Jacque Fresco - In Search for the Science of Communication [full]

‘In Search of the Science of Communication’ Jacque Fresco - November 3, 2010 Venus, Florida The science of communication does not exist, actually. There is no science of communication as yet, although to a limited extent, we do communicate. But communication is misunderstood. For example: II a prince desires a particular woman he may send her a gift. The expense of that gift determines to what extent that woman will yield to the prince. So that's a form of communication. If you ask an ordinary man to repair your roof he might say “No." If you offer him 20 dollars an hour he might say “Maybe.” If you offer him 30 dollars an hour he says “When do you want me to start?" So money can be a mechanism that affects human behavior. Ultimately, communication was a means of trying to affect human behavior. A woman that can operate a sewing machine quite well cannot communicate with a physiologist. Only to a limited extent. So communication, in the society where there are a multiplicity of different reactions and different values, does not assure communication. You understand what that means? You have problems with that? Okay. So: If a man is very good with a bow and arrow, in order to serve his tribe he might train others to use the bow and arrow efficiently. Now when people fly an airplane today they try to aim the missile at an airplane. If someone designs a heat seeking missile, that goes up the hot end of an airplane, or the exhaust port, you don't need to aim or develop a training program for that. You merely release the missile, and it seeks heat. If you released a missile and it seeked the human body, you don't need to train people to aim. So communication, to a limited extent, has to do with the state of technology today. Do you understand? Communication as a system is always undergoing change. Now if you sit there and say “Well what is communication?" Well in essence, you want control the behavior of another person. That's why you'd say “I'll see you Wednesday," Wednesday means the same thing to the other person. But if it was a foreigner, he says “What means Wednesday?" so you have to find out what that means. So when people set out to communicate, they set out to share language. And that all depends on what the rewards are for a certain behavior. If you have a certain philosophy, and you're a ruler of a certain country, if somebody offers you two million dollars you may sell your country short, for a home in Switzerland, if they deposit two million in the bank. So the two million dollars is a method of persuasion or communication. Do you understand that? That's why it's not possible in a monetary system, where there are certain ways of gaining advantage. If the communication takes away your advantage. there's no need for you to learn that kind of communication. If you're head of the Catholic Church and the Presbyterian Church becomes dominant in your community, there's no basis for you learning about that because it takes away your job. So in a monetary system where rewards vary, it's very difficult to establish communication. That's why people that come from different cultures cannot communicate, except to a limited extent. If one Indian tribe has a different philosophy than another, they may not want to communicate because it may upset the conduct of people in the tribe. But if a common enemy appears then the tribes might merge temporarily to defeat the common enemy. But they don't sit down and communicate. They communicate-... their communication is maintaining positions of differential advantage. They do not seek to communicate; they seek to maintain those conditions. Now there's many scientists that say “Yes, we're interested in developing a means of communication," But even scientists have vested interests. So their communication is affected by vested interest. Nobody is so pure as to say “I seek pure communication." You would have to forget all about your culture, advantages, and living in a nice house, making money; all of that would interfere. But if you wish to communicate with another person, you either set out advantages, in other words you bring the other person gifts, then they say “What have you to say?" If you come at them and say “We're taking your land away because we can operate your land more efficiently than you can" they don't say “Great! Do that." They have vested interest, and they maintain their vested interest. That's why you can communicate on the nature of the planets and people will listen to you. It doesn't affect their income, their style of living, or their values. If you tell them that the moon always faces the earth as it goes around, they're willing to listen to that. But if you tell them things that interfere with their positions of differential advantage, communication fails; that is, there's no such thing. Am I clear up to now? This is why people can only communicate in areas where they have common values and common sense of gain in learning to communicate. If you learned to communicate with very primitive people you might be able to talk to them, but it's no real advantage to you if you're technical to communicate with primitive people, unless you're doing an autobiography of some particular chief. So I would say, in the future, all primitive people would be updated, not treated as an anthropology study. Anthropology will be considered socially offensive behavior. If you go to a primitive tribe and make notes of how they behave and what they talk to the trees about, would not be the proper study of mankind. The proper study would be the conditions they live under and their limited communications. You would have nothing to say to a Seminal Indian of extensionality to you. You might be able to extend the Indian a little bit but he can't say anything that would help you. That's why I point out it wouldn't make much sense for you to talk to children because they can't say anything new. If they're 10 years old, and say “My daddy has a bigger car than your daddy," they can't say “The engine of a Mercedes displaces so many cubic inches therefore it's more efficient." They can't about those things, unless they have rote memory, with unreal or no real understanding of what they're saying. So when you say “Is it possible to develop a science of communication?" I would say no, not within established systems. If a system is established, it automatically cuts communication. Now, if you visit people from another planet that have achieved, most, and have solved most of the problems we have here, there's a reason for you to learn their language, there's a real advantage in learning their language, if they've overcome cancer, heart disease, most nervous disorders, there's a reason for you to listen. But some people have such a damaged ego they can't even hear things that would serve as an advantage to them. They really can't hear it. He may say “Well they don't want to hear it" because they feel they have achieved a level of advantage, and who are they to listen to other people? You know, they got ego problems. So let me say this. In order for us to communicate we have to establish what communication IS! If we don't establish what that is, and we can't at our present state of development. Say “What is communication without using a referent of our own values?” So I'm using this term. It is impossible to communicate with other people today, unless you teach them your language, your referents, and they accept them. Then you might be able to communicate within the referents that you have given others. So there's no reason right today, for Republicans and Democrats to communicate because there's one system that offers advantages. Nobody is interested in long term advantages. If I say "There's an advantage to your culture 50 years from now," he says “What will serve now?" So that's what he wants to learn: the advantages of the immediate. If I say "500 years from now, people will live perfectly well!" nobody’s interested, because there's no communication of value that they can receive. So, if scientists really were able to - which is almost impossible - to let go of everything they have and ask “What is communication?” they can't ask that question. Do you understand? Okay. So when you effectively communicate with another person, you either are training them in some way, so that ... your words would have similar meaning, not subject to interpretation. If a person develops even a hearing aid, and it works better than another one, he has to communicate the means of making that work better. Now why does he want it to work better? Because he gets more money for it. If he doesn't get more money for it, he doesn't concern himself with it. So there can't be a science of communication where there is a system of differential advantage. So it's much easier to give a young girl a gift, and she says “Oh, I'm so impressed by the expense of the gift you gave me!" What you're doing is softening her up toward your value system. She has no fixed value system, if that occurs. If a person has a fixed value system like religion, which is rigid and fixed, they're not interested in any kind of communication which takes that away because they project a lot of meaning into that. And you say “Their communication is ineffective" they don't give a damn. It does not communicate what you have in mind. So, first of all, before you even talk about communication, you have to convince people that they tend to move along established lines, because they have proven to be worthwhile, within a given culture. Do you understand what I'm saying? I'm leaving out sunny day in May; I'm going right to the point. So if you sit down and you want to communicate with another person first ask them- why they want to listen to you? Because it serves no immediate value. Unless they're studying communication. Now, the science of communication today would be in the given field. If you learn mathematics you can get jobs doing certain things. So people do not study to improve communication, they study to pick up an advantage- ... advantageous system. Is that clear? They do not study to improve communication. Even though a person says “I am a student of the language of communication," they can't be that, and be a member of society. Do you understand that? If a person comes up to you and says “I am completely neutral; I've come to study communication," that is not possible! Do you understand why? Nobody can be completely neutral. You're always a victim of culture. So, I'm going to talk to you a little bit about communication in the future. In the future people say “Is that good material to use in this structure?" They say “Yes." The next thing is "What's its tensile strength, torsional strength, compression strength, what is it? - "We don't know yet" - "Let me know when you find out, then I will make a decision that's appropriate to the use of that material. Do you understand what that means? If you make a fishing net, that tears a lot, another person comes up with material but you have to spend four years making it, he says “I'll make what I've already got." The advantage of the system has to be within a reasonable amount of time. Therefore, people are not reasonable. Reasonable people will say “Let's live together to see if our values coincide." And if they don't, they separate but they're not mad at each other, because their values don't coincide. If you meet a girl that you wish to get along with, you express your values. She says “They're completely unacceptable to me." That means you won't be able to get along. If she says “Yes I'd like to learn more about it, I accept some of them," then there's a basis. But if she gets mad at you, she may reject the values. So her method's - ... In other words, if you're a very good engineer but you're a mean person I should listen to your engineering, not your meanness. You have to learn what the advantage is of the system you're in and learn to not reject the person but to reject certain aspects of the values you can't use. If a guy is very good at growing food, but he's a Seventh Day Adventist, you don't need those values; you need the growing-food values. So they are extensional to you in certain areas. That's why again, anyone that sets out to communicate would have to know roughly where they want to go. Now you can only communicate in a limited way when you talk of structures. But when you talk of chemistry you can communicate in a certain range. But when it comes to human behavior and values, a girl says “Sam is not good looking enough for me," that has to do with personal values; has nothing to do with communication. I would marry a crab, if the crab was extensional. Do you understand what I mean? But the crab would have to be extensional in many areas. Okay? And if the crab says “You will learn to love me over a period of four years, due to your old conditioning" I may not be able to accept that. That's why communication is so difficult. It's what you're able to accept also. "All your stuff is very logical, but it does not please me." There are people that would say that. “Your thinking is perfectly logical, but I don't feel good about it, so I'm going back to my old feel-good system." Do you understand communication has to be something like "What have we here?" - "I don't know" And when you study it, are you studying trees in relation to the symbiotic process? Are you studying trees in relation to edible fruits? What is the kind of study you're doing? So communication requires locking your frame of reference to what it is you're studying that, and why you're studying it. Do you have any questions in that area? Therefore, if you ask me again “What's a good way of communicating?" I cannot answer that. Or “Is communication possible?" I would say not today. That the communication between Democrats and Republicans are not about physical referents. They're about physical referents related to the Democrats and the Republicans, but not about ... what you would call relativistic values. Relative values is a man may not give a damn of whether the planet Venus, rotates or not. That is of no value to the average person. Especially a plumber, unless he's interested in astronomy. So there are many things that are true but are of no value to another person. If you go into study the brain and you know all about how it works, I say ... "Persons may not have any use for that" and it would be non-extensional, to that person. Do you understand? So if you ask a normal person “What are you interested in?" He says "I'm interested in the science of communication." - "Can you look at things without bringing your old values into it?" He says “I think I can." Test him out. And if he can't, say “I can't communicate with you." Communication is any means whatsoever that can affect another person's behavior. So communication is possible, only within limited areas, and relative to what they seek. That's the basis of this subject. Now if I came to another planet, if I wanted to live there, I'd have to ask "Is there oxygen, nitrogen, edible food, water?" then I can't live there. Can I bring that stuff there? Then I can live there. Do I have the means of transporting it? Yes, then I can live there. You know what I mean? You can't communicate with another planet. You have to study the other planet and ask whether it offers survival means for you. Is that clear? I'm talking about communication purely, regardless of culture, and that's very difficult. So I would say that a person in an airplane doesn't really want to aim to shoot down another plane. He likes to press a button and have the enemy plane explode. That's what he really wants. If you teach him how to aim and shoot and maneuver, he really doesn't know. He says “All I want to do is get rid of that guy, instantaneously, without any threat to me." That would be very-.... Anybody that can communicate that well, would not be a soldier in the first place ... and will not have many friends. Can you understand that? How to win friends and influence people means: to accept established methods of communication. Is that clear? Influencing other people [like] “I love your choice of clothing, and I love the house you designed, and I think your children are simply charming!" then you can communicate ... if you want to get along with people. Now, if you seek to get along with people you have no business studying communication. Unless you have questions. [Roxanne] When you talk about what you were going to discuss today, you did it in a simple way I thought was interesting, talking about how the Democrats couldn't communicate with the Republicans like you said because there's- - There's no basis. - ...because there's a vested interest. - Always. - But In the future, well, you didn't put it that way but you were talking about there would be more relevant ... communication if it's relevant to the real world for the benefit of everyone- - If you tell them what vested interest is. A lot of people don't even know what that is. They don't even know the motivation for their question. When a person says “I'm interested in communication” they have to be ignorant. - Can you discuss how it would be different.? - What's that? - ...within a resource-based economy? - Well, in a resource-based economy, people are brought up to understand how they relate to their immediate environment and that their relationship to the environment is not the whole truth; it's as far as we know up to now. As long as you're brought up that way, you know that you're ... you're not given a real, total understanding of anything because that's not possible. You're brought up to date and you're told that as we seek more and more information, we will know more about a given subject. Right now, a person might, in the future, say “I'm not prepared to discuss that; I don't know enough about it." That would be a wonderful thing to live at a time when people begin to talk that way: “I don't know enough about it to make a decision; I don't have enough information." What a wonderful world that would be! “Do you think you can live with Jennifer?" - "I don't know. I really don't know." You don't know! How do you know? You don't know what damage they have in their own existence, what values they may bring in the future, due to their background. But if you know, that you only know limited aspects of something, and it's relative to your background, ... then you have advantages. You may have the only advantage of the ten people you talk to; you may be the one only to recognize the advantages, not the other people. The other people might condemn you ... and say that you're not practical. All "practical" means [is] "adjusted to that set of values." When you move in with a primitive tribe don't try to bring your values in there. You bring whatever you can, and if you can't you withdraw. You don't talk about things they can't grasp at all. Especially if a person believes in such things as fixed notions, that certain people are beautiful. I can assure if people have lips that consume food, just the lips moved, that'd be normal to your culture. It'd be beautiful to you. but not to an outsider. That's why you can't say “This is IT!" You can only say “I like this because I am of that." Do you know what I mean by that? Okay. Anyway put it to test. Let me know what happens. If they please react to this state, we are very much interested; we want to know how far we can go, in the science of attempting developing a science of communication. You can call it the limitations of communication, whatever you want to call the tape. Toward a science of communication: and impossible attainment, at present. Now if you can suddenly input into a person’s head, without having them go through all the experience, if you can implant a system of communication, like what people talk about when they say "instinctive" behavior. If you could - you can do that with robots: When he sees a fire he puts it out. When he sees an automobile accident he opens the door to get the people out. If the people don't seem to move after a certain test, he calls the morgue; if there's some life, he calls a hospital. or IT calls a hospital. Does it care? That doesn't matter. What matters is, did the robot do the right thing at the time? If the robot bites his nails and says “I'm so sorry about the accident," it doesn't make people any better. So you don't want a robot that feels sorry for people, you want a robot that calls an ambulance, and calls a certain type of physician, if the bones are broken. If the robot knows how to do that, you don't give a shit about its philosophy! Do you understand what I'm saying? So, how intelligent do you want a robot to be? What kind of service do you want of the robot? That's why if an inventor gives a robot the pleasing smell of a rose and all that, the robot would have behavior superfluous to your needs if he goes around smelling roses all day long. But if he goes around killing insects that spread disease, that would be to your advantage. So you wouldn't want a robot that had any information superfluous to the need for your creation of that robot. All you want of an automobile is transportation. You don't want it to bitch about the weather, because you can't do anything about that. But if you say to the robot “What kind of weather do you want?" The robot says ... “Pleasant weather." - "Do you know how to do that?" - "No." - "Then shut up!" The robot will shut up. Even a robot can understand that. If you can't control the weather, you can't make any contributions. If you can design a ship that can go under the water when there's a storm, you know like a submarine, you don't need to be subject to the big waves. So remember, a submarine is designed to support people underwater. Rarely- it's not designed to support people flying through the air, until one day a submarine can come out of the water and fly through the air. Then it would have to be quite different. Do you understand? The same with people. As in their range of operation. This is all related; whether people will see that relationship, that's something else. Depends on their background, not how smart they are. Background meaning having information that can put this together. You can wrap it up. And that's why semantics have really very little use. I said very little use. Not everything is totally loused up, it's just less relevant. I would never seek a science of communication because I would only have limited tools to work with. Even whatever I came up with would be of temporary use. But chemotropism is a direct kind of communication. Some ants follow, not other ants but formic acid. And they have chemotropism which is more direct. There are ants that are warriors and there are ants that feed the mother ant; that's chemotropism. It's better than learning. You know what I mean? Because all the ants want is certain behavior. They don't know that, you can't ask an ant “What do you want?" That's why-... We can communicate someday with ants by changing the chemistry of the environment. We can change the tropism. You know what I mean? That would be communicating with ants. This is very broad; I'd like you to spin it, test it out, let me know what kind of reaction you get from that alone. I would be very interested by the Zeitgeist people or people who really are interested in social change. And they say “Well what do you recommend?" To evolve a communication system within the physical referents of an existing culture, and understand when you're doing that, what you're doing. You're not really communicating; you're improving communication within the realm of a given culture. As long as you know what you're doing, it's alright. So I'd like to know the spin off from this type of delivery. Whether it's too difficult, whether people say “I disagree with you completely" well, they couldn't possibly agree, immediately. But if a person says “You've given me a lot for to think about. I can't answer that immediately but give me about 2 or 3 weeks to toss it around, I may have some questions then.” That's better than saying "I completely disagree with you." So I'm giving you tools - the advanced tools - so you have to stay away from trying to communicate with other people. You only communicate to whatever extent you can. Do you understand that? I'm speaking to you people here. If you understand it, I don't know how other people will react. That's the truth: I really don't know. It may be too heavy, it may be a system in-between the systems - I don't know. But anyway, put it to test, I'd be very curious to know, particularly people who call themselves open-minded, which I don't believe exists. I don't believe I'm open minded or anybody else. That concludes this lecture on communication by Jacque Fresco. If these talks are helpful to you, be sure to subscribe to the channel, add as friend, like, and also add to your favorites lists. For more information visit thevenusproject.com where you'll find free downloads, including e-books, photo galleries of Jacque Fresco's original designs of city systems, cities in the sea, energy, transportation, housing, and much more. Be sure to visit the FAQ section, where you will find over 100 of the most frequently asked questions. For further information, visit the store where you'll find books, CDs, DVDs and more. All sales and donations help support the Project. THANKS!