Ep. 42 - Awakening from the Meaning Crisis - Intelligence, Rationality, and Wisdom

[@johnvervaeke]

You can support my work at patreon.com/johnvervaeke and receive benefits such as a monthly video call with me. Thank you for watching!

[@notmyrealpseudonym6702]

John - can you thank your filming/editing person and/or team. Things like the little subtitle around 6.20-40 ish to clarify your statements are extremely helpful. Much appreciated

[@johnvervaeke]

not my real pseudonym Will do. I am very grateful for their excellent work as well.

[@xwindor]

Not sure if it's just me, but the extra ".com" at the end of your link breaks the link to your patreon.

[@kevinwilusz7767]

@@johnvervaeke Hey John thank you for videos and knowledge I respect your knowledge , I'm having a problem I'm a recovering Addict, I just cant buy into that addiction is a disease , using the computer analogy, I dont believe I have a hardware problem, the more I study I'm thinking it's more of a software problem , I cant explain this in text , but hopefully you understand what I'm getting at , where do you stand on addiction , disease or no? I get it as a metaphor but in recovery community its seen as literally true !

[@vincentchapdelaine848]

Hello, John I'm a student in psychology at Montreal university. I'm a french Canadian and my English is limited (sorry about that). I'm trying to break the language barriere to reach out for you because your work is truly inspiring. I'm using your work all over the place in my academic work. I would love to receive a video call with you because i have so many questions to ask (how much i need to donate for that). You have inspire me so much that i'm thinking of leaving Montreal to finish my undergraduate degree at Toronto university, because of your presence there. Also, I would like to volunteer in any of your reasearch work if the need is there... Have a nice day and please, continue to share your great knowledge with us. Ps: my problem with english is more about speaking and writing, i do understand nearly to 100% of what you say, but it's much harder to speak/write...

[@stephenlaswell4341]

Thank you for drawing the distinction between fixed intelligence and malleable rationality. The concept of fixed intelligence G had always been existentially discouraging. It also led me to believe that Dweck's idea was a bunch of BS, because it seemed to be predicated on a lie- and seemed to encourage lying to yourself. Your ability to draw out clear distinctions and avoid pitfalls of equivocation is incredibly helpful and motivates me to cultivate wisdom for myself.

[@mattgumbley6080]

imagine a world where all youtube comments were this articulate.

[@marykochan8962]

@@mattgumbley6080 getting to that would be quite the problem.

[@dls78731]

Stephen Laswell, this is a powerful realization that endorses the way that this series can shift our thinking about our thinking, and point to ways that we can improve our processes for developing knowledge and wisdom! Thank you. Watching this lecture, I recognized that I tended to think pretty far outside the box from a young age, and was generally treated as less bright (not quite a trouble-maker, but not quite worth the effort of encouraging). But I knew that my approach was also a valid way of viewing a problem. I suspect that I am somewhere on some spectrum of non-typical cognitive styles, and I suspect that others who are similarly endowed with non-standard brilliance increasingly find ways to stimulate themselves and satisfy their cognitive need for problem solving in novel ways due to access to increased resources on the internet. I am also curious if the work of Daniel Goleman on different kinds of intelligence also implies that there are different kinds of rationality (is the rationality feedback system for emotional intelligence different from cognitive intelligence, or spiritual intelligence, or relational intelligence). Guy Sengstock might have some interesting views on the above thoughts. I think that Circling is a way of training relational rationality which is highly malleable but largely untouched by our current educational systems.

[@spiralsun1]

I know how you feel 🙌🥰 John=purveyor of fine wisdom.

[@tracywilliamsliterature]

Brilliant... Brilliant... Brilliant... been told all my life I am intelligent but I know I am not at all rational... if I can learn rationality I know this existence will improve dramatically... your work is crucial in my search for meaning and wisdom. Sincere thanks from the UK.

[@TheSurfingCat]

Thank you John. This lecture revealed a powerful new line of inquiry to me. I'm a well read seeker of meaning and wisdom, but your illustration of how intelligence and rationality relate to each other helped me make a connection to my past which casts new light on my current existential crisis. I tested high on IQ as a boy, but was very much praised on results, not process. Throughout Primary and Junior education I was described as "highly intelligent", "a top student" and my standard test scores at age 10 were in the top 1% nationally. In high school I missed a lot of schooling due to debilitating illness and struggled to catch up. I missed the process of "how", to do things and many times had to rely on "educated guesses" and finding my own processes to arrive at correct answers (especially in Mathematics and Sciences). However, I think this is the origin of the decline in my rational processes. I no longer believed I had high intelligence and the results (which were the only metric my teachers and peers paid any attention to) were not as good as before. If someone ever told me I was "clever" or "very intelligent", I would immediately dismiss it, not through modesty, but because I just didn't feel it was true. When it came to choose a career, I had no idea what would be meaningful and wise for me to do. That feeling of lack of direction and meaning has followed me everywhere for the last 30 years. I now urgently recognise the need to cultivate rationality in my own life. Ironically, I am passionate about open mindset and personal development (that's what brought me to your lectures), but I recognise now that I have many fixed systems and biases for myself that I don't apply to others. Fixing the dysfunctional process of rationality that I've been using for 30 years is going to be hard, but at least now I believe it to be possible. I look forward especially now, to your next lecture.

[@GrapplingwithReality]

I relate so much to everything you have written here and I am at this critical junction in my life where i must choose what i will put my time and effort into. I have an engineering degree and all pursuing another degree in computer science but i have not yet committed myself to either field and really feel like I have wasted my free time for the past 5 years... I'm 25 years old but I still feel like a kid

[@TheSurfingCat]

@@GrapplingwithReality That's a coincidence, my degree was in Computer Science. I really feel for you. However, I think some struggle is a necessary part of being human and essential for our development. So maybe there aren't any critical junctions; we will all work things out when we're ready to do so, or when we've endured enough pain and suffering to make us change and evolve. I always find it easier to be rational and positive on other people's behalf, so something I am trying to work on is treating myself kindly, like someone I want to help. I think a huge part of my personal struggle has been negative self talk and lack of self love. I find it incredibly difficult to "sell" myself in interviews and I am very sensitive to bullshitting. It's almost debilitating, because the recruitment world seems to expect (and be mostly built) on bullshitting and I seem to be incapable of it. Conversely, I'm very adept in negatively misleading myself, or over-analysing failures, or weaknesses. I am hopeful, because I'm starting to notice these things as they happen and my current search for a new job is bringing all of this to the forefront again. It doesn't sound like you're wasting your time; you already have an Engineering degree and there are a lot worse ways to "waste" your time than doing a Computer Science degree. I think seeking more knowledge when you don't know what else to do is a pretty noble approach. I wish you well with your studies and career. I'll leave you with my two favourite ways of looking at meaning: 1. Nothing matters more than finding what matters to you. 2. Nothing matters and everything matters.

[@chongkeetan6607]

Love that moment when he distinguishes between wonder and curiosity, tie them to Plato and Aristotle and then WHAM: they are in fact meta-accommodation and meta-assimilation.

[@David-bo7zj]

Same haha that's what makes this series so fun, always some sort of integration with prior concepts!

[@MsGardener77]

"You cannot Descartes your way through the whole of your existence... You'll commit cognitive suicide." Love it.

[@911garebear]

Could you elaborate a bit on this? Thanks

[@MsGardener77]

@@911garebear I would love for John to elaborate on that more too! The take-away seems to be: if we actually could reduce our rationality to logical processes we wouldn't be able to function efficiently... Or at all.

[@KRGruner]

"We care too much for intelligence and not enough for rationality." INDEED! Superb lecture. Much to think about, of course, but I'm encouraged to see this fits (so far, anyway) with my existing perspectives on the subject. Just fascinating. Can't wait for next installment (yet again!).

[@alcidesamaciel]

Books in the video: - Thinking Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman - The Ancestral Mind - Gregg D. Jacobs - Mindset - Carol S. Dweck - Why Smart People Can Be So Stupid - Robert J. Sternberg - What Intelligence Tests Miss - Keith E. Stanovich

[@gwasaa]

Superb, once again. Thank you John :)

[@leedufour]

Thanks John.

[@johnvervaeke]

Thanks Lee.

[@thetranscendedman]

I bought a random bookmark at a bookstore and 42 episodes later, John mentions the Socrates quote "Wisdom Begins in Wonder" and I look down to see the same quote on that bookmark. Now I understand what it means other than just being profound. Thanks John!

[@Beederda]

I appreciate YOUR time JV ❤️🍄

[@ThePathOfEudaimonia]

I am so grateful for all the lectures about rationality. For a long time I did consider it too vague of a term. And even though my intuition was that it is more important and complex than I understood, I was put off by all the people using it as "purely logical". Glad to befriend rationality again, and in particular its friendship with wisdom!

[@realsushrey]

It is remarkable how you addressed almost all objections I had to the ideas being expressed here surrounding intelligence and rationality. Really enjoyed watching this episode. I still have some misgivings, but I am hopeful you will address those as well by the time I end this series and the upcoming series on wisdom. You are the most learned man I have ever encountered.

[@nugzarkapanadze6867]

Thanks 🙏😁🙏

[@TheBotuto]

Greetings from Barcelona Spain

[@elsawiegers1093]

and somewhere else in spain

[@marykochan8962]

I have always been so resistant to the idea that intelligence is fixed. I would always think that I could make myself smarter but that I could also make other people smarter. Often I would think of this in terms of organization. Sometimes I would have a conversation with someone, and then afterwards I would tell my husband that their problem was that they had no organization in their thoughts. Imagine that you walked into an office and the file drawers had been opened in the files dumped out all over the floor and Scattered. that was like the mind of this person that I was talking to. but I felt that if I could work with a person and help them organize their thoughts that they would become smarter. they could learn to make connections between things and put things into the right categories. that's why when I taught my kids I always like to work with them on analogy puzzles. I really love the last part of this lecture because it fleshed out what I was intuiting.

[@maudeeb]

The question then is: 'what is the best way to organise?'. People who have spent their whole lives in a mess perhaps have the potential to organise things in a completely novel way. Creatively re-engaging with something is often a matter of dumping the contents of the system out on the floor, forgetting the old order, and rebuilding from scratch.

[@marykochan8962]

@@maudeeb I think that some amount of controlled disorder can help with creativity. But I'm not going to confuse creativity with simple confusion. Before you start being creative, I think you have to operate within a framework- categories and hierarchies. Once you have them established, then you can start pushing on the boundaries, breaking the edges. But you won't even know you're doing that unless you know where they are to begin with.

[@maudeeb]

​@@marykochan8962 I see what you're saying. I suppose I mean the 'stuff' of this intuitive 'S1' rather than disorder. Disorder sounds more like 'S2' doing a bad job. I would call the product of S1 'pre-intellectual quality', which has a natural dynamic form already, before the conscious 'S2' starts containing it.

[@maudeeb]

@@marykochan8962 You could see it as tilling the land. Getting back to the underlying form and clearing space for new growth. Lessons from past seasons will still be there, but this will keep things fresh, healthy, and adaptive.

[@marykochan8962]

@@maudeeb right, but pre intellectual quality is not something you would be having a discussion with someone about, would it?

[@peten5426]

Seems reasonable to map the McGilchrist model onto the S1/S2 model? Hoping to hear you and McGilchrist engaging in dialogos soon!

[@stephen-torrence]

Yes! I had the same thought, Pete. Maps very nicely to R/L hemispheres.

[@bettermentprojectnotes808]

Pete N I’m trying to decide if I agree with you. It seems to me that there is something beyond the fast intuition of S1 and the more right brain, linear process of S2, which is the wholistic gestalt we arrive at only through prolonged focus. The S1 here appears to be the first pass of a gestalt, but when I push back against S1 with my S2, then against my S2 with my S1 again, and I’m cycling this, it seems like you get to something more complete and accurate of the whole and the parts both, a gestalt of the gestalt in context with the parts perhaps. You get insight, both an upgrade in knowledge and of understanding. S3? I’d be really interested in knowing if that also aligns with flow state. @John Vervaeke, would love to have your comments on this. Great job by the way.

[@dalibofurnell]

This is becoming super awesome!

[@AnAlgernon]

55:40 paraphrase - Wisdom is perhaps the recursive application of rationality. 🙏

[@ReidNicewonder]

Fascinating stuff.

[@stephen-torrence]

22:20 "That'll be $1000, please." Totally plausible if the grocery store is Whole Foods. 😂

[@polymathpark]

Polymath Park NOTES!Information processing is deeply existential.

[@malpais776]

Your clarification of what you mean by "psychotechnology" was helpful. Thank you.

[@polymathpark]

I'd like to mention how these descriptions of S1 and S2 processing align with Ian McGhilchrist's theories on split-brain behaviors from stroke victims (compromised corpus callosum yields astonishing predominant neurological behaviors) (this is not to insinuate the false notion of “left brain people vs. right”, that kind of predominance is unrealistic. Everyone has potential to be creative and use critical thinking) This description of processing aligns with the theories presented by many other psychologists and neuroscientists. Kahneman, McGhilchrist (and you, Vervaeke) all need to converse. You're all great dudes that don't seem to be pushing a personal narrative.

[@davidjones690]

What John said towards the end about mindset in relation to problem solving efficacy reminded me of some issues surrounding the concept of free will. Analagous to a belief in the malleability of intellegence might be a belief in the existence of something like free will (as commonly understood and as opposed to adopting an attitude of fatalism). Both beliefs seem to have a significant influnce on positively shaping our congnitive processing vs. their opposites, irrespective of whether the underlying belief is actually valid (intelligence may be largely fixed; free will as commonly understood may not exist). I wonder if this observation implies a relationship between notions of rationality and free will?

[@maudeeb]

Happiness, and perhaps the sign of wisdom, is when S1 is simply validated by S2. "ah, I was right".

[@AnAlgernon]

12:11 it strikes me that curiosity is something one playfully engages with towards "understanding"... To resolve the curiosity. Awe, I'd be happy to sit with for hours if it would have me.

[@ClassPunkOnRumbleAndSubstack]

Where my mind is going.. It seems we often act without instinctually and visibly knowing any thought or feeling that would've drove those actions in the movement, and instead we have to think about it before coming to a conclusion as to what's driving most of our actions, which seems transcendent. We think and feel without being able to instinctively know where thoughts or feelings come, which seems transcendent. And we don't have total understanding of the smallest or largest scales of space, where many people have been taught so many thoughts about space that they look at a starry night without wondering about the boundaries of space and if the boundaries exist, or look at subatomic ideas with confusion and frustration, with the result of less or no feeling(s) of transcendence. So it seems the feeling(s) of transcendence might be fundamentally built into our more animistic or instinctual perception of ourselves and the universe, that excessive thought or "non-transcendent-pointing thought" exists heavily in civilizational culture, and we are sustaining and creating forms of thought and culture, that attacks thought or culture that might point to the feeling(s) of transcendence, where this might not always be bad, but often is for us, because we are doing it to a detrimental point of reducing our wellbeing-- and my best guess for primarily needs to be addressed, to change culture that is both anti-wellbeing and anti-transcendence, is social trauma.

[@dale3726]

This is great

[@ラヒム旬]

YAS!

[@jiggybau]

The idea that rationality emerges from intelligent use of intelligence is really interesting, but it suggests that there is a continuum and that it's perhaps not very useful to pull apart these notions (intelligence, rationality and wisdom). The obvious next question would be what happens when you use wisdom to improve your wisdom. So wisdom is not the endpoint, it's just one developmental step on this continuum. I would suggest that the essence behind all these concepts is reflection (great name, because it also touches on the recursive, reflective process previously mentioned). Cognitive reflection is a never-ending process, very reminiscent of reciprocal opening, of agape. Through cognitive reflection we achieve intelligence, rationality, wisdom and beyond.

[@davidfost5777]

I'm always looking for new interesting lectures on Psychology/Philosophy, please let me know if you guys have any recommendations, would be highly appreciated

[@jamesgrey13]

I'd like to thank my laziness for developing my rationality, and my love of poker for developing my wisdom!

[@ThePathOfEudaimonia]

Weight is a highly malleable trait, especially when those salient chocolate cakes humming with chocolaty goodness keep appearing on the counter. ;-)

[@mdmh9999]

100 k subs!

[@davidalvarez13]

Awe → Plato → Mindfulness , Insight→ S1 ||| Curiosity → Aristotle → Active Open Mindfulness, Inference → S2

[@5hydroxyT]

what is the use of rationality if the world is irrational? is being rational wise in an absurd universe? could it lead us to self-deception?

[@StephenDix]

13:09 some Plato vs Aristotle

[@JohnRiver490]

00:3:49 Johnny V's Definition of Psychotecnology

[@JeremyNathanielAkers]

07:00 Finding a Problem Nexus

[@paulexander]

I'd like to know more about the idea that intelligence is fixed. I'm curious to know if that is dependent on age, where is there a certain point where this becomes true? Is it genetic? Developmental? Environmental? Also, just to make sure I was clear, I went back to episodes 26 and 27 to review the basics of how intelligence was defined. To condense what I heard, it seems that intelligence in this case is the capacity to be a general problem solver, and when we measure intelligence, we are measuring the capacity to avoid combinatorial explosion and computational limitations. That being said, how or why would that not be malleable? There was also a reference to Polya in episode 27, and some work that shows that it is indeed improvable. Was that the same work that was referenced in this video when discussing long-term mindfulness (@53:00)?

[@TLMS654]

While I was watching your video I was feeling that maybe a priori knowledge maps onto S1 and a posteriori onto S2. I agree that we need both but I find we live in a social world where S2 is overemphasized or S1 is dismissed through a science biased education. Interested to know if you think religiosity would map onto S1 processing.

[@sennewam]

muh big brain

[@ConcernedNetizen]

Hahaha, so when the intervals of cool media, like the Modern poets or Picasso or low-res, iconic artwork, require resonance (or "leaping") across, this entails involvement of insight, or the affects of wonder or awe, but potentially dysrational and basically burned out hippies. Whereas hot media, like straight-up know-how (think Carnegie, or many straightfoward instructions) where all the connections are pre-made, are over-taxing s2 and leave us stunned or hard-headed and trapped in closed loops. Yup, that's hot and cold media alright.

[@calaflash]

So S1 and S2 are your limbic system and your frontal cortex right?

[@networkimprov]

Isn't S1 inherently reactive to the environment, with a significant contribution of (often subtle) emotion? If so, could meditation be a third state, neither deliberate & inferential, nor leaping intuitively based on pattern recognition? The Q is probably too deep for a YT comment, but maybe you could offer some references?

[@brynjarespejord8867]

Hi, John! Earlier you have described mindfulness (or at least vipassana, I think) as the part of meditation practice where you move "backwards" to look at your processing, and you have talked about this ability to move back and reflect on your processing as a potential source of choking in decision making (like Hamlet). In this video you talk about how mindfulness can be a therapeutic aid for getting out of reflection and into intuitive thinking, which on the surface seems a little contradictory to the earlier explanation of the function of mindfulness (vipassana). Do you think you could expand a little bit on this?

[@brynjarespejord8867]

Okay, never mind. Ep. 45 explains that you use mindfulness to mean a broader range of practice than just the breaking frame-part.

[@tonym6566]

54:00 ish, the avatar for logic in the subconscious is probably Socrates incepted by Plato in his writings 🧐

[@bigpicsoccer]

Do you think our cultural obsession with psychometrics like IQ are related to Fromm's having mode? I find people like to talk about having a high IQ more than doing intelligent things. Put another way, if rationality was the same as intelligence it would preclude people from telling you that they "have an IQ of 140."

[@bettermentprojectnotes808]

John, in the art world we sometimes speak of someone’s “style” as a kind of fingerprint, something which, though it can resemble a genera, is unique to that individual as a trace of their skill’s development and ideas. Could these cognitive styles of rationality be similar, where thinkers can fall into a similar school, but have very distinct habits, propensities, and moves that are indicative of a person’s cognitive style? Or would we expect cognitive styles to be less personal and “stylistic?”

[@notmyrealpseudonym6702]

Arlin 1990 - Mentioned around 6:40 - 7:30 - is this from their chapter 11 in this? Wisdom: Its Nature, Origins, and Development - Marvin Bower - Google Books books.google.com/books/about/Wisdom.html?id=YuBKWJDdmiEC

[@HenrySoinnunmaa]

John, have you talked about the criticisms on Dweck's work and arguments, some of which are summarized here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Dweck#Criticism (If anyone else has heard him discuss this, I'd be interested to hear.)

[@johnvervaeke]

I have always criticized Dweck for a fundamental confusion, namely confusing our attitude towards our intelligence with our actual intelligence. Intelligence is not malleable but how we relate to it is. Inconsistency in replication points to a confounded variable. I argue that there is clear evidence that rationality is malleable and can be improved by caring about our cognitive process rather than just our cognitive products. Dweck’s interventions probably initially do this short term but they are not sufficient for long term change. There seems to be a consensus that the effect she produces is small and not long lasting. When people engage in more long term reflective interventions such as active open mindedness , CBT etc then one sees larger more long term change. That is my best attempt to deal with the data.

[@HenrySoinnunmaa]

@@johnvervaeke thank you very much for this reply. That broadened my perspective. And also: My deepest gratitude for you and your whole team for creating this amazing series, and in general for sharing your wisdom and understanding. It has had a profound impact on me. We're running a study group on the series here in Finland. I've actually been thinking of inviting you to my forthcoming podcast. I've also got a suggestion related to an NGO that I'm involved with. Is your gmail address the best route for reaching you with these kinds of suggestions?

[@pandelisperakakis2736]

S1 called the cashier a "she" and then S2 jumped in to correct it :)

[@theheraldofchelmsford]

40:05