EP 345 Worldviews: Tyson Yunkaporta on Ceremony, Skepticism, and Seeing in 3D

Jim talks with Tyson Yunkaporta—indigenous Australian scholar and author of Sand Talk, one of Jim's top ten favorite books—about his metaphysics and worldview, the ecology of sex and creation, and how to wear rationalist and traditional knowledge frameworks simultaneously.

They discuss:

Jim's editorial endorsement of Sand Talk—"one of the top 10 best books I have ever read"

Tyson's trilogy of books

Humans as a custodial species—sacred carers embedded in nature

Who Tyson is when he wakes from deep sleep

Tyson's experience under general anesthesia—ten thousand years of deep dark oblivion

How Jim shifted Tyson toward rationality and evidence-based thinking

Tyson's reassessment of peer review and collective scientific inquiry as similar to Indigenous processes of collective knowledge-building

Tyson's late initiation into the Apalech clan

The distinction between "knowledge systems" and "knowledge of systems"

Color blindness as a biological advantage in traditional systems knowledge