What is consciousness? It's one of science's greatest unsolved questions, and one that Michael Pollan has spent years trying to answer it. Here, Pollan unpacks why the brain is not a computer, why AI cannot truly be conscious despite what Silicon Valley believes, and why our inner lives are under a very real threat from the algorithms built to exploit them.
Along the way he tackles the hard problem of consciousness, the 22 competing theories science is still arguing about, why the dream of mind uploading is built on a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to be human, and what you can actually do to protect your own mind.
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Michael Pollan is a journalist and author of several bestselling books including The Omnivore's Dilemma, How to Change Your Mind, and A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness. He is a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine and teaches at Harvard and UC Berkeley.
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Order Michael Pollan's books here:
A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness - https://geni.us/K3BxG
How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics - https://geni.us/wS9cW
This Is Your Mind On Plants: Opium―Caffeine―Mescaline - https://geni.us/NkQicQX
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Chapters:
00:00 What is consciousness?
01:19 From the soul to modern science
03:05 How psychedelics sparked Michael Pollan's interest
04:06 The 22 competing theories — and why none fully work
08:40 The hard problem: how does matter become mind?
11:48 Is social media hacking your consciousness?
12:33 Can AI ever truly be conscious?
19:14 Why mind uploading won't work
20:03 How to protect your consciousness
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This video was filmed at the Ri by our in-house production team.
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