One of the most insightful interview of Deutsch i have come across. His refutation of some class of free will skepticism is new to me. Thank you Arjun for the quality of questions, your itws are always different.

@ericdenton9663

6 ай бұрын

David is indispensable in the world of creative thinkers and problem solvers; however, what he said regarding ‘free will’ and ‘the self’ wasn’t a knockdown refutation for either argument. He simply changed the subject, just like Daniel Dennett does on these topics. Saying that creativity gives one free will is simply adding indeterminacy to the picture. But indeterminacy doesn’t give one free will either.

Best new podcaster in the game 🫡

David is, and has been, captain of my dream team for over a decade. I can’t wait to listen to this and learn about who you are Arjun.

@EmperorsNewWardrobe

5 ай бұрын

Who are the others on this dream team and why?

@ArtworkAnon

5 ай бұрын

@@EmperorsNewWardrobe this would take awhile to write up. I have a bunch of one inch portraits in black and white in a grid. I don’t have the team recorded in text. They are people that helped me understand the world. David is first cause of all the banger frames in the beginning of infinity.

@fightfamilybuffalo

5 ай бұрын

Balaji Sirnivasan, Naval Ravikant, Lex Fridman

David thnx for frequenting podcasts, I as among others are learning so much from each one.

heard it on my walk today, LOVED IT! there is so much value in this conversation, great work.

Great conversation, I wish it had been longer, I could listen to David all day long 😁 Great questions Arjun !

Great conversation, thanks Arjun!

Grateful for the podcast!

Great interview! Keep up the good work and do bring David on again soon!

Thank you Arjun for making this happen! 🙏

These pause cuts spare my life time and don't let me bored. Great interview!

Thanks so much for the interview, really great

Thanks a lot! Wonderful conversation

Very interesting interview - well done to Arjun for some great questions!

Great Interview! Thanks!

props to you my friend! great questions!!

If you're interested in taking the Free Will discussion further, then recommend Robert Sapolsky. Robert's understanding of the brain and how the body works seems to be very relevant. BTW, novelty/creation appears in nature all the time independent of life and the human brain. I would like to hear distinctions made between free will and awareness/consciousness as these seem to be entangled and I don't recall that Sapolsky addressed.

@sebastiencomeau3520

4 ай бұрын

look for Bernado Kastrup too.

I fucking love these talks, and this one was especially enlightening. Giving me the philosophical tools I need to express things I've always understood as well as generate new ideas. Keep up the awesome work, Arjun!

Awesome!

Wishing you a long life and subscriptions.

@build_the_future_

Ай бұрын

cutely said hah

wow! great content

Ayn Rand said 'happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy.' I say reason is an integration of interest and detachment and happiness is a balancing of interest and detachment. An asymmetric relationship like cause and effect.

@PazLeBon

5 ай бұрын

its often contradictory anyway. my pets bring me daily joy but i might still struggle to find a vet bill at times :)

@frankrockefeller3038

5 ай бұрын

@@PazLeBon Love our pets! Glimpses of 'human' consciousness the more you care about them.

@PazLeBon

5 ай бұрын

@@frankrockefeller3038 oh dear, hope not, i was loving the very non human nature of them haha But absolutely, even our chickens etc have individual personalities

The foundational issue with education is purpose. Where this has been production of ruling, officer/managerial & servant/soldier/working classes, this has defined & constrained discussion of it. As the idea takes hold that AI necessarily must generally eliminate the need for the latter two classes, the Overton Window is now set to shift & bring this issue to the forefront. Any quest for truth is likely to be crowded out as technocrats & politicians game the situation & polarise opinions for their own ends.

I can change my mind so is that against free will

I love the work of David Deutsch and I am thrilled by he is talking about Free Will, but I am not sure if I get his point here. Would love if someone can put it in other (maybe easier;-)) words what David's view on the Free Will topic is. Thx in advance!

@sebastiencomeau3520

4 ай бұрын

He views Free will as knowledge creation, like the theory of relativity for example. In his view, it is impossible to predict creativity base on previous action, therefore it needs a better explanation simply then saying that A + B = C. For him, the answer is a kind of free will, that interject between A and B. I get his point but i'm incline to think like Bernado Kastrup and his theory of idealism on this, that free will is an illusion and that nature is using you to understand itself.

Dear Professor Deutsch, I fully agree with your notion of Free Will as a useful concept for human society, even though it is physically impossible. Yet, I need help to understand your view on creativity. If Einstein's ideas did not come from the Big Bang, where did they come from? This sounds like some kind of dualism to me. Following your idea, does it prevent AGI from being creative when its creativity is not encoded in its deterministic programming?

@build_the_future_

Ай бұрын

the whole point of it is about being non-deterministic- at the level of knowledge creation / epistemology ie

@build_the_future_

Ай бұрын

and that is in fact how and what knowledge grows- unpredictably but this also clearly means that a theory of knowledge (or at least 'creativity') within physics cannot perfect itself 💡

Really great interview! Thanks so much for sharing. Never tire of listening to David on any topic. Hope we will see David on the big USA podcasts like Joe Rogan, Lex Fridman and with Jordan Peterson soon! Also, another one with Sam Harris to revisit the issues discussed previously re AGI would be wonderful.

Woah you two look kinda similar!

@arjunkhemani

5 ай бұрын

🤔

Happiness, not “happeness”

Problem, reaction, solution -- the Hegelian dialectic. Mathematical problems lead to mathematical thinking or reflection (reaction) leads to mathematical solutions. The mathematical process of problem solving is based upon the Hegelian dialectic -- teleology. Thesis (problem) is dual to anti-thesis (reaction) creates the converging thesis or synthesis (solution) -- the time independent Hegelian dialectic. Understanding, explanation, communication requires language or duality! Making predictions to track targets, goals & objectives is a syntropic process -- teleological. Prediction markets have goals to maximize profit -- teleological. Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics! Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy). Syntax is dual to semantics -- languages. If mathematics is a language then it is dual. Explanation or understanding requires communication or languages hence duality. "Always two there are" -- Yoda.

@ephrin-ligand

3 ай бұрын

precondition to appearance - progress

@hyperduality2838

3 ай бұрын

@@ephrin-ligand Would you care to expand on this? "The art of progress is preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order" -- the duality of Alfred North Whitehead, mathematician. Change (variation) is dual to order (structure or the lack of change, repetition). Repetition is dual to variation -- music.

"it is clearly not true that someone's actions today are caused by the states of the universe yesterday." actually it's not clear at all. if wavefunction monism is true, then this is false. maybe the time-reversability of physical laws is just a theoretical artifact. it's an open question, like the non-locality of quantum mechanics. consensus closure on these questions is non-existent as if now. suppose that there is "real randomness" - no one ever clearly and coherently explicated what this would mean, i personally think it's unintelligible and thought-terminating - how would real random occurrences be "free" in a way that somehow vindicates some nonsensical concepts of personal responsibility or agency or will? i just don't see an argument here, only vibes-based mystery-mongering and anti-explanationism. but let's survey our options. whatever that exists is either; 1. *atomic* -deterministic -deterministic + random -just random 2. *non-atomic* -singular flux unfolding non-mechanistically, like some singular smear, one patterned, causeless unit of existence. wrt time reversability issue, well, yeah, maybe this is a block universe. okay, so the usual deterministic past-to-present-to-future chain of inferred causation may not hold, but then neither does david's mystifying and rather goofy free-will assertion. what free-will? or is he just asserting because he's already convinced that "inexplicit knowledge" is some highly trustworthy source of private revelation that tracks stance-independent matters of fact? i love his books and cognitive style, but sometimes he just doesn't make sense, which is ok, just don't make it seem like vibes-based word salad is not biased nonsense just because it's coming from david deutsch.

16:00 most of human history was wasted time in terms of creating knowledge

David Deutsch looks like Robert Carlyle having a really, really bad hair and face day.

Isnt that an oxymoron... parenting under anarchocapitalism

if the world is deterministic, it doesn't make sense to say there is any difference saying A happened because of B, or A happened because of C, that statement doesn't make any difference, because in such a world everything is connected and you are really saying C and B follows from A, A and B follows from C, A and C follows from B, everything follows from everything given their identities in the whole, so there is no actually difference in saying B follows from C and B follows from A. there is nothing incoherent about that, it is just coherent within the particular structure you are talking about. if you take many worlds instead, just add indexes to the elements discussed. Ai and Bi follows from Ci ect, now there are no novelties anyway you just have multiple outcomes that are determined. either there is uniqueness in choice or some expanding uniqueness in choice, if you are faced with a choice and versions of you pick every option, then every version is predetermined to do a certain thing, there is still no room for choice beyond the laws of physics, whatever notion of novelty is there is inherent in the workings of reality anyway. i don't see a way around that, and if you have one that would be a great to hear about concretely. i don't disagree that the experience of free will is real, i just don't think it is related to novelty or breaking the laws of physics i think it is related to a structured experience, and is in a sense not free but restrained to feel free, and in the limit the experience can be feeling as free as is possible to imagine even in principle. for example, if you where as close to an omniscient being as possible you would have your experience structured such that you would evaluate and understand choice in an almost unbounded way, you would be able to imagine all possible consequences and therefore choose to do something you would be most satisfied with later on, and that doesn't require novelty or breaking physical laws, all it requires is that the process that is determined from the eternal past involves evaluating all possible consequences correctly and acting upon the result of the reasoning in a perfect way. for example lets take an omniscient thermostat, a funny thought experiment because it is so ridiculously simple, if you built a thermostat with the knowledge of the entire history of temperatures it will experience, it is possible to build it in such a way that the action of its switches at the output is any function of time you like, the temperature goes up and down and yet the thermostat only blurts out lets say the data corresponding to a movie mp4 file, or better yet it blurts out in Morse code all movies that has ever been made in a great cycle in bit form. That is entirely possible in principle to do mechanically given a clock and having it coupled to the external temperature as long as you knew the function throughout time for the external temperature, letting the swings in temperature drive your system but having an entirely independent internal function decide what to output, in one sense independently of the input, but only because we knew what the input would be all along. it can only be fully independent of the external driving input by knowing it perfectly, a certain kind of limited omniscience is required. The analogy is not perfect with a mind but it is close enough, given a decent model of the world outside, one can map random or structured input into a determined but somewhat independent output, this is how the real notion of free will works in a deterministic world, it is not completely free, if is still fully determined externally, but is in such a configuration that lets say a person will reliably seek out and eat food when they have to or feel it is proper, it is also possible to modify our thermostat to not require our limited omniscience to produce to output data of our films, but then we either need the data from the films to output and take only inputs as driving influences we recover as usable energy or something, this would require a less time reversible process, or we can do it in the way i said where the whole thing can essentially be mechanical and thereby have to store the least about of information that could possibly produce the right outcome. the brain is a machine that takes inputs and maps them to outputs, somewhere between random thermal motion and completely structured responses that are predetermined and only driven by external influence, no matter how our parents treated us it is overwhelmingly likely that we will seek out food within 24 hours if we can, and no matter what happens to walk in front of us in the street, or no matter what happened microscopically at the big bang, we can be almost certain to do this given our current structure, ofc it isn't exact, but none of this is, we have to be somewhat dependent on the environment to react to it, we cant quite be like the thermostat, there has to be some dependence on whether you missed the green light on the way home in what you choose for dinner so to speak, but a brain with an experience of free will is a brain with a sophisticated internal space that seems to structure inputs and organize them such that outputs are structured in a comprehensible way, and the limits of expanding that idea are these experiences of perfect free will, but they are also completely self constraining, if you could evaluate and act perfectly you would certainly feel obliged to choose a certain path, I don't think that is related to novelty in the state of the world, but what kind of structure is determined to come into being. i hope that is somewhat comprehensible, it doesn't have to be not determined from the big bang or the eternal past for these features to manifest in experience as far as I can see. freedom from the laws of reality is a contradiction in terms, if it exists it is the law, so that doesn't make any sense at all, but freedom of kinds of experience within the laws is something different, and i don't think it has to do with novelty, it has to do with the kind of structure, and the kind of structure kind of is the laws of physics, it is not like it is merely subject to the laws.

@jgandia1207

6 ай бұрын

Can you expand on that?

@PazLeBon

5 ай бұрын

@@jgandia1207 we could introduce D :)

All Evils are due to lack of Knowledge💯

@PazLeBon

5 ай бұрын

or too much knowledge perhaps, most of us are hypocrits after all

@hyperduality2838

5 ай бұрын

Knowledge is dual! Synthetic a priori knowledge -- Immanuel Kant. Problem, reaction, solution -- the Hegelian dialectic. Mathematical problems lead to mathematical thinking or reflection (reaction) leads to mathematical solutions. The mathematical process of problem solving is based upon the Hegelian dialectic -- teleology. Thesis (problem) is dual to anti-thesis (reaction) creates the converging thesis or synthesis (solution) -- the time independent Hegelian dialectic. Understanding, explanation, communication requires language or duality! Making predictions to track targets, goals & objectives is a syntropic process -- teleological. Prediction markets have goals to maximize profit -- teleological. Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics! Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy). Syntax is dual to semantics -- languages. If mathematics is a language then it is dual. Explanation or understanding requires communication or languages hence duality. "Always two there are" -- Yoda.

@cbskwkdnslwhanznamdm2849

5 ай бұрын

The one thing I disagree with him on. Some evil is just evil, no other info

Taking Children Seriously haha. Trouble is they seem to still be children ar 25 with thier faces in phones and doing dances on tiktok over mundane trivial nonsense. How is one supposed to take that seriously? :) Tho I suppose that's based on us allowing anyone under 40 on social media in a previous step haha

@Mr.Goodkat

5 ай бұрын

For eon's people had the same derision and disdain at the very idea of taking women seriously, now it's taking neither women or men seriously until thousands of days have elapsed after their birth, which is even less healthy. I prefer the "treat other's how you'd like to be treated" rule for all instead of sectioning people into groups in your mind and arguing for each individual ones to now be treated according to that rule, like pulling teeth before moving onto the next group, the amount of unnecessary BS minorities have to go through before getting any respect because of this, it's not necessary or following the moral golden rule. You don't behave like a condescending asshat to young people for the same reasons you don't to anyone else, it's rude, bigoted and not doing unto other's how you'd like done unto you.

@ixvegardxi

Ай бұрын

You’re talking about the effects of previous causes. I.e. NOT taking children seriously