Life, Consciousness and Society

These sessions will be dialogues exploring specific aspects of the nature of life, consciousness or society. Since in the past new participants have felt they were missing parts of these discussions—which have been going on for nearly two years—these sessions will follow a different format from previous quarters. We will focus on a series of specific topics instead of reading an entire book. Before each session, participants will watch a YouTube video(s) by an expert author(s). The facilitator will start by providing context, definitions and key points, then lead open dialogue.

April 14: Perception and the Brain
In this session we will focus on how the brain perceives external stimuli and information. As one example, we’ll consider the relatively simple question of how we perceive vision. In a second example, we’ll consider the vastly more complicated question of how and whether we can perceive and understand how life started.
The two videos are:
• Osher online video for Ed Chaplin, 2024: The Perception & the Brain. What and How Consciously See
• YouTube video: Professor Nick Lane: How Can We Know Anything About the Origin of Life?

April 28: Free Will and the Justice System
In this session we’ll consider free will. If it is not what we think it is, what are the implications for the justice system?
The two videos are:
• YouTube video: Do We Have Freewill? Daniel Dennett vs Robert Sapolsky at How To Academy
• YouTube video: Robert Sapolsky and Daniel Dennett Free Will Debate

May 12: The Universe, Life and Artificial Intelligence
In this session we’ll consider theories of constructive mathematics and artificial intelligence that suggest the universe and life are just computations.
The online video is:
• Search for: Blaise Aguera y Arcas: Google fellow; Development Talks: A Computational View of Life and Intelligence, Harvard Growth Lab

May 26: The Brain and Computational Algorithms
In this session we’ll consider how brain functions may differ from that of a digital computer and computational algorithms.
The online video is:
• Search for: Earl Miller 2024 TSC Plenary Cortical Oscillations, Waves, and Consciousness