More math / physics and philosophy write-ups are coming shortly... For now, here’s a podcast released ahead of time with Professor Jennifer Nagel from the Theories of Everything YouTube channel.
This particular podcast is extremely important to me. If you’ve been subscribed for a while, you may have watched this interview with Karl Friston where I talk about how destabilizing studying all these different theories of consciousness / reality / etc. can be. This podcast with Jennifer Nagel provides some lithified rock on the ordinarily irresolute and dubious foundation we (think we) stand on, due to the constant skepticism of any model we have, including what it means to be you. I hope you find this as fascinating, rationally reassuring / sanity-preserving, and impactful as I did.
Questions and topics explored are:
How Doubting Creates Illusions
Why Socrates’ “I Know Nothing” Isn’t Actually About Not Knowing
The Difference Between Knowing, Believing, and Certainty
Why Justified True Belief Isn’t Enough for Knowledge (The Gettier Problem)
Can You Know Something Without Knowing That You Know It?
How Understanding Knowledge Impacts Free Will & The Self
Consciousness’ Relationship to Knowing
What Does It Mean to Understand?
Can AI Truly “Know” or “Understand”?
What is Truth?
By the way, I’ve started writing up the full transcripts of episodes (or show notes), but it turns out, unsurprisingly, because the videos are several hours long, that it’s just a huge wall of text. Therefore, to make it more informative, I was thinking of summarizing into accurate “Questions and Answers” instead, which are perhaps one to three paragraphs long each, retaining the technicality (of course).
Is this something you’d be more interested in reading? Let me know in the comment section below. I read each and every response.
—Curt Jaimungal
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