Lucky Vibrations

Hi guys, it's Tom Guarriello. I wanted to make a follow-up video on the, on the Luck video. Actually, I wanted to just try to make comments to people's comments, but the comments are so like broken and blown up that it's just crazy making. So anyway, this is gonna be a little bit long, probably. And it's probably gonna be a little geeky, sort of philosophy, psychology geeky. So if you're not interested in those kinds of things, I'd suggest you kinda go catch somebody else's video, which I'm sure you'll find some great ones. The thing I wanted to talk about is the difference between sort of the way we live our lives and the way we think about our lives. Now, that's a, that's a question that goes really deep into the history of philosophy and the history of psychology. If you think about your everyday life, for example, I'd like you to just go ahead and listen to this.

I love the colorful clothes she wears and the way the sunlight plays upon her hair. I hear the sound of a gentle lullaby on the wind that lifts her perfume through the air.

I'm picking up good vibrations Okay, so, uh, that's the Beach Boys, Good Vibrations. Now, when you listen to that song, your experience of it is depending upon many, many, many factors of your life. Um, an experience that either, uh, is Bringing up memory is— well, it's all bringing up memory because most of us have heard the song before. That wasn't the first time you probably heard Good Vibrations, uh, and those memories are unique to us. They have some shared elements because some of us who heard that song when it was popular, um, heard it within the context of a certain period of our lives, and so It has lived meaning for us. Lived meaning. In other words, it means something to us in the context of our lives and the context of our lives the way they're lived. Now, science will tell us that, you know, what's really going on there is as follows. There are— I chose the song with a little bit of, you know, cleverness attached to it— there are vibrations that are taking place, and that those vibrations in this, in the sound, in the air at a certain frequency are hitting our eardrums, and those vibrations are then creating neurological impulses that are going to our brain, and then there are neurophysiological processes that are taking place in our brain, and that those neurophysiological processes are what's really going on. That's what's really going on. See, that the idea that our experience of our lives is what philosophers have come to call not phenomenon—phenomenon are the things that we live and experience in our lives—but are epiphenomenon, epi-phenomenon, meaning that they're kind of illusions almost, that they're, they're, you know, they occur, but they're not the really real, that the really real is what's taking place down at the neurophysiological level. And of course, the physicists would— I mean, the chemists would tell you that what's going on is that there are chemical reactions that are taking place there, and that's what's really real. And the physicists will tell you that what's really going on there is in fact that there are molecular, uh, electron transfers and, you know, reactions at the physical level, and that's what's really going on there. And all of that is absolutely correct. That is what's going on there from the perspective of those disciplines, of those sciences. Now, but that's not the way we live as human beings. We live at the level of the phenomenal world, the world that we experience. We Listen to music. We have enjoyable, pleasurable experiences, or not enjoyable, unpleasurable experiences. And that level of our lives is really the level that most of us care about on a day-to-day basis. Does something taste good? Does it smell good? Does it feel good? Does it sound good? Does it look good? What's my experience of it? What's my experience of this other person? That— and all of these other levels, whether they are psychological reductionism, physical reductionism— reductionism being, of course, the reducing of things down to other smaller parts, and that that's what's really going on— that, that all of those reductionisms are all perfectly valid perspectives of study, but that they don't— what we've done is to think that they make that level of the phenomenal level, the level of lived experience, somehow less valid. That somehow or other the really real things— and, you know, the way to find out what's really happening is to break things down, and then we'll find out what it's really about. Well, you know, it's sort of like looking for the soul or like looking for love, you know. You reduce it down to neurochemical kinds of things, and what do you have? You have neurochemical reactions. You don't have love, right? You know, you don't have pleasure. You don't have— you know, that's not what— those are human terms, right? Those are terms that are descriptive of the way we live our lives. The other level of understanding of those things, again, perfectly valid, but in some ways doesn't really inform us about our lives. It's sort of an interesting fact that, oh yes, when I taste chocolate, there are these chemicals that— but that doesn't talk about chocolate. It doesn't talk about loving chocolate. It doesn't talk about the experience of tasting and really, mm, great chocolate. It doesn't tell you that. What it tells you is about this other level of things. Now, luck is another one of those lived realities that people experience. Probabilistic reality, which of course I'm not challenging the probabilistic nature of reality. No, you know, calculus, we understand. We understand the probabilistic nature of reality. But the probabilistic nature of reality is not the level that we live on. We live on the level of the human and we say, "Boy, that was lucky," or, "Boy, that wasn't." wasn't lucky. So the question, does luck exist? The word exist then becomes really crucial because it don't— something only exists from a certain point of view. You know how when you hear about all these new particles in particle physics that don't exist except outside of these special kinds of conditions in, in particle accelerators that, you know, they exist in there. So you say, well, do they exist? Yes, they exist under those conditions. They exist So does luck exist? Excuse me. Yes, under the conditions of lived human reality, luck exists. Does luck exist if you look at the universe from some kind of meta-probabilistic perspective? It's an argument. It's an interesting philosophical argument. So anyway, I wanted to bring that next level of thought into that interesting dialogue. There have been a lot of very interesting comments that I wish I would have been able to respond to, uh, as they were taking place on the question of luck. And, and also, by the way, any, any new subscribers— and thanks so much for subscribing— I, you know, I made a video about subscribers, uh, a while ago and had 125 subscribers, and as of this morning I have 229 subscribers, which is really great. It's— and thank you so much for subscribing. I hope I've thanked you all in comment notes or in other ways, but maybe some of those fail, and if I did Thanks so much for subscribing, and I look forward to seeing you again soon. So take care. Bye-bye.