learning science

Dwarkesh Patel interviews Andy Matuschak on how he learns, why memorization matters for understanding, and why most learning tools fail. The conversation also covers handling confusion and the role of tutoring.

A two-minute clip of Richard Feynman explaining why he considers much of social science pseudoscience. He stresses how easy it is to fool yourself and how much care real knowledge takes.

A two-minute 1981 interview clip in which Richard Feynman answers an artist friend who claims science takes the beauty out of a flower. Feynman argues that understanding adds to beauty and mystery.

A 2023 University of Toronto conversation between Geoffrey Hinton and Fei-Fei Li on responsible AI development. They look back at the history of deep learning and ImageNet and discuss the ethics and risks of AI.

A restored HD upload of the 1983 BBC series Fun to Imagine, in which Richard Feynman talks informally about everyday science. Topics include jiggling atoms, fire, rubber bands, magnets, electricity, mirrors, seeing, big numbers and ways of thinking.

Alan Kay visits Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science in 2007 for an informal conversation with faculty and students. He discusses the state of CS education and criticizes mainstream computing.

Brady Haran interviews Brother Guy Consolmagno, director of the Vatican Observatory, for Sixty Symbols. It is part of a three-video set along with the observatory's telescopes and its meteorite collection.

Dwarkesh Patel interviews Richard Sutton, reinforcement learning pioneer, Turing Award winner and author of The Bitter Lesson. Sutton argues LLMs are a dead end because they cannot learn on the job, and that continual learning from experience will require a new architecture.

Dwarkesh Patel interviews Andrej Karpathy on why reinforcement learning is flawed, why AGI may blend into steady GDP growth, why self-driving took so long, and the future of education. The conversation runs about two and a half hours.

A long Machine Learning Street Talk interview with Kenneth Stanley, creator of NEAT and novelty search, about his book on why greatness cannot be planned. They discuss open-endedness, the tyranny of objectives, serendipity and the evolution of ideas.

A short clip from a Richard Feynman interview in which he explains fire, describing how burning wood releases sunlight stored by the tree, which built itself mostly from air. It showcases his curiosity and plain-spoken explanations.

A short clip of Richard Feynman answering an interviewer's question about why magnets repel, explaining that a 'why' question depends on a shared framework of understanding. It illustrates how hard it is to explain fundamentals to a layperson.

Lex Fridman interviews Jeff Hawkins, founder of Numenta and author of On Intelligence, about the Thousand Brains Theory and reverse-engineering the neocortex. They also cover Hierarchical Temporal Memory and brain-inspired AI architectures.

A dialogue with Gary Weber on the default mode network, meditation and non-dual awakening, with discussion of psychedelics, thought and time. It is part of the Non-Dual Couch series.

A clip from the BBC Fun to Imagine series in which Richard Feynman is asked how magnets work and explains why 'why' questions depend on a shared framework of understanding and cannot always be answered in layman's terms.

A ten-minute clip of Richard Feynman describing how mathematicians and physicists differ in their interests and customs. He argues physics rests on visualizing and applying math rather than pure abstraction.

A 42-minute CBS interview with Geoffrey Hinton at the Vector Institute in 2023, covering the history of neural networks and the present and future of AI. He discusses AGI timelines and whether language models truly understand.

A short excerpt from a BBC interview in which Richard Feynman explains why he dislikes honors and prizes, including his own Nobel, saying the real reward is the pleasure of finding things out.

A 24-minute interview with Edsger Dijkstra, the Dutch computer scientist, including his views on writing programs by hand and keeping errors out of them. It is part of a longer Dutch TV interview.

Mike Acton, in a HandmadeCon 2015 interview with Casey Muratori, discusses game engine development, hiring and learning on your own.

A clip from a BBC interview in which Richard Feynman is asked why magnets repel and attract. He explains that "why" questions depend on what a person already accepts as fundamental.

A short excerpt from a 1973 Yorkshire TV film in which Richard Feynman explains that knowing the name of something is not the same as knowing it.

An interview with Nick Bostrom at Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute presenting his simulation argument: at least one of three propositions about posthuman civilizations and ancestor simulations must be true.

Joe Armstrong, creator of Erlang, interviews Alan Kay at Code Mesh. They discuss the meaning of object orientation, message passing, the META II paper, and the state of computer science.

A 1983 BBC interview in which Richard Feynman is asked how magnets work and explains why 'why' questions are hard to answer in everyday terms. He reflects on what counts as an explanation and the limits of analogy.

A two-minute video of Ira Glass on the creative process, describing the gap between taste and skill when starting out and urging you to keep producing until your work matches your taste.

Sal Khan interviews Elon Musk in a 2013 Khan Academy entrepreneurship series. Musk discusses PayPal, rocket efficiency and reusability, and how he approaches education and learning.

Freeman Dyson recounts how Enrico Fermi rejected his team's meson scattering model, noting that it had too many free parameters. It is the source of the quote about fitting an elephant.