Enjoyed this interview with Cormac McCarthy (Couldn’t Care Less). How do you assign good work to your nigh shift?

The night shift you know – you know you’re asleep and it’s busy working away. Well how does it do that it doesn’t have a pencil and paper it has to keep everything in mind. All that’s saying it can’t when you’re working a problem in math you put it down step by step and then if you kind of get stuck and go back over and see what you did. The unconscious can’t do this, got to keep everything right there right it doesn’t have a ledger that it can refer back. It doesn’t even have an eraser. Yeah that’s right and uh that’s baffling yeah I couldn’t do that but maybe it’s sort of the clue there is that it’s doing it completely differently that’s the point.

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The unconscious will work on… it it doesn’t think of problems. The only problems it’s going to work under the ones you give it So to that extent yeah you do and influence it but but you don’t know how it works or how it goes about what it does. It’s it’s just really good at at figuring things out but it’s it’s like your own personal valet. It has no interest whatsoever in anything except you. It just works for you 24 hours a day it never sleeps it has no interest in anything except your welfare that’s that’s a pretty handy item to have

1:11:20 So I don’t think you can influence how it goes about its work but but it will only go about the work that you want done it it doesn’t come up with it doesn’t come up with problems and say uh David what do you think about this. Is this interesting it that’s the one way yeah having you where somehow we are asking it right so how so we’re presented with a mathematical problem that’s a problem in the world we have to then it’s a problem in the world but it’s not a but it’s not a problem for you unless it’s a problem for you right yeah and there’s this problem for you then it’s a problem for your unconscious because it’s interested in everything yeah it doesn’t want you to be puzzled about things if there’s something that you’re having difficult to do with yeah it will jump in and figure it out for you yeah yeah so we don’t know
another question that people don’t ask is uh it seems to have this vast horde of information and expertise and ways to do things I mean it just seems to have a huge vat of stuff that it can take things out of yeah and we don’t know we don’t know how huge it is or where it comes from yeah but it’s enough it’s enough to be a bit spooky I mean does it know things that um there’s no things that you just shouldn’t know

I mean I’ve I mean it’s interesting you say this because I’ve I mean I’ve always
had a very adversarial relationship to my unconscious I think you spoke to right yeah uh because it’s not always you it might be um interested in as you say it’s evolved to support us and and yet uh it’s its instincts aren’t always civilized right and so that I was interested in that idea that not only does nothing moderating right the the linguistic Dimensions is moderating also of that no

I think that I think it’s a good observation I don’t think it’s particularly interested in in manners right or how to how to it doesn’t really care about anybody but you right the only the only reason it has any interest in any of the people on the planet is to the extent that you interact with them yeah and that they influence you it doesn’t give a damn about anybody else. couldn’t care less