Ep. 28 - Awakening from the Meaning Crisis - Convergence To Relevance Realization
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- Опубліковано 26 сер 2024
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Twenty-eighth episode of Dr. John Vervaeke's Awakening from the Meaning Crisis.
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This is one of the clearest and most useful lectures of the whole series. The idea of wisdom being the capacity of zeroing in on relevant information while facing ill defined problems is insightful. Proud and loyal onlooker of this series, I just wish I was better at putting it in practice.
I've loved his lecture series, but you hit the nail on the head. Embodying the ideas is easily the most difficult part of understanding it. I get it when I hear him speak, then I attempt to enact them, and it seems far more blurry. Basically computational explosion is some seriously real shit. lol
This is where Peterson's work is helpful. Maps of Meaning is a very practical and brilliant addition to this course. Elephant in the Brain is a fantastic book which describes our dark motivations which we hide from ourselves (by bullshitting!)
The overall goal is just to reverse engineer the ideal version of yourself (divine double) by augmenting your daily behavior (attention/diet/exercise/study time/work/ etc.) Writing out who you want to be really helps you contrast your current set of behaviors from the ones you aspire to have.
In a way, It's obvious for me because I work in a hospital where people are dying from various bad behaviors (excess sugar intake, alcohol, lack of exercise, lacking mental stimulation, bad relationships, etc. Not to mention all the time they waste thinking about irrelevant things, watching daily news, bickering with idiots about things that wont matter a week from now, or ever.
As a result I've quit ingesting things that are bad for me, and I try not to read anything that will become outdated within the next few years, meaning that I spend about an hour a month on news, if that. If I'm spending time and attention, I want the approval of my divine double. It serves as a judge. "Is this relationship worth your time? Should you continue hanging out with this 'friend' who is a bad influence? Do you really want to spend any of your precious time on social media?"
Cheers!
@@IEGTI one of the best convergent summaries written between Peterson and Vervaeke. Thank you! Very good synthesis of eclectic/converging material!
Agreed! I do believe some of the pactical steps are just ahead. Keep listening.
@@IEGTI Pleasant Greetings! Thanks for your advice, testimony, and relevant suggestions. Would you be so kind and provide me with your reference for the 'Divine Double' idea? A book? Lecture?
"There's so much more I can teach you". That honestly sounded better than any girl that told me not to stop.
In conveying relavance realizaiton he became frustrated at the mass of information he could covey, having to narrow it down to what is most relevant. Very ironic, I laughed wondering if it was intentional.
Well, luckily for you your relavance radar has lead you to John, and he still uploads! Don't stop 💚- ua-cam.com/video/dxJtBEfAT_E/v-deo.html
Probably the funniest episode of the series so far, John's examples of the problems are often quite hilarious. Comedian material.
He seems such a serious person to me, I'm taken by surprise when he makes a funny. Just watched a VanderKlay video in which John quipped about "putting Descartes before the horse."
Agency is always contextual. This is a beautiful lecture.
OMG I'm LOVING THIS EPISODE! I've asked many of the same questions when in the midst of absurd arguments. I wish this series...or at the very least, this EPISODE...was required watching in school.
43:04 'there's so much more I could teach you' haha of course, but we only want the relevant information
You could say that the amount of info John can teach is combinatorially explosive
Definitely needed to hear that. 😂👍🏻 Helps me understand people.
"There's so much more I could teach you...."
"CONVEY IT ALL, JOHN!"
It is so generous of you, Dr. Vervaeke to share this lecture series free and widely available. This is a graduate level course, which is taught in a way that can be accessible to undergrad students. People pay 5k$ per course in many instances with much lower signal-to-noise ratio, generalizability and level of insight.
CONVEY IT ALL TO ME JOHN 🙌🙌
“GIVE IT ALL TO ME, JOHN!”
I am currently living this expansion of my own salience landscape, I'm finding gratitude in small things and making connections via maxims from the lessons learned here. Many thanks to all your efforts!
If anyone needs a transcript we've made them for this & all episodes here: www.meaningcrisis.co/ep-28-awakening-from-the-meaning-crisis-convergence-to-relevance-realization/
sounds to me that we dont have to fear general AI and the horror scenarios many describe that soon ... As always John, amazing lecture.
Thanks for an underrated comment.
I think John needs to be doing some stand up also. "Excuse me, I am out of gas".... "I am not asking you to make me more flatulent..." lol
For some reason the Rolling Stones popped into my head and hence became salient. Damn I think my relevance realisation is broken!
I was born in a cross-fire hurricane
And I howled at the morning driving rain
But it's all right now, in fact, it's a gas
But it's all right. I'm Jumpin' Jack Flash
It's a gas, gas, gas
Hahah noo I don't think your RR is broken, to me these Rolling Stones lyrics fit the situation perfectly! But maybe it's just because a guy once pointed out to me how great a metaphor a car is for your merkaba... So maybe my RR is broken too ;) But John's videos are definitely a gas to me, or even more like kerosine heheh
That's the guy for those who are interested: ua-cam.com/channels/H8ArKBBi1CSjSOL_3-my8A.html
I absolutely appreciate YOUR time JV ❤️🍄
I've heard it said that octopus are odd in that they are not social yet highly intelligent. However, their neural networks are highly distributed. Octopus (octopi?) operate as a vast society of one.
"Breathe, breathe in the air.
Don't be afraid to care."
Was there an actual class of students present for these lectures? I assume so but I would have thought there'd have been some laughter at points in this session if so; some was very funny as well as informative. More excellent work.
Yeah I was thinking this too. I think it’s because of the mic. Even John’s voice fades when he’s writing on the board or amplified if he’s facing down.
I love the recurring characters of Tom and Agnes. I hope I'll get to know them better in the next lectures.
I am truly disquieted by the idea that RR can be both immutable and endangered at the same time. This lecture really drives home what's at stake. Looking forward to the rest of this journey.
AWAKENING TIME
I'm shedding tears of joy about the gas-station scenario. Your way of giving life to your explanations is very enjoyable.
I'm not a scientist, a psychologist, or highly knowledgeable about philosophy, but this series has motivated me to attempt to make a theoretical motivational psychotechnology.
How is that theoretical motivational psychotechnology going?
Appreciate how at 17:32 John switches (probably accidentally) 'works of art' and 'your children'. Perhaps a Freudian slip of some kind, but quite a profound one
John you're an underappreciated genius, thank you.
Amazing lecture. I'm getting more and more engaged in philosophy and the meaning crisis.
Ideas and concepts as old as civilisation itself. Still grappling with the issues despite the advances in technology .
categorization is context dependent - this needed to be said
Thank you , sir.. Mind blown.
At the CRUX. So excited to hear more. Regenerating Right Relationship . . . this is exactly what is needed for cultural renewal. Many people are doing this intuitively, and it is so nice to get under the hood to understand the mechanisms from a scientific frame.
This series is making me more intelligent, in ways that matter.
"A lawn mower does not make a great weapon"... Clearly John hasn't watched Peter Jackson's Braindead
Thank You!
Addicted. Have no background in philosophy, cognitive science nor psychology, but just addicted. Great job Professor !
It seems to me that Christianity offers a way to recalibrate relevance realization. You are able to add a level of perspective to the situation - the perspective of God, and this allows you to escape the trap of your own mind/ego. It also measures relevance against your ideal self, not your perceived self.
Beautiful lecture, John. Thank you
Iain McGilchrist writes about how our brain works in The Master And His Emissary. We bring two brains to the table when we problem solve. This is done by the two sides of the brain working together in different ways. In general, both sides attend to problems by what they choose to attend to - McGilchrist describes it as what they ‘do not say no to’. The right side is generally intuitive and holistic. This might correlate with John’s top-down view of a problem. The left side is generally more analytical, framing problems by narrowing the focus. Maybe this correlates with bottom up. Both sides are informed by life experience. This might provide our definitions of relevance. How can a robot carry a lifetime of experience in its memory? How can it say no to irrelevance if its very nature is to process conditions?
I'm reading that book currently and indeed there seems to plenty of connections ;)
I have the strong impression this is at most a confirmation of truisms. A long, complex way of saying something fundamentally simple.
Relevant is just a way of saying valuable. Values are subjective, so relevance is subjective, value-dependent, fundamentally related to agents, proactive choosers.
So what is it to choose well? The problem with the term value is it conflates together everything from preferences to needs. I don’t think is I correct to say that my need for water is subjective. The point to you find and choose the information most relevant to solving your problem. That is not determined by just your subject values. If it were just subjective values why is there such difference in intelligence between people and why is it so difficult to make AI? There are skills and states of mind etc that make a difference. I hope this addresses your concern. Thanks for the comment.
So what is it to choose well? The problem with the term value is it conflates together everything from preferences to needs. I don’t think is I correct to say that my need for water is subjective. The point to you find and choose the information most relevant to solving your problem. That is not determined by just your subject values. If it were just subjective values why is there such difference in intelligence between people and why is it so difficult to make AI? There are skills and states of mind etc that make a difference. I hope this addresses your concern. Thanks for the comment.
@@johnvervaeke
Who defines "well" if not the chooser? The chooser wants to pick the best option, or at least a "good" option, however they define or think of "good". "Need" is just a non-negotiable value, or a value of survival. You don't need water if you don't want to live, but you do want to live (understandably, biologically). I don't see why values being subjective would make them easier. Our subjective values have been refined and ingrained by billions of years of evolution, homing in on features causally related to survival (danger, food, sex, etc) and ingraining these physiologically, hence why almost all humans agree on these. Different hardware can perform the same task at different rates or to different accuracies. We generally value intelligence because it makes one better able to do whatever they may wish to do: it is a universally applicable tool.
This is along the same lines: ua-cam.com/video/hEUO6pjwFOo/v-deo.html&ab_channel=RobertMiles
Thanks for responding. I'm really enjoying your content, even if I don't agree with it all. You're doing the Lord's work, so to speak :)
This episode marks quite a significant synchronization moment for me. It is as if something clicked into place and unlocked a symphony to pour into my sense of being and I know that it came from deep , I suppose this could be a weird new type of fluency I don't know I am going to apply my be still practice to try see what I'm sensing. First time for everything I suppose, yet it doesn't feel new it feels knew.. if that makes sense. And I think what could be a balancing component is to renew. Interesting. Thank you.
I've been waiting for this for hours, but now I have to leave... *sadface*
Thank you for all the interesting work you are doing, John!
Thanks John.
Informative as always and the journey continues. I'm getting an uneasy feeling from this last lecture that we're headed towards the idea that the meaning crisis is subjective and if we fiddle with the tuning knobs of our brain we can clean up the static and enjoy peaceful music... It will be interesting to see what future lectures hold.. thanks again for you and your team's efforts. They are appreciated.
27:07 we love to know we don't know! And look, even when the policy was "no bullshit", we still came to a crappy situation. This could be an intro to series from my humble view.
Just stumbled into these lectures. Great! I'm a fan!
The "Excuse me" skit here, starting @31:40, was so o o hilarious, I was 'dying, rolling on the floor' in laughter! Too funny! 😂
This is genius! Love this stuff, I'm learning so many fascinating ideas on things I've wondered about, it actually "makes sense," (and also makes my brain hurt!) The best kind of lectures from the best profs ever! Often I have to rewind and listen again,like....WHAT did he just say? Okay!! Now I think I understand! Another sleeping synapse just lit up, FLASH! Oh,my head! Will I ever get to 'After Socrates'? Hope so! So much to learn. So little time. Oh no, and he just started another series! Can't keep up with this mind. Oh,and what about all these recommended awesome books?? Either a speed reader you be, or plan on living at least 100 years, with still being cognizant enough to comprehend this cutting edge subject, about being aware of being aware of being......
Thanks so much for this incredible online series! It's amazing. Full stop. Sharing it with people I care about the most who I'm sure will appreciate it.
😊👍👍
This is a truly fascinating lecture series, but I’m at Episode 28 and still want to hang myself. When does it become practical?
You snapped on this one
thank you, I found this relevant
Amazing. Almost literally "illuminating" lecture to the world. Friendly question, were you crying? 👍🏼
I don’t remember. But I don’t think so. Thanks for the kind words.
@@johnvervaeke Thanks for taking your time to read. Sometimes I think you're doing Tai Chi or something while doing a lecture, your breathing feels heavy and is kind of contagious, to me at least. It's a good experience.
🙏
It seems that “relevance” is teleological. In other words what makes something relevant depends on a goal, purpose
It is because it is grounded in the autopoiesis of life. Life is self making for no purpose other than itself.
@@johnvervaeke I appreciate the reply. Unfortunately, while I have an answer, it belongs to my friend and he is currently writing a book on these epistemological-ontological matters.
I enjoy the videos
I'm always looking for new interesting lectures on Psychology/Philosophy, please let me know if you guys have any recommendations, would be highly appreciated
27:00 Google's PaLM-SayCan is a big step towards solving Denett's robot bomb battery problem. It uses language models to shortcut to relevant information. The problem is not solved yet but I expect it in the next few years.
I would have gotten in trouble due to excessive laughing along if I been there in person. 🙏
Juicy batteries
My intuition is that you can't argument away from desire. I dont see relevance realisation organising who I love and hate or determining what I want. Wisdom seems to me seems directed to the process of desire abrogation and meaning a byproduct in the degree that process is succeeding. Know thyself.
That sounds more like repression, wisdom is much more than that
00:05 Newle(?) and Simon. intelligence as a capacity to do general problem solving by analyzing, formulizing and mechanising the mind. Problem space. Zero in on relevant information.
02:00 heuristics vs algorithmic. bias and prejudice. self-deception.
... Categories
16:45 logical to psychological similarity
18:00 relevance by context
Robot looking for food. Intended effects
24:30 side effects of behavior! combinatory explosion of side effects
27:30 define relevance - impossible?
28:45 zen koan: ignore the information
31:20 language. Convey>>saying
32:15 gas station example. Galostation
35:45 bad question
36:35 can we still read between the lines, inter legger?
Rarely do animals assess danger, they react to danger instinctively through processes of the sensory cortex. There must be an essence to danger, otherwise, animals would be in a state of constant flight and fear. Phobias are also involuntary reactions.
There are dangers which our species has not evolved to detect, meaning our class of "dangers" is incomplete. But those genetically inscribed dangers must contain between them some essences or salient attributes of "danger".
Isnt it just the instinct is the assessment.
it seems more like there are categories which we find dangerous (big cats, hot things, etc.), which is why we many times miss the danger of novel things as dangerous (though, novel things can be a category in and of itself, which might relate to why some people are open and less open to experience) but then are able to integrate them into our danger detection (like guns, climate change or artificial intelligence)
15:18 Bizon was a combine harvester producer based in Płock, Poland. (wikipedia). Greetings from Poland, that's no coincidence ;)
What about feelings of hunger, fear, pain, excitement etc as framers of relevance. Some of these are innate
It's the moment of "Awakening from the Meaning Crisis."
It's the moment of complete and total horse shit for sychophants, you mean?
@@PhoenixProdLLC Genuinely interested in what parts you consider horseshit and from what alternate viewpoint/formulation you consider it to be horseshit?
Hamed Moradi can you elaborate?
4:39
The anti-essentialist is saying that all problems are not essentially the same.
Well, if that’s true, how do we refer to collection as “all”?
In fact all problems are problems. Otherwise they’re not problems.
You are assuming that definitions are logical instead of functional, the point is that the category of "problem" is not a strictly logical one since there isn't a way of defining it neatly but instead is a collection of things human's group toghether. The contention is not if all problems can be called problems but if they share a exclusive set of characteristics that we can work around
@@joseignaciomontes5712 replying me ?
Well jusst about anything to be defined as problematic. It makes me wonder if problemacy of problems must be essential ?
So cognitive science is a jonny come lately here, Jung was using relevancy realization 100 years ago but he called it the extrovert/introvert divide, balancing these bring transcendance, etc. Central here is working with the opposite shadow as extroversion is the shadow of introversion and vice versa, Jung further extended this to the sensation/intuative divide and the thinking/feeling divide which are also shadows of each other which are tempered by the objective/subjective divide. Fischer's model of arousal coming from the work of James is also a better way of conceptualizing the problem, it has the advantage of also grounding it within the sympathetic/parasympathetc nervous system so its an embodied approach, instead of medatation, at one ment and flow, we would use medatation, relaxation techniques, etc which are associated with the parasympathetic system, trance states which are associated with the sympathetic nervous system as in shamanic states of journeying, dance, etc and the flow between them which means the ability to move between these arousal states which Jung would have called moving between extroversion and introversion, Their are numerous state change technologies which can achieve this. I would also recommend people read Porges recent ground breaking work, these are the seminal works we need to build from.
Great job!
Forgive me if i missed something, but you said you're explaining the mind in non-mental terms. But how is this possible? Isn't *everything* a mental term? Including numbers?
Did anyone notice what happened at 13:17? Surely the odd one out was the eraser. Was this a bait?
52:07 what's the relevance realization doing in free will?
We seem to be on the same page as Jasper Hoffmeyer and semiotic scaffolding.
www.etymonline.com/word/semiotic
Memes, anyone?
Happy Friday!
Alexander Ruden cheers !
As a NZer I can categorically state that lawnmowers make great weapons, just go watch Peter Jackson's zombie movie called Braindead. Zombies ... Lawnmowers ... never seen John Vervaeke or Peter Jackson in the same room at the same time ... both males ... hmmm ... a lot of similar features ... what does this mean?
It could mean one of them is about to conduct a sadistic virtual reality experiment on the other and transform them from an Woodland Elf into Uruk-hai? www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=images&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjP6sOfkNXjAhUFWX0KHaH7BaoQjRx6BAgBEAU&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.microsoft.com%2Fen-ca%2Fp%2Fthe-lawnmower-man-the-directors-cut%2F8d6kgwxb6p0x&psig=AOvVaw3Z6D5EgwpON3TySYR927rO&ust=1564317814367222
Whilst watching previous videos I thought about the robot that replaces it's battery idea. I'm still not entirely sure why it wouldn't work. I'll have to watch the video again or pay closer attention.
I wonder if trying to create G.A.I might be to ambitious currently. Could we replicate early life and have a self replicating program that learns and is embodied. Start it in a basic environment with the goal of replacing it's battery as John said then complexify the environment till it can cope with ours. Maybe then it'll be a G.A.I. I'm definitely missing the bit where it'll have to realize some relevance but it seems like following this track further may teach us something.
Won’t cognition be limited by incoming stimuli via the body, a bison / lawnmower won’t run into that issue unless you try and make it one as the perceptual differences between them are so great. It’s a perception issue rather than a thinking issue?
I'm curious as to how looking for naturalistic answers to the problem of mind and consciousness is not going to yield the same kind of circularity that it is supposed to avoid. Like, doesn't a scientific account for science commit exactly the homuncular fallacy? It seems to me that the problem does need to be reframed in metaphysical terms.
(e.g., a naturalistic account for nature is an obvious category confusion, I would think)
relevance realization
🍺
I don't see Wolfram's model of universe, which has great resonance here, s as a Cartesian trap. Wolfram's "computational irreducibility" is John's "combinatorial explosion." The trap is in thinking there can be a COMPLETE model of something that is fundamentally irreducible. You just have to watch it all play out.
To spend two hours to convey a single not all that complex idea is almost impressive
Categorization is, no doubt, critical to intelligence and specifically to human intelligence, but the manner of its manifestation is critically influenced by the dominant technologies and media of the time. The notion of visual perspective, for instance, never evolved until humans were presented with the routinized parallel lines of text produced by the printing press. Note that prior to this, books in a library tended to be categorized by their sheer *size*.
So, if p=np and we could follow an Cartesian algorithm toward the best life, there would be no need for consciousness?
there are much bigger problems then np, and in general the epistemicological frame problem reveals that relevance, function etc. is indeterminately large and non static.
Marketers be like “salience for sale!” 🤣
"a plausability structure" you mean a mindmap John. Attaching new labels to simple concepts does not make them deeper
Is relevance realization prayer redesigned?
The Illustrious Martyrs Club No, he’s gonna get into the details of how he sees we realize relevance. It’s a process having to do with our minds being embodied/ embedded in an environment and the fact that we need to search for food in order to survive.
It’s too much to fit in a comment here, it will be very interesting how he presents it here in this format.
I can say after listening to his other lecture series I understand prayer in a completely different way. I used to see it as just a ridiculous waste of time but now understand it can do profound things for people who do it seriously.
Ahh, there's the proof. You ARE a bunch of religious nuts trying to use science to further your bs and turn the world backwards in time. No need for such fantasies. Merely denying climate science and acting like it's not happening will utterly wipe your DNA out and that of any unfortunate progeny you have, that you will a world of ashes and illness and violence. No, there will be no "re-ward" post death for ones such as yourselves. In fact, not for anyone. Get over it, lock your spines back in place, and stop trying to rationalize your every selfish ambition, hobby, and behavior.
@@PhoenixProdLLC Ahh, you should have realized the irrelevance of your comment before you posted it, but I suppose you were desperate to escape your loneliness for a second or two. So we forgive you.
@@dsuleyma In Yorkshire we have a psychotechnology called "calling a spade a spade". But I like finding out what else a spade can be called so I'll keep following.
I would consider it in a similar class @The Illustrious Martyrs Club .... synonymous with the Images of revelation or receptions of a blessing from God. Vervaeke seems willing to “pretend” , as Paul Vanderklay likes to advocate. to believe in blessings from God but in a more polytheistic way where the god of Science is one of the new main players.
28:55
43:00 shakes head and says: "There is so much more i could teach you"
Somebodys struggling with whats relevant about relevance realization here
It seems that relevance realization is a learned ability. Young children are especially inclined to convey irrelevant information and become more attuned to context as they mature. If so, perhaps our fundamental analysis of our environment is "what works" and "what doesn't work". That might be more fundamental to us than "true" and "false" as falsehoods can sometimes work.
When one is concerned with the optimization of technologies, it is always preferable to seek the truth. But when one is concerned with survival, it's always preferable to seek what works. By "works" I mean something which benefits you--aids your survival, etc. The truth is not always beneficial.
@Language and Programming Channel From a Darwinian perspective, the genes don't care about what kind of society they inhabit. What interests a gene is fitness. And what works will always improve genetic fitness. That's what I mean by "works"--something which benefits the individual (and species) in terms of survival.
@Language and Programming Channel Evolution is the result of random mutation and natural selection. What "works" would be the selective element. Human beings who are predisposed to follow strategies that don't "work" will have decreased their genetic fitness. Relevance works, irrelevance does not work.
John, I still can't get your Google podcast link to work.
I will check into it.
@@johnvervaeke thank you, sir.
I think you really need to be in Google play music. There are many podcasts there.
"regenerate"... Huh.
The gasoline scenario is hilarious. If someone said that to me when I was on the street, I'd say 'good for you!' Alot of the problems in the world are because we 'assume' what people want and need. I dislike arguments like this.
d4nk