Art of the Question

Julius Moorman
  • 0.0 (0)
  • Technology

Conversations about science, technology, philosophy, psychology, self-improvement, media, and culture.

  1. 3d ago

    Is AI Actually Going to Kill Us All? - Prof. Moshe Vardi - #55

    Moshe Y. Vardi is a University Professor at Rice University and one of the most decorated computer scientists alive, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society, with more than 800 papers to his name. This episode was recorded days after Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned and posted that the AI labs are racing to self improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives, warning that AI could kill us all by the end of the decade. Anthropic's own alignment lead Evan Hubinger backed him, putting the odds of human extinction from AI at over 10 percent, and within days Dario Amodei, Sam Altman, Demis Hassabis and Elon Musk all called for an AI slowdown and more regulation. Vardi, who is not an AI doomer, explains why he thinks the extinction panic misses the point, why the AI companies begging to be regulated is not the good news it looks like, and why the dangers that actually keep him up at night are jobs, corporate power and a financial bubble. Expect to learn why Jacob Coxon quit Anthropic and warned AI could kill us all, what Evan Hubinger meant by a 10 percent chance of human extinction, why Amodei, Altman and Musk are suddenly calling for AI regulation, whether that call is genuine or just regulatory capture that locks out competitors, if the honest move for a lab that thinks it could end humanity is simply to stop building, why Vardi says the large corporation is the superintelligence we already failed to control, whether large language models have hit a wall after GPT-4, what recursive self improvement really means and whether it is actually happening, what the OpenAI Hugging Face agent breakout tells us about AI safety, why the 2011 novel The Fear Index predicted rogue AI better than anyone, which jobs AI will replace first, and whether the whole AI boom is a bubble about to burst. Moshe Vardi online: Website: https://www.cs.rice.edu/~vardi/ Rice profile: https://profiles.rice.edu/faculty/moshe-y-vardi Communications of the ACM columns: https://cacm.acm.org/author/moshe-y-vardi/ 0:00 Jacob Coxon quits Anthropic warning AI could kill us 1:00 Recursive self improvement explained 7:08 Is the corporation the real superintelligence 12:47 Has AI hit a wall after GPT-4 19:21 How click through contracts strip your rights 24:44 If AI is so dangerous why don't they just stop 34:35 Why AI companions harm young people 38:10 The novel that predicted rogue AI in 2011 45:28 The jobs AI will replace first 1:04:53 Is the AI boom a bubble about to burst

    Is AI Actually Going to Kill Us All? - Prof. Moshe Vardi - #55

  2. 4d ago

    Are You Still You If Everything Changes? - Prof. Marya Schechtman - #54

    Marya Schechtman is an LAS Distinguished Professor and Chair of Philosophy at the University of Illinois Chicago, and one of the most influential living thinkers on the philosophy of personal identity. She earned her PhD in philosophy from Harvard in 1988 and is also a member of UIC's Laboratory of Integrative Neuroscience, bringing philosophy into direct contact with the brain sciences. She is best known for developing the narrative self-constitution view, the idea that a person becomes who they are by authoring an ongoing story of their own life. In this conversation she uses that framework to work through some of the hardest questions about the self: whether you would still be a person alone on Earth, what a stroke or dementia does to identity, and whether a perfect digital copy of your mind would really be you. In July 2026 she becomes board chair of the American Philosophical Association. Her latest book is The Self: A Very Short Introduction, published by Oxford University Press in 2024. Expect to learn whether you would still be the same person if you were the only human on Earth, what the narrative self actually is and how it differs from having a fixed core, how a life gets its unity the way a story does, why the old overlapping-chain view of identity fails the Ship of Theseus test, how a stroke or dementia reshapes who someone is, what the case of Phineas Gage reveals about personality and identity, why the idea of traveling somewhere to find yourself is confused, how selfhood is something you recalibrate rather than discover, whether a digital or AI copy of your mind would count as you or merely a copy, how mortality quietly structures the way we live, and what a world without death might actually feel like. Marya Schechtman online: Faculty page: https://phil.uic.edu/profiles/schechtman-marya/ Book: The Self: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2024) 00:00 Introduction 13:20 Are you a self alone on Earth 21:51 What the narrative self is 44:03 How brain injury changes identity 58:17 Why you can't find yourself 1:05:45 Sharing the episode 1:06:51 The Midnight Library 1:20:46 Can you copy a mind 1:30:39 Living forever and mortality 1:33:09 Closing thoughts

    Are You Still You If Everything Changes? - Prof. Marya Schechtman - #54

  3. Sep 10

    How Smart is an Octopus Really? - Dr. Piero Amodio - #53

    Piero Amodio is a comparative cognition researcher and staff scientist at the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn in Naples, Italy, where he leads work on the behaviour and intelligence of octopuses. Born in Italy, he studied animal behaviour in Florence and anthropology in Zurich before earning a PhD in psychology at the University of Cambridge under Nicola Clayton, working across octopuses, cuttlefish, and members of the crow family. He is a National Geographic Explorer and appears in the docuseries Octopus, where he argues for caution against reading human-style intelligence into these animals. His research asks not just how clever octopuses are, but why intelligence evolved at all in a short-lived, mostly solitary invertebrate, a puzzle captured in his widely cited paper Grow Smart and Die Young. In conversation he pushes back on the internet hype around octopuses while making the real science even more surprising. Expect to learn whether octopuses really have nine brains and how their arms think for themselves, whether octopuses are curious, how they see the world and change colour to camouflage despite being colourblind, whether octopuses are social, how researchers actually measure octopus intelligence, how an octopus and a fish hunt together and split the catch, why such an intelligent animal lives only a year or two and dies after breeding, why the online hype around octopus intelligence can mislead, whether you can genuinely bond with an octopus the way you would a dog or cat, what the hype gets wrong and what it means for conservation, and where the real frontier of octopus science lies. Piero Amodio online: X: @AmodioPiero Instagram: piero__amodio Institution: Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Naples 0:00 Intro 7:49 Do octopuses have nine brains 15:53 Are octopuses curious 17:37 How octopuses see and camouflage 25:31 Are octopuses social 29:16 Measuring octopus intelligence 32:04 Hunting with fish 38:38 Why they die so young 47:54 The octopus hype 55:20 Can you bond with an octopus 58:08 Hype and conservation 1:04:32 Closing thoughts

    How Smart is an Octopus Really? - Dr. Piero Amodio - #53

  4. Sep 7

    The Neuroscience of Musical Pleasure - Prof. Robert Zatorre - #52

    Robert Zatorre is a cognitive neuroscientist at the Montreal Neurological Institute of McGill University, and one of the founders of the modern science of music and the brain. Born and raised in Buenos Aires, he trained as a musician and an organist before turning to psychology, earning his doctorate at Brown University and doing postdoctoral work with Brenda Milner in Montreal, where he has spent his career studying how the brain turns patterns of sound into meaning and pleasure. He holds a Canada Research Chair in Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience, co-founded the International Laboratory for Brain, Music, and Sound Research (BRAMS), and in 2020 received the Heineken Prize in Cognitive Sciences, the most prestigious science prize in the Netherlands. His lab has published hundreds of papers on pitch, memory, prediction, and the dopamine reward system that makes music feel good. His book From Perception to Pleasure: The Neuroscience of Music and Why We Love It brings that work together for a general reader. Expect to learn why a pattern of sounds with no literal meaning can trigger such strong emotions, how the brain constantly predicts the next note and where tension and resolution come from, why music activates the same ancient reward system as food and sex, why children's songs bore adults while complex music rewards repeat listening, what gambling and music have in common, why you will happily hear a favourite piece forty times but never reread a novel that often, what makes jazz work when it sounds chaotic, why some people feel nothing at all when they hear music, whether familiarity is really what drives musical pleasure, how music changes mood and helps people with Parkinson's and stroke move again, why armies march in step and groups sing together, whether animals can enjoy music, and how a vibrating glove might give music back to people with hearing loss. Robert Zatorre online: Lab website: zlab.mcgill.ca X: @zatorrelab Book: From Perception to Pleasure, Oxford University Press 0:00 Intro 7:25 Why music creates emotion 20:27 Music and the reward system 28:19 The predictability sweet spot 34:38 Why we replay favourite songs 41:21 What makes jazz work 47:05 People who feel nothing from music 53:52 Bidding money on unheard music 59:59 Using music to change mood 1:07:46 Why music makes us move 1:12:36 Can animals enjoy music 1:17:57 Music for hearing loss

    The Neuroscience of Musical Pleasure - Prof. Robert Zatorre - #52

  5. Sep 3

    The Exciting Science of Boredom - Prof. James Danckert - #51

    James Danckert is a cognitive neuroscientist and Professor of Psychology at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, and one of the world's leading experts on the psychology of boredom. He trained as a clinical neuropsychologist in Australia before moving to Canada, where he held a Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience. His interest in boredom began in the clinic, working with people who had suffered traumatic brain injuries and reported feeling far more bored than they had before, which led him to suspect boredom was an organic change in brain function rather than a simple mood. In his lab he studies it through foraging tasks, deliberately dull attention tasks, and brain imaging, and he argues that boredom is not a flaw but a signal that we have strayed from meaningful engagement. He is the co-author, with John Eastwood, of Out of My Skull: The Psychology of Boredom, published by Harvard University Press. Expect to learn how James went from studying brain injury to studying boredom, what boredom actually is and how it differs from depression and apathy, why we may have evolved to feel it in the first place, whether other animals get bored, how scientists deliberately bore people in a lab, whether smartphones have really ruined our attention spans, what actually helps when you are bored, whether the dopamine detox trend holds up to scrutiny, why boredom works a lot like physical pain, whether boredom really makes you more creative, what the true opposite of boredom is, how boredom warps your sense of time, what a bored brain looks like on a scan, and whether some cultures are more bored than others. James Danckert online: Website: JamesDanckert.com Bluesky: search James Danckert on Bluesky Book: Out of My Skull: The Psychology of Boredom (Harvard University Press) 0:00 Intro 1:05 From brain injury to boredom 2:53 What boredom actually is 4:45 Boredom versus depression 6:06 Why we evolved boredom 10:34 How scientists bore people 14:27 Is boredom good or bad 16:18 Have smartphones ruined attention 21:01 What actually helps 25:11 Boredom and movement 28:17 Does a dopamine detox work 30:14 Boredom compared to pain 36:53 Were people ever fine bored 39:11 Does boredom make you creative 44:22 The opposite of boredom 47:23 How boredom warps time 50:43 What people get wrong 52:16 What a bored brain looks like 55:39 Boredom across cultures 59:44 Final thoughts 1:00:39 Where to find James

    The Exciting Science of Boredom - Prof. James Danckert - #51

  6. Aug 31

    Stop Caring About the Opinions of Others - Julius Moorman - #50

    This is a solo episode to mark episode 50 and six months of the show. I sit down on my own to look back at what the podcast has become, what I have learned from running it, and where I want to take it next. I talk through the guests and topics that resonated most, the growth of the show and my notepad.mp4 short-form channel, and the mindset shifts that came with putting myself out there consistently. From there it opens up into bigger personal themes, the difference between the European and American mindset, why I made a career change out of law, and how I think about using AI honestly as a creator. It is part progress report, part personal manifesto for the second half of the year. Expect to hear how the show has grown over its first six months, which guests and episodes landed best and why, how the notepad.mp4 short-form channel fits into the bigger plan, why consistently posting content matters more than production value, why you should stop caring about the opinions of others, why I left a career in law, why I believe every entrepreneur is a little delusional, what really separates the European and American mindsets, why the place you love on holiday is rarely where you should move, why doing what the average person does leads to an average life, and where AI genuinely helps a creator versus where it does not. 0:00 Intro 3:13 Six months of the show 6:43 The episodes that landed best 10:46 Adding ad breaks and structure 12:08 The notepad.mp4 channel 15:47 Show up and post consistently 22:32 Stop caring what people think 27:54 Leaving law behind 30:01 Every entrepreneur is delusional 35:47 Europe versus America 41:07 Americans root for you 45:49 The holiday you should not move to 47:38 Why I changed careers 51:27 Do not live an average life 54:15 Using AI as a creator 1:02:47 Where AI actually helps 1:04:20 Wrapping up episode 50

  7. Aug 27

    Is Your Red the Same as Mine? - George Musser - #49

    George Musser is a contributing editor at Scientific American and Nautilus and a contributing writer at Quanta, where he covers fundamental physics and space science from Glen Ridge, New Jersey. He studied electrical engineering and mathematics at Brown and planetary science at Cornell, and was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. He is the author of three books, The Complete Idiot's Guide to String Theory, Spooky Action at a Distance, and most recently Putting Ourselves Back in the Equation, which explores why physicists are turning to consciousness and AI to make sense of the universe. In this conversation he lays out what consciousness actually is, walks through a study suggesting your experience of the color red may be physically different from someone else's, and explains why the same math that lets AI translate between languages hints that all human languages share a deep structure. He also gets into machine emotions, quantum entanglement, and whether spacetime itself is something that emerges from something deeper. Expect to learn what phenomenal consciousness really means, how a zombie thought experiment tests whether machines could be aware, why your red might genuinely differ from another person's red, how AI language models map words into a shared geometric space, whether all human languages are secretly the same language, why AI systems appear to have something like emotions, what really happened when an AI tried to blackmail its engineers, how your conscious and unconscious minds are structured differently in the brain, why you can drive a familiar route with no memory of doing it, how quantum entanglement may give rise to space and time, and whether a machine could ever truly be conscious. George Musser online: Website: https://www.georgemusser.com Bluesky: @gmusser.bsky.social Mastodon: @gmusser@mastodon.social Book: Putting Ourselves Back in the Equation, available on Amazon and wherever books are sold 0:00 Introduction 7:43 Asking better questions 9:01 The consciousness article 19:08 Defining consciousness 21:23 Is your red my red 29:33 AI and language 36:09 Machine consciousness 43:09 Do AIs have emotions 49:39 AI self preservation 53:34 Conscious and unconscious mind 1:07:19 Quantum entanglement 1:18:14 Dream physics questions 1:23:58 Can machines be conscious 1:26:53 AI and creativity

    Is Your Red the Same as Mine? - George Musser - #49

  8. Aug 24

    Psychological Tricks of World's Biggest Brands - Phil Barden - #48

    Phil Barden is the managing director of Decode Marketing and one of the few people who bridges hands-on brand management with hard decision science. He spent more than 25 years in senior marketing roles at Unilever, Diageo, and T-Mobile before a set of strange research results pushed him toward the neuroscience and psychology of why people actually buy. At T-Mobile he commissioned two scientists whose approach led to the famous Liverpool Street station flash mob ad, which grew sales by nearly 50 percent and pulled tens of millions of views in the days before Instagram and TikTok. That experience convinced him to leave client-side marketing and build a business around applying decision science to brands. He is the author of Decoded: The Science Behind Why We Buy, which translates behavioral economics, neuroscience, and psychology into practical marketing. In this conversation he explains how the brain really makes buying decisions, why seeing a price registers as physical pain, and how scarcity, framing, and packaging quietly shape what we choose. Expect to learn why what people say and what people do are so different, how a flash mob ad grew T-Mobile sales by nearly 50 percent, what goals really drive every purchase, why trying to please everyone dilutes a brand, how consumer psychology stays constant even as media changes, why almost nobody admits ads work on them, what the real reason someone buys a BMW is, why your brain treats paying money as physical pain, how reducing friction and choice can transform sales, why fewer options often make us happier, how removing a currency symbol lifts spending, why packaging shapes what we taste and perceive, and how to protect yourself from scarcity and manipulation. Phil Barden online: LinkedIn: Phil Barden Email: phil@decodemarketing.com Book: Decoded: The Science Behind Why We Buy, on Amazon 0:00 Introduction 4:29 Research that made no sense 11:34 Why the flash mob worked 20:45 Trying to do too much 26:53 How media changed marketing 28:53 Do ads work on you 32:55 Why you buy a BMW 37:36 Why prices feel painful 46:22 Reducing friction and choice 48:21 The paradox of choice 53:02 Removing the currency symbol 56:44 The power of packaging 1:07:04 Perception beats reality 1:10:02 How to resist marketing 1:12:33 The scarcity effect

    Psychological Tricks of World's Biggest Brands - Phil Barden - #48
See All (55)

About

Conversations about science, technology, philosophy, psychology, self-improvement, media, and culture.

Information

  • Creator
    Julius Moorman
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    55
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Julius Moorman