INSIGHTS from this video:
The speaker's transition from urban to rural life, including buying a farm and horses, showcases the transformative power of embracing a different lifestyle and reconnecting with nature.
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Spirit burns through forms in evolution, allowing for the possibility of going back and forward in the evolutionary process.
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There is an inherent intelligence in the universe that is non-trivial and coherent, suggesting that everything holds together.
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Rats learn faster in the laboratory because they run hypothetical environments in their sleep, which is a significant evolutionary mutation.
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Humans have the unique ability to simulate themselves, blurring the lines between the hypothetical, demi-real, surreal, and virtual realms.
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There seems to be a directionality or increasing capacity in the evolutionary process, leading to organisms with greater perceptive and action capabilities.
The Power of Abstraction and Complexity
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The iterative and recursive process of generating higher levels of abstraction in organisms creates greater causal power and the ability to navigate and influence the environment more successfully.
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As we move up the stack of complexity, we gain greater autonomy and enter a wider possibility space, allowing for more potential and freedom.
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Pure abstractions are the spirituality of post-post modernism, as they are there and not there at the same time, drawing from deep structures in math and the role of the mind in perceiving what is not physically present.
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Understanding concepts like information, energy, and entropy is crucial in the evolutionary process and can provide valuable insights into the narrative of complexity.
Perception and Insight in Understanding Reality
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Direct perception allows us to perceive the enduring and originary patterns in reality, which could potentially be contingent on another universe.
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Michael Levin's taboo question in biological sciences reveals the importance of intuition and direct insight in scientific discovery.
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As we move up the levels of hierarchical organization, we can find linear relationships between abstractions and eventually discover embedded formal relationships within systems.
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Understanding the real-world meaning behind abstract math symbols, such as a sine and cosine representing a tangent line and a radius moving around a circle, can provide a deeper understanding of mathematics.
FULL SUMMARY
The key idea of the video is that understanding different states of consciousness, recognizing simulations, and embracing simplicity can lead to greater autonomy, potential, and insights in navigating mental experiences and understanding our relationship with nature.
00:00 π£οΈ The speaker and Bonnitta Roy have an unplanned conversation about their involvement in the integral scene, their career, and the importance of innovation and critique within the community.
The speaker and Bonnitta Roy have a conversation without a specific plan or set of topics, but they are excited to see where the conversation will go.
The speaker has been involved in the integral scene since 2003 and has won awards for alternative theories, with their thoughts on the current state of everything.
The speaker discusses their career in landscape design and construction, their background in philosophy and neuroscience, and their transition into building a business in the country, all from a metamodern perspective.
Fast Company magazine, which focused on new businesses and ways of doing things, played a role in the speaker's introduction to the integral scene in 2003.
Social media groups discussing Ken Wilbur were brutal and focused on ego deconstruction, but this brutality was beneficial for the speaker in resisting ego pampering and taking spiritual matters seriously.
The speaker discusses their long history of innovation in integral theory and their identification with relationships formed within the integral community, while also acknowledging the ongoing innovation and critique within the community.
11:22 π Metamodernism has limitations in its understanding of integral theory and its critique of stage theory, as it fails to incorporate cultural, political, and sociological components, and confuses developmental and evolutionary logics, while also questioning its own meaning-making potential and discussing the inherent intelligence in the universe.
Different generations are involved in the integral and meta-modern discourse, with the speaker identifying with the multi-generational relationships that emerged from the integral diaspora.
Metamodernism is not radical enough and has limitations in its understanding of integral theory, as it lacks cultural, political, and sociological components.
Metamodernism presents a critique of stage theory in both individual and cultural contexts, arguing that it should be seen as an evolving process rather than a linear development, and that it often confuses developmental and evolutionary logics.
Evolution does not progress in a linear fashion, as the highest forms rarely develop from the previous highest forms, and the reason for this is that the highest form becomes too niche specified to survive extinction events, but rather, evolution involves the burning through of forms by spirit, allowing for movement back and forth in time.
Metamodernism's meaning-making potential is questioned by the speaker, who also discusses their previous work on teleology and their current stance on it.
There is an inherent intelligence in the universe that holds everything together and is coherent, but it is not going anywhere, and this intelligence makes us perceive it as teleological.
21:04 π§ Humans and animals have the ability to simulate their environment and engage in shared simulations to solve problems, leading to significant evolutionary mutations.
The speaker discusses the concept of the ultimate environment and how it relates to a non-teleological, naturalistic worldview.
Most people misunderstand the vertical dimension of spirituality, thinking it is like left and right, but it actually encompasses the entire stack of mutations at different levels in life.
Organisms have the ability to simulate their environment through pure abstractions, with honeybees using dance to communicate and rats being able to simulate hypothetical environments.
During REM sleep, rats create hypothetical environments and combine different experiences, as shown by a researcher who discovered that a rat produced a mashup of two different maze songs while asleep.
Rats learn faster in the laboratory because they run hypothetical environments in their sleep, which is a significant evolutionary mutation.
Humans have the ability to simulate themselves and engage in shared simulations to solve problems.
29:23 π§ Understanding different states of consciousness and recognizing simulations can help navigate mental experiences, distinguish reality from imagination, and generate higher levels of abstraction and reflective capacity for greater autonomy and potential, while also acknowledging the misuses and perversions of our capacity to think and understand the world.
Understanding the different states of consciousness and recognizing when one is running a simulation can help individuals navigate their mental experiences and distinguish between reality and imagination.
The speaker discusses the idea that there is a narrative of increasing capacity and directionality in evolution, where organisms that are able to simulate their environment have an adaptive evolutionary edge.
The process of generating higher levels of abstraction and reflective capacity is a normative process that allows organisms to have greater causal power and influence in their environment.
The nature of mind and the simulations we have today may not be aligned, as the mutations in our mind and the powers we possess do not necessarily mean coherence with the teleology of mind, as seen in the axial age where abstractions were made to tidy things up.
Abstraction and complexity can lead to greater autonomy and potential, but can also be misused and lead to confusion and perversions of our capacity to think and understand the world.
Intuitions are right, and the speaker argues that pure abstractions, which are not tangible but can be perceived by the mind, are the spirituality of post-post modernism and may have roots in Buddhist esoteric schools.
44:55 π The relationship between pure abstractions and information is explored, emphasizing the importance of protocols in understanding reality, while the concept of hierarchical complexity and stage theory is discussed in relation to the abstract model of organizing information and its potential insights into the causal manifold.
The relationship between pure abstractions and information is that while pure abstractions have causal power in the world, information patterns only have an effect through a network of relationships.
Direct perception of the causal manifold or deep patterns in reality is so fundamental that it is irrelevant to question their contingency in our universe.
Science articulates intuitions about pure abstractions, but the translation of these articulations can lead to partial truths, so it is important to use protocols to achieve confident results in understanding reality.
The hierarchical complexity model organizes information at multiple levels, with abstractions being related to one another in increasingly complex ways.
The speaker discusses the concept of a causal manifold and the idea of pure abstraction, where one can gain an intuitive appreciation for the profound sets of relations that happen across scales.
Hierarchical complexity and stage theory are real and important for understanding development, but the speaker is more interested in the abstract model of organizing information and its potential insights into the causal manifold.
56:46 π§ Complexity does not always lead to better understanding; instead, simplifying and changing perspectives can provide more explanatory power, and a new model of hierarchical complexity is needed to include an orthogonal move to the mind.
The discovery of non-real numbers in theoretical math, such as the square root of negative one, may initially seem abstract, but they can be understood as representing tangible concepts like a tangent line and a radius moving around a circle.
People can become lost in complex abstractions without being able to determine if they are connected to reality, but true metacognition involves cutting through the complexity to understand the underlying relationships, and as complexity increases, there is less opportunity to include what has been left out, leading to potential problems in the future.
Increasing complexity does not always lead to better understanding or solutions; sometimes, simplifying and changing our perspective can provide more explanatory power.
Confusing horizontal complexity with true complexity, while true complexity involves a shift to another level, like moving from 2D to 3D.
The speaker discusses the need for a new model of hierarchical complexity that includes an orthogonal move to the mind, which would involve two axes of complexity and a move towards pure abstraction.
The speaker discusses the need for a new vantage point in the tradition of meditative journey, using Copernicus as an example, and mentions an insight practice question.
01:06:16 π§ The speaker explores the limitations of our mental models and hierarchical complexity in understanding our relationship with nature, emphasizing the need for a shift in perspective and focusing on simple yet powerful insights.
The speaker explores the limitations of our mental models and hierarchical complexity in understanding our relationship with nature, emphasizing the need for a shift in perspective and focusing on simple yet powerful insights.
The speaker emphasizes the importance of returning to nature and our relationship with it, highlighting the limitations of cognitive models and the need to express grounded experiences through language while acknowledging the role of the mind in mediating these experiences.
Increasing degrees of freedom in understanding and perceiving complexity should not always be equated with increased complexity itself, as it can also be achieved through the release of complexity.
Complexity and immediacy have a dialectical relationship, with reflection leading to new levels of complexity but also a desire for immediate intuitive awareness, as seen in the difference between nested sets and fractals in the integral community.
The speaker discusses the concept of self and states that what we are aware of when we are aware of ourselves is simply the body being aware, and that the self is a pure abstraction and not the psychological egoic self.
The speaker enjoyed the discussion and looks forward to exploring topics such as meditation, complexity, self, information, and abstraction in future conversations.
01:21:33 π‘ Have open and reciprocal conversations, and thank you for inviting me.
Iβm just getting around to this one, and Iβm grateful for what I have heard here. It βfeelsβ supportive of my experiences, which are damned difficult to transmit.
I may meander a bit here.
I have been observing patterns in energy for decades in a way that I can most closely describe as βseeing/feelingβ β some blending of the two. The vast majority of my energetic experiencing, though infinitely flowing and complex, have long ago become uninteresting. I do often pause to simply delight in the pleasure of them in their transitory beauty.
But some are truly fascinating. Sometimes the patterns are informative, as in something is obvious to me about them and language descriptors somehow arise with them. These can sometimes be relayed to people who are accustomed to listening to me, or those who are in the general neighborhood.
At other times, Iβll see a pattern that is clearly reflected βdownstreamβ as a fractal-like pattern that exists at many βlevelsβ β best word I can come up with though it does not really feel right. Typically, in an instant, I see the pattern repeat itself into the infinite distance. I cannot relay in words the pattern itself (a pure abstraction) and it disappears into the distance so fast that I can only pick up the manifestation that brought it to light, and usually the next one βdownstream.β This is usually not enough to convince anyone that what I saw is real, though those who are closest to me will feel the validity in how I am presencing what I saw and will simply acknowledge that. It tends to be rare, and is a real treasure, when I can both language its essence and have it feel like someone really gets it, empties me of it, in a way. It is common that these insights will hang around a while and then fade into the background as part of my own kind of transitory, contextual ground, which after all of these decades I donβt think that I could describe to anyone really.
Another reflection on these fractal-like patterns is that they βmightβ be hierarchical, but they each show up in their pure form at each βlevelβ downstream and I assume, though I have no experiential evidence, upstream as well. So there seems to be an upstream and a downstream but I typically donβt see an actual hierarchy in the energy itself.
Iβll also thank you here for your comments about stage theory, and the like. I find things like this interesting, but only useful insomuch as they might provide a handhold for a distinction that allows some pattern that I have been immersed in, and blind to, to be now distinguished as not βme.β There is βfreedomβ in that. The distinctions of βjustification systemsβ and βsimulations,β for example, are now labels of experiences that when I feel them, that label provides a distinct separation. So, for me, letting go can be initiated by cognition OR experience and one assists the other as I shed themβ¦at least thatβs how it appears to work in this body/mind.
Iβm going blend the fractal-like patterns and freedom. In my experience, when wavelengths become short enough for me to occasionally distinguish a pattern, then I am free of it, even though it may take time to get far enough beyond its experiential frequency range that it no longer clings to me, whether that attraction is out of range or is at a different enough velocity that it canβt stick.
This appears to be a rowing-like mechanism, where shorter wavelengths shift into my foreground as I move into longer wavelengths. The shorter and the longer cannot exist in the same space at the same time and as I acclimate to the longer, the shorter recede. The longest, in a given moment of experience, are too subtle for me to sense anything more than overall motion, or perhaps an undulation - a mere portion of a sine wave. There are not enough peaks and troughs to distinguish a frequency, therefore no patterns can be "seen." And, in my view, in order to βsee/feelβ the longer ones I must widen my attention β however the hell that works β and since narrower focus, by its very nature, excludes more in the periphery, the reverse includes more of the periphery. It could be said that the narrower the focus, the more βconfinedβ attention feels. Thus, the wider the attention, the more it feels like freedom in comparison. This may be some kind of intentionally driven action of your transducer. Who knows, but itβs fun to simulate. π
Now I donβt want to diminish the value of narrowed focus, because it seems that it is an outlet for creativity. But I do, myself, tend to be drawn to longer wavelengths, wider focus. I donβt know why that is, but it appears to be so.
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