111 | Nick Bostrom on Anthropic Selection and Living in a Simulation

111 | Nick Bostrom on Anthropic Selection and Living in a Simulation

Human civilization is only a few thousand years old (depending on how we count). So if civilization will ultimately last for millions of years, it could be considered surprising that we've found ourselves so early in history. Should we therefore predict that human civilization will probably disappear within a few thousand years? This "Doomsday Argument" shares a family resemblance to ideas used by many professional cosmologists to judge whether a model of the universe is natural or not. Philosopher Nick Bostrom is the world's expert on these kinds of anthropic arguments. We talk through them, leading to the biggest doozy of them all: the idea that our perceived reality might be a computer simulation being run by enormously more powerful beings.

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Nick Bostrom received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the London School of Economics. He also has bachelor's degrees in philosophy, mathematics, logic, and artificial intelligence from the University of Gothenburg, an M.A. in philosophy and physics from the University of Stockholm, and an M.Sc. in computational neuroscience from King's College London. He is currently a Professor of Applied Ethics at the University of Oxford, Director of the Oxford Future of Humanity Institute, and Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology. He is the author of Anthropic Bias: Selection Effects in Science and Philosophy and Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies.


Jaksot(416)

Holiday Message 2019: On Publishing Books

Holiday Message 2019: On Publishing Books

Welcome to the second annual Mindscape Holiday Message! No substantive content or deep ideas, just me talking a bit about the state of the podcast and what's on my mind. Since the big event for me in ...

22 Joulu 20191h 6min

77 | Azra Raza on The Way We Should Fight Cancer

77 | Azra Raza on The Way We Should Fight Cancer

In the United States, more than one in five deaths is caused by cancer. The medical community has put enormous resources into fighting this disease, yet its causes and best treatments continue to be a...

16 Joulu 20191h 22min

76 | Ned Hall on Possible Worlds and the Laws of Nature

76 | Ned Hall on Possible Worlds and the Laws of Nature

It's too easy to take laws of nature for granted. Sure, gravity is pulling us toward Earth today; but how do we know it won't be pushing us away tomorrow? We extrapolate from past experience to future...

9 Joulu 20191h 25min

75 | Max Tegmark on Reality, Simulation, and the Multiverse

75 | Max Tegmark on Reality, Simulation, and the Multiverse

We've talked a lot recently about the Many Worlds of quantum mechanics. That's one kind of multiverse that physicists often contemplate. There is also the cosmological multiverse, which we talked abou...

2 Joulu 20191h 11min

74 | Stephen Greenblatt on Stories, History, and Cultural Poetics

74 | Stephen Greenblatt on Stories, History, and Cultural Poetics

An infinite number of things happen; we bring structure and meaning to the world by making art and telling stories about it. Every work of literature created by human beings comes out of an historical...

25 Marras 20191h 6min

73 | Grimes (c) on Music, Creativity, and Digital Personae

73 | Grimes (c) on Music, Creativity, and Digital Personae

Changing technologies have always affected how we produce and enjoy art, and music might be the most obvious example. Radio and recordings made it easy for professional music to be widely disseminated...

18 Marras 20191h 18min

72 | César Hidalgo on Information in Societies, Economies, and the Universe

72 | César Hidalgo on Information in Societies, Economies, and the Universe

Maxwell's Demon is a famous thought experiment in which a mischievous imp uses knowledge of the velocities of gas molecules in a box to decrease the entropy of the gas, which could then be used to do ...

11 Marras 20191h 16min

71 | Philip Goff on Consciousness Everywhere

71 | Philip Goff on Consciousness Everywhere

The human brain contains roughly 85 billion neurons, wired together in an extraordinarily complex network of interconnected parts. It's hardly surprising that we don't understand the mind and how it w...

4 Marras 20191h 34min

Suosittua kategoriassa Tiede

rss-poliisin-mieli
rss-mita-tulisi-tietaa
tiedekulma-podcast
docemilia
rss-luontopodi-samuel-glassar-tutkii-luonnon-ihmeita
rss-duodecim-lehti
radio-antro
utelias-mieli
filocast-filosofian-perusteet
rss-lapsuuden-rakentajat-podcast
rss-lihavuudesta-podcast
rss-sosiopodi