What, Why & How do we Know ?
This Karl Friston interview is long and wandering (almost 4 hours!) and a bit distorted by the somewhat affected (?) naïve “Theory of Everything” – everything including the kitchen sink – agenda of interviewer Curt Jaimungal, but anyway … some very rough mental notes: Deflationary view – hooray. The very point. Using / understanding general … Continue reading “Long Friston Interview”
Just a quick diary of my 4 days at the IAI “How the Light Gets In” festival in Hay-on-Wye 2 to 5 June 2022, from a logistical & meta perspective first, before I get down to any people and significant content. Being also the Jubilee holiday, the main car-park in Hay was free so I … Continue reading “HTLGI2022@Hay – Mostly Meta”
[Work in Progress – Draft will be edited without notification.] [Feedback appreciated on the “See / Refs” – where more are needed? Meantime all those indicated will be elaborated and worked into the text. And obviously on the intelligibility of the text so far. Drafting arose out of the “Three Essays” post, particularly “Algorithms for … Continue reading “Information Ontology of Mind and Body”
I’ve been racking my brains for a day or two as to how I came to be reading Sean Carroll’s 2016 “The Big Picture – On the Origins of Life, Meaning and the Universe Itself”, indeed how I came to buy it in the Spring of this year? I can’t read every book by every … Continue reading “Poetic Naturalism – Sean Carroll”
Preamble I’ve been following Chiara Marletto (and David Deutsch before her) for more than a decade as the idea of a “Universal Constructor” has become an even more generic concept than the “Universal Turing Machine”. A machine that can do arbitrarily creative stuff in the physical world as well as perform arbitrary information processing tasks. … Continue reading ““The Science of Can and Can’t””
Start the Week – Rationality in an Irrational Age – BBC Sounds Another fantastic edition. Well done @amolrajan – it really is possible to have intelligent dialogue on “tricky” subjects.@amiasrinivasan and @sapinker on sex between student and professor anyone? https://t.co/pzjjdUeCnE — What, Why & How do we know? (@psybertron) October 18, 2021 So as defined … Continue reading “Rationality According to Pinker”
One of many interviews with Chiara Marletto in connection with her book on Constructor Theory (“The Science of Can and Can’t” which I started but didn’t finish yet – here again after I did finish it), this one by Sean Carroll, who I consider to be one of the more grounded theoretical physicists and science … Continue reading “Quantum Theory is not Up to the Job”
I noted ten days ago I had acquired a copy of Chiara Marletto’s first foray into popular “trade” science literature “The Science of Can and Can’t” and noted at the time that I’d already been following her work and that of David Deutsch her mentor and collaborator for more than a decade. I’ve been putting-off … Continue reading “A Kite’s Eye View”