By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 5 Jul 23
Jim talks with Sara Walker and Lee Cronin about the ideas in their Aeon essay “Time Is an Object.” They discuss the history of the idea of time, Newton’s clockwork universe, the capacity for things to happen, the impossibility of time travel, Einstein’s block universe theory, making time testable, conceptions of the arrow of time, irreversibility as an emergent property, the core of assembly theory, measures of complexity, recursive deconstruction, distinguishing random & complex, Kolmogorov complexity, the absence of a useful theory of complexity, counting steps in the assembly pathway, developing theories from measurement, the size of chemical possibility space, the
Jim talks with Sara Walker and Lee Cronin about the ideas in their Aeon essay “Time Is an Object.” They discuss the history of the idea of time, Newton’s clockwork universe, the capacity for things to happen, the impossibility of time travel, Einstein’s block universe theory, making time testable, conceptions of the arrow of time, irreversibility as an emergent property, the
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 27 Jun 23
Jim talks with Samuel Scarpino about what we’ve learned from Covid-19 and how to apply those lessons to preparing for the next pandemic. They discuss takeaways from cross-national comparisons, the social misery index, the failure to control the spread in the U.S., the efficacy of border closure, the test-trace-isolate strategy, what the U.S. should be ready to do in the event of the Big One, capacity for rapid test development, how universities responded in the first wave, Covid as a warning shot, local & federal coordination for pandemic preparedness, the effectiveness of ventilation, airport surveillance, wastewater surveillance, novel pathogen tests,
Jim talks with Samuel Scarpino about what we’ve learned from Covid-19 and how to apply those lessons to preparing for the next pandemic. They discuss takeaways from cross-national comparisons, the social misery index, the failure to control the spread in the U.S., the efficacy of border closure, the test-trace-isolate strategy, what the U.S. should be ready to do in the
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 23 Jun 23
Jim talks with Damien Walter about science fiction and the mechanics of myth. They discuss the roles of pathos & ethos in science fiction, Damien’s lifelong fascination with sci-fi, the symbolon of “science fiction,” Star Trek vs Star Wars, categorizing Star Wars, Asimov’s idea of psychohistory, The Lord of the Rings & the value of myth, the Inklings literary group, the metaphysics of Tolkien, fostering a creator culture, creating as an alternative to consumption, Jim’s Script Helper program & opening the door to creativity, the collapse of status competition to money & beauty, the corporate entertainment franchise, collaborative virtual world-making,
Jim talks with Damien Walter about science fiction and the mechanics of myth. They discuss the roles of pathos & ethos in science fiction, Damien’s lifelong fascination with sci-fi, the symbolon of “science fiction,” Star Trek vs Star Wars, categorizing Star Wars, Asimov’s idea of psychohistory, The Lord of the Rings & the value of myth, the Inklings literary group,
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 22 Jun 23
Jim talks with recurring guest Forrest Landry about civilization design. They discuss the meaning of the concept, toolkits for problem-solving, why this work matters now, local hill-climbing, preconditions for sustainability, cultivating an epistemic commons, non-relativistic ethics, value ethics, grounding good choices in relationship, the endurance of cities, how metaphysics provides a foundation for ethics, going beyond explore & exploit, accounting for human nature, transmission of cultural dynamics, having a complete value set, 3 dimensions of human relationship, the invention of monogamy, moving away from sexual egalitarianism, making the unconscious conscious, the balance between cooperation & competition, finding the right level
Jim talks with recurring guest Forrest Landry about civilization design. They discuss the meaning of the concept, toolkits for problem-solving, why this work matters now, local hill-climbing, preconditions for sustainability, cultivating an epistemic commons, non-relativistic ethics, value ethics, grounding good choices in relationship, the endurance of cities, how metaphysics provides a foundation for ethics, going beyond explore & exploit, accounting
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 20 Jun 23
Jim talks with Frank Lantz, game designer and director of the Game Center at New York University, about Network Wars and the art of game-making. They discuss Frank’s first reaction to Network Wars, how the game works, elegance in game design, the simplest possible expression of an idea, Frank’s overall score record, high stochasticity in the combat results, the combination of high skill & high variance, the tendency to bend randomness in favor of the player’s instincts, learning from poker, whether there are some setups that you can’t win, being rewarded for understanding the mechanics, climbing the ladder of heuristics,
Jim talks with Frank Lantz, game designer and director of the Game Center at New York University, about Network Wars and the art of game-making. They discuss Frank’s first reaction to Network Wars, how the game works, elegance in game design, the simplest possible expression of an idea, Frank’s overall score record, high stochasticity in the combat results, the combination
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 13 Jun 23
Jim talks with Robert Tercek about the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike and intellectual property rights in the era of generative AI. They discuss Los Angeles as a union town, Jim’s screenwriting helper software, likely impacts of AI on writers, the history of Hollywood union negotiations, the devaluation of human labor & humanity, motion picture companies of the future, the suit against Stable Diffusion, whether copyright laws will present obstacles to model-building, fair use, licensing, whether AIs “copy” works, knockoff Wes Anderson film trailers, AI’s threat to social media influencers, the rate of progress toward text-to-video systems, why ChatGPT
Jim talks with Robert Tercek about the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike and intellectual property rights in the era of generative AI. They discuss Los Angeles as a union town, Jim’s screenwriting helper software, likely impacts of AI on writers, the history of Hollywood union negotiations, the devaluation of human labor & humanity, motion picture companies of the future,
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 6 Jun 23
Jim has an extremely wide-ranging discussion with Michael Garfield. They discuss the upcoming book Michael is drafting in public, the exponential scaling of information production, Jurassic Park, mass distributed computation, a new topology for social connectivity, info agents, stereotyping & police violence, a dehumanizing pace of human interaction, Charles Stross’s prophetic visions, heuristic induction, strong vs weak social links, restoration of the mesoscale, from the geographic polity to the noetic, the importance of the ground layer, semi-permeable membranes with commons inside them, Pokemon Go & behavioral control, generative AI & intellectual property, creating a commons to benefit culture, circular economies, dividend money
Jim has an extremely wide-ranging discussion with Michael Garfield. They discuss the upcoming book Michael is drafting in public, the exponential scaling of information production, Jurassic Park, mass distributed computation, a new topology for social connectivity, info agents, stereotyping & police violence, a dehumanizing pace of human interaction, Charles Stross’s prophetic visions, heuristic induction, strong vs weak social links, restoration of the
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 1 Jun 23
Jim talks with Carlos Perez about the ideas in his new book A Pattern Language for Generative AI: A Self-Generating GPT-4 Blueprint. They discuss GPT-4’s ability to introspect on its capabilities, Christopher Alexander’s idea of a pattern language, pattern language design, Jim’s script-writing program, moving beyond ChatGPT to the OpenAI API, managing the context window, chain of thought prompting, the skyhook effect, the value of using tables, creation patterns, input-output pairs, the power of examples, punctuation, cloze prompts, compressing text, the mystery of LLM capabilities, an explanation for state emulation, the system prompt, explainability patterns, meta-levels of language, procedural patterns, design
Jim talks with Carlos Perez about the ideas in his new book A Pattern Language for Generative AI: A Self-Generating GPT-4 Blueprint. They discuss GPT-4’s ability to introspect on its capabilities, Christopher Alexander’s idea of a pattern language, pattern language design, Jim’s script-writing program, moving beyond ChatGPT to the OpenAI API, managing the context window, chain of thought prompting, the skyhook
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 24 May 23
Jim talks with Charles Eisenstein about the environment and the ideas in his book Climate: A New Story. They discuss Charles’s involvement with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s presidential campaign, his first encounter with the idea of global warming, the problems with carbon fundamentalism, environmental derangement, the importance of forests to the water cycle, a world of concrete & shit, escaping the mentality of domination, humans as a custodial species, reversing the course of separation, the healing potential of land, developments in regenerative land use, the commodification pressure of our money system, changes in consciousness, the co-evolution of consciousness & systems, diverting
Jim talks with Charles Eisenstein about the environment and the ideas in his book Climate: A New Story. They discuss Charles’s involvement with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s presidential campaign, his first encounter with the idea of global warming, the problems with carbon fundamentalism, environmental derangement, the importance of forests to the water cycle, a world of concrete & shit, escaping the
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 9 May 23
Jim talks with Matt Welsh about the ideas in his essay “The End of Programming,” arguing that coding as we know it will soon be obsolete. They discuss ChatGPT’s ability to perform logical reasoning, whether it thinks, its utility as a programming aid, skipping code entirely, using language models as computational engines, problem decomposition, streamlining the interface between models and databases, complex customer service, the accessibility of fine-tuning, Jim’s LLM scriptwriting project, custom hardware for language models, learning to speak with aliens, democratizing computing abilities, moral conundrums & value-laden choices, training introspection, avoiding an erosion of trust, short-term opportunities for
Jim talks with Matt Welsh about the ideas in his essay “The End of Programming,” arguing that coding as we know it will soon be obsolete. They discuss ChatGPT’s ability to perform logical reasoning, whether it thinks, its utility as a programming aid, skipping code entirely, using language models as computational engines, problem decomposition, streamlining the interface between models and