Two Videos with Discussion

Jeff Justice and Carl Angotti will facilitate

11 a.m., December 1, 2019

The two videos this Sunday are “Is the World Getting Better”, and “Happiness: What Your Mother Didn’t Tell You”.

We will watch the above videos of talks by distinguished professors from Harvard University. Then we will spend some time discussing each one for about 10 to 15 minutes.

The videos are:

1) Steven Pinker’s Ted talk “Is the World Getting Better or Worse?”. It’s 18 minutes long. See:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCm9Ng0bbEQ&t=37s

Steven Arthur Pinker is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, and popular science author. He is Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University, and is known for his advocacy of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind.

2) Dan Gilbert from Harvard University: “Happiness: What Your Mother Didn’t Tell You” (2018 WORLD.MINDS Annual Symposium). It’s 21 minutes long. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1Y2Z1BGwno

Professor Gilbert is interested in how human beings navigate the complexities of time and social life. The first of these interests motivates his research on affective forecasting (how, and how well, do people predict the emotional consequences of future events), inter-temporal choice (when and how people sacrifice for the future), and other topics in judgment and decision-making.

Both of these videos give us a lot to stimulate our thinking, get a discussion going.

Come join us to discuss these two great videos, and join in for lunch afterwards to discuss them further.

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After the Forum, please join us for a lunch at 12:30pm. The lunch is complimentary for first-time visitors and students.

RSVP on Meetup here.
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See videos of our past Forums here.

To help our Forum series continue, please consider making a donation or becoming a member (http://www.humanists.org/blog/membership/) of the Humanist Community.

Do your online shopping at https://smile.amazon.com/ch/94-6173979, and Amazon donates to the Humanist Community every time you do.

Note: If you would like to speak at a Forum, or know of someone who you think might be willing to speak at a Forum, please send an email about your idea to the HCSV Program Committee.

The Annual Creativity Sunday

Hosted by Sena Havasy

11 a.m., November 24, 2019

Do you paint? Write? Do a skit? Read a poem? Do a dramatic reading?
Sing? Play an instrument? Join us!

Audience members are invited to share any activity like the above with the rest of the audience.

Please contact Sena at senahav@gmail.com or 408-739-5638, if you would like to share something at this Forum.

After the Forum, please join us for a lunch at 12:30pm. The lunch is complimentary for first-time visitors and students.

RSVP on Meetup here.
Like us on Facebook here.
Follow us on Twitter here.
See videos of our past Forums here.
To help our Forum series continue, please consider making a donation or becoming a member (http://www.humanists.org/blog/membership/) of the Humanist Community.

Do your online shopping at https://smile.amazon.com/ch/94-6173979, and Amazon donates to the Humanist Community every time you do.

Note: If you would like to speak at a Forum, or know of someone who you think might be willing to speak at a Forum, please send an email about your idea to the HCSV Program Committee.

How We Know What We Know: Quantum Mechanics

Ron Garret

11 a.m., November 17, 2019

This is another in a series of talks on the history of science and how we came to our present understanding of how our world works. This installment focuses on quantum mechanics.

Ron Garret is a software engineer by trade. He is currently working on easy-to-use-cryptography software. He was a co-founder and CTO of Virgin Charter, and an early hire at Google. He was previously a rocket scientist. He also made a feature-length documentary about homelessness (www.graceofgodmovie.com). His blog can be found at blog.rongarret.info.

After the Forum, please join us for a lunch at 12:30pm. The lunch is complimentary for first-time visitors and students.

How We Know What We Know: Quantum Mechanics – Ron Garret from Humanist Community-SiliconValley on Vimeo.

RSVP on Meetup here.
Like us on Facebook here.
Follow us on Twitter here.
See videos of our past Forums here.
To help our Forum series continue, please consider making a donation or becoming a member (http://www.humanists.org/blog/membership/) of the Humanist Community.

Do your online shopping at https://smile.amazon.com/ch/94-6173979, and Amazon donates to the Humanist Community every time you do.

Note: If you would like to speak at a Forum, or know of someone who you think might be willing to speak at a Forum, please send an email about your idea to the HCSV Program Committee.

Two Videos with Discussion

Jeff Justice and Carl Angotti will facilitate

11 a.m., November 10, 2019

This week we will show two videos, each followed by an audience discussion. They deal with two topics of interest to Humanists.

The first video is “What Happened to the Atomic Test Sites?”:

During the cold war, you couldn’t get through a day without news articles on nuclear warfare. Why has that dropped from the news and what happened to the bombs? We will show an excellent documentary to start the discussion.

We will leave time for a more positive 10 minute documentary called “3 People Who Saved Your Life” about three people who exhibited very Humanistic values:

Join us to view videos about, and discuss, these two very interesting subjects.

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After the Forum, please join us for a lunch at 12:30pm. The lunch is complimentary for first-time visitors and students.

RSVP on Meetup here.
Like us on Facebook here.
Follow us on Twitter here.
See videos of our past Forums here.

To help our Forum series continue, please consider making a donation or becoming a member (http://www.humanists.org/blog/membership/) of the Humanist Community.

Do your online shopping at https://smile.amazon.com/ch/94-6173979, and Amazon donates to the Humanist Community every time you do.

Note: If you would like to speak at a Forum, or know of someone who you think might be willing to speak at a Forum, please send an email about your idea to the HCSV Program Committee.

Future History; a General and Personal Perspective

Gerald D. Nordley

11 a.m., November 3, 2019

Gerald D. Nordley is a science fiction writer, physicist, and astronautical engineering consultant whose fiction writing is most associated with Analog Science Fiction and Fact. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._David_Nordley)

Here is Mr. Nordley’s summary of his talk:

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There are, of course, many efforts to anticipate future events ranging from the weather forecast for tomorrow to projections of the end state of the universe, done by various professionals for economic, environmental, military, and scientific reasons, which more often than not put out a range of possibilities of, for example, the sea level a hundred years from now.

A science fiction writer, however, cannot rely on a range of possibilities. To tell a story, the wave function of the future must collapse to particulars; with backgrounds, names, events and often numbers. These will certainly vary greatly from the details of the reality to come, but may otherwise shed at least qualitative light on possibilities and offer hope or warning regarding what may come to be. Imagine an ocean of post-historical spaghetti, and then extracting one noodle from all off that to use as the background for a story, or set of stories. This is more or less what I and a number of other writers have done.

For this talk, I’ll look at a very focused non-fiction future history of the development of mass-beam propulsion for interstellar travel, then a couple of science-fictional future histories; Robert A. Heinlein’s, and my own.

Because he published his, I will publish mine at some point, and I have graphics! Heinlein’s is in his 1967 collection, The Past through Tomorrow (I have the 1975 Berkley Medallion Books paperback and it’s on page 661). I should have a copy of mine available for the meeting.

My bottom line is that, while nobody can predict the future exactly, close counts, and the exercise is particularly useful in highlighting where not to go.
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After the Forum, please join us for a lunch at 12:30pm. The lunch is complimentary for first-time visitors and students.

Future History: a General and Personal Perspective – Gerald D. Nordley from Humanist Community-SiliconValley on Vimeo.


RSVP on Meetup here.
Like us on Facebook here.
Follow us on Twitter here.
See videos of our past Forums here.

To help our Forum series continue, please consider making a donation or becoming a member (http://www.humanists.org/blog/membership/) of the Humanist Community.

Do your online shopping at https://smile.amazon.com/ch/94-6173979, and Amazon donates to the Humanist Community every time you do.

Note: If you would like to speak at a Forum, or know of someone who you think might be willing to speak at a Forum, please send an email about your idea to the HCSV Program Committee.