How Much of an Academic Education Is Actually Knowledge or Intellect?

David and Tamler dive into David Foster Wallace’s celebrated and surprisingly earnest Kenyon College commencement speech “This is Water”. How can we escape the prison and prism of our (literally) self-centered perspective? Can we choose to adjust our natural default settings, take a break from our running inner monologue, and pay attention to what’s in front of us right now? Is DFW appealing to Buddhist ideas or something more general that you can be found across all spiritual traditions?

Plus we ask the AI ethics program “Ask Delphi” some tough moral questions (spoiler alert: "just the tip" is "rude"), and almost get into a big fight about the potential of AI ethical robots (but we’re saving that argument for a future episode).

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Links:

• Artificial intelligence turns racist after learning from humans | Metro News
• Ask Delphi
• Very Bad Wizards Episode 91: Rage Against the Machines
• This is Water by David Foster Wallace (Full Transcript and Audio) - Farnam Street