Saturday, May 09, 2009

You Are A Brain

Here is a 2-hour slide show I made for college students and teens:

You Are A Brain

It's an introduction to realist thinking, a tour of all the good stuff people don't realize until they include a node for their brain's map in their brain's map. All the concepts come from Eliezer Yudkowsky's posts on Overcoming Bias.

I presented this to my old youth group while staffing one of their events. In addition to the slide show, I had a browser with various optical illusions open in tabs, and I brought in a bunch of lemons and miracle fruit tablets. They had a good time and stayed engaged.

I hope the slides will be of use to others trying to promote the public understanding of rationality.

Note: When you view the presentation in Google Docs, make sure you can see the speaker notes. They capture the gist of what I was saying while I was showing each slide.

Monday, May 04, 2009

Close Friendship

My friend Noam is a really cool guy, but I can't say we've been close.