"Mindless:" don't fall for all-or-nothing thinking

Neuroscience, it’s said, can often answer the obvious questions but rarely the interesting ones.

Writing in the New Yorker, Adam Gopnik has a go at what the mapped brain says about the self-referential mind.

The neurological turn has become what the 'cultural' turn was a few decades ago: the all-purpose non-explanation explanation of everything. Thirty years ago, you could feel loftily significant by attaching the word 'culture' to anything you wanted to inspect: we didn’t live in a violent country, we lived in a 'culture of violence'; we didn’t have sharp political differences, we lived in a 'culture of complaint'; and so on. In those days, Time, taking up the American pursuit of pleasure, praised Christopher Lasch’s 'The Culture of Narcissism'; now Time has a cover story on happiness and asks whether we are 'hardwired' to pursue it.

We should resist this thinking, according to him.

The really curious thing about minds and brains is that the truth about them lies not somewhere in the middle but simultaneously on both extremes. We know already that the wet bits of the brain change the moods of the mind: that’s why a lot of champagne gets sold on Valentine’s Day. On the other hand, if the mind were not a high-level symbol-managing device, flower sales would not rise on Valentine’s Day, too.

Gopnik calls the debate about "minds and brains" a "myth," one that depends on two competing and enduring claims, neither of which will ever completely prevail. And having had the field much to itself recently, the brains-are-us crowd has encountered a popular resistance. Heightening differences, especially when those differences make their way into the popular media, is all well and good. Scientists and the journalists interested in brain studies have to make a living too.

But I liked Gopnik's idea of truths living "simultaneously on both extremes" because, in one sense, that's what the IdeaFestival is all about. I'm not suggesting that all truths are equal, just that whatever is big-T true about how, for example, the brain produces the sentient magic of choosing based on hypothesized futures - well, that ought to humble us. That truth and others are beyond what we can understand now. They may be beyond what we will ever understand.

On particularly crystalline evenings like the one I experienced Wednesday night, I can stand outside while photons that have journeyed for many thousands of years empty into my eyes and produce the snap, crackle and pop of recognition. Having an amateur's appreciation for the heavens, I know they originate in starry furnaces that are fusing hydrogen and, in other cases, slightly heavier elements. The really interesting question, though, is that even while I can understand that these bodies are under incomprehensible pressures and are releasing a commensurate and staggering energy, I can't begin to fathom how those elemental beginnings would coalesce 13.8 billion years later into this introspective and curious being on a grassy hill slowly scanning Eden, ticking off Antares and Vega, Cassiopeia and Saturn.

It's the interesting questions that demand our attention. And the big-T truths, whatever they may be, are rarely if ever the result of either-or thinking. Nor can they be used in any sentence that includes the phrase "nothing but," as in "X is 'nothing but....'"

Big-T truths are about "this too."

Gopnik's editor gave his piece the title, "Mindless." That works for me. Because binary thinking, whether it be on the subject of neuroscience or any other area that requires serious attention and a willingness to tolerate ambiguity, barely qualifies as thinking at all. Brain scans alone will never explain, as Gopnik says, why "Mozart is more profound than Manilow" in part because - and here's the kicker - we also know that our thoughts are continually changing the medium from which they emerge. "Philosophy" may never "someday dissolve into psychology and psychology into neurology," and that's perfectly fine. Like the observed reality produced in double slit experiments or the confounding truths about physical non-locality from Bell's theorem, meaning that emerges from the stuff of life is both obvious and paradoxical. Do brain maps draw back the curtain on a three pound gelatinous mass that can render the spectroscopic identity of stars? Yes! I can watch that brain at work. But can this lump of matter, the thing that does the thinking and then somehow named itself - ever truly understand itself? That's an entirely different, and more interesting, question.

Stay curious.

Wayne

Attribution
Share Alike

Curiosity is the dance

If I could tell you what it meant, there would be no point in dancing it. - Isadora Duncan

In this video, participants in IdeaFestival 2012 explain that curiosity is a crucial and restless state of mind.

Emily Foerster, for example, points out that while any business must of course pay attention to profit and loss statements and return on investment, not taking time out "to play" will harm its future prospects.

With its question-answer-question dynamic, Baratunde Thurston calls curiosity a "virtuous cycle of magic."

But my favorite quote comes from artist Hasan Elahi, who helpfully points out that "interesting things come from people interested in things." In other words, it's impossible to deliver something of interest without having an interest.

What I appreciate so much about the Duncan quote at the top is that meaningful outcomes require of us a certain belief, an interest in possibility and a willingness to reinterpret the facts of the matter in a different way, to be open-minded rather than singleminded, to think "what if?" instead of "what for?"

Curiosity is the dance.

I hope to see you at IdeaFestival 2013!

Wayne

Considering that Festival Pass? Act now

Please remember, beginning Monday, Sept. 2, the price for an IdeaFestival 2013 Festival Pass will increase from $375 to $450. If you've been thinking about making a purchase, now is the time! And, don’t forget to add your Thrivals Pass for only $49 more.

If available, a limited number of single session tickets, as well as overflow seating, will be on sale during the Festival beginning at 10:00a on Monday, Sep., 23. Tickets may be purchased in person at the Kentucky Center Box Office or by phone at 502-584-7777.

The incredible agenda and associated speaker bios for 2013 are here and here, respectively. Since most of us live on our mobiles, we will soon let you know where to point your smartphone browser to get a cleaned up and simplified version of the festival web site. It will make tracking events and relevant information during the festival much easier.

An ever expanding number of events affiliated with the festival are also happening throughout the week! They may be found here. If you find one of interest, please check with that event for separate registration and pricing.

During the events this year, please use the #IF13 hashtag when tweeting about the festival. We'll be on the other end, reading. And as always, #staycurious.

Wayne

Image of Teller from the IdeaFestival photo vault by Geoff Oliver Bugbee

Gretchen Rubin video: To be happy, know yourself

In this terrific video, Gretchen Rubin explains that self-knowledge, not power or health or positive thinking, is the key to happiness. The problem? To know ourselves requires a bit of daring.

It may call on us to give something up.

There is, as she says, "a sadness" to self-knowledge because it is also the simultaneous acknowledgement of what we are not. But once we overcome the idea of what happiness should mean and focus on what it does mean for each of us as individuals, life begins.

She offers this advice: "we should always pay very special attention to anything we try to hide."

At IdeaFestival 2013, you will hear Oliver Burkeman, author of "Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking," talk about the unusual route some people have taken to their respective happy places. The festival recently interviewed Burkeman for its Five Questions series, where he touches on the danger of positive thinking. Give it a watch.

I suspect that at IdeaFestival 2013 he will similarly emphasis that self-knowledge can be uncomfortable. But as with the related state of awe, the irony is that it adds by subtraction, by showing us what we are not.

I hope to see you at IdeaFestival 2013! Please remember that beginning September 2 prices for Festival Pass will increase.

Stay curious.

Wayne

Hasan Elahi video - Romancing the FBI

Is it possible to hide in plain sight?

One artist responds to being mistakenly identified as a terrorist by creating an online record of his every move, meal and destination. In the words of Hasan Elahi, what began as a pragmatic solution to the problem of being singled out, though, has evolved over the last ten years into an elaborate art project.

He jokes in the video that "he just recently celebrated his 10th anniversary with the FBI." And as romantic as that may sound, the artist in him wonders: what happens to a society that no longer has a need to forget?

Elahi, one of the Creative Capital artists who attended and participated in what has become an annual and much anticipated event at the IdeaFestival, is also the source of this wonderful quote pulled from last year's "Stay Curious" video:

Interesting things come from people interested in things.

There is a lot of truth in that simple statement.

If you haven't purchased your Festival Pass for IdeaFestival 2013, you may want to act soon! After Sept. 1, the prices for passes will increase.

Wayne