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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.

“I mean, people ask me, 'Should I do a startup?' And I say, 'Well, how important is work-life balance to you?' And if they say anything other than 'It's not important,' I say, 'You shouldn't do it.' Because it's a killing field.”
— Richard Hagberg
“Art is a vocation for me, not a career, not a job… you wouldn't say to a nun. 'so, how did you get into God?'”
— Tracey Emin British artist known for provocative conceptual and autobiographical works
“Poverty is a result of history first of all. Mankind was always 'poor' according to our development standards. Growth has been very high in the last two centuries, but only in the west for a while, and now”
— Jacques Attali French Economist, Advisor to Mitterrand & Founder of EBRD

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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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