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Skeptically Curious

Skeptically Curious

Written by: Ryan
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 In each episode I endeavour to know more and think better by interviewing knowledgeable guests about fascinating topics. I have an insatiable curiosity about many areas, including politics, economics, philosophy, history, literature, psychology, religion, and different branches of science such as neuroscience, biology, and physics. Regardless of subject matter, I hope to promote critical thinking, Enlightenment values, and the scientific method. Please join me on this journey as we engage and broaden our skeptical curiosity.Copyright 2025 Ryan Nature & Ecology Science
Episodes
  • Episode 15: Episode 15 - AI Controllability, AGI, and Possible AI Futures with Roman Yampolskiy

    Episode 15: Episode 15 - AI Controllability, AGI, and Possible AI Futures with Roman Yampolskiy
    Nov 10 2021
    For this episode I was very pleased to be once again joined by Roman Yampolskiy. Dr. Yampolskiy is a professor in the department of Computer Engineering and Computer Science at the Speed School of Engineering at the University of Louisville in Kentucky and has authored dozens of peer-reviewed academic papers and some books.  In this discussion, I first asked my guest about the recent AGI-21 conference organised by Ben Goertzel’s SingularityNET, held in San Francisco from the 15th to the 18th October, to which he remotely contributed. Roman summarised his presentation on AI Controllability, an incredibly important topic from an AI risk standpoint, but one that has not received nearly enough attention.  The conference provided a neat segue into the topic comprising the bulk of our discussion, namely AGI, or artificial general intelligence. I threw plenty at my interviewee, primarily perspectives gleaned from some papers and books, as well as interviews, to which I was recently exposed. However, Roman parried most of my challenging salvos with impressive aplomb. I then shifted focus to some provocative possible future scenarios, both positive and negative, involving AI systems gaining greater intelligence and competency. Lastly, we ventured onto more personal terrain as I asked Roman about his family’s move to the United States, his interest in computers, intellectual influences, and what the secret is to his astonishing productivity. Roman Yampolskiy’s page at the University of Louisville: http://cecs.louisville.edu/ry/List of Yampolskiy’s papers at Research Gate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Roman-YampolskiyYampolskiy’s ‘AI Risk Skepticism’ paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/351368775_AI_Risk_SkepticismAGI Control Theory Presentation at AGI-21: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Palb2Ue_RjI‘Human ≠ AGI’ paper: https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2007/2007.07710.pdf‘Personal Universes’ paper: https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1901/1901.01851.pdf‘Here’s Why We May Need to Rethink Artificial Neural Networks’ by Alberto Romero: https://towardsdatascience.com/heres-why-we-may-need-to-rethink-artificial-neural-networks-c7492f51b7bc‘Evil Robots, Killer Computers, and Other Myths’ by Steve Shwartz: https://www.aiperspectives.com/evil-robotsTwitter account for Skeptically Curious: https://twitter.com/SkepticallyCur1Patreon page for Skeptically Curious: https://www.patreon.com/skepticallycurious  
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    1 hr and 6 mins
  • Episode 14: Episode 14 - The Psychopath Whisperer with Dr. Kent Kiehl (Part 2) - Free will, serial killers, and treating psychopathy

    Episode 14: Episode 14 - The Psychopath Whisperer with Dr. Kent Kiehl (Part 2) - Free will, serial killers, and treating psychopathy
    Nov 3 2021
    This episode of Skeptically Curious features the second interview with Dr. Kent Kiehl, one of the foremost contemporary experts on psychopathy, and author of The Psychopath Whisperer. This exceptional book recounts Dr. Kiehl’s illustrious career while also serving as a lucid guide to the latest research on psychopathy. The first interview focused primarily on that book, while this episode moves well beyond its ambit. I began by asking Dr. Kiehl whether it is rare to find psychopaths drawn from higher socio-economic echelons, as was the case with someone dubbed Brendan in his book. We then took a plunge into the ever-knotty thickets of the free will debate, a detour during which such names as Sam Harris, Robert Sapolsky, and Daniel Dennett were evoked. Probably the lion’s share of our discussion revolved around the inexhaustibly fascinating subject of serial killers, both real and imagined. I instigated this part of our conversation by asking my guest whether it is safe to assume that while not all psychopaths are serial killers, all serial killers should be classified as psychopaths. The answer is surprisingly not so straightforward. One of America's most notorious serial killers, Ted Bundy, helped to stoke Dr. Kiehl’s interest in psychopathy as this infamous murderer was born a few blocks from his childhood home in Tacoma, Washington. Dr. Kiehl discussed other real-life killers including Jeffrey Dahmer, the Green River Killer, incidentally also from Washington State, and BTK. I could not resist asking my strikingly credentialed interlocutor about the accuracy of some famed fictional figures, such as Hannibal Lector and Dexter Morgan. I even asked Dr. Kiehl to cast a verdict on the potential veracity of my own as-yet-unpublished foray into the realm of imaginary serial murderers. After hearing his answer, I probably have some serious re-writing to do. We then discussed some of the popular books on psychopathy published around the same time as The Psychopath Whisperer, including Kevin Dutton’s The Wisdom of Psychopaths and Jon Ronson’s book, The Psychopath Test, which Dr. Kiehl described as basically a work of fiction, and a very irresponsible one at that. Instead, Dr. Kiehl urged listeners to rely on academics who have published in peer-reviewed journals for reliable information on psychopathy, including Adrian Raine, James Blair, Joe Newman, and, of course, Robert Hare. We ended on a more hopeful note by discussing possible treatment options for psychopathy. The most promising development in this regard is probably the Mendota Juvenile Treatment Centre in Madison, Wisconsin, which employs a decompression model to positively reinforce good behaviour. Dr. Kiehl writes about this in some detail in The Psychopath Whisperer and still enthusiastically praises its considerable success in comparison to other juvenile programmes. The impressive results suggest if troubled individuals are identified early in life and enough time and resources are spent to re-shape their behaviour, it is possible to prevent them from developing into clinically diagnosed psychopaths. Dr. Kiehl’s personal website: https://kentkiehl.com/ Dr. Kiehl’s Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_Kiehl The Psychopath Whisperer: https://www.amazon.com/The-Psychopath-Whisperer-Science-Conscience/dp/077043584X Twitter account for Skeptically Curious: https://twitter.com/SkepticallyCur1 Patreon page for Skeptically Curious: https://www.patreon.com/skepticallycurious 
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    2 hrs and 9 mins
  • Episode 13: Episode 13 - The Psychopath Whisperer with Dr. Kent Kiehl (Part 1)

    Episode 13: Episode 13 - The Psychopath Whisperer with Dr. Kent Kiehl (Part 1)
    Oct 25 2021
    Rarely does one have the opportunity to interview someone who, without any exaggeration, can be legitimately considered among a handful of leading figures in their respective field. This aptly describes Dr. Kent Kiehl’s celebrated career as a world leading psychopathy expert. Furthermore, as anyone reading his superb 2014 memoir-cum-primer, The Psychopath Whisperer, will learn, Dr. Kiehl’s career has intersected with some iconic luminaries, particularly in neuroscience and psychology, including Karl Friston, Michael Gazzaniga, the Nobel Prize-winning mathematician John Nash, and the grandfather of modern psychopathy research, Dr. Robert Hare, creator of the Psychopathy Checklist, which is still the unsurpassed gold standard of assessment. Dr. Kiehl completed his undergraduate degree at the University of California-Davis and later earned a doctorate under Dr. Hare at the University of British Columbia. Putting his studies to practical use, for several years he worked in a maximum-security prison in Canada. Thereafter, he was affiliated with Yale and the Institute of Living, and for the last fifteen years has been a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of New Mexico where he heads the Mind Research Network, a non-profit institute. During his work at the latter institution, Dr. Kiehl and his team have used a mobile fMRI to scan the brains of over 5000 inmates in five states. In the interview, after Dr. Kiehl summarised his storied career, he spent quite some time reflecting on the scientific method, which included relating this to his own work. I asked my guest to provide the so-called “dinner party” definition of psychopathy. He then clarified the distinction between psychosis and psychopathy, as well as sociopathy and psychopathy. As we discussed, and is elaborated upon in more detail in The Psychopath Whisperer, among the principle reasons for Dr. Kiehl’s esteemed stature are the landmark contributions he has made using two of the primary imaging tools in neuroscience, namely EEG and fMRI, which stand for electroencephalography and Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, respectively, techniques he kindly first explained before moving onto describing his research findings. In short, after repeatedly identifying a correlation between high scores on the Psychopathy Checklist and the volume and structure of certain brain areas, Dr. Kiehl formulated what he has dubbed the Paralimbic Dysfunction Model of Psychopathy. Impressively, this is now among the most robust findings in the field. As uncomfortable as it may be for some to accept, psychopaths simply have different brains to those of us not so designated. The last major topic we discussed was whether, in light of these findings, psychopaths are born or made, which then segued into possible interventions to ameliorate these traits, or at any rate their most socially deleterious manifestations.  Dr. Kiehl’s personal website: https://kentkiehl.com/ Dr. Kiehl’s Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_Kiehl The Psychopath Whisperer: https://www.amazon.com/The-Psychopath-Whisperer-Science-Conscience/dp/077043584X Twitter account for Skeptically Curious: https://twitter.com/SkepticallyCur1 Patreon page for Skeptically Curious: https://www.patreon.com/skepticallycurious
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    1 hr and 38 mins
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