114: Theory of Mind with Jean-Francois Cloutier

Greater Than Code

In this episode, Jean-Francois Cloutier talks about theory of mind: his Elixir-powered robots, predictive processing, object-oriented programming, intuition and emergent properties, and the ineffability of Smalltalk. Hi friends!...that's what Scott Hanselman says whenever he starts a talk or a podcast. He's done over 650 episodes of his Hanselminutes podcast that he calls "Fresh AIr for Developers." It's a tight 30 min technology chat show that shares the same values that we do here at Greater than Code. There's a HUGE library of guests for you to catch up on and a new high quality show every Thursday afternoon with a fresh face you may not have seen on other shows! Panelists: Avdi Grimm | Sam Livingston-Gray | Jessica Kerr Special Guest: Jean-Francois Cloutier: @jfcloutier Jean-Francois Cloutier is French-Canadian, born in Montréal the year Québec embarked on its Révolution Tranquille. It was also the year the first spacecraft left Earth orbit. He has been an avid learner for as long as he can remember, and obtained special dispensation in first grade to read those mind-blowing third grade science books. Jean-Francois was pursuing a Bachelor of Science degree in Physiology, and was on his way to medical school, when he encountered programming. He fell in love and never looked back. He presented his Elixir-Powered Robots talk at ElixirDaze 2016 and 2017 and at Explore DDD 2017. A year ago, he became frustrated with the shortcomings of the cognitive model (no learning!), and then encountered Predictive Processing: a leading theory in cognitive neuroscience. Inspired by it, he redesigned his cognitive model, now with learning built-in. He presented it at Explore DDD 2018. Show Notes: 02:41 – JF’s Superpower: Systems Thinking 06:58 – Robots and Elixir Marvin Minsky's Society of Mind Inside Out Rodney Brooks -- Robots, AI, and other stuff The Brains Blog 17:10 – Reapproaching Robotics, Predictive Processing, and Calibration of Attention 33:26 – Thinking and Talking About Object-Oriented Programming 43:51 – Intuition and Emergent Properties 54:02 – Unpacking Fractals “Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.” 59:08 – The Ineffability of Smalltalk Reflections: Avdi: Trying not to do work, but sometimes finding ways to be pulled into doing work. Sam: 1) Generating predictions and then correcting your model when those predictions turn out not to be confirmed by sensory data. 2) Object-Oriented Programming should be called Message-Oriented Programming. 3) Computer science as a field really wants to be math and the people who teach computer science want to be mathematicians. Jessica: Smalltalk feeling like a cathedral where you can get a sense of the architectural beauty. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY54TmmEllY&feature=youtu.be Jean-Francois: Aikido. Want to help keep us a weekly show, buy and ship you swag, and bring us to conferences near you? Support us via Patreon! Or tell your organization to send sponsorship inquiries to [e-mail]. Are you Greater Than Code? Submit guest blog posts to [e-mail] Please leave us a review on iTunes! This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep of DevReps, LLC. To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode. To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps. You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks! Transcript: ["Hi, friends.