John Vervaeke: Meaning Crisis, Atheism, Religion & the Search for Wisdom
哲学与宗教生物与进化心理与人性音乐与艺术历史与文明
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🔑 关键词
meaningdonselfflowconsciousnesstryingcognitiongoingrealsaiddoingrealitytalkingimportantstatehumandoesntalksayingrelevance
💬 精彩语录
"I think we only know the truth retrospectively when we go through some process of self transcendence,"
我想，只有当我们经历了一些自我超越的过程之后，我们才知道真相，
— John Vervaeke （49:24.520）
"because remember the propositions are representational and they're dependent on the nonpropositional,"
因为记住命题是代表性的并且它们依赖于非命题，
— John Vervaeke （1:30:08.540）
"what we can from the best religion and philosophical traditions, because there's things like stoicism"
我们可以从最好的宗教和哲学传统中得到什么，因为有像斯多葛主义这样的东西
— John Vervaeke （1:32:04.140）
"If by assumption you mean a proposition, representational or rule, I think that's much more downstream"
如果你所说的假设是指一个命题、代表性或规则，我认为这更下游
— John Vervaeke （32:06.280）
"Because then we're trying to say that propositions are ultimately responsible for how we do relevance"
因为那时我们试图说命题最终对我们如何进行相关性负责
— John Vervaeke （33:14.500）
🎙️ 完整对话（2734 条）
Lex Fridman (00:00.000)
The universe doesn't care about your personal narrative.
宇宙并不关心你的个人叙述。
Lex Fridman (00:04.440)
You can just have met the person that is going to be the love of your life.
您可能刚刚遇到了将成为您一生挚爱的人。
Lex Fridman (00:09.400)
It's the culmination of your whole project for happiness,
这是你整个幸福计划的顶峰，
Lex Fridman (00:13.960)
and you step into the street and a truck hits you and you die.
你走到街上，一辆卡车撞到了你，你就死了。
Lex Fridman (00:18.160)
That's mortality.
这就是死亡。
John Vervaeke (00:19.360)
Mortality isn't just some far flung event.
死亡不仅仅是一些遥远的事件。
Lex Fridman (00:22.720)
It's that every moment we are subject to fate in that way.
我们每时每刻都以这种方式屈服于命运。
Lex Fridman (00:29.320)
So you can think of lots of little deaths you experience whenever all the projects
所以你可以想象每当所有项目完成时你所经历的许多小死亡
Lex Fridman (00:36.240)
and the plans you make come up against the fact that the universe can just roll over them.
而你制定的计划却面临着宇宙可以碾压它们的事实。
John Vervaeke (00:43.560)
The following is a conversation with John Verweke,
以下是与 John Verweke 的对话，
Lex Fridman (00:46.280)
a psychologist and cognitive scientist at the University of Toronto.
多伦多大学心理学家和认知科学家。
John Vervaeke (00:50.200)
I highly recommend his lecture series called Awakening from the Meaning Crisis,
我强烈推荐他的系列讲座，名为“从意义危机中觉醒”，
Lex Fridman (00:55.760)
which covers the history and future of humanity's search for meaning.
它涵盖了人类寻找意义的历史和未来。
John Vervaeke (01:00.840)
This is the Lex Friedman podcast.
这是莱克斯·弗里德曼的播客。
Lex Fridman (01:02.720)
To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.
为了支持它，请在说明中查看我们的赞助商。
Lex Fridman (01:06.240)
And now, dear friends, here's John Verweke.
现在，亲爱的朋友们，这是约翰·维维克。
Lex Fridman (01:10.440)
You have an excellent 50 part lecture series online on the Meaning Crisis.
你们有一个关于意义危机的精彩在线讲座系列，共有 50 部分。
Lex Fridman (01:15.960)
And I think you describe in the modern times an increase in depression,
我认为你描述了现代抑郁症的增加，
Lex Fridman (01:21.080)
loneliness, cynicism, and wait for it, bullshit.
孤独，愤世嫉俗，等等，废话。
John Vervaeke (01:26.640)
The term used technically by Harry Frankfurt and adopted by you.
该术语由 Harry Frank 技术性地使用并由您采用。
Lex Fridman (01:30.680)
So let me ask, what is meaning?
Lex Fridman (01:33.840)
What are we looking for when we engage in the search for meaning?
Lex Fridman (01:40.200)
So when I'm talking about meaning, I'm talking about what's called meaning in life,
John Vervaeke (01:43.600)
not the meaning of life.
Lex Fridman (01:45.080)
That's some sort of metaphysical claim.
John Vervaeke (01:47.440)
Meaning in life are those factors that make people rate their lives as more meaningful,
Lex Fridman (01:52.480)
worth living, worth the suffering that they have to endure.
Lex Fridman (01:55.920)
And when you study that, what you see is it's a sense of connectedness,
Lex Fridman (02:03.160)
connectedness to yourself, to other people, to the world,
Lex Fridman (02:07.240)
and a particular kind of connectedness.
Lex Fridman (02:09.920)
You want to be connected to things that have a value and an existence
John Vervaeke (02:14.960)
independent of your egocentric preferences and concerns.
Lex Fridman (02:19.120)
This is why, for example, having a child is considered very meaningful,
John Vervaeke (02:21.920)
because you're connecting to something that's going to have a life and a value
Lex Fridman (02:26.040)
independent of you.
John Vervaeke (02:29.000)
Now, the question that comes up for me, well, there's two questions.
Lex Fridman (02:33.360)
One is, why is that at risk right now?
Lex Fridman (02:36.560)
And then secondly, and I think you have to answer the second question first,
Lex Fridman (02:41.080)
which is, well, yeah, but why is meaning so important?
Lex Fridman (02:44.040)
Why is this sense of connectedness so important to human beings?
Lex Fridman (02:46.600)
Why, when it is lacking, do they typically fall into depression,
Lex Fridman (02:51.040)
potentially mental illness, addiction, self destructive behavior?
Lex Fridman (02:55.120)
And so the first answer I give you is, well, it's that sense of connectedness.
Lex Fridman (02:59.480)
And people often express it metaphorically.
Lex Fridman (03:01.160)
They want to be connected to something larger than themselves.
John Vervaeke (03:03.760)
They want to matter.
Lex Fridman (03:05.120)
They don't mean it literally.
John Vervaeke (03:06.640)
I mean, if I chained you to a mountain, you wouldn't thereby say, oh,
Lex Fridman (03:09.640)
now my life is so fulfilling, right?
Lex Fridman (03:12.040)
So what they're trying to convey, they're using this metaphor to try and say,
Lex Fridman (03:15.600)
they want to be connected.
John Vervaeke (03:17.240)
They want to be connected to something real.
Lex Fridman (03:19.080)
They want to make a difference and matter to it.
Lex Fridman (03:22.200)
And one way of asking them, well, you know, what's meaningful is,
Lex Fridman (03:27.480)
tell me what you would like to continue to exist even if you weren't around
Lex Fridman (03:31.120)
anymore, and how are you connected to it, and how do you matter to it?
Lex Fridman (03:37.640)
That's one way of trying to get at what is the source of meaning for you,
John Vervaeke (03:44.000)
is if you were no longer there, you would like it to continue existing.
John Vervaeke (03:49.920)
That's not the only part of the definition probably, because there's probably many
John Vervaeke (03:54.200)
things that aren't a source of meaning for me that maybe I find beautiful
Lex Fridman (04:01.320)
that I would like to continue existing.
John Vervaeke (04:03.200)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (04:04.000)
If it contributes to your life being meaningful, you are connected to it
John Vervaeke (04:08.520)
in some way, and it matters to you, and you matter to it in that you make
Lex Fridman (04:15.600)
some difference to it.
John Vervaeke (04:16.840)
That's when it goes from being just sort of true, good, and beautiful,
Lex Fridman (04:20.040)
to being a source of meaning for you in your life.
Lex Fridman (04:23.120)
Is the meaning crisis a new thing, or has it always been with us?
Lex Fridman (04:27.400)
Is it part of the human condition in general?
John Vervaeke (04:30.120)
That's an excellent question.
Lex Fridman (04:31.600)
And part of the argument I made in Awakening from the Meaning Crisis is
John Vervaeke (04:35.160)
there's two aspects to it.
Lex Fridman (04:37.640)
One is that there are perennial problems, perennial threats to meaning.
Lex Fridman (04:43.800)
And in that sense, human beings are always vulnerable to despair.
Lex Fridman (04:47.760)
You know, the book of Ecclesiastes is, it's all vanity, it's all meaningless.
Lex Fridman (04:52.960)
But there's also historical forces that have made those perennial problems more
Lex Fridman (05:00.680)
pertinent, more pressing, more difficult for people to deal with.
Lex Fridman (05:05.880)
And so the meaning crisis is actually the intersection of perennial problems,
Lex Fridman (05:10.880)
finding existence absurd, experiencing existential anxiety, feeling alienated,
Lex Fridman (05:17.280)
and then pressing historical factors, which have to do with the loss of the
Lex Fridman (05:21.560)
resources that human beings have typically cross historically and cross
John Vervaeke (05:26.120)
culturally made use of in order to address these perennial problems.
Lex Fridman (05:32.040)
Is there something potentially deeper than just a lack of meaning that speaks
Lex Fridman (05:39.520)
to the fact that we're vulnerable to despair?
Lex Fridman (05:42.880)
You know, Ernest Becker talked about the, in his book Denial of Death,
John Vervaeke (05:47.400)
about the fear of death and being an important motivator in our life.
Lex Fridman (05:52.480)
As William James said, death is the warm at the core of the human condition.
John Vervaeke (05:56.880)
Is it possible that this kind of search for meaning is coupled or can be seen
Lex Fridman (06:06.240)
from the perspective of trying to escape the reality, the thought of one's own mortality?
John Vervaeke (06:15.480)
Yeah, Becker and the terror management theory that have come out of it,
John Vervaeke (06:19.040)
there's been some good work around sort of providing empirical support for that claim.
John Vervaeke (06:26.600)
Some of the work, not so good.
Lex Fridman (06:28.960)
So which aspects do you find convincing?
Lex Fridman (06:31.360)
Can you steel man that case and then can you argue against it?
Lex Fridman (06:35.080)
So what aspects I find convincing is that human finitude, being finite,
John Vervaeke (06:42.600)
being inherently limited is very problematic for us.
Lex Fridman (06:49.000)
Given the extensive use of the word problematic, I like that you used that word
John Vervaeke (06:54.080)
to describe one's own mortality as problematic.
John Vervaeke (06:57.240)
Because people sort of on Twitter use the word problematic when they disagree with somebody.
Lex Fridman (07:01.760)
But this, to me, seems to be the ultimate problematic aspect of the human condition
Lex Fridman (07:06.320)
is that we die and it ends.
John Vervaeke (07:08.480)
I think I'm not disagreeing with you, but I'm trying to get you to consider
Lex Fridman (07:14.360)
that your mortality is not an event in the future.
John Vervaeke (07:16.760)
It's a state you're in right now.
Lex Fridman (07:19.440)
That's what I'm trying to shift.
Lex Fridman (07:23.400)
So your mortality is just a...
Lex Fridman (07:26.160)
We talk about something that causes mortality fatal.
Lex Fridman (07:30.280)
But what we actually mean is it's full of fate.
Lex Fridman (07:33.520)
And I don't mean in the sense of things are prewritten.
Lex Fridman (07:36.520)
What I mean is the sense of the universe doesn't care about your personal narrative.
Lex Fridman (07:44.400)
You can just have met the person that is going to be the love of your life.
John Vervaeke (07:49.360)
It's the culmination of your whole project for happiness,
Lex Fridman (07:53.920)
and you step into the street and a truck hits you and you die.
John Vervaeke (07:58.120)
That's mortality.
Lex Fridman (07:59.320)
Mortality isn't just some far flung event.
John Vervaeke (08:02.680)
It's that every moment we are subject to fate in that way.
Lex Fridman (08:09.280)
So you can think of lots of little deaths you experience whenever all the projects
Lex Fridman (08:16.200)
and the plans you make come up against the fact that the universe can just roll over them.
Lex Fridman (08:22.320)
The death is the indifference of nature of the universe to your existence.
Lex Fridman (08:28.760)
And so in that sense, it is always here with us.
John Vervaeke (08:31.960)
Yeah, but you're vulnerable in so many ways other than just the ending of your biological life.
John Vervaeke (08:38.480)
Because it's interesting, if you rate what people fear most, death is not number one.
Lex Fridman (08:43.600)
They often put public speaking as number one.
John Vervaeke (08:47.160)
Because the death of status or reputation can also be a profound loss for human beings.
Lex Fridman (08:54.120)
It can drive them into despair.
Lex Fridman (08:56.360)
So as the terror management folks would say, as Ernest Becker would say,
John Vervaeke (09:00.360)
that a self report on a survey is not an accurate way to capture what is actually
John Vervaeke (09:06.000)
at the core of the motivation of a human being.
Lex Fridman (09:08.360)
That we could be terrified of death.
Lex Fridman (09:10.680)
And we, from childhood, since we realized the absurdity of the fact that the right ends,
John Vervaeke (09:18.560)
we've learned to really try to forget about it, try to construct illusions that allow us
John Vervaeke (09:26.560)
to escape momentarily or for prolonged periods of time the realization that we die.
John Vervaeke (09:32.120)
Okay, so first, I took it seriously, but now I want to say why there's some empirical work
John Vervaeke (09:37.920)
that makes me want to reconsider it.
Lex Fridman (09:39.760)
So terror management theory is you do things like you give people a list of words to read.
Lex Fridman (09:45.840)
And in those lists are words associated with death, cough, and funeral.
Lex Fridman (09:51.040)
And then you see what happens to people.
Lex Fridman (09:52.640)
And generally, they start to become more rigid in their thinking.
Lex Fridman (09:55.760)
They tend to identify with their worldview.
John Vervaeke (09:58.920)
They lose cognitive flexibility.
Lex Fridman (10:01.840)
That's if you present it to them in that third person perspective.
Lex Fridman (10:04.880)
But if you get them to go in the first person perspective and imagine that they're dying
Lex Fridman (10:11.120)
and that the people that they care about are there with them, they don't show those responses.
John Vervaeke (10:17.760)
In fact, they show us an increase in cognitive flexibility, an increase in openness.
Lex Fridman (10:23.200)
See, so I'm trying to say we might be putting the cart before the horse.
John Vervaeke (10:27.160)
It might not be death per se, but the kind of meaning that is present or absent in death
Lex Fridman (10:32.600)
that is the crucial thing for us.
John Vervaeke (10:34.640)
By the way, to push back, I don't think you took it seriously.
John Vervaeke (10:37.400)
I don't think you truly steel manned the case because you're saying that death is always
Lex Fridman (10:43.120)
present with us, yes, but isn't there a case to be made that it is one of the major motivators?
John Vervaeke (10:49.320)
Nietzsche, will to power, Freud wanting to have sex with your mother, all the different
John Vervaeke (10:55.080)
explanations of what is truly motivating us human beings.
John Vervaeke (10:58.600)
Isn't there a strong case to be made that this death thing is a really damn good, if
Lex Fridman (11:06.520)
not anything, a tool to motivate the behavior of humans?
John Vervaeke (11:12.120)
I'm not saying that the avoidance of death is not significant for human beings, but I'm
John Vervaeke (11:18.360)
proposing to you that human beings have a capacity for considering certain deaths meaningful
Lex Fridman (11:25.300)
and certain deaths meaningless, and we have lots of evidence that people are willing to
John Vervaeke (11:31.280)
sacrifice their biological existence for a death they consider meaningful.
Lex Fridman (11:36.200)
Are you personally afraid of your death if you think about it?
John Vervaeke (11:40.400)
As somebody who produces a lot of ideas, records them, writes them down, is a deep thinker,
John Vervaeke (11:48.320)
admired thinker, and as the years go on, become more and more admired, does it scare you that
Lex Fridman (11:55.800)
the ride ends?
Lex Fridman (11:56.800)
No.
John Vervaeke (11:57.800)
I mean, you have to talk to me on all my levels.
John Vervaeke (12:00.600)
I'm a biological organism, so if something's thrown at my head, I'll duck and things like
John Vervaeke (12:04.760)
that.
Lex Fridman (12:06.280)
But if you're asking me, do I long to live forever, no.
John Vervaeke (12:13.400)
In the Buddhist tradition, there are practices that are designed to make you aware of simultaneously
Lex Fridman (12:19.400)
the horror of mortality and the horror of immortality.
John Vervaeke (12:22.800)
The thought of living forever is actually horrific to me.
Lex Fridman (12:29.280)
Are those the only two options?
John Vervaeke (12:32.600)
Like when you're sitting with a loved one or watching a movie you just really love or
John Vervaeke (12:39.960)
a book you really love, you don't want it to end, you don't necessarily always flip
John Vervaeke (12:45.000)
it to the other aspect, the complete opposite of the thought experiment.
Lex Fridman (12:49.680)
What happens if the book lasts forever?
John Vervaeke (12:52.720)
There's got to be a middle ground, like the snooze button.
John Vervaeke (12:55.080)
Sure you don't want to sleep forever, but maybe press the snooze button and get an extra
John Vervaeke (12:58.960)
15 minutes.
John Vervaeke (13:01.040)
There's surely some kind of balance, that fear seems to be a source of an intense appreciation
John Vervaeke (13:10.380)
of the moment, in part, and that's what the Stoics talked about, sort of the meditate
Lex Fridman (13:16.240)
on one's mortality.
John Vervaeke (13:17.240)
Sure.
John Vervaeke (13:18.240)
It seems to be a nice wake up call to that life is full of moments that are beautiful
Lex Fridman (13:26.560)
and then you don't get an infinite number of them.
John Vervaeke (13:29.160)
Right, and the Stoic response was not the project of trying to extend the duration of
John Vervaeke (13:34.560)
your life, but to deepen those moments so they become as satisfying as possible so that
Lex Fridman (13:42.880)
when death comes it does not strike you as any kind of calamity.
Lex Fridman (13:46.880)
Does that project ring true for your own personal feelings?
Lex Fridman (13:50.880)
I think so.
Lex Fridman (13:51.920)
Do you think about your mortality?
Lex Fridman (13:53.720)
I used to.
John Vervaeke (13:54.720)
I don't so much anymore.
John Vervaeke (13:59.520)
Part of it, as I'm older and your temporal horizon flips somewhere in your 30s or 40s,
John Vervaeke (14:05.400)
you don't live from your birth, you live towards your death.
Lex Fridman (14:09.120)
That's such a beautiful phrase, the temporal horizon flips.
John Vervaeke (14:13.220)
That's so true.
Lex Fridman (14:14.900)
That's so true.
Lex Fridman (14:15.900)
At what point is that?
John Vervaeke (14:18.880)
The point before which the world of opportunity and possibility is infinite before you.
John Vervaeke (14:25.840)
Yeah, it's like Peter Pan.
Lex Fridman (14:27.400)
There's all these golden possibilities and you fly around between them.
John Vervaeke (14:31.600)
Yes, very much.
Lex Fridman (14:33.200)
And then when it flips, you start to look for a different model, the Socratic, the Stoic
John Vervaeke (14:39.800)
model, Buddhism has also influenced me, which is more about, wait, when I look at my desires,
Lex Fridman (14:48.480)
I seem to have two meta desires.
John Vervaeke (14:50.720)
In addition to satisfying a particular desire, I want whatever satisfies my desire to be
John Vervaeke (14:56.080)
real and whatever is satisfying my desire to not cause internal conflict but bring something
John Vervaeke (15:03.920)
like peace of mind.
Lex Fridman (15:05.560)
And so I more and more move towards how can I live such that those two meta desires are
John Vervaeke (15:12.600)
a constant frame within which I'm trying to satisfy my specific desires.
Lex Fridman (15:19.920)
What do you think happens after we die?
John Vervaeke (15:22.080)
I think mind and life go away completely when we die.
Lex Fridman (15:28.960)
And I think that's actually significantly important for the kind of beings that we are.
John Vervaeke (15:37.600)
We are the kinds of beings that can come to that awareness and then we have a responsibility
Lex Fridman (15:44.240)
to decide how we're going to comport ourselves towards it.
Lex Fridman (15:48.440)
Can you linger on what that means, the mind goes away?
John Vervaeke (15:52.500)
Like when you're playing music and the last instrument is put down, the song is over.
John Vervaeke (16:00.600)
Doesn't mean the song wasn't beautiful.
Lex Fridman (16:02.360)
Doesn't mean the song wasn't complex.
John Vervaeke (16:04.480)
Doesn't mean the song didn't add to the value of the universe and its existence, but it
Lex Fridman (16:09.600)
came to an end.
John Vervaeke (16:11.120)
Is there some aspect in which some part of mind was there before the human and remains
Lex Fridman (16:18.680)
after?
Lex Fridman (16:20.200)
Something like panpsychism or is it too much for us limited cognitive beings to understand?
Lex Fridman (16:26.320)
Something like panpsychism, I take it seriously.
John Vervaeke (16:29.520)
I don't think it's a ridiculous proposal, but I think it has insoluble problems that
Lex Fridman (16:33.800)
make me doubt it.
John Vervaeke (16:37.040)
Any idea that the mind is some kind of ultimately immaterial substance also has for me just
Lex Fridman (16:45.520)
devastating problems.
John Vervaeke (16:46.600)
Those are the two kinds of framework that people usually propose in order to support
Lex Fridman (16:51.960)
some kind of idea of immortality.
John Vervaeke (16:53.920)
I find both very problematic.
John Vervaeke (16:56.320)
The fact that we participate in distributed cognition, that most of our problem solving
John Vervaeke (17:02.160)
is not done as individuals but in groups, this is something I work on, I've published
Lex Fridman (17:06.560)
on that.
John Vervaeke (17:07.560)
I think that's important.
Lex Fridman (17:09.600)
But most of the people who do work on systems of distributed cognition think that while
John Vervaeke (17:15.560)
there's such a thing as collective intelligence, there's no good evidence that there's collective
Lex Fridman (17:20.240)
consciousness.
John Vervaeke (17:21.240)
In fact, it's often called zombie agency for that reason.
Lex Fridman (17:25.960)
And so while I think it's very clear that no one person runs an airline, and there's
John Vervaeke (17:32.200)
a collective intelligence that solves that problem, I do not think that collective intelligence
Lex Fridman (17:36.280)
supports any kind of consciousness.
Lex Fridman (17:38.840)
And so therefore, I don't think the fact that I participate, which I regularly and
John Vervaeke (17:43.600)
reliably do in distributed cognition, gives me any reason to believe that that participation
John Vervaeke (17:49.320)
grounds some kind of consciousness.
Lex Fridman (17:51.280)
Okay, there's so many things to mention there.
John Vervaeke (17:54.640)
First of all, distributed cognition, maybe that's a synonym for collective intelligence.
Lex Fridman (17:59.840)
So that means a bunch of humans individually are able to think, have cognitive machines,
Lex Fridman (18:08.400)
and are somehow able to interact through the process of dialogue, as you talk about, to
Lex Fridman (18:15.160)
morph different ideas together, like this idea landscape together.
John Vervaeke (18:20.320)
It's so interesting to think about, okay, well, you do have these fascinating distributed
John Vervaeke (18:27.000)
cognition systems, but consciousness does not propagate in the same way as intelligence.
Lex Fridman (18:35.920)
But isn't there a case, if we just look at intelligence, if we look at us humans as a
John Vervaeke (18:41.880)
collection of smaller organisms, which we are, and so there's like a hierarchy of organisms,
John Vervaeke (18:50.280)
tiny ones, work together to form tiny villages that you can then start to see as individual
John Vervaeke (18:57.440)
organisms that are then also forming bigger villages and interacting different ways and
John Vervaeke (19:03.920)
function becomes more and more complex.
Lex Fridman (19:06.160)
And eventually we get to us humans to where we start to think, well, we're an individual,
Lex Fridman (19:10.440)
but really we're not.
Lex Fridman (19:11.720)
There's billions of organisms inside us, both domestic and foreign.
Lex Fridman (19:18.600)
So isn't that building up consciousnesses like turtles all the way up to us, our consciousness?
Lex Fridman (19:27.840)
Why does it have to stop with us humans?
John Vervaeke (19:29.760)
Are we the only, like, is this the phase transition when it becomes a zombie like giant hierarchical
John Vervaeke (19:38.680)
village that first like, oh, there's like a singing angels and it's consciousness is
John Vervaeke (19:44.860)
born in just us humans.
Lex Fridman (19:47.540)
Do bacteria have consciousness?
John Vervaeke (19:49.520)
Not bacteria, but maybe you could say bacteria does, but like the interesting complicated
Lex Fridman (19:54.200)
organisms that are within us have consciousness.
John Vervaeke (19:57.480)
I think it's proper to argue, and I have, that like a paramecium or bacteria has a kind
John Vervaeke (1:00:00.800)
possibly find out, it is irrational for me to pay any attention to that possibility.
Lex Fridman (1:00:08.160)
So I could keep doing the science as I'm doing it.
John Vervaeke (1:00:11.600)
If there's a way of finding out, science is my best bet, I believe, for finding out if
John Vervaeke (1:00:17.840)
it's, what's true and what's an illusion.
Lex Fridman (1:00:20.440)
So I keep doing what I'm doing.
Lex Fridman (1:00:22.000)
So it's an argument if you move it to that, that makes no existential difference to me.
Lex Fridman (1:00:26.600)
Oh man, that is such a deeply philosophical argument.
John Vervaeke (1:00:31.400)
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Lex Fridman (1:00:34.880)
Nobody's saying science doesn't work.
John Vervaeke (1:00:38.400)
It's an interesting question, just like before humans were able to fly, they would ask a
Lex Fridman (1:00:43.880)
question, can we build the machine that makes us fly?
John Vervaeke (1:00:47.480)
In that same way, we're asking a question to which we don't know an answer, but we may
Lex Fridman (1:00:51.600)
know in the future, how much of this whole thing is an illusion?
Lex Fridman (1:00:58.000)
And I think in a second category, the first, I forgot which one, yes, science will be able
Lex Fridman (1:01:02.520)
to help us discover this.
John Vervaeke (1:01:04.440)
Otherwise, yes, for sure, that doesn't matter.
John Vervaeke (1:01:07.960)
If we're living in a simulation, we can't find out at all, then it doesn't matter.
Lex Fridman (1:01:13.120)
But yes, the whole point is as we get deeper and deeper understanding of our mind of cognition,
John Vervaeke (1:01:20.580)
we might be able to discover like how much of this is a big charade constructed by our
John Vervaeke (1:01:25.220)
mind to keep us fed or something like that.
John Vervaeke (1:01:28.680)
Some weird, some weird, very simplistic explanation that it will ultimately in its simplicity
John Vervaeke (1:01:34.620)
be beautiful, or as we try to build robots and instill them, instill them with consciousness,
John Vervaeke (1:01:44.760)
with ability to feel, those kinds of things, we'll discover, well, let's just trick them
John Vervaeke (1:01:54.520)
into thinking they feel and have consciousness and they'll believe it.
Lex Fridman (1:01:58.720)
And then they'll have a deeply fulfilling and meaningful lives.
Lex Fridman (1:02:01.900)
And on top of that, they will interact with us in a way that will make our lives more
Lex Fridman (1:02:05.720)
meaningful.
Lex Fridman (1:02:06.720)
And then all of a sudden, it's like at the end of Animal Farm, you look at pigs and humans
Lex Fridman (1:02:11.160)
and you look at robots and humans and you can't tell the difference between either.
Lex Fridman (1:02:14.920)
And we in that way start to understand that much of this existence could be an illusion.
Lex Fridman (1:02:21.960)
Okay, well, I have two responses to that.
John Vervaeke (1:02:25.220)
First is the progress that's being made on like AGI is about making whatever the system
John Vervaeke (1:02:37.080)
is that's going to be the source of intelligent more and more dynamically and recursively
John Vervaeke (1:02:42.720)
self correcting.
Lex Fridman (1:02:45.080)
That's part of what's happening.
John Vervaeke (1:02:48.920)
Extrapolating from that, you get a system that gets better and better at self correcting,
Lex Fridman (1:02:52.520)
but that's exactly what I was describing before as the transformative theory of truth.
John Vervaeke (1:02:59.600)
The other response to that is people think of science just as sort of end proposition.
Lex Fridman (1:03:09.420)
Let me just use the evolutionary example again, right?
John Vervaeke (1:03:15.700)
If I'm gathering the evidence, I need to know a lot of geology, I need to know plate tectonics,
John Vervaeke (1:03:20.520)
I need to know about radioactive decay, I need to know about genetics, and then in order
John Vervaeke (1:03:25.560)
to measure all those things, I need to know how microscopes work, I need to know how pencils
Lex Fridman (1:03:30.160)
and paper work, I need to know how rulers work, I need to know how English... You can't
John Vervaeke (1:03:36.480)
isolate knowledge that way.
Lex Fridman (1:03:38.680)
And if you say, well, most of that's an illusion, then you're in a weird position of saying
John Vervaeke (1:03:43.200)
somehow all of these illusions get to this truth claim.
Lex Fridman (1:03:48.360)
I think it goes in reverse.
John Vervaeke (1:03:50.620)
If you think this is the truth claim, the measuring and all the things that scientists
John Vervaeke (1:03:55.960)
would do to gather on all the ways the theories are converging together, that also has to
John Vervaeke (1:04:01.660)
be fundamentally right, because it's not like Lego, it is an interwoven whole.
John Vervaeke (1:04:07.920)
Yes, it definitely is interwoven, but I love how I'm playing the devil advocate for the
John Vervaeke (1:04:13.180)
illusion world.
Lex Fridman (1:04:14.720)
But there's an aspect to truth that has to be consistent, deeply consistent across an
John Vervaeke (1:04:21.800)
entire system.
Lex Fridman (1:04:23.360)
But inside a video game, that same kind of consistency evolves.
John Vervaeke (1:04:28.480)
There's rules about interactions, there's game theoretic patterns about what's good
Lex Fridman (1:04:33.560)
and bad and so on, and there's sources of joy and fear and anger, and then understanding
John Vervaeke (1:04:39.640)
about a world, what happens in different dynamics of a video game, even simple video games.
Lex Fridman (1:04:44.460)
So there's no, even inside an illusion, you can have consistency and develop truths inside
John Vervaeke (1:04:52.680)
that illusion and iteratively evolve your truth with the illusion.
Lex Fridman (1:04:59.400)
Okay, but that comes back.
John Vervaeke (1:05:02.040)
Is that process genuinely self correcting, or are you in the simulation in which there
Lex Fridman (1:05:06.320)
is no possible doorway out?
John Vervaeke (1:05:08.560)
Because if, my argument is, if you find one or two doorways, that feeds back.
John Vervaeke (1:05:12.920)
In fact, you can't just say, this is the little tiny island where we have the truth.
John Vervaeke (1:05:17.680)
That's the point I'm making.
Lex Fridman (1:05:18.680)
Right.
Lex Fridman (1:05:19.680)
But what if you find that, I think there is doorways, if that's the case.
Lex Fridman (1:05:24.400)
And what if you find a doorway and you step out, but you're yet in another simulation?
John Vervaeke (1:05:29.760)
I mean, that's the point.
Lex Fridman (1:05:31.860)
That's so self correcting.
John Vervaeke (1:05:34.360)
When you fix the self deception, you don't know if there's other bigger self deceptions
Lex Fridman (1:05:40.640)
you're operating on.
John Vervaeke (1:05:41.640)
Of course.
Lex Fridman (1:05:42.640)
That makes sense.
John Vervaeke (1:05:43.640)
That's right.
Lex Fridman (1:05:44.640)
But again, we're back to when I step into the second simulation, is it, can I get the
Lex Fridman (1:05:49.440)
doorway out of that or right?
John Vervaeke (1:05:51.620)
Because if you just make the infinite regressive simulations, you basically said, I have a
John Vervaeke (1:05:55.400)
simulation that I can never get out of.
Lex Fridman (1:05:57.280)
Yeah.
John Vervaeke (1:05:58.280)
I think there's always a bigger pile of bullshit is the claim I'm trying to make here.
Lex Fridman (1:06:04.400)
Okay.
John Vervaeke (1:06:07.000)
Let me dance around meaning once more.
Lex Fridman (1:06:09.160)
Sure.
John Vervaeke (1:06:10.160)
I ask people on this podcast or at a bar or to imaginary people I talk to in a room when
Lex Fridman (1:06:16.720)
I'm all by myself, the question of the meaning of life.
Lex Fridman (1:06:22.040)
Do you think this is a useful question?
Lex Fridman (1:06:24.900)
You drew a line between meaning in life and meaning of life.
Lex Fridman (1:06:29.320)
Do you think this is a useful question?
John Vervaeke (1:06:31.680)
No, I think it's like the question, what's north of the North Pole or what time is it
Lex Fridman (1:06:35.720)
on the sun?
John Vervaeke (1:06:36.720)
It sounds like a question, but it's actually not really a question because it has a presupposition
John Vervaeke (1:06:41.400)
in it that I think is fundamentally flawed.
John Vervaeke (1:06:45.840)
If I understand what people mean by it, and it's actually often not that clear, but when
John Vervaeke (1:06:50.400)
they talk about the meaning of life, they are talking about there are some feature of
John Vervaeke (1:06:55.120)
the universe in and of itself that I have to discover and enter into a relationship
John Vervaeke (1:07:01.040)
with and there's in that sense, a plan for me or something.
Lex Fridman (1:07:05.680)
And so that's a property of the universe.
John Vervaeke (1:07:09.600)
That's a very deep, serious, metaphysical, ontological claim.
Lex Fridman (1:07:14.920)
You're claiming to know something fundamental about the structure of reality.
John Vervaeke (1:07:18.320)
There were times when people thought they had a worldview that legitimated it, like
John Vervaeke (1:07:22.560)
God is running the universe and God cares about you and there's a plan, et cetera.
Lex Fridman (1:07:28.600)
But I think a better way of understanding meaning is not...
Lex Fridman (1:07:36.080)
Meaning is like the graspability.
John Vervaeke (1:07:37.080)
Remember, I talked about optimal grip, it's like the graspability of that cup.
Lex Fridman (1:07:41.180)
Is that in me?
John Vervaeke (1:07:42.960)
No.
Lex Fridman (1:07:44.160)
Is it in the cup?
John Vervaeke (1:07:45.160)
No, because a fly can't grasp it.
Lex Fridman (1:07:47.880)
Well, graspability is in my hand, well, I can't grasp Africa.
John Vervaeke (1:07:51.680)
No, no, there is a real relation, fittedness between me and this cup.
Lex Fridman (1:07:58.320)
Same thing with the adaptivity of an organism.
Lex Fridman (1:08:00.480)
Is the adaptivity of a great white shark in the great white shark?
Lex Fridman (1:08:03.400)
Drop it in the Sahara, dies, okay?
John Vervaeke (1:08:07.240)
Meaning isn't in me, I think that's romantic bullshit, and it isn't in the universe, it
Lex Fridman (1:08:14.960)
is a proper relationship.
John Vervaeke (1:08:17.280)
I've coined the phrase transjective, it is the binding relationship between the subjective
Lex Fridman (1:08:22.040)
and the objective.
Lex Fridman (1:08:23.340)
And therefore, when you're asking the question about the meaning of life, you are, I think,
Lex Fridman (1:08:31.560)
misrepresenting the nature of meaning.
Lex Fridman (1:08:33.760)
Just like when you ask, what time is it on the sun?
Lex Fridman (1:08:36.480)
You're misrepresenting how we derive clock time.
John Vervaeke (1:08:40.740)
At the risk of disagreeing with a man who did 50 lectures on the meaning crisis, let
Lex Fridman (1:08:45.440)
me hard disagree.
Lex Fridman (1:08:48.000)
But I think we probably agree, but it's just like a dance, like any dialogue.
John Vervaeke (1:08:52.720)
I think meaning of life gets at the same kind of relationship between you and the glass
John Vervaeke (1:08:59.120)
of water, between whatever the forces of the universe that created the planets, the proteins,
John Vervaeke (1:09:12.760)
the multi cell organisms, the intelligent early humans, the beautiful human civilizations
Lex Fridman (1:09:21.640)
and the technologies that will overtake them.
John Vervaeke (1:09:26.360)
It's trying to understand the relevance realization of the Big Bang to the feeling of love you
John Vervaeke (1:09:39.020)
have for another human being.
Lex Fridman (1:09:42.080)
It's reaching for that, even though it's hopeless to understand.
John Vervaeke (1:09:46.500)
It's the question, the asking of the question is the reaching.
Lex Fridman (1:09:50.420)
Now it is, in fact, romantic bullshit, technically speaking.
Lex Fridman (1:09:58.480)
But it could be that romantic bullshit is actually the essence of life and the source
Lex Fridman (1:10:07.700)
of its deepest meaning.
John Vervaeke (1:10:09.520)
Well, I hope not.
Lex Fridman (1:10:12.620)
But technically speaking, romantic bullshit, meaning romantic in the philosophical sense,
John Vervaeke (1:10:18.760)
yes.
Lex Fridman (1:10:19.760)
I mean, what is poetry?
Lex Fridman (1:10:23.600)
What is music?
Lex Fridman (1:10:24.600)
What is the magic you feel when you hear a beautiful piece of music?
Lex Fridman (1:10:27.840)
What is that?
Lex Fridman (1:10:28.840)
Oh, but that's exactly to my point.
Lex Fridman (1:10:31.200)
Is music inside you or is it outside you?
Lex Fridman (1:10:34.760)
It's both and neither.
Lex Fridman (1:10:36.080)
And that's precisely why you find it so meaningful.
Lex Fridman (1:10:39.120)
In fact, it can be so meaningful you can regard it as sacred.
Lex Fridman (1:10:43.480)
What you said, I don't think, and you preface that we might not be in disagreement, right?
Lex Fridman (1:10:48.080)
What you said is, no, no, no, there is a way in which reality is realizing itself.
Lex Fridman (1:10:56.000)
And I want my relevance realization to be in the best possible relationship, the sort
Lex Fridman (1:11:04.320)
of meta optimal grip to what is most real.
John Vervaeke (1:11:07.000)
I totally agree.
John Vervaeke (1:11:08.360)
I totally think that's one of the things, I said this earlier, one of our meta desires
John Vervaeke (1:11:12.100)
is whatever is satisfying our desires is also real.
John Vervaeke (1:11:16.920)
I do this with my students, I'll say, you know, because romantic relationships sort
John Vervaeke (1:11:21.800)
of take the role of God and religion and history and culture for us right now.
Lex Fridman (1:11:25.520)
We put everything on them and that's why they break, right?
John Vervaeke (1:11:29.280)
Strong words.
Lex Fridman (1:11:30.280)
Got it.
Lex Fridman (1:11:31.820)
But I'll say to them, okay, how many of you are in really satisfying romantic relationships?
Lex Fridman (1:11:36.660)
Put up your hands.
John Vervaeke (1:11:37.660)
Then I'll say, okay, I'm now only talking to these people.
John Vervaeke (1:11:40.240)
Of those people, how many of you would want to know your partner's cheating on you even
John Vervaeke (1:11:44.220)
if it means the destruction of the relationship, 95% of them put up their hands.
Lex Fridman (1:11:49.140)
And I say, but why?
Lex Fridman (1:11:51.300)
And here's my students who are usually all sort of bitten with cynicism and postmodernism
Lex Fridman (1:11:56.120)
and they'll just say spontaneously, well, because it's not real, because it's not real.
John Vervaeke (1:12:01.640)
Right.
Lex Fridman (1:12:02.640)
So I think what you're pointing to is actually, you're pointing not to an objective or a
John Vervaeke (1:12:12.360)
subjective thing.
Lex Fridman (1:12:14.160)
Empiricism says it's subjective.
John Vervaeke (1:12:15.440)
There's some sort of, I guess, like positivism or Lockean empiricism says it's objective,
Lex Fridman (1:12:19.760)
but you're saying, no, no, no, there's reality realization and can I get relevance realization
Lex Fridman (1:12:24.620)
to be optimally gripping in the best right relationship with it?
Lex Fridman (1:12:30.060)
And there's good reason you can because think about it, your relevance realization isn't
John Vervaeke (1:12:33.820)
just representing properties of the world, it's instantiating it.
John Vervaeke (1:12:38.140)
There's something very similar to biological evolution, which is that the guts of life,
John Vervaeke (1:12:42.780)
if I'm right, running your cognition, it's not just that you have ideas, you actually
Lex Fridman (1:12:48.620)
instantiate, that's what I mean by conformity, the same principles.
John Vervaeke (1:12:52.700)
They're within and without, they don't belong to you subjectively.
Lex Fridman (1:12:55.600)
They're not just out there, they're both at the same time.
Lex Fridman (1:12:58.380)
And they help to explain how you are actually bound to the evolutionary world.
Lex Fridman (1:13:03.660)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:13:04.660)
So it comes from both inside and from the outside.
Lex Fridman (1:13:07.340)
But there's still the question of the meaning of life, first of all, the big benefit of
John Vervaeke (1:13:14.100)
that question is that it shakes you out of your hamster in a wheel that is daily life,
John Vervaeke (1:13:21.200)
the mundane process of daily life, where you have a schedule, you wake up, you have kids,
John Vervaeke (1:13:26.340)
you have to take them to school, then you go to work and the da da da da da and repeats
John Vervaeke (1:13:30.740)
over and over and over and over and then you get increased salary and then you upgrade
John Vervaeke (1:13:35.100)
to home and that whole process.
John Vervaeke (1:13:40.060)
Asking about the meaning of life is so full of romantic bullshit that if you just allow
John Vervaeke (1:13:48.500)
yourself to take it seriously for a second, it forces you to pause and think, what's going
Lex Fridman (1:13:57.220)
on here?
Lex Fridman (1:13:58.500)
And then it ultimately, I think, does return to the question of meaning in those mundane
Lex Fridman (1:14:03.420)
things.
Lex Fridman (1:14:04.420)
What gives my life joy?
Lex Fridman (1:14:07.260)
What gives it lasting deliciousness?
Lex Fridman (1:14:12.380)
Where do I notice the magic and how can I have that magic return again and again?
Lex Fridman (1:14:16.740)
Beauty.
Lex Fridman (1:14:17.740)
And that ultimately what it returns to.
Lex Fridman (1:14:20.220)
But it's the same thing you do when you look up to the sky.
John Vervaeke (1:14:23.260)
You spend most of your day hurrying around looking at things on the surface, but when
John Vervaeke (1:14:27.340)
you look up to the sky and you see the stars, it fills you with the feeling of awe that
Lex Fridman (1:14:33.060)
forces you to pause and think in full context of like, what the hell is going on here?
John Vervaeke (1:14:39.580)
That, but also I think there is a, when you think too much about the meaning of a glass
Lex Fridman (1:14:50.180)
and relevance realization of a glass, you don't necessarily get at the core of what
Lex Fridman (1:14:56.420)
makes music beautiful.
Lex Fridman (1:14:58.780)
So sometimes you have to start at the biggest picture first.
Lex Fridman (1:15:02.260)
And I think meaning of life forces you to really go to the big bang and go to the universe
Lex Fridman (1:15:09.540)
and the whole thing, the origin of life.
Lex Fridman (1:15:12.380)
And I think sometimes you have to start there to discover the meaning in the day to day,
John Vervaeke (1:15:19.260)
I think, but perhaps you would disagree.
John Vervaeke (1:15:24.580)
In so far as the question makes you ask about the whole of your life and how much meaning
John Vervaeke (1:15:32.100)
is in the whole of your life.
Lex Fridman (1:15:34.640)
And in so far as it asks how much that is connected to reality, it's a good question.
Lex Fridman (1:15:40.820)
But it's a bad question in that it also makes you look for the answers in the wrong way.
John Vervaeke (1:15:47.180)
Now you said, and I agree with what you said, how we really answer this question is we come
John Vervaeke (1:15:52.260)
back to the meaning in life and we see how much that meaning in life is connected to
Lex Fridman (1:15:56.900)
reality.
John Vervaeke (1:15:58.220)
We pursue wisdom.
Lex Fridman (1:16:00.120)
And so for me, I don't need that question in order to provoke me into that stance.
Lex Fridman (1:16:08.220)
So let's return to the meaning crisis.
Lex Fridman (1:16:11.220)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (1:16:12.220)
What is the nature of the meaning crisis in modern times?
Lex Fridman (1:16:18.020)
What's its origin?
Lex Fridman (1:16:19.100)
What's its explanation?
John Vervaeke (1:16:20.100)
Well, remember what I said, what I argued, that the very processes that make us adaptively
John Vervaeke (1:16:25.100)
intelligent subject us to perennial problems of self deception, self destruction, creating
Lex Fridman (1:16:30.140)
bullshit for ourselves, for other people, all of that.
Lex Fridman (1:16:33.220)
And that can cause anxiety, existential anxiety, it can cause despair, it can cause a sense
Lex Fridman (1:16:42.600)
of absurdity.
John Vervaeke (1:16:45.180)
These are perennial problems.
Lex Fridman (1:16:47.940)
And across cultures and across historical periods, human beings have come up with ecologies
John Vervaeke (1:16:54.660)
of practices, there's no one practice, there's no panacea practice, they've come up with
John Vervaeke (1:16:58.100)
ecologies of practices for ameliorating that self deception and enhancing that fittedness,
John Vervaeke (1:17:05.300)
that connectedness that's at the core of meaning in life.
Lex Fridman (1:17:09.380)
That's prototypically what we call wisdom.
Lex Fridman (1:17:13.700)
And here's how I can show you one clear instance of the meaning crisis, is it's a wisdom famine.
Lex Fridman (1:17:22.940)
I do this regularly with my students.
Lex Fridman (1:17:26.780)
In the classroom I'll say, where do you go for information?
Lex Fridman (1:17:28.860)
They hold up their phone.
Lex Fridman (1:17:31.700)
Where do you go for knowledge?
John Vervaeke (1:17:32.700)
They're a little bit slower and probably because they're in my class, they'll say, well, science,
John Vervaeke (1:17:36.500)
the university.
Lex Fridman (1:17:37.500)
I'll say, where do you go for wisdom?
John Vervaeke (1:17:42.220)
There's a silence.
John Vervaeke (1:17:45.180)
Wisdom isn't optional, that's why it is perennial, cross cultural, cross historical, because
John Vervaeke (1:17:49.940)
of the perennial problems.
Lex Fridman (1:17:51.500)
But we do not have homes for ecologies of practices that fit into our scientific technological
John Vervaeke (1:18:00.120)
worldview so that they are considered legitimate.
Lex Fridman (1:18:03.040)
The fastest growing demographic group are the nones, N O N E S.
John Vervaeke (1:18:06.900)
They have no religious allegiance, but they are not primarily atheistic.
John Vervaeke (1:18:11.780)
They most frequently describe themselves with this very, this has become almost everybody
John Vervaeke (1:18:18.140)
now describes, I'm spiritual but not religious, which means they are trying to find a way
John Vervaeke (1:18:25.140)
of reducing the bullshit and enhancing the connectedness, but they don't want to turn
John Vervaeke (1:18:31.180)
to any of the legacy established religions by and large.
Lex Fridman (1:18:36.700)
Well isn't both religion and the nones, isn't wisdom a process, not a destination?
Lex Fridman (1:18:45.380)
So trying to find, if you're a deeply faithful religious person, you're also trying to find,
Lex Fridman (1:18:52.380)
right?
Lex Fridman (1:18:53.380)
So just because you have a place where you're looking or a set of traditions around which
Lex Fridman (1:18:59.660)
you're constructing the search, it's nevertheless a search.
Lex Fridman (1:19:05.180)
So I guess, is there a case to be made that this is just the usual human condition?
Lex Fridman (1:19:12.080)
How do you answer?
Lex Fridman (1:19:13.080)
If you asked five centuries ago, where do you look for wisdom?
John Vervaeke (1:19:16.900)
I mean, I suppose people would be more inclined to answer, well, the Bible or a religious
John Vervaeke (1:19:24.340)
text.
Lex Fridman (1:19:25.340)
Right.
Lex Fridman (1:19:26.340)
And they had a worldview that was considered not just religious, but also rational.
Lex Fridman (1:19:32.660)
So we now have these two things, orthogonal or often oppositional, spirituality and rationality.
Lex Fridman (1:19:40.460)
But if you go before a particular historical period, you look back in the Neoplatonic tradition,
Lex Fridman (1:19:44.940)
like before the scientific revolution, those two are not in opposition.
John Vervaeke (1:19:49.820)
They are deeply interwoven so that you can have a sense of legitimacy and deep realness
Lex Fridman (1:19:56.280)
and grounding in your practices.
John Vervaeke (1:19:59.780)
We don't have that anymore.
Lex Fridman (1:20:01.120)
And I'm not advocating for religion, neither am I an enemy of religion.
John Vervaeke (1:20:04.700)
I'll strengthen your case, by the way.
Lex Fridman (1:20:06.940)
So one of my RAs did research, and you get people who have committed themselves to cultivating
John Vervaeke (1:20:14.300)
wisdom.
Lex Fridman (1:20:15.300)
And you can look at people within religious traditions and people who are doing it in
John Vervaeke (1:20:19.420)
a purely secular framework.
John Vervaeke (1:20:21.800)
By many of the measures we use to study wisdom scientifically, the people in the religious
John Vervaeke (1:20:28.700)
paths do better than the secular.
Lex Fridman (1:20:32.220)
But here's the important point, there's no significant difference between the religious
John Vervaeke (1:20:37.140)
paths.
Lex Fridman (1:20:38.520)
So it's not like if you're following the path of Judaism, you're more likely to end up wiser
John Vervaeke (1:20:43.900)
than if you follow Buddhism.
Lex Fridman (1:20:45.940)
By the way, I don't know if that's my case.
John Vervaeke (1:20:47.180)
I was making the case that you don't need to have a religious affiliation to search
Lex Fridman (1:20:50.740)
for wisdom.
John Vervaeke (1:20:52.020)
It's that I thought along to the point you just made, that it doesn't matter which religious
Lex Fridman (1:20:57.900)
affiliation or none.
Lex Fridman (1:20:59.860)
But that's what I'm saying.
Lex Fridman (1:21:01.420)
Okay, so this is the tricky thing we're in.
John Vervaeke (1:21:04.360)
It does matter if you're in one, but it doesn't matter sort of the propositional creeds of
Lex Fridman (1:21:09.740)
that.
John Vervaeke (1:21:10.740)
There's something else at work.
John Vervaeke (1:21:12.640)
If you'll allow me this, there's a functionality to religion that we lost when we rejected
John Vervaeke (1:21:18.260)
all the propositional dogma.
Lex Fridman (1:21:20.460)
But there's a functionality there that we don't know how to recreate.
John Vervaeke (1:21:24.340)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:21:25.340)
What is that?
Lex Fridman (1:21:26.340)
Can you try to speak to that?
Lex Fridman (1:21:27.340)
What is that functionality?
Lex Fridman (1:21:28.340)
What is that?
Lex Fridman (1:21:29.340)
Why is that so useful?
John Vervaeke (1:21:31.700)
A bunch of stories, a bunch of myths, a bunch of narratives that are drenched in deep lessons
Lex Fridman (1:21:39.260)
about morality and all those kinds of things.
John Vervaeke (1:21:43.180)
What's the functional thing there that can't be replaced without a religious text by a
Lex Fridman (1:21:47.820)
nonreligious text?
John Vervaeke (1:21:49.700)
This is, for me, the golden question.
Lex Fridman (1:21:51.660)
So thank you.
Lex Fridman (1:21:52.660)
Do you have an answer?
Lex Fridman (1:21:54.780)
Yeah.
John Vervaeke (1:21:55.780)
I think I have a significant answer.
Lex Fridman (1:21:58.860)
I don't think it's complete, but I think it's important.
Lex Fridman (1:22:02.140)
And this is to step before the Cartesian revolution and think about many different kinds of knowing.
Lex Fridman (1:22:10.600)
And this is now something that is prominent within what's called 4E cognitive science,
John Vervaeke (1:22:15.380)
the kind of cognitive science I practice.
Lex Fridman (1:22:17.300)
And there's a lot of converging evidence for these different ways of knowing.
John Vervaeke (1:22:22.180)
There's propositional knowing.
Lex Fridman (1:22:23.500)
This is what we are most familiar with.
Lex Fridman (1:22:25.100)
In fact, it almost has a tyrannical status, right?
John Vervaeke (1:22:29.740)
This is knowing that something is the case, like that cats are mammals and it's stored
Lex Fridman (1:22:33.780)
in semantic memory, and we have tests of coherence and correspondence and conviction, right?
Lex Fridman (1:22:40.540)
There's procedural knowing.
John Vervaeke (1:22:41.620)
This is knowing how to do something.
Lex Fridman (1:22:46.180)
Skills are not theories.
John Vervaeke (1:22:47.820)
They're not beliefs.
Lex Fridman (1:22:48.820)
They're not true or false.
John Vervaeke (1:22:49.820)
They engage the world or they don't.
Lex Fridman (1:22:53.100)
And they are stored in a different kind of memory, procedural memory.
John Vervaeke (1:22:58.460)
Semantic memory can be damaged without any damage to procedural memory.
John Vervaeke (1:23:02.040)
That's why you have the prototypical story of somebody suffering Alzheimer's and they're
John Vervaeke (1:23:06.060)
losing all kinds of facts, but they can still sit down and play the piano flawlessly.
Lex Fridman (1:23:11.240)
Same kind of argument.
John Vervaeke (1:23:12.900)
There's perspectival knowing.
John Vervaeke (1:23:15.380)
This is knowing what it's like to be you here now in this situation, in this state of mind,
John Vervaeke (1:23:20.160)
the whole field of your salience landscaping, what it's like to be you here now.
Lex Fridman (1:23:25.860)
And you have a specific kind of memory around that, episodic memory, and you have a different
John Vervaeke (1:23:31.140)
criterion of realness.
Lex Fridman (1:23:33.200)
So you can get this by my friend Dan Schiappi and I, we studied the scientists using moving
John Vervaeke (1:23:39.900)
the rovers around, or you can take a look at people who are doing VR.
Lex Fridman (1:23:43.740)
People talk about they want to really be in the game, and that makes it real.
John Vervaeke (1:23:49.620)
They don't mean verisimilitude.
John Vervaeke (1:23:51.660)
You can get that sense of being in the game with something like Tetris, which doesn't
John Vervaeke (1:23:58.340)
look like the real world, and you can fail to have it in a video game that has a lot
Lex Fridman (1:24:03.620)
of verisimilitude.
John Vervaeke (1:24:04.620)
It's something else.
Lex Fridman (1:24:05.620)
It's about, again, this kind of connectedness that we're talking about.
John Vervaeke (1:24:09.300)
If I may interrupt, is that connected to the hard problem of consciousness, the subject,
John Vervaeke (1:24:14.060)
the qualia, or is that a different, that kind of knowing, is that different from the quality
Lex Fridman (1:24:18.600)
of consciousness?
John Vervaeke (1:24:19.600)
I think it has to do with, well, I make a distinction between the adjectival and the
John Vervaeke (1:24:22.660)
adverbial qualia, so I think it has to do with the adverbial qualia much more than with
Lex Fridman (1:24:27.020)
the adjectival.
Lex Fridman (1:24:28.020)
So the adjectival qualia are like the greenness of green and the blueness of blue.
Lex Fridman (1:24:32.860)
The adverbial qualia are the hereness, the nowness, the togetherness.
Lex Fridman (1:24:41.500)
And I think the perspectival knowing has a lot to do with the adverbial qualia.
Lex Fridman (1:24:46.180)
Adjectival qualia and adverbial qualia.
John Vervaeke (1:24:48.380)
I'm learning so many new things today.
Lex Fridman (1:24:50.660)
Okay, so that's another way of knowing.
John Vervaeke (1:24:53.780)
Right, the perspectival, and then there's a deeper one.
Lex Fridman (1:24:56.580)
And this is a philosophical point, and I don't want to, we can go through the argument, but
John Vervaeke (1:25:01.860)
you don't have to know that you know in order to know, because if you start doing that,
Lex Fridman (1:25:05.580)
you get an infinite regress.
John Vervaeke (1:25:06.580)
There has to be kinds of knowing that doesn't mean you know that you know that.
Lex Fridman (1:25:10.140)
Yeah.
John Vervaeke (1:25:11.140)
Okay.
Lex Fridman (1:25:12.140)
Of course.
John Vervaeke (1:25:13.140)
Okay, great.
Lex Fridman (1:25:14.140)
Okay, good.
John Vervaeke (1:25:15.140)
Well, there was a lot of ink spilled over that over a 40 year period, so.
John Vervaeke (1:25:19.540)
My philosophers, they spill, this is what they do, they spill ink to get paid for ink
John Vervaeke (1:25:24.900)
spillage.
Lex Fridman (1:25:25.900)
So I want to talk about what I call participatory knowing.
John Vervaeke (1:25:29.380)
This is the idea that you and the world are co participating in things and such that real
Lex Fridman (1:25:36.360)
affordances exist between you.
Lex Fridman (1:25:38.520)
So both me and this environment are shaped by gravity, so the affordance of walking becomes
Lex Fridman (1:25:44.820)
available to me.
John Vervaeke (1:25:46.720)
Both me and a lot of this environment are shaped by my biology, and so affordances for
Lex Fridman (1:25:53.480)
that are here.
John Vervaeke (1:25:55.620)
Look at this cup, shared physics, shared sort of biological factors, my hand, I'm bipedal,
Lex Fridman (1:26:04.660)
also culture is shaping me and shaping this.
John Vervaeke (1:26:06.820)
I had to learn how to use that and treat it as a cup.
Lex Fridman (1:26:10.460)
So this is an agent arena relationship, right?
John Vervaeke (1:26:14.780)
Use identities being created in your agency, identities being created in the world as an
Lex Fridman (1:26:21.660)
arena so you and the world fit together.
John Vervaeke (1:26:24.340)
You know when that's missing, when you're really lonely, or you're homesick, or you're
Lex Fridman (1:26:29.940)
suffering culture shock.
Lex Fridman (1:26:31.420)
So this is participatory knowing, and it's the sense of, it comes with a sense of belonging.
Lex Fridman (1:26:38.780)
At every level.
Lex Fridman (1:26:40.060)
So the ability to walk is a kind of knowing.
Lex Fridman (1:26:43.780)
Yes.
John Vervaeke (1:26:44.780)
Yes.
John Vervaeke (1:26:45.780)
That there's a dance between the physics that enables this process and just participating
John Vervaeke (1:26:52.140)
in the process is the act of knowing.
Lex Fridman (1:26:54.860)
Right.
Lex Fridman (1:26:55.860)
And there's a really weird form of memory you have for this kind of knowing, it's called
Lex Fridman (1:26:59.860)
yourself.
Lex Fridman (1:27:00.860)
What?
Lex Fridman (1:27:01.860)
Can you elaborate?
John Vervaeke (1:27:02.860)
Well, you do, so we talked about how all the different other kinds of knowing had specific
John Vervaeke (1:27:10.080)
kinds of memory, semantic memory for propositional, procedural, episodic for perspectival.
Lex Fridman (1:27:17.020)
What's the kind of memory that is the coordinated storehouse of all of your agent arena relationships?
John Vervaeke (1:27:23.420)
All the roles you can take, all the identities you can assume, all the identities you can
John Vervaeke (1:27:28.020)
assign.
Lex Fridman (1:27:29.020)
Yeah, what's the self?
Lex Fridman (1:27:30.020)
Do you mean like consciousness?
Lex Fridman (1:27:31.020)
No, I mean your sense of self.
John Vervaeke (1:27:33.580)
Sense of self in this world that's not consciousness.
Lex Fridman (1:27:38.020)
It's like an agency or something.
John Vervaeke (1:27:40.620)
Right, it's an agent arena relationship.
Lex Fridman (1:27:43.340)
And so in an agent arena relationship, it's the sense of the agent.
Lex Fridman (1:27:50.260)
And that the agent belongs in that arena.
John Vervaeke (1:27:52.880)
Whatever the agent is, whatever the arena is, because it's probably a bunch of different
John Vervaeke (1:27:58.860)
framings of how you experience that.
Lex Fridman (1:28:01.700)
Yeah, and you do.
John Vervaeke (1:28:04.260)
In your identity as a self, you have all kinds of roles that are somehow contributing to
Lex Fridman (1:28:09.120)
that identity, but are not equivalent to that identity.
John Vervaeke (1:28:12.740)
Yeah.
John Vervaeke (1:28:13.740)
I wonder if like my two hands have different, because there's a different experience of
John Vervaeke (1:28:20.100)
me picking up something with my right hand and then my left hand.
Lex Fridman (1:28:25.220)
Are those like...
John Vervaeke (1:28:28.060)
That's a really cool question, Lex.
John Vervaeke (1:28:30.180)
They certainly feel like their own things, but that could be just anthropomorphization
John Vervaeke (1:28:37.580)
based on cultural narratives and so on.
John Vervaeke (1:28:40.060)
It could, but I think it's a legitimate empirical question because it also could be sort of
John Vervaeke (1:28:43.540)
Ian McGilchrist stuff.
John Vervaeke (1:28:45.020)
It could be you're using different hemispheres and they sort of have different agent arena
John Vervaeke (1:28:50.220)
relationships to the environment.
Lex Fridman (1:28:52.080)
This is a really important question in the cognitive science of the self.
Lex Fridman (1:28:55.780)
Does that hemispheric difference mean you're multiple or you actually have a singular self?
Lex Fridman (1:29:00.500)
So it's important to understand how many cells are there.
John Vervaeke (1:29:03.780)
Yes, I think so.
Lex Fridman (1:29:05.380)
But that's just like a quirk of evolution.
John Vervaeke (1:29:09.580)
Surely it can be fundamental to cognition, having multiple cells or a singular self.
John Vervaeke (1:29:14.620)
It depends, again, because we're getting far from the answer to the question you originally
John Vervaeke (1:29:22.620)
asked me.
Lex Fridman (1:29:23.620)
Do you want me to go back to that first or answer this one?
Lex Fridman (1:29:25.260)
Which question?
Lex Fridman (1:29:26.260)
I already forgot everything.
Lex Fridman (1:29:27.260)
What's the functionality of religion?
Lex Fridman (1:29:28.740)
Yes.
John Vervaeke (1:29:29.740)
Okay.
Lex Fridman (1:29:30.740)
Let us return.
John Vervaeke (1:29:31.740)
Okay.
Lex Fridman (1:29:32.740)
And then we can return to the self.
John Vervaeke (1:29:33.740)
Okay.
Lex Fridman (1:29:34.740)
So you said you have all these propositions and et cetera, et cetera, and they differ
John Vervaeke (1:29:38.700)
from the religions and they don't seem to be considered legitimate by many people.
Lex Fridman (1:29:45.060)
But yet there's something functioning in the religions that is transforming people and
John Vervaeke (1:29:51.340)
making them wiser.
Lex Fridman (1:29:52.580)
And I put it to you that the transformations are largely occurring at those nonpropositional
John Vervaeke (1:29:57.980)
levels.
Lex Fridman (1:29:59.540)
The procedural, the perspectival, and the participatory.
Lex Fridman (1:30:04.060)
And those are the ones, by the way, that are more fundamentally connected to meaning making
John Vervaeke (1:30:08.540)
because remember the propositions are representational and they're dependent on the nonpropositional,
John Vervaeke (1:30:14.820)
nonrepresentational processes of connectedness and relevance realization.
Lex Fridman (1:30:18.660)
So religion goes down deep to the nonpropositional and works there.
John Vervaeke (1:30:22.460)
That's the functionality we need to grasp.
John Vervaeke (1:30:24.380)
Well, you talk about tools, essentially, that humans are able to incorporate into their
John Vervaeke (1:30:30.140)
cognition.
Lex Fridman (1:30:31.140)
Psychotechnologies, like language is one, I suppose.
Lex Fridman (1:30:36.940)
Isn't religion then a psychotechnology?
Lex Fridman (1:30:39.820)
It would be, yeah, an ecology of psychotechnologies, yes.
Lex Fridman (1:30:43.580)
And the question is that Nietzsche ruined everything by saying God is dead.
Lex Fridman (1:30:49.580)
Do we have to invent the new thing?
John Vervaeke (1:30:52.300)
Go from the old phone, create the iPhone, invent the new psychotechnology that takes
Lex Fridman (1:30:57.500)
place of religion.
Lex Fridman (1:30:59.020)
And so when the madman in Nietzsche's text goes into the marketplace, who's he talking
Lex Fridman (1:31:03.900)
to?
John Vervaeke (1:31:04.900)
He's not talking to the believers.
Lex Fridman (1:31:06.580)
He's talking to the atheists and he says, do you not realize what we have done?
John Vervaeke (1:31:11.700)
We have taken a sponge and wiped away the sky.
Lex Fridman (1:31:14.980)
We are now forever falling.
John Vervaeke (1:31:16.420)
We are unchained from the sun.
Lex Fridman (1:31:18.120)
We have to become worthy of this.
Lex Fridman (1:31:20.980)
But Nietzsche is full of romantic bullshit, as we know.
Lex Fridman (1:31:23.740)
No, no, no.
John Vervaeke (1:31:24.740)
No, but there's a point there.
Lex Fridman (1:31:25.740)
Yes.
John Vervaeke (1:31:26.740)
The point is, right, there's one thing to rejecting the proposition.
John Vervaeke (1:31:31.500)
There's another project of replacing the functionality that we lost when we reject the religion.
Lex Fridman (1:31:37.900)
So his worry that as nihilism takes hold, you don't ever replace the thing that religion,
Lex Fridman (1:31:47.420)
the role that religion played in our world.
John Vervaeke (1:31:49.580)
It's hard to tell what he actually, because he's so multivocal.
Lex Fridman (1:31:54.820)
I'll speak for me rather than for Nietzsche.
John Vervaeke (1:31:57.260)
I think it is possible to, using the best cognitive science and respectfully exacting
Lex Fridman (1:32:04.140)
what we can from the best religion and philosophical traditions, because there's things like stoicism
John Vervaeke (1:32:11.020)
that are in the grey line between philosophy and religion, Buddhism is the same.
John Vervaeke (1:32:16.480)
Using that best cocci, that best exaptation, we can come up with that functionality without
John Vervaeke (1:32:24.300)
having to buy into the particular propositional sets of the legacy religions.
Lex Fridman (1:32:30.740)
That's my proposal.
John Vervaeke (1:32:31.740)
I call that the religion that's not a religion.
Lex Fridman (1:32:34.140)
So things like stoicism or modern stoicism, those things, don't you think in some sense
Lex Fridman (1:32:39.780)
they naturally emerge?
Lex Fridman (1:32:43.500)
Don't you think there's a longing for meaning?
Lex Fridman (1:32:46.460)
So stoicism arises during the Hellenistic period when there was a significant meaning
John Vervaeke (1:32:52.540)
crisis in the ancient world because of what had happened after the breakup of Alexander
John Vervaeke (1:32:59.100)
the Great's empire.
Lex Fridman (1:33:00.540)
So if you compare Aristotle to people who are living after Alexander.
Lex Fridman (1:33:06.820)
So Aristotle grows up in a place where everybody speaks the same language, has the same religion,
Lex Fridman (1:33:13.140)
his ancestors have been there for years, he knows everybody.
John Vervaeke (1:33:16.820)
After Alexander the Great's empire is broken up, people are now thousands of miles away
John Vervaeke (1:33:22.180)
from the government, they're surrounded by people because of the diasporas, they're surrounded
John Vervaeke (1:33:29.180)
by people that don't speak their language, don't share their religion, that's why you
John Vervaeke (1:33:32.660)
get all these mother religions emerging, universal mother religions like ISIS, etc.
Lex Fridman (1:33:38.100)
So there is what's called domicile, there's the killing of home, there's a loss of a
John Vervaeke (1:33:43.100)
sense of home and belonging and fittedness during the Hellenistic period and stoicism
John Vervaeke (1:33:49.740)
arose specifically to address that.
Lex Fridman (1:33:52.660)
And because it was designed to address a meaning crisis, it is no coincidence that it is coming
John Vervaeke (1:33:58.060)
back into prominence right now.
John Vervaeke (1:34:00.780)
Well there could be a lot of other variations and it feels like, I think when you speak
John Vervaeke (1:34:06.900)
of the meaning crisis, you're in part describing, not prescribing, you're describing something
Lex Fridman (1:34:13.780)
that is happening.
Lex Fridman (1:34:14.780)
But I would venture to say that if we just leave things be, the meaning crisis dissipates
John Vervaeke (1:34:23.500)
because we long to create institutions, to create collective ideas, so this distributed
John Vervaeke (1:34:30.500)
cognition process that give us meaning.
Lex Fridman (1:34:33.900)
So if religion loses power, we'll find other institutions that are sources of meaning.
John Vervaeke (1:34:40.700)
I don't...
Lex Fridman (1:34:41.700)
Is that your intuition as well?
John Vervaeke (1:34:44.300)
I think we are already doing that.
John Vervaeke (1:34:48.100)
I am involved with and do participant observation of many of these emerging communities that
John Vervaeke (1:34:55.340)
are creating a colleges of practice that are specifically about trying to address the meaning
Lex Fridman (1:35:00.660)
crisis.
John Vervaeke (1:35:01.660)
I just, in late July, went to Washington State and did Rafe Kelly's Evolve Move Play, Return
Lex Fridman (1:35:07.180)
to the Source, and wow, one of the most challenging things I've ever done.
John Vervaeke (1:35:12.540)
That guy is awesome, by the way.
Lex Fridman (1:35:13.540)
I got to interact with him a long, long time ago.
John Vervaeke (1:35:17.220)
He said to say hi to you, by the way.
Lex Fridman (1:35:18.780)
Yeah.
John Vervaeke (1:35:19.780)
It's from another world.
John Vervaeke (1:35:20.780)
It feels like a different world because I interacted with him, not directly, but...
John Vervaeke (1:35:26.820)
This is somebody...
Lex Fridman (1:35:27.820)
He can speak to what he works on, but he makes movement and play...
John Vervaeke (1:35:34.540)
He encourages people to make that a part of their life, like how you move about the world,
John Vervaeke (1:35:39.260)
whether that's as part of sort of athletic endeavors or actual just like walking around
John Vervaeke (1:35:44.820)
a city.
Lex Fridman (1:35:47.060)
And I think the reason I ran into him is because there was a lot of interest in that in the
John Vervaeke (1:35:52.060)
athletic world, in the grappling world, in the Brazilian jiu jitsu world, people who
John Vervaeke (1:35:56.780)
study movement, who make movement part of their lives to see how can we integrate play
Lex Fridman (1:36:01.380)
and fun and just the basic humanness that's natural to our movement.
Lex Fridman (1:36:08.800)
How do we integrate that into our daily practice?
Lex Fridman (1:36:11.540)
So this is yet another way to find meaning.
John Vervaeke (1:36:14.980)
I think it's actually an exemplar of what I was talking about because what's going on
John Vervaeke (1:36:19.420)
with Raif's integration of parkour in nature and martial arts and mindfulness practices
Lex Fridman (1:36:28.420)
and dialogical practices is exactly, and explicitly so by the way, he will tell you he's been
John Vervaeke (1:36:35.740)
very influenced by my work.
John Vervaeke (1:36:37.620)
He's trying to get at the nonpropositional kinds of knowing that make meaning by evolving
John Vervaeke (1:36:43.180)
our sensory motor loop and enhancing our relevance realization because that gives people profound
Lex Fridman (1:36:48.540)
improved sense of connectedness to themselves, to each other and the world.
Lex Fridman (1:36:53.380)
And I'll tell you, Lex, I don't want to say too specifically the final thing that people
Lex Fridman (1:37:00.060)
did because it's part of his secret sauce, right?
Lex Fridman (1:37:03.780)
But what I can say is when it was done, I said to them all, I said, as far as I can
Lex Fridman (1:37:08.460)
tell, none of you are religious, right?
Lex Fridman (1:37:10.620)
And they go, yeah, yeah, and I said, but what you just did was a religious act, wasn't it?
Lex Fridman (1:37:15.620)
And they all went, yeah, it was.
John Vervaeke (1:37:18.140)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:37:19.140)
So that same magic was there.
John Vervaeke (1:37:21.420)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (1:37:22.420)
Bathroom break.
John Vervaeke (1:37:23.980)
Sure.
Lex Fridman (1:37:24.980)
What's your take on atheism in general?
John Vervaeke (1:37:30.380)
Is it closer to truth than, maybe is an atheist closer to truth than a person who believes
Lex Fridman (1:37:38.220)
in God?
Lex Fridman (1:37:40.020)
So I'm a nontheist, which means I think the shared set of presuppositions between the
Lex Fridman (1:37:45.460)
theist and the atheist are actually what needs to be rejected.
Lex Fridman (1:37:49.700)
Can you explain that further?
Lex Fridman (1:37:53.540)
Yes, I can.
Lex Fridman (1:37:56.220)
And I want to point out, by the way, that there are lots of nontheistic religious traditions.
Lex Fridman (1:38:03.860)
So I'm not coming up with a sort of airy fairy category.
John Vervaeke (1:38:07.740)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:38:08.740)
And what's the difference in nontheism, agnosticism and atheism?
Lex Fridman (1:38:14.020)
So nontheists think that the theist and the atheist share a bunch of presuppositions.
John Vervaeke (1:38:21.760)
For example, it's that sacredness is to be understood in terms of a personal being that
John Vervaeke (1:38:31.020)
is, in some sense, the supreme being, and that the right relationship to that being
Lex Fridman (1:38:36.140)
is to have a correct set of beliefs.
John Vervaeke (1:38:39.500)
I reject all of those claims.
Lex Fridman (1:38:41.660)
So both the theist and the atheist see God.
John Vervaeke (1:38:44.420)
In their modern version, yes, yes.
John Vervaeke (1:38:46.960)
In which, do you reject it in the sense that you don't know, or do you reject it in a sense
Lex Fridman (1:38:53.360)
that you believe that each one of those presuppositions is likely to be not true?
Lex Fridman (1:39:02.940)
The latter.
John Vervaeke (1:39:04.480)
Both on reflection, argument, and personal experimentation and experience, I've come
Lex Fridman (1:39:12.020)
to the conclusion that those shared propositions are probably not true.
Lex Fridman (1:39:16.460)
Which one is the most troublesome to you?
John Vervaeke (1:39:20.020)
The personal being, the kind of accumulation of everything into one being that ultimately
Lex Fridman (1:39:25.800)
created stuff?
Lex Fridman (1:39:27.840)
So for me, there's two, and they're interlocked together.
John Vervaeke (1:39:29.780)
I'm not trying to dodge your question.
John Vervaeke (1:39:31.660)
It's that the idea that the ground of being is some kind of being, I think, is a fundamental
John Vervaeke (1:39:39.900)
mistake.
Lex Fridman (1:39:40.900)
It's void of being?
John Vervaeke (1:39:41.900)
No, no, no.
Lex Fridman (1:39:45.020)
The ground of being is some kind of being, so it's turtles all the way down.
John Vervaeke (1:39:48.620)
The ground of being is not itself any kind of being.
Lex Fridman (1:39:50.940)
Being is not a being.
John Vervaeke (1:39:53.340)
It is the ability for things to be, which is not the same thing as a being.
Lex Fridman (1:40:00.220)
Are humans beings?
John Vervaeke (1:40:02.060)
We are beings.
Lex Fridman (1:40:03.060)
This glass is a being.
John Vervaeke (1:40:04.060)
This table is a being.
Lex Fridman (1:40:05.820)
But when I ask you, how are they all in being, you don't say, by being a glass or by being
John Vervaeke (1:40:13.120)
a table or by being a human.
John Vervaeke (1:40:15.620)
You want to say, no, no, there's something underneath it all, and then you realize it
John Vervaeke (1:40:20.120)
can't be any thing.
John Vervaeke (1:40:21.900)
This is why many mystical traditions converge on the idea that the ground of being is no
John Vervaeke (1:40:28.020)
thingness, which is normally pronounced as nothingness.
Lex Fridman (1:40:32.700)
But if you put the hyphen back in, you get the original intent, no thingness.
John Vervaeke (1:40:40.220)
That is bound up with, okay, what I need to do in order to be in relationship with … So,
John Vervaeke (1:40:46.620)
it's a misconstruing of ultimate reality as a supreme being, which is a category mistake
John Vervaeke (1:40:52.100)
to my mind, and then my relationship to it, that sacredness is a function of belief.
Lex Fridman (1:40:58.620)
And I have been presenting you an argument through most of our discussion that meaning
John Vervaeke (1:41:02.860)
is at a deeper level than beliefs and propositions.
Lex Fridman (1:41:07.860)
And so, that is a misunderstanding of sacredness, because I take sacredness to be that which
John Vervaeke (1:41:12.980)
is most meaningful and connected to what is most real.
Lex Fridman (1:41:18.260)
And theists think of sacredness as what?
John Vervaeke (1:41:23.060)
They think of sacredness as a property of a particular being, God, and that the way
Lex Fridman (1:41:33.340)
that is meaningful to them is by asserting a set of propositions or beliefs.
John Vervaeke (1:41:39.820)
Now, I want to point out that this is what I would now call modern or common theism.
John Vervaeke (1:41:45.780)
You go back into the classical periods of Christianity, you get a view that's really
John Vervaeke (1:41:51.980)
radically different from how most people understand theism today.
John Vervaeke (1:41:55.140)
Okay, so let me … This is an interesting question that I usually think about in the
John Vervaeke (1:42:00.500)
form of mathematics, but … So, in that case, if meaning is sacred in your nontheist view,
Lex Fridman (1:42:09.380)
is meaning created or is it discovered?
John Vervaeke (1:42:14.260)
There's a Latin word that doesn't separate them called inventio, and I would say that,
Lex Fridman (1:42:20.980)
and before you say, oh, well, give me a chance, because you participate in it.
Lex Fridman (1:42:27.340)
You've experienced an insight, yes?
Lex Fridman (1:42:29.740)
Did you make it happen?
John Vervaeke (1:42:32.940)
The insight …
Lex Fridman (1:42:35.060)
Did you make it happen or did … Did you do … Like, can you do that?
John Vervaeke (1:42:38.900)
I'm going to have … I need an insight.
Lex Fridman (1:42:39.900)
This is what I do to make an insight.
John Vervaeke (1:42:41.940)
Oh, I see.
Lex Fridman (1:42:42.940)
Yeah, in some sense, it came from elsewhere.
John Vervaeke (1:42:45.900)
Right, but you didn't just passively receive it, either.
Lex Fridman (1:42:48.980)
You're engaged and involved in it.
Lex Fridman (1:42:51.100)
That's why you get … Right?
Lex Fridman (1:42:52.360)
So that's what I mean by you participate in it.
John Vervaeke (1:42:54.580)
You participate in meaning.
Lex Fridman (1:42:56.020)
So you do think that it's both?
John Vervaeke (1:42:58.100)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (1:42:59.100)
You do think it's both?
John Vervaeke (1:43:00.100)
I mean, that's not a trivial thing to understand, because a lot of time we think … When you
John Vervaeke (1:43:08.580)
think about a search for meaning, you think … It's like you're going through a big
John Vervaeke (1:43:15.500)
house and you open each door and look if it's there and so on, as if there is going to be
John Vervaeke (1:43:20.260)
a glowing orb that you discover, but at the same time, I'm somebody that, based on the
John Vervaeke (1:43:31.780)
chemistry of my brain, have been extremely fortunate to be able to discover beauty in
Lex Fridman (1:43:36.500)
everything, in the most mundane and boring of things.
John Vervaeke (1:43:40.500)
I am, as David Foster Wallace said, unboreable.
John Vervaeke (1:43:46.500)
I could just sit in a room, just like playing with a tennis ball or something and be excited,
John Vervaeke (1:43:52.860)
basically like a dog, I think, endlessly.
Lex Fridman (1:43:56.660)
So to me, meaning is created, because I could create meaning out of everything, but of course,
John Vervaeke (1:44:06.380)
it doesn't require a partner.
Lex Fridman (1:44:08.560)
It does require dance partners, whatever, it does require the tennis ball.
Lex Fridman (1:44:13.900)
But honestly, that's what a lot of people that I don't necessarily … We'll talk
Lex Fridman (1:44:18.100)
about it.
John Vervaeke (1:44:19.100)
I don't practice meditation, but people who meditate very seriously, like the entire
John Vervaeke (1:44:24.820)
days for months kind of thing, they talk about being able to discover meaning in just the
John Vervaeke (1:44:32.980)
wind or something, like they just … The breath and everything, just subtle sensory
Lex Fridman (1:44:38.980)
experiences give you deep fulfillment.
Lex Fridman (1:44:45.320)
So that's, again, it's interaction.
John Vervaeke (1:44:47.060)
Actually, I do want to say, because the interesting difference that you've drawn between nontheism,
John Vervaeke (1:44:54.900)
theism and atheism, where's the agreement or disagreement between you and Jordan Peterson
Lex Fridman (1:45:01.420)
on this?
John Vervaeke (1:45:02.420)
I want to say to Jordan about this, because you're very clear, it's kind of beautiful
Lex Fridman (1:45:08.580)
in the clarity in which you lay this out.
John Vervaeke (1:45:11.500)
I wonder if Jordan has arrived at a similar kind of clarity.
Lex Fridman (1:45:15.920)
Have you been able to draw any kind of lines between the way the two of you see religion?
John Vervaeke (1:45:21.980)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:45:22.980)
So there was a video released, I think, like two or three weeks ago with Jordan and myself
Lex Fridman (1:45:28.620)
and Jonathan Paget.
Lex Fridman (1:45:29.620)
Oh, I haven't watched that one yet, yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:45:31.020)
And it's around this question, Lux.
Lex Fridman (1:45:33.220)
He's basically sort of making, he's putting together an argument for God.
John Vervaeke (1:45:39.380)
I mean, I think that's a fair way.
Lex Fridman (1:45:40.660)
I don't think he would object to me saying that.
Lex Fridman (1:45:44.500)
And Jonathan Paget is also a, well, Jonathan is a Christian, it's unclear what Jordan
Lex Fridman (1:45:50.900)
is.
Lex Fridman (1:45:52.620)
And Jonathan's work is on symbolism and different mythologies and Christianity.
Lex Fridman (1:45:56.940)
Yes, especially Neoplatonic Christianity, which is very important.
John Vervaeke (1:46:01.820)
I have a lot of respect, well, I have a lot of respect for both of them, but I have a
Lex Fridman (1:46:04.500)
lot of respect for Jonathan.
Lex Fridman (1:46:05.980)
But in my participation in that dialogue, you could see me, well, repeatedly, but I
John Vervaeke (1:46:15.180)
think everybody, including Jordan, thought constructively challenging sort of the attempt
John Vervaeke (1:46:19.940)
to build a theistic model, and I was challenging it from a nontheistic perspective.
Lex Fridman (1:46:24.000)
So I think we don't agree on certain sets of propositions.
Lex Fridman (1:46:32.460)
But there was a lot of, there was also a lot of acknowledgement, and I think genuine appreciation
Lex Fridman (1:46:38.460)
on his part and Jonathan's part of the arguments I was making.
Lex Fridman (1:46:43.060)
So they believe in maybe the presupposition of like a supreme being.
John Vervaeke (1:46:48.980)
Not believe, but they see the power of that particular presupposition in being a source
John Vervaeke (1:46:57.420)
of meaning.
Lex Fridman (1:46:58.420)
I think that's relatively clear for me with Jordan.
John Vervaeke (1:47:01.380)
Jordan's a really complex guy, so it's very hard to just like pin.
John Vervaeke (1:47:04.740)
To my best sort of understanding, yes, I think that's clearly the case for Jordan.
John Vervaeke (1:47:12.080)
It's not the case for Jonathan.
Lex Fridman (1:47:14.480)
Jonathan is, remember I said I was talking about modern atheism and theism?
John Vervaeke (1:47:18.840)
Jonathan is a guy who somehow went into icon carving and Maximus the Confessor and Eastern
John Vervaeke (1:47:26.940)
Orthodoxy and has come out of it at the other end as a fifth century church father that
John Vervaeke (1:47:31.700)
is nevertheless being, rightfully so, found to be increasingly relevant to many people.
Lex Fridman (1:47:38.220)
So he's deeply old school.
John Vervaeke (1:47:40.260)
Yeah, I think he has, he and I, especially because Neoplatonism is a nontheistic philosophical
John Vervaeke (1:47:47.020)
spirituality and it's a big part of Eastern Orthodoxy, he and I, I think, he would say
John Vervaeke (1:47:52.580)
things like, God doesn't exist.
Lex Fridman (1:47:54.740)
What?
Lex Fridman (1:47:55.740)
You're a Christian, right?
Lex Fridman (1:47:57.380)
And then he's being coy, but he'll say, well, God doesn't exist the way the cup exists or
John Vervaeke (1:48:02.340)
the table exists, the same kind of move I was making a few minutes ago.
Lex Fridman (1:48:06.300)
He'll say things like that.
John Vervaeke (1:48:08.180)
He will emphasize the no thingness of ultimate reality, the no thingness of God, because
John Vervaeke (1:48:15.500)
he's from that version of Christianity, what you might call classical theism, but classical
John Vervaeke (1:48:22.100)
theism looks a lot more like nontheism than it looks like modern theism.
Lex Fridman (1:48:27.140)
That's so interesting.
John Vervaeke (1:48:29.140)
Yeah, that's really interesting.
Lex Fridman (1:48:31.060)
What about, is there a line to be drawn between myth and religion in terms of its usefulness
Lex Fridman (1:48:38.700)
in man's search for meaning?
Lex Fridman (1:48:42.060)
So here's where Jordan and I are in much more, actually all three of us are in significant
John Vervaeke (1:48:46.460)
agreement.
Lex Fridman (1:48:47.460)
I said this in my series, but I want to say it again here.
John Vervaeke (1:48:52.100)
Myths aren't stories about things that happened in the deep past that are largely irrelevant.
John Vervaeke (1:48:58.460)
Myths are stories about perennial or pertinent patterns that need to be brought into awareness.
Lex Fridman (1:49:05.620)
And they need to be brought into an awareness, not just or primarily at the propositional
Lex Fridman (1:49:11.180)
level, but at those nonpropositional levels.
Lex Fridman (1:49:14.020)
And I think that is what good mythos does.
John Vervaeke (1:49:17.300)
I prefer to use the Greek word because we've now turned the English word into a synonym
John Vervaeke (1:49:21.580)
for a widely believed falsehood.
Lex Fridman (1:49:25.620)
And I don't think, again, if you go back even to the church fathers, I'm not a Christian,
John Vervaeke (1:49:31.140)
I'm not advocating for Christianity, but neither am I here to attack it.
Lex Fridman (1:49:36.740)
But when they talk about reading these stories, they think the literal interpretation is the
John Vervaeke (1:49:44.340)
weakest and the least important.
John Vervaeke (1:49:47.140)
You move to the allegorical or the symbolic, to the moral, to the spiritual, the mystical,
Lex Fridman (1:49:54.100)
and that's where...
Lex Fridman (1:49:56.340)
So they would say to you, but how is the story of Adam and Eve true for you now?
Lex Fridman (1:50:05.220)
And I don't mean true for you in that relativistic sense, I mean, how is it pointing to a pattern
Lex Fridman (1:50:10.000)
in your life right now?
Lex Fridman (1:50:12.160)
So there is some sense in which the telling of this mythos becomes real in connecting
Lex Fridman (1:50:19.740)
to the patterns that kind of captivate the public today.
John Vervaeke (1:50:23.940)
Sure.
Lex Fridman (1:50:24.940)
So you just keep telling the story.
John Vervaeke (1:50:26.420)
I mean, there's something about some of these stories that are just really good at being
Lex Fridman (1:50:31.020)
sticky to the patterns of each generation.
John Vervaeke (1:50:34.860)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (1:50:35.860)
And they'll stick to different patterns throughout time, they're just sticky in powerful ways.
John Vervaeke (1:50:41.420)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (1:50:42.420)
And so we keep returning back to them again and again and again.
Lex Fridman (1:50:46.900)
And it's important to see that some of these stories are recursive, they're myths about
John Vervaeke (1:50:56.940)
one particular set of patterns, they're myths about not just the important pattern.
John Vervaeke (1:51:04.540)
You get the Jordan stuff about there's heroes and myths are trying to make us understand
Lex Fridman (1:51:13.340)
the need for being heroic in our own lives.
John Vervaeke (1:51:16.860)
One of the things I like to put in counterbalance to that is the Greek also have myths of hubris,
Lex Fridman (1:51:22.100)
that counterbalance the heroic.
Lex Fridman (1:51:25.560)
But then there are myths that are not about those deeply important patterns, but they're
John Vervaeke (1:51:34.080)
myths about religio itself, that the way we're—religio means to bind, to connect, the way relevance
John Vervaeke (1:51:41.460)
realization connects us.
Lex Fridman (1:51:43.260)
And so the point of the myth is not notice that pattern or notice that pattern or notice
John Vervaeke (1:51:46.680)
that pattern, it's notice how all of these patterns are emerging and what does that say
Lex Fridman (1:51:55.260)
about us and reality.
Lex Fridman (1:51:57.460)
And those myths, those myths, I think, are genuinely profound.
Lex Fridman (1:52:04.580)
And how much of the myths, how much of the power of those myths is about the dialogues?
John Vervaeke (1:52:11.160)
You talk about this quite a bit, I think in the first conversation with Jordan, you guys,
John Vervaeke (1:52:15.700)
I'm not sure you've gotten really into it, you scratched the surface a little bit.
Lex Fridman (1:52:20.220)
But the role of, as you say, dialogue in distributed cognition.
Lex Fridman (1:52:25.160)
What is that?
Lex Fridman (1:52:26.160)
The thing we're doing right now, talking with our mouth holes, what is that?
Lex Fridman (1:52:31.500)
And actually, can I ask you this question?
John Vervaeke (1:52:34.820)
If aliens came to Earth and were observing humans, would they notice our distributed
Lex Fridman (1:52:43.100)
cognition first or our individual cognition first?
Lex Fridman (1:52:47.600)
What is the most notable thing about us humans?
Lex Fridman (1:52:50.940)
Is it our ability to individually do well on IQ tests or whatever?
Lex Fridman (1:52:55.860)
Or puzzle solve, or is it this thing we're doing together?
Lex Fridman (1:52:59.660)
I think most of our problem solving is done in distributed cognition.
John Vervaeke (1:53:05.780)
Look around, you didn't make this equipment, you didn't build this place, you didn't invent
Lex Fridman (1:53:09.180)
this language that we're both sharing, et cetera, et cetera.
Lex Fridman (1:53:12.980)
And now there's more specific and precise experimental evidence coming out.
John Vervaeke (1:53:19.320)
Let's take a standard task that people, reasoning task, I won't need to do the details, it's
John Vervaeke (1:53:25.180)
called the waste and selection task.
Lex Fridman (1:53:27.740)
And you give it to people, highly educated psychology students, premier universities
John Vervaeke (1:53:33.140)
across the world, we've been doing it since the 60s, it replicates and replicates, and
Lex Fridman (1:53:38.980)
only 10% of the people get it right.
John Vervaeke (1:53:43.480)
You put them in a group of four, and you allow them to talk to each other, the success rate
Lex Fridman (1:53:49.000)
goes to 80%.
John Vervaeke (1:53:51.060)
That's just one example of a phenomenon that's coming to the fore.
John Vervaeke (1:53:55.980)
By the way, do you know if a similar experiment has been done on a group of engineering students
Lex Fridman (1:53:59.720)
versus psychology students?
Lex Fridman (1:54:01.220)
Is there a major group differences in IQ between those two?
John Vervaeke (1:54:04.700)
Just kidding.
Lex Fridman (1:54:07.240)
Let's move on.
John Vervaeke (1:54:08.240)
All right, so there is a lot of evidence that there's power to this distributed cognition.
John Vervaeke (1:54:12.860)
Now what about this mechanism, this fascinating mechanism of the ants interacting with each
Lex Fridman (1:54:17.700)
other?
Lex Fridman (1:54:18.700)
The dialogue.
John Vervaeke (1:54:19.700)
I use the word discourse or dialogue for just people having a conversation, and this is
Lex Fridman (1:54:25.460)
deeply inspired by Socrates and Plato, especially the Platonic dialogues.
Lex Fridman (1:54:33.620)
And I'm sure we've all had this, and so give me a moment because I want to build onto something
Lex Fridman (1:54:36.940)
here.
John Vervaeke (1:54:37.940)
We've participated in conversations that took on a life of their own and took us both in
John Vervaeke (1:54:43.860)
directions we did not anticipate, afforded us insights that we could not have had on
John Vervaeke (1:54:48.320)
our own.
Lex Fridman (1:54:49.320)
And we don't have to have come to an agreement, but we were both moved and we were both drawn
John Vervaeke (1:54:53.980)
into insight, and we feel like, wow, that was one of the best moments of my life because
John Vervaeke (1:54:59.160)
we feel how that introduced us to a capacity for tapping into a flow state within distributed
John Vervaeke (1:55:07.840)
cognition that puts us into a deeper relationship with ourselves, with another person, and potentially
Lex Fridman (1:55:15.320)
with the world.
John Vervaeke (1:55:17.200)
That's what I mean by dialogos.
Lex Fridman (1:55:19.220)
And so for me, I think dialogos is more important... Boy, I could just... I'm sorry, I can
John Vervaeke (1:55:30.180)
hear Jordan and Jonathan in my head right now, but I think it's more...
Lex Fridman (1:55:33.300)
I hear them all the time.
John Vervaeke (1:55:35.260)
I just wish they would shut up in my head sometimes.
Lex Fridman (1:55:39.960)
So what are they saying to you in your head?
Lex Fridman (1:55:42.040)
What they're saying... Well, see, that's what the most recent conversation was about.
John Vervaeke (1:55:45.960)
I was trying to say that I don't think mythos is... I think mythos is really important.
John Vervaeke (1:55:55.600)
I think these kinds of narratives are really important, but I think this ability to connect
John Vervaeke (1:56:01.280)
together in distributed cognition, collective intelligence, and cultivate a shared flow
John Vervaeke (1:56:09.880)
state within that collective intelligence so it starts to ramp up perhaps towards collective
Lex Fridman (1:56:14.680)
wisdom.
John Vervaeke (1:56:15.680)
I think that's more important because I think that's the basin within which the myths and
Lex Fridman (1:56:21.400)
the rituals are ultimately created and when they function.
John Vervaeke (1:56:25.840)
A myth is like a public dream.
John Vervaeke (1:56:28.200)
It depends on distributed cognition, and it depends on people enacting it and getting
John Vervaeke (1:56:33.160)
into mutual flow states.
Lex Fridman (1:56:36.160)
So the highest form of dialogos of conversation is this flow state, and that it forms the
John Vervaeke (1:56:44.400)
foundation for myth building.
Lex Fridman (1:56:46.640)
I think so.
John Vervaeke (1:56:47.800)
I think so.
Lex Fridman (1:56:48.800)
So that communitas, that's Victor Turner's phrase, and he specifically linked it to flow,
Lex Fridman (1:56:53.500)
and I study flow scientifically, that within distributed cognition as the home, as the
John Vervaeke (1:57:01.920)
generator of mythos and ritual, and those are bound together as well, I think that's
John Vervaeke (1:57:07.600)
fundamentally correct.
John Vervaeke (1:57:08.600)
You know what's the cool thing here, because I'm a huge fan of podcasts and audiobooks,
Lex Fridman (1:57:14.720)
but podcasts in particular is relevant here, is there's a third person in this room listening
Lex Fridman (1:57:19.280)
now, and they're also in the flow state.
John Vervaeke (1:57:23.680)
Yes, yes.
Lex Fridman (1:57:24.680)
Like I'm close friends with a lot of podcasts, they don't know I exist.
John Vervaeke (1:57:30.120)
I just listen to them because I've been in so many flow states with them, and I was like,
Lex Fridman (1:57:34.600)
yes, yes, this is good.
Lex Fridman (1:57:36.720)
But they don't know I exist, but they are in conversation with me, ultimately.
Lex Fridman (1:57:40.360)
And think of what that's doing.
John Vervaeke (1:57:43.200)
You've got dialogues, and then you've got this meta dialogue like you're describing,
Lex Fridman (1:57:47.440)
and think about how things like podcasts and YouTube, they break down old boundaries between
John Vervaeke (1:57:54.440)
the private and the public, between writing and oral speech.
Lex Fridman (1:57:58.240)
So we have the dynamics of living oral speech, but it has the permanency of writing.
John Vervaeke (1:58:05.160)
We're in the midst of creating a vehicle and a medium for distributed cognition that breaks
Lex Fridman (1:58:12.860)
down a lot of the categories by which we organized our cognition.
John Vervaeke (1:58:18.920)
Because of the tools of YouTube and so on, just the network, the graph of how quickly
Lex Fridman (1:58:24.340)
the distributed cognition can spread is really powerful.
John Vervaeke (1:58:28.080)
Just a huge amount of people have listened to your lectures, I've listened to your lectures,
Lex Fridman (1:58:31.920)
but I've experienced them, at least in your style, there's something about your style,
John Vervaeke (1:58:38.280)
it felt like a conversation.
John Vervaeke (1:58:40.840)
It felt like at any moment I could interrupt you and say something, and I was just listening.
John Vervaeke (1:58:46.360)
Thank you for saying that, because I aspire to being genuinely as Socratic as I can when
Lex Fridman (1:58:52.920)
I'm doing this.
Lex Fridman (1:58:53.920)
Yeah, there was that sentence, actually, as I'm saying it now, why was that?
John Vervaeke (1:58:57.860)
It didn't feel like sometimes lectures are kind of, you know, you come down with the
John Vervaeke (1:59:03.600)
commandments and you just want to listen, but there was a sense like, I mean, I think
John Vervaeke (1:59:07.760)
it was the excitement that you have, like, you have to understand, and also the fact
John Vervaeke (1:59:10.960)
that you were kind of, I think, thinking off the top of your head sometimes, there was
John Vervaeke (1:59:16.800)
a, you were interrupting yourself with thoughts, you were playing with thoughts, like you're
John Vervaeke (1:59:21.800)
reasoning through things often, like you had, you referenced a lot of books, so surely
John Vervaeke (1:59:27.820)
you were extremely well prepared and you were referencing a lot of ideas, but then you were
John Vervaeke (1:59:32.120)
also struggling in the way to present those ideas.
John Vervaeke (1:59:34.200)
Yes, there was, and so the jazz, like the jazz and getting into the flow state and trying
John Vervaeke (1:59:40.780)
to share in a participatory and perspectival fashion the learning with the people rather
Lex Fridman (1:59:47.320)
than just pronouncing at them, yes.
Lex Fridman (1:59:50.560)
What's mindfulness?
Lex Fridman (1:59:52.900)
So published on that as well.
Lex Fridman (1:59:55.380)
And I practice, I've been practicing many forms of mindfulness and ecology of practices
John Vervaeke (1:59:59.960)
since 1991, so I both have practitioner's knowledge and I also study it scientifically.
John Vervaeke (20:05.060)
of agency and even a kind of intelligence, kind of sense making ability.
Lex Fridman (20:10.360)
But I do not think that we can attribute consciousness, at least what we mean by consciousness, this
John Vervaeke (20:15.880)
kind of self awareness, this ability to introspect, et cetera, et cetera, to bacteria.
John Vervaeke (20:24.080)
Now the reason why distributed cognition doesn't have consciousness, I think is a little bit
John Vervaeke (20:28.880)
more tricky.
Lex Fridman (20:31.760)
And I think there's no reason in principle why there couldn't be a consciousness for
John Vervaeke (20:38.180)
distributed cognition, collective intelligence.
Lex Fridman (20:41.760)
In fact, many, you know, philosophers would agree with me on that point.
John Vervaeke (20:46.280)
I think it's more an issue of certain empirical facts, bandwidth, density of connection, speed
Lex Fridman (20:55.320)
of information transfer, et cetera.
John Vervaeke (20:58.400)
It's conceivable that if we got some horrible Frankensteinian neural link and we linked
John Vervaeke (21:04.040)
our brains and we had the right density and dynamics and bandwidth and speed that a group
John Vervaeke (21:10.840)
consciousness could take shape.
Lex Fridman (21:12.600)
I don't have any argument in principle against that.
John Vervaeke (21:15.000)
I'm just saying those contingent facts do not yet exist, and therefore it is implausible
Lex Fridman (21:20.880)
that consciousness exists at the level of collective intelligence.
Lex Fridman (21:24.240)
So you talk about consciousness quite a bit.
Lex Fridman (21:26.560)
So let's step back and try to sneak up to a definition.
Lex Fridman (21:32.000)
What is consciousness?
Lex Fridman (21:33.520)
For me, there are two aspects to answering that question.
Lex Fridman (21:38.720)
One is, what's the nature of consciousness?
Lex Fridman (21:40.920)
How does something like consciousness exist in an otherwise apparently nonconscious universe?
Lex Fridman (21:46.480)
And then there's a function question, which is equally important, which is, what does
Lex Fridman (21:49.560)
consciousness do?
John Vervaeke (21:52.200)
The first one is obviously, you know, problematic for most people, like, yeah, consciousness
Lex Fridman (21:57.240)
seems to be so different from the rest of the nonconscious universe.
Lex Fridman (22:02.000)
But I put it to you that the function question is also very hard, because you are clearly
Lex Fridman (22:07.340)
capable of very sophisticated, intelligent behavior without consciousness.
John Vervaeke (22:15.360)
You are turning the noises coming out of my face hole into ideas in your mind, and you
Lex Fridman (22:21.160)
have no conscious awareness of how that process is occurring.
Lex Fridman (22:27.000)
So why do we have consciousness at all?
Lex Fridman (22:29.680)
Now, here's the thing.
John Vervaeke (22:31.880)
There's an extra question you need to ask.
John Vervaeke (22:34.240)
Should we attempt to answer those questions separately, or should we attempt to answer
Lex Fridman (22:38.800)
them in an integrated fashion?
Lex Fridman (22:41.200)
I make the case that you actually have to answer them in an integrated fashion.
Lex Fridman (22:46.840)
What consciousness does, and what it is, we should be able to give it a unified answer
Lex Fridman (22:52.400)
to both of those.
Lex Fridman (22:53.760)
Can you try to elucidate the difference between what consciousness is and what it does, both
Lex Fridman (23:02.120)
of which are mysteries, as you say, state versus action?
Lex Fridman (23:08.440)
Can you try to explain the difference that's interesting, that's useful, that's important
Lex Fridman (23:13.040)
to understand?
Lex Fridman (23:14.040)
So that's putting me in a bit of a difficult position, because I actually argue that trying
Lex Fridman (23:18.220)
to answer them separately is ultimately incoherent.
Lex Fridman (23:22.680)
But what I can point to are many published articles in which only one of these problems
Lex Fridman (23:28.800)
is addressed, and the other is left unaddressed.
Lex Fridman (23:31.280)
So people will try and explain what qualia are, how they potentially emerge, without
John Vervaeke (23:35.880)
saying what do they do, what problems do they help to solve, how do they make the organism
John Vervaeke (23:41.400)
more adaptive.
Lex Fridman (23:42.400)
And then you'll have other people who will say, no, no, this is what the function of
John Vervaeke (23:45.600)
consciousness is, but I don't know, I can't tell you, I can't solve the hard problem,
Lex Fridman (23:50.240)
I don't know how qualia exist.
Lex Fridman (23:52.520)
So what I'm saying is many people treat these problems separately, although I think that's
Lex Fridman (23:58.240)
ultimately an incoherent way to approach the problem.
Lex Fridman (24:02.200)
So the hard problem is focusing on what it is.
Lex Fridman (24:05.520)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (24:06.520)
So the qualia, that it feels like something to experience a thing, that's what consciousness
Lex Fridman (24:10.920)
is.
Lex Fridman (24:11.920)
And does is more about the functional usefulness of the thing, to the whole beautiful mix of
Lex Fridman (24:18.840)
cognition and just function in everyday life.
John Vervaeke (24:24.160)
Okay, you've also said that you can do very intelligent things without consciousness.
Lex Fridman (24:34.240)
Yes, clearly.
Lex Fridman (24:35.800)
Is that obvious to you?
Lex Fridman (24:38.800)
Yes.
John Vervaeke (24:39.880)
I don't know what I'm doing to access my memory.
Lex Fridman (24:43.360)
It just comes up, and it comes up really intelligently.
Lex Fridman (24:50.900)
But the mechanisms that create consciousness could be deeply interlinked with whatever
Lex Fridman (24:55.600)
is doing the memory access, that's doing the...
John Vervaeke (25:00.040)
Oh, I think so, in fact, yes, yes.
Lex Fridman (25:02.840)
So I guess what I'm trying to say in this will probably sneak up to this question a
John Vervaeke (25:08.960)
few times, which is whether we can build machines that are conscious, or machines that are intelligent,
Lex Fridman (25:18.280)
one level intelligent or beyond, without building the consciousness.
John Vervaeke (25:21.600)
I mean, ultimately, that's one of the ways to understand what consciousness is, is to
Lex Fridman (25:26.760)
build the thing.
John Vervaeke (25:28.600)
We can either sort of from the Chomsky way, try to construct models, like he thinks about
John Vervaeke (25:33.960)
language in this way, try to construct models and theories of how the thing works, or we
John Vervaeke (25:37.960)
can just build the damn thing.
Lex Fridman (25:39.960)
Exactly.
Lex Fridman (25:40.960)
And that's a methodological principle in cognitive science.
John Vervaeke (25:45.320)
In fact, one of the things that sort of distinguishes cognitive science from other disciplines dealing
John Vervaeke (25:53.600)
with the nature of cognition in the mind is that cognitive science takes the design stance.
John Vervaeke (25:59.580)
It asks, well, could we build a machine that would not only simulate it, but serve as a
Lex Fridman (26:06.480)
bona fide explanation of the phenomenon?
Lex Fridman (26:09.400)
Do you find any efforts in cognitive science compelling in this direction?
John Vervaeke (26:15.440)
In terms of how far we are, there's, on the computational side of things, something called
John Vervaeke (26:21.880)
cognitive modeling, there's all these kinds of packages that you can construct simplified
John Vervaeke (26:26.620)
models of how the brain does things and see if complex behaviors emerge.
Lex Fridman (26:32.680)
Do you find any efforts in cognitive, or what efforts in cognitive science do you find most
Lex Fridman (26:38.480)
inspiring and productive?
John Vervaeke (26:41.300)
I think the project of trying to create AGI, artificial general intelligence, is where
John Vervaeke (26:47.860)
I place my hope of artificial intelligence being of scientific significance.
John Vervaeke (26:53.400)
This is independent of technological socioeconomic significance, which is already well established.
Lex Fridman (27:01.080)
But being able to say because of the work in AI, we now have a good theory of cognition,
John Vervaeke (27:08.120)
intelligence, perhaps consciousness, I think that's where I place my bets is in the current
John Vervaeke (27:13.920)
endeavors around artificial general intelligence.
Lex Fridman (27:17.340)
And so tackling that problem head on, which has now become central, at least to a group
John Vervaeke (27:25.120)
of cognitive scientists, is I think what needs to be done.
Lex Fridman (27:31.800)
And when you think about AGI, do you think about systems that have consciousness?
John Vervaeke (27:37.080)
Let's go back to what I think is at the core of your general intelligence.
Lex Fridman (27:44.160)
So right now, compared to even our best machines, you are a general problem solver.
John Vervaeke (27:49.420)
You can solve a wide variety of problems in a wide variety of domains.
Lex Fridman (27:53.280)
And some of our best machines have a little bit of transfer.
John Vervaeke (27:56.220)
They can learn this game and play a few other well designed rule bound games, but they couldn't
Lex Fridman (28:01.080)
learn how to swim, etc., things like that.
Lex Fridman (28:05.460)
And so what's interesting is what seems to come up, and this is some of my published
John Vervaeke (28:12.240)
work, in all these different domains of cognition across all these different problem types is
John Vervaeke (28:20.080)
a central problem.
Lex Fridman (28:22.120)
And since we do have good sort of psychometric evidence that we do have some general ability
John Vervaeke (28:26.380)
that's a significant component of our intelligence, I made an argument as to what I think that
Lex Fridman (28:32.060)
general ability is.
Lex Fridman (28:35.480)
And so it's happening right now.
John Vervaeke (28:39.800)
The amount of information in this room that you could actually pay attention to is combinatorial
John Vervaeke (28:43.760)
explosive.
John Vervaeke (28:46.180)
The amount of information you have in your memory, long term memory, and all the ways
John Vervaeke (28:49.520)
you could combine it, combinatorial explosive.
Lex Fridman (28:54.200)
The number of possibilities you can consider, also combinatorial explosive.
John Vervaeke (28:58.040)
The sequences of behavior you can generate, also combinatorial explosive.
Lex Fridman (29:03.040)
And yet somehow you're zeroing in.
John Vervaeke (29:06.680)
The right memories are coming up, the right possibilities are opening up, the right sequences
Lex Fridman (29:10.320)
of behavior, you're paying attention to the right thing.
John Vervaeke (29:12.880)
Not infallibly so, but so much so that you reliably find obvious what you should interact
Lex Fridman (29:20.280)
with in order to solve the problem at hand.
John Vervaeke (29:23.280)
That's an ability that is still not well understood within AGI.
Lex Fridman (29:30.720)
To filtering out the gigantic waterfall of data.
John Vervaeke (29:35.720)
Right.
Lex Fridman (29:36.720)
It's almost like a Zen Koan.
Lex Fridman (29:37.720)
What makes you intelligent is your ability to ignore so much information and do it in
Lex Fridman (29:44.960)
such a way that is somewhere between arbitrary guessing and algorithmic search.
Lex Fridman (29:53.240)
And to a fault sometimes of course that you, based on the models you construct, you forget,
John Vervaeke (2:00:05.800)
I think, I'm pretty sure I was the first person to academically talk about mindfulness at
John Vervaeke (2:00:12.060)
the University of Toronto within a classroom setting, like lecturing on it.
Lex Fridman (2:00:16.040)
So this is a topic that a lot of people have recently become very interested in, think
Lex Fridman (2:00:20.840)
about, so from that, from the early days, how do you think about what it is?
John Vervaeke (2:00:27.360)
I've critiqued the sort of standard definitions, being aware of the present moment without
John Vervaeke (2:00:32.540)
judgment and because I think they're flawed, and if you want to get into the detail of
Lex Fridman (2:00:37.840)
why we can, but this is how I want to explain it to you, and it also points to the fact
John Vervaeke (2:00:43.740)
of why you need an ecology of mindfulness practices.
Lex Fridman (2:00:46.680)
You shouldn't equate mindfulness with meditation.
John Vervaeke (2:00:49.320)
I think that's a primary mistake.
Lex Fridman (2:00:50.720)
When you say ecology, what do you mean, by the way?
Lex Fridman (2:00:52.800)
So lots of many different variants?
Lex Fridman (2:00:54.840)
No, so what I mean by ecology is exactly what you have in an ecology.
Lex Fridman (2:00:58.360)
You have a dynamical system in which there are checks and balances on each other, right?
Lex Fridman (2:01:02.800)
And I'll get to that with this about mindfulness, so I'll make that connection if you allow
John Vervaeke (2:01:07.080)
me.
Lex Fridman (2:01:08.320)
So we're always framing, we've been talking about that, right?
Lex Fridman (2:01:11.440)
And for those of you who are not on YouTube, this podcast, I wear glasses and I'm now sort
Lex Fridman (2:01:16.880)
of putting my fingers and thumb around the frames of my glasses.
Lex Fridman (2:01:21.940)
So this is my frame, and my lens is, right, and that frame, the frame holds a lens, and
Lex Fridman (2:01:28.600)
I'm seeing through it in both senses, beyond and by means of it.
Lex Fridman (2:01:33.720)
So right now, my glasses are transparent to me.
Lex Fridman (2:01:36.240)
I want to use that as a strong analogy for my mental framing, okay?
John Vervaeke (2:01:41.040)
Now this is what you do in meditation, I would argue.
John Vervaeke (2:01:45.820)
You step back from looking through your frame and you look at it, I'm taking my glasses
John Vervaeke (2:01:49.840)
off right now and I'm looking at them.
Lex Fridman (2:01:51.660)
Why might I do that?
Lex Fridman (2:01:52.960)
To see if there's something in the lenses that is distorting, causing me to, right?
John Vervaeke (2:01:59.560)
Now if I just did that, that could be helpful, but how do I know if I've actually corrected
Lex Fridman (2:02:06.600)
the change I made to my lenses?
Lex Fridman (2:02:08.080)
What do I need to do?
John Vervaeke (2:02:09.720)
I need to put my glasses on and see if I can now see more clearly and deeply than I could
Lex Fridman (2:02:15.400)
before.
John Vervaeke (2:02:17.300)
Meditation is this, stepping back and looking at.
John Vervaeke (2:02:21.380)
Contemplation is that looking through, and there are different kinds of practices.
John Vervaeke (2:02:25.940)
The fact that we treat them as synonyms is a deep mistake.
John Vervaeke (2:02:28.920)
The word contemplation has temple in it, in Latin contemplatio, means to look up to the
John Vervaeke (2:02:33.840)
sky.
John Vervaeke (2:02:34.840)
It's a translation of the Greek word theoria, which we get our word theory from.
John Vervaeke (2:02:39.220)
It's to look deeply into things.
John Vervaeke (2:02:41.860)
Meditation is more about having to do with reflecting upon, standing back and looking
John Vervaeke (2:02:47.080)
at.
Lex Fridman (2:02:48.600)
Mindfulness includes both.
John Vervaeke (2:02:50.580)
It includes your ability to break away from an inappropriate frame and the ability to
Lex Fridman (2:02:57.240)
make a new frame.
John Vervaeke (2:02:59.000)
That's what actually happens in insight.
John Vervaeke (2:03:00.840)
You have to both break an inappropriate frame and make, see, realize a new frame.
John Vervaeke (2:03:08.060)
This is why mindfulness enhances insight.
Lex Fridman (2:03:10.280)
Both ways, by the way, meditative practices and also contemplative practices.
Lex Fridman (2:03:17.200)
So mindfulness is frame awareness that can be appropriated in order to improve your capacities
Lex Fridman (2:03:25.800)
for insight and self regulation.
John Vervaeke (2:03:28.440)
Now I am inexperienced with meditation, the rigorous practice and the science of meditation,
Lex Fridman (2:03:36.400)
but I've talked to people who seriously as a science study psychedelics and they often
John Vervaeke (2:03:44.200)
talk about the really important thing is the sort of the integration back.
Lex Fridman (2:03:49.880)
So the contemplation step.
Lex Fridman (2:03:52.120)
So if you, it's not just the actual things you see on psychedelics or the actual journey
Lex Fridman (2:03:57.000)
of where your mind goes on psychedelics.
John Vervaeke (2:03:59.640)
It's also the integrating that into the new perspective that you take on life.
Lex Fridman (2:04:05.600)
Right.
John Vervaeke (2:04:06.600)
Exactly.
Lex Fridman (2:04:07.600)
You really nicely described.
Lex Fridman (2:04:08.600)
So meditation is the, in that metaphors is the psychedelic journey to a different mind
John Vervaeke (2:04:13.720)
state and then contemplation is the return back to reality, how you integrate that into
John Vervaeke (2:04:18.640)
a new world view and mindfulness is the whole process.
Lex Fridman (2:04:22.840)
Right.
Lex Fridman (2:04:23.840)
So if you just did contemplation, you could suffer from inflation and projective fantasy.
John Vervaeke (2:04:30.880)
If you just do meditation, you can suffer from withdrawal, spiritual bypassing, avoiding
John Vervaeke (2:04:36.040)
reality.
Lex Fridman (2:04:37.040)
They act, they need each other.
John Vervaeke (2:04:39.260)
You have to cycle between them.
John Vervaeke (2:04:40.840)
It's like what I talked about earlier, when I talked about the opponent processing within
John Vervaeke (2:04:45.240)
the autonomic nervous system or the opponent processing at work and attention.
Lex Fridman (2:04:49.440)
And that's what I mean by an ecology of practices.
John Vervaeke (2:04:52.680)
You need both.
Lex Fridman (2:04:53.680)
Neither one is a panacea.
John Vervaeke (2:04:55.480)
You need them in this opponent processing, acting as checks and balance on each other.
John Vervaeke (2:05:00.600)
Is there sort of practical advice you can give to people on how to meditate or how to
Lex Fridman (2:05:05.560)
be mindful in this full way?
Lex Fridman (2:05:09.560)
Yes.
John Vervaeke (2:05:10.560)
I would tell them to do at least three things.
Lex Fridman (2:05:12.920)
And I was, I lucked into this.
John Vervaeke (2:05:16.960)
When I started meditation, I went down the street and there was a place that taught Vipassana
Lex Fridman (2:05:21.800)
meditation, Metta contemplation and Tai Chi Chuan for flow induction.
Lex Fridman (2:05:26.880)
And you should get, you should have a meditative practice, you should find a contemplative
John Vervaeke (2:05:32.760)
practice and you should find a moving mindfulness practice, especially one that is conducive
John Vervaeke (2:05:37.520)
to the flow state and practice them in an integrated fashion.
Lex Fridman (2:05:42.080)
Can you elaborate what those practices might look like?
Lex Fridman (2:05:45.800)
So generally speaking.
Lex Fridman (2:05:49.120)
Meditative practice like Vipassana.
Lex Fridman (2:05:52.240)
So what's the primary thing I look through rather than look at?
Lex Fridman (2:05:57.080)
It's my sensations.
Lex Fridman (2:05:58.520)
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to focus on my sensations rather than focusing on the
Lex Fridman (2:06:02.940)
world through my sensations.
Lex Fridman (2:06:04.680)
So I'm going to follow, for example, the sensations in this area of my abdomen where my breathing
Lex Fridman (2:06:13.120)
is.
Lex Fridman (2:06:14.120)
So I can feel as my abdomen is expanding, I can feel those sensations and then I can
Lex Fridman (2:06:19.040)
feel the sensations as it's contracting.
John Vervaeke (2:06:21.000)
Now what will happen is my mind will leap back to try to look through and look at the
Lex Fridman (2:06:27.760)
world again.
Lex Fridman (2:06:28.760)
Right?
Lex Fridman (2:06:29.760)
I'll start thinking about, I need to do my laundry or what was that noise?
Lex Fridman (2:06:32.680)
And so what do I do?
Lex Fridman (2:06:33.880)
I don't get involved with the content.
John Vervaeke (2:06:36.440)
I step back and label the process with an ING word, listening, imagining, planning.
Lex Fridman (2:06:43.920)
And then I return my attention to the breath and I have to return my attention in the correct
John Vervaeke (2:06:48.600)
way.
Lex Fridman (2:06:49.600)
So part of your mind that jumps around in the Buddhist tradition, this is called your
John Vervaeke (2:06:52.080)
monkey mind.
Lex Fridman (2:06:53.080)
It's like a monkey leaping for branches and chattering, right?
John Vervaeke (2:06:56.800)
If I was trying to train that monkey mind to stay, or as Jack Kornfield said, train
John Vervaeke (2:07:01.800)
a puppy dog, stay puppy dog, and if it goes and I get really angry and I bring it back
Lex Fridman (2:07:08.880)
and I'm yelling at it, I'm going to train it to fight and fear me.
Lex Fridman (2:07:13.600)
But if I just indulge it, if I just feed its whims, oh, look, the puppy dog went there.
John Vervaeke (2:07:18.920)
Oh, now it's there.
Lex Fridman (2:07:20.720)
Puppy dog never learns to stay.
Lex Fridman (2:07:21.840)
What do I need to do?
Lex Fridman (2:07:22.840)
I have to neither fight it nor feed it.
John Vervaeke (2:07:25.640)
I have to have this centered attitude.
Lex Fridman (2:07:27.080)
I have to befriend it.
Lex Fridman (2:07:29.120)
So you step back and look at your sensations.
Lex Fridman (2:07:33.560)
You step back and look at your distracting processes.
John Vervaeke (2:07:37.240)
You return your attention to the breath and you do it with the right attitude.
Lex Fridman (2:07:40.720)
That's the core of a good meditative practice.
John Vervaeke (2:07:44.240)
Okay.
Lex Fridman (2:07:45.240)
Then what's a good contemplative practice?
John Vervaeke (2:07:47.680)
A good contemplative practice is to try and meta, it's actually apropos because we talked
Lex Fridman (2:07:56.440)
about that participatory knowing the way you're situated in the world.
Lex Fridman (2:08:00.400)
So this is a long thing because there's different interpretations of meta and I go for what's
Lex Fridman (2:08:06.200)
called an existential interpretation over an emotional one.
Lex Fridman (2:08:10.520)
So what I'm doing in meta is I'm trying to awaken in two ways.
John Vervaeke (2:08:17.700)
I'm trying to awaken to the fact that I am constantly assuming an identity and assigning
John Vervaeke (2:08:24.000)
an identity.
Lex Fridman (2:08:25.000)
So I'm looking at that.
John Vervaeke (2:08:27.720)
I'm trying to awaken to that and then I'm trying to awake from the modal confusion that
Lex Fridman (2:08:33.360)
I could get into around that.
Lex Fridman (2:08:35.720)
And so I'm looking out onto the world and I'm trying to see you in a fundamentally different
Lex Fridman (2:08:44.680)
way than I have before.
John Vervaeke (2:08:48.400)
You know, like you go to the gym and you do bicep curls.
Lex Fridman (2:08:51.120)
Yeah.
John Vervaeke (2:08:52.120)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (2:08:53.120)
Yes.
John Vervaeke (2:08:54.120)
Is it possible to reduce it to those things that, I mean, you don't need to speak to the
Lex Fridman (2:08:55.840)
specifics, but is there actual practice you can do or is it really personal?
John Vervaeke (2:09:00.760)
No, I teach people how to do the meta practice.
John Vervaeke (2:09:03.200)
I also teach them how to do a Neoplatonic contemplative practice, how to do a Stoic.
John Vervaeke (2:09:07.560)
Another one you can do is the view from above.
Lex Fridman (2:09:09.960)
This is classic Stoicism.
John Vervaeke (2:09:11.280)
I get you to imagine that you're in this room and then imagine that you're floating above
John Vervaeke (2:09:15.600)
the room, then above Austin, then above Texas, then above the United States, then the earth.
Lex Fridman (2:09:22.000)
And you have to really imagine it.
Lex Fridman (2:09:24.480)
Don't just think it, but really imagine.
Lex Fridman (2:09:25.960)
And then what you notice is as you're pulling out to a wider and wider like contemplation
John Vervaeke (2:09:32.240)
of reality, your sense of self and what you find relevant and important also changes.
John Vervaeke (2:09:36.720)
No, for all of these, there is a specific step by step methodology.
John Vervaeke (2:09:40.080)
Oh, so you can, so like in that one, you could just literally imagine yourself floating farther
Lex Fridman (2:09:45.200)
and farther out.
Lex Fridman (2:09:46.200)
But you have to go through the steps because the stepping matters because if you just jump,
John Vervaeke (2:09:51.540)
it doesn't work.
Lex Fridman (2:09:52.540)
Do you have any of this stuff online by the way?
John Vervaeke (2:09:54.760)
I do because during COVID, I decided at the advice of a good friend to do a daily course.
Lex Fridman (2:10:03.840)
I taught meditating with John Vervecki.
John Vervaeke (2:10:06.240)
I did all the way through meditation, contemplation, even some of the movement practices.
Lex Fridman (2:10:10.620)
That's all there.
John Vervaeke (2:10:11.620)
It's all available.
Lex Fridman (2:10:12.620)
That was largely inspired by Buddhism and Taoism.
Lex Fridman (2:10:15.480)
And then I went into the Western tradition and went through things like Stoicism and
Lex Fridman (2:10:18.760)
Neoplatonism, cultivating wisdom with John Vervecki.
John Vervaeke (2:10:21.680)
That's all there, all free.
Lex Fridman (2:10:23.920)
On your website?
John Vervaeke (2:10:24.920)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:10:25.920)
It's on my YouTube channel.
John Vervaeke (2:10:26.920)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:10:27.920)
On your YouTube channel.
John Vervaeke (2:10:28.920)
Okay.
Lex Fridman (2:10:29.920)
That's exciting.
John Vervaeke (2:10:30.920)
I mean, your Meaning Crisis lectures is just incredible.
John Vervaeke (2:10:34.460)
Everything around it, including the notes and the notes that people took, it's just,
John Vervaeke (2:10:38.640)
it created this tree of conversations.
Lex Fridman (2:10:41.800)
It's really, really, really well done.
Lex Fridman (2:10:45.360)
What about flow induction?
Lex Fridman (2:10:47.480)
You want to flow wisely.
Lex Fridman (2:10:48.480)
And first of all, you need to understand what flow is, and then you need to confront a particular
Lex Fridman (2:10:55.280)
issue around, a practical problem around flow.
John Vervaeke (2:10:57.520)
Let's go there because a lot of those words seem like synonyms to people sometimes.
Lex Fridman (2:11:02.400)
So the state of flow, what is it?
John Vervaeke (2:11:07.000)
All right.
Lex Fridman (2:11:08.000)
So, and he just died last year, Csikszentmihalyi.
John Vervaeke (2:11:11.120)
I admire him very much.
John Vervaeke (2:11:13.400)
We've exchanged a bunch of messages over the past few years, and he wanted to do the podcast
John Vervaeke (2:11:20.040)
several times.
Lex Fridman (2:11:21.040)
Oh, that would have been wonderful.
Lex Fridman (2:11:22.640)
But he said he struggled with his health, and I never knew in those situations, I deeply
John Vervaeke (2:11:30.040)
regret several cases like this that I had with Conway, that I should have pushed him
John Vervaeke (2:11:41.800)
on it because, yeah, as you get later in life, things, the simple things become more difficult,
Lex Fridman (2:11:48.960)
but a voice, especially one that hasn't been really heard, is important to hear.
Lex Fridman (2:11:54.320)
So anyway, I apologize, but yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:11:57.000)
No, no.
John Vervaeke (2:11:58.000)
I share that.
John Vervaeke (2:11:59.000)
I mean, I can tell you that within my area, he is important and he's famous in an academics
John Vervaeke (2:12:06.000)
sense.
Lex Fridman (2:12:07.000)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:12:08.000)
So the flow state, two important sets of conditions, and very often people only talk about one,
Lex Fridman (2:12:13.520)
and that's a little bit of a misrepresentation.
Lex Fridman (2:12:16.560)
So the flow state is in situations in which the demand of the situation is slightly beyond
Lex Fridman (2:12:24.080)
your skills.
Lex Fridman (2:12:25.880)
So you both have to apply all the skills you can with as much sort of attention and concentration
Lex Fridman (2:12:31.320)
as you possibly can, and you have to actually be stretching your skills.
John Vervaeke (2:12:36.600)
Now, in this circumstance, people report optimal experience, optimal in two ways.
Lex Fridman (2:12:44.280)
Optimal in that this is one of the best experiences I've had in my life.
John Vervaeke (2:12:47.380)
It's distinct from pleasure, and yet it explains why people do very bizarre things like rock
Lex Fridman (2:12:51.720)
climbing because it's a good flow induction.
Lex Fridman (2:12:55.040)
But they also mean optimal in a second sense, my best performance.
Lex Fridman (2:12:58.600)
So it's both the best experience and the best performance.
Lex Fridman (2:13:02.880)
So Csikszentmihalyi also talked about the information flow conditions you need, right,
John Vervaeke (2:13:09.660)
in order for there to be this state of flow, and then I'll talk about what it's like to
John Vervaeke (2:13:13.160)
be in flow in a sec.
Lex Fridman (2:13:14.400)
What you need is three things.
John Vervaeke (2:13:16.820)
You need the information that you're getting to be clear.
Lex Fridman (2:13:18.700)
It can't be ambiguous or vague.
John Vervaeke (2:13:20.760)
Think about a rock climber.
Lex Fridman (2:13:21.760)
If it's ambiguous and vague, you're in trouble, right?
John Vervaeke (2:13:26.240)
There has to be tightly coupled feedback between what you do and how the environment responds.
Lex Fridman (2:13:31.160)
So when you act, there's an immediate response.
John Vervaeke (2:13:33.560)
There isn't a big time lag between your action and your ability to detect the response from
Lex Fridman (2:13:38.960)
the environment.
John Vervaeke (2:13:40.360)
Third, failure has to matter.
Lex Fridman (2:13:43.440)
Error really matters.
Lex Fridman (2:13:45.040)
So there should be some anxiety about failure.
Lex Fridman (2:13:48.120)
And failure matters.
Lex Fridman (2:13:50.160)
So that, yeah, because…
Lex Fridman (2:13:51.160)
Like to you, the person that participates.
John Vervaeke (2:13:53.720)
Yes, yes, yes.
John Vervaeke (2:13:55.200)
Now when you're in the flow state, notice how this sits on the boundary between the
John Vervaeke (2:14:00.600)
secular and the sacred.
John Vervaeke (2:14:03.000)
When you're in the flow state, people report a tremendous sense of atonement with the environment.
John Vervaeke (2:14:10.760)
They report a loss of a particular kind of self consciousness, that narrative, nurturing
Lex Fridman (2:14:16.080)
nanny in your head that, how do I look?
Lex Fridman (2:14:19.040)
Do people like me?
Lex Fridman (2:14:20.080)
How do I look?
Lex Fridman (2:14:21.080)
How's my hair?
Lex Fridman (2:14:22.080)
Do people like me?
Lex Fridman (2:14:23.080)
Should I have said that?
Lex Fridman (2:14:24.080)
That all goes away.
John Vervaeke (2:14:25.240)
You're free from that.
John Vervaeke (2:14:26.240)
You're free from the most sadistic, superego self critic you could possibly have, at least
John Vervaeke (2:14:30.840)
for a while.
Lex Fridman (2:14:32.160)
The world is vivid.
John Vervaeke (2:14:34.320)
It's super salient to you.
Lex Fridman (2:14:35.960)
There's an ongoing sense of discovery.
John Vervaeke (2:14:39.720)
Although often you know you're exerting a lot of metabolic effort, it feels effortless.
Lex Fridman (2:14:47.300)
So in the flow state when you're sparring, your hand just goes up for the block and your
John Vervaeke (2:14:53.160)
strike just goes through the empty space.
Lex Fridman (2:14:56.200)
Or if you're a goalie in hockey, I've got to mention hockey once, I'm a Canadian, right?
Lex Fridman (2:15:01.000)
You put out your glove hand and the puck's there, right?
Lex Fridman (2:15:05.920)
So there's this tremendous sense of grace, atonement, super salience, discovery and realness.
John Vervaeke (2:15:19.600)
People don't, when they're in the flow state, they don't go, I bet this is an illusion.
John Vervaeke (2:15:23.600)
The interesting question for me and my coauthors in the article we published in the Oxford
John Vervaeke (2:15:31.920)
Handbook of Spontaneous Thought with Arianne Harabennett and Leo Ferraro is that's a descriptive
Lex Fridman (2:15:37.320)
account of flow.
John Vervaeke (2:15:39.420)
We wanted an explanatory account, one of the causal mechanisms at work in flow.
Lex Fridman (2:15:45.320)
And so we actually proposed to interlocking cognitive processes.
Lex Fridman (2:15:51.780)
The first thing we said is, well, what's going on in flow?
Lex Fridman (2:15:56.440)
Well think about it.
John Vervaeke (2:15:57.440)
Think about the rock climber.
John Vervaeke (2:15:59.400)
The rock climber, and I talked about this earlier, they're constantly restructuring
Lex Fridman (2:16:04.140)
how they're seeing the rock face.
John Vervaeke (2:16:06.980)
They're constantly doing something like insight, and if they fail to do it, they impasse and
John Vervaeke (2:16:12.560)
that starts to get dangerous.
Lex Fridman (2:16:14.160)
So they've got to do an insight that primes an insight that primes an insight.
Lex Fridman (2:16:17.760)
So imagine the aha experience, that flash and that moment, and imagine it cascading
Lex Fridman (2:16:23.960)
so you're getting the extended aha.
John Vervaeke (2:16:26.860)
That's why things are super salient.
Lex Fridman (2:16:28.440)
There's a sense of discovery.
John Vervaeke (2:16:30.000)
There's a sense of atonement, of deep participation, of grace, but there's something else going
Lex Fridman (2:16:35.280)
on too.
Lex Fridman (2:16:37.280)
So there's a phenomenon called implicit learning, also very well replicated.
Lex Fridman (2:16:43.340)
It's way back in the 60s with Rieber.
John Vervaeke (2:16:45.680)
You can give people complex patterns, like number and letter strings, and they can learn
Lex Fridman (2:16:54.160)
about those patterns outside of deliberate focal awareness.
John Vervaeke (2:16:59.360)
That's what's called implicit learning.
Lex Fridman (2:17:01.720)
And what's interesting is if you try and change that task into, tell me the pattern, but explicitly
John Vervaeke (2:17:10.680)
try to figure it out, the performance degrades.
Lex Fridman (2:17:13.320)
So here's the idea.
John Vervaeke (2:17:14.320)
You have this adaptive capacity for implicit learning, and what it does is it results in
John Vervaeke (2:17:19.720)
you being able to track complex variables in a way, but you don't know how you came
John Vervaeke (2:17:24.920)
up with that knowledge.
Lex Fridman (2:17:27.280)
And this is Hogarth's proposal in educating intuition.
John Vervaeke (2:17:31.120)
Intuition is actually the result of implicit learning.
Lex Fridman (2:17:33.040)
So an example I use is how far do you stand away from somebody at a funeral?
John Vervaeke (2:17:41.680)
There's a lot of complex variables.
John Vervaeke (2:17:43.160)
There's status, closeness to the person, your relationship to them, past history, all kinds
John Vervaeke (2:17:49.500)
of stuff, and yet you know how to do it, and you didn't have to go to funeral school.
Lex Fridman (2:17:55.160)
I'm just using that as an example.
Lex Fridman (2:17:56.960)
So you have these powerful intuitions.
Lex Fridman (2:17:58.840)
Now here's Hogarth's great point.
John Vervaeke (2:18:02.580)
Implicit learning, remember I said before, the things that make it adaptive make us subject
Lex Fridman (2:18:06.660)
to self deception?
John Vervaeke (2:18:07.840)
Here's another example.
John Vervaeke (2:18:09.720)
Implicit learning is powerful at picking up on complex patterns, but it doesn't care what
John Vervaeke (2:18:14.160)
kind of pattern it is.
Lex Fridman (2:18:15.840)
It doesn't distinguish causal patterns from merely correlational patterns.
Lex Fridman (2:18:22.140)
So implicit learning, when we like it, it's intuition.
John Vervaeke (2:18:24.360)
When it's picking up on stuff that's bogus, we call it prejudice or all kinds of other
John Vervaeke (2:18:27.800)
names for intuition that's going wrong.
Lex Fridman (2:18:30.800)
Now, he said, okay, what do we do?
Lex Fridman (2:18:33.680)
What do we do about this?
Lex Fridman (2:18:34.680)
And this will get back to Flo.
Lex Fridman (2:18:36.380)
What do we do about this?
John Vervaeke (2:18:37.380)
Well, we can't try to replace implicit learning with explicit learning because we'll lose
John Vervaeke (2:18:40.800)
all the adaptiveness to it.
Lex Fridman (2:18:42.820)
So what can we do explicitly?
Lex Fridman (2:18:44.600)
What we can do is take care of the environment in which we're doing the implicit learning.
Lex Fridman (2:18:50.140)
How do we do that?
John Vervaeke (2:18:51.160)
We try to make sure the environment has features that help us distinguish causation from correlation.
Lex Fridman (2:18:58.420)
What kind of environments have we created that are good at distinguishing causation
Lex Fridman (2:19:02.080)
from correlation?
Lex Fridman (2:19:04.320)
Experimental environments.
Lex Fridman (2:19:05.320)
What do you do in an experiment?
John Vervaeke (2:19:07.600)
You make sure that the variables are clear, no confound, no ambiguity, no vagueness.
John Vervaeke (2:19:12.480)
You make sure there's a tight coupling between the independent and the dependent variable
Lex Fridman (2:19:16.120)
and your hypothesis can be falsified.
John Vervaeke (2:19:19.040)
Error matters.
Lex Fridman (2:19:20.040)
Now look at those three, Lex.
John Vervaeke (2:19:21.480)
Those are exactly the three conditions that you need for Flo.
Lex Fridman (2:19:27.320)
Clear information, tightly coupled feedback and error matters.
Lex Fridman (2:19:31.700)
So Flo is not only an insight cascade, improving your insight capacity, it's also a marker
John Vervaeke (2:19:39.120)
that you're cultivating the best kind of intuitions, the ones that fit you best to the causal
John Vervaeke (2:19:46.800)
patterns in your environment.
Lex Fridman (2:19:48.760)
But it's hard to achieve that kind of environment where there's a clear distinction between
John Vervaeke (2:19:54.240)
causality and correlation and it has the rigor of a scientific experiment.
John Vervaeke (2:20:01.440)
Fair enough and I don't think Hogarth was saying it's gonna be epistemically as rigorous
John Vervaeke (2:20:06.660)
as a scientific experiment, but he's saying if you structure that, it will tend to do
Lex Fridman (2:20:13.360)
what that scientific method does, which is find causal...
John Vervaeke (2:20:16.440)
Think of the rock climber.
Lex Fridman (2:20:17.800)
All of those things are the case.
John Vervaeke (2:20:18.800)
They need clear information.
John Vervaeke (2:20:20.920)
It's tightly coupled and error matters and they think what they're doing is very real
John Vervaeke (2:20:25.760)
because if they're not conforming to the real causal patterns of the rock face and the physiology
Lex Fridman (2:20:34.380)
of their body, they will fall.
John Vervaeke (2:20:37.280)
Is there something to be said about the power of discovering meaning and having this deep
Lex Fridman (2:20:43.640)
relationship with the moment?
John Vervaeke (2:20:48.480)
There's something about flow that really forgets the past and the future and is really focused
Lex Fridman (2:20:55.200)
on the moment.
John Vervaeke (2:20:56.200)
I think that's part of the phenomenology, but I think the functionality has to do with
John Vervaeke (2:21:00.120)
the fact that what's happening in flow is that dynamic nonpropositional connectedness
John Vervaeke (2:21:07.500)
that is so central to meaning is being optimized.
John Vervaeke (2:21:12.400)
This is why flow is a good predictor of how well you rate your life, how much well being
John Vervaeke (2:21:20.240)
you think you have, which of course is itself also predictive and interrelated with how
Lex Fridman (2:21:24.880)
meaningful you find your life.
John Vervaeke (2:21:26.560)
One of the things that you can do, but there's an important caveat, to increase your sense
Lex Fridman (2:21:31.920)
of meaning in life is to get into the flow state more frequently.
John Vervaeke (2:21:36.520)
That's why I said you want a moving practice that's conducive to the flow state, but there's
John Vervaeke (2:21:40.320)
one important caveat, which is we of course have figured out and I'm playing with words
John Vervaeke (2:21:48.800)
here how to game this and how to hijack it by creating things like video games.
John Vervaeke (2:21:54.320)
I'm not saying this is the case for all video games or this is the case for all people,
Lex Fridman (2:21:59.320)
but the WHO now acknowledges this as a real thing that you can get into the flow state
John Vervaeke (2:22:05.640)
within the video game world to the detriment of your ability to get into the flow state
John Vervaeke (2:22:12.320)
in the real world.
Lex Fridman (2:22:14.040)
What's the opposite of flow?
John Vervaeke (2:22:15.880)
Depression.
Lex Fridman (2:22:16.880)
In fact, depression has been called anti flow.
Lex Fridman (2:22:21.400)
So you get these people that are flowing in this non real world and they can't transfer
Lex Fridman (2:22:27.840)
it to the real world and it's actually costing them flow in the real world.
Lex Fridman (2:22:32.240)
So they tend to get, they tend to suffer depression and all kinds of things.
John Vervaeke (2:22:36.240)
Your ability, your habit and just skill at attaining flow in the video game world basically
John Vervaeke (2:22:45.840)
makes you less effective or maybe shocks you at how difficult it is to achieve flow in
Lex Fridman (2:22:52.800)
the physical world.
John Vervaeke (2:22:53.800)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:22:54.800)
I'm not sure about that.
John Vervaeke (2:22:55.800)
I just, I don't want to push back against the implied challenge of transferability because
John Vervaeke (2:23:03.400)
there's a lot of, I have a lot of friends that play video games, a very large percent
John Vervaeke (2:23:10.240)
of young folks play video games and I'm hesitant to build up models of how that affects behavior.
Lex Fridman (2:23:20.560)
My intuition is weak there.
John Vervaeke (2:23:22.320)
Sometimes people that have PhDs are of a certain age that they came up when video games weren't
Lex Fridman (2:23:29.000)
a deep part of their life development.
John Vervaeke (2:23:31.320)
I would venture to say people who have developed their brain with video games being a part,
John Vervaeke (2:23:38.400)
a large part of that world are in some sense different humans and it's possible that they
John Vervaeke (2:23:45.040)
can transfer more effectively.
John Vervaeke (2:23:47.440)
Some of the lessons, some of the ability to attain flow from the virtual world to the
John Vervaeke (2:23:54.280)
physical world, they're also more, I would venture to say, resilient to the negative
John Vervaeke (2:23:59.520)
effects of, for example, social media or video games that have maybe the objectification
John Vervaeke (2:24:08.280)
or the over sexualized or violent aspect of video games.
John Vervaeke (2:24:12.440)
They're able to turn that off when they go to the physical world and turn it back on
John Vervaeke (2:24:15.760)
when they're playing the video games probably more effectively than the old timers.
Lex Fridman (2:24:23.040)
So I just want to say this sort of, I'm not sure, it's a really interesting question how
John Vervaeke (2:24:27.280)
transferable the flow state is.
Lex Fridman (2:24:29.000)
I don't know if you want to comment on that.
John Vervaeke (2:24:31.960)
I do, I do.
John Vervaeke (2:24:32.960)
First of all, I did qualify and I'm saying it's not the case for all video games or for
John Vervaeke (2:24:36.160)
all people.
John Vervaeke (2:24:37.160)
I'm holding out the possibility and I know this possibility because I've had students
John Vervaeke (2:24:42.120)
who actually suffer from this and have done work around it with me.
Lex Fridman (2:24:48.760)
The ability to achieve.
John Vervaeke (2:24:51.000)
They couldn't transfer, yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:24:54.760)
And then they were able to step back from that and then take up the cognitive science
Lex Fridman (2:24:58.840)
and write about it and work on it.
John Vervaeke (2:25:01.600)
Also, I'm not so sure about the resiliency claim because there seems to be mounting evidence.
John Vervaeke (2:25:10.940)
It's not consensus, but it's certainly not regarded as fringe, that the increase in social
John Vervaeke (2:25:17.640)
media is pretty strongly correlated with increase in depression, self destructive behavior,
John Vervaeke (2:25:23.840)
things like this.
Lex Fridman (2:25:24.840)
I would like to see that evidence.
John Vervaeke (2:25:26.160)
Sure.
Lex Fridman (2:25:27.160)
I can find it.
John Vervaeke (2:25:28.160)
No, no, no.
John Vervaeke (2:25:29.160)
Let me, I'm always hesitant to too eagerly kind of agree with things that I want to agree
John Vervaeke (2:25:41.720)
with.
Lex Fridman (2:25:42.720)
There's a public perception everyone seems to hate on social media.
Lex Fridman (2:25:48.720)
I wonder, as always with these things, does it reveal depression or does it create depression?
Lex Fridman (2:25:56.520)
This is always the question.
John Vervaeke (2:25:57.680)
It's like whenever you talk about any political or ideological movement, does it create hate
Lex Fridman (2:26:04.220)
or does it reveal hate?
Lex Fridman (2:26:06.000)
And that's a good thing to ask and you should always challenge the things that you intuitively
Lex Fridman (2:26:09.960)
want to believe.
John Vervaeke (2:26:10.960)
I agree with that.
Lex Fridman (2:26:13.960)
Like aliens.
Lex Fridman (2:26:15.640)
So one of the ways you address this, and it's not sufficient and I did say the work is preliminary,
Lex Fridman (2:26:21.280)
but if I can give you a plausible mechanism that's new and then that lends credence.
Lex Fridman (2:26:28.900)
And part of what happens is illusory social comparison.
Lex Fridman (2:26:33.560)
Think of Instagram.
John Vervaeke (2:26:34.560)
People are posting things that are not accurate representation of their life or life events.
John Vervaeke (2:26:39.400)
In fact, they will stage things, but the people that are looking at these, they take it often
John Vervaeke (2:26:46.680)
as real and so they get downward social comparison and this is like compared to how you and I
John Vervaeke (2:26:56.280)
probably live where we may get one or two of those events a week, they're getting them
John Vervaeke (2:27:00.640)
moment by moment.
Lex Fridman (2:27:02.440)
And so it's a plausible mechanism that why it might be driving people into a more depressed
John Vervaeke (2:27:07.600)
state.
John Vervaeke (2:27:08.600)
Okay, the flip side of that is because there's a greater, greater gap going from real world
John Vervaeke (2:27:14.120)
to Instagram world, you start to be able to laugh at it and realize that it's artificial.
Lex Fridman (2:27:19.920)
So for example, even just artificial filters, people start to realize like, there's like,
John Vervaeke (2:27:26.280)
it's the same kind of gap as there is between the video game world and the real world.
Lex Fridman (2:27:31.480)
In the video game world, you can do all kinds of wild things.
John Vervaeke (2:27:35.320)
Grand theft auto, you can shoot people up, you can do whatever the heck you want.
John Vervaeke (2:27:38.360)
In the real world, you can't and you start to develop an understanding of how to have
John Vervaeke (2:27:42.880)
fun in the virtual world and in the physical world.
Lex Fridman (2:27:46.200)
And I think it's just as a pushback, I'm not saying either is true though, those are very
John Vervaeke (2:27:50.320)
interesting claims.
John Vervaeke (2:27:51.760)
The more ridiculously out of touch Instagram becomes, the easier you can laugh it off potentially
John Vervaeke (2:27:58.520)
in terms of the effect it has on your psyche.
Lex Fridman (2:28:00.560)
I'll respond to that.
Lex Fridman (2:28:01.760)
But at some point, we should get back to Flo.
Lex Fridman (2:28:06.280)
As we engage in Flo.
John Vervaeke (2:28:07.460)
You laugh at the shampoo commercial and you buy the shampoo.
John Vervaeke (2:28:16.280)
There's a capacity for tremendous bullshitting because of the way these machines are designed
John Vervaeke (2:28:21.440)
to trigger salience without triggering reflective truth seeking.
John Vervaeke (2:28:33.040)
I'm thinking of common examples because sometimes you can laugh all the way to the bank.
John Vervaeke (2:28:42.240)
You can laugh and not buy the shampoo.
Lex Fridman (2:28:45.560)
There's many cases, so I think you have to laugh hard enough.
John Vervaeke (2:28:49.160)
You do have to laugh hard enough, but the advertisers get millions of dollars precisely
John Vervaeke (2:28:54.800)
because for many, many people, it does make you buy the shampoo and that's the concern.
Lex Fridman (2:29:00.280)
And maybe the machine of social media is such that it optimizes the shampoo buying.
Lex Fridman (2:29:04.800)
Yes.
John Vervaeke (2:29:05.800)
The point I was trying to make is whether or not that particular example is ultimately
Lex Fridman (2:29:13.200)
right, the possibility of transfer failure is a real thing.
Lex Fridman (2:29:18.840)
And I want to contrast that to an experience I had when I was in grad school.
John Vervaeke (2:29:22.640)
I had been doing Tai Chi Chuan about three or four years, very religiously, both senses
John Vervaeke (2:29:27.160)
of the word, like three or four hours a day and reading all the literature and I was having
Lex Fridman (2:29:32.900)
all the weird experiences, cold as ice, hot as lava, all that stuff and it's ooh, right?
Lex Fridman (2:29:39.880)
But my friends in grad school, they said to me, what's going on?
Lex Fridman (2:29:45.360)
You're different.
Lex Fridman (2:29:46.360)
And I said, what do you mean?
Lex Fridman (2:29:48.520)
And they said, well, you're a lot more balanced in your interactions and you're a lot more
John Vervaeke (2:29:54.120)
flowing and you're a lot more sort of flexible and you adjust more and I realized, oh, and
John Vervaeke (2:30:01.480)
this was the sort of Taoist claim around Tai Chi Chuan that it actually transfers in ways
John Vervaeke (2:30:08.160)
that you might not expect.
John Vervaeke (2:30:10.160)
You start to be able, and I've now noticed that, I now notice how I'm doing Tai Chi even
John Vervaeke (2:30:15.840)
in this interaction and how it can facilitate and afford and so there's a powerful transfer
Lex Fridman (2:30:22.280)
and that's what I meant by flow wisely, not only flow in a way that's making sure that
John Vervaeke (2:30:28.800)
you're distinguishing causation from correlation, which flow can do, but find how to situate
John Vervaeke (2:30:35.160)
it, home it so that it will percolate through your psyche and permeate through many domains
John Vervaeke (2:30:39.960)
of your life.
John Vervaeke (2:30:42.780)
Is there something you could say similar to our discussion about mindfulness and meditation
Lex Fridman (2:30:49.540)
and contemplation about the world that psychedelics take our mind?
Lex Fridman (2:30:55.360)
Where does the mind go when it's on psychedelics?
John Vervaeke (2:31:04.840)
I want to remind you of something you said, which is a gem.
John Vervaeke (2:31:10.840)
It's not so much the experience, but the degree to which it can be integrated back.
Lex Fridman (2:31:16.640)
So here's a proposal that comes from Woodward and others, a lot of convergence around this.
John Vervaeke (2:31:21.480)
Carhartt Harris is talking about it similarly in the entropic brain, but I'm not going to
John Vervaeke (2:31:25.640)
talk first about psychedelics.
John Vervaeke (2:31:26.640)
I'm going to talk about neural networks and I'm going to talk about a classic problem
John Vervaeke (2:31:31.480)
in neural networks.
Lex Fridman (2:31:32.480)
So neural networks, like us with intuition and implicit learning, are fantastic at picking
John Vervaeke (2:31:37.180)
up on complex patterns.
Lex Fridman (2:31:40.040)
Which neural networks are we talking about?
John Vervaeke (2:31:41.360)
I'm talking about a general, just general...
Lex Fridman (2:31:43.920)
Both artificial and biological?
John Vervaeke (2:31:45.360)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (2:31:46.360)
Yes.
John Vervaeke (2:31:47.360)
I think at this point, there is no relevant difference.
Lex Fridman (2:31:52.200)
So one of the classic problems because of their power is they suffer from overfitting
John Vervaeke (2:31:56.680)
to the data, or for those of you who are in a statistical orientation, they pick up patterns
Lex Fridman (2:32:04.200)
in the sample that aren't actually present in the population.
Lex Fridman (2:32:09.280)
And so what you do is there's various strategies.
John Vervaeke (2:32:13.960)
You can do dropout where you periodically turn off half of the nodes in a network.
John Vervaeke (2:32:19.300)
You can drop noise into the network.
Lex Fridman (2:32:22.520)
And what that does is it prevents overfitting to the data and allows the network to generalize
John Vervaeke (2:32:28.400)
more powerfully to the environment.
Lex Fridman (2:32:32.360)
I proposed to you that that's basically what psychedelics do.
John Vervaeke (2:32:38.600)
They do that.
Lex Fridman (2:32:39.680)
They basically do significant constraint reduction.
Lex Fridman (2:32:44.260)
And so you get areas of the brain talking to each other that don't normally talk to
John Vervaeke (2:32:49.640)
each other, areas that do talk to each other, not talking to each other, down regulation
John Vervaeke (2:32:53.940)
of areas that are very dominant, like the default mode network, et cetera.
Lex Fridman (2:32:58.020)
And what that does is exactly something strongly analogous to what's happening in dropout or
John Vervaeke (2:33:04.140)
putting noise into the data.
Lex Fridman (2:33:05.960)
It opens up.
Lex Fridman (2:33:06.960)
And by the way, if you give human beings an insight problem that they're trying to solve
Lex Fridman (2:33:11.880)
and you throw in some noise, like literally static on the screen, you can trigger an insight
John Vervaeke (2:33:16.780)
in them.
Lex Fridman (2:33:19.420)
So like literally very simplistic kind of noise to the perception system.
John Vervaeke (2:33:23.440)
Right.
Lex Fridman (2:33:24.440)
It can break it out of overfitting to the data and open you up.
John Vervaeke (2:33:27.760)
Now, that means, though, that just doing that in and of itself is not the answer because
John Vervaeke (2:33:39.880)
you also have to make sure that the system can go back to exploring that new space properly.
John Vervaeke (2:33:46.580)
This isn't a problem with neural networks.
John Vervaeke (2:33:48.360)
You turn off dropout and they just go back to being powerful neural networks, and now
John Vervaeke (2:33:51.940)
they explore the state space that they couldn't explore before.
John Vervaeke (2:33:55.360)
Human beings are a little bit more messy around this, and this is where the analogy does get
John Vervaeke (2:34:00.520)
a little bit strained.
Lex Fridman (2:34:02.000)
So they need practices that help them integrate that opening up to the new state space so
John Vervaeke (2:34:10.740)
they can properly integrate it.
Lex Fridman (2:34:12.560)
So beyond Leary's state and setting, I think you need another S. I think you need sacred.
John Vervaeke (2:34:21.760)
You need, psychedelics need to be practiced within a sapiential framework, a framework
John Vervaeke (2:34:29.120)
in which people are independently and beforehand improving their abilities to deal with self
John Vervaeke (2:34:35.340)
deception and afford insight and self regulate.
John Vervaeke (2:34:38.800)
This is, of course, the overwhelming way in which psychedelics are used by indigenous
John Vervaeke (2:34:43.600)
cultures.
Lex Fridman (2:34:44.600)
And I think if we put them into that context, then they can help the project of people self
John Vervaeke (2:34:53.080)
transcending, cultivating meaning and increasing wisdom.
Lex Fridman (2:34:56.900)
But if I think we remove them out of that context and put them in the context of commodities
John Vervaeke (2:35:03.520)
taken just to have certain phenomenological changes, we run certain important risks.
Lex Fridman (2:35:10.840)
So using the term of higher states of consciousness.
John Vervaeke (2:35:14.160)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (2:35:15.160)
Is consciousness an important part of that word?
Lex Fridman (2:35:19.640)
Why higher?
Lex Fridman (2:35:22.000)
Is it a higher state or is it a detour, a side road on the main road of consciousness?
Lex Fridman (2:35:30.560)
Where do we go here?
Lex Fridman (2:35:32.880)
I think the psychedelic state is on a continuum.
John Vervaeke (2:35:37.720)
There's insight and then flow is an insight cascade.
John Vervaeke (2:35:40.960)
There's flow and then you can have sort of psychedelic experiences, mind revealing experiences,
Lex Fridman (2:35:46.480)
but they overlap with mystical experiences and they aren't the same.
Lex Fridman (2:35:52.000)
So for example, in the Griffiths lab, they gave people psilocybin and they taught them
John Vervaeke (2:35:56.640)
ahead of time sort of the features of a mystical experience and only a certain proportion of
John Vervaeke (2:36:03.440)
the people that took the psilocybin went from a psychedelic into a mystical experience.
Lex Fridman (2:36:08.260)
What was interesting is the people that had the mystical experience had measurable and
Lex Fridman (2:36:13.040)
longstanding change to one of the big five factors of personality.
John Vervaeke (2:36:17.020)
They had increased openness, openness is supposed to actually go down over time and these traits
Lex Fridman (2:36:21.400)
aren't supposed to be that malleable and it was significantly like altered, right?
Lex Fridman (2:36:27.360)
But imagine if you just created more openness in a person, right?
Lex Fridman (2:36:33.380)
And they're now open to a lot more and they want to explore a lot more, but you don't
John Vervaeke (2:36:36.960)
give them the tools of discernment.
Lex Fridman (2:36:39.680)
That could be problematic for them in important ways.
John Vervaeke (2:36:42.640)
That could be very problematic.
John Vervaeke (2:36:44.120)
Yes, I got it, but you know, so you have to land the plane in a productive way somehow
John Vervaeke (2:36:53.080)
integrated back into your life and how you see the world and how you frame your perception
Lex Fridman (2:36:57.360)
of that world.
Lex Fridman (2:36:58.360)
And when people do that, that's when I call it a transformative experience.
John Vervaeke (2:37:03.480)
Now the higher states of consciousness are really interesting because they tend to move
John Vervaeke (2:37:06.900)
people from a mystical experience into a transformative experience, because what happens in these
Lex Fridman (2:37:12.400)
experiences is something really, really interesting.
John Vervaeke (2:37:15.960)
They get to a state that's ineffable, they can't put it into words, they can't describe
John Vervaeke (2:37:19.280)
it, but they're in this state temporarily and then they come back and they do this.
John Vervaeke (2:37:25.960)
They say, that was really real and this in comparison is less real.
Lex Fridman (2:37:30.680)
So I remember that platonic meta desire, I want to change my life myself so that I'm
John Vervaeke (2:37:35.520)
more in conformity with that really real, and that is really odd, Lex, because normally
John Vervaeke (2:37:41.120)
when we go outside of our consensus intelligibility, like a dream state, we come back from it,
John Vervaeke (2:37:48.200)
we say, that doesn't fit into everything, therefore it's unreal.
Lex Fridman (2:37:51.520)
They do the exact opposite.
John Vervaeke (2:37:53.420)
They come out of these states and they say, that doesn't fit into this consensus intelligibility
Lex Fridman (2:37:59.840)
and that means this is less real.
John Vervaeke (2:38:01.520)
They do the exact opposite and that fascinates me.
Lex Fridman (2:38:04.920)
Why do they flip our normal procedure about evaluating alternative states?
John Vervaeke (2:38:12.800)
The thing is those higher states of consciousness, precisely because they have that ontonormativity,
John Vervaeke (2:38:18.280)
the realness that demands that you make a change in your life, they serve to bridge
John Vervaeke (2:38:22.960)
between mystical experiences and genuine transformative experiences.
Lex Fridman (2:38:26.600)
So you do think seeing those as more real is productive because then you reach for them.
Lex Fridman (2:38:31.320)
So Jaden's done work on it, and again, all of this stuff isn't recent, so we have to
John Vervaeke (2:38:38.240)
take it with a grain of salt, but by a lot of objective measure, people who do this,
John Vervaeke (2:38:44.240)
who have these higher states of consciousness and undertake the transformative process,
John Vervaeke (2:38:49.200)
their lives get better, their relationships improve, their sense of self improves, their
John Vervaeke (2:38:53.920)
anxieties go down, depression, like all of these other measures, the needles are moved
Lex Fridman (2:38:59.240)
on these measures by people undergoing this transformative experience.
John Vervaeke (2:39:03.240)
Their lives, by many of the criteria that we judge our lives to be good, get better.
John Vervaeke (2:39:08.280)
I have to ask you about this fascinating distributed cognition process that leads to mass formation
John Vervaeke (2:39:18.040)
of ideologies that have had an impact on our world.
Lex Fridman (2:39:22.120)
So you spoke about the clash of the two great pseudo religious ideologies of Marxism and
John Vervaeke (2:39:28.600)
Nazism.
Lex Fridman (2:39:29.600)
Yes.
John Vervaeke (2:39:30.600)
Especially their clash on the Eastern Front.
Lex Fridman (2:39:33.080)
Battle of Kursk.
Lex Fridman (2:39:34.880)
Can you explain the origin of each of these, Marxism and Nazism, in a kind of way that
Lex Fridman (2:39:42.640)
we have been talking about the formation of ideas?
John Vervaeke (2:39:47.640)
Hegel is to Protestantism what Thomas Aquinas is to Catholicism.
John Vervaeke (2:39:51.820)
He was the philosopher who took German Protestantism and also Kant and Fichte and Schelling, and
John Vervaeke (2:40:01.640)
he built a philosophical system.
Lex Fridman (2:40:07.480)
He explicitly said this, by the way.
John Vervaeke (2:40:08.940)
He wanted to bridge between philosophy and religion.
Lex Fridman (2:40:12.040)
He explicitly said that.
John Vervaeke (2:40:13.240)
I'm not foisting that on him.
Lex Fridman (2:40:14.800)
He said it repeatedly in many different places.
Lex Fridman (2:40:18.300)
So he's trying to create a philosophical system that gathered to it, I think, the core mythos
Lex Fridman (2:40:25.800)
of Christianity.
John Vervaeke (2:40:26.800)
The core mythos of Christianity is this idea of a narrative structure to reality in which
Lex Fridman (2:40:33.480)
progress is real, in which our actions now can change the future.
John Vervaeke (2:40:38.860)
We can co participate with God in the creation of the future, and that future can be better.
Lex Fridman (2:40:44.600)
It can reach something like a utopia or the promised land or whatever.
John Vervaeke (2:40:49.280)
He created a philosophical system of brilliance, by the way.
Lex Fridman (2:40:52.120)
He's a genius.
Lex Fridman (2:40:53.280)
But basically what it did was it took that religious vision and gave it the air of philosophical
Lex Fridman (2:41:00.640)
intelligibility and respect.
Lex Fridman (2:41:04.240)
And then Marx takes that and says, you know that process by which the narrative is working
John Vervaeke (2:41:10.080)
itself out that Hegel called dialectic, I don't think it's primarily happening in ideas.
John Vervaeke (2:41:14.720)
I think it's happening primarily between classes within socioeconomic factors.
Lex Fridman (2:41:19.520)
But it's the same story.
John Vervaeke (2:41:21.060)
Here's this mechanism of history, it's teleological, it's going to move this way, it can move towards
Lex Fridman (2:41:27.140)
a utopia.
John Vervaeke (2:41:28.140)
We can either participate in furthering it, like participating in the work of God, or
Lex Fridman (2:41:34.320)
we can thwart it and be against it.
Lex Fridman (2:41:37.120)
And so you have a pseudo religious vision.
Lex Fridman (2:41:41.080)
It's all encompassing.
John Vervaeke (2:41:42.640)
Think about how Marxism is not just a philosophical position, it's not just an economic position.
John Vervaeke (2:41:48.040)
It's an entire worldview, an entire account of history, and a demanding account of what
John Vervaeke (2:41:56.440)
human excellence is.
Lex Fridman (2:41:58.160)
And it has all these things about participating, belonging, fitting to.
Lex Fridman (2:42:03.480)
But it's very, in Marx's case, it's very pragmatic or directly applicable to society, to where
Lex Fridman (2:42:14.160)
it leads to, it more naturally leads to political ideologies.
John Vervaeke (2:42:18.760)
It does.
Lex Fridman (2:42:19.960)
But I think Marx, to a very significant degree, inherits one of Hegel's main flaws.
John Vervaeke (2:42:26.400)
Hegel is talking about all this and he's trying to fit it into post Kantian philosophy.
Lex Fridman (2:42:32.920)
So for him, it's ultimately propositional, conceptual.
John Vervaeke (2:42:38.000)
He like everybody after Descartes is very focused on the propositional level, and he's
Lex Fridman (2:42:43.200)
not paying deep attention to the nonpropositional.
John Vervaeke (2:42:48.340)
This is why the two great critics of Hegel, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, they're trying
John Vervaeke (2:42:53.320)
to put their finger on the nonpropositional, the nonconceptual, the will to power or faith
John Vervaeke (2:42:59.360)
in Kierkegaard, and they're trying to bring out all these other kinds of knowing as being
Lex Fridman (2:43:04.080)
inadequate.
John Vervaeke (2:43:05.080)
That's why Kierkegaard meant when he said, Hegel made a system and then he sat down beside
Lex Fridman (2:43:08.560)
it.
Lex Fridman (2:43:11.760)
And so Marxism is very much, it is activist, it's about reorganizing society, but the transformation
John Vervaeke (2:43:20.400)
in individuals is largely ideological, meaning it's largely about these significant propositional
John Vervaeke (2:43:28.640)
changes and adopting a set of beliefs.
John Vervaeke (2:43:31.560)
When it came in contact with the Soviet Union or with what became the Soviet Union, why
Lex Fridman (2:43:37.440)
do you think it had such a powerful hold on such a large number of people?
Lex Fridman (2:43:42.840)
Not Marxism, but implementation of Marxism in the name of communism.
John Vervaeke (2:43:48.120)
Because it offered people, I mean, it offered people something that typically only religions
John Vervaeke (2:43:57.200)
had offered, and it offered people the hope of making a new man, a new kind of human being
John Vervaeke (2:44:05.540)
in a new world.
Lex Fridman (2:44:07.640)
And when you've been living in Russia, in which things seem to be locked in a system
John Vervaeke (2:44:16.400)
that is crushing most people, getting the promise in the air of scientific legitimacy
John Vervaeke (2:44:25.160)
that we can make new human beings and a new world and in which happiness will ensue, that's
John Vervaeke (2:44:32.360)
an intoxicating proposal.
John Vervaeke (2:44:34.600)
You get sort of, like I said, you get all of the intoxication of a religious utopia,
Lex Fridman (2:44:40.480)
but you get all the seeming legitimacy of claiming that it's a scientific understanding
Lex Fridman (2:44:47.320)
of history and economics.
John Vervaeke (2:44:48.960)
It's very popular to criticize communism, Marxism these days, and I often put myself
John Vervaeke (2:44:55.960)
in the place before any of the implementations came to be, I tried to think if I would be
John Vervaeke (2:45:03.520)
able to predict what the implementations of Marxism and communism would result in, in
Lex Fridman (2:45:11.000)
the 20th century.
Lex Fridman (2:45:12.000)
And I'm not sure I'm smart enough to make that prediction.
John Vervaeke (2:45:16.440)
Because at the core of the ideas are respecting, with Marx it's very economics type theory,
Lex Fridman (2:45:24.920)
so it's basically respecting the value of the worker and the regular man in society
Lex Fridman (2:45:32.880)
for making a contribution to that society.
Lex Fridman (2:45:35.480)
And to me that seems like a powerful idea, and it's not clear to me how it goes wrong.
John Vervaeke (2:45:42.360)
In fact, it's still not clear to me why the hell would Stalin happen, or Mao happen.
John Vervaeke (2:45:52.840)
There's something very interesting and complex about human nature in hierarchies, about distributed
Lex Fridman (2:45:58.120)
cognition that results in that, and it's not trivial to understand.
John Vervaeke (2:46:01.880)
No, no.
Lex Fridman (2:46:02.880)
So, I mean, I wonder if you could put a finger on it.
Lex Fridman (2:46:06.520)
Why did it go so wrong?
Lex Fridman (2:46:08.760)
So I think, you know, what Ohana talks about in The Intellectual History of Modernity talks
John Vervaeke (2:46:17.520)
about the Promethean spirit, the idea, the really radical proposal.
Lex Fridman (2:46:27.760)
And think about how it's not so radical to us, and in that sense Marxism has succeeded.
John Vervaeke (2:46:33.560)
The radical proposal that you see even in the French Revolution, and don't forget the
John Vervaeke (2:46:38.800)
terror comes in the French Revolution too, that we can make ourselves into godlike beings.
John Vervaeke (2:46:46.280)
Think of the hubris in that, and think of the overconfidence to think that we so understand
John Vervaeke (2:46:53.440)
human nature and all of its complexities and human history, and how religion functioned,
John Vervaeke (2:46:59.960)
that we can just come in with a plan and make it run.
John Vervaeke (2:47:04.960)
To my mind, that Promethean spirit is part of why it's doomed to fail, and it's doomed
John Vervaeke (2:47:11.640)
to fail in a kind of terrorizing way, because the Promethean spirit really licenses you
Lex Fridman (2:47:20.860)
to do anything, because the ends justify the means.
John Vervaeke (2:47:25.840)
The ends justify the means really free you to do some of, basically, well, commit atrocities
Lex Fridman (2:47:35.240)
at any scale.
John Vervaeke (2:47:36.240)
Ground zero with Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, right, exactly.
Lex Fridman (2:47:40.720)
And you can only believe in an ends that can justify any means if you believe in a utopia,
Lex Fridman (2:47:47.840)
and you can only believe in the utopia if you really buy into the Promethean spirit.
Lex Fridman (2:47:52.580)
So is that what explains Nazism?
Lex Fridman (2:47:55.380)
So Nazism is part of that, too.
Lex Fridman (2:47:58.120)
The Promethean spirit that we can make ourselves into supermen, ubermensch, right?
Lex Fridman (2:48:05.800)
And Nazism is fueled very much by appropriating and twisting sort of Gnostic themes that are
John Vervaeke (2:48:19.160)
very prevalent, Gnosticism tends to come to the fore when people are experiencing increased
John Vervaeke (2:48:26.700)
meaning crisis.
Lex Fridman (2:48:27.700)
And don't forget, the Weimar Republic is like a meaning crisis gone crazy on all levels.
John Vervaeke (2:48:33.760)
Everybody's suffering domicile, everybody's home and way of life and identity and culture
Lex Fridman (2:48:38.600)
and relationship to religion and science, all of that, right?
Lex Fridman (2:48:43.240)
So Nazism comes along and offers a kind of Gnosticism, again, twisted, perverted.
John Vervaeke (2:48:50.360)
I'm not saying that all Gnostics are Nazis, but there is this Gnostic mythology, mythos,
Lex Fridman (2:48:59.840)
and it comes to the fore.
John Vervaeke (2:49:01.800)
I remember, and this stuck with me in undergrad, I was taking political science, and the professor
John Vervaeke (2:49:09.800)
extended lecture on this, and it still rings true for me, says, if you understand Nazism
Lex Fridman (2:49:14.920)
as just a political movement, you have misunderstood it.
John Vervaeke (2:49:17.880)
It is much more a religious phenomenon in many ways.
Lex Fridman (2:49:24.800)
Is it religious in that the loss of religion?
Lex Fridman (2:49:27.600)
So is it a meaning crisis?
John Vervaeke (2:49:30.040)
Or is it out of a meaning crisis every discovery of religion in a Promethean type of...
John Vervaeke (2:49:39.160)
I think it's the latter.
Lex Fridman (2:49:40.280)
I think there's this vacuum created.
Lex Fridman (2:49:43.680)
In that context, is Hitler the central religious figure?
Lex Fridman (2:49:48.480)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (2:49:49.480)
And also, did Nazi Germany create Hitler, or did Hitler create Nazi Germany?
Lex Fridman (2:49:56.340)
So in this distributed cognition where everyone's having a dialogue, what's the role of a charismatic
Lex Fridman (2:50:02.120)
leader?
Lex Fridman (2:50:03.120)
Is it an emergent phenomena, or do you need one of those to kind of guide the populace?
John Vervaeke (2:50:10.240)
I hope it's not a necessary requirement.
John Vervaeke (2:50:13.520)
I hope that the next Buddha can be the Sangha rather than a specific individual.
Lex Fridman (2:50:19.080)
But I think in that situation, Hitler's charisma allowed him to take on a mythological, in
Lex Fridman (2:50:26.600)
the proper sense, archetypal...
John Vervaeke (2:50:29.440)
He became deeply symbolic, and he instituted all kinds of rituals, all kinds of rituals,
Lex Fridman (2:50:35.680)
and all kinds of mythos.
John Vervaeke (2:50:38.640)
There's all this mythos about the master race, and there's all these rituals.
Lex Fridman (2:50:43.840)
The swastika is, of course, itself a religious symbol.
John Vervaeke (2:50:47.840)
There's all of this going on because he was tapping into the fact that when you put people
John Vervaeke (2:50:57.840)
into deeper and deeper meaning scarcity, they will fall back on more and more mythological
John Vervaeke (2:51:04.100)
ways of thinking in order to try and come up with a generative source to give them new
Lex Fridman (2:51:10.040)
meaning making.
John Vervaeke (2:51:11.040)
I should say meaning participating behavior.
Lex Fridman (2:51:16.280)
What is evil?
Lex Fridman (2:51:19.220)
Is this a word you avoid?
Lex Fridman (2:51:21.320)
No, I don't.
John Vervaeke (2:51:23.880)
Because I think part of what we're wrestling with here is resisting the Enlightenment,
John Vervaeke (2:51:31.600)
I mean the historical period in Europe, the idea that evil and sin can just be reduced
John Vervaeke (2:51:38.180)
to immorality, individual human immorality.
Lex Fridman (2:51:43.680)
I think there's something deeper in the idea of sin than just immoral.
John Vervaeke (2:51:49.240)
I think sin is a much more comprehensive category.
John Vervaeke (2:51:53.080)
I think sin is a failure to love wisely so that you ultimately engage in a kind of idolatry.
John Vervaeke (2:52:01.480)
You take something as ultimate, which is not.
Lex Fridman (2:52:05.120)
And that can tend to constellate these collective agents, I call them hyperagents, within distributed
John Vervaeke (2:52:14.080)
cognition that have a capacity to wreak havoc on the world that is not just due to a sort
Lex Fridman (2:52:21.520)
of a sum total of immoral decisions.
John Vervaeke (2:52:25.680)
This goes to Hannah Arendt's thing, and the banality of Eichmann.
John Vervaeke (2:52:30.280)
She was really wrestling with it, and I think she's close to something, but I think she's
John Vervaeke (2:52:34.500)
slightly off.
John Vervaeke (2:52:35.500)
Eichmann is just making a whole bunch of immoral decisions, but it doesn't seem to capture
John Vervaeke (2:52:40.920)
the gravity of what the Nazis did, the genocide and the warfare.
Lex Fridman (2:52:46.360)
And she's right, because you're not going to get just the summation of a lot of individual
John Vervaeke (2:52:51.160)
rather banal immoral choices adding up to what was going on.
John Vervaeke (2:52:55.920)
You're getting a comprehensive parasitic process within massive distributed cognition that
John Vervaeke (2:53:03.520)
has the power to confront the world and confront aspects of the world that individuals can't.
Lex Fridman (2:53:09.960)
And I think when we're talking about evil, that's what we're trying to point to.
John Vervaeke (2:53:14.520)
This is a point of convergence between me and Jonathan Paget.
Lex Fridman (2:53:18.200)
We've been talking about this.
Lex Fridman (2:53:19.440)
So the word sin is interesting.
Lex Fridman (2:53:21.520)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (2:53:22.520)
Are you comfortable using the word sin?
Lex Fridman (2:53:23.520)
I'm comfortable.
John Vervaeke (2:53:24.520)
Because it's so deeply rooted in religious texts.
Lex Fridman (2:53:27.280)
It is.
John Vervaeke (2:53:28.280)
It is.
Lex Fridman (2:53:29.280)
And in part, and I struggle around this because I was brought up as a fundamentalist Christian,
Lex Fridman (2:53:35.320)
and so that is still there within me.
Lex Fridman (2:53:38.920)
There's trauma associated with that.
John Vervaeke (2:53:41.480)
Probably layers of self deception mechanisms.
Lex Fridman (2:53:45.880)
No doubt.
John Vervaeke (2:53:46.880)
No doubt.
Lex Fridman (2:53:47.880)
That you're slowly escaping.
John Vervaeke (2:53:48.880)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (2:53:49.880)
Trying to.
Lex Fridman (2:53:50.880)
And trying to come into a proper respectful relationship with Christianity via a detour
Lex Fridman (2:53:58.320)
through Buddhism, Taoism, and pagan Neoplatonism.
John Vervaeke (2:54:02.000)
Trying to find a way how to love wisely.
Lex Fridman (2:54:04.120)
Yes, exactly.
Lex Fridman (2:54:05.440)
And so I think the term sin is good because somebody may not be doing something that we
John Vervaeke (2:54:14.560)
would prototypically call immoral, but if they're failing to love wisely, they are disconnecting
John Vervaeke (2:54:24.760)
themselves in some important way from the structures of reality.
Lex Fridman (2:54:30.520)
And I think it was Hume.
John Vervaeke (2:54:33.880)
I may be wrong.
Lex Fridman (2:54:34.880)
Hume says, you know, people don't do things because they think it's wrong.
John Vervaeke (2:54:39.320)
They do a lesser good in place of a greater good.
Lex Fridman (2:54:42.600)
And that's a different thing than being immoral.
John Vervaeke (2:54:45.440)
Immoral, we're saying, you're doing something that's wrong.
Lex Fridman (2:54:48.240)
It's like, well, no, no, you know, I'm loving my wife.
Lex Fridman (2:54:51.920)
That's a great thing, isn't it?
Lex Fridman (2:54:53.920)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:54:54.920)
But if you love your wife at the expense of your kids, like, wow, maybe something's going
Lex Fridman (2:55:00.360)
awry here.
Lex Fridman (2:55:01.360)
Right?
Lex Fridman (2:55:02.360)
Well, I love my country.
John Vervaeke (2:55:03.360)
Great.
Lex Fridman (2:55:04.360)
But should you love your country at the expense of your commitment to the religion you belong
Lex Fridman (2:55:09.720)
to?
Lex Fridman (2:55:10.720)
I mean, people should wrestle with these questions.
Lex Fridman (2:55:13.720)
And I think sin is a failure to wrestle with these questions properly.
Lex Fridman (2:55:17.280)
Yeah.
John Vervaeke (2:55:18.280)
To be content with the choices you've made without considering, is there a greater good
Lex Fridman (2:55:24.960)
that could be done?
John Vervaeke (2:55:26.360)
Yeah.
John Vervaeke (2:55:27.360)
Your lecture series on The Meaning Crisis puts us in dialogue in the same way as with
John Vervaeke (2:55:32.480)
the podcast with a bunch of fascinating thinkers throughout history.
Lex Fridman (2:55:37.640)
Yes.
John Vervaeke (2:55:38.640)
For example, Paul Corbin, the man Carl Jung, Tillich, Barfield, is there, can you describe,
Lex Fridman (2:55:45.920)
this might be challenging, but one powerful idea from each that jumps to mind?
John Vervaeke (2:55:53.160)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (2:55:54.160)
Maybe Heidegger?
Lex Fridman (2:55:55.160)
So for Heidegger, one real powerful idea that has had a huge influence on me, he's had a
Lex Fridman (2:56:02.260)
huge influence on me in many ways.
John Vervaeke (2:56:04.200)
He's a big influence on what's called 4E Cognitive Science.
Lex Fridman (2:56:07.280)
And this whole idea about the nonpropositional, that was deeply afforded by Heidegger and
John Vervaeke (2:56:12.960)
Marla Ponti.
Lex Fridman (2:56:13.960)
But I guess maybe the one idea, if I had to pick one, is his critique of ontotheology,
John Vervaeke (2:56:19.400)
his critique of the attempt to understand being in terms of a supreme being, something
John Vervaeke (2:56:24.480)
like that, and how that gets us fundamentally messed up and we get disconnected from being
John Vervaeke (2:56:30.520)
because we are overfocused on particular beings.
Lex Fridman (2:56:33.280)
We're failing to love wisely.
John Vervaeke (2:56:34.920)
We're loving the individual things and we're not loving the ground from which they spring.
Lex Fridman (2:56:39.240)
Can you explain that a little more?
John Vervaeke (2:56:42.300)
What's the difference between the being and the supreme being and why that gets us into
Lex Fridman (2:56:45.560)
trouble?
John Vervaeke (2:56:46.560)
Okay.
John Vervaeke (2:56:47.560)
So, well, we talked about this before, the supreme being is a particular being, whereas
John Vervaeke (2:56:51.460)
being is no thing.
Lex Fridman (2:56:52.860)
It's not any particular kind of thing.
Lex Fridman (2:56:54.700)
And so if you're thinking of being as a being, you're thinking of it in a thingy way about
Lex Fridman (2:57:00.500)
something that is fundamentally no thingness.
Lex Fridman (2:57:03.040)
And so then you're disconnecting yourself from presumably ultimate reality.
Lex Fridman (2:57:08.380)
This takes me to Tillich.
John Vervaeke (2:57:10.560)
Tillich's great idea is understanding faith as ultimate concern rather than a set of propositions
Lex Fridman (2:57:18.520)
that you're asserting, right?
Lex Fridman (2:57:20.520)
So what are you ultimately concerned about?
Lex Fridman (2:57:25.200)
What do you want to be in right relationship to, ratio religio?
Lex Fridman (2:57:31.800)
And is that ultimate?
Lex Fridman (2:57:34.020)
Is that the ultimate reality that you conceive of?
Lex Fridman (2:57:36.440)
Are those two things in sync?
Lex Fridman (2:57:38.920)
This has had a profound influence on me and I think it's a brilliant idea.
Lex Fridman (2:57:44.480)
So some of the others, how do they integrate?
Lex Fridman (2:57:49.260)
Maybe this is Carl Jung and Freud.
Lex Fridman (2:57:54.120)
Which team are you on?
Lex Fridman (2:57:55.320)
I'm on Jung.
John Vervaeke (2:57:57.040)
Freud is the better writer, but Jung has, I think, a model of the psyche that is closer
Lex Fridman (2:58:02.980)
to where cognitive science is heading.
John Vervaeke (2:58:06.000)
He's more prescient.
Lex Fridman (2:58:07.680)
Which aspect of his model of the psyche?
John Vervaeke (2:58:09.480)
Directly.
Lex Fridman (2:58:10.480)
So Freud has a hydraulic model.
John Vervaeke (2:58:11.560)
The psyche is like a steam engine.
Lex Fridman (2:58:13.080)
Things are under pressure and there's a fluid that's moving around.
John Vervaeke (2:58:16.400)
It's like, like this is a record note of this.
Lex Fridman (2:58:19.760)
Jung has an organic model.
John Vervaeke (2:58:21.800)
The psyche is like a living being.
Lex Fridman (2:58:24.120)
It's doing all this opponent processing.
John Vervaeke (2:58:26.480)
It's doing all of this self transcending and growing.
Lex Fridman (2:58:30.920)
And I think that's a much better model of the psyche than the sort of steam engine model.
Lex Fridman (2:58:37.120)
What do you think about their view of the subconscious mind?
Lex Fridman (2:58:41.120)
What do you think their view and your own view of what's going on there in the shadow?
Lex Fridman (2:58:47.760)
So all bad stuff, some good stuff, any stuff at all?
John Vervaeke (2:58:53.680)
Well, I mean, both Freud and Jung are only talking about the psychodynamic unconscious,
John Vervaeke (2:59:00.240)
which is only a small part of the unconscious.
Lex Fridman (2:59:02.520)
Can you elaborate on the psychodynamic?
John Vervaeke (2:59:05.160)
They're talking about the aspects of the unconscious that have to do with your sort of ego development
Lex Fridman (2:59:12.800)
and how you are understanding and interpreting yourself.
John Vervaeke (2:59:16.960)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:59:17.960)
What else is there?
John Vervaeke (2:59:19.640)
There's the unconscious that allows you to turn the noise coming out of my face hole
Lex Fridman (2:59:23.280)
into ideas.
John Vervaeke (2:59:25.000)
There's the unconscious that says, yeah, all that stuff, which is huge and powerful.
Lex Fridman (2:59:31.200)
And they didn't think about that.
John Vervaeke (2:59:33.240)
They're focused on the big romantic stuff that you have to deal with through psychotherapy,
Lex Fridman (2:59:37.400)
that kind of stuff.
John Vervaeke (2:59:38.560)
Which is relevant and important.
Lex Fridman (2:59:39.760)
I'm not dismissing.
John Vervaeke (2:59:40.760)
I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but it's certainly not all of the unconscious.
John Vervaeke (2:59:44.080)
A lot of work that's going on, my colleague and deep friend, Anderson Todd is about, can
John Vervaeke (2:59:50.000)
we take the Jungian stuff and the cognitive science stuff and can we integrate it together
Lex Fridman (2:59:54.160)
theoretically?
Lex Fridman (2:59:55.440)
And so he's working on that, exactly that project.
Lex Fridman (2:59:59.320)
But nevertheless, your sense is there is a subconscious.
John Vervaeke (30:00.280)
you ignore things that you should probably not ignore.
Lex Fridman (30:03.560)
And that, hopefully we can circle back to it Lux, is related to the meaning issue.
John Vervaeke (30:10.120)
Because the very processes that make us adaptively intelligent make us perennially susceptible
John Vervaeke (30:16.600)
to self deceptive, self destructive behavior because of the way we misframe the environment
John Vervaeke (30:22.840)
in fundamental ways.
Lex Fridman (30:24.400)
So to you, meaning is also connected to ideas of wisdom and truth and how we interpret and
John Vervaeke (30:38.200)
understand and interact intellectually with the environment.
Lex Fridman (30:42.320)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (30:43.320)
So what is wisdom?
Lex Fridman (30:45.120)
Why do we long for it?
Lex Fridman (30:46.920)
How do we and where do we find it?
Lex Fridman (30:49.000)
What is it?
John Vervaeke (30:50.040)
This is what you use to solve your problems, as I was just describing.
John Vervaeke (30:56.120)
Rationality is how you use your intelligence to overcome the problems of self deception
John Vervaeke (31:01.860)
that emerge when you're trying to solve your problems.
Lex Fridman (31:04.340)
So it's that meta problem.
Lex Fridman (31:06.440)
And then the issue is, do you have just one kind of knowing?
John Vervaeke (31:12.080)
I think you have multiple ways of knowing, and therefore you have multiple rationalities.
Lex Fridman (31:18.220)
And so wisdom is to coordinate those rationalities so that they are optimally constraining and
Lex Fridman (31:23.500)
affording each other.
Lex Fridman (31:25.500)
So in that way, wisdom is rationally self transcending rationality.
Lex Fridman (31:30.120)
Right.
Lex Fridman (31:31.360)
So life is a kind of process where you jump from rationality to rationality and pick up
Lex Fridman (31:40.280)
a village of rationalities along the way that then turns into wisdom.
John Vervaeke (31:44.160)
Yes, if properly coordinated.
Lex Fridman (31:46.360)
You mentioned framing.
John Vervaeke (31:47.720)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (31:48.760)
So what is framing?
John Vervaeke (31:52.720)
Is it a set of assumptions you bring to the table in how you see the world, how you reason
Lex Fridman (31:58.680)
about the world, how you understand the world?
Lex Fridman (32:03.680)
So it depends what you mean by assumptions.
John Vervaeke (32:06.280)
If by assumption you mean a proposition, representational or rule, I think that's much more downstream
John Vervaeke (32:12.920)
from relevance realization.
John Vervaeke (32:14.640)
I think relevance realization refers to, again, constraints on how you are paying attention.
Lex Fridman (32:25.240)
And so for me, talking about framing is talking about this process you're doing right now
Lex Fridman (32:32.760)
of salient landscaping.
Lex Fridman (32:35.400)
What's salient to you?
Lex Fridman (32:37.780)
And how is what's salient constantly shifting in a sort of a dynamic tapestry?
Lex Fridman (32:44.520)
And how are you shaping yourself to the way that salient landscaping is aspectualizing
Lex Fridman (32:52.060)
the world, shaping it into aspects for interaction?
John Vervaeke (32:55.960)
For me, that is a much more primordial process than any sort of beliefs we have.
Lex Fridman (33:02.640)
And here's why.
John Vervaeke (33:04.860)
If we mean by beliefs a representational proposition, then we're in this very problematic position.
John Vervaeke (33:14.500)
Because then we're trying to say that propositions are ultimately responsible for how we do relevance
John Vervaeke (33:19.200)
realization.
Lex Fridman (33:21.320)
And that's problematic because representations presuppose relevance realization.
Lex Fridman (33:26.200)
So I represent this as a cup.
John Vervaeke (33:30.660)
The number of properties it actually has, and that I even have epistemic access to,
John Vervaeke (33:34.840)
is combinatorial explosive.
John Vervaeke (33:36.600)
I select from those a subset and how they are relevant to each other insofar as they
John Vervaeke (33:42.480)
are relevant for me.
Lex Fridman (33:43.640)
This doesn't have to be a cup.
John Vervaeke (33:44.800)
I could be using it as a hat, I could use it to stand for the letter V, all kinds of
Lex Fridman (33:50.020)
different things.
John Vervaeke (33:51.020)
I could say this was the 10th billion object made in North America.
Lex Fridman (33:57.200)
Representations presuppose relevance realization.
John Vervaeke (34:00.160)
They are therefore dependent on it, which means relevance realization isn't bound to
Lex Fridman (34:06.860)
our representational structures.
John Vervaeke (34:09.120)
It can be influenced by them, but they are ultimately dependent on relevance realization.
Lex Fridman (34:14.720)
Let's define stuff.
John Vervaeke (34:17.000)
Relevance realization.
Lex Fridman (34:18.000)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (34:19.000)
What are the inputs and the outputs of this thing?
Lex Fridman (34:21.360)
What is it?
Lex Fridman (34:22.360)
What are we talking about?
Lex Fridman (34:23.360)
What we're talking about is how you are doing something very analogous to evolution.
Lex Fridman (34:31.840)
So if you think about that adaptivity isn't in the organism or in the environment, but
Lex Fridman (34:38.000)
in a dynamical relation and then what does evolution do?
John Vervaeke (34:42.000)
It creates variation and then it puts selective pressure and what that does is that changes
Lex Fridman (34:47.000)
the niche constructions that are available to a species.
John Vervaeke (34:49.640)
It changes the morphology.
Lex Fridman (34:52.020)
You also have a loop.
John Vervaeke (34:54.040)
It's your sensory motor loop and what's constantly happening is there are processes within you
John Vervaeke (34:59.700)
that are opening up variation and also processes that are putting selection on it and you're
John Vervaeke (35:04.720)
constantly evolving that sensory motor loop.
Lex Fridman (35:07.600)
So you might call your cognitive fittedness, which is how you're framing the world is constantly
John Vervaeke (35:13.480)
evolving and changing.
Lex Fridman (35:14.480)
I can give you two clear examples of that.
John Vervaeke (35:17.320)
One, your autonomic nervous system, parasympathetic and sympathetic.
John Vervaeke (35:22.440)
The sympathetic system is biased to trying to interpret as much of reality as threat
John Vervaeke (35:28.560)
or opportunity.
John Vervaeke (35:30.160)
The parasympathetic is biased to trying to interpret as much of the environment as safe
Lex Fridman (35:37.160)
and relaxing and they are constantly doing opponent processing.
Lex Fridman (35:40.520)
There's no little man in you calculating your level of arousal.
John Vervaeke (35:47.000)
There's this dynamic coupling opponent processing between them that is constantly evolving your
Lex Fridman (35:51.840)
arousal.
John Vervaeke (35:52.840)
Similarly, your attention, you have the default mode network, task network.
John Vervaeke (35:57.320)
The default mode network is putting pressure on you right now to mind wander, to go off,
John Vervaeke (36:02.760)
to drift, right, and then the task focus network is selecting out of those possibilities the
John Vervaeke (36:07.980)
ones that will survive and go into and so you are constantly evolving your attention.
John Vervaeke (36:13.840)
Okay, so there's a natural selection of ideas that a bunch of systems within you are generating
Lex Fridman (36:19.380)
and then you use the natural selection.
Lex Fridman (36:22.460)
What is the selector, the object that you're interacting with, the glass?
Lex Fridman (36:27.020)
Relevance realization, once again, you just describe how it happens.
John Vervaeke (36:31.520)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (36:32.520)
You didn't describe what the hell it is.
Lex Fridman (36:34.840)
So what's the goal?
Lex Fridman (36:36.400)
What are we talking about?
Lex Fridman (36:37.400)
So relevance realization is how you interact with things in the world to make sense of
Lex Fridman (36:45.160)
why they matter, what they mean to you, to your life.
John Vervaeke (36:48.040)
Yes, and notice the language you just used, you're starting to use the meaning in life
Lex Fridman (36:51.120)
language.
Lex Fridman (36:52.120)
Good or bad?
Lex Fridman (36:53.120)
That's good.
John Vervaeke (36:54.120)
Okay.
Lex Fridman (36:55.120)
That's good.
Lex Fridman (36:56.120)
So what does that evolution of your sensory motor loop do?
John Vervaeke (37:02.800)
It gives you, and here I'll use a term from Marlon Ponti, it gives you an optimal grip
John Vervaeke (37:08.640)
on the world.
Lex Fridman (37:11.300)
So let's use your visual attention again.
John Vervaeke (37:14.120)
Okay, here's an object.
Lex Fridman (37:17.500)
How close should I be to it?
Lex Fridman (37:20.280)
Is there a right?
Lex Fridman (37:21.280)
That's what you want to do with it.
John Vervaeke (37:23.280)
Exactly.
Lex Fridman (37:24.280)
Exactly.
Lex Fridman (37:25.280)
So you have to evolve your sensory motor loop in order to get the optimal grip that actually
Lex Fridman (37:32.200)
creates the affordance of you getting to a goal that you're trying to get to.
John Vervaeke (37:35.800)
Yeah, but you're describing physical goals of manipulating objects, so this applies,
John Vervaeke (37:44.120)
the task, the process of relevance realization is not just about getting a glass of water
Lex Fridman (37:49.960)
and taking a drink.
Lex Fridman (37:50.960)
No.
John Vervaeke (37:51.960)
It's about falling in love.
Lex Fridman (37:54.280)
Yeah, of course.
Lex Fridman (37:56.080)
What else is there?
Lex Fridman (37:57.080)
Well, there's obvious.
John Vervaeke (37:58.080)
Between those two options.
Lex Fridman (38:01.840)
I can show you how you're optimally gripping in an abstract cognitive domain.
Lex Fridman (38:06.480)
Okay?
Lex Fridman (38:07.800)
So a mammal goes by and most people will say there's a dog.
John Vervaeke (38:13.160)
Now why don't they say, they might, but typically, you know, probabilistically they'll say there's
Lex Fridman (38:18.360)
a dog.
John Vervaeke (38:19.360)
They could say there's a German Shepherd, there's a mammal, there's a living organism,
Lex Fridman (38:23.560)
there's a police dog.
Lex Fridman (38:25.360)
Why that?
Lex Fridman (38:26.360)
Why there?
Lex Fridman (38:27.360)
Why did they stop Eleanor Rush called these basic level?
John Vervaeke (38:30.760)
Well, what you find is that's an optimal grip because it's getting you the best overall
John Vervaeke (38:35.200)
balance between similarity within your category and difference between the other categories.
John Vervaeke (38:41.300)
It's allowing you to properly fit to that object in so far as you're setting yourself
John Vervaeke (38:46.740)
up to, well, I'm getting so as many of the similarities and differences I can on balance
John Vervaeke (38:52.680)
because they're in a trade off relationship that I need in order to probably interact
John Vervaeke (38:56.960)
with this mammal.
Lex Fridman (38:59.240)
That's optimal grip, not right.
John Vervaeke (39:01.440)
It's at the level of your categorization.
John Vervaeke (39:04.560)
You evolve these models of the world around you and on top of them, you do stuff like
John Vervaeke (39:13.240)
you build representations, like you said, yes.
Lex Fridman (39:16.720)
What's the salience landscape?
John Vervaeke (39:19.080)
Salience meaning attention landscape.
John Vervaeke (39:23.560)
Salience is what grabs your attention or what results from you directing your attention.
John Vervaeke (39:30.280)
I clap my hands, that's salient, it grabs your attention.
John Vervaeke (39:34.320)
Your attention is drawn to it, that's bottom up, but I can also say you left big toe and
John Vervaeke (39:39.800)
now it's salient to you because you directed your attention towards it.
Lex Fridman (39:42.720)
That's top down and again, opponent processing going on there.
John Vervaeke (39:47.440)
Whatever stands out to you, what grabs your attention, what arouses you, what triggers
Lex Fridman (39:52.120)
at least momentarily some affect towards it, that's how things are salient.
Lex Fridman (39:57.320)
What salience I would argue is, is how a lot of unconscious relevance realization makes
Lex Fridman (3:00:02.360)
Or at least an unconscious.
John Vervaeke (3:00:03.360)
I like the term unconscious.
Lex Fridman (3:00:05.200)
And Jung continually reminded people that the unconscious is unconscious, that we're
John Vervaeke (3:00:09.960)
not conscious of it.
Lex Fridman (3:00:11.680)
And that's its fundamental property.
Lex Fridman (3:00:13.160)
Yeah, and then isn't the task of therapy then to bring, to make the unconscious conscious?
Lex Fridman (3:00:21.200)
Yeah, to a degree, right?
Lex Fridman (3:00:23.560)
But also, I mean, yeah, to bring consciousness where there was unconscious is part of Jung's
Lex Fridman (3:00:31.680)
mythos.
Lex Fridman (3:00:32.800)
But it's also not the thought that that can be completed.
John Vervaeke (3:00:36.680)
Part of why you're extending the reach of the conscious mind is it so it can enter into
John Vervaeke (3:00:41.840)
a more proper dialogical relationship with the self organizing system of the unconscious
Lex Fridman (3:00:48.360)
mind.
Lex Fridman (3:00:49.360)
What did they have to say about the motivations of humans?
Lex Fridman (3:00:53.200)
So for Freud, jokingly, I said, you know, sex, so much of our mind is developed in our
John Vervaeke (3:00:59.400)
young age, sexual interactions with the world or whatever, hence the thing about the edible
Lex Fridman (3:01:07.160)
complex and all, you know, I wanted to have sex with your mother.
Lex Fridman (3:01:12.180)
What do you think about their description about what motivates humans?
Lex Fridman (3:01:16.320)
And what do you think about the will to power from Nietzsche?
Lex Fridman (3:01:22.520)
Which camp are you in there?
Lex Fridman (3:01:24.120)
What motivates humans?
Lex Fridman (3:01:27.440)
Sex or power?
Lex Fridman (3:01:28.980)
I think Plato is right.
Lex Fridman (3:01:30.760)
And I think there's a connection for me.
John Vervaeke (3:01:33.360)
Plato's my first philosopher, Jung's my first psychologist, and Jung is very much the Plato
John Vervaeke (3:01:36.840)
of the psyche.
Lex Fridman (3:01:37.840)
You never forget your first.
John Vervaeke (3:01:38.840)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (3:01:39.840)
You never do.
John Vervaeke (3:01:40.840)
You never do.
Lex Fridman (3:01:41.840)
And I think we have, I reject the monological mind, I reject the monophasic mind model.
John Vervaeke (3:01:50.040)
I think we are multi centered.
John Vervaeke (3:01:51.720)
I think we have different centers of motivation that operate according to different principles
John Vervaeke (3:01:57.180)
to satisfy different problems, and that part of the task of our humanity is to get those
John Vervaeke (3:02:05.760)
different centers into some internal culture by which they are optimally cooperating rather
John Vervaeke (3:02:14.320)
than in conflict with each other.
Lex Fridman (3:02:18.400)
What advice would you give to young people today?
John Vervaeke (3:02:22.880)
They're in high school trying to figure out what they're going to do with their life.
Lex Fridman (3:02:25.960)
Maybe they're in college.
Lex Fridman (3:02:28.120)
What advice would you give how to have a career they can be proud of or how to have a life
Lex Fridman (3:02:32.720)
they can be proud of?
Lex Fridman (3:02:37.800)
So the first thing is find an ecology of practices and a community that supports them without
John Vervaeke (3:02:48.040)
involving you in believing things that contravene our best understood science so that wisdom
Lex Fridman (3:02:54.800)
and virtue, especially how they show up in relationships, are primary to you.
John Vervaeke (3:03:02.120)
This will sound ridiculous, but if you take care of that, the other things you want are
John Vervaeke (3:03:09.500)
more likely to occur.
John Vervaeke (3:03:11.000)
Because what you want at when you're approaching your death is what were the relationships
John Vervaeke (3:03:22.900)
you cultivated to yourself, to other people, to the world, and what did you do to improve
Lex Fridman (3:03:27.480)
the chance of them being deep and profound relationships?
John Vervaeke (3:03:33.560)
That's an interesting ecology of practice, finding a place where a lot of people are
John Vervaeke (3:03:38.520)
doing different things that are interesting interplay with each other, but at the same
John Vervaeke (3:03:43.760)
time is not a cult where ideas can flourish.
Lex Fridman (3:03:49.520)
How the hell do you know?
John Vervaeke (3:03:53.600)
Because in a place where people are really excited about doing stuff, that's very ripe
Lex Fridman (3:03:59.120)
for cult formation.
John Vervaeke (3:04:01.040)
Especially if they're awash in a culture in which we have ever expanding waves of bullshit.
Lex Fridman (3:04:05.920)
Yes, precisely.
John Vervaeke (3:04:07.800)
So...
Lex Fridman (3:04:08.800)
Try to keep away from the bullshit is the advice.
John Vervaeke (3:04:11.040)
Yes.
John Vervaeke (3:04:12.040)
No, I mean, I take this very seriously and I was with a bunch of people in Vermont at
John Vervaeke (3:04:16.560)
the respond retreat, people, Rafe Kelly was there, a bunch of people who have set up ecologies
Lex Fridman (3:04:22.860)
of practices and created communities.
Lex Fridman (3:04:27.120)
And I have good reason to find all of these people trustworthy.
Lex Fridman (3:04:31.960)
And so we gathered together to try and generate real dialogos, flow in distributed cognition,
John Vervaeke (3:04:39.480)
exercise the collective intelligence, and try and address that problem, both in terms
John Vervaeke (3:04:44.400)
of metachurriculum that we can offer emerging communities, in terms of practices of vetting,
Lex Fridman (3:04:51.960)
how we will self govern the federation we're forming so that we can resist gurufication.
Lex Fridman (3:04:58.960)
Gurufication of people or ideas?
John Vervaeke (3:05:00.600)
Both.
Lex Fridman (3:05:01.600)
Yeah.
John Vervaeke (3:05:02.600)
Both.
Lex Fridman (3:05:03.600)
Some of us just get unlucky.
John Vervaeke (3:05:04.600)
Some of us get unlucky and we all at respond, we all had a tremendous sense of urgency around
John Vervaeke (3:05:11.480)
this, but we were trying to balance it about not being premature, but there was going to,
John Vervaeke (3:05:18.040)
I mean, we're going to produce a metachurriculum that's coming in months, there's going to
John Vervaeke (3:05:22.680)
be a scientific paper about integrating the scientific work on wisdom with this practitioner
John Vervaeke (3:05:27.880)
based ideas about the cultivation of wisdom, there's going to be projects about how we
John Vervaeke (3:05:34.480)
can create a self correcting vetting system so we can say to people, we think this ecology
John Vervaeke (3:05:41.880)
is legit, it's in good fellowship with all these other legit ecologies, we don't know
John Vervaeke (3:05:47.160)
about that one, we're hesitant about that one, it's not in good fellowship, we have
John Vervaeke (3:05:51.880)
concerns, here's why we have our concerns, et cetera.
Lex Fridman (3:05:55.020)
And you may say, well, who are you to do that?
Lex Fridman (3:05:56.940)
It's like nobody, but somebody's got to do it, right?
Lex Fridman (3:06:00.160)
And that's what it comes down to, and so we're going to give it our best effort.
John Vervaeke (3:06:04.180)
It's worth a try.
John Vervaeke (3:06:06.520)
You talked about the meaning crisis in human civilization, but in your own personal life,
Lex Fridman (3:06:17.200)
what has been a dark place you've ever gone in your mind?
Lex Fridman (3:06:20.600)
Has there been difficult times in your life where you've really struggled?
John Vervaeke (3:06:24.520)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (3:06:25.520)
So when I left fundamentalist Christianity, and for a while I was just sort of a hard
John Vervaeke (3:06:34.920)
bitten atheist, the problem with leaving the belief structure was that I didn't deal with
John Vervaeke (3:06:43.960)
all the nonpropositional things that had gotten into me, all the procedures and habits and
John Vervaeke (3:06:50.280)
all the perspectives and all the identities and the trauma associated with that.
Lex Fridman (3:06:55.040)
So I required therapy, it required years of meditation and Tai Chi, and I'm still wrestling
John Vervaeke (3:07:01.720)
with it, but for the first four or five years, I would... I described it like this, I called
Lex Fridman (3:07:12.560)
it the black burning.
John Vervaeke (3:07:13.560)
I felt like there was a blackness that was on fire inside of me, precisely because the
John Vervaeke (3:07:19.960)
religion had left a taste for the transcendent in my mouth, but it had... The food it had
John Vervaeke (3:07:24.660)
given me, food in square quotes, had soured in my stomach and made me nauseous, and the
Lex Fridman (3:07:29.760)
juxtaposition of those seemed like an irresolvable problem for me.
John Vervaeke (3:07:36.500)
That was a very, very dark time for me.
Lex Fridman (3:07:38.600)
Did it feel lonely?
John Vervaeke (3:07:41.720)
When it was very bad, it felt extremely lonely and deeply alienating.
Lex Fridman (3:07:48.860)
The universe seemed absurd, and there was also existential anxiety.
John Vervaeke (3:07:53.680)
I talk about these things for a reason.
Lex Fridman (3:07:55.480)
I don't just talk about them as things I'm pointing to.
John Vervaeke (3:07:57.880)
I'm talking about them as seeing in myself and in people I care, having undergone them
Lex Fridman (3:08:04.080)
and how they can bring you close to self destructive... I started engaging in kinds of self destructive
John Vervaeke (3:08:12.480)
behavior.
Lex Fridman (3:08:13.480)
So the meaning crisis to you is not just the thing you look outside and see many people
John Vervaeke (3:08:20.440)
struggling.
Lex Fridman (3:08:21.440)
You yourself have struggled.
Lex Fridman (3:08:22.440)
But that's, in fact, the narrative, is I struggled with it, thinking it was a purely personal,
Lex Fridman (3:08:29.920)
idiosyncratic thing.
John Vervaeke (3:08:30.920)
I started learning the kog sai, I started doing the tai chi and the meditation, I started
Lex Fridman (3:08:35.540)
doing all this Socratic philosophy.
Lex Fridman (3:08:39.760)
And when I started to talk about these pieces, I saw my students eyes light up, and I realized,
Lex Fridman (3:08:47.360)
wait, maybe this isn't just something I'm going through.
Lex Fridman (3:08:52.800)
And talking to them and then doing the research and expanding it out, it's like, oh, many
John Vervaeke (3:08:58.840)
people in a shared fashion and also in an individual lonely fashion are going through
John Vervaeke (3:09:05.000)
meaning crisis.
John Vervaeke (3:09:06.000)
Well, we talked a lot about wisdom and meaning, and you said that the goal is to love wisely.
Lex Fridman (3:09:12.460)
So let me ask about love.
Lex Fridman (3:09:14.760)
What's the role of love in the human condition?
John Vervaeke (3:09:18.040)
It's central.
Lex Fridman (3:09:19.040)
I mean, it's even central to reason and rationality.
John Vervaeke (3:09:23.300)
This is Plato, but Spinoza, the most logical of the rationalists.
John Vervaeke (3:09:30.720)
The ethics is written like Euclid's geometry, but he calls it the ethics for a reason, because
John Vervaeke (3:09:36.840)
he wants to talk about the blessed life.
Lex Fridman (3:09:38.800)
And what does he say?
John Vervaeke (3:09:40.360)
He says that ultimately reason needs love, because love is what brings reason out of
Lex Fridman (3:09:47.260)
being entrapped in the gravity well of egocentrism.
Lex Fridman (3:09:52.440)
And Murdoch, Iris Murdoch said, I think really beautifully, love is when you painfully realize
Lex Fridman (3:09:57.520)
that something other than yourself is real.
John Vervaeke (3:10:03.320)
Escaping the gravity well of egocentrism.
Lex Fridman (3:10:06.680)
Beautifully put.
John Vervaeke (3:10:07.680)
A beautiful way to end it.
Lex Fridman (3:10:09.040)
And you're a beautiful human being.
John Vervaeke (3:10:11.200)
Thank you for struggling in your own mind with the search for meaning and encouraging
Lex Fridman (3:10:17.660)
others to do the same.
Lex Fridman (3:10:19.640)
And ultimately to learn how to love wisely.
Lex Fridman (3:10:21.920)
Thank you so much for talking today.
John Vervaeke (3:10:23.640)
It's been a great pleasure, Lex.
Lex Fridman (3:10:24.800)
I really enjoyed it a lot.
John Vervaeke (3:10:26.160)
Thank you so much.
Lex Fridman (3:10:27.160)
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Jon Verweke.
John Vervaeke (3:10:30.240)
To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
Lex Fridman (3:10:34.720)
And now let me leave you with some words from Hermann Hesse in Siddhartha.
John Vervaeke (3:10:38.600)
I've always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come
John Vervaeke (3:10:43.400)
our way, we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.
John Vervaeke (3:10:49.560)
Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
Lex Fridman (40:02.760)
information relevant to working memory.
John Vervaeke (40:07.640)
That's when it now becomes online for direct sensory motor interaction with the world.
Lex Fridman (40:13.360)
So you think the salience landscape, the ocean of salience extends into the subconscious
Lex Fridman (40:19.320)
mind?
John Vervaeke (40:21.040)
I think relevance does, but I think when relevance is recursively processed, relevance realization
John Vervaeke (40:27.520)
such that it passes through sort of this higher filter of working memory and has these properties
John Vervaeke (40:35.440)
of being globally accessible and globally broadcast, then it becomes the thing we call
John Vervaeke (40:41.400)
salience.
Lex Fridman (40:42.400)
And that's, that's, that's really good evidence.
John Vervaeke (40:44.280)
There's really good evidence from my colleague at UFT, University of Toronto, Lynn Hasher,
Lex Fridman (40:49.400)
that that's what working memory is.
John Vervaeke (40:50.880)
It's a higher order relevance filter.
John Vervaeke (40:52.960)
That's why things like chunking will get way more information through working memory because
John Vervaeke (40:57.680)
it's basically making, it's basically monitoring how much relevance realization has gone into
Lex Fridman (41:04.280)
this information.
John Vervaeke (41:06.040)
Usually you have to do an additional kind of recursive processing.
Lex Fridman (41:09.240)
And that tells you, by the way, when do you need consciousness?
Lex Fridman (41:13.400)
When do you need that working memory and that salience landscaping?
John Vervaeke (41:18.960)
It's when you're facing situations that are highly novel, highly complex and very ill
John Vervaeke (41:24.000)
defined that require you to engage working memory.
Lex Fridman (41:27.720)
Okay, got it.
Lex Fridman (41:29.320)
So relevance realization is in part the thing that constructs that basic level thing of
Lex Fridman (41:34.520)
a dog.
John Vervaeke (41:35.640)
When you see it, when you see a dog, you call it a dog, not a German Shepherd, not a mammal,
Lex Fridman (41:41.640)
not a biological meat bag.
John Vervaeke (41:44.120)
It's a dog.
Lex Fridman (41:45.720)
Wisdom.
John Vervaeke (41:46.720)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (41:47.720)
So what is wisdom?
John Vervaeke (41:50.060)
If we return, I think as part of that, we got to relevance realization and then wisdom
Lex Fridman (41:57.600)
is accumulation of rationalities.
John Vervaeke (42:02.920)
You described the rationality as a kind of starting from intelligence, much of puzzle
John Vervaeke (42:09.240)
solving and then rationalities like the meta problem of puzzle solving and then what wisdom
Lex Fridman (42:14.360)
is the meta, meta problem of puzzle solving?
John Vervaeke (42:16.840)
Yes, in the sense that the meta problem you have when you're solving your puzzles is that
John Vervaeke (42:23.000)
you can often fall into self deception.
Lex Fridman (42:25.840)
You can misprint.
John Vervaeke (42:26.840)
Self deception, right.
Lex Fridman (42:27.840)
Right.
Lex Fridman (42:28.840)
So knowledge overcomes ignorance, wisdom is about overcoming foolishness if what we mean
John Vervaeke (42:35.440)
by foolishness is self deceptive, self destructive behavior, which I think is a good definition
John Vervaeke (42:40.760)
of foolishness.
Lex Fridman (42:42.780)
And so what you're doing is you're doing this recursive relevance realization.
John Vervaeke (42:49.720)
You're using your intelligence to improve the use of your intelligence and then you're
Lex Fridman (42:53.640)
using your rationality to improve the use of your rationality.
John Vervaeke (42:57.520)
That's that recursive relevance realization I was talking about a few minutes ago.
Lex Fridman (43:01.360)
Think about a wise person.
John Vervaeke (43:03.260)
They come into highly often messy, ill defined, complex situations usually where there's some
Lex Fridman (43:09.800)
significant novelty and what can they do?
John Vervaeke (43:13.080)
They can zero in on what really matters, what's relevant and then they can shape themselves,
John Vervaeke (43:19.000)
salience landscaping to intervene most appropriately to that situation as they have framed it.
John Vervaeke (43:26.640)
That's what we mean by a wise person and that's how it follows out of the model I've been
Lex Fridman (43:30.800)
presenting to you.
Lex Fridman (43:31.800)
So when we say self deception, I mean part of that implies that it's intentional.
John Vervaeke (43:37.400)
Part of the mechanism of cognition, you're modifying what you should know for some purpose.
Lex Fridman (43:45.240)
Is that how you see the word self deception?
John Vervaeke (43:48.160)
No, because I belong to a group of people that think the model of self deception as
John Vervaeke (43:53.320)
lying to oneself ultimately makes no sense.
John Vervaeke (43:58.000)
Because in order to lie to you, I have to know something you don't and I have to depend
John Vervaeke (44:02.280)
on your commitment to the truth in order to modify your behavior.
Lex Fridman (44:06.720)
I don't think that's what we do to ourselves.
John Vervaeke (44:09.840)
I think, and I'm going to use it in the technical term and thank you for making space for that
John Vervaeke (44:13.800)
earlier on, I think we can bullshit ourselves, which is a very different thing than lying.
Lex Fridman (44:21.900)
So what is bullshit and how do we bullshit ourselves, technically speaking?
Lex Fridman (44:27.040)
Yeah.
John Vervaeke (44:28.040)
Frankfurt and this is inspired by Frankfurt and other people's work based on Frankfurt's
Lex Fridman (44:32.480)
work.
John Vervaeke (44:33.480)
On bullshit.
Lex Fridman (44:34.480)
Yeah.
John Vervaeke (44:35.480)
Classic essay.
Lex Fridman (44:36.480)
It's a pretty good title.
John Vervaeke (44:37.480)
I think it's one of the best things he wrote.
Lex Fridman (44:39.040)
He wrote a lot of good things.
Lex Fridman (44:40.560)
The title or the essay?
Lex Fridman (44:42.000)
The essay.
John Vervaeke (44:43.000)
The title's good too.
Lex Fridman (44:44.720)
It's always an icebreaker in certain academic settings.
Lex Fridman (44:49.780)
So let's contrast the bullshit artist from the liar.
Lex Fridman (44:54.360)
The liar depends on your commitment to the truth.
John Vervaeke (44:59.080)
The bullshit artist is actually trying to make you indifferent to the question of truth
Lex Fridman (45:04.600)
and modify your behavior by making things salient to you so that they are catchy to
John Vervaeke (45:11.360)
you.
Lex Fridman (45:12.840)
So a prototypical example of bullshit is a commercial, a television commercial.
John Vervaeke (45:21.400)
You watch these people at a bar getting some particular kind of alcohol and they're gorgeous
Lex Fridman (45:29.160)
and they're laughing and they're smiling and they're clear eyed.
John Vervaeke (45:34.340)
You know that's not true and they know you know it's not true, but here's the point.
John Vervaeke (45:39.820)
You don't care because there's gorgeous people smiling and they're happy and that's salient
John Vervaeke (45:45.680)
to you and that catches your attention.
Lex Fridman (45:47.640)
And so you know, go into a bar, you know that won't happen when you drink this alcohol,
John Vervaeke (45:53.200)
you know it.
Lex Fridman (45:54.200)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (45:55.200)
But you buy the product because it was made salient to you.
Lex Fridman (45:59.200)
Now you can't lie to yourself, Lex.
John Vervaeke (46:03.080)
Salience can catch attention, but attention can drive salience.
Lex Fridman (46:06.560)
So this is what I can do.
John Vervaeke (46:08.120)
I can make something salient by paying attention to it and then that will tend to draw me back
John Vervaeke (46:15.080)
to it again, which, and you see what happens, which means it tends to catch my attention
John Vervaeke (46:20.080)
more so that when I go into the store, that bottle of liquor catches my attention and
Lex Fridman (46:26.160)
I buy it.
Lex Fridman (46:27.160)
And that's, why is that bullshit?
John Vervaeke (46:31.720)
Because what you're doing is being caught up in the salience of things independent from
John Vervaeke (46:40.340)
whether or not that salience is tracking reality.
Lex Fridman (46:44.520)
Is it independent or is it loosely connected?
John Vervaeke (46:48.340)
Because it's not so obvious to me when I see happy people at a bar that I don't in part
Lex Fridman (46:53.760)
believe that, well, my experience has been maybe different.
John Vervaeke (46:58.240)
Logically, I can understand, but maybe there is a bar out there where it's all happy people
Lex Fridman (47:05.280)
dancing.
John Vervaeke (47:06.280)
In fact, most of the bars I go to these days in Texas, there's pretty lots of happy people.
John Vervaeke (47:11.400)
I think you can, I mean, there's probably variation, although I think it's very the
John Vervaeke (47:16.200)
truth seeking in there.
Lex Fridman (47:17.960)
Let's say the intent is at least to try and shut off your truth seeking.
John Vervaeke (47:22.720)
It might not completely succeed, but that's the intent.
John Vervaeke (47:25.720)
At times it can completely succeed because I can give you pretty much gibberish and never
John Vervaeke (47:32.480)
let it will motivate your behavior.
John Vervaeke (47:35.400)
There's an episode from the classic Simpsons, not the modern Simpsons, the classic Simpsons
John Vervaeke (47:39.440)
where there's aliens and they're running for office in the United States.
Lex Fridman (47:43.920)
Now I'm a Canadian, so this doesn't quite work for me, but right.
Lex Fridman (47:47.420)
And this speech goes like this, my fellow Americans, when I was young, I dreamt of being
Lex Fridman (47:51.880)
a baseball, but we must move forward, not backward.
John Vervaeke (47:55.480)
Upward, not forward, twirling, twirling towards freedom and people go, and there's a rush.
Lex Fridman (48:02.240)
There's nothing there.
Lex Fridman (48:04.040)
And yet it's great satire because a lot of political speech is exactly like that.
Lex Fridman (48:10.260)
There's nothing there.
Lex Fridman (48:11.260)
Right?
Lex Fridman (48:12.260)
Well, I'm not saying all political speech, I said a lot.
John Vervaeke (48:17.800)
There's a fundamental difference between, and it's so hilarious, I remember that episode.
John Vervaeke (48:22.900)
There's a fundamental difference between that absurd sort of non secular speech and political
John Vervaeke (48:28.080)
speech because one of the things is political speech is grounded in some sense of truth.
Lex Fridman (48:35.620)
And so if that requires you talking about alternative facts and weird self destructive
Lex Fridman (48:44.220)
oxymoronic phrases, isn't that approaching pure bullshit?
John Vervaeke (48:50.680)
No, I think pure bullshit, like the vacuum is very difficult to get to, but I get the
John Vervaeke (49:00.920)
point.
Lex Fridman (49:01.920)
So what exactly is truth?
Lex Fridman (49:07.520)
Is it possible to know?
John Vervaeke (49:09.360)
I think Spinoza's right about truth, that truth is only known by its own standard, which
John Vervaeke (49:14.720)
sounds circular.
John Vervaeke (49:16.160)
There's a way in which he didn't mean that circularly, and I think this is also converges
John Vervaeke (49:20.160)
with Plato.
Lex Fridman (49:21.160)
These are two huge influences on me.
John Vervaeke (49:24.520)
I think we only know the truth retrospectively when we go through some process of self transcendence,
John Vervaeke (49:32.300)
when we move from a frame to a more encompassing frame so that we can see the limitations and
John Vervaeke (49:37.840)
the distortions of the earlier frame.
Lex Fridman (49:40.880)
You have this when you have a moment of insight.
John Vervaeke (49:43.280)
Insight is you doing, you are re realizing what is relevant.
Lex Fridman (49:47.640)
You go, oh, oh, I thought she was aggressive and angry.
John Vervaeke (49:55.260)
She's actually really afraid.
Lex Fridman (49:57.640)
I was misframing this and you change what you find relevant.
John Vervaeke (50:02.760)
You have those aha moments.
Lex Fridman (50:04.800)
So do you think it's possible to get a sense of objective reality?
Lex Fridman (50:14.120)
So is it possible to get to the ground level of something that you can call objective truth?
Lex Fridman (50:22.680)
Or are we always on shaky ground?
John Vervaeke (50:26.600)
I think those moments of transcendence can never get us to an absolute view from nowhere.
Lex Fridman (50:35.140)
And so this is Drew Hyland's notion of finite transcendence.
John Vervaeke (50:38.340)
We are capable of self transcendence, and therefore we are creatures who can actually
John Vervaeke (50:42.720)
raise the question of truth, or goodness, or beauty, because I think they all share
John Vervaeke (50:48.120)
this feature.
Lex Fridman (50:49.960)
But that doesn't mean we can transcend to a godhood, to some absolute view from nowhere
John Vervaeke (50:55.880)
that takes in all information and organizes it in a comprehensive whole.
Lex Fridman (51:02.440)
But that doesn't mean that truth is thereby rendered valueless.
John Vervaeke (51:10.120)
I think a better term is real.
Lex Fridman (51:13.840)
And real and illusory are comparative terms.
John Vervaeke (51:18.560)
You only know that something's an illusion by taking something else to be real.
Lex Fridman (51:24.660)
And so we're always in a comparative task, but that doesn't mean that we can somehow
John Vervaeke (51:29.760)
jump outside of our framing in some final manner and say, this is how it is from a God's
Lex Fridman (51:37.840)
eye point of view.
Lex Fridman (51:39.080)
So what do you think, if I may ask, of somebody like Ayn Rand and her philosophy of objectivism?
Lex Fridman (51:46.940)
So where the core principle is that reality exists independently of consciousness and
John Vervaeke (51:51.000)
that human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception.
Lex Fridman (51:54.960)
So they have that, you do have that ability to know reality.
John Vervaeke (52:00.440)
There's two things.
John Vervaeke (52:01.600)
Knowing that there's an independent reality is not knowing that independent reality.
John Vervaeke (52:06.960)
Those are not the same thing.
John Vervaeke (52:07.960)
Yeah, but I think objectivism would probably say that our human reason is able to have
John Vervaeke (52:15.120)
contact with that.
John Vervaeke (52:17.320)
Then I would respond and say, I believe, in fact, ultimately, in a conformity theory of
John Vervaeke (52:24.880)
knowing that the deepest kind of knowing is when there's a contact, a conformity between
John Vervaeke (52:33.200)
the mind, the embodied mind and reality, and here's where I guess I'd push back on Rand.
John Vervaeke (52:40.840)
I would say you have to acknowledge partial knowledge as real knowledge, because if you
Lex Fridman (52:47.400)
don't, you're going to fall prey to Meno's paradox.
Lex Fridman (52:50.720)
Meno's paradox is, you know, it's in Plato, right?
Lex Fridman (52:54.840)
To know P. Well, if I don't know P, I'm going to go looking for it.
Lex Fridman (53:00.760)
But if I don't know P, how could I possibly recognize it when I found it?
Lex Fridman (53:04.120)
I have no way of recognizing it.
John Vervaeke (53:05.920)
I have no way of knowing that I found it.
Lex Fridman (53:09.120)
So I must know P. But if I know P, then I don't need to learn about it.
John Vervaeke (53:13.160)
I don't need to go searching.
Lex Fridman (53:16.080)
So learning doesn't exist.
John Vervaeke (53:18.080)
Knowledge is impossible.
John Vervaeke (53:19.760)
The way you break out of that paradox is saying, no, no, no, it is possible to partially know
John Vervaeke (53:25.760)
something.
John Vervaeke (53:26.760)
I can know it enough that it will guide me to recognizing it, but that's not the same
John Vervaeke (53:31.600)
as having a complete grasp of it, because I still have to search and find what I don't
Lex Fridman (53:35.920)
yet possess in my knowledge.
Lex Fridman (53:39.280)
So partial knowledge has to be real knowledge.
Lex Fridman (53:43.000)
Right.
John Vervaeke (53:44.000)
Partial knowledge is still knowledge.
Lex Fridman (53:45.480)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (53:46.480)
What do you think about somebody like Donald Hoffman, who thinks the reality is an illusion,
Lex Fridman (53:52.800)
so complete illusion, that we're given this actually really nice definition or idea that
John Vervaeke (53:59.880)
you talked about, that there's a tension between the illusory and what is real.
John Vervaeke (54:05.440)
He says that basically we've taken that and we've ran with the real to the point where
John Vervaeke (54:12.680)
the real is not at all connected to some kind of physical reality.
Lex Fridman (54:18.680)
I hope to talk to him at some point.
John Vervaeke (54:20.120)
You were supposed to talk at one point, and so I have to talk in his absence.
John Vervaeke (54:25.760)
I think that, first of all, I think saying that everything is an illusion is like saying
John Vervaeke (54:30.680)
everything is tall.
Lex Fridman (54:31.680)
It doesn't make any sense.
John Vervaeke (54:32.680)
It's a comparative term.
Lex Fridman (54:36.440)
You have to say, against this standard of realness, this is an illusion.
Lex Fridman (54:42.480)
And he uses arguments from evolution, which are problematic to me because it's like, well,
John Vervaeke (54:52.400)
you seem to be saying that evolution is true, that it really exists, and then some of our
John Vervaeke (55:02.440)
cognition and our perception has access to reality, math and presumably some science
Lex Fridman (55:08.320)
has access to reality.
Lex Fridman (55:10.280)
And then what he seems to be saying is, well, a lot of your everyday experience is illusory,
Lex Fridman (55:18.280)
but we do have some contact with reality, whereby we can make the arguments as to why
John Vervaeke (55:24.280)
most of your experience, most of your everyday experience is an illusion.
Lex Fridman (55:28.920)
But to me, that's not a novel thing.
John Vervaeke (55:32.200)
That's Descartes.
John Vervaeke (55:33.200)
That's the idea that most of our sense experience is untrustworthy, but the math is what connects
John Vervaeke (55:38.360)
us to reality.
Lex Fridman (55:39.480)
That's how he interpreted the Copernican revolution.
John Vervaeke (55:41.520)
Oh, look, we're all seeing the sun rise and move over and set, and it's all an illusion,
Lex Fridman (55:46.600)
but the math, the math gets us to the reality.
John Vervaeke (55:49.600)
Well, I think he makes a deeper point that most of cognition is just evolved and operates
Lex Fridman (55:57.280)
in the illusory world.
Lex Fridman (55:59.560)
How does he know that things like cognition and evolution exist?
Lex Fridman (56:04.000)
I think there's an important distinction between evolution and cognition, right?
John Vervaeke (56:09.560)
No, no, I'm just saying that's not the point I'm making.
John Vervaeke (56:11.720)
I'm making a point that he's claiming that there are two things that really exist.
Lex Fridman (56:17.440)
Why are they privileged?
Lex Fridman (56:19.880)
He basically says that, look, the process of evolution makes sense, right?
John Vervaeke (56:26.680)
Like it makes sense that you get complex organisms from simple organisms through the natural
Lex Fridman (56:30.600)
selection process.
John Vervaeke (56:32.320)
Whereas how you get to transfer information from generation to generation, it makes sense.
Lex Fridman (56:37.320)
And then he says that there's no requirement for the cognition to evolve in a way that
John Vervaeke (56:44.560)
it would actually perceive and have direct contact with the physical reality.
John Vervaeke (56:49.960)
Except that cognition evolved in such a way that it could perceive the truth of evolution.
Lex Fridman (56:54.480)
And you can't treat evolution like an isolated thing.
Lex Fridman (56:58.160)
Evolution depends on Darwinian theory, genetics.
John Vervaeke (57:01.020)
It depends on understanding plate tectonics, the way the environment changes.
Lex Fridman (57:05.320)
It depends on how chromosomes are structured.
John Vervaeke (57:08.480)
Actually, that's an interesting question to him, where I don't know if he actually would
Lex Fridman (57:13.520)
push back on this, is how do you know evolution is real?
John Vervaeke (57:18.360)
Yes.
John Vervaeke (57:20.000)
I think he would be open to the idea that it is part of the illusion that we constructed,
John Vervaeke (57:25.760)
that there's some, in some sense, it is connected to reality, but we don't have a clear picture
Lex Fridman (57:33.280)
of it.
John Vervaeke (57:34.280)
I mean, that's an intellectually honest statement then, if most of our cognition as thinking
John Vervaeke (57:42.120)
beings is operating at every level in an illusory world, then it makes sense that this, one
John Vervaeke (57:50.880)
of the main theories of science, that's evolution, is also a complete part of this illusory world.
Lex Fridman (57:58.680)
Right.
Lex Fridman (57:59.680)
But then what happens to the premise for his argument leading to the conclusion that cognition
Lex Fridman (58:04.080)
is illusory?
John Vervaeke (58:05.080)
I think he makes a very specific argument about evolution as an explanation of why the
Lex Fridman (58:09.520)
world is, of our cognition operating in an illusory world.
Lex Fridman (58:13.520)
But that's just one of the explanations.
John Vervaeke (58:17.060)
I think the deeper question is why do we think we have contact with reality, with physical
Lex Fridman (58:23.880)
reality?
John Vervaeke (58:24.880)
It's, we could be very well living in a virtual world constructed by our minds in a way that
John Vervaeke (58:34.280)
makes that world deeply interesting in some ways, whether it's somebody playing a video
John Vervaeke (58:38.960)
game or we're trying to, through the process of distributed cognition, construct more and
John Vervaeke (58:46.320)
more complex objects.
John Vervaeke (58:47.760)
Like why do we have to, why does it have to be connected to like physics and planets and
Lex Fridman (58:54.320)
all that kind of stuff?
Lex Fridman (58:55.320)
Okay.
Lex Fridman (58:56.320)
So if we're going to say like we're now considering it as a possibility rather than it's a conclusion
John Vervaeke (59:01.160)
based on arguments, because the arguments, again, will always rely on stipulating that
John Vervaeke (59:06.240)
there is something that is known.
Lex Fridman (59:08.720)
These are the features of cognition.
John Vervaeke (59:10.960)
Cognition is capable of illusion.
Lex Fridman (59:12.520)
That's a true statement.
John Vervaeke (59:13.840)
You're somehow in contact with the mind.
Lex Fridman (59:15.960)
Why does the mind have this privileged contact and other aspects like my body do not?
Lex Fridman (59:21.500)
So that's, but let's put that aside and now let's just consider it.
Lex Fridman (59:25.680)
Now when we put it that way, it's not an epistemic question anymore.
John Vervaeke (59:29.520)
It's an existential question and here's my reply to you.
Lex Fridman (59:32.240)
There's two possibilities.
John Vervaeke (59:34.080)
Either the illusion is one that I cannot discover, sort of, you know, the matrix on steroids
Lex Fridman (59:41.720)
or something.
John Vervaeke (59:42.720)
There's no way.
John Vervaeke (59:43.720)
Because what I do, I can't find out that it's an illusion or it's an illusion, but I can
John Vervaeke (59:51.000)
find out that it's an illusion.
Lex Fridman (59:54.760)
Those are the two possibilities.
John Vervaeke (59:56.840)
Nothing changes for me if those are the two possibilities, because if I could not find,
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