Many Minds cover art

Many Minds

By: Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute — Kensy Cooperrider
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  • Summary

  • A podcast that explores our world's diverse forms of mind—human, animal, machine—from diverse perspectives
    Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute 2020
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Episodes
  • Rehabilitating placebo

    Rehabilitating placebo
    May 2 2024
    Welcome back friends! Today we've got a first for you: our very first audio essay by... not me. I would call it a guest essay, but it's by our longtime Assistant Producer, Urte Laukaityte. If you're a regular listener of the show, you've been indirectly hearing her work across dozens and dozens of episodes, but this is the first time you will be actually hearing her voice. Urte is a philosopher. She works primarily in the philosophy of psychiatry, but also in the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of biology, the history of medicine, and neighboring fields. She's particularly interested in a colorful constellation of psychiatric phenomena—phenomena like hypnosis, mass hysteria, psychogenic conditions, and (the topic of today's essay) the placebo effect. There's almost certainly more to placebo than you realize—it's a surprisingly many-layered phenomenon. Here, Urte pulls apart those layers. She talks about what placebo can and cannot do, the mechanisms by which it operates, the ethical dimensions of its use, its evil twin nocebo, how it is woven through the history of medicine, and a lot more. She argues that, though we've learned a lot about the placebo in recent decades, we have not yet harnessed its full potential. As always, we eagerly welcome your comments about the show. Feel free to find us on social media, or send us a note at manymindspodcast@gmail.com. We would love to hear your suggestions for future episodes, your constructive criticisms, really your feedback of whatever kind. Alright friends, now on to our audio essay—'Rehabilitating placebo’—written and read by Urte Laukaityte. Enjoy! A text version of this episode will be available soon. Notes and links 3:30 – A research paper describing the FIDELITY trial. 8:00 – For a neuroscientific overview of placebo research, see this review article. The landmark 1978 study is here. 9:00 – The study using naloxone in rats. 10:30 – A review of placebo effects in Parkinson’s disease. 13:00 – The study showing placebo effects in allergy sufferers. For more on placebo and conditioning in the immune system, see here. 13:30 – An overview of the results on whether placebo “can replace oxygen.” 16:00 – For the “milkshake” study, see here. 20:00 – A perspective piece on open-label placebos. A review of the efficacy of open-label placebos. 22:00 – A review of nocebo-induced side effects within the placebo groups of trials. 24:00 – On the idea of “good placebo responders,” see here. 27:30 – The book Medical Nihilism, by Jacob Stegenga. 28:00 – A review and meta-analysis of the use of placebo by clinicians. 29:30 ­– A paper on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and placebo. 30:30 – A review of factors modulating placebo effects. 34:00 – For the “signaling theory of symptoms,” see here. Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala. Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com. For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
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    39 mins
  • Cosmopolitan carnivores

    Cosmopolitan carnivores
    Apr 18 2024
    They tend to move under the cover of darkness. As night descends, they come for your gardens and compost piles, for your trash cans and attic spaces. They are raccoons, skunks, and coyotes. And if you live in urban North America, they are a growing presence. Whether you consider them menacing, cute, fascinating, or all of the above, you have to grant that they are quite a clever crew. After all, they've figured out how to adapt to human-dominated spaces. But how have they done this? What traits and talents have allowed them to evolve into this brave new niche? And are they still evolving into it? My guest today is Dr. Sarah Benson-Amram. Sarah is Assistant Professor of Forest and Conservation Sciences and Zoology at the University of British Columbia; she also directs the Animal Behavior & Cognition Lab at UBC. Sarah's research group focuses on the behavioral and cognitive ecology of urban wildlife. They ask what urban wildlife can teach us about animal cognition more generally and try to understand ways to smooth human-wildlife interactions. Here, Sarah and I talk about her work on that trio I mentioned before: raccoons, skunks, and coyotes. These three species are all members of the mammalian order of carnivora, a clade of animals that Sarah has focused on throughout her career and one that has been underrepresented in studies of animal cognition. We discuss the traits that have allowed these species—and certain members of these species—to thrive in dynamic, daunting urban spaces. We also talk about the big picture of the evolution of intelligence—and how urban adapter species might shed light on what is known as the cognitive buffer hypothesis. Along the way, we touch on: the neophilia of raccoons and the neophobia of coyotes, puzzle boxes, the Aesop's fable task, hyenas and elephants, brain size, individual differences, human-wildlife conflict, comparative gastronomy, and the cognitive arms race that might be unfolding in our cities. If you have any feedback for us, we would love to hear from you. Guest suggestions? Topics or formats you'd like to see? Blistering critiques? Effusive compliments? We're open to all of it. You can email us at manymindspodcast at gmail dot com. That's manymindspodcast at gmail. Though, honestly, if it's really an effusive compliment, feel free to just post that publicly somewhere. Alright friends, on to my conversation with Sarah Benson-Amram. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available here. Notes and links 8:50 – A study of manual dexterity in raccoons. 11:30 – A video featuring raccoon chittering, among other vocalizations. 12:00 ­– A recent academic paper on the categorization of wildlife responses to urbanization—avoider, adapter, exploiter—with some critical discussion. 14:00 – A study of how animals are becoming more nocturnal in response to humans. 18:00 – An encyclopedia article on the Social Intelligence Hypothesis, by one of its originators, Richard Byrne. A recent appraisal of how the hypothesis has fared across different taxa. 18:30 – A recent review article by Dr. Benson-Amram and colleagues surveying carnivore cognition. 25:00 ­– On the question of urban vs rural animals, see the popular article, ‘Are cities making animals smarter?’ 28:00 – A study by Dr. Benson-Amram and colleagues using puzzle boxes to study behavioral flexibility in captive raccoons. See also her follow-up study, conducted with a large team of neuroscience collaborators, examining the brains of raccoons who successfully solved the puzzle boxes. 34:30 – An earlier study by Dr. Benson-Amram on innovative problem solving in hyenas. 36:30 – Our earlier episode on animal personality with Dr. Kate Laskowski. 39:00 – A study by Dr. Benson-Amram and colleagues exploring raccoons’ ability to solve the Aesop’s Fable task. She has also used this task with elephants. 44:00 – A study by Dr. Benson-Amram and colleagues examining reversal learning in raccoons, skunks, and coyotes. 49:00 – An article articulating the “cognitive buffer hypothesis.” 51:00 – A paper discussing—and “reviving”—the so-called ecological intelligence hypothesis. 53:00 – A study by Dr. Benson-Amram and colleagues comparing brain size and problem-solving ability in mammalian carnivores. 56:00 – A paper by Dr. Benson-Amram and colleagues on cognition in so-called nuisance species, in which they discuss the idea of a "cognitive arms race." 57:30 – A paper on bin-opening in cockatoos and how it might be leading to an “innovation arms race.” Recommendations How Monkeys See the World, Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? by Frans De Waal An Immense World, by Ed Yong (featured in a previous episode!) Urban Carnivores, by Stanley D. Gehrt, Seth P. D. Riley, and Brian L. Cypher Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute...
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    1 hr and 2 mins
  • From the archive: Myths, robots, and the origins of AI

    From the archive: Myths, robots, and the origins of AI
    Apr 4 2024
    Hi friends, we're busy with some spring cleaning this week. We'll have a new episode for you in two weeks. In the meanwhile, enjoy this pick from our archives! _____ [originally aired Nov 30, 2022] When we talk about AI, we usually fixate on the future. What’s coming next? Where is the technology going? How will artificial intelligences reshape our lives and worlds? But it's also worth looking to the past. When did the prospect of manufactured minds first enter the human imagination? When did we start building robots, and what did those early robots do? What are the deeper origins, in other words, not only of artificial intelligences themselves, but of our ideas about those intelligences? For this episode, we have two guests who've spent a lot of time delving into the deeper history of AI. One is Adrienne Mayor; Adrienne is a Research Scholar in the Department of Classics at Stanford University and the author of the 2018 book, Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology. Our second guest is Elly Truitt; Elly is Associate Professor in the History & Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of the 2015 book, Medieval Robots: Mechanism, Magic, Nature, and Art. In this conversation, we draw on Adrienne's expertise in the classical era and Elly's expertise in the medieval period to dig into the surprisingly long and rich history of AI. We discuss some of the very first imaginings of artificial beings in Greek mythology, including Talos, the giant robot guarding the island of Crete. We talk about some of the very first historical examples of automata, or self-moving devices; these included statues that spoke, mechanical birds that flew, thrones that rose, and clocks that showed the movements of the heavens. We also discuss the long-standing and tangled relationships between AI and power, exoticism, slavery, prediction, and justice. And, finally, we consider some of the most prominent ideas we have about AI today and whether they had precedents in earlier times. This is an episode we've been hoping to do for some time now, to try to step back and put AI in a much broader context. It turns out the debates we're having now, the anxieties and narratives that swirl around AI today, are not so new. In some cases, they're millennia old. Alright friends, now to my conversation with Elly Truitt and Adrienne Mayor. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available here. Notes and links 4:00 – See Adrienne’s TedEd lesson about Talos, the “first robot.” See also Adrienne’s 2019 talk for the Long Now Foundation. 7:15 – The Throne of Solomon does not survive, but it was often rendered in art, for example in this painting by Edward Poynter. 12:00 – For more on Adrienne’s broader research program, see her website; for more on Elly’s research program, see her website. 18:00 – For more on the etymology of ‘robot,’ see here. 23:00 – A recent piece about Aristotle’s writings on slavery. 26:00 – An article about the fact that Greek and Roman statues were much more colorful than we think of them today. 30:00 – A recent research article about the Antikythera mechanism. 34:00 – See Adrienne’s popular article about the robots that guarded the relics of the Buddha. 38:45 – See Elly’s article about how automata figured prominently in tombs. 47:00 – See Elly’s recent video lecture about mechanical clocks and the “invention of time.” For more on the rise of mechanistic thinking—and clocks as important metaphors in that rise—see Jessica Riskin’s book, The Restless Clock. 50:00 – An article about a “torture robot” of ancient Sparta. 58:00 – A painting of the “Iron Knight” in Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. Adrienne Mayor recommends: The Greeks and the New, by Armand D’Angour Classical Traditions in Science Fiction, edited by Brett Rogers and Benjamin Stevens In Our Own Image, by George Zarkadakis Ancient Inventions, by Peter James and Nick Thorpe Elly Truitt recommends: AI Narratives, edited by Stephen Cave, Kanta Dihal, and Sarah Dillon The Love Makers, by Aifric Campbell The Mitchells vs the Machines You can read more about Adrienne’s work on her website and follow her on Twitter. You can read more about Elly’s work on her website and follow her on Twitter. Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. 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 ...
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    1 hr and 5 mins
Science
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