ReConsider

Erik Fogg

A podcast to examine your life, because the unexamined life is not worth living. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  1. 9月14日

    [2.10a] Welcome to Silicon Eden: Pt 1, The Last Man

    Many people believe that in a the robo-communist future of superintelligent AI, humans will flourish: artists, scholars -- perhaps Burning Man 24/7. Human nature suggests a very different picture. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke ZarathustraBecker, Ernest. The Denial of Death.Bostrom, Nick. Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World. Ideapress, 2024Kosmyna, Nataliya, et al. "Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task." arXiv:2506.08872, 2025. MIT Media Lab.Stanković, Miloš, et al. "Comment on: Your Brain on ChatGPT." arXiv:2601.00856, 2026. Lee, Hao-Ping (Hank), Advait Sarkar, Lev Tankelevitch, Ian Drosos, Sean Rintel, Richard Banks, and Nicholas Wilson. "The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking." Proceedings of CHI 2025, Yokohama.Aguiar, Mark, Erik Hurst, and Loukas Karabarbounis. "Time Use during the Great Recession." American Economic Review 103(5), 2013, 1664–1696. Sleep and TV absorb the largest share of foregone work hours.Aguiar, Mark, and Erik Hurst. "Measuring Trends in Leisure: The Allocation of Time over Five Decades." Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2007. Leisure up roughly 4–8 hrs/week, 1965–2003. Cowen, Tyler. "Human Life in a Post-AGI World." Talk at Google DeepMind, July 8, 2026. tylercowen.com. - Note Cowen disagrees significantly with me!National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 2024 results. 12th-grade reading lowest ever reported, 10 points below 1992; 4th and 8th grade at early-1990s levels. Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), 2023 cycle, released Dec 2024 (NCES). Bone et al. "Reading for pleasure" trends from the American Time Use Survey, 2003–2023. iScience, August 2025.Aguiar, Mark, Mark Bils, Kerwin Kofi Charles, and Erik Hurst. "Leisure Luxuries and the Labor Supply of Young Men." Journal of Political Economy 129(2), 2021, 337–382.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    [2.10a] Welcome to Silicon Eden: Pt 1, The Last Man
  2. 8月31日

    [2.9] Building Silicon Eden

    The world is barreling towards disaster on many fronts. Crises include: climate change, depopulation, government debt, sagging welfare states, housing affordability, healthcare affordability, political polarization, government paralysis. By 2050 they will all be irrelevant, as will the structures trying to grapple with them. SOURCES: Kokotajlo, Daniel, et al. AI 2027. ai-2027.com.Kokotajlo, Daniel. "What 2026 Looks Like." 2021.Amodei, Dario. "Machines of Loving Grace." 2024.TechTimes. "OpenAI GPT-5 Biological Risk Classification." July 27, 2026.Axios. "The AI Titans' Biggest Private Fear." July 24, 2026.Center for a New American Security (CNAS). "AI and the Evolution of Biological National Security Risks." August 2024.AI Incident Reporting Act. 2026.AI Kill Switch Act. 2026.Schneier, Bruce. "AI Surveillance Is Being Supercharged." Schneier on Security, July 2026.DeepMind. "AlphaFold: Five Years of Impact." 2024.Bostrom, Nick. "The Superintelligent Will: Motivation and Instrumental Rationality in Advanced Artificial Agents." Minds and Machines, 2012.Bostrom, Nick. "Astronomical Waste: The Opportunity Cost of Delayed Technological Development." Utilitas, 2003.Vinge, Vernor. A Fire Upon the Deep. Tor Books, 1992.Freitas, Robert A., Jr. "A Self-Reproducing Interstellar Probe." Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, vol. 33 (1980): 251–264.Wikipedia. "Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894."Oxford Academic. Book chapter on William Crookes and the wheat-supply crisis (1898 address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science).Jevons, William Stanley. The Coal Question: An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of Our Coal-Mines. Macmillan, 1865.Ricardo, David. "On Machinery." Chapter 31, On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, 3rd ed. John Murray, 1821.United Kingdom. Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration. 1904.Vinge, Vernor. "The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era." 1993 ERRATA: Haber-Bosch synthesized fertilizer in 1909, not 1934Borlaug did not use transgenic methods; golden rice didI forgot to mention Scott Alexander at AI Futures; sorry, Scott!Hayek's "Price and Production" touches only briefly on epistemology; "The Use of Knowledge in Society" is a better source. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    [2.9] Building Silicon Eden
  3. 8月10日

    [2.6] The One Wisdom

    [AUDIO FIXED!] Today we explore wisdom. Not the "don't put tomatoes in a fruit salad" kind. Serious business wisdom. It turns out, the wise tend to converge on understanding the world in a similar way. In the 20th century, philosophical titans saw this convergence. They look back to the original seers of wisdom and see in them parallels that run so deep, that upon deep contemplation of these philosophies, they found a "highest common factor," including among: Epicteus, Marcus Aurelius, and the StoicsPlato, and various Neoplatonists such as PlotinusSpinoza, SchopenhauerPossibly Hegel, Wittgenstein, though they are famously difficult to interpretJiddu KrishnamurtiLao Tzu, who authored the Tao Te ChingALso Chuang Tzu and Lieh TzuJewish philosophers such as Philo of AlexandriaSufi mystics of Islam, most famously Jalal al-Din RumiJesus of NazarethSt. PaulMeister Eckhart, the mystic Christian St. Jon of the CrossHinduism:The Sages of the UpanishadsAdi Shankara’s The Crest-Jewel of WisdomThe Bhagavad GitaThe BuddhaParticularly Zen masters who followedVarious SutrasThe Bardo Thodol It is the Perennial Philosophy. I call it the One Wisdom. Huxley called it the “Highest Common Factor” of universal truth. SOURCES Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus. 1942. Huxley, Aldous. The Perennial Philosophy. Harper & Row, 1945. John of the Cross, St. Dark Night of the Soul (La noche oscura del alma). Jung, C. G. Letters, Volume 1: 1906–1950. Princeton University Press. Kahan, Dan. Identity-protective cognition research (cross-referenced, this project). Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch (Liuzu Tan Jing). Polanyi, Michael. Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy. University of Chicago Press, 1958. Polanyi, Michael. The Tacit Dimension. Doubleday, 1966. Tolle, Eckhart. A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose. Dutton, 2005. Tao Te Ching (Laozi). Watts, Alan. Become What You Are. Shambhala, 1995 (essays, 1930s–1950s). Watts, Alan. The Wisdom of Insecurity. Pantheon, 1951. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. 1921. Wright, Robert. Why Buddhism Is True. Simon & Schuster, 2017. Xiangyan Zhixian — traditional Chan/Zen biographical account (Tang dynasty, c. 820–898). Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu), "On the Equality of Things" ("Discussion on Making All Things Equal"). Bible. Job 42:5–6; Luke 15:11–32 (KJV). Bhagavad Gita, 2.47. Ovid. Metamorphoses. McGilchrist, Iain. The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. Yale University Press, 2009. Miles Kington. Quoted in The Independent (UK), Mar 28, 2003.  Joseph Campbell. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Pantheon, 1949 — "Freedom to Live," Stage 17.  Eckhart Tolle. The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment. New World Library, 1997  Ramana Maharshi, quoted in Ram Dass, "Dying Is Absolutely Safe" Alan Watts, Become Who You Are.  Sam Harris, Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion.  Dalai Lama & Paul Ekman, Emotional Awareness: Overcoming the Obstacles to Psychological Balance and Compassion. Times Books, 2008 Emmet Fox, The Sermon on the Mount Ernest Kurtz & Katherine Ketcham, The Spirituality of Imperfection. Bantam Byron Katie, Loving What Is. Harmony, 2002.  Diana Chapman & Jim Dethmer (with Kaley Klemp), The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership. 2014. Epictetus, Discourses / Enchiridion. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations. Plato, Republic Plotinus, The Enneads. Spinoza, Ethics Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit.  Jiddu Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known  Philo of Alexandria, On the Creation of the World.  1 Corinthians 1:20, 1:25, 3:19 — "the wisdom of the world is foolishness" John 14:6 — "I am the way, the truth, and the life."  Galatians 2:20 or 2 Corinthians 5:17 -- "in Christ" ERRATA: Heller, not Huxley, wrote Catch-22.Pauline, not Jesus, says "The wisdom of the world will be foolish..." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    [2.6] The One Wisdom

簡介

A podcast to examine your life, because the unexamined life is not worth living. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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