THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE

Noam Chomsky discusses how the "mechanical philosophy" that originated in the 17th century with thinkers like Galileo, Descartes and Newton viewed the universe as a grand machine that could in principle be understood through science. However, Newton's discovery of gravity, which involved "action at a distance" rather than direct physical contact, undermined this mechanical view.

Full title: The Ghost in the Machine and the Limits of Human Understanding.

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Professor Noam Chomsky is the most significant thinker of our generation. Chomsky argues that since Newton, the goal of science has become more modest - rather than trying to understand the true nature of the universe, which may be beyond human comprehension, science aims to construct abstract models that are intelligible to us, even if the underlying reality remains a mystery. He suggests there may be inherent biological limits to human understanding, just as other animals have limits to their cognitive capacities.

The upshot is that we shouldn't necessarily expect a complete unification of scientific knowledge or for complex phenomena like mind and language to be fully explainable in terms of physics. Chomsky provocatively states that after Newton "exorcised the machine" by showing the mechanical philosophy was untenable, only the "ghost" of intelligibility was left in science, which now relies on human-constructed models rather than grasping the true essence of nature. Achieving a direct, intuitive understanding - "exorcising the ghost" - may simply lie beyond the cognitive horizons of the human species.

Panel:
Dr. Tim Scarfe
Dr. Keith Duggar
Dr. Walid Saba

00:00:00 Kick off
00:02:24 C1: LeCun's recent position paper on AI, JEPA, Schmidhuber, EBMs
00:48:38 C2: Emergent abilities in LLMs paper
00:51:32 C3: Empiricism
01:25:33 C4: Cognitive Templates
01:35:47 C5: The Ghost in the Machine
02:00:08 C6: Connectionism and Cognitive Architecture: A Critical Analysis by Fodor and Pylyshyn
02:20:12 C7: We deep-faked Chomsky
02:29:58 C8: Language
02:34:34 C9: Chomsky interview kick-off!
02:35:32 Q1: Large Language Models such as GPT-3
02:39:07 Q2: Connectionism and radical empiricism
02:44:37 Q3: Hybrid systems such as neurosymbolic
02:48:40 Q4: Computationalism silicon vs biological
02:53:21 Q5: Limits of human understanding
03:00:39 Q6: Semantics state-of-the-art
03:06:36 Q7: Universal grammar, I-Language, and language of thought
03:16:20 Q8: Profound and enduring misunderstandings
03:25:34 Q9: Greatest remaining mysteries science and philosophy
03:33:04 Debrief and 'Chuckles' from Chomsky

References;

LeCun Path to Autonomous AI paper

Tim’s marked up version:

Emergent Abilities of Large Language Models [Wei et al] 2022

Connectionism and Cognitive Architecture: A Critical Analysis [Fodor, Pylyshyn] 1988

Ghost in the machine

Noam Chomsky in Greece: Philosophies of Democracy (1994) [Language chapter]

Richard Feynman clip

Chomsky Bryan Magee BBC interview:

Randy Gallistel's work (question 3)
Helmholtz “NNs : they’ve damn slow”
Purkinje cells

Barbara Partee

Iris Berent

Penrose Orch OR

Fodor “The Language of Thought”

Least Effort

structure dependence in grammar formation

three models

Darwin's problem

Descartes's problem

Control Theory

[mthai]

In the late 80s I was an undergrad making my spending money sitting on the floor of Dan Dennett's back office sorting through box after box of academic papers, reading them and then classifying them according to a list of subject topics (i.e., Connectionism, Chinese Room, etc) for a future library of cognitive studies. As a grown up manufacturing engineer I'm getting serious nostalgia here. I suggest you do one on the making of Do The Right Thing next just to complete the job lol. Edit: Thank you for treating Noam so respectfully, that was really heartwarming.

[Self-Duality]

Beautifully conducted! Rare is it that Chomsky is asked and pressed on technical questions — the results are pure dynamite 🧨💥 Thank you!!!!

[richkoziol]

I love how people can get together and just talk and learn from each other it's absolutely beautiful.

[SimonLMonsour]

Heroic effort! One of the richest Chomsky interviews around. Thank you so much. :)

[ShawnEmamjomeh]

What an incredible interview. For an outsider who knows nothing about the topic, to get a glimpse of such a beautiful mind distilling fundamental questions was revelatory. Your painstaking struggle to salvage the recording underscored your profound respect not just for Chomsky but for your audience. Thank you for this gift.

[DarrylWhiteguitar]

I don't know why this podcast popped into my feed, but I'm very glad it did. The amount of effort your team put into this single episode is remarkable and greatly appreciated. It wasn't easy for me to wade through the jargon and concepts of a field unknown to me; even so, it was nearly impossible to quit. Thank you, gentlemen and long live Chomsky!

[ChaiTimeDataScience]

Phew, I was scared till the re-release!

Massive respect and thanks for keeping these conversations, guests and everything the highest quality possible!

[_tgwilson_]

What an episode!! Combining one of the worlds great public intellectuals with one of the worlds most insightful podcasts. Well done chaps.

[pauloabelha]

What a beautiful episode. Such a cool ironic journey with the audio recovering process. I’ll echo what others have said: this channel is amazing; thank you for all the care and effort put into it. One of the best qualities is that this is not a passive empiricist channel, but in fact it is actively trying to build knowledge and construct ideas in the interaction space between you guys and the guests.

[lambhead]

brilliant save! master language splicing! wicked interview and great episode. thanks very much for all the hard work 🙂

[BoRisMc]

As a serious science podcast connoisseur, I gotta say the work you guys have put together here is truly extraordinary. Very impressed and honestly deeply humbled. Thanks and kudos!

[DunkmeisterFresh]

I listened to this a few weeks ago and re-listened to take notes, and it's still almost beyond my grasp. Amazing you got Chomsky for an entire hour. Really great work putting this together. Thanks

[pennyjohnston]

A lesson in the way a true scientist thinks and questions the world - over 90 - just wow ! An episode with so much content/references I'll be visiting it often. Thank you for all the teams hard work and perseverance - much appreciated !

[HeronMarkBlade]

dude thanks for sharing this roller coaster ride of a story re recovering the lost audio - wtaf with the recording providers?? absolutely stunning work - amazing guest- you guys are nailing this stuff and I'm extremely grateful for your efforts. keep up the good work.

[stephenwallace]

Dude, ths is absolutely incredible.

This kind of dedication is singular, and I've not seen quality of this kind on youtube in a long long time.

This is beyond stimulating, there's something deeply beautiful about the quality of the work, and I can only say thank you.

[benjones]

Your respect for Chomsky and each other and your passion for clarity in this complex subject created something wonderful. This was accessible to me, and my family and we haven't stopped discussing rats in prime number mazes, the cognitive templates perhaps bestowed by survival though the action of genetics, the nature of empiricism finite points of data and useful abstractions and our symbolic approximations of the infinite, so much so that my daughter wants to know how to get onto you discord so that she can read more about all of this - much gratitude!

[valeknappich]

Amazing episode! The only thing better than chomskys point of view on things is the joy keiths face whenever chomsky makes a point

[roholazandie]

Wonderful content! Keep up the great work as you do. I love all of your episodes. It's getting better and better every day.

This episode is awesome. Recently discovered you guys from a Goertzel episode. I'm a phil mind student trying to get a grip on AI. This channel is a huge help. Bringing what I learn here back to the philosophers I have on my own channel

[njgroene]

This is probably the best content you've created so far, and some of the best content on AI that I've watched in a long time. Keep up the great work - those armchairs suit you! ;)