Category: Science

Science

AlphaGo – The Movie | Full award-winning documentary

With more board configurations than there are atoms in the universe, the ancient Chinese game of Go has long been considered a grand challenge for artificial intelligence.

On March 9, 2016, the worlds of Go and artificial intelligence collided in South Korea for an extraordinary best-of-five-game competition, coined The DeepMind Challenge Match. Hundreds of millions of people around the world watched as a legendary Go master took on an unproven AI challenger for the first time in history.

Directed by Greg Kohs and with an original score by Academy Award nominee Hauschka, AlphaGo had its premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. It has since gone on to win countless awards and near universal praise for a story that chronicles a journey from the halls of Oxford, through the backstreets of Bordeaux, past the coding terminals of DeepMind in London, and ultimately, to the seven-day tournament in Seoul. As the drama unfolds, more questions emerge: What can artificial intelligence reveal about a 3000-year-old game? What can it teach us about humanity?

Your Symphony of Selves (Interview with Jordan Gruber)

For the tenth episode of the Integral Stage Authors Series, Layman is joined by Jordan Gruber, J.D., to discuss Your Symphony of Selves, a new book he co-authored with Dr. James Fadiman. Layman and Jordan explore the themes of the book, reflecting on the history and the psychospiritual implications of the “multiple self” concept, the resistance the concept has received in both popular and academic contexts, the intersection of the multiplicity of identity with the “higher self” and “no self” traditions, practical ways to work with our multiplicity, and much more.

The Emergence of Conscious Evolution: Jude Currivan

Cosmologist Jude Currivan is an enthusiastic and inspirational advocate of the positive view of the transformations we are witnessing on planet Earth. As a scientist she can report with confidence that science can at last conclusively prove and reconcile scientific evidence with ancient wisdom and universal spiritual experience – resolving SAND’s ongoing quest by revealing the unified nature of reality. “Consciousness is not what we have it is what we are” – and this understanding has the power to heal our fragmented perspectives and radically change our collective behaviors, transforming the challenges of our global emergency into the emergence of our conscious evolution.

Joseph Chilton Pearce – The Crack in the Cosmic Egg

We interviewed Joseph Chilton Pearce at The Monroe Institute in Favor, Virginia as part of the 40 Days and 40 Nights Video Tour in October 2011. For nearly half a century, Joe has been probing the mysteries of the human mind. Author of The Crack in the Cosmic Egg, Exploring the Crack in the Cosmic Egg, Magical Child, Magical Child Matures, Bond of Power, and Evolution’s End, one of his overriding passions remains the study of what he calls the “unfolding” of intelligence in children.

He is a self-avowed iconoclast, unafraid to speak out against the myriad ways in which contemporary American culture fails to nurture the intellectual, emotional, and spiritual needs and yearnings of our young people. Part scholar, part scientist, part mystic, part itinerant teacher, Pearce keeps in close touch with the most brilliant men and women in each field. He creates a unique synthesis of their work and translates the results into a common language.

His most recent book, Death of Religion and the Rebirth of Spirit: A Return to the Intelligence of the Heart (2007), is critically important for where we are now. Our organized religions are stuck in centuries of a particular way of thinking that makes it very difficult to address the changes going on the world of thought today. Over and over on this tour we met brilliant thinkers and scientists who are making the journey from the intellect to the heart along an unchartered and unmapped path. In our interview, Joe shows us the importance of living from the heart, regardless of what the mind says.

Man Spends 30 Years Turning Degraded Land into Massive Forest – Fools & Dreamers (Full Documentary)

The incredible story of how degraded gorse-infested farmland has been regenerated back into beautiful New Zealand native forest over the course of 30 years.

Fools & Dreamers: Regenerating a Native Forest is a 30-minute documentary about Hinewai Nature Reserve, on New Zealand’s Banks Peninsula, and its kaitiaki/manager of 30 years, botanist Hugh Wilson. When, in 1987, Hugh let the local community know of his plans to allow the introduced ‘weed’ gorse to grow as a nurse canopy to regenerate farmland into native forest, people were not only skeptical but outright angry – the plan was the sort to be expected only of “fools and dreamers”.

Now considered a hero locally and across the country, Hugh oversees 1500 hectares resplendent in native forest, where birds and other wildlife are abundant and 47 known waterfalls are in permanent flow. He has proven without doubt that nature knows best – and that he is no fool.

Lawrence Krauss & Frank Wilczek – Materiality of a Vacuum PHYSICS – Part 1

The Origins Project invites you to a fascinating and intriguing Lecture by Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek discussing the Materiality of a Vacuum: Late Night Thoughts of a Physicist, followed by a conversation with Lawrence Krauss.

In modern physics we’ve discovered that it is very fruitful to regard empty space, or vacuum, as a sort of material, which can have exotic properties, like superconductivity. Conversely, materials can be viewed “from the inside” as the vacua of alternative worlds, which often have exotic, mind-expanding properties. These ideas suggest new possibilities for cosmology, and bring to life a profound question: What is a Universe?

Recorded Tuesday, January 31, 2017