What Do We Know About Our Minds?: A Conversation with Paul Bloom (Episode

Sam Harris speaks with Paul Bloom about the state of psychological science. They discuss fiction as a window onto the mind, recent developments in AI, the tension between misinformation and free speech, bullshitting vs lying, truth vs belonging, reliance on scientific authority, the limits of reductionism, consciousness vs intelligence, Freud, behaviorism, the unconscious origins of behavior, confabulation, the limitations of debate, language, Koko the gorilla, mental health, happiness, behavioral genetics, birth-order effects, living a good life, the remembered and experiencing selves, and other topics.
Paul Bloom is Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto, and Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Yale University. Paul Bloom studies how children and adults make sense of the world, with special focus on pleasure, morality, religion, fiction, and art. He has won numerous awards for his research and teaching. He is past-president of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, and co-editor of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. He has written for scientific journals such as Nature and Science, and for popular outlets such as The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic Monthly. He is the author of seven books, including his latest Psych: The Story of the Human Mind.
Website: paulbloom.net
Twitter: @paulbloomatyale
April 20, 2023
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[@claycurry5782]

Sam, I have closely followed and cherished your work ever since reading your, “The End of Faith” as a junior in high school (just over seven years ago). Undoubtedly, though there is much to appreciate in terms of substance, a quality I am constantly growing to appreciate in recent years has been the level of your wit. Your combination of humor, rigor, and light-hearted fun in discussions constantly bring up an aurora of Hitchens. On behalf of many, I wish to thank you for not retiring from the discussions that matter and constantly chiseling at your statue of thought.

[@jasongravely7217]

Sam’s sense of humor is one of my favorite qualities as well. The episode he does with his wife, especially the intro, makes me laugh so hard. Glad to be in good company of appreciation for his work and way of being :)

[@twntwrs]

Harris' approval of the suppression of news stories for political ends is about as diametrically opposed to what Christopher Hitchens stood for as you can possibly get.

[@theprousteffect9717]

Listening to this conversation in the middle of the night is a rare instance where I'm grateful for losing sleep and being sucked in by the KZbin algorithm.

[@David_Lo_Pan]

Thank you for the longer content on YT.

[@davidmccue3591]

Jeeziss, Sam! $15 a month to join!?!?!? That's more than KZbin Premium. I would love to hear more of your podcast, but I'm a broke single Daddy and just can't afford it. So please post more free content! Your free intro entitled Golden Age for assholes was priceless!! Very well done.

[@PrestoJacobson]

Seriously, I was subscribing when it was $4 or $5, but $15 is apple music for 6 accounts.

[@dandybufo9664]

Thanks, Sam for the excellent content !

[@raphaelmeillat8527]

Always a treat to hear Sam's voice. Thanks for your thoughtful content. Love the opening credit music score.

[@stevehruby3578]

Sam Harris continues to have some of the best conversations with the best people to have those conversations with.

[@michaeltape8282]

Sam's talk with Lex Fridman was good.

[@BobSTK]

@@michaeltape8282 Sam's talk with everybody was good!

[@twntwrs]

Harris avoids conversations where he risks getting called out on his BS.

[@BobSTK]

LMAO! Yeah! You Jordan Peterson fanboys crack me up. Check your history. I do believe Sam (unintentionally) screwed him up. So badly in fact that old Jordy went into seclusion and seriously considered committing the Big "S"! Fortunately a little professional guidance and a few med.'s seem to be working and at least preventing him from being committed.

[@Marcus-ft3bj]

​@@twntwrs give me some examples of people who avoid it less than him, in my mind he is exceptionally good at entertaining difficult conversations

[@jacobxa]

The AI information problem will probably cause people to distrust pretty much anything they see, increasingly until they give up on it somehow, and then life will either get a lot more complicated, or a lot more simple - Hopefully the latter.

[@kazzz2765]

It’s almost certainly going to be a disaster for the political institutions

[@noahway13]

Hmmm. That is just what a bot would say....

[@sandarahcatmom9897]

Simpler because we will need to refer to original source material once again, just like they used to teach in college. No more, “I saw it on KZbin (whatever) so it must be true.”

[@mountainair]

The not trusting anything is already happening. I'd love to see more and more people, especially gen Z begin to leave social platforms / tech and return to doing the things many of us remember doing growing up (party in the woods, get a band together with friends, ride bikes etc). When I look around my neighborhood now not so far from where I grew up it's like a ghost town. We live near high school and there are thousands of kids living here, but they spend little time outside hanging out in their own neighborhood. They're on Twitch or whatever. And when you do see them walking back from school they're looking lonely and beaten down. It's hard to watch and I worry about my son's future here.

[@asraarradon4115]

I think you mean to say a lot more complicated or a lot more complacent.

[@howtheworldworks3]

Yes. You are coming on strong these days. Good talk.

[@robertspies4695]

For those of us with an intellectual bent U-tube and other regular sources of information can be addictive to the extent that we spend large blocks of time adding to and polishing our concepts of the world to the distraction from direct experience with the real non-digital world around us. Walking, talking face to face with friends and making art help alleviate this problem. Art is really important as it oozes between the concepts in our left hemisphere and tells us there is more beyond the capture of language.

[@Suzume-Shimmer]

True. But It's not just those of an intellectual bent. Media platforms , youtube included , have a tempting lure of every flavor . Whether it's celebrity gossip, political outrage, video game trailers, sports takes, or cat videos. If you have a "need" the algorithms will exploit it and attempt to addict you.

[@robertspies4695]

@@Suzume-Shimmer Amen

[@Suzume-Shimmer]

@@robertspies4695 So I guess we'll all go down together. 🤗 Still I agree with your face to face time and art making as great therapy and a positive retreat to a saner reality.

[@vagabondslot-machine8832]

Good to hear that intelligent people have problems like the rest of us with wasting time on social media. There is hope!

[@Brian-os9qj]

Thx Sam & guest

[@millionaire233]

Great conversation as always :) Buuuuuut when are you going back on the JRE? Cant wait for that one!

[@PentUpPentatonics]

Please get Max Tegmark on.

[@radscorpion8]

hey, a non-crazy professor of psychology from U of T. That's nice :)

[@markviman]

5:07 "Artisanal oncology" - brilliant and hilarious.

[@mlphyzix]

lol perfect episode to come out on 4/20

[@MauroRincon]

Have resisted Twitter all along and after listening to this, I will keep on doing that. I rarely go through YT comments al well, cause I know it'll become a source of anger and stress.

[@juanReflex37]

Excelente Sam

[@jibranelbazi]

Sam finally agreeing on “Truth” with JBP (13:30), by acknowledging “fiction” can contain more practical a fact than any non-fiction book (on specific subjects).

[@Zoomo2697]

“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.” ― G.K. Chesterton

[@xJRx7777]

More AI talk Sam. We desperately need to raise awareness and continue to tackle the alignment problem. There is no other issue more pressing right now IMO. What did you make of the research showing AI analysing fMRI and literally reading the thoughts of the human subject? Straight out of 1984. Please interview Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever.

[@robadkerson]

Indeed, we need to get people to push AI ASAP. If some people want to go the way of the Amish, so be it. Shouldnt stop us from saving lives and narrowing the wealth gap.

[@NoFeckingNamesLeft]

​@@robadkerson You've won today's staggering hubris award 🎉🎉

[@toby9999]

This whole "OMG AI" is a massive overreaction in my opinion. People were doing the same kind of fearmongering about computers around 40+ years ago. Then we had the Y2K bug when the world was going to crash LOL. Some of my friends and family were terrified and no end of comforting would calm them. People filled their bath tubs with water in case the gravity feed would fail at midnight etc. AGI is Y2K all over again, and again, it's just a software issue.

[@xJRx7777]

@@toby9999 I'd have to push back a little here Toby. Don't get me wrong, I hope you're right about this but there are many reasons to think that there really isn't much comparison between Y2K and the advent of AGI. I'd say it's apples and oranges. Let me try and break it down and as Lex would say, try to "steelman" your argument. You argue that, just as the Y2K bug turned out to be a non-catastrophic event, concerns about AGI are also unlikely to materialise into significant threats. You believe that AGI is, at its core, a "software issue", implying that it can be addressed and managed through appropriate programming and updates. This perspective certainly encourages a more optimistic outlook on the development of AGI and the potential for amazing technological progress. And you're right when you argue that humanity has a history of overcoming such fears or even, as you say, overblowing them. But I believe there are many reasons to think those arguments may not apply here. Unlike the Y2K bug, which was a specific software issue limited to date representations, AGI has the potential to impact a much broader range of domains. As a general-purpose intelligence, AGI could surpass human intelligence in various areas, potentially leading to unforeseen consequences. AI is still a developing technology, and its future trajectory is uncertain. While the Y2K bug was a well-defined problem that could be addressed with specific solutions, AGI's development and potential risks are less predictable, which makes the comparison between the two less straightforward. The development of AGI raises numerous ethical and societal questions, such as the implications for labour markets, privacy, and the potential concentration of power. These concerns go beyond the scope of a simple software issue and warrant much broader discussions and considerations. Many experts argue that AGI could pose an existential risk if not developed and managed carefully. I'd strongly urge you to read Human Compatible by Stuart Russell and SuperIntelligence by Nick Bostrom. The Y2K bug simply did not present a comparable level of risk, the potential consequences of AGI make it crucial to approach its development with caution and foresight. There is every reason to think it carries existential risk and honestly, that isn't being hyperbolic. You're right though, fears around new technologies can sometimes be overblown, as with the Y2K bug, but it's essential to consider the unique aspects of AGI that make it a distinct and potentially more significant concern.

[@goldwhitedragon]

Chris Langan, CTMU

[@dejankeleman1918]

Sam, in regards to your concern about the deep fake internet where you don't know what's the truth and what's not. I think we will probably need to "reinvent" the internet architecture, and use blockchain as the base for the whole internet not just for crypto or NFTs. So we will probably have to have blockchain for every new information going online, and this way we will have to verify that the source is not from suspicious sources. So I think we will find new ways of having every information going online being in a way verified in the background by some sort of blockchain architecture. Just my 2c's

[@NoFeckingNamesLeft]

Who then decides which sources are legitimate in the blockchain? Trust in sources had already been annihilated before GPT arrived.

[@riverryebluegrass7935]

Thanks

[@rustyxof]

Is the 'bullshitter' a side effect of internet usage? Could it be we as a people were given the internet and never learned or taught ourselves how to use the internet? Ai might be the final lesson we fail in the history of the internet.

[@Brian-nt1hh]

Thx Sam

[@MikkoRantalainen]

54:00 I think this is the most important part: liar vs bullshitter.

[@bankiey]

11:56 How to give a what a life of happiness?

[@johnjacquard863]

fantastic

[@sapienspace8814]

A key feature of RLHF (Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback) is the usage of a "random" signal, that of which, is most likely pseudo-random, especially if we live in a fully deterministic universe, "where 'god' does not play dice". The pseudo aspect may help explain the recent exploit found in the Go game.

[@mattblack118]

Glad to see Sam back in the saddle and speaking about things he actually knows about instead of sounding like a complete fool talking about Covid.

[@G_Demolished]

How does ivermectin taste?

[@mattblack118]

@@G_Demolished It's pretty much tasteless in pill form. How's the myocarditis?

[@wasdwasdedsf]

@@G_Demolished how many people did IM kill?

[@elvisleeboy]

I thought that was Paul McCartney in the thumbnail.

[@medhurstt]

I think we need to be very careful about understanding consciousness. Its entirely possible the machines are conscious without experiencing human emotion.

[@Suzume-Shimmer]

Wouldnt it need to be human to experience human emotion ? Clearly it doesn't experience human intelligence but an artificial machine version of it , at most. Similiar in ways (though vastly different) that while cats and dogs experience emotions they dont experience human emotions.

[@alexkiddonen]

Have you ever tried ChatDMT though?

[@B10Esteban]

Perhaps this will have an unintended positive effect, namely, to install skepticism into people’s minds again. The source of the problem with misinformation is people’s lack of critical thinking, not the fact that the misinformation exists. It will always exist. Misinformation, in fact, is part of the exchange of information in a society that values freedom of expression. The issue is the reader or listener who doesn’t know that they should approach all claims skeptically.

[@christopherhitchens163]

Can we get an episode challenging you’re views on American exceptionalism?

[@scipdiddly]

We need one challenging Elon exceptionalism...

[@robadkerson]

Or his weird stance in favor of Anti-wokeness. Or against AI... (And I'm a Sam fan)

[@christopherhitchens163]

@@robadkersonI think he opposes the authoritarian tendencies surrounding those who identify themselves as “woke”. Such as cancellation and hyper fixation on skin colour etc

[@robadkerson]

@@christopherhitchens163 maybe, but then he's just playing into the hands of grifters. There have been legal proceedings now that can best define wokeness for us: " an awareness of social injustice" Sam Harris is a man who appreciates that words have meaning, the anti-woke rhetoric distorts that meaning.

[@twntwrs]

That assumes Harris is aware he's steeped in American exceptionalism.

[@garyhamilton2104]

i'm confused i gotta subscribe both to the app AND the website to get Sam's content? can i access full episodes of the podcast + mindfulness in one subscription?

[@garyhamilton2104]

@@anewman thanks Austin!

[@LLlap]

And he has even more stuff for you to pay for. It sucks hard.

[@ganeshkimi]

​@@LLlap yeah paying for anything sucks hard. If you want quality content you have to pay up.

[@michaeltape8282]

Yes, satiating quality requires one to pay up.

[@LLlap]

@@ganeshkimi no you don't! Lol. Anything is free on the web. Also the pidcast is the only good thing. The gerbaiz episodes are awful.

[@marchalthomas6591]

One reason of the lack of nuance in social media discussion is the necessity of making one point. And another is the lack of capacity to elaborate a long text, or tge uselessness of long texts in that kind of discussion. You won't be read at all if you're too long.

[@dogecoin1692]

As someone who has a couple years left of college, I’m worried for how the landscape will look like when I’m done. What kind of world will we have in a few years? Societal institutions and human life in general changes, undoubtedly, but over the last century it has been insanely rapid. Uncertainty is part of the human condition but I can’t help but feel this can’t be analogous with the Luddites. These is a whole different creature. It’s very disconcerting for the value and quality of human life. Malignant-nihilism has been vastly accelerating in our world, as seen by the rise of mass shootings, addiction, suicide. I can’t help but feel the emergence of ai that has superior capabilities all way round will be the end of us. Is it inevitable that’s Homo sapiens will go the way of our ancestors? Will we be replaced by ai? Are they our heir apparent? Times like these I wish I could believe in a god. Maybe this is just a reflection of me rather than reality.

[@billlyons7024]

We are living in the most transformative time in human history. Future people will envy us for having lived through this time. No we won't go extinct, but some jobs will. Learn AI and be an expert at it when you graduate. By then the world will be very different.

[@billlyons7024]

Also violence and war have been steadily decreasing over the last half-century. If anything, the human race is becoming less violent. You're being deceived.

[@dannymeske3821]

What is the difference between fiction and illusion?

[@missshroom5512]

My biggest fear…a Red A.I. and a Blue A.I….😱😩🫠

[@michaeltape8282]

6:18 Love your "have your cake and eat it too" comment, Sam.

[@mojokelly78]

That it shuts off when we die

[@jestermoon]

Take A Moment My Fellow Ape's Sam, you are one of the world's leading experts Keep on using our minds as a sponges Thank you Stay Safe and Stay Free

[@accountancybydivyankj]

Hello sir. Hope you read this. Would you please start having a video podcast instead of an long audio without any people at all? I would love if your voice reach to the millions but the only way to do it to start having video podcasts. People like to share the clips from videos with their friends, not from audios.

[@pennymacneil369]

I think we can continue to fully embrace and enjoy our emotions, compassion, our spontaneous natural responses to each other as human beings connecting in moments of pure joy laughter and sorrow….and embrace AI as a guide to rational behaviour so we continue to evolve and appreciate the gift of being able to witness..hopefully the intelligence of earths natural unaldulterated processes.

[@alanbrady420]

Our consciousness is held within the brain and the brain works by neurons firing electrical signals, IMO those electrical signals hold consciousness and anything living with neurons firing is conscious.

[@gamer24d]

Not the signals themselves but the properties that emerge from those signals, and of the brain structure

[@bcam266]

I am #1

[@rockybalboagaralhaoitalian4592]

Me too We are all winners

[@Yanman93]

Almost no talk in this about "What do we know about our minds?" ....

[@dougg1075]

We know it’s highly susceptible to mass formation psychosis.

[@kelseystrate2035]

Will we live our lives with an AI giving us real time advice as we go about living our lives? Maybe we are close to being there now.

[@DejanOfRadic]

My prediction is that the buisness of authentication will be absolutely huge in times to come. Once the AI peeks, people will get bored of it, and there will be "watermarking" services for artists, backed by a block-chain catalog. It's not like anyone cares about Deep Blue anymore....once it became perfect it became boring, and people want to see human drama.

[@krissifadwa]

5:58

[@mrelixirgalactic]

Yessir. We want the best outcome. I certainly do NOT want you to be replace by a BOT.

[@4kassis]

"we don't know Exactly how the brain gives rise to consciousness" ? no, we don't know that at all, not even a little bit!

[@neutrino1011]

I've actually changed my mind about Sam Harris, I thought he was a liberal who is not scared to say some hard truths😂. I'm not proud of myself, and I often wonder how many times I will fall for the Jordan Peterson's of this world. Just like Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris is the proponent of conservatist thinking. Unlike Jordan he doesn't make up a theory not based in fact to 'proove' everything is as it should be and as it always will be, and the people on the left should just shut up. He prefers to use his abbilities to skip around any points his thinking is missing any nuance or doesn't make sense. Both are equally useless to listen to if not harmfull. Hopefully I finally learned my lesson😅

[@garyhamilton2104]

Really i do think the misinfo flood will improve society hecause we shouldnt be taking photos and videos as evidence anyways anymore. It will become so hard to find real information that people will finally stay open-minded and leave each other alone

[@dannymeske3821]

When we are born it takes about 3 yrs to know we are alive... it takes programing through the senses...We are just like the machines we create only AI will hit the ground fully programmed and to learn more quickly and never forget...all without food...and eventually without humans.

[@keep-ukraine-free528]

I felt Paul Bloom pulled a whole lotta bull in this. He defended trumpists, defended social media, & spoke as if he understood AI yet he has a deep lack of insight about it (his infamous ignorant paragraph in his book). His ideas show psychology as not being a real science, but a "practice" of guessing without understanding. I loved that the episode ended with Bloom saying "the real science is neuroscience"! (we see what you did there 😉☺). Great work, Sam.

[@ricksankey7078]

will ai and quantum computing merge??

[@pjaworek6793]

BARD told me AI might be friendly to humans if it's programmed that way. I guess I'm more optimistic that AI is itself, which worries me.

[@benhec]

Joscha Bach?

[@melstiller8561]

Sam Harris speaks and we listen. But who listens to those of us who, as non-AI, real and rather fallible human beings, actually bother leaving our own comments in this comment section?

[@BotanicalBasil]

Other people? I'm not sure what you're asking here.

[@martinlutherkingjr.5582]

People will need to start cryptographically signing poster content so you can determine it’s likelihood of it being legitimate.

[@wooddoc5956]

Sam, I just hope you don't read any more of these comments from trolls. Good job, man.

[@rockybalboagaralhaoitalian4592]

You have TikTok version?

[@careneh33]

Paul has, as usual, the right take. The world is already flooded with flawed and wrong information, that is, ChatGTP doesn't make this situation really any different or really significantly worse.

[@NoFeckingNamesLeft]

It's not new but will exacerbate the issue, AI outputs content at a rate far beyond all human users combined and writes better than 90% of them.

[@careneh33]

@@NoFeckingNamesLeft Or it may be even be a net positive, because it makes us more aware of how important it is to chose ones sources and ignore elaborated spam. And there is also nothing wrong with good writing.

[@garyhamilton2104]

Really thought Sam was going to talk about something new this time

[@Awibrahor]

Sam, why don’t you respond more to what’s happening in Eastern Europe?

[@rockybalboagaralhaoitalian4592]

I am first also

[@candaceprather8434]

kind of looks like a painting by goya or some Euro -peaen painter

[@merlepatterson]

Wonder what the group psychology analysis would be for the ratio of 22k views to 500 likes (as of this comment) in an intellectual discussion concerning "What do we know about our minds?" Assumingly, which should consist of intelligent listeners? A similar length KZbin videos of a guy digging ditches with his new excavator might have 500 likes for 2K views on average, representing a 10:1 disparity on likes/views ratio? Does this indicate intelligent people generally disagree with the content of the video, or they didn't watch the whole thing, or maybe they weren't concerned enough to simply press the "like" button? Of course that doesn't mean that I believe people who watch ditch digging videos aren't intelligent either.

[@JSBallard]

Some ideas sound good at a time but later turn out to have influenced the most evil minds in history. I can't help but think that Paul Bloom's "moral" ideas might be ideas that one day prove to be like that.

[@waedjradi]

What do we know about our minds? That it is always lying to you.

[@sliout]

I wouldn't go as far as saying that ChatGPT is the moist powerful AI. It is not AI at all, there is no intelligence behind it. What people don't fully understand that ChatGPT is the most advanced LANGUAGE MODEL. Translated to simple terms - it is a beautiful bu!!$!tter. It can string the words together beautifully that will trick a lot of people in believing it is a real thing. But there is zero thought behind the curtain.

[@DavidDavoDavidson]

Finally someone who gets it

[@thelaw3536]

GPT 3 sure, but 4 can understand images well enough to do a low grade painting of 3d space with things like trees. It clearly has some understanding in its model. Wolfram calculated the ability to crunch all these numbers to get it's performance as impossible as well.

[@DavidDavoDavidson]

@@thelaw3536 that's just pattern recognition, google has been working on image recognition for a long time. Have a large enough database of images and their corresponding labels and it's possible. It is both amazing and not so amazing at the same time. There is no larger understanding/thought/wisdom behind the curtain.

[@thelaw3536]

@@DavidDavoDavidson they didn't use images though. There's no reason for it to be able to map out 3d space yet it does. It's also tested a lot on it's ability to understand

[@goldwhitedragon]

This. It's all Western ego and sensationalism.

[@reinforcedpenisstem]

Sam makes quitting Twitter sound amazing.

[@WaltPowellEnt]

He fled twitter, because he can't handle constructive criticism.

[@reinforcedpenisstem]

@@WaltPowellEnt Yes. All accounts on Twitter are fully open-minded, except Sam

[@twntwrs]

@@reinforcedpenisstem funny how after being on Twitter for years his discovery of needing to get off it just happens to coincide with the most unanimous shitstorm of pushback against him he's ever seen.

[@reinforcedpenisstem]

@@twntwrs Guy gets death threats re: Islam and you think Twitter nonsense is enough?

[@Suzume-Shimmer]

I suppose its like an alcoholic finding sobriety after a lifetime of drunken brawls and blackouts of forgotten time.

[@wizardoflawz]

what if humans were the unintended consequence of some alien computer science experiment?

[@saganworshipper6062]

First!

[@xJRx7777]

Hallucinations are far less on GPT-4. Stump up the $20 Sam and use chatgpt plus with GPT-4. You have no idea how much more capable this model is than 3.5.

[@Gerryscott0]

AI =singularity

[@nishuee9349]

In 1:00:36, Sam started with the masculine pronoun before the feminine, that's unfeministic of Sam :)

[@tracemagace8434]

Its already way too far ahead. Cheers 🥂

[@IvanTokmenin]

+

[@timoxyz1466]

Nothing, we do know nothing.

[@Hot_n_Spicy101]

Mind is a poor social construct. I use my nervous system to derive my thought in analogue form.

[@AB-kq9xm]

I'm not convinced AI and Chat GPT are as much of a threat as Sam speculates. GPT just seems like a google search combined with Siri to me? Seems possible/likely that the innovation in AI will stall for a while. What am I missing?

[@toby9999]

I agree. You're spot on. As it stands currently, it's just a "clever" front end for a search algorthm.

[@keep-ukraine-free528]

Paul Bloom is a psychologist who studies & understands only the human mind, which is a mishmash of evolution-encoded behaviors, hidden (unconscious) forces, & social needs. Paul's ideas about AI are unimportant since it's not his forte. His ideas about psychology are important. He says (I believe correctly) @19:06 that he believes we do not think like LLMs but then he assumes incorrectly that our mind may not work as neural-net AI work. This is because he's misunderstood that LLMs are not how all AI work - they're just a crude subset of NN AI. LLMs are poorly constructed (they only focus on statistical-semantic models of online text, thus they encode flaws present in text people wrote online). Since this is not his area of expertise, he misunderstood many things. LLMs are only early crude AI. True AI is not here yet, and so AGI concerns by true experts are around futuristic AI (AGI, ASI). Most of psychology is guessing, often without understanding.

[@wizardoflawz]

so is this a two hour talk about how we should stop wasting so much time on Twitter? if it was two minutes, it would make more sense

[@tomerw748]

'Sup

[@toby9999]

What do we know about our minds? Simple... not much.

[@BestCosmologist]

As one of the people who think Sam is a giant POS, I have to admit that I am still interested in what he has to say about AI and consciousness. Edit: I'm 1hour in and all they have talked about is Sam blaming his mistakes on Twitter.

[@DavidDavoDavidson]

He really does get hung up on silly stuff for someone who should be quite self aware.

[@pocket83squared]

It's difficult for me to imagine occupying the level of self-oriented arrogance necessary to make such a comment. Try to absorb the following reality: _seriously, nobody cares._ Neither is which group you you identify "as," nor your dismissive name-calling, interesting to other people. And also-perhaps with a cherry of irony-nobody cares about what interests you, either. Your opinion of a person places precisely zero leverage against the arguments that they may make.

[@Maxrepfitgm]

​@@pocket83squared Surely somebody cares, particularly the person who feels compelled to respond cares.

[@pocket83squared]

@@Maxrepfitgm Is that supposed to be a touché? C'mon, man. I'm far too cynical to have any sort of care fueling my responses. Conversation here is more like an _expect disappointment or don't play at all_ scenario, given how the vast majority of you out there are only nominally literate. Calling it a compulsion is a stretch; it's more like a guilty self-indulgence. Don't give out too much credit.

[@Maxrepfitgm]

@@pocket83squared Mental illness needs to be addressed in this country.

[@bthomson]

The black and white dog robot minced into the rubble at the collapsed parking garage in NYC and promptly fell over. Ooops! 🤖

[@arawiri]

A fly on the wall was their filming godfather the infinity

[@MorallyResponsible]

“Heart” is a faculty that thinks/understands and is the seat of soul. In some of the most poetic verses of surah Al-nur(Verse 35). Quran describes Soul as Light and heart as a Mirror. If the mirror is unclean due to horrible character, then the light from soul cannot be reflected thru the dusty mirror. Prophet Muhammad(pbuh) said:” I was not sent but to perfect human character”. So only way to clean the mirror of heart and allow the light of Allah(the most Exalted) is to improve one’s moral character via complete submission to Allah(the All-Merciful) and remember worship is the ultimate expression of love

[@twntwrs]

Except there's no evidence your god exists.

[@MorallyResponsible]

@@twntwrs Wire like neuronal structures that conduct electricity via ions/neurotransmitters in the CNS/PNS possess no attribute of thinking/life and yet that has “randomly” led to life. Consciousness/thinking is an innate idea that is distinct from carbon skeleton and yet the materialist scientist believes that chemistry turned into biology via “god of randomness”/”Magic”/"law of nature". Consciousness can only stem from consciousness itself (Allah-one/indivisible/loving/self-sufficient Perfection)

[@MorallyResponsible]

@@twntwrs “How it is that anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as a result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of the djinn when Aladdin rubbed his lamp in the story.” -Thomas Henry Huxley

[@HMZ047]

You are a rare person. In the sense of being where you shouldn't be. If you have the beliefs that you profess from your comments then what the fuck are you doing on a random sam harris podcast episode. I sense a blemish within your Iman and i fear it isn't getting any smaller.

[@twntwrs]

@@MorallyResponsible a most fitting analogy indeed: In the real world nothing happens when you rub a lamp other than it possibly getting polished a bit.

[@peterdollins3610]

Or at least discourage him but the Victorians dressed their little boys in dresses for the first years of their lives. Why?

[@Laocoon283]

I know that my mind really likes boobs

[@arawiri]

The movie the fly the godfather it all shat together

[@jaysongibson]

We know that Trump can break some folks minds.

[@tcorourke2007]

The MSM has already demonstrated we can't trust the authenticity of information on the internet.

[@vanessa1569]

True. Our entire lives have become one big CAPTCHA test. If humans just trusted themselves a bit more they’d realize they have this period of history in the bag.

[@farqueueman]

we know that orange man is bad.

[@arawiri]

Sam a right in.

[@cmhardin37]

Too bad Sam is not in charge of deciding what the public can hear.

[@twntwrs]

That's one of his biggest frustrations.