Conversations about philosophy, science, religion and spirituality
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Knowledge, Reality, Truth, Morality … Daniel Kaufman, David Ottlinger, Robert Gressis, and their guests explore the rich universe of philosophical investigation and inquiry.
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David Bryce Yaden hosts conversations at the interface of science and spirituality—scientific breakthroughs, new perspectives, and the future of spirituality.
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Kant Stop Critiquin' (Aryeh Cohen-Wade & David Ottlinger)
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A bizarre Washington Post column about critical theory and Immanuel Kant ... Why has Kant become a bogeyman? ... How contingent is the history of philosophy? ... Relativism vs. rationalism ... What Kant meant by the "Critique of Pure Reason" ... Steven Pinker and the problem with rationalists ... David explains what Kant actually believed ...…
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The Dharma of Bob 8: A Cosmic View of Our Situation (Robert Wright & Josh Summers)
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What part of secular-guru space (if any) does Bob occupy? ... On the origin of Bob’s theses (by means of natural selection) ... The mind-boggling mystery of consciousness ... Could evolution have a larger purpose? ... The “global brain” as the flowering of natural selection’s seed ... Saving our species by transcending some species-typical tendenci…
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The Dharma of Bob 7: Cognitive Bias and Conflict (Robert Wright & Josh Summers)
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Remembering Michael Brooks ... The existential stakes of enlightenment ... Overcoming the affective dimension of cognitive bias ... Bringing broader awareness to the concept of cognitive bias ... Cognitive bias and the roots of war ... The folly of feedback loops ... Quelling our primitive retributive impulses ... Taking a mulligan in your meditati…
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Saving Anti-Wokeness from Itself (David Ottlinger & Cathy Young)
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A plea to the weary to return to the Woke Wars ... Who is James Lindsay? ... Lindsay's book, Cynical Theories ... Lindsay's other critiques of wokeness ... The religion of wokeness, the religion of anti-wokeness ... Lindsay jumps on the Trump train (starts shoveling coal) ... The anti-semitism thing ... David: In a way, Lindsay is on the side of BL…
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Contesting Determinism (Robert Wright & Oliver Burkeman)
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Oliver's new book, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals ... Oliver outlines “compatibilism,” the idea that free will and determinism can coexist ... Bob: Everyone should be a free will agnostic ... The occasionally dramatic consequences of arguments against free will ... Would determinism require us to reform our approach to criminal ju…
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The Trouble with Quantum Mechanics (Robert Wright & John Horgan)
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John's recent bout of fever-induced hallucinations ... Does math actually help you understand QM? ... What experiments in QM have and have not verified ... John: All interpretations of QM are bad ... What do we want from science? ... "An operating system for reality" ...By meaningoflife.tv
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Debating the Sexual Psychology of Men and Women (Robert Wright & Agustín Fuentes)
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Disavowing the naturalistic fallacy ... Why “sex” may not mean what you think it means ... Did evolution make women “choosier” about sex partners than men? ... Haggling over the price of sperm and eggs ... Agustín: Empirical studies complicate evolutionary psychology’s theoretical models ... The evolutionary significance of non-reproductive sex ...…
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Consolations of Physics (John Horgan & Sabine Hossenfelder)
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Sabine inspires John's quantum experiment ... Sabine previews her book-in-progress ... Isn't quantum mechanics non-deterministic? ... Is consciousness conserved? ... John and Sabine tangle over free will ... Physics creationism ... Will quantum mechanics be replaced? ...By meaningoflife.tv
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Time Management for Mortals (Robert Wright & Oliver Burkeman)
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Oliver’s new book, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals ... Why is it so hard to accept the limits of our productivity? ... Prioritizing mindfully ... Heideggerian time management ... Finding value in even "meaningless" work ... Reducing the lure of distractions ... Ten tools for embracing your finitude ... Five (pretty intense) questio…
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The Dharma of Bob 6: The Explain/Excuse Conflation (Robert Wright & Josh Summers)
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Josh's aversion to the term "guru" ... Explaining the explain/excuse conflation ... The (possible) evolutionary origins of (biased) arguing ... Are humans mismatched to their modern environment? ... Building strengths vs. addressing deficiencies ... Defusing attribution error ... Making cognitive empathy cool ... Using meditation to strengthen cogn…
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Should Darwin Be Cancelled? (Robert Wright & Agustín Fuentes)
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Agustín on what he was and wasn’t saying in his controversial Science piece on Darwin ... What is biological anthropology? ... What social media critiques of Agustín’s editorial missed ... Untangling Darwin’s attitudes toward race and genocide ... Darwin’s worries about his theory’s acceptance ... What do female gibbons want? ... Agustín: Commonly …
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Quantum Mechanics and the Quest for Final Knowledge (John Horgan & Philip Ball)
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Will science ever absorb the arts and humanities? ... Why Phil wrote a book about quantum mechanics ... Knowing quantum math doesn’t necessarily help ... Is "information” the key to quantum mechanics? ... What quantum computing can and can’t do ... The weirdness and arbitrariness of existence ...By meaningoflife.tv
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Thinking in Tongues (Nikita Petrov & David Poleski)
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Saving the World One Podcast at a Time (Robert Wright & Rob Wiblin)
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Defining effective altruism ... Rob explains the meaning of ‘80,000 Hours’ ... Should young people dedicate their careers to fighting climate change? ... The Apocalypse Aversion Project ... How cognitive biases fuel tribalism ... Bob: We need a psychological revolution ... Are external threats the best way to bring people together? ... The balance …
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The Dharma of Bob 5: Mindful Defiance (Robert Wright & Josh Summers)
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Josh tries to help Bob retool his meditation practice ... Identifying the purpose of your practice ... What to do when your mind wanders ... Tuning your mind ... The Four Rs ... Can mindfulness help us bolster our courage? ... Learning to tolerate blowback from your tribe ... Suffering and the psychology of tribalism ... Developing a non-zero-sum r…
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Despite Our Best Intentions (Robert Wright & Paul Bloom)
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The value of defying your tribe ... Egocentric bias and attribution error ... The thin line between between courage and acting like an asshole ... Why do we punish people for unintentional transgressions? ... To understand all is to forgive all … ... … but forgiveness won’t get you retweets ... Are people’s politics as irrational as they seem? ... …
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Circling the Elephant (Robert Wright & John Thatamanil)
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John’s new book, Circling the Elephant: A Comparative Theology of Religious Diversity ... John’s early religious sensibility ... The Advaita Vedanta tradition in Hinduism ... Grappling with the human predicament ... Approaches to ultimate reality ... John’s brush with non-dualistic experience ... Why John doesn’t consider himself a perennialist ...…
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Science, Fiction, and the Mind-Body Problem (John Horgan & Erik Hoel)
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Erik's new novel, The Revelations ... How Erik became a writer and a neuroscientist ... Erik defends integrated information theory ... The agnosticism of the novelist ... Should the mind-body problem have a single solutions? ...By meaningoflife.tv
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DMT and Plato's Cave (Nikita Petrov & John Horgan)
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The Dharma of Bob 4: Averting the Apocalypse (Robert Wright & Josh Summers)
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Who you callin' bodhisattva? ... Outlining the Apocalypse Aversion Project ... How meditation can make us better global citizens ... Why we need “cognitive crampons” ... Transcend and include ... The varieties of meditative experience ... Achieving micro-enlightenment ... The benefits of confronting your dark side ... Building a cognitively empathe…
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Steven Pinker, the Unabomber, Quantum Physics, and DMT (Nikita Petrov & John Horgan)
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Explaining Quantum Mechanics (John Horgan & Tim Maudlin)
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Why Tim became a philosopher ... John gets entangled in superposition ... Tim explains Bell’s Theorem with diagrams ... Tim rejects shutting up and calculating ... Will quantum computers lead to a better quantum theory? ...By meaningoflife.tv
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Kant’s Transcendental Philosophy (Robert Wright & David Ottlinger)
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Distinguishing between the numinous and the noumenal ... Kant’s religious vision ... The Copernican revolution in philosophy ... What, if anything, does the Buddhist idea of emptiness have to do with Kant? ... The transcendental status of space and time ... Can the Matrix help us understand Kant? ... Distinguishing between the noumenal and the phen…
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Ten Keys to Reality (Robert Wright & Frank Wilczek)
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What got Frank his Nobel Prize ... Frank's new book, Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality ... Solving the mystery of dark matter ... Can quantum physics make sense? ... Frank: Mind emerges from matter, not the other way around ... Can you love an automaton? ... Complementarity as scientific concept and everyday attitude ... How Frank's Catholic upbrin…
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(What If) Ideas Are Alive (Nikita Petrov & John Horgan)
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Questioning the Practice of Grading in Schools (Robert Gressis & Kevin Currie-Knight)
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Rob and Kevin make small talk ... Kevin describes and laments the grade economy ... What's the relationship between grades and learning? ... Bryan Caplan's "The Case Against Education" and how it has traumatized Rob ... Unschooling ... If schools suck so much, how did Rob and Kevin learn? ...By meaningoflife.tv
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Questioning the Practice of Grading in Schools (Robert Gressis & Kevin Currie-Knight)
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Rob and Kevin make small talk ... Kevin describes and laments the grade economy ... What's the relationship between grades and learning? ... Bryan Caplan's "The Case Against Education" and how it has traumatized Rob ... Unschooling ... If schools suck so much, how did Rob and Kevin learn? ...By meaningoflife.tv
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Free Speech and Academic Freedom in 2020 (Daniel Kaufman & David Ottlinger)
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A new home for Sophia ... The (latest) defenestration of Kathleen Stock ... How sincere are pro-trans rights public intellectuals? ... Justin Weinberg's essay on the Kathleen Stock incident ... David: "It's the squishy middles that are gonna kill us" ... Dan: deplatforming people on social media is effectively censorship ... The death of public dis…
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Free Speech and Academic Freedom in 2020 (Daniel Kaufman & David Ottlinger)
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A new home for Sophia ... The (latest) defenestration of Kathleen Stock ... How sincere are pro-trans rights public intellectuals? ... Justin Weinberg's essay on the Kathleen Stock incident ... David: "It's the squishy middles that are gonna kill us" ... Dan: deplatforming people on social media is effectively censorship ... The death of public dis…
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Quantum Mechanics and “Reality” (John Horgan & Adam Becker)
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Do you need math to grok quantum mechanics? ... Adam's quibble with Nils Bohr ... Explaining David Bohm’s pilot-wave model ... Defending the many-worlds hypothesis ... Are quantum mechanics and consciousness entangled? ... Will science ever explain the world? ...By meaningoflife.tv
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The Dharma of Bob 3: Cognitive Biases (Robert Wright & Josh Summers)
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Continuing “the Dharma of Bob” ... The evolutionary logic of cognitive biases ... Attribution error, or why your enemies seem so damn evil ... Zero-sum biases in a non-zero-sum world ... Bob fixes social media ... How cognitive biases have shaped perceptions of the Capitol riot ... The psychology of tribalism and the BLM protests ...…
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Introducing Psychopolitica (John Horgan & Nikita Petrov)
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Spooky Action at a Distance (John Horgan & George Musser)
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Is spacetime obsolete? ... Quantum spookiness explained! ... Black holes and the big bang are spooky too. ... What preceded space and time? ... Is physics just poetry with math? ... George’s next book: how mind relates to matter ...By meaningoflife.tv
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The Cultural Contradictions of Conservatism (Daniel Kaufman & Kevin Currie-Knight)
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Kevin's book, Education in the Marketplace ... Dan and Kevin's concern for Coleman Hughes' intellectual freedom ... How young is too young for movement conservatism? ... What was the Intellectual Dark Web? ... The IDW's central contradiction ... How Dan got involved with the conservative movement ... ... ... and why he left it ... Dan's advice to H…
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Is Philosophy of Religion Still Necessary? (Daniel Kaufman & Megan Fritts)
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Megan: philosophy of religion shouldn't focus on "proofs for God" ... Determining rational grounds for supernaturalism ... Why Dan rejects epistemic foundationalism ... Megan's Christian agnosticism, Dan's Jewish atheism ... Wittgenstein's engagement with philosophy of religion ... What kind of authority would it be good for us to submit to? ... Da…
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The Decline of Great Philosophers (Daniel Kaufman & Robert Gressis)
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Robert's essay, "The Philosophy Rapture" ... What counts as "relevant" philosophy? ... Philosophy's "dirty insider game" ... Why are great philosophers overrepresented at elite universities? ... Generational decline, intellectual and attitudinal ... Do intellectual celebrity cultures produce shrinking intellectual gene pools? ... Dan: Our present-d…
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How to Make a Comic Book (Daniel Kaufman & Milton Lawson)
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The new issue of Milton's comic book, Thompson Heller: Detective Interstellar ... Christopher Hitchens' influence on Milton's comic ... The anxieties of robot personhood ... The economic determinants of comic book production ... How a new comic writer finds an artist ... The comic book art division of labor ... Thompson Heller's future ...…
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Justifying Our Beliefs (Daniel Kaufman & Joshua Rasmussen)
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Joshua’s views on basic beliefs ... How do we get from experience to justified belief? ... The connection between knowledge and awareness ... Is Dan actually a foundationalist? ... Where the chain of warrant ends ... Joshua’s engagement with the big questions in philosophy ... Running up against the boundaries of inquiry ...…
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Lesser Evils (Daniel Kaufman & Kevin Currie-Knight)
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Why Kevin chose not to vote ... The two-party system vs. a multiparty parliamentary system ... Dan accuses Kevin of not confronting what the election was about ... Is Kevin acting like a spoiled brat? ... The logic of straight-ticket voting ... Kevin accuses Dan of having a pessimistic view of democracy ...…
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Debating Standpoint Theory (Daniel Kaufman & Crispin Sartwell)
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The origins of "standpoint theory" ... Are Dan and Crispin white? ... Defining standpoint theory ... Dan: Standpoint theory presents an irrefutable hypothesis ... Crispin: "All knowledge is from some standpoint" ... Dan: There is no single black perspective on race ... Why don't people trust experts? ... Is this argument good for society right now?…
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Who Is Entitled? (Daniel Kaufman & Robert Gressis)
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A review of Kate Manne's book Entitled sparks an online philosophy feud ... Is America systematically misogynistic? ... How Twitter incentivizes bad behavior ... The professional norms around book reviewing ... Dan sees "no honor all the way down" on the other side ... Self-immolating philosophers ... Is there a case for keeping some topics off lim…
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