Leo D.M.J. Aurini - November 12, 2017


A Question of Inquiry： Politics, Heuristics, and Knowledge [Requested Video]

Topics
understanding the world
Hosted by
Leo D.M.J. Aurini
Mentioned
Africans Nick
How to Deal With Homesickness Telling Children About Santa Claus

Episode Stats


Length

16 minutes

Words per minute

102.01

Word count

1,692

Sentence count

139

Harmful content

Misogyny

12

sentences flagged

Toxicity

5

sentences flagged

Hate speech

8

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I discuss the nature of inquiry and how to understand it. I break down it into three segments: Purpose, Heuristic, and Objective Measurement. I also talk about why it's important to understand why you're doing it and why you should be doing it.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Thank you.
00:00:30.320 So the topic of this video is a question of inquiry, the nature of inquiry.
00:00:42.220 Nick writes in, asking, how do I find accurate information about the world, about politics, about life in general, really?
00:00:55.360 Okay.
00:01:25.340 At the same time, this guy was primarily creating a cult of personality, providing endless questions and never a reasonable course of action, never a solution.
00:01:43.740 The purpose was the question itself.
00:01:49.100 And this winds up with you spinning into these vortexes, these vortices of endless questioning with no purpose.
00:02:03.720 You constantly feel like you're learning something new without actually changing your situation or changing your life.
00:02:10.540 So the question is, how do we engage in productive inquiry?
00:02:21.900 And I'd like to break it down into three segments.
00:02:28.780 Number one is purpose.
00:02:31.460 What is the purpose of your inquiry?
00:02:34.720 What is your goal of inquiry?
00:02:37.280 What do you hope to do by asking these questions?
00:02:42.880 Number two is heuristic.
00:02:46.860 Which heuristic are you using?
00:02:49.800 Do you know that there's different heuristics?
00:02:51.840 And number three is objective measurement.
00:02:59.160 How do you qualify your inquiry as a success or a failure?
00:03:05.560 How do you validate it in a scientific manner?
00:03:08.360 So let's start with the first one.
00:03:12.900 This is a very fundamental question.
00:03:16.100 So many people fail to ask why they're doing anything.
00:03:20.920 And they get wrapped up in somebody else's plans.
00:03:27.040 I've made the joke before that there's so many people out there that they have a job so that they can pay the mortgage.
00:03:32.580 And the reason they have a mortgage is because it forces them to have a job.
00:03:36.360 And thus they never have to confront the existential angst of their abyssal existence.
00:03:45.220 They know how to get a black credit card.
00:03:49.300 They don't know why they're doing it.
00:03:53.180 So what is the purpose of your inquiry?
00:03:57.420 And let's not do politics.
00:04:00.600 Okay, because that's a little bit too big.
00:04:01.920 I mean, if it was as simple as finding the one person speaking the truth,
00:04:06.620 the one compendium of absolute wisdom,
00:04:10.680 life would be much simpler.
00:04:14.160 It's not that simple.
00:04:19.940 So you need to ask why you're getting into this in the first place.
00:04:23.100 So let's discuss game.
00:04:25.640 Because, again, in retrospect,
00:04:28.400 it's no surprise that game is what led to the eye-opening on so many other layers of what's going on.
00:04:42.860 So with game, what do you want?
00:04:44.660 Why are you studying game?
00:04:46.180 Well, you want to get with women. 0.99
00:04:48.160 Well, you want to get with women who are consenting. 0.98
00:04:52.980 You don't want to go around raping. 0.99
00:04:54.380 You don't want to hire prostitutes. 1.00
00:04:56.340 You want to get with good quality women. 0.99
00:04:59.660 Well, this now begs the question, what is a quality woman? 1.00
00:05:02.120 You want to get with women who are fun and interesting and kind and sweet.
00:05:11.140 The further you go down that trail, the more you refine the goal.
00:05:16.720 The more you understand what it is you're seeking out.
00:05:20.600 And so to achieve that goal, now we come to heuristics.
00:05:28.740 You need to understand what women are. 1.00
00:05:35.000 Now, let's say to try and understand women, 1.00
00:05:38.140 you only read books written during the 1980s.
00:05:42.300 If you restricted your field of view to all of the assumptions and norms and tropes
00:05:53.160 that would appear in 1980s fiction,
00:05:56.340 you'd learn a lot about the 1980s,
00:05:59.460 but without anything to contrast it to,
00:06:03.200 it wouldn't be very useful.
00:06:06.800 Because you'd only have that heuristic of the 1980s.
00:06:09.800 Maybe, after reading all of these books, watching all of these films,
00:06:14.100 you'd have a sense of how to dress like a cool guy from the 80s,
00:06:18.520 how to say the witty one-liners that would have worked in the 80s.
00:06:23.880 But if that's your entire grounding of knowledge,
00:06:26.960 is the 1980s decade and the women therein,
00:06:31.380 you have nothing to contrast it to.
00:06:37.940 Instead, if you want to understand women, 0.98
00:06:39.800 you need to read books from the 1980s.
00:06:43.160 You need to read books from the 1880s.
00:06:46.060 You need to read romance novels written originally in Mandarin.
00:06:53.020 You need to see all these different systems,
00:06:56.960 and you need to have a sense and appreciation
00:06:59.300 of all these different systems of knowledge.
00:07:02.500 All of these categorization systems,
00:07:08.860 all of these generalizations,
00:07:11.320 these simplifications.
00:07:13.720 Because every culture,
00:07:16.440 tropes, narrative culture,
00:07:18.280 these are just simplified heuristics.
00:07:22.440 Rules of thumb.
00:07:23.380 More than that.
00:07:24.460 A heuristic is a system that determines
00:07:28.780 what you consider valid information
00:07:31.080 and what you consider invalid information.
00:07:34.500 For instance, if you only read those 1980s books,
00:07:42.640 you know, set in presumably America,
00:07:44.760 Miami or California,
00:07:46.800 the characters are going to be white women, 1.00
00:07:52.640 maybe black women sometimes. 1.00
00:07:55.320 But you're not going to be dealing with any Japanese girls, 1.00
00:07:58.200 any Indian girls,
00:07:59.600 any African girls.
00:08:02.160 You'll have black Americans, 0.86
00:08:03.580 but not Africans. 0.58
00:08:06.960 It's a very narrow view.
00:08:09.420 So, in this view,
00:08:10.560 if you're only dealing with white women, 1.00
00:08:13.660 race and ethnicity won't come into play at all.
00:08:16.580 You will be completely colorblind
00:08:18.240 because skin color is utterly irrelevant.
00:08:23.780 If you're trying to pick up girls in the punk scene,
00:08:27.400 skin color is pretty irrelevant within the punk scene.
00:08:30.820 You probably won't have too many black punk girls, 1.00
00:08:33.340 but you'll have a few of them. 0.66
00:08:34.880 But you still approach them
00:08:36.300 the same way you'd approach a white punk girl.
00:08:40.560 So, your heuristic there says,
00:08:43.120 don't consider race.
00:08:44.700 Assume everybody speaks your language.
00:08:46.540 Assume everybody shares a common culture.
00:08:49.360 So, you can completely ignore those questions.
00:08:52.060 You put those on the back burner.
00:08:54.220 We already have the answers.
00:08:56.800 We're not going to spend resources
00:08:59.100 calculating those things.
00:09:00.320 We're going to focus on these variables,
00:09:03.020 which are significant.
00:09:06.480 So, that's what a heuristic is.
00:09:07.900 It tells you what to pay attention to
00:09:10.100 and what not to pay attention to.
00:09:13.020 You know, if you're trying to buy a fast car,
00:09:15.900 the paint job doesn't matter.
00:09:18.220 If you're trying to find somebody who speeds,
00:09:23.000 red cars probably do speed more often
00:09:26.280 than slate gray cars.
00:09:31.200 Cars with racing stripes tend to speed more often
00:09:34.160 than cars that don't have them,
00:09:35.720 even though the racing stripes
00:09:36.920 don't actually make the car a faster car.
00:09:39.900 So, again, two different heuristics.
00:09:42.040 Are you trying to find a fast car?
00:09:43.380 Are you trying to find speeders?
00:09:44.500 So, by educating yourself
00:09:49.060 in these different approaches
00:09:51.500 to the dance of the sexes,
00:09:54.020 between how men and women related,
00:09:56.760 to what the variations
00:09:59.100 and similarities
00:10:00.640 in the roles that men and women occupied 0.98
00:10:03.800 in societies,
00:10:04.620 now you have things to compare it to.
00:10:11.320 And the same thing goes for politics,
00:10:14.060 for civilization,
00:10:15.620 for history.
00:10:18.080 If you try and understand American politics,
00:10:21.740 having only been educated
00:10:23.300 in American politics,
00:10:25.500 you know, it's like asking a fish about water.
00:10:28.100 You're going to see the left
00:10:29.260 and you're going to see the right
00:10:30.320 and you won't see anything else.
00:10:34.620 You will be beholden
00:10:39.200 to all of the assumptions
00:10:40.400 that all of your fellow Americans
00:10:44.060 are subjected to.
00:10:47.580 And you won't even realize
00:10:48.940 you got them.
00:10:56.000 You need to learn different heuristics.
00:10:58.480 You need to familiarize yourself
00:11:00.340 with different heuristics.
00:11:02.460 And at that point,
00:11:05.380 you can start to determine
00:11:07.000 which is the best heuristic
00:11:09.000 for me to employ here.
00:11:17.360 And finally,
00:11:18.720 you need an objective standard
00:11:21.300 to hold all of this to.
00:11:23.980 You need a right or wrong.
00:11:27.240 Did my predictions come true?
00:11:29.100 And if they didn't,
00:11:30.260 why didn't they?
00:11:31.180 A failure is an opportunity
00:11:38.480 to grow and learn.
00:11:45.920 So to reiterate,
00:11:47.760 first, you need to know
00:11:50.060 why you're asking the question
00:11:51.520 in the first place.
00:11:52.360 what does it mean
00:11:53.800 to understand
00:11:55.500 the world,
00:11:57.540 to understand
00:11:58.200 contemporary events?
00:12:04.880 What does that mean for you?
00:12:06.020 Why do you want to understand this?
00:12:08.900 See, if you want to understand it
00:12:10.260 so you can be a political commentator,
00:12:12.120 then you have a very,
00:12:13.940 a very direct reason
00:12:15.800 why you want to understand this.
00:12:17.340 It makes perfect sense.
00:12:18.140 If you want to understand this
00:12:22.400 to predict shifts in the economy,
00:12:25.360 well, that's an entirely
00:12:26.220 different question.
00:12:28.240 If it's political responsibility,
00:12:31.500 many reasons to understand this,
00:12:33.800 but you need to know
00:12:34.580 why you want to understand it.
00:12:36.700 Then you need to move on
00:12:41.840 to the heuristic
00:12:43.300 you're using
00:12:44.420 to understand it.
00:12:45.920 Are you using
00:12:46.980 a Marxist
00:12:49.080 understanding of history
00:12:50.620 where you have
00:12:51.380 different social classes
00:12:53.220 struggling against one another?
00:12:55.460 Are you using
00:12:56.860 a spiritual
00:12:57.720 understanding of history
00:12:59.600 where each generation
00:13:02.200 has a character,
00:13:03.560 a virtue,
00:13:04.780 and a vice?
00:13:08.920 Are you using
00:13:10.060 a moral
00:13:10.640 interpretation
00:13:11.720 of history?
00:13:16.880 Depending on
00:13:17.840 what questions
00:13:19.040 you're asking
00:13:19.580 and why you're asking them,
00:13:21.720 all of these
00:13:22.600 different heuristics
00:13:23.540 apply.
00:13:26.940 And finally,
00:13:27.820 you need that
00:13:28.220 objective standard.
00:13:30.040 You know,
00:13:31.240 and this comes
00:13:32.000 from your purpose.
00:13:35.160 Did you succeed
00:13:36.140 or fail
00:13:36.680 in understanding
00:13:38.000 the world?
00:13:41.400 If you're trying
00:13:42.160 to make investments,
00:13:43.400 well,
00:13:43.600 if they paid off,
00:13:44.460 then you probably
00:13:46.160 understood the world.
00:13:47.120 Or maybe you were lucky,
00:13:48.140 but, you know,
00:13:48.580 probably understood
00:13:49.340 the world.
00:13:51.620 If you're trying
00:13:52.360 to make predictions,
00:13:54.600 you know,
00:13:54.840 well,
00:13:55.020 there you've got
00:13:55.440 that objective standard.
00:14:00.040 This is the
00:14:05.940 interesting thing
00:14:06.440 about humans,
00:14:07.240 is that
00:14:08.700 as soon as
00:14:09.780 you isolate
00:14:11.500 a person,
00:14:12.120 as soon as you
00:14:12.700 define a person
00:14:14.000 or a civilization
00:14:15.920 or an era
00:14:17.840 or a generation,
00:14:20.520 as soon as you
00:14:21.540 put that
00:14:22.340 into a box
00:14:24.100 and you define it,
00:14:26.820 it's like going
00:14:28.380 up to somebody
00:14:29.000 that's sitting down
00:14:29.900 on the sofa
00:14:30.420 and enjoying themselves
00:14:31.860 and saying,
00:14:32.300 hey, you,
00:14:33.520 keep sitting
00:14:34.080 on the sofa.
00:14:38.320 They'll jump up
00:14:39.340 and say,
00:14:39.640 no, you can't tell me
00:14:40.460 to sit on the sofa.
00:14:41.920 I'm going to go
00:14:42.340 sit in the chair.
00:14:47.220 Iterations upon iterations.
00:14:48.960 It's always,
00:14:51.560 always more complex.
00:14:53.300 And this is why
00:14:58.520 you need a purpose.
00:15:00.320 You know,
00:15:00.500 completely unfiltered
00:15:02.120 information,
00:15:03.180 information
00:15:03.880 with no heuristic
00:15:05.260 is nothing
00:15:06.220 but data.
00:15:08.600 Reams upon
00:15:09.440 reams
00:15:10.100 of data
00:15:11.180 and it's
00:15:13.080 meaningless.
00:15:13.440 So understand
00:15:19.420 what you're seeking.
00:15:22.060 Understand
00:15:22.620 the different
00:15:23.080 heuristics,
00:15:23.860 the different
00:15:24.260 ways
00:15:25.040 of analyzing
00:15:26.500 what's going on.
00:15:30.560 And have
00:15:31.920 an objective
00:15:32.400 standard.
00:15:33.580 Have a
00:15:34.600 measurable
00:15:35.840 result
00:15:37.160 that
00:15:38.900 you can achieve.
00:15:40.660 and keep
00:15:44.520 searching
00:15:44.840 because
00:15:46.860 trying to
00:15:48.660 understand
00:15:49.000 the world
00:15:49.420 and trying
00:15:49.960 to understand
00:15:50.400 the self
00:15:50.860 is a
00:15:52.960 never-ending
00:15:53.360 journey.
00:15:55.120 Best of luck,
00:15:55.780 brother.
00:15:57.360 Berini out.
00:16:10.660 an
00:16:13.120 legend.
00:16:25.520 'll
00:16:26.740 have
00:16:27.060 a
00:16:27.240 step
00:16:27.860 into
00:16:28.140 what
00:16:28.820 you
00:16:29.040 you
00:16:29.180 you
00:16:29.640 yourself
00:16:29.740 you
00:16:31.220 yourself
00:16:32.020 you