The Jim Rutt Show

John Vervaeke joins Jim for the third of a five-part series examining the ideas put forward in Vervaeke’s popular YouTube series, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis... John Vervaeke joins Jim for the third of a five-part series examining the ideas put forward in Vervaeke’s popular YouTube series, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis. They discuss altered states of consciousness, phenomenology as clue to functionality, fluency, weakening egocentrism, ecologies of practice, the Solomon effect, complexification, Buddhism's intervention in parasitic processing, a corrective reading of dukkha, Alexander the Great & post-Alexandrian domicide, Stoicism as therapy, eros & agape, St. Augustine's grand synthesis, Thomas Aquinas's solidification of two-worlds mythology, Galileo's murder of the universe, the Enlightenment & Romanticism, genocidal implications of the True Self, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP143 - John Vervaeke Part 1: Awakening from the Meaning Crisis JRS EP144 - John Vervaeke Part 2: Awakening from the Meaning Crisis "From housing to homemaking," Brian Walsh How the West Really Lost God, by Mary Eberstadt JRS EP106 - Michael Strevens on the Irrational History of Science Spinoza, by Michael Della Rocca John Vervaeke is an Associate Professor, in the teaching stream. He has been teaching at the University of Toronto since 1994. He currently teaches courses in the Psychology department on thinking and reasoning with an emphasis on insight problem solving, cognitive development with an emphasis on the dynamical nature of development, and higher cognitive processes with an emphasis on intelligence, rationality, mindfulness, and the Psychology of wisdom. He is the director of the Cognitive Science program where he also teaches courses on the introduction to Cognitive Science, and the Cognitive Science of consciousness wherein he emphasizes 4E (embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended) models of cognition and consciousness. In addition, he teaches a course in the Buddhism, Psychology and Mental Health program on Buddhism and Cognitive Science. He is the director of the Consciousness and the Wisdom Studies Laboratory.  He has won and been nominated for several teaching awards including the 2001 Students' Administrative Council and Association of Part-time Undergraduate Students Teaching Award for the Humanities, and the 2012 Ranjini Ghosh Excellence in Teaching Award. He has published articles on relevance realization, general intelligence, mindfulness, flow, metaphor, and wisdom. He is first author of the book Zombies in Western Culture:  A 21st Century Crisis, which integrates Psychology and Cognitive Science to address the meaning crisis in Western society. He is the author and presenter of the YouTube series Awakening from the Meaning Crisis.

John Vervaeke joins Jim for the second of a five-part series examining the ideas put forward in Vervaeke's popular YouTube series, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis... John Vervaeke joins Jim for the second of a five-part series examining the ideas put forward in Vervaeke’s popular YouTube series, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis. They discuss virtue & virtuosity, Plato's man-monster-lion model, hyperbolic discounting, agent & arena, Plato's parable of the cave, the continuity between Plato & Aristotle, personality vs character, Erich Fromm's idea of having vs being, modal confusion, reversal theory, mindfulness as meta-modal optimization, opponent processing, hierarchical complexity, mystical experiences & putting transformation above metaphysics, the danger of reifying consciousness, global workspace theory, the g factor, integrated information theory, an emerging consensus about the function of consciousness, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP143 - John Vervaeke on Awakening from the Meaning Crisis: Part 1 John Vervaeke on Twitter Awakening from the Meaning Crisis Zombies in Western Culture: A Twenty-First Century Crisis, by John Vervaeke, Christopher Mastropietro, & Filip Miscevic "Hyperbolic Discounting," George Ainslie et. al. (paywalled) Anagoge Spiritual bypassing Plato's Critique of Impure Reason, by D.C. Schindler To Have or to Be?: The Nature of the Psyche, by Erich Fromm Piaget's stages of cognitive development JRS EP97 - Emery Brown on Consciousness & Anesthesia Buddhism Without Beliefs, by Stephen Batchelor Why I Am Not a Buddhist, by Evan Thompson JRS - EP105 Christof Koch on Consciousness JRS - EP108 Bernard Baars on Consciousness "Applying global workspace theory to the frame problem," Murray Shanahan and Bernard Baars "The Chinese Room," John Searle John Vervaeke is an Associate Professor, in the teaching stream. He has been teaching at the University of Toronto since 1994. He currently teaches courses in the Psychology department on thinking and reasoning with an emphasis on insight problem solving, cognitive development with an emphasis on the dynamical nature of development, and higher cognitive processes with an emphasis on intelligence, rationality, mindfulness, and the Psychology of wisdom. He is the director of the Cognitive Science program where he also teaches courses on the introduction to Cognitive Science, and the Cognitive Science of consciousness wherein he emphasizes 4E (embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended) models of cognition and consciousness. In addition, he teaches a course in the Buddhism, Psychology and Mental Health program on Buddhism and Cognitive Science. He is the director of the Consciousness and the Wisdom Studies Laboratory.  He has won and been nominated for several teaching awards including the 2001 Students' Administrative Council and Association of Part-time Undergraduate Students Teaching Award for the Humanities, and the 2012 Ranjini Ghosh Excellence in Teaching Award. He has published articles on relevance realization, general intelligence, mindfulness, flow, metaphor, and wisdom. He is first author of the book Zombies in Western Culture:  A 21st Century Crisis, which integrates Psychology and Cognitive Science to address the meaning crisis in Western society. He is the author and presenter of the YouTube series Awakening from the Meaning Crisis.

John Vervaeke joins Jim for the first of a five-part series examining the ideas put forward in Vervaeke's popular YouTube series, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis... John Vervaeke joins Jim for the first of a five-part series examining the ideas put forward in Vervaeke's popular YouTube series, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis. In this episode they focus on defining core concepts, including meaning, non-reductive science, symptoms of the meaning crisis, attention, shamanism, psychotechnology, ritual, serious play, participatory vs perspectival knowing, the flow state, mindfulness, the Bronze Age collapse & transition into the Axial Age, two-worlds mythologies, faith as loving commitment, the perniciousness of romantic comedies, kairos & its relation to Game B, the Socratic revolution, Socrates's imprecation to "know thyself," lying & bullshit, availability bias, salience vs transformation, and much more. Episode Transcript John Vervaeke on Twitter Awakening from the Meaning Crisis Zombies in Western Culture: A Twenty-First Century Crisis, by John Vervaeke, Christopher Mastropietro, & Filip Miscevic Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi JRS EP27 - Jamie Wheal on Flow & the Future of Culture JRS EP123 - Jamie Wheal on Recapturing the Rapture Sam Harris's Waking Up app  On Bullshit, by Harry Frankfurt John Vervaeke is an Associate Professor, in the teaching stream. He has been teaching at the University of Toronto since 1994. He currently teaches courses in the Psychology department on thinking and reasoning with an emphasis on insight problem solving, cognitive development with an emphasis on the dynamical nature of development, and higher cognitive processes with an emphasis on intelligence, rationality, mindfulness, and the Psychology of wisdom. He is the director of the Cognitive Science program where he also teaches courses on the introduction to Cognitive Science, and the Cognitive Science of consciousness wherein he emphasizes 4E (embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended) models of cognition and consciousness. In addition, he teaches a course in the Buddhism, Psychology and Mental Health program on Buddhism and Cognitive Science. He is the director of the Consciousness and the Wisdom Studies Laboratory.  He has won and been nominated for several teaching awards including the 2001 Students' Administrative Council and Association of Part-time Undergraduate Students Teaching Award for the Humanities, and the 2012 Ranjini Ghosh Excellence in Teaching Award. He has published articles on relevance realization, general intelligence, mindfulness, flow, metaphor, and wisdom. He is first author of the book Zombies in Western Culture:  A 21st Century Crisis, which integrates Psychology and Cognitive Science to address the meaning crisis in Western society. He is the author and presenter of the YouTube series Awakening from the Meaning Crisis.

Zak Stein & Jim have a wide-ranging talk inspired by two recent Consilience Project essays on the information war & propaganda... Zak Stein & Jim have a wide-ranging talk inspired by two recent Consilience Project essays on the information war & propaganda. They discuss the culture wars as a case of mutually assured destruction, distinguishing education from propaganda, developing widespread resistance to propaganda, epistemic nihilism, key indicators of propaganda, the function of thought-terminating clichés, a typology of propaganda, leaders' failure to educate rather than propagandize regarding Covid vaccines, modulating noise & chaos in the information ecosystem, redirecting technological innovation toward new goals of educational development, and much more. Episode Transcript Zak’s Website JRS: EP57 Zak Stein on Education in a Time Between Worlds JRS: EP60 Zak Stein on Educational Systems Collapse JRS: EP62 Zak Stein on Education, Tech & Religion JRS: EP 113 Zak Stein on Hierarchical Complexity "It's a MAD Information War" - The Consilence Project "WE DON'T MAKE PROPAGANDA! THEY DO!" - The Consilience Project JRS: EP143 Robert Tercek on the Metaverse "The science literacy paradox: Why really smart people tend to have the most biased opinions" On Bullshit, by Harry G. Frankfurt Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes, by Jacques Ellul Zachary Stein is a writer, educator, and futurist working to bring a greater sense of sanity and justice to education. He studied philosophy and religion at Hampshire College, and then educational neuroscience, human development, and the philosophy of education at Harvard University. While a student at Harvard, he co-founded what would become Lectica, Inc., a non-profit dedicated to the research-based, justice-oriented reform of large-scale standardized testing in K-12, higher-education, and business. He has published two books. Social Justice and Educational Measurement was based on his dissertation and traces the history of standardized testing and its ethical implications. His second book, Education in a Time Between Worlds, expands the philosophical work to include grappling with the relations between schooling and technology more broadly. He writes for peer-reviewed academic journals across a range of topics including the philosophy of learning, educational technology, and integral theory. He’s a scholar at the Ronin Institute, Co-President and Academic Director of the activist think-tank at the Center for Integral Wisdom, and scientific advisor to the board of the Neurohacker Collective, as well as a co-founder of The Consilience Project.

Lene Rachel Andersen & Jim have a wide-ranging talk about the meaning of Bildung & the growing Bildung movement, inspired by last week's Global Bildung Festival... Lene Rachel Andersen & Jim have a wide-ranging talk about the meaning of Bildung & the growing Bildung movement, inspired by last week's Global Bildung Festival. They discuss easily transferable "horizontal" knowledge vs. emotional, social, & bodily development, the need to confront exponentially increasing rates of change, appropriate learning for appropriate ages, the wasted effort of teaching math to young children, participatory knowing in childhood play, how to expand our sense of responsibility, ten concentric circles of belonging, humans as a custodial species, applying Kant's categorical imperative to food choices, highlights of the Bildung Festival, and more. Episode Transcript Bildung: Keep Growing by Lene Rachel Andersen The Nordic Secret by Lene Rachel Andersen and Tomas Björkman JRS: EP67 Tomas Björkman on The Nordic Secret John Vervaeke, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis (lecture series) Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta Many of the lectures mentioned are available on the Global Bildung Network YouTube page. Further reading: "What is Bildung?" (paper by Lene Rachel Andersen) Global Bildung Network The Global Bildung Manifesto Nordic Bildung European Bildung Network North American Bildung Bildung América Latina Bildung on Medium Lene Rachel Andersen is an economist, author, futurist, philosopher and Bildung activist. She heads the think tank Nordic Bildung in Copenhagen and is a member of the Club of Rome. After studying business economy for three years, she worked as a temp teacher before studying theology. During her studies, she wrote entertainment for Danish television until she decided to quit theology, become a full-time writer, and focus on technological development, big history, and the future of humanity. Since 2005, she has written 18 books and received two Danish democracy awards: Ebbe Kløvedal-Reich Democracy Baton (2007) and Døssing Prisen, the Danish librarians’ democracy prize (2012). Among her books are The Nordic Secret (2017), co-developed and edited by Club of Rome member Tomas Björkman, Metamodernity (2019), and Bildung (2020).

Jim has a wide-ranging talk with returning guest Robert Tercek about competing visions of the metaverse... Jim has a wide-ranging talk with returning guest Robert Tercek about competing visions of the metaverse, centralized vs. decentralized models, the importance of interoperability standards, differences between VR & AR, digital twins, digitization of the supply chain, AI-enabled creation of artificial worlds, Unity’s democratizing approach to 3D creation tools, the metaverse's potential for social harm, Marc Andreessen’s statements about “Reality Privilege,” whether the metaverse will be an extension of digital feudalism, mental-health externalities of social media, keeping “useless humans” occupied versus a world where everyone can be useful, meaning & craftsmanship in digital worlds, the challenge of 3D search, the illusion of “free” services, and more. Episode Transcript EP 133 – Robert Tercek on Digital Strategies EP 139 – Robert Tercek on Education Today Mark Zuckerberg’s interview in The Verge WSJ article about effects of Instagram on teenage girls (paywalled) Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow, by Yuval Noah Harari The Social Dilemma (documentary film) Sources for unpacking the metaverse: Matthew Ball’s website Jon Radoff (Medium) GS1US.org Robert Tercek is an award-winning author and one of the world’s leading authorities on dematerialization and the virtual economy. He has supervised the launch of new digital services that are used by hundreds of millions of people every day, including the first streaming video on mobile phones, the largest live educational program on the web, and some of the earliest games on a variety of platforms, including PCs, the web, and mobile.

Jim has a wide-ranging talk with evolutionary biologist Heather Heying about her & Bret Weinstein’s new book, A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century: Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life... Jim has a wide-ranging talk with evolutionary biologist Heather Heying about her & Bret Weinstein’s new book, A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century: Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life. They discuss hyper-novelty & its challenges, niche-switching as the human niche, the naturalistic fallacy, the Ancient Beringians’ entry into the Americas, the hubris of reductionism & neo-cornucopianism, humans as the blankest slates, metaphoric & literal campfires, scaling laws in social groups, theory of mind, social media’s flattening effects including flattened affects, social media sabbaticals, the Sucker’s Folly, human population explosion, the Personal Responsibility Vortex, Proto-B communities, the lineage view of evolution, understanding exponentials & fat-tail events, culture as evolutionary adaptation (the Omega Principle), humanity’s Fourth Frontier, and more. Episode Transcript Heather’s Website DarkHorse Podcast JRS: EP24 - Bret Weinstein on Evolving Culture JRS: Currents 17 - Bret Weinstein on Unity 2020 JRS: EP140 - Robin Dunbar on Friendship  Heather Heying is an evolutionary biologist who applies the toolkit of evolutionary theory to problems large and small. She is a professor in exile, cohost of the DarkHorse Podcast alongside her husband Bret Weinstein, and the author of numerous essays.

Evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar discusses the power of friendship, the loneliness epidemic, oxytocin and endorphins, new data sources in social networks, the discovery of Dunbar's number, the seven pillars of friendship, and why friendships end.

John Robb & Jim meet for a timely discussion about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan... John Robb & Jim meet for a timely discussion about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the current mess at the Kabul airport, how the Taliban are controlling the flow of evacuations, likely backroom negotiations, dynamics of the intelligence and command failures that led us here, the U.S.’s failure to switch from guerilla warfare to maneuver warfare, the overreliance on diplomacy, OODA loops & shears, tempo change, how the Taliban could force the U.S. into an overland retreat & whether they will, the brutality of nation-building, Afghanistan & Iraq as foreign-policy distractions, further examples & consequences of “assumption rot”, and more. Episode Transcript JRS - Currents 021: John Robb on Jan 6th, 2021 John’s Patreon: Global Guerillas Report John is an author, inventor, entrepreneur, technology analyst, astro engineer, and military pilot. He’s started numerous successful technology companies, including one in the financial sector that sold for $295 million and one that pioneered the software we currently see in use at Facebook and Twitter. John’s insight on technology and governance has appeared on the BBC, Fox News, National Public Radio, CNBC, The Economist, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and BusinessWeek. John served as a pilot in a tier-one counter-terrorism unit that worked alongside Delta and Seal Team 6. He wrote the book Brave New War on the future of national security, and has advised the Joint Chiefs of Staff, NSA, DoD, CIA, and the House Armed Services Committee.

Robert Tercek & Jim continue their conversation in this wide-ranging chat about learning & education... Robert Tercek & Jim continue their conversation in this wide-ranging chat about learning & education. They discuss the dematerialized economy, technological unemployment risk, underestimating software automation, AI as a career superpower, changing cost & quality of college, what education is for, Bryan Caplan’s challenge to the value of college, COVID & online education, online educational resource curation, VR learning potential, the metaverse discovery problem, why higher ed hasn’t vaporized, microcredentials & the push for alternative credentialing, 2 vaporized-education business proposals, and more. Episode Transcript JRS: EP133 Robert Tercek on Digital Strategies Vaporized: Solid Strategies for Success in a Dematerialized World “The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation?” (Oxford University) Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money by Bryan Caplan JRS: EP32 – Jason Brennan on Irrational Democracy & Academia Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts Virtual Film School Open Badges Robert Tercek is an award-winning author and one of the world’s leading authorities on dematerialization and the virtual economy. He has supervised the launch of new digital services that are used by hundreds of millions of people every day, including the first streaming video on mobile phones, the largest live educational program on the web, and some of the earliest games on a variety of platforms, including PCs, the web, and mobile.