Latest / Tracking Wisdom / Between Conformity and Creativity: Does Science Need More Imagination?

Transcript

Between Conformity and Creativity: Does Science Need More Imagination? · Tracking Wisdom

• 0:03
  Peter: You're listening to the Tracking Wisdom Podcast, exploring the universal truths that we see woven through culture, consciousness, and the human experience.
• 0:18
  Ryan: Good morning everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the Tracking Wisdom Podcast.
• 0:22
  Ryan: I'm Ryan,
• 0:22
  Peter: I'm Peter.
• 0:23
  Ryan: And today we are talking about an interview by the Institute of Art and Ideas discussing the concept of imagination, and creativity, and whether creativity/imagination can help us reframe our understanding of reality.
• 0:40
  Ryan: The panel was with Roger Penrose, the physicist and Nobel Laureate, Iain McGilchrist, Oxford Scholar and author of, Master and His Emissary, and also the Divided Brain.
• 0:53
  Ryan: And with them was Esther Freud, she's an award-winning writer and novelist and representative from the more artistic and creative realm.
• 1:07
  Ryan: Okay so the question being, the idea of human creativity.
• 1:13
  Ryan: So I think we think of art, although there's also the idea of innovation, I think there's a nuance there that we might want to touch on.
• 1:20
  Ryan: But thinking of the human creativity versus cosmic creation and material expression.
• 1:27
  Ryan: Right?
• 1:27
  Ryan: So there's human creativity within the material experience, and then there's this concept of creativity, imagination being a direct influencer on material experience.
• 1:41
  Peter: Yes.
• 1:42
  Peter: And so just to clarify, we're riffing on the question that was presented to the panel more than reporting on what the panel said.
• 1:51
  Ryan: Yes.
• 1:51
  Peter: Because, you were just defining human creativity as art.
• 1:54
  Peter: But in fact, Penrose was describing scientific creativity.
• 1:59
  Peter: He went...
• 1:59
  Ryan: yes
• 1:59
  Peter: at length to describe the nature of creativity in science or the nature of science as requiring some creativity, particularly at this point.
• 2:10
  Ryan: Yes.
• 2:11
  Ryan: Which I do want to talk about.
• 2:12
  Ryan: but before we get to creativity in science, I wanted to discuss a little bit about what creativity means in general, what we mean by creativity, how we think of creativity.
• 2:24
  Ryan: And one element of that is this idea that we see imagination and creativity as central human qualities, vital to technology and innovation as well as the arts.
• 2:38
  Ryan: I don't dispute that, but I wonder how much creativity is a human central human quality versus creativity being a component of consciousness itself.
• 2:50
  Peter: So, I want to kind of reorient 'cause you just went on a direction I didn't expect you to go.
• 2:55
  Peter: Human creativity versus conscious creativity.
• 2:59
  Peter: Is that right?
• 2:59
  Peter: Creativity.
• 3:00
  Peter: Creativity as a, as a
• 3:03
  Ryan: quality of consciousness.
• 3:04
  Peter: As a human quality versus,
• 3:07
  Ryan: yes,
• 3:07
  Peter: as an absolute quality.
• 3:09
  Peter: And you know, for, for newcomers,
• 3:11
  Ryan: oh, yes.
• 3:11
  Peter: I think we have to say that we've pretty much landed as staunch idealists, in other words, that matter arises from consciousness versus the kind of status quo paradigm, which is that consciousness arises from matter.
• 3:26
  Peter: And so as such, we can talk about qualities of consciousness, but if you're a materialist, that might not be.
• 3:33
  Ryan: Right.
• 3:34
  Ryan: So the assertion in the video was creativity is a central human quality.
• 3:41
  Ryan: From an idealism paradigm, if the creation of material experience emerges from, or is somehow secondary to, consciousness itself; then creation, that would be a component of consciousness, and if consciousness innervates all things in the material form.
• 4:01
  Peter: Yeah.
• 4:02
  Ryan: Then it seems to me that creativity or creation is a fundamental essence of all things.
• 4:09
  Ryan: And I was curious what you thought?
• 4:12
  Peter: Right.
• 4:12
  Peter: And, I readily agree.
• 4:14
  Peter: Because creativity is an inherent aspect of consciousness, and because everything that exists, each thing that you could name arises as an element of consciousness or as a consciousness construct, then each thing inherently carries an aspect of creativity to
• 4:32
  Peter: it.
• 4:33
  Peter: And not meaning, not just the mark of creativity
• 4:36
  Ryan: right,
• 4:36
  Peter: But what we're saying is that,
• 4:38
  Ryan: the capacity for creativity.
• 4:40
  Peter: Right.
• 4:41
  Peter: The capacity for creativity.
• 4:42
  Peter: But I don't know what that looks like.
• 4:44
  Ryan: Mm, mm-hmm.
• 4:45
  Peter: So I can pick up this rock and- this rock I'm holding here that you can't see 'cause I'm on mic- And this rock has creativity in it.
• 4:54
  Ryan: Mm.
• 4:54
  Ryan: Mm-hmm.
• 4:55
  Peter: Now what does that mean?
• 4:56
  Ryan: Mean?
• 4:57
  Ryan: Yeah.
• 4:57
  Peter: I don't know what that means.
• 4:59
  Peter: And I think the reason that that's fair, to say both of those things,
• 5:03
  Ryan: mm-hmm
• 5:03
  Peter: is that the idealist model isn't complete yet.
• 5:07
  Peter: So we can imagine how this rock arises from consciousness, but we don't have a complete picture of the mechanisms by which consciousness is expressed in this rock, and therefore how we might see the capacity for creativity in this
• 5:25
  Peter: rock.
• 5:25
  Ryan: Right.
• 5:25
  Peter: I'm trying to be precise about what I'm saying because this rock is a, it's a manifestation of consciousness itself, but I'm not saying this rock is a conscious being.
• 5:35
  Peter: And so what's the difference between those two things?
• 5:38
  Peter: I guess what I have to say is that, the rock is not a being whose consciousness I can access, or I can appreciate.
• 5:46
  Peter: And just as we can't access the consciousness of the rock, we can't access the creativity of the rock.
• 5:54
  Ryan: Hmm.
• 5:54
  Peter: So I think this goes back to something, we've talked about before.
• 5:58
  Peter: Depending on our level of- oh, this is getting complex- as we manifest in physical existence, right?
• 6:10
  Peter: So we are now participating in this physical material world.
• 6:14
  Peter: We have relative levels of complexity as consciousness.
• 6:19
  Ryan: Mm-hmm.
• 6:19
  Peter: So you and I are relatively the same level of conscious complexity.
• 6:25
  Peter: We cannot directly access each other's consciousness.
• 6:28
  Peter: But we can, to some measure, access each other's consciousness, primarily by shared language.
• 6:34
  Ryan: Mm-hmm.
• 6:34
  Peter: But you can kind of see how I'm thinking.
• 6:36
  Peter: You, I can kind of see how you're thinking.
• 6:37
  Peter: It's not perfect, but we have some access there.
• 6:40
  Peter: Our dog or cat, we have less access.
• 6:43
  Peter: Like we can interact with them, say, "oh yeah, I can tell what they're...", you know.
• 6:47
  Peter: But there's much less access with an animal than with another person.
• 6:53
  Peter: And then still less with a rock.
• 6:55
  Peter: So it's a matter, I think of our ability to access consciousness, of other conscious beings, of different levels.
• 7:06
  Ryan: Mm-hmm.
• 7:06
  Peter: And it's not an absolute limitation, of humans, because there are humans who have incredible access to animal consciousness, and presumably, to non-animal consciousness.
• 7:16
  Peter: Which, you can kind of sense into stories and myths about people with access to non-human, not only non-human, but non-animal, non animate, consciousness.
• 7:29
  Peter: So, I went way down a rabbit hole, but just to say that's how I can be comfortable saying the rock has creativity, even though its creativity is even less accessible to me than its consciousness.
• 7:43
  Ryan: Yeah.
• 7:44
  Peter: Which is not at all accessible.
• 7:46
  Peter: It's just that I intuit that there's creativity there.
• 7:50
  Peter: But, this is all presuming an idealist perspective.
• 7:53
  Ryan: Of course.
• 7:54
  Peter: So poor sir.
• 7:56
  Peter: Roger Penrose is totally like, yeah, you guys are cra uh, like, you know- and we've seen him multiple times talking to idealists- and he kind of just like, yeah, I can't see it.
• 8:07
  Ryan: Yeah.
• 8:07
  Peter: Which is fine.
• 8:08
  Peter: So if you, the listener, are a staunch materialist, this is nonsense.
• 8:13
  Peter: It just does not fit into that paradigm.
• 8:16
  Peter: So, I kind of question, and what we noticed from watching this panel, I don't know how you can have this conversation with a materialist.
• 8:25
  Peter: And I think Sir Roger kind of was lost in the, like, he was like, well, you need creativity to come up with new theories.
• 8:32
  Ryan: Right.
• 8:32
  Peter: It's like, that wasn't the question.
• 8:33
  Ryan: Right.
• 8:34
  Peter: You know, it's not like "how does human creativity come up with theories to understand physical reality?"
• 8:39
  Peter: I think the question was more about how does creativity relate to the nature of reality.
• 8:46
  Ryan: Yes.
• 8:46
  Peter: And McGilchrist seemed the most comfortable with it.
• 8:50
  Peter: And then the novelist, she doesn't travel in these circles, or she's not conversant in this way, and so she's talking purely from an artistic perspective.
• 8:58
  Peter: Which was fine, and interesting, and I think more accessible, to more people, than either the physicist or the the philosopher.
• 9:07
  Ryan: Right.
• 9:08
  Peter: So, but I'm, I'm like, as we start to talk about this, I'm really acutely aware of what I believe is gonna sound like nonsense depending on your personal framework,
• 9:16
  Ryan: right?
• 9:16
  Peter: Yeah.
• 9:17
  Ryan: Yeah.
• 9:18
  Ryan: So one thing I wanted to note was we were referring to consciousness as separate beings, where at the most foundational level we're talking about creativity being the expression of the one consciousness through all of the emanations of said
• 9:38
  Ryan: consciousness.
• 9:40
  Ryan: But when we're talking about creativity in the material sense, so now coming out of cosmic creation into, creative acts, innovation within the material existence.
• 9:54
  Ryan: Um, I think it's undoubtable that art and innovation slash technology are both using creativity.
• 10:04
  Ryan: I am kind of curious about a distinction between art and innovation.
• 10:09
  Ryan: Different endpoints, I guess is what it is.
• 10:11
  Peter: Yeah, I thought that's exactly what I was gonna say.
• 10:13
  Ryan: And it's probably a bit of semantics.
• 10:16
  Ryan: Esther Freud, she's a novelist so she was talking about story, and her point was stories in general aren't new.
• 10:26
  Ryan: Story archetypes, like the hero's journey or whatever archetype you want to take, they're all the same stories told in a different way.
• 10:34
  Ryan: And that it's incumbent upon the author slash artist slash whatever to find a new and unique way of telling a story.
• 10:45
  Ryan: And for me, art all art is a story.
• 10:48
  Ryan: That's why we connect to it, as human beings.
• 10:51
  Peter: Okay.
• 10:51
  Peter: So now I want to put some nuance on the terminology of creativity and innovation.
• 10:57
  Ryan: Mm-hmm.
• 10:57
  Ryan: Yes.
• 10:57
  Peter: Because I think, in Western culture, innovation implies technological.
• 11:02
  Peter: But I think in an absolute, innovation is just another word for creativity.
• 11:07
  Ryan: Yeah.
• 11:07
  Peter: Because you can have an innovative novel.
• 11:09
  Ryan: Absolutely.
• 11:10
  Peter: Right?
• 11:10
  Peter: You can innovate a way of storytelling.
• 11:13
  Peter: A book I read a little while ago had the character find a book in library and started to read the book.
• 11:20
  Peter: And the book was telling the character's own story.
• 11:23
  Ryan: Hmm.
• 11:23
  Peter: And, and so, throughout the book, characters are finding books that are telling their own stories, and then the characters in the stories eventually come together.
• 11:34
  Peter: And so for me, I was like, wow, this is a really exciting novel.
• 11:38
  Peter: 'cause you couldn't tell from page to page whether you were in this story or whether you were in the meta story of another character.
• 11:46
  Ryan: Oh, that's cool.
• 11:47
  Peter: So it was very cool.
• 11:48
  Peter: And I was like, oh, this is quite great.
• 11:50
  Peter: This is a very original, novel form for, for me it was.
• 11:54
  Peter: So, you know we, we say creativity versus innovation.
• 11:58
  Peter: Now, to me that was an innovative novel,
• 12:02
  Ryan: right
• 12:02
  Peter: that was an innovation in the technology of novel storytelling.
• 12:06
  Ryan: Yeah.
• 12:07
  Peter: But I think the way you were using innovation was in the common sense of technological innovation, which is the word we use for creativity instead of creativity because creativity, air quotes means art.
• 12:19
  Ryan: Right.
• 12:20
  Peter: And innovation, air quotes means technology or STEM or some kind of, you know, hard science thing.
• 12:26
  Peter: Which is what Roger was talking about.
• 12:28
  Peter: Well, we need innovation in our theory because the theory's not working.
• 12:33
  Peter: So we need to innovate something new.
• 12:35
  Peter: So in a sense I was thinking, well actually innovation is the bigger umbrella for creativity.
• 12:42
  Peter: But it really doesn't matter.
• 12:43
  Peter: I mean, you could say either you-
• 12:45
  Ryan: they're all kind of synonymous-
• 12:46
  Peter: pick the one that you, that resonates with you more.
• 12:49
  Ryan: Yes.
• 12:49
  Peter: Right?
• 12:49
  Peter: So, but they mean the same thing, we just mean to apply them in different areas of focus.
• 12:54
  Peter: And so that's what you said and, as you were introducing the subject, I immediately intuited this distinction between innovation, creativity; which you said, was art is communication.
• 13:07
  Peter: And, so I would say, yeah, art is creativity that's intended to communicate to another person.
• 13:15
  Peter: Innovation is creativity that's more interacting with non-human consciousness.
• 13:21
  Ryan: Hmm.
• 13:22
  Peter: So in the sense that a novel is a thing
• 13:25
  Ryan: mm-hmm.
• 13:26
  Peter: In our universe, which is therefore a expression of consciousness or a conscious construct, right?
• 13:32
  Ryan: Yep.
• 13:33
  Peter: Any technology that we use is a physical manifestation of consciousness in our universe, but we don't talk to those manifestations.
• 13:42
  Peter: Instead, we use our creativity in a more direct way, which we call innovation, to influence how we interact with that thing.
• 13:51
  Peter: Does that make sense?
• 13:53
  Ryan: Yeah, I think that makes sense.
• 13:54
  Ryan: I had utility, but that's kind of where I was like technology slash innovation, so I had innovation, but you're absolutely right as far as the term innovation is not exclusive to STEM, but instead of telling story, or communicating,
• 14:15
  Ryan: technology is used, has has usefulness.
• 14:19
  Peter: I was gonna say, you know, I was gonna say, and, and not that we never talk to our technology.
• 14:23
  Peter: Really.
• 14:23
  Peter: Not that we don't yell at our cars.
• 14:25
  Ryan: Yeah.
• 14:25
  Peter: Um,
• 14:26
  Ryan: it doesn't work though.
• 14:27
  Peter: Well, I'm actually very intrigued by this kind of insight or way of looking at it.
• 14:33
  Peter: Right?
• 14:33
  Peter: Communication or art or expression is how we interact with other human consciousness, right?
• 14:42
  Ryan: Mm-hmm
• 14:42
  Peter: and everything else is how we interact with the non-human consciousness.
• 14:47
  Peter: And, there's a way of interacting with human consciousness that is non-physical and nonverbal.
• 14:55
  Ryan: Mm-hmm.
• 14:56
  Peter: I mean, specifically in my experience, I'm talking about GAE.
• 14:59
  Peter: But of course what we're talking about are, what?
• 15:02
  Peter: Wisdom practices or spiritual practices or these nonconventional practices, which put us in touch with each other in nonconventional ways?
• 15:13
  Ryan: Mm-hmm.
• 15:13
  Peter: And art, art is kind of in the middle there.
• 15:17
  Ryan: So I just had a thought, I don't know how this will resonate with you, but I was thinking art as being sort of the higher self-consciousness expression and technology being the ego's version of expression.
• 15:33
  Peter: Yes.
• 15:35
  Peter: And so we could go to McGilchrist, and take left brain and right brain.
• 15:39
  Ryan: Right.
• 15:39
  Peter: And I would put language, like literal language in left brain.
• 15:45
  Ryan: Right.
• 15:45
  Peter: And technology.
• 15:46
  Peter: Left brain.
• 15:47
  Ryan: Yeah.
• 15:48
  Peter: And poetry.
• 15:49
  Peter: And this is where it gets, this is where you kind of slide down the continuum, right.
• 15:55
  Peter: You can use language imprecisely.
• 15:57
  Ryan: Yeah.
• 15:58
  Peter: For poetry where it's pure art and the poetry is communicating.
• 16:03
  Peter: Not through language, literally.
• 16:06
  Ryan: Right.
• 16:06
  Peter: But through art.
• 16:07
  Ryan: Yep.
• 16:08
  Peter: And so you're in that right brain area, even though you're using language to do it.
• 16:12
  Ryan: Yeah.
• 16:12
  Peter: But yes, I,
• 16:13
  Ryan: yeah.
• 16:14
  Peter: Yeah.
• 16:14
  Ryan: It's interesting.
• 16:15
  Ryan: Um, we've touched on this a little bit before it came up again, sort of indirectly, is, the relation of philosophy and intuition on scientific thesis.
• 16:28
  Ryan: Historically there was a much stronger, connection or, collaboration with, philosophical thought practices and scientific pursuits; and in more modern time, there's been a fracture or distancing of those two things.
• 16:47
  Ryan: And what Roger and Iain were saying was that, now getting towards creativity and science, we're at an impasse, sort of in the scientific discovery where the theories aren't working the way that they should or or there's inconsistency or
• 17:07
  Ryan: contradiction that is yet to be explained.
• 17:10
  Ryan: So using creativity is necessary, injecting creativity is necessary to move us to the next phase of that.
• 17:18
  Peter: Yeah.
• 17:18
  Peter: So this idea of, you know, the, the model being incomplete or internally self inconsistent or wrong.
• 17:26
  Ryan: Right?
• 17:26
  Peter: Right?
• 17:27
  Peter: And, um, all models are wrong.
• 17:30
  Ryan: Yeah.
• 17:30
  Ryan: Right.
• 17:30
  Peter: Right?
• 17:31
  Peter: So, a model is not wrong, to the extent which, we have not yet applied it, to a situation where it no longer works.
• 17:39
  Ryan: Right.
• 17:39
  Peter: We haven't found the limits of our model, and that's, I think, where we are with quantum physics.
• 17:45
  Peter: Although, no, I guess that's not fair to say because it happened at the beginning.
• 17:49
  Peter: Right?
• 17:49
  Peter: Pretty much the founders very quickly bumped up against the limits of their model.
• 17:55
  Peter: We know it's not complete, but the part that we have, it does work.
• 18:00
  Peter: It, it, it's extremely effective in creating atomic bombs and iPhones.
• 18:04
  Peter: So we can keep on doing that.
• 18:06
  Peter: And Penrose is just expressing we found the limits of this model, that's our cue to use creativity to go beyond and fix it, or make it more complete, you know, not complete.
• 18:19
  Peter: Mm-hmm.
• 18:19
  Peter: No model is ever complete.
• 18:20
  Peter: Cause the map is not the territory.
• 18:22
  Ryan: Right.
• 18:22
  Peter: The model is just the model.
• 18:24
  Peter: And, and so I think he has been frustrated for some time.
• 18:27
  Peter: Yeah.
• 18:28
  Peter: I mean, I think it's pretty clear when you hear him talk, that no one has gone back to say, Hey, let's make this model more complete, we can do it.
• 18:36
  Peter: And I think the key is what you, you referenced, the split of philosophy and science.
• 18:45
  Ryan: Yeah.
• 18:46
  Peter: And now you and I are very clearly seeing the, the rapprochement.
• 18:51
  Peter: Right.
• 18:51
  Peter: We keep on seeing, and hearing, philosophers reengaging and scientists, reengaging with philosophers.
• 18:59
  Peter: I mean, I first became aware of it a few decades ago, with the Dalai Lama engaging with scientists, and scientists like, yeah, we need this guy in our conference because he's giving us kind of breakthrough ideas, because he's
• 19:11
  Peter: not coming from this inherently materialistic world worldview.
• 19:16
  Ryan: Yeah.
• 19:16
  Peter: But I think, you know, until recently it's been a few of these notable figures that have kind of crossed the aisle on that.
• 19:25
  Peter: I think there was some popes who were pretty pro-science.
• 19:29
  Ryan: Mm-hmm.
• 19:29
  Peter: But they're the standouts, because it's so unusual.
• 19:33
  Ryan: Yeah.
• 19:33
  Peter: But I think now we're seeing, more exchange between philosophers and physicists.
• 19:39
  Ryan: Yeah.
• 19:39
  Ryan: As they were talking about the need for creativity, Iain McGilchrist was talking about how creativity as a function can't be an output of a group, like a large group.
• 19:52
  Peter: Oh yeah.
• 19:52
  Ryan: He talked, he said specifically of a committee, right?
• 19:55
  Peter: Yes.
• 19:55
  Ryan: You you can't committee-ize, art or creativity.
• 19:59
  Ryan: But the point being that he was, he was suggesting that, the days of Einstein and Schrodinger and all of them, at the turn of the last century, we were sort of at a pinnacle of scientific progress because there
• 20:15
  Ryan: was this openness to creativity.
• 20:18
  Peter: He was specifically saying, now papers have hundreds of authors on them.
• 20:22
  Peter: And therefore everyone is struggling for acceptability or, or compatibility.
• 20:28
  Peter: You know, and so you're kind of, following the level of mediocrity.
• 20:32
  Ryan: Mm-hmm.
• 20:32
  Peter: Right?
• 20:33
  Peter: In, in terms of a new paper, with a hundred people on it.
• 20:37
  Peter: Which is a product of the technology, because the technology is so resource intensive, that you have to involve a hundred collaborators in order to split the cost.
• 20:46
  Ryan: Right.
• 20:47
  Ryan: And as a function of institution, and conformism, because they have a tendency for self-preservation once they get to a certain size and influence.
• 20:56
  Ryan: And because funding for highly detailed and complex studies, is a necessary part of scientific pursuit, people are incentivized to sort of toe a line of common wisdom, instead of pushing boundaries.
• 21:16
  Ryan: That being, the stifling of creativity, due to this overarching committee- ization of science through institution.
• 21:26
  Ryan: But you made a comment off mic that I thought was interesting, which was you mentioned ideas being synthesized.
• 21:35
  Ryan: There is some level of group activity that benefits creativity.
• 21:41
  Ryan: When you can bounce ideas,
• 21:44
  Peter: Yes
• 21:44
  Ryan: and synthesize ideas, and come up with even new things that the, one person couldn't think of in their own.
• 21:52
  Ryan: But I, and I think there's a, there's an element of scale here.
• 21:55
  Peter: Yes.
• 21:56
  Peter: Yes.
• 21:56
  Ryan: Iain McGilchrist had mentioned maybe two or three.
• 21:59
  Ryan: I think it can probably go to like 10 or 20.
• 22:03
  Peter: So this is an aspect of science that's gone back and forth over time of isolation versus collaboration.
• 22:11
  Ryan: Right.
• 22:11
  Peter: Right?
• 22:12
  Peter: And then people realize if we started collaborating or we changed the structure of meetings or we change the layout of the research building so that people naturally run into each other and you know, they sit down for coffee,
• 22:25
  Peter: and you get more collaboration, and then you get more breakthrough.
• 22:29
  Ryan: Right?
• 22:29
  Peter: So, there is this tuning aspect to it, that you don't just stick in one state.
• 22:36
  Peter: You don't just stick in the lab and become completely siloed, and not get others' ideas.
• 22:43
  Peter: But you also don't work solely in committee and never have independent thought.
• 22:47
  Ryan: Right.
• 22:48
  Peter: And, and so I think it sounds like the, the status quo now is way too far the other way
• 22:55
  Ryan: Yeah.
• 22:55
  Peter: Of group think.
• 22:56
  Ryan: Yeah.
• 22:56
  Peter: I've heard this many times in physics.
• 23:00
  Ryan: Yeah.
• 23:00
  Peter: Particularly.
• 23:00
  Ryan: Yeah.
• 23:01
  Peter: I'm sure it's true throughout science.
• 23:02
  Peter: Yeah.
• 23:03
  Ryan: As we were discussing off mic, we mentioned that institution is not inherently bad and that there is valid and legitimate reasons, benefits, that are the impetus to institutionalization of something.
• 23:19
  Ryan: And, at least in the scientific realm, this idea of validation or the peer review verification of findings, right?
• 23:29
  Ryan: A scrutinization of the scientific method or process.
• 23:34
  Ryan: And I, I am throwing out this question of validation versus marketplace of ideas and I think that, you know, is there more.
• 23:43
  Ryan: Democratic way for ideas to be sussed out through community as opposed to centralized institution.
• 23:53
  Ryan: And one comment that I got from Vinay Prasad, scientist, oncologist, researcher, was the value of preprint.
• 24:02
  Ryan: That there should be, more emphasis on trying to engage with these pre-print forums.
• 24:08
  Ryan: Making it available, sort of really broad and having the whole community really, invested in, assessing and, and discussing.
• 24:18
  Ryan: I guess this kind of comes to that communal, uh, committee approach
• 24:22
  Peter: Yeah.
• 24:23
  Peter: So, I was going a different direction with institution in terms of, scalability of material resources.
• 24:29
  Ryan: Sure.
• 24:30
  Ryan: Yeah.
• 24:30
  Peter: But obviously.
• 24:32
  Peter: For science, peer review is a central function.
• 24:37
  Peter: I mean, it is, it is institution.
• 24:40
  Peter: It's kind of decentralized institution.
• 24:42
  Peter: Right?
• 24:43
  Peter: Because peer review doesn't happen in
• 24:45
  Ryan: Right
• 24:45
  Peter: you know, in a fixed committee.
• 24:46
  Ryan: Mm-hmm.
• 24:47
  Peter: But it does happen through publishers.
• 24:51
  Ryan: Right.
• 24:51
  Peter: Right?
• 24:52
  Peter: It's not like the entire community does a peer review.
• 24:55
  Peter: A publisher selects a bunch of reviewers, and it goes out that way.
• 25:00
  Peter: And so I think part of the problem is there's bias built in and, and there's pressure.
• 25:07
  Peter: And, and then that the grant process, and choosing your research topic process, is like "well, let me choose what everybody else is doing 'cause this is hot right now, so I'm gonna get funding for it."
• 25:18
  Ryan: Right.
• 25:19
  Peter: And I'm gonna get published because people wanna publish this because this is what people are interested in versus where the work needs to be done.
• 25:26
  Ryan: Right.
• 25:26
  Peter: Right?
• 25:27
  Peter: I think that the idea that you're talking about of kind of break open the review process and put the ideas out there.
• 25:35
  Peter: Like here are some new ideas that people are working on.
• 25:37
  Peter: It's not peer reviewed.
• 25:38
  Ryan: Mm-hmm.
• 25:38
  Peter: It hasn't been granted the status of publication, but it's pre-print.
• 25:43
  Peter: And therefore, more people can be inspired.
• 25:47
  Ryan: Mm-hmm.
• 25:47
  Peter: Or can catch the problem that this review committee they're not gonna see that because they're incentivized not to see the problem.
• 25:55
  Peter: They wanna, they wanna publish it for whatever reason.
• 25:57
  Peter: Science is messy.
• 25:58
  Ryan: Yeah.
• 25:58
  Peter: Um, as someone just told me.
• 26:00
  Ryan: I like the way you had called it technology.
• 26:03
  Ryan: Off mic, you had said institution, as a tool, is kind of like a technology.
• 26:09
  Ryan: And we don't see it as that, right?
• 26:12
  Peter: Yes.
• 26:12
  Ryan: We pedestalize it as the ultimate authoritative
• 26:15
  Peter: or we demonize it
• 26:16
  Ryan: or we demonize it should,
• 26:17
  Peter: like, there's no good reason, like "all institutions should be torn down!"
• 26:21
  Ryan: We perhaps give it too much, well, I guess authority, but whatever the
• 26:26
  Peter: Right.
• 26:26
  Ryan: The converse of it.
• 26:27
  Peter: Right.
• 26:27
  Peter: So much value.
• 26:27
  Peter: Value, we overvalue it.
• 26:28
  Ryan: Yes.
• 26:29
  Peter: We say it's inherently good.
• 26:30
  Peter: So anything it does is good
• 26:32
  Ryan: or the converse,
• 26:32
  Peter: or it inherently bad.
• 26:33
  Peter: Yeah.
• 26:34
  Ryan: And if we view it more like a technology, we can assess it for its limitations and trying to fill in those gaps instead of just putting all the eggs in that basket.
• 26:45
  Peter: This, this calls me back to this pendulum.
• 26:48
  Peter: Like trying to fine tune, trying to find balance and because you have to have mastery of a tool, right?
• 26:56
  Peter: You have to have people who are masters of it.
• 26:58
  Peter: And you can't have only masters.
• 27:01
  Peter: A tool that is only useful to a master, with 10,000 hours of experience, is not a very useful tool.
• 27:07
  Ryan: Right.
• 27:08
  Peter: Right?
• 27:08
  Peter: So you wanna have some masters, you want to have wide application, you wanna have discipline, but you want to have innovation.
• 27:16
  Peter: I guess that that's where I'm, trying to point is this, this balance between discipline and innovation.
• 27:21
  Ryan: Mm-hmm
• 27:21
  Peter: you don't want everything becoming a nail because the hammer's the most popular tool.
• 27:26
  Peter: And yet you don't want people saying, oh no, this is the only way you can use a hammer.
• 27:31
  Peter: So you need the discipline to actually read the manual, and then you need the innovation to not say, "oh no, I can't do that because the manual says I can't do that.
• 27:40
  Peter: Oh, this tool is only designed for this, so I can't do this other thing."
• 27:43
  Ryan: Right.
• 27:44
  Peter: These are traps that I, I guess they're intrinsic human traps
• 27:48
  Ryan: Yeah.
• 27:48
  Peter: That we can fall into.
• 27:49
  Peter: And so, I guess it's let's try to engage with our institutions, in ways that benefit from the upsides,
• 27:58
  Ryan: Right
• 27:58
  Peter: and mitigate the downsides.
• 28:00
  Ryan: Yeah.
• 28:01
  Peter: And don't just go along without understanding.
• 28:04
  Ryan: Yeah,
• 28:04
  Peter: yeah.
• 28:04
  Ryan: Yeah.
• 28:05
  Ryan: I agree.
• 28:07
  Ryan: Uh, so creativity, imagination can it help us reframe our understanding of reality.
• 28:12
  Ryan: Nah.
• 28:15
  Ryan: Uh, I think it's obvious that, and even Roger Penrose agreed, we've reached a point where something needs to give.
• 28:25
  Ryan: We need to be reengaging the philosophy and intuition to create our thesis, and point the funding- I guess that's a whole other...
• 28:35
  Ryan: because that, that's a big barrier, right?
• 28:37
  Ryan: People can have all kinds of ideas, but if they don't get funded...
• 28:40
  Peter: well, this is- and now you're going to the whole capitalist
• 28:44
  Ryan: right
• 28:44
  Peter: model and
• 28:45
  Ryan: Yeah
• 28:45
  Peter: now you're talking about really large scale institutions, right?
• 28:48
  Peter: Right.
• 28:49
  Peter: Like yeah, it got us really far.
• 28:51
  Ryan: Yeah.
• 28:51
  Peter: You know, it, it created a lot of innovation and, and scale.
• 28:56
  Peter: In a good way.
• 28:57
  Peter: And in a bad way.
• 28:58
  Peter: And now it's like preventing us from moving forward.
• 29:00
  Ryan: Yeah.
• 29:00
  Peter: Uh, yeah.
• 29:02
  Ryan: Okay.
• 29:03
  Ryan: Then on that note, we will put the, uh, link to the full debate for you, for your listening pleasure.
• 29:12
  Ryan: And love to hear what you guys think about it.
• 29:15
  Ryan: And I guess we'll see you guys next time.
• 29:17
  Peter: See you next time.
• 29:17
  Ryan: Bye
• 29:18
  Peter: bye.
• 29:20
  Peter: Thank you for listening to the Tracking Wisdom podcast.
• 29:23
  Peter: Join us next time as we continue the discussion.
• 29:26
  Peter: Don't forget to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, and visit www.eth-studio.com for more information and content