85 | L.A. Paul on Transformative Experiences and Your Future Selves

85 | L.A. Paul on Transformative Experiences and Your Future Selves

It's hard to make decisions that will change your life. It's even harder to make a decision if you know that the outcome could change who you are. Our preferences are determined by who we are, and they might be quite different after a decision is made — and there's no rational way of taking that into account. Philosopher L.A. Paul has been investigating these transformative experiences — from getting married, to having a child, to going to graduate school — with an eye to deciding how to live in the face of such choices. Of course we can ask people who have made such a choice what they think, but that doesn't tell us whether the choice is a good one from the standpoint of our current selves, those who haven't taken the plunge. We talk about what this philosophical conundrum means for real-world decisions, attitudes towards religious faith, and the tricky issue of what it means to be authentic to yourself when your "self" keeps changing over time.

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L.A. (Laurie) Paul received her Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton University. She is currently professor of philosophy and cognitive science at Yale University. She has worked extensively on causation, the philosophy of time, mereology, and transformative experience. She has won fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Humanities Center, and the Australian National University. Among her books are the monograph Transformative Experience; she is currently working on a popular-level book on this theme.


Jaksot(415)

69 | Cory Doctorow on Technology, Monopoly, and the Future of the Internet

69 | Cory Doctorow on Technology, Monopoly, and the Future of the Internet

Like so many technological innovations, the internet is something that burst on the scene and pervaded human life well before we had time to sit down and think through how something like that should w...

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68 | Melanie Mitchell on Artificial Intelligence and the Challenge of Common Sense

68 | Melanie Mitchell on Artificial Intelligence and the Challenge of Common Sense

Artificial intelligence is better than humans at playing chess or go, but still has trouble holding a conversation or driving a car. A simple way to think about the discrepancy is through the lens of ...

14 Loka 20191h 22min

67 | Kate Jeffery on Entropy, Complexity, and Evolution

67 | Kate Jeffery on Entropy, Complexity, and Evolution

Our observable universe started out in a highly non-generic state, one of very low entropy, and disorderliness has been growing ever since. How, then, can we account for the appearance of complex syst...

7 Loka 20191h 12min

66 | Will Wilkinson on Partisan Polarization and the Urban/Rural Divide

66 | Will Wilkinson on Partisan Polarization and the Urban/Rural Divide

The idea of "red states" and "blue states" burst on the scene during the 2000 U.S. Presidential elections, and has a been a staple of political commentary ever since. But it's become increasingly clea...

30 Syys 20191h 52min

65 | Michael Mann on Why Our Climate Is Changing and How We Know

65 | Michael Mann on Why Our Climate Is Changing and How We Know

We had our fun last week, exploring how progress in renewable energy and electric vehicles may help us combat encroaching climate change. This week we're being a bit more hard-nosed, taking a look at ...

23 Syys 20191h 17min

64 | Ramez Naam on Renewable Energy and an Optimistic Future

64 | Ramez Naam on Renewable Energy and an Optimistic Future

The Earth is heating up, and it's our fault. But human beings are not always complete idiots (occasional contrary evidence notwithstanding), and sometimes we can even be downright clever. Dare we imag...

16 Syys 20191h 16min

63 | Solo -- Finding Gravity Within Quantum Mechanics

63 | Solo -- Finding Gravity Within Quantum Mechanics

I suspect most loyal Mindscape listeners have been exposed to the fact that I've written a new book, Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime. As I release this episode o...

9 Syys 20191h 50min

62 | Michele Gelfand on Tight and Loose Societies and People

62 | Michele Gelfand on Tight and Loose Societies and People

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