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Biological evolution via natural selection is a simple idea that becomes enormously complicated in its realization. Populations of organisms are driven toward increased "fitness," a measure of how successfully we reproduce our genetic information. But fitness is a subtle concept, changing with time and environment and interactions with other organisms around us. We talk with biologist Brandon Ogbunu about the best mathematical and conceptual tools for thinking about the messy complexities of evolution, and how modern technology is changing our way of thinking about it.
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Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/11/18/296-brandon-ogbunu-on-fitness-seascapes-and-the-course-of-evolution/
Brandon Ogbunu received his Ph.D. in Genetics and Microbiology from Yale University. He is currently Assistant Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale, and External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. He has been awarded a Fullbright Fellowship and was the Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Professor at MIT. He has contributed to a number of publications, including Wired, Undark, and Quanta.
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Emergence is a centrally important concept in science and philosophy. Indeed, the existence of higher-level emergent properties helps render the world intelligible to us -- we can sensibly understand the macroscopic world around us without a complete microscopic picture. But there are various different ways in which emergence might happen, and a tendency for definitions of emergence to rely on vague or subjective criteria. Recently Achyuth Parola and I wrote a paper trying to clear up some of these issues: What Emergence Can Possibly Mean. In this solo podcast I discuss the way we suggest to think about emergence, with examples from physics and elsewhere.
Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/11/11/295-solo-emergence-and-layers-of-reality/
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Welcome to the November 2024 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Patreons, whittle them down to a more manageable number -- based primarily on whether I have anything interesting to say about them, not whether the questions themselves are good -- and sometimes group them together if they are about a similar topic. Enjoy!
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Blog post with AMA questions and transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/11/04/ama-november-2024/
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Erwin Schrödinger said that the important characteristic of life is that it "goes on doing something... for a much longer period than we would expect an inanimate piece of matter to keep going under similar circumstances." Living organisms are in constant motion inside; so where does this stability and persistence come from? Addy Pross points to a novel kind of chemical phenomenon -- "dynamic kinetic stability" (DKS), a feature that enables a chemical "fountain" to persist in the presence of an energy source. This suggests an interesting perspective on the question of life's origin, and perhaps on the origin of consciousness.
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Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/10/28/294-addy-pross-on-dynamics-stability-and-life/
Addy Pross received his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Sydney. He is currently Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at Ben-Gurion University. He has held visiting positions in the University of Lund, Stanford University, Rutgers University, University of California at Irvine, University of Padova, the Australian National University Canberra, and the University of Sydney. He is the author of What Is Life? How Chemistry Becomes Biology.
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A large economy is one of the best examples we have of complex dynamics. There are multiple components arranged in complicated overlapping hierarchies, out-of-equilibrium dynamics, nonlinear coupling and feedback between different levels, and ubiquitous unpredictable and chaotic behavior. Nevertheless, many economic models are based on relatively simple equilibrium principles. Doyne Farmer is among a group who think that economists need to start taking the tools of complexity theory seriously, as he argues in his recent book Making Sense of Chaos: A Better Economics for a Better World.
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Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/10/21/293-doyne-farmer-on-chaos-crashes-and-economic-complexity/
J. Doyne Farmer received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is currently Director of the Complexity Economics program and Baillie Gifford Professor of Complex Systems Science at the University of Oxford, External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, and Chief Scientist at Macrocosm. He was the founder of the Complex Systems Group in the Theoretical Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and co-founder of The Prediction Company.
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It's not immoral to kick a rock; it is immoral to kick a baby. At what point do we start saying that it is wrong to cause pain to something? This question has less to do with "consciousness" and more to do with "sentience" -- the ability to perceive feelings and sensations. Philosopher Jonathan Birch has embarked on a careful study of the meaning of sentience and how it can be identified in different kinds of organisms, as he discusses in his new open-access book The Edge of Sentience. This is an example of a question at the boundary of philosophy and biology with potentially important implications for real-world policies.
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Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/10/14/292-jonathan-birch-on-animal-sentience/
Jonathan Birch received his Ph.D. in the philosophy of science from the University of Cambridge. He is currently a Professor in the Department of Philosophy Logic and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He is one of the authors of the New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness, and has advised the British government on matters of animal cruelty and sentience.
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Welcome to the October 2024 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Patreons, whittle them down to a more manageable number -- based primarily on whether I have anything interesting to say about them, not whether the questions themselves are good -- and sometimes group them together if they are about a similar topic. Enjoy!
Support Mindscape on Patreon.
Blog post with questions and transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/10/07/ama-october-2024/
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Aging and death happen to the best of us, but there are increasing efforts to do something about it. That effort requires that we have some reasonable understanding of why aging happens, and what processes are involved. You will be unsurprised to learn that it's complicated. Venki Ramakrishnan, who won the Nobel Prize for his work on the ribosome, investigates what we know about aging in his book Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality. We talk about aging and death, and manage to get some thoughts in about ribosomes. Venki and many other great communicators will be speaking at New Scientist Live, which takes place at ExCeL London between 12 - 14 October 2024, and is also streamed live as well as on-demand.
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Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/09/30/291-venki-ramakrishnan-on-the-biology-of-death-and-aging/
Venkatraman (Venki) Ramakrishnan received his Ph.D. in physics from Ohio University. He is currently Group Leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, England, and is a Fellow of Trinity College. He previously served as President of the Royal Society of London. He shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work uncovering the structure of the ribosome.
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It's a wonder democracy works at all -- a collection of people with potentially different interests have to agree to abide by majority vote even when it goes against their desires. But as we know, it doesn't always work, and racial and ethnic tensions are one of its biggest challenges. Hahrie Han studies the ground-up workings of democracy, how people can come together to successfully enact change. In her new book Undivided: The Quest for Racial Solidarity in an American Church, she investigates an example where democracy apparently has worked remarkably well, and asks what lessons we can draw from it.
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Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/09/23/290-hahrie-han-on-making-multicultural-democracy-work/
Hahrie Han recieved her Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University. She is currently the Director of the SNF Agora Institute, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Professor of Political Science, and Faculty Director of the P3 Research Lab at Johns Hopkins University. She was named the Social Innovation Thought Leader of the Year by the World Economic Forum, is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and gave the 2024 Tanner Lectures on Human Values at Harvard University, among other awards.
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As an experimental facility, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva has been extraordinarily successful, discovering the Higgs boson and measuring multiple features of particle-physics interactions at unprecedented energies. But to theorists, the results have been somewhat frustrating, as we were hoping to find brand-new phenomena beyond the Standard Model. There is nothing to do but to keep looking, recognizing that we have to choose our methods judiciously. I talk with theoretical physicist Cari Cesarotti about what experimental results the modern particle physicist most looks forward to, and how we might eventually get there, especially through the prospect of a muon collider.
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Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/09/16/289-cari-cesarotti-on-the-next-generation-of-particle-experiments/
Cari Cesarotti received her Ph.D. in physics from Harvard University. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at MIT. Her research is on particle phenomenology theory, with an eye toward experimental searches. Among her awards are the Sakurai Dissertation Award in Theoretical Physics from the American Physical Society and the Young Scientist Award at the 14th International Conference on the Identification of Dark Matter.
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It wasn't that long ago, historically speaking, that you might put on your tuxedo or floor-length evening gown to go out and hear a live opera or symphony. But today's world is faster, more technologically connected, and casual. Is there still a place for classical music in the contemporary environment? Max Richter, whose new album In a Landscape releases soon, proves that there is. We talk about what goes into making modern classical music, how musical styles evolve, and why every note should count.
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Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/09/09/288-max-richter-on-the-meaning-of-classical-music-today/
Max Richter trained in composition and piano at Edinburgh University, at the Royal Academy of Music, and with Luciano Berio in Florence. He was a co-founder of the ensemble Piano Circus. His first solo album, "Memoryhouse," was released in 2002. He has since released numerous solo albums, as well as extensive work on soundtracks for film and television, ballet, opera, and collaborations with visual artists.
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Welcome to the September 2024 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Patreons, whittle them down to a more manageable number -- based primarily on whether I have anything interesting to say about them, not whether the questions themselves are good -- and sometimes group them together if they are about a similar topic. Enjoy!
Blog post with AMA questions and transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/09/02/ama-september-2024/
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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One common feature of complex systems is sensitive dependence on initial conditions: a small change in how systems begin evolving can lead to large differences in their later behavior. In the social sphere, this is a way of saying that history matters. But it can be hard to quantify how much certain specific historical events have affected contemporary conditions, because the number of variables is so large and their impacts are so interdependent. Political economist Jean-Paul Faguet and collaborators have examined one case where we can closely measure the impact today of events from centuries ago: how Colombian communities are still affected by 16th-century encomienda, a colonial forced-labor institution. We talk about this and other examples of the legacy of history.
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Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/08/26/287-jean-paul-faguet-on-institutions-and-the-legacy-of-history/
Jean-Paul Faguet received a Ph.D. in Political Economy and an M.Sc. in Economics from the London School of Economics, and an Master of Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. He is currently Professor of the Political Economy of Development at LSE. He serves as the Chair of the Decentralization Task Force for the Initiative for Policy Dialogue. Among his awards are the W.J.M. Mackenzie Prize for best political science book.
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Understanding how life began on Earth involves questions of chemistry, geology, planetary science, physics, and more. But the question of how random processes lead to organized, self-replicating, information-bearing systems is a more general one. That question can be addressed in an idealized world of computer code, initialized with random sequences and left to run. Starting with many such random systems, and allowing them to mutate and interact, will we end up with "lifelike," self-replicating programs? A new paper by Blaise Agüera y Arcas and collaborators suggests that the answer is yes. This raises interesting questions about whether computation is an attractor in the space of relevant dynamical processes, with implications for the origin and ubiquity of life.
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Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/08/19/286-blaise-aguera-y-arcas-on-the-emergence-of-replication-and-computation/
Blaise Agüera y Arcas received a B.A. in physics from Princeton University. He is currently a vice-president of engineering at Google, leader of the Cerebra team, and a member of the Paradigms of Intelligence team. He is the author of the books Ubi Sunt and Who Are We Now?, and the upcoming What Is Intelligence?
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Being rational necessarily involves engagement with probability. Given two possible courses of action, it can be rational to prefer the one that could possibly result in a worse outcome, if there's also a substantial probability for an even better outcome. But one's attitude toward risk -- averse, tolerant, or even seeking -- also matters. Do we work to avoid the worse possible outcome, even if there is potential for enormous reward? Nate Silver has long thought about probability and prediction, from sports to politics to professional poker. In his his new book On The Edge: The Art of Risking Everything, Silver examines a set of traits characterizing people who welcome risks.
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Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/08/12/285-nate-silver-on-prediction-risk-and-rationality/
Nate Silver received a B.A. in economics from the University of Chicago. He worked as a baseball analyst, developing the PECOTA statistical system (Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm). He later founded the FiveThirtyEight political polling analysis site. His first book, The Signal and the Noise, was awarded the Phi Beta Kappa Society Book Award in Science. He is the co-host (with Maria Konnikova) of the Risky Business podcast.
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Welcome to the August 2024 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Patreons, whittle them down to a more manageable number -- based primarily on whether I have anything interesting to say about them, not whether the questions themselves are good -- and sometimes group them together if they are about a similar topic. Enjoy!
Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/08/05/ama-august-2024/
Support Mindscape on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/seanmcarroll
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The human brain does a pretty amazing job of taking in a huge amount of data from multiple sensory modalities -- vision, hearing, smell, etc. -- and constructing a coherent picture of the world, constantly being updated in real time. (Although perhaps in discrete moments, rather than continuously, as we learn in this podcast...) We're a long way from completely understanding how that works, but amazing progress has been made in identifying specific parts of the brain with specific functions in this process. Today we talk to leading neuroscientist Doris Tsao about the specific workings of vision, from how we recognize faces to how we construct a model of the world around us.
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Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/07/29/284-doris-tsao-on-how-the-brain-turns-vision-into-the-world/
Doris Tsao received her Ph.D. in neurobiology from Harvard University. She is currently a professor of molecular and cell biology, and a member of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, at the University of California, Berkeley. Among her awards are a MacArthur Fellowship, membership in the National Academy of Sciences, the Eppendorf and Science International Prize in Neurobiology, the National Institutes of Health Director’s Pioneer Award, the Golden Brain Award from the Minerva Foundation, the Perl-UNC Neuroscience Prize, and the Kavli Prize in Neuroscience.
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Change is scary. But sometimes it can all work out for the best. There's no guarantee of that, however, even when the change in question involves the introduction of a powerful new technology. Today's guest, Daron Acemoglu, is a political economist who has long thought about the relationship between economics and political institutions. In his most recent book (with Simon Johnson), Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity, he looks at how technological innovations affect the economic lives of ordinary people. We talk about how such effects are often for the worse, at least to start out, until better institutions are able to eventually spread the benefits more broadly.
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Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/07/22/283-daron-acemoglu-on-technology-inequality-and-power/
Daron Acemoglu received a Ph.D. in economics from the London School of Economics. He is currently Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Econometric Society. Among his awards are the John Bates Clark Medal and the Nemmers Prize in Economics. In 2015, he was named the most cited economist of the past 10 years.
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The philosophy of mathematics would be so much easier if it weren't for infinity. The concept seems natural, but taking it seriously opens the door to counterintuitive results. As mathematician and philosopher Joel David Hamkins says in this conversation, when we say that the natural numbers are "0, 1, 2, 3, and so on," that "and so on" is hopelessly vague. We talk about different ways to think about the puzzles of infinity, how they might be resolved, and implications for mathematical realism.
Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/07/15/282-joel-david-hamkins-on-puzzles-of-reality-and-infinity/
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Joel David Hamkins received his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently the John Cardinal O'Hara Professor of Logic at the University of Notre Dame. He is a pioneer of the idea of the set theory multiverse. He is the top-rated user by reputation score on MathOverflow. He is currently working on The Book of Infinity, to be published by MIT Press.
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Welcome to the July 2024 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Patreons, whittle them down to a more manageable number -- based primarily on whether I have anything interesting to say about them, not whether the questions themselves are good -- and sometimes group them together if they are about a similar topic. Enjoy!
Blog post with questions and transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/07/08/ama-july-2024/
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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