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The Brain in the Dark: A Conversation with Professor Karl Friston on Perception, Free Will and Whether Machines Can Be Conscious

In this interview, I spoke to Professor Karl Friston, the neuroscientist behind the free energy principle, about why the brain perceives from the inside out, where free will fits into a predictive mind, what separates us…

Vikas Shah 27 min read

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Three thousand moments. Three picked at random.

“If you're doing anything for legacy, you might as well forget about it – even your great grandchildren will have no idea who you were or what you did. Legacy lasts 50 years maximum.”
— Mitch Lowe Co-Founder of Netflix & Former Redbox CEO
“Space also taught me that when you think you're at 100% of your physical or mental capacity, you're not. We have enormous reserves within us (which we don't tap into for good reason), but we are all capable of pushing ourselves a lot further than we think.”
— Tim Peake British Astronaut & ISS Expedition Commander
“People underestimate their personal probability of encountering negative …it is not so much that individuals believe that negative events will not happen, but rather that these events are relatively unlikely to happen to them.”
— Frank McKenna Former Premier of New Brunswick & Canadian diplomat and businessman

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  1. 01 Business & Economics The End of Hand-Written Code: A Conversation with David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH) on AI, Omarchy and the Future of Programming 365 interviews
  2. 02 Culture, Society, Sports & Arts The Brain in the Dark: A Conversation with Professor Karl Friston on Perception, Free Will and Whether Machines Can Be Conscious 239 interviews
  3. 03 Politics & Policy Who Decides What a Country Is? Michael and Liam Bates on Sealand, Sovereignty and Belonging 172 interviews
  4. 04 Science & Technology The Brain in the Dark: A Conversation with Professor Karl Friston on Perception, Free Will and Whether Machines Can Be Conscious 141 interviews
  5. 05 Health & Medicine Different, Not Wrong: A Conversation with Dave Plummer on Autism, Task Manager and Coding with AI 75 interviews
  6. 06 Nobel Laureates Markets, Morals and the Road Ahead: A Conversation with Nobel Laureate Professor Alvin Roth 21 interviews

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