318: Jen Howk on Buddhism, Philosophy, The Matrix, Simulations, and Sentience

Social scientist, Jen Howk, PhD discuss the following topics:

1. I loved your last podcast about Buddhism and other perspectives in psychology. I'd love to hear more of your perspectives on spirituality such as how you would describe the personality profiles of popular gurus Byron Katie and Eckhart Tolle. They both claim to have been in close to catatonic states of misery/depression, suicidal and then overnight, woke up enlightened. If it's not enlightenment, what are they experiencing? I'd also like to hear your views on other personality profiles such as influencers who end up being con artist and other weird, modern day criminals.
2. Can all personality types be equally happy if they apply diligent effort to worthwhile goals? ie all other things being equal, would a low conscientiousness individual be as happy as a high conscientiousness individual if they both applied their version of diligent effort and equally felt they hadn't left 'anything on the table' (despite those levels of effort and results being very different)
3. I am curious how you would define a "sentient" organism. Does sentience even exist? If we are simply a system of electrical signals that indicates our next action based on a pre-programmed reward/punishment function, then are we truly more "sentient" than the AI personalities currently being built by OpenAI and Google, etc? How and where do we draw the line between an organism or machine that is sentient and one that is not? Do you think this should any implications for the construction and ownership of AI personalities and computer-based neural networks?

   Copyright Beat Your Genes Podcast

   Host: Nathan Gershfeld

   Interviewee: Jen Howk, Ph.D.

   Podcast website: www.BeatYourGenes.org

   True to Life seminars with Dr. Lisle and Dr. Howk : www.TrueToLife.us

   Intro & outro song: City of Happy Ones · Ferenc Hegedus