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Percontations

Percontations: Fear, Power, and Mortality
Robert Greene & Eliezer Yudkowsky

Nov 14

2009

	Robert’s new book, “The 50th Law”
	Robert says power is better than happiness
	Robert’s controversial 7th law: Take credit for others’ work
	Eliezer on censorship in online communities
	Will politics thwart transhumanists’ dreams?
	Do you need a looming threat of death to get stuff done?

Percontations: Reality and Television
Anne Helen Petersen & Susan Murray

Nov 1

2009

	The balloon boy as harbinger of death for reality TV
	Our 21st-century cult of the individual
	Anticipating TV’s coming innovations
	A brief history of audience disillusionment
	Tensions in the nature of celebrity
	Octomom (and other dysfunctional stars)

Percontations: Loving Wives and Countries
Simon Keller & Niko Kolodny

Oct 17

2009

	Love as a response to reasons
	Will your marriage survive Niko’s analysis of love?
	Unrequited love and dysfunctional relationships
	What’s the difference between patriotism and racism?
	Does patriotic pride require epistemic irresponsibility?
	Is unconditional love a worthy ideal?

Percontations: The Nature of Probability
Eliezer Yudkowsky & Andrew Gelman

Oct 11

2009

	Fun with coin-flipping
	Can probabilistic thinking be completely automated?
	The limits of probability theory
	How Andrew got shot down by Daily Kos
	Is the academic world addicted to easy answers?
	The difference between Eliezer and Nassim Taleb

Percontations: Spiritual Warfare
Robert Wright & John Horgan

Oct 4

2009

	Hard truths and Buddhist consolations
	Bob’s Darwinian explanation of John’s career
	Bad gurus and good Buddhists
	John’s modest brand of enlightenment
	The meaning of monks who set themselves on fire
	Do you need Buddhism in order to feel oneness with lizards?

Percontations: The Diavlog of Dead Philosophers
Simon Critchley & David Shields

Sep 27

2009

	Simon’s year of nihilistic stupor in Los Angeles
	Living in the present between anxiety and regret
	Is obsession with death a guy thing?
	Quotation and immortality
	How to talk about David Lynch
	Is every joke an “epigraph on the death of feeling”?

Percontations: Philosophy and the String Wars
Peter Woit & Craig Callender

Sep 12

2009

	How string theory came to dominate physics…
	...and acquired its share of enemies
	Have we ever had a theory quite like string theory?
	Does string theory explain why apples fall from trees?
	Can the Anthropic Principle be non-trivial without being absurd?
	Math, physics, and beauty

Percontations: A Tale of Data, Theory, and Coral Reefs
Greg Laden & David Dobbs

Sep 6

2009

	David’s book “Reef Madness”
	Louis Agassiz: one of Darwin’s great 19th-century foes
	Charles Darwin, geologist
	Alexander Agassiz’s epic battle with Darwin over coral reefs
	How the US Navy vindicated Darwin
	Darwin’s legendary nose for what matters

Percontations: Fiddling With the Knobs of the Universe
Anthony Aguirre & Clifford Johnson

Aug 23

2009

	The recent evolution of theoretical cosmology
	Eternal inflation and the possibility of a beginningless universe
	Can string theory explain why our world looks four-dimensional?
	The Anthropic Principle: How unlikely is our universe?
	Remembering string theorists’ early optimism
	In search of alternatives to inflation and to string theory

Percontations: Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Mechanics
Eliezer Yudkowsky & Scott Aaronson

Aug 16

2009

	When will we build the first superintelligence?
	Why quantum computing isn’t a recipe for robot apocalypse
	How to guilt-trip a machine
	The evolutionary psychology of artificial intelligence
	Eliezer contends many-worlds is obviously correct
	Scott contends many-worlds is ridiculous (but might still be true)

Percontations: The Diavlog of Death
Ben Bradley & Roy Sorensen

Aug 9

2009

	Did Farrah Fawcett become even worse off after she died?
	Reasons to care about Grandpa’s will
	Can 4-dimensionalism soothe the fear of death?
	How can an early death be bad if a late birth isn’t?
	Our weird intuitions about James Dean’s life
	Would it be irrational to pass up a chance at immortality?

Percontations: Sweet Revenge
Michael McCullough & Dacher Keltner

Aug 2

2009

	What was Obama’s beer summit supposed to accomplish?
	The biological origins of getting even
	Has our thirst for revenge outlived its usefulness?
	How to make modern criminal justice more satisfying
	Buddha, Darwin, and compassion
	What’s next for the evolutionary science of human nature?

Percontations: Leibniz’s Theodicy
Michael Murray & Jan Cover

Jul 26

2009

	How could a good God allow so many bad things to happen?
	What is evil?
	What would a solution to the Problem of Evil look like?
	Leibniz’s strange idea that ours is the best of all possible worlds
	Does human free will help the theists’ case?
	Is Leibniz’s God free to make an imperfect world?

Percontations: Intelligence and Beyond
Rex Jung & Robert Sternberg

Jul 19

2009

	Bob and Rex swap definitions of intelligence
	Is intelligence teachable?
	Creativity as novelty plus usefulness
	Do you have to be smart to be creative?
	Why creativity matters more now than ever
	What is wisdom?

Percontations: Healing Spaces
Esther Sternberg & Stephen Post

Jul 12

2009

	Lessons from Disneyland for hospital architects
	The healing power of labyrinths
	Why beautiful places can produce brilliant insights
	How your neighborhood could make you sick
	How Esther’s trip to Greece improved her arthritis
	Architectural challenges posed by Alzheimer’s patients

Percontations: Cage Match of God
Robert Wright & John Horgan

Jul 5

2009

	John attempts to divine Bob’s theology
	Is “moral truth” an oxymoron?
	John vs. Bob on whether religion does more harm than good
	Are the New Atheists winning?
	Is belief in God like belief in electrons?
	John denies being objectively good

Percontations: System Justification Theory
Joshua Knobe & John Jost

Jun 28

2009

	John argues that we seek to justify our own oppression…
	...and responds to objections against his view
	What would evidence for racial self-hatred look like?
	Explaining George W. Bush’s success
	Our mistaken stereotypes of political activists
	Advice for advocates of social change

Percontations: Who Owns the Words?
Siva Vaidhyanathan & David Shields

Jun 22

2009

	David’s forthcoming book, “Reality Hunger”
	The Bible’s authors’ blissful ignorance of IP law
	The bizarre market in famous quotations
	Why Thomas Jefferson would have loved Napster
	Nonfiction as art
	Siva and David embrace punk’s DIY aesthetic

Percontations: Explaining and Appraising Moral Intuition
Joshua Greene & Joshua Knobe

Jun 14

2009

	Why the natural history of our moral intuitions matters
	Could parents’ love for their children be morally wrong?
	How we’re confused about gay kissing in public
	A moral civil war waged inside our heads
	When is moral theorizing inappropriate?
	How to philosophize with a brain scanner

Percontations: The Elusive Hand of God
Robert Wright & Karl Giberson

Jun 7

2009

	Karl on reconciling Christianity with evolution
	In search of a scientifically respectable form of divine intervention
	Can natural selection explain our moral sense?
	What is it that our moral sense senses, anyway?
	Can we explain Mother Teresa’s generosity without God?
	How consoling could a hands-off God be?