High Signal Podcasts Evidence ledger
Method
Browse
How the evidence works
← All source episodes

Conversations with Tyler / episode intelligence

Ed Boyden on Minding your Brain

10 Apr 2019 26 published claims 2 attributable people
Open original episode ↗ Read the evidence

Speakers in the public record

Ed BoydenTyler Cowen

Claim mix

belief 14evaluation 4uncertainty 2preference 2prediction 2commitment 1recommendation 1

Evidence policy

Every row below preserves an exact excerpt. Identified speakers are linked; unresolved voices are labeled and excluded from people counts.

Claim ledger

The useful parts, with receipts.

26 published records

01 / belief

What I realized was that, for me, the skills I wanted to learn and the impact I wanted to do really required me to get my hands dirty, get into a laboratory and start playing around with real matter.

“What I realized was that, for me, the skills I wanted to learn and the impact I wanted to do really required me to get my hands dirty, get into a laboratory and start playing around with real matter.”
Speaker
Ed Boyden
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

02 / belief

If we start thinking about these kinds of topics that connect to everyday human experience, like lies and memories and so forth, I think we also have to delve very deeply into the underlying neuroscience so we know what we’re talking about and what we’re doing.

“If we start thinking about these kinds of topics that connect to everyday human experience, like lies and memories and so forth, I think we also have to delve very deeply into the underlying neuroscience so we know what we’re talking about and what we’re doing.”
Speaker
Ed Boyden
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

09 / belief

Again, I think we don’t have a good definition of consciousness in the sense that we cannot detect it through a consciousness meter, and we don’t have a creation method of consciousness engine.

“Again, I think we don’t have a good definition of consciousness in the sense that we cannot detect it through a consciousness meter, and we don’t have a creation method of consciousness engine.”
Speaker
Ed Boyden
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

11 / belief

There’s a report from about five days ago that there’s a new contribution coming out of Columbia for a kind of “mind vocoder,” they called it, I believe — almost a kind of mind reading — that you can read mind signals and have some notion what an individual is thinking.

“There’s a report from about five days ago that there’s a new contribution coming out of Columbia for a kind of “mind vocoder,” they called it, I believe — almost a kind of mind reading — that you can read mind signals and have some notion what an individual is thinking.”
Speaker
Tyler Cowen
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

13 / belief

I think what’s going to happen is, we’re going to need to be able to simulate as much of the biology as possible, and then there might be a point where things kind of become unpredictable.

“I think what’s going to happen is, we’re going to need to be able to simulate as much of the biology as possible, and then there might be a point where things kind of become unpredictable.”
Speaker
Ed Boyden
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

15 / belief

Personally, I think that there’s a lot of interesting questions about how chemicals modulate brain circuits, and psychedelics and lots of other chemicals could have interesting effects.

“Personally, I think that there’s a lot of interesting questions about how chemicals modulate brain circuits, and psychedelics and lots of other chemicals could have interesting effects.”
Speaker
Ed Boyden
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

17 / commitment

If we can make a map of the brain so detailed that we could simulate decisions or emotions in silico, in software, I would be very excited about this because it would kind of tie into my own desires for neuroscience, which is to understand something deep about the human condition.

“If we can make a map of the brain so detailed that we could simulate decisions or emotions in silico, in software, I would be very excited about this because it would kind of tie into my own desires for neuroscience, which is to understand something deep about the human condition.”
Speaker
Ed Boyden
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

18 / preference

I think if I was given a pile of money right now, what I would like to do is to find a way — not just in our group but across many groups — to try to find those unfundable projects where, number one, if we think about the logic of it, “Hey, there’s a non-zero chance it could be revolutionary.

“I think if I was given a pile of money right now, what I would like to do is to find a way — not just in our group but across many groups — to try to find those unfundable projects where, number one, if we think about the logic of it, “Hey, there’s a non-zero chance it could be revolutionary.”
Speaker
Ed Boyden
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

20 / preference

I think one of the things that I really love about the space of ecological diversity is, if you think of brains as computing things, then ecological diversity might provide many ways of computing the same thing but in different ways that actually yield interesting computational insights or aesthetic outcomes.

“I think one of the things that I really love about the space of ecological diversity is, if you think of brains as computing things, then ecological diversity might provide many ways of computing the same thing but in different ways that actually yield interesting computational insights or aesthetic outcomes.”
Speaker
Ed Boyden
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

21 / prediction

Now we’ve broadened the class to call it Revolutionary Ventures because we realized that a lot of the ways we thought about neurotechnology could apply to other fields that could also benefit from a big jolt in the arm, like alternative energy or other parts of healthcare and so forth.

“Now we’ve broadened the class to call it Revolutionary Ventures because we realized that a lot of the ways we thought about neurotechnology could apply to other fields that could also benefit from a big jolt in the arm, like alternative energy or other parts of healthcare and so forth.”
Speaker
Ed Boyden
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

23 / evaluation

Brian Kobilka, who recently won the Nobel Prize for solving the structure of the G-protein-coupled receptor — and for context, one-third of all drugs target this class of molecules, so it’s a very, very important class of drugs — he lost his funding because he wasn’t making progress fast enough.

“Brian Kobilka, who recently won the Nobel Prize for solving the structure of the G-protein-coupled receptor — and for context, one-third of all drugs target this class of molecules, so it’s a very, very important class of drugs — he lost his funding because he wasn’t making progress fast enough.”
Speaker
Ed Boyden
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

25 / evaluation

If somebody critiques a proposal, but they’re doing it from a vantage point that doesn’t see a certain part of the proposal as valuable because they’re missing an underlying piece of knowledge, or they’re evaluating a proposal — based upon opinion — that, if we think about the logical underpinnings of it, the rationale is actually pretty solid in terms of its being linked to ground-truthable sciences, like physics and chemistry.

“If somebody critiques a proposal, but they’re doing it from a vantage point that doesn’t see a certain part of the proposal as valuable because they’re missing an underlying piece of knowledge, or they’re evaluating a proposal — based upon opinion — that, if we think about the logical underpinnings of it, the rationale is actually pretty solid in terms of its being linked to ground-truthable sciences, like physics and chemistry.”
Speaker
Ed Boyden
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler
Search evidence