An Argmin Events Calendar
A quick rundown of four fun events this week.
I wanted to give a quick rundown of some upcoming Irrational Decision events, as I’ve managed to stack four of them into a week.
On Wednesday, April 29, I’m visiting the University of Wisconsin-Madison to give the SILO seminar. It’s at 12:30 in the Orchard View Room of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery building. Rob Nowak and I started this multidisciplinary seminar on systems, information, learning, and optimization fifteen years ago, and I’m super happy that it’s still going strong. It’s fitting that I’m going to be giving a talk about the roots of the SILO subjects, when they were all considered disciplinary, not multidisciplinary. Do come by if you’re on campus.
On Friday, May 1, I’ll be at the University of Chicago, giving a lecture at the Data Science Institute at noon. I always love visiting Chicago and am looking forward to seeing the new data science building, which was a Lutheran seminary when I was an undergraduate there. Given my book’s framing, that’s quite a fitting, unintentional allegory.
On Tuesday, May 5, I’ll be participating in a conversation on “AI, rationality, and violence” with Kevin Baker, Sophia Goodfriend, and moderator Lily Hu. This is a free, online event hosted by The Boston Review at 3 PM Eastern Time. We’ll be discussing the “nature and meaning of rationality, how new technology is interfacing with old institutions, what popular AI discourses get wrong, and the consequences for politics, war, and social life in general.” I can’t wait to hash it out with three super brilliant people.
And finally, I’ll also be giving a talk about The Irrational Decision at 4 PM on May 5 at Berkeley. This presentation will be in conversation with Marion Fourcade and hosted by the Social Science Matrix and the BESI Technology Network. I’m looking forward to discussing the book with my on-campus colleagues there, as a way to celebrate the end of the semester. Details here.
Since I’ll be on the road, I expect blogging will be light for the next week. In transit, I’ll be writing down some thoughts for the summer session that I’ll probably post next week. Stay tuned!

