On Humans

Happy New Year 2025! To celebrate, here is an encore of what proved to be the most popular episode of 2024. This rerun combines episodes 30 and 31 into one epic journey towards the frontiers of human understanding. My guest is Donald Hoffman. Our topics are consciousness, cosmos, and the meaning of life. Enjoy! Original show notes Laws of physics govern the world. They explain the movements of planets, oceans, and cells in our bodies. But can they ever explain the feelings and meanings of our mental lives? This problem, called the hard problem of consciousness, runs very deep. No satisfactory explanation exists. But many think that there must, in principle, be an explanation. A minority of thinkers disagree. According to these thinkers, we will never be able to explain mind in terms of matter. We will, instead, explain matter in terms of mind. I explored this position in some detail in episode 17. But hold on, you might say. Is this not contradicted by the success of natural sciences? How could a mind-first philosophy ever explain the success of particle physics? Or more generally, wouldn't any scientist laugh at the idea that mind is more fundamental than matter? No — not all of them laugh. Some take it very seriously. Donald Hoffman is one such scientist. Originally working with computer vision at MIT's famous Artificial Intelligence Lab, Hoffman started asking a simple question: What does it mean to "see" the world? His answer begins from a simple idea: perception simplifies the world – a lot. But what is the real world like? What is “there” before our perception simplifies the world? Nothing familiar, Hoffman claims. No matter. No objects. Not even a three-dimensional space. And no time. There is just consciousness. This is a wild idea. But it is a surprisingly precise idea. It is so precise, in fact, that Hoffman’s team can derive basic findings in particle physics from their theory.  A fascinating conversation was guaranteed. I hope you enjoy it. If you do, consider becoming a supporter of On Humans on ⁠⁠Patreon.com/OnHumans⁠⁠.  MENTIONS Names: David Gross, Nima Arkani-Hamed, Edward Whitten, Nathan Seiberg, Andrew Strominger, Edwin Abbott, Nick Bostrom, Giulio Tononi, Keith Frankish, Daniel Dennett, Steven Pinker, Roger Penrose, Sean Carroll,  Swapan Chattopadhyay Terms (Physics and Maths): quantum fields, string theory, gluon, scattering amplitude, amplituhedron, decorated permutations, bosons, leptons, quarks, Planck scale, twistor theory, M-theory, multiverse, recurrent communicating classes, Cantor’s hierarchy (relating to different sizes of infinity... If this sounds weird, stay tuned for full episode on infinity. It will come out in a month or two.) Terms (Philosophy and Psychology): Kant’s phenomena and noumena, integrated information theory, global workspace theory, orchestrated objective reduction theory, attention schema theory Books: Case Against Reality by Hoffman, Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker Articles etc.: For links to articles, courses, and more, see ⁠https://onhumans.substack.com/p/links-for-episode-30⁠

This was fun! Last Wednesday saw the first-ever live recording of On Humans. The event was held at the London Business School, courtesy of the LBS's China Club. My guest was MIT Professor Yasheng Huang, familiar to regular listeners from the China trilogy published earlier this fall. In this new episode, we keep tackling the origins of modern China. This time, we draw insights from Huang's two upcoming books: Revisiting the Needham Question and Statism With Chinese Characteristics. The conversation is structured around five themes: 1) the "Needham Question"; 2) Keju exams; 3) Scale; 4) Scope; and 5) The Eighties. Expect juicy insights to questions such as: Why was more Buddhism linked to more inventions in ancient China? How does footbinding relate to China's technological decline? Has China's GDP growth stopped serving Chinese workers? Towards the end of the conversation, Huang also shared his memories of working in China through the 1989 crackdown at Tiananmen Square. Enjoy! MORE LINKS Get the On Humans newsletter at ⁠⁠OnHumans.Substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. You can also find On Humans on ⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠BlueSky⁠! Feeling generous? Join the wonderful group of my patrons at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon.com/OnHumans⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠or get in touch for other ways to support! Email: ⁠⁠makela dot ilari at outlook dot com⁠⁠⁠

Persians. Romans. Chinese. Guptas. Abbasids. Mongols. British. The list of the world’s largest empires is a list of different peoples of Eurasia. With the sole exception of ancient Egypt, the Eurasian landmass has been the breeding ground for the largest empire of each moment in history. Why has Eurasia been so prone to large empires? Similarly, why did so many technological breakthroughs — from writing to gunpowder — occur in Eurasia? And how did these broader patterns of Eurasian history enable the dark chapters of European colonialism? These questions constitute some of the “broadest patterns of history”, to quote Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel. Indeed, these are not only the broad contours of the last few millennia: searching for answers, we need to dig deep into the origins of agriculture and beyond. My guest today, ⁠Ideen Ali Riahi⁠, has been digging very deep indeed. Building on Diamond’s original project, Riahi has traced the deepest roots behind Eurasia’s outsized power in human history. And if he is correct, these roots extend to periods way before the dawn of agriculture. In this episode, we discuss topics such as: The “Why Eurasia?” questions: What does it mean? What answers do we have? And is this a meaningful question to start with? Environmental determinism vs environmental realism Did the activities of our Ice Age ancestors prepare Eurasian lands for farms, cows, and cavalries? Riahi’s case against genetic explanations of Eurasian dominance and Europe’s rise As always, we finish with my guest’s reflections on humanity. You can find links ⁠to academic articles discussed in this episode here.⁠ MORE LINKS Get the On Humans newsletter at ⁠OnHumans.Substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. You can also find On Humans on ⁠YouTube⁠ and ⁠BlueSky! Feeling generous? Join the wonderful group of my patrons at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon.com/OnHumans⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠or get in touch for other ways to support! Email: ⁠⁠makela dot ilari at outlook dot com⁠⁠⁠ MENTIONS Scholars Jared Diamond (author of Guns, Germs, and Steel) Daron Acemoglu ( co-author of Why Nations Fail, guest in episode #26) Alfred Crosby (author of Ecological Imperialism) Vernon L Smith Melinda Zeder & Bruce Smith Richard Dawkins (author of Selfish Gene) Oded Galor (author of Journey of Humanity, guest in episodes #12 and #13) Technical terms Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) | Niche construction | herd management | commensal pathway | Modern evolutionary synthesis | extended evolutionary synthesis | niche construction Keywords History | social science | comparative economics | comparative history | imperialism | colonialism | technology | ancient civilisations | agricultural revolution | neolithic revolution | human migration | wealth of nations | global inequality | indigenous cultures | epidemics

Why do wars begin? How can we avoid them? Do countries wage wars whenever it suits their own goals? Or are wars a product of failed understanding and military madmen?  These are questions at the centre of the study of war and peace. But for too long, the field of international relations has answered them by scavenging data from European history alone.   To better understand the human capacity for peace, we need to understand military history more broadly.  Or so argues David C. Kang, a professor of global politics at the University of Southern California. A Korean American scholar, Kang argues that the histories of China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam give us lessons that no reading of European countries could: lessons about neighbouring countries living in peace for centuries. Yes, there was violence. At times, there was war. But peace between these countries prevailed for stunningly long periods. And contrary to standard theories of war and peace, this wasn’t achieved by a “balance of powers” nor by the threat of a common enemy. But is this too peaceful a picture of East Asian history? Didn’t China keep up bullying Vietnam? What about the epic wars started by Japan? What about the Mongols, the Great Wall, and China’s expansion on its Western frontier? And what, if anything, can this tell about war and peace in the 21st Century? Doesn’t the “Thucydides trap” make a war between the US and China inevitable? We discuss these and many other questions in this fascinating episode. I am particularly glad to bring you this episode as it brings together two of the major themes on the show this fall: the study of war and peace and the study of Asian history. Co-hosting again is Jordan Schneider from⁠ ChinaTalk.⁠ Check out also our “What About China” trilogy from September (episodes #44-46)! LINKS Kang's new book, co-authored with Xinru Ma, is ⁠Beyond Power Transitions⁠. You can read my essays and get the On Humans newsletter at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠OnHumans.Substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Feeling generous? Join the wonderful group of my patrons at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon.com/OnHumans⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠or get in touch for other ways to support! Email: ⁠⁠makela dot ilari at outlook dot com⁠⁠⁠ MENTIONS Books Beyond Bronze Pillars by Liam Kelley Technical terms Thucydides trap | Westphalian system | Balance of powers | IR (=international relations) | keju civil service | Keywords War | Peace | International relations | China | Japan | Korea | Social science of war | History | Military history | Humanities | Vietnam | East Asia | Thucidides trap |