3 HN users recommended this talk3 months2020–2023score 3.5
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
HN commenters call it lucid and fluff-free, and point to Bach as one of the most interesting voices on AI, consciousness and philosophy.
Joscha Bach's 35C3 talk offers an AI perspective on the soul, covering perception, mental representation, agency, consciousness and selfhood as things that can arise in a computational system like the brain.
“the whole talk is incredibly lucid and contains zero fluff or BS” (HN, 2020)
Yesterday I watched a fascinating talk The Ghost in the Machine by AI researcher Josha Bach. He claims that computational math is enough to support the conscious thought, both in living things and simulated environments. The whole talk is densely packed with ideas and concepts (for example nice illustration of concepts behind back-propagation NNs at 19:20). Here [0] he lays out his current model for mind. I have no idea what to make of it, but the whole talk is incredibly lucid and contains zero fluff or BS (unlike linked article). [0] [this video]
Dense, lucid argument that computation supports conscious thought
Joscha Bach has an interesting take on how to combine idealism with materalism. See for example his 'The Ghost in the Machine' talk at 35C3: [this video]
Interesting take combining idealism with materialism
He is definitely one of the most interesting people to listen to when it comes to AI, Intelligence and Philosophy. I've seen him in Leipzig on CCC events in the past, here are some of his other talks: * Computational Meta-Intelligence (32C3): [link] * Machine Dreams (33C3): [link] * The Ghost in the Machine (35C3): [this video] He also did a very interesting podcast episode with Fefe and Frank from alternativlos! (in German): [link]
I also believe that in order to make progress it is important to accept those things that are established as scientific fact even if they counter intuitive or hard to accept. With respect to consciousness, Joshua Bach has an interesting view: [this video]
Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.
Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed
4 Hacker News comments
From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.
Citations, criticism and jokes