📚 5 Books mentioned in "Jaron Lanier: Virtual Reality, Social Media & the Future of Humans and AI | Lex Fridman Podcast #218" of Lex Fridman Podcast

i thought that was a curious kind of thought that reminds me of that uh old isaac asimov story where the cl you know there's this planet where they finally get to see what's in the sky once in a while

Lex mentions an old story by Isaac Asimov about a planet where the stars are rarely seen, likely referring to 'Nightfall'.

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um i wrote a book about people suggesting people take a break from their social media to see what happens and maybe even it was actually the title of the book was just the arguments to delete your account

Jaron Lanier mentions writing a book suggesting people take a break from social media.

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even there there's opportunity to discover beauty now. and so it's that's that's the interesting thing about humans is the capacity to discover uh beautiful in the darkest of moments but there's always the dark parts too well i mean it's our situation is structurally difficult we are um actually no it is it's true we perceive socially we depend on each other for our sense of place and and perception of the world i mean we're dependent on each other and yet there's also a degree in which we're inevitably um we never really let each other down uh we are set up to be competitive as well as supportive i mean it's a it's just our fundamental situation is complicated and challenging and i wouldn't have it any other way okay let's talk about one of the most challenging things one of the things i unfortunately am very afraid of being human allegedly you wrote an essay on death and consciousness in which you write a note certainly the fear of death has been one of the greatest driving forces in the history of thought and in the formation of the character of civilization and yet it is under acknowledged the great book on the subject the denial of death by ernest becker deserves a reconsideration

Lex Fridman mentions Jaron Lanier's essay on death and consciousness, which references 'The Denial of Death' by Ernest Becker as a great book on the subject.

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uh hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy right of what this uh mostly harmless mostly harmless yeah

Lex compares a description to a summary from 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'.

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so there's this thing called data dignity that i've been studying for a long time i wrote a book about an earlier version of it called who owns the future

Jaron Lanier mentions writing a book about an earlier version of the concept of data dignity.

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