In this episode I am discussing the economic impacts of the AI revolution, and whether or not it is time for UBI. AI will take over jobs and increase productivity per remaining worker to compensate. We are bound for a situation where owners will be able to squeeze more profits from a declining workforce, while the working class continues on the path to extinction and increasing hardship. Corporate profits need to keep increasing to pay shareholders, and corporations have been able to use the threat of offshoring jobs, while having to compete with more unscrupulous companies to hold wages down. I am a proponent of some sort of UBI but I recognize that the path from here to there is not obvious. I fear that if we don’t find a peaceful means to distribute the increasingly concentrated wealth created by robotics, and AI, that the uprising is coming. People are getting restless. Despite being significantly more productive than our parents generation, we have less real wealth. Less purchasing power. Less free time. Less leisure. AI and robotics were supposed to free us from the grind. Make life easier. Instead we have to compete with robots in a dwindling job market to make ends meet. It doesn’t have to be this way. Is there an equitable and peaceful path to more widely share the benefits of automation or are we rushing headlong into upheaval? Dr. Karl Widerquist has a Ph.D. in economics from the City University of New York. For several years Widerquist pursued both music and economics. He played in several indie bands in New York in the 1990s. He was a Hoover Fellow at the Université Catholique de Louvain. Widerquist received a second doctorate in Political Theory at the University of Oxford and then worked as a Fellow at the Murphy Institute at Tulane University and as a Visiting Professor at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom. He is a Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University-Qatar specializing in distributive justice. Widerquist has been the co-chair of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) since 2008. Support the podcast at patron.podbean.com/TheRationalView Support the discussion on Facebook @TheRationalView Twix @AlScottRational

I recently ran a pair of episodes investigating claims of the health effects of deuterium, a stable heavy isotope of hydrogen. The first interview was with a Naturopath, and the second was with a real medical doctor publishing peer reviewed papers on the topic. And my focus in this effort is on drilling through the BS to get to what the evidence says.  This takes sustained skepticism, and it doesn’t always make friends. Many people are turned off by the methods of science. It reminds me of why I never liked the TV series X-files. The scientist was always being appropriately skeptical of phenomena that have, at best, only breathless anecdotal support. But she was constantly being shamed by the male character for not ‘believing’ that the truth is out there.  But believing extraordinary claims without sufficient evidence makes you gullible. You have the choice of being a friendly fool in believing that astrology or alternative medicine, homeopathy, or other superstitions should be given equal standing with experimentally tested scientific knowledge. So in this episode I want to give you some tools to identify bafflegab, gobbledygook, and pseudo-science, while reviewing some of the reactions I received.  Support the podcast at patron.podbean.com/TheRationalView Give me your feedback on Facebook @TheRationalView Twittter @AlScottRational

In this episode I’m digging deeper into the purported health effects of deuterium, a stable isotope of hydrogen. Deuterium has twice the mass of hydrogen, and it exists naturally in water.  A hydrogen atom in H2O is replaced by deuterium in about 150 out of 1 million atoms. This trace compound interacts chemically as hydrogen, but because of its weight it has different dynamics. Why is this an issue? Excess deuterium has been found to impact cell division.. When it gets incorporated into proteins in the body it can mess with their functionality. Yet at such low concentrations it seems like it wouldn’t be a significant issue. Let’s get to the bottom of this. Dr. Laszlo Boros is a retired Professor of Pediatrics at the UCLA School of Medicine, the Co-Director of the Stable Isotope Research Laboratory at the Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovations and Investigator at the Clinical and Translational Research Institute at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. He is the inventor of the Human Deutenome Project in order to map the distribution of deuterium in the human body with structural and functional interpretations as it relates to disease and health. Born and educated in Hungary, his medical background includes a focus on pancreatic cancer and stable isotope technologies to study diabetes and cancer cell growth in vitro. He researches the influence of metabolic processes and disorders on aggressive cancers and vitamin transport. He is an internationally recognized expert of metabolic water biochemistry as well as deuterium mediated kinetic isotopic effects in health and disease. His most recent studies target 'deupletion' and 'deuposition' related mechanisms as the result of intra-cellular hydrophobic lipid membrane nanoconfinements via the Quantum Destabilization of Protons in metabolic water. https://www.laszlogboros.com/_files/ugd/aeaa87_81191bea9f9643a7b40ed99f0052394d.pdf Support The Rational View at https://patron.podbean.com/TheRationalView This was an interesting discussion. What did you think? Let me know @TheRationalView on Facebook.

This episode is based on feedback from a listener who suggested I investigate the science of Deutenomics. The impact of heavy water on health.  Apparently it’s a thing. Is it snake oil or is it real? Deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen that is twice as heavy. It has a neutron plus a proton.  Chemically it should be identical, but the reaction dynamics can be different due to the mass. I’ve found an expert on the subject to chat with. This is a job for The Rational View Petra Davelaar is a naturopathic doctor who specializes in Deutenomics. Deutenomics is a new area in science that explores how hydrogen moves through water and other intermediates inside our body. Essentially, humans are electric Beings of water fueled by light. Deutenomics seeks to uncover the biochemical and quantum physics of these processes. She completed her naturopathic medical training at Bastyr University and is certified in functional medicine and nutrition. She is an invited reviewer for several scientific periodicals, including Scientific Reports, a Nature group research journal, as well as Medical Oncology, a Springer journal. https://drpetrad.com/about Let me hear your opinion on Facebook @TheRationalView Twix @AlScottRational Insta @The_Rational_View #TheRationalView #podcast #deutenomics #heavywater #health #cancer #mitochondria

In this episode I am welcoming a returning guest, Zion Lights, to the podcast to discuss the growing influence of degrowth. This philosophy encompasses a wide range of thinking from return to nature Luddites to  mild anti-capitalist zeitgeist. Zion Lights is a Science Communicator who is known for her environmental advocacy work. She is founder of the evidence-based climate activism group Emergency Reactor and author of The Ultimate Guide to Green Parenting. Zion has become a world-leading speaker on clean energy, specifically nuclear energy, and also lectures on effective science communication, tackling misinformation, and climate action. Zion is also a keen astronomer who has given a TED talk on the importance of stargazing. She is the former Editor of The Hourglass, Extinction Rebellion's print newspaper, and was also a spokesperson for the group for two years.

In this episode I’m continuing my series on human enhancement. I’ve previously interviewed Guilia Dominijanni on her experiments on how people adapt successfully to adding a third robotic arm. Technology continues to advance in robotics, computing, and brain-machine interfaces opening a huge pandora’s box on the potential for future enhancements. To explore this I’m going to chat with a distinguished author who has explored the issue in depth. Joel Garreau is an explorer of culture, values, and change. He has published several books, including The Nine Nations of North America. Edge City: Life on the New Frontier, and Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies—and What It Means to Be Human. A long-time reporter and editor at The Washington Post, Joel is now Professor of Culture, Values and Emerging Technologies Emeritus at Arizona State University. Joel has served as a Future Tense Fellow at New America in Washington, D.C., and a fellow at Cambridge University, Oxford, the University of California at Berkeley and George Mason University and a Science Journalism Laureate at Purdue. He was a long-time member of Global Business Network, the pioneering scenario-planning organization, and is the troll of a small forest in the foothills of Virginia's Blue Ridge. Support the podcast at patron.podbean.com/TheRationalView Join the Facebook discusssion @TheRationalView

In this episode I want to return to the theme of critical thinking. How can we teach people to immunize their minds? In the past I’ve interviewed two of the co-founders of the Mental Immunity Project, Andy Norman and Lee McIntyre to get their feedback on how to fight the pandemic of misinformation and disinformation that we are fed on social media. The Mental Immunity Project is an effort to vaccinate the minds of the public against viral misinformation. Today I’m interviewing the third co-founder of the project to learn about her work in fighting for a Rational View. Melanie Trecek-King is the creator of Thinking Is Power, an online critical thinking resource. She is an Associate Professor of Biology at Massasoit Community College, where she teaches a general-education science course designed to teach critical thinking, information literacy, and science literacy.  As a speaker and consultant, she promotes her "teach skills, not facts" approach to fellow science educators, and assists organizations in achieving their goals through better thinking. The enthusiastic support of my listeners is what keeps me pumping out new and interesting content. Please consider becoming a patron at patron.podbean.com/TheRationalView Add your inputs on Facebook @TheRationalView #TheRationalView #podcast #criticalthinking #mentalimmunity #bias #disinformation

2023 was a big year for the perception and advancement of nuclear power not only in Canada, but globally. In this episode I am interviewing friend of The Rational View and fellow podcaster Dr. Chris Keefer to reminisce about the work his group, Canadians for Nuclear Energy has accomplished in the past year. Chris Keefer is an emergency physician, medical simulation educator, nuclear energy advocate and podcaster. He is the President of Canadians for Nuclear Energy and the Director of Doctors for Nuclear Energy and the host of the Decouple Podcast. Support the podcast at https://patron.podbean.com/TheRationalView Give me your feedback on Facebook @TheRationalView Twix @AlScottRational Instagram @The_Rational_View #TheRationalView #podcast #nuclearenergy #candu #greenenergy #atomicenergy   

This episode is a Rational View review of 2023, and an outlook for 2024. Happy New Year! 2023 was a big year for yours truly in that I uprooted my family and moved to a new city, and I apologize for the interruptions that this entailed. I’ve finally gotten settled in my new home and it’s time to take stock and make new plans. If you are interested learning about The Rational View and are in need of a quick overview of last year's podcasts to decide where to start in then you've come to the right place. If you are a long-time listener, then I hope you enjoy reminiscing with me about the past year and are looking forward to a new year filled with more learning and evidence-based exploration of important issues. #TheRationalView #podcast #2023 #overview

In this episode I am returning to a topic that has become a favourite for pundits and trolls, and that is carbon dioxide. The near doubling of the atmospheric concentration of this colourless odourless gas has been identified by scientists as contributing to an accelerating heating of the biosphere that has significantly affected the climate.  As a by-product of one of our most lucrative industries, the burning of fossil fuels, CO2 has gained a lot of friends.  And because of that it is the subject of a targeted disinformation campaign, becoming headline political news.  This is a job for The Rational View. Bärbel Hönisch grew up in Germany and studied at the Universities of Bielefeld and Bremen, as well as the Alfred-Wegener-Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven. She received her Diploma in Biology in 1999 and her PhD in Natural Sciences in 2002. After moving to the US, she held academic positions at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, the City University of New York at Queens College, the State University of New York in Stony Brook, and Bremen University. She joined the faculty of the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University in 2007. She is interested in the effect of global carbon cycle perturbations on climate and the oceans, in particular past variations of seawater acidity and its relation to atmospheric CO2. As she was originally trained as a marine biologist, her research includes culture experiments with living marine calcifiers to validate proxies for past environmental conditions. She applies the resulting calibrations to reconstructing seawater carbonate chemistry and atmospheric CO2 variations through Earth history. Over the past 7 years she has led a consortium of paleo-CO2 proxy experts to compile, vet and modernize published paleo-CO2 estimates over the Cenozoic. Support the podcast at https://Patron.podbean.com/TheRationalView Facebook @TheRationalView Twitter @AlScottRational