Sean Carroll是一位理论物理学家，也是一位受欢迎的科学传播者，他主持的播客《Mindscape》探讨了从科学到社会、哲学、文化、艺术和思想等广泛话题。Carroll在最近一期节目中谈论了人工智能和大型语言模型（LLMs），并对AI的思考能力进行了分析，他认为AI拥有独特思维方式，但也需要谨慎对待，避免过度炒作和误解。

👨‍🏫 Sean Carroll是一位理论物理学家，也是一位受欢迎的科学传播者，他主持的播客《Mindscape》探讨了从科学到社会、哲学、文化、艺术和思想等广泛话题。Carroll在最近一期节目中谈论了人工智能和大型语言模型（LLMs）。

🤖 Carroll认为，人工智能拥有独特的思维方式，它们能够以人类无法企及的方式处理信息和进行推理。他强调了AI在解决复杂问题和进行创造性工作方面的潜力，但也指出我们需要谨慎对待AI的思考能力，避免过度炒作和误解。

🤔 Carroll还探讨了西方佛教的禁欲主义，以及给予不道德者赞誉的危险。他认为，乌克兰冲突是一个将世界人民团结在一起的事件，它提醒我们人类的共同命运。

💡 Carroll在节目中还讨论了大型语言模型（LLMs）的局限性，他认为LLMs虽然能够生成看似有意义的文本，但它们缺乏真正的理解能力和创造性思维。

📚 Carroll的观点引发了关于人工智能未来发展的思考，他认为AI将对我们的生活产生深远的影响，但我们需要明智地利用AI的力量，确保它为人类社会带来积极的改变。

Controversial physics firebrand Sean Carroll has cut a swathe through the otherwise meek and mild podcasting industry over the last few years. Known in the biz as the "bad boy" of science communication, he offends as much as he educ....

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No, we can't back any of that up obviously, those are all actually lies. Let's start again.

Sean Carroll has worked as a research professor in theoretical physics and philosophy of science at Caltech and is presently an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute. He currently focuses on popular writing and public education on topics in physics and has appeared in several science documentaries.

Since 2018 Sean has hosted his podcast Mindscape, which focuses not only on science but also on "society, philosophy, culture, arts and ideas". Now, that's a broad scope and firmly places Sean in the realm of "public intellectual", and potentially within the scope of a "secular guru" (in the broader non-pejorative sense - don't start mashing your keyboard with angry e-mails just yet).

The fact is, Sean appears to have an excellent reputation for being responsible, reasonable and engaging, and his Mindscape podcast is wildly popular. But despite his mild-mannered presentation, Sean is quite happy to take on culture-war-adjacent topics such as promoting a naturalistic and physicalist atheist position against religious approaches. He's also prepared to stake out and defend non-orthodox positions, such as the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics, and countenance somewhat out-there ideas such as the holographic principle.

But we won't be covering his deep physics ideas in this episode... possibly because we're not smart enough. Rather, we'll look at a recent episode where Sean stretched his polymathic wings, in the finest tradition of a secular guru, and weighed in on AI and large-language models (LLMs).

Is Sean getting over his skis, falling face-first into a mound of powdery pseudo-profound bullshit or is he gliding gracefully down a black diamond with careful caveats and insightful reflections?

Also covered the stoic nature of Western Buddhists, the dangers of giving bad people credit, and the unifying nature of the Ukraine conflict.

Links

YouTube 'Drama' channel covering all the Vaush stuff in excruciating detailThe Wikipedia entry on Buddhist Modernism Sharf, R. (1995). Buddhist modernism and the rhetoric of meditative experience. Numen, 42(3), 228-283.Radley Balko's Substack: The retconning of George Floyd: An Update and the original articleWhat The Controversial George Floyd Doc Didn't Tell Us | Glenn Loury & John McWhorterSean Carroll: Mindscape 258 | Solo: AI Thinks Different