Positive Feedback Loop

Positive Feedback Loop

By Positive Feedback LoopSociety & Culture
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Positive Feedback Loop episodes

  • Ep. 43: What is Your Utopia?
    In this episode, the three co-hosts describe their very different concepts of utopia.
    Episode notes:
    Mormon Utopia
    Is modern society the past’s utopia?
    What is consciousness?
    Do any two people imagine the same utopia?
    Ray’s utopia: all people become one unified energy outside of time
    Matryoshka Brain
    Static vs. dynamic world
    Luis’s utopia of work and leisure as choices
    Is a utopia a perfect world, and if so, can imperfect people live in it?
    Are we capable of imagining a true utopia?
    Will we overcome mortality, or at least aging?
    What are you willing to give up to achieve utopia?
    Forms of government
    Commercial: Utopios
    Utopia in pop culture: Star Trek
    Death in utopia
    Are we already living in a utopia?
    Moral agency
    AI of the future
    47 min
  • Ep. 42: Handy Dandy Pets
    Episode notes:
    What are pets?
    Being a “pet parent”
    What’s in an animal’s mind?
    Humans raised by animals
    Do animals feel emotions similar to humans’?
    Commercial: Petcestry Genomics
    Why do we have pets?
    Homeless pets
    People who poison other people’s pets
    Ray’s chameleon
    Luis’s dog
    Steph’s dog
    Worm charming
    Are people like their pets?
    Caring for pets vs. children
    Street cats
    Seeing-eye dogs
    Vanity pets and breeding
    50 min
  • Ep. 41: The Bigger Sick
    Most destructive diseases in history
    Contagion
    Social contagion
    The spread of ideas
    Should you vaccinate your child?
    Travel and disease
    The Anthrax story
    Disease in war
    Suicide contagion
    Commercial: Minority animal diseases
    World of Warcraft and the CDC
    Studying the spread of disease
    Google Flu Trends
    Dancing Plague of 1518
    Fictitious monsters on the Internet
    Leprosy colonies
    Zombies
    Network theory
    57 min
  • Ep. 40: Autonomous Morality
    Episode notes:
    MIT’s Moral Machine test
    Who would you save?
    Fate and interference, guilt
    Kant’s autonomous morality
    Utilitarianism
    Patience with people vs. machines
    MBTA and Amtrak stories
    Consumer comfort with driverless cars
    Blame in autonomous vehicle accidents
    The future of machine autonomy
    Applying moral frameworks in the context of changing technology
    49 min
  • Ep. 39: Listeners' Choice - Celebration (1st Anniversary Special!)
    This is a Listeners’ Choice episode! The topic ("the importance of celebration”) was submitted by Akshay. We also talked about birthdays, which was submitted by Jan Marie!
    Episode notes:
    Is “celebrating the everyday” really a celebration?
    Celebrations as checkpoints
    Celebration vs. recurring holidays
    Luis’ story about his mother’s gifts
    Ray on Turkish weddings and communal lamb
    Is celebration a group activity?
    History/etymology of celebration
    Two types of celebration (surprise vs. expected)
    Steph on Utah’s and the LDS Church’s celebration of Pioneer Day
    Luis on Cuban celebrations
    Commercial: Chainsaw the Clown / Murder Clowns LLC
    What’s the purpose of celebrating?
    Holiday anxiety
    Funerals
    Birthdays
    Celebration pet peeves
    47 min
  • Ep. 37: Making the Most of Your MBA
    Episode notes:
    What we did before we started the MBA program
    The role of diversity and different types of diversity
    Choosing extracurriculars
    What is a case competition?
    “Teaming”
    A clear vision vs. experimentation
    Commercial: Bartholomew's School for Shady Business
    How to network effectively
    Skills for learning in the classroom
    34 min
  • Ep. 36: Are We in a Golden Age?
    What is a “golden age”?
    How do we know if we are in a golden age?
    The golden ages of media: television, information, radio, video games…
    The golden age of hip hop
    Are we able to identify a golden age while we’re in it?
    Commercial: Customized Element Ages
    The golden age of television
    The metrics for identifying a golden age
    Is ubiquity or acceleration a sign of a technology’s golden age?
    Are golden ages in “the chasm”?
    34 min
  • Ep. 35: What's the Deal with Sleep?
    What defines sleep?
    What’s your common sleep position?
    Why do we sleep?
    Sleep deprivation
    The relationship of anxiety and sleep
    Sleep apnea and night terrors
    Naps and siestas
    Commercial: Hypernation Pills
    Sleep paralysis and kanashibari
    Cultural views of sleep
    Debunking bunker: Does turkey make you sleepy?
    Food and sleep: Rip Van Winkle, pizza dreams
    How to fall asleep or sleep well
    Relationships and sleep (fairytales vs. reality)
    Vulnerability
    Sleeping in public and social norms
    “Sleep ecologies”
    Sleep in different parts of the world
    47 min
  • Ep. 34: Field Trip – Popnology! The Past’s Future
    *Special episode*
    We visited the Popnology Exhibit at Boston’s Museum of Science! In this episode we discuss some topics that come up in the exhibit, such as:
    Lots of robotic arms (e.g., Baxter!)
    Space Elevator
    What the smartphone has replaced
    The love for retro
    Digital vs. 35mm photography
    3-D printed cars
    A world with flying cars
    The wall of tech prophecies (did they really envision the future?)
    Pop culture influenced by research
    …and research influenced by pop culture
    Sustainability and escapism: will we need to leave planet earth?
    What was the point of the Popnology Exhibit?
    36 min

About Positive Feedback Loop

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Positive Feedback Loop! We discuss tech, history, and culture and we have fun disagreeing with each other. ;-) Co-hosts: Luis, Ray, and Steph. Find us on Twitter: twitter.com/thepflpodcast!