with Julia Galef
July 27, 2014 Did you know that an artificial intelligence named “Eugene Goostman” recently passed the Turing Test, our gold standard criterion for whether an AI is conscious? At least, that’s what many media outlets breathlessly reported. In this episode of Rationally Speaking, Julia and Massimo take a critical look at Eugene, and at the Turing test … Read more
July 13, 2014 In this episode, Julia and Massimo talk about the problems with “race” as a genetically-based concept. Starting with the controversial recent book “A Troublesome Inheritance,” by NY Times science writer Nicholas Wade, they critique the statistical analyses that group people into racial categories, and Wade’s (and others’) attempts to attribute differences between rich and … Read more
June 29, 2014 Ever heard someone sigh, “That’s just human nature”? Have you wondered what that meant? In this episode of Rationally Speaking, Julia and Massimo delve into the science and philosophy of human nature: what traits are “built in” to being human, and how would we know? And once we know what human nature … Read more
June 15, 2014 For all the sniping that goes on between science and philosophy it’s easy to forget that both fields are part of “scientia,” the pursuit of knowledge and understanding. In this episode of Rationally Speaking, Julia and Massimo discuss the latter’s new “Scientia Salon” online journal, how the boundaries blur between math, science and philosophy, … Read more
June 1, 2014 Rebecca Newberger Goldstein — philosopher, author, and Genius-grant recipient — returns to the Rationally Speaking podcast to discuss her latest book, “Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away.” Rebecca, Julia and Massimo argue over the value of philosophy in modern science, and whether it makes sense to designate “experts” in ethical reasoning.
May 18, 2014 “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide,” wrote Albert Camus. In this episode of Rationally Speaking, Massimo and Julia discuss the ethics of suicide through the lens of several major philosophies. They also explore the social science of suicide: how does one person’s suicide affect the community?
May 4, 2014 Does the future belong to MOOCs? Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs for short, have been hailed as the next wave in secondary education, poised to replace brick-and-mortar colleges with their expensive infrastructure and sky-high tuition. In this episode of Rationally Speaking, Julia and Massimo discuss how to measure MOOCs’ effectiveness, separating … Read more
April 20, 2014 Rationally Speaking returns to NECSS for a live show with Lawrence Krauss, theoretical physicist and author of best selling books like The Physics of Star Trek and A Universe from Nothing. Julia and Massimo chat with Lawrence about whether the laws of the universe demand some kind of explanation, whether string theory should be deemed a failure, and … Read more
April 6, 2014 Atheist activist and author Greta Christina appears on this episode of Rationally Speaking, to discuss her new book, “Coming Out Atheist: How to Do It, How to Help Each Other, And Why.” A spirited debate ensues, in which Greta, Julia and Massimo disagree over the boundaries of the “atheist movement,” and the role of social justice … Read more
March 23, 2014 Can you find beauty — even romance — in mathematics? Mathematician Edward Frenkel, author of “Love and Math,” joins Rationally Speaking to talk about how the subject seduced him as a young man, and how he believes it’s generally mis-taught in schools. Other topics include: the search for a “grand unified theory” of mathematics, and … Read more