Friday, June 23, 2023

Friends Jenny B And Tommy G's Recommendation Of A PBS Documentary About The Brain And Its Relationship To Truth And Illusion -- With My Commentary

"My Stroke Of Insight" by Neuroscientist, Jill Bolte Taylor

A TED Talk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyyjU8fzEYU


Alan Archibald 


Alan Archibald: This is a remarkable documentary. Thanks to Jenny B and Tommy G for sending it my way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU6LfXNeQM4


Tell me.

Do you think you know who you are, and "what's going on?"


Think again.

Perhaps more accurately put, "Don't think, but rather be aware that everyone's perceptions - by the very nature of our intrinsically prejudiced sensorium - focus on an infinitesimal part of what's around us... and what's in us.

A typical human being is comprised of 30 trillion cells, and is host to 39 trillion bacterias. Human microbiome | Definition, Examples, & Facts | Britannica (An aside... I grew up with a set of Encyclopedia Britannica on shelving built into the living room wall, and the Britannica has only gotten better with time. Its freely-accessible online version is written in a very understandable way, but also with unfailing academic rigor.)

And so, when we automatically make the world "manageable" by minimizing/bending/skewing-and-otherwise-altering the (otherwise paralyzing) enormity of our unbridled sensory reality, we end up with a shrunken account/story/narrative that enables us to navigate the world more easily, but at the cost of curtailing and truncating it.

In effect, we subject the world Procrustes' Bed. Procrustes | Encyclopedia.com


It is true that by shrinking reality, we often optimize our chances of personal survival.

But we do so at tremendous cost to The General Welfare, The Common Good, and any kind of meaningful "Social Contract."


And so -- at least functionally (if not ontologically) -- we choose "the gods" at whose altars we worship because, whether we like it or not, we tend to prioritize and worship gods that enhance our likelihood of survival.

Just to mention a few gods: sex, drugs, money, rock-n-roll, fruit loops.

Yes, it's complicated.

Perhaps the most important takeaway from our innate inclination toward "simplification of Reality" is that we are well-advised to appreciate - even revere - complexity instead of over-simplifying Reality by a knee jerk reflex to minimize complexity.

When we over-simplify, we are easily suckered by our calculating, self-centered ignorance, and thereby become less reverent and -- in an effort to protect our shrunken selves -- we become more disdainful of the world around us, and cruel to people who do not belong to our prejudicial tribe.

The Normalization Of Cruelty During Donald Trump's Administration: A Compendium

Since statistics and statistical analysis play a cornerstone role in "science" (... the word itself derives directly from the Latin root for "knowledge"... scio, scire) we can only know "The Fullness Of Truth" by deliberately opening ourselves to ever wider perspectives informed by ever greater appreciation of the incalculable depth-and-breadth of ever richer context. (

In this regard, I would define God as the sum-total of environmental matrices - both within and without - whose overarching and subtending contexts embed us. In short: The Whole Enchilada. I will also add the line from the Nicene Creed: "I believe in all that is seen, and all that is unseen."  English versions of the Nicene Creed - Wikipedia

But the downside of shrunken reality is extraordinarily appealing to "the shrunken heads" who don't - or won't - see past their self-interested quest for over-simplification and easy manageability, often manifesting as the enactment of so-called "common sense." 

See J.B.S. Haldane at:

Who Woulda Thunk It?!? Shakespeare, Einstein, J. B. S. Haldane And Wendell Berry Converge On Truth

Although cherry-picking reality may benefit YOU: it might also put humanity on the fast track to collective extinction - or, at least, environmental and personal diminishment.

Notably, in recent decades there has been a dramatic fall in US life expectancy - the first time this has ever happened in a "developed" country, except during World Wars. 
Why life expectancy in the US is falling - Harvard Health

At bedrock, we discover the truth that
The Scientific Method is humanity's only reliable tool dependable for advancing the scope of knowledge.

Why?

Because science is the only human tool that widens our scope of knowledge by consistently benefiting from its ferocious, no-holds-barred determination to prove its own findings false.

I repeat: the best way to determine what's going on (and not just swirl around in the perpetual eddy of wanting - and needing - to prove our individual selves right) is the methodical determination to prove ourselves wrong.

By cherry-picking Reality, we can accumulate all manner of decontextualized findings that support our favorite story-narrative. But this obsessive accumulation is almost entirely prejudicial, presupposing as it does that our postulates-and-premises are in fact "ultimate truths" when, in fact, they are unprovable axiomatic beliefs seized upon (usually) in our formative years as a way to simplify/shrink our reality for personal comfort-and-complacency - and the illusory feel-good sense of being "settled."


And so, it is commonplace that our personal 'understanding" decontextualizes what we rabidly hold as "self-evident truths," instead of "getting over" such reflexive self-cathexis in order to study reality "in the round."

Admittedly, we always see through a glass darkly (to quote St. Paul of Tarsus), but we are no longer deliberately ignorant of the larger, fuller, richer world that surrounds us.

When we open our eyes to open-minded exploration - illuminated by the light of science - imagine this concept! we learn.


Carl Sagan's book, "The Demon-Haunted World" is a masterful revelation how "the light of science" is all that separates us from superstition which brings in tow -- as night follows day -- the dimwitted, never-ending abuse of other human beings who don't agree with our convictions.
 
The Demon-Haunted World - Wikipedia

The Death Of Epistemology: Update


To get a handle on these fundamental epistemological concerns, it is also useful to explore the method and goal of Neil DeGrasse Tyson's "Master Class," pursuing the practical measures we can take to dependably reach that goal.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson's Masterclass: Teaches You How To Think - Learning How To Get Past "Thinking You're Right" To "Knowing When You're Wrong"

https://newsfrombarbaria.blogspot.com/2020/11/neil-degrasse-tysons-masterclass.html

If humanity is to prevail over self-annihilation (and I believe we will) Trump and his Q-inspired cultists will prove to be the experiment that finally revealed -- "unforgettably" -- how it's not about (and was never about) "The Righteous," "The Chosen" and "The Divinely Ordained" vanquishing (indeed annihilating) "The Infidel Bad Guys," but how do we make ignorance itself "the enemy" to be eliminated - not by violence, but by the gentility and patience of devoted research (in light of The Scientific Method), supplemented by authentic education which is the "socialized" version of amoral instruction. 


Instruction And Education Aim At Antipodes


H.G. Wells: "Human History Becomes More And More A Race Between Education And Catastrophe -- The Survival Of Humanity Requires That We Meet Our Essential Need For Enlightened Education

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