21 December 2024
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Nov 1, 2019 —
Robert Wright & Preston Greene
- Why many intelligent people think we’re living in a simulation
- The philosophical argument that you’re probably not real
- How cosmic rays might (and might not) reveal that reality is fake
- Preston’s dire warning against trying to determine if we’re in a simulation
- Is the simulation hypothesis non-falsifiable?
- Is “the simulation” just religion for atheists?
TAGS atheism | cosmology | death | history | philosophy | physics | religion | science | technology | the future
May 14, 2019 —
Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Leah Finnegan
- How Leah realized that she should not “be herself”
- The mental health benefits of getting a dog
- Leah: We must bring back Kierkegaardian irony
- Leah on the scourge of “urgent earnestness”
- Is it ethical to not read the news?
- Leah’s reflections on being “a year Twitter sober”
- Lessons from the great “horseface” controversy of 2018
Apr 30, 2019 —
Robert Wright & Luke Kemp
TAGS climate change | cosmology | death | history | meditation | science | technology | the future | violence
Mar 4, 2019 —
Nikita Petrov & John Horgan
TAGS ancient philosophy | Buddhism | Christianity | consciousness | enlightenment | human nature | literature | philosophy | religion | spirituality | technology
Feb 8, 2019 —
Robert Wright & Douglas Rushkoff
- Douglas’s new book, Team Human
- Remembering when people behaved better online than IRL
- Douglas was optimistic about the Internet. Then came capitalism.
- Imagining a better Facebook
- Douglas: “Being human is a team sport”
- Tribalism and the Internet
- The false promise of “disruption”
- How capitalism complicates Douglas’s life
Oct 23, 2018 —
Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Max Read
- Viewing the Trump-Kanye meeting through the lens of mental illness
- The shared traits that make Trump and Kanye irresistible to the media
- How online news and social media created the “attention economy”
- Did reality TV remake reality?
- Jake and Logan Paul: brothers, YouTube superstars, and possible sociopaths
- How social media helps people with mental illness
Oct 10, 2018 —
Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Lauren Oyler
- What is it about social media that’s so depressing?
- Twitter, the unpopular website that elites love
- Is what happens on social media real or fake?
- Is @laurenoyler the same as Lauren Oyler?
- How everything in life became “toxic”
- Do all online communities eventually become toxic?
- The moral challenge of social media
Sep 4, 2018 —
Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Lauren Shields
- Lauren’s new book on her experiment with dressing modestly, The Beauty Suit
- Lauren’s unusual path to the seminary
- Alternative readings of Quranic verses on female modesty
- Christianity, conspicuous consumption, and the Amish
- Jewish women who cover their hair with wigs that look just like their hair
- Makeup trends that only look good on social media
- Why cultural appropriation is often rooted in misogyny
- Lauren’s advice for men
Jun 11, 2018 —
Robert Wright & Adam Frank
- Adam’s new book, Light of the Stars: Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth
- Adam: Climate change is a civilizational inevitability
- How many planets are in our galaxy? Guess again. It’s more than that.
- How pessimists about the existence of extraterrestrial life became optimists
- Why haven’t we heard from any aliens?
- Does fighting climate change require spiritual change?
- Why the Gaia hypothesis isn’t new-age hooey
- The theoretical archaeology of exo-civilizations
May 27, 2018 —
Aryeh Cohen-Wade & Michael Benson
- Michael’s new book Space Odyssey, about the film 2001
- The quest to make the “first good science fiction film”
- The remarkable development of the Dawn of Man sequence
- The fiction and fact of HAL 9000
- The trippy “Stargate” sequence
- Why the movie’s premiere was an utter disaster
- Is the film supposed to be boring?
- 2001‘s legacy
Mar 20, 2017 —
Robert Wright & S. Matthew Liao
TAGS biology | climate change | cognitive science | drugs | ethics | genetics | love | memory | mental health | science | technology | the future | war
Feb 22, 2017 —
Robert Wright & Micah Redding
TAGS Christianity | death | human nature | Islam | Judaism | love | religion | technology | the future | transhumanism
Dec 18, 2016 —
Nikita Petrov & George Young
- Does Russian thought have anything to contribute to the world?
- Nikolay Fedorov, an eccentric thinker who influenced Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky
- Fedorov’s plan: Immortality for everyone
- “Kinship” as a fundamental property of all matter
- A mass movement for the spiritual unity of humankind
- Vladimir Solovyov’s The Meaning of Love: Sexuality as a path to a Christian utopia
- Christ as the ultimate role model
TAGS Christianity | consciousness | death | evolution | history | human nature | literature | mysticism | occult | philosophy | politics | religion | science | spirituality | technology | the future | transhumanism
Nov 13, 2016 —
Robert Wright & Keith Frankish
TAGS Buddhism | cognitive science | consciousness | ethics | evolution | human nature | memory | mind-body problem | panpsychism | perception | philosophy | psychology | self | technology
Nov 4, 2016 —
Robert Wright & Christof Koch
- The search for non-human consciousness
- Consciousness in the organic and inorganic worlds
- Measuring consciousness
- Lucky us: The universe breeds consciousness
- How scientific and spiritual worldviews can enrich each other
- Artificial intelligence is not (necessarily) artificial consciousness
- The Allen Institute for Brain Science and its mission
TAGS Buddhism | cognitive science | consciousness | ethics | evolution | panpsychism | physics | science | spirituality | technology | the future
Sep 17, 2016 —
Nikita Petrov & George Young
- What is Russian cosmism?
- The religious side of cosmism
- Cosmism as a response to the challenges of the 20th century
- Nature as a temporary enemy and eternal friend
- Pavel Florensky, the Russian da Vinci
- Plant life as a spiritual ideal
- The father of the Soviet space program, and his weird spirituality
- Cosmism and transhumanism: Compare and contrast
- Cosmism as a Russian propaganda project
TAGS Christianity | consciousness | death | evolution | history | human nature | mysticism | occult | philosophy | politics | religion | science | spirituality | technology | the future | transhumanism
Sep 1, 2016 —
Robert Wright & Ken Wharton
- The future is real, and we could travel there
- Reasons to think the future may influence the present
- Can retro-causality explain quantum entanglement?
- Why our intuitions about time are wrong
- Is there a place for free will in a deterministic universe?
- The many worlds theory, quantum computers, and events without causes
Aug 8, 2016 —
Robert Wright & Susan Schneider
TAGS cognitive science | compassion | consciousness | death | free will | human nature | identity | mind-body problem | philosophy | physics | psychology | science | technology | the future | transhumanism
Dec 15, 2015 —
Robert Wright & Francis Fukuyama
TAGS Barack Obama | democracy | Donald Trump | foreign policy | history | politics | religion | science | technology | terrorism | the future
Oct 3, 2015 —
Daniel Kaufman & Massimo Pigliucci
- “Virtue ethics” vs. typical modern understandings of morality
- What do you need to live a “flourishing” life?
- How to tell the difference between a Cynic and a Stoic
- When our moral intuitions and our moral systems conflict
- What Massimo finds appealing about a Stoic lifestyle
- Why you shouldn’t focus on external outcomes
Aug 4, 2015 —
Daniel Kaufman & Massimo Pigliucci
- The “strong AI thesis”: Can a machine think?
- Debating the usefulness of the Turing test
- Could your brain be swapped with a silicon replica?
- Massimo: You’ll never be able to upload your consciousness
- Digging into the famous “Chinese room” thought experiment
- Dan: Neuroscience won’t solve philosophy of mind puzzles
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