UnConference sessions, Free Will
Free will: Do we have it, does it matter? UnConference: Notes from the Unofficial London EV Unconference. Autism rates mostly explained by diagnosis and awareness. Sam Altman, Jony Ive, Home Ed.
Free will: Do we have it, does it matter?
UnConference: Notes from the Unofficial London EV Unconference
Autism rates mostly explained by diagnosis changes and awareness
UK Talent office. Julia Willemyns briefing.
Nick Cave on not separating art from artist from fallibility of being human. Or why he can still listen to Kanye.
AI: a profile of Sam Altman over lunch, where he cooks pasta (FT)
Design/Life: Jony Ive (Apple designer) in chat with Patrick Collison
Naomi Fisher podcast. Thanks those coming from Naomi’s Substack, see end for links to our podcast and other education thoughts.
I had an excellent chat with Samir Vamir (his substack) on free will but also covering Pink Floyd, cricket, and financial markets.
Samir approaches free will from his physics background. Classically, there has been a debate around determinism.
Hard determinists argue that because everything is caused, free will is an illusion. Whereas others argue that human beings have the power of "agent causation" — initiating events not fully caused by previous events.
Then there are ideas about how the concept influences society. For instance, regardless of “true” or not, is it useful for society to believe in free will.
Samir reconciles many of these ideas by accepting the laws of physics and determinism (a lack of free will in theory) but arguing in practice, we experience a form of free will because we cannot predict our actions until we perform them.
On the side of the determinists, there have been recent experiments from neuroscience and the laws of physics. But then Samir argues around (1) chaos theory (2) complexity and (3) computational irreducibility.
In chaotic systems minute differences in initial conditions can lead to vastly different outcomes, making long-term prediction practically impossible (a butterfly flaps its wings…). This inherent unpredictability implies that, even in a deterministic universe, our actions cannot be precisely forecasted, granting us a form of practical free will.
The human brain is an extraordinarily complex system, comprising approximately 86 billion neurons interconnected in intricate networks. Varma argues that this complexity renders it infeasible to predict behavior accurately, as it would require modeling every particle in the brain and its interactions with the environment. Such comprehensive modeling is beyond our current and foreseeable computational capabilities.
Varma (channeling Wolfram) argues for the concept of computational irreducibility, suggesting that certain systems cannot be simplified or predicted without simulating every step of their evolution. This means that, to determine the outcome of such systems, one must essentially let them run their course.
So the only practical way to know what happens is to live your life.
Samir explores ideas from quantum mechanics, and comes out with explanations for traffic. Other fascinating ideas:
the idea that AI will come to practical consciousness. It will just be silicon based rather than carbon based.
Whether maths is upstream of physics, or how much is downstream from maths or physics (or computation).
Samir also comes down hard on the emotion of regret arguing that from his work on freewill and physics, it is the one emotion he can say is mostly useless (exception for learning, but mostly useless).
In late April, I organised an UnConference (OpenSpace style) for Emergent Ventures (EV) Winners + friends.
Who are EVs? EV site writes:
We want to jumpstart high-reward ideas—moonshots in many cases—that advance prosperity, opportunity, liberty, and well-being. We welcome the unusual and the unorthodox.
Our goal is positive social change, but we do not mind if you make a profit from your project. (Indeed, a quick path to revenue self-sufficiency is a feature not a bug!)
We encourage you to think big, but we also will consider very small grants if they might change the trajectory of your life. We encourage applications from all ages and all parts of the world.
You should consider applying. This is Sam on the application process. While the blurb hints at
“ entrepreneurs and brilliant minds with highly scalable, "zero to one" ideas for meaningfully improving society.”
I would put emphasis on this phrase:
“Grants are awarded to thinkers and doers around the world”
To give you a small example, K was working as a librarian in the UK finding it hard to have the time and money to finish working on her novel. She applied for the grant, and it enabled her to finish her book and has changed the trajectory of her life.
Here is the 41st cohort. (March 2025). Here is the AI engine, built by Nabeel Qureshi, for searching through the longer list. Here are previous cohorts of EV winners.
What is an UnConference and why do I think they are so great?
Long-time readers will know I’ve written about UnConference type formats before. Here with Civic Futures, with Home Education, and with Sustainability and Chatham House; and with the Official Dublin EV Unconference in 2024.
Important elements of UnConference are:
the content is generated by the participants
participants are encouraged to move between sessions
There can be other elements but these two ideas drive a rich event for participants and one where people feel more involved than with a traditional conference. A short blurb on the format here:
Unlike traditional conferences with pre-set agendas and passive listeners, an UnConference invites all attendees to participate actively.
Everyone is encouraged to propose topics, lead discussions, and contribute to conversations in a meaningful way.
While a conventional conference treats attendees like a passive audience to be entertained by the organisers, the UnConference format gives everyone a say by building something together.
UnConferences are choose-your-own-adventure. At any moment there will be multiple talks happening and participants can move between them.
The UnConference board is the centre of the event. The board is a large grid representing the schedule. The time slots start out blank. We fill them at the start of the day but they can change and combine throughout the time.
There are risks, if people feel constrained and don’t use their agency of choice; or when somehow you do not have a good mix of people, but I’ve never seen it fail.
I gravitate to an Open Space style, which emphasis a few principles:
Whoever comes are the right people
Value is created by those who choose to show up. Influence isn’t about status—it's about passion and commitment.
Whenever it starts is the right time
Creativity and insight aren't bound by schedules; the right moment emerges naturally. Think about corridor conversations and Kairos time (greek) rather than chinos time.
Whatever happens is the only thing that could have
Let go of expectations. The conversations and outcomes that arise are exactly what’s meant to emerge.
When it's over, it's over
If a session ends early because the conversation has run its course, that's okay. Move on and use the time for something else.
And The Law of Two Feet (or Mobility)
“If at any time you find yourself in a situation where you are neither learning nor contributing, use your two feet and go somewhere else.”Participants are free to move between sessions based on their interest, energy, and where they feel they can add value.
I also start and close with a gathering / open and closing circle.
At our Unofficial UnConference these were the session titles.
Session titles
AI Security and Safety Discussion
Immigration
Negotiation by Adults vs. Courts to Settle Disputes
Ukrainian Military Tech: Drones & Electric Warfare
Theory and Practice: Thinking and Sensing
Beauty as a Public Good
Card Playing
Nature of Power
Aliens + Metascience
Is European Defence Screwed?
How to Beat the Cost Disease
Overreliance of AI as an Emotional Partner
Emotional Technology: How Can We Build for Happiness?
Future of Our Energy Systems
Privatisation of Space
European FPJ Reindustrialisation
Unobvious Connections
Productivity in Construction
Reverse Engineering the Tax System (and the Road to Georgism)
The Disconnect Between Simple Narratives and Complex Problems
Venture Capital and Startups
How Do We Build High Trust Societies?
How to Become Better at Coming Up with Unconventional Ideas
How to Speed Up Medical Innovation
Rant Session About the State of Education in the World
Socratic AI (Questions, not answers)
What Makes Good Fiction and Non-Fiction to You
Let me know if you’d like access to a few notes and will share link with you.
Stella also wrote up her first time experience here (and notes on immigration and Georgist tax modelling).
I mostly try and avoid The Current Thing but there’s a lot of stuff about autism diagnosis floating around, and this is an area of interest for me. So I thought I’d comment.
Cremieux Recueil , and Emily Oster have written on this. All agree that the cause of autism is probably genetic. The cause is likely not environmental (although air pollution might raise risk slightly), and it is not vaccines.
The large majority of the explanation of the change over time is due to changes in how we diagnose and in awareness.
I will say that again.
The large majority of the explanation is the change over time is due to changes in how we diagnose and in awareness.
Although it’s true we don’t know if this is exactly 70% (or 90% or 60%) although we have guides on the ranges. So it would be useful to continue to do more evidence-based research here. You can use ChatGPT (and my link is here) on this.
But in summary:
1. Broadened diagnostic criteria and new surveillance methods
DSM revisions. The shift from the narrow “infantile autism” definition (DSM‑III, 1980) to the much wider umbrella in DSM‑IV (1994) and DSM‑5 (2013) re‑labelled large numbers of children who would previously have received other or no diagnoses.
2. Rising awareness and service incentives
Parents, teachers, and primary‑care clinicians are now primed to recognise subtler social communication differences, especially in girls and racial‑minority children who were historically overlooked. Cross‑sectional insurance claims work covering 2011‑2022 shows the steepest growth in diagnoses among females and Black/Latino youth, consistent with “catch‑up” identification rather than a true surge in incidence.
And then the remaining 10 to 20% is explained by (i) older parents (and more surviving pre-term babies) and (ii) assortative mating, and a little potential from air pollution.
3. Demographic shifts that slightly raise true biological risk and a little on air pollution
These factors carry modest individual effect sizes (odds ratios ~1.3‑2.0) but have become more common in the population, nudging incidence upward.
Advanced parental age (≥ 40 y vs 20s)
Maternal obesity/gestational diabetes
Maternal autoimmune/inflammatory disorders
Pre‑/perinatal air pollution (NO₂, PM2.5)
4. Gene–environment & assortative‑mating hypotheses (emerging support)
Assortative mating for autistic traits. Concentrations of STEM‑skilled adults (e.g., Silicon Valley) show higher‑than‑average child ASD rates; the mechanism is thought to be higher‑than‑random pairing of individuals with sub‑clinical autistic traits. Evidence is still ecological but consistent across several regions. WIRED
De‑novo mutation load and older paternity. Paternal‑age effects are mediated partly by age‑related increases in germ‑line point mutations; large whole‑exome studies confirm a linear paternal‑age‑mutation relationship, but this explains only a few percent of ASD cases.
5. What the evidence does not support
Vaccines. Large cohort studies of >650,000 children show no association between MMR or any mercury‑containing vaccine component and ASD; this line of investigation is considered closed. (Consensus reviews, not cited here, but endorsed by WHO, CDC, AAP.)
A single new environmental toxin. Heavy‑metal and endocrine‑disruptor reviews yield inconsistent, often small effect estimates, and cannot account for the order‑of‑magnitude increase seen in administrative prevalence.
Putting the pieces together:
Meta‑analysts who decomposed U.S. and Scandinavian trends estimate:
Changes in ascertainment (criteria + substitution + awareness) ≈ 60‑70 %
Demographic & perinatal risk shifts ≈ 10‑20 %
Unexplained residual (true incidence change + measurement error) ≈ 10‑20 %
These proportions vary by country, study design, and age band, but the qualitative takeaway is stable across dozens of studies published since 2009.
Link to the ChatGPT report here: https://chatgpt.com/share/681dd9a0-c044-800a-a0cf-8158a84fc493
Julia Willemyns writes:
Britain should establish an Exceptional Talent Office to headhunt the world’s best talent – those who will drive the next scientific and technological breakthroughs and build the leading companies of the 21st century. This initiative would be in service of economic growth and prosperity for the British people.
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A few posts ago, I highlighted the Barthes arguments on the meaning of a text.
The Death of the Author – In his famous 1967 essay, Barthes argued that the meaning of a text should not be determined by the author's intentions but by the reader's interpretation. This shifted literary theory away from authorial intent and toward reader response and intertextuality.
So this separates the art from the artist to some degree. However, you can argue his reasoning is more radical and theoretical than simply saying “ignore the artist’s life.” Instead, he argues for a complete reorientation of how we interpret texts. Barthes isn't just saying we should ignore the author's personal life for the sake of enjoying the work (as in the modern debates about “cancel culture” and problematic artists). Instead, he’s arguing that the concept of the Author is a limiting construct that should be discarded altogether in critical interpretation.
That said, I found Nick Cave in a recent post on Kanye interesting on the other side of this perspective:
Cave writes:
“I want to challenge the notion that we can separate art from the artist. I’ve written on this subject before (#149), but I thought it might be worth revisiting. From reading your recent letters, it appears that some of you assume I hold this belief. To be clear, I do not. The idea of an artist being divorced from their art is absurd. An artist and their art are fundamentally intertwined because art is the essence of the artist made manifest. The artist’s work proclaims, “This is me. I am here. This is what I am.” However, the great gift of art is the potential for the artist to excavate their interior chaos and transform it into something sublime. This is what Kanye does. This is what I strive to do, and this is the enterprise undertaken by all genuine artists. The remarkable utility of art lies in its audacity to transfigure our corrupted state and create something beautiful.
When I make a song, I do not draw from a pocket of purity isolated from the rest of me; a song is torn from all of me, the mess of me, becoming the best of me on its alchemical journey to its realisation. This is the very definition of hope – that we are not prisoners of our flawed nature but can transcend it. We look to artists and their art to convey this exact thing. In his brokenness, Kanye is an exemplar par excellence of this notion, the braided dance between sin, transcendence and genius.
We are all broken, flawed, and suffering human beings, each a disaster in our own right, each with the capacity to cause great harm, each brimming with misguided notions, perhaps the most deluded of which is the belief that we are somehow exclusively and morally superior to everyone else. Many of you might be thinking, “Well, speak for yourself! I’m not like Kanye! I could never behave like that!” Yet, given the circumstances, we humans are capable of anything. To be human is to be flawed, yet it is also to possess the potential to achieve staggering things – beautiful, brilliant, inspiring, wild and audacious things; things to be cherished, despite our complex and compromised natures.
As odious and disappointing as many of Kanye’s views are, and as sickening as antisemitism is – in its sadly always-present, ever-morphing forms – I endeavour to seek beauty wherever it presents itself. In doing so, I am reluctant to invalidate the best of us in an attempt to punish the worst. I don’t think we can afford that luxury.”
And Cave wrote in 2021:
“I don’t think we can separate the art from the artist, nor should we need to. I think we can look at a piece of art as the transformed or redeemed aspect of an artist, and marvel at the miraculous journey that the work of art has taken to arrive at the better part of the artist’s nature. Perhaps beauty can be measured by the distance it has travelled to come into being.
That bad people make good art is a cause for hope. To be human is to transgress, of that we can be sure, yet we all have the opportunity for redemption, to rise above the more lamentable parts of our nature, to do good in spite of ourselves, to make beauty from the unbeautiful, and to have the courage to present our better selves to the world.
The moon is high and yellow in the sky outside my window. It is a display of sublime beauty. It is also a cry for mercy — that this world is worth saving. Mostly, though, it is a defiant articulation of hope that, despite the state of the world, the moon continues to shine. Hope too resides in a gesture of kindness from one broken individual to another or, indeed, we can find it in a work of art that comes from the hand of a wrongdoer. These expressions of transcendence, of betterment, remind us that there is good in most things, rarely only evil.”
I first came to this argument as a poetry student on the the work of Ezra Pound. But more recently on problematic theatre makers. I wish I could be as clear as Cave or Barthes, but it still seems to me messy and difficult.
Speaking about messy things, this FT profile (Roula Khalaf) of Sam Altman (OpenAI) had many intriguing details of his life. (Gated here, but I have gift copies if you need).
The tech entrepreneur on the risks and opportunities of AI, his dispute with Elon Musk and why he has the ‘most important job maybe in history’
Patrick Collison was in conversation with former Apple designer Jony Ive. Couple of observations:
Design as an Expression of Care
Ive emphasized that design should be rooted in care, clarity, and service, not disruption for its own sake. He recounted spending hours obsessing over seemingly trivial product details, like how a charging cable is unwrapped, to convey love and attention to users. He quoted Steve Jobs, saying, "You can express gratitude to the species through what you make."
Fostering Team Culture Through Rituals
At Apple, Ive instituted weekly rituals like team breakfasts, where designers took turns cooking for each other. These practices were not just about camaraderie but foundational to creating products with empathy and depth. He believed that personal care within a team often translated into care for the user.
Acknowledging Unintended Consequences
Ive expressed concerns about the unintended consequences of technology, including social media and the pace of innovation in AI. He stated that it's not enough to have good intentions—designers and technologists must take responsibility when products have harmful outcomes. "Even if you're innocent in your intention, if you're involved in something that has poor consequences, you need to own it,"
Watch/listen here: https://youtu.be/wLb9g_8r-mE
Home Education / Education links. Welcome to all those recent joiners to the newsletter. If you are interested in the education strand then check out my podcast with Naomi Fisher on self-directed education with a UK perspective and also Peter Gray with a US view. The pod with Daisy Christodoulou on the importance of knowledge in education (and also video assisted referees) is also good.
Thanks for reading.