Bit of a Tangent

https://www.podtangent.com/feed.xml

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31Episodes

Two aspiring rationalists bring you mind-bending ideas from science, philosophy, artificial intelligence, and medicine. Whether you enjoy wide-ranging discussions or are looking to upgrade your reasoning and critical thinking skills, this podcast will satisfy your intellectual hunger and sharpen your skeptical eye.

031 | Kat Woods — Effective Altruism, Infohazards, and Brain Hacks

August 17, 2022

Kat Woods is an effective altruist and the co-founder of Nonlinear, which incubates longtermist nonprofits by connecting founders with ideas, funding, and mentorship. Gianluca and Kat discuss brain hacks for curing imposter syndrome and being more agentic, infohazards, the simulation hypothesis, why you don’t need permission to do things, “passive impact” via automation, and Kat’s exciting new projects at Nonlinear.

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Shownotes:

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Kat Woods on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Kat__Woods

Gianluca on Twitter: www.twitter.com/QVagabond

Kat’s blog: www.katwoods.org/

Nonlinear: www.nonlinear.org/

Effective Altruism (EA): https://www.effectivealtruism.org/

The Effective Altruism Handbook: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/handbook

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10016013-harry-potter-and-the-methods-of-rationality

Replacing Guilt: https://anchor.fm/guilt

SMBC cartoon on compatibilism: www.smbc-comics.com/comic/compatibilism

Nonlinear Library (podcast): https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/JTZTBienqWEAjGDRv/listen-to-more-ea-content-with-the-nonlinear-library

Kat’s post on text-to-speech automation: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/tAWK33eNXZKMckPhn/how-and-why-to-turn-everything-into-audio

EA Houses: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/4zHWQNzCusaTfD7jz/ea-houses-live-or-stay-with-eas-around-the-world

Nonlinear support fund: www.nonlinear.org/productivity-fund.html

Nonlinear bounty programme: https://super-linear.org/

EA hiring agency: https://second-bellflower-54f.notion.site/EA-Hiring-Agency-0d6d75a0f5934455be9003fd7886d537

Nonlinear newsletter: www.nonlinear.org/subscribe.html

Bit of a Tangent on Twitter: www.twitter.com/podtangent

Bit of a Tangent on Instagram: instagram.com/podtangent/

030 | Predictive Processing 3: Neurobiology, Prediction, and Computational Psychiatry

December 3, 2020

In this episode, Gianluca and Jared discuss the neurobiology of predictive processing, the role of dopamine in reward signalling, satisfaction, and human desire. They also touch on the relation of reward to reinforcement learning and artificial intelligence.

The podcast then shifts to discuss the clinical manifestations of the predictive brain, including the computational psychiatry of depression, autism-spectrum-disorder, and schizophrenia, and how top-down prediction, and precision-weighted prediction error explain central aspects of these conditions.

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Shownotes:

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Jared on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jnearestn

Gianluca on Twitter: www.twitter.com/QVagabond

Bit of a Tangent on Twitter (www.twitter.com/podtangent) and Instagram (instagram.com/podtangent/)

Last episode: https://www.podtangent.com/e/029-predictive-processing-2-where-the-action-is/

029 | Predictive Processing 2: Where The Action Is

September 3, 2020

This week’s episode of Bit of a Tangent is a continuation of our 3 part series on Predictive Processing - a fascinating neuroscientific account of the way our brains come to understand the world. If you haven’t already listened to part 1 (episode 028), check that out first!

In this episode Gianluca and Jared discuss the importance of sensory precision, the circular causality of prediction and action, how action comes about in a counterintuitive way from high confidence predictions, the way in which prior expectations can bias sensory sampling, and how this could lead to self-fulfilling spirals that would make your life either much worse or much better!

Find us on Twitter @podtangent

028 | Predictive Processing 1: The World You Thought You Knew

August 17, 2020

It's here. It's finally here! The first in a series of three episodes diving into the predictive processing theory of brain function! Jared and Gianluca discuss top-down versus bottom-up perception, Bayesian Brain hypotheses, the logic of caring only about prediction error, and the phenomenology of visual illusions!

027 | 7 Practices to Survive the 2020 Apocalypse

August 11, 2020

Gianluca and Jared have survived 2020 (so far) and are back for Season 3 of Bit of a Tangent. In this episode they bring you 7 new habits and techniques that can be used to iteratively upgrade yourself — even in lockdown. Forget everything else that’s going on in the world, and take a deep dive into personal optimisation. Or, as they’d put it, prepare to geek out on organisation hacks, bootstrapped learning, and motivation pumps.

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Shownotes:

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Jared on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jnearestn

Gianluca on Twitter: www.twitter.com/QVagabond

Bit of a Tangent on Twitter (www.twitter.com/podtangent) and Instagram (instagram.com/podtangent/)

Last episode: https://www.podtangent.com/e/026-drink-and-be-rational/

Matt D’Avella’s video on Checklists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8n2vL2I__WY

Alex Vermeer’s Tangibles: https://alexvermeer.com/tangibles/

Roam research: https://roamresearch.com/

Put iPhone in grayscale: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNuziJOl61o

FitNotes Android app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.github.jamesgay.fitnotes