Infinite Loops – EP. 246: Michael Garfield — Play the (Mind) Jazz

Date: December 12, 2024
Host: Jim O’Shaughnessy
Guest: Michael Garfield
Main Theme: Embracing improvisation, diversity of thought, and active playfulness (“mind jazz”) to navigate a chaotic, networked world; rethinking agency, technology, curation, and collective learning in the accelerating age of complexity.

Episode Overview

Jim O’Shaughnessy welcomes Michael Garfield—futurist, improvisational thinker, and polymath (formerly of the Santa Fe Institute and host of Future Fossils)—to explore how curiosity, improvisation, and “mind jazz” can equip us to thrive amid accelerating complexity, narrative collapse, and technological transformation. Their dialogue traverses systems theory, cognitive diversity, collective intelligence, technological feedback loops, and the art of steering (rather than controlling) a world in radical flux.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Concept of “Mind Jazz” (02:25)

• Origin: Inspired by historian William Irwin Thompson and his critique of overly linear, institutional knowledge exchange.
• Definition: “Mind jazz” is the active, improvisational exploration of ideas in dialogue—like jazz musicians riffing—rather than adhering to rigid, one-to-many transmission.
• Quote:
  “What we are doing is...moving through networks of ideas...invoking a more exploratory attitude rather than an exploitative attitude.” – Michael Garfield (04:30)
• Applied Improvisation: The metaphor is extended to learning, business, and even how books or digital media could become interactive, generative, and responsive.
• Memorable Moment: Michael reflects on leading ensemble musical improvisations, noting, “...the fact that it generates a lot of noise, the fact that it doesn’t behave in the way that you expect it to is the feature, it’s not the bug.” (06:28)

2. Agency: Humans “On the Loop” (11:26)

• Beyond “In/Out of the Loop”: Building on cybernetics and complex systems, Michael distinguishes “humans on the loop” as neither fully controlling nor entirely excluded from decision-making feedback—agency is distributed across many scales and systems.
• Quote:
  “Very little of what you do is something you’re doing deliberately...You don’t share an umwelt. The virtual reality that we construct out of our interactions.” – MG (14:24)
• Reframing Technology: The real question is not just designing for individuals, but understanding ourselves as nodes in hyperobjects (Timothy Morton)—massively distributed, emergent collective phenomena.
• Notable Reading: Joshua DiCaglio’s “Scale Theory,” Greg Bateson’s “difference that makes a difference,” and the necessity for multi-perspectival, scalar thinking.

3. The Extended Self & New Media (21:14)

• Personal Example: Jim has 45 years of journals, which inspired his ideas around the “extended self” and the excitement about current neural media and generative technologies.
• Critical Book Reference: Robert Anton Wilson’s The New Inquisition—how rationalist institutions can become dogmatically irrational, resisting novelty.
• Quote:
  “They’ve taken it to the point where they themselves are to become so irrational because they will not explore any new topic...” – Jim (22:55)

4. The Red Queen Hypothesis, Weirdness, and Cultural Evolution (26:18)

• Predator/Prey & Co-evolution: Technology and humanity are locked in an arms race akin to biological evolution.
• Generalists vs. Specialists: Neurodiversity, cognitive diversity, and being weird become evolutionary advantages in a volatile world.
• Quote:
  “If Instagram seems like it’s selling you the wrong ads, then that means that you might be doing something right...being weird in an age as weird as ours is actually a perk.” – MG (33:56)

5. Information, Surprise, and Optimization (35:12)

• Claude Shannon & Information Theory: Surprise is the essence of information; poetry holds more informational value than predictable political speech.
• Critique of Optimization: Over-optimizing for the present can be maladaptive; life is a movie, not a snapshot.
• Quote:
  “You do not want to optimize your life, Right? Well, you’re optimizing your life for something, for a snapshot in time. You’re living a movie.” – Jim (36:45)
• Pitfalls of Quantification: Over-tracking with data (sleep rings, smart devices) can paradoxically subtract from well-being.

6. Mirrors, Reflection, and “Neural Media” (38:54)

• Media as Mirrors: Today’s technologies reflect and shape us in ways both illuminating and potentially narcissistic or even occult.
• Quote:
  “The mirror has always had a kind of frightening occult quality to it...there are people who refuse to have mirrors in their home still, you know, because they feel that you’re like the camera...steal their souls.” – MG (39:24)

7. Useful Dichotomies, Probabilistic Thinking, and Learning in Complexity (41:05)

• All Models Are Wrong, Some Are Useful: When does oversimplification help or harm? Sometimes binary models are “good enough.”
• Quote:
  “The question is...when are the profoundly inaccurate oversimplifications still good enough?” – MG (44:35)
• Limits of Simulation: Attempting perfect world-models can devour resources—sometimes the value of data is questionable.

8. Mass Customization, Curation, and “Reality Hunger” (51:24)

• From Monoculture to Fractal Culture: Collapse of geography, mass flourishing, rise of cognitive and cultural long tails.
• Challenges: Loss of tacit knowledge, epistemic loneliness, the illusion of customization constrained by deep infrastructure.
• Jim’s Observation:
  “All you had to do [in the 1970s] was control the three networks and two newspapers...Now, we’ve gone from a log normal distribution...to Mandelbrot, a fractal distribution.”
• Curation’s Limits: Individual customization masks deeper assimilation via opaque infrastructure and design decisions.

9. Building Networks of Cognitive Diversity (63:09)

• Fellowships and Grant Cohorts: Efforts to create generative interactions (“beautiful and unexpected and brilliant things”) through assembling diverse, non-overlapping minds.
• Quote:
  “...the things that result from putting brilliant, cognitively different people together in the same physical space, I actually witnessed last week.” – Jim (63:24)

10. Intellectual Property, Networks, and the Future of Value (66:28)

• Copies vs. Relationships: The era of value through controlling copies is ending; value in networks, synaptic links, remixing, and generative collaboration is rising.
• Quote:
  “Reality can’t be copyrighted.” – David Shields, cited by Jim (66:25)
  • MG’s wry addendum: “Yeah. Although Monsanto will try.” (66:28)
• Generative Institutions: The need for both short- and long-term, high- and low-context participants; planning institutions for intergenerational, collective intelligence.

11. Adaptive Learning & Internal Disruption (73:16)

• Learning Organizations: Must listen, adapt, empower rebels, and promote “departments of internal disruption.”
• Quote:
  “You have to listen. Listening can be fun. It doesn’t have to be a chore...How do you structure, like, how do you channel that nuclear energy into helping your collective learn better and navigate the complexity better.” – MG (74:04)

Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• “Mind jazz gets us to the point where we can combine different perspectives stereoscopically.” – Michael Garfield (15:58)
• “You learn by interacting, by pivoting, by being agile and listen[ing] and active listening as opposed to listening to respond, right.” – Jim O’Shaughnessy (09:48)
• “Being weird in an age as weird as ours is actually a perk, because highly specialized, extremely efficient ecologies do not do so well when there’s like a huge disease or a meteor impact.” – MG (33:56)
• “Surprise is information...Poetry, boom. All sorts of information in poetry.” – Jim (35:27)
• “If you’re generating all these productivity enhancements, but it’s not leading to leisure, then you’re not actually the master, you know, you’re the slave of this system.” – MG (48:44)
• “Copies have been destroyed. The future is relationships, it’s links, it’s networks, it’s connections, it’s sharing. Reality can’t be copyrighted.” – Jim (66:25)
• “I want to help people figure out who are the rebels at their organization and how to empower those people.” – MG (74:04)

Memorable Moments & Takeaways

• Improvisation both in art and knowledge is not a flaw but a vital feature for adaptive navigation in periods of narrative and systemic chaos (07:00, 26:18).
• The shift from individualistic agency (“in the loop”) to a recognition of layered, distributed agency (“on the loop”) in a networked world is crucial for responsible co-existence with technology (11:26–21:14).
• The future of value and innovation lies with fostering diversity, weirdness, and “departments of internal disruption”—not in optimizing for a static present or clinging to outdated monocultural or institutional norms (26:18–74:04).
• As information and meaning become increasingly contextual and interactive, curation, relationships, and active networks—not mere content or copying—define the next paradigm of flourishing, learning, and value creation (51:24–70:36).

Final (“Magical Microphone”) Question & Michael Garfield’s Incepted Message (76:28)

If you could incept a simple idea into the world, what would it be?

Michael advocates for shifting from “How do I get this thing done?” to “What world do I want?”:

“...If we start by being grateful for everything that [our ancestors] have done and ask ourselves, now that we have finally made it as a species...the question, I think, shifts from, how do I get this thing done? ...Start in a clear vision of that world... it’s a protocol rather than the inception of an ideology...learning how to get better at reallocating our attention and at telling stories that excite ourselves and excite other people is a far better way to engage with the daunting complexity of the world.” — MG (77:05)

Suggested Further Listening/Reading

• Scale Theory (Joshua DiCaglio)
• The New Inquisition (Robert Anton Wilson)
• Global Brain and Reinventing Capitalism (Howard Bloom)
• Reality Hunger (David Shields)
• The Nature of Technology (Brian Arthur)
• C.T. Nguyen on gamification and agency

Key Takeaway

Infinite Loops EP. 246 is a rich, playful, and deeply reflective conversation on improvisational learning, collaborative intelligence, the “weirdness dividend,” and how humanity can build generative, resilient futures by embracing both the chaos and emergent order of our interconnected age. It is an invitation to join the mind jazz ensemble—listening, riffing, and building new worlds together.