I am starting a miniseries about John Vervaeke’s four Ps of knowing, an influential framework for understanding how we know, learn, grow, and self-transcend. This post will be the introduction.
Summary
What we today call knowledge is a small part of what we actually know.
4P gives me a useful map to orient myself, especially through self-transformation.
AI researchers or those simply interested in artificial intelligence will find 4P eye-opening.
My quest
In 2014, I worked with my brilliant colleagues to design what would grow into the largest Kaggle challenge up to that time. We carefully crafted an innovative metric and harvested data that we confirmed with the ATLAS collaboration was safe to make public. After triple checking everything, we launched the competition and watched in amazement as team registration skyrocketed to nearly two thousand. The leader heavily overfitted the public data set; while we were aware of this, the eventual champion was not until victory was declared. The prize opened doors—the champion is now with Deep Mind and the silver medalist is part of Google Research. Although these results didn't directly contribute to the discovery of the Higgs boson, they did bring science to AI's map, and XGBoost - used by the eventual winner - became a go-to tool of thousands of industrial AI pipelines.
Although searching for this fundamental particle was fascinating, I couldn't help but wonder if it was really worth my effort. After all, I am a researcher in Artificial Intelligence, not a physicist. Nevertheless, something inside me kept pushing me forward, a strange desire to seek out the truth, wherever it lies.
So why was I drawn to the Higgs boson?
The search for an answer became my obsession. Then I stumbled upon John Vervaeke's course: Awakening from the Meaning Crisis. It became my salvation.
And yet, even armed with Vervaeke’s 4P, this is a formidable question to answer. None of the superficial approaches I could think of worked. If I ask why I drank a glass of water, a reductive1 response is that my dehydrated cells sent a signal that my mind interpreted as thirst? Why am I with my partner? Perhaps our genes implore us to reproduce, and this manifests in us still being drawn together even if we no longer want children? And what of armies? They are formed because a group of people can employ a minority with weapons more proficiently to shield themselves from danger? When the 'why' covers higher values, the questions slip out of the reductionist grip. Why do I forfeit part of my freedom to be with her? Why do individuals enlist in the military, possibly sacrificing their own life for all of us?
And how on Earth my bodily or relational needs or my genes or my rational Homo Economicus side explain my interest in the Higgs boson? My best reductionist theory is that seeking is a basic mammalian drive that our genes configured us to do (just look at dogs!). But why was I exploring particle physics specifically? Who would find it purposeful or meaningful that the mass of the Higgs boson is 125GeV2?
As I embark on the miniseries, this question will be my constant companion. I could have picked something more straightforward, like why do I prefer tea over coffee. However, as you’ll come to see, some “why” questions are more difficult to answer than others. The meaning of the Higgs boson is shrouded in layers of abstraction and mystery, making it an especially challenging puzzle to crack.
If dojo is the world, jujitsu is life
Two years ago, I went down to the dojo to learn jujitsu. More precisely, to immerse myself into jujitsu. I knew I wanted to do a contact sport, but did not know which one. So I studied it, reading and watching videos. First I gravitated towards BJJ, Brazilian Jiu Jitsou, but then I realized that jujitsu is more all around, a mixed martial art, with elements of boxing, karate, judo, and BJJ.
Despite being utterly unprepared, I have been enjoying every minute of it, even when I do not (it does hurt sometimes).
Learning about jujitsu by reading about it helped me to decide to try it, but, as you can imagine,
it gave me no clue about what I will have to do, which muscles to move to achieve an outcome.
Learning those steps gave me no clue about what it would feel like when executing those movements in a real situation.
I still remember the rush of adrenaline when flying over someone's shoulder the first time. It is hard to describe, the only way to really understand it is to live through it. Words can only hint at the power of the experience with metaphors and poetry.At last, having experienced these unique perspectives, I still had no idea who I would become by practicing jujitsu. As I immersed myself in the art, it changed my body and mind. Even more interestingly, it also transformed the world around me.
Those are John Vervaeke’s four types of knowing: propositional, procedural, perspectival, and participatory.
I want to discuss John Vervaeke's four Ps of knowing, as it forms the basis of my discussion on self-transformation and artificial intelligence. It is the grammar of the language that we speak in this little corner of the internet, a cognitive road map by which I can navigate my thoughts.
4P is a map
4P is like any other map; it simplifies reality to help us get from point A to point B. But 4P is more than just a map—it's the mother of all maps. It explains why mapmaking is important, how maps connect our internal and external worlds. It explains the limitations of maps and how to transcend them. Above all else, 4P gives us a tool for self-reflection and transformation. As with all good maps, 4P provides clarity and focus by allowing us to zoom in on a subject—in this case, myself and AI—uncovering insights that would otherwise remain hidden.
4P is a cornerstone
of my project of connecting what I know to who I am: it is the conceptual link between the two. Without 4P, I could not understand self-transformation, and without understanding self-transformation, I could not understand either myself or the limits of the current paradigm of AI.
4P is a framework of metacognition
Cognitive science focuses on how we understand the world, and meta means that it is an abstract system that frames the knowledge-acquisition process. I often view 4P as a pair of glasses through which we look at the world. As an analytical thinker, I enjoy taking off this cognitive frame and looking at it. I now recognize and apply these stages of knowing, which helps me orient myself toward self-transformation. Additionally, I find it incredibly beneficial to look at AI through the lens of 4P, to understand where we are and plan strategies towards Enlightened AI (following Vervaeke’s footsteps).
The ten aspects of the four Ps
For each of the four Ps, I will consider ten factors that differentiate them from one another. This should illustrate that they are distinct forms of knowing available to all of us.
What is the kind of knowledge we acquire?
What question does it answer?
What value do we associate to the knowing, what do we gain by acquiring it?
How do we call what it leads to, both the piece of knowledge and
the interconnected system of these pieces?
A couple of examples.
What is the type of memory we, humans, use to store the knowledge?
How do we extend our cognition beyond our bodies?
How does the knowing manifest itself on the collective level?
A couple of examples of these extensions.
What’s next
In my upcoming post, I will be discussing the first P—propositional—meaning understanding what is true. The significance of the first P cannot be overstated: much of what we call knowledge today is propositional.
That being said, there's more to it than just that!
I plan on challenging the popular belief that “all knowledge is propositional”. To do so, I will initially point out its shortcomings and then gradually introduce the wonderful world of non-propositional knowing.
Reductionism looks for bottom-up answers, grounding everything in the physical and working up purely through emergence.
Physicists use weird units and make fun of the Imperial System. Go figure.