Episode 08 - System 2, Superman, & Simulacra: Jeff's Amateur Philosophy
Jeff and Darron talk about the evolution of Jeff’s amateur philosophy and the development of his Beautiful Illusions concept- the ongoing exploration of which is the foundational idea behind this podcast. Jeff walks through some experiences that changed his thinking, they discuss some of the key ideas that led to further construction and refinement of the bigger idea, and how this exploration ultimately opened up new avenues of thought to pursue. A quick content warning, there is a bit of mild swearing in this episode, so if that kind of thing bothers you please take note.
Notes:
2:03 - Existentialism entry from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Existentialism: Crash Course Philosophy #16 (YouTube video)
2:20 - Atheism (IEP)
2:56 - The Law of Conservation of Mass (TED-Ed YouTube video)
5:10 - Holden Caufield from The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
6:07 - The Quran, The Book of Mormon, The Bhagavad Gita, Buddhism, Daoism
10:41 - The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow
14:18 - Grand Central Station in New York City
14:46 - Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior by Leonard Mlodinow
15:13 - See “Why People Choose Coke Over Pepsi” and “How the Brain Reveals Why We Buy”
15:45 - Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
15:54 - Douglas Vigliotti
17:40 - Keith Stanovich and Richard West coined the terms System 1 and System 2 in their work on dual process theory, as noted by Kahneman in the first chapter of Thinking, Fast and Slow entitled “The Characters of the Story” - Psychologists have been intensely interested for several decades in the two modes of thinking evoked by the picture of the angry woman and by the multiplication problem, and have offered many labels for them. I adopt terms originally proposed by the psychologists Keith Stanovich and Richard West, and will refer to two systems in the mind, System 1 and System 2.
18:15 - Neuroscience book by David Brooks?
18:16 - Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman
18:34 - Thus Spake Zarathrustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
18:55 - See “What Did Nietzsche Really Mean When He Wrote “God Is Dead”? (Open Culture, 2016)
19:10 - The Overman
20:03 - Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey TV Series w/Neil deGrasse Tyson
20:18 - See “Tool-Making Crows Are Even Smarter Than We Thought” video from National Geographic regarding the New Caledonian Crow
20:22 - See images of bowerbird nests and “What Makes Bowerbirds Such Good Artists” (Scientific American, 2015) “Bowerbirds, Art, and Aesthetics” (Communicative & Integrative Biology Journal, 2012)
20:28 - The Guggenheim Museum designed by the famous and influential architect Frank Lloyd Wright
21:05 - To be clear the “lizard brain” idea has been disproven by neuroscience, but remains one of the most enduring myths about the brain. Originally developed by the neuroscientist Paul MacLean between the 1960s and 1990s, the triune brain theory asserts that we have a “lizard brain” under our “mammal brain,” and that our “mammal brain” is itself under our primate/human brain. Our lizard brain, as the theory goes, is a small, primitive part of our brain that functions entirely on instinct. Through the course of evolution, that little lizard brain was enveloped in a more sophisticated but ancient cortex, the limbic system, which is the source of our emotions. Then that was enveloped in an even more sophisticated neocortex that is unique to humans. The only difference between humans and other vertebrate animals, according to this theory, is the existence of these newest layers of our brain that allowed humans to make rational, intelligent decisions. But according to neuroscientists Daniel Toker, the triune brain theory is completely wrong, most notably for the simple reason that our brains aren’t fundamentally different from those of reptiles, or even from those of fish. Every mammal has a neocortex (not just the really intelligent ones), and all vertebrates, including reptiles, birds, amphibians, and fish, have analogues of a cortex. Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Baarrett notes that the lizard brain idea became wildly popular in the 1970s with the publication of astronomer Carl Sagan’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Dragons of Eden, right around the same time that neuroscientists disproved the lizard brain theory as advances in gene sequencing techniques allowed them to discover that most vertebrate brains are made of the exact same ingredients; that there weren’t “new” parts of the brain and “primitive” parts of the brain. Still, the idea of the lizard brain has proven stubbornly persistent, frequently showing up today in media articles, pop psychology, self help, and occasionally even more scientifically reputable sources, but as Barrett notes “The problem here is that it takes 10, 20, sometimes 50 years before discoveries in science make it to the public.” - For more on the lizard brain myth see “You Don’t Have a Lizard Brain” and “It’s Time To Correct Neuroscience Myths” and “A Theory Abandoned But Still Compelling”
23:32 - See “The Evolution of the Human Brain” (YouTube video from BrainFacts.org), “A natural history of the human mind: tracing evolutionary changes in brain and cognition” (Journal of Anatomy, 2008), and the “evolution of the brain” Wikipedia entry
23:43 - Kingdoms in taxonomic classification - humans are classified in the Kingdom Animalia
24:00 - See “Unraveling the Evolution of Uniquely Human Cognition” (PNAS, 2016)
24:23 - Self-Consciousness gives us an ability to reflect on our experience and project into the future and recognize that we exist
25:23 - Animal consciousness - Do animals have subjective experience?
26:50 - Simulacrum and Simulation by Jean Beaudrillard
27:13 - Hyperreality
27:17 - The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
27:20 - Postmodernism
28:12 - Flow
30:04 - BeautifulIllusions.org - “Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror, or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being, or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal.” -Jean Beaudrillard
30:08 - Read “On Exactitude in Science” by Jorge Luis Borges
31:32 - See “Baudrillard’s Thoughts on Media” (Philosophical Society.com)
31:47 - The Drive-By Truckers at Infinity Music Hall in Hartford, CT (7/26/17)
32:02 - See “A Journey to the Oldest Cave Paintings in the World” (Smithsonian Magazine, 2016) and the cave painting Wikipedia entry
32:12 - See “Ziggurats and Temples in Ancient Mesopotamia” (History on the Net) and the “ziggurat” Wikipedia entry
32:22 - See “Egyptian Pyramids: The Capstone Pharaoic Power” (History on the Net) and the “Egyptian pyramids” Wikipedia entry
32:24 - See “Art of the Americas Before 1300” (SlideShare presentation based on “Art of the Americas Before 1300” from Art History Teaching Resources)
33:10 - See “Modern human brain organization emerged only recently” (Science Daily, 2018) - “The Homo sapiens fossils were found to have increasingly more modern endocranial shapes in accordance with their geological age. Only fossils younger than 35,000 years show the same globular shape as present-day humans, suggesting that modern brain organization evolved some time between 100,000 and 35,000 years ago.”
33:13 - See “The (Violent) Origin of Sports” (Psychology Today, 2008) and the Wikipedia entry on the history of sport - “It is likely that after the switch from hunter-gathering to farming becoming the primary means of providing food became dominant, those individuals who had previously been assigned to the Hunter role- and were likely naturally more physically built for the purpose- had little way to utilize their skill sets in a practical setting anymore, so instead entered a form of perpetual preparation for hunting and practicing the skills required, which then let to competitive bouts intended to indicate whomever was the most "prepared" for the different elements of the hunt- for example the speed to chase down, strength to wrestle down or accuracy to rapidly dispatch the prey and associated wagering on the outcomes of contests, which them evolved gradually into what we would recognize as sports as we would know them today.”
33:35 - See “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs: A Work Rant” by David Graeber (STRIKE! Magazine, 2013), and this 2018 Vox interview with Graeber about his book Bullshit Jobs: A Theory
33:59 - See “How Can Scientists Create New Elements?” (Discover Magazine), the “Island of Stability” video from PBS Learning Media, and the Wikipedia entry on synthetic elements
34:07 - George Carlin on “natural” (YouTube video, definitely NSFW)
35:22 - See “What is the Universe Made Of?” (Science Magazine, 2005)
36:38 - See this discussion on social reality and this post on causal reality vs social reality from LessWrong, and the Wikipedia entry on social reality
36:58 - It’s generally understood that biological life is made up of cells that are themselves comprised structurally and functionally of interacting molecules and elements (chemistry) which take place according to the laws of physics - see “Life is Physics” (Physics, 2019) for an interesting discussion of trying to understand “life” as an emergent phenomenon of a physical system
38:35 - Can we overcome our cognitive biases? See “Your Lying Mind: The Cognitive Biases Tricking Your Brain” (The Atlantic, 2018) and this 2015 interview with Daniel Kahneman (The Guardian)
43:20 - Do humans have agency?
44:01 - Freaks and Geeks (TV Show)
46:50 - In Buddhism, enlightenment is when a Buddhist finds the truth about life and stops being reborn because they have reached Nirvana. (Wikipedia)