The Rational View podcast with Dr. Al Scott

Intro to the science behind nutrition

In this episode I’m hoping to start a new investigation into the science behind nutrition and food science. Many of us have heard the messages from our doctors that we need to cut back on our high sodium diets and we need to avoid fat and red meat to prevent heart disease. We’ve been told that sugar is bad for us. Processed foods are bad for us. Alcohol is bad for us. We need to eat more fruit and vegetables. We need to eat more fiber.
Western society is now in the midst of an obesity epidemic. Are we getting good nutritional advice? What does the science say?
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#TheRationalView #podcast #nutrition #science #evidencebased 

A psychedelic trip into the mind with Dr. Anil Seth

In this episode I return to the hard problem of consciousness with a distinguished neuroscientist, Dr. Anil Seth.  In the finest traditions of science, Dr. Seth is willing to test his ground-breaking theories of mind on himself by exploring the impacts of psychedelic drugs on the conscious experience. 
Anil Seth is a neuroscientist, author, and public speaker who has pioneered research into the brain basis of consciousness for more than twenty years. His mission is to advance the science of consciousness, and to use its insights for the benefits of society, technology, and medicine. He is Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex, Co-Director of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Program on Brain, Mind and Consciousness, and Editor-in-Chief of the academic journal Neuroscience of Consciousness. His two TED talks have been viewed more than thirteen million times, he has appeared in several films, and he is lead scientist on the Dreamachine project. His new book Being You: A New Science of Consciousness was an instant Sunday Times Bestseller and a 2021 Book of the Year.
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#TheRationalView #podcast #consciousness #psychedelics #mind #dreammachine 

Is nuclear energy good for the climate?

In this episode I talk about how nuclear energy is being framed in Germany, the environmental laggard currently mining lignite coal for heat. I review some of the blatant anti-nuclear rhetoric being broadcast internationally and expose the flaws in the arguments.
On social media I have been heavily critical of Germany’s Energiewende. This is their national program to shut down their clean nuclear fleet and attempt to replace it with hundreds of billions of euros worth of variable wind and solar generating equipment. As a result of this ideologically driven strategy the country has been unable to keep the lights on without burning vast amounts of heavily polluting lignite coal, and bankrolling Putin's invasion of the Ukraine by buying up all available Russian natural gas. The death toll associated with anti-nuclear ideology is the true danger society should be talking about.
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#TheRationalView #podcast #energiewende #cleanenergy #greenenergy #nuclearenergy #atomicenergy #renewableenergy #sustainable #energytransition

Why we need a Rational View

In this episode I am bringing you my 2022 Rational View year in review, followed by a cool Pecha Kucha presentation that I made last year to a group of football alumni, put on by my public school friend Andy Vasily host of the Run Your Life podcast. The presentation is called ‘Why we need a Rational View’, and it defines much of what I have learned about communicating science, and the need for a rational discussion in a polarized world. Pecha Kucha is, I believe, a Japanese term meaning chit-chat.  The format is unique as it includes a timed slide presentation that you need to present alongside with a strict 20 second clock on each slide. So if you like it, I urge you to watch The Rational View Youtube channel for this presentation. 
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#TheRationalView #podcast #pechakucha #polarization #science #tribalism #live

Alexander Wong on the new AI ChatGPT

Dr. Alexander Wong rejoins the Rational View to review the new and exciting advance in Artificial Intelligence, ChatGPT. 
ChatGPT is a variant of GPT-3 (Generative Pretrained Transformer 3) that is specifically designed to be used in chat applications. It is a large language model that has been trained on a huge amount of text data in order to generate human-like responses to various types of inputs. Some key features of ChatGPT include its ability to generate responses in a conversational style, understand context, and continue a conversation based on previous exchanges. It is commonly used in chatbots, virtual assistants, and other applications where it is important to generate human-like responses in real time.
Professor Wong is currently the Canada Research Chair in Artificial Intelligence and Medical Imaging, Member of the College of the Royal Society of Canada, Director of the Vision and Image Processing Research Group, and a Professor in the Department of Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo.
Together we assess the impact of this amazing new AI release, and question what it means for the future.
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#TheRationalView #podcast #chatgpt #artificialintelligence #generalAI #gpt3

Consuming rationally with Dr. Marko Kovic

In this episode I’m continuing to provide a free public service to educate the world about cognitive bias. You’re welcome. Today we’ll be exploring how the multi-billion dollar global marketing industry is implicitly given moral licence to exploit our cognitive biases, and how to prevent falling victim to this ethically questionable practice.
Marko Kovic, PhD, has a background in political science and communication science. He's a lecturer, researcher, author and activist in the areas of decision-making, cyberpsychology, misinformation and conspiracy theories.
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#TheRationalView #podcast #consuming #bias #cognitivebias #marketing #haloeffect #advice

Rationality requires managing your cognitive biases

In this episode I describe several cognitive biases that we commonly fall victim to. Can you identify any of these from your own experiences?
If you have been following the controversy over social media you are aware of the problems with confirmation bias that leads us to believe dodgy sources when they agree with our preconceived opinions, but to hold other opinions to a much higher standard of evidence.  In this episode I’m going to explore a few lesser-known types of cognitive bias that could be impacting your judgement.  If you had a chance to listen to my interview with Nobel Laureate Dr. Daniel Kahneman you would understand that our brains do not naturally follow the formal laws of logic and inference.  We use several shortcuts that work well for us in everyday life. In a more recent interview, happiness guru Valerie Alexander pointed out that we need to shine a light on these biases to recognize their impacts on our mental processes and to address them.  Here is my crash course on how to recognize a few more insidious biases and eliminate them in our quest for the ultimate Vulcan rationality.
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Valerie Alexander on how to outsmart our unconscious biases

In this episode I’m continuing my investigation of cognitive bias by interviewing an expert who has thought about this topic a lot.
Committed to expanding happiness and inclusion in all communities, Valerie Alexander is a globally-recognized speaker on the topics of happiness in the workplace, the advancement of women, and unconscious bias. Her TED Talk, “How to Outsmart Your Own Unconscious Bias” has been viewed over half a million times and is used in boardrooms and classrooms around the world to enlighten leaders and future leaders about the brain science behind bias and how we can work together to create more equitable outcomes for everyone. 
Valerie’s books include: Happiness as a Second Language, Success as a Second Language, and How Women Can Succeed in the Workplace (Despite Having “Female Brains”) Valerie has had a varied and successful career as a corporate securities lawyer, investment banker and Internet executive in the Silicon Valley, and more recently as a Hollywood screenwriter and director.
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#TheRationalView #podcast #cognitivebias #bias #equity #workplace 

Dr. Daniel Kahneman on how we think

In this episode I have the honour to interview a Nobel Laureate who has devoted his life to understanding the way we think. His work has interesting links, not only to my new research topic of cognitive biases, but also on humanity’s continuing self examination of consciousness and the mysteries of the mind.
Berkely-trained psychologist Daniel Kahneman was corecipient of the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2002 for his integration of psychological research into economic science. His pioneering work examined human judgment and decision making under uncertainty.
He was a lecturer (1961–70) and a professor (1970–78) of psychology at the Hebrew University, University of British Columbia, University of California Berkeley, and Princeton University where he was the Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology and a professor of public affairs at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
Kahneman’s groundbreaking nobel research showed that people’s inferences of future probabilities are not strictly rational, but show various biases.
In 2011 Kahneman received the Talcott Parsons Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for his contributions to the social sciences. Also that year he published the best-selling book Thinking, Fast and Slow, which highlights two different ways in which people make decisions. His other books included Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment. In 2013 Kahneman was awarded the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom.
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#TheRationalView #podcast #consciousness #cognitivebias #mind #economics #rationality

Dr. Andrew Budson has a new theory of consciousness

In this episode I am interviewing the lead author of a recent paper describing a new theory of how consciousness works. It is based on evolutionary principles, and it posits that we mostly go about our lives unconsciously acting and reacting with no free will in the present moment.  Their theory is that the conscious mind has evolved to enable reasoning and goal-driven behaviour through manipulation of memories.  In this theory, we have no direct control over our actions in the present, as our observations are always a few milliseconds behind. This idea has interesting things to say about free will and first person experiences.
Educated at Haverford College and Harvard Medical School, Dr. Andrew Budson is Chief of Cognitive Behavioral Neurology at the Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System, Associate Director of the Boston University Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, Professor of Neurology at Boston University School of Medicine, and Lecturer in Neurology at Harvard Medical School.
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#TheRationalView #podcast #consciousness #memory #awareness #sentience #qualia