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B.F. Skinner
“B.F. Skinner is probably its most famous practitioner. It was created by Pavlov. Pavlov was a Russian psychologist, very famous for his experiments with dogs. He had a lot of dogs, and what he would…” (Lee Braver)
From Descartes to Nietzsche: The Birth of Science and the Death of God · Lecture 4: Why You Can't Prove Tomorrow▶︎ watch 28:26 · read ↗︎
Bacon
“So, there were a number of figures, like Descartes, uh, Bacon, Galileo, Newton, Leibniz, who were all doing science and philosophizing about the nature of science simultaneously. They were playing…” (Lee Braver)
From Descartes to Nietzsche: The Birth of Science and the Death of God · Intro: When the Old Map Stopped Working▶︎ watch 3:51 · read ↗︎
From Descartes to Nietzsche: The Birth of Science and the Death of God · Lecture 7: Nietzsche's Warning to the Future▶︎ watch 5:03 · read ↗︎
balls in a sack
“So, okay, you lost a bet with your friends and the agreement is you have to stand in humiliation holding a big empty sack, a wool sack. And there's a pile of infinitely many billiard balls nearby.” (Joel David Hamkins)
Lectures on Infinity · Lecture 2: Supertasks: Doing Infinitely Many Things▶︎ watch 12:10 · read ↗︎
bang plex stack hierarchy
“For example, I could make a tweet like this. I could write a googlebang plex bang bang plex plexbang.” (Joel David Hamkins)
Lectures on Infinity · Lecture 4: The Largest Tweetable Number▶︎ watch 22:13 · read ↗︎
barber paradox
“Let's imagine a town, and there's a barber in this town, and he lives in the town, and the barber shaves all the men in town who don't shave themselves, yeah? Let me assume the barber is a man.” (Joel David Hamkins)
Lectures on Infinity · Lecture 9: Beyond Countable Infinity▶︎ watch 1:30:51 · read ↗︎
barista paradox
“There's also another kind of example, the barista who happily serves up coffee to all and only those who don't make coffee for themselves. Some people don't make coffee for themselves. They get it…” (Joel David Hamkins)
Lectures on Infinity · Lecture 9: Beyond Countable Infinity▶︎ watch 1:32:14 · read ↗︎
begging the question
“that's a logical fallacy. That, by the way, is what begging the question means, not bringing up a question. That's a little irritation to me. I'm sorry, it's a pet peeve. You don't beg the question.…” (Lee Braver)
From Descartes to Nietzsche: The Birth of Science and the Death of God · Lecture 4: Why You Can't Prove Tomorrow▶︎ watch 21:07 · read ↗︎
behaviorism
“became called behaviorism. B.F. Skinner is probably its most famous practitioner. It was created by Pavlov. Pavlov was a Russian psychologist, very famous for his experiments with dogs. He had a lot…” (Lee Braver)
From Descartes to Nietzsche: The Birth of Science and the Death of God · Lecture 4: Why You Can't Prove Tomorrow▶︎ watch 28:24 · read ↗︎
being
“this word "being" is gonna come up more and more frequently, where being means something that is independent of experience and perception. Right. And somehow exists in itself by itself. Also kind of…” (Richard Polt)
Plato’s Theaetetus: An Inquiry into Knowledge · Lecture 2: When Every Perception is True▶︎ watch 16:29 · read ↗︎
Plato’s Theaetetus: An Inquiry into Knowledge · Lecture 4: The Soul Behind the Senses▶︎ watch 18:42 · read ↗︎
being is
“Here's what seems to be the most solid of all statements, "Being is." Right? What is, is. Who can argue with that?” (Richard Polt)
Plato’s Theaetetus: An Inquiry into Knowledge · Lecture 3: Does Relativism Refute Itself?▶︎ watch 46:48 · read ↗︎
Computation as a Universal and Fundamental Concept · Lecture 2: How Algorithms Outsmart Complexity▶︎ watch 51:20 · read ↗︎
Computation as a Universal and Fundamental Concept · Lecture 4: Two Worlds We Might Live In▶︎ watch 21:34 · read ↗︎
Plato’s Theaetetus: An Inquiry into Knowledge · Lecture 1: Is Knowledge Just Perception?▶︎ watch 35:40 · read ↗︎
Plato’s Theaetetus: An Inquiry into Knowledge · Lecture 2: When Every Perception is True▶︎ watch 16:20 · read ↗︎
Plato’s Theaetetus: An Inquiry into Knowledge · Lecture 4: The Soul Behind the Senses▶︎ watch 18:41 · read ↗︎
beliefs
“his beliefs, not beliefs that he simply swallowed down, not beliefs he took on authority, not beliefs that he believed 'cause everyone else believed, but beliefs he believed because he had examined…” (Lee Braver)
From Descartes to Nietzsche: The Birth of Science and the Death of God · Recap: Making Your Beliefs Your Own▶︎ watch 1:14 · read ↗︎
believing is seeing
“And what you ... And so, we say that seeing is believing, but in a very important sense, believing is seeing. What you believe determines what you will see, what you understand, what you see to mean.” (Lee Braver)
From Descartes to Nietzsche: The Birth of Science and the Death of God · Lecture 1: Descartes Reboots Everything▶︎ watch 8:23 · read ↗︎
Bell
“nice quote by Bell, who was a wonderful writer, where he says, "Look, the lesson of the measurement problem, succinctly, is that either the Schrodinger equation is not right or it's not everything."…” (David Albert)
Quantum Mechanics and the Crisis of Scientific Realism · Lecture 5: Three Ways to Save Reality▶︎ watch 1:05:27 · read ↗︎
Bell Inequality
“Okay? So, if the quantum mechanical predictions are that the probability that” (David Albert)
Quantum Mechanics and the Crisis of Scientific Realism · Lecture 4: Bell's Impossible Proof▶︎ watch 1:20:55 · read ↗︎
Bell Test Experiments
“And that's what people did. And oddly enough, we have a lot of Nobel Prizes coming up in this story. Oddly enough, it was these experiments that were awarded the Nobel Prize around two or three years…” (David Albert)
Quantum Mechanics and the Crisis of Scientific Realism · Lecture 4: Bell's Impossible Proof▶︎ watch 1:25:03 · read ↗︎
Bell's Theorem
“the story doesn't come out that way. Okay? That this time, the non-loca- w- we have an argument, which I'm gonna try to present here. It's a quite simple argument, that” (David Albert)
Quantum Mechanics and the Crisis of Scientific Realism · Lecture 4: Bell's Impossible Proof▶︎ watch 1:05:39 · read ↗︎
Quantum Mechanics and the Crisis of Scientific Realism · Lecture 5: Three Ways to Save Reality▶︎ watch 15:34 · read ↗︎
benevolent
“For a long time, uh, throughout the whole Middle Ages, the picture of the universe was that it was cr- the universe was created by God for us, and God, uh, wants what's best for us, so he gave us an…” (Lee Braver)
From Descartes to Nietzsche: The Birth of Science and the Death of God · Intro: When the Old Map Stopped Working▶︎ watch 1:15 · read ↗︎
Berkeley
“Everything becomes an atomic moment of truth that then disappears. So, I agree. By the way, Berkeley, a modern idealist, said, "To be is to be perceived." Seems rather close, but then he had God up…” (Richard Polt)
Plato’s Theaetetus: An Inquiry into Knowledge · Lecture 2: When Every Perception is True▶︎ watch 42:10 · read ↗︎
Bernstein
“and then finally by Bernstein in 1897. And so the earlier proofs, and in fact, we're using the axiom of choice, but you do not need the axiom of choice to prove this principle, and it's quite lovely…” (Joel David Hamkins)
Lectures on Infinity · Lecture 6: Galileo's Paradox of Infinity▶︎ watch 33:09 · read ↗︎
Berry
“Okay, so this brings us to another paradox called Berry's paradox. Berry was a librarian in Oxford, at the beginning of the 20th century, and Bertrand Russell described him as the only one in Oxford…” (Joel David Hamkins)
Lectures on Infinity · Lecture 4: The Largest Tweetable Number▶︎ watch 37:29 · read ↗︎
Berry's paradox
“Okay, so this brings us to another paradox called Berry's paradox. Berry was a librarian in Oxford, at the beginning of the 20th century, and Bertrand Russell described him as the only one in Oxford…” (Joel David Hamkins)
Lectures on Infinity · Lecture 4: The Largest Tweetable Number▶︎ watch 37:29 · read ↗︎
Bertrand Russell
“transcendental illusion, you see. Imagine this was a later philosopher, Bertrand Russell would use this analogy. Imagine that you have pink sunglasses on, and you look at a white wall. What would the…” (Lee Braver)
From Descartes to Nietzsche: The Birth of Science and the Death of God · Lecture 6: How Your Mind Builds Reality▶︎ watch 38:47 · read ↗︎
Lectures on Infinity · Lecture 4: The Largest Tweetable Number▶︎ watch 37:39 · read ↗︎
Lectures on Infinity · Lecture 9: Beyond Countable Infinity▶︎ watch 1:23:05 · read ↗︎
better color box
“Question one, can we build this... Can we build a better color box? Can we engineer things more carefully somehow so that what we've got is a box which not only does its job properly of measuring…” (David Albert)
Quantum Mechanics and the Crisis of Scientific Realism · Lecture 1: The Experiment That Broke Reality▶︎ watch 14:21 · read ↗︎
Big Bang
“You see, cosmologists have been trying to get as close as they can to the Big Bang. They get closer and closer and closer and closer to it, until they're these unbelievably tiny fractions of a second…” (Lee Braver)
From Descartes to Nietzsche: The Birth of Science and the Death of God · Lecture 6: How Your Mind Builds Reality▶︎ watch 42:38 · read ↗︎
Computation as a Universal and Fundamental Concept · Lecture 4: Two Worlds We Might Live In▶︎ watch 26:16 · read ↗︎
Computation as a Universal and Fundamental Concept · Lecture 5: AI, Quantum Computing, and Beyond▶︎ watch 12:48 · read ↗︎
Lectures on Infinity · Lecture 4: The Largest Tweetable Number▶︎ watch 18:53 · read ↗︎
bijection
“actually we can write down a certain formula, a polynomial equation, that exactly exhibits the bijection, the one-to-one correspondence between the natural numbers, the pairs of natural numbers, and…” (Joel David Hamkins)
Lectures on Infinity · Lecture 8: Hilbert's Hotel Is Always Open▶︎ watch 27:59 · read ↗︎
billiard ball
“So imagine that you're in a pool hall, and you see one billiard ball coming towards another one and striking the second one. Now, what do you expect the second one to do?” (Lee Braver)
From Descartes to Nietzsche: The Birth of Science and the Death of God · Lecture 4: Why You Can't Prove Tomorrow▶︎ watch 5:36 · read ↗︎
From Descartes to Nietzsche: The Birth of Science and the Death of God · Recap: Making Your Beliefs Your Own▶︎ watch 2:59 · read ↗︎
From Descartes to Nietzsche: The Birth of Science and the Death of God · Lecture 5: Kant Wakes from His Dogmatic Sleep▶︎ watch 7:51 · read ↗︎
From Descartes to Nietzsche: The Birth of Science and the Death of God · Lecture 6: How Your Mind Builds Reality▶︎ watch 46:39 · read ↗︎
Lectures on Infinity · Lecture 2: Supertasks: Doing Infinitely Many Things▶︎ watch 12:03 · read ↗︎
Quantum Mechanics and the Crisis of Scientific Realism · Lecture 4: Bell's Impossible Proof▶︎ watch 20:32 · read ↗︎
birth of computer science
“which many computer scientists like myself regard as the birth of our discipline, the birth of computer science as an intellectual discipline. So, you can come for Alan Turing, but then you” (Tim Roughgarden)
Computation as a Universal and Fundamental Concept · Intro: Computation and Its Limits▶︎ watch 7:40 · read ↗︎
Computation as a Universal and Fundamental Concept · Lecture 1: Is There Anything Computers Can't Do?▶︎ watch 2:50 · read ↗︎
black and white TV
“The solution is that I have a black and white TV. So, everything on the TV is some shade of gray. Somewhere between white and black.” (Lee Braver)
From Descartes to Nietzsche: The Birth of Science and the Death of God · Lecture 6: How Your Mind Builds Reality▶︎ watch 3:02 · read ↗︎
Bletchley Park
“So, in case you thought Alan Turing was just a code breaker, in case you only know him for the work that he did at Bletchley Park back in World War II, you'll learn that, in fact, Turing is…” (Tim Roughgarden)
Computation as a Universal and Fundamental Concept · Intro: Computation and Its Limits▶︎ watch 7:29 · read ↗︎
Computation as a Universal and Fundamental Concept · Lecture 1: Is There Anything Computers Can't Do?▶︎ watch 2:04 · read ↗︎
blind man who's stumbling down the right road
“So in The Republic, Socrates compares true judgment without knowledge to a blind man who's stumbling down the right road. Yeah, he's doing great. He's on the right path, but he has no clue what's…” (Richard Polt)
Plato’s Theaetetus: An Inquiry into Knowledge · Lecture 4: The Soul Behind the Senses▶︎ watch 24:36 · read ↗︎
Bloomsbury circle
“people in literary modernism, especially people like people in the Bloomsbury circle, like Virginia Woolf, who were very aware of what was going on in physics and who were clearly trying to reflect…” (David Albert)
Quantum Mechanics and the Crisis of Scientific Realism · Lecture 2: When Physics Stops Making Sense▶︎ watch 4:43 · read ↗︎
blue sphere
“So the process is we take unit circles stacked and put them inside a four by four square, and I look at the tiny little blue circle that fits in the middle of them, okay? Or we can just calculate how…” (Joel David Hamkins)
Lectures on Infinity · Lecture 3: The Paradox of Giants: Strange Consequences in High Dimension▶︎ watch 54:20 · read ↗︎
Bob
“Let's forget about God for a minute. Let's just call it Bob. Bob is a supremely perfect being. Bob has all possible perfections. Bob is omniscient, Bob is omnipotent, Bob is omni benevolent, and Bob…” (Lee Braver)
From Descartes to Nietzsche: The Birth of Science and the Death of God · Lecture 2: The Birth of Modern Science▶︎ watch 25:37 · read ↗︎
Bohm
“Very famous effect in quantum mechanics. I'm gonna give you a schematic version of the Aharonov-Bohm effect, but the logic is exactly the same. So, I'm gonna introduce a new piece of terminology.” (David Albert)
Quantum Mechanics and the Crisis of Scientific Realism · Lecture 1: The Experiment That Broke Reality▶︎ watch 46:18 · read ↗︎
Bohr
“account of why these experiments came out in the way they do, any attempt to do that was, it was argued by people like Bohr and his circle in Copenhagen, was, it was argued, inevitably gonna collapse…” (David Albert)
Quantum Mechanics and the Crisis of Scientific Realism · Intro: The Crisis In Physics▶︎ watch 6:26 · read ↗︎
Quantum Mechanics and the Crisis of Scientific Realism · Lecture 1: The Experiment That Broke Reality▶︎ watch 54:17 · read ↗︎
Quantum Mechanics and the Crisis of Scientific Realism · Lecture 2: When Physics Stops Making Sense▶︎ watch 0:01 · read ↗︎
Quantum Mechanics and the Crisis of Scientific Realism · Lecture 3: Two Laws That Can't Both Be True▶︎ watch 1:13 · read ↗︎
Quantum Mechanics and the Crisis of Scientific Realism · Lecture 5: Three Ways to Save Reality▶︎ watch 0:22 · read ↗︎
Bolzano
“Okay, so let me now move to Bolzano's observations about equinumerosity of these sort of geometric figures. So, this is in Paradoxes of the Infinite, 1851. And what Bolzano observed is the following.” (Joel David Hamkins)
Lectures on Infinity · Lecture 6: Galileo's Paradox of Infinity▶︎ watch 12:22 · read ↗︎
Lectures on Infinity · Lecture 9: Beyond Countable Infinity▶︎ watch 29:10 · read ↗︎
Borel sets
“So this was generalized by Suslin to the Borel sets, which is a sort of continuation of Cantor's program of sort of working his way up in complexity, and I think analytic sets also by Suslin. But the…” (Joel David Hamkins)
Lectures on Infinity · Lecture 10: Set Theory's Deepest Mystery▶︎ watch 28:02 · read ↗︎
Boris Podolsky
“Such that if you follow these preparation instructions, let's call these preparation instructions P, okay? If you follow these laboratory instructions, you're gonna get a pair of particles that has…” (David Albert)
Quantum Mechanics and the Crisis of Scientific Realism · Lecture 4: Bell's Impossible Proof▶︎ watch 1:09:37 · read ↗︎
Born rule
“up choosing this or that. For example, in a case like this, this rule, it's called the Born rule, will tell you that the particle has a 50% chance of choosing the hard route and a 50% chance of…” (David Albert)
Quantum Mechanics and the Crisis of Scientific Realism · Lecture 2: When Physics Stops Making Sense▶︎ watch 37:58 · read ↗︎
both routes
“Could it, in some sense, have taken both routes? Well, not in any familiar sense, for sure. I mean, if you stop the experiment in the middle, okay, and look for a particle, you'll either find an…” (David Albert)
Quantum Mechanics and the Crisis of Scientific Realism · Lecture 1: The Experiment That Broke Reality▶︎ watch 52:19 · read ↗︎
Quantum Mechanics and the Crisis of Scientific Realism · Lecture 3: Two Laws That Can't Both Be True▶︎ watch 21:52 · read ↗︎
bounded quantifiers
“zero, which asserts the induction axiom, that's the I part, for delta zero assertions, which are assertions that involve only bounded quantifiers. So if you limit the induction principle to…” (Joel David Hamkins)
Lectures on Infinity · Lecture 5: Potential vs Actual Infinity▶︎ watch 23:45 · read ↗︎
Breuer
“discipline until the end of the 19th century basically, like Breuer and then Charcot and Freud. Up until then, if you wanna do psychology, you did philosophy. It was part of philosophy. And Hume is…” (Lee Braver)
From Descartes to Nietzsche: The Birth of Science and the Death of God · Lecture 4: Why You Can't Prove Tomorrow▶︎ watch 28:03 · read ↗︎
Brobdingnagians
“human beings to whom Gulliver seemed the giant. But he also met, on those same... in those same travels, the Brobdingnagians, who were giants to whom Gulliver seemed Lilliputian, even though Gulliver…” (Joel David Hamkins)
Lectures on Infinity · Lecture 3: The Paradox of Giants: Strange Consequences in High Dimension▶︎ watch 1:03 · read ↗︎
bulletproof
“How do you find things like that? Well, think about how you would find a material that's bulletproof, right? You wanna find something that, that is bulletproof, like Kevlar. Right? How would you find…” (Lee Braver)
From Descartes to Nietzsche: The Birth of Science and the Death of God · Lecture 1: Descartes Reboots Everything▶︎ watch 14:21 · read ↗︎
busy beaver function
“but if this intrigues you, sort of complexity arising from seemingly tiny simple programs, have a look up of the busy beaver function, which actually is defined in terms of Turing machines and shows…” (Tim Roughgarden)
Computation as a Universal and Fundamental Concept · Lecture 1: Is There Anything Computers Can't Do?▶︎ watch 18:42 · read ↗︎