Get your DEMYSTICON 2024 tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/demysticon-2024-tickets-727054969987 This is our second week on the road and we're broadcasting from uber-sunny Joshua Tree, California. Today we start out with the observation that a dominant faction of the techno-futurist community seems to believe that if our civilization maximizes intelligence, everything will be just fine in the end. We intuitively balk at this promise - and in general, we are skeptical at the lack of vision about what that future might look like. To understand this belief we have to understand what is meant by "intelligence." Then we have to consider the alternatives. We look at the evolution of this dream/nightmare from the earliest days of computer science through the lenses of sci-fi authors like Bradbury & PKDick up through a recent JRE interview with Ray Kurzweil. Tell us your thoughts in the comments! Follow our band Secretary of Nature as we're on tour! https://www.instagram.com/secretary.of.nature/ Listen to Secretary of Nature! https://soundcloud.com/laterisgone Sign up for a yearly Patreon membership for discounted conference tickets: https://bit.ly/3lcAasB 00:00 Go! 00:06:14 Futurists value computation above all 00:08:14 Quality matters for vision 00:10:20 Intelligence: wisdom, insight, computation 00:14:45 Futurists dream to become god? 00:17:44 Insight & wisdom at the cellular level 00:23:13 False wisdom & hallucinatory insight 00:31:53 Comfort, computational value structure, and slavery 00:38:54 Bradbury corollaries 00:45:24 Soviet model: computational decision making 00:53:23 Exponential computation goes to bureaucratic singularity 00:58:09 We could be wrong. Let's be honest. 01:03:02 Tech should work for us, not the other way 01:09:19 Allure of authority 01:16:52 When computational futurists go blind 01:23:37 Caution for catastrophism. Looking within. #science #sciencepodcast #TechnoFuturism #ArtificialIntelligence #FutureVision #SciFiAnalysis #RayKurzweil #JoshuaTreeBroadcast #IntelligenceDebate #FuturistPerspectives #SkepticalViewpoints #ScienceFiction #TechnologyTrends #FutureSociety #EvolutionOfIdeas #JREInterview #Bradbury #PKDick #FutureOutlook #VisionaryThinking #PodcastDiscussion #SpeculativeFutures Check our short-films channel, @DemystifySci: https://www.youtube.com/c/DemystifyingScience AND our material science investigations of atomics, @MaterialAtomics https://www.youtube.com/@MaterialAtomics Join our mailing list https://bit.ly/3v3kz2S PODCAST INFO: Anastasia completed her PhD studying bioelectricity at Columbia University. When not talking to brilliant people or making movies, she spends her time painting, reading, and guiding backcountry excursions. Shilo also did his PhD at Columbia studying the elastic properties of molecular water. When he's not in the film studio, he's exploring sound in music. They are both freelance professors at various universities. - Blog: http://DemystifySci.com/blog - RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/2be66934/podcast/rss - Donate: https://bit.ly/3wkPqaD - Swag: https://bit.ly/2PXdC2y SOCIAL: - Discord: https://discord.gg/MJzKT8CQub - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/DemystifySci - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DemystifySci/ - Twitter: https://twitter.com/DemystifySci MUSIC: -Shilo Delay: https://g.co/kgs/oty671