Apes in Drapes

The second part in the two part episode exploring other forms of cognizance and the human race to build one.

A followup to episode 15 that covered Purpose. This episode introduces the idea of cognizant artificial intelligence that will be dived into further in Pt 2.

What are we doing? 

Infinitely many tangents!

We explore breaking things and things breaking.

How do we define ourselves in space as we move within our environments?

When integrating new ideas into our understanding, unlike when we encounter physical objects, we need to build out the ideological scaffolding to be able to support the information.

A breakdown of our realities from the perspective of social dynamics and not physics. All the water you choose to consume, every bit of food you eat, all the time you spend on your couch, is being calculated by somebody somewhere.

Categories are useful for understanding our realities but are only as useful as they are simultaneously both well defined and fluid. Everything falls on a gradient, even gradients. 

"There are no differences but differences of degree among different degrees of difference and no difference." - William James

Simple Brain Anatomy

Exploring informed personal bias, or lenses. There is so much knowledge that humans have generated, knowledge which has only been created and refined through interaction with other pieces of knowledge, that when we look through our lens at other aspects of reality they seem to hold true, because they are. Knowledge built upon knowledge built upon knowledge.

Some fun links in case you want to read up on some topics:

Sense Data

Kant’s Idealism

Husserl (Founder of Phenomenology)

Idealism

Phenomenology

What would it take to make you question your reality?

This episode we explore things like cutting gashes into our hands and how what is normal is only what we can agree on. Everything we can't reconcile is madness or irrational. But what does any of that mean anyway.

Some fun links:

Consciousness

Qualia

Mind Identity

Knowledge of Self

A thought experiment: are the sections of our genetic sequence that bring about thought a virus in DNA's code? Maybe we are just the hosts for a cosmic competition between the two.

A couple of things things for fun:

Expansion of Cerebral Cortex in Hominid Evolution [Cell]

Pleasure Systems in the Brain [NCBI]

Episodes Referenced: 5 | Free Will & Awareness

You only know you've gone far enough in a discussion if you hit opinions on free will. So we might as well just start there.

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Further reading in case you want to start diving into some of the big names that focus or touched on free will and determinism, sorted in order of their birth:

Western Tradition
(Early) Zeno, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Plutarch
(Middle) Descartes, Spinoza, Hume, Kant, Laplace
(Recent) Godel, Camus, Foucault, Chomsky, Umberto Eco

Arabic Tradition
al-Kindi, al-Maarri, al-Ghazali, Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd

Indian Tradition
Sidhartha Gautama, Shankara, Rabindranath Tagore, Guru Nanak, Jiddu Krishnamurti

Chinese & Japanese Tradition
Lau Tzu, Confucius, Wang Fuzhi, Motoori Norinaga, Nishida Kitaro

Some resources:

1. Standford's Philosophy Portal

2. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (I know, the name makes it sound like it's not legitimate. But it's a peer reviewed online resource by professors from various universities. It was started in 1995 when nobody was sure what the internet would be.)

3. Reddit thread with links to some great resources.

Why is the problem of the damage we cause to our environment so difficult to solve?

All the information in this podcast comes from large government organizations, well known NGOs, and respected universities. No small obscure articles. Only fact checked, consensus driven research.

1. United Nations Food and Agriculture [Food Loss and Waste Reduction]
2. Environmental Protection Agency (US) [Environmental Impact of the Petroleum Industry]
3. IFOAM (EU) [Impact of Agriculture on Air Quality and Climate Change]
   
4. World Economic Forum [Which Countries Waste the Most Food]
   
5. Environmental Protection Agency (US) [The Dirty Dozen Pollutants]
6. United Nations [Water]
7. Nasa Earth Observatory [Cape Town Water]
8. Nasa Earth Observatory [Sao Paolo Water]
9. Oxford University Press [Future of the Sun and Earth]
10. US Government Geological Department [Interior of the Earth]

For Fun:

1. Nick Bostrom [Existential Risks]
2. Lumen [Visualization of Earth's Interior]
3. Future Timeline [Future of the Earth]

Relevant Episodes: Plastics and Packaging

There are exceptions to every rule. Let's slide into some nuance.

Episodes Referenced: Outsourcing Our Realities

Plastic is invading everything. Even this podcast.

All the information in this podcast comes from large government organizations, well known NGOs, and respected universities. No small obscure articles. Only fact checked, consensus driven research.

1. United Nations Environment [Single Use Plastics]
2. United Nations Environment [Microplastics]
3. Encyclopedia Britannica [Plastic]
4. National Institute of Health (US) [Production, Use, and Fate of All Plastics Ever Made]
5. World Health Organization [Toxicological Aspects of BPA]
   
6. World Health Organization [Dioxins and Their Impact on Human Health]
7. Environmental Protection Agency (US) [The Dirty Dozen Pollutants]
8. King’s College London [Plastic and Human Health]
9. Texas A&M University [Plastic and Human Health]
   
10. UK Government [Different Types of Plastic and Their Classification]

What do we really know, and what do we believe as though you know? Basically, how much of our realities are outsourced?

Apes in Drapes Soundcloud

Hi, my name is Ohan, and I like information.