Great video, although I have one minor dispute: lactic acid is not produced because the brain tells the body to stop exercising, but because the body cannot efficiently use aerobic means of energy to satisfy the body's demand. We know this because the lactate threshold for most anyone is around 90 seconds of all-out sprinting, which is hence why the 800m run is the most painful race for anyone and everyone (though we all have different ideas of what makes a race difficult).
I have encouraged my children (now competent adults...mostly) to think for themselves OR go the library and read William James, Goethe, Plato...original thinkers not influenced by much more than their own environments, studies, experiences, etc. Too many minds are being shaped by media in countless forms. To me, that is not reasoning or thinking- it's mind numbing. The best part of this lecture- how exhausting thinking really is, this makes good sense to me. Accepting something as fact without taking it apart bit by bit versus studying the problem, seeking alternative solutions is as different as swimming the ocean instead of merely wading in a kiddie pool. Thank you...I feel less weird today about my inability to accept what ifs over what is.
Great again... Mr Cecil just an Ideia I am a native Portuguese speaker from brazil it will be just great if you give a lecture someday on the history of the Portuguese Language today the 5th bigger language in the world Our country Brazil is a country Without War and without identity... but with one Language the only thing who glue all brazil all together is the Portuguese language... And in Europe as well How this language manage to survive and create a country for their own, our language is so close to Spanish but even so our language appear to isolate ourselves out of the world... I personally only discovered through English before when I live in brazil I have back then the impression that all the world was Portuguese speaker... And since you discover the rest of world the big surprise is not how tiny we are in face in face of the rest of the world.. but how big we are how enormous brazil is... how great the Portuguese conquests are... Well anyway thanks for the great material... one of the best things on internet...
The basic problem here in amerika is that most primary and secondary schools and even at the university level we often don't teach thinking. And as Edward deBono has amply demonstrated you can teach creative thinking in a systematic way and on a large scale (most western European schools teach his courses). Our school system on the other hand specializes in teaching non-thinking. More than 40% of our population "believe" Terra is less than 10,000 years old and that some bronze age war god created the universe in 6 days and then needed a day off. Amerika at its heart is anti-intellectual and the bulk of its culture reflect this distrust of thinking. Sadly what we need most to survive in the coming decades will be creative thinking.
Dr. Cecil, I've only just discovered you and your lectures and I'm very much enjoying the discovery. I DO highly recommend though that you hire a sound guy? Perhaps someone who can take over for you during the recording of your lectures. The microphone noises can be quite painful with volume and it distracts from the great points you are making. As for the points, I thought this lecture would successfully integrate with your lecture on religion and politics when you spoke of avoiding evidence when contradicts a held belief because it would require thinking to actually see it and consider it. Thank you for uploading this! I will watch more of your lectures.
+Andrew Madrick If you like Wes's stuff, I recommend trying out The Partially Examined Life. It covers Philosophy (one of Wes's primary subjects) with the same quality and fun vitality that he does.
Great lecture Wes, as always. It's funny you mentioned the Republic, only because for the whole of the lecture I was reminded of Plato's 'Simile of the Divided Line.' We begin by deluding ourselves with imitations ("filtering"), then passively accepting the world through faith (childhood before reasoning powers develop), then moving on to axiomatic thought (Nazi example), and ending with dialectical thought where our fundamental assumptions are questioned. What wasn't clear to me is your use of the word "evidence" as a method for judging our assumptions when often times what counts as evidence is our most firmly held assumption. For example, why the New Atheist debates are so silly is because each side pushes what they consider to be evidence towards the other without ever discussing what evidence means between themselves. In other words, judging our assumptions on the basis of evidence is still thinking axiomatically because what counts as evidence is assumed. This wouldn't have been confusing if only I didn't feel you were trying to describe a different type of thinking than that found in your Nazi example. I'd appreciate it if you would clarify what you had meant by evidence. Thanks!
+dwsingrs "Why? Because I said so." And so the first bit of evidence was created. Evidence is created by mixing an unquestioned truth with reason, and so you arrive at a derivation, just like in mathematical formal systems. When you leave no truths unquestioned, how then can evidence exist? This is what I mean by evidence, and this is my concern.
+dwsingrs "Because I said so" is an axiom most parents have, but I never said that scientists ascribe to it. Nevertheless, they have their own unquestioned truths. Scientific truths are formed from models created by statistical analysis. They are their own little formal systems that constant experimentation tries to align with measurements of the world. The 'truths' of these models, to the best of my understanding, achieve their justification nowadays on a stance towards Truth called pragmatism. Pragmatism, in short, says: "You know all that weird metaphysical stuff we've been doing for 2000 years? Let's just forget about that and concentrate on what works. I give up on real capital-T Truth." But how do you justify pragmatism? "Shut up. I'm trying to do practical things over here." There is the unquestioned truth of science.
The point is that for the claim 'everyone is equal' to be plausible requires qualifiers. Once that is clear, then you also have to enquire what the seemingly innocuous phrase means in any particular context. You cannot assume it means what you want it to mean. Notice how cleverly the US declaration of independence uses the phrase without anticipating emancipation of slaves or land rights for native Americans. Rights to "happiness" incorporate property rights which end up prevailing over human rights, then as now. Absolute monarchy could also appeal to that phrase and any other form of government. It just needs a good lawyer (or a philosopher like Locke).
Nice lecture but Wes hasn't thought about the reasons behind why the framers of our country said "all men are created equal". They meant that all men (and by extension of today, all women too) are equal under our laws, are all entitled to dignity of life without a structured class system. They in no way meant that everyone was endowed with equal abilities in intelligence or physical prowness. That assumption is absurd and I cringe that he would make such a statement. He was totally not thinking.
RhondaH I think he was referring to its use. When "all men are created equal" is intoned, it is implemented as a justification in and of itself--which it is not. People use it as a foundation for argumentation--as an assumed premise, which is antithetical to the kind of thinking Wes elaborates upon in the lecture. If one thinks about "all men are created equal", one is divorced from the notion that it can serve as a justification, and find, rather, that it is a proposition which must itself be justified. When one doesn't think about it or question it, "all men are created equal" is often misused as an assumed truth, which it may not be.
Rephiam The phrase is so totally taken out of context by the ignorant and that anyone with a lick of sense would do is is nuts and sad. People really need to read themselves some Thomas Paine.
Thomas Paine meant that in his text 'Agrarian Justice' and others, and Benjamin Franklin probably meant that, but the rest of those elitists and slave drivers were probably thinking something else. Thomas Jefferson wrote it and he is complex, because his words were enlightened and libertarian like Paine's but unlike Thomas Paine, Jefferson's actions did not reflect his words.
I would like to see this research because I have not yet found evidence that suggests that the brain uses more energy in periods of thinking than in baseline inactive periods.
I think there is in what you say a good concept: that the energy the brain uses is relatively constant regardless of what it is doing. Brains cost quite a lot of energy to run and some have said ours was only able to grow so big because with fire we learned how to turn animals into high protein food, into fuel. Cognition, thinking, uses energy, the electro-chemical sort. Less cognition uses less energy, more cognition uses more energy. Any stimulus causes some use of energy. You can see this just by looking at an MRI or any other of many brain activity diagnostic tools (evidence for you). In 'fight or flight' the brain is sending out a ton of hormones and other neurotransmitters, signals to turn off unneeded functions and faculties, so we can hopefully run away from the tiger. It seems to me a good question to ask is, what is a 'baseline inactive period.' When would that be? My best idea is 'sensory deprivation' in a flotation tank.
@@hinteregions It would be interesting to look at attentive tasks which do not raise stress hormones, knowing that they definitely increase energy use.
@@darrenparis8314 I do see what you are about, it is an interesting question or it leads to lots of them. I imagine this has been studied thoroughly but I don't know where I would go to get something so specific. I have certainly seen figures showing how much energy the brain uses generally but that's all I remember. Maybe meditation is one of those things that uses minimal energy?
amazing lecture. Glad to hear criticism of Gladwill. Have the fortune of reading Thinking Fast and Slow and misfortune of reading Blink. Blink is indeed total trash.
Easter Island update a) It is clear now that the inhabitants had excellent agriculture b) they used ropes to 'walk' their statues (it's documented) c) Most died after after Dutch and other "explorers" brought illnesses, massacred (at least on one occasion) and took inhabitants as slaves. Who would have thunk 😉
I love your videos. Keep them coming! Thanks for making college level education free for all.
Always great to have new lectures!
3rd or 4th time I listened to it, April 25th 2019
Great video, although I have one minor dispute: lactic acid is not produced because the brain tells the body to stop exercising, but because the body cannot efficiently use aerobic means of energy to satisfy the body's demand. We know this because the lactate threshold for most anyone is around 90 seconds of all-out sprinting, which is hence why the 800m run is the most painful race for anyone and everyone (though we all have different ideas of what makes a race difficult).
Excellent as usual. Well crafted yet entertaining enough to keep up the listener's attention, one of the best lecturers anywhere.
What a great intellectual boom stick! I'm gonna blow so many freakin heads away with this one thank you!
You are my favorite youtuber by far, keep the interesting lectures coming!
Thanks professor, your lectures are always interesting
I have encouraged my children (now competent adults...mostly) to think for themselves OR go the library and read William James, Goethe, Plato...original thinkers not influenced by much more than their own environments, studies, experiences, etc. Too many minds are being shaped by media in countless forms. To me, that is not reasoning or thinking- it's mind numbing. The best part of this lecture- how exhausting thinking really is, this makes good sense to me. Accepting something as fact without taking it apart bit by bit versus studying the problem, seeking alternative solutions is as different as swimming the ocean instead of merely wading in a kiddie pool. Thank you...I feel less weird today about my inability to accept what ifs over what is.
I think I've listened to this at least 5 times now.
Same :)
MOST clear account of Thinking about Thinking!
Great again...
Mr Cecil just an Ideia I am a native Portuguese speaker from brazil it will be just great if you give a lecture someday on the history of the Portuguese Language today the 5th bigger language in the world
Our country Brazil is a country Without War and without identity... but with one Language the only thing who glue all brazil all together is the Portuguese language...
And in Europe as well How this language manage to survive and create a country for their own, our language is so close to Spanish but even so our language appear to isolate ourselves out of the world... I personally only discovered through English before when I live in brazil I have back then the impression that all the world was Portuguese speaker...
And since you discover the rest of world the big surprise is not how tiny we are in face in face of the rest of the world.. but how big we are how enormous brazil is... how great the Portuguese conquests are...
Well anyway thanks for the great material... one of the best things on internet...
The basic problem here in amerika is that most primary and secondary schools and even at the university level we often don't teach thinking. And as Edward deBono has amply demonstrated you can teach creative thinking in a systematic way and on a large scale (most western European schools teach his courses). Our school system on the other hand specializes in teaching non-thinking. More than 40% of our population "believe" Terra is less than 10,000 years old and that some bronze age war god created the universe in 6 days and then needed a day off. Amerika at its heart is anti-intellectual and the bulk of its culture reflect this distrust of thinking. Sadly what we need most to survive in the coming decades will be creative thinking.
Great lecture. I gotta say I am very new to thinking and this video was super helpful as an introduction.
These really are special lectures. And you make me laugh too. Thank you.
It would be amazing if you could add links or sources of the readings, investigations and book you quote by memory. That would help me a lot.
thank you for uploading!!
Dr. Cecil, I've only just discovered you and your lectures and I'm very much enjoying the discovery. I DO highly recommend though that you hire a sound guy? Perhaps someone who can take over for you during the recording of your lectures. The microphone noises can be quite painful with volume and it distracts from the great points you are making. As for the points, I thought this lecture would successfully integrate with your lecture on religion and politics when you spoke of avoiding evidence when contradicts a held belief because it would require thinking to actually see it and consider it. Thank you for uploading this! I will watch more of your lectures.
did you watch more of his lectures?
beautiful lecture! where might one find more of your material without having to pay tuition?
Andrew Madrick Just go to his channel and look under Videos. A treasure chest chock full.
+Andrew Madrick If you like Wes's stuff, I recommend trying out The Partially Examined Life. It covers Philosophy (one of Wes's primary subjects) with the same quality and fun vitality that he does.
Great lecture Wes, as always. It's funny you mentioned the Republic, only because for the whole of the lecture I was reminded of Plato's 'Simile of the Divided Line.' We begin by deluding ourselves with imitations ("filtering"), then passively accepting the world through faith (childhood before reasoning powers develop), then moving on to axiomatic thought (Nazi example), and ending with dialectical thought where our fundamental assumptions are questioned.
What wasn't clear to me is your use of the word "evidence" as a method for judging our assumptions when often times what counts as evidence is our most firmly held assumption. For example, why the New Atheist debates are so silly is because each side pushes what they consider to be evidence towards the other without ever discussing what evidence means between themselves. In other words, judging our assumptions on the basis of evidence is still thinking axiomatically because what counts as evidence is assumed. This wouldn't have been confusing if only I didn't feel you were trying to describe a different type of thinking than that found in your Nazi example. I'd appreciate it if you would clarify what you had meant by evidence. Thanks!
+dwsingrs "Why? Because I said so." And so the first bit of evidence was created. Evidence is created by mixing an unquestioned truth with reason, and so you arrive at a derivation, just like in mathematical formal systems. When you leave no truths unquestioned, how then can evidence exist? This is what I mean by evidence, and this is my concern.
+dwsingrs "Because I said so" is an axiom most parents have, but I never said that scientists ascribe to it. Nevertheless, they have their own unquestioned truths. Scientific truths are formed from models created by statistical analysis. They are their own little formal systems that constant experimentation tries to align with measurements of the world. The 'truths' of these models, to the best of my understanding, achieve their justification nowadays on a stance towards Truth called pragmatism. Pragmatism, in short, says: "You know all that weird metaphysical stuff we've been doing for 2000 years? Let's just forget about that and concentrate on what works. I give up on real capital-T Truth." But how do you justify pragmatism? "Shut up. I'm trying to do practical things over here." There is the unquestioned truth of science.
I love your lectures!!! Thank you.
When is the next lecture? :)
Love this one!
Great content, thanks Wes! Would you consider a talk on argumentation?
+Acoustic Habit Not the same thing, but he does have a video on conversation, if that works.
Thank you professor.
35:35 The widest highway in the US is in a western suburb of Houston and measures, generously, 750 feet in width.
Thank you for this .... lets think !! better...
I always thought "equal" was about the value of someone & they're rights as a person, not a ability of the person.
is that not it?
I thought so also. Sounded like Wes misinterpreted this, surprisingly! Not sure if I'm missing something....
The point is that for the claim 'everyone is equal' to be plausible requires qualifiers. Once that is clear, then you also have to enquire what the seemingly innocuous phrase means in any particular context. You cannot assume it means what you want it to mean. Notice how cleverly the US declaration of independence uses the phrase without anticipating emancipation of slaves or land rights for native Americans. Rights to "happiness" incorporate property rights which end up prevailing over human rights, then as now. Absolute monarchy could also appeal to that phrase and any other form of government. It just needs a good lawyer (or a philosopher like Locke).
@@nicole-secondaryemail-mort9617 Maybe it was too complicated and his mind refused to think about it?
Damn!!! You made me think.
Nice lecture but Wes hasn't thought about the reasons behind why the framers of our country said "all men are created equal". They meant that all men (and by extension of today, all women too) are equal under our laws, are all entitled to dignity of life without a structured class system. They in no way meant that everyone was endowed with equal abilities in intelligence or physical prowness. That assumption is absurd and I cringe that he would make such a statement. He was totally not thinking.
RhondaH I think he was referring to its use. When "all men are created equal" is intoned, it is implemented as a justification in and of itself--which it is not. People use it as a foundation for argumentation--as an assumed premise, which is antithetical to the kind of thinking Wes elaborates upon in the lecture. If one thinks about "all men are created equal", one is divorced from the notion that it can serve as a justification, and find, rather, that it is a proposition which must itself be justified. When one doesn't think about it or question it, "all men are created equal" is often misused as an assumed truth, which it may not be.
Rephiam The phrase is so totally taken out of context by the ignorant and that anyone with a lick of sense would do is is nuts and sad. People really need to read themselves some Thomas Paine.
Thomas Paine meant that in his text 'Agrarian Justice' and others, and Benjamin Franklin probably meant that, but the rest of those elitists and slave drivers were probably thinking something else. Thomas Jefferson wrote it and he is complex, because his words were enlightened and libertarian like Paine's but unlike Thomas Paine, Jefferson's actions did not reflect his words.
I would like to see this research because I have not yet found evidence that suggests that the brain uses more energy in periods of thinking than in baseline inactive periods.
I think there is in what you say a good concept: that the energy the brain uses is relatively constant regardless of what it is doing. Brains cost quite a lot of energy to run and some have said ours was only able to grow so big because with fire we learned how to turn animals into high protein food, into fuel. Cognition, thinking, uses energy, the electro-chemical sort. Less cognition uses less energy, more cognition uses more energy. Any stimulus causes some use of energy. You can see this just by looking at an MRI or any other of many brain activity diagnostic tools (evidence for you). In 'fight or flight' the brain is sending out a ton of hormones and other neurotransmitters, signals to turn off unneeded functions and faculties, so we can hopefully run away from the tiger. It seems to me a good question to ask is, what is a 'baseline inactive period.' When would that be? My best idea is 'sensory deprivation' in a flotation tank.
@@hinteregions It would be interesting to look at attentive tasks which do not raise stress hormones, knowing that they definitely increase energy use.
@@darrenparis8314 I do see what you are about, it is an interesting question or it leads to lots of them. I imagine this has been studied thoroughly but I don't know where I would go to get something so specific. I have certainly seen figures showing how much energy the brain uses generally but that's all I remember. Maybe meditation is one of those things that uses minimal energy?
Some conspiracys are true.
Thinky
amazing lecture. Glad to hear criticism of Gladwill. Have the fortune of reading Thinking Fast and Slow and misfortune of reading Blink. Blink is indeed total trash.
Easter Island update
a) It is clear now that the inhabitants had excellent agriculture
b) they used ropes to 'walk' their statues (it's documented)
c) Most died after after Dutch and other "explorers" brought illnesses, massacred (at least on one occasion) and took inhabitants as slaves.
Who would have thunk 😉
Hmm, today I think I'll stop paying my taxes.
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@@bearmuscle3211 #42
Bad Audio. Microphone rubbing and banging constantly. Very annoying and distracting. Unprofessional please fix
What, like, go back six years in a time machine with a professional audio crew? Right you are!