007 Licence to Feel with Richard Firth-Godbehere

Richard Firth-Godbehere is an independent researcher and consultant in the history, language, and science of emotions. He is also a witty, entertaining, charismatic, and "occasionally funny" man. This conversation goes "all over the place" with stops at: 01:50 – Feelings throughout history and the changing vocabulary to describe them 04:15 – Narrating one's own book 07:15 – Convergent evolution in different religions' stance on desires 11:33 – Ashoka the Great and Buddha "the fat guy" 16:45 – Abiding neurotransmitters and their role in emotions 19:05 – Defining love 21:07 – Reading Marcus Aurelius vs laughing at proto-scientific papers on evolution 22:05 – Scientists moving things forward (despite lacking in eloquence) 25:20 – Desire-led need to know things and the scientific revolution 26:44 – Emotions in decision making and the archetype of Mr. Spock 33:30 – Chipping away at jobs, task by task; paying humans to observe their emotions 35:35 – Emotions being the hardest nut to crack in creating genuine "General AI"; needing bigger "roomfuls of computers" 38:25 – Solipsism 2.0 and the future of emotions 39:05 – Passing the Turing test vs being sentient 43:50 – Digital communications and the wielding of one's "offendedness level" as an argument 47:05 – Getting freaked out by new information technology, on a global and historical level 48:25 – Changing culture of letter-writing and interpersonal communication (and the oxytocin connection) 51:45 – Pursuing copycat happiness and letting Instagram and TikTok be our guide doing it 54:30 – Modern art, filters, attention, and social media apps 57:15 – TikTok being better than YouTube at guessing the user's interests 61:20 – Computers telling us what we really want Links: Richard Firth-Godbehere: @DrRichFG KMO: @Kayemmo | padverb.com/kmo Comments? Join our Telegram channel: t.me/padverbpodcast