Uploaded September 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
We are joined by Cristopher Moore, a professor at the Santa Fe Institute with a diverse background in physics, computer science, and machine learning.
The conversation begins with Cristopher, who calls himself a "frog" explaining that he prefers to dive deep into specific, concrete problems rather than taking a high-level "bird's-eye view".
They explore why current AI models, like transformers, are so surprisingly effective. Cristopher argues it's because the real world isn't random; it's full of rich structures, patterns, and hierarchies that these models can learn to exploit, even if we don't fully understand how.
ADDITIONAL FREE CONTENT:
We also filmed Cris' talk at DISI, the audio quality was too bad for us to officially publish, slides included
dropbox.com/scl/fo/bn0tn7z9fxrh1rya1ycrt/AH_d4SOOvlauxLzBgfnNUA0?rlkey=ec65ero4feo5uezum0j6p9z4t&dl=0
**SPONSORS**
Take the Prolific human data survey - prolific.com/humandatasurvey?utm_source=mlst and be the first to see the results and benchmark their practices against the wider community!
---
cyber•Fund https://cyber.fund/?utm_source=mlst is a founder-led investment firm accelerating the cybernetic economy (note we got url wrong in the video, this is correct URL!)
Oct SF conference - dagihouse.com/?utm_source=mlst - Joscha Bach keynoting(!) + OAI, Anthropic, NVDA,++
Hiring a SF VC Principal: https://talent.cyber.fund/companies/cyber-fund-2/jobs/57674170-ai-investment-principal#content?utm_source=mlst
Submit investment deck: https://cyber.fund/contact?utm_source=mlst
***
Cristopher Moore:
https://sites.santafe.edu/~moore/
TOC:
00:00:00 - Introduction
00:02:05 - Meet Christopher Moore: A Frog in the World of Science
00:05:14 - The Limits of Transformers and Real-World Data
00:11:19 - Intelligence as Creative Problem-Solving
00:23:30 - Grounding, Meaning, and Shared Reality
00:31:09 - The Nature of Creativity and Aesthetics
00:44:31 - Computational Irreducibility and Universality
00:53:06 - Turing Completeness, Recursion, and Intelligence
01:11:26 - The Universe Through a Computational Lens
01:26:45 - Algorithmic Justice and the Need for Transparency
TRANSCRIPT: app.rescript.info/public/share/VRe2uQSvKZOm0oIBoDsrNwt46OMCqRnShVnUF3qyoFk
Filmed at DISI (Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute)
disi.org
REFS:
The Nature of computation [Chris Moore]
nature-of-computation.org
Birds and Frogs [Freeman Dyson]
ams.org/notices/200902/rtx090200212p.pdf
Replica Theory [Parisi et al]
arxiv.org/pdf/1409.2722
Janossy pooling [Fabian Fuchs]
fabianfuchsml.github.io/equilibriumaggregation
Cracking the cryptic [YT channel]
youtube.com/c/CrackingTheCryptic
Sudoko Bench [Sakana]
sakana.ai/sudoku-bench
Fractured entangled representations “phylogenetic locking in comment” [Kumar/Stanley]
arxiv.org/pdf/2505.11581 (see our shows on this)
The War Against Cliché: [Martin Amis]
amazon.com/War-Against-Cliche-Reviews-1971-2000/dp/0375727167
Rule 110 (CA)
mathworld.wolfram.com/Rule150.html
Universality in Elementary Cellular Automata [Matt Cooke]
wpmedia.wolfram.com/sites/13/2018/02/15-1-1.pdf
Small Semi-Weakly Universal Turing Machines [Damien Woods]
https://tilde.ini.uzh.ch/users/tneary/public_html/WoodsNeary-FI09.pdf
COMPUTING MACHINERY AND INTELLIGENCE [Turing, 1950]
https://courses.cs.umbc.edu/471/papers/turing.pdf
Comment on Space Time as a causal set [Moore, 88]
https://sites.santafe.edu/~moore/comment.pdf
Recursion Theory on the Reals and Continuous-time Computation [Moore, 96]
We are joined by Cristopher Moore, a professor at the Santa Fe Institute with a diverse background in physics, computer science, and machine learning.
The conversation begins with Cristopher, who calls himself a "frog" explaining that he prefers to dive deep into specific, concrete problems rather than taking a high-level "bird's-eye view".
They explore why current AI models, like transformers, are so surprisingly effective. Cristopher argues it's because the real world isn't random; it's full of rich structures, patterns, and hierarchies that these models can learn to exploit, even if we don't fully understand how.
ADDITIONAL FREE CONTENT:
We also filmed Cris' talk at DISI, the audio quality was too bad for us to officially publish, slides included
dropbox.com/scl/fo/bn0tn7z9fxrh1rya1ycrt/AH_d4SOOvlauxLzBgfnNUA0?rlkey=ec65ero4feo5uezum0j6p9z4t&dl=0
**SPONSORS**
Take the Prolific human data survey - prolific.com/humandatasurvey?utm_source=mlst and be the first to see the results and benchmark their practices against the wider community!
---
cyber•Fund https://cyber.fund/?utm_source=mlst is a founder-led investment firm accelerating the cybernetic economy (note we got url wrong in the video, this is correct URL!)
Oct SF conference - dagihouse.com/?utm_source=mlst - Joscha Bach keynoting(!) + OAI, Anthropic, NVDA,++
Hiring a SF VC Principal: https://talent.cyber.fund/companies/cyber-fund-2/jobs/57674170-ai-investment-principal#content?utm_source=mlst
Submit investment deck: https://cyber.fund/contact?utm_source=mlst
***
Cristopher Moore:
https://sites.santafe.edu/~moore/
TOC:
00:00:00 - Introduction
00:02:05 - Meet Christopher Moore: A Frog in the World of Science
00:05:14 - The Limits of Transformers and Real-World Data
00:11:19 - Intelligence as Creative Problem-Solving
00:23:30 - Grounding, Meaning, and Shared Reality
00:31:09 - The Nature of Creativity and Aesthetics
00:44:31 - Computational Irreducibility and Universality
00:53:06 - Turing Completeness, Recursion, and Intelligence
01:11:26 - The Universe Through a Computational Lens
01:26:45 - Algorithmic Justice and the Need for Transparency
TRANSCRIPT: app.rescript.info/public/share/VRe2uQSvKZOm0oIBoDsrNwt46OMCqRnShVnUF3qyoFk
Filmed at DISI (Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute)
disi.org
REFS:
The Nature of computation [Chris Moore]
nature-of-computation.org
Birds and Frogs [Freeman Dyson]
ams.org/notices/200902/rtx090200212p.pdf
Replica Theory [Parisi et al]
arxiv.org/pdf/1409.2722
Janossy pooling [Fabian Fuchs]
fabianfuchsml.github.io/equilibriumaggregation
Cracking the cryptic [YT channel]
youtube.com/c/CrackingTheCryptic
Sudoko Bench [Sakana]
sakana.ai/sudoku-bench
Fractured entangled representations “phylogenetic locking in comment” [Kumar/Stanley]
arxiv.org/pdf/2505.11581 (see our shows on this)
The War Against Cliché: [Martin Amis]
amazon.com/War-Against-Cliche-Reviews-1971-2000/dp/0375727167
Rule 110 (CA)
mathworld.wolfram.com/Rule150.html
Universality in Elementary Cellular Automata [Matt Cooke]
wpmedia.wolfram.com/sites/13/2018/02/15-1-1.pdf
Small Semi-Weakly Universal Turing Machines [Damien Woods]
https://tilde.ini.uzh.ch/users/tneary/public_html/WoodsNeary-FI09.pdf
COMPUTING MACHINERY AND INTELLIGENCE [Turing, 1950]
https://courses.cs.umbc.edu/471/papers/turing.pdf
Comment on Space Time as a causal set [Moore, 88]
https://sites.santafe.edu/~moore/comment.pdf
Recursion Theory on the Reals and Continuous-time Computation [Moore, 96]
![We Built Calculators Because Were STUPID! [Prof. David Krakauer]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dY46YsGWMIc/mqdefault.jpg "We Built Calculators Because Were STUPID! [Prof. David Krakauer]
Prof. David Krakauer argues that intelligence isnt about knowing more—its about doing more with less.
His core thesis flips our assumptions on their head: while emergence in complex systems is about more is different, intelligence is fundamentally about less is more.
Why Large Language Models Miss the Point
LLMs are more is more, Krakauer explains. Theyre essentially sophisticated libraries that know everything but understand nothing. When a student looks up answers in a library during an exam, we call them a cheater, not intelligent.
Intelligence Across All Life
Perhaps most surprisingly, Krakauer claims that all living things are intelligent—even bacteria. His reasoning: intelligence is the information accumulated through evolutions selective pressures. Its why we can say an elephant is smarter than a worm, but wed never say its more alive. The difference is accumulated capacity.
Three Dimensions of Intelligence
Krakauer proposes intelligence exists in three distinct flavours:
- Strategic Intelligence - Adaptation and survival where viruses actually beat us/
- Inferential Intelligence - Math and computation (where we built calculators because were so bad at it)
- Representational Intelligence - Finding better ways to encode problems (the most uniquely human)
The Soma Cube Insight
Using a Soma Cube puzzle, Krakauer demonstrates something incredible: a four-year-old can solve a combinatorial problem with 15,000 logical clauses—not by computing, but by using physical representation. The physical world does the computing for us. This is intelligence: making impossibly hard problems tractable through clever representation.
This talk was recorded at DISI 2025 https://disi.org/
David Krakauer
President and William H. Miller Professor of Complex Systems
https://www.santafe.edu/people/profile/david-krakauer
Note this version is edited down, you can watch the full version on our Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/posts/masterclass-on-142898847
Watch interview we published with David - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXa8dHzgV8U
TRANSCRIPT:
https://app.rescript.info/public/share/Cs8QFwMw_FiOEROkNPiIf6Y-e_ahAxNMl0oFiL7_4QA
TOC:
00:00:00 - Complexity, Life & Intelligence
00:00:45 - Ptolemy vs Newton
00:01:30 - Purpose of Science
00:02:15 - Feynman on Rules vs Strategies
00:03:00 - Entropy as Unifying Rule
00:03:45 - Intelligence in Physics
00:04:15 - Complex Systems & Broken Symmetries
00:05:00 - Historical Definitions of Intelligence
00:06:15 - Herbert: Capacity to Acquire Capacity
00:06:45 - Problems with Turing Test
00:07:30 - Intelligence vs Knowledge
00:08:00 - LLMs as Libraries
00:08:30 - Humanistic Perspectives
00:09:00 - Unified Theory: Life & Intelligence
00:09:30 - Intensive vs Extensive Properties
00:10:30 - Selection Gradient Analogy
00:11:15 - Universal Intelligence (Bacteria to Elephants)
00:12:30 - Three Dimensions of Intelligence
00:13:00 - Strategic Intelligence & Viruses
00:13:30 - Inferential Intelligence & Calculators
00:14:15 - Encoding & Representation
00:14:30 - Different Paths: Life vs AI
00:15:15 - Soma Cube Problem
00:16:00 - Principle of Materiality
00:17:15 - Embodied Representation
00:17:45 - Intelligence Makes Hard Problems Easy
00:18:00 - Stupidity & Conclusion
REFS:
Papers and Academic Works
More is Different by Phil Anderson [https://www.tkm.kit.edu/downloads/TKM1_2011_more_is_different_PWA.pdf ]
Recent paper with Melanie and John Krakauer on emergence [https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11135 ]
Formal treatment paper on intelligence/evolution duality from David - Darwinian demons, evolutionary complexity, and information maximization [https://wiki.santafe.edu/images/b/b1/CHAOEH213037110_1.pdf ]
The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences by Eugene Wigner [https://webhomes.maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranick/papers/wigner.pdf ]")
