Contesting Determinism (Robert Wright & Oliver Burkeman)

Robert Wright's Nonzero

Nonzero

News & Politics, Philosophy, Society & Culture

4.7 • 618 Ratings

🗓️ 14 September 2021

⏱️ 74 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Oliver's new book, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals ... Oliver outlines “compatibilism,” the idea that free will and determinism can coexist ... Bob: Everyone should be a free will agnostic ... The occasionally dramatic consequences of arguments against free will ... Would determinism require us to reform our approach to criminal justice? ... A (possible) quantum hack for free will vs. determinism ... Bob thinks compatibilism is b******t ... ... ... but Oliver tries to persuade him there's something to it ... Oliver: No position on free will and determinism is free of contradiction ...

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to a podcast from Meaning of Life TV.
0:08.3	Hi, Oliver.
0:10.0	Hi, Bob.
0:11.0	How are you doing?
0:12.1	I'm doing very well.
0:12.8	How are you?
0:13.9	Can't complain.
0:15.1	Let me introduce this.
0:15.9	I'm Robert Wright.
0:16.6	This is the right show available on both streaming video and via audio podcast.
0:21.3	You are Oliver Burtman, well-known journalist and writer.
0:26.2	You've written a lot of stuff for The Guardian, and in fact, we're going to talk about one very long piece he wrote some weeks ago in The Guardian on free will.
0:37.2	And we're going to get to the bottom of the free will question before we finish talking.
0:42.6	But, you know, first, I wanted to mention a book that when this is posted, either we'll be about to come out or will just have come out.
0:52.0	And we're actually going to have a separate conversation about
0:55.0	this because it's about time management. Time management for mortals is the subtitle. And I'm going to
1:03.1	seek your guidance there. I am a mortal in need of time management guidance. And the title is
1:08.6	4,000 weeks. I'm going to even show our video viewers
1:13.0	roughly what the jacket looks like. At least that's the jacket on the galleys. I assume that's
1:17.3	what the actual book is going to look like. It is, yeah. The only difference there is it's
1:20.6	obviously a soft cover and it will be a hard cover. Yes. You're worthy of nothing less. Do you want
1:25.6	to mention any other books or things you've written?
	...

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