by Jamie Woodhouse
We discuss the biggest questions: "what's real?", "who matters?" and "how to make a better world?" with scientists, celebrities, activists, writers and philosophers. The Sentientism worldview is "evidence, reason and compassion for all sentient beings." It's a simple, yet radical, philosophy that's grounded in reality (naturalistic epistemology) and has compassion for all sentient beings (mostly human and non-human animals). Naturalism & sentiocentrism combined. Find out more at https://sentientism.info/ or join a group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/sentientism. Also on YouTube!
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Publishing Since
11/12/2020
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April 16, 2025
<p><a href="https://sentientism.info/sentientist-pledge/anders-reagan">Anders Reagan</a> is a peace entrepreneur, philosopher, academic, and technologist. He is founding director of the <a href="https://pacsinstitute.org/">Peace and Conflict Science Institute (PACS)</a>, an academic think-tank and advocacy organisation with special consultative status at the United Nations that aims to put peace and rights mechanisms on more rigorous, evidence-based foundations. Anders is also an AI Consultant at the University of Oxford.</p><p>In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what’s real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?"</p><p>Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is <a href="https://youtu.be/ze-Dk3Lkh3o?si=TIFk9U37Gjmzs3Ky" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferer">here on YouTube</a>.</p><p><strong>00:00 Clips</strong></p><p><strong>01:06 Welcome</strong></p><p><strong>02:58 Anders' Intro</strong></p><p><strong>03:58 What's Real?</strong></p><p>- "My upbringing and emotional impetus for initiatingthe academic journey that I went on... happened because of a clash between a non-theistic, agnostic background and a religious, Christian environment"</p><p>- Born in Boulder, Colorado "rather liberal"</p><p>- Agnostic parents, father interested in Buddhist traditions</p><p>- Moving to Arkansas at 7 yrs old "quite conservative leaning"</p><p>- "A sudden transition happened with our social relationships... encountering people who had a Christian religious doctrine at such a core place... in their personality"</p><p>- "Oftentimes the first question you'll be asked is 'what church do you go to?'... and at the time we didn't have any answer"</p><p>- "It is an ingratiating tactic... These people are so kind and approchable... they're clearly looking for common ground to build off of"</p><p>- "But when you respond with 'I'm atheist I don't go toany church at all'... the reaction... would be suspicion, confusion..."</p><p>- "My mum... took the tactic of saying we would 'homechurch'... either indicating that we have no religion at all or we're way more intense than the rest of you" :)</p><p>- At 7 years old: "That was intense... I didn't haveany concept of god or theism or religion - I'd never heard of any of these things... it was like living through a culture clash even though I hadn't left my own country"</p><p>- "We eventually did find a home in a Unitarian Universalist fellowship... very welcoming of what they called liberalreligion... people who had found themselves ostracised by other congregations... LGBTQ+... Muslims... the Wicca faith... they would congregate in this space... exchange ideas... trying to find common ground across all of these different religious doctrines... I found that to be very enriching"</p><p>- "Sunday School programme which offered a survey ofreligions. By the time I finished that programme... I felt like I had a pretty thorough understanding of the full range of religious and spiritual traditions"</p><p><strong>21:54 What Matters?</strong></p><p><strong>42:14 Who Matters?</strong></p><p><strong>01:09:40 A Better World?</strong></p><p><strong>01:32:30 Follow Anders</strong></p><p>- <a href="https://www.andersreagan.com/" target="_blank">Andersreagan.com</a></p><p>- <a href="https://pacsinstitute.org/" target="_blank">PACSInstitute.org</a> </p><p>- <a href="https://linktr.ee/andersreagan" target="_blank">Anders' LinkTree</a></p><p>- <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/anders-reagan/" target="_blank">Anders on LinkedIn</a></p><p>- <a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a>And more... full show notes at <a href="https://sentientism.info/">Sentientism.info</a>.</p><p>Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at <a href="https://sentientism.info/">Sentientism.info</a>. Join our<a href="https://sentientism.info/wall/"> "I'm a Sentientist" wall</a> via<a href="https://sentientism.info/im-a-sentientist"> this simple form</a>.</p><p>Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our <a href="https://sentientism.info/groups">groups</a>. The biggest so far is <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/sentientism">here on FaceBook</a>. Come join us there!</p>
March 23, 2025
<p><a href=" https://sentientism.info/sentientist-pledge/mike-berners-lee" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">Mike Berners-Lee</a> is Professor in Practice at Lancaster University and director and principal consultant of <a href="https://www.sw-consulting.co.uk/" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">Small World Consulting</a>. His books include <a href="https://uk.bookshop.org/a/15422/9781788163811" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">How Bad are Bananas?</a>, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17593623-the-burning-question" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">The Burning Question</a> and <a href="https://uk.bookshop.org/a/15422/9781108821575" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">There Is No Planet B</a> and he is a contributing author to <a href="https://uk.bookshop.org/a/15422/9780241547472" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">The Climate Book</a> created by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greta_Thunberg" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">Greta Thunberg</a>. His latest book is <a href="https://uk.bookshop.org/a/15422/9781009440066" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">A Climate of Truth</a>.</p><p>In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what’s real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?"</p><p>Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is <a href="https://youtu.be/BH_sdfs_MXw?si=6rFFUoQRk26cbpuz" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">here on YouTube</a>.</p><p><strong>00:00 Clips</strong></p><p><strong>01:02 Welcome</strong></p><p><strong>03:03 Mike's Intro</strong></p><p>- "A professor of what... I'm not really quite sure... a professor of the future?"</p><p>- Academic: Climate change, carbon flows, sustainable food systems, AI, technology</p><p>- Small World Consulting "help organisations to respond to the environmental and wilder polycrisis that we are accelerating towards"</p><p>- "Trying to create a better world for humans and other beings to live in"</p><p>- From climate change to "the climate emergency... crisis... breakdown"</p><p>- From trying to deal with climate change in isolation to..."all these things are just so joined up... climate... nature... food... population... social questions... politics... economics..."</p><p>- "You can't deal with that separate from questions about what matters, who matters, does truth matter... you have to go deeper and deeper..."</p><p>- Philosophy "I'm very pragmatic about it."</p><p>- "It's important to work at all of these levels at once"</p><p>- "I lose patience [with fellow academics] when they lose contact with everyday reality"</p><p>- "How much of how we basically think and how we basically run society is fit for purpose... and how much we need to go back to the drawing board?"</p><p>- The Anthropocene "the era in which suddenly it's humans that are so powerful"</p><p>- "How we do economics... politics... how we think... it all dates back to a time when we could just expand our activities... the world was a robust playground... we could get away with anything we liked... Now we're right up against the stops... a hard physical boundary"</p><p>- "We've given ourselves enormous physical power and wejust haven't given ourselves, yet, the wisdom with which to wield that power"</p><p>- "We're like babies running around with machine guns"</p><p><strong>09:52 What's Real?</strong></p><p>- Mathematician parents "they also went to church"</p><p>- "They asked a lot of questions [about religion]... they were not literalists"</p><p>...</p><p><strong>21:53 What Matters?</strong></p><p><strong>34:00 Who Matters?</strong></p><p><strong>51:05 A Better World?</strong></p><p><strong>01:24:30 Follow Mike: </strong></p><p>- "<a href="https://uk.bookshop.org/a/15422/9781009440066" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">A Climate of Truth</a>" A very simple guide to what’s going on in the world…"</p><p>- <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/mikebernerslee.bsky.social" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">Mike on BlueSky @mikebernerslee</a> “I’m on BlueSky and I’m not on X… Please do avoid any social media in which you do not trust the owner… please switch right now”.</p><p>- <a href="https://sentientism.info/sentientist-pledge/mike-berners-lee" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">Mike on Sentientism.info</a></p><p>And more... full show notes at <a href="https://sentientism.info/" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">Sentientism.info</a>.</p><p>Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at <a href="https://sentientism.info/" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">Sentientism.info</a>. Join our<a href="https://sentientism.info/wall/" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer"> "I'm a Sentientist" wall</a> via<a href="https://sentientism.info/im-a-sentientist" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer"> this simple form</a>.</p><p>Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our <a href="https://sentientism.info/groups" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">groups</a>. The biggest so far is <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/sentientism" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">here on FaceBook</a>. Come join us there!</p>
March 21, 2025
<p>Peter Watts (<a href="https://rifters.com/" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://rifters.com/</a>) is a Hugo Award winning sci-fi author. His works include the Rifters trilogy (e.g. Starfish) & the Firefall series (e.g. Blindsight). He earned a Ph.D from the Univ of BC Canada. He held several academic positions & worked as a marine-mammal biologist before becoming an author. </p><p>In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is <a href="https://youtu.be/7399QuK1Bl8" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">here on YouTube</a>.</p><p><br /></p><p>We discuss:</p><p>0:00 Welcome</p><p><br /></p><p>1:30 Peter's Intro - Baptist to biology to sci-fi</p><p>- A father so confident in Baptist truth that he encouraged questioning "He taught so many people about the word of god but had somehow failed to reach me"</p><p>- Becoming a marine biologist then fleeing the political bullshit</p><p>- Becoming a sci-fi author</p><p>- Including academic references in sci-fi. "I've been published in Nature more than they have because Nature publishes sci-fi stories!"</p><p>- "One of the coolest things about this gig is that scientists seek me out"</p><p><br /></p><p>4:35 What's real?</p><p>- Parental default "We're programmed to imitate & imprint"</p><p>- A "rock star" Baptist minister father who trained other ministers. Seeing him struggle with domestic abuse, dementia & being a "non-practicing homosexual"</p><p>- "He was the most unjudgmental man I've ever known." "Rolling his eyes at the sin but loving the sinner." Maybe because he was afraid of being judged for being gay. "A tormented, unhappy but wonderful guy"</p><p>- Starting to question religion by reading sci-fi</p><p>- Robert Heinlein's 'Stranger in a Strange Land' "introduced me to what an asshole the old testament god was". For some reason this hadn't been mentioned in Sunday school</p><p>- Interestingly, as a gay minister, dad didn't seem to know about Leviticus</p><p>- "Learning just enough from sci-fi novels to be an asshole to my dad"</p><p>- "God doesn't really explain anything"</p><p>- Being an atheist teenager + later becoming anti-religious</p><p>- "Religion is basically a biological epiphenomenon"</p><p>- Snorting oxytocin to improve fidelity</p><p>- In/out group tribalism</p><p>- Once you strip away the rhetoric humans act pretty much like any other mammal</p><p>- "Being right is not as important in survival as having the esteem of your social group"</p><p>- "Nobody ever achieved exalted social status by saying 'you guys are all fucking morons & here's my evidence'"</p><p>- More educated people sometimes just have better post-rationalisations</p><p>- "When you think of people as mammals a lot of stuff that seems bat-shit insane suddenly makes sense"</p><p>- A soft spot for psionics/telepathy: "Time travelling snuff porn"?</p><p>- "We kinda don't know everything yet - isn't that what science is about?"</p><p>- Does being open-minded make us vulnerable to fundamentalists?</p><p>- "It's easier to fit god than uncertainty onto a bumper sticker"</p><p>And much more... (see YouTube or Sentientism.info)</p><p><br /></p><p>Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at <a href="https://sentientism.info/" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://sentientism.info/</a>. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall <a href="https://sentientism.info/wall/" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://sentientism.info/wall/</a> here: <a href="https://sentientism.info/im-a-sentientist" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://sentientism.info/im-a-sentientist</a>.</p><p>Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. Main one: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/sentientism" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/groups/sentientism</a>.</p><p>Thanks Graham: <a href="https://twitter.com/cgbessellieu" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://twitter.com/cgbessellieu</a>.</p>
Emilia Leese
Vox
Derek Beres, Matthew Remski, Julian Walker
Planet B Productions
Persephonica and Global Optimism
Peter Singer & Kasia de Lazari Radek
Rachel Donald
Stephen West
The Guardian
Sam Harris
Critical Frequency
Jasmin Singer and Mariann Sullivan
New York Times Opinion
Alex J O'Connor
10% Happier
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