Rationally Speaking #169 - Owen Cotton-Barratt on "Thinking About Humanity's Far Future"
What can we do now to affect whether humanity is still around in 1000 years (and what life will be like then)? In this episode, Julia talks with Owen Cotton-Barratt, a mathematician at Oxford's Future...
3 Jan 202144min
Rationally Speaking #168 - Don Moore on "Overconfidence"
This episode features a chat with Don Moore, professor of management of organizations at the University of California Berkeley's Haas School of Business, and an expert in overconfidence. Don and Julia...
3 Jan 202143min
Rationally Speaking #167 - Samuel Arbesman on "Why technology is becoming too complex"
As the technology we rely on every day becomes increasingly sophisticated, it's getting to the point where it's too complicated to understand -- not just for individual users, but for any human at all...
3 Jan 202148min
Rationally Speaking #166 - Eric Schwitzgebel on "Why you should expect the truth to be crazy"
Some theories violate common sense so wildly that you want to just reject them out of hand. For example, "The United States is conscious," or "The most moral act would be to replace all living beings ...
3 Jan 202152min
Rationally Speaking #165 - Robert Frank on "Success and Luck"
If someone asks you, "What caused your success (in finance, your career, etc.)?" what probably comes to mind for you is a story about how you worked hard and made smart choices. Which is likely true -...
3 Jan 202151min
Rationally Speaking #164 - James Evans on "Using meta-knowledge to learn how science works"
Has science gotten slower over the years? Does the proliferation of jargon make it harder for scientists to collaborate? What unstated assumptions -- "ghost theories" -- are shaping our research witho...
3 Jan 202145min
Rationally Speaking #163 - Gregg Caruso on "Free Will and Moral Responsibility"
If people don't have free will, then can we be held morally responsible for our actions? And what would happen to society if we were to collectively shed our belief in free will? In this episode Julia...
3 Jan 202157min
Rationally Speaking #162 - Sean Carroll on "Poetic Naturalism"
Naturalism is the stance that everything that exists in the universe arises from "natural" causes, of the sort observable by science -- not supernatural ones. It's practically a foundational tenet of ...
3 Jan 202148min
