Kind: captions
Language: en
the universe doesn't care about your
personal narrative you can just have met
the person that is going to be the love
of your life it's the culmination of
your whole project for happiness and you
step into the street and a truck hits
you and you die
that's mortality mortality isn't just
some far-flung event it's that every
moment
we are subject to fate in that way so
you can think of lots of little deaths
you experience whenever
all the projects and the plans you make
come up against the fact that the
Universe can just roll over them
the following is a conversation with
John ravaki a psychologist and cognitive
scientist at the University of Toronto I
highly recommend his lecture series
called Awakening from the meaning crisis
which covers the history and future of
Humanity's search for meaning
this is Alex Friedman podcast to support
it please check out our sponsors in the
description and now dear friends here's
John viveki
you have an excellent 50-part lecture
series online on the meaning crisis and
I think you describe
in the modern times an increase in
depression loneliness cynicism and wait
for it the term used
technically by Harry Frankfurt and
adopted by you so let me ask what is
meaning
what are we looking for
when we uh engage in the search for
meaning so when I'm talking about
meaning I'm talking about what's called
meaning in life not the meaning of life
that's some sort of metaphysical claim
meaning in life are those factors that
make people rate their lives as more
meaningful worth living worth the
suffering that they have to endure
and
you study that what you see is it's a
sense of connectedness
uh connectedness to yourself
to other people to the world and a
particular kind of connectedness you
want to be connected to things that have
a value and an existence independent of
your egocentric
sort of preferences and concerns this is
why for example having a child is
considered very meaningful because
you're connecting to something that's
going to have a life and a value
independent of you
now the question that comes up from me
well there's two questions one is why is
that at risk right now and then secondly
and
I think you have to answer the second
question first which is well yeah but
why is meaning so important why is this
sense of connectedness so important to
human beings why when it is lacking do
they typically fall into depression
potentially mental illness addiction
self-destructive behavior and so the
first answer I give you is well it's
that sense of connectedness and people
often express it metaphorically they
want to be connected to something larger
than themselves they want to matter they
don't mean it literally I mean if I
change you to a mountain you wouldn't
thereby say oh now my life is so
fulfilling right so what they're trying
to convey they're using this metaphor to
try and say they want to be connected
they want to be connected to Something
Real they want to make a difference and
matter to it and one way of asking them
well you know what's meaningful is tell
me what you would like to continue to
exist even if you weren't around anymore
and how are you connected to it and how
do you matter to it
that's one way of trying to get at what
is the source of meaning for you
is
if you were no longer there you would
like it to continue existing
that's not the only
part of the definition probably because
there's probably many things that aren't
uh source of meaning for me that maybe I
find beautiful
that I would like to continue existing
yes if it contributes to your life being
meaningful uh you're connected to it in
some way and it ha and it matters to you
and you matter to it and that you make
some difference to it that's when it
goes from being just sort of true good
and beautiful to being a source of
meaning for you in your life
is the meaning crisis a new thing or has
it always been with us is it part of the
human condition in general that's an
excellent question and part of the
argument I made in Awakening for the
meeting crisis is there's two aspects to
it
one is that there are perennial problems
perennial threats to meaning
and in that sense human beings are are
always vulnerable to despair you know
the Book of Ecclesiastes is it's all
vanity it's all meaningless
but there's also historical forces that
have made those perennial problems
more pertinent more pressing uh more
difficult for people to deal with and so
the meaning crisis is actually the
intersection of perennial problems
finding existing existence absurd
experiencing existential anxiety feeling
alienated and then pressing historical
factors which have to do with the loss
of the resources the tip that human
beings have typically crossed
historically and cross-culturally made
use of in order to address these
perennial problems
is there something potentially deeper
than just
a lack of meaning
uh that speaks to the the fact that
we're vulnerable to despair you know
Ernest Becker talked about the in his
book denial of death about the fear of
death and being an important motivator
in our life as William James said death
is the warm at the core of the human
condition is it possible that this kind
of
search for meaning
is uh
coupled or can be seen from the
perspective of trying to escape the
reality the thought of One's Own
mortality
yeah Becker and the terror management
theory that have come out of it now
there's been some good work
um around sort of providing empirical
support for that claim
um some of the work not so good uh so so
which aspects do you find convincing can
you still man that case and then can you
argue against it so what aspects I find
convincing is that Human Being Human
infinitude Being finite uh being
inherently limited is uh very
problematic for us
[Laughter]
given the extensive use of the word
problematic I like that you use that
word to describe one's own mortality
it's problematic because people sort of
on Twitter use the word problematic when
they disagree with somebody but this to
me seems to be the ultimate problematic
aspect of the human condition is that we
die and it ends I think I'm not just
agreeing with you but I'm trying to I'm
trying to get you to consider that your
mortality is not an event in the future
it's a state you're in right now
that's what I'm trying to get that's
what I'm trying to shift
um so your mortality is just a we talk
about something that causes mortality
fatal
yes but what we what we actually mean is
it's full of fate and I don't mean in
you know in the sense of things are
pre-written what I mean is this sense of
the universe doesn't care about your
personal narrative you can just have met
the person that is going to be the love
of your life it's the culmination of
your whole project for happiness and you
step into the street and a truck hits
you and you die
that's mortality mortality isn't just
some far-flung event it's that every
moment
we are subject to fate in that way so
you can think of lots of little deaths
you experience whenever
all the projects and the plans you make
come up against the fact that the
Universe can just roll over them
the death
is the indifference of nature of the
universe to your to your existence and
so in that sense it is always here with
us yeah but you're vulnerable in so many
ways other than just the ending of your
biological life
um because it's interesting if you rate
what people fear most death is not
number one they often put public
speaking as number one yeah because the
death of status or reputation can also
be a profound loss for for human beings
and drive them into despair
so as the terror management folks would
say as Ernest Becker would say that you
know a self-report on a survey is not an
accurate way to capture what is actually
at the core of the motivation of a human
being sure that we could be terrified of
death and we've from childhood since we
realized
the the absurdity of the fact that the
right ends we've learned to really
try to forget about it try to construct
illusions that um that allow us to
escape momentarily or for prolonged
periods of time the the realization that
we die okay so first I took it seriously
but now I want to say why there's some
empirical work that makes me want to
reconsider it so Terror management
theory is you do things like you give
people a list of words to read and you
and in those words in that in those
lists are words associated with death
cough and funeral and then you see what
happens to people and generally they
start to become more rigid in their
thinking they tend to identify with
their world view they lose cognitive
flexibility
that's if you present it to them in that
third person perspective but if you get
them to go in the first first person
perspective and imagine that they're
dying and that the people that they care
about are there with them
they don't show those responses in fact
they show us an increase in cognitive
flexibility and increase in openness see
so I'm trying to say we might be putting
the cart before the horse it might not
be death per se but the kind of meaning
that is present or absent in depth
there's the crucial thing for us by the
way to push back I don't think he took
it seriously I don't think you'd truly
Steel Man the case because uh you're
saying that death is always present with
us yes but isn't there a case to be made
that it is one of the major motivators
Nietzsche Will To Power Freud wanting to
have sex with your mother uh all the
different explanations of what is truly
motivating us human beings isn't there a
strong case you've made that this death
thing
is a really damn good
um if not anything a tool to motivate
the behavior of humans I'm not saying
that the avoidance of death is not
significant for human beings but I'm
proposing to you that human beings have
a capacity for considering certain
deaths meaningful and certain deaths
meaningless and people and we have lots
of evidence that people are are willing
to sacrifice their biological existence
for a death they consider meaningful are
you personally afraid of your death do
you think about it as a as somebody
who produces a lot of ideas records them
writes them down is a deep thinker
admire thinker and as the years go on
become more and more admired
does does it scare you that the ride
ends
um no I mean you have to talk to me in
all my levels I'm a biological organism
so something's thrown at my head I'll
docked and things like that
but if you're asking me do
I long to live forever no in the
Buddhist tradition there are practices
that are designed to make you aware of
simultaneously the horror of mortality
and the horror of immortality
the thought of living forever
is actually horrific to me
are those the only two options like
um
when you're sitting with a loved one
or watching a movie you just really love
or a book you really love you don't want
it to end
you don't necessarily always flip it to
the other aspect the the complete
opposite of the thought experiment what
happens if the book lasts forever
there's got to be a middle ground like
the snooze button sure you don't want to
sleep forever but maybe press the snooze
button and get an extra 15 minutes
so there's surely some kind of balance
that that fear seems to be
a source of an intense appreciation of
the moment in part
I mean that's what the stoics talked
about sort of the to meditate on wants
mortality sure seems to be a nice
wake-up call to
that life is uh full of moments that are
beautiful and then you don't get an
infinite number of them
right and the stoic response was not the
project of trying to extend the duration
of your life but to deepen those moments
so they become as satisfying as possible
so that when death comes it does not
strike you as any kind of Calamity does
that project ring true for your own
personal feelings
I think so do you think about your
mortality I used to I don't so much
anymore
um
part of it as I'm older and your
temporal Horizon flips
somewhere in your 30s or 40s you don't
live from your birth you live towards
your death that's such a beautiful
phrase the temporal Horizon flips that's
so true
that's so true at what point is that
that the the point before which the the
world of opportunity and possibility is
infinite before you yeah it's like Peter
Pan there's all these golden
possibilities and you fly around between
them yes very much and then when it
flips you start to look for a different
model uh well Socratic the stoic model
of Buddhism has also influenced me which
is more about weight
when I look at my desires
I seem to have two meta Desires in
addition to satisfying a particular
desire I want whatever satisfies my
desire to be real
and whatever is satisfying my desire to
not cause internal conflict but bring
something like peace of mind and so I'm
more and more move towards how can I
live such that those two meta desires
are a constant frame within which I'm
trying to satisfy my specific desires
what do you think happens after we die I
think mind and life go away completely
when we die and
I think that's actually
significantly important for the kind of
beings that we are
um we are the kinds of beings that can
come to that awareness and then we have
a responsibility
to decide how we're going to comport
ourselves towards it
on what that means the Mind goes away
like when
you're playing music and the last
instrument is put down the song is over
doesn't mean the song wasn't beautiful
doesn't mean the song wasn't complex
doesn't mean the song like didn't add to
the value of the universe in its
existence but it came to an end is there
some aspect in which some part of Mind
was there before the human
and remains after something like pan
psychism or is it too much for us
limited cognitive beings to understand
something like parent psychism I take it
seriously I don't think it's a
ridiculous proposal but I think it has
insoluble problems that make me doubt it
um
any idea that the mind is some kind of
ultimately immaterial substance also has
for me just
devastating problems those are the two
kinds of framework that people usually
propose
in order to support some kind of idea of
immortality I find both very problematic
the fact that we participate in
distributed cognition that most of our
problem solving is not done as
individuals but in groups this is
something I work on I've published on
that I think that's important
but most of the people who do work on
systems of distributed cognition think
that while there's such a thing as
collective intelligence
there's no good evidence that there's
Collective Consciousness in fact it's
often called Zombie Agency for that
reason
um and so while I think it's very clear
that no one person runs an airline
and there's a collective intelligence
that solves that problem I do not think
that collective intelligence supports
any kind of consciousness
and so therefore I don't think the fact
that I participate which I regularly and
reliably do in distributed cognition
gives me any reason to believe that that
participation grounds some kind of
consciousness
okay there's so many things to mention
there first of all distributed cognition
maybe that's a synonym for collective
intelligence so that means a bunch of
humans
individually are able to think have
cognitive machines
and uh are somehow able to interact the
process of dialogue as you talk about to
um morph different ideas together like
this ideal landscape together
is so interesting to think about okay
well you do have these fascinating
distributed cognition systems
but Consciousness does not
propagate in the same way as
intelligence yeah but
isn't there a case if we just look at
intelligence if we look at us humans as
a collection of smaller organisms yes
which we are and and so there's like a
hierarchy
um of organisms tiny ones work together
to form
tiny Villages that you can then start to
see as individual organisms that are
then also forming bigger Villages and
interacting different ways and function
becomes more and more complex and
eventually we get to us humans to where
we start to think well we're an
individual but really we're not there's
billions of organisms inside us are both
domestic and foreign
so uh isn't that building up
consciousnesses like turtles all the way
up to us our Consciousness why does it
have to stop us humans are we the only
like is this the face transition when it
becomes a zombie-like giant hierarchical
village that first like ah there's like
a singing Angels and it's Consciousness
is born in just us humans
do bacteria have Consciousness uh not
bacteria but maybe you could say
bacteria does but like the interesting
complicated organisms that are within us
have Consciousness I think it's proper
to argue and I have that like a
paramecium or bacteria has a kind of
agency and even a kind of intelligence
uh kind of sense making ability but I do
not think that we can attribute
Consciousness at least what we mean by
Consciousness this kind of
self-awareness this ability to
introspect
etc etc
to bacteria now the reason why
distributed cognition doesn't have
Consciousness I think it's a little bit
more tricky
um and I think there's no reason in
principle why there couldn't be a
Consciousness for distributed cognition
collective intelligence
in fact many you know philosophers would
agree with me on that point I think it's
more an issue of certain empirical facts
bandwidth uh density of connection speed
of information transfer Etc
it's conceivable that if we got some
horrible frankenstinian neural link and
we link to our brains and we had the
right density and Dynamics and bandwidth
and speed that a group Consciousness
could take shape I don't have any
argument in principle against that I'm
just saying those those contingent facts
do not yet exist and therefore it is
implausible that Consciousness exists at
the level of collective intelligence so
you talk about Consciousness quite a bit
so let's step back and try to sneak up
to a definition
what is consciousness for me there are
two aspects to answering that question
one is what's the nature of
Consciousness how does something like
consciousness easiest in an otherwise
apparently non-conscious universe and
then there's a function question which
is equally important which is what does
Consciousness do
the first one is obviously you know
problematic for most people like yeah
Consciousness seems to be so different
from the rest of the non-conscious
universe but I put it to you that the
function question is also very hard
because you are clearly capable
a very sophisticated
intelligent Behavior without
Consciousness you are turning the noises
coming out of my face hole into ideas in
your mind and you have no conscious
awareness of how that process is
occurring
so why do we have Consciousness at all
now here's the thing there's an extra
question you need to ask should we
answer attempt to answer those questions
separately or should we attempt to
answer them in an integrated fashion
I make the case that you actually have
to answer them in an integrated fashion
what Consciousness does
and what it is
we should be able to give it a unified
answer to both of those can you
try to elucidate the difference between
what Consciousness is and what it does
both of which are Mysteries as you say
State versus action
can you try to explain the difference
that's interesting that that's useful
that's important to understand so that's
putting me in a bit of a difficult
position because I actually argue that
trying to answer them separately is
ultimately incoherent
but what I can point to are many
published articles in which only one of
these problems is addressed and the
other is left unaddressed so people will
try and explain what qualia are how they
potentially emerge without saying what
do they do what problems do they helped
to solve how do they make the organism
more adaptive and then you'll have other
people who say oh no this is what the
function of Consciousness is but I don't
know I can't tell you I can't solve the
hard problem I don't know how qualia
exists so what I'm saying is many people
treat these problems separately although
I think that's ultimately an incoherent
way to approach the problem
so the hard problem is focusing on the
what it is yes so the qualia that the it
feels like something to experience a
thing that's what Consciousness is and
does is more about the functional
usefulness of the thing yes yes to to
the whole beautiful mix of cognition and
just function in everyday life okay
uh you've also said that you can do very
intelligent things
without Consciousness yes
clearly is that obvious to you yes
I don't know what I'm doing to access my
memory
it just comes up
and it comes up really intelligently
but the mechanisms that create
Consciousness could be deeply
interlinked with whatever is doing the
memory access that's doing the oh I
think so in cognition yes yes so I guess
what I'm trying to say in this will uh
probably sneak up to this question a few
times which is whether we can build
machines that are conscious uh
or machines that are intelligent human
level intelligence or Beyond without
building the Consciousness I mean
ultimately that's one of the ways to
understand what Consciousness is is to
is to build the thing we can we can
either sort of from the Chomsky way try
to construct models like he thinks about
language in this way try to construct
models and theories of how the thing
works or we can just build the damn
thing exactly and that's a
methodological principle
in cognitive science in fact one of the
things that uh sort of distinguishes
cognitive science from other disciplines
dealing with the nature of cognition in
the mind is that cognitive science takes
the design stance it asks well could we
build a machine that would not only
simulate it but serve as a bona fide
explanation of the phenomena
do you find any efforts in cognitive
science compelling in this direction
in terms of how far we are there's
there's uh on the computational side of
things
something called cognitive modeling
there's all these kinds of packages that
you can construct simplified models of
how the brain does things and see if
complex behaviors emerge uh do you find
any efforts in cognitive or what efforts
in cognitive science do you find most uh
inspiring and productive I think the
project of trying to create AGI
artificial general intelligence is where
I place My Hope of artificial
intelligence being of scientific
significance this is independent of
technological socioeconomic significance
which is already well well established
but
being able to say because of the work in
AI we now have a good theory of
cognition intelligence perhaps
Consciousness I think that's where I
place my bets is in the current
Endeavors around
artificial general intelligence and so
tackling that problem head on which is
now
become Central at least to a group of
cognitive scientists is I think what
needs to be done
and when you think about AGI do you
think about systems that have
consciousness
let's go back to what I think is at the
core of your general intelligence
so right now compared to even our best
machines you are a general Problem
Solver you can solve a wide variety of
problems in a wide variety of domains
and some of our best machines have a
little bit of transfer they can learn
this game and play a few other
well-designed rule-bound games but they
couldn't learn how to swim writer
Etc things like that
and so what's interesting is
what seems to come up this is some of my
published work and all these different
domains of cognition
across all these different problem types
is a central problem
and since we do have good sort of
psychometric evidence that we do have
some general ability that's a
significant component of our
intelligence
I made an argument as to what I think
that General ability is
and so
it's happening right now
the amount of information in this room
that you could actually pay attention to
is combinatory explosive
the amount of information you have in
your memory long-term memory and all the
ways you could combine it
combinatorial explosive
the number of possibilities you can
consider also combinatory explosive the
sequences of behavior you can generate
also combinatorial explosive and yet
somehow
you're zeroing in the right memories are
coming up the right possibilities are
opening up the right sequences of
behavior you're paying attention to the
right thing not infallibly so
but so much so that you reliably find
obvious what you should interact with in
order to solve the problem at hand
that's an ability that is still not
well understood within AGI
so filtering out the gigantic waterfall
of data right it's almost like a Zen
Cohen what makes you intelligent
is your ability to ignore so much
information and do it in such a way that
is somewhere between arbitrary guessing
and algorithmic search
and to a fault sometimes of course that
you based on the models you construct
you forget
you uh ignore things that you should
probably not ignore and that hopefully
we can Circle back to it Lux is related
to the meaning issue because the very
processes that make us adaptively
intelligent make us perennially
susceptible to self-deceptive
self-destructive Behavior because of the
way we Mis frame the environment in
fundamental ways
so to you
meaning is also
connected to ideas of wisdom and truth
and how we interpret and understand and
interact intellectually with the
environment yes so what is wisdom why do
we long for it how do we and where do we
find it what is it intelligence is what
you use to solve your problems because I
was just describing
rationality is how you use your
intelligence to overcome the problems of
self-deception that emerge when you're
trying to solve your problems so it's
that matter problem
and then the issue is do you have just
one kind of knowing I think you have
multiple ways of knowing and therefore
you have multiple rationalities
and so wisdom is to coordinate those
rationalities so that they are optimally
constraining and affording each other
so in that way wisdom is rationally
self-transcending rationality
right so life
is the kind of process where you jump
from rationality to rationality and uh
pick up a village of rationalities along
the way that then turns into wisdom yes
if properly coordinated you mentioned
framing yes so
what is framing is it a set of
assumptions you bring to the table in
how you see the world how you reason
about the world yeah how how you
understand the world so it depends what
you mean by assumptions if it by
assumption you mean a proposition
representational or rule I think that's
much more Downstream from relevance
realization I think relevance
realization refers to
um
again constraints on how you are paying
attention and so
for me talking about framing is talking
about
this process you're doing right now of
salience landscaping
what's Salient to you
and how is what Salient constantly
shifting in a sort of a dynamic tapestry
and how are you
shaping yourself
to the way that salience Landscaping is
aspectualizing the world shaping it into
aspects for interaction for me that is a
much more primordial process than any
sort of a beliefs we have and here's why
if we mean by beliefs you know a
representational proposition
then we're in this very problematic
position
because then we're trying to say that
propositions are ultimately responsible
for How We Do relevance realization
and that's problematic because
representations presuppose relevance
realization
so I represent this as a cup
the number of properties it actually has
and that I even have epistemic access to
is combinatory explosive I select from
those a subset
and how they are relevant to each other
insofar as they are relevant for me this
doesn't have to be a cup it could be
using it as a hat I could use it to
stand for the letter v
all kinds of different things I could
say this was the 10th billion object
made in North America
right representations presuppose
relevance realization they are right
they are therefore dependent on it which
means relevance realization isn't bound
to our representational structures it
can be influenced by them but they are
ultimately dependent on relevance
realization let's define stuff relevance
realization yes what are the inputs and
the outputs of this thing what is it
what are we talking about
what we're talking about is how you are
doing something very analogous to
evolution
so if you think about that adaptivity
isn't in the organism or in the
environment but in a dynamical relation
and then what does evolution do it
creates variation and then it puts
selective pressure and what that does is
that changes the niche constructions
that are available to a species it
changes the morphology
you also have a loop it's your sensory
motor Loop and what's constantly
happening is there are processes within
you that are opening up variation and
also processes that are putting
selection on it and you're constantly
evolving that sensory motor Loop so your
you might call your cognitive fittedness
which is how you're framing the world is
constantly evolving and changing I can
give you two clear examples of that one
right the autonomic nervous system
parasympathetic and sympathetic the
sympathetic system is biased to trying
to interpret as much of reality as
threat or opportunity the
parasympathetic is right is biased to
trying to interpret as much of the
environment as safe and relaxing and
they are constantly doing opponent
processing there's no little man in you
calculating your level of arousal
there's this Dynamic coupling opponent
processing between them that is
constantly evolving your arousal
similarly your attention you have the
default mode Network task Network the
default mode network is putting pressure
on you right now to mind wander to go
off to drift right and then the task
Focus network is selecting out of those
possibilities the ones that will survive
and go into and so you're constantly
evolving your attention Okay so there's
a natural selection of ideas that a
bunch of systems within you are
generating and then you use the natural
selection what is the selector the the
object that you're interacting with the
glass relevance realization once again
you just describe how it happens yes you
didn't describe what the hell it is so
what's the goal what are we talking
about so relevance realization is how
you interact with things in the world to
make sense of you just make sense of why
they matter what they mean to you to
your life yes and notice the language
you just use you're starting to use the
meaning in life language right they're
bad that's good okay that's good so what
that what what does that evolution of
your sensory motor Loop do it it
gives you and here I'll use the term for
Marlo Ponte it gives you an optimal grip
on the world
so let's use your visual attention again
okay here's an object
how close should I be to it
is there a right what you want to do
with it exactly exactly
so you have to evolve your sensory motor
Loop in order to get the optimal grip
that actually creates the affordance of
you getting to a goal that you're trying
to get to yeah but you're describing
physical goals
of manipulating objects but is so this
applies
the task the process of relevance
realization is not just about getting a
glass of water and taking a drink no
it's about
Falling in Love yeah of course what else
is there well there's uh there's there's
obviously between those two options I
can show you how you're optimally
gripping in an abstract cognitive domain
okay so a mammal goes by and most people
will say there's a dog
now why don't they say they might but
typically you know probabilistically
they'll say there's a dog they could say
there's a German Shepherd there's a
mammal there's a living organism there's
a police dog why that why there why do
they stop Eleanor Rush called these
basic level well what you find is that's
an optimal grip because it's it's
getting you the best overall balance
between similarity within your category
and difference between the other
categories it's allowing you to properly
fit to that object insofar as you're
setting yourself up to well I'm getting
so as many of the similarities and
differences I can on balance because
they're in a trade-off relationship that
I need in order to probably interact
with this mammal
that's optimal grip not right it's at
the level of your categorization
you evolve these
models of the world around you
and on top of them you do stuff like you
build representations like you said yes
what's the salience landscape salience
meaning attention landscape
so salience is what grabs your attention
or what results from you directing your
attention so I slap my hands that
Salient it grabs your attention your
attention is drawn to it that's bottom
up but I can also say you left big toe
and now it's Salient to you because you
directed your attention towards it
that's top down and again opponent
processing going on there so whatever
stands out to you what grabs your
attention what arouses you what triggers
at least momentarily some affect towards
it that's how things are salient what
salience I would argue is is how a lot
of unconscious relevance realization
makes information relevant to
working memory
that's when it now becomes online for
direct sensory motor interaction with
the world so you think the salience
landscape
the ocean of salience extends into the
subconscious mind
I think relevance does but I think when
relevance is recursively processed
relevance realization such that it
passes through sort of this higher
filter
of working memory and has these
properties of being globally accessible
and globally broadcast then it becomes
the thing we call salience look that's
that's that's really good evidence
there's really good evidence from my
colleague at UFT University of Toronto
Lynn hasher that that's what working
memory is it's a higher order relevance
filter that's why things like chunking
will get way more information through
working memory because it's basically
making it's basically monitoring how
much relevance realization has gone into
this information usually you have to do
an additional kind of recursive
processing and that tells you by the way
when do you need Consciousness when do
you need that working memory and that
salience Landscaping it's when you're
facing situations that are highly novel
highly complex and very ill-defined that
require you to engage working memory
okay got it so relevance realization is
in part the thing that constructs that
basic level thing of a dog when you see
it when you see a dog you call it a dog
not a German Shepherd not a mammal not a
biological meat bag it's a dog
wisdom
yes so what is wisdom
if we return I I think as part of that
we got to relevance realization
and then wisdom is is a accumulation of
rationalities he described the
rationality as a kind of uh starting
from intelligence much of puzzle solving
and then rationalities like the meta
problem of puzzle solving and then what
wisdom is the Meta Meta problem of
puzzle solving yes in the sense that
um The Meta problem you have when you're
solving your puzzles is that you can
often fall into self-deception you can
misframe self-deception right right so
whereas knowledge overcomes ignorance uh
wisdom is about overcoming foolishness
if what we mean by foolishness is
self-deceptive self-destructive Behavior
which I think is a good definition of
foolishness
and so what you're doing
is you're doing this recursive relevance
realization you're using your
intelligence to improve the use of your
intelligence and then you're using your
rationality to improve the use of your
rationality that's that recursive
relevance realization I was talking
about a few minutes ago think about a
wise person
they come into highly
often messy ill-defined complex
situations usually where there's some
significant novelty and what can they do
they can zero in on what really matters
what's relevant and then they can shape
themselves salience Landscaping to
intervene most appropriately to that
situation as they have framed it that's
what we mean by a wise person and that's
how it follows out of the model I've
been presenting to you so when you see
self-deception I mean part of that
implies that it's intentional
part of the mechanism of cognition
you're the modifying what you should
know for some purpose is that is that
how you see the word self-deception no
because I belong to a group of people
that think the model of self-deception
as lying to oneself ultimately makes no
sense yeah because in order to lie to
you I have to know something you don't
and I have to depend on your commitment
to the truth in order to modify your
behavior
I don't think that's what we do to
ourselves I think and I'm going to use
it in the technical term and thank you
for making space for that earlier on I
think we can ourselves which is
a very different thing than lying
ah so what is and how do we
ourselves technically speaking
Yeah Frankfurt and this is inspired by
Frankfurt and other people's work uh
based on frankford's work on
yeah classic essay
it's a pretty good title I think it's
one of the best things he wrote he wrote
a lot of good things the title or the
essay the essay okay
title's good too it's always an
icebreaker in certain academic settings
um
so let's contrast the artist
from the liar the liar depends on your
commitment to the truth
the artist is actually trying
to make you in-depth indifferent to the
question of Truth and modify your
behavior
by making things Salient to you so that
they are catchy to you
so
you know a prototypical example of
is a commercial a television
commercial
you watch these people
at a bar getting some particular kind of
alcohol and they're gorgeous and they're
laughing and they're smiling and they're
clear-eyed
you know that's not true
and they know you know it's not true but
here's the point
you don't care
because there's gorgeous people smiling
and they're happy and that's Salient to
you and that catches your attention and
so all you know go into a bar you know
that won't happen when you drink this
alcohol you know it yeah but you buy the
product because it was made Salient to
you
now you can't lie to yourself Lex
salients can catch attention but
attention can drive salience so this is
what I can do I can make something
Salient by paying attention to it and
then that will tend to draw me back to
it again which and you see what happens
which means it tends to catch my
attention more so that when I go into
the store that bottle of liquor catches
my attention
and I buy it you and that's
why is that because what you're
doing is being caught up in the salience
of things
independent from whether or not that
salience is tracking reality
is it independent or is it Loosely
connected because it's not so obvious to
me when I see happy people at a bar
that I don't in part believe that
well my experience has been maybe
different logically I can understand but
maybe there's a bar out there
well it's all happy people dancing in
fact most of the bars I go to these days
in Texas is pretty lots of happy people
I think you could I mean there's
probably variation although I think it's
very the true seeking in there but let's
say the intent is at least to try and
shut off your truth seeking it might not
completely succeed but that's the intent
at times it can completely succeed
because I can give you
pretty much gibberish
and never let it motivate your behavior
there's a there's a Sim there's a
episode from the classic Simpsons not
the modern Simpsons the classic symptoms
where the there's the aliens and they're
running for office in the United States
now I'm a Canadian so this doesn't quite
work for me but right and and this
speech goes like this my fellow
Americans when I was young I dreamed of
being a baseball but we must move
forward not backward upward not forward
twirling twirling towards Freedom yeah
and people go there's a rush yeah
nothing there's nothing there and yet
it's great satire because a lot of
political speech is exactly like that
there's nothing there right well so I'm
not saying all political speech I said a
lot no but there there's a fundamental
difference between and so hilarious I
remember that episode uh there's a
fundamental difference between that
absurd sort of non-secura speech and
political speech because one of the
things is political speech is grounded
in some sense of Truth and so if that
requires you talking about alternative
facts
and weird
self-destructive oxymoronic phrases
isn't that approaching pull pure
no I think I think pure uh
like the vacuum is uh is very difficult
to uh to get to but I get the point so
what exactly is
truth
is it possible to know I think Spinoza
is right about truth that truth is only
known by its own standard which sounds
circular there's a way in which he
didn't mean that circularly and I think
this is also conversions with Plato
these are two huge influences on me
I think we only know the truth
retrospectively when we when we go
through some process of
self-transcendence when we move from a
frame
to a more encompassing frame so that we
can see the limitations and the
distortions of the earlier frame you
have this when you have a moment of
insight Insight is you doing you're you
are re-realizing what is relevant
you're going oh oh
I thought she was aggressive
and angry she's actually really afraid
I was misframing this
right and you CH you change what you
find relevant you have those aha moments
so do you think it's possible
to get a a sense of objective
reality
so
is it possible to have to get to the
ground level of what something that you
can call objective truth
or is it are we always on Shaky Ground
I think those moments of transcendence
can never get us to an absolute view
from nowhere
all right and so this is Drew Hyland's
notion of finite Transcendence we are
capable of self-transcendence and
therefore we are creatures who can
actually raise the question of Truth or
goodness or beauty because I think
they're they all share this feature
but that doesn't mean we can transcend
to a godhood to some absolute view from
nowhere that takes in all information
and organizes it in a comprehensive
whole but that doesn't mean that truth
is thereby rendered valueless
um
I I I think a better term is real
and real and illusory are comparative
terms you only know that something's an
illusion
by taking something else to be real
and so we're always in a comparative
task but that doesn't mean that we could
we can somehow jump outside of our
framing in some final Manner and say
this is how it is from a God's eye point
of view so what do you think if I may
ask
uh of somebody like iron Rand and her
philosophy of objectivism
so what are the core principles that
reality exists independently of
Consciousness and that human beings have
direct contact with reality through
sense perception so they have that you
do have that ability to know reality
there's two things knowing that there's
an independent reality is not knowing in
that independent reality those are not
the same thing yeah but I think
objectivism would probably
say that our human reason is able to
have contact with that then I would
respond and say
you have to I believe in fact ultimately
in a Conformity theory of knowing that
what that the deepest kind of knowing is
when
there's a a contact a Conformity between
the mind with the embodied mind and
reality but and here's where I guess I
push back on on Rand I would say you
have to acknowledge personal knowledge
as real knowledge because if you don't
you're going to fall preyed amino's
paradox
amino's Paradox is you know it's in
Plato right
to no P well
if I don't know P I'm going to go
looking for it but if I don't know P how
could I possibly recognize it when I
found it
I have no way of recognize it I know I
have no way of knowing that I've found
it
so I must know P but if I know P then I
don't need to learn about it I don't
need to go searching
so learning doesn't exist knowledge is
impossible
the way you break out of that Paradox is
saying no no no it is partial it is
possible to partially know something I
can know it enough that it will guide me
to recognizing it but that's not the
same as having a complete grasp of it
because I still have to search and find
what I don't yet possess in my knowledge
if we so yeah partial knowledge has to
be real knowledge right personal
knowledge is still knowledge yes
what do you think about somebody like
Donald Hoffman who thinks the reality is
an illusion so complete illusion that
we're given this uh actually really nice
definition or idea that you talked about
that there's a tension between the the
illusory and the and what is real
he says that basically we taken that and
we ran with the reel to the point where
the Reel is not at all connected to some
kind of physical reality
well I hope to talk to him at some point
we were supposed to talk at one point
and so I have to talk in his absence
um I I think that first of all I think
saying that everything in his illusion
is like saying everything is tall it
doesn't make any sense it's a
comparative term
um something you have you you you have
to say against this standard of realness
this is an illusion
and
he uses arguments like from Evolution
which are problematic to me because it's
like well
you seem to be saying that evolution is
true that it really exists and
then
some of our cognition and a perception
has access to reality math and
presumably some science has access to
reality and then what he seems to be
saying is well
a lot of your everyday experience is
illusory but that we do have some
contact with reality whereby we can make
the arguments as to why most of your
experience most of your everyday
experience is an illusion but to me
that's not a novel thing that's that's
that's Descartes that's the idea that
most of our sense experience is
untrustworthy but the math is what
connects us to reality that's how he
interpreted the copernican revolution oh
look we're all seeing the sun rise and
move over and set and it's all an
illusion but the math the math gets us
to the reality well I think he he makes
a deeper point that most of cognition is
just is evolved and operates in the
illusory world how does he know that
things like cognition and evolution
exist
I think there's an important distinction
between evolution and cognition right no
no I'm just saying that's not the point
I'm making I'm making a point that he's
claiming that there are two things that
really exist
why are they privileged
he basically says that look the process
of evolution makes sense yes right like
it makes sense that you get complex
organisms from simple organisms through
the natural selection process here's how
you get to transfer information from
generation to generation it makes sense
and then he says that there's no
requirement for the cognition to evolve
in a way that it would actually perceive
and have direct contact with the
physical reality accept that cognition
evolved in such a way that it could
perceive the truth of evolution and you
can't treat Evolution like an isolated
thing Evolution depends on darwinian
Theory genetics it depends on
understanding plate tectonics the way
the environment changes it depends on
how chromosomes are structured actually
that's an interesting question to him
where I don't know if he actually would
push back on this is how do you know
evolution is real yes
foreign
I think he would be open to the idea
that it is part of the illusion we
constructed that there's some it's it's
it's it's in some sense it is connected
to reality but we don't have a clear
picture of it I mean you that's a that's
an intellectually honest statement then
if most of our cognition yeah as
thinking beings is operating at every
level in an illusory world
then it makes sense that this other one
of the main theories of science that's
evolution
is is also a complete part of this
illusory world right but then what
happens to the premise for his argument
leading to the conclusion that cognition
is illusory I I think it makes a very
specific argument about Evolution as an
explanation of why the world is of of
our cognition operating in the loser
world but that that's just one of the
explanations I I think the deeper
question is
why do we think we have contact with
reality with physical reality it's it we
could be very well living in a virtual
world
constructed by our by our minds in a way
that makes that world
deeply interesting in some ways whether
it's somebody playing a video game or
we're trying to through the process of
distributed cognition construct more and
more complex objects like why do we have
to why why does it have to be connected
to
like physics and planets and all that
kind of stuff okay so if we're going to
say like we're now considering it as a
possibility rather than it's a
conclusion based on arguments because
the arguments again will always rely on
stipulating that there is something that
is known these are the features of
cognition cognition is capable of
Illusion that's a true statement you're
somehow in contact with the Mind why is
the mind have this privileged contact
and other aspects like my body do not so
that's but let's put that aside and now
let's just consider it now when it when
we put it that way it's not an epistemic
question anymore it's an existential
question and here's my reply to you
there's two possibilities either the
illusion is one that I cannot discover
sort of you know the The Matrix on
steroids or something there's no way no
matter what I do I can't find out that
it's an illusion
or
it's an illusion but I can find out that
it's an illusion
those are the two possibilities nothing
changes for me if those are the two
possibilities because if I could not
find possibly find out
it is irrational for me to pay any
attention to that possibility
so I could she I should keep doing the
science as I'm doing it if
there's a way of finding out
science is my best bet I believe for
finding out if it's a what's true and
what's an illusion so I keep doing what
I'm doing so it's an argument if you
move it to that that makes no
existential difference to me
oh man that is such an a deeply
philosophical argument no no no no no no
no uh
nobody's saying science doesn't work
it's an interesting question just like
before humans were able to fly they
would ask a question can we build a
machine that makes us fly in that same
way we're asking a question to which we
don't know an answer but we may know in
the future
how much of this whole thing is an
illusion
and I think in a second category the
first guy I forgot which one yes science
will be able to help us discover this
otherwise yes for sure it doesn't matter
if we're living in a simulation we can't
find out at all yes then it doesn't
matter but yes the whole point is as we
get deeper and deeper understanding
of our mind of cognition
we might be able to discover like how
much of this is a big charade
constructed by our mind to keep us fed
or something like that I don't some some
weird uh some weird very simplistic
explanation that it will ultimately in
its Simplicity be beautiful
or as we try to build robots and instill
them instill them with Consciousness
with ability to feel
those kinds of things we'll we'll
discover well we let's just trick them
into thinking they feel and have
Consciousness and they'll believe it and
then they'll have a deeply fulfilling
and meaningful lives and on top of that
they will interact with us in a way that
will make our lives more meaningful and
then all of a sudden it's like at the
end of Animal Farm you look at pigs and
humans and you look at robots and humans
you can't tell the difference between
either and we in that Way start to
understand that
um that much of this existence could be
an illusion
okay well I have two responses to that
uh first is uh the progress that's being
made on
like AGI
is about making
whatever the system is that's going to
be the source of intelligent more and
more dynamically and recursively
self-correcting
that's part of what's Happening
extrapolating from that you get a system
that gets better and better at
self-correcting but that's exactly what
I was describing before as the
transformative theory of Truth
foreign
the other response to that is
science like people think of science
just as right sort of end proposition
but let me just use the evolutionary
example again right have a like I need I
I need if I if I'm gathering the
evidence I need to know a lot of geology
I need to know plate tectonics I need to
know about radioactive decay I need to
know about genetics and then and and
then in order to measure all those
things I need to know how to how
microscopes work I need to know how
pencils and paper work I need to know
how rulers work I need to know how
English like like you can't isolate
knowledge that way and if you say well
most of that's an illusion then you're
in a weird position of saying somehow
all of these Illusions get to this truth
claim
I think it it goes in reverse if you
think this is the truth claim
right the measuring and all the things
that scientists would do to gather on
all the ways the theories are are
converging together that also has to be
fundamentally right because it's not
like Lego it is an interwoven whole yes
it definitely is interwoven but I love
how I played that I'm playing the devil
advocate for for the illusion world but
uh there's a consist I mean there's an
aspect to truth that has to be
consistent deeply consistent across an
entire system but inside a video game
that's some kind of that's some same
kind of consistency evolves there's
rules about interactions then game
theoretic patterns about what's good and
bad and so on you you get and there's
sources of joy and fear and anger and
and then understanding about the world
what happens in the different dynamics
of a video game even simple video games
so there's no you know even in an inside
an illusion
you could have consistency and develop
truths inside that illusion and uh
iteratively evolve your truth with the
illusion okay but that comes back does
that Pro is that process genuinely
self-correcting or are you in the
simulation in which there is no possible
doorway out because if my argument is if
you find one or two doorways that feeds
back in fact you can't just say this is
the little tiny Island where we have the
truth that's the point I'm making right
but what if you find that I I think
there is doorways if that's the case and
what if uh you find a door when you step
out
but you're yet in another simulation I
mean that's the point that's so
self-correcting when you fix the
self-deception
you don't know if there's other bigger
self-deceptions you're operating of
course in in one sense that's right but
again we're back to when I step into the
second simulation is it uh can I get the
doorway out of that or right because if
you just make the infinite regressive
simulations you've basically said I have
a simulation that I can never get out of
yeah I think there's always a bigger
pile of is the the claim I'm
trying to make here okay
foreign
Let Me dance around meaning once more
sure I often ask people on this podcast
or at a bar or to imaginary people I
talk to in a room when I'm all by myself
uh the question of the meaning of life
do you think this is a useful question
you draw a line between meaning in life
yes and meaning of life do you think
this is a useful question no I think
it's like the question what's north of
the North Pole or what time is it on the
sun it sounds like a question but it's
actually not really a question
uh because it has a presupposition in it
that I think is fundamentally flawed
if I understand what people mean by it
and it's actually often not that clear
but when they talk about the meaning of
life they are talking about there are
some feature of the universe in and of
itself that I have to discover and enter
into a relationship with and there's in
that sense a plan for me or something
and so that's a property of the universe
that's a very deep
um serious metaphysical ontological
claims you're claiming to know something
fundamental about the structure of
reality there were times when people
thought they had a world view that
legitimated it like God is running the
universe and therefore and God cares
about you and there's a plan Etc
but I think a better way of
understanding meaning is not
right it's
meaning is like the graspability
remember I talked about optimal grip
it's like the graspability of that cup
is that in me no
is it in the cup no because the fly
can't grasp it right it well
graspability is in my hand well I can't
grasp Africa no no there is a real
relation
fittedness between me and this cup same
thing with the adaptivity of an organism
is the adaptivity of a great white shark
in the great white shark drop it in the
Sahara dies okay
meaning isn't in me
I think that's romantic and it
isn't in the universe it is a proper
relationship I've coined the phrase
transjective it is The Binding
relationship between the subjective and
the objective and therefore when you're
asking
the question about the meaning of life
you are I think
misrepresenting the nature of meaning
just like when you ask what time is it
on the sun you're misrepresenting how we
how we derive clock time
uh at the risk of disagreeing with a man
who did 50 lectures on the meaning
crisis let me uh hard disagree but I
think we probably agree but it's just
like a dance like any dialogue
I think meaning of life
gets at the same kind of relationship
between you and the glass of water
between
whatever the forces of the universe that
created the planets
the proteins
the multi-cell organisms
the intelligent
early humans the beautiful human
civilizations and the technologies that
will overtake them
it's trying to understand
the
foreign
the relevance realization
of the Big Bang
to the feeling of love you have for
another human being
it's reaching for that even though it's
hopeless to understand it's the question
the asking of the question is the
reaching now it is in fact
romantic technically speaking
but
it could be that romantic is
actually the essence
of life
and the source of his deepest meaning
well I hope not uh but uh technically
speaking romantic meaning
romantic in the philosophical sense yes
so I I
mean what is poetry what is music what
is the magic you feel when you hear a
beautiful piece of music what is that oh
but that's exactly to my point is music
inside you or is it outside you
both and neither and that's precisely
why you find it so meaningful in fact it
can be so meaningful you can regard it
as sacred
what you said I don't think and you
preface that we might not be in
disagreement right what you said is no
no no there is there's a way in which
reality is realizing itself
and I want my relevance realization to
be in the
best possible relationship that the sort
of meta optimal grip to what is most
real I totally agree I totally think
that's one of the things I said this
earlier one of our meta desires is
whatever is satisfying our desires is
also real
I do this with my students I'll say
um you know because romantic
relationships are sort of take the role
of God and religion and history and
culture for us right now we we put
everything on them and that's why they
break but right strong words uh got it
but I'll say to them okay how many of
you are in really satisfying romantic
relationships put up your hands and I'll
say okay I'm not only talking to these
people
of those people how many of you would
want to know your partner's cheating on
you even if it means the destruction of
the relationship 95 of them put up their
hands
and I say but why and they and and
here's my students who are usually all
sort of Bitten with cynicism and
post-modernism and they'll just say
spontaneously well because it's not real
because it's not real
right so I think what you're pointing to
is actually
just like you're you're pointing not to
an objective or a subjective thing so
Romanticism says it's subjective there's
some sort of I guess like positivism or
locking empiricism says it's objective
but you're saying no no no there's
reality realization and can I get
relevance realization to be optimally
gripping in the best right relationship
with it and and there's good reason you
can because think about it your
relevance realization isn't just
representing properties of the world
it's instantiating it there's something
very similar to biological evolution
which is that the guts of life if I'm
right running your cognition is not just
that you are have ideas you actually
instantiate that's what I mean by
Conformity the same principles they're
within and without they don't belong to
you subjectively they're not just out
there they're both at the same time and
they help to explain how you are
actually bound to The evolutionary world
yeah so it comes from both inside and
from the outside yeah but there's still
the question of the meaning of life
first of all uh the big benefit of that
question is that it shakes you out of
your hamster in a wheel
that is daily life the mundane process
of daily life where you have a schedule
you wake up you have kids you have to
take them to school then you go to work
and
repeats over and over and over and over
and then you get it increased salary and
then you upgrade the home and that whole
process
uh meaning asking about the meaning of
life
is so so full of romantic
that if you take it if you just allow
yourself to take it seriously for a
second
it forces you to pause and think like
what
what's going on here and then It
ultimately I think does return to the
question of meaning in those mundane
things yes what gives what gives my life
Joy what gives it lasting
um deliciousness where do I notice the
magic and how can I have that magic
return again and again Beauty
and that that ultimately what it returns
to but it's a the same thing you do when
you look up to the sky you spend most of
your day hurrying around looking at
things on the surface but when you look
up the sky and you see the stars
it fills you with the feeling of awe
that forces you to pause and think in
full context of like what the hell is
going on here that but also I think
um there is a
when you think too much about the
meaning of a glass
and uh relevance realization of a glass
you don't necessarily get at the core of
what makes music Beautiful
so sometimes you have to start at the
biggest picture first and I think
meaning of life forces you to really go
to the big bang and go go go to the go
to the universe and the whole thing the
origin of life and I think
um
sometimes you have to start there to
discover the meaning in the day-to-day
I think
but perhaps you would disagree
insofar as the question makes you ask
about
um the the whole of your life and how
much meaning is in the whole of your
life
and insofar as it asks how much that is
connected to reality it's a good
question
but it's a bad question in that it also
makes you look for the answers in the
wrong way now you said and I agree with
what you said what how we really answer
this question is we come back to the
meaning in life and we see how much that
meaning in life is connected to reality
we pursue wisdom
and so for me the ques I don't need that
question in order to provoke me into
that stance
so let's return to the meaning crisis
yes
what is the nature of the meaning crisis
in modern times what's its origin what's
its explanation well remember what I
said what I argued that the very
processes that make us adaptively
intelligent subject us to Perennial
problems of self-deception
self-destruction creating for
ourselves for other people all of that
and that can cause all you know anxiety
existential anxiety it can cause despair
it can cause a sense of absurdity
these are perennial problems
and across cultures and across
historical periods
human beings have come up with ecologies
of practices there's no one practice
there's no Panacea practice they've come
up with ecologies of practices for
ameliorating that self-deception and
enhancing that fittedness that
connectedness that's at the core of
meaning in life
that's
prototypically what we call wisdom
and here's how I can show you one clear
instance of
the meeting crisis
is it's a wisdom famine I I can I I do
this regularly with my students
in the classroom I'll say where do you
go for information they hold up their
phone
where do you go for knowledge they're a
little bit slower and probably because
they're in my class they'll say well
science the University
I'm gonna say where do you go for wisdom
there's a silence
wisdom isn't optional that's why it is
perennial cross-cultural across
historical because of the primary
problems but we do not have
homes for ecologies of practices that
fit into our scientific technological
worldview so that they are considered
legitimate the fastest growing
demographic group are the nuns
n-o-n-e-s's they have no religious
Allegiance but they are not primarily
atheistic they most frequently describe
themselves with this very this is this
has become almost everybody now
described I'm spiritual but not
religious which means they are trying to
find a way of reducing the and
enhancing the connectedness but they
don't want to turn to any of the Legacy
established religions by and large
well isn't both religion and and the
nuns
isn't uh wisdom a process not a
destination so trying to find if you're
deeply faithful a religious person
you're also trying to find right so just
because you have a a place where you've
been you're looking or a set of
traditions around which you're
constructing
the search it's nevertheless a search
and is isn't so I guess
is there a case to be made that this is
just the usual Human Condition uh though
how do you answer if you ask five
centuries ago where do you look for
wisdom I mean I suppose people would be
more inclined to answer while the Bible
or a religious text right and they had a
world view that was considered not just
religious but also rational
so we now have these two things
orthogonal or often oppositional
spirituality and rationality but if you
go before a particular historical period
you look back in the neoplatonic
tradition like before the the Scientific
Revolution those two are not in
opposition they are deeply interwoven
so that you can have a sense of
legitimacy and deep realness and
grounding in your practices
we don't have that anymore and I'm not
advocating for religion neither am I an
enemy of religion I'll strengthen your
case by the way
so one of my Ras did research and you
get people who are have committed
themselves to cultivating wisdom and you
can look at people within religious
traditions and people who are doing it
in a purely secular framework
by many of the measures we use to try to
study wisdom scientifically the people
in the religious paths do better than
the secular but here's the important
Point there's no significant difference
between the religious paths
so it's not like if you're you know
following the path of Judaism you're
more likely to end up wiser than if you
follow Buddhism by the way I don't know
if that's my case I was making the case
that you don't need to have a religious
affiliation to search for wisdom it's
that I thought along to the point you
just made that it doesn't matter which
religious affiliation or none but that's
what I'm saying it okay so this is the
tricky thing we're in yeah it does
matter if you're in one but it doesn't
matter sort of the propositional Creeds
of that there's something else at work
there's a if you'll allow me this
there's a functionality to religion that
we lost when we rejected all the
propositional Dogma but there's a
functionality there that we don't know
how to recreate yeah what is that can
you try to speak to that what is that
functionality what is that why is that
so useful a bunch of stories a bunch of
myths a bunch of narratives I don't
think that are drenched in like deep
lessons about morality and all those
kinds of things what is the what's the
what's the functional thing there that
can't be replaced without a religious
text by a non-religious text this is for
me the golden question so thank you
um do you have an answer yeah I I have I
think I have a significant answer I
don't think it's complete but I think
it's important
and this is to step before
the Cartesian Revolution and
think about many different kinds of
knowing and this is now something that
is prominent within what's called four e
cognitive science the kind of cognitive
science I practice and there's a lot of
converging evidence for okay these
different ways of knowing there's
propositional knowing this is what we
are most familiar with in fact it's
almost it's almost has a tyrannical
status right of course not so this is
knowing that something is the case like
that cats are mammals and it's stored in
semantic memory and we have tests of
coherence and correspondence and
conviction right
there is procedural knowing this is
knowing how to do something
this is
skills are not theories they're not
beliefs they're not true or false they
engage the world or they don't and they
are stored in a different kind of memory
procedural memory
semantic memory can be damaged without
any damage to procedural memory that's
why you know you have the prototypical
story of somebody suffering Alzheimer's
and they're losing all kinds of facts
but they can still sit down and play the
piano flawlessly same kind of argument
there's perspectival knowing this is
knowing what it's like to be you here
now in this situation in this state of
mind the whole field of your salience
Landscaping what it's like to be you
here now
and you have a specific kind of memory
around that episodic memory and you have
a different sense you have a different
Criterion of realness
so you you can you can get this by well
we my friend Dan chappie and I we
studied the the scientists using moving
The Rovers around or you can take a look
at people who are doing VR
people talk about you know
they want they want to really be in the
game that makes it real they don't mean
very similitude you can get that right
sense of being in the game with
something like Tetris which has Isn't
like it doesn't look like the real world
and you can fail to have it in a video
game that is has a lot of very
similitude it's something else it's
about again this this kind of
connectedness that we're talking about
if I may interrupt is that connected to
the hard problem of Consciousness the
subject the qualia or is that a
different that kind of knowing is that
different from the quality of
Consciousness I think it has to do with
well I make a distinction between the
adjectival and the adverbial qualia so I
think it has to do with the adverbial
quality are much more with the than with
the adjectival so the adjectival quality
are like the greenness of green and the
blueness of balloon the adverbial qualia
are
the hereness
the nowness the togetherness yeah
and I think the perspective of knowing
has a lot to do with the adverbial
qualia adjectival qualia and adverbial
quality I'm learning so many new things
today okay so uh that's another way of
knowing right the perspective and then
there's a deeper one
and this is a philosophical Point uh and
I don't wanna we can go through the
argument right but you don't have to
know that you know in order to know
because if you start doing that you get
an infinite regress there have there has
to be kinds of knowing that doesn't mean
you know that you know that
yeah okay of course okay great okay good
well there was a lot of ink spilled over
that over a 40-year period so by
philosophers they spilled this is what
they do There's the link yeah but I want
to talk for ink spillage so I want to
talk about
what I call participatory knowing this
is the idea that you and the world are
co-participating in things and such that
real affordances exist between you so
both me and this environment are shaped
by gravity so the affordance of walking
becomes available to me both me and a
lot of this environment are shaped by my
biology and so affordances for that are
here
look at this cup
shared physics
shared sort of biological factors look
at my hand i'm bipedal yeah also culture
is shaping me and shaping this I had to
learn how to use that and treat it as a
cup so
this is an agent Arena relationship
right there's identities in being
created in your agency identity is being
created in the world as an arena so you
and the world fit together you know when
that's missing when you're really lonely
or you're homesick or you're suffering
culture shock so this this is
participatory knowing and it's the sense
of it comes with a sense of belonging
at every level so the ability to walk is
a kind of nothing yes yes that that
there's a dance between the physics that
enables yes this process and just
participating in the process is the act
of knowing right and there's a really
weird form of memory you have for this
kind of knowing it's called yourself
what can you elaborate well you you so
so we talked about how all the how all
the different other kinds of knowing had
specific kinds of memory semantic memory
for propositional procedural right
episodic for perspectival
what do you what's the kind of memory
that is the coordinated Storehouse of
all of your agent Arena relationships
all the roles you can take all the
identities you can assume all the
identities you can have what what's the
self do you mean like Consciousness or
like senior sense of self sense of self
in this world that's not Consciousness
that's uh like an agency or something
right it's an agent Arena relationship
and so in an agent Arena relationship
it's the sense of the agent
and and and that the agent belongs in
that Arena whatever the agent is
whatever the arena is because there's
probably a bunch of yes different
framings of how you experience that yeah
and you and you do you have all within
your identity as a self you have all
kinds of roles that are somehow
contributing to that identity but are
not equivalent to that identity
yeah
I wonder if like my two hands have
different
because there's a different experience
of me picking up something with my right
hand and then my left hand
so are those like uh
that's a really cool question Lex and
they certainly feel like their own
things
and but that could be just uh
anthropomorphization based on cultural
narratives and so on it could but I
think it's a legitimate empirical
question because it also could be sort
of email Gilchrist stuff it could be
you're using different hemispheres and
they sort of have different agent Arena
relationships to the environment this is
a really important question in the
cognitive science of the self does the
does that hemispheric difference mean
you're multiple or you actually have a
singular self oh so it's important to
understand how many uh cells are there
yes I think so but that's that's just
like a quirk of evolution that's a it's
not it surely can be fundamental to
cognition having multiple cells are a
singular self it depends
um again because uh we're getting far
from the answer to the question you
originally asked me do we you want me to
go back to that first or answer this
which question I already forgot
everything what's the functionality of
religion yes okay okay and then we can
return to the self okay
so you said you know you have all these
propositions and Etc et cetera and they
differ from the religions and they're
not they don't seem to be considered
legitimate by many people
but yet there's something functioning in
the religions that is transforming
people
and making them wiser and I put it to
you
that the Transformations are largely
occurring at those non-propositional
levels
the procedural the perspectival
and the participatory and those are the
ones by the way that are more
fundamentally connected to meaning
making because remember the propositions
are representational and they're
dependent on the non-propositional
non-representational processes of
connectedness and relevance realization
so religion goes down deep to the
non-propositional and works there that's
the functionality we need to grasp well
you talk about tools essentially that
humans are able to incorporate into
their cognition
psychotechnologies like language is one
I suppose uh
isn't religion then a psychotechnology
it would be a yeah an Ecology of
psychotechnologies yes and the question
is
that Nietzsche ruined everything by
saying God is dead
uh do we have to invent the new thing go
go to from the old phone create the
iPhone invent the new Psycho technology
that takes place of religion and so when
the madman in Nietzsche's text goes into
the marketplace who's he talking to he's
not talking to the Believers he's
talking to the atheists and he says do
you not realize what we have done right
we have taken a sponge and wiped away
the sky we are now forever falling we
are Unchained from the sun we have to
become worthy of this yeah what
Nietzsche is full of romantic
as well no no no no but there's a point
there yes the point is right there's one
thing to rejecting the proposition
there's another project of replacing the
functionality that we lost when we
reject the religion so his worry that is
nihilism takes hold you don't ever
replace the thing that religion the the
role the religion played in our maybe
it's hard to tell what he actually
because he's so multivocal
um I I I'll speak for me rather than for
Niche I think it is possible
to using the best cognitive science and
respectfully exacting what we can from
the best religion and philosophical
traditions because there's things like
stoicism that are on the gray line
between philosophy and religion Buddhism
is the same
doing that best cog's eye that best
acceptation we can come up with
that functionality without having to buy
into the particular propositional sets
of the Legacy religions that's my
proposal I call that the religion that's
not a religion so things like stoicism
or modern stoicism those things don't
you think in some sense they naturally
emerge
don't you think there's a longing for
meaning so stoicism arises during the
Hellenistic period when there was a
significant meaning crisis in the
ancient world because of what had
happened after the breakup of Alexander
the Great's Empire so if you if you
compare Aristotle to people who are
living after uh Alexander so Aristotle
grows up in a place where everybody
speaks the same as this language has the
same religion his ancestors have been
there for years he knows everybody after
Alexander the Great's Empire broken is
broken up people are now thousands of
miles away from the government
they're surrounded by people because of
the dysphoras right the diasporas I
should say they're surrounded by people
that don't speak their language don't
share their religion that's why you get
all these mother religions emerging
right Universal mother religions like
Isis Etc so there's a there is what's
called domicide there's the killing of
home there's a loss of a sense of home
and belonging and fittedness during the
Hellenistic period and stoicism arose
specifically to address that and because
it was designed to address a meaning
crisis it is no coincidence that it is
coming back into prominence right now
well there there could be a lot of other
variations
it feels like
I think when you speak of the meaning
crisis you're in part describing not
prescribing you're describing something
that is happening but I would venture to
say that
if we just leave things be
the the meaning crisis dissipates
because we long
to create institutions to create
Collective ideas that is distributed
cognition process that give us meaning
so if religion loses power we'll find
other
institutions that are sources of meaning
I don't is that is that is that your
intuition as well
I think we are already doing that I do
I'm involved with
and do participant observation of many
of these emerging communities that are
creating ecologies of practice that are
specifically about trying to address the
meeting crisis I just in Late July I
went to Washington State and did Rafe
Kelly's evolve move Play Return to the
source and wow one of the most
challenging things I've ever done that
guy is Awesome by the way I've gotten to
interact with them a long long time ago
he said to say hi to you by the way yeah
it's from another world It Feels Like A
Different World
um because I interacted with him not
directly but so he this is somebody
maybe you can speak to what he works on
but he makes movement and play
uh and he encourages people to make that
a part of their life like how how you
move about the world whether that's as
part of sort of athletic Endeavors or
actual just like walking around around a
city yeah
um and I think the reason I ran into him
is because there was a lot of interest
in that in the athletic world and the in
the grappling world and the Brazilian
Jiu Jitsu world people who study
movements who make movement part of
their lives to see how how can we
integrate play and fun and and uh just
the the basic humanness that's natural
to our movement how do we integrate that
into our daily practice so so this is
yet another way to find meaning I think
it's actually an Exemplar of what I was
talking about because what's going on
with race integration of Parkour in
nature right and martial arts
um and mindfulness practices and
dialogical practices is exactly and
explicitly so by by the way he he will
tell you he's been very influenced by my
work he's trying to get at the
non-propositional kinds of knowing that
make meaning by evolving our sensory
motor Loop and enhancing our relevance
realization because that gives people
profound improved sense of connectedness
to themselves to each other and the
world and I'll tell you Lex I won't I
don't want to say the the I don't want
to say too specifically the final thing
that people did because it's part of his
secret sauce right right right but what
I can say is when it was done
I said to them all I said as far as I
can tell none of you are religious right
and they go yeah yeah but what you just
did was a religious act wasn't it and
they all went yeah it was yeah
so that same magic was there yes
bathroom break sure
what's your take on atheism
in general
is uh
a closer to truth than uh
maybe is an atheist closer to truth than
a person who believes in God
so I'm a non-theist which I which means
I think the shared set of
presuppositions between the theist and
the atheist are actually what needs to
be rejected
can you uh explain that further yes
I can and uh and I want to point out by
the way that they're
uh there are lots of non-theistic uh
religious Traditions
um so I'm not I'm not I'm not coming up
with a sort of Airy fairy category yeah
and what's the difference in non-theism
agnosticism and Atheism so non-theists
think that the theist and the atheists
share a bunch of presuppositions for
example it's that sacredness is to be
understood in terms of a personal being
that is in some sense the Supreme Being
and that the right relationship to that
being is to have a correct set of
beliefs
I reject all of those claims so both the
theist and the atheists in their modern
version yes yes in which do you reject
it in the sense that you don't know or
do you reject it in a sense that
you believe that
each one of those presuppositions is
likely to be not true the latter I both
on reflection argument and personal
experimentation and ex and experience
I've come to the conclusion that those
shared propositions are probably not
true which one is the most Troublesome
to you
the personal being the the kind of
accumulation of everything into one
being that ultimately created stuff
so for me there's two and they're
interlocked together I'm not trying to
dodge your question it's that the idea
that
the ground of being is some kind of
being I think is a fundamental mistake
it's void of being no no no like
the ground of being some kind of being
no no turtles all the way down the
grounded being is not itself any kind of
being being is not a being it is the
ability for things to be which is not
the same thing as a being
our Humans Beings we are beings this
glass is a being this table is a being
but when I ask you
how are they all in being you don't say
by being a glass or by being a table or
by being a human you want to say no no
there's something ah Underneath It All
and then you realize it can't be any
thing this is why many mystical
Traditions Converge on the idea that the
ground of being is no thingness
which is you know which you use normally
pronounced as nothingness but if you if
you put the hyphen back in you get the
original intent no thingness
and
that is bound up with okay what I need
to do in order to be in relationship
with so it's a misconstruing of Ultimate
Reality as a Supreme Being
which is a category mistake to my mind
and then that my relationship to it that
sacredness is a function of belief and I
have been presenting you an argument
through most of our discussion that
meaning is at a deeper level than
beliefs and propositions and so that is
a misunderstanding of sacredness because
I take sacredness to be
that which is most meaningful and it
connected to what is most real
and theists think of what uh of
sacredness is what they think of
sacredness as a property of a particular
being
God
and that the way that is Meaningful to
them is by asserting a set of
propositions or beliefs now I want to
point out that this is what I would Now
call Modern or common theism you go back
into
the classical periods of Christianity
you get a view that's really radically
different from how most people
understand theism today okay so let me
uh this is an interesting question that
I usually think about in the form of
mathematics but
so in that case if meaning is sacred in
your non-theist view
is meaning created or is it discovered
so there's a Latin word that doesn't
separate them called inventio
and I would say that and before you say
oh well give me a chance because you
participate in it
you've experienced an Insight yes did
you make it happen
the the Insight did you make it happen
or did what did you do like can you do
that I'm gonna I need an Insight this is
what I do to make an Insight oh I see
yeah in some sense it came from
elsewhere right but you didn't just
passively receive it either you're
engaged and involved in it that's why
you get right so that's what I mean by
you participate in it you participate in
meaning so you do think that is both
yes you do think it's both I mean that's
not a trivial thing
to understand
because a lot of time we think when you
think about a search for meaning
you think it's like you're going through
a big house and you open each door and
look if it's there and so on as if there
is going to be a glowing orb that you
discover yeah
um and but at the same time
I'm somebody that
uh based on the chemistry of my brain
have been extremely fortunate to be able
to discover Beauty in everything uh in
the most mundane and boring of things I
am as David Foster Wallace said
unborable
I could just sit in a room uh just like
playing with the tennis ball or
something and be excited um basically
like a dog I think endlessly
um so to me meaning is
um
created like because I could create
meaning out of everything but of course
it doesn't require a partner
it does require dance Partners whatever
it does require the tennis ball but
honestly that's what you know a lot of
people that I don't necessarily and
we'll talk about about I don't practice
meditation but people who meditate very
seriously like you know the entire days
for months kind of thing they talk about
being able to discover meaning and just
uh the the wind or something like they
they just the the breath and everything
just subtle sensory experiences yes give
you deep fulfillment
um so that's again this interaction
between two actually I do want to say
because the the interesting
uh difference that you've drawn between
non-theism theism and Atheism
where's uh where's the agreement of
disagreement between you and Jordan
Peterson on this I just talked to Jordan
about this
um because you're very clear it's it's
kind of beautiful in the clarity in
which you laid this out
um I wonder if Jordan has arrived at a
similar kind of clarity what have you
have you been able to draw any kind of
lies between the the way the two of you
see religion yeah so there was a video
released I think like two or three weeks
ago with Jordan and myself and Jonathan
Pajero who I haven't watched that one
yet yeah and it's around this question
Lux no he's basically sort of making
um he's putting together an argument for
God I mean I think that's a fair way I
don't think he would object to me saying
that and um and Jonathan Pajero is also
a um
well Jonathan is a Christian it's
unclear what Jordan is
um and Jonathan's work is on symbolism
and different mythologies and
Christianity yes especially neoplatonic
Christianity which is very important
um I have a lot of respect well I have a
lot of respect for both of them I have a
lot of respect for Jonathan but in in I
mean my participation in that dialogue
you can see me
well repeatedly uh but uh but I think
everybody including Jordan thought
constructively challenging sort of the
attempt to build a theistic model and I
was challenging it from a non-theistic
perspective so I think we don't
um agree in on certain sets of
propositions but there was a lot of
there was also a lot of acknowledgment
um and I think genuine appreciation on
his part and Jonathan's a part of the
arguments I was making so they believe
in uh
maybe the presupposition of like a
Supreme Being that not believe but the
the not not believe but they see the
power of that particular priest
opposition in uh uh being a source of
meaning I think that's relatively clear
for me with Jordan Jordan's a really
complex guy so it's very hard to just
like pin to my best sort of
understanding yes I think that's clearly
the case for Jordan it's not the case
for Jonathan Jonathan is remember I said
I was talking about modern atheism and
theism Jonathan is a guy who somehow
went into
icon carving and Maximus the Confessor
and Eastern Orthodoxy and has come out
of it the other end as a 5th Century
Church Father that is nevertheless being
rightfully so found to be increasingly
relevant to many people I think so he's
deeply old school yeah I think he has he
and I especially because neoplatonism is
a non-theistic uh philosophical
spirituality and it's a big part of
Eastern Orthodoxy he and I uh I think he
would say things like God doesn't exist
with what you're a Christian right and
then and he's being a koi but he'll say
well God doesn't exist the way the cup
exists or the table exists the same kind
of move I was making a few minutes ago
he'll say things like that he will
emphasize the no thickness of Ultimate
Reality the no thingness of God because
he's he is he's from that version of
Christianity what you might call
classical theism but classical theism
looks a lot more like non-theism than it
looks like modern theism that's so
interesting
yeah that's really interesting what what
about
um is there a line to be drawn between
myth and religion in terms of its
usefulness in Man's Search for meaning
so here's where Jordan and I are much
more actually all three of us are in
significant agreement
um I said this in my series but I I want
to say it again here myths aren't
stories about things that happened in
the Deep past that are largely
irrelevant myths are stories about
perennial or pertinent patterns that
need to be brought into awareness and
they need to be brought into an
awareness not just
or primarily at the propositional level
but at those non-propositional levels
and I think that is what good Mythos
does I prefer I prefer to use the Greek
word because we've now turned the
English word into a synonym for a widely
uh a widely believed falsehood and I
don't think again if you go back even to
the you know the church fathers I'm not
a Christian I'm not advocating for
Christianity right but right neither am
I here to attack it right but if you
when when they talk about reading these
stories they'll right they think the
literal interpretation is the weakest
and the least important you move to the
allegorical or the symbolic to the moral
to the spiritual the mystical and that's
where right so they would say to you oh
uh you know but how is I how is the
story of Adam and Eve true for you now
and I don't mean true for you in that
relativistic sense I mean how is it
point pointing to a pattern in your life
right now so there's some sense in which
the telling of this Mythos
becomes real
in connecting to the patterns that kind
of captivate the public today sure so
first so you just keep telling the story
I mean there's something about some of
these stories that are just really good
at being sticky to the patterns of of
each generation yes and they they'll
stick to different patterns throughout
time they're just sticky yeah in in
powerful ways yes and so we keep
returning back to them again and again
and again and
it it's important to see that some of
these stories
are recursive they're myths are about
one particular set of patterns the their
myths about right not not not just an
important pattern like you get the you
know Jordan stuff about
there's Heroes and myths are trying to
uh make us understand the the need for
being heroic in our own lives one of the
things I'd like to put in counterbalance
to that is the Greek also have myths of
hubris
right the counterbalance the heroic
right but then there are myths
that
are not about those deeply important
patterns but they're myths about
religio itself that the way we're
religio means to bind to connect the way
relevance realization connects us and so
the point of the myth is not notice that
pattern or notice that pattern or notice
that pattern it's
notice how all of these patterns are
emerging and what does that say about us
and reality and those myths
those myths
um I think are genuinely profound
and how much of the the myths how much
of
the power of those myth is about the
dialogues you talk about this quite a
bit I think in the first conversation
with Jordan you because I'm not sure
you've gotten really into it you you
scratch the surface a little bit but the
role of as you say dialogue in
distributed cognition yes what is that
the thing we're doing right now talking
with our mouth holes what is that and
actually can ask you this question yep
if aliens came to Earth and were
observing humans
would they notice our distributed
cognition first or our individual
cognition first what is the most notable
thing about us humans is it our ability
to individually do well in IQ tests or
whatever yeah uh or puzzle solve or is
it this thing we're doing together
I think most of our problem solving is
done in distributed cognition
look around you didn't make this
equipment you didn't build this place
you didn't invent this language that
we're both sharing etc etc uh and now
there's there's more specific and
precise experimental evidence coming out
um
let's take a standard task that people
reasoning task I wanted to do the
details it's called the waste and
selection task and you give it to people
Highly Educated psychology students
primary universities across the world
you've been we've been doing it since
the 60s it's replicates and replicates
and only 10 of the people get it right
you put them in a group of four
and you allow them to talk to each other
the success rate goes to 80 percent
that's just one example of a a phenomena
that's coming to the fore
IGN by the way do you know if a similar
experiment has been done on a group of
engineering students for psychology
students is there a major group
differences in IQ between those two just
kidding
um that's uh let's move on uh all right
so there is a lot of evidence that
there's power to this distributed
cognition now what about this mechanism
this fascinating mechanism of the ants
interacting with each other the dialogue
I use the word discourse or dialogue for
just people having a conversation
but and this is deeply inspired by
um
Socrates and Plato especially the
platonic dialogues
and I'm sure we've all had this and so
give me a moment because I want to build
on to something here we've participated
in conversations
that take on a life of their own and
took us both in directions we did not
anticipate
afforded us insights that we could not
have had on our own and we don't have to
have come to an agreement but we were
both moved and we both drawn into
insight and we feel like wow that was
one of the best moments of my life
because we feel how that it introduced
us to a capacity for tapping into a flow
state within distributed cognition that
puts us into a deeper relationship with
ourselves with another person and
potentially with the world
that's what I mean by deal logos and so
for me I think Dia logos is
more important
boy I could just hear I'm sorry I can
hear Jordan and Jonathan in my head
right now but I think it's more I hear
them all the time I just wish they would
shut up in my head
sometimes
uh so what uh what are they saying to
you in your head what they're saying it
well see that's what the most recent
conversation was about I was trying to
say
that I don't think Mythos is I think
Mythos is really important
I think these kinds of narratives are
really important but I think this
ability to connect together
in distributed cognition collective
intelligence and cultivate
a shared flow state within that
collective intelligence so it starts to
ramp up perhaps towards Collective
wisdom I think that's more important
because I think that's the Basin within
which the myths and the rituals are
ultimately created and when they
function
like like a myth is like a public dream
it depends on distributed cognition and
it depends on people enacting it and
getting into mutual flow States
so the the highest form of dialogues of
conversation is this Flow State and that
it forms the foundation for myth
building I think so I think so so that
communitas that's Victor Turner's phrase
and he specifically linked it to flow
and I study flow scientifically that you
know that within distributed cognition
as as as as the home as the generator of
Mythos and ritual and those are bound
together as well I think that's
fundamentally correct you know what's
the cool thing here because I'm a huge
fan of podcasts uh and audiobooks but
pockets in particular is relevant here
is there's a third person in this room
listening now and and and they're also
in the Flow State yes yes like I'm I'm
close friends with a lot of podcasts
they don't know I exist I just listen to
them and because I've been in so many
flow states with them yeah I was like
yes yes this is good but they don't they
don't know I exist but they are in
conversation with me ultimately and
think think like of what what that's
doing you've got like you've got
dialogues and then you've got this meta
dialogue like you're describing and
think about how things like podcasts and
YouTube they break down old boundaries
between the private and the public
between writing and oral speech so we
have the Dynamics of living oral speech
but it has the permanency of writing
like we're we're we're we're in the
midst of creating a vehicle right and
and a medium for distributed cognition
that breaks down a lot of the categories
by which we organized our cognition I
mean because of the tools of YouTube and
so on just the the network the the graph
of how quickly the distributed cognition
can spread is really powerful and you
just a huge amount of people have
listened to your lectures yeah I've
listened to your lectures but I've
experienced them as at least in your
style there's something about your style
it felt like a conversation yeah like it
felt like at any point moment I could
interrupt you and say something oh and I
was just listening thank you thank you
for saying that because I aspire to
being genuinely as Socratic as I can
when I'm doing this yeah those that
sounds actually as I'm saying it now why
was that it didn't feel like sometimes
lectures are kind of uh you you know you
came you come down with the Commandments
and you're just trying to list them yeah
but there is a sense like I mean I think
it was the excitement that you have like
you have to understand and also the fact
that you were kind of I think
ing off the top of your head sometimes
yes there was a you were interrupting
yourself with thoughts you're playing
with thoughts like you're you're
reasoning through things often like you
had what you referenced a lot of books
so surely you were extremely well
prepared and you're referencing a lot of
ideas but then you're also struggling in
the way to present those ideas yes there
was and so the Jazz like the Jazz the
Jazz and getting into the Flow State and
and trying to
share in a participatory and perspective
of fashion the learning with the people
rather than just pronouncing at them yes
what's mindfulness
so published on that as well
um and I practice I've been practicing
many forms of mindfulness and Ecology of
practices since 1991 so I both have
practitioners knowledge and I also study
it scientifically I think I'm pretty
sure I was the first person to
academically talk about mindfulness at
the University of Toronto within a
classroom setting like lecturing on it
so this is a topic that a lot of people
have recently become very interested in
think about so from that from the early
days how do you think about what it is
I've critiqued the sort of standard
definitions being you know aware of the
present moment without judgment because
I think they're they're flawed
um and if you want to get into the
detail of why we can but this is how I
want to explain it to you
and it also points to the fact of why
you need an Ecology of mindfulness
practices you shouldn't equate
mindfulness with meditation I think
that's a primary mistake when you say
ecology what do you mean by the way like
so lots of many different variants no so
what I mean by ecology is exactly what
you have in an ecology you have a
dynamical system in which there are
checks and balances on each other and
right and I'll get to that with this
about mindfulness I'll make that
connection if you allow me
so we're always framing we've been
talking about that right and for those
of you who are not on YouTube there's
podcast I wear glasses and I'm now sort
of putting my my my fingers and thumb
around the frames of my glasses so this
is my frame and I and my lenses right
and that frame the the frame holds a
lens and I'm seeing through it in both
senses Beyond and by means of it
so right now my glasses are transparent
to me I want to use that as a strong
analogy for my mental framing okay now
sometimes this is what you do in
meditation I would argue
you step back from looking through your
frame and you look at them I'm taking my
glasses off right now and I'm looking at
them why might I do that to see if
there's something in the lenses
that is distorting
right causing me to right now if I just
did that that could be helpful but how
do I know if I've actually corrected
the change I made to my lenses what do I
need to do I need to put my glasses on
and see if I can now see more clearly
and deeply than I could before
meditation is this stepping back and
looking at
contemplation is
that looking through and they're
different kinds of practices the fact
that we treat them as synonyms is a deep
mistake the word contemplation has
temple in it in Latin contemplaradio
means to look up to the sky it's it's a
translation of the Greek word theoria
which we get our word theory from it's
to look deeply into things meditation is
more about
having to do with reflecting upon
standing back and looking at mindfulness
includes both
it includes your ability to break away
from an inappropriate frame
and the ability to make a new frame
that's what actually happens in Insight
you have to both break an inappropriate
frame and make see realize a new frame
this is why mindfulness enhances Insight
both ways by the way meditative
practices and also contemplative
practices
so mindfulness is frame awareness
that can be appropriated in order to
improve your capacities for insight and
self-regulation now I'm inexperienced
with meditation sort of the practice the
rigorous practice and the science of
meditation but you know I've uh I've
talked to people who uh
seriously as a science studies
psychedelics and they often talk about
the really important thing is the sort
of the integration back so the
contemplation step so if you it's not
just the actual things you see on
psychedelics or the actual journey of
where your mind goes on psychedelics
it's also the integrating that into
the New Perspective that you take on
life right exactly you you really nicely
describe so meditation is the in that
metaphors is the Psychedelic Journey uh
to a different mind State and
contemplation is the the return back to
reality how you integrate that into a
new world view and mindfulness is the
whole process those right so if you if
you if you adjusted contemplation you
could suffer from inflation and
projective fantasy if you just do
meditation you can suffer from
withdrawal spiritual bypassing avoiding
reality they act they need they need
each other you have to cycle between
them it's like what I talked about
earlier when I talked about the opponent
processing within the autonomic nervous
system or the opponent processing at
work and attention and that's what I
mean by an Ecology of practices you need
both neither one is a Panacea you need
them in this opponent processing acting
as checks and balance on each other
is there sort of practical advice you
can give to people on how to meditate or
how to be
mindful in this full way yes I would
tell them to do at least three things
and I was I I I I lucked into this uh
when I started meditation I went down
the street and there was a place that
taught the passion of meditation meta
contemplation and Tai Chi Chuan for flow
induction and you should get you should
have a meditative practice
you should find a contemplative practice
and you should find a moving mindfulness
practice especially one that is
conducive to the Flow State and practice
them in an integrated fashion
can you elaborate with those practices
might look like so right generally
speaking meditative practice like
vipassana
um and so what what what's the primary
thing I look through rather than look at
it's my Sensations so what I'm going to
do is I'm going to focus on my
Sensations rather than focusing on the
world through my Sensations so I'm going
to follow for example the sensations in
this area of my of my abdomen where my
breathing is so I can feel as my abdomen
is expanding I can feel those Sensations
and then I can feel the sensation since
it's Contracting now what will happen is
my mind will leap back to trying to look
through and look at the world again
right I'll start thinking about I need
to do my laundry or what was that noise
and so what do I do I don't get involved
with the content
I step back and label the process with
an ing word listening imagining planning
and then I return my attention to the
breath and I have to return my attention
in in the correct way the part of your
mind that jumps around in the Buddhist
tradition this is called your monkey
mind it's like a monkey leaping for
branches and chattering
right if I was trying to train that that
monkey mind to stay or as Jack cornfield
say train a puppy dog
and you know stay puppy dog and if it
goes and I get really angry and I bring
it back and I'm yelling at it I'm going
to train it to fight and fear me yeah
but if I just indulge it if I just feed
its whims oh look the puppy dog went
there oh now it's there puppy dog never
learns to stay what do I need to do I
have to neither fight it nor feed it I
have to have this centered attitude I
have to befriend it so you you step back
and look at your Sensations
you step back and look at your
distracting processes you return your
attention to the breath and you do it
with the right attitude that's the core
of a good meditative practice okay then
what's a good contemplative practice a
good contemplative practice is to try
and
Meadow it's actually apropos because we
talked about that participatory knowing
the way you're situated in the world so
what this is a long thing because
there's different interpretations of
meta and uh and I go for what's called
an existential interpretation over a an
emotional one but so what I'm doing in
Mata right is I'm trying to become a I'm
trying to awaken in two ways
I'm trying to awaken to the fact that I
am constantly assuming an identity and
assigning an identity so I'm looking at
that
I'm trying to awaken to that and then
I'm trying to awake from the modal
confusion that I can get into around
that and so I'm looking out onto the
world and I'm trying to see
you in a fundamentally different way
than I have before
you know like you go to the gym and you
do bicep curls yeah yes yes is is it
possible to reduce it to those things
that I mean you don't need to speak to
the specifics but is there actual
practice you can do or is it really
personal no I teach people how to do The
Meta practice I also teach them how to
do a neoplatonic contemplative practice
how to do a stoic one another one you
can do is the view from above this is
classic stoicism I get you to imagine
that you're in this room and then
imagine that you're floating above the
room then above Austin then above Texas
then above the United States than the
earth and you like and you have to
really imagine it don't just think it
but really and then what you notice is
as you're pulling out to a wider and
wider like contemplation of reality your
sense of self and what you find relevant
and important also changes no for all of
these there's a specific step-by-step
methodology so you can so like in that
one you could just literally imagine
yourself floating
farther and farther out but you have to
go through the steps yeah because the
the stepping matters because if you just
jump it doesn't work do you have any
other stuff online by the way I do
because during covid I decided
um at the advice of a good friend to do
a daily uh course I taught meditating
with genre Vicky I did all the way
through meditation contemplation even
some of the movement practices that's
all there it's all available that was
largely inspired by Buddhism and Taoism
and and then I went into the Western
tradition and went through things like
stoicism and neoplatonism cultivating
wisdom with genre that's all there all
free on your website yeah yeah it's on
my YouTube channel yeah on your YouTube
channel okay and that's exciting
um I mean your meaning meaning crisis
lectures is just incredible everything
around it including the notes and the
notes that people took it's just there's
a it created this tree of of
conversations that's really really well
done
um what about flow induction
you want to flow wisely
and first of all you you need to
understand what flow is yeah and then
you need to confront a particular issue
around a practical problem around flow
let's go there because a lot of those
words seem like synonyms to people
sometimes so the state of flow
what is it all right so
um and he just died last year checks out
my high I admire him very much we've
exchanged a bunch of messages
um over the past few years and
he wanted to do the podcast several
times it would have been wonderful uh
but he's he said his
um he struggled with his health and yeah
I I never knew in those situations I
deeply regret um
several cases like this that
um
that I had like with with Conway
that I should have pushed him on it um
because yeah as you get later in life
things the simple things become more
difficult but a voice especially one
that hasn't been really heard is
important to hear so anyway I I
apologize but you know I I share that I
mean I can tell you that Within
my area he is important and he's famous
and in academics in a sense so the Flow
State
two important sets of conditions and
very often people only talk about one
and and that's a little bit of a
misrepresentation
so the flow state is in situations in
which the demand of the situation is
slightly beyond your skills
so you both have to apply all the skills
you can with as much sort of attention
and concentration
as you possibly can and you have to
actually be stretching your skills
now in this circumstance
people report optimal experience optimal
in two ways optimal in that this is one
of the best experiences I've had in my
life it's distinct from pleasure and yet
it explains why people do very bizarre
things like rock climbing because it's a
good flow induction right but they also
mean optimal in a second sense my best
performance so it's both the best
experience and the best performance
so
checks out my also talked about the
information flow conditions you need
right in order for there to be this
state of flow and then I'll talk about
what it's like to be inflow in a sec
what you need is three things you need
the information that you're getting to
be clear it can't be ambiguous or vague
think about a rock climber it's
ambiguous and Vegas you're in trouble
right
there has to be tightly coupled feedback
between what you do and how the
environment responds so when you act
there's an immediate response there
isn't a big time lag between your action
and your ability to detect the response
from the environment
third failure has to matter error really
matters
so there should be some anxiety about
failure and failure matters so so that
like the yeah because to you the person
that possesses yes yes yes now when
you're in the Flow State
and notice how this sits on the boundary
between the secular and the sacred when
you're in the Flow State yeah people
report a tremendous sense of that one
mint with the environment
they report a loss of a particular kind
of self-consciousness that narrative
naturing nanny in your head that how do
I look to people like me how do I look
how's my hair do people like me should I
have said that that all goes away
you're free from that you're free from
the the most sadistic super ego
self-critic you could possibly have at
least for a while the world is vivid
it's super Salient to you there's an
ongoing sense of discovery
although often you know you're exerting
a lot of metabolical metabolical effort
it feels effortless so
in the Flow State when you're sparring
your hand just goes up for the block and
you you your strike just goes through
the empty space or if you're a goalie in
hockey I've got to mention hockey once
I'm a Canadian right you put out your
you know you put out your glove hand in
the pucks there right so there's this
tremendous sense of Grace
at one minute super Salient Discovery
and realness people don't well people
don't when they're in the Flow State
they don't go I bet this is an illusion
the interesting question for me and my
co-authors in the book in the the
article we published in the hand the
Oxford handbook spontaneous thought with
Aryan Hera Bennett and Leo Ferraro is
that's a descriptive account of flow we
wanted an explanatory account what are
the causal mechanisms at work inflow
and so we actually proposed to
interlocking cognitive processes the
first thing we said is well what's going
on in flow
well think about it think about the rock
climber
the rock climber and we I talked about
this earlier they they they're
constantly restructuring how they're
seeing the rock face they're constantly
doing something like insight
and if they and if they fail to do it
they impasse and that starts to get
dangerous so they got to do an Insight
that primes an Insight that primes an
Insight so imagine the AHA experience
that that flash in that moment and
imagine it cascading so you're getting
the extended aha that's why things are
super Salient there's a sense of
Discovery there's a sense of that one
mint of deep participation of Grace
but there's something else going on too
so there's a phenomena called implicit
learning also very well replicated
starts way back in the 60s with Reber
you can give people complex patterns
like number and letter strings right and
they can learn about those patterns
outside of deliberate focal awareness
that's what's called implicit learning
and what's interesting is if you try and
change that task into
um
you know tell me the pattern but
explicitly
explicitly try to figure it out their
performance degrades so here's the idea
you have this adaptive capacity for
implicit learning and what it does is it
results in you being able to track
complex variables in a way but you don't
know how you came up with that knowledge
right so you get and this is hogarth's
proposal in educating intuition
intuition is actually the result of
implicit learning so an example I use is
how far do you stand away from somebody
at a funeral
there's a lot of complex variables
there's status closeness to the person
you're a relationship to them past
history all kinds of stuff and yet you
know how to do it and you didn't have to
go to funeral school I'm just using that
as an example so you have these powerful
intuitions now here's hogar's great
point
implicit learning and remember I said
before the things that make it adaptive
make us subject to self-deception here's
another example implicit learning is
powerful at picking up on complex
patterns but it doesn't care what kind
of pattern it is it doesn't distinguish
causal patterns from merely
correlational patterns
so the implicit learn when we like it
it's intuition when it's picking up on
stuff that's bogus we call it Prejudice
or all kinds of other names for
intuition that's going wrong
now he said okay what do we do what do
we do about this and this will get back
to flow what do we do about this well we
can't try to replace implicit learning
with explicit learning because we'll
lose all the adaptiveness to it so what
can we do explicitly what we can do is
take care of the environment in which
we're doing the implicit learning
how do we do that we try to make sure
the environment has features that help
us distinguish causation from
correlation
what kind of environments have we
created that are good at distinguishing
causation from correlation experimental
environments
what do you do in an experiment you make
sure that the variables are clear no
confound no ambiguity no vagueness you
make sure there's a tight coupling
between the independent and the
dependent variable and your hypothesis
can be falsified error matters now look
at those three legs those are exactly
the three conditions that you need for
flow
clear your information tightly coupled
feedback and error matters so flow is
not only an Insight Cascade improving
your Insight capacity it's also an
marker that you're you're cultivating
the best kind of intuitions the ones
that fit you best to the causal patterns
in your environment
but it's hard to achieve that kind of
environment
where there's a clear distinction
between causality and correlation and
and it has this the the rigor of a
scientific experiment fair enough and I
don't think Hogarth was saying it's
going to be epistemically as rigorous as
a scientific experiment but he's saying
right if you structure that it will tend
to do what that scientific method does
which is find causal think of the rock
climber all of those things are the case
they need clear information right it's
tightly coupled and error matters and
they think what they're doing is very
real because if they're not if they're
not you know conforming to the real
causal patterns of the rock face and the
physiology of their body they will fall
is there something
to be said about the power of
discovering meaning and having this deep
relationship with them with the moment
there is something about flow that's
really forgets the past and the future
yes and it's really focused on the
moment I think that's part of the
phenomenology but I think the
functionality has to do with the fact
that what's happening in flow is that
dynamic
non-propositional connectedness that is
so Central to meaning
is being optimized this is why flow is a
good predictor of the how well you rate
your life how much well-being you you
think you have which of course is itself
also predictive and interrelated with
how meaningful you find your life one of
the things that you can do but there's
an important caveat
to increase your sense of meaning in
life is to get into the Flow State more
frequently that's why I said you you
want a moving practice that's conducive
to the Flow State but there's one
important caveat
which is
we of course have figured out and I'm
playing with words here how to game this
and how to hijack it by creating things
like video games I'm not saying this is
the case for all video games or this is
the case for all people but the who now
acknowledges this as a real thing that
you can get into the flow state within
the Video Game World
to the detriment of your ability to get
into the flow state in the real world
what's the opposite of flow depression
the fact depression has been called
anti-flow
so you get these people that are flowing
in this non-real world and it's they
can't transfer it to the real world and
it's actually costing them flow in the
real world so they tend to get they tend
to suffer depression and all kinds of
things oh your ability your uh Habit and
uh just skill attaining flow in the
Video Game World
basically
makes you less effective
or maybe shocks you at how difficult it
is to achieve flow in the physical world
yeah I'm not sure about that I just I
don't I don't want to push back against
the implied challenge of transferability
because
um you know there's a lot of you know I
have a lot of friends that play video
games a lot a very large percent of
young folks play video games and
I'm hesitant to build up models
uh of how that affects behavior my
intuition is weak there oftentimes
people that have phds are of a certain
age that they came up when video games
weren't a deep part of their life
development I would venture to say
people who have develop their brain
with video games being a part a large
part of that world
um are in some sense different humans
and it's possible that they can transfer
more effectively some of the lessons
um some of the ability to attain flow
from the virtual world to the physical
world they're also more I would venture
to say resilient to the negative effects
of for example social media or or video
games they have that you know maybe the
objectification or like the over
sexualized of a violent aspect of video
games they're able to turn that off when
they go to the physical world and turn
it back on when they're playing the
video games probably more effectively
than
um the the old timers so I just want to
say the sort of I'm not sure it's a
really interesting question how
transferable the flow state is I don't
know if there's if you want to comment
on I do I do um first of all I did
qualify and I'm saying it's not all the
case for all video games or for all
people I'm holding out the possibility
and I know this possibility because I've
had students who actually suffer from
this and have done work around it with
me
um the the yeah
um and then they were able to step back
from that and then take up the cognitive
science and write about it and work on
it
um also I'm not so sure about the
resiliency claim because
um there seems to be
mounting evidence it's not consensus
but it's certainly not regarded as
Fringe that the increase in Social Media
is being is is pretty strongly
correlated with increase in depression
self-destructive Behavior Uh things like
this I would like to see that evidence
because no no no no no
let me um
I'm always hesitant
to too eagerly kind of agree with things
that I want to agree with that there's a
public perception everyone seems to hate
on social media
I I I wonder as always with these things
does it reveal
depression or does it create depression
sure this is always the question it's
like uh whenever you talk about any
political or ideological movement does
it create hate or does it reveal hate
and that's a good thing to ask and you
should always challenge the things that
you intuitively want to believe I agree
with that
um
like aliens so one of the ways you
address this and it's not it's not
sufficient and I did say that work is
preliminary but you you if if I can give
you a plausible mechanism that's new and
then that lands Credence and part of
what happens right is illusory social
comparison
uh think of Instagram people are posting
things that are not accurate
representation of their life or life
events in fact they will stage things
but we what the people that are looking
at these right they take it often as
real and so they get downward social
comparison and this is and and this is
like compared to how you and I probably
live where we may get one or two of
those events a week they're getting the
moment by moment and so it's a plausible
mechanism that why it might be driving
people into a more depressed state so
okay the the flip side of that is
because there's a greater greater Gap
going from Real World to Instagram world
you start to be able to laugh at it and
realize that it's artificial so for
example even just artificial filters
people start to realize like yeah
there's like it's the same kind of Gap
as there is between the Video Game World
and the real world in the Video Game
World you can do all kind kinds of wild
things uh Grand Theft Auto you can shoot
people up you can do whatever the heck
you want in the real world you can't and
you start to develop an understanding of
how to have fun in the virtual world and
in the physical world and I think it's
just a push back I'm not saying either
is true though yeah those are very
interesting claims the more ridiculously
out of touch Instagram becomes the
easier you can laugh it off
potentially in terms of the effect it
has on your side okay I'll respond to
that but at some point we should get
back to flow yeah
um as we engage in flow you laugh at the
the hair the shampoo commercial
and you buy the shampoo
yeah there's a capacity for tremendous
bullshitting because of the way these
machines are designed to trigger
salience without triggering reflective
truth seeking
I'm thinking of counter examples uh
because you're sometimes you're
can laugh all the way to the bank so you
could you can laugh and not buy the
shampoo right there's there's many cases
so I think you have to laugh hard enough
you do have to laugh hard enough but the
advertising the advertisers get millions
of dollars precisely because for many
many people it does make you buy the
shampoo and that's the concern and maybe
the machine of social media is such that
it optimizes the shampoo buying yes the
point I was trying to make is
whether or not that particular example
is you know ultimately right the
possibility of transfer failure is a
real thing
um and I want to contrast that to an
experience I had when I was in grad
school I've been doing Tai Chi Chuan
about
three or four years very religiously
both senses the word like three or four
hours a day and like reading all the
literature and like
and I was having all the weird
experiences you know cold as eyes hot as
lava all that stuff right
but my friends in grad school
they said to me what's what what's
what's going on you're different
and I said what do you mean and they
said
well you're a lot more balanced in your
interactions and you're a lot more
flowing and you're a lot more sort of
flexible and you adjust more and I
realized oh
you know and this was this was the sort
of Taoist claim around taichiton that it
actually transfers in ways that you
might not expect you start to be able
and I've now noticed that I now notice
how how I'm doing Tai Chi even in this
interaction and how it can facilitate
and afford and so there's a powerful
transfer and that's what I meant by you
know flow wisely not only flow in a way
that's right making sure that you're
distinguishing causation from
correlation which flow can do
but find how to situate it home it so
that it will percolate through your
psyche and permeate through many domains
of your life
is there something you could say
similar to our discussion about
mindfulness and meditation
and contemplation about the world that
psychedelics take our mind where does it
where does the mind go
uh when it's on psychedelics
I want to remind you of something you
said which is a is a gem
it's not so much the experience but the
degree to which it can be integrated
back
so here's a proposal comes from Woodward
and others a lot of convergence around
this card Harris is talking about it
similarly in the entropic brain but I'm
not going to talk first about
psychedelics I'm going to talk about
neural networks
and I'm going to talk about a classic
problem in neural networks so neural
networks like us with intuition and
implicit learning are fantastic at
picking up on complex patterns uh which
no one else we were talking about I'm
talking about a general just general
artificial and biological yes yes yes
um I I think at this point there is no
relevant difference
so one of the classic problems because
of their power is they suffer from
overfitting to the data or for those of
you are you know from a statistical
orientation they pick up patterns in the
sample that aren't actually present in
the population right and so
what you do is there's various
strategies you can do Dropout where you
you to periodically turn off half of the
nodes in a network you can drop noise
into the network and what that does is
it prevents overfitting to the data and
allows the network to generalize more
powerfully to the environment
I propose to you that that's basically
what psychedelics do
they they do that they basically do
significant constraint reduction and so
you get areas of the brain talking to
each other that don't normally talk to
each other areas that do talk to each
other not talking to each other down
regulation of areas that are very
dominant like the default mode Network
Etc and what that does is exactly
something strongly analogous sorry to
what's happening in Dropout or putting
noise into the data it opens up by the
way if you give people if you give human
beings an Insight problem that they're
trying to solve and you throw in some
noise like literally static on the
screen you can trigger an Insight in
them
so like literally a very simplistic kind
of noise to the perception system right
can it can break it out of overfitting
to the data and open you up now that
means though
that just doing that right
in and of itself
is not
the answer
because you also have to make sure that
the system can go back to exploring that
new space properly this isn't a problem
with neural networks you turn off
Dropout and they just go back to being
powerful neural networks and now they
explore the state space that they
couldn't explore before human beings are
a little bit more messy uh around this
and this is where the analogy does get a
little bit strained so they need
practices
to help them integrate that opening up
to the new state space so they can
properly integrate it so beyond Leary's
State
set and setting
I think you need another S I think you
need sacred you need
psychedelics need to be practiced within
a sapiential framework a framework in
which people are independently and
beforehand improving their abilities to
deal with self-deception and afford
insight and self-regulate this is of
course the overwhelming way in which
psychedelics are used by indigenous
cultures
and I think if we put them into that
context then they can help the project
of people
self-transcending cultivating meaning
and increasing wisdom but if I think we
removed them out of that context and put
them in the context of Commodities taken
just to have certain phenomenological
changes we run certain important risks
so using the term of higher States Of
Consciousness yes
is consciousness an important part of
that word what what why higher
uh is it is it is it a higher state or
is it a detour a side road on the main
road of Consciousness what so where do
we go here I think the Psychedelic state
is on a Continuum there's insight and
then it flows an inside Cascade there's
flow and then you can have sort of
psychedelic experiences mind revealing
experiences and then but they overlap
with mystical experiences and they
aren't the same
um so for example in the Griffis lab
they gave people cytocybin and they
taught them ahead of time
how like sort of the features of a
mystical experience and only a certain
proportion of the people that took the
psilocybin went from a psychedelic into
a mystical experience what was
interesting is the people that had the
mystical experience had measurable and
long-standing change to one of the big
five factors of Personality they had
increased openness openness is supposed
to actually go down over time and these
traits aren't supposed to be that
malleable and it was significantly like
altered right but imagine if you just
created more openness in a person
right and they're now open to a lot more
and they want to explore a lot more but
you don't give them the tools of
discernment that could be problematic
for them in important ways that could be
very problematic yes I got it but you
know so you have to land the plane
uh in a productive way somehow
integrated back into your life and how
you see the world and how you frame your
perception of that world and when people
do that that's when I call it a
transformative experience
now the higher States Of Consciousness
are really interesting because they tend
to move people from a mystical
experience into a transformative
experience because what happens in these
experiences is something really really
interesting they get to a state that's
ineffable they can't put it into words
they can't describe it but they they do
this this they're in this state state
temporarily and then they come back and
they do this they say that was really
real and this in comparison is less real
so I remember that platonic meta desire
I want to change my life myself so that
I'm more in Conformity with that really
real and that is really odd Lex because
normally when we go outside of our
consensus intelligibility like a dream
state we when we come back from it we
say that doesn't fit into everything
therefore it's unreal they do the exact
opposite they come out of these states
and they say that doesn't fit into this
right consensus right intelligibility
and that means this is less real they do
the exact opposite and that fascinates
me why do they why do they flip our
normal procedure about evaluating
alternative States and one the thing is
those higher States Of Consciousness
precisely because they have that
autonomativity the the the realness the
demands that you make a change in your
life they serve to bridge between
mystical experiences
and genuine transformative so you do
think seeing those as more real is
productive because then you reach for
them so yaden's done work on it
um you know and it's again all of this
is all this stuff isn't recent so we
have to take it with a grain of salt but
you know by a lot of objective measure
people who do this who have these higher
States Of Consciousness and undergo that
and undertake the transformative process
their lives get better their
relationships improve right their sense
of self improves their anxieties go down
depression like all of these other
measures are the needles are moved on
these measures by people undergoing this
transformative experience their lives by
many of the criteria that we judge Our
Lives to be good get better
foreign
I have to ask you about this fascinating
distributed cognition process that leads
to mass formation of ideologies that
have had an impact on our world so you
spoke about the clash of the two great
pseudo-religious ideologies of Marxism
and Nazism
their Clash on the Eastern Front Battle
of cursed
can you explain the origin of each of
these Marxism
and Nazism in a kind of way that we have
been talking about the formation of
ideas
Hegel is to protestantism what Thomas
Aquinas is to Catholicism he he was like
the philosopher who took German
protestantism and
and also Kant and ficta and shelling and
he built
a philosophical system
he explicitly said this by the way he
wanted to bridge between philosophy and
religion he explicitly said that I'm not
I'm not foisting that on him he said it
repeatedly in many different places so
he's trying to create a philosophical
system that
gathered to it I think the core Mythos
of Christianity core Mythos of
Christianity is this idea of a narrative
structure to reality in which progress
is real in which our actions now can
change the future we can co-participate
with God in the creation of the future
and that future can be better it can
reach something like a Utopia or the
promised land or whatever he created a
philosophical system of brilliance by
the way he's a genius but basically what
it did was it it took that religious
vision and gave it the air of
philosophical intelligibility and
respect
and then Marx takes that and says you
know that process of the by which the
narrative is working itself out that
Hegel called dialectic I don't think
it's primarily happening in ideas I
think it's happening primarily in
between classes within socioeconomic
factors but it's the same story here's
this mechanism of History it's
teleological it's going to move this way
it can move towards the Utopia we can
either
participate in furthering it like
participating in the work of God or we
can thwart it and be against it and so
you have a real you have a
pseudo-religious vision it's all
encompassing think about how Marxism is
not just a philosophical position it's
not just an economic position it's an
entire world view an entire account of
uh of history and and a a demanding
account of what Human Excellence is and
it has all these things about
participating belonging fitting to but
it's very uh in in Marx's cases very
uh pragmatic or or directly applicable
to society to where it leads to it more
naturally leads to political ideologies
it does and but I think marks to a very
significant degree inherits one of
hegel's main flaws
Hegel is talking about all this and he's
trying to fit it into right post kantian
philosophy so for him it's ultimately
you know propositional conceptual
he like everybody after Descartes is
very focused on the propositional level
and he's not paying deep attention to
the non-propositional this is why the
two great critics
of Hegel Nietzsche and kirkegaard
they're trying to put their finger on
the non-propositional the non-conceptual
the will to power or faith and they're
trying to bring out the all these other
kinds of knowing as being inadequate
that's why kirkegon met when he said
Hegel made a system and then he sat down
beside it
right
um and and so Marxism is very much
it is activists it's about reorganizing
Society but the the transformation in
individuals is largely ideological
meaning it's largely about these
significant propositional changes in
adopting a set of beliefs when uh it
came in contact with the Soviet Union or
with the what became the Soviet Union
why do you think it had such a powerful
hold on such a large number of people
not Marxism but implementation of
Marxism in the name of communism because
it offered people
I mean
it offered people something that
typically only religions had offered and
it offered people the hope of making a
new man a new kind of human being in a
new world
and when you've been living in Russia
in which things seem to be locked in a
system that is crushing most people
getting the promise in the air of
scientific legitimacy
that we can make new human beings
and a new world and in which happiness
will ensue that's an intoxicating
proposal you get sort of like I said you
get
you get all of the intoxication of a
religious Utopia but you get all the
seeming legitimacy of claiming that it's
a scientific
understanding of history and economics
it's very popular to criticize communism
Marxism these days
and I often put myself in the place
before any of the implementations came
to be
I I tried to think if I would be able to
predict
what the implementations of Marxism and
communism would result in in the 20th
century and I'm not sure
I'm smart enough to make that prediction
because at the core of the ideas are
respecting it's uh with with Marx it's
very economics type of theory so it's
basically respecting the value of the
worker
and the the regular man in society for
for making a contribution to that
society and to me that seems like
a powerful idea and it's not clear to me
how it goes wrong in fact it's still not
clear to me
why the hell did this like would Stalin
happen or mile happened it's there's
something very interesting and complex
about human nature in hierarchies about
distributed cognition the results in
that and it's not trivial to understand
no no
um so I I mean I wonder if you can put a
finger on it why like why did it go so
wrong so I think uh you know what Ohana
talks about in uh the intellectual
history of modernity
um
talks about
the the Promethean spirit
the idea the really radical proposal and
think about how it's not so radical to
us and in that sense Marxism has
succeeded the radical proposal that you
see even in the French Revolution
and don't forget the terror comes in the
French Revolution too
that we can make ourselves into god-like
beings think of the Hubris in that
right and think of the overconfidence to
think that we so understand human nature
and all of its complexities and human
history right and how religion
functioned and every that we can just
come in with a plan and make it run it's
it's to my mind that Promethean spirit
is
part of why it's doomed to fail and it's
doomed to fail in a kind of terrorizing
way because the Promethean spirit
really licenses you to do anything
because the the ends justify the means
this the end Justified that means really
free you to do some of
um basically
um
will commit atrocities at any scale
Ground Zero with Pol Pot and the camera
Rouge right exactly and you only you can
only believe
in an ends that can justify any means if
you believe in a Utopia and you can only
believe in the Utopia if you really buy
into the Promethean spirit so is that
what explains Nazism so Nazism is is
part of that too the Promethean spirit
that we can make ourselves into Superman
ubermensch right and
Nazism is fueled very much
by
appropriating and twisting
sort of Gnostic themes
that are very prevalent gnosticism can
tends to come to the fore when people
are experiencing it uh you know
increased meaning crisis and don't
forget the Weimar Republic is like a a
meeting crisis gone crazy on all levels
everybody's suffering domicide
everybody's home and way of life and
identity and culture and relationship to
religion and science all of that right
and so Nazism comes along and offers a
kind of gnosticism again Twisted
perverted I'm not saying all not I'm not
not saying that all gnostics are Nazis
but there is this Gnostic mythology
Mythos and it comes to the fore I I
remember and this stuck with me in
undergrad I was taking political science
um
and the professor extended lecture on
this and it still Rings true for me he
says if you understand Nazism as just a
political movement you have
misunderstood it it is much more a
religious phenomena
in many ways is it religious in that the
loss of religion so is it a meaning
crisis or
is it out of a meaning crisis every
discovery of religion in a in a
Promethean type uh I think it's the
latter I think there's a there's this
vacuum created in that context is Hitler
the the central religious figure yes and
also the did uh Nazi Germany create
Hitler or did Hitler create Nazi Germany
so in this distributed cognition where
everyone's having a dialogue what's the
role of the charismatic leader is it an
emergent phenomena or do you need one of
those to uh to kind of guide the
populace I hope
um it's not a necessary requirement I
hope that the next Buddha can be the
Sangha rather than a specific individual
um but I think in that situation
Hitler's Charisma allowed him to take on
a mythological in the proper sense
archetypal
he became deeply symbolic and he and he
instituted all kinds of rituals all
kinds of rituals and all kinds of Mythos
there's all this Mythos about the master
race and there's all these rituals the
swastika is of course a self a religious
symbol right there's all of this going
on because
he
was tapping into the fact that when you
put people into deeper and deeper
meaning scarcity they will fall back on
more and more mythological ways of
thinking in order to try and come up
with a generative source to give them
new meaning making I should say meeting
participating
Behavior
what is evil
is this a word you avoid no I don't
because I think part of what we're
wrestling with here
is resisting the enlightenment I mean
the historical period in Europe the the
idea that
evil and sin can just be reduced to
immorality
um individual human immorality
I think there's something deeper in the
idea of sin than just immoral I think
sin is a much more comprehensive
category I think sin is a failure to
love wisely so that you ultimately
engage in a kind of idolatry you take
something as ultimate which is not
and that can tend to constellate
these Collective agents I call them
hyper agents within distributed
cognition that have a capacity to wreak
havoc on the world that is not just due
to a sort of a sum total of immoral
decisions you know this goes to Hannah
arendt's thing right and the banality of
Eichmann and she was really wrestling
with it and I think she she's close to
something but I think she's slightly off
you know Eichmann is just making a whole
bunch of immoral decisions but it
doesn't seem to capture the gravity of
what the Nazis did the genocide and the
Warfare and and she's right because
you're not going to get just the
summation of a lot of individual rather
banal immoral choices adding up to what
was going on you're getting a
comprehensive
parasitic process within massive
distributive cognition that is has the
power to confront the world and confront
aspects of the world that individuals
can't and I think when we're talking
about evil
that's what we're trying to point to
this is a point of convergence between
me and Jonathan Peugeot we've been
talking about this so the word sin is
interesting yes are you comfortable
using the word sin so deeply rooted in
religious yes it is and in part and and
I struggle around this
um because I was brought up as a
fundamentalist Christian and so that is
still there within me there's trauma
associated with that probably uh layers
of self-deception mechanisms no doubt no
doubt to hear slowly escaping trying to
and trying to come into a proper
respectful relationship
with Christianity via a detour through
Buddhism taoism and Pagan neoplatonism
trying to find a way how to love wisely
yes exactly and so I want to I think
this the term sin is good because
somebody may not be doing something that
we would prototypically call immoral
but if they're failing to love wisely
they are
disconnecting themselves in some
important way from the structures of
reality and
I think I think it was Hume I may be
wrong you've said you know people don't
do things because they think it's wrong
they do a lesser good in place of a
greater good
and that's a different thing than being
immoral I mean we're always saying
you're doing something that's wrong it's
like well no no
you know I'm loving my wife that's a
great thing isn't it
yeah but if you love your wife at the
expense of your kids
like ah maybe something's going awry
here right well I love my country great
but should you love your country at the
expense of your commitment to the
religion you belong to like people
should wrestle with these questions and
I think sin is a failure to wrestle with
these questions properly yeah to be
content with the choices you made
without considering yeah
um
is there a greater good that could be
done yeah
your lecture series on the meaning
crisis uh puts us in dialogue in the
same way as with the podcast with a
bunch of fascinating thinkers throughout
history Corbin
uh the man Carl Young tillage Barfield
is there can you describe this might be
challenging but one powerful idea from
each that
yeah jumps to mind yes maybe Heidegger
so for Heidegger
one real powerful idea that has had a
huge influence on me he's he's had a
huge influence on me in many ways he's a
big influence on what's called 40
cognitive science and this whole idea
about the non-propositional that was
deeply uh you know afforded by Heidegger
and Marla Ponte but I guess maybe the
one idea if I had to pick one is his
critique of onto theology his critique
of the attempt to understand being in
terms of a Supreme Being something like
that and how that gets us fundamentally
messed up and and we get disconnected
from being because we are over focused
on particular beings we're failing to
love wisely we're loving the individual
things and we're not loving the ground
from which they they spring can you
explain that a little more what's the
difference between the being and the
Supreme Being and why that gets us into
trouble okay so uh like well we talked
about this before The Supreme Being is a
particular being whereas being is no
thing it's not any particular kind of
thing and so if you're thinking of being
as a being you're thinking of it in a
thingy way about something that is
fundamentally no thingness yeah and so
then you're disconnecting yourself from
presumably Ultimate Reality
this takes me to telek Telex great idea
is understanding Faith as ultimate
concern rather than
a set of propositions that you're
asserting right so
what
are you ultimately concerned about what
do you want to have what do you want to
be in right relationship to ratio
religio what what and is that ultimate
is that the Ultimate Reality that you
conceive of are those two thing things
in sync this has had a profound
influence on me and I think it's a
brilliant idea so uh some of the others
how do they integrate
um maybe the psychoso the Carl Jung
and Freud which which team are you on
I'm on young Freud is the better writer
but young has I think a model of the
psyche that is closer to where cognitive
science is heading
um he's more prescient so which aspect
of his model is like directly so Freud
has a hydraulic model the psyche is like
a steam engine things are under pressure
and there's a fluid that's moving around
it's like like this is a record note of
this young has an organic model the
psyche is like a living being it's doing
all this opponent processing it's doing
all of this self-transcending and
growing right and I think that's a much
better model of the psyche than the sort
of uh steam engine model what do you
think about their view of the
subconscious mind
what do you think their View and your
own view of what's going on there in the
shadow
so all that stuff some good stuff
um any stuff at all
well I mean both Freud and young are
only talking about the psychodynamic
unconscious which is only a small part
of the unconscious oh can you elaborate
they're talking about Dynamics they're
talking about the the the the aspects of
the unconscious that have to do with
your your sort of ego development and
and how you are understanding and
interpreting yourself
yeah what else was there there's the
unconscious that it allows you to turn
the noise coming out of my face hole
into ideas also there's the
unconsciousness that's yeah memory
access all that stuff which is huge and
Powerful
and they didn't think about that they're
they're focused on the big romantic
stuff that you have to deal with through
Psychotherapy that kind of stuff which
is relevant and important I'm not
dismissing I'm not saying it doesn't
exist but it's certainly not all of the
unconscious a lot of work that's going
on my colleague and deep friend Anderson
Todd is about can we take the union
stuff and the cognitive science stuff
and can we integrate it together
theoretically and so he's working on
that exactly that project
but nevertheless your census there is a
subconscious or at least an unconscious
I like the term unconscious and and
young continually reminded people that
the unconscious is unconscious that
we're not conscious of it and and that's
its fundamental property yeah and then
isn't the task
of therapy then to bring to make the
unconscious conscious yeah to a degree
right but also I mean yeah to bring to
to bring to bring Consciousness where
there was unconscious is part of Young's
Mythos but it's also not the thought
that that can be completed part of the
why you're extending the reach of the
conscious mind is it so it can enter
into more proper dialogical relationship
with the self-organizing system of the
unconscious mind what do they have uh to
say about the the motivations of humans
so for Freud joking I said you know sex
there's so much of our mind is
developing our young age yeah sexual
interactions with the world or whatever
uh hence the thing about the the edible
complex and all you know I wanted to
have sex with your mother
what do you think about their
description about what motivates humans
and what do you think about the will to
power
from Nietzsche who who which Camp are
you in there what motivates humans
sex or power I think Plato's right and I
think there's a connection for me
Plato's my first philosopher Young's my
first psychologist and young is very
much the Plato of the psyche I never
forget you first yep you never do you
never do and I think I think we have
I reject the monological mind I reject
the monophasic Mind model I I think we
are multi-centered I think we have
different centers of motivation that
operate according to different
principles to satisfy different problems
um and that part of the task of our
humanity is to get those different
centers into some
internal Culture by which they are
optimally cooperating rather than in
conflict with each other
what advice would you give to young
people today
they're in high school trying to figure
out what they're going to do with their
life maybe they're in college
what advice would you give how to have a
career they can be proud of or how to
have a life they can be proud of
so the first thing is
find an Ecology of practices
and a community that supports them
without involving you in believing
things that contravene are best
understood science
so that wisdom and virtue
especially how they show up in
relationships are primary to you this
will sound ridiculous
but if you take care of that
the other things you want are more
likely to occur because what you most
want
is you what you want at when you're
approaching your death
is what were the relationships
you cultivated to yourself to other
people to the world and what did you do
to improve the chance of them being deep
and profound relationships well that's
an interesting so Ecology of practice to
like finding a place where a lot of
people are doing different things that
are in interesting interplay with each
other yes but at the same time is not a
cult like uh yes yes where ideas can
flourish now how the hell do you know
um because actually in a place where
people are really excited about doing
stuff yes that's very right for cult
formation especially if they're a wash
in a culture in which we have ever
expanding waves of yes
precisely
so try to keep away from the is
the advice yes no I mean I take this
very seriously and I was with a bunch of
people in Vermont at the respond Retreat
people Rafe Kelly was there
a bunch of people who have set up
colleges of practices and created
communities
and
I have good reason to find all of these
people trustworthy and so we gathered
together to try and generate Real Deal
logos flow in distributed cognition
exercise the collective intelligence and
try and address that problem both in
terms of
you know meta curriculum that we can
offer emerging communities in terms of
practices of vetting how we will
self-govern the Federation we're forming
so that we can resist gurification
glorification of people or ideas both
both some of us just get unlucky some of
us get unlucky and we we all at
respond we all had a tremendous sense of
urgency around this but we were trying
to balance it about not being premature
but there it was going to I mean there's
we're going to produce a meta curriculum
that's coming in months there's going to
be a scientific paper about integrating
the scientific work on wisdom with this
practitioner-based ideas about the
cultivation of wisdom there's going to
be projects about how we can create a
self-correcting vetted vetting system so
we can say to people we think this
ecology is legit it's in good fellowship
with all these other legit ecologies ah
we don't know about that one we're
hesitant about that one it's not in good
Fellowship we have concerns here's why
we have our concerns Etc
and you may say well who are you to do
that it's like nobody but somebody's got
to do it right and that's what it comes
down to and so we're going to give it
our best effort it's worth a try
you talked about the meaning crisis
in uh human civilization but in your own
personal life
what has been a dark place you've ever
gone in your mind has there been
difficult times in your life where you
really struggled yes
so when I left
fundamentalist Christianity
and then for a while I was just sort of
a hard-bitten atheist
um
the problem with leaving the belief
structure
was that I didn't deal with all the
non-propositional things that had gotten
into me
all the procedures and habits and all
the perspectives and all the identities
and the trauma associated with that so
you know I have acquired therapy it
required years of meditation in Tai Chi
and I'm still wrestling with it but for
the first
four or five years I would
I I described it like this it was I I I
called it the black burning I felt like
there was a a Blackness that was on fire
inside of me precisely because
the religion had left a taste for the
Transcendent in my mouth but it had the
food it had given me it's food and
square quotes had soured in my stomach
and made me nauseous and that and the
juxt the juxtaposition of those seemed
like an irresolvable problem for me
that was a very very dark time for me
did it feel
lonely when it was very bad it felt
extremely lonely and in the and deeply
alienating
the universe seemed absurd and there was
also a existential anxiety I talk about
these things for a reason I don't just
talk about them as things I'm pointing
to I'm talking about them as seeing in
myself and in people I care you know
having undergone them and how how they
can bring you close to you know
self-destructive I I started engaging in
kinds of self-destructive Behavior so
the meaning crisis to you is not just
the thing you look outside
and and see many people struggling you
yourself are struggling well but that's
that that's in fact the narrative is I
struggled with it thinking it was a
purely
personal idiosyncratic thing I started
learning the cogs eye I started doing
the Tai Chi and the meditation I started
doing all this right Socratic philosophy
and when I started to talk about these
pieces
I saw my students eyes light up and I
realized oh wait
maybe this isn't just something I'm
going through
and talking to them and then doing the
research and expanding it out it's like
oh
many people
in a shared fashion and also in an
individual lonely fashion are going
through meaning crisis
well we talked a lot about wisdom and
meaning and you said that the goal is to
love wisely so let me ask about love
what's the role of Love In The Human
Condition it's Central
I mean it's even Central to to to to
reason and rationality this is Plato but
you know Spinoza the most logical of the
rationalists you know the ethics is
written like Euclid's geometry but he
calls it the ethics for a reason
because he wants to talk about the
blessed life and what does he say he
says that ultimately reason needs love
because love is what brings reason out
of being entrapped in the gravity well
of egocentrism
and Murdoch Iris Murdoch said I think
really beautifully love is when you
painfully realize that something other
than yourself is real
escaping the gravity well of egocentrism
beautifully put a beautiful way to enter
John you're a beautiful human being
thank you for struggling in your own
mind with a with the with the search for
meaning and uh encouraging others to do
the same and ultimately to learn how to
love wisely thank you so much for
talking today it's been a great pleasure
Lux I've really enjoyed it a lot thank
you so much
thanks for listening to this
conversation with John ravaki to support
this podcast please check out our
sponsors in the description and now let
me leave you with some words from Herman
Hesse and Siddhartha
I've always believed and I still believe
that whatever good or bad fortune may
come our way we can always give it
meaning and transform it into something
of value
thank you for listening and hope to see
you next time