https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=Ka93RMiT_PQ
Welcome. I am recording. Welcome everyone to Voices with Verveki. I’m joined again by my good friends, Paul Van de Klay and Mary Cohen. In a second, I’ll ask them to reintroduce themselves. For those of you who might just be seeing this video de novo, this is actually part two. Maybe there’s going to be a part three. I’m kind of enjoying this whole process. It’s nice hanging out with these two people. It’s very nice. It’s very refreshing and renewing. In part one, we were discussing the relationship between narrative and what I was calling de logos. I will only speak for myself, although Paul and Mary to speak from what they got from part one. One of the things I got from part one is an important realization that there was an equivocation in my work. It made a distinction between dialogue and de logos. I found that very helpful. Then I think we got into some very interesting and deep ideas about that. That is going to lead us into a discussion today around proposals around other kinds of knowing. With that, I think that was neutral. I’m going to pass things to whoever wants to go first. Either one of you introduce yourself. Perhaps it would be best if Paul went first, Mary, and then you can introduce yourself and then just go into your introduction. Sounds good. Okay. My name is Paul Van de Klay. I met John when John was doing his awakening from the meaning crisis videos. I was introduced to John by someone who had been watching his videos, who had also been watching my videos. I have a YouTube channel. I’m a minister in the Christian Reformed Church of North America. I pastor a small congregation in Sacramento, California. For the last three years, I’ve been making YouTube videos and having stimulating conversations like these. It’s been, again, one of the most stimulating growth-inducing experiences of my life. I’m deeply grateful to both of these individuals because they have both stimulated me and embraced me and helped me grow in some new and, I think, remarkable ways. I’m very happy to be here this morning. I’m Mary Cohen. I started off getting involved in this by listening to some videos by Jordan Peterson, which directed me to Paul Van de Klay. Paul and I had some conversations. Then Paul started talking about John Verbeke. I started watching all of John Verbeke’s stuff, which has been quite a wonderful journey. I live in Georgia. I’m a grandmother. I actually have some grandkids over here that I’m helping with schoolwork today. They are under strict orders to start no fires and engage in no acts of mayhem while we’re doing this. Hopefully, everything will go well. All right. John, you want me to take it from here for a few minutes? Yeah. That’s how I understood what your task was. All right. Good. What I want to do here is lay out my thoughts about parabolic knowledge. I had listened with a great deal of interest to John’s four Ps of knowing. I felt like something was missing, and I wanted to insert something else. I was under strict orders that it had to start with a P, which constrained the combinatorially explosive possibilities of what I could say. What I want to bounce off of today is two concepts that are kind of interrelated in John’s lectures. I’ll probably do a very imperfect job of laying them out, and he can come back afterwards and clean it up. This is particularly his lectures about brain function as it relates to … What’s that word you always use? The thing that you want to get to. I can’t believe that I’m blanking on the word, but it’s the relevance realization. That’s what you forgot? Of everything that John has? That’s right. That’s the thing. You want to get to relevance realization. He’s talking about brain function and how it relates to relevance realization, and he goes through these two concepts that are related, and they are self-organizing criticality and small world networks. I’m going to try and work in deep continuity by the end of this. I hope I can. This has to do with the brain function and the fact that our brain is adapted to make optimum use of its limited biological resources. That involves trade-offs between efficiency and resilience. The brain has to do a lot of things, and it could do the things it does with maximum efficiency, but it would be vulnerable to failure because it would have single points of failure that would be very critical for it. Or it could do the things it does using a lot of redundancy that is highly resilient, but that would make it less efficient. This trade-off between resiliency and efficiency shows up in the way the brain organizes its own neural networks. All right. Now, there is a science behind the way networks are organized. There is a science between the way the networks are organized. They can be organized with many connections between the nodes and lots of redundancy, so they’re very resilient to any point of failure, but then they’re less efficient, or they can be organized with great efficiency and be vulnerable to points of failure and therefore less resilient. So what research into brain organization of neural networks has found is that the brain organizes itself in what are called small world networks. Small world networks provide the optimum balance between resilience and efficiency. Now, it isn’t as though the brain just builds a single network and then it’s done. The brain is constantly building these networks. All right. And when we say building, it’s not really like we’re talking about building a structure. What we’re talking about is the way the neurons are firing together. Okay? So we’re using the word building just kind of an analogy. All right? So the neurons that are already in the brain, they’re not building new ones, are firing in particular patterns. So it’s the pattern that’s being so-called built, right? And we call the pattern of the firing a network. And there are billions of them that are being created and dissolved and recreated every second in the brain. All right? Once they reach a certain complexity, they fall away and then they reconfigure. All right? Now, this falling into the disorder and reconfiguring, reorganizing is similar to self-organizing that we see in other natural phenomena. It’s called self-organizing criticality because it reaches a level of organization that goes beyond its ability to maintain and then it falls away and starts over. Okay? So some examples that John has given us are those of a tornado, right? Or you can think of it like you’ve probably seen little whirlwinds or something that they come up, they whirl around and then they sort of dissolve, right? And then also the way that grains of sand at the bottom of an hourglass will mound up into a conical structure and then collapse and then they’ll do it again. So those are a couple of examples of self-organizing criticality. Now, what I want to do is relate this concept of small world networks and self-organizing criticality to parabolic knowing by bringing into the discussion some brain research that I found out about that I think is extremely interesting. And now, part of the work I’m going to talk about, part of this brain research, John’s told me was already part of his sources for his own lectures or his own papers, right? Okay, because we had a discussion about this specific researcher and the specific research. However, the part of it that I’m going to talk about is not the same part of it that John talked about, it’s an extension of it. It’s something he didn’t go into in his lecture specifically. All right? So, but I hope I can bring it all together. And so what I want to do is kind of lay it out in a way that I think people can relate to the progression of the thought. That was an excellent overview of my argument. I did it right. I don’t I don’t have anything to add. OK, good. All right. So when we think about the brain and we think about the brain firing, you know, we think about those pictures we’ve seen of the, you know, of the neurons with the axon and the dendrites and all the little little connections they have. And then they’ll they’ll do animations of it and they light up, you know, here and there. OK, so that’s what we what we tend to think about when we think of neurons firing. Of course, what’s really in the brain is so packed and so so completely condensed in terms of its structure that you can never see it if someone actually were to lay out the way it is. It wouldn’t look like anything to you because it’s so packed, so tight. There’s billions and billions of neurons. There’s all this firing going on all the time. And so one of the original images we have is just this thing that you might think of it like the delta of a river stretching out and then making the connections and going like that. But it’s really if you were to think about the structure and you want to think about it in a big way that you could possibly put in your mind and be more like a forest. OK, so think about a forest only packed with the trees like one right next to the other, which no forest could ever grow that way, but one right next to the other. And you’d have like small trees and medium sized trees and tall trees and all their branches all connecting with one another. So you get that kind of image in your mind. You have more of an image of how the structure of the neurons and their connections is in the brain. All right. So and the firing, it looks like if you were to be able to see it, which, of course, we can’t, but there’s models of it, it looks at first, it looks almost like a random thing. Yeah. But there have been some very exciting brain research projects that have tried to really understand and model the firing of the neurons and what’s going on with the brain. One of the one of the big, big projects in this has been something that was in Europe called the Blue Blue Brain Project. So that’s three times fast. So the Blue Brain Project, when I first ran across somebody elaborating a little bit about its results, I was pretty suspicious because it was presented in kind of a new agey way. We have found out that you are a hyperdimensional creature and brain research proves it. Blah, blah, blah. I was like, yeah, sure. But but I but they showed some images that I thought, let me go in and actually look at the papers and see if they’re saying what these, you know, if there’s if there’s anything to these images that are being shown. So at first, and at first, I was still suspicious because it started off with like, we made a model of the brain and look at what we found. And I thought, yeah, it’s like I generated all these random numbers and lo and behold, there’s a pattern. You know, I was pretty suspicious that this was this was bogus. But as I went further in, I found out that they actually had not just done modeling of the brain structure, but they had actually looked at brains. Now, the one of the brains they looked at is that of a round worm, which is not much of a brain, but it can still show brain things and and rats, which do have more of a brain. So I thought, OK, there’s something to this. So once, once, once I got into it and saw what they were finding in the patterns, I thought it was quite exciting. And I thought it really related to parabolic knowledge. All right. And so that’s kind of what I want to show is how I think it relates. But first of all, what I want to do if I can is kind of show the paper. So I want to share Share screen on my side. Hang on a sec, Mary. I’m not sure because I’m the original host. There you go. I think that should work for you now. That I can share a screen. Yeah, it should work now. OK, so where’s the Trying to figure out where’s the green box at the bottom. Your screen. OK. OK, so let me see if I can So what I want to do is go into This, I think, and go here. Can you Oh no, did I just close out what I wanted to close out what I want to see All we’re getting is your Let me do this. I can get it right here because it was just I was just in it. And Be careful what you open up Mary, you are now exposing your computer files to the whole of the internet. Okay, I will be careful and I will go right here. This is it. It is the link. Yeah, that’s the safe from into the It is the link. Yeah, that’s the safe from into so far. OK. It’s just, you know, when you opened it up, you see a bunch of files. You have to be careful around stuff like that. That’s all. Yeah. OK, this is This is the article and I want to get to the image that’s in the article right here. To show the What it is they found out the way they came across this was by taking these You know, they recorded this firing of these neurons. Right. And then after they recorded them, they applied a particular geometry to them. They applied a particular geometry to them. And they applied a particular algebra to them. Topological algebra. Yeah. And I’m looking for the image that shows the actual forms that they found. Okay, I think this might be it here. Okay. Okay, this is getting this is getting close to it. So you see that when they applied the geometry or when they applied the algebraic topology to the firing, they began to find these geometric shapes that were that were being there. That are part of the structure that they could not see. Let me see if it’s in this one. I had a particular image that was in here that was so good. And now I cannot seem to locate it. It was going to do one more quick I’m going to go back to the topology. Going to do one more quick Search here in my history to see if I could find You can search in the document for figure and that’ll take you through the various figures. Okay, let me see it by scrolling through because I had seen it earlier. Okay, here it is. Here it is. This one. All right. So if you look at the way my, my image of you guys is flashing. I hope I’m Not doing that to you. Okay, so this is what they located when they want or what they discovered when they applied algebraic topology to the firing of the neurons. They discovered that as the as the neural network was being built, it starts with a simple geometry and builds up into these particular geometries that you see here. And these are called hyper dimensional. Yeah, be hyper dimensional polyhedrons, I think is what they’re called right. Right. They’re not anything that you ever see. Like if you ever walk out in the world, you never see these things. All right. Prior to them finding these things, I guess, in in the brain by applying this algebraic topology to the firing of the neurons. I don’t think these things were ever seen in a natural thing. They were simply constructions of mathematics. Right. Yeah, because they exist in multi dimensional space. Right. That’s why they’re called hyper dimensional Right. So this is what so what it so the small world networks that the neurons are building are actually built from these hyper dimensional polyhedrons. That’s like if you were if you were able to see them. Which, of course, we can’t. And of course, they’re not stable. So as they get, you know, to a certain number of dimensions. I think that 11 is the highest one that they had that they were able to to find. They fall away and then they rebuilt. Yeah. Right. So one of the one of the scientists said it’s as though the brain is building these elaborate sand castles and then they’re washing away over and over and over again constantly. Yeah. Right. So when I saw this. Now I’m gonna should I stop sharing this and go back. Yeah. So we all kind of get the picture. Literally. So when I saw that I was really excited because I thought this relates to parabolic know it. And now I want to say how it is that I think that worked. Right. So, um, I could have called parabolic knowledge analogical right because that’s really what I was thinking about was analogical. But like I said, I was forced to use a piece of parabolic was the closest one that that I could that I could make the connection to. But some of the guys on that are on your is it a discord you have. Yeah. I wondered why you didn’t call it like poetical knowledge because that’s closer to metaphor and analogy that starts with a P. Yeah, because I was that’s true. But I was going for something that was more precise. I was going for a very precise logical construction that I felt would collapse. Um, would collapse the combinatorial explosive possibility space and I would say poetic knowledge would do the opposite. Right. Because it would open up. It would be opening up. Interpretation, it would be more and I was looking for something that would bring things to So what you’re trying to emphasize. I’m sorry I want to interrupt you. I just want to make sure I’m understanding That the pair what you want to emphasize in the in the terminology isn’t so much that it’s like a parable, you want to get the idea Because the problem I have with parables is they do open up interpretations. That’s what the history of parables have shown you instead want to emphasize that the interpretation is getting sort of locked down in a very powerful way. Am I understanding you correctly. Okay. That was one of my misunderstandings, by the way, about the word parabolic because it seemed to me like parables go the other way. Yeah, but where I think what we’re doing is where My, my idea of parabolic is that laying side by side of the two things of two things, not how many things can I lay side by side, but that there’s the one to one kind of thing. So, um, Now, then we got into the whole question of metaphor. And that was another rabbit trail. Okay. Because I want to talk about analogy. But what you did is you didn’t talk about analogy and one of your videos. All right. And you is the work of what was it Gertner D. D. Get in her Either get her To have sort of the best theory of analogy around Okay, but except that I’m not happy with her description of analogy or what she calls an analogy, because I think she goes to she goes She packs a whole bunch of different levels on it. Well, she’s going into metaphor. That’s why was the analogy, I would call something very strict. So it would be like this. Okay. Okay, let me talk about what she said first and why I don’t like it. So one of the and I Becoming quite the cognitive scientist is very pleasurable for me. What I don’t what I don’t like about about what she said was a doesn’t follow the logic of an analogy in at least this is the one that you use with her. So she the example that you use in your Video that came from her was the one where there was a car. There’s an automobile accident and a car collides with a truck. All right. And somebody expresses it as the woman hit the man. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Right. Okay. So that the woman hit the man is used as like I’m like, I would call that a figure of speech. The woman hit the man. We say that Again, sorry, I just want to be clear. I don’t want to misrepresent getting her getting her wasn’t using that as an example of an analogy. She was just using that as an example of what higher order relations look like it’s not intended to be a model of an analogy. So That’s what I thought. I thought that’s a higher order thing than what I’m focusing on. Because what I want to focus on is the construction, a is to be as wise to see Okay, so I was the example that I gave when I was doing my video about parabolic knowledge was the example of, for example, if I say, you know, fishes to fit. Bird is to wing as any instantly as fishes to blank fishes to fit right or you could even do bird is to wing as As or as blank is to thin and instantly it’s fish. So it’s like this is the kind of construction that I’m talking about this very precise kind of construction like that. All right. To defend getting her. Doesn’t she give an example like that. You know, I, I don’t But I haven’t read her. I’m just going kind of like by what you Lecture. But what I’m saying is that gave I gave another example that was like that. I just want Just very careful to represent people because she says, you know, the the solar system onto the atom. The sun is to the planets as the nucleus is to the electrons. Right. Okay, yeah. I just want to be clear to her because she’s not here to defend herself. Oh, right. Right. And I, I’m not, I, I’m not, you know, I haven’t read her and I’m sure she’s wonderful. I just, it’s just that I’m talking about the precise example that the example that You were using is not what the kind of thing that I want to talk about in terms of this analogy when I’m talking about the parabolic not knowing I want to deal with this sort of this precise thing. The A is to be as wise to Z construction. All right. So, um, But this is, you know, I mean, this sort of thing like we use an analogy test with children all the time and stuff like that, like, you know, Dog is to dog houses car is to garage. Right. That sort of thing. All right. Now what I want to do is I want to talk about that in terms of geometry. All right. And this is kind of like saying, what was my thinking about how I thought, well, the brain was doing was related to the pair of knowledge. So So I want to draw something. All right. So I have a little tiny whiteboard. Oh, so you don’t need to share screen then No, no, because that is Tell you what this technology stuff just messes with me big time. So I can’t even get that cap on the on the marker. Alright, so I’m not. I gotta, I gotta look at what I’m doing so I can hold this so that you guys can Black Black Blue. Okay, black is usually best I learned that when I was doing awakening for the meeting crisis. Oh, really, I don’t, I don’t think I have a black one. All right, I’m just going to draw. I’m drawing a triangle. So I’m going to then hold it up so you can see it. Alright, so I drew a triangle. Yep. All right, now I’m going to do something that you know kids do all the time when they’re doodling you probably did it when you were a kid. Right. You draw a triangle, then, then you do this right right Okay, see what I did. Yep. Now. Okay, so when you’re kidding you’re doodling like this. What do you do, then you’re going to fill up all the triangles. Right. All right. So I’m going to say here is that this here. This is already an analogy. All right, so now in geometry, we’d call this a flip. Right. It’s similar because it’s the same shape, but different size. So it’s similar similar Geometric shape, but it’s flipped. Right, because the point is down here up here. The point is there. Right. You got that. Right. Okay, but it’s, it’s an it’s an analogy because look Right with this thing. It’s kind of thick. Well, I’ll just point at it so we can go a is to be as Why is to see Sure. You could do that with all the sides. Right. And if I was to fill it up with a whole bunch of little triangles, which gets like to do that kind of doodle. Right. Right. And if I was to fill it up with a whole bunch of little triangles, which gets like to do that kind of doodle. Right. It would, I would be doing that constantly. All right, but they’re all analogies every time that a new that a new one is constructed. It’s an analogy with the one that was there before. All right, now, let’s talk about that with dimension. So this is you see this right Mm hmm. This is a We call this. This is a Tetra hydra. Yeah, three, three sides. It’s three. It’s a it’s a triangular Period. Right. Okay. So now let’s say that you were to take this and you want to add dimensions more dimensions. This is three dimensions. It doesn’t have a bottom. No, I lost the bottom. But anyway, it’s, it’s from my kids, you know, geometry instruction stuff. All right, now, um, so let’s say you were going to add dimensions to this. All right, you could take each one of these sides and you can multiply them out to make them part of something shaped like this and it would keep going. Right. And it could you could add you could add dimensions dimensions. If this was big, you could add the dimensions from the inside. Right. You could go down. You could do it. You could make, you know, like a model of something that was multi dimensional right But each time you’re doing it, you’re doing that same logical thing you’re doing an A is to be as wise to see kind of thing using the points using the lines. The edges and using the planes. Right. Okay, so when I saw that thing that geometric thing that they found in the brain. I thought, okay, that’s what now I want to, I want to be careful here because I don’t want to fall into saying that the planets are doing Calculus I know you would hit on right away. But I’m not saying that the brain is doing that as a, you know, the brain is thinking, okay, I have, I have to build this next thing. So I’m doing this as to be as wise to see thing inside. Right. What I’m saying is that that is that is what is happening. All right, even though I’m not I’m not attributing to the brain a self knowledge of its of its own geometry. All right, so That is why I think that when I talked about the parabolic knowledge constraining the possibility space, the same things going on on inside of the brain with regard to the these neural networks. Because that is to be as wise to see thing that the brain has to do that function that the brain has to do to create the neural networks. collapses inside of the brain itself, the possibility space because it’s got these Billions and billions of neural networks and connections that can make. But of course it’s trying to get to that small world network very efficiently. And I’m saying that this is how That no problem. Okay, go ahead. Good. This this relates to how it is doing it. So it’s, it’s a parabolic function or an analogic function, just even with regard to this structure that’s going on the brain. Am I, am I making sense. Well, sure. I mean, I have question. But that’s why So the lot the that logic that’s going on in the brain collapses the combinatorially explosive nature of how many possibilities there are for the neural connections. Well, I want to wait till you’re done. Okay, so now I have now just a couple more things to say. So I feel like or I think that this, um, this has This has implications for That you want to take your logic stuff all the way down into the chain of being into the chain of life. Right. So that that deep continuity. Yes. Right. So I thought about sponges. Right. So sponges, you know, you can take a sponge and put it through a sieve. Right. It self organizes. Yeah, but, but it has three layers of cells. It has three different kinds of cells which have to be placed into a certain configuration of three layers. Otherwise, the sponge doesn’t work. So you put the sponge through a sieve. It reorganizes itself into smaller sponges, but all of those little sponges are organized. The same way in terms of the layers of cells. Right. Right. So you you’ve made the criticality for for putting it through a sieve. It hasn’t dissolved itself. But when you dissolve it, it’ll come back as sponges and it’ll organize itself and it’ll still be that a is to be as wise to Z organization matching what it had because it’s still a layer of cells. And it’ll organize itself and it’ll still be that a is to be as wise to Z organization matching what it had before you dissolved it. Sure. Right. And then I wanted to think about movement or bring the idea of movement in here. So they have found that there are these cells, they call them place cells in the hypothalamus. Yeah, this is this is somewhat controversial. But go ahead. Okay, well, I throw it in here anyway, just because it I find it intriguing. Well, it gets controversial when there are some people who make the claim that we have what they might find this funny, Mary, we have a grandmother cell, a cell that fires just when their grandmother is present, which I regard as a ridiculous proposal. So there’s, there’s, there’s, yeah, there’s a lot of variation on that. Okay, well, the ones I’m the one I’m talking about is just the that has to do with location. So like, if you put I guess I’ve done these experiments with rats, you put the rat in a particular place and and they can map like these this and the hypothalamus is like a simpler part of the brain, right, I guess, are more old part of the brain or whatever. It’s necessarily simpler, but older, probably better. Yeah. And so you put the rat in a particular location and certain as it maps the territory that you put it in certain neurons will fire in this in the hypothalamus that they call place neurons. I’d say that the animal is mapping its territory. Then you take the rat out and you put another rat in there. And when the first rat is watching the second rat go to the same places, the same neurons will fire. Yeah, yeah. So it’s so that again it’s it’s like it’s one of those A is to be as Y is to Z. I’m situations because the rat, it’s as though the rat is saying, and I know the rats don’t say and I’m not attributing logic to the rat. It says, but it says, though the rat is is able to to say, I am to that place as this other rat is to that place. So it’s making it’s like it’s making an analogy. I think this would also be involved if you want to get to real simple critters like the nematodes, roundworms, nematodes, we call them nematodes around here because we’re very fond of soil biology. So the little nematodes that are, you know, they have to move anything that has to move to maintain the integrity of its movement is it’s as it goes to a new place. It’s still that same logical function of A is to be as Y is to Z to move its to move its body. I think that becomes very complicated, but it’s still the same function when we talk about like animals that like, for example, a starfish you cut off an arm, it grows a new one or when you deal with the bilateral symmetry of many creatures, right, you’ve got that that same A is to be as B is to C function, but a lot, but you got flip. Okay, I’m done. Okay, well, there’s a lot to talk about. Okay, well, there’s a lot to respond to on that. I’ll try and be as careful. First of all, congratulations, and I mean that sincerely. That was really good cognitive science. And if I’m making everybody do more cognitive science, then I’ve really succeeded in my ultimate secret agenda. So, which is not so secret, right? So that’s very good. And I also want to commend, and again, I mean this sincerely, you guys taking seriously that cutting edge cognitive science is saying things that we should, that even people who are within a religious framework should be paying attention to. And I think that’s a very significant recognition, and I want to acknowledge that. I think that’s important. It may be that actually those two points I just made are the most important things of this whole dialogue. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to avoid the topic, but I just wanted, I want to upfront and say, I think that’s really, to me, that seems very important, what you guys are doing, and I want to express appreciation for that. That’s important. Okay, so let’s, so I want to go first to recursivity, because what you’re actually describing is called recursivity. It’s scale and variance. So a system is recursive as it does the kind of thing you said. If it feeds back on itself, and when it’s scale and variant recursive, it feeds back on itself and you seem to the same patterns. They’re not, they’re not totally identical, right? Because, right, you’re getting more triangles, for example, as you go up the dimensionality, etc. But that’s, the thing about scale and variance is it’s, you’re not claiming that the two things are logically identical, you’re claiming that there is a, there are shared principles of organization all the way through, right? Because if they were shared, there’d be no point in doing it, right? I’m sorry, if they were identical, there’d be no point in doing it. Just do, just stay down here, right? So, recursivity is, again, that, and Mary, I totally agree. Recursivity and where we can find scale and variance is how we do deep continuity as something different from reduction, right? Or different from my conversation with JP, right? Different from panpsychism, because panpsychism says no, it’s consciousness all the way down. Whereas deep continuity says no, no, right? There’s principles of consciousness that are continuous with non-conscious processes, etc., etc. I’m not trying to pull a fast one on JP, he knows I care about him, he knows I respect his position. I’m just trying to use a past history you guys are familiar with to make clear the distinction. Okay, and so what I want to say then is I want to, I want to zero in on two or three points. The first one I want to zero in on is, is the language of collapse, because my understanding of this literature is that it’s only because the brain is doing self-organizing criticality and small world network formation, is that’s why it forms these multi-dimensional complexities. So it’s because the brain is doing SOC, SOC, self-organizing criticality, and so it’s because the brain is doing the same thing. So the thing is, that’s how it’s scale invariant. The whole thing is doing SOC, and then all the parts are doing SOC, right? It’s scale invariant all the way through. So the whole thing is, that’s how it’s scale invariant. So the whole thing is doing SOC, and then all the parts are doing SOC, right? It’s scale invariant all the way through. So the thing is, that’s how it’s scale invariant. The whole thing is doing SOC, and then all the parts are doing SOC, right? It’s scale invariant all the way through. The whole thing is a small world network, and it’s made out of smaller small world networks recursively. Is that okay? Because that’s how I read this literature. Yeah. So what that means is, is that SOC and small world networks cause this complexity. So it’s a cause and a result. It’s recursive, but the thing is, now we’re not talking about stages, we’re talking about stages of complexity. So it’s a result. So it’s a result, and it’s a result. So it’s a result. So it’s a result. So it’s a result. So it’s a result. So it’s a result. It’s recursive, but the thing is, now we’re not talking about stages, we’re talking about types of entities. The complex polyhedral multidimensional things are built, they’re made by SOC and small world network formation. Okay? Now, you’ve agreed, at least in this argument, although I think you seem to agree more deeply, and again, very gratifying to me, that small world network formation and SOC are doing RR. They’re doing relevance realization. That’s kind of what I would, that’s kind of what I’m thinking, that it’s, I said that right at the beginning, it’s related to the relevance realization. Right. So the system is basically doing relevance realization, and then that’s causing this complexification. Right? Um, the system is doing relevance realization. So if I had a system and it wasn’t, yeah, if it wasn’t structured to pursue efficiency and resiliency, it wouldn’t build these complex things, right? Right. Okay. So what that means to me then is, I don’t think it’s right to say the complexification is collapsing, or it’s the other way around. It’s because the system is capable of doing really sophisticated relevance realization that it produces this. All right, I’m a little, I think we’re in like a chicken and egg problem here. Well, not really, because like I said, you did agree with me that if I don’t have a system constrained to do SOC and small world network, it’s not going to go into this hyper dimensionality thing. You’re not going to see that. Right. Okay, so that’s a causal dependence, right? Okay. So doing this is causally dependent on relevance realization. Okay. Right. Let me, let me see if I can restate. Yeah, you’re okay. So in a way, what you’re, if you take it down, I would take it down to like, take it down to the triangle that I drew. Yeah, there’s a route. So you would say at the very simplest level we’re already starting with the relevance realization right there to start to build. Yeah. So the analogy would be the ability to make a triangle and then map other triangles around to it and then map that’s already doing it. And so what I’m saying is, and this is how I think about this a lot because I try to be very careful because I totally agree with the recursivity. I’m not denying that. But I, what I want to say is you can’t ultimately explain the complex, you can’t use the complexity to explain how relevance realization occurs, because ultimately presupposes relevance realization in its construction. Right. And that’s exactly what I want to say. Okay, so maybe what you’re calling relevance realization. So what I’m calling the parabolic not knowing, or what I’m calling, you know, when I was doing this I just said the analogy, the A is to be as wise to Z construction. I really constrain that real narrowly down to that and not get into like poetry and. Yeah, yeah. You are you and I are in complete agreement. Let’s stay at something that we can keep really sort of basic and fundamental. I agree. Right. So, all right. So, I’m gone. Okay, so we’re at the geometries that are being found in the brain is the construction of the Small World Network, doing self organizing criticality. So, at one point when we were talking about why it collapses, or why it, you said you didn’t like collapse. No, no, no, no, no, I didn’t know no I was trying. The point I was objecting to was, was the idea that the system is collapsing the combinatorial explosive space. Okay, I think it goes the causal arrow goes the other way around is precisely because it can do recursive relevance realization that it avoids combinatorial explosion in the construction of this complexity, because it’s to complexify itself in a way that tracks the relevant complexity in the world. Is that that’s that. Yes, yes. And that was what I was trying to get at. I was trying to get that that that whatever that thing, whatever this thing is that the little child does when the child says, you know, is putting the silverware on the table and puts the knife down and says, Daddy, puts the fork down and says mommy and then puts the knife down and says baby, that that thing that the child is doing is the same thing as when the brain is going from building that first going from the simplest or simplist however they say that, you know, and adding the next structure of the, of the geometry to that network. Because it’s a it’s she’s doing a, a is in her case and a is to be as be as be as to see with the daddy mommy. So that’s, that’s why I want to say some function. Right, but so what I’m saying is it’s recursive relevance realization. And then what I see is recursive relevance realization is always mapping, you said, for example, movement. So I, I do the form, and I have to map that into sparring, and then I have to map that into actually fighting on the street, God forbid, and sorry I didn’t mean that I didn’t mean that psych religiously I mean literally I don’t want that to happen. Right, right. Even when you win a fight, it takes a piece of your soul away. Right. So, there’s mapping there, obviously, and you’ve done you did, there’s mapping within prospectable knowing I take you did this, I take on your perspective you take on mine. And there again, I’m, it’s your perspective but it’s not really your perspective. Right, I’m doing this, a and not a at the same time. Same thing with the fork for the child. She doesn’t really think that’s her mom. It’s her mom and it’s not her mom because she wouldn’t be happy if you got rid of her mom and just gave her. And then you’re still got mom. Right. So it’s a and not a right and when that’s right and so the point that I what I’m trying to get at is, isn’t that just a feat, I mean so let me be really careful here. And I think you, you’re in agreement with me, I think, so what we can do we get in this part of the argument I made we can measure self organizing criticality, and we can measure general intelligence and one of the piece of evidence for this whole theory is measuring it predicts this, it’s highly correlated together. Right. So what we’re measuring is intelligence, and it seems to me that intelligence is the capacity to do relevance realization, when which I transfer relations from one situation to another. That’s problem solving. And I think that’s the case. I think it’s a category mistake to call that a new kind of knowing, because it’s presupposed in your own examples by all kinds of knowing it’s it’s you’re pointing to intelligence, rather than a kind of knowing. I think that’s a good thing. And if you say to me, do we know, do we know by being intelligent or activating our intelligence, of course, but I don’t think that’s a separate kind of knowing I think it’s, I mean, I think this is exactly right. No, no, I’m fine. This is more fundamental I think you’re pointing to something fundamental and I do think it’s important. And I think, I think the idea that we’re doing recursive relevance realization and mapping, you even used mapping when you did the rats, right. That is knowledge that is that’s that’s what it is to know. I can’t think of an instance of knowing where these things would be absent. Okay, and therefore it’s not going to be a specific kind of knowing. Okay, so that. That’s the point at which I was having. I was having a bit of trouble with what you were saying in your lectures, had to do with this. With this. When you presented that the concept of the combinatorially explosive nature of the possibility space. Yes. All right. And then the, the way that we come to any kind of conclusion, which we have to do constantly constantly constantly. Right. It’s going on in our brain, all the time, millions of times a second, right. It’s happening. That I’ll give the example, which comes from this, this woman re researcher, we’re talking about that, and you use this example, talking about the, the solar system in the atom right. That’s that that’s your favorite example. So, when you were talking about it you were talking about, you talked about how does the conclusion happen. You were talking about well there’s, you know, and you started to go through the whole combinatorially explosive nature of all of the differences and similarities between the atoms in the, in the solar system right. And the question of how did the, how did the person who came up with that illustration, come up with that illustration. You talked about, you know, he, it would be impossible to search the possibility space. Yeah, come to the right. And it’s always impossible to search the possibility space for anything because there’s always a combinatorial explosive number of possibilities of similarity and differences between any two things. Yeah, maybe be helpful to just do a quick things for people who are watching. Right, so some of the criticism not by made by me by just by me I mean I published these criticisms but made by many people about get nurse theory is. Well, here’s my data on the atom. What do I look for in all of my possible, all of my memory that’s recursive that’s required requires recursive relevance realization, because what I have to be doing is doing this I have to be sort of, because if I, if I have exactly the structure in order to find the solar system then I don’t need to consider the solar system because I have the full structure so you have to do this recursive relevance realization, kind of a, you know, moving back and forth like that, or when in order to do it out of all the levels at which I could describe the solar system I have to zero in on the right one I if I, and I have to zero in on the right properties I don’t look to what corresponds in the atom to the color of the sun. And on the third planet there’s life on the third electron is their life, I know when I don’t do like, so you can see this combinatorial explosion all over the place. And when we try to give computers the ability to map. We hit, we hit the frame problem we hit combinatorial explosion. So if you’re if you were to tell if you were to tell an AI person, well you know how you give it intelligence, give it the ability to do to do to do analogy, they’re going to look at you like, of course, but that’s exactly the problem. Right, that’s exactly the problem. Right, I have no interest in assisting AI. But here, here is what I thought about that. So let me, let me just say what I think about that and we’re going to do but Paul get a word and as wise here. I agree, I agree. The whole thing with the solar system in the atom is that what, let’s say, the scientists came to the point at which he started to think of the electrons, as in some way, circling or orbiting the, the nucleus. The moment that he had a recognition of this, of being able to frame it in that way. He’s immediately constrained down to a very small number of possibilities, because if I say to you, hey, I’ve got something that you know we’ve got a center and then we’ve got something circling and the, on the outer perimeter. So, that could be an example of that. I mean, the list of possibilities is going to go. Well, let me see is it a clock, you know with the hands going around. Is it like an axle, and the rim of the wheel, or, you know, are, hey, you know solar system planets going around the sun I mean, really your your number of things that you got to kind of mentally pass through to see that relationship is very tiny. And then the question is, the bird is to wing as fishes to finn once I say to you bird is to wing as fishes to, you know, what are your possibilities are very, very constrained. Yeah, I agree. Then there’s a mystery. The mystery is, how does the original insight occur, and it can’t be because of the analogy, because you’re saying the analogy follows from the initial insight. Because I think it’s a real I think it’s a relationship insight, not a thing insight. I think all insights are pretty much relationship insights. I don’t I don’t quite know what that means what you just said. What I mean is that. When I say bird is to wing as fishes to finn. The focus is not the thing bird, or even the thing way. The focus instantly goes to. Now I’m going to throw out another P. I talked about this with my with Mark and Manuel, and I said, If I throw this in john’s going to say she’s promiscuously multiplying these pieces. It’s prepositional. It’s prepositional because it’s the on it’s the end it’s the of it’s the two. It’s that right relational and prepositions. This was a point I made when I was talking to Mark and Manuel prepositions are not in the propositional space proposition. So you learn from teaching a child grammar. When you tell teaching them how to diagram a sentence you would know that I’d be fan of diagramming sentences right when you’re teaching them how to diagram a sentence you teach them first all the prepositions. So if you cross those prepositional phrases out of the sentence, then you can easily find the, the subject of the sentence and the verb, because the subject and the neither the subject of the sentence nor the verb in the sentence are the predicate, neither of them are going to be in the prepositions prepositional phrases. Propositions are made. No, they’re not going to be in that what I’m saying is that a proposition is a subject and a verb, or, you know, a subject and a verb makes a proposition together, but not but prepositions, but the prepositions are not in that. Okay, okay. Well, I sort of disagree with that. Tell me. Because, first of all, wing to bird is not a proposition, it’s, it’s a part whole relationship. It’s a functional relationship. And we don’t have a proposition for that, which is one of the difficulties we have. Secondly, I mean propositions contain all kinds of functional words right that bind things together. It’s actually about it’s called formal logic, it’s about all the binding relations, like and and but and or and some and in like it’s all of those right and so if you take those out of a proposition you don’t have a proposition that’s the those are all the syntax markers, right. And if, and if what you’re saying is that what you want to point to is the brain maps relations by using prepositions and other other relational markers. Notice how a lot of the times we use prepositions as sort of stand in metaphors when we’re trying to find the relational term like a structural functional relationship or a causal. No, if you read the Neil Platonist they talk about the effect being in the cause, because they’re trying to figure out the relation, things like that. So, again, isn’t it the case that all knowing is mapping relations, I mean, I like, isn’t that, I mean, I can’t I can’t see what a kind of knowing would be again, right, I’m not, I’m not mapping the actual you know I’m not taking the movement I’m doing in my room and trying to replicate it when I’m fighting, I’m saying, as you know has my arm was towards my television and my knee was towards my wall. Now I need my arm to be towards his face, and my knee towards his leg and mapping relation. That’s what you’re doing. In fact, that’s part of the knack about trying to get people to understand this, like you tell them don’t practice in just one room, because then you won’t be able to transfer it. You’ll be looking from this distance from my hand and the TV No, no, don’t do that. Pick up the relation and how can you map it right all of this, I think, is every kind of knowing involves this, this kind of process. What I want to say about that let’s go back to the bird bird in the way. What I want to say about that is that function is the functional relationship is not what makes us instantly go to burden them. It’s not the functional relationship actually. It is there’s good evidence it is that’s very Douglas, right, people look for structural functional relationships between the morphology of the animal, the way they move around, and the environment that they’re in. That’s what they’re constantly looking for. Okay, what about, what about dog is to doghouse as as car is to garage garage. Yeah, yes, that’s a functional relationship right. But it’s the, I think it’s the in. It’s the in this. I could do that to the word in of it. That is the, it’s that in this. Okay, show. If you go back to the geometry thing. There’s not, I mean, there’s not a structural functional relationship. Yeah, there is that triangle and that there’s just the. There is a structural, there’s a structure which is a triangle there’s the function of recursivity. It’s a structural relationship. You see, and the thing is, I mean, the, I think your color example is a good example because it’s just straight mapping of function right mapping of relation. Yeah, the mapping of function is very interesting in the knife fork spoon. Yeah. Because, because the. Now I’ve, I’ve, I found this whole thing fascinating and instructive but maybe the preacher of me wants to kind of pull back and say okay why are we talking about this. I do, I do think, I do think that Mary was making an important point about trying to keep this at least initially at a very, very basic and fundamental. Yes. Yes. Yes. And I, so I wanted to play, play just in that field with Mary because I thought that was being fair to her. Yeah, yeah, no I think I thought it was all is all wonderful. And, and so, let me first say that Mary. I I’m tremendously impressed at how you digested. You put so much of john stuff into this and then went out and fed on some other things that was your, your introduction was really quite amazing. I thought was clear and concise and powerful now. And then it’s a little. I know this because I’ve listened to john stuff and we’ve been in this conversation and this is where we get into. This is where we get into the question okay well what are we doing here and why, why is the religious, non religious relation here relevant. Why, why do we have interest in this. What’s with all the peas. I really loved the, the way that this kind of laid out the deep mapping of the world and made it quite intelligible to me in terms of, you know, if what we’re doing. If what we’re doing deep inside is all of this modeling and unmodeling you can see that in, you know, you can, if you, you know, I’ve had five children Mary has been a close watcher of children both Mary and I have have homeschooled, which is a light like so many interesting things in this world homeschooling is such a deeply rewarding thing to do, because, you know, I’m being a pastor I’m homeschooling and watching my children. So you get a chance, instead of going off to work each day and letting mom be with the kids or even outsourcing or schooling, you get to watch stuff with kids and you sort of watch them develop right from the beginning and you don’t even we don’t even realize we’re watching because so much of this, and I really love the way this conversation has unfolded, all of this mapping gets into us, and I’ve been talking a lot lately in my videos about first drafts, because it strikes me as a pastor, you sit down with a rather unhappy couple that have just stood up in front of church and pledge their undying love. And now a few years later they’re at each other’s throats and it’s like well what happened here. And, and so you begin to realize that there was a. Okay, well they both have the maps of their parents relationships and and they stand as opposed to it. And so, so we have this question about how the world works and I love John’s pursuit of saying, let’s, let’s, let’s get this down into natural, and I’ll try to speak Canadian here processes. Let’s get down into natural processes here because I like that actually better than processes processes elegant. I’ve just, there’s another level of relationality I just mapped. So, let’s get this down into processes which which, as you know CS Lewis’s miracles, they go on their own. And we see this with human beings and actually winding all the way through this and john you mentioning JP and his panpsychism which when I first you know, gosh, where’s my cell phone stand that is no consciousness, but but I have a better, I have a better deeper understand standing of why people turn to that option in terms of it’s it’s almost a, you know, it’s almost an alternative to john your realization, which is this. Okay, how do we do this and then, you know, Mary what you’ve all laid out just gives me a vision of. Okay, we’re all absorbing this first draft What does that mean that we’re all, we’re all just absorbing this world around us and and mapping it to an amazing degree with amazing efficiency in our minds and, you know, I just listening to both of you gives me in some ways, a, what one might call a religious experience because I am, I am in this moment. I’ll put it in religious terms because those are the terms of course I’ve, I’ve been formed by, you know, just a, a praise of the glory of God at the, the manifest beauty and intricacy and I don’t find the natural perspective of things going on their own as threatening to this at all because just like with doing science you begin to say wow, this is durable this is pervasive. And I’m also lavished on, you know, the just and the unjust this is this is given liberally to the world that that we’re all, we’ve been given this astounding capacity to map. And so, the, the image I have in my mind is just this continual mapping, and that that little girl sitting with the place setting, and the parents, somehow seeing daddy is to knife and mommy is to fork and I am the spoon that that this mapping is just going on constantly. And we’re always looking for relationships or always. And so mentally I love this, what you know one of the things Jordan Peterson one of his great lines was, you know, we have ideas so that our ideas can die instead of ourselves. And so we’re, we’re, and when I think of this relevance realization process I, I think of all of this, all of these maps that we have in our minds, and we’re constantly checking them. We’re kind of you know we’re constantly checking them and. And so and I, you guys have just given me this vision of, of what the world works and how relationality works and I think in some of what we’re doing is where we’re, we’re testing. You know, John gave us the four P’s, even he came down from the mountain awakening from the meeting crisis and he gave us like that I did not come down from it was wonderful it was wonderful, but but you giving us the four P’s now, you know, you, okay the proposition and I’m like, well what are we talking about the perspectival the participatory the procedural, and Mary comes in with the parabolic and I’ve been thinking about the proverbial and but even there we’re testing. We’re mapping the, and we’re using peas okay, and we’re mapping them and, and, and I just think it’s a, it’s an amazing vision, I guess maybe the one thing I would want to throw on to this is when I listen to both of you and I think about the religious surveillance and the, and the tensions we have and religious communities about about physics as Lewis calls it or Natura of things going on their own. I mean why, why is, why is the universe so alive to us. The thing that comes into my mind in my own mapping again goes back to Jordan Peterson’s conversation with Sam Harris, because that of course, and live in this interesting religious non religious anti religious network where I mean Peterson what he wanted to keep pushing on Harris was, look, we don’t. We don’t see the world as disembodied consciousness. Things. No, we are in the midst of this vast process. And when I listen to both of you talking and I think about this I actually think about a lot of the conversations going around with respect to intelligent design. Because when, when I am when I am enthralled when I am just excited by the vision that both of you have really laid out very nicely I don’t see a lot of disagreement between the two of you in this thing. And I see this capacity that we have of, of mapping and okay so is the, is that how is the, how is the knowing and the mapping and then the desiring the seeing and the mapping and the desiring I mean how do all of these things work. And, you know, we have eyes to know and ears and skin to touch. I mean we’re, we recognize ourselves as so far down the process and the capacity that you just see us have been having been formed and I just see us in many ways as these astounding creatures that are our heirs of, you know, unbelievable sacrifice and care, and that that we to this point, you know we come from our mothers and we’re ready to map. And we’re, we’re we’re mapping without knowing it and so I that’s just the vision that I have of listening to you talk and I’ve, you know, it’s just been a privilege to sit here and and watch both of you. Just, you know, I, in my language would be watch both of you tell of the glory of God. And I don’t mean that offensively. You’re not offending me you’re not offending at all. I because I, that’s what I see in this process that here we are at this point. We’re recipients of astounding capacity that, and that goes all the way down to mapping these tiny little relationships and we’re trying them out in the world and it just makes the world a living beautiful glorious place so that’s, that’s that’s what I got in this and it’s I’m just deeply grateful for what you two have given us. Well thank you. I wasn’t offended. Okay, in fact, I mean, the, the, the idea that we complexify in order to, and we complexify in an evolving way, so that we are complexification more and more conforms to the complexity of the world, never perfectly never finally because it can’t because the the world is so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it’s so complex, it I’m putting words into her mouth but if if if if you’re asking do I think that is a beautific vision well I definitely do I definitely do I definitely do and I am motivated by that vision this is what I’m trying I’m trying to articulate this vision with this this weird metaphysics of emergence and emanation and trying to articulate and then you know and then the participatory knowing is the ongoing dynamical conformity that can move up and down the emergence and emanation that I yeah that that that that I would call it platonic eros no offense hopefully right that that motivates me deeply and profoundly and so that’s why I care about it I mean I don’t care about it just because I’m a scientist with a theory and I hope I hope this matters again I hope that my caring about it in this way makes me open and available to you guys in a responsive and responsible manner because I do care about it beyond just here’s the academic with his scientific theory I think there’s something more more encompassing here Mary sent me a very wonderful email about that and I thank you for doing that. One of the one of my you know we all come from our we all have our like our things that are tugging at our heart yes and for you you know seeing people in a meaning crisis. Tugs at your heart for me my piece of this and when you start talking about the deep continuity that was very resonant with me because for me my piece of this is a feeling that we’re just getting we’re just getting so disconnected from the natural world. We’re just getting so disconnected from the natural world in every way and that that is damaging us like like when my daughter when my daughter talks to me about that it’s one of my daughters came up with the nematos thing it’s like you know if we put something on the on the archie goes how’s that going to affect the little nematos. It’s like we’re conscious we’re being conscious of the soil biology you know we’re feeding well if I say I’m feeding the soil feeding life that lives in this way. That’s going to turn around and feed me and so this sense of being connected in this to the world in this natural way is to me so important and when this is the thing it’s about it’s like in a way I feel like. I’m at war with the AI. You know or the or the robot the robot aficionados and all of that it’s like it’s because and you said this to one of your lectures, it doesn’t care. Yes, that’s never going to care. Yes, not going to care about the nematos. It doesn’t care about the about the soil by it’s not going to care it’s not going to care about us. It’s not even care about itself to the extent that you could say it even as a self, it’s not going to care. How do we bring, how do we get more caring into the world, especially the kind of caring that goes all through the levels of being, you know, to all of the to all of the life. And I, I guess, you know, that’s where I, that’s what I want to keep dragging people back to we had a, we had a reading. And we didn’t actually read we had two variant readings that we could have read for the mass. This weekend. And the one that the my favorite one that I was hoping it would be read was not the one that got read it was another one but there’s a there’s a passage in Isaiah that says, why are you spending your money for that which is not true. And I’m like, I want to sign like 10 feet with letters 10 feet tall in front of every grocery store. That’s I think I’m in deep agreement with you about this and I want to I want to say something here. And I’ve said it repeatedly, and I’m worried that I don’t think you two are saying this but I do hear it. I’ve tried to argue that the reason why the AI can’t care is exactly the same reason as why it doesn’t do relevance realization. That’s that that’s that that’s the argument. Relevance realization is not cold calculation. Relevance realization is caring. It’s about if I find this more relevant than that. I’m caring. And the reason I do that is because I care about information rather than this information rather than that information. That’s what relevance realization is relevance realization is about salience it’s about affect it’s about motivation. The reason why I do that is because I’m fundamentally, I’m a being that has to take care of myself. I’m a, I’m a, and until we have robots that are auto poetic machines, if you’ll allow me machine to be used in a very neutral term auto poetic systems perhaps is a better thing. And if we’re very much analogous to being living beings. We’re not going to give them relevance realization. And that means we’re not going to give them true intelligence. And I think what I’m seeing is as we are driven for not always good reasons I acknowledge that As we’re driven towards trying to make artificial general intelligence, AGI, we are more and more driven to trying to make these machines auto poetic machines that take care of themselves and care about this information rather than that information. So, I don’t know, I don’t know what the corporate and political structures are going to steer AI ultimately in a great direction. But I argue, I predict, I’ll be, I’ll do a scientific and put my neck on the block, because that’s what scientists are supposed to do at some point, I predict that if we try if we get If we try to give AGI to machine, we’re going to find that we’re going to give it more and more the capacity to care and take care of itself until it starts to meet look more and more like a living thing and not just a computational thing. I think that’s what’s coming. One possible variant, we might get quantum computing that does all this stuff for us and quantum computing doesn’t care. Right. But that’s not the kind of AI that I’m interested in because that doesn’t tell me anything about how minds work. Well, I want to, I want to jump in here, john and just a little bit of something that you said when you said, you know, and this again maps theologically for me, because you say, you know, I wanted, I wanted to take care of itself, and that I think in our cultural frame has sort of become one of these things that I don’t think is, is, and you, but you’re right, because the thing is, you, you certainly care about yourself, you ought to care about yourself, but at this point, you know, you’re a father, you’re a teacher, you, the real to me a much a real question is well what exactly is yourself, because And the same with AI, because the I mean all the all the science fiction movies that we worry about are the all these AIs caring about themselves at the expense of all of you know, as creators here. That’s a totally good point. And that’s what insofar as you’re trying to make artificial intelligence. I think if we want to make and I got it, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that I got a video saying, we shouldn’t be just trying to make systems intelligent artificially intelligent, because we have really good evidence to make artificial intelligence. Because we have really good evidence that you can be highly intelligent and highly self deceptive and highly self destructive. We want artificial rationality and ultimately artificial wisdom and then it wouldn’t, would it even be artificial wisdom that doesn’t Doesn’t sound like it makes sense to me anymore. So I totally agree with that. And so one of the things I do in the arena of the ethics of AI is strandlessly argue for stop just trying to to make artificial intelligence, you want to make something that That and you know that I mean rationality much bigger than logicality. Right. For me, the relationship, the, you know, the aspirational relationships I have the relationships of caring for others that they fall under that because I think we’re inherently distributed, etc, etc. So, so the point I was just making is the paramecium is way different than any computer we have the paramecium is because the current paramecium is making itself and taking care of itself. So the paramecium cares about sugar and cares about various poisons and doesn’t care about a whole bunch of stuff, precisely because it’s a paramecium. Right. That’s the deep continuity. Yeah. And yet we, so we have the deep continuity and the discontinuity. Yeah. Unlike, you know, even the I make this analogy all the time. The, the gorilla the endangered gorilla in the jungles of Congo in the midst of everything going on in this world is not anxious for its survival. Yeah, I mean, Mary has Mary has lovingly bestowed upon her daughter, a care for and even the naming you to the Nima Nima tots I mean you make them. And, and there’s the parable there’s Mary’s parabolic knowing these, these tiny little creatures in the soil and what is the soil the soil is not just this inorganic matter and and semi mindless things going about worrying about their own survival now we have. Now we have a creature who has in a sense, mapped motherliness on to, you know, these tiny little worms in the soil and so here again, in terms of mapping we see, oh we’re a little lower than the angels here. And, and we’re, we’re, we’re caring, you know, for the beauty of the earth we’re caring for this caring for the soil and we’re caring for each other and we’re caring for ourselves because we’re a part of this and again, to me, what what you two have done this morning is is really in some ways connected heaven and earth. I don’t think you can be. I mean this is the more ancient version of rational I don’t think you can be rational unless you care about the truth. Unless you care about the good, unless you care about the beautiful. And if you don’t have that capacity to care I can’t give it to you. This is the great Socratic point, I can’t teach you to care about the truth, because you won’t listen to me, you won’t believe me, right, unless you care about the truth, I can’t get you to care about like once you once you got it I can help you draw it out, I can induce it from you. Right, that’s the original meaning of educate. Same thing with caring about the good, like you can’t you there’s no argument you can give a psychopath that will make them start behaving morally, because they just don’t have that fundamental caring. Yeah, totally. And that’s, I think that that’s really fundamental. And if that’s what you guys want me to acknowledge and say central is important, I totally agree with that. I think what I want to understand as a scientist is, I want to see how your capacity, which we share with animals, because there’s many animals that are highly intelligent, how the capacity for intelligence makes possible is in deep continuity but not identical with that kind of rationality. And again I think that the the gorilla that is not anxious for his survival is some ways analogous to that because here we are. It’s, it’s just, could, could a gorilla, could a gorilla ever, despite all of the intelligence and you know that language and things. What, what is it about us that that we care for the gorilla in a way that the gorilla can’t care for, and then you have the question what on earth is a gorilla, because we care that the gorilla be in nature, even though the gorilla might say no I kind of like you providing the housing and the protection and the food resourcing to me, you know the the life of pie the point that that book made quite early on. So there’s a fish meal that does the same thing with the talking gorilla. Yeah, okay I haven’t read that book. So it’s, and so again I, it’s because we’re running out of time I know but maybe they’ll need to be third so so part of me again comes to this and says okay what what’s, because I’ve listened to I’ve listened to Mark and probably going to have them on to hear I’ve got to know him a little bit better on the discord server. What’s what’s the problem with john’s four P’s. And I think I think and I think john completely knows this we’re trying to improve them and and adding another P isn’t necessarily improvement. But, you know, there’s a question of, okay perspectival participatory procedural, those certainly for me we’re a for a big upgrade from all of the people saying there’s proposition and nothing else. Because that’s been it that’s been a problem theologically as well as I’m sure in terms of philosophy outside the church so yeah, that was particularly relevant to the main crisis, I mean, so there’s two things, and there’s two ways in which I’m trying to be responsible to that one is I think the question. And you know and Greg Greg Enriquez and Christopher master Pietro and I are going to address it. I’ve taught a course and done work on, you know, the series that’s coming out the elusive I the nature and function of the self we’re going to do a series, a a dialogical series like I did with Greg unconsciousness, but with the three of us, because try logs seem to be really good, by the way. So I’m trying to respond to that. And then the other point you made. I mean, the net, the point that concerns me. You’re right. And I think some of the stuff I wrote in the email which we haven’t burdened the viewers which which is good about how it’s making me rethink, especially how symbols work, this has been tremendously helpful. And Chris and I are getting very excited about it so I wanted to thank this discuss, I couldn’t true dialogous I couldn’t come up with these points on my own. And so I’m genuinely sincerely grateful about that. But there’s a concern I have, you know, and I’ve spoken to Mark about it and I’ve spoken to be a little bit Mary. Right. There’s a, like, there’s a methodology. I have a particular thing I need to do, I need to have this so that people like yourselves who are interested in religiously spiritually will go yeah I can, I can think of that, but I also have to be able to point to the cognitive scientists and go, yeah, yeah, I can agree with that. And so there’s a methodology, I have, I’m bound to. Right. And so I have to be very careful about just adding things in that don’t follow that very strict methodology, people can do whatever they want. Right. I’m not, I’m not trying, but what I’m trying to say is if you’re saying well we want to add it to this existing thing. It’s not really fair to me. It’s not fair to me if you, and I’m not accusing anybody I’m stating a request. It’s not fair to me, unless that methodology is also adopted, you can do what you want you can build other taxonomies, but if you want to add it in, you have to, you have to, you have to use the same grammar by which the other four P’s were created. And so that’s been an ongoing concern of mine. And did that make sense. I mean it’s a request. Because if we add to this taxonomy and what, and the cognitive scientists go, I don’t care about that that doesn’t make any sense to me that it then it for me it’s lost its functionality. I think that’s exactly, I mean we’re doing what we’ve been talking about the whole time we’ve got these mappings and you’ve got these mappings of four things. And what you’re doing john and what Mary’s doing what I’m doing I’m hopefully, you know, is what we are saying okay well we’ve got this, we’ve got this little system of cognitive science, and we can, I mean, I’ve watched this happen in theology forever. Oh, we have our reform theology we have our reform dogma and our whole system works really nicely together. And then someone comes along and says yeah but I’ve got this in my life, and this doesn’t map onto this and so you know you can you can hang your reform dogma. And so what we’re doing is we’re, we’re doing just like the little child with a knife fork spoon, we’re doing just like the little, you know, multi dimensional structures in the brain or expanding we’re collapsing. We’re doing the, you know, we’re doing all of this as we’re doing this here too so I, I see it all as part of a whole. Well that’s great. I mean, and I’m very grateful about that I’m also cognizant that you and I’ve been talking for quite a bit I should let Mary speak. At some point maybe we would want to talk about. I don’t know if we want to do the methodology arguments that’s probably boring for viewers, but I’m very interested in maybe going to the topic that might be. I have a wonder, it’s not a suspicion because that attributes malicious motors to you guys. Right. I’m suspicious that’s not quite right. But what what, like, you guys, I think it’s fair to say you deep and this is where Jonathan is, you deeply care about the symbolic aspect of things. And I think part of why this is happening is you’re trying to, and I share this project with you about trying to ground the symbolic aspect and and and and you know Paul you do a lot about this you know criticizing metaphorical truth and because the problem with what happened is symbol has become a language that’s somewhat dismissive to my mind to my hearing at least when we say it all it’s symbolic that’s like wow it’s only metaphorically true and right and there’s nothing really is, it’s almost like they’re saying it’s ornamental and it’s not really part and I take it that what one of the concerns you guys have and one of the ways we can express Mary Mary’s caring is you want to care about if you have a caring about that there’s an aspect of reality that is being safe to you. By this by the symbolic way. Is that, is that, am I reading you guys correctly because if it is, I want to be responsible to that because I agree I think it’s very important. Well, I think that I think that the, the symbolic is about levels of reality and how they connect to one another. Right, and it goes all the way down, and it goes all the way up. Yes. And, um, you know, that’s that’s something like civillians exploring purse eggs idea of different levels of reality and how they’re connected and other and Jonathan page I was talking about you know, delving into the early church fathers and how they connect levels of reality and what they, and what they see you know, and I know all of the things and you know, there’s the Jungian archetypes and all of that. And I think that’s all, but it’s, it’s all expressing the reason why there are so many languages of it. And the reason why there are so many different approaches to it is because it’s so big. It’s so real I mean there’s there’s always a temptation, and I think this is the great scientific temptation is to get as much out of the way as possible so I don’t have to deal with it so I can do this little thing, which leads to people saying one of the problems with scientists is that they’re knowing more and more about less and less right. You know, we want to get it narrowed down, and then out of that narrowing down comes, you know, because of the power of science as expressed in technology, then, then it gets this authority to dismiss all this other stuff, which is one of the things that’s led people into the meeting crisis. I agree. I think what we’re trying to, what we’re trying to do is let’s is, you know, let’s get all that other stuff out there. And I think that’s where, if it connects to the scientific, and there’s, there’s a scientific way to either explain it or analyze it or something that’s fine. But, but just we want to stand I think one of the things that’s happening is, we want to stand against the reductionism. Sure. Because, because if we don’t will never capture capture the meaning. No, I totally agree. And I mean you guys have heard arguments I’m against reductionism I argue against reductionism is ultimately absurd it’s it’s self defeating. And I think we’re in agreement and that’s why JP and I keep having such fruitful discussions. And I like the idea about, you know, the symbolic as, as the way in which we try to map between ontological levels. And, you know, I think, insofar as you think that symbols are resisting reductionism. I think that, well I think that’s really interesting. I think that’s right. And I think the trick, the trick that maybe I’ll, I’ll say it’s the one thing and they give you guys a chance to close because I should get going. The trick for me is sort of, you know, there’s a skill and crib this here. And one of the reasons why I’m so attracted to deep continuity is Evan Thompson, my friend, idea of deep continuity is it steers between them reductionism gets. And the problem with reductionism is you all you to be consistent you have to say that only the very, very, very bottom level is real, and everything else is an illusion and that’s just, and that’s just that’s just so deeply problematic it’s just so deeply problematic. If you say no, no, there’s ontological realness, not just how we think about it but reality itself. Right. But the, the problem with that, the problem, and, and I can see it in Paul’s work. Right. The problem with that is if you’re not careful it fractures into dualisms and multiple layer isms that are equally destructive of meaning. And the reason why I’m so attracted to deep continuity is it tries to steer between reductionism and dualism in a powerful way. And so, one of the things, one of the projects, I see myself engaged in is trying to get the symbolic world into deep dialogue with deep continuity can we understand symbolism in terms of deep continuity. And I think that’s why I was so fascinated why why why what Mary was doing at the beginning. She was invoking deep continuity and then trying to not sorry that makes it sound like she failed, she was right mapping that symbolically right she was mapping it into symbolic activity and I think beyond our disagreements, I think that move that Mary made of there’s some deep relationship of mutual affordance and mutual support between deep continuity and a way of understanding human symbolic behavior, I think that’s deeply right. And I’ve been trying to argue a similar thing but I, I’m not trying to take anything away from Mary either. I’m saying, I feel like that’s a point of deep convergence between the two of us. So let me ask you a question deep continuity starts at the human and goes down. What if we wanted to set have a deep continuity but we want to go the other direction. What would we call that what’s the opposite of deep. That the problem is it’s used both ways, which is unfortunate. Well sure. Then, then I’m good, then I’m good with it. I just don’t want us. I just don’t want to put us at the top of the mountain. No, no, no, no, I wouldn’t do that. I mean, we probably differ about how deeply up it goes. I’m not sure because you know I’m a non theist in certain ways. And I take serious mystical experiences, but a level I think is becoming relatively non controversial within cognitive science is you go up from individual cognition to distributed cognition, which I think is, you know, you got you guys are committed to that you’re You’re committed to the Ecclesia having a life of its own above and beyond the individuals, and this is taking so there’s deep continuity between individual cognition and distributed cognition. So that’s that that is at least, I wouldn’t say everybody totally agrees with that in the world of cognitive science, but that is a deeply respectable move to make. So that’s a deep continuity up that I think is widely acknowledged now. That’s getting somewhere. I like it. Oh, and I think, you know, I, to me, I watched the reductionism happen, but then there’s a whole lot of other smuggling going on. Oh yeah, yeah. And, and I just want to say, well, where are you getting that from, because that’s not that’s that’s not all of this stuff down here you’ve, you’ve scaled up but you’re not saying, oh, by the way, we’ve just scaled up and we’ve, we’re looking at distributed cognitive cognition so no and john you have to and I know a lot of the explaining you do for the sake of the audience, but I, you know, you have to understand that you are, you are deeply trusted, I speak for myself by me. I mean, I’ve never in all of my conversations with you I don’t, I, you’re a man of deep integrity and deep care and concern and so I’m, I’m not at all anxious about you in any of these things. Well, I just thank you for that and I appreciate that that was a gesture of love and I reciprocated very much to both of you. But but but but what I don’t hold me out as some singular exemplar, right, there are many many people like me. Oh yeah, right, right, right. And so, right, especially within cognitive science, especially within for e cognitive science. And so there’s there’s there’s a huge scientific community that is talking this way. The way, at least where there’s significant overlap between the three of us and doing just tremendous. That’s why again, the work of Evan Thompson, like his work is just mind blowing. And so, I just want to be to be clear, I understand that I’ve sort of taken on the role of the voice of cognitive science within the internet, and I’ll try and live up to that responsibility as honorably as possible, but I do want people who are like it’s, there’s, there’s lots of people talking this way, and a lot of, and I know many of them and the people of integrity as well. So I just wanted to make that clear to. Same for pastors. Yeah, yeah, yeah, lots of love you. You’re the only pastor now now I’m just the one right here on the YouTube channel there’s lots more out there. So we all have our little Ecclesias out there functioning and that’s a good thing. Yeah, and one of the functions of this is to get the Ecclesias to talk to each other. Hopefully, yeah, it’s not just us talking the hope if we’re, if we’re properly humble. Right, we are also making those Ecclesias present to each other, which I think is an important responsibility that needs to be discussed a little bit more in this corner of the internet or maybe in the internet as a whole. So, guys, I should get going. I want to give Mary a chance to say any. I think everything’s, I think everything’s been covered I really appreciate your, your listening to me even if anything I expressed was so was kind of sloppy from the cognitive science perspective. But I do appreciate it and I think it’s been a great, I think it’s been a great conversation so maybe we’ll just talk through emails about when we’re going to speak together and what the topic might be so sure, like I said, I’m happy to make a part three trilogies are really good. It’s what we’ve learned from Lucas is don’t go beyond the trilogy right. I think that’s what the profit motive. Yeah, yeah. Take good care of my friends. Thank you both. Take care. Bye. Bye.