Problems With Language

Bob talks about problems with language, serendipity and chance ("chance favors only the prepared mind"), coal tar dyes. DarmaTalks always with his honest takes, general science, and zen examples.

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Transcript

I'm fine.

I'm fine.

Well congratulations to all of you present for not waking up in the morning in the drunk day.

The night is young,

Yeah.

When I get out of here I'm pounding some Jagermeister.

Language is a huge problem for humans.

It's such a problem that one of the preeminent linguists of the 20th century,

Wittgenstein,

Said,

Forget about it.

Language is so fucked up.

You can't do anything but make matters worse with language.

He gave up on language.

And a physicist named Murray Gell-Mann,

I don't know when,

Sometime in the 60s,

Subatomic components,

Particles,

Whatever you want to call them,

Began to be created in the particle accelerators.

Murray Gell-Mann and a couple of others,

They began naming these things.

Sometimes if you're listening to a talk or a lecture on physics or something like that,

They sometimes say,

Oh those crazy physicists,

What were they doing with their whimsical names?

Like quarks and giving quarks names like strange.

These were characteristics,

Physical characteristics of quarks,

Strange,

Charm and color.

What the hell is a quark and what is charm?

Well,

In spite of the physicists talking to the general public,

And it's not always the general public,

I mean sometimes I don't think they understand the problem of language,

Apparently.

By the time these things are being named,

There was enough problems from the beginning of the 20th century with quantum mechanics up to the middle of the 20th century that people like Murray Gell-Mann began,

Said,

Hey,

Fuck that.

We're going to just give them names that have no characteristics that humans can conceive of.

So,

When other subatomic particles were being named in the beginning of the 20th century,

They were given names like photons,

Electrons,

Neutrinos.

All of these things immediately bring to mind a picture of something in our minds.

It's a particle of some sort,

Like a dust mode or a small BB or something.

Well,

These things are not those things,

But the names that were given up until the 60th caused enormous problems.

There are multiple meanings of words depending on the context that they're used and the discipline in which they're used in,

And they commonly get all screwed up.

So,

Somebody's at the donut shop and they're talking about their car overheating on the road.

And they're telling the story and they go,

Yeah,

I had a theory it might have been a radiator hose.

And so,

What they mean is they either had a,

Well,

They had a hypothesis or even if it was a poorly constructed hypothesis,

Not a theory.

But the word theory in the vernacular means I have an idea about something.

That's not what a theory means in science.

And so,

When the people with the vernacular meaning of theory hear the word theory in science,

They go theory,

This is a big issue,

Especially with evolution because the hillbillies pick on it.

And so,

The big deal is,

Oh,

It's the theory of evolution.

Therefore,

It's not the fact of evolution,

It's the theory of evolution.

It's because of the word theory that they denigrate the theory of evolution or the theory of gravity,

Except they don't denigrate the theory of gravity.

They bypass the meaning of the theory in the vernacular and go,

Well,

We all know there's gravity.

It's,

Gravitation is a theory.

In science,

It's not just a half-baked idea,

But it's got the same fucking name,

Theory,

As is used in the vernacular.

And the people that are too ignorant about it,

They just confute them.

Concluding the word chance with a word that's used in science that denotes chance is serendipity in science,

But chance for most people,

But the problem with that is most people think that chance is some sort of random event.

Serendipity is anything but a random event,

But it is still chance.

And it got a name,

Serendipity,

To differentiate it from people's half-baked ideas about chance or even the term probability theory.

Sounds probability?

Yeah,

Well,

Probability is many orders of magnitude more precise than any other kind of measurement,

Period.

Several orders of magnitude.

So Pasteur in the 19th century,

And I got to paraphrase this,

But he said,

Chance favors the prepared mind.

What that meant was what science calls serendipity,

Pasteur was calling chance with the prepared mind.

In other words,

It doesn't matter what the hell I do,

I'm not going to accidentally or by chance discover Lexan or LSD.

But that's exactly how Lexan was discovered,

Serendipity.

That's how LSD was discovered,

Serendipity.

That's how coal tar dye was discovered,

Serendipity.

That serendipity word just goes on and on and on,

Ad nauseum,

Because people are often working on things in their chemistry fields or whatever,

And they're working on this and this and this,

And they find that completely serendipitously,

Which is nothing other than accident,

But it's not just a random event.

So coal tar dye was a serendipitous discovery and arguably led straight to World War I,

Because a British chemist was working on something.

I mean,

Coal tar,

Coal tar was a waste product from doing something with coal,

Processing coal produced a waste product of coal tar.

It turned out it had a lot of uses,

But nobody knew what the hell it was.

It was they would have huge pools of this coal tar.

It was just some nasty ass stuff that was around.

Nobody knew what to do with it.

And then people started buying it and doing stuff with it.

This chemist is working on it,

Some with coal tar doing something.

I'm completely making it up,

But he's waterproofing fabric for coals.

And he's trying to get certain properties in his mixture.

And he's mixing this up a batch and it doesn't have the right whatever he's looking for,

And he's throwing it out the window.

And at some point it started raining.

Got a pretty good puddle out the window.

And when he threw out a batch of that stuff,

It landed in a puddle of rainwater.

And he looked out the window and the whole surface of that puddle of water turned royal purple.

Like,

What the hell is that?

So that's how coal tar dye was discovered.

And coal tar dye meant fabrics could be dyed and wouldn't wash out.

It was permanent dye.

Now the British,

Like the rest of Western science,

There was a separation between science and technology.

We say science and technology because they're wedded together irrevocably.

But that wasn't true before the 20th century and it wasn't true through about the first third of the 20th century.

Science and technology were completely separate arenas.

And scientists did not do technological stuff.

That was for workers.

Like a mathematician might figure out a geometry to build a better arch or something.

But the mathematician didn't go out and build the arch.

He gave a set of instructions to the masons who then built this better arch.

But the mathematician did not go build the arch.

That's for workers.

So the British discovered coal tar dye.

But they were not going to get their hands dirty doing actual work with coal tar dye.

That was for somebody else.

They just discovered coal tar dye.

Well,

The Germans didn't have any problem getting their goddamn hands dirty.

They started out with coal tar dye and that set off a revolution in chemistry that echoed around the world.

And the Germans used their coal tar dye beginnings to begin modifying it and they began making paints for different things.

Paints that didn't rust,

Paints that didn't rot off.

Paints of the most fabulous colors that have never been seen before in paints.

And at the same time their pharmaceutical industries were taking these same chemistry tricks that they were learning and modifying and they were coming up with all kinds of drugs and weapons.

For example,

Ammonia nitrate.

So in the beginning of World War I or just before World War I started,

I can't really remember,

The main source of ammonia nitrate was chili.

Well,

The Western forces went and blocked off,

Blockaded chili so Germany had no access to ammonia nitrate.

But their chemistry knowledge allowed them to synthesize ammonia nitrate and that started because they synthesized fertilizer,

Which is ammonia nitrate.

All this came from some douchebag discovering coal tar dye but the British aristocracy,

The scientists didn't want to do anything with it.

That's allowed the Kaiser,

Who was cut off from ammonia nitrate as an explosive for propelling artillery shells and cannons and things of that nature.

It allowed them to propagate the war.

It allowed for World War I to occur.

And everybody else was light years behind the Germans in their chemistry because even if they found something out they didn't do anything with it.

Somebody,

A techno nerd had to do something with it,

Not the Germans.

They didn't mind getting their hands dirty and that's how come World War I came about.

I mean arguably,

You can come up with all kinds of alternative historical things but that's what happened.

So Harrigold wrote a book called Zen and the Art of Archery.

Harrigold spent two years with the Zen master,

Archer.

The whole point of the goddamn thing was not to be able to create a Robin Hood and hit the center of the target,

Riding on horseback underneath the horse's neck like a plane's in here or something.

The point of the archery exercise was to release the arrow when it was the right time to release the arrow without intending to release the arrow and you discover you've released the arrow.

So he spent two years with his archery master trying to release the arrow without trying to release the arrow.

So he fired thousands of arrows over that two year period and each time the master went no,

No,

No,

No,

No,

No,

No.

Finally he released an arrow and the master said that's it.

I don't know why I can't remember the name of the place.

There's a retreat in Northern California,

Very famous place where the woods meets the ocean.

Humboldt?

No,

South of Humboldt.

You should know it's right by San Francisco.

Big Sur.

Yeah,

So there's a,

I can't remember the name of the place either,

But it's a huge retreat for wealthy people basically in Big Sur and they have,

Yeah,

Esalen Institute in Big Sur,

Thank you.

So they have this Zen master from Japan and Esalen,

So people are all excited to watch this Zen master archer,

You know,

And he sets up a target,

Which is a big round bale of hay with a target on it on the stand with it and its back is to the ocean and he's standing out there,

His robes are blowing in the wind and everybody's sitting around like this.

He pulls back,

Lets go of the arrow and the arrow completely misses the target and flies out into the ocean and he screams,

Boomzai!

It's easy for somebody to think I'll be a better archer if I practice Zen archery,

But Zen archery actually has nothing to do with becoming a better archer,

It has to do with becoming Zen consciousness if you want to call it that.

Esalen Institute,

How'd you know that?

You been there?

It's very expensive.

Yeah,

Helen Watts used to give talks there too.

I talked to two women who supposedly banged Helen Watts and Ram Dass at Esalen Institute.

They were all going,

Oh my God,

They were smoking dope and fucking.

I don't know if it was bullshit,

I have no reason to think it was bullshit.

It was a good story.

Yeah,

It's a good story.

Speaking of good stories,

After you left Sunday,

Three people attained enlightenment.

You didn't get to see them,

Transformed.

How expensive.

Yeah,

Just when you're not looking,

It's like one of those little things out of the corner of your eye,

When you go like this,

It's already gone.

Damn it.

Another issue is Albert Einstein said some things about God.

And so he said,

God does not play dice with the universe,

For example.

He also said,

And I always fuck this up,

But religion without God is empty and God without science is meaningless or some fucking thing.

Anyway,

Every hillbilly,

You know,

All the way over to Mississippi,

Says,

Oh,

You see,

Albert Einstein leading God.

Well,

They think they're talking,

They think that Albert Einstein was talking about the God they conceive of,

They believe in.

And they all have different conceptions of this God.

And they just assume when they hear the word God,

That you must be talking about the same God,

They're conceiving of.

Albert Einstein was so fucking furious about all this.

He wrote as many opinions and said it in a number of books and newspaper opinions and all that crap.

Hey,

I don't believe in your personal intervening God,

You numb nuts.

But a word like God is like a bomb going off.

Oh,

Just yesterday we were driving by a restaurant that used to be called TGIF Fridays and now the TGIF is gone and it just says Fridays.

Christine probably very astutely said,

Well maybe it was that TGIF,

Thank God it's Friday.

Especially since this Friday is across the street from Chick-fil-A.

Language is symbolic and our brains operate with symbols.

But we got a very weird evolved problem because our brains do what's called reify the symbols,

Meaning they become real to us and they partly become real to us because words and ideas,

They can trigger the release of hormones and neurotransmitters in our brains.

Words alone can do this.

Apparently no other animal has this problem or whatever,

But we can do it.

When we close our eyes and imagine something,

We can imagine something fearful and our bodies can begin responding to a fear.

In other words,

One half of our autonomic nervous systems,

The sympathetic nervous system,

Gets actionized and suddenly we're in the mission impossible mode.

All from closing the ideas and imagining shit in what Daniel Dinnock called the Cartesian theater of the mind.

And so you feel like there's really a self,

I mean it's one of the most sure feelings we have is that there is a self,

But that is all the evidence is against it and much evidence is for the idea that there is,

That this is a constructed delusion that feels real.

And by the way,

Emotions and feelings are not the same thing either.

Although they're in the donut shop,

They're used interchangeably.

I have a problem with this business with naming the subatomic constituents of particles or whatever at the beginning of the 20th century through 1965 or so,

Involved a fundamental problem that every single thing that we call a thing is not a thing because a thing is a noun.

What we call a thing is actually a verb.

It appears to us to be a thing because its thingness is changing at a speed that is inappropriate to our perceptions.

And when something like this gong hangs around and I think I'm seeing the same gong over and over and over again,

I say that gong,

Not realizing that it's,

Let's really get fucked up,

It's gonging.

It's manifesting as a gong but constantly its atoms are never the same from moment to moment.

In fact,

Every single atom is decaying into something else at a certain rate of speed.

Some atoms,

What we call atoms,

The elements in the Mendelian chart,

Mendelius chart,

Not Mendel,

Mendelius,

They're all becoming another element every second.

That's what a half-life is all about.

Some things are more reliable in their decay than others but what they're decaying into is well known,

You know,

I mean,

I'm not a chemist but something like carbon-14 is decaying,

And I've got to totally make this up,

Carbon-14 is decaying into argon-12 or whatever and it's doing so at a steady rate which is why that's what carbon-14 dating of carbon-based plants and things is about.

Anything that's carbon-based can be dated because how much carbon-14 is left versus how much,

I'm telling you,

I have no clue if it's argon-12.

I don't know what isotope it is of argon even if it's argon but anyway,

If there's a certain amount of carbon-14 left versus argon and that will tell you exactly when that,

Or within a,

Not exactly,

But within a reasonable standard of when that plant got buried or when that plant got,

No,

How old the plant is,

Or the plant plants.

And then if you find fossils around there buried in the same strata you say well the plants are this old and the skeletons,

Fossils we find are buried at the same place and same strata as the plants,

They got to be about the same age.

That's what carbon-14 dating is because carbon-14,

The isotope of carbon,

Carbon-14 is not just sitting there.

It's losing carbon-14 atoms and transforming it all the time into argon-12 or whatever.

But you know I'm looking at it,

It looks like carbon to me.

Everything's just like that.

Things are not things.

They're thing-ing.

If you understand that you would understand the term self-actualizing is not self-actualizing as in attaining something.

It is self-actualization in which self-actualization is an ongoing process until the day you kick the bucket.

I don't know what the verb is for enlightenment but it's not enlightenment like that's the goal of enlightenment over there and you got to get to it.

Enlightenmenting.

Write that down.

That's a good one.

You understand enlightenment is not a place you get to any more than self-actualization is in Maslow's hierarchy.

It's a place you get to.

It's a process.

It's never-ending.

You don't attain self-actualization.

The minute you get to the self-actualizing top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs you realize by then it's an ongoing process.

You didn't get anywhere.

Imagine that you're a hamster in one of those little fucking wheels and you think if you can only get enough wheel turns you'll get to be self-actualized.

Well now you've made it.

You self-actualized and there you are in the wheel running on it.

That one's supposed to be like this.

There's nothing but running on that wheel.

You're not going anywhere.

You didn't come from anywhere.

You can't make any progress.

You can't make any headway.

Now some people find this depressing but I know none of you do because you understand.

So,

You make the most of it while you're in the goddamn wheel.

It's annoying.

You can't escape from the wheel.

You start dancing on the wheel.

You're still turning the wheel but now you're drinking rum and Coca Cola.

Everybody else is trudging along.

Oh,

I'm the fucking wheel.

I can't wait to self-actualize and get enlightenment so I can get off the wheel.

And you're like,

What do you mean self-actualized enlightenment?

You're boogie on the goddamn wheel.

Understand?

That's what seeing your true nature is.

That's what understanding what life is suffering is all about.

Well,

On that note,

Oh man,

I could just go on but it's not some of you.

I'm trying to keep you all from going out and hitting the egg.

I can see from some grins it ain't gonna work.

Okay.

So,

Have fun with your hangovers if you have them.

Please try not to go to jail.

I've been there a few times.

It's not very pleasant.

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