Polymathic Being Podcast

Today's topic is boring, but because of that, it’s fascinating, illuminating, and creative. It pushes back on the idea that every second of every day must be curated and stimulating. It tries to pull us back from (un)social media, into the real world, and even a step further into that terrifying place of boredom. From that point, we can unlock the superpower of nothingness to create things beyond our imagination.

Today's topic continues a thread we started exploring in Don’t Trust AI, Entrust It which provides a solid framing for how to consider the ethics of advanced technology. Today we’ll do a thought experiment involving the ethical quandary where we have incredible forgiveness for human accidents but zero forgiveness for technology.

Today's topic addresses the highly effective nature of clickbait headlines and how headlines in general prime us for a certain viewpoint. Join us as we explore the effects of priming and how we can mentally check ourselves to avoid that priming.

Today's topic is going to explore two topics. The first is my own experience with avoiding sunburn and the second explores why we’ll never be able to scientifically prove my method works. It’s two counterintuitive topics rolled into one essay so let’s dive into Sunglasses, Skin Cancer, and Science.

Today's topic is a psychological exploration into a few of our cognitive biases and how they cause us to see the world as significantly worse than it really is. Not just worse but with the dismal outlook that we are facing an apocalypse. This outlook is tightly coupled with a nostalgic yearning for how things used to be. Let’s explore what drives this and rewire our perceptions to understand why we always see an apocalypse.

Today's topic rethinks and recontextualizes a theme within Polymathic Being of slowing down, stepping back, and analyzing more before executing. The challenge is that there is a case for taking action in the face of doubt and uncertainty especially when facing wicked problems. Let’s find out how to balance these two ideas together.

Today's topic continues a collaboration between I as we write on the history, culture, and science of our favorite indulgences. Today we’ll explore whisky and you can also look back at our previous “Odes” for more fun and informative insights.

Today's topic dives once more into the middle of techno-optimists and pessimists ripping social media and the news into what feels like two camps of utopia or apocalypse regarding our relationship with AI. Once again, I’m going to try to bridge the two camps with a pragmatic approach on how to use AI to augment intelligence.

Today's topic continues to explore what happens when we force a narrative on a story that doesn’t need to be there. We’ll find how that typically makes the story fragile and, worse, causes the original value to be lost. Come join us and discover how antifragility can apply to mythology and theology to unlock new insights.

Today's topic is one I’ve been wanting to write for a while about how the human perception of risk often puts us at even greater danger because we don’t apply the right systems thinking perspectives to contextualize it properly. We’re going to investigate the topic of risk compensation and provide some useful tips for analyzing risk better.