Bad Philosophy

For the last century or so, we have had a healthy little obsession with replicating the human ability to reason using machines. We here at BF are happy to announce that these efforts have finally brought us the holy grail of artificial intelligence: robot radio DJs! That’s right, now you can enjoy all your favorite [...]

Ep102 A.I. Troopers [ 1:10:59 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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AI, Artificial Heart, artificial intelligence, brain, Clear Channel, CleverBot, cognitive computing, computers, dinosaurs, Flowers for Algernon, football, fossil fuels, Ghost in the Shell, Google Wave, IBM, immortality, Japan, Jeopardy!, John Stuart Mill, Jonathan Coulton, Kant, Kevin, Kiki, Lawnmower Man, Levar Burton, Machine Girl, Machine Man, Magic School Bus, memristor, Michael Crichton, neurobiology, neurology, neuroscience, Peter F. Hamilton, Power Rangers, radio, Reddit, Richard Hatch, robots, Simon, singularity, soul, Stanford, Stephen, Stephen King, Survivor, UTSA, velociraptor, VR Troopers, Watson

Since the dawn of computer networks, there have been those who push past the permissions, the boundaries, and the firewalls to penetrate deep within the forbidden corners of cyberspace. Recently, a group of these hackers calling themselves LulzSec has taken it upon themselves to bring some highly public meme-infused humor back into this practice. They’ve [...]

Ep092 LulzSec Flamebait [ 1:02:16 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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artificial intelligence, blackhat, Boing Boing, book code, brain, Colossus: The Forbin Project, computer security, consequentialism, crime, emergence, encryption, ethics, Facebook, FBI, Fox.com, Gawker, Hacker's Manifesto, Hackers, hacking, IBM, identity theory, intelligence, IRC, Kevin, Kevin Mitnick, Let Me Google That For You, Libya, lulz, LulzSec, memes, mind, morning, MySQL, network security, Nintendo, passwords, PBS, planting, porn, Pron.com, Sean Connery, singularity, Sony, Stephen, trolling, vigilantism, Watson, whitehat

Imagine if falling in love was as easy as taking a pill. Scary? Exciting? Kind of rad? Well, to make up for the distinct lack of anything resembling actual philosophy last week, we decided to delve straight into this and other hardcore questions, courtesy of George Saunders and his recent short story in The New [...]

Ep082 Saunders on Saunders [ 51:04 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Anathem, apocalypse, Battlefield Earth, brain, connectome, consequentialism, Cryptonomicon, deontology, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, drugs, emotion, Escape from Spiderhead, ethics, experimentation, George Saunders, harm principle, identity theory, Kevin, love, MLK Day, Neal Stephenson, Panera Bread, personal identity, phenomenology, Philip K. Dick, philosophy of mind, psychotropic drugs, Rifftrax, science, scientology, sex, Snow Crash, Stephen, The Baroque Cycle, The Giver, The New Yorker, zombies

For no particular reason we’ve decided to try something *BRAND NEW* on this week’s episode of Bad Philosophy. Kevin and I pulled a few articles and a comic out of the news, grabbed a couple of beers, and dove in to the stories for an hour. What came was something of a nice balance between [...]

Ep071 What's in the News, Robin? [ 1:06:46 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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advertising, age, Apple, babies, beer, brain, Choose Your Own Adventure, CNN, Corky's, corporatism, Dan 3.0, Dan Brown, E!, epistemology, Facebook, fate, Firefox, gay marriage, Groupon, Hank Green, homosexuality, How I Met Your Mother, Japan, Josh Stevens, Kevin, marketing, Mashable, Massachusetts, Memphis, Neil Patrick Harris, Newton, patronage, philosophy of mind, Prop 8, QuakeCon, reality TV, Red Stripe, Risk, scams, Shiner, society, Squarespace, Stephen, SubNormality, Texas, TiVo, Todd TV, TV, Ulysses, VirusComix, Will and Grace