Ken Stanley – AI researcher and author of "Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned" – joins me to explore why ambitious objectives can blind us to the stepping stones that make breakthroughs possible. Ken is the inventor of the novelty search algorithm and co-creator of Picbreeder, a crowdsourced evolutionary art experiment that has led to important insights about our objective-obsessed culture.

This conversation covers everything from why vacuum tubes had to come before computers, how the path you take to success matters more than the success itself, the "fractured entangled representation" hypothesis, why grant applications kill innovation, how education beats the playground mentality out of children, and why "interesting" is the opposite of random.

I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did. For the full transcript, episode takeaways, and bucketloads of other goodies designed to make you go, "Hmm, that's interesting!", check out our Substack.

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Show Notes:

Are We Deterministic Thinkers Living in a Probabilistic World?
Evolving Complexity and the NEAT Algorithm
The Origins of Picbreeder
The Power of Novelty Search
The Cultural Impact of Non-Objective Thinking
Why Pursuing Interestingness is Not the Same as Being Random
Mechanizing Serendipity via Stepping Stones
The Allure of the Security Blanket
The Omni-culture of NSF Funding
What Makes an Innovator?
The Fractured Entangled Representation Hypothesis
What does it say about LLMs if They Are Fractured and Entangled?
Path Dependency and Careers
Ken as Emperor of the World

Books Mentioned:

Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned; by Kenneth Stanley (and Joel Lehman)
The God Problem; by Howard Bloom
The Lucifer Principle; by Howard Bloom
Global Brain; by Howard Bloom
The Beginning of Infinity; by David Deutsch
Invest Like the Best; by Jim O'Shaughnessy
A Mind At Play; by Jimmy Soni

Dishonest tax policy on both sides of the Irish sea. Green is good economics.