Great Minds with Michael Medved

To be a conservative, says Yale polymath David Gelernter, is to “give due credit to the ideas that created the civilization we live within.” A simple and beautiful summary. In a new podcast episode of Great Mind with Michael Medved, Dr. Gelernter talks with our host Mr. Medved about the shocking irresponsibility in the failure to introduce young people to the best achievements in thought. They also, however, discuss evidence that our civilization is due for a healthy correction as we “snap out” of the torpor that suppresses consideration of great ideas. If Gelernter is right, there’s reason for optimism.

Human intelligence sits between fundamental, unbridgeable chasms on either side: animal and artificial intelligence. The capacity for creativity, for one thing, stands permanently outside the reach of algorithms. In a wide-ranging conversation, Robert Marks and Michael Medved tackle questions like what it means for something to be not just unknown but “unknowable.”

Join Discovery Institute Senior Fellow and nationally-recognized talk show host Michael Medved for a once-in-a-lifetime experience in Israel from September 8-17, 2019. Visit the sites of both modern and ancient Israel as you explore the relationship between faith and science, discover the archeological evidence for Biblical history, investigate the role of entrepreneurship in the development of new technologies, and learn the amazing behind-the-scenes story of how modern Israel has survived against all odds.

Addressing one of today's most acclaimed technological frontiers, Michael Medved and professor of electrical and computer engineering Robert Marks discuss the limits of artificial intelligence. They begin with definitions — What is a computer? What is an algorithm? — before tackling some pervasive media myths. Can a computer innovate or only imitate? Can computers now really do anything different from the Turing Machine, devised as a model by Alan Turing in the 1930s? Could a computer be programmed to interact with humans like the sinister HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey? The answer is yes, says Bob Marks, and whatever flaws such a machine displayed would be the faults inadvertently woven into it by its human programmers.

Stephen Meyer acts as host and quester to discuss Michael Medved's latest book, The American Miracle: Divine Providence in the Rise of the Republic. Topics includes the settling of North America and the momentous Constitutional Convention. The series of “happy accidents” is strongly suggestive of providence, “divine favor,” as many Americans have perceived today and in the past. Medved makes a couple of additional provocative points. First, that seeing “design” in your country’s history, or you own marriage or your life, is healthy and beneficial. He discusses his own marriage in this context. Second, that it keeps front and center in your mind, as a citizen, that America’s “miracles” are not meaningless accidents but instead are arranged to serve a goal: “serving the world” by rescuing it from evils including Communism and Nazism. He understands that mission as being still before us today.