From: jimruttshow8596
The Process of Relevance Realization
The concept of relevance is understood not as having an essence, but as a process 02:20:00. Many categories, as noted by Wittgenstein, lack an Aristotelian essence, meaning there isn’t a fixed set of necessary and sufficient conditions shared by all members 02:33:00. Quine further argued that the purpose of science is to discover categories that do possess an essence, defined as properties that support the broadest possible explanatory generalizations, exemplified by elements like gold 03:06:00.
Relevance, however, does not exhibit these properties. It lacks systematic import—learning about one relevant thing does not inform about another, unlike a category like “horses” 05:01:00. It is neither homogeneous, stable, nor intrinsic, meaning it changes constantly and is dependent on the observer 06:37:00. Therefore, there is no scientific “essence” to relevance; the brain does not discover it as a fixed property in the world 07:05:00.
Connection to Darwinian Fittedness
The concept of relevance is analogous to Darwinian fitness or “fittedness” 07:41:00. Just as there is no single essence to what makes an organism “fit” (it could be big, small, fast, slow, complex, or simple depending on the environment), there is no essence to relevance 07:58:00. Darwin proposed evolution by natural selection as a universal process by which fittedness is continually redefined and redesigned 08:31:00. Similarly, relevance realization is a process by which relevance is constantly evolving, serving as a lens for maneuvering in a highly complex and co-evolutionary world 09:00:00. This dynamic nature is a key tool in our cognition for making sense of a combinatorically explosive and constantly changing world 09:34:00.
Relevance Realization and Sacredness
Sacredness can be understood as a profound enhancement of our relevance realization and connectedness—how we are connected to ourselves, each other, and the world 10:48:00. This aligns with literature on the meaning in life, which emphasizes the realization (both awareness and actualization) of connectedness 11:01:00. Since there is no perfection or finality to this cognitive fittedness, sacredness is experienced as the “inexhaustibility of our reality” 11:18:00. This perspective resonates with the Neo-Platonic Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition’s notion of epictasis, where the experience of God is found in the ongoing affordance of continual self-transcendence, rather than a final rest 11:55:00. It’s about an ongoing sense of discovery of ever-deepening connectedness 12:47:00.
Religio: Realization of Connectedness
Religio is defined as the realization—in both senses of awareness and actualization—of the fundamental connectedness or fittedness that is at the core of our cognitive agency 20:50:00. A defining feature of relevance realization is that it frequently finds itself relevant, recursively functioning upon itself in a process of self-correction 21:14:00. Therefore, anything that corrects, improves, or enhances our relevance realization and our realization of connectedness is positively motivating and functionally beneficial 21:40:00. This connectedness extends to ourselves as autopoietic beings, to each other as sociocultural beings, and to the world as dynamically evolving cognitive systems 22:00:00.
Addressing Perennial Problems via Relevance Realization
Religio is a significant part of the solution to “perennial problems”—issues that arise across time and cultures due to the very processes that make humans adaptively fitted to their environment, but also vulnerable to self-deception and self-destruction 22:34:00. Examples include:
- Modal confusion: Conflating the “being mode” and “having mode” 22:59:00.
- Absurdity: The clash between first-person and cosmic perspectives 23:10:00.
- Alienation: Being pulled between individuation and group participation 23:31:00.
- Parasitic processing: Cognitive biases that lead to self-deceptive and self-destructive foolishness 23:40:00.
Religio acts as a cultural superstructure that guides, constrains, and “seduces” relevance realization towards flourishing 25:31:00. While religions often claim to have the “true compass,” they often operate through a “dead reckoning” method 26:13:00. The advent of sophisticated cognitive science and psychotechnologies offers a way to improve this process intentionally 26:40:00.
The Significance of Cognitive Science
The current “nomological order” (how we fit in the world) provided by the Enlightenment is considered ontologically incomplete because it lacks an explanation for how we generate explanations 37:40:00. Cognitive science is posited as the most important science for addressing this gap, as it promises to extend scientific explanation into the very processes of science and scientific explanation itself 38:13:00. This integration of cognitive science, biology, and complexity science is central to understanding not only reality but also humanity’s fundamental belonging within it 39:02:00.
Reverse Engineering Enlightenment with Cognitive Science
“Reverse engineering enlightenment” proposes using modern cognitive science to reliably and systematically ameliorate perennial problems and enhance human flourishing 50:57:00. This approach aims to move beyond traditional, often complex or mysterious, definitions of enlightenment that suggest it is nearly impossible to achieve today 49:16:00. Instead, it focuses on practical, realizable steps informed by scientific understanding 52:57:00.
Specific applications include:
- Parasitic processing: Cultivating “counteractive dynamical systems” or ecologies of practices (like the Buddhist eightfold path) to counteract self-deceptive behavior 53:38:00. Modern therapeutic advances and cognitive scientific knowledge can improve upon historical practices 54:11:00.
- Modal confusion: Engaging in mindfulness practices to deeply distinguish the “being mode” from the “having mode” 54:52:00.
- Reflectiveness gap: Cultivating the “flow state” to balance the flexibility of reflection with the involvement of impulsivity, transcending the pitfalls of excessive introspection 56:19:00.
- Absurdity: Using meditation and contemplation to achieve non-duality, where clashing perspectives interpenetrate powerfully 56:54:00.
The “religion that is not a religion” is a proposed framework for integrating the best of cognitive science and reverse-engineered enlightenment practices 01:06:00. It aims to exact wisdom from past traditions while leaving behind “two-worlds mythologies” that are no longer viable in a scientific “one-world” worldview 01:07:00. This approach responds to the “meaning crisis” felt by many who find traditional religions irrelevant, not necessarily false 01:09:01.
Cognitive Science and Psychotechnologies
The framework emphasizes cultivating an “ecology of psychotechnologies”—a dynamical system where various practices mutually afford and constrain each other, leading to recursive self-correction 01:29:41. Psychotechnologies have complementary strengths and weaknesses, allowing for powerful “opponent processing” relationships (e.g., meditation and contemplative practices, mindfulness and active open-mindedness, seated and moving practices) 01:30:04.
The palette of psychotechnologies is broad, including meditation, contemplative practices, yoga, tai chi, medical psychotherapy, psychedelic drugs, neuro and biofeedback, group singing, chanting, and ecstatic dancing 01:45:00. The goal is to use collective wisdom, curated by cognitive science, to help individuals and communities craft effective practices to mitigate foolishness and enhance flourishing 01:32:56. This coordination of psychotechnologies and cyber technologies presents a moral obligation to develop wisdom, especially given the risk of their misuse for negative ends (e.g., creating psychopaths for military purposes) 01:33:30.
Wisdom, Rationality, and Cognitive Style
The development of wisdom and “meta-virtue” is crucial to ensure that psychotechnologies are used for good 01:35:37. Wisdom, rationality, insight, and virtue are deeply interconnected 01:36:06. While intelligence (g) may be relatively fixed, rationality is highly malleable 01:42:37. Cognitive science shows that intelligence is necessary but not sufficient for rationality 01:43:21.
A key cognitive style to cultivate is active open-mindedness 01:44:54. This practice, similar to Stoicism, helps fight cognitive biases 01:45:00. It involves:
- Identifying a cognitive bias and observing it in others.
- Turning that observational skill on oneself to catch personal instances of the bias.
- Actively counteracting the bias (e.g., looking for evidence that falsifies one’s own propositions or seeking external criticism) 01:45:45.
This practice fosters epistemic humility and a recognition of one’s own ignorance 01:46:51. A related practice is “steel-manning” an opponent’s argument—formulating the strongest possible version of a viewpoint one disagrees with 01:47:36. This, combined with a willingness to move towards the other’s position with integrity, encourages “dialogical movement” and the potential for collective rational insight 01:48:19. The goal of such dialectic is not necessarily convergence on agreement, but for both participants to reach a place of understanding they couldn’t have achieved on their own 01:52:02. This process-oriented approach to thinking, in contrast to focusing solely on products, fosters genuine collaboration and wisdom 01:52:24.