https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss486_Jon_Mills_2024_11_19.mp3

Download MP3

Michael Shermer interviews Jon Mills, a psychoanalyst and philosopher, on a variety of topics, including the evolution of psychoanalysis, the dynamics of therapeutic relationships, and the psychological roots of aggression and trauma. Mills explains Freud’s lasting influence, the moral implications of aggression, and the role violence plays in society. The conversation also explores how trauma affects individuals and families across generations and the difficulty of understanding human behavior when faced with global challenges.

The discussion extends to broader issues such as individuality, the struggles faced by modern youth, and the evolution of belief in God. Shermer and Mills discuss how technology impacts mental health and the pursuit of spirituality without relying on traditional religion.

Jon Mills, PsyD, PhD, ABPP, is a philosopher, psychoanalyst, and clinical psychologist. His two latest books are Inventing God: Psychology of Belief and the Rise of Secular Spirituality, and End of the World: Civilization and its Fate.

End of the World: Civilization and Its Fate

Famine. Extreme climate change. Threats of global war and nuclear annihilation. Obscene wealth disparities. Is civilization destined for self-annihilation? In this timely book, philosopher and psychoanalyst Jon Mills explores the emergencies that could ignite an apocalypse. As we idly stand by in the face of ecological, economic, and societal collapse, we must seriously question whether humanity is under the sway of a collective unconscious death wish. Examining ominous existential risks and drawing on the psychological motivations, unconscious conflicts, and cultural complexes that drive human behavior and social relations, he offers fresh new perspectives on the looming fate of humanity based on a collective bystander disorder.

End of the World is a warning about the dangerous precipice we find ourselves careening toward and a call to action to take control of our own fate.

Inventing God: Psychology of Belief and the Rise of Secular Spirituality

In this controversial book, philosopher and psychoanalyst Jon Mills argues that God does not exist; and more provocatively, that God cannot exist as anything but an idea. Put concisely, God is a psychological creation signifying ultimate ideality. Mills argues that the idea or conception of God is the manifestation of humanity’s denial and response to natural deprivation; a self-relation to an internalized idealized object, the idealization of imagined value.

After demonstrating the lack of any empirical evidence and the logical impossibility of God, Mills explains the psychological motivations underlying humanity’s need to invent a supreme being. In a highly nuanced analysis of unconscious processes informing the psychology of belief and institutionalized social ideology, he concludes that belief in God is the failure to accept our impending death and mourn natural absence for the delusion of divine presence. As an alternative to theistic faith, he offers a secular spirituality that emphasizes the quality of lived experience, the primacy of feeling and value inquiry, ethical self-consciousness, aesthetic and ecological sensibility, and authentic relationality toward self, other, and world as the pursuit of a beautiful soul in search of the numinous.

Jon Mills, PsyD, PhD, ABPP, is a philosopher, psychoanalyst, and clinical psychologist. He is Honorary Professor, Department of Psychosocial & Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex, UK, on faculty in the Postgraduate Programs in Psychoanalysis & Psychotherapy, Gordon F. Derner School of Psychology, Adelphi University, USA, and on faculty and a Supervising Analyst at the New School for Existential Psychoanalysis, USA. Recipient of numerous awards for his scholarship including 5 Gradiva Awards, he is the author and/or editor of over 30 books in psychoanalysis, philosophy, psychology, and cultural studies including most recently Psyche, Culture, World. In 2015 he was given the Otto Weininger Memorial Award for Lifetime Achievement by the Canadian Psychological Association. He is based in Ontario, Canada. His two latest books that I want to discuss today are Inventing God: Psychology of Belief and the Rise of Secular Spirituality, and End of the World: Civilization and its Fate.

If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support by making a $5 or $10 monthly donation.

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss485_Michael_Shermer_2024_11_14.mp3

Download MP3

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss484_Ben_Westhoff_2024_11_12.mp3

Download MP3

In 2023, 107,543 Americans died from an overdose—over 75 thousand of those overdosed from fentanyl. This is almost double the number of people who died in car accidents or from gun homicides that year.

Fentanyl has been cut into heroin for years, but now is often mixed into meth and cocaine, fueling rising death counts for those drugs, a troubling development, considering that Americans are much more likely to try meth and cocaine than heroin.

In Canada, the numbers are similarly astronomical, and fentanyl deaths have marched upward in Australia and many European countries as well. Ten years ago, fentanyl and its analogues overtook heroin to become the deadliest drug in Sweden.

“Fentanyl is the game changer,” Special Agent in Charge James Hunt of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) told Vice News. “It’s the most dangerous substance in the history of drug tracking. Heroin and cocaine pale in comparison to how dangerous fentanyl is.”

Ben Westhoff is a best-selling investigative journalist focused on drugs, culture, and poverty. His book Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Created the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic is the bombshell first book about fentanyl. Since its publication, Westhoff has advised top government officials on the fentanyl crisis, including from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, the U.S. embassy in Beijing, and the U.S. State Department.

His new book Little Brother: Love, Tragedy, and My Search for the Truth tells the story of his relationship with Jorell Cleveland, his longtime mentee in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program. When Jorell was murdered at age 19, and the case went cold, Ben used his skills as an investigative journalist to find the killer. It’s a three-year investigation set in the northern suburbs of St. Louis that uncovers a heartbreaking cycle of poverty, poor education, drug trafficking, and violence. Follow him at benwesthoff.substack.com and benwesthoff.com.

If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support by making a $5 or $10 monthly donation.

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss483_Warren_Hern_2024_11_09.mp3

Download MP3

In his new book Abortion in the Age of Unreason: A Doctor’s Account of Caring for Women Before and After Roe v. Wade, a nationally prominent doctor reports the daily challenges of offering and receiving abortion services in a volatile political and social atmosphere. In stories from the front lines–from protecting patients and staff from protesters’ attacks to the dangers to women of restricted access to abortion services, and the pertinent findings of his remote research in Latin America, Hern’s book is strikingly detailed just as it exposes the needs of women and the U.S. national interest. Dr. Hern–an abortion specialist, researcher, scholar, and highly visible public advocate – shows how abortion saves women’s lives given the many risks that arise during pregnancy, more than most people realize. He points to political and national solutions to reverse a reawakened crisis that now threatens democracy. Throughout the book, Dr. Hern shows how the current emergency was largely created by political actors who have exploited and distorted the abortion issue to increase and consolidate their power.

A vital component of women’s health care, the crisis over abortion is not new. Yet the reversal of Roe v. Wade and the steady accumulation of power by America’s right wing has put the issue at a level of urgency and national prominence not seen since the days before legalization. Women’s need for safe abortion services will continue as the struggle to secure their rights intensifies.

Warren M. Hern, M.D., is known to the public through his many appearances on CNN, Rachel Maddow/MSNBC, Sixty Minutes, and in the pages of The Atlantic magazine, The New York Times, Washington Post, and dozens more media. A scientist, Hern wrote about the need for safe abortion services before the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and was present at the first Supreme Court arguments. In his research and medical work, he pioneered since 1973 the modern safe practice of early and late abortion in his highly influential books and scholarship. A tireless national activist for women’s reproductive rights, he is an adjunct professor of anthropology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and holds a clinical appointment in obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Colorado medical center. He holds doctorates in medicine and epidemiology. His book is Abortion in the Age of Unreason: A Doctor’s Account of Caring for Women Before and After Roe v. Wade.

Shermer and Hern discuss:

How and why he became an abortion doctor

Age of Unreason: Crusades, Inquisition, Witch hunts, pogroms against Jews, slavery, genocide and ethnocide, McCarthyism

Abortions pre-Roe going back centuries

Abortions after Roe

Late term abortion, Partial birth abortion, Abortion on demand

What exactly is involved in an abortion: walk us through the procedure

Protests, death threats and violence against abortion doctors and clinics

Fetal personhood and when life begins

Weighted risks of abortion vs. pregnancy.

Show Notes

According to the CDC, the number of abortions in the United States in 2021 was 625,978

Women in their 20s accounted for more than half of abortions, higher for minority women, over half performed medication (mifepristone & misoprostol) at ≤9 weeks’ gestation (53.0%)

Guttmacher Institute: 930,160 abortions in 2020. Decline:

744k in 1973, 1.25m in 1975, 1.6m in 1990, 1.25m in 2005, 930,160 in 2020

14.4/1,000 women (compare homicide rate of 5.9/100,000 people)

Abortion providers: 2,908 in 1982, 1603 in 2020

87% unmarried women (CDC)

Black: 42%, 30% White, 22% Hispanic, 6% other races

Second abortions: 24%; Third abortions: 11%; 4th abortion: 8%

93% of abortions in the 1st trimester, at or before 13 weeks of gestation

6% between 14-20 weeks of pregnancy; 1% at 21 weeks or more.

Why women get abortions—2013 study “Understanding Why Women Seek Abortions in the US” (BMC Women’s Health Antonia Biggs, Heather Gould, Diana Greene Foster):

Financial (40%)

Timing (36%)

Partner-related reasons (31%)

Need to focus on other children (29%)

The top three reason categories cited in both studies were: 1) “Having a baby would dramatically change my life” (i.e., interfere with education, employment and ability to take care of existing children and other dependents) (74% in 2004 and 78% in 1987), 2) “I can’t afford a baby now” (e.g., unmarried, student, can’t afford childcare or basic needs) (73% in 2004 and 69% in 1987), and 3) “I don’t want to be a single mother or am having relationship problems” (48% in 2004 and 52% in 1987). A sizeable proportion of women in 2004 and 1987 also reported having completed their childbearing (38% and 28%), not being ready for a/another child (32% and 36%), and not wanting people to know they had sex or became pregnant (25% and 33%)

What about medical problems with the woman or the fetus? Lozier Institute 2024 study:

Rape and incest: 0.4%

Risk to the woman’s life or a major bodily function: 0.3%

Other physical health concerns: 2.2%

Abnormality in the unborn baby: 1.2%

Elective and unspecified reasons: 95.9%

Worldwide (Guttmacher Institute):

121 million unintended pregnancies occurred each year between 2015 and 2019

Of these unintended pregnancies, 61% ended in abortion. This translates to 73 million abortions per year

Americans’ Self-ID on Abortion, 2024 (Gallup):

Pro-choice: 54%, Pro-life: 41%

Men: 45% pro-choice/49% pro-life; Women: 63% pro-choice/33% pro-life

Republican: 23% pro-choice/69% pro-life; Democrat: 86% pro-choice/12% pro-life; Independent: 52% pro-choice/41% pro-life

If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support by making a $5 or $10 monthly donation.

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss482_Michael_Shermer_2024_10_31.mp3

Download MP3

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss481_Edward_Goldberg_2024_10_29.mp3

Download MP3

The United States as Global Liberal Hegemon: How the U.S. Came to Lead the World examines America’s role as the global liberal hegemon. Using a historical analysis to understand how the United States came to serve as the world leader, Goldberg argues why the role of a liberal hegemon is needed, whether the United States has the ability to fulfill this role, and what the pitfalls and liabilities of continuing in this role are for the nation. He also considers the impact that this role on the global stage has for the country as well as individual citizens of the United States. Goldberg argues that the United States’s geographic location away from strong competitors, it’s role as the dominant economy for much of the 20th century, and its political culture of meritocracy all contributed to the United States taking this role in the 1940s. He also argues that the role of liberal hegemon has shifted to include not only being the international policeperson but also to be the world’s central banker, a role that at this time only the United States can fill.

Edward Goldberg is a leading expert in the area of where global politics and economics intercept. He teaches International Political Economy at the New York University Center for Global Affairs where he is an Adjunct Assistant Professor. He is also a Scholarly Practitioner at the Zicklin Graduate School of Business of Baruch College of the City University of New York where he teaches courses on globalization. With over 30 years of experience in international business and as a former member of President Barack Obama’s election Foreign Policy Network Team, Dr. Goldberg is the author of Why Globalization Works For America: How Nationalist Trade Policies Destroy Countries, and The Joint Ventured Nation: Why America Needs A New Foreign Policy. He is a much-quoted essayist and public speaker on the subjects of Globalization, European-American relations, U.S.-Russian and China relations. He has commented on these issues on PBS, NPR, CBS, Bloomberg, and in The New York Times, The Hill, and the Huffington Post. His new book is The United States as Global Liberal Hegemon: How the U.S. Came to Lead the World.

Shermer and Goldberg discuss:

“In the 1940s, when America anointed itself hegemon, somewhat like in Great Britain in the nineteenth century, American foreign policy was largely, aside from Harry Truman and a few others, dominated by a group of men who generally all went to similar prep schools and graduated from Princeton, Yale, or Harvard. This has changed drastically. If there is one common domestic thread in American post-World War II history, it is how American society and political life has become noticeably more diverse.”

The 2024 presidential election is the first time Americans are voting on whether the U.S. should remain the so-called “leader of the free world” – or just go it alone as Donald Trump suggests. Even in the late 1930s, the heyday of isolationism, isolationism never appeared on the ballot. In fact in the presidential election of 1940, the Republican candidate Wendel Wilkie was an internationalist.

What are the benefits to American citizens to continue in this role? What are the costs? And why can’t another nation or some institution play this role?

Does the U.S. need allies to be successful or are relationships/institutions like NATO “obsolete” as Trump has stated?

Why does there need to be a global leader or as Secretary of State Blinken said, an organizer? Is there any logic for instance to Donald Trump’s statement that he would “encourage Russia to do whatever the hell they want?”

As the world faces new globalized communal problems, climate change, pandemics, financial contagion, etc., is the U.S. political culture capable of leading the world against these more abstract threats?

Secretary of State Blinken’s statement, “Whether we like it or not, the world does not organize itself,” I look at why the United States is the only country capable of organizing the world, of being the liberal hegemon.

the world’s central banker, the financial fireman of the world, a position at this time only the United States can fulfill.

why a liberal hegemon is needed. Why can’t the United Nations organize the world or be the cop?

The United States was the only major nation whose birth was influenced by the philosophical enlightenment movement. Thus, it has a very different view of the role of government. In America, the government was created not to watch over the individual welfare of its citizens but to guarantee their fundamental rights and liberties. That perspective emphasizes the individual over the community. Does America’s political culture, based on an aggrandized view of the eighteenth-century enlightenment theory of individual rights, hinder its ability to lead in the twenty-first century?

Foreign governments have been trying to influence American foreign policy since the time of George Washington.

disastrous mistakes like Vietnam and Iraq

The March of Folly

are the rewards of hegemony worth the price for the American citizen? $1.120 trillion the United States spent on defense in 2022. This expenditure created approximately 800,000 civilian jobs and 1.3 million active-duty jobs. But could these funds have created larger economic growth if applied to other areas?

U.S. has defense treaties with 51 countries plus independent security understandings with others.

Is the Iowa farmer aware that the reason their soybeans can be shipped safely around the world is because of the protection of the United States Navy?

Roosevelt State of the Union address to Congress January 6, 1941: “No realistic American can expect from a dictator’s peace international generosity, or return of true independence, or world disarmament, or freedom of expression, or freedom of religion-or even good business … Such a peace would bring no security for us or for our neighbors. Those, who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

The United States has agreed to treaties obligating it to the defense of 51 countries:

28 countries in NATO, which is essentially a defense umbrella for Canada and most of Europe

18 through the Rio Treaty that applies to most of Central and South America

ANZUS Treaty with Australia and New Zealand

A bilateral treaty with Japan

A bilateral treaty with South Korea

A bilateral treaty with the Philippines.

The theory behind most of these treaties derived from the lessons of World War I and II and especially the isolationist period between those two wars. Essentially, the underlying idea for these agreements is to halt aggression early rather than letting it metastasize and potentially overcome the United States.

If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support by making a $5 or $10 monthly donation.

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss480_Talia_Lavin_2024_10_26.mp3

Download MP3

All across America, a storm is gathering: from book bans in school libraries to anti-trans laws in state legislatures; fire-bombings of abortion clinics and protests against gay rights. The Christian Right, a cunning political force in America for more than half a century, has never been more powerful than it is right now—it propelled Donald Trump to power, and it won’t stop until it’s refashioned America in its own image.

In Wild Faith, critically acclaimed author Talia Lavin goes deep into what motivates the Christian Right, from its segregationist past to a future riddled with apocalyptic ideology. Using primary sources and firsthand accounts, Lavin introduces you to “deliverance ministers” who carry out exorcisms by the hundreds; modern-day, self-proclaimed prophets and apostles; Christian militias, cults, zealots, and showmen; and the people in power who are aiding them to achieve their goals. Along the way, she explores anti-abortion terrorists, the Christian Patriarchy movement, with its desire to place all women under absolute male control; the twisted theology that leads to rampant child abuse; and the ways conspiracy theorists and extremist Christians influence each other to mutual political benefit.

From school boards to the Supreme Court, Christian theocracy is ascendant in America—and only through exploring its motivations and impacts can we understand the crisis we face. In Wild Faith, Lavin fearlessly confronts whether our democracy can survive an organized, fervent theocratic movement, one that seeks to impose its religious beliefs on American citizens.

Talia Lavin is the author of the critically acclaimed book Culture Warlords. She is a journalist who has had bylines in the New Yorker, the New Republic, the New York Times Review of Books, the Washington Post, and more. She writes a newsletter, The Sword and the Sandwich, which is featured in Best American Food and Travel Writing 2024. She is a graduate of Harvard University with a degree in comparative literature, and was a Fulbright scholar who spent a year in Ukraine. Her first book was Culture Warlords: My Journey Into the Dark Web of White Supremacy. Her new book is Wild Faith: How the Christian Right is Taking Over America.

Shermer and Lavin discuss:

The Satanic Panic and the McMartin preschool case

The Recovered Memory Movement

Multiple Personality Disorder

Demon possession and exorcisms

Moral panics

The Evangelical right is working hard to dominate what it refers to as the Seven Mountains of Societal Influence: Arts and entertainment, business, education, family, government, media, and religion

How Christian dominance has waxed and waned over the past 50 years

Opposing abortion by all possible means

Opposing marriage equality

Opposing no-fault divorce in favor of hard-to-sever “covenant marriages”

Opposing out-of-wedlock heterosexual sex

Christian Zionism: “Christian Zionists have spent more than $65 million in support of ongoing Israeli settlements within the disputed territories of the West Bank,” “Before the Messiah can return, the nation of Israel must be restored; Jerusalem must be a Jewish city; and the Temple, the center of worship and sacrifice in the ancient Jewish world, which was last destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD, must be rebuilt,” writes Lavin. But here’s the rub: For the temple to be rebuilt, the Jewish people have to be “purified with the ashes of a red heifer.” (young, female cow)

In a poll conducted in 2018 by Christian research organization LifeWay Research, a staggering 80 percent of evangelicals agreed with the statement that the creation of the modern state of Israel was a “fulfillment of Bible prophecy that shows we are getting closer to the return of Jesus Christ.” Some may see this as imminent, others as eventual, though a 2010 Pew poll showed nearly 60 percent of white evangelical Christians in the U.S. expect Jesus Christ to return by 2050.

Premillenarian dispensationalism, which was developed in the late nineteenth century and holds that the world is divided into eras, or dispensations, which will culminate in Christ’s triumphant return.

Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth

Why do Christians want to control female sexuality and reproductive freedom?

Prostitution and pornography

Children and families.

If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support by making a $5 or $10 monthly donation.

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss479_Mark_Weinstein_2024_10_22.mp3

Download MP3

Big Tech is driving us, our kids, and society mad. In the nick of time, Restoring Our Sanity Online presents the bold, revolutionary framework for an epic reboot. What would social media look like if it nourished our critical thinking, mental health, privacy, civil discourse, and democracy? Is that even possible?

Restoring Our Sanity Online is the entertaining, informative, and frequently jaw-dropping social reset by Mark Weinstein, contemporary tech leader, privacy expert, and one of the visionary inventors of social networking.

This book is for all of us. Casual and heavy users of social media, parents, teachers, students, techies, entrepreneurs, investors, and elected officials. Restoring Our Sanity Online is the catapult to an exciting, enriching, and authentic future. Readers will embark on a captivating journey leading to an inspiring and actionable reinvention.

Restoring Our Sanity Online includes thought-provoking insights including:

Empowering You―Social Media User, Content Creator

In The Crosshairs: Privacy And Anonymity

Saving Our Kids From The Abyss

Surprise! Social Media Can Be Good For Your Mental Health

Is AI The High-Tech Tattletale In Your Social Experience?

Lifting the Veil On Bots and Trolls

Facts, Opinions, Lies―Who Decides?

Web3 Is Here―What The Heck Is It?

Mark Weinstein is a world-renowned tech entrepreneur, privacy expert, and one of the visionary inventors of social networking, including SuperFamily and SuperFriends, two of the earliest social networks. In 2016 he founded MeWe, the Facebook alternative with the industry’s first Privacy Bill of Rights. MeWe’s membership grew to nearly 20 million users worldwide, whose advisory board includes Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web; Steve “Woz” Wozniak, co-founder of Apple; Sherry Turkle, MIT academic and tech ethics leader; and Raj Sisodia, co-founder of the Conscious Capitalism movement. Mark is frequently interviewed and published in major media including the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fox, CNN, BBC, PBS, Newsweek, Los Angeles Times, The Hill, and many more worldwide. He covers topics including social media, privacy, AI, free speech, antitrust, and protecting kids online. A leading privacy advocate, Mark’s landmark 2020 TED Talk, “The Rise of Surveillance Capitalism,” exposed the many infractions and manipulations by Big Tech, and called for a privacy revolution. Mark has also been listed as one of the “Top 8 Minds in Online Privacy” and named “Privacy by Design Ambassador” by the Canadian government. His new book is Restoring Our Sanity Online: A Revolutionary Social Framework.

Shermer and Weinstein discuss:

Amid growing concerns over targeting, bullying, hate, boosted misinformation, bots and trolls, AI, privacy violations, and democracy disruption, can we really “restore our sanity online?”

As an early inventor of social networking, have you been shocked by the direction social media has taken since launching SuperFamily and SuperFriends in 1998?

How do we combat the mental health crisis associated with social media, particularly among teens?

How can parents take charge of the runaway train which is their kids on social media?

You’ve said the Surgeon General’s recommendation of putting warning labels on social media won’t be effective at protecting kids. What will?

Your book has a chapter that says social media can be good for our mental health … You must be kidding!

As Meta, X, Snap, and other Big Tech increasingly utilize AI, how will AI impact the future of social media?

How will AI chatbots and “AI Friends” affect our personal relationships?

Web3 promises to fix the problems with social media—privacy, data ownership, elimination of targeting, etc. What should people know about Web3? Is that too good to be true?

How do you envision the future of privacy and anonymity on social media?

How do we defeat bots and trolls? Are they going to destroy democracy?

While conducting research for the book, how did you discover the shared patterns between Big Agriculture, Big Energy, and Big Tech?

What lessons can be gleaned from Big Ag and Big Energy that we can apply to Big Tech?

The book’s subtitle is “A Revolutionary Social Framework” and in chapter seven you introduce “Restoration Networks.” What’s so revolutionary about these?

Why should social platforms create a more equitable creator economy?

How can the tenets of Conscious Capitalism, often associated with retail companies like Patagonia, be applied to social networks?

Can social media really function successfully without Surveillance Capitalism?

If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support by making a $5 or $10 monthly donation.

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss478_Neal_Stephenson_2024_10_18.mp3

Download MP3

Neal Stephenson is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the novels Termination Shock, Fall; or, Dodge in Hell, Seveneves, Reamde, Anathem, The System of the World, The Confusion, Quicksilver, Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, Snow Crash, and Zodiac, and the groundbreaking nonfiction work In the Beginning … Was the Command Line. He is also the coauthor, with Nicole Galland, of The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. His works of speculative fiction have been variously categorized as science fiction, historical fiction, maximalism, cyberpunk, and post-cyberpunk. In his fiction, he explores fields such as mathematics, cryptography, philosophy, currency, and the history of science. Born in Fort Meade, Maryland (home of the NSA and the National Cryptologic Museum), Stephenson comes from a family comprising engineers and hard scientists he dubs “propeller heads.” He holds a degree in geography and physics from Boston University, where he spent a great deal of time on the university mainframe. He lives in Seattle, Washington. As The Atlantic has recently observed, “Perhaps no writer has been more clairvoyant about our current technological age than Neal Stephenson. His novels coined the term metaverse, laid the conceptual groundwork for cryptocurrency, and imagined a geoengineered planet. And nearly three decades before the release of ChatGPT, he presaged the current AI revolution.” His new novel is Polostan, the first installment in his Bomb Light cycle.

Shermer and Stephenson discuss:

How to write professionally

How to write science fiction and fantasy

How lives turn out: genes, environment and luck

How so much of history is contingent

No Hitler, No Atomic Bomb

How the bomb was developed and why

The ethics of dropping the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

The Hobbesian Trap, Security Dilemma, and the Other Guy Problem and the bomb

Mutual Assured Destruction and why it has worked (so far)

Cryptocurrency

AI, ChatGPT, and the Singularity

Mind uploading

Human evolution and the far future of humanity

What type of political and economic systems will we have on Mars?

Charles Sanders Peirce and the philosophy of Fallibilism

Platonic realism.

If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support by making a $5 or $10 monthly donation.

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss477_Terry_Sejnowski_2024_10_15.mp3

Download MP3

In ChatGPT and the Future of AI, the sequel to The Deep Learning Revolution, Terrence Sejnowski offers a nuanced exploration of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and what their future holds. How should we go about understanding LLMs? Do these language models truly understand what they are saying? Or is it possible that what appears to be intelligence in LLMs may be a mirror that merely reflects the intelligence of the interviewer? In this book, Sejnowski, a pioneer in computational approaches to understanding brain function, answers all our urgent questions about this astonishing new technology.

Sejnowski begins by describing the debates surrounding LLMs’ comprehension of language and exploring the notions of “thinking” and “intelligence.” He then takes a deep dive into the historical evolution of language models, focusing on the role of transformers, the correlation between computing power and model size, and the intricate mathematics shaping LLMs. Sejnowski also provides insight into the historical roots of LLMs and discusses the potential future of AI, focusing on next-generation LLMs inspired by nature and the importance of developing energy-efficient technologies.

Grounded in Sejnowski’s dual expertise in AI and neuroscience, ChatGPT and the Future of AI is the definitive guide to understanding the intersection of AI and human intelligence.

Terrence J. Sejnowski is Francis Crick Chair at The Salk Institute for Biological Studies and Distinguished Professor at the University of California at San Diego. He has published over 500 scientific papers and 12 books, including The Computational Brain with Patricia Churchland. He was instrumental in shaping the BRAIN Initiative that was announced by the White House in 2013, and he received the prestigious Gruber Prize in Neuroscience in 2022.

Sejnowski and Shermer discuss:

Large Language Models

ChatGPT, GPT-4, GPT-5 and beyond

What is AI and AGI?

The alignment problem

What set of values should AI be aligned with, and what legal and ethical status should it have?

What is thinking?

How brains evolved

Reverse engineering brains

How language evolved

Artificial intelligence and natural intelligence

Emotions, mind, and sentience

What is “mind”, “thinking”, and “consciousness”, and how do molecules and matter give rise to such nonmaterial processes?

The hard problem of consciousness

The self and other minds

How would we know if an AI system was sentient?

Can AI systems be conscious?

Does Watson know that it beat the great Ken Jennings in Jeopardy!?

Self-driving cars

What set of values should AI be aligned with, and what legal and ethical status should it

AI as an existential threat

Why there is no such thing as “the” singularity. There are lots of them and we’ve already experienced them and will continue to do so.

If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support by making a $5 or $10 monthly donation.