What I will remember most about this interview is the discussion of philosophy in the context of science and prediction and how these fields are interwoven and inherently interconnected. There are many ethical considerations that can be raised. For example, is running this experiment ethical, and what are the legal or other complications that come with running it? What if a simulation reveals a prediction that is at odds with our current moral or philosophical values? The interviewees discuss how the questions that philosophers attempt to answer and struggle with are often not practical, and part of science is trying to answer unanswerable questions to the best of your abilities. This aspect of the interview will stick with me for a while because I think it is an eloquent way of expressing feelings that I have already had. One of the reasons why I love economics is that the goal is to take equations to try and describe human behavior, which is inherently an impossible task. However, as this interview illuminates, part of the journey of predictions is answering questions people know are important and adding a philosophical component. One other element of this interview that will stick with me is when the interviewers said, "Globally, we seem to have made a very rapid transition from climate change is not necessary at all to climate change is inevitable. There's nothing we can do about it." I think this quote, in particular, stands out to me because I view it as almost a caution from the interviewers. Even though we have made great strides to mitigate the risk of climate change, we as a society cannot be complacent. There are plenty of more things we can do and must continue to do to get rid of this problem. As the interviewee says, "It's really important to emphasize to people that climate change is a choice. You know, we can choose to continue dumping CO2 in the atmosphere, or we can choose not to." We have to continue to make the conscious choice to help save our planet both as individuals and as a society.
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I thought the question you raised about how the questions philosophers attempt to answer is often not practical and often simulations are in contrast to our current moral and ethical values. I think the interview and your post really emphasize how difficult it is to take questions and theories we have and answer them practically with data, but we must still try to answer this unanswerable questions to the best of our abilities. A synergy of theory and scientific understanding with data and algorithmic approaches seems to be the best course of action.