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NO Forum on December 29, 2019

There will be NO Forum held on December 29, 2019, since the Community Center will be closed on this day (for the holidays).

The Forums will resume on Sunday, January 5th, 2020.

Happy Holidays!

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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.

Approval Voting is the Easy Way to Fix Major Problems

Jeff Justice

11 a.m., December 22, 2019

Our current voting method (choose one) has major problems. It causes society to polarize. It allows voting splitting and spoilers to select unpopular candidates. It suppresses third-parties and new ideas.

A simple and effective solution is Approval Voting. Approval Voting is the system that lets you vote for all the candidates you like, including your favorite.

Jeff Justice is a board member of The Center for Election Science, which advocates for better voting methods. In this talk, he will explain why his group settled on Approval Voting as the simplest way to dramatically improve our democracy.

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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.

2019-12-22 Jeff Justice from Humanist Community-SiliconValley on Vimeo.

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.

Against the Wind: What’s the Deal with Free Will?

Michael Abramson

11 a.m., December 15, 2019

Do we really have a Free Will? If we do, in what sense our choice is “free”? If we don’t and our Free Will is just an illusion, why is this illusion so important to us, and what is behind it? Do we need a Free Will to make moral choices?

These questions were debated for centuries, but now we can try to draw insights from psychology, neuroscience, computer science, and other disciplines. Do we know enough to develop a “model” of Free Will consistent with our subjective experience and moral intuition? What can we learn from it?

Finally, even if our Free Will served us well in the past, can it still be a reliable guidance in the Silicon Age?

Let’s try to find the answers together.

Michael Abramson is a physicist specializing in system modeling and simulations, and a concerned citizen leading a “Positive Agenda” group who is involved with a number of activist organizations.

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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.

Against the Wind: What’s the Deal with Free Will? – Michael Abramson from Humanist Community-SiliconValley on Vimeo.

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.

Bicycle Touring and Zero Waste

Tim Oey

11 a.m., December 8, 2019

Earlier this year, Tim Oey bicycled 5000 miles from San Francisco to Boston while giving 254 talks about Oceans, Plastic, Climate Change, and Kids at schools, aquariums, and museums across the US and raising money to combat climate change. Come learn about the wonders of bicycle touring, how his household of 3 people and 3 dogs generates just a quart of trash a month, and 5 easy things we all can do to save our world for our kids as well as save money. It’s really all about balance.

Tim is a long time cycling and environmental advocate. In addition to a long career in high tech at Harvard, Fidelity, Apple, Sun, and Adobe, he was the VP of Rides for the Charles River Wheelers in Boston, President of the Friends of Stevens Creek Trail, vice chair for the Sunnyvale Bicycle and Pedestrian Commission, and a founding board member of the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition (SVBC). He often speaks at government meetings on behalf of bicyclists and the environment and is a bicycling instructor who loves to teach people how to bike and how to bike better.

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

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., 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.
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.