Joscha Bach: Artificial Consciousness and the Nature of Reality | Lex Fridman Podcast #101
Why Hacker News recommends it
Praised as a long but rewarding conversation, with commenters especially liking Bach's emphasis on modelling as a skill and his bridge between mind and computation.
What it is
Lex Fridman has a three-hour conversation with Joscha Bach about artificial consciousness, the workings of the mind, intelligence and the possibly simulated nature of reality.
Recommended by 6 HN commenters across 5 different months, 2020 to 2021.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec reciprocity · 2020-06 · on “Emotional Blocks as Obstacles to Learning”
You might be interested in watching this: [this video] If watching this isn't worth anyone's time, I'm not sure what would be.
Strong rec alexshortt · 2020-07 · on “Joscha Bach: Artificial Consciousness and the Nature of Reality [video]”
I really love his emphasis on modelling as a skill. Its obviously great applied to technical skills like computer science, but he seems to apply it to everything else in the human experience so well. "everything that we sense is part of the same object ... we learn it all into one model ... we call this model the universe" [this video]
Strong rec miketery · 2020-09 · on “Mind Emulation Foundation”
The best I've seen the topic of mind and computation bridged and well communicated has been by Joscha Bach. Recommend watching this video on Computational Meta-Psychology [1]. Also his 3 hour conversation with Lex Fridman is a whole other amazing rabbit hole [2]. [1] [LINK] [2] [this video]
Strong rec meowface · 2021-12 · on “Ask HN: Favorite Podcast Episode of 2021?”
Same for me. His first interview with him was also my favorite podcast episode of 2020. Also, you can watch it in video form. I'd argue it's better that way, especially with the way he emotes during certain parts of the discussion. Episode 1: [this video] Episode 2: [LINK]
Recommends memexy · 2020-06 · on “Joscha Bach: Do we live in a simulation or in the base reality?”
He recently did an interview with Lex Friedman ( [this video] ) and it was pretty good. It's a bit long but worthwhile. Covers a bunch of topics about the philosophy of machine learning, models of thinking and consciousness, and some bits and pieces of future directions for AI.
Recommends jcims · 2020-10 · on “Aliens on 1k nearby stars could see us, new study suggests”
Totally agree. Joscha Bach laid out a few interesting ideas around this at the end of a podcast. If you have a few minutes start here for a broader context (starts of wholly unrelated but with some great concepts): [this video] If not, he drills into it here: [this video]