The Local Maximum with Max Sklar

Today’s news update covers issues related to big data and privacy. We start with how big data from public information is being used to track and fight coronavirus, followed by the possibility that the car of the future will be spying on you. Finally, we get into a proposal in Congress to criminalize encryption technology, which will make our data less secure. Finally, the New York Times puts out a...

Dave Rubin stops in to The Local Maximum to discuss his new venture called Locals, a subscription-based community solution that gives power to creators, not platforms. He discusses the current problems with our online platforms and communication systems on “big tech” and his approach to fixing it. Dave Rubin is a talk show host, comedian, and TV personality. He is the host of The Rubin Report, a t...

Max give his take on Logical Induction and the construction of mathematical objects, a topic that he's been interested in for years. Topics include: - Intro to Mathematical Induction - Tradition Induction vs Ordinal Induction vs Epslion Induction - The Dominos analogy - Logical arguments vs Physical Arguments - Problems with compound implications in the real world - Spotting arguments that hide co...

These days there’s a lot of angst about job loss due to automation, AI, and Robotics. This led to a formal debate at the SoHo forum in New York about the implications of robotics and automation technology on the job market and what our response should be. Today’s guest, Anthony Sameroff, successfully argued against the resolution which predicts widespread joblessness due to automation. This is a p...

Max talks about all the exciting developments from 100 episodes of producing The Local Maximum Podcast. He also answers listener questions relating to the first 100 episodes, the podcast as a whole, and where it can go in the future. localmaxradio.com/100 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit localmaximum.substack....

Aaron and I start by responding to listener emails, and talking about how our predictions are faring on Metaculus and PredictIt. Then we go over our short list of technological trends of the decade which includes: - The ubiquity of mobile and cloud computing - Consolidation of Social Networks - Status of Wearables and Audio - Populist Movements of all kinds fuels by mass communication - Bitcoin an...

Alex Andorra, host of the new podcast Learning Bayesian Statistics joins The Local Maximum today to talk about these fascinating issues: - The growing role of Bayesian Analysis in Science and Technology - How the pollsters and journalists cover election data, and how it can be improved - Ways to look at election polls from a Bayesian standpoint - Strategic voting, comparative political systems, an...

Today we dive into the world of Computer Science with David Kopec, author of Classic Computer Science Problems in Python. Topics include misconceptions about computer science, what the general public should know, stumbling blocks for students, graph algorithms, and genetic algorithms. localmaxradio.com/97 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get acc...

Ep. 96 - Climate Protests, Pascal’s Wager, and the Duplicitous Science Press Max gives a first hand account of the climate protests during the Yale Harvard football game which delayed the game by almost an hour. He breaks down the arguments made by climate activists, and relates it to Pascal’s Wager, a concept in probabilities that relates to infinite values, and how it can be abused. Max and Aaro...

Panelists Craig Lorentzen and Foursquare Founder Dennis Crowley discuss inspiration, lessons learned, and career shifts they’ve obtained from playing video games as kids and as adults. localmaxradio.com/95 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit localmaximum.substack.com

Today Max talks about his long-term fascination with the concept of infinity, including several different forms and definitions that infinity can take on. Then, we do a deep dive into what it means to extend the real number line and divide by zero. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit localmaximum.substack.com

In our second November news update, we cover articles and stories on: - The consolidation of the internet - The dispute over whether Facebook centralized or decentralized speech - Calls to “re-decentralize” the internet with personal servers, and the practicality of that - How podcasting has been caught up in some internet trends, and left out of others. - A/B testing and shrinking emphasis on it...

This news update covers Ranked Choice Voting in New York City, Twitter’s decision to ban political advertising as we enter the 2020 political campaign season, and Waymo and Uber fighting it out for dominance in the self driving car market. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit localmaximum.substack.com

Max talks to Adweek reporter Shoshana Wodinsky about the fraud, the scandal, the propaganda, that goes out through online ad industry. localmaxradio.com/91 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit localmaximum.substack.com

In this solo show, Max talks about Narrative building, and the confirmation bias that can be associated with it. To illustrate his points: The recent hearings in Congress of Mark Zuckerberg over the Libra Project A professor who claims to have the winning system to predict the presidential election Stefan Molyneux’s use of a combination of statistical and linguistic tricks to build his society nar...

Max interviews Vit Jedlicka, president and founder of Liberland, which is a project to create a new country on unclaimed territory between Serbia and Croatia. Liberland was founded as a free republic with the goal of building new institutions to safeguard personal and economic freedom in a way that isn’t being done in any country including the western democracies today. We discuss the legal and or...

Today's Concept of the Week is Occam's Razor, along with other related ideas like Hanlon's Razor. - The Dragon in My Garage - Fermi Estimation - Why your iPhone is probably not recording all your conversations; but if it was what how it might do it. - How early is too early for Halloween? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus epis...

This week’s guest is Mark Ryan, author of the upcoming book Deep Learning with Structured Data. We cover: - How machine learning has come to dominate Artificial Intelligence over the last few decades - How the deep learning, which can solve problems like natural language understanding and image recognition - is becoming more and more practical, and gets results even in more traditional datasets -...

On the news that Amazon wants to put Alexa into wearable devices, we discuss the idea that the focus in consumer tech has moved to sound, including voice controls, augmented reality, and podcasting. Max gives an update on the Betaworks Hearing Voices conference that highlighted the latest tech, demos, and ideas in this area. Plus - we follow up on previous episodes, including Aaron’s predictions o...

Part 2 of Max's discussion with Anthony Aguirre, cofounder of the Metaculus prediction engine. Topics include: - The difference between making short term, long term, and theoretical predictions - The human mind and human emotions - as imperfect as they are - being world's best tool for prediction making - Calibrating your probabilities, on an individual and group level - Predictions of humor-detec...

Max talks to cosmologist Anthony Aguirre about the fundamental nature of the universe, with the following questions: Is the Space Discrete or Continuous? How does our physics differ from Virtual Reality, or the model we have in our brain? What is Fourier space? What does it mean that the universe is made of information? Is there a fundamental bit? In most cases, things aren’t what they seem! Check...

Max follows through on his promise to take down the big lie about Bitcoin - that it’ll consume all our energy and destroy the earth. He goes through the simple math that shows this won’t be a problem, and talk about how Bitcoin can encourage better energy technology. Jack Ma and Elon Musk were recently in a debate/discussion about AI in Shanghai, and they are in such opposite ends of the spectrum...

Henry Abramson, Dean of Touro College in Brooklyn, tells us about how he took his Jewish History Lectures online. We talk a bit about the historical shift in communication, information, and education that the internet and YouTube represent and his dealings with feedback, trolling, and algorithms. Finally, we learn about his biggest influences, and some specific lectures and why the internet has gr...

Ever feel like there’s something wrong with all the news and information you consume, even when you get it from professional scientists and doctors? We tackle the reproducibility crisis in science today starting with taking a look at some mudslinging between high profile online academics Andrew Gelman and Cass Sunstein. We also talk about the probable over-publishing of studies in stock market pre...

The recent sale of the creative and niche site Tumblr to Wordpress from Verizon shows an over 99% loss of value from it’s original sale to Yahoo in 2013. We look back at the phases Tumblr’s been through, and how this fits with the larger social, technological, and business trends. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, vi...