https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=62aQeoyC7oo
What happens when your computer crashes? Well, you know, usually you utter some sort of curse. And it’s interesting that you do that because the circuit that you use to curse with is the same circuit that monkeys use to detect eagles or leopards or snakes. And so, when there’s a bunch of monkeys together, you know, they’re not all preyed on by eagles and leopards and snakes, but you know, there’s usually a predator in that category for every single monkey population, and so when the monkeys are watching, they have an emotional utterance that the most nervous monkey might utter first, that basically says, you know, hide from the eagle, get out on a thin branch so the cougar can’t eat you, and look the hell out for the snake. But there’s a circuit that’s linked to emotions that produces an instinctive utterance that represents that category. And that’s the same circuit that you use when you curse. And it’s not the same circuit that you use for normal language, and we know that because that circuit is activated in people who have Tourette’s Syndrome, because they preferentially swear. You think, well, why in the world would you have a neurological condition that makes you preferentially curse? Well, that’s the reason. You don’t just have one linguistic circuit. You have one for, oh my god, there’s a predator. And that’s the one that will get activated when something happens like your computer crashing. Because, you know, you’re an evolved creature, and so those old circuits that were there, say, 30 million years ago, to deal with exceptions, are the same circuits you’re using now to deal with your computer. Why else would you want to hit it? Right? Because that’s what you want to give it a whack. It’s like, it doesn’t behave whack. Aggression right away. Well, that’s some clue as to the categorized category system that you’re automatically using to encapsulate the event. Okay, so fine. What do you do when your computer crashes? Well, first you curse, and then you do the stupid things that idiot primates do when they’re trying to deal with something that’s way too complex, and maybe you turn it on and off, right? And that doesn’t work. It didn’t work. And so then I thought, well, maybe the power bar went, so I checked the power bar, and it… I turned it on and off, and nothing happened, and so I brought a light behind the computer, the light wouldn’t go on. So I thought, aha! I must have blown a fuse. So I went to the fuse box and took a look, but the fuses were fine, and so I thought, oh, the power’s gone out. So then I went outside, and the power was out. None of the streetlights were working, the power was out everywhere. And it was seriously out, because this was the time that the, almost the entire Northeast power grid in Quebec collapsed, and the reason it collapsed is because there was a solar flare that happens reasonably often, and the solar flare produced a huge electromagnetic pulse, because it’s basically, you know, like a billion, million hydrogen bombs going off at the same time, 93 million miles away, produces this tremendous electromagnetic pulse, passes through the Earth’s atmosphere, produces a spike in current in the main power lines, and blows the whole system. And so, just so you know, an event like that happens about every 150 years, and if we had one now, it would take out all of our electronics, like one of the big ones, there was a big one back in the late 1800s. Everything, satellites, computers, cars, everything, gone. And so that’s a big problem, and no one knows what to do about it, one missed us by about nine minutes, I think two years ago. So that’s something else to worry about, if you’re inclined to worry about those sorts of things. Okay, so what did I conclude from that? Well, the function of my computer was dependent on the stability of the sun. It’s not the first thing you check out when your computer crashes, right? You don’t run out and go, hey, well, yeah, the sun’s still there, no problem, I can cross that off the list. But to me, it’s an extraordinarily interesting example of the invisible interdependence of things, you know, and our tendency to fragment things. What we seem to do is to look at things at the simplest level of analysis that actually functions. So, for example, when you’re interacting with your computer, you’re not interacting with your computer at all, really. You’re interacting with the keyboard, sort of one key at a time, and you’re interacting with the symbols on the screen, but as long as the computer is working, you don’t care about it at all, you don’t give it a second thought, and you certainly don’t care about the fact that it’s dependent on, well, the electrical power, for example, and the electrical power is dependent on, you know, I don’t know, how many men are out there right now, or were out there last night when it was freezing rain, fixing power lines and freezing to death while they’re doing it, so that your stupid computer doesn’t malfunction while you’re watching cat videos, you know, I mean, there’s this incredibly dynamic living system that’s social and economic and political, that has to remain dead stable in order for us to have access to functional and, like, pure, non-fluctuating electricity 100% of the time. Because you also don’t think, well, the stability of your computer is dependent on the stability of the political system, but, of course, it is, because if the political system mucks up and the economic system goes, then people don’t go out and work to fix things, and things are breaking all the time, that’s their normal state, is broken, not working, and so, and that’s all, in some sense, folded up, not only inside your computer, but actually inside your tiny conceptions of the computer while you’re using it, and you only get a glimpse of what the computer is really like when it doesn’t work. Then it’s when it becomes a complex object, right, as long as it’s working, then your stupid perceptions are perfectly fine to get the job done, and that’s another indication that what you’re using your perceptions for is to get the job done, and how you specify exactly the level of resolution that you should be operating at, I haven’t sorted that out, but it’s something like you default to the simplest level that moves you to the next step, you know, so for example, and generally that is what you should do, if you’re having an argument with someone that you have a long-term relationship with, you can start by arguing about what the little argument is about, or you can immediately cascade into whether or not you should have a relationship with this person at all, or even into whether or not you should even bother with relationships, which is, you know, every time there’s an argument, that question is a reasonable question to have emerge, or at least it’s in the realm of potential reasonable questions, but it doesn’t seem useful to jump to the most catastrophic possible explanation every time some minor thing goes wrong, that’s what happens to people who have an anxiety disorder, and that’s what happens to people who are depressed, right, they can’t bind the anomaly, and so what happens is it tends to propagate up the entire system until it takes out their highest order conceptualizations, you know, so if you’re seriously depressed, maybe you’ll watch a news article about something stupid and you’ll think, Jesus, why should I even be alive? You know, and I’m dead serious about that, if you score like 60 on the Beck Depression Inventory, which puts you way the hell up in the depressed range, anything that happens to you that’s negative will trigger suicidal thoughts, roughly speaking, and sometimes even positive things will do it, because there are very few positive things that happen that don’t carry with them some threat of change or transformation, so, you know, one mystery, it’s a big mystery, is why don’t you fall into a catastrophic depression every time something little goes wrong, because it’s not, that level of analysis is not self-evident, and you see this with people who are high in neuroticism too, you know, their trivial fluctuations at their workplace or in their relationships or in their health will produce a disproportionate negative emotional response, but it’s part of the range of normal emotional responses, some people are very, very high in neuroticism, so everything upsets them, some people are very low, and the reason that whole range exists is because sometimes you should get upset when some little thing happens to you, because it’s an indication that the whole damn environment has got dangerous on you, and sometimes you should just brush it off, because, you know, its net consequence is low, but how do you calculate that? Very, very difficult.