Podcast Notes: Iain McGilchrist on “The Great Simplification”

I wish I could remember how this podcast came across my radar so I could give credit where it’s due. But alas, I cannot. It’s episode 217 with Dr. Iain McGilchrist. At one point, he shares his perspective about how science and reason can only take you so far: [science and reason] have their limitations. Most scientists and most philosophers are very well aware of that. Some people who are not terribly aware of [this] think that [science and reason] can answer all our questions. The fact that they can answer very many questions and be extraordinary servants doesn’t make them the arbiters of everything that we know. Replace “science and reason” there with “AI” and you have a pretty good assessment. I like the word “servant” there too — AI can be a good servant, but it’s a terrible master. [AI] has no body, so it cannot suffer, it cannot love, it doesn’t know that it’s going to die, none of the things that humans deal with, so it is a very, very poor guide to how we should think [of…