Evolve Faster with Scott Ely

Welcome to Life, Upgraded. On 1/21/2020, ten new cautionary tales of speculative fiction begin to drop every other week. The goal of Season Two of the Evolve Faster Podcast is to help you explore the contracts you’ve unwittingly signed with society and its layers of cultural institutions. Then it will be up to you to decide if it’s time to tear up and rewrite any of them. Season One of the EFP was themed around MIND. Are you thinking both critically and creatively? Are you managing your emotional and consistently upgrading your EQ? In summary, are you using your mind well? With your mind in check, you can now step out into life with better footings and a broader perspective. So Season Two is about LIFE. Humanity rose to the top of the food chain because of our ability to cooperate and communicate; but life in society also causes much of the anguish and suffering that exists in the human condition. Also, life in cultures and society comes with vastly more unknowns and challenges — you thought managing one mind was a challenge? To learn how to live and be happy also requires understanding how to navigate the complex intermeshing of the billions of minds and collective fictions we call society. This season is also a philosophical meditation about the next 25 years. It doesn’t take radical extrapolation of the trends we’re already on to envision how overdependence on technology might go awry, putting risk our humanity’s last remaining stronghold: actually being human. Are you ready for a life, upgraded?

Will Storia is a graduate student whose PhD work in history and evolutionary psychology is evolving into a manifesto about radically changing the trajectory of civilization. On his show, The Next Evolution, he argues to a global audience that we are at the edge of an abyss, about to hand off what remains of our humanity to machines. His latest guest is John Weber, a revolutionary techie, who believes technology will solve all of humanity’s problems. As they publicly clash with the world watching, Will worries how people might twist his ideas; because it’s increasingly obvious that John’s transhuman ideology has already become a religion. To explore if technology might be the quick solution for every problem humanity is facing, we must look deep into the core of what makes us tick — human nature. Transhumanism will likely exponentially multiply all of our human weaknesses. Does the hard-wired human desire to seek power over others pose a serious problem for our inevitable evolution of wanting to be superhuman? Also, Yuval Noah Harari believes dataism — the trend towards reducing humans down to our data and trusting AI to make all our decisions — has civilization on a crash course with becoming useless. Is this our fate? Or will technology open doors to new heights for humanity?

EF38 is an Ask Me Anything about Episode EF13 (The Bloody Fingerprint of Creativity). Where does creativity come from?! It’s impossible to understand if creativity is born as soon as we are or is creativity a quest we need to work to achieve. Or maybe, it’s both?

EF37 is a Behind The Podcast about Episode EF13 (The Bloody Fingerprint of Creativity). The driving question of this episode is ... Where does creativity come from?! Art, imagination, and creativity aren't mystical powers divinely granted to only a few, but instead are a cumbersome process where you need to wake up every day and work hard — just like any other job requiring hard work and years of practice. Although everybody wants to be creative, it's the will we usually lack. But, unlike some mysterious force we can't define, the will is more than attainable. Do you have the guts to face the failures you'll have to endure to attain it?

EF36 is an Ask Me Anything about Episode EF12 (Wired to Fail: Leveling Up in the Game of Life). What defines us? Success, failure and fear are the three main ingredients that define what we are and what we can and will be. But how much freedom and power do we have at controlling how much of each ingredient goes into the pot?

EF35 is a Behind The Podcast about Episode EF12 (Wired to Fail: Leveling Up in the Game of Life). The driving question of this is ... What defines us? What have you done in your life that makes you feel proud? Although it can be anything — from having a satisfying job to a blossoming relationship with a person you love, we often don't know what defines us. It's not as easy as its three simple words imply.

EF34 is an Ask Me Anything about Episode EF11 (When the Lights Go Out: The Blinding Light of an Artificial Future). For the first time, something is breathing down humanity's neck in as evolution accelerates. So will humanity see this as a challenge to further evolve, or will we get overwhelmed by the unprecedented capability of our machines? Do we stand a chance when for everything humanity took centuries to perfect, AI can master in days or weeks? Can our ape-like brains even comprehend what might be around the next curve of this Next Evolution?

EF33 is a Behind The Podcast about Episode EF11 (When the Lights Go Out: The Blinding Light of an Artificial Future). The driving question of this episode is ... Can machines think, be creative or fall in love? It's obvious we're witnessing the dawn of artificial intelligence (AI). As the generation living through and directing this big change, we have to feel both excited and nervous. What will the next step be? Will machines become a new race with their own rights to live, love and create? How might the change — potentially a quantum leap — affect humanity?

EF32 is an Ask Me Anything about Episode EF10 ((The Road to Happiness is Inked in Suffering). The driving question of this episode (and this BTP) for you to think through is ... Does happiness define the good? The eighth episode of the first season of the Evolve Faster Podcast Episode is driven by the big question Does happiness define the good. We want to be happy, yet there are only a few people who can honestly claim that. So are we hardwired to sadness or simply bad at our job?

EF31 is a Behind The Podcast about Episode EF10 (The Road to Happiness is Inked in Suffering). The driving question of this episode (and this BTP) for you to think through is ... Does happiness define the good? We need to be happy to feel good. Even a 4-year-old child knows this somewhere in the chaos of their still-evolving mind. Thus, it seems logical the closer we are to becoming happy 24/7, the better. But when was the last time you met someone who achieved this? And have you ever thought through the practicalities of such a scenario?