Podcast
ToKCast
Hosted by Brett Hall · EN
This is a podcast largely about the work of David Deutsch and his books ”The Beginning of Infinity” and ”The Fabric of Reality”.
24episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Ep 244: Deep learning is not "inductive".
Aug 2200:22:35Tap to summarizeWe are told by people working in the field, researchers and those who publish academic papers on the topic that artificial intelligence or deep learning or LLMs or Machine Learning or Recurrent Neural Networks - call them what you like - employ some form of inductive reasoning. But do they? What is inductive reasoning? What is deductive or adductive for that matter? Is "new physics" or other new science being discovered by the most recent and best chatbots or other "artificially intelligent" computer systems? My response to all that is contained herein. For images see: https://youtu.be/9Dimv7mOls4 For more information: https://www.bretthall.org/blog/induction
Transcribe →Ep 243: In praise of ignorance - the podcast. With Liberty Fitz-Claridge
Jul 21, 202501:36:22Tap to summarizeThis episode is a reading of and reflection upon more writing by David Deutsch - an article you can find at https://takingchildrenseriously.com/in-praise-of-ignorance/ Joining me is philosopher and language educator Liberty Fitz-Claridge. Liberty holds Master Degrees in both Philosophy and Applied Linguistics and English Language teaching, as well as a Bachelors in The Philosophy of Science. As well as teaching, Liberty runs the Popper-Deutsch Reading Group which can be found at www.meetup.com/popper-deutsch-reading-group/ In this conversation Liberty refers to the following articles: 1. Ioup, Georgette, Elizabeth Boustagui, Manal El Tigi, and Martha Moselle. “Reexamining the Critical Period Hypothesis: A Case Study of Successful Adult SLA in a Naturalistic Environment.” Studies in Second Language Acquisition 16, no. 1 (1994): 73–98. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0272263100012596. 2. Alsulaimani, Adil. (1990). Reading problems in Arab learners of English (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). London University, UK. 3. Randall, Mick and Meara, Paul. (1988). “How Arabs read Roman letters.” Reading in a Foreign Language, 4 (2): 133-145.
Transcribe →Ep 242: Is religion worth preserving?
Jul 11, 202500:17:36Tap to summarizeWoke is a rejection of the truth, the good, the beautiful. Is the best response a return to traditional religion? Are some dogmas worth defending?
Transcribe →Ep 241: AI 2027 Reaction Part 5: Summary and Conclusions
May 29, 202500:42:18Tap to summarizeA summary of some arguments made in the previous 4 parts, and a conclusion to my evaluation of https://ai-2027.com I refer to Daniel Kokotajlo's paper which contained an earlier set of predictions made in 2021 about the 5 years leading to 2026 which is found here https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6Xgy6CAf2jqHhynHL/what-2026-looks-like Note that Part 4 is here: https://youtu.be/C3jDjuSLBv0 Part 3 is here: https://youtu.be/7P-UlHiTins Part 2 is here: https://youtu.be/o3Rdj37UJjw Part 1 is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq_txKy-XMQ Credit to @drpeterboghossian for the inspiration, @NavalR for the support and @DavidDeutschPhysicist for many of the arguments made with errors, as always, my own.
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