Podcast appearances and mentions of Daniel Dennett

It’s actually a good thing that some books push you to the edge of your ability to understand. But there’s no doubting the fact that dense, abstract and jargon-filled works can push you so far into the fog of frustration that you cannot blame yourself for giving up. But here’s the truth: You don’t have to walk away frustrated and confused. I’m going to share with you a number of practical strategies that will help you fill in the gaps of your reading process. Because that’s usually the real problem: It’s not your intelligence. Nor is it that the world is filled with books “above your level.” I ultimately don’t believe in “levels” as such. But as someone who taught reading courses at Rutgers and Saarland University, I know from experience that many learners need to pick up a few simple steps that will strengthen how they approach reading difficult books. And in this guide, you’ll learn how to read challenging books and remember what they say. I’m going to go beyond generic advice too. That way, you can readily diagnose: Why certain books feel so hard Use pre-reading tactics that prime your brain to deal with difficulties effectively Apply active reading techniques to lock in understanding faster Leverage accelerated learning tools that are quick to learn Use Artificial Intelligence to help convert tough convent into lasting knowledge without worrying about getting duped by AI hallucinations Whether you’re tacking philosophy, science, dense fiction or anything based primarily in words, the reading system you’ll learn today will help you turn confusion into clarity. By the end, even the most intimidating texts will surrender their treasures to your mind. Ready? Let’s break it all down together. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9HLbY4jsFg Why Some Books Feel “Too Hard” (And What That Really Means) You know exactly how it feels and so do I. You sit down with a book that people claim is a classic or super-important. But within a few pages, your brain fogs over and you’re completely lost. More often than not, through glazed eyes, you start to wonder… did this author go out of his or her way to make this difficult? Are they trying to show off with all these literary pyrotechnics? Or is there a deliberate conspiracy to confuse readers like me? Rest assured. These questions are normal and well worth asking. The difficulty you might feel is never arbitrary in my experience. But there’s also no “single origin” explanation for why some books feel easier than others. It’s almost always a combination of factors, from cognitive readiness, lived experience, emotions and your physical condition throughout the day. This means that understanding why individual texts resist your understanding needs to be conducted on a case-by-case basis so you can move towards mastering anything you want to read. Cognitive Load: The Brain’s Processing “Stop Sign” “Cognitive load” probably needs no definition. The words are quite intuitive. You start reading something and it feels like someone is piling heavy bricks directly on top of your brain, squishing everything inside. More specifically, these researchers explain that what’s getting squished is specifically your working memory, which is sometimes called short-term memory. In practical terms, this means that when a book suddenly throws a bunch of unfamiliar terms at you, your working memory has to suddenly deal with abstract concepts, completely new words or non-linear forms of logic. All of this increases your cognitive load, but it’s important to note that there’s no conspiracy. In Just Being Difficult: Academic Writing in the Public Arena, a variety of contributors admit that they often write for other specialists. Although it would be nice to always compose books and articles for general readers, it’s not laziness. They’re following the codes of their discipline, which involves shorthand to save everyone time. Yes, it can also signal group membership and feel like an intellectual wall if you’re new to this style, but it’s simply a “stop sign” for your brain. And wherever there are stop signs, there are also alternative routes. Planning Your Detour “Roadmap” Into Difficult Books Let me share a personal example by way of sharing a powerful technique for making hard books easier to read. A few years ago I decided I was finally going to read Kant. I had the gist of certain aspects of his philosophy, but a few pages in, I encountered so many unfamiliar terms, I knew I had to obey the Cognitive Load Stop Sign and take a step back. To build a roadmap into Kant, I searched Google in a particular way. Rather than a search term like, “Intro to Kant,” I entered this tightened command instead: Filetype:PDF syllabus Kant These days, you can ask an LLM in more open language to simply give you links to the syllabi of the most authoritative professors who teach Kant. I’d still suggest that you cross-reference what you get on Google, however. If you’re hesitant about using either Google or AI, it’s also a great idea to visit a librarian in person to help you. Or, you can read my post about using AI for learning with harming your memory to see if it’s time to update your approach. Narrowing Down Your Options One way or another, the reason to consult the world’s leading professors is that their syllabi will provide you with: Foundational texts Core secondary literature Commentaries from qualified sources Essential historical references Once you’ve looked over a few syllabi, look through the table of contents of a few books on Amazon or Google Books. Then choose: 1-2 foundational texts to read before the challenging target book you want to master 1-2 articles or companion texts to read alongside In this way, you’ve turned difficulty into a path, not an obstacle. Pre-Reading Strategies That Warm Up Your Reading Muscles A lot of the time, the difficulty people feel when reading has nothing to do with the book. It’s just that you’re diving into unfamiliar territory without testing the waters first. Here are some simple ways to make unfamiliar books much easier to get into. Prime Like a Pro To make books easier to read, you can perform what is often called “priming” in the accelerated learning community. It is also sometimes called “pre-reading” and as this research article discusses, its success has been well-demonstrated. The way I typically perform priming is simple. Although some books require a slight change to the pattern, I typically approach each new book by reading: The back cover The index The colophon page The conclusion or afterword The most interesting or relevant chapter The introduction The rest of the book Activate Prior Knowledge Sometimes I will use a skimming and scanning strategy after reading the index to quickly familiarize myself with how an author approaches a topic with which I’m already familiar. This can help raise interest, excitement and tap into the power of context-dependent memory. For example, I recently started reading Doubt: A History by Jennifer Michael Hecht. Since the Renaissance memory master Giordano Bruno comes up multiple times, I was able to draw up a kind of context map of the books themes by quickly going through those passages. Take a Picture Walk Barbara Oakley and Terence Sejnjowski share a fantastic strategy in Learning How to Learn. Before reading, simply go through a book and look at all the illustrations, tables, charts and diagrams. It seems like a small thing. But it gives your brain a “heads up” about upcoming visual information that you may need to process than prose. I used to find visual information like this difficult, but after I started taking picture walks, I’m now excited to read “towards” these elements. If still find them challenging to understand, I apply a tip I learned from Tony Buzan that you might like to try: Rather than struggle to interpret a chart or illustration, reproduce it in your own hand. Here’s an example of how I did this when studying spaced repetition: As a result, I learned the graph and its concepts quickly and have never forgotten it. Build a Pre-Reading Ritual That Fits You There’s no one-sized-fits-all strategy, so you need to experiment with various options. The key is to reduce cognitive load by giving your mind all kinds of ways of understanding what a book contains. If it helps, you can create yourself a checklist that you slip into the challenging books on your list. That way, you’ll have both a bookmark and a protocol as you develop your own pre-reading style. Active Reading Techniques That Boost Comprehension Active reading involves deliberately applying mental activities while reading. These can include writing in the margins of your books, questioning, preparing summaries and even taking well-time breaks between books. Here’s a list of my favorite active reading strategies with ideas on how you can implement them. Using Mnemonics While Reading On the whole, I take notes while reading and then apply a variety of memory techniques after. But to stretch my skills, especially when reading harder books, I start the encoding process earlier. Instead of just taking notes, I’ll start applying mnemonic images. I start early because difficult terms often require a bit more spaced repetition. To do this yourself, the key is to equip yourself with a variety of mnemonic methods, especially: The Memory Palace technique The Pegword Method The Major System The PAO System And in some cases, you may want to develop a symbol system, such as if you’re studying physics or programming. Once you have these mnemonic systems developed, you can apply them in real time. For example, if you come across names and dates, committing them to memory as you read can help you keep track of a book’s historical arc. This approach can be especially helpful when reading difficult books because authors often dump a lot of names and dates. By memorizing them as you go, you reduce the mental load of having to track it all. For even more strategies you can apply while reading, check out my complete Mnemonics Dictionary. Strategic Questioning Whether you take notes or memorize in real-time, asking questions as you go makes a huge difference. Even if you don’t come up with answers, continually interrogating the book will open up your brain. The main kinds of questions are: Evaluative questions (checking that the author uses valid reasoning and address counterarguments) Analytical questions (assessing exactly how the arguments unfold and questioning basic assumptions) Synthetic questions (accessing your previous knowledge and looking for connections with other books and concepts) Intention questions (interrogating the author’s agenda and revealing any manipulative rhetoric) One medieval tool for questioning you can adopt is the memory wheel. Although it’s definitely old-fashioned, you’ll find that it helps you rotate between multiple questions. Even if they are as simple as who, what, where, when, how and why questions, you’ll have a mental mnemonic device that helps ensure you don’t miss any of them. Re-reading Strategies Although these researchers seem to think that re-reading is not an effective strategy, I could not live without it. There are three key kinds of re-reading I recommend. Verbalize Complexity to Tame It The first is to simply go back and read something difficult to understand out loud. You’d be surprised how often it’s not your fault. The author has just worded something in a clunky manner and speaking the phrasing clarifies everything. Verbatim Memorization for Comprehension The second strategy is to memorize the sentence or even an entire passage verbatim. That might seem like a lot of work, but this tutorial on memorizing entire passages will make it easy for you. Even if verbatim memorization takes more work, it allows you to analyze the meaning within your mind. You’re no longer puzzling over it on paper, continuing to stretch your working memory. No, you’ve effectively expanded at least a part of your working memory by bypassing it altogether. You’ve ushered the information into long-term memory. I’m not too shy to admit that I have to do this sometimes to understand everything from the philosophy in Sanskrit phrases to relatively simple passages from Shakespeare. As I shared in my recent discussion of actor Anthony Hopkins’ memory, I couldn’t work out what “them” referred to in a particular Shakespeare play. But after analyzing the passage in memory, it was suddenly quite obvious. Rhythmical Re-reading The third re-reading strategy is something I shared years ago in my post detailing 11 reasons you should re-read at least one book per month. I find this approach incredibly helpful because no matter how good you get at reading and memory methods, even simple books can be vast ecosystems. By revisiting difficult books at regular intervals, you not only get more out of them. You experience them from different perspectives and with the benefit of new contexts you’ve built in your life over time. In other words, treat your reading as an infinite game and never assume that you’ve comprehended everything. There’s always more to be gleaned. Other Benefits of Re-reading You’ll also improve your pattern recognition by re-treading old territory, leading to more rapid recognition of those patterns in new books. Seeing the structures, tropes and other tactics in difficult books opens them up. But without regularly re-reading books, it can be difficult to perceive what these forms are and how authors use them. To give you a simple example of a structure that appears in both fiction and non-fiction, consider in media res, or starting in the middle. When you spot an author using this strategy, it can immediately help you read more patiently. And it places the text in the larger tradition of other authors who use that particular technique. For even more ideas that will keep your mind engaged while tackling tough books, feel free to go through my fuller article on 7 Active Reading Strategies. Category Coloring & Developing Your Own Naming System For Complex Material I don’t know about you, but I do not like opening a book only to find it covered in highlighter marks. I also don’t like highlighting books myself. However, after practicing mind mapping for a few years, I realized that there is a way to combine some of its coloring principles with the general study principles of using Zettelkasten and flashcards. Rather than passively highlighting passages that seem interesting at random, here’s an alternative approach you can take to your next tour through a complicated book. Category Coloring It’s often helpful to read with a goal. For myself, I decided to tackle a hard book called Gödel Escher Bach through the lens of seven categories. I gave each a color: Red = Concept Green = Process Orange = Fact Blue = Historical Context Yellow = Person Purple = School of Thought or Ideology Brown = Specialized Terminology Example Master Card to the Categorial Color Coding Method To emulate this method, create a “key card” or “master card” with your categories on it alongside the chosen color. Use this as a bookmark as you read. Then, before writing down any information from the book, think about the category to which it belongs. Make your card and then apply the relevant color. Obviously, you should come up with your own categories and preferred colors. The point is that you bring the definitions and then apply them consistently as you read and extract notes. This will help bring structure to your mind because you’re creating your own nomenclature or taxonomy of information. You are also using chunking, a specific mnemonic strategy I’ve written about at length in this post on chunking as a memory tool. Once you’re finished a book, you can extract all the concepts and memorize them independently if you like. And if you emulate the strategy seen on the pictured example above, I’ve included the page number on each card. That way, I can place the cards back in the order of the book. Using this approach across multiple books, you will soon spot cross-textual patterns with greater ease. The catch is that you cannot allow this technique to become activity for activity’s sake. You also don’t want to wind up creating a bunch of informational “noise.” Before capturing any individual idea on a card and assigning it to a category, ask yourself: Why is this information helpful, useful or critical to my goal? Will I really use it again? Where does it belong within the categories? If you cannot answers these questions, either move on to the next point. Or reframe the point with some reflective thinking so that you can contextualize it. This warning aside, it’s important not to let perfectionism creep into your life. Knowing what information matters does take some practice. To speed up your skills with identifying critical information, please read my full guide on how to find the main points in books and articles. Although AI can certainly help these days, you’ll still need to do some work on your own. Do Not Let New Vocabulary & Terminology Go Without Memorization One of the biggest mistakes I used to make, even as a fan of memory techniques, slowed me down much more than necessary. I would come across a new term, look it up, and assume I’d remember it. Of course, the next time I came across it, the meaning was still a mystery. But when I got more deliberate, I not only remembered more words, but the knowledge surrounding the unfamiliar terms also stuck with greater specificity. For example, in reading The Wandering Mind by Jamie Kreiner, memorizing the ancient Greek word for will or volition (Prohairesis) pulled many more details about why she was mentioning it. Lo and behold, I started seeing the word in more places and connecting it to other ancient Greek terms. Memorizing those as well started to create a “moat of meaning,” further protecting a wide range of information I’d been battling. Understanding Why Vocabulary Blocks Comprehension The reason why memorizing words as you read is so helpful is that it helps clear out the cognitive load created by pausing frequently to look up words. Even if you don’t stop to learn a new definition, part of your working memory gets consumed by the lack of familiarity. I don’t always stop to learn new definitions while reading, but using the color category index card method you just discovered, it’s easy to organize unfamiliar words while reading. That way they can be tidily memorized later. I have a full tutorial for you on how to memorize vocabulary, but here’s a quick primer. Step One: Use a System for Capturing New Words & Terms Whether you use category coloring, read words into a recording app or email yourself a reminder, the key is to capture as you go. Once your reading session is done, you can now go back to the vocabulary list and start learning it. Step Two: Memorize the Terms I personally prefer the Memory Palace technique. It’s great for memorizing words and definitions. You can use the Pillar Technique with the word at the top and the definition beneath it. Or you can use the corners for the words and the walls for the definitions. Another idea is to photograph the cards you create and important them into a spaced repetition software like Anki. As you’ll discover in my complete guide to Anki, there are several ways you can combine Anki with a variety of memory techniques. Step Three: Use the Terms If you happened to catch an episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast back when I first learned Prohairesis I mentioned it often. This simple habit helps establish long-term recall, reflection and establishes the ground for future recognition and use. Expand Understanding Using Video & Audio Media When I was in university, I often had to ride my bike across Toronto to borrow recorded lectures on cassette. Given the overwhelming tsunamis of complex ideas, jargon and theoretical frameworks I was facing, it was worth it. Especially since I was also dealing with the personal problems I shared with you in The Victorious Mind. Make no mistake: I do not believe there is any replacement for reading the core books, no matter how difficult they might be. But there’s no reason not to leverage the same ideas in multiple formats to help boost your comprehension and long-term retention. Multimedia approaches are not just about knowledge acquisition either. There have been many debates in the magical arts community that card magicians should read and not rely on video. But evidence-based studies like this one show that video instruction combined with reading written instructions is very helpful. The Science Behind Multi-Modal Learning I didn’t know when I was in university, or when I was first starting out with memdeck card magic that dual coding theory existed. This model was proposed by Allan Paivio, who noticed that information is processed both verbally and non-verbally. Since then, many teachers have focused heavily on how to encourage students to find the right combination of reading, visual and auditory instructional material. Here are some ideas that will help you untangle the complexity in your reading. How to Integrate Multimedia Without Overload Forgive me if this is a bit repetitive, but to develop flow with multiple media, you need to prime the brain. As someone who has created multiple YouTube videos, I have been stubborn about almost always including introductions. Why? Go Through the Intros Like a Hawk Because without including a broad overview of the topic, many learners will miss too many details. And I see this in the comments because people ask questions that are answered throughout the content and flagged in the introductions. So the first step is to be patient and go through the introductory material. And cultivate an understanding that it’s not really the material that is boring. It’s the contemporary issues with dopamine spiking that make you feel impatient. The good news is that you can possibly reset your dopamine levels so you’re better able to sit through these “priming” materials. One hack I use is to sit far away from my mouse and keep my notebook in hand. If I catch myself getting antsy, I perform a breathing exercise to restore focus. Turn on Subtitles When you’re watching videos, you can help increase your engagement by turning on the subtitles. This is especially useful in jargon-heavy video lessons. You can pause and still see the information on the screen for easier capture when taking notes. When taking notes, I recommend jotting down the timestamp. This is useful for review, but also for attributing citations later if you have to hand in an assignment. Mentally Reconstruct After watching a video or listening to a podcast on the topic you’re mastering, take a moment to review the key points. Try to go through them in the order they were presented. This helps your brain practice mental organization by building a temporal scaffold. If you’ve taken notes and written down the timestamps, you can easily check your accuracy. Track Your Progress For Growth & Performance One reason some people never feel like they’re getting anywhere is that they have failed to establish any points of reference. Personally, this is easy for me to do. I can look back to my history of writing books and articles or producing videos and be reminded of how far I’ve come at a glance. Not only as a writer, but also as a reader. For those who do not regularly produce content, you don’t have to start a blog or YouTube channel. Just keep a journal and create a few categories of what skills you want to track. These might include: Comprehension Retention Amount of books read Vocabulary growth Critical thinking outcomes Confidence in taking on harder books Increased tolerance with frustration when reading challenges arise You can use the same journal to track how much time you’ve spent reading and capturing quick summaries. Personally, I wish I’d started writing summaries sooner. I really only got started during grad school when during a directed reading course, a professor required that I had in a summary for every book and article I read. I never stopped doing this and just a few simple paragraph summaries has done wonders over the years for my understanding and retention. Tips for Overcoming Frustration While Reading Difficult Books Ever since the idea of “desirable difficulty” emerged, people have sought ways to help learners overcome emotional responses like frustration, anxiety and even shame while tackling tough topics. As this study shows, researchers and teachers have found the challenge difficult despite the abundance of evidence showing that being challenged is a good thing. Here are some strategies you can try if you continue to struggle. Embrace Cognitive Discomfort As we’ve discussed, that crushing feeling in your brain exists for a reason. Personally, I don’t think it ever goes away. I still regularly pick up books that spike it. The difference is that I don’t start up a useless mantra like, “I’m not smart enough for this.” Instead, I recommend you reframe the experience and use the growth mindset studied by Carol Dweck, amongst others. You can state something more positive like, “This book is a bit above my level, but I can use tactics and techniques to master it.” I did that very recently with my reading of The Xenotext, parts of which I still don’t fully understand. It was very rewarding. Use Interleaving to Build Confidence I rotate through draining books all the time using a proven technique called interleaving. Lots of people are surprised when I tell them that I rarely read complex and challenging books for longer than fifteen minutes at a time. But I do it because interleaving works. Which kinds of books can you interleave? You have choices. You can either switch in something completely different, or switch to a commentary. For example, while recently reading some heavy mathematical theories about whether or not “nothing” can exist, I switched to a novel. But back in university, I would often stick within the category while at the library. I’d read a core text by a difficult philosopher, then pick up a Cambridge Companion and read an essay related to the topic. You can also interleave using multimedia sources like videos and podcasts. Interleaving also provides time for doing some journaling, either about the topic at hand or some other aspect of your progress goals. Keep the Big Picture in Mind Because frustration is cognitively training, it’s easy to let it drown out your goals. That’s why I often keep a mind map or some other reminder on my desk, like a couple of memento mori. It’s also possible to just remember previous mind maps you’ve made. This is something I’m doing often at the moment as I read all kinds of boring information about managing a bookshop for my Memory Palace bookshop project first introduced in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utcJfeQZC2c It’s so easy to get discouraged by so many rules and processes involved in ordering and selling books, that I regularly think back to creating this mind map with Tony Buzan years ago. In case my simple drawings on this mind map for business development doesn’t immediately leap out at you with its meanings, the images at the one o’clock-three o’clock areas refer to developing a physical Memory Palace packed with books on memory and learning. Developing and keeping a north star in mind will help you transform the process of reading difficult books into a purposeful adventure of personal development. Even if you have to go through countless books that aren’t thrilling, you’ll still be moving forward. Just think of how much Elon Musk has read that probably wasn’t all that entertaining. Yet, it was still essential to becoming a polymath. Practice Seeing Through The Intellectual Games As you read harder and harder books, you’ll eventually come to realize that the “fluency” some people have is often illusory. For example, some writers and speakers display a truly impressive ability to string together complex terminology, abstract references and fashionable ideas of the day in ways that sound profound. Daniel Dennett frequently used a great term for a lot of this verbal jujitsu that sounds profound but is actually trivial. He called such flourishes “deepities.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ey-UeaSi1rI This kind of empty linguistic dexterity will be easier for you to spot when you read carefully, paraphrase complex ideas in your own words and practice memorizing vocabulary frequently. When you retain multiple concepts and practice active questioning in a large context of grounded examples and case studies, vague claims will not survive for long in your world. This is why memory training is about so much more than learning. Memorization can equip you to think independently and bring clarity to fields that are often filled with gems, despite the fog created by intellectual pretenders more interested in word-jazz than actual truth. Using AI to Help You Take On Difficult Books As a matter of course, I recommend you use AI tools like ChatGPT after doing as much reading on your own as possible. But there’s no mistaking that intentional use of such tools can help you develop greater understanding. The key is to avoid using AI as an answer machine or what Nick Bostrom calls an “oracle” in his seminal book, Superintelligence. Rather, take a cue from Andrew Mayne, a science communicator and central figure at OpenAI and host of their podcast. His approach centers on testing in ways that lead to clarity of understanding and retention as he uses various mnemonic strategies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlzD_6Olaqw Beyond his suggestions, here are some of my favorite strategies. Ask AI to Help Identify All Possible Categories Connected to a Topic A key reason many people struggle to connect ideas is simply that they haven’t developed a mental ecosystem of categories. I used to work in libraries, so started thinking categorically when I was still a teenager. But these days, I would combine how traditional libraries are structured with a simple prompt like: List all the possible categories my topic fits into or bridges across disciplines, historical frameworks and methodologies. Provide the list without interpretation or explanation so I can reflect. A prompt like this engineers a response that focuses on relationships and lets your brain perform the synthetic thinking. Essentially, you’ll be performing what some scientists call schema activation, leading to better personal development outcomes. Generate Lists of Questions To Model Exceptional Thinkers Because understanding relies on inquiry, it’s important to practice asking the best possible questions. AI chat bots can be uniquely useful in this process provided that you explicitly insist that it helps supply you excellent questions without any answers. You can try a prompt like: Generate a list of questions that the world’s most careful thinkers in this field would ask about this topic. Do not provide any answers. Just the list of questions. Do this after you’ve read the text and go through your notes with fresh eyes. Evaluate the material with questions in hand, ideally by writing out your answers by hand. If you need your answers imported into your computer, apps can now scan your handwriting and give you text file. Another tip: Don’t be satisfied with the first list of questions you get. Ask the AI to dig deeper. You can also ask the AI to map the questions into the categories you previously got help identifying. For a list of questions you can put into your preferred chat bot, feel free to go through my pre-AI era list of philosophical questions. They are already separated by category. Use AI to Provide a Progress Journal Template If you’re new to journaling, it can be difficult to use the technique to help you articulate what you’re reading and why the ideas are valuable. And that’s not to mention working out various metrics to measure your growth over time. Try a prompt like this: Help me design a progress journal for my quest to better understand and remember difficult books. Include sections for me to list my specific goals, vocabulary targets, summaries and various milestones I identify. Make it visual so I can either copy it into my own print notebook or print out multiple copies for use over time. Once you have a template you’re happy to experiment with, keep it visible in your environment so you don’t forget to use it. Find Blind Spots In Your Summaries Many AIs have solid reasoning skills. As a result, you can enter your written summaries and have the AI identify gaps in your knowledge, blind spots and opportunities for further reading. Try a prompt like: Analyze this summary and identify any blind spots, ambiguities in my thinking or incompleteness in my understanding. Suggest supplementary reading to help me fill in any gaps. At the risk of repetition, the point is that you’re not asking for the summaries. You’re asking for assessments that help you diagnose the limits of your understanding. As scientists have shown, metacognition, or thinking about your thinking can help you see errors much faster. By adding an AI into the mix, you’re getting feedback quickly without having to wait for a teacher to read your essay. Of course, AI outputs can be throttled, so I find it useful to also include a phrase like, “do not throttle your answer,” before asking it to dig deeper and find more issues. Used wisely, you will soon see various schools of thought with much greater clarity, anticipate how authors make their moves and monitor your own blind spots as you read and reflect. Another way to think about the power of AI tools is this: They effectively mirror human reasoning at a species wide level. You can use them to help you mirror more reasoning power by regularly accessing and practicing error detection and filling in the gaps in your thinking style. Why You Must Stop Abandoning Difficult Books (At Least Most of the Time) Like many people, I’m a fan of Scott Young’s books like Ultralearning and Get Better at Anything. He’s a disciplined thinker and his writing helps people push past shallow learning in favor of true and lasting depth. However, he often repeats the advice that you should stop reading boring books. In full transparency, I sometimes do this myself. And Young adds a lot of context to make his suggestion. But I limit abandoning books as much as possible because I don’t personally find Young’s argument that enjoyment and productivity go together. On the contrary, most goals that I’ve pursued have required fairly intense periods of delaying gratification. And because things worth accomplishing generally do require sacrifice and a commitment to difficulty, I recommend you avoid the habit of giving up on books just because they’re “boring” or not immediately enjoyable. I’ll bet you’ll enjoy the accomplishment of understanding hard books and conquering their complexity far more in the end. And you’ll benefit more too. Here’s why I think so. The Hidden Cost of Abandoning Books You’ve Started Yes, I agree that life is short and time is fleeting. But if you get into the habit of abandoning books at the first sign of boredom, it can quickly become your default habit due to how procedural memory works. In other words, you’re given your neurons the message that it’s okay to escape from discomfort. That is a very dangerous loop to throw yourself into, especially if you’re working towards becoming autodidactic. What you really need is to develop the ability to stick with complexity, hold ambiguous and contradictory issues in your mind and fight through topic exhaustion. Giving up on books on a routine basis? That’s the opposite of developing expertise and resilience. The AI Risk & Where Meaning is Actually Found We just went through the benefits of AI, so you shouldn’t have issues. But I regularly hear from people and have even been on interviews where people use AI to summarize books I’ve recomended. This is dangerous because the current models flatten nuance due to how they summarize books based on a kind of “averaging” of what its words predictability mean. Although they might give you a reasonable scaffold of a book’s structure, you won’t get the friction created by how authors take you through their thought processes. In other words, you’ll be using AI models that are not themselves modeling the thinking that reading provides when you grind your way through complex books. The Treasure of Meaning is Outside Your Comfort Zone Another reason to train for endurance is that understanding doesn’t necessarily arrive while reading a book or even a few weeks after finishing it. Sometimes the unifying insights land years later. But if you don’t read through books that seem to be filled with scattered ideas, you cannot gain any benefit from them. Their diverse points won’t consolidate in your memory and certainly won’t connect with other ideas later. So I suggest you train your brain to persist as much as possible. By drawing up the support of the techniques we discussed today and a variety of mnemonic support systems, you will develop persistence and mine more gold from everything you read. And being someone who successfully mines for gold and can produce it at will is the mark of the successful reading. Not just someone who consumes information efficiently, but who can repeatedly connect and transform knowledge year after year due to regularly accumulating gems buried in the densest and most difficult books others cannot or will not read. Use Struggle to Stimulate Growth & You Cannot Fail As you’ve seen, challenging books never mean that you’re not smart enough. It’s just a matter of working on your process so that you can tackle new forms of knowledge. And any discomfort you feel is a signal that a great opportunity and personal growth adventure awaits. By learning how to manage cognitive load, fill in the gaps in your background knowledge and persist through frustration, you can quickly become the kind of reader who seeks out complexity instead of flinching every time you see it. Confusion has now become a stage along the path to comprehension. And if you’re serious about mastering increasingly difficult material, understanding and retaining it, then it’s time to upgrade your mental toolbox. Start now by grabbing my Free Memory Improvement Course: Inside, you’ll discover: The Magnetic Memory Method for creating powerful Memory Palaces How to develop your own mnemonic systems for encoding while reading Proven techniques that deepen comprehension, no matter how abstract or complex your reading list is And please, always remember: The harder the book, the greater rewards. And the good news is, you’re now more than ready to claim them all.

Metaphors matter. They enliven our speech and our prose; they animate our arguments and stir our passions. Some metaphors power political movements; others propel scientific revolutions. These little figures of speech delight, provoke, captivate, shock, amuse, and galvanize us. In one way or another, metaphors just seem to help us make sense of a messy world. But how do they do all this? Whence their peculiar powers? What does it say about the human mind that we just can't escape our metaphors—and frankly don't want to?  My guest today is Dr. Stephen Flusberg. Steve is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Vassar College, where he directs the Framing, Reasoning, And Metaphor (FRAME) Lab. Here, Steve and I talk about what metaphors are and why we're so drawn to them. We discuss some of the misleading ideas about metaphor you may remember from middle school literature class. We consider why some metaphors work and others flop. We talk about the metaphors we use for climate change and prevalence and potency of war metaphors across different realms of public discourse. We consider how metaphor operates in science and in scientific theorizing. Finally, we talk about the question of whether there are some ideas that we simply can't grasp literally, concepts we can only approach through metaphor. Along the way, Steve and I talk about: "aura farming"; nautical metaphors and textile metaphors; the outmoded idea that metaphors are mere adornments; metaphor versus analogy; dead metaphors and how to resuscitate them; shadows and footprints; Dan Dennett's technique of metaphorical triangulation; and the brain-as-computer metaphor—and whether it is actually a metaphor. Alright, friends this is a fun one. Steve has spent his entire career exploring this fascinating terrain—and, as you'll see, he's a lively and affable guide. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Dr. Steve Flusberg.    Notes 3:00 – For more on "beige flags," see here. For more on "aura farming," see here. 8:00 – For an overview of metaphor in communication and thought, see here for an article by Dr. Flusberg and co-authors. 18:00 – The "life is a journey" (or "career is a journey") metaphor—as well as other examples we discuss—are treated at length in the classic book, Metaphors We Live By. 24:00 – For a detailed academic treatment of the relationship between metaphor and analogy, see here. 32:00 – Some of the best-studied "orientational metaphors" are those found in the domain of time. See here and here. 37:00 – For more on metaphors used in discussions of environmental issues, see a paper by Dr. Flusberg and a colleague here.   42:00 – For more on the idea of the "climate shadow," see here. 46:00 – The study by Dr. Flusberg and colleagues comparing the effects of race and war metaphors for climate change. 55:00 – The article by Dr. Flusberg and colleagues on the role of war metaphors across different areas of public discourse. 1:04:00 – For an influential discussion of the role of metaphors and analogies in science, see here. For Kensy's take on Darwin's metaphors for natural selection, see here. For discussion of whether, the "brain-as-computer" metaphor is actually a metaphor, see here and here. 1:12:00  – For more on the history of metaphors in the English language—including analyses of which source domains have historically been the most fruitful—see here. 1:14:00 – For discussion of the (disputed) idea of "dead metaphors," see here and here. 1:17:00 – The idea of "theory-constitutive metaphors" in science is discussed in a chapter by Richard Boyd in this book.  1:19:00 – For a preview of Dr. Flusberg's in-progress paper on the philosopher Daniel Dennett and his technique of "metaphorical triangulation," see here. 1:33:00 – For the (extremely short) Borges' story on a maps that are too accurate to be useful, see here.   Recommendations Metaphors we Live By, by George Lakoff & Mark Johnson Consciousness Explained, by Daniel Dennett Three Sheets to the Wind, by Cynthia Barrett   Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com. For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).

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Charlotte Dennett is an attorney, best-selling author, a former reporter in the Middle East, and investigative journalist who has been described by Time Magazine as “an expert in resource-based politics.” As the daughter of Daniel Dennett -- America's first master spy in the Middle East -- Charlotte has been offering a different perspective on the wars raging in Israel and Gaza based on decades of research into the mysterious death of her father after his top secret mission to Saudi Arabia. Daniel Dennett was the head of counter-intelligence for the Central Intelligence group (immediate forerunner of the CIA) when he traveled to Saudi Arabia in 1947 to determine the route of the Trans-Arabian pipeline and whether it would terminate in Lebanon or Haifa, Palestine. His plane crashed two weeks after he filed his last report. Charlotte has published several books dealing with a campaign to prosecute George W Bush, and Nelson Rockefeller and the Age of Oil. Her most recent  book is Follow the Pipelines: Uncovering the Mystery of a Lost Spy and the Deadly Politics of the Great Game for Oil . Relying on declassified documents at the National Archives – and after suing the CIA for additional information about her father (who now has a wing of the CIA named after him) -- she reveals that today's wars in Gaza and Ukraine have been triggered by great power competition to control oil and natural gas.

I detta avsnitt av Avkodat möter vi Christer Sturmark. Vi börjar i varm IT nostalgi från nittiotalets internetdrömmar och tidiga e-handel. Sedan rör vi oss mot de mänskliga och filosofiska frågorna om AI. Vad gör tekniken med kunskap, ansvar och värdighet? Var går gränsen mellan smarta verktyg och något som liknar medvetande? Christer har lämnat IT och leder i dag bokförlaget Fri Tanke. Vi pratar om förlagets idé och några av författarna som ges ut där, till exempel Steven Pinker, Daniel Dennett, Nick Bostrom, Peter Gärdenfors, Åsa Wikforss, David Chalmers, Bill Browder och Lawrence M Krauss. Ett samtal om dåtid, nutid och framtid där tekniken möter humanismen. Medverkande: Christer Sturmark, Johan Nordberg, Robert Folkesson

In this powerful and intellectually provocative episode, Dr. Douglas Groothuis reads his essay from the Summer 2025 issue of Salvo Magazine, titled “Escape from the Acid Bath: Can Darwinism Support Morality?” Drawing from his broader work in Christian Apologetics (2nd ed.), Dr. Groothuis critically examines the claim that Darwinian evolution can serve as a sufficient foundation for objective morality, contrasting that with the moral implications of a theistic worldview grounded in divine character and design. This essay-style episode surveys the views of prominent atheists such as Daniel Dennett, Karl Marx, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris, and demonstrates the internal philosophical weaknesses of moral theories rooted in evolutionary naturalism. Instead, Dr. Groothuis makes a compelling case for Judeo-Christian theism as the only viable foundation for universal moral truths.

Eliott Edge revisits his first book, Three Essays in Virtual Reality, while giving us a sneak preview of his thinking for his upcoming opus on Simulation theory. Edge is a critically-acclaimed author, artist, and international speaker. Edge has published and presented through The Institute of Ethics and Emerging Technologies, The University of Melbourne, Stevens Institute of Technology, Anthology Film Archives, The C.G. Jung Center, The Fenris Wolf, The Museum of Computer Arts, VRTO, Block Seoul, and Disinformation.Names cited:Ayn Rand, Bob Monroe, Nick Bostrom, Carlos Castaneda, Charles Eisenstein, Chris Anderson, Daniel Dennett, David Graeber, Elon Musk, Frank Zappa, Jeffrey Epstein, John Ellis, Kurt Gödel, Lawrence Krauss, Nick Land, Peter Thiel, Rupert Sheldrake, Susan Blackmore, Thomas Campbell, Walter Kirn, Zoltan Istvan Team Human is proudly sponsored by Everyone's Earth.Learn more about Everyone's Earth: https://everyonesearth.com/Change Diapers: https://changediapers.com/Cobi Dryer Sheets: https://cobidryersheets.com/Use the code “rush10” to receive 10% off of Cobi Dryer sheets: https://cobidryersheets.com/Support Team Human on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/teamhumanFollow Team Human with Douglas Rushkoff:Instagram: https:/www.instagram.com/douglasrushkoffBluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/rushkoff.comGet bonus content on Patreon: patreon.com/teamhuman Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is a preview — for the full episode, subscribe: https://newmodels.io https://patreon.com/newmodels https://newmodels.substack.com Our guest is American media theorist Douglas Rushkoff. He is the author of such seminal books on digital culture and networked communication as Cyberia (1994), Media Virus (1995), and Coercion (1999); and numerous further titles including, Program or Be Programmed (2010/2025) and Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires (2022). He is also the host of Team Human and a professor of Media Theory and Digital Economics as CUNY/Queens. On this episode, Doug speaks with us about the evolution (and devolution) of digital culture across web 1, 2, 3, and beyond via a synthesis of media theory, psychedelic thinking, and practical wisdom for navigating our contemporary networks. Names cited: Adam Curtis, Alex Garland, Allan Kaprow, Amazon, Art Bell, AT&T, Bernie Madoff, CNN, Cyberia, CVS, Dan Rather, Daniel Dennett, David Bowie, David Hershkovitz, David Lynch, Donna Haraway, Douglas Rushkoff, Elon Musk, Emmanuel Levinas, Francis Bacon, Genesis P-Orridge, Jake Tapper, Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, Jesse Armstrong, Joe Rogan, John Brockman, John Perry Barlow, Joseph Chaikin, Kamala Harris, Lauren Sanchez, Louis Rossetto, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Madonna, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Buber, Martin Heidegger, Media Virus, Michael Jackson, Milton Friedman, Naomi Klein, Naomi Wolf, Neil Simon, New Models, New York Times, Norbert Wiener, Orit Halpern, Paper Magazine, Peter Thiel, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Present Shock, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Dawkins, Robert Anton Wilson, Ross Douthat, Skinny Puppy, Spinoza, Star Trek, Team Human, Temple of Psychic Youth, The Long Boom, The Process Church, The Simpsons, Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, Walter Benjamin, William S. Burroughs, Wired Magazine

Jim talks with Zak Stein about the psychological & developmental risks of AI in K-12 education. They discuss education vs schooling, technology's role in human-to-human interaction, GPS & skill atrophy, prosthetic vs enhancement technologies, multipolar traps in AI, cognitive diminishment & skill development, teacherly authority, attention as a constrained resource, attention as a service, parasocial attachment, risks of anthropomorphizing AI, object relations theory, bad parenting & AI parenting, Daniel Dennett's proposal about criminalizing misrepresentation, design principles for responsible AI in education, non-anthropomorphic design, age limits, neurological safety, fiduciary security, the transhumanist ideology behind AI development, the need for better cultural & legal frameworks, and much more. Episode Transcript Education in a Time Between Worlds, by Zachary Stein JRS Currents 067: Ending Nihilistic Design (with Zak Stein) JRS EP57: Zak Stein on Education in a Time Between Worlds JRS EP60: Zak Stein on Educational Systems Collapse JRS EP62: Zak Stein on Education, Tech & Religion The Politics of Invisibility: Public Knowledge about Radiation Health Effects after Chernobyl, by Olga Kuchinskaya "The Problem with Counterfeit People," by Daniel Dennett Wayfinding: The Science and Mystery of How Humans Navigate the World, by M.R. O'Connor Dr. Zachary Stein is a Co-Founder of the Civilization Research Institute and the Center for World Philosophy and Religion. He was trained at the interface of philosophy, psychology, and education and now works in fields related to the mitigation of global catastrophic risk. He is a widely sought-after and award-winning speaker and a leading authority on the future of education and contemporary issues in human development.

Andrew For America presents a crazy acid trip ride of ADHD pontificating about numerous topics! In this episode, Andrew discusses capitalism, socialism/communism, the "big club," the European banking cartels, academics, science, religion, spirituality, philosophy, the Gnostics, simulation theory, good vs. evil, personal responsibility, an alleged claim by Klaus Schwab's daughter Nicole, and more! Andrew plays clips from Milton Friedman (with his "I, Pencil speech), former executive director of the Club of Rome Calin Georgescu, Daniel Dennett, Del Bigtree, Bill Hicks, and others...as well as a clip about a scientific experiment conducted to see how people who are given unequal advantages in life act towards the less fortunate, and the findings are quite telling!The song selections are the songs, "Sinners Club" and "Living Dead" by the band Screamin' Sins.Visit allegedlyrecords.com and check out all of the amazing punk rock artists!Visit soundcloud.com/andrewforamerica1984 to check out Andrew's music!Like and Follow The Politics & Punk Rock Podcast PLAYLIST on Spotify!!!Check it out here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1Y4rumioeqvHfaUgRnRxsy...politicsandpunkrockpodcast.comhttps://linktr.ee/andrewforamerica

The late philosopher and scientist, Daniel Dennett talked about ‘counterfeit people' as one of the great dangers of AI – but are we now willing to court the same dangers through our adoption of multiple identities across the metaverse. Moving from the confinement of physical reality to the landscape of the metaverse, where looks, preferences, and genders are limitless, we can each acquire many digital selves. Is a ‘virtual you' a truer reflection of your deepest self – revealing desires and aspects that otherwise remain hidden? What is the human cost of leaving the physical world behind? What are the ethical implications of living without boundaries in a digital space where the borders between morality and legality, in the ‘real world', begin to dissolve?  Lizzie O'Shea sues companies and governments that do the wrong thing. She has run major cases against major technology companies on behalf of thousands of people who have been harmed by them. She is also a founder and the chair of Digital Rights Watch, which advocates for human rights in online spaces.  Patrick Stokes is associate professor of philosophy at Deakin University, and a writer, radio producer, and media commentator on philosophical matters. He is currently engaged in a three-year Australian Research Council-funded project, ‘Digital Death and Immortality.'  Emily van der Nagel is a Lecturer in Social Media at Monash University. She researches social media identities, platforms, and cultures, with a particular focus on digital intimacies. Her book, Sex and Social Media, co-authored with Katrin Tiidenberg, takes a feminist, sex-positive approach to how social media platforms shape and restrict sex. Emily is currently working on a research project about how Australians use social media to create and subscribe to content on OnlyFans. Chaired by Professor of Evolution at UNSW Sydney and a popular science author, Rob Brooks.  

Professor Terrence Deacon & Professor Michael Levin have both shaped the fields of developmental evolutionary biology, cognitive science, and so much more. In this episode of Mind-Body Solution, these distinguished giants come together in conversation for the very first time: "A Biology Revolution". Terrence Deacon is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology and member of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at the University of California, Berkeley.Michael Levin is Professor in the Biology department at Tufts University and associate faculty at the Wyss Institute for Bioinspired Engineering at Harvard University. TIMESTAMPS:(0:00) - Introduction(0:42) - Mike on Terry's work(1:32) - Terry on Mike's work (2:48) - Mike & Terry on Daniel Dennett's work(8:10) - Origin of Life & Purpose (Terry's perspective: complexity, thermodynamics, memory)(14:37) - Origin of Life & Purpose (Mike's perspective: models of scaling, polycomputing, spaces of reality)(20:08) - The Self, Beneficiaries & Causal Emergence(26:00) - Strange Loops & Semiotics (Metabolism precedes Neural activity)(29:00) - Causality: Constraints, Morphological Computing & Environmental Offloading (32:50) - Lazy Gene Hypothesis, Inverse Darwinism, Constraints & Energy(40:15) - Regeneration & Memory: Decompression Processes & Complexity(45:30) - Meta-Constraints: Problem Solving Agents & Bioengineering Surprises (beyond genes)(52:57) - Hypothesis Generation & Adaptive Nervous Systems (Competitions between Interpretations)(57:48) - Biologizing Cognition: Evolutionary & Developmental(1:02:40) - Terry's Critique of Mike's work (Preformationism)(1:06:00) - Mike's Response(1:15:22) - Mike's Critique of Terry's work (Teleonomy)(1:18:03) - Terry's Response(1:23:50) - Goal Directedness(1:26:22) - Final Thoughts(1:28:55) - Conclusion EPISODE LINKS:- Mike's Podcast 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6gp-ORTBlU- Mike's Podcast 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMxTS7eKkNM- Mike's Podcast 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1R-tdscgxu4- Mike's Lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQEX-twenkA- Terry's Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Kj2OgkxGa0- Terry's Lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=refDeUzgdIg- Daniel Dennett Tribute: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3cWQLUbnKsCONNECT:- Website: https://tevinnaidu.com - Podcast: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/mindbodysolution- YouTube: https://youtube.com/mindbodysolution- Twitter: https://twitter.com/drtevinnaidu- Facebook: https://facebook.com/drtevinnaidu - Instagram: https://instagram.com/drtevinnaidu- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/drtevinnaidu=============================Disclaimer: The information provided on this channel is for educational purposes only. The content is shared in the spirit of open discourse and does not constitute, nor does it substitute, professional or medical advice. We do not accept any liability for any loss or damage incurred from you acting or not acting as a result of listening/watching any of our contents. You acknowledge that you use the information provided at your own risk. Listeners/viewers are advised to conduct their own research and consult with their own experts in the respective fields.

On this ID The Future, Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger joins hosts Andrew McDiarmid and Nathan Jacobson to delve into his personal evolution from longtime skeptical philosopher to belief in God. After falling out of faith in his teens, Sanger became a committed skeptic and agnostic, adhering to the principle of methodological skepticism for decades as he evaluated traditional arguments for the existence of God and found them wanting. And while Sanger was unconvinced by the claims of "new atheists" like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, he found himself drawn to the arguments of intelligent design scientists like Stephen Meyer, Michael Behe, and William Dembski. In this first half of a conversation, Sanger recounts his fascinating intellectual journey while unpacking the intelligent design arguments he found most convincing along his journey. This is Part 1 of a two-part interview. Look for Part 2 in a separate episode. Source

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.liveIn 2012, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat published Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics, a book about how mainstream American religion was devolving into the prosperity gospel, superstitious cults and other forms of heterodox faith. Thirteen years later, the American religious landscape has changed, and Ross wrote a new book tackling a much more basic question: why you should be religious at all. He joins Damir Marusic and Shadi Hamid to discuss that book, which is titled Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious.This new book, Douthat says, “assumes a highly individualist culture” as its audience. This individualist culture is one where each person thinks of whether to believe in a god as a highly personal choice. The culture as a whole can no longer support any one person's faith. The biggest individual challenge to Douthat's thesis in this episode comes from Damir, who says: “I feel most religious people try to get through … happiness and/or meaning. I am not thirsting for those. I am not hungry for them. I feel I'm ok.” Douthat responds by posing a hypothetical: “Suppose you die and you're summoned before the judgment throne of God and God says, ‘Seems like were friendly for arguments for being religious, you weren't one hundred percent convinced, but still: why didn't you go to church?'” Douthat argues that, while he himself is believing Catholic, there are nevertheless many “commonalities of religious experience. [World religions] are not all saying the same thing, but they are real and suggest something.” This makes common ground with Shadi who, as a Muslim, disagrees with Douthat about the divinity of Christ, but who, as a believer, agrees with Douthat that we should all be religious.In our bonus section for paid subscribers, Damir, Shadi and Ross talk about the philosophy of mind; whether AI will ever be conscious; what consciousness is for; whether Daniel Dennett is in hell; and why being lukewarm about whether God exists is a bad idea.Required Reading and Listening:* Ross Douthat, Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious (Amazon). * Damir Marusic, “A Lost Sense of Wonder” (WoC). * Nathan Beacom, “The Art of Hiking” (WoC). * John Lennon, “Imagine” (YouTube). * Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (Amazon). * Revelation 3:16: “So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth” (King James Version). This post is part of our collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Governance and Markets.Free preview video:Full video for paid subscribers below:

As a listener of TOE you can get a special 20% off discount to The Economist and all it has to offer! Visit https://www.economist.com/toe Professor Geoffrey Hinton, a prominent figure in AI and 2024 Nobel Prize recipient, discusses the urgent risks posed by rapid AI advancements in today's episode of Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal. Join My New Substack (Personal Writings): https://curtjaimungal.substack.com Listen on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/SpotifyTOE Timestamps: 00:00 The Existential Threat of AI 01:25 The Speed of AI Development 7:11 The Nature of Subjective Experience 14:18 Consciousness vs Self-Consciousness 23:36 The Misunderstanding of Mental States 29:19 The Chinese Room Argument 30:47 The Rise of AI in China 37:18 The Future of AI Development 40:00 The Societal Impact of AI 47:02 Understanding and Intelligence 1:00:47 Predictions on Subjective Experience 1:05:45 The Future Landscape of AI 1:10:14 Reflections on Recognition and Impact Geoffrey Hinton Links: •⁠ ⁠Geoffrey Hinton's publications: https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~hinton/papers.html#1983-1976 •⁠ ⁠The Economist's several mentions of Geoffrey Hinton: https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2024/10/08/ai-researchers-receive-the-nobel-prize-for-physics •⁠ ⁠https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/01/02/would-an-artificial-intelligence-bubble-be-so-bad •⁠ ⁠https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2024/10/10/ai-wins-big-at-the-nobels •⁠ ⁠https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2024/08/14/ai-scientists-are-producing-new-theories-of-how-the-brain-learns •⁠ ⁠Scott Aaronson on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZpGCQoL2Rk&ab_channel=CurtJaimungal •⁠ ⁠Roger Penrose on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGm505TFMbU&list=PLZ7ikzmc6zlN6E8KrxcYCWQIHg2tfkqvR&index=19 •⁠ ⁠The Emperor's New Mind (book): https://www.amazon.com/Emperors-New-Mind-Concerning-Computers/dp/0192861980 •⁠ ⁠Daniel Dennett on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH553zzjQlI&list=PLZ7ikzmc6zlN6E8KrxcYCWQIHg2tfkqvR&index=78 •⁠ ⁠Noam Chomsky on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQuiso493ro&t=1353s&ab_channel=CurtJaimungal •⁠ ⁠Ray Kurzweil's books: https://www.thekurzweillibrary.com/ Become a YouTube Member (Early Access Videos): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdWIQh9DGG6uhJk8eyIFl1w/join Support TOE on Patreon: https://patreon.com/curtjaimungal Twitter: https://twitter.com/TOEwithCurt Discord Invite: https://discord.com/invite/kBcnfNVwqs #science #ai #artificialintelligence #physics #consciousness #computerscience Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hindus who've never read four Gospel sentences and Wiccans all know he said it, "love your enemies." But since we know Jesus was not trying either to lay down a new ethical code or teach pacifism, what was his point? What did his words mean in a first century business framework of amicitia? What did Jesus' words mean in light of the Old Testament teaching on enemies? Just how should one pray for one's enemies? How have these specific words of Jesus reshaped western civilization? In the show's opening I also reflect on how Daniel Dennett, a leading evolutionary philosopher, explains away consciousness and mind. Moreover, I lament the global Church's leadership vacuum; what do we do in light of the dearth of leaders? 

SLEERICKETS is a podcast about poetry and other intractable problems. My book Midlife now exists. Buy it here, or leave it a rating here or hereFor more SLEERICKETS, check out the SECRET SHOW and join the group chatLeave the show a rating here (actually, just do it on your phone, it's easier). Thanks!Wear SLEERICKETS t-shirts and hoodies. They look good!SLEERICKETS is now on YouTube!Some of the topics mentioned in this episode:Versecraft starter episodes: Elijah's interview with Tim Steele and his episode on Shane McCrae's Eurydice On the Art of PoetryUncut Gems (2019)The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)"The Four Horsemen" roundtable with Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher HitchensBen ShapiroJoe RoganJordan PetersonYou are not serious peopleDoes God Exist? William Lane Craig vs. Christopher HitchensMatthew's poem Creed for AtheistsBertrand RussellTopic of Cancer by Christopher HitchensSpinozaBill HicksFrequently mentioned names:– Joshua Mehigan– Shane McCrae– A. E. Stallings– Ryan Wilson– Morri Creech– Austin Allen– Jonathan Farmer– Zara Raab– Amit Majmudar– Ethan McGuire– Coleman Glenn– Chris Childers– Alexis Sears– JP Gritton– Alex Pepple– Ernie Hilbert– Joanna PearsonOther Ratbag Poetry Pods:Poetry Says by Alice AllanI Hate Matt Wall by Matt WallVersecraft by Elijah BlumovRatbag Poetics By David Jalal MotamedAlice: Poetry SaysBrian: @BPlatzerCameron: CameronWTC [at] hotmail [dot] comMatthew: sleerickets [at] gmail [dot] comMusic by ETRNLArt by Daniel Alexander Smith

Happy New Year 2025! To celebrate, here is an encore of what proved to be the most popular episode of 2024. This rerun combines episodes 30 and 31 into one epic journey towards the frontiers of human understanding. My guest is Donald Hoffman. Our topics are consciousness, cosmos, and the meaning of life. Enjoy! Original show notes Laws of physics govern the world. They explain the movements of planets, oceans, and cells in our bodies. But can they ever explain the feelings and meanings of our mental lives? This problem, called the hard problem of consciousness, runs very deep. No satisfactory explanation exists. But many think that there must, in principle, be an explanation. A minority of thinkers disagree. According to these thinkers, we will never be able to explain mind in terms of matter. We will, instead, explain matter in terms of mind. I explored this position in some detail in episode 17. But hold on, you might say. Is this not contradicted by the success of natural sciences? How could a mind-first philosophy ever explain the success of particle physics? Or more generally, wouldn't any scientist laugh at the idea that mind is more fundamental than matter? No — not all of them laugh. Some take it very seriously. Donald Hoffman is one such scientist. Originally working with computer vision at MIT's famous Artificial Intelligence Lab, Hoffman started asking a simple question: What does it mean to "see" the world? His answer begins from a simple idea: perception simplifies the world – a lot. But what is the real world like? What is “there” before our perception simplifies the world? Nothing familiar, Hoffman claims. No matter. No objects. Not even a three-dimensional space. And no time. There is just consciousness. This is a wild idea. But it is a surprisingly precise idea. It is so precise, in fact, that Hoffman's team can derive basic findings in particle physics from their theory.  A fascinating conversation was guaranteed. I hope you enjoy it. If you do, consider becoming a supporter of On Humans on ⁠⁠Patreon.com/OnHumans⁠⁠.  MENTIONS Names: David Gross, Nima Arkani-Hamed, Edward Whitten, Nathan Seiberg, Andrew Strominger, Edwin Abbott, Nick Bostrom, Giulio Tononi, Keith Frankish, Daniel Dennett, Steven Pinker, Roger Penrose, Sean Carroll,  Swapan Chattopadhyay Terms (Physics and Maths): quantum fields, string theory, gluon, scattering amplitude, amplituhedron, decorated permutations, bosons, leptons, quarks, Planck scale, twistor theory, M-theory, multiverse, recurrent communicating classes, Cantor's hierarchy (relating to different sizes of infinity... If this sounds weird, stay tuned for full episode on infinity. It will come out in a month or two.) Terms (Philosophy and Psychology): Kant's phenomena and noumena, integrated information theory, global workspace theory, orchestrated objective reduction theory, attention schema theory Books: Case Against Reality by Hoffman, Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker Articles etc.: For links to articles, courses, and more, see ⁠https://onhumans.substack.com/p/links-for-episode-30⁠

Nicholas Humphrey is Professor Emeritus of Psychology, London School of Economics, Visiting Professor of Philosophy, New College of the Humanities, & Senior Member, Darwin College, Cambridge. He has been Lecturer in Psychology at Oxford, Assistant Director of the Sub-department of Animal Behaviour at Cambridge, Senior Research Fellow in Parapsychology at Cambridge, Professor of Psychology at The New School for Social Research, New York, & School Professor at the London School of Economics. He is best known for his work on the evolution of human intelligence & consciousness. His books include "Consciousness Regained", "Leaps of Faith", "The Inner Eye", "Soul Searching", "Seeing Red", "Soul Dust" & many more. He has been the recipient of several honours, including the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, the British Psychological Society's book award, the Pufendorf Medal, the International Mind & Brain Prize, & is the only scientist ever to edit the literary journal Granta. Lecture Title: "The Evolution of Consciousness & Sentience: A Tribute to Daniel Dennett" Special thanks to Nick for allowing me to share this lecture with the MBS audience. EPISODE LINKS: - Nick's MBS Podcast: https://youtu.be/SCTJb-uiQww - Nick's Website: http://www.humphrey.org.uk/ - Nick's Books: https://tinyurl.com/tkcmfx3d - Nick's Royal Institute Lecture: https://youtu.be/NHXCi6yZ-eA CONNECT: - Website: https://tevinnaidu.com - Podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/drtevinnaidu - Twitter: https://twitter.com/drtevinnaidu - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drtevinnaidu - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drtevinnaidu - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drtevinnaidu ============================= Disclaimer: The information provided on this channel is for educational purposes only. The content is shared in the spirit of open discourse and does not constitute, nor does it substitute, professional or medical advice. We do not accept any liability for any loss or damage incurred from you acting or not acting as a result of listening/watching any of our contents. You acknowledge that you use the information provided at your own risk. Listeners/viewers are advised to conduct their own research and consult with their own experts in the respective fields.

You're Listening to Parallax Views https://parallaxviews.podbean.com/ Support the Show on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/parallaxviews Recorded: 12-11-24 On this edition of Parallax Views, journalsit and lawyer Charlotte Dennet returns to the program to discuss her book Follow the Pipelines: Uncovering the Mystery of a Lost Spy and the Deadly Politics of the Great Game for Oil, which features a forward by her brother, the late American philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel C. Dennett. Previously, Charlotte, alongside Gerard Colby, co-wrote a book that has been mentioned previously on the program, Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil. Follow the Pipelines came about as a result of Dennett's search for answers about the death of her father, Daniel Dennett, who was the U.S.'s master spy in the Middle East. Dennett died in a plane crash that remains shrouded in mystery. This led Dennett to uncover the world of what she calls "The Great Game for Oil". We discuss the relationship between war and oil pipelines in this conversation. Although Charlotte and I have discussed Follow the Pipelines before, this conversation will focus more on Syria and the Great Game in light of the overthrow of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. For your benefit, Charlotte has provided maps from her book that will aid in understanding the conversation:

Decades ago, I escaped the Islamic world and came to the West. Many don't know how good the West is, or how fragile. I fight for the restoration of what made the West great.' – Ayaan Hirsi Ali Ever since writer and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali publicly disavowed Islam, controversy has followed her every step. For many years the Somali-born former Muslim was a fierce critic of religion – particularly Islam – and became famous worldwide after publishing her controversial bestselling autobiography 'Infidel'. In the first decade of this century she was a pioneer of the New Atheist movement alongside the so-called ‘Four Horsemen': Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett. And then late last year Ali stunned many of her own supporters and allies when she wrote an article ‘Why I am now a Christian,' in which she announced her conversion to Christianity and argued that the Christian belief system — not atheism — is the only means to preserve Western values. Many atheists felt that she had betrayed her life's work and many Christians felt she had politicised their religion. In September 2024 Ali came to the Intelligence Squared stage where, in conversation with Editor-in-Chief of UnHerd Freddie Sayers, she discussed her complicated history — from escaping an arranged marriage in her early 20s to becoming a Dutch MP aged 33 and going into hiding when death threats were made against her for alleged apostasy. And she explained her conviction that Christian values are the best hope for preserving Western society. … Subscribe to our newsletter here to hear about our latest events, discounts and much more. https://www.intelligencesquared.com/newsletter-signup/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All Things Are Full Of Gods is David Bentley Hart's philosophical case for an idealist and theist understanding of consciousness, understood as an intertwining of mind, language and life. As he puts it: “Mind and life, and language too, are possibly only by way of a kind of “downward causation” that informs their “upward” evolution in particular beings.”The book is also a careful debunking of materialist alternative explanations such as that mind emerges from matter, that consciousness is an illusion, or that consciousness doesn't really exist at all; it is a careful examination of everything from eliminativism to integrated information theory, from the ideas of Daniel Dennett to those of Philip Goff.Personally, I also hugely valued the book because it is, in a way, therapeutic. A nihilist cosmos has become default and it is not only intolerable to live in, it is gaslighting. A thought or experience is only possible because we have capacities for attention and intention, desire and perception, communication and participation - and following those qualities through, leads to the realisation that consciousness is not born in us, but that we are born in consciousness.As on of his characters, Psyche, puts it: the mind's “transcendental preoccupation with an infinite horizon of intelligibility that, for want of a better word, we should call God; and that the existence of all things is possible only as the result of an infinite act of intelligence that, once again, we should call God.”David Bentley Hart's repeated point, as his interlocutors propose and take apart the materialist explanations, is that everything we might experience explodes with meanings. That is what mind does, in response to the life within which it is immersed.That said, the book ends on a downbeat note. Psyche hopes the we humans “might yet learn to know themselves in a new way as spiritual beings immersed in a world of spirit, rather than machines of consumption inhabiting a machine of production, and remember that which lies deepest within themselves: living mind, the divine ground of consciousness and life, participating in an infinite act of thought and communication, dwelling in a universe full of gods and full of God.” The book is, of course, an invitation and nudge to do so.

What do our genes reveal about our past?  Richard Dawkins, one of the world's most influential and thought-provoking scientists, explored the most profound principles of evolutionary history in his new book, The Genetic Book of the Dead.  Dawkins is a renowned evolutionary biologist, zoologist, and author. He is also a prominent figure in New Atheism alongside Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens and is well known for his criticisms of creationism and intelligent design.  I had the extraordinary privilege of discussing his new book in our two-part interview. In addition to judging his book, we explored the evolution of sex drive and aesthetic appreciation, genetics, the intersection of theoretical and experimental science, the potential of artificial intelligence, and more.  Tune in to learn about genes from one of the most prominent evolutionary biologists of our time! P.S. Don't forget to check out part one of our interview: https://youtu.be/BdiOFaMUASU Key Takeaways: 00:00 Intro 01:30 Judging a book by its cover 06:01 Do genes die?  07:53 Can genes predict the future?  11:26 The extended phenotype  22:42 The hypothetical scientist of the future  28:53 A colony of symbiotic vertical viruses 32:51 Final exit to the future 36:10 What evolutionary purpose does music serve?  43:25 The palimpsest  49:38 AI, pain, and evolutionary processes  56:25 Outro Additional resources: ➡️ Learn more about Richard Dawkins: ✖️ Twitter: https://x.com/RichardDawkins/ 

WATCH: https://youtu.be/3WLdL5zT6eY Professor David Papineau is a British academic philosopher. He works as Professor of Philosophy of Science at King's College London and the City University of New York Graduate Center, and previously taught for several years at Cambridge University, where he was a fellow of Robinson College. He did a BSc in Mathematics at the University of Natal, followed by a BA and PhD in philosophy at Cambridge. After academic posts at Reading, Macquarie, Birkbeck, and Cambridge, he joined King's College London in 1990. From 2015-21 he spent half of each year at the Graduate Center of CUNY in New York. he was President of the Mind Association in 2009 and the Aristotelian Society in 2014. He has written widely on epistemology, metaphysics and the philosophy of science and mind. My books include: For Science in the Social Sciences (1979), Theory and Meaning (1990), Reality and Representation (1987), Philosophical Naturalism (1992), Thinking about Consciousness (2002), Philosophical Devices (2012), Knowing the Score (2017), and The Metaphysics of Sensory Experience (2021). TIMESTAMPS: (0:00) - Introduction (0:23) - History of the Mind-Body Problem (5:14) - Robert Lawrence Kuhn's Landscape of Consciousness and Physicalism (9:43) - Illusionism (14:32) - Emergentism (16:46) - David's current thoughts about Consciousness (22:33) - Intelligence vs Consciousness (25:30) - Panpsychism (34:40) - Consciousness & Moral Standing (41:12) - Hard Problem or Easy Problems? (45:32) - Mary Thought Experiment Explained (58:59) - David's definition of Consciousness (1:05:37) - Will we ever solve the mind-body problem? (1:10:15) - David on Free Will & Daniel Dennett (1:15:25) - David's upcoming book: "Causes" (About causation, probabilities etc.) 1:18:50) - Conclusion EPISODE LINKS: - David's Website: https://www.davidpapineau.co.uk/ - David's Books: https://tinyurl.com/4e55a6k9 - David's Publications: https://tinyurl.com/47sdussx - David's X: https://twitter.com/davidpapineau CONNECT: - Website: https://tevinnaidu.com - Podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/drtevinnaidu - Twitter: https://twitter.com/drtevinnaidu - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drtevinnaidu - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drtevinnaidu - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drtevinnaidu ============================= Disclaimer: The information provided on this channel is for educational purposes only. The content is shared in the spirit of open discourse and does not constitute, nor does it substitute, professional or medical advice. We do not accept any liability for any loss or damage incurred from you acting or not acting as a result of listening/watching any of our contents. You acknowledge that you use the information provided at your own risk. Listeners/viewers are advised to conduct their own research and consult with their own experts in the respective fields.

We announce FFRF's Chicago billboard saying "Keep Freedom Alive: Stop Project 2025." After reporting state/church complaints and victories in Texas, Missouri, Florida, and Arkansas, we announce FFRF Action Fund's "Secularist of the Week." Then, we take a time machine back to 2006, our first year of broadcast, to hear our first interview with philosopher Daniel C. Dennett, the year of release of his blockbuster book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon.

Why are men's sex drives so strong? Can genetic information be destroyed? And why does the desert lizard have such intricate patterns?  I had the extraordinary privilege of exploring these topics with Richard Dawkins, one of the world's most influential and thought-provoking scientists! Dawkins is a renowned evolutionary biologist, zoologist, and author. He is also a prominent figure in New Atheism alongside Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens and is well known for his criticisms of creationism and intelligent design.  In our wide-ranging conversation, we explored the evolution of sex drive and aesthetic appreciation, genetics, the intersection of theoretical and experimental science, the potential of artificial intelligence, and more.  Tune in! — Key Takeaways:  00:00 Intro 01:56 Why is the sex drive in men so strong? 04:44 DNA, origin of life and panspermia  10:28 Is there life elsewhere in the universe? 14:58 Memes and their evolution  21:13 Homage to Daniel Dennett  23:20 Natural selection and evolution  26:59 The threats and opportunities of AI 31:05 A shifting moral zeitgeist  35:15 Science communication  43:02 Audience questions  47:01 Technology, magic, and time capsules 56:22 Outro — Additional resources:  ➡️ Learn more about Richard Dawkins: ✖️ Twitter: https://x.com/RichardDawkins/ 

6 things a sannyasi should avoid / even non-sannyasis can take some essential teachings from the sannyasi regulations / we need some people, with both feet in the spiritual realm, wandering around the material realm / avoid literature without spiritual benefit / avoid making a living by making a living / avoid indulging in arguments and counterarguments / Daniel Dennett's the 4 steps to arguing intelligently / Bhaktivedanta Swami's multi-faceted approaches / Sri Caitanya's method of argument / avoid alluring disciples with material benefits / avoid reading many books / avoid increasing material opulences unnecssarily SB: 7.13.7-9 ************************************************************************************ LOVE THE PODCAST? WE ARE COMMUNITY SUPPORTED AND WOULD LOVE FOR YOU TO JOIN! Go to https://www.wisdomofthesages.com. WATCH ON YOUTUBE: https://youtube.com/@wisdomofthesages LISTEN ON ITUNES: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wisdom-of-the-sages/id1493055485 CONNECT ON FACEBOOK: https://facebook.com/wisdomofthesages108 CONNECT ON INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/wisdom_of_the_sages  

Do we have free will? Many leading atheist voices say 'no'. Determinism has become a popular philosophy, but has contributed to a meta-crisis and a mental health crisis. Hearing from thinkers such as Alan Noble, Elizabeth Oldfield and Iain McGilchrist, Justin asks whether the passing of influential philosopher Daniel Dennett may herald a new openness to God, as seekers such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Russell Brand emerge from the 'meaning crisis'. Tech pioneer Jordan Hall also tells his story of finding an unexpected answer to his search for a solution to the meta-crisis. More info, book & newsletter: https://justinbrierley.com/surprisingrebirth/ Support via Patreon for early access to new episodes: https://www.patreon.com/justinbrierley/membership Support via PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/brierleyjustin Support via Tax-deductible (USA): https://defendersmedia.com/portfolio/justin-brierley/ Buy the book or get a signed copy: https://justinbrierley.com/the-surprising-rebirth-of-belief-in-god/ Ep 23 show notes: https://justinbrierley.com/surprisingrebirth/episode-23-emerging-from-the-meaning-crisis-the-death-of-daniel-dennett-and-rebirth-of-jordan-hall The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God is a production of Think Faith in partnership with Genexis, and support from The Jerusalem Trust & the Christian Evidence Society. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Is consciousness an illusion? Is it just a complex set of cognitive processes without a central, subjective experience? How can we better integrate philosophy with everyday life and the arts?Keith Frankish is an Honorary Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield, a Visiting Research Fellow with The Open University, and an Adjunct Professor with the Brain and Mind Programme in Neurosciences at the University of Crete. Frankish mainly works in the philosophy of mind and has published widely about topics such as human consciousness and cognition. Profoundly inspired by Daniel Dennett, Frankish is best known for defending an “illusionist” view of consciousness. He is also editor of Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness and co-edits, in addition to others, The Cambridge Handbook of Cognitive Science.“There is magic everywhere. There's wonder everywhere. There's wondrous complexity that is so complex, so difficult to conceptualize, to grasp, to articulate that it might as well be magic for all intents and purposes, but we can gradually start to unpick how the tricks are done, how nature learned to do these wonderful tricks. And that's the wonder of science, gradually learning what's happening behind the scenes and how these marvelous effects are produced.I'm probably best known for my work on consciousness. My view about this is often caricatured, I think, as a kind of heartless, materialist one, because I'm resistant to all forms of dualism about the mind. I think that's a very unhelpful way of thinking.Some people think that I do that because I have a sort of crass materialist attitude to the world, that there's only things you can measure and weigh and bump into and everything else is just nonsense and fancy and different. What I like about the sort of view I have is that it represents us as fully part of the world, fully part of the same world. We're not sealed off into little private mental bubbles, Cartesian theaters, where all the real action is happening in here, not out there. No, I think we're much more engaged with the world… Another one of my heroes is Daniel Dennett's great friend, Nicholas Humphrey, who has a wonderfully rich range of experience. He's been described as a scientific humanist. What he does is he knows his science, including cognitive neuroscience and psychology, but he's also steeped in literature, art, music, and painting, and he brings all this together in his wonderful book on consciousness Soul Dust, published in 2011, suggests the idea that the soul is actually made of dust, which is a fantastic concept.”www.keithfrankish.comwww.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-handbook-of-cognitive-science/F9996E61AF5E8C0B096EBFED57596B42www.imprint.co.uk/product/illusionismwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

“There is magic everywhere. There's wonder everywhere. There's wondrous complexity that is so complex, so difficult to conceptualize, to grasp, to articulate that it might as well be magic for all intents and purposes, but we can gradually start to unpick how the tricks are done, how nature learned to do these wonderful tricks. And that's the wonder of science, gradually learning what's happening behind the scenes and how these marvelous effects are produced.I'm probably best known for my work on consciousness. My view about this is often caricatured, I think, as a kind of heartless, materialist one, because I'm resistant to all forms of dualism about the mind. I think that's a very unhelpful way of thinking.Some people think that I do that because I have a sort of crass materialist attitude to the world, that there's only things you can measure and weigh and bump into and everything else is just nonsense and fancy and different. What I like about the sort of view I have is that it represents us as fully part of the world, fully part of the same world. We're not sealed off into little private mental bubbles, Cartesian theaters, where all the real action is happening in here, not out there. No, I think we're much more engaged with the world… Another one of my heroes is Daniel Dennett's great friend, Nicholas Humphrey, who has a wonderfully rich range of experience. He's been described as a scientific humanist. What he does is he knows his science, including cognitive neuroscience and psychology, but he's also steeped in literature, art, music, and painting, and he brings all this together in his wonderful book on consciousness Soul Dust, published in 2011, suggests the idea that the soul is actually made of dust, which is a fantastic concept.”Keith Frankish is an Honorary Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield, a Visiting Research Fellow with The Open University, and an Adjunct Professor with the Brain and Mind Programme in Neurosciences at the University of Crete. Frankish mainly works in the philosophy of mind and has published widely about topics such as human consciousness and cognition. Profoundly inspired by Daniel Dennett, Frankish is best known for defending an “illusionist” view of consciousness. He is also editor of Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness and co-edits, in addition to others, The Cambridge Handbook of Cognitive Science.www.keithfrankish.comwww.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-handbook-of-cognitive-science/F9996E61AF5E8C0B096EBFED57596B42www.imprint.co.uk/product/illusionismwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

“One thing I love about living in Crete is that the sense of the presence of nature is always here. I walk out the door and I can see the mountains around the city. I can see the White Mountains (Lefka Ori), which for half the year are covered in snow. I can see the sea. If you walk out in the summer, you're immediately aware of your physicality. You become dehydrated very quickly. It's not necessarily a kind environment for humans. It's not if you engage in any vigorous activity, but it's one that makes you feel vividly alive."Keith Frankish is an Honorary Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield, a Visiting Research Fellow with The Open University, and an Adjunct Professor with the Brain and Mind Programme in Neurosciences at the University of Crete. Frankish mainly works in the philosophy of mind and has published widely about topics such as human consciousness and cognition. Profoundly inspired by Daniel Dennett, Frankish is best known for defending an “illusionist” view of consciousness. He is also editor of the journal Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness and co-edits, in addition to others, The Cambridge Handbook of Cognitive Science."The area where I grew up, which is a very low-lying area, in a river valley, it was a landscape where nature felt very dormant. The skies would be gray. The landscape would be flat. There was also a lot of human activity in it. Canals, railway lines, coal mines. It was a land that felt as if it had been depressed, as if it had not been allowed to express itself somehow. And it's been carved up into fields and so on by humans.And so now here, it's the opposite. Although there is a lot of building in the particularly tourist areas, drive five minutes out of the city, and you're in a land of rugged land with almost desert in places. A land where you couldn't survive very long without proper water, in particular. It's a land where you feel the presence. And, also, another thing you feel here is periods of frequent earthquakes, and that again, is quite a salutary thing. When the Earth shakes like that, and you suddenly realize that this building, which seems wonderfully strong and well-equipped, is suddenly moving from side to side under Poseidon's influence. It makes you see how people could animate this landscape. It's a landscape that feels animated with presences, with gods, with non-human entities. There's a way of living, which involves engaging more deeply with the meaning of things, engaging not just living life on the surface, but trying to look for the deeper, for the real patterns, and living with that, not without pleasure, not without relishing life, but with relishing it for its complexity.”www.keithfrankish.comwww.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-handbook-of-cognitive-science/F9996E61AF5E8C0B096EBFED57596B42www.imprint.co.uk/product/illusionismwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Is consciousness an illusion? Is it just a complex set of cognitive processes without a central, subjective experience? How can we better integrate philosophy with everyday life and the arts?Keith Frankish is an Honorary Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield, a Visiting Research Fellow with The Open University, and an Adjunct Professor with the Brain and Mind Programme in Neurosciences at the University of Crete. Frankish mainly works in the philosophy of mind and has published widely about topics such as human consciousness and cognition. Profoundly inspired by Daniel Dennett, Frankish is best known for defending an “illusionist” view of consciousness. He is also editor of Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness and co-edits, in addition to others, The Cambridge Handbook of Cognitive Science.“There is magic everywhere. There's wonder everywhere. There's wondrous complexity that is so complex, so difficult to conceptualize, to grasp, to articulate that it might as well be magic for all intents and purposes, but we can gradually start to unpick how the tricks are done, how nature learned to do these wonderful tricks. And that's the wonder of science, gradually learning what's happening behind the scenes and how these marvelous effects are produced.I'm probably best known for my work on consciousness. My view about this is often caricatured, I think, as a kind of heartless, materialist one, because I'm resistant to all forms of dualism about the mind. I think that's a very unhelpful way of thinking.Some people think that I do that because I have a sort of crass materialist attitude to the world, that there's only things you can measure and weigh and bump into and everything else is just nonsense and fancy and different. What I like about the sort of view I have is that it represents us as fully part of the world, fully part of the same world. We're not sealed off into little private mental bubbles, Cartesian theaters, where all the real action is happening in here, not out there. No, I think we're much more engaged with the world… Another one of my heroes is Daniel Dennett's great friend, Nicholas Humphrey, who has a wonderfully rich range of experience. He's been described as a scientific humanist. What he does is he knows his science, including cognitive neuroscience and psychology, but he's also steeped in literature, art, music, and painting, and he brings all this together in his wonderful book on consciousness Soul Dust, published in 2011, suggests the idea that the soul is actually made of dust, which is a fantastic concept.”www.keithfrankish.comwww.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-handbook-of-cognitive-science/F9996E61AF5E8C0B096EBFED57596B42www.imprint.co.uk/product/illusionismwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

“There is magic everywhere. There's wonder everywhere. There's wondrous complexity that is so complex, so difficult to conceptualize, to grasp, to articulate that it might as well be magic for all intents and purposes, but we can gradually start to unpick how the tricks are done, how nature learned to do these wonderful tricks. And that's the wonder of science, gradually learning what's happening behind the scenes and how these marvelous effects are produced.I'm probably best known for my work on consciousness. My view about this is often caricatured, I think, as a kind of heartless, materialist one, because I'm resistant to all forms of dualism about the mind. I think that's a very unhelpful way of thinking.Some people think that I do that because I have a sort of crass materialist attitude to the world, that there's only things you can measure and weigh and bump into and everything else is just nonsense and fancy and different. What I like about the sort of view I have is that it represents us as fully part of the world, fully part of the same world. We're not sealed off into little private mental bubbles, Cartesian theaters, where all the real action is happening in here, not out there. No, I think we're much more engaged with the world… Another one of my heroes is Daniel Dennett's great friend, Nicholas Humphrey, who has a wonderfully rich range of experience. He's been described as a scientific humanist. What he does is he knows his science, including cognitive neuroscience and psychology, but he's also steeped in literature, art, music, and painting, and he brings all this together in his wonderful book on consciousness Soul Dust, published in 2011, suggests the idea that the soul is actually made of dust, which is a fantastic concept.”Keith Frankish is an Honorary Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield, a Visiting Research Fellow with The Open University, and an Adjunct Professor with the Brain and Mind Programme in Neurosciences at the University of Crete. Frankish mainly works in the philosophy of mind and has published widely about topics such as human consciousness and cognition. Profoundly inspired by Daniel Dennett, Frankish is best known for defending an “illusionist” view of consciousness. He is also editor of Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness and co-edits, in addition to others, The Cambridge Handbook of Cognitive Science.www.keithfrankish.comwww.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-handbook-of-cognitive-science/F9996E61AF5E8C0B096EBFED57596B42www.imprint.co.uk/product/illusionismwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Dr. Craig reflects on the legacy and views of atheist philosopher Daniel Dennett.

“Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it's a feather bed.”– Terence McKennaThis week I meet our guest Tom Morgan (LinkedIn, Twitter) in mid-leap as we both make giant bids to meet our destiny and better serve the world. Tom Morgan, who calls himself a “curiosity sherpa” and writes the superb blog What's Important, worked for years in finance while he grew increasingly compelled by transcendental mysteries. His blog reflects a rare appreciation for the edges of our knowledge and his reputation is for getting high-performing businesspeople to ask deeper questions. In this conversation we discuss complexity and higher intelligences, the heroic metamyth, the alchemy of money, love as an organizing principle in transrational cognition, and holding other people through their personal encounters with the so-called “meaning crisis.”If this discussion does it for you, look below to find scores more potentially life-changing (certainly mind-altering) talks and essays we discussed therein…✨ Support The Good Work• Learn about my new project on wisdom and technology, Humans On The Loop!• Subscribe on Substack or Patreon.• Join the Holistic Technology & Wise Innovation Server, the Future Fossils Server, and Future Fossils FB Group!• Make one-off donations at @futurefossils on Venmo, $manfredmacx on CashApp, or @michaelgarfield on PayPal.• Buy the music on Bandcamp! This episode features “Olympus Mons” off the Martian Arts & “Tin Heart” off Double-Edged Sword.• Buy the books we discuss at the Future Fossils Bookshop.org page and I get a small cut from your support of indie booksellers.• Browse and buy original paintings and prints or email me to commission new work.• Read my pitch for Jurassic Worlding, my next book on the future of evolution!✨ Mentioned MediaLooking Over The Edge – Tom MorganFor The Person Who Has Everything – Tom MorganAdventure Capital: An Interview with Jim O'Shaughnessy – Tom MorganHeresies of The Heart – Tom MorganThe Great Betrayal – Tom MorganTom's recent five-minute talk at the Sohn Investment ConferenceToward A New Evolutionary Paradigm 1.0 – Michael at SFI in 2019Intimations Of A New Worldview – Brett AndersenThe Master and His Emissary – Iain McGilchristCognition All The Way Down – Michael Levin and Daniel Dennett at Aeon MagazineAnimism Is Normative Consciousness – Josh Schrei on The Emerald PodcastThe Passion of The Western Mind – Richard TarnasTech Ethics As Psychedelic Parenting – Michael at CBA Innovation LabExodus as Revolution – William Irwin Thompson at the Lindisfarne AssociationPicbreederWhy Greatness Cannot Be Planned – Kenneth Stanley and Joel LehmanProof of Spiritual Phenomena – Mona SobhaniThe Phenomenon: Control System, or Developmental Driver? – Stuart DavisMeditations on Moloch – Slate Star CodexStudies on Slack – Slate Star CodexAlison Gopnik on Child Development, Elderhood, Caregiving, and A.I. – Michael for Complexity Podcast✨ Related Episodes:212 - Manfred Laubichler & Geoffrey West on Life In The Anthropocene & Living Inside The Technosphere202 - Caveat Magister on Psychomagic, Amusement Parks, & Turning Your Life Into Art196 - Robert Poynton on Improvisation As A Way of Life191 - Roland Harwood on Learning To Be Liminal186 - A Manifesto for Weird Science161 - On Play & Innovation with Michael Phillip: Hermes, EvoBio, Bitcoin, and Good Noise150 - A Unifying Meta-Theory of UFOs & The Weird with Sean Esbjörn-Hargens125 - Stuart Kauffman on Physics, Life, and The Adjacent Possible60 - Sean Esbjörn-Hargens Goes Meta on Everything: Integral Ecology & Impact45 - Kerri Welch (Fractal Synchronicity & The Future of Time)3 - Tony Vigorito (Synchronicity)✨ Other Mentions:William Irwin ThompsonCarl JungJoseph CampbellBill PlotkinDave Snowden & The Cynefin FrameworkStafford BeerFrozen 2 (film)The Matrix (films) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

He describes himself as a dharmik skeptic, and has written a book about how atheism evolved within Hindu philosophy. Kushal Mehra joins Amit Varma in episode 382 of The Seen and the Unseen to discuss his intellectual evolution-- and his journey as a podcaster. (FOR FULL LINKED SHOW NOTES, GO TO SEENUNSEEN.IN.) Also check out: 1. Kushal Mehra on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and his own website. 2. Nastik: Why I Am Not an Atheist -- Kushal Mehra. 3. The Cārvāka Podcast -- Kushal Mehra's podcast on YouTube. 4. Kushal Mehra's YouTube monologues. 5. 'How We Spend Our Days Is How We Spend Our Lives' -- Amit Varma. 6. Hanlon's Razor. 7. Tim Urban's tweet on getting to know people. 8. The Harm Principle. 9. Deepak VS and the Man Behind His Face — Episode 373 of The Seen and the Unseen. 10. A Life in Indian Politics — Episode 149 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Jayaprakash Narayan). 11. I, Pencil -- Leonard Read. 12. Why People Believe Weird Things -- Michael Shermer. 13. Richard Dawkins on the God of the Old Testament. 14. Vinamre Kasanaa and Prakhar Gupta on YouTube. 15. Kushal Mehra on Dostcast. 16. A Meditation on Form — Amit Varma. 17. Sowmya Dhanaraj Is Making a Difference -- Episode 380 of The Seen and the Unseen. 18. The God Delusion -- Richard Dawkins. 19. Robert Sapolsky's biology lectures on YouTube. 20. The Evolution of Cooperation -- Robert Axelrod. 21. A Manual for Creating Atheists -- Peter Boghossian. 22.  A Godless Congregation — Amit Varma. 23. Tell Me You Love Me -- Amit Varma. 24. Dr Chatterjee and therealnihal's Instagram post on friendship. 25. The New Atheism and the Four Horsemen. 26. Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett on Amazon. 27. ‘Wet Streets Cause Rain' — Michael Crichton. 28. The Big Questions -- Steven Landsburg. 29. Three cultures of atheism: on serious doubts about the existence of God -- Simon Glendinning. 30. Charvaka and Jayarāśi Bhaṭṭa. 31. Tattvopaplavasiṃha — Jayarāśi Bhaṭṭa. 32. The Rooted Cosmopolitanism of Sugata Srinivasaraju — Episode 277 of The Seen and the Unseen. 33. Imagine There's No Svarga: Rediscovering Cārvāka, India's 2,700-Year-Old Atheistic Tradition -- Kushal Mehra on Quilette. 34. Moral Foundations Theory, proposed by Jonathan Haidt, Craig Joseph and Jesse Graham. 35. Hitchen's Razor. 36. Consciousness Explained -- Daniel Dennett. 37. Who We Are and How We Got Here — David Reich. 38. Soul and Sword: The History of Political Hinduism -- Hindol Sengupta. 39. Hind Swaraj -- MK Gandhi. 40. Yugank Goyal Is out of the Box — Episode 370 of The Seen and the Unseen. 41. Hindutva -- Vinayak Savarkar. 42. Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India -- Akshaya Mukul. 43. The Gita Press and Hindu Nationalism — Episode 139 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Akshaya Mukul). 44. Rangila Rasul. 45. The Intellectual Foundations of Hindutva — Episode 115 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Aakar Patel). 46. The Populist Playbook -- Episode 42 of Everything is Everything. 47. Don't Insult Pasta (2007) -- Amit Varma. 48. Caged Tiger: How Too Much Government Is Holding Indians Back — Subhashish Bhadra. 49. Subhashish Bhadra on Our Dysfunctional State — Episode 333 of The Seen and the Unseen. 50. The Progress of Humanity -- Episode 101 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Steven Pinker). 51. Colours of the Cage -- Arun Ferreira. 52. Modi's Domination: What We Often Overlook -- Keshava Guha. 53. The BJP Before Modi — Episode 202 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Vinay Sitapati). 54. Anand -- Hrishikesh Mukherjee. 55. How We Do the Small Things -- Amit Varma. 56. How Not To Get Trolled -- Amit Varma. 57. The Pursuit of Happyness -- Gabriele Muccino.. 58. Andaz Apna Apna -- Rajkumar Santoshi. 59. I Wonder If Heaven Got a Ghetto -- Tupac Shakur. 60. Shiv Kumar Batalvi on Rekhta. 61. Bulleh Shah on Wikipedia. Amit's newsletter is explosively active again. Subscribe right away to The India Uncut Newsletter! It's free! Amit Varma and Ajay Shah have launched a new video podcast. Check out Everything is Everything on YouTube. Check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing. Episode art: ‘Study' by Simahina.

Known as one of the "Four Horsemen" of "New Atheism," Daniel Dennett was a philosopher, professor, author, and speaker whose resume spans almost half a century.In the wake of his death on April 19, 2024, we take a moment to remember.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/thethinkingatheist--3270347/support.

Stefan and Ben discuss the latest disaster of Journalists trying to understand Philosophy https://benburgis.substack.com/.../the-new-york-times...   Subscribe to Philosophy for the People on Substack: https://benburgis.substack.com/subscribe   Thank you guys again for taking the time to check this out. We appreciate each and everyone of you. If you have the means, and you feel so inclined, BECOME A PATRON! We're creating patron only programing, you'll get bonus content from many of the episodes, and you get MERCH!   Become a patron now https://www.patreon.com/join/BitterLakePresents? Please also like, subscribe, and follow us on these platforms as well, (specially YouTube!)   THANKS Y'ALL   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG9WtLyoP9QU8sxuIfxk3eg Twitch: www.twitch.tv/thisisrevolutionpodcast www.twitch.tv/leftflankvets​ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Thisisrevolutionpodcast/ Twitter: @TIRShowOakland Instagram: @thisisrevolutionoakland   Read Jason Myles in Sublation Magazine https://www.sublationmag.com/writers/jason-myles   Read Jason Myles in Damage Magazine https://damagemag.com/2023/11/07/the-man-who-sold-the-world/   Pascal Robert's Black Agenda Report: https://www.blackagendareport.com/author/Pascal%20Robert

This is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.Part I (00:13 - 10:37)America's Elite Campuses Are in Chaos: Columbia University's Protesting Students Are the Tip of the Leftist IcebergWelcome to Dearborn, America's Jihad Capital by The Wall Street Journal (Steven Stalinsky)How Columbia University became the epicenter of disagreement over the Israel-Hamas war by USA Today (Zachary Schermele)Part II (10:37 - 14:02)Democrats are Going Back to the Future? The Democratic National Convention Faces Tumult in Chicago — And Deserves ItHow the Israel-Gaza Protests Could Hurt the Democratic Party by The New York Times (Jeremy W. Peters)Part III (14:02 - 16:17)What Exactly are Israel-Protesting College Students Demanding? Nothing Less than the Elimination of IsraelPart IV (16:17 - 25:11)‘Belief in God is Not Only False, It Should Be Made Shameful': Daniel Dennett, One of the Four Horsemen of New Atheism, Dies at 82Sign up to receive The Briefing in your inbox every weekday morning.Follow Dr. Mohler:X | Instagram | Facebook | YouTubeFor more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu.For more information on Boyce College, just go to BoyceCollege.com.To write Dr. Mohler or submit a question for The Mailbox, go here.

In this week's episode, Daniel Dennett was awesome and STAYED awesome, a new anti-vaxxer supplement can vaccinate you against vaccination, and the Bible will thy and thou at us some more. --- To make a per episode donation at Patreon.com, click here: http://www.patreon.com/ScathingAtheist To buy our book, click here: https://www.amazon.com/Outbreak-Crisis-Religion-Ruined-Pandemic/dp/B08L2HSVS8/ If you see a news story you think we might be interested in, you can send it here: scathingnews@gmail.com To check out our sister show, The Skepticrat, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/the-skepticrat To check out our sister show's hot friend, God Awful Movies, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/god-awful-movies To check out our half-sister show, Citation Needed, click here: http://citationpod.com/ To check out our sister show's sister show, D and D minus, click here: https://danddminus.libsyn.com/ To hear more from our intrepid audio engineer Morgan Clarke, click here: https://www.morganclarkemusic.com/ --- Headlines: Daniel Dennett dies at 82: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/19/books/daniel-dennett-dead.html More delicious drama around sword swallowing guy: https://www.christianpost.com/news/alex-magala-says-he-has-no-children-wasnt-saved-10-years-ago.html https://www.christianpost.com/news/pastor-john-lindell-says-mark-driscoll-tried-to-divide-his-church.html   Christian Right is freaking out over rumors of furries overtaking school and biting students: https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2024/04/conservatives-are-freaking-out-over-rumors-of-furries-overtaking-school-biting-students/ Catholic League responds to NY AG statement about new child protection policy: https://www.catholicleague.org/ny-ag-misrepresents-brooklyn-diocese/ People attend church way less than they say they do when they check cell phone data: https://www.nber.org/papers/w32334 Kash Patel's COVID vax detox vitamins have 3 times the nothing of regular supplements: https://www.wonkette.com/p/kash-patels-covid-vax-detox-vitamins --- This Week in Misogyny: Arizona Court to uphold 1864 anti-abortion law: https://www.vox.com/politics/24128840/arizona-abortion-total-ban-law-roe-court-1864 Republicans considering fake pro-abortion ballot measures: https://jessica.substack.com/p/republicans-fake-ballot-measures

Patreon supporters who give $5 a month will get an ad-free version of the show!Join our private Facebook group and Discord server!Jessica and I spoke about several stories from the past week involving religion and politics.— What I'll remember about Daniel Dennett. (0:28)— Catholic priest resigns after backlash involving his criticism of a gay author. (8:43)— Christian lawmaker says teachers should be allowed to hit special needs students. (24:38)— A Christian ministry urged the Supreme Court to criminalize homelessness. (46:03)— MaÃÑori atheists say Christian colonization helped push them away from the faith. (1:01:59)SPONSOR: Sign up today at butcherbox.com/friendly and use code friendly to choose your free offer and get $20 off. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Patreon supporters who give $5 a month will get an ad-free version of the show! Join our private Facebook group and Discord server! Jessica and I spoke about several stories from the past week involving religion and politics. — What I'll remember about Daniel Dennett. (0:28) — Catholic priest resigns after backlash involving his criticism of a gay author. (8:43) — Christian lawmaker says teachers should be allowed to hit special needs students. (24:38) — A Christian ministry urged the Supreme Court to criminalize homelessness. (46:03) — Māori atheists say Christian colonization helped push them away from the faith. (1:01:59) SPONSOR: Sign up today at butcherbox.com/friendly and use code friendly to choose your free offer and get $20 off. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alice discusses the manufacture of argan oil, and the medicinal claims made for it and other similar oils. Meanwhile, Marsh reflects on compassionate skepticism following the death of Daniel Dennett.If you want to support the podcast, you can donate via Patreon - or leave us a glowing review on your podcasting app of choice!Mixed and edited by Morgan Clarke.

Andrew Mayne, Justin Robert Young, and Brian Brushwood embark on a philosophical journey, starting with a tribute to the late Daniel Dennett, whose work on consciousness and thought experiments left a profound impact on Andrew. The conversation then shifts to AI, with Facebook’s new Llama 3 model stirring the pot in the open-source community, and […]

Paul asserts his right to non-assertion ... Campus protests and free speech controversies ... Have pro-Palestine protestors crossed a line? Have their opposition? ... Will the protests force a reckoning on campus “wokeness”? ... Remembering philosopher Daniel Dennett ... Bob vs Dennett on consciousness ... Does the mind-body problem suggest a cosmic solution? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Paul asserts his right to non-assertion ... Campus protests and free speech controversies ... Have pro-Palestine protestors crossed a line? Have their opposition? ... Will the protests force a reckoning on campus “wokeness”? ... Remembering philosopher Daniel Dennett ... Bob vs Dennett on consciousness ... Does the mind-body problem suggest a cosmic solution? ... Heading to Overtime ...

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Dr. Jordan B. Peterson sits down with writer, philosopher, and cognitive scientist Dr. Daniel Dennett. They discuss the concepts of aboutness, intention, and the highest good as they relate to the religious and secular worlds, the establishment of trust and ethics outside of transcendent presupposition, and the loss of academic freedom at the misapprehension of postmodernism. Dr. Daniel Dennett is an American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist. He has published dozens of books, such as “Consciousness Explained" (1992), “Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life” (1996), and “Breaking the Spell: Religion as Natural Phenomena” (2007). - Links - 2024 tour details can be found here https://jordanbpeterson.com/events   Peterson Academy https://petersonacademy.com/    For Dr. Daniel Dennett: On X https://twitter.com/danieldennett?lang=en The Problem with Counterfeit People (Article on AI, the Atlantic) https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/05/problem-counterfeit-people/674075/ Consciousness Explained (Book) https://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-Explained-Daniel-C-Dennett/dp/0316180661 I've Been Thinking (Book) https://www.amazon.com/Ive-Been-Thinking-Daniel-Dennett/dp/0393868052 Breaking the Spell: Religion as Natural Phenomena (Book) https://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Spell-Religion-Natural-Phenomenon/dp/0143038338 

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OpenAI and Microsoft are leaders in generative artificial intelligence (AI). OpenAI has built GPT-4, one of the world's most sophisticated large language models (LLMs) and Microsoft is injecting those algorithms into its products, from Word to Windows. At the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, Zanny Minton Beddoes, The Economist's editor-in-chief, interviewed Sam Altman and Satya Nadella, who run OpenAI and Microsoft respectively. They explained their vision for humanity's future with AI and addressed some thorny questions looming over the field, such as how AI that is better than humans at doing tasks might affect productivity and how to ensure that the technology doesn't pose existential risks to society.Host: Alok Jha, The Economist's science and technology editor. Contributors: Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor-in-chief of The Economist; Ludwig Siegele, The Economist's senior editor, AI initiatives; Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI; Satya Nadella, chief executive of Microsoft. If you subscribe to The Economist, you can watch the full interview on our website or app. Essential listening, from our archive:“Daniel Dennett on intelligence, both human and artificial”, December 27th 2023“Fei-Fei Li on how to really think about the future of AI”, November 22nd 2023“Mustafa Suleyman on how to prepare for the age of AI”, September 13th 2023“Vint Cerf on how to wisely regulate AI”, July 5th 2023“Is GPT-4 the dawn of true artificial intelligence?”, with Gary Marcus, March 22nd 2023Sign up for a free trial of Economist Podcasts+. If you're already a subscriber to The Economist, you'll have full access to all our shows as part of your subscription. For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.