#320 — Constructing Self and World

Making Sense with Sam Harris

Waking Up with Sam Harris

Samharris, Currentevents, Politics, Ethics, Religion, Neuroscience, Science, Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.6 • 29.1K Ratings

🗓️ 22 May 2023

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sam Harris speaks with Shamil Chandaria about how the brain constructs a vision of the self and the world. They discuss the brain from first principles; Bayesian inference; hierarchical predictive processing; the construction of vision; psychedelics and neuroplasticity; beliefs and prior probabilities; the interaction between psychedelics and meditation; the risks and benefits of psychedelics; Sam’s recent experience with MDMA; non-duality; love, gratitude, and bliss; the self model; the Buddhist concept of emptiness; human flourishing; effective altruism; and other topics.

If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe.

Learning how to train your mind is the single greatest investment you can make in life. That’s why Sam Harris created the Waking Up app. From rational mindfulness practice to lessons on some of life’s most important topics, join Sam as he demystifies the practice of meditation and explores the theory behind it.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast.
0:09.1	This is Sam Harris.
0:11.3	Just a note to say that if you're hearing this, you are not currently on our subscriber
0:14.8	feed and will only be hearing the first part of this conversation.
0:18.6	In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense Podcast, you'll need to subscribe
0:22.5	at samharis.org.
0:24.5	There you'll find our private RSS feed to add to your favorite pod catcher, along with
0:28.3	other subscriber-only content.
0:30.7	We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support
0:34.6	of our subscribers.
0:36.0	So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one.
0:47.0	Today I'm speaking with Shamil Tendaria.
0:50.0	Shamil is a philanthropist, an entrepreneur, a technologist, and an academic with multidisciplinary
0:56.6	research interests, spanning computational neuroscience, machine learning and artificial
1:01.4	intelligence, and the philosophy and science of human well-being.
1:05.0	He got his PhD at the London School of Economics in Mathematical Modeling of Economic Systems,
1:11.6	and he later completed a Master's in Philosophy from University College London, where he developed
1:17.1	an interest in the philosophy of science and the philosophical issues related to biology
1:21.4	and neuroscience and ethics.
1:23.4	In 2018, Shamil helped in Dow the Global Priorities Institute at Oxford University, and in 2019,
1:29.4	he was a founder of the Center for Psychedelic Research in the Department of Brain Sciences
1:33.9	at Imperial College London.
	...

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