notes on podcasts

feb 9 - good podcast on how to approach philosophy and the big questions from the standpoint of math and physics

• "mathematics exists because it is not possible that it does not exist"
• "philosophers: if you want to prove that the world exists, start with mathematics"
• "if you don't study philosophy first, you might spend your life doing something that's not valuable"
• "what's true in mathematics is not the same as what is provable"
• American philosopher, noted secularlist, leader of Brights movement
  Daniel Dennett, wiki
• "the success of philosophy is the extent it spins off questions into other disciplines"
• "children who go to preschool earn more money 30 years later than children who don't, how to sort out the causality of that"
• author of the book Selfish Gene and when published
  written 1976, Richard Dawkins, wiki
• "I'm skeptical that many people believe very deeply."
• "rule #1 of economics: you can't pay attention to what people say they do or say they think"
• "a system of a billion neurons is a very different animal than a system of 100 neurons"
• "both evolutionists and creationists are wrong: the most complex things are mathematical entities, neither evolved nor created"
• cosmologist who works at MIT, from Sweden
  Max Tegmark
• "the universe is one big mathematical object with self aware area, which are us"
• "it's a remarkable, disturbing thing that hoest, truth-seeking people cannot agree"
• "it's very hard to defend the idea that you should trust your own opinions over those of others"
• who wrote Freakonomics when
  Steven Levitt, 2005, lots of facts
• wiki review of Superfreakonomics: released october 2009
• the big questions book: looks like a fun read with a wide spectrum