Episode 83

The ninth and final episode in a series wherein Juliet and I begin by jointly consulting the I Ching (ancient Chinese oracle), getting hexagram 4, "Youthful Folly", and then see where that goes. We consider various ideas about sentience and the balance of living and dead matter in the Universe before bringing things to a rather whimsical conclusion.

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Some relevant links:

• self-organisation
• emergence
• James N. Gardner's "Biocosm Hypothesis"
• I Ching
• Richard Wilhelm
• heat death of the Universe
• Buddhism
• Vipassana
• artificial intelligence
• Taoism
• Brian Tomasik, a serious "rationalist" thinker who has seriously considered (although not actually proposed) the possibility that destroying the biosphere might be the most effective way to reduce the total amount of suffering in the world
• Humble Pious, Hide