Cultural tools reshape human cognition

Tim sits down with Max Bennett to explore how our brains evolved over 600 million years—and what that means for understanding both human intelligence and AI.

Max isn't a neuroscientist by training. He's a tech entrepreneur who got curious, started reading, and ended up weaving together three fields that rarely talk to each other: comparative psychology (what different animals can actually do), evolutionary neuroscience (how brains changed over time), and AI (what actually works in practice).

*Your Brain Is a Guessing Machine*

You don't actually "see" the world. Your brain builds a simulation of what it *thinks* is out there and just uses your eyes to check if it's right. That's why optical illusions work—your brain is filling in a triangle that isn't there, or can't decide if it's looking at a duck or a rabbit.

*Rats Have Regrets*

*Chimps Are Machiavellian*

*Language Is the Human Superpower*

*Does ChatGPT Think?*

(truncated description, more on rescript)

Understanding how the brain evolved isn't just about the past. It gives us clues about:

- What's actually different between human intelligence and AI

- Why we're so easily fooled by status games and tribal thinking

- What features we might want to build into—or leave out of—future AI systems

Get Max's book:

https://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-Intelligence-Humans-Breakthroughs/dp/0063286343

Rescript: https://app.rescript.info/public/share/R234b7AXyDXZusqQ_43KMGsUSvJ2TpSz2I3emnI6j9A

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TIMESTAMPS:

00:00:00 Introduction: Outsider's Advantage & Neocortex Theories

00:11:34 Perception as Inference: The Filling-In Machine

00:19:11 Understanding, Recognition & Generative Models

00:36:39 How Mice Plan: Vicarious Trial & Error

00:46:15 Evolution of Self: The Layer 4 Mystery

00:58:31 Ancient Minds & The Social Brain: Machiavellian Apes

01:19:36 AI Alignment, Instrumental Convergence & Status Games

01:33:07 Metacognition & The IQ Paradox

01:48:40 Does GPT Have Theory of Mind?

02:00:40 Memes, Language Singularity & Brain Size Myths

02:16:44 Communication, Language & The Cyborg Future

02:44:25 Shared Fictions, World Models & The Reality Gap

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REFERENCES:Person:

[00:00:05] Karl Friston (UCL)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNYWi996Beg

[00:00:06] Jeff Hawkins

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VQILbDqaI4

[00:12:19] Hermann von Helmholtz

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hermann-helmholtz/

[00:38:34] David Redish (U. Minnesota)

https://redishlab.umn.edu/

[01:10:19] Robin Dunbar

https://www.psy.ox.ac.uk/people/robin-dunbar

[01:15:04] Emil Menzel

https://www.sciencedirect.com/bookseries/behavior-of-nonhuman-primates/vol/5/suppl/C

[01:19:49] Nick Bostrom

https://nickbostrom.com/

[02:28:25] Noam Chomsky

https://linguistics.mit.edu/user/chomsky/

[03:01:22] Judea Pearl

https://samueli.ucla.edu/people/judea-pearl/

Concept/Framework:

[00:05:04] Active Inference

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkR24ieh5Ow

Paper:

[00:35:59] Predictions not commands [Rick A Adams]

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23129312/

Book:

[01:25:42] The Elephant in the Brain

https://www.amazon.com/Elephant-Brain-Hidden-Motives-Everyday/dp/0190495995

[01:28:27] The Status Game

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58642436-the-status-game

[02:00:40] The Selfish Gene

https://amazon.com/dp/0198788606

[02:14:25] The Language Game

https://www.amazon.com/Language-Game-Improvisation-Created-Changed/dp/1541674987

[02:54:40] The Evolution of Language

https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Language-Approaches/dp/052167736X

[03:09:37] The Three-Body Problem

https://amazon.com/dp/0765377063