philosophy

Physicist Carlo Rovelli gives a public lecture at the Royal Institution on how our understanding of time has changed, from Boltzmann and Einstein to quantum theory and loop quantum gravity. He blends physics, philosophy and art to argue that time is stranger than everyday intuition suggests.

The first lecture in Bartosz Milewski's category theory series for programmers. It covers the motivation and philosophy behind category theory and why composition matters for handling complexity.

Michael Sugrue's lecture on Marcus Aurelius' Meditations and the Stoic ideal, covering the text and its philosophy. It is one of his humanities lectures known for their clarity.

A philosophy lecture by Professor Moeller on the philosophy of identity. It builds on a discussion of Abigail Thorn's video and covers authenticity, sincerity and how online profiles reshape identity.

A one-minute clip from Richard Feynman's 1979 Auckland lecture in which he answers whether you see an object or only its light. It is a short, playful take on perception and on the use of philosophy.

The first episode of John Vervaeke's lecture series on the modern meaning crisis, tracing its history through philosophy, cognitive science, religion and psychology. It introduces the series and its themes.

The first episode of Michael Sandel's Harvard course on moral reasoning, opening with the trolley problem and the choice between killing one to save five. Sandel draws out student arguments and introduces utilitarian and other approaches to justice.

Daniel Dennett's Royal Institution lecture on whether the brain is a computer and where its software comes from. He argues that minds are built by evolution and culture, with competence arising without comprehension.

Noam Chomsky's 2011 University of Oslo lecture on Newton's contributions to the study of mind. He argues Newton abandoned mechanical explanation and lowered the bar for scientific intelligibility, with consequences for the limits of human understanding. Q&A starts at 45:33.

Philosopher Jeffrey Kaplan summarizes Peter Singer's 1972 essay 'Famine, Affluence, and Morality', arguing that failing to give to save lives is morally comparable to letting a child drown. It is a short lecture on the argument's structure.

A lecture by Swami Sarvapriyananda at IIT Kanpur on the Mandukya Upanishad and the question 'Who am I?'. It explains the four states of consciousness in Advaita Vedanta.

Neil Postman's 1997 lecture at College of DuPage, based on his book, argues that Americans treat technology as a national religion and depend on it to solve larger human problems. It includes audience questions.

Chuck Spinney, a long-time associate of John Boyd, presents Boyd's thinking on the OODA loop and evolutionary epistemology. The talk runs about two and a half hours and includes Q&A.

Rick Roderick's 1993 lecture on Baudrillard, the last in his series The Self Under Siege. It covers hyperreality, simulation and what Baudrillard calls fatal strategies.

The first lesson of Uncle Bob (Robert C. Martin)'s "Coding Better World Together" series. It makes the case for clean code and for treating software craftsmanship as an ethical and professional responsibility. It runs about 109 minutes.

Chris Granger, creator of Light Table and the Eve language, gives a Berkeley data science lecture on what computation and programming might look like in ten years. He covers the path that led to Eve and ends with demos.

Brian Will critiques object-oriented programming and rewrites a roughly 3800-line OO program in a procedural style, cutting code and complexity. It is part of a series of OOP critiques.

A Royal Institution lecture in which Nicholas Humphrey presents his theory of phenomenal consciousness and its evolution. He draws on the book Sentience and discusses evidence for animal sentience.

A one-minute clip of Richard Feynman describing the scientific method: guess a law, compute its consequences, and compare with experiment. If it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong.

A three-minute clip of Richard Feynman using the rules of chess as an analogy for how science works, discovering rules by observation and sometimes meeting surprises like castling. It touches on incremental progress versus revolutions.

A clip of psychologist Jordan Peterson lecturing on intelligence and IQ, covering how it is defined and its correlation with academic and work success.

A short clip of Jordan Peterson explaining Pareto distributions, using Soviet farm collectivization and the resulting famine as context. It also covers how outcomes concentrate in a few people.

Peter Thiel's lecture from the How to Start a Startup course on business strategy and monopoly theory, arguing that competition destroys profits and that startups should aim to build monopolies. It covers the ideas of Zero to One.