Deep Thinking, Education, and Freedom in an Age of Distraction - Jon Burmeister | S4E5 - Still Curious

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jon Burmeister (00:00):
Traditional forms of education tend to shut
down curiosity and shut downcreativity.
liberal education in its bestforms is the kind of education
that helps to free you from,Your own unhealthy desires and
passions and impulses, Whatsomeone like the French
philosopher might call a kind ofinternal slavery.
and then the oppression ofstrong people who want to

(00:20):
oppress you.
those are two ways in which Ithink a liberal education
liberates us.
And helps prepare people forthat kind of citizenship with
self knowledge, the ability tomonitor.
the ability to be creative,curious, the desire to not just
be spoon fed.
I'm thinking about theconnection between liberal arts
and this idea of the attentioneconomy helping people to
develop the mental skills thatthey need to navigate this very

(00:45):
unfriendly technologicallandscape that we're now in,
which these very powerful, verypersuasive algorithms are vying
for our attention.

Danu Poyner (00:57):
You're listening to the still curious podcast with
me, Daniel pointer.
The show where I meet people whoinsist on relating to the world
with curiosity and care.
The people I call Caracas andtalk to them about the red
thread that runs through theirlife story and ultimately
empowers them to flourish.
As they unrepeatable selves.
The voice you just heard belongsto my guest today.

(01:18):
John Burmeister, a philosopherand educator whose wide ranging
interests include the philosophyof technology and computing.
The future and meaning of workand leisure.
Philosophy of mind and thenature of freedom in the
attention economy.
Today's episode is both a storyof whole person education and a
conversation about liberation ofthe mind, the body and the self.

(01:43):
John grew up in a deeplyreligious evangelical household.
Homeschooled until high schoolwhere belief and faith were
central pillars of life.
His parents were indifferentabout higher education wary that
college might undermine hisreligious faith.
After spending a few years as atruck driver for a print shop
after high school, John did goto college, a conservative

(02:07):
non-denominational institutionwith strict rules about drinking
and dancing, primarilyattracting students from
Methodist, Wesleyan, and Unitedbrethren traditions.
It was here that John's love ofphilosophy was sparked.
By charismatic professor knownfor his humor, irreverence, and
a gentle ability to questiongroup.
Think without making anyonewrong.

(02:29):
This professor's approach gaveJohn a glimpse of how people
could be well-meaning, but alsoconfused opening his mind to
critical thinking.
It was also at college whereJohn formed lasting friendships.
Including late nightphilosophical discussions with a
friend at his dorm that inspiredhim to minor in philosophy
alongside other disciplines,like sociology, psychology and

(02:52):
literature.
He described this period as anintellectual, all you can eat
buffet where his curiosity tookflight.
John pursued his doctoralstudies in philosophy at Boston
college.
Known for its emphasis on wholeperson education.
Intellectual spiritual andpersonal development.
Choosing Boston college becauseof its alignment with his
growing interests in Catholicphilosophy and the philosophy of

(03:14):
religion.
John spent these years deepeninghis understanding of German
idealism, existentialism, andthe philosophy of technology,
while enduring influences fromAristotle Plato and stoicism
shaped his views on humanflourishing.
During this time, John beganteaching philosophy, offering
courses on topics like ethics,love and desire, human nature,

(03:36):
and political freedom.
Inspired by his owntransformative experiences.
John became deeply invested inthe philosophy of education
advocating for the role ofliberal arts in fostering
curiosity, creativity, andcitizenship.
As you heard in the opening,John sees liberal education as a
way to cultivate freedom.
Preparing individuals for thechallenges of a world

(03:58):
increasingly designed tofragment our focus.

When information is abundant, as it is now,
sustained attention on one thingis harder and more scarce.
That's a real problem for humanflourishing, because we start to
lose the skills of deep andsustained thinking that actually
lead to the solution ofproblems.

John reflects on the growing scarcity of
attention in a world, saturatedwith information, emphasizing
that without the ability tofocus deeply, we risk losing not
just the skills to solveproblems, but the capacity to
flourish altogether.
And as a good heck alien, Johnalso views ideas as living
structures built over timethrough the collective

(04:39):
contributions of history.
He sees engaging with theseideas as an act of participating
in an ongoing process thatconnects us to both the past and
the future.

Ideas are historical, they are built up in
a way that's similar to,buildings, if you look at a
modern day building, it's theresult of the learnings of
centuries of architecture andengineering.
we ourselves as the thinker ofideas are part of that
historical process.
we are historical beings

as John moved through his journey.
His focus shifted from purelyanalytical thinking to a more
embodied way of being it beganintegrating practices like yoga,
meditation, and breath work intohis life.
Tools that helps him connectwith neglected parts of himself
and cultivate what he calls theskill of, not thinking.
For John flourishing meanscreating harmony between the

(05:30):
analytical and intuitive partsof the self.
Integrating the mind, body andemotions.
This integration of practices.
Isn't just personal.
It's deeply philosophical, too.
John draws inspiration fromAristotle's idea of flourishing
as a process of self movementtowards a goal.
Where the parts of oneselfbecome more harmonized and

(05:50):
whole.

The first, 30 years of my life were focused
very much on developing mythinking skills in a very kind
of laser focused way.
more recent years, I've come tosee the importance of Learning
how to not think and learninghow to, pay attention to other
parts of my mind, other parts ofreality in a, less cognitive,
less conceptual way

Despite his deep engagement with technology he
lives without a smartphone,intentionally creating
boundaries that protect hisattention and focus.
One of the books.
John recommended to me beforeour conversation was stand out
of our light by James Williams,which we discussed in the
episode, including its keyinsight that reclaiming our
attention is not just aboutavoiding distractions, but also

(06:30):
about protecting our ability tocare about the things that
matter most.
John storey calls us tore-imagine education, not as a
checklist of knowledge, but as aprocess of liberation.
To stand out of the light ofdistraction is to step fully
into the light of purpose,connection and integration.

(06:50):
So let's dive in.
Here's my conversation with JohnBurmeister coming up after the
music on today's episode of thestill curious podcast.

(07:25):
So, hi John, welcome to thepodcast.
How are you going?

Hi, I'm doing great.
Thanks for having me on.

Oh, it's very nice to have you on.
I've been looking forward totalking to you for a while.
so we find you today as anassistant professor of
philosophy at the College ofMount St.
Vincent in New York City, whereyou specialize in the philosophy
of technology and computing,philosophy of mind and German
idealism.
You have an interest in thefuture and meaning of work and

(07:52):
leisure and the nature offreedom in the attention
economy.
What would you say is The bestway for someone to understand
you as a whole andmultidimensional person?

One of my main goals in life is to be really,
really good at thinking and alsoreally, really good at not
thinking.
Being able to do both of thosewhen the situation calls for it.
There's lots of ways to becomegood at thinking, But the way
that I've chosen on a kind ofpersonal and professional level
is the study of philosophy andall of the tools that provides

(08:24):
in terms of logic and criticalthinking and metaphysics and all
of that.
Uh, and then in terms ofbuilding my skills of being good
at not thinking, my focus inthat is, meditation I'm also
supplemented by A very kind of,informal loosey goosey yoga
practice.
and then sometimes, breath workto, I guess among other things,

(08:47):
activate my parasympatheticnervous system and learn to
relax and my thoughts down.
And The first, probably 30 yearsof my life were focused very
much on developing my thinkingskills in a very kind of laser
focused way.
And then in more recent years,I've come to see the importance
of Learning how to not think andlearning how to, pay attention

(09:08):
to other parts of my mind, otherparts of reality in a, I guess,
a less cognitive, lessconceptual way,

okay, I really like that answer and it's definitely
a philosopher's answer.
It makes me wonder though howthat shift.
Learning how not to think.
It might've influenced yourunderstanding of philosophy
itself, especially as adiscipline, so deeply rooted in
the history of ideas.
How did your early years inphilosophy help shape your sense
of what it means to be part ofthat larger historical process?

So my first couple of years was just trying
to build that general backgroundin the history of philosophy to
just to get a first flavor ofhow ideas develop through
history, that ideas arehistorical, that they are built
up in a way that's similar to,buildings, if you look at a

(09:58):
modern day building, it's theresult of the learnings of
centuries of architecture andengineering.
And as a part of that, justcoming to see that we are
historical beings, we ourselvesas the thinker of ideas are part
of that historical process.
The pieces fell into place forme to write a dissertation on

(10:20):
Hegel with the help of theseprofessors who had been reading
him for decades and gave me alittle entryway into his
thought.
There's all sorts of reasons whyyou might be such a dense
writer.
But that question ended up beingthe kind of impetus for my
dissertation, which was onHegel's philosophy of language.
And specifically, what kind oflanguage Hegel thinks we should

(10:44):
use to write about philosophy.
what I call philosophicallanguage, as opposed to, let's
say, poetic language, orreligious language, or everyday
language.
And, Hegel doesn't have a lot tosay about it.
He does have some scatteredpassages.
about why he writes the way hedoes and the the way that a

(11:06):
philosopher in his view needs touse language to best do
philosophy.
so I tried to develop thoseisolated passages and connect it
with other ideas in his corpusto try to make sense of What a
philosophical language wouldlook like.
The idea is that philosophyshould as much as possible be

(11:26):
presupposition less and shouldstart with assuming nothing and
then just start yourinvestigation.
What he wants to do as he goesis define each word as it pops
up, but these definitions end upbeing inadequate because he
doesn't have the language fullydefined things.
And so words take on differentmeanings.
It's almost like a bigdictionary where you need later,
more complex terms to help youdefine the earlier terms.

(11:49):
So I, my dissertation wasfocused on this idea of a living
language, that it was almostlike a organic.
Organism that was unfoldingalmost like an embryo growing
into a full grown biologicalorganism.

That is very interesting, and I note that you
have an interest in.
software as a living organism,and I'm wondering, what
connection you can draw betweenthose two things.

Yeah so my dissertation led me to think a
lot about the concept of lifeand what it means at the
biological level for somethingto be alive, and a rock can
move, it can be moved, bygravity, or a person, or an
animal.
But living things move on theirown, in that they are the origin

(12:39):
of their own movement.
And the internal integration oftheir parts is the functional
integration in which there areparts that make them up interact
in such a way as to make thatmovement possible.
And these are not just randommovements, but movement toward a
particular goal.
So how can we apply all of thisto software is the question that

(13:01):
that me and my coauthor took onin a paper that we wrote a few
years back.
How can we make software morelike a living organism, which
means making software moreinternally integrated.
The useful contrast here is,especially when we're talking
about software, is, Less like amachine and more like a living

(13:22):
being because machines, thisweird new thing that we have in
the last few hundred years, arestarting to look a little bit
like a living thing insofar asthey have self movement, they
have complex internal parts thatwork together to make that
movement possible.
so we're starting to havetechnologies that are starting

(13:46):
to take on some of thecharacteristics of living
things.
And the question is, how far canwe push that?
What advantages will that giveus?
And this is not at all a newthing.
It's been going on for a longtime in all sorts of engineering
fields, biomimicry, but I thinkwe see it now in a most advanced
way in terms of Artificialintelligence research, which is

(14:09):
mimicking as much as possible,structures of the brain and
sometimes called neuromorphiccomputing and that kind of thing
to figure out how to make,intelligent machines more
intelligent through applicationsfrom neuroscience.
So this article that we wroteabout making software more like
a living being is working inthat tradition.

Looking at the range of your current work,
there's clearly a very deepinterest in technology and its
implications for societypatterns work and relating to
technology and systems.
I'm curious, a, how that comesabout and b, what your view on

(14:53):
the stakes for society, how youthink about what matters for
society,

so my interest in technology, I think.
It began when I started to thinkabout machine intelligence.
Maybe 2014 or so, starting toread about advances in
artificial intelligence.
I also came across the idea ofthe control problem and
existential risk surroundingartificial intelligence.

(15:18):
how humans will retain controlover artificial intelligence
once it reaches a certain levelof, competence.
At first it seemed silly to me,like, how could we possibly lose
control of of machines that wemake, but then I was encouraged
I think, by a podcast orsomething to read Nick Bostrom's
book Superintelligence, which Ithink that may have come out

(15:39):
maybe 2012, 2013.
I read it around 2015.
That book made a really largeimpact on me.
Nick Bostrom is one of thesepeople whose intellect is so
large.
His ability to weave togetherideas from computer science,
game theory, mathematical logic,political theory.
it's really an extremelyimpressive book.

(16:01):
Reading that book, persuaded methat the control problem is
going to be a real one at somepoint in the future.
It may be that the problem issolvable in ways that are,
easier than some of the doomersthink, but I am persuaded that
it is a real problem.
The next year a friend was goingto apply for an NEH grant to

(16:23):
develop a course and then alsospin off a series of conferences
and then you publish some thingsthat were related to the theme
and all of this would have somefunding and support from the,
the National Endowment for theArts and Humanities.
Which is a government agency inthe United States.
he and I were going to work onthis grant together and it was

(16:43):
going to be on work and play.
He stumbled into some otherpublishing and course
development opportunities.
And so then I just continued onmy own with the application and
I end up tweaking theapplication to be about work and
leisure.
And then I also gave theapplication a special emphasis
on the impact of artificialintelligence.

(17:04):
Because that was very topical atthe time, but not very widely
known amongst the public, Ifigured that would be both very
cool to work on and useful forthe grant application.
Boston College PhilosophyDepartment were my institutional
sponsor for the grant.
I was able to get the grant.
I developed the course, taughtit at Boston college, then I
ended up putting on a couple ofconferences in the Boston area

(17:25):
on artificial intelligence asrelated to work and leisure.
at that point I became, more andmore interested in just what is
technology, trying to thinkabout artificial intelligence,
made me realize that I had notgiven serious Adequate thought
at all to what it means forhumans to build things.
And in my current position atthe university of Mount St.

(17:46):
Vincent.
I have developed a course onphilosophy of technology.
And then also a course called AIand data ethics.
So it's the ethics of artificialintelligence and the ethics of
data, which includes likeprivacy and social media and
things like that.

I'm very curious to hear about what happens in a
philosophy of technology courseand who comes to it, but before
I ask you about that, I'm justcurious.
What was the adjunct teaching,experience like?

Yeah, I didn't love teaching my first semester,
but I think by my secondsemester, I realized that this
was something for me, and In theBoston College Philosophy
Doctorate program, they throwyou in early.
Our second year of the program,we are given our own class, we
have to design our own syllabus,we're not teaching assistants or
anything like that.

(18:37):
I've been teaching my ownclasses since, 2003.
Boston College value teaching.
And that's part of this focus onwhole person education, that the
connection between student andteacher is not just one of
information transfer.
That it can be much morepersonal than that.

(18:58):
And we had teaching seminarswhere we would meet with other
first and second year graduatestudent teachers and.
It was supervised by a BostonCollege faculty member who had
been teaching for decades.
And so we would talk about ourteaching.
We would talk about how toconnect better with the
students, how to be moreSocratic, how to not ask leading

(19:21):
questions that shut downconversation, but to be genuine
and asking open ended questions.

Is it fair to say that having originally
approached college with someamount of trepidation and then
having had the full liberal artsexperience that you're now quite
an advocate for a full liberalarts education?
Yeah.

almost on the verge of creating a picket sign
and carrying it around New YorkCity.
Uh, Yeah.
Full throated advocate.
I like the phrase liberaleducation better than liberal
arts.
It goes beyond the arts.
mathematics is part of theliberal arts, but it's not an
art in the traditional sense.
And by that phrase, a liberatingeducatioN.

(20:07):
I certainly didn't make thisidea up.
It's, I think it, it goes backto ancient Greece, goes back to
Plato and Aristotle.
I think the standard bearers ofthis idea of education in the
United States is probably, St.
John's which has a campus inAnnapolis and also one in Santa
Fe.
That is considered part of thegreat books tradition.

(20:29):
The great books tradition alsohas centers in the university of
Chicago.
also some degree at Columbiauniversity.
And the idea is that allstudents read a certain set of
books, and they read themtogether.
The idea of a liberal educationgoing back to the ancient Greeks
is twofold.
so liberal comes from liberatingor like free, if you go back to

(20:54):
the etymology.
So one sense of that term forthe ancient Greeks was that this
is an education that's availableto people who are freE.
Free from working 10 hours a daypicking rocks in a field, free
from the demands of extremelydifficult manual labor.
Part of the origins of thisphrase are quite elitist and

(21:14):
aristocratic that a liberaleducation is for people who
don't have to get their handsdirty all day, they have free
time to study music, to studypoetry, to study rhetoric, to
study logic.
You can only go to school if youhave a lot of leisure.
I think the more interestingreading on liberal education is
that It is the kind of educationthat helps to free you in

(21:38):
certain ways, to liberate you incertain ways.
There's two things that almostall people need to be freed
from, which would be Your ownunhealthy desires and passions
and, impulses, and then theoppression of strong people who
want to oppress you.
So liberal education is designedin its best forms to help free

(22:00):
us from the parts of ourselvesthat are leading us in the wrong
direction.
away from our own happiness.
What someone like Rousseau, theFrench philosopher might call a
kind of internal slavery.
You're a slave to your ownunhealthy desires.
and then there's the politicalaspect that you really cannot
have.
A functioning democracy, unlessa certain segment of the

(22:23):
citizens have received a liberaleducation, which means that
they're able to participate in ademocratic system in some kind
of intelligent way.
They're not just thinking abouttheir own immediate personal
desires, but they have someconcept, however general, of the
common good.
The idea that, okay, I don'tlike that my taxes might need to

(22:45):
be raised a little bit, butthat's going to be good because
people with less fortunatebackgrounds than me could really
use it.
And that's the just thing to do.
I think that a liberal educationhelps prepare people for that
kind of citizenship.
so those are two ways in which Ithink a liberal education
liberates us.

I read, Stand Out of Your Light a little while ago
on your recommendation, which Iunderstood as a half a critique
of the way, Technology, andparticularly social media,
captures our attention for itsown ends.
And half is just a verybeautiful, freestanding
philosophy of attention, withthese different categories of

(23:24):
attention, I'd love to hear yourthoughts on the book and your
relationship with the ideas,perhaps you can explain it.

Yeah.
I found the book to be sobeneficial for my thinking about
both technology and like yousaid, the psychology of
attention.
So the theme of this book, StandOut of Our Light, what he
compares in one of the chaptersto a monster, and a monster
that's not all bad, but it isthis gargantuan creature of

(23:52):
Google, Facebook, Netflix, TOK,Instagram.
These forces that are unrivaledin their power over the human
mind.
I don't think there's anyprecedent in human history,
certainly not at the corporatelevel, but probably not even at
the governmental level.
For an entity to have suchgranular moment by moment

(24:15):
influence over so many humanminds as say TikToks or
Instagrams algorithms have overhuman minds today.

I like the way he phrases the nature of that
problem in saying, techcompanies have their own goals
that they're pursuing, that are,unlikely to be the ones that you
would pursue for your own life,necessarily.
And what happens when theydiverge?
And there's that controlinfluence, and you don't have
that.
I'm interested in politicalhistory, especially, and I would

(24:46):
nominate nationalism as the mostimportant, idea in political
history in modern times thatwould give you a similar
precedent.
I dunno if you know the book,Benedict Anderson's Imagined
Communities, which is aboutwhere.
the idea of nationalism comesfrom and how it's, invented.
And it's possible to have thetechnology of nationalism as an
idea because of the real worldtechnologies of, maps,

(25:11):
newspapers, and museums is whathe's saying, because for the
first time you can imagineyourself as being part of a
broader community, for thesereasons.
And so that's what allows you tothen have the group think and
everything else.
Big Tech, with its granularityand its scale and its speed,
seems to offer similarimplications, but at a much

(25:32):
bigger scale.
So that's a connection I woulddraw.

Yeah.
That's very helpful.
They're both these centralizingforces, because now you have
these communities on socialmedia that span the borders of
traditional nation states.
so now you have people aroundthe world, lobbying the United

(25:55):
States government to not banTikTok and it's almost
comparable to the map.
If you give people a map, thenthey can imagine themselves part
of this bigger whole.
TikTok is doing that with itsown technology saying TikTok
nation, we have to rise up.
We're being persecuted.
Yeah, I love that connection.
I'm thinking about theconnection between liberal arts
and this idea of the attentioneconomy in the books stand out

(26:18):
of our light in terms of helpingpeople to develop the mental
skills that they need tonavigate this very unfriendly
technological landscape thatwe're now in, which these very
powerful, very persuasivealgorithms are vying for our
attention.
some of the skills that aliberal education gives us, self

(26:40):
knowledge, the ability tomonitor.
the ability to be creative, theability to be curious, the
desire to not just be spoon fed.
Traditional forms of educationtend to shut down curiosity and
shut down creativity.
And it's for understandablereasons because the teachers
need to teach to some kind ofstandardized test.

(27:03):
I fully sympathize with thoseteachers in the constraints that
they're working in, but thatpedagogical environment tends to
shut down the kind of curiosity,creativity, student motivated
learning.
That might help people to betterrecognize when they've been
sucked into an unhealthy vortexof messages and ads where

(27:25):
you're, just a purely passive,almost vegetative Consumer.

that's where the book was most compelling for me
is in, in spelling out thedifference.
levels of attention, because, wetend to think about what he
calls the spotlight of ourattention.
to be attentionist.
It's distracting me in thismoment because I'm scrolling and
not doing something else, butit's much deeper than that
because there's the starlightattention about knowing what

(27:54):
direction you're going and whereyou're headed, lift your head
from the, screen, where are yougoing in life?
And then the daylight attentionof wanting what you want to
want.
having the freedom to even beable to have those, thoughts and
clarity about wanting what youwant to want.

So what are some ways that you think that.
Daylight attention and starlightattention can be fostered in us
that we can build those powers,from their, normally diminished
state.

Yeah, that's a great question.
I'm very interested infacilitating people towards
flourishing and, in thisconstruct, That conversation is
a daylight conversation.
And I tend to encounter a timewhen they are, trying to recover
their lives from, the path theythought they were on and they've

(28:40):
been burnt out or disillusionedby institutions that bear the
same name as the practice theycare about but actually get in
the way of doing the practiceand why they wanted to do it in
the first place, or trying tofigure out how all of the
different types of expertise andexperience they've accumulated
fit together, in some way that'srich and multidimensional and

(29:01):
not reductionist in lack of ananswer to,, what do you do?
To me, it's a relationship ofcare, that allows those things
to take place.
acknowledging an other andentering into a relationship.
of care and curiosity with them.
That is the first thing to do.
people set their own direction.
Ultimately, I think people arelike plants.

(29:22):
they want to grow.
you don't have to do anything tomake a plant grow other than
give it the right conditions andstand out of its light as it
were.
so yeah, this is somethingobviously I'm very passionate
about.

That's really nice.
one thing that I'm hearing yousay is helping people to feel
that they are loved and thatthey're in a kind of.
safe place to dream aboutdifferent possibilities for
themselves.
as opposed to metaphoricallyspeaking, head down, just
looking at the phone or theground or five feet in front of
you, to think about differentpossibilities for their lives

(29:53):
than they currently imagine.
Another point that I, I find tobe, incredibly helpful in James
Williams's Stand Out of OurLight is a point he makes about
information scarcity versusinformation abundance and the
idea that before the informationage, information was scarce.

(30:14):
You would get a newspaper orpeople would pass through town.
You would ask him like, Hey,what's going on?
or you would have a telegraphmessage or something like that.
But the idea that he raises inthe book, I found to be so
helpful for understanding ourown current struggles is that
when information is scarce,sustained attention on one thing
is easier and more abundant.

(30:35):
And When information isabundant, as it is now,
sustained attention on one thingis harder and more scarce.

Yeah.
and therefore the valuing of.
both the information and theattention changes.

I do think that social media has some real
benefits.
for example, a lot of mystudents have some Basic
familiarity with mental healthterminology.
they're interested in the ideaof shadow work, or they
understand that your sympatheticnervous system can be activated
and can make you stressed.
and they're not getting thisfrom reading books.

(31:09):
They're getting it from socialmedia.
So I do think that very skimmingsurface level engagement that we
get with social media has somereal benefits.

I would offer another concept that goes nicely
with that.
There's a guy called VictorMeyer Schoenberger, I think, and
he has a book.
called Delete.
And, he's making the point thatfor all of human history, we
have defaulted to forgettingthings.
But now we default toremembering things.

(31:39):
You can see it In technology, noone ever goes through and edits
or deletes their photos.
You just end up with 14, 000photos and emails and because
it's more trouble than it'sworth to go and delete things.
So you remember them by default.
And so that changes the natureof information and attention
also.

Wow, yeah.
I totally relate to that.
just this morning I was thinkingthat I need to go through my
recent vacation photos, but thatbefore I do that I should go
through my photos from lastsummer.
And it's just going to get worsewhen people start wearing, you
know, AI pins that are recordingeverything so that we have video

(32:18):
of everything we do as Ram getscheaper, storage is cheaper.
There's this problem would justget worse and worse.
And I think it's similar withthe information abundance
problem where.
you don't even need to have, abunch of superficial interests,
you can have very quote unquoteserious, meaningful interests

(32:39):
that you set up your phone oryour feeds to give to you, and
it can be just too much.
there's just so much great stuffon the internet now about
psychology, about humanflourishing, about philosophy,
about environmental studies,about AI safety, about
neuroscience, you can just begetting thousands of

(33:00):
notifications a day, any one ofwhich would be a worthwhile
thing to pursue.
My tendency then is just to scanvery quickly, each one.
And then as Nicholas Carr talksabout in his book, The Shallows,
to eventually lose the abilityto read anything because we lose
the skill.
And then maybe I also forget howto think deeply about one

(33:23):
problem over an extended periodof time.
Marianne Wolf talks aboutdeveloping this dual reading
skill.
One skill is oriented towardsshallow, quick reading.
And then the other form ofreading that you want to keep up
your skills with is.
Deep reading, sustainedattention, because both of them
have their place.

(33:43):
we didn't have to intentionallyform this dual form of reading
before the internet age, becauseinformation was scarce, But now
that we have both wonderfulbooks to read and feeds coming
at us, it makes sense to takeadvantage of both.
And it makes sense to, in aself-conscious way, switch back
and forth to what kind ofattention am I gonna give this?

(34:06):
Whereas our default tends to be,I just give it the level of
attention that feels right inthe moment.
And what feels right is.
My inbox is like overwhelmed.
My text messages, I haven't readthem all.
So then the default mode ofattention becomes very shallow.
I think that's a real problemfor human flourishing, because
we start to lose skills ofintrospection and we start to

(34:29):
lose the skills of deep andsustained thinking that actually
lead to the solution ofproblems.

Most definitely.
And to have, flourishing in thatsense, you need to cultivate,
the diachronic self, the stableself over time.
And if all of your attention ispatchy and spotty, and you don't
have that starlight or thedaylight that it can happen in,
then you won't be doing that.
And you may not be aware thatyou're not doing that, just

(34:58):
aware that something's notright.

I really appreciate that point there's
all this lots of debates rightnow about the influence of
smartphones on mental health andspecifically teen mental health.
And I wonder if what you justmentioned is not a big part of
it.
So if you're a teenager, you'retrying to form your sense of
yourself, and it's already avery difficult thing to do pre
smartphone.
lots of people joke about, whenI was in high school, I was like

(35:22):
a goth one day and then I was aprep.
And then later I was like in apunk band.
So it's natural to experimentwith different selves when
you're a teenager,

Especially when those can be forgotten as well
and not defaulted to beingremembered.

yes, and photographed.

and brought up potentially at any point in the
future.

Sure.
But then if, The idea of asustained attention and
remembering of your owndiachronic self becomes harder
because of the choppiness of theTikTok experience.
That would be even moredisorienting, like continual
whiplash.
Teenagers would probably beexperiencing that more than they

(36:03):
Normally would be just based ontheir neurobiology.
When I hear some of my studentssay that they spend six or eight
hours a day TikTok, don't knowhow to process that would mean
experientially or what it wouldbe doing to them
developmentally.

are the students who you have In your classes,
where are they from?
what's their background and aretheir concerns and hopes,

I would say most of my students are first
generation college students.
So their parents did not go tocollege.
A lot of my students are comingfrom the Bronx.
so for a lot of them, they don'tknow what to expect from
college.
They have not been given aseries of narratives about this
is what college will be, this ishow great it will be.
Here's what you'll learn.

(36:49):
If you're the first person inyour family to go to college,
it's a lot of, novelty andsometimes can be overwhelming.

my, mentor professor, Rob, he came from a
very working class backgroundand he was first in family to go
to university and he didn't knowwhat to do when he turned up,
and.
He thought that you weresupposed to go to the library
and just read all the books.
So He did.
He started at A and just workedhis way through all the books
until he got to about F orsomething That's why he likes

(37:17):
Hannah Arendt.
It's maybe not a bad way to doit.

That's not a bad way to do it.
Yeah.
so a lot of students That Iteach don't know what to expect.
and I mean, to be fair, evenwhen I was teaching at schools
where most of the students werecoming from the families of
doctors and lawyers and surgeonsand so forth, they also had no
idea what to expect.

(37:40):
in Introduction to Philosophy,because unless you go to an
unusual high school, you'reprobably not getting any
exposure to philosophy.
so yeah, if you're a firstgeneration college student, then
it's doubly disorienting.
So, the challenge for me is toreally not make assumptions
about what they might know.
But the benefit of that is Thathelps me to be more

(38:04):
philosophical, to not makepresuppositions, to not throw in
fancy words that I think I knowwhat they mean when maybe I
don't know what they mean, or Ihaven't fully worked it out.
to be a good teacher, I need tobreak things down to their
component parts and reallyconnect it up with The stuff of
life.
otherwise my students, most ofthem will be confused quite

(38:28):
quickly.
But again, there's a realbenefit to this because when I
was teaching at schools wherestudents had gone to prep
schools and they had taken allthese extracurriculars.
A lot of the students are veryconcerned about looking smart or
their idea of what smart is.
And so they will hear a word ora phrase and then be afraid to

(38:49):
ask what it means because theythink they would look dumb.
something I really appreciateabout most of the students that
I teach is that they don't haveany of this pretentiousness.
If they don't understandsomething, they'll just be like,
I don't know what that means.

Now that we've explored John's professional
perspective.
Let's turn to the personaljourney that shaped his approach
to philosophy and life.
I'm curious when did you firsthave that desire to be really
good at thinking, it sounds likeit was fairly early on.
did Young John have that as aplan a?

not really.
I always enjoyed academics, butI wouldn't say that I wanted to
become more skillful at thinkingin general until I discovered
philosophy in college And reallycrystallized the theme of
thinking in general, likerationality and reason and
critical thinking.
I was raised in a veryconservative, evangelical

(39:46):
environment.
From kindergarten up through thefourth grade, I attended,
Christian private schools.
so I was homeschooled from fifthgrade.
up through high schoolgraduation.
My parents weren't super keen oncollege.
looking back at it, I would saythat they viewed college solely
as a vocational training.
So their advice was, well, ifyou're not sure what you want to

(40:07):
do for a vocation, then there'sno point in starting college,
which, I know in hindsight is,is really bad advice.
That's a long way of saying thatI just worked for a couple of
years out of high school.
I was a truck driver for, aprint shop, just driving this
big truck around, deliveringprinted materials.
It's I got to know the guys thatran the warehouse and a couple

(40:27):
of the other drivers.
so I got to experience that modeof living, for a couple of
years.
in many ways, it was a greatjob.
Just like being in a vehicle,independent on your own for a
lot of the day, listening to theradio, listening to music.
and then eventually I, I decidedto go to college to be a high
school social studies teacher.
That was my goal.
So I, I became an educationmajor with a focus on social

(40:51):
studies.
I

What led you to that particular path?

think it was, the fact that history was
probably my favorite topic inhigh school.
I just found history fascinatingin terms of these general kind
of life lessons that you couldlearn, from seeing people make
mistakes and seeing people havesuccesses.
And I didn't know what to dowith it.
So I decided I'd be a teacher.
but about a year into myeducation major, I just got

(41:17):
turned off by a lot of theeducational methods that were
being taught to me and Irealized I didn't really connect
with, the high school psyche.
for 15 or 16 year-olds.

Was that cause you'd had the homeschooling
experience, What was it like todo observations of high school,
in your college degree.
Was that surprising what thatenvironment was or what was it
what you expected?

It was more a matter of the level at which the
students were operating was notone that excited me.
and their level of engagement,their level of interest, and
then what could be taught tothem.
That's when I started to thinkabout higher education so I
ended up dropping my educationmajor, switching to just a
straight history major.
Right around the time I took amandatory introduction to

(42:03):
philosophy class, had nointerest in taking it, didn't
want to take it.
took it reluctantly.
it's funny now because I'm sucha huge advocate for core
curriculum, liberal artseducation, but in college, I
didn't see the point of havingto take all these classes that I
quote unquote wasn't going touse.
So I actually went to theprovost office.

(42:25):
schedule a meeting with theprovost to complain about, like,
why do I need to take, foursemesters of Spanish et cetera,
et cetera, it was good that Iwas asking questions because I
think, my teachers weren'texactly explaining to us
students, at least in a way thatI can understand, what was the
purpose of the classes.
To fast forward for a second totoday, this really motivates me,

(42:46):
like in my core classes, as aphilosophy professor, I always
spend time with my students inthe conversation of what are we
doing here?
It's a bit insulting to studentsto have them sit in a three
month course and never reallygive them a chance to think that
question through.

Absolutely.
Did the provost engage withyour, questioning or did they
just tell you no?

No, remember him being annoyed.
Maybe he gave me some rationale,but it wasn't one that my young
brain could comprehend.
Basically, it was, you need todo this because it's for your
own good.
so that wasn't very satisfying,but then very shortly
thereafter, I came to see thewisdom of that in taking this
philosophy class and finding itincredibly interesting,

(43:28):
incredibly fascinating.
So I ended up minoring inphilosophy, I don't think I
actually would have done.
I If my interest had notcontinued to be piqued by a guy
in my hall who was a philosophymajor.
So he me continue in thesephilosophical conversations over
the next semester.
then at that point I was like,wait a minute, I think I should
probably minor in this.

Do you remember a particular moment where you went
from skeptical to switched on?
Was there something about thatcourse Or was it the teacher, or
was it the stuff outside thecourse and the discussion?

There's no concept that really sticks out
in my memory.
It was really the person of theteacher.
that was a lot of my initialattraction to philosophy was who
is this person who can talk andthink and persuade in the way
that this person does.
I'd never encountered someonelike him before.

(44:24):
He was funny.
He was slightly irreverent.
this is a very, evangelical,pretty conservative school.
he was considered the, uh,campus liberal.
He sort of gave me this littleglimpse of Oh, there's a
different way of being that's alittle bit, like I said,
irreverent, a little bit,ironic.
And able to question thegroupthink that's so common,

(44:47):
everywhere in the world, butespecially in that particular
environment of a small religiouscommunity.
It was a non denominationalcollege, but it primarily
attracted students fromMethodist, Wesleyan, United
Brethren, sort of tradition.
there was very conservativerules on campus, no drinking, no
dancing.
It was ungodly.

(45:09):
So yeah, my my professor,philosophy professor, Dr.
Michael Peterson, had a hugeimpact on me terms of helping me
to see the world a bitdifferently and to gain a kind
of critical distance from myselfand from the world I grew up in
and be willing to say, well,there may be some cracks here.
There may be some things thatare not quite right.
But without, tossing out thewhole thing.

Had you been doing questioning of your own up until
then, and then this was a leverthat could crack that open, or
was this the first occasion tobe doing that.

I would say that was probably the first occasion.

That's pretty

big.
yeah, and it was pretty gentle.
if I had a class with, I don'tknow, Bertrand Russell or
somebody like that, I probablywould have just pushed it all
the way and said, this is notfor me.
But it was just a very gentleintroduction into critical
thinking into.
looking at subcultures andcollections of beliefs as, well

(46:04):
meaning but potentiallymisguided.
So the idea that people could bewell meaning and confused was
something that came across inthis class very strongly.
and then as I mentioned, havinga friend in my hall.
In the dorms who was on asimilar path, but was a
philosophy major and asking himabout his classes and getting a
little sneak peek of what he wasstudying, that was also really

(46:27):
impactful on me and I probablywould not have become a
philosophy minor without thatmore personal connection to
philosophy that developedthrough those late night dorm
room conversations.

Is that the first time you had those deep
intellectual conversations witha peer?
Is that also a new experience?

That was, yeah, uh, I mean, I had, definitely it
had intense conversations withpeers about religious and
theological questions, when Iwas younger in my church, but in
terms of a kind of a broaderphilosophical approach and I
took a class on sociology andthat started to inform my view
of the world, took a class onpsychology and all of these were

(47:10):
completely new to me.
These different lenses throughwhich to see the world.
As a college student, I wasjust, like at this, all you can
eat buffet and just lapping itall up.
And then I discovered literatureand almost fit in a literature
minor.
And so yeah, college is reallyspecial time.

You said something very interesting about the
approachability of the way,Professor Peterson was
introducing these ideas to you.
I'm curious.
what that sounds like in thecontext that you were in to have
this, approachable introductionto questioning groupthink.
I wonder if you can give me aflavor of that.

I think, At the time, I was a very conservative
evangelical Christian, read theBible as being infallible.
Every word literally true.
And I was actually suspicious ofphilosophy going into it.
Philosophy, psychology,Freudianism.
Um, I didn't know anything aboutthese things except that I'd
heard things about them thatthey were not a good influence.

(48:07):
One of the reasons I chose thisschool was because it really did
align with a lot of my values.
But Dr.
Peterson was able to crack opena space to think a bit more
broadly.
And we studied some Aristotle.
We studied some Descartes andDr.
Peterson was really good at justkind of disappearing behind the
text and saying, this is whatthis person believes.

(48:27):
It wasn't trying to push anyideas onto us.
Like you should believe this.

It was more of a (48:31):
these people were really smart.
there's a reason why we're stillreading them, 500 or a thousand
or 2000 years later.
So let's see what they have tosay.
And yeah, that was very nonthreatening to me.
there was no proselytizationgoing on really.

so you're at the smorgasbord.
you've just decided to do theminor in philosophy.
You've made a good friend.
what happens from there?

Yeah.
So I had taken a bunch ofclasses in literature.
Um, I had a couple of goodfriends who were literature
majors and I had some extra roomin my schedule.
So they're like, let's take thismodern novel class together.
It'll be fun.
So we read Virginia Woolf, weread James Joyce, we read
Hemingway, and it was taught bya fantastic teacher, who kind of
similar to my philosophyprofessor, who was very warm,

(49:18):
funny, little bit irreverent.
so then I was reading thesebizarre books, we read Ulysses
and the class conversations weregreat.
started to get excited aboutliterature and I took a class on
literary theory.
And then we're looking atliterature really from a
philosophical perspective, likethrough a Marxist lens or a
feminist lens.
So by the time I graduated witha major in history, a minor in

(49:42):
philosophy, I knew I wanted todo graduate school.
I knew I wanted to keepstudying, but I didn't know
what.
I knew it was going to be eitherphilosophy or literature.
but given that I had nocredentials in literature, that
seemed like a tougher road togo.
so Dr.
Peterson, advised me that Icould apply to PhD programs that
were funded, tuition free andthat would pay a stipend.

(50:05):
so it was pretty clear thatphilosophy would be my best
option, and also, I realizedthat a lot of the questions in
literature that I was mostinterested in ultimately had a
very philosophical bent to them.
And just in terms of question ofthe narrator's voice and how
poets and novelists impactreaders, what's going on when

(50:28):
somebody's influencing your mindin a way that you don't quite
comprehend.
I realized that those kinds ofquestions were probably better
answered by philosophers andpsychologists.
so yeah, I decided to go thephilosophy grad school route.
I took a year off and justworked and Studied how to get
into grad school.
What's the admissions process?
and most importantly, worked ona writing sample to submit with

(50:51):
my application.

I'm curious where your parents in this story, were
they supportive of thisdirection?
Or indifferent or somethingelse?

Not supportive.
they were kind of indifferent tome going to college.
they were concerned that highereducation could be detrimental
to my religious faith and kindof suspicious of academics in
general, but they didn't help mewith college.
but they also weren't adamantlyagainst it.
they assumed, he'll go tocollege, he'll become a high

(51:20):
school teacher and that's a goodcareer.
They were not excited about megoing to graduate school.
they didn't really see thepoinT.
at that point, I was not at allconfident that I would go
through the full PhD process,get a PhD, apply for professor
jobs.
I thought to myself, this seemslike a cool route.
I'm not quite sure if I'll goall the way to the end.

(51:42):
I can stop with a master's if Iwant to, and I can pursue other
kinds of options with that.

Yeah, you mentioned your interest in history driving
a lot of these choices early on.
I'm curious what kind of historywere you interested in, a
particular period or aparticular aspect of history at
that point?
I'm always interested in whatpeople start with and what
lights them up about that andthen how it evolves over time
and infuses into other things.

Yeah, I didn't have any particular period in
history that really grabbed mein high school.
It was really just the wholescope of human events.
The idea that people had writtenthese things down And then
there's so much that's lost andthen historians are trying to
piece together.
What do we have and how do wemake sense of it?
so going into college, it wasjust a very generalized interest

(52:30):
in history.
I remember reading about themedieval period in high school
and finding that incrediblyinteresting where there's, The
church has a very different rolein society than the present day.
Given my very religiousupbringing, the notion that,
that religion would play such adifferent role in society, that
things hadn't always been thisway, where you have a separation

(52:51):
of church and state, where youhave a kind of nominally,
secular public square and justrealizing that things used to be
so different and that theydidn't need to be the way they
are now.

thank you for that.
That's something else we'll comeback to, I'm sure.
So you've got your writingsample together and you're going
into grad school.
Keep going.

applied to a number of Catholic universities.
I was mostly focused on Catholicphilosophy, PhD programs.
Because I was possiblyinterested in focusing on
philosophy of religion, Idefinitely wanted to be in a
place where religious ideas werenot scoffed at, but were taken
seriously by at least some ofthe faculty.

(53:35):
My, um, Philosophy professor,Dr.
Peterson, a couple of myliterature professors all
recommended that I look at someJesuit universities.
And, I was accepted into Fordhamin Boston College and ended up
choosing Boston College justbecause of the professors that
were there that seemed to be abit more aligned with my

(53:55):
interests.
So I ended up there for my PhDand It was an extraordinary
time.
How much I loved it can betracked by how long I was there,
I think.
So I started in 2002 and Idefended in 2011.
I definitely did someprocrastinating as well.
I loved the atmosphere so much.

(54:16):
and I took on a very challengingdissertation thesis that also
took a long time to develop.

Did you arrive there and feel like you belonged
in this republic of letters andthis environment, or was that
something that came to you overtime?
how was that experience?

Yeah, I definitely did not feel like I
belonged for the first year.
probably the second year aswell.
I was, only having a minor inphilosophy from a very small
institution that nobody hadheard of.
I didn't have a wide range ofcourses.
There were five of us thatentered the program that year
and two of them had master'sdegrees already.

(54:55):
Were just way beyond me., and sothey're going to do just maybe a
year of coursework and go rightinto the dissertation.
And meanwhile, I'm like, who isAristotle?
Not exactly, but I had done verylittle serious deep reading of
philosophical texts, but I wassuper fortunate that some of
these people that I came in withas first year students were just

(55:16):
incredibly warm and welcomingthemselves, even though they
were sometimes way beyond me intheir philosophical education,
they would organize readinggroups and they would invite me.
it wasn't like, a kind ofpretentious thing where it's
like, Oh, you need to catch upto us.
And I think Boston college to alarge degree, really enacts that
idea of whole person education,that it's not just about your

(55:38):
intellectual development, butit's also about your spiritual
development, your emotionaldevelopment.

Now that we've traced the thread of John's
journey.
Let's discover how these ideaslive in his work and reflect his
way of being in the world.

I think that, before mass industrialized
standardized education, we hadno education for the masses.
You had tutors for the rich.
and then we're like, oh, maybeeverybody should be able to go
to school.
I think it was maybe the 19teens in the United States,
there is a movement foruniversal high school that
everybody should be able to goto high school.
And a And then finally you haveuniversal high school built into

(56:18):
the system but I doubt that everwould've happened without all of
the wealth creation ofindustrialization that allowed
for the funding of these kindsof things, which is incredibly
expensive to both to pay theteachers, build the schools, and
to take all this labor out ofthe agricultural workforce.
I think that mass standardizededucation was the best

(56:41):
alternative, so these more likebespoke, tailored, seminar
style, Montessori, what I'mcalling like a true liberal
education, this is what's goingto be possible with the advent
of GPT 5 or GPT 6.
So having personalized AI tutorsthat are free.

(57:03):
So that's very exciting to me isthe idea of, of having liberal
education as opposed to thisstandardized form of education
where you're teaching to thetest, where you're encouraging
students to not ask things thatare outside of the lesson plan
because you have to get throughthe lesson plan.
Because everybody needs to knowwhat they're doing to take the
test, or you lose your job, orthe principal gets dinged by the

(57:26):
state.
most of the constraints areeconomic.

I think that's a very interesting and complicated
thought, by situating ithistorically in that way and
comparing.
the deeply flawed and quitedamaging mass education
experience we have is still amass education experience that
we would not otherwise havebrought about by economic power

(57:51):
and social conditions, and sowhat would that look like with
the AI leap?
But is there also an opportunityto not recreate the same,
Inequalities of access or arewe, always doomed to recreate
that?
We would say no, because webelieve as in other
possibilities and contingenciesof history, but perhaps it might

(58:12):
happen that way if we don't dosomething about it.

I was just reading a, um, guy named Jack
Clark, who.
Is at Anthropic, and who wasoriginally at OpenAI.
Jack Clark and what is his name?
Dario Amadai.
I think those are the two cofounders of Anthropic who left
OpenAI, some safety concerns.
So I subscribed to Jack Clark'snewsletter.
And the other day he wasreflecting on.

(58:37):
GPT 2 and he says that to trainGPT 2 cost around 50,000 to 100,
000.
and estimates that today itwould cost, about 250.
NGPT2 was the first model thatshowed signs of general

(58:57):
intelligence, because itimproved on a bunch of
benchmarks that they did nottrain it for Like we didn't
train it to do this, and this,but it's doing better on these
things.
We did not tailor the trainingprocess for these benchmarks.
So that was the first model thatthey said, okay, we may be onto
something here with thisparticular kind of large
language model.

(59:17):
but the idea that something fiveyears ago would cost 50, 000.
Now it would cost 250 to trainit.
And now we have, the models thatare going to be coming out,
according to both people fromAnthropic and indications from
Microsoft, that the models willbe using about 10 times as much

(59:37):
compute each time there's a newmodel that comes out.
what I foresee is that withinfive years, we will have such
incredibly capable models thatare free.
So there'll be.
Like GBT 3.
5 right now is free for anybodyto use, but the models will be,
not hallucinating anymore orvery rarely, and also incredibly

(01:00:00):
good at what you ask them to do,such as giving personalized
tutoring to a particularstudent.

Danu Poyner (01:00:07):
there's a lot of interesting questions about the
mechanics of that and how it allcomes to be, and the costs and
the models and everything.
Where I want to go to with thatthought is a much more
pessimistic view, to be honest,which is not to do with the
technology, because it'sultimately not about the
technology.
I'm of the age where we werevery optimistic about The

(01:00:29):
internet, the frothy, view ofthat as being a great leveling,
liberator of all sorts ofthings.
and we all lost our minds aboutthat for a while.
I think the best scholar I'vecome across on this is Evgeny
Morozov talking about the netdelusion and to save everything,
click here.
There's nothing about thetechnology itself that
guarantees good, applications orgood social arrangements.

(01:00:53):
So we've got commodity facerecognition technology in the
hands of, bad actors and stateactors using it for, identifying
Uyghurs and whatnot.
And, It's probably not going togo to a good place by itself
without a huge intervention,that's what I would say.

Jon Burmeister (01:01:08):
Yeah, I definitely agree.
Like the technology needs to beshepherded in the right way,
it's going to be put to many baduses.
The question is, will it also beput to good uses?
People who are also working inschool systems and in higher ed,
that even though thistechnology.
Tons of scams.

(01:01:29):
imitating your grandma's voiceor imitating wife's voice to
send you money and all of this,not to mention the bad actors at
the state level that we will getsome pretty big benefits within
educational systems and outsideof So like in the way that, so
much of my education inneuroscience, psychology,
computer science.

(01:01:49):
Has come from YouTube that justwould not have been possible pre
internet.
just because of the ease ofaccess.
I think that the sort of personthat uses YouTube to supplement
their education will besimilarly motivated to use a
large language model.
Is it?

I am that person, and that is already the case.
my pessimism is not antitechnological, I am a great
lover of technology.
I'm just very ambivalent aboutit.
To which, just to say I havestrong feelings on both sides.
Paul Valio says When you inventthe ship, you also invent the
shipwreck.
And I think that's what you getwith these new things.

(01:02:27):
You get a lot of both and, as agood hegelian, it's like what's
the synthesis of those?

Yeah.
I think it's, inevitable that wewill have ship and the
shipwreck.
The question I ask is how bigwill the shipwreck be?
Will it be, civilization endingor will it be something more
like a world war, or will it besomething like COVID?
I know that.
a lot of people are critical ofopen AI and there's grounds for

(01:02:54):
critique, and some people fromtheir super alignment team are
leaving and complaining thatthey're not getting enough
compute to work on the problemof aligning the goals of an AGI
of an artificial generalintelligence with human goals.
Open AI is dealing with a verydifficult situation, which is
they want to get to AGI before.

(01:03:14):
Google does before Microsoftdoes before Facebook does and
before China does, and thatmakes sense to do because
they're not legally beholden toshareholders, given that they're
a for profit that's governed bya nonprofit.
There's problems with thatstructure, but in my mind, it's
Far more desirable for a companywith this structure to achieve

(01:03:35):
AGI first than any of the otherOptions out there.
The question is how do youachieve aGI first without
enormous amounts of money?
So there is a real that theyface in terms of speed of
development.
Some people are saying, slowdown, but then I'm sure
internally they're saying, thenif we slow down, Google's going

(01:03:56):
to get there first.

right at the beginning of this conversation,
you said that you see yourselfas someone who's really good at
thinking and really good at notthinking.
And, I wanted to ask you whenyou came to that formulation and
how to know which is which, andwhat is required when.

Yeah.
I would say that at this pointin my life, I'm pretty good at
thinking and I'm very mildlygood at not thinking.
I've have not been meditatingfor that long.
And, my practice has been, notsuper intensive.
Like I haven't done a lot ofretreats or worked with a lot of
experienced teachers.
But my goal is to become verygood at both of those I guess

(01:04:34):
it's something of what Aristotlewould call the intellectual
virtue of prudence, of beingable to judge in the situation,
what is the right response?
Call for problem solving.
That calls for thinking.
Other scenarios call for, atleast temporary resignation.
and you say in a stoic manner,right now this situation is out

(01:04:58):
of my control and I can dolittle or nothing to solve the
problem.
it might be a relationshipproblem.
It might be a problem.
it might be a political problem,or your Anxieties about an
upcoming presidential election.
if not much you can do in theimmediate present about
something that's bothering you,then that's probably going to be

(01:05:19):
a good time to activate the notthinking dimension of your mind.
In the sense of, letting it go.
But if the intrusive thought issomething that's beyond my
control, and it keeps comingback and bothering me, that's
just not productive.
So what I can do in that momentis go into my breath, turn my

(01:05:39):
attention to my body, which inmy experience will often really
put up a, almost like anisolation chamber around that
intrusive thought until it, itloses its power.
And then for myself to set asidecertain times of day, for
thinking and other times for notthinking.

you mentioned this has been a hard won Thing for
you to adapt to and to learn isthe value of non thinking.
How does that show up in, John'slife?
where you've gone from thinkingto non thinking and that's been
a good move.

An interesting way to illustrate this is that I
have, three smartphones.
And, two of them cost 40 off ofeBay.
And one of them is my normalphone.
The two 40 phones, are notconnected to the internet in any
way.
one of them is in my bedroom andI use that for my alarm.

(01:06:29):
So I never take my internetconnected phone into my bedroom.
and I just use this cheap phoneas an alarm.
it's very important for me tohave an alarm clock that
gradually rises in volume.
Normal alarm clocks are veryloud and they shock you out of
your sleep.
And so your first moment ofconsciousness in the day is the
activation of your sympatheticnervous system, Not the way I

(01:06:52):
want to start my day, at least.
So my second 40 phone is in myoffice and I use that for
meditation I don't touch myinternet connected phone.
I don't look at it in themorning until I have done yoga
and meditation.
this is the way that I shutmyself off from the internet,

(01:07:12):
both right before bed and alsofor the first to 45 minutes in
the morning.
These are my times for lessthinking or for not thinking.
because once I've.
I've taken a look at my phoneand seen a bunch of
notifications.
If I do that and then meditate,it's a lot more chaotic in
there.
The other thing I do is to settimes in the day that I look at

(01:07:33):
the news as opposed to justlooking at the news when I have
a free moment, becauseintroducing that stream of
images and to be honest,suffering in my cognitive
centers, I can feel the effectit has on me.
I use like a variation onbreathing where you breathe in
for four seconds, you hold forseven, and then you exhale for

(01:07:54):
eight seconds.
I do a variation of that whenI'm brushing my teeth in the
morning, at night and in theday, if I'm feeling stressed, I
will do that.
And that's a way for me to veryquickly shut down my thinking
and turn my attention to mysensations to the present
moment, and I,find that to be anice way To turn off thinking
just like a light switch.

thank you for sharing that.
that's a great example andstrikes me as that you're taking
a very intentional andmethodical approach to this kind
of integration of ways of being,That makes me have to shoehorn
in the question, that I need toask you about the word grokkist,
which is like an integrative wayof being, different ways of

(01:08:36):
knowing.
I wondered, if that is a termthat resonates with you and what
it means to you, if so.

Yeah, it does.
I think I first came across theterm last year and had no
orientation to it.
The way that I made sense of itis in terms of a distinction
that Hegel makes betweenabstract thinking and concrete.
thinking, He has an essaycalled, What is Abstract
Thinking?
And in this little article, hetalks about the idea that, I

(01:09:04):
can't remember if he saysacademics or philosophers, but
people who think a lot are oftenaccused of abstract thinking.
That they're thinking aboutideas that are floating,
hundreds of miles above thesurface of the earth, that don't
make any contact with real life.
And it's just a kind of a formof mental masturbation where
people are just thinking aboutthings for the fun of it, but it

(01:09:28):
doesn't actually produce orgenerate anything.
claim is that true philosophicalthinking is the opposite of
abstract thinking.
And it's what he calls concretethinking, where you're dealing
with concepts, and concepts areby definition abstract.
If I say apple, and bydefinition abstract in a way

(01:09:48):
from the particulars of anygiven apple, its color, its
taste, size, but real thinkingor concrete thinking, and what I
think of as grokking, is whatbrings concepts directly into
contact with the real world andwith the particulars of the real
world.
He gives this great example inthe article about people
watching a public execution, andthen people thinking abstractly

(01:10:12):
about the person being executedand thinking, this is a terrible
person, this person's wicked,this person is pure evil.
And not recognizing that thisperson has a history, that they
have a family, we might add onto this and say this person
committed this crime, probably awhole host of reasons were
involved that they couldn'tcontrol.
So concrete thinking, he says,is seeing the person that's

(01:10:34):
about to lose their life andseeing them as a real person
situated in history and not justas a devil.
that's, that's a long winded wayof saying for me to grok
something is to thinkconcretely, which is never
letting the concepts just floataround in the ether.
It's like always grabbing themand pulling them back down to
earth.

Yeah.
That's very beautiful.
I like that connection withconcrete thinking.
would you consider yourself agrokkist?

I would in the sense that I was just discussing
where it's, it's something that,it was close to your heart, that
you're connecting with yourlife, that isn't just a matter
of intellectual abstraction.
For me, real philosophy isgrokking.

Nicely put.
I like it.
so you gave a definition of,life and living earlier, which I
was paying close attention to asself movement towards a goal,
and the internal integration ofits parts.
I thought that was really nice.
and I thought that it appliedalso to a person's journey
towards flourishing, as beingself movement towards a goal and

(01:11:38):
integrating internally all theparts.
so I wanted to check in withJohn the living person, and the
journey that you've been on andhow you feel you're going as
moving towards a goal of somekind and how you have been
integrating all of your variousparts.

Yeah.
That's a great question.
something's more alive when theparts are determining each other
more and more, as opposed tostanding in a kind of isolated
independence from each other.
if we go back to Aristotle, hesays that life is self movement
towards a goal involvingnutrition.
think that can be generalized toself movement towards a goal in
which the internal parts arebecoming more integrated, more

(01:12:15):
unified, less isolated from eachother.
And that really is my goal formyself in terms of my mind and
my body.
Trying to make that relationshipmore intimate through these
various spiritual exercises andpractices like yoga and
meditation.
and I should also mention,dancing, raving, music, is

(01:12:37):
another way that I see myselfbecoming more integrated as a
person.
I'm actually reading a bookright now called Whole Brain
Living.

that's the best book I read last year.
I will recommend that to anyone.

I'm still in the early chapters, but I think that
This idea of there beingdifferent networks in the brain
that we can work to develop andalso to integrate.
This is one of the mostimportant ideas that I've come
across probably in the last 10years.
It's also developed in,McGilchrist's The bathroom is

(01:13:12):
emissary, which is what I'll bereading this summer.
but I'm really inspired by thebasic idea of both of these
books, which I think also has alot of wonderful precedent in
the history of philosophy.
in Plato's Republic, he arguesthat the flourishing soul is the
soul in which there is harmonybetween its parts.
he doesn't use the word soulbecause he doesn't speak

(01:13:33):
English.
He's talking about the Psychefrom which we get psychology.
the harmonious Psyche In whicheach part is well developed and
is doing its proper function isthe flourishing psyche.
I see just the general projectof thinking about brain
networks, the differenthemispheres of the brain,
cognitive, emotional, and soforth as an extension of what

(01:13:56):
Plato was doing in the Republicand Other psychologists have
been doing for thousands ofyears, through Freud and so
forth, trying to think about thedifferent parts of the psyche.
so the way that I'm applyingthis to my own life is I'm
thinking about my meditationpractice As developing more of
my right hemisphere, both thecognitive and the emotional.

(01:14:18):
philosophy as a practice for meis I think developing a lot of
left brain analytical thinking,but also brain synthetic,
holistic kind of thinking.
and then what I was mentioningearlier in terms of.
Both meditation and breath work.
I want to be able to integratethose into my day.
I'm starting to think about itas Oh, I'm waiting in line at

(01:14:40):
the supermarket, this can be aright brain moment.
Where I can dial down thethinking and dial up my
attention to the present moment.
And my attention to sensationsand whatever's going on in my
mind just to observe what'shappening as a kind of impartial
observer.
So that's one way that I'mtrying to think about becoming a

(01:15:00):
more integrated mind to be ableto have these two hemispheres
talk to each other and to flipback and forth with more skill.

I see it as a kind of extension and deepening of
what you were saying beforeabout whole person education,
because the takeaway here isyou've got the mind.
is embodied and the body isembedded in a context and, what
Jill Balty Taylor's doing in theWhole Brain Living book is doing
us a great service ofsynthesizing some philosophy and

(01:15:33):
psychology and neurosciencetogether in a, really grounded,
way and saying there's not justtwo hemispheres, but there's a,
thinking, right brain and afeeling left brain and they all
are in dialogue with each other.
we contain multiple charactersand so a whole person education
is integrating all of ourcharacters and treating them as

(01:15:55):
wholes within hwhole and homeswithin homes that we're all in.
It's all very holistic, I think.

Yeah.
And I think that it's very easyfor a person to be stronger in
one of those four networks thatshe mentions or one of the
hemispheres.
And just pursue that to thedetriment of the other one.
10 years ago, I was astereotypical academic who was
just super analytical and superconceptual, didn't pay much

(01:16:21):
attention to my body, didn'thave embodied practices.
And at first it was veryunfamiliar to meditate, to do
yoga, to spend time on thesethings.
And I was skeptical at first.
in the way that I was skepticalof breath work, it just seemed
like it was this woo woo kind ofhippie thing.
but yeah, it's also useful tolook back over history and we
can see certain periods ofhistory as being more one sided

(01:16:45):
in one direction than the other.
you look at the hippie movementand there was a lot of great
stuff happening there.
But not always quite enoughthinking and critical reflection
going on.
so I think in the same way thatwe can characterize historical
periods as being a bitimbalanced one way or the other,
I'm trying to see myself in thatway and to correct those
imbalances through setting upnew practices in my life.

Yeah, that's a really nice way of putting it,
and helps me understand thestory we've been telling today
as a story of rebalancing, fromone thing to the next and
integrating as we go.
So I'm very grateful to you forsharing your personal journey
and integrating it with us.
I have one more question that Iask everyone that comes on the

(01:17:28):
podcast, which is, if you couldgift someone a life changing
learning experience, what wouldit be and why?

Wow, that's really difficult.
I would say that for someone newto philosophy, the study of
stoicism can be life changing inthe sense that the ideas are
accessible enough that prettymuch anybody can grab onto them.
having a reading group orsomebody to guide you through

(01:17:57):
some of the basic works ofstoicism, like Epictetus
Handbook, Marcus AureliusMeditations.
that can be life changing whenyou start to see that your
experience of the world is moredetermined by the structure of
your own mind than by the worlditself.
That realization is shocking.

(01:18:18):
Another reason why I appreciatethe Stoics so much is that they
recognized that the conceptualrealization that I just
mentioned that your day to dayminute to minute experience is
more about the structure of yourown mind than about the
structure of the world.
That realization is not nearlyenough to change your life.
They didn't know this, but it'sbecause the neocortex is only

(01:18:42):
one part of your brain and whatyou really need is to start
restructuring other parts ofyour brain as well.
And even though they didn't knowthe neuroscience, they knew that
There needed to be exercises,there needed to be practices to
take this insight and turn itinto, a lived reality through
daily, what came to be calledspiritual exercises later on.

(01:19:03):
whether it's a morningmeditation ritual in the sense
of kind of conceptual meditationon reminding yourself of the
basic ideas of stoicism orreminding yourself of what might
go wrong that day and how youcan respond better.
whether it's about a mementomori, remembering your
mortality, putting things inperspective, but without these
regular exercises, the basicinsight of stoicism is almost

(01:19:26):
too radical for our brain todeal with it.
so I teach a class called theart of living in which the first
half of the class is on stoicismand the second half of the class
is on the past in a meditation.
Some of the definite lacunas andlacks and missing insights in
Stoicism are filled in by astudy of Buddhism, for someone

(01:19:50):
that has a bit of experiencewith philosophy, something that
for me was pretty personallylife changing was doing a year
long study of Aristotle'sNicomachean Ethics.
For me, that book covers thevast majority of the important
topics that humans need to knowabout in order to flourish.
Everything ranging from thevegetative state of your body to

(01:20:13):
philosophical and the role thatemotions play in happiness, the
role that friendship plays inhappiness, the role that
community plays, the role thatpolitics plays.
What I really wish is that, andmaybe someone has done this, is
to write a kind of primer thatfollows the contours of that
book and distills the maininsights into an easy to read

(01:20:37):
fashion.

I don't know if there's that, but there's
certainly Christopher ShieldsAristotle, book with Routledge
Philosophers that does that forall of his stuff, This has
certainly been a life changingexperience for me, spending a
year deep diving on Aristotle.
and the ethics as the crowningwork in that.
Thank you so much for a wideranging and enjoyable

(01:20:59):
conversation, John.
There's lots that we couldcontinue to talk about and I'll
have to talk to you again, whenAGI comes about and see how that
all plays out.

The other thing that, I wanted to mention
earlier is, that I think thatit's likely that AGA will put a
tremendous number of people outof work.
And I think the liberal artswill be the main solution to
this problem people need to knowhow to spend their free time in
a fulfilling, productive way.
in a way that's meaningful forthemselves.

(01:21:29):
It's not economically orientedand I don't think our current
education system is set up forthat.
A liberal education will be moreimportant than ever once we've
achieved some level of AGI.
and so I'm very, Disheartened tosee it being cut all over the
place.
and this I think also relates upto what you're doing at grokkist
is having these resources beavailable in a way that don't

(01:21:52):
get lost when an institutionfolds.
That we can have some likepartial memory, we have these
resources and they will still bethere when we need them in 10,
15, 20 years.
So I think that's something I'mreally excited about of what
you're doing.

Yeah, that's a nice thought, actually.
I hadn't quite put it togetherin that way, as sort of
maintaining a kind of oraltradition of ideas It's,
curating.
Curating is the same.
word root as curiosity and care,which are our other two
favorites.
It's cura, it's Latin cura, soit's the intellectual care of
selection.
so yeah, it all ties togethernicely, I think.

Beautiful.
I love that.
Yeah.
Thank you so much for thisconversation.
I really enjoyed

Oh, thank you.
Me too, John.
It's nice to talk about thesethings.
I hope we will, talk again andtalk separately.
And this might be the start of afriendship like the friend you
made in college.

I look forward to that.

Thank you so much, John.
Take care.

All Episodes

Deep Thinking, Education, and Freedom in an Age of Distraction - Jon Burmeister | S4E5

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Deep Thinking, Education, and Freedom in an Age of Distraction - Jon Burmeister | S4E5