
We all appreciate that human individuals progress through stages of cognitive development on the way to adulthood. A toddler is simply not equipped to run a country (hold your quips): the brain hasn’t fully developed. Infants love the game of peek-a-boo precisely because they have not yet cemented the idea of object permanence. Language capability improves over many years—decades, actually. Brains are not “fully” developed until the late twenties (yet assert mastery starting in the teen years).
But, what does “fully” developed mean? It means significant further development in structure or capability is not to be expected. Does it mean that brains reach some theoretical ultimate capability—no more improvements possible—or do they maybe stop short of perfection? Why would evolution produce anything substantially better than what provides sufficient selective advantage in an ecological context, in simultaneous consideration of all other organism attributes and the biodiverse and social environments in which they operate? The tangled difficulty of that sentence barely hints at the immense contextual complexity involved.
So, every last one of us ceases brain development well short of some notional limit. Does that stopping point cross the threshold of being able to master all knowledge or understanding about Life, the Universe, and Everything? Of course not. Evidence abounds. So, we will never comprehend it all, given our limited meat-brains.
All this echoes things I’ve said before. What’s new in this post is what I hope will be a helpful analogy to how adults present ideas to children possessing less-developed brains—thus the Nursery Rhyme title. Since adult human brains also stop short of “full” development, how might we expect our imperfect brains to interact with what we can’t fully understand? We encounter this conundrum all the time in giving “sufficient” accounts to children that are effective, even if they must be over-simplified or distorted to get the point across. So, how would a hypothetical species possessing far more wisdom explain the incomprehensible to us, as if we were children to them?
To cut off a potential misunderstanding, I’m not about to assume the role of this imaginary hyper-intelligent being. I have the same limited model of meat-brain, of course. But just as evaluating how three-dimensional objects might be perceived by someone limited to two dimensions (e.g., Flatland) can help us 3-D creatures grasp the merest contours of how four-dimensional objects might be shaped, I hope the analogy to familiar child brains can help us appreciate our own limitations.
It may be unavoidable that some are offended by what seems like condescension. My advice is: don’t take it personally. I’m in the same boat, insulting myself along with everyone else. But, reactions are not under any of our control.
Packaging for Kids
Let’s start by evaluating how we explain difficult concepts to children: concepts that they are not yet mentally prepared to grasp. Many strategies emerge. I go through these examples to remind us of kids’ limitations, all the while carrying a faint echo of our own—which becomes the essential point.
Death and Heaven
Death is a difficult concept for a child. That’s just great: here they are—having just mastered object permanence—and Grandpa just disappears. No fair! What do we tell the kid?
I only know our (twisted) culture well, so I can’t speak to the universality of this approach across cultures and deep time, but a very common one is something like: “Oh, sweetie, Grandpa isn’t really gone. He lives on in another place: a happy place free of pain and annoying grandchildren.” Okay, I couldn’t resist. But, right? Granted, the adults telling these stories often also believe some version of the same. I wonder if the stories we tell kids get stuck as a convenient way for adults to avoid facing difficult realities, codified into more sophisticated dogma.
A clearer case might be when the family dog dies, and is said to be in “Doggie Heaven.” As this is not an explicit teaching of human supremacist religions, it is less likely that the adult buys into the story, yet still casts the event in similar terms. “She’s up there Bumpussing around with all her doggie friends.” (Extra points for catching the cinematic reference.)
Consequences
Children have a shaky handle on the existence of a future beyond the present. “I want the cookie now, and the jar is on the shelf, a chair available nearby for climbing.” Not much thought goes into the many ways this could go wrong: maybe a shattered cookie jar; incriminating sounds audible from the other room; tell-tale crumbs or chocolate smears; suspiciously not hungry for dinner (“growing food”). They have enough capacity to envision the reward of the narrow goal, but not enough to envision the breadth of unintended consequences. Am I really just talking about children, here?
Adults step in with extremely helpful advice that kids totally understand (being facetious), like: “you’ll fall and hurt yourself;” “you might break the cookie jar;” “you’ll spoil your appetite for broccoli.” What the kid actually hears is more like: “Mom doesn’t want me to eat a cookie, and to avoid punishment I had better not do it while she’s in the room.”
When a child is wrestling with a decision as to whether or not to defy stern warnings from parents who are right in front of them, it is well known that it takes until the count of three for them to work it out and back down. Some kids might need higher numbers, or even a Zeno-type approach via a series of bungled fractions that don’t come easily to either adult or child.
Authority
When kids are younger, it goes without saying that the parent/adult has absolute authority. The fact that you may be bodily removed, kicking and screaming, together with a helplessness to meet basic needs without parental help puts a damper on effective resistance (but not a damper on wailing, empirically-speaking).
As an aside, I think I figured out why young kids believe their parents are the ultimate authority—not only of the household, but of the entire community. If a kid asks any other adult if they can have that cookie, the very most likely response is something like: “Let me ask your mom/dad if that’s okay.” What is the kid to deduce other than that all adults defer to their own parents?
As kids age, learn to open the refrigerator and cupboards on their own, and are less likely to be physically carried off, authority is increasingly questioned. Yet, parents tend to maintain enough power so that when a kid is unable to grasp the full context of an unpopular parental decision, the frequent fallback of: “Because I said so!” is still available for use. The more understanding parent might offer the “helpful” and always-welcomed addition: “You’ll understand when you’re older.”
Morality and Social Complexity
Early on, behaviors are shaped by simple reward and punishment schemes. Conforming to rules plays a huge role for kids. They don’t need to understand the rationale for the rules, only that failure to obey carries unpleasant consequences. Sometime later, the approval of others begins to exert its own influence, leading to awareness of societal standards and a sort of inexplicit contract. Eventually, one might appreciate that the letter of the law is an imperfect, skeletal, baseline construct that does not offer guidance to all—or even most—interactions and nuances.
It can be hard to even articulate why we behave the way we do, as our actions simultaneously weigh a number of considerations that interact and counterbalance—many beyond our direct awareness. Plus, there is no one right answer that can be logically defended. We just do our best. How do you explain to a child what you yourself can’t fully articulate to your own satisfaction?
Stories
Stories are perhaps our most powerful means of conveying concepts that are difficult (or ineffective) to spell out directly. Stories start early. Almost every children’s book—besides cajoling the kid to go to sleep—carries a lesson. That lesson is seldom “don’t listen to your silly parents, who know nothing and are making it up as they go,” but tends to reinforce the behaviors parents and our society wish to encourage. Nothing wrong with that: it’s how humans have worked for hundreds of thousands of years.
Our stories provide digestible models that needn’t hash out the withertos and whyfors in order to be effective. Character A took these actions in relation to Character B, and these were the consequences. Don’t be like Character A-hole.
In short, adults cleverly craft stories for children aiming to pass on some kernel of wisdom that would not be well-received in the form of didactic exposition, no matter how elegantly constructed.
Amateur Stories
Okay, so what effective stories can we craft for adult humans to cleverly package ideas that adult humans are cognitively incapable of mastering? Can you spot the flaw? If the authors of the stories suffer the same limitations as the target audience, how can it work? If you asked a five-year-old to construct a story for other five-year-olds about why it’s a bad idea for a brother and sister to marry and have kids, what might you expect to emerge?
The kid will feel that they know all they need to know about brothers and sisters, based on direct experience with their own family and those of cousins and friends. They’ll feel they know plenty about marriage, based on observations of their parents and other parents in their circles. They’ll feel they know about babies and growing families based on plenty of exposure. They’ve got this. Sound familiar?
Just think about the wild variants kids would come up with. Kids say the darndest things! The stories would be all over the place, often quite amusing, and certainly creative. I could predict a common theme: brother-sister marriage is a bad idea because brothers and sisters fight all the time, while married people… oh wait. But would their stories be useful? Maybe sometimes by accident, if the stories effectively instilled a sense that incest is bad news. The main problem is that the stories would tend to be a bit unhinged, in terms of capturing the actual (realistic) pitfalls, and thus would be hard to take seriously: not much sticking power. Just as lies are most effective if generously suffused with truth, stories are most effective if containing a healthy dose of reality, so that real-world examples make numerous contact-points with the story.
The adult version crafted for kids would probably contain crucial elements like birth defects, social exclusion, loss of livelihood, and general sadness/regret (fewer toys). The five-year-old, not steeped in these concepts would be very unlikely to conjure a story featuring these elements.
Wanted: Wise Storytellers
We still need stories to guide us. But, just as children are not the best authors of stories that can teach other children what children don’t understand, humans are not the best authors of stories that can teach humans what humans don’t understand. Echoing Erin Brockovich: because we suck at it.
Wait, what have I just said? If human authors are unequal to the task, and we can’t exactly dial up (non-existent?) hyper-intelligent aliens, we’re out of luck, right? No: soooo wrong. Humans are a tiny and very recent part of the cosmos, or even of life on Earth. Where, then, might we find wisdom?
I’m suggesting that we listen more carefully to lessons whose origins lie beyond humans. Rather than leave it to us to concoct, fabricate, manufacture, conjure stories out of our meat-brains, let the much older and wiser natural world write the script for us to read.
At the most fundamental scale, we can watch the way the actual real universe (and its constituent matter) works. This is what physics does. Contrary to what post-modernists would claim, physics is not a human creation, but a human reading of a much older, broader reality. Quarks and electrons obeyed the same rules well before life took notice, While we will never comprehend the full glory of emergent complexity, we can appreciate the stable wisdom embedded in an ancient code: a code to which we owe our existence: the ultimate authority. Because it says so.
But perhaps the most instructive source is other life—which invariably abides by physics, thus acting as a messenger of that base wisdom. Because humans have dangerously deviated from an ecologically-rooted tradition, we have invited ruinous consequences for our own species and a multitude of others by heeding deeply flawed stories of our own concoction.
I really love Indigenous traditions that speak of our older brothers and sisters—the plants and animals—who can teach us much about how to live on this planet. It’s not just a romantic notion. Great wisdom—only tiny facets of which we ourselves are capable of generating—is encoded in the community of life. Having been shaped over an inconceivable yawning gulf of time by the most clever feedback mechanism ever, species who are able to survive are performing countless genius acts that are vetted to work in the long term. By contrast, notions spun out of human brains have essentially none of that enormous contextual grounding, vetting, or track record—and the results are on display all around us.
In the introduction to this post, when your came across “hypothetical species possessing far more wisdom [than us],” did your thoughts go straight to “space alien?” Did it occur to you that other species on this planet might possess a non-cerebral type of wisdom that is missing in our shortcut mental models?
Members of modernity are not trained to attend to lessons from “inferior” life. After all, a hedgehog can’t help me build a skyscraper or launch a communication satellite. Worthless! A hedgehog, however, wisely perceives no value in such ventures. So, wait: was the “worthless” comment above directed at the hedgehog, or the hedgehog’s take on artificial satellites?” Rather than dismiss the hedgehog, it bears asking why it perceives no value, and what it might be getting right.
It will take some time and training to listen to external stories. My own journey has barely begun, but my posts on wasps and newts contain hints.
What Rhymes?
The title of this post has the word rhyme in it, yet I have not offered a single one (not deliberately, anyway). I’ll throw out a few cheap ones, in the context of how we interpret stories that are meant to be metaphorical.
It’s fine to have a story with trolls, elves, dwarfs, goblins, etc. if these devices help us navigate our complex world. The problem is in taking story elements literally. That’s a rookie mistake, all too common among children, and not at all absent among infantilized members of modernity.
Many of the stories we tell about who we are, fundamentally, involve not trolls and elves but souls and selves. There, I did it. Moving on… It might be fine to tell stories of mind, consciousness, God, or whatever, but maybe the peril is in taking them literally. These are inventions/interpretations of our brains, not handed to us by direct observation of the wise world as it is and as it does.
I ended the post on Shortcut Brains with a quote from Vanessa Machado de Oliveira’s Hospicing Modernity about the question of truth in stories. As the book goes on to explain, more important than truth is the question: what does the story move? My concern about mind, consciousness, souls, etc. and why my posts continue taking issue is out of unease over what those self-aggrandizing notions move. I believe we already have the answer in the form of our modern culture hurtling toward a sixth mass extinction. Narcissism, human supremacy, individualism (separate selves), and brain-worship go hand-in-hand with stories of the transcendent specialness of mind, consciousness or souls: no longer mere animals or insultingly bound by nasty, brutish physics!
It’s possible that I’m barking up the wrong tree, here. Maybe humans need to have their egos inflated, to be aggrandized, before they’ll suffer a story. But humans of modernity don’t represent all of humanity (over time, especially). The main hint comes from the relentlessly persistent call for humility among Indigenous traditions that have stood the test of time, and lived in approximate ecological balance. By contrast, no examples exist of a hubristic culture tucking into right-relationship with the community of life for long-term success.
Thus, I seek stories that teach humility, and how to live ecologically. The best avenue seems to be stories that come from the tried-and-true more-than-human world, not the self-flattering drivel we fabricate.
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Gracias por tu esfuerzo Tom. No te cansas de tratar de hacer entender el problema a los demás, y eso es admirable. Un abrazo.
[edit: Google translation: Thanks for your efforts Tom. You never tire of trying to make others understand the problem, and that is admirable. A hug.]
Murphy:
"…no longer mere animals or insultingly bound by nasty, brutish physics!"
Wow! This is the most direct connection I have seen you make to the work of Ernest Becker in "The Denial of Death."
Becker:
'Man has a symbolic identity that brings him sharply out of nature…with a mind that soars out to speculate about atoms and infinity… Yet (he) is a worm and food for worms…he is out of nature and hopelessly in it… in a heart-pumping, breath-gasping body that once belonged to a fish and still carries the gill-marks to prove it.
…he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order blindly and dumbly to rot and disappear forever.'
Murphy:
"Maybe humans need to have their egos inflated, to be aggrandized…"
Becker:
'If we had to offer the briefest explanation of all the evil that men have wreaked upon themselves and upon their world since the beginnings of time right up until tomorrow…it would be simply in the toll that his pretense of sanity takes, as he tries to deny his true condition.'
Cool comment Gordon. You might have just convinced me to look at Becker's book. Been on my list for a while, but reading books nowadays is like kryptonite. (screentime has destroyed me)
@Tom; Great essay today!
I think that some of the stories we tell kids aren't about truth but about protection.
"Don't go into the woods because the bogeyman will get you". Fear is a good motivator of behaviour and survival is the ultimate goal.
We "sugarcoat" death because we want to protect our kids. I can remember the day when I realised that me parents would die sometime. I was inconsolable (for a few hours before my thoughts moved on🤣). They aren't ready for hard reality yet.
As adults we still tell ourselves stories because they are comforting even if they aren't true.
Once we became conscious (however that came about???) we became aware of what we don't know. In fact there is far more things we don't know, than what we do.
Not understanding something can be very anxiety triggering.
My son is autistic and find society, people, customs, language, completely baffling and extremely anxiety triggering.
So we tell stories about the cosmos to feel comfortable.
High anxiety and confusion aren't great states of mind for survival.
Not knowing stuff is the tradeoff for the ability to make connections and imagine things that don't exist. Imagining things that don't exist is what has given us an survival edge (up till now!!!😲)
The fall from the Garden of Eden. Ignorance is bliss. Awareness is stress.
Gods seem crazy to me with my modernity mind but I can see why "belief" can be a good survival strategy.
Stories don't need to be true, they just need to work.
People of indigenous cultures seem to have been the far better story tellers. Their stories/language were and are more aligned with living a sustainable existence (holistic modes of being). Stories that carry wisdom because they have been tuned by the process of evolution.
They also don’t try to force anyone (especially those outside their own indigenous group) of the “truth” of their story (maybe this is key to it all?). But if you are part of the group and you want to remain that way, you have to accept the “truth” of the group’s particular story (or that’s the impression I get from my reading. I don’t profess to be an authority). The stories differ and gradually change, but the “bad” additions to the stories are weeded out by evolution because the purpose of the stories is, afterall, ongoing survival, which is what you said John 🙂
Maybe a few new simple nursery rhymes palatable to the modern mindset, Tom? Ones geared towards transitioning us out of modernity. Perhaps they could bring home the point that the “truth” revealed by physics should be used to instil awe at the miracle of everything, but is extremely susceptible to misuse in our hands. Seeking the ultimate truth brings with it the capacity to destroy the world.
@Bim
I'm in the middle of reading Sand Talk.
There is a bit in it that has caught my imagination.
He talks about the meaning of "spirit" in aboriginal culture.
"Spirit" can be translated to abstract thoughts/concepts/metaphors in modernities language.
When he (Tyson) has a complex abstract thought that he wants to remember, he makes and object covered in marks, etchings, symbols, colours, textures.
In the process of making the object he is thinking about the abstract thought.
So, when he sees the object again it triggers the memory of the thought.
The object contains "Spirit".
I guess that some objects are deeply personal and others contain symbols/metaphors that are shared by wider groups.
We tend to use pen and paper (or a keyboard) to achieve the same thing
Cheers John, very interesting.
As other have suggested, I wonder if our modern cultures are way too dominated by the written word, which seems to go hand-in-hand with us having a strong "inner voice", much of our thinking being of the verbal kind, and a predilection for trying to explain things/grand theorizing. It seems that the consciousness of indigenous peoples (who have much stronger oral traditions) is not so heavily weighted towards the theorizing internal dialogue side-of-things, hence they remain more immersed in and attuned to the "outer world" and, therefore, more open to letting it (rather than them) guide how they should live well.
The Australian Aboriginals' notion that "The Land is the Law" has always appealed to me. You (and others) might perhaps be interested to read this very informative piece by the indigenous Australian academic Mary Graham:
https://australianhumanitiesreview.org/2008/11/01/some-thoughts-about-the-philosophical-underpinnings-of-aboriginal-worldviews/
@Bim
I really enjoyed the article you gave the link to.
Lots more food for thought 🤔!!!!!
@Bin
Thanks for the link. I'll check it out.
Yes, Tyson talks a lot about the oral traditions and how ideas are passed on verbally. Ideas grow through the inputs of many voices round the campfire.
We are doing it here by posting comments but it is a much "removed" process.
"My concern about mind, consciousness, souls, etc. and why my posts continue taking issue is out of unease over what those self-aggrandizing notions move."
If all life has those things, then how can they be self-aggrandizing?
Isn't a desire to impose a determinist worldview on the entire universe perhaps incompatible with a desire for humility?
I'm not saying you're wrong, only that certainty about these things is beyond the meat brain.
Metaphysical questions, by definition, fall outside the purview of physics.
The disgusting stain that is modernity springs directly from the mechanistic, left-brain view of Nature.
Blaming belief in mind, consciousness, souls, God, etc for it is disingenuous. The modern, scientific consensus is atheist/materialist. It sees 'resources' and nothing more.
Sadly, the world increasingly resembles this stark, utilitarian model of reality, as modernity continues its relentless assault on Nature, creativity, freedom etc. All wonderful scientific/human 'progress'.
Yes, a belief that 'God made us' might be an example of human supremacism, but so is a belief that 'science and technology can solve all our problems'. Thus, the (real) existence of human supremacism can be weaponized by either side of the 'God vs science' argument.
The only thing I can say with absolute certainty about God etc is "I don't know". Ok, there's no evidence. There's evidence for consciousness though – unfiltered experience – unless that's an illusion. But then, who is being fooled?
If consciousness is not handed to us by direct observation, I'm not sure what is.
Science, born from a spirit of enquiry, has ended up as a tool of corporate, global bureaucracy. With its silos and specializations, it is now a completely left-brained affair, a microcosm of the narrow focus that got us here, to this modern hell.
Maybe your strong protests against modernity are a form of penance, in order to gain absolution for the materialist paradigm that inadvertently created the monster…
First: no such thing as unfiltered experience. From the photons, vibrations, molecules, thermal, and electrostatic phenomena our senses register to the impressions they make is a huge raft of complexity (a giant filter). The sense of consciousness, free will, etc. are a product of this complexity, not somehow a direct line to truth (about as far as one can get in terms of filtered layers). [later addition: Perhaps our experiences are among the most heavily-filtered (sophisticated; many-layered; complex; removed from direct contact) phenomena in the universe, or at least on Earth. The powerful instinct is to treat these elaborate constructs as base truth/reality—inviting problematic interpretations.]
I agree that science has been a net negative (see my post on Disillusioned Scientist). It seems to have been lost somehow that what I'm trying to do is not claim with certainty I know how it all works (how many times have I said so?) but that it's okay if we can't have certainty about how the dots connect. I'm trying to pry people away from left-brain algorithmic certainty and accept the mystery of how it could all work. At the same time, I am advocating that we don't make up any facile short-cuts (a left-brain addiction) to cover our lack of knowledge (souls, consciousness, mind, etc. are huge leaps founded on complex "feelings" we haven't much clue about). It's just making stuff up, and much of that has been for the worse, in our culture.
I don't find myself in either camp you describe (God vs. science). But I can't decide to refute the physics we've uncovered, either (yes, largely a left-brain product, but both hemispheres have their place). So the question is: how can we move forward accepting the things we cannot deny (i.e., physics), but careful not to over-interpret or self-aggrandize? I like that this foundation puts us all in the same boat: a healthy start to community.
"Science, born from a spirit of enquiry, has ended up as a tool of corporate, global bureaucracy. "
And God, born from a spirit of reverence for all of 'creation', has ended up as a tool of theocratic bureaucracy. Revealed truth is the favorite tool of dictators.
I'm with you James.
If "the world" is just a creation of our minds formed through inputs from our senses, how can physics be objective?
We can only "see" what our meatbrains are able to experience/process. The cosmos will always be subjective to us.
I've never really gone too far down the "rabbit hole" of physics. I know It has no bottom and that all I'm going to get is more questions.
I tend to drift towards more philosophical ways of thinking. I find more solace there. More calm. Less neurons firing all over the place.
We can't stop having thoughts. It's the curse of consciousness.
I find more solace in carving a kuksa than thinking about quarks, strange and charm.
Cheers John
I did study physics, in the naive hope of finding answers, but like you say all I found were more questions…
In the end, who cares about 'ultimate reality', whatever that is?
Best just to be nice to each other and try to enjoy the brief time we get on this Earth.
At least you're honest about the motivations: solace, calm, more graspable, more sense of order. You've got plenty of company.
I know this is part of the reason my message is an uphill battle. I myself don't much *like* what it says, but what relevance is that? The world is not made in my head—only my filtered and constructed sense of it (including a nearly-unshakable sense of free will). The silver lining is that by de-centering humans, forcing us to look at hard, unflattering truths, we might just become better members of the community of life, placing more value on our luck to be included at all.
@tmurphy.
I have to say that I have really enjoyed this debate. I hope I don't want to come across as confrontational antagonistic.
Reading back through, it's all about words and their perceived meanings.
"Free will" stands out as a possible point of confusion.
What do you mean by "free will"?
I do see consciousness as a thing. But then I guess it depends on what one thinks "consciousness" means?
I'm not convinced that all the decisions l/we make have a bearing on our chances of survival. Especially since we became apex preditors. Very few of the decisions I make on a daily basis are a matter of life and death and are "neutral" to my survival or the passing on of my DNA to humanity's future.
I appreciate that we can't always see the very complex cause and effects.
A bit like the butterfly flapping it's wings in the Amazon…….. fable. But, it's a kind of choice whether I believe or not. It's difficult to prove either way.
Free will: free of what? Physics constraints? Deterministic influences? The spirit of the term has us as entities over our atoms. Lacking evidence for this override/intervention capability, it seems more likely (though far from our constructed perception) that material interactions do all the work and we're along for the ride. Evolutionary feedback has shaped us (our atom arrangements and interactions) to make adaptively reasonable decisions, on average.
Consciousness is about the most complicated construction out there, built out of billions of years of tuning and capability exploration (and exceedingly sophisticated structures we don't really understand). I'd call it an illusion, in that what we perceive is not a thing unto its own, over and above physics interaction, but a convenient, perceived construct emerging from the complex material interactions.
I would never say that all decisions bear on life and death, even for a microbe (you keep bringing that in). But in the aggregate, decisions had better be net-favorable, or evolution smacks down the species. So, our physical construction is geared toward making decent decisions on the whole, in long-term feedback to survival.
Whatever you chose to believe, the universe will take no notice. Same goes for me, of course. My approach is to seek grounding in what we know, minimize speculation, and also connect these humble beliefs to a way of living more connected to the community of life. It's all one enormous phenomenon of which we are but a small part.
With respect to the phenomenal aspect of consciousness (the subjective "what it is like" aspect), it seems that large swathes people tend to fall into one of two camps: those that believe it is a private, non-reductive, fundamental element of reality (dualists, and panpsychists?), and those that think it is a cognitive illusion based on the belief that all that exists are physical, non-phenomenal properties (illusionists).
Lahav and Neeneh offer up an interesting relativistic theory of consciousness that says both camps are wrong:
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.704270/full
"We propose a novel relativistic theory of consciousness in which consciousness is not an absolute property but a relative one. This approach eschews both extremes of illusionism and dualism. The relativistic theory of consciousness will show that phenomenal consciousness is neither an illusion created by a “machine stuck in a logic loop” nor a unique fundamental property of the universe. It will give a coherent answer to the question of the (supposed) privacy of phenomenal consciousness, will bridge the explanatory gap, and will provide a solution to the hard problem based in relativistic physics"
"Phenomenal consciousness is neither private nor delusional, just relativistic."
Might be of interest to people of both camps that are locked in debate with members of the opposing camp?
I'll have to take a peek, but I have my doubts that relativity enters. I mean, relativity is always present in all situations, just playing a negligible role. The claims of bridging the gap and finally solving the "hard problem" put up red flags: another facile grab for certainty as a means to cope with our staggering ignorance?
I vote you keep barking and see what's further up the tree.
I've spent time around those who believe that human spiritual evolution is the ultimate solution (rhyme unintended!) and eventually came to realize it's simply the flip side of the techno-delusionist progress coin, even if it makes the occasional pretense not to be. Humble bragging is still bragging, as it turns out, and people who focus all their energy on rising above all things earthly and material become, at best, indifferent to those surroundings and, at worst, actively hostile (and at all times conveniently ignoring their need for actual physical sustenance from said earth and other beings). It wasn't an anomaly that those evolved yoginis were married to rich tech guys, or that the truth was the alcoholic was swapping a physical addiction for one to religion, and that both seemed to involve nonstop preaching and self-centered success stories while at the same time knocking ego and calling out the listener for displaying any hint of it (though suggest that humankind is anything less than superior, magical, and super duper precious and special and watch that mask of serenity slip away into the ether!)
The spirits-and-souls set and the singularity seekers have the same fear of death; they're simply hoping to cheat it in different ways. I get it, it's scary, but look where trying to perpetually protect and childishly cocoon has gotten us. Every day, in a million ways, it's the same old story and I'm so, so tired of it. So thanks for challenging it – I am very excited to have discovered your work and look forward to hearing more!
Great to have someone who gets what I'm saying. The comment forum mainly conveys the opposite impression, even if composed of only a few individual voices.
I'm so,so tired of it too. The god squad with their focus on an imaginary world beyond this, and their indifference to the trashing of the only world they'll ever know, Witness Reagan's Secretary for the Interior, with his declaration that the environment doesn't ,matter, because the second coming was imminent. Power and delusion.
What a combination. Now ecologically ignorant Musk, with his statements that the planet is underpopulated, doing his best to solve that problem by himself. So devoid of any connection with or appreciation of the natural world that he regards moving to a planet devoid of life as some sort of triumph, all while the biosphere and its endless wonders is inexorably becoming a wasteland.
On a slight tangent.
How far would physics have got without fossil fuels?
Oh—not far at all! This hasn't escaped me, and if I had my druthers, I'd prefer we never took this road (the one that forked off through grain agriculture 10,000 years ago). Of course, none of us have our druthers: the wheels turn as they do.
However, now that we *do* know about physics, we can ask what that really tells us. It tells me that we're spectacular instances of emergent complexity, but we shouldn't let that go to our heads. Because that's where the trouble starts. My approach is: how can we cast the physics we know into a humble-making lesson? We might not like the answers, but sometimes medicine tastes yucky.
So is a physics based understanding of the world a blip like fossil fuels?
One is wedded to the other.
The physics based understanding has got us to the point of the 6th mass extinction or nuclear annihilation. (The Laws of Physics making it inevitable 😉)
Will we run out of fossil fuels before we reach the tipping point?
And if we do, will we have to come up with a different story to physics, to explain it all?
Yes, I imagine that 10,000 years from now humans will know very little of the physics we do now (mostly irrelevant to living in right-relationship to the community of life, as was the case for hundreds of thousands of years). It has more downsides than upsides, the record seems to show. That said, from our current, temporary perch, can we access our understanding to help us transition to a new way of seeing our place in the world? This way, we work with what we've got, and with people trained as they are, to pivot—rather than a whole-cloth start from scratch in perhaps an animist framing. Those may (re)emerge in due time to replace what's familiar now.
I blame the Holocene!!!!🤣
Without a relatively stable climate, the accumulation of surplus energy would not have been possible on a consistent basis.
Increasingly erratic climatic conditions and a decline in fossil fuels with set us on a different path (if we don't destroy ourselves in the meantime)
Now you're talking my language: the atoms made us do it! "External" factors, not some notional consciousness driving the story. We're along for the ride, of course interactively.
[Substantially edited down to retain key points]
What you are saying is […] that our choices decisions aren't our own and are prewired/predestined by a complex series of interrelationships that our meatbrains can't possibly understand or predict. If I have this bit correct, (?) then this is where I struggle.
If we have no conscious thoughts or agency then I'm not sure how this statement that you made above fits?
[You're saying] that we are on a path that is already set out and we can't think/act our way out of it?
On a philosophical angle, I can live with that but on a practical social level it is problematic. To believe that we have no agency over our actions is to say that we aren't responsible for what we do.
On a philosophical level it's fine but on a practical level, I still have to make decisions to get through the day.
The fact that those decisions come from a combination of personal experience, ancestral/inherited behaviours, my education etc is by the by. (I'm also sceptical that all my decisions impact on my chances of survival. Even in a microscopic way, unreadable to myself)
I'll say again: nothing is predetermined. The universe doesn't know what happens next. Thoughts happen in our brains that we are aware of (we label it consciousness, then elevate the sensation to a first principle despite being the product of unthinkably complex layered interactions). We have agency in that our actions can change things: we are not inert, non-interactive separate entities or Boltzmann brains, but material, corporeal beings enmeshed in a tangle of physics interactions. Responsibility is *always* distributed among a broad set of influences, but we often insist on 100% attribution to a "soul," in impressive black/white certainty. Granted, actions often come to focus in an individual, and a social species will hold that individual accountable as part of the forces shaping evolutionary success. Nothing wrong with that: it works. Philosophy (the "my atoms made me do it" defense) has no power to overrule physics when it comes to evolved, physics-based instincts on how to shape appropriate behaviors. What you call "by the by" is absolutely relevant in shaping our behaviors. We *are* our heritage and experiences, not somehow separate and purified of them. Every time you express skepticism that all decisions impact survival, I clarify that I never (knowingly) implied so, and that it's an aggregate, long-term time-averaged assessment. So, until next time…
Thanks a lot Tom (again) for bringing the physical view in front of the traditional narcissists religious views.
Ask any phycologist and they will tell you that humans need self estimate to feel right. Obviously this makes much more difficult for people who consider their mind and intelligence the ultimate wonders, to accept your proposals.
The meatbrain is full of biases!
And they move intelligent people to aporía territory.
The funny fight that so easily appears as soon as you questioned the holy status of our brains.
I'm not saying that you have the Truth, but IMHO you choose the right path.
"Things are not as they are seen, nor are they otherwise."
—”Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/reality-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/
Also, about meat-brains biases, religious people are primed, from too early in life, to consider believes as something better than reasons.
Great, another round! 🙂 Now in my environment, techno-optimistic (blind) ideas about the noosphere are gaining weight. This is the teaching of Vernadskyi (a century ago) In which you can see the whole progress of attempts to master the mind, the biosphere and, accordingly, life. This is the foundational legend of the cosmіsm of Tsiolkovsky and other paralytics who created nomenclature and philosophical works in my region.
Your arguments smash this theory to dust. The only regret that can be expressed is that words, meanings and explanations do little to stimulate action (especially in the era of excessive digital social interactions).
*Lesson* not yet learned. Only survive will force you to change, and then, perhaps, pride will become a taboo again.
Thanks 🙂
I haven't commented much here in the past.
BUT, I just want to let you know that your writing and thoughts are greatly appreciated. I read your textbook a couple of years ago and have enjoyed your writing even if I haven't always agreed with you.
Lately I have liked the "Free Will" (Physics explains it all) debate you have been engaged in here, in the comments. I bought Sapolsky's "Determined" and am working my way through it.
I have thought for a long time humans are insignificant in the face of the majesty of the Universe but at this point in time have with the benefit of Modernity and Science risen to the point of a little bit of understanding the Physics of the Universe's start and possible end (as much as our meat brains can manage). It is sad to me that this understanding has been at the expense of the rest of the life on this planet and that going forward this knowledge will be lost and if humans (and the biosphere) survive us, we will go back (IMHO) to the "Demon Haunted World" we so recently emerged from.
But so be it.
The left right and center political spectrum is perhaps one of the 'stories' that is blocking people from understanding their place in the world.
The spectrum actually looks more like this:
At one end we have indigenous/tribal people who lived in relation with the community of life for what can safely be called a sustainable length of time. Base line human condition. "Leavers" in DQ parlance.
Then we have essentially left wing, left, center, right, right wing. All "Takers", all radicalised human supremacists from a lesser to greater extent.
No doubt a questionnaire could be developed to give people a score on what might be called the
Human Supremacist Index (HSI)
Human Radicalisation Index (HRI)
Social Engineering Index (SEI)
Brain Washing Index (BWI)
…
People need to realise they have a problem before they are ready to change.
No doubt this would be 'very popular'.
All the best
Derek
Thumbs-up!
1) Thank you for all your public writings. Your exhaustive analysis of overshoot is powerful to those of us who come from a scientific/technical background.
2) As you move from "Do the Math/Did the Math" analysis into philosophical questions, you might reconsider your aversion to philosophy. Philosophers have long discussed the issues you raise in this post along with the free will and mind-body problems you raised in your last post.