Sean Carroll Episode Decoding Material
Added 2024-01-17 02:01:00 +0000 UTCThe next Decoding episode target is Sean Carroll and Matt has suggested a solo episode he did on AI.
Sean Carroll was Matt's suggestion partly because Sean might serve as a 'good' version of a modern secular guru. I (Chris( have not listened to much of his stuff so will be coming at the content quite fresh.
Any comments, recommendations, and suggestions for other content welcomed.
Comments
💯 If you casually assert several times that he was one of the central IDW figures at its peak, he might come on just to refute that point.
Kevin Nyberg
2024-01-23 17:15:43 +0000 UTCI hope Chris picks up on Sean going a little bit Kyle Reese 50 mins in: "Listen and understand! That Terminator is out there! It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop... ever, until you are dead!" Well, not quite that, but they don't have emotions!
Jonathan Southern
2024-01-22 15:24:03 +0000 UTCIs ChatGPT a p zombie?
Linda Sears
2024-01-19 13:44:54 +0000 UTCI've really enjoyed listening to Sean Carroll and am excited to hear your take on him. One thing that he did not address in the source material for his decoding that I am hoping you do is, if I knew that he wouldn't burn himself on the skillet does that make me an AI? Food for thought. Looking forward to this episode!
Thomas Steckbeck
2024-01-18 23:57:31 +0000 UTCThis was very disappointing to listen to. In the sense that I didn't find any guru-isms in his talk
Farah
2024-01-18 02:41:21 +0000 UTCI’m glad he referred to the fact that our embodied nature is key to our intelligence rather than dismissing it as a regretful hinderance. It is worrisome that large language models seem intelligent so people use them as if they have more understanding than they do.
Linda Sears
2024-01-18 00:33:02 +0000 UTCI agree with you that he probably knows more than he realises. I get a little lost in his AMA answers where he speaks in a matter-of-fact tone about stuff that I have zero understanding of (i.e., quantum field theory).
Aaron Holder
2024-01-18 00:00:49 +0000 UTCI am really looking forward to this episode as well. I have been listening to SC for a couple of years and think he’s great. I don’t get a sense that he’s a guru, which, if he was going to pose as such would be most noticeable in his monologues and AMAs. I re-listened to the AI episode and was impressed, again, by the cautious and carefully worded arguments he made. If he is a guru, I wish more were like him.
Aaron Holder
2024-01-17 23:57:30 +0000 UTCI just wanted to add that Sean sounds a lot to my ear like the actor James Woods, who played Hades in the Disney movie Hercules. It's fun to listen to him imagining Hades talking about AI, OOO, Possible Worlds theory, etc.
Ymirsdreams
2024-01-17 20:10:28 +0000 UTCIn his Solo episodes, Sean talks about very specific topics. One of the Gurometer dimensions is about applying an idea to everything (was that galaxy brainedness?) You won't get much data on that from a Solo episode. Maybe you can find some material where he's challenged by other people, like a panel discussion? Or a talk with a Q&A session? Here's an older debate about "God and Cosmology", for example. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0qKZqPy9T8 A recent one "Is Consciousness Fundamental?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCPCyri1rXU Another older one "The Nature of Reality: A Dialogue Between a Buddhist Scholar and a Theoretical Physicist" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLbSlC0Pucw Haven't watched any of these, so I don't know how insightful they are. Alternatively, or additionally, you could listen to one of his AMA episodes (don't pick the longest ones ;-) The questions are from his Patreon supporters and cover a wide range of topics. But it's still filtered, because he picks the questions he's going to answer. One of his criteria is whether he thinks he can answer something interesting.
Roland Weber
2024-01-17 18:01:09 +0000 UTCI'm listening to this week's episode of Mindscape right now 😄 If you want to go for a new DTG length record, decode his Crisis in Physics solo episode... 😈 https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/07/31/245-solo-the-crisis-in-physics/
Roland Weber
2024-01-17 16:49:06 +0000 UTCI get your pain, Eric. My scientific/math abilities are lacking as well.
Linda Sears
2024-01-17 14:53:58 +0000 UTCI look forward to this. I don’t have a physicist brain, sadly, but I still got a lot from reading Carroll’s Big Picture. I appreciated that he distinguished between what happens at the quantum level from how we think about human concepts like morality. I believe he said something to the effect that it isn’t very helpful to deal with questions of meaning by explaining them as reducible to quantum mechanics even though that is ultimately true. He referred to the subatomic particle level as microscopic and our human level as emergent or macroscopic. I also thought learning about the arrow of time and entropy was pretty cool.
Linda Sears
2024-01-17 13:17:11 +0000 UTChttps://drive.google.com/file/d/1YgO9eszSnyuRpuInAni9uny6LdJYBGyl/view?usp=sharing When has Gurudoo diligence ever failed us? 🙂
Anne Stephens
2024-01-17 12:51:44 +0000 UTCI believe Chris will like Sean Carroll. It might not come up in this content, but Sean’s position on consciousness is very similar to Chris’s This episode might not be representative of him at peak guru. To the extent that he has galaxy-brained takes, it’s when he’s talking about emergence and the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics
Erik Fast
2024-01-17 06:24:01 +0000 UTCthese comments are all way too positive. I therefore can confidently conclude that Sean has a lot to hide
Farah
2024-01-17 05:34:56 +0000 UTCDamnit, damnit. damnit, I saw the email out of the corner of my eye and thought it said Sean CONNERY! I didn't know how that was going to go but it seemed like it could be an incredible ride. Anyway I like Sean Carroll. He does plug his book a lot, that is supposedly for people like me who have a decent understanding of Algebra wherein he breaks down the math of Physics, however it left me feeling stupid (which I might very well be) and I think he probably just knows so much more than he realizes and forgets that others don't. I couldn't wrap my head around it much and so I felt disappointed. Love his podcast though.
Eric Stern
2024-01-17 03:56:23 +0000 UTCSean Carroll is great. I love the Mindscape podcast. He saw right through the ‘IDW’ straight away. He addressed it in this podcast: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2019/07/01/episode-53-solo-on-morality-and-rationality/ Timestamp: 0:58:12 This is from nearly 4 years ago and he was right on the money re Weinstein, Peterson, etc.
Ciaran Mullan
2024-01-17 03:41:53 +0000 UTCThis is great news! I've been listening to Sean for years and have a couple of his (audio) books. I ended up mildly obsessed with (at the punter level) cosmology and quantum mechanics after listening to Max Tegmark on a Sam Harris podcast (2015!). Got to Brian Greene and Sean not long after. I mainly listen to his cosmology/physics/philosophical content and skipped the AI one. Better study up!
Kit McLean
2024-01-17 03:24:31 +0000 UTCVery excited for this guys! Make this a long and rambling one. Requesting a 4 hour decoding.
chris barber
2024-01-17 02:54:48 +0000 UTCVery much looking forward to this. Sean Carroll is, in my opinion, always very down-to-Earth even as he is quite wide-ranging in his interests. He's someone who, from my experience, always flags up limitations on how much he is qualified to speak on a topic and from what I remember of this AI discussion he clearly points out that some of what he is saying is really only his impression. Nevertheless he made great points about how the specific AI he is talking about models language and not the world, and therefore should only really be seen as language-modellers and not saying something that goes beyond human intelligence (yet!). *POSSIBLE SPOILER* I once looked through some of his back catalogue to see if he had addressed Eric Weinstein's Geometric Unity, given that Sean Carroll is a theoretical physicist, and it turns out he did respond to a couple of people in various AMAs asking him to comment. His only comments were "I would like to tell you, but I have no idea what Geometric Unity is. LOL! *POSSIBLE SPOILER*
Robert Andrews
2024-01-17 02:21:36 +0000 UTCI've been listening to Sean Carroll more recently, and I was actually in the process of signing up for his patreon while watching the DTG reflections video just as Sean Carroll was suggested! I look forward to hearing what the boys think of him.
Jenson
2024-01-17 02:16:50 +0000 UTCMake sure you diss him a bit so you can bait him into coming on for a right to reply
scottymfg
2024-01-17 02:16:05 +0000 UTCJust discovered Sean Carroll today! The synchronicity on this pod is fire brahhhh 🔥💥
SonicScrewWriter
2024-01-17 02:12:52 +0000 UTCI really enjoyed this episode of Sean's and have sent it to some of my friends who are a little too caught up in the AI craze. Curious what Chris and Matt's disagreements (if any) will be.
Ryan Goss
2024-01-17 02:07:33 +0000 UTCAwesome! Sean is great. Look forward to hearing how Chris can find issue with him somehow!
YellowDreams
2024-01-17 02:02:24 +0000 UTC
