The Wright Show (audio)

What part of secular-guru space (if any) does Bob occupy? ... On the origin of Bob’s theses (by means of natural selection) ... The mind-boggling mystery of consciousness ... Could evolution have a larger purpose? ... The “global brain” as the flowering of natural selection’s seed ... Saving our species by transcending some species-typical tendencies ... The algorithm of evolution as “the Logos” ... How cognitive biases get in the way of global cooperation ... The positive feeling of negative emotions (but can mindfulness feel even better?) ... Bob explains his recent writings on tribalism ... Bob: You are an expression of "the [evolutionary] Logos" ... Bob’s latent-functionality theory of epiphenomenal consciousness ... Does evolution steer us toward greater alignment with moral truth? ... On the “panoramic specificity” of Bob’s dharma ... This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nonzero.substack.com/subscribe

Remembering Michael Brooks ... The existential stakes of enlightenment ... Overcoming the affective dimension of cognitive bias ... Bringing broader awareness to the concept of cognitive bias ... Cognitive bias and the roots of war ... The folly of feedback loops ... Quelling our primitive retributive impulses ... Taking a mulligan in your meditation practice ... Focusing on the hindrances ... Can you fail at meditation? ... This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nonzero.substack.com/subscribe

Oliver's new book, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals ... Oliver outlines “compatibilism,” the idea that free will and determinism can coexist ... Bob: Everyone should be a free will agnostic ... The occasionally dramatic consequences of arguments against free will ... Would determinism require us to reform our approach to criminal justice? ... A (possible) quantum hack for free will vs. determinism ... Bob thinks compatibilism is b******t ... ... ... but Oliver tries to persuade him there's something to it ... Oliver: No position on free will and determinism is free of contradiction ... This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nonzero.substack.com/subscribe

John's recent bout of fever-induced hallucinations ... Does math actually help you understand QM? ... What experiments in QM have and have not verified ... John: All interpretations of QM are bad ... What do we want from science? ... "An operating system for reality" ... This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nonzero.substack.com/subscribe

Disavowing the naturalistic fallacy ... Why “sex” may not mean what you think it means ... Did evolution make women “choosier” about sex partners than men? ... Haggling over the price of sperm and eggs ... Agustín: Empirical studies complicate evolutionary psychology’s theoretical models ... The evolutionary significance of non-reproductive sex ... Why are males bigger than females in our species? ... Looking at pornography (for insights into human evolution) ... Are male and female sexual jealousy systematically different? ... This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nonzero.substack.com/subscribe

Oliver’s new book, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals ... Why is it so hard to accept the limits of our productivity? ... Prioritizing mindfully ... Heideggerian time management ... Finding value in even "meaningless" work ... Reducing the lure of distractions ... Ten tools for embracing your finitude ... Five (pretty intense) questions for reflection ... This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nonzero.substack.com/subscribe

Josh's aversion to the term "guru" ... Explaining the explain/excuse conflation ... The (possible) evolutionary origins of (biased) arguing ... Are humans mismatched to their modern environment? ... Building strengths vs. addressing deficiencies ... Defusing attribution error ... Making cognitive empathy cool ... Using meditation to strengthen cognitive empathy ... The mythical side of Bob ... Rationalists, effective altruists, and other possible fellow travelers ... This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nonzero.substack.com/subscribe

Agustín on what he was and wasn’t saying in his controversial Science piece on Darwin ... What is biological anthropology? ... What social media critiques of Agustín’s editorial missed ... Untangling Darwin’s attitudes toward race and genocide ... Darwin’s worries about his theory’s acceptance ... What do female gibbons want? ... Agustín: Commonly used racial categories are unscientific ... The changing rules for competition among males ... Okay, so should we cancel Darwin or not? ... This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nonzero.substack.com/subscribe

Defining effective altruism ... Rob explains the meaning of ‘80,000 Hours’ ... Should young people dedicate their careers to fighting climate change? ... The Apocalypse Aversion Project ... How cognitive biases fuel tribalism ... Bob: We need a psychological revolution ... Are external threats the best way to bring people together? ... The balance between surveillance and public safety ... Bob: Let's retire the word 'apologist' ... Making rationality cool ... Rob challenges Bob to find flaws in "The Moral Animal" ... This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nonzero.substack.com/subscribe

Josh tries to help Bob retool his meditation practice ... Identifying the purpose of your practice ... What to do when your mind wanders ... Tuning your mind ... The Four Rs ... Can mindfulness help us bolster our courage? ... Learning to tolerate blowback from your tribe ... Suffering and the psychology of tribalism ... Developing a non-zero-sum relationship with your own mind ... So you say you've been called a neofascist... ... This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nonzero.substack.com/subscribe

The value of defying your tribe ... Egocentric bias and attribution error ... The thin line between between courage and acting like an a*****e ... Why do we punish people for unintentional transgressions? ... To understand all is to forgive all … ... … but forgiveness won’t get you retweets ... Are people’s politics as irrational as they seem? ... William James’ preternatural insight into human psychology ... Should the Philip Roth biography have been pulled? ... Reliving the worst day of your life ... This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nonzero.substack.com/subscribe

John’s new book, Circling the Elephant: A Comparative Theology of Religious Diversity ... John’s early religious sensibility ... The Advaita Vedanta tradition in Hinduism ... Grappling with the human predicament ... Approaches to ultimate reality ... John’s brush with non-dualistic experience ... Why John doesn’t consider himself a perennialist ... Touching the infinite elephant ... This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nonzero.substack.com/subscribe

Who you callin' bodhisattva? ... Outlining the Apocalypse Aversion Project ... How meditation can make us better global citizens ... Why we need “cognitive crampons” ... Transcend and include ... The varieties of meditative experience ... Achieving micro-enlightenment ... The benefits of confronting your dark side ... Building a cognitively empathetic grassroots movement ... This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nonzero.substack.com/subscribe

Distinguishing between the numinous and the noumenal ... Kant’s religious vision ... The Copernican revolution in philosophy ... What, if anything, does the Buddhist idea of emptiness have to do with Kant? ... The transcendental status of space and time ... Can the Matrix help us understand Kant? ... Distinguishing between the noumenal and the phenomenal ... Can we transcend our phenomenal experience of the world? ... This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nonzero.substack.com/subscribe

What got Frank his Nobel Prize ... Frank's new book, Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality ... Solving the mystery of dark matter ... Can quantum physics make sense? ... Frank: Mind emerges from matter, not the other way around ... Can you love an automaton? ... Complementarity as scientific concept and everyday attitude ... How Frank's Catholic upbringing influenced his scientific thinking ... Is reality an algorithm? ... The limits of human intelligence ... This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nonzero.substack.com/subscribe

Continuing “the Dharma of Bob” ... The evolutionary logic of cognitive biases ... Attribution error, or why your enemies seem so damn evil ... Zero-sum biases in a non-zero-sum world ... Bob fixes social media ... How cognitive biases have shaped perceptions of the Capitol riot ... The psychology of tribalism and the BLM protests ... This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nonzero.substack.com/subscribe

Could evolution have a higher purpose? ... The value of (some) untestable hypotheses ... What zombies can (and can’t) teach us about consciousness ... Evolutionary teleology vs. evolutionary teleonomy ... Why does evolution produce increasingly complex forms of life? ... Distinguishing between physical laws and natural processes ... Could the hypothesis that evolution is serving a larger purpose be tested? ... This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nonzero.substack.com/subscribe

Continuing the exploration of "the Dharma of Bob" ... Bob: There is no good alternative to global community ... Defining non-zero-sumness ... How genetic "selfishness" led to altruism ... The psychology of tribalism ... Can we bridge the polarization divide? ... Sadly, self-transcendence isn't genetically inheritable ... Does Bob see cause for optimism? ... This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nonzero.substack.com/subscribe

Philo of Alexandria, seminal Logos theorist ... Bob: Teleology is perfectly compatible with a scientific worldview ... A logic shaping the unfolding of life ... How Jordan Peterson understands the Logos ... Does order flow from consciousness? ... Moral progress and human interdependence ... Teleology without theology ... The Logos and the "simulation hypothesis" ... This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nonzero.substack.com/subscribe

Guthrie's new book, Just Faith: Reclaiming Progressive Christianity ... Guthrie's personal faith journey ... The tradition of liberal Protestantism ... Human sexuality and evangelicalism ... Guthrie sees a liberatory counternarrative in Scripture ... What drives militant atheism? ... What happened to Christian antiwar activism? ... Do young progressives privilege identity over class? ... Why Guthrie prays for President Trump ... This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nonzero.substack.com/subscribe