The Meaning Code

Jonathan Pageau joins for a conversation with Dr. Wolfgang Smith and Dr. Richard Smith about icons, symbolism and our connection to the Divine. Links to books and articles mentioned will follow the timestamps.Timestamps00:00 Opening chitchat01:20 Intro05:30 Wolfgang Smith’s Tripartite Cosmos icon12:00 Jonathan’s question about the icon20:15 Examples of 3 dimensional versions28:50 Jonathan’s icons42:40 Wolfgang responds to question about the aeviternal realm45:20 Jean Borella quote as an opening to the question of the symbolism of the Cross53:20 The connection to the Divine is what fill it with Reality, bringing up into Glory1:05:30 Without an identity, you can’t measure anything. Identity is a gift.1:15:30 The cup, the apple, identity and coherence over time an Wolfram’s Theory1:19:30 Obstacle is the gift1:27:50 The introduction of perspective in sacred art1:31:20 Wolfgang is encouraged meeting JonathanWolfgang's books (selected out of a long list)The Vertical AscentThe Quantum EnigmaCosmos and TranscendenceAncient Wisdom and Modern MisconceptionsThe new physics by Stephen Wolfram: https://wolframphysics.org

Perry Marshall, author of Evolution 2.0 and founder of the $10 million price for the origin of a spontaneously arising communication system joins Glen and Karen to discuss the fundamental nature of information, choice and the observer. Links to videos mentioned will follow timestamps. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:45 Origin of Life v. Origin of Species 05:14 Is something missing in the Intelligent Design argument? 07:35 Where does the idea come from in the first place? Information must become physical. 11:00 How many divine interventions are there supposed to be? 16:00 The limitations of the God of the Gaps argument. Information shows up. There has to be a mechanism, a chunk of hardware. This problem is not addressed by Intelligent Design 18:30 Does Code = Information? Many definitions of information. Shannon, for example. 22:00 Definition of code is symbolic information exchanged between a sender and a receiver, Between an encoder and a decoder, and it’s a digital communication system 27:25 Science v. Religion is a proxy battle for something deeper, perhaps what it means to be human. 33:30 Does Maxwell’s demon actually exist? 41:00 John Torday, A systems approach to physiologic evolution https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jcp.25820 45:00 Information capacity is a capacity for choice. Freedom to select a one or a zero. 53:00 Maxwell’s demon lives on symbolic info, not bits and bytes. It’s what the 1’s and 0's represent symbolically. What is the sender looking at and the receiver sending onto? A bigger more holistic landscape than science can look at. 1:00:22 Free choice in quantum mechanics. The observer has free choice in what experiment to do. 1:05:45 Time acts on the rocks. The rocks do not act on time. We act on time 1:11:14 If you want to push choice down to the level of Quantum physics, you have to acknowledge that there are multiple pathways into the future which are all consistent with the past history of the universe, so you can’t have perfect determinism. Choice breaks that. 1:15:25 Following the question of the observer is a fruitful path. Glen’s suggestion: perhaps replace consciousness with agency. Consciousness is how WE experience agency, so it takes US out of the theoretical pathway. Reluctance to recast definitions into formal, mathematical statements hinders progress in the search for Origin of Life. 1:17:00 Stuart Kaufman and Set Theory 1:24:00 Heuristics leads to an outcome that is good enough. Inductive reasoning is a powerful skill set. The Meaning Code videos related to The Physics of Life: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoARw9zo4EUZhxqfaqYU5yjy0-Tr8RlB4 The Observer: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoARw9zo4EUZTm9ZRgC9OQINsbC1BxsPy Perry Marshall and Stephen Meyer on Unbelievable https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RHUEXn2upI&t=1s Perry Marshall, Denis Noble and Lee Cronin on Unbelievable https://youtu.be/Njuso5A2jts The Prize website: https://evo2.org The book: Evolution 2.0: Breaking the Deadlock Between Darwin and Design by Perry Marshall

Karen and Glen get together for an informal review of items that have recently caught their attention relative to Stephen Wolfram's Theory of Fundamental Physics. If anyone wants to do a comment with timestamps, I will be forever grateful. At the end, Glen mentions John Walton and his reading of the first few chapters of Genesis. We talked about how great it would be to see a conversation between Jordan Peterson and John Walton, and after I started uploading this video, I saw that the Youtube Channel called Deep Talks had uploaded a video today of clips from those two, so here's the link to that: Jordan Peterson v John Walton on Deep Talks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiSGdDc3bQY&t=2s The art video from Chris Petkau that we mentioned: https://youtu.be/pYgUwolDuPs And Glen once again mentioned Nima Arkani Hamed's Morality of Fundamental Physics video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiSGdDc3bQY&t=2s Here's Wolfram on Lex Fridman # 124. Interesting things happen starting at 1:33:30 and again at 3:16:00 going all the way to 3:40:00 or thereabouts..

In Part 3 of this discussion regarding the role of the observer, Glen weaves together ideas of robust computing (demon horde sort) and distributed intelligence. He makes the claim that it could be mathematically verified whether or not computation is fundamental, and that if it turns out to be so, then language is also fundamental, since computation and language are inextricably intertwined. We also learn that handedness (chirality) is hierarchical. links follow timestamps Timestamps 0:00 Intro 0:15 Recapping the end of Part 2 2:00 Central Planning v. Distributed Intelligence 3:00 Responding to viewer’s comments 4:45 PBS Spacetime on the participatory universe 8:32 John Wheeler’s biggest question: Whose bit? 12:20 Implications of observers and the quantum mechanical universe 16:20 A vision of Wholeness 18:30 A challenge for mathematicians 20:35 If there is a point where entanglement does not affect the next layer up, that would solve the Wigner’s Friends paradox and would also illustrate that computation is fundamental. 24:00 Robodog as a way to explore learning systems and language in robotics 28:00 An exploration of group intelligence and the conversation as adaptable 31:30 Handedness is essential and implies Hierarchy 33:30 The language called Forth 38:20 Context Free Grammar, indexed grammars, natural language processing 41:35 The layers of Grammar 47:30 Field workers will probably never be replaced by robots, not a menial task, very complex 51:35 If computation is fundamental, we need a covenant between Truth and Language 53:40 Trust Networks and Cesar Hidalgo 57:50 Decisions at the level of the input output are more effective than centrally planned ones. 1:02:00 Questions about Darwin 1:07:20 It depends on what question you want answered 1:07:45 Questions about Space and Time, the reality of Possibilities and Options 1:11:15 Computational irreducibility is more intuitive if you talk about languages Finite State Machines on Reason to Believe https://youtu.be/6FOJWxdTvms “The "Meta" Hard Problem of Consciousness and Quantum Babbling with Levin, Friston, and Fields,” https://youtu.be/J6eJ44Jq_pw "Cracking The Nutshell," https://www.youtube.com/c/CrackingTheNutshell "Do Electrons Have Free Will? The Conway-Kochen Free Will Theorem - Closing the Free Will Loophole,' https://youtu.be/7ZqUEAACfyk PBS Space-Time, “Does the Universe Create Itself?” https://youtu.be/I8p1yqnuk8Y?t=600 "Robust-first computing: Demon Horde Sort (short version)," https://youtu.be/lbgzXndaNKk "Forth the Hackers Language," https://hackaday.com/2017/01/27/forth-the-hackers-language/

If you want to watch this episode on YouTube:https://youtu.be/ZUOiF0tljiwSevilla King of A Quality Existence joins the Meaning Code to discuss recent appearances by Jonathan and Matthieu Pageau. We look at Mercy and Judgment, gathering in and cutting away. Judgment as a type of discernment, measurement, paring down, producing fittedness. Mercy as a gathering together, care, attention, choosing. Both together are Agape and Sacrifice, opportunity cost, bringing reality into existence. Matthieu Pageau with Tammy Peterson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Om4NKrOCF4 Jonathan Pageau on Love and Attention at the Consciousness and Conscience Conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGQVs4ewHFw&t=647s

For Youtube version: https://youtu.be/G8cAwts0ZZgMargaret Allen tells her story of being raised in an aggressively atheist household and yet learning of the better way, and opens her heart about the process of writing her book. Lot of resources available on Margaret's website, https://margaretallen.org Be sure to look at the page of Declarations. A great encouragement! Gracious Living: Creating a Culture of Honor, Love and Compassion https://www.amazon.com/Gracious-Living-Creating-Culture-Compassion/dp/1952025087/ref=sr_1_2?crid=3THKU7MET6BVL&keywords=Margaret+Allen&qid=1661454384&sprefix=margaret+allen%2Caps%2C156&sr=8-2

Brad Bilski, a designer of testing equipment, joins The Meaning Code for a discussion of the measurement problem and the need for a covenant between language and truth.Timestamps00:00 Intro (reading from Paul Feyerabend's 1975 book, Against Method04:00 Can facts exist outside of a narrative? A response to John Vervaeke11:25 Gauge block: "We call it a Master." ANSI19:45 Calibrations differ; error exists29:45 Rooted in Christ31:30 Copenhagen interpretation? Or Many Worlds?40:30 The sliding scale from mercy to justice52:15 The dystopian world that arrives if we destroy our ideals1:00:35 Subjective and objective and the issue of measurement. The limits of our perception1:10:00 The anomaly is a gift1:17:30 The focal point creates the meaning. The part must measure up to the Master.

A meeting of two great minds moving from considerations of choice and agency to free will and wisdom. Books and authors mentioned follow timestamps.Timestamps00:00 Intro03:30 Decision making and competent behavior do not imply high level cognition 05:20 The value of higher levels is context-dependent06:30 Be careful not to all into patterns that lead to collectivism07:07 Composite agents harness their parts toward an action they wouldn't normally be doing on their own. The scaling of cognition.09:30 A. Juarrero's notion of constraint. Causes are events, happenings. Constraints are conditions and orderings of probability. Bottom up causation, top down constraints. Aristotle's impact on Juarrero: participating the tree structure. Hierarchies presume a single ontological relation. We have to get beyond simple models mapping onto each other. Two kinds of constraints: Selective (reduce probabilities) and Enabling (increase probabilities) counterbalance each other.14:03 Emergence without emanation is epiphenomenalism: an ontological oxymoron, a monster. We are crypto privileging the level at which we do science.16:22 We need to acknowledge the importance of the higher levels, but there is not a simple mapping.18:00 A symphony of choices over time. Constraints as a way to generate creativity. Selection is a way to ignore stuff in order to prevent combinatorial explosion. 21:00 Acknowledging continuity - the problem with extending agency all th way down. Deep identities hypothesis23:45 Self-constraints are related to behavior shaping24:30 Choice, agency, decision making as a continuum. What is a decision? It is a decision to the extent that you need to consider a radius of events in space and time to figure out what just happened.31:45 Not just explained by local forces. Distiinction between causation and causal relevance. What caused the sinking of the Titanic?33:00 If we allow choice to map onto the causal event.... We need a sensitivity to causal relevance34:52 the idea of will goes alll the way down to primitive agents37:02 I am an agent that does things, using the same coarse graining on myself. The need to tell stories, to build internal models.38:25 The basic physics of being an object. Active inference is also for cells and molecular networks. The critical thing is the difference that makes a difference. 40:05 What does attention look like in the molecular pathway in a cell?41:20 Will, active inferencing, free energy all bound up together.45:13 When you zoom in to any event, there are only 2 choices. Determinism or true quantum randomness. If you zoom in... no big shocker! If you zoom in, all you see is physics. Free action (free will) is stretched over long periods of time.47:30 Free will is exercised over years in small increments50:00 Free will only applies to extended beings. From here, they go into a discussion of wisdom.Books mentioned by John:Shaun Gallagher: Enactivist InterventionBrian Cantwell Smith: On the Origin of ObjectsAlice Juarrero: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26272797/ (paper on constraints)

Drew is a music teacher at the International School in Tunis in Northern Africa. With a Master's in Ethnomusicology, Drew is able to consider music as an art form within and across cultures, considering the harmonious interplay of patterns and the musicality of intelligibility. We hear Drew's life story and then consider various aspects of music as communication, music as an aesthetic form and music as communitas and worship.Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:13 Drew's Story 14:20 Arriving in North Africa, Master's in Ethnomusicology 15:45 What drew him to The Meaning Code? 18:30 Using music as a bridge to meaning 20:25 Correspondence between color theory and music theory 27:00 Sound colored by overtones 33:58 Is birdsong strictly just communication or is it an aesthetic experience for the birds as well as for humans? 42:00 Visual arts and music as two different dimensions 47:00 Music, timelessness, unity and multiplicity 54:30 Atomization of modern society and musical silos 58:45 Deeper into the Weeds conversation of Peterson, Vervaeke and Pageau The musicality of intelligibility. "Music is the most representational of art forms." Jordan Peterson 1:02:31 Or, is music the most abstract? 1:07:45 Unity in music, plus multiplicity, diversity, variety 1:09:00 Scale is essential 1:10:45 Pageau, "Consciousness is a pattern perceiving patterns." 1:21:15 What songs does Drew use when leading worship? 1:23:00 Outro Mentions: Stefan Alexander, The Jazz of Physics Robin Sylvan: The Traces of the Spirit Victor Turner: The Ritual Process Songs: Christ is Enough There is No Other Name Give me Faith 10,000 Reasons Oceans

00:00 Intro 03:19 The difference between physical and corporeal, the solution to the quantum enigma 07:25 The corporeal enters into the measurement problem through the measuring device 08:50 John describes relevance realization, the 4 P’s of knowing, emanation and emergence 13:45 Reality is structured with things emerging (returning to the One) and emanating (coming from the One 15:50 If the corporeal is not real, we love conformity to Reality 17:05 We are both Platonists! 18:15 Studying Plato through the lens of the ancient thinkers 25:00 Why is James Gibson’s work important? How has it affected your work? 27:30 Wolfgang seeks to understand John’s ontology 32:00 Gibson and affordances - undermines nominalism. There are real relations 34:30 Opening the door to a new ontology 37:45 The vertical dimension cannot be excluded from the project of working out intelligibility 39:45 James Gibson’s reputation in the academic community is stellar among cognitive scientists but not among cognitive psychologists 44:00 Gibson’s breakthrough has still not penetrated into the physics world 51:00 Spinoza’s Religion 55:00 The undoing of nominalism and representationalism is epochal and we need to celebrate it. 1:01:30 The 1804 edition of Plato’s works with commentary by Thomas Taylor opens up a new way of understanding the ancient books. The Ptolemaic cosmology. 1:06:00 A quote from Cosmos and Transcendence 1:07:00 John discovering the Western wisdom tradition (convergence with Wolfgang) 1:20:15 Abandoning the view that all faiths look to the same source (Vedanta in the Light of Christian Wisdom) 1:28:50 John suggests we do this again! Background material on Wolfgang Smith and John Vervaeke A previous conversation with Wolfgang Smith Solving the Quantum: a Vertical Ascent: https://youtu.be/8NWHGX53agc Wolfgang Smith (A sampling of his many books) Vedanta in Light of Christian Wisdom Physics: a Science in Quest of an Ontology Vertical Ascent Ancient Wisdom and Modern Misconceptions Cosmos and Transcendence: Breaking through the Barrier of Scientistic Belief The Quantum Enigma: Finding the Hidden Key Theistic Evolution: The Teilhardian Heresy Science and Myth: A Response to Stephen Hawking's The Grand Design and many others And a movie made about his life: The End of Quantum Reality, available on Amazon An earlier discussion with physicist friend Glen on Wolfgang Smith's ideas about vertical causation as well as a bit about Stephen Wolfram. Toy Story as Metaphor for Quantum Measurement Problem: https://youtu.be/dFqGjvocYPw John Vervaeke The full series of Awakening from The Meaning Crisis w John Vervaeke: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLND1JCRq8Vuh3f0P5qjrSdb5eC1ZfZwWJ John Vervaeke's 4 P's of Knowing https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLND1JCRq8Vuit-ucfcXN8QDPMc6DXbTHq