https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=Y4-n4raU2Zs
John Vervecky and Sean Coyne have together authored a new book, Mentoring the Machines. It’s a book about artificial intelligence and the path forward that further develops the arguments of how to align artificial intelligence to human flourishing, and it sets those arguments into beautiful and accessible writing. Welcome everyone to another Voices with Vervecky. I’m very excited to have John Stewart back again. This is his third time, and there’s been this increasing progression of ideas and interest in our discussions. And so John has something in particular he wants to focus in on for today and so welcome John, it’s great to have you here again. It’s great to be with you again, John. I was particularly looking forward to this discussion because central to the evolutionary worldview and my life as well, is the development of technologies that enhance human capacities, particularly cognition and social emotional capacities. So the, the evolutionary worldview as we’ve discussed before identifies a trajectory to evolution. And predicts the, you know, the next major evolutionary transitions which need to occur in life on Earth, and in particular, the hatching of a global superorganism, a unified cooperative and highly evolvable planetary society that becomes an entity in its own right and evolves in its own right. And basically that that transitions needed. If humanity is to survive the existential threats that currently So the question is what capacities. Do we need to each of us may individually and collectively, in order to drive that process forward and successfully. You know, take the next step in evolution, because if if if humanity and life on Earth. Isn’t aligned with the trajectory of evolution, it’s selected out of existence. I mean that’s the definition of a trajectory trajectory identifies. In effect, what, what is needed to survive and thrive. So, you know, identifies what’s needed to overcome the existential threats, the existential threats are the selection processes. Right. At this stage in the evolution of, of life. I mean that if we, if we don’t proceed a bit to establish a unified cooperative global society, then the existential threats will will win and select us out of existence. You know, environmental destruction, which climate change is destructive climate changes first and foremost. The threat of nuclear war, you know, which was very, very big. Very recognized. You know, the 60s were a million people. You know, marched in the UK led by Bertrand Russell, the great English philosopher. Against nuclear proliferation. And we’ve been on the brink of nuclear extinction a number of times it’s just one basically that’s got us through it. So, so that’s that’s another key existential threat. So what capacities do we need to You know, there’s an evolutionary activist. Is someone who is trying to drive the process forward because we would live in an extraordinary evolutionary process. It’s a developmental process. You can see the history of the evolution of life on Earth. It’s a developmental process leading to the hatching of the global superorganism. So it’s a developmental process just like an embryo developing within a chicken egg that actually hatches a chicken. But the extraordinary thing about the nature of this developmental process that we’re embedded in is that The that it only completes successfully if the key intelligent organisms involved that’s humans wake up to the fact that they’re in an evolutionary developmental process and see where it needs to go and see is that we have a role in driving the process forward. It’s only it’s only if we wake up to the process, see where it needs to go. It’s as if you’re in a chicken egg and you’re a cell within a chicken egg and you eventually realize you’re part of the developmental process and then you come to the extraordinary realization that that process will only complete successfully it’ll only hatch. If you and other cells wake up to the nature of the process you’re embedded in, see what your role is to drive it forward and then do that. So what capacities are needed for that. It’s central to being an evolutionary activist or acting on the evolutionary worldview. It’s central to that is developing the capacities needed to wake up to the nature of the large scale evolutionary processes in which you’re embedded and driving that forward. So to make it more concrete, what, what capacities to we need to develop individually and collectively in order to overcome existential threats that currently face humanity. So major, you know, interest in my life from, you know, from a teenager has been the identification of those practices, the technologizing of those practices. So, taking from wherever they exist on this planet. Well, whatever religious or contemplative tradition they’re embedded, taking, taking the practices from those developing a cognitive science model of those practices and why they work, which is sort of the, you know, that’s was the great step forward that started 400 or so years ago when with the emergence of technology and industry industrialization and science. So it’s taking the folk knowledge, developing cognitive science, science models, and then using those cognitive science models to then tune, adapt, develop, enhance processes. That will eventually just industrialization produced scientific knowledge that, you know, is almost unrecognizable from the folk knowledge that emerged from the, these technologize practices will look almost nothing like the spiritual and contemplative traditions from which they came. Wow, that’s, that’s a powerful claim that last one. I find that very, very, very interesting. So there’s kind of something like an exaptation out of these traditions to something that’s an evolutionary step. What would that look like like what it was specifically what that looks like. Well, the, you know, to write up to your work as I understand your work and I have been stalking you recently. In the sense that I’ve been, you know, watching closely your recent discussions with Ian McGillcrist for example, your discussion with Lex Friedman and the video that came out of the, you know, the retreat. Yep, yep. Which was about developing a curriculum for wisdom. Right. Yeah, yeah. Well, that’s, you know, they’re all aligned with this. Well, they’re all like the spirit underlying your project and, you know, what I would claim is the evolutionary activist project. Right. Absolutely aligned with the detail, the detail business. So, the first thing that gets sorted out is, in my view, in developing any technologies of practice is to identify what the goals are. And what is it, what are the capacities you’re trying to build and for what purpose. It’s possible to develop an integrated suite of technologies if you, if you haven’t got a clear idea of what purposes they’re meant to serve. So, in the evolutionary perspective, it’s, it’s reasonably straightforward. Basically, you need the cognitive capacity to build mental models of future evolution and the trajectory of evolution. And it is those models to see what we have to do to align with those trajectory, trajectories, and overcome the existential threats. So you, you basically, you know, you need strategic cognitive capacity ability to develop complex strategies in complex circumstances. As I’ve used to perform in our discussion, second enlightenment cognition, as opposed to the limited first enlightenment cognition, which can’t adequately cognize complexity. So you need strategies. Secondly, you then need, you know, in this sense, trivial in a way, but given the human condition, it’s not, it’s absolutely central. And it’s you need individual, individually and collectively, the ability to implement those strategies, take the actions, take the actions that are identified by those strategies. And basically that means that, that, you know, if, if you’re, if individually, you know, well, where we are now in general, where humanity is in general, is generally psychologically, we do not choose our likes and dislikes. You know, change our genetically, socially, socially, and culturally implanted motivations, desires, goals, and so on. That’s the nature of a current human being. We can’t, we don’t choose our likes and dislikes. Therefore, our likes and dislikes, our inherited socialized and conditioned impulses and motivations might conflict with what we need to do in order to implement these complex strategies needed to, that are needed to take the next great steps in evolution on Earth. So, imagine more concrete individually, you know, it’s, it’s the, as an evolutionary activist, or, you know, to not sort of embedded in the evolutionary world, just to act optimally and skillfully to assist in the overcoming of the existential threats that face humanity. You need to be able to align your personal motivations, your personal, personal conditioning and so on, with the actions needed to, to optimally overcome those existential threats. So, you know, become an activist, and an effective activist might involve, might involve you doing things that, you know, violate your inherited moral predispositions, the prosocial, you know, some of the prosocial predispositions are implanted in humanity in our tribal stage. You know, it’s because it’s, it’s, you know, to an extent, the ends justify the means. The question is, how can you ensure that you’re not handicapped in your activism by predispositions that aren’t aligned with the, with what you need to do, that come from your conditioning, your socialization and your genetic inheritance. So, so that’s, they’re the two capacities you need. You know, the complex cognition, the ability to become self evolving in the sense that you, you can align your motivations and so on. And the, so then they become the measuring sticks that you use to develop practices and to develop cognitive science models and so on. Could you give, could you give a more specific examples? I could hear, around this one point, I could hear people being worried about sort of overcoming our, our prosocial inborn tendencies. And, you know, the ends justify the means has been the, the, the, the clarion call of many bloodthirsty regimes and utopias. So what would that mean? Like, can you be specific on that, that point? Yeah, so, well, to give an example, so say, say that you’re, you know, being a single celled organism, free living, you know, at that evolutionary time where that was the most complex form of life existing on the planet. And then imagine that, you know, that you and your other free living single cells developed intelligence and you have the capacity to, to sit around a table, so to speak, and plan how you would evolve in the future. So, you know, obviously, totally hypothetical and not realistic, but it’s designed to make a particular point. So, if those cells, you know, discuss their evolutionary future and discuss what they would need to do to be successful in evolutionary terms in the future, and if their science was good enough, they’d see well they needed that the, that the leading chip of evolution involved forming collectives of cells. In other words, giving rise to multicellular organisms, and then the long trajectory of the multicellular organism becoming an agent in its own right and developing the, you know, to evolve and adapt as a co-hereditary. So, the, now you could easily imagine that such a proposition that we, we, our intelligent cells should give up our free living life. You know, where we pseudepodia our way around our, you know, warm little ponds and live the good life, we should give that up and form these collectives where we’re not free any longer, we’re attached to other cells. We’re constrained, and we, we basically live with, with the, you know, with each other’s excretives, so to speak. Yeah, it’s us. Images like the emergence of the first cities, which weren’t a pretty sight, basically. So, the, those, those single cells, you know, if they made their decision about how they were going to evolve in the future, based on how they felt about it. Yeah, so if they, if they tasted those possibilities, tasted that possibility by consulting their feelings, you know, their, their inherited predispositions and their, their existing motivations and so on, then, you know, you can imagine them deciding, no, we don’t want that. That’s not the way we want to be. So similarly, similarly with humanity. So, our pro-social impulses, the, the inculturated ones and the genetic ones, largely come from the tribal phase in human societies, where tribes competed with one another and there were large populations of tribes. And so you could get the natural selection competitive dynamic going. And the, the tribes that were the most coherent socially tended to be the ones that were selected by evolution. And the predispositions of members of the tribe that caused them to be the most coherent socially, that is pro-social predispositions, tended to be favored by evolution. So the, however, what’s pro-social in those circumstances in tribal societies might be utterly different from what’s pro-social when we need to make the move to a… I see. I see. I see. So you’re saying our pro-social inclinations and predispositions basically evolved within, within a tribal scale, at a tribal scale. And that is not the scale we need to be working at now if we’re going to pick up on the evolutionary gradient towards the identification that we need in order to create the kind of agency that can save us from the existential risks. Did I, is that, is that getting it correctly? Perfectly. That’s, that’s perfect. So, and just to give a concrete example, in tribal societies, group punishment is a critically important pro-social mechanism. So the, and we feel that in our everyday lives at the tribal level. The group will turn on individuals that breach the norms of the tribe. So that was essential to enforcing the norms. Right, right, right. So the pro-social impulses aren’t necessarily, you know, the ones that are, that are highly developed, you know, American spiritual progressive, my So the, you know, good values and so on. So the, you know, good, so, you know, group punishment, gossip, group censure, and more particularly the one that’s extremely dangerous still in the world today is in-group versus out-group. So, and that’s, you know, which is underpins racism and so on. Yes. And racist tendencies are now being harvested by, you know, pro-capitalist political parties in America, UK, Australia, but presumably in Canada as well. In other words, the wealthy and powerful, they have to maintain their power, they’ve got to pull off the trick of getting 50% of the people involved in democracy to vote for the interests of the wealthy and powerful rather than their own. And part of the way you do that is by fueling, you know, racist sentiments, having an enemy from the outside, internal enemies, you know, and so on and so on. No, I think that’s a well-placed example and there’s a record of, historical record of that. It was especially the case during the Gilded Age and many people are saying that that’s happening right now as well. I’m wondering if you could say the opposite, like what’s the opposite? What are the tendencies within us now, the proclivities or the capacities that are present that we can build upon or draw upon, exact from, that are taking us in the direction that you’re proposing? Okay, well, it’s very aligned with how I understand, you know, some of the goals of your practices. So waking up, for example, you know, using… Yep. It basically develops the capacity to be able to move through, well, waking up in the midst of ordinary life involves the ability to move through the world and not be captured by and driven by the inherited predispositions, your conditioning and so on. And where an emotion is evoked by circumstances and that emotion is not consistent with what you need to do to be an effective actor in the world, an effective agent in the world, then you, you know, you have psychological distance from that emotion, that conditioning. You can stand back from it, you know, you can use various metaphors for this and that’s why the next step is then to develop a cognitive science that goes away with the metaphors and deals in cybernetic terms and so on. Yeah, with how waking up achieves this psychological distancing, what is it? Yeah, in psychological terms, and that then enables you to hone in on, you know, how you can use existing practices of waking up to develop more, you know, better practices, more effective practices, ones that act more quickly and so on. So the, the, So that’s, yeah, so that’s the example I’m giving of, you know, so waking up is a specific capacity that is a specific concrete example of what I’m talking about in terms of being able to, you know, move the right angles to your predisposition. It’s the, it’s the classic capacity that enables you to move the right angles to your conditioned predispositions, your genetic predispositions and so on. And you need that capacity to move the right angles in order to do whatever is needed for future, future evolution. On the question specifically, what does it mean, you know, in detail? Well, to work that out, you have to have a, you know, that’s why you need the cognition. Yeah. Cognition is central to this because you need to be able to see what the evolutionary demands are now and in the future. You need that look ahead capacity to be able to say, well, you know, we need to move to a, you know, an integrated cooperative global society. And that entails reorganizing our political and social systems in these particular ways. That involves me and others, other evolutionary activists behaving in particular ways, being able to act in particular ways, particular circumstances. So, and I think it’s worth mentioning, we touched on this briefly in a previous discussion, but there’s this three phase, arguably this three phase transition underway that we’re embedded in at the moment that humanity has where we’re initially, you know, 200,000 or more years ago. There was, there wasn’t any detailed thinking capacity that enabled planning ahead, that enabled this in future circumstances and taking that into account to work out how we should adapt here and now. There wasn’t the declarative knowledge or the propositional knowledge or the thinking capacity to do that. And so, so evolution to personify evolution had no option, but to install in us and enforce through group punishment. You know, the kinds of predispositions that led to the behaviors that led to that which was successful in evolution terms. In other words, you know, organizing tribal societies, the process, so we didn’t choose them. We didn’t think through them. The human beings that existed at the time couldn’t form the mental models, but enable them to act to evolution and and see, you know, the detailed behaviors and actions that were required. And then came the fall. The fall was the truth from the truth knowledge which was the emergence of, you know, proposition knowledge, thinking, and so on. And that eventually that developed into analytical rational thought, first enlightenment thinking, and it, it’s, it thought it had the capacity to think through a fresh. You know, these predispositions and and some and it threw them out. It killed God. You know, that was what was, as you point out, was, you know, warning against you’ve killed God. But you’ve therefore thrown out everything that came with God, which was all those rules and so on, that you’re thinking mine couldn’t understand. Because they’re embedded in, you know, in religious language and justification, dependent on supernatural stories and myths for their, for their adoption, their perpetuation and their reproduction in society and culture. So, so that was the second part of the phase was thinking, which, which have enormous benefits in terms of industrialization, so on. But great disadvantage in the sense that it killed God and killed the wisdom, the evolutionary wisdom. And that’s, that’s why the sacred exists. So, so part of, you know, this is another thing that, you know, people would initially react negatively to I think is that, you know, I basically say well, yeah, the development of these technologies, the development of a cognitive science, the development of these enhanced practices that that look nothing like the traditions that initially, you know, have the spark in them that is taken and then developed. The, that process involves disregarding the sacred or not treating, you know, this wisdom as, as sacred, eventually. And part of the reason for, you know, saying, saying having a problem with that is that the sacred was it was the way of protecting the the tribal predispositions often embedded in religion, the supernatural, protecting them from being, you know, undermining their ignorance by individuals playing with them, changing them, not knowing what they’re doing. So the importance of the sacred somewhat paradoxically was demonstrated by the, by the fact that the rise of first enlightenment and inspirational cognition, you know, undid that which the sacred initially was, was adaptation, the cultural adaptation that protected this wisdom. So now that, so that brings us to the third stage and the third stage is the, the emergence of cognition that can do justice to the complexity involved in seeing how organized societies and seeing how we take this next step towards a global global identification and so on. So the, and that’s, you know, called second enlightenment and cognition and so on. So that second enlightenment and cognition no longer needs these implanted predisposition protected by the sacred, they’re embedded in religious and contemplative traditions and so on. It no longer needs them because it can think through from first principles, the evolutionary processes that in the past, you know, shaped those predispositions. So it can do what, you know, so it can, it can kill God, but retain all the wisdom. It understands the wisdom independently. And, you know, it has a science, it’ll have a science of that which, you know, wisdom dealt with before and that so we’ll be able to derive from first principles. So imagine if, so just to try and have a more concrete example, imagine a tribal society in which the members of the tribe have second enlightenment, cognition. And so they have the capacity to sit down and say, okay, we see we’re embedded in this evolutionary process where we’re competing with other tribes and that competition with other tribes leads to warfare and so on. How do we need to organize ourselves? How do we need to behave? You know what, what should be our, what should be value and what should be our goals, so that we survive and thrive in competition with those other tribes and so on. So they work out from first principles. You know, how they need to organize themselves, and they would be far more effective than, than waiting for evolution to go through trial and error process of in effect deciding, you know, how they should be organized. They could work out from first principles. So we’re imagining that, you know, these tribal members have that problem of capacity. We’re now on the verge. And so it’s very, very important if we survive our existential threats, we’re on the verge of developing that capacity now and being able to understand cognitively how we need to reorganize ourselves and how you set up a global society that’s, that’s highly And as we’ve discussed before, you know, that entails maximum diversity. Just as our body, you know, it’s, it’s an explosion of diversity that we’ll get with a global society, not the ball, not the totalitarian centrally controlled society. And you don’t see that you only see that that’s what it leads to that you need, you need it, you need a world society in which the resources first and foremost of that society are used to ensure that every individual within the society develops develops their potential to the greatest extent And that’s the problem with social emotional capacities, because the availability of the global society, which is what you need to maximize, you know, the next steps beyond that, depending upon the realizing the potential of the most limited resource of all for the global society, which is the individual And that’s the individual humans and processes that make up the global society. So, thank you for re articulating that that that framework. I see you’ve mentioned practices for waking up and then you’ve met that that we also need the science, the cognitive science for articulating this framework and what should be done. What are the practices that would help turn that theory into concrete, you know, identities and communities are like are there are they practices where people are starting to access collective intelligence and distributed cognition they’re starting to realize the power of that, you know, dialectical dialogical practices are these practices that would go in hand in hand with with the with the waking up and with the cognitive science to get So people get a direct sense of what it would be like to participate in the, the, the, the, I don’t know what to call it the super organism or something. Are those the kinds of practices also that would be important. Well, looking at waking up first just to give an example of having a cognitive science understanding of waking up and then use that cognitive science understanding. Yeah. Practices. So, the key thing from the evolutionary perspective is obviously not waking up on the meditation couch. Yes, that waking up in the midst of ordinary life. So that’s that’s where having the goal, you know, clear and unequivocal is essential to developing technologies. So how do you wake up in the midst of ordinary life. Are there practices, you know already. There are arguably you know the great Armenian systems think that George Gurdjieff, you know, 100 years ago. Started off doing what I’m talking about. He plundered. He plundered the religious and complex traditions that they could find his wandering around to bet, you know, India and so on. He plundered them. As he said he stole. And as he stole where the essence of their practices and bounded together to form, you know, a new constellation of practices that were specifically designed. So he didn’t make meditation on the couch or whatever. And you will. I’m sure you’ll easily see the parallels with what George Gurdjieff said. But basically waking up in the midst of ordinary life. He what he was trying to promote was subject permanence. So in other words, you’re the art you you develop a real eye. You develop the ability for your subject to move through the world, undistracted by what’s going on, what’s interacting with you and so on. And that’s a highly dynamic process in which you’re going to get emotions and predispositions and thoughts arising, but you’re not embedded in them. You have psychological distance from them. So you’re in this poised state. So the kind of practice he talked about self remembering, which is basically where you retain part of your attention on your attention as you’re moving through the world. The other part of your attention is on your bodily field and then the other is on the environment in general. And if you can move through the world like that, you’re in a poised state. You’re actually in a poised state where your attention is no longer embedded in thinking and reacting emotionally to circumstances. That’s what the subject permanence comes in. And you’re in a poised state where you can go with any set of thinking that you decide to. You can go with any emotion. You can act on it if you want to, but you’ve got the choice. So you’re in effect control and choose whether to be bound by your existing likes and dislikes. You can move at right angles to your existing predispositions and so on. So that’s basically his practice. There’s various ways you can scaffold that capacity because it’s not a, you know, it’s very simple in principle and it’s very easy to get a glimpse of. But to actually be able to do it in the midst of ordinary life. My experience when I worked as a government policy advisor, you know, in meetings, I would practice being awake, having subject permanence during the meeting. The first thing you notice is everyone else in the meeting is going off to sleep. Yeah. Now to sleep and so on. And, you know, it’s a superpower. If you can be awake when everyone else is asleep, then you can achieve whatever goals you have, good or bad. So anyway, coming now to the cognitive science model, what is this awakening? What’s the cognitive science model of awakening? And that’s something I’ve worked on and published about. But it’s very hard to get acceptance of it, given that, you know, the most scientists don’t have experience of what you’re pointing to. So the, you know, you just manage to them. But in any event, the cognitive science model that I’ve developed, you know, basically the central point of it is that consciousness is very narrow in bed, but it’s serial and it’s slow. So you can’t listen to two conversations if you’re in a party or whatever, you can’t listen to two conversations at once. You listen to one and the other, you know, is not in your attention. If you think deeply about something when you’re moving through the world, you’ll be the absent-minded professor. The rest of the world disappears if you’re in subject permanence, you’re not awake. So there’s numerous, numerous examples of this limited bandwidth, this limited capacity, this slowness and serial nature. And it’s well established. It’s, you know, starting with Miller’s magic number seven plus or minus two. You know, there’s a limit to how things can keep working memory at any one time. So, so that hence sleep. So it immediately then leads, that leads to a cognitive science understanding or model of sleep. Sleep is when you’re embedded in something that takes up the limited bandwidth of consciousness and excludes other things. It leads immediately to an understanding of the fall, the fall and the fact that we’re at a stage of human evolution where our consciousness is colonized by taking over by thinking, by proposition knowledge. And so, so we’re incessantly thinking where the monkey mind and so on, but where it’s not the monkey mind you observe in meditation. It’s the monkey mind is you. That’s who you are. If you go psychological distance from the thinking process. So, so waking up is being able to still the, you know, the thinking mind and being in this poised state of awareness, where you can maintain open awareness despite events going on around you. But you’re fully aware of those events. In fact, in fact, you’re more aware of those events than a sleeping human being. You’re more aware of them and you’re able to able to respond to them in with all your, you know, learned capacities and so on. And that’s arguably that’s what being in the zone is. Being in the zone is. Because when you’ve, you’ve still the mind, you’re an absolutely open awareness, your automatic, you know, learned capacities your motor programs and so on. Being evoked by the circumstances around you so you act extraordinarily still fully and so on. But you’ve got the subject permanence. It’s quite different to the flow state, which is, which also still owes its, you know, its interestingness to the fact that it stills the thinking mind, but it does it through absorption. So the classic examples of the flow state that chicks are mentally, you know, identified and define and recognize the essence of are like the playing computer games or the mountain climbing mathematicians. Very high proportion of mathematicians, academic mathematicians, yeah, they’re hobbyists, man, I mean, stills their hyperactive thinking mind. You need something very serious. Yeah. You and chicks and mentalist fly with the, you know, if you need a sequence of challenges that are not too easy to be boring and not too difficult to be frustrating, that puts you in the flow. But it’s not the it’s not waking up. Being in the flow is not waking up. It’s not being it’s the opposite of waking up the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the guys who have, you know, sat down on a computer and played a computer game for four days until they drop dead. Because they don’t drink water, they don’t, you know, they’re totally absorbed in the game. They’re absolutely in flow. In a state that’s enjoyable to them. But it’s clearly pathological. It’s clearly, it’s clearly not an open, broad poised state. And equally, as I think in the group that McGill pointed out in your discussion with him, it’s not that useful in the sense that, you know, the conditions to fly. Yeah, the sequence of tasks, not too difficult, not too easy. Doesn’t exist. Now, you need that to be in the flow. So, so I’m sure that I would suspect that some of the circumstances that you refer to, you know, and others prefer to as being in the flow. In actual fact, it’s the open, focused, waking up that they’re actually in, not, not the absorbed flow state. What’s the primary phenomenological difference? I think that the absorption concentration characterizes the flow state. So, you know, climbing, mountain climbing, looking for the next handhold, the next handhold. So, while you could do that, you could do that in the zone, which is the waking up state, which is where you’re not absorbed in the, you’re in effect surrendered. You’re surrendered psychologically and your body will find the next handhold and so on. But your awareness is broad, absolutely broad. So the example is an example that is given, not specifically in the terms I’ve given, but a phenomenon that relates to this is the F1 driver driving down the main straight with the green stands on either side. If a person halfway up in the stands opens their umbrella, he will see it. I mean, I haven’t driven down. This is recorded. So the, so that’s the difference between an open focus and a narrowly focused thing. So Mohammed Ali, when he, in that extraordinary documentary, we were kings about the rumble in the jungle. Where he’s fighting George Foreman and they’re interviewing him and the interviewer says, look, George Foreman’s a beast. You know, he’s much bigger than he is, much as incredible, no one can beat him, he’s undefeatable and aren’t you scared to death? You know, get in the ring with him and Mohammed Ali says, well, he said, yeah, if Mohammed Ali was getting in the ring with him, he’d be scared to death. But I’m not. But Mohammed Ali doesn’t get in the ring with him. He said Allah gets in the ring with him. So I surrender to Allah, we did use the word surrender. But you know, it’s Allah in the ring with him who’s guiding his actions. So he’s in a surrendered state, which is an open focused state as opposed to a concentrated state. So it’s the difference between, it’s broadly comes, it basically comes down to the difference between a concentrated meditation versus an open focus. And if you’re moving through ordinary life in most circumstances, then it’s the open focus. You know, another way, another term to use is unloaded consciousness. So consciousness narrow bandwidth, so you need to unload consciousness so that it’s not embedded in and narrowly focused and so on. Yeah, I would say that’s the main difference. But you said in the open focus, you still have that sense of it one minute with the environment, like your actions are right fitted still. Like, so that one of the characteristics of the chick set my high flow state is right that, you know, the the the your sparring and the punch comes and you do the correct block and you find the opening. Like that kind of virtuosity. Is that still present in the open state? Absolutely. So, so say tennis players when I hear when I hear their descriptions of being in the zone or the F1 driver going down the main straight. Right. Yeah, they’re there. When I hear the tennis players talk, they’re the focus. So they’re, they’re aware of their body. They’re aware of, you know, of serving of, you know, moving around the court and so on. But they’re not embedded in the decisions. Right. That sounds like a distinction that I’ve been making between what I call hot flow and cold flow or cool flow. So, hot flow is that very, and it brings with it that tremendous sort of metabolic goal fire, and you’re really highly focused where cool flow which I get from sort of the jazz world is no no you have this. I get into that state where I’m lecturing where I’m aware of all of the students and I’m aware of the material like it’s it’s and it doesn’t have that. It has a different. Yeah, that’s why I use the difference between hot and cool to try and describe it. That’s well that’s because I have no doubt, you know, and watching your videos carefully. You know, that you’re often experiencing what I call the waking up. Right. Right. I get that. Yes. Yeah. So the side for example in your lecture theater. You see all the students if one of the students at the back, raised an umbrella. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you’re mad and you’re actually you know, you don’t see anything else that’s going on around you. Right. So the state to be called today, this comes back to you know you. It’s necessary to have clear goals about what the technologies are trying to scaffold. Yeah, yeah. The state that’s awakening in the midst of ordinary life is the open state, not the not the closed. So you’re doing that. Yeah, I’m sure. I’m sure. Hearing you talk, you’re awakening in the midst of ordinary life. So, um, but the, the, but you often call it flow. Well, I don’t think it is the chicks and naturally flow. All this, and I looked at that in detail when I read it. I organized a workshop of the towards the science of consciousness conference in Hong Kong in 2010 or 11 was where we this workshop was looking at meaningful media. And I did some blog posts, and they were I looked at was how it was how, because, you know, how to scaffolding method for staff staff only the open waking up. So, by using what I call an engineer flows flow state. So the concept concept is this you can design a computer game that initially, you know, produces fly. That sort of drags you into the, you know, propelled the engages yourself. But then the first I can wait to a series of tasks, but then I can actually away. Right, right, right, right, right. I get that I get that that really, I get that I really resonate with that move you made. Right. That’s very cool. And that caught that caught that’s a cut. That’s the kind of new practice, you’re proposing as one of the kinds of things that we would need to be doing that you we could use technology and the psychology to get maybe start people in the flow state and then open up the scope. And the sense of presence in the flow state to be what you’re calling the open state. Am I understanding the proposal correctly. Exactly precisely. So, so the year and so you end up with technologies that are far more effective at developing the capacities that are wanted for evolution. And, and be a little relationship. Unless you’ve got the underlying common science. Very, very. See, yeah, you have a common science theory that unifies, you know, the contemplative. And how they have the effects they have. And the effects they have nothing to do with their stories. Yeah. Do to do that to make that move to, you know, to develop a cognitive science understanding and then to use that to develop new, new scaffolding that’s more effective and tuned and shaped and so on. To do that, you, you have to mess with the sacred. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Because, because the sacred and reverence, you know, a part of the, from a cognitive science perspective, they’re part of it. They don’t, they don’t, they don’t even protect from meddling. You know, this passed down. Yeah. With by the ignorant and dissipated. And so on, if they want protected by the sacred. Not only so it’s not only just protecting but it’s also it helps produce a state that’s conducive to the goals of this. Yeah, rituals. Yeah, rituals can put you in a, in a, in either, you know, a flow state or the open rituals are the greatest bullshitting devices. Here’s your terminology. Right. Again that I’ve picked up from my stalking. The, the. So, both the better. Yeah. And the first phase of the three step evolutionary transition I’m talking about evolution needs to implant in individuals, beliefs and moral principles that they can’t change that they can’t meddle with that they can’t question, and that they don’t understand. And the I’ve lost my train of thought there. Well, you were moving towards the train of thought that right. And that might be embedded in ritual, but we could re-approach that’s in ritual and get something that’s sort of trans ritual it’s like it captures the functionality of ritual, but doesn’t, we’re not bound at a level of ignorance were bound at a level of knowledge and wisdom. I think that’s what you’re going to propose. You haven’t lost my train of thought at all. So, yes, a ritual is a bullshitting device. Yeah, because, because there’s been thousands and thousands of religions in human history, you know, the tribal level, and so on. And evolution needed a device that convinced individuals that those, there was truth and importance, evidence in those whatever story, those thousands of different stories. And, and, you know, the device of ritual, which can put you into these transformed states. The stories ascribe that state, which is stuff, and, you know, alluring and seems significant to the participants in the ritual. The story, you know, ascribes that state to the truth of the religious beliefs and whatever. So, so ritual, rituals can be misused and so on, but again, they become a, a possible technology. Yes, yes. That you understand in cognitive science terms and you can play with and so on. I distinguish the technologies from the practices from the contemplative and spiritual conditions that I’ve found less useful. Those that aren’t portable. So the, because if your goal is waking up in the middle of your life, as opposed to doing it in a darkened room, you minimize distractions and make it easier to, so on, then you need practices that are portable. So, so to take around with you, you know, rituals and so on, portable. So you need, you know, you need to use your cognitive science to see, you know, the way of waking up. And there’s this myriads of ways of waking up. A school of self-knowledge that I went to once used to say that everyone’s hobbies, that what attracts people to them is love of the self. By self they meant the Advaita Benanti itself, which is the, basically the awakened state when you experience it. And they said that, that, that whatever your hobby is, if you really look it down, and so it’s like mountain climbing for the mathematicians. It’s still, it’s your hobby stills the mind and makes you aware of your awareness. And that’s why you’re attracted to the hobby. And I looked at my obsession through my younger life as fishing. Fishing is very, it’s very, yes, very meditative, concentration meditation. The, the great sporting events, sporting events, why are human beings attracted to sport? It’s because things happen in sport that are ineffable. They’re ineffable. They can’t be understand propositionally. They still propositionally mind. So, so when the crowd at the Melbourne, the great Melbourne cricket ground, down the road from me here, they’re watching an AFL match and they gasp. They gasp, you know, there’s a gasp collectively amongst a hundred thousand people. And they are waking up from that. That’s the attraction of it and so on. So you need portable methods. Right. I was going to say you want rituals that portable, you’re calling portable. They’re transferable to many different domains and many different dimensions of a lived life. They don’t get locked into a particular location or a particular setting or context. They’re trans contextual in that matter. And ideally they’re transportable on the individual level. So the individual needs. So, so there’s and some are more portable for ordinary life than others. Yeah. So for example, you know, I’ve never taken to the, you know, the given attention to the sensations of the breath. Yeah, that is partly absorbed for me. So, so the awareness of awareness is what you use in your meta. The awareness of the awareness can be the center of everything, which is the awareness of awareness, expanding awareness out and then maintaining that as you. Yes, yes, yes. I think the because because that’s that’s this. Just moving back to the cognitive science model quickly, the cognitive science model. It explains, as I said, is, you know, consciousness is very narrow bandwidth. And you need to clear the bandwidth to be open. And also to have things, conscious experiences go through to your unconscious mind, which is a critical part of this, because the the you mentioned one point that, you know, the the the next the next stage in development is to be able to manage your four P’s. Yes. This factory. Yeah, that’s another level to which those objects. So, so critical to that development and this get comes to, you know, starts going to the how do you develop the higher cognitive capacities critical to it is making what was part of your subject. And that you’re unaware of that had you rather than you had it. I can add object to this new higher level of awareness. Right, right, right, right. And it is object that you can play with it. You can manage it. Yeah, it’s almost the dialectical. It’s more complex than the dialectical, but the dialectical thesis and antithesis. The synthesis from a high level. Just oppositional processing, which can occur at the thesis and antithesis. And, and, you know, because that’s unlikely to settle in the optimal thing you need the higher level to which that is object that can manage it. And, you know, and some integrate integrate the thesis in the antithesis. So coming back to the cognitive science model. Consciousness is very narrow we need to, you know, make sure it’s unloaded to have open awareness and wake up in the midst of ordinary life. How do you do that. What is it about, you know, placing attention on sensations of the breath, or sensations of touching the table, or. Or placing attention on attention, or feeling your body, you know, as a, as a whole as, as, you know, tends to work particularly when you’re around, you know, in martial arts or whatever. So, what is it about that that. What is it about that that stills the thinking mind that clears the narrow bandwidth of consciousness and enables you to wake up. And arguably it’s the. That you. What what you’re basically doing building this muscle. It’s giving attention to something that doesn’t evoke thoughts. It’s got to be. You give bare attention to things so I saw a video as you were describing that that it’s, you know, when you’re observing monkey mind or your emotions or whatever. You, you’re not giving attention to the content. You’re not giving attention to just the fact and naming it helps that giving bare attention. So what actually is going on in cognitive science terms, arguably. You’re giving bare attention you’re giving attention to things as object. You’re not embedded in them. You’re not. You’re not embedded in the thinking. You’re saying the thinking from the outside. And again, this is, it’s critical to understand that in order to see how you can scaffold this higher level of management. That that can manage the four P’s. So, in your terminology in terms of the salience landscape. So that it no longer is formed by and constrained by your the predispositions and salience. From your evolution, socialization, and culturalization, and enables you to revise your, say, choose your likes and dislikes. So that it is now aligned with the demands of the future evolution. I see that. Yeah, that sounds very similar to one of the cardinal virtues softerson, where you’re, you go, you’re, you’re no longer doing crack to you, you’re no longer sort of regulating yourself instead. Things are cleared out and you’re constantly tempted by the good, rather than being trying to overcome your past like you open up into this. You’re constantly being, like I said, drawn towards the good drawn to rather than constantly being tempted by what is distracting or self destructive or self deceptive. It sounds like you’re proposing something that’s very analogous. Transparent to these predispositions, these emotional impulses. Yeah. So you said the first time rather than just mouthing the platitude, turn the other cheek. You actually can turn the other cheek. Yes. Yes. But by being transparent to it, by not occupying and contracting down. Yes. No longer contracts down your consciousness. The pain flows through it. And, yeah, I imagine it’s a terrible image but my image of, you know, the point you want to reach up with, reach out, when you change when you, you know, you manage your intentionally. And it’s from an evolutionary perspective of the, of your silence landscape. The image is to me is the, the border smart, you know, it sets himself on fire outside the American industry. And he wouldn’t be able to sell all the time. He wasn’t repressing. No, it would have been pure. Therefore didn’t trigger. Yeah, the, the tension, the screaming. Yeah, that’s a very profound state. Well, john this has been excellent, as the previous to have been. We got a lot deeper into your thinking today, and I was intentionally trying to give you lots of space to talk. So that we could get a deeper sense and there were some really cool. This, in particular this distinction between flow and the open state or hot flow and cool flow. I think that that’s really really interesting and really thought provoking, and that that open state the cool flow can enable us to move to the, the kind of perspective and cognitive capacity we need in order to orient properly towards the future I think that’s a very profound proposal, but I like to give people that are on my show. I’m thanking you but I like to give people on my show and you know this the sort of last word you know it doesn’t have to be summative or cumulative just the last thing you want to leave the viewers with. You know, just, just to be provocative again, which is in my type. I talked about portability and and support ability has to be portable with the individual. And that’s one of the limitations of this collective processes. Also, the, the collective presence in processes. You can’t take around with you the center. So to be awake in the midst of ordinary life. You know, for me in my, my work, you know, to be awake during meetings. And discussions away, and so on. Then I have to be able to enter that state on my own. It’s been fantastic as always has been an absolute pleasure stalking you. Thank you very much john.