Videos in: 2013

DEEP PRAGMATISM

Joshua D. Greene
[8.30.13]

Imagine the following scenario: You have two different tribes, your collectivist tribe over here—where everything's in common, and your individualist tribe over there. Imagine these tribes not only have different ways of cooperating, but they rally around different gods, different leaders, different holy texts that tell them how they should live—that you're not allowed to sing on Wednesdays in this group, and in this group over here, women are allowed to be herders, but in this group over there, they're not; different ways of life; different ways of organizing society. Imagine these societies existing separately, separated by a forest that burns down. The rains come, and then suddenly you have a nice lovely pasture, and both tribes move in.

Now the question is: How are they going to do this? We have different tribes that are cooperative in different ways. Are they going to be individualistic? Are they going to be collectivists? Are they going to pray to this god? Are they going to pray to that god? Are they going to be allowed to have assault weapons or not allowed to have assault weapons? That's the fundamental problem of the modern world—that basic morality solves the tragedy of the commons, but it doesn't solve what I call the "tragedy of common sense morality." Each moral tribe has its own sense of what's right or wrong—a sense of how people ought to get along with each other and treat each other—but the common senses of the different tribes are different. That's the fundamental and moral problem.
 

JOSHUA D. GREENE is the John and Ruth Hazel Associate Professor of the Social Sciences and the director of the Moral Cognition Laboratory in the Department of Psychology, Harvard University. He studies the psychology and neuroscience of morality, focusing on the interplay between emotion and reasoning in moral decision-making. His broader interests cluster around the intersection of philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience. He is the author of Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and ThemJoshua D. Greene's Edge Bio Page


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TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION AS A NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY

A Conversation with
David Moinina Sengeh
[7.12.13]

I think beyond me, beyond our individual silos, to achieve prosperity and development in a place like Sierra Leone does not involve giving free devices to victims, which leads to low self-efficacy and dependence on external actors; we need to make new minds. That involves giving young people the platform to innovate, to learn from making, and to learn, and to solve very tangible problems within their communities.

DAVID MOININA SENGEH is a doctoral student at the MIT Media Lab, and a researcher in the Lab’s Biomechatronics group. David Moinina Sengeh's Edge Bio Page


 

What is your Question from SciFoo 2013?

Questions from
Tyler Cowen, Joseph "Yossi" Vardi, Carl Page, Fiery Cushman, Lee Smolin, Linda Stone, Paul Davies, Paul J. Steinhardt, Peter Norvig, Richard Potts, Steve Fuller, Stuart Firestein
[6.27.13]

Questions from Sci Foo 2013


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THINK ABOUT NATURE

Lee Smolin
[5.14.13]

Feynman once told me, "Whatever you do—you're going to have to do crazy things to think about quantum gravity—but whatever you do, think about nature. If you think about the properties of a mathematical equation, you're doing mathematics and you're not going to get back to nature. Whatever you do, have a question that an experiment could resolve at the front of your thinking." So I always try to do that.

LEE SMOLIN is a founding and senior faculty member at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada. He is also Adjunct Professor of Physics at the University of Waterloo and is a member of the graduate faculty of the Department of Philosophy of the University of Toronto. His is the author od Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe. Lee Smolin's Edge Bio Page

 


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DISFLUENCY

A Conversation with
Adam Alter
[2.25.13]

We've shown that disfluency leads you to think more deeply, as I mentioned earlier, that it forms a cognitive roadblock, and then you think more deeply, and you work through the information more comprehensively. But the other thing it does is it allows you to depart more from reality, from the reality you're at now. ..

ADAM ALTER is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Stern School of Business, NYU. He is the author of Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces that Shape How We Think, Feel, and Behave. Adam Alter's Edge Bio Page 


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ENCAPSULATED UNIVERSES

Lera Boroditsky
[2.19.13]

Think about it this way. We have 7,000 languages. Each of these languages encompasses a world-view, encompasses the ideas and predispositions and cognitive tools developed by thousands of years of people in that culture. Each one of those languages offers a whole encapsulated universe. So we have 7,000 parallel universes, some of them are quite similar to one another, and others are a lot more different. The fact that there's this great diversity is a real testament to the flexibility and the ingenuity of the human mind. 

LERA BORODITSKY is an assistant professor of psychology, neuroscience, and symbolic systems at Stanford University. Lera Boroditsky's Edge Bio Page

 


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