Irving Finkel is a scholar of ancient languages and a longtime curator at the British Museum, renowned for his expertise in Mesopotamian history and cuneiform writing. He specializes in reading and interpreting cuneiform inscriptions, including tablets from Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, and Assyrian contexts. He became widely known for studying a tablet with a Mesopotamian flood story that predates the biblical Noah narrative, which he presented in his book “The Ark Before Noah” and in a documentary that involved building a circular ark based on the tablet’s technical instructions.
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https://lexfridman.com/irving-finkel-transcript

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Irving’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drirvingfinkel/
The Ark Before Noah (book): https://amzn.to/4j2U0DW
Irving Lectures Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYXwZvOwHjVcFUi9iEqirkXRaCUJdXGha
British Museum Video Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0LQM0SAx603A6p5EJ9DVcESqQReT7QyK
British Museum Website: https://www.britishmuseum.org/
The Great Diary Project: https://thegreatdiaryproject.co.uk/

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OUTLINE:
(00:00) – Introduction
(00:43) – Sponsors, Comments, and Reflections
(09:53) – Origins of human language
(15:59) – Cuneiform
(23:12) – Controversial theory about Göbekli Tepe
(34:23) – How to write and speak Cuneiform
(39:42) – Primitive human language
(41:26) – Development of writing systems
(42:20) – Decipherment of Cuneiform
(54:51) – Limits of language
(59:51) – Art of translation
(1:05:01) – Gods
(1:10:25) – Ghosts
(1:20:13) – Ancient flood stories
(1:30:21) – Noah’s Ark
(1:41:44) – The Royal Game of Ur
(1:54:43) – British Museum
(2:02:08) – Evolution of human civilization

Michael Levin is a biologist at Tufts University working on novel ways to understand and control complex pattern formation in biological systems.
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Michael Levin’s Website: https://drmichaellevin.org
Michael Levin’s Papers: https://drmichaellevin.org/publications/
– Biological Robots: https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.00880
– Classical Sorting Algorithms: https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.05375
– Aging as a Morphostasis Defect: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38636560/
– TAME: https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.10346
– Synthetic Living Machines: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scirobotics.abf1571

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OUTLINE:
(00:00) – Introduction
(00:29) – Sponsors, Comments, and Reflections
(10:09) – Biological intelligence
(18:42) – Living vs non-living organisms
(23:55) – Origin of life
(27:40) – The search for alien life (on Earth)
(1:00:44) – Creating life in the lab – Xenobots and Anthrobots
(1:13:46) – Memories and ideas are living organisms
(1:27:26) – Reality is an illusion: The brain is an interface to a hidden reality
(2:13:13) – Unexpected Intelligence in sorting algorithms
(2:38:51) – Can aging be reversed?
(2:42:41) – Mind uploading
(3:01:22) – Alien intelligence
(3:16:17) – Advice for young people
(3:22:46) – Questions for AGI

David Kirtley is a nuclear fusion engineer and CEO of Helion Energy, a company working on building the world’s first commercial fusion power plant by 2028.
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Helion’s YouTube: https://youtube.com/HelionEnergy

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OUTLINE:
(00:00) – Introduction
(03:00) – Sponsors, Comments, and Reflections
(11:35) – Nuclear fission vs fusion
(21:35) – Physics of E=mc^2
(26:50) – Is nuclear fusion safe?
(32:11) – Chernobyl
(38:38) – Geopolitics
(40:33) – Extreme scenarios
(47:28) – How nuclear fusion works
(1:20:20) – Extreme temperatures
(1:25:21) – Fusion control and simulation
(1:37:15) – Electricity from fusion
(2:11:20) – First fusion power plant in 2028
(2:18:13) – Energy needs of GPU clusters
(2:28:38) – Kardashev scale
(2:36:33) – Fermi Paradox

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