Beyond Belief: Enlightenment 2.0Link to Google video (look at "related videos" for the rest)Four parts, about 4 hours each, over the 4 days of the symposium. Yes, 16 hours of brain-melting science, reason, religion, philosophy, politics, culture, neurology, psychology, sociology, economics, history, and new fields that aren't quite named yet. The link above starts with (after introduction by moderator) my man Sam Harris. The precision of his language and the ideas behind it tend to explode my brain. After reading his book The End of Faith it kind of changed my whole perspective, and I've since then tried to take in every article and speech he gives.
Most of the other the speakers are great too, including Michael Shermer and Daniel Dennet. There are some heated arguments and crazy debates. Something about hearing intellectuals call eachother out is deeply satisfying to me, especially when they are both making sense. There are a couple notable annoying speakers, you can decide for yourself, and with the magic of the internets you can skip past them.
Anyone who gets through the 16 hours of this, you should award yourself a cookie. If you can understand even some of it, even to a degree, you should get a cookie. There are more than a few parts that sail completely over my head. And I love that.
I wonder how many people actually get stuff and how many just pretend to get it. And there seems to be fine line, once you get into the really heady philosophies of the mind, consciousness, quantum physics, and unified theory, between sounding like a passionate intellectual genius, and like a self-important stoner professor who is about to forget the point he was trying to make.