Michael Zimmerman

Podcast #24: Michael Zimmerman Gets Philosophical on Tech

In a wide-ranging conversation, philosopher Michael Zimmerman contextualizes our technological journey within the history of Western thought.

By Mo Lotman | January 9, 2019 | Artificial Intelligence, Culture, Employment, Environment, Ethics, Knowledge, Philosophy, Podcasts, Religion, Society | Acts of Enclosure, Addiction, Agriculture, Ancient World, Anger, Aristotle, Arnold Toynbee, Artificial General Intelligence, Artificial Intelligence, Authenticity, Axial Age, Behavior, Bible, Bolsheviks, Boundaries, Buddhism, Capitlism, Carolyn Merchant, Christianity, Civilization, Control, Craving, Creativity, CRISPR, David Loy, Death, Decadence, Deep Ecology, Delusion, Desire, Distraction, Earth, Ease, Embodiment, Engineering, Environment, Eternity, Exploitation, Exponential Growth, Facebook, Fake News, Fate, Finitude, Fire, Francis Bacon, Friedrich Nietzsche, Gnosticism, Golden Rule, Google, Greed, Hatred, Hegel, Heiddeger, Hubris, Human Nature, Humanness, Immaturity, Immortality, Industrial Revolution, Infantilization, Isaiah, Islam, Jaron Lanier, Karl Jaspers, Karl Marx, Knowledge, Lab-Grown Meat, Life, Loss, Martin Rees, Marxism, Master-Slave Dialectic, Meaning, Meat-Eating, Mediation, Medieval World, Metallurgy, Mind, Mining, Modernity, Money Economy, Morality, Mortality, Native Americans, Nature, Nazis, News, Nihilism, Obesity, Pain, Pascal, Peter Thiel, Philosophy, Plato, Playing God, Power, Production, Progress, Propoganda, Protestant Reformation, Ray Kurzweil, Reincarnation, relationships, Religion, René Descartes, Resentment, Resources, Respect, Sailing, Security, Self-Mastery, Silicon Valley, Smartphones, Socialism, Soviets, Spirituality, Splintering, Steve Jobs, Suffering, The Overman, The Singularity, Trade, Traditional Societies, Transhumanism, Twitter, Utopia, Wealth, Wildfires, Will to Power, Wisdom, Wonder

Mansplaining with tablet

iPhone, Therefore I Am

Once we’re all parroting back Wikipedia entries to each other, what unique knowledge or wisdom do we have to offer?

By Isabel Sterne | March 28, 2018 | Cognition, Culture, Identity, Knowledge, Relationships | Efficiency, External Memory, Google, GPS, Individuality, Information, Knowledge, Memory, Overconfidence, Phaedrus, Plato, Recall, Smartphones, Socrates, Wisdom

Complexity

The Problems of Prediction, Part 2

Our overconfidence in our predictive abilities can be traced to the simple fact that the universe is infinitely complex.

By David A. J. Reynolds | February 21, 2018 | Cognition, Economics, Government, Philosophy, Prediction, Society | Brexit, Britain, Certainty, Comprehension, Cosmology, Data, Economics, Elections, Error, Forecasting, Foresight, Freakonomics, Genetic Engineering, Hanna Arendt, Hubris, Ignorance, Infinity, Information, Knowledge, Limitations, Manipulations, Models, Neuroscience, Over-confidence, Philip Tetlock, Polling, Prediction, Reality, Statistics, Stephen Dubner, The Brain, The Universe, Truth, UK, Understanding, Unknowns, Unpredictability, US

The Problems of Prediction, Part 1

Our technological mindset makes us more inclined to predict and gather ever-more data in service of prediction. We misunderstand the information we have, can’t know the information we don’t have, and yet we are more confident than ever.

By David A. J. Reynolds | January 24, 2018 | Economics, Government, Philosophy, Prediction, Society | Abstraction, Alfred North Whitehead, Belief, Britain, Comprehension, Data, Elites, Error, EU, Euro, Experts, Fallacies, Forecasting, Hubris, Information, Knowledge, Limitations, Michael Gove, Nassim Taleb, Over-confidence, Paul Slovic, Philip Tetlock, Prediction, Statistics, Truth, Understanding, Unknowns

From the Sublime to the Ridiculous, part two

European communist states were, perhaps, the ultimate manifestation of the modern conflation of technological development with progress. But with such [...]

By David A. J. Reynolds | November 9, 2016 | Culture, Economics, Philosophy, Religion, Society | Christianity, Communism, Distraction, Empire, Happiness, Heidegger, Industry, Knowledge, Materialism, Michael Sacasas, Narcissism, Progress, Russia, Science, Secularism, Soviet Union, Space Race, Stalin, Steel, Sublime, Technological Determinism, The Frailest Thing, Transcendence

Algorithm is Gonna Get You

What prevents us from gaining knowledge? For centuries, our instinctive answer has been: paucity of information. Our search for knowledge [...]

By David A. J. Reynolds | January 21, 2016 | Automation, Posts, Privacy | Black Box Society, Eli Pariser, Filter Bubble, Frank Pasquale, Google, Hummingbird, Knowledge, Personalization, Robert Epstein, Search, Tracking

Categories

Support Us!

General Donations

Thank you for your support!

$ Donation Amount:

Select Payment Method

Credit Card
Offline Donation

Personal Info

First Name *

Last Name

Email Address *

Credit Card Info

This is a secure SSL encrypted payment.

Card Number *

CVC *

Cardholder Name *

Expiration *

Billing Details

Country *

Address 1 *

Address 2

City *

State *

Zip / Postal Code *

Donation Total: $30.00