Chasing Consciousness

How have metrics surreptitiously replaced our internal value guidance system? How much nuance is lost when we scale collective counting across contexts? How dangerous is data that at first appears independent, whist in fact having heavy value assumptions baked in from that start?
Today we have the worrying topic of value capture to discuss; that is the phenomena of how the majority of our personal values have been outsourced to external generic data sets and measurable scoring systems, often without us realising it. We discuss how, whilst useful in getting the wider picture, these measurables replace our internal lived sense of why things are important, motivating and worthy of goal directed behaviours. We also get into the root of this phenomena in the artificial demotion of the subjective to a lower level of value than the objective; how subjectivity is in fact supertangible and salient rather than intangible; and we get into how data is not neutral and has interests that in turn influence how we collect that data - risking a kind of objectivity laundering. On the other hand we also look at what measurables are good for, and how awareness of the tension between our external and internal value guidance, offers a middle road that gets the best of both worlds.
Fortunately to unpack this slippery topic we have the philosopher of games and art at the University of Utah, C. Thi Nguyen. He’s the author of over 70 academic papers and 2 books for the general public. “Games: Agency as Art”, and his brand new book “The Score: How to stop playing somebody else’s game”, that we’ll be focussing on today.

What we discuss: 
00:00 Intro
05:20 Double Consciousness - W.E.B. Du Bois
09:05 “The Score”, how measuring everything warps our values.
10:35 “The things that are easiest to measure at scale don’t track what’s actually important”.
11:50 The constraints on scaled collective counting.
13:36 Amplification of particularly fashionable scaled data points distorts our values.
22:50 The ìdismissal of unmeasurables’ bias.
24:50 Its NOT subjective VS objective. It’s easy to count VS what’s subtle and specialist to count.
28:04 How mechanical public counting came to mean objectivity.
27:50 Theodore Porter - Trading away context-specific for transmissibility.
31:50 Rewriting the rules of the highly context specific.
34:20 The ‘Hyde’: old land measure = the land needed to sustain a family.
36:05 Universality is by definition over generalised.
40:22 Data’s abstract. Context relevance.
44:05 Data is not value neutral, it has interests.
46:20 The ‘screen time’ example of hidden value assumptions.
47:50 The IQ example.
49:20 The ‘categorisation of mortality codes’ example.
50:50 Information compression decisions.
54:10 Bias in science - Awareness over naivety.
55:10 A lack of time to check every specialisation.
57:50 Data has interest baked into it by human interest.
01:02:50 Objectivity laundering - cleansing data of initial value assumptions.
01:05:50 How data can take over our consciousness.
01:09:20 Data has also been GREAT for many things. E.g De-biasing.
01:11:50 Data led VS data informed.
01:15:35 Games scoring - getting the best from measurables.
01:18:50 Reduction in freedom via institutional power over measures.
01:15:00 We are becoming deaf to our internal values.
01:29:20 Solution #1. Awareness.
01:31:50 Solution #2. Critical thinking.
01:32:05 Solution #3. Playfulness.

References:
W.E.B. Du Bois - Double Consciousness concept
Wendy Nelson Espeland , Michael Sauder, “Engines of Anxiety: Academic Rankings, Reputation, and Accountability”.
Lorraine Daston, “Rules: A short history of what we live by”.
Lorraine Daston, Peter Galison - “Objectivity”.
Geoffrey C. Bowker, Susan Leigh Star, “Sorting things out: Classification and its consequences”.
Natasha D Schull, “Addiction by Design”.
Elijah Milligram, “The Great Endarkenment: Philosophy for an age of hyper specialisation” .
Annette Baier, ’Trust & Antitrust*’ paper.

Why were fungi so important to the evolution of life on earth? How do they collaborate with plants to help them communicate? What does the difficulty separating individual fungi from the collective of a mycelial network teach us about collective intelligence and interconnected co-dependence in ecosystems?
In this episode we discuss how fungi are a brilliant example of symbiosis in nature. We get into their importance to evolution; how they facilitate plant communication; how they exhibit both collaboration and competition simultaneously; how they can solve problems without brains; and how they confound our ideas of ‘self’ and ‘other’.
Fortunately to decode these ideas we have biologist, ecologist, mycologist and award winning author Merlin Sheldrake as our guide. He is a research associate at Oxford University and Vrije University in Amsterdam. He has written 20 scientific papers and his 2020 book “Entangled life - How Fungi make our worlds, change our minds, and shape our futures”, has sold more than a million copies in over 30 languages. The book received the 2021 Royal Society Science book award and the Wainwright prize for writing on Global Conservation.
What we discuss:
00:00 Intro
05:00 Entangled Life Book.
06:40 The difference between the plant and fungal kingdoms.
08:00 Mycelium Networks: shapeshifting, sprawling networks.
09:55 Fungi’s symbiotic role in early evolution of land plants.
13:15 Mychorrhizal fungi: plant partners.
14:00 Katie Field - Re-creating early earth conditions in the lab.
15:50 Plant-Fungi electrical and chemical signalling.
19:40 Mutual vs parasitic simbiosis.
22:15 Inherent intelligence in fungi behaviour.
27:15 The skin and gut microbiome.
31:45 The enteric nervous system - possible mood changer.
33:00 The dance of competition and cooperation in evolution.
37:30 Climate Change innovations with fungi - Carbon cycling.
39:50 Writing Fungi into conservation targets with better data.
42:00 Fungal problem solving and distributed intelligence.
46:00 The blurring of self and other - fungi make us reconsider our separateness.
48:00 Individuality is a convenient concept but over emphasised.
50:00 The wood wide web over romanticised concept.
52:00 Fungal communication studies.
55:00 Sound communication in plants & fungi.
58:00 Implications of plant and mushroom memory.
References:
Merlin Sheldrake, “Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures”.
Dr. Katie Field, ‘How fungi helped create life as we know it’ article.
Justin D. Stewart et al, ‘Global density and biomass of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks’ Paper.
Loteto Galvez et al, ‘A travelling-wave strategy for plant–fungal trade’.

How has new research changed the way we see nutritional health? What role do ultra-processed foods, fibre, gut microbes, inflammation and insulin resistance play in the new paradigm? Why does the gut microbiome affect our mental health? How can simply diversifying the quantity of plants in your diet change health outcomes radically?
In this episode we have the complex topic of nutrition to get up to date on. There’s been so much research over the last 20 years that has contradicted some of our most deep seated preconceptions about food, so today we clarify science’s new take. We discuss the rise of lifestyle medicine as a solution to western health crises; individualised diet; ultra processed foods; fibre; glycemic index issues; the gut microbiome; inflammation; a variety of foods over restrictive diets; how to support the use of new GPL-1 weight loss drugs; and what the nutritional organisation Zoe is doing to make this all easier for the public to put into practice.

Fortunately our guest is a master at untangling all this nuance in a way that’s so easy for us Joe public to understand - medical scientist and clinical nutritionist, senior lecturer and researcher at Imperial College London and King’s College London, Dr. Federica Amati. She’s also Head Nutritionalist at ZOE and Head of Nutrition Science at WellFounded Health. She’s written 12 scientific papers and 3 books, “EveryBODY should know this”, “Recipes for better menopause”, and her brand new book “The Appetite reset”, which we discuss today.

What we discuss:
00:00 Intro
06:30 Worldwide pandemic of previously western-only diet related chronic diseases.
07:00 Western diet, exported to the rest of the world is a big part of the problem.
08:45 Sedentary lifestyle is also part of the metabolic dysfunction crisis.
09:15 The “Diabesity” crisis.
10:15 Dysfunctional food environments.
10:55 One size dos NOT fit all for diet.
11:45 Influencers are confusing the public.
16:25 Personalised diet issues: more required from the patient, more expensive.
18:00 Ultra-processed foods damage 1: quick energy uptake.
20:30 U.P.F. damage 2: High palatability - more delicious, harder to stop eating.
21:45 U.P.F. damage 3: Synthetic additives - unknown consequences & cocktail effect.
23:35 Processed food risk scale from Zoe nutrition can help people consider.
24:15 %60 of Uk calories are coming from ultra processed food.
30:45 Fibre - How much do we eat and should we eat?
32:45 Plant diversity: 30 per week, leads to Intestinal microbe diversity.
35:15 Mapping the microbiome. 
39:05 Microbiome and mental health - Vagus gut-brain axis, 
42:55 Inflammation theory of depression - withdraw from society to heal.
43:50 Chronic inflammation caused by western diet and stress.
46:45 Your habits are more important than exceptions.
48:15 Restrictive calorie-counting diets aren’t sustainable for losing weight because of metabolic adaptation.
52:05 “The Appetite Reset” book - GLP1 weight loss drugs.
56:45 Adult obesity has doubled, adolescent obesity has quadrupled.

References:
Federica Amati, “The Appetite reset”.
Federica Amati, “EveryBODY should know this”.
Francesco Asnicar et al.,’Gut micro-organisms associated with health, nutrition and dietary interventions’ paper. 
Zoe Nutrition - microbiome testing, glycemic monitoring, and personalised diet guidance.
The microbiome, mental health & rethinking hygiene - Dr. Graham Rook episode
Mood Food: The gut, diet and inflammation - Alex Laird episode
Not all U.P.F’s are equal - Zoe Nutrition article

How separate is the cognition in our heads from cognition with our bodies, our tools, our communities and our ecosystems? What is participatory sense making and why is our world becoming less and less disposed to doing it? What does connecting cognitively with the world beyond our own bodies do for our sense making, and so for the future of our species?

In this episode we have the intriguing topic of extended cognition to explore, and in particular the field of participatory sense-making. So we get into the extended component of the 5E’s model of embodied cognition; how our technologies, including AI, are much more influential on our cognition than mere tools that we set aside after use; we talk about our co-dependence on the natural world, and what happens to cognition and our society when our sense of “kinship” with it is lost; And we get into detail on the crucial process of participatory sense making, and how important it is to arrive to consensus rather than getting bogged down in polarisation, which in turn allows us to decide on urgent solutions as a species.

Fortunately these are the exact specialisations of our guest, psychologist, cognitive scientist and philosopher at the University of British Columbia, Rebecca Todd. With a background also in neuroscience, she’s authored nearly 100 academic papers, whilst her substack hosts her much loved writings for the general

What we discuss:
00:00 Intro.
06:05 Extended cognition defined.
08:45 Distributed cognition - Edward Hutchins.
09:00 Attention, learning and memory are all distributed.
10:00 Can we identify the cognitive boundary between self and other?
14:30 Heidegger’s warning about undermining the influence of technology.
17:00 We give our tools too much credit.
19:00 Large Language Model’s effect on extended cognition.
23:00 Individualistic, extractive, competitive motivations for technology.
24:00 Self AS relationship rather than IN relationship - Dr. Yuri Celidwen.
28:10 Non-verbal communication.
29:46 Feedback loops between nature and our minds.
33:50 Connection to nature and mental health.
37:20 Belonging and ‘kinship’ with the natural world.
39:45 Objects can have personality - Object personality Synesthesia.
44:20 Risk of appropriation, when applying indigenous ideas of ‘belonging’.
46:50 The ‘Trim Tab’ analogy — small interventions can lead to big changes in direction, Greg Watson.
53:15 Participatory Sense-making explained.
57:30 Shifts happen before and after moments of synchrony.
59:30 Conditions required for participatory sense-making.
01:02:20 The 4 R’s: Reciprocity, Respect, responsibility and relevance.
01:03:05 Neurodivergence: bridging the way we see the world differently.
01:12:15 The new lack of bandwidth for complexity and nuance - information overload.
01:15:30 Creating the time and space needed to do participatory sense-making.
01:19:30 Food together is a magical ingredient.
01:23:30 Openness and listening can be trained.
01:24:20 Is consensus necessary.
01:29:10 Tolerance of diversity rather than unified consensus.

References:
Beck Todd Substack, “Towards an ecology of mind”
Andy Clarke and David Chalmers, “Extended Cognition” paper
Edward Hutchins - Distributed Cognition paper.
Fernando Rosas - Statistical boundaries between agents.
Karen McClean - SPIN Lab (human-robot interactions through the sense of touch)
Shirley Turcotte - Indigenous Focusing-oriented Therapy (IFOT)
“Participatory Sense-making with the More than Human World” With Yuri Celidwen.
An interview with Dr. Greg Watson - Ex US agricultural minister
Hannah De Jaegher & Ezequial Di Poalo, “Participatory Sensemaking, An enactive approach to social cognition”.
V.J .Kirkness, “First Nations and Higher Education: the four 4’s”
“The Multiplicity of Worlds” with Penijean Gracefire et al.
Ed Young, “An immense world”
“Community Out of the Ashes” with Eli Oda Shina.
Gabor Mate, “In the realm of hungry ghosts - Encounters with Addiction”

What can psychologists do the make pilots and astronauts’ decision making better under duress? Can we anticipate the psychological issues of planned long distance space missions to Mars? How can we shift the  shame culture for pilots and astronauts around reporting unidientified anomolous phenomena?

In this episode we have the unique field of Space psychology to look into; So we discuss the psychology of military pilots and astronauts working under such extreme conditions; and the intuitive skill sets developed under such high pressure, split second decision situations; we discuss the cognitive engineering required to match the design of instruments to the cognitive needs of the pilots and astronauts; we get into alternatives methods of expertise exchange apart from the usual text book approach which have had extraordinary decision making results for pilot and astronaut performance. We also discuss the issues for pilots around reporting of UFO encounters, and the implications for space psychology of the new bout of main stream interest following the New York Times 2017 expose of military incidents.

So who better to help us understand the minds of pilots and astronauts than space psychologist, cognitive engineer, astronaut instructor and Director of the Centre of Space Medicine at UCL in London, Dr. Iya Whitely. She’s helped design training programs and conducted studies for the European Space Agency, The Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre in Russia, and presented he research for the USAirforce and Nasa. Dr. Whitely is also a pilot, rescue scuba diver and competitive sky diver! She’s written 11 scientific papers, and three books, “Toolkit of a Space Psychologist, to support astronauts on exploration missions to the moon and mars”, “Earth Designs” for toddlers, and her new book “Born Knowing”, which we get onto at the end.

What we discuss:
00:00 Intro.
05:30 Iya’s path into Cognitive Engineering.
18:35 Decision making research.
28:00 Iya’s method led to 200/cent increase in decision making speed.
21:40 Professional intuition.
43:00 Surgeon expertise transmission study
55:45 Astronaut psychology - Alexei Leonov, first space walk near-disaster, 1965.
01:06:00 ESA human, long-distance space flight study.
01:13:00 Nature solves problems using resources available locally - Biomimetics, Dr Olga Bogatyreva.
01:27:10 Mars 500: 520 day simulated Mars mission trial.
01:31:30 Space colonisation psychology.
01:40:40 Difficulty reintegrating with terrestrial society after missions to space.
01:43:00 “The Overview Effect” when earth is seen from space.
01:50:30 Taboo around reporting of anomolous phenomena for pilots and astronauts.
01:53:15 Ryan Graves is speaking out in congress about repeated UFO safety concerns.
02:01:00 Astronauts can’t risk to speak about this as it will affect their careers.
02:13:00 Navy have implemented a new reporting protocol and office, AARO.
02:21:30 Iya at the Sol Foundation: Garry Nolan & Diana Pasulka.
02:29:30 Pilot Jake Baba - reporting issue with the phenomena.
02:39:10 Telepathic autistic children, called ‘spellers’. Diane Hennessy Powell research.
02:47:00 These telepathic kids are also interracting with non-human intelligences.
02:51:15 Non-verbal communication with toddlers.

References:
Iya Whiteley, “Born Knowing”.
Iya Whiteley & Olga Bogatyreva, “Toolkit for a space psycholgist”.
Iya Whiteley, “Earth designs” toddlers book.
Gary A. Klein - professional intuition book “The Power of Intuition".
Dr Olga Bogatyreva - ‘Biomimetics - its practice and theory’.
Frank White, “The Overview Effect”.
Whitley Strieber, “Communion”.
Rick Srassman, “DMT The Spirit Molecule”.
All domain Anomoloy Resoltions Office, AARO.
2024 Paper on the UAP reporting system 
Occupational Safety and Reporting Guidance: Reviewing UAP ...
Sol Foundation of Garry Nolan at Stanford, Scientific UAP research.
Ky Dickens, Telepathy Tapes podcast and documentary film.