Podcast
Micah Zarin Podcast
Hosted by Micah Zarin · EN
Teenager asks smart people dumb questions. Formerly titled Elite Ball Knowledge Philosophy (EBKP).
16episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Can we cure aging (w/ Aubrey de Gray)
4d ago01:05:46Tap to summarizeyeah
Transcribe →Is Suffering Actually Bad? (w/ Richard Chappell)
2w ago00:51:02Tap to summarizeIn this conversation, I talk with philosopher Richard Chappell about moral realism, suffering, moral responsibility, effective altruism, AI consciousness, digital sentience, and why our intuitions about machines may change once the machines actually arrive.Richard’s blog: https://www.goodthoughts.blogMy Substack: https://substack.com/@micahzarinTimestamps0:00 Consciousness0:53 Realism3:36 Reflection9:23 Mathematics24:41 Suffering31:05 Consequences41:33 Responsibility49:29 AI58:02 Advice
Transcribe →Why Our Civilization Will Collapse Within Decades (w/ Robin Hanson)
2w ago01:18:16Tap to summarizeRobin Hanson is an economist at George Mason University, the inventor of prediction markets, and the author of The Age of Em and The Elephant in the Brain. In this conversation he argues that our civilization is failing because we broke the engine of cultural evolution, and that the only way out is to let capitalism run more things, which I pushed back on, badly.We also got into prediction markets, why we don't actually want accurate information, authenticity as hidden performance, foragers vs farmers, falling fertility, insider trading, and what young people should do with their lives.📚 Robin's work:Overcoming Bias: https://www.overcomingbias.comThe Age of Em: https://ageofem.comThe Elephant in the Brain: https://www.elephantinthebrain.com🎧 More from me:Substack: https://substack.com/@micahzarin⏱️ Chapters:00:00 — Hook00:11 — Intro01:27 — Philosophy05:04 — Kalshi & Polymarket13:56 — Group loyalty, and implausible beliefs21:15 — Cultural evolution27:14 — Why civilization is collapsing51:41 — The incoherence of utopia57:22 — Where I tried to defend anti-capitalism1:16:21 — Life advice for me
Transcribe →Does Fine-Tuning Prove God? (w/ Bentham's Bulldog)
4w ago01:05:09Tap to summarizeI sat down with Matthew Adelstein (Bentham's Bulldog) to debate one of the most popular arguments for God's existence: the fine-tuning argument.🔗 Bentham's Bulldog: https://benthams.substack.com 🔗 My Substack: https://substack.com/@micahzarin0:00 - Hook0:14 - Intros6:11 - Fine-Tuning Explained9:10 - Independent Constants?21:33 - Bill Gates Analogy40:51 - Islands and Continents1:02:06 - Why God?1:04:06 - Advice
Transcribe →She Paints Brain Cells Without Realizing (w/ Haleh Fotowat)
4w ago01:05:54Tap to summarizeHaleh Fotowat is a senior scientist at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University, where she leads neuroscience work on a DARPA-funded program developing novel anesthetics. She trained as an electrical engineer in Tehran and Houston before getting her PhD in neuroscience at Baylor, with postdocs at McGill, Ottawa, and Harvard studying locust escape behavior, weakly electric fish, and zebrafish navigation. She is also a working abstract painter whose pieces have shown in Harvard art exhibitions.https://www.halehfotowat.comI realized "Sleepwalkers" is an essay I never posted on my Substack, but it was an assignment for a class. Here's the Substack: https://open.substack.com/pub/micahzarin00:00 — Intro 00:21 — Art & Spontaneity 16:06 — The Brain 17:40 — Electric Fish & Serotonin 29:00 — Anesthesia & Consciousness 39:05 — AI & Attention 55:04 — What Makes Art Human 01:03:53 — The Secretary Problem 01:09:51 — Advice
Transcribe →Arguing With a Logician About Reality (w/ Graham Priest)
4w ago01:06:41Tap to summarizeGraham Priest
Transcribe →Why Gen Z Can’t Connect (w/ Max Lippmann)
Apr 2200:54:06Tap to summarize00:00 Intro + phone ban and distraction02:30 Why Gen Z feels lonely06:15 Emotional intelligence and gender09:58 Micro-communities and loss of shared culture12:19 Third spaces disappearing15:58 Doomscrolling and addiction24:32 Why you don’t do what you want (self-sabotage)48:07 Thinking, AI, and pure math
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Is Culture Fake? (w/ Todd McGowan)
Apr 1601:08:10Tap to summarizeRecommended watch - https://youtu.be/K1kxCBvExsU?si=nQbYKDq1n0X_-mDf Todd McGowan returns to the podcast for a conversation about Lacan, language, desire, culture, AI, and the mental health crisis. We talk about the master signifier, the sinthome, why subjectivity emerges where language fails, why people desire things that do not make them happy, and why social media seems engineered to intensify anxiety, guilt, and psychic fragmentation. We also get into race, culture, identity, purity politics, trans subjectivity, domestication, and whether large language models could ever truly desire anything or become subjects in the psychoanalytic sense. Somewhere in there, we also discuss Hegel, Star Wars, Michael Phelps, and more. 00:00 – Intro / Todd McGowan returns 00:52 – What is the sinthome? (Lacan + Joyce) 04:50 – What is the master signifier? 07:01 – Cultural appropriation and instability of culture 09:19 – Why culture isn’t “owned” (and why it’s always oppressive) 12:27 – Is all culture oppressive? 13:40 – Race, pride, and why race doesn’t “exist” biologically 16:58 – Should you be proud of intelligence? 17:39 – Language, abstraction, and why clarity can confuse 19:20 – Israel, Zionism, and what people actually mean 22:06 – Why race is a product of racism 23:00 – Signifier vs signified vs referent 27:15 – Naming, identity, and why your name isn’t “you” 30:34 – Subjectivity = where language fails 32:27 – What is the subject? (Kant, Hegel, Freud) 35:05 – How desire forms (and why it resists authority) 37:35 – Why you can’t know your own unconscious 38:45 – LLMs, language, and meaning 40:22 – Can AI be a subject? 43:40 – Does AI have desire? 46:39 – Can anything exist without desire? (animals vs humans) 48:54 – Domestication and “neuroticizing” pets 49:02 – Trans identity, biology, and desire 52:17 – Desire as collision between body and language 55:21 – Why desire ≠ what you want 57:24 – Michael Phelps, success, and emptiness 58:23 – The mental health crisis (social media + superego) 1:00:00 – Attention spans and students post-social media 1:02:21 – Purity culture, canceling, and moral signaling 1:03:08 – Hegel’s “beautiful soul” 1:04:27 – Is politics replacing religion? 1:04:58 – Loss of public space / third spaces 1:06:24 – When should you push back vs ignore people? 1:07:33 – Life advice: thinking dialectically
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Can Science Explain Consciousness (w/ Grace Lindsay)
Apr 1000:45:58Tap to summarizeCould a computer simulation be conscious? I sat down with Grace Lindsay, professor of psychology and data science at NYU and computational neuroscientist, to talk about modeling the brain, free will, emergence, the hard problem of consciousness, and whether uploading your mind to a computer would actually be you. We cover: • The fruit fly connectome and what’s still missing • Is the brain deterministic or probabilistic? • Why randomness doesn’t save free will • What the “self” actually is • Whether a self-modeling system could be conscious • The line between science and philosophy Subscribe for more conversations on philosophy, neuroscience, and the biggest questions. Substack: https://substack.com/@micahzarin Instagram: @ebkphilosophy X: @micahzarin
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Is Looksmaxing Rational? (w/ Dan Demetriou)
Apr 401:09:17Tap to summarizeMy Substack: https://substack.com/@micahzarin Dan's website: https://www.dandemetriou.com/ Dan's paper "Virgin vs. Chad: On Enforced Monogamy as a Solution to the Incel Problem": https://philpapers.org/rec/DEMVVC Dan's ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Daniel-Demetriou References mentioned: Bowling Alone — Robert Putnam Calhoun's Mouse Utopia Experiment (1950s) William Costello's research on cross-sex mind reading (UT Austin / David Buss lab) Malcolm & Simone Collins, Basecamp Podcast Nick Fuentes "Jester Maxxing" clip 0:00 Intro 0:24 What do you make of looksmaxing? 2:30 The loss of third spaces (Bowling Alone) 4:37 Why guys lack emotional literacy 6:15 Charisma vs. looks on dating apps 8:07 The proxy-vs-goal trap (deadlift maxing) 11:00 The PSI scale and sexual market value 12:35 Who is Clavicular? 13:35 "Dating girls is gay" — courtship as simping 15:32 Jester maxing and the simp problem 17:48 Validation without sex 19:53 Situationships vs. relationships 21:41 Trading richness for convenience 23:33 Short-term vs. long-term mating strategies 27:27 The Mouse Utopia and the Beautiful Ones 30:33 The peacock alpha vs. the patriarch alpha 32:03 Why discomfort around the opposite sex has spiked 34:53 Competing with the entire city 37:50 Why guys actually are being creepy 39:11 What courtship used to look like 43:08 Playing hard to get meets harassment culture 47:49 The male over-perception bias 52:40 25% of women think asking for coffee is harassment 54:20 Is cultural fragmentation the real problem? 58:46 Incel violence and the limits of "let them die out" 59:51 The political divide between young men and women 1:01:34 The Scandinavian paradox — more freedom, more divergence 1:03:48 Redistribution and the male loneliness problem 1:07:31 "Monogamy was the socialism of women"
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