I really enjoyed this conversation with Judea. Here's the outline: 0:00 - Introduction 3:18 - Descartes and analytic geometry 6:25 - Good way to teach math 7:10 - From math to engineering 9:14 - Does God play dice? 10:47 - Free will 11:59 - Probability 22:21 - Machine learning 23:13 - Causal Networks 27:48 - Intelligent systems that reason with causation 29:29 - Do(x) operator 36:57 - Counterfactuals 44:12 - Reasoning by Metaphor 51:15 - Machine learning and causal reasoning 53:28 - Temporal aspect of causation 56:21 - Machine learning (continued) 59:15 - Human-level artificial intelligence 1:04:08 - Consciousness 1:04:31 - Concerns about AGI 1:09:53 - Religion and robotics 1:12:07 - Daniel Pearl 1:19:09 - Advice for students 1:21:00 - Legacy
a suggestion for a future guest could be William "Bill" Easterly. he is a an economics professor at NYU (focusing on political economy and international development) and had roughly 15 years experience at the world bank as their head of research. He has written many great books. His big idea is that in contrast to the status quo approach of economists and aid agencies trying to reduce poverty through technocratic approaches and top down plans... a better more time tested approach is to expand political and economic freedoms to the poor. He also taught at MIT. Highly recommend giving him a youtube search and listening to some of his stuff. Thanks!
Great interview with a man that I have incredible respect for, and am in awe of. Reading "The Book of Why" was a great experience, although I'm going to need to read it multiple times I think, to *really* "get it". As far as suggestions for future guests, I would love to see one or more of: Ben Goertzel Marcus Hutter Pei-Wang Fei-Fei Li
Siraj is just one name. Every other person who has a RUclips channel or an account on FB or LinkedIn think they are representative of the field of Machine Learning and Data Science but in reality their whole understanding is built by some shitty medium blog and all they know is how to stack layers.
@@dream1430 Check LinkedIn someday. Every one is calming that they are doing research but all they have to offer is some Tensorflow/Pytorch 101 course.
Thank you for being very respectful while chatting with your guests, even when you are discussing a sensitive topic. It is an amazing quality that every host should have.
This has to be one of the best interviews I have ever seen. Both Judea and Lex are continuously challenging their point with enormous respect. Judea is also an amazing communicator of complex ideas. thanks Lex for providing us with this content!!
Beautiful. Life is short, but you make my life so much richer with interviews like this one. I will watch this again with affection.
Point of personal history. I was at UCLA in 1968 and 1969. The internet began on October 29, 1969 when Leonard Kleinrock and his team at UCLA sent a message to Stanford (only the first two letters made it through). At that time I was interested in film, art, music, parties, political demonstrations, and working to save money to go to Europe, and I knew nothing about computers. I traveled to Europe, and lived in Paris, working as a construction worker. I returned to UCLA, switched majors, and graduated from the UCLA School of Engineering in Computer Science. Judea Pearl’s office reminds me of the offices in the school where my friends and I would hang out with professors drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes (times have changed) and talking about self-aware robots, Boolean algebra, transfer phenomena, and multi-dimensional spaces. So many wonderful professors then, and now, who were so kind to us students. Watching these videos of so many extraordinary people makes me wonder about the many paths that I did not take, but if I had taken any of those paths then I would not exist to say--thank you. William L. Ramseyer
Mr. Judea Pearl is so amazing! My hart is bleeding for him and his late son. But he is so full of joy and life! I wish I could ever become at least half a person he is...
Lex's podcast have a way of doing that lol. I never liked math but I now can see the beauty and importance of it thanks to him and all the wonderful guests.
[11:30] “Faking it, is having it. …Faking intelligence, is intelligence, because it’s not easy to fake. It’s very hard to fake…and you can only fake it if you have it.”
but that's not true. watch an interview with almost any famous actor: the actor isn't actually as intelligent or cool or whatever as the rolls he convincingly plays.
@@chrissmithdoe2100 Give yourself some time and think about the original sentence and your reply - maybe write it down...there is a clear answer, that is why I had to react. Wonderful podcast and a wonderful audience. Best wishes!
@@phlipsterroxor9068 well i thought i understood your point, which was the obvious point that, being actors, an observer arguably can't know whether they're acting stupid or are stupid. my next message was just trying to play along in a fun way. but i'm not sure why you're treating me like an idiot now?
Amazing interview. Beautiful exploration of what basic concepts in causality actually mean, complete with examples. I've watched several speeches by Pearl, but never anything as clear this, Lex Fridman very craftily structures the conversation.
I love how Prof Pearl seems to keep Lex a bit off balance, not in a bad way, but by continually questioning and challenging various points as they're made.
I think around 56-58 mins-ish I believe the rifle man example it’s clear that Lex hadn’t grasped the principles early in the conversation. It’s easy for the mind to wander off the path 😂
Lex, your talent for extracting knowledge from your interviewees is amazing, inspirational, and very much appreciated by this armchair aficionado of the sciences.
How did you cover such a magnificent span of topics and range of intellectuality and emotion. Can't believe you asked that deep and perfect pair of questions about his son.
It feels like Lex is trying to ask very cautiously how to build an AGI and Judea politely declines to break our hopes about it happening any time soon :D Great podcast, refreshing to see people that actually know what they are discussing
One of the best interviews I saw in a long time! Judea Pearl is a genius with a wonderful sense of humor and a big heart!!👏👏 A rare breed in today’s world!!
Man, that is absolutely horrible what happened to his son. He's a strong man being able to talk about it without falling to pieces. Or maybe that's just time dulling the pain. I love my children and I don't want to think about how I would grapple with such a tragedy. Love of ones offspring is a powerful emotion. Sorry for your loss sir.
What Pearl says about intervention is much the same as what LeCunn says about infants. Infants observe the world (mostly) and occasionally intervene. Infants (and kittens batting a ball of yarn) are building a causal model from the data -- from some initial architecture and set of conditions -- and resolving ambiguities with interventions. Intervention is a way of pruning the causal graph to make it less "bushy", as Pearl puts it. The other lesson to draw from this interview is the importance of historical and cultural grounding in math and science education. We typically interact with disembodied knowledge about abstract structures. But Pearl is firmly situated in time and place. He knows who he is, who Descartes was, and who his people (the Jews) are. He knows how to relate to Archimedes and Daniel and the king of Babylon. All these connections mean that his personal knowledge graph is very bushy. He can approach a topic from multiple vantages and evaluate the merits of many different paths through his personal graph. But if all he knew about a subject was what he learned in textbooks, then the sparseness of his understanding would preclude insights and wisdom.
A beautiful episode, loved it. I had a feeling I'm drinking a cup of coffee with the 2 of you - that's a good sign that the podcast was a success. Thank you.
I had hard time to agree with many things that he said. However, I was in awe at the end of the discussion. Ended up buying his book. Great talk! Gave me many fruitful insights!
Thank you for respecting the artistic integrity of your podcast and putting ads at the beginning! Sean Carrol has degraded his podcast significantly by having interruptions for unrelated things in the middle of a deep conversation.
The important thing to understand is that when we *do not* add arrows to the causal diagram it is an explicit assumption that there is no causality in between two variables. And that is essentially the default in many observational studies. What causal inference does is allow one to explore and better understand how those implicit or explicit assumptions actually influence the analysis of the data and conclusions that can or can't be made logically. At least, that's the important takeaway for me.
Who the fuck is disliking these podcasts? Honestly, it blows my mind. I understand you might not like the topic at hand or the guest but to take the time to go on and dislike such high quality of content is absurd.
What a brilliant man! I love that he said the best way to teach math is chronologically! I always believed so. I need to know who, when, and why first! He is so funny, I don't know why Lex isn't laughing harder. As a roboticist, this is undoubtedly my favorite episode!
Thanks @Lex. It was an interesting conversation that tried to align a mental model of reality, that is very human and uses terms like causation, and structure, to some of the mental models that a pure pattern recognition algorithm can build from raw observation of the world (eg a baby of another specie of being for example). Can we 'learn' how to build mental models, is the topic that you kept coming back to.
@@SalarymanNoMore ??? How can you fake a higher order of intelligence. If people try to fake intelligence by using smart words and throwing in a few premeditated comments, they appear as stupid as people walking around naked. Can you pretend to be good at chess in a chess competition?
2 of the biggest dangers imo is the fact that generals are going to get their hands on it for war. Secondly the creation of A.I could start a war itself if leaders realize the power advantage because someone is going to create it first.
@1:21:25 "Put a counterfactual in terms of a model surgery" ?? what does this mean? I get the counterfactual, I don't get the "in terms of model surgery" part.
I admire the financial independence of people, But you can live better if you work a little more. After watching this I think there are people out there, on the extreme, who plan to die early just to be able to retire early. To each their own but to me, retirement isn't just about not having to work, it's about having the freedom to do whatever you might reasonably want, such as travel, buying things, enjoying life, etc. I don't think I could retire with less than $3m in income-generating investments, maybe $2m at the very minimum. I plan to work until I'm at least 45
Nobody knows anything, you need to create your own process, manage risk and stick to the plan, through thick or thin while also continuously learning from mistakes and improving
@@harrisonjamie794 Having an investment adviser is the best way to go about the market right now, especially for near-retirees, I've been in touch with a coach for a while now mostly cause I lack the depth knowledge and mental fortitude to deal with these recurring market conditions, I netted over $220K during this dip, that made it clear there's more to the market that we avg joes don't know
"Ask your questions. Really, your questions are never dumb. And solve them your own way. And don't take "no" for an answer." Judea Pearl - Lex Fridman Podcast #56
"You can't fake it if you don't have it". Indeed. But *it* doesn't have it. The engineers who designed it do (and they also know what it *means* to have it).
That’s only true for expert systems. In machine learning reasonably complex algorithm can result in an extremely complex behaviour that the engineer doesn’t understand. General intelligence may emerge from simpler principles
1:02:00 "You should have passed the ball," as said by your coach, can only be interpreted correctly within either the context of the coaching relationship, or the generalized context of all coaching relationships, modulo conventional norms of athletic progression. An NHL defensemen will process a coach's remark about passing the puck or eating the puck (taking the forecheck on the chin, because a hasty outlet pass is excessively vulnerable to being picked off) as fine-tuning a decision when fielding the puck off the boards at one particular angle and position, with the forecheck coming in with a certain size/pace/stick length, and relative to his outlet being one step above or below the hash marks, already fully in flight, or just winding up. Or the coach may be implicitly talking about that particular play in the middle of a flying shift change by other teammates on the ice. Especially during the game, when a player returns to the bench and the coach leans over from behind and says into one ear "gotta eat that puck"-which is probably as much as the noise and chaos allows-the player has to figure out _which_ puck (the whole shift is potentially in scope, a similar play might have been made more than once) and then actively hypothesize why the coach might have read the play differently from the bench than the player did from the ice, why the coach decided that the player could feasibly make a useful change based on this guidance (there's a lot you can't see with your back to the ice; and the coach is not telling you what he concluded with his more complete vision, but what you _should_ have been able to conclude, despite your partial vision). And honestly, the player actually tends to make a bit of a muddy guess, much like machine learning, and makes very small tweaks to multiple coefficients, about pace/position/circumstance to see whether this leads to more validation or less validation from the bench boss in future. If that doesn't work, the player eventually confronts the coach in practice and says "you know, I'm really not getting it, in game A you said 'pass', in game B you said 'eat', and so far as I can see, these were entirely equivalent circumstances". It might turn out that the coach is seeing something very specific, in a consistent way, or it might not. If it's analytic, the coach can probably explain it at greater length; if it's more based on intuition (it often is), the coach might struggle to get the message across for multiple seasons. The guys who are simply not on the same page often get traded, and their success with the next coach can be night and day. The problem is that this coaching shorthand is only convergent if enough of the conceptual model is shared, and everyone is grinding away on the meta problem about _whether_ this model is sufficiently shared (especially the GM on a season-over-season time scale), in parallel with trying to do the best with what you already have. If you do successfully diagnose a failure to share sufficient context, then you have to decide whether this a reparable fault, or whether to kick the can down the road by trading the player to some other team for a bag of pucks/equally conflicted player, or maybe even releasing the coach altogether, and putting the entire team on a new communications page, all at once. What actually happens is that coaches transfer what they can within the margin of frame overlap, until the gaps accumulate into too big a problem, and then you cycle in a coach with a different repertoire of strengths and gaps. The largest gap often receives a quick boost, while the former strengths atrophy slowly (as they will when maintained by a coach whose greatest strengths now lie elsewhere). If a defenseman is consistently making the wrong choice on pass/eat under a hard forecheck, his forwards coming back in support will start to evolve their own behaviour to better cope with the anticipated reality (born of long experience under fire) pulling those forwards "out of position" not so much in the game state, but as viewed from the discourse model, making feedback from the coach to those forwards so much _more_ confusing: did he mean I shouldn't have done that relative to the X and O model, had I been in "discourse" position, or relative to my being a bit out of position to save the bacon of a rookie with a Magic 8 Ball for brains? This is why coaches everywhere front-load this kind of instruction to the earliest possible moment, when it's not yet clear that comprehension is on the same page. The coach is hoping that _many_ of these comments do manage to take root as desired, so that _some_ kind of structure emerges, so that the sketchy discourse model becomes merely insufferable, rather than outright intractable. The average armchair fan underestimates the "fog of causal arrows" in this complex discourse environment by _at least_ a full order of magnitude. Hence every Tom, Dick and Harry with a 60" television can diagnose a problem in the room with a single gestalt that your Claude, Alain, or Lindy pulling down $2 million annually is unable to rectify over multiple, long seasons. This is also why "glue" veterans are so important on any team. These are the players who make subtle changes all over the ice because of what he knows the coach has told the other players to change or to work on, biased toward making the failures crisp when you can afford to do so, and biased toward bacon-saving when you can't. And then back at the bench: "hey, rook-you know I saved your bacon on that play by being _way the firetruck_ out of position, don't you?" Rook stares at skates. "Don't count on it next time," continues the veteran. "I don't change diapers for a living, you know." This might work great for a while, until eventually the rook becomes cognitively overloaded with all this "helpful" advice, and starts to play the discourse rather than playing by instinct out there on the ice. Cognitive overload from the discourse domain is an erratic, moving target. Hence many coaches lean harder on the line-blender than most fans appreciate. It's also why it so often helps a player to regain his cognitive bubble to go out there for a period or two with a couple of fresh linemates, with no set, internal conventions as an established group. Coach: "You gotta eat that puck." Player [inside head]: "yeah, but my forward came back on the route to save my bacon, after recently telling me that he 'doesn't change diapers for a living, you know' and so I was expecting his position to be different than it was, and by the time I realized we were on different pages, I wasn't properly positioned to 'eat' the puck without also losing two teeth to the knob of my stick". Rook [to veteran, on bench]: "May I politely remind you that you don't change diapers for a living? You must have heard coach hanging me out to dry after than last play, where I was expecting you to ignore the poop smell." Veteran: "Point taken. My bad. I forgot." Maybe he did, maybe he didn't; but it just might be the very last time Rook ever positions the knob of his stick directly between hard-charging forecheck at NHL pace and his own sparse, remaining dentition. Because next time on that play he _is_ going to eat that puck-whether he loses two teeth or not-or he'll occupy the popcorn box for a month of Sundays (where those extra teeth are small consolation as you sit on those hot, buttery thumb screws, agonizing that your lifelong dream is spiraling down the pipe). So many lessons, so little time.
I really enjoyed this conversation with Judea. Here's the outline:
0:00 - Introduction
3:18 - Descartes and analytic geometry
6:25 - Good way to teach math
7:10 - From math to engineering
9:14 - Does God play dice?
10:47 - Free will
11:59 - Probability
22:21 - Machine learning
23:13 - Causal Networks
27:48 - Intelligent systems that reason with causation
29:29 - Do(x) operator
36:57 - Counterfactuals
44:12 - Reasoning by Metaphor
51:15 - Machine learning and causal reasoning
53:28 - Temporal aspect of causation
56:21 - Machine learning (continued)
59:15 - Human-level artificial intelligence
1:04:08 - Consciousness
1:04:31 - Concerns about AGI
1:09:53 - Religion and robotics
1:12:07 - Daniel Pearl
1:19:09 - Advice for students
1:21:00 - Legacy
dude thank you so much for doing these. this is a great corner of the internet
a suggestion for a future guest could be William "Bill" Easterly. he is a an economics professor at NYU (focusing on political economy and international development) and had roughly 15 years experience at the world bank as their head of research. He has written many great books. His big idea is that in contrast to the status quo approach of economists and aid agencies trying to reduce poverty through technocratic approaches and top down plans... a better more time tested approach is to expand political and economic freedoms to the poor. He also taught at MIT. Highly recommend giving him a youtube search and listening to some of his stuff. Thanks!
This content is worth sharing!!!
Great interview with a man that I have incredible respect for, and am in awe of. Reading "The Book of Why" was a great experience, although I'm going to need to read it multiple times I think, to *really* "get it".
As far as suggestions for future guests, I would love to see one or more of:
Ben Goertzel
Marcus Hutter
Pei-Wang
Fei-Fei Li
Thanks Lex! This interview is amazing. The outlining is very nice. ML needs to execute on these ideas.
In a world of AI sharlatans and sales gurus, its so refreshing to have such a non BS podcast.
Who is Ai sharlatan? Could you give an example? You don't have to give a name, simply what kind of person you mean.
damcism Siraj Raval
Siraj is just one name. Every other person who has a RUclips channel or an account on FB or LinkedIn think they are representative of the field of Machine Learning and Data Science but in reality their whole understanding is built by some shitty medium blog and all they know is how to stack layers.
@@abu_six19 It's one thing to build AI systems, it's another thing to think about the ethics, the psych, etc. That's why lex is very important .
@@dream1430 Check LinkedIn someday. Every one is calming that they are doing research but all they have to offer is some Tensorflow/Pytorch 101 course.
Thank you for being very respectful while chatting with your guests, even when you are discussing a sensitive topic. It is an amazing quality that every host should have.
This has to be one of the best interviews I have ever seen. Both Judea and Lex are continuously challenging their point with enormous respect. Judea is also an amazing communicator of complex ideas. thanks Lex for providing us with this content!!
Beautiful. Life is short, but you make my life so much richer with interviews like this one. I will watch this again with affection.
Point of personal history. I was at UCLA in 1968 and 1969. The internet began on October 29, 1969 when Leonard Kleinrock and his team at UCLA sent a message to Stanford (only the first two letters made it through). At that time I was interested in film, art, music, parties, political demonstrations, and working to save money to go to Europe, and I knew nothing about computers. I traveled to Europe, and lived in Paris, working as a construction worker. I returned to UCLA, switched majors, and graduated from the UCLA School of Engineering in Computer Science. Judea Pearl’s office reminds me of the offices in the school where my friends and I would hang out with professors drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes (times have changed) and talking about self-aware robots, Boolean algebra, transfer phenomena, and multi-dimensional spaces. So many wonderful professors then, and now, who were so kind to us students.
Watching these videos of so many extraordinary people makes me wonder about the many paths that I did not take, but if I had taken any of those paths then I would not exist to say--thank you. William L. Ramseyer
Not just an interview. This is a classic, a legacy for 100s of years.
The gospel according to Judea Pearl
God bless you sir
What a great scientist. Not losing his hope and humour despite such a heartbreaking loss makes him a great human being, too.
he was a great human being before too, and if you know about the story, so was his son that was killed.
Mr. Judea Pearl is so amazing! My hart is bleeding for him and his late son. But he is so full of joy and life! I wish I could ever become at least half a person he is...
This podcast is what got me interested again in mathematics. I owe you deeply Lex.
Lex's podcast have a way of doing that lol. I never liked math but I now can see the beauty and importance of it thanks to him and all the wonderful guests.
Huge intellect, clearly expressed - your questions were excellent in teasing out more of the understanding. Pearl is a fascinating guest.
thanks for not doing adds in the middle
[11:30] “Faking it, is having it. …Faking intelligence, is intelligence, because it’s not easy to fake. It’s very hard to fake…and you can only fake it if you have it.”
but that's not true. watch an interview with almost any famous actor: the actor isn't actually as intelligent or cool or whatever as the rolls he convincingly plays.
@@chrissmithdoe2100 But how can you be so sure about that? ;)
@@phlipsterroxor9068 ohhhh.... mind = blown
@@chrissmithdoe2100 Give yourself some time and think about the original sentence and your reply - maybe write it down...there is a clear answer, that is why I had to react. Wonderful podcast and a wonderful audience. Best wishes!
@@phlipsterroxor9068 well i thought i understood your point, which was the obvious point that, being actors, an observer arguably can't know whether they're acting stupid or are stupid. my next message was just trying to play along in a fun way. but i'm not sure why you're treating me like an idiot now?
Amazing interview. Beautiful exploration of what basic concepts in causality actually mean, complete with examples. I've watched several speeches by Pearl, but never anything as clear this, Lex Fridman very craftily structures the conversation.
I love how Prof Pearl seems to keep Lex a bit off balance, not in a bad way, but by continually questioning and challenging various points as they're made.
yeah so good haha
Great observation. Definitely: Professor Pearl always alert in details, specially it has philosophical implication on some math concept.
Exactly! I loved it.
I think around 56-58 mins-ish I believe the rifle man example it’s clear that Lex hadn’t grasped the principles early in the conversation.
It’s easy for the mind to wander off the path 😂
Lex, your talent for extracting knowledge from your interviewees is amazing, inspirational, and very much appreciated by this armchair aficionado of the sciences.
Such a beautiful and moving interview. A display of humility, intelligence and compassion by this man.
How did you cover such a magnificent span of topics and range of intellectuality and emotion. Can't believe you asked that deep and perfect pair of questions about his son.
It feels like Lex is trying to ask very cautiously how to build an AGI and Judea politely declines to break our hopes about it happening any time soon :D
Great podcast, refreshing to see people that actually know what they are discussing
I wasn't convinced by mr. Pearl at the beggining of the interview, but it really grew on me ! Yet another awesome one, thank you both.
I was just reading his book and wondered if Lex has already interviewed him... This channel is amazing.
He has to be one of the wisest people I’ve ever seen.
Oh wow I've used a bunch of his textbooks before. Bless up Lex for these awesome guests and free content.
Hes 83. He doesn't look a day older than 60. Incredible
And he is still publishing kick ass research. Like this: arxiv.org/pdf/1801.04016.pdf and the book of why.
Yourself and Joe Rogan are the only podcast I make sure not to miss.
Same here
One of the best interviews I saw in a long time! Judea Pearl is a genius with a wonderful sense of humor and a big heart!!👏👏 A rare breed in today’s world!!
I just started watching all your interviews, wow, such a good combination of intelligent questions and answers!
I definitely need to watch this 2-3 times. It is great, and each time I am learning more from it. I enjoyed it so much.
Mr. Pearl changed my life, most inspiring Person I have ever seen...
Such a brilliant and empathetic person, Dr. Pearl...thank you!
Thanks Lex! One of the most interesting interviews so far! (and I've watched them all!!!)
Man, that is absolutely horrible what happened to his son. He's a strong man being able to talk about it without falling to pieces. Or maybe that's just time dulling the pain. I love my children and I don't want to think about how I would grapple with such a tragedy. Love of ones offspring is a powerful emotion. Sorry for your loss sir.
"Free will is an illusion that we, AI people, are gonna solve." - Judea Pearl
For what purpose do you propose that we are without purpose?
@anders damin Did you ask me that on purpose?
ZandarKoad Well am I replying to you on purpose?
Yes. Purpose is a self-evident truth (non-emergent). Just like consciousness itself.
I scrolled by this comment at the exact moment he said it. That was kind of weird ;)
What Pearl says about intervention is much the same as what LeCunn says about infants. Infants observe the world (mostly) and occasionally intervene. Infants (and kittens batting a ball of yarn) are building a causal model from the data -- from some initial architecture and set of conditions -- and resolving ambiguities with interventions. Intervention is a way of pruning the causal graph to make it less "bushy", as Pearl puts it.
The other lesson to draw from this interview is the importance of historical and cultural grounding in math and science education. We typically interact with disembodied knowledge about abstract structures. But Pearl is firmly situated in time and place. He knows who he is, who Descartes was, and who his people (the Jews) are. He knows how to relate to Archimedes and Daniel and the king of Babylon. All these connections mean that his personal knowledge graph is very bushy. He can approach a topic from multiple vantages and evaluate the merits of many different paths through his personal graph. But if all he knew about a subject was what he learned in textbooks, then the sparseness of his understanding would preclude insights and wisdom.
Awesome talk, love Prof. Pearl. Please invite Doug Hofstadter next.
Thank you Lex, I really enjoy the work you put into making these great podcasts. I'm learning new concepts in each episode.
A beautiful episode, loved it. I had a feeling I'm drinking a cup of coffee with the 2 of you - that's a good sign that the podcast was a success. Thank you.
What an amazing interview again! Thank you for interviewing the geniuses of our modern times.
Great talk! Another good one lex. Interviewing skills are improving and progressing after each successive one.
This is the kind is Academic pop culture we need on Facebook and in general. :)
What an amazing interview!? Thank you Dr. Pearl.
One of the best conversations, thank you!
My favorite podcast yet! What a fascinating and interesting conversation!
Very moving at the end , and overall very deep talk about causal reasoning.
I have true appreciation for your work, Mr Fridman
Excellent excellent interview - got more out of this than some of his lectures
Lex, can you get Ben Goertzel from SingularityNET on if possible? Thanks
I had hard time to agree with many things that he said. However, I was in awe at the end of the discussion. Ended up buying his book. Great talk! Gave me many fruitful insights!
Currently working on same topic. Thanks for providing material for literature review.
lex we really appreciate content from such a high level, your are going down as one of the best to every do it
Please do Josh Tenenbaum
do(Tenenbaum)
@@samernoureddine What if did not (Tenenbaum)
Thank you for respecting the artistic integrity of your podcast and putting ads at the beginning! Sean Carrol has degraded his podcast significantly by having interruptions for unrelated things in the middle of a deep conversation.
The role of the equation sign in physics and what is implied by the causal relations from 20:00 to 22:22 is mind blowing
Great interview full of key ideas. Worth a careful study and sharing around.
Great interview, I really like the greate spirit in Prof Pearl.
What a beautiful conversation!! Couldn’t skip anything.
The important thing to understand is that when we *do not* add arrows to the causal diagram it is an explicit assumption that there is no causality in between two variables. And that is essentially the default in many observational studies. What causal inference does is allow one to explore and better understand how those implicit or explicit assumptions actually influence the analysis of the data and conclusions that can or can't be made logically. At least, that's the important takeaway for me.
Thanks again for inspiring us again with an amazing interview Lex
Why on earth does this video not have billion of views?
Thanks for this beautiful interview!
Who the fuck is disliking these podcasts? Honestly, it blows my mind. I understand you might not like the topic at hand or the guest but to take the time to go on and dislike such high quality of content is absurd.
Thanks for all of this amazing, insightful content Lex! Much appreciated, cheers from India
Thank you so much Lex! Could we please get automatic captions?
44:30 - "Metaphor is an expert system ..." great comment by Pearl.
wow... tear in my eye from 1:09:53
"Today is father's day"
I was waiting for this one!
Gosh Judea is amazingly sharp despite his age. A real genius.
What a brilliant man! I love that he said the best way to teach math is chronologically! I always believed so. I need to know who, when, and why first! He is so funny, I don't know why Lex isn't laughing harder. As a roboticist, this is undoubtedly my favorite episode!
Thanks @Lex. It was an interesting conversation that tried to align a mental model of reality, that is very human and uses terms like causation, and structure, to some of the mental models that a pure pattern recognition algorithm can build from raw observation of the world (eg a baby of another specie of being for example).
Can we 'learn' how to build mental models, is the topic that you kept coming back to.
"You can't fake free will if you don't have it" -Judea Pearl
@@SalarymanNoMore I think, that's exactly the point, he's saying that no other comparison to what we'd call 'free will' exists...
@@SalarymanNoMore The quote is paradoxical in a sense
@@SalarymanNoMore No, that would be a subjective view / perspective of intelligence; not really intelligence.
@@SalarymanNoMore ??? How can you fake a higher order of intelligence. If people try to fake intelligence by using smart words and throwing in a few premeditated comments, they appear as stupid as people walking around naked. Can you pretend to be good at chess in a chess competition?
@@skierpage Then both sides faked intelligence.
I see Lex Fridman AI Podcast im just spaming like button
Great talk. Could you speak with Michael Jordan.
I wish I could be 10% as intuitively intelligent as prof. Pearl - great video.
Lex, it was a really great conversation. Appreciate it a lot.
An excellent interview, Lex! Bravo :)
Hell yeah!!!! Read my mind with that guest!
2 of the biggest dangers imo is the fact that generals are going to get their hands on it for war. Secondly the creation of A.I could start a war itself if leaders realize the power advantage because someone is going to create it first.
Beautiful conversation
Absolutely fabulous work! Love it.
I'm from China, recently I bought the Chinese version of 《The Book of Why》, I want to read the book firstly and review this video later.
Only through min 11, but it's already obvious this must be a like
Great talk ..
Not on Spotify?
"...the strings behind the facts." Awesome!
This might be Inconvenient but it looks like the *Turing Award* behind him!
Thanks for the Podcast BTW!
excellent talk, a real giant
what a wonderful exchange tyg
@1:21:25 "Put a counterfactual in terms of a model surgery" ?? what does this mean? I get the counterfactual, I don't get the "in terms of model surgery" part.
11:42 On free will: ''You can only fake it if you have it.'' Wtf. Can somebody elaborate on how this makes any sense?
Pretty simple, it takes intelligence to fake intelligence. It takes free will to fake free will.
interview Geoffrey Hinton
I admire the financial independence of people, But you can live better if you work a little more. After watching this I think there are people out there, on the extreme, who plan to die early just to be able to retire early. To each their own but to me, retirement isn't just about not having to work, it's about having the freedom to do whatever you might reasonably want, such as travel, buying things, enjoying life, etc. I don't think I could retire with less than $3m in income-generating investments, maybe $2m at the very minimum. I plan to work until I'm at least 45
Nobody knows anything, you need to create your own process, manage risk and stick to the plan, through thick or thin while also continuously learning from mistakes and improving
@@harrisonjamie794 Having an investment adviser is the best way to go about the market right now, especially for near-retirees, I've been in touch with a coach for a while now mostly cause I lack the depth knowledge and mental fortitude to deal with these recurring market conditions, I netted over $220K during this dip, that made it clear there's more to the market that we avg joes don't know
@@MarcelPhilips Who’s the person guiding you
@@harrisonjamie794 credits to *MARTHA ALONSO HARA*, one of the best portfolio managers out there. she's well known, you should look her up
@@MarcelPhilips Thank you, I just checked her out and I have sent her an email. I hope she gets back to me soon.
Saw the Teal book in the background "De Re Metallica" . After looking the book up I'm somewhat disheartened that Judea Pearl isn't a heavy metal fan
haha, well this is Fridman's studio so there's still a chance
Again a great conversation. Keep it going :)
Really good conversation
"Ask your questions. Really, your questions are never dumb. And solve them your own way. And don't take "no" for an answer." Judea Pearl - Lex Fridman Podcast #56
Hey Lex. Your are awesome!!! Keep being so dope!!!!!!
4:30 What he's saying is that by shuffling around notation you can lay your hand on your God's creation, which on this plane manifests geometrically.
"You can't fake it if you don't have it". Indeed. But *it* doesn't have it. The engineers who designed it do (and they also know what it *means* to have it).
That’s only true for expert systems. In machine learning reasonably complex algorithm can result in an extremely complex behaviour that the engineer doesn’t understand. General intelligence may emerge from simpler principles
1:02:00 "You should have passed the ball," as said by your coach, can only be interpreted correctly within either the context of the coaching relationship, or the generalized context of all coaching relationships, modulo conventional norms of athletic progression.
An NHL defensemen will process a coach's remark about passing the puck or eating the puck (taking the forecheck on the chin, because a hasty outlet pass is excessively vulnerable to being picked off) as fine-tuning a decision when fielding the puck off the boards at one particular angle and position, with the forecheck coming in with a certain size/pace/stick length, and relative to his outlet being one step above or below the hash marks, already fully in flight, or just winding up.
Or the coach may be implicitly talking about that particular play in the middle of a flying shift change by other teammates on the ice.
Especially during the game, when a player returns to the bench and the coach leans over from behind and says into one ear "gotta eat that puck"-which is probably as much as the noise and chaos allows-the player has to figure out _which_ puck (the whole shift is potentially in scope, a similar play might have been made more than once) and then actively hypothesize why the coach might have read the play differently from the bench than the player did from the ice, why the coach decided that the player could feasibly make a useful change based on this guidance (there's a lot you can't see with your back to the ice; and the coach is not telling you what he concluded with his more complete vision, but what you _should_ have been able to conclude, despite your partial vision).
And honestly, the player actually tends to make a bit of a muddy guess, much like machine learning, and makes very small tweaks to multiple coefficients, about pace/position/circumstance to see whether this leads to more validation or less validation from the bench boss in future.
If that doesn't work, the player eventually confronts the coach in practice and says "you know, I'm really not getting it, in game A you said 'pass', in game B you said 'eat', and so far as I can see, these were entirely equivalent circumstances". It might turn out that the coach is seeing something very specific, in a consistent way, or it might not. If it's analytic, the coach can probably explain it at greater length; if it's more based on intuition (it often is), the coach might struggle to get the message across for multiple seasons. The guys who are simply not on the same page often get traded, and their success with the next coach can be night and day.
The problem is that this coaching shorthand is only convergent if enough of the conceptual model is shared, and everyone is grinding away on the meta problem about _whether_ this model is sufficiently shared (especially the GM on a season-over-season time scale), in parallel with trying to do the best with what you already have. If you do successfully diagnose a failure to share sufficient context, then you have to decide whether this a reparable fault, or whether to kick the can down the road by trading the player to some other team for a bag of pucks/equally conflicted player, or maybe even releasing the coach altogether, and putting the entire team on a new communications page, all at once.
What actually happens is that coaches transfer what they can within the margin of frame overlap, until the gaps accumulate into too big a problem, and then you cycle in a coach with a different repertoire of strengths and gaps. The largest gap often receives a quick boost, while the former strengths atrophy slowly (as they will when maintained by a coach whose greatest strengths now lie elsewhere).
If a defenseman is consistently making the wrong choice on pass/eat under a hard forecheck, his forwards coming back in support will start to evolve their own behaviour to better cope with the anticipated reality (born of long experience under fire) pulling those forwards "out of position" not so much in the game state, but as viewed from the discourse model, making feedback from the coach to those forwards so much _more_ confusing: did he mean I shouldn't have done that relative to the X and O model, had I been in "discourse" position, or relative to my being a bit out of position to save the bacon of a rookie with a Magic 8 Ball for brains?
This is why coaches everywhere front-load this kind of instruction to the earliest possible moment, when it's not yet clear that comprehension is on the same page. The coach is hoping that _many_ of these comments do manage to take root as desired, so that _some_ kind of structure emerges, so that the sketchy discourse model becomes merely insufferable, rather than outright intractable.
The average armchair fan underestimates the "fog of causal arrows" in this complex discourse environment by _at least_ a full order of magnitude. Hence every Tom, Dick and Harry with a 60" television can diagnose a problem in the room with a single gestalt that your Claude, Alain, or Lindy pulling down $2 million annually is unable to rectify over multiple, long seasons.
This is also why "glue" veterans are so important on any team. These are the players who make subtle changes all over the ice because of what he knows the coach has told the other players to change or to work on, biased toward making the failures crisp when you can afford to do so, and biased toward bacon-saving when you can't. And then back at the bench: "hey, rook-you know I saved your bacon on that play by being _way the firetruck_ out of position, don't you?" Rook stares at skates. "Don't count on it next time," continues the veteran. "I don't change diapers for a living, you know."
This might work great for a while, until eventually the rook becomes cognitively overloaded with all this "helpful" advice, and starts to play the discourse rather than playing by instinct out there on the ice. Cognitive overload from the discourse domain is an erratic, moving target. Hence many coaches lean harder on the line-blender than most fans appreciate. It's also why it so often helps a player to regain his cognitive bubble to go out there for a period or two with a couple of fresh linemates, with no set, internal conventions as an established group.
Coach: "You gotta eat that puck."
Player [inside head]: "yeah, but my forward came back on the route to save my bacon, after recently telling me that he 'doesn't change diapers for a living, you know' and so I was expecting his position to be different than it was, and by the time I realized we were on different pages, I wasn't properly positioned to 'eat' the puck without also losing two teeth to the knob of my stick".
Rook [to veteran, on bench]: "May I politely remind you that you don't change diapers for a living? You must have heard coach hanging me out to dry after than last play, where I was expecting you to ignore the poop smell."
Veteran: "Point taken. My bad. I forgot."
Maybe he did, maybe he didn't; but it just might be the very last time Rook ever positions the knob of his stick directly between hard-charging forecheck at NHL pace and his own sparse, remaining dentition. Because next time on that play he _is_ going to eat that puck-whether he loses two teeth or not-or he'll occupy the popcorn box for a month of Sundays (where those extra teeth are small consolation as you sit on those hot, buttery thumb screws, agonizing that your lifelong dream is spiraling down the pipe).
So many lessons, so little time.
I love Judea Pearl!
Illisuon of free will :). I like this guy.