The podcast begins with Dr. Steve Strogatz, a professor at Cornell University, getting asked if he believes there are limits to human knowledge. At first Dr. Strogatz suggests that our tools are not precise enough and always have areas to improve. His theory is that no amount of information will give us a true and accurate depiction of how and why the universe and nature exists . When people integrate technologically into their lives and utilize it in a meaningful way, they are able to have greater opportunities by connecting themselves to information, people, and services. The epistemology of a society refers to the source in which new information may be gained. Dr. Strogatz explains that finding the limiting factors within one's contemporary epistemology is much more justified than trying to make any type of conclusions about what might be beyond the uncertainties of nature, physics, or even philosophy. I would argue that there is a certain category of things that one can be absolutely certain about. Any fact that can be understood by reason alone is called a priori. In an example given by Michael Stevens, take the statment, "All bachelors are unmarried". There is no reason to actually survey every bachelor in the world to verify this claim. We know it to be true becuase we define the word bachelor to mean "not married".
The computer that was able to generalize an incredible amount of data and make "sense" of it sounds similar to how modern day neural networks.
I was really shocked when I heard that from data alone the computer deduced the fundamental equation that governs all forces in the universe F=ma.
Finding the answers to difficult problems has the potential of changing the world for the better. If we can build neural networks to implement algorithms driven from altruistic motivations, the world could be a much safer better place. Neural networks and machine learning has solved previously "impossible" NP Hard tasks. At what point will machine discoveries surpass our own comprehension? Already has.
If you only wanted to watch one of these videos: I would watch the first one
https://radiolab.org/episodes/91712-limits-of-science
:)