180 | Camilla Pang on Instructions for Being Human

Just like with physics, in biology it is perfectly possible to do most respectable work without thinking much about philosophy, but there are unmistakably foundational questions where philosophy becomes crucial. When do we say that a collection of matter (or bits) is alive? When does it become an agent, capable of making decisions? What are the origins of morality and altruistic behavior? We talk with one of the world's leading experts, Samir Okasha, about the biggest issues in modern philosophy of biology.Support Mindscape on Patreon.Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/07/01/281-samir-okasha-on-the-philosophy-of-agency-and-evolution/Samir Okasha received his D.Phil. in Philosophy from the University of Oxford. He is currently Professor of the Philosophy of Science at the University of Bristol. He is a winner of the Lakatos Award for his book Evolution and the Levels of Selection, and is a Fellow of the British Academy.University of Bristol web pagePhilPeople profileGoogle Scholar publicationsAmazon author pageWikipediaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

1 Heinä 20241h 11min

Which is more intelligent, ChatGPT or a 3-year old? Of course this depends on what we mean by "intelligence." A modern LLM is certainly able to answer all sorts of questions that require knowledge far past the capacity of a 3-year old, and even to perform synthetic tasks that seem remarkable to many human grown-ups. But is that really intelligence? François Chollet argues that it is not, and that LLMs are not ever going to be truly "intelligent" in the usual sense -- although other approaches to AI might get there.Support Mindscape on Patreon.Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/06/24/280-francois-chollet-on-deep-learning-and-the-meaning-of-intelligence/François Chollet received his Diplôme d'Ingénieur from École Nationale Supérieure de Techniques Avancées, Paris. He is currently a Senior Staff Engineer at Google. He has been awarded the Global Swiss AI award for breakthroughs in artificial intelligence. He is the author of Deep Learning with Python, and developer of the Keras software library for neural networks. He is the creator of the ARC (Abstraction and Reasoning Corpus) Challenge.Web siteGithubGoogle Scholar publicationsWikipedia"On the Measure of Intelligence"See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

24 Kesä 20241h 41min

For those of us who are not dualists, the mind arises from our physical bodies -- mostly the brain, but the rest of the body has a role to play. And yet it remains tempting to treat the mind as a thing in itself, disconnected from how the body is doing. Ellen Langer is a psychologist who is one of the foremost researchers on the idea of mindfulness -- the cognitive skill of paying to one's thoughts, as well as to one's external environment. Her most recent book is The Mindful Body: Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health. We talk about how our state of mind can effect the functions of our body, sometimes in surprising ways.Support Mindscape on Patreon.Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/06/17/279-ellen-langer-on-mindfulness-and-the-body/Ellen Langer received her Ph.D. in Social and Clinical Psychology from Yale University. She is currently a professor of psychology at Harvard University. She is also an artist with multiple gallery exhibitions. Among her awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Liberty Science Center Genius Award.Web siteHarvard web pageGoogle Scholar publicationsAmazon book pageWikipediaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

17 Kesä 20241h 11min

We claim to love all of our children, friends, and students equally. But perhaps deep down you assign a ranking to them, from favorite to not-so-favorite. Ranking and quantifying people is an irresistible human tendency, and modern technology has made it ubiquitous. In this episode I talk with sociologist Kieran Healy, who has co-authored (with Marion Fourcade) the new book The Ordinal Society, about how our lives are measured and processed by the technological ecosystem around us. We discuss how this has changed how relate to ourselves and the wider world.Support Mindscape on Patreon.Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/06/10/278-kieran-healy-on-the-technology-of-ranking-people/Kieran Healy received his Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton University. He is currently a professor of sociology at Duke University, and a member of the Kenan Institute for Ethics. As an undergraduate at University College Cork he won the Irish Times National Debating competition. He has a longstanding interest in data visualization.Web siteDuke web pageGoogle Scholar publicationsWikipediaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

10 Kesä 20241h 15min

Welcome to the June 2024 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Patreons, whittle them down to a more manageable number -- based primarily on whether I have anything interesting to say about them, not whether the questions themselves are good -- and sometimes group them together if they are about a similar topic. Enjoy!Support Mindscape on Patreon.Blog post with show notes, questions, and transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/06/03/ama-jun-2024/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

3 Kesä 20243h 58min

String theory, the current leading candidate for a theory of quantum gravity as well as other particles and forces, doesn't connect directly to the world we see. It's possible that there is a large landscape of possible states of theory, with the hope that one of them represents our universe. The existence of a landscape implies the existence of a corresponding swampland -- universes that are not compatible with string theory. I talk with Cumrun Vafa, a respected physicist and originator of the swampland program, about how we might use constraints on what kinds of physics are compatible with string theory to make predictions about cosmology and other experimental regimes.In the conversation we refer to a famous diagram representing different ten-dimensional string theories, as well as 11-dimensional M-theory, as different limits of an underlying fundamental theory.Support Mindscape on Patreon.Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/05/27/277-cumrun-vafa-on-the-universe-according-to-string-theory/Cumrun Vafa received his Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University. He is currently Hollis Professor of Mathematicks and Natural Philosophy, and Chair of the Physics Department, at Harvard University. He has done fundamental work on the dynamics of superstrings, the entropy of black holes, F-theory, and other topics. Among his awards are the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, the Dirac Medal, and the Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. He is the author of the book Puzzles to Unravel the Universe.Web siteHarvard web pageGoogle Scholar publicationsWikipediaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

27 Touko 20241h 22min

The Earth's climate keeps changing, largely due to the effects of human activity, and we haven't been doing enough to slow things down. Indeed, over the past year, global temperatures have been higher than ever, and higher than most climate models have predicted. Many of you have probably seen plots like this. Today's guest, Gavin Schmidt, has been a leader in measuring the variations in Earth's climate, modeling its likely future trajectory, and working to get the word out. We talk about the current state of the art, and what to expect for the future.Support Mindscape on Patreon.Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/05/20/276-gavin-schmidt-on-measuring-predicting-and-protecting-our-climate/Gavin Schmidt received his Ph.D. in applied mathematics from University College London. He is currently Director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and an affiliate of the Center for Climate Systems Research at Columbia University. His research involves both measuring and modeling climate variability. Among his awards are the inaugural Climate Communications Prize of the American Geophysical Union. He is a cofounder of the RealClimate blog.NASA web pageColumbia web pageGoogle Scholar publicationsWikipediaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

20 Touko 20241h 19min

Publication week! Say hello to Quanta and Fields, the second volume of the planned three-volume series The Biggest Ideas in the Universe. This volume covers quantum physics generally, but focuses especially on the wonders of quantum field theory. To celebrate, this solo podcast talks about some of the big ideas that make QFT so compelling: how quantized fields produce particles, how gauge symmetries lead to forces of nature, and how those forces can manifest in different phases, including Higgs and confinement.Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/05/13/275-solo-quantum-fields-particles-forces-and-symmetries/Support Mindscape on Patreon.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

13 Touko 20242h 12min