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Blog post with audio player, show notes, and transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2020/01/06/78-d…fic-image/
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/seanmcarroll.

Wilfrid Sellars described the task of philosophy as explaining how things, in the broadest sense of term, hang together, in the broadest sense of the term. (Substitute “exploring” for “explaining” and you’d have a good mission statement for the Mindscape podcast.) Few modern thinkers have pursued this goal more energetically, creatively, and entertainingly than Daniel Dennett. One of the most respected philosophers of our time, Dennett’s work has ranged over topics such as consciousness, artificial intelligence, metaphysics, free will, evolutionary biology, epistemology, and naturalism, always with an eye on our best scientific understanding of the phenomenon in question. His thinking in these areas is exceptionally lucid, and he has the rare ability to express his ideas in ways that non-specialists can find accessible and compelling. We talked about all of them, in a wide-ranging and wonderfully enjoyable conversation.

Daniel Dennett received his D.Phil. in philosophy from Oxford University. He is currently Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy and co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. He is known for a number of philosophical concepts and coinages, including the intentional stance, the Cartesian theater, and the multiple-drafts model of consciousness. Among his honors are the Erasmus Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the American Humanist Association’s Humanist of the Year award. He is the author of a number of books that are simultaneously scholarly and popular, including Consciousness Explained, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, and most recently Bacteria to Bach and Back.

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Blog post with show notes, audio player, and transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2018/12/03/epis…imulation/

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/seanmcarroll.

The “Easy Problems” of consciousness have to do with how the brain takes in information, thinks about it, and turns it into action. The “Hard Problem,” on the other hand, is the task of explaining our individual, subjective, first-person experiences of the world. What is it like to be me, rather than someone else? Everyone agrees that the Easy Problems are hard; some people think the Hard Problem is almost impossible, while others think it’s pretty easy. Today’s guest, David Chalmers, is arguably the leading philosopher of consciousness working today, and the one who coined the phrase “the Hard Problem,” as well as proposing the philosophical zombie thought experiment. Recently he has been taking seriously the notion of panpsychism. We talk about these knotty issues (about which we deeply disagree), but also spend some time on the possibility that we live in a computer simulation. Would simulated lives be “real”? (There we agree — yes they would.)

David Chalmers got his Ph.D. from Indiana University working under Douglas Hoftstadter. He is currently University Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science at New York University and co-director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness. He is a fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities, the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among his books are The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory, The Character of Consciousness, and Constructing the World. He and David Bourget founded the PhilPapers project.

Continue reading “Episode 25: David Chalmers on Consciousness, the Hard Problem, and Living in a Simulation” | >

Sabine Hossenfelder, Rupert Sheldrake and Bjorn Ekeberg go head to head on consciousness, panpsychism, physics and dard matter.

Watch more fiery contenet at https://iai.tv?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=description&utm…e-universe.

“Not only is the universe stranger than we think. It is stranger than we can think.” So argued Niels Bohr, one of the founders of quantum theory. We imagine our theories uncover how things are but, from quantum particles to dark matter, at fundamental levels the closer we get to what we imagine to be reality the stranger and more incomprehensible it appears to become.

Might science, and philosophy one day stretch to meet the universe’s strangeness? Or is the universe not so strange after all? Or should we give up the idea that we can uncover the essential character of the world, and with Bohr conclude that the strangeness of the universe and the quantum world transcend the limits of the human mind?

Continue reading “Can we understand the universe? | Sheldrake & Hossenfelder go head to head on dark matter IN FULL” | >

Emergence is how the world works differently at various levels or hierarchies of organization. It’s what happens when the whole becomes more than the sum of all its parts.

For David Chalmer’s full profile and more videos please visit http://bit.ly/1BNrd8v.

For more thoughts from leading thinkers on why emergence is so significant please visit http://bit.ly/1MBdBsj.

For more Closer to Truth interview videos, please visit http://www.closertotruth.com

Continue reading “David Chalmers — Why is Emergence Significant?” | >

😗😁 2021

After appearing for decades in science fiction, then moving into an actual theory, a new patent for an updated warp drive was published last year to no fanfare. Like many other false starts in cutting-edge research, the patent may represent the next step in the expanding theory, or it could mean the practical, real-world design of a functioning warp drive is on the horizon.

Background: How to Bend Space-Time with A Warp Drive

Continue reading “Mysterious New Warp Drive Patent Surfaces Online” | >

The GDNF gene therapy is currently used to treat Parkinson’s disease but could now be a major breakthrough in substantially reducing alcohol use disorder. “Drinking went down to almost zero,” Grant told OHSU News. “For months on end, these animals would choose to drink water and just avoid drinking alcohol altogether. They decreased their drinking to the point that it was so low we didn’t record a blood-alcohol level.”

Grant and her team said in the study that the resounding efficacy of GDNF gene therapy is promising for those who struggle with alcohol use disorder, and believe it could be effective in treating other substance abuse disorders. However, the therapy treatment would not be widely accessible and with other options on the market, it should be used as a last resort form of treatment.

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This is my latest thought 💭 post about humans and machines and why SymbioticAI (not control AI) is the way forward for humanity in the era of super intelligent machines.

Maybe interesting 🤔.

A recently published research paper from scientists at Anthropic demonstrates a method for determining how much “influence” individual instances of training data have on the generation of outputs by large language models.

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Ford CEO Jim Farley experienced the headache of electric-vehicle charging firsthand and acknowledged there was much to do to improve the experience for his customers.

Farley hit the road in an F-150 Lightning last week, traversing Route 66 and the American West to put the electric truck through its paces. He documented his trip on LinkedIn and X, the social-media website formerly known as Twitter.

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