Review of Waking Up #120: WHAT IS AND WHAT MATTERS

Official Notes:

In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Rebecca Goldstein and Max Tegmark about the foundations of human knowledge and morality.

Another one in front of a live audience. At the Q &A after someone even asked about the live audience thing and SH affirmed that it has the advantage of bringing an audience into the conversation. He also said it might be weird for podcast listeners since some laughs won’t seem justified. They don’t address my principal complaints that a live podcast tends to pander just a little more. But actually, the pandering was less of an issue in this one. This actually felt more like a genuine conversation and less like an attempt to squeeze in as many one-liners as possible.

The main focus was on how science can answer the question of what is matter but not the question of what matters. Topics covered: counterfactuals, modal realism (everything that can exist, does) multi universes. Refinement of free will explanation by Sam.

Science= what is

Philosophy =what matters.

Sam claims that even if you think you don’t care about philosophy, only science, you still have to decide what science you like and that means some elements of philosophy gets involved. Not sure I buy this.

I also dispute their agreement that that that human brain cognitively developed to be able to understand parabolic arcs, but not quantum mechanics. 

Having studied quantum mechanics, I think the human brain is more of a blank slate than that. It may be true that we understand parabolic arcs better than a lot of other mathematical forms because of our brain structure, but I think that's something that develops as we mature through childhood.

It’s maybe also true that quantum mechanics doesn’t make sense to the human brain because it's a nonsensical theory.