Tim sits down with Max Bennett to explore how our brains evolved over 600 million years—and what that means for understanding both human intelligence and AI.
Max isn't a neuroscientist by training. He's a tech entrepreneur who got curious, started reading, and ended up weaving together three fields that rarely talk to each other: comparative psychology (what different animals can actually do), evolutionary neuroscience (how brains changed over time), and AI (what actually works in practice).
*Your Brain Is a Guessing Machine*
You don't actually "see" the world. Your brain builds a simulation of what it *thinks* is out there and just uses your eyes to check if it's right. That's why optical illusions work—your brain is filling in a triangle that isn't there, or can't decide if it's looking at a duck or a rabbit.
*Rats Have Regrets*
*Chimps Are Machiavellian*
*Language Is the Human Superpower*
*Does ChatGPT Think?*
(truncated description, more on rescript)
Understanding how the brain evolved isn't just about the past. It gives us clues about:
What's actually different between human intelligence and AI
Why we're so easily fooled by status games and tribal thinking
What features we might want to build into—or leave out of—future AI systems
Get Max's book:
https://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-Intelligence-Humans-Breakthroughs/dp/0063286343
Rescript: https://app.rescript.info/public/share/R234b7AXyDXZusqQ_43KMGsUSvJ2TpSz2I3emnI6j9A
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TIMESTAMPS:
Introduction: Outsider's Advantage & Neocortex Theories
Perception as Inference: The Filling-In Machine
Understanding, Recognition & Generative Models
How Mice Plan: Vicarious Trial & Error
Evolution of Self: The Layer 4 Mystery
Ancient Minds & The Social Brain: Machiavellian Apes
AI Alignment, Instrumental Convergence & Status Games
Metacognition & The IQ Paradox
Does GPT Have Theory of Mind?
Memes, Language Singularity & Brain Size Myths
Communication, Language & The Cyborg Future
Shared Fictions, World Models & The Reality Gap
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REFERENCES:Person:
[] Karl Friston (UCL)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNYWi996Beg
[] Jeff Hawkins
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VQILbDqaI4
[] Hermann von Helmholtz
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hermann-helmholtz/
[] David Redish (U. Minnesota)
[] Robin Dunbar
https://www.psy.ox.ac.uk/people/robin-dunbar
[] Emil Menzel
https://www.sciencedirect.com/bookseries/behavior-of-nonhuman-primates/vol/5/suppl/C
[] Nick Bostrom
[] Noam Chomsky
https://linguistics.mit.edu/user/chomsky/
[] Judea Pearl
https://samueli.ucla.edu/people/judea-pearl/
Concept/Framework:
[] Active Inference
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkR24ieh5Ow
Paper:
[] Predictions not commands [Rick A Adams]
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23129312/
Book:
[] The Elephant in the Brain
https://www.amazon.com/Elephant-Brain-Hidden-Motives-Everyday/dp/0190495995
[] The Status Game
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58642436-the-status-game
[] The Selfish Gene
https://amazon.com/dp/0198788606
[] The Language Game
https://www.amazon.com/Language-Game-Improvisation-Created-Changed/dp/1541674987
[] The Evolution of Language
https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Language-Approaches/dp/052167736X
[] The Three-Body Problem
