Epistik: Recent Episodes
Epistik
Pause. Think aloud. Repeat. Epistemology + Ethics = Epistik
"Whoever questions you openly with genuine reason is loyal to you."
Thank you for listening!
Email: contact.epistik@gmail.com Twitter: @prefixiffus
TIMESTAMPS
- 2:35 Natural Scientists vs. Social Scientists in Complexity Science
- 8:29 Alex’ paper about elections
- 27:00 Professor Friston’s work in relation to Complexity Science
- 36:13 Can data be to weak to be useful?
- 40:35 Complexity Science in relation to philosophy and empiricism vs. rationality
- 46:29 What is the hardest thing in your work?
- 55:38 Successful people in academia
- 1:02:00 Circles & Loops
- 1:05:00 Measuring success
- 1:10:30 Are religions circular?
- 1:17:09 Language compression and emotion transfer devices
- 1:21:00 Meta-talk
- 1:24:29 Why is it hard to talk about ”deep things”?
- 1:28:22 The nature of learning
- 1:31:30 Memory
- 1:36:50 A subagent in our embodied cognition that is ”higher” than us?
- 1:49:11 What advice do you have for younger students?
Intrested in CS? Award-winning intro to Complexity Science by Alex: https://www.hindawi.com/journals/complexity/2020/6105872/
Mentioned resources:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions (Note from Alex: It seems less original now than at the time it was written)
- The Master and His Emmissary by Iain McGilchrist
- Another book recommended by Alex: I and Thou by Martin Buber (he recommends the translation by Smith)
- The review article in Nature Physics: https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.11489
Regarding proxies to internal goals, I’d recommend the following Medium article: https://adamahm.medium.com/data-linkage-visualization-for-assisting-policy-makers-d4ba40715693x
Give Epistik a follow and fill the following form: https://forms.gle/MSZwUEFm1kzMTuia6
TIMESTAMPS:
- 6:15 Is the reduction of uncertainty in the Free Energy Principle more compareable with Occam’s razor or simple deterministic laws?
- 18:03 Tautologies and compression of information.
- 30:00 Free will
- 37:48 Where does the first prior probability distribution come from? Do you believe in revelation?
- 49:20 How can we describe parameters of epistemic foraging in terms of the Free Energy Principle and Philosophy?
- 1:04:15 Practical applications of Friston’s work in relation to policy-making in the corporate world and the public sector.
- 1:16:10 Should people aspiring to work in Public Admin study maths?
Links to Prof. Friston’s previous pertinent appearances:
- TOE Podcast: https://youtu.be/2v7LBABwZKA (good for getting an elementary understanding of the Free Energy Principle and it's applications)
- Lex Fridman Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwzuibY5kUs&t=688s (a fun conversation)
- Dartmouth's CCN Workshop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1hEc6vay_k (good for stats-people)
- ML Streettalk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkR24ieh5Ow (good for ML-people)
- Serious Science: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW0JnjgCO3o&t=520s (about a slightly separate area: Embodied Cognition)
Give Epistik a follow! Suggest ideas here: https://forms.gle/MSZwUEFm1kzMTuia6
TIMESTAMPS:
- 23:39 Subagents in our heads.
- 35:00 What can we learn from how we perceive people we encounter on the street?
- 42:26 The Game of Life in relation to RL and MDPs.
- 58:35 Summarizing question
TIMESTAMPS
- 13:00 Computer scientist vs social scientists
- 17:50 Is quantification effective?
- 24:00 Why did you choose to work with CSS?
- 49:00 NLP & Marketing
- 54:10 NLP vs regression
- 57:20 What kind of variable would you like to maximize?
Dr. Garimella’s website and GitHub: https://users.ics.aalto.fi/kiran/ https://github.com/gvrkiran
Sorry for bad audio from my side.
TIMESTAMPS
- 2:00 How do you choose which books to read?
- 4:00 Random decision-making
- 8:00 The potential of a emotion transfer device
- 18:30 The leap of faith
- 25:27 Who are the genuine atheists?
- 28:00 Links between dualism vs non-dualism and idealism vs materialism
- 35:58 Infinite vs finite games in the evolution of religions
- 39:50 Objectivity in contrast to the personification of God
- 43:00 Virtue ethics and tautologies
- 46:10 Turning infinite into finite games – from the micro-level to the macro-level
- 49:21 What percentage of the world population do you think that people would accept and abide by a coherent and somewhat fair axiomatic system?
- 50:43 Is there any variable that you can pinpoint and say that you want to maximize or minimize in life?
- 1:00:55 When do you think that Hegelian dialectical logic is better than using statistical inference in psychology?
- 1:05:57 The impact of instantaneous emotions
- 1:10:00 ”Chicken and egg”-problems, tautologies, and circular systems
- 1:14:40 What social science subject would you recommend for engineers or scientists?
Professor Gozli’s…
YT-channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6XWPTuBcXjkPoeP_MGCjug
Website: dgozli.com
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/dgozli
- 4:26 What did you learn from Prof. Collin Camerer
- 10:10 Neuroeconomics vs Metabolomics
- 14:07 Defining wellbeing
- 15:30 A proxy for wellbeing
- 20:00 The theory of reflexivity and the delta between money and value
- 25:33 Hedonic recalibration/calibration
- 28:08 Can our projection of wellbeing be 100% epistemically correct?
- 31:35 Is computational power or lack of information the primarily limiting factor in deriving a path to wellbeing?
- 46:15 Do we have a tendency to turn infinite games into finite games?
- 57:50 Simple stats vs sophisticated maths
- 1:17:20 Can one force oneself to like any smell?
- 1:19:25 “When we have to cooperate but don’t have the same purpose of goals, we make transactions.”
Dr. Bose's website: https://sites.google.com/view/devdeeptabose
TIMESTAMPS
- 8:00 Hegelian dialectical logic vs. statistical inference in Psychology.
- 13:45 Problems with defining wellbeing.
- 23:30 Data gathering
- 31:10 Subconscious hard-limiter.
- 40:00 Behavioral Scientists' impact in society
- 53:00 Paternalism v libertarianism.
Links to Professor Krpan's social media:
- Google Scholar
TIMESTAMPS
- 20:25 Comp. Neuroscience & Public Policy
- 31:50 Comparing brains with computers.
- 38:00 When should we note something down?
- 52:40 Does logic have to be mathematical?
- 1:02:10 Why is it so important for us that some other consciousness has registered our acts/experience?
William's podcast: akademiskasmadad.se
TIMESTAMPS
- 27:20 Could you explain your research project at the Stockholm School of Economics?
- 32:50 The balance between using computers and brains
- 40:00 Could we have a subconscious hard limiter that prevents us from having it ”too good”?
- 43:00 Do you think that doctors have a place in management consulting?
- 57:29 How vulnerable is Swedens healthcare?
TIMESTAMPTS:
- 3:56 What insights from your research has surprised you the most?
- 8:35 Advice to researchers when it comes to international collaboration?
- 17:45 Data linking
- 21:35 Finding the balance between finding new ideas and focusing on ongoing projects.
Sorry for bad audio quality.
TIMESTAMPS
- 0:20 Are the laws of logic a priori or a posteriori?
- 7:55 Ideas in applied mathematics
- 27:50 Why did you choose to work with automated theorem proving?
- 43:50 An argument for theism and deism
- 1:06:44 Can automated theorem proving be applied in the field of philosophy?
- 1:24:10 Our emotional states, wellbeing, and rationality
TIMESTAMPS
- 7:40 Normative ethics and public policy
- 14:40 The definition of wellbeing.
- 24:07 Social Anthropologists vs Comp. Social Scientists in Public Policy
- 39:30 Hedonic wellbeing vs eudaimonic wellbeing.
- 51:25 How can engineers get into policy?
TIMESTAMPS
3:00 The definition of health
22:30 Qualitative analysis in Psychoneuroimmunology
33:45 Alternative medicine.
39:20 What are your views on the explanatory gap?
53:30 Are the faith problems that western health workers experience in the third world due to problems in allopathic medicine?
Website: Epistik.wordpress.com
TIMESTAMPS:
- 0:27 Insights from working with Donald Ingber.
- 6:00 What motivates researchers?
- 19:00 Regulations in research
- 33:12 Measuring success in the public sector.
- 36:15 Researchers and collaboration with the wider society.
- 42:55 How do you define learning something new?
TIMESTAMPS
- 00:10 Why did you study medicine?
- 3:43 How suitable does the medical program make you for research?
- 13:12 How has the student experience changed since you studied in med school?
- 21:35 Multidisciplinary vs. focused education.
- 27:53 Materialsim vs. Idealism in regards to the peace in Sweden.
- 31:37 For how long will the world be able to sustain its standard of living?
- 37:25 Should business grads make all the money from the work of researchers?
- 40:11 Philosophical incentives in research.
- 47:00 What are the biggest obstacles for researchers?
- 52:32 How should researchers collaborate with the public sector, e.g. the EU?
- 56:34 Limiting effects of computing power.
- 58:25 Where do you draw the line between when quantitative and qualitative analysis is more efficient?
- 1:00:00 What questions can simulations answer?
- 1:04:35 Potential of open access data analysis.
- 1:08:24 Can we unbelief something?
- 1:09:45 Is there some common denominator in what we are striving for?
- 1:14:21 What is your objective in life?
TIMESTAMPS
- 6:12 Kantian ethics
- 20:38 Communication
- 33:10 Is it important for society to learn history as a school subject?
- 44:30 The negative form of the ”Golden rule”
- 1:33:00 Why do people want to have children?
- 1:53:15 Would you go on a vacation If you would know that you would forget about it after getting back?
- 2:00:00 Goal in life
Pre Scriptum: Audio quality improves after around 10 mins.
TIMESTAMPS:
- 0:17 How are philosophy and psychology interlinked?
- 4:00 Why is it so hard for researches to resist the ”Philosopause”?
- 14:50 Is it more important for a model to be closer to the truth as opposed to effective?
- 19:50 Can we simulate how we would behave in different circumstances?
- 35:20 Can the feeling of making the ”right” decision correlate with any bioinformatics data?
- 53:40 What does it mean to learn something new?
- 1:00:00 Why are so many undergrads nihilists or absurdists?
- 1:02:15 Philosophical values across cultures.
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Email: contact.epistik@gmail.com
TIMESTAMPS:
- 00:13 The we-feeling in Sweden
- 9:15 Is the role of the law to deter or cure?
- 10:35 Is it impossible to avoid contradictions in law?
- 16:35 What is the role of the government?
- 23:40 What would you do in an enclosed field?
- 37:30 Idealism in law school.
- 1:22:00 Is law logical?
- 1:35:00 Nuclear war & WW3
- 2:08:04 Objective in life