Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how stup
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe
Speaker 1: McCormick and Robert. I've got a question for you about
Speaker 1: childhood divination practices. Did you ever do this thing when
Speaker 1: you were a kid that I definitely did where you
Speaker 1: were worried about some question you wanted an answer like
Speaker 1: am I going to get in trouble because I said
Speaker 1: butt head on the playground? And what you do is
Speaker 1: you go to some book, probably the Bible or any book,
Speaker 1: but especially the Bible, and you just open to a
Speaker 1: random page and you close your eyes and you put
Speaker 1: your finger on a verse, and then you look down
Speaker 1: and it says, now Jehoram, the son of Ahab, began
Speaker 1: to reign over Israel and Samaria the eighteenth year of Jehosaphat,
Speaker 1: king of Judah, and reigned twelve years. That's the problem
Speaker 1: about randomly generated Bible quote patients is that you might
Speaker 1: get something really juicy and thoughtful and helpful. You might
Speaker 1: get something that's just an incident of hideous violence from
Speaker 1: the ancient past or some sort of of psychedelic prophecy,
Speaker 1: you're very likely to get a list of progen a
Speaker 1: or something like that, exactly. Yeah, and now I never
Speaker 1: I don't think I ever did this with the intent
Speaker 1: of getting some sort of meaning or guidance from the book.
Speaker 1: But I certainly did it out of out of boredom
Speaker 1: at times, because growing up in church, you're not everything
Speaker 1: going on up there is going to be really interesting
Speaker 1: to a young person. So you you only have so
Speaker 1: many things you can turn to. You can poke around
Speaker 1: in the hymnal, you can poke around in the Bible,
Speaker 1: or you can doodle a little bit on the program,
Speaker 1: but you can only get away with so much of that.
Speaker 1: So you turn to the Bible, and there's there's a
Speaker 1: lot of of interesting stuff in there, a lot of
Speaker 1: boring stuff in there, just depending on where your fingertip
Speaker 1: happens to land. Well, yeah, just after that verse I mentioned.
Speaker 1: I mentioned verse from Second Kings because it seems like
Speaker 1: very often when you split the Bible in half, you
Speaker 1: go some where like in the later Middle Old Testament,
Speaker 1: with a lot of that those kinds of verses that
Speaker 1: are not super helpful. But right after that you'd get
Speaker 1: and he wrought evil in the side of the Lord,
Speaker 1: but not like his father and like his mother, for
Speaker 1: he put away the image of Baal that his father
Speaker 1: had made. Somehow that seems a little more relevant to
Speaker 1: saying butt head on the playground, maybe like the but
Speaker 1: the ble is the butt head you've done something worthy
Speaker 1: of guilt. Yeah, you simply miscast your initial divination there,
Speaker 1: you know, like you just needed to be a one
Speaker 1: degreeed to laughter the right. Well, it highlights the fact
Speaker 1: that some divination actually does feel more relevant than other divination,
Speaker 1: even though we would probably say that no divination actually
Speaker 1: has access to future or special knowledge, right, Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: when one example that comes to mind that lines up
Speaker 1: with this is is something I used to do as
Speaker 1: an adult, is that we just randomly pull up a
Speaker 1: date on the writer's Almanac and see what the poem
Speaker 1: for that day happened to be. Uh. This is was
Speaker 1: a radio program about literary history, and each day that
Speaker 1: they aired it, it would have a certain poem by
Speaker 1: by you know, a poet living or dad. You know,
Speaker 1: it varied, and since each poem is generally going to
Speaker 1: speak to the human condition in in some way, shape
Speaker 1: or form, there's almost always going to be something you
Speaker 1: can gain from. It's something you can compare to your
Speaker 1: own experience, and at times that might feel rather poignant
Speaker 1: and perfect and just cosmically aligned. And because we have
Speaker 1: such powers of interpretation, we can very easily do that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like if I had been trying
Speaker 1: really hard, I wouldn't need like a good verse like
Speaker 1: the one about baal and reeking wickedness, And I wouldn't
Speaker 1: even need a good poem. I could probably make some
Speaker 1: kind of sense out of that weird lineage passage, right,
Speaker 1: And you could make sense out of pretty much any
Speaker 1: poem they throw at you, right, yeah, Yeah, if you
Speaker 1: if you try hard enough, if you sort of twist
Speaker 1: the meaning enough, you can you can find something in
Speaker 1: just about any poem to apply to you. And certainly
Speaker 1: you see plenty of examples of pastors and other clergical
Speaker 1: individuals out there who who are following, say a liturgical calendar,
Speaker 1: and they have a certain passage that they're given for
Speaker 1: a given Sunday that they have to transform into a message.
Speaker 1: And UH, as a skilled preacher, will be able to
Speaker 1: do that. But in a divinatory context, I wonder, why
Speaker 1: are we so good at this? And why do we
Speaker 1: keep doing it. Why are we so intolerant of uncertainty
Speaker 1: that throughout history we always keep coming back to these
Speaker 1: methods of seeking secret information from outside ourselves. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: the thing that we fear the most in life, and
Speaker 1: yet we summon it in trying to figure out how
Speaker 1: we're going to tackle uncertainty. Yeah, and also like, why
Speaker 1: do we keep doing it on the assumption, like you
Speaker 1: and I, I know are not going to be advocating
Speaker 1: the magic powers of any divination method in this episode,
Speaker 1: So on the assumption that the information provide through divination
Speaker 1: is no better than chance at being correct, why do
Speaker 1: we keep doing it? Is there something actually adaptive or
Speaker 1: powerful or useful about this process even though it doesn't
Speaker 1: actually have magic access to the future. Well, it simply
Speaker 1: makes choices easier at times. I think we've all been
Speaker 1: in a situation where, uh, maybe it's not as simple
Speaker 1: as like who who's gonna serve first in a game
Speaker 1: of tennis? But it becomes too much of an effort
Speaker 1: to say, decide who's going to pick up the tab
Speaker 1: at a bar? Right, it becomes too much of an argument.
Speaker 1: There are too many social considerations to take into place. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's much easier just to make it random, just a
Speaker 1: complete random act. Flip a coin, paper rocks, is, there's whatever,
Speaker 1: and just come up with with the with with an answer,
Speaker 1: and then you don't have to think about it anymore.
Speaker 1: You got it. The cognitive load has just been dumped.
Speaker 1: I think that is a great answer, like the laziness perspective,
Speaker 1: and we know mother nature is quite lazy, and anything
Speaker 1: we can do to reduce cognitive loads and take the
Speaker 1: effort out of the process, that can be helpful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's at the end of the day, you have decision
Speaker 1: fatigue from all the other decisions you've made, and you
Speaker 1: just can't decide if it's going to be, you know,
Speaker 1: macaroni or crab cakes for dinner. Let randomness, Let let
Speaker 1: a coin, a flip of a coin decided for me.
Speaker 1: And yet there are some contradictions in there, aren't there?
Speaker 1: Because that seems to make sense for trivial decisions where
Speaker 1: you don't want to be bothered by stuff. But people
Speaker 1: use divination methods and you know, casting of lots and
Speaker 1: all all that kind of stuff and opening the Bible
Speaker 1: to a random verse to make the most important decisions
Speaker 1: in their lives. That that's almost when you've most find
Speaker 1: yourself seeking this, when you're really desperate, when you really
Speaker 1: need to know something, when you really don't know what
Speaker 1: to do about something important, then people seek the wisdom
Speaker 1: of the gods. That's an interesting contradiction, and I want
Speaker 1: to come back to that later. A second thing that
Speaker 1: I think is interesting give in the idea that we're
Speaker 1: not going to be advocating that any books have magic
Speaker 1: powers or have the power to predict to the future,
Speaker 1: is that, nevertheless, some divination methods seem better, more powerful,
Speaker 1: and more profound than others, even though none of them
Speaker 1: are actually magic. For example, your average newspaper horoscope is
Speaker 1: it's kind of hilarious to most of us, right, if
Speaker 1: you've done some research on the forer effect in making
Speaker 1: vague statements that seem like they apply specifically to you,
Speaker 1: but in fact they applied almost everybody. You can see
Speaker 1: these just the newspaper horoscopes just riddled with them, right.
Speaker 1: Or another example would be and there's an even worse
Speaker 1: example because there's even less methodology behind it, but the
Speaker 1: fortune cookie, which would which we've many of us have
Speaker 1: grown up obtaining at Chinese restaurants, is of course, not
Speaker 1: even a legitimate Chinese cultural artifact. Sometimes it delightful. Nevertheless,
Speaker 1: it can't be the life. Well, it can be fun.
Speaker 1: I mean, everybody loves a fortune cookie. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: a cookie and it has this shot of paper in
Speaker 1: it that you can talk about with your friends or
Speaker 1: make a joke about. But it's pretty lightweight and inauthentic
Speaker 1: when it comes to considering Chinese divination. Well, to get
Speaker 1: into Chinese divination, I want to say that while we're
Speaker 1: highlighting divination methods that even while we fully acknowledge they're
Speaker 1: not magic and they are really just start effects of
Speaker 1: culture that play on our psychological vulnerabilities, some feel like
Speaker 1: they get at something deeper. And I think, for me,
Speaker 1: the prime example of this would be the Chinese classic
Speaker 1: the Eaching, the Guided Divination Book, also known as the
Speaker 1: Book of Changes, and that's what we're gonna be talking
Speaker 1: about today now. I do want to drive home that
Speaker 1: if you ever looked up the Eaching and started to
Speaker 1: read about it, and then you get intimidated by this
Speaker 1: big block of symbols, well trust us, because we're gonna
Speaker 1: we're gonna guide you through the Eaching here and We're
Speaker 1: not gonna get too far into the weeds on the
Speaker 1: particulars of Chinese divination and sorcery, right, we wanted to
Speaker 1: look more at like the idea of the eaching, how
Speaker 1: it works in its most basic sense, how it fits
Speaker 1: into the psychology of the human practice of divination, and
Speaker 1: why so many thinkers, from ancient Chinese philosophers to Carl
Speaker 1: Young have believed it to contain such profundity despite the
Speaker 1: fact that it doesn't actually predict the future. It doesn't.
Speaker 1: It's not magic. It doesn't predict the future. But it
Speaker 1: does do something interesting. And what does it do well?
Speaker 1: As the name implies that it speaks to change in
Speaker 1: our lives and in the universe, as the as the
Speaker 1: title the Book of Changes implies. Uh, there's a There's
Speaker 1: a wonderful quote I want to read from Alan Watts,
Speaker 1: who who spoke and wrote at length about the eaching.
Speaker 1: He said, it's almost a mapping of the thinking processes
Speaker 1: of man. Yeah, he has a lot of interesting thoughts
Speaker 1: about it, especially in the context of thinking about the
Speaker 1: Yin and yang imagery in Chinese culture. But Watts also
Speaker 1: compares the functioning of the each ing to the logic
Speaker 1: gates to the you know, buy aary logic in technology, Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: I mean, in essence, the Book of Changes is just
Speaker 1: an ancient book of Chinese divination. Right. You seek the
Speaker 1: answer to a question, and you have a process and
Speaker 1: the book will help give you some kind of answer. Right.
Speaker 1: But it's also much of the more than that, and
Speaker 1: it I think it lacks a true parallel in the
Speaker 1: West in terms of its influence. So one could perhaps
Speaker 1: make a case for the Bible. But the Bible is
Speaker 1: not explicitly intended as a book of divination, right, But
Speaker 1: I'm speaking beyond like near divination, just in terms of
Speaker 1: how important the work is. It's like a root text
Speaker 1: for a civilization. It's it's hard. I mean, you could
Speaker 1: make a case for the Bible, but but but I
Speaker 1: feel like that's not really a direct one to one
Speaker 1: between the I Ching and whatever version of the Bible
Speaker 1: one is presenting. So this is a classical text that
Speaker 1: was recorded in the ninth century BC, and it contains
Speaker 1: the verses that incorporate divination terms and images. It was
Speaker 1: used by diviners to read sticks or stalks of yarrow
Speaker 1: plant that were cast six at a time so that
Speaker 1: they fell in the shape of a hexagram, and the
Speaker 1: practice would have involved lore, art, and mathematics in interpreting it.
Speaker 1: So it's considered one of the great five Chinese classical texts,
Speaker 1: and and it serves as a root text for both
Speaker 1: Taoism and Confucianism, and beyond that, it also influenced Chinese
Speaker 1: science and states craft. Uh. In other words, it's a
Speaker 1: fundamental work of Chinese culture. And in fact, it alone
Speaker 1: among all the Confucian classics, escaped the book burnings of
Speaker 1: Chin Chi Wong, who we recently discussed at link in
Speaker 1: an episode. Do you know why it survived? Is there
Speaker 1: a reasoning behind that or that just an accident? My
Speaker 1: understanding is that there may be more to it, But
Speaker 1: it was it was just such a fundamental text. It
Speaker 1: was just again it was it is a root text.
Speaker 1: You could not just rip it out of the culture,
Speaker 1: no matter how many other things you were ripping apart. So, like,
Speaker 1: even if you're a person who's devoted to a racing
Speaker 1: history and establishing a new world, you there are some
Speaker 1: books that maybe seem so pivotal and so important to
Speaker 1: you as a tool that you can't get rid of them. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's like you can rip down the house, but
Speaker 1: this is the foundation. So German sinologist Richard Wilhelm, who
Speaker 1: lived through ninety he was a key individual in the
Speaker 1: history of Western scholarship on the Eaching, as was his
Speaker 1: son as well. Uh. He wrote that there were pros
Speaker 1: and cons to the book's importance. On one hand, quote
Speaker 1: it forced Chinese philosophical thinking more and more into a
Speaker 1: rigid formalization. Yet he also points out they quote apart
Speaker 1: from this mechanistic number of mysticism, a living stream of
Speaker 1: deep human wisdom was constantly flowing through the channel of
Speaker 1: this book into everyday life, giving to China's great civilization.
Speaker 1: The rightness of wisdom distilled through the ages. Well being
Speaker 1: a book and not just being say, you know, a
Speaker 1: method of casting animal bones or something like that, but
Speaker 1: having written content, we we do have to acknowledge that
Speaker 1: it does contain inherent directional nous, right because it has
Speaker 1: written words. There are things that this book says and
Speaker 1: things that this book does not say. And that's different
Speaker 1: from a totally like a totally free form type of
Speaker 1: divination that could say anything at any time, right right,
Speaker 1: the sort of magic eight ball kind of scenario right, Well, no,
Speaker 1: I mean in a ball has a has a number
Speaker 1: of messages to like the eight ball has written content.
Speaker 1: I guess it's less it's less literary, but no, I
Speaker 1: mean I'm thinking like as opposed to just sitting somewhere
Speaker 1: and saying, like, all right, what is what are the
Speaker 1: gods telling me? That could go in any direction? When
Speaker 1: you've got a book to guide you. The book says
Speaker 1: some things in it and it doesn't say other things
Speaker 1: constrains you, right, So it would be different than say,
Speaker 1: setting in Central Park in New York City and say alright, God,
Speaker 1: give me a sign, and then you look around until
Speaker 1: you notice something that seems like it might be a
Speaker 1: message from the divine And it could be anything. It
Speaker 1: could be a peculiar looking dog, a child looks at
Speaker 1: you with a with a with a weird eye, or
Speaker 1: there's a you know, a large child eating corn on
Speaker 1: the cob. But you know that the portant could be anything.
Speaker 1: But I like where your brain went with that. But
Speaker 1: that was seeing the Robert Lamb reference for our Hodgman fans,
Speaker 1: that was one of the portant City lays out one
Speaker 1: the weird eye or the corn on the corn of
Speaker 1: the cop Okay, yeah, I believe that was one of
Speaker 1: the signs of Ragnarok approaching. Now, is there a hexagram
Speaker 1: in the each ing of the child with the weird eye? Oh?
Speaker 1: I don't know. There might be child with weird eye turning.
Speaker 1: All right, well we should actually explain a little bit
Speaker 1: more of the specifics of how the book works. So
Speaker 1: if you are an ancient Chinese philosopher and you want
Speaker 1: to know something about the future, you want the answer
Speaker 1: to a question in your life, how would you use
Speaker 1: the book? All right? So at this point we really
Speaker 1: just need sort of break down the process of the eaching,
Speaker 1: how it works. So, what's the most basic question you
Speaker 1: could ask of a god or the universe or what
Speaker 1: have you, or say a coin you could ask the
Speaker 1: same question. You could ask it a yes or no question. Yeah,
Speaker 1: basic binary situation here, uh, and we can you can
Speaker 1: ask this a virtually anything. You could stare at the
Speaker 1: park and say, all right, give me a sign God
Speaker 1: you have answer to my question is a yes, and
Speaker 1: then you wait till you see the child with the corn.
Speaker 1: In a way, it's the most efficient sort of information
Speaker 1: dense way of consulting anything, just to ask it yes.
Speaker 1: Or no question right yeah, And at the at the
Speaker 1: heart the Book of Changes comes down to this yes
Speaker 1: no binary. So the cast sticks form lines, and a
Speaker 1: single unbroken line is a yes, while a broken line
Speaker 1: is a no. But pretty early on the ancient diviners
Speaker 1: added additional details to these divined answers a second line,
Speaker 1: so now you could have such answers as essentially yes, yes, no, no, yes, no, no, yes,
Speaker 1: and then a third line produces the eight trigrams. That's
Speaker 1: the that's that's the symbol. When you look at those
Speaker 1: charts of all these weird lines and you're intimidated by
Speaker 1: the by the eaching, that's what you're looking at, the
Speaker 1: trigrams and as as. And also if you've if you've
Speaker 1: ever seen an image of the young symbol and it's
Speaker 1: surrounded by these different line based symbols than those are
Speaker 1: the trigrams. You typically you'll see that on just the
Speaker 1: the the logo for S Martial Arts Studio in any
Speaker 1: given small town in America. M But but that also
Speaker 1: underlines just how widespread these are in Chinese culture and
Speaker 1: things that are inspired by Chinese culture. Would you say
Speaker 1: it's so widespread that it makes it even into lots
Speaker 1: of imagery where the people employing it don't even know
Speaker 1: what it's from. Oh, without doubt. So, as will Ham
Speaker 1: points out, quote, these eight triagrams were conceived as images
Speaker 1: of all that happens in Heaven and Earth. At the
Speaker 1: same time, they were held to be in a state
Speaker 1: of continual transition, one changing into another, just as transition
Speaker 1: from one phenomenon to another is continually taking place in
Speaker 1: the physical world. And that's the central idea of the
Speaker 1: Book of Change, a universe defined by changing transitional states. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would say that it seems that the primary ideas
Speaker 1: within the Book of Changes are duality and binaries, and
Speaker 1: then constant flux between them. Right right there, there are
Speaker 1: two ways things can be, and you're always going back
Speaker 1: and forth between those two ways, right, Does that make sense? Yeah,
Speaker 1: totally so. So again, we have these eight triagrams at
Speaker 1: this point, and then each one takes on additional meanings.
Speaker 1: Uh so, one is the father, the other than mother,
Speaker 1: then first son, second son, third son, and then the
Speaker 1: three daughters. One is Heaven, one is Earth. When his
Speaker 1: thunderwater mountain, wind would fire lake, other attributes such as
Speaker 1: strength or resting or penetration or or joyfulness. And then
Speaker 1: these you take these these tigrooms and then you use
Speaker 1: them in combination with each other, producing a total of
Speaker 1: sixty four signs six lines each. Change one line in
Speaker 1: one of these, and you change the situation they represent, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, such as the earth or thunder. So we're
Speaker 1: left with a series of situations expressed as line based symbols,
Speaker 1: and the movement of these lines change the situation. And
Speaker 1: in response to each situation, there's a right and a
Speaker 1: wrong course of action. And this is where the Book
Speaker 1: of Changes transforms from a mere book of divination to
Speaker 1: a book of wisdom. What should I do about the
Speaker 1: situation just revealed to me? Now that's interesting, So the
Speaker 1: book this is another way in which the content of
Speaker 1: the book actually matters. It's not just a process for
Speaker 1: giving you random answers to yes or no questions. It
Speaker 1: also tells you something about the situation and wreck men's behavior. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty big. It's it's it's not merely revealed fate.
Speaker 1: You have a role to play, and the germinal phase
Speaker 1: and all of this is key. This is when things
Speaker 1: are most susceptible to change, which matches up with our
Speaker 1: experience of reality, you know, and out of this we
Speaker 1: get the idea of the dow the course of things,
Speaker 1: the great stirring represented in the yenyang symbol UH, and
Speaker 1: it was used by sorcerers, diviners, Confucius, Daoist statesman, scientists,
Speaker 1: and more, with writings popping up and vanishing over the
Speaker 1: ages devoted to the various interpretations and new writings, some
Speaker 1: of which we will discuss here, continue to pop up.
Speaker 1: Is new individuals and new cultures discover the Book of Changes.
Speaker 1: All right, on that note, we're going to take a
Speaker 1: quick break, and when we come back we will bust
Speaker 1: out an example of the eaching consultation before discussing it
Speaker 1: in greater depth than alright, we're back, alright, So today
Speaker 1: we've been talking about the eaching, this ancient Chinese method
Speaker 1: of divination, the Book of Changes and UH and some
Speaker 1: interesting psychological characteristics of it, how it works. But we
Speaker 1: we should show you what it feels like to consult
Speaker 1: the eaching and get some results. So one example I
Speaker 1: came up with last night. For a while, I've been
Speaker 1: working on a writing project and I just asked the
Speaker 1: eaching last night whether I would get any good writing done.
Speaker 1: This coming weekend, because you never know is stuff going
Speaker 1: to come up that's gonna draw you away, distract you,
Speaker 1: or am I going to be productive? So I did
Speaker 1: a virtual version that allows you to use virtual coin
Speaker 1: flips to generate the hexagram number, so I didn't actually
Speaker 1: have to flip coins or throw sticks. Yeah, there are
Speaker 1: a number of different websites that allow you to do this,
Speaker 1: and some even give you the choice where you can
Speaker 1: you can physically flip your own coins and record it
Speaker 1: on the website, which if you if you're like me
Speaker 1: and you you play role playing games, you prefer actual
Speaker 1: dice as opposed to just pure like it seems wrong
Speaker 1: to trust the computer world completely. I want my my
Speaker 1: physical uncertainty to take place on the table. Well, there's
Speaker 1: definitely a way in which if you actually believe there's
Speaker 1: something magic about the process, then you people very often
Speaker 1: default to wanting physical tokens for for magical kind of significance.
Speaker 1: It's harder to feel like something magic is happening inside
Speaker 1: the computer just generating random numbers. But either way, let's
Speaker 1: say I don't believe anything magic is going on. I
Speaker 1: don't I use the computer and it generates hexagram eighteen
Speaker 1: repairing decay. So that bodes well for my writing project.
Speaker 1: But okay, so I see repairing decay. Interesting. No, the
Speaker 1: Chinese word here is goo, which is a type of
Speaker 1: venom based poison made from like combining I think scorpions
Speaker 1: in different insects or worms. Yeah. Yeah. Anyone who listened
Speaker 1: to the episode I did with Christian about poisons a
Speaker 1: while back will recognize this term. We discussed it at length.
Speaker 1: This idea that that this mix of magic and actual pharmacology.
Speaker 1: Uh that and sometimes just like pure superstition attached to
Speaker 1: various peoples that they have a magical power of poison
Speaker 1: or google now, but it's also linked to this idea
Speaker 1: of decay. And that's where repairing decay comes in. So
Speaker 1: here's an example of the kind of thing that the
Speaker 1: Book of Changes might say to you if you get
Speaker 1: hexagram eighteen or this is what it will say to
Speaker 1: you in this English translation, work on what has been
Speaker 1: Spoiled has supreme success. It furthers one to cross the
Speaker 1: great water before the starting point three days after the
Speaker 1: starting point three days and then also the wind blows
Speaker 1: low on the mountain the image of decay. Thus the
Speaker 1: superior man stirs up the people and strengthens their spirit.
Speaker 1: I like that there's a little something in there for everybody.
Speaker 1: But I can see where could it definitely can apply
Speaker 1: to a writing project, because the thing that it's I
Speaker 1: instantly think of as well, it sounds like you've got
Speaker 1: editing this this weekend. That sounds like you're you're going
Speaker 1: to do some revisions on your existing work, and maybe
Speaker 1: there's going to be less the striking out into bold
Speaker 1: new territory. I think this example shows some of the
Speaker 1: some of the qualities that I was talking about with
Speaker 1: the eaching at the beginning, and that even though I
Speaker 1: believe that there's nothing magic about it, it's somehow useful
Speaker 1: it it's doing something that other divination practices don't really do.
Speaker 1: And maybe part of that is just spurring lines of
Speaker 1: thought going off in all different directions that allow one
Speaker 1: to consider possibilities of action. All right, well, let's do
Speaker 1: another one, just just totally off the top of my head.
Speaker 1: Maybe a more important questions. Will the werewolves rise up
Speaker 1: tonight to consume? Okay, let's consult. This is going to
Speaker 1: be the electronic version of the eaching, and so I'm
Speaker 1: going to virtually throw the coins, right, it's three coins
Speaker 1: for each line. I believe it's true. Yeah, so you
Speaker 1: have to throw three coins six times. Ah. And the
Speaker 1: arrangement we've gotten sends us to hexagram fifty three chin
Speaker 1: development or gradual progress development. The maiden is given in marriage,
Speaker 1: good fortune, perseverance furthers on the mountain a tree the
Speaker 1: image of development. Thus, the superior man abides in dignity
Speaker 1: and virtue in order to improve the Moray's So, so
Speaker 1: if we were playing a game of werewolf, this would
Speaker 1: there's a lot we could we could we could we
Speaker 1: could gather from this. It seems to imply a certain
Speaker 1: patients and dignity and dealing with the villagers. Uh and uh,
Speaker 1: and in the idea that we're maybe gonna pull this
Speaker 1: off in the end if we don't overreact. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a little haunting because it all these images start
Speaker 1: to suggest a narrative in the mind, which is that
Speaker 1: if the werewolves are out there and they could rise
Speaker 1: up against us tonight, actually they're going to take their
Speaker 1: time and be patient and wait for a better striking position.
Speaker 1: So it might not happen tonight, but it might be
Speaker 1: worse in the long run. For us humans. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: again this is just an off the cuff interpretation, Bye
Speaker 1: bye bye Joe and I. But but clearly someone the
Speaker 1: more skilled with the with the eaching would be going
Speaker 1: would be applying their own wisdom on top of the
Speaker 1: existing wisdom in the literary passage, right, so their whole
Speaker 1: traditions on how to interpret. And there's more text too.
Speaker 1: I'm just reading the little epigraph bits, right, there's more
Speaker 1: text you can consult, and there are traditions of interpretation.
Speaker 1: So hopefully at this point we've given you just just
Speaker 1: a basic idea of the eaching, and certainly feel free
Speaker 1: to play around with any of these websites to get
Speaker 1: a little better idea of how this rolling is taking
Speaker 1: place and what the different trigegrams look like, and then
Speaker 1: reading the passages to get a taste of the of
Speaker 1: the literary message for each one. So one thing I
Speaker 1: think we should look at if we're considering the potential
Speaker 1: adaptive nous of non magical divination systems, or even considering
Speaker 1: the relative merits of the Book of Changes compared to
Speaker 1: other divination systems, is to look at divination generally and
Speaker 1: see where the eaching fits into the map of human
Speaker 1: divination methods. And one of the sources who has actually
Speaker 1: been very useful by coincidence, I guess, or maybe Young
Speaker 1: would say by synchronicity, but certainly by coincidence on this
Speaker 1: topic is Julian Jaynes. Not not so much for his
Speaker 1: bi cameral mind theory, but just he's got a very
Speaker 1: succinct and interesting explanation of the different types of divination
Speaker 1: and how they occur. Yeah, and he's certainly his main
Speaker 1: interest in it was that, as he saw it, this
Speaker 1: was a new way of making decisions by returning to
Speaker 1: the directions of the gods by simple analogy. But but
Speaker 1: even if you totally ignore the bi cameral mind theory,
Speaker 1: I think he's got a pretty good category system for
Speaker 1: how divination takes place in human history. And he picked
Speaker 1: out there are four sorts, right, You've got oh ones,
Speaker 1: you've got sortilage, you've got augury, and you've got spontaneous divination. Now,
Speaker 1: now augury is of course in tailing said put pulling
Speaker 1: the the intestines out of animals, right, that would be
Speaker 1: one type, one type. So you can cast judgments on
Speaker 1: the likelihood of a ranged list of things by for example,
Speaker 1: looking at the livers of chickens or something like that.
Speaker 1: Another category he uses is omens. Omens is the seeking
Speaker 1: of meaningful information in mundane patterns of events in the world.
Speaker 1: So a blackbird landed on my window sill, that means death.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and we're all familiar with these. We still
Speaker 1: are ridiculously susceptible to these. A black cat crosses your path,
Speaker 1: you spec you stepped on a crack. Now your mother
Speaker 1: is in the hospital. Yeah. If a fox runs into
Speaker 1: the public square of the town, will be devastated. That's
Speaker 1: one he sites. So those two you've got. Then you've
Speaker 1: got sortilage, which is the casting of lots, which is
Speaker 1: answering questions or receiving guidance by reference to unpredictable outcomes
Speaker 1: of pseudo random physical events, you know, throwing dice, throwing sticks,
Speaker 1: throwing animal bones, generating random numbers to get answers or
Speaker 1: get some kind of wisdom. And we'll come back to
Speaker 1: this one, yes, And then of course his last category
Speaker 1: is spontaneous divination, which is going to be the most
Speaker 1: free and the most direct, which is just receiving insights
Speaker 1: directly from the gods into the mind of the diviner.
Speaker 1: So this would be like a shower thought would be
Speaker 1: spontaneous divination if if you interpret it, or you could
Speaker 1: compare spontaneous divination to being kind of like omens that
Speaker 1: haven't been pre established. So if like you didn't already
Speaker 1: know that a blackbird means death, you just see a
Speaker 1: thing and you think it means something. You see something
Speaker 1: and you're like, oh, well, that is actually a metaphor
Speaker 1: for what's going on in our country right now, or
Speaker 1: in my life or with my automobile. But so the
Speaker 1: Book of Changes would be an example of swordilage that
Speaker 1: the casting of lots. Right. Yes, I'm going to read
Speaker 1: a passage here from The Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes,
Speaker 1: because I feel like this just really drives at home.
Speaker 1: He says, of sort of edge quote. It consisted of
Speaker 1: throwing marked sticks, stones, bones, or beans upon the ground,
Speaker 1: or picking one out of a group held in a bowl,
Speaker 1: or tossing such markers in the lap of a tunic
Speaker 1: until one fell out. Sometimes it was to answer yes
Speaker 1: or no, at other times to choose one out of
Speaker 1: a group of men, plots or alternatives. But this simplicity,
Speaker 1: even triviality, to us, should not blind us from seeing
Speaker 1: the profound psychological problem involved, as well as appreciating its
Speaker 1: remarkable historic importance. We are so used to the huge
Speaker 1: variety of games of chance, of throwing dice, roulette, wheels, etcetera,
Speaker 1: all of them vestiges of this ancient practice of divination
Speaker 1: by lots, that we find it difficult to really appreciate
Speaker 1: the significance of this practice historically. It is a help
Speaker 1: here to realize that there was no concept of chance
Speaker 1: whatever until very recent times. Therefore, the discovery, how odd
Speaker 1: to think of it as a discovery of deciding an
Speaker 1: issue by throwing sticks or beings on the ground, was
Speaker 1: an extremely momentous one for the future of mankind. For
Speaker 1: because there was no chance, the result had to be
Speaker 1: caused by the gods whose intentions were being divined. Isn't
Speaker 1: that fascinating? The idea that randomness was a discovery in
Speaker 1: history that, uh, I mean, we don't know that for sure,
Speaker 1: but I think that is a reasonable way of interpreting
Speaker 1: what people generally acted like in history. A lot of times,
Speaker 1: if you go back into history, people don't seem to
Speaker 1: believe in coincidence very much. That they believe that like
Speaker 1: if something random happened. It happened because the God's made
Speaker 1: it happen that way. And thus, for example, if you
Speaker 1: and your friends draw straws, as to who's going to
Speaker 1: have to I don't know, do do the unwanted task,
Speaker 1: who's gonna have to sweep up after your poker games? Over,
Speaker 1: the person who draws the short straw is not just
Speaker 1: losing a game of chance. They were chosen by the
Speaker 1: gods to sweep up. It might be a punishment. And
Speaker 1: also the outcomes of all your poker hands were chosen
Speaker 1: by the gods. Yeah, we have no real agency in
Speaker 1: any of this. Now, that draws me to the fact
Speaker 1: that we mentioned earlier. I think that Carl Young was
Speaker 1: interested in the eaching, and for for Carl Young, I
Speaker 1: think the eaching definitely meshed with his idea of the
Speaker 1: concept of synchronicity. Right. Young believed he had a lot
Speaker 1: of essentially magical beliefs, and he believed that there was
Speaker 1: an a causal connecting principle in the universe where events
Speaker 1: could be connected by something other than physical causation. And
Speaker 1: he called that connecting principle synchronicity. Uh, it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of hard to explain exactly what he's saying, because, for example,
Speaker 1: you think about someone and then suddenly the phone rings
Speaker 1: and it's that person, and so he would say, well,
Speaker 1: it's not that your thought caused them to call. But
Speaker 1: he also would not just say well, it's just pure randomness,
Speaker 1: it's pure coincidence. He does think that there's some reason
Speaker 1: that happened, it's just not physical causation, and in that
Speaker 1: he saw that principle at work in the eaching. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, we just to break that down a little bit.
Speaker 1: I feel like we can often break that that down
Speaker 1: that that's supposed synchronicity in our own lives. For instance,
Speaker 1: you're watching a movie or TV show with with a
Speaker 1: significant other and there's some framework, there's some mention or
Speaker 1: symbol or emblem that shows up in the show, and
Speaker 1: since you both have a shared such a shared history,
Speaker 1: shared path, shared live, it's liable to trigger the same
Speaker 1: association in both of your minds at the same time.
Speaker 1: And then one mentions, hey, do you remember that time
Speaker 1: we went to the Turkish restaurant? And then you're like,
Speaker 1: I was just thinking about that Turkish restaurant. But it's
Speaker 1: there's nothing mystical going on. It's just that they're there.
Speaker 1: There's certain things between the two of you that are
Speaker 1: in attainment. Yeah, I think that's one good explanation for
Speaker 1: the feeling of synchronicity. I mean, one thing is just
Speaker 1: so election bias, because like most of the time, synchronicity
Speaker 1: type events are not happening, and maybe when they do
Speaker 1: happen by coincidence, you just happen to notice them and
Speaker 1: they seem very significant, but in fact they're very uncommon.
Speaker 1: Another explanation could be maybe if they are more common,
Speaker 1: then would actually be predicted by random chance. There were
Speaker 1: often hidden causative factors, just like you're talking about. There
Speaker 1: are things that did cause this correlation of events that
Speaker 1: you just can't even imagine, but they are pure mundane
Speaker 1: physical causes. All right, I think we'll take a quick
Speaker 1: break and then when we come back, we will discuss
Speaker 1: some weird and esoteric beliefs about the eaching and then
Speaker 1: maybe try to answer that question of what could the
Speaker 1: adaptive value of a totally non predictive, non magical prediction
Speaker 1: book bank Alright, we're back, all right, So I think
Speaker 1: maybe it's time to talk about the Wizard of Psychedelics. Yes,
Speaker 1: Terrence McKenna, because because we mentioned earlier that various sorcerers,
Speaker 1: sign antis, etcetera. Have taken up the Book of Changes
Speaker 1: over the years and found new spins to take on
Speaker 1: its ancient wisdom. If there is anybody who qualifies as
Speaker 1: a modern wizard or sorcerer, I think maybe Terence McKenna
Speaker 1: I would fit that category best. Oh yeah, yeah. Terence McKinney,
Speaker 1: for anyone who's not familiar, was an American ethnobotanist, mystic,
Speaker 1: psychonautic author, and he lived from nineteen forty six to
Speaker 1: the year two thousand. He was a noted again, a
Speaker 1: noted author, a definite counterculture figure. If you look him
Speaker 1: up on YouTube, for instance, you will find various talks
Speaker 1: by Terence McKenna. Interviews with Terence McKenna. I would say
Speaker 1: he's worth looking up for his talks because even though
Speaker 1: most of the time his talks are full of stuff
Speaker 1: that I think is absolute bs, he's so great to
Speaker 1: listen to. And he and even while he's saying stuff
Speaker 1: that I know is probably not true, it's very it's
Speaker 1: very inspiring of paths of thought to go down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, he's clearly you listen to me, there's there's
Speaker 1: a brilliance to the man. There's a there's a deep
Speaker 1: intelligence Terence McKenna. Uh. And and yet some of the
Speaker 1: theories that he throughout there we're definite suit of science.
Speaker 1: Some are a little more grounded. I guess. I will say,
Speaker 1: we've received a number of suggestions that we cover his
Speaker 1: stoned ape theory of human evolution. So perhaps we'll come
Speaker 1: back at some point and do that, and even do
Speaker 1: a deeper treatment of Terence mckinna's life. Oh yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't write something off just because he said it.
Speaker 1: I just mean that, Like as much as I like
Speaker 1: listening to him most of the time, even though I've
Speaker 1: enjoyed his talk, it's been full of a lot of magic. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And for instance, you will find interviews where he's discussing
Speaker 1: the eaching. And it's interesting because at times he is
Speaker 1: very you know, spot on with with his interpretation of
Speaker 1: the eaching and what it means and now it matches
Speaker 1: up with human experience and and I'll read a quote
Speaker 1: from him in just just a minute. But other times
Speaker 1: he is of course taking it and using it, wrapping
Speaker 1: it up in his what he called novelty theory. So
Speaker 1: he picked up the Book of Changes in the nineties
Speaker 1: seventies following an experience on psilocybin or magic mushrooms, and
Speaker 1: he started looking at the sixty four hexagrams from the
Speaker 1: Kingland's sequence of the of the Eaching. And this, I
Speaker 1: think is often considered like the most traditionally authoritative sequence, Right.
Speaker 1: I'll include an image of the sequence on the landing
Speaker 1: bait for this episode at stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: dot com. But he he basically came to believe that
Speaker 1: the sequence revealed the way time flows through the world,
Speaker 1: with peaks and valleys lining up with major events in
Speaker 1: human history, all of it moving towards the end of
Speaker 1: the time wave, towards the end of time. And guess
Speaker 1: when he figured that was going to be today? No, no,
Speaker 1: we were were tomorrow. No no, we're way past it now.
Speaker 1: But it was November. Yeah, well, I guess, I guess
Speaker 1: that was part of the whole twelve thing, wasn't it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. Consider it's considered one of the major factors there.
Speaker 1: You know that along with various interpretations of the mind calendar. Uh,
Speaker 1: he even had a computer program had lined up with it.
Speaker 1: Time wave zero. Yeah, McKenna did claim that in some
Speaker 1: sense the eaching quote seems to work that quote against
Speaker 1: all rational expectation. The carrying out of this random ritualistic
Speaker 1: activity seems then to give a reading applicable to the
Speaker 1: unique situation. And I would say that hinging on the
Speaker 1: word seems there. I could probably actually agree with that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think that it's actually a magic book,
Speaker 1: that it actually predicts the future, but it does seem
Speaker 1: to provide some kind of value. Yeah, like it cannot
Speaker 1: it obviously cannot be used to actually map out the future,
Speaker 1: but it does line up with our experience of reality
Speaker 1: and our experience of change in time. Yeah. Now he
Speaker 1: went beyond that actually though, which is that McKenna thought
Speaker 1: that the eaching was not just a product of culture,
Speaker 1: but was evidence that the ancient Chinese had some how
Speaker 1: gotten ahead of even today's physicists in coming up with
Speaker 1: what he called an objectively predictive theory of time. Obviously,
Speaker 1: that does not seem very plausible to me, but I'll
Speaker 1: admit it's an interesting idea. It would be a cool
Speaker 1: idea to entertain. Yeah, and when McKinney is talking about
Speaker 1: I mean He's often talking way above my head about it,
Speaker 1: and I think the heads of of of many people
Speaker 1: who are listening to him. Um, But he was not
Speaker 1: approaching it from an area of ignorance. It's it's a
Speaker 1: very complicated theories rolling out here is just ultimately the
Speaker 1: domain of pseudo science or mysticism. But but, but some
Speaker 1: of his his quotes about the eaching I think are
Speaker 1: pretty spot on. Here's one from an interview quote. My
Speaker 1: conclusions looking at the eaching have been that it is
Speaker 1: not possible to know the future. For if it were
Speaker 1: possible to know it, life would be a determinism and
Speaker 1: thinking would be divorced from meaning and we would be
Speaker 1: out of business. But what is possible to know about
Speaker 1: the future is levels of novelty, which future states will
Speaker 1: fulfill by the happenstance of unpredictable events. Now, this is
Speaker 1: a formal well way of saying, we know where the
Speaker 1: road goes, but we don't know what the scenery looks like.
Speaker 1: I feel like there are two different ways of interpreting that.
Speaker 1: One way is to interpret him literally as saying that
Speaker 1: he thinks the teaching does in some sense literally predict
Speaker 1: to the future, in which case, I think he's wrong.
Speaker 1: But if he is saying that it contains insights about
Speaker 1: the way life tends to go, I think you could
Speaker 1: say that that that could be true. Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1: I feel as we've sort of demonstrated, you can pull
Speaker 1: pretty much any of these trigrams out and they will
Speaker 1: match up with experiences we've had, or anxieties we've felt,
Speaker 1: or situations that we've observed in others or read about
Speaker 1: in the history of civilization. But of course this may
Speaker 1: lead many people to ask, well, then, does it have
Speaker 1: any real value beyond just mirror literature, beyond mere uh,
Speaker 1: you know, ancient wisdom in a book? Well? Yeah, And
Speaker 1: also does it have value? We asked this question earlier.
Speaker 1: I think does that have value comparable to other divination
Speaker 1: systems with content like is it actually a better or
Speaker 1: more useful book than say, consulting your horoscope in the newspaper?
Speaker 1: Or are they all just kind of kind of contain
Speaker 1: vague statements about human life that are often going to
Speaker 1: feel applicable to you and give you some kind of
Speaker 1: feeling of knowing how to deal with things that ultimately
Speaker 1: no better than the fortune cookie, which most of the
Speaker 1: time you just toss it out, but one in a
Speaker 1: hundred or two hundred will have some sort of meaning
Speaker 1: and you'll tuck it away in your wallet. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so I think people of a secular, skeptical frame of
Speaker 1: mind about divination would tend to assume that, since there
Speaker 1: is no actual way to see into the future, all
Speaker 1: divination systems are equally useless. They're equally perpetuated by people's
Speaker 1: confirmation bias, in general gullibility. It's kind of like you had,
Speaker 1: you know, if you have several different computer programmers write
Speaker 1: programs to randomly predict the final scores of upcoming football games,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't expect one random score pick or program to
Speaker 1: work any better than any other. Right, they'd all be
Speaker 1: equally useless. But just because people can't actually see into
Speaker 1: the future doesn't mean the different divination methods created by
Speaker 1: different people's are of all the same equal worthless value.
Speaker 1: In a way, I think divination methods, especially the bibliomancy,
Speaker 1: like we've been talking about the eaching, As I said,
Speaker 1: they have content, and that content, even when exerted at random,
Speaker 1: can be on average, more or less insightful about the
Speaker 1: present and the future of the wisdom seeker. So while
Speaker 1: I think McKenna was grossly overstating the case by claiming
Speaker 1: that the eaching is an objective scientific theory of time,
Speaker 1: I think there can be divination systems in which the contents,
Speaker 1: more accurately or less accurately, tend to suggest to people
Speaker 1: valuable insights about their lives and the situations they face.
Speaker 1: And in a way, I think this is kind of
Speaker 1: analogous to the idea that there could be like a
Speaker 1: good palm reader and a bad palm reader. Right in
Speaker 1: both cases, palm reading is pseudoscience or it's magic. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's no correlation between what your palm looks like and
Speaker 1: what your future will be, or there's little correlation. I
Speaker 1: don't know. You might be able to like see somebody's
Speaker 1: rough hands and think you'll probably continue doing a lot
Speaker 1: of work with your hands, but there's not going to
Speaker 1: be much actual correlation there. So the reader has no
Speaker 1: paranormal access to hidden information. But some palm readers are
Speaker 1: going to be better at making correct or insightful statements
Speaker 1: about the person they're reading by using all the standard
Speaker 1: cold reading tricks. You notice body language, you catch hits
Speaker 1: and build on them, and so forth. Or just by
Speaker 1: being a wiser person and having more thoughtful stuff to say. Now,
Speaker 1: a book doesn't have any way of like reading the
Speaker 1: body language of the reader and feeding back off that.
Speaker 1: But some books are written by wiser people who have
Speaker 1: more insights about the way life goes. Then again you
Speaker 1: might wonder, Okay, how could that apply to the eaching
Speaker 1: since it has you know, it tends to trade in
Speaker 1: these like weird, cool, cryptic kind of statements, right, could
Speaker 1: those really be all that insightful? I want to mention
Speaker 1: a personal essay. I read an Eon magazine by a
Speaker 1: fiction writer named Will Buckingham about his personal relationship with
Speaker 1: the Eaching over the years, and he also, in his
Speaker 1: own way kind of like McKenna, claimed that the eaching works,
Speaker 1: but not in a magical sense. And I think the
Speaker 1: most interesting thing he writes in the essay is that
Speaker 1: he thinks the value of the eaching lies not in
Speaker 1: it giving accurate or certain predictions about the future, but
Speaker 1: in providing what he calls better uncertainties. He mentions a
Speaker 1: twelfth century poet and scholar named Yang Wan Lee who wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: the profound implications of the Book of Changes are what
Speaker 1: plunges people of the world into doubts and makes them think.
Speaker 1: And then he writes, I use the eaching not as
Speaker 1: a certain team machine, but as an uncertain team machine
Speaker 1: does solving false certainties. It integrates the fact of unknowing
Speaker 1: into the fabric of my thinking, opening me up to
Speaker 1: hitherto unimagined possibilities, scattering the monotony of my either or
Speaker 1: dilemmas into a myriad of forking paths. I like that,
Speaker 1: and I want to think about that well. To go
Speaker 1: back to your your example of consulting the the eaching
Speaker 1: on your your writing project this weekend, I can imagine
Speaker 1: a situation where one is thinking, is not even entertaining
Speaker 1: the idea of of of doing some revisions you know,
Speaker 1: and then consulting the eaching seems to suggest that you
Speaker 1: should do revisions or you know, and it it makes
Speaker 1: you contemplate a path that you had already decided to
Speaker 1: steer away from, and it makes you reconsider your choices.
Speaker 1: I think that is a profound insight. I want to
Speaker 1: think about the idea of introducing randomness into behavior. So
Speaker 1: most studies show that humans are unable to spontaneous regenerate randomness.
Speaker 1: This is often demonstrated. If you get some people into
Speaker 1: a room and say I want you to create a
Speaker 1: random list of digits, can you do it? Robert, give
Speaker 1: me a random list of digits? Oh? What one, three, six, nine, two, three, eight?
Speaker 1: Not very good? Is it? Well? I don't know. It
Speaker 1: fell random as I was belting it out. But but
Speaker 1: I did also I could I could sense myself sort
Speaker 1: of casting about for numbers. Yeah. Yeah. Most studies find
Speaker 1: that the lists people creative these digits are, in mathematical terms,
Speaker 1: very non random. The brain has what it interprets as
Speaker 1: an internal randomness generator, Like if I ask you to
Speaker 1: say a random word, you'll be able to say a
Speaker 1: word that feels random to you. But in fact it
Speaker 1: might not be so random. It might be actually pretty
Speaker 1: easy to predict what kind of words you're going to say.
Speaker 1: And in the case of listing numbers, it is provably
Speaker 1: very easy to predict what number you're going to say,
Speaker 1: because people have done it with computer models. So I
Speaker 1: want to look at a study from Plos one by
Speaker 1: Mark Andre Schultz at all. What they did in this
Speaker 1: study was that they did this like digit listing thing,
Speaker 1: and they came up with a computer model using a
Speaker 1: principle called Lewenstein dam a rale distance to look at
Speaker 1: a list of supposedly random digits generated by human subject
Speaker 1: and then predict what the next number in the sequence
Speaker 1: would be. The model was able to do this at
Speaker 1: a rate much better than chance. So if the numbers
Speaker 1: were really random, they would have the model would not
Speaker 1: have been able to do any better than chance right,
Speaker 1: and the percentage chance he would expect would be eleven
Speaker 1: percent of the computer model getting the numbers right. But
Speaker 1: in reality, the mean prediction rate of this program was
Speaker 1: twent This means that the lists of digits people generated
Speaker 1: were not random. They contained patterns that the human generators
Speaker 1: were simply not aware of. And it gets worse. The
Speaker 1: patterns were also persons specific. Not only could this computer
Speaker 1: model look at a list of random members generated by
Speaker 1: humans and do significantly better than chance predicting what numbers
Speaker 1: would come next, it could identify patterns unique to each
Speaker 1: individual subject. So like if Dale just said six, you
Speaker 1: can be pretty sure he's about to say three. But
Speaker 1: to extrapolate, isn't a lot of life like this? Like
Speaker 1: you find yourself with the urge to do something spontaneous,
Speaker 1: to seek novelty, But what do you actually do almost
Speaker 1: all the time, Yeah, you fall back on pre existing
Speaker 1: patterns of behavior. Yeah, exactly, you do what you've done before,
Speaker 1: even when you think you're being spontaneous, like this is
Speaker 1: a horrible example, Robert. I know you've had this experience
Speaker 1: I have. Do you ever sit down with somebody and say,
Speaker 1: let's watch a new movie, let's find something new to watch,
Speaker 1: and you go through some complicated, drawn out selection process
Speaker 1: to find a new movie you've never seen before, and
Speaker 1: you start watching it, only to gradually realize, wait a second,
Speaker 1: didn't we try to watch this same movie a few
Speaker 1: years ago and we didn't like it, so we stopped
Speaker 1: halfway through. I've had that experience with other people. I
Speaker 1: tend to remember. It's one of one of the few
Speaker 1: things I can I can count on myself to remember,
Speaker 1: is whether I have seen a film or tried to
Speaker 1: watch it before. But but as far as the long,
Speaker 1: drawn out selection process, certainly, there's so many times where
Speaker 1: you end up just scrolling through Netflix or Hulu until
Speaker 1: you just you just sort of time out on it.
Speaker 1: You give up, and you just pull up something that
Speaker 1: you were already watching, and maybe we weren't that into
Speaker 1: or just something you've seen before, right, But so this
Speaker 1: is just about what to watch, and even this shows
Speaker 1: that we are so much more patterned and predictable even
Speaker 1: when we're trying to seek spontaneity. Of course, randomness and
Speaker 1: novelty are so much more important than that, and there's
Speaker 1: so much more important than just finding an interesting new movie.
Speaker 1: Like at the level of technology and science, random enough
Speaker 1: pseudo random numbers and processes are necessary for accurate statistical sampling,
Speaker 1: for computer modeling of complex phenomenon, definitely for cryptography. At
Speaker 1: the level of biology, randomness is necessary in order or
Speaker 1: organisms to evolve. The primary driver of evolution is natural selection,
Speaker 1: picking from among random mutations. If you don't have enough
Speaker 1: random mutations, if your mutation rate is too low, you
Speaker 1: can't adapt, you can't evolve, you can't create a diverse biosphere.
Speaker 1: You could live in a world of fragile, cloned organisms,
Speaker 1: highly vulnerable to extinction. So I wonder if there are
Speaker 1: analogies to this and the behavior of complex animals, like
Speaker 1: our macroscopic random mutations of behavior important for the quality
Speaker 1: and success of an individual's life. So anyway, I think
Speaker 1: this kind of brings us back to the question from
Speaker 1: earlier of how predictively worthless divination methods could still be adaptive,
Speaker 1: how they might be useful even though they're not magic.
Speaker 1: What if divination methods like the each ing are useful
Speaker 1: because they introduce an element of randomness into our behavior
Speaker 1: and motivation that we would not be able or willing
Speaker 1: to introduce on our own. Yeah, I mean, they could
Speaker 1: be the only way to introduce true randomness into your
Speaker 1: life because even you know, certainly we live within chaotic systems.
Speaker 1: But but even within those chaotic systems, there's there's a
Speaker 1: fair amount of dependability, you know. I mean, I mean
Speaker 1: we build whole structures for our lives to eliminate unpredictability, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and also playing with a certain amount of probability. Um,
Speaker 1: Like I I have to be prepared for various weather
Speaker 1: scenarios to take place in the next week, but I'm
Speaker 1: fairly sure it's not going to snow. We'll see. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, these sort of these sort of considerations come
Speaker 1: up time and time again. But if you have a
Speaker 1: true random randomness generator, then you were gonna have to think, well,
Speaker 1: what if it did snow, what's my plan for the
Speaker 1: for the snow day next week, and uh and and
Speaker 1: that can force you to consider possibilities that just would
Speaker 1: not be there if you did not have something like
Speaker 1: that eaching to turn to yeah, exactly. So. The way
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about this is that what what if divination
Speaker 1: methods are essentially a way we've come up with for
Speaker 1: encouraging mutations in our behavior in the evolutionary sense, allowing
Speaker 1: our lives and societies to test new ways of living
Speaker 1: and potentially culturally evolve. I can't help it come back
Speaker 1: to the Game of Werewolf that we just kind of
Speaker 1: haphazardly mentioned earlier. But in the game of the Werewolf,
Speaker 1: it is random. It is completely random who is going
Speaker 1: to be the werewolf in a given game, which individuals
Speaker 1: will be the villains of that round of play, and
Speaker 1: that pure randomness is one of the main reasons the
Speaker 1: game is so engaging. But it brings out things in
Speaker 1: people like the randomness can allow you to suddenly have
Speaker 1: to be the deceiver when you wouldn't normally play that
Speaker 1: role in life, that's not part of your established patterns
Speaker 1: of behavior. It draws out things in your personality that
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have accessed otherwise is yeah, I mean God,
Speaker 1: And then there's I don't want to talk too much
Speaker 1: about gambling and all this, but but imagine like the
Speaker 1: weirdness of the lottery. In considering this, somebody, we're just
Speaker 1: gonna make somebody a millionaire, just just randomly, and see
Speaker 1: what happens. See how it affects that everybody. It seems
Speaker 1: like it often doesn't work out too good. Well no,
Speaker 1: but for other people. For me, I feel like I
Speaker 1: could handle it. But that's what we all tell each other, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that might be different. Even playing the lottery, though, is
Speaker 1: is kind of a contemplation of that uncertainty. What did happen?
Speaker 1: I mean, generally that's the only option that someone is
Speaker 1: fantasizing about when they play it. What if I win?
Speaker 1: What will that be like? Now, a counter factual to
Speaker 1: this hypothesis that I just put out there that divination
Speaker 1: methods might be valuable because they introduce random to s
Speaker 1: into our lives is that you could think that, like
Speaker 1: in nature, most mutations are either either have no effect
Speaker 1: or are harmful. Right, But I wonder if there is
Speaker 1: an overall selection effect on introducing randomness into behavior, because
Speaker 1: really good deviations from patterns of behavior are are beneficial
Speaker 1: enough to keep the whole thing in the in the black. Well,
Speaker 1: if you're bringing up at the very beginning of the
Speaker 1: episode the idea of pulling up random passages from the Bible,
Speaker 1: and we can just apply this to any book that
Speaker 1: you yourself consider a book of wisdom. It could be,
Speaker 1: it could be any religious or secular work. The first
Speaker 1: five times you do it, you could get nonsense, You
Speaker 1: could get what would be in a biological level, just
Speaker 1: a disastrous mutation. But but then you keep going until
Speaker 1: you hit the one that is novel that you hadn't
Speaker 1: thought about. Uh, And I mean that's what makes the
Speaker 1: process worthwhile. Yeah, well, but that what you just said
Speaker 1: also makes me think about how this hypothesis could inform
Speaker 1: the idea that some divination methods are actually more adaptive
Speaker 1: than others. Even though none of them are actually magic,
Speaker 1: none of them can actually predict the future, some of
Speaker 1: them do feel more useful. And this could be because,
Speaker 1: for example, spontaneous divination would not allow you to depart
Speaker 1: from internally establish mental patterns. Right if you're just looking
Speaker 1: at stuff and saying, what does this mean from the gods,
Speaker 1: you're probably you're just drawing on the same types of
Speaker 1: thought processes that would normally guide your behavior. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're not really reaching outside yourself for that answer. Sort
Speaker 1: of lige on the other hand, maybe more useful for
Speaker 1: this kind of thing, because if you're employing sufficiently pseudo
Speaker 1: random processes like rolling dice or yarrow sticks or flipping coins,
Speaker 1: then you and then you use those numbers to consult
Speaker 1: sections of a pre written text that you can't edit
Speaker 1: and you didn't create. You are introducing external random factors
Speaker 1: into your life that you have no control over. Now,
Speaker 1: there might be to some extent and ability to sort
Speaker 1: of correct for that randomness by your process of interpretation.
Speaker 1: But I wonder if some of the value of the
Speaker 1: the interpretive tradition ends about things like the eaching make
Speaker 1: it harder for you to ignore the random aspects of
Speaker 1: these of these divination outcomes, right, They make it harder
Speaker 1: for you to rationalize away novelty and make you sort
Speaker 1: of like face the randomness. And of course randomness can
Speaker 1: be pleasant, it can be terrifying, Yeah, depending on the
Speaker 1: details of what you're contemplating. Totally true. Now, one last
Speaker 1: thing I have to kind of wonder about though, if
Speaker 1: this is true, If it is true that methods like
Speaker 1: this work by introducing randomness into your life, and that
Speaker 1: can in many cases have some kind of benefit, do
Speaker 1: you lose the benefit if you understand that process, Like,
Speaker 1: if you don't actually think that the wisdom provided by
Speaker 1: the eaching is some kind of magic thing delivered by
Speaker 1: the gods. If you think it's, well, this is just
Speaker 1: a random process that I'm using to introduce some creative
Speaker 1: novelty into my life, does it still have the same
Speaker 1: power to do that? So? Yeah, So the idea here
Speaker 1: being that you would have to buy into the eaching
Speaker 1: to a certain amount to get anything out of it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm saying, I wonder if you would have to.
Speaker 1: I feel like the answer to that is going to
Speaker 1: vary from individual to individual. You know, It's like to
Speaker 1: what to to varying degrees. I feel each individual is
Speaker 1: able to turn to something like the eaching and and
Speaker 1: sort of divide it, you know, and understand that, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is not the voice of the divine, but I
Speaker 1: can find some wisdom in it, you know, Like, to
Speaker 1: what extent can the individual? Does the individual value insight
Speaker 1: in literature or in historical texts or or to what
Speaker 1: extent do they view randomness as a beneficial aspect of
Speaker 1: life and not just pure chaos to be avoided. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, I guess some people would get random
Speaker 1: insights or random charges to action, and they would tend
Speaker 1: to ignore them because they break patterns of behavior. Some
Speaker 1: people are just we're very set in our ways, aren't we. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And changes terrifying, but that's that's all. That's the crazy
Speaker 1: things that that is what this is all about. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's the Book of Changes. It's the book of dealing
Speaker 1: with the rate of change in our lives in the
Speaker 1: universe and how one is supposed to react accordingly so
Speaker 1: as to avoid the more detrimental situations. It's the book
Speaker 1: of entropy. Yeah, all right, So there you have it.
Speaker 1: Hopefully we gave you a lot to chew on here,
Speaker 1: along with just a basic understanding of what the eaching
Speaker 1: is and how it fits in with other divination practices
Speaker 1: from around the world. If you'd like to reach out
Speaker 1: to us uh and discuss any of this, well, hey,
Speaker 1: you can find us on social media or on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Instagram.
Speaker 1: We're also, of course, that's stuff to blow your mind
Speaker 1: dot com that is the mothership. That is where you
Speaker 1: will find all the episodes of the podcast, as well
Speaker 1: as the links out to those social media accounts. Thanks
Speaker 1: as always to our excellent audio producers Alex Andry, and
Speaker 1: thanks to our guest producer Paul for stepping in today. Paul,
Speaker 1: you're doing great. If you'd like to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us about this episode or any other, or if
Speaker 1: you would like to let us know a topic that
Speaker 1: you think we should do in the future, or just
Speaker 1: to say hi, you can always email us at Blow
Speaker 1: the Mind at how stuff works dot com for more
Speaker 1: illness and thousands of other topics because it how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com.