This week’s guest is Cadell Last, the creator of Philosophy Portal, author of Global Brain Singularity and Real Speculations, and organizer of myriad conferences, anthologies, and collaborative volumes exploring biocultural evolution, the mind-matter relation, and speculative futures. Cadell has been the director of psychedelic research at Psirenity, a researcher at the Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science, a science writer on primatology and paleoanthropology for Scientific American, and the founder, writer, and researcher for The Advanced Apes at PBS Digital Studios.
In this episode, we discuss self-actualization and self-transformation in our age of magical technologies — the domestication of the human being by AI and institutions, how to live in a future of hyper-social neuroplasticity, navigating hybrid physical-virtual relationships, the importance of intergenerational learning, and how we can make a better argument for culture to the social systems that only perceive measurable value. In the climax of this conversation, Cadell makes a case for “staying with the lack” and “working the cracks in being” as ways of cultivating our agency in a highly-automated world.
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Cadell’s Links
Website (with research and social media links)
Philosophy Portal
YouTube
(+ My recent appearance as a guest on Cadell’s Philosophy Portal show)
Relevant Papers
Human Evolution: Life History Theory and the End of Biological Reproduction
Self Actualization in the Commons
Global Commons in the Global Brain
Global Brain and the Future of Human Society
Information-Energy Metasystem Model
Abstraction, mimesis and the evolution of deep learning
Landian Exit and Hegelian Love
Systems & Subjects: Thinking the Foundations of Science & Philosophy
Logic for the Global Brain: Singular Universality as Perfect Opposition
Mentions
Kevin Kelly
Lawrence Steinberg
Nick Land
Nora Bateson
Jessica Flack
Thomas Pickety
Michel Bauwens
Layman Pascal
David Jay
Philip K. Dick
Yanis Varoufakis
Chris Cutrone
Andrew Tate
Benjamin Studebaker
Gordon Brander
Alan Turing
Kate Raworth
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