About this episode
My conversation with Kevin Mitchell, neuroscientist and geneticist at Trinity College Dublin, on free agency and randomness, nested selves, mental causation and the tension between free choice and control, and artificial agents.Kevin's books:Free Agents: https://www.amazon.com/Free-Agents-Evolution-Gave-Will/dp/0691226237/Innate: https://www.amazon.com/Innate-How-Wiring-Brains-Shapes/dp/0691204152/Related episodes:Michael Levin: https://youtu.be/0nMXYdayQIUEmbodied AI: https://youtu.be/JZ8GTucClpMAlexander Ororbia: https://youtu.be/N83vBfz7_BIYogi Jaeger: https://youtu.be/5UJ4y2L2qpkBaudouin Saintyves: https://youtu.be/NmvzEpz9R84Laura Desiree Di Paolo: https://youtu.be/9txUwVtAOBkAnna Riedl: https://youtu.be/w2ZiSWZNQsgAnna Ciaunica: https://youtu.be/x1QHwhlCn-8Giuseppe Paolo: https://youtu.be/R7tEd65e2i800:00:00 Intro: the psychological angle of theories of consciousness.00:05:00 Free agency and randomness. The world is nondeterministic, but where the possibility of control comes from? Causal slack + selection.00:15:14 The tension of randomness: its harmful but it also needs to be nurtured and amplified. From particle decay to neural "noise".00:21:38 Nested agency and cognition. Vertical dynamics of hierarchical distributed control. Multicellularity. 00:34:58 What looks random from outside may be what the 1st person system experiences as free agency. Psychopathologies.00:40:58 Selves and fuzzy boundaries. Dyads and collectives. Couples' therapy, ant colonies, lineages.00:55:58 Spirituality. Being part of a bigger organism. Rituals. Game theory and incentive design.01:08:30 AI. AGI vs _an_ AGI. Agency in Minecraft.01:18:58 What's next for Kevin? The tension of choice and control. Mental causation. Genetic decoding. I, scientist blog: https://balazskegl.substack.comTwitter: https://twitter.com/balazskeglArtwork: DALL-EMusic: Bea Palya https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBDp3qcFZdU1yoWIRpMSaZw Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
