Multidimensional thinker Eric Smith has a wide-ranging talk with Jim about the origins of life, monetary systems, language & sustainability. Eric starts by sharing how geochemistry informs the origin of life topic, the dynamics of autocatalytic processes, how little we know about biological systems & what this might tell us about the Fermi paradox. The conversation then goes into the importance of institutions & a dynamic perspective on monetary systems, the subprime mortgage crisis,...
Feb 10, 2020•1 hr 27 min•Season 1Ep. 40
Multi-talented thinker & creator John Koza & Jim start by talking about what led him to create secure lottery ticket tech early in his career. They then go on to talk about how he got interested in genetic algorithms, his pioneering work in genetic programming, how powerful it is, and some of its stand-out applications. Lastly, John tells Jim what led him to create the National Popular Vote bill, how it works, its current state support, how it addresses the prisoner’s dilemma, the role p...
Feb 03, 2020•1 hr 17 min•Season 1Ep. 39
Tristan Harris & Jim start by talking about how Tristan’s career & education in design ethics are informed by being a magician in his youth. They then go on to talk about his experience at the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab, the history of psychologically informed business, the power of personalized digital/AI targeting, how algorithms can radicalize us & erode societal trust, the game theory of an attention economy, the breakdown of sense-making, impacts of ad-supported business...
Jan 27, 2020•1 hr 35 min•Season 1Ep. 38
Meditator & thinker Jared Janes talks with Jim about why he still uses the word ‘spiritual’, altered states vs altered traits, the equation & dynamics of suffering, understanding our own intentions, the confabulating mind, embodied intuition, the value & limits of conceptuality, what the self is & its usefulness, attention & awareness, the pleasure of concentration, metaphysics, and more.
Jan 23, 2020•1 hr 27 min•Season 1Ep. 37
Hanzi Freinacht, political philosopher, historian, sociologist, & author has a wide-ranging talk with Jim that starts by exploring what postmodern views are, how many postmodernists there might be & how they act. They, then go on to cover effective values memes & how they arise/interact, the dynamics of the model of hierarchical complexity, societal code, the progression from modern to post-modern & metamodern perspectives, how code & cognitive complexity interact, whether po...
Jan 20, 2020•1 hr 37 min•Season 1Ep. 36
Internet pioneer Ken McCarthy talks with Jim about why & how he first got on the internet in 1993, what it was like to be in tech in the 90’s, the walled gardens of the early internet, the birth of email, Well.com, the pre-commercial internet, brand vs direct response advertising & how they made their way to the internet, Ken’s online businesses, the early days of AOL, the timeline of internet media, the state of podcasting today, understanding market potential & targeting, dangers o...
Jan 16, 2020•1 hr 27 min•Season 1Ep. 35
Joe Edelman, philosopher, social scientist & designer starts this conversation with Jim by talking about how meaningfulness is connected to values, social norms & ideological commitments. Then, they go on to talk about the pros & cons of pluralism & coherence in today’s digital world, why Joe coined the phrase/metric ‘time well spent’ & its influence so far, pros & cons of ad-supported tech & potential changes to existing models, the trend of more private social media...
Jan 13, 2020•1 hr 25 min•Season 1Ep. 34
Professor & Author Melanie Mitchell and Jim have a wide-ranging talk about her work in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI). They explore the differences between deep learning, symbolic techniques & hybrid systems, AI springs/winters & hype cycles, self-driving cars, strong (general) vs weak (narrow) intelligence, the black-box element of human & artificial intelligence, limitations of neural nets, the potential of evolutionary approaches to AI, embodied & social cogniti...
Jan 06, 2020•1 hr 21 min•Season 1Ep. 33
Author & Research Professor Jason Brennan talks with Jim about teaching in business school after studying philosophy, what a bleeding heart libertarian is, the ignorance & irrationality of voters, how well group identity predicts personal values, whether political engagement leads to rational politics, political discrimination, social signaling, epistocracy & other alternatives to democracy, what course evaluations actually measure in academia, grading inconsistencies & their uni...
Dec 30, 2019•1 hr 32 min•Season 1Ep. 32
Forrest Landry, philosopher, writer, researcher, scientist, engineer, craftsman, and teacher talks with Jim about his company (Magic-Flight), what motivates his work, how he defines ethics, metaphysics & its connection to realism, free will & choice, the nature of time, how he defines & utilizes meaning, value & purpose, interaction between complicated & complex systems, human/ecological sustainability, core dynamics of collective intelligence, the challenges of sense-making,...
Dec 16, 2019•1 hr 35 min•Season 1Ep. 31
Nora Bateson, award-winning filmmaker, writer, educator, and President of the International Bateson Institute talks with Jim about the work of the International Bateson Institute, her father (Gregory Bateson) & grandfather’s (William Bateson) academic histories & the impact they had on her work, complex systems, the dangers of mental monocropping, what it means to think transcontextually, cross-cultural collaboration & awareness, some of her observations on Swedish culture & the ...
Dec 09, 2019•1 hr 25 min•Season 1Ep. 30
Michael Mauboussin, Director of Research at BlueMountain Capital Management, Author, and Adjunct Professor at Columbia University talks with Jim about how he came to be the Chairman of the Board at the Santa Fe Institute, his perspective on investing & its challenges, the Colonel Blotto game, using variance & complexity in game theory, defining luck & skill and their relative importance in several domains, outcome bias, the importance of understanding sample size, intelligence quotie...
Dec 02, 2019•1 hr 28 min•Season 1Ep. 29
Author, founder & scientist Mark Burgess talks with Jim about why he made the switch from theoretical physics to computer science, the widely applicable skill set of physicists, what led him to create CFEngine, computer immunology, how he came up with Promise Theory & its connection to physics & network science, the relativity of systems, consistency in large-scale systems, what physics can teach computer science about uncertainty, the limits of Turing machines & deep learning, f...
Nov 25, 2019•1 hr 46 min•Season 1Ep. 28
Author Jamie Wheal talks with Jim about working with the Navy SEALs, what characterizes flow, intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation, the Eleusinian Mysteries, Plato, Aristotle & Pythagoras, soft-leadership & dynamic hierarchies, group flow, if courage & integrity can be taught & what that means for Game B, coherent pluralism, spiritual bypassing, the dangers & promises of ecstatic state technology, the realities of collapse, what we might learn from the Amish, cult leaders & ...
Nov 21, 2019•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 27
Jordan Hall and Jim have another wide-ranging conversation about Game B. They start with a quick overview of Game A and then move on to talk about the emerging collaboration of Game B & how it happened, its competitive advantage over Game A, liminal spaces, embodied wisdom, sovereignty & sense-making, the pre-B phase, changing our lives to be Game B oriented, meaningfulness, the transition to Game B, parenting & working in Game B, the importance of conviviality & multidimensional...
Nov 19, 2019•2 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 26
Scientist, author & entrepreneur Gary Marcus talks with Jim about his latest book, Rebooting AI. In this wide-ranging conversation they cover the gullibility gap, the illusory progress gap, the robustness gap, driverless car progress & safety, how narrow AI is today, model building, the free-lunch theorem, nativism in animals & humans, how Jim’s experience with war games demonstrates the learning limitations of AI, Cyc & ConceptNet, symbolic algorithms, potential of graph neural ...
Nov 14, 2019•1 hr 18 min•Season 1Ep. 25
Bret Weinstein and Jim talk about the evolutionary & game-theoretic dynamics that have led humanity to an unsustainable place, the impact of today’s algorithms & how they’re connected to human evolution, the recent shift of corporate values, how Game B should view complex systems, design vs. navigation, trade-offs from a theoretical biology perspective, approaches to keeping online collaboration & networks net-positive, how the political left has changed & how Jim & Bret rela...
Nov 11, 2019•1 hr 30 min•Season 1Ep. 24
CEO Jeff Gomez and Jim have a wide-ranging talk about Jeff’s work with massive movies like Pirates of the Caribbean, his work with transmedia storytelling & worldbuilding, how nerdy Jim really is, how narrative & story differ & the role the audience plays, fandom, the perennial Star Wars vs Star Trek question, the far reaches of fan fiction, Jeff’s work in ‘collective journey & its broader connection to the internet & politics, the hero’s journey & its ‘Hollywood’ization’...
Nov 05, 2019•1 hr 23 min•Season 1Ep. 23
Business Consultant Sara Kindsfater-Yerkes and Jim start this episode by reflecting on working together in their earlier careers. They then go on to talk about today’s multi-generational workforce, commonalities of Gen Z & Boomers, workplace mindsets, recruitment strategies & HR teams, shifts in today’s leadership approaches, hierarchical vs flat organizations, building company cultures that embrace change, nourishing employee engagement & intellectual honesty, the James Demore &...
Oct 31, 2019•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 22
This conversation with Jim and Dr. Roman V. Yampolskiy–author, tenured associate professor, founding director of Cyber Security Lab–starts by covering the vast variance of possible minds. They then go on to talk about Boltzmann brains, the implications of an infinite universe, simulation theory’s limits & if we could find its glitches, symbolic vs deep learning & the role of language understanding in AI, the Turing test, limitations of human intelligence, limits of AI safety, the singula...
Oct 28, 2019•1 hr 12 min•Season 1Ep. 21
Author Pamela McCorduck talks with Jim about themes of her latest book, This Could Be Important: My Life and Times with the Artificial Intelligentsia. They talk about C.P. Snow’s Two Cultures thesis that explores the divide between the humanities & sciences, Pamela’s professional & personal friendships with AI pioneers (Julian Feldman, Allen Newell, Marvin Minsky, Ed Feigenbaum, Raj Reddy & Herb Simon), how language is related to AI, symbolic vs. deep learning, drinking sherry with H...
Oct 24, 2019•1 hr 8 min•Season 1Ep. 20
This conversation with Jim and John Robb–author, inventor, entrepreneur, technology analyst, astro engineer, and military pilot–starts by covering the impact of the recent drone attack on a Saudi fuel processing center, and the current US political situation. They then go on to talk about how John compares resistance and the insurgency networks, the dynamics of tribes, institutions & markets in this internet age, the role open-source dynamics play, coherence vs. corruption, how Extinction Re...
Oct 21, 2019•1 hr 27 min•Season 1Ep. 19
Professor, MacArthur Fellow and author Stuart Kauffman talks with Jim about the major themes of his career: complexity, auto-catalytic chemical sets, protocells and the origins of life, the problem of the error catastrophe, human evolution, social and technical evolution, the Fermi Paradox and much more. Stuart also introduces his new T.A.P. equation and his view that it drives creativity and complexity across many scales.
Oct 17, 2019•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 18
Bonnitta Roy, author of Our Future at Work and editor at Integral Review, talks with Jim Rutt about process thinking, complexity, evolution, and Game B. The discussion begins with a description of Roy's "insight practice," process thinking, complexity science, reification, and model building. It continues with a discussion of consciousness, causality, complexity, chaos and emergence. That is followed by a discussion of the temporal vs. the spatial, ending in a Buddhist boat. The evolution of the...
Oct 14, 2019•1 hr 47 min•Season 1Ep. 17
Anaconda CTO Peter Wang talks with Jim Rutt about the latest Python tools, deep fakes, nonrivalrous economics, and the distributed Internet. The discussion begins with a slew of new Python tools, including Numba, Dask, PyTorch, Chainer, CuPy, and PyData. That's followed by a long discussion about deep fakes, authentication, curation, and the ability to tell what's real from what isn't. The two IT pioneers then take on building a better Facebook, building a better economy, and finally building a ...
Oct 07, 2019•1 hr 26 min•Season 1Ep. 16
Author and futurist David Brin talks with Jim Rutt about optimism, ritualized combat, The Transparent Society, and the search for life in the universe. Beginning with the case for optimism, Brin takes on "Star Wars" and talks up "Star Trek" before dropping back to Adam Smith and Karl Popper. They provided the intellectual framework for an "intensely regulated" capitalism that brought tremendous wealth increases for the middle class. He's wary that it could all be lost if people cling to righteou...
Sep 30, 2019•1 hr 24 min•Season 1Ep. 15
Astrophysicist Jill Tarter talks with host Jim Rutt about the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), technosignatures + related projects. Starting with the Fermi Paradox and the Drake Equation, they discuss the hunt for life in the universe. While discussing the SETI protocol for determining when a credible signal has been received, Jill Tarter describes the "false positive" incident in 1998 that nearly lead to the announcement that Earth had been contacted by aliens. The two scientist...
Sep 23, 2019•1 hr 5 min•Season 1Ep. 14
Trent McConaghy, of Ocean Protocol, talks with host Jim Rutt about blockchain, AI, and DAOs. Beginning with a discussion of Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies and public utility networks, the conversation explores the DCS Triangle, the Interplanetary File System (IPFS), Decentralized Autonomous Organizations or DAOs, BigChainDB, AI, Ocean Protocol, the Data Economy, MOBI, and Token Engineering.
Sep 16, 2019•1 hr 16 min•Season 1Ep. 13
Brian Nosek, cofounder of the Center for Open Science, and host Jim Rutt discuss the cutting edge in science governance including the reproducibility crisis, the Open Science Framework, OSF Preprints, peer review journals, Registered Reports, Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines, Open Source software and Open Source science, implicit bias, the Implicit Association Test, Project Implicit, experimental design, and replication.
Sep 12, 2019•1 hr 20 min•Season 1Ep. 12
Dave Snowden is Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Cognitive Edge. He has pioneered a science-based approach to organizations drawing on anthropology, neuroscience, and complex adaptive systems theory. In this podcast, Dave Snowden and Jim Rutt discuss decision-making tools, assessment tools, business management systems, complexity, causality, artificial intelligence, and some of Dave Snowden's best-known projects: Cognitive Edge, Cynefin and SenseMaker. You'll hear how complex decision-mak...
Sep 09, 2019•1 hr 15 min•Season 1Ep. 11
