Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. The thoughts of all men arise from
Speaker 1: the darkness. If you were the movement of your soul,
Speaker 1: and the cause of that movement procede you, then how
Speaker 1: could you ever call your thoughts your own? How could
Speaker 1: you be anything other than a slave to the darkness
Speaker 1: that comes before? Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. In
Speaker 1: today's episode is mostly going to be an interview with
Speaker 1: the Canadian author are Scott Baker, best known for his
Speaker 1: Second Apocalypse saga, Robert, how would you characterize that? Well?
Speaker 1: I think that quote that I read there from his
Speaker 1: first book in the series, The Darkness That Comes Before,
Speaker 1: sums it up rather nicely. I was first turned onto
Speaker 1: the work of our Scott Baker back in two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: and I hadn't read anything quite like it at the time,
Speaker 1: and I really haven't read anything quite like his work
Speaker 1: since then. His first novel, The Darkness That Comes Before,
Speaker 1: cast the reader into a dark fantasy world and invokes
Speaker 1: the Holy Wars of our own world, token esque evil
Speaker 1: factional in fighting worthy of Frank Herbert's Dune and a
Speaker 1: deep philosophical core, And we're actually gonna be getting into
Speaker 1: not so much his science fiction and fantasy but a
Speaker 1: recent philosophy paper of his that sounds kind of odd,
Speaker 1: though We will discuss his science fiction and fantasy a
Speaker 1: fair amount. Don't don't worry about that if you're a fan,
Speaker 1: but we're really going to be focusing on our Scott
Speaker 1: Baker's recent paper on alien philosophy, published this year in
Speaker 1: the Journal of Consciousness Studies. Yes, you heard that right,
Speaker 1: alien philosophy. We will get back to that in just
Speaker 1: a little bit. Yes, on alien philosophy. This is a
Speaker 1: wonderful thought experiment and sort of a reverse engineering of
Speaker 1: human philosophy via the consideration of a fictional convergeon ale
Speaker 1: in species and what's sort of philosophical systems they might
Speaker 1: create to make sense of their own existence. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: in the past we've actually speculated about possible characteristics of
Speaker 1: alien life forms. We did this in that episode Grizzly
Speaker 1: Bears from Outer Space. Do you remember that? Yeah, like,
Speaker 1: would aliens have eyes? Would they have hands? How large
Speaker 1: or intelligent life forms? Generally? Where there was there was
Speaker 1: a paper back then that tried to use some statistical
Speaker 1: analysis to say, you know, it's really more likely, given
Speaker 1: certain planet sizes and gravity and stuff, that aliens are
Speaker 1: going to be pretty big. Um. But this is always
Speaker 1: a tricky game because if you are a reasonable person,
Speaker 1: you have to admit that if alien life exists somewhere
Speaker 1: out there, there's every chance that it could just totally
Speaker 1: defy your expectations. We we don't always know what to expect.
Speaker 1: We can't be certain about much, but it is always
Speaker 1: fun to play the game. Okay, if we just start
Speaker 1: with a few fairly safe assumptions, what can we deduce
Speaker 1: about what types of life are possible? And one of
Speaker 1: those fairly safe assumptions is that whatever alien life exists,
Speaker 1: it's going to be the product of evolution by natural selection.
Speaker 1: I think it would be incredibly surprising if it turned
Speaker 1: out to not be the product of evolution by natural selection,
Speaker 1: meaning it's going to be a system that somehow incodes information,
Speaker 1: makes copies of itself through that information, and the copies
Speaker 1: survive and make their own copies at differential rates. And
Speaker 1: from these humble premises you can actually start to make
Speaker 1: a lot of interesting guesses about what types of life
Speaker 1: are more possible or more common than others. And so
Speaker 1: we've already tried this with biological and ecological traits in
Speaker 1: the past. But in this new paper, Our Scott Baker
Speaker 1: chases this this phenotype problem really deep. He goes on
Speaker 1: to guests, what are the philosophical projects that intelligent alien
Speaker 1: life forms would wonder about? What big questions would they
Speaker 1: share with us? What hang up so they really likely
Speaker 1: to dwell upon. Yeah, it's a fascinating paper and if
Speaker 1: you want to read it in full, I'll include a
Speaker 1: link to it on the landing page for this episode
Speaker 1: is Stuff to Blow your Mind dot Com. And I
Speaker 1: should also point out that the first six books in
Speaker 1: the Second Apocalypse saga, including the first trilogy, are currently
Speaker 1: out there and just about any reading format you desire,
Speaker 1: and this summer Our Scott Baker brings it all home.
Speaker 1: He's gonna follow up last year's The Great Ordeal with
Speaker 1: the Unholy Consults, which is gonna be out July eleven
Speaker 1: from Overlook Press. And if you're not ready to commit
Speaker 1: to a multi book series, his standalone novels Neuropath and
Speaker 1: Disciple of the Dog are out there as well. Robert,
Speaker 1: I know you warned me about neuropath well, as as
Speaker 1: we'll explore in the interview, Baker himself warns everybody about neuropaths,
Speaker 1: so be sure to tune in for that section of
Speaker 1: the conversation. Just a few quick notes about this episode.
Speaker 1: First up, this is a phone interview. We're in Atlanta
Speaker 1: and Scott chatted with us from the wilds of Canada
Speaker 1: in the midst of a thunderstorm. So, uh, everything's not
Speaker 1: going to be necessarily as crisp as a you reually is,
Speaker 1: but we think the content is is definitely worth sticking
Speaker 1: around for. Secondly, I bring up a couple of details
Speaker 1: from the Second Apocalypse saga that I think bear quick explanation. First,
Speaker 1: there's the ink Ai. Now, this is a hedonistic alien
Speaker 1: species that descends upon the world in ancient times undying.
Speaker 1: They're devoted to selfish indulgence, limitless pleasure, and a cataclysmic
Speaker 1: scheme to shield themselves from judgment. And then there are
Speaker 1: the non Men. This is an all male race of
Speaker 1: humanoids that essentially serves as the waning elder race the
Speaker 1: elves of Baker's world, only far darker and interestingly inhuman
Speaker 1: in many respects, both in body and in mind. And finally,
Speaker 1: there's a tiny bit of cursing in this episode, but
Speaker 1: it's polite Canadian cursing, and we bleaped it all out
Speaker 1: for you. All Right, Well, i'd say, without further delay,
Speaker 1: maybe we should get into our conversation with our Scott Baker. Hey, Scott,
Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. Thanks for taking
Speaker 1: time out of your day to talk with us here
Speaker 1: about your new paper on alien philosophy, as well as
Speaker 1: uh your works of fiction, which I know personally have
Speaker 1: been a lot to me over the years. I'm I'm
Speaker 1: a big fan of the Second Apocalypse saga. I loved
Speaker 1: an Neuropath and Disciple the Dog as well. So we
Speaker 1: want to welcome you to the show. And I believe
Speaker 1: Joe has the first question here related to on alien philosophy. Well, actually,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess we should start just by Scott.
Speaker 1: Is there anything you'd like to tell our audience about yourself?
Speaker 1: Just introduce yourself and then second we'll we'll get to
Speaker 1: the meat of the paper. I'm a farm boy who
Speaker 1: grew up in southwestern Ontario and uh ended up falling
Speaker 1: in love with Lord of the Rings and Conan the
Speaker 1: Barbarian at a preposterously young age and just never grew up.
Speaker 1: What's your opinion on the Millius movie? It has to
Speaker 1: be the one written by alver Stone. Yeah yeah, Ernie.
Speaker 1: All right, So we wanted to get into the idea
Speaker 1: of your your paper about alien philosophy. Could you just
Speaker 1: start by as succinctly as you can explaining what your
Speaker 1: motive for writing this paper was and what your basic
Speaker 1: conclusions are. Okay, So, I mean I kind of backed
Speaker 1: into philosophy. Um, my original my original degree program I
Speaker 1: took at university was languages and literature, and it quickly
Speaker 1: became apparent to me that I was barking up the
Speaker 1: wrong tree. And so the question for me was basically
Speaker 1: how to transition my literature degree into something more philosophical.
Speaker 1: So I did a critical theory graduate degree, and in
Speaker 1: that case, I found myself knee deep and all these
Speaker 1: philosophical traditions, ten thousand different interpretations of the same bloody thing.
Speaker 1: I think the best way to put it is dismayed.
Speaker 1: There's just so much confusion. It seemed like there was
Speaker 1: so much obvious obtuscation. I so it quickly came to
Speaker 1: the conclusion that something profoundly wrong lay at the heart
Speaker 1: of traditional philosophy, and I just endeavored to be as
Speaker 1: honest and as ruthlessly skeptical as I could and try
Speaker 1: to figure out what that something wrong was. And aude
Speaker 1: alien philosophy is basically the answer I've been able to
Speaker 1: come up with after about twenty years of studying and
Speaker 1: researching the topic, both informal university contexts and UH and
Speaker 1: on my own. And the idea, in a nutshell is
Speaker 1: simply that we human beings simply did not evolve the
Speaker 1: capacity to reflect upon ourselves and our experience in any way,
Speaker 1: shape or form that would allow us to answer theoretical
Speaker 1: questions regarding our experience. And when you really look at
Speaker 1: you know the question empirically in terms of cognitive neuroscience,
Speaker 1: for instance, and you see the way in which the
Speaker 1: brain constantly windows information, constantly just selects a little bit
Speaker 1: of information from this process, a little information from that process,
Speaker 1: a little information from that process. You discovered the brain
Speaker 1: really is a giant bottleneck machine that is bend on
Speaker 1: selecting only what it needs. And on alien philosophy gives
Speaker 1: us a sort of picture of how we can understand
Speaker 1: that bottleneck machine such that it explains the morass of
Speaker 1: traditional philosophy of mind are you know, epical inability to
Speaker 1: figure out what the hell is going on inside of
Speaker 1: our own heads? So in the paper you you make
Speaker 1: this distinction you just talked about and you you mentioned
Speaker 1: the idea of causal cognition versus heuristic cognition, right, Uh,
Speaker 1: basically having a true understanding of the workings of things
Speaker 1: in in a sort of deep information way, versus having
Speaker 1: a you know, on the fly, good enough understanding of
Speaker 1: things that gets us through everyday life and that we're
Speaker 1: constantly using the ladder to try to get at the former. Um.
Speaker 1: A question I sort of wonder about. Is the former
Speaker 1: to me, sounds like it is best executed in science.
Speaker 1: If we're trying to get causal cognition, it's when we
Speaker 1: you know, put these tools on our inquiries, like scientific
Speaker 1: investigatory tools. And so does that leave any room for philosophy?
Speaker 1: Do you think that there is really any good philosophy
Speaker 1: to be done or really should it just be science
Speaker 1: and everything outside of science is misapplying these heuristic models
Speaker 1: we have. Um, yeah, I mean I think there's definitely
Speaker 1: good philosophy. I mean, uh, Um, it's not the death
Speaker 1: of philosophy or theoretical speculation. I mean, there's no way
Speaker 1: to kill that. Um. What for me it signals the
Speaker 1: end of is a certain type of philosophizing, which just
Speaker 1: happens to be the majority of philosophizing since the ancient Greeks,
Speaker 1: which is the idea of actually using heuristic cognition to
Speaker 1: try to get to the truth of heuristic cognition, using
Speaker 1: these shortcuts, these ways of actually avoiding knowledge of what's
Speaker 1: actually going on to solve problems as a means of
Speaker 1: getting at what's going on. And that's the philosophy that
Speaker 1: does That is the philosophy that's caused the bulk of
Speaker 1: our confusion today. So how much of philosophy do you
Speaker 1: think is really just sort of backward looking ex post
Speaker 1: facto justification for our biases. So the way I look
Speaker 1: at it is we have this capacity to metacognize. We
Speaker 1: have these ancestral abilities to basically pick things from the
Speaker 1: stream of experience and think about them and change our
Speaker 1: behavioral responses to the world on the basis of them.
Speaker 1: So think about Christmas with your relatives. You know, everyone
Speaker 1: has that family member who says something that you jest. Oh,
Speaker 1: you got to say something about it, but you know
Speaker 1: if you do, it's going to ruin the whole night.
Speaker 1: And then it's a great example of meta cognition at work.
Speaker 1: You know you're gonna say something, and then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, Wait a second, Scott, he's an soul. Everyone
Speaker 1: knows he's a whole. You don't need to tell everybody
Speaker 1: he's in sool. If you tell everybody's, well, then the
Speaker 1: whole night's ruined. Right, Your reproductive chances go flying out
Speaker 1: the window. That sounds weird. It doesn't know, But meta
Speaker 1: cognition consists of a suite of practical tools. There's no
Speaker 1: a in the world that we evolved the meta cognitive capacity.
Speaker 1: We needed to do much more than a handful of
Speaker 1: practical things on the fly. And what philosophical reflection does
Speaker 1: is it it basically takes those tools, repurposes them, and
Speaker 1: asks them to solve questions. There's just simply no way
Speaker 1: they could possibly solve them. But since we lack the
Speaker 1: ability to even see how little ability we have when
Speaker 1: it comes to man cognition, we have no sense of
Speaker 1: constraints or limits or whatever, and so we're confunded by
Speaker 1: this constant illusion of transparency. It seems like, yes, if
Speaker 1: only I think hard enough on this, Yes, if only
Speaker 1: I get my concepts arranged just right. Yes, if only
Speaker 1: I abandoned the metaphysics a presence, Yes only I abandoned
Speaker 1: the mirror major on and on and on it goes.
Speaker 1: Everybody thinks that there's a way to use philosophical reflection
Speaker 1: to solve or the problem with human experience. So, uh, Scott,
Speaker 1: in the paper you seem and the way you just
Speaker 1: described it now, you definitely do seem to be trying
Speaker 1: to use this idea of imagining what alien philosophy looks
Speaker 1: like in order to reverse engineer our own human philosophy
Speaker 1: to better understand how we've arrived at our philosophical traditions.
Speaker 1: But I'm also just really interested in that speculative project
Speaker 1: trying to literally imagine what an information processing organism orbiting
Speaker 1: a faraway star might think about, what hard problems would
Speaker 1: they encounter and how would they deal with them? And
Speaker 1: so I wonder if I could ask you just a
Speaker 1: few crazy kinds of questions that you don't even address
Speaker 1: in the paper. Uh. I started off thinking, like, you know,
Speaker 1: would could you imagine that there would be an alien
Speaker 1: Hagel or an alien Wittgenstein. But these are kind of
Speaker 1: stupid questions because I think these philosophers necessarily exist in
Speaker 1: a tradition, if you know what I mean, Like they're
Speaker 1: reacting to all the philosophers that came before them, and
Speaker 1: so it's sort of silly to try to imagine if
Speaker 1: that history of philosophy would be recreated on other planets.
Speaker 1: But you can't imagine other fields of philosophy and how
Speaker 1: they would be created. So I'm trying to think, like,
Speaker 1: what would alien meta ethics look like? Is there anything
Speaker 1: that we could guess, uh that that would form the
Speaker 1: basis of how aliens would think about, you know what,
Speaker 1: they're where their sense of right and wrong comes from.
Speaker 1: But this is a really hard question to ask. I mean,
Speaker 1: part of the reason why I took so much care
Speaker 1: to uh underscore how how really you know, plausibility of
Speaker 1: alien philosophy was all I was after. It's just simply
Speaker 1: because asking the question of alien philosopy earnestly, you know,
Speaker 1: um is really difficult, simply because you've got to assume
Speaker 1: so much convergence just to just get off the ground
Speaker 1: I mean have to that they use language in similar
Speaker 1: ways that we as we use language for instance. Um,
Speaker 1: So if you grant all that, if you grant convergence,
Speaker 1: as I call them in the paper, then I think
Speaker 1: meta ethics would look like a giant mess the way
Speaker 1: meta ethics looks like in contemporary philosophy, justly because when
Speaker 1: it comes to where we stand in these various super
Speaker 1: complicated systems that nature has us pinned in, we just
Speaker 1: have no access to the information we need. So what
Speaker 1: we really have to rely on is basically these blind guesses,
Speaker 1: you know, these simple heuristics, these little tricks that have,
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, um, preserved our ancestors in the past.
Speaker 1: Now these tricks are just simply uh, they're literally invisible
Speaker 1: to us, even though they actually are the foundation of
Speaker 1: guiding our behavior through these super complicated natural natural environments. Now,
Speaker 1: any creature like the human is stuck in the exact
Speaker 1: same informational bind. They're stuck in a shallow information environment.
Speaker 1: They have these tools for picking out those handles, those
Speaker 1: features of the environment that actually help them get along
Speaker 1: or get on or get it on, um, but they
Speaker 1: actually have no way of isolating those simple heuristics as
Speaker 1: simple heuristics, no way of understanding where they stand in
Speaker 1: these superordinance systems. They're just they're blind, and even worse,
Speaker 1: they're blind to their blindness. So every time these aliens
Speaker 1: would attempt to solve ethical questions what is ethics, They're
Speaker 1: going to run into the same sets of illusions and
Speaker 1: problems that beset human philosophers. They're going to confuse the
Speaker 1: load in scape of ethical concepts as being a sort
Speaker 1: of autonomous system as being all there is. They're going
Speaker 1: to think that they've actually solved something, even though all
Speaker 1: it takes is another person to ask the exact same
Speaker 1: question to arrive at, in some cases, radically different answer
Speaker 1: following what seemed to be very similar intuitions. So those
Speaker 1: two things I think they're gonna are going to strand
Speaker 1: them as effectively as we've been stranded by meta ethics.
Speaker 1: I can imagine a skeptical objection to what you're saying, Um,
Speaker 1: that would be okay, you're right that we are, by
Speaker 1: nature shallow information consumers. We don't have deep knowledge about
Speaker 1: the world in order to get along in a natural setting.
Speaker 1: But you can definitely look at the way we've loved
Speaker 1: ridged the weak tools. We do have to do amazing
Speaker 1: things in say science and technology, like we can build
Speaker 1: an international space station, and that has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with our ground level survival and reproduction. We've just managed
Speaker 1: to sort of bootstrap up some very basic survival tools
Speaker 1: into incredible products. Why would you think that we couldn't
Speaker 1: do the same thing with these hard problems, like like
Speaker 1: met ethics or natural philosophy or understanding the mind that
Speaker 1: we do with science and technology. Well, I mean I
Speaker 1: actually think that you know a lot of the say
Speaker 1: you know norms of science. I actually see these things
Speaker 1: as technology. I mean I see them as basically ways
Speaker 1: of turning, you know, spinning tools out of our own
Speaker 1: brains if you will. I mean the idea of the
Speaker 1: idea isn't that we can't use heuristic cognition in novel ways.
Speaker 1: I mean we literally, I think we literally evolved to
Speaker 1: do exactly what philosophers do, which is just simply trying
Speaker 1: to recast, repurpose that our existing cognitive capacities in order
Speaker 1: to solve um different kinds of problems. The problem with
Speaker 1: meta ethics in particular is it doesn't really have anything
Speaker 1: to do with that process. So ethical thought it has
Speaker 1: given us a lot of great ideas that we've been
Speaker 1: able to institutionalize in ways that have been tremendously tremendously
Speaker 1: beneficial um to humanity. But there's no way of actually
Speaker 1: realizing that that's the case short of putting those tools
Speaker 1: into application. I mean, I would argue that the type
Speaker 1: of norm toolmaking that humans have just done so fantastically
Speaker 1: well is actually a completely different process than the process
Speaker 1: that underwrites meta ethical thought. I mean, problems get solved
Speaker 1: when we actually discover a new simple heuristic that allows
Speaker 1: us to get along with each other in some way,
Speaker 1: shape or form. But when you actually ask the fundamental
Speaker 1: nature of ethical thought, and you begin by looking at
Speaker 1: all these terms, all this norm talk as referring to
Speaker 1: posits that actually plays some role in some kind of
Speaker 1: economy transcendental economy or a normative economy, or an anomalous
Speaker 1: economy or an autonomous economy outside of the circuit of nature.
Speaker 1: No one's gotten anywhere, no one's the through anything. I mean,
Speaker 1: the all the dilemmas that confronted the ancient Greeks are
Speaker 1: still confronting modern philosophers today. And that's just simply because
Speaker 1: constitutes an attempt to apply these simple heuristics not to
Speaker 1: practical problems in the real world of politics and social interaction,
Speaker 1: but to the theoretical problem of ethics itself. All right,
Speaker 1: now it's time to take a quick break, and when
Speaker 1: we come back, more of our conversation with our Scott Baker.
Speaker 1: So maybe I've got one more and then I'm going
Speaker 1: to throw back to Robert here. Uh So, I wanted
Speaker 1: to go to a footnote in your paper about alien philosophy. Um,
Speaker 1: you say that because we evolved in ecologies that didn't
Speaker 1: give us access to deep information, you know, we just
Speaker 1: knew enough to get along. You write, quote, My fear
Speaker 1: is that the provision of this information is likely to
Speaker 1: crash the effectiveness of many of our tools. A good
Speaker 1: deal of my fiction is devoted to exploring different crash scenarios.
Speaker 1: So I wondered if you could explain a little bit
Speaker 1: more what you mean about the idea of a crash
Speaker 1: scenario and how you explored so when you understand that
Speaker 1: the bulk of our cognition is heuristic, that it really
Speaker 1: relies on these kinds of guesses that we're making with
Speaker 1: the lack any sort of deep understanding of the actual
Speaker 1: physical structure of the environment around us. You realize that
Speaker 1: that guesswork depends upon an invariant background. So a perfect
Speaker 1: example would be AI for instance. So human beings we
Speaker 1: evolved to manage unbelievable amount of complexity. We we evolved
Speaker 1: to solve the most complicated systems that we know of
Speaker 1: in the universe, basically each other, without actually knowing the
Speaker 1: first thing about what's going on in brains or or
Speaker 1: ecologies or or what what have you. So heuristics solved
Speaker 1: by taking things for granted in their environments. So that
Speaker 1: means the only cognition can be properly function is if
Speaker 1: those things that it takes for granted actually obtained in
Speaker 1: its environments. So if you look at that last year,
Speaker 1: there was the first fatality ever attributed to a self
Speaker 1: driving car, and I think it was a Tesla Um
Speaker 1: and the unfortunate fellow was driving on an incline and
Speaker 1: a truck was crossing his path. He was watching Harry
Speaker 1: Potter on his dashboard. He had his autopilot on his car.
Speaker 1: Now the autopilot actually read forward, and the white truck
Speaker 1: crossed what was actually white sky. This is what they
Speaker 1: think happened, and as a result, the truck's trailer qued
Speaker 1: open space to the computer, and so the car just
Speaker 1: drove right underneath the truck trailer. Um, that's exactly what
Speaker 1: happen when the environment doesn't cooperate with a heuristic problem
Speaker 1: solving system. If that system cannot discriminate between white truck
Speaker 1: white sky, then it just sees sky. And so that's
Speaker 1: actually a perfect example of a crash space where you
Speaker 1: have a cognitive system that requires the environment to be
Speaker 1: a certain way in order to properly solve the problem.
Speaker 1: When the environment is changed or varies in a way
Speaker 1: that it cannot accommodate, then you literally have a car
Speaker 1: crash in that case. Now, that obtained as much for
Speaker 1: self driving cars as it does for human social cognition.
Speaker 1: So my big fear with AI generally is that you
Speaker 1: and I evolved to solve each other um over literally
Speaker 1: the history of life on this planet. We're enormously complicated,
Speaker 1: and yet we're so finally attuned to one another that
Speaker 1: we can make unbelievable predictions as to each other's behavior
Speaker 1: and reliability and so forth. Now, what happens when you
Speaker 1: take that ecology and you start injecting all these little
Speaker 1: artificial agencies that are literally designed to cue your heuristic
Speaker 1: social positive systems out of school, right for some sort
Speaker 1: of commercial advantage. Now, all of a sudden, you find
Speaker 1: human beings using these systems that are exquisitely designed to
Speaker 1: make sense of other human beings. Now we're using these
Speaker 1: systems to make sense of machines that have literally been
Speaker 1: designed to mpre wallets or you know, swear our votes
Speaker 1: or what have you. Now that's a crash space, and
Speaker 1: it's a tremendously significant crash space because what it means
Speaker 1: is that human beings are going to be able to
Speaker 1: trust their social cognitive systems that suite of simple heuristics
Speaker 1: we use to solve the monstrous complexity of each other.
Speaker 1: We're no, we're gonna be able to trust that less
Speaker 1: and less and less moving forward because the environment, the
Speaker 1: invariant background that it's adapted to solve, no longer exists.
Speaker 1: So really, what my big fear is is that we're
Speaker 1: looking at the destruction of the human cognitive habitat, that
Speaker 1: all this stuff that people are celebrating Mark Zuckerberg, even
Speaker 1: President uh really is the beginning of the end of
Speaker 1: the ability of human beings to make sense of each other,
Speaker 1: the world themselves. What have you, Robert, I know some
Speaker 1: of these ideas come up in some questions you had
Speaker 1: about the fiction, right, Oh, yes, Um. At this point
Speaker 1: I want to jump ahead to a question I had
Speaker 1: for later, but I think it's ees in here. So
Speaker 1: your your book Neuropath is a wonderfully scientifically disturbing thriller,
Speaker 1: sort of near future neuroscientifically charged psychological thriller for those
Speaker 1: who haven't read it, Well, you've just described here instantly
Speaker 1: made me think of the semantic apocalypse. Is that the
Speaker 1: same concept? Or is that a related concept? That's the
Speaker 1: same concept, that's the that's the semantic apocalypse. I kind
Speaker 1: of see it as having two stages to it. I
Speaker 1: mean the first stage is actually on alien philosophy. I mean,
Speaker 1: the first stage is just clearing away all these philosophical
Speaker 1: conceptions of meaning and um coming to understand the practical
Speaker 1: nature of of intentional cognition. And then the big problem
Speaker 1: with semantic apocalypse has to be with the slow degradation
Speaker 1: of the environments that intentional cognition requires in order to
Speaker 1: function reliably right, And it's the depth of meaning in
Speaker 1: every sense. When you say the intentional environment, there you
Speaker 1: mean reasoning on the basis of inferring the intentions of others,
Speaker 1: sort of what Daniel Dennet would call the intentional stance.
Speaker 1: Actually greatly enjoying uh Denna's book right now, his latest book.
Speaker 1: There's no intentional stance in my position. Um, there's no
Speaker 1: uh perspectives or anything like that. I mean, intentional cognition
Speaker 1: just simply means basically all the machinery in your brain
Speaker 1: that enables you to solve the behavior of other biological
Speaker 1: life in your in your vicinity to like incredibly rarefied extents, right, um,
Speaker 1: and when you look and when you look at human
Speaker 1: behavior in particular. The problem with the intentional stance is
Speaker 1: that it's actually an attempt to use intentional cognition to
Speaker 1: theorize intentional cognition. And that's the big reason why Dinnett
Speaker 1: has such a hard time actually selling his position to
Speaker 1: h their philosophers of mine who want intentionality in meaning
Speaker 1: to be a thing, to be something in the world. Uh,
Speaker 1: I share much of of then it's view, but I
Speaker 1: don't see how the intentional stance has anything to do
Speaker 1: with the parts I share your original question had to
Speaker 1: do with, uh, just simply what I mean by intentional cognition,
Speaker 1: And once again, it's simply the machinery in our head.
Speaker 1: That's you know, what gets taken out by a stroke.
Speaker 1: That's what gets you know, pathologically attenuated in cases of autism,
Speaker 1: that's you know what gets degraded in dementia. You know,
Speaker 1: that's where the action is. And UM, I think that's
Speaker 1: all we need to to really get a theoretical grasp
Speaker 1: on what's going on with meaning. In your Second Apocalypse saga,
Speaker 1: an alien race known as the ink Roy play a
Speaker 1: crucial role did on alien philosophy impart stem from trying
Speaker 1: to understand their perspective and yes or no, how does
Speaker 1: one try to think like the people of emptiness? How
Speaker 1: does one try to think like an Inkroy? Wow? I've
Speaker 1: tried to actually get into their headspace on several occasions.
Speaker 1: I find it really difficult. I mean, the problem is
Speaker 1: is that, you know, our own sort of experience, of
Speaker 1: our own first person is so unbelievably specific to our
Speaker 1: biology and to our history that that, um, as soon
Speaker 1: as you've tried to actually think of an alien way
Speaker 1: of thought ceases to make sense. I mean on Alien
Speaker 1: philosophy is tied to the ink roy, not not so
Speaker 1: much as uh exploration. Okay, so the incroy not so
Speaker 1: much you know, the object of on alien philosophy as
Speaker 1: they are kind of uh, the cipher for the ultimate
Speaker 1: significance of alien philosophy, because the ultimate significance of Alan
Speaker 1: philosophy is that, you know, once we understand that thought
Speaker 1: is ultimately material physical um uh, and just simply part
Speaker 1: of all the natural processes going on in our environment,
Speaker 1: nothing on theologically extraordinary, then we realize that this boundary
Speaker 1: that we've just we're just creeping up to and are
Speaker 1: getting ready to cross, where we have literally gained the
Speaker 1: ability to control physical processes at unbelievably small scales, cellular scales,
Speaker 1: at this point where our own biology is becoming technology. Um.
Speaker 1: If on alien philosophy is right, then ink oi are
Speaker 1: one possible consequence of us crossing this boundary. So the
Speaker 1: ink roy could possibly be us in some respect where
Speaker 1: you know, been up on any sort of normative ideals
Speaker 1: of or truth or what have you, and have literally
Speaker 1: just simply collapsed into this bioheedionism that is to our
Speaker 1: moral sensi abilities, absolutely horrific. And that's for me. The
Speaker 1: ink y have always kind of represented the ugly consequences
Speaker 1: of an alien philosophy, the fact that we are going
Speaker 1: to climb out of this dream that we've had of
Speaker 1: being exceptional in some way and this or that we
Speaker 1: are just simply material and that we will just simply
Speaker 1: chase fitness indicators, you know, via our technology, to the
Speaker 1: point where we um become something that our present belves
Speaker 1: can only be horrified by. Well, that's excellent, that's certainly
Speaker 1: a horrifying thought to think of ourselves as the ink roy.
Speaker 1: So in imagining alien philosophy, you've got these convergions, who
Speaker 1: are you know, have some amount of sufficient uh convergent
Speaker 1: evolution with us there there's somewhat similar to how our
Speaker 1: information processing works at least. Um, is there any reason
Speaker 1: to assume that, even if conscious cognition exists in conversions,
Speaker 1: that it would feel the same to them as conscious
Speaker 1: cognition feels to us. I know, that's kind of a
Speaker 1: strange question to ask, because you can't even be sure
Speaker 1: that another person's you know, consciousness exists or feels the
Speaker 1: same as yours. But we tend to assume that feeling
Speaker 1: like a human, you know, if sort of like one thing.
Speaker 1: Mostly we could be wrong about that, But is it
Speaker 1: possible to imagine radically different subjectivity is not just radically
Speaker 1: different behavior throughout the universe. I mean, I'd argue that
Speaker 1: it's not impossible to them that, and I think it's
Speaker 1: just a lot more complicated than than people would give
Speaker 1: it credence. And I think all you have to do
Speaker 1: is look at the human case to see that um
Speaker 1: has to be the case. Just think of the difference
Speaker 1: between different philosophers and the phenomenological tradition like Heidegger, Myrtle, Punty,
Speaker 1: uh Sartraum, husserl Shoots Gatamer. I mean, if you look
Speaker 1: at all these different philosophers and all the different interpretations
Speaker 1: they've given of the fundamental nature of experience. I mean,
Speaker 1: some cases are similar, they certainly share similar commitments, but
Speaker 1: there's a wild variance in how human subjective experience is describd. So,
Speaker 1: given that we have difficulty even pinpointing what it's like
Speaker 1: to be a human, the notion of being able to
Speaker 1: understand what it's like to be an alien, it's got
Speaker 1: to be that much more difficult, And so one of
Speaker 1: the things they try to argue in that paper is
Speaker 1: that you really, even if you can't say what it
Speaker 1: would be like, what you could say is what kinds
Speaker 1: of information they'd have access to, and what kinds of
Speaker 1: information they wouldn't have access to, and what kinds of
Speaker 1: problems they potentially might into as the ability to see
Speaker 1: their own neglect structure, to understand what it was their neglecting.
Speaker 1: So to give a strange answer to your question, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think you can you can say things about the
Speaker 1: shape of alien experience, even if you can't say much
Speaker 1: of anything about the quality of of that experience. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One possible idea I had here was I was wondering
Speaker 1: if you think it would make a difference in the
Speaker 1: evolution of an alien philosophy if it occurred in a
Speaker 1: species that subjectively just had much less of a self
Speaker 1: world distinction than we have. You know, we think of
Speaker 1: ourselves as in the universe rather than being the universe.
Speaker 1: But of course we are the universe. The universe is
Speaker 1: in a small part, embodied in us and in the
Speaker 1: brains that generate our consciousness. Um, we we just don't
Speaker 1: feel that way yet. There are you know, they're meditative
Speaker 1: exercises like you can do meditation that's specifically aimed at
Speaker 1: trying to get you into that state of mind where
Speaker 1: you feel like you are the universe. You just are
Speaker 1: the world you are experience and wat right, right apprehension exactly.
Speaker 1: Uh So, I wonder if you know, if you imagine
Speaker 1: an alien species that doesn't naturally possess this self world distinction,
Speaker 1: just feels that it is the universe, could we imagine
Speaker 1: it would generate a radically different type of ontology of
Speaker 1: the universe, of what it means to be and all
Speaker 1: of the socially derived philosophy, the meta ethics and everything
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, and I think this is I mean,
Speaker 1: I think this is actually a fascinating question. I mean
Speaker 1: I've I've cracked my skull open against it a couple
Speaker 1: of times now. And um, I mean what I think
Speaker 1: is the case? I think I think meta cognition it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter where you are in the universe. Meta cognition
Speaker 1: is expensive. And if meta cognition is expensive everywhere and
Speaker 1: you go in the universe, um, it is going to
Speaker 1: be hard, very very hard for an alien species to
Speaker 1: to it its own continuity with its own environments. So
Speaker 1: I mean, they're going to be stuck relying on simple
Speaker 1: heuristics in some way, shape or form. And if they
Speaker 1: don't develop the medicoc it of capacity to be intuitively deduce,
Speaker 1: you know, the fractioning heuristic nature of their own metacognitive capacities,
Speaker 1: they're going to be duped the same way we've been
Speaker 1: duped into thinking that the information they're getting is sufficient
Speaker 1: to draw conclusions. And I think about human philosophy, how
Speaker 1: strange it is. I mean, we've been asking the same
Speaker 1: bloody questions for thousands of years, thousands of years, no answers,
Speaker 1: no answers. I mean, really that's madness, isn't it. I mean,
Speaker 1: the same thing and expecting a different result. I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean, I know each philosopher tweaks something along the
Speaker 1: way and they think that tweak is going to give
Speaker 1: them a different result. But but it really is. You know,
Speaker 1: a paradigm for madness, if you if you think about
Speaker 1: philosophy in those terms, traditional intentional philosophy for flection on
Speaker 1: the soul um ah. I think that yes simply follows
Speaker 1: from the biological expense of metacognition, so that you can
Speaker 1: have an alien species realize their continuity with nature, but
Speaker 1: there will be some point in their past where they
Speaker 1: assume the same kinds are similar kinds of exceptionalism as
Speaker 1: we have, where they think that they're actually something apart,
Speaker 1: simply because they lack the metacognition ability to actually cognize
Speaker 1: themselves as continuous with their environments. You see, I mean
Speaker 1: think about choice for instance, there's just nothing incredively obvious interest.
Speaker 1: But they're just physically impossible when you consider it in
Speaker 1: light of causal cognition. Um. Like, the reason we believe
Speaker 1: in choices is simply that we have no way of
Speaker 1: intuiting any causal providence for anything that happens inside of
Speaker 1: our beings. And that will be the case for any
Speaker 1: alien species whatsoever. So they're gonna be blind to the
Speaker 1: causal providence that holds them continuous with the greater circuit
Speaker 1: of nature. So and I think you know that that
Speaker 1: first move, the move that humans made, Oh well, we
Speaker 1: must be something apart from nature. We must be something exceptional,
Speaker 1: something outside, transcendent, anomalous, autonymous, what have you. I think
Speaker 1: that is going to be something Any intelligent species, working
Speaker 1: through the bugs of its metacognitive capacities, is going to
Speaker 1: encounter awesome. Now, as as we've been talking about the
Speaker 1: crash scenarios alien philosophy, Uh, it's interesting to to think
Speaker 1: back on the books of the Second Apocalypse Saga and
Speaker 1: you know, and and see how this is utilized throughout
Speaker 1: the books because this fantasy series has been the playground
Speaker 1: for your ideas for so long here and it's generally
Speaker 1: classified as as fantasy. Yourself classified as fantasy. So I
Speaker 1: wanted to ask in your in advance of your recent
Speaker 1: UH A m A on Reddit, you stated quote, if
Speaker 1: God is dead, then fantasy is his grave. Can you
Speaker 1: expand on that for our audience? Um, yes, yes, sure,
Speaker 1: I mean the m A organizers Um. Uh, they give
Speaker 1: you a fact sheet. In the fact sheet, the first
Speaker 1: thing the fact sheet recommends is that you come up
Speaker 1: with some something jaunty and light you introduce your A
Speaker 1: M A. And I'm just such a conturian first thing
Speaker 1: that in my head and uh, but it was Joe
Speaker 1: very serious. At the same time. It's serious insofar as
Speaker 1: it makes a reference, of course to Nietzsa's famous claim
Speaker 1: that God is dead, and that's usually taken as UH
Speaker 1: an emblem for basically the way in which enlightenment, reason
Speaker 1: collapses into nihilism. And uh so, in that sense that
Speaker 1: claim is very serious. If God is dead, then fantasy
Speaker 1: is his grave. Um. If you see the death of
Speaker 1: God as the problem of nihilism, then fantasy actually becomes
Speaker 1: the greatest place in the world to try to understand
Speaker 1: what the role of nihilism in contemporary society is. Fantasy
Speaker 1: worlds are fantasy worlds because they resemble scriptural scriptural worlds.
Speaker 1: The more of your world looks like that a India
Speaker 1: or biblical Israel or or Homeeric, the more readily your
Speaker 1: world will be identify fight as fantasy. Why is that, Well,
Speaker 1: in all worlds, meaning is objective, morality is objective. There's
Speaker 1: a fact of the matter when it comes to right
Speaker 1: or wrong. You know, um uh, intentions are objective. All
Speaker 1: these things have objective existence, and that's what accused them
Speaker 1: as being fantastic. Now that's for me, that's crazy. For me.
Speaker 1: That makes fantasy the canary in the coal mine. Fantasy
Speaker 1: is where we can actually see meaning die in our culture.
Speaker 1: We see all these worlds that science has rendered factually irrelevant,
Speaker 1: you know, recreated over and over and over again for
Speaker 1: the enjoyment and edification of millions millions of readers worldwide,
Speaker 1: and the um uh that statement is just simply meant
Speaker 1: to encapsulate that that, you know, we can look at
Speaker 1: fantasy not as a throwaway, escapist, culturally retrograde uh mode
Speaker 1: of entertainment. You know, that's ideologically tram open, how many
Speaker 1: waves we can look at. Fantasy is actually the very
Speaker 1: cutting edge of where human thought, in nihilism, our own
Speaker 1: the fact of our own material nature come into conflict.
Speaker 1: Fantasy is the spark, you know, when when that flint
Speaker 1: and that iron are struck. So Scott, if you see
Speaker 1: fantasy embodying um some of the meaning structures that we
Speaker 1: used to get from mythology and religion, I wonder if
Speaker 1: you see a kind of parallelism in in modern asy
Speaker 1: of the different types of meaning and ethical uh structures
Speaker 1: that you would get from different ancient mythology. Is one
Speaker 1: thing that I think of is like the mythological world
Speaker 1: that has a virtue ethic versus the one that has
Speaker 1: a moral ethic. I don't know if you might consider
Speaker 1: this like Greek mythology versus Buddhism or something where wherein
Speaker 1: one you have you know, an ethic that's about being great,
Speaker 1: and then another one in ethic that's about being good.
Speaker 1: Did you see this paralleled in modern fantasy, I mean
Speaker 1: fantasy like any other fictional platform in which to explore ideas.
Speaker 1: Um just really just sort of you know, UM rips
Speaker 1: the windows out and he kicks the doors down, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, you really can go almost any direction you want.
Speaker 1: Stephen Shaviro, who's a uh fantastic cultural uh critic, uh
Speaker 1: who teaches at Wayne State University. He has a book
Speaker 1: called Discognition where he literally um argues that fiction is
Speaker 1: or has become the primary platform for being able to
Speaker 1: explore philosophical ideas. For this very reason, the fact that
Speaker 1: you can actually contrast the virtue ethics to a more
Speaker 1: authoritarian ethics, the fact that you can ah ask questions
Speaker 1: like what is the meaning of life without it just
Speaker 1: simply collapsing into a joke. Only what happen it's outside
Speaker 1: of fiction, it seems, Um. I mean, either you think
Speaker 1: of meaning of life? What part of the bookstore you
Speaker 1: go to to discover the meaning of life? You don't
Speaker 1: go to the science section, you don't put to the
Speaker 1: philosophy section. You go to the new wage called section.
Speaker 1: Um fiction gives you that freedom to actually show that no,
Speaker 1: I don't care what your a priori intuitions tell you,
Speaker 1: we can actually build a plausible narrative as to you know,
Speaker 1: what would come of the depth of meaning for instance. Um,
Speaker 1: it just provides a platform that allows you to blow
Speaker 1: past all of these philosophical constraints and explore things without
Speaker 1: having to worry about being lectured by pendance, you know,
Speaker 1: on on your ignorance regarding to sort that. All right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we're gonna jump right back in to the conversation. Now, Scott,
Speaker 1: you've you've mentioned that, among other works, Frank Herbert's done
Speaker 1: influence your your fantasy fiction. What's your take on Frank's
Speaker 1: run of Doom books and were there any essons there
Speaker 1: that informed your own world building and approach to a
Speaker 1: multi volume series. Yeah, and this is a very good question,
Speaker 1: I mean, because it actually my my experience reading Dune
Speaker 1: probably is one of the has had the biggest influence
Speaker 1: on my UM discipline writing these books over over the
Speaker 1: past decade. Um. I mean, so my experience reading Dune
Speaker 1: was I read Dune blew me away, absolutely blew me away,
Speaker 1: and so what do what do I do? I go
Speaker 1: out and it buy Children at Dune. I quoted by
Speaker 1: God Emperor in Dune Messiah and I read in order
Speaker 1: and God Emperor okay, but he lost me on and yah,
Speaker 1: And I could just feel that, Uh. I just had
Speaker 1: a feeling that he had kind of lost focus. Uh
Speaker 1: lost the spark that drove the original vision. And so
Speaker 1: for me, reading Doone was sort of a process of
Speaker 1: being disappointed in in Um what I thought was his
Speaker 1: commitment to to the vision. And so when I set
Speaker 1: out and started these books, I'll never forget. I mean
Speaker 1: darkness that came before I had come out with Think
Speaker 1: was two thousand four, two thousand three, and I found
Speaker 1: myself having lunch with one of my idols, Uh as
Speaker 1: a younger man. Anyways, Um guy K and we're on Uh.
Speaker 1: We're in Greektown in Toronto, and he asked me about
Speaker 1: my next book and I told him as a sequel,
Speaker 1: and he said, well, how many sequels do you have planned?
Speaker 1: And I said, well, I think nine and he literally
Speaker 1: said the last thing. This is another multi volume epic fantasy.
Speaker 1: And no, my my heart did not think to the
Speaker 1: through the bottom of my shoe, I said, no, I
Speaker 1: think that what the world really needs is a multi
Speaker 1: volume ethics fantasy that does not lose sight of its
Speaker 1: vision guide and hum. And so that's the thing I mean.
Speaker 1: And I was a young writer writing The Prince of
Speaker 1: Nothing and The Warrior Prophet, I mean, I was teaching
Speaker 1: at the time, and uh, the thousand fol thought even
Speaker 1: more so, I really felt the pressure to actually write
Speaker 1: those books, um inside of my delivery dates. And uh um,
Speaker 1: I think both those books actually suffer for it, and
Speaker 1: I think the vision suffered for it. I still think
Speaker 1: I still love the books, but I would love to
Speaker 1: rewrite them as well. Um. Moving into The Aspect Emperor,
Speaker 1: I decided, no, I mean that's a problem. I committed
Speaker 1: to the vision in the very beginning, and that means
Speaker 1: I just like the vision called the call the Shocks,
Speaker 1: and so you know, with the judging Eye from the
Speaker 1: White Luck Warrior, and then of course the final volume
Speaker 1: of The Aspect Emperor having into two, that was just
Speaker 1: exactly what had happened, you know. Rather than worry about
Speaker 1: what my agent would say or what my editors would say,
Speaker 1: and I hate to say it, my my readers, I
Speaker 1: thought you know what, everyone will be better served if
Speaker 1: the vision is better served, because really, that's what people
Speaker 1: are signing on for. They want to follow this story,
Speaker 1: one story all the way through to the conclusion. They
Speaker 1: don't want it to turn into a different story. They
Speaker 1: don't want it to suffer because of my you know,
Speaker 1: I mean I spent ten thousand hours with these characters.
Speaker 1: I hate them at times. You know, readers, readers spend
Speaker 1: a few dozen hours with them, and they don't get
Speaker 1: tired of them the way a writer does. And so, um,
Speaker 1: really all along that that experience reading Dune is really
Speaker 1: sort of informed my decision making. You know, if I'm
Speaker 1: hating this character, I'll stop writing. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: force it, right, I know, I love that character. I'm
Speaker 1: just tired of that character right now. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to invent a new character, right because I'd just be
Speaker 1: freshening freshening things up for me, my writer, my readers,
Speaker 1: they don't want a new character. They just want to
Speaker 1: see what happens to this character, this beloved character or
Speaker 1: hated character or what have you. And U um, yeah,
Speaker 1: so my whole m o kind of became one of
Speaker 1: sit back, let the story tell itself the way and
Speaker 1: needs to be told, and I think that's part of
Speaker 1: the reason why I just feel so supremely confident in
Speaker 1: these final two books. I know these people who disagree,
Speaker 1: there always is, but but I really feel like, I
Speaker 1: really feel like I accomplished that the promise I made
Speaker 1: to ay all those years back in Greek Camp, well,
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed the most recent one, and I'm looking
Speaker 1: forward very much to The Unholy Consult coming out the summer. Correct. Yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: hopefully you agree with me. Hopefully you think it you
Speaker 1: think it works. So the Rooky series, right, I mean
Speaker 1: I was certainly. I always feel it's it's a risky
Speaker 1: scenario reading one of your books, because I don't know
Speaker 1: to what extent You're going to damage my psyche a
Speaker 1: little bit, you know, or force me. There's so much
Speaker 1: fantasy takes one out of oneself, you know, and uh,
Speaker 1: and it serves as as at times just pure escapism,
Speaker 1: but that your work always manages to sort of do
Speaker 1: both at the same time. So I'm able to to
Speaker 1: escape into a dark, rich imagined world, but then also
Speaker 1: you're forcing me to ask, at times troubling questions about myself.
Speaker 1: And about humanity in general. That's the goal. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's just what you just said there. That's writer's gold.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm aiming for. What I'm trying to always
Speaker 1: trying to do, is to try to uh immerse and
Speaker 1: and push out at the exact same time. That's stuff.
Speaker 1: It doesn't work for a lot of readers. It's true.
Speaker 1: Now you've mentioned in interviews before how you might have
Speaker 1: written some aspects of neuropath differently if you've finished it
Speaker 1: after the birth of your daughter. Has becoming a father
Speaker 1: affected the arc of the Second Apocalypse saga? Um, well,
Speaker 1: I certainly hope not. I mean through the Second Apocalypse saga. Uh.
Speaker 1: The the idea came to me when I was seventeen
Speaker 1: years old, the basic narrative idea, and it's actually remarkably unchanged.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's given the fact that it's you know,
Speaker 1: sort of soaked up so much of my education basically,
Speaker 1: you know, all those years in university, you know, studying literature,
Speaker 1: and then all those years studying uh history, philosophy, and
Speaker 1: then all these years now soaking up cognitive science. Um,
Speaker 1: it's still that that narrative which ends at the end
Speaker 1: of the Unholy Consult is still the same. So I
Speaker 1: even dug out for the for a couple of the
Speaker 1: final scenes of Dann Holy Console. I even dug out
Speaker 1: material that I had written almost twenty years ago to
Speaker 1: rework to put into the end of the book, and
Speaker 1: that was really exciting for me. I mean it, uh,
Speaker 1: the fact that you know, when you aim at a destination,
Speaker 1: at a far far away destination, um, and when the
Speaker 1: journey is a sort of fraud with reversals in this direction,
Speaker 1: as as this journey has been for me, um, when
Speaker 1: you actually arrive at your destination, and sometimes wondered this
Speaker 1: must be what a nuclear missile feels like when it
Speaker 1: actually hits its target. I mean, it just doesn't seem
Speaker 1: possible that you can actually arrive at the place you
Speaker 1: set out to arrive. And Uh, I really feel as
Speaker 1: though I've closed um the deal when it comes to
Speaker 1: that first seventeen year old idea. So there's more to come.
Speaker 1: There's more to come yet. But I'm interested in something
Speaker 1: you mentioned briefly in the paper, which is Susan Schneider's
Speaker 1: idea that if we encounter alien intelligence, it's less likely
Speaker 1: to be biological intelligence and more likely to be machine
Speaker 1: intelligence or or what you might call more broadly post
Speaker 1: biological intelligence. UM. So I assumed, based on the way
Speaker 1: you mentioned it that you agree with that. Would you
Speaker 1: agree with that? And what do you think about it? Oh? Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I think I think the argument is pretty iron clad.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you just look at where we stand
Speaker 1: in terms of our ability to travel between the stars,
Speaker 1: and where we stand in terms of our ability to
Speaker 1: manipulate our biology and uh basically offload um cognition onto
Speaker 1: our Machini artifacts, I think it seems pretty clear that
Speaker 1: the transition from biology to post biology is actually something
Speaker 1: that becomes more technically feasible um earlier than interstellar travel.
Speaker 1: Another question that that comes to mind, and this might
Speaker 1: be just two specific and I'm, you know, tugging at
Speaker 1: something that's supposed to remain mysterious. But there's a there's
Speaker 1: a scene in I believe it's The Judging I where
Speaker 1: the characters are walking through the ruins of the non men,
Speaker 1: and it's in and and you do a wonderful job
Speaker 1: just explaining the their artistic style, their their use of sculpture.
Speaker 1: And I believe it's mentioned that the non men cannot
Speaker 1: see paintings UH, and that one of the reasons they
Speaker 1: they depend on sculpture. UM. Can you elaborate on that
Speaker 1: at all? Or is that meant to be sort of
Speaker 1: a mysterious cipher You always want to distinguish your your
Speaker 1: various UH races and species that you create in UH
Speaker 1: specul fiction and UM. This notion of non men not
Speaker 1: being able to see visual two dimensional visual representations is
Speaker 1: sort of like a textured textural detail along those lines,
Speaker 1: But it actually does have a rationale. I me the
Speaker 1: idea is that we just think of the cavemen in
Speaker 1: Chauvais in France actually drawing you know, their uh, charcoal
Speaker 1: stained fingers across the cave wall for the first time
Speaker 1: and realizing you can see shape in that in the
Speaker 1: experiment right turns out for umans we can actually see
Speaker 1: horses and bison and figures of humans. UH. Given very
Speaker 1: very small amount of visual information, finger coverage in charcoal
Speaker 1: dragged across the cave wall is enough for us to
Speaker 1: be able to recognize a lion or a horse. UM.
Speaker 1: Famous horses of Chauveis are are a wonderful example of
Speaker 1: UM for non men. Their ability you know, to cue
Speaker 1: demission of scenes. UM just simply requires a bit more information,
Speaker 1: in particular requires um death information so they can see
Speaker 1: representation the way weekend. They just have difficulty with two
Speaker 1: dimensions just simply because those the amount of information that
Speaker 1: is given in a two dimensional representation comp isn't it
Speaker 1: enough to actually cue the cognitive systems involved in recognizing
Speaker 1: horses and tigers and what have you. So so there's
Speaker 1: a kind of that. I mean, it's just one of
Speaker 1: many ways in which you know, my blind brain theory,
Speaker 1: uh uh um has sort of nuance the background and
Speaker 1: the landscape of of the novels and the blind brain theory.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you want to elaborate here, but
Speaker 1: this is basically the idea of getting down to the
Speaker 1: idea that the brain cannot perceive itself and that's one
Speaker 1: of the big stumbling blocks to understanding ourselves in our
Speaker 1: place in the world. Right, Yeah, exactly. It's just basically
Speaker 1: the description I gave earlier, this notion of of meta
Speaker 1: cognition being largely almost utterly blind as to the brain
Speaker 1: zone operations and UM, and more importantly being blind to
Speaker 1: that blindness and so being convinced that it actually can
Speaker 1: see its own operations. And then that's the explanation for why,
Speaker 1: you know, we have this madness called philosophy where we
Speaker 1: simply asked the same questions over and over again, assuming
Speaker 1: there's answers and during their proves I know in past
Speaker 1: interviews you've you've referred to the ending of Neuropath, which
Speaker 1: no spoilers for anyone, but it's a it's a particularly
Speaker 1: bleak ending in many ways. And you've you've you said
Speaker 1: that you might have written that differently if you had
Speaker 1: written it after the birth of your daughter. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: almost certainly would have written it differently, almost certainly would have.
Speaker 1: It's a hard book to read it. I mean I
Speaker 1: had a fan like I don't recommend the book. Actually,
Speaker 1: I've stopped recommending the book to people. I've had good
Speaker 1: friends email me, you know, give waited a couple of
Speaker 1: years before reading the book and read the book, and
Speaker 1: they basically said, I wish I hadn't read this book.
Speaker 1: I've been feeling depressed for weeks. I found it at
Speaker 1: the depressing but fulfilling reading. Um. I do occasionally recommend
Speaker 1: it to people who I think you gave me a copy.
Speaker 1: Rob to do now the speaking of parenthood and dark stories. Uh.
Speaker 1: I assume reading plays a big role in your household.
Speaker 1: What's the darkest children's book you've found yourself reading to
Speaker 1: your daughter? Uh? In, is there a particular genre book
Speaker 1: you're looking forward to being able to read with her? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm looking forward to being able to read
Speaker 1: The Hobbit with her. I mean The Hobbit was a
Speaker 1: watership read for me, and uh, the idea of actually
Speaker 1: being able to share that with my daughter makes me
Speaker 1: feel giddy. I mean, it's crazy about with the balloons
Speaker 1: and streamers up or something like that. But it's a
Speaker 1: pretty dark book. But I mean all the all the
Speaker 1: other's grown fairy tales, mother Goose fairy tales. I mean,
Speaker 1: we have um a couple of collections and I read
Speaker 1: them to my daughter, and my wife would prefer that
Speaker 1: I not read them, just simply because they're so strange
Speaker 1: and uh and violent, right, I mean, Hunsel and Gretel,
Speaker 1: Holy moly, what a story that is. And uh uh,
Speaker 1: I worry that as a culture, we're really we're really
Speaker 1: losing faith in our children's ability to deal with darkness
Speaker 1: and unsettling thoughts. And I actually think that that's a,
Speaker 1: that's a huge social problem moving forward. I remember yearning
Speaker 1: for that kind of stuff when I was a kid.
Speaker 1: I remember when I was a little kid, I wanted
Speaker 1: more dark. I was like not satisfied with how dark
Speaker 1: and disturbing and weird the children's stories I was supplied with.
Speaker 1: Were asked me what my favorite Bible story is? What
Speaker 1: is your favorite Bible story? Sodom and God mora? I
Speaker 1: just thought that was the coolest story ever. I mean, um,
Speaker 1: obviously it's not a cool story at all. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: and plus they have these illustrated a daughters seducing him
Speaker 1: in the cave afterwards. I mean to sticks down right
Speaker 1: creepy story. But those are the kinds of things I liked,
Speaker 1: And I mean I grew up in religious households. Those
Speaker 1: are the things that I caught my attention held it alright.
Speaker 1: So one last question here, and this is just an
Speaker 1: idol curiosity here. So I've long wondered if a Wrong
Speaker 1: and the Rocks the last living in Karoa in your books?
Speaker 1: Are they at all a wink at Kang and Kodos
Speaker 1: on the Simpsons, Not that they have anything to do
Speaker 1: with each other except the fact that there are pairs
Speaker 1: of aliens. Yeah, yeah, no they're not. But it's pretty
Speaker 1: hard to move forward. Thanks you that a little piece
Speaker 1: of pollution there, and mean, well, maybe it just changes
Speaker 1: the Simpsons. It elevates the Simpsons rather than Yeah, as
Speaker 1: if Simpsons is the only immovable object in the universe.
Speaker 1: I think it doesn't in anyways. It's funny like I
Speaker 1: stopped reading um uh messageward banter on my books and stuff.
Speaker 1: It's just just simply um to keep too late clean.
Speaker 1: I just find you know, people, people will so will
Speaker 1: mention something to you and it'll be like, hey, that's
Speaker 1: a great bloody idea, actually better than the idea, and uh,
Speaker 1: I mean it may feel that way. Your own idea
Speaker 1: is always feel old to me, right, Um. I just
Speaker 1: try to shelter myself from that a bit so I
Speaker 1: don't get too much interference when it comes to following
Speaker 1: through the original vision that I went on and on about.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I can imagine where you definitely want to
Speaker 1: plow ahead as much as possible towards that original vision
Speaker 1: without polluting it in any way. Basically interaction. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean the big thing is is like I say, you
Speaker 1: spend ten thousand hours with these characters and this narrative
Speaker 1: and stuff, and the tendency is to you make it broke, right.
Speaker 1: I Mean, there's just so many ways in which an
Speaker 1: author's exhaustion with the project ends up creeping into that project.
Speaker 1: And why For me, so much of it just comes
Speaker 1: down to U being mindful of my own exhaustion, I mean,
Speaker 1: how I feel about my own material, and you know,
Speaker 1: making sure I'm in the right place while I'm working
Speaker 1: on the books so that the books actually express, you know,
Speaker 1: what it does I wantcome to. Well, on that note,
Speaker 1: thanks again for chatting with us, for answering our questions.
Speaker 1: Your books are all available right now, the all the
Speaker 1: books in the Second Apocalypse Saga, Disciple of the Dog Neuropath,
Speaker 1: you know, for the Brave I guess based on our
Speaker 1: discussions of it here, and the Unholy Consult. The latest
Speaker 1: book in the Second Apocalypse Saga coming out this summer.
Speaker 1: This summer. Yeah, and it's the culmination of what feels
Speaker 1: like a lifelong quest for me now so basically uh
Speaker 1: adolescent narrative that I've managed to pursue through you know,
Speaker 1: graduate degrees and job changes. Strangely enough, the world, the
Speaker 1: world just keeps trying to make my horrific vision come true.
Speaker 1: So it feels like it's only become more relevant um
Speaker 1: now than than it was back at the turn of
Speaker 1: the millennium when I first got serious about publishing. And
Speaker 1: if anyone went out there wants to follow you, you're
Speaker 1: you're on social media, but also your blog Three Pound
Speaker 1: Brain correct is is a great way to sort of
Speaker 1: keep up with your regularly plice to to pester me
Speaker 1: with with questions and whatnot, or just simply shoot shoot
Speaker 1: me an email. You'll find my email on my blog.
Speaker 1: But just google three Pound Brain and Baker and you'll
Speaker 1: you'll find yourself at my profane doorstep soon enough. All right,
Speaker 1: Thanks Scott, Thanks Scott, Thank you guys. So there you
Speaker 1: have it. Thanks again to our Scott Baker for taking
Speaker 1: time out of his day to chat with us about
Speaker 1: alien philosophy and his dark fantasy works. It was really
Speaker 1: a treat for me to finally chat with our Scott
Speaker 1: Baker throw out a few questions here and there. I
Speaker 1: tried to limit my geeky questions in this interview, but
Speaker 1: I worked in one or two there again. The first
Speaker 1: six books in the Second Apocalypse Saga are out there,
Speaker 1: and the next one, The Unholy Consult, comes out July
Speaker 1: eleven from Overlook Press. If you wanna learn more about
Speaker 1: our Scott Baker and follow him, his blog A three
Speaker 1: Pound Brain is our s Baker dot WordPress dot com.
Speaker 1: He's also online our Scott Baker dot com and if
Speaker 1: you want to follow him on Twitter. He is the
Speaker 1: Devil's Chirp. That's just one word, of course, the Devil's chirp.
Speaker 1: And finally, I want to drive him again that one
Speaker 1: of the things that I really love about his work
Speaker 1: is that I'm able to, on one hand, escape into
Speaker 1: just this this wonderful dark fantasy world with all of
Speaker 1: its magic and intrigue, all of it just just so
Speaker 1: perfectly created for the reader. And then at the same
Speaker 1: time he's throwing in all of these, uh, these thought
Speaker 1: provoking notions about human experience and identity, motivation and cognition.
Speaker 1: It really, you know, challenges you and and and forces
Speaker 1: you to to to look hard into the mirror. And
Speaker 1: I wanted to just share one more quick quote from him.
Speaker 1: This is from his book The Judging I uh that's
Speaker 1: in the Dark the Second Apocalypse saga. He says, I
Speaker 1: remember asking a wise man once, why do men fear
Speaker 1: the dark? Because darkness, he told me, is ignorance made visible.
Speaker 1: And to men despies ignorance, I asked, no, he said,
Speaker 1: they prized it above all things, all things, but only
Speaker 1: so long as it remains invisible. All right, and uh again.
Speaker 1: We'll throw all those links on the landing page for
Speaker 1: this episode at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: And if you want to check out more of our work,
Speaker 1: that's where you'll also find it. You'll find blog posts,
Speaker 1: you'll find podcasts, you'll find videos, links out to our
Speaker 1: various social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Instagram.
Speaker 1: We're on all those things. And if you want to
Speaker 1: make your ignorance visible to us, you can email us
Speaker 1: at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Isn't
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com? They believe the differ