Ep 28: Robert Walden Kurtz & the Zero Sum Game
Can a Seventh-Day Adventist be a transhumanist? Robert Walden Kurtz, Adventist pastor and Professor of Philosophy, says yes! Join us as we discuss robots stealing your job, mind-mapping Jesus, the hidden threat of washing machines, zero-sum games, hacking the mind, and radical humility.
- Why Singularitarians are like early Seventh-Day Adventists
- The origins of Adventism, and what to do when your apocalypse fails
- The impact of communication on historical cycles in culture, and how this connects the Adventists, Mormons, Ahmadiyya Muslims, and the Bahai
- What's different about utopian expectations this time around?
- Ray Kurzweil & the Transcendent Man Documentary
- Will there always be an economy?
- Redefining what value means
- Transhumanism: the prospect of becoming superheroes. But will it also make us super-villains?
- What happens when you get everything you really want?
- "Earl Grey, hot!" — Star Trek & the world of 3D printing we're now entering
- Altruism isn’t popular — especially in modern Christianity
- Must others fail for you to succeed?
- Zero-sum games — amplifying competition, what about altruism?
- Robots stealing your jobs?
- Washing Machines: the robots already among us!
- Did the washing machine destroy community? What do you do about it?
- Mind-mapping Jesus, The Buddha & Mother Teresa
- Hacking the neural correlates of spiritual experiences, controlling oxytocin, and amping up our pro-sociality
- Prayer and meditation as the original brain-hacking technology
- Why brain modification doesn't make zombies, but can help us overcome our zombie addictions, and become more human
- How Robert became a more effective police officer, and spent 15 years in law enforcement without needing to hurt anyone
- Aubrey De Grey & Calico Labs
- “I have never been okay with accepting death and destruction as somehow beautiful and natural”
- Why Christianity agrees with Ray Kurzweil about the beauty of life, and the ugliness of death
- John 10:10 “…I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”
- Adventists pioneered some of the finest hospitals and medical technologies—desiring to extend life and relieve suffering
- David Brin’s Bible study
- David Brin, novelist & futurist, author of The Postman, speaking to atheists about how to communicate with theists
- The biblical motif of God as parent, and humans as growing children
- God saying "not yet" to humans
- But ultimately inviting them into his family business
- Stephen Pinker and The Better Angels of Our Nature
- Darwin — a patron saint?
- Why nature films skew our perception of nature in the direction of conflict
- Schadenfreude — Why people will destroy their own best interest to spite others
- Why humility is the gateway to curiosity
- Does the Big Bang contradict the Second Law of Thermodynamics?
- Do our theologies amuse God?
- Why the criticism of "Playing God" is hypocrisy—and why Christianity calls us to "Play God" better
- For further reading: The Four Gospels!
Ep 28: Robert Walden Kurtz & the Zero Sum Game
Micah Redding
2017-01-15 20:33:00
01:31:38