Philosopher's Walk - Royal Botanical Gardens

Location changed to Botanical Gardens! Weather looks reasonable good on Sunday. Participants are invited to join us for a walk and talk about science, philosophy and technology. There will be a humanist event in the Botanical Gardens afterwards.

I believe parking is free far side of the botanical gardens (near eastern gate B and Tecoma gate C) - no longer free everywhere else.

Schedule
10 am – Meet outside the Botanic Gardens Visitors Centre (near the Melbourne Observatory Building and the Shrine of Remembrance)
10.30 am – Venture into the gardens and walk around the outer walkway (anti-clockwise), eventually spiraling inwards towards the lake.
12.30 – Sit somewhere near the lake to have lunch, BYO (note the Terrace Cafe may be closed).
Possible topics:

– Moral realism - a stance independant moral ontology - useful for capturing non-arbitrary moral choice.
– Moral anti-realism?
– Can AI be fault tolerantly aligned to moral realism? can AI be aligned to fault tolerantly to anti-realism?
– Is sentience required for moral reasoning? moral deliberation? Can sentience be a hindrance to moral reasoning? see AI beating humans at Moral Turing Test - https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1ci798x/gpt4_passes_moral_turing_test_after_a/
– AI Safety, automated persuasion, orthogonality thesis
– ChatGPT, future directions in AI
– How epistemics (inc science) makes progress
– Health, wellness and how to live a good life
– Metaethics / ethics
– Moral progress and indirect normativity
– Latest trends in AI
– Economic impacts of AGI, automation, unbounded inequality
– UBI - Basic income and universal wealth redistribution
– Likelihood of future doom or utopia
– Human augmentation, hacking human potential
– AI interpretability
– ChatGPT, Gemini, ClaudeAI
– Automated persuasion, AI dark arts
– Future directions in AI
– Plato’s cave
– Fun theory, value theory

Nietzsche: "All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking. From the process of creative self-discovery one emerges an artist. More often than not, our internal spiritual restoration is accompanied by a physical transformation."

Sometimes philosophy discussions feel quite sedentary – hence our experiment to cross pollinate exercise and engaging discussions on philosophy. Exertion of both the mind and body at the same time may lead to a fascinating dynamic.

A sedentary lifestyle (and by association, philosophy) has been linked to mental health concerns like depression, anxiety, and chronic stress.

Ease the anxieties of the armchair philosopher engaging in mental gymnastics with minimal muscle movement – join our raggle-taggle crew of aspiring philosophers walking the talk!
Healthy body, healthy mind!

Note, bring elemental protection (umbrellas, sunscreen etc)