Best Of: Why Sci-Fi Legend Ted Chiang Fears Capitalism, Not A.I.

Best Of: Why Sci-Fi Legend Ted Chiang Fears Capitalism, Not A.I.

For years, I’ve kept a list of dream guests for this show. And as long as that list has existed, Ted Chiang has been atop it.

Chiang is a science fiction writer. But that undersells him. He has released two short story collections over 20 years — 2002’s “Stories of Your Life and Others” and 2019’s “Exhalation.” Those stories have won more awards than I can list, and one of them was turned into the film “Arrival.” They are remarkable pieces of work: Each is built around a profound scientific, philosophical or religious idea, and then the story or the story structure is shaped to represent that idea. They are wonders of precision and craft. But unlike a lot of science fiction, they are never cold. Chiang’s work is deeply, irrepressibly humane.

I’ve always wondered about the mind that would create Chiang’s stories. And in this conversation, originally released in March 2021, I got to watch it in action. Chiang doesn’t like to talk about himself. But he does like to talk about ideas. And so we do: We discuss the difference between magic and technology, why superheroes fight crime but ignore injustice, what it would do to the human psyche if we knew the future is fixed, whether free will exists, whether we’d want to know the exact date of our deaths, why Chiang fears what humans will do to artificial intelligence more than what A.I. will do to humans, the way capitalism turns people against technology, and much more.

The ideas Chiang offered in this conversation are still ringing in my head months later, and changing the way I see the world. It’s worth taking your time with this one.

Recommendations:

"Creation" by Steve Grand

"On the Measure of Intelligence" by Francois Chollet

"CivilWarLand in Bad Decline" by George Saunders

"A Visit from the Goon Squad" by Jennifer Egan

"Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise" (movie)

"On Fragile Waves" by Lily Yu

"Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" by Annie Dillard

Control (video game)

Return of the Obra Dinn (video game)

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.

“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Alison Bruzek.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.


Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Avsnitt(489)

A Realist Take on How the Russia-Ukraine War Could End

A Realist Take on How the Russia-Ukraine War Could End

As we enter the fourth week of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many of the possible pathways this conflict could take are terrifying. A military quagmire that leads to protracted death and suffering. A ...

18 Mars 20221h 14min

Timothy Snyder on the Myths That Blinded the West to Putin’s Plans

Timothy Snyder on the Myths That Blinded the West to Putin’s Plans

“Americans and Europeans were guided through the new century by a tale about ‘the end of history,’ by what I will call the politics of inevitability, a sense that the future is just more of the presen...

15 Mars 20221h 11min

Masha Gessen on Putin’s 'Profoundly Anti-Modern’ Worldview

Masha Gessen on Putin’s 'Profoundly Anti-Modern’ Worldview

For Western audiences, the past few weeks have been a torrent of information about what’s happening in Russia and Ukraine. Daily updates of Russian military advances. Horrifying videos of buildings ex...

11 Mars 20221h 1min

Fiona Hill on the War Putin Is Really Fighting

Fiona Hill on the War Putin Is Really Fighting

Vladimir Putin was looking for a swift invasion that would halt Ukraine’s drift toward the West, reveal NATO’s fractures and weaknesses and solidify Russia as a global power. In response, the West thr...

8 Mars 202258min

Fareed Zakaria Has a Better Way to Handle Russia — and China

Fareed Zakaria Has a Better Way to Handle Russia — and China

“Russia’s utterly unprovoked, unjustifiable, immoral invasion of Ukraine would seem to mark the end of an era,” writes Fareed Zakaria, “one that began with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.”Many of...

4 Mars 20221h 5min

Can the West Stop Russia by Strangling its Economy?

Can the West Stop Russia by Strangling its Economy?

There’s the Russia-Ukraine war that’s easy to follow in the news right now. We can watch Russian bombs falling on Ukraine, see Russian tanks smoking on the side of the road, hear from Ukrainian resist...

1 Mars 20221h 35min

A Philosophy of Games That Is Really a Philosophy of Life

A Philosophy of Games That Is Really a Philosophy of Life

When we play Monopoly or basketball, we know we are playing a game. The stakes are low. The rules are silly. The point system is arbitrary. But what if life is full of games — ones with much higher st...

25 Feb 20221h 12min

Best Of: Stop. Breathe. We Can’t Keep Working Like This.

Best Of: Stop. Breathe. We Can’t Keep Working Like This.

We were promised, with the internet, a productivity revolution. We were told that we’d get more done, in less time, with less stress. Instead, we got always-on communication, the dissolution of the bo...

22 Feb 202254min

Populärt inom Politik & nyheter

aftonbladet-krim
svenska-fall
p3-krim
rss-krimstad
fordomspodden
rss-expressen-dok
flashback-forever
rss-sanning-konsekvens
motiv
aftonbladet-daily
spar
rss-vad-fan-hande
blenda-2
olyckan-inifran
rss-krimreportrarna
rss-frandfors-horna
rss-flodet
dagens-eko
svd-ledarredaktionen
grans