My name is Shannon O'Zerny. I am the head of youth services at the West Vancouver Memorial Library, and it is my great pleasure to welcome you to Virtual Booktopia, the literary arts festival for young people, and today's presentation by Tanya Lloyd-Kai. Before we begin, I want to acknowledge that the library has its home on the traditional ancestral and unseated territories of the Coast Salish people, and in particular, recognize the Squamish, Slewa-tooth, and Musqueam nations. I am very grateful that I get to make my home here and that I can keep learning to do better and be better when it comes to sharing this place. Booktopia is a very special partnership between the West Vancouver Memorial Library, our library foundation, and West Vancouver schools. I want to give a huge thank you to all your teachers, teacher librarians, principals who made it possible for you to watch today. Thank you so much for joining us. So our format, how it's gonna work. I am very shortly going to be introducing author Tanya Lloyd-Kai. She will be talking with you about some of the most interesting, coolest, and probably sometimes weirdest stories from her latest nonfiction books, and then we will have time for your questions. I know many of you who are watching live will think of questions as you're listening to Tanya, and it's not too late to send those in. You can email them to us at youthatwestvanlibrary.ca, and that email address is also down in the video description. And even if you don't have a question, but you're a teacher or you're leading a home learning group, if you're watching with a group of kids we want to hear from you, tell us how many kids are watching, and we'd also love to give you a shout out at the end as well. It's just really helpful for us to know exactly how many of you are tuning in. So now I am so thrilled to introduce you to our presenter.  Curious, determined, generous, kind, tenacious, persistent, and very funny. This very unique combination is totally fitting for someone who writes both nonfiction information books and fiction novels for kids and teens. Tanya's job as a writer combines the work of a researcher, a journalist, a teacher, a TED talker, a stand-up comedian, and sometimes even a therapist. I think she will really open up your eyes to a whole new side of what an author can do and all the different things they can choose to write. Tanya has written over a dozen books, but today she's going to be focusing on three, under pressure, the science of stress. This is your brain on stereotypes, how science is tackling unconscious bias, and the forthcoming snooze fest, which will be released this fall and is all about the science of sleep. So again, don't hesitate to send us your questions if you're watching live. I really hope that you enjoy this whirlwind trip through Tanya's brain. I'm excited and I hope you are too. We're all watching in different places, but I still want you to put your hands together, give a big round of applause, especially if you're watching together as a group for Tanya Lloyd-Kai. Tanya, I am going to turn the screen over to you until our Q&A at the end. Okay, thank you, Shannon, and thank you for having me. Thank you for the West Van Library and thank you for everybody for tuning in. I'm going to talk about where some of my ideas come from today for all of these different information books that I get to write. Because I get to write about all these different topics, which means that every six months or so, I need to come up with some sort of new idea to say to a publisher, this is what I would like to write about next. So to show you how I do this, I've gone and gotten a picture taken of my brain, just for you so you can see where the ideas come from. Are you ready? Here it is, the insides of my brain, very organized as you can see. And the trouble with this brain of mine is usually big parts of it are taken up with things that have nothing to do with books. Sometimes I think about my new puppy, sometimes I think about tennis, gardening, sometimes elephants for no reason at all. The weather, sometimes I just really want a strawberry milkshake and that's all I can think about. Sometimes coronavirus like all of us right now. But the trick is to get some time when my brain can be a little bit more blank, maybe a walk outside or some time by myself. And then these places where a whole bunch of lines intersect tend to be where the ideas come from. So I'm gonna talk about three of these places where different lines intersected in my head today. And the first one has to do with stereotypes. And this is where the ideas came from for this is your brain on stereotypes. So here's my husband and my son. My husband, Min, was born in Burma. So he's brown as you can see. And a couple of years ago I had just listened to a podcast about the ways that our brains categorize things and people without us necessarily realizing it. So I had this podcast in the back of my head. And then Min gets invited to Edmonton to give a keynote talk at a conference. Now the keynote speaker at the conference is kind of the most important guy there. He gets to like really rile everybody up and get them all excited. And Min is a very outgoing, funny guy. So he's really good at this. And he flies in to Edmonton the night before and he checks into the hotel and he asks, can I borrow the key and I'll just go look at the conference room. And he goes and looks at where the people will be sitting the next day and where he'll be speaking at the microphone. And then while he's in there, in rushes a woman from the conference room next door and she says, oh, thank goodness you're here. We have been waiting forever to get the heat turned up. And as I said, Min is a very outgoing and funny guy. So he said, do you think I'm a janitor because I'm brown? And of course that's what she did think. And she was so embarrassed and she of course hadn't meant to make those conclusions but her mind had seen Min and put him in a certain category without her necessarily meaning to do it. In her mind, there was some sort of pictures that looked like this where there was a brown guy who was a janitor and a white guy who was a keynote speaker. And she apologized. She was horribly embarrassed. She didn't do this on purpose. But when Min told me this story, I thought, that's just like the podcast I was just listening to. Those are categories in our minds. Categories that trick us sometimes and make for embarrassing situations where we assume things that we should never have assumed.  So call out breakfast, lunch or dinner. Are you ready? Breakfast could be lunch. I'm gonna call that dinner. Lunch, definitely lunch. Definitely breakfast. Dinner? Okay, one more set. Dinner, lunch, wait a second. So we have all these categories in our heads. We have, when we open the cupboard of our kitchen, we know right away which foods we're gonna think about for breakfast and which foods we're gonna think about for lunch. And when we see an umbrella, we know that it is not in the food category at all. So we have to have these categories in our heads. Otherwise we would be very confused about what to eat and we would end up chewing on outdoor gear. So we need categories and they're good for things like food and they're great for outdoor gear, but they're not very useful when we start applying them to people we don't know. So one of the interesting stories I read as I was preparing for this book was about a test called the IAT, the Implicit Association Test. An implicit here means memories we use without thinking about them. So means things like we know what an umbrella is without thinking about it because it's somewhere back in our brain. That's an implicit memory. So this is an implicit association test and it was developed by a team who worked with a scientist named Anthony Greenwald and then a woman named Mazurine Banji came to work on it. And they said, here, take one of these tests, try it out.  So she thought, okay, I can do this. So she went through and she put business and work and wealth with man and she put babies and athlete and cooking and fashion and nurture with woman. And then they said, okay, great, we've written down your times and now we're gonna time you again. Do it the same way except backwards. So put all the words that have to do with work with the word woman. So she went through and she put business and work and wealth with woman and all the other ones with man. And they said, okay, here's your time. And it was slower. It took her longer, now she had a lot more words to sort through than I have here, but it took her longer to put the work words with woman than it did for her to put the work words with man.  And she said, well, that's ridiculous. I'm a professor. I've been working my whole life. Of course I associate women with work. And they said, it's not really something that you do consciously. It's something that all of our brains do because they have these categories buried in them. And they said, the same thing happens with black and white. So they have given this test to millions of people all over the world. And they have said, put the positive words with the word white.    And it takes them longer to put positive words with black. It even takes black people longer to put positive words with black. Because somewhere in the backs of our minds we have this category that says, white is positive and black is negative. And it's so hard for us to fight against those categories. Partly because they're in advertising and shows and things we read. They're all around us. And we absorb them whether or not we want to. And that leads to all sorts of crazy stuff happening. For example, when scientists ask boys and girls in preschool, hey, are girls smarter or boys smarter?  But if they ask those same kids in elementary school, everybody says boys are smarter. What? And if you ever watch a show on TV like Dragon's Den or Shark Tank, business ideas pitched by men are likely to get more investors and more money than business ideas pitched by women. And if the men are good looking, they get even more money. So that's not fair. Female politicians get interviewed less in newspapers and magazines than men. And men are given more time to speak on TV when they're running for office. And if you look at the sports section of a newspaper, only 3% of stories feature female athletes. So there's all these things going on all around us that just aren't fair that have to do with stereotypes, have to do with those categories in our brains. Now, the best part of researching this book was I got to find some ways that we can actually change our brains. There's all thank goodness. There's all sorts of ways that scientists are researching to figure out how we can solve some of these problems with the categories in our minds. The first thing we can do is be an ally. So if somebody's being called names, we don't have to get involved in a fight but we can go and sit beside them. If our friend says, hey, I wanna go and check out this new club, we can say, hey, I'll go with you, sure. We can be supportive to those around us who might be experiencing more stereotypes than we are. Another thing we can do is speak up. So if we see somebody getting bullied because of stereotypes or if we see somebody getting categorized when they shouldn't be, we can tell our parents or teachers or the principal or even the police if it's something really bad, we can speak up when we see something going wrong. Number three is we can get involved and actively try to make things better. So we could start a club about diversity or we could help the school librarian create a display of diverse books or we could volunteer and be friends with new refugees coming to town. This is an interesting one because this Easy Bake Oven, the colors of the Easy Bake Oven were changed because of the campaign of a 13-year-old girl whose little brother wanted to cook but didn't wanna use a girl's Easy Bake Oven. So we can actually change things just by writing to companies or writing to the government and saying, hey, you are causing bias with your ads or your policies and you need to change those. And the last way, one of the best ways to change those categories in our brains is to make friends with as many people as possible and as many kinds of people as possible because the more we have real-life friends from all different types of life, the less the categories in our mind are based on stereotypes and the more we start to know real people. And if you don't, maybe you live in a really small town where everybody looks the same and you don't have different types of people you can make friends with, then the next best thing is to go and read books about all different sorts of people because scientists have shown that even reading books about different sorts of people helps change those categories in our minds. So those are some of the things I learned as I was researching.  The idea came up for a book about stress and you might think, oh, Tanya must have been really stressed at work or maybe things were going badly in her family or she was really having a hard time but the truth is I was stressed about tennis because I play tennis in my spare time, not very well and I wanted to look like and Riasco in the top picture here and what I did look like was a person in the bottom picture balls going everywhere, nothing going right and every time I was supposed to have a match against especially if it was against somebody I didn't know I would get so stressed and my hands would get sweaty and the tennis racket would start slipping around and my heart would be beating fast and I thought, this is ridiculous. I need to learn to calm down. I'm not in the Olympics. This is just a friendly tennis game. So I started to look into the science of stress and how I might calm myself down. And as I was doing it, I was like, this is really interesting. There could be a whole book about stress and so that's what I started to write. So one of the very first stress researchers was a guy named Walter Cannon and I have arranged for us to interview Walter Cannon today. So here he is and we are going to ask him, Walter Cannon, did you mean to research stress? No. Well, when you started researching stress then what did you mean to be researching? Digestion. Were you researching human digestion? No. Whose digestion were you researching? Cats. Walter Cannon was researching the digestive processes of cats and he had a cat in the X-ray machine. And so he's watching food go through the cat's body when all of a sudden there was a loud noise. Somebody slammed the door in the lab or something and he noticed that all the cat's systems stopped. Just for a second they stopped and then digestion started again. And so he thought, well, that was very strange. So he had someone try it again like, crash something and yep, all the cat's systems stopped. And so Walter abandoned his research on digestion and he started trying to figure out what was going on in the cat's body. And he discovered something that now we call the flight or fight or freeze response. Which means when we have this sudden burst of stress when a tiger jumps out of the bushes or a bus is bearing down on us, either we get ready to fight, which doesn't work that well against the bus or we get ready to flee to run away or we freeze like a squirrel in the middle of the road, also not a good idea with the bus. So he discovered this and once he did all sorts of researchers got interested in stress and started investigating how it works in our bodies. And the funny thing is, is that our body's stress response hasn't changed for thousands of years. So it was designed to deal with tigers jumping out of the bushes. It was designed for those really sudden stress instances where we had to fight or run away or freeze. But today's stress is a different kind of stress. Today we have like maybe a math test on Friday and then a tennis tournament and then our mom's telling us to clean our room and there's just all these things building up on us and they last sometimes for hours or for days. They're not just that one minute tiger. But our body only has that one response. Our body only has that adrenaline rush in our bodies and our heart rate goes faster and our muscles get ready to fight. So it's hard for our bodies to maintain that if the stress lasts over hours or days. So that's something called chronic stress and that's a tricky thing for our bodies to deal with in this modern world. Now scientists have found four things they think are very stressful for people and they say that's nuts and it's for novelty. So we find new things stressful. U is for unpredictability. So if we can't control what's about, we can't predict what's about to happen, that's stressful. T is a threat to the ego. That means if we feel like we're about to be embarrassed, if you're about to get pushed on stage and you have to sing, that's stressful. And S is a sense of control. Let's say you're locked in your car with your big sister who's just learning to drive, that can be stressful. So those are things in our everyday lives that can cause our heart to race. Fortunately, there's a few things that work against stress. So if you can feel in control, if one day you can drive your own car, it's less stressful. If you feel really confident about something, if you feel like I've been taking singing lessons for years, I've totally got this when you walk on stage, way less stressful. And if you have goals and you know what you're trying to do and you know that, okay, it might be stressful, but I'm getting to this one exact place, that helps. So we're gonna try three different, I showed you those five different ways to combat stereotypes. We're gonna try three different ways to combat stress. Now the first thing here has a few different parts. Let's see, if your last name goes from A to F, then what you're going to do is sit very quietly and think to yourself, I am calm. I am calm, I am calm. So you sit there and think about that.  Don't hit people next to you with your elbows. Shannon, you're looking very powerful right now. And if your last name is something beyond P, then you're gonna think, I'm so excited. I can't wait, I'm so excited. So those are your jobs. Okay, I am about to tell you what's happening in your brain. Now, those of you doing the big powerful poses, some science says that if you do a power pose for two minutes, then all the stress hormones in your body will drop and all the high performance hormones in your body will go up and if you're going into a sports match or a big exam or job interview, you are going to do better. Now, some scientists have found that to be true and other scientists have tried to repeat the same experiments and they haven't been able to get the same results. So the jury's out on that one, but you can try it and see if it works for you. That is called power posing. Now, the people thinking, I am calm, I am calm, I am calm, that works great on everyday things.  Now, the you people who are saying, I'm excited, I'm so excited, scientists have found that that is actually a little more effective if you're about to do something like a math test or singing competition because feeling stressed and feeling your heartbeat fast and feeling that little bit of sweat and tingling in your skin actually feels very similar to feeling excited. So if you can trick yourself into thinking you feel excited, instead of thinking you'll feel stressed, you are actually, and this is scientifically proven, going to do better on your math test and better at your singing competition. So those are a few different things to try. Here is my stress buster number two. This is very simple and it is like the best scientific way to combat stress is to go outside. Somehow, when we breathe in plant oils and when we feel the breeze and we hear birds singing and we see green, all the stress hormones in our body start to go away and our immune system that fights off stress and fights off sickness starts to get better and better even after just a few minutes outside. Now you've done research showing this all over the world. The research started in Japan, but now scientists have done the same experiments everywhere and found it's totally true. And let's say you don't have time to go outside. Even looking at pictures of nature helps your stress hormones in your body go down.  So that's stress buster number two. Stress buster number three is to breathe because here's a funny thing. Breathing is one of the only things that we can do without thinking about it at all and we can do differently when we're thinking about it. We can do other things without thinking about it at all. We can digest a chocolate chip cookie without thinking about it. We can have our heart beat faster without thinking about it, but we can't change those things by thinking. We can't say, hey, digest that cookie faster. It doesn't work, but we can say, hey, breathe more slowly. And when we tell ourselves to breathe more slowly and more calmly, it calms that stress down as well. So I have a little 20 second timer here. Let's try breathing slowly. That's why things like yoga are really good at stress busting because of all that slow breathing tells our inside brain that's happening without us thinking about it. Nothing stressful here, nothing to worry about you right now can be calm. So those were three of the most interesting ways I found that there was research about to calm that stress in our bodies. So that is where my ideas came from for under pressure. And I'm gonna talk to you about one last thing and you will be the first people ever to see this cover I'm about to show you and to hear about this book because it's not coming out until the fall but it is my newest book and it's called Snooze Fest, the surprising science of sleep. And you might be able to guess where I got the idea for this book because I got it about 4 a.m. while I was laying wide awake and thinking why am I not sleeping? Why can't I sleep? Why do I have bad dreams? Why do I wake up at 4 a.m. when it's not morning yet? Why is my son sleepwalking? Why do people talk in their sleeps? I found at 4 a.m. I had all sorts of different questions about sleeping and it turns out that our brains when we're sleeping are doing really interesting things. It also turns out that the scientists who researched sleep were the first ones to research sleep were very strange people. Some of them researched sleep by going deep into caves where there was no light and dark and living there for weeks so they could see if their body would stay on the same sleep-wake cycle. And you'll see here the scientist has his bed in buckets of water and that's because he was so far back in the cave that centipedes started climbing into his bed. Another scientist was so obsessed with how and why people sleep that he started watching his newborn baby sleep and taking pictures and videos of her sleeping which I think is creepy.  All sorts of interesting scientists that I could write about in my book. And as I researched sleep, I learned that we have all these neurons in our brains, these nerve cells and it's kind of like during the day if your whole class was passing notes to each other and they're passing notes to the people sitting behind them and beside them in front of them and they're passing notes in all different directions and of course a whole class can't do something like this quietly so they're burbling and yelling and talking as they're doing this and it's loud and it's crazy. That's our brains during the day.  But at night, it's like everybody is still passing notes but very slowly and they're all passing them in the same direction.  And there's all sorts of interesting things that are happening as we sleep. So our immune system that keeps us from getting sick and that heals our cuts or our sprained ankles works at double speed overnight. Our brains sort through the stuff we've taken in during the day and decide what we need to remember and what we don't.  That is not something that's gonna be useful to you.  So your brain makes those decisions at night and stores the things you need to remember.  So if you learned a new way to pass a soccer ball or a new song on the piano, your brain actually practices those movements at night. So then you improve your physical abilities. And the other really interesting thing that happens, especially when you dream, is your brain sorts through your emotions and balances them out so you can wake up fresh and start a new day feeling good about the day. So I gave you ways to help combat the stereotypes in your mind. And I told you the ways from my stress book that you can feel a little bit less stressed. So here are some ways from the sleep book that you can get better sleep. You can use foot lotion made from mouse fat. Does that sound good? You could apply live leeches to your skin.  Okay, I would suggest you do none of these things, but there are actually ways that people hundreds of years ago thought would help them sleep better from different parts of the world. The interesting thing is the guy who thought you should take earwax from a dog and rub it across your front teeth. Okay, he was totally wrong about that. But he also invented the combination lock. So next time you lock up your locker or your bike shed, you can thank the guy who thought you could sleep better with dog earwax. Okay, here's the real advice for sleeping better that people now think will work, that scientists have studied. The first one is mindfulness. So those same sorts of deep, long breaths and concentrating on the present moment that we tried with stress, that also helps us sleep. Exercising often helps us sleep. Turning off your screens at least an hour before bed so all that light doesn't mess with your wake sleep cycles, not drinking lots of coffee or tea or pop. And here's the best news. If you are a kid or a teenager, you can sleep in. They say that for grownups who are trying to sleep better, they should try to go to sleep and wake up at the same time every day. But for kids, sleeping in is okay. So there's your best news from sleep research for the day.  And those are the kind of things I think about when I'm looking for ideas for my books, whether I'm telling information book types of stories or whether I'm trying to make up ideas for the novels, I'm looking for people trying to solve interesting problems and discover new interesting things. So I think now Shannon is going to read some of your questions and we'll talk about more about books. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much, Tanya. I wanna start by giving a couple of shout outs. One to division eight, the grade four or five class at Equal Pauline Johnson. Thanks so much for watching. Also a grade six class from Ridgeview. You can still send us an email if you're watching for a shout out or you can still sneak in your questions youthatwestvenlibrary.ca, that email address is below. I feel a bit like a DJ, like a radio DJ taking requests and it feels great. So Tanya, some questions for you. When we are working with students, librarians and teachers when we're working with students and they're doing inquiry projects or essays, a question we get all the time from students is how do you know when to cite something or how do you know when to give someone else credit for something that you've learned or something you wanna include in your book or your project? Because when you're brand new to a topic, you feel like you're taking ideas and facts and research from everyone else. So can you talk a little bit more about when you're writing, how you know when to give someone else credit for idea or when you actually need a citation? Oh. Tricky. It is a bit tricky. Sometimes if I find the same idea in a whole bunch of different places, I find it in different scientific journals and different books I'm reading and everybody seems to agree, then I feel like, okay, I can write this in my own way and I don't really need to say that it was the idea of one specific person. But I do feel like lots of these scientists have spent years of their life trying to find exactly the right answers for us. And also those scientists are often pretty interesting people. So if it's something a scientist has really worked to find the right answer about, I feel like I definitely have to say who the scientist was and what they were working on. So as much as I can, I try to give people credit for the ideas that they've come up with. I also noticed too in your books, something that you're able to do also because you write fiction is you're able to kind of put yourself in someone else's shoes. So if you're talking about somebody getting blood taken, you can kind of write about how that person might feel nervous or might feel squeamish. And that's not something you have to go and get a citation for because you're sort of, it's the more imaginative part of nonfiction. That is totally true, yes. Although as far as getting squeamish when getting blood taken, I may or may not have to imagine that. It may have been real. I have a question from Owen at a cold Pauline Johnson. Which one of your books is your favorite? Oh, my very favorite book is, oh, it's on the screen there. When the Worst Happens and It's All Stories of Survival. And I love it because first of all, survival stories are automatically exciting. There's somebody's in a really scary situation and they're obsessed with getting out of the situation. So automatically I have a really exciting story to tell.  So I'm the one who listens really carefully on an airplane when they give a safety demonstration. And I always look to see where they store the life jackets on BC Ferries like I'm very paranoid. And after writing that book and writing all these survival stories and looking at all the scientific research into why some people survive and maybe some people don't. I felt like, hey, I could actually do this. There's survival strategies I could use. I have to like take action and I have to look after my basic survival skills and I have to work well with the people around me. So I felt like it might help me survive a desperate situation in the future. Which hasn't happened yet. Thank goodness. A question from Evelyn at Eagle Harbor. And also I wanna give a shout out to Eagle Harbor grade four or five class. I bet that's Mr. Price's class. If it is, hi to you. If it's not Mr. Price's class, just as big of a hello. But Evelyn from that Eagle Harbor grade four or five class is wondering how do we get schools to start later so we can sleep in? Oh. What could kids do? Can kids do anything? You're not alone. There are big campaigns to make that happen. Especially in the United States where their schools start even earlier than ours do. But yeah, you can write a letter to your school board and tell them, do some research into the science and then write a letter to your school board explaining the science. Yeah, and your book is coming out this fall snooze fest. People can see a picture of it up on the screen but there's lots of other sleep research. In the meantime, if they can't wait till September to check out and absolutely writing to your school board is a really good first step. A question from Mia at Pauline Johnson School. What do you do if you have tried everything on your sleep list and it doesn't help you? People who are still struggling with sleep. And I know you're obviously not a sleep expert or a sleep doctor but are there things that, or people that students could maybe talk to about that? Well yeah, thankfully there are sleep doctors and I worked with one on the book. So thankfully if you've tried everything and it's just not working for you you can go to your doctor and you can say I really want to see a sleep doctor and they'll send you to somebody who is specialist in sleep and they're actually very, very successful those sleep doctors. So that's the answer to those ones is go see somebody who is more of an expert than I am. Some other questions we have here. It seems like now more than ever people can get really heated and really angry with one another when they're discussing facts and science. And I'm wondering if that's made your job as a non-fiction writer harder than it was 10 or 15 years ago. I don't know if it's made it harder but I do think that that's the reason non-fiction is important. And I think in lots of my books like Eyes and Spies for example was on privacy and surveillance. So in lots of places I would say this is the argument of the people who are on the side of privacy. They think it's really important to protect this information about ourselves. This is the argument of the people on the side of surveillance. They think it's really important to catch criminals. And I present those arguments and I don't necessarily give my readers all the answers. I give them research on both sides and then I let people talk about it and decide. And I think that process of seeing the facts on both sides and sorting them out for yourself and talking to your friends about them is a process that we should all get a little bit better at so that we can talk about things like viruses and what to do about them without getting so angry with each other. Yeah, absolutely. And that's a really good point that you do do that a lot in your writing. You're not just telling kids you should think this or these are the facts that you should understand. You're looking at all different sides and sort of empowering us and giving us the tools to make our own decision. So we may have some viewers who are like me and they get very shy and nervous when they have to do something like call for a hair appointment or call the library to see if they have a book. And I'm wondering when you're doing research how do you get in touch with experts and do you ever get nervous reaching out to these people for help or guidance? I used to get super nervous when I had to phone them because I don't like phoning people either. But now we have this wonderful technology called email. I believe it uses the internet. I'm not totally sure about it. And people are so generous I found when I, especially if I've already read their research so that I'm not asking them a dumb question I could have found elsewhere but if I've read their research and I say I'm writing this book for kids and I'm trying to explain this concept and this is what you've said about it but I'm still wondering A, B and C or if I said this, would I be right? Then people are very, very generous about emailing back and telling me giving me more information. And they're also usually excited to hear that kids might be reading their research and kids might change the way they live or change the world around them because of their research. So it's kind of, I think, exciting for the scientists too. Yeah, another interesting thing we're getting lots of questions about sleep. I think that's a really hot topic that really resonates with people. And we have a question from Clara at Eagle Harbor and sometimes we're not in control of our sleep, right? Sometimes we have siblings who wake us up and our sleep is always interrupted. Are there ways that you think kids can try to take a little bit more control over their sleep or conversations they may be able to have with the adults in their life about sleep? Oh, that's interesting. And often we have a little more control over when we go to sleep than we do about when our little brother is gonna wake us up. So if you can't control when your little brother is gonna wake you up, you might have to take more control of when you're getting to sleep, which is hard. And it's harder and harder. Now that we have phones and screens and Netflix to distract us, it's harder for everybody, kids and grownups, to turn off all those things and wind down for sleep. So I would say start earlier and start with a book instead of a show. Yeah, that's great advice. And it relates to what you were talking about with stress is look for the little pieces where you may have control or if a whole situation seems like you don't have control, what do you have control over?  A question from Quinn from Eagle Harbor. Quinn does not really like sleeping and notices that some people really love sleeping. Did you see anything about sleep preference in your research or if not, are people able to function without sleep? Even if they hate sleep, can they just get through their life without it or with just a little bit? You can't function without sleep. They actually have really funny, funny, funny scary stories about people who tried to go for weeks without sleep and lamppost started talking to them and imaginary spiders turned up on their floors and all these crazy things happened in their brain. So you can't go without sleep, but definitely some people need a little less sleep and some people need a little more sleep. Some people find that they like to go to sleep early and wake up early and some people are the opposite. They're the night owls. So we are all a little bit different. And I think if you're one of those people that needs a little less then you just try not to worry about it and your body will tell you whether you're tired or not. And you're very lucky. Yeah, good point. Our very last question, I'm gonna take this one from Keon from Division 8 at Ecole Pauline Johnson and it's a great wrap-up question. What inspires you to write? Oh, I think the best part about writing is that anything I get curious about, whether I hear it on a podcast or the radio or I see it in a book, then I can do a little research and think, hmm, could I write a book about that? So I'm always on the lookout for ideas and I think I'm a curious type of person. Awesome. Tanya, that was fantastic. Thank you so much for being here with us today. Your work is so timely and we all get to benefit from your endless curiosity and care that you take tackling these topics. We may need to do a sequel just on sleep. I think once NewsFest comes out in the fall we need to have you back and we really need to delve into that. I wanna say thank you to everyone who is watching. It's really helpful for us to know what you thought of this program. There is a link to a very quick survey in the YouTube description below. If you're watching as a class, everyone as a class can fill that out or just your teacher can fill it out totally up to you. It's very helpful for us. I wanna say a final huge thank you to Tanya Lloyd-Kai, West Vancouver Schools and the West Vancouver Memorial Library Foundation for their continued support of Booktopia. This is our final Booktopia presentation of the 2020-2021 school year and it has been a blast. And until next time, I hope you all take care and I hope to see you soon. Bye for now. Thanks, Tanya.


So today we are doing a mass casualty for CLR-37 for both our corpsmen and for the Marines involved in the jump CP as part of Iron Dragon. The mass casualty, what that is, is it is any event medically that overwhelms our medical system, so our simple BAS that's set up. The purpose of it is to work through a point of injury to the casualty collection point to our BAS and then do a ground to air medevac. So this is our first experience to take our training that we've done in clinic on that ground type training and really mobilize it from our Humvee type patient movement to movement to an actual aircraft, which is realistic in a true wartime scenario with how we would be moving patients.


Aspects of western philosophy, module 10 and lecture 10. This lecture will focus the following topics. We will try to understand the problem of the physical substance as it is explained in the philosophy of René Descartes. And in this context, he introduces another notion, the concept of God. And again, like many of his predecessors, particularly like many of his, many of the scholastic philosophers, Descartes also comes up with certain proofs for the existence of God. And also in this context, we will see the very important distinction which he maintains. Or rather, I would rather say that this is a very important problem which Descartes has initiated. It is not that Descartes has introduced it. Descartes actually has not introduced the mind-body dualism into western philosophy. It has been there since the time of Plato or even before that. But in Descartes, we would find a culmination of the discussions. All the implications of mind-body dualism have been brought out in Descartes philosophy. So, we will conclude this lecture with a brief analysis of mind-body dualism. So, when we talk about reality, we have been already examining all these concepts in the previous lectures. So, roughly we can say that this, the ontology of reality, these are the three important substances that we find when we talk about reality in this context. There is the mind, then the God and then the body. There is a certain reason why I follow this order. I began with mind, because as in the previous lecture we have seen, Descartes has already proved the existence of the mind. He is pretty sure about its existence and for him, I am a thinking substance. So far he has only proved that. So, the existence of the mind gains a kind of precedence or it comes first before all other things, which is followed by the existence of God and again after that, with the help of proving the existence of God, Descartes proves the existence of body or physical substance or the entire existence of the physical world, material world is proved as a third step. So, these three constitute roughly the domain of reality for Descartes or what we only understand as the substances. Now, as I already mentioned, the mind is the beginning, the affirmation of the mind is the beginning of all knowledge. We have already seen this, because Descartes was looking for a starting point and absolutely certain indubitable starting point in philosophy. So, if you have the starting point in philosophy that would function as a self, as an axiom, something which is very similar to an axiom in mathematics from where we deduct everything else. So, all knowledge system is in one sense based on this beginning and mind is that beginning and now the method of detection is applied and everything else is derived from this primary truth and everything else is known by the mind by having ideas. So, mind is very important because all knowledge even when I know that there is a camera in front of me or there is a computer in front of me, this does not directly or immediately imply that there is an object called a camera or a computer in front of me. It only means that I have an idea of a computer or I have an idea of a camera. So, what is absolutely certain for me is the existence or me having ideas, I am having ideas which further implies that there is a mind which has ideas or I am a mind, I am a thinking substance which entertain or which has ideas. There is nothing more easily or clearly apprehended than my own mind. So, because in every process of apprehension, whatever you know, whatever you comprehend, whatever you understand, even when you doubt the mind is pre-supposed. So, there is nothing that is so immediately and so clearly known like the mind. So, mind is the absolute starting point for the cut, but this importance given to the mind both as a starting point as and also as your central concept in this philosophical enterprise immediately leads to a kind of threat, the threat of solipsism. Solipsism is a situation which says that there is only my mind and its ideas that exist, nothing else in this world. The world as such is not real, there is only one thing in this world that is my mind, everything else is my creation or the creation of my mind. So, this is the problem. So, Kojito ergo zoom which I think therefore, I access the Kojito, the mind, the thinking substance prevents the systematic doubt from leading to skepticism. That is true in one sense, Kojito is the end point of your doubt. As we have already seen in the previous lecture, Descartes begins with a kind of methodological doubt, a kind of systematic doubt, but it ends somewhere. It is not that skepticism takes you to eternity so that you are nowhere, you are lost completely. No, it ends in a definite place with the Kojito. The discovery of the Kojito is the end point of your skepticism, but there are issues. This does not rule out the threat of solipsism. You might encounter a very peculiar, a different kind of or even a more serious danger now, because though you can talk about everything, you ultimately have not assured that there is a world that exists outside. I exist as a mind with my own thoughts, the only certain thing for me and this may lead to solipsism. My mind with its thoughts is the only thing that exists, the only reality that exists. So, this situation is not, in one sense it cancels all human enterprises, all philosophy, all literature, all arts, all science, everything is cancelled, because there is no meaning. To overcome solipsism thus becomes a very important problem and to prove that something else exists besides one's own mind and its thoughts. So, this is become the next step for Descartes and it is here again to strengthen this doubt or this worries. Descartes suggest that what assures me that the Kojito is correct, that is the question. See when I open my eyes I could see a world around me, I experience the world around me in different ways, different sensations and feelings and emotions, they are all there and I could see colors and smells, I can experience colors and smells and taste and everything, but does it assure, I mean there is a possibility that my Kojito or the thinking substance which experiences all these things is making a mistake, it is not correct. Descartes assures me that the Kojito is correct, I could be a schizophrenic, a schizophrenic could see things which is actually these things are not there, but still he or she might experience them by mistake. What makes an idea true and certain is its clarity and distinctness. So, here Descartes comes up with a criterion to decide the truth, the truth of an idea, what makes an idea true and certain. So, anything that is true and certain must be clear and distinct, there should not be any confusion about it, there should be immediate. In order to be certainly true ideas must be self evidently clear and distinct like mathematical prepositions, when you encounter a mathematical prepositions or there is no scope for any further doubt about it. Even in mathematics there is a possibility that we are deceived by an evil demon or God. So, this is where Descartes comes up with another possible or potential threat to his knowledge systems, that even in the case of mathematics where you apparently feel that you are absolutely certain about your knowledge, there is a possibility that we are deceived by a demon, an evil demon or God. It is possible that you might be thinking that this is like this, but actually it is not the case, you are being deceived. So, even to this point you have not proved anything else, but only the existence of the thinking substance or the kajito. The most important problem or the immediate problem for Descartes is the knowledge of bodies, the knowledge of material objects around us, whether they really exist or what we know about them is true or not, correct or not, that is the question. So, here Descartes in order to sort of strengthen his arguments, Descartes takes up the example of a piece of wax. This is a classic example given by Descartes, he takes the example of a piece of wax, things that are apparent to the senses. When you see a piece of wax, what is apparent is it tastes of honey because it is taken from the honey. It smells of flowers, it has certain sensible color, size and shape, it is hard and cold and if struck it emits a sound. So, these are the apparent qualities you perceive when you perceive a piece of wax. Now, the question is whether from the perception or sensation of these qualities, these enumerated qualities which we believe are the qualities of a wax, can we assume that the wax, the piece of wax actually exist. So, Descartes says that if you put this piece of wax near the fire, these qualities change. The moment you put it, bring a piece of wax near the fire, these qualities like taste of honey, smells of flowers, certain sensible colors, size, shape, hard and cold, all these qualities might undergo certain changes. These qualities change although the wax persist. So, it might acquire a different set of qualities now, you know the qualities which it used to possess earlier no longer are there, but instead there are certain other set of qualities that the object possesses. Therefore, what appeared to the senses was not the wax itself and it is here, it says that the wax itself is constituted by extension, flexibility and motion which are understood by the mind not by the imagination. So, here actually Descartes introduces a distinction, there are two types of qualities, later on he calls it modes and attributes, but here at present he says that there are qualities which are apparently sensible like taste, smell and all that and there are qualities which are actually constitutive of the objects like extension, motion which according to Descartes are not something which the object possesses, but are understood by the mind not by the imagination, but the mind. The thing that is the wax cannot itself be sensible since it is equally involved in all these appearances of wax to various senses, the perception of the wax is not a vision or touch or imagination, but an inspection of the mind. So, it is not a vision or touch or imagination, but an inspection of the mind, basically he says that these material sensations which we get when we perceive, when the so called perception or apprehension of an object material object takes place. Several sensations and perceptions need not necessary point to the existence of an object, but only the existence of certain ideas in the mind. So, they do not prove anything else, but only the existence of the mind which Descartes is already proved, they do not necessarily prove the existence of a material substance, from all these assumptions can conclude that external objects or the very concept of an object whether it is a mistake, that is the question. The existence of wax does not follow from my sensibly seeing the wax, knowledge of external things must be by the mind not by the senses. To think that my ideas are like outside objects is an error and this is what we have reached. So, just because we have sensations or perception does not mean that there are objects in the world, so now the existence of material objects still remains a problematic thing. Material objects or bodies themselves are not properly perceived by the senses, but by the intellect alone. Bodies are not perceived because they are seen and touched, but only because they are understood by the mind. So, the mind as I mentioned plays a very important role even in the question of apprehending material objects. Just because I perceive them I cannot be sure of them I may be dreaming or God must be deceiving me. So, still the possibility of a deceiver a kind of an evil demon or a deceiving God exists. I can be certain of them only if I can prove that there is a God who is not a deceiver. So, now that becomes very important that Descartes has to somehow assure himself that there is no evil demon. So, that if or in other words we can say that he has to prove the existence of God and once he proves the existence of the God even the question of evil demon does not arise because God is so benevolent by definition God must be benevolent and God will not cheat God will not deceive. If at all God induces sensations in us they must be corresponding to objects outside my mind. So, that is this argument. So, in one sense the question of certainty about the material world is related to the question of God. How can I know that there is any reality other than my mind only the truthful nature of God to whom I owe my existence as a thinking thing guarantees the principle that whatever I see clearly and distinctly is true. So, all these things necessitates that Descartes should now prove the existence of God. Establishing God's existence is therefore a necessity and examine whether there is a God or not that becomes very important and if there is one investigate whether he can be a deceiver. The question of proving God's existence become a perennial problem a very important issue for Descartes. It has been a perennial problem for philosophers particularly the medieval philosophers Descartes also takes it up for various other reasons. Now, he comes up with the proofs for a God's existence and there are certain classical rationalistic proofs for the existence of God as we have already seen it Saint Anselm and Saint Thomas come up with rational detective arguments for proving the existence of God and there is a process of reasoning from axioms which are self evidently true and deduce the existence of God from them. Descartes found that many of these given arguments the so called proofs for the existence of God from the scholastic tradition are problematic. For example, Saint Thomas cosmological argument that God as a first course or the argument from design which suggest that there is a the universe exhibits a design and behind that there must be a conscious designer that is God. But Descartes cannot base his arguments for the existence of God on such things because he is yet to prove the existence of the world. So, one cannot deduct the proof for God's existence from the design one perceives in this world because the world itself is something which is yet to be decided. So, many of such classical proofs are not acceptable for him. This is what you know when you talk about the cogito so far we have only proved the existence of the cogito the cogito or the mind and the thinking substance and its ideas there are certain ideas which are innate there are certain others which are factitious and certain others which are adventitious. The innate ideas come from the nature of human reason mathematical and other kinds of ideas. The factitious come from human imaginative inventiveness and the adventitious come from things outside us in the world. So, that is now the problematic domain for us. So, this is just to explain that you know when you talk about the innate ideas examples of substance or thing cause existence time space the basic principles of mathematics and logic they are all innate. And when we talk about factitious they are basically invented by human imagination examples ideas of mermaids unicorns pitapias or future worlds these things do not exist they are just imagine they are just created by the human mind artificially. And adventitious ideas are ideas which appear to come from outside of us which nature seems to suggest to us and which come despite our will example hearing a noise seeing the sun trees or colors. So, these are not our creations they just come from outside of us. And the question here is I mean before we really get into the problem of material substance and existence of God we will just clarify it once again the question here is what is the reality of ideas. Ideas are present in our minds hence they exist actually in our minds they have actual or formal reality. And what are the ideas of what they are about what objects do they represent ideas are ideas of something of objects ideas represent or refer to objects they have objective reality. So, this is what Descartes was trying to assert and in this context let us examine the idea of God. So, he says that except for the idea of God all other ideas could be fictitious of my inventions there is a reason for that he says that all other ideas could be fictitious except the idea of God. Because God is an existence substance possessing all positive qualities in the fullest degree of reality the very concept of God the very notion of God presupposes a substance that exists possessing all positive qualities in the fullest degree of reality. It is an infinite perfect being God cannot be, but infinite if it is finite it is not God.  And since we are all imperfect everything in this world is come across are imperfect creatures imperfect objects, but God by definition should be perfect. He possesses the positive qualities of goodness knowledge power duration to this perfect degree. So, whatever qualities God possesses these qualities God must be possessing in its infinite degree all qualities. If there is goodness in God there must be goodness in God and in that case God must possess infinite goodness infinite knowledge infinite power and everything in its perfect degree. So, in this context the God initiates the first proof the first proof is that it begins by saying that we have a clear and distinct idea of God that I have a notion of God as something which is perfect something which possesses all the qualities in its perfect degree. So, I have some notion or idea in my mind about God and since something cannot proceed from nothing there must be some cause of our idea of God every effect has a cause. So, now I have an idea the idea of God that exists in my mind as a perfect creature must have a cause also. What is more perfect cannot proceed from the less perfect it is a perfect being the idea of a perfect being which I have in mind the cause of the idea cannot be something which is imperfect since it is about a perfect being.  Therefore, God who is perfect must be the cause of the idea of God as a perfect substance. So, since my idea of God is an idea of a perfect substance the cause of this idea must be a perfect substance. So, perfection can come out of perfection alone that is the assumption and now when you talk about the innateness of the idea of God innate ideas are clear and distinct and are self evident to the mind the idea of God is native to the mind that is innate to the mind God is the cause of this idea and other ideas like the ideas of cause substance logic and mathematics are also imprinted to on our mind by birth there absolutely certain truth since God would not deceive us in what is self evident to the reason he has given us. So, since God has imprinted these original ideas this is called original ideas certain truths like the cause substance logic and mathematics they are there they are innate to us they are there from the very beginning and God has imprinted them in my mind and since God has imprinted them in my mind God cannot deceive us. Now, when we come to the second proof of God what are the possible causes of my existence that is the question I could not have been the cause of my own existence if I am the cause of my own existence that is not possible because for I have an idea of perfection and if I had created myself I should have made myself perfect and I should be able to preserve myself which is not the case since I have an idea of perfection in my mind and if I had created myself then I would have created myself as a perfect being, but I am not a perfect being since I am not a perfect being I cannot be the cause of my own existence. Therefore, God exists as the only possible cause of my existence as a thinking substance. So, that is the second proof now we come to the third proof all the properties I clearly and distinctly conceive God to have truly belong to them. The clear and distinct idea of a perfect being includes the perfection of existence to exist belongs to the nature of God as a perfect being if God lacked existence he would be less than perfect see this is something which you have already seen in the previous lectures that since God is a perfect being the idea of God is that of a perfect being and perfection includes existence. So, God exists if God lacked existence he would be less than perfect. So, perfection includes existence therefore God exists. So, in this way Descartes proves the existence of God and also proves that God is not a deceiver because God has imprinted these ideas on me he cannot be a deceiver. Now, with this he thinks that he can comfortably go ahead proving the existence of physical substance. No physical substance exists independently of my mind because all substances I come to know about them through ideas which are mental I have an idea of a substance that exists outside. So, they never exist independent of my mind can I know this with certainty and know what the properties of a physical things are that is a question now can I trust my senses this is another question is the idea physical substance my own creation is God the cause of this idea. So, these are some of the questions which Descartes puts forward and he says that I am not the cause God is not the cause of these ideas in my mind there must be actual substances outside the in the world the external world and they cause these ideas in my mind of course it is God who have created those substances created me as well, but the ideas which I get when I perceive an object is not cause by God, but by that substance I am not the cause because I could not be the cause of physical object since I am a thinking substance thinking or thought or mind and physical substance cannot they are diametrically opposite substances. So, I cannot be the cause of a material substance since I am a thinking substance the effect must be like the cause. So, a thinking substance if at all it produces something which is of that nature. So, a mind can have ideas because ideas are not physical substances, but mind cannot produce a physical world that exists outside the cause of the idea must be itself a physical substance and God is not the cause because God is not a deceiver God would not deceive me by creating ideas of physical substances in my mind. So, that I think that there are physical substances that exist actually in the world that is a kind of deception and God cannot be a deceiver God exist and is infinitely good because as I have already mentioned all qualities which we can conceive exist in God in its highest degree. So, goodness should exist in God in its highest degree God must be infinitely good a substance or God who is infinitely good cannot be a deceiver because deception is against goodness. He would not allow me to be deceived about everything that exists God authenticates my sensory experiences. So, the world of sensory experience the physical world the material world the material substances bodies exist objectively God is good and God is not a deceiver since God is good he will not act like a deceitful demon God has given me such a strong inclination to believe in bodies that he would be deceitful if they were there were none and God cannot be a deceiver therefore, bodies exist therefore, physical world exist. Now, this is the court from Russell we have seen that. So, before we really I read it up I will just summarize it we have seen you know in the previous lecture we have seen how Descartes began with a method of doubt a process of doubting methodological doubt doubt everything that can be doubted. So, that he can arrive at an indubitable starting point from where he can deduce everything else. So, he went on doubting and finally reached a point where he proved the existence of the thinking substance or mind and now the question is about the physical world physical substances or bodies since you cannot directly prove the existence of the physical world Descartes was trying to prove the existence of God on the one hand and also to prove that God cannot be a deceiver he has done it God exist and since God exist as a possessing all qualities in its highest degree he cannot be a deceiver. So, there must be a world that exist in the outside world which we perceive through our senses and the third one is therefore, the physical world exist. So, he has proved the existence of all the three possible substances God mind and body he would later on call God as the substance the absolute substance mind and body as relative or dependent substances. Now, let us see what Russell says Bertrand Russell in his history of philosophy commenced that the constructive part of Descartes theory of knowledge now onwards you know we can see that this is a constructive part is much less interesting than the earlier destructive part the earlier destructive part is doubting everything that can be doubted it uses all sorts of scholastic maxims such as that an effect can never have more perfection than its cause which have somehow escaped the initial critical scrutiny no reason is given for accepting these maxims although they are certainly less self evident than once on existence which is proved with a flourish of triumph Plato's theatres St. Augustine and St. Thomas contain most of what is affirmative in the meditation. So, Russell says that there are two aspects to Descartes philosophy Descartes meditations one is the destructive aspects where he employs the methodological doubts skepticism and he almost questions destroys the entire traditional scholastic philosophy and as far as that aspect of his philosophical thinking is concerned Descartes remarkably original when it comes to the constructive part is less interesting because here he accepts almost all the maxims of scholastic philosophy without any reflection and constructs his own ideas about it. So, now let us once again come to the old problem where we have begun with these three substances mind body and God or in the correct order mind God and body or in a more ontological order if you follow God mind and body God is the absolute substance I have already mentioned the three substances substance is one that so exist that it needs no other thing in order to exist. So, that is the definition of a substance it is something which does not need any other thing in order to exist something which is absolutely independent. So, that is the classical definition of a substance which is actually provided you will find this very similar to something of this sort in the classical Greek philosophy in scholastic philosophy it is so strong the this notion of substance. In reality only one such substance only one such being exists that is God mind and body are relative or dependent substances I have already mentioned this substances are known how do you know a substance how do you know something you know something you know a substance through its attributes the qualities of that substance which are so essential to it something which is characteristic of it. So, he says that an attribute is the essential characteristic or property of substance that which necessarily inheres in it something without which you cannot conceive it the substance. So, that is an attribute. So, you have three concepts here substance attributes and modes I have already very briefly mentioned about it sometime back attribute as I mentioned is the quality without which the substance cannot conceivably exist, but it can manifest itself in different ways or modes for example, modes cannot be conceived without substance and attributes. So, there is a kind of relationship between these three words substance attributes and modes substance cannot change its attributes, but it can change its modes I will clarify this for example, if you take physical substance figure and motion are modes of extended substances or bodies and you conceive a body what is the attribute of the body the most important characteristic feature which defines its very nature without which the body cannot be conceived every body will have this without that a thing will never qualify to be called as a body. So, what is it that is the attribute. So, figure and motion cannot be attributes there are only modes of existence then what is it extension is the attribute of body. Similarly, when you come to mind imagination or will are modes of thinking, but thinking as such is the attribute you cannot conceive of a mind which does not think to be a mind is to think and no other substances can think only the mind can think. So, mind and thinking are intimately related they are almost anonymous because thinking is the attribute of the mind, but imagination willing all these are modes of thinking. So, as I mentioned what we clearly and distinctly perceive in a body is the attribute of the body the spatial continuum of three dimensions length breadth and thickness which is nothing but the extension is called the attribute of the body and physical things need not have colors or taste or orders in order to exist, but extension getting extended in space and time length breadth and thickness are essential for a physical substance to exist they must have size and shape. When you come to the mind its attribute is thinking I have already mentioned it mind is not extended and it always things since we have already discussed a lot about the thinking substance in the previous lecture I will rather concentrate here a little bit more on the physical world very interesting thing to be noted here is that with this separation with this dualism of mind and body and conceiving them as separation entities separate substances they are bound to be separate they cannot come together because both of them possess very diametrically opposite attributes mind thinking and body extension minds are not extended and bodies cannot think each of them must be having an independent realm of their own with their own laws and their own principles the domain of the physical world must be having its own unique principles and laws and the card says that this can be explained in terms of mechanics the source of motion is God. So, he says that here again he is bringing God because body though it constitutes an independent domain its independence is always a relative independence it is independent from the mind, but it is not absolutely independent because in the absolute sense there is only one substance which is independent that is God. So, body or material substance is dependent on God it is independent of the mind, but it is dependent on the God the source of motion is God it is God which gives bodies the physical world its motion God created matter along with motion and rest God is a prime mover. So, this is again an Aristotelian conception which is also accepted by the scholastic philosopher there is a notion of prime mover and cause unmoved mover God has given this world a certain amount of motion in this world is constant bodies must be moving fast or slow or are in rest, but that is all modes of motion the amount of motion put together is constant in this world on the other hand the thinking substance of mind one that doubts understands conceives affirms denies wills refuses imagines and feels that is the thinking substance thought includes everything that we term as consciousness. So, these are all part of consciousness what we say not a part of nature this is where he separates the mind from the body it is never part of the physical world or physical nature it occupies a totally independent domain than the territory of the body it can exist without the body because they are diametrically opposite and independent it is this context or this situation as actually has introduced several problems because now we have seen that the territories of the mind and body are totally different independent. Now, how do you explain the relationship because our day to day experience our usual day to day experience tells us that there is a very close relationship that excess between mind and body and they are diametrically opposite substances bodies are extended and are passive, but cannot think minds can think and hence are active, but are not extended both domains follow their own independent loss. So, I have already explained this situation introduces certain problems there are certain very interesting and significant implications of this dualism which are not confined to the world of philosophy alone, but to the world of science and culture and all that. So, that is the reason why Dakot is considered as the most one of the most important philosopher or probably according to some evaluations is the most important thinker after Aristotle. So, it says that the implications of dualism nature and its workings can be explained purely in terms of mechanical explanations which is something what was the requirement of the age the requirement of the age means you know it was the time when modern science natural science was sciences were emerging and natural sciences were primarily concerned with the physical world. So, it requires a completely autonomous independent system of knowledge to be developed completely free from the domain of mind, soul, God and other things independent of religion independent of the conception of revealed knowledge which is so important in religion. So, you require a domain that is an independent domain the domain of the physical world with its own laws and principles the mechanics the terms of mechanical explanations. So, this is what the one of the immediate implications of this dualism physics proceeds its own laws human body like the bodies of animals is a machine follows the laws of mechanics. So, this is another very important and very significant implication of this dualism body human body is like a machine like the animal body and it follows the laws of machines heat in the heart is a moving principle nerves are the organs of sensation and the muscles are the organs of motion. So, everything explained in terms of mechanical principles and laws it functions like a machine. So, this is what Descartes dualism ultimately implies there are certain advantages as well as disadvantages of this dualism which we would be explaining in the course of our lecture further, but the main problem is that if they exist in diametrically opposite domains and territories, but that is not the case as far as our experience suggests a very close interaction we have to somehow respected I mean with this kind of a clear dualism you would fail to explain our normal understanding of life which presupposes a very close interaction between mind and body there cannot be any interaction if you follow Descartes philosophy mind cannot cause changes in the body and body cannot cause changes in the mind, but this is not consistent with our experience our experience suggest an intimate union of mind and body often mind and body compose a substantial unity there is a substantial unity which needs to be explained further and if I were a merely thinking substance if my mind is not intimately conjoined with the body then when I am hungry I may know that I am hungry, but may not feel hungry. So, this is a very interesting paradox that if there is absolutely no connection between these two when I am hungry I may know that I am hungry because I am a thinking substance I can know that I am hungry, but I may not feel hungry because feeling is a bodily exercise, but that is not the case when I am hungry I feel that I am hungry feeling is also very active how does Descartes explained this situation is the problem here Descartes comes up with mind body interaction which will also mention when we discuss contributions of other philosophers who follow. So, I will be just mentioning it here they are combined in man a unity of composition and not a unity of nature this is what he says they are not united as a matter of nature I mean in the sense that they are they are diametrically opposite territories, but there is a unity of composition not a mixture of two bodies though thought can be troubled by organs without being the product of them. So, when I see something I feel happy I feel happy which is again a feeling. So, when I am hungry it is a feeling basically the body needs body has some wants, but then my mind also knows that I am hungry. So, there is a close interaction. So, he says that thought can be troubled by organs without being a product of them sensations and feelings are disturbances in the mind resulting from its union with the body, but they remain distinct. So, Descartes maintains a very interesting body mind interactionism without really conceiving them as interacting with each other or belonging to the same domain. A physical state neither becomes or produces a material state and vice versa, but is troubled by it. Often suggest causal interaction and he says that mind has its principle seat in the pineal gland of the brain and this position is introduced several interesting questions like you know if pineal gland is where mind and body interacts then is pineal gland a part of body or of mind. These are questions which later on critics raised against Descartesian dualism for which Descartes has not given a very satisfactory answer and the mind body dualism has been a very interesting and a very troublesome domain in philosophy aversions Descartes introduced this problem to resolve the enmity between the new science and church. So, in one sense this dualism helped in resolving the kind of enmity between the new science and the church between rational knowledge based on sense observation which science emphasizes and divine revelation which is the model of knowledge in religion. So, these two things apparently go in two different directions and corner each other, but Cartesian dualism in a sense helped the western European intellectual tradition to resolve this problem. Physical substances and their laws for example laws of motion are controlled by science and mental substance not causally determined by the physical laws and comes under the church because they are part of the divine domain. A compromise and reconciliation between the church and the scientist was possible with this. So, here I just quote Anthony Kenny who makes a very interesting observation which would also summarize Descartes position. There are two key ideas that are presented in the discourse and elaborated in later works. First human beings are thinking substances second matter is extension in motion. Everything in a system is to be explained in terms of this dualism of mind and matter. If we nowadays tend naturally to think of mind and matter as the two great mutually exclusive and mutually exhaustive divisions of the universe we have it that is because of Descartes. So, here is kind of a summary. So, there are several arguments initiated. He begins with the arguments for universal doubt which is again divided into three. For example, the dream argument we have seen this the deceiving god argument again we have seen that you know he concludes that god is not a deceiver and then comes the evil demand argument and now the arguments for the cogito is being raised. Arguments for the existence of god is followed by that and finally arguments that material objects exist. So, Descartes introduced several problems as Russell said as I mentioned his destructive part is more interesting than his constructive part. He has rather introduced more problems for later philosophers to solve and grapple with. And we will also be doing in our subsequent lectures some of these problems will creep in and we have to tackle them and we have to deal with them and even in contemporary philosophy there is a very interesting observation made by Richard Benstein that Descartes is the father of philosophy in the Freudian sense. In the sense that in Freud's scheme of things the father is a figure who is constantly negated. Similarly, Descartes is a father of philosophy in the Freudian sense that later philosophers all the philosophers who came after Descartes primarily considered Descartes as an opponent to be encountered. So, the next philosopher whom we are going to discuss is Spinoza. Spinoza is also a rationalist who has been tremendously influenced by Descartes, but he tries to advance some of these issues particularly the mind body dualism which created several paradoxes and riddles in the Cartesian system and which Spinoza tries to resolve with a pantheism. We will see it in the subsequent lectures. Thank you.


How do you see those unbanked people who don't have access to classical financial instruments? How do they get to crypto? Well, they get to crypto not by buying crypto. They get to crypto by earning crypto and And that is the fundamental shift in in your mentality you need to make which is the idea that this is an investment in order for it to operate as a currency you have to use it as a currency and Don't get me wrong right now You can't let's be direct Bitcoin right now on its base layer. It does not scale enough to be used as a retail currency It is very useful for cross-border transactions. It's very useful for import-export businesses. It's very useful for outsourcing It's useful for store value. It is not useful for buying a cup of coffee and As Jacomo said blockchains are never going to scale in the base layer But Bitcoin can and it's going to be a combination of both second and third layer scaling as well as Base layer scaling Will increase the block size again already did we'll do it again if necessary not to support Bear transactions, but to support more second layer scale on the base layer when necessary And I don't think anyone is really opposed to that except for a few very few outliers How do we get the poor on this? We make it better. We make it bigger. We make it faster We make it more secure. We make it easier to use we add complexity in the back end to remove complexity from the front end we create Complex systems that are easy to use There's this real fallacy and engineering that the way to build simple to use systems is to make those systems simple and to make the simple choices in In fact most of technology most of engineering is a series of inherently unbelievably complex things Each of which took decades to build each of which was unimaginable at first each of which required people to overcome this unthinkable nature of the complexity to build entirely new Sciences professions disciplines If you go to someone in the early 19th century and you say well electrify the world and even poor people will have a better time They'll just do the quick math in their head and they will write a PhD showing you why there's not enough copper in the world to do what you want to do Why there's not the possibility of creating enough electrical energy why you cannot distribute it why the Infrastructure upgrade is unthinkable if you introduce to someone the concept of an automobile And you say well in order to make this happen We just need to design redesign every city in the world and repave all of the roads all 7 billion miles of them, but don't worry We'll do it in 40 years That's not gonna happen.  Can you imagine the amount of money that would take and this? Internal combustion engine there's all of these bits that move up and down and it's electrical and chemical at the same time Look horse is a simple eat. Hey poop. I Don't know why you want to do this heavy engineering lift to bring this technology Complex technology Can create simple solutions and in the background it's unimaginably complex Most people don't understand how it works. That's okay That's what specialization is all about. I was at the internet conference in Stockholm last week an Audience of about 8,000 people all of them internet specialists engineers, right? Or most of them and I asked the question of the audience How many of you understand how BGP works? So I'll ask this audience as well. How many of you understand how BGP works. I'll put my hand up because I do great Maybe 20 hands went up in an audience of maybe 150 people How many of you use the internet? Never mind You do not need to use the internet BGP is unimaginably complex and Itself rides on top of a routing infrastructure that is unimaginably complex And there are lots of people who love that and work in that day in day out There's someone out there who is tweaking BGP routing tables every hour of every day of their life And they just love it, and I'm thankful they're doing it. So I don't have to The bottom line is that we will scale and it will be unimaginably complex And if you try to read the lightning paper or drive chain paper or nimble wimble or side chains or any of these papers like me You read it three times understand 10% of it. That's if you have a master's degree in computer science and Then you ask the creators to explain it to you so you can put it in your book Okay, that may be a rather narrow example, but that's what happened to me. I Don't need to understand it in order for it to work and the way we get to poor people is through a Relentless process of optimization and scaling that will take decades That will gradually take the cost of a transaction to the marginal cost of zero and it will take the capacity of this network to billions of Real peer-to-peer trustless private confidential transactions per second and if they're not private and Confidential, I don't want them That's how we're going to do it. It is possible It is just as possible as bringing Skype over 3g to a village in the Amazonian basin On a $20 Android phone, which is happening now, and if you told me that was gonna happen in 1993 I wouldn't believe you even though I was building part of it The reason you can do video conferencing to the furthest reaches of the world Had nothing to do with bigger pipes It had everything to do with two inventions that came out of a small German research Institute called the Fraunhofer Institute of Technology, which invented MP3 and Perceptual lossy compression in the mid 90s We didn't make the pipes bigger. We made the videos smaller much much smaller So that gives you an idea of where I stand on the scaling debate. Yes We have to make the pipes a bit bigger But we have to make the data a hell of a lot smaller and there's a lot of smart people working on that We haven't even scratched the surface yet. I'm not ready to give up


After losing his straightness, wrist, magnetize, magnetize, I forgot that I needed to do a video about this. Should the Undertaker wrestle again? And my answer is yes and no. If he does wrestle again, he should have one last match. And that match should be against Brock Lesnar for the World Heavyweight Title. That's what it should be for. I had heard before that there was a speculation of rumors that after Brock Lesnar beat him, Brock would go on this tie rate of destruction, rampage, just the immovable object and the unstoppable force all at the same time. And then the Undertaker would come back, challenge him for the title, beat him at this year's WrestleMania and then retire and go into the Hall of Fame next year. I think that that's the absolute best way to do it. I do not want him to wrestle Bray Wyatt and then retire or Bray Wyatt and then staying next year. The steam, the awe, the epicness of the Undertaker at WrestleMania, all of that energy was stamped out, fived out by Brock Lesnar breaking the streak. That's what he had. It was his, the most popular streak of all time with Goldberg coming in an extreme close second. The Undertaker is unbeatable at WrestleMania. It took all of it away, what they call it, the stigma. It just took it away. It's gone now. For him to wrestle Bray Wyatt is like, I'm starting over again. It's like, why? What epicness can the, now the WWE creative heads, a lot of times they think of things that I never could think of and they just think of things to wow me again. But I just don't think that it can be done with them losing. And then I'm hearing rumors that it was actually a mistake that the Undertaker got a concussion early in the match. So that's why they decided to lose and then Brock pinned him, but he wasn't supposed to pin him. It was like two different rumors that I read about, like, it was just, I don't know. But the point is, it's gone, the streak is gone now, man.  Like even if he goes against Roman Reigns this year, which I don't want to see still yet, so I'm not convinced. But say Brock goes again, he beats Roman Reigns, say that or something. If he resigns, you know, I'd be cool for him to go through another, you know, year of destruction. But we see him more and then the Undertaker just be like, yo, look, you know, boom. Brock Lesnar, last year, you took my streak. This year. Yeah, hold on. Where's the hood? This year, I'm going to take your soul. That's it. You know what I'm saying? Actually, that needs to be done this year. Not next year. It needs to be done this year. And as when he takes the title, he gives it up, you know, he retires, he's on top. That's it. It's over. I can't see it being right any other way. Bray Wyatt is a great foe for him. But it's just, you know, storyline wise, he's a great foe for him. But right now it's just like me, look, you should have him do fight Bray Wyatt last year then. You know what I mean? Then we brought Lesnar this year, Rob beats him, and then he comes back to reclaim and take Brock Lesnar's soul. Then we never see, then then Brock signs with UFC so we don't see him again. You know what I mean? Like that type of thing. That'd be perfect. Shit. I just tied that up nice and neat, put it in the box. You know what I mean? He's shipping out. I just tied that up nice and neat. But we got to go with whatever it is they're doing. I love the Undertaker. Seemed has lost an extreme amount of weight.  Did he have cancer? Was he undergoing chemo? Because at one point, I mean, that man was a six foot 11, 300 pound savage beast.  What happened to his weight? Something's not right. But anyway, Undertaker, I love you. I just hope you go out the right way. If I had to truly pick, I would have him wrestle again, but it would have to be against Lesnar and him getting his win back in something, a fashion that would be totally taking his pride back. And even though he lost, it would just, it would just cement him and just would make everything right. If he's not going against Lesnar, I would say no. But looks like he probably is. So post your comments below. Let me know what you think. Hit the like button right now. Yeah. Hurry up and do it right now, because I got a limousine outside. Four ladies, wait for me to go, whoa, what made us subscribers? Woo. You may now subscribe.