Episode Notes

00:00 The Beauty of Questions

02:07 Setting the Scene: Manchester, 1951

03:20 Alan Turing's Early Life

04:43 Turing's Contributions During WWII

05:35 Post-War Achievements

06:55 The Imitation Game and Turing Test

10:23 A Conversation with Alan Turing

10:58 The Power of Questions

12:10 The Evolution of Thought

16:12 The Intersection of Questions and Beauty

20:30 Effective vs. Ineffective Questions

22:00 The Discipline of Questioning

23:58 The Ethics of Machine Deception

25:30 Replacing Human Players

27:06 The Limits of Machine Dialogue

28:11 The Role of Doubt in Human Dialogue

28:35 The Responsibility of Inventors

29:56 Persistent Questions and Personal Reflections

31:53 The Nature of Human Thought

32:44 Protecting Human Qualities

34:06 The Value of Human Doubt

37:11 The Future of Human Questions

38:36 The Risk of Seamless Imitation

39:57 Reflections on the Interview and Takeaways

47:50 Final Thoughts and Gratitude

Resources Mentioned

The Britons Protection

Sherborne School

King’s College, Cambridge

On Computable Numbers (Turing's proof)

Government Code and Cypher School

Bletchley Park

Enigma machine

Bombe

National Physical Laboratory

Automatic Computing Engine

University of Manchester

Manchester Mark I

Morphogenesis

Arnold Murray

Oscar Wilde

Computing Machinery and Intelligence

Imitation Game/Turing Test

Pia Lauritzen

Dear Turing, I Have a Test For You by Pia Lauritzen

H.G. Wells

Gross Indecency Law

Beauty Pill

Producer Ben Ford

Questions Asked

Can machines think?

When did you first understand the power of questions?

How did this intoxication influence your willingness to unleash your mind to solve further problems that could change the way we encounter the universe?

Was it all at once or more gradually?

How do you handle questions that change under your hands?

Is that from scientific training, strict pursuit of the answer, failed experiments, where did you learn that ability?

Where, for you, do questions and beauty intersect?

What is your practice for driving to profound questions?

Questions that trouble multiple disciplines, can you say more?

Do you encounter much in the way of ineffective questions, or those you would determine as simply wrong questions?

How do you break the habit of pursuing the wrong target?

What informs your discipline to not look in the seemingly easy question, but to dig deeper for the better question?

Might I buy the next round in gratitude for your initial buy?

Is this just going to be part of the design by default?

Have you imagined how people might one day extend this idea to perhaps replace players B or even C?

Where do you see the limits of a machine’s role in human dialogue?

If a machine can convincingly simulate a human, do we have a responsibility to set boundaries for its use — or is that not for the inventor to decide?

Are there questions you’ve carried with you since your youth, perhaps questions that have stayed no matter how your answers change?

Are you journaling to interact with these questions or, perhaps, depending on circumstances, to engage with them?

What do you think is most important for humans to protect in themselves?

Can you go deeper on perhaps the benefits of human doubt?

What is your Right Now Question?

Since you knew we’d be talking about questions, is there anything you hoped we’d touch on that we haven’t?

What aspects of your own questioning process are you inadvertently trying to optimize away?

In your daily interactions, when are you settling for the efficiency of information exchange instead of risking the messiness and potential transformation of genuine dialogue?

What fundamental questions about human nature, consciousness, or meaning are you already asking less frequently because AI has made certain assumptions feel inevitable?

How might you transform your questioning practice from a tool for getting answers into a discipline for staying human in an increasingly artificial world?