Very Bad Wizards
a philosopher and a psychologist ponder human morality
We found 2 episodes of Very Bad Wizards with the tag “memory”.
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Episode 244: Thanks for the Memories? (Borges' "Funes the Memorious)
September 6th, 2022 | 1 hr 51 mins
10 years!, borges, funes the memorious, memory
David and Tamler return to Borges land to get lost in the infinite, this time with his legendary and tragic character Funes the memorious. What would it be like to have perfect memory, to have full access to every perceived detail no matter how trivial? Would life be infinitely richer, with present experience and memory merging into a perfect Heraclitan flow? Or is William James correct to say that one condition of remembering is to forget, and that “if we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing.”?
Plus, we’re sorry, but after 10 years (!) we thought we had the right to get a little self-indulgent and naval-gazey. We do a bit of reminiscing (“though we have no right to speak that sacred verb..”) in the first segment about how the podcast has changed since 2012, and the impact it has made on our lives. Thanks for the memories!
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Episode 138: Memory, Pain, and Relationships (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind)
April 24th, 2018 | 1 hr 45 mins
eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, memory, michel gondry, relationships
Award-winning screenwriter and medieval philosophy scholar Yoel Inbar joins us for a deep dive on the Charlie Kaufman/Michel GondREY masterpiece Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. When relationships go bad is it better to believe they never happened? What is the nature of memory, how is it constructed, and is it possible to zap them out existence with an Apple IIe? Will Tamler have a more optimistic take on the ending of the movie than David? (Hint: yes)
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