What is beauty? What is knowledge? Are there limits to human understanding? Can a machine create moving poetry?

By bringing together insights from different fields, the I’m Not Sure talks explore the fluid and permeable pillars of the space of possibilities and create the room for unexpected answers to emerge.

Hosted, written and produced by Viola Ruzzier.

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Podcast Chapters

Chapter 1

What is Creativity? Is AI Capable of Creativity?

Here at B21, we are interested in the difficult questions that lie at the frontiers of the event horizon.

One of those is art.

Is art the exclusive domain of humanity? We thought so, much for thousands of years since prehistoric art. But computers, AI, machine language, software like GPT 3 have forced us to think about that question again.

GPT3 is capable of producing beautiful texts. But what does it mean? Is a poem or an artwork’s deep relationship with us only its results? What does it mean if it’s beautiful but has no intention? If it’s only pattern recognition without any desire, will, behind it? If an infinite number of monkeys typing randomly for an infinite amount of time are capable of eventually producing Hamlet, is the play still an artwork?

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Chapter 4

Would You Trust an Alien?

What would you do if something or someone completely different from anything you’ve ever known came up to you and offered some seemingly good advice? Would you take it? refuse it? take it but cautiously?

Throughout human history, people have reacted with caution, anger, violence, and suspicion to others, to “aliens,” because that seems to be how many of us enact fear. But this is not always the case; there are accounts of people acting generously and trustingly towards people or animals they have no connection to.

What makes us react in one way or the other? Do we need to feel some kind of connection with another in order to trust them? Does this connection need to be spiritual, physical, visual, or something else entirely?

Can we trust what is unknown?

What's the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word "alien"? Is it something threatening? Something unknown? Something different? Join us along with Prof. Samuele Collu and Vincent Laliberté to dive into this surprisingly ancient question.

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Chapter 8

What is Language? 

Questions like: how can we speak the same language and still misunderstand each other? What is the difference between animal communication and human language? Do we think in language? How does language influence the self?

How do we define language? What is the difference between language and other types of communication? Is music a language? How does language shape our way of thinking? Join us for this follow-up to one of our latest I'm Not Sure discussions.

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In-person chapters

Chapter 5

Why Do We Have Favourites?

What’s your favourite colour? Your favourite food? Your favourite number?

For children, these are often essential questions, and favourites tend to stick with us for a long time.

But why?

What does it mean that we sometimes identify ourselves based on what we like or don’t like? Why do we feel sympathy towards someone who shares our favourite colour, or displeasure when someone we don’t like enjoys the same music as we do?

In part this has to do with memories, with recollections of times past. A favourite food was made by a beloved relative long ago, a favourite smell was first sensed during a moment of comfort.

In part it has to do with how we want others to perceive us. Your favourite movie being a dark Scandinavian film from the 1960s says something different about you than liking a Marvel movie.

And in part it is something we cannot explain.

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Chapter 6

What Would a World Run by Women Look Like?    

We live in a patriarchal society and know what that looks like.

What would a matriarchal society look like? Would there be less physical aggression and more psychological aggression? Would medicine and design be biased towards women? Would the world be any better or worse than it is now?

In-person event: Thursday, November 17th 2022, 12:30pm - 2pm

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Chapter 7

Are We Becoming More Wise?

On every measure — health, education, child mortality, poverty or hunger — the improvement in the last 30, 50, 100 years has been dramatic.

Is our society a worthier one than it was 100 years ago? How have people changed since then? Are we becoming better, wiser, more tolerant and compassionate beings?

In-person event: Wednesday, November 23rd 2022, 3:30pm - 5pm

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Media Chapters

Chapter 2

What is Friendship? Do enemies exist?        

Most of us can point to someone and call them a friend. But what does that mean? Is a friend someone who makes us happy, in whom we can confide, whom we trust? If so, what is the difference between a friend and a partner? Are there varying levels of friendship?

And what about enemies? What makes someone an enemy, rather than simply a person we dislike? Can people have enemies, or is “enemyhood” the privilege (if one can call it that) of states?

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Chapter 3

What is Capitalism?

The word “capitalism” is used a lot today. The advantages and disadvantages are debated ferociously by students, politicians, employers and employees… But what is it, exactly? What lies at its root, its core? Are there elements worth salvaging or destroying completely? Can we change the system without dismantling everything that came before?

Here’s what some of the B21 scholars thought:

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Additional Media

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