Profs and Pints Metro Baltimore

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “The Everyday Supernatural,” a discussion of how folklorists and anthropologists view our belief in uneasily explained beings, forces, and experiences, with Benjamin Gatling, folklorist, scholar of belief and everyday religion, and associate professor of English at George Mason University.

[Doors open at 5. The talk starts at 6:30. The room is open seating. Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/baltimore-everyday-supernatural .]

Have you ever wondered why people believe in the supernatural? Or where do such beliefs come from and what purposes do they serve?

On hand to offer answers will be Benjamin Gatling, who teaches a course on folklore and the supernatural, studies various cultures’ oral traditions, and serves as editor of Folklorica: the Journal of the Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Folklore Association.

You’ll gain an understanding of how the supernatural isn’t something strange or extraordinary. It’s part of the everyday lives of most people around the world, and it’s fundamental to virtually all cultural traditions. Here in the United States, three out of four people believe in some aspect of the supernatural such as astrology, telepathy, clairvoyance, or communication with the dead. About half attest to having personally had a mystical experience.

In discussing the nature of supernatural beliefs, Dr. Gatling will talk about how our experiences are inexact and ambiguous and how we operate on incomplete information. In many ways belief in the supernatural represents an affirmation that human understanding extends beyond empirical observation and that we live in an imprecise, infinite, irrational, and mysterious world.

The goal of folklorists and anthropologists studying such beliefs is not to prove or disprove them, but rather to understand various peoples’ lived experiences and gain insight on how individuals make sense of the uncanny around them. Dr. Gatling will talk about such researchers’ findings in terms of how such beliefs are expressed in dream interpretation or the stories people tell about encounters with ghosts or their relationship with the dead.

He’ll talk about visits to haunted places and touch upon subjects such as UFO sightings, encounters with the divine, and magic in our everyday lives. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID.)

Image: A deck of 22 Tarot cards. (Photo by Roberto Viesi / Wikimedia Commons.)

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “How AI Alters Thinking,” on dealing with artificial intelligence’s capacity to change and undermine our thought processes, with Eli Alshanetsky, assistant professor of philosophy at Temple University, principal investigator at its Cognitive Integrity Lab, and author of an upcoming book on AI and freedom of thought.

[Doors open at 3. The talk starts at 4:30. The room is open seating. Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/baltimore-how-ai-alters-thinking ]

Doctors who give bad advice can be sued for malpractice. Teachers belong to a profession with set standards. When artificial intelligence guides you, however, that guidance comes with a disclaimer: Use at your own risk.

Every day millions of people take that risk, and usually AI seems genuinely helpful. But even if AI gives us good answers, might its use over time do bad things to how we think?

Explore the relationship between AI and our own minds with Eli Alshanetsky, whose Cognitive Integrity Lab studies how artificial intelligence changes how we think, learn, and build trust. Author of Articulating a Thought and the upcoming book Freedom of Thought in the Age of AI, he’s on the cutting edge of efforts to answer AI-related questions such as: How can we tell when work is truly our own? How can technology support rather than replace authorship and reflection? What does trust mean when AI mediates our relationships with others and with our own thoughts?

To set up his discussion of potential consequences of AI, he’ll describe how social media’s impact on society serves as a preview.

Social media didn’t just give people what they wanted to click on, it actually changed what they regarded as click-worthy. It broke attention spans and fueled radicalization across millions of very different people. It left us with people who doom-scroll for hours, who can’t focus, who don’t know what to trust anymore.

If you’d shown people this version of themselves ten years ago, would they have chosen it?

Artificial intelligence is making a similar deal with us, but the stakes are higher. It isn’t chasing clicks. It’s optimized for giving you the most satisfying response to whatever is on your mind right now.

The risk over time isn’t just that you’ll get lazy. More profoundly, even when you think hard, your sense of what counts as good thinking—as well as what sounds like you—will shift to match what AI has been feeding you.

We’ll consider what kind of person this produces and whether this is someone we want to be or want children to become. Professor Alshanetsky will lay out a practical framework, which he calls “the interaction layer,” for using AI without letting it replace the thinking it’s supposed to support. He’ll also talk about what AI-related concerns should be the focus of parents and educators. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID.)

Image: Illustration by David S. Soriano / Creative Commons.

Profs and Pints Metro Baltimore presents: “A Deep Dive into the Declaration of Independence,” on the origins and impact of America’s founding document, with Denver Brunsman, chairman of George Washington University’s history department, lecturer at Mount Vernon, and noted scholar of early American history and the American Revolution.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/declaration-of-independence .]

The celebration of our nation’s 250th anniversary will take on much deeper meaning if you take time to fully understand and appreciate the document that declared our independence from England and gave rise to the American experiment.

Learn essential lessons about the Declaration of Independence by coming to the debut of Profs and Pints at the Guinness Open Gate Brewery in Halethorpe, Md., just outside Baltimore. The speaker, Denver Brunsman, is an incredibly engaging speaker who has built a big following among Profs and Pints fans in and around Washington D.C.

Professor Brunsman will start by discussing the Declaration’s background, composition, and philosophical underpinnings.

You’ll learn how by 1776 American colonists had resisted British policies for thirteen years and endured open warfare with Britain for more than a year. We’ll look at how this imperial crisis influenced the Declaration’s primary author, Thomas Jefferson, as well as the larger Declaration Committee and the Second Continental Congress.

In recent years, scholars have focused particularly on the previously underappreciated grievance section of the Declaration. Rather than simply being an afterthought to the more famous preamble (“all men are created equal”), the grievances followed a logical order that carefully presented the case against King George III and the British Empire for a “candid world” to consider. Professor Brunsman will fill you in on how that list of grievances rallied Americans and other nations to the cause.

A document both timeless and of its time, the Declaration quickly soared beyond its humble origins as a committee report to become synonymous with American independence and an inspiration for rebellion elsewhere. Dr. Brunsman will consider the place of the Declaration in American life, from the eighteenth century to today, and how the document helped shape much of American history while influencing “the course of human events” throughout the world.

The talk will close with customary toasts from the American revolutionary era. Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah! (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: From an idealized Jean Leon Gerome Ferris painting of Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams drafting the Declaration of Independence.