John Vervaeke has a lecture series on YouTube called Awakening from the Meaning Crisis. I thought it was great, so I’m arranging a lecture club to discuss it here on Less Wrong. The format is simple: each weekday I post a comment that’s a link to the next lecture and the summary (which I plan on stealing from the recap at the beginning of the next lecture), and then sometimes comment beneath it with my own thoughts. If you’re coming late (even years late!) feel free to join in, and go at whatever pace works for you.
(Who is John Vervaeke? He’s a lecturer in cognitive science at the University of Toronto. I hadn’t heard of him before the series, which came highly recommended to me.)
I split the lecture series into three parts: the philosophical, religious, and cultural history of humankind (25 episodes) related to meaning, the cognitive science of wisdom and meaning (20 episodes), and more recent philosophy related to the meaning crisis specifically (5 episodes). Each episode is about an hour at regular speed (but I think they’re understandable at 2x speed). I am not yet aware of a good text version of the lectures; I also have some suspicion that some important content is not in the text itself, and so even if I transcribed them (or paid someone to) it’d still be worth watching or listening to it.
I think the subject matter is 1) very convergent with the sort of rationality people are interested in on LW, and 2) relevant to AI alignment, especially thinking about embedded agency.
[Lecture Club] Awakening from the Meaning Crisis
John Vervaeke has a lecture series on YouTube called Awakening from the Meaning Crisis. I thought it was great, so I’m arranging a lecture club to discuss it here on Less Wrong. The format is simple: each weekday I post a comment that’s a link to the next lecture and the summary (which I plan on stealing from the recap at the beginning of the next lecture), and then sometimes comment beneath it with my own thoughts. If you’re coming late (even years late!) feel free to join in, and go at whatever pace works for you.
(Who is John Vervaeke? He’s a lecturer in cognitive science at the University of Toronto. I hadn’t heard of him before the series, which came highly recommended to me.)
I split the lecture series into three parts: the philosophical, religious, and cultural history of humankind (25 episodes) related to meaning, the cognitive science of wisdom and meaning (20 episodes), and more recent philosophy related to the meaning crisis specifically (5 episodes). Each episode is about an hour at regular speed (but I think they’re understandable at 2x speed). I am not yet aware of a good text version of the lectures; I also have some suspicion that some important content is not in the text itself, and so even if I transcribed them (or paid someone to) it’d still be worth watching or listening to it.
I think the subject matter is 1) very convergent with the sort of rationality people are interested in on LW, and 2) relevant to AI alignment, especially thinking about embedded agency.
Discussion:
Introduction
Flow, Metaphor, and the Axial Revolution
Conscious Cosmos and Modern Grammar
Socrates and the Quest for Wisdom
Plato and the Cave
Aristotle, Kant, and Evolution
Aristotle’s World View and Erich Fromm
The Buddha and “Mindfulness”
Insight
Consciousness
Higher States of Consciousness, Part 1
Higher States of Consciousness, Part 2
Buddhism and Parasitic Processing
Epicureans, Cynics, and Stoics
Marcus Aurelius and Jesus
Christianity and Agape
Gnosis and Existential Inertia
Plotinus and Neoplatonism
Augustine and Aquinas
Death of the Universe
Martin Luther and Descartes
Descartes vs. Hobbes
Romanticism
Hegel
The Clash
Cognitive Science
Problem Formulation
Convergence to Relevance Realization
Getting to the Depths of Relevance Realization
Relevance Realization Meets Dynamical Systems Theory
Embodied-Embedded RR as Dynamical-Developmental GI
RR in the Brain, Insight, and Consciousness
The Spirituality of RR: Wonder/Awe/Mystery/Sacredness
Sacredness, Horror, Music, and the Symbol
The Symbol, Sacredness, and the Sacred
Religio/Perennial Problems/Reverse Engineering Enlightenment
Reverse Engineering Enlightenment: Part 2
Agape and 4E Cognitive Science
The Religion of No Religion
Wisdom and Religion
What is Rationality?
Intelligence, Rationality, and Wisdom
Wisdom and Virtue
Theories of Wisdom
The Nature of Wisdom
Conclusion and the Prophets of the Meaning Crisis
Heidegger
Corbin and the Divine Double
Corbin and Jung