Hello, everyone a while back. And that would be November of twenty Twenty-One. I had the distinct pleasure of having a discussion with dr. Richard Dawkins, who apart from being an esteemed evolutionary biologist in theorist, is also one of the world's foremost atheists. We danced back and forth for quite a while on Gmail before agreeing to meet and our meeting I think was really productive. So I have a recording of it audio only as was the agreement and it starts
Rather abruptly as we entered right into a discussion at ends abruptly, in a sense too, because we ran out of our time without running out of topics. And so I walked over to Aha as it turned out a chapel on the Oxford campus and that wasn't the place that doctor Dawkins wanted to go with me. So that's where it ended in any case. We had a wide-ranging conversation. I found him charming and erudite and intelligent and a man of Good Will and I really enjoyed the conversation. So I hope you enjoy it too.
And I hope that there's more of it because we have a lot more to talk about, I feel that way and I think perhaps he did by the end of our conversation. So Joy.
Almost 100% of the conversations that I have with people on the street are very, very positive. I would say it's 1 in 5000 that isn't. Yes, but but it only takes one. Yes, and there's no shortage of. Yeah,
well trouble. What's the motivation of the of the few who are hostile?
That's a good question, isn't it? Because you could think about that as sort of a general metaphysical question, you know.
What's the motivation of the few who are truly hostile? I think often they have me confused with a figment of their
imagination, you know,
so when I you you sent me one of your papers on biological sex, well, stating what you stated in that paper is already enough in the current world to make you very unpopular with a certain class of people. Regardless of why you think what you think or
What your reasons are when I when all this first exploded around me. I had released a couple of YouTube videos. Three of them. I think D crying.
a bill c16 that was passed by the Canadian Parliament, which mandated pronoun use
and,
For me, it had nothing to do with the transgender issue or maybe it did peripherally as a political issue, you know, and maybe as a psychological issue because the transgender issues, very complicated if you're a psychopath ologist, but for me, it was just compelled speech. Like, I don't care what your reason is. I am not saying the words. I am legally obligated to say. And the case I made on YouTube was
Well, first, the American Supreme Court had made compelled, voluntary speech, they declared it unconstitutional in 1942 and second. There was never a common law jurisdiction in the entire world that ever compelled speech for any
reason. He's kind of the only country that does that does
this.
That's a good question.
I don't know. I know of any of the United States doesn't. Yes, we've also had this encounter this proliferation of these so-called human rights commission's which are like a quasi-judicial Inquisition system that have been taken over completely by the woke types. And so there was a restaurant in Vancouver quite recently where the man who owned it. Although he seemed to have done backflips to satisfy. This angry, hypothetically transgender individual. He had employed, he was fine.
Something like thirty five thousand dollars in forced to take this, you know, these mandatory sensitivity training, programs, missing, kind of that's encounter. You have had coover's major city on the west coast. And so, you know, I was assured when I voiced my opposition and I said, well, this is illegal and say well nothing will happen if you don't comply and I thought what the hell with
that? But what do you mean nothing will happen? It's illegal.
Yes, quite no, nothing will. So how could how and how can you possibly say? Nothing will happen? But that wasn't the point for me.
Either. Well, I made these videos at the same time. I made a video because the University of Toronto was implementing mandatory, racial, sensitivity training and I know the literature pertaining to the implicit association test. Let's say which is the test that all these half-wit HR types. Used to diagnose your implicit bias, and then they want to train you with explicit training techniques to reduce your bias, which can't work.
If their theory is correct because it takes mask practice to change or eliminate implicit bias. And then there's no evidence whatsoever that the training programs work, and some evidence that they're actually counterproductive. And the implicit association test, which is essentially used as a diagnostic instrument has neither. The predictive validity nor the test-retest reliability to be used in an ethical manner as a diagnostic test, which I also said in these videos.
And so that caused a lot of trouble and I didn't really expect it. You know, I mean, well, why should you is
perfectly reasonable? I just want to say, I admire your courage in speaking out about this because a huge number of people, including me, totally agree with you and many. Many of them are just too frightened to say so because they have been intimidated. There's there's massive intimidation going on, especially in the academic world. Yeah, and you're one of the few people whose
Listed up to this intimidation and I wish to Salute You Well, thank for that. It's very much appreciated.
Well, I understand.
because I've studied it a lot, why people are intimidated, you know, I've talked to conservative politicians all over Canada and the United States, although I also talked to particularly in the state's moderate Democrat types A lot, but the conservatives,
especially in Canada. They're absolutely terrified that if they make any conservative pronouncements, that they'll be singled out and mobbed and it's unbelievably unpleasant. I mean, not to mention potentially dangerous. I mean, I was careful in what I did see. I worked as a clinician for 20 years and I help people negotiate unbelievably stressful situations, you know where their careers were on.
Line where their families were on the line, their sanity was on the line. And I got very good at figuring out how to step through such minefields, you know, strategically and carefully and so, by the time I said something,
I had three sources of independent income. So I had to clinical practice and I had a company that was generating, a certain amount of money, and I have my University position. And so, I didn't think that, you know, I was fairly well insulated. I thought,
Because when I said I wouldn't do this, I met there is no bloody way. You're going to make me do this, no matter what you do, and I thought that through all the way to the bottom, you know, could lose my job. Yeah, can live with that. Could lose my clinical practice. Yeah, I could live with that. What about jail? Well, probably won't come to that, but
Put me in jail and see what happens. And so I meant, no and I meant no more than they meant. Yes, and that's part of the reason it caused such a stir, I would say so. But many of the clients I dealt with, you know, they'd be under pressure to conform it illogically in the workplace and be pressured badly. And, you know, they had families to support mortgages to pay and it was
Wouldn't say easier for them. Exactly to go along, you know, step by step or even micro step by micro step, then to stand up and risk being taken out. And so, if I was my clinical practice, if someone needed to stand up in the workplace, to a bullying boss, a or to an ideologue vehicle, kadriye, which was very frequently, the case in the corporate world. We'd get their CV or resume in order and make sure it was polished.
Up. And if they had any educational faults that needed to be rectified, to make them marketable, we'd address that. And then they deploy for different jobs and they go in a few interviews. So they were ready. And then, then they could go in and we did that often to when I was helping people negotiate for a raise. It's like yourself, ready, you know, so you can go in there and tell your boss while your valuable or you can go in there and tell your boss. Why? They better get the hell off your case? Or they're either lose your, there's going to be trouble, but man, you have to prepare for that.
And so you see in the Academia and in the corporate workplace, and in the entertainment industry, now, which is absolutely corrupted by this sort of thing, 300,000 micro retreats.
And here we are.
So what's a micro retreat?
Okay,
so I'm sitting in a faculty meeting at the University of Toronto.
And the administration announces that they're going to increase the size of our 4th year, seminars by factor of 2.
We don't have enough faculty. We actually don't have enough money to hire more faculty. Well, that's because you spent all the money on administrators over the last 20 years. And here's the data that pertain to that, but that's beside the point. So, would it be okay if you just, you know, had twice as many people in your fourth year seminar. Well, that's a crowning seminar for the students and a seminar with 40 people in it isn't a seminar. It's another class. Yeah, and so I tell my faculty confreres. Why don't you just
I know like, no, we're not doing this. Well, we won't get what we want. Well, you may have noticed that when you've been dealing with the administration for the last 20 years, they make all sorts of plans and often your consulted and then none of the plans come to fruition. And then they Implement something that has nothing to do with you want with what you want, all the time and all of, you know that because it's happened to you. Yeah. Well, you know, we have to go along with them.
Okay.
Well, so then what happened? You know, what happened? I don't know if it happened here it at Oxford but in North American universities.
The administrative load Like A Parasite load. And I think the biological metaphor is exactly out by the way, exploded over the last 40 years, universities of eaten up, 70 cents of every dollar, that the American Federal Government pumped into student aid. It's almost all gone into the hands of Administrators. They faculty numbers. Haven't grown in a commensurate manner with the student numbers. And so the administration took over well. And then, because they were
Of the same sort of people that the faculty were, who did all these micro Retreats, when the diversity equity and inclusivity, people started to invade the administration. They just did the same thing. And so here we are.
Well, I think we agree about this, so we don't get on to whatever size you want to talk about
it. Yes. Yes. Yes. Well, I'd like to talk to you about your paper. The one you sent me about the organism as a
model. Yes.
Okay. Yeah.
If you don't mind because I'd like to, I guess what I was curious about because our I didn't find anything in that paper that I disagreed with that all I thought. Yeah, that's and I know a little bit about the engineering literature that suggests that and even the computation literature that suggests that in some sense, an organism that operates within the world has to be a model of that way. Yes, in order for it to be in order for it to be able to operate in the world. Yes, and you detailed out all sorts of real world examples. Including
Well, let's say stick insects where you know, not only are they a model of the world, but they look just like the world is and animals in Winter versus Summer changing their coats and birds. Of course, you said you could drive the structure of the atmosphere and probably the Earth grab gravitational field and probably the strength of the gravitational field by a sufficiently
detailed analysis of the bird. They could I hadn't thought of that one. That's very
good. Yeah. Well you did mention you did mention the the the are aspect of birds anyways, but but I
I'm sure you could, I'm sure
you'll like it better like that. That's a, that's a. Yes. Well good. I'm glad you like that. It's a book. I'm now working on called the genetic Book of the Dead, which is all about the idea that, that the animal is a model of not the present, for the past. Yeah, their ancestral worlds. Yes, because the animals genes have been filtered through a long series of environments. So, the genome is a palimpsest.
of ancient environments, more recent more recent more recent right there in that in very recent, including
Extremely recent. And then we got out of the genome and and the nervous system becomes part of the palimpsest of recent
experience, right? So you could say that. So at correct me, correct me if I ever put words in your mouth because I want to get what you think of. Yes, exactly. Right. The genetic code is a repository of information that generates, every perhaps ever more complex, or ever more
fine-grained and not to say that, all I wanted to say, is that is that the
Genetic code is a deep in principle decodable description of ancient. You've ancient environments
right where it's okay. Fair enough. So the question then I suppose would be
at what level of resolution, right? Yes. So there's this idea. I think I mentioned in my talk the other day. I really like this idea. And when I talk about religious Matters, by the way, I try to speak metaphorically and psychologically, and To Tread on ground. That might be theological.
Only when that's absolutely necessary and never, if I can possibly manage it. So, I like to think about things in psychological and, and biological terms and physical terms for that matter wherever possible. It keeps things clearer and simpler. And so, but there is this idea in relationship to the idea of the Incarnation. That Christ could embody God through a process of kenosis and and the Scholastic theoreticians.
Made this case because they were trying to account for how the entire Cosmos, you might say, could fit in one body. And the idea was well, there was an emptying of God. And when I was reading that in relationship to heuristic processing, and also to the idea of of low resolution representations in computational, simulation and in relationship to this idea that an animal has to be the model of the world, I thought. Well,
You kind of you want to also be an unbiased model of the world, right? So if you make a thumbnail, this is a good way of thinking about it. I think a computer thumbnail is a good model of essentially, a two-dimensional slice of the world. Right? So it's a low-resolution image and if it's a
The interesting thing about a low-resolution image is that it's an unbiased sample of the color space of the of the image, right? It's not it doesn't have an ideological bent part of the reason. It's an accurate representation is and this has to do with that idea of run redundancy that you developed in your paper. So
if I took a picture of that wall, which is basically white, the picture is going to be white. It's not going to be as varied in its whiteness as the actual wall. But it's going to be an unbiased random essentially random sample of the whiteness of that wall. And so it can stand in for it in a manner that's unbiased. And a lot of I think our internal representations are, I like to use the terminology low resolution because it's it implies this it is also associated in some sense with the idea of a compression.
Algorithm in computation because what a compression algorithm does is reduces redundancy, hell and all that stored.
as information is the non redundant information and you can usually take something quite complex and if it has regularities in it, as you pointed out in the paper, then you can
you can abstract the regularities or and just represent them and it's interesting. It's really interesting actually because with some compression algorithms some get rid of data, but some
And they don't compress quite as tightly, some allow you to recreate the entire original from the compression because there is genuine redundancy in the, in the external world. So, the kenosis idea, part of the reason I'm interested in this and I was extremely interested in the fact that when we first had our e-mails back and forth before we decided to meet
I suggested that we meet and that I would like that and you
sent me an email
and you said I suspect you want to talk about this?
And I thought I was remarkable to me that you pick that particular paragraph because that was exactly why I wanted to talk to you. And it was I think probably the most clearly I'd ever stated that particular idea. And so, that was quite, I've forgotten what that was. Well, it has to do with what we're talking about to some degree. The question is, if the human being is a model of the environment, what exactly is being modeled. So, because he might
But what exactly is the environment?
And so and that's where I think we could have a very fruitful exchange of views. Now, that the stick insect has, obviously been shaped to have a massive degree by natural selection because it looks like a stick but I'm very curious about the role of sexual selection.
Because that makes things weirdly complicated especially among human beings because first of all, sexual selection can result in runaway processes, like I think I might have read this in your book, The Irish elk story. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So, so and some people have suggested. Maybe it was you as I read your books. It was a long time ago, but you know, they stuck.
Many people have suggested that at least one of the mechanisms that drove our rapid. Cortical Evolution was stringent, sexual selection, primarily applied by females to males.
I think that might be Jeffrey Miller who
suggested that, okay. And so, what do you what if sexual selection is one of the processes that really drove our
Rapid Divergence away from our chimpanzee. Human shared relative.
Then part of what we modeled as a consequence of that. Sexual selection is whatever women wanted. And so then the question is what exactly is that? That's driving human female, sexual selection, and that's really what I wanted to talk to you about because that would be incorporated in us as a model. You know, if women are looking for a kind of Ideal. Let's say in a mate.
Then as they exercise, their High pergamus Choice, the male is going to come to ever more closely, approximate that ideal whatever it is. And that's going to be an implicit ideal because none of that is conscious.
Obviously. Yes. It seems to me. You keep wandering from one subject to another without sticking to do one at a time. I mean, we came, we went to kenosis and I just kind of wonder what that's got to do with anything and
then it's probably some difference.
Are thinking style, you know, I think. Well, one of the
Would you say you're more interested in ideas or
Aesthetics ideas? Okay,
that's what I would have guessed. Yes. I'm probably more somewhat more interested in Aesthetics. Although it's closed. And part of the way that would be reflected in. Our thinking Styles is that I would think in a more in a style that has a more loose Association will
structure. That's right. I mean, yeah, let me take one example of something that I seen of yours, which is not done you with sexual selection.
Um, you you
once showed in a lecture, a picture of snakes spiraling around each other's necks. Yes, and, and you said something like, I think positively the, you know, that that is the representation of DNA.
Yes, we could. Let's leave that one. But I promise, I promise I will return to that. Well, let there's a rough time because that seems to be to go
to the heart of what may be a difference between us this aesthetic. I mean, that, that idea, that that in some sense represents DNA seems to be
To be complete
nonsense. Okay. I will, I will absolutely address
that. Okay, God.
Well, this is something I did want to talk to you about. Okay, because take us rather far down the rabbit hole though. I would be, I would say. Okay.
Well, I think it may be fundamental to our difference.
That's fine. That's fine. I'm more than happy to address it and people have called me out on that a lot. You know, and I'm good. I actually threw that in lecture because I was thinking in a Loosely associative way, about some very complicated things and I was struck by this, the
So recurrence of the the double helix pattern in cultural representations all over the place. You love symbols when you yes, Esther symbols. Yes,
um, you're almost drunk on symbols and and could say that I think you've got to stop and say what does it actually mean to say absolutely and and the the snakes trying is one thing there and there are others but that would be a very good one to try to nail down.
Yeah. Well, you know part of the we could talk about
Technically for a moment, you know, because I think it is a difference in thinking style. And I think one of the reasons that your writing is, so appealing to people including me, is that your language is very precise. It's very obvious. What you mean when you say a given word, you know, and some of the psychologists that I've really admired, like, Jeffrey gray, who wrote a great book on the neuropsychology of anxiety it. Like if you're interested in the idea of modeling that that's I think that's the most
Profound Neuroscience text that's ever been written. Haven't read that. I
confess. I Used to Know Jeffrey gray, but I haven't read it.
It's it's a great book. Yes, and it integrates cybernetic Theory and animal experimental work and neurophysiology and the function of emotion. Like it's a really good book and it does it is centrally concerned with the idea of modeling because good because gray worked see in your paper and I'll get to the DNA thing. I promise. Okay, in your paper, you talk about the response of a
A single cell to the repeated to a repeated, identical stimulus show. Okay, sokolov who is one of the great Russian neuropsychologists identified, the orienting reflex as the manifestation of the habituation, the habituation phenomenon at the highest level of nervous system organization. So for example, if I put headphones on you and then I hook you to a galvanometer.
And I play say, I play a middle C at exactly the same volume, one second apart 40 times. Okay. So what will happen is, when you first Hear It, They'll be a change in skin response. And then the second time you hear it a slightly smaller change until it will habituate completely zero response. But then, if you change the volume, or the pitch or the space between the tones, or interestingly enough.
If you skip a tone where the tone should have been and there's silence. Lovely, you get an order like great. Okay. Now, out of that the Russians hypothesized, that you build an internal model, which is exactly what you say in that paper and then your nervous system, see searches for deviations from the model.
And so, and then your Consciousness is oriented towards the deviation and it's oriented by a deep Instinct. Like, literally an instinct. So, for example, if you're walking down the road, you have a map of the environment, imagine that there's a loud clattering noise behind you. You'll stop. This is all involuntary. It's driven by extremely low level nervous system mechanism. So you Orient towards the place of maximum.
Maximal novelty. And then you do rapid visual exploration to try to rehabilitate. You ate yourself to the environment. And then if it's, you know, a tradesman's truck bumped, you map that onto regularities. You already know and you continued onward, but all of that is mediated by emotion so anxiety. So literally we wrote a paper on. This was one of the papers are most happy with that anxiety.
Files. The emergence of entropy.
That's what it does. So you can map anxiety, right? Down to like an right map, it right down to the, to the level of entropy. Yes. So so anyways gray. Also map, the emotions neuro pharmacologically in neurophysiological E, onto the orienting reflex, and then he identified the brain areas. So the hippocampus, the hippocampus is extremely metabolically active. It's extremely expensive to operate. Cycle physiologically. It's very susceptible to all
Vision deprivation of brain damage.
The hippocampus moves information from short-term attention to long-term memory and it's crucially involved in the analysis and inhibition of that orienting response. And you could also think too that this movement of orientation, in some sense. Your whole brain is set up to inhibit that. And so, so here's an interesting corollary of that. One of the things that psychedelics seem to do is to Des inhibit. You called it lat.
In addition, there's also a phenomenon called latent inhibition, which is the in admitting effect of the memory of the regularities on your current perception. And so when you look at the world mostly what you see is memory and that's being tracked in the visual system. So, you know, there are these visual Primitives like line detection. But if you look at the layers of the visual system and you look at the bottom layer where the retinal cells, first make contact with the visual cortex, there are more top-down inputs from the cortex.
Us into that low level then there are retinol inputs. So even at the level of initial detection, most of what you see is memory and that memory inhibits, the novelty response and the novelty response. This is part of the reason I got interested in mystical experience. The novelty response is twofold. It's not just anxiety.
It's also exploratory curiosity and that's because when there's something novel, well, you have to be careful because God only knows what it might be. Like, it might be the thing that kills you might be nothing. So, anxiety freezes you, but the hypothalamus, which is sits right on top of the spinal cord. And is the highest integrating center of the instinctual responses of the motor system? Its way pre cortical, it's divided into two parts.
And one part of it governs, the dopaminergic system that that mediates incentive reward. So all positive emotion, but more importantly, active exploration. So, what happens if you hit something, that's
Novel. In relationship to the Notions of preconceived. Regularities positive emotion is disinhibited. That's exploration and negative. Emotion is disinhibited, simple taneous lie, and there's a man named Rudolph. Otto who wrote a book called. I can't remember the name of the book, but
It's not varieties of religious experience because that James winning games. Anyways, he described the primordial Act of perception as numinous, mysterium tremendum, and it's a combination of positive and negative emotion, and I thought
that's that's pre latent inhibition perception.
Psychedelics disinhibited latent inhibition of perception. And that's why they produce a mystical experience by the mystical experience. I mean, there's three aspects to it. Let's say there's an overwhelming, positive, emotion, simmel, taneous LIE, there's overwhelming negative emotion. So and that's like an odd experience. And then there's the disinhibition of fantasies simultaneously, which is something like the attempt to map that. And so people find that will absolutely
Humming, but by definition, you know it. Yeah it is. It is overwhelming. Literally. Now you might say so I'm going to answer that snake question. That's what I'm trying to do. You know, I studied one symbol which is was the Scandinavian world tree symbol. And so the Scandinavians thought that there was a tree at the center of the cosmos, they called that yggdrasil and on the outside of the tree. There's a snake that eats its own tail.
Now the the the Amazonian jungle dwellers who discovered ayahuasca.
Have the same image. Exactly the same. It's a tree at the center of the cosmos with the snake that eats its own tail. Now, Ayahuasca is a very bizarre chemical and no one has any idea how the natives
synthesized it to Iowa. Ayahuasca is a combination of DMT, which is an extremely powerful hallucinogenic. That only lasts 10 minutes and mono a mean oxidase inhibitor.
Which makes the DMT experience last 8 hours, because monoamine, oxidase Inhibitors, stop. The breakdown of DMT, which is a mono. A mean.
The amazonians had to find these two plants that were widely separated geographically out of like hundreds of thousands of plants and they had to mix them together and they had to boil them properly for a certain amount of time to make Ayahuasca while they've been using Ayahuasca probably for like fifteen thousand years.
Now, the Scandinavians didn't use Ayahuasca, the ones who came up with the world tree Thousand Years.
For 15,000 years.
Yeah. In Amazon are
in the jungles. Well, they go out there about 15,000 years ago. Now maybe, you know, we don't know how long it took them to discover it. But, you know, in most of those relatively primordial and small tribal groups. The pattern is unbroken oral tradition, like, they're not transformative societies. They do pretty much what their ancestors
did, because it was, you have
Phenomenon, which we something in comes in Scandinavian and Amazonia. Yes. Do you have an explanation for that? Yes, and is, I would say the excitation archetypes now,
well, we won't get to that yet because like I said, and I'm sure you would appreciate this. We want to keep things as much on the ground as possible. Doesn't it? Yes. Okay. Well, so it's not unreasonable to note that a particular chemical.
Might have the same effect on widely distributed people, right? So, okay, so you'd expect constancy of response to a pharmacological agent rather than variance. Yes, and that's even true with the psychedelics and psilocybin. For example, most almost all the psychedelics have a very similar chemical structure. It's A peculiar ring structure, but but it's similar to LSD. Psych psilocybin DMT, the classic hallucinogens.
Psilocybin tends to produce a type of vision that has a fair bit of commonality across cultures and you can think about that as well. It's the psychophysiological effect of the drug. Now, it's weird because it has this emotional effect. This disinhibition of motion, can go two ways it because people get in Heavenly experiences. Say that's almost complete. Disinhibition of positive emotion, or they can have bad trips. That's hell, essentially that's complete, disinhibition of negative emotion. And
A lot of that seems to depend on the context within, which they have the experience. So, if there's a lot of negative things happening in that context, that can be magnified by the experience and things can go like horribly sideways not accounted for a lot of what happened badly in the Psychedelic explosion in the u.s. In the 60s and that was precipitated by the discovery of LSD and also,
It was a man of Mycologist who was a banker who went into Mexico and found a woman practicing Shaman, who used psilocybin mushrooms, and she agreed to let them try them. And that was one of the Soma. He wrote Soma very famous book on Amanita. Muscaria, the can't remember his name at the moment. Wausau. That was Warsaw. He was the first person he introduced psilocybin psilocybin mushrooms into Western culture and like we were
Ready for any of that and certainly ready for LSD. These are unbelievably powerful, pharmacologically LSD. I think is the most psychoactive chemical ever found by an order of magnitude. It just takes a few million molecules to produce an intense. Psychedelic experience. In any case,
Sorry, this is complicated.
The ancient Scandinavians.
Either, used Amanita muscaria, those, those red mushrooms with the white dots that you see in fairy tales all the time. Same color, as Santa Claus, and, and his flying reindeer and reindeer like Amanita muscaria mushrooms, by the way, so in sort of flies, even weirdly enough.
But I think the Scandinavians also used psilocybin. Now, the question is, what the hell is that tree, if you take it seriously? And she take it seriously. I mean, these images were used for a very, very long time. And people thought about the very hard.
So, imagine that. Well, their first of all, you could imagine that the tree has this
resonance
as a sacred item partly, because we've had a relationship with trees for maybe 60 million years are, you know, we our ancestors lived in trees for a long time. And, you know, you hear these psychologists talk about
the African veldt as are like uber environment, you know, that were adapted to its like, what kind of depends on your time frame, you know, that's
Five million years trees, that's like 50 million years. So the notion of the tree, that's
That's in there and all of our Cathedrals have tree, like architecture and that the light through the stained glass windows. That's sunlight through the glasses. There trees, all over the world is done. And there's that too. Yes,
they would come into people's out and symbolism with
yes, but but there's a conceptual reason see because I think and this is speculation. I know, it's speculation. I understand this perfectly. Well,
It's clear that our Consciousness can move up and down levels of analysis to some degree and levels of nervous system creation and repair. So imagine when you're writing you can attend to a letter or word or phrase or a sentence or a paragraph or you can move your level of apprehension up and down from the micro level to the more macro level and you know, at the highest level of your Consciousness. You can apprehend.
The most General ideas and the lowest level very specific.
Well, actually very specific motor movements. So if you're typing a word and you make a mistake, you don't fix it, conceptually, you, move your finger and fix it. And so that's kind of where it groans out. And so our Consciousness sort of grounds out at the bodily level at the level of adjustable, voluntarily, adjustable micromodular chur. And then at the high level at the highest level of abstract concept so it can move this Consciousness. Well,
The world tree is a vision of the microcosm to the macrocosm. The tree is used as a metaphor for that. It's a Proto scientific idea. Intuition of the idea that there's a, there's a kind of Dimension that constitutes zooming in on things, right to the
Smallest possible level of apprehension and zooming out to the most General level of apprehension dust particles to. Cause most let's say, well, psychedelic seemed to expand that capacity so that Consciousness can move up and down layers of apprehension that aren't available to Consciousness under its normal conditions and there are good accounts of shamanic experiences and they're very strange. They're very well documented.
The shamanic experience involves a death.
And then passed the death, the capacity to move up and down this microcosmic to macrocosmic realm in a way that doesn't seem possible under conditions of normal consciousness.
And so they are reveling around again. Yeah. Well, the question is, how far down the levels of analysis can Consciousness go under extreme conditions? And so as I said this was speculation, but I've seen these dual, they're often dual. Entwined, serpents are very common. In fact, I have one made by an Indian. Carver Canadian. Native Carver in my so cool.
It's called a Cecil. I have it up in my third floor. It said onto totem poles. There's a man in the middle. There's a serpent on both side of him. And I asked him what this
image meant to his people because he's still part of an unbroken. Tradition said, they had a myth that
Something alien landed on the earth. It was this Cecil object and that when it was rolling down the mountain that it landed on, it took the form of all the things that it encountered.
And so. Well, like I said, this is in the realm of wild speculation, but I know what Creek thought about the origin of
DNA.
Well, he thought he thought it was too complex to have evolved
to mean, you even the idea of it coming from
now. I mean, I know that's an infinite
regress. Okay, that's okay.
So there was all kinds of speculation which
calling surface. I
keep under some conditions, people Vision can expand to the point where they can see down into the micro level. They can apprehend the micro-level consciously,
you think that our Consciousness can extend down to the micro level. Yeah.
The level, I do micro micro. Micro micro level of here, DNA. Okay.
Well, since we're on this topic, I have taken extremely high doses of psilocybin like four. Doses is enough basically to knock you out of your body.
I wouldn't recommend it casually. I took 7 G three times, and I had this shamanic experience. It was unbelievable. And I don't even know how I have no idea how to make sense. Out of what I
believe. That I can fight. I understand, you have a most extraordinary experience. I've never taken such a drug, but I could imagine you had a most remarkable experience, but you've just said that you think that your Consciousness can see into your cells and see the structure of DNA that has got to be utter nonsense. I'm
Well, it like I said, I am perfectly reasonable willing to admit forthrightly that that is a highly speculative idea.
Well,
it is speculative but it's also got to be false it. Why
right? No, heck. Yeah and fair look in all probability. You're right.
Right. I mean, we both why is it enough to use Occam's razor? Right? And so, and I said that it's funny that that particular statement got picked up, because I think that was the most
What would you say that canvas into it speculative idea that I'd ever uttered to my
students? What their enough and I understand that?
And so it's strange to be in a position to defend. I tell you why. I was why I made that but there was more to it than that, you know, because in this Visionary experience,
I could feel my Consciousness go down these levels of analysis and I could see things that they appeared to me in my field of imagination and I looked at them and I thought that looks a lot like DNA,
but you're an educated man. Who? Yes, he knows about DNA. Yes, these people didn't know it was DNA. Like that's what
sort of they didn't know. Doesn't surprise me in the
least that you could have a Visionary experience and think you see your DNA in yourself. That's of course. It's highly plausible. Yes.
Because I already know about it. Yes, what is not plausible? Is it? Someone who does not know about it. And an ancient Chinese Scout, whatever it was. Yes, who working long before Watson and Crick discovered, the structure of
DNA could possibly apprehend.
Those Batman. Is that, that just isn't fair enough and I guess I would only see in
defense of that idea. Is that
It is the case that Consciousness can travel up and down levels of analysis in a real sense. And yeah, it is absolutely inconceivable that that's not an expandable capacity under some circumstances, you know, because you got to ask yourself like,
I do yoga in the morning. I couldn't lie Neoga exercise. And I've done it for about 20 years, and I learned a long while back that when Yogi's are practicing their asanas, these positions. That's not yoga.
They practice the asanas because their postures that stretch you, and then when they get to master them, they basically do an exploration of their body for places of discomfort and use the asanas to heal. And you might say, well, what do you mean? He'll and well, my experience is that if I move my head for example, down like this, I can, I'll have a pain manifest itself in my back where I'm tight and then I can pay
Attention to that and loosen the musculature and then the pain will disappear. And as I've been recovering from my last illness, I've been doing this quite a bit because my body is full of knots and pain, all sorts, and I can explore them and do something with them. And I actually think we can also do that to each other, to some degree. We do that massage therapists are very good at that and I think it's part of an elaborated, grooming knowledge, but what that means is that
That internally at least whatever my Consciousness is, can apprehend these places of trouble that are physiological. Yes, and that I can explore them. And the question is well.
How deep they are. First of all, what is that Explorer? That's passed so far down. Can you
go? That is perfect Applause? Yes, I wouldn't object to that. Also, I wouldn't wish to pin you down on what was the sort of throw away speculation on the DNA, but it does seem to me that that's kind of Representative, what I mean by being drunk on symbols. Yes, it's it's, um, well, you are rightly hostile to post-modernism,
and
I'm not hostile to the postmodernist claim that there's
That there's a terrible problem that arises when you understand that there's an indefinite number of interpretations of things. Yes. They got that right, but what I'm really hostile to is the answer. Okay. Than that, I think that's okay.
I don't want to put you in one of my
Books here.
Now. I've talked too much during this discussion. So far. There's something I really want to ask you about. If you don't mind what has been what Biffle before?
Yes. I just me just pursue this. Okay measures know I can I can read this out. Okay. Okay. We're on audio during this is one of my by only written attack on post-modernism and this is
From La car.
Who says I calculating that thing diffic ation, according to the algebraic method used here. Namely s capitalist signifier of a little less signified. Equals little less the statement with s equals minus 1 but uses the square root of minus 1 lakh. On then, goes on to conclude that the erectile organ. The penis is equivalent to the square root of minus one of the significations, produced above of the Jewish.
Is that it restores by the coefficient of its statement, to the function of lack of signifier minus one. Then another quote, from a feminist?
Think about this is actually an interpreter of hers, a her, her Expositor Katherine hayles, talking about why fluid mechanics is difficult to understand and she says, the privileging of solid over fluid mechanics and indeed the inability of science deal with the turbulent flow at all. She attributes to the association of fluidity with femininity, huh. Whereas men have sex.
Organs that protrude and become rigid. Women have have openings that lat, that side that leak, menstrual blood and vagina or fluids from this perspective. It is no wonder that science has not been able to arrive at a successful model for turbulence. The problem of turbulent flow cannot be solved because the conception of fluids and of women have been formulated so as necessary to leave unarticulated remainders, so, okay, so I'm going to play Devil's dandruff, Cold
Steel is MM. Okay. So let's let's take that.
That apart two ways. Okay. Okay. The first is, let's deal with Licata. Okay. Okay, Lacroix is a fraud as far as, I'm glad you say that. Well, I've tried to read Le Kong. Yeah, and I cannot make heads or tails of hip good and it may be because I'm stupid. It's not, I don't think so. No people have accused young of the same sort of mysticism that lock engages in. But I can understand, you know, I don't think he's a Mystic at all.
What Young was doing is very complicated and it Maps, very nicely onto evolutionary, biology of all the French intellectuals that I've read. I think. Lock on is the most fraudulent. Okay? Okay, so we'll just put him aside good and, you know, I haven't read that much luck. All partly because I can't. Now, I've read a lot of Foucault and I'm rereading the order of things. And the Order of things. I would say, if you're writing a book about modeling as well.
Reading the neuropsychology of anxiety. The order of things is very much worth reading. Okay, and he doesn't wander off into ideological. I've only found that he made one mistake in the first half of the book because Foucault is the social constructionist to a large degree, but he does talk about its categories of the imagination. That's not exactly the phrase he uses, but he does make reference at one point to the fact that our conceptual structures are grounded in an underlying imagination, which to me is a nod to biology.
G and so, but I like the order of things. I read it a long time ago. I'm just rereading it now. So, forget about McKenna. Yeah, the feminist. Now, I'm going to argue from the perspective of a biologist here. I would say I'm going to give the devil her do in this case.
There are, we do have a proclivity to map sexual relationship onto the world. And the degree for obvious reasons, because we have to perceive sexual relationship at a very deep level. We do have a tendency to animate things or to perceive them as if they're animated and the degree to which those a priority perceptual. Proclivities might bias. What would otherwise be objective?
Is open for valid discussion. Now, that doesn't mean that. Look, my daughter last night was engaged in a debate at the Oxford Union, and that I had was that you were there. Yes.
Well, you heard Carol. Yeah. Well, that was a mind-boggling performance. As far as I was concerned. It was exactly the example of the sort of thing, you're tossing out. It was absolutely Beyond Comprehension. I was so happy to be there because I thought I had never heard all of that.
Expressed and simultaneously invalidated so effectively. But you know, the side, she argued for one by the
vote. I didn't know who, what, which side won
the side. The we should move Beyond me. Yes, and now, independent of the merits of the underlying argument, except for Carol's the fact that that feminist scholar who attributed meat-eating to white supremacist patriarchal oppression. Yeah, that argument was so
appalling.
Is that what it was? That was that the final one that right at the elbow. You missed it?
Yeah. Oh, that's too bad. It's too bad. You really
need for that. I left. We left. When the president said to students should start talking
but it didn't. So you must have you must have left just before that happened. Yeah. Well, you say tell me that I can go on. It's just well that that was essentially it that was her argument. That meat-eating was a consequence of the imposition of a
A patriarchal racist. Hey oppressive. Okay, white supremacist. Yeah. Narrative on essentially a feminine background. Yes, see anything.
Okay. Well,
now, you're saying you're saying that you don't know how much of that character is, is my thinking despite my opposition to postmodern. That's right. Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, that's a, you know, that's that's a, that's a, an absolutely reasonable question and given that doubt which I
I certainly understand why you would hold it's perfectly reasonable of you and I think perspicacious to have pointed to my
Attempt to speculate about how these images of intertwined Helix has happened to propagate themselves, all over the world because I have a see, I have a problem with that because I can't understand why that's the case. So, for example, there's a really interesting Chinese image, which is one of the ones that I referred to in that particular lecture. That shows.
I hope I could remember this. Exactly. Right. So, it's this intertwined, underlying Serpentine structure giving rise to a female and male form. Yes, and it's portrayed that way in the cosmogonic myth that these forms emerge out of this underlying helical structure. And but there are stories like that everywhere. And so you might say, well, it's a case of false pattern recognition and that's really a problem. Right? That's the problem of
misperception. Okay. Now, wait II, I have no problem with
My big problem is equating it with DNA that? Yeah, that's bullshit. However, yes, however, what might be, what might be interesting, would be a commonality between myths all around the world and then anthropologists have argue about whether this is because of cross infection of ideas or whether there's something yummy and about about the item. And I think that's
a genuinely interesting question and it may be the
effect of neuroscientists that I've met. The good ones are tilted pretty hard towards the biological primitive argument that yes, forms of perception while collar is one of
them and I think that's interesting and of course the co incidence of an image or a statue in this part of the world in that part of the world, you should think about how improbable it is that two people might have hit upon the same.
The same design. I mean, the idea right as snake spiraling around each other. It's not that difficult to think of it's not. It wouldn't be ridiculously improbable that two people two tribes and opposite sides of the world with independently. Come upon that.
No no. And and might not point to anything particular except that it is the use of snakes. I would say though, you know, the idea of that coiled snake or the dual coil. Snake is also a powerful.
Apple symbol of healing. And so, yes, that's partly why it's used as a symbol for Physicians. Yes, exactly. And so and there is the idea that's part and parcel of that and this would be lets say separate from the DNA idea and snakes shed their skin and their reborn. And so that's part of the reason why they're symbols of Athena transformation. Exactly. And and that notion of death and regeneration is obviously Central to the idea of healing. And so, that's another explanation for the use of the
snake. So,
I'm
interested in in the, in probability of coincidence in this case. Now. If ye people in Scandinavia and people in the Amazonian jungle had independently developed an alphabet which was the same alphabet. Now, that would be pressive. I mean that would great white.
Yes. Yes. Well, but, but but it's also equally impressive that separated people did develop alphabets. Yeah, but not the same. No. No, I know they didn't use but there's a level at which it's the same, right?
Cuz they are alphabetic and they are the use of written forms to
represent down. Well, if that's okay, simple thing to have and it is such a good idea that wouldn't be improbable. That two tribes would have the same
idea. That's true. But well, but it gives complicated to well. It gets complicated in the context of this argument, because one of the debates that Foucault had, that was famous, was a debate with Chomsky. Yes. And for code, of course, is radical social.
She missed except when he isn't now and then, right? And I'm not being smart about that. The order things is quite a careful book, but Chomsky was laying out a more archetypal argument. In some sense and Chomsky thinks that there is something like an underlying language grammar. And so the fact that an alphabetic structure might be discovered by two separate people's would be partly a reflective of an underlying biological commonality. And so it is very difficult to draw a border between these. And I would also say
say I agree with you completely that associative thinking of the kind that you just read to me can go far as straight what that is is false pattern recognition, you know, so it's
It's the a perception or perhaps, the projection of a pattern, onto a background. Let's say an underlying reality that actually isn't characterized by that pattern. But, but that's actually part of the Dilemma of thought though, to isn't it. Because, like, I think, thought is usefully parceled out into a revelatory element and a dialogical element. And so the revelatory element is
While you're sitting there and thoughts, enter the theater of your imagination and so it's an innocence phenomenologically, like they sort of spring up from the void and you can be struck by a thought which is really interesting. Right? It's like me, it's your thought. Why are you struck by? Where's it come from the hell? Yes. That's it. No, kidding. Where does it come from? But then there's another element, which is
Well, not all intuitions are valid the things that strike you even though being struck is often a pretty good indication that, there's something there but it's not always an indication and there are certain forms of Psychopathology schizophrenia and particular schizophrenia is characterized by the misfiring of that intuition system. So for example here, partly what happens to people who have
Like ideas of reference, they'll be watching television. And the latent inhibition will get stripped away from their perception of the voices. And so now, the voice has become magnified in significance. And to account for the magnification of emotional significance. They start thinking that television has a special message for me. It's like the reciprocal seat of a religious Revelation and is often accompanied by religious ideation. So
It's not that uncommon, although it's somewhat uncommon, for people who are floridly, schizophrenic to identify with
cries me. They're like, religious Revelation. It is very it is, it is very like what I wanted to counter because you, you characterize yourself as religious sometimes, and you don't seem to believe in a supernatural Creator. Normal people. How you do it all the time. I know they do. We know. Well,
no, I believe in God and I say, well, I act as though, God
exists. Yes, but lunch is the
reference to this model
idea. Place last night. You seemed to be coming to the
Idea of true that you seem to be saying that, that which is beneficial to humanity or to the, or reduce your anxiety or makes you feel good or reduces stress is true.
And no no no, it's more. It's more than that and a good. I'm glad that we're onto this part of this discussion when Darwin first published his
Biological treaties, the Origin of Species.
The New England pragmatists got ahold of his manuscript, William James and Sirius purse and William James. Founded experimental psychology. And CS purse was probably the most profound philosopher, the Americans ever produced and they had a club. This psychological the Phyllis.
I think it was the psychological Club. It was either that or the philosophical Club, but I believe it was a psychological club and they believe that Darwin's theory, Rising required a new epistemology. It was so revolutionary and they purse in particular developed. Pragmatism and pragmatism is like an engineering truth claim. And I don't think you can be an evolutionary biologist without being a pragmatist. I don't think it's possible. I don't
It's coherent. Conceptually, and so purse was trying to
Solve the problem of well, how can something be true when for fundamentally ignorant about everything in the final analysis? And the answer was well, we have truths that are true enough and you might say, well, what do you mean true enough? And the answer would be?
They're true enough to be used as tools to achieve a certain end in a certain space over a certain time period. And so your truth is true enough, if it gets you from point A to B when you're using it, the tool is adequate for the job. If it performs the task intended and for purse and the
Pragmatist. That was it. There is no true superordinate to that. Now, it's complicated because some pragmatic truths are functional across broader spans of time and space than others. So they're more like ultimate truths. But this was not a grounding of Truth in a Newtonian idea or Cartesian idea, or even in a idea of objective truth because they derive their concept of truth from their
Is of The evolutionary process and they said. So what I really want to know what you think about this is like
Say there's truth in the human form. Well, speak metaphorically, but biologically that truth only suffice is for like 90 years. All right, we're good enough. We're good enough as a model.
It may be that
I'm knowledge of Truth is is incomplete and can never be sure of anything, but that doesn't mean there isn't truth out there. Well.
Truth is a slippery concept because it can be used very many ways. And I'm not trying to, I believe me. I'm not trying to Bandy words about. I do not believe that the Newtonian conception of Truth and The evolutionary conception of Truth are commensurate and I think the evolutionary because well, it's tough, right? Because you might think,
Well, when you're talking about truth, are you talking about the nature of Ultimate Reality or you talking about the relationship of your models to that
reality?
Riley don't know that. I care too much about that because I mean, let me tell you something that he is true. Okay, we are just, we are cousins of chimpanzees. Yes, that is objectively, true. It's another thing. That's true. Is that the Earth orbits the sun? Yeah, these are. These are not
What one can argue about the epistemology of that? But I want to be a realist about this and and say that they're meant, there may be kinds of Truth, which are somehow filtered through our darwinian past and which influence the way we see true that we may be deceived by all sorts of things. We are, maybe self-deceived, but there are objective truth. It is the business of science to find them.
And science has tools for stripping off subjective bias for stripping off self-deception. Yes, and that's why we do double blind trial. Absolutely Metz. Why we use random out our nation exactly as well. Yeah. Absolutely. Okay,
right? And who can argue with the power of the scientific process. And, but I would also say that the religious people that you've debated they lose before,
They open their mouths because they don't notice that you impose this realist metaphysics on the argument before it starts. Now, I'm not saying that you're not justified in doing that. I'm not saying that because that's open to question. But I am saying they don't notice that, that's what's happened. But there's a problem here. It's a real problem and this is the postmodern conundrum. I would say
There are.
It's useful and true to say that there are objective facts, but the problem is, there's an infinite number of them,
true. Okay. So
now the question is,
As a scientist, how do you decide which facts to attend to and the answer to that is, you cannot do that using the scientific process? No, that's true. Okay, so, okay. So then the question is, look.
I've done a lot of statistical analysis of data sets in my time, you know, and when I was a naive undergraduate and I'm not particularly mathematically gifted, by the way, statistics was quite a slog for me till I started to understand it. Conceptually and then I started to enjoy it, but I kind of imagined that the data contained the information, the statistical process was Nell, Guru them to reduce the data to the information and that was kind of a mechanistic process. I didn't realize at all that a data set is
Imagine I've had data sets that had 5,000 participants and 200 rules of Rosa variables. It's like there's a lot of information in that data set. And so then the question is, how the hell do you derive a valid conclusion from that plethora of information because you could report all sorts of meaningless correlations, right? They would be spurious.
But also practically useless and there's just endless numbers of those in the data set, you know.
How do you judiciously use a statistical process to extract out the information that that is what true? Yes, but but it's not just true. You want it to be useful?
I agree it, right?
And so that's where the pragmatism issue comes in, right? Because then we might say and one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is because I know you care, deeply about true that I know that you're motivated by it. And so then I would say that, that that's a metaphysical.
Relationship in some sense. It's an a priori metaphysical relationship because you made a commitment to truth and I would also say that that's an Act of Faith because you might ask yourself.
In science, is it truth or untruth that serves the
world?
Well, that's where we came back as well. We came in because there are all sorts of truths which do not serve the world are all sorts of truths, which are very unpleasant. Yes, you get an analogy might be as a doctor. You you have a patient who has incurable cancer and you have to decide whether to tell that patient the truth or not, right? Well, you could might debate this with your colleagues and you might. Yeah colleagues might say well.
Of not telling him, it's better not knowing. So the truth in this case is not beneficial.
But what would you pick? Why would you well, do you want to know that's irrelevant? No.
No, I would like, I would want and I would want to know
well, but I agree that there are dangers, truths. Let's say, and there are truths that under some circumstances might be harmful and that could be used as weapons, but I would still say, I don't believe that you can be a scientist.
And discover objective truths, a and useful manner, without being committed to a metaphysical vision of the redeeming power of the truth. Because I don't even think you can make the micro decisions that you're making. Well, you're reading a book and sifting through it, right? Trying to separate the wheat from the chaff. Without I don't want to impose this view on this conversation, right? I'm trying to explore it because it's, I'm very I've dealt with
D of bad scientists in my time, you know, psychology is Rife with what they call P hacking where you just run a repeated correlations until you find one
that yeah, that's
bad son. Yes, but it's also bad but it's badass ethics. It's like well, why not? Look, why not do that? If it
advances your careers, I'm quite that mean, that's bad. And that's not. I think what we're talking about. I thought you were saying that truth is
That which is beneficial in my, in my, in my analogy, when you're arguing with your colleagues, whether to tell this patient, the truth, you could very well argue. Shall We Tell him or shall we not? It would be beneficial not to have beneficial to but everybody should agree that it is true that this man has cancer. That is true. Yes, and that, yes, this is
partly why this this issue is so unbelievably complicated because what you just said is true, but it's also the case.
That you have to apply an ethical framework on to that Infinity of 3. The yes, you know, order to focus on and communicate those. See you've picked topics that you communicate to people and there are other topics you didn't pick. Yes. And there's lots. Most of the other topics you didn't pick. And so, the questions to me is this is partly why I got interested in Young, by the way, because he was very interested in the unconscious direction of attention the
Alice were fascinated by that. That's partly why they were interested in Freudian slips, but you okay. One thing we could ask. Do you think that you picked your field of study or did it pick you?
I
I'm not sure, but I don't think that's not relevant. It doesn't it? Why is nobody? It is, it
has to be relevant because it's actually the question of relevance. And so there's a whole branch of cognitive science. Now, I'd like to have you talk to this colleague of mine named John Verve. A key. Joanne Verve. A key is unbelievably smart and the problem. He spent his whole career focusing on is
How in the world do you decide what you attend to when there's an almost
infinite number of things to attend? That's the big question. Everything huge question. It's a question as applies to science when you decide what to what to work on. As you say there's an infinite number of things you could attend to work on and you choose some of them. And that's a decision which people take and that bias is your view of the world and everything. But nevertheless there is objective truth. That doesn't affect the fact that subjective truth. The the
The mere fact, there's a very large number of things you could attend to and you have to choose one of them doesn't affect the fact that there are lots of truths out there and write,
but it definitely yes, but it definitely does affect the way that science is can see. This is also why the post modern critics have been so effective in what they've done, it's because there are pushing the notion that a narrative necessarily draw.
Ives the process of inquiry, even in relationship to objective facts. And I think that's true. And that's partly what we're discussing now. I also think, and, I don't know how to reconcile these things. Like the fact that you're making a case for the existence of the objective facts. Like, I'm not going to argue about that. That doesn't mean I understand it fully because I can't quite understand the relationship between the objective fact, and the necessity for utility and partly, I can't understand.
On biological grounds, you know, because are fundamentally. When you look at things, I would say that the description of truth that your purveying in right now, in this argument. I'm not trying to make it any more General than that is not one. That's well, nested inside the epistemology that you would derive from evolutionary biology because you would, you would you would say in some sense that were tilted in a very fundamental manner to only
And those things that will Aid, survival and reproduction. And so to hell with the objective fact.
Well, that's probably true that, that our sense organs and biased towards that, which helps us to survive. And our internal sensor was have speaker attention mechanisms inside the way. I thought I thought mechanisms. So we are creatures who evolved on the African Savanna and from forests earlier on and our
Ability to understand the world, let alone, what we attend to is limited by that. We are blinkered by the fact that that, that our bodies and our brains were designed to survive in
Africa, and that's what that feminist critic was pointing to in a very well. Let's look in an awkward and tendentious Manner and an overstated manner. Absolutely. Not as bad as the
capital and present with we are living, I
Don't understand, quantum theory. And the reason I don't understand quantum theory. Yes, even Lucien a point of view, is that is, there are not evolved,
doesn't matter onto our bodies, work,
lie, and I don't, so, there are what I think is remarkable. Actually that there are people who understand quantum theory, I agree. I mean that that and there's
no point to your point that also points to our capacity to apprehend truths that in some sense appear to be outside.
The pier confines of The evolutionary struggle. Yes, but then that's also a problem in some ways for evolutionary theory. I mean, you can, you know, wave that office a spandrel. But I think that's a big mistake when when we're talking about something as profound as the capacity to
understand. Why liar Elena Java total. I mean, I think I accept Steven pinker's, it says, why should you be so presumptuous? As to think you can understand all these things when you're only an animal which has, which has evolved to survive and
Reproduce, right. But what about the thing? That's so horrible about that in some senses. That's also at the core of the postmodern critique of science that claim. Now, the human that Humanities types when they make a claim like that often sound like the woman that you just described. But you know, I try to give the devil his due and I'm trying to do that with post-modernism because you know, I think the conclusions that were drawn from the postmodernist cannon, you know, the fundamental conclusion as far as I'm concerned.
Of the the French postmodernist.
Process allied with a certain kind of Marxism. Is that the entire process of categorization all our categories plus? The process of categorization are attributable to the expression of Will To Power. That's it. Oppression tyranny dominance and there's actually, I would say that the evolutionary biologists are in part responsible for that. Weirdly enough. I am not trying to throw stones. You know, I'm
I like to think of myself to the degree that I can manage it as an evolutionary psychologist. I accept the tenants of evolutionary biology. I don't think you can understand anything about biology without doing that. But here's the argument from the biological perspective. We ratchet ourselves up. Hierarchies of power to attain positions of status, particularly as males to give us preferential access to mating resources and that contaminates everything.
Do it's like, hey, okay. Now I want to ask you one final question. I know we're running out of time, but I don't care. I want to ask you this question. Okay. I talked to Sam Harris. I've talked to Sam Harris five times. And the first time I talked to him. I was extremely ill and we got bogged down in a discussion of Truth, pragmatism versus objective. Something we've been banding that back and forth and it's a tough. It's a tough nut to crack.
And then we had for more discussions that we're all public. And there is a tremendous amount of interest in them, which was quite stunning. It was staggering. We had 10,000 people at in Dublin, 21 and about the same to the O in London and we were discussing issues just like this, you know, and I made some mistakes dealing with Sam because I had a point I wanted to make, you know, and it was, I suppose the point of this pragmatism in some sense and its relationship to evolutionary biology. And so I was trying to
To win the argument and I have found as a consequence. Let's say of a baptism by fire that that's not a good way to approach. Like, one of the things I really wanted to do with you. I hope we manage this today was to ask you questions and find out more about what you thought, like, in a real. Genuine matter not okay. In any of that, none of that. The last time I talked to Sam, all I did was ask him questions and we have by far the best discussion we've ever had. Okay, and so he threw that
Ian, I was alerted to reasons why he was so antipathetic to the idea of religion. Okay, and so, I thought I would. So Sam is very obsessed with the idea of totalitarian atrocity.
I would say evil fundamentally, if you wanted to make it metaphysical, but you could say restrictive, dogmatic tribalism of the sort that makes us demonize and Destroy people
ideas installations. So what is it? You want to ask me? Because we, we have are not so
time. I I want to ask you.
When you talk about religion, yes.
Do you identify the religious impulse? Let's say or even the religious phenomena with the totalitarian proclivity for dogmatic certainty and the potential acceleration of
Aggression and atrocity as a
consequence. No, I have like a first and foremost about scientific truth. And so, to me, it is an, it is a scientific question. Whether there is a supernatural power, creative, power intelligence in the universe. I think that's a very fascinating question. I think that if that were true, it would be the most important scientific truth is there is that would be it would be a fundamental.
Different kind of universe that we live in if there is a creative intelligence. So although I have a secondary interest in negative consequences to religion and support especially in Islam. I my my fundamental interest is in the scientific truth, which I believe it is a scientific question. Even if it can't be answered by scientific means it that the either is a God or there, isn't that the either is a Creator or not at the base of the universe?
An intelligence. I think there's not I think that intelligence is something that comes late into the universe. As a consequence of a long evolutionary process happened, here is no doubt happened. What probably happened in other parts of the universe. Do you distinguish between
intelligence and Consciousness
for this purpose? No,
okay. For this purpose. Not. Okay. So let me ask you this question and
Do you think that sexual selection is mediated by Consciousness / intelligence
in those species that have Consciousness?
Yes.
I mean then I would ask you to what degree do you think that consciousness?
Operates as a.
Fundamental mechanism of selection and shaping. Because that that's
I mean that that is a very profound. Interesting question and sexual selection happens in insects, which I do not think a conscious. So
yeah, that's a tough one. I mean, I know butterflies could detect a deviation from Symmetry and their Partners on the part of one in a million. So
that is there that there is sexual selection throughout the animal kingdom and
Consciousness can happen without
Consciousness, I think yes, but but in one, let's look and he Inhumans. Yes, I should
think so. Okay, so okay. So when I look at the religious epistemology cross-culturally, I see a bipartite structure at the bottom of the hypothesizing. There's an idea that there's a material substrate that consists of a kind of latent potential, that might be one way of looking at it. And then there's the action of a forming
SS on top of that and it looks to me like it's something like what would you call it? An intuitive apprehension of the relationship between Consciousness and the rise to complexity of living forms? And the reason that I'm curious about that from an evolutionary perspective is that I can't see how sex forget about unconscious sexual selection for a minute. We'll just parse that off because maybe their gradations of
This I don't know insects do some damn complex things. And have you ever seen that BBC clip of the pufferfish making a
sculpture? Oh, yes, I think yes. I mean, yeah,
that's quite something. It is that puffer fish. Is it took on the way to the chapel can do that? Okay. Well, it's very, it's hard day to talk to you, too Penrose. And you at the same
day. I know. Yes. So so
I don't
Think it's completely out of the realm of question that part of the apprehension that there's a spirit that gives rise to material order is a metaphysical reflection of the idea that Consciousness shapes biological being through sexual
selection, but that Spirit would have to have been around before Eeveelution got started and so you
got well that okay, fair enough big thing is that, that's it. Yes, that's a big problem, but then I guess a rejoinder to
Add in some sense would be.
Do you think it's a
nonsensical proposition to mean? One of the things I was talking to? Dr. Penrose today about was?
He believes that Consciousness in some sense stands outside the domain of algorithmic
computation. Any does? Yes.
And we discussed in some detail why he believes that? And I'm very curious about that. My brother-in-law is probably the world's foremost computer chip designer. Okay, and he's currently designing a chip.
That he thinks will have the computational power of a human brain. And he was the first person to build a 64-bit chip and he
did 1985. Okay,
and so, we've had a lot of discussions about the limits of AI. So this is an AI optimize chip by. Yes. This is my brother-in-law thinks that computation is algorithmic and so it's comp or that, that that thought is computation and algorithmic.
And that can be replicated and I am systems. Yeah, Penrose thinks that Goodell's theorem precludes that there has to be something standing outside. Yeah, you know, I tried to push him on what he regarded as The Meta. Physical significance of Consciousness. Yes, and he's a very careful. Think he's a lot like you except he's more Association Linda's. Thinking I would say and he thinks it images. He doesn't fundamentally. Do you think in words? Yes. Yes, and I think in words mostly, but yes.
But images have quite a hold on me as well as you as you pointed out. Do you think that the proposition that Consciousness is implicit in matter is a useful and non nonsensical statement. I
think it's nonsensical and I don't think that's what Roger
said. No, I know. I know. I know it isn't. Yeah. I know it isn't he? And he didn't say that, but I suppose it depends to some degree on what you mean by implicit, right? But obviously,
SLI matter can give rise to
Consciousness with sufficient complexity.
Yes, but not mean you people to say things like every unit of Consciousness even in stones. And yes,
and I know I know I've talked to the fascist, why just strikes me that? It doesn't really help answer the question. Yes,
so hello. Hello. I think very well you both you need to take out my face.
