Bible Lecture #3

Study Notes
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Discussion thread for The Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories - Lecture #3

study group discussion

Discussion as part of our Study Group.

podcast

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my notes

  • 1:15 - Richard Dawkins idea of memes and Carl Jung’s similarities.

  • 2:17 - Religious belief affecting evolution - Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris avoiding the topic.

  • 2:28 - Religious stories and their impossibilities to be forgotten. Not tested empirically but maybe at some point.

  • 2:50 - Really excited about this lecture.

  • 3:51 - Trinitarian idea - an a priori structure is needed for consciousness to emerge. Produced over vast span of evolution.

  • 4:19 - Difficult to read Genesis stories literally. Early Bible folks were not all literalists.

  • 5:22 - Fiction can tell the truth non-fiction wasn’t able to get at. Mistake to think fiction is just for entertainment.

  • 5:52 - Immanuel Kant and apriori cognitive structures.

  • 6:30 - Failure of AI - problem of perception stalled them.

  • 6:43 - You don’t see objects, you see tools. You don’t see objects and infer utility - you see useful things and infer objects.

  • 7:25 - You have to have an body before you can think/see. Mapping patterns of the world onto the patterns of the body.

    • << KInd of reminds me of what I learned during meditation about how first a emoption shows up on the body, and then we become conscious of it. Why are we trying to solve the problem of AI by human terms in the sense that make them more like us. What are we trying to make them in our image. >>

  • 8:03 - Blind people detecting facial expressions.

  • 8:48 - Visual stimuli activating your body. Picking up the water bottle.

  • 9:46 - Rodney Brooks - invented Rumba.

  • 9:57 - **Pointed out that a machine that has perception needs to have a body. **Perception of some of the simple machines was to run away from the light.

  • 11:30 - The idea of God is basically a apriori structure that is needed for consciousness (which gives form to things).

    • << Reverse of an idea that Tyler was talking about. >>

  • 12:05 - We are adapted and evolved to change the world. Speech is an extension of our ability to use hands - people talk with their hands.

    • << Why ? >>

  • 12:59 - Classical Christianity putting emphasis not just on divinity of the spirit but bod also.

  • 13:35 - Patriarchal structure of a priori structure, partly because of the social structure.

    • << How long was the period of development of consciousness ? So human societies were Patriarchal during all that time ? >>

  • 13:37 - Apriori structure changes the world by using the consciousness, esp. Truthful speech that gives rise to the good.

  • 14:30 - People laid low by the difficulties of life, but also people get tangled up in webs of deceit that are often multiple generations longs. That just takes them out. Deceit can produce suffering that can last for a very long time.

  • 14:43 - Freud - repression as a lie of omission.

    • << OMG, I didn’t fully appreciate how deceit can be with your own soul. Denying your own wants because you don’t want to take the effort of chasing them. >>

  • 14:55 - Jung’s idea that there is no difference b/w curative Psychotherapeutic effort and supreme moral effort including truth.

  • 15:00 - Carl Rogers - It’s in truthful dialog that clinical transformation took place.

    • << That’s why I don’t like shallow, skin-deep corporate deception at workplace. All these cultural rituals where you are supposed to clap, smile and be nice. It’s all fake BS and drives me nuts sometimes. I would much rather have some meaningful conversation with someone or read a book >>

  • 15:22 - How can you solve a problem if you don’t know what’s going on (In the context of Therapist and client both telling the truth).

  • 15:35 - If you don’t tell people the truth then people around you don’t know who you are.

    • << Wow, I had this friend once, it’s not that he lied, it’s just that he would not express himself. I was always frustrated that I know for all this time and I don’t even know who you are. Some people just don’t feel the need to express - so difficult to really know them. >>

  • 15:53 - If you can’t get your hands on the problem - the probability that you are going to solve it is close to zero.

    • << Wow, what are the problems that I am hiding consciously or unconsciously. >>

  • 16:10 - Let me figure out how to start this properly (Peterson trying to figure out how to explain something).

    • << Boy this guy is really constantly doing mental workout while talking, sometimes it seems as though he is connected to something deep. I got the same sense when listening to Steve Jobs. Bill Gates would speak from him brain and it felt like Jobs was more like speak from hurt kind of guy. >>

  • 1700 - Idea of dominance hierarchy is Marxist idea.

  • 17:34 - For rats to play they have to play fair or they won’t play with each other.

  • 18:36 - Morals are not just sociological phenomena. Barbaric chimp leader doesn’t last very long.

  • 19:37 - The idea of male dominance is absurd because people with power/responsibility are bound by ethics even more so than other people.

  • 19:51 - Managers are more stressed with subordinates than vice-versa.

    • << Really ? >>

  • 20:16 - Arbitrary boss is not going to be successful. You get called out if you make mistakes constantly.

  • 20:33 - Psychopaths have to move from hierarchy to hierarchy pretty constantly because they get found out pretty quickly.

    • << Reminds me of some private companies in India. >>

  • 21:01 - Sexual selection is a very powerful force even though biologist have ignored it, thinking mostly on natural-selection.

  • 21:20 - Man at the top of hierarchy are more likely to be reproductively successful. You have twice as many female ancestors as male.

    • << I have never understood the maths on this calculation, maybe I have low IQ or something. >>

  • 22:19 - Man elect competent man at the top of hierarchy by consensus. Women just pick from the top.

  • 24:02 - Interplay of reproductive success and male dominance hierarchy.

  • 24:13 - If that’s true then this means man evolved to become better and better at climbing dominance hierarchy.

  • 24:30 - Common across multiple-hierarchy. General IQ. Consciousness.

    • << There you go again. >>

  • 26:07 - How I think ? I try to hack at it from every possible direction to see if it’s a weak idea. Can’t refute this idea.

    • << He needs to do a class on how he thinks and his process of creativity. >>

  • 26:36 - People are really good at identifying hero and anti-hero.

    • << Except for these days Bollywood in my country is programming people to like rough/tough, bad-guy kind of heros. It’s really confusing at least for me. >>

  • 26:40 - Generally bad guy is someone who strives for authority and fails. Kid figures out pretty quickly he is not supposed to be the bad guy.

    • << This is an interesting idea how failure turns you into a bad guy. >>

  • 27:30 - Peterson’s advice to his some when watching a horror movie - keep your eyes on the hero.

  • 27:40 - Why do you want the good guy to win ?

  • 28:05 - We have come to this conclusion over long period, what the most good of good and most bad of bad guys are.

  • 29:11 - Evolution is driving the idea of God.

  • 29:27 - When actual rules becomes confused with abstract ideal then state turns into tyranny.

    • << Kind of same when you are being arrogant when you are successful. >>

  • 30:28 - As soon as the Israelites kings become almighty, real God cuts them into pieces.

    • << It’s the same thing when you are successful at something. >>

  • 32:00 - Jean Piaget children acts out idea before they understand them. Merlyn Donald books on these idea.

  • 34:00 - Children are able to abstract the idea of say mother before acting it out. Critical for self-understanding and being with others.

  • 35:02 - We act things out before we understand them.

  • 36:02 - When explaining the behaviour of animals, rules are human constructed to explain their behaviour. For animals it’s not a rule but stable behavioural pattern.

  • 36:59 - Sociologist trying to push that there is no morality, ethics are arbitrary.

  • 37:18 - Evidence that, that is wrong is so overwhelming.

    • << What evidence ? Good luck trying to convince moral relativist about that. I remember being told who are you to decide what’s right or wong so many times. >>

  • 38:21 - Men are more criminal than women.

    • << Can you say that in west without getting fired ? >>

  • 38:53 - Put repeat offenders in jail till they are 28. Testosterone levels come down when you are 27-28. Creativity curve matches this too.

  • 39:36 - Father employed the Son to generate habitable order out of chaos. Children are more exploratory so more likely to discover/invent something.

  • 40:20 - Role of the father is to encourage children to confront the chaos.

  • 40:52 - Womens life is more complicated so same advise don’t work for them.

  • 41:04 - Most of my audience has been young man. Truth and responsibility.

  • 41:39 - Life is difficult - you can either hide from it or confront it.

  • 43:04 - Freezing and curious when confronting the unknown.

  • 43:30 - Capacity of the unknown to generate continually novel information. We are very exploratory and there is massive prize to be gained by doing that.

  • 44:14 - God confronted the Leviathan and Behemoth (chaotic unknown).

  • 45:25 - When you confront the unknown and gain something of value that improves your position in the hierarchy.

    • << That answers the question a viewer asked in I think in the lecture where he talks about Jacob. A lot of valuable ideas have come from people being out there own their own, humans being social creatures, Why are we evolved to have this behaviour where individual confronts the unknown rocking himself and brings something back that is of great value to the whole group ? Maybe these people who confronted the unknown were villains in the sense that their other attempts to attain the hierarchy had failed. >>

  • 46:52 - The idea that you seeing things and then act is not correct esp. When they are emotional.

    • << Ideas emerged out of actions that were already there. >>

  • 48:13 - How you generate wisdom ? You act in the face of the unknown, then you dream about it. Then you speak about it.

    • << Refer to the slide “Generation of Human Knowledge” here. >>

  • 48:29 - First the body came, then imagination and after that the speech.

  • 50:58 - Fire: Greatest friend and worst enemy. Richard Wrangham’s book, on how cooking made us human.