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Reading the Rock Record: Understanding Our Future

It’s difficult to understand how one or two degrees of global temperature rise can even be observed, much less have any impact on climate and ecosystems. It’s especially difficult to accept as we struggle through another cold and snowy winter. The effects of global warming are hardly noticeable on the timescale of a person’s life. However, on a geologic time […]

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A.I. and Our Future

Historian Yuval Noah Harari is a Big Thinker. His 2024 blockbuster book, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks From the Stone Age to AI, concerns how Artificial Intelligence will shape our future. An AI “app” is a computer program trained on a vast amount of information (from the internet), learning to see patterns, for use in carrying out tasks. […]

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The Social Psychology of Group Delusions

How do people become entangled in conspiracy theories and other shared delusions? This question has long been the province of novelists, but recently psychologists and social scientists have applied the tools of their disciplines to shed light on this vexing question. This talk will survey their findings so far about the psychological and social factors that lead people to embrace […]

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Misinformation, Conspiracy Theories and Extremism in an Age of Political Mega-Identities

Misinformation is nothing new. For as long as humans have communicated, they also manipulated information and deceived others to gain power. Nevertheless, scholars, journalists and pundits have expressed a concern about humanity entering a new “Post-Truth” era, one driven by the collapse of truth and political turmoil. In this talk, Dr. Ophir argues that humans have never been motivated by […]

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Live To See The Day: Coming of Age in American Poverty

Kensington, Philadelphia, is distinguished only by its poverty. It is home to Ryan, Giancarlos and Emmanuel, three Puerto Rican children who live among the most marginalized families in the United States. This is the story of their coming-of-age, which is beset by violence–the violence of homelessness, hunger, incarceration, stray bullets, sexual and physical assault, the hypermasculine logic of the streets, […]

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The Well-Connected Animal: Social Networks and the Wondrous Complexity of Animal Societies

It’s all about who you know. Whether vampire bats sharing blood meals for survival, macaque monkeys forming grooming pacts after a deadly hurricane, marmots warning others of danger lurking in the mist, or long-tailed manakins singing and dancing their little hearts out—it pays to be well connected. Dr. Lee Alan Dugatkin is a Professor and Distinguished University Scholar in the […]

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National Preparedness Month: Emergency Preparedness

Since its inception in 2004, National Preparedness Month is observed in the U.S. during the month of September. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) encourages everyone to take steps to prepare for emergencies in their homes and in their communities. This meeting will discuss the potential emergencies and natural disasters the Capital District may experience and how to prepare you […]

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Morality De-Mystified

To many people, morality seems unnatural, unscientific, and possibly mysterious or supernatural, or subjective and arbitrary. I will argue that there are objective moral facts which are entirely natural, based on scientific concepts like instrumental valuation, recursive thought, and universalizability. We can then both explain why there are so many moral valuations we share in common, and understand we are […]

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Humanism in Star Trek

Gene Roddenberry, creator and executive producer of the television series Star Trek, believed that: human beings can solve problems through reason and cooperation; that there is no need to turn to superstition or religion for help; that human understanding and intelligence will help us to develop and progress. “I’ve been sure from the first, that the job of Star Trek […]

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