Exploration of Agency, Meaning, and Connection to Reality

Mahon McCann is a writer, award-winning playwright, philosophy doctoral researcher, martial arts coach, and podcast host who explores personal development and ethical issues of technology.  

Are we on the brink of a new era of enlightenment or facing the rise of an existential threat? In this episode, John Vervaeke and Mahon McCann delve into the intricate relationship between artificial intelligence and the human search for meaning. They explore the potential of AI to act as a tool for personal and collective transformation, but also examine the challenges of creating AI that truly understands and respects our values. From predictive processing and relevance realization to Plato's cave allegory, this episode offers a fascinating exploration of the intersection between AI and human consciousness.

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"Attention is like a spotlight you shine on things. When you shine your attention on them, they stand out and keep your attention." - John Vervaeke  [00:02:12]

“So much of this first generation of AI is an environment, the large scale curation algorithms of social media are what's organizing our experience online. It's not a human being, but it's playing this role of orchestrating a lot of our experience and people's development. And so creating an optimal AI or an optimal environment would be trying to foster optimal agency, optimal meaning, which is really optimal wellbeing as well.” - Mahon McCann [00:38:23]

“I think part of steeling the culture is to get the people within the AI industry [to] drop the sorcerer myth. Drop it. Disidentify with it. Take up the sage mythology. Take that up. That is the way we can do what you want, but in a way that isn't going to set us on a path to destruction. - John Vervaeke [00:59:16]

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0:00 Introduction to AI Alignment and the Meaning Crisis

1:00 Predictive Processing and Relevance Realization

2:00 Beyond the Spotlight Metaphor: New Models of Attention

6:30 Integrating Predictive Processing with Relevance Realization

23:00 Agency, Meaning, and the Self-Organizing Mind

29:20 Autopoiesis, Agency, and Plato's Insights

31:25 Predictive Processing, Motivation, Vertical Alignment, and Horizontal Anticipation 

35:05 Optimal Agency, Collective Intelligence, and Persuasive Technologies

37:40 AI as Agents vs. AI as Environment

39:45 The Challenge of Aligning AI with Human Flourishing

53:15 Creating a New Sacredness in the Digital Age

59:44 Concluding Thoughts on Navigating AI Development: Embracing Choice Points, Wisdom, and Foresight for a Collectively Beneficial Future

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Discover practices that deepen your virtues and help you connect more deeply with reality and relationships by joining Awaken to Meaning today. 

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Ideas, Authors, and Works Mentioned in this Episode

Predictive processing and relevance realization: exploring convergent solutions to the frame problem - Brett Andersen, Mark Miller, John Vervaeke 

Ken Lowry

D.C. Schindler

Jonathan Pageau

Mark Miller

Rick Repetti

Attention Is Cognitive Unison: An Essay in Philosophical Psychology - Christopher Mole 

Feature-integration theory of attention - Anne Treisman

Metaphors We Live By - George Lakoff and Mark Johnson

Attention Metaphors: How Metaphors Guide the Cognitive Psychology of Attention - Diego Fernandez-Duque, Mark Johnson

William James 

Andy Clark

Phenomenology of Perception  - Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Lev Vygotsky

The Republic - Plato

Theory of motivation

Mentoring the Machines - John Vervaeke and Shawn Coyne

Free-Energy Minimising Agents and Beneficial A.I.: Ambient Smart Environments, Allostasis, and Metacognitive Control - Ben White and Mark Miller

Tristan Harris

Heidegger

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The Crossroads of Predictive Processing and Relevance Realization | Leiden Symposium

AI: The Coming Thresholds and The Path We Must Take | Internationally Acclaimed Cognitive Scientist

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Follow Mahon McCann: Website | Instagram | YouTube

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Thank you for watching!