Forums – Page 65

G0d spelled with a zer0? Kabbalistic and Scientific reasons why

Rabbi Ari Cartun

11 a.m., February 24, 2019

Note: Elections for the Board of Directors of the Humanist Community will be held before this Forum. You must be an up-to-date member of the community to vote. Please arrive 10 minutes early so the voting will not disrupt the regular Forum. For more info, please see the bottom of this webpage.

The speaker, Rabbi Ari Cartun was, for 21 years, the Hillel Rabbi at Stanford University, and, for 19 years after that, rabbi of Congregation Etz Chayim in Palo Alto.

He is finishing the editing of a book using computer and internet analogies to Jewish thought, titled “Mindware for a G0dwrestler: Jewish Thought in the Age of Thinking Machines”.

Rabbi Cartun and Evangelical Pastor, Danielle Parish (whose Spark Church meets at Etz Chayim) podcast on Jewish and Christian thought at https://www.rabbiandpastor.net/podcast. They are currently casting pods chapter by chapter through Genesis.

A frustrated chemist who took a right turn into the rabbinate, in his spare time he reads all the science he can get. He considers science to be the original language in which the Book of Genesis was written.

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

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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.

More info about the Board election before this Forum:

You can request a vote-by-mail (email) ballot from Alex Havasy at havasy@live.com, by Thursday. Alex will email you a ballot which must be returned before Sunday. If you ask to vote by email you will not be able to vote Sunday.

There are seven positions and seven candidates. Candidates are:

Greg Alexander
Kakoli Banerjee
Matt Courtney
Pam Erwin
Lori Fuller
Alfred Jan
Ray Sundby

U.S. Labor and Working People are in Trouble

Steve Zeltzer

11 a.m., February 17, 2019

U.S. labor and working people are in trouble. The issues of deregulation, privatization and technology with mobile platforms have made millions of workers temporary with no real future in our country. This presentation will look at how labor ended up in this crisis and the growing strike wave and anger among working people in the United States. It will also look at the future of labor in the U.S. and globally.

Steve Zeltzer is the founder of the Labor Video Project and Labortech.net. He produces a weekly labor show on KPFA called WorkWeek Radio, and has produced documentaries including “Halfway To Hell, The Workers and Unions That Built The Golden Gate Bridge”, narrated by Danny Glover.

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 Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

Discussion Leader – Carl Angotti

11 a.m., February 10, 2019

Recently, the HCSV Book Discussion Group read the Jonathan Haidt book – “The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom”. His book explores the human search for happiness via modern scientific approaches and the ancient wisdom that has been passed on by many former Philosophers and Religious persons. To this end he tries to help encapsulate what is meant by happiness, its pursuits and what might be considered its root causes.

We will use a mixed format of video and other material to explore Haidt’s book among ourselves as it relates to our understanding of happiness and to our lives.

ABOUT JONATHAN HAIDT
(from https://www.amazon.com/Jonathan-Haidt/e/B001H6GAXW/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1)

Jonathan Haidt is the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business. He received his Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992 and then did post-doctoral research at the University of Chicago and in Orissa, India. He taught at the University of Virginia for 16 years before moving to NYU-Stern in 2011. He was named one of the “top global thinkers” by Foreign Policy magazine, and one of the “top world thinkers” by Prospect magazine.

His research focuses on morality – its emotional foundations, cultural variations, and developmental course. He began his career studying the negative moral emotions, such as disgust, shame, and vengeance, but then moved on to the understudied positive moral emotions, such as admiration, awe, and moral elevation. He is the co-developer of Moral Foundations theory, and of the research site YourMorals.org. He is a co-founder of HeterodoxAcademy.org, which advocates for viewpoint diversity in higher education…….

DISCUSSION LEADER

This video and presentation discussion will be led by Carl Angotti, a longtime member of the Humanist Community. He is trained and worked as an Electronic Engineering Consultant for many years, and has been an amateur student of Philosophy and Psychology since his youth.

Slides from this Forum can be found here.

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See videos of our past Forums here.

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.

An Introduction to Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning

Oswald Campesato

11 a.m., February 3, 2019

This fast-paced session provides a brief history of Artificial Intelligence (AI), followed by AI-related topics, such as Machine Learning, Deep Learning and Reinforcement Learning, and the most popular frameworks for Machine Learning. You will learn about some of the successes of AI, and also some of the significant challenges in AI. No specialized knowledge is required, but an avid interest is recommended to derive the maximum benefit from this session.

Oswald Campesato is a former PhD Candidate (ABD) in Mathematics, an education fanatic with multiple graduate degrees, and an author of 20 technical books. He has worked for Oracle, AAA, and Just Systems of Japan, along with various startups. He has lived/worked in 5 countries on three continents, and in a previous career he worked in South America, Italy, and the French Riviera, and has traveled to 70 countries on six continents. He has worked from C/C++/Java developer to CTO, comfortable in 4 languages, and wants to become fluent in Japanese. He has presented Deep Learning sessions at conferences, such as the Mensa Conference in SF (11/2018), Google LaunchPad, and Bay Area meetups to more than 1,200 people, and he is currently is an instructor for Deep Learning and TensorFlow as well as Machine Learning at UCSC, and a consultant who provides training primarily in Deep Learning, TensorFlow, and Android.

Slides from his talk can be found here.

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

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 Industrial Workers of the World

Sena Havasy

11 a.m., January 27, 2019

Longtime Humanist Community member Sena Havasy will give a brief history of the Industrial Workers of the World, and introduce some of the dedicated activists of the movement, some of the major strikes, and gains won and horrific reactions. She will finish with the decline in its numbers, and its later history, up until the present day.

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.