Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas25 Tammi 2021

131 | Avi Loeb on Taking Aliens Seriously

The possible existence of technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilizations — not just alien microbes, but cultures as advanced (or much more) than our own — is one of the most provocative questions in modern science. So provocative that it's difficult to talk about the idea in a rational, dispassionate way; there are those who loudly insist that the probability of advanced alien cultures existing is essentially one, even without direct evidence, and others are so exhausted by overblown claims in popular media that they want to squelch any such talk. Astronomer Avi Loeb thinks we should be taking this possibility seriously, so much so that he suggested that the recent interstellar interloper `Oumuamua might be a spaceship built by aliens. That got him in a lot of trouble. We talk about the trouble, about `Oumuamua, and the attitude scientists should take toward provocative ideas.

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Abraham (Avi) Loeb received his Ph.D. in plasma physics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is currently the Frank B. Baird Jr. professor of science at Harvard University. He served as the Chair of Harvard's Astronomy department from 2011-2020. He is Director of the Institute for Theory and Computation of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and Founding Director of Harvard's Black Hole Initiative. He is chair of the Advisory Committee for the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative. His new book is Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth.

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189 | Brian Klaas on Power and the Temptation of Corruption

All societies grant more power to some citizens, and there is always a temptation to use that power for the benefit of themselves rather than for the greater good. Power corrupts, we are told — but to...

21 Maalis 20221h 22min

AMA | March 2022

Welcome to the March 2022 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). I take the large number of quest...

17 Maalis 20223h 18min

188 | Arik Kershenbaum on What Aliens Will Be Like

If extraterrestrial life is out there — not just microbial slime, but big, complex, macroscopic organisms — what will they be like? Movies have trained us to think that they won't be that different at...

14 Maalis 20221h 21min

187 | Andrew Leigh on the Politics of Looming Disasters

We're pretty well-calibrated when it comes to dealing with common, everyday-level setbacks. But our brains aren't naturally equipped for dealing with unlikely but world-catastrophic disasters. Yet suc...

7 Maalis 20221h 20min

186 | Sherry Turkle on How Technology Affects Our Humanity

Advances in technology have gradually been extending the human self beyond its biological extent, as we augment who we are with a variety of interconnected devices. There are obvious benefits to this ...

28 Helmi 20221h 11min

185 | Arvid Ågren on the Gene's-Eye View of Evolution

One of the brilliant achievements of Darwin's theory of natural selection was to help explain apparently "purposeful" or "designed" aspects of biology in a purely mechanistic theory of unguided evolut...

21 Helmi 20221h 25min

184 | Gary Marcus on Artificial Intelligence and Common Sense

Artificial intelligence is everywhere around us. Deep-learning algorithms are used to classify images, suggest songs to us, and even to drive cars. But the quest to build truly "human" artificial inte...

14 Helmi 20221h 24min

AMA | February 2022

Welcome to the February 2022 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). I take the large number of qu...

10 Helmi 20224h 15min