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Home > NewsRelease > Professor John Vervaeke — How to Build a Life of Wisdom, Flow, and Contemplation (#657)
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Professor John Vervaeke — How to Build a Life of Wisdom, Flow, and Contemplation (#657)
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Tim Ferriss - Productivity, Digital Lifestyles and Entrepreneurship Tim Ferriss - Productivity, Digital Lifestyles and Entrepreneurship
For Immediate Release:
Dateline: San Francisco, CA
Wednesday, March 1, 2023

 
Illustration via 99designs

“Knowledge is about overcoming ignorance. Wisdom is about overcoming foolishness.”

— Professor John Vervaeke

John Vervaeke (@vervaeke_john) is a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. He currently teaches courses on thinking and reasoning with an emphasis on cognitive development, intelligence, rationality, mindfulness, and the psychology of wisdom.

Vervaeke is the director of UToronto’s Consciousness and Wisdom Studies Laboratory and its Cognitive Science program, where he teaches Introduction to Cognitive Science and The Cognitive Science of Consciousness, emphasizing the 4E model, which contends that cognition and consciousness are embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended beyond the brain.

Vervaeke has taught courses on Buddhism and Cognitive Science in the Buddhism, Psychology, and Mental Health program for 15 years. He is the author and presenter of the YouTube series “Awakening from the Meaning Crisis” and his brand new series, “After Socrates.”

Please enjoy!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. You can watch the interview on YouTube here.

Brought to you by Wealthfront high-yield savings account, Basecamp refreshingly simple project management, and Eight Sleep’s Pod Cover sleeping solution for dynamic cooling and heating.

The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.

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#657: Professor John Vervaeke — How to Build a Life of Wisdom, Flow, and Contemplation

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Want to hear another interview that ponders the nature of our relationship with reality? Have a listen to my conversation with Professor Donald Hoffman here, in which we discuss the science of consciousness, how perception may influence the physical world, the holographic model of the universe, panpsychism (and influential panpsychists), cosmological polytope, the use of hallucinogenic drugs to tap into deeper reality and interact with conscious agents, QBism, the probability of zero that humans evolved to see reality in full, and much more wild stuff.

#585: Professor Donald Hoffman — The Case Against Reality, Beyond Spacetime, Rethinking Death, Panpsychism, QBism, and More

What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

SCROLL BELOW FOR LINKS AND SHOW NOTES…

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE

  • Connect with John Vervaeke:

Website | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube

SHOW NOTES

  • [05:31] The four ways of knowing (4P).
  • [10:15] Affordances.
  • [13:04] Semantic memory.
  • [13:37] Flow.
  • [27:03] Did John find Tai Chi, or did Tai Chi find him?
  • [29:46] Leaving Christianity.
  • [34:42] Wisdom vs. knowledge.
  • [36:54] Self-deception.
  • [41:53] When is logic the illogical choice for solving a problem?
  • [46:05] The powers and perils of intuition.
  • [55:05] Spotting patterns that need breaking.
  • [59:18] Meditation vs. contemplation.
  • [1:05:30] Misunderstanding love.
  • [1:06:36] Circling.
  • [1:12:28] “God is related to the world the way the mind is related to the body.”
  • [1:14:34] A non-theist in the no-thingness.
  • [1:24:03] Responsive poiesis and Sufism.
  • [1:27:31] Neoplatonism.
  • [1:29:16] Seminal moments.
  • [1:31:36] Pierre Hadot.
  • [1:32:43] Two books.
  • [1:34:38] Potent poetry.
  • [1:37:40] The four Es.
  • [1:42:38] Two bonus Es.
  • [1:45:24] Heretical beliefs.
  • [1:54:12] Panpsychism.
  • [2:00:56] Most unusual modes of cognition.
  • [2:02:37] Jordan Peterson.
  • [2:10:27] Opponent processing.
  • [2:13:53] How to support friends endeavoring to lead meaningful lives.
  • [2:17:50] After Socrates.
  • [2:21:44] Western words.
  • [2:25:11] John’s changing perspective of experienced reality.
  • [2:28:01] Something old, something new.

MORE JOHN VERVAEKE QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW

“Knowledge is about overcoming ignorance. Wisdom is about overcoming foolishness. So you understand wisdom by understanding foolishness, and you understand foolishness as not identical to ignorance.”
— John Vervaeke

“Stop demonizing any faculty and stop deifying any faculty. Your intuition will lead you as much wrong as your reason, as much wrong as your emotions, as much wrong as your logic.”
— John Vervaeke

“The very processes that make us intelligent problem solvers [and] make us so adaptive are the very same processes that make us prone to self-deceptive, self-destructive behavior.”
— John Vervaeke

“We pick up on all kinds of complex patterns that are not real and we form intuitions around them, but when we don’t like our intuition, we don’t call it intuition, we call it bias or prejudice or racism or sexism or a whole bunch of other things.”
— John Vervaeke

“Logic does not tell you how to go from a weaker logic to a stronger logic. I can do all the possible manipulations within predicate logic and it won’t get me to motor logic. I have to do something outside of that to actually increase my logical competence. So there’s no panacea.”
— John Vervaeke

“Yes, your emotions can lead you astray, but try living without them and see how rational you can be.”
— John Vervaeke

“I don’t like the argument that goes, ‘Consciousness is weird, quantum is weird, therefore consciousness is quantum.’ That’s just ridiculous. Now, panpsychism is a different thing. And you don’t have to be convinced about quantum stuff to be a panpsychist.”
— John Vervaeke

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