TrueLife - Dr.Bart Wilson is AWESOME

Episode Date: February 11, 2022

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Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. Fear is through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Seraphini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the True Life podcast on a Friday. It looks like we're made it. How's your day going? Is it awesome? Did you wake up and you're smiling?

It was your coffee nice and warm? I don't know. Maybe you drink tea. I don't know. Maybe you are in the jungles of South America. Maybe you're getting ready to make your way to Machu, Pichu, and you're sipping on a little bit of that Coke of tea. I sure hope so.

That would be awesome. Okay, enough of the fantasy. Well, I have got an awesome book review for you today, my friend. It is the property species by Dr. Bart Wilson. This guy's a beast. He's just a beast. I'll tell you, expertise in experimental economics, property, civil asset forfeiture, philosophy of property, biology of property. I bet you didn't even know there was a biology of property.

Spontaneous order and the law. It's really a fascinating book. Let me just give you a quick little synapses of. of what I thought it was going to be and what it turned out to be. Initially, I was thinking to myself, hmm, seems like it could be a cool book. I wasn't sure what to expect. It's an economist.

I thought maybe it may have been a little dry. I may have been a little, a little, not sure what to expect. I was thinking about the policies of our beloved Fed chairman and our government officials and then I started thinking this book is going to be not so good. But you know what? I was wrong. The book was great. And it wasn't about dry policy. It wasn't about the way in which we could manipulate interest rates to change the behavior of the lower class and help funnel all that money into the hands of the wealthy. It wasn't that at all. Fascinating, actually. It got into the...

meaning of property. It got into what the meaning and property in things are. Let me give you an example. Something. Do you know what it means to have property in something? Is your property in the safe? Is it in the house? What is your property in? I bet you don't know. You might know. What I learned from this book is that I don't know anything about property. I don't know how intricate it is. I don't understand the language, the linguistics, or the philosophy behind it. And I'm willing to bet there's a lot that you don't know either. And if you read this book, you will find out it's almost disheartening and sad how little we as common folk know about property. And he does a great job of explaining it.

He really breaks it down. This is why he's an expert. It's really good. And you don't know anything about property until you've read this book. Okay, that's not a fair statement for me to say. I didn't know anything about property until I read this book, and I think you will learn a lot from reading this book. Linguistics, semantic primes. I know it sounds like that when you think like, hmm, linguistics, really?

Yeah. Linguistics, semantic primes. It got into all these cool games this guy established in order to almost predict what things can be in the future. And it made me begin thinking about what role does property play in terms of the philosophical world? You know, is property a universal and uniquely human custom? Right off the bat, I thought to myself, well, wait a minute, hang on now. What about monkeys? What about primates?

What about some of these crows? I see them protect in their home. What about some of these squirrels? and he obviously that's the first thing people are going to think so he did a really good job of going in and explaining why these things that we think other animals think are property are not property and he made a very compelling argument i would highly recommend people to check it out it's the problem there that kind of bothered me a little bit was just this idea that we're going to compare ourselves to primates it almost felt like

okay, we're just going to go straight to the bottom denominator. We're just going to simplify ourselves down to a squirrel or an ape or a monkey or something like that. That kind of bothers me. You know, it bothers me when we compare ourselves to a different species, a different animal. And even in saying that, like I guess I'm saying that we're animals. So I got some thinking to do there, okay? I guess I got some thinking to do there. You know, without giving away too much, I want to talk to you a little bit about how humans can locate the meaning of property within a thing.

You know, it's important to think about that. Find something on your table that yours. I'm looking at a book. This is my book, right? It's mine. And that's where the beginning of meaning starts to come into stuff with this term, mine. Think about that. In the book he talks about there is a word or a concept for the idea, mine.

Hey, this is mine in every language. In every language, in every culture, they have the concept of this is mine. They may not have the exact word. And I would really love to get Dr. Bart Wilson on here so we could talk more about this. I know that there's a lot of other people and philosophers who would disagree with him. However, I really believe that he makes a compelling case here. And I would love to have him come and speak to me in my audience about these fascinating issues. Because they are fascinating.

And the more you read the book, the more it's difficult to put down in that he has a wide range of explaining a wide range. he has done a lot of research and he covers a lot of different disciplines that I believe support his argument for the property species and the concepts in there as far as mine and thine and in and of another thing he likes to talk about well I don't know if he likes to talk about it but another thing that he talks about in the book is that all animals use things specifically food. And some of the questions I was thinking about when I read that was, you know, do you think that food is or could likely be the original object of property? Sounds like it could be, right? Why not? Right around, I think it's chapter two. He gets into

the idea of symbolic thought. And this is where the book really began to speak to me as an individual and as someone who is a linguistic nerd. I've been doing a lot of work on symbolic thought. The ideas of symbols and rituals are something that not only point towards an event but participate in that event. And to me this is something that we as human beings need to focus on doing in order to get out of the rut that we're in. You can imagine how excited I was when I got to this topic of symbolic thought and how it makes meaning possible. You know, for me, like I said, when I think a symbolic thought, my mind goes right to Marseilleat, you know, in particularly the book, the Sacred and the Profane, which, you know,

shameless plug for me. I, that's the book that inspired me to write terror before the sacred, which I have to say is a really good book. And you can pick it up on Amazon for, you know, 777 on 2222. too. It's almost like I made this esoteric masterpiece and put in all this numerology. And wait till you see the cover, ladies and gentlemen. Wait till you see the cover. You could go on Amazon right now and look at Terror Before the Sacred and you can see this beautiful picture of a caterpillar, smoking a hookah, sitting on a mushroom. You know why? Because that's the scene where we ask the question,

who are you? Who are you? And if I can just give you one more tidbit here, The cover of the book is done in beautiful, Eat Me Blotter Paper, the original LSD paper from the 60s, ladies and gentlemen. Go on Amazon, do yourself a favor and pick up Terror Before the Sacred, the epic new fantastic book by George Monty, America's favorite new author. Now let's get back here to Bart Wilson, the phenomenal book, The Property Species. I really admire his ability to cross the different disciplines and talk about semantic primes. And for those of you that don't understand what a semantic prime is, think of it as the lowest or smallest piece of knowledge that can be broken down no further. Does that kind of make sense? You're like, yeah, Georgia kind of makes sense.

Why don't you give me an example? Okay. Let's go with something like this, like a semantic. prime. So let's say you say the word touch, touching, and you're like, I'm going to look this word up. So then you look up the word touch, and it is defined in a dictionary as the art of touching something or feeling something or, you know, to touch something. So basically a semantic prime is something you look up in the dictionary and it gives you the same word that you're trying to look up. It can't, it's a, it's a universal concept. It's this universal. It's this

universal idea that everybody has. So when you look it up, you just say the same word. How about that? Does it make you feel a little bit better? It does for me. Another part that I really found fascinating was when he talks about the semantic and linguistic relationship that we as humans have that is different than other primates. And let me give you an example that the doctor gives in his book. And I really think you guys should pick it up. It's just a, it's one of these books where you, you're not sure what to expect, and you'll be pleasantly surprised at all the valuable information inside. But let me give you an example of what we as humans do that no other species can do.

He gives this excerpt about calling from below. And he's, it's, I'm paraphrasing here. However, it's like, if say you're, you're, you're observing a scene with a monkey, in a tree. And there's another monkey that is running towards the tree and he yells out his monkey call like, oh, he, or whatever monkeys do. And the reason he's giving this call is because there's like a leopard chasing him. So the call that he gives is the calling from below, dare I say, the call of the wild. And the monkey upstairs in the tree, hears the call from below.

But the monkey in the tree, how does he know the monkey on the bottom is saying, hey, there's a leopard. Like, how does he interpret the monkey language? Well, he interprets it from past experience, which we kind of do sometimes. But it's unlike the monkeys,

Dr. Bart Wilson, makes the claim, and I think accurately that we use words to point to other words, instead of using sounds to point to prior experiences only. I think I'm getting that right. I hope to get Dr. Wilson here to break that down for us, but I think I have that part right. And it's, if you just take a moment to think about it, we as humans use words to point to other words.

words as symbols, as our symbolic reference. And it's something that other species, other animals cannot do. They use sounds, much like we do, but they use sounds to point to past experiences, where we use our sounds to point to other sounds for mental images, which is our symbolic thought. And it ties so nice with Eliad and, just the idea of the symbolic structures in our mind that make our world and our life and our conversation so beautiful. It's a beautiful concept. I wish I could express it and talk with him

more about it. Isn't it beautiful? Let's just do a little thought experiment right now. Think of, okay, I'm going to say a word and then you think of something that pops up in your head. Beautiful. shining, glorious, masterful. What are you thinking about? What are you thinking about right now with those words? You have a picture in your head? How about flowing? Radiant, gorgeous, awestricken,

terrible, dangerously beautiful, What's coming to your mind right now? Oh, come on. I'm thinking about you, George. No, you're not. Maybe you are. Probably a few of those things. Enough already, George.

That's so gross. Okay. You know, it's fascinating. In the book, he begins, him and a few of his colleagues actually set up a set of experiments with college freshmen and college sophomores where they do this, sort of economic game that presents the kids with different strategies they can use in order to make actual cash. And in the game, there are ways of, it's based on like a fishing game somewhat. And it's, you can harpoon these whales in one of the games, and so can the other

person. And depending on how you harvest the whale, Let me give you a quick example. Let's say that you and I are playing a video game and I fire a harpoon into the whale. Now that whale is mine. Unless you fire a harpoon into the whale and you could take it away from me. But then he puts in all these little rules like, okay, well, if there's a harpoon with a colored pin on it, you can't take that one. Or you get penalized extra if you do. And so without giving away too much of the book or too much of the rules,

it almost becomes like a Stanley Milgram experiment with these kids, and it radically changes their behavior about possession, rights, money, and it gives you a breakdown almost, in some ways, it really reminded me of the Milgram experiments. It showed that resentment as a feeling, is at the core of economics. Is it the core of a lot? And I think that that area could be fleshed out a lot more because I think, and I'm going to blow your mind right here,

at least this is kind of what blew my mind. Think about the law of possession, right? You know, often you'll hear possession is nine-tenths of the law. You know what I think about when I hear the word possession? I think about being taken over by an evil spirit, and like some sort of religious figure like splashing holy water on you. And, you know, what was that, that, that movie or that book when I was growing up? I'm a little older than everybody, probably.

I'm in almost 50. So there was a book about this girl that got possessed and her head spun around backwards and stuff. And anyways, it's not really important. What is important is that possession. is nine-tenths of the law and possession is also something that if we look at the religious connotation of it is something that takes people over by the devil or by an evil spirit that changes them and in these experiments it was almost like the people that were trying to possess the whale were possessed by an evil spirit you see there's a connection there if and especially

if we go back to the symbolic representation of thought, what is this thing possession? I possess all this money. I want to possess this house. I want to possess this person. You are being possessed by some sort of evil animal spirit when you possess or attempt to possess other things. The possession is acting through you. I would love to talk to him more about that. I think that it's an interesting conversation to be had. And I think he's really on to something when he is talking about the evolution of economics and bringing into this conversation topics of philosophy and psychology and biology. I think that that might be where we as a species are evolving too.

Let me just go ahead and throw this out at you. You know, if we look at the world as a series of patterns, One pattern you can see is the constant expanding and contracting. Expand and contract, expand and contract, whether it's the universe or the planet or our lungs breathing or the climate. The pattern of expand and contract is something that is always happening to us. And might what our, might it be that what our species is going to be, that what our species is going to, through is this incredible expanding and contracting. Maybe you call it a boom and a bust, just like an engine piston.

So the process of specialization is this expanding, like, bow, where we explode out. Right? Think of like a ink bottle, throw it against the wall, to smash! And these little ink droplets begin falling all the way down the wall, and they make these intricate, beautiful little patterns. Like, that's the expansion part. And to me, I think that is specialization.

Like that little ink bottle, there's little curly cues in these intricate patterns. And those are the specialization patterns. So we have been, for the last 200 years, beginning this process of specialization. Sometimes it's like talking to a stranger when you talk to a specialist because they're so abstract and it's so far out there. And now what you're seeing, in my opinion, and my evidence for this is the last few books I've read with Dr. Buchanan's book on the evolution of mind. And now I read this book on the property species. And both of these authors, without even knowing each other, are talking about cross-discipline evolution. And that to me seems like we're contracting and we're regrouping.

We're bringing all these specialists back to the center to begin having the conversation of what we're. we can do to move forward. It's like all our generals just went way out in the fields and explored, and now they're coming back and having a conversation about what we can do to work together. And that's what gives me hope. That's what gives me the idea that things are going to get better once we call back all these specialists. And there's going to be some arguing. There's going to be, you know, the four wisemen and the elephant. No, it's not an elephant. It's a lion. It's a suitcase. It's a crocodile. Whatever the hell those old guys were talking about when they touched the elephant.

They all felt something different, right? And that's what our specialists, our specialization experts have been going out and doing is they've been touching the same thing, but in a different area. So they have different ideas of what it is. Long story, longer, I've seen this pattern happening. And I see it in this book. And I've seen it in other books. And it seems to me, if you just take a moment to think about it, it's plausible. It's plausible.

Well, that's, I know I kind of flying through this stuff, but I, I really, I hope to get the doctor on here. He's a great, incredibly intelligent. He's a lawyer. He's a doctor. He's a, he's just so, he's got so many different disciplines under his belt. He's fun to listen to. Well, I've never listened to him, but I've read his book. And I imagine he's fun to listen to because his book was fun. to read. So the book is called The Property Species, and it's by Dr. Bart Wilson. If you get an opportunity to check it out, even if you're not a big fan of economics, or even if you have

read economic books before and you were not really thrilled by economic books, I think that you would be pleasantly surprised by this book, The Property Species by Dr. Bart Wilson. The guy is, he's awesome, and I hope he comes on here, and I hope we can have more of a conversation about it. I thought it was a great book, and I think you will think it's a great book, too. That being said, ladies and gentlemen, it is Friday, so I hope you have a great day. Try to make everybody around you better, and that makes you better. Go out there, tell people you love them. If someone pisses you off, just let it go, if you can. If you got to stand up and do something, I stand up and do something, but don't let people get you down. Don't let the

Keep you down. It's Friday. Let's get up. Let's get at them. Aloha.