Cosmic Intelligence
Welcome to Cosmic Intelligence (formerly Spiritual But Not Ridiculous), a podcast that explores philosophy (Western and Vedic), consciousness, cosmology, spirituality, and technologies in the broadest sense—technologies of the sacred, of transformation, and of the mundane. As we enter this age of artificial intelligence (AI), we focus in particular on AI and its implications for humanity, questions of consciousness, AI safety and alignment, and what it means to be human in the 21st century, as well as its impact on our shared worldview. Since worldviews create worlds we will always keep one eye on our shifting worldview, hoping to encourage it along from materialism to idealism.
In terms of consciousness and spirituality, we also explore spiritual practices and other ways to expand consciousness, the importance of feeling our feelings, how to cultivate compassion and empathy, find balance, and lean into fear as a practice. Sometimes we have guests.
We approach all subjects from a grounded and discerning perspective.
Your host is Chad Jayadev Woodford, a philosopher, cosmologist, master yoga teacher, Vedic astrologer, lawyer, and technologist.
Cosmic Intelligence
Zombies, Transhumanists, and the Worldview Crisis
Continuing our deep dive into what it means to be human in the age of AI, and inspired by the physicalist yet transcendent worldviews of the transhumanists, in this episode I start to explore the concept of worldviews, focusing first on physicalism / scientific materialism (the idea that matter / energy is fundamental), and how that particular metaphysics or worldview was based entirely on a series of assumptions that were never empirically proven. We contextualize all of it via the postmodern zombie mythology.
I focus on the unexplained anomalies from quantum physics as how they undermine the physicalist worldview. I then explore the reasons that physicalism is so intractable as a worldview.
All of this is just to set the table for an exploration of #idealism in my next episode (the idea that mind or consciousness is fundamental). Then we can finally turn our attention to transhumanism and human faculties.
You can find a YouTube version of this episode here.
Sam Altman’s “Intelligence Age” post
Quantum measurement explained:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHDMJqJHCQg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kxmR82QMN8
Quantum entanglement explained:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqmIVeheTVU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuvK-od647c
John Vervaeke on being rational and spiritual
John Vervaeke on Zombies
The famous Einstein - Bergson debate of 1922
My video on the hurdles to AGI
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