal Subscription 1 Dollar: https://tinyurl.com/yb3acuuy PayPal Subscription 3 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ybn6bg9l PayPal Subscription 5 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ycmr9gpz PayPal Subscription 10 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y9r3fc9m PayPal Subscription 20 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y95uvkao ------------------Follow me on--------------------- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedissenteryt/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheDissenterYT This show is sponsored by Enlites, Learning & Development done differently. Check the website here: http://enlites.com/ Dr. Gareth Leng was one of the founders in 1983 of the British Society for Neuroendocrinology. He was appointed as the Chair of Experimental Physiology at the University of Edinburgh in 1994, after 17 years at what is now the Babraham Institute, Cambridge. He is a former Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Neuroendocrinology, and a former President of the International Neuroendocrine Federation. He is the author of The Matter of Facts: Skepticism, Persuasion, and Evidence in Science. In this episode, we focus on The Matter of Facts. We talk about what evidence is; structure and norms in science; the “scientific method”; Thomas Kuhn, scientific revolutions, and paradigms. We discuss issues with scientific publication and citation. We discuss if science is value-free, if it is done by individual geniuses, and if we can communicate science through narratives. Finally, we address a question from a patron of the show, regarding why people tend to rely more on authority than evidence, and what we can do about it. -- A HUGE THANK YOU TO MY PATRONS/SUPPORTERS: PER HELGE LARSEN, JERRY MULLER, HANS FREDRIK SUNDE, BERNARDO SEIXAS, OLAF ALEX, ADAM KESSEL, MATTHEW WHITINGBIRD, ARNAUD WOLFF, TIM HOLLOSY, HENRIK AHLENIUS, JOHN CONNORS, FILIP FORS CONNOLLY, DAN DEMETRIOU, ROBERT WINDHAGER, RUI INACIO, ZOOP, MARCO NEVES, COLIN HOLBROOK, SIMON COLUMBUS, PHIL KAVANAGH, MIKKEL STORMYR, SAMUEL ANDREEFF, FRANCIS FORDE, TIAGO NUNES, FERGAL CUSSEN, HAL HERZOG, NUNO MACHADO, JONATHAN LEIBRANT, JOÃO LINHARES, STANTON T, SAMUEL CORREA, ERIK HAINES, MARK SMITH, JOÃO EIRA, TOM HUMMEL, SARDUS FRANCE, DAVID SLOAN WILSON, YACILA DEZA-ARAUJO, ROMAIN ROCH, DIEGO LONDOÑO CORREA, YANICK PUNTER, ADANER USMANI, CHARLOTTE BLEASE, NICOLE BARBARO, ADAM HUNT, PAWEL OSTASZEWSKI, NELLEKE BAK, GUY MADISON, GARY G HELLMANN, SAIMA AFZAL, ADRIAN JAEGGI, NICK GOLDEN, PAULO TOLENTINO, JOÃO BARBOSA, JULIAN PRICE, EDWARD HALL, HEDIN BRØNNER, DOUGLAS FRY, FRANCA BORTOLOTTI, GABRIEL PONS CORTÈS, URSULA LITZCKE, SCOTT, ZACHARY FISH, TIM DUFFY, SUNNY SMITH, JON WISMAN, DANIEL FRIEDMAN, WILLIAM BUCKNER, PAUL-GEORGE ARNAUD, LUKE GLOWACKI, GEORGIOS THEOPHANOUS, CHRIS WILLIAMSON, PETER WOLOSZYN, DAVID WILLIAMS, DIOGO COSTA, ANTON ERIKSSON, CHARLES MOREY, ALEX CHAU, AMAURI MARTÍNEZ, CORALIE CHEVALLIER, BANGALORE ATHEISTS, LARRY D. LEE JR., OLD HERRINGBONE, STARRY, MICHAEL BAILEY, DAN SPERBER, ROBERT GRESSIS, IGOR N, JEFF MCMAHAN, JAKE ZUEHL, BARNABAS RADICS, MARK CAMPBELL, TOMAS DAUBNER, LUKE NISSEN, CHRIS STORY, KIMBERLY JOHNSON, BENJAMIN GELBART, JESSICA NOWICKI, AND PEDRO BONILLA! A SPECIAL THANKS TO MY PRODUCERS, YZAR WEHBE, JIM FRANK, ŁUKASZ STAFINIAK, TOM VANEGDOM, BERNARD HUGUENEY, CURTIS DIXON, BENEDIKT MUELLER, VEGA GIDEY, THOMAS TRUMBLE, KATHRINE AND PATRICK TOBIN, JONCARLO MONTENEGRO, AND AL NICK ORTIZ! AND TO MY EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS, MATTHEW LAVENDER, SERGIU CODREANU, AND BOGDAN KANIVETS!
This is Lara Varpio's 6th 'Methods Consult' for KeyLIME. As a PHD trained scientist working in the field, it is of Lara's opinion that her job is to help others gain the skills and expertise needed to engage in Health Professions Education scholarship and research. Additional material about Thomas Kuhn, ontologies and epistemologies: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [Internet]. Stanford University: Center for the Study of Language and Information; 2019. Available from: https://plato.stanford.edu Kuhn, TS. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 50th ed. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press; 2012 (Original work published in 1962). Okasha, S. Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction. 2nd ed. Oxford UK: Oxford University Press; 2016.
June 25, 2023 Speaker: Thomas Kuhn
Today's ID The Future coincides with the release of a new online course from biologist Dr. Jonathan Wells on the evidence for and against Darwinian evolution. On this blast from the past from 2006, Casey Luskin interviews Wells about evolution, intelligent design, scientific revolutions and historian of science Thomas Kuhn. Source
Gleaned from Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, this week's episode discusses the need for occasional revolutions in the world of science. When it was first published in 1962, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions marked a significant milestone in the history and philosophy of science. In this book, Kuhn argues that major scientific breakthroughs don't come from everyday experimentation and data gathering. He believes that transformative ideas occur outside of normal science and arise from revolutions that challenge accepted ways of thinking.Fifty years later, lessons from this book are still applicable to our current world. The ultimate transformative moment occurs when our paradigm shifts. This means that sometimes, it's necessary to disassemble a familiar structure and put it back together in a completely different way. This week, Ashto and Jonesy learn that science isn't a linear, cumulative process; science changes by means of revolutions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
On today's ID the Future host Andrew McDiarmid brings listeners a couple of fascinating recent articles from Evolution News & Science Today by David Coppedge. The first is “Animals Tune Behavior by Lunar Cycle; but How?” The second article is “Darwin, We Have a Problem: Horse Teeth Are Not Less Evolved.” In the first, some ingenious molecular engineering crops up in widely divergent creatures, giving them some impressive abilities to read lunar cycles. The evolutionists' go-to explanation is “convergent evolution,” an incantation that fails to explain how something like this could have evolved even once, much less multiple separate times. And in the second, a much-beloved story of ruminant tooth evolution gets a kick in the teeth from a series Read More › Source
About GeneGene Kim is a multiple award-winning CTO, researcher and author, and has been studying high-performing technology organizations since 1999. He was founder and CTO of Tripwire for 13 years. He has written six books, including The Unicorn Project (2019), The Phoenix Project (2013), The DevOps Handbook (2016), the Shingo Publication Award winning Accelerate (2018), and The Visible Ops Handbook (2004-2006) series. Since 2014, he has been the founder and organizer of DevOps Enterprise Summit, studying the technology transformations of large, complex organizations.Links: The Phoenix Project: https://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-Project-DevOps-Helping-Business/dp/1942788290/ The Unicorn Project: https://www.amazon.com/Unicorn-Project-Developers-Disruption-Thriving/dp/B0812C82T9 The DevOps Enterprise Summit: https://events.itrevolution.com/ @RealGeneKim TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Cloud Economist Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: If you asked me to rank which cloud provider has the best developer experience, I'd be hard-pressed to choose a platform that isn't Google Cloud. Their developer experience is unparalleled and, in the early stages of building something great, that translates directly into velocity. Try it yourself with the Google for Startups Cloud Program over at cloud.google.com/startup. It'll give you up to $100k a year for each of the first two years in Google Cloud credits for companies that range from bootstrapped all the way on up to Series A. Go build something, and then tell me about it. My thanks to Google Cloud for sponsoring this ridiculous podcast.Corey: This episode is brought to us by our friends at Pinecone. They believe that all anyone really wants is to be understood, and that includes your users. AI models combined with the Pinecone vector database let your applications understand and act on what your users want… without making them spell it out. Make your search application find results by meaning instead of just keywords, your personalization system make picks based on relevance instead of just tags, and your security applications match threats by resemblance instead of just regular expressions. Pinecone provides the cloud infrastructure that makes this easy, fast, and scalable. Thanks to my friends at Pinecone for sponsoring this episode. Visit Pinecone.io to understand more.Corey Quinn: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. I'm joined this week by a man who needs no introduction but gets one anyway. Gene Kim, most famously known for writing The Phoenix Project, but now the Wall Street Journal best-selling author of The Unicorn Project, six years later. Gene, welcome to the show.Gene Kim: Corey so great to be on. I was just mentioning before how delightful it is to be on the other side of the podcast. And it's so much smaller in here than I had thought it would be.Corey Quinn: Excellent. It's always nice to wind up finally meeting people whose work was seminal and foundational. Once upon a time, when I was a young, angry Unix systems administrator—because it's not like there's a second type of Unix administrator—[laughing] The Phoenix Project was one of those texts that was transformational, as far as changing the way I tended to view a lot of what I was working on and gave a glimpse into what could have been a realistic outcome for the world, or the company I was at, but somehow was simultaneously uplifting and incredibly depressing all at the same time. Now, The Unicorn Project does that exact same thing only aimed at developers instead of traditional crusty ops folks.Gene Kim: [laughing] Yeah, yeah. Very much so. Yeah, The Phoenix Project was very much aimed at ops leadership. So, Bill Palmer, the protagonist of that book was the VP of Operations at Parts Unlimited, and the protagonist in The Unicorn Project is Maxine Chambers, Senior Architect, and Developer, and I love the fact that it's told in the same timeline as The Phoenix Project, and in the first scene, she is unfairly blamed for causing the payroll outage and is exiled to The Phoenix Project, where she recoils in existential horror and then finds that she can't do anything herself. She can't do a build, she can't run her own tests. She can't, God forbid, do her own deploys. And I just love the opening third of the book where it really does paint that tundra that many developers find themselves in where they're just caught in decades of built-up technical debt, unable to do even the simplest things independently, let alone be able to independently develop tests or create value for customers. So, it was fun, very much fun, to revisit the Parts Unlimited universe.Corey Quinn: What I found that was fun about—there are few things in there I want to unpack. The first is that it really was the, shall we say, retelling of the same story in, quote/unquote, “the same timeframe”, but these books were written six years apart.Gene Kim: Yeah, and by the way, I want to first acknowledge all the help that you gave me during the editing process. Some of your comments are just so spot on with exactly the feedback I needed at the time and led to the most significant lift to jam a whole bunch of changes in it right before it got turned over to production. Yeah, so The Phoenix Project is told, quote, “in the present day,” and in the same way, The Unicorn Project is also told—takes place in the present day. In fact, they even start, plus or minus, on the same day. And there is a little bit of suspension of disbelief needed, just because there are certain things that are in the common vernacular, very much in zeitgeist now, that weren't six years ago, like “digital disruption”, even things like Uber and Lyft that feature prominently in the book that were just never mentioned in The Phoenix Project, but yeah, I think it was the story very much told in the same vein as like Ender's Shadow, where it takes place in the same timeline, but from a different perspective.Corey Quinn: So, something else that—again, I understand it's an allegory, and trying to tell an allegorical story while also working it into the form of a fictional work is incredibly complicated. That's something that I don't think people can really appreciate until they've tried to do something like it. But I still found myself, at various times, reading through the book and wondering, asking myself questions that, I guess, say more about me than they do about anyone else. But it's, “Wow, she's at a company that is pretty much scapegoating her and blaming her for all of us. Why isn't she quitting? Why isn't she screaming at people? Why isn't she punching the boss right in their stupid, condescending face and storming out of the office?” And I'm wondering how much of that is my own challenges as far as how life goes, as well as how much of it is just there for, I guess, narrative devices. It needed to wind up being someone who would not storm out when push came to shove.Gene Kim: But yeah, I think she actually does the last of the third thing that you mentioned where she does slam the sheet of paper down and say, “Man, you said the outage is caused by a technical failure and a human error, and now you're telling me I'm the human error?” And just cannot believe that she's been put in that position. Yeah, so thanks to your feedback and the others, she actually does shop her resume around. And starts putting out feelers, because this is no longer feeling like the great place to work that attracted her, eight years prior. The reality is for most people, is that it's sometimes difficult to get a new job overnight, even if you want to. But I think that Maxine stays because she believes in the mission. She takes a great deal of pride of what she's created over the years, and I think like most great brands, they do create a sense of mission and there's a deep sense of the customers they serve. And, there's something very satisfying about the work to her. And yeah, I think she is very much, for a couple of weeks, very much always thinking about, she won't be here for long, one way or another, but by the time she stumbles into the rebellion, the crazy group of misfits, the ragtag bunch of misfits, who are trying to find better ways of working and willing to break whatever rules it takes to take over the very ancient powerful order, she falls in love with a group. She found a group of kindred spirits who very much, like her, believe that developer productivity is one of the most important things that we can do as an organization. So, by the time that she looks up with that group, I mean, I think she's all thoughts of leaving are gone.Corey Quinn: Right. And the idea of, if you stick around, you can theoretically change things for the better is extraordinarily compelling. The challenge I've seen is that as I navigate the world, I've met a number of very gifted employees who, frankly wind up demonstrating that same level of loyalty and same kind of loyalty to companies that are absolutely not worthy of them. So my question has always been, when do I stick around versus when do I leave? I'm very far on the bailout as early as humanly possible side of that spectrum. It's why I'm a great consultant but an absolutely terrible employee.Gene Kim: [laughing] Well, so we were honored to have you at the DevOps Enterprise Summit. And you've probably seen that The Unicorn Project book is really dedicated to the achievements of the DevOps Enterprise community. It's certainly inspired by and dedicated to their efforts. And I think what was so inspirational to me were all these courageous leaders who are—they know what the mission is. I mean, they viscerally understand what the mission is and understand that the ways of working aren't working so well and are doing whatever they can to create better ways of working that are safer, faster, and happier. And I think what is so magnificent about so many of their journeys is that their organization in response says, “Thank you. That's amazing. Can we put you in a position of even more authority that will allow you to even make a more material, more impactful contribution to the organization?” And so it's been my observation, having run the conference for, now, six years, going on seven years is that this is a population that is being out promoted—has been promoted at a rate far higher than the population at large. And so for me, that's just an incredible story of grit and determination. And so yeah, where does grit and determination becomes sort of blind loyalty? That's ultimately self-punishing? That's a deep question that I've never really studied. But I certainly do understand that there is a time when no amount of perseverance and grit will get from here to there, and that's a fact.Corey Quinn: I think that it's a really interesting narrative, just to see it, how it tends to evolve, but also, I guess, for lack of a better term, and please don't hold this against me, it seems in many ways to speak to a very academic perspective, and I don't mean that as an insult. Now, the real interesting question is why I would think, well—why would accusing someone of being academic ever be considered as an insult, but my academic career was fascinating. It feels like it aligns very well with The Five Ideals, which is something that you have been talking about significantly for a long time. And in an academic setting that seems to make sense, but I don't see it thought of or spoken of in the same way on the ground. So first, can you start off by giving us an intro to what The Five Ideals are, and I guess maybe disambiguate the theory from the practice?Gene Kim: Oh for sure, yeah. So The Five Ideals are— oh, let's go back one step. So The Phoenix Project had The Three Ways, which were the principles for which you can derive all the observed DevOps practices from and The Four Types of Work. And so in The Five Ideals I used the concept of The Five Ideals and they are—the first—Corey Quinn: And the next version of The Nine whatever you call them at that point, I'm sure. It's a geometric progression.Gene Kim: Right or actually, isn't it the pri—oh, no. four isn't, four isn't prime. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. So, The Five Ideals is a nice small number and it was just really meant to verbalize things that I thought were very important, things I just gravitate towards. One is Locality and Simplicity. And briefly, that's just, to what degree can teams do what they need to do independently without having to coordinate, communicate, prioritize, sequence, marshal, deconflict, with scores of other teams. The Second Ideal is what I think the outcomes are when you have that, which is Focus, Flow and Joy. And so, Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, he describes flow as a state when we are so engrossed in the work we love that we lose track of time and even sense of self. And that's been very much my experience, coding ever since I learned Clojure, this functional programming language. Third Ideal is Improvement of Daily Work, which shows up in The Phoenix Project to say that improvement daily work is even more important than daily work itself. Fourth Ideal is Psychological Safety, which shows up in the State of DevOps Report, but showed up prominently in Google's Project Oxygen, and even in the Toyota production process where clearly it has to be—in order for someone to pull the andon cord that potentially stops the assembly line, you have to have an environment where it's psychologically safe to do so. And then Fifth Ideal is Customer Focus, really focus on core competencies that create enduring, durable business value that customers are willing to pay for, versus context, which is everything else. And yeah, to answer your question, Where did it come from? Why do I think it is important? Why do I focus on that? For me, it's really coming from the State of DevOps Report, that I did with Dr. Nicole Forsgren and Jez Humble. And so, beyond all the numbers and the metrics and the technical practices and the architectural practices and the cultural norms, for me, what that really tells the story of is of The Five Ideals, as to what one of them is very much a need for architecture that allows teams to work independently, having a higher predictor of even, continuous delivery. I love that. And that from the individual perspective, the ideal being, that allows us to focus on the work we want to do to help achieve the mission with a sense of flow and joy. And then really elevating the notion that greatness isn't free, we need to improve daily work, we have to make it psychologically safe to talk about problems. And then the last one really being, can we really unflinchingly look at the work we do on an everyday basis and ask, what the customers care about it? And if customers don't care about it, can we question whether that work really should be done or not. So that's where for me, it's really meant to speak to some more visceral emotions that were concretized and validated through the State of DevOps Report. But these notions I am just very attracted to.Corey Quinn: I like the idea of it. The question, of course, is always how to put these into daily practice. How do you take these from an idealized—well, let's not call it a textbook, but something very similar to that—and apply it to the I guess, uncontrolled chaos that is the day-to-day life of an awful lot of people in their daily jobs.Gene Kim: Yeah. Right. So, the protagonist is Maxine and her role in the story, in the beginning, is just to recognize what not great looks like. She's lived and created greatness for all of her career. And then she gets exiled to this terrible Phoenix project that chews up developers and spits them out and they leave these husks of people they used to be. And so, she's not doing a lot of problem-solving. Instead, it's this recoiling from the inability for people to do builds or do their own tests or be able to do work without having to open up 20 different tickets or not being able to do their own deploys. She just recoil from this spending five days watching people do code merges, and for me, I'm hoping that what this will do, and after people read the book, will see this all around them, hopefully, will have a similar kind of recoiling reaction where they say, “Oh my gosh, this is terrible. I should feel as bad about this as Maxine does, and then maybe even find my fellow rebels and see if we can create a pocket of greatness that can become like the sublimation event in Dr. Thomas Kuhn's book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.” Create that kernel of greatness, of which then greatness then finds itself surrounded by even more greatness.Corey Quinn: What I always found to be fascinating about your work is how you wind up tying so many different concepts together in ways you wouldn't necessarily expect. For example, when I was reviewing one of your manuscripts before this went to print, you did reject one of my suggestions, which was just, retitle the entire thing. Instead of calling it The Unicorn Project. Instead, call it Gene Kim's Love Letter to Functional Programming. So what is up with that?Gene Kim: Yeah, to put that into context, for 25 years or more, I've self-identified as an ops person. The Phoenix Project was really an ops book. And that was despite getting my graduate degree in compiler design and high-speed networking in 1995. And the reason why I gravitated towards ops, because that was my observation, that that's where the saves were made. It was ops who saved the customer from horrendous, terrible developers who just kept on putting things into production that would then blow up and take everyone with it. It was ops protecting us from the bad adversaries who were trying to steal data because security people were so ineffective. But four years ago, I learned a functional programming language called Clojure and, without a doubt, it reintroduced the joy of coding back into my life and now, in a good month, I spend half the time—in the ideal—writing, half the time hanging out with the best in the game, of which I would consider this to be a part of, and then 20% of time coding. And I find for the first time in my career, in over 30 years of coding, I can write something for years on end, without it collapsing in on itself, like a house of cards. And that is an amazing feeling, to say that maybe it wasn't my inability, or my lack of experience, or my lack of sensibilities, but maybe it was just that I was sort of using the wrong tool to think with. That comes from the French philosopher Claude Lévi-Strauss. He said of certain things, “Is it a good tool to think with?” And I just find functional programming is such a better tool to think with, that notions like composability, like immutability, what I find so exciting is that these things aren't just for programming languages. And some other programming languages that follow the same vein are, OCaml, Lisp, ML, Elixir, Haskell. These all languages that are sort of popularizing functional programming, but what I find so exciting is that we see it in infrastructure and operations, too. So Docker is fundamentally immutable. So if you want to change a container, we have to make a new one. Kubernetes composes these containers together at the level of system of systems. Kafka is amazing because it usually reveals the desire to have this immutable data model where you can't change the past. Version control is immutable. So, I think it's no surprise that as our systems get more and more complex and distributed, we're relying on things like immutability, just to make it so that we can reason about them. So, it is something I love addressing in the book, and it's something I decided to double down on after you mentioned it. I'm just saying, all kidding aside is this a book for—Corey Quinn: Oh good, I got to make it worse. Always excited when that happens.Gene Kim: Yeah, I mean, your suggestion really brought to the forefront a very critical decision, which was, is this a book for technology leaders, or even business leaders, or is this a book developers? And, after a lot of soul searching, I decided no, this is a book for developers, because I think the sensibilities that we need to instill and the awareness we need to create these things around are the developers and then you just hope and pray that the book will be good enough that if enough engineers like it, then engineering leaders will like it. And if enough engineering leaders like it, then maybe some business leaders will read it as well. So that's something I'm eagerly seeing what will happen as the weeks, months, and years go by. Corey Quinn: This episode is sponsored in part by DataStax. The NoSQL event of the year is DataStax Accelerate in San Diego this May from the 11th through the 13th. I've given a talk previously called the myth of multi-cloud, and it's time for me to revisit that with... A sequel! Which is funny given that it's a NoSQL conference, but there you have it. To learn more, visit datastax.com that's D-A-T-A-S-T-A-X.com and I hope to see you in San Diego. This May.Corey Quinn: One thing that I always admired about your writing is that you can start off trying to make a point about one particular aspect of things. And along the way you tie in so many different things, and the functional programming is just one aspect of this. At some point, by the end of it, I half expected you to just pick a fight over vi versus Emacs, just for the sheer joy you get in effectively drawing interesting and, I guess, shall we say, the right level of conflict into it, where it seems very clear that what you're talking about is something thing that has the potential to be transformative and by throwing things like that in you're, on some level, roping people in who otherwise wouldn't weigh in at all. But it's really neat to watch once you have people's attention, just almost in spite of what they want, you teach them something. I don't know if that's a fair accusation or not, but it's very much I'm left with the sense that what you're doing has definite impact and reverberations throughout larger industries.Gene Kim: Yeah, I hope so. In fact, just to reveal this kind of insecurity is, there's an author I've read a lot of and she actually read this blog post that she wrote about the worst novel to write, and she called it The Yeomans Tour of the Starship Enterprise. And she says, “The book begins like this: it's a Yeoman on the Starship Enterprise, and all he does is admire the dilithium crystals, and the phaser, and talk about the specifications of the engine room.” And I sometimes worry that that's what I've done in The Unicorn Project, but hopefully—I did want to have that technical detail there and share some things that I love about technology and the things I hate about technology, like YAML files, and integrate that into the narrative because I think it is important. And I would like to think that people reading it appreciate things like our mutual distaste of YAML files, that we've all struggled trying to escape spaces and file names inside of make files. I mean, these are the things that are puzzles we have to solve, but they're so far removed from the business problem we're trying to solve that really, the purpose of that was trying to show the mistake of solving puzzles in our daily work instead of solving real problems.Corey Quinn: One thing that I found was really a one-two punch, for me at least, was first I read and give feedback on the book and then relatively quickly thereafter, I found myself at my first DevOps Enterprise Summit, and I feel like on some level, I may have been misinterpreted when I was doing my live-tweeting/shitposting-with-style during a lot of the opening keynotes, and the rest, where I was focusing on how different of a conference it was. Unlike a typical DevOps Days or big cloud event, it wasn't a whole bunch of relatively recent software startups. There were serious institutions coming out to have conversations. We're talking USAA, we're talking to US Air Force, we're talking large banks, we're talking companies that have a 200-year history, where you don't get to just throw everything away and start over. These are companies that by and large, have, in many ways, felt excluded to some extent, from the modern discussions of, well, we're going to write some stuff late at night, and by the following morning, it's in production. You don't get to do that when you're a 200-year-old insurance company. And I feel like that was on some level interpreted as me making fun of startups for quote/unquote, “not being serious,” which was never my intention. It's just this was a different conversation series for a different audience who has vastly different constraints. And I found it incredibly compelling and I intend to go back.Gene Kim: Well, that's wonderful. And, in fact, we have plans for you, Mr. Quinn.Corey Quinn: Uh-oh.Gene Kim: Yeah. I think when I say I admire the DevOps Enterprise community. I mean that I'm just so many different dimensions. The fact that these, leaders and—it's not leaders just in terms of seniority on the organization chart—these are people who are leading technology efforts to survive and win in the marketplace. In organizations that have been around sometimes for centuries, Barclays Bank was founded in the year 1634. That predates the invention of paper cash. HMRC, the UK version of the IRS was founded in the year 1200. And, so there's probably no code that goes that far back, but there's certainly values and—Corey Quinn: Well, you'd like to hope not. Gene Kim: Yeah, right. You never know. But there are certainly values and traditions and maybe even processes that go back centuries. And so that's what's helped these organizations be successful. And here are a next generation of leaders, trying to make sure that these organizations see another century of greatness. So I think that's, in my mind, deeply admirable.Corey Quinn: Very much so. And my only concern was, I was just hoping that people didn't misinterpret my snark and sarcasm as aimed at, “Oh, look at these crappy—these companies are real companies and all those crappy SAS companies are just flashes in the pan.” No, I don't believe that members of the Fortune 500 are flash in the pan companies, with a couple notable exceptions who I will not name now, because I might want some of them on this podcast someday. The concern that I have is that everyone's work is valuable. Everyone's work is important. And what I'm seeing historically, and something that you've nailed, is a certain lack of stories that apply to some of those organizations that are, for lack of a better term, ossified into their current process model, where they there's no clear path for them to break into, quote/unquote, “doing the DevOps.”Gene Kim: Yeah. And the business frame and the imperative for it is incredible. Tesla is now offering auto insurance bundled into the car. Banks are now having to compete with Apple. I mean, it is just breathtaking to see how competitive the marketplaces and the need to understand the customer and deliver value to them quickly and to be able to experiment and innovate and out-innovate the competition. I don't think there's any business leader on the planet who doesn't understand that software is eating the world and they have to that any level of investment they do involves software at some level. And so the question is, for them, is how do they get educated enough to invest and manage and lead competently? So, to me it really is like the sleeping giant awakening. And it's my genuine belief is that the next 50 years, as much value as the tech giants have created: Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google, Microsoft, they've generated trillions of dollars of economic value. When we can get eighteen million developers, as productive as an engineer at a tech giant is, that will generate tens of trillions of dollars of economic value per year. And so, when you generate that much economic activity, all problems become solvable, you look at climate change, you take a look at the disparity between rich and poor. All things can be fixed when you significantly change the economic economy in this way. So, I'm extremely hopeful and I know that the need for things like DevOps are urgent and important.Corey Quinn: I guess that that's probably the best way of framing this. So you wrote one version that was aimed at operators back in 2013, this one was aimed at developers, and effectively retails and clarifies an awful lot of the same points. As a historical ops person, I didn't feel left behind by The Unicorn Project, despite not being its target market. So I guess the question on everyone's mind, are you planning on doing a third iteration, and if so, for what demographic?Gene Kim: Yeah, nothing at this point, but there is one thing that I'm interested in which is the role of business leaders. And Sarah is an interesting villain. One of my favorite pieces of feedback during the review process was, “I didn't think I could ever hate Sarah more. And yet, I did find her even to be more loathsome than before.” She's actually based on a real person, someone that I worked with.Corey Quinn: That's the best part, is these characters are relatable enough that everyone can map people they know onto various aspects of them, but can't ever disclose the entire list in public because that apparently has career consequences.Gene Kim: That's right. Yes, I will not say who the character is based on but there's, in the last scene of the book that went to print, Sarah has an interesting interaction with Maxine, where they meet for lunch. And, I think the line was, “And it wasn't what Maxine had thought, and she's actually looking forward to the next meeting.” I think that leaves room for it. So one of the things I want to do with some friends and colleagues is just understand, why does Sarah act the way she does? I think we've all worked with someone like her. And there are some that are genuinely bad actors, but I think a lot of them are doing something, based on genuine, real motives. And it would be fun, I thought, to do something with Elizabeth Henderson, who we decided to start having a conversation like, what does she read? What is her background? What is she good at? What does her resume look like? And what caused her to—who in technology treated her so badly that she treats technology so badly? And why does she behave the way she does? And so I think she reads a lot of strategy books. I think she is not a great people manager, I think she maybe has come from the mergers and acquisition route that viewed people as fungible. And yeah, I think she is definitely a creature of economics, was lured by an external investor, about how good it can be if you can extract value out of the company, squeeze every bit of—sweat every asset and sell the company for parts. So I would just love to have a better understanding of, when people say they work with someone like a Sarah, is there a commonality to that? And can we better understand Sarah so that we can both work with her and also, compete better against her, in our own organizations?Corey Quinn: I think that's probably a question best left for people to figure out on their own, in a circumstance where I can't possibly be blamed for it.Gene Kim: [laughing].That can be arranged, Mr. Quinn.Corey Quinn: All right. Well, if people want to learn more about your thoughts, ideas, feelings around these things, or of course to buy the book, where can they find you?Gene Kim: If you're interested in the ideas that are in The Unicorn Project, I would point you to all of the freely available videos on YouTube. Just Google DevOps Enterprise Summit and anything that's on the plenary stage are specifically chosen stories that very much informed The Unicorn Project. And the best way to reach me is probably on Twitter. I'm @RealGeneKim on Twitter, and feel free to just @ mention me, or DM me. Happy to be reached out in whatever way you can find me. Corey Quinn: You know where the hate mail goes then. Gene, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me, I appreciate it.Gene Kim: And Corey, likewise, and again, thank you so much for your unflinching feedback on the book and I hope you see your fingerprints all over it and I'm just so delighted with the way it came out. So thanks to you, Corey. Corey Quinn: As soon as my signed copy shows up, you'll be the first to know.Gene Kim: Consider it done. Corey Quinn: Excellent, excellent. That's the trick, is to ask people for something in a scenario in which they cannot possibly say no. Gene Kim, multiple award-winning CTO, researcher, and author. Pick up his new book, The Wall Street Journal best-selling The Unicorn Project. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. If you hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts and leave a compelling comment.Announcer: This has been this week's episode of Screaming in the Cloud. You can also find more Corey at ScreamingintheCloud.com or wherever fine snark is sold.This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.
On this ID the Future, intelligent design scientist Casey Luskin sits down with Summit Ministries podcast host Dr. Jeff Myers to explain the heart of intelligent design theory and why it should matter to Christians and to anyone who prizes a culture committed to the view that life is meaningful and human beings more than matter in motion. Luskin also makes a quick case against evolutionist attempts to explain the origin of exquisite molecular machines like the bacterial flagellum motor, and he offers some advice for pro-ID college students facing professors hostile to anything that challenges mainstream evolutionary theory. Source
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