Episode 322: A Theater of Simultaneous Possibilities (William James' "The Stream of Thought")

0:00Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and psychologist Dave Pizarro, having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics. Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say, and knowing my dad, some very inappropriate jokes. That's how real it is. I think somebody's trying to kill me. I'll be waking up paranoid. I'll be really scared. I'll just be paro.

0:26That's just the way I am.

0:30The Great Enfoss has spoken.

0:36Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

0:44Who are you? Who are you? I'm a very bad man. I'm a very good man. Good man.

0:55They think deep thoughts, and with no more brains than you have. Pay no attention to that man.

1:05Anybody can have a brain.

1:09You're a very bad man. I'm a very good man. Just a very bad wizard. Welcome to Very Bad Wizards. I'm Tamler Summers from the University of Houston. Dave, Vince Gilligan, the creator of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, and now Pluribus, has said about AI that it's the most expensive and energy-intensive plagiarism machine. I think there's a very high possibility that this is all a bunch of horseshit.

1:40Now, you know that I agree with him on this, so go ahead. Defend your boy. By your boy, I mean AI. I was going to say, who am I defending here? Look, we're on the same page about art and AI. Yeah. And I feel like that's what you're focused on primarily in your attacks on AI. Because what you never say is, for instance, that our Patreon members have a new feature that automatically divides up their ask-us-anything questions into chapter markers because of AI. That's the kind of shit that you're just like, oh, yeah, that's just whatever, normal computing.

2:13If that's AI, that's, I guess, great. Although, is it AI that's doing that, even? Yeah. So, like, yeah, I'm sure there's stuff like that. But, you know, obviously it's kind of ruining, like, universities and, like, education. So it's not just art. Like, it's a fact on students right now, I think, is absolutely poisonous and, like, soul-destroying. So I think my hatred of it goes well beyond the ridiculous things that people claim about it in art. Like, that is the most ludicrous part of it.

2:45The art part of it is soul-crushing, for sure. The other stuff, to me, is such a mixed blessing. Like, we're having, like, the ability to better diagnose, like, x-rays because of these models, right? Like, not relying on individual doctors. Like, getting this, like, amazing stuff. It's just, it comes with this cost. And you know what that cost is? We have to do our job better. Like, we as professors have to, like, find a way to inspire our students. Oh, yeah, we have to incorporate AI into our class. Not incorporate, inspire our students to, like, not be tempted by, like, the thought.

3:16I don't know. Like, I was optimistic on that front a lot more in September than I am now. As far as the x-rays and the cancer and, like, all the stuff that people claim, I'd really like to see more. Because all I've heard is people just say it. And it sounds like a way of, like, hospitals saving money on having actual people look at something. I mean, there is a lot of that, right? But, like, I just don't expect that if somebody publishes a paper on the ability to detect cancerous cells using machine learning that you're going to sit there and read it and be like, ah, I'm convinced.

3:49No, I would. I have an open mind. I'm very objective. Let's ask ChatGPT to summarize the research. I think, like, the most impressive thing I've ever seen it do is if, like, you want to search something and then you want to ask follow-up questions about the search. And, like, that's the, like, one time where I'm like, okay, this could be kind of helpful. But every other thing that people tell me it's good for, like, every time I try it, I find it, like, I'm just useless and also, like, I have a negative fringe experience, as William James would call it.

4:26Although I don't think he would use that exact phrase. But, like, I just think that you're not the target audience for, like, what these machine learning models do. I think that it's, like, actually unlocking a lot of really interesting things. Like, for instance, in scholarship, the ability to look at a tablet of whatever, cuneiform, that has previously been, like, you know, impossible to glean the meaning from. Like, these machine learning models can, like, actually bring insight into stuff. Like, there's, of course, all the stuff that you're saying is true about, like, its influence on university students.

4:57But I think it's sort of just ignoring a huge swath of powerful things that are coming with these models. Yeah. When did they get to you? Like, what happened? I'm not going to say anything bad about them here. What, like, is it, are they threatening you? Are they paying you? It's the Pornhub ads that say AI women at your disposal. Are you trying to get some of that Walter Sennett Armstrong money? What are you up to? That sweet, sweet AI money. But on that note, by the way, what you were saying, like, I, for instance, today, when we were prepping for our main segment, I was finding it hard to understand how James was using a specific set of terms.

5:37Like, his use of the words neuroses and psychoses is just weird to me. I don't know if you caught that. And so I asked GPT, like, can you explain, like, how he's using these? And it gave me, like, a real, I mean, it might be a lie. It might be complete. Yeah, it might be a hallucination, but great. But it sounded legit. Do we need to issue, like, a disclaimer for this episode? Yeah. I'm just going to be reading a script. They all be completely made up.

6:02Absolutely. I'd love to help you with that.

6:06Oh, that's such a great question. You are so smart. Like, I'm just in awe of how smart you are. That's what it is, Tamler. You don't like the sycophantic nature of it because your twisted personality is such that you need, like, your balls stepped on by a machine. I need, yeah, I want it to, like, time me up, like, spread it, go the face down on the bed. It hasn't negged you effectively yet.

6:30Meanwhile, I love that, you know. I love people telling me how smart my questions are.

6:37All right. So you've prepped for today entirely using JadGBT. It's actually the whole thing is going to be a script. As you say things, it'll be pumping out answers. Oh, right. You're just keeping a window open right now. I'm going to use the black guy voice, like, to respond. That actually is creepy to me. You can choose the voices for JadGBT. Can you talk to it? You can. You can. Yeah. I don't. I have. Yeah. I didn't even know that. I mean, it makes sense. Like, they know they have the technology to do that.

7:08Like, I swear, there's a voice that's a black guy. And I was trying to point this out to Nikki, and she's like, it doesn't sound like a black guy to me. And I was like, yeah, you know, you're just not part of the people, you know. Because it's just like, absolutely, I'd love to get that for you. Like a Denzel Washington kind of. I was doing more of a ladies' man. Yeah. Like, yeah, what's his name from South Park? Isaac Hayes. Isaac Hayes. Yeah. That would be a good JadGBT. Oh, man. Anyway, that's not what this is about.

7:39But I do not, I don't love that you've been captured by them, and you're like part of the whole Vichy regime. That's troubling. But, yeah. So, today, we're going to talk about two works of psychology, what, like 135 years apart.

8:01That's crazy, yeah. In the main segment, William James, his chapter from The Principles of Psychology, The Stream of Thought. And then right now, for the opening, we're going to talk about a paper entitled, Unexpected Events and Pro-Social Behavior, The Batman Effect. Man, how far psychology has fallen. Oh, I was going to say culmination of all of William James' ideas into this one article. Yeah, I think so. Which is like a nature journal.

8:31I've never heard of this mental health research journal, but it's like part of the Nature Publishing Group. Oh, so this wasn't just in nature. No, it's like in one of the sub journals. I know, I thought so too. I thought, yeah, I thought at first. Because it is a nature.com URL. Yeah, so this is a single field study done in Milan where they were interested in, like, what kind of interventions can we do to increase pro-social behavior? So as you well know, as a student of measurement, you need an operational definition of pro-social behavior.

9:05So what they picked was giving up your seat for a pregnant woman on a subway ride, like on a train ride. And they're totally theory-driven.

9:16I want to talk about the theories that they have. That's the most absurd part of this. Because, like, the findings, it's like I can't argue with the finding. But why they think they got this is absurd. It's completely ludicrous. Yeah. Well, in one way, it's completely ludicrous. And then another way, it's like, well, yeah. Okay, so they did this field study where they had researchers enter, like, board a train. There were other people who were observing in this train. And it was one of two conditions.

9:48It was always a woman in, like, a fake pregnancy belly, like a foam belly, looked pregnant, boarding the train. And it had to be, like, a full train so there were no seats around. And the measure was, does anybody give up their seat so that she can sit down? The polite, nice thing to do. I assume you would always do this. The manipulation that they chose was having a guy in one of the conditions board the train and be, like, a few meters away in a Batman suit.

10:20Just in a full Batman suit, except for the hood. Like, they didn't want to scare anybody, they said, because they were sensitive to the ethical issues of seeing. Like, yeah, no, that's very sensitive of them. No cowl, but yes, cape. Yeah. He holds the mask, at least in the photo, on his hand. Which, in some way, is a little creepier. Yeah. So, to quote, the experimental condition mirrored the control, but included an additional element. Another experimenter dressed as Batman entered the train from a different door approximately three meters away. There was no interaction between the pretend pregnant woman.

10:52Pretend pregnant is the term of art. It's a hysterical pregnancy. Is that what they're... That's what they're implying.

10:59For ethical reasons, the full mask was omitted to avoid potentially scaring passengers. The costume nevertheless included the characteristic cape logo and pointed cowl, making it easily recognizable. So, they had a couple of researchers seated in the trains, always. And they, like, immediately recorded, like, on their phone or whatever, on Qualtrics, whether or not somebody gave up their seat. And then, if they did, they would go and ask that person after the fact, like, why? Like, did you notice that there was a pregnant woman? Did you notice there was, like, a Batman guy?

11:30Yeah. And so, their main finding is that this seemed to work. There was an increase overall from when there was no Batman. Batman, the chance that a passenger would give up their spot was 38%, while if Batman was there, the chance increased to 67%. And this was statistically significant. It feels like, are we back in, like, 2008 or something like that? I know. Like, is Obama about to be elected, like, filling the nation full of hope? Cass Sunstein is in the cabinet.

12:01Yeah, right. Yeah. Well, this is the thing. Like, in their defense, this is a, like, a registered report, which basically means that some journals accept this way of going about doing things. Before you run the study, you submit exactly what you're going to do. So, you describe it. Like, they write the intro. They write their predictions, like, everything that they're going to do. And the journal reviews the proposal. And what the journal is doing is pre-committing to publishing the results no matter how they come out. So, this is, like, intended to be a measure to, you know, to prevent against, like, file drawer effects where, you know, non-significant results don't get published.

12:37Like, that's a good thing. So, they did that. They get the effect. It's a simple measure. You know, either somebody got up or somebody didn't. It's, like, a very, it's a strong effect. It's in the field. It's not in the lab. It's in the field, right? There's no, like, weird scale of altruism that they used. I do. I appreciate that. There's no scales. There's no measures like that. Yeah. Although, when they talk about in the discussion, they will appeal to a few of those. But, yeah, the main finding doesn't depend on it. It just does someone get up or not.

13:09Yeah. So, here's the thing. So, they're very self-aware that this has the vibe of a social priming experiment. And they're, like, maybe that's the effect. But we think that, like, you know, we saw what happened to social priming. It doesn't seem to be a real thing. But, like, their, like, theory that they say generated this prediction and that they're using to explain it is this sort of, like, vague, as you said from the title, unexpected events and pro-social behavior. So, they think that what's going on is that there is just an interruption in, like, the norms of a setting, like, in the script that we're used to.

13:45And just, like, the interruption of seeing a random-ass guy wearing a Batman suit is enough to, like, snap people into attention somehow. Like, it disrupts, as they say. Yeah. It makes them more mindful. Yeah. Such events disrupt automatic patterns of attention and behavior, increasing individuals' awareness of their surroundings and the needs of others. So, that's what they think is going on. But it's weird because then why Batman? Well, so, this is the part where I'm, like, in some ways, well, yeah. Right? So, the idea is that being more mindful in a situation will foster maybe pro-social behavior.

14:23And one way to make you more mindful, to get you out of your dream world, or are you listening to a podcast and just zoning out, is to have something novel happen. And then you're like, oh, shit. Like, I'm in, like, I notice the world around me right now. Oh, this pregnant woman needs a seat. I'll get up. Like, I probably didn't even notice her before because I was lost in my world. I think that's the idea. And in some ways, that makes sense to me, right? Yeah. It's less that it doesn't make sense. Well, I mean, there's a couple of things to me.

14:53Like, I'm not sure why it would encourage mindfulness, unless you just mean by mindfulness, like, interrupting what you're thinking now. Because, like, I would think you might be just hyper-focused on the weird thing that just happened and not mindful in any. But haven't you, like, been in a situation where you're literally, like, in dreamland? You know, you're not asleep, but you're just lost in your own world. And then something happens. Like, it could be, like, a bug stinging you or something like that. You, like, slap it and it's like, oh, yeah.

15:23Like, I'm back in this space, in this world, at this time. Like, I don't know. Like, it kind of makes sense. That does. Is that mindfulness? It's not mindfulness, like, you're trying to cultivate in, like, certain Buddhist practices. That's the slippage that I worry about. Because it makes sense that if you're mindful, you'd be more likely to engage in pro-social behavior. But just to have your attention interrupted, I still have the additional question of why they're helping. They might just be more likely to notice their surroundings. But why would it encourage them? Is the idea that the default is that you would help if you noticed?

15:55Yeah, I think that's what it is. It's like, if you really are aware that this woman needs a seat, I was like, yeah, sure, I'm going to get up. Like, yeah, I guess it kind of assumes that you didn't even notice her or you didn't really process her in the way that will relate to the next segment when we talk about, like, something good. Yeah, right. This is actually weirdly relevant. One of the findings that they point out as potentially interesting is that people weren't more likely to say that they recognized the pregnant woman in one condition versus the other.

16:27Like, at least their explicit acknowledgement didn't change. But who knows why that might be the case. The other thing is, like, you would think, though, that that explanation of interrupting attention could be had with anything, you know? Why Batman? Yeah. As they point out, like, you're like almost immediately introduced an alternative explanation, which is that, like, what you're priming is this idea of being some sort of hero and being like, you know, moral. So, yeah, they, like, invite that, like, almost like they're building a literature because it's almost like they built an objection and an alternate explanation into the study.

17:06Like, they deliberately chose something just so they would have people, like, testing out other conditions and doing that. It feels very, like, strategic in that way. Oh, I never even thought about that. They're all Italians. Maybe they're sneaky Italians, you know? You can't trust them. Not at all. I would have thought they would, like, steal olive oil on the train, you know? Yeah, right. But no, that's not going to start a literature. So, they say, talking about this disrupting hypothesis theory, they say, this suggests a potential mechanism by which novelty and unpredictability foster pro-social behavior, reinforcing theories that link attentional shifts to increased social responsiveness.

17:43At the same time, alternative explanations should be considered. For instance, the superhero figure may have increased the salience of cultural values, gender roles, and chivalrous helping norms. In line with research on superhero-related priming. All three of which seem like more plausible accounts to me. But, uh... Like, not necessarily to me, but if you knew that, why choose Batman? I know! That's what's so ridiculous. Why not have one more condition where it's just, like, another thing? You know, another thing that disrupts attention. I love this also. Therefore, a more parsimonious explanation.

18:14I love, like, to even bring that word into this is just, like, Occam is spinning in his grave right now. Uh, a more parsimonious explanation is that the Batman figure served as a pro-social prime, yet this explanation, too, should be approached with caution. It's like, what the fuck are you talking about? Close replications of social priming effects largely failed to reproduce original findings. Then they say, these findings contribute to discussions on how public spaces and social interventions can be designed to encourage kindness and cooperation.

18:51What discussions are these, you know? If unexpected, yet non-threatening events can increase mindfulness and pro-social behavior, urban planners, policymakers, and psychologists may consider ways to integrate positive disruptions into daily life. Like, what do you think they have in mind there? Yeah, obviously, just deploying Batmans. Like, obviously. Yeah, it's like the beginning of The Dark Knight, where there's just all these Batmans everywhere. I think they have in mind, like, those, what do they call them?

19:22Like, the, like, dance bombs or whatever, where all of a sudden, like. Oh, yeah, flash mobs? Flash mobs, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's very early aughts of you. I mean, that's the, but that's where this paper belongs. I know, it really does. Like, don't bail out the banks, Obama. That's going to, like, completely, like, torch this country for the next, like. Stop with the drones. Stop with the drones. Stop with the drones. Jesus Christ. You can still have your Martha's Vineyard, like, estate. Just don't, no more drones. Yeah, that was also just hilarious to me as I was thinking about whether they really mean that.

19:56Like, the thought of scaling something like this was hilarious. Where you'd be. Like, I love the idea that you have these, like, effect and that you have, like, which theory is more parsimonious, as if these are fleshed out theories of, like, human behavior. And we're down to just kind of, like, you know, to break the tie, which is more parsimonious. It's just so ridiculous. Future research should therefore test a range of characters or disruptions, varying in both emotional valence and symbolic meaning, to clarify the boundary conditions of this effect.

20:27The boundary conditions.

20:30So ridiculous. And again, right, like, if you think, like, why choose an intervention that would invite this if you didn't want somebody to, you know, like, what happens if it's Batgirl? Yeah, I know. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Totally. What happens if it's a villain? Well, Wonder Woman. Does Marvel versus DC play a role? Yeah.

20:52It's, I mean, it's an open question. I feel like DC is the parsimonious. Right. Like, I mean, one alternate explanation is this would only work for a DC superhero, but not a Marvel because people are so sick of the MCU. Exactly. Yeah. But, you know, what I also love is the first sentence, pro-social behavior, voluntary actions that aim to benefit others has profound implications for societal functioning and individual well-being. And then it, like, cites, it's like, cites them.

21:24It's just so, it's the emptiest possible thing you could lead a paper off of. I'm not even sure that's a real sentence. I know.

21:33Pro-social behavior has implications, I guess. Yeah. No, I know. I, oh, man, I didn't even notice that. Pro-social behavior has profound implications for societal functioning and, like, no shit. Like, how could it not? Like, oh, but, like, wait, I don't buy that. We have to look at, oh, no, wait, hold on. Pro-social behavior and altruism. They cite someone. So I guess it's true. You know, this is such a short article that they don't have time, but, like, they get right to it. They're like, there's tons of work on pro-social behavior.

22:04For instance, romantic love has been shown to promote pro-social responses. And that's it. Like, that's the lit right thing.

22:12That's the one, you know? Like, at least give us a quote from a musical or something. Like, you know, kind of. I know, right. I want to be, like, seduced. I want to, like, take me out to dinner. Do you think they're working on the Joker, like, next? Yeah. Like, the Joker control. Well, William James, see what you've done. You opened psychology to be the empirical science that it is. And this is what happened. I do think it is worth having kind of a meta conversation at some point about, like, the difference between what James is doing.

22:48I mean, I guess we have had this conversation in some way. But because these, you know, I guess they have some parallels. It's such a different way of approaching the subject that it's interesting that it's tilted so far in this direction. I know. What really they should have had is, like, a multiple pages long quote of a guy who grew up deaf and blind or whatever.

23:11Now, now.

23:14Well, no, but, like, I think this is true of philosophy, too. Like, you could find a 20, 25 paper, like, in some top journal right now and compare it to, like, Hume or, like, William James writing philosophy. And, like, I would have the same question. Like, what happened? You know? Yeah. I think it has to do with the professionalization of the topic. But it's interesting and kind of sad. Yeah. It's inevitable that something like this would have to happen because of just the increased complexity and division of labor.

23:45However, I'm very curious what William James would think of these kinds of methods. And, in fact, like, and we'll get to this in the main topic because, like, I'm not quite sure in some of these cases where James is writing about some of these phenomena. Like, I'm not sure what his method even is. Like, and sometimes I wonder whether he was doing psychology and not just some kind of philosophy. Saying stuff? Yeah. Yeah. Maybe that's, well, yeah, okay. So we can talk about that in the next segment. Not to get all serious.

24:15All right. We'll be right back to talk about William James's famous chapter, The Stream of Thought. Keep your mind on your mask, kid. Horror form a classic. It's drastic. Villain hydrochloric acid. Splashed it. Pull it, nah. Reached and blasted. Pow. Ten stripes on a basket. New York style. Wow. Cheddar grab easy. It's only entertainment, though. It's thought out completely. Sad demeanor could get in the drop and bag cleaner. Master schemer.

24:47Expert in that arena. Puff in Pasadena. He read the grass was greener. Black beaver, IH, gyrate. Rubbing shoulders with pigs who don't fly straight. Just ate. Causing indigestion. Soaring girth and tape. Into profits, no question. Nosey agent sniffing around. Pay attention. You can take that to the bank. Thanks. Don't mention. Pleasure's all mine. I ain't mad at y'all. Clear advantage like playing paddle ball on Adderall. Be great. Welcome back to Very Bad Wizards.

25:23As you know, we have stopped doing ads because we are the most moral podcast in history. And want to make it clear that this is not an ad. We are teaming up with, as you said, spinoff podcast, Lori Santos' The Happiness Lab. We're teaming up with her and a bunch of other podcasts to join hashtag pods fight poverty.

25:58And the goal here is actually to do something super important, to lift three entire villages in Rwanda out of extreme poverty. And we're doing it through the great philanthropy, GiveDirectly, which has been a top four GiveWell charity. And it was always the one that I would choose when I gave to GiveWell when it was available. So, and it's going to give a $1,100 payment, no strings attached.

26:28That's a life-changing sum of money in these Rwandan villages. But Tamler, just giving cash? You might be thinking, what if people waste all that money? I work hard for all this money and I'm going to give it to them and they'll just waste it. They're taking our money. They took their jobs. No, but seriously, there's a great deal of research showing that these direct cash transfers really do get people out of these situations of extreme poverty. It helps them invest, invest in their futures. When families receive these lump sums of money, they start businesses, they buy livestock to fertilize their farm.

27:04They pay off school fees. There's even research showing that these cash transfers can cut infant mortality by half. And, you know, if you're economically minded, every dollar that we give creates $2.50 in wealth in the local economy. So, even people nearby in the wider community can benefit. It's a small amount for us, but it really is, like you said, life-changing for the people who receive it. Yeah, and if you give a donation to at GiveDirectly, that'll get a 50% boost today.

27:40I think this goes through the end of the month thanks to Giving Multiplier. So, go to GiveDirectly.org slash wizards. And this is something that we were always very high up in GiveWell donations. It'd be very cool if you could represent the podcast and give to a truly great philanthropy. Yeah, and let me just end by saying I would really like it if we could beat the Happiness Lab in number of donations. Yes. I mean, it's not a competition.

28:10I'm just giving us some motivation. If we could give, like, the spinoff podcast, like, if we could show them that they are a spinoff and that we are the flagship podcast, that would be amazing. Yeah, so thank you, everybody. GiveDirectly.org slash wizards. Make your donation, and they will appreciate it. And we're still going to take the time that we normally take, this part of the episode, to thank you for all of your support. We really appreciate it.

28:41We love hearing from you. If you want to get in touch with us, you can email us, verybadwizards at gmail.com. You can tweet to us at Tamler, at Pease, or at VeryBadWizards. You can go join in some discussion on Reddit at reddit.com slash r slash VeryBadWizards for the unofficial VeryBadWizards Reddit. You can find us on Instagram, and if you find it in your heart, you can give us a rating on Apple Podcasts, maybe even a review there or on Spotify. We very much appreciate it. And if you would like to help us in more tangible ways, you can go to our support page, verybadwizards.com, and click on the support page.

29:19You'll see the various ways you can help us out. You can buy some swag. You can donate to us via PayPal. Or you can become part of our Patreon supporter family. And if you do, you'll see there's a number of tiers at $2 a month. You get our ad-free episodes, so the whole back catalog without ads. You also get access to my little beat compilations. I have nine of them. Yeah, nine of them. If you join us at the $5 per month and up level, you get access to all of our bonus content, including our listening to our monthly Ask Us Anything series, our entire Deadwood podcast series, The Ambulators, our podcast with Paul Bloom on Severance, The Reintegrators.

30:06All of our back catalog of bonus episodes where we talk about various movies, TV shows, and sometimes bring on guests. And maybe just most excitingly, if that's a word, for us, our latest series, our now ongoing series on the Odyssey, on Homer's Odyssey. We put out our episode on Odyssey parts one and two for everybody to listen. And now we're just going to continue going. We're about to record episodes, an episode on books three and four.

30:39Really excited about it. It's an easy read. Follow along with us. Join us if you haven't. It's like a book club, but you know, like a good one where you get to chime in on the episodes and tell us what you think about what we're saying or what you read. So you get that with $5 a month and $5 a month and up. At $10 and up, you get all of that. You get to vote on an episode topic that we do these polls a couple times a year.

31:12You get access to our five-part Brothers Karamazov series. You get access to a couple of lecture series, Tamler on Plato Symposium and some of my intro psych lectures. And at $20 and up, you get access to us in the form of asking us anything. You get to be a questioner. And once a month, we answer those questions. We release them on video for the $20 and up club. But everybody from the bonus tiers and up gets access to our answers.

31:44So thank you, everybody. As the holiday season approaches, it's just an extra excuse to communicate our appreciation for you guys, for the community you've built, for listening to us and for putting up with us. We really appreciate it. Okay, now for the main topic, William James' stream of thought. So this is one of the chapters in his famous influential two-volume Principles of Psychology published in 1890. And I think, Tamler, I think this is maybe his most famous idea, at least culturally.

32:17This might be the most influential, even though it's not clear what exactly the influence is. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Like, I think people tend to associate, like, the whole stream of consciousness idea, which I think might be fair. Like, the stream of thought as opposed to, like, a succession of, like, atomistic ideas. Like, that is something that this does endorse and, you know, it rejects the atomistic theory. That's a big influence. But it feels like people attribute to this the whole idea of stream of consciousness in art.

32:51In art, right. And stream of consciousness, yeah, in prose style because of his brother, Henry James. So, yeah, I think it has this secondary influence, but that might not be earned, I think. Yeah, totally. Yeah, that's right. So, just like a broad strokes outline of what he's doing in this chapter, he is disagreeing with, I think, this strand of thought that still exists to this day, which I really want to talk about, that the way to try to understand consciousness is by looking at the individual parts of subjective experience.

33:26So, sometimes people talk about, you know, you have these, all these individual sensations. Like, isn't it a mystery how they all combine into being this one sense of subjective experience? And he seems to just be arguing that it's a mistake to even start thinking about consciousness or thought as atomistic. Yeah, and I think he's responding specifically to a strain and philosophical inquiry from John Locke, this idea of simple ideas that get built up to form more complex ideas.

33:57So, the way we would get, like, a forest is to have a simple idea, I don't know, of bark and of leaves and of branches, and that gives us a complex idea of a tree, and then we can build from that out, and that's the thing that he's rejecting here. Yeah, and that makes sense, because there is a particular kind of psychology that is, like, this associationistic, like, very empirical view that the way that you ever get complex ideas is by experiencing the more simple ones and then combining them.

34:30And he just seems to think that this is a wrong approach if what you're trying to do is understand consciousness. Which they are, so. Yeah, yeah, well, that's the thing I want to talk about, though, because I think that there is a way in which, if what you're trying to understand is how consciousness gets built, it doesn't seem that wrong-headed to try to think about the components, you know? But that's different than, I guess, explaining the nature of subjective experience. Oh, I see. So, you're saying, like, that could work, you know, maybe if you were doing brain science or some kind of functionalist cognitive science or something like that.

35:05But you think he's doing this more phenomenologically, trying to capture, like, the actual experience. Yeah. That doesn't work. Right. So, it's holistic in experience. But part of me thinks, well, but it has to be atomistic in some way, you know, but. Why does part of you think that? Because that's just how things work. Like, you literally do have different sensory organs that are inputting different pieces of information, right? Like, it has to get processed somehow. That it presents itself as a holistic experience, I think, is true.

35:38And maybe he's right that we're misguided to think that the way to understand subjective experience is to understand the components. But your brain is putting together a whole bunch of different sensations. Like, that seems kind of trivially true. Yeah, I mean, I guess. I don't know. Like, when you're starting to talk about how the brain and consciousness, like, how that all works, I don't see why you have to be reductionistic about it. And it could be holistic in a way that we don't understand. Or it could be, you know, atomistic, at least at the level before it becomes accessible to us as conscious experience.

36:13But I don't know why you necessarily have to think it must be atomistic in some sense. Because, I mean, like, we have neurons and we have, but that's, I don't know. Yeah, well, I mean, we should get, like, let me finish maybe giving the broad overview because I think there's a lot to unpack there. So, like, the chapters divide into five sections, each of which makes a specific claim about this experience of consciousness. So, the first is that it is stream-like. It's continuous. It's fluid. There's no gaps. The other one is that consciousness is always personal. It's always about you.

36:43It's always your consciousness. And, you know, he has some interesting discussion there that I was wondering what you would think about. Like, where he seems to think it's just obviously true that the you is always there. You were right that I want to talk about that. He calls it one of the most absolute breaches found in nature. This my stream of thought and my consciousness versus your stream of thought and your consciousness. Yeah. The biggest breach is the difference between yours and mine. Yeah. Right. Yeah. One of the most absolute breaches in all of nature, he says. Which is why, by the way, like, not to get ahead of ourselves, but why I wouldn't think that you would be so opposed to me challenging his view that it is always best understood as a holistic subjective experience and not basically understand some of this as components.

37:29Because when you understand it as components, you can start seeing that it is perhaps the illusion of unified selfness that is going on here. Right. But I think that's a separate, that's orthogonal. Like. Yeah. And I don't. So, okay. Yeah. So, we'll get to that. Yeah. That's right. He also says that one of the, and is, I think one of his big points is that consciousness is always changing. So, you know, he invokes Heraclitus. You never step into this same stream twice. Yeah. You never have the same experience twice, even though you think that you might.

38:00You think that every time you smell that rose, it's the same experience. But, you know, he says it's a silly thing to assume because you are a different person each time you smell it. There's all kinds of background conditions that differ both in your mind and in the world. All that stuff he thinks is illusory. He also says there's no way to determine that because, like, the person is not a good judge of it. So, like, it does seem kind of hopeless to even answer that question. Right. Then he says consciousness is, one of the primary features for him is that it's driven by selective attention.

38:35So, he thinks that experience of consciousness is motivated so much by what you're paying attention to, whether it be your specific thoughts or some feature of your environment. Guy in a Batman suit. Exactly. So, two people might be sort of, like, having the same sensory, like, the same photons, the same molecules of smell, the same waves of sound are hitting them, but they have fundamentally different experiences because one person is paying attention to some feature of it that the other person is not paying attention to.

39:05Yeah. He has a great line about this. He says, the mind is at every stage a theater of simultaneous possibilities. Yeah. Because the data that we take in under determines the experience we're going to have. And so, like, it really just depends on what we're attending to. And we're always excluding some things and putting in others. And so, we could have, like, a second before, like, a completely different experience than the one that we end up having just because of this tiniest little alteration in our attention.

39:39Yeah. Exactly. So, you know, and this, like, mechanism of attention ends up playing a big part in will, which we already talked about, I guess, the chapter on will. We just talked about that chapter on attention. We never did the will. We didn't do will? No. Oh, yeah. Okay. All right. So, yeah. Another thing he says is that consciousness is always appearing to deal with objects that are independent of the self. So, he makes this point about, like, you think that what you're perceiving is the object. You confuse your subjective experience for the object itself.

40:10Yeah. Which is almost like he's almost getting Kantian there. Yeah. That you never are really experiencing the object. You're just sort of thinking that you're... Just idea. I think he's just being an idealist, or at least he's leaning in that direction of, like, what we have is the experience. It's an inference to assume that it's the actual thing. But actually, when you think of all the different variations of all the different ways we could experience that thing, yeah, I think you're right. Maybe Kantian is right.

40:40Like, there is something there that's causing you to have this experience. But the idea that your experience matches the thing is, like, far-fetched. Yeah. And he has a nice little passage there where he sort of refers to it as triangulating. So, like, we infer that the object is the same object because we're triangulating our experience at, like, two different times. Or my experience and your experience, like, are similar enough that we're like, oh, yeah. So, we're both looking at that thing. Right. That's the inference that we make is just purely just based on the fact that other people are experiencing it, too.

41:15So, I think, like, that's a starting point to dive in. Like, I was trying to say, think to myself, how would I summarize what, like, what's his thesis here? And I think the best that I was getting at is just this somehow an anti-reductionistic view, like a very holistic view of consciousness. Yeah. And a very much of a, like, the river, the stream, it's always flowing. It never stops. And it has all different flavors and all different varieties. But it's just constantly going. And it's my stream. And you have your stream.

41:46Yeah. And never the twain shall meet. Yeah. It's like the river banks are high. And so, one river, and, you know, he would change on that, you know, like, as he got more, a little more mystical later in his later work in varieties of religious experience and then the radical empiricism stuff. Like, he would bend on that part, which I think he should, because I don't think that's the most compelling part of this, as, you know, you might. But maybe we're getting ahead of ourselves. So, let's, let's. Yeah. I did want to say, though, that when I was reading this, I was thinking, well, like, we're talking.

42:19That's us crossing streams. Yeah. But we are. And maybe we shouldn't cross the streams. We shouldn't have crossed the streams. But the, you know, like, I see what he's saying. I still am in my experience. And even though I'm saying a word and you're hearing that word, we're having different experiences in that. Yeah. But so, we'll talk about that, because that's really right at the beginning of the chapter. Did you want to say more about how you were questioning the method here? And is it even psychology?

42:51Yeah. So, as I was reading this, you know, across the principles, the two volumes, there's so much. There's all kinds of style of argumentation and building a case. And some are more empirical than others. This one, what struck me was that a lot of what he's saying about how psychologists might be getting this wrong. So, we mentioned one target, the people who view, like, consciousness as this atomistic, like, just the sum of these individual parts. Another one is he's, like, throws some shade on introspectionists.

43:23Does he? Where does he do that? So, he's not taking aim at the school, but he is saying a lot of people get so misguided because they are introspecting and they think it can't be any other way when, in fact, they're just, like, fooling themselves. And through a lot, I was thinking, like, but he's relying a lot on his own introspection about the stream of consciousness. Yeah. And so, even when I agree, like, I would sometimes take a step back and say, like, am I agreeing because, like, he's actually making convincing arguments or because, like, I'm all just convinced of what he's saying?

43:56Because it's hard. As you were pointing out earlier, for some of this stuff, it's, like, unclear what it would even mean to have evidence for, like, a competing view. So, it surprises me a little to hear you say that because, like, I remember there was something you said a few episodes back. But it was one of these studies where maybe it was one about how visual illusions may or may not be more effective across cultures. You know, like, do people experience them differently across cultures depending on their ecological conditions?

44:28And what you said was that, like, the great thing about, like, cognitive science when it deals with perception, especially visual perception, is most of the experiments, you don't, like, have to run studies. You just show it to a person. You show them, like, what do you see? And there it is. Like, you don't need an experiment. You don't need to do linear regressions. You don't need to pre-register anything. You just show it to people. That's what I feel like he's doing here is, like, yeah, like, this is what's going on as I am characterizing it for me.

45:01But he, you know, I think it's compelling because it's going on for us, too. And the way he describes it, like, the way he describes if you can't think of a person's name, but you can get, like, a fuzzy outline of the name, like, a blurry fringe of the name. And you immediately know if somebody says the wrong name that it's not that. It's just like, yeah, that's a good way of describing the exact same experience that I have. So, like, I don't know, like, that seems to me it's not as clear cut as the visual illusion.

45:32And it does depend on people actually sharing the experience that he's talking about. But I still think that's psychology to the extent that that's a division, a real, you know, demarcation. Yeah, maybe it's not right for me to say it's not so much psychology. It's just I find that he's conflicted in the way that he's reporting some of the stuff where he takes his experience as a solid piece of evidence for why some feature of the mind is obvious. But then other people describing their mental experience, he thinks they're clearly wrong.

46:04And this is why I wanted to get to the thing, like, when he doubles down hard on, like, this unified sense of self as being the center of conscious experience, doesn't it seem to you that, like, that needs to be defended more than just simply stipulating that that's the most obvious? Yeah. Okay, that's a good example because you know that I'm going to probably be sympathetic with what you're saying here. So let's go to it. So he says,

46:56In nature, everyone will recognize this to be true, so long as the existence of something corresponding to the term personal mind is all that's insisted on without any particular view of its nature being implied. And then finally, the universal conscious fact is not feeling and thoughts exist. But I think I feel no psychology at any rate. This is the strongest claim. No psychology at any rate can question the existence of personal selves.

47:26Yeah, this is exactly the thing that I think he kind of changed his mind to a significant extent about. But I don't have a problem with it methodologically because it's like, no, I don't think it has to be like that. Like, now you're not describing what I think is essentially true about my experience. And so, yeah, that's okay, too, you know? Well, right. But if that's what he's hanging his claim on, it seems that, like, well, there are the ones that you agree with as also features of your conscious experience and they're the ones that you disagree with.

47:57But it's like, what's the truth? It's not agree like we're having opinions. It's like this idea of whether he's capturing what I take to be my experience or not. And so, like, when it doesn't work, it doesn't work. Like, you know, but methodologically it seems fine. It's like, look, I'm going to say these things. It will either capture your experience or it won't. And it will be compelling or not compelling, like, based on how well it does that. No, but he's not saying, like, let me toss this out here and see if this resonates with your experience.

48:29He's saying no psychology can question the existence of ourselves. Well, that's, yeah. Like, these are strong. Like, yeah, I mean, he is claiming a universality of what consciousness is based on, in many cases, like, and this was like, I would think that that would cause you to say, okay, well, maybe some of the things that do resonate with me, I should not take as confidently as he's presenting because there might be other people who don't have that experience. So, if the claim is universality, which I think is very clearly what he's trying to say, then it seems like not a great method to achieve.

48:59But see, I guess, and I agree, like, that claim, like, no psychology at any rate can question the existence of personal selves. Like, that's too strong, but I don't mind him throwing it out there. Like, look, yeah, what I'm looking for in a William James chapter is to try to learn something that might capture experience or might synthesize certain experiences along with other stuff that I've noticed or read or, like, so to give this vivid description that comes from his own phenomenology

49:31and to see to what degree that reflects my own and can even make sense of certain things I'm puzzled about or confused about or don't see how they're connected. And even this is, like, kind of useful where I disagree to figure out exactly how or why I disagree. Like, I find all of that super useful, whether or not it's like— But, like, I'm not saying that it's not useful or interesting or insightful, like, in the same way that Freud is interesting and useful and insightful. Like, I'm simply pointing out that I think that the certainty with which he's presenting this is a feature of what, like, I think his goal is to explain a universal truth.

50:06So when you say, like, it doesn't bother me, like, I believe you. Like, it doesn't bother—but, like, I think that his goal is to capture a universal thing. And the way that he's doing it through introspection and making that claim seems to me not to be on the same, like, ground as when, say, he's describing, you know, studies on perception where, like, people can tell the difference between two different stimuli that are given to you, right? Like, that's, like, just a different thing. But that's also, like, that's something that's by nature more intersubjective, whereas this is something by nature that's completely and totally subjective,

50:39which is kind of part of his point. And so, like, there's no perfect way of approaching something like consciousness and streams of thought. Like, you have to approach it in this other way. Now, I agree. Like, the rhetoric—but, like, to me, this is a problem with rhetoric. No, this is—to me, this is a problem with rhetoric. He's saying it too strongly and confidently and with too much certainty. And he's presenting maybe his aims in a way that I would think should be much less ambitious in terms of the universality of the claims.

51:14But that, to me, is a rhetorical problem. Like, I like the actual method, to me, is much more—and even Freud. Like, Freud, I have to, like, take leaps and buy something. With this, I don't have to do that. Like, this either captures my experience and makes sense of something that I'm confused about or it doesn't. Like, I don't have to, like, do any kind of leaps of faith when I look at this. Yeah, fair enough. Like, and we're approaching this differently. Like, but I feel like I'm taking him at face value for his claims.

51:46And so, for you to say, like, I don't mind. Sometimes he says wrong things and sometimes he says right things. Or sometimes he says things that don't resonate. Or sometimes he's being too strong. I'm just taking him at face value for saying these things as universal features of consciousness. Like, in that sense, we just agree. We just don't—you just don't think it's as problematic, right? I don't think that this is a turn of phrase to try to convince me. I think that he's making a strong claim. And the evidence that he's using to back up that strong claim isn't enough. And so, to say, well, like, that's fine because some of them I'll agree with because they match my experience and some I'll disagree with because they don't match my experience is not to take William James' claim seriously.

52:25I mean, it's not to take the—literally. Like, it's to take himself seriously, though. Right. Yeah. I guess I don't understand why the charitable nature of, like— Like, if somebody in, like, that nature paper made a strong— Don't you like me? Fucking take me seriously. I do take you seriously. I think your rhetoric is a little off. So, this is—but, like, I agree with everything you're saying about, like, that he's using a very straightforward way of introspecting about, like, what consciousness is like.

52:58I actually agree. I actually probably agree way more than you do that there is irrefutably a self. Yeah. Like, you know. And so that much I agree with. I just think that the burden—it just can get slippery because my concern is that later on, I think he does use just as strong a language for things that you resonate with and that you might not notice that he's using that strong language. And somebody might say, actually, I feel like—maybe Locke was like, no, I do feel like it's—I'm experiencing eight different things and somehow bringing them together in my mind. Yeah, and if he does, like, then either, you know, he's lying, he's different, you know, like, I'm somehow defective that I can't break it down like he could—you know, it could be anything.

53:38I just think with something like personal subjective experience or phenomenology, it's like you have to come at it somewhat obliquely because there's no way for us to know. There's no way for us to know, like, if your experience is, like, the same as my experience. There's just no way. So you have to come at this—there's going to be, like, a kind of almost essential deadly flaw with any methodology, right? Like, and you could be too reductionistic and just say, well, but the neurons here, this part of the, you know, the amygdala is activated.

54:11And then it's like, okay, but now we're not talking about experience anymore. We're making inferences. Right. I think that's just the nature of this particular topic. Whereas, like, habit or something like that, which is, like, an incredible chapter here, it's a little easier for us to get at a more objective picture. Right. So I agree. And, like, all I think really I'm saying is that he thinks that he's building an objective science of subjectivity. Like, he's putting all these chapters together as a theory of psychology.

54:41But, you know, I agree, though, that there's no better way to do it. Like, there's not—I just wouldn't be so short. I might be being a little pragmatist about it, but even when you say that, I kind of think that just means he feels very strongly about certain— Right. Yeah, maybe. Maybe that's—maybe. The other thing, though, you know, bringing up the brain, this is where I was, like, I think you are giving him a pass because you like him because I was doing it, too. Because some of the stuff that he talks about where he's, like, obviously the brain is like this, and so that's how we know that you don't have the same experience because the brain is constantly changing.

55:17I was, like, we wouldn't give that a pass if somebody made that argument. I selectively, like— I honestly didn't—like, I kind of, like, didn't process a lot of that stuff. Like, I think I kind of knew that I wasn't going to like it. Did you see his, like, little graphs? Oh, the graphs. Yeah, like, that's the thing. Like, with the graphs, and then when it became three-dimensional, I was just like, I'm not even going to try to figure out what he's saying. All right. I think we're—I think we have an understanding about what's going to do. Yeah, because— He's earned a little charity, though. Yeah, he has. You know, like, more than the nature author.

55:50Did we even say the name? No, there's a lot of Italian names. Sorry, guys. Don't whack us. His—I feel like Milan is not Sicily, you know. So, but there is a lot in here that I think is so right about attention. Like, that thing that you were saying about the feeling of trying to think of a name. Like, I think that's a great example of the emptiness of a conscious experience that is nonetheless clearly different from another empty experience, right?

56:21So, he's saying, I'm trying to think of a name in one case, and I can't think of it. Yeah. In another case, I'm trying to think of a different name, and I can't think of it. Those two things are very different. Like, you kind of get this, like, vague, this fringe sense of what that name might be, even though you don't have it. But you know it when it's wrong. Like, there is something about those empty states that I think is super— It's so interesting. Yeah, he says there's, like, a psychic overtone of a feeling. That's so good. Yeah. Did you get that? That's, like, the musical metaphor, because it's such a good metaphor, because he's saying, like, okay, if you pluck a string on a guitar, like an A or whatever—I don't remember what the strings are—you play the note on the guitar, that guitar has not just that tone, the main tone.

57:09It has a bunch of overtones, so, like, harmonic tones. So, there are identifiably, like, three or four higher notes. Right. That same note played on a flute. It's the same note. Like, they're both an A, like, in the same octave. But the flute tone has different overtones. And that's why we can identify, like, why one has a timbre that's different from the other one. And to say that, like, yeah, we're both thinking of the same exact thing. But, like, there are all these other features that play into what makes your thought your thought and my thought my thought.

57:42And, like, that just seems so right. It seems so right. And also, like, it's not that I don't get that because of that, like, our streams have to be different. Like, does it follow if it's a continuous stream? I don't think so. But I could see why you would think it follows, that if this is a continuous stream, then they can't cross because you're always going to be coming at something from a different perspective. So, you won't ever, like, overlap exactly. Right. And I think this is, like, now an interesting puzzle because the fact that our streams will never cross, that huge gap in what, you know, like he says, Peter and Paul go to bed together.

58:23They don't – one doesn't wake up with the other person's memories. Yeah, that's another great thing. First of all, why are Peter and Paul? I imagine that it was Peter Salovey and Paul Bloom that they secretly had an affair. And so, there's the intersubjective thing where it's like, yeah, like, just in terms of access, epistemology, like, I'll never really know what you're experiencing. But then, you experiencing the thing yesterday and you experiencing it today is substantively different. But nonetheless, you have the illusion that it was the same.

58:53And that's an interesting feature of consciousness where our stream from time one to time two has this strong sense that it's, like, the same. Yes. And this is a thing that, like, when we were doing Funes, that's the thing that he doesn't have. Yeah, totally. Like, you can't abstract, yeah. Like, it's probably actually, like, about this debate right here. So, I want to talk about this. So, Peter and Paul wake up in the same bed and recognize that they've been asleep. And then they make a connection with one of the two streams of thought, obviously theirs, right?

59:26Like, and then he says – so, the past thought of Peter is appropriated by the present Peter alone. He may have a knowledge and even a correct one of what Paul's last drowsy state of mind were. As he sank into sleep. They're very close. This is so gay. Yeah, it's very, like, boarding school in Britain. I don't know. It just feels good. But it is an entirely different sort of knowledge from that which he has of its own states. This is a great little thing.

59:57He says he remembers his own states while he only conceives Paul's. Remembrance is like direct feeling. Its object is suffused with a warmth and intimacy to which no object of mere conception ever attains. So, like, when I remember something that I did, it has this warmth. It's suffused with warmth and intimacy. Whereas I might know exactly what you experienced. And I might be right that that was your last thought or whatever before you, in the same bed as me, drifted off to sleep.

1:00:30But, like, it won't be suffused with that. Like, this is one of those examples where it's like, what do you mean by warmth and intimacy and immediacy? But I also think that sounds right. Like, my memories do have something like, yeah, subjective warmth. It seems so obvious as to be weird to point it out, but it is true. Like, it's just like, I don't know what's going on there. But, you know, and he's talking about this in the context of disruptions of consciousness where he says, so he's arguing that it's continuous.

1:01:01But he says, of course, you have some disruptions. So, like, you fall asleep. That's a disruption. But when you wake up, you pick right where you left off. And you know that it's your consciousness. I'm surprised he didn't do. Yeah, he said it's just inferences that you know you're asleep. But I thought that was kind of interesting, this idea that the way we connect with it is through some feeling of intimacy. Yeah. Even though, like, I don't know. Like, I know what he means. Right. This is another thing that I really like about this chapter, and probably other chapters, but I haven't read those in a while, where he says a couple of times that our vocabulary is too ill-suited.

1:01:35Yeah. Like, he gives these warnings that you shouldn't rely on the words that you have to describe psychology to, like, accurately capture what the psychology is. Yeah. We just don't have words sometimes. And, like, that's the sense that I got here, where it's like, yeah, call it warm. Like, he's really just saying it's mine, but, like, trying to find other ways of saying it, you know? Yeah. But I think, like, it does a little bit more than just say it's mine. And, like, the warmth thing, like, captures something in the same way that, you know, when he tries to talk about the tingle of a word, you know?

1:02:09Like, when you hear a word, it has a certain tingle, or it attributes some value to it, or an odor, like, you know, like, something, you know? Like, I think, like, some of these are evocative of the feeling. But, yeah, of course it can't fully capture it, because it seems like it's past language at that point. Yeah. Right, right. It is interesting, though, that our language can push us to the limits of, like, trying to understand these things. And why, you know, that gap between consciousnesses that he refers to, language is the one thing that, like, gets us even close to bridging it, you know?

1:02:45And so a good artist, you do feel like, reading the way that some people write or film, obviously, you're getting just a glimpse of somebody else's subjectivity in a way that would be impossible otherwise. Right. And especially certain, like, if, like, a Tarkovsky film, you feel like you're entering, like, not really, but vicariously through somebody else's consciousness because of how personal it is. Yeah. Do you know, by the way, talking about his mystical stuff, in reading up a little bit on this chapter, I learned his father was like a mystic.

1:03:20Like, like, an actual mystic? Yeah. Like, he was a follower of Immanuel Swedenborg, who was this, like, Swedish mystic who was, like, very influential. He was, like, a scientist, like, theologian and mystic. Like, and so both William and Henry, like, grew up in this household where things like the conscious experience and that feeling of, you know, all of those, like, that subjectivity, that was all just part of what they would have grown up in. Yeah. The air they breathe. Yeah. So it makes sense that, like, these mysteries for him are, like, the most interesting things to focus on.

1:03:52Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I do think, like, when he got into the later, like, radical empiricism, he was just more open to that stuff. Yeah. Maybe he experienced his own replication crisis, like, sometime in, like, 1895, and then just retreated into philosophy. He was like, I could try to pre-register my thoughts. That would help. He didn't know how awesome that would be. He had no idea. That would have been invented. He didn't know how that would just solve everything. There were no Daniel Lackens or Dutch school of, like, wagging their finger at him.

1:04:24But, so, do we have, like, I feel like we haven't talked about everything, right? No, yeah. We're doing this very stream of consciousness. Yeah, in the spirit of the thing. One thing is, it's just, there's just so much good, like, so just this idea where he's talking about selective attention. And how much we underplay how different it is for, like, you know, like, an experience of both of us, like, on a subway car. Like, we could be sitting next to each other. We're having completely different experiences.

1:04:57But we don't, we always think maybe we have some, you know, there's some difference. But we're basically looking at the same stuff. And so this is the way he describes it. He says,

1:05:36That's just such a great description of, like, yeah, just how different these things can be. And I'm sure it's true to a large extent. It is kind of crazy that, like, this is almost certainly the case. And we have zero idea what another person's experience is.

1:06:08But we have these ways of describing them to each other where we're pretty sure we're kind of experiencing similar things, you know? And this is actually ties into another thing I want to talk about, which I think you touched on in bringing up Funes the Memorius. He has a section here where he's talking about language. And, you know, he's very prescient discussion of is language necessary for thought. And, you know, he seems to think, no. Thought is prior to language. Thought is prior to language. But he says that what words are doing, what verbal symbols are doing is they're symbols that are standing in for a variety of different experiences.

1:06:46So he says, the verbal symbol horse, which stands for all our experiences of horses, serves all the purposes of thought without recalling one of the images clustered in the perception of horses, just as the sight of a horse's form serves all the purposes of recognition without recalling the sound of its neighing or its tramp, the qualities as an animal of draft and so forth. So we are abstracting and turning all of this collection of sensations and experiences, like congealing it into a verbal symbol and then exchanging it with each other.

1:07:17And, like, by some measure, we know what we're experiencing. Like, oh, yeah, have you seen a horse? Yeah. Yeah, yeah.