The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 298. Perception： Chaos and Order ｜ Dr. Karl Friston

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00:00:57.420 Hello everyone. Thank you for tuning in to watch and listen.

00:01:14.260 I have the great privilege today of being able to talk with Dr. Carl Friston as an addition, let's say,

00:01:23.460 and a signal addition to the recent conversation I had with Andrew Huberman.

00:01:28.460 Dr. Carl Friston is arguably the world's most renowned neuroscientist, a professor at University College London.

00:01:36.400 He is one of the world's leading authorities on brain imaging.

00:01:39.480 90% of the work published in fields employing such imaging relies on methods he pioneered.

00:01:47.400 Dr. Friston is also well known for his work on many of the topics we will discuss today.

00:01:52.720 Work I find even more exciting, at least conceptually speaking, than his work on brain imaging.

00:01:58.820 We will discuss the ideas that concepts and precepts, categories, that's another way of thinking about it,

00:02:05.640 bind free energy or entropy, the idea of computation, especially the kind of computation that approximates brain function as hierarchical,

00:02:19.400 the theory of predictive coding and active inference.

00:02:23.920 Welcome, Dr. Friston. It's very good of you to agree to talk to me on this podcast. I'm really looking forward to it.

00:02:30.200 That's a great pleasure to be here. Thank you.

00:02:31.820 So, let me start maybe by helping people understand this idea of hierarchical computation and the binding of entropy.

00:02:43.100 And so, if you could walk through that briefly, then I'll ask some questions if that seems appropriate.

00:02:49.820 Yeah, sure.

00:02:51.420 The binding of free energy and entropy, that sounds delightfully Freudian.

00:02:56.060 And I don't mean that in a sort of disparaging sense.

00:03:00.620 I think that some of the truisms and the insights of that era have now proved themselves in modern formulations of computation,

00:03:09.980 information processing, sense-making in the brain.

00:03:13.680 And one nice link there is to think of free energy as surprise.

00:03:19.660 So, one way of looking at the way that we make sense of our world, bringing explanations, concepts, categories, notions to the table that provide the best explanation for the myriad of sensations to which we are exposed,

00:03:37.100 is to see that process as a process of minimizing surprise.

00:03:40.960 So, binding free energy, I think, can be read very simply as minimizing surprise.

00:03:47.440 But, of course, to be surprised, you have to have something you predicted.

00:03:51.600 You have to have a violation of predictions.

00:03:54.060 So, immediately, you're in the game now of predictive processing.

00:03:59.760 Predicting, what would I see if the world out there was like this?

00:04:04.780 And then using the ensuing prediction errors to adjust your beliefs and update your beliefs in the service of minimizing those prediction errors or minimizing that surprise or minimizing that free energy.

00:04:17.320 And you artfully introduced the notion of hierarchy in that question, which I think speaks to another fundamental point,

00:04:27.600 that in making sense of the world, in making those good predictions, we have to have an internal model, sometimes called a world model,

00:04:37.460 a model that can generate what I would have seen if this was the state of affairs out there.

00:04:44.240 And that notion of a generative model, I think, is quite key and holds the attribute of hierarchy,

00:04:50.080 simply in the sense that we live in a deeply structured world, very dynamic world, a world composed largely of creatures like ourselves,

00:04:58.880 that has this sort of hierarchical nested structure that has to be part of the models that we bring to the table to understand it.

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00:06:47.760 Okay, so I encountered these ideas, I would say, first reading a book back in 1982 by a man named Jeffrey Gray,

00:06:55.720 who was influenced by Norbert Viner and by general cybernetic theory.

00:07:00.660 And he regarded the hippocampus as, at least as part of the central part of the brain involved in contrasting expectation,

00:07:10.440 let's say, the way you expect the world to lay itself out with the way the world is actually laying itself out,

00:07:16.000 indicating that surprise was a, what was the prodroma to anxiety,

00:07:23.140 and that anxiety in some sense was an indicator of the magnitude between,

00:07:28.320 the magnitude of mismatch between expectation and reality.

00:07:32.420 So I want to ask you a couple of questions about that,

00:07:35.480 because I thought a lot about Gray, and I thought about Gray for like 40 years after reading his book,

00:07:41.200 and also as a consequence of encountering your ideas much later.

00:07:47.580 The cybernetic model of expectation is predicated on the idea that you lay out an expectation on the world,

00:07:54.340 and the expectation is a model, and then you have incoming sensory data,

00:07:58.540 and the sensory data is the world,

00:08:00.680 and that now and then there's a mismatch between the sensory data and the expectation.

00:08:04.780 And then you have to modify either the representation or the action pattern to reduce that mismatch.

00:08:14.940 But then I thought, well, wait a second, there's a weird lack in that formulation that's twofold.

00:08:24.740 Number one, it isn't obvious to me that it's expectation.

00:08:29.460 It seems to me that it's more likely to be desire.

00:08:32.340 And that's a useful transformation of conceptualization,

00:08:36.340 because if you use the word desire rather than the word expectation,

00:08:41.640 you can infer that the models that are being contrasted against the real world

00:08:47.400 are models of motivation rather than cold cognitive computation.

00:08:52.960 And so, for example, if I'm interacting with a woman who I'm romantically interested in,

00:08:59.540 I'm attempting to bring about the realization of my desire, not my expectation.

00:09:06.040 And that's under the pressure, let's say, of the demand for sexual reproduction.

00:09:14.840 And so the motivational state grips the desire.

00:09:18.600 The desire manifests itself as a fantasy.

00:09:21.300 And then the motivation is the minimization of the discrepancy

00:09:25.240 between the actual world and the fantasy.

00:09:28.020 And then, so it's not exactly an expectation, because it's more dynamic and alive.

00:09:32.260 And then one more, I hate to hammer you with all of this right at the beginning,

00:09:37.240 but one more issue on that front is the error.

00:09:42.860 Because you could imagine, and I'm interested in how this matches your hierarchical concept.

00:09:48.780 If I make a mistake such that I don't minimize the relationship between what's happening and my fantasy,

00:09:58.860 one of the mistakes I might make is a mistake of perception, not expectation or desire.

00:10:05.520 Because I might be seeing the situation wrong.

00:10:08.240 And so it seems to me that it's more realistic to say that what you're doing

00:10:12.560 is minimizing the mismatch between a model of what's happening,

00:10:18.460 not sensory data itself, but a model of the unfolding present,

00:10:24.380 contrasted with a fantasy,

00:10:26.140 and that the mismatch is what indicates surprise or entropy.

00:10:33.560 Now, I know that's a lot of questions to answer at the same time,

00:10:38.020 but that whole set of objections makes up a pattern.

00:10:42.540 It does.

00:10:43.340 And despite the fact you introduced a whole bunch of really important concepts there,

00:10:48.880 I think it was nicely introduced in a coherent way.

00:10:54.220 So I'm just trying to remember all the exciting things you'd brought to the table.

00:10:57.240 So yeah, Geoffrey Gray, a great thinker.

00:11:00.200 In my memory, sort of famed for understanding latent inhibition

00:11:06.020 and sort of how you use these surprise or these mismatches or these prediction errors.

00:11:12.520 And it's interesting that you speak to his conceptual roots in cybernetics

00:11:19.120 because there's a very, very close connection

00:11:21.320 between the things that we're talking about

00:11:23.180 and the early formulations of cybernetics by people like Ross Ashby.

00:11:28.140 So there's this good regulator theorem,

00:11:29.920 which I think if your listeners don't know about,

00:11:33.020 I think they'd like and I think you would like a lot.

00:11:35.860 It's just the notion and provable notion

00:11:39.380 that to control an environment,

00:11:42.440 you have to have a model of that environment

00:11:46.040 to be able to couple with, to engage with the environment.

00:11:51.980 The degrees of freedom of your model

00:11:54.180 have to match those of the kind of environment

00:11:57.580 in which you are operating.

00:11:59.580 So I think there's a deep connection there.

00:12:01.680 The other thing, well, many things you mentioned there,

00:12:06.540 you use the word fantasies a lot.

00:12:08.940 And I think that's quite important

00:12:10.220 because very often I sell the brain as a fantastic organ,

00:12:17.300 literally because it is in the game

00:12:19.140 of generating the right kind of fantasies.

00:12:21.760 And these are the fantasies,

00:12:22.920 these are the motivated expectations

00:12:25.140 that drive our behavior.

00:12:27.540 But in noting that, in noting that,

00:12:31.240 you've also made a big move, an important move.

00:12:34.060 I know it's a move you want to make

00:12:36.220 in terms of our conversation,

00:12:37.560 but just to contextualize why that is such an important move,

00:12:41.700 you're talking about motivation,

00:12:44.280 how our perception and action

00:12:46.780 are all contextualized by motivation

00:12:50.420 and what we desire and what we want

00:12:52.700 and the preferred outcomes of our acts.

00:12:56.400 That's, I think, sort of the crux,

00:12:59.500 and will probably be the focus

00:13:00.440 of much of what we're going to be talking about.

00:13:02.080 But just to say that vanilla predictive processing

00:13:05.040 and vanilla predictive coding does not deal with that.

00:13:07.820 It just deals with sense-making.

00:13:10.060 So it's usually in the moment.

00:13:12.220 As soon as you bring decisions and choices

00:13:14.240 and actions to the table,

00:13:15.800 you're immediately in the game now

00:13:17.540 of making inferences about the future,

00:13:20.680 the future that has yet to be observed.

00:13:22.940 So there are no prediction errors.

00:13:24.360 It's just your expected surprise,

00:13:27.000 your expected entropy,

00:13:28.280 your expected free energy,

00:13:30.140 or your expected discrepancies

00:13:31.740 between what you fantasize should happen

00:13:34.100 or what you prefer to happen

00:13:35.500 and what you anticipate

00:13:38.200 given your best sense-making at the moment.

00:13:40.480 So I think that inactive aspect,

00:13:42.580 that choice,

00:13:44.140 really does profoundly change the game

00:13:46.400 and takes us from simple sense-making

00:13:49.360 into the world of choice

00:13:51.500 and decision-making and motivation.

00:13:54.820 So mathematically,

00:13:56.400 the way that I would articulate that

00:13:59.400 as a physicist would be,

00:14:01.780 okay, if we're in the game

00:14:03.640 of minimizing surprise

00:14:05.120 and this mismatch,

00:14:06.040 this discrepancy

00:14:07.240 that you were describing

00:14:09.540 in the moment,

00:14:11.600 then presumably,

00:14:13.140 I will now choose

00:14:15.160 the things that I do

00:14:16.560 in order to minimize

00:14:18.320 the expected surprise

00:14:19.800 in the future.

00:14:21.440 And the nice thing

00:14:22.200 about articulating it like that

00:14:23.840 is that the expected surprise,

00:14:25.820 mathematically,

00:14:27.060 is just entropy.

00:14:28.900 So entropy,

00:14:30.460 uncertainty,

00:14:32.060 and I'm using entropy

00:14:33.020 and uncertainty

00:14:34.620 synonymously here,

00:14:36.740 they are the mathematical statement

00:14:39.240 of the surprise I expect

00:14:41.680 when I haven't actually seen

00:14:43.020 the outcome yet.

00:14:44.280 So in many senses,

00:14:45.400 what you can say is that

00:14:46.600 we are motivated

00:14:47.920 to resolve our uncertainty.

00:14:50.340 And that can be sort of,

00:14:51.420 if you like,

00:14:51.840 carved into two ways

00:14:53.420 of minimizing uncertainty.

00:14:55.660 It can either be

00:14:56.980 through choosing those behaviors

00:14:59.100 that resolve uncertainty

00:15:00.540 in the sort of

00:15:02.740 folk psychological sense,

00:15:04.080 you know,

00:15:04.320 watching the news,

00:15:05.620 looking over there

00:15:06.540 to see whether,

00:15:07.480 you know,

00:15:07.940 my fantasies about the cause

00:15:09.640 of that visual flutter

00:15:12.160 in the periphery

00:15:12.920 of my vision

00:15:13.600 was what I thought it was.

00:15:15.080 Was it a bird

00:15:15.700 or a butterfly?

00:15:17.120 But I think there's another side,

00:15:19.300 well,

00:15:19.520 I know there's another side

00:15:20.780 to that technically

00:15:21.920 an expected information gain

00:15:23.660 or an epistemic value.

00:15:27.520 And that's,

00:15:28.520 of course,

00:15:29.160 I will avoid putting myself

00:15:31.120 in surprising situations,

00:15:33.080 being very cold physiologically

00:15:34.920 or being unloved

00:15:37.240 or being embarrassed

00:15:38.740 or anything that I would find

00:15:41.880 surprising about myself.

00:15:44.260 I will minimize

00:15:45.380 my expected surprise

00:15:46.620 by avoiding those kinds of things.

00:15:49.140 And I think that's,

00:15:49.980 that's,

00:15:50.880 you know,

00:15:51.900 my reading of what you were saying

00:15:53.160 touches exactly on that.

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00:17:04.580 I think people

00:17:06.060 hem themselves in

00:17:08.300 in their actions

00:17:09.640 even

00:17:10.080 once people

00:17:11.380 you see this clinically

00:17:12.420 is once people

00:17:13.200 develop a conceptualization

00:17:14.640 of themselves

00:17:15.300 which is a box

00:17:17.060 in some sense

00:17:17.940 to put their variability in

00:17:19.640 they'll sometimes

00:17:20.860 simplify themselves

00:17:22.160 in terms of

00:17:23.300 their range of action

00:17:24.360 merely so they don't

00:17:25.600 surprise themselves.

00:17:27.140 And so they

00:17:28.080 artificially constrain

00:17:29.260 the range

00:17:29.800 of their potential behavior

00:17:31.020 and that can become

00:17:31.800 maladaptive

00:17:32.580 if their conception

00:17:33.540 of themselves

00:17:34.060 is too narrow.

00:17:35.060 That would be a good example

00:17:36.200 of a mis

00:17:36.900 in some sense

00:17:37.800 of a misperception

00:17:38.960 of the self.

00:17:40.640 Right?

00:17:41.180 It's a narrowing

00:17:42.000 of possibility.

00:17:43.340 And so I should

00:17:44.900 maybe try to explain

00:17:46.120 to people a little bit

00:17:46.980 more about this issue

00:17:47.960 of entropy.

00:17:49.380 And so

00:17:50.660 there's this notion

00:17:52.440 that's come out of

00:17:53.340 theory of perception

00:17:54.920 that

00:17:55.340 any set of objects

00:17:57.500 or any object

00:17:58.180 for that matter

00:17:58.900 is different

00:18:01.000 from any other object

00:18:02.540 and the same

00:18:03.200 as any other object

00:18:04.240 in a multitude

00:18:05.220 or even a near

00:18:06.320 infinite number

00:18:07.000 of ways.

00:18:08.220 And so you could think

00:18:09.000 I always think

00:18:09.620 of two goblets

00:18:10.420 standing on a table

00:18:11.540 and you might say

00:18:12.640 well they're identical

00:18:13.440 but they're not

00:18:14.720 and you can tell

00:18:15.520 they're not

00:18:15.900 if you wanted

00:18:16.940 to paint them

00:18:17.580 in a photorealistic manner

00:18:19.020 you'd find that

00:18:20.180 the surface

00:18:20.840 of one goblet

00:18:22.080 is very much

00:18:22.720 unlike the surface

00:18:23.720 of another

00:18:24.140 and you'd have to

00:18:24.900 render that

00:18:25.460 at high resolution

00:18:26.460 in order to

00:18:27.200 represent it

00:18:27.880 accurately on a canvas

00:18:29.020 and then they differ

00:18:30.200 in weight

00:18:30.720 and they differ

00:18:31.920 in the regularity

00:18:33.860 of the surface

00:18:34.460 and they might

00:18:36.040 differ in age

00:18:36.820 there's all sorts

00:18:37.780 of differences

00:18:39.360 between them

00:18:39.980 that you might not

00:18:40.920 think are germane

00:18:41.980 or relevant

00:18:42.620 but that's really

00:18:43.280 the issue

00:18:43.760 is why do you

00:18:44.520 regard some

00:18:45.220 similarities

00:18:46.120 as crucial

00:18:47.600 and some

00:18:48.380 differences

00:18:49.120 as irrelevant

00:18:49.960 and so

00:18:50.500 here's something

00:18:52.600 I'd like to run

00:18:53.320 by you

00:18:53.820 so

00:18:54.600 would it be

00:18:55.780 reasonable to say

00:18:56.680 imagine a hierarchy

00:18:57.660 of perception

00:18:58.460 and so

00:18:59.000 and conception

00:19:00.500 so the idea

00:19:01.360 is well

00:19:02.040 two goblets

00:19:04.420 are identical

00:19:05.160 if I can drink

00:19:06.800 out of either

00:19:07.540 of them

00:19:08.060 using the same

00:19:09.800 pattern of perception

00:19:10.800 and action

00:19:11.420 so

00:19:12.500 so that

00:19:14.440 that's kind of

00:19:15.060 an indication

00:19:15.740 of the entropy

00:19:16.640 constrained by the

00:19:17.720 notion of

00:19:18.400 wishing to drink

00:19:19.820 any two things

00:19:21.700 are substitutable

00:19:22.620 as long as they

00:19:23.520 leave me with

00:19:24.480 the ability

00:19:25.140 to drink

00:19:25.680 as an axiom

00:19:26.620 of my current

00:19:27.400 action set

00:19:28.480 and that's

00:19:30.060 that's something

00:19:30.960 like a

00:19:31.420 maybe a

00:19:32.220 computational

00:19:32.760 definition

00:19:33.420 of resemblance

00:19:34.340 because I

00:19:36.140 can't understand

00:19:36.920 how you can

00:19:37.440 bind resemblance

00:19:38.400 otherwise

00:19:38.780 if any

00:19:40.320 two things

00:19:40.960 differ in a

00:19:41.580 near infinite

00:19:42.080 number of ways

00:19:42.740 they differ

00:19:43.200 in terms of

00:19:43.680 the microstates

00:19:44.540 that they might

00:19:45.440 be composed of

00:19:46.160 that would be

00:19:46.600 a way of

00:19:46.940 thinking about

00:19:47.440 it from

00:19:47.680 the perspective

00:19:48.240 of entropy

00:19:48.820 theory

00:19:49.240 so there

00:19:50.860 were some

00:19:51.260 if they're

00:19:51.760 substitutable

00:19:52.560 within a

00:19:53.180 higher hierarchical

00:19:54.360 conception

00:19:55.360 then they're

00:19:56.480 identical

00:19:57.380 perceptually

00:19:58.680 and conceptually

00:19:59.520 does that

00:20:00.720 so do you

00:20:01.420 know the

00:20:01.920 change blindness

00:20:03.260 experiments

00:20:03.940 that was

00:20:05.320 Dan Simon

00:20:06.020 yes

00:20:06.800 managed at

00:20:07.600 Harvard

00:20:07.940 yeah well

00:20:08.860 that's a good

00:20:09.280 example right

00:20:09.880 so I'll just

00:20:10.440 run through

00:20:10.800 one of those

00:20:11.180 experiments

00:20:11.600 for the people

00:20:12.200 listening

00:20:12.520 so imagine

00:20:13.560 you put a

00:20:13.980 camera on

00:20:14.540 a two-story

00:20:15.100 building

00:20:15.500 and it's

00:20:15.940 looking down

00:20:16.420 over a

00:20:16.840 university

00:20:17.260 yard

00:20:17.680 and now

00:20:18.660 imagine

00:20:19.120 that you

00:20:20.000 have tourists

00:20:20.540 walking

00:20:20.940 through the

00:20:21.320 yard

00:20:21.580 and an

00:20:24.140 undergraduate

00:20:24.600 research associate

00:20:25.620 comes up to

00:20:26.340 a tourist

00:20:26.720 with a map

00:20:27.360 and asks the

00:20:28.080 tourist to

00:20:29.240 help him

00:20:30.160 find his way

00:20:30.860 and while

00:20:31.620 that's happening

00:20:32.360 some other

00:20:33.740 experimental

00:20:34.580 compatriots

00:20:35.220 walk between

00:20:36.300 the person

00:20:38.000 who's asking

00:20:38.540 for directions

00:20:39.120 and the

00:20:39.560 tourist

00:20:39.840 carrying a

00:20:40.480 door

00:20:40.760 two of them

00:20:41.580 and the

00:20:42.380 person asking

00:20:43.240 the question

00:20:43.780 grabs the

00:20:44.460 door

00:20:44.800 hidden from

00:20:46.220 the tourist

00:20:47.420 and continues

00:20:48.640 walking with

00:20:49.780 the door

00:20:50.180 and the

00:20:51.180 person who

00:20:51.580 is carrying

00:20:51.920 the door

00:20:52.220 stands there

00:20:52.840 and continues

00:20:53.380 asking the

00:20:54.420 question with

00:20:55.040 the map

00:20:55.520 and what

00:20:56.120 Simon found

00:20:56.820 was that

00:20:57.900 the largest

00:20:59.580 percentage of

00:21:01.220 people

00:21:01.460 the majority

00:21:01.920 of people

00:21:02.240 do not

00:21:02.700 notice that

00:21:03.380 the student

00:21:03.900 has been

00:21:04.400 swapped

00:21:05.060 in the

00:21:05.760 middle of

00:21:06.060 the conversation

00:21:06.860 and the

00:21:07.800 reason for

00:21:08.200 that has

00:21:08.640 to be

00:21:08.960 that the

00:21:10.780 perception

00:21:11.580 of the

00:21:12.220 student

00:21:12.620 by the

00:21:13.400 tourist

00:21:13.760 is something

00:21:14.360 like generic

00:21:15.300 student asking

00:21:16.340 for directions

00:21:17.040 and any

00:21:18.060 student who's

00:21:18.860 asking for

00:21:19.380 directions

00:21:19.760 at that

00:21:20.260 point will

00:21:20.820 fulfill that

00:21:21.840 function or

00:21:23.460 act as a

00:21:24.120 player in

00:21:24.500 that story

00:21:25.020 and so

00:21:25.380 there's no

00:21:25.740 reason to

00:21:26.220 be surprised

00:21:26.800 by the

00:21:27.200 transformation

00:21:27.660 even though

00:21:28.720 quote it's

00:21:29.360 a different

00:21:29.760 person

00:21:30.240 and that

00:21:31.100 seems to

00:21:31.480 add credence

00:21:32.020 to this

00:21:32.380 notion of

00:21:33.040 a theory

00:21:33.780 of identity

00:21:34.620 or resemblance

00:21:35.460 does that

00:21:36.040 seem reasonable

00:21:36.720 to you

00:21:37.200 it seems

00:21:38.200 very reasonable

00:21:39.040 so mathematically

00:21:40.880 I think you

00:21:41.800 could you

00:21:42.240 would describe

00:21:43.120 that exactly

00:21:44.660 in terms of

00:21:45.260 finding those

00:21:45.940 latent states

00:21:46.980 or categories

00:21:47.800 or structures

00:21:48.440 or resemblance

00:21:49.280 that are

00:21:49.600 conserved

00:21:50.320 over different

00:21:50.880 contexts

00:21:51.540 and that

00:21:52.380 enables you

00:21:52.880 to have

00:21:53.400 a simple

00:21:54.900 but apt

00:21:55.800 for purpose

00:21:56.520 model of

00:21:57.280 your world

00:21:57.900 so if you

00:21:58.420 can find

00:21:59.040 the causal

00:22:00.120 structure

00:22:00.780 that is as

00:22:02.000 simple as

00:22:02.620 possible

00:22:03.120 that provides

00:22:04.100 an adequate

00:22:04.600 explanation

00:22:05.300 of your

00:22:05.980 sensorium

00:22:06.740 then that

00:22:07.960 is the

00:22:08.780 good model

00:22:09.380 I mean

00:22:09.660 literally

00:22:10.040 as a

00:22:10.980 statistician

00:22:11.760 that would

00:22:12.720 be the

00:22:13.200 model with

00:22:13.600 the greatest

00:22:14.000 evidence

00:22:14.480 the accuracy

00:22:15.120 minus the

00:22:15.660 complexity

00:22:16.080 you also

00:22:17.440 brought something

00:22:18.180 interesting

00:22:18.560 into the

00:22:20.120 conversation

00:22:20.560 again

00:22:21.560 which was

00:22:23.180 what I would

00:22:24.420 read as

00:22:24.740 affordance

00:22:25.480 do you like

00:22:26.360 sort of

00:22:26.660 Gibsonian

00:22:27.240 notions of

00:22:27.800 affordance

00:22:28.040 yeah

00:22:28.200 so you were

00:22:29.160 saying

00:22:29.380 this ability

00:22:32.660 to extract

00:22:33.720 the latent

00:22:34.420 structure

00:22:34.980 the essence

00:22:35.680 the resemblances

00:22:37.600 that are

00:22:38.000 conserved

00:22:38.520 over different

00:22:39.020 contexts

00:22:39.620 they have

00:22:41.100 at very low

00:22:42.460 levels of

00:22:42.880 the hierarchy

00:22:43.380 these

00:22:43.660 microscopic

00:22:44.560 or detailed

00:22:46.060 differences

00:22:47.100 but at higher

00:22:47.980 levels of

00:22:48.500 the hierarchy

00:22:49.180 they are

00:22:51.120 the same

00:22:51.880 kind of thing

00:22:52.480 they have

00:22:52.760 the same

00:22:53.060 affordance

00:22:53.520 I sit on

00:22:54.100 this

00:22:54.240 I drink

00:22:54.700 this

00:22:54.980 I love

00:22:55.400 that

00:22:55.620 I don't

00:22:56.040 like that

00:22:56.520 what you've

00:22:59.000 done though

00:22:59.440 again in

00:23:00.140 terms of

00:23:00.580 talking about

00:23:00.940 affordance

00:23:01.400 is bring

00:23:01.760 action

00:23:02.220 to the

00:23:03.900 fore

00:23:04.180 I can

00:23:05.380 perceive

00:23:06.080 lots of

00:23:06.640 inferences

00:23:07.080 in my

00:23:07.480 world

00:23:07.940 there are

00:23:09.000 categories

00:23:09.960 and there

00:23:10.820 are exemplars

00:23:11.820 of particular

00:23:12.420 categories

00:23:13.040 and I can

00:23:13.440 unpack that

00:23:14.000 hierarchically

00:23:14.920 and many

00:23:15.160 people think

00:23:15.620 that's how

00:23:16.060 the visual

00:23:17.420 hierarchy

00:23:17.980 the cortical

00:23:18.540 hierarchy

00:23:19.100 that

00:23:19.900 subtends

00:23:20.500 or subserves

00:23:21.280 visual

00:23:22.340 perception

00:23:22.860 and visual

00:23:23.320 synthesis

00:23:23.740 is organised

00:23:24.420 but what

00:23:25.680 you're saying

00:23:26.160 is this

00:23:27.120 also holds

00:23:28.020 true

00:23:28.440 in the

00:23:29.580 way that

00:23:29.900 I plan

00:23:30.500 to act

00:23:31.280 and the

00:23:31.940 outcomes

00:23:32.420 of those

00:23:32.940 actions

00:23:33.460 and all

00:23:34.540 of these

00:23:35.080 if I get

00:23:36.180 those

00:23:36.460 invariances

00:23:37.140 out

00:23:37.700 then they

00:23:38.440 are the

00:23:38.700 right kinds

00:23:39.200 of affordances

00:23:39.960 that speak

00:23:40.980 to my

00:23:41.420 model of

00:23:42.060 the way

00:23:42.320 I'm going

00:23:42.620 to behave

00:23:43.040 in the

00:23:43.400 situation

00:23:43.980 putting

00:23:44.900 centre stage

00:23:45.920 the self

00:23:46.760 model

00:23:47.100 what kind

00:23:48.620 of thing

00:23:48.940 am I

00:23:49.380 and what

00:23:49.840 will I

00:23:50.120 do in

00:23:50.440 this

00:23:50.620 situation

00:23:51.160 and is

00:23:52.000 my model

00:23:52.540 good enough

00:23:52.960 is it

00:23:53.180 too rigid

00:23:53.680 should it

00:23:55.500 be more

00:23:55.780 flexible

00:23:56.140 all these

00:23:57.160 are crucial

00:23:57.680 questions

00:23:58.340 in terms

00:23:58.940 of updating

00:23:59.920 not just

00:24:00.500 your beliefs

00:24:01.220 about what

00:24:02.680 you're doing

00:24:03.240 and the

00:24:04.000 context in

00:24:04.580 which you're

00:24:04.900 operating

00:24:05.340 but the

00:24:06.020 kind of

00:24:06.520 thing you

00:24:06.880 are and

00:24:07.260 whether you've

00:24:07.680 got the

00:24:08.000 right simple

00:24:08.560 explanations

00:24:09.100 whether they

00:24:09.520 should be

00:24:09.780 more complex

00:24:10.720 or simpler

00:24:12.680 done

00:24:13.920 right so the

00:24:15.120 optimal simple

00:24:16.700 explanation is

00:24:18.020 the least

00:24:19.360 complex

00:24:20.160 affordance

00:24:21.180 necessary for

00:24:22.060 the operation

00:24:22.680 at hand

00:24:23.220 and so then

00:24:24.240 we could talk

00:24:25.540 about affordances

00:24:26.300 a little bit

00:24:26.880 so people who

00:24:28.060 are watching

00:24:28.540 and listening

00:24:28.980 might think

00:24:29.560 that you

00:24:30.100 see the

00:24:31.440 object and

00:24:32.120 infer the

00:24:32.700 meaning

00:24:33.020 but the

00:24:33.900 theory of

00:24:34.320 affordances

00:24:34.900 would suggest

00:24:35.660 that you

00:24:36.080 see the

00:24:36.640 meaning and

00:24:37.160 infer the

00:24:37.700 object or

00:24:38.320 something like

00:24:38.860 that it

00:24:39.180 reverses it

00:24:39.940 and that

00:24:40.540 what you

00:24:40.820 see first

00:24:41.380 is something

00:24:41.860 like functional

00:24:43.240 utility but

00:24:44.620 I think you

00:24:45.040 can bring both

00:24:45.680 those positions

00:24:46.340 together if

00:24:47.100 you think

00:24:47.540 that what

00:24:48.940 we see in

00:24:49.880 the world

00:24:50.340 are patterns

00:24:52.060 that have

00:24:53.920 functional

00:24:54.360 utility now

00:24:55.520 there's all

00:24:55.980 sorts of

00:24:56.400 patterns that

00:24:57.080 don't have

00:24:57.720 functional

00:24:58.140 utility or

00:24:58.920 that only

00:24:59.460 have potential

00:25:00.140 functional

00:25:00.660 utility and

00:25:01.800 that might

00:25:02.220 be you

00:25:03.180 might consider

00:25:03.820 patterns that

00:25:04.660 don't have

00:25:05.080 specified

00:25:05.620 functional

00:25:06.220 utility as

00:25:06.960 something like

00:25:07.600 the infinite

00:25:08.520 domain of

00:25:09.200 potential

00:25:09.700 empirical

00:25:10.220 facts

00:25:10.940 if a fact

00:25:12.480 is something

00:25:12.920 like the

00:25:13.660 accurate

00:25:14.780 identification

00:25:15.420 of a

00:25:16.320 pattern that

00:25:17.520 exists stably

00:25:18.620 across contexts

00:25:19.780 but then we

00:25:21.000 can't see all

00:25:21.660 the set of

00:25:22.140 all possible

00:25:22.680 facts because

00:25:23.380 it's way too

00:25:23.960 large and

00:25:25.020 so we want

00:25:25.460 to reduce

00:25:25.840 that further

00:25:26.460 to that

00:25:26.980 set of

00:25:27.400 patterns that

00:25:28.520 offer us a

00:25:29.160 grip on the

00:25:29.840 world and

00:25:30.920 Gibson who

00:25:34.120 wrote an

00:25:35.120 ecological

00:25:35.540 approach to

00:25:36.160 visual perception

00:25:36.840 talked a lot

00:25:37.580 about affordances

00:25:38.560 tools and

00:25:39.200 obstacles in

00:25:39.960 particular if

00:25:40.700 I remember

00:25:41.160 correctly but

00:25:42.320 I'm wondering

00:25:42.840 as well is

00:25:43.720 it is the

00:25:44.520 domain of

00:25:45.060 affordance

00:25:45.560 here's a

00:25:45.920 way of

00:25:46.180 conceptualizing

00:25:46.880 the domain

00:25:47.340 of affordance

00:25:48.100 it's tool

00:25:49.200 those things

00:25:50.420 that you

00:25:51.240 can get a

00:25:51.640 grip on the

00:25:52.120 world with

00:25:53.720 and move

00:25:54.320 forward towards

00:25:55.360 a desired

00:25:55.860 goal obstacles

00:25:56.920 so things that

00:25:58.060 get in your

00:25:58.480 way of

00:25:58.840 different size

00:25:59.700 and then

00:26:00.480 pathways and

00:26:02.760 the pathways in

00:26:03.540 some so I

00:26:04.160 would say the

00:26:04.580 pathways are

00:26:05.660 littered with

00:26:06.200 tools and

00:26:06.680 obstacles and

00:26:08.620 the description

00:26:09.260 of a pathway

00:26:10.020 that's littered

00:26:10.660 with tools and

00:26:11.260 obstacles that's

00:26:12.820 a story

00:26:13.440 and so

00:26:16.820 these these

00:26:17.840 it looks to

00:26:19.180 me like those

00:26:20.180 hierarchical

00:26:21.340 conceptual boxes

00:26:23.320 are best

00:26:24.580 conceptualized as

00:26:25.640 something like

00:26:26.240 stories if

00:26:28.020 they're an

00:26:28.400 amalgam of

00:26:29.340 affordance and

00:26:30.460 pattern then

00:26:31.820 they're not

00:26:32.340 either just an

00:26:33.340 object or just

00:26:34.980 the subject

00:26:35.620 they're the

00:26:37.060 bringing of

00:26:37.500 the two

00:26:37.760 together and

00:26:39.060 the story is

00:26:40.140 where the

00:26:40.560 pattern and

00:26:41.200 the purpose

00:26:42.100 meet that's a

00:26:43.260 that's a way of

00:26:43.940 thinking about it

00:26:44.680 yeah and I

00:26:45.680 would think maybe

00:26:46.240 even when you

00:26:47.160 perceive a tool

00:26:48.180 it seems to me

00:26:49.740 that what you're

00:26:50.480 perceiving is

00:26:52.020 something like a

00:26:52.820 micro story you

00:26:54.480 know like if I

00:26:55.180 perceive this pen

00:26:56.400 say well that's

00:26:57.800 obviously it's an

00:26:58.840 objective fact that

00:27:00.020 this pen exists and

00:27:01.200 it is in so far as

00:27:02.640 the pen is a

00:27:04.060 stable pattern in

00:27:05.500 time and space

00:27:06.440 but it's the

00:27:08.360 function of the

00:27:09.100 pen that makes it

00:27:09.920 a pen and gives

00:27:10.980 the unity that it

00:27:13.160 gives the unity to

00:27:14.000 the perception

00:27:14.620 because you might

00:27:15.600 ask well why is

00:27:16.520 the pen a pen

00:27:18.000 this way and a

00:27:18.780 pen this way and

00:27:19.600 also a pen this

00:27:20.520 way and speak well

00:27:21.460 because because

00:27:22.460 it's it's objective

00:27:24.060 characteristics transform

00:27:25.660 tremendously when

00:27:26.900 it's moved or when

00:27:27.920 it's illuminated

00:27:29.000 differently but its

00:27:30.340 function remains

00:27:31.180 constant and

00:27:32.620 so I think even

00:27:33.820 an affordance is a

00:27:34.880 micro story and

00:27:36.820 so a tool is a

00:27:38.280 positive it's a

00:27:39.580 comedy that's a

00:27:40.880 way of thinking

00:27:41.340 about it a tool

00:27:42.440 is a comedy and

00:27:43.420 an obstacle is a

00:27:45.160 tragedy and and

00:27:47.880 we lay out the

00:27:48.560 world like that

00:27:49.320 even at the

00:27:50.140 levels of our

00:27:50.720 fundament even at

00:27:51.760 the level of our

00:27:52.320 fundamental perceptions

00:27:53.420 is there any

00:27:55.240 what do you think

00:27:56.600 of the idea as a

00:27:57.480 of a concept or a

00:27:58.640 percept as a as a

00:28:00.160 story because you

00:28:01.200 see the reason I

00:28:01.920 like that the

00:28:02.580 reason I think this

00:28:03.300 is so important is

00:28:04.120 that there's an

00:28:04.560 entire literature on

00:28:06.140 narrative of course

00:28:07.020 the entire literature

00:28:09.140 on literature is

00:28:09.980 about narrative and

00:28:11.680 if it is the case

00:28:12.900 that our fundamental

00:28:13.880 concepts are

00:28:14.740 narrative in in

00:28:17.040 their in their in

00:28:18.860 their origin and

00:28:19.740 their nature then

00:28:20.720 that allows us to

00:28:22.640 lay the narrative

00:28:23.320 world on top of the

00:28:24.440 objective world and I

00:28:26.160 think that's a well

00:28:27.920 it would be lovely

00:28:28.520 if that was a

00:28:29.220 possibility it would

00:28:31.260 alleviate the

00:28:32.320 terrible tension

00:28:34.260 between them then of

00:28:35.400 course the question

00:28:36.020 comes up with what's

00:28:37.280 the best narrative but

00:28:38.420 that's something we can

00:28:40.060 also talk about in

00:28:40.960 terms of hierarchical

00:28:41.920 processing yeah I

00:28:44.100 think some deep

00:28:44.900 truths are a number

00:28:47.300 of ways I could sort

00:28:48.540 of paraphrase what

00:28:49.380 you've just said so

00:28:50.240 this notion of micro

00:28:51.700 stories and narratives

00:28:52.860 I think that is

00:28:54.580 exactly the plans into

00:28:56.580 the future that we

00:28:57.400 were talking about

00:28:58.040 before that you know

00:28:58.960 choosing the right

00:28:59.980 ones and mathematically

00:29:04.020 you can think of that

00:29:04.880 exactly as you

00:29:05.620 articulated as a path

00:29:07.560 one perspective on

00:29:10.100 that is that of

00:29:11.600 Richard Feynman in

00:29:13.340 terms of the

00:29:13.800 pathological

00:29:14.240 formulation of

00:29:15.540 quantum

00:29:16.260 electrodynamics where

00:29:17.380 he was playing

00:29:18.120 exactly the same

00:29:18.920 game finding the

00:29:20.180 path of least

00:29:20.800 action the path

00:29:21.640 with the least

00:29:22.320 obstacles the path

00:29:24.420 that isn't the most

00:29:25.200 fluent the most

00:29:26.440 egos syntonic

00:29:28.900 leading to exactly

00:29:31.080 what we talked about

00:29:31.760 before either the

00:29:32.960 information gain or

00:29:34.180 avoiding surprising

00:29:35.240 outcomes which you

00:29:36.200 know I would read as

00:29:37.840 the obstacles that I

00:29:39.140 don't go there that's

00:29:40.080 not the kind of thing

00:29:41.340 that I'm in so if you

00:29:44.700 if you read our

00:29:46.780 active engagement with

00:29:48.760 the world our active

00:29:49.760 inference just as a

00:29:51.360 process of committing

00:29:52.440 to the right paths the

00:29:53.720 right plans the right

00:29:54.800 narratives the right

00:29:56.520 micro stories I think

00:29:58.140 that is the essence of

00:30:00.360 what one could argue

00:30:02.560 sort of sentient

00:30:03.380 behavior and existence

00:30:05.180 so I you know I'm I

00:30:07.760 would be put myself

00:30:09.260 very much or I would

00:30:11.760 certainly find it very

00:30:12.820 easy to commit to that

00:30:13.700 kind of formulation I

00:30:15.860 think a lot of another a

00:30:17.140 lot of other people would

00:30:17.900 as well in different

00:30:18.560 fields so what you're

00:30:19.540 talking about you you're

00:30:20.680 mentioning before about

00:30:21.680 you know all the facts

00:30:23.520 that are knowable and

00:30:24.900 yet we only register and

00:30:26.980 recognize those that

00:30:29.020 matter essential

00:30:29.960 variables for example

00:30:31.200 change blindness is a

00:30:33.060 nice example that you

00:30:34.080 don't see student of a

00:30:36.280 particular identity

00:30:38.020 person identity change

00:30:39.700 it's just a student you

00:30:41.120 only see and you only

00:30:42.840 model and rehearse and

00:30:44.940 sample the world using

00:30:47.040 the level the simple

00:30:47.960 level explanation that

00:30:49.340 is apt for getting

00:30:51.900 those right paths

00:30:53.120 forward yes well and

00:30:55.000 it would be lovely if

00:30:56.040 if your hierarchical

00:30:57.800 conceptualization

00:30:59.100 consisted of micro

00:31:01.480 stories let's say that

00:31:03.140 were flexible enough so

00:31:04.740 that they would apply

00:31:05.940 across a very wide range

00:31:08.380 of micro state

00:31:09.240 transformations because

00:31:11.140 then you can use the

00:31:12.180 same simple model in

00:31:13.840 all sorts of different

00:31:14.660 situations so you might

00:31:15.780 say well if you could

00:31:16.880 extract out a universal

00:31:18.320 ethic for dealing with

00:31:20.880 people then you could

00:31:23.120 apply that ethic to

00:31:24.580 everyone that you met

00:31:25.620 and then and that idea

00:31:28.860 might help us triangulate

00:31:30.160 in on what might

00:31:31.540 constitute a universal

00:31:32.920 higher order ethical

00:31:34.660 narrative and if you

00:31:36.820 imagine that my

00:31:38.600 interactions with people

00:31:39.900 are generally constrained

00:31:41.000 by the necessity of

00:31:42.840 iterating the interactions

00:31:44.180 across time and then you

00:31:46.380 might say by the

00:31:47.300 additional constraint of

00:31:48.720 iterating the

00:31:49.420 interactions across time

00:31:50.580 so that they increase in

00:31:52.700 their utility and so then

00:31:55.600 you might say well how do

00:31:56.620 you have to treat someone

00:31:57.860 or everyone for that

00:32:00.180 matter so that that

00:32:01.940 reality makes itself

00:32:03.780 manifest as you move

00:32:04.880 forward into the future

00:32:05.880 and I would say well that

00:32:07.600 looks like something like

00:32:08.780 genuine altruistic

00:32:10.040 reciprocity

00:32:10.380 reciprocity

00:32:10.940 you know Franz de Waal I

00:32:13.100 had a chance to talk to

00:32:14.140 Franz de Waal about his

00:32:15.680 work with chimpanzees

00:32:17.020 you know when chimpanzee

00:32:18.740 alpha males are often

00:32:20.100 parodied as dominant in a

00:32:23.140 sort of Marxist sense

00:32:24.560 power driven and it's the 0.64

00:32:26.840 most dominant male chimp 1.00

00:32:28.680 so the one with the most 0.99

00:32:29.720 physical prowess the biggest

00:32:31.180 tyrant in some sense who

00:32:32.740 gets to dominate all the

00:32:33.840 other chimps and who in

00:32:35.660 consequence has preferential

00:32:37.160 reproductive access and so

00:32:39.460 it's a theory of power and

00:32:41.240 social structure and

00:32:42.040 reproduction all tangled up

00:32:43.260 into one but the problem

00:32:44.640 with that is it's not true

00:32:46.120 so de Waal has shown very

00:32:48.540 very clearly that first of

00:32:51.140 all sometimes the alpha

00:32:52.260 chimps so to speak can be

00:32:53.880 the smallest male in the

00:32:55.100 troop

00:32:55.380 frequently he's allied with a

00:32:58.460 powerful female and he is 0.66

00:33:00.600 generally the most reciprocal

00:33:02.520 individual in the troop very

00:33:05.600 concerned with the long-term

00:33:06.920 maintenance of social

00:33:07.780 relations and very good at

00:33:09.780 making peace not war now that

00:33:11.860 doesn't mean he doesn't have

00:33:13.020 let's call it power at his

00:33:15.840 disposable disposal especially

00:33:17.780 in coalitions if necessary but

00:33:20.160 de Waal has shown very clearly

00:33:21.760 that the alpha chimps who rely on

00:33:24.660 power and force are very likely

00:33:27.700 to rule over an unstable polity and

00:33:31.100 to meet an extremely violent end in

00:33:33.360 the relatively short term and so if

00:33:37.420 if your fantasy about the future

00:33:39.560 let's say is motivated by an

00:33:41.780 underlying motivational state it

00:33:43.480 could be hunger it could be thirst it

00:33:45.100 could be sexual need it could be

00:33:49.280 rage it could be the desire to make

00:33:52.660 anxiety decrease then you can

00:33:55.140 imagine that there are ways of

00:33:57.760 interacting in the world that satisfy

00:34:02.100 multiple motivational states

00:34:05.960 simultaneously and then you could

00:34:08.400 imagine that they that those modes of

00:34:10.800 being satisfy multiple states of

00:34:13.000 motivation simultaneously in a social

00:34:15.600 context so also for other people and

00:34:18.140 then you could say and that and that

00:34:21.780 make that occur as it iterates forward

00:34:24.960 into the future and then you could say

00:34:27.440 well you want to extract out a

00:34:28.740 representation that allows you all

00:34:30.200 those advantages simultaneously and it

00:34:32.620 looks to me like something maybe

00:34:34.320 that's marked here's some hypotheses

00:34:36.000 it's marked by the sense of active

00:34:38.340 engagement that you might have in a

00:34:39.840 good conversation it's marked by the

00:34:42.720 sense of the emergence of the spirit

00:34:44.860 of play and Yacht Panksepp has

00:34:47.260 detailed out the psychophysiological

00:34:49.440 structures underlying the play circuit

00:34:51.260 it would underlie something like

00:34:53.500 maximal no optimized stress so you

00:34:57.620 talked about minimizing predictive

00:34:59.760 error but here's a variant what if

00:35:03.380 you optimize predictive error so that

00:35:05.240 you lay out a fantasy on the future

00:35:09.040 and then work so that there's just

00:35:11.780 enough predictive error so that you

00:35:14.360 encounter something you don't expect

00:35:16.140 at a micro level small enough that you

00:35:19.340 can manage it but large enough so that

00:35:21.140 it expands the confines of your

00:35:23.240 hierarchical presuppositions and maybe

00:35:26.200 you do that see I was thinking about

00:35:27.860 that relationship to play because if

00:35:30.160 you're on a team and you're playing

00:35:31.880 against a well-matched opponent the

00:35:34.480 opponent pushes you right to the limit

00:35:36.640 of your skill not past it right so it's

00:35:40.340 not too stressful but but it isn't

00:35:42.980 exactly in that situation that surprise

00:35:44.700 is minimize it's more like it's more

00:35:48.360 like a little entropy is allowed to enter

00:35:50.980 the system at just enough rate and

00:35:54.860 intensity so that you can push your

00:35:57.680 development in a manner that doesn't

00:35:59.500 stress you too badly physiologically

00:36:01.960 yeah so you've brought it about sort of

00:36:06.740 four really important themes here the two

00:36:09.660 key things that you've brought to the

00:36:11.460 table there were with sort of putting

00:36:13.780 sentient creatures together so you're

00:36:16.260 talking about social interactions now

00:36:18.060 and social hierarchism and sense making

00:36:20.720 when the other the thing I'm making

00:36:22.740 sense about is also trying to make

00:36:24.060 sense of me I think that's a really

00:36:25.920 important sort of and challenging sort

00:36:29.900 of move there you've also brought to

00:36:34.900 this sort of highlighted this paradox that

00:36:38.520 you know we might be in the game or we

00:36:41.460 might be seen as in the game of trying

00:36:43.860 to minimize our surprise minimize our

00:36:46.600 prediction errors and yet we seek out

00:36:49.500 novelty so I think there's a fundamental

00:36:52.260 paradox there that needs resolving I

00:36:54.840 think you've you're in your setting up of

00:36:58.180 the of the issue I think you've

00:37:00.880 implicitly resolved it there is I think a

00:37:03.720 very simple way of resolving that and it

00:37:05.360 comes back to this sort of isomorphism

00:37:08.480 between expected surprise and uncertainty

00:37:11.180 and I notice you also use the word angst

00:37:13.400 and anxiety to my mind uncertainty just is

00:37:17.680 a state of your or recognized as a state

00:37:20.640 of angst or anxiety so you know that that

00:37:25.500 that sort of imperative to minimize expected

00:37:32.640 surprise just is choosing or can be complied

00:37:38.000 with by choosing those plans that minimize

00:37:41.060 uncertainty and what would that look like

00:37:43.360 it would basically look like epistemic of

00:37:46.980 responding to epistemic affordances that

00:37:50.600 resolve that uncertainty so I think that's the

00:37:54.200 kind of surprise that we aspire to it's the

00:37:56.680 novelty that affords the opportunity to

00:38:00.360 resolve uncertainty and thereby resolve angst and

00:38:04.020 if that's true then taking it to your context how would I

00:38:07.980 do that if I was in a social hierarchy of

00:38:11.980 chimpanzees or I was in any social setting

00:38:14.580 in one sense the simplest way to resolve my

00:38:20.300 surprise and make the world as predictable as

00:38:22.820 possible would in one would initially be to

00:38:26.600 resolve my uncertainty about you by asking you

00:38:29.280 the right kinds of questions that allows me to

00:38:32.100 sort of put you in a particular category in one of

00:38:37.240 my narratives my pro-social narratives about the

00:38:40.460 kinds of people that I can talk about but also

00:38:43.540 ultimately I'm going to try and make you like me or

00:38:47.680 make me like you because the closer we are if we can

00:38:51.580 share the same narratives in the same language

00:38:54.060 right then together we're mutually predictable so that

00:38:57.860 that mathematically would be so like a generalized

00:39:00.200 synchrony but from the from a social

00:39:02.180 social neuroscience perspective on Dalek interactions

00:39:05.580 it's basically aligning ourselves so that we come to know each other

00:39:10.360 and that we can dance and synchronize and exchange and you know after a

00:39:15.660 while I don't need to ask you any more questions you don't need to

00:39:18.460 ask me any more questions we are now on the same page singing from the

00:39:22.740 same hymn sheet the same generative model the same world model the same

00:39:27.060 kinds of narratives having said that of course there's also in the

00:39:32.060 background the putative or potential novelty of

00:39:35.940 finding out what somebody's not like me like you know so so you know I think

00:39:42.560 asking questions about the right kinds of narrative that resolve

00:39:46.760 uncertainty responding to epistemic affordance novelty seeking

00:39:51.680 information seeking whilst at the same time still avoiding those surprising

00:39:55.380 states of loss or physiological extremists

00:40:00.580 put that into a social context and I think you've you know you've got some

00:40:07.280 really interesting questions and possibly a structure and a framework to

00:40:12.100 understand social organization and and sort of information exchange and

00:40:18.060 self-organization not at the level of just the individual negotiating with his

00:40:23.760 or her body but negotiate negotiating with another individual with a very 0.75

00:40:28.440 similar kind of body I spent a lot of time studying Jean Piaget and his

00:40:34.820 description of how cognitive structures organize themselves across time and you

00:40:41.440 might imagine a two-year-old as a collection of micro narratives each of which are

00:40:47.120 driven by a somewhat independent motivational state and so two-year-olds

00:40:51.920 will cycle between being too hot and too cold and too tired and too playful and

00:40:56.820 too enthusiastic and too anxious without any real overarching integration and they

00:41:02.880 start to manifest that ability to integrate those already integrated

00:41:08.940 motivational states which are probably in large part hypothalamically

00:41:12.700 controlled they start to be able to integrate those into a continuous

00:41:16.540 narrative through time and in different locales at two and so then they start to be able to play

00:41:23.820 by themselves and so but it's at three or thereabouts when they can adopt a shared

00:41:32.500 narrative with someone else so a little boy and a little girl might get together and the little

00:41:36.740 boy will offer to play or the little girl and say would you like to play house and so that

00:41:42.540 specifies the goal and then the little girl has to say yes it has to be voluntary and then the little

00:41:49.620 boy might say well I'll be the dad and you be the mom and then they can integrate their two identities

00:41:54.960 within that overarching concept and so they can develop mutual understanding that way

00:42:01.220 and it's partly because you said earlier that the best way to make someone else predictable

00:42:08.340 and you to them which is also equally useful in some sense is to be inhabited by the same

00:42:14.960 conceptual structure and that's sort of what we do when we decide to play a game together it's like

00:42:20.960 here's the game here are the principles by which we're going to operate those are the rules of

00:42:25.360 the game and if you're operating by those principles and I'm operating by those principles

00:42:30.840 simultaneously then we're going to share perceptual reality because that's instantiated in relationship

00:42:38.180 to the game and we're going to share emotional response and so I can now predict you if you're

00:42:45.300 playing the same game merely by reading off of me because the same thing and I think this is what we

00:42:51.480 do when we go to a movie and we watch the hero we adopt his hierarchy of attentional prioritization

00:42:59.540 and then we can feel the same emotions because we're in the same state and we really are like

00:43:05.580 neurophysiologically we're in an analogous state and then the understanding comes not from me deriving

00:43:11.740 inferences about the character's motivations because of his actions but by me adopting his

00:43:17.220 goal or his story and then reading off the emotions I have which are now isomorphic with his

00:43:22.760 and I think children are doing the same thing when they play a game and I would say that you and I

00:43:30.140 insofar as we're playing the same game in this conversation are very likely to remain predictable to

00:43:36.380 one another and also to occupy the same emotional states simultaneously similar at least similar

00:43:42.580 enough so we're not jarring and off-putting to each other yes I will I wanted to say that

00:43:49.200 I think that's a perfect example of a shared narrative and you crucially point out that you know you're

00:44:02.100 talking about theory of mind and one of the easiest ways to get to theory of mind is just to

00:44:07.360 commit to the hypothesis that you are very much like me so what I would feel if I sensed what you sensed

00:44:16.340 is going to be a very good proxy for my inference about your feelings and of course you're making

00:44:24.700 inferences about you just is um theory of mind I also wonder whether you're going to develop that argument

00:44:32.560 um um sort of you know almost pre um stages of uh PR jetian development just to um how a newborn infant

00:44:43.760 starts to make sense of its world and the very emergence of selfhood uh that self is distinct from

00:44:50.640 mum or the rest of the world um getting into notions of uh motor babbling you know babies that will 0.99

00:44:59.840 rattle their uh their toys to say yes I cause that as opposed to mum causing that yeah so you know I think

00:45:09.320 that what you're talking about um the the Newmont being the ability to actually recognize oh you are

00:45:16.800 another that is like me and if we can share the same narrative then there is some um not only a a deep

00:45:24.900 connection and a communication but also a very sophisticated theory of mind that would be the

00:45:30.760 Newmont but on route you've actually um described a mechanism as a structure learning learning the

00:45:39.160 structure of this this hierarchical um world model or self model that entails the emergence of selfhood

00:45:46.540 in and of itself you know in order for me for us to take turns we both have to have this fantasy

00:45:52.740 that I am me and you are you and I have to recognize I am me and you are you and we have to take turns

00:45:58.980 so now it's your turn right so those are the axiomatic preconditions of that game and the axiomatic

00:46:06.440 preconditions some of them are you exist as a separate entity and I exist as a separate entity but we can be

00:46:12.000 joined together in a shared vision and one of the just for those of you who are watching and listening

00:46:17.620 to understand is if this is true and we establish a shared two people establish a shared narrative

00:46:24.160 and that shared narrative simplifies the world and that simplification constrains entropy then that

00:46:31.240 shared narrative constrains terror and so you might say well why is it possible to be calm in the

00:46:39.100 presence of someone else given their infinite complexity and also their almost infinite

00:46:43.180 capacity for mayhem and the answer well it is well insofar as the two of you establish and inhabit a

00:46:51.100 shared narrative then all that entropic complexity is constrained by the desire let's say to keep the

00:46:58.560 shared narrative intact and then you might also point out that if you and I our shared narrative might

00:47:05.740 be it would be worthwhile to have an interesting conversation because both of us might learn

00:47:10.760 something and we might have the opportunity to bring a bunch of other people along for the ride

00:47:15.920 which seems like a good additional bonus and so we both come to this conversation with that story in

00:47:23.180 mind and then we can play the game as a consequence and even though we don't know each other because we

00:47:30.280 assume goodwill on each other's part not only are we not anxious in each other's presence apart from

00:47:36.420 whatever additional relevant features might have to do with being on a podcast but we can also take

00:47:44.140 some pleasure in joint movement towards the shared goal because the dopamine system to me seems to

00:47:50.300 indicate progress towards a shared to the instantiation of a vision it's something like that and then if

00:47:59.620 you're acting in a manner that makes the vision appear to me making itself manifest then that's

00:48:05.580 rewarding and that reward has a an existential element a phenomenological element you can feel it

00:48:13.240 feels good but then the dopamine what it does neurochemically seems to be to track the neural

00:48:20.240 systems that were activated just prior to the manifestation of the success and make them grow

00:48:28.560 and so once you establish a shared narrative if you negotiate it successfully you also increase

00:48:36.240 the probability that the neural architecture manifesting that vision making that vision

00:48:42.100 manifest in skill and apprehension is more likely to dominate in the future more likely to take

00:48:47.560 priority in the future yeah you no no go ahead well no i'm just noting you've you've now sort of

00:48:57.040 brought in dopamine um as an important neurochemical um um part of the anatomy of sense making and uh

00:49:09.840 and exchange so i just wanted to acknowledge that because um um in my world um the way that one might

00:49:18.600 describe that and uh interpret all the empirical evidence is very much along the line of this notion

00:49:25.200 of pursuing a narrative and in this instance a dyadic narrative uh or a narrative about how i should

00:49:32.160 behave in a dyadic context and if everything if i resolve my uncertainty and just to open brackets just to

00:49:40.640 uh come back to your nice observation about we might learn something um from this exchange i think that

00:49:46.640 speaks to that to that novelty bonus you're talking about a bonus and certainly in machine learning this information

00:49:53.520 gain this epistemic affordance that is part of the good narratives and the good paths into the future

00:50:00.000 would be seen exactly as this sort of novelty bonus so that is part of the reward so if in this exchange

00:50:08.160 we are both um realizing you use the word instantiating instantiating or realizing through committing to the

00:50:15.440 right narratives literally a narrative of verbal exchange or linguistic exchange here um and that

00:50:22.560 secures a reserve resolution of uncertainty about what you think or indeed about what i think um then that

00:50:29.520 will be um rewarding in the sense that's minimizing uncertainty minimizing expected surprise minimizing if you

00:50:36.640 like entropy in the sense that you originally introduced it um so i think that's an you know there's an

00:50:43.040 important if you like um generic thing uh concept that you'll bring to the table here that all these

00:50:49.600 um ways of looking at good narratives and good engagement with the world i think are all very

00:50:57.040 internally consistent especially when placed in terms of interpersonal interactions and they also

00:51:02.320 actually have biophysical correlates in our brains and you've identified a really important one which

00:51:08.240 which is dopamine and we could talk about and i suspect you would want to talk about what's special

00:51:13.600 about dopamine relative to all the other chemicals that are responsible for message passing and belief

00:51:19.760 propagation and sort of getting the um the hierarchical fantasies aligned in order to explain what i'm

00:51:27.600 sensing what i'm hearing and indeed what i'm saying so so do you do you want to elaborate on the role of

00:51:33.520 dopamine i'd be more than happy to hear what you have to say about that so because we talked about

00:51:38.800 surprise minimization but this is this is reward and reinforcement and so and and and the and the

00:51:44.880 propagation of growth and that can happen artificially i mean if you dose yourself with cocaine you can

00:51:50.640 produce a cocaine seeking narrative that's instantiated in your brain and that's actually what constitutes

00:51:56.720 the addiction in some sense it's a cocaine seeking personality that's a unidimensional monster that

00:52:03.040 now comes to dominate your neurophysiology in conditions of deprivation that's a very bad idea

00:52:09.440 it's you you've you've you've generated an internal parasite that's fed on this externally applied

00:52:16.240 chemical but so if you could elaborate on the role of dopamine i'd be more than happy to hear what you

00:52:21.440 what you have to say about that yeah no absolutely um just picking up on that nice notion of um a

00:52:28.480 cocaine uh addiction being sort of parasitic i i think that's absolutely right it's sort of almost

00:52:34.960 as if there's been a short circuit a hijacking of the normal mechanisms that we would um you know

00:52:42.400 our brains would certainly bring um bring to the fore to actually choose and register the choice of the

00:52:49.440 right paths forward so for me reward just is that minimization or realization uh minimization of

00:52:57.440 expected surprise or uncertainty so it is intrinsically rewarding to resolve uncertainty

00:53:03.840 and to secure and seek out those novel things or avoid those unfamiliar uncharacteristic obstacle

00:53:11.360 light states um that you know states that do not characterize me so i you know dopamine i think um

00:53:18.960 read like that just is the fact you have resolved uncertainty so if i get a cue in the world um say a

00:53:28.160 conditioned stimulus that tells me oh i now know exactly what i'm going to do next i'm going to if

00:53:33.840 i'm a little monkey in an experimental paradigm i'm going to receive a drop of juice and i'm going to drink

00:53:39.040 that um if i am um um somebody engaging a social conversation then uh i know exactly where this

00:53:48.400 conversation is going that's great i know exactly what i want to say um so i think that's when you

00:53:53.280 get the dopamine blush that resolution of uncertainty suddenly you see the path forward clearly and it is

00:53:59.120 exactly and i'm using path in your sense of the micro story the micro story that's responding to the

00:54:04.720 the affordances what's special about dopamine though um well it's a neuromodulator so it plays

00:54:11.200 the role in the brain as not um of sending information from this neuronal structure to this

00:54:18.960 neural structure or this set of neurons to this set of neurons but greasing the pathway by setting

00:54:25.680 the excitability or the game by being the um the chemical mechanism by which you will switch on this

00:54:33.920 set of messages or that method set of messages another way of saying that is it sensitizes for

00:54:39.520 example let's come back to your sort of hierarchical structure that the the micro stories are informing

00:54:46.240 or perhaps the mismatch um at the lowest level the prediction is at the lowest level are inducing

00:54:53.200 belief updates at a higher level to get to these simpler more abstracted inferences you were talking

00:54:59.280 about before um but how much does the high level listen to the low level and how much does a low

00:55:05.040 level inherit or um respond to top-down constraints afforded by your simple high-level abstractions

00:55:13.600 your which could of course be be the narrative so chemicals like dopamine and i and i wonder whether

00:55:20.560 you also want to talk about things like serotonin um in relation to things such as depression and learned

00:55:26.160 helplessness all of these neurochemicals have one thing in common their role in the brain is just

00:55:33.040 to sensitize one set of neuronal representations to messages from another set of neural neural

00:55:40.640 representations when placed in your hierarchical context that can have a profound effect on the

00:55:46.800 balance between how much you're attending to what's going on out there so you're the micro uh the

00:55:52.560 micro structure the low level sensory uh um um constructions that um um or categorizations that say you

00:56:03.840 you might um think are being played out in the early visual cortex or the primary auditory cortex

00:56:09.760 relative to your um coherent deeply structured narratives about me in a particular world so you know i would

00:56:19.360 imagine that you know a lot your way you might want to go with this is is just thinking well how might

00:56:25.120 that go wrong and um what would that look like if i had an abnormality of these neuromodulatory

00:56:32.720 transmitter systems in the brain and of course you've highlighted one of the key uh or a key abnormality

00:56:39.760 that which is a juice induced by drugs of abuse or misuse nowadays um such as cocaine so that's i think

00:56:47.280 you know drug addiction is a really good example of what tends to happen if you mess with these

00:56:53.840 really important systems mm-hmm yeah well cocaine addiction prioritizes the micro behaviors associated

00:57:03.520 with cocaine self-administration prioritizes those over all other potential behavioral microstates over

00:57:10.480 all other stories and it does that neurologically on the serotonin front so

00:57:17.280 here's here's a pattern of depressive cognition and we you can think about it as the collapse of a

00:57:22.480 hierarchy so let's say you have a tiff with your wife and if you're operating let's say normally 0.73

00:57:34.160 in terms of your neurological hierarchy you might say well you know i'm just having an off day or i'm

00:57:39.360 having an off hour and it's only one little upset it's only one little anomaly it's only one

00:57:47.120 little surprise i can safely ignore it but that isn't what a depressive person will think a

00:57:53.760 depressing person will think oh my god i just had another fight with my wife 0.67

00:57:58.720 i'm doing nothing but fighting with my wife lately my marriage isn't going very well i've always fought

00:58:04.960 with my wife too much in the past and i'm fighting a lot with my friends i'm not a really good person to get along with

00:58:12.240 i mess up everything i do i've always messed up everything i do i'm going to keep messing up

00:58:17.520 everything i do in the present because that's what i'm like and there's no hope at all for me to change

00:58:22.400 in the future and you can see that an error that could have been bounded at a low level which is

00:58:28.960 well maybe i didn't have enough to eat in the last two hours and so i'm a little irritable has cascaded

00:58:34.320 through the entire hierarchy of self-conceptualization and so imagine that

00:58:40.240 each level of the hierarchy has to be protected against the propagation of error messages from a

00:58:45.920 lower level and then imagine each level of the hierarchy has a resistance level that's set by

00:58:53.920 something like the tonic level of serotonin so the higher the serotonin level corresponding to

00:59:00.720 higher social status by the way the more error has to accrue at a given level of analysis before

00:59:06.800 a message will propagate up the hierarchical system and so one of the things my wife and i have worked

00:59:13.680 out in terms of modulating our reactivity to each other and to other people is well when should you

00:59:19.600 respond to a disruption in social communication when should you call someone on it and our answer

00:59:27.440 as being something like the rule of three that's fairly typical of narrative descriptions of such

00:59:34.560 things if it happens once you can ignore it it's just random fluctuation if it happens twice you could

00:59:42.240 mark it but still discount it but if it happens three times it establishes a pattern and then something

00:59:48.400 has to be called into question so i might say if if i'm interacting with my wife and it doesn't go well

00:59:54.400 three times in a row i might say to her i tried to be friendly three times in a row and i've been

01:00:00.240 rebuffed what that indicates to me is something else is going on here that's like a freudian slip in some

01:00:08.320 sense it's like i think this is what's happening i want this to be happening but it's not happening

01:00:15.120 here's the evidence three instances thus we have to reconfigure the narrative that we're using to

01:00:22.160 structure the space and we have to say well what actually is happening here what needs to be

01:00:27.200 resolved and so that's a and then maybe and you don't say well we were rude to each other three

01:00:33.680 times today therefore our marriage is over and we're both terrible people because that would be

01:00:38.880 leaping too far up in the hierarchy you might say well is there something else going on in the background

01:00:45.520 that's disturbing you so that you're more irritable in relationship to me that's part of a

01:00:50.960 different conceptual structure and maybe the other person will say well you know i i didn't have a

01:00:55.520 very good day at work i was arguing with my boss he's a bit tyrannical then you can go off on that

01:01:01.040 narrative and try to resolve it but but you can see depression as the collapse of that resistance

01:01:08.480 of the hierarchy to the propagation of errors upward and so when you give people serotonergic

01:01:15.440 reuptake inhibitors what they seem to do arguably is make each level of the hierarchy more resistant to

01:01:22.560 the propagation of upward error and the reason i tied that into social status is because we know that

01:01:28.960 animals that have higher social status and therefore occupy a more secure position in the social and

01:01:35.760 environmental hierarchy are more resistant to anomaly partly because they can rest comfortable in the

01:01:43.200 supposition that their superordinate status actually means that they're globally safer they have better

01:01:50.880 social relations they have better access to necessary environmental resources the world isn't as dangerous

01:01:56.800 a place and so you can imagine that your brain computes how likely an error message is to propagate

01:02:05.280 upward partly by looking at your social status which would be the value that other people have attributed to

01:02:11.280 you by their distributed computation and it does that with trait neuroticism which is your own genetically

01:02:18.400 mediated mostly partially at least genetically mediated initial propensity for those error messages to

01:02:27.520 propagate up the hierarchy you might say they're more likely to propagate up the hierarchy the internal

01:02:32.880 representational hierarchy of women and women are more sensitive to negative emotion than men and i think the

01:02:39.360 reason for that is is because they have to take care of infants it makes sense for them to be more sensitive

01:02:46.480 to smaller errors of prediction because the consequences for someone who's truly vulnerable an infant can be

01:02:54.080 cataclysmic and so anyways there's a lot in that but that's that's a relation a theory of the relationship

01:03:02.160 between hierarchical processing of entropy and the proclivity for depression yeah there is a lot there

01:03:09.280 um but it all makes perfect sense um from the point of view of hierarchical inference in the brain and

01:03:18.240 particularly hierarchical predictive coding so if you'll indulge me i'm just going to say exactly what you said

01:03:24.400 um but using slightly different words um but using slightly different words because i i think that that notion that you've just described

01:03:31.520 and its implications for things like depression um has a lot of construct validity in relation to sort of um

01:03:39.200 more machine learning uh artificial intelligence formulations of this hierarchical processing

01:03:45.520 so one way of articulating um is to think of the the message passing in a hierarchy that literally is our brain

01:03:57.600 under the rubric of predictive coding so in this um in this sort of framework or scheme the idea is that

01:04:05.520 each level of the hierarchy it receives information from below and it tries to explain away

01:04:14.720 the information based upon top-down predictions and that which cannot be explained is ensuing

01:04:22.160 prediction error so these are the mismatches you were referring to before and then these prediction errors

01:04:28.000 are used to revise beliefs or representations sub-personal beliefs or representations at the higher level at the

01:04:35.280 more abstract level until the top-down predictions are more apt to explain away what's going on below

01:04:42.400 now the key thing um about this architecture well there are a number of key things and we've spoken

01:04:49.760 in depth about about a number of them um but you're framing like this then the game of minimizing surprise

01:04:56.960 the mate the game of uh is just the game of minimizing prediction errors but how are you doing that well

01:05:03.040 you're explaining away what's going on down there based upon higher level hypotheses or

01:05:09.440 or belief structures or expectations or uh representations um in your hierarchy the key

01:05:18.480 aspect of this sort of um um message passing schemes predictive coding scheme is that it really matters how

01:05:26.960 much weight you afford to the prediction errors that are passed and ascend the hierarchy you use the

01:05:32.640 words sort of cascading up the hierarchy and this is exactly the image that a um an engineer would have

01:05:40.320 when building a predictive coding machine um and the degree to which they cascade up is exactly proportional

01:05:48.880 to the gain or the sensitivity that is set by the neuromodulators in this instance serotonin

01:05:55.600 so the resistance now is set by um having entrenched if you like uh beliefs about this at this level of

01:06:05.760 the hierarchy relative to this level of the hierarchy that is mediated by decreasing your sensitivity to the

01:06:12.560 ascending prediction errors so if i if i read your um your con well let's take depression i'd also like to

01:06:21.360 talk about psychedelics because they act upon exactly the same uh neurotransmitter systems but let's let's

01:06:26.880 let's just take um let's take depression which is a particularly pernicious i think sort of um um set of

01:06:34.880 narratives to find yourself in because you know i'll just cut to the denouement of this argument that

01:06:39.680 you know in many senses this um this predictive coding formulation when put in the context of um me

01:06:50.720 discovering and learning and optimizing my models of the world is all about accumulating evidence

01:06:57.440 for my explanations that are updated in a way that minimize the prediction errors but in accumulating

01:07:04.080 evidence i have to expose myself i have to choose to expose myself to the world i have to actively

01:07:09.200 sense and go out there depression is pernicious because of course a lot of the symptoms of depression

01:07:14.960 prevent you going getting evidence that you're not this kind of person or that you could have coped

01:07:22.160 with this particular um scenario so depression i think a little bit like the cocaine using that it

01:07:29.200 has a slightly self-subverting or self-maintaining aspect uh that sort of hijacks the normal ways that

01:07:35.840 we get out of it but just to come back to to this sort of i think quite fundamental um uh notion of

01:07:42.560 sort of um inducing either through um um um physiological setting of that resistance or that

01:07:52.400 what we call precision so we call it um the precision it's the inverse uncertainty it's the

01:07:58.320 um the reliability that you can afford these ascending prediction errors that tell you you've

01:08:03.440 got to change your mind um you've got to find a new way of coping um either in a marital relationship

01:08:09.360 or or just in terms of where you're actually looking you know from many many different levels

01:08:14.960 so this notion of precision translates into exactly what the neuromodulators control which is the

01:08:20.240 excitability of the neuronal cells that are broadcasting the prediction errors to the next

01:08:26.640 level um and as such that looks very much like attention in in the you know we were talking before

01:08:32.720 about sort of um change blindness and we just don't seem to uh be able to attend to things

01:08:39.040 that are irrelevant to the extent we don't even notice changes when they occur if then we don't uh we

01:08:45.520 don't um assign them the right kind of informativeness or salience or precision uh that is necessary to

01:08:53.760 to explain the narrative that's unfolding before us so one way of reading this sort of um this state

01:09:00.800 this serotonergic state uh or continuum where these high level uh hierarchically higher level beliefs

01:09:09.440 are recalcitrant or insensitive to the lower level information is the remarkable and important

01:09:14.800 capacity to ignore stuff that is irrelevant and what you're saying is when it happens three times

01:09:20.240 perhaps i shouldn't be ignoring it anymore and i now have to redeploy the precision the neuro

01:09:26.480 my refocus my neuromodulator system perhaps away from serotonin at the top and perhaps more to say

01:09:32.800 acetylcholine at the bottom just given the anatomy of these neurotransmitter systems that would indeed

01:09:38.880 render me in a state where i'm now much more attentive to what's actually going on out there and what is

01:09:45.040 actually going on out there will have uh will engender prediction errors that will change my mind or

01:09:51.200 indeed change my my generative model that you know that entails this hierarchical structure so i think

01:09:57.280 everything you've said makes perfect sense um from the perspective of the mechanics of belief

01:10:02.480 updating and structure learning and in the brain seen through the lens of of an engineer who thinks

01:10:08.000 about the brain as a predictive processing or coding machine so what does acetylcholine do what does

01:10:13.520 acetylcholine do and you you you contrasted acetylcholine with serotonin and and you you associated

01:10:19.280 acetylcholine with increased precision of attention focused outward and and and that's at the lower

01:10:25.520 levels of the hierarchy yeah so uh this is a vast simplification but um i think it's a sort of a

01:10:32.800 useful mnemonic so if you if you think about the hierarchy that were that that you were um describing

01:10:39.680 before and you now want to um discriminate between uh a situation where all my high level beliefs

01:10:49.200 are um insensitive to changes at the lower levels so this would be say the the dominant alpha male

01:10:55.680 very very self-confident has very precise what we sometimes in a bayesian reading of this predictive

01:11:02.080 coding scheme called prior beliefs prior beliefs this is the way i behave this is the way you behave

01:11:07.840 and i am going to realize instantiate those um those fantasies by behaving in this way and indeed

01:11:14.240 that's what normally happens so i'm very confident and that translates into a high degree of prior

01:11:20.960 precision which could be mediated by things like serotonin the equivalent neurotransmitter at the

01:11:27.760 lower level is often um just looking at the neuroanatomy and the neurochemistry and physiological

01:11:33.600 experiments this a similar role might be played by acetylcholine um so you can think of um if you like

01:11:40.960 too much prior precision um as being mediated by uh serotonin the neurotransmission and of course you

01:11:48.800 know as well as i do that it's you know it's a very complicated game with different receptor

01:11:52.880 subtypes and sort of inverted u behavior so i'm not saying it's more or less but certainly rests upon

01:11:59.680 the way that you deploy your serotonin firing that will have a profound influence on the higher level

01:12:06.400 prior beliefs uh exactly the same kind of role may be ascribed for cholinergic neurotransmission from

01:12:13.360 the nucleus bazellus and meinhardt which is another neuromodulator so you've got dopamine you've got

01:12:20.960 serotonin you've got uh adrenaline or norepinephrine uh you have oxytocin there are lots of them um and they

01:12:30.640 may all have particular roles in setting the precision or the recalcitrance or the sensitivity

01:12:36.880 at different hierarchical levels so it's generally in my world if you like if you think of serotonin

01:12:44.000 doing one thing then the complement of that is that the the acetylcholine is doing it in the in the

01:12:52.080 inverse way so it's sort of like a yin yang uh so it you know when i talk about um um attention at

01:13:00.000 the periphery it's likely that that does uh sorry at the low level of the hierarchy it's likely that

01:13:05.600 that does rely upon intact cholinergic neurotransmission with possibly aberrant serotonergic

01:13:12.080 neurotransmission that may be due to psychopathology or it could be due to taking drugs that affect

01:13:17.440 say 5h22a receptors like like all the psychedelics you know psilocybin for example okay so i want to

01:13:24.640 go in i've got three directions to go in now the first question that's been lurking in the back of

01:13:30.400 my mind for a while is okay when you make progress towards a valued goal let's say we inhabit a shared

01:13:36.880 narrative and we're making progress towards our mutual stated goal and when we see ourselves

01:13:42.400 making progress we get a bit of a dopamine hit could you say that the fundamental reason

01:13:49.760 for the positively rewarding effect of that movement forward is that as i move forward towards

01:13:56.720 a goal i decrease the entropy that still remains between me and the goal and so is even that reward

01:14:03.280 is even that movement forward readable as an entropy reduction yeah absolutely because i'm closer now so

01:14:09.280 there's okay okay so so i mean i mean right see i didn't know i didn't understand that before okay

01:14:15.280 okay that i mean it's it's almost written into the uh the mathematical meaning of the words so if

01:14:20.800 entropy just is uncertainty and as i get close to resolving that uncertainty getting my fruit juice uh

01:14:27.200 pleasing my wife um or you know being able to watch the news uh you know if it's an epistemic reward

01:14:33.600 it is just expected surprise just is the uncertainty and the closer you get the the more um the less

01:14:40.800 uncertain you are and all they have to suggest exactly it's partly because the well the closer you get

01:14:48.560 the fewer things you have to compute in order to get there so that's a good working definition of

01:14:53.680 entropy it's like i have to do less i have to handle less doubt between me and my eventual destination

01:15:01.200 so that okay so that's cool so that reduces dopaminergic reward to a subset of entropy reduction

01:15:08.480 right and we should point out you know living creatures are always fighting

01:15:13.040 entropy they're trying to violate the laws of thermodynamics in some not fundamentally but in

01:15:19.200 some local sense by insisting upon the maintenance of order in the face of this proclivity for things

01:15:26.560 to go every which way at once and so all right so movement towards movement forward towards a shared

01:15:32.800 goal that's also going to reduce the entropy between us say because it means if i can rely on you to be

01:15:39.840 to accompany me as i move forward that means i can predict you better it also means that both of us are

01:15:46.800 now in a situation that's less entropic because there's less variability between you and me and the

01:15:53.840 joint us and that shared goal and so i've fortified my belief in your reliability and i've reduced my

01:16:02.000 apprehension of your entropy yep a physicist would love that because of course the nice thing about

01:16:07.040 entropy and free energy which you know we're here sort of reading as surprise and prediction errors

01:16:14.160 is an extensive quantity so your free energy and my free energy or your entropy and my entropy

01:16:20.080 um we just have to add them together because they're extensive and then our free energy

01:16:24.640 um is exactly the sum of our free energy so if we can both render our mutual worlds more predictable and

01:16:32.320 less surprising then our joint free energy will um um will fall um and this you know this is if you like

01:16:41.680 um it could be read as a um a statement of imperatives but you could also read it another way in a much more

01:16:50.960 deflationary way that stuff societies through to cells that exist are just these um free energy

01:16:59.760 minimizing systems so your these conversations are just the kinds of conversations that can only be there

01:17:08.720 simply because they are uh free energy minimizing and um if you like are what is left when you

01:17:16.880 you wanted to say you know resisting the second law of thermodynamics the very fact that that we are here

01:17:23.120 having this low free energy conversation and this exchange and rendering everything mutually predictable

01:17:29.200 and resolving uncertainty about ourselves uh means that this little dyadic um exchange is in itself

01:17:36.560 a free energy minimizing free energy minimizing system and you know free energy here again is just being

01:17:41.920 used as a uh proxy for uncertainty for uh unpredictability uh disorder um so we're by minimizing free

01:17:51.920 energy by we are implicitly going to be minimizing the disorder and the entropy and the expected surprise

01:17:57.280 so it's all very consistent with the physics of self-organization what you're doing though i think is

01:18:02.640 thinking about what would these things look like in a social context in a dyadic context and just to just

01:18:09.520 to say also that one way of reading what you were saying about you know well if we can both shorten the

01:18:15.440 path to a state of orderly predictiveness and uncertainty resolution um then um if one thinks about that in the

01:18:25.440 you know in terms of interactions either between people or between uh between people and their environment

01:18:31.360 then you've got now a nice model for niche construction and uh cultural niche construction that you know

01:18:38.080 everything i do is in the service of making everything more predictable and if that involves um um evolving

01:18:44.400 to have a language and to teach my children language then there's you know even that aspect of very very

01:18:51.920 high level um niche construction or in culture um acting upon the world to make it um in an

01:19:00.880 uncultured way more learnable and more predictable is all in the service of minimizing this this um

01:19:09.360 entropy anxiety or free energy uncertainty sorry i slipped in anxiety there i shouldn't do that anxiety i think

01:19:16.240 it would be our remarkable capacity to recognize that we haven't resolved our uncertainty uh in the

01:19:24.720 way that we normally expect to and that would be the situation where the dopamine just goes away

01:19:29.680 so how do you view the role of GABA and so that's one question another question is

01:19:35.280 i've i've spent a fair bit of time thinking about hemispheric specialization and i'm wondering if

01:19:40.240 is it is it is there any reason to make the assumption that does the left hemisphere specialize

01:19:48.960 in some sense for precision or does it specialize for instantiating certainty at the lower levels of

01:19:56.480 the hierarchy whereas the right hemisphere is involved in play at the higher levels is that is there

01:20:02.880 anything to any of those concepts that you know of um you know it's a very interesting question

01:20:07.600 um and now i'm sort of speaking as a sort of um imaging neuroscientist you know about the function

01:20:13.920 anatomy i mean um first of all if we just go back to what we're talking about before which is you

01:20:20.640 know the cybernetic view um and the good regulator theorem um and the notion that we are or we entail

01:20:29.520 good models of our lived world or at least our sensed world um then having two hemispheres tells me

01:20:36.480 immediately immediately that there is some um lateral symmetry in my lived world and of course

01:20:42.960 that tells me that of course that is true in the sense i have two arms and two legs uh you know if

01:20:48.480 my world certainly as a newborn is basically you know 99 my body um i think the sort of having two

01:20:56.480 hemispheres tells you something quite fundamental about about the universe into which you are um as a brain

01:21:02.880 at least um introduced just to generalize that what that means is if you gave me the brain of a martian

01:21:10.080 i should be able to tell you a lot about its lived world and its embodiment and its body and the kind

01:21:16.720 of world that it lives in just by looking at the structure the anatomy of the brain so i think that

01:21:21.200 you know there's an important aspect to that sort of lateralization issue um it a more i think a sort of

01:21:27.920 more um scholarly and and but more more specific answer to your question is that there is certainly

01:21:34.400 um in neuropsychology um an asymmetry in the way we deploy attention so if you now read the deployment of

01:21:43.680 certain neuromodulators such as say serotonin or acetylcholine or indeed um adrenaline um as um

01:21:52.560 instantiating endogenous attention then its deficits will correspond to certain kinds of neglect

01:21:59.440 the you know a pathological inability to attend to ie you're always going to ignore or just not be aware

01:22:06.400 of this and of course there's a really interesting work in terms of uh hem neglect since uh systems and

01:22:12.160 bilateral asymmetries between the right and the left parietal cortex in these syndromes so i do i don't

01:22:19.200 know very much beyond that other than to be able to say that um for um for reasons that uh must have

01:22:27.920 a principal explanation in terms of the you know the high order causal structure of the worlds in which

01:22:32.160 we operate there certainly is some asymmetry in the way that we attend to things or there's some benefit

01:22:38.720 in terms of having that factorization um that allows certain um things to attend to that this set

01:22:47.200 you know just set the sensitivity or the um the flexibility or inflexibility of a hierarchical

01:22:53.520 construction um it must be the case that there are certain domains and certain attributes that do

01:22:59.440 show this um this lateralization and just to point out also of course that the lateralization issue

01:23:05.360 was quite hot in the days of um of gray at the the morsley as an as a possible correlate of things like

01:23:12.960 schizophrenia yeah well i mean goldberg who was a student of lurius suggested that the right hemisphere

01:23:19.200 was specialized for processing in the domain of novelty and the left hemisphere was specialized for

01:23:25.040 processing in the domain of relative certainty and so it might be something like the more novel it is the

01:23:31.840 more likely the right is to attend to it and that sort of maps on to gilchrist mcgilchrist's

01:23:38.400 conceptualization of hemispheric specialization with regards to both predation and predator detection

01:23:44.800 so the right hemisphere seems to be specialized for contextual evaluation and the spotting of predators

01:23:50.960 and the left for focused attention in the service of predation so a bird for example will attend

01:23:58.400 preferentially with the prey detection system well eating but the right hemisphere and the other eye

01:24:05.520 are scanning the environment for signs of context dependent signs of predation on the bird okay i

01:24:11.520 didn't know i didn't know that that's very interesting so i was just thinking of course the the obvious

01:24:16.880 example of lateralization is language and if you look at language as um really um predation for information

01:24:25.920 so if you think of language as the way of asking questions that is the tool that we use to predate for

01:24:32.880 information so that makes the entire sense i didn't know that about the um the comparative um

01:24:38.400 ethology and anatomy of of of um of predators but uh um yeah well if mcgilchrist's new work

01:24:46.640 mcgilchrist's new work details that out in in some at some length the the relationship between

01:24:53.120 attentional breadth and focus and hemispheric specialization it's quite nice and it maps very

01:24:58.320 nicely onto the concepts that we've been discussing today so shall we take a brief foray into

01:25:05.520 psychedelics and then we'll have to close this part of the conversation unfortunately although there's

01:25:10.720 about 50 other things i'd like to discuss with you but well that's i guess we've covered a fair bit of

01:25:16.240 territory for one day but i'd be i'm very interested in your conception of the relationship between say

01:25:23.360 psychedelic experience and its antithesis in some sense if i've got this right with the action of

01:25:29.200 antidepressants yes well yeah i'm not sure it's um an antithesis because um you know there are um

01:25:38.800 in the past few years and indeed months um an increasing number of papers looking at sort of um

01:25:45.680 uh 5h2a um agonists and partial agonists and and drugs that act upon the social energetic system

01:25:54.000 namely psychedelics and their ability to remediate certain uh conditions that would have a you know

01:26:01.360 a pronounced um usually pronounced effective state so i i the game is very complicated but what we

01:26:07.120 certainly uh know at the moment is that the actions of psychedelics um from the point of view of their

01:26:14.240 uh definitive um um effects on the brain namely you know the you know the abnormal perception uh um and

01:26:24.240 the um characteristic way that you you can't attend from the sort of the microstructure um of your

01:26:31.840 sensations we we we do now know that that um is probably um it's best explained when i say we know

01:26:42.000 we conjecture that it is nicely explained by exactly the same kind of mechanism that you were talking

01:26:47.920 about before which is a sort of changing the balance of recalcitrance or precision or sensitivity

01:26:54.000 um away from these high level uh constructs deep in the hierarchy at the top of the hierarchy

01:27:00.960 and reading reinvesting that kind of precision or um sensitivity um under predictive coding models to

01:27:10.000 prediction errors much lower in the hierarchy so this would look basically like i'm now going to

01:27:15.120 ignore my prior beliefs about about the narrative uh that i'm currently committed to in terms of this

01:27:21.280 interaction and i'm just going to focus in on you know what can i sense so you're talking before about

01:27:26.720 sort of a mother's um predisposition to be very sensitive to uh cues that could engage um or could 0.98

01:27:35.840 represent really important affordances for responding like responding to a baby crying

01:27:40.560 so this would be you know one way of viewing the effects of psychedelics that you are forced to by

01:27:48.880 reducing or relaxing the precision of the high level beliefs in relation to the lower level um

01:27:57.120 evidence or belief updating or evidence accumulation you are putting yourself in an intentional set

01:28:02.320 where everything is interesting you can't attend away from it at a very elemental level and it just

01:28:08.480 struck me that this is you know very very similar to what you were talking about before in terms of the

01:28:13.760 um you know the uh in neuroticism and i presume this is of an einsink like uh construct um where you

01:28:22.320 know you would have some people who are just jolly confident that their prior beliefs are the most apt

01:28:27.280 explanation and they will ignore lots of evidence to the contrary simply by suppressing the precision

01:28:33.840 or the importance or turning down the gain on that kind of thing but you can't do that if you can't

01:28:39.600 get more than three uh errors that you can't explain so you know there is an adaptability um built into our

01:28:47.120 brains that will actually say well no actually let's just attend to these lower level ones and at that

01:28:51.760 point you're going to have to relax the higher level and become more flexible and more adaptive well

01:28:57.120 that okay so that ability to relax at at that level seems to be indexed by the personality trait openness

01:29:07.120 and open people are more creative and so creative people have more play in the higher order

01:29:12.800 conceptualizations and one of the solid empirical findings emerging out of the research on psilocybin is that

01:29:21.520 a single mystical experience induced by psilocybin produces something approximating a one standard

01:29:28.240 deviation increase in trait openness that's permanent it never goes away yeah yeah and so it doesn't look

01:29:37.120 exactly like it's a reduction in or say an increase in neuroticism so that error messages can propagate

01:29:44.880 upward it's it's something akin to that because if you're more open then there's more play

01:29:50.800 in the system but it doesn't seem to be tied exactly to error per se and negative emotion

01:29:56.000 and i can't puzzle out the distinction exactly right because if you're high in neuroticism you're

01:30:00.800 going to propagate error messages but then things are going to collapse if you're high in openness

01:30:05.600 the error messages propagate but you generate alternative theorems at a very rapid rate in order to

01:30:11.520 re-contextualize the anomaly i i didn't know that that is very interesting so i think then

01:30:17.520 it's the openness that i was talking to and certainly that's the the aspiration um or the

01:30:23.200 motivation behind that the use of these uh chemicals in say end-of-life care or indeed in

01:30:29.280 terms of yeah psilocybin assisted psychotherapy it's really to open you up to new possibilities

01:30:35.280 well maybe with with creative people what you see so imagine category rigidity and category rigidity

01:30:44.080 might be something like the probability that activation of one category will activate adjacent

01:30:49.600 categories so imagine that constraint is the constraint of openness the more open you are the more flexible

01:30:55.840 those boundaries the more when you activate one category you're going to co-activate a network of

01:31:01.360 associated categories so then imagine you dump psilocybin into the system and what happens is the

01:31:06.640 barriers between adjacent categories become more permeable and so then as information propagates up

01:31:13.760 there's more play in the systems because the category boundaries have become wider and that would

01:31:18.480 increase your probability of a false certainty right which is on an idea derived from insight that's wrong

01:31:26.640 but it would also increase the probability that you'd get some true positives out of the deal which is

01:31:31.200 really what creative people are doing all the time a lot of creative ideas just aren't functional

01:31:35.760 but some are crucial and so it's a high risk high return cognitive strategy in some sense to generate

01:31:43.120 to have looser categories or more co-activation of categories at the higher levels and certainly that

01:31:49.200 is akin to what people report in psychedelic experiences that ideas flood in on them and they see how

01:31:55.200 things are connected in ways they couldn't perceive before and so that's different than the flexibility

01:32:02.400 that high neuroticism in some sense produces because that's more like the probability that

01:32:07.040 our conceptual system will collapse rather than it than it will expand but your your um use of the word

01:32:14.560 barriers i think is is very nice um and i'm just wondering and certainly i think you'd enjoy speaking to

01:32:21.600 robin kaha harris who who um has has described um i think effectively what you've just described but

01:32:29.040 instead of um casting it in terms of jumping through barriers um he um would describe it really as

01:32:37.440 a reduction in the height of a barrier so you if you can imagine um and it's um in my world it would

01:32:44.640 literally be a free energy landscape and our ideas our prior beliefs are basically sitting at the minima

01:32:51.280 at the bottom of a well um and sometimes we can get stuck in a rut i see um yeah and you know for

01:32:57.920 example if you say i was depressed or i had the hypothesis i am going to die and this is how um things

01:33:04.720 that are going to die behave um and this is how i'm going to behave and that may not be the most functional

01:33:10.720 way of that kind of um um end of life self-modeling then by making the barriers more permeable simply

01:33:19.920 by reducing the um their height you can you now enable a jumping from one minima to another minima

01:33:25.840 to explore more options exactly in the spirit that you meant in terms of creativity but it could be

01:33:31.440 creativity about other ways of being me in this situation and that flattening of the landscape is just

01:33:39.680 you know one way mathematically of writing down the reduction in the precision or the rigidity of

01:33:46.080 these high level beliefs prior beliefs relative to the to the to the lower ones so i think there's a

01:33:51.440 some beautiful consilience there okay so so that would imply that that would imply as those walls come

01:33:58.640 down let's say that it would require less novelty propagating up the system to produce a phase change

01:34:04.400 exactly yeah yeah yeah okay okay okay well i'm afraid we have to bring this part of this conversation

01:34:11.520 to a close even though i don't want to uh there's there's other topics i would love to discuss with

01:34:17.120 you i would very much appreciate it if you would consider putting me in touch with is it carhartt harris

01:34:22.640 indeed yes i will do that yes yes because i i know some of the papers that you've written jointly

01:34:27.920 um and i would like to discuss those further um i would maybe i close with an observation if you

01:34:36.560 don't mind is that one of the most functional narratives as far as i can tell is predicated on

01:34:42.960 the idea that you should conduct yourself in a manner that leaves you open to exposing yourself to

01:34:49.520 information that will allow you to update your narratives right so it's a weird loop it's like well

01:34:56.400 narrative itself is dependent on exploration and so the best narrative in the most fundamental sense

01:35:02.400 is one that leaves the option of exploration continually open and that's something like a

01:35:07.680 voluntary confrontation with the anomalies that characterize existence as the central pattern

01:35:14.480 of adaptive being it's something like that and that's existence on that border between chaos and order

01:35:20.160 in some fundamental sense so anyways i appreciated the conversation very much it would be fun to meet in

01:35:26.960 person sometime i think we could probably talk for about 36 hours and uh i'll be in london again in

01:35:33.840 january and so maybe maybe we could meet then if you'd be amenable to that and in the meantime i would like

01:35:40.960 to let everybody watching and listening know that i'm going to continue my conversation with dr friston

01:35:46.960 for half an hour on the dw plus site i like to go behind the scenes with people and to investigate

01:35:53.280 the process by which their narrative unfolded the process by which they made their path through life

01:35:59.280 their successful path through life because i think it's very useful to for people to be provided with

01:36:03.600 models of how that occurs hello everyone i would encourage you to continue listening to my

01:36:09.440 conversation with my guest on dailywireplus.com

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - October 20, 2022

298. Perception： Chaos and Order ｜ Dr. Karl Friston

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