Talk of Today

Chamira Gamage is a Human Rights Advocate at Amnesty International who has been instrumental in campaigning and lobbying for the Assange campaign globally. He has taken a complex and at times unpopular case and ensured it was being given the attention it deserves, based on the core principles press freedom, freedom of expression, and the impact it has on us all, both now and in the future. Chamira is also the Co-Founder and CEO of Thinkrs, a critical thinking Chrome Extension and soon to come News App, which helps users consider context as they read in to help them be better informed.

We cover: 

• Chamira's background
• The backstory of Julian Assange and Wikileaks
• How has Assange been treated
• Why does this matter to all of us
• What can we do

EPISODE LINKS

• Chamira on Twitter
• Amnesty International's petition
• Write to the Whitehouse
• Letter to Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison
• Thinkrs.io

SUPPORT:

• Contribute to coffee fund
• Back me on Ideamarket
• Rate Talk of Today on Apple Podcasts

PODCAST INFO

• Podcast Website
• Follow Sam on Twitter

Dr. Peter Rohde is an ARC Future Fellow and Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Quantum Software & Information at the University of Technology Sydney. Peter is also a mountaineer, musician, cryptoanarchist, and author of the recently released book "The Quantum Internet".

EPISODE LINKS:

• The Quantum Internet
• ‍Peter's website
• Peter's Twitter

SUPPORT:

• Contribute to coffee fund
• Back me on Ideamarket
• Rate Talk of Today on Apple Podcasts

PODCAST INFO

• Podcast Website
• Follow Sam on Twitter

Tyson Yunkaporta is an Australian academic, arts critic, researcher, and member of the Apalech Clan in far north Queensland. He recently started the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, which is focused on applying Indigenous thinking to issues that complexity scientists and technologists are currently working on across domains including economics, governance, evolutionary dynamics, cognition, and the environment. Tyson is also the author of the world-view reconfiguring book 'Sand Talk' which served as the basis of our conversation. In the book, Tyson explores our global systems from an Aboriginal perspective and how this viewpoint could help us resolve some of the complex sustainability issues facing our world.

In our conversation we cover:

• The indigenous notion of story and the problem with the narrative at the heart of Western civilisation
• The value in true diversity, identity, and place
• Violence and the need for its integration in society
• Why instead of pursuing growth we should seek 'increase'
• The need for humanity to retake our place as custodians of the land we're connected to.

EPISODE LINKS

• Tyson's Deakin University page
• Book: Sand Talk
• ‍Tyson's Podcast: The Other Others
• Video: Why the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab matters

SUPPORT:

• Contribute to coffee fund
• Back me on Ideamarket
• Rate Talk of Today on Apple Podcasts

PODCAST INFO

• Podcast Website
• Follow Sam on Twitter

Jeremy is CEO of LBRY, a blockchain based protocol which is aiming to do what bitcoin has done for money for publishing. In that, rather than relying upon third parties to aggregate and distribute content, library has built a technology that allows this to be done peer to peer without fear of censorship or demonetisation. He's also CEO of Odyssee, a youtube-like video streaming platform built on LBRY technology. 

EPISODE LINKS:

• Jeremy on Twitter
• LBRY.com
• Odysee.com

SUPPORT:

• Contribute to coffee fund
• Back me on Ideamarket
• Rate Talk of Today on Apple Podcasts

PODCAST INFO

• Podcast Website
• Follow Sam on Twitter

Victor Kline is the Party Leader of the New Liberals in Australia. He's a Sydney based barrister specialising in the area of Refugee and Asylum Seeker Law. He's founder and director of the The Refugee Law Project as well as editor of the Federal Court Reports and Federal Law Reports.

We cover:

• The need for an Independent Commission Against Corruption with teeth
• The moral crisis of our immigration policies and some potential solutions
• Australia's vast potential as an energy superpower
• Brain drain, the crippling of Australian universities, and getting back on track to becoming the 'smart country'
• The plans the New Liberals have and the challenges they face.
• Why Climate inaction is actually unAustralian

EPISODES LINKS:

• The New Liberals' Website
• Victor on Twitter
• New Liberals on Twitter

SUPPORT:

• Contribute to coffee fund
• Back me on Ideamarket
• Rate Talk of Today on Apple Podcasts

PODCAST INFO

• Podcast Website
• Follow Sam on Twitter

In this episode I am once again joined by philosopher and economist Prof. Karl Widerquist, professor of philosophy at Georgetown University in Qatar.

He was co-founder of the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network, the first Basic Income network in the United States, and was also co-chair of the Basic Income Earth Network from 2008-2017.

He's recently coauthored a several of books, two of which served as the basis of our discussion. These are The Prehistory of Private Property which debunks three false claims commonly accepted by contemporary political philosophers regarding property systems, and the book Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy which explores how philosophers use and perpetuate myths about prehistory. While there's barely any mention of universal basic income in these texts, the conclusions that lead from them can be seen to be strongly support a social program like UBI.

• Karl on Twitter
• Karl's Website
• Prehistory of Private Property
• Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy
• Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income: A Theory of Freedom as the Power to Say No (Exploring the Basic Income Guarantee)

Support & Shownotes

• Podcast shownotes
• Rate it on Apple Podcasts
• Subscribe on YouTube
• By me a coffee
• Follow Sam on Twitter

This episode is another dive into what is one of the most fascinating and promising fields of our age: complexity science. It's a relatively new field that is transforming how we see and understand the world across multiple disciplines. Most importantly, it's can provide us with a deeper understanding of our collective interactions with the complex biophysical system we call, Earth and how we might avert the catastophes that loom.

Joining me today is Professor Karoline Wiesner, Professor of Complexity Science at the University of Potsdam, Germany, and Associate editor for the journals Entropy and Advances in Complex Systems

Her research focuses on the use of information theory in the study of formation, maintenance and stability of complex systems.

She is also one of the authors of the recently released book What is a Complex System, which served as the basis of my interview with her.

In our conversation, we cover:

• What is a complex system?
• What is complexity and what are some ways we can measure it?
• Why information theory and complexity science are such powerful tools for understanding the world?
• We also spend some time discussing entropy, order, and disorder, as well as a bit on how these things might be related to ethical value, which, if has been a pet interest of mine in recent times.

Unfortunately we didn't get to cover all of the topics I wishes to explore as we were bedevilled by technical difficulties, so the conversation might not flow as normal. Regardless, I still had a great time speaking with Prof. Wiesner and I hope you enjoy it as well.

Links

Prof. Wiesner's Book: What is a Complex System?

Prof. Wiesner's website

Prof. Wiesner on Research Gate

‍Book mentioned: Origin of Wealth by Eric Beinhocker

Support & Shownotes

• Podcast shownotes
• Rate it on Apple Podcasts
• Subscribe on YouTube
• By me a coffee
• Follow Sam on Twitter

This episode is a bit of a wild one. It's a three hour discussion bringing together a unifying principle for life, the free energy principle (a topic I explored in greater detail in my conversation with Maxwell Ramstead), with several pernicious problems that have plagued us for years, like consciousness, free will, intelligence, and what the hell is going on when we take psychdelic substances. 

Leading us on a tour of these awe-inspiring, interconnected, mind-bending topics is the scientist Dr. Adam Safron. Adam is has recently finished a postdoc the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University and has moved on to the John's Hopkins Centre for Psychdelics and Consciousness Research.

His work brings together neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy from a complex systems perspective and is truly fascinating. His ultimate aim is is providing a multi-level account of the factors that help people to be adaptive, creative, and free in all aspects of their lives.

One of his more recent projects has been developing a theory of consciousness, Integrated World Modeling Theory, which in the context of the free energy principle and integrated information theory, proposes that conscious experiences are what it is like to model an embodied self and world with coherent organization by space, time, and cause.

In our conversation we cover:

• The Free Energy Principle
• The Big 5 Personality trait model, and it's recent cybernetifaction
• Intelligence and why the artificial intelligence of the future might have to be embodied in order to reach its purported potential
• Adam then takes us through his theory of consciousness, Integrated World Modeling Theory,
• Free will
• Psychedelics and the brain

Support & Shownotes

• Podcast shownotes
• Rate it on Apple Podcasts
• Subscribe on YouTube
• By me a coffee
• Follow Sam on Twitter

• Adam on Twitter
• Adam on Facebook
• Adam on Google Scholar
• Adam on Research Gate
• Book: Freedom Evolves by Dan Dennett
• Book: The Big Picture by Sean Carroll

Herb is co-founder and treasurer of the Democracy Earth foundation, a non-profit building a blockchain-based open source "liquid democracy" governance platform, with the aim of bringing blockchain-based tools for democracy to the world at large, as well as executive Director of the Independent National Union, a new organisation with the aim of strengthening political power independent from the two-party system to enable the Independent governing of American cities, states and nation.

He's a serial software entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, having built and sold multiple companies mostly building systems where power purposefully shifts to the user through technology. When he learned of blockchain technology in 2012, considering it to be "the best invention since the Internet itself", Herb dedicated the rest of his career to social entrepreneurship.

In our conversation, we cover:

• Sovereign identity and proof of humanity ID
• Quadratic voting
• Currency, nation-states, and the blockchain revolution we will see
• How the Universal Basic Income token works, what the philosophy behind it is, and what the plans for it are
• What's wrong with politics in the US at the moment

Support & Shownotes

• Podcast shownotes
• Rate it on Apple Podcasts
• Subscribe on YouTube
• By me a coffee
• Follow Sam on Twitter

• Democracy.Earth
• Proof of Humanity
• Herb's Twitter
• Independent National Union
• Book: Architecture of a Techno democracy
• Book: The Politics Industry

Today we're talking about climate change and the precarious position we are all in, threatened with the very collapse of our societies and the biosphere upon which they rest, all due to our inaction. Joining me to explore this sobering topic is Earth systems scientist Professor Will Steff. Will is a climate change expert and researcher at the Australian National University, Canberra. He's held many positions related to guiding our species back onto a sustainble climate trajectory. He was the Executive Director of the Australian National University's Climate Change Institute,he served as a Science Adviser to the Australian Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, he was a founding Climate Councillor of Australia's Climate Council, and has been an author and reviewer of five of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) assessments and special reports between 2000 and 2018.

In our conversation, we cover:

• How bad is the current situation?
• Tipping points
• The difficulty of modelling a system as complex as our climate and thus, the need for a great deal of humiltiy and caution when dealing with climate change
• The threat social collapse due to climate change
• and why we really need to get our act together by 2030 in order to try and stablise the climate system. 

Support & Shownotes

• Podcast shownotes
• Rate it on Apple Podcasts
• Subscribe on YouTube
• By me a coffee
• Follow Sam on Twitter

• Will's ANU Page
• Australian Climate Council
• Why we are facing a climate emergency talk by Will
• Game, Set, Match: Calling Time on Climate Inaction
• Paulo Magalhaes' The Safe Operating Space Treaty