Ep. 41 - Awakening from the Meaning Crisis - What is Rationality?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 31 พ.ค. 2024
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Forty-first episode of Dr. John Vervaeke's Awakening from the Meaning Crisis.
No John, Thank YOU very much for YOUR time and attention! This is the most wonderful series I've ever heard!
Absolutely 👍👍👍 thanks John
The degree to which John’s insights have broadened my understanding of rationality are combinatorial explosive.
Thank you John
The last 10 episodes were difficult. I'm glad I pulled through to this one. As always, thanks John!
I find the back-and-forth stories of debates between thinkers on these ideas to be so engaging. I get so drawn in and want to hear what the other replied, and it's humbling that every time I think "Ah, that's brilliant, that's the answer!" the other's reply points out the flaw and takes it in a new direction again. It's wonderful to feel a thrill from being wrong.
Books in the video:
- Models of Bounded Rationality - Herbert Simon
- Biased - Henry Priest
- The 25 Cognitive Biases - Kai Musashi
- Cognitive Biases: A Pocket Reference Book - Aryan Pillai
Absolutely BRILLIANT! What a beautiful argument. This lecture in particular epitomized Spinoza’s concept of understanding the parts, the parts of the parts, and how they fit together at multiple levels… what did JV call it?… that you need to deeply internalize new knowledge. I can follow the individual arguments he introduced in this lecture, then how they fit into the rationality argument as a whole, then how they talk to the theory of relevance realization, then how it converges with the history from dozens of lectures ago… it’s a beautiful convergence at all levels.
Does anyone remember the word for that??
In particular, the idea that biases are misused heuristics is incredibly powerful to me. It is at the intersection of wisdom, rationality, intelligence, RR, and a fantastic jumping off point for discussions about these concepts. It’s a profound statement that’s catchy and really intriguing in a culture dominated by nebulous accusations of bias and prejudice.
I am watching through this series from the beginning with a friend as I am finishing my first watch-through. (My friend is watching for the first time.) We just finished our discussion of lecture 4, and we spent a significant amount of time trying to explicate the notion of bullshit and define rationality. Rather than using the conclusions I’ve heard along the way, I’ve attempted to stick to the argument with my friend and build it together. It is SO much harder than I thought, and equally more insightful. As I watch the conversation unfold before my eyes, consistently surprised where it ends up, I am utterly amazed how many ideas we come to that JV picks up again 30 lectures later.
As someone said in some other comments section, we are monkeys whacking a notebook with sticks until the right pages haphazardly fall out… but we are learning so much :) I am so excited to reach this point in the series with him months from now. I cannot wait to see how far the conversation takes us.
To give a concrete metric, we’ve spent about 14 hours total in discussion. We haven’t even hit Plato yet. Not to mention Aristotle. Or the Buddha. Or literally anyone after that.
Wish us luck!! Also, if you read this, 😊😊 and join the Discord server if you haven’t! There’s links around, I know there’s at least one in the first episode of After Socrates.
I continue to experience genuine awe at the brilliance, depth, insight, and humility with which @John Vervaeke presents this information to us. Question.... Isn't it possible that people fail rationality tests as a result of oversimplified Relevance Realization? It seems like many of the examples show people holding some, but not all of the information which is critical to formulate the problem correctly. I think the spectrum of RR must range from combinatorial explosion to oversimplification which misses critically relevant information. Just a thought. Deeply grateful to listen at the feet of a modern master.
I highly appreciate when you point out the distinctions between conflated concepts like fallacy and misunderstanding ( both leading to wrong conclusion) or rationality and logicality / intelligence. This really fine-tunes my understanding and (sometimes) it confirms my vague inklings. It is like emerging into the light..... thank you!
Hey KatiForTruth This lecture on the nature of rationality for me was another way of explaining the workings of the 4 knowings and relevant psychotechs, with an ecology of practices that are top-down instructional: from propositional down to participatory and also bottom-up emergent: from participatory up to propositional
Jase the-ace - Hi Jase - yes, I think the 4 types of knowing is a much needed comprehensive understanding of the 4 levels/areas of life - the practical, the intellectual, the relational and the spiritual- each of these requires its own particular approach for getting to know the world we occupy ( knowing awareness?).... This is a major breakthrough, in my view, because it does emphasise the interplay and slotting together of these areas, making everything a lot more 3-dimensional. Great to know we are still following similar paths here.... :o)
@@kbeetles As John discussed the Rationality debates appear highly significant and something I am still pondering. Most people acknowledge and accept the authority of certain standards of reasoning, yet they reliably fail to meet those standards. So do we assume most people are thus irrational in nature?? But if we assume people are irrational, this will have important implications for their moral, political, legal, developmental status; rationality is deeply existential, it is not just theoretical.
Jase the-ace - I think John is beginning to debunk this reasoning (ie because of irrational humans democracy cannot be justified etc...) because rationality is more comprehensive than the usual assumptions - that it is identical with being logical, being intelligent and probabilistic. ( The underlying frame of the scientists doing and interpreting the experiments.)He said something about salience can interfere and mislead us from the correct understanding of a problem ( Did I get that right?) too. ..... so I would not stop here to ponder too much about the practical-social implications of human beings' irrationality. Somehow I think John will have a trump card and I guess it might have something to do with Rationality overlapping Wisdom. After all an uneducated, poor farmer in India or Africa can still obviously display much wisdom ( therefore Rationality). But I am convinced that a lot of so-called educated "experts" can also display a lack of wisdom ( therefore Irrationality). Democracy is a tricky business for many reasons, one of them is our herd instinct, another one is our propensity for self-deception, another one is the whole system being undermined (cheating). .... You could argue that vulnerability for deception/self-deception is a feature of irrationality but John also brought up the fallacy of taking Rationality to be a static competence. .... just waiting for the next chapter now!
@@kbeetles What I am pondering is just where or how things went pear-shaped. I think the argument for irrationality is an argument against "natural law", as envisaged the Greeks and incorporated into Christianity, (although at certain periods, Christianity has failed in this endeavour, it is definitely in the deeper aspects of its doctrine), and of the loss of the monastic traditions from the middle ages. I'm still waiting for John to give a thorough account of distributed cognition. I suspect this is the "slam dunk"!
I can’t stop asking last episodes - what is meant by reality and what is meant by illusion
I see a lot of things pointing to humility towards the end of this. Lovely.
Im loving the cognitive science part of these lectures, im not deeply prepared but i have done a papper relating the 4es with sculpture processes, witch in you always have to be sure of what you are doing focus and evolving the material inference and projective inference with the formal result. Now, with the knowledge you are sharing, i undestand how i can relate the summuning on procedural practices to my salient ladscape. Thank you soo much for your project, hope none of these fall in to wrong intentions.
Thanks 🙏🙏🙏
I cannot wait for the series on wisdom.
This is one of my favourites so far, the practical applications for self development are really helpful, thanks John.
Thank you John. This is one of the best lecture series I've seen. I've added all the books referenced to my reading list and intend to fully grock this subject. To share one small piece of critical feedback; I'm not always able to resonate with the emotional expressions. I imagine there's purposefulness to, but I don't find it particularly helpful. Given that the material is in a "crisis" frame its perhaps appropriate, but I don't find that frame super salient. I value the content none the less. John I'm grateful for the opportunity to experience the depth and clarity of your knowledge.
The sun literally came out during this episode. Symbolically meaningful, I think. :-)
This all tracks very well with what I learned a while back from work in Evolutionary Psychology (especially Cosmides and Tooby), and from reading Vernon Smith's "Rationality in Economics: Constructive and Ecological Forms." Also of course Kahneman and Tverski. I think by now the domain-dependence of rationality is well established. Really excellent, thank you Professor Vervaeke for presenting all these great ideas and concepts so clearly.
I appreciate YOUR time JV ❤️🍄
This felt like a culmination of a significant amount of your work that I didn't have a clear context for, like the g force and some of the more in depth cog sci work. It just placed a lot of information into useful parameters for me and helped me more succinctly follow the lecture series. I think referencing the thinkers and the debate also helped me. I just finished undergrad so I don't want to pretend that I have a comprehensive understanding of your work. But I wrote my senior thesis on your lecture series. So so I deeply appreciate what you're doing here, and this episode in particularly helped me get a better focus on some of your more recent work that was beyond my scope.
Thank you Matthew. I would love to read your thesis.
Thank you, John . This episode brought all the previous ones together for me and I gained a great sense of understanding. This episode couples nicely with your talk including Jonathan Pagaue on the Rebel Wisdom channel, the episode about wonder and curiosity. such a beautiful conversation. wow.
This one has me on the edge of my seat. You’re such a great presenter!
The definition of foolishness as being highly irrational + highly intelligent reminds me of my high school years.. being asked “you’re so smart, why do you make such bad decisions?” whenever I got suspended. Now I know better, and hopefully by the end of this video I will understand why it is that I now know better. 😊
For anyone interested in this series, and this lecture in particular-I highly recommend the novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It’s a deep dive into questions of reason, rationality, and values, and the degree of similarity to what John talks about here is so striking that it would surprise me if he hadn’t read the book himself
Fascinating stuff here.
Another way to look at the issue of fallacy vs misunderstanding is through the lens of the growth mindset - this is the way we learn and advance our understanding of the world. When we encounter something new, we try to use our previous knowledge in order to understand, but since it is new, we misunderstand. So even though we reason 'correctly' based on our previous experiences, we still make mistakes. Once we understand the new, we start the process of understanding how to reason with this new knowledge. Because we don't know, we make mistakes in that reasoning.
As we move through life, we grow by moving through this process. In that view, failure to grow is described as the inability to "correct" (better word is "improve") your reasoning.
Some deep house music by Ben Böhmer goes great with these lectures.
Mindful World not the crossover I was expecting!
Really loved this lecture!
Another great lecture. Thank you!
This was awesome 😎 ❤️ I looked into this problem a bit just for personal reasons because I was shocked at how many people at high levels of intelligence were literally incapable of thinking. That sounds so egotistical I cringe to say it but I have seriously checked it out. I took several different personality tests and IQ tests. I used Jordan Peterson’s IQ test as well. I think the 16 factor MBTI was the most enlightening in this regard for me. Even at my MENSA meetings (I have an IQ in the top 1%) I noticed a lot of Trivial pursuits, let’s say, people not seeming very able to think clearly. I recognize that this was really bad for me because I got into a habit of just sailing ahead with the right questions and paradoxes on my own and making up my own words and concepts for the paradoxes in things etc and then I lost the ability to relate to people. I just assumed no one would understand or they would get pissed of and just not like me.
Anyway that’s not my point except that this causes larger problems than you would think. But I think it has something to do with using your intelligence instrumentally as a way of coping and getting things you need vs using it potentially against that to get at truth for truths sake. There’s a personality style for that called the “Thinker” and it’s approximately 2% of the population. I think it’s less than that for people who can seriously keep going toward truth. I think you fall into that category. I can usually recognize when someone does.
Anyway this is not anything I have pursued as a main focus-I just dive enough into any thought I have enough to make a career on that alone… I am definitely a thinker.
So yeah check out that personality dimension. Maybe ask Jordan Peterson about it. I love known him for like 20 years 😂🤷♀️ because you guessed it he’s a thinker too.
I did not see a very clear bridge between MTBI and Jordan’s personality tests, but a researcher out here wrote a book about the correspondence of the MBTI profiles including the thinker with actual brain biology way beyond chance. A lot of people discount that test but I think it is a good tool for nuances and rarer personality types.
Anyway thanks for the beautiful job on this video. I think the most startling and relevant thing was the .3 correlation of (g) and (gr). Just explained so much on a huge question that has been burdening me for a long time. I can’t even describe how I felt hearing this. I was like yep, I saw that there was a definite problem with just IQ, but I didn’t like the “multiple intelligences” idea fully because g shows that there is a general quality to IQ -g- and I know that g is correlated with a ton of different things pretty highly. So I was like, it’s MOTIVATION and personality! And it’s looking like it is. My superpower is finding holes in things. For puzzle pieces or in logic or whatever. I tried to think about what I do over the years because it is a definite superpower. For example I identified and thought about the “binding problem” before anyone ever wrote about it or named it. I tend to zoom in on that stuff.
I identified part of why too. The way things are taught and rewarded is very memory-focused. And also socially instrumental. Other motives than truth allow success. Of course now there are studies showing other things related to that. I have a lot of anecdotes of course but it’s not science Lol.
I guess I just wanted to thank you and express joy in the form of thinking because it’s my favorite. 🥰🙌 I guess I can admit it but this made me cry a bit. Feel less alone. Thanks 🙏🏻 Most people wouldn’t know how vitally important this is. I do. And not just because I feel like I can see Michaelangelo in the world of the blind. Not just because of my personal pain in that, but because I see the beauty and potential in humanity and I don’t want to give up on them, and what I love. I think you could understand. Thank you.
Also I love the combinatorial explosion concept it rocks. Yes 👍🏻
I fly ahead with knowledge and I can tell like immediately when I am even slightly headed there. I thought about that too and I think it’s due to from an early age compulsively NOT just memorizing (that’s some of the research that came out where people with worse memory for facts were better thinkers in general). I wanted to internalize and connect things so my mind works like reality. I nearly flunked out of school all my grade school and high school and I think this is why. I would space off and make connections of the most relevant things from multiple classes instead of focusing on the course of facts. I obviously didn’t give a crap about grades. I actually stayed home from school faking being sick so I could read about physics and psychology 😂. So then later I came across a Tibetan saying “om mani Padme hum” which is sorta loosely translated as “to prepare a mind which is at one with the universe” that’s what I read back then anyway and never forgot. I have a decal of that saying on my car right now in the original Sanskrit.
Sorry I busted loose with my own anecdote 🤷♀️🤦♀️ but it’s actually relevant ❤️🙌
Thanks John.
Thanks Lee.
Hey John, would you mind updating your podcasts so Spotify also has this episode? I barely have time to watch, but I have time to listen :) Thank you for the hard and meaningful work!
Hello John! Just subbed. Glad I found your channel. Will be going through the archives in the following days.
Thank you for the most precious content of the internet. But I have to admit I totally dropped out of the page in this one. I got the part not to think about rationality as being smart or overanalyzing/superlogical, but I have no idea where to look at next. Being as conscious as you can about your automatized thinking processes and questioning them etc. ? Sorry for my lack of skill in English, not native!
Does it get harder to separate when errors are competence or performance errors, as someone becomes more developed. The example of the two year old girl used was obvious as we can see the development still to do. As adults we can help children develop to our stage as we can see their errors. If part of the problem of the meaning crisis is lack of sages( or some form organisation so sages can help develop adults) how can we have any form of cultural escape from the cave. We need wisdom to become wiser.
Funny, the more you want to distance from, the more you get into the golden mean of Siddhartha's teachings haha. Keep up the good work John, thank you.
Thnx for these lectures I love em. I really want to know where the 0.3 comes from. That number feels so random.
For most mathematicians Godel's Incompleteness Theorem is an "ugly surprise", or "unwanted property" for "rich enough" systems (i.e., you can do arithmetic). What can rationality theory tells about this theorem?
HMM...yeah, so when we make the observation that very few pwople who aren't mathematically trained ( and even many who are in contexts that don't feel appropriate to them) have any meaningful grasp of the behavior of exponential processes in light of this work, we come to the conclusion that because exponential behavior is so alien to our day to day experience, we simply tend to exclude it as irrelevant. This is something that is difficult to impossible to change through propositional arguments for most. It seems in my experience that the only way to break through is to provide parables and stories in which exponential processes are very salient.
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
You currently (10/25 1:30 EST) seem to be missing a thumbnail image for this video like the ones you have for the rest of the series. Maybe that just takes a while?
I've been waiting for the next episode to come out on the Achor podcast syndication but I think something is broken. It stops at 40. Is there some way to fix it or another place to get the podcasts?
Hello from France John, thanks for your work. Where does the number 0.3 come from please ?
The work of Keith Stanovich . See Stanovich and West 2000 and his book What Intelligence Tests Miss.
Actually if what we call "intelligence," as measured by IQ, mostly a dialectical skillset then a correlation 0.33333 is about right, as its contribution to reason as entailing all three aspects of the trivium: dialectic (ungrounded comparative reason), grammar (grounded exterior reason), and rhetoric (grounded interior reason).
Somehow you still do not mention the issue of computational irreducibility (i.e. the property of a system complex enough that there is no way to know the outcome of an action other than running the simulation in full, meaning letting the system run and check the outcome afterwards. I think this is something different than the combinatoial explosion). Note that it renders all normative questions undecidable. In other words, the only _rational_ answer to the "So, what should I do?!" question is "I don't know".
This "I don't know" moment brings me a quale that I imagine to be the Zen-like enlightment.
Who am I? I don't know. What should I do? I don't know. I'm just left stunned - or _contemplative_, if I prefer more solemn wording.
This was rather a little excourse into the realms of the "grey literature" of psycho-sciences, but there can also be some fun in it, remember the motivation thing. There have been debates on "intelligence" - What is it, how can it be measured, where are biases inherent ...? - going on for centuries, so the topic is really heavy and hardly managable, more so for "virtuosos" lilke me.
I find Your approach very interesting, especially as you seem to attempt to start a complex project, which is combined intra-, inter- and transcultural.
Then it should not go unnoticed, that at least some of the Eastern "systems" differentiate explicitly - in rough outline - between a) natural talents/knowledge, b) technical knowledge (--> ger. Verstand, Ratio, Messen und Berechnen), c) knowledge of the wiser, nobler, more experienced, insightful people (--> ger. Vernunft, Erfahrungswissen), and d) transcendental knowledge, of which we can get some glimpses in the book of Master Zhuang (ca. 3./2. ctr. B.C.E.), e.g., and which in Mahayana-Buddhism is often called "prajna"(-wisdom/knowledge) --- I think, You mentioned this some times. It would be very interesting for me to hear, whether, and, if so, how You would integrate this (organic theoretical-practical) "teachings" in Your system/project.
14:37 Is this similar to the idea that there's multiple paths to the top of the mountain? Each path is it's own competency?
I think its more like how we have a bunch of skills that overlap. I may be socially and mathmaticly competent, but if I am not finically competent I will have a hard time as a G.P.S (General Problem Solver) in our society. I wouldn't necessarily be able to take just one path, as in order to be competent in on area, such a finance, I would need competency in many fields.
Are there theories of multiple rationalities like there is for intelligence? I am confused as to what rationality is, need to digest this longer.
lazyboyr33 John has another lecture up on TH-cam called “Cognitive Science of Wisdom” where he gets at the relationship he sees between Rationality and Wisdom from a different angle. It might help put some of the pieces together for you.
Finally! Second, by the way.
12:01 "Is there no video this week?!?!?!"
I really like your series because it makes me think. Thank you. However when you say that you are doing good science 29.30 in comparison with Descartes, I think you introduce equivocation. The rationalist (Descartes) allows for a priori knowledge the scientist (empiricist) for sensory knowledge. I would keep both in mind as dual aspects of knowledge and that in the process conceptualism tends to rationalism and nominalism to empiricism.
Jonathan Hale can you elucidate how conceptualism and rationalism and nominalistic and empiricism relate? I understand if it’s too long to put in a YT comment
@@ryanapodaca9042 perhaps I might commend to you the history of philosophy YT series of Dr Arthur Holmes. My intuition is that it would be disrespectful to post a link here within Prof Vervaeke's lecture series comments section. There is a lecture, around the no 30 mark, comparing the methods and epistemology of Hobbes with Descartes, that I believe is relevant.
psychotech, mindware or cognitive style might as well be called school of thought, right?
First!
Not sure why this insight isn't attributable to the classic grammar/rhetoric part of the trivium.
Rationality and intelligence are evaluative, choice making qualities, and are hence subjective. We care about things. But these are human things, inexorably rooted in a human perspective, reflecting human experience. Intelligence is based on human capacities, interests, experiences. Why think there is something metaphysical (i.e. objective) about it? As Nietzsche said, there are no moral (normative) facts. Also Hume's guillotine, description-prescription, etc.
Please see Casebeer’s Natural Ethical facts. Hume’s argument depends on goodness being a non-natural property so that means it spends on Moore’s argument. That argument in turn depends on the analytic/synthetic distinction which Quine has undermined. Please also see Putnam on the fact:value distinction.
Also Nietzsche has a hidden objectivity around the will to power which he ascribes to all things not just human beings.
@@johnvervaeke
Can you outline a way to get a prescription from only descriptions?
Afaik, Hume didn't think that "goodness" objectively inhered in anything as a real "out there" property. Goodness is in the eye of the beholder.
Nietzsche likes to talk out of both sides of his mouth. He clearly lays out why he thinks there are no moral facts, but then he will advocate for certain decisions being better than others. Rather than inconsistency, I see this as quite shrewd: he will tell you values are subjective, but he also knows the power of subjectivity. He knows how attractive he can make his own values seem to others, which, at the end of the day, is all anyone ever does with values. Moreover, I think he thinks of his "will to power" as descriptive of how life actually works, how living things actually act. To that extent it is objective, but it's not that anyone objectively ought to choose more over less power, rather just that they objectively do choose it.
"But I need living companions, who will follow me because they want to follow themselves-and to the place where I will."
"“This-is now MY way,-where is yours?” Thus did I answer those who asked me “the way.” For THE way-it doth not exist!"
-Thus Spake Zarathustra
This video is made unavailable if restricted mode is enabled for "being inappropriate" lol
Smart (genius in fact) but irrational (at least sometimes) = Sheldon Cooper.
If I remember correctly, Jonathan Haidt argues that many prominent enlightenment philosophers were probably autistic. They came up with structures of ethics which seemed very logical, but failed to adequately take into account key aspects of human nature.