Monthly Archives: September 2019

EP15 Futurist David Brin on The Case for Optimism



David Brin is best-known for shining light — plausibly and entertainingly — on technology, society, and countless challenges confronting our rambunctious civilization. His bestselling novels include The Postman (filmed in 1997) plus explorations of our near-future in Earth and Existence. Other novels are translated into over 25 languages. His short stories explore vividly speculative ideas. Brin’s nonfiction book The Transparent Society won the American Library Association’s Freedom of Speech Award for exploring 21st century concerns about security, secrecy, accountability and privacy.

As a scientist, tech-consultant and world-known author, he speaks, advises, and writes widely on topics from national defense and homeland security to astronomy and space exploration, SETI and nanotechnology, future/prediction, creativity, and philanthropy. Urban Developer Magazine named him one of four World’s Best Futurists, and he was cited as one of the top 10 writers the AI elite follow.

  1. Introduction to David Brin and The Case for Optimism 20 minutes
  2. Is the World Improving? Zero Sum vs. Positive Sum 12 minutes
  3. Ritualized Combat in Science, Sports, Markets, Courts, Democracy 14 minutes
  4. “The Transparent Society” + The Surveillance Society 20 minutes
  5. The Fermi Paradox or “The Great Silence” + Uplift 7 minutes
  6. SETI, METI, NASA, NIAC + The Drake Equation 11 minutes

Transcripts for The Jim Rutt Show featuring David Brin

Keynames for EP15:
Jim Rutt, David Brin, “The Postman”, “The Transparent Society”, “Existence”, “Earth”, “Chasing Shadows”, “Elevation”, “Star Wars on Trial”, “The Loom of Thessaly”, “Uplift War”, Santa Fe Institute, Hugo Award, Nebula Award, Arnold J. Toynbee, Matthew Woodring Stover, Karl Popper, “The Open Society and Its Enemies”, Adam Smith, “The Wealth of Nations”, “The Theory of Moral Sentiments”, Karl Marx, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Newt Gingrich, Dennis Hastert, Bill Clinton, Steven Pinker, Peter Diamandis, XPRIZE, Dean Kamen, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, NASA, Fox News, Donald Trump, Junker, Republican Party, Democratic Party, Facebook, Gutenberg, Mark Zuckerberg, Paul Tsongas, Warren Rudman, Martin Luther King Jr., Bull Connor, China, Estonia, Charlie Brooker, “Black Mirror”, Contrary Brin, davidbrin.blogspot.com, Electronic Frontier Foundation, EFF, American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU, Sierra Club, Robin Hanson, “The Circle”, Enrico Fermi, Jill Tarter, SETI, Nick Bostrom, METI, Liu Cixin, “The Three-Body Problem”, Frank Drake, Douglas Vakoch, Joe Norman, NASA Innovative and Advanced Concepts, NIAC

Keywords for EP15:
Jim Rutt, David Brin, science fiction, SciFi, artificial intelligence, AI, optimism, Hollywood, propaganda, Star Trek, Star Wars, Captain Kirk, competition, evolution, progress, cheating, rules, umpires, regulated capitalism, intense regulation, oligarchy, supply side, zero sum, positive sum, consumer surplus, abundance, XPRIZE, innovation, competition vs. cooperation, media evolution, ritualized combat, sensemaking, attention economy, Tea Party, feudalism, slavery, emancipation, land redistribution, entitlements, surveillance, law enforcement cameras, social credit, snitching, “sousveillance”, facial recognition, radical transparency, The Enlightenment Experiment, The Fermi Paradox, The Drake Equation, extraterrestrial, aliens, The Precautionary Principle, extremophiles, space colonization, NIAC grants


EP14 Astrophysicist Jill Tarter on SETI and Technosignatures



Jill Tarter received her Bachelor of Engineering Physics Degree with Distinction from Cornell University and her Master’s Degree and a Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of California, Berkeley. She served as Project Scientist for NASA’s SETI program, the High Resolution Microwave Survey, and has conducted numerous observational programs at radio observatories worldwide.

Since the termination of funding for NASA’s SETI program in 1993, she has served in a leadership role to secure private funding to continue the exploratory science. Currently, she serves on the management board for the Allen Telescope Array, an innovative array of 350 (when fully realized) 6-m antennas at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory, it will simultaneously survey the radio universe for known and unexpected sources of astrophysical emissions, and speed up the search for radio emissions from other distant technologies by orders of magnitude.

Jill is a frequent speaker for science teacher meetings and at museums and science centers, bringing her commitment to science and education to both teachers and the public. Many people are now familiar with her work as portrayed by Jodie Foster in the movie Contact.

  1. Introduction to Jill Tarter and the SETI Institute 9 minutes
  2. Building a Better Drake Equation 12 minutes
  3. The SETI Protocol and the False Positive of 1998 12 minutes
  4. Binary Stars and Adding Neural Networks to Signal Detection 6 minutes
  5. Extremophiles, Exoplanets, and Technosignatures 7 minutes
  6. Breakthrough Listen, Laser SETI, PANOSETI 6 minutes
  7. METI, Funding for SETI, What SETI Needs 13 minutes

Transcripts for The Jim Rutt Show featuring Jill Tarter, Ph.D.

Keynames for EP14:
Jim Rutt, Jill Tarter, SETI Institute, SETI Research, SETI@home, NASA, “Contact”, Santa Fe Institute, Enrico Fermi, Frank Drake, Stuart Kauffman, Philip Morrison, Lynn Margulis, International Academy of Astronautics, IAA, National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Bill Broad, The New York Times, Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan, Seth Shostak, SETIleague.org, Laurance Doyle, Arthur C. Clarke, Karl Schroeder, David Wolpert, Freeman Dyson, Robin Hanson, Jason Wright, Nikolai Kardashev, Breakthrough Listen, Parkes Observatory, Robert Ferguson, LaserSETI, PANOSETI, Stu Boyer, Buckminster Fuller, Gordon Moore, David Brin, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker

Keywords for EP14:
Jim Rutt, Jill Tarter, SETI, astronomy, astrophysics, Fermi Paradox, spectrometry, Drake Equation, aliens, extraterrestrials, outer space, planets, livable planets, exoplanets, stars, binary stars, Bayesian probability, Kepler space telescope, evolution, evolutionary theory, DNA, symbiosis, Greenbank, Project Phoenix, Rio Scale, Rio Scale 2.0, neural networks, machine learning, extremophiles, radiodurans, Dyson shells, Dyson sphere, Tabby’s Star, technosignatures, biosignatures, megastructure, TRAPPIST-1, WISE Satellite, Kardashev Type, Allen Telescope Array, Square Kilometer Array, MeerKAT, FAST telescope, radio telescope, spigot telescope, TMT, LSST, Moore’s Law, METI


EP13 Trent McConaghy: Blockchain, AI and DAOs



Trent McConaghy is the Founder of Ocean Protocol. He has 20 years of deep technology experience with a focus on machine learning, data visualization and user experience. He was a researcher at the Canadian Department of Defense and in 1999, he co-founded Analog Design Automation Inc. and was its CTO until its acquisition by Synopsys Inc. In 2004, he co-founded Solido Design Automation Inc., once again in the role of CTO.

Trent has written two critically acclaimed books on machine learning, creativity and circuit design and has authored or co-authored more than 40 papers and patents. He lives in Berlin, Germany.

  1. Introduction to Trent McConaghy + Blockchain Technology 10 minutes
  2. The DCS Triangle, BigChainDB + Interplanetary File System (IPFS) 14 minutes
  3. Smart Contracts + Decentralized Finance 5 minutes
  4. Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) 5 minutes
  5. The Ocean Protocol Platform for Decentralized Data Exchange 13 minutes
  6. MOBI and the Ontology Problem with Shared Data 5 minutes
  7. AI on Ocean Protocol + SingularityNet 3 minutes
  8. Blockchain Governance, Ethics + Token Engineering 13 minutes

Transcripts for The Jim Rutt Show featuring Trent McConaghy

Keynames for EP13:
Jim Rutt, Trent McConaghy, Santa Fe Institute, Analog Design Automation, Ocean Protocol, Synopsys, Solido Design Automation, Siemens, “Why Nations Fail”, James A. Robinson, Daron Acemoglu, Ascribe, “Code”, Lawrence Lessig, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Polkadot, Algorand, Dfinity, Cosmos Network, Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin SV, Litecoin, Zcash, Robin Dunbar, SingularityNet, Ben Goertzel, Ralph Merkle, David Krakauer, Facebook, Google, Amazon, IBM, Toyota, BMW, Docker, TensorFlow, Vint Cerf, Bob Kahn, AWS, EC2, Golem, David Holtzman, W. Brian Arthur, “The Nature of Technology”

Keywords for EP13:
Jim Rutt, Trent McConaghy, audio, podcast, interview, Ocean Protocol, blockchain, cryptocurrency, encryption, Bitcoin, Ethereum, DCS triangle, BigChainDB, decentralized autonomous organizations, DAO, Interplanetary File System, IPFS, AI, AGI, mobility open blockchain initiative, MOBI, smart contracts, Moore’s Law, incentives, data security, data privacy, engineering ethics, IP, IP security, transparency, public ledger, DCS Triangle, Decentralized – Consistent – Scalable, MongoDB, load balancing, double spend problem, BigChainDB, permissionless, censorship resistant, Interplanetary File System, IPFS, CRDT, distributed databases, replication, Byzantine fault tolerant protocols, BFT protocols, sharding, Dunbar number, smart contracts, decentralized finance, peer-to-peer lending, Merkle tree, nanotechnology, antifragile, data economy, big data, big AI, tokens, autonomous vehicles, federated learning, ontology, TCP/IP vs. OSI, IP, copyright, IP blockchain, data extraction, AI algorithms, blockchain governance, hard fork, token engineering

 


EP12 Brian Nosek – Open Science and Reproducibility



Brian Nosek is Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Open Science (COS) that operates the Open Science Framework. COS is enabling open and reproducible research practices worldwide. Brian is also a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Virginia. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 2002.

Brian co-founded Project Implicit, an multi-university collaboration for research and education investigating implicit cognition — thoughts and feelings that occur outside of awareness or control. Brian investigates the gap between values and practices, such as when behavior is influenced by factors other than one’s intentions and goals. Research applications of this interest include implicit bias, decision-making, attitudes, ideology, morality, innovation, and barriers to change. Nosek applies this interest to improve the alignment between personal and organizational values and practices.

  1. Introduction to Brian Nosek and the Center for Open Science 9 minutes
  2. Registered Reports = Publication + Funding 23 minutes
  3. Open Science, Open Source, Open Data, Open Code 14 minutes
  4. Peer Review, Open Access, OSF Preprints 8 minutes
  5. The Reproducibility Project and Experimental Design 11 minutes
  6. The Implicit Association Test and Project Implicit 6 minutes

Transcripts for The Jim Rutt Show featuring Brian Nosek

Keynames for EP12:
Jim Rutt, Brian Nosek, Santa Fe Institute, Center for Open Science, University of Virginia, “Nature”, “Human Behavior”, “eLIFE”, GitHub, Open Science Framework, OSF, Thomson-Reuters, Westlaw, Transparency and Openness Promotion Guidelines, TOP Guidelines, National Institutes of Health, NIH, National Science Foundation, NSF, Rebecca Sachs, MIT Brain and Cognitive Science, Eli Broad, Broad Institute, Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, Wiley, OSF Preprints, arXiv, bioRxiv, PeerJ, CogPrints, Reproducibility Project, Charles R. Ebersole, Daniel J. Simons, Philip Zimbardo, Stanford prison experiment, Stanley Milgram, Milgram experiment, Project Implicit, Mahzarin Banaji, Anthony Greenwald, Blindspot

Keywords for EP12:
Jim Rutt, Brian Nosek, audio, podcast, interview, reproducibility, irreproducibility, confirmation, replication, verifiability, failure to replicate, selective reporting, science governance, scientific papers, scientific publications, scientific journals, open source, open science, open source science, open access publication, open data, open code, registered reports, psychological experiments, incentives, motivation, process transparency, information integrity, reward badges, peer review, publication bias, confirmation bias, research articles, research reports, TOP guidelines, medical research, scientific research, biomedical research, open source software, software code, citations, core operating facilities, FAIR data, ontology, data integration, paywalls, preprints, preprint server, experimental design, implicit bias, blindspot, implicit association test


EP11 Dave Snowden and Systems Thinking



Dave Snowden is Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Cognitive Edge. His work is international in nature and covers government and industry looking at complex issues relating to strategy and organizational decision-making. He has pioneered a science-based approach to organizations drawing on anthropology, neuroscience, and complex adaptive systems theory. He is a popular and passionate keynote speaker on a range of subjects, and is well-known for his pragmatic cynicism and iconoclastic style.

Dave holds visiting Chairs at the Universities of Pretoria and Hong Kong Polytechnic University as well as a visiting fellowship at the University of Warwick. He is a senior fellow at the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies at Nanyang University and the Civil Service College in Singapore.

  1. Introduction to Dave Snowden and Cynefin 13 minutes
  2. Complicated vs. Complex + Apex Predator Theory 14 minutes
  3. Agent-Based Modeling + “Anticipatory Triggers” 9 minutes
  4. Artificial Intelligence + Chomsky Bashing 9 minutes
  5. Practical Applications for Managers 9 minutes
  6. Downward Causality + Red Team 6 minutes
  7. SenseMaker Software 6 minutes
  8. Mapping the Present 8 minutes

Transcripts for The Jim Rutt Show featuring Dave Snowden

Keynames this Episode:
Jim Rutt, Dave Snowden, Santa Fe Institute, SFI, Cognitive Edge, Cynefin, SenseMaker, University of Pretoria, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, University of Warwick, IBM, DARPA, Harvard Business Review, HBR, Stuart Koffman, Walter Freeman, Ralph Stacey, Luis Lobo-Guerrero, David Chandler, René Thom, Clayton Christensen, Extinction Rebellion, Thomson-Reuters, Murray Gell-Man, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Vilfredo Pareto, Nassim Taleb, David Wolpert, Gary Marcus, Ben Goertzel, Josh Tenenbaum, Ogletree Deakins, Noam Chomsky, Jacques Lacan, Ayn Rand, “Nudge”, “Thinking, Fast and Slow”, Daniel Kahneman, Baxter, VECO, Rikolto, Myers-Briggs, Andy Clark

Keywords this Episode:
Jim Rutt, Dave Snowden, audio, podcast, interview, decision-making, strategy, design, knowledge management, business management, process engineering, management science, complexity, cognitive neuroscience, order, chaos, disorder, constrained, enabling constraints, competence induced failure, symbiosis, populism, Ebola, contagion, Apex Predator, global warming, Hong Kong protests, China strategy, coevolutionary fitness landscapes, agent-based model, simulation, correlation, causation, downward causality, Gaussian distribution, Pareto distribution, artificial intelligence, AI, general artificial intelligence, AGI, symbolic AI, deep learning, anticipatory triggers, counterterrorism, 9/11, No Free Lunch Theorem, Alpha Go, abstraction, epigenetics, intelligence, autism, evolutionary biology, philosophy of mind, behavioral economics, diversity, dissent, red team, narrative, business scan, employee survey, employee evaluation, employee review, assessments, 360-degree assessments, cultural evolution, agile development, Six Sigma, astrology

 


EP10 David Krakauer: Complexity Science



David Krakauer is President and William H. Miller Professor of Complex Systems at the Santa Fe Institute. David’s research focuses on the evolutionary history of information processing mechanisms in biology and culture. This includes genetic, neural, linguistic and cultural mechanisms. The research spans multiple levels of organization, seeking analogous patterns and principles in genetics, cell biology, microbiology and in organismal behavior and society.

  1. Introduction to David Krakauer and the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) 5 minutes
  2. Complexity, Reductionism, Emergence + Causality 15 minutes
  3. Time, Entropy + Selection 7 minutes
  4. Cutting Edge Complexity + Theory of Circuits 7 minutes
  5. The Evolution of Intelligence and Stupidity 9 minutes
  6. Order, Discipline, Policing + Trust 9 minutes
  7. Effusive Memetics + Constitutions as Code 10 minutes
  8. How Complexity Science has Changed the World 8 minutes

Transcripts for The Jim Rutt Show featuring David Krakauer

Keynames this Episode:
Jim Rutt, David Krakauer, Santa Fe Institute, SFI, Henri Poincaré, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Hendrik Lorentz, Dave Snowden, Stephen Wolfram, Sherlock Holmes, D.H. Peregrine, Arthur Eddington, Charles Darwin, Geoffrey West, Murray Gell-Mann, Charles Bennett, David Deutsch, Alan Turing, Trent McConaghy, Joshua Grochow, Werner Heisenberg, Seth Lloyd, Jessica Flack, Bryan Daniels, Eddie Lee, Facebook, Dan Rockmore, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, John Holland, Simm City, Minecraft, Frances Arnold, James Webb Space Telescope

Keywords this Episode:
Jim Rutt, David Krakauer, audio, podcast, interview, complexity, complex systems, evolution, evolution of intelligence, adaptive phenomenon, scaling theory, network theory, genetic algorithms, nonlinear dynamics, celestial mathematics, chaos studies, reductionism, emergence, Rule 120, causality, top-down causality, billiard ball causality, complex causality, machine learning, energy flux, single-cause systems, time, nature of time, arrow of time, entropy, selection, Red Queen dynamic, symmetries, encoded contingencies, energetics, information science, information transfer, computation, evolutionary computing, algorithm, Kolmogorov Complexity, Turing Machines, halting problem, theory of circuits, prediction, knowledge, artificial intelligence, AI, artificial general intelligence, AGI, Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, rule systems, God algorithm, quantum systems, policing, enforcement, robustness, consensus-generating mechanisms, trust, corruption, blockchain, crypto-currency, biomimickry, constitution, meme, memetic, effusive memetics, adaptation, network theory, evolutionary algorithms, quantum computation, prediction markets, climate science, climate models, Fermi Paradox