Sharpen your thinking skills and then turn them loose on life’s most profound questions, like the nature of good and evil, free will, ethical behavior, and living a good life.
Get ready to think big—you’ll be exploring questions that have puzzled humanity for thousands of years. What does it mean for something to be real? What’s the best way to organize a government or a whole society? What are “good” and “evil,” anyway? Explore these and other complex ideas from different points of view and discuss questions posed by great philosophers while untangling concepts like nature, art, ethics, logic, and even your very own existence.
And just in case all of these questions seem too abstract, you’ll tackle one of humanity’s most recent philosophical challenges: the nature and purpose of artificial intelligence. Does AI think, feel, or make judgments? Are its products “real” or “fake” by definition? Can it ever be truly unbiased? Think carefully—your future work, entertainment, politics, and whole world may depend on the answers.
What you'll do
You're In the Driver's Seat
Make a philosophical question real when you tackle the Trolley Problem: whether to steer a runaway train into a single person to spare the lives of five others… or not.
Distort Reality
Delve into the depths of Plato’s Cave, a thought experiment exploring what is real. Then do a “real” experiment as you don perception distortion goggles to demonstrate how your brain adapts to changes (or simulated changes) in the world around you.
You're Not In the Driver's Seat
Take a seat at the table of an AI Advisory Committee and craft rules for the use of AI in military drones. Unmanned aerial vehicles reduce risks to pilots—but should they be allowed to use lethal force based on their own facial-recognition capabilities?
Aesthetic Arguments
What makes a piece of art beautiful? For that matter, what makes something a piece of art at all? See how complicated it is to define something as universal and deceptively simple as “music” in group discussions and debates.
