Today's video is the most meta video I've made. (No, not you Facebook). My channel has become an experiment in meta-cognition.
We normally think we think between our ears, as individuals, by ourselves. We actually think, and believe in community. People sometimes say to me "I want to believe in the resurrection but I just can't." I tell them to join a community that does.
Ever since I started talking into the computer to make Youtube videos I realized the power of this platform for distributed cognition. I know this sounds strange, sort of like the stuff you hear @vervaeke_john or @WisdomRebel talking about, but that's what's grown.
I actually make monologue videos in order to develop new language, ideas and insights, not just to share them. I am thinking WITH my audience, not just in front of them. @GrimGriz was one of the first to really lean into this.
Youtube is perhaps the best platform we have for something like this. I first began to appreciate its power when I realized that the @jordanbpeterson fans I was talking too were being relieved of their depression through it.
Its relationship with meat-space is complex. Like all cyber-community there are tradeoffs. You can do @vervaeke_john dia-logos IN FRONT OF thousands even millions of people. That changes things.
We are only beginning to understand this. Smart people like @hyonschu are continuing to pursue it. I had no idea what I was starting when I started using it, but here we are.
I'm not sure what to make of this new medium. As a listener and a reader I find value. I also watch in real time as the presenters change and morph usually for the worse. Pride and ego feed into audience capture as well as "co-presenter capture" if I may coin the phrase.... Particularly seductive for big brains that have toiled in obscurity... Insidiously it promises John's four P's without ever having to get off the couch.... Unfortunately it probably only delivers one P or maybe 2 but the rest are surely counterfeits... Is this the new tree in the garden? And like Adam and Eve is our pride going to lead us astray? Probably...
This has shed some light on why I, a lifelong dedicated reader, find myself listening to hours of podcast and YouTube videos. Sometimes I think, one day this will be in a book by this speaker. However, listening to the thought processes is somehow even more valuable as the listener gets to go on the journey that will end in the book. So instead of experiencing the book as a fait accompli, the listener experiences the bumps in the road, the twists and turns, and ends up with a deeper understanding than would ever have been possible from the book alone. This is particularly true of people like Vervaeke, Pageau, Kelley, and you who are willing to listen to the other speaker and explore the way to an insight, rather than dig in to defend a position. I feel a little less guilty about the hours of listening that could have been spent reading! Thank you for your willingness to think out loud.