Lex Fridman Podcast: #149 – Diana Walsh Pasulka: Aliens, Technology, Religion, and the Nature of Belief

Lex Fridman Lex Fridman 12/28/20 - Episode Page

Diana Walsh Pasulka is a professor of philosophy and religion at UNCW and author of American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, and Technology. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:

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EPISODE LINKS:

Diana’s Website: https://uncw.edu/par/faculty/faculty-pasulka.html

American Cosmic (book): https://amzn.to/3aK2kaj

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OUTLINE:

Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.

(00:00) – Introduction

(08:28) – What is real?

(13:56) – Can beliefs become reality?

(18:59) – Donald Hoffman

(22:57) – Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason

(26:27) – Ayn Rand

(33:25) – How do religions start?

(48:38) – Religion is an evolutionary advantage

(53:59) – Religion used in propaganda

(58:32) – What did Nietzsche mean by “God is Dead”?

(1:03:59) – American Cosmic

(1:07:45) – What do aliens look like?

(1:16:28) – History of space programs

(1:19:30) – Jacques Vallee

(1:28:55) – Artificial intelligence

(1:34:25) – Ufology community

(1:45:38) – Psychedelics

(1:49:35) – Tic Tac UFO

(1:58:09) – Roswell UFO incident

(2:09:14) – Bob Lazar

(2:12:50) – Monoliths in the desert

(2:23:39) – Humans will co-evolve with AI

(2:26:58) – Neuralink

(2:31:48) – Singularity

(2:41:39) – Books: Nietzsche

(2:46:44) – Books: Hannah Arendt

(2:51:43) – Fear of death

(2:56:11) – Meaning of life