Purpose, Value, Evolution, Consciousness, Sentience, Life & Emergence of Mind | Terrence Deacon |#95

Nick talks to biological anthropologist & neuroscientist Dr. Terrence Deacon, who is a professor of biological anthropologist at UC-Berkeley and a leading thinker on the evolution of language, consciousness and human cognition. They discuss: how end-directed systems, such as life, can emerge from non-life; how complexity evolves once life originates; the origins of sentience and a sense of self; the evolution of the nervous system and consciousness; information, value, and "aboutness" in the universe; and more.

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ABOUT Nick Jikomes:
Nick is a neuroscientist and podcast host. He is currently Director of Science & Innovation at a technology startup in the legal cannabis industry. He received a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Harvard University and a B.S. in Genetics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

0:00:00 Episode Intro
0:04:55 Terrence Deacon Conversation

[MindAndMatter]

All M&M content is available on Substack. I mainly respond to questions & comments on that channel:

If you enjoy M&M content and want to provide further support, read this:

[a-guess-at-the-riddle]

I would love to hear a conversation between Terrence Deacon and Michael Levin.

[Self-Duality]

Thank you for this excellent conversation! I’m just now delving into your channel 😌💭

[HeronMarkBlade]

Fantastic thank you, what a great thinker!

[networkimprov]

Terrence has fascinating insights, and I'm grateful that this discussion has such depth and breadth! Thanks to both of you :)

[adambjerre]

A brilliant conversation with an incredible synthetic thinker. Thank you for this.

[srimallya]

Ontology

The mind equation

The more we think we have agencies to the actions the body takes, the more we imposes agencies to the activities in our environment.

The ownership expands into other objects.
The illusion of body ownership comes from the modeling of the motor neurones pattern from the childhood.
The self just predicts the bodies behaviours in the real world with its simulation of the real world. Multiple sensor data unify in language in the simulation.

Intelligence is economy of metabolism.
Language is temporal reference frame of economics.
Self is simulation in language on metabolism for economy.

Longer context windows create generalisation.
Shorter creates specificity.
Longer context window needs more computing.
Self is the protagonist creates a storyline in this context window.

Theory of mind evolved so that an entity can learn from it’s peers.
It’s creates a possibility for parallel computing.
Then it creates the possibility of transmitting
the highlights of a generational lessons into a metaphorical story for upcoming child.
That creates the possibility of modeling the physical world as a macro organism.
Creation of fiat currency was the singularity of this species.
There is now one macro organism in a connected web world.
Loosing the peer of the macro organism creates the possibility of loosing it’s objective function.
That creates the possibility of loosing the theory of mind of this macro organism.
That creates the possibility of death of this macro organism by reaching the planetary boundary.
That is post singularity.


Every action we do, we do what is expect from ours tribe.
Body might have a opinion, but not the cell.
They do what is expected from its tribe. If it doesn’t we call it cancer.
The body is a mirror system of the macro organism.
Each system have two transactional openings.
Serial and parallel.
Each cell within the body can transact material or information serially by genetic determinism and parallel non deterministic way.
Similarly eact body with in the macro organism can transact serially by inherit material and information in a deterministic manner and parallelly through language in the society.
Everything emerges from this systems.

Every sensor is a range calculator of contexts.
Taste > touch > smell
Immediate and visceral.
Vision > hearing
Not immediate, tactical.
Self > language
Abstract, strategical.

In this non deterministic economic transaction space the individual is coded to transact with its kin.
From the macro perspective tribe formation minimises economic risk for the tribes.

Each and every node of these systems organise and mark their kin’s with identifier.
Thus, i am what you make of me.
And others too.
For short cut i have a legal name, so you have. My legal name gives the legitimacy marker so that you can transact with me parallelly if you have the same marker.

The self is a simulation in language.
It negotiates between the physical world and the information world.
All these negotiations are the temporal memories in the body and scene of the story.
Now, when we started writing we iconised the abstract in the physical world to make symbols for the tribes. So that under that common symbol every node will take the same risk and distribute equally.

We created more and more symbols and more and more meta tribes within the tribes so that who has the authority to use the pen control the tribe.

When the negotiator act like an executioner then it’s a downfall of that system.
It falls apart.



Objective reality > legitimacy > individual behaviours.

Survival of the species is dependent on the decoding of the objective reality. Since no species can access it, they use their sensors and interpret the small data which is useful for the survival. Few complex species have created communication channels to rectify their sensory limitations to survive. Homo sapiens has widened their communication channels for faster throughput and started storing them as culture and carrying them through education. As a result we have created social truth.

Factual datas are the useful snapshot of the objective reality, a totem, a physical object can be observed with the sensors. Truth is an individual subject, an interpretation of the sensory data, a useful compromise.

The social truth is the useful compromise for the group by the group. The goal of the social truth is to survive as a group.
Physical Transcriptions of these social truth legitimise them.

We are tribal animal. We live in as a physical tribes and inside of hundreds of meta tribes in simulation which is the socio political data space we call it as the world.

Since we can’t access the objective reality reliably we look for social truth as the best guess blindly.

Institutions legitimise truths.

Fact driven institutions are more useful in the survival of the specie.
In other hand opinion driven institutions are not so useful for the species.

We do what we can get away with and exactly as expected within the context of our meta tribes.

We have two bodies
The biological one is like looking the earth from space.
And the political body is like the state.
The name you carry is the political body.
It transacts with the political states on the boundary less earth.
From the evolutionary perspective every biological entity has a basic feature which is homeostasis.
It’s the functioning sweet spot of that entity.
A control center read the sensory data to regulate itself to that state. By doing so it’s validate or update it’s prediction model.
In the process of becoming a complex organism it developed an extra layer of processing.
That’s our conscious mind.
And the control center remains as subconscious.
The subconscious collect the sensory data and regulate itself to stay functional.
Now when it stumble upon a novel environment it float the management to conscious mind to find the solution for homeostasis.
This conscious mind have one sensor which is language.
It works like a spiderweb.

As a spider creates it’s web it’s perception gets expand.
We are like spiders in a jungle.
We started creating these small webs at least 2/3 million years ago.
Our offspring stayed on it’s ancestral web reinforced it expanded it.
In time nearby webs became larger and connected with each other.
A common structural geometrical pattern emerges from this. This became the symbols which is the backbone of all language systems.
In time the forest becomes the mesh of web.
The superstructure is exactly the same but when we zoom in we can find different species of spiders are making their type of webs in between the super web.

Each spider try to senses the vibration of flies and
Try to catch it before others.
Every movement is telegraphic in the zone.
Every form of perceptions are just a different pitch of note traveling back and forth in the web superstructure.
There is a echo of older vibration pulsating through the web. Full of noise and self repeating hum.
That’s cultural history.
In the background there is the base hum in the infinite feedback loop.
Insignificant but ever present.
The sum of all the vibrations from the start.

[jackwilliamatkins]

Jesus Christ lives in Nunawading between two Catholic Churches

[LuisManuelLealDias]

Terrence Deacon!!! Haven't listened to him for a decade now!

[guillermobrand]

The "hard problem" of Consciousness is a problem arising from ignorance. There is no point in wasting time trying to figure it out. It is like, for someone ignorant of geography, wanting to go to an unknown city and to do so, impose on themselves the condition of previously climbing a high hill.