Really liked the podcast. Found your comments nuanced and, from my perspective, correct on almost every topic. I especially liked discussion of the singularity, Francis Collins, neuroscience-and-religion, what we know and don’t know about the brain.

A big mystery, that connects many of these topics, is consciousness. As I neuroscientist, and trying to read broadly, I think I can describe ‘consciousness’ better, but I don’t think neuroscience, psychology or philosophy have explained the ‘hard problem’. Or even have good hypotheses. The conflict between dualism and materialism remains. I think I have an idea of what a conscious-like system is good for — why it is useful to have a central supervisor that can guide behavior — but I don’t know why it needs to have the ‘feeling’ of consciousness.

John