Menu
Sign In Search Podcasts Charts People & Topics Add Podcast API Blog Pricing

Adam Elga

๐Ÿ‘ค Speaker
690 total appearances

Appearances Over Time

Podcast Appearances

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
345 | Adam Elga on Being Rational in a Very Large Universe

But that's not going to tell you the difference between whether you start sweating or not as you press the button.

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
345 | Adam Elga on Being Rational in a Very Large Universe

I do, although I have to say I'm a lot less confident about it than I used to.

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
345 | Adam Elga on Being Rational in a Very Large Universe

part of the, a large part of the reason my confidence has gone down aside from the great work, uh, criticizing that view that's, that's happened over the years is the problem of false brains.

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
345 | Adam Elga on Being Rational in a Very Large Universe

And, um, it's thrown, uh, my confidence in this whole business to hell.

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
345 | Adam Elga on Being Rational in a Very Large Universe

So I can't pretend to have the answers.

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
345 | Adam Elga on Being Rational in a Very Large Universe

If you have forced me to choose, I'm going to go and go with that view.

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
345 | Adam Elga on Being Rational in a Very Large Universe

But they're twists and turns, and I'm not that confident.

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
345 | Adam Elga on Being Rational in a Very Large Universe

Speaking as Mr. Rational, I really like the idea of there being constraints.

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
345 | Adam Elga on Being Rational in a Very Large Universe

And I guess I'm not comfortable with just โ€“

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
345 | Adam Elga on Being Rational in a Very Large Universe

all actions being on a par.

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
345 | Adam Elga on Being Rational in a Very Large Universe

And when we add to the story that there's, for example, a door outside of the receiving room that in the Enterprise leads to a pizza party and in the Potemkin just is an airlock out into outer space.

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
345 | Adam Elga on Being Rational in a Very Large Universe

Hard for me to give up the idea that there's some answer to the question about whether it's reasonable to open that airlock or not.

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
345 | Adam Elga on Being Rational in a Very Large Universe

A lot of my... Now, we haven't gotten to the slightly more complicated cases.

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
345 | Adam Elga on Being Rational in a Very Large Universe

We're going to get there.

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
345 | Adam Elga on Being Rational in a Very Large Universe

We're going to work up to some cases where we add in... Remember, in the case we have so far, it is certain what will happen.