Rationally Speaking Podcast

Exploring cognitive dissonance and biases, Carol Tavris discusses how our need to justify our beliefs leads to rationalization and mistreatment of others. She highlights the fallibility of human memory and cultural variations in handling cognitive dissonance. Strategies for navigating critical thinking and engaging with differing viewpoints are also explored, emphasizing the importance of objectivity and compassion.

Discussing the accuracy and trustworthiness of medical research, challenges of evidence-based vs. science-based medicine, exploring the complexities of conducting rigorous medical research, analyzing 'The Walking Dead' from a storytelling perspective, and examining the epidemiology of a fictional zombie pandemic.

The podcast explores experimental philosophy, moral judgments, human nature, and debates within the field of philosophy. Guest Joshua Knobe recommends 'The Genealogy of Morals' by Nietzsche and 'You Must Go and Win' by Alina Simone. It also discusses the connection between experimental philosophy and indie rock.

Massimo and Julia answer listener questions on rationality, changing opinions, biases in debates, morality of bestiality, and solving the induction problem. They recommend philosophy sources like Stanford Encyclopedia and discuss influential philosophical works.

Political scientist Brendan Nyhan discusses the challenges of changing false beliefs, citing examples like Iraq's WMDs and misconceptions about political figures. He explores the role of ideology in perpetuating false beliefs and emphasizes the importance of elites in dispelling misinformation. The conversation also touches on strategies to combat false beliefs, survey data reliability, and the evolving media landscape.

You’ve heard the claims: men are inclined to cheat on women because natural selection favors multiple offspring from multiple mates, especially if you don’t have to pay child support. Even rape has been suggested to be the result of natural selection in favor of “secondary mating strategies” when the primary ones fail. Welcome to evolutionary psychology, a discipline curiously situated at the interface between evolutionary science and pop psychology, where both wild and reasonable claims seem to clash against the wall of an incredible scarcity of pertinent data. The issue is not whether it makes sense to apply evolutionary principles to the study of human behavior. Of course it does, human beings are no exception to evolution. But the devil is in the details, and the details deal with the complexities and nuances of how exactly evolutionary biologists test adaptive hypotheses, as well as with the nature of historical science itself.

The podcast explores the philosophy and implications of transhumanism, including radical alterations to human abilities, ethical dilemmas, and the controversial pursuit of life extension. It questions the feasibility and desirability of goals like mind uploading to computers and delves into the societal challenges and consequences of technologies enhancing human abilities.

At a talk he gave at TAM 8, Massimo argued that non-experts in a field aren't qualified to reject an expert consensus, such as that on anthropogenic climate change. Most recently, he has taken Jerry Coyne to task for making a philosophical argument without having the necessary expertise. This raises a number of questions: Are there fields that have no experts, or that have pretend experts? If there is a lot of disagreement among experts on a topic, should we take any individual expert's opinion less seriously? How much consensus is required before a non-expert should say, "OK, looks like this question really is settled"? Perhaps noted expert George Carlin had it right when he said: "I have as much authority as the pope, I just don't have as many people who believe it."

Massimo and Julia from the Rationally Speaking podcast answer thought-provoking questions ranging from sacred beliefs to moral repugnance in philosophy. They explore the significance of rationality in decision-making and reflect on the impact of individual votes in elections, debating the rationality of voting in local versus national elections.

Jennifer Michael Hecht, author, science historian, philosopher, and poet, discusses the changing concept of happiness in different cultures and times. She critiques the skeptic community's reliance on science resembling religion. They explore the complex relationship between faith and doubt, blending religious beliefs with skepticism, and the intersection of skepticism, atheism, and the arts. The discussion challenges societal obsessions with longevity and diet, emphasizing living a meaningful life over extending life. They touch on happiness, atheism, and the impact individuals have on each other.