Recorded 05 November 2024. David Spivak of the Topos Institute presents "Plausible Fiction: Accounting for Actualizing Potential" at IPAM's Naturalistic Approaches to Artificial Intelligence Workshop. Abstract: Caring tends to actualize potential. A caring parent or mathematician must tend to the subject of their care: they must tend it like a gardener cultivating development; they must attend to it like a nurse relieving stress; they must pay attention to it like a student taking note. That sort of care tends to produce higher quality in all cases: more of the potential we see ends up being actualized when we tend to it properly. In this talk, I'll propose a methodology for caring called plausible fiction (PF), and I'll use it in two ways. First, PF will serve as an insulator around the rest of the talk: the math will be correct but its connection to the "real world", while plausible, is currently only fiction. The central subject of the talk is the possibility of actualizing potential, where the PF methodology comes up again, acting as both a midwife and an accountant for that endeavor: I believe the PF methodology can both help us increase the likelihood of actualizing potential in the world and help us articulate that process clearly. I'll also sketch some conceptual mathematics (category theory) that has potential to serve as a grounding first step toward an associated technical system, i.e. a "platform" for actualizing plausible fiction. Learn more online at: https://www.ipam.ucla.edu/programs/workshops/workshop-iii-naturalistic-approaches-to-artificial-intelligence/?tab=overview