The Intelligence of Living Traditions with Moshe Koppel

In this episode I talk to about his mathematical concept of sophistication and how that relates to meaning outside of math. We discuss his book Judaism Straight Up and the potential benefits that religion provides to communities. Next we cover his work on algorithmic authorship detection in a different texts, including the Bible. Finally we discuss modern AI and how people can find meaning when their work is no longer economically needed. Listen or Watch on YouTube or Spotify. TranscriptBelow is a lightly edited transcript, courtesy of AI:Ariel (00:02)I’m joined by Moshe Koppel, professor emeritus of computer science at Bar-Ilan University. His research spans complexity theory, authorship detection, and social choice—the study of how groups make collective decisions. He’s also the founder of Dicta, which develops AI tools for studying Jewish texts, and the author of the books Meta-Halakhah and Judaism Straight Up.We start this conversation with a mathematical idea Moshe developed…