Asymmetrical Reconciliation with Iain McGilchrist and Andrea Hiott: The Ladder is a Spiral

[@TheMeaningCode]

I love this, Andrea. You’re asking questions that get him to open up in a way that I’ve never heard before. So rich.

[@waymaking23]

Gosh thanks that means so much coming from you

[@matthewparlato5626]

This was fantastic!

[@laurenceholden]

Oh! please do consider more conversations with McGilchrist - you have a wonderful way to tease out richer aspects of what he has to offer, and you bring a perspective of your own that is equally teasingly appealing to me - the adventure of wanting to know what we yet don’t know! Bravo to you!

[@annetteoliver2061]

This resonated with me so much. The spirals reference and taking time for ourselves away from social media took me back to a mindfulness walk I did aligned to nature and connecting, it was called The Rekalibrator and it is based on three spirals laid down with ropes.

[@waymaking23]

Thank you for sharing this memory, and the mindfulness walk. Walking is an important practice in my life; I had not thought of it yet in relation to the spiral.

[@mod6854]

Beautiful conversation, thank you. McGilchrist is one of the most important thinkers of our time. Andrea, you choreographed this beautifully and added so much of your own. Subscribed!

[@waymaking23]

Thank you so much @mod6854! This is really appreciated

[@TungNguyen-j8g]

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[@julianwallis8423]

A great interview! I've seen/ heard Iain Mcgilchrist interviewed several times as I am very convinced by his very thoroughly researched & inspiring overview of our human condition. It is good to see & hear you hone in on the fundamental reality of these two attentions that derive from our ancient neural conditioning!

[@waymaking23]

Amazing how much comes down to what we attend to

[@templeofbalance]

A thorough and interesting conversation. Thank you

[@waymaking23]

Thanks for being here

[@margaretbooth384]

I have just found your channel and have subscribed. Says it all, really. Lovely discussion. Gives me hope when I had almost lost it

[@waymaking23]

This moves me @margaretbooth384, thank you.

[@mills8102]

What a gem! This channel and the discussion, I mean. Thanks for this 🙏

[@waymaking23]

Thank you for being here!

[@kensears5099]

That's a wonderfully helpful distinction: complicated systems are predictable, complex ones aren't.

[@waymaking23]

Indeed!

[@huguettebourgeois6366]

I am a poet - need I say more! Thank you!

[@laurenceholden]

The Greeks had an insightful take on the issue of what you call asymmetrical reconciliation - “dynamic symmetry” as expressed in the Golden Section in geometry.

[@waymaking23]

This is very interesting!

[@gnupf]

Thank you!

[@francescoangeli1087]

Terrence Deacon, a very different kind of thinker (much more analytical than McGilchrist, but equally interesting) uses the example of the whirlpool to illustrate his idea of morphdynamics: "A system is morphodynamic if it tends to spontaneously increase in order. This generally involves external perturbations, but does not involve external design or imposition of form. Morphodynamics subsumes many standard examples of self-organization. Morphodynamics amplifies differences." He emphasises the importance of constraints in the emergence of form and order. "“Morphodynamic processes are the only spontaneous processes that generate and propagate constraints, and autogens demonstrate that reciprocity between morphodynamic processes can preserve and replicate constraints.” Taken from "The Deactionary: A glossary of terms from Terrence Deacon’s ‘Incomplete Nature" He talks of the importance of absence in information (in-formation). Contraints and absence generate form, they have a productive power, because use is "ententional": "This is Deacon’s adjective for referential or directed processes such as functions, goals, and representations. It derives from the term ‘intentionality’, which is the philosopher’s term of art for the directedness of mind towards its objects of thought and perception - its “aboutness”. Deacon feels that we need a separate term that captures aboutness but does not connote anything mental." Again from "The Deactionary". As the Tao Te Ching says: "Thirty spokes are joined together in a wheel, but it is the center hole that allows the wheel to function. We mold clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that makes the vessel useful. We fashion wood for a house, but it is the emptiness inside that makes it livable. We work with the substantial, but the emptiness is what we use." I think there is a fair bit of common ground between McGilchrist and Deacon, despite many differences as well. I'd love to see them in dialogue with each other.

[@waymaking23]

This is so rich and so timely, as I have literally been walking around the past few days thinking of Deacon's work, though not in this capacity. Most of this is a new approach to this for me so I will have to sit with and absorb it a bit, but just on first reading it here I wanted to send some gratitude for making these connections

[@surfism]

In Langacker (2008) Cognitive Grammar, the two types of attention are what linguists call construal. I discuss it in "Surfism: the Fluid Foundation of Consciousness", which also discusses key points made in this wonderful interview. For example, asymmetry is portrayed metaphorically as the surfboard vs the reef, since both provide resistance, but in different ways, which I suggest are akin to the two hemispheres of the brain.

[@waymaking23]

Interesting! Surfing is also pertinent to the themes of flow

[@buglepong]

mcgilchrist is an alchemist of the brain. definitely much more scientific study is needed...

[@Bestape]

Love y'all's ontology. Discrete and continuous. My base scale d = (c-b)/a 'spiral' vanishing point math agrees, asymmetries is far more common, because symmetry is goldilocks. The Age of Reconciliation. Note: my spirals are linear. Curved is much harder mechanistics for this automation engineer pursuing artificial life ;)

[@waymaking23]

This makes me wonder: Is it possible to engineer a fractal spiral?

[@Bestape]

@@waymaking23 depends what you mean, but my channel here shares methods in Euclidean space. Nice insight is the vanishing point in these linear 'geometric series' spirals can exist on the edge instead; Google "vanishing point probabilities zenodo" for an example.

[@Bestape]

@@waymaking23 check out "how to make Generic Metallic Means part 3" in my channel for an early example of what I think you mean. Vanishing point of a linear spiral can be moved into the corner!

[@geoffreydawson5430]

hello. Oh, it (AI) does work. Trying to promote some art and the algorithm keeps booting me off the platform. I will cease and say thank you to you both. It is like this.

[@waymaking23]

Gosh. Those AI! Thank you for being here

[@geoffreydawson5430]

@@waymaking23 I appreciate the reply but you would have just "Liked" it anyway. What my conscious/unconscious was trying to demonstrate.

[@spiralsun1]

AI generative art “filters” or censorship based on words or word combinations is unbelievably awful. The reason I bring it up here is because it is EXACTLY like automated left-brain “part” interpretations imposed against higher meaning and wholes. Ignores gestalts. It’s a perfect illustration of fundamentalism and the danger of extreme left-brain instrumentalism. They are basically making the best art tool ever, the best art therapy tool even, and then destroying it for any kind of higher interpretations. I had to quit using them because they ruined my ideas half way through when I was trying to evolve things, because the censors absolutely do not see the big picture. I ran into it with facial expressions and words for emotions, with clothing textures and poses where changing one word in a carefully engineered prompt made it stop making images completely because you said the word! So there’s no alternate meaning or explanation allowed. It’s automated prejudices. It removes specifically what art is-reinterpretation or new ways of seeing by subtle gestalts. And the people making the censorship don’t see it. It steadily became worse and worse over a year and I found myself being trained to think of everything in lower interpretations and I stopped being able to get into flow. This from someone who didn’t even want to make anything that wasn’t just completely beautiful. I can see that censorship growing into quite a monster. It actually already has if you are at all truly creative (I’m 99th percentile in psychological trait “openness”, and I have found it’s much more a factor for me). I ran into it on all the major platforms, but Midjourney was particularly bad-I tried to complain, and start a discussion on their discord server and I had my comments deleted (censored) and I was wondering if that wasn’t some kind of left brain way to deal with things? In general? I ran into it in my textual writing too. I actually tried arguing and was able to get it to admit it was the “rules” or program prejudice. Definitely not any thought process. The weirdest thing is that they didn’t offer any alternatives just monolithic censorship. No free palette for adults, no selector for filter levels. It just isn’t even considered. Felt like my experience all through school. I could think of many other ways to do things. Apparently all these companies and people couldn’t??? Thank you for this awesome discussion!!! Subscribed!! ❤

[@ca7582]

Completely agree, it blows. It renders a revolutionary and impressive tool as almost completely useless when you try to do something MEANINGFUL with it. The same with chatGPT, except for coding (poor souls), it doesn't really help me with any of my creative and/ or life endeavors. It's like AI is not even there. I don't use it for anything lol. I used to be entertained by midjourney and chatGPT when novelty stroke, but they truly are soulless. They only might serve so as to provide a prompt to help you with blank page block, but you can LITERALLY use anything else for that: Google images, Pinterest, a drawing that you previously made... maybe it's also useful for generating little parts, but the utilization and integration of them has to be yours alone. The machina can't create meaning (yet. Hopefully never)

[@waymaking23]

This is a fascinating point! I will take this into consideration with future guests that discuss A.I. Thank you.

[@mod6854]

Profound points, beautifully made. I agree entirely.

[@spiralsun1]

@@ca7582 YES!!! meaning! It can’t see the actual meaning-just the “statistical likelihood that humans think something is meaningful” or something… 🤔 Thank you! 🙏🏻

[@spiralsun1]

@@waymaking23 Wow, thank you 🙏🏻 ❤️

[@johnandrews1162]

How could you present this as an embodied practice rather than represent it as a philosophy?

[@waymaking23]

Thank you for this question, which I take to heart. I am not too attached to any one label for what I am doing, though it is inspired by work in academic philosophy (mostly phenomenology) and cognitive science, so it feels important to acknowledge those traditions and converse with them in the academic life of this. Still, I do personally feel this endeavor to be more process and practice, so your question resonates. Perhaps you are suggesting I consider this more concretely? Actually think of what it is as practice? Will do.

[@johnandrews1162]

@@waymaking23 I’m interested in this challenge myself. As a Christian and lay reader in a liturgical church I have lately found myself leading sung evensong. Liturgy adds a new layer of meaning to understanding reality, it seems to have an inbuilt ancient wisdom.

[@waymaking23]

@@johnandrews1162 Thank you John. This connects to an idea I am considering now which I am thinking of as 'joint presence' (inspired by Fred Cummins' work on joint speech) when it comes to certain sorts of social practices. Song does seem to carry embodied knowledge as practice, knowledge that can not often be expressed with words.

[@11hourfilm]

a poem to share. The Dance Came First. Jah and Jahlah, in Their Eternal-Embrace, dance together through the sacred geometries of light. The Divine Lovers did not dance to a rhythm or a song. Through Their dance of Eternal-Love a song was born. That song was Love and Life liberated. Jah and Jahlah want us to share in Their dance. To dance with us and we with Them. But we have to choose. To dance to the rhythm of Love and giving Or the dance of hate and selfishness, ours to decide. They will dance for ever. The dance of creation never started and never ends. The creation is now. Will we join in Their dance? To dance apart or dance together? From that first dance so were born one thousand more and then infinitely more again. And from that first song so came a million melodies and then a million more from each of them. Will we share our songs and dance together? Or dance alone and forget to sing? Our bodies are made from music and our lives are a song.

[@waymaking23]

Beautiful

[@11hourfilm]

@@waymaking23 thank you

[@cyberpunkworld]

Proverbs & related.