Computing Up

Inspired by a WIRED profile of Karl Friston, Dave and Michael talk about theories of everything, and theories thereof. [WIRED Article: https://www.wired.com/story/karl-friston-free-energy-principle-artificial-intelligence/ ]

Author Brian Christian talks about "Algorithms to Live By", and computing writ large, with Michael and Dave. [Cover photo by Michael Langan courtesy of Brian Christian]

Glen Weyl joins Michael and Dave to talk about democracy, mechanism design, quadratic finance, blockchain, and the RadicalXChange. [Image courtesy of Gley Weyl]

Democratic debates and Dave darkness raise the question of whether progress is even possible.

Intersubjectivity is what everybody is talking about.

David Jensen, Professor and Director of the Knowledge Discovery Laboratory at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, talks with Michael and Dave because of causality. [Cover image used by permission of David Jensen]

Michael and Dave discuss Rich Sutton's The Bitter Lesson and Rod Brook's A Better Lesson.

Michael is preparing an award lecture on computation while Dave, with the sniffles, tries to help.

Discussion of Dave's 2018 'Christmas Rant' about systems thinking. The video (12 min) The death of a Blepharisma

When people ask what programming language Michael uses, he basically has to say 'Graduate Students'.

Michael corners Dave-the-extreme-relativist on the meaning of neutrality.

Dave's new thing. Also, Allen Ginsberg, and fricken leximited.

Some professors think they're, like, funny.

Dave and Michael talk about achieving immortality by 'uploading' yourself into a computer. (Note: There's also this book.) [Episode thumbnail based on public domain image.]

God exists in a perfectly real sense that is sure to please almost no one.

Michael and Dave talk to Professor Richard Gerrig about the power and the computation and cognitive science of stories and narrative worlds. Watch out! There be monsters! [Title photograph courtesy of Richard Gerrig]

We are in the bronze age of the internet. [Title background image is a 2005-era partial internet map, created by Matt Britt using data from the OPTE project, licensed under CC-BY-2.5]

Michael talks to Professor Charles Isbell about computing education and topics ranging from Sebastian Thrun to whether computer science is a lame name. [Title photograph courtesy of Charles Isbell]

Discussing the immediate and ultimate causes of these latest horrible predictable computer vulnerabilities. But note that Dave the big expert confuses his facts at least twice: Austria is not Germany, and Heartbleed is not Shellshock. [Title image based on a public domain CPU image posted by bicanski]

From evolution to proxy fitness to generalized drugs and back again. [Title image combines a public domain CC0 book image plus a version of Ernst Haeckel's 'Tree of Life' drawing]

Dave finds out how Michael ended up doing two TEDx talks in a month and a half. [Title image using screengrabs from Michael's talks at TEDx Providence and TEDx Boston]

Professor and author Melanie Mitchell discusses artificial intelligence with Dave. [Title photograph courtesy of Melanie Mitchell]

The meaning of science, and engineering, and philosophy of science, and the ultimate physicality of all things including ideas. [Title image based on Chalkboard in empty classroom licensed under CC-BY-2.0 by Thomas Galvez.]

Emotions and reinforcement learning. Partly inspired by Eric Barker's recent discussion of emotional intelligence. [Title background image: Happy robot and sad robot created, and placed in the public domain, by Lola Kno.]

Randomness writ large. With discussion of Brendan Koerner's recent Wired article on hacking casino slot machines. [Title background image: A photograph of Las Vegas slot machines, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license by Yamaguchi先生]

So how doomed are we? [Title background image: An Atlas robot image, supplied as public information by DARPA, overlaid on a post-apocalyptic cityscape licensed under CC-BY-2.0 by Ty'Onah Gallman]

Let's just get this sorted out right now. [Title background image: The Elakala Falls in West Virginia, from Wikipedia ]

How Michael Littman and Dave Ackley met, in the 1980's. [Title image based on a street view from Oct 2016 (© 2017 Google) --- long after Bellcore had moved out --- of the 'Y building' in Morristown NJ, where Michael and Dave met.]

A forty second test clip