EP 145: The Beginning of Infinity, Explanations That Transform the World, David Deutsch,

The Beginning of Infinity, Explanations That Transform the World, David Deutsch,

A bold and all-embracing exploration of the nature and progress of knowledge from one of today’s great thinkers. 

Throughout history, mankind has struggled to understand life’s mysteries, from the mundane to the seemingly miraculous.

Our guest is a multiple award-winning pioneer in the field of quantum computation and argues that explanations have a fundamental place in the universe. They have unlimited scope and power to cause change, and the quest to improve them is the basic regulating principle not only of science but of all successful human endeavour.

This stream of ever improving explanations has infinite reach. We are subject only to the laws of physics, and they impose no upper boundary to what we can eventually understand, control, and achieve.

He applies that worldview to a wide range of issues and unsolved problems, from creativity and free will to the origin and future of the human species.

We welcome David Deutsch, Fellow of the Royal Society, a pioneer in quantum computing, visiting Professor of physics at the Centre for Quantum Computation at Oxford University, multiple TED Talker, optimist and author of The Beginning of Infinity,  Explanations That Transform the World.

We discuss:

  • What David calls good explanations.
  • Error as unavoidable in the growth of knowledge.
  • Fallibilism
  • Education
  • Creativity
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • The misconception that knowledge needs authority to be genuine or reliable
  • All scientific theories are testable conjectures
  • Every explanation begins with conjecture
  • The growth of knowledge consists of correcting misconceptions in our theories
  • The Principle of Mediocrity
  • The Spaceship Earth metaphor
  • We touch very lightly on the Multiverse

 

https://www.daviddeutsch.org.uk/

 

EP 144: “Our Search for Belonging: How Our Need to Connect Is Tearing Us Apart" with Howard Ross

“If you’re treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person. If certain things are described to you as being real they’re real for you whether they’re real or not.” — James Baldwin

We are living in a time of mounting political segregation that threatens to tear us apart as a unified society. The result is that we are becoming increasingly tribal, and the narratives of life that we get exposed to on a daily basis have become echo chambers in which we hear our beliefs reinforced and others’ beliefs demonised. 

At the core of tribalism exists a paradox: as humans, we are hardwired with the need to belong, which ends up making us deeply connected with some yet deeply divided from others. 

When these tribes are formed out of fear of the “other,” on topics such as race, immigration status, religion, or partisan politics, we resort to an “us versus them” attitude. 

Especially in the digital age, when we are all interconnected in one way or another, these tensions seep into our daily lives and we become secluded with our self-identified tribes. 

Today’s guest explores how our human need to belong is the driving force behind the increasing division of our world. 

Drawing upon decades of leadership experience, he probes the depth of tribalism, examines the role of social media in exacerbating it, and offers tactics for how to combat it. 

Filled with tested practices for opening safe and honest dialogue in the workplace and challenges to confront our own tendencies to bond with those who are like us, his book “Our Search for Belonging” is a powerful statement of hope in a disquieting time.

We welcome diversity and inclusion expert and author of “Our Search for Belonging: How Our Need to Connect Is Tearing Us Apart” Howard J. Ross

We talk:

  • Bias
  • Polarisation
  • Why we tend to form tribes
  • Race and Gender
  • Politics
  • The brain
  • White Privilege
  • Empathy
  • Media
  • The Toilet Assumption

More about Howard here:

https://www.amazon.com/Our-Search-Belonging-Connect-Tearing/dp/1523095032

http://everydaybias.com/

https://twitter.com/HowardJRoss

EP 143: Iterate: Run a Fast, Flexible, Focused Management Team with Ed Muzio

Today we discuss an iterative organisation, the only kind of organization that can learn and adapt fast enough to keep up in today’s world. For anyone running a team of managers, or advising someone who does, today we explore the fundamental behaviours that create iteration. 

Our guest will explain how to implement them, and how to get the process started. Iterate defines what management really is and helps readers create a fast, flexible, focused management team that does it well.

Our guest is recognised as one of the planet’s clearest thinkers on management practice and provides a research-based blueprint for a management team that will take the next best step for the organization in any situation. 

This show is for senior leadership, front line and middle management, and human resource executives and explores how to equip teams with both knowledge and practical skills so that they not only understand their own purpose but also perform that purpose well amidst ever-changing conditions. 

It touches on how to create measurable business results for any management team, of any size, in any industry where complex work and frequent change are the norms.

We explore:

  • How to tear down the silos created by the typical Western approach to management
  • How managers can manage other managers in an Iterative organization so that the whole organization is coordinated
  • How to promote front line self-sufficiency
  • How to successfully structure meetings to enable critical decision-making and ensure commitments are carried out
  • How to help your reports give their reports insight into the ways their work impacts the big picture

 CEO of Group Harmonics and award-winning author of “Iterate: Run a Fast, Flexible, Focused Management Team”, Ed Muzio

More on Ed and the book here: https://iteratenow.com/

EP 142: Into the Magic Shop, A Neurosurgeon's Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart with James R. Doty MD

Growing up in the high desert of California, Jim Doty was poor, with an alcoholic father and a mother chronically depressed and paralysed by a stroke.

Today, he is the director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) at Stanford University, of which the Dalai Lama is a founding benefactor.

As a child, his life was at a dead end until at twelve he wandered into a magic shop looking for a plastic thumb. Instead, he met Ruth, a woman who taught him a series of exercises to ease his own suffering and manifest his greatest desires. Ruth’s final mandate was that he keep his heart open and teach these techniques to others. She gave him his first glimpse of the unique relationship between the brain and the heart.

Doty would go on to put Ruth’s practices to work with extraordinary results. He achieved power and wealth that he could only imagine as a twelve-year-old. However, he neglects Ruth’s most important lesson, to keep his heart open, with disastrous results.

A spectacular charitable contribution that will virtually ruin him, changed his life.

Part memoir, part science, part inspiration, and part practical instruction, Into the Magic Shop, shows us how we can fundamentally change our lives by first changing our brains and our hearts.

More about Jim here: http://intothemagicshop.com

Meditations mentioned throughout the show here:

http://intothemagicshop.com/exercises

Similar shows here: http://www.theinnovationshow.io/2018/10/19/ep-126-a-life-worth-breathing-with-max-strom/

http://www.theinnovationshow.io/2018/10/31/ep-128-one-second-ahead-enhance-your-performance-at-work-with-mindfulness-with-author-rasmus-hougaard/

 

EP 141: “Parallel Mind, The Art of Creativity” with Aliyah Marr

“The Toltecs believe that every human is an artist, and the art we create is our lives.” —Don Miguel Ruiz

Today’s guest uses practical examples and guides us through conceptual, transpersonal art experiments to demonstrate how we can use the power of art to access our inner child, express our buried emotions, and use any form of art as a catalyst to transform our lives.

Pure creativity is an activity that has no predefined destination or purpose, while applied creativity is an activity that always has a goal or application in mind.

Pure creativity can be seen as a kind of play, while applied creativity is usually seen as work.

We welcome creative consultant and coach with a stellar list of clients from IBM to American Express and the author of multiple titles including the focus of today’s show “Parallel Mind, The Art of Creativity: The missing manual for your right brain”, Aliyah Marr.

We talk:

  • Creativity
  • Left and Right Brain
  • Open Focus
  • The Inner Child
  • The benefit of Limitation
  • Limiting Beliefs
  • Internal Dialogues
  • Overcoming Fear

More about Aliyah here:

https://www.parallelmindzz.com/

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