Octopuses, artificial intelligence, and advanced alien civilizations: for many reasons, it's interesting to contemplate ways of thinking other than whatever it is we humans do. How should we think about the space of all possible cognitions? One aspect is simply the physics of the underlying substrate, the physical stuf

David Deutsch is one of the most creative scientific thinkers working today, who has as a goal to understand and explain the natural world as best we can. He was a pioneer in quantum computing, and has long been an advocate of the Everett interpretation of quantum theory. He is also the inventor of constructor theory,

Our planet and its environment are in bad shape, in all sorts of ways. Those of us who want to improve the situation face a dilemma. On the one hand, we have to be forceful and clear-headed about how the bad the situation actually is. On the other, we don't want to give the impression that things are so bad that it's h

Sean Carroll is a quantum physicist, who has written several books explaining the complexity of his topic to general readers. Show notes: Sean Carroll (https://www.preposterousuniverse.com) Mindscape Podcast (https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/) Hijack (https://tv.apple.com/us/show/hijack/umc.cmc.1dg08zn0g3zx

Why is the past different from the future? Neil deGrasse Tyson and Chuck Nice explore the universe’s deepest questions like why is there anything, what is the present, and if there could be a unified theory of physics with theoretical physicist Sean Carroll. For more information about the new book: https://startalkmedi

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/08/21/247-samuel-bowles-on-economics-cooperation-and-inequality/ Economics, much like thermodynamics, is a story of collective behavior arising from the interactions of many individual constituents. The big difference is that in economics, the