Unmaking Sense

Episode 1.24: The Tinder Effect; that small decisions can have large consequences.

Important things like consciousness need not arise from complicated underlying structures. Just being able to say yes or no may be enough. Lessons from machine-learning and AI.

Episode 1.23: We contribute best to the world by being ourselves, not being what it wants us to be.

We come under all kinds of pressure and influences that draw us away from being ourselves, and while there are times when we need that corrective, we also are best for ourselves and make the biggest contribution to the world when we are the unique individuals we are most cut out to be, becoming someone new every day by living the present.

Episode 1.22: The destructive consequences of being in two minds.

Living the present, staying in the moment. The tennis phenomenon of Raducanu winning the US Open. Better do one thing than dream all things. Possible worlds again.

Episode 1.21: Positive and Negative responses to adversity.

Beating ourselves up when we suffer adversity is a chosen but unhelpful response that serves no useful purpose. We need not allow ourselves to be defined by the past; we can choose to view it differently and positively.

Episode 1.20: There are New Things under the Sun. Lev Shestov and breaking with the past.

We are not obliged to be consistent with the past because we are not determined by it. We can change. The past only constrains us if we allow it to, if we believe it can and should. Otherwise almost anything is possible.

Episode 1.19: Three models of the self: the onion; the peach; the river.

The difference between solving problems in order to leave everything the same, and the much deeper approach of asking which problems will bring about radical change. Models of the self for three different answers.

Episode 1.18: The way we have been trained to make sense of things is self-affirming.

We are trained to make sense of the world in ways that our cultural world endorses as legitimate ways to make sense of it.

Episode 1.17: Some autobiography and how we all need to evolve beyond our birth circumstances.

Letting go of the past without blame. Coming to terms with a new world every day.

Episode 1.16: All human problems cannot be solved because we want different things.

The Liberal Rationalist Principle is mistaken: getting our reasoning right will not usher in a world of peace and harmony.

Episode 1.15: Reason as the slave of the passions, our emotions.

David Hume and how we define our rationality according to our passions, rather than the other way round. So if we don’t like a rational conclusion, we change our assumptions to avoid it. Implications for human communication and relationships.