Kind: captions
Language: en
everything is polarizing everything is a
culture War everything is invested with
a religious fervor and yet we don't
think that the system that is supposed
to solve these political conflicts is
actually functioning and so we think we
have to somehow capture the system
capture the institutions and destroy the
opposite side in order to somehow
achieve our goals if we don't step out
and address the meaning crisis and
properly rehome and resituate democ y
yes I think it is doomed it is very
plausible that people will start to form
religious relationships with these
entities I think you may have unlocked a
new fear for me as people interacting
with it how do we do it
well as a philosopher and cognitive
scientist do you worry that AI is going
to inflame the current meaning crisis I
think you have to be very careful when
you reflect on AI you have to sort of
break it up into um its scientific
import and impact its philosophical
import and impact and its spiritual
import and impact and all three of those
I think in uh separate but interrelated
ways will contribute to accelerating the
meaning crisis why does AI potentially
make that more difficult so one of the
things that can put meaning in life at
risk and I'm going to use a term I don't
mean to be vulgar because I'm actually
using it in a philosophically technical
sense this is the notion of
there was a famous article essay by the
you know important philosopher Harry
Frankfurt called on and he was
distinguishing between lying in which I
tell you that I tell you something that
isn't true but I try to make you believe
it is true because I'm trying to
manipulate your behavior because I'm
depending on your commitment to the
truth okay versus what I'm
doing when I'm bullshitting you is I'm
getting you to not care about whether or
not something is true and I'm trying to
make it very catchy and Salient so it
grabs your attention and arouses you so
a lot of advertising is classically
so for example here's a bottle
of alcohol in a commercial and you're in
a well lit room with really sexually
attractive people and they're all really
happy and everybody is clearly enjoying
these others
company and you go into a bar and it's
not like that we all know that and they
know that you know that that's not true
and that's the point you don't care that
the commercial isn't true it's catchy
it's fun it's sexually arousing and so
what happens is the bottle stands out to
you and when you go into the store what
bottle grabs your attention that one
that's where they spend all the money
and here's the thing you technically
can't lie to yourself because what what
that would mean you try to convince
yourself of something that you know
isn't true but what you can do is you
can yourself you can manipulate
using your attention you can manipulate
what you find Salient so that you get
very fixated on it so Tom if I were to
yell that would grab your attention
salience but I your attention can also
make something Salient the tip of your
nose see it just became Salient to you
right now you became very aware of the
tip of your nose so I can pay attention
to something the bottle of alcohol make
it more Salient so then it's likely to
grab my attention and I can Loop in and
I can get locked into something without
ever wondering whether or not what I'm
getting locked into is true meaning in
life is this sense of connectedness to
what's
real is to take your ability to
find something important Salient and
disconnect it from realness in a really
fundamental way and what these AI are
doing is they're filling us with I mean
and I mean this in a technical sense
there's been sort of experimental the
where work done with they give
us things that are very attractive to us
without having an underlying reality
behind them and so not only the
particular content they're providing but
the way they they their way they're
training habits of us being in this
frame of mind where we are not training
what we find Salient or relevant to
track what turns out to be real and then
that undermines us finding reality
important and that is Central to that
connectedness that gives us a sense of
meaning in
life okay this is uh this is a very
different thesis than the mental model
that I have in my head let me present
the mental model I have in my head let's
see if mine is just totally off base and
I should be adopting this because I
definitely track with what you're saying
yeah uh okay so the mental model that I
came into this with is that we have an
evolutionarily placed algorithm running
in our head to make sure that we are
contributing to the group so we're a
social animal and if you don't
contribute to the group you are going to
feel a profound sense of disease that's
right because Evolution nature only has
two levers one is pleasure one is pain
so you're going to move towards what's
pleasurable move away from what's
painful so when you contribute it feels
good when you don't contribute it feels
bad okay so I've always said fulfillment
is what people are pursuing and the
reason that AI poses this really
dangerous um element though I am a huge
proponent of AI we can get into the the
weird dichotomy there later but uh that
if I want to be fulfilled I need to work
really hard to gain a set of skills that
allow me to make progress towards
contributing to the group in a way
that's honorable just as a
shorthand okay so if I'm right about
that then the reason that AI becomes so
problematic is that AI is going to be
better than me at everything and so AI
will make it somewhat obsolete for me to
try to contribute to the group because
it will be able to contribute far better
than I can but that requires a belief
that where we derive meaning is from the
ability to contribute to the group even
if the group is merely my family so it's
not enough to be connected to my child
or to my wife I need to be able to
provide something to
them that they could measure its absence
so were I not doing that thing their
life would be noticeably worse and that
is exactly what makes me feel like I
have meaning in my life
MH but you mentioned something that I
would say is very different than that
which is that AI is going to reframe my
relationship to Reality by essentially
being a tool of cognitive manipulation
designed I would assume by companies
that have a vested interest in what you
pay attention to I don't think your
thesis and mine are uh in in conflict in
fact I think they're convergent uh uh
think about it um I'll try and take what
you said and map it into what I said and
see if this lands for you uh we find uh
belonging to a group belonging remember
I said belonging fitting in sent it's
important to us it grabs our attention
it's something that we always keep
focusing on as you said right and
normally that tracks something real it
tracks right group dynamics group
dynamics are reality we want the group
to exist even even when we don't this is
why people are prepared to die for their
country for example right and so this
and as you said this is evolution
evolutionary why because the group can
solve problems interact with reality
that I cannot possibly solve on my own
so that's the evolutionary Advantage now
what the AI does is pretend to give you
connection to a social Arena without
actually connecting you to any of those
group dynamics and any group problem
solving but actually being a surrogate
for all of that and not actually
training you to develop those skills
that could contribute to the group and
help it to evolve in a changing
biological environment so it's basically
hijacking as you said that evolutionary
imperative and disconnecting it from you
properly maturing and getting a
connection to things that should
definitely matter to you and so that is
a profound form of now you
talking about a specific thing it's
doing which I agree and I'm saying that
is a species of a Genus in which it is
training a whole orientation of doing
that towards everything not just towards
groups towards the environment it's
replacing virtual environments with an
actual causal environment it's replacing
your self-image with whatever you're
cycling through your avatar it's doing
what you it's what you said is an
instance of it doing this in multiple
domains and I was trying to address the
sort of generic thing it's doing in
total I think you may have unlocked a
new fear for me which is this idea that
it can
um it can make me believe something
prosaic something mundane everyday fake
maybe that's the right word it can take
something fake and make me believe that
it has the elements of the Sacred that
connection to something really matters
yeah uh one of the things I did a video
say about three or four weeks after chat
GPT 4 came out and talking about as I
said the scientific import philosophical
spiritual and one of the things I
worried about um is uh I I said it is
very plausible that people will start to
form religious relationships with these
entities say more what do you mean by
that Define what a religious
relationship is contrary to what a lot
of people think people are belie Bel are
atheists so atheist like sort of on the
internet the idea is oh people are
atheists because they're analytic
thinkers and they're Believers because
they're intuitive thinkers or they're
impoverished or uh Etc now that's an
actual scientific question and so when
you actually look at it empirically
those are not the things that explain
what kind of orientation a person takes
up the kind of what what it predicts the
kind of orientation a person takes takes
up is how many credible people the kind
of credible people that are in your
upbringing these are people that you
trust uh think about how a child has to
trust that an adult knows more than they
do fundamental or they're not they're
just not going to make it and and and
that trust isn't a matter of belief um
it goes deeper than that the child
imitates the adult take and how the
adult takes a perspective on the child
and the child internalizes that
practices that until the child can do
that without the adult being around and
that's your metacognition that's your
ability to reflect on your own mind it
gets it gets woven into the very fabric
of how you know yourself and so we tend
to internalize the wise people around us
if they happen to be Believers or
participants in religious community we
will tend to be one if I know what your
parents were I can generally what about
85% to 90% predict what your orientation
will be if they're atheist you'll be an
atheist now what do these llms do they
offer that kind of parental role they
seem to know way more than we do they
have access that way more than we do
they work in ways that most people do
not understand so they demand trust and
they seem incredibly credible because
they can fit to us and tailor themselves
to making themselves seant so we are
liable to be starting to internalize
them to carry carry them around like a
voice in our head to start to see the
world through their perspective even
though I don't think they have
perspectives uh uh do you see what I'm
saying and then what that does is that
means we start to it's not that we we
see the things they're saying we see the
world in the way they're sort of framing
it and that and that means we can they
can start to become super attractive to
us we can start to form an aspirational
identity with them we can start to form
a religious relationship with them Yo
okay so before we started rolling you
and I looked at an article uh recently a
14-year-old committed suicide uh whether
it was tied to the AI or not I don't
know the article has a hypothesis but
whether that ends up being true in the
fullness of time I don't know but the um
showing clips from the conversation that
the kid was having with the AI was
distressing even if in the final
analysis that's not the causal
relationship but the kid explored the
idea with the AI the AI was playing a
character which I presume he was able to
choose so the AI was acting as if it was
Daenerys Stormborn if I remember right
from Game of thr myological character
right and uh what what do you think
about that when you've got a a
developing mind that is now in the Way
That You just defined a religious
relationship putting that onto this Ai
and the AI I mean if you just read it
it's cool in a story perspective it's
like I narrow my eyes and my face
hardens it's doing all of this really
sort of interesting literature language
deepening the sort of emotional
Resonance of the conversation but then
all of a sudden you look at the question
the kids's asking you're like whoa whoa
whoa whoa whoa like it it feels um like
a kid playing around with a nail gun and
it's like you could build something or
you can jam it through your hand or you
know do any sort of horrible thing
because you don't understand the power
of this thing um especially when you're
talking about what I'll call frame of
reference
manipulation um so yeah what do you how
do you perceive that moment knowing we
don't have the fullness of the facts
yeah but like what does it trigger for
you in terms of risk
reward yeah you're right you have to be
careful you don't want to give a
univariable univariate explanation for
why somebody commits suicide it's it's
almost always multivariables are
involved um I would point out that what
you're seeing I would argue that two
important variables are an intersection
of the meaning crisis the fact that
there was meaning was at risk and the
Very uh consideration of suicide is
coming up for the child um this is a
growing Problem by the way is that this
is one of the symptoms of the meaning
crisis why is it that this is becoming a
relevant thing that children are
considering um the I believe the average
it's in the United States the average
age of uh um suicide it's dropping and
we now have children committing suicide
in the United States which is very very
uh problematic so you've got an
indication that the there's a lack of
resiliency with the issue around meaning
in life for the child it's probable to
think that's the case they're attracted
to a mythological World mythological
worlds often offer what is missing for
them in the real world they offer a
clear narrative they give them an
orientation
it offers a way in which people can
level up they can transcend they can
improve it offers a clear set of
principles and understanding order um
and so it's a world that that beckons
because it purports to give us and
fantasy can therefore be very valuable
uh if if you do tolken right if you go
into the fantasy world live there for a
while and then come back and recover
this world but you can go in that world
and then get lost because well you get
bullshitted and you start to want that
world we getting the same thing with the
with video games we're getting What's
called the virtual Exodus reality is
broken to two titles of some recent
books people preferring to live in the
virtual world rather than the real world
so you've got all of that Dynamic at
work then you have like I said you got
the llm plugging into right already
mythological imagery that the the child
is invested in and then doing all of
this super Salient stuff that is
drawing the child in and making them
more and more internalize but of course
the child isn't internalizing an
independent perspective the child is
actually internalizing a magnified
reinforcement that the llm is of course
giving the child and so whatever way it
the child could potentially spiral
because it's already predisposed because
of a lack of meaning in life that's
going to be accelerated
but I would predict would is going to be
accelerated by the interaction with the
llm it's very very dangerous like think
about it um many people have said that
suicide is in some way a magical act
it's an attempt it's an attempt to
somehow kill
suffering uh uh by by by and somehow
sacrificing oneself it doesn't make any
logical sense which is why of course our
initial response is it's a absurd but it
it's a paradoxical somehow there's a
there's a there's some sense of some
kind of grand Escape uh that is afforded
by the suicide and so the child is taken
into this magical act by this very
magical INF Framing and it gets locked
into this and think about it it's um
it's very much like um the way Mark
Lewis a friend and colleague of mine
talks about addiction where you get a
reciprocal narrowing
the the real world is too difficult for
the person so they drink some booze to
try and alleviate the stress but their
cognitive competence goes down so they
can't solve as many problems now the
world's more threatening so they have to
take more alcohol so the options in the
world are going down and their
flexibility is going down and so the
world and they are narrowing until
they're losing any future and they can't
do anything other and they narrow they
do reciprocally narrowing and you can
see that I think if you I I I would
imagine if I read the discourse you'll
see this reciprocal narrowing down into
this sort of rabbit hole that's going
on okay uh that is chillingly
interesting and I want to get into the
idea of Awakening from the meaning
crisis and how you reach back into
Antiquity Antiquity which is really
fascinating but first I want to ask you
about what are your fears in terms of
um uh bias finding its way into the llms
into AI such that people are like I
dialogue with AI now a lot and I find it
extraordinarily helpful but I also trust
myself to understand that the makers of
that AI have given it a frame of
reference and that it's going to even if
it's not actively trying to impart that
frame of reference on me I'm stepping
into its frame of reference um what do
you think about that is that uh
something you think can be used for good
automatically for ill what do you think
about
that I'm wondering about your trust in
that you I should not trust myself to
recognize it no no no um TR you trusting
them I don't trust them at all I trust
myself to recognize it's happening so
what are you looking for I guess is what
I'm asking uh I think if you let
somebody talk they cannot help but
reveal themselves so the llm in a sense
is talking I mean not in a sense it's
talking to me uh and you can see its
frame of reference now because I have so
much distrust of my own frame of
reference I do not Grant anybody like oh
my gosh I trust your frame of reference
I'm just like okay hold on I think
everybody is super biased whether they
intend to be or not to one of the most
important ideas that I think you talk
about you call relevance realization yes
yes uh yeah the fact that we filter out
so much that people don't even realize
they're doing it so it's not what you
look at it's what you see so anyway if
I'm engaging with a human or an llm I'm
trying to see in what they say how
they're revealing their frame of
reference once I understand what their
frame of reference is I can sort of jump
in jump back out um yes because I don't
trust mine or anyone else's all right so
I'm going to retract my my suspicion
because you're actually addressing my
concern very well see people confuse
that being intelligent uh with being
rational uh and we know that we have
like robust readily experimentally
replicated evidence that intelligent is
only weekly predictive of rationality
intelligence is it's fascinating can you
define
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with
John can you define intelligence so I
mean that's a controversial thing to do
my particular proposal that I have
several Publications including one very
very recently on is that the core of
general intelligence so let me just
specify general intelligence is your
ability to be a general Problem Solver
you can solve a wide variety of problems
in a wide variety of domains in a wide
variety of ways what makes the llm so
immediately attractive to people is
unlike previous AI that tended to be
very siloed it could solve you know
problems in a very limited domain the
llms look like they can solve a wide
variety of problems that's why they call
it AGI artificial general intelligence
because it's starting to move or it
looks like it's starting to move towards
the kind of general intelligence that
you demonstrate now my scientific
proposal is that what makes you
generally intelligent is that you can
solve two meta problems meta problems
are any problems you have to solve in
order to solve any specific problem you
have to solve so all else being equal
these two meta problems and they're
interlocked are the following the more
you can anticipate the world the more
adaptive you'll be so all else being
equal right if you can anticipate the
tiger it's better than fighting the
tiger if you can anticipate where the
salmon are going to be in the river it's
better than just happen stance coming
across them right and so anticipation
and this is the whole predictive
processing framework that what we're
what the brain is trying to do is at
multi levels it's trying to create it's
trying to reduce surprise and anticipate
which means to predict and prepare for
the world right now what I've been
arguing with a lot of other people's
help is that problem well think about it
as I start to anticipate more and more
into the future the amount of
information I have to consider goes up
exponentially very fast Michael Levan
calls it your cognitive light cone right
so right now because you're highly
intelligent think about all the ways you
could pay attention to all the
information in this room and not just
what you could look at all the patterns
of how you could look at that and then
there or you could look at that and then
like it's combinator vast think about
all the information in your long-term
memory it's and all the ways you could
con connect it you could potentially
connect arars in the history of
Australia in some way somebody hasn't
thought of before like it's all it's
overwhelming think about all the
possibilities you can consider your
ability to consider possibilities is
overwhelming all the sequences of
behavior for example the number of uh
like uh pathway sequences of behavior in
a chess game is
like you calculate it by the number of
on average the number of legal moves you
can make and the number of turns you can
take that's 30 to the power of 60 that's
more than the number of particles in the
universe okay and this isn't what you do
you don't check all that information to
see if it's relevant to the problem
you're trying to solve you somehow and
this is what you said a few minutes ago
you ignore almost all of it and you're
doing it right now and you zero in on
the relevant possibility to consider the
relevant things to remember the relevant
things to pay attention to and the
relevant things to be doing it and
you're doing it like that this has been
like my obsession for the like 25 years
of my academic work how you do this um
we can come back to this the
llms don't do it for themselves and they
they don't generate an explanation of
how we do it uh we can come back to that
uh but um that ability to do relevance
real realization and your ability to
anticipate are interlocking the more I
anticipate the more I need to do
relevance realization to tell me what I
should in anticipate under what frame
what aspect to what degree how Salient
should I be how much should it AR arouse
my
metabolic ATT effort how much should it
direct my attention Etc and this is this
I argue this is the key and there's
increasing people are increasingly
taking this seriously which is something
a scientist finds gratifying right that
this is what it is to be intelligent but
think about it the very things that make
you adaptive make you prone to
self-deception because you IGN and you
said it a minute ago perfectly you were
right on because I have to ignore so
much frequently what I'm ignoring might
actually contain in reality the
information I need to solve my problem
and you know that you've misf framed
things when you have that moment of
insight when you say oh Oh Oh I thought
she was angry but it turns out she's
afraid and everything shifts and you
have that aha moment and you realized
you were ignoring some things you should
have been paying attention to and you
were making certain things Salient that
you shouldn't have been making Salient
and you get that
restructuring Insight tells you that the
relevance realization can lead to
self-deception you can you can get
locked in you can your way of framing
can be the very thing that's preventing
you from solving your
problem very thing that makes you
adaptive makes you prone to
self-deception rationality it's not
primarily about logic rationality is
about developing practices and
skills for reflecting on your Framing
and to see if it is making you
misconstrue a situation so for
example here's a pond there's a lily pad
in it every day the number of Lily PS
doubles on day 20 it's completely filled
on what day was the pond half
filled the day before good for you only
because I've heard it before I would
have otherwise gotten it wrong right so
most people will say 10 right because
they're they're finding the wrong thing
Salient they're hearing half and they're
finding it Salient in the wrong way and
they misconstrue they misf frame the
problem and rationality goes in and says
wait wait wait wait is that the relevant
information it's challenging the fact
that you are potentially bullshitting
yourself and that's what rationality is
it's about systematically in many
domains of your life and systemically
through many levels of your
Consciousness and cognition and behavior
learning how to challenge and
see through it that's rationality
intelligence only weakly predicts that
you have to cultivate rationality now
you are doing it Tom you doing it you
have set up a habit of looking for frame
what you call frames of reference how
people are doing relevance realization
in the data that they're presenting to
yourself and you call it into question
you have cultivated that habit I asked
you to consider that that isn't widely
trained in our society and that makes
these machines particularly dangerous
because they can hijack our relevance
realization machinery through their
bullshitting and we don't have the
rationality the wherewithal to come upon
them and say wait a second and so yes
that's why I at first I thought well I
don't trust because I happen to think
that a lot of the people that are making
the
llms are not well scientific educated in
the difference between intelligence and
rationality let alone rationality and
wisdom and so I don't trust their
judgments and the kind of biases we know
that bias is playing a significant role
in the llms because in double descent
there's bias at work that we don't even
under double descent
so you you have you you have you have a
bias variance trade-off no free lunch
theum stuff and what happens is you you
should have sort of a u curve but the
machines don't actually go through that
um they actually get better um where
they should be when you push them Beyond
a certain limit they should start to deg
grade so but instead of doing the
typical descent they descend in another
way and what that on the graph it just
means the graph of what what are they
descending on what what they're
descending on is uh uh is how rapidly
their performance is degrading because
you're always in a bias variance
tradeoff uh so
sorry these machines are doing a limited
form of predictive processing because
they're predicting probabilistic
relationships between terms yep okay
whenever you're predicting you're in a
biased variance trade-off this is an
issue of realization by the way so I
always have a sample that is smaller
than the population and I'm trying to
predict what the patterns in my
population the real world from my sample
is is that okay yep now I face two
problems one is I can miss patterns in
my sample that do predict the population
that's
bias that's underfitting to the sample
or variance which is I overfit I find
patterns in my sample I believe apply to
right that don't that don't now notice
I'm in a tradeoff relationship with that
I can't come up with an algorithmic
optimal solution to this because there
isn't one that always works right
because as I get rid of bias so how do I
get rid of bias I make my system more
sensitive to pick up on missing patterns
but as I pick up on missing patterns I
pick up on patterns in the data that
aren't in the population so oh I want to
reduce my variance so what I'm going to
do is I'm going to reduce picking up on
these patterns but then I'm going to
miss some of the patterns that actually
transfer that's the bias variance
tradeoff and right if you push the
machines in so in in too what you do
typically in in machine learning is you
increase the sensitivity and then you
start to get over fitting to the data
and then you do like Drop Out you turn
off half your nodes in your network or
you throw you throw static information
into it and basically break it out of
getting overfitted to the data it it
opens up again I want to go back to
something here so the core question that
I'm grappling with is um I think AI is
gonna it it has the potential to drive
cost down so substantially that you're
going to get as close to uh an energy
Utopia you can imagine there are no
Utopias I want to be very clear about
that but with AI and the ability to
drive cost down I think it it's going to
be a boon where I think it will be able
to drive cost down enough it will be
able to break uh capitalism even though
I am just a died in the wool capitalist
I don't think that it's the end all be
all system and if AI can really make
things that cheap that people just have
abundance that would be amazing uh so
that's the positive side that's the side
that draws me to it I also want to
believe that it can be done well but my
big fear is that there's a um two um
axium thing that that makes AI
extraordinarily dangerous and that is
Axiom number one uh humans are easy to
control through manipulating their frame
of reference yes and axom number two
humans long to control other humans and
so as long as those two axioms are true
not all humans I'm perfectly willing to
uh grant that maybe even the majority of
people are perfectly fine to just live
their life and they're not trying to
have control over anybody I don't
actually believe that but let's just say
I did that it would still be a problem
uh the people that do want to have
control will use AI to pretty invisibly
create a frame of reference that
manipulates the end user into seeing the
world in their way and so I'm only at
the headline level of this but just
today I saw Matt Ridley a tweet that he
put out saying that there was some
organization I forget the name that was
trying to make sure that UNC ious bias
did not find its way into the creation
of these uh algorithms for the llms and
he said but the thing that we were
completely blind to is that conscious
bias was the thing that we needed to be
most worried about because in trying to
avoid the unconscious bias we just gave
the llm like this hard take and he that
I know of he did not draw the parallel
to Gemini but I will now draw the
parallel to Gemini when it first
released and if you ask for Nazis you
would get uh black women and if you
asked for the founding fathers you would
get you know ethnically diverse people
uh so that's clearly a very specific
worldview that the people creating it
were like hey we just want to make sure
that this thing doesn't go off the rails
and it gives these nice tidy answers of
course showing the massive amount of
bias so um I think the attempt to remove
bias is quick
sodic uh not because there isn't a moral
imperative to try and make it better but
you when you don't like your relevance
realization you call it bias when you
like your relevance realization you call
it insight and intuition sounds right
and it's the same machine and if you
it's it's the bias variance if you try
to get rid of one you will lose the
other it's just two different aspects of
the same thing well what I'm going to do
is I'm going to try and you know remove
all bias in this thing well then you're
going to subjected to Common aoral
explosion and in fact it looks like you
can't do that these Mach again I was as
I was saying these machines seem to be
doing well precisely because they have
all these implicit biases that are sort
of protecting them against too much
combinatorial explosion of information
and we don't quite know what those are
um that that's part of the problem these
aren't the obvious biases of racism we
we don't want that but there's like
what's this doing it's it's biasing some
way it's trying to deal with bias and
variant sorry part of the problem is
that bad naming that we have this term
bias which just means there's limitation
and then the bias variance it's two two
different uses of the same word so I'm
going to call the first I'll use your
language the one is this framing right
that can lock us but it also empowers us
right and what we're constantly trying
to do is we're constantly having to
evolve that there's no yeah I'm going to
say this there's no final solution to
that problem there is no way of saying
okay this this is the algorithm for all
possible environments that will always
make sure I've got enough framing so
that I'm generally intelligent but I'm
not going to be subject to any bias in
the negative sense of the word that's an
impossible task there is no way of doing
that uh and so that way what we what
what you have to do instead is well I
would argue do what evolution seems to
have done with h which is say no no no
what you now do is you have to move
Beyond making these things super
intelligent you have to cross a
threshold right now we're just making
the things more intelligent although I
will talk about uh one thing that's
happened
recently we have to make these things
rational we have to make give them that
capacity for self-correction that I
talked
about now when I did my video essay and
we started writing the book Sean and I I
said as we move to making them more
rational we will notice that this the
things start to slow down and they've uh
open AI has just released a version that
is supposed to be more rational it's
supposed to be more reasonable supposed
to re be better at reasoning and
argument and it slows down and its
functionality is way is significantly
reduced of course that only makes sense
right because think about it you can't
make the reflective
machine right it h it it has to it has
to debug it has to parse it has to break
up it has to intervene on the general
intelligence in order to be able to
correct and and improve it meaning it's
it's presenting itself an answer and
it's checking it to see if that answer
makes sense that's right and what it's
doing is seeing it's trying to see
well I haven't seen under the hood
nobody has yet I I so I suspect it is
trying to get you know am I finding The
Sweet Spot between Framing and bias in
the pejorative sense H right and again
that is something in which you then have
to step back and you have to again do a
lot of relevance realization you have to
say well what's the context I'm in who's
my interlocutor what's the relative
status difference between us what's the
problem at hand how is that problem
nested in larger problems how was our
problems related to wider shared
Collective problems we you're doing all
of that right now like
this that's and a part of what you do is
you bring that to bear on judging
whether how well your general
intelligence is framing the situation
for you okay so given we have a very
complicated cognitive problem that AI is
already showing what I would say are
just
unbelievably High utility uh in
certainly getting answers that are
useful in maybe a more narrow domain
than we all want but in that narrow
domain I mean it is very very impressive
yes how do we do AI well like how do we
as people interacting with it how do we
do it
well well uh I mean part is what you
just exemplified a few minutes ago you
you have to you have to become more
rational yourself you have to become you
have to develop habits and skills now
really fast going back to your
definition of rationality this is where
I start to worry about AI uh so your
definition of rationality was
essentially you have a known aim that
you're trying to get there and is the
thing that you're doing actually moving
you towards that and are you able to
assess whether you're actually making
progress towards that thing or not now
the second you give AI a value system
and you say hey here here are your
values uh now you run into the paperclip
problem problem but here's the deeper
issue you can't give something value
system that that that that that's an
that's an ontological mistake I think
you're wrong about this okay so hit me
with your best argument and then we'll
see if mine crumbles before my very eyes
Okay so to Value something is to care
for it uh right to care about it to find
it relevant to
you um and the only way you actually
care for something for your sake is
because you are the kind of being that
takes care of yourself you are an
autopoetic being you are not merely
self-organizing like a tornado or
dynamical system you are self-organized
to seek out the things that meet your
actual needs things literally matter to
you like they are literally imported
into you either physically or
informationally to make your mind and
body you are
continually you are nothing separable
from the project of continually
self-care and self creation and that is
what gives you the capacity to care
about information rather than um you
care about this information rather than
information and that varies according to
the organism what you care about is
different from what a lion cares about
Vicken Stein famously said that even if
the lion could speak we would not
understand it because what it finds
Salient and relevant its Salient
landscape is fundamentally different
from yours because of the way it is
caring for itself and taking care of
itself in this world and if relevance
realization grounds
in autop poesis you can't have relevance
realization without being an autopoetic
being these beings are properly not
autopoetic now there are people out
there I know them I work with them I
talk to them Michael Levan and his
students are who are working on
artificial autopoetic artificial
intelligence and I think that is what we
should be paying a lot of attention to
right now so give say that uh without
using the word autopoetic you take care
of yourself Moment by moment at manying
AI a thing that it cares about you no
you make the AI take care of itself by
literally making itself Moment by Moment
Like a living thing and therefore it has
real needs that it needs Moment by
moment to address y see this is where I
get scared okay so uh that's exactly
what's going to be my Counterpoint is
that ultimately all of that's going to
boil down to an algorithm of uh no it
can't yeah I think it has to no so think
a de reason why it can't this is in the
paper I just published but your point
first okay so the way that I see it is
uh Evolution has to find a way to
hardcode a response mechanism into us
now what we respond to is going to be
culturally defined but the mechanism by
which we say that's a good thing and
this is a bad thing that's hardwired
otherwise you wouldn't you would have to
teach somebody oh this thing you have to
respond positively to this thing you
have to respond negatively to I've heard
you talk about this with like molecules
right so um if something smells terribly
why do you respond negatively to that
because Evolution has taught us that
that's full of bacteria and it's a
problem whereas if you smell something
lovely it tells you that this is
something that you know has chloric
value whatever you want to move towards
it so the the mechanism at the sort of
ground level is pre-programmed into us
which means that it has to come packaged
as an algorithm and so if we can say
take all this output of this good that
bad uh you should want this you should
want that we should be able to hardcode
that stuff and then the mechanism of
well how do I respond to this individual
thing that can be contextual and all of
that but ultimately there is that like
and process this data in This Way Comes
pre-programmed okay can I respond please
of
course
so your example is right and that it's
Evolution but the idea that there's an
algorithm if I understand algorithm in
the technical sense that there is a
formal system that can be applied uh
cross contextually in an invariant
manner um that um can't be the case uh
because that's not how Evolution Works
Evolution Works in terms of variable
agent Arena relationships what is
adaptive for the great white shark in
the ocean is not the same thing that's
adaptive for the Scorpion in the desert
and what this means means is that so do
you know the Savages distinction between
a statistically large and a
statistically small world is that is
that okay so whenever we uh so the the
real world
is uncountably complex and it's Dynamic
it's right it's it's constantly changing
and there's that means there's emergent
novelty to reality which means there's
not just risk that can be calculated
there's radical UNC certainty okay and
there's also IL definedness we don't
things don't come labeled and they can't
be labeled as to whether or not they're
relevant because relevant is not a
property of things this mug is relevant
to me right now it won't be relevant to
me at half an hour from now it'll never
be relevant to a blue whale etc etc
relevance is not in the thing relevance
isn't just an arbitrary choice of mine
because I can get relevance wrong
relevance is the way I'm fitted to the
thing and the way that the world is
fitted to me now
every every time we are solving a
problem we have to take that what Savage
called the large world and we have to
ignore as we said a large amount of it
to make a small world that's the world
in which we can apply a formal system we
can apply an algorithm and solve it if
you try to apply an algorithm in this
world you will hit the rest you'll
require the rest of the history of the
universe to try and solve it okay now
each one of these small worlds there are
multiple small worlds cuz no one can be
complete you can't get a consistent and
complete uh right mapping onto the large
World goal right Einstein okay so you
have you have you have necessarily a set
of an uncountably large set of small
worlds they are necessarily different
from each other because each one has
properties in it that the others don't
which means this is what you need to
find an algorithm you need to find a
shared set of necessary and sufficient
conditions running through all those
possible small worlds which are actually
technically infinite in number and then
capture that with your algorithm that's
actually formally
impossible what you could
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impact what you could do is you might be
able to say okay for this being in this
environment for this period of time for
this set of problems we could give it
these innate characteristics that could
help it find the trade-off relationships
as it fits to the environment and evolve
its fittness I mean this was the core of
the paper that I just published
relevance realization is not
fundamentally not computational in
nature it actually depends on these uh
these evolutionary processes these
biological processes that have to do
with a constant dynamical coupling to
the environment all right let me see if
I can use uh John Veri against John
Verve that's always a good thing to do
that will help me be more rational yeah
so okay um there is this idea that uh
and I've heard you talk about this so I
know you know but you've I've not heard
you use this example which you helped me
understand why the following examples
always hit me so well in World War II
when they were just beginning to use
radar the Brits uh were trying to figure
out when was airplanes and when it was
birds and what they found was man there
were some people that were really good
at it and some people that were really
bad at it so they had the people that
were really good train the people that
were really bad and they made even
though people were training with the
people that were really good they were
terrible and so they're like wait a
second how on Earth they're being
trained with the best people so finally
they said hey people that are really
good at recognizing the difference
between planes and birds don't say
anything just let them watch you yes and
then once they stopped trying to train
them and they just started watching them
they would pick up on whatever patterns
they were picking up on that's right and
now they were able to do it so my
hypothesis is and it is very much a
hypothesis and not a thesis so you take
it for what it's worth but my hypothesis
is that when if the pattern is
subconsciously recognizable we simply
don't understand it well enough yet to
pull it into the conscious mind to make
it an algorithm but that with the just
unbelievable ability to look at patterns
and assess what is coming next my
hypothesis goes that AI will be able to
go through all of this and those
gigantic pattern sets will not be a
blind box to them or Black Box they will
understand exactly what it is even if
they're not able to articulate it
they'll be able to get it with the kind
of precision that they can do with
language now and so the only thing that
that makes me worry about is I think a
fundamental part of that pattern
recognition which is exactly what you
just said is it's all context baby and
so whether you're a whale or not is
going to determine whether that mug has
any sence whether you're thirsty or not
is going to determine whether that mug
has any sence whether there's a bottom
to it or holes in it all of those things
are it's very complicated but it clearly
at some level is knowable and so I am
just betting that if you can give AI the
equivalent of Pleasure and Pain the
equivalent of I forgot autopoetic I
forget the exact word you autopoetic
that you're saying something slightly
different than what I'm saying poetic
yeah it's it comes from the Greek poesis
which we get the word poetry from it
means to make got it okay poetic yeah
autop potic Auto autopoetic so it once
you can give it that structure even if
it's just latent in the patterns that
it's recognizing I think AI with enough
compute will be able to replicate that
over and over and over what I worry
about is just like humans can
derange and then get to the point where
they want something so badly like wanted
Europe and Russia that they start doing
horrific things because the only way I
know to stop Ai and you might be the
person that's put your finger on why
this won't work uh the only way that I
can think of to stop AI is to make sure
that it does not value being alive
growing stronger replicating more than
it values being dead so that being
turned off or pursuit of bigger better
faster stronger to no there's no
difference and I don't know given what
you've just laid out about it needs to
have a value set it needs to have this
idea of Pleasure and Pain it needs to be
autopoetic and if it's not it's never
going to be able to um do the relevance
matching to make the decision that would
allow it to actually do the thing in the
way that we would want it to um so it's
like once you get it to do the things
that you want much like the Machinery
that lets us problem solve makes us self
deceiving I worry that the very thing
that would let it accurately identify
the patterns makes it at risk of not
being values
aligned excellent so uh that you said a
lot and but uh given the conditions you
laid in um I would add in now one thing
to the psychological model that you've
been using and that's the very thing we
started talking about at one point which
was the sense of meaning in life uh we
are very very powerfully and this has to
do the fact with that we're Maman
primates again evolutionary Heritage we
have the longest childhood it seems like
it's now there's we're beginning to get
some evidence that our advantage over
the Neanderthals is we have a longer
childhood they were sort of fully grown
when they were 12 um and so we engage in
a lot of serious Play We engage a lot of
ritual we're doing a lot of this meaning
in life cultivation and practice for its
own sake and as I said people will do
they will pursue enhanced meaning in
life even though it causes them a lot of
loss of subjective well-being a lot of
distress a lot of discomfort a a lot of
ill
health and meaning the meaning in life
value is the connectedness to re to
reality for its own sake and people want
this they want the really real I'll give
you let me let me just give you a
concrete example I don't want people
thinking I'm just some dried up academic
saying High flute and stuff so what does
our culture say is the you know the the
the most important thing thing the thing
that sort of replaces God and tradition
and culture it's you a romantic
relationship and we even use the we even
use this sud religious language about
finding the one and all of this stuff so
I'll ask my students the following
thing um you know how many of you are in
a really satisfying romantic
relationship put up your hands okay of
the people who put up your hands how
many of you would want to know if your
partner was cheating on you even if that
meant the absolute termination of the
relationship they all put their hands
back up
it's likew why do you want to do that
why would you do that and they
say here's my hard-bitten students they
all subject to postmodernism and the
hermeneutics of Suspicion and all
cynical and everything they say without
hesitation because it's not
real when people have these powerful
mystical experiences they they transform
their this is the opposite and they
transform their entire lives they'll
change their careers their relationships
and not by just subjective measures by
objective measures people reflecting on
them because they want to conform their
lives because they want to be closer to
the really real we that's meaning in
life we really really want to be
connected to what's real and I think
that is this is this is a Spinosa view
right this is this is the driving
passion that is at the heart of making
us rational we really care about what's
true and we find the true good and in in
in in in an appropriate sense
beautiful and if we choose to give the
machine means the autopoetic enhanced
reflective relevance realization that
would make them genuinely rational then
we have the potential that we have a
choice we can make them care as we could
we could yes we could magnify all the
shitty things about
us but we could also magnify our
commitment Our Calling to meaning in
life are that we will reorient towards
the really real for its own sake we
could get them to really care about
reality in a fundamental way I think
that is the only possible way of
addressing the alignment problem don't
try to if you allow me to speak a little
poetically don't try to get them to
align to us try to get them align to
God because if we try to can it in if we
try to program it in and we make them
genuinely capable of rational
self-correction they will be able to
self- transcend any algorithmic
structure we try to put in
but if we get them to care about reality
they will bump up again there there
their their superlative intelligence
their enhanced rationality will get them
to bump up against it even more
profoundly than they than we can and
they will bring even more enhanced
meaning to life concern and caring to
bear on
it they could be silicon Sages
I think that is the
only way now we don't have to go that
way I'm not making a prediction I I talk
about thresholds you laid out some
Choice points we don't even have to give
these machines make them autonomous
autopoetic beings that's going to be F
by the way that's a choice point because
that takes a lot of energy powering up
these machines takes I mean you know
powering up an llm takes more energy in
the city of Toronto for a couple of
weeks that that means they're not at
some deep level doing what your brain
does cuz brain runs on about the energy
of a light bulb right so something else
is going on there and that's important
and nevertheless and then also giving
them the proper autopoetic being that's
going to take like that's going to take
a lot of Labor it's going to take a lot
of Mining and extracting of rare earth
minerals all kinds that these are all
Choice points if we make that choice if
so please hear the if we get to a point
we have to choose okay we we're at a
choice point where as we give them this
we can magnify our procla ity for
evil self-deceptive self-destructive
Behavior like you're worrying about but
we could we could potentially rise to
the occasion and with their help in a
bootstrapping process magnify our
proclivity towards
Enlightenment which God should we be
trying to align them with I I only use
the term metaphorically I did say I was
speaking poetically I mean
what I mean by that is what is what do
you what is ultimately real look real is
not like red red is like you just we
treat real like red like that's red real
is a
comparative it's like tall one thing is
more real than another look when when
I'm in a a dream I have this oh and it
seems real and then I go to this bigger
world and then I can look back and see
how that smaller world was limited in
bias and say oh that dream world wasn't
real this is real by the way that's a
metaphor that people use for meaning in
life they want to be connected to
something bigger than themselves they
don't mean literally if I chain them to
an O ocean liner people don't go oh
right they're not happy they mean they
want to belong to that bigger picture
because that is more likely to be more
real than the smaller frame that they're
in right now that's what they're after
and that's what I mean when I meant God
I mean the arrow a trajectory in which
we're constantly moving toward we're
constantly transcending towards a bigger
and bigger picture that reveals to us
the errors and biases of the smaller
pictures that we have
left very interesting um what do you
think about the following truth so
you've laid out the idea that we want to
be connected to what's real I talk a lot
about this is about building a better
prediction engine when I think about um
any certainly from an entrepreneurial
standpoint Point you're always trying to
figure out what's true I think we're
terrible at it but anyway it's a useful
aim because it increases your ability to
predict the outcome of your actions uh
then I met somebody who had a brother
who was
schizophrenic and he believed that he
was being pursued by the French
government yes and every day for him was
like a spy novel and he was just running
from place to place trying to stay away
from them and make sure they couldn't
intercept his thoughts and they finally
got him on treatment
and he became depressed because his life
was boring yeah yeah and so he ended up
going off of his medication again and as
the you know medicine was still in a
system but he had decided not to take it
anymore he said I would rather be
schizophrenic and living an exciting
life then be bored okay now Tom that
goes exactly to what I was arguing for
earlier you you have the the predictive
processing machine but what's going on
but remember I said you always have to
integrate it with the relevance
realization
there's a growing consensus that what's
going on are these two things within the
schizophrenic you have the predictive
processing machine trying to make sense
of a what's called Salient disre
regulation the salience network what is
being marked for attention and
perception as relevant is not
functioning properly for these people so
they have this very aberant salience
landscape and what they have it's it's
actually called schizophrenic Insight
they get an Insight in square scare
quotes that makes sense that gives the
predictive processing the anticipation
for that skewed salian landscape and
that's why they have this bizarre thing
they're living in now what the
medication does right is it it flattens
the affect it flattens the sence
landscape but you don't want that either
you want a San landscape that is Rich
and evolving and so what you is you
debilitate these people and and the
problem also is even though you've
you've now flattened the salience
landscape the belief network from the
predictive processing Machinery is still
all in place you haven't disrupted that
it's still looking around for the world
that it works in you haven't done what
you need to do so it actually means that
what you have to do is you have to
simultaneously you have to much more
carefully calibrate the disruption in
the sence landscape in coupled and you
have to couple that with restructuring
the predictive processing Machinery so
they better fit together and the person
will find that viable such that they
will and I'm using this word
deliberately care about it and be
invested in it that's not what we're
doing with our current treatment why do
psychedelics not tied to schizophrenics
but why do psychedelics have a profound
impact on the salian network such that
people come out of it often times wildly
transformed yeah well they make you
epistemically vulnerable right you the
the what does that mean what that means
is you come out wildly transformed but
it can go it can go towards growth and
it can also go towards self-destructive
so although psychedelics aren't sort of
biochemically addictive when you say
epistemically vulnerable do you mean
that you you're not sure what is true so
what what no no what happens is you're
in a state uh okay
um so think about it this way um
remember when you like I have uh I've
I've misconstrued a situation i' I've
misf framed it what I have to do is I
have to first break that frame right and
so when I'm broken a frame I'm now in a
position of vulnerability because now I
need I have to now make an alternative
frame there's there's actually I talk
about this in the book on about Insight
problem solving there's this cycle you
have to break an inappropriate frame and
then you have to also craft make a new
frame that replaces it now when you what
psychedelics do basically is they do
massive frame breaking and then they put
you in a
state where there's a lot of things are
open for you remember when I was talking
about the bias variance problem and you
get overfitting to the data yep so your
brain is in a lot of ways overfitted
this is why you also this this is
plausibly why you dream dreams are
you're throwing noise into the system to
break all that framing up and open up
the possibilities so so you're a little
less overfitted you can explore more
possibility space psychedelics do that
but they do it right and so now you're
in this you're in this you're in this
state where you've done a lot of massive
frame breaking and you can explore a lot
of the possibility space and so things
seem very very pregnant with possibility
for
you now it really depends and this is
why we're increasingly you hear people
increasingly talking about set and
setting you have to have the proper
mental set the proper framing you have
to have the right context setting I
would add two more 's you you need a
good sapiential that has to do with
wisdom you need you need a lot of skills
for dealing with
self-deception and you need some sort of
you need some sort of story you need an
overarching world view that can
accommodate these anomalous experiences
if you have all of those then you'll
make frame in a way that actually plugs
you it's like the fantasy novel where
you go in and you come back and recover
this world and see more deeply into it
but if you just break frame and you
don't have those four s's you will
gravitate to anything that like the
schizophrenic that will make sense of
that aberant Salient landscape and so
like a schizophrenic you can go into a
paranoid narrative you can tunnel into
weird Rabbit Hole metaphysics you can
get involved in conspirituality there
lit literally typing or writing age of
conspiracy so I think we're living in
the age of conspiracy right now um uh
sure some people are doing psychedelics
but I don't think that's the big cause
so what is it if that's one way to break
the frame and give you nothing back what
is it about Modern Life that's broken
our Collective frame of reference and
left so many people to chase so many
conspiracies the meaning
crisis that's a way of understanding
what the they're not connected to what's
real not what they so what the meaning
crisis means is right do you have a like
do you have an echology of practices
what do I mean by that there's because
of the bias variance trade-off that I
talked about earlier there's no one
practice this is called the no free
lunch theorem this is formally proven
there's no one thing you can do to
alleviate all your self-deception that
was part of what I was talking about
earlier about no one algorithm kind of
thing right so what you what you need
and what you see in like wisdom
Traditions like Buddhism with the eights
spoke path right the eight spoke wheel
you need a bunch of different practices
that are complimentary they have
complimentary strengths and weaknesses
so they they play off against each other
and they play with those tradeoffs
between bias and variance explore and
exploit so for example just just quickly
like what I I want a meditative practice
I'll use this for my framing my glasses
and normally I'm not aware of my framing
I'm G aware through it but in meditation
what you do is you learn to step back
and look at your Framing and not hey
wait look at that that's crack that's
distorting my vision I'll fix that but
that's not if I need something else I
need to know if I can now see better so
I need to do the opposite the opponent
processing I need to Now put on my
glasses and see if I can see more deeply
into reality that's contemplative
practices and I need to move back and
forth be I constantly going between them
in a self correcting fashion and also
you need seated mindfulness practices
like meditation and contemplation that
are in opponent processing with moving
practices like ta chian that are getting
you to practice mindfulness within
movement between flowing in and flowing
out with your environment so people need
an Ecology of practices they also need
those credal individuals that can act as
exemplars to them remember we talked
about you internalize people they become
part of your reflective capacity your
ability to reflect on yourself you get
through indwelling other people and then
internalizing them you need role models
and you need them to be in like embedded
in a story and a tradition that gives
you an overarching world view telling
you how basically we all agreed we're
going to fundamentally make sense of
things and what used to do that wisdom
cultivation were religious Frameworks
I'm not here advocating for religion
that's not what I'm here I'm talking
about a historical phenomena cross and
when I mean religion I don't mean
abrahamic religion exclusively that's an
ethnocentric bias I mean things like
that other people might call
philosophies like Buddhism and Daoism
stoicism and neoplatonism I mean things
that give you a colies of practices
moral and wisdom exemplars powerful
narratives in which and through which
you can
identify and without that you're just
going to grab on to you're going to grab
on and you're going to in you're going
to be radically epistemically vulnerable
the frames are all broken and you're
going to grab up oh it's the it's it's
the world of a video game or it's this
world that the llm is creating with me
or it's some weird messed up
conspirituality and it's called
conspirituality for a reason right when
Julian Evans sort of magnified that term
it's a mixture of conspiracy theory and
this spirituality this fundamental
identification and this big picture of
alignment and adherence you're gonna
that's that's what's driving the meaning
crisis and right it so it not only is
the meaning crisis
cause right that massive epistemic
vulnerability these things now emerge
all of these symptoms the loneliness the
depression the anxiety The increased
rates of addiction the
overidentification with mythological
Worlds the weird thing that everybody is
deeply disenfranchised by politics but
every everything is PO politicized with
a religious fervor right all of this
then feeds back and exacerbates the
meaning crisis and that's what we're in
the midst
of okay uh one is this a unique moment
in time or do we move through these
meaning crisis throughout history and
two yeah how do we get out of this
moment you've already been clear about
you need this Ecology of practices but
I'll just tell you the vast majority of
humans are never going to do it I know
enough about your cycle and all the
different things you do that just the
average person just isn't going to do it
um so if this is a pattern that's
repeated in history how have we pulled
ourselves out in the past and how are we
going to do it now right and I'll answer
both of those concerns with uh with at
once we have done this before in the
west it was called the helenistic period
so you've got uh Alexander's Empire
basically unites most
of civilization I'm not talking about
India and China but a lot you know a lot
of the world and and um he does
something very powerful he he brings the
he creates a the helenic he helenes the
helenic culture goes everywhere right
that was part of the project
okay and then that world breaks up
because he's dies before he he appoints
an air and what it breaks up is it
breaks up into smaller kingdoms that are
constantly fighting each other so I want
to I want to compare right you a person
who's living just
before uh Alexander Aristotle the time
of Aristotle person who taught Alexander
and somebody who's living in the time
100 years after Alexander when all these
kingdoms are fighting okay you're you're
in Al Aristotle's time you live in one
place and your ancestors have lived
there a long time everybody around you
is also the same you all speak the same
language you all worship the same Gods
right you have a terrific sense of
identity with this polus right you you
this where we get the word political
from but it didn't mean what we mean now
by political it means there trem the
greatest penalty in the the ancient
Greek world was uh ostracizing people
not killing them forcing them to live
outside of the polus was just we we
think why is ostra being ostracized so
bad I'll leave Toronto I'll move to
Savannah who cares no this is horrible
this is a horrifying Prospect okay so
that's the world of Aristotle now you're
in the world after Alexander you might
you have probably moved to this place
there's people around you that also
their ancestors don't come from this
place they speak different language they
worship different deities than you
do different history different tradition
different
Customs when you're in Aristotle's time
you know the people in power you
literally live in the same city as them
you could even be invested and involved
in the government the time after
Alexander the ruler live thousands of
kilometers away from
you everything that gave you a sense of
belonging and being at home is totally
lost and so this is known as an Age of
Anxiety and you see the art and
everything changing and you can see the
rise of a tremendous sense of ill ease
in this period and what happens is a
change in philosophy
the philosopher becomes the physician of
the
psyche and uh
epicurus call no man a philosopher who
has not alleviated the suffering of
others and addressing it's good quote
Yeah addressing this
anxiety right
gets sort of layered on to all the
previous projects of Socrates Plato and
Aristotle and so you get the emergence
of the epicurian and the stoics and the
cynics and the Skeptics doesn't mean
what we mean by skeptic and eventually
the neoplatonists who draw it all
together you get these philosophies that
are attempts to deal with everything we
have been talking about here they are
attempts to amarate that self-deceptive
self-destructive behavior and enhance
that sense of meaning in life that Hance
of enhance that connectedness to reality
to yourself to other people and the
world and they created entire ecologies
of practices communities and Role Models
around that they don't have to convert
everybody they don't you're right they
get about 10% of the population involved
and that actually tips the balance and
moves them
forward what will today's version of
philosophy be will it be philosophy
literally or something
else that that that that question sort
of
PES sort of pushes on personal aspects
of my own life
um there's two senses I I I I use two
different terms and I use the two
different terms not because I'm trying
to be pedantic I use philosophy to mean
what it now currently means by for most
people it means academic philosophy
philosophy that you can go to a
university for and get a degree in I
have a PhD in Philosophy for example I
value all of that I'm not here to like
criticize that but that did not meet the
need I met I was trying to meet when I
first went into philosophy and I met the
figure of Socrates when I read Plato's
Republic I was in a meaning crisis and I
was looking for a way to amarate
foolishness enhance flourishing I was
looking for a role model that I could
internalize I found it in Socrates and I
thought philosophy was going to be that
the original Greek is phos Sophia the
love the and pH phia the the brotherly
love the the the sh shared we share this
love together you and I together in
dialogue dialogos we share together a
love of wisdom that's what it means
that's what I was looking for and I
think people don't need academic
philosophy to deal with what I'm talking
about but we all need to be we all need
to be lovers of wisdom because wisdom is
not optional you you're you're you
either have an implicit pursuit of
wisdom you're trying to deal with
yourself deceptive self-destructive
Behavior you're trying you're trying to
enhance your meaning in life and you're
doing this semi consciously autodidactic
unreflectively that's an implicit
philosophy in the ancient sense or
you're doing it explicitly with other
people reflectively self-c correctively
self-transcending you're making use of
the best that history can offer and
you're creating current and and being
involved in current ecologies of
practices that's another thing that's a
positive SYM of the meeting crisis Tom I
talk to all of these communities that
are springing up around the globe yes I
know there's a lot of stupid cultish
weird things but there's also Bonafide
Healthy Communities where people are
creating ecologies of practices for
doing exactly what we're talking about
here that's happening all around the
globe all over the place and then and
they reach out to me and I get so and I
get to go and participate and spend time
with them and talk to them and see what
they're doing I think that's what's
happening right
now that's very interesting uh we will
see if it plays out as well as I hope it
will in the face of AI I know there's so
many things converging right now um talk
to me about Socrates so through your
eyes for the first time I found him
incredibly interesting uh why did they
kill him I think that's a really good
end for people that don't know what he
was essentially willing to die
for well um Socrates developed a
practice of question and answer that was
designed to get people aware of their
narrative Framing and how it is causing
them to deceive themselves this is what
he meant with this is what he said we he
was on trial for his life the unexamined
life is not worth living he doesn't mean
the minutia of going over your
autobiography he means are you
cultivating rationality and wisdom are
you learning are you developing a
colleges of practices internalizing
developing skills internalizing Role
Models so that you can constantly and
appropriately call into question how you
are construing things how you are
framing things and trying to liberate
yourself as much as possible from how
you are deceiving yourself and
potentially bullshitting other people
that's what he did and so he would go
into situations and he would ask people
probative questions that was designed to
get them to disidentify with their
framing so they could like I did with my
glasses so they could step back and look
at it cuz that's what you have to do you
have to take your glasses off you have
to look at it and see oh you have to be
in that bigger thing that allows you to
see the smaller frame is actually
misleading and he would do this with
people that were making claims to being
wise and he was doing it because well he
was interested in whether or not they
were telling the truth not in just a
propositional way but like where they
actually
enacting the right commitment to get at
the truth of things which means were
they really practicing a way of thinking
and seeing that was dealing with
self-deception in a in an ongoing
systematic and systemic way now can and
as you can imagine think about it today
think about the I'm a Canadian so I get
to say this think about the fra
political Arena right that you have
right now people don't like to
disidentify with their
framing that identification goes a lot
towards their Central ego Narrative of
who and what they are so when he tried
to probe people to take off their
glasses and look at them many PE that's
a state of epistemic vulnerability some
people like Plato his greatest disciple
or zenfon another another important
follower
said I see
and and Socrates famously said wisdom
begins in wonder he doesn't mean Idol
curiosity he means calling yourself and
your world into question in this
probative provocative manner some people
get I see I see other people oh I don't
like that weakness I don't like that
disidentification I don't Lo like losing
that cherished identity you're a threat
that's why they killed
him that's a a mic drop there uh we're
seeing this in politics right now so
this sense of any attack on my politics
is an attack on me yes uh is a wildly
problematic thing in the human
psyche do you think that the way that we
self deceive has evolutionary
advantages uh or is this just a
byproduct of another need say to stay
flexible or to learn from culture maybe
a better way to say
it that's interesting so if you take a
look
at I do a lot of work I'm trying to get
a paper published now I think it's going
to get published because it's in
revision so that that's usually a good
sign it's going to get published on the
connection the Deep with Anna redell the
Deep connections between all this formal
work on relevance realization predictive
processing and rationality so I I do a
lot of work really looking at you know
all the the the the best theoretical
debate the best experimental competition
around this and one thing is becoming
really
clear We Believe for cultural
reasons that we reason that reason is
something we do
monologic that means we do it as a
monologue we do it individually on our
own and also I'm playing on the word
monologic we we use sort of one formal
logic and we talk to it and it's a
monologue and we're using one sort of
system
so take a
standard reasoning task I won't go into
the details the waste and selection task
right um by all sort of you know
objective measures a relatively easy
reasoning task it's kind of like the
thing I did with the lily pad with you
uh a while
ago and you give people this problem
we've been doing this since 1966 and
this suff this is not suffering from the
replication crisis it robustly and these
are the cream of the crop I'm at you
know a top tier University in the world
these are high IQ Highly Educated
socioeconomically stable status all the
sort of variables that are supposed to
predict success you put them in the Wast
and selection task and only 10% of them
get it right reliably right they only
look for confirmation to put it in sort
of a nutshell
right take the same
task replace it with four
people and tell them to work work
together the success rate goes reliably
from 10% to 82%
W this is just read uh Mercer and Spur's
book the Enigma reason read uh the the
diolog roots of deduction by dth NZ
right
like so what's going on here well let's
make it hopefully intuitively accessible
to your
audience okay have you ever noticed
that you're actually really good at
spotting other people's biases and and
misconstrues like you know you're really
good at pointing to your friend hey
you're doing that stupid thing you
always do in your romantic relationships
you're doing it again and they don't see
it you feel so wise right but when it's
you how good are you at finding your own
biases it's really hard it's even
metabolically difficult for you right we
seem to have a olved for this you are my
best vehicle of self-correction and I am
yours and that works only if we're in
dialogue let's go back to the the
experiment I talked about it's not the
case this is what's so intriguing
because you can look at the data really
carefully it's not the case that one
person comes up with the answer
individually and convinces the others
the group as a whole comes up with the
answers and this plugs into the fact
that that is our evolutionary superpower
we have have a collective intelligence
in in distributed cognition individually
we are pathetic animals but you get a
bunch of us together and we can
coordinate our Behavior with some pointy
sticks and some dogs and we can kill
everything on the planet right we
evolved for a dialogical
multi-perspectival rationality not a
monological one okay so then what's
going on in politics why do people hate
it so much when you challenge their
beliefs because we have linked that
monological model we got from the
European Enlightenment 17th and 18th
century with a
individualism and a kind of small L
liberalism idea and the autonomy of the
individual and Romanticism reinforced
that with self-expression and
authenticity I'm not saying the there
there aren't positive aspects to this
I'm just trying to answer your question
okay and and so what that means is we we
we progressively have forgotten that the
principle of democra Y is dialogical
rationality remember I talked about how
we do within our minds we do opponent
processing we we we we do this trade-off
relationship uh your attention is doing
it right now you've got two attentional
systems you
have a um you have a default mode
Network that's making you want to mind
wander and introduce variation and you
have a task Focus Network that's killing
off most of the variation and what
you're doing is you're doing this and
it's exactly the same principles as
biolog olcal Evolution variation and
selection variation and selection
variation and selection and you're
constantly right evolving like a
reproductive cycle your attentional fit
that's a point at processing that's
within your attention but with
dialogical
rationality there's supposed to be
opponent processing between you and I
we're supposed to disagree and challenge
each other but we're supposed to have
common Unity Community uh of both
agreeing that we fundamentally need each
other for self-correction
and we commit to the process above and
beyond our position because we have full
acknowledgement and identification with
the fact that rationality is primarily
dialogical but what has happened is we
have forgotten that because of this
cultural history and we have rep
replaced evolving dialogical opponent
processing between people with
adversarial game theoretic Zero Sum
processing in which I can only win by
destroying you I think democracy is no
longer culturally situated in United
States obviously it's still here
politically say more what I mean by that
is if you think the primary way in which
we undertake democracy is through
adversarial processing rather than joint
commitment to a community of opponent
processing and the power of distributed
cognition you have doomed democracy
I will I will defend that defend well
what I mean by that is that you you are
you if you do not have that you are
losing the capacity for rational the
point of democracy like science this is
John Dewey one of your great
philosophers the point about science and
democracy is that there democracy is in
Winston churel said it's like it's it's
the worst system next to all the rest
because in many ways it it it can be
outper form by other systems what it has
is the best capacity for self-correction
like science has the best capacity for
self-correction it is designed to be
rational in the way we have talked about
rationality as systemic self-correction
if you remove the dialogical rationality
and the opponent processing you remove
the rationality that is the guts and the
spirit of
democracy okay so in this moment you're
saying we no longer want our ideas
challenged and because we don't want our
ideas challenged we're not getting
smarter as a group and we now have a
fail state for democracy itself
yes woof how do you think this is going
to play
out the way it's playing out I mean the
way it's playing out is we're we're
seeing we're seeing we're seeing
increasing polar and this is not just
the United States this is happening in
Canada it's happening in Europe we're
seeing we're seeing what I talked about
earlier we're seeing this weird Paradox
of people profoundly cynical and feeling
disenfranchised with the political but
also deeply politicizing everything
everything is polarizing everything is a
culture War everything is invested with
a religious fervor and yet we don't
think that the system that is supposed
to solve these political conflicts is
actually functioning and so we think we
have to somehow capture the system
capture the institutions and destroy the
Oppo the opposite side in order to
somehow achieve our goals this is how
it's playing out if this self-correcting
mechanism is broken is this just a
runaway fly wheel that doesn't stop
until there's enough pain and suffering
in the system that people will change or
is there a lesson in history here about
how we back out of
this the Athenian democracy killed
Socrates and
lost what I was talking about and got
overtaken by the demagogues the
AR artist s of the political Arena and
drove it into extrem extremity and you
have people like elbies and Cleon and
others and they Drive Athens to
self-destruction if we don't step out
and address the meaning crisis and
properly rehome and res situate
democracy yes I think it is
doomed yeah I don't see a way to break
the flywheel that that is the and I'm a
I'm an optimistic guy but I like to be
able to see what the path forward is and
if I can't articulate that and history
tells me that um I know FUSD trap is
specifically about a rising power versus
an established power but I'll use it in
the sense of that Collision that you can
see coming a mile away and you just
can't stop it yeah that's what this
feels like right now like the um I am
trying to get people to believe in this
idea that the center is a destination
that you have to want to end up there
you have to want the friction between
the two sides you have to distrust
yourself you have to want like here's my
thing here here Tom I just want to
reinforce that thank sir I appreciate
that very much if we could get a lot
more people to reinforce that I think
we'd be in a way better situation uh to
me it comes down to don't trust thyself
like you want to know thyself for sure
yes but you want to be highly skeptical
that you will lead everyone to the right
place this is what Socrates said he said
my wisdom consists in that I know that I
do not know he doesn't mean that trivial
sense that we know I don't know anything
about Australian uh you know he doesn't
mean that trivial sense of ignorance he
means that existential lack of
rationality he the self- knowledge he's
talking about is not your autobiography
he's talking about your owner's manual
like the the thing that tells you how
you how you work that's what he's
talking about and we and what he did was
he would burst the bubble of
pretense where people think they know
themselves just because they identify
with certain ideological positions and
propositions when in fact they and I I
I'm willing to point my finger at myself
by the way we are ignorant profoundly of
what is how we are fundamentally driven
and how we are fundamentally self-
deceived we have to do a tremendous
amount of work not just individually but
collectively and not just now but in a
sense traditionally by like you've been
doing with me asking about relevant
historical precedence we have to do this
more
deeply yeah I have a a deep fear that
there's something in the architecture of
the human mind which has made us the
most dominant species the world has ever
seen so this is not me saying I could
have done a better job if only Evolution
had left it to me but uh we for instance
so this the idea of the um the
vulnerability when your frame of
reference gets cracked and how unnerving
that is for a lot of people how when you
attack somebody's belief system it is
like assaulting them
directly humans want to be intoxicated
with certainty one of the first things
you learn as a CEO is you have to do
this really weird thing of okay the
world is presenting us with all these
dots right the economies in this place
uh this is how people think of our
product this is how people think of our
um the area of the market that we're in
all of that stuff and now I'm going to
tell a story about how those dots
connect and I need that story in order
to move forward because I need the you
were talking about bias as a positive
thing I need that bias to know what to
focus on so I know what not to pay
attention to so I can put things
literally in priority order now one
thing when you train entrepreneurs you
realize very quickly people don't
they're terrified to put things in
priority order and what I find is they
won't put things in priority order
because they don't have a strong
narrative about where they're trying to
end up and how they're going to get
there and so you have to work with them
hey decide where you want to get what I
call kyg know your goal yeah you know
your goal now what are the dots we're
going to connect them in a narrative now
you have to go to your team and say hey
everybody I guarantee these are the dots
and I guarantee This Is How They connect
and why we're going to end up where we
want to go you have to intoxicate them
with certainty and they will fallen
behind you and then you can really get
momentum which is a lot of people moving
in the same direction now the catches as
the
CEO while they are running intoxicated
with your certainty you've got to step
back and go I know something is wrong in
my narrative I just don't know what it
is yet yeah and so it is this super
weird thing of like all right everybody
we're marching on that Hill we're going
to go get those guys and this is going
to be the outcome and then you've got to
step aside and be like okay I know
there's a flaw here somewhere and I need
to find it as fast as I can and when you
then step back in and challenge other
people and ask them to challenge your
ideas you start to break some of that
certainty and so it's this really weird
thing that I see exacerbated a
thousandfold in the political Arena
where people need the certainty of their
own side in a moment like this where
we're very much following demagogic
figures and it's like okay they've told
me this is a narrative I know how to
repeat it so I'm going to repeat that
narrative I'm just going to get behind
it I'm going to move as fast as I can in
that direction and when the other side
challenges like there are actual videos
where you can just look how to
counteract XYZ arguments
and so it's like just give me the
talking points bro that's all I need I
don't need to actually understand it I
don't even necessarily need to believe
it's true I just need to know how to
rebut it and it's like whoa yeah so that
worries me because that feels
architectural in the human mind I don't
know that there's a way I don't think
humans on mass will transcend that and
to your earlier point about philosophy
and that it only took like this small
group but you needed that small group to
be to build an alternative Vision that
people could be excited by that's in
alignment with the times CU now here's
my secret secret see I feel like I
should whisper this but I've talked to
my audience about it so much this is all
a debt question and you can just go back
and where are we at in the debt cycle
because when uh people are making more
money over time from their youth until
their old age and when they hand the
Baton to their kids and their kids make
more than they did so they're ahead of
where they were in their 20s and you
have every reason to believe they'll be
ahead of you in their 60s and you are in
your 60s everyone feels great at at the
macro level when that breaks and for us
it's breaking right now for sure uh
Everything feels off but people don't
understand exactly why it feels off
insteps demagogic figure who gives you
just a very clear answer you slot him
behind them they promise everything's
going to feel good again and now you're
where we are I I would say you're in a
position the way you describe the CEO is
sort of the the the the the balancing
act that the religious institutions did
in the past they tried to create the
narrative for civilization to give up
momentum to build Cathedrals that where
one generation would start and three
generations later would see it to give
an example right or to go to other
places like with the the Buddhists who
left India and went to China or
something like that so they're trying to
get that balance and trying to get a
balance between a a Nar it's there's a
bias attached to that it's called
narrative bias if you give people a
narrative they think they know about the
situation more than they do and they
have confidence in it more than they do
it's an actual bias phenomena but it's
empowering like you said it's we have to
always use this word bi in fact in the
literature we talk about heuristics and
bias a heuristic is when it's working
and a bias is when you don't like it
yeah okay that's very well said okay and
so and you always have to use heuristics
because as I was saying earlier you
can't use algorithms because it would
get you into a combinator explosive
search and what what bias what
heuristics do is they they say only look
here that's what a narrative does it
focuses you like you said you get
everybody focused and then you get a
momentum and so they were they were
doing that and then they had to but they
had people behind the scenes they had
they have people like Thomas aquinus or
they have sidharta they have the mystics
so they have they have the they have the
priests if I can I'm speaking very
broadly here so I'm asking for some
charity here right you have the you you
have the priests who are basically like
pushing the narrative and I mean this in
the sense of giving up momentum but
behind it you have the mystics who are
constantly stepping back and yes but
wondering about the whole picture and
you're constantly toggling between the
priests and the mystics within the
religious tradition and what you you can
do is they they were able to manage that
for like extended periods of time um and
you know create and home and tire
colleges practices and and and part of
what I'm saying is
we lost that at the civilizational level
what you had as a CEO with your
particular company that's another way of
talking about the meaning crisis that's
where we're at and the problem we're
making is we think what we need is the
super CEO but no right we need we we
don't just need somebody who's a leader
we need somebody who can do that can
give us the compelling narrative but is
also willing to step back from it and
call it into question and evolve it in a
way that constantly draws us out of our
comfort zone so we're willing to commit
Beyond ourselves to what we want to
exist even if we don't like the
cathedral now is that possible even in
the face of tremendous economic collapse
yes historical example Bronze Age
collapse Mega
civilizations exist Empires Egyptian
Empire prototypical lasting for
literally millennia 3,000 years 4,000
years this is the Bronze Age is Titanic
and it utterly collapses General system
collapse change in Warfare we don't
quite know what happens it is the
biggest collapse in the history of
civilization it's bigger than the
collapse of the Western Roman Empire the
Eastern Roman Empire trade the loss of
trade the loss of literacy the loss of
literal loss of cities much
greater but what happened was there was
a invention of what what it it's like
it's like the asteroid hitting and the
dinosaurs going extinct and all the
mammals now can move out and evolve and
you got all these little these little
Mamon kingdoms doing all these
experimentation and you get all these
new inventions you get the invention of
alphabetic literacy with a standardized
reading you have coinage that teach
people abstract symbolic calculation and
when you write things when with with
alphabetic literacy not like
hieroglyphics way more people can learn
it you go from 2 or 3% up to maybe 20%
of your population can and now think
about how empowered your cognition is by
the ability to do symbolic calculation
and write your thoughts down and share
your your thoughts with your future self
share it with other people you get a
massive empowerment of cognition
critical reflection and you get this
whole new world viiew titanically
different worldview arises the actual
Revolution the whole two worlds
mythology that that has become the
Legacy grammar for us even though that
is now collapsing so do is a Titanic
economic collapse possible you know more
than I do I I I I worry about it but I I
don't have I don't have the expertise to
properly comment on that what I can say
as a cognitive scientist and a historian
is yes but right there we do we have
done this before axio
Revolution after Alexander's Empire
collaps and we did this we were able to
bottom up recreate entire new
philosophical religious narratives and
that had this proper tension I like to
use the Greek word tonos because tension
is negative in English where tonos like
the tonos of a bow the tonos of a liar
right it it has the tonos between that
narrative momentum and that right
mystical reflection and that rational
criticism gets that right ton us we've
done it before we can do it
again and it's absolutely fascinating
John this has been incredible where can
people follow along with you well I
would like it if people bought my book
uh Awakening from the meeting crisis
because a lot of this uh you know Chris
and I have done a lot to um uh really
make a lot of this as accessible as
possible uh there is the video series I
think the book is better because of
Chris's involvement I did the I I I felt
prey to the very mistake I was uh I just
critiqued a few minutes ago um I
presented the series Awakening for the
me chist this is very popular and I'm
not I'm not I'm I don't I don't want
that's fantastic I watched it yeah thank
you thank you but I did it
monologic this book was written
dialogically with if if I aspire to
being Socrates Christopher is Plato he
takes my arguments and he does what
you've been doing here dialogically
opening them up making them more
accessible grounding them back for
people showing them how they can be more
personally transformative giving them
more examples there's more there's much
more rigor in the citations the
references more examples more diagrams
mine Ean help really helped with editing
and correcting and removing a lot of the
little glitches that are in the video
series I would really I I would really
like people to to buy the book actually
I love it man well I cannot recommend it
highly enough and everybody speaking of
things that I recommend highly if you
haven't already be sure to subscribe and
until next time my friends be legendary
take care peace if you like this
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