Talks at Google
Professor Dennett comes to Google to talk about his new book, Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking. Dennett deploys his thinking tools to gain traction on these thorny issues while offering readers insight into how and why each tool was built. Alongside well-known favorites like Occam’s Razor and reductio ad absurdum lie thrilling descriptions of Dennett’s own creations: Trapped in the Robot Control Room, Beware of the Prime Mammal, and The Wandering Two-Bitser. Ranging across disciplines as diverse as psychology, biology, computer science, and physics, Dennett’s tools embrace in equal measure light-heartedness and accessibility as they welcome uninitiated and seasoned readers alike. As always, his goal remains to teach you how to “think reliably and even gracefully about really hard questions.” About the Author: Daniel C. Dennett is the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University and the author of numerous books including Breaking the Spell, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, and Consciousness Explained.
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Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking | Daniel Dennett | Talks at Google
Sigh. Okay. He refers to “social Darwinism” and then references laissez fair and “totally free markets.” No, he WASN’T saying we have such a situation. In my prior comments I am basically accusing Dennett of glibly mis-characterizing how a “unfettered, laissez fair… economy” would be. This is part of the nonsense propagated by the left, it is popular among lefties in academia- AND IT IS WRONG. I love Dennett/Dawkins but they are just spouting status-quo gibberish when they speak like this.
A debate has gone on for generations between economists arguing for statism & a “managed” economy, & those of the laissez faire (“hands off”) approach. The former deride the latter as “social Darwinists” causing an entrenched capitalist class exploiting and underclass. THIS is the reflexive depiction of laissez fair Dennett is referring to. NOW look at ALL my prior comments. I don't disagree with his concept- however, his use of a completely unfettered market to illustrate it is crude and wrong.
Honestly, I could care less about your stance or education on "economics". This is about "consciousness". You made a statement that wrongly accused Dennett of something he didn't say, nor imply and that's that.
I think Intuition Pump is a crappy name
Necktop LOL
Oh, well thanks for summing it all up, genius. Clearly you know what you are talking about and no further study on your part is required.
laissez-faire
Thanks for pointing that. The dash isn't necessary, and you may have noticed I got the 'e' on the end in my initial comment. But faire enough, you got me faire and square. Douche.
"Oh, well thanks for summing it all up, genius."
You dare take that stance after chiming in with the rhetoric of your first post? Surely you troll…
16:13 "It would be embarrassing."
I usually agree with dan but free market is far from chaos and it doesn't follow rules of natural selection. It is much more of a direct democracy. People vote on products they want. Any additional laws introduced so far only brought only additional waste and power discrepancy. It's amazing how misunderstood free market really is
It may not flow off the tongue right, but I bought and enjoyed the book.
Great talk.. one correction;p around 0:40:49 the speaker mentions 100-200 million neurons in human brain on average, while the real number is about 86 Billion! Hope he picks it up some day.
Sachin Anshuman: About the number of neurons. I'm not up to that point in the vid yet, but possibly he said million when he meant billion, as 100 to 200 billion is now the usual number, with over 1.25 trillion synapses.
…Additional thanks, you probably couldn't imagine the indirect benefits, access to to this type of thinking provides…useful in application in "real-life" as well as in theory.
Dan Dennett knows computer science!
The chance that one of us will ever get him is small but not impossible. We ALL assume that he is telling the truth in his speaches but we can never check it……..can we?
That goes for all the scientists and philosophers in the world. My idea of life is………….YOU DO NOT GET IT…….cauze: He can not explain it enough or ME I am to stubborn to get it.
Nice association fallacy there there dan :T the fact that the legal system in the soviet union was de jure predicated on the idea that criminals need treatment, not retribution, does not discredit the idea any more than it discredits airplanes, or the theory of gravitation, or in fact, representative democracy, which the soviet union, de jure, was.
Anyway. Good talk. Disagree with some stuff, but I can clearly see where he comes from on those topics and i think he barking up the right tree even on those so it's alright in the end.
Dennett is wrong that neuroscientists telling people that they don't have free will is the same as the surgeon telling the patient that they now control his decisions.
The surgeon is taking on the responsibility of the patient's decisions, but no one is taking on that responsibility in the case of the neuroscientists using determinism to refute free will. The physical laws aren't conscious intelligent agents that care about you. You still have to take care of yourself even when you know the physical laws are controlling you. You don't have access to all the physical mechanics happening within and around you, so knowing you're being controlled by those mechanics should mean nothing to your decision making.
It's an enormous fallacy to think that being controlled by physical laws means that you should give in to primal desires and emotions and disregard all responsibilities and consequences. As I have stated, nothing changes when you know you are controlled by physical laws because you lack knowledge of those processes and what they will bring. You have no choice but to continue on the presumption of free will even though it may not exist in an absolute sense. It's a useful illusion much like the illusion of color or cuteness.
I largely agree with Dennett but I think he's implicitly inserted a "surely" in his free will argument that goes something like this: "Surely if people don't have free will then we can't punish them through the justice system". I challenge that. He's translate the old school "real" free will to his new meaning of free will, but failed to do the corresponding translation of punishment. Let me fix that.
Imagine people touch a lamp and fall dead. We accuse the lamp of electrocuting them. We segregate it from the public. We investigate: did they die of electrocution, does it have a faulty ground, etc. We make conclusion on the evidence (a trial). If found innocent, we put it back in circulation. If guilty, we rehabilitate (fix) it. If we can't fix it, we either permanently segregate it (life in prison) or disassemble it (execution) so it can't hurt people. If it had a simple cost-benefit calculation for performing operations (perhaps robots now instead of lamps), we make sure it includes a great cost in its calculation for "bad" behaviours. That's self-deterrence ("I won't do that again."), and make sure all other robots (or lamps) are aware of the cost (social deterrence).
We now have everything the justice system does and value it provides with no reference to either old or new definitions of free will. Free will is unnecessary. "Responsibility" simply means that, given a social contract on what rules we will all follow for mutual benefit, society (collective "we") will add a cost to your cost-benefit calculation, and may segregate you from the public (also a cost), if you break these rules. That's what responsibility is. That's what punishment is. We are, essentially, robots. And when we break rules for rational self-interest then adding a cost is the solution. If it's broken brains/programming then re-programming is the fix (therapy, pharmaceuticals, rehabilitation, remove the tumor), or if unfixable then segregate for life (or arguably execute).
Talk starts at 3:40
Okay it goes like this, Dennett says we shouldn't say we don't have free will because it has implications regarding responsibility, but take a mountain, with a dangerous road near the peak and a road sign saying caution 10mph danger of falling to death etc., without the sign, lot's of people fall to their deaths, with the sign, far, far less do, but some see the sign and choose to speed anyway, now looking back at all the actors who do or do not die/speed in these scenarios, all of them lack free will, but the sign has an outcome, so let's say we have the court house and this murder who uses he was told no free will and brings neurologist to his defence etc., well the court would say, tough, it doesn't matter that you lack free will we are going to lock you up because 1. it will be a deterrent to others who might want to also murder (just like the road-sign is a deterrent for speeding) and 2. those it does not deter will need to be kept away from people anyway so they can't cause anymore harm (just like those who would ignore road sign).
Furthermore, endorsing the lie (as Dennett is arguing from a point of there not being (necessarily) any free will) is short sighted as people build on ideas, so if people build on the idea that is the lie that we have free will then they are wasting there time and if the idea we have free will is a key or somewhat key component of an idea then the spreading of this lie damages these buildings to, in other-words to spread a lie is to spread bad foundations, where as the truth is a necessity to advance intellectually.
Also it should be noted that this idea of defending something that is not necessarily true, because without it there would be moral consequences (violence, murder etc.) is exactly the same line the religious use, they say, religion should not be refuted or abandoned or else there would be no reason for people to act morally, there would be murder, violence in the street etc., so Dennett, uses the same kind of weak, baseless fear-mongering as the religious to defend what?, a word he likes?, because he on some level fears change?, I don't understand his motivation or how he could miss such fallacious reasoning.
A good schematical model of thinking
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id9NZGLGAxU
this is the dumbest pile of worthless driveling shit. fuck this guy, he's an arrogant asshole
what a beautiful beard
If want want something in life you have to cause it.
One part of me says I understand the second part says What the fuck is this n*gga talking about blood
34:30 – Oh, I initially understood Lottery B as saying that the winning ticket is chosen, publicly communicated and put in a safe, before tickets are sold … So in that case, I thought, you still have some chances to win, (maybe even more than for Lottery A): you may be the first who's able to organize a successful heist!
Juxtaposing incremental algorithmic steps to "magic" is much more indicative of the lack of understanding and pretentiousness of the speaker than it is those that he refers to.
It seems there is a difference between definitions of "free will". On the one hand people can talk about the ability to make a decision based on options available, and then being accountable for the decision they make. On the other hand there is the question of whether an idea, or a choice could have originated in an individual absent any outside influences. The later has more to do with originality, while the former has to do with choice and accountability. The accountability question is sometimes addressed as a question of whether a person had any degree of freedom from emotional responses, physiological conditioning, and priming. A very good case can be made that when it comes to whether it is moral to punish someone for a decision they have made in the absence of a complete history of how they made that decision and why, that absolute free will is an illusion and that it is not ethical to punish someone for a decision they made without taking into account the criteria and the circumstances. But I also think that there is a good argument to be made for holding someone accountable for acts of evil which I define as knowingly and not arbitrarily, or in anyway accidently doing something that will harm someone and doing so knowing it is wrong. In that case, the no free will argument does not hold in my opinion.
50:00
If the algorithm for calculating a percentage is best as a public good, so too are computer algorithms.
The problem with permitting free software copying, however, is that it is a flawless copy. When our ancestors copied their neighbors canoe, their accidental variations either improve or impair the design, thereby exploring the possibility space zeroing in on an optimal design. This process of error-ridden copying is NECESSARY, so the appropriate law regarding software is one that permits absolutely your right to copy anything you see… but you must do so by reverse engineering, or starting on your own with the tools you have at your disposal.
Daniel dennett is a deep thinker helped me with additional system of tools , ❤️ his talk
Those audience questions were great. Usually there one cringy dude asking about something irrelevant, but today they were all sharp, varied and interesting
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