Now that you've had an opportunity to walk through a narrative
then, hopefully, some of the things that I'm going to say, that are more technical, will make more sense
and so, what we're going to do today, at least in part, is to deal with...
to start to deal with conceptualizing a solution
to the fact that the world is too complex to properly perceive
so what the problem fundamentally is is that there's a lot more of everything else than there is of you
especially if you include in that everything else, all the parts of you that you also don't understand
and so...
I want to walk you through how I think we solve that, at least in part
and we do that by, essentially by simplifying the world, but
I think mostly that we simplify it as a place in which to act, rather than a place in which to perceive objects
and I really believe that there's a critical distinction between those two things
and I think that part of the reason that there's been continual tension
say, between the claims of science and, let's say, the claims of religion
is because the idea that the world as a place of objects and as a place to act have to be considered separately, isn't properly understood
I don't know...
so I'm gonna try to straighten that up to the degree that that's possible
so, I'm gonna talk to you about stories and meta-stories
and the story, I would say, is the simplest unit of useful information
with regards to action and perception that you can be offered
and then a meta-story is a story about how a story like that transforms
and I would say...
we'll concentrate on the structure of the story
and then we'll get into the structure of the meta-story, and
that'll constitute today's... today's class
so the first thing I wanna show you... I know many of you have seen this, but I'm gonna show it anyways
for the longest time it was presumed that...
for the longest time, say, at least in the 20th century
it was presumed that we make a pretty complete model of the world
and then we act in the world, and we compare what happens to that model
and as long as our model and the world are matching
then, roughly speaking, we believe that everything is okay, and our emotions stay under control
but if that model mismatches, then we know that something's up
now, a lot of this work was done by Russians, especially in the early 60s
by two Russian scientists, Vinogradova and Sokolov
who were students of Alexander Luria, who was arguably the greatest neuropsychologist of the 20th century
Luria spent a lot of time studying soldiers from WW2 that had received head injuries
of various sorts, and because of that he could draw inferences about how the brain worked
and some of what we're going to talk about over the upcoming weeks with regards to brain function
much of it is predicated on Luria's work
Sokolov and Vinogradova were his students, and they were interested in this phenomena...
they were interested in psychophysiological measurement, right
as a way of inferring brain function
so psychophysiological measurement is measurement of those physiological parameters
say, like pupil width, or skin conductance, or EEG
that are in some ways directly reflective of how the brain works
now, if you measure skin resistance, skin resistance changes with the amount that you sweat
that can change very, very rapidly, and it changes in response to physiological demands placed on your body
so, for example, if your body assumes that you're going to leap into action for some purpose
and it's gonna open up your pores to prepare you to keep yourself cool
and you can measure those transformations quite accurately by measuring the electrical resistance of the skin
and so what you see, if you put someone in a lab chair
and you expose themselves to different stimuli, you find that...
for example you can expose them to something that's threatening
say, like a picture of a snake, then their skin conductance will decrease, because they're...
sorry, their skin conductance will increase, because they sweat a little bit more
and it's quite a rapid response, it can be a very rapid response
now, one of the things that Sokolov...
yeah, that's right... noted was that if he...
if I sat you down, for example, and I put some headphones on you
and I played a tone to you that repeated, exactly the same tone that repeated at predictable intervals
that the first time you heard the tone you'd produce quite a spike in skin conductance
and the next time a slightly smaller spike, and then the next time a slightly smaller spike
until after maybe you've heard it three or four times, you would not respond to it at all
and that was often regarded as habituation
and habituations is the same thing that you can see in snails, for example
and I'm using snails as an example, because they have very, very simple nervous systems
so if you take a snail and you poke it, then...
like it comes out of its shell and you poke it, it'll go back into its shell
and then it'll come out, and if you poke it again it'll go back into its shell
and it'll come out; but if you keep doing that, sooner or later the snail will just stop going in
and you might think of that... it has been conceptualized as the simplest form of learning
habituation
and the behaviorists tend to presume that if a human being manifested a response that could be modeled by a simple organism
then the human being was using a response that was analogous to that of the simple organism
and sometimes that's true, and sometimes it's not, so...
for example, you have simple reflexes that, you know
if you put your hand on a hot stove, you'll jerk back, and that's quite a simple circuit
you'll move your hand back before the message gets to your brain
because the spinal cord is smart enough to mediate a reflex like that all by itself
so you know, your brains is actually quite distributed throughout your body, it's not just in your head like people tend to think
and so, we have conserved fast-acting reflexes at various levels of our nervous system
they aren't capable of sophisticated response, it's pretty much stimulus - response
thinking about it from the behavioral perspective
but they have as an advantage incredible speed, because they're just aren't that many neural connections between the stimulus and the response
and so, we have layers of response at different time frames
that help us match with the demands of the external environment
so Charles Darwin, for example, used to go into the, I think it was a museum in England, I don't remember the name of it
the snake in there, I believe it was a cobra,
and he'd stick his face up at the glass, and the cobra would strike at him
and he'd jerk back; and he tried many, many times to master that reflexive response to the snake, but there was no way
every time that thing struck at him, he'd jump backwards
well, you can imagine the survival utility in a reflex like that, but in reflexes in general
okay, so back to Sokolov
now, what he decided...
if you took that tone, and you did anything to it that was perceptible
right, because there's certain gradations of tone that you're not capable of perceiving
but let's assume you took the tone, and you would adjust it enough so that it was perceptibly louder
or it was perceptibly a different frequency, or something like that
or even that the spaces between the tones
'cause I said they were predictably spaced
even if the spaces between the tones were changed
then, when the change occurred, the orienting reflex would be reinstated, you'd respond to it again
and Sokolov tried to vary the tone on many, many parameters
but no matter what parameter he varied it on, as long as you could detect it perceptibly
you'd produce an orienting reflex; so Sokolov's idea was that
you must be producing a complex internal model of the world
that's in concordance with the world across pretty much every perceptible dimension
because if you weren't doing that, how in the world would you know that the tone had changed from what you had already learned about it?
and so, for the longest time, and this was also true for people who were investigating artificial intelligence
we had this idea that what people did was make a complex model of the world, and hold it in their minds, so to speak
and then they'd act in the world, and they compared what they expected to happen in the world with the model
and as long as there was a match, then there was no orienting reflex
now, the orienting reflex turns out to be quite a complex reflex, it's not merely an alteration in skin conductance
what it is in essence is the manner in which you start to unfold your response to the unknown
and the initial stages of that are very, very quick
but it's hard to tell when the orienting reflex stops, and when more complex learning begins
they sort of shade into one another
so the initial stages of the orienting reflex are quite reflexive
but the later stages can be extraordinarily complex, so for example...
well, I always think the example of betrayal is the best one, because it's so complex
so imagine that you know, you come home and you find evidence, lipstick or something like that
evidence that the person that you're with is betraying you
the first thing that's going to happen is that you're going to orient, there's going to be a real shock, and that's reflexive
it's very much akin to the response that you would manifest if you saw a predator, or a snake, or something like that
so that's very instantaneous, you know
and then that'll prepare you for action, you'll get ready to do whatever it is that you need to do next
a very unpleasant thing; but then
it might take you even years to fully manifest the learning that would be necessary in a situation like that
because there's so many things that you have to reconsider
first of all, the person might now appear to you as a threat, that's pretty immediate
so there's a biological, physiological response first, your body reacts first
then you respond emotionally, that's gonna take a while, and you know, the emotional response might extend over days, or weeks, or months, or even years
and then, as you're doing that as well, you're going to try to start to re-sort out your interpretive schema
so that it can adjust to the transformation that this...
this error on your part, say, or this catastrophe, or this betrayal
it has to adjust to whatever information that event contains
and so the orienting reflex can manifest itself over an extraordinarily long period of time
it's best to think about it as the initial part of what can be a very complex learning process
now, that was a standard idea in psychology for the longest period of time
that we created a detailed internal model of the world
and we watched how the world was unfolding, we compared the two
and the physiology, the neurophysiology of this was even understood to some degree, even by the Russians
in the early 1960s, because they basially localized...
you could use complex EEG, electroencephalogram technology
to localize where the orienting reflex was occurring in the brain, and basically it appeared to occur, roughly speaking, in the hippocampus
and the theory arose that your brain, your cortex, let's say, produced a very complex model of the world
an internal model; and your sense were producing a model of the external world
and the hippocampus was watching those things to see if they matched
and if they didn't match, there was a mismatch signal, and that would be the orienting reflex
and then your body would start to prepare itself for whatever that mismatch meant
and then you would engage in exploratory behavior to try to update your model
that was the standard theory, it was a very well accepted theory
it has elements of cybernetic theory in it
but it was accepted enough so that when people first started to experiment with artificial intelligence
that's how they tried to make artificially intelligent systems
they tried to make ones that would model the world, and then act, and then compare the changes in the world to that model
but that didn't go anywhere, it turned out, because it turned out that
it's so difficult to see and model the world that people had no idea how complex that was
it was impossibly complex, as it turned out, and so that's part of the reason
we don't have robots wandering around, doing apparently simple things like walking
walking in an environment like this
now, when we look at the environment, we think: well, it's not that hard to look at, it's full of objects
they're just self-evident, there they are, and we can just wander through it
you know, and we don't even do that consciously to any great degree
because so much of that perception is presented to our consciousness without effort
in some sense; but the AI guys learned pretty quick that perceiving the world was waaay more difficult than anybody had guessed
and then this experiment really in some sense put a phenomenological punch behind that observation
because one of the presuppositions of the orienting reflex theory that I just laid out was that:
you were very good at detecting changes
that your nervous system would automatically detect change, anomaly
right, any mismatch between your model and what you expected, and then
well, the AI guys, I think, figured out first of all that was a big problem
that the problem of perception was much more complicated than that
you know, it's actually... it's out of that same set of observations in some sense that Postmodernism emerged in liternature...
in literary criticism, because, well
it turns out to be hard enough to see a normal object, like a chair
and part of that is that if you just do that to the chair, it's really different than it was before
you could imagine, how different it would be if you tried to paint the chair under both those conditions, right
if you really got good at looking at it you'd find that
even though, if I asked you what color this is, you'd say white
if you were actually painting it, you'd find out that the colors of the chair when it's in that location
and the colors in the chair when it's in that location, just because of the difference in lighting
are substantially different
I think it was Monet, I think
who painted a very large series of haystacks in the French countryside in different seasons and under different conditions of illumination
just because he was exploring how radically different the same object could be as it moved through contexts
so it isn't even obvious why we think this is the same object when you move it
and the answer is something like: well, you can sit on it in both positions
which is not a description of an object, by the way
right? that's a description of something that's useful, something that's a tool, something that exists in relationship to your body
it's not an object; and so...
if you think that just looking at something like a chair is almost impossibly difficult
and subject to interpretation
then imagine how difficult it is to perceive something like a text, you know, like a novel
because a novel obviously is subject to multiple interpretations
and the interpretations are gonna depend on, well, at least in principle
on the intent, conscious and unconscious, of the author
of the time, of the place, of the culture, of the language
then that's just on the side of the production itself, but then there's the reader
it's like, I've read books when I was sixteen, and then reread them, say, when I was forty
and the book was almost completely different, as far as I was concerned
partly 'cause I knew what was in it the second time, and I didn't know what was in it the first time
and so, the meaning that manifests itself out of a book
is a consequence of all the complexity of the book plus all the complexity of the reader, and so
you know, if you're reading Russian literature, for example, and you've already read fifty Russian novels
you're going to be in a much more different interpretive space
than you are if, say, the Russian novel is the first novel you've ever read
and the Postmodernists were grappling with this
as well as with many other ideas that I think contaminated their thinking
and their conclusion was: well, you can't extract out a canonical meaning from a text
it's so dependent on the situation that to say the text has an interpretable meaning is actually an error, now
just because it's difficult to do something doesn't mean it's impossible
and there's massive holes in the postmodernist view
I think it's an unbelievably pathological view, personally
but the thing is is that there are reasons why it emerged
and the reasons were analogous to the reasons that the AI project initially failed
and analogous to the reasons that this experiment turned out the way it did
so I'm gonna show you this, many of you have seen this already, but as I said, it doesn't matter
your job here is to count the times... there's a team of three people here, dressed in white
and there's a team of three people here dressed in black
and your job is to count the number of times the white team throws the baskeball back and forth to the white team members
ok, we'll just run that
okay, well, so, obviously
or perhaps not so obviously, the
the number of times I believe that they threw it back and forth was sixteen, if I remember this correctly
but of course that's not really the issue, because what happens in the middle of the scene is that
a guy wearing a gorilla suit comes out into the middle of the screen, and pounds his chest three or four times
he comes out quite slowly, as you saw; is there anybody in here who didn't see the gorilla?
no, well, I presume all of you knew about this video anyways
so, Dan Simon, who produced this video has got a couple of other ones
where he shows that, you know, even if you're smart enough to see the gorilla, 'cause you've seen the video before you've heard about it
if you make other changes in the background, you'll count properly and you'll catch the gorilla, but you'll miss the other changes in the background
and they're not trivial either, it's really quite remarkable
he's produced other short videos, for example, where you'll be looking at a... like a field
and a road will grow in it, occupying about a third of the photograph's space
and you'd think well, yeah, you're gonna see that, it's like: you don't, you don't
so, okay, so this threw a big spanner into the works
this sort of experiment, along with the AI failures, and we could even say, the postmodern dilemma
it's like, well, hmm, everyone, virtually...
every psychologist would've predicted before this series of experiments that there's no damn way you'd miss that gorilla
because your nervous system was actually attuned to change in the environment
and that's a big change, and it's also a gorilla
it's something you would really think that you couldn't miss, you couldn't possibly miss
especially when it's occupying the center of the visual field
and so, well, this is part of a phenomena called change blindness
and it helped psychologists who had been studying the visual system for a very long time
to figure out, well mostly figure out exactly how blind human beings are
because we're way blinder than we think, and
and so we actually focus on much less of the world than we think, and
we do that partly... it's not exactly obvious how we do it
it's kinda like we hold a still picture in our imagination
and then fill in the details by using our central foveal vision
which is always dancing around like a pinpoint or a laser beam, moving back and forth
and we're assembling those little snapshots from the fovea into a relatively coherent picture
maybe what happens is that I look at you, and then I look at you [points to a different student]
and I've still got the information from looking at you, so my brain can sort of infer that that's remained stable
but like if I look at you, and I...
I tried to learn how to do this, 'cause you can look at something, and then pay attention to the periphery, it's annoying
but, so if I'm looking at you, I really can't make out your eyes [points to a different student]
I can more or less make out the fact that you have a head
especially if you move it, so your periphery is sory of like frog vision or dinosaur vision
it's much better at picking up movement than it is at picking up something that's staying still
and that makes sense, because, well, if it's staying still, and it hasn't already hurt you, then
it's probably not going to hurt you; but if it's moving, then, you know, that's a good thing that you might pay attention to
and so, if your periphery catches movement, then you'll focus your fovea on it
it's like you go from really low resolution to really high resolution
so the center of your vision is incredibly high resolution
but then it fades into low resolution as you move towards the periphery, until it's out here
which would be about 170 degrees
if I concentrate on this hand I can tell it's a hand, mostly when it's moving
I have no idea what color it is, this one I can't see at all
and then, I can probably see my fingers - now
and then I can clearly see them if I look at them with my fovea, and so
your vision is a very, very strange thing, and it's focusing on something very specific
and so you're pointing your eyes at something very specific, and that's what you seem to see
so then that opens up a whole new universe of questions, it's like...
how do you decide what to point your eyes at?
that turns out to be an insanely complicated problem
John Vervaeke talks about that all the time as the problem of relevance
and the issue is: well, there's many, many things in the world, there's an infinite number of things, let's say
and you're not gonna be able to see them, that's for sure, even if they happen to be changing, as it turns out
and so, out of this mess, first of all, how do you pick what to look at?
and second, even if you do pick it, how do you see it? 'cause it's so crazily complicated
so that's the problem that we're going to try to unpack
now, roughly speaking, what seems to have happened with the gorilla video is
you have to take that first theory, that you make a complete model of the world
which is the objects in the world, and how they're interacting
and you compare that to the objects in the actual world and how they're interacting
you have to modify that model, you say: well, no, you're certainly not making a complete model
and people should have known better anyways; even subjects to the limits of your perception, because
there's all sorts of things in the world that you can't directly perceive, but
what you're doing instead is something like: you're making a partial model of the world
but you're only making a partial model of the world that you're currently operating on
with some goal in mind
and you're also comparing that to a model of the world as it's currently unfolding
'cause the other thing that was implicit... this is really tricky, this is where you have to watch your implicit assumptions
the other thing that was implicit in the original cybernetic theory was that
you have a model of the world that's complete
and then what you're watching is the actual world as it unfolds
and that's not a model, that's just your perception of the object; but that also turns out to be wrong, because
your perception of the world as it unfolds is also a model, and so
what's happening is: you look at the world
the world you see is a model, and a very partial model at that
and then you compare it to the model that you expect or desire, more accurately, desire
although the initial models were expectation
because if you're in the lab, listening to tones it's not like you desire anything
but mostly when you're acting in the world, you have desires
so the experimental constraints skewed the data in some sense by making people assume that
what people were doing when they walked through the world was expecting instead of desiring
anyways, you have a model of the world that's generated as you look at it
you have another model of the world that's something like the world that you desire
then you compare both of them, and they can mismatch, and they can mismatch in a way that upsets your current pursuit
that's the critical issue
you don't see the anomaly unless it upsets your current pursuit
and you kinda know that too, because when you're...
like, while I'm lecturing to you guys
you know, mostly you're sitting still, but people are moving their arms, and they're moving their glasses, and they're shifting their feet, and
generally I don't see any of that, because what difference does it make?
you know, it's not relevant to the ongoing... to the ongoing what?
ongoing contract? the ongoig series of interactions? it's something like that
so as long as you keep your movements bounded
within a range that doesn't interfere with whatever it is we're doing
then it's going to be as invisible to me as the gorilla was when you were counting the balls
and the cool thing is about the gorilla experiment, or one of them, is that
the reason you were blind to the gorilla was because you were counting the balls
and so, that's so fascinating , because what it shows to a huge degree, to an unfathomable degree
to an unfathomable degree is that
the value structure that you inhabit determines what you perceive
it doesn't just determine what you expect or want, it bloody well determines what you see
and that makes the world a completely different place, no one really expected that
and so, if you watch the basketball, you see the basketball
if you stop watching the basketball, well then you see the gorilla, and so
the first question that arises from an experiment like that is:
just exactly what is it that you don't see in the world? and the answer is: all of it
you see so little it's unbelievable; you see that tiny amount that's necessary
for you to undertake the next sequence in your plotted movements...?
it's something like that; but then that becomes very complicated, too, because
it isn't obvious how you can conceptualize or how you can determine what your next movement is
because it's not like you just add up movements and make up your life
it's not that simple, and it's related to the novel problem, the problem of meaning in a literary work
so imagine: you're trying to specify the meaning of a literary work, well
there's meaning in the word, but the meaning of the word is dependent on the phrase within which it's embedded
and then the meaning of the phrase is dependent on the sentence that it's embedded in
and the sentence in the paragraph, and the paragraph in the chapter, and the chapter in the book
and the book in the corpus of books of that sort
and then within the culture, and then within whatever your peculiar personal experience is
all of those things, nested, are operative to some degree when you're extracting out the meaning at any level of analysis
they're all operating simultaneously, so you might say, well
what are you doing in this classroom?
well, the answer is: sitting in a chair
but that's... obviously that's a very short-term and context-independent answer
but you're also attending to what I'm saying, hypothetically
and you're attending to some of it, and not to other parts, you're thinking about some parts and not other parts
and you're also attending a class, and a class is a sequence of lectures
and that's embedded within your desire to finish up the semester
and then to finish up the year, and then to get your degree
and then you nest that inside whatever it is, whatever the reason it is that you're getting your degree
and then maybe that's nested inside your career goals, and that's nested inside your life goals
and that's nested inside your ultimate values, which you may or may not even be aware of
and so, I could say, well, you're sitting here because it serves your ultimate values
well, that's true
it seems a bit abstract to be useful, right, it's so vague out at the outermost levels, that
it doesn't really have much specificity, right, so it seems to lack information, but
by the same token if I said what you're doing is sitting there
it has the same problem of too restricted meaning, because of overspecificity
and so, there's some level in there that you would interpret as meaningful, God only knows why
and that's the level... there's a natural level of perception for that sort of thing
so for example, when children learn to name an animal, for example, they'll name "cat"
they don't name the species of cat, or the subspecies of cat
and they don't confuse cats with dogs, even though they're both in the category of "four-legged furry mammal"
so, why not call the cat and the dog "furry mammals"?
well, children don't do that, they go to "cat" and "dog"
and people who've studied the acquisition of language have found that there are basic-level categories that children pick up first
and they're often represented with short words, and the words are short, because they've been around a long time
because they seem to reflect the natural level at which people perceive the world
but none of that's obvious, you know
I mean you could just lump all animals together, for that matter, and just call them "animals", which we do sometimes
so...
anyways, so it's very difficult to specify the meaning level, and it's not very easy at all to figure out how we do it
and so that's partly what I'm trying to unpack, so...
here's part of the issue, so let's say that you're... you have a computer
yeah, I have a story for this, so
one time, when I was in Montreal, I was using my computer
I was in my apartment
and I was typing out an essay, and it crashed, and so
what happens when your computer crashes? well, you know, usually you utter some sort of curse
and it's interesting that you do that, because the circuit that you use to curse with
is the same circuit that monkeys use to detect eagles, or leopards, or snakes
and so, when there's a bunch of monkeys together
you know, they're not all preyed on by eagles and leopards and snakes, but
you know, there's usually a predator in that category for every single monkey population
and so, when the monkeys are watching, they have an emotional utterance that the most nervous monkey might utter first
that basically says, you know, hide from the eagle; get out on the thin branch, so the cougar can't eat you; and look the hell out for the snake
but there's a circuit that's linked to emotions that produces that instinctive utterance that represents that category
and that's the same circuit that you use when you curse
and it's not the same circuit that you use for normal language
we know that, because that circuit is activated in people who have Tourette's syndrome
because they preferentially swear
you think, well, why in the world would you have a neurological condition that makes you preferentially curse?
well, that's the reason: you don't just have one linguistic circuit
you have one for: "oh my God, there's a predator!"
and that's the one that will get activated when something happens like your computer crashing
because, you know, you're an evolved creature, and so those old circuits that were there, say, 30 million years ago
to deal with exceptions
are the same circuits you're using now to deal with your computer; why else would you wanna hit it?
right? 'cause that's what you want - give it a whack! it's like: it doesn't behave - whack!
aggression right away, well, that's some clue as to the category system that you're automatically using
to encapsulate the event
ok, so fine, what do you do when your computer crashes?
well, first you curse, and then you do the stupid things that idiot primates do when they're trying to deal with something that's way too complex
maybe you turn it on and off, right? and that doesn't work
it didn't work, and so then I thought, well, maybe the power bar went, so I checked the power bar
and I turned it on and off, and nothing happened
so I brought a light behind the computer, and the light wouldn't go on, so I thought, aha!
I must have blown a fuse! so I went to the fuse box and took a look, but the fuses were fine
and so I thought, well, the power's gone out, so then I went outside, and the power was out
none of the street light were working, the power was out everywhere
and it was seriously out, because this was the time that almost the entire northeast power grid in Quebec collapsed
and the reason it collapsed was because there was a solar flare
that happens reasonably often, a solar flare produced a huge electromagnetic pulse
because it's basically, you know, like a million hydrogen bombs going off at the same time
93 million miles away
produces this tremendous electromagnetic pulse
passes through the Earth's atmosphere
produces a spike in current in the main power lines, and blows the whole system
and so, just so you know, an event like that happens about every 150 years
and if we had one now, it would take out all of our electronics
like one of the big ones, there was a big one in the late 1800's
everything, satellites, computers, cars, everything - gone
and so that's a big problem, and no one knows what to do about it
one missed us by about nine minutes, I think two years ago
so that's something else to worry about, if you're inclined to worry about those sorts of things
um, ok, so what did I conclude from that? well, the...
the function of my computer was dependent on the stability of the sun
it's not the first thing you check out when your computer crashes, right?
you don't run out and go, hey, well, yeah, the sun's still there :)
no problem, I can cross that off the list
but to me it's an extraordinarily interesting example of the invisible interdependence of things
you know, and our tendency to fragment the...
what we seem to do is to look at things at the simplest level of analysis that actually functions
so, for example, when you're interacting with your computer, you're not interacting with your computer at all, really
you're interacting with the keyboard, sort of one key at a time
and you're interacting with the symbols on the screen
but as long as the computer is working, you don't care about it at all, you don't give it a second thought
and you certainly don't care about the fact that it's dependent on...
well, the electrical power, for example, and the electrical power is dependent on...
you know, I don't know how many men are out there right now or were out there last night, when it was freezing rain
fixing power lines and freezing to death while they're doing it, so that your stupid computer doesn't malfunction while you're watching cat videos
you know, I mean there's this incredibly dynamic living system, that's social, and economic, and political
that has to remain dead-stable in order for us to have access to
functional and pure, non-fluctuating electricity 100% of the time
'cause you also don't think, well, the stability of your computer is dependent on the stability of the political system
but of course it is, because if the political system mucks up, and the economic system goes, then
people don't go out and work to fix things; and things are breaking all the time
that's their normal state, is broken, not working; and so...
and that's all in some sense folded up not only inside your computer
but actually inside your tiny conceptions of the computer while you're using it
and you only get a glimpse of what the computer is really like when it doesn't work
then it's when it becomes a complex object, right
as long as it's working, then your stupid perceptions are perfectly fine to get the job done
and that's another indication of what you're using your perceptions for is to get the job done
and how you specify exactly the  level of resolution that you should be operating at
I haven't sorted that out, but it's something like you default to the simplest level that moves you to the next step
you know, so for example... and generally that is what you should do
if you're having an argument with someone that you have a long-term relationship with
you can start by arguing about what the little argument is about
or you can immediately cascade into whether or not you should have a relationship with this person at all
or even into whether or not you shoul even bother with relationships
which is... you know, every time there's an argument, that question is a reasonable question to have emerge
or at least it's in the realm of potential reasonable questions
but it doesn't seem useful to jump to the most catastrophic possible explanation every time some minor thing goes wrong
that's what happens to people who have an anxiety disorder
that's what happens to people who are depressed, right? they can't bind the anomaly
and so what happens is it tends to propagate up the entire system
until it takes out their highest-order conceptualizations
you know, so if you're seriously depressed, maybe you'll watch a news article about something stupid, and you'll think: Jesus, why should I even be alive
you know, and I'm dead serious about that
if you score like 60 on the Beck depression inventory, which puts you way the hell up in the "depressed" range
anything that happens to you that's negative will trigger suicidal thoughts, roughly speaking
and sometimes even positive things will do it, because
there are very few positive things that happen, that don't carry with them some threat of change or transformation
so, you know, one mystery, it's a big mystery
why don't you fall into a catastrophic depression every time something little goes wrong?
because the level of analysis is not self-evident
you see this with people who are high in neuroticism too, you know
their trivial fluctuations at their workplace or in their relationships or in their health
will produce a very disproportionate negative emotional response
it's part of the range of normal emotional responses
some people are very, very high in neuroticism, so everything upsets them, some people are very low
and the reason that whole range exists is because sometimes you should get upset when some little thing happens to you
'cause it's an indication that the whole damn environment has got dangerous on you
and sometimes you should just brush it off, because it's net consequence is low
but, how do you calculate that? very, very difficult question
so you know, when your computer goes wrong
well, you have to pick the proper level of analysis to fix it, and
you could say, well there's something wrong with the circuit board, and maybe there's a crack in one of the...
somewhere that it's soldered, and
or you know, sometimes now that people are building microchips
they've run into a crazy problem
you know, microchips keep getting smaller and smaller, right
so the little wires now are down to atomic width
or you know, the width of maybe 20 atoms or something like that, but really, really... they're really getting thin
and so, that produces another problem, which no one would have ever...
you wouldn't expect, and that is that at the quantum level there's uncertainty about where electrons might be
normally that doesn't matter
The degree of uncertainty where your electrons are, is smaller than your size so that it's basically irrelevant
But down at the sub-atomic level where these microchips are starting to be produced
Sometimes the electron will be outside the wires
and that means that they are getting so damn small that they'll get short-circuited by themselves
because the electrons aren't stable enough to be where they're supposed to be in the wires
so
well, the reason I'm pointing that out is because
a problem that exists in the system can exist at any of the multiple levels of that system
and it isn't obvious where to start
and lot of political arguments are like that, you know...
it's like maybe a company goes bankrupt and its shareholders get, maybe a bank fails, so maybe people can't withdraw their money
One response is, well that just show you how rotten the capitalist system is
It's like, well, maybe that is what it shows, but
it seems there is, it seems like that might not be the most appropriate level to start
and so again, it's like Occam's Razor in the scientific world, right
You want to use the simplest explanation that
it's not that fits the facts
because you don't organize your perception by facts
it's kind of like you want to use simplest tool you can possibly manage to fix the problem
so you don't... when your car has a flat tire, you don't buy a new car
You fix the flat tire if you can figure out how to do it
so you go for the thing that will put the tool back together with the minimum involvement of time and effort
it's something like that
And you care about that because you have limited time and you have limited resources
And so it make sense for you to conserve them, and
I'm telling you part for practical reasons too
because this is a very useful thing to know
if you're arguing with someone
you want to argue about the smallest possible thing that you could argue about that might fix the problem
you want to really specify what's going on at a micro level
and what's the minimum that I would require to be satisfied with that outcome
and if you're... This is especially true in intimate relationships. It's like...
If someone is bugging you and you want them to change, you think, well, how can I be minimally bothered by this
and what's the tiniest amount of change I could request that might satisfy me
cuz otherwise, the argument will come unglued
and every time you guys try to discuss a problem
you'll talk about whether you should even be together
and then you're done
cuz you'll never solve a problem
and then you won't be together, cuz you'll never solve a problem
so
ok
so, here's the way to think about perception
so, let's say this is the thing you're trying to look at
I call that the thing in itself
Now, that's schematic of a thing in itself
so, the thing in itself, that's an old philosophical concept and I think it came from Kant
But I'm not sure about that. That might be older than that
And the thing in itself is, what you could see if you could see everything about something, but…you can't…so it's a hypothetical entity
and maybe, who knows, if I were looking at you like the thing in itself
maybe I could see every level of your being, from the sub-atomic level, up to this level of perception then beyond
I could see your family relationships
I could see how they were nested in the societal relationships, economic relationships, political relationships, the eco-system as a whole
like, I would see all those levels at the same time
of course, I don't, cuz I can't
What I see instead is
First of all, you are radically simplified by my senses because they are just not acute enough to see you at a microscopic level
and they're not comprehensive enough to see your connections across time
so, my senses filter a bunch of you from me right away
and then, I'm also filtered from you, by your willingness to act like I want while we were together
cuz that's ... cuz you could be doing all sorts of strange things at the moment. But you're not
and so, you're helping me simplify my perception of you, by agreeing to play the same game that I'm playing while we occupy the same space
and that's basically politeness
that's the mark of someone who's well socialized
you walk in somewhere you get the game play the game and you don't scare the hell out of everybody
and that's…that's partly how we keep our emotions stabilized
because you know if you're like a Freudian, you think
well, as long as your ego is well constituted, you can keep your emotions under control
it's like, yes and no, mostly no
I like the Piaget an idea better, which is
if you're well socialized, you're awake enough to identify the game that's going on wherever you go
and then you play that game immediately and so do all the other socialized primates
and so then you can just understand the game you don't have to understand them, thank God
you could just understand the game
and as long as the game continues you don't have to be nervous, because you know
you at least know what's going to happen and maybe you even know how to get what you want in that game
and so… so that again that's really worth thinking about, because
we talked about this before about why people want to maintain their culture
it isn't just because their culture is a belief system that helps them orient themselves in the world
it's because I believe system is a game that everyone who shares that belief system is playing
and the fact that everybody's playing means nobody needs to get upset
So it isn't like the belief system is directly inhibiting the emotions. That isn't how it works
so… and it's not like the culture is just a belief system
it's only secondarily a belief system, man
mostly it's a game that people are actively engaging in
that's way more important than the beliefs that go along with it
you even need the damn beliefs you know that's why wolves can live with each other
I don't know what the they'll have a belief system exactly
mostly they have a set of
they have a game, that is the wolf game, roughly speaking
and all the wolves know how to play it, and, so, that's that
that's how they keep themselves organized in their packs
a lot of its externalized
and so
okay, so, anyway, so,
the thing in itself, that's a very complicated thing. It got multiple dimensions, multiple levels
and then it's worse than that because it doesn't only have multiple levels, but all those levels move across time
and every one of those level shifts as it moves across time
and so I like to think of the thing in itself like a symphony
I think that's a good model. I think that's why we like music, in fact
because music shows you a multi-level reality that unfolds and shifts across time, within some parameters, right? because
it is not just chaos
the music has an element of predictability and an element of unpredictability and it has these multiple levels
and that's sort of what everything in the world is like. It's what the world is like
so this is… a even that is just a conceptual model of the thing in itself first of all that's only got 2 dimensions instead of 3
cuz it could be a cube
and then it has… even a cube has 3 dimensions instead of 4, because
if that was a cube, adding the third dimension
then it would also be a cube that would transform and shift as it moved across time
and that's what the thing in itself is but that's too damn complicated
so then the question is when you look at it, what you see?
and the answer is
to some degree, it depends on what you want to use it for
and so I would say will hear look at the different ways you can look at this
might say what is this
somebody could say well it's a rectangle
and would you say that's correct
it's like, well
it's not correct because there's not a one-to-one correspondence, but
it might be a useful conceptualization if you think about that as a box
it could contain that
and if you are carrying the box to only have to be concerned about the box and so that would be fine
it's a good functional simplification
that one's a little higher resolution because it says well yeah it's actually four rectangles
and that one says, well, wait, think about that is an orchard that someone's looking at from the top
you want to figure out how to walk from South to North
well, you got a little map there
cuz you can think of those as bars instead of collections of dots
Piaget showed the children will automatically do this. So for example if you take six dots and put them in a row
and you take the same six dots and you stretch them out so the rows this much longer
and then you asked the child where there are more dots, the child will say that there are more dots where it's longer
because they're flipping in some sense between the perception of the individual dot, and the perception of the shape that the array of dots makes
and so, the shape is longer, 'cause you could see it as a rectangle
so they think, well, longer is bigger, bigger is more, there's gotta be more dots
and then there's this one, which is sort of an amalgam of this one and this one, and then that one
and that's the highest resolution model of that that's still a simplification
and you know, what I like about this diagram is that, you know, people say, well...
the facts are the facts, and what we're disagreeing about is our opinion about the facts
it's like, no... yes...
you have an opinion about the facts, but the world is so horribly complex that you can actually disagree about the facts themselves
and I think and ideology does that to people very commonly
so I saw this movie once that Naomi Klein made
if I tell you the same story, tell me, 'cause I don't wanna tell you the same story, but I might
so she went down to Argentina after a bunch of money had got out of Argentina beause of a financial collapse
and she went to a factory that had been padlocked, and it was a heavy machinery factory
and the workers had decided they were gonna undo the padlocks and go build machines, you know
to hell with the owner who shut it down!
and so, she went down and made this movie, and followed these workers around
and showed how catastrophic their lives have been because they'd lost their livelihood in this big financial crash
and so that was really interesting; but then she went and interviewed the guy who owned the factory, and
she treated him like he was... like a cipher in some sense
instead of asking him: how he got the factory? what he wanted to do with it? how it fit in with his life plans?
why he shut it down instead of continuing it?
she didn't get the back story on him, she just left him in the "evil capitalist" box and went on with the film
and it was... it wasn't like what she did wasn't true
but it was only half true, and it was half true because she could perceive the complexity of the workers, having sympathy for them
but as far as she was concerned, the enemy, the owner had no complexity
he was just "bad capitalist", and that how it was left in the movie
I found it profoundly unsatisfying, because I wanted to know, okay, it's like
you know that these workers are suffering, it's not self-evident that you want your damn factory closed
you'd think you'd want it open so you could be building things, it's like...
who are you? what are you doing? why is is this justifiable? have a question about it
well, you can take this infinite set of facts
and then you subject it to your filters, and you let some of the facts through, and they're facts
but what about all the facts that you don't let through?
that's the thing, and that's what the gorilla video shows, too
it's like, yeah, yeah, you've got the basketball count right, but you missed the big primate
and you might say, well, your priorities were a bit skewed in that circumstance, because
you were rearranging the deck chairs as the Titanic sank, as the old joke goes
and so it's very much useful to think always, well, you're...
it isn't just your damn opinion that's biased, although it is
it's your perceptions that are biased, so...
[???] it's even more, so you say, well
you can't see the thing in itself 'cause it's too complex, so you perceive it simpler than it is
and some of that perceptual simplification is dependent on your aims
so that's a vicious one, because it pulls the value structure that you're ensconced within into your perceptions
it pulls it into the reals of facts itself
and then you do another... I think about this as a compression
you can compress a photograph by getting rid of redundant information
that's sort of what you're here
one of these squares, little black squares here, black rectangles, compresses all of those
it's like we're going to treat those as if they're greyish black, same thing happens here
so we're blurring across them, so we have a much less high-resolution image here
so you take the thing in itself, you perceive it as a low-resolution representation
and then you take that low-resolution representation and you replace that with a word
and so the word is a twofold compression
and then when someone tosses you the word, you unpack it into a low-resolution perception
and then maybe into the world itself, if you can do that, but probably not
so that's what we're doing, we're taking the complex world, we fold it into a simple perception
we fold that into a word, we throw the word to someone else, and they unpack it
and the only way you can unpack it, of course, is if you'd had enough similar experience so that you have the reference for the word already in your experience
which is why you have to use simplified language with children, right, because
there's no point tossing a child a concept  that he or she can't unpack
so we compress a very complex reality through a very, very small keyhole
that's basically our cognitive process
okay, so then here's the next kinda argument, this goes along with...
the science-religion argument that I was making earlier, which I wanna unpack a little bit more
I think that fundamentalists and atheistic scientists have the same problem
the fundamentalists, so we can say the christian fundamentalists in the US
make the proposition that biblical stories, we'll call them mythological stories
are literal representations of the truth, but... and...
that might be true depending on what you mean by "literal" ;)
but what they mean by "literal", or what they attempt to make "literal" mean, is that they're in the same category, as scientific facts
because they don't have the idea that there are different ways of approaching truth
and that truths can serve different purposes; they don't have the sense that your definition of "truth" is actually something like a tool
rather than an ontological statement about the reality of the world
and so the  fundamentalists basically make the proposition that
the idea that God created the world in six days, five thousand years ago is literally true
and they get the five thousand year estimate, by the way
by going through the genealogies on the Old Testament, and adding up the hypothetical ages, and figuring out
how long before Moses Adam lived, and some bishop did that, I think it was in the mid-1800s
I might be wrong about that, but it was somewhere back about that time
and more or less that's been accepted as canonical fact ever since
and then the scientists say: well yeah, those are empirical truths, they're just wrong
see, and that's the only difference there is between the fundamentalists and the atheist scientists
the fundamentalists say: those are fundamental scientific truths, and they're right
and the scientists say: well, they're scientific truths, they just happen to be wrong
I think that's a stupid argument, presonally
for a bunch of reasons, one is that
the people who wrote the ancient stories that we have access to were - in no way, shape or form - scientists
you know, modern people tend to think that you think like a scientist, and people have always thought that way
first of all, you do not think like a scientist
even scientists hardly even think like scientists
but if you're not scientifically trained, you don't think like a scientist at all
so one of the things, for example, that characterizes your thinking is confirmation bias
so if you have a theory, what you do is wander around in the world, looking for reasons why it's true
and a scientist does exactly the opposite of that
in the little tiny, narrow domain where he or she is actually capable of being a scientist
and what they have is a theory, and look for a way to prove it wrong
but, believe me, you don't run around doing that
you can train yourself so now and then you can do that
you can learn to listen to people, for example, on the off chance that you might be wrong
but that is by no means a natural way of thinking
and of course, the fundamental philosophical axioms of the scientific method
weren't developed until Descartes and Bacon, and who else...?
there's one more... anyways, the name escapes me at the moment, but
you can argue when science emerged, but it's certainly emerged in its articulated form in the last thousand years
I think you could say even more specifically that it emerged in the last five hudred years
now, you might argue with that, and say: what about the Greeks and other people who were fairly technologically sophisticated?
or who invented geometry or that kind of thing
but yeah, yeah, bare precursors to the idea of empirical observation
Aristotle, for example, when he was writing down his knowledge of the world
it never occurred to him to actually go out in the world and look at it to see if what he assumed about it was true
and it's certainly never occurred to Aristotle
to get 20 people to go look at the same thing independently
write down exactly how they went about doing it
compare the records, and then extract out what was common
and that's a... that seems self-evident to us to some degree, but, you know...
it was by no means self-evident to anyone five hundred years ago, and people still don't do it
so it's not plausible...
if you know anything about the history of ideas, it's not plusible to posit that
stories about the nature of reality that existed before 500 years ago
were scientific in any but the most cursory of ways
so why we have that argument continually is somewhat beyond me
part of the reason is, though, that everyone, fundamentalists included, really believe in scientific facts
even though they hate it; they'll use conputers, they'll fly; computer's wouldn't work unless quantum mechanics were correct
the fact that you use a high-tech device indicates through your action that you actually accept the theories upon which it's predicated
right, the same as flying, same as anything you do in a complex technological society
you're stuck with it; you're reading by the lights; do they work? yeah, they work
well, so it's really hard for people who are trying to hold onto
a way of looking at the world that appears to contradict the scientific claims
when everything they do is predicated on their acceptance of the validity of the scientific claims
it's really problematic for people
it's problematic in a real way, I think, because
one of the problems with the scientific viewpoint is it doesn't tell you anything about what you should do with your life
it doesn't solve the problem of value at all
in fact, it might make it more difficult, because
one of the fundamental scientific claims, roughly speaking, is that every fact is of equal utility
at least from a scientific perspective; there's no hierarchy of facts
that's not exactly true, because you can think of one theory as "more true" than another
but that boils down to saying that it's more useful than another
so I don't think that that's a really good exception
okay, so fine
you got the scientific atheists on one end and you got the religious fundamentalists on the other
and what they both agree on, whether they like it or not, is that
there's so much power in the scientific method that it's difficult to dispute the validity of scientific facts
and they seem to exist in contradiction to the older, archaic stories
if you also accept them as fact-based accounts
so what do we do about that? well, if you're on the scientific atheist end of things
you say: well, those old stories are just superstitious science
second-rate, barbaric, archaic forms of science; you just dispense with them, they're nothing but trouble
and if you're on the fundamentalist side, you say: well we'll try to shoehorn science into this framework
and really that doesn't work very well; it doesn't work very well with the claims of evolution, for example
in fact, it works very badly, and that's a problem, because evolutionary theory is like... it's a killer theory
it's really, really hard...
like it's not a complete theory, and there's lots of things we don't know about evolution, but... you know
trying to handwave that away, that's not gonna work without dispensing with most of biology
so that's a big problem; so here's another way of thinking about it
you don't just need one way of looking at the world
maybe you need two ways of looking at the world, and I'm not exactly sure how they should be related to one another
like which should take precedence under which circumstance
but one problem is: what's the world made of?
you know, what's the world, conceptualized as an objective place, made of
and the other is: how should you conduct yourself while you're alive?
and there's no reason to assume that those questions can be answered using the same approach
I mean, physics has its methods, chemistry has its methods, and biology has its methods
so a method for obtaining the truth can be bound to a domain
so why would we necessarily assume that you could use the same set of tools
to represent the world as a place of objects, and to represent as a place in which a biological creature would act?
I mean, anyways, I'm suggesting that we...
that we don't view it that way, that we have two different viewpoints
maybe they can be brought together, although it's not obvious how
but that it's not a tenable solution to get rid of one in favor of the other
and I think the reason for that is that...
you need to know how to conduct yourself in the world
you have to have a value system, you can't even look at the damn world with out a value system
it's not possible; your emotional health is dependent on a value system, the way you interact with other people is dependent on a value system
there's no getting away from it
and you say, well, there's no justification for any value system from a scientific perspective
you're gonna draw that conclusion that no value system is valid, where the hell does that leave you?
there's no down, there's no up, there's no rationale for moving in any direction
there's not even really any rationale for living
and so people say things like: well, why the hell should I care what happens, in a million years who's gonna know the difference?
it's like, yeah, yeah, true. stupid, but true
and the reason I think it's stupid is because it's just a game, you know
I can take anything of any sort and find a context in which it's irrelevant
it's just a rational game, it's like
who cares if a hundred children freeze to death in a blizzard? what difference is it gonna make in a billion years?
well, what do you say to someone who says that? you say, well, seems like the wrong frame of reference, bucko
that's what it looks like to me; you know, 'cause at some point you question the damn frame of reference, not what you derive from it
and it certainly seems to me that situations like that don't allow you to use that kind of frame of reference, there's something inhumane about it
and that trumps the logic, or at least it should
and if it doesn't, then all hell breaks loose, and that doesn't seem to be a good thing
okay, so I have this quote from Shakespeare here
he says: all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in time plays many parts
well, it's the sort of thing that you'd expect a dramatist to pen, but that's how he looked at the world
and we still watch Shakespeare's plays some hundreds of years later because there seems to be something essential captured in them
something about how people do act, but more importantly, I think, how people should and shouldn't act
because what fun is it going to a play that doesn't outline how someone should and shouldn't act?
you want a good guy or a couple of them, maybe they can be complex interminglings of good and bad
you know, that makes it more sophisticated
and you want a bad guy or a bad... you always want to see that contract either within a character or between characters
and it's because you want to know how to live properly, that's how to be a good person
and you wanna know how to live improperly, how to be a bad person, so you can watch out for people like that
or so you can figure out what that means for yourself; it's compelling
and that's another thing that's worth thinking about:
why is it compelling?
and it's compelling to everyone, and that's the thing that's so cool, is that there aren't that many phenomena that you can point to that are compelling to everyone
music is close, it's a very rare person who doesn't like at least some genre of music, no matter how narrow
but the other one is stories, you're hard pressed to find someone, especially if they're younger, who doesn't like stories
why? is it a waste of time? or is there something going on?
well...
i think it's not only not a waste of time, it's actually the most fundamentally important thing you can possibly do
because there's no difference between understanding stories and figuring out how to get along in the world
so, and there's a tight relationship between the story that you inhabit, that structures your behavior
and the games that Piaget talked about, that organize people's behavior,
to some degree the reason we can all sit in this room together like this
is because a huge chunk of the value system that guides our behavior is shared
so I'm lecturing and you're sitting in the classroom, and that distinguishes us to some degree
but you know that that's partly merely a consequence of the difference in our age
it's the same trajectory, we just happen to occupy different positions in a value hierarchy that we both accept
and so, as long as you feel that that's fair and just, then you're not gonna object to it, but
I'm here in the classroom for many of the same reasons that you're here in the classroom
if you look at the higher-order parts of the value structure, and maybe right at the end of that...
'cause I've tried to figure out if you push why you're doing what you're doing right now to its ultimate limit
so you can't get a story that's superordinate to that
it's something like, well, you belive that the investigation of the world to acquire knowledge is worthwhile
otherwise what the hell are you here for?
and even if 80% of your motivation is to get a good, stable job, fair enough
there's still something outside of that
because the whole culture says, well, you're more likely to be able to function properly in a good, stable job
if you're the sort of person who knows how to go out in the world and forage for information usefully
and I think that's very much analogous to the hero story
it's like, you go out and you search the unknown to find something of value
and so fundamentally that's what we're doing in the classroom
and the reason we can all organize our behavior is because we accept that framework consciously...
consciously would be: we know how to articulate it
unconsciously it's: well, it doesn't matter, we know how to act out the patterns
whether we can say the rules or not, doesn't matter
same as a wolf pack; we know the procedures, and you could describe them with an articulated value structure
let's take a break
okay, so let's go back to the complexity problem
you see, I actually think in some sense that's the fundamental problem
when you read about the terror management theorist types
they think that death is the fundamental problem
and that's a good argument, because it's definitely a fundamental problem, but I think it's a subset of the complexity problem
and the reason I think that is because sometimes people's lives become so complex that they'd rather be dead
and the reason they seek death through suicide is to make the complexity go away
'cause complexity causes suffering if it's uncontrolled
you know, things just get beyond your control
and that can happen, you know, if you're hit by three or four catastrophes at the same time
you know, maybe you have... oh, the political system collapses, there's hyperinflation
you lose your job, and you have someone that you love or two people die, and maybe you get cancer, something like that
those things happen to people, and they just think, well, there's no getting out of this, it's just too much
and you know, one of the interesting things about being a psychologist is that
what you learn if you're gonna be a psychologist is that people come to you with mental illnesses - and that's almost never true
people come to you, because their lives are so damn complicated, they cannot stay on top of them
in any way that doesn't make it look like they're just gonna get more complicated
and so then that causes symptoms, you know it's like...
there's this old idea, a sort of a metaphor for genetic susceptibility
take a balloon and blow it up until it's beyond its tolerance - it's going to blow out at the weakest point
well that's sort of what a genetic susceptibility is
if I just keep adding complexity on top of you, at some point you'll blow out at your weakest point
you know, maybe you'll get physiologically ill, maybe you'll start drinking
maybe you'll develop an anxiety disorder, maybe you'll get OCD, maybe you'll get depressed
whatever, they'll be something about you that's the weakest point
and if I just push, that's where you'll blow out, so
that's a mental illness, but those things almost never just happen
sometimes, but not very often, usually people have just been hammered like two or three different ways
and then they collapse in the direction of their biological weakness, and
then maybe you put them back together, but
it's almost always a complexity-related phenomenon rather than a mental illness-related phenomenon
not always, but almost always
okay, so now
you got this complexity problem, and you think: well, you deal with it conceptually
and that's sort of akin to the idea that it's belief systems that protect you from death anxiety
the ideas are roughly comparable, but again, that's wrong
it's the sort of thing only a psychologist could think up
because psychologists think that everything about you happens inside your head, so to speak, in your psyche, but that's not true
there's a huge chunk of you that's outside of you completely
and so, this is a really good example, like, we know the oldest cities, this is a medieval city in France
a beautiful old city
old cities were walled, and the reason for that was because
they were places of wealth, and if you didn't put walls around them then
other people would come in and steal everything and kill you
so having some walls was a good idea
the same as having walls in your house is a good idea
walls between your rooms are a good idea, or borders between categories are a good idea
and so, part of the way you simplify the world is by building walls around your space, because then a whole bunch of things can't come in
and so, you don't even have to think about them; it's not conceptual, it's practical
and so, and you know, one of the things I think I've figured out recently
is the fundamental political difference between people
and it looks to me like the fundamental political difference, is:
how many walls should there be around your stuff?
and the ultimate liberal answer is: zero
and the ultimate conservative answer is: bring on those walls, man!
and what's interesting about both those perspectives
first of all is that there's temperamental contributions to them, and second that they're both valid
so one of the mysteries, I believe, that permeates psychometric psychology right now is
why the temperamental factors that influence politics are those particular temperamental factors
so there's five, let's say, right, there's classic Big 5: extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness
well, the biggest predictors of political allegiance, forget about the politically correct types for a minute
but on the liberal to conservative axis is that the liberals are low in conscientiousness and high in openness
and the conservatives are high in conscientiousness and low in openness
and so then you think, well, why those two traits? that's the first question
and the second question is: why those two traits together?
given that they're not very highly correlated, right, they're really quite independent
so why do they co-vary on the political axis?
and I think this is the reason, I think it's exaclty that
open people like to live on the periphery of boundaries
and they like to break boundaries between things, 'cause interesting things happen when you...
when you think a different way, when you think outside of the box, so to speak
that's what open people do, they always think outside of the box, no matter what box you put them in
you know, and sometimes you meet people that are so open that they're completely disorganized
their thought process is almost completely associational, like a dreamer they just jump from one thing to another
they're very interesting to talk to, it's very hard for those people to get their lives together
'cause they're interested in absolutely everything, and their attention just flits all over the place
and so they're open, and that actually does go along with higher intelligence, generally speaking
so, and then if they're low in conscientiousness, they don't see any utility in order
and orderly people... 'cause that's part of conscientiousness, and the biggest determiner of political belief in the conscientious domain
the orderly people like to have everything in its separate place and properly structured
and so their world is box inside a box, inside a shelf of boxes
and then that shelf of boxes is inside another box, and all those boxes are nice and neat and tight
and nothing inside them is touching, and everything in every box is the same thing
and you know, you can see that... you can see the utility in that
that, as far as we've been able to tell is also associated with disgust sensitivity
and people are disgusted, generally speaking, when things that shouldn't be touching, are touching
like something horrible stuck to you, for example
that produces a very visceral sense of disgust
and it's a boundary violation, 'cause that's what disgust is, it indexes a boundary violation
and you can... how separate people should be from one another as individuals or in groups
is an entirely debatable issue
because there's huge advantages when people mingle and mix
and there's huge dangers when people mingle and mix, and so...
at some point you say, well, the danger are overwhelming the positives
and at another point you say, well the positives are overwhelming the dangers
and you have a continual argument about that with your self, but more importantly with people who have different temperament than you
and the terrible temptation is to assume that only those people who have your temperament are correct
and that's just... those other temperaments wouldn't exist if that was true
if you look at it from a strictly biological perspective
so anyways, one of the things we do to simplify the world is to frame it
physically - and so you look at this, you've got wall number 1, and then you have wall number 2
but then inside the walls you have walls around everything
all these houses are walls, and inside the houses there are walls as well
and so everything is...
and what you do when you put walls around things is you make part of the worlds simpler, constantly
the reason you have a house is so that everybody and his dog isn't in your house
you just want those few people that you can barely tolerate in your house
and not all those other strangers, God only knows what they're gonna do
you'll still invite people in now and then, beause maybe you're sick and tired and bored of the people that are in your house
and so you want a little bit of new information, but
you want those barriers to be there so that you can voluntarily modulate the information flow
okay, so that's the first thing you do
then you set up rules with everybody else that says, well:
I'm gonna have some walls, so you can't come in, but
what I'm gonna do is pay you for that privilege by letting you have some walls where people can't come in
and so, I think that's analogous... I was thinking about
the issue of discrimination in relationship to sex
because I've been thinking a lot about discrimination lately, because everybody thinks discrimination is a bad idea
which is a very stupid proposition, because you're discruminating all the time
and the most fundamental form of discrimination is choice of sexual partner
and so you might say, well, why should that even be allowed?
because it is the most fundamental form of
so for example, almost everyone is racially prejudiced when it comes to sexual partners
so you think, well... what about... are you...
do you use age as an exclusionary criteria? probably
do you use physical attractiveness? only insofar as you're able
right? you'd use it completely if you could get away with it, roughly speaking
but you can't, because the most attractive people aren't gonna be anywhere near you
so you can't do it, but you'd like to
health? yes, strenght? yes, wealth? yes, education? definitely
so it's unbelievably discriminatory
so you might say, well, why is that justifiable? and it seems to me that it's something like...
well, you get to say "no" to me if I get to say "no" to you, it's something like that
we've agreed that everybody gets to discriminate on that basis, and because everybody can do it, then it's fair
it's something like that, it's very much worth thinking about
you know, I don't know if you know this, but in Huxley's book, Brave New World
where the family had been completely demolished, right, and children were conceived in bottles and produced in factories
the whole idea of the relationship between sex and procreation had become a taboo
one of the mantras, slogans of the society, was: "Everyone belongs to everyone else."
and so, it was actually a social  faux-pas to refuse to sleep with someone
just as it was a social faux-pas to have any exclusionary relationship
because another thing you might notice is that there's nothing more discriminatory than falling in love with someone
it's like: you're special! and all the rest of you? haha no
so it's the ultimate exclusionary act, right, and we presume that that's an acceptable...
not only acceptable, we demand that as a right; and that's worth thinking about a lot
anyways, okay, so what you're doing is
by agreeing to this segregation and boxing, what you're doing is
carving off little bits of the world that are simple enough so that someone like you can live for some amount of time there without too much danger
and everyone agrees to do that, roughly speaking, because everybody needs to engage in that
process of simplification and safety provision
and so, so we have towns, and those towns are nothing but boxes inside boxes
so there's a good schematic of a little house
and you can see that even inside the same place we segregate off rooms for different purposes
and then, what's interesting, too, is that we set up those rooms as little dramatic spaces; right, so you furnish them
and you furnish them with things that tell you how to behave in that room
so table and chairs tells you that's where you're going to eat, and that's where people are going to sit, and
they're gonna sit facing each other, and that has certain implications, 'cause the chairs don't face the walls, they face each other
and you have a living room where it's comfortable, and there's a fire, and
you know, you're setting up little stages, basically, so that...
just like kids do when they pretend, you know, they all assign each other roles
and then they lay out a little drama; and that's what you do when you invite someone over
well, let's sit in the living room, well, you'll probably get a drink if you sit in the living room
and hypothetically you're gonna have some conversation
so it's a bounded place, there are rules that apply
and then you get to have a little exploration inside that set of bounded rules, and
if you're open, you're gonna discuss all sorts of things, and if you're conservative
and closed, then you're gonna discuss a very, very small subset of things
and so, hopefully everyone will agree on that
so that's one form of binding
then another is: we put boxes around each other when it comes to groups
I think this is a picture from the Democratic convention
when Obama was elected, if I remember correctly
but anyways, what happens is that people segregate themselves into little microgroups, like Democrats and Republicans
and they basically do that on  temperamental grounds, fundamentally
and then they produce these games that everyone knows how to play
and that's another form of simplification
so when you bring all these people together at a political convention
it's not like they all have the same ideas, they don't
and it could degenerate into chaos, and sometimes that happens, you get big demonstrations at these places
and sometimes people throw tear gas, and all of that
but mostly speaking, it's pretty peaceful
and the reason for that is that there's a set of procedures in place that have some historical justification
that are embedded within a shared cultural and belief system
and everybody goes there and agrees to play by the rules, roughly speaking
and so then they can elect a candidate
they can kind of flip it down to a binary choice for the election, right
yes or no, something like that, and
nobody gets killed, usually, so hooray for that
that's a hell of a thing to pull off, to be able to
generate out of 300 million people two people to run for the highest office
then let everyone play a game to determine who they're going to be
and then to have the bloody thing function stably through power transitions
that never happens, right, that's a complete bloody miracle
and hardly any societies have ever pulled it off
the power transition being the really important thing
'cause a tyrant can be stable for a while, but usually what happens is: he dies and all hell breaks loose
I think it was George Washington that said or had said about him
'the reason that he was a great leader wasn't because he was president, but because he stopped being president'
and that's really worth thinking about
so then the next thing that sort of simplifies the world is actually your physiological structure
we talked about that a little bit
you can only see things that are in front of you, not things that are to the side or behind you
you can only see a very narrow...
you can only see a very narrow chunk of the electromagnetic spectrum
roughly that chunk that enables you to see by sunlight and to detect ripe fruit and that sort of thing
so it's very evolutionarily determined, and...
you see things of a certain size quite easily, because they're handy
so objects manifest themselves to you as things-
because they have some relationship to your capacity to use them as tools, and that's dependent on your size
you have a certain strength and not a different strength
you have a certain degree of articulation, there's some things you can represent in language, so
you have limitations that screen out from your consideration all sorts of things
and that's bad, because, for example, before people discovered germs, there was a lot of them zipping about, killing people
and the fact that we couldn't see them wasn't such a good thing
but by the same token
we're also not as overwhelmed with complexity as we might be if we could detect everything
and one of the problems with being connected so much is that it's easy to drown in information
and that's rough for information foragers, you can't stay off your damn computer, because...
it opens up your senses far beyond their normal limitations; and so where should you stop?
well, you don't; you're on the damn thing like a pensioner on a slot machine
and for many of the same reasons
so your body also filters out the world for you and provides you acces to some information and not access to others
and then the same thing is the case with your nervous system
and I do... I put the first picture there of the central nervous system that controls voluntary movement, for example
I put it there because people like to think that their brain is in their head
but it's a stupid way of thinking about it, as far as I'm concerned, because
you have an awful lot of neurological tissue distributed through your body, and
like your autonomic nervous system, if I remember correctly, which is mostly distributed through your body
has more neurons in it than your central nervous system, and so
you aren't a brain in a body, your brain is really distributed through your whole body
and I think the idea that you have a brain in a body is kind of a holdover from the idea that you have a soul in a body
not that I'm necessarily criticizing that idea, but I think they kinda got graften onto one another, and so
but the problem with that is that it...
so it's the soul-body, brain-body, mind-body dichotomy, which I think is the same dichotomy
and the problem with that is that it's easy to think of thought as something that's abstracted away from the body
I think that was an enlightenment idea
that just like the soul shouldn't be contaminated by the demands of the body, if you were going to be pure spiritually
so your thought shouldn't be contaminated by your subjectivity, and your emotions
and your motivations, and all of that
it should... your abstractions should be independent of your subjectivity
and rationality and emotion are construed in that manner as enemies
the purpose of rationality is to dispense with the irrationality of emotion and motivation
and that's... Freud's idea of the properly functioning ego is something like that, too
because the Id is this place of compulsion and drive
and the ego has to basically suppress that in the service of the superego
there's no idea of integration, really, in Freud
now, I don't wanna be rough on Freud
and I think part of the reason that he thought that way is because the patients he had
were precisely those who weren't very well integrated because of their pathological past
and so they didn't know how to get those subsystems up into the overarching game
and so their only alternative was something like suppression or repression
because if you don't know how to be aggressive in a sophisticated way
you're still gonna be aggressive, but you're gonna have to inhibit it, control yourself
because you can't just be aggressive around people, it just won't go well for you
so if you can't do it in a sophisticated way, you're gonna repress it
or you're gonna get in trouble, those are the options, so...
okay, but if you start thinking about the brain, the nervous system as part of the body
as an inseparable part, well then the function of thinking seems to become something different
it's not so much the objective, abstract representation of the world
which is kinda what you're pursuing if you're a scientist, it's more like...
it's more like conceptualization of and practice of the proper way of being in the world
and I think that's what you're more interested in anyways, I don't see how you can't be, since
you're a living thing, and you're overwhelmingly motivated to
successfully manifest those actions that a living thing has to manifest in order to continue
and it's complicated, you can boil it down to survival and reproduction, it's a good overarching simplification
but there's nothing simple about survival and reproduction, I mean
all sorts of complex monsters emerge even  out of that simple conceptualization
but it's not unreasonable to assume that one of the things that people generally want to do is to continue living in as pain-free manner as possible
it's something like that, although that's a simplification
so now the reason I'm making that case is because
the fact that you have a body and the fact that you have a nervous system is another set of limitations on
how it is that you're going to interact with the world
so now we've got the nervous system, we can go to higher resolutions - you say you have a brain
and the brain... that's the frontal cortex there
and that's the temporal cortex there, and that's the parietal cortex there, and that's the sensory cortex there
and these were, if I remember properly, these were divisions that I think were first
thought through in the late XIX and early XX century
they're slightly specialized
so this cortex back here does a lot of the elaboration of vision
and that one there helps you with your sense of embodiment and your knowledge about where your body actually happens to be localized
and that one helps for example in some elements of language output, and
then the frontal cortex, especially the prefrontal part, which is up here
is concerned with the organization of motor action
that's a good way of thinking about it, you've got
part of your brain that deals with the sensory world
and the integration of the sensory world, which seems to happen about there, where these places meet
and the prefrontal cortex grew out of the motor cortex
the motor cortex helps you plan out voluntary actions
the prefrontal cortex grew out of that in the course of evolution
so you might think, well, there's reflex actions
and they happen when something happens to you, you resond
and then that elaborates up into the motor system, and that enables you to act voluntarily in the world
and then that elaborates up into the prefrontal motor system, which helps you plan how you might act in the world
so it's the prefrontal cortex that's the home of, let's call it, complex, sophisticated, voluntary thought
which you could think about as a way of representing the world
but which is more accurately a way of generating avatars of yourself in hypothetical worlds
to figure out how they would survive if you did implement them into action
and so, I think that's why...
one of the weird things that you discover psychometrically
is that there's no correlation between conscientiousness and intelligence
and that's a weird one, because people think about intelligence as planning and forward thinking and all of that
but that's also how they think about conscientiousness
as planful behavior and the consideration of future possibilities, but
intelligence and conscientiousness have zero correlation
so you think, well, why is that? I guess it has to be that way, because
you couldn't think abstractly if you were prone to act out what you thought
you'd just go and act it out
I mentioned this to you before, when you dream, you're paralyzed
and you can take that little part of the brain that produces that paralysis out of a cat
or out of a person, but we haven't done it with people
out of a cat, and then when the cat falls asleep, it hits REM sleep, it'll run around until it runs into something, and then it'll wake up
so the dream thinking is so tightly allied with action that
there's no separation between them, so there's no real abstraction there
if you couldn't abstract, you wouldn't be able to think
and the fact that you can abstract means that you can separate your thinking from your action
so that's why, as far as I can tell, there's very little correlation between conscientiousness and intelligence
it's like it has to be that way, because you have to be able to think about things that you wouldn't do, if you're going to think
and generally we think of people who act as soon as they think as impulsive
so...
there's a huge part of the brain that's devoted to sensory processing
and there's a huge part of the brain that's devoted to planning
and the whole prefrontal part of the brain is devoted to planning
and what that indicates is that in large part
as far as your evolved body is concerned
the reason that you think is so that you can act better
and of course that makes sense
and you can think about memory from that perspective, too, because
if you think scientifically, you think that your memory of the world is something like an objective record of events, of objective events
but it's really not very much like that at all
and besides, who cares?
you don't need an accurate representation of all the facts about this room
in fact, all it would do is weigh you down
who cares what color the walls are? or what color the ceiling is?
or what color the paint is; all of that's not worth remembering
partly 'cause it has no relationship whatsoever to what you need to do in order to continue to act
and so what you're doing when you remember, as far as I can tell
is that you're mining your experience for information that you can bring forward into the future
it's purely pragmatic, and so...
I treat people who have post-traumatic disorder or symptoms of post-traumatic disorder
and so, let's say they got post-traumatic stress disorder because
again, because a relationship collapsed on them suddenly, which is quite common
you know, they get betrayed or someone leaves them suddenly, and then they don't know what to do, because
especially if they're conscientious, because then they just tear themselves to pieces trying to figure out what they did wrong
to bring about that event
and the reason they're doing that is that they wanna retool their perceptions and their actions
so that the probability that they'll have the same experience again is minimized
and their mind won't leave them alone 'till they do it
and no wonder, tight, because if you fall into a big pit and you get really hurt
the first thing you should figure out is how to not fall into big pits anymore
and your mind is set up exactly for that, and so...
what you do with someone whose having problems like that
so maybe they're waking up in the middle of the night, obsessing about what went wrong
is you walk them through it
you do a situational analysis first, because
one of the oversimplifications that people make, and this is especially true for conscientious people, is:
if something bad happened to me, I must have done something to deserve it
now, that's actually a prestty functional idea, because
it suggests that there are things about your behavior that you could change that would make the future better
but the problem is that, say if it's the collapse of a relationship and you've been with that person for eight years or longer
well, you did so many things with them
that the idea that you did something wrong pretty much extends to every single thing you ever did with them
and that's... how are you gonna fix that?
and so that's part of the trauma, actually; the trauma is
80 million snakes, all at the same time; it's like, well, forget it
you don't have time to go through all that material, and so
partly what you do with people, and this is what you should do with yourself, too
is you do a situational analysis
don't be assuming necessarily that the thing that happened to you only happened to you because of what you did or didn't do
there's all sorts of factors at play, so
one of the things I sometimes do with clients is that if they were in a relationship
and I can get some reasonable personality information about both of them
I can point out where they were temperamentally incompatible
you know, like if you're a highly conscientious person and your partner is very, very low in conscientiousness
it's like: well good luck to you two! how in the hell are you ever gonna work that out?
because you want everything to be exactly where it's supposed to be and you're working all the time
and your partner could care less whether things were where they're supposed to be, and they're not gonna work
and you can butt heads about that forever, but the probability that you're gonna shift it
you know, except to some minor degree, is very, very low
and so sometimes you end up with someone with whom you get along very well on one temperamental dimension and you're an absolute catastrophe on the other four
and he probability that you're going to be able to mediate a huge temperamental difference is extremely low
you wouldn't expect yourself to mediate a huge intellectual difference
right? you're gonna make the other person smarter?
or maybe you smarter, depending on who you're with; it's like, no, probably not, a bit, maybe
so you do a situational analysis
and so what you're trying to do is to extract out information from your past and your present that will enable you to conduct yourself properly into the future
and so that's another example of the pragmatic element of thought
well then, within the brain itself, apart from the major subdivisions which we just described, there are
minor subdivisions, and here's a bunch of them listed
the caudate nucleus, the cerebral cortex, a huge, newest part of the brain
that's about a square meter if you unfold it, it's all folded up
and most of the processing occurs right on the surface, that's the idea, anyways
the thalamus, that's a place where a lot of the information in the brain appears to be integrated
the cerebellum helps you with balance and the sequencing of complex motor activities
the hippocampus, that's the one we talked about before
one of the things that the hippocampus does, seems to do, is compare your model of the world as it's unfolding with the model that
that you desire to be ocurring, and then keeps track of mismatches
and if it detects a mismatch, then it disinhibits other emotional and motivational centers
and that's the beginning of your response to the unknown, so...
one of them is the hypothalamus, I'm gonna concentrate on it for a bit
it's a little, tiny part of the brain that's  pretty much at the top of the spinal cord, see it's really small
compared to the rest of the brain
now, imagine this is a cat brain for a minute
and you take off the whole cat brain except for the hypothalamus
which people do, you take off the whole cortex, for example
and then the cat's still alive if you do it carefully
but it doesn't have much of a brain, and so you might think, well that cat would just do nothing, but it...
cat's actually pretty functional if it's reduced just to it's hypothalamus
and that's because the hypothalamus is an incredibly important part of the brain
and it provides what I would say constitute the major frames, the maojr psychological frames
and so,  a decorticate cat can stil eat and drink
and regulate its body temperature, and engage in defensive aggression
and if it's female, it can still mate, male can't, 'cause the male mating behavior is more complicated
and as long as you keep it in a bounded environment, it can function reasonably well
it's hypercurious, though
which is very weird, because you wouldn't expect a cat with no brain to be curious about anything
but a cat with no brain is curious about everything
and that seems to be because...
part of the reason that you aren't curious about something anymore is 'cause you've investigated it
and you've built a representation of it that's functional
and that functional representation then stands for the thing itself
and then you can ignore it, and so you learn to ignore things
they're interesting to begin with, and then you learn to ignore them
and so, one of the things that I think artists do, if they're great artists
is remind you that there's more to things than you see now that you've learned to ignore them
so you get a kind of a halucinogenic painting of flower, like van Gogh might produce
like his famous irises, which I think sold for like 220 milion dollars or something outrageous
it's like what van Gogh is trying to show you is what those flowers looked like before you thought you could see them
'cause now: "flower", and you walk by, you don't see it at all
'cause you're off to get a peanut butter sandwich or something
you don't have time to glory in the wonder of the world, you've got something practival to do
alright, so we're gonna zoom in on the hypothalamus here
and what you see, of course, when you zoom in on the hypothalamus, is that it's not a thing
it's a whole bunch of things
and then it's one of those horrible whole bunches of things that are made out of even more bunches of things, and then they're made out of more bunches of things, and
what's really interesting about going down the body from an analytic perspective
is that it doesn't seem to get less complex as you go farther down, you know
some of the... I should actually show you that...
I haven't shown you that little video of DNA fixing itself, eh?
I better show you that, it's so cool, it's ridiculously cool, so you definitely need to see it
>>untill I encountered the artworks of David Goodsell, I was a molecular biologist at the Scrips (?) Institute
>>and these pictures are all... everything's accurate, it's all to scale
>>and his work illuminated for me what the molecular world inside us is like
>>so this is a trans-section through blood, in the top left hand corner you've got this yellow-green area
>>the yellow-green area is the fluids of blood, which is mostly water, but it's also antibodies, sugars
>>hormones, that kind of thing
>>and the red region is a slice into a red blood cell, and those red molecules are hemoglobin
>>they are actually red, that's what gives blood its color
>>and hemoglobin acts as a molecular sponge to soak up the oxygen in your lungs and carry it to other parts in the body
>>I was very much inspired by this image many years ago
>>and I wondered whether we could use computer graphics to represent the molecular world, what would it look like?
>>and that's how I really began, so let's begin
>>this is DNA in its classic double helix for, and it's from x-ray crystallography, so it's an accurate model of DNA
>>if we unwind the double helix and unzip the two strands, you see these things that look like teeth
>>those are the letters of the genetic code, the 25 000 genes you've got written in your DNA
>>this is what they typically talk about, the genetic code, this is what they're talking about
>>but I wanna talk about a different aspect of DNA science, and that is the physical nature of DNA
>>and it's these two strands that run in opposite directions for reasons I can't go into right now
>>but they physically run in opposite directions, which creates a number of complications for your living cells
>>as you're about to see; most particularly when DNA is being copied
>>and so, what I'm about to show you is an accurate representation of the actual DNA replication machine
>>that's occurring right now inside your body, at least 2002 biology
>>DNA is entering the production line from the left-hand side
>>and it hits this collection, this miniature biochemical machines that are
>>pulling apart the DNA strand and making an exact copy
>>so DNA comes in and hits this blue doughnut-shaped structure, and it's ripped apart into its two strands
>>one strand can be copied directly, and you can see these things spooling off down to the bottom there
>>but things aren't so simple for the other strands, because it must be copied backwards
>>so it's thrown out repeatedly in these loops, and copied one section at a time
>>creating two new DNA molecules
>>now you have billions of this machine right now working inside you, copying your DNA with exquisite fidelity
>>it's an accurate representation, and it's pretty much at the correct speed for at what is occurring inside you
>>but I've left out error correction and a bunch of other things
[applause] >>this was work from a number of years ago; thank you
>>this is work from a number of years ago, but what I'll show you next is updated science, it's updated technology
>>so again we begin with DNA, and it's jiggling and wiggling there because of the surrounding supermolecules, which are stripped away so you can see something
>>DNA is about two nanometers across, which is really quite tiny
>>but in each one of your cells, each strand of DNA is about 30 to 40 million nanometers long
>>so to keep the DNA organized and regulate access to the genetic code it's wrapped around these purple proteins, I've labeled them purple here
>>It's packaged up in bundles [?], all this field of view is a single strand of DNA
>>this huge package od DNA is called a chromosome, and we'll come back to chromosomes in a minute
>>we're pulling out, we're zooming out
>>out through a nuclear pore, which is sort of the gateway to this compartment
>>that holds all the DNA, called the nucleus
>>all of this field of view is about a semester's worth of biology, and I've got 7 minutes, so we're not gonna be able to do that today
>>no, I'm being told no
>>this is the way a living cell looks down a live microscope
>>and it's been filmed under time lapse, which is why you can see it moving
>>the nuclear envelope breaks down; these sausage-shaped things are the chromosomes, and we'll focus on them
>>they go through this very striking motion that is focused on these little red spots
>>when the cell feels it's ready to go, it rips apart the chromosome
>>one set of DNA goes to one side, the other side gets the other set of DNA
>>identical copies of DNA; and then the cell splits down the middle
>>and again, you have billions of cells undergoing this process right now inside of you
>>now we're gonna rewind and just focus on the chromosomes
>>and look at tis structure, and describe it
>>so again, here we are at that equator moment
>>the chromosomes line up, and if we isolate just one chromosome, we're gonna pull it out and have a look at its structure
>>so this is one of the biggest molecular structures that you have, at least as we've discovered so far inside of us
>>so this is a single chromosome, and you have two strands of DNA in each chromosome
>>one is bundled up into one sausage, the other strand  is bundled up into the other sausage
>>these things that look like whiskers that are sticking out from either side are the dynamic scaffolding of the cell
>>they're called microtubules, but the name's not important; but we're gonna focus on this red region, I've labaled it red here
>>and it's the interface between the dynamic scaffolding and the chromosomes
>>it is obviously central fo the movement of the chromosomes
>>but we have no idea, really, as to how it's achieving that movement
>>we've been studying this thing they call the kinetic core for over a hundred years with intense study
>>and we're still just beginning to discover what it's all about
>>it is made up of about two hundred different types of proteins, thousands of proteins in total
>>it is a signal broadcasting system
>>it broadcasts through chemical signals, telling the rest of the cell when it's ready
>>when it feels that everything is aligned and ready to go for the separation of the chromosomes
>>it is able to couple onto the growing and shrinking microtubules
>>(?) it's involved in the growing of the microtubules, and it's able to transiently couple onto them
>>it's also a tension-sensing system, it's able to feel when the cell is ready,  when the chromosome is correctly positioned
>>it's turning green here, because it feels that everything is just right
>>and you'll see there's this one little last bit, that's still remaining red
>>and it's walked away down the microtubules
>>that is the signal broadcasting system sending out the stop signal, and it's walked away, it's that mechanical
>>it's molecular clockwork, this is how you work at the molecular scale
>>so with a little bit of molecular eye candy...
>>we've got kinesines, which are tho orange ones, they're little molecular courier molecules walking one way
>>and here are the dionine(?), they're carrying that red broadasting system, and they've got their long legs so they can step around obstacles and so on
>>so again, this is all derived accurately from the science, the problem is we can't show it to you any other way
>>exploring at the frontier of science, at the frontier of human understanding is mindblowing
>>discovering this stuff is certainly a pleasurable incentive to work in science
>>but most medical researchers...
>>this is just... discovering this stuff is simply steps along the path to the big goals
>>which are to eradicate disease, to eliminate the suffering and the misery that disease causes and to lift people out of poverty, thank you
>>[applause]
so like that's just so ridiculously mindblowing that it's amost unbearable
to think about that as clockwork even is a pretty strange idea
because those little things walk over obstacles, how the hell does that happen? they're just molecules
so it's so cool, 'cause when you go down you think "simple", but you know
and he said at the beginning, when the little machines were taking the DNA apart that he didn't show the error correcting
there are these other little machines that go along and see if everything's okay, and if it isn't, they cut it out and put the right piece in
yeah, things we don't understand, there's no shortage of them, that's for sure
okay, so
what I'm doing in some sense is walking you though a psychophysiological representation of
Piaget's developmental process, I would say
I wanted to zero in on the hypothalamus, becaue it seems to me the thing that sets the most basic frames
and so, we'll go ahead with that
so you see that it's made up of all these little parts
so it's called the hypothalamus more for convenience than because it's a homogeneous set of structures
'cause it's not a homogeous set of structures
this is something to consider very carefully when you're thinking about the terminology that psychologists use
or that you might use to describe your own behavior
'cause you know, you can roughly... there is a psychology of motivation and there's a psychology of emotion
and you might think, well, emotion and motivation are categorically different entities
but they're not
in fact, there's no such thing as a uniform set of motivations, and there's no such thing as a uniform set of emotions
and the distinction between a motivation and an emotion is unclear, to say the least
and that's partly because the physiological substructures that subsume what we call motivations and what we call emotions
it's not like there's a motivation center that's homogeneous
the closest is the hypothalamus, but it's made of structures that are qualitatively different
and then the emotions... 'cause I have to use that descriptive terminology, 'cause we have to communicate about it somehow
there's all sorts of different structures in the brain that contribute to emotional expression
they're not even in the same place
much less composed of identical structure or function
so you know, we have shorthands that we use to divide up the world, but they're...
they're awkward and untenable as the level of resolution increases
but anyways, I'm still gonna go with motivation and emotion, becasue it's a useful simplification
but you can see with the hypothalamus that there's all these complicated little subsystems in there
and I showed you that video to show you just how complicated the subsystems are
all the way down to the molecular level
how those little machines manage what they do is completely beyond me
they call it clockwork when those little things that walk can walk over obstacles
it's like: clockwork does one thing only
click, click, click, click, that's all it does, no exceptions
this thing walks over obstacles to get where it's going; who knows what's going on down there?
but it works well enough, so here we are, weirdly enough
so motivation seems to be to be the initial  framing process
and you come in to the world with the motivational systems roughly ready to go
babies are hungry, babies get cold, babies want something to drink
so the world already comes...
in some sense they come into the world with pre-packaged categories for existence
and those are the categories that are going to aid their survival
and you know, they're not simple, either; it's not so simple
it's hunger, thirst, pleasure, pain, anxiety,
and the classic emotions: sadness, joy, and so forth
those systems are already there, but babies have more complicated systems, too
like the system for exploration is already in place, and the system for play
which is really complicated, it's already in place, so
you come into the world with a human nature
and the nature seems to be distributed across the subsystems, that's one way of thinking about it
and it's also useful to think about the operation of those subsystems as something like...
you can think abouth them as games with an aim
you could think about them as stories, you could think about them as frames of reference, you can think about them as action patterns
all of those, and you can think abouth them as subpersonalities, which I actually think is maybe the best way to think about them
because if you're hungry, it's not a deterministic drive
it's a subpersonality that has a goal
and then it has a bunch of action patterns that are going to work in reference to that goal
it has a bunch of perceptions that suit that goal
and it organizes your emotional responses around that goal
and so, to think about it as a personality is a much more intelligent way to look at it
one of the things about Skinner's rats... you know, Skinner could get rats to do almost anything, and he would reward them with food
and so he had a simple rat model, but his rats were starved down to 75% of their normal body weight
so not only were they not social, gregarious ratts, like rats are, 'cause they were isolated
they were genetically altered from wild rats
but they also weren't as complex as a real rat, because they were starvind, and so
but you know, a starving rat is a prety good model of a rat
and a rat is a pretty good model of a person
but a lot of our models of simple behavior learning were based on starving, isolated rats, so anyways
how to think about motivation? we'll think about it from the hypothalamic perspective
so we could say one thing that motivation does is set goals
we could say that emotions track progress towards goals
and I'm gonna use that schema, even though it's not exactly right
so you say, well, motivation determines where you're gonna aim, so if you're hungry, you're gonna aim at something to eat
and then that will organize your perceptions, so that you zero out everything that isn't relevant to that task
which is almost everything
you concentrate on those few things that are gonna facilitate your movement forward
when you encounter those things, that produces positive emotion
as you move throught the world towards your goal and you see that things are alying themselves out, that facilitate your movement forward
those things cause positive emotion
and if you encounter anything that gets in the way, then that produces negative emotion
and it can be like threat, 'cause you're not supposed to encounter something that gets in the way
it can be anger, so that you move it away, it can be frustration, disappointment, grief, those would...
if you have a response that serious to an obstacle, it would probably punish the little motivated frame right out of existence
so you walk downstairs and I don't know, the contracting company sent a wrecking ball through your kitchen
that's gonna be disappointing
you're not gonna keep eating your peanut butter sandwich in the rubble
that little frame is going to get punished out of existence
and some new goal is gonna pop up in its stead
and one of the things we're gonna try to sort out is how do you decide
when you've encountered an obstacle that's so big that you should just quit and go do something else
'cause that's not obvious
you can get into counterproductive persistence pretty easily
we don't know how people solve that problem, it's a really complicated one
so anyways, we're gonna work on that scenario
your hypothalamus pops up micro-goals that are directly relevant to biological survival
that produces a frame of reference
so it's not a goal, and it's not a drive, and it's not a collection of behaviors, it's a little personality
and the little personality has a viewpoint, it has thoughts that go along with it
it has perceptions, it has action tendencies, all of that
you can see this in addiction, most particularly
so one of the things that you find often with people who are alcoholic is they lie all the time
and that's because when they built a little alcohol-dependent personality inside of themselves
or a big one, maybe it's 90% of their personality
and one of the things that consists of
is all the rationalizations that they've used over the years to justify their addiction to themselves and to other people
and so the addiction has a personality
and so when the person is off...
maybe they're addicted to meth or something like that, where we know the addiction is more...
it's more short-term powerful than, I would say, an alcohol addiction
they'll say anything, and the words are just tools to get towards the goal
and if they happen to be deceptive, whatever, it doesn't matter, they're just practical tools to get towards the goal
and then when you get towards a goal, you take a nice shot of meth or something like that
you reinforce all those rationales that you used to get the drug, and the next time you're even a better deceiver and liar
so we're gonna say, motivations, one way of thinking about it is they set goals, but it's not the right way of thinking about it
they produce a whole framework of interpretation, and so we're gonna think about that framework of interpretation
and then emotions emerge inside of that
so the world is framed, motivation set goals, you could say the world has to be framed
so motivation sets that frame: goals, emotions, perceptions and actions
and then the actions (he means emotions) track progress, so
positive emotion says: you're moving forward properly towards your goal
and if you encounter something you don't expect, you stop, that's anxiety
it's like: oh! we're not where we thought we were
and so we don't know what to do, so we should stop, 'cause we don't know where we are and what we're doing; stop, frozen
and then the more powerful negative emotions like pain, they might make you get out of theres, so...
emotions: forward, stop, reverse; that's your emotions within that motivated frame
and that's another example of how your mind is embedded in your body
emotions are offshoots of action tendencies, that's the right way to think about it
'cause action is everything, fundamentally
so what are some basic motivations?
most of these are regulated by the hypothalamus, by the way, and that tells you just how important a control system it is
the other that's useful to know about the hypothalamus is that it has projections going up from it that are like tree trunks
and inhibitory projections coming down that are like grape vines
so you can kinda control your hypothalamus as long as it's not on too much, but
if it's on in any serious way, its like... it wins
so partly what you do to stop yourself from falling under the dominion of your hypothalamus
is to never, ever be anywhere where its action is necessary
right? you don't wanna go into a biker bar
because you might find yourself in a situation where panicked defensive aggression is immediately necessary
you probably don't want that; you don't want the panic, you don't want the terror
you don't want the frenzied fight, you don't want any of that, you don't wanna have to run away in absolute panic
so you just don't go there
and a huge part of how we regulate our emotions
is just by never going anywhere where we have to experience them
and so that has very little to do with internal inhibitory control, and everything to do with staying where you belong
so... okay
so, basic motivations: hunger, thirst, pain
pain is not regulated by the hypothalamus, that's a different circuit
anger / aggression, thermoregulation
panic and escape
affiliation and care, sexual desire, exploration, play
and you can kinda break those into
the classic darwinian categories, too, and say, well, there's a set of motivations that go along with self-maintenance
that's be your survival, ingestive and defensive
see, I've sort of coded them there
so the self maintenance
there's an ingestive set of basic motivations that go with self maintenance, that's hunger, thirst
there's a set of defensive motivations: pain, anger, thermoregulation, panic and escape
and then there's motivations that are associated with reproduction
affiliation, care, and sexual desire
and then I put exploration and play sort of outside of that
I would say because those two things serve both of these approximately equally
so what I tried to do is take the basic motivations, and then nest them inside a fundamental darwinian framework
so that you can see how the biological process of evolution has manifested itself, an then sort of differentiated into these fundamental biological systems
okay, so this is a rat brain flat map
so it's basically what you would see of a rat's brain if you flattened it out, unrolled it, flattened it out, and then made it two-dimesional
and you can see here...
so this is the hypothalamus
and you can see that it's made out of these different nuclei, that's what they're called
and they sort of correspond to those shapes that I showed you in the human hypothalamus earlier
and you see that there's different systems, there's the system for eating and drinking, it's outlined in green
and the reproductive system, there's two of them, and they're outlined in I think it's red... is that right?
yeah, reproductive is red, and the defensive ones are in magenta
and so those are the... you could think about those as the three fundamental value systems
of living creatures with complex nervous systems as far as the hypothalamus is concerned
and then, given what I told you about the hypothalamus, which is...
you hardly need the rest of your brain at all, as long as you have a hypothalamus
it's worth thinking that those are very fundamental to value per se
now, you might think, if you only need the damn hypothalamus, why bother with the rest of the brain at all?
which is a very useful question
especially because most creatures don't have much of a brain, so...
but it seems to be something like:
well, you've got your eating and drinking system, your reproductive system, and your defensive system, but
the problem is that those things, first of all, can conflict,
you know, are you too hungry to sleep or too sleepy to eat?
that's a pretty simple kind of contradiction
are you more angry at your partner or do you want sexual relations more?
so they can conflict in the present
but then they can conflict with other people doing the same thing
and they can conflict across time
and so partly the reason that you need the rest of your brain is to solve the problems from the solutions that the hypothalamus offers
and so, because you don't wanna just eat and drink, and reproduce and defend yourself
you wanna eat now, later, tomorrow, next week, and next month
while you're able to engage in reproductive activity and defend yourself
in multiple contexts, with a whole bunch of people, for as long as you can possibly manage it
and so you need the rest of your brain to calculate that
and so what the rest of your brain has to do, roughly speaking, is regulate these
and also elaborate them up into... into something that's integrated inside you
which might roughly be your personality, and then
so that that personality is integrated with the personality of other people
and so you can think about it as an emergent process
this is one of the things I really like about Piaget
he's so damn smart, because Piaget is the only thinker I know, really
who really addressed the problem of the evolution of value systems
like, he never nailed it down to the physiology, because there wasn't enough known about physiology when he did his work
but it maps really nicely onto the physiology
...
but he got it right anyways, he said: you come into the world with a handful of preestablished reflexes
okay, we're gonna complicate that up a bit: no, you come into the world with a handful of micropersonalities
that are centered around these fundamental motivational axes, okay
and then that gets you started
and that has motor output as well as perceptions, and all of that, that's associated with it
and then, as you interact initially, let's say, with your mother
you start to learn how to integrate those things in some sort of social context
because you form a relationship with your mother right off the bat
and so, you're starting to figure out how to produce patterned and stable interactions between those motivational systems
on a day to day, week to week, month to month basis
and one of the things you do with kids, it's really important to do this with kids
you wanna get them on to some sort of a routine
'cause what the routine is actually, is the beginnings of the system that integrates
all of these underlying biological systems into some sort of unity
'cause they have to sleep and wake up, so you wanna get that nailed down, so it's predictable
you know, they have to eat, they have to stay warm
and they need to do that in a manner that's stable
and so, it's to your great benefit as a parent that you get islands of stability planted in the life of your kid
so that some of this gets simplified, so that the kid isn't constantly preoccupied with domination by these different motivational systems
and so it's a useful thing to know, because you might think, well, you don't wanna impose any structure on your baby, it's like, no, wrong
you don't wanna be a tyrant about it, but
there's no difference between that structure, and the emergence of the child's adaptation to the world
and to some degree what you're trying to do is free them up from arbitrary domination by these underlying motivational systems
you know, 'cause if the baby gets too tired, it's a horrible little thing, it'll just scream at you non stop
and it's not happy about it, it's like it's not good for anyone for that to happen
and so the faster... you have to do it in relationship with the child
some will sleep right away in a schedule almost immediately
and other kids are harder to get their circadian rhythms regulated
so you have to attend to the individual differences that characterize the child, but
you're still trying to establish some stable harmony out of this mish-mash of initial systems
alright, so that's sort of a physiological look, and this is a more of a conceptual look at it
I said that each of these systems you can think about in a bunch of different ways
you can think about it as something that sets a goal
"I'm hungry, and I don't wanna be hungry - point A, point B
so the hunger and the vision of the satiation of the hunger are all part of the same frame
and so, if you're hungry, you go into the kitchen
you know that already, that's part of your procedural knowledge about how the world works
and then what you're gonna look for are only those things that are relevant to what you're trying to do in the kitchen
everything else is zeroed out, you won't even really see it, and why would you?
you want to see the things that are relevant to the task at hand
and so that's the thing that's so cool, I think
because what it means is that you see the things that are relevant to the task at hand
and so, here's something to think about
let's say that you see a whole bunch of things that you don't wanna see
that make you constantly miserable and unhappy
one thing that you might ask yourself is: are you sure that your goals are proper?
because your goals determine what you see; now, not a 100 percent, obviously
you could be thinking about the homework you're gonna do and step off a curb and be hit by a van, it's like
you're gonna get hit by the van regardless of how you've oriented your perceptions, in all likelihood
so I'm not trying to argue for pure solipsism
but it is very interesting to consider that since you see in relationship to what you want
that a very large amount of what you see is dependent on what you're aiming at
and so one issue is: if your life is wretched and miserable
one thing to think about is whether or not what you're aiming at is the right thing to be aiming at
and "nothing" is exactly the wrong answer to that
"I'm aiming at nothing" Okay, you're gonna experience a tremendous amount of misery and not very much joy
so anyways, you've got this little frame:
you're somewhere, and it's not good enough, and you're going somewhere else, that's going to be better
and what "better" depends upon is the state of these underlying biological systems
and then, more complexly, as those biological systems get integrated into a personality, and into the social world
then the frame and the goal is going to be dependent on that more complex hierarchical organization
so, you're not in here 'cause you're hungry
you're in here, because if you get a degree, maybe you don't ever have to be hungry
so the hunger is properly incorporated into your...
you don't wanna be cold, you don't wanna freeze to death in the winter, you don't wanna be on the street
you know, so your higher-order goals are
long-term socially negotiated solutions
to the problems that are implicit in your being, that might be one way of thinkig about it
and the microelements of this... so you could say "I'm hungry", that's a physiological state and a conception
"I have a vision about how I'm going to solve that"
but then... and that's an abstraction
but what you do to transform point A into point B is not an abstraction, you act
you know, so if you're hungry, you actually move your body, say down from the second floor into the kitchen
and you arrange things so that there's transformations in the world
that's a good way of thinking about the relationship between the mind and the body
your hypothetical solution to your problem, that's the mind
but the manner in which you incarnate that solution
that's no longer abstract
you know, people are always trying to solve the mind-body problem
and as far as I can tell, that's how you solve it, is: you have abstractions, but they're not abstractions that are representations of the world
they're abstractions that are representations of action patterns
and the way those are implemented in the world is that you act them
and so, it's strange, 'cause you've got this weird level of control
I can move my arm, and I seem to be able to do that voluntarily
but Ireally have no idea how I'm doing it
like I don't have conscious access exactly to the musculature, except technically
and I certainly have no idea what I'm doing chemically to make those muscles transform
so my abstractions ground out in this movement
and I can observe the movement, and modify it, but
I have no conscious access whatsoever to the micro processes that are making tha possible
I've no idea why that is, probably because I'm not smart enough
that would be my guess
evolution is only going to allow your mind to control those elements of your being
that you're smart enough to control
and so you don't get voluntary control over your heartbeat, for example, because you'd just forget
and then you'd be wandering around, and then you'd forget to beat your heart, bang, you'd be dead, so you don't get to do that
...
all these different...
I classify these, again, as self-propagation  and self-maintenance motivations
if you're too hot, well, you wanna go somewhere cooler, and if you're too cool you wanna go somewhere hotter
same if you're thirsty and hungry
and for self-propagation, well, you get lonesome and maybe you have some sexual desire
and each of those different systems competes for access to this central frame
and that's something like the contents of your consciousness at any given time
so up pops a desire... but it's a wrong way of thinking about it
'cause a desire sounds like something that's pushing you forward
but the desire is goal, framework, emotion, perception, action pattern, all at the same time
it's a little personality, or it's a little story
actually, when you describe the operation of one of these things, that's when you're teling a story
so I was somewhere, I needed something, I went and got it
it's a boring little story, but that's the basic unit of a story
'cause I don't care to hear what you're doing unless you had a reason for doing it
I just say: what's the point of the story?
and the point of the story is the point
it's directional, right?
it says: "I went from here to there", that's the point, "here's how I did it", that's the point
and you're interested in that, because maybe you want to know how to do it too
and you won't have to struggle through it like I did, you could just listen
and so we're always throwing these little units of information back and forth to each other
and for good reason; I wanna know what your point is
because better Iearn it from you than make all the mistakes that you had to make when you were learning it
and human beings, we've got that figured out, that's for sure
okay, I'm gonna just explain this
and then we'll stop; alright, so
we're in one of those frames now, and we're going from point A to point B
and so, the question is: how does the world lay itself out?
okay, so the first thing to understand, and this is partly the reason I showed you the gorilla video, is that
the first thing a frame does for you is make almost everything irrelevant
and that's so great, because that's what you want
you want almost everything to be irrelevant, because otherwise you're gonna be so flooded with information, that you...
that's what hallucinogens do, at least in their initial stages
is they take away that filter, and make everything relevant
you can read about that in Huxley's "Doors of Perception"
he does a great job of describing the initial stages of a mescaline experience
and what happens is that all of the memory, in some sense, that regulates his perceptions is stripped off
and so he sees everything glowing, and alive, and magical like he'd never encountered it before
which is exactly how you would see something if all your memory about it was  gone
and so he sees things as way more complex and interesting than he normally sees them
well, that's fine, but, you know, if you're like that all the time, then, you know, you end up in a ditch, starving to death or something
it's not commensurate with normal life, that's what it looks like
and so your perceptions are just shrunken, restricted to the bare minimum necessary to keep you moving in the direction that you're moving
alright, so the first thing you wanna do is you wanna make things irrelevant
now, if you're with someone
in a relationship
partly what you want them to do is to help you continue making most of their possibility irrelevant
it's polite
so you say, well, "we have a friendship", let's say
so that means you've agreed to act in a friendly manner towards me, and to support me
there's all sorts of other ways you could act
like a myriad of them
and I' gonna do the same for you, so we're simpler to each other than we would normally be
and then you go and so something that betrays me, it's like bang, that whole simplification is gone
and all those parts of you that were supposed to be irrelevant, 'cause we were playing the same game
they're dead relevant, and I don't know who the hell you are
and so that's really rough, and people do not like that
it's this emergent mismatch between their desires and the way the world is manifesting itself
so one of the issues of complexity is that
when you hit an obstacle, everything that you have agreed with other people to make irrelevant - is relevant
and that's generally a disconcerting experience
now you can, you know, you might wanna toy a little bit with that in a relationship
maybe you encourage your partner to dress differently or you go do different things or something
'cause you don't wanna be stuck in exactly the same old rut
and so what you'll agree is how you can both deviate an interesting amount
but that's voluntary and controlled, it's not the same at all as having that little mess of eighty million snakes pop up right in front of you
which is the last thing you wanna have happen, and so
it's so weird, because one of the things that we're striving to do constatnly is to keep most of the world irrelevant
and our cultural systems are designed precisely for that purpose, and par of what you do when you disrupt them is
you force people to consider a far more range of relevance than they are even vaguely comfortable or vaguely comfortable to manage
and it just burns them to a crisp
because what your body does is:
if all of a sudden everything around you is relevant...
like I could say: "you're stripped naked, I take you in a helicopter, drop you right into the middle of the jungle at midnight"
it's like, you're not bored
standing there, frozen, paralyzed, everything is interesting
well, too bad for you, 'cause too interesting is very little different from terrifying, and so
you know, your heart rate's gonna be at 160 for like two days, and then something will eat you, and your problems will be over
alright, so this diagram basically suggests this
is this is how you break up the world when you're going from point A to point B
it renders almost everything irelevant, hooray
and then what happens is the rest of the world is broken up into obstacles that get in your way
and tools that facilitate your movement forward
and that's actually what you see when you come into a place
like when you come into this room, these are obstacles insofar as you con't walk through them
and those are tools insofar as you can sit on them and watch the class
and this is a tool, and these are tools, and this is a tool
and I'm a tool, although I'd never admit it
but anyways, I'm a tool, because you need to take this class in order to advance towards your degree
and so, basically what you see inthe world are entities of functional significance
and those are not objects, they're not the same thing
and that's very much worth considering, because we're trying to
build up a case, at least in part, for analyzing the nature of the structure within which you organize your perceptions
and we tend to think that those are predicated on object perception
it's not true
it's not true, they're predicated on relevance conception
does it help you? does it get in your way? or is it irrelevant?
that's what you wanna know; if it helps you, you're happy about it; if it gets in your way, you're negatively predisposed towards it; if it's irrelevant, it's invisible
and so, if your little scheme is functional, your little frame is functional
then most of the things that you encounter are mildly positive
and that's how you know that you know what you're doing, that's how you validate the entire frame
so okay, good
