Topical Storm

We take on the harrowing topic of existential risk and examine the many ways that things could go very badly for humanity. On the bright side, Nick Bostrom is always an enjoyable read.

It’s widely known that humans tend to sacrifice long term rewards for smaller, more immediate gains. We tackle a less widely disseminated model of behavior called hyperbolic discounting that implies our impulsive decisions have some very surprising characteristics.

We’re back! Today we tackle cryonics, the movement that suggests cryo-preserving the body moments after legal death will enable humanity to one day greatly extend our lifespans.

We have a wacky one for you today! Roko’s Basilisk, a thought experiment grounded in decision theory, suggests that a future AI could be incentivized to punish most of humanity for not helping bring it into existence.

We take a break from heavy philosophy to discuss a fun topic: Jazz! This serves as a good introduction to the genre for any novice jazz listener or player.

Today we have an informal discussion about free will, possibility, and what it means to have agency. This was a fascinating conversation for us and we hope it encourages you to think critically about these topics!

We continue our discussion of anthropic reasoning from last episode by examining a very troubling thought experiment. Can we logically deduce that humanity is doomed?

We return from our hiatus to discuss the Anthropic Principle and its applications to statistical reasoning. How should we think about probability when our own existence is correlated with an events occurrence?

Today we take a look at the political philosophy of one of the 20th century’s most influential thinkers: John Rawls. We discuss his notion of an ideal society and his interpretations of justice. 

We discuss the fascinating interaction between voluntary facial expression and involuntary, fleeting movements known as microexpressions.