013 Balance of Error with Paul Thagard

Dr Paul Thagard is a Canadian cognitive scientist and philosopher of mind. He is the author of many interdisciplinary books, including, most recently, "Balance: How it Works and What it Means." In this conversation, KMO and Paul discuss:

• 03:32 – Balance, Paul's book of two parts
• 04:47 – The inner ear and its role in balance
• 06:50 – Comparing balance and scales
• 08:40 – Using metaphors, Scott Adams, and Sam Harris
• 15:52 – Toxic metaphors and AI monitoring live conversations
• 20:00 – How prevalent misinformation is
• 22:52 – Opinions on vaccination
• 23:28 – The notion of consensus reality
• 25:40 – The no-longer binary (strong/weak) nature of AI
• 30:48 – The vacuously eloquent linguistic models
• 34:32 – Panpsychism and its relation to neuroscience
• 37:38 – Neural representation of meaning
• 41:08 – Whether larger brains means more intelligence
• 45:22 – Cats vs Boston Dynamics robots and the generality of human skill
• 47:26 - AI ethics
• 50:20 - Our future moral duties to suffering-capable AI entities

Host and guest:

• KMO: en.padverb.com/kmo | @Kayemmo
• Dr Paul Thagard: paulthagard.com

Links and references:

• Overpopulation on Mars - quoteinvestigator.com/2020/10/04/mars/
• Eliezer Yudkowsky – en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliezer_Yudkowsky