WEBVTT - Thrill to the Stunning Bicameral Mind Hypothesis 0:00:01.440 --> 0:00:04.240 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I 0:00:04.360 --> 0:00:13.080 Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, 0:00:13.160 --> 0:00:16.000 and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is 0:00:16.040 --> 0:00:21.600 Stuff You Should Know, the ongoing, amazing, mind blowing edition. 0:00:23.160 --> 0:00:25.200 You've been into this stuff lately? What's going on with you? 0:00:25.400 --> 0:00:28.240 I don't know. I don't know, man, but yes, I'm 0:00:28.280 --> 0:00:34.560 definitely into it lately. It's weird approaching fifty existential crisis. 0:00:35.760 --> 0:00:40.360 I don't know about crisis, maybe more like pondering, existential pondering. 0:00:40.760 --> 0:00:42.720 I don't think it's a crisis yet. I've still got 0:00:42.800 --> 0:00:45.159 five years, still fifty, So give me time now, you 0:00:45.240 --> 0:00:52.440 forty five, I'm forty five and eight ninths. Uh, yeah, 0:00:52.479 --> 0:00:57.200 you got time. Yeah, great, thank you for that. But no, 0:00:57.320 --> 0:00:59.840 there's no like one thing that's making me say, like, hey, 0:01:00.000 --> 0:01:03.600 when did humans become conscious? Or when did humans become intelligent? 0:01:03.720 --> 0:01:05.640 Or what do we do if aliens come down? Like 0:01:05.680 --> 0:01:08.760 for some reason, it's just maybe a little more appealing 0:01:08.800 --> 0:01:10.959 to me than it has been in the past lately. 0:01:10.959 --> 0:01:14.280 I don't know, but yes, I'm definitely into this kind 0:01:14.280 --> 0:01:16.440 of thing right now. And this stuff, well, we're gonna 0:01:16.480 --> 0:01:18.520 talk about today It's based on a how Stuff Works 0:01:18.560 --> 0:01:21.360 article that Robert Lamb wrote, and I'm not at all 0:01:21.400 --> 0:01:24.000 surprised that Robert Lamb is into this, but I just 0:01:24.040 --> 0:01:26.240 want to note that I've heard about this years and 0:01:26.319 --> 0:01:27.959 years and years ago and have been meaning to do 0:01:28.680 --> 0:01:31.360 an article or an episode on it. So I don't 0:01:31.400 --> 0:01:33.360 want you to think this is something who just stumbled across. 0:01:33.400 --> 0:01:36.760 This is actually the fruition of years of planning and 0:01:37.000 --> 0:01:42.319 hope and dreams coming to to pass in the in uh, 0:01:42.520 --> 0:01:45.800 maybe the best episode will ever make. Uh. And of 0:01:45.840 --> 0:01:50.000 course Robert and not Robert Lamb, the lead singer of 0:01:50.160 --> 0:01:54.200 the band Chicago. There's another Robert Lamb, and he was 0:01:54.200 --> 0:01:58.800 in Chicago. In Chicago, is that Peter Sata's stage name 0:01:59.440 --> 0:02:02.880 No Stara was the bass player and part lead singer 0:02:03.760 --> 0:02:06.640 along with Robert Lamb, who played keyboards and also sang 0:02:06.760 --> 0:02:09.960 lead on some and before Terry Cats died, he played 0:02:10.480 --> 0:02:14.280 guitar and also sang So they had three singers in 0:02:14.320 --> 0:02:17.960 the early days of Chicago. Just confusing, but none of 0:02:18.000 --> 0:02:21.560 them are our colleague Robert Lamb, who, along with our 0:02:21.600 --> 0:02:24.480 colleague Joe, had been doing stuff to blow your mind 0:02:24.520 --> 0:02:27.280 for many, many years. Another great show. Yeah, and I 0:02:27.320 --> 0:02:30.080 didn't check, but I would place a substantial amount of 0:02:30.080 --> 0:02:34.079 money on the idea that they have their own episode 0:02:34.120 --> 0:02:37.680 on this Julian James by Camra Mind. I bet they have. 0:02:37.880 --> 0:02:40.720 And we should also shout out Philosophy for Life, Psychology 0:02:40.760 --> 0:02:45.120 Today and Frontiers in Psychology. And I'm gonna make one 0:02:45.200 --> 0:02:49.880 up um psychology food Young. Okay, I've got two more 0:02:49.919 --> 0:02:54.160 that aren't made up late Star Codex and um uh 0:02:54.320 --> 0:02:58.120 poster her name Hazard on the site less Wrong. That 0:02:58.240 --> 0:03:01.880 sounds like a great source. It is, Hazard knows what 0:03:01.960 --> 0:03:03.680 he's talking about. Oh. In one more, I'm sorry, a 0:03:03.680 --> 0:03:06.120 guy named Jeff Ward or jeff Ward but you know 0:03:06.240 --> 0:03:10.840 when they say jeff um on medium. So all of 0:03:10.840 --> 0:03:14.600 those combined with Robert Lamb's article the Coalesce and again, 0:03:14.919 --> 0:03:17.840 probably the greatest episode we'll ever do. Yeah, and I 0:03:18.360 --> 0:03:20.600 sort of get some of this. Um, I think you're 0:03:20.639 --> 0:03:22.720 gonna help me out some because I do have some 0:03:22.800 --> 0:03:25.560 questions that I'll just throw out here and there, because 0:03:25.600 --> 0:03:28.280 at times I found myself reading and stuff and going, yeah, 0:03:28.280 --> 0:03:31.720 but isn't that just blank? Okay, great, I'll do my 0:03:31.760 --> 0:03:34.480 best to answer, and you're probably right, um, when you're 0:03:34.520 --> 0:03:38.240 thinking that, which is probably like, yes, all right, well, 0:03:38.640 --> 0:03:40.480 I mean I guess we should say then that the 0:03:40.520 --> 0:03:43.800 whole hypothesis is that we're going to be kind of 0:03:43.800 --> 0:03:49.200 breaking down today. Is controversial and it's not provable necessarily 0:03:49.240 --> 0:03:53.280 scientifically speaking. So it's sort of one of those Um, 0:03:53.320 --> 0:03:55.800 I mean, I think it goes beyond thought experiment for sure, 0:03:56.040 --> 0:04:01.320 definitely into true hypothesis land. But it was proposed by 0:04:01.520 --> 0:04:05.040 a psychologist here in the United States named Julian Jaynes 0:04:05.560 --> 0:04:08.480 in the mid nineteen seventies. Of course, yeah, the ear 0:04:08.640 --> 0:04:15.240 was born. So what he proposed was an answer to 0:04:15.600 --> 0:04:20.440 a longstanding question, and that was when did humans become conscious? 0:04:20.480 --> 0:04:23.599 Like when did consciousness emerge? Is it something that came 0:04:23.640 --> 0:04:27.719 along like in the earliest archaic humans? Is it something 0:04:27.760 --> 0:04:30.880 that came along much later than that? And how could 0:04:30.960 --> 0:04:33.800 we ever possibly answer that, like what relics have been 0:04:33.920 --> 0:04:39.520 left in history, um, in prehistory that would say like, hey, 0:04:39.560 --> 0:04:43.480 this is evidence of of consciousness um. And Julian James 0:04:43.560 --> 0:04:46.120 took that up, and he did it as an outsider, 0:04:46.160 --> 0:04:49.719 which was a huge strike against him because automatically legitimate 0:04:49.760 --> 0:04:52.239 scientists are like, well, I can't build upon this theory. 0:04:52.279 --> 0:04:55.160 Possibly this man is in actually in my field of 0:04:55.160 --> 0:04:58.880 consciousness studies. Um. But the thing is is this, this 0:04:59.000 --> 0:05:04.279 hypothesis is so well liked, it's just roundly like people 0:05:04.320 --> 0:05:07.400 just like it. It's just such an interesting hypothesis that 0:05:07.480 --> 0:05:10.000 it just won't go away. It hasn't gone away. And 0:05:10.040 --> 0:05:12.919 in fact, there's like a Julian James Institute, there's like 0:05:13.000 --> 0:05:16.240 groups that have sprung up based on this hypothesis. And 0:05:16.279 --> 0:05:20.600 what he says, in a very small nutshell is that 0:05:20.760 --> 0:05:26.760 sometime about one thousand, two thousand years ago humans became 0:05:26.920 --> 0:05:32.039 conscious in the way that we understand consciousness today. They 0:05:32.080 --> 0:05:35.240 developed the ability to think about thinking, They developed the 0:05:35.279 --> 0:05:38.720 ability to think about that other people are thinking. They 0:05:38.800 --> 0:05:43.440 developed basically what's called subjective introspection, and then as a 0:05:43.520 --> 0:05:49.279 result of that, they almost automatically gained free will and volition. 0:05:49.760 --> 0:05:52.000 So what he's saying is that if we went back 0:05:52.000 --> 0:05:53.800 in time in the Way Back Machine, Chuck, and we 0:05:53.880 --> 0:05:57.600 met somebody who lived three thousand years ago, four thousand 0:05:57.680 --> 0:06:00.560 years ago, they would not be a kind just human 0:06:00.640 --> 0:06:03.800 in the way that we understand conscious humans. That's right, 0:06:04.160 --> 0:06:07.320 And he thinks that it was a learned thing. And 0:06:07.560 --> 0:06:11.000 the idea that he throws down is that our our mind, 0:06:11.200 --> 0:06:17.239 our brain is, or was rather very important was because 0:06:17.240 --> 0:06:22.560 it no longer is bicameral, which means split into two parts. 0:06:22.560 --> 0:06:25.640 And we'll get to some actual science about the hemispheres 0:06:25.680 --> 0:06:28.440 of the brain later on, but in this case he 0:06:28.480 --> 0:06:31.400 means split into two parts where you have a part 0:06:31.480 --> 0:06:35.000 that makes decisions and a part that follows. And that 0:06:35.120 --> 0:06:38.720 neither one of them were conscious. And and here's where 0:06:39.640 --> 0:06:42.600 I get a little tripped up right out right out 0:06:42.600 --> 0:06:46.000 of the gate. Is Basically he says that instead of 0:06:46.040 --> 0:06:50.000 an internal dialogue, which we all have and which indicates 0:06:50.000 --> 0:06:54.000 a consciousness, uh, like us talking to ourselves, us saying 0:06:54.080 --> 0:06:58.560 things like everything from like you know, hey, get up 0:06:58.600 --> 0:07:02.520 and go do this, to just internally thinking about things 0:07:02.600 --> 0:07:09.039 like humans do that instead of that, we were sort 0:07:09.080 --> 0:07:12.360 of like human zombies and that we were creatures of habit. 0:07:12.920 --> 0:07:15.800 We had routines and behaviors that we followed to a 0:07:15.920 --> 0:07:20.600 t and whenever something disrupted that behavior, which is when 0:07:20.920 --> 0:07:23.400 like a conscious mind you would think, would speak up 0:07:24.360 --> 0:07:30.920 that instead of that that an external agent in this case, Uh, 0:07:31.080 --> 0:07:34.960 they thought there were gods would enter their brain and 0:07:35.000 --> 0:07:41.160 create an auditory hallucination. Yeah, and that they unquestioningly obeyed 0:07:41.440 --> 0:07:45.600 that auditory hallucination, and that's what help them get through 0:07:45.720 --> 0:07:48.800 novel situations that they didn't have like a basically a 0:07:48.880 --> 0:07:53.080 prescribed script for you know, a mindless automatic thing. Something 0:07:53.120 --> 0:07:55.720 new came along, they got in their way. This god 0:07:55.800 --> 0:07:58.280 would speak to them and say, go around that rock. 0:07:59.280 --> 0:08:01.960 It wasn't there yesterday. Don't worry about it, just go 0:08:02.040 --> 0:08:04.680 around it. And it could be one of their gods. 0:08:05.040 --> 0:08:08.320 It could be an ancestor guiding them. I think um one, 0:08:08.720 --> 0:08:11.920 um one. I think the Sumerians maybe made reference to 0:08:12.000 --> 0:08:15.800 angels walking beside them um or. And this is really 0:08:15.840 --> 0:08:19.200 important later on. It's a big part of Jane's hypothesis. 0:08:19.520 --> 0:08:23.080 It could be your local ruler, the divine king who's 0:08:23.120 --> 0:08:25.360 in charge of you and everybody else that you know 0:08:25.480 --> 0:08:27.720 and love and have ever lived among. It could be 0:08:27.800 --> 0:08:30.880 that person guiding you in your life too. And the 0:08:31.040 --> 0:08:34.960 idea is they these people heard this in the same 0:08:34.960 --> 0:08:37.360 way like you said that we hear our own internal dialogue, 0:08:37.440 --> 0:08:39.400 but they never chalked it up to themselves. It was 0:08:39.480 --> 0:08:42.959 always coming from the outside. All right, Well, here's I 0:08:43.000 --> 0:08:45.400 guess where I had my first issue kind of grasping 0:08:45.400 --> 0:08:49.440 this is there were no gods speaking to them and 0:08:49.480 --> 0:08:53.800 guiding them. This was just their internal dialogue. They just 0:08:53.840 --> 0:08:58.200 didn't know it. Yes, yes, yes, there was no gods. 0:08:58.280 --> 0:09:01.400 But to them, and this is a really important point 0:09:01.960 --> 0:09:05.880 to them, it definitely was a god talking to them 0:09:05.960 --> 0:09:08.480 or an ancestor talking to them. And in the same 0:09:08.520 --> 0:09:12.000 way that if if an actual god got into your 0:09:12.200 --> 0:09:14.760 brain and like was speaking to you and you responded 0:09:14.760 --> 0:09:16.640 to it, if you could have looked at their brains 0:09:16.720 --> 0:09:20.520 lighting up, presumably in like a wonder machine, it would 0:09:20.559 --> 0:09:23.480 it would respond the same way. So it was entirely 0:09:23.559 --> 0:09:25.560 real to them, and the same way that a placebo 0:09:25.600 --> 0:09:28.800 effect has real effects on your body. Um, this would 0:09:28.800 --> 0:09:30.920 have been the same thing. And then in addition to that, 0:09:31.120 --> 0:09:35.080 it was culturally supported. Everyone that they knew believed the 0:09:35.120 --> 0:09:37.679 same thing that the gods were talking to them, and 0:09:37.920 --> 0:09:40.120 so like that just lent support to this idea so 0:09:40.160 --> 0:09:41.960 that no one, no one questioned it. It was just 0:09:42.120 --> 0:09:44.880 that's the way it was. Well, so this, I guess 0:09:44.880 --> 0:09:48.000 brings me to let me macro this out a little 0:09:48.040 --> 0:09:49.680 bit in my own dumb brain, and it may just 0:09:49.760 --> 0:09:54.520 be twenty twenty one century person thinking that I'm engaging 0:09:54.559 --> 0:09:59.520 in But if the idea is that, uh, before this, 0:09:59.600 --> 0:10:02.800 there was consciousness. But what we're really saying is there 0:10:02.800 --> 0:10:05.600 actually was consciousness that they just didn't recognize it as such. 0:10:06.200 --> 0:10:08.240 Is that the whole point was that if you do 0:10:08.320 --> 0:10:12.720 not recognize it as consciousness, therefore you are not conscious. Yes, 0:10:13.080 --> 0:10:18.520 because you're not. You're not experiencing consciousness in any way 0:10:18.559 --> 0:10:21.000 that we would recognize as you being conscious. You're just 0:10:21.120 --> 0:10:25.880 kind of um Julian James referred to now. Okay, so so, 0:10:25.920 --> 0:10:27.560 but the thing is is there's like a lot of 0:10:27.840 --> 0:10:31.240 scholarly discussion on like, Okay, what did James mean exactly? 0:10:31.280 --> 0:10:34.600 How literal was he because he used words like automaton. 0:10:35.080 --> 0:10:37.920 He never called him zombies. Other people call them like zombies, 0:10:38.240 --> 0:10:41.400 but that no one talked about zombies back then. Hard, No, 0:10:41.520 --> 0:10:44.320 that's true. But um, well evil Dead had or not 0:10:44.360 --> 0:10:46.560 evil Dead, living dead now the Living Dead had come 0:10:46.559 --> 0:10:50.040 out by then. Yeah, but it wasn't like today. Okay, no, no, 0:10:50.160 --> 0:10:53.080 I know. They're definitely over the automatons. So he called 0:10:53.120 --> 0:10:56.240 them automatons, and it's essentially the same thing that they were. 0:10:56.800 --> 0:10:59.920 They just behaved automatically. They didn't stop and think about 0:11:00.520 --> 0:11:03.320 how they felt. They and this is really important to Chuck. 0:11:04.160 --> 0:11:06.960 Of course, they still had feelings. They had feelings about 0:11:07.000 --> 0:11:09.240 the people that were in their kin group, they had 0:11:09.240 --> 0:11:12.719 feelings about their local ruler, they had feelings about um, 0:11:13.040 --> 0:11:16.640 you know, stubbing their toe. It's not like they just 0:11:16.720 --> 0:11:20.880 had no inner life whatsoever. It's that they weren't. They 0:11:21.000 --> 0:11:24.000 didn't reflect on their inner life, they didn't think about thinking. 0:11:24.040 --> 0:11:28.160 They didn't they didn't have what we would recognize as consciousness, 0:11:28.240 --> 0:11:31.720 and in the terms that James is describing consciousness, which 0:11:31.760 --> 0:11:35.840 is a really narrow definition of consciousness. And then on 0:11:35.960 --> 0:11:39.120 top of that, he also goes to great links to say, Hey, 0:11:39.400 --> 0:11:41.600 I understand that you're gonna get all up in a 0:11:41.640 --> 0:11:44.280 tizzy that I'm saying that these people weren't conscious. I'm 0:11:44.320 --> 0:11:47.400 not talking about consciousness in general. And I think that 0:11:47.480 --> 0:11:51.960 you over overestimate just how much consciousness makes up our 0:11:52.040 --> 0:11:56.320 our lives. Okay, how about we take a break. Okay, 0:11:57.120 --> 0:12:02.320 I'm gonna go rip a boll uh. We'll take a break, 0:12:02.360 --> 0:12:05.440 we'll come back and we'll talk about what lots of 0:12:05.440 --> 0:12:34.040 other stuff right after this and stop shot stop all right. 0:12:34.160 --> 0:12:35.640 So I've kind of wrapped my head around what this 0:12:35.720 --> 0:12:38.920 guy is saying. Now it's uh. I will admit it's 0:12:38.920 --> 0:12:42.000 a little naval gazey for me. Uh On when it 0:12:42.080 --> 0:12:45.040 comes to certain types of philosophy and hypotheses, I get 0:12:45.040 --> 0:12:51.040 a little bit like, uh, what's the word? Maybe I 0:12:51.080 --> 0:12:53.680 can be a little too concrete or is the French 0:12:54.480 --> 0:12:59.079 concrete and literal in my thinking, because it's not you know, 0:12:59.320 --> 0:13:02.439 Friday night in college, like two in the morning kind 0:13:02.440 --> 0:13:05.800 of discussion. So I think that's where I am now. 0:13:05.920 --> 0:13:08.640 But I do think it's very interesting and that he 0:13:08.920 --> 0:13:10.400 I mean, I think a lot of this is very interesting, 0:13:10.480 --> 0:13:13.280 But I think it's interesting that he thought around the 0:13:13.320 --> 0:13:18.040 first or second millennium BC is when things to him 0:13:18.600 --> 0:13:24.240 changed and a consciousness began to emerge because of uh, well, 0:13:24.320 --> 0:13:28.640 eventually language, but specifically metaphor, which is to say that 0:13:28.840 --> 0:13:31.000 all of a sudden, we could make analogies in our brain. 0:13:31.480 --> 0:13:36.719 We could link things together. Uh. We saw ourselves as 0:13:37.600 --> 0:13:43.800 um almost as if they were characters. Ourselves were characters 0:13:44.000 --> 0:13:47.520 that had like choices that they could make his characters, 0:13:48.640 --> 0:13:52.199 and that as these things like connected in the brain, 0:13:53.480 --> 0:13:56.640 then it created just an effect like a domino effect 0:13:56.679 --> 0:14:00.560 basically where all of a sudden we could work out 0:14:00.640 --> 0:14:04.000 our own solutions, or we we knew we were capable 0:14:04.080 --> 0:14:07.439 of working out our own solutions, And wasn't God saying 0:14:07.920 --> 0:14:10.959 God saying walk around the rock? They realized it was 0:14:11.040 --> 0:14:14.120 ourselves making the decision to walk around the rock. Yes, 0:14:14.400 --> 0:14:17.360 but it's but in part of that that also required 0:14:17.400 --> 0:14:19.640 them to be able to reflect on the idea. Like 0:14:19.800 --> 0:14:22.240 you said that that they were able to now make 0:14:22.280 --> 0:14:25.080 their own decisions, right, And you said something earlier where 0:14:25.080 --> 0:14:26.560 you're like, you know, you were talking about your own 0:14:26.600 --> 0:14:29.840 internal dialogue where you you think, hey, I should get 0:14:29.920 --> 0:14:34.600 up and go outside for a second. Um, Like, that's 0:14:34.840 --> 0:14:38.000 that's different, right, You're thinking about you yourself, and you 0:14:38.160 --> 0:14:42.320 realize that you are thinking about yourself. That's modern consciousness. 0:14:42.760 --> 0:14:46.840 What somebody who was a bicameral person during this time 0:14:47.200 --> 0:14:51.800 would have thought is get up and go outside. And 0:14:51.920 --> 0:14:54.960 they would stand up and go outside without questioning because 0:14:55.040 --> 0:14:57.200 God had just instructed them to do that, so it 0:14:57.320 --> 0:14:59.840 must be important. And they didn't think about where it 0:15:00.000 --> 0:15:02.680 came from. They definitely didn't think it was from themselves, 0:15:02.960 --> 0:15:05.160 and they didn't reflect on it. They just obeyed it. 0:15:05.320 --> 0:15:08.520 That's Jane's position, and that if you compare those two things. 0:15:09.000 --> 0:15:12.680 You're talking about two totally different forms of mental life, 0:15:13.360 --> 0:15:15.960 and that's so different. He said that this is that 0:15:16.120 --> 0:15:19.000 what we understand is consciousness just wasn't around until a 0:15:19.080 --> 0:15:22.720 couple of thousand years ago. Okay, I can buy that. 0:15:23.680 --> 0:15:26.320 I like it as a hypothesis. I can swim in 0:15:26.360 --> 0:15:30.160 this pool. Okay, good, good. Here's the thing it's really 0:15:30.200 --> 0:15:32.760 important to to to realize, like you said something, that 0:15:32.880 --> 0:15:36.560 you're you're a literalist, right, that's actually really appropriate to 0:15:36.680 --> 0:15:40.000 approach this because Julian Jaynes one of the very radical 0:15:40.120 --> 0:15:44.200 things that he did was he took the ancients literally 0:15:44.880 --> 0:15:47.760 because when he started looking around and we'll talk more 0:15:47.800 --> 0:15:50.600 about this later, but he was looking for those artifacts 0:15:50.640 --> 0:15:53.360 that would prove his hypothesis or lend support to it 0:15:53.440 --> 0:15:56.760 at least, and he was an expert in ancient languages, right, 0:15:56.880 --> 0:15:59.360 so he was it was really appropriate. He could actually 0:15:59.400 --> 0:16:03.520 read Sumerian and Mesopotamian, and he took what they were 0:16:03.520 --> 0:16:06.480 saying when they said things like, um, you know, the 0:16:06.600 --> 0:16:09.680 gods told us to do this, that that they thought 0:16:09.800 --> 0:16:11.240 that the gods told him to do this, not that 0:16:11.320 --> 0:16:13.800 they were using metaphors. So he took them literally on 0:16:13.920 --> 0:16:16.880 their word and that's a real departure from anybody else 0:16:16.920 --> 0:16:20.640 who's ever examined the ancients of what they were saying. Yeah, 0:16:20.680 --> 0:16:22.760 and I think it's also something we should point out now, 0:16:23.320 --> 0:16:26.880 even though it comes up later in our research. Is that, um, 0:16:28.080 --> 0:16:31.320 when you think of an auto, I guess an automatic 0:16:31.400 --> 0:16:35.480 society or society of automatons. Uh. That's not to say 0:16:35.520 --> 0:16:39.360 that they weren't successful. He's describing some of the most successful, 0:16:39.920 --> 0:16:43.200 you know, ancient civilizations that existed. But I think his 0:16:43.320 --> 0:16:47.000 contention is that it was a hive mind all working 0:16:47.080 --> 0:16:51.359 together as automatons that allowed this stuff to get accomplished, 0:16:51.480 --> 0:16:54.760 and not the conscious mind, right, And he didn't I 0:16:54.840 --> 0:16:56.920 don't think he ever used it as like, I don't 0:16:56.960 --> 0:16:59.880 think ever explicitly said that it was an emergent prop 0:17:00.000 --> 0:17:02.240 pretty of a hive mind. But that's kind of what 0:17:02.360 --> 0:17:05.440 he was describing, kind of like if you take one 0:17:05.600 --> 0:17:09.680 stone cutter and one stone mason and three stone carriers 0:17:10.040 --> 0:17:13.119 and multiply that unit by five hundred and give it 0:17:13.720 --> 0:17:17.399 a year, you have a zigguratte built. That That's just 0:17:17.720 --> 0:17:19.399 that's just all those people knew what to do, they 0:17:19.480 --> 0:17:21.600 knew their position in their place, and they just did it, 0:17:22.080 --> 0:17:24.320 and so yeah, you could totally do that. With people 0:17:24.359 --> 0:17:27.639 who are thinking in this way and weren't conscious, you 0:17:27.680 --> 0:17:30.520 could probably actually get it done more easily than you 0:17:30.600 --> 0:17:33.080 could with people who stopped and thought, I'm above this, 0:17:33.800 --> 0:17:35.920 this work is is not suited for me. I should 0:17:35.920 --> 0:17:38.400 be doing something else, or why is the foreman being 0:17:38.520 --> 0:17:40.720 so mean to me today? Like they didn't think like 0:17:40.880 --> 0:17:44.960 that under Jane's um hypothesis, So they would probably get 0:17:45.000 --> 0:17:48.840 the work done more efficiently, at least more quietly. I 0:17:48.880 --> 0:17:53.760 would guess. Oh, I mean consciousness proposed or brought along 0:17:53.760 --> 0:17:57.720 a whole host of problems. I imagine if you're the 0:17:57.800 --> 0:18:01.119 ruling class. Uh. I think one thing that's interesting is 0:18:01.200 --> 0:18:05.479 that you mentioned um about what what is it? Jane's 0:18:06.359 --> 0:18:11.800 not Johns, Jane's Jane's thought about I love Robert Lamb's 0:18:11.880 --> 0:18:15.440 James Addison joke in here by that Oh that was yours? 0:18:16.400 --> 0:18:20.560 Oh well, where to go? Thanks, you said, Janes says, 0:18:20.960 --> 0:18:25.360 and then in parentheses you put it's a pretty good joke. 0:18:25.680 --> 0:18:30.120 But what Jane said was that, um, and it's something 0:18:30.160 --> 0:18:32.840 you mentioned earlier, was that consciousness. I think we think 0:18:32.880 --> 0:18:36.920 consciousness plays too big of a role. And what is 0:18:37.000 --> 0:18:42.240 actually a life that is can largely be still automatic 0:18:42.320 --> 0:18:45.399 on a lot of levels. And this is from the 0:18:45.480 --> 0:18:48.880 actual book in nineteen six and it's a little little 0:18:48.960 --> 0:18:51.680 mind blowy. I kind of like it. Consciousness is a 0:18:51.720 --> 0:18:53.840 much smaller part of our mental life than we're conscious 0:18:53.880 --> 0:18:57.480 of because we cannot be conscious of what we are 0:18:57.560 --> 0:19:00.119 not conscious of. It's like asking a flat and this 0:19:00.240 --> 0:19:02.160 is where it kind of comes home to me. It's 0:19:02.200 --> 0:19:05.480 like a asking a flashlight in a dark room to 0:19:05.600 --> 0:19:09.000 search around for something that does not have any light 0:19:09.080 --> 0:19:13.400 shining upon it. So that's where it comes home to meet, 0:19:14.320 --> 0:19:17.080 is when you and hey, it's metaphor. So how about 0:19:17.119 --> 0:19:22.400 that he lays down a metaphor that makes me understand 0:19:22.480 --> 0:19:25.639 it a little bit more. Yeah, because you know, wherever 0:19:25.680 --> 0:19:28.680 the flashlight looks, there's light. And his point, yeah, and 0:19:28.880 --> 0:19:33.320 his point is is wherever your conscious mind looks, there's consciousness. 0:19:33.680 --> 0:19:36.879 But that doesn't mean that there's consciousness all over the place. 0:19:37.280 --> 0:19:39.800 And um, yeah. Robert Lamb does use as a really 0:19:39.880 --> 0:19:43.640 good example of unloading a dishwasher, right, like when you're 0:19:43.720 --> 0:19:46.520 unloading the dishwasher, especially if you're one of those people 0:19:46.560 --> 0:19:48.639 who put like all of your knives in one place 0:19:48.800 --> 0:19:50.680 all of your forks in one part of the basket, 0:19:50.800 --> 0:19:53.520 all of your spoons and so on. Right, a maniac 0:19:53.600 --> 0:19:57.960 in other words, sensible human. If you do it like that, 0:19:58.040 --> 0:20:00.440 it's you can you can just be on a pilot 0:20:00.440 --> 0:20:03.480 because you've done it so many times. But when you 0:20:03.600 --> 0:20:06.800 do something like drop a fork, that's out of the norm. 0:20:07.000 --> 0:20:09.480 That's a novel thing that doesn't happen every time. And 0:20:09.600 --> 0:20:14.199 so in in the bi cameral mind, God would have said, um, 0:20:14.680 --> 0:20:17.920 I command thee to pick up thine fork butter fingers, 0:20:18.600 --> 0:20:20.640 and you would lean over and pick up the fork, 0:20:20.760 --> 0:20:23.960 and that was that. Instead you you might not even 0:20:24.000 --> 0:20:26.359 think about picking up the fork. You might do that automatically, 0:20:26.720 --> 0:20:29.040 but it's still out of the norm. It's still different. 0:20:29.119 --> 0:20:30.480 You have to kind of think about it a little 0:20:30.560 --> 0:20:33.560 more than just unloading the dishwasher. Now, if you take 0:20:33.600 --> 0:20:38.520 that dishwasher metaphor chuck, and you realize that three five, 0:20:38.760 --> 0:20:42.920 nine thousand years ago, there were no dishwashers. There was 0:20:43.040 --> 0:20:46.560 no ice cream scoop, there was no cookie scoop, there 0:20:46.680 --> 0:20:50.480 was no avocado splitter, there was nothing like that. Wait, 0:20:50.520 --> 0:20:53.200 what's that thing? Now? Yeah, you don't know, you don't 0:20:53.240 --> 0:20:55.800 have one of those. No, I'll send you one. You're 0:20:55.800 --> 0:20:59.640 missing out. It's a it's a multi tool for cutting avocados, 0:21:00.119 --> 0:21:02.840 getting the pit out, and then slicing them as you 0:21:02.920 --> 0:21:06.359 scoop them out. They're essential. As a matter of fact, 0:21:07.240 --> 0:21:08.760 I do pretty well with my knife, but I would 0:21:08.760 --> 0:21:10.520 love to see one of these. Okay, I'm gonna get 0:21:10.520 --> 0:21:15.000 to you one for Christmas. Okay. So the point is that, like, 0:21:15.440 --> 0:21:19.080 there wasn't a big variety of stuff, so there wasn't 0:21:19.160 --> 0:21:22.720 that many novel situations, like we encounter novel situations like 0:21:22.800 --> 0:21:26.439 almost constantly. That's just modern life. And that's the basis 0:21:26.520 --> 0:21:30.720 of James um uh Like hypothesis that the reason that 0:21:30.960 --> 0:21:33.639 consciousness evolves is because we started to get faced with 0:21:33.840 --> 0:21:37.520 more and more novel situations on a much more frequent basis. 0:21:37.960 --> 0:21:41.040 So it maybe it became inefficient for God to be 0:21:41.160 --> 0:21:44.560 talking to us every thirty seconds um or maybe we 0:21:44.720 --> 0:21:48.120 just got better at thinking for ourselves and consciousness kind 0:21:48.160 --> 0:21:50.800 of evolved out of that. But the point is life 0:21:50.920 --> 0:21:53.000 was much less complex back then, so you could have 0:21:53.160 --> 0:21:55.760 something like a bi camera mind. You could have somebody 0:21:55.800 --> 0:21:59.399 who who consciousness hadn't evolved in yet because they hadn't 0:21:59.440 --> 0:22:03.320 been introduced to enough experience in life, and with that 0:22:03.440 --> 0:22:08.359 experience came the the fork falling on the floor. In 0:22:08.480 --> 0:22:11.639 other words, yeah, or you know, there's a lot more 0:22:11.760 --> 0:22:14.240 dishes to put away, in much more different dishes to 0:22:14.320 --> 0:22:18.159 put away rather than just forks, you know, you know 0:22:18.200 --> 0:22:20.639 what I'm saying. Or you have one fork and you 0:22:20.800 --> 0:22:22.800 just carry it with you everywhere, you know, like you 0:22:22.840 --> 0:22:24.640 don't have to think about that. There was just less 0:22:24.640 --> 0:22:27.439 stuff to think about, is what I'm saying. Well, now 0:22:27.480 --> 0:22:30.000 you're speaking my language, because if I had it my way, 0:22:30.359 --> 0:22:33.879 every member of my family would have one for one spoon, 0:22:33.960 --> 0:22:37.600 one knife, one bowl, one cup, one plate, and they 0:22:37.640 --> 0:22:40.680 were all responsible for keeping them clean and put away. Man, 0:22:40.760 --> 0:22:42.600 every time I hear one cup there, I'm like, there's 0:22:42.600 --> 0:22:44.480 a joke in there somewhere, But even if I could 0:22:44.480 --> 0:22:46.440 come up with it, I wouldn't be able to say it. 0:22:46.880 --> 0:22:49.960 Oh yeah, that's true. All right. So now we're at 0:22:50.000 --> 0:22:51.600 the point where we can talk a little bit more 0:22:51.640 --> 0:22:55.760 about this idea of metaphor and language sort of bringing 0:22:55.760 --> 0:23:01.240 about this change. And uh so what James was throwing 0:23:01.320 --> 0:23:06.120 down in ninety six, besides apparently a bunch of roach 0:23:06.200 --> 0:23:11.760 clips was a the emergence of agricultural society is kind 0:23:11.800 --> 0:23:16.399 of changing everything, and that all of a sudden, we 0:23:16.520 --> 0:23:19.720 are not living in groups of you know, ten or 0:23:19.760 --> 0:23:23.639 twelve people that are hunting and gathering, where even if 0:23:23.680 --> 0:23:26.280 there was sort of a leader within that group, it 0:23:26.440 --> 0:23:30.160 was very easy to disseminate information and follow that that leader. 0:23:31.080 --> 0:23:35.440 Once we started settling down planting and growing things, engaging 0:23:35.520 --> 0:23:38.479 in trade with other people's that that did a lot 0:23:38.560 --> 0:23:41.920 of things that complicated every process, and it meant that 0:23:42.119 --> 0:23:46.480 societies were much much larger and that rulers couldn't necessarily 0:23:47.119 --> 0:23:53.080 speak directly to people anymore. Yeah, so the another not 0:23:53.440 --> 0:23:56.560 two specific people, like they could lay down an edict 0:23:56.840 --> 0:23:59.399 and that would get disseminated in other words, right, and 0:23:59.480 --> 0:24:02.720