Joscha Bach
AI researcher and cognitive scientist
On the podcast
Joscha Bach has appeared on the show four times.
On the record
In March 2020, at the outset of the pandemic, Bach described how his own belief that COVID-19 was being overreacted to had shifted once he examined the ingroup-signaling dynamics behind his own reasoning — an early, self-critical account of how tribal belief formation shaped pandemic-era discourse, before that dynamic became a widely discussed feature of COVID-era political polarization.
In their own words
“I really developed an entire hypothesis about how people believe what they believe... what you know is what your tribe believes and what is acceptable among that group of people. And I fucking did it to you at the moment that it was happening because you're exactly right. I was a part of the tribe that was the people that were saying this overreaction to coronavirus is just that.”March 2020, on the Vance Crowe Podcast, on the Vance Crowe Podcast
“If they change these beliefs that are signals for the ingroup, they lose access to the ingroup, they lose the benefits that the group bestows on them. And so you cannot change these beliefs with rational arguments.”May 2026, on the Vance Crowe Podcast, on the Vance Crowe Podcast
“In this resonance state they basically share mental state. And this means that there can be an entity in the room that is composed out of the minds of all the individuals... you basically can get memes that are themselves not just ideas, but that are agents that are implemented in software in their, their, your mind that are self-organizing, that are persistent and can move from mind to mind.”May 2023, on the Vance Crowe Podcast, on the Vance Crowe Podcast
Where this conversation traveled
Moments in later episodes where Joscha Bach's ideas and work resurfaced, drawn from the show's transcripts.
Bach's "misplaced empathy" and Garden-of-Eden metaphors became recurring reference points for other guests — Shaun Newman applied it directly to homelessness and drug policy, Barbara Carswell connected it to community-driven mental health, and Lyle Benjamin's book-club discussion of ancient texts as metaphor was sparked by a Bach tweet.
Listen →Lyle Benjamin, August 2020; Shaun Newman, February 2024
Producer Ben Anderson credited Bach, alongside Michael Levin and Lee Cronin, with raising the caliber of the show's science guests during the pandemic era, and Vance repeatedly drew a parallel between Bach's communication style and guest Aella's discussion of autism and directness.
Ben Anderson, January 2023; Aella, December 2020
If you valued this conversation
- Michael Levin — Vance repeatedly cross-referenced Bach's and Levin's frameworks on cognition and mind in the same conversations
- Rob Long — later guest who discussed AI and technology alongside references to Bach's work
- Jim Rutt — both guests were named together as AI-focused voices in a 2026 discussion of AI fears with radio host Mark Reardon
Link to this page
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https://articulate.ventures/podcast/guest/joscha-bach
I spoke with Vance Crowe on the Vance Crowe Podcast. The full conversation and transcript are here: https://articulate.ventures/podcast/guest/joscha-bach
This page is maintained by Articulate Ventures as part of the permanent record of the Vance Crowe Podcast. Quotes are drawn from episode transcripts.