The Science of a Good Explanation with Tania Lombrozo
Human value stems from individual differences, rooted in the unique, historical ability of hominids to generate explanatory knowledge.
TRANSCRIPT
How did humans start generating knowledge and why has no other species been capable of doing that? We are today the only species that can do that, but we haven't always been, since we know that previous species like Homo erectus and the Neanderthals must have had the same ability because they made technology that seems impossible to have created
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Scientific vs. narrative approaches to understanding AI: examining actual mechanisms rather than creating anthropomorphic stories about consciousness
TRANSCRIPT
They wrote a story about what they observed, and then they extrapolated from that story to talk about what they think is going to happen. this is essentially the difference between a scientific and something like an ancient animist religion approach to understanding the world the scientist tries to figure out the actual underlying mechanisms
... See moreWe look for the underlying, hidden causes of events. We try to figure out the nature of things. It’s not just that we human beings can do this; we need to do it. We seem to have a kind of explanatory drive, like our drive for food or sex. When we’re presented with a puzzle, a mystery, a hint of a pattern, something that doesn’t quite make sense, we
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