As I explain in the introduction to the full conversation with Noam, due to an unfortunate rare mishap, this conversation is audio-only (and so is the clip). Hope you still enjoy it and find it interesting. Full episode with Noam Chomsky (Nov 2019): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMscNuSUy0I
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Noam Chomsky is one of the greatest minds of our time and is one of the most cited scholars in history. He is a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. He has spent over 60 years at MIT and recently also joined the University of Arizona.

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So I just spent a day at a company called Neuralink and what they do is try to design what's called the brain machine, brain computer interface.

So they try to do thousands readings in the brain, be able to read what the neurons are firing and then stimulate back, so 2 way.

Do you think their dream is to expand the capacity of the brain to attain information, sort of increase the bandwidth to which we can search Google kind of thing.

Do you think our cognitive capacity might be expanded, our linguistic capacity, our ability to reason might be expanded by adding a machine into the picture?

Can be expanded in a certain sense, but a sense that was known thousands of years ago.

It's not totally new things could be understood.

Well, nothing that goes beyond our native cognitive capacities.

Just like you can't turn the visual system into an insect system.

Well, I mean, the thought is, the thought is perhaps you can't directly, but you can map.

You could, but we already, we know that without this experiment.

You could map what a bee sees and present it in a form so that we could follow it.

But you don't think there's something greater than bees that we can map and then all of a sudden discover something, be able to understand a quantum world, quantum mechanics, be able to start to be able to make sense.

Students at MIT study and understand quantum mechanics.

But they always reduce it to the infant, the physical.

Oh, you don't, there's things, that may be another area where there's just a limit to understanding.

We understand the theories, but the world that it describes doesn't make any sense.

So, you know, the experiment, Schrodinger's cat, for example, can understand the theory, but as Schrodinger pointed out, it's an unintelligible world.

1 of the reasons why Einstein was always very skeptical about quantum theory.

He described himself as a classical realist once in one's intelligibility.

He has something in common with infants in that way.


Speaker 0: So I just spent a day at a company called Neuralink and what they do is try to design what's called the brain machine, brain computer interface. So they try to do thousands readings in the brain, be able to read what the neurons are firing and then stimulate back, so 2 way. Do you think their dream is to expand the capacity of the brain to attain information, sort of increase the bandwidth to which we can search Google kind of thing. Do you think our cognitive capacity might be expanded, our linguistic capacity, our ability to reason might be expanded by adding a machine into the picture?

Speaker 1: Can be expanded in a certain sense, but a sense that was known thousands of years ago. A book expands your cognitive capacity. Okay, so this could expand it too.

Speaker 0: But it's not a fundamental expansion. It's not totally new things could be understood.

Speaker 1: Well, nothing that goes beyond our native cognitive capacities. Just like you can't turn the visual system into an insect system.

Speaker 0: Well, I mean, the thought is, the thought is perhaps you can't directly, but you can map.

Speaker 1: So that. You could, but we already, we know that without this experiment. You could map what a bee sees and present it in a form so that we could follow it. In fact, every bee scientist does that.

Speaker 0: But you don't think there's something greater than bees that we can map and then all of a sudden discover something, be able to understand a quantum world, quantum mechanics, be able to start to be able to make sense.

Speaker 1: Students at MIT study and understand quantum mechanics.

Speaker 0: But they always reduce it to the infant, the physical. I mean, they don't really understand.

Speaker 1: Oh, you don't, there's things, that may be another area where there's just a limit to understanding. We understand the theories, but the world that it describes doesn't make any sense. So, you know, the experiment, Schrodinger's cat, for example, can understand the theory, but as Schrodinger pointed out, it's an unintelligible world. 1 of the reasons why Einstein was always very skeptical about quantum theory. He described himself as a classical realist once in one's intelligibility.

Speaker 0: He has something in common with infants in that way. You

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Noam Chomsky: Neuralink and the Expansion of Cognitive Capacity