On Wisdom

67: The Wisdom Turing Test - Part Two (with Steve Rathje)

November 16th, 2025  |  49 mins 58 secs

ai sycophancy, alan turing, artificial intelligence, benedict cumberbatch, emotions, happiness, listener poll, meaning, philosophy, psychology, psychology of technology, purpose, reasoning, social media, social science, steve rathje, the chinese room, turing test, well being, wisdom, wisdom turing test

What can insights from the psychology of technology teach us about wisdom in the age of AI? In this special follow-up episode, Igor and Charles are joined by Steve Rathje to explore how classic ideas like the Turing Test hold up now that AI can talk compellingly about human wisdom. Steve unpacks what today’s generative models are actually capable of, Igor is intrigued by how quickly the line between human and machine reasoning seems to be blurring, and Charles realises that telling human insight from machine insight isn’t nearly as straightforward as he'd hoped. The trio also reveal the results of our listener poll — who sounded the wisest, and was the audience able to spot the AI? Welcome to Episode 67.

66: The Wisdom Turing Test - Part One

October 26th, 2025  |  40 mins 42 secs

ai, artificial intelligence, emotions, folk wisdom, happiness, intellectual humility, meaning, philosophy, psychology, purpose, reasoning, social science, turing test, well being, wisdom

What happens when we ask our own fantastic listeners — and AI — what it means to live wisely? In this episode, Igor and Charles hand the mic to members of the On Wisdom audience to hear their answers to the big questions usually reserved for scientists and philosophers. But there’s a twist: one set of responses was provided by AI. We invite you to vote on who gave the wisest answers — and to guess which one wasn’t human. Igor is surprised by just how insightful the answers from the regular folk (compared to experts) turn out to be, while Charles wonders if the wisest one may not be human at all? Can you pass the Wisdom Turing Test? Welcome to Episode 66.

63: The AI Mirror: Why Machines Reflect Us More Than They Think (with Shannon Vallor)

February 23rd, 2025  |  44 mins 30 secs

ai, alignment, artificial intelligence, emotions, happiness, meaning, moral machines, philosophy, psychology, purpose, reasoning, shannon vallor, social science, technomoral virtues, technomoral wisdom, the ai mirror, value alignment, virtue embodiment, well being, wisdom

Can AI ever be truly wise, or are we just seeing reflections of ourselves? Philosopher Shannon Vallor joins Igor and Charles to explore how technology shapes human wisdom, why we’ve been thinking about AI all wrong, and what it really means to align machines with our values. Shannon unpacks the AI Mirror metaphor, suggesting that today’s AI isn’t a thinking mind but a reflection of human data, Igor considers whether technology could ever help us become wiser rather than just more efficient, and Charles wonders if philosophy can guide better decisions in a world increasingly shaped by algorithms. Welcome to Episode 63.

55: Wise of the Machines (with Sina Fazelpour)

August 5th, 2023  |  1 hr 4 mins

ai, algorithms, alignment, alphago, artificial intelligence, bias, chatgpt, constitutional ai, diversity, emotions, god’s touch, happiness, large language model, lee sedols, llm, machine learning, meaning, philosophy, psychology, purpose, reasoning, sina fazelpour, social science, well being, wisdom

How can we make AI wiser? And could AI make us wiser in return? Sina Fazelpour joins Igor and Charles to discuss the problem of bias in algorithms, how we might make machine learning systems more diverse, and the thorny challenge of alignment. Igor considers whether interacting with AIs might help us achieve higher levels of understanding, Sina suggests that setting up AIs to promote certain values may be problematic in a pluralistic society, and Charles is intrigued to learn about the opportunities offered by teaming up with our machine friends. Welcome to Episode 55.

47: Charting Pandemic Waters: A Common Wisdom Model for Uncertain Times (with Howard Nusbaum) - Rebroadcast

July 20th, 2022  |  1 hr 2 mins

adversity, alfred binet, artificial intelligence, balance of self- and other-oriented interests, candace vogler, centre for practical wisdom, common wisdom model, cortex-adaptability, dialectal thinking, emotions, epistemic humility, happiness, howard nusbaum, iq, jingle-jangle fallacy, keith stanovich, meaning, metacognition, moral-grounding, nancy snow, perspectival insight, perspectivism, philosophy, propositional logic, psychology, purpose, pursuit of truth, reasoning, shared humanity, social science, social-cognitive processing, toronto wisdom task force, university of chicago, valerie tiberius, value-action gap, values, well being, wisdom, wisdom measurement

(First Broadcast - 21st June 2020)

What is the value of wisdom in the time of the global pandemic? Does the community of behavioural scientists studying wisdom agree on anything about the nature of wisdom? Can we say what we now know about wisdom and, conversely, what do we know we don’t yet know? Howard Nusbaum joins Igor and Charles to discuss the recently assembled Toronto Wisdom Task Force and the resulting Common Wisdom Model, meta-cognition, the thorny issue of moral-grounding, and sage advice regarding how to measure wisdom in the lab. Igor stresses the importance of building solid theoretical foundations for the field in the context of the pandemic, Howard reflects on the viability of evil wisdom, and Charles learns that we had better pay close attention today to the values we program into the decision-making robots of tomorrow.

29: Charting Pandemic Waters: A Common Wisdom Model for Uncertain Times (with Howard Nusbaum)

June 21st, 2020  |  1 hr 8 mins

adversity, alfred binet, artificial intelligence, balance of self- and other-oriented interests, candace vogler, centre for practical wisdom, common wisdom model, cortex-adaptability, dialectal thinking, emotions, epistemic humility, happiness, howard nusbaum, iq, jingle-jangle fallacy, keith stanovich, meaning, metacognition, moral-grounding, nancy snow, perspectival insight, perspectivism, philosophy, propositional logic, psychology, purpose, pursuit of truth, reasoning, shared humanity, social science, social-cognitive processing, toronto wisdom task force, university of chicago, valerie tiberius, value-action gap, values, well being, wisdom, wisdom measurement

What is the value of wisdom in the time of the global pandemic? Does the community of behavioural scientists studying wisdom agree on anything about the nature of wisdom? Can we say what we now know about wisdom and, conversely, what do we know we don’t yet know? Howard Nusbaum joins Igor and Charles to discuss the recently assembled Toronto Wisdom Task Force and the resulting Common Wisdom Model, meta-cognition, the thorny issue of moral-grounding, and sage advice regarding how to measure wisdom in the lab. Igor stresses the importance of building solid theoretical foundations for the field in the context of the pandemic, Howard reflects on the viability of evil wisdom, and Charles learns that we had better pay close attention today to the values we program into the decision-making robots of tomorrow. Welcome to Episode 29.