The Michael Shermer Show7 Mar 2023

330. Jim Davies — How to Be a Better Person

Why do we feel like in order to be productive, happy, or good, we must sacrifice everything else? Is it possible to feel all three at once? Without even knowing it, we're doing things everyday to sabotage ourselves and our societies, habits that prevent us from optimizing long term happiness. Where most books imagine solutions that, when enacted, fail to fundamentally improve our lives, Jim Davies grounds his research in cognitive science to show you not only what works, but how much it works. Being the Person Your Dog Thinks You Are shows us how we can use science to become our best selves, using resources we already have within our own brains.

Shermer and Davies discuss: • an operational definition of the "good life" or "happiness" or "well being" • utilitarianism vs. deontology vs. virtue ethics • effective altruism • marriage and children • objective moral values • Do we have a moral obligation to help those who cannot help themselves? • Does America have a moral obligation to help oppressed peoples in dictatorships? • immigration • abortion • the welfare state • prostitution • reparations.

Jim Davies is a full professor at the Institute of Cognitive Science at Carleton University and the School of Computer Science. He is the director of the Science of Imagination Laboratory and he co-hosts, along with Dr. Kim Hellemans, the podcast Minding the Brain. He is the author of Riveted: The Science of Why Jokes Make Us Laugh, Movies Make Us Cry, and Religion Makes Us Feel One with the Universe; Imagination: The Science of Your Mind's Greatest Power, and his new book Being the Person Your Dog Thinks You Are: The Science of a Better You. He lives in Ottawa, Canada.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(640)

Why America Failed to Stop 9/11 | Gerald Posner & Michael Shermer

How did 19 hijackers evade the world's most advanced intelligence apparatus despite years of warnings? Twenty-five years after 9/11, journalist Gerald Posner joins Michael Shermer to explain the secur...

11 Sep 42min

Why Be Honest When Cheating Pays?

Most of us think of ourselves as honest. But would we still tell the truth if lying got us what we wanted—and nobody would ever find out? Philosopher Christian Miller joins Michael Shermer to discuss ...

9 Sep 1h 45min

Is the Future Unknowable? Uncertainty, Free Will, and the Limits of Science

What if uncertainty isn't a temporary problem science will eventually solve, but a fundamental feature of reality? Neuroscientist Stuart Firestein joins Michael Shermer to make the case that the unive...

1 Sep 1h 23min

Why We Want to Believe in Aliens and Why We Still Haven't Found Them

UFOs were once the stuff of tabloids and conspiracy theories. Today they're the subject of congressional hearings, Pentagon investigations, mainstream news coverage, and a new wave of claims about gov...

25 Aug 1h 13min

Is There a Second Arrow of Time? A New Law of Evolution, Information, and Complexity

Why does the universe produce ever more elaborate forms, from atoms and minerals to cells, organisms, brains, technology, and civilization? The familiar laws of physics can explain much of what happen...

18 Aug 1h 18min

Why Good People Disagree About Right and Wrong

Why do reasonable people disagree so strongly about right and wrong? And why are we so quick to assume that people on the other side of a moral or political issue are irrational, selfish, ignorant, or...

11 Aug 1h 57min

Are We Building a God? AI, Superintelligence, and the Coming Singularity

Robert Wright joins Michael Shermer to discuss his new book, The God Test: Artificial Intelligence and Our Coming Cosmic Reckoning, and why he thinks the AI revolution may be moving much faster than m...

5 Aug 1h 22min

Can You Trust Wikipedia? Co-Founder Larry Sanger on Wikipedia's Bias and Why He Was Banned

Michael Shermer speaks with Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger shortly after Sanger was permanently banned from editing the site he helped create. Sanger tells the story of Wikipedia's founding, how it...

30 Jul 2h 3min