#317 — What Do We Know About Our Minds?

Making Sense with Sam Harris

Waking Up with Sam Harris

Samharris, Currentevents, Politics, Ethics, Religion, Neuroscience, Science, Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.6 • 29.1K Ratings

🗓️ 20 April 2023

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sam Harris speaks with Paul Bloom about the state of psychological science. They discuss fiction as a window onto the mind, recent developments in AI, the tension between misinformation and free speech, bullshitting vs lying, truth vs belonging, reliance on scientific authority, the limits of reductionism, consciousness vs intelligence, Freud, behaviorism, the unconscious origins of behavior, confabulation, the limitations of debate, language, Koko the gorilla, mental health, happiness, behavioral genetics, birth-order effects, living a good life, the remembered and experiencing selves, and other topics.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast.
0:09.1	This is Sam Harris.
0:11.3	Just a note to say that if you're hearing this, you are not currently on our subscriber
0:14.8	feed and will only be hearing the first part of this conversation.
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0:22.5	at samharis.org.
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0:28.3	other subscriber-only content.
0:30.7	We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support
0:34.6	of our subscribers.
0:36.0	So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one.
0:41.3	Well, recent developments in AI have been interesting.
0:52.5	I'm sure I will do many more podcasts on this topic, but for the moment some people have
0:57.6	asked whether GPT-4 and its rapid adoption have changed my views at all about AI and AI
1:08.3	risk.
1:09.3	As some of you know, I did a TED talk on the topic of artificial general intelligence
1:14.6	in 2016, and it's available on YouTube and elsewhere, presumably.
1:22.0	And nothing has really changed about my concern for AI and alignment, artificial general
1:28.3	intelligence, and the problem of creating it such that it is aligned with our interests.
1:34.9	It's probably a worse problem now than I thought it was, because the main change here is
1:41.3	that the suddenness with which AI has improved and the way in which we have blown past all
1:48.6	of the landmarks that AI safety people have carefully erected, that has alarmed me
	...

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