Al Pittampalli

SCIENCE WRITER: author of WSJ book-of-the-month Persuadable
EXPERIMENTALIST: designed some of the largest RCTs in healthcare
LECTURER: Google, Microsoft, NASA

[Al Pittampalli @Pittampalli]

My new Psychology Today article is featured on the home page today. Check it out!

Thanks to @DavidDeutschOxf for the inspiration and @ToKTeacher for the peer review.

https://t.co/uEAqsOR3di

[Peter Djerf @PeterDjerf]

@CaseyMericle Persuadable by Al @Pittampalli should be required reading imo

[Al Pittampalli @Pittampalli]

@Ri_Science @WiringTheBrain Amazing. Will the video be made available online?

[Al Pittampalli @Pittampalli]

@bnielson01 Loved the last episode. Looking very much forward to this one.

[Al Pittampalli @Pittampalli]

@arjunkhemani Popper and Hayek seemed to have overlapping and yet slightly different views on scientism i.e. how the methods of science ought (or ought not) be applied to the social sciences. Can you elaborate on their views?

[Al Pittampalli @Pittampalli]

@MatjazLeonardis Start with a blank page. Reverse engineer your draft back into an outline or bare bones argument. Add back in one sentence at a time.

[The Knowledge Project @TKPPodcast]

Blake Eastman is a psychologist and expert at reading other people's non-verbal cues. In this episode, he teaches you exactly what he knows (and explains how it can go terribly wrong...)

'The Non-Verbal Expert: These Behaviors Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Someone'

[Arjun Khemani @arjunkhemani]

My conversation with David Deutsch (@DavidDeutschOxf).

David is the author of The Fabric of Reality and The Beginning of Infinity. He is known as the father of quantum computing for his contributions to the field. He is an advocate of Taking Children Seriously, a new, non-paternalistic view of children.

Topics we discuss are well captured by the timestamps below.

Links to YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and transcript in thread below.

Timestamps:
0:22 - Happiness is a state of continually solving one’s problems
4:54 - Both free-will and the self exist
12:06 - The principle of optimism
17:28 - Any ultimate explanation is a bad explanation
20:22 - The origins of Taking Children Seriously
25:33 - Why children are the most coerced members in society
31:33 - Anarcho-capitalism

[Al Pittampalli @Pittampalli]

@WiringTheBrain @TIME insightful, as always

[Al Pittampalli @Pittampalli]

Still making my way through @WiringTheBrain's new book Free Agents, but so far it is BRILLIANT. A stunningly comprehensive, cohesive, and lucid narrative on how humans evolved the ability to choose. Highly recommended . https://t.co/XbcOtgLv9Z

[Al Pittampalli @Pittampalli]

@WiringTheBrain @PrincetonUPress @AlisonKalett @zcosini Congrats! Looking forward to reading it.

[David Deutsch @DavidDeutschOxf]

A tour de force by Popper.

https://t.co/w0WXWdBgL4

And by Brett.

Now that I've watched a number of these, greatly outnumbering what I've heard by other Australians, the neural net within me keeps telling me to expect everything said in an Australian accent to be a deep truth.

[Al Pittampalli @Pittampalli]

@leecronin @ChemistryWorld Amen, Professor. In case you're interested, I wrote this article (inspired by Popper) on the pitfalls of being "data-driven": https://t.co/uEAqsOR3di

[Brett Hall @ToKTeacher]

What you can never extract from experiments are new good explanations. It doesn't work that way. That's the empiricist mistake and is still the popular conception of how science works and is often lurking behind statements like "evidence-based (science)" or similar formulations.

[Alex Cespedes @AlexCpds]

I’ve been secretly writing a book this past year… and it’s ready! Rich Instinct out now on all major platforms!

[Brett Hall @ToKTeacher]

Bayesianism Podcast - Twitter version

First, I cover the basics of epistemology & decision theory.

Then I go into the various "species" of what is grouped under "Bayesianism" including:

Bayes' Theorem
Bayesian Statistics
Bayesian "Reasoning" &
Bayesian "Epistemology"

[Al Pittampalli @Pittampalli]

@PeterDjerf @fortworthchris @Rob_Briner @AdamMGrant There’s nothing special about intuition. Karl Popper said it best: “There are no ultimate sources of knowledge. Every source, every suggestion, is welcome; and every source, every suggestion is open to critical examination”

[Al Pittampalli @Pittampalli]

@WiringTheBrain Congrats. Can't wait to read it.

[Clay Hebert @clayhebert]

@paulg My friend @Pittampalli wrote a great book on this.

Persuadable: How Great Leaders Change Their Minds to Change the World

https://t.co/HFLRuidPRq

[Al Pittampalli @Pittampalli]

@ToKTeacher @jckbllyrd brilliant.

[Al Pittampalli @Pittampalli]

@ToKTeacher @DavidDeutschOxf And therefore poses a great opp. to find an explanation that resolves it.

But the example of: “I want to be rich, and yet I’m currently not,” doesn’t seem like the same kind of contradiction. Does it need explanation? Reality is that most people want to be rich yet are not.

[Al Pittampalli @Pittampalli]

@DavidDeutschOxf & @ToKTeacher: are practical problems really problems in the Popperian sense? (i.e. legit starting points for scientific inquiry)

Not sure “I want to be X and yet I am Y” is a true contradiction in the same way that “I know the world is X and yet I see Y” is.

[Al Pittampalli @Pittampalli]

@ToKTeacher @DavidDeutschOxf BOI: “Since theories can contradict each other, but there are no contradictions in reality, every problem signals that our knowledge must be flawed or inadequate.”

The apparent contradiction in your example Brett def seems to me to signal that our knowledge is inadequate.