111 | Nick Bostrom on Anthropic Selection and Living in a Simulation

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 quest...

25 Jan 20211h 40min

What is the world made of? How does it behave? These questions, aimed at the most basic level of reality, are the subject of fundamental physics. What counts as fundamental is somewhat contestable, bu...

18 Jan 20211h 16min

The first full week of 2021 has been action-packed for those of us in the United States of America, for reasons you're probably aware of, including a riotous mob storming the US Capitol. The situation...

11 Jan 20211h 43min

We all know stereotypes about people from different countries; but we also recognize that there really are broad cultural differences between people who grow up in different societies. This raises a c...

4 Jan 20211h 27min

Welcome to the third annual Mindscape Holiday Message! Just a chance for me to be a little more chatty and informal than usual, although as it turned out this isn't all that different from a conventio...

21 Dec 20201h 31min

Many characteristics go into making human beings special — brain size, opposable thumbs, etc. Surely one of the most important is language, and in particular the ability to learn new sounds and use th...

14 Dec 20201h 15min

Getting into the swing of things here with monthly Ask Me Anything episodes. If you missed the explanation last month, there is a Patreon page for people who wish to support Mindscape with a small don...

9 Dec 20203h 24min

Those of us living in democracies tend to take the idea for granted. We forget what an audacious, radical idea it is to put government power into the hands of literally all of the citizens of a countr...

7 Dec 20201h 25min