TagJohn von Neumann
How Eccentric Mathematician Kurt Gödel Opened the World
Science writer: As often happens, few people understood the significance of what had just happened. The one exception was John von Neumann.Albert Einstein, Jogalekar tells us, considered it a privilege to walk home with Gödel every day. Why?: In an exceptionally elegant essay, science writer Ashutosh Jogalekar (no stranger to controversy) talks about the huge difference Kurt Gödel (1906–1978) made by eliminating the idea that some single, simple explanation would put an end to all questioning about the nature of the universe in favor of some simple materialism. In a review of Stephen Budiansky’s biography of Gödel, Journey to the Edge of Reason (Harvard 2021), Jogalekar explains how Gödel dashed such hopes: In September 1930, a big conference was going to be organized in Königsberg. German mathematics had been harmed because of Germany’s instigation of the Great War, and Hilbert’s decency Read More ›
Can Quantum Mechanics Help Decipher Consciousness? Free Will?
Nobel laureate Roger Penrose, among others, looked to the quantum world for modelsIn Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks’s second podcast with philosopher Angus Menuge, the big topic is the perennial “Hard Problem of consciousness and various proposed solutions. One of the questions that often comes up is quantum consciousness. Earlier, they had discussed Integrated Information Theory (IIT) and panpsychism. But now, what about recent Nobelist Roger Penrose’s approach: quantum consciousness? https://episodes.castos.com/mindmatters/Mind-Matters-134-Angus-Menuge.mp3 This portion begins at 18:22 min. A partial transcript, Show Notes, and Additional Resources follow. Robert J. Marks (pictured): Okay. Another model of consciousness of which I am aware is so-called quantum consciousness. I’m really interested in this because reading the works of Roger Penrose, he maintains that humans can do non-algorithmic things. And he looked around at the Read More ›
Artificial Intelligence Gaming the Stock Market
What are some assumptions about artificial intelligence? How does artificial intelligence affect the stock market? George Gilder and Robert J. Marks discuss assumptions about artificial intelligence, the stock market, and George Gilder’s new book Gaming AI: Why AI Can’t Think but Can Transform Jobs (which you can get for free here). Show Notes Additional Resources
Why AI Geniuses Think They Can Create True Thinking Machines
Early on, it seemed like a string of unbroken successes …In George Gilder’s telling, the story goes back to Bletchley Park, where British codebreakers broke the “unbreakable” Nazi ciphers. In Gaming AI, the tech philosopher and futurist traces the modern concept of a machine that really thinks for itself back to its earliest known beginnings. Free for download, his concise book also explains why the programmers were bound to fail in their quest for the supermachine. But let’s start with why they thought—and many today still think— it could work. Success emboldened the pioneers to dream of a final AI triumph They had every reason to be emboldened by success. Special computers called “bombes,” created by Alan Turing’s team, broke every version of the famous Enigma code used by the Read More ›
Does AI Really “Get” Poker? Why That Matters.
Science journalist Maria Konnikova, also a professional poker player, explores the human side of poker and efforts to automate itMaria Konnikova (left), a science journalist who quit a good gig to become a poker player, learned a a good deal about the human side of the game and about AI programmers’ efforts at automating it. Along the way, she won money and wrote a book, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win (June 2020). In an excerpt at Wired, she reflects on the fact that computer pioneer John von Neumann (1903–1957) was a poker player and “Not just a poker player, but someone for whom poker inspired brilliant insights into human decisionmaking, someone who considered it the ultimate game for approximating the strategic challenges of life.” Poker is a game of skill but Read More ›
Election Models: Predicting the Past is Easy — and Useless
You can seldom see where you are going by looking in a rear-view mirror