Socrates on the Wow Signal Podcast: Be Unreasonable!

Posted on: January 31, 2013 / Last Modified: October 15, 2018

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I know how hard it is start a podcast. So when budding podcasters ask me for an interview, I am always looking for reasons to say “Yes.”

This is a re-post of my month-old interview for the Wow Signal Podcast recently started by Paul Carr. Since this is only the 3rd episode ever, the recording is still a bit rough around the edges. Never-the-less, I enjoyed talking to Paul and you might enjoy listening to it too.

During our conversation with Carr we cover a variety of topics such as: transhumanism and the technological singularity; hard and slow take-offs and why I bet on the latter rather than the former; mind uploading and the two major criticisms thereof; pro-sports, performance enhancing drugs, Lance Armstrong and regulation; the Fermi paradox, our civilization’s chance of surviving and colonizing the universe…

I end up the interview with one of my favorite quotes of all time:

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

Geroge Bernard Shaw, “Maxims for Revolutionists,” Man and Superman, 1903

And so that is why I say: Go, be unreasonable!!!

P.S. My comments about Lance Armstrong were made a few weeks before his Oprah interview, and during a period when Lance was still vehemently denying any doping whatsoever.