Podcast for Inquiry S01E17: Will Artificial Intelligence bolster or destroy humanity? Christopher DiCarlo on the future of AI

Christopher DiCarlo is a philosopher of science and the founder of Critical Thinking Solutions. We start by discussing the potential future for Artificial Intelligence (AI); both to help humanity (through DiCarlo’s Onion Skin Theory of Knowledge (OSTOK) project), and how to avoid a robotic apocalypse. But we quickly realize that the most difficult question is: What would we want a perfectly functioning AI to do? This leads to a fascinating conversation about society, philosophy, and politics, before coming back to AI and our ability to integrate new technology into our mindset, outlook, and culture. 

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Podcast for Inquiry S01E16: Eric Schnurer on what happens when territory no longer defines a government’s authority

Eric Schnurer is the author of the essay Democracy Disrupted: Governance in an Increasingly Virtual and Massively Distributed World. In it, Eric argues that the Internet will revolutionize our society on a scale similar to the agricultural and industrial revolutions, but on a timescale of years instead of decades or centuries. Eric and I discuss how Estonia points to how government services of the future may look, the importance (and eventual impotence) of antitrust enforcement, and how to reconcile the fact that most economic sectors are becoming more concentrated (with fewer competitors) with the unbundling and disaggregation that digitization allows. 

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Podcast for Inquiry S01E15: Brandon K. Gauthier on his book: Before Evil

Brandon K. Gauthier (@bk_gauthier) wrote Before Evil, about the childhoods of six of the twentieth century’s most notorious dictators, to show that even the most vile among us share a basic humanity. We must remember that if we are to avoid becoming like them. The two of us discuss the impetus for writing the book and Brandon reads a couple of excerpts. The passionate conversation ranges from the importance of democratic norms and structures in avoiding sliding into autocracy (reminiscent of PfI S01E05 with Miriam Mufti) and the importance of free expression while recognizing the difficulty of determining where its limits lie (echoing a discussion in PfI S01E06 with James Turk). Brandon emphasizes that we are all subject to ideologies that view others as less than human, and implores everyone to approach complex subjects with humility.

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Podcast for Inquiry S01E014: John Gleason, the Godless Engineer, on Jesus mythicism and online activism

John Gleason is known online as the Godless Engineer (@GodlessEngineer Facebook) and has spent the past decade debunking religious apologists and anti-science beliefs. I ask John about his journey to atheism, and whether Jesus was a historical or mythical figure. John describes how he chose the audience he wanted to reach, and how he strives to be both memorable and entertaining. He talks about how his activism has affected his career and relations with his family, and concludes by giving some advice to activists just starting to find their voice. 

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Podcast for Inquiry S01E13: Emma Allen-Vercoe on the importance of microbes to human health

Dr. Allen-Vercoe (@EmmaAllenVercoe) talks about how to think of microbe populations across different people, and why they are important for digestion and overall health. She describes her research on the microbiome of the Yanomami, and why it is important. The role of serendipity in scientific progress is often underemphasized, and Emma shares how one such moment led to an enormous grant for colorectal cancer research. She explains her role in improving a disgusting but effective medical intervention. Finally, Emma summarizes her extensive efforts to fight pseudoscience and the need for personalized medicine in the years to come. 

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Podcast for Inquiry S01E12: David Good on the Yanomami and the Good Project

What is it like to stand astride two different worlds? Few people know better than David Good, born to an American father and Yanomami mother. Listen to David describe the experience of meeting his mother in the jungle after twenty years in suburban America and talk about the Yanomami equivalent of laws and means of settling disputes. Learn more about his efforts to protect the Yanomami way of life at The Good Project. 

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Podcast for Inquiry S01E11: Steven Pinker on Rationality and Humanist Values

Even as a young teenager, Dr. Steven Pinker (@sapinker) prized rationality as a virtue, and considered himself an anarchist. He changed that belief, however, when evidence indicated that anarchy was not a path to human flourishing. In this special episode, a co-production with the New Enlightenment Project, previous Podcast for Inquiry guest Lloyd Hawkeye Robertson returns as a co-host. Together, Lloyd and I explore with Dr. Pinker whether universities are betraying their mission, how the human brain spectacularly fails while also working wonders, the loose connections between science and technology with social and moral progress, and what humanity needs to do to continue to thrive for the next 50-100 years. 

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Podcast for Inquiry S01E10: William B. Davis: On Acting …and life.

William Davis is best known as the Cigarette Smoking Man on the popular TV show The X-Files. He is also the founder of The William Davis Centre for Actors’ Study and has just published a new book On Acting…and Life. William and I discuss how his presence on The X-Files expanded from the silent portrayal he gave in the pilot to the series’ most frequent recurring role, the importance of seeing the world from the perspective of the character you are portraying, and how William’s undergraduate education in philosophy informed both his career and his worldview. We discuss many tips, tricks, and traps to help any aspiring actor, and William shares a few insights that did not make it into the book. 

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I've been censored!

On February 20 2020, I gave a public talk at Nerd Nite Toronto called Stab Everyone You Love. It was about the "ZYX of Vaccine Denialism" (because anti-vaxxers get everything backward). At the time, we knew that there was an outbreak of some disease in China, but not that it would soon become a global pandemic.

My son recorded my speech, which debunked several myths about the supposed dangers of national immunization programs. I uploaded the video to YouTube one day after my talk, and posted the video (and the subsequent Q&A session) to this blog the following month. 

One pandemic and two years later, on April 26, 2022, I received a letter from YouTube. It stated that they think my presentation violated their "medical misinformation policy", and thus removed my video from YouTube. 

YouTube has an appeals process. I clicked on the link, and wrote that my presentation debunked medical misinformation - I explained several erroneous beliefs about vaccines in my presentation so my audience would be more effective at rebutting them. 

Seconds after submitting, YouTube sent a second email stating they had "reviewed your content carefully, and had confirmed that it violates our medical misinformation policy. [...] We won't be putting your content back up on YouTube." Clearly, this was an automated process - there was no time for a human to read my appeal before I received the email stating it had been denied.

This experience highlights several problems with any censorship (or "moderation") regime:

1. Who decides what's acceptable?
2. How do you ensure none of the bad stuff escapes your filter?
3. How do you ensure none of the acceptable stuff gets caught in your filter?

I'm pretty sure I'm an accidental victim of 3). I doubt that anyone at YouTube watched my presentation. It probably contained enough keywords that an algorithm determined it was "medical disinformation" based on a machine-generated transcript. I wasn't peddling medical misinformation, but no one at YouTube will watch the video to find out. And now, nobody else will, either.

I presented Stab Everyone You Love for the Centre for Inquiry Canada and Toronto Oasis virtually later that year. Those videos are still online - so far. It may just be a matter of time before they are taken down as well, for the same reason. 

Take care before endorsing censorship regimes. They tend to target the very communities they were ostensibly set up to protect.

Podcast for Inquiry S01E09: Howard Doughty on Academic Freedom and Post-Secondary Education

Howard Doughty has been a college professor for over 40 years and has grave concerns about the changes he’s seen in colleges and universities. Howard describes the nature, scope and limitations of academic freedom, and how that has changed over the decades. The increasing corporate influence in universities has in some cases supplanted the original purpose of the university, according to Howard. We discuss how students are different today than when he started teaching, and whether they should view their post-secondary endeavor as an educational opportunity, or a glorified job training program.

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A video recording is also available: