https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=s_BiFxGeSMo
Alright, today I thought I’d talk about a little pet peeve of mine. You hear a lot of people use the word meta, and I think it’s almost entirely inappropriate in almost every case it’s used. I hear a lot of equivocation, I hear a lot of weirdness around the word, and I think largely it’s just an attempt for people to look smart when they are not. So this word meta gets thrown around a lot, especially in the philosophical circles where people just say, oh, let’s go meta on this, or let’s look at the meta problem, or the meta crisis, or the meta meaning, or whatever. And the way that most people are using this word is to mean we’re going to add a layer of abstraction. We’re going to go one layer up from our current analysis into a new analysis. And the reason why people do that, it seems, is to solve a problem. So we’ve got a problem, we’ll say, well, there’s all these crises, and there’s more than one And because we don’t want to solve five crises, we’re going to go meta and postulate that there’s a meta crisis. And when we do that, we can just solve the meta crises and all these other five crises will get solved. Now I’m not saying that that’s wrong in all cases, but in most cases it’s wrong. They’re just sort of saying that that is possible, that that is a possible configuration, and that there’s a way to do that. Now there may be a way to do that, but the problem is when you add an abstraction layer to anything, and you can map this out in mathematics, this is a common thing that’s done in math, you add a dimensional variable that would be going meta in math, is adding a dimensional variable. So instead of working with x and y, you’re now working with the z-axis. So you’ve got x and y, and now you add z. There’s a bunch of problems you can fix by doing that. Absolutely. And they can’t be fixed any other way. I agree. Unfortunately, you add a bunch of unknown problems in the process. And so now you may think you’re solving for a problem in the x, y, but you’re actually creating a bunch of problems elsewhere in the x, y plane that you didn’t see because now you’re operating in the z plane. This actually happens all the time. They go, oh, well, the solution to the meta crisis is to put us all in conversation with one another. And it’s like, well, there’s lots of problems with that, but let’s just deal with the meta problem. The meta problem is even if you can get people to agree on what they’re talking about, and you probably can’t, and you can agree to get them to agree on the interpretation of what they’re talking about, which again, you probably can’t once you get large enough numbers, that’s not going to work, you still need to get them to agree on a solution and the interpretation of that solution and the implementation of that solution. So this is just one of these things where we sort of, well, conversation will solve the world sort of thing. And of course, there’s a lot of pieces there. It doesn’t work because there’s a lot of pieces. And at each one of those pieces, you’re adding variation because that’s how the world seems to unfold. And so you run into problems. And when you’re adding a dimensional variable, when you’re going meta or adding a layer of abstraction to a problem, you run the risk of creating more problems than you started with pretty easily. And you see this all the time. Now, where do I think the use of this comes from? Well, I think it comes from the idea that Plato wrote some term called the metaphysics. Oh, not Plato, sorry, Aristotle. There is no work labeled by Aristotle as metaphysics. Meta means after. It means after the physics. And so you can imagine what emerges from physics, right? Well, does it make sense? So where did metaphysics come from? Well, it turns out that metaphysics is derived from a publisher saying, oh, here’s the work of Aristotle’s physics and I want to add to it. And here’s some other papers that are unrelated. I’ll just put them together and call them the metaphysics because I’m publishing it after I published the physics. Makes perfect sense. He didn’t do anything wrong, right? But people sort of took it literally, oh, this is Aristotle’s metaphysics, like his project of what comes after physics. Now, first of all, it’s not clear that this is true. All of this work may have been done before the physics, for example, which means the moniker metaphysics is inaccurate from the perspective of Aristotle. So that’s problem number one. The best sort of solution to this that I’ve been told is, well, no, no, no, no, there’s a bunch of stuff that comes before the physics. And that’s actually what Aristotle’s metaphysics is all about. To which I say, OK, maybe, but you’re using the word after. So I don’t think so. Like, I think there’s a mismatch here. And I believe that what underpins the metaphysics or underpins the physics even is religion. It’s probably their religious beliefs because all the Greeks were religious. As near as anybody can tell, religion’s all over their texts. You know, the myths are there and they can deny the myths or say myths are bad or whatever. But even the people who say that we’re still worshipping the gods in some form, right? We’re talking about the gods and in some cases coming to the conclusion that maybe there should only be one god. All right. That’s sort of the more neoplatonic tradition, right? Where there’s just the one. But it’s still, you know, it’s still very religious in its aspect. So when I hear people using the term metaphysics in particular, what I hear them talking about after they invoke metaphysics is religion. That’s what I hear them talking about. Now you may hear something else. That’s fine. These are just, you know, my observations and the way I’m interpreting things. And that may not match the way you’re interpreting things. That was the problem I just talked about. And that’s OK, right? I’m not I’m not trying to convince you of anything. I’m just trying to give you frameworks. Maybe they’re helpful. Maybe they’re not. When people invoke metaphysics, they’re really talking about, you know, what the physics or physics or science is embedded in. And I think and I think Immanuel Kant also thought, although he challenged where this line should be, that everything’s embedded in religion, including philosophy. And what his argument was, was, well, maybe that maybe maybe philosophy doesn’t have to be the handmaiden of religion. Well, but but maybe maybe it does. All right. And so it doesn’t seem able to get out of this. I know Jordan Peterson and Jonathan Peugeot and John Brevecky had a little chat. And Jordan Peterson said in three different ways, science is embedded in a narrative, right, which I think is true. I think you can observe that people are after something with science and the thing they’re after is best defined by a narrative. I know John Brevecky has a problem with this. Jonathan Peugeot picked up on it, although not in the conversation, oddly, but afterwards. And so when when they’re talking about metaphysics, right, coming before the physics, which again is an odd thing, I think that, you know, they’re on to something. But the something they’re on to is religion, because whenever anybody invokes metaphysics, what’s your metaphysics? What they really mean? What are your beliefs about the world? Right. And and underneath the what are your beliefs about the world question is really a question of faith, ultimately. And if you listen carefully, I think you can hear that you can hear the fact that what they’re actually talking about with metaphysics is a question of belief and faith and not a question of science or pre science or reality or that which undergirds reality as such. But more, what are the things that cause you to engage with reality? And I would call that that religion, right? That’s that’s that for me, that’s what they’re actually discussing. And I know a lot of people get upset about that. And that’s fine. And look, the people invoke metaphysics all the time is what is your metaphysics? Right. Like what do you know, which is what is the underlying worldview that you hold? Yeah, fair enough. But I would call that a religion in all cases. I don’t think there’s any exceptions to that. We’re all happy to be proven wrong. But, you know, bring the goods. I’m happy to engage. So people use because they got used to using metaphysics and, oh, there’s something after the physics that emerges from it, by the way. And yet when they use metaphysics, they’re talking about something that came before. Right. Like what what is your physics girded in? Right. So they’re playing this game where they’re talking about emanation as though it’s an emergence at the same time. And I think that’s a deep mistake, by the way. I think, yeah, they’re definitely doing that. There’s an equivocation there for sure. And so when people invoke meta, because because of the metaphysics, they’re just talking about abstraction. What’s the layer of abstraction that you’re talking about? Or let me add a layer of abstraction so that I can give you a new perspective. And fair enough. Every once in a while, somebody uses that word appropriately. And interesting, I had a conversation on Clubhouse with a friend of mine, and he said, well, I don’t want to say meta. And then he launched into this whole explanation of why he didn’t want to invoke meta. And I had to applaud him for that. I said, there’s a Nobel Prize for that. I want to give it to you because most people will just get lazy and say, I want to go all meta on this. It’s like, well, I don’t know what that means, honestly, because, like I said, I know how people use it, but I only know after they use it. I don’t know by I’m going to go meta on this problem or let’s talk about the meta crisis or the meta meaning crisis or the meta this or the meta that. I never know what they’re talking about until after they’ve described it, because they’re just invoking the word meta as a placeholder for some kind of abstraction. But when they invoke it for a placeholder, for a perspective, and that perspective turns out to be pragmatically useful because I’m a pragmatist. So I am careful with my abstractions, or at least as careful as I can be. Then it’s very useful. But that is so blindingly rare that I wouldn’t rely on it. Right. So in other words, if you took an even bet on usage of meta being bad or good, if you just bet bad every time you’d make so much money, you could retire. And highly recommend if you can get away with it. So I just wanted to, you know, go through that. I think it’s misused. I think it’s abused. I think that people are, are, are using it to sound smart instead of using it in a way that facilitates good communication. Right. I think that when they’re sort of using this magical invocation of meta, or at least I think they’re trying to do magic when they do it, they are trying to get around resolving a hard problem and instead substituting what they consider to be an easier problem for it. And look, fair enough. Like sometimes that’s necessary, but it’s extremely rare that that is the right thing to do. And, you know, a lot of people will use it as a weapon. They’ll say, I want to go all meta on you or on this, or let me, let me talk about the meta frame that you’re ignoring. Right. These are all very suspicious ways of speaking, uh, because of the framing of what you’re saying and the invocation of this word. Right. And look, there’s a place for a time and a place for abstraction. So I’m all for abstraction. And I, there’s an easy way to avoid this, right? Just say abstraction when you mean abstraction, right? Or say, I want to look at this from a higher level, right? Or something else. Just don’t use the word meta. You don’t really need it. And, uh, and that’s why I don’t like it. Cause like, it really seems to me to be like a completely unnecessary term that we just don’t need to use. Uh, and again, they’re usually talking about something that came before. I’m talking about a formal cause, right? But they’re invoking meta, which means after, right? And so they’re speaking about emergence. Right. Uh, but maybe they should be speaking about emanation, which is the thing that sort of maybe not comes after, or maybe not is the abstraction, but causes the abstraction, right? So that would be, you know, back to Aristotle’s final cause. And, uh, you know, one of my missions in life is now going to be to resurrect Aristotle’s final cause because nobody talks about it. And I would say that’s, that’s the same as avoiding the question of emanation as such, uh, cause I think that’s very much what, what’s wrapped up with Aristotle’s final cause. Uh, so that’s why one of the reasons why I don’t like meta. It gets in the way of and corrupts sort of the Aristotelian model, uh, that, that I do, I do think is important and, and should be well cared for, uh, cause Aristotle seems to, uh, along with Plato to have been ahead of all of us on a lot of things and I want to preserve that or rather than destroy it. Uh, so that’s my thoughts on meta. I hope you found them helpful and, uh, I want you to know that, uh, you know, usually at the end of my videos, I thank you for your time and attention, which I really do value and I don’t mean to do that by going all meta on you, uh, right? Because I think that the active participation in my videos by watching them, commenting them on them, liking them, subscribing to my channel, you know, whatever, uh, is an act in line with me making the videos. And so when I’m thanking you for your time and attention, uh, I’m doing that sincerely because I appreciate your involvement, your participation with my channel. Thank you very much.