Matt Hodgkinson<p>I like Alex O'Connor (formerly the CosmicSkeptic, but softened since his militant atheist days), but as a biologist I was disappointed by this interview with Iain McGilchrist, a psychiatrist who takes an evo-neuro theory too far.</p><p>Introducing a divide of focussed vs wider attention of the left vs right brain, he says this is seen in science/logic vs religion/wonder.</p><p>🧵</p><p><a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=mzoBRy1ob7-XTS-M&v=Q16ARIpxlPQ&feature=youtu.be" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">m.youtube.com/watch?si=mzoBRy1</span><span class="invisible">ob7-XTS-M&v=Q16ARIpxlPQ&feature=youtu.be</span></a></p><p><a href="https://scicomm.xyz/tags/IainMcGilchrist" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>IainMcGilchrist</span></a> <a href="https://scicomm.xyz/tags/Neuroscience" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Neuroscience</span></a> <a href="https://scicomm.xyz/tags/CosmicSkeptic" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>CosmicSkeptic</span></a> <a href="https://scicomm.xyz/tags/AlexOConnor" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>AlexOConnor</span></a> <a href="https://scicomm.xyz/tags/EvolutionaryBiology" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>EvolutionaryBiology</span></a> <a href="https://scicomm.xyz/tags/YouTubePodcasting" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>YouTubePodcasting</span></a></p>
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The Lifeboat Academy<p><a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/iainmcgilchrist" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>iainmcgilchrist</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/lifeboatacademy" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>lifeboatacademy</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/polycrisis" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>polycrisis</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/decolonization" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>decolonization</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/reciprocity" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>reciprocity</span></a></p>
janhoglund<p>Iain McGilchrist<br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9sBKCd2HD0&pp=ygUddGhlb3JpZXMgb2YgZXZlcnl0aGluZyBzZWdhbGw%3D" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">youtube.com/watch?v=Q9sBKCd2HD</span><span class="invisible">0&pp=ygUddGhlb3JpZXMgb2YgZXZlcnl0aGluZyBzZWdhbGw%3D</span></a><br><a href="https://mastodon.nu/tags/iainmcgilchrist" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>iainmcgilchrist</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.nu/tags/mcgilchrist" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>mcgilchrist</span></a></p>
janhoglund<p>This article provides a great summary of Iain McGilchrist’s hemisphere hypothesis and Christopher Alexander’s quest for wholeness. The article has been reviewed by Iain McGilchrist and Maggie Moore Alexander (Christopher Alexander died in 2022).<br><a href="https://doi.org/10.3846/jau.2023.18548" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="">doi.org/10.3846/jau.2023.18548</span><span class="invisible"></span></a><br><a href="https://mastodon.nu/tags/article" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>article</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.nu/tags/iainmcgilchrist" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>iainmcgilchrist</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.nu/tags/christopheralexander" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>christopheralexander</span></a></p>
jan“..thanks to AI, it will be almost impossible in future to know what is true at all. I mean, not just deep fakes, of course, and not just that somebody can simulate me and my voice and I'll be saying things that I never said. It's not just that, but it's also the fact that when you ask the ChatGPT to answer a question, it…comes back with a sort of vanilla milkshake made out of all the stuff it's found. But in the future, most of what it finds will be stuff that was put there by bots of one kind or another.”<br>—Iain McGilchrist, Metaphysics and the Matter With Things, Session 3.1 - Saturday Closing Dialogue<br><a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/iainmcgilchrist" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#iainmcgilchrist</a> <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/ai" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#ai</a> <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/chatgpt" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#chatgpt</a>
jan“…nothing really is like a machine. In fact, I say there is nothing in the cosmos that is as at all like a machine except a handful of pieces of metal that we invented in the last couple of hundred years. Nothing else is mechanical, not the inanimate world, not the animate world, not the cosmos, nothing. So it's a very bad model to be starting to compare a human being to and try and simulate a human being, and to do so is, I think, completely pernicious, because people…will believe that it really is something like a human being. That's the danger. And the other danger is not that machines will get like human beings because they never will, but that people will become more like machines, which they are doing daily.”<br>—Iain McGilchrist, Metaphysics and the Matter With Things, Session 3.1 - Saturday Closing Dialogue<br><a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/iainmcgilchrist" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#iainmcgilchrist</a> <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/ai" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#ai</a> <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/artificialintelligence" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#artificialintelligence</a> <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/machines" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#machines</a>
jan“…AI simply is not intelligent. And there is no way you should be calling it artificial intelligence. It's artificial information processing. That's what the I stands for. And it's done well by a machine that can be vamped up to process an enormous amount of information. but…it doesn't have experience, it doesn't have any of the elements that go to being a human being. And AI people want to know from me in some ways how they can replicate right hemisphere thinking in a computer. … But you cannot turn right hemisphere thinking into something that is computable. It is strictly non-computable because it involves the acceptance of so many uncertainties that there is no place from which it can anchor itself. It can't be done by a series of steps. And what of course is true of right hemisphere thinking is true more generally of organisms and systems in the cosmos, because right hemisphere thinking is better able to reflect the structure of those.”<br>—Iain McGilchrist, Metaphysics and the Matter With Things, Session 3.1 - Saturday Closing Dialogue<br><a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/iainmcgilchrist" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#iainmcgilchrist</a> <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/ai" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#ai</a> <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/artificialintelligence" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#artificialintelligence</a> <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/computability" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#computability</a>
janhoglund<p>Metaphysics and the Matter with Things - Thinking with Iain McGilchrist<br><a href="https://ctr4process.org/mcgilchrist-videos/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">ctr4process.org/mcgilchrist-vi</span><span class="invisible">deos/</span></a><br><a href="https://mastodon.nu/tags/conference" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>conference</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.nu/tags/recordings" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>recordings</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.nu/tags/metaphysics" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>metaphysics</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.nu/tags/iainmcgilchrist" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>iainmcgilchrist</span></a></p>
jan“If you see a human being as say, take a very simple argument, as something like a robot, not essentially different from a machine, then your way of envisioning what you're seeing in front of you or in the presence of is going to be different from one in which you see that person as a living entity that has feelings, that has awareness of life and death and suffering and all these things. And so you turn something into something else by attending to it in a different way. And in the case of the left hemisphere's attention, which is always designed towards what use is this to me? How can I map this? How can I model it? How can I use it, manipulate it? Then a lot is being lost, particularly if you're dealing with something that is living.”<br>—Iain McGilchrist, Metaphysics and the Matter With Things, An Evening with Iain McGilchrist<br><a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/iainmcgilchrist" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#iainmcgilchrist</a> <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/attention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#attention</a>
jan“In fact, I believe nobody should finish their education without having undergone couple therapy, whether you need couple therapy or not. Couple therapy is a wonderful tool. It goes something like this. one of the parties is speaking and is talking about how he or she sees the relationship. This is very important. The other person wants to chip in and the therapist says no, no, let them speak because you'll have your turn in a minute. Then the person stops speaking and the first thing that is asked of the other person is, what did you just hear said? And this is revelatory, because it's very often completely different from what the person actually intended. And to be able to understand that, you have to try to see the other person's point of view and say what it is. And you're not allowed to speak your own version until you've, to the other person's satisfaction, said, yes, that's what I meant. And then you, instead of endlessly floundering in a sea of falsehoods, you actually have some planks of truth, at least to begin to understand one another. At the end of it, you may say, well, I at least understand you, but I don't think I want to be your partner. But at least that would be a very fine step forward. And so we ought to teach that in school.”<br>—Iain McGilchrist, Metaphysics and the Matter With Things, An Evening with Iain McGilchrist<br><a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/iainmcgilchrist" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#iainmcgilchrist</a> <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/education" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#education</a>
janhoglund<p>The left hemisphere helps us apprehend the world, which means literally to grasp onto it, and the right hemisphere to comprehend it, which means to grasp it together as a whole.<br>—Iain McGilchrist, Metaphysics and the Matter With Things<br><a href="https://mastodon.nu/tags/iainmcgilchrist" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>iainmcgilchrist</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.nu/tags/attention" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>attention</span></a></p>
janhoglund<p>…how we attend changes what it is that we see…, and it changes us…<br>—Iain McGilchrist, Metaphysics and the Matter With Things<br><a href="https://mastodon.nu/tags/iainmcgilchrist" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>iainmcgilchrist</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.nu/tags/attention" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>attention</span></a></p>
jan“…organisms are nothing like mechanisms, and…they have fascinating properties that cannot be explained by a complicated machine, however complicated. They can only be explained by complex systems. The distinction is this. A Harrier jet engine is a complicated machine, but a small organism, a single-cell amoeba, is a complex system. And the difference is either they have re-entrant loops that can't be mapped, they are never fully determined or determinable, not entirely predictable. But that doesn't mean there's chaos. There is a sweet spot in everything between order and disorder. And it is that at which all existence seems to settle, and particularly life.”<br>—Iain McGilchrist, Metaphysics and the Matter With Things (transcript)<br><a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/iainmcgilchrist" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#iainmcgilchrist</a> <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/organisms" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#organisms</a> <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/mechanisms" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#mechanisms</a>
jan”This book is what would conventionally be called a single argument. That is why I have chosen not to publish it as three separate books… And yet it is also not an argument, in the conventional sense, at all. If we want others to understand the beauty of a landscape with which they may be unfamiliar, an argument is pointless: instead we must take them there and explore it with them, walking on the hills and mountains, pausing as new vantage points continually open around us, allowing our companions to experience it for themselves. …my trust is in my readers, that for them something deeper will be unconcealed, and that they will literally dis-cover a new vision of the world for themselves.”<br>—Iain McGilchrist, The Matter with Things<br><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matter_with_Things" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matter_with_Things</a><br><a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/iainmcgilchrist" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#iainmcgilchrist</a> <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/book" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#book</a>
jan…wondering at things involves a certain degree of humility and not knowing, which I think is professionally difficult for some scientists. It’s much easier for physicists, it seems, than biologists. Talking to physicists is a wonderful experience, because they admit that there’s very much they don’t understand. I think in future biologists will become much nicer as they realize that a lot of their certainties are not as certain as they once thought.<br>—Iain McGilchrist<br><a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/iainmcgilchrist" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#iainmcgilchrist</a> <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/biology" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#biology</a> <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/physics" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#physics</a> <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/science" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#science</a>
janI like the image of something that flows, rather than a static mechanism, a machine. Nothing in biology is very like a machine. In fact, I sometimes say there’s nothing in the universe that’s like a machine, except the few million pieces of metal that we created in the last few hundred years. Neither the inanimate nor the animate world is like a mechanism. But things do flow, and seeing that they flow and change is what evolution is. Seeing that there is continuity, and seeing that there need not be separations that are hard and fast, but distinctions that are beautiful within an overall seamless whole is a very good way that we could take forward in science. I think it’s happening already in physics, which is always one hell of a lot further down the line than biology. But here we are.<br>—Iain McGilchrist<br><a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/iainmcgilchrist" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#iainmcgilchrist</a> <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/mechanism" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#mechanism</a> <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/machine" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#machine</a> <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/biology" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#biology</a> <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/physics" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#physics</a> <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/science" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#science</a>
janIn the book “The Matter with Things”, I start from neuroscience, I add in philosophy, and then I look at things like physics and metaphysics. The interesting thing is that these paths all seem to converge…on a core that is pretty consistent. …that core…also happens to be in keeping with the sort of things that have been said by the great wisdom traditions of the East, and of the early West, before it got corrupted by Platonism, and probably by a lot of Christianity. That’s not a dismissal of Plato or Christianity, but just a recognition that they have had undeniable effects on the way we think.<br>—Iain McGilchrist<br><a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/iainmcgilchrist" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#iainmcgilchrist</a> <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/book" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#book</a>
jan…it’s worth pointing out that there is a distinct difference between the modus operandi of the left hemisphere and the right. As I understand it from Computer Sciences, left hemisphere procedures are highly computable, and that’s very obvious; in fact, I believe that AI is a way of pushing out the left hemisphere mode of thinking into the environment. But what the right hemisphere does is strictly non-computable, because it has no points of certainty in it. The computer needs at least one or two reference points to begin working with. But in essence, there is nothing but experience, either the experience—if one can talk about this, and I think one can— of the cell (or the plant or the root or whatever it is), but effectively the single cell. It can’t be engineered according to principle.<br>—Iain McGilchrist<br><a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/iainmcgilchrist" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#iainmcgilchrist</a>
jan"There are mechanisms in a complex system, but... biology is having to at least sophisticate it and move on from there."<br><a href="https://youtu.be/YGCYDw9-yDQ?t=2532" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/YGCYDw9-yDQ?t=2532</a><br><a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/iainmcgilchrist" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#iainmcgilchrist</a> <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/mcgilchrist" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#mcgilchrist</a> <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/complexity" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#complexity</a> <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/biology" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#biology</a>
jan"There's something very exciting happening now, and it feels to me like physics in about 1910. (Biology is, you know, 100 and bit years later catching up.) Physics was all supposed to have been completed by 1900. Then suddenly the carpet is pulled right out from under their feet, and they still don't quite know what it is they're dealing with. I think the same thing is happening in biology..."<br><a href="https://youtu.be/YGCYDw9-yDQ?t=1930" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/YGCYDw9-yDQ?t=1930</a><br><a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/iainmcgilchrist" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#iainmcgilchrist</a> <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/mcgilchrist" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#mcgilchrist</a> <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/biology" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#biology</a> <a class="hashtag" href="https://pleroma.microblog.se/tag/physics" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#physics</a>
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