Words are Totems (of Etymology)

Cherry Blossoms

Henry Where do we want to go?0:00

Xiq I don’t know. Just hunch. Like wherever seems interesting.0:01

Henry That’s the best.0:06

Henry We will come back somehow.0:10

Xiq Man. The cherry blossoms.0:13

Henry I know. It’s so beautiful. Our place is really nice. It’s all around.0:15

Xiq Multiple streets. Yeah. I talked to a guy at office hours who said, whenever he’s in the area, he doesn’t even go to a park. He just walks around the block.0:22

Henry Take a picture.0:38

Henry It feels very walkable here.0:46

Xiq I like that they have a bunch of statues that feel native.0:50

Henry Even in the airport. When you walk in, I was like, wow. You hear all the, they put fake sounds or something of birds and there’s water when we walked in. There’s this giant eagle and stuff. I mean, that’s interesting, it’s like…0:57

Xiq He’s wrapped in a snake.1:13

Henry That’s it. It’s with two…1:14

Xiq With two heads. Holding the tail and then at the bottom the snake two heads.1:16

Henry Let me see. Wow.1:30

Xiq Cool. So how’s the conference so far?1:36

Henry It’s good. It’s good to meet different kinds of people working on stuff. We have goals for, no, not really. You could just meet some people. I honestly, like we said, I’m enjoying the nature. I kind of wanna just go on walks with some people and then talk and see what happens.1:39

Xiq Get food? I get food some point too.2:01

Henry We could do that too. That’s part of it, the walk. It’s just like, if you find something then just go. Did you have any goals that you had?2:05

Xiq Because people are in fact working on the things that I think are important, say are missing.2:34

Henry So you can collaborate or, yeah.2:42

Xiq Yeah, I can either collaborate or just…2:45

Henry Pay attention. Yeah.2:48

Xiq Pay attention. Use their thing. Or just plan around what people are working on already.2:49

A Swarm of AI Fairies

Xiq Especially stuff like permission data. Like Blue Sky seems to be working on it. And I really care about permission data and I think it enables apps that I intend to build myself. So if I don’t have to build that piece, that’s even better. And then there’s stuff like attribution and provenance, making sure that people aren’t bots, like verifying identity and stuff.2:57

Henry Why do you think that it’s important?3:28

Xiq Which one?3:30

Henry Permission data or what does it enable and then why do we need to track things and trace it? And I guess the bot thing makes sense. It’s because an easy argument is just AI is here, it’s gonna take over. In the sense that you don’t know who’s real and so you want be able to track it.3:31

Xiq I think for permission data. So one thing I really want is a swarm of AI fairies conspiring in my favor at all times. So I want agents to look at my data and my friend’s data.3:50

Henry I guess any direction we go, we’ll probably get to the water at some point.4:14

Xiq Do you wanna get to the water?4:19

Henry Yeah, that sounds fun.4:20

Xiq I see an eagle over there. Like a totem with an eagle on top.4:21

Xiq I wanna check that out.4:26

Xiq If you see things that you wanna check out, you should point them out too. Honestly, I wanna see the eagle, but then I want to go there ‘cause it looks so much…4:28

Henry The mountains and stuff. It looks good. Yeah, you were saying,4:36

Xiq Why is it important? Yeah. Because you don’t publish all your data and all the stuff that’s going on in your life, right? But you might share it with a friend. You might even share with kind of a weak tie, like a friend of a friend or someone you met once at a conference. And so there’s lots of coordination that’s left on the table. Maybe someone knows someone who would fund you, or maybe they’re working on the same thing or reading the same books as you and you didn’t know, and you could have had a nice discussion about it. Maybe you need a sofa and someone has a sofa they wanna get rid of. And so if you’re able to have agents…4:47

Henry Do that work.5:38

Xiq Yeah, kind of cross check between your data and people’s data. Where there are opportunities for deals and coordination and so on, then we can just have a lot more luck in serendipity and yeah, it’s gonna feel like fairies.5:39

Henry I guess funny ‘cause I’ve heard a lot of people do this and want, and I think that there’s a lot of potential. It’s just funny that it’s implied that we should just give all our data to the AI. And that’s fine. It’s just kind of funny.5:54

Xiq You can have the AI be like a model you run. Right. Ideally, your AI determines what to expose to the other AI. Exactly. And that’s where the permission data comes in, right. Ideally you have lists, maybe you have roles, right? You have your friends and you have your family, and you have your partner. And ideally the AI is good enough at knowing what’s appropriate to share with whom.6:10

Henry Right. And I guess it’s okay at this point to extrapolate at how much better it will get, because I wouldn’t have thought that last year, but then now I’m like, okay, it’s already really good. I do think it’s gonna get better. And then the whole Claude thing or whatever. So I guess you can try to rely on it more. Think about future things now.6:43

Xiq I think that’s how you should build to.7:08

Xiq Holy shit. Isn’t that fucking crazy? You wanna go over there?7:14

Henry You should take a picture too. You can annotate the post.7:18

Henry My camera’s not working or something.7:25

Xiq I’ll take a picture. Oh. Should have taken a picture of the other one.7:27

Henry Oh. Yeah, I’ll go back.7:31

Henry So it’s kind of funny. Oh yeah. Museum of Anthropology. Right here. I guess technically maybe we just go there when we’re at the top. Top left here.7:52

Xiq We’re gonna head back after we see that anyway.8:08

Henry It’s kind of interesting because I also think of markets, the whole point of market to bring people together that needs something and this other person needs something. But then this is with information. It doesn’t really cost anything. Like you said about, I need a sofa, and then they need a whatever. It’s more just building community and stuff, potentially.8:20

Xiq I think what you get is a network of trust, right? You have your friends and you have certain policies about who you share what with, right. You formalize trust and clearance between people and there’s a graph, right? There’s a graph and you can’t see the whole graph. ‘Cause not everyone trusts you. Right. But maybe you can see your friends and your friend’s friends, right.8:46

Openness and Game Theory

Henry And now I’m thinking of when you meet someone. You’re trying to figure out who they are and they’re trying to figure out who you are, like strangers. Then this whole thing of, if you’re vulnerable first and you’re willing to take that step, maybe they’ll be vulnerable back. So then I’m like, it’d be funny if the agents are doing that too. It’s like, oh, I think this person has high potential to be good alpha or whatever. So then I’m gonna say something, see what they say. And then I’m like, wow, this is game theory stuff, like prisoner’s dilemma or something. But for this,9:16

Xiq I think we run some amount of game theory automatically. You probably don’t think about it in terms of game theory explicitly, but I think if your brain isn’t doing that, then you’re exposing yourself to vulnerabilities. You’re taking risks, undue risks.9:52

Henry I’m definitely more on the open side though.10:11

Xiq So me too.10:16

Henry Compared to most people.10:17

Xiq Maybe even a little careless.10:20

Henry Yeah, I think so. But honestly, the reason why I think I do it is ‘cause every time I’m doing it, I’m getting something positive or I feel like it’s working, whatever that means. And so it causes me to want to be more bold, like talking to strangers or I was saying, every time I go on the airplane, I am open. And even looking forward to talk to the person next to me, I might not do it, but before I’d be like, oh, it’s nice if it happens. But now I’m actively looking for the opportunity. Like, oh, they’re holding a book or what they’re wearing or whatever happens in the situation. You just need any excuse to say something. Right.10:21

Henry And I don’t know, it’s like, my hope is that whoever it is, that person could become your best friend, it could also become nothing. And then maybe you just talk for a whole hour, five hours, you don’t even know their name and you leave and that’s fine too. So yeah, that’s how I have been seeing it.11:13

Henry I think the taking more risk thing is interesting ‘cause I think usually if it goes well, you might do the same action again, ‘cause it feels good. But then I’m like, no, you can go even farther, which is more risky. ‘Cause it might fail and then it might make you not wanna do it anymore. But I think you have to.11:37

Xiq Otherwise you’re just perfectly hermetically sealed and no one can touch you and you can’t touch anyone.12:02

Henry How do you think about it? Your openness, I mean.12:07

Xiq I don’t think about it in terms of benefiting directly, or at least I’m not consciously making that calculus, although I’m sure it happens at some level. I think often I just want to be seen or something. And I think I value openness almost as an end in itself. Or I just think it’s healthy. I will say something about my emotions that might be a little embarrassing, but it’s like having open source code. It’s like I don’t have anything to hide. You can know how I work, and that lets you trust me more, right?12:15

Henry I like that. Yeah. You don’t have to second guess it. Well, I also think it just makes things simpler. Like, all right, here’s the totem pole.13:09

The Reconciliation Pole

Xiq Totem.13:22

Henry Oh, here there’s a… Okay. Oh wow. Reconciliation pole. Dang. Oh, that’s interesting. It says it’s bottom to top.13:24

Xiq Makes sense. 800 year old red cedar log.13:47

Henry And then there’s three sections. Before, during, after, probably before…13:57

Xiq Probably before colonization.14:01

Henry That’s very interesting. Oh, it’s about schools.14:02

Henry Specifically?14:14

Henry No. Oh residential schools.14:16

Xiq Which is, I think where you send the indigenous kids to be educated in Western.14:18

Xiq A government instituted system designed to assimilate and destroy all indigenous cultures across Canada.14:35

Henry Okay, I get it. Interesting. Wow. So it’s like the history of, it was like this before. What happened and then now. Okay. Oh, and that’s interesting. The four figures, what was it? Water, whale14:42

Xiq Land, Eagle Air, and Thunderbird. Supernatural.15:02

Henry Hm. That is interesting. Nice.15:06

Xiq Canoe represents first Nations and the long boat represents Canada.15:16

Henry Side by side.15:22

Xiq Alright. Cool. I’m glad they inject the indigenous flavors back into the… But it feels almost like beating a dead horse. No. ‘cause there’s so few indigenous people.15:26

Henry Oh, I see.15:48

Xiq And I even question whether the cultures are still alive,15:49

Henry Mm. In the same way it was.15:53

Xiq I think great to remember it and to try to make it part of your DNA, but it’s hard, right? It’s like something really awful and atrocious happened at some point, and how you need to find the least bad way of dealing with it.15:58

Henry I guess it’s funny I was talking about grieving and mourning. And maybe it’s part of it, what does it mean to remember what happened in the past? To not forget it, but to not try to go back to the past or to make people do anything. What does it mean to respect that culture or what was lost? I was talking with someone, it was like, we didn’t even grieve COVID in a way, like it just ended, but no one said it was over. And then there’s this underlying fear in everyone.16:20

Xiq We didn’t have a collective cleansing.17:09

Henry Or something. Like a banishing ritual or something. And so what are our rituals anymore anyway. And are we just kind of going through life?17:12

Psychomagic and Hyperstition

Xiq Yeah, I think definitely. I’m at a psychomagic workshop right now. And that’s all about kind of moving your psychology and collective psychology potentially via action, right? By enacting certain things.17:30

Henry Why is it called psychomagic? That’s interesting.17:48

Xiq I’m not sure why psychomagic. It comes from Alejandro Jodorowsky, who’s a Chilean filmmaker. He was supposed to make the Dune movie and he’s really eccentric and really esoteric. Anyway, my point, I think it’s psycho, obviously ‘cause you’re moving your psychology, and then magic. I always think of magic as pointing to hyperstition, right? So it’s like manifesting, kind of acting as if. And the thing you’re acting as if is true becomes more likely to be true.17:50

Henry More true. You believe something into existence. Okay. That’s interesting. It is funny ‘cause normally people just use the word self-fulfilling prophecy, right? But then hyperstition seems like a new word that is coming about.18:42

Xiq You’re asking why not use self-fulfilling prophecy?19:08

Henry No. I think every generation has their version of the same stuff, but for now, it feels more resonant, right?19:10

Xiq The word. Hyperstition. And you have lots of synonyms that have slightly different meanings.19:20

Henry Like in the Borges video when he was talking about English, Germanic roots versus.19:29

Henry Like rectangle. Yeah.19:36

Xiq And I know this ‘cause in the Nest, they have a wall full of photos of different things that happened since the early 1900s, like 1911 or something. When they started the uni.19:53

Henry What is the word again? Cairn. I’ve heard that. What does that mean again?20:09

Xiq It is a big rock, just a big rock, a monument. It comes from Celtic culture. And it’s like you erect a big rock and it’s a monument. I don’t know the semantic content of what they were usually representing or used for. But yeah, we have our dolmens also, are other words for the same thing?20:15

Henry I heard it at some point. So it is on my mind now, but then I’m like, I don’t really… Yeah. Interesting. Without a reference.20:45

Henry That’s interesting. Yeah, that’s very, what’s his name? Baudrillard or whatever. The, what was that?20:57

Xiq What does he say?21:10

Henry What is it called? I can’t remember, but I remember,21:11

Xiq Is it the simulacra?21:15

Henry Simulacra. Simulation. Because it’s like, I guess the simulation is supposed to point to a thing, but then it becomes the thing.21:15

Henry It’s like the map territory. Or there’s, like you said, it doesn’t point to anything anymore. It’s just so far removed you don’t even remember anymore.21:26

Xiq Oh, that makes me wanna read him more because I have this whole crusade, this whole of my life that’s about making words more precise and redefining words to be neater21:36

Henry and more in line with their etymology, talking about that the other day.21:50

Words Are Totems

Xiq It’s part of how I improve the world or something,21:57

Henry Improve the world. Yeah. That’s funny. ‘cause I think there’s something there because it’s kinda the opposite. Like say with 1984, double speak and then basic English. It’s like the guy was trying to simplify English, so then you could just do more good or more and more good, that kind of thing. And obviously he wrote against that. Because it makes people think less essentially.22:03

Xiq And it’s not about the diversity of words. It’s like if you lose certain words or if you lose touch with the way they came about, you lose the ability to certain concepts.22:31

Henry And do you think that it can’t be recovered?22:46

Xiq It can be recovered. But there are probably things that when they die, they die.22:52

Henry It’s like a tech tree, but in reverse.23:00

Xiq It’s like if there’s any way to get back to it, any path, any written thing, any path, then yes. Right. But you probably cut access to some branches fully.23:04

Henry Right. What do you think about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that your language determines what you can think? I mean, obviously most people don’t believe in the strong version. But a weak version. And I watched Arrival recently. And it was the whole movie related to that kind of stuff, and it was really cool.23:16

Xiq I definitely believe the weak version. I’m not sure what the strong version is.23:41

Henry I think it’s literally just, you cannot think certain thoughts if you don’t have the word for it or something like that.23:45

Xiq I was thinking more of it in terms of the language structure and the logic of the language. Right, the grammar. But even me learning Chinese, the little Chinese that I learned, I felt like certain things were easier to think.23:55

Henry That’s funny. I guess it’s similar to when they’re talking about even LLMs with prediction, it’s like, oh, because you’re using this language, it naturally flows in a certain way. Right. So it makes sense.24:19

Xiq Certain words imply… like the synonyms that aren’t exactly the same, right? One implies more darkness and another implies more light.24:31

Henry And then also just the idea that not everything is translatable. Is part of that, I think, right? That there’s value to diversity of language.24:41

Henry And then I’ll even bring it back to Babel about, it’s a good thing that we’re not all one language. Culture is language, the words represent what has happened and what we believe and how we live and die and whatever.24:54

Xiq I really like that.25:12

Henry Especially in Chinese where the picture, the character encodes. It’s like we watched that totem pole of the history of what happened here, literally. But it’s literally a totem. Words work like that too.25:15

Xiq Words are totems. Yes.25:29

Henry Oh, that’s a good one.25:32

Xiq I never came up with that. That’s really nice.25:34

Henry Only ‘cause of this one. Yeah.25:36

Xiq Words are totems. Definitely. If you know the etymology. If you don’t, you’re just looking at the top of the totem. You don’t know where it comes from.25:39

Henry It is kind of funny ‘cause, I guess from a different frame, it’s like everything you even encounter or see, why aren’t we immediately asking where does this come from? Right.25:58

Henry Do we take it? No, not you, in general, why are we not so curious? Essentially. It’s just taking everything for granted. It’s just there, or it just existed, the things that we have now, we think they’ve always been. Right. But it’s all the people or whatever that it took to get to any of this stuff. It is kind of insane, right?26:10

Xiq And you can have two attitudes, once you realize that. One is it’s too much work to keep it in mind, ‘cause it’s so much, but actually it’s less work than it seems.26:32

Xiq Because you can never have a map that comprehends the whole territory. But there are highly efficient compression algorithms. That you can use to understand, do the 80/20 for understanding history and where things come from and so on. And the more you learn, the more things fit together. So if you learn about world history or, I don’t know, there’s this knowledge graph that keeps rolling and that as you add things, you get more references and they point to each other more.26:55

Henry I mean, it should be fun. Ultimately.27:38

Xiq I have a lot of fun personally.27:43

Facts Into Wonders

Henry I’ve been thinking about my Twitter bio or Blue Sky bio, whatever. It is a reference, another reference to Chesterton and he talks about what he thinks imagination is, and he says it’s about making not wonders facts, but facts wonders. It’s the things that you believe in, these facts, which are kind of whatever. It’s very non-personal, neutral statement. But if you could read that and then be like, wow, that’s amazing. That’s making it a wonder. But I think a lot of people are always doing the opposite. Like, oh, it’s just this, it’s just there. Instead of being like, whoa, and then that’s what imagination is. To be willing to expand things, not reduce things. The more you know, do you really think there’s less to know? Or is it the opposite?27:46

Xiq Oh, I love that. That matches my experience perfectly.28:45

Henry There’s this expansion of knowledge. I think there’s that quote, I don’t even know if it’s from him, but Einstein is like, if you think you’re struggling with math and how hard it is, I’m basically struggling even more. And he knows all this stuff. So why do we think it’s so boring? And reduced and flat. And now I’m thinking of, I saw a tweet from Aiden, and he was talking about, I guess just being overwhelmed, what’s the point with life and you don’t believe in God, all these things. And it just reminded me of my old roommate. He was like, if we do go to heaven, won’t it be boring? And I had this thought, I’m like, why do we think that? Heaven, whatever we think it is, it would be boring. And I think it’s because we think that eternity is flat, time is just passing. Of course it would be boring. If you’re a vampire and you live forever, they hate it. Everyone around you is dying. All these things versus if time doesn’t have to be the same thing over and over, just seconds passing. Of course that’d basically be hell. Nothing’s happening. And I think it’s more to say heaven should be like what CS Lewis says. It’s going deeper. There’s a phrase that says further up and further in. The farther you go in, the more it feels like there’s more and it never ends. And that’s supposed to be exciting, not boring. But I think we just can’t comprehend.28:48

Xiq Wow. Yeah. So, thinking heaven is boring as a failure of the imagination.30:22

Henry ‘cause of what we have here. But the funny thing is this world should be pointing to, if this world is amazing then heaven should be even more. But I think it’s the opposite. We think this world sucks, so then heaven probably sucks too. Right. Just like people now, they don’t want to live, or they don’t wanna have kids, or they don’t want to do anything. We’re just passing by.30:32

Xiq Do you think the singularity is preventing people from having kids? Or is it Calvinism?31:00

Henry Well, good question. What singularity, as in AI is gonna take over? Or how do you…31:09

Xiq Yeah, just the fact that AI is getting faster and faster, the stakes are getting higher. Maybe there won’t be a world to have kids in.31:16

Henry Well, I guess it’s like, what does it mean for the stakes to be higher? A different frame is the stakes have always been the same. You’re gonna live, you’re gonna die. There’s nothing about that that has changed. But your expectations on what your life looks like, I guess.31:28

Xiq Well, but you could argue this is the most important moment in history. If AI turns us into a spacefaring civilization, or even ends humans and replaces them with silicon-based life or something. And then they go off to the stars and they colonize millions and billions of planets and stars, and it all starts from here.31:49

Xiq That’s kind of what I’m pointing at when I say leverage. Yeah, I don’t know. I also don’t think this is the juiciest topic. I wanted to make the joke.32:16

Henry Or the Calvinism.32:27

Xiq Is it Calvinism preventing people from having kids?32:30

Henry That’s funny. Or I guess you mean implicit Calvinism.32:34

Xiq Part of the joke is identifying Calvinism with the singularity.32:41

Henry The capital-S Singularity. We could talk about it, but yeah. No, that’s funny. Okay, well now we’re in front of the…32:45

Xiq Of the bay with mountains. And we’re gonna take a picture.32:54

Henry Let’s take a picture. Yeah. Beautiful. Nice. With the plane too.32:59

Xiq Cool. And I propose after looking at the mountains for a bit…33:27

Henry That’s a good idea. What’s here? I wonder if you can go down there or is it just, oh, this is stairs here.33:33

Henry I mentioned it earlier, before we recorded, but if you work on something and then you don’t want to maintain it anymore. What do you do? You should talk about it and then you feel bad. But I think that’s also related to this life and death grieving thing. It is funny when you make something, you shouldn’t be thinking about leaving when you start. But when you do feel like, oh, why am I even working on this? Why do I feel so much anxiety? ‘cause you’re competing against other people, blah, blah, blah. It’s all part of the psychology, right?34:08

Xiq Baby. Cute dog.34:51

Henry Black forest. Oh, interesting.35:01

Xiq “Is yours.” So cool.35:08

Henry What does that mean? “It is…”35:13

Xiq It means “it is yours” or just, I don’t know, the universe, the view, nature, your life. It is yours.35:14

Henry Interesting. I have to look up later where it comes from. Nice. Oh, okay. This says anthropology building too.35:25

Xiq Are we there?35:55

Henry No, I think we went to other, oh, no wait, actually. Yeah.35:56

Xiq I’m hungry, but we should check it out. It’s four minutes away.36:02

Henry Do you want to go in? I guess you have to pay, so,36:10

Xiq Do we have to pay?36:15

Henry Yeah, I think so. I mean, if you want to eat, then…36:16

Xiq I did want to eat though. But it looks so pretty.36:20

Henry You probably want to spend more time there.36:26

Xiq What do you say, we come back?36:30

Henry We can come back and then we’ll just look for a place.36:33

Xiq I got some recs the other day.36:40

Henry Oh, okay. Yeah, there’s a bunch of stuff here, but that’s funny. We stumbled into it. I didn’t even know what direction we were walking, so it’s kind of…36:43

Theory of Tpot

Xiq So I sent him my blog post about the theory of Tpot. And this is what he said: obsessives put in hours, schizos make art, cluster B people vibe. Geeks, mops, sociopaths, but it’s personality disorders. I think I’m a schizo and the mop.37:27

Henry Wow. It is funny when we say it like that, it makes it feel like everyone is just. I guess it’s not deterministic, but it’s, okay, this is why you’re acting in a certain way. It’s personality or disorder.37:51

Xiq Does it feel unsatisfying?38:12

Henry No. Maybe it’s just ‘cause when you usually talking about it, it’s very negative. But if it is just describing, I guess that’s just how it is. But your role.38:14

Xiq I think I straddle a line between obsessive and schizo.38:28

Henry What’s the difference?38:33

Xiq Obsessives put in hours. Schizos make art.38:35

Xiq The way I interpret it is obsessives are more like artists, and they make more rigorous progress from the time that they put in.38:40

Henry Oh, I see. If you’re the obsessive, you’re the one that’s really into one thing. Forever.38:52

Xiq Or for a while. You have a special interest and you really go deep and spend a lot of time on it, right?38:59

Henry Right. But the schizo is, you go all over the place, I guess.39:06

Xiq And you make connections and notice patterns.39:10

Henry I see. And do you think that different media bring about more of different kinds, or it’s not related? Like, does Twitter have a certain personality?39:16

Xiq Yeah, I think Twitter is super schizo. And cluster B, ‘cause it enables lots of status games and who follows who. Cluster B, let me look it up. So he identifies cluster B with sociopaths, basically.39:35

Henry Oh, okay. I see.40:00

Xiq So he identifies obsessives with geeks, schizos with mops.40:01

Henry And what’s mop again?40:06

Xiq Members of the public. So it’s like, if you imagine a music scene, the kids in bands are the geeks, the people who come to watch because they like it are the mops, and the sociopaths try to profit from intermediating between geeks and mops.40:09

Henry This is the David Chapman thing. Yeah. Okay.40:28

Xiq Cluster B personalities. Man, I have so much Tpot knowledge in my head. And I don’t want to write it all. The thing I wrote is so short. Not even 5%. It’s a tiny amount of all the detail that I could give. But then you don’t wanna make a map the size of the territory once again.40:34

Henry Right. You gotta refine. Okay. I mean, we can talk about that too. I don’t know if you want to, but…41:05

Xiq If you’re interested.41:10

Henry You’re calling it a theory of Tpot, so why is it a theory?41:12

Xiq Well, I think it’s a theory in the sense that it’s a mechanistic account of what I think is special about Tpot. Why does it exist? Why is it so generative or seemingly generative? Why am I obsessed with Tpot? I think is the actual question here.41:17

Henry Why? I mean, I know your audience, it is people in it, but I guess it’s why would someone care about this? Basically.41:43

Xiq And I think I answer that to some extent. I think I could present a lot more evidence, for example. But I at least described the core mechanism and I give a couple examples.41:54

Henry No, it smashed it out my head because I think anyone that’s in it, they don’t know what it is. It’s always like, I don’t know what I would say either, or what it is or what it does.42:07

Xiq Don’t know what you would say?42:19

Henry I would just say post-rat, but that’s one word, it doesn’t really say that much, so.42:24

Henry How would you describe it in a short, one sentence?42:51

Xiq Oh, it’s like post-rats. Or the people I would describe as post-rat, which isn’t everyone in Tpot. It’s, let’s say my favorite people in Tpot, the people I think are the most generative, and I think are the core of Tpot or post-rat Twitter. So what they do is they mine spiritual traditions or therapeutic traditions and present them with high epistemic rigor, right? In rationalist language. You go into woo traditions, you bring back juice and you explain it in rationalist terms such that it can be considered, accepted, and experimented with. And improved. By people who aren’t diving in directly into the tradition.42:59

Henry I guess if you do put it that way, then I’m like, maybe I am part of it.44:02

Xiq I think so. Yeah, definitely.44:06

Henry Which is funny. Yeah.44:09

Xiq You’re a strong post-rat in my framework.44:13

Post-Critical

Henry Yeah, me too. Because I was just talking to my roommate about, so there’s a person I really like called Michael Polanyi and he popularized tacit knowledge. He’s kind of related to Thomas Kuhn, the paradigm shift, all that. So it’s all about frames and how taking leaps of faith to join a new theory basically. And he uses very spiritual language. Basically, in order to believe something, you need to go through a conversion experience essentially.44:17

Xiq Because there are some assumptions at the base of your being that don’t depend on anything else. It’s just assumptions that you accepted on their own. And to acquire new ones and drop these ones, there’s no reasoning that will help you. You just need to take the thing, remove it, and replace it with something else.44:54

Henry And that’s what I meant, you can only understand something from that new frame. It just won’t make sense in the old frame. And so I really liked his term, which is post-critical instead of postmodern or post-rationalist. Critical as in skeptical. And so I do think in that sense that I am in it because I’m trying to merge the faith, which is supposedly non-rational, and then rational. Or to take Christianity and then explain it to these rationalist people.45:13

Xiq Exactly. That’s exactly what you’re doing. Yeah.45:48

Henry Kind of funny. Because all the people I talk to are in Twitter or tech or whatever. So yeah.45:51

Xiq I would say so. I’d say you’re an archetypal post-rat.45:57

Henry That is funny. But yeah, I remember I saw a tweet a while ago and they call it the W Pipeline or something. It was like you start Christian or something. And then you become atheist and then you become agnostic. And then you learn about meditation. And then you become like Catholic again or something like that. It’s just kind of funny circle that happens. And maybe that is that though. But you come back around, it’s a weird…46:04

Xiq But it’s a spiral ‘cause you come back with more perspective, more knowledge, and more meta-cognizance.46:36

Xiq Let me see if we can find any food. I think Jill recommended some food. Down Low Chicken has great fried chicken. Alright. Let me see. Oh, 400 meters. This way.46:44

Henry We probably are over there.47:16

Xiq Yeah, it’s right next to the student center.47:20

The Midwit Spiral

Henry Oh, okay. Perfect. Nice. I feel like the midwit meme always comes up for this because you start off, say you think that people that believe in God are really dumb. I don’t think so, but low IQ, whatever. And then you’re like, oh, I’m smart now, I’m atheist, rationalist. But then later you go back to it. But like you said, you had this greater understanding of it.47:23

Xiq So I’m having this image of taking the midwit meme, stretching it out. And turning it into a spiral. Right. So you’re at the top, then you flip because you become the midwit again, and you realize there’s more to learn. So you go around. It’s a spiral. And that’s the hero’s journey also. The hero’s journey is also a spiral. Because you start at home, you get disrupted, you have a hard time, you learn, and then you bring it back home. You come back home with what you learned. So now you’re smarter and more capable. And then you’re home again until next time you’re disrupted and need to do the whole journey again. So everything is secretly the same thing.47:50

Henry Or like the matrix or something, you’re trying to get out, but then you’re just in another one. So I think it’s similar to saying that there’s no frame that you can, or there’s no non-frame, I guess.48:42

Xiq Of course. There’s no view from nowhere.49:00

Henry Or you always have to have a map. So,49:02

Xiq But you can have more useful ones.49:05

Henry Better ones. Right. And you can test that, or you can basically be closer to knowing that you’re closer to whatever reality or the truth. It’s just the reason why it’s not rationalist is ‘cause you can’t prove it. Right. With a hundred percent evidence.49:09

Henry I feel like with a typical rationalist thing, it’s no, you gotta prove a hundred percent.49:39

Xiq And you just let go of that.49:44

Henry Not because you don’t think there is truth, it’s just, you,49:46

Xiq It’s like there is an underlying reality, but not from where you are. You won’t know for sure.49:53

Xiq Ivan was talking about this the other day. I think Mike Johnson said this to him, basically, ‘cause I think Ivan was treating lots of different perspectives as they were equally valid. And I guess something in the conversation made Mike realize, maybe Ivan was overlooking that there is an underlying50:06

Henry Oh, I see. Reality. Yeah.50:29

Xiq And you can approximate it.50:34

Xiq Ah, so pretty.50:41

Seeing the Old with New Eyes

Henry We’re back again. That’s fun.50:45

Xiq Having gone on a hero’s journey.50:50

Henry This was a hero’s journey. We just learned something, came back. That actually, that’s the story that Chesterton talks about though, he says.50:52

Xiq Who talks about that?51:00

Henry The guy, the facts and wonders guy.51:00

Xiq Was this Lewis?51:05

Henry No. It’s a guy that influenced CS Lewis. His name is GK Chesterton. He was saying that, that was me. I was trying to, in his view, prove Christianity wrong by trying to find some heresy. But then he just came back to where he was. And he says it’s like a story that he wanted to write of a guy that was trying to find the new world sailing from England. And he comes and then he gets lost and then he comes back, but he doesn’t know he’s back. He’s like, well this is so amazing. But then you realize, wait, I’m just back home. And then he is mind blown. Because you have a different perspective, right? It was the same.51:07

Xiq Oh yeah. You’re seeing the old with new eyes and so it’s different.51:48

Henry Oh, okay. We’re here.51:55

Xiq It’s a bit further ahead I think.52:02

Henry That was a good walk. Quick.52:07

Xiq Wait, how should we conclude?52:12

Henry I don’t know.52:19

Xiq What did we learn? What did we bring back home?52:20

Henry I don’t know. I mean, one thing was just that, which I already, you could say discovered, but it’s just walking around, observing, thinking about things, the things that are around you can obviously influence your thoughts to come up with some new insight. And I think that’s experiencing the world. I think that’s,52:31

Xiq It’s me, you, the world. Me, you and the universe. The universe was also part of this conversation, and if we were locked in a room, it would have been less evident.52:52

Xiq Is this it? Is this Down Low Chicken?53:34

Henry You wanna end it here? Yeah, cool. Thank you.53:43

Xiq Thank you for inviting me.53:48

Henry Thank you. I think you just pressed the button.53:48