At a time when the Enlightenment is under attack from without and within, I bring together two of the most thoughtful defenders of progress and reason, for their first ever public dialogue.

Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. I think of him as providing the strongest empirical defence of the Enlightenment (as seen in his book Enlightenment Now).

David Deutsch is a British physicist at the University of Oxford, and the father of quantum computing. I think of him as having produced the most compelling first principles defence of the Enlightenment (as seen in his book The Beginning of Infinity).

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TIMESTAMPS
(00:00:00) Introduction
(00:03:09) Is AGI even possible?
(00:10:17) Scientific method will constrain runaway superintelligence
(00:11:56) Does AGI need agency to be 'creative'?
(00:28:31) Will AGIs be sentient?
(00:37:06) AGI & AI safety
(00:47:44) P(doom) & subjective probabilities
(00:53:21) Prediction markets
(01:01:43) Universal explainers & The Language Instinct
(01:04:43) Universal explainers & heritability of behavioural traits
(01:27:59) Differential technological development
(01:36:09) What explains the Great Stagnation?
(01:46:13) Should presumed physical limits to growth make us pessimistic?