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PEL Tech Nightcap July 2023

July 14, 2023 by Mark Linsenmayer 2 Comments

Recorded 7/9/23. For the first time, we're presenting the unedited version of this to all you supporters on video, if you'd prefer to watch us than listen. Mark, Wes, and Seth trade a few tech-gone-wrong stories and give a preliminary response to a request that we cover some philosophy of technology on the show. We've already done plenty of philosophy of mind that covers  Continue Reading …

Saints & Simulators 22: #ThePerennialPhilosophy

July 31, 2019 by Chris Sunami Leave a Comment

The twenty-second installment of an ongoing series about the intersection between religion and technology. The previous essay is here; the next essay is here. As we sink deeper and deeper into the realm of religion, we find ourselves forced to face up to a core religious dilemma of the modern, globalized world, the same dilemma glossed over by Pascal in his wager: In a world  Continue Reading …

Saints & Simulators 21: #TheProblemOfEvil

July 24, 2019 by Chris Sunami Leave a Comment

The twenty-first installment of an ongoing series about the intersection between religion and technology. The previous essay is here. (Last time, we looked at ancient Greek philosopher Plato, and the Neoplatonic interpretation of his work as focused around illuminating the nature of a single divine ideal.) The reason Plato believes the Great Good Thing exists, and the  Continue Reading …

Saints & Simulators 20: #theOne

July 11, 2019 by Chris Sunami Leave a Comment

Plato

Twentieth in an ongoing series on the nexus between religion and technology. The previous essay is here; the next essay is here. Out of the two objections we raised against the concept of God as the "Lonely Dungeon Master" (at the end of our last segment), the conceptual complexity of the Dungeon Master’s world is perhaps the easier one to address. In our outline of the  Continue Reading …

Saints & Simulators 19: #TheLonelyDungeonMaster

July 3, 2019 by Chris Sunami 2 Comments

Nineteenth in an ongoing series on the nexus between religion and technology. The previous essay is here. In the last essay, we talked about the eerily godlike role played by the simulator in Nick Bostrom's theory that posits we all exist only within a computer simulation, and the fact that, even so, it would be unknowable what kind of god the simulator might be. But is it  Continue Reading …

Saints & Simulators 16: #ScaryAI (Roko’s Basilisk)

May 30, 2019 by Chris Sunami 1 Comment

Sixteenth in an ongoing series about the interface between religion and technology. The previous episode is here; the next episode is here. In 1969, philosopher Robert Nozick first popularized what would go on to be quite a famous thought experiment. Soon known as "Newcomb’s Paradox," after its inventor, physicist William Newcomb, it asks us to imagine two boxes, one of  Continue Reading …

Saints & Simulators 15: #WiseAI

May 9, 2019 by Chris Sunami 1 Comment

Fifteenth in an ongoing series about the interface between religion and technology. The previous episode is here. Another possible strategy for fending off the robot apocalypse is to ask if there are characteristically human traits or characteristics that are humanity-preserving, and if so, can those be passed along to our machines? What is it that has given us our identity  Continue Reading …

Saints & Simulators 14: #FriendlyAI

May 2, 2019 by Chris Sunami Leave a Comment

Fourteenth in an ongoing series about the places where science and religion meet. The previous episode is here; the next episode is here. Given how likely killer robots are, and how clearly the paths we are currently embarked on lead to that eventuality, can this destiny be averted? Can the killer robots be stopped? The most obvious answer is just to commit not to building  Continue Reading …

Saints & Simulators 13: #PushyAI

April 25, 2019 by Chris Sunami 2 Comments

Thirteenth in an ongoing series about the places where science and religion meet. The previous episode is here. For a more realistic portrait than Kurzweil’s of what a future dominated by technology might look like, one plausible place to start is with our present domination by technology, and how it is already transforming us as human beings. For example, consider the  Continue Reading …

Saints & Simulators 10: #SoulfulMachines

March 28, 2019 by Chris Sunami 3 Comments

Tenth in an ongoing series about the places where science and religion meet. The previous episode is here. At this point in our journey, let us take a moment to return to Descartes’s infamous concept of mind-body duality. The body, in his view, is one type of thing: physical matter. It is subject to the laws of physics, it gets old and degrades, it is built up of discrete  Continue Reading …

Has the Internet Transformed Us? Yes and No.

February 28, 2011 by Wes Alwan 7 Comments

This Piece by Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker is very good and suitably conflicted concerning complaints about the social effects of technology: The odd thing is that this complaint, though deeply felt by our contemporary Better-Nevers, is identical to Baudelaire’s perception about modern Paris in 1855, or Walter Benjamin’s about Berlin in 1930, or Marshall McLuhan’s in the face  Continue Reading …

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About The Partially Examined Life

The Partially Examined Life is a philosophy podcast by some guys who were at one point set on doing philosophy for a living but then thought better of it. Each episode, we pick a text and chat about it with some balance between insight and flippancy. You don’t have to know any philosophy, or even to have read the text we’re talking about to (mostly) follow and (hopefully) enjoy the discussion

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