Ep 37: Robin Hanson & The Elephant in the Brain

The Christian Transhumanist Podcast

Robin Hanson explores a future of robotic human uploads, helps us worry about The Great Filter, gives us strategies for living in a Simulation, and casually points out the Elephant in the Brain.

Bio:

Robin Hanson is an associate professor of economics at George Mason University and a research associate of the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University. He is the author of The Age of Em: Work, Love and Life when Robots Rule the Earth and
The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life, with co-author Kevin Simler.

Topics:

• Is Robin a "sex redistribution professor"?
• The Elephant in the Brain
  • Why do we hide our actual motives from ourselves?
  • Ignorance as a strategy
  • The log in the eye — Jesus' version of the elephant in the brain
  • Is the "elephant" an evolutionary version of the Christian concept of a "fallen nature"?
  • Does anyone believe in creationism?
• Where does religion come from?
• What will life be like when robots rule the earth?
• Why human brains will probably be with us for a very long time
• The Great Filter
  • Read about The Great Filter, or watch the TEDx talk
  • What stands between dead matter, and expanding lasting life?
  • "Something out there is killing everything, and you're likely next."
• How to live in a simulation
  • The Simulation Argument (see also a religious version and why we should believe we are not alone)
  • Why Donald Trump is probably living in a Simulation — and you aren't.

Books & Links:

• The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life, with co-author Kevin Simler.
• The Age of Em: Work, Love and Life when Robots Rule the Earth
• Robin Hanson's website
• Kevin Simler's website

(Watch the video of this conversation)