" This is the first time in history that we have no idea what the world will look like in 10 years" Great interview with Lex Fridman. Numerous great books: "What is suffering" rather than "meaning." Observe what is happening when you observe suffering  Very good advice on mindfulness Deep insight into the role of stories in the way we see the world Insight into where AI is going and how it's surprising even though he's been writing about it Fear of death and how we die a bit when we lose anything People expect a story to answer fear of death

Assuming everything is observable in principle at least, we have two sets of interest: Meme space available to the individual (roughly their "vocabulary" of ideas Meme space available to the group (what ideas can be communicated) Any model is made exponentially more useful if it can be made dynamic. We can make the model dynamic by observing what ideas are communicated at any time. We can spot trends. "Big Data" techniques allow is to scoop up vast amounts of data from the Internet, providing good maps of how "memes" turn up down to the individual level. We can also see what ideas are being shared between individuals and groups.  Along the way of using the model, we are bound to discover its limitations. One obvious one is defining the slippery concept of "meme." The common meaning of meme these days refers to anything that gets spread on the internet, especially some catchy picture. We need to pay attention to this concept since "ideas...

If you are not familiar with this phenomenon, I refer you to that the breathless and uncritical treatment of the subject in  near death experiences on CBC Ideas . It seems fairly common for people who are "near death" in the sense of having their heart stop to have a vivid memory of leaving their body, seeing themselves from the outside, perhaps hearing and/or seeing what's going on around them, seeing a wonderful light and feeling a great sense of peace and well-being. The classic treatment of the subject, " Life after Life " is cited with approval by the "expert" for the CBC audience. "People have reported "near death experiences", or NDE's, over centuries and across cultures. The nature of them has historically been the territory of religion and philosophy. But now science has staked its claim in the discussion. And the questions are profound: where is consciousness produced, in the brain, or somewhere else? Can consciousness cont...

Richard Dawkins, the originator of the "meme" idea, hardly takes it seriously except as a rhetorical device to attack religion as a viral infection of the brain. THE MEMETIC PERSPECTIVE Dennett, on the other hand, takes the idea and runs with it. Here are some key talks on memes by Dennett. I note that Dennett has been promising for the last 4 years that he will soon come out with a book on memes, but we're still waiting. Dennett is a philosopher, not a scientist, so he understandably misunderstands what a "science" of memetics might look like. In fact, the word "memetics" sounds like "genetics", but it's really an extended analogy or a "meme" in its own right. It's a way of talking about culture that philosophers would be more inclined to call "Dennettism". What Dennett winds up with is a "philosophy" of memetics, which is still interesting. It is certainly a powerful rhetorical device, but its pretensio...