Many Minds

Welcome back all! Today’s episode is a conversation with Dr. Manvir Singh. Manvir recently finished his PhD in Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, and will soon begin a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse. Manvir studies human culture. In particular, he focuses on certain cultural practices and products that spring up over and over again across the world’s societies—often in strikingly similar form. To explain these similarities, Manvir appeals to the human mind. He argues that our universal mental machinery plays a powerful role in molding our cultural traditions and products. We start by diving deep into the topic of shamanism. We talk about why humans around the world have long put their trust in shamans—and why they still do today. We discuss why it is that, to secure that trust, shamans everywhere enter trance states, deny themselves worldly comforts, and undergo harrowing initiation rituals. We then move beyond shamanism. We talk about why we believe in witches and why we like stories about orphans and other sympathetic characters. We consider why people the world over know a lullaby when they hear one. Part of what I admire about Manvir’s work is his balanced interest in both universal cultural patterns and fine-grained particulars. He’s interested in the forest, definitely, but also in the trees. And, trust me, there are a lot of fascinating trees here. Hope you enjoy this one as much as I did. Without further ado, here’s my conversation with Dr. Manvir Singh.   A transcript of this interview is available here.   Notes and links 3:00 – An 1896 article by Frans Boaz titled, ‘The limitations of the comparative method in anthropology.’ 6:15 – Read Dr. Singh’s article, ‘The cultural evolution of shamanism.’ 20:45 – A popular article by Dr. Singh on money managers as modern shamans. 24:30 – On the question of whether magicians believe in their own powers, see Nicholas Humphrey’s essay ‘Behold the Man: Human Nature and Supernatural Belief’ in his book, The Mind Made Flesh. 27:45 – See James Scott’s book, Against the Grain. 30:10 – See Dr. Singh’s recently published study of costly prohibitions among Mentawai shamans. 34:45 – See here for Franz Boas’s account of a Kwakiutl shaman. 37:15 – For the etymology of the word “shaman,” see here and here. 38:00 – See Dr. Singh’s in-press paper on witches here. 44:30 – E. E. Evans-Pritchard’s book, Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande. 49:45 – A popular article by Dr. Singh about the ongoing persecution of people perceived as witches. 52:50 – Read a Dr. Singh’s essay in Aeon on the sympathetic plot. See also his pre-print on the same topic. 59:40 – A study of the appeal of minimally counter-intuitive ideas. 1:04:10 – An article by Dr. Singh and colleagues on how songs serving similar functions (e.g., lullabies) tend to take similar forms around the world. Read a popular article write-up of the work here.   Manvir Singh’s end-of-show recommendations: Explaining Culture by Dan Sperber The Social Order of the Underworld by David Skarbek The best way to keep up with Dr. Singh is on Twitter: @mnvrsngh. You can also learn more about his work at his personal website: https://www.manvir.org/   Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://www.diverseintelligencessummer.com/), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted by Kensy Cooperrider, with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster, and Associate Director Hilda Loury. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/). You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com. For updates about the show, follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.

Welcome to our 10th episode! Today’s show is another in our ‘mini minds’ series. We’ve been experimenting with different formats for our minis, as you may have noticed, but today we’ve got another in the classic blogpost style. The topic is the acronym WEIRD—maybe you’ve heard it used. It stands for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. It’s become a shorthand for the idea that people in WEIRD societies are a bit unusual relative to the rest our species. The term was first introduced 10 years ago. On this episode I talk about its origins and the far-reaching influence it’s had since. As with all episodes, be sure to check out the show notes for a smorgasbord of links and tidbits. There was a lot I had to leave on the cutting room floor with this one. But I swept some of it up and put it in the notes for anyone who’s interested. Enjoy!   A text version of this "mini" is readable here.    Notes and links 2:00 – The birthplace of the acronym: ‘The weirdest people in the world?’ 2:44 – A 2008 paper by Jeffrey Arnett that provided key support for the first part of Henrich et al.’s two-part argument. 3:35 – The visual illusion in question is the Müller-Lyer Illusion. 3:52 – These cultural differences in spatial conceptualization were first widely reported by Stephen Levinson and colleagues. See his book for the full story (or see a popular article of mine for a much shorter version). 4:33 – See the commentary by Meadon and Spurrett titled ‘It’s not just the subjects – there are too many WEIRD researchers.’ 4:45 – See the commentary by Rozin titled ‘The weirdest people in the world are a harbinger of the future of the world.’ For an expansion of Rozin’s argument, with more examples, see my article on “global WEIRDing”. 5:45 – See David F. Lancy, The Anthropology of Childhood. (Note that only the second edition came out after the WEIRD article was published.) One part of child development that proves unexpectedly variable across cultures is learning to walk and other motor milestones. 6:30 – The intersection of smell and WEIRD-ness is discussed in a recent special issue—see the editorial introduction here. Long-standing ideas about the impoverished nature of human olfaction are discussed here. 6:48 – A study comparing olfactory sensitivity in Tsimane people and Germans. 6:55 – For discussion of the idea that odors are ineffable, see this article. The same article was also among the first to characterize the elaborated and consistently applied odor lexicon of a hunter-gatherer group. Other papers have since built on this work. 7:23 – See the paper titled ‘WEIRD bodies: Mismatch, medicine, and missing diversity.’ Foot flatness and flexibility in “conventionally shod” populations are discussed in this paper. 8:10 – The researchers behind the original WEIRD paper—and their students—have kept busy themselves, exploring and expanding many related themes. See papers on theodiversity, the possible influence of the Catholic Church on WEIRD psychology, and the use of a new tool for mapping degrees of cultural distance. 8:22 – For a variety of articles raising issues of sample diversity, see: the 2014 opinion piece on the exclusion of left-handers from studies in cognitive neuroscience; another piece on diversity issues in cognitive neuroscience, focusing on issues of racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic homogeneity; an article on “anglocentrism” in linguistics; and a commentary on “missing diversity” in genetics. 9:11 – For the idea that our understanding of primates may be skewed by a focus on captive primates, see ‘The Mismeasure of Ape Social Cognition.’ For the STRANGE framework, see here. 10:00 – For recent critiques, see here and here. The quote about the “homogeneous West” comes from the Broesch et al. (2020) paper; the quote about treating humans as “endangered butterflies” comes from Barrett (2020). Conducting research on sensitive populations is a major theme of Broesch et al. (2020). 11:15 – The analysis of persistent sampling problems in developmental psychology is here. The analysis of the journal Psychological Science is here. Patricia Bauer’s editorial is here.   Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://www.diverseintelligencessummer.com/), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted by Kensy Cooperrider, with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster, and Associate Director Hilda Loury. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/). You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play—or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com. For updates about the show, follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.

Welcome back everyone! My guest on today’s show is Dr. Cat Hobaiter. Cat is a Lecturer at the University of St Andrews, where she’s part of research unit called the Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution. Cat spends a good chunk of her time, not in Scotland, however, but in Africa, where she conducts fieldwork on great apes. Her primary research site is in the Budongo Forest Reserve in Uganda. Along with her team there, she studies the social behavior of wild chimpanzees—in particular, how they communicate with each other. Much of our conversation centers on how chimps communicate through gesture—through bodily theatrics like stomping, drumming, clapping, somersaulting, and pirouetting. We discuss when chimps use these gestures, how they acquire them, and the thorny issue of what they mean. We also talk about how the gestures of chimpanzees compare to the gestures of other primates—including those bonobos, gorillas, and human toddlers. Cat and I do make our way over to other topics, too—we touch on some work she and her colleagues have done on the so-called “cooperative eye” hypothesis. We talk about the day-to-day of what it’s like to do fieldwork on great apes. And we talk about how the chimps at Budongo are faring in these pandemic times. Not many of us get the opportunity to observe our closest primate cousins in the wild. I’ve certainly never been so lucky. But maybe the next best thing is to hear from someone who has—particularly someone like Cat who has spent more than a decade watching chimps closely, puzzling out their propensities, and generally just figuring out what they’re up to. I learned a lot from this conversation—and had fun to boot. I think you will do. So without any more preamble, here is my conversation with Dr. Cat Hobaiter!   A transcript of this interview is available here.   Notes and links  2:45 – Learn more about the Budongo Forest Reserve here. 7:45 – Chimpanzees are “neophobic”—afraid of new things, like humans. As a result, primatologists spend a lot of time habituating chimps to their presence. 14:15 – An article about Jane Goodall’s classic work on chimpanzees. 17:00 – An influential paper by Dr. Hobaiter and a colleague on the gestural repertoire of wild chimpanzees. 19:25 – Examples of many of the gestures we discuss are viewable at: http://greatapedictionary.ac.uk/video-resources/gesture-videos/ 20:55 – A study in which Dr. Hobaiter and a colleague examine how many of the anatomically possible gestures chimpanzees actually make use of. (A small percentage, it turns out.) 25:15 – An important early paper on the intentional use of gesture in orangutans. 32:00 – A paper by Dr. Hobaiter and a colleague reviewing the debate on where chimp gestures come from. An influential earlier book in these debates. 44:25 – An article by Kirsty Graham and colleagues on the bonobo gestural repertoire. See also a more recent article featuring a direct comparison between bonobos and chimpanzees. 48:05 – Comparing a chimpanzee pant hoot and a human impersonation of a chimpanzee pant hoot. 52:40 – A recent article in Aeon about the controversy surrounding chimpanzee pointing. 58:45 – A paper by Dr. Hobaiter and colleagues on possible cases of pointing in the wild by chimpanzees. 1:01:45 – A recent study by Dr. Hobaiter and colleagues comparing the gestures of apes with those of human toddlers. For a popular write-up of this article, see here. 1:13:10 – A 2007 study comparing the flexibility of gestures and vocalizations in apes. 1:16:20 – A 2019 paper by Dr. Hobaiter and colleagues investigating sclera and the “cooperative eye” hypothesis in chimps, bonobos, and humans. The original article proposing the hypothesis. 1:25:00 – A recent report on how primatologists are trying to keep primates safe during the pandemic. For news about the chimps at Budongo during the pandemic, see here.   Cat Hobaiter’s end-of-show recommendation: A special issue of Animal Cognition devoted to the study of primate gesture, edited by Erica Cartmill and Cat Hobaiter. The best way to keep up with Dr. Hobaiter is on Twitter: @NakedPrimate. You can learn more about her research at: http://greatapedictionary.ac.uk/about/   Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://www.diverseintelligencessummer.com/), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted by Kensy Cooperrider, with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster, and Associate Director Hilda Loury. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/). You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play—or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com.

A warm welcome back! On this “mini minds” installment, we tried something a little different. We reached out to former participants in the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI)—including grad students, post docs, and faculty—to ask them a couple questions. What we’ve done for this episode put together a selection of their answers. Here were the questions: 1. What is a book you’ve read over the last couple months and would recommend—perhaps because it offered insight, comfort, context, or escape? 2. As we start to look beyond the pandemic, what are some changes you think—or hope—may be in store for academic research?These could be changes to your own practices or priorities as a researcher; to your subfield; to academic culture or practices generally; or to the role of science in society.   A transcript of this episode is available here.   Contributors Anna Corwin, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Saint Mary’s College of California Nadya Vasilyeva, Postdoctoral Researcher, Princeton University/ UC Berkeley/ UCLA Brian Bruya, Professor of Philosophy, Eastern Michigan University Dániel Czégel, Graduate Student at Eötvös University, Budapest Hungary Amalia Bastos, Graduate Student in Comparative Psychology at the University of Auckland Jacob Foster, Founding Co-Director of DISI, Associate Professor of Sociology, UCLA Colin Conwell, Graduate Student in the Department of Psychology, Harvard University Alina Arseniev-Koehler, Graduate Student in the Department of Sociology, UCLA Efrén Cruz Cortés, Eberly Postdoctroal Research Fellow, Penn State University Chris Krupenye, Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Psychology, Durham University (UK) Haleh Yazdi, Graduate Student in the Departments of Psychology, UCSD   Book recommendations Man Is Not Alone, by Abraham Joshua Heschel At the Existentialist Café, by Sarah Bakewell Confucius Beyond the Analects, by Michael Hunter The Book of Life, edited by Stephen Jay Gould What is Life, by Lynn Margulus and Dorian Sagan The Sense of Style, by Steven Pinker Indiscrete Thoughts, by Gian-Carlo Rota What It’s Like to Be a Bird, by David Sibley Why Fish Don’t Exist, by Lulu Miller   Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://www.diverseintelligencessummer.com/), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted by Kensy Cooperrider, with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster, and Associate Director Hilda Loury. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/). You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play—or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com. For updates about the show, follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.

Greetings all—and a warm welcome back for another episode! Today’s show is a conversation with Daniel Oberhaus. Daniel is a staff writer for Wired magazine and the author of the book Extraterrestrial Languages, published by MIT Press in 2019. The book charts the history of humanity’s efforts at “interstellar communication”—our attempts to send messages to the stars in the hopes that alien life forms might receive them. Daniel and I talk about what these messages have contained, what forms they’ve taken, and the thinking and theories behind them. As you might guess, the history of interstellar communication is packed full of colorful episodes, charismatic characters, and quirky passion projects. But it’s also full of deep questions—questions about the very nature of communication, about the essence of human language, about why minds think in the ways they do, about the origins of mathematics, about what can and should be said on behalf of our species—or our planet. Apologies for the long list, but there really is a lot in play here—we touch on a bunch of it but for the fuller story, I definitely recommend you check out Daniel’s book. Thank you so much for joining us, as always. Enjoy and take care!   A transcript of this interview is available here.   Notes and links  Most of the topics we discuss are treated in detail in Daniel Oberhaus’s book, Extraterrestrial Languages. 2:38 – In 1960 the mathematician Hans Freudenthal published a book called Lincos: Design of a Language for Cosmic Intercourse. Here is Daniel’s original article profiling Freudenthal and his ideas. 5:08 – There were a number of fanciful early schemes for communicating with aliens. For example, Carl Friedrich Gauss, better known for his contributions to mathematics, reportedly proposed building a large right triangle as a kind of message. 10:30 – The Arecibo message was devised and sent by Frank Drake and Carl Sagan in 1974. 11:25 – Two important acronyms in this world: the search for extraterrestrial life (SETI) and messaging extraterrestrial life (METI). 14:40 – In case you need a refresher on what an exoplanet is—as I did—here is a place to start. 20:38 – For more on the idea of Mathematical Platonism, see this article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. A few alternatives to Mathematical Platonism have been proposed, including the theories of Embodied Mathematics put forward by George Lakoff & Rafael Núñez in Where Mathematics Comes From. 27:00 – A brief survey of the different numeral base systems used in across human languages. 28:30 – For a bit about John Lilly, read his obituary or see this article on his role in SETI. Lilly promoted the idea that communicating with aliens might be akin to communicating with dolphins. 30:50 – Another analogy: decoding alien messages might be like decoding ancient scripts like Linear B. 34:20 – For more on the dolphin whistle research we discuss, see here. 36:16 – Noam Chomsky’s idea that recursion is a key—perhaps the key feature—of human language is controversial. For discussion of this claim—and an equally controversial rejection of it—see this article. 37:50 – For examples of the communication abilities of Koko the gorilla, see here. Koko died in 2018. 44:45 – See here for more about the Pioneer Plaques, and here for more about the Golden Voyager Record. 48:30 – Here is a list of the musical recordings that were included on the Golden Voyager Record. 51:20 – For more about the Cosmic Call messages, see here. 53:10 – The controversial Pioneer Plaque image. 56:49 – The website for METI International. 1:03:30 – The 2015 announcement of a $100 million donation to fund SETI research is discussed here.   Daniel Oberhaus’s end-of-show recommendations: Intelligent Life in the Universe, by I.S. Shklovskii and Carl Sagan Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence, edited by Carl Sagan The best way to keep up with Daniel is on Twitter @DMOberhaus. His personal website is: http://www.danieloberhaus.com/   Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://www.diverseintelligencessummer.com/), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted by Kensy Cooperrider, with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster, and Associate Director Hilda Loury. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/). You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play—or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com. For updates about the show, follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.

This podcast explores the concept of umwelt theory, which suggests that every species has its own unique way of sensing and experiencing the world. It discusses Jacob von Uexküll's influential work and its continued relevance today. The podcast delves into examples of animals and their private worlds, as well as the interface theory of perception, which emphasizes the variation of reality and meaning across species.

Welcome back! Today’s episode is a conversation with Cristine Legare. Cristine is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on how our minds allow us to do culture—to learn it, to create it, and to pass it on. Among other things, we talk about cumulative culture and the human capacities for imitation and innovation. We talk about the power of ritual and about thorny questions surrounding human uniqueness. We touch on work that Cristine and her team have done in Vanuatu. And we muse about the problems facing psychology—in particular the so-called WEIRD problem. For those who may not know, this is the issue of psychologists unduly focusing on a thin slice of humanity—namely, Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) folks. I found Cristine’s perspective on this issue—and really on all these issues—super insightful. Without further ado, here is my conversation with Dr. Cristine Legare. Hope you enjoy it! And please be well.   A transcript of this episode is available here.    Notes and links 2:35 – An article about “cumulative culture.” 3:25 –There is debate about whether any non-human animals show evidence of cumulative culture. Here is one review of the topic. 6:30 – A paper by Dr. Legare and a colleague on imitation and innovation as “dual engines of cultural learning.” 10:53 – One of Dr. Legare’s studies examining children’s flexible understanding of when to imitate faithfully. 13:07 – A popular article about the puzzle of why chimps in Zambia started to put grass in their ears. The primary research was reported here. 14:25 – The literature on so-called “over-imitation” is substantial. Here is a recent review. 19:14 – An encyclopedia article by Dr. Legare and a colleague on ritual. See also their paper on the social functions of rituals. 25:45 – Here is the original paper report on the “illusion of explanatory depth.” 28:42 – A paper on how a culture’s history of migration affects how often its members smile. 34:45 – This article describes the puzzle of chimpanzees throwing rocks at trees. 40:18 – This paper by Joe Henrich and colleagues is the source of the acronym WEIRD—that is, Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic—and is one of the most cited and discussed papers in the last decade of psychology. Here is a recent popular article on the current state of the WEIRD problem. Finally, see this paper by Dr. Legare and colleagues about the WEIRD bias in developmental psychology. 49:00 – Dr. Legare has done a number of studies in Vanuatu, a culturally diverse archipelago in the South Pacific. 49:32 – A study by Dr. Legare and colleagues comparing triadic interactions in the US and in Vanuatu. 55:51 – Barbara Rogoff, mentioned here, has done a range of important work on learning styles across cultures. See, for example, her book, The Cultural Nature of Human Development. 59:55 – A study by Dr. Legare and colleagues showing that adults in the US and Vanuatu differ in how they evaluate the intelligence of conforming vs non-conforming children. Dr. Legare’s end-of-show recommendations: A good summary of some of the research we discussed by Dr. Legare and her colleagues can be found here. See also the following books: The Secret of Our Success (2018), by Joe Henrich Cognitive Gadgets (2018), by Cecilia Heyes A Different Kind of Animal (2018), by Robert Boyd Minds Make Societies (2018), by Pascal Boyer   The best ways to keep up with Dr. Legare’s research: http://www.cristinelegare.com/   Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://www.diverseintelligencessummer.com/), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted by Kensy Cooperrider, with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster, and Associate Director Hilda Loury. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/). You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play—or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com. For updates about the show, follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.

Welcome to our next ‘Mini Minds’ installment! As I mentioned before, we’re still figuring out what we want this format to be, so you can expect a bit of tinkering over the coming months. Our first mini was a short audio blogpost of sorts, and today’s mini is a mini interview. I chatted with Matt Crosby. He’s a postdoc at Imperial College London and has been spearheading a super cool project called the Animal AI Olympics. (If you recall, this is something that Marta Halina and I touched on briefly in our last episode, but it seemed intriguing enough to merit a longer look.) The basic idea behind the project, as Matt and I discuss, was to have a bunch of artificial agents—submitted by teams from around the world—compete in a gauntlet of tests. The wrinkle was that these weren’t the kinds of tests usually given to artificial systems. They were tests usually given to animals: some involved avoiding obstacles; others involved remembering locations; still others involved solving physical puzzles, like the celebrated “trap tube" task. This all sounds like good fun—and no doubt it was. But there were also deeper motivations for the project. Matt and I talk about those. We also talk a bit about how the contestants performed, about whether he was impressed, and about his team’s plans for the next iteration of the Olympics, to be held in 2021. Enjoy the mini—and thanks for listening!   A transcript of this interview is available here.    Notes and links 2:23 – An article by Dr. Crosby and colleagues about the Animal AI Olympics and the motivations behind it. 3:45 – An article about recent successes in getting AIs to play Atari games. 5:45 – For details about the Animal AI environment and the types of tasks use, see here. 8:28 – A little more about object permanence. 12:48 – Variants of the “trap tube” task have been widely used in animal cognition research. Here's an example of a paper using it in apes, and here is a video of a dog attempting this kind of task. 14:15 – A blogpost announcing the results of the competition. For more info about the Animal AI Olympics, check out: http://www.animalaiolympics.com/ For more about Matt Crosby and his work, see: https://www.mdcrosby.com/ @MaCroPhilosophy   Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://www.diverseintelligencessummer.com/), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted by Kensy Cooperrider, with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster, and Associate Director Hilda Loury. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/). You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play—or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com. For updates about the show, follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.

Welcome back! Our guest today is Marta Halina, a University Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. Marta’s current focus is the philosophy of artificial intelligence. We discuss what philosophers can contribute to AI. We talk about AlphaGo and its stunning defeat of one of the world’s most celebrated Go champions. We puzzle over whether artificial minds can think creatively. (We also touch briefly on a project that Marta has been involved in called the Animal AI Olympics. Consider this part of our conversation a teaser—our next ‘mini’ episode is going to take a longer look at this initiative.) Marta brings a distinctive perspective to all these issues. As you’ll hear, she’s worked on great ape minds as well as artificial minds, and she’s run scientific experiments in addition to her philosophical work. As always, thanks for listening—we hope you enjoy the conversation.   A transcript of this interview can be found here.    Notes and links 8:45 – The key distinction between artificial general intelligence (AGI) and artificial narrow intelligence (ANI). 10:25 – AlphaGo’s victory against Go master Lee Sedol. 12:00 – More about Go.         15:57 – Lee Sedol announces his retirement. 17:00 – An article by Marta Halina and colleagues describing the Animal AI Olympics. (Stay tuned for our upcoming “mini” episode about this!) 23:05 – Demis Hassabis is the CEO and co-founder of DeepMind. You can listen to an interview with him here. 26:45 – On the idea that creative ideas are new, surprising, and valuable, see this collection of essays. 28:45 – A blogpost on DeepMind’s system AlphaFold, part of its effort to develop AIs that support scientific discovery. 30:32 – For Margaret Boden’s distinction between P-creativity and H-creativity, see this article (or this book). 35:45 - An article about Stephen Hawking’s 2016 presentation at the launch of the Leverhulme Center for the Future of Intelligence. 38:54 – A paper by Henry Shevlin and Marta Halina in which they argue that, in the context of AI, “rich psychological terms” ought to be used with care. 46:15 – The mission statement of the Society for the Philosophy of Science in Practice.   Dr. Halina’s end-of-show recommendations: What is This Thing Called Science? (1976), by Alan Chalmers The Meaning of Science (2016), by Tim Lewens Kinds of Minds (2008), by Daniel Dennett The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Artificial Intelligence   The best ways to keep up with Dr. Halina’s research: https://www.martahalina.com/ @MartaHalina   Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://www.diverseintelligencessummer.com/), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted by Kensy Cooperrider, with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster, and Associate Director Hilda Loury. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/). You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play—or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com. For updates about the show, follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.

Welcome to our second episode—and our very first installment of Mini Minds! Mini Minds is a short, snack-sized format that will alternate with our longer conversations. Today’s Mini is a primer on the mirror self-recognition test. This is a classic paradigm in comparative psychology—and, as we’ll see, it continues to generate both results and criticism. Thanks for listening, and we hope you enjoy the mini format!   A text version of this "mini" is readable here.   Notes and links 2:58 – Wilhelm Preyer’s observations on ducks. 3:15 – Wolfgang Kohler’s The Mentality of Apes. 3:33 – The original mirror test study by Gordon Gallup. 6:09 – Frans de Waal’s 2019 paper, offering a gradualist perspective on self-awareness in animals. 6:45 – Alexandra Horowitz’s 2017 paper, innovating an olfactory version of the mirror test for use in dogs. 8:56 – A recent study correlating brain structures in chimps with their performance on the mirror test. 9:05 – A recent study correlating chimps’ performance on the mirror test with other measures of their social cognition abilities.   The research surrounding the mirror test is truly vast—much vaster than could be covered in a short episode. Here are a couple recommendation for further reading: A recent Aeon essay by Virgina Morell A popular article about a recent finding of mirror self-recognition in the wrasse fish   Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://www.diverseintelligencessummer.com/), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted by Kensy Cooperrider, with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster and Associate Director Hilda Loury. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/). You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com. For updates about the show, follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.