1 hr 58 min

Eric Schwitzgebel on Digital Consciousness and the Weirdness of the World Hear This Idea

    • Social Sciences

Eric Schwitzgebel is a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. His main interests include connections between empirical psychology and philosophy of mind and the nature of belief. His book The Weirdness of the World can be found here.

We talk about:


The possibility of digital consciousness
Policy ideas for avoiding major moral mistakes around digital consciousness
Prospects for the science of consciousness, and why we likely won't have clear answers in time


Why introspection is much less reliable than most people think
How and why we invent false stories about our own choices without realising
What randomly sampling people's experiences reveals about what we're doing with most of our attention


The possibility of 'overlapping minds'
How and why our actions might have infinite effects, both good and bad
Whether it would be good news to learn that our actions have infinite effects, or that the universe is infinite in extent


The best science fiction on digital minds and AI

You can get in touch through our website or on Twitter. Consider leaving us an honest review wherever you're listening to this — it's the best free way to support the show. Thanks for listening!

Eric Schwitzgebel is a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. His main interests include connections between empirical psychology and philosophy of mind and the nature of belief. His book The Weirdness of the World can be found here.

We talk about:


The possibility of digital consciousness
Policy ideas for avoiding major moral mistakes around digital consciousness
Prospects for the science of consciousness, and why we likely won't have clear answers in time


Why introspection is much less reliable than most people think
How and why we invent false stories about our own choices without realising
What randomly sampling people's experiences reveals about what we're doing with most of our attention


The possibility of 'overlapping minds'
How and why our actions might have infinite effects, both good and bad
Whether it would be good news to learn that our actions have infinite effects, or that the universe is infinite in extent


The best science fiction on digital minds and AI

You can get in touch through our website or on Twitter. Consider leaving us an honest review wherever you're listening to this — it's the best free way to support the show. Thanks for listening!

1 hr 58 min