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Robots (from the Czech word for laborer) began appearing in science fiction in the early 1900s as metaphors for real-world ideas and issues surrounding class struggles, labor, and intelligence. Author Ken MacLeod says that the idea that robots would one day rebel was baked into the narrative from the start. As technologies have advanced, so too have our fears.

"Science fiction can help us to look at the social consequences, to understand the technologies that are beginning to change our lives," says MacLeod. He argues that while robots in science fiction are a reflection of humanity, they have little to do with our actual machines and are "very little help at all in understanding what the real problems and the real opportunities actually are."

AI has made the threat of "autonomous killer robots" much more of a possibility today than when Asimov wrote his three laws, but it's the decisions we make now that will determine the future. "None of these developments are inevitable," says MacLeod. "They're all the consequences of human actions, and we can always step back and say, 'Do we really want to do this?'"

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KEN MACLEOD:

Ken MacLeod is the multiple award-winning author of many science fiction novels, including the Fall Revolution quartet, the Engines of Light trilogy ("Cosmonaut Keep," "Dark Light," and "Engine City"), and several stand-alone novels including "Newton's Wake," "Learning the World," and "The Restoration Game". Born on the Scottish isle of Skye, he lives in Edinburgh.

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TRANSCRIPT:

KEN MACLEOD: There's so much unrealized potential in science fiction. It asks the most profound questions. We were there at the airship and the airplane and the atomic bomb, and we're still with you. We are in the beginnings of what's being called the fourth industrial revolution, and the application of AI to many, many areas that go beyond routine clerical work. But even a fully-automated world is not beyond having to make hard choices. Science fiction can help us to look at the social consequences, to understand the technologies that are beginning to change our lives.

My name is Ken MacLeod. I'm a science fiction writer. Science fiction has always acted as a metaphor for the mundane, to get across these ideas and consequences to the public in engaging ways. In the age of aviation, science fiction was all about space ships. In the age when the internet has become part of everyday life, a lot of science fiction became about a singularity.

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Your brain on sex, love, and rejection with biological anthropologist Helen Fisher. What happens in the brain of someone who gets dumped? One answer is increased activity in the nucleus accumbens, which is the same brain region that becomes active when you become addicted to cocaine, cigarettes, or gambling. Romantic love, in other words, is an addiction. That’s one key takeaway from the research of anthropologist Helen Fisher, who argues that we should learn to respect the intense feelings of people who get romantically rejected. According to Fisher, a better understanding of how the brain processes love and romantic desire can help us find the right partner and sustain a meaningful, healthy relationship.

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Chapters;-

0:00 Charles Darwin’s ‘game of love’

0:58 Sexual attraction in a partnership

1:49 The 3 brain systems

3:20 Romantic love

4:32 Romantic rejection

5:51 Long-term love & sex drive

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About Helen Fisher: Helen E. Fisher, Ph.D. biological anthropologist, is a Senior Research Fellow at The Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, and a Member of the Center For Human Evolutionary Studies in the Department of Anthropology at Rutgers University. She has written six books on the evolution, biology, and psychology of human sexuality, monogamy, adultery and divorce, gender differences in the brain, the neural chemistry of romantic love and attachment, human biologically-based personality styles, why we fall in love with one person rather than another, hooking up, friends with benefits, living together and other current trends, and the future of relationships — what she calls: slow love. About Big Think | Smarter Faster™ ► Big Think The leading source of expert-driven, educational content. With thousands of videos, featuring experts ranging from Bill Clinton to Bill Nye, Big Think helps you get smarter, faster by exploring the big ideas and core skills that define knowledge in the 21st century.

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It's not always easy to tell the difference between objective truth and what we believe to be true. Separating facts from opinions, according to skeptic Michael Shermer, theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss, and others, requires research, self-reflection, and time.

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Chapters for easier navigation:-

0:00 Introduction

0:41 Lawrence Krauss

3:02 Michael Shermer

8:07 Bill Nye

9:50 Lawrence Krauss (Part 2)

11:50 Darren Brown

It's not always easy to tell the difference between objective truth and what we believe to be true. Separating facts from opinions, according to skeptic Michael Shermer, theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss, and others, requires research, self-reflection, and time.

Recognizing your own biases and those of others, avoiding echo chambers, actively seeking out opposing voices, and asking smart, testable questions are a few of the ways that skepticism can be a useful tool for learning and growth.

As Derren Brown points out, being "skeptical of skepticism" can also lead to interesting revelations and teach us new things about ourselves and our psychology.

Read Michael Shermer's latest book "Skeptic: Viewing the World with a Rational Eye" at https://amzn.to/3c7vP58

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TRANSCRIPT:

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: I like to keep an open mind but not so open that my brains fall out. And that's the key point. We have to skeptically assess the information we receive. We can't be gullible because when we get a lot of information, it's absolutely certain that some of that information is wrong. And so we have to always filter what we get. And we have to ask ourselves the following question: "How open does my brain have to be to accept that information? Does it have to fall out?" And by that, I mean when someone tells you something you have to ask "Is this consistent with my experience? Is it consistent with the experience of other people around me?" And if it isn't, then probably there's a good reason to be skeptical about it; it's probably wrong. If it makes predictions that also appear to be in disagreement with things that you observe around you, you should question it.

And so we should never take anything on faith. That's really the mantra of science, if you want, that faith is the enemy of science. We often talk about a loss of faith in the world today. You don't lose anything by losing faith. What you gain is reality. And so skepticism plays a key role in science simply because we also are hard-wired to want to believe. We're hard-wired to want to find reasons for things. In the savanna in Africa, the trees could be rustling and you could choose to say, "Well, there's no reason for that." Or, "Maybe it's due to a lion." And those individuals who thought there might be no reason, never lived long enough to survive to procreate. And so it's not too surprising, we want to find explanations for everything. And we create them if we need to, to satisfy ourselves, because we need to make sense of the world around us. And what we have to understand is that what makes sense to the universe, is not the same as what makes sense to us. And we can't impose our beliefs on the universe. And the way we get around that inherent bias is by constantly questioning both ourselves and all the information we receive from others. That's what we do in science and it works beautifully in the real world as well.

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Peak performance mind hack explained in 7 minutes. Flow is described as a state of 'effortless effort,' where we feel like we're propelled through an activity, and everything else seems to disappear. More specifically, flow refers to any moments of rapt attention and total absorption. You're so focused on the task at hand that everything else seems to disappear. Researchers have discovered 22 catalysts that can help you prepare your environment and quickly drop into a flow state. A few of these include distraction management, dopamine triggering, and concentration. About Steven Kotler: Steven Kotler is a New York Times bestselling author, an award-winning journalist, and the Executive Director of the Flow Research Collective. He is one of the world’s leading experts on human performance. He is the author of ten bestsellers (out of thirteen books total), including The Art of Impossible, The Future Is Faster Than You Think, Stealing Fire, The Rise of Superman, Bold and Abundance. His work has been nominated for two Pulitzer Prizes, translated into over 40 languages, and appeared in over 100 publications, including the New york times Magzine, Wired , Atlantic Monthly, TIME and the Harward Business Review.Steven is also the cohost of Flow Research Collective Radio, a ten ten iTunes science Podcast.Along with his wife, author Joy Nicholson, he is the cofounder of the Rancho de Chihuahua, a hospice and special needs dog sanctuary.

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What does it mean to be a failure? Failing is typically seen as moving in the opposite direction of a specific goal, when in reality, most achievements in history were made possible by a series of non-successes.

"The very concepts of success and failure are words that never really meant anything," says astronomer Michelle Thaller. She and others argue that successes and failures are inextricably linked, and that how we define them for ourselves is what matters.

As Ethan Hawke, multidisciplinary filmmaker Karen Palmer, entrepreneurs Steve Case and Tim Ferriss, executive coach Alisa Cohn, and others explain, finding personal success means taking risks, being willing to fail, and recognizing when—and why—things are not working. "Most things will fail, but that doesn't mean you're a failure," Steve Case says. "That just means that idea failed. And what can you learn from that idea and then move forward."

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TRANSCRIPT:

Do something where it's going to go bad. Where you know that ahead of time. 'Cause like what's the worst that can happen?

You have to try a lot of things. Most things will fail, but that doesn't mean you're a failure. That just means that idea failed. And what can you learn from that idea? And then move forward.

The very concepts of success and failure I think are words that never really meant anything. And actually, I strongly suspect they have a lot to do with privilege.

MICHELLE THALLER: I often get questions from young students, and they say, well, how did you become a success? Or another great question these days is how did you overcome failure? And the funny thing is I found myself really kind of at a loss because the very concepts of success and failure I think are words that never really meant anything. And actually, I strongly suspect they have a lot to do with privilege. That if you can make yourself in the model of a research professor of 100 years ago, that's defined as a success. And if you do something different it's defined as a failure. There's never been any time in my life where, even after having received an award, or having been on a television show, I sat back and said, boy, I really feel like a success. It was always wrapped up in feelings of I should've done something differently, I should've had a different career path. There's never been a time where I felt like a success. And at the same time the idea that you ever really fail at something. There are plenty of times that, I very nearly failed differential equations in calculus, there were things that I was not very good at. But I eventually got them on, say, the third or fourth try. And the problem was just staying around and telling yourself that I really want to learn this, and I'm just not gonna leave until I do. There wasn't any really true failure either. It was always kind of twisted up with things I was proud of, that I was actually working through and trying to learn. So this idea that at some point in your life you're going to stop and feel like a success. Yes, I am successful now. I get very, very nervous when people ask me about that, about how did you become a success. I wanna sit them down and tell them all the things I screwed up, and all the things I did wrong, and all the reasons I'm not a success. And at the same time, when anybody calls me a failure, it's like, I wanna sit you down and explain why what I'm doing is actually getting your money and your funding for the rest of science. I'm not a failure either.

Everything in life is gonna be a flow between those two things. Everything is gonna be a jumble of success and failure. Your personal life, your professional life, the way you feel about yourself. And it's a strange model we give young people. Try to be a success, try to overcome failure. All I can do is just kind of breathe and just realize that at no point in my life am I gonna separate those two.

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This interview is an episode from @The-Well, our publication about ideas that inspire a life well-lived, created with the @JohnTempletonFoundation. Sometimes, it’s really hard to be happy. And there’s a reason for that: The human brain isn’t hard-wired for happiness. Why? Because happiness isn’t essential for survival. To make matters worse, our minds can deceive us when it comes to happiness, leading us to chase things that won’t make us happy in the long run. To solve for this, Yale psychology professor Laurie Santos recommends a set of practices, dubbed “re-wirements.” These practices include priotizing social connection, being other-oriented, focusing on gratitude and blessings, and incorporating exercise into our daily routine. By understanding the common pitfalls of our thinking and adopting new behaviours, we can achieve true happiness, and make it last. For Santos, happiness isn't just a state; it' an ongoing practice.

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Chapters:

0:00 Happiness? Natural selection doesn’t care.

0:59 4 annoying mind features ruining your happiness

3:33 5 ways to rewire your behavior for more happiness

6:56 Listen to your negative emotions

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About Laurie Santos: Dr. Laurie Santos is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Yale University. Her research provides an interface between evolutionary biology, developmental psychology, and cognitive neuroscience, exploring the evolutionary origins of the human mind by comparing the cognitive abilities of human and non-human primates. Her experiments focus on non-human primates (in captivity and in the field), incorporating methodologies from cognitive development, animal learning psychology, and cognitive neuroscience. Get Smarter Faster, With Daily Episodes From The Worlds Biggest Thinkers.

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People are living longer than ever, challenging our assumptions around milestones like retirement. Economist Lynda Gratton explains a “multi-stage life,” and how retiring later isn’t necessarily something to fear. Lynda Gratton challenges the idea of retiring at 60, advocating instead for a multi-stage life. She argues that with increasing life expectancy and technological changes, we need to redesign work. Gratton, a Professor of Management Practice at the London Business School, proposes a flexible approach that allows individuals to customize their lives through lifelong education, diverse work options, and delayed retirement. She encourages self-reflection and courage to embrace this new paradigm, urging viewers to make work enjoyable, exciting, and a continuous learning experience. The key message is to ditch the old idea of retirement, work longer, and create a life that fits individual needs.

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About Lynda Gratton: Lynda is a Professor of Management Practice at London Business School where she directs ‘Human Resource Strategy in Transforming Companies’, considered the world’s leading programme on human resources. Lynda is the founder of the advisory practice HSM Advisory and since 2008 has led the Future of Work by HSM which has brought together executives from more than 100 companies over the past 14 years. Lynda’s work has been acknowledged globally – she has won the Tata prize in India; in the US she has been named as the annual Fellow of NAHR and won the CCL prize; whilst in Australia she has won the AHRI prize; she has received the Best Teacher Award at London Business School. Lynda is a Fellow of the World Economic Forum and chaired the WEF Council of Leadership. She has served on former Japanese Prime Minister Abe’s “Council for designing the 100-year-life society” and is currently a member of the international advisory board of Equinor. Get Smarter Faster, With Daily Episodes From The Worlds Biggest Thinkers.

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This interview is an episode from @The-Well, our publication about ideas that inspire a life well-lived, created with the @JohnTempletonFoundation. Drawing from the wisdom of ancient philosophers like Aristotle, history has taught us that the pursuit of a good life is found in cultivating virtues. Yale psychologist Laurie Santos brings us into the modern era of virtuous living by unpacking various schools of thought — from Martin Seligman and Chris Peterson’s 24 character strengths to the Japanese practice of ikigai. While engaging with character strengths enhances our sense of meaning and happiness, it’s our unique “signature strengths” that have a profound impact on our lives. Contrary to the common belief that monetary rewards drive job satisfaction, engaging more of our signature strengths at work not only leads to increased job fulfillment but also improves performance and potentially increases earnings. But the application of virtue extends beyond the workplace. Finding ways to incorporate humor, zest, or a love of learning into our leisure activities can unlock greater fulfillment and meaning during our free time. Whether through self-reflection or a systematic survey, identifying our signature strengths and committing to their regular practice empowers us to live a more virtuous and meaningful life.

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Chapters:

0:00 The wheel of virtue: 6 domains, 24 character strengths

1:11 Your signature strengths

3:06 Job crafting

4:54 Take the signature strengths test

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About Laurie Santos: Dr. Laurie Santos is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Yale University. Her research provides an interface between evolutionary biology, developmental psychology, and cognitive neuroscience, exploring the evolutionary origins of the human mind by comparing the cognitive abilities of human and non-human primates. Her experiments focus on non-human primates (in captivity and in the field), incorporating methodologies from cognitive development, animal learning psychology, and cognitive neuroscience.

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The science of ‘herd mentality'

What can monkeys teach us about stock market bubbles? It turns out that monkeys make decisions much like investors on the trading floor—they develop a herd mentality, mimicking the behavior of others until over inflation and the eventual pop. "This tendency to follow the herd emerges from our social brain networks," explains Michael Platt, professor of neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania. This network allows us to learn and adapt based on information from those around us. But these learnings are not always positive. In the context of money and the stock market, following the herd could result in bad financial decisions. The key, Platt says, is learning to take a step back and resist impulses, which in some ways goes against our evolution and the way our brains work. "There's a trade off between speed and accuracy in decision-making," he says. "If we could slow people down, that would allow more evidence to accumulate, and they're more likely to make a better decision."

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Revolutionary ideas and culture-shifting inventions are often credited to specific individuals, but how often do these "geniuses" actually operate in creative silos?

Tim Sanders, former chief strategy officer at Yahoo, argues that there are three myths getting in the way of innovative ideas and productive collaborations: the myths of the expert, the eureka moment, and the "lone inventor."

More than an innate quality reserved for an elite group, neuroscientist Heather Berlin and neurobiologist Joy Hirsch explain how creativity looks in the brain, and how given opportunity, resources, and attitude, we can all be like Bach, Beethoven, and Steve Jobs.

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TRANSCRIPT:

-There is no such thing as a lone inventor. We want to be as empowered as Ayn Rand. We want to think that we are the fountainhead, so this is how we tell the story. But until you believe that genius is a team sport, you will never give up control.

- It's not just about collecting a bunch of data and knowing a lot of facts, but it's making these novel connections between ideas.

- I think all of us as humans are sort of endowed with the need to make things better. Genius is just an extreme version of that but it represents us as humans in a very fundamental way.

TIM SANDERS: There are myths of creativity and these myths are usually propagated by people that have romantic notions about heroes, romantic notions about eureka moments. And these myths of creativity keep people from collaborating and it causes them to be a lone wolf. And the research says it causes them to fail. So let me talk a little bit about those myths of creativity. In the world of sales and marketing, I battle against three myths. Myth number one, the lone inventor. This is very dangerous because there is no such thing as a lone inventor. As a matter of fact, there's a lot of historical research that has debunked Einstein. Specifically in terms of inventions, Henry Ford, not a lone inventor. Classic example, Thomas Edison. In the invention community, Thomas Edison is a brand. It stands for 14 people. Yes, there was a figurehead named Thomas Edison. His name is on 10,000 patents. He did not invent a single thing. He marshaled people together and knew how to spot innovations and put people together like, a creative soup, if you will. Here's a classic example, Steve Jobs, you ask the average person, say a millennial who uses a lot of Apple technology, "Who's one of the greatest inventors of our time?" They'll say Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs once said, "I never created anything. "All I did was notice patterns "and put people together to finish projects." So think about it. If he doesn't have Wozniak, there is no original Apple, right? If he doesn't have Ive, there is no iPod. If he doesn't have Tony Fiddel, there is no iPhone. And the list goes on and on.

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