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Daniel Pick on Psychoanalysis and Fascism

presented by Daniel Pick

The thing I’ve been real­ly inter­est­ed in the last few years in my research is think­ing about the prob­lem of fas­cism and Nazism, and the way in which in the human sci­ences, the his­to­ry of the human sci­ences, these phe­nom­e­na came to be understood.

Towards an Artificial Brain

presented by David Cox

The goal of MICrONS is three­fold. One is they asked us to go and mea­sure the activ­i­ty in a liv­ing brain while an ani­mal actu­al­ly learns to do some­thing, and watch how that activ­i­ty changes. Two, to take that brain out and map exhaus­tive­ly the wiring dia­gram” of every neu­ron con­nect­ing to every oth­er neu­ron in that ani­mal’s brain in the par­tic­u­lar region. And then third, to use those two pieces of infor­ma­tion to build bet­ter machine learn­ing. So let it nev­er be said that IARPA is unambitious.

Recreating the Brain

presented by David Cox

The thing that makes us unique is our com­plex­i­ty. But not com­plex­i­ty in some gener­ic sense. Nature is rife with com­plex­i­ty. What makes us spe­cial is the com­plex­i­ty of our brains.

Open Discussion on Lucas Introna’s Algorithms, Performativity and Governability”

presented by Lisa Gitelman, Lucas Introna, Matthew Jones

I just want to be clear that I’m not say­ing that the details of the algo­rithms are irrel­e­vant. In a way they can mat­ter very much, and you know, in a cer­tain cir­cum­stance, in a cer­tain sit­u­at­ed use, it might mat­ter sig­nif­i­cant­ly what the algo­rithm does but we can’t say that a pri­ori. So we need to both open up the algo­rithms, we need to under­stand them as much as pos­si­ble, but we must not be seduced to believe that if we under­stand them there­fore we know what they do.

Comments on Lucas Introna’s Algorithms, Performativity and Governability”

presented by Matthew Jones

We can’t gov­ern through knowl­edge, prop­er­ly speak­ing. Even if many algo­rithms are trade secrets, Lucas and oth­ers have remind­ed us near­ly all would not be sur­veil­l­able by human beings, even if we had access to their source code. We have to begin what­ev­er process from this fun­da­men­tal lack of knowl­edge. We need to start from the same epis­te­mo­log­i­cal place that many of the pro­duc­ers of algo­rithms do.

Algorithms, Performativity and Governability

presented by Lucas Introna

I think this ques­tion what do algo­rithms do,” which points to the ques­tion of agency, I think is an inap­pro­pri­ate way to ask the ques­tion. I think we should rather ask the ques­tion, what do algo­rithms become in sit­u­at­ed practices?

2013 Internet Hall of Fame Interviews: Jun Murai

presented by Jun Murai

In order to make the Internet be a kind of glob­al enti­ty, I’ve been involved as one of the key per­sons out­side the US for the devel­op­ment of the Internet.

Why Are Dogs Special?

presented by Clive Wynne

We real­ized there was noth­ing spe­cial about dogs when it came to their intel­lect. Dogs were just doing what any ani­mal would that had been raised around peo­ple and is com­plete­ly depen­dent on peo­ple for the ful­fill­ment of all of its needs. Dogs pay close atten­tion to every­thing peo­ple do that pro­duces an out­come that mat­ters to the dog. There’s no spe­cial intel­li­gence involved in doing that.

After the Next Attack: Terrorism in the Trump Era

presented by Saud Al-Zaid

My pre­dic­tion was that there would be some form of an attack in the United States or pos­si­bly in the for­eign ter­ri­to­ries or inter­ests. My talk would have been a break­down or dis­sec­tion and con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion of the event. And of course, so far in the Trump admin­is­tra­tion there’s no attack. Well, at least no real ones. Some of us might remem­ber Bowling Green. 

The True Costs of Misinformation
Producing Moral and Technical Order in a Time of Pandemonium

presented by Joan Donovan

Of course we’re avid, avid watch­ers of Tucker Carlson. But inso­far as he’s like the shit fil­ter, which is that if things make it as far as Tucker Carlson, then they prob­a­bly have much more like…stuff that we can look at online. And so some­times he’ll start talk­ing about some­thing and we don’t real­ly under­stand where it came from and then when we go back online we can find that there’s quite a bit of dis­course about would­n’t it be fun­ny if peo­ple believed this about antifa.”

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