Awaken from the Meaning Crisis Ep2.

Flow, Metaphor and the Axial Revolution

Flow state

• Could be likened to ‘being in the zone’
• To achieve it: Demands of the current situation should go slightly beyond the current skill level.
• There are flow-induction machines, e.g., video games.
• Requirements:
  • tight feedback with environment
  • failure should matter
• Some scenarios that include flow and fulfill the above requirements: playing jazz, martial arts, rock climbing.
• Flow state is connected to meaning in life. They are directly propotional.
• Meaning in life → We create this meaning. It is not life meaning of life where people leave it to chance and destiny.
• Flow state is universal across groups.
• One is deeply at one with things.
• Time is passing differently.
• Self-consciousness is not present. It disappears. The inner critic that limits us is not present.
• Super salient → we are more vibrant. Occurrences are more intense.
• It is the best experience you can have, and it is where you do your best work.
• Mindfulness increases capacity to get into flow state.
• Cascade of insights, that in turn leads to more insight.
• We gain capacity for implicit learning – we pick up on complex patterns in your environment.
• Unbeknownst to us.
• Activates ‘psychic abilities’. In quotes. Our actions and decisions look like magic to the ordinary observer.

Implicit Learning

• Intuition is as a result of implicit learning.
• Intuition and bias are different sides of the same coin:
  • Intuition is good learning and what we should strive for. As a result of casual patterns that actually exist
  • Bias is bad learning and something we should look out for. As a result of correlations that we take too seriously.
• We should train our implicit learning to pick up on the casual patterns instead of the correlations.
• We should set up the right context so that implicit learning can occur.
• Science can be though of as distinguishing the casual from the correlation.
• Conditions for flow are the same for implicit learning. They reinforce each other:
  • clear information
  • tightly coupled feedback
  • failure matters
• We lean real complex patterns.
• Flow deeply enhances cognition.

Metaphor

• Ability to connect things that are not connected.
• Pervasive and profound
• How you make creative connections between ideas.
• Restructures how you think of things/ideas.

Axial Revolution

• New kind of literacy
• There was a collapse – devastating, almost like apocalypse.
• Alphabetic literacy invented. Easier and more powerful. It helps:
  • write down ideas – we can come back to them
  • correct ideas that were previous wrong.
  • Store ideas.
• Second order thinking – thinking about thinking
• Metacognition – awareness of your mind
• examine your own thinking and correct it.
• Coinage is invented. Trains you:
  • abstract symbol system
  • numeracy. Counting.
• Both leads to realizing:
  • how much you can correct cognition
  • enhancing awareness of self deceptiveness and awareness of errors in our cognition.