COMPLEXITY
John Krakauer Part 2: Learning, Curiosity, and Consciousness
Episode guests
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Quick takeaways
- Humans possess a unique capacity to comprehend and theorize about the world, setting them apart from other animals.
- Understanding the unique cognitive abilities of humans requires interdisciplinary efforts and novel conceptual frameworks.
Deep dives
The Unique Capacity of Human Mind
Humans possess a unique capacity to comprehend and theorize about the world, which sets them apart from other animals. This cognitive ability allows humans to tap into the comprehensibility of the universe and exploit it to adapt and survive. While other intelligent behaviors exist in the animal kingdom, such as curiosity, they are distinct from the human capacity for comprehension. The mystery lies in understanding the representations and mechanisms that enable humans to comprehend and theorize about the world, which remains an open question.
The Complexity of Human-Centric Comprehension
Human cognition goes beyond the sensory-motor system and culture. It involves a cognitive capacity that allows humans to simulate and predict the world, leading to planning and decision-making based on comprehension. This comprehension of the world extends beyond the abilities of other animals and requires the integration of semantic understanding, symbol manipulation, and abstract conceptualization. While there may be overlaps in the algorithms used by humans and animals, the representation and grasp of abstract ideas and concepts make human cognition a distinct phenomenon.
The Challenge of Explaining Human Intelligence
Understanding the unique cognitive abilities of humans poses a challenge for fields such as neuroscience and computer science. While there exist mathematical frameworks and algorithms that explain aspects of learning and intelligence in animals, they fall short in explaining the full range of human cognition. The nature of human intelligence remains elusive, with the capacity to comprehend and theorize about the universe standing as a discontinuous and emergent phenomenon. The pursuit of understanding this distinctive capacity requires interdisciplinary efforts and novel conceptual frameworks.
The Importance of Multi-Disciplinary Discussions
To make progress in understanding human intelligence, it is crucial to foster multi-disciplinary discussions and salons where researchers from various fields can come together. These conversations can help explore different perspectives, challenge existing ideas, and pave the way for new conceptual frameworks. By creating an environment that encourages cross-disciplinary dialogue, scientists can tackle the complexities of human intelligence and potentially bridge the gap between different disciplines, fostering new insights and avenues for research.
What makes us human? Over the last several decades, the once-vast island of human exceptionalism has lost significant ground to wave upon wave of research revealing cognition, emotion, problem-solving, and tool-use in other organisms. But there remains a clear sense that humans stand apart — evidenced by our unique capacity to overrun the planet and remake it in our image. What is unique about the human mind, and how might we engage this question rigorously through the lens of neuroscience? How are our gifts of simulation and imagination different from those of other animals? And what, if anything, can we know of the “curiosity” of even larger systems in which we’re embedded — the social superorganisms, ecosystems, technospheres within which we exist like neurons in the brain?
Welcome to COMPLEXITY, the official podcast of the Santa Fe Institute. I’m your host, Michael Garfield, and every other week we’ll bring you with us for far-ranging conversations with our worldwide network of rigorous researchers developing new frameworks to explain the deepest mysteries of the universe.
This week we conclude a two-part conversation with SFI External Professor John Krakauer, Professor of Neurology and Director of the Center for the Study of Motor Learning and Brain Repair at Johns Hopkins. In this episode, we talk about the nature of curiosity and learning, and whether the difference between the cognitive capacities and inner lifeworld of humans and other animals constitutes a matter of degree or one of kind…
Be sure to check out our extensive show notes with links to all our references at complexity.simplecast.com . If you value our research and communication efforts, please subscribe, rate and review us at Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and consider making a donation — or finding other ways to engage with us — at santafe.edu/engage. Please also note that we are now accepting applications for an open postdoc fellowship, next summer’s undergraduate research program, and the next cohort of Complexity Explorer’s course in the digital humanities. We welcome your submissions!
Lastly, for more from John Krakauer, check out our new six-minute time-lapse of notes from the 2022 InterPlanetary Festival panel discussions on intelligence and the limits to human performance in space…
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Referenced in this episode:
Prospective Learning: Back to the Future
by The Future Learning Collective (Joshua Vogelstein, et al.)
The Learning Salon: Toward a new participatory science
by Ida Momennejad, John Krakauer, Claire Sun, Eva Yezerets, Kanaka Rajan, Joshua Vogelstein, Brad Wyble
Artificial Intelligence Hits the Barrier of Meaning
by Melanie Mitchell at The New York Times
Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren
by John Maynard Keynes
The Intelligent Life of the City Raccoon
by Jude Isabella at Nautilus Magazine
The maintenance of vocal learning by gene-culture interaction: the cultural trap hypothesis
by R. F. Lachlan and P. J. B. Slater
Mindscape Podcast 87 - Karl Friston on Brains, Predictions, and Free Energy
by Sean Carroll
The Apportionment of Human Diversity
by Richard Lewontin
From Extraterrestrials to Animal Minds: Six Myths of Evolution
by Simon Conway Morris
I Am a Strange Loop
by Douglas Hoftstadter
Coarse-graining as a downward causation mechanism
by Jessica Flack
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Complexity 9 - Mirta Galesic on Social Learning & Decision-making
Complexity 12 - Matthew Jackson on Social & Economic Networks
Complexity 21 - Melanie Mitchell on Artificial Intelligence: What We Still Don't Know
Complexity 31 - Embracing Complexity for Systemic Interventions with David Krakauer (Transmission Series Ep. 5)
Complexity 52 - Mark Moffett on Canopy Biology & The Human Swarm
Complexity 55 - James Evans on Social Computing and Diversity by Design
Complexity 87 - Sara Walker on The Physics of Life and Planet-Scale Intelligence
Complexity 90 - Caleb Scharf on The Ascent of Information: Life in The Human Dataome
Complexity 95 - John Krakauer Part 1: Taking Multiple Perspectives on The Brain
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