Uploaded June 2024 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Machine Learning Street Talk
|
Cohere is "not an AGI company" - Nick Frosst (co-founder)
🔇 TAP TO UNMUTE
![#70 - LETITIA PARCALABESCU - Symbolics, Linguistics [UNPLUGGED]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/p2D2duT-R2E/mqdefault.jpg "#70 - LETITIA PARCALABESCU - Symbolics, Linguistics [UNPLUGGED]
#70 - LETITIA PARCALABESCU - Symbolics, Linguistics [UNPLUGGED]")
![Why Every Brain Metaphor in History Has Been Wrong [SPECIAL EDITION]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/pO0WZsN8Oiw/mqdefault.jpg "Why Every Brain Metaphor in History Has Been Wrong [SPECIAL EDITION]
What if everything we think we know about the brain is just a really good metaphor that we forgot was a metaphor?
This episode takes you on a journey through the history of scientific simplification, from a young Karl Friston watching wood lice in his garden to the bold claims that your mind is literally software running on biological hardware.
We bring together some of the most brilliant minds weve interviewed — Professor Mazviita Chirimuuta, Francois Chollet, Joscha Bach, Professor Luciano Floridi, Professor Noam Chomsky, Nobel laureate John Jumper, and more — to wrestle with a deceptively simple question: *When scientists simplify reality to study it, what gets captured and what gets lost?*
*Key ideas explored:*
*The Spherical Cow Problem* — Science requires simplification. Were limited creatures trying to understand systems far more complex than our working memory can hold. But when does a useful model become a dangerous illusion?
*The Kaleidoscope Hypothesis* — Francois Chollets beautiful idea that beneath all the apparent chaos of reality lies simple, repeating patterns — like bits of colored glass in a kaleidoscope creating infinite complexity. Is this profound truth or Platonic wishful thinking?
*Is Software Really Spirit?* — Joscha Bach makes the provocative claim that software is literally spirit, not metaphorically. We push back hard on this, asking whether the sameness we see across different computers running the same program exists in nature or only in our descriptions.
*The Cultural Illusion of AGI* — Why does artificial general intelligence seem so inevitable to people in Silicon Valley? Professor Chirimuuta suggests we might be caught in a cultural historical illusion — our mechanistic assumptions about minds making AI seem like destiny when it might just be a bet.
*Prediction vs. Understanding* — Nobel Prize winner John Jumper: AI can predict and control, but understanding requires a human in the loop.
Throughout history, weve described the brain as hydraulic pumps, telegraph networks, telephone switchboards, and now computers. Each metaphor felt obviously true at the time. This episode asks: what will we think was naive about our current assumptions in fifty years?
Featuring insights from *The Brain Abstracted* by Mazviita Chirimuuta — possibly the most influential book on how we think about thinking in 2025.
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 The Wood Louse & The Spherical Cow
00:02:04 The Necessity of Abstraction
00:04:42 Simplicius vs. Ignorantio: The Boxing Match
00:06:39 The Kaleidoscope Hypothesis
00:08:40 Is the Mind Software?
00:13:15 Critique of Causal Patterns
00:14:40 Temperature is Not a Thing
00:18:24 The Ship of Theseus & Ontology
00:23:45 Metaphors Hardening into Reality
00:25:41 The Illusion of AGI Inevitability
00:27:45 Prediction vs. Understanding
00:32:00 Climbing the Mountain vs. The Helicopter
00:34:53 Haptic Realism & The Limits of Knowledge
REFERENCES:
Person:
[00:00:00] Karl Friston (UCL)
https://profiles.ucl.ac.uk/1236-karl-friston
[00:06:30] Francois Chollet
https://fchollet.com/
[00:14:41] Cesar Hidalgo, MLST interview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzpFOJRteeI
[00:30:30] Terence Taos Blog
https://terrytao.wordpress.com/
Book:
[00:02:25] The Brain Abstracted
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262548045/the-brain-abstracted/
[00:06:00] On Learned Ignorance
https://www.amazon.com/Nicholas-Cusa-learned-ignorance-translation/dp/0938060236
[00:24:15] Science and the Modern World
https://amazon.com/dp/0684836394
Interview.:
[00:02:43] The Brain Abstracted Patreon interview
https://www.patreon.com/posts/brain-abstracted-124479979
Interview:
[00:04:18] David Krakauers presentation on intelligence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dY46YsGWMIc
[00:06:45] Machine Learning Street Talk interview with Francois Chollet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTU8Ha4Jyfc
[00:09:32] Joscha Bach Patreon interview.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/joscha-bach-deep-141884561
[00:18:24] Luciano Floridi, MLST interview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLNGvvgq3eg
[00:25:02] Jeff Beck, MLST interview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9suqiofCiwM
[00:28:00] John Jumper
https://www.patreon.com/posts/john-jumper-on-144557652
[00:30:48] Noam Chomsky, MLST interview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axuGfh4UR9Q
[00:31:59] Anna Ciaunica
https://www.patreon.com/posts/dr-anna-ciaunica-144509970
[00:33:12] Mike Israetel debate on functionalism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yYcN_mFi18
Company/Org:
[00:09:25] Neuralink
https://neuralink.com/
Paper:
[00:23:45] A Logical Calculus of Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02478259
[00:28:00] Highly Accurate Protein Structure Prediction with AlphaFold
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03819-2
Thank you to Dr. Maxwell Ramstead for early script work on this show (Ph.D student of Friston) and the woodlice story came from him!")
