The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 256. Psychedelics, Consciousness, and AI | Richard Dawkins

Episode Date: May 27, 2022

Dr. Richard Dawkins is a British evolutionary biologist, theorist, and one of the world’s foremost atheists.In this episode, Dr. Dawkins and I discuss religion, psychedelics, consciousness, symbolism, postmodernism, and the importance of objective truth.Links:To follow Dawkins on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RichardDawkinsWebsite: https://richarddawkins.com/Read Dawkins’ articles: https://richarddawkins.com/articlesTo donate to the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science: https://richarddawkins.net/donate/Show Notes:[0:00] Intro[1:30] Jordan’s rise to fame, Bill C-16, and Free Speech[5:30] Intimidation and fear of speaking out against the far left[9:10] Micro retreats[11:40] Dawkins’ paper about the organism as a model[18:30] Female sexual selection[21:10] Differences between Jordan and Dr. Dawkins' thinking[24:00] Jeffrey Gray, his work on modeling, Psychedelics, and Anxiety[30:00] Psychedelics, Symbolism, and Consciousness[41:00] Jordan’s experiences with psilocybin and yoga[45:40] Postmodernism, Lacan, Foucault, and Mikhaila’s Oxford Union debate[52:30] Jordan addresses Dawkins' assertion that despite being against postmodernist thinking he at times utilizes symbolism to speculate in a way which is similar to them.[53:50] Finding commonality between myths and symbols across cultures[55:50] False pattern recognition and revelatory thoughts[59:20] Objective truth and the scientific process[1:07:10] Unpleasant or dangerous truths[1:08:10] The metaphysical vision of the redeeming power of truth[1:10:10] Jordan and Dawkins discuss the idea that a narrative drives the process of inquiry, even in regards to objective truth[1:12:50] Humans’ ability to understand difficult concepts on a biological level[1:16:10] Question: Do you identify the religious impulse or even the religious phenomenon with the totalitarian proclivity for dogmatic certainty and the potential acceleration of aggression and atrocity as a consequence?[1:20:10] Question: To what degree do you think that consciousness operates as a fundamental mechanism of selection and shaping?[1:23:00] Artificial intelligence and the metaphysical significance of consciousness

Hello, everyone. A while back, and that would be November of 2021. I had the distinct pleasure of having a discussion with Dr. Richard Dawkins, who, apart from being an esteemed evolutionary biologist and 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 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. It ends abruptly in a sense too because we ran out of our time without running out of topics. And so I walked over to, as it turned out, a chapel on the Oxford campus.

And that wasn't a place that Dr. 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 airy-dite and intelligent and a man of goodwill, 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, enjoy it! Almost 100% of the conversations that I have with people on the street are very, very positive. I would say it's one in five thousand that isn't. But, but. It only takes one. Yes, and there's no shortage of trouble. What's the motivation of the

the 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. So when I, 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 all this first exploded around me, I had released a couple of YouTube videos, three of them, I think, decrying a Bill C-16 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 issue is very complicated if you're a psychopathologist. But for me, it was just compelled speech. It's 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. Is Canada the only country that does this? That's a good question. I don't know. I don't know. The United States doesn't.

We've also had this, in Canada, this proliferation of these so-called human rights commissions, 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 back flips to satisfy this angry hypothetically transgender individual he'd employed, he was fined something like $35,000 and forced to take these mandatory sensitivity training programs. I mean, this in Canada.

That's in Canada. Vancouver is a major city on the west coast. And so I was assured when I voiced my opposition. I said, well, this is illegal. And I said, well, nothing will happen if you don't my opposition. I said, well, this is illegal. And I said, well, nothing will happen if you don't comply. And I thought, what the hell was that? Well, what do you mean nothing will happen? It's illegal.

Yes, quite. No, nothing will. So 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 use 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 they're theory is correct because it takes mass 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? You're just 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 massive intimidation going on, especially in the academic world. And you're one of the few people who's actually stood up to this intimidation, and I wish to salute you. Well, thank you for that.

That's very much appreciated. Well, I understand, because I've studied a lot, why people are intimidated. You know, I've talked to conservative politicians all over Canada and the United States, although I also talk to particularly in the States, 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 helped people

negotiate unbelievably stressful situations. You know where their careers were on the line, where their families were on the line, where their families were on the line, their sanity was on the line, and I got very good out, figuring out how to step through such mind fields, you know, strategically and carefully. And so by the time I said something, I had three sources of independent income. So I had a clinical practice, and I had a company that was generating a certain amount of money, and I had 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 meant there is no bloody way you're gonna 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, I couldn't have 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 ideologically in the workplace and be pressured badly. And, you know, they had families to support, mortgages to pay. And it was, I 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 in my clinical practice, if someone needed to stand up in the workplace to a bullying boss, say, or to an ideological cadre, 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 the marketable,

we'd address that. And then they'd apply for different jobs and they'd go on a few interviews so they were ready. And then they could go in and we did that often too. And I was helping people negotiate for a race. It's like Self ready, you know So you can go in there and tell your boss why you're valuable or you can go in there and tell your boss why they better get the hell off your case Or they're either gonna lose you or there's gonna 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. 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 fourth-year seminars by factor of two. 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 pertained to that but that's beside the point.

So would it be okay if you just 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. And so I tell my faculty, confers, why don't you just say no? 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 you're 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 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 have 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.

The faculty numbers haven't grown in a man-s-er-it-matter with the student numbers, and so the administration took over. Well, and then because they were composed 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 this is you want to talk about. 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 I didn't find anything in that paper that I disagreed with at all. I thought, yeah, that's, and I know a little bit about the engineering literature that suggests that, and even the computational literature that suggests that in some sense an organism that operates within the world has to be a model of that world.

In order for it to be, in order for it to be operate in the world. Yes. And then 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. And animals in winter versus summer, changing their coats. And birds, of course, you said you could derive the structure of the atmosphere and probably the earth-gravitational field and probably the strength of the gravitational field by

sufficiently detailed analysis of the bird. That's very good. I hadn't noticed that one. That's very good. Yeah. Oh, well, you did mention the air aspect of birds, anyway. But I'm sure you could... I'm sure you could generalize that.

Yes, well good, I'm glad you liked that. It's a book I'm now working on called the genetic book of the dead, which is all about the idea that the animal is a model of not the present but the past, it's a whole of the ancestral worlds. Yes. Because the animals, the whole of the ancestral worlds, 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, still very, very recent, including extremely recent, and then we go out of the genome and the nervous system becomes part of the palimpsest of recent experience. Right, so you could say that, so correct me, correct me if I ever put words in your mouth, because I want to get what you think, exactly right. The genetic code is a repository of information that generates The genetic code is a repository of information that generates ever, perhaps ever more complex or ever more fine-grained. Not sure. Not sure.

Not sure. I said that all I wanted to say is that the genetic code is a in principle decodable description of ancient environments. Right. Okay. Fair enough. So the question then I suppose would be, at what level of resolution?

Right? So there's this idea, I think I mentioned it might talk the other day, I really like this idea. 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 biological terms and physical terms, so that matter, wherever possible.

It keeps things clearer and simpler. But there is this idea in relationship to the idea of the incarnation that Christ could embody God through a process of canosis and the scholastic theoreticians who 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 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 want 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 interesting thing about a low-resolution image. And if it's an, the interesting thing about a low-resolution

image is that it's an unbiased sample of the color space of the image, right? It's not, it doesn't have any ideological bent. Part of the reason it's an accurate representation is, and this has to do with that idea of 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 it reduces redundancy. And all that's 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 abstract the regularities 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 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 emails 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 picked that particular paragraph because that was exactly why I wanted to talk to you. And that was, I think, probably the most clearly I'd ever stated that particular idea. And so that was quite, I have 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 you might ask, well, what exactly is the environment? And so, and that's where I think we could have a very fruitful exchange of views. Now, the the 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. I might have read this in your book. The Irish Elk Story? Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yeah, so and some people have suggested maybe it was you. So 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 it 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 hypergamous 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's conscious, obviously. Yes.

It seems to me you keep one drink from one subject to another without sticking to one at a time. I mean, we came, we went to Kino's and I was kind of wondering what that should go to do with anything. It's probably some difference in our 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 somewhat more interested in aesthetics, although it's close. 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 associational structure. That's right. I mean, let me take one example of something that I've seen of yours, which is not, I know, a sexual selection.

You once showed in a lecture a picture of snakes spiraling around each other snakes. Oh yes. And you said something like, I think it's positively, you know, that is the representation of DNA. Yes, we could, let's leave that one by promise. I promise I will return to that. Well, there's a lot of time because that that seems to be to go to the heart of what may be a difference between us This is aesthetic. I mean that that that idea that that in some sense represents DNA seems 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, just 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 of that a lot. You know, and I, I actually threw that in a lecture because I was thinking in a loosely associative way about some very complicated things. And I was struck by this recurrence of the double helix pattern

in cultural representations all over the place. You love symbols. Yes. I mean, you're obsessed with symbols. Yes. You're almost drunk on symbols. And you could say that. I think you've got to stop and say, what does it actually mean to say absolutely? And the snake's twining is one thing, 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, and some of the psychologists that I've really admired, like Jeffrey Gray, who wrote a great book

on the neuropsychology of anxiety, if you're interested in the idea of modeling, that's, I think that's the most profound neuroscience text that's ever been written. I haven't read that in a contest. I used to know Jeffrey Gray, but I haven't read that book. 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 gray worked. See, see in your paper and I'll get to the D anything I promise in your paper you talk about the response of a single cell to the repeated to a repeated identical stimulus okay Sokolov who is one of the great Russian neuropsychologists identified the Orienting reflex as the manifestation of 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, there'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 the silence, you'll get an orange light. 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 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, and this is all involuntary. It's driven by extremely low-level nervous system mechanism. So you orient towards the place of maximal novelty and then you do rapid visual exploration to try to Rehabituate yourself to the environment and then if it's you know what tradesmen's truck bumped You map that on to regularities you already know and you continue onward, but All of that's mediated by emotion. So anxieties literally, we wrote a paper on this, was one of the papers I'm most happy

with, that anxieties signifies the emergence of entropy. That's what it does. So you can map anxiety right down to, well, you can map it right down to the level of entropy. Yes. So, anyways, gray also mapped the emotions neuropharmacologically and neurophysiologically 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 psychophysiologically. It's very susceptible to oxygen deprivation and 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. You could also think, too 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 dis inhibit, you call it lateral inhibition. There's also a phenomenon called latent inhibition, which is the inhibiting effect of the memory of the regularities on your current perception. So when you look at the world, mostly what you see is memory. That's been tracked in the visual system. So 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 into that low level than there are retinal 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. 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.

It's way pre-cortical. It's divided into two parts. And one part of it governs the dopaminergic system that mediates incentive rewards, so all positive emotion, but more importantly active exploration. And 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 simultaneously. And there's a man named Rudolf Otto,

who wrote a book called, oh, I can't remember the name of the book, but it's not for a very decent, really, just experience because that's James. Anyways, he described the primordial act of perception as Numinus, Mysterium Tremendum. James. Anyways, he described the primordial act of perception as luminous, mysterious, tremendous, and it's a combination of positive and negative emotion. And I thought, that's that's pre-latin inhibition perception, psychedelics disinhibit

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. Simultaneously, there's overwhelming negative emotion. And that's like an awe experience. And then there's the disinhibition of fantasy simultaneously, which is something like the attempt to map that. And so people find that, well, absolutely overwhelming, but by definition, you know, 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 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 igre seal. And on the outside of the tree, there's a snake that eats its own tail. Now, the Amazonian jungle dwellers who discovered ayahuasca have the same image. It's exactly the same. It's a tree at the center of the cosmos with a 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, Iowa is a combination of DMT, which is an extremely powerful hallucinogenic, that only lasts 10 minutes. And monoaminoxidase inhibitor, which makes the DMT experience last eight hours, because

monoaminoxidase inhibitors stop the breakdown of DMT, eight hours because monoammy, noxidase inhibitors, stop the breakdown of DMT, which is a monoammy. The Amazonians had defined 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. Well, they've been using ayahuasca probably for like 15,000 years.

Now the Scandinavians didn't use ayahuasca, the ones who came up with the world's 3,000 years. For 15,000 years, yeah. In Amazonia. thousand years. For 15,000 years, yeah. In, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in The pattern is unbroken oral tradition, like they're not transformative societies. They do pretty much what their ancestors did. They say, well, you have a phenomenon in which you do something in common with Scandinavian and Amazonian. Yes.

Do you have an explanation for that? Yes. I would say the explanation 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. 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 variants.

Yes. And that's even true with the psychedelics. And psilocybin, for example, almost all the psychedelics have a very similar chemical structure. It's a peculiar ring structure, but it's similar to LSD, 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 emotion can go two ways. Because people get heavily 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 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 horribly sideways. That accounted for a lot of what happened badly in the psychedelic explosion in the US in the 60s.

And that was precipitated by the discovery of LSD. And also, there was a man, a 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 Aminita, Muscaria. I can't remember his name at the moment, wasaw, that was wasaw.

He was the first person, he introduced Silasibon mushrooms into Western culture. And it was like, we weren't ready for any of that. And certainly we weren't ready for LSD. These are unbelievably powerful pharmacologically. Like 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 Ammonita Muscaria, those red mushrooms with the white dots that you see in fairy tales all the time, same color as Santa Claus and his flying reindeer, and reindeer like Ammonita Muscaria mushrooms, by the way. So, and so do flies even, weirdly enough. But I think this Scandinavian is also used to Silasai, but now the question is, what the hell is that tree? If you take it seriously, and you take it seriously, I mean, these images were used for a very, very long time, and people thought about them very hard. So imagine that, well, there's 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. You know, we are ancestors lived in trees for a long time and you know you hear these psychologists talk about the African vell as our like Uber environment, you know, that we're adapted to. It's like, well, it 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 like 50 million years. So the notion of the tree, that's in there. And all of our cathedrals have a tree like architecture, and that the light through the stained glass windows, that's sunlight through the glass. They're a tree all over the world. And there's that too. Yes, that's surprising that they would come into people's out in symbolism. Yes, but there's a conceptual reason, yes, yes, yes, they would come into people's outensinbrilism. 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 a word or a 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, 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 grounds out. And so our consciousness sort of

grounds out at the bodily level, at the level of adjustable, voluntarily adjustable micro-musculature, 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 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 too cosmos, let's say. Well psychedelics seem 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 past 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're revenue around again. Yeah.

Well, the question is how far down the levels of analysis can consciousness go under extreme conditions? And so, and I said this was speculation, but I've seen these dual, they're often dual entwined serpents. They're very common. In fact, I have one made by an Indian Carver, Canadian native Carver in Maya. It's so cool. It's called a sea suit.

I have it up in my third floor. It's set on two 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 sea-soodle 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.

mountain that it landed on, it took the form of all the things that it encountered. And so, well, like I said, this isn't a realm of wild speculation, but I know what Crick thought about the origin of DNA. Well, he thought it was too complex to have evolved. Oh, I mean, you mean the idea of it coming from that? No, I mean, I know that's an infinite rigorous problem. Okay, that's what was. Okay, so that was all that was behind that, you know, bit of speculation, which I normally would do with the coding surface. I think that under some conditions, people can 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 consciously. You think that our consciousness can extend down to the micro level, to the level of... I do. The micro micro micro level of 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 seven grams 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 it. Well, I believe that. I can quite understand you have a most extraordinary experience. I've never taken such a drug, but I could imagine you have a most remarkable experience. But you've

just said that you think that your consciousness can see into yourselves and see this structure of DNA. That has got to be utter nonsense. I'm sorry. Well, like I said, I'm 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. Why? Well, no, no, no, no, and fair, look, in all probability, you're right, right? I mean, we're both wise enough to use Orchum'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? Thank you for that. Intuit speculative idea that I'd ever uttered to my students. Yes, well, that enough. I mean, I understand that. And so it's strange to be in a position to defend it. I understand that.

I understand that. I did. 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 knows

the region knows about DNA. These people didn't know what was DNA about it. That's what so. Oh, no, they didn't know. It doesn't surprise me in the least that you could have a visionary experience and think you see your DNA in your own cells. Yes. That of course is highly plausible. Yes. Because I already know about it. Yes. What is not plausible is that somebody who does not know about it. An ancient Chinese sculptor whatever it was, yes, who working long before watching and quick, discovered the structure of DNA,

could possibly apprehend, was apprehend, that just isn't enough. And I guess I would only say in, 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 it isn't absolutely inconceivable that that's not an expandable capacity under some circumstances. You know, because you go to ask yourself, like, I do yoga in the morning.

I couldn't lean the yoga exercise and I've done it for about 20 years and I learned a long while back that when yogis are practicing their asanas, these positions, that's not yoga. They practice the asanas because they're postures that stretch you and then once 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 heal? Well, my experience is that if I move my head, for example, down like this, I can all 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 lost illness

I've been doing this quite a bit because my body is full of knots and pain of 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 therapist who are very good at that. And I think it's part of an elaborated grooming knowledge. But what that means is 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, yeah, first of all,

what is that explorer that's passing in and how far down can you go? That is perfectly plausible. 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 postmodernism. 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. They got that right, but what I'm really hostile to is the answer. I think that's... I want to put you...

I've got one of write 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. Well, before this, I just need to pursue this. Okay, matter a little bit. I can read this out. Okay, okay, we're on audio. Sure.

This is one of my, it's by only written attack on postmodernism and this is from La Car, who says by calculating that signification according to the algebraic method used here namely, s, capital S, signify of a little less signified equals little S, the statement with S equals minus 1, produces a square root of minus 1. Lacan then goes on to conclude that the erectile organ, the penis, is equivalent to the square root of minus one of the signification produced above, of the juicence that it restores by the coefficient of its statement to the function of lack of signifier minus one.

Then another quote from a feminist thinker, well this is actually an interpreter for her, her, her, her, her expositor, Catherine Hales, 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 to deal with the turbulent flow at all, she attributes to the association of fluidity with femininity. Whereas men have sex organs that protrude and become rigid, women have openings that lack that so that leak menstrual blood and vaginal 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 it's necessary to leave unarticulated reminders. So I'm going to play devil's drum call symbolism. Okay, so let's let's take that apart two ways. Okay, okay, the first is let's deal with Laca. Okay, okay. Laca is a fraud as far as I'm glad you say that. Well, I've tried to read LaKah and I cannot make heads or tails of him good and it may be because I'm stupid. It's not. I don't think so. Now, people have accused Jung of the same sort of mysticism that LaKah engages in, but I can understand Jung. I don't think he's a mystic at all.

What Jung was doing is very complicated, and it maps very nicely onto evolutionary biology. Of all the French intellectuals that I've read, I think Lecun is the most fraudulent. Okay? Okay, so we'll just put him aside. Good. You know, I haven't read that much La Conde, 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 as reading the Neurosycology 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 a social constructionist to a large degree. But he does talk about, it's the 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. But I like the order of things. I read it a long time ago. I'm just rereading it now. So forget about La Cain.

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 due 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 priori perceptual proclivities might bias what would otherwise be objective thinking 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 was there. You were there. Yeah.

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 that 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, which side won? The side that 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, that argument was so appalling. I must have missed that. Was that the final one?

Right, right at the end. Oh, you missed it? Yeah. Oh, that's too bad. It's too bad. You really needed to be left for that. I left. We left when the president said the student should start talking.

Right. You must have left just before that happened. Yes. So tell me that I was just, well that was essentially it that was her argument that meat eating was a consequence of the imposition of a patriarchal race is oppressive. Okay, white supremacist narrative on essentially a feminine background. Yeah, okay. 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 postmodernism. That's right. Yes, absolutely. Well, that's an absolutely reasonable question. And given that doubt, which I can 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 helixes happen to propagate themselves all over the world. Because 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 can 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. recognition and that's really a problem, right? That's the problem of misperception. Okay, no, wait, I have no problem with my big problem is equating it with DNA. Yes, that's bullshit, however, yes, however, what might be interesting would be a 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 Jungian about the... Right. ...and I think that's a genuinely interesting question. Of course it is. ...and it may be... Most of the affective neuroscientists that I've met, the good good ones are tilted pretty hard towards the biological primitive argument that forms of perception while color is one of them.

I think that's interesting and of course the coincidence of an image or a statue in this part of the world and that part of the world, you should think about how improbable it is that two people might have hit upon the same design. I mean, the idea of a snake sparring around each other, it's not that difficult to think of. It wouldn't be ridiculously improbable that two tribes and opposite sides of the world would independently come upon that. No, no, and it 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 coiled snake is also a powerful symbol of helic. And so 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, let's say separate from the DNA idea, snakes shed their skin and they're reborn. And so that's part of the reason why there are symbols of transformation. Like a phoenix. 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. Okay, so I'm interested in the improbability of coincidence in this case. Now, if they, people in Scandinavia and people in the Amazonian jungle had independently

developed an alphabet, which was the same alphabet. Now that would be impressive. I mean, that would be... Right, well, but it's also equally impressive that separated people did develop alphabets. Yeah, but not the same alphabet. No, I know they didn't use it, but there's a level at which it's the same, right? Because they are alphabetic and they are the use of written forms to represent sounds. Yeah, well, it's a sensible 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, it gets complicated too. 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 Foucault, of was famous was a debate with Chomsky. Yes.

And Foucault, of course, is a radical social constructionist, except when he isn't now and then, right? And I'm not being smart about that. The order of 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 peoples 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, I agree with you completely that a sociative thinking of the kind that you just read to me can go far astray. What that is is false pattern recognition. You know, so it's it's the app 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, too, isn't it because like I think thought part of the dilemma of thought, though, too, isn't it? Because, like, I think thought is usually parceled out into a revelatory element and a dialogical element. And so the revelatory element is, well, you're sitting there and thoughts entered the theater of your imagination.

And so it's in a sense, 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, well, it's your thought, why are you struck by it? Where does it come from? 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 in particular. Schizophrenia is characterized by the misfiring of that intuition system.

So for example, partly what happens to people who have 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 voices become magnified in significance. And to account for the magnification of emotional significance, they start thinking the television has a special message for me. It's like the receipt of a religious revelation and it's 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 Christ. Very light religious revelation. It is very, it is, it is very light. So I wanted to come to, because you characterize yourself as religious sometimes, and you don't seem to believe in a supernatural creator. Not the people that you do or not. All the time.

I know they do. I believe in God, and I say, well, I act as though God exists. Yes, but let me let you, which is a reference to this model idea. Last night, you've seen to be, we've come to the idea of truth. You've seen to be saying that that which is beneficial to humanity or to the, or your 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 good, I'm glad that we're on to this part of this discussion. When Darwin first published his biological treaties, the origin of species, the New England pragmatists got a hold of his manuscript, William James and CSPERS. And William James founded experimental psychology, and CSPERS was probably the most profound philosopher the Americans ever produced. And they had a club, the psychological, the Philist, I think it was the psychological club, it was either that or the philosophical club, but I believe it was the psychological

club. But I believe it was the psychological club. And they believe that Darwin's theorizing required a new epistemology. It was so revolutionary. And they, per se 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 think it's coherent conceptually. And so, purse was trying to solve the problem of, well, how can something be true when 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 an idea of objective truth, because they derived their concept of truth from their analysis of the evolutionary process. And they said, and 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 suffices for like 90 years Right, we're good enough. We're good enough as a model

It may be that Our knowledge of truth is incomplete and we 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 are you talking about the relationship of your models to that reality? I don't know that I care too much about that because I mean let me tell you something that is true. Okay. We are cousins of chimpanzees. Yes, that is objectively true. It's another thing that's true is that the earth or it's the sun. Yes, these are not. What one can argue about the epistemology of that, but I want to be a realist about this and say that there may be kinds of truth which are somehow filtered through our Darwinian past and which influence the way we see truth. And we may be deceived by all sorts of things, we may be 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 and that that's why we do double blind trial Absolutely. It's why we use random assaynation Exactly. Yes, 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.

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 then the question is, look, I've done a lot of statistical analysis of data sets in my time. 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 an algorithm 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, you know, imagine, I've had data sets that had, you know, 5,000 participants and 200 rules of, rows of 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 can 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 is what? True? Yes, but it's not just true. You want it to be useful. I agree. Yes. 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 truth,

and I know that you're motivated by it. And so then I would say 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 active faith because you might ask yourself in science, is it truth or untruth that serves the world? Well, that's where we came back,

that's where we came in because there are all sorts of truths which do not serve the world. There are all sorts of truths which are very unpleasant. Yes, and analogy might be as a doctor, 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 You might your colleagues might say well it's better off not telling him. It's better not not knowing So the truth in this case is not beneficial But what would you pissed what would you well? You want to know that's irrelevant. No, no, I would rock you would I, well, would you want to know? That's irrelevant. No, no, no, I would want to know.

Okay, well, but I agree that there are dangers, truth, 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 say, I don't believe that you can be a scientist and discover objective truth say in a 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 while 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 fuel on this conversation, right?

I'm trying to explore it because it's, I'm very, I've dealt with plenty of bad scientists in my time. You know, psychology is rife with what they call p-hacking, where you just run in repeated correlations until you find one that, yeah. That's bad science. Yes, but it's also bad, but it's bad ethics. It's like, well, why not, look, why not do that if it advances your career? Yes, well, I'm quite, 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 a beneficial to but everybody should agree that it is true that this man has cancer. That is true. Yes, and that's true. Well, this is partly why 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 onto that infinity of truth. Yes, in 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 a lot most of the other topics you didn't Yeah, but so the question to me is and this is partly why I got interested in Jung by the way because he was very interested in the unconscious

Direction of attention the psychoanalysts were fascinated by that as partly whether interested in Freud unconscious direction of attention. The psychoanalysts were fascinated by that. That's partly why they're 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 does. Well, it is... nobody it is. It has to be relevant because it's actually the I'm not sure, but I don't think that's not relevant. It is, nobody 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 my name, John Verveiki. John Verveiki 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 a big question. It's a huge question. It's a question that applies to science, so when you decide 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. It doesn't affect the fact that there's objective truth. The mere fact that 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. Right, but it definitely, yes, but it definitely does affect the way that science is, see, this is also why the postmodern critics have been so effective in what they've done. It's because they're pushing the notion that a narrative necessarily drives 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, it's like, I'm not going to argue about that. That doesn't mean I understand it fully fully because I can't quite understand the relationship between the objective fact and the necessity for utility. And partly, I can't understand that on biological grounds, you know, because are fundamentally,

when you look at things, I would say that the description of truth that you're purveying 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 we're tilted in a very fundamental manner to only apprehend those things that will aid survival and reproduction. And so, to hell with the objective facts. Well, that's probably true. That are sense organs and are biased towards that which helps us to survive. And our internal sense always helps us figure out attention mechanisms inside our thought

mechanisms. So we are creatures who evolved on the African savannah and from forests earlier on and our ability to understand the world, let alone what we intend to, is limited by that. We are blinkered by the fact that our bodies and our brains were designed to survive in Africa. Well, 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. Well, that is so powerful.

Well, then we are living in, I don't understand quantum theory. And with, I don't understand quantum theory. And the reason I don't understand quantum theory for this evolutionary point of view is that I'm not involved in that. It doesn't map onto our bodies as well. Exactly. And I don't know. So what I think is remarkable, actually, that there are people who understand quantum theory.

I agree. I mean, that, that that and that's also points to to to to your point that also points to our capacity to apprehend truths that in some sense appear to be outside the pure 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 off as a spandrel, but I think that's a big mistake when when we're talking about something as profound as the capacity to understand the theory of a tool. I mean, I think I said, Stephen Pinker says, why should you be so presumptuous to think you can understand all these things when there are only an animal

which is which is 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 humanities types, when they make a claim like that, often sound like the woman that you just described, but I try to give the devil as do. And I'm trying to do that with postmodernism because I think the conclusions that were drawn from the postmodernist canon, the fundamental conclusion as far as I'm concerned, of 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. Pression, tyranny, dominance. And there's actually, I would say, that the evolutionary biologists are, in part, responsible for that, weirdly enough. Now, I'm not trying to throw stones, you know. I'm like to think of myself to the degree that I can manage it as an evolutionary psychologist. I accept the tendons 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.

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 we do. It's like, hey, hold it. 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 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

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 bandying that back and forth, and it's a tough, it's a tough not to crack. And then we had four more discussions that were all public. And there was a tremendous amount of interest in them, which was quite stunning. It was staggering. We had 10,000 people in Dublin to wander about the same to the old 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, in this relationship to evolution or biology. And so I was trying to sort of win the argument. And I have found, as a consequence,

let's say, of a baptism by fire that that that's not a good way to approach. Like, one of the things I really wanted to do with you, I hope we managed this today was to ask you questions and find out more about what you thought. I can a real genuine man or not a man, 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. And so he, through that discussion, I was alerted to reasons why he was so antipathetic to the idea of religion. 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, institutions. I know, my life is six or 12. So what does it you want to ask me? Because we have our not a time. I want to ask you, when you talk about religious, 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 care, I care first and foremost about scientific truth. And so to me, it isn't, 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 if there is, that would be a fundamentally different kind of universe that we live in, if there is a creative intelligence. So,

although I have a secondary interest in negative concepts of religion and so on, especially in Islam, my fundamental interest is in the scientific truth, which I believe is a scientific question, even if it can't be answered by scientific means, that either is a God or that isn't. That either is a creator or not, 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.

It happened here, no doubt it happened, but probably it happened in other parts of the universe. And do you distinguish between intelligence and consciousness for this purpose? No. Okay. For this purpose. No. Okay. So let me ask you this question. And do you think that sexual selection is mediated by consciousness slash 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 is the... I mean, that is a very profoundly interesting question. And I mean, social selection happens in insects, which I do not think are conscious. So, um, yeah, well, that's a tough one. I mean, I know butterflies can detect a deviation from symmetry in their parts. Well, that's a part of one in a million.

So, yeah, there is sexual selection throughout the animal kingdom. And consciousness can happen without consciousness. I think so. Yes. But, but, but, but, but, but, let's, let's look in humans. Yes. I should think so. Okay. So, okay. So, when I look at the, at a 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 that there's the action of a forming process 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 there are gradations of consciousness. I don't know. Insects do some damn complex things. Have you ever seen that BBC clip of the pufferfish making a sculpture? Yes, I think I have. Yes, I mean, that's quite something. That pufferfish is... We should talk on the way to the chat. We can do that.

Okay, okay. Well, it's very, it's hard day to talk to, to Penrose and you at the same day. I know. Yes. Um, 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 evolution got started. And so you've got to... Well, that, okay, fair enough.

That's a big thing. Yes, that's a big problem. But then, I guess, a rejoinder to that in some sense would be Do you think it's a nonsensical proposition to? I 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 and he does yes and we discussed in some sense, stands outside the domain of algorithmic computation. And he 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. 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 ship, and he did that in 1985. And so we've had a lot of discussions about the limits of AI. So this is an AI-optimized chip by this. As my brother-in-law thinks that computation is algorithmic, or that thought is computation, and algorithmic, and it can be replicated in systems. Penrose

thinks that Gidele's theorem precludes that, that there has to be something standing outside. Now I tried to push him on what he regarded as the metaphysical significance of consciousness. Yes. And he's a very careful thinker. He's a lot like you except he's more associational in his thinking I would say and he thinks in images. He does. Fundamentally. Do you think in words? Yes. Yes. I think in words mostly, but but images have quite a hold on me as well as you as you pointed out. But images have quite a hold on me as well 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 didn't think that's what Roger said. No, I know, I know it isn't. I know it isn't. And he didn't say that. But I suppose it depends to some degree on what you mean by implicit, right?

But obviously, matter can give rise to consciousness with sufficient complexity. Yes, but not. I mean, people are saying like every, even a conscious is even in stones and lessen. Yes, I know. I've talked to the best. Well, it just strikes me that it doesn't really help answer the question.

Yes. So, hello, hello. I think very well. You have your both. You need to take our mic. I'll just, I'll just.