#317 – John Vervaeke: Meaning Crisis, Atheism, Religion & the Search for Wisdom
Lex Fridman Podcast
Lex Fridman
4.7 • 13.6K Ratings
🗓️ 4 September 2022
⏱️ 197 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
John Vervaeke is a psychologist and cognitive scientist at University of Toronto. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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EPISODE LINKS:
John’s YouTube: https://youtube.com/johnvervaeke
John’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/vervaeke_john
John’s Facebook: https://facebook.com/VervaekeJohn
John’s Website: https://johnvervaeke.com
Books mentioned:
Flow: https://amzn.to/3cQDby9
On Bullshit: https://amzn.to/3PZDvYW
The Denial of Death: https://amzn.to/3KsIctp
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OUTLINE:
Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
(00:00) – Introduction
(07:03) – Meaning
(27:17) – Consciousness
(36:17) – Relevance realization
(47:40) – Wisdom
(54:54) – Truth
(59:38) – Reality
(1:11:59) – Meaning crisis
(1:35:27) – Religion
(1:43:17) – Nontheism
(1:58:26) – Distributed cognition
(2:16:37) – Flow
(2:36:35) – Psychedelics
(2:45:03) – Marxism and Nazism
(2:57:08) – Evil
(3:01:19) – Powerful ideas
(3:08:10) – Advice for young people
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following is a conversation with John Verveki, a psychologist and cognitive scientist |
| 0:04.8 | at University of Toronto. |
| 0:06.6 | I highly recommend his lecture series called Awakening from the Meaning Crisis, which |
| 0:12.3 | covers the history and future of humanity's search for meaning. |
| 0:18.4 | And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor. |
| 0:20.9 | Check them out in the description as the best way to support this podcast. |
| 0:24.4 | We got Ms. In a Main for Style, Inside Traco for Longevity, Aitslipe for |
| 0:29.9 | Napping, Athletic Greens for Performance, and On It for Supplements. |
| 0:35.6 | Choose wise and my friends. |
| 0:37.4 | And now onto the full ad reads. |
| 0:39.0 | As always, no ads in the middle. |
| 0:40.7 | I try to make this interesting, but if you skip them, please do check out our sponsors. |
| 0:44.7 | I enjoy their stuff. |
| 0:46.2 | Maybe you will too. |
| 0:49.0 | This show is brought to you by Ms. In and Main, the maker of comfortable style is dress |
| 0:53.7 | shirts and other menswear. |
| 0:56.3 | I wear their black dress shirt, I have a bunch of them and I love it. |
| 1:01.6 | It's comfortable, it fits great, it's light, but not too light because it still holds |
| 1:07.8 | the form as the flexibility of athletic wear. |
| 1:10.9 | So I feel pretty, you know, I'm pretty short on adjectives when I describe stuff. |
| 1:17.3 | Adjectives are tricky. |
| 1:18.3 | In fact, I try to avoid adjectives because I think that's a slippery slope that you |
... |
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