The Rational View podcast with Dr. Al Scott

In this episode we’ll be discussing polarization and the idea of moral narcissism. My guest has published an article in a substack newsletter discussing this idea that people today are taking on absolute moral stancess in polarizing issues because of the status it gives them in their tribe, irrespective of the cost. In her blog she makes an analogy of a group who believes eating blue cheese is immoral so they outlaw it. As a result of their banning blue cheese, people start dying from eating unregulated blue cheese. There is another group who believe the group outlawing blue cheese is evil. They ostracize members of the group from society resulting in some members of the group being radicalized and resorting to violence. Both groups are holding their moral purity above the lives of people. She calls this behaviour moral narcissism. After years of serving as a high school government and law teacher, Sharon McMahon took her passion for education to Instagram, where more than a million people (who affectionately call themselves “Governerds”) rely on her for non-partisan, fact-based information as “America's Government Teacher.” Sharon is also the host of the award-winning podcast, ‘Here’s Where It Gets Interesting’, where, each week, she provides entertaining yet factual accounts of America’s most fascinating moments and people. In all that she does, Sharon encourages others to be world-changing humans. She has led her community in various philanthropic initiatives that have raised more than $9 million for teachers, domestic violence survivors, terminally ill children, medical debt forgiveness programs, refugees, and more. In addition, she is the author of ‘The Preamble’, a Substack newsletter about politics and history. Join me on Facebook @TheRationalView and we shall rule the galaxy Patron dot Podbean dot com slash TheRationalView

In this episode I’m going to be sharing with you an earlier interview with Dr. Micheal Levin that I found to be really mind bending. In it I wanted to explore the cellular basis of consciousness, and we delved into that a little bit, however the part that I found really interesting was his discussion of how cells work together and communicate to build macroscopic structures like bodies and hands, and maintain your shape over long time periods. I find it inspiring to realize how much we have yet to learn. Are individual cells conscious? How can this be? And If they are how does this cellular consciousness come together to form a unified experience in a single organism? Are human cells like ants in a colony? Is our mind a hive mind? I hope you enjoy this discussion. Michael Levin received dual B.S. degrees (computer science and biology), followed by a Ph.D. (Harvard University). After post-doc training (Harvard Medical School), he started his independent lab at Forsyth Institute focusing on the biophysics of cell:cell communication during embryogenesis, regeneration, and cancer. In 2009 he moved his group to Tufts, where they use biophysical and computational approaches to study decision-making and basal cognition in cells, tissues, and synthetic living machines. Levin holds the Vannevar Bush chair, and directs the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts, working to crack the morphogenetic code for applications in regenerative medicine, bioengineering, and artificial intelligence. Recent work includes the modulation of native bioelectric circuits to control embryogenesis, regeneration, and cancer, and the creation of novel synthetic living proto-organisms. Support the podcast at patron.podbean.com/TheRationalView Facebook comments appreciated @TheRationalView

In this episode I’m continuing to look at consciousness and cognition and the working memory that sets humans apart from all other animals. Human working memory can be roughly quantified to hold about 7 items at once in a sequence and allow conscious manipulation, consideration, and attention to about 4 of them at a time. These numbers are surprisingly consistent across all humans. The size of working memory in humans is much larger than in our nearest relatives the great apes. The ability to remember sequence information also seems to be unique. Today I’m interviewing a researcher who studies the evolution of the human capacity for cognition. His vocabulary and working memory are both immense. I need to stretch my working memory to the limit just to parse some of his most elegant utterances. For example, in a recent exchange he opined the following gem: “However, as Karl Friston reminded us, the mathematical itinerancy of stochastic genetical and epigenetical mechanisms in ergodic systems can explain the appearances, disappearances, and reappearances of some technological outcomes of Early Pleistocene human behaviours from a far more rational scientific basis than can any self-justifying assertion that ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence’.” Professor emeritus Michael Walker is a paleoanthropologist with degrees in Medicine, Physiology, and Prehistoric Archaeology from Oxford University including his doctorate on the prehistoric physical anthropology and archaeology of the southeastern Spanish region of Murcia. He established systematic two important Palaeolithic excavation sites, one with fossil remains of fourteen Neanderthals in deep sediments with dates from 130,000 to 40,000 years ago, and a very much older site dating to between 900,000 and 772,000 years ago where he discovered burning in the cave, as well as abundant stone artefcts among which is the earliest stone hand-axe from Europe. The unique hand-axe reawakened Dr. Walker’s interest in neuroscience and, in particular, about how cognition might lead to surprising manual behaviour that was not passed on culturally. This hypothesis, based on the Free Energy Principle, has implications on the evolution of human cognition and calls into question time-honoured interpretations by anthropologists about human cultural transmission. Add your two cents on Facebook @TheRationalView If you like me to keep doing this send more than two cents to patron.podbean.com/TheRationalView

In this episode I’m going back to look at consciousness and cognition, and specifically one aspect of our mental capacity that sets us apart from other animals. It’s our ability to recall items in a sequence, for those of you who are software buffs, basically we have a short term memory buffer that acts like a linked list. We can remember a list of numbers (about 7 or so), or letters, or items in a particular order over a short timespan if we are not too distracted. This capability is called working memory. Working memory can be roughly quantified to hold about 7 items at once in a sequence and allow conscious manipulation, consideration, and attention to about 4 of them at a time. These numbers are surprisingly consistent across all humans. The size of working memory in humans is much larger than in our nearest relatives the great apes. The ability to remember sequence information also seems to be unique. Some scientists speculate that the evolution of working memory is what separates humans intellectually from other intelligent animals. Working memory capacity is strongly correlated with fluid intelligence. Héctor Manrique: graduated in Psychology in 1999, then he started his scientific career by studying ethanol metabolism in the brain and its effect on memory in rodents and got his PhD in Psychobiology in 2005. Hmm sounds a lot like my graduate work inadvertently studying the effects of alcohol on my brain. In 2008 he joined The Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Leipzig, Germany) where he investigated the cognition of the four species of great apes. After having occupied different positions in several Spanish universities he currently holds a professorship in Developmental Psychology at Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain. Support The Rational View at patron.podbean.com/TheRationalView Throw in your 2 cents on Facebook @TheRationalView

This episode is a rant about why people don’t have time to become better informed about the issues. It is about why people are rushed. It is about why people feel mistreated by the system. The Rational View is going to rant about inequity and highlight the growing resentment amongst the struggling middle class at the elite robber barons of capitalism. Capitalism is about greed. It is about gloves-off below-the-belt big-stack bullying that pretends it provides a level playing field. I’m no communist. I believe that a well regulated market system is probably the best way that we know of to efficiently distribute goods…But I’m not taken in by the rich ponces who have been pushing the big lie that lack of market regulation and union busting is good for us. If you are too young to recall the collapse of the entire capitalist system due to under-regulation, I will remind you of 2008 and the sub-prime mortgage collapse where the government spent trillions of dollars to pay off the bad bets made by the Wall Street elite financial class. Our current system is capitalism for the masses and socialism for the rich. Its a system that is happy to grind away the earnings of lower and middle class citizens and to keep them fighting for table scraps, but if Biff is about to miss a yacht payment the government is only more than happy to give his bank a few hundred million dollars of quantitative easing to help their bottom line. My interview with Naomi Oreskes on her book the Big Myth is an eye opener that I highly recommend. Support the podcast at patron.podbean.com/TheRationalView Add your voice on Facebook @TheRationalView

This episode is one of my favorite interviews. A great chat that was part of my series on consciousness—are we biological robots? I’m getting into some real science talking to a biophysicist who brings the esoteric world of quantum mechanics to bear on the topic. His groundbreaking work in the lab provides us with some real measurements that provide tantalizing hints at the previously unknown quantum processes tied to consciousness. Dr. Luca Turin was born in 1953 in Beirut, Lebanon, to Italian-Argentinian parents and was brought up in France, Italy and Switzerland. He studied Physiology and Biophysics at University College London, PhD in 1978. Dr. Turin worked at the CNRS 1982-92, then became a lecturer in Biophysics at UCL 1992-2000. He is best known for his work on olfaction, in which he proposed a quantum mechanism for odorant recognition by receptors. For 8 years he was CTO of a venture company designing odorants for fragrance and flavors with a success rate 100 times the industry average. After returning to full time research in 2009, in collaboration with Makis Skoulakis in Athens, Greece, he has shown that both flies and humans can detect molecular vibrations by smell. His current interest is in quantum electronics in neuroscience. He is the author of three perfume guides, a collection of essays and a popular science book on how smell works. He is currently a Professor in the Medical School at the University of Buckingham (UK). Join the Facebook discussion @TheRationalView Twitter @AlScottRational Instagram @The_Rational_View

In this episode I am interviewing a returning guest to the show to examine the economics surrounding Ontario’s foray into renewable energy. As is typical in divisive topics such as this, the government has made it very difficult to track down the actual costs of ideologically driven policies such as Ontario’s 2009 Green Energy Act that brough in juicy Feed In Tarriffs on 20 year contracts for renewable energy to kick start the green economy. The act was brought in by Liberal premiere Dalton McGuinty and aggressively pursued by his successor in that office, Kathleen Wynne who was driven out of office by angry voters in the 2018 election, losing official party status. A key element of that loss was her mishandling of the energy transition, the privatization of Hydro One, and the disastrous costs downloaded onto voters. Our guest today is investigating the costs and benefits of renewable energy in Ontario’s nuclear and hydro-dominated electrical grid. Edgardo Sepulveda is a telecommunications and electricity economist with the last several with his consulting firm in Toronto, Canada. He was born in Chile and has an MA in Economics. As part of his civic policy-related engagement, he also writes about inequality, COVID-19 and other issues, including at the Progressive Economics Forum. Support the podcast at patron.podbean.com/TheRationalView Join the Facebook discussion @TheRationalView

In this episode I have a special returning guest, the famous Dr. Michael Shermer on the show to discuss the interesting times our neighbours to the south are experiencing. I’m hoping to discuss the polarization and the bias that have catalyzed conspiratorial thinking emerging around the Trump assassination attempt. Dr. Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the host of the podcast The Michael Shermer Show, and a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University where he teaches Skepticism 101. For 18 years he was a monthly columnist for Scientific American. He writes a weekly Substack column. He is the author of New York Times bestsellers Why People Believe Weird Things and The Believing Brain, Why Darwin Matters, The Science of Good and Evil, The Moral Arc, Heavens on Earth, and Giving the Devil His Due: Reflections of a Scientific Humanist. Neil deGrasse Tyson has called him “a beacon of reason in an ocean of irrationality”. Support the podcast at patron.podbean.com/TheRationalView Make your voice heard on Facebook @TheRationalView

In this episode I’m responding to the political tension we are witnessing in the US with a historic election looming on the horizon. Many see this as some sort of battle royale between good and evil. But for some reason the options on the table for our neighbours to the south are four more years of increasing inequity in a reasonably well-off country vs. a wrecking ball to the heart of the institutions that keep us all safe. How did we get here? Why are these the only options available? The problems are significant, and we are all being fooled by the rich and powerful oligarchs that rule both parties. We are being hacked by those who would destroy us. And not only literally, but also psychologically. Bad actors are exploiting our human reactions, and our emotions, to paralyze our rationality. This is a job for The Rational View! Support the podcast at patron.podbean.com/TheRationalView Share your views on Facebook @TheRationalView

Today I’m taking a step back from science and addressing politics. I know certain of my listeners do not like to hear my opinions on this topic and I respect that, so if you need to stay in a silo to protect your political narratives please stop listening. This is your trigger warning. It was recently announced that the Supreme Court has ruled that it is inadmissible to use evidence from a president’s actions to prosecute them. The founding fathers of our friends to the south are spinning in their graves. It is sad that I’m here talking about getting out the popcorn to watch the trainwreck happening to our neighbours in the south. I never thought that I would watch the most prosperous nation on earth choke on the hate generated by social media clickbait, alternative facts from purveyors of putred partisan apologetics preying on the vulnerable and the venerable with their faux outrage engines. The 2025 Presidential Transition Project claims that it is the conservative movement’s unified effort to be ready for "the next conservative Administration to govern at 12:00 noon, January 20, 2025". This is the partisan document published by Conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation, that outlines their plans for the next Republican presidency. I will provide a Rational View on what this document contains. Support the podcast at patron.podbean.com/TheRationalView Give me your feedback on Facebook @TheRationalView

In this episode I will be discussing the topic of abortion with a philosopher who has studied the moral arguments on both sides of the issue. I am interested in rational bases of moral decision making. I’d like to be able to work out moral rules from a set of socially acceptable first principles, but often I find that my moral intuition conflicts with what I derive as a rational morality. Is our morality wrong if it is not totally consistent, or is morality not derivable from precepts? I’d like to understand how these ideas apply to the topic of abortion ethics. Bonnie Steinbock is professor emerita of the Department of Philosophy at the University at Albany/State University of New York. A Fellow of the Hastings Center, she has been a visiting professor at Santa Clara University (2012), the Chinese University of Hong Kong (2015) and Monash University in Melbourne, Australia (2017). In addition to 70 articles, she is the author of Life Before Birth: The Moral and Legal Status of Embryos (Oxford University Press, 1992, 2011) and the editor or co-editor of several collections, including Killing and Letting Die (1980, 1994), New Ethics for the Public's Health (1999), Public Health Ethics: Theory, Policy, and Practice (2006), the Oxford Handbook of Bioethics (2008), and Ethical Issues in Modern Medicine, 4th - 8th editions. Her latest book, co-written with Paul Menzel, is Bioethics: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2023). Please support the podcast at patron.podbean.com/TheRationalView Join the Facebook discussion @TheRationalView Instagram @The_Rational_View Twix @AlScottRational

In this episode I’m delving into the weaponization of space. The space race was originally a military flexing competition between the US and the Soviet Union. Since that time space has been consistently used for surveillance, similar to early airborne operations, but weaponization of space has been off limits through treaties. Now the space race seems to be evolving. China, Russia and the US have all tested weapons that can blow up satellites. I will be interviewing an expert who can tell us about what is going on and whether the space race is heating up again. Clayton Swope is the deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project and a senior fellow in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Before joining CSIS, Swope led national security and cybersecurity public policy for Amazon’s Project Kuiper, an initiative to increase global broadband access through a constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit. While at Amazon, he also worked on cloud policy issues. Prior to his time at Amazon, Swope served as a senior adviser on national security, space, foreign affairs, and technology policy issues for a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He also worked for more than 14 years at the Central Intelligence Agency, serving largely in the Directorate of Science and Technology. He holds a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering from the University of Notre Dame. Please support the podcast at patron.podbean.com/TheRationalView Provide your feedback on Facebook @TheRationalView

This episode is a recording of a live social media broadcast on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Riverside.fm where the Scott brothers revisit their previous disagreements over manifestation and magical thinking. Will they come to an agreement or will it come to fisticuffs? Manifestation is the idea that by aligning our thoughts and expectations with our goals we can better achieve success. Many people take this idea to a magical extreme whereby the proper series of mental gymnastics will change one's circumstances independent of other actions. Kevin Scott is the founder of the Effortless Alpha brotherhood "To inspire, and create space for men to access their own potential through the bond of brotherhood where no man feels alone". His life-transforming work with men has sparked the Masculine Expansion, creating space for men to lead themselves and become a role model in their communities with power, honour, discipline and respect. Please help to support the podcast at patron.podbean.com/TheRationalView Give me your feedback on Facebook @TheRationalView

In this episode I’ve decided to wade into another highly polarized topic, the morality of abortion. This has become a hot political topic with the Republicans stacking the supreme court to overturn Roe v Wade. In many people’s opinion this is a large step on the way to Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale where women’s rights to self determination are overridden by making them subservient to the greater rights of their unborn progeny. The debate over this topic is a question of ethics. Is this a job for The Rational View? Can we claim a rational basis for morality or does it need to be subjective, or derived from objective laws handed down from a value code invented by a greater power. Support the podcast at https://patron.podbean.com/TheRationalView Join the Facebook discussion @TheRationalView

In this episode I will be talking to an author and screenwriter who has taken up the potentially poisoned chalice of popularizing nuclear energy for the world. Let’s see what he is planning to share with the world. The son of a career naval officer, Mike Conley has lived in Japan, Hawaii, and all over the US and has backpacked through Thailand and Cambodia. Out for Blood is his first solo effort as a novelist. His screenplay Wicked Wonderland is based on the novel and has been optioned for feature production. As a lifelong science nerd, Mike became interested in nuclear power in 2010, and quickly saw that the field was in dire need of writers who could explain the technology to the average reader. So he joined the Thorium Energy Alliance, met dozens of scientists and engineers, and made them an offer: “You explain it to me and I’ll explain it to the world.” The first published book from this years-long effort will be Earth is a Nuclear Planet, and its short companion book The LNT Report. The third book in the series, Roadmap to Nowhere, will be released in the fall of 2024. Power to the Planet will be the fourth book, to be released in 2025. The books are written for the non-technical reader as a basic but comprehensive (and entertaining) education in nuclear power, renewables, and energy-related issues. Support the podcast at patron.podbean.com/TheRationalView Join the Facebook discussion @TheRationalView

In this episode I will be talking more about how to debate Creationists. I have taken this topic on in the past, in my original episode on how to debate Creationists, and I have also interviewed well known evolutionary scientist Dr. Niles Eldredge who was one of the founders of the Punctuated Equilibrium theory of evolution alongside Stephen J. Gould. Today I will be interviewing someone who I saw debating Kent Hovind a leading Young Earth Creationist. The debate was not what one comes to expect from these affairs and was more like a courtroom interrogation than the usual grandstanding and Gish Galloping that one might expect from a Creationist debate. Let’s see if we can all learn something. Mr. Anderson is a practicing Canadian lawyer who focuses on litigation. Having spent years in and out of the courtroom cross-examining witnesses and analyzing arguments, he has recently turned his talents on proponents of pseudoscience and dogmatic thinking on the internet. He is most well known for his attacks on creationists such as Kent Hovind, and has recently started a YouTube channel where he breaks down the techniques he uses to force evasive and pugnacious individuals to come to grips with facts and arguments that they would prefer to ignore. His style, for those of you who have never seen his videos, is very reminiscent of a cross examination, so his debates look very different from what you are likely used to seeing online, and he joins us here today. Support the podcast at patron.podbean.com/TheRationalView Join the Facebook discussion @TheRationalView Twix @AlScottRational Insta @The_Rational_View

In this episode I’m continuing my investigation into Universal Basic Income as the natural solution to the AI and robotics revolution. One day we should be able to work because we want to improve the world and our situations, and not do it because we are under risk of death. The problem is that the intermediate period between having all of our needs taken care of by our robotic assistants, and having to compete with them for wages to put food on the table is not at all a clear path. My guest today chaired a committee that investigated UBI as an option for the BC government. Their conclusion was that augmenting current social programs would be a better approach. It’s time for The Rational View. David Green is a professor in the Vancouver School of Economics at UBC. His areas of research interest include income inequality, immigration, the impact of technical change on the labour market, and labour market policies. He is a former editor of the Canadian Journal of Economics and an International Research Associate with the Institute for Fiscal Studies in London. He has served on the editorial boards for the American Economic Review and the Journal of Political Economy. His work has been published in leading journals, including Econometrica, the American Economic Review, and the Review of Economic Studies. He was also a member of the BC Expert Panel on Basic Income and has served as the President of the Canadian Economics Association. Support the podcast at Patron.Podbean.com/TheRationalView Join the Facebook discussion @TheRationalView Twix @AlScottRational Insta @The_Rational_View

In this episode I’m going to be exploring the science behind learning with an author who has been exploring this topic for almost 20 years. How do we learn, and reason, how can we be more rational, and what can we do to make learning easier? Scott H. Young is the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Ultralearning, a podcast host, computer programmer, and an avid reader. Since 2006, he has published weekly essays to help people learn and think better. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Pocket, and Business Insider, on the BBC, and at TEDx among other outlets. He doesn’t promise to have all the answers, just a place to start. He lives in Vancouver, Canada. Support the podcast at patron.podbean.com/TheRationalView Join the Facebook conversation @TheRationalView Twix @AlScottRational

In this repeat episode I chat with Dr. Ben Heard about environmental advocacy and communicating science-based viewpoints in a polarised debate. Dr. Heard provides his assessment on the rationality of the anti-nuclear lobby. Dr. Ben Heard is recognised as a leading voice for the use of nuclear technologies to address our most pressing global challenges. It certainly didn’t start that way. Back in the day he was a member of environmental NGOs and shared their basic objection to nuclear technologies. After completing a Masters in Sustainability he started working in major projects in climate change. But there was just no solution on offer to match the scale of the problems at hand. So instead of continuing his objection to nuclear technology he shut his damn mouth about it for a couple of years and did some learning. That was the start of pathway of writing, presenting, advocating and ever more learning about how we can reinvent the future using all our knowledge and ingenuity. Ben was awarded his doctorate from the University of Adelaide in 2018, where he examined clean energy supply with a focus on nuclear technologies. He has presented his research findings at conferences around Australia and the world. He founded Bright New World in 2016 to provide a new organisation for people who want pragmatic, compassionate, and science-based environmentalism, in particular that values the role of nuclear technologies. Ben lives in Adelaide, South Australia where he works in the private sector on energy and asset performance projects. He features as one of the global voices in the documentary Juice: How Electricity Explains the World. Support the podcast at Patron.podbean.com/TheRationalView Chat with the experts at TheRationalView Facebook group Follow me on Instagram @the_rational_view Follow me on Twitter @AlScottRational

In this re-released episode I interview religious studies scholar Dr. Janet Tulloch to discuss the Big Bang, and other origin stories. Let's go explore where science and religion collide. I hope you find it an interesting journey! Janet Tulloch is an adjunct research professor in the College of Humanities at Carleton University in Ottawa. She is a cultural historian with a PhD in Religious Studies. She is also a member of the Ottawa centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. She was the recipient of two awards from RASC-Ottawa one for her writing about ancient religions and their connection to the night sky and one for her interpretation of the night sky through visual art. Support the podcast at patron.podbean.com/TheRationalView What did you think of this episode? Let me know on Facebook @TheRationalView TwiX @AlScottRational