David and Tamler talk about Jorge Luis Borges' disorienting
short story "The Other." A 70-year-old Borges sits on a bench by
the Charles River and who should he encounter but himself as a
19-year-old, by the Rhône River in 1918 Geneva. Is this a dream?
Who is dreaming it? What does the Heraclitean river metaphor reveal
about this impossible meeting? (Stick around after the closing
music, David reads the story in English and in Spanish.)
Plus Richard Dawkins has a memorable encounter of his own, but
with his AI Claudia (née Claude). If you think AI isn't conscious
then how do you explain Claudia's rapturous and penetrating insight
into Dawkins' unpublished novel?
Very Bad Wizards is a podcast featuring a philosopher (Tamler Sommers) and a psychologist (David Pizarro), who share a love for ethics, pop culture, and cognitive science, and who have a marked inability to distinguish sacred from profane. Each podcast includes discussions of moral philosophy, recent work on moral psychology and neuroscience, and the overlap between the two.