Yeah, it's big brain time. This week we're reading 'Understand' from Ted Chiang's 2002 collection Stories of Your Life and Others.

what is the ceiling on human intelligence? can we jooce it up? did Chiang inspire the whole AI doomer movement? would superintelligence beings have to annihilate each other instead of cooperating? Do we buy the orthogonality thesis?

Also: introducing David Deutsch's 'universal explainer' theory of intelligence, which gives radically different answers to all of the above. Is the dumbest guy you know really capable of making novel advances in quantum physics? The answer may surprise you.

On abstractions and 'chunking': how important is working memory? Should we expect our high-level explanations to converge on a theory of everything? Would super-smart people really communicate in short series of grunts? Could they hack their own autonomic nervous systems or incept a linguistic killshot?

tl;dr: gestalt gestalt gestalt gestalt gestalt gestalt. gestalt gestalt? gestalt gestalt, gestalt.

CHAPTERS

• (00:00:00) intro and synopsis
• (00:05:13) Can you jooce up human intelligence
• 00:14:53) How would super-smart people communicate?
• (00:22:01) ’chunking’ abstractions towards a theory of everything
• (00:39:23) behavioral priming gone WILD (Greco vs Reynolds grunt battle)
• (00:51:23) why can’t we all just get along??
• (00:55:40) reconciling David Deutsch’s ’universal explainer’ theory with IQ
• (01:16:42) unresolved AI safety concerns

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS:

We love to share listener feedback on the pod, so send us a note at douevenlit@gmail.com to correct our bad takes or share your own or just say hello.

NEXT ON THE READING LIST:

My Struggle, volume 1 - Karl Ove Knausgaard

Lolita - Nabokov

The Moviegoer - Walker Percy

This week we're reading three of Anton Chekhov's most beloved short stories: The Man in the Case, Gooseberries, and About Love (The Little Trilogy, 1898).

We get a minor assist from George Saunders and his fantastic book A Swim in the Pond in the Rain but have no shortage of stuff to discuss.

Talking big 5 personality traits, the degree to which people oppress themselves, why Rich fell out of love with the early retirement movement, whether it's OK to be happy in a world full of suffering, and if having to settle in romantic relationships is antithetical to true love. Also: Cam takes a controversial and brave stance against home-wreckers.

CHAPTERS

• (00:00:00) intro
• (00:01:54) ’The Man in the Case’ synopsis
• 00:07:12) Are some personality types just better than others?
• (00:12:52) Belyakov fumbles the bag with Varenka
• (00:24:07) Is everybody trapped in a case of their own making
• (00:34:58) Mavra and the tranquil village
• (00:40:15) Gooseberries synopsis
• (00:42:30) The pitfalls of the ’early retirement’ movement
• (00:52:55) theorising on happiness
• (01:01:57) Ivan the big fat hypocrite
• (01:07:23) ’About Love’ synopsis
• (01:11:44) Did Alyohin make the right decision?
• (01:22:10) Can love by analysed rationally
• (01:33:49) our favourite story of the trilogy
• (01:37:59) accessibility of chekhov

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS:

We wanna start reading listener feedback out on the pod, so send us a note at douevenlit@gmail.com to correct our bad takes or share your own or just say hi.

NEXT ON THE READING LIST:

My Struggle, volume 1 - Karl Ove Knausgaard

Hemingway's 1929 semi-autobiographical classic tackles two big timeless themes: love and war.

Two out of three of us can relate to the first one, but war feels pretty alien to us. How would the boys do if they were conscripted? What made WWI so uniquely dispiriting? What is it about this novel that so faithfully captures the experience of war?

We also talk quite a bit about Hemingway's laconic characters and terse writing style. How representative is this of his broader work? What do we think of the 'iceberg method'? Why did he go with the most depressing possible ending?

and MORE

CHAPTERS

• (00:00:00) first reactions and synopsis
• (00:06:02) Hemingway’s understated style and the ’Iceberg method’
• (00:19:10) What made WWI a uniquely dispiriting war?
• (00:28:35) Catherine and Henry are the same person
• (00:38:44) downer ending
• (00:46:45) A catalogue of arbitrary and meaningless death
• (00:57:34) Final thoughts and next book

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS:

We wanna start reading listener feedback out on the pod, so send us a note at douevenlit@gmail.com to correct our bad takes or share your own.

NEXT ON THE READING LIST:

My Struggle, volume 1 - Karl Ove Knausgaard