I’ll return at 11AM to answer questions live! I’m a philosopher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Professorial Fellow of the Arche Research Centre at the University of St Andrews, whose main interests are in metaphysics, phenomenology, and cognitive science. If you want to know more about me, here’s my website, an interview about my research interests with 3am magazine, and an interview with more personal sorts of questions at NewAPPS. Much of my recent work focuses on the nature of experience and its role in constructing the self. I’m especially interested in exploring the way that some experiences can be transformative. Transformative experiences are momentous, life-changing experiences that shape who we are and what we care about. Going to war, winning the lottery, having a baby, losing your faith, or being spiritually reborn are all experiences that transform us epistemically, and through the epistemic transformations they bring, such experiences change us personally. Massive epistemic change can restructure who you are and what you care about. When you have a transformative experience, something new is revealed to you—what’s like to be in that situation or what it’s like to have that experience. Once you discover this, you discover how you’ll respond, and in particular, who you’ll become as the result of the transformation. In this sense, an exploration of transformative experience is also an exploration of the self, since we are exploring the way that experience allows us to discover who we are and what we care about. We discover new features of reality through experience, and this discovery turns us back into a new understanding of our own selves. I prefer to work on these philosophical questions using somewhat technical and formal tools from contemporary philosophy drawn from metaphysics, epistemology, decision theory, and the philosophy of mind. I’m also interested in empirical work in cognitive science, statistics, and psychology, and I try to bring relevant empirical research to bear on my conceptual work. I see myself as a defender of the importance of phenomenology and lived experience, but within a context that emphasizes the use of formal tools and empirically informed research combined with analytical metaphysics to frame and tackle philosophical problems. I’ve done a lot of work in the past on the nature of time and the metaphysics of causation and counterfactuals, and that work also informs the project of transformative experience in some obvious and some not-so-obvious ways. Recent Links: There have been a number of good discussions in the media of transformative experience. Here are a few, and there are more links on my website. In the New Yorker, Joshua Rothman discusses impossible decisions and the transformative experience of seeing color for the first time In the Wall Street Journal, Alison Gopnik discusses my original argument about the transformative nature of becoming a parent here In The New York Times, David Brooks discusses my book The Philosopher’s Zone has a fun podcast about transformative experience here Transformative Experience (OUP 2014), now available 30% off with promocode AAFLYG6 I’ll return at 11AM to answer questions live! Thanks for the questions, everyone. I’ll look in later, but I need to go back to work now!

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As previously announced, /r/philosophy is hosting an AMA series this Spring semester which will host AMAs by a number of world class academic philosophers working in a variety of different areas of contemporary philosophy. Check out our series announcement post to see blurbs for all the AMAs lined up this semester. You can also check out last semester’s series announcement post to see all the AMAs from Fall 2016. So far this semester we’ve had AMAs by Amie L. Thomasson on metaphysics, philosophy of mind and philosophy of art, available here, Samantha Brennan on normative and feminist ethics, available here, Chris W. Surprenant on moral/political philosophy, available here, S. Matthew Liao on ethics, bioethics and neuroethics, available here, David Chalmers on consciousness, technology and various areas of philosophy, available here, Lisa Bortolotti on irrationality and the philosophy of mind, available here and Shannon Vallor on philosophy of technology and science, available here. We continue our Spring 2017 Series this upcoming Wednesday with an AMA by L.A. Paul (UNC - Chapel Hill). Hear it from her: L.A. Paul I’m a philosopher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill whose main interests are in metaphysics, phenomenology, and cognitive science. If you want to know more about me, here’s my website, an interview about my research interests with 3am magazine, and an interview with more personal sorts of questions at NewAPPS. Much of my recent work focuses on the nature of experience and its role in constructing the self. I’m especially interested in exploring the way that some experiences can be transformative. Transformative experiences are momentous, life-changing experiences that shape who we are and what we care about. Going to war, winning the lottery, having a baby, losing your faith, or being spiritually reborn are all experiences that transform us epistemically, and through the epistemic transformations they bring, such experiences change us personally. Massive epistemic change can restructure who you are and what you care about. When you have a transformative experience, something new is revealed to you—what’s like to be in that situation or what it’s like to have that experience. Once you discover this, you discover how you’ll respond, and in particular, who you’ll become as the result of the transformation. In this sense, an exploration of transformative experience is also an exploration of the self, since we are exploring the way that experience allows us to discover who we are and what we care about. We discover new features of reality through experience, and this discovery turns us back into a new understanding of our own selves. I prefer to work on these philosophical questions using somewhat technical and formal tools from contemporary philosophy drawn from metaphysics, epistemology, decision theory, and the philosophy of mind. I’m also interested in empirical work in cognitive science, statistics, and psychology, and I try to bring relevant empirical research to bear on my conceptual work. I see myself as a defender of the importance of phenomenology and lived experience, but within a context that emphasizes the use of formal tools and empirically informed research combined with analytical metaphysics to frame and tackle philosophical problems. I’ve done a lot of work in the past on the nature of time and the metaphysics of causation and counterfactuals, and that work also informs the project of transformative experience in some obvious and some not-so-obvious ways. Recent Links: There have been a number of good discussions in the media of transformative experience. Here are a few, and there are more links on my website. In the New Yorker, Joshua Rothman discusses impossible decisions and the transformative experience of seeing color for the first time In the Wall Street Journal, Alison Gopnik discusses my original argument about the transformative nature of becoming a parent here In The New York Times, David Brooks discusses my book The Philosopher’s Zone has a fun podcast about transformative experience here OUP Book Thanks to OUP, you can save 30% Professor L.A. Paul’s new book by using promocode AAFLYG6 on the oup.com site, while the series is ongoing: Transformative Experience AMA Professor Paul will join us Wednesday for a live Q&A on 4/5 at 11AM EST. Please feel free to post questions for her here. She will look at this thread before she starts and begin with some questions from here while the initial questions in the new thread come in. Please join me in welcoming Professor Paul our community!

Hi Reddit, My name is Ole Andreassen and I am a Professor in Psychiatry at University of Oslo. I have also a clinical position where I see patients regularly in the outpatient clinic at Oslo University Hospital. My research focuses on severe mental illness and neurodegenerative diseases. We recently published an article titled Genetic assessment of age-associated Alzheimer’s disease risk: development and validation of a polygenic hazard score in PLOS Medicine. In this paper, we describe the development and validation of a new genetic score to predict Alzheimer’s disease age of onset. Our results show that genetic data can be combined with epidemiological information on dementia incidence rates from the US population to derive a score that can predict age-specific risk for Alzheimer’s disease. I’ll be answering questions at 1pm ET – Ask Me Anything!

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Hi Reddit! The Association of Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS) is here to promote Polar Week! What is ​that​?​ There are two International Polar Weeks each year​ – ​one in March and one in September​ ​–​ ​which coincide with the equinoxes,​ the only time ​when everywhere on Earth has 12 hours of daylight. ​Polar Week is a series of international events with the goal of promoting the science that takes place in polar latitudes, and educating the public about all things polar. For the upcoming Polar Week we are specifically highlighting #PolarPeople, humans and their activities and impacts on the poles. Did you know that there are people living in Antarctica year-round? Or that permafrost thaw is causing infrastructure damage and affecting communities worldwide? This AMA is just one of many events ​being held world-wide to connect and educate the public about all things polar. ​See a full calendar of events here: http://www.apecs.is/outreach/international-polar-week/upcoming-polar-week.html APECS ​is an international and interdisciplinary organization for undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, early faculty members, educators​,​ and others with interests in ​Earth’s ​Polar Regions ​(Antarctica and the Arctic) ​​as well as the wider cryosphere. ​Our goals include creating opportunities for the development of innovative, international, and interdisciplinary collaborations among current early career polar researchers as well as recruiting, retaining​,​ and promoting the next generation of polar enthusiasts.​ Learn more here: http://www.apecs.is​ APECS members participating in this AMA are early-career polar scientists in a variety of research areas with experience working in the polar regions in remote field locations and in some native communities, studying everything from sea-ice interactions to charismatic animals​ ​like​ ​penguins.​ ​We will be answering questions related to our research, what it’s like to work in the polar regions, or even how to get into polar research. Learn more about and join APECS for free here: http://www.apecs.is/get-involved/join-apecs.html Participants: Liz Ceperley:​ PhD student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison researching the dynamics and history of glaciers in the Arctic, such as the Petermann Glacier in Greenland and well the paleoclimate of the last 20,000 years and has conducted fieldwork in the Arctic five times. Linkedin Alex Thornton: ​Master’s student researching the ecology of Pacific walrus​ and oceanography in response to environmental change. Website Jean Holloway: ​PhD student at the University of Ottawa in Canada, researching the impacts of forest fires on discontinuous permafrost in the Canadian arctic. She has done work in the Canadian arctic over the past 5 years, travelled to a remote fly-in site, and seen a polar bear face-to-face. Samantha Darling: ​PhD student at McGill University’s Sustainable Futures Lab, with research focusing on natural resources, governance and capacity in Northern Canada. Website Linkedin Aja Ellis: ​Postdoctoral researcher at Carnegie Mellon University working on aerosols, biomass burning, and Antarctic paleoclimate. Sara Strey: Meteorology Teaching Fellow at Northland College in Ashland, Wisconsin, USA. Sara’s research focuses on interactions between Arctic climate change and midlatitudes.

Ben and Ken: Thanks for offering many great questions, Redditers. We hope that our responses advanced the conversation about global climate change and possible solutions that include climate engineering. We certainly enjoyed this interaction. Signing off, Ken and Ben. Hi reddit! I’m Ken Caldeira and I work on a broad array of issues including the physical climate system, global energy systems, ocean acidification, and geoengineering. With the exception of the ocean acidifcation work, all of our research is based on performing simulations using computer models. Solar geoengineering involves trying to cool the Earth by deflecting some incoming sunlight away from our planet. Studies have shown that actions like putting small particles in the stratosphere could reflect some sunlight away from the Earth, potentially taking our climate back to a point similar to pre-industrial revolution. Of course, we know for sure about only one habitable planet, and toying around with this planet at the required scale would pose great risks – but allowing the Earth to warm from our greenhouse gas emissions also poses grave risks. Given that it is going to take time to transform our energy system into one that does not dump its waste in the atmosphere, what is the best path forward? I’m Ben van der Pluijm and I work in hazards geology and societal impacts of global change. The goal of 2016’s Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) is ideal, but unlikely from voluntary greenhouse gas emission reductions alone. Building on our remarkable history of engineering applications to overcoming societal challenges, climate engineering should be included as a viable solution for reducing the impacts of global warming. Climate engineering takes two approaches: (1) Carbon dioxide removal, and (2) solar radiation management. The former addresses the cause of climate warming by removing greenhouse gas from the atmosphere (“treat the illness”). The latter offsets the warming effects of greenhouse gases by allowing Earth to absorb less solar radiation (“treat the symptoms”). Given their worldwide impact, planning must occur on a global scale, involving all nations, large and small, rich and poor, and not be limited to a few technologically advanced, wealthy countries. We’re looking forward to answering questions about environmental change and dealing with the impacts for human society, and whether various geoengineering techniques could really be expected to reduce climate damage and decrease damage to both ecosystems and people. We were here from noon to 2 PM EST to answer your questions. Thanks for Asking Us Anything!

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EDIT, NOTE FROM THE MODS: The Spring Equinox 2017 will occur in the Northern Hemisphere at 6:28 AM EST on Monday, March 20, NOT today. The date of the AMA was moved and the headline was not updated! Apologies to anyone we’ve confused! – THANKS EVERYONE!! – We appreciate the great questions, comments and support. It’s been wonderful engaging with your enthusiastic content and we look forward to speaking with everyone again during future Reddits or any of our multitude of other NASA social media events. Our scheduled time for this event has ended, though some of us may continue to answer questions throughout the day, weekend or when our schedule allows. However, please feel free to continue to talk amongst yourselves. One great thing about our NASA fans is the depth of your combined knowledge and willingness to share it with the world. Thanks everyone and good luck with your Solar Eclipse viewing. Don’t forget to follow us on our social media channels, as we will have several opportunities to discuss the Solar Eclipse event, as well as other topics. :-) Sincerely, The NASA Goddard and NASA Marshall teams Hi reddit! We are scientists at NASA are studying heliophysics and how the sun, heliosphere and planetary environments function as a single, connected system and how elements of the system like space weather affect solar, planetary and interstellar conditions. Heliophysics is the study of the sun’s influence throughout the solar system, and its connection to the Earth and the Earth’s extended space environment. Answering your questions today: Dr. Linda Habash Krause I am a space plasma physics experimentalist at NASA Marshall’s Science and Technology Office and Project Scientist of a joint US-Brazil satellite mission entitled “Scintillation Prediction Observation Research Task” (SPORT). This mission, due to launch into low Earth orbit in 2019, will observe plasma turbulence in the ionosphere responsible for operational outages in our GPS navigation systems and some of our satellite communication systems. This is form of “space weather” that is a result of the interactions between the sun, magnetosphere, ionosphere, and upper neutral atmosphere, and I have been studying it for over 20 years. My activites have included installation of an ionospheric observatory in Nigeria, invention of space plasma instruments for satellites, and performing both scientific and mission operations duties for sounding rockets, the Space Shuttle, the ISS, tethered satellites, and free-flying satellites, and data mining and analysis of large space weather data sets. Mitzi Adams I’m a heliophysicist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and co-author of a paper published in Nature that deals with solar jets seen in solar coronal holes. I study various solar phenomena, like the jets, but also prominences, sunspots and sunspot magnetic fields, in an attempt to understand solar variability and space weather. Understanding space weather is important for protecting our satellite resources, mobile phone communications, and Earth’s power systems. Nicki Viall I’m Nicki Viall, and I’m a solar physicist at NASA Goddard. I study the solar corona, the part of the sun that we will see during the total solar eclipse in August. I also study the solar wind – the part of the solar corona that continuously flows off the sun. I primarily use data taken with NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory and NASA’s STEREO (Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory). One of the instruments on STEREO is called a coronagraph and works by artificially creating an eclipse so that we can continuously observe the corona. Eric Christian I design and build instruments to study energetic sub-atomic particles in space, and use the data from these instrument to improve our understanding of the Sun, the heliosphere, and the distant galaxy. These particles give clues to the origin and evolution of our Sun and planets, and other solar systems. They are also an important part of Space Weather that can be dangerous to satellites and astronauts, and even to technology down on Earth, and can affect the habitability of planets throughout the galaxy. For more information: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/overview/index.html https://www.facebook.com/NASASunScience https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov We’ll be back at noon EST to answer your questions! AUA!

ACS AMA Hi Reddit! My name is Chris Yarosh, and I’m the Science Policy Fellow at the American Chemical Society (ACS) in Washington, D.C. I work with ACS’s External Affairs and Communications (EAC) team to promote policies that support science and address the concerns of the chemical community. Before coming to Washington, I earned my Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics from the University of Pennsylvania. For my dissertation, I studied how cells regulate RNA-binding proteins (SFPQ and TRAP150, specifically) to influence pre-mRNA alternative splicing and other cellular processes. When I wasn’t in the lab, I could be found teaching high school students the basics of running experiments or imploding watermelons with rubber bands at the Franklin Institute. I also hold a B.S. in Biochemistry from the University of Scranton (yes, that Scranton) where I did some polymer chemistry research and ruined several expensive pieces of equipment. As the ACS Science Policy Fellow, I work with my EAC colleagues to cover a range of issues of interest to ACS members, including federal funding for scientific research, STEM education, innovation, green chemistry, and regulatory policy. Mostly, this means keeping tabs on the federal agencies that fund chemistry research, helping ACS members get involved in the policy process, and communicating ACS’s positions on critical issues to policymakers. As someone who recently made the jump from bench to desk, I understand how opaque the policy process can be; I also understand just how important it is for scientists to learn as much as they can and get involved. I’m excited to answer any of your questions! Ask me anything! Note: Views expressed here are my own and not necessarily those of ACS. I’ll be back at 12pm EDT (9am PDT, 5pm UTC) to answer your questions. 12:00 PM EDT: Alright, let’s do this… 1:40 PM EDT: Thanks for the questions, Reddit! I did my best to answer a representative swath, but my time is up. Hope it helped!