The Jim Rutt Show EP 159 Bobby Azarian on the Romance of Reality
02:01:26
Limits of Reductionism
- Reductionism is a valuable scientific method but has limits.
- It overlooks emergent phenomena in complex systems where interactions between components matter.
Entropy and Life
- The universe isn't moving towards disorder; adaptive complexity increases order locally.
- Life, as adaptive complexity, uses energy to create order while increasing overall entropy.
Life's Origin and Energy
- Life might be an inevitable consequence of energy dissipation on suitable planets.
- Hydrothermal vents are theorized as life's origin due to energy flow, although other theories exist.
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Introduction
00:00 • 2min
The Reductionist World View
02:01 • 2min
The Second Law of Thermodynamics
04:25 • 4min
Are You Trying to Break the Second Law of Thermodynamicis?
08:50 • 2min
The Second Law of Thermodynamics
10:40 • 2min
The Origin of Life
13:07 • 2min
Is Life Something Like a Dissipative Structure?
14:50 • 2min
Evolution, Evolution and the Error Catalyst
17:16 • 6min
The Firmy Paradox - Is There a Natural Ratchet Up a Stack of Such States?
23:14 • 3min
The Evolution of Ucariotic Bacteria
26:42 • 2min
The Evolution of Multi Cellularity
28:21 • 6min
The One Big Idea in the Book, I'd Never Run Across Before
33:58 • 3min
How Evolution Creates Knowledge Through Natural Selection
36:32 • 3min
Statistical Modelling of the Environment
39:26 • 2min
Epigenetic Knowledge Acquisition
41:13 • 2min
Evolution Is a Slow, Sloweran Shift
42:47 • 2min
Is There an Emergency of Agency?
45:08 • 4min
What Is Agency?
48:44 • 4min
The Problem of Epistemology
52:34 • 5min
The Asian Brain Hypothesis and the Free Energy Principle
57:49 • 2min
The Active Inference Paradime - The Paradim of the Basian Brain Hypothesis
59:30 • 3min
Symbols and Language - And That's a Bright Line That Separates Humans From Chimps
01:02:48 • 3min
Is Life a Flourishing Phenomenon?
01:06:17 • 2min
Is Intelligent Life Possible?
01:08:11 • 2min
Ameta Plan for Humanity
01:10:28 • 5min
What Is the Definition of Teleology?
01:15:53 • 5min
The Goal of Cosmic Evolution
01:20:43 • 6min
The Amega Point and the Anthropic Cosmological Principle
01:26:34 • 2min
Dark Energy and Consciousness at a New Scale
01:28:20 • 6min
Is There Consciousness in Brains?
01:34:12 • 5min
Affirmation of the Importance of Attention in Higher Learning
01:38:58 • 6min
The Romance of Reality by Bobby Azarian
01:44:43 • 3min
The Multiverse Theory Is a Good Fit, Though Not Necessary
01:48:05 • 2min
The Multi Verse Theory
01:50:32 • 3min
Is There a Creator?
01:53:12 • 2min
The Multiverse Explanation
01:54:52 • 7min
Jim talks with Bobby Azarian about the ideas in his new book The Romance of Reality: How the Universe Organizes Itself to Create Life, Consciousness, and Cosmic Complexity, which Jim calls "the most Jim Rutt Show-ish book ever"...
Jim talks with Bobby Azarian about the ideas in his new book The Romance of Reality: How the Universe Organizes Itself to Create Life, Consciousness, and Cosmic Complexity, which Jim calls "the most Jim Rutt Show-ish book ever." They discuss the meaning & limits of reductionism, why the universe may not be moving toward an increasingly disordered state, life as a channel for dissipating energy, dissipative adaptation, self-organization as Darwinian process, the Fermi paradox, an evolutionary arms race of complexity, biology as knowledge creation, the emergence of agency, the Bayesian Brain Hypothesis, how symbolic thought opens up design space, the probability of complex life, teleology at local & universal scales, Teilhard de Chardin's omega point, global workspace theory, phenomenal vs access consciousness, whether the internet is a global brain, applying the weak & strong anthropic principle to multiverse theory, cosmological natural selection, life as central to reality, and much more.
Episode Transcript
The Romance of Reality: How the Universe Organizes Itself to Create Life, Consciousness, and Cosmic Complexity, by Bobby Azarian
JRS EP 157 - Terrence Deacon on Mind's Emergence From Matter
JRS EP 105 - Christof Koch on Consciousness
JRS EP 18 - Stuart Kauffman on Complexity, Biology & T.A.P.
JRS EP 116 - Doug Erwin on the Cambrian Explosion
At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity, by Stuart Kauffman
The Phenomenon of Man, by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, by John Barrow & Frank Tipler
JRS EP 108 - Bernard Baars on Consciousness
JRS EP 5 - Lee Smolin – Quantum Foundations and Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution
Bobby Azarian is a science journalist and a cognitive neuroscientist with a PhD from the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study at George Mason University. He has written for The Atlantic, The New York Times, Scientific American, BBC, Slate, and Aeon. His blog Mind in the Machine hosted by Psychology Today has over 8 million views. He worked on the Emmy-nominated show Mind Field, and he is the author of the new book The Romance of Reality: How the Universe Organizes Itself To Create Life, Consciousness, and Cosmic Complexity.