FLI Podcast: Cosmological Koans: A Journey to the Heart of Physical Reality with Anthony Aguirre

There exist many facts about the nature of reality which stand at odds with our commonly held intuitions and experiences of the world. Ultimately, there is a relativity of the simultaneity of events and there is no universal "now." Are these facts baked into our experience of the world? Or are our experiences and intuitions at odds with these facts? When we consider this, the origins of our mental models, and what modern physics and cosmology tell us about the nature of reality, we are beckoned to identify our commonly held experiences and intuitions, to analyze them in the light of modern science and philosophy, and to come to new implicit, explicit, and experiential understandings of reality. In his book Cosmological Koans: A Journey to the Heart of Physical Reality, FLI co-founder Anthony Aguirre explores the nature of space, time, motion, quantum physics, cosmology, the observer, identity, and existence itself through Zen koans fueled by science and designed to elicit questions, experiences, and conceptual shifts in the reader. The universe can be deeply counter-intuitive at many levels and this conversation, rooted in Anthony's book, is an attempt at exploring this problem and articulating the contemporary frontiers of science and philosophy.

Topics discussed include:

-What is skillful of a synergy of Zen and scientific reasoning

-The history and philosophy of science

-The role of the observer in science and knowledge

-The nature of information

-What counts as real

-The world in and of itself and the world we experience as populated by our concepts and models of it

-Identity in human beings and future AI systems

-Questions of how identity should evolve

-Responsibilities and open questions associated with architecting life 3.0

You can find the podcast page, including the transcript, here: https://futureoflife.org/2019/10/31/cosmological-koans-a-journey-to-the-heart-of-physical-reality-with-anthony-aguirre/