The simplest questions often have the most complex answers. The Philosopher's Zone is your guide through the strange thickets of logic, metaphysics and ethics.
…
continue reading
Content provided by Bruce Nielson and Peter Johansen, Bruce Nielson, and Peter Johansen. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Bruce Nielson and Peter Johansen, Bruce Nielson, and Peter Johansen or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://ppacc.player.fm/legal.
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…
continue reading
From June, 1962 through January, 1964, women in the city of Boston lived in fear of the infamous Strangler. Over those 19 months, he committed 13 known murders-crimes that included vicious sexual assaults and bizarre stagings of the victims' bodies. After the largest police investigation in Massachusetts history, handyman Albert DeSalvo confessed and went to prison. Despite DeSalvo's full confession and imprisonment, authorities would never put him on trial for the actual murders. And more t ...
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Episode 88: The Myth of the Objective
Manage episode 425561760 series 2853322
Content provided by Bruce Nielson and Peter Johansen, Bruce Nielson, and Peter Johansen. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Bruce Nielson and Peter Johansen, Bruce Nielson, and Peter Johansen or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://ppacc.player.fm/legal.
Here Bruce reflects on AI researcher Kenneth Stanley’s assertion that setting specific, measurable goals may actually hinder discovery and innovation, which he writes about in his book, Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective. How does Stanley’s insight relate to critical rationalism, education, and life in general?
We cover topics including:
- Why are objective sometimes misleading?
- When are objectives appropriate and when are they misleading?
- How did Stanley and his team discover the problems with objectives?
- How does this relate to the problem of open-endedness?
- How did he implement a program to explore alternatives? What was the result?
- What are implications for AI/AGI, scientific research, and education?
- How does these theories relate to Darwinian evolution and Popperian epistemology?
- Are natural selection and biological evolution the same thing?
- How important is 'selection' to knowledge creation?
Follow us on Twitter: https://x.com/bnielson01
107 episodes
Share
Manage episode 425561760 series 2853322
Content provided by Bruce Nielson and Peter Johansen, Bruce Nielson, and Peter Johansen. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Bruce Nielson and Peter Johansen, Bruce Nielson, and Peter Johansen or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://ppacc.player.fm/legal.
Here Bruce reflects on AI researcher Kenneth Stanley’s assertion that setting specific, measurable goals may actually hinder discovery and innovation, which he writes about in his book, Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective. How does Stanley’s insight relate to critical rationalism, education, and life in general?
We cover topics including:
- Why are objective sometimes misleading?
- When are objectives appropriate and when are they misleading?
- How did Stanley and his team discover the problems with objectives?
- How does this relate to the problem of open-endedness?
- How did he implement a program to explore alternatives? What was the result?
- What are implications for AI/AGI, scientific research, and education?
- How does these theories relate to Darwinian evolution and Popperian epistemology?
- Are natural selection and biological evolution the same thing?
- How important is 'selection' to knowledge creation?
Follow us on Twitter: https://x.com/bnielson01
107 episodes
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Similar to The Theory of Anything
The simplest questions often have the most complex answers. The Philosopher's Zone is your guide through the strange thickets of logic, metaphysics and ethics.
…
continue reading
David Edmonds (Uehiro Centre, Oxford University) and Nigel Warburton (freelance philosopher/writer) interview top philosophers on a wide range of topics. Two books based on the series have been published by Oxford University Press. We are currently self-funding - donations very welcome via our website http://www.philosophybites.com
…
continue reading
From June, 1962 through January, 1964, women in the city of Boston lived in fear of the infamous Strangler. Over those 19 months, he committed 13 known murders-crimes that included vicious sexual assaults and bizarre stagings of the victims' bodies. After the largest police investigation in Massachusetts history, handyman Albert DeSalvo confessed and went to prison. Despite DeSalvo's full confession and imprisonment, authorities would never put him on trial for the actual murders. And more t ...
…
continue reading
Imperfect Paradise is an award-winning weekly narrative podcast showcasing California stories with universal significance, hosted by Antonia Cereijido. Each deeply reported story is driven by characters who illuminate aspects of American identity and underscore California's reputation as a home for dreamers and schemers, its heartbreaking inequality, its varied and diverse communities, its unique combination of dense cities and wild places. New episodes premiere Wednesdays, with broadcasts o ...
…
continue reading
As She Rises brings together local poets and activists from throughout North America to depict the effects of climate change on their home and their people. Each episode carries the listener to a new place through a collection of voices, local recordings and soundscapes. Stories span from the Louisiana Bayou, to the tundras of Alaska to the drying bed of the Colorado River. Centering the voices of native women and women of color, As She Rises personalizes the elusive magnitude of climate cha ...
…
continue reading
Every house is haunted. In each episode of Family Ghosts, we investigate the true story behind a mysterious figure whose legend has followed a family for generations. Grandmothers who were secretly jewel smugglers, uncles who led double lives, siblings who vanished without a trace, and other ghostly characters who cast shadows over our lives in ways that might not be immediately obvious. We are all formed in part by our familial collections of secrets, intrigues, and myths. By engaging with ...
…
continue reading
Stephen Fry's 7 Deady Sins - I will take each one of the Seven Sins in turn, lay them out on the surgical table and poke, prod, pry and provoke in an attempt to try to anatomise and understand them; I hope and believe it will be, if nothing else, delicious fun and something of a change from the usual run of podcastery. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
…
continue reading
Peter Adamson, Professor of Philosophy at the LMU in Munich and at King's College London, takes listeners through the history of philosophy, "without any gaps". www.historyofphilosophy.net
…
continue reading
Rabbi Shalom Rosner on The Parsha
…
continue reading
Leading thinkers discuss the ideas shaping our lives – looking back at the news and making links between past and present. Broadcast as Free Thinking, Fridays at 9pm on BBC Radio 4. Presented by Matthew Sweet, Shahidha Bari and Anne McElvoy.
…
continue reading
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Go offline with the Player FM app!
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