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Topic
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Language
3
episodes
3
thinkers
6h
of conversation
9
books & papers
6
terms defined
The neighbourhood: language and the ideas it travels with. Drag to roam, click a star for the episode, click a neighbour to travel.
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From foundational to frontier
Climb the spectrum. The most accessible conversations come first.
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The lexicon
Every term the guests lean on, in plain language. Read one in full, or filter to find it.
What the corpus says
The throughline across every conversation that touches this idea.
The N-word's history traces back to the 16th century, evolving from neutral to derogatory by the 19th century.
Randall Kennedy · Randall Kennedy: The N-Word - History of Race, Law, Politics, and Power
Kennedy argues that censoring the N-word erases critical historical and literary contexts.
Randall Kennedy · Randall Kennedy: The N-Word - History of Race, Law, Politics, and Power
Kennedy highlights a 200-point test score gap between affirmative action beneficiaries and peers as significant.
Randall Kennedy · Randall Kennedy: The N-Word - History of Race, Law, Politics, and Power
Kennedy asserts that racial profiling undermines societal equality and fairness.
Randall Kennedy · Randall Kennedy: The N-Word - History of Race, Law, Politics, and Power
Kennedy contends that understanding the N-word is crucial for grasping racial terrorism's history in the U.S.
Randall Kennedy · Randall Kennedy: The N-Word - History of Race, Law, Politics, and Power
Francois Chollet sees intelligence as the ability to generalize efficiently to new situations, beyond prior knowledge.
Francois Chollet · François Chollet: Measures of Intelligence
The ARC test, developed by Chollet, benchmarks fluid intelligence by using tasks requiring core knowledge priors without external information.
Francois Chollet · François Chollet: Measures of Intelligence
Chollet argues that language is an operating system for the mind, not fundamental to cognition itself.
Francois Chollet · François Chollet: Measures of Intelligence
Current AI models, like GPT, primarily perform pattern matching rather than true reasoning, limited by data quality.
Francois Chollet · François Chollet: Measures of Intelligence
Chollet critiques the Turing test as outsourcing intelligence measurement to human judges, limiting its utility.
Francois Chollet · François Chollet: Measures of Intelligence
Chomsky argues that language is a unique cognitive capacity linked to human nature, not merely a communication tool.
Noam Chomsky · Noam Chomsky: Language, Cognition, and Deep Learning
Deep learning, according to Chomsky, identifies patterns but lacks the capability to understand language structure or contribute to scientific insights.
Noam Chomsky · Noam Chomsky: Language, Cognition, and Deep Learning
Voices on language
8 standout quotes from across the corpus.
Go read
9 books and papers cited across these episodes.
For the specialist
What experts find new
5 expert-level takeaways for a specialist reader.
At the frontier
Still unresolved
5 open questions flagged across these conversations.
The thinkers
Who takes this idea on, by how often they return to it.
