Breaking Out of a Black-and-White World (with Brook Ziporyn and Bing Song)

We live in a culture that flattens the world into yes or no. Hot takes and hard binaries promise simplicity. But complexity is leaking through the cracks. Opposites depend on each other. If you try to tease out the uncertain from the certain, you destroy the reality of the thing itself. In this episode, Taoist scholar Brook Ziporyn makes the case that Taoism and Buddhism aren’t puzzles to solve but tools for living. Reckoning with Eastern paradoxes can help us navigate the desire to end desire. Modern science has unlocked humanity's potential to see the emptiness of both the far-away universe and the vast space within the building blocks of matter. Buddhism and Taoism give us the capacity to reckon with the fact that there is "no there there." Resources Daodejing (Tao Te Ching) — Laozi; translated/edited by Brook Ziporyn (Book, 2023) Zhuangzi: The Complete Writings — translated by Brook Ziporyn (Book, 2020) Emptiness and Omnipresence: An Essential Introduction to Tiantai Buddhism — Brook Ziporyn (Book, 2016) Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid — Douglas R. Hofstadter (Book, 1979) Find Professor Brook Ziporyn here: https://divinity.uchicago.edu/directory/brook-ziporyn https://voices.uchicago.edu/ziporyn/ Want to share suggestions or feedback? Email futurology@berggruen.org Keep up to Date with the Berggruen Institute at: https://www.berggruen.org Instagram: /futurologypod Twitter/X: / futurologypod Facebook: / berggrueninst LinkedIn: / berggrueninst Bluesky: / futurologypod Youtube: / berggrueninst Credits Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, and Jason Hoch. Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, and Nathalia Ramos. Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney Theme Music: Marcus Bagala Audio Engineer: Aaron Bastinelli & Kyle Scott Wilson Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

Det här avsnittet är hämtat från ett öppet RSS-flöde och publiceras inte av Podme. Det kan innehålla reklam.

Avsnitt(50)

There's No Such Thing as a Free Agent (with Gillian Tett and Dawn Nakagawa)

One value proposition of AI is a personalized assistant at your fingertips. Every Average Joe can now have a “pocket pixie," the kind of perk once reserved for Hollywood stars and high-powered CEOs. B...

11 Aug 1h 7min

We're Winning the Race to Replace Ourselves (with Tristan Harris and Dawn Nakagawa)

The people racing to build artificial general intelligence tell us this rush to the future is inevitable. It reads like a forecast, but works like an alibi. If nothing can stop the race, then no one d...

4 Aug 51min

Is It Awareness All the Way Down? (with Annaka Harris and Grant Slater)

Science studies the world from the outside. But for thousands of years, meditators have been running a different experiment: sit still, pay close attention, and watch what reality does. The results of...

30 Juli 2h 7min

Can We Move Fast and Fix Things? (with Reid Hoffman and Dawn Nakagawa)

For 20 years, Silicon Valley's operating creed was 'move fast and break things'; the wreckage was the price of inventing the future. Today, we live amid that wreckage: institutions built for the last ...

21 Juli 1h 4min

The AI CEOs Are Terrified of Themselves (with Stuart Russell and Nils Gilman)

This year, two powerful AI CEOs said they want to stop building it and will… if everyone else agrees to stop too. Yet they race ahead with stock market valuations premised on making millions of worker...

14 Juli 1h 23min

Our Machines Evolved From Us (with Blaise Agüera y Arcas and Carlo Rovelli)

The machines were supposed to come from somewhere else as invaders. An alien intelligence, hellbent robots, a rival species. But nothing’s arrived. Instead, the machines came out of us, the same way o...

7 Juli 1h 23min

You Have Plenty to Hide From AI (with Meredith Whittaker and Nils Gilman)

Today’s tech industry can’t survive without mass surveillance. The US government, foreign powers, and ad brokers can buy a nuanced picture of you on the open market for pennies on the dollar. What kep...

30 Juni 50min

On Love and Quantum Physics (with Carlo Rovelli and Claire Webb)

We treat the self as bedrock. But look closely, and the ground gives way. Over the last century, quantum physics has systematically dismantled the illusion of a constant, solid material reality. A par...

23 Juni 1h 14min