We discuss the biggest questions: "what's real?", "who matters?" and "how to make a better world?" with scientists, celebrities, activists, writers and philosophers. The Sentientism worldview is "evidence, reason and compassion for all sentient beings." It's a simple, yet radical, philosophy that's grounded in reality (naturalistic epistemology) and has compassion for all sentient beings (mostly human and non-human animals). Naturalism & sentiocentrism combined.
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Jay Shapiro is an award winning filmmaker, writer, & podcaster. He directed the film Islam & the Future of Tolerance, based around a post 9/11 conversation between Sam Harris & Maajid Nawaz. He produces and creates a wide range of content, writes on his “What Jay Thinks” blog & hosts the Dilemma podcast – I had the pleasure of being his guest for a Dilemma hangout about Sentientism back in 2020. He loves thoughtful deep dives into philosophy, psychology, & political analysis.
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?”
Sentientism is “evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.
We discuss:
00:00 Welcome
01:54 Jay Intro
– The Essential #samharris series
– Documentary & narrative film-making
– “I really want to understand ideas… and transmit those to an audience… even if I totally disagree with the idea”
03:16 What’s Real?
– Growing up in a secular #Jewish household
– “Post-holocaust American judaism is it’s own brand… a very ethical & political tribe more than a religious one”
– “Never again becomes the holiest prayer”
– Psychologist dad, guidance counsellor mum
– “I’m a boring naturalist but… I love analogies for what it feels like to exist”
– Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five “Oh… This is what I like”
– An over-active imagination as a kid… “my scientists”, The Truman Show, solipsism, Philip K Dick & #scifi
– #Meditation, #psychedelics, religious experiences… “scrambles the dials”
– Donald Hoffman’s “The Case Against Reality”
– How evolution shapes our construction of experiences of reality
– Psychedelics help us “catch it in the act” of reality construction
– “There’s much more out there” e.g. non-human sentient experiences
– “It reminds you of the expansiveness of reality rather than show you a new one”
– The National High School Ethics Bowl
– Anil Seth’s “How your brain hallucinates reality” @TED
– Annika Harris’s exploration of consciousness theories re: “The Hard Question”
– “Reality is awesome enough – who needs magic” (I mis-spoke!)
– Epistemological tests?: atheism, veganism, spherical earth…
– Writing about Sam Harris, not for him
– Object-oriented ontology
– #psychology “I don’t think we’re the rational animal… we’re the rationalising animal”
– How people respond to #cognitivedissonance (Leon Festinger) “they really don’t like it”
– Criticising #consequentialism “you can justify anything… wait long enough and the consequences will work out… where do you stop the clock… too easy to find an out”
– #Virtueethics “Secular virtue” (vs. religious views of virtue)
– What happens after noticing the cognitive dissonance. More about psychology & values more than epistemology?
– Coping mechanisms. Consequentialism, capitalism, economics… give people outs to “quiet these voices in their heads”
– Neil Levy “people are more rational than you think” https://youtu.be/Tp40ga1cXEc
– Qanon, Goop products… everyone selects evidence/sources to suit themselves
– Believing unfounded things can be a “rational” response to existential crises / the discomfort of cognitive dissonance
37:45 What Matters?
– “There is no grounding (to ethics)”
– David Hume’s “unbreachable” is-ought chasm
– “If you hate Sam (Harris) I think you’ll like a lot of what I do there” (the Foundations of Morality episode of The Essential Sam Harris
– There is a relationship between is and ought but “It’s up to us to define that relationship”
58:50 Who Matters?
01:50:49 How Can We Make A Better Future?
…and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info.
Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our ”I’m a Sentientist” wall via this simple form.
Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there!
Dhruv is a PhD student at the Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of Cambridge. He has interests in psychology, philosophy and animal advocacy. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who …continue
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