WEBVTT - Ep14 "Why do we have so little access to what’s happening under the hood?" 0:00:05.120 --> 0:00:08.719 When you make a choice, who exactly is doing the choosing? 0:00:09.280 --> 0:00:11.960 Is there someone in your head but it's not you? 0:00:12.600 --> 0:00:15.040 What is a chicken sexer? And what do they have 0:00:15.120 --> 0:00:18.319 to do with British plane spotters during World War Two? 0:00:19.239 --> 0:00:24.639 Do we have free will or don't we? Welcome to 0:00:24.760 --> 0:00:28.560 enter cosmos with me, David Eagleman, I'm a neuroscientist at 0:00:28.560 --> 0:00:31.480 Stanford and one of my big interests has always been 0:00:31.600 --> 0:00:35.159 understanding all the stuff we do that we don't have 0:00:35.320 --> 0:00:38.160 access to why we did it, or the stuff we 0:00:38.320 --> 0:00:41.040 believe is true, but we don't have access to why 0:00:41.120 --> 0:00:49.199 we believe it. So this is going to be a 0:00:49.240 --> 0:00:53.160 two parter. In today's episode, I'm going to dive into 0:00:53.200 --> 0:00:56.160 all the things that your brain is doing around the 0:00:56.280 --> 0:01:00.960 clock that the conscious you has no insight into and 0:01:01.000 --> 0:01:05.600 really no acquaintance with all this activity that lives within 0:01:06.040 --> 0:01:09.800 what we call the unconscious brain. You're only conscious of 0:01:09.840 --> 0:01:13.560 a tiny bit of what's happening under the hood. So 0:01:13.600 --> 0:01:16.839 today we're going to see how all this unconscious activity 0:01:17.240 --> 0:01:20.160 drives so much more of your life than you would 0:01:20.160 --> 0:01:23.200 have imagined. And then in the next episode, I'll talk 0:01:23.240 --> 0:01:27.520 about what all this means for our legal system. If 0:01:27.560 --> 0:01:31.399 your behavior and your choices are driven by parts of 0:01:31.440 --> 0:01:34.960 your brain that you have little or no control over, 0:01:35.560 --> 0:01:38.400 what does that mean if you commit a crime, can 0:01:38.440 --> 0:01:41.240 you help that you did it? Did you have a 0:01:41.480 --> 0:01:45.520 choice or does your brain get formed by your genetics 0:01:45.520 --> 0:01:48.080 and your childhood experience, neither of which you had any 0:01:48.200 --> 0:01:51.320 choice over? So what does that all mean for the 0:01:51.400 --> 0:01:55.360 notion of fault and blame worthiness in our legal system? 0:01:56.040 --> 0:01:58.400 What would that mean for our courts? Because you can't 0:01:58.440 --> 0:02:00.360 just let everyone off the hook, even if they didn't 0:02:00.400 --> 0:02:03.120 have a choice and who they are right. So next 0:02:03.120 --> 0:02:06.520 week we'll dive into what happens at the intersection of 0:02:06.640 --> 0:02:10.400 neuroscience and the legal system and how we can build 0:02:10.400 --> 0:02:14.080 a system moving forward that gets bad actors off the 0:02:14.120 --> 0:02:19.840 street and is compatible with insights of modern neuroscience. So 0:02:19.919 --> 0:02:24.360 let's start at the beginning. Ours is an incredible story. 0:02:24.360 --> 0:02:26.680 As far as anyone can tell. We are the only 0:02:26.800 --> 0:02:31.040 species on the planet that has grown so complex that 0:02:31.080 --> 0:02:36.040 we have thrown ourselves headlong into this game of reverse 0:02:36.080 --> 0:02:40.799 engineering ourselves. Imagine that you plugged some peripheral devices into 0:02:40.840 --> 0:02:45.440 your laptop and it began to control those and removed 0:02:45.480 --> 0:02:48.640 its own cover and pointed its webcam at its own 0:02:48.680 --> 0:02:53.440 circuitry and tried to figure out how it runs. That's us, 0:02:53.520 --> 0:02:57.720 that's our species. And what we have discovered by peering 0:02:57.840 --> 0:03:03.440 into the skull ranks some among our most significant intellectual developments. 0:03:03.440 --> 0:03:07.480 What we found is that all the facets of our behavior, 0:03:08.040 --> 0:03:14.280 our thoughts, our experiences, these are inseparably yoked to this vast, 0:03:14.560 --> 0:03:19.760 wet chemical electrical network called the nervous system. And this 0:03:19.880 --> 0:03:24.880 machinery is totally alien to us, and yet somehow it 0:03:25.240 --> 0:03:30.840 is us. When we look at the brain, this is 0:03:30.960 --> 0:03:35.520 the most complex device we have ever found in our universe. 0:03:36.240 --> 0:03:39.840 The human brain is made up of eighty six billion 0:03:40.480 --> 0:03:46.120 specialized cells called neurons, and each neuron is as complicated 0:03:46.240 --> 0:03:50.440 as the city of New York. Every neuron contains the 0:03:50.640 --> 0:03:54.760 entire human genome, and it's trafficking millions of proteins around 0:03:54.800 --> 0:03:58.360 inside it. And every neuron is connected to about ten 0:03:58.400 --> 0:04:01.040 thousand of its neighbors. So that means you have something 0:04:01.080 --> 0:04:06.160 like five hundred trillion connections in your brain. So that 0:04:06.200 --> 0:04:08.880 means if you took a cubic centimeter of your brain 0:04:09.000 --> 0:04:12.600 and you examined that there are as many connections in 0:04:12.640 --> 0:04:16.920 there as there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy. 0:04:17.000 --> 0:04:19.800 It's totally impossible for any of us to understand a 0:04:19.920 --> 0:04:24.200 system of this complexity. But one thing is clear. This 0:04:24.520 --> 0:04:30.839 three pounds of wet biological stuff is you. All your thoughts, 0:04:30.960 --> 0:04:35.279 your hopes, your fears, the agony and the ecstasy. It's 0:04:35.320 --> 0:04:39.520 all happening right inside here in your brain, in the 0:04:39.600 --> 0:04:42.240 darkness of your skull. So, in other words, it's not 0:04:42.279 --> 0:04:45.760 that you have a brain, it's that you are your brain. 0:04:49.560 --> 0:04:52.640 So how do we know this, Well, imagine you were 0:04:52.640 --> 0:04:54.600 to get in a car accident and you hurt the 0:04:54.720 --> 0:04:57.840 tip of your pinky. You'd be sad about that, but 0:04:57.880 --> 0:05:01.160 you wouldn't be any different as a person. But if 0:05:01.200 --> 0:05:04.320 you were to damage an equivalently sized little chunk of 0:05:04.400 --> 0:05:08.640 brain tissue, that can change you entirely. That can change 0:05:08.640 --> 0:05:13.120 your decision making or your appetite for risk, or your 0:05:13.160 --> 0:05:18.440 ability to see colors or name animals, or understand music, 0:05:19.200 --> 0:05:22.640 or read signals from your body, or to understand the 0:05:22.680 --> 0:05:25.880 concept of a mirror, or one hundred other things that 0:05:25.920 --> 0:05:28.440 we see every day in the clinics when people get 0:05:28.480 --> 0:05:33.480 brain damage due to strokes or tumors or traumatic brain injury. 0:05:33.960 --> 0:05:37.719 Now here's the surprise. Almost all of this machinery of 0:05:37.800 --> 0:05:42.240 you runs under the hood, meaning you don't even have 0:05:42.440 --> 0:05:45.240 access to it or have any acquaintance with it. So 0:05:45.320 --> 0:05:48.320 think about moving your arm to get your coffee mug 0:05:48.440 --> 0:05:51.839 to your mouth. That feels very simple, but it's actually 0:05:51.920 --> 0:05:56.600 underpinned by a lightning storm of brain activity. Literally, hundreds 0:05:56.680 --> 0:06:00.680 of millions of neurons are popping off the chattering with 0:06:00.760 --> 0:06:05.120 these electrical spikes between tens or hundreds of times per 0:06:05.200 --> 0:06:09.120 second to allow you to grip the cup see the 0:06:09.200 --> 0:06:12.960 cup arranger. Grip on the handle, lift it with the 0:06:13.080 --> 0:06:16.520 right strength, bring it to your mouth, position it against 0:06:16.600 --> 0:06:21.600 your lower lip tilted, take a sip. Okay. The remarkable 0:06:21.600 --> 0:06:25.279 thing is you don't have any awareness of all these 0:06:25.480 --> 0:06:30.279 microscopic neurons and their massive dialogue that they're chattering away in. 0:06:30.720 --> 0:06:33.400 And by massive, I mean every neuron in your head 0:06:33.440 --> 0:06:37.160 is shooting off these little electrical spikes tens or hundreds 0:06:37.160 --> 0:06:41.839 of times per second every second of your life. And 0:06:41.920 --> 0:06:46.240 multiply that times these eighty six billion neurons. If you 0:06:46.440 --> 0:06:51.760 represented each spike by a single photon of light, the 0:06:51.839 --> 0:06:55.279 action inside your skull at any moment would be blinding. 0:06:55.680 --> 0:06:57.640 But the thing I want to zoom into today is 0:06:57.640 --> 0:07:01.120 that you don't have any awareness of this, any insight 0:07:01.360 --> 0:07:05.479 or consciousness of all the action going on. The only 0:07:05.560 --> 0:07:08.359 thing you know is whether you spilled the coffee on 0:07:08.400 --> 0:07:12.720 yourself or not. That's it. All the action is happening 0:07:12.800 --> 0:07:15.680 at the level of billions of biological cells, and you 0:07:15.720 --> 0:07:18.200 don't even know how you do it. Now, it's not 0:07:18.400 --> 0:07:21.320 just your cup of coffee. It's everything in your life. 0:07:21.720 --> 0:07:24.880 It's how you drive a car, it's how you recognize 0:07:24.880 --> 0:07:28.520 a friend's face, it's how you get a joke, it's 0:07:28.560 --> 0:07:32.520 how you fall in love. These are all underpinned by 0:07:32.560 --> 0:07:38.000 massive storms of electrochemical activity inside the darkness of your skull. 0:07:38.560 --> 0:07:42.560 So the conscious you is really the smallest part of 0:07:42.600 --> 0:07:45.400 what your brain is up to. Here's an example that 0:07:45.480 --> 0:07:47.560 got me thinking about this. When I was young. There 0:07:47.640 --> 0:07:51.400 was an old experiment at the University of Chicago. And 0:07:51.480 --> 0:07:55.720 in this experiment, men were asked to rate how attractive 0:07:55.800 --> 0:08:00.720 they found photographs of different women's faces. So the photographs 0:08:00.720 --> 0:08:03.560 were eight by ten photos and they would flip through 0:08:03.560 --> 0:08:06.600 them and they would rank each women from one to ten. Now, 0:08:06.680 --> 0:08:11.239 unbeknown to the men, in half the photographs, the eyes 0:08:11.360 --> 0:08:14.280 were dilated, and in the other half of the photographs 0:08:14.320 --> 0:08:16.640 the eyes were normal. So the result turned out to 0:08:16.680 --> 0:08:20.120 me that the men were consistently more attracted to the 0:08:20.160 --> 0:08:24.640 women with dilated eyes. But the important point is that 0:08:24.680 --> 0:08:28.680 the men had no insight into their decision making. None 0:08:28.720 --> 0:08:31.640 of them said, oh, I noticed that her pupils were 0:08:31.680 --> 0:08:35.439 two millimeters larger than her pupils, And presumably none of 0:08:35.440 --> 0:08:38.960 the men knew that dilated eyes is a biological sign 0:08:39.240 --> 0:08:44.360 of reciprocal attraction. But their brains knew it, and here 0:08:44.400 --> 0:08:48.280 they were making the right sorts of decisions, as carved 0:08:48.320 --> 0:08:52.040 by millions of years of natural selection, without having any 0:08:52.040 --> 0:08:55.400 idea why they were making those decisions. They simply felt 0:08:55.600 --> 0:08:59.480 more drawn towards some women than others for reasons they 0:08:59.520 --> 0:09:03.480 couldn't put finger on. So who was doing the choosing. 0:09:03.880 --> 0:09:07.520 It wasn't really like the men were choosing, but instead 0:09:07.559 --> 0:09:12.040 it was a choice of successful neural programs that had 0:09:12.080 --> 0:09:15.560 been burned deep into the circuitry over the course of 0:09:15.760 --> 0:09:20.680 hundreds of thousands of generations. Brains are in the business 0:09:20.840 --> 0:09:25.720 of gathering information and steering behavior appropriately, and it doesn't 0:09:25.760 --> 0:09:29.360 matter whether consciousness is involved in the decision making, and 0:09:29.480 --> 0:09:32.320 most of the time it's not. This is true whether 0:09:32.320 --> 0:09:36.400 we're talking about dilated eyes, or the sting of jealousy, 0:09:36.640 --> 0:09:40.520 or the pull of attraction, or your love of sugary 0:09:40.600 --> 0:09:43.920 cookies or the great idea that popped into your head 0:09:44.000 --> 0:09:48.439 last week. For all of these, consciousness is the smallest 0:09:48.600 --> 0:09:51.960 player in the operations of your brain. Your brain runs 0:09:52.360 --> 0:09:57.400 mostly on autopilot, and your conscious mind has very little 0:09:57.520 --> 0:10:01.840 access to the giant and mista furious factory that runs 0:10:01.880 --> 0:10:04.400 below it. And when you start looking around, you see 0:10:04.480 --> 0:10:07.199 evidence of this all around you. So think of when 0:10:07.240 --> 0:10:10.280 your foot gets halfway to the break of your car 0:10:10.400 --> 0:10:14.040 before you consciously realize that a truck is backing out 0:10:14.080 --> 0:10:16.480 of a driveway on the road ahead of you, or 0:10:16.960 --> 0:10:20.480 when you notice your name spoken in a conversation across 0:10:20.520 --> 0:10:23.000 the room that you thought you weren't listening to. You 0:10:23.040 --> 0:10:25.800 see this when you're in a conversation and you don't 0:10:25.840 --> 0:10:28.080 know the words that are going to spill out of 0:10:28.080 --> 0:10:32.079 your mouth, You the conscious you just sits in the 0:10:32.120 --> 0:10:37.240 back seat and waits to see what comes pouring out. Now, 0:10:37.360 --> 0:10:40.760 the brain is massively complex, but that doesn't mean that 0:10:40.800 --> 0:10:45.679 it's incomprehensible. Our neural circuits were carved by natural selection 0:10:46.240 --> 0:10:50.440 to solve problems that our ancestors faced during our species 0:10:50.480 --> 0:10:55.960 evolutionary history. So your brain has been molded by evolutionary pressures, 0:10:56.080 --> 0:10:59.640 just like your spleen and your eyes have, and so 0:11:00.080 --> 0:11:05.600 has your consciousness. Consciousness developed because it was advantageous, but 0:11:06.440 --> 0:11:11.000 only advantageous in limited amounts. So why do we have 0:11:11.080 --> 0:11:14.800 consciousness at all? Well, think of this as an analogy. 0:11:14.840 --> 0:11:18.280 Look at all the activity that's happening in the nation 0:11:18.559 --> 0:11:23.560 at any moment. You've got factories going and telecommunication lines 0:11:23.600 --> 0:11:27.800 and businesses shipping product and people eating, and police chasing 0:11:27.840 --> 0:11:32.360 criminals and schools running and lovers rendezvousing, and everyone's doing 0:11:32.360 --> 0:11:35.440 their thing, teachers and athletes and doctors. There's a ton 0:11:35.520 --> 0:11:39.480 of action going on in the nation. Now, you want 0:11:39.520 --> 0:11:41.640 to know what's happening in the nation, but you can't 0:11:41.880 --> 0:11:45.679 possibly take in all this information at once. It's too 0:11:45.800 --> 0:11:48.240 much to be useful even if you could take it in. 0:11:48.960 --> 0:11:51.400 So what you want is a summary. So you go 0:11:51.520 --> 0:11:55.120 to a news website and you won't be surprised that 0:11:55.200 --> 0:11:58.320 none of the details are listed there, because really you 0:11:58.440 --> 0:12:00.800 just want to know the bottom line. You want to 0:12:00.840 --> 0:12:04.480 know that Congress just signed a law that affects you, 0:12:04.600 --> 0:12:07.480 But you don't have interest in the detailed history of 0:12:07.520 --> 0:12:09.200 the bill, and you don't want to know all the 0:12:09.200 --> 0:12:12.600 details of the food supply of the nation. You only 0:12:12.640 --> 0:12:15.800 want to be alerted if there's something that affects you. 0:12:15.800 --> 0:12:18.959 You don't care how the garbage is produced and packed away. 0:12:19.320 --> 0:12:21.920 You only care if it's going to end up in 0:12:21.960 --> 0:12:26.000 your backyard. That's what you get from reading the news headlines. 0:12:26.640 --> 0:12:30.880 Your conscious mind gives you the headlines. Your brain is 0:12:31.000 --> 0:12:34.240 buzzing with activity around the clock, and just like the nation, 0:12:34.720 --> 0:12:37.920 everything is happening locally. You've got groups of neurons that 0:12:37.960 --> 0:12:41.840 are making decisions and sending out messages to other groups. 0:12:42.400 --> 0:12:46.760 And out of these local interactions emerge larger coalitions. And 0:12:46.800 --> 0:12:49.960 by the time you read a mental headline, all the 0:12:50.000 --> 0:12:54.199 important action has already transpired, all the deals are done. 0:12:54.360 --> 0:12:59.320 You have shockingly little access to what happened behind the 0:12:59.400 --> 0:13:03.480 scenes to lead you up to this moment. Entire political 0:13:03.520 --> 0:13:08.560 movements have gained ground up support and become unstoppable before 0:13:08.559 --> 0:13:11.559 you ever catch wind of them as a feeling or 0:13:11.600 --> 0:13:14.760 an intuition or a thought. That strikes you. You're the 0:13:14.880 --> 0:13:19.680 last one to hear the information. But strangely, you're an 0:13:19.760 --> 0:13:23.840 odd kind of newsreader because you read the headline and 0:13:23.920 --> 0:13:26.200 you take credit for the idea as though you thought 0:13:26.200 --> 0:13:28.840 of it first. Just think about when you have an 0:13:28.920 --> 0:13:31.840 idea and you say, oh, I just thought of something. 0:13:32.480 --> 0:13:35.480 It wasn't exactly you that thought of it. Your brain's 0:13:35.520 --> 0:13:39.560 been working on that behind the scenes for hours or 0:13:39.720 --> 0:13:46.440 days or weeks, consolidating information, evaluating options, and eventually it 0:13:46.600 --> 0:13:49.320 serves something up to your conscious mind and you say, oh, 0:13:49.440 --> 0:13:53.080 I'm a genius, but it wasn't really you. Right, you're 0:13:53.200 --> 0:13:59.040 taking credit without considering the vast hidden machinery behind the scenes. 0:14:00.000 --> 0:14:03.520 So the conscious you, which is the part that flickers 0:14:03.559 --> 0:14:05.800 to life when you wake up in the morning, that's 0:14:05.880 --> 0:14:08.800 the smallest bit of what's going on in your brain. 0:14:09.200 --> 0:14:12.800 It's a broom closet in the mansion of the brain. 0:14:13.520 --> 0:14:16.520 Most of what you think and do and believe is 0:14:16.679 --> 0:14:19.640 generated by functions of your brain to which you have 0:14:19.720 --> 0:14:24.720 no access. So the conscious mind is like a stowaway 0:14:25.160 --> 0:14:28.760 on a transatlantic steamship that's taking credit for the whole 0:14:28.840 --> 0:14:34.440 journey without acknowledging all the massive engineering that's underfoot, and 0:14:34.480 --> 0:14:36.720 it kind of has to be that way because really 0:14:36.760 --> 0:14:41.080 the conscious mind is acting like the CEO of an 0:14:41.280 --> 0:14:44.520 enormous organization. So think if you're the CEO of some 0:14:45.320 --> 0:14:49.600 huge international company, you can't possibly get involved with all 0:14:49.640 --> 0:14:54.480 the little tasks of knowing what software version is on employees' computers, 0:14:55.120 --> 0:14:57.760 or where the food for the cafeteria is coming from, 0:14:58.280 --> 0:15:01.360 or where the truck tires are being ordered from. The 0:15:01.480 --> 0:15:05.200 organization is just way too big. So your job as 0:15:05.200 --> 0:15:07.880 the CEO is to kick your feet up on the 0:15:07.960 --> 0:15:10.960 desk and wait for the phond erring if there's a problem. 0:15:11.440 --> 0:15:14.920 And this is essentially what the conscious mind is doing. 0:15:29.800 --> 0:15:33.360 So who exactly deserves the credit for the great idea 0:15:33.400 --> 0:15:35.720 that you have? This is a tough one that people 0:15:35.720 --> 0:15:39.280 have been wrestling with for ages. I was recently reading 0:15:39.360 --> 0:15:43.680 about the mathematician James Clerk Maxwell, who in eighteen sixty 0:15:43.680 --> 0:15:48.960 two developed a set of Sweet equations to unify electricity 0:15:49.000 --> 0:15:53.480 with magnetism. But on his deathbed he said that quote 0:15:53.840 --> 0:15:58.960 something within him unquote discovered the famous equations, not him. 0:15:59.640 --> 0:16:03.440 He had admitted that he had no idea how ideas 0:16:03.600 --> 0:16:07.080 actually came to him. They simply came to him. The 0:16:07.160 --> 0:16:11.480 author William Blake wrote the long poem Milton, and later 0:16:11.720 --> 0:16:15.960 he said, quote, I have written this poem from immediate dictation, 0:16:16.200 --> 0:16:20.600 twelve or sometimes twenty lines at a time, without premeditation, 0:16:20.880 --> 0:16:25.680 and even against my will unquote. Or the novelist Kurtis 0:16:25.680 --> 0:16:27.800 said that he had written one of his novellas with 0:16:28.040 --> 0:16:31.800 practically no conscious input, as though he were holding a 0:16:31.840 --> 0:16:35.280 pen that moved on its own. Or think about the 0:16:35.400 --> 0:16:39.320 British poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He started to use opium 0:16:39.400 --> 0:16:42.440 in seventeen ninety six, and originally it was for relief 0:16:42.480 --> 0:16:45.640 from toothaches, but after a while he was addicted and 0:16:45.680 --> 0:16:49.920 he wrote his famous poem Kubla Khan on an opium high. 0:16:50.600 --> 0:16:54.080 Now we give credit for that poem to Coleridge because 0:16:54.080 --> 0:16:56.480 it came from his brain and no one else's right, 0:16:57.160 --> 0:17:01.000 But he couldn't get hold of those words while so, so, 0:17:01.400 --> 0:17:04.960 who exactly does credit for the poem belong to? As 0:17:05.000 --> 0:17:08.800 Carl Jung said, in each of us there is another 0:17:09.320 --> 0:17:12.879 whom we do not know, Or as Pink Floyd put it, 0:17:13.280 --> 0:17:17.160 there's someone in my head, but it's not me. Almost 0:17:17.240 --> 0:17:21.120 everything in your mental life is not under your conscious control. 0:17:21.480 --> 0:17:24.639 And the truth is it's better that way. Consciousness can 0:17:24.680 --> 0:17:28.280 take all the credit it wants, but it's best left 0:17:28.359 --> 0:17:31.159 at the sidelines for most of the decision making that 0:17:31.200 --> 0:17:34.800 cranks along in your brain. When your conscious mind messes 0:17:34.800 --> 0:17:38.879 with details that it doesn't understand, the whole operation runs 0:17:38.960 --> 0:17:42.879 less effectively. So if you play the piano, you know 0:17:42.960 --> 0:17:44.879 that if you start to think about where your fingers 0:17:44.880 --> 0:17:47.919 are going, you're dead. You can't do it anymore. Or 0:17:47.920 --> 0:17:49.639 here's something to try. I want you to try this. 0:17:49.760 --> 0:17:53.840 Take two dry erase markers and go stand in front 0:17:53.920 --> 0:17:56.199 of the dry erase port. And what I want you 0:17:56.240 --> 0:17:59.240 to do is write your signature with your right hand 0:17:59.280 --> 0:18:02.399 at the same time that you're writing it backwards with 0:18:02.480 --> 0:18:04.840 your left hand. So you're writing your signature and its 0:18:05.000 --> 0:18:09.160 mirror reverse at the same time. So go ahead, try 0:18:09.160 --> 0:18:11.160 this for a moment if you are near a dry 0:18:11.200 --> 0:18:15.200 erase board, and you'll quickly find that there's only one 0:18:15.280 --> 0:18:18.439 way you can do it, and that is if you 0:18:18.720 --> 0:18:22.240 don't think about it at all. The moment you start 0:18:22.280 --> 0:18:25.560 thinking about what a backwards letter looks like, the whole 0:18:25.600 --> 0:18:28.840 thing fails. You stumble, and you stutter along and you 0:18:28.920 --> 0:18:31.920 just can't do it. But you actually can't do this 0:18:32.640 --> 0:18:35.080 if you simply don't think about it, if you just 0:18:35.600 --> 0:18:38.560 zen out and let your hands do the work. So 0:18:38.600 --> 0:18:42.080 you can only do it if you exclude conscious thought. 0:18:42.760 --> 0:18:46.160 Here's another example. Pretend you're driving, and what I want 0:18:46.200 --> 0:18:48.000 you to do is actually put your hands up on 0:18:48.280 --> 0:18:50.800 an imaginary steering wheel in front of you. So put 0:18:50.840 --> 0:18:53.160 your hands there, and if you're in a car while 0:18:53.160 --> 0:18:56.120 listening to this podcast, don't do this, okay. So imagine 0:18:56.119 --> 0:18:58.479 with your hands on the imaginary steering wheel that you 0:18:58.560 --> 0:19:01.200 are in the center lane going thirty miles an hour, 0:19:01.480 --> 0:19:03.840 and I want you to make a lane change into 0:19:03.880 --> 0:19:06.560 your right lane. So go ahead and turn the wheel 0:19:06.640 --> 0:19:09.560 in the way that you would to make a lane change. Now, 0:19:09.600 --> 0:19:12.960 if you're like essentially everybody who I've ever tried this with, 0:19:13.280 --> 0:19:15.520 what you do is you turn your wheel to the 0:19:15.600 --> 0:19:18.359 right and then back to center. Is that what you did, Okay? 0:19:18.520 --> 0:19:21.880 So that turns your car to the right, and now 0:19:21.920 --> 0:19:24.360 you bump over the sidewalk and you crash into the buildings. 0:19:24.880 --> 0:19:27.280 The way you make a lane change is by turning 0:19:27.359 --> 0:19:30.200 the steering wheel to the right, then back through the center, 0:19:30.240 --> 0:19:32.280 and just as far to the left and then you're 0:19:32.320 --> 0:19:34.920 back to the center again. So if you're in a car, 0:19:35.000 --> 0:19:37.720 pay attention to how you're doing this, and you'll see 0:19:38.160 --> 0:19:40.560 that's how you make a lane change, and you do 0:19:40.640 --> 0:19:44.000 it every day and you have no idea how you're 0:19:44.000 --> 0:19:47.960 doing it. Why. It's because your unconscious brain is taking 0:19:47.960 --> 0:19:51.000 care of all the details for you and you don't 0:19:51.040 --> 0:19:53.960 even have access to what you're doing. So you can 0:19:54.000 --> 0:19:57.840 do lots of things well with no consciousness involved. When 0:19:57.960 --> 0:19:59.840 I was younger, I used to play baseball and my 0:20:00.040 --> 0:20:02.240 coach would always say to us, I want you guys 0:20:02.280 --> 0:20:05.160 to think out there. And I would say to him, actually, 0:20:05.440 --> 0:20:07.560 you don't want us to think out there. You want 0:20:07.640 --> 0:20:10.399 us to train a sufficient number of hours so that 0:20:10.440 --> 0:20:13.200 we automatize all these behaviors and then we go out 0:20:13.240 --> 0:20:15.600 there and perform. But the last thing you want us 0:20:15.640 --> 0:20:18.400 doing out there is thinking, because we would never connect 0:20:18.680 --> 0:20:20.640 the bat with the ball or catch the pop fly. 0:20:21.240 --> 0:20:22.720 But he never believed me, so I had to go 0:20:22.760 --> 0:20:25.479 become a neuroscientist and write books to convince him that 0:20:25.720 --> 0:20:30.280 consciousness typically doesn't even get invited to the party. And 0:20:30.320 --> 0:20:33.840 by the way, when consciousness does get any insight, it's 0:20:33.880 --> 0:20:37.840 always the last one to hear the information. So think 0:20:37.840 --> 0:20:41.400 about hitting a baseball. In twenty ten, the Guinness Book 0:20:41.400 --> 0:20:45.359 of World Records clocked a fastball from the Cincinnati pitcher 0:20:45.480 --> 0:20:48.040 or all this Chapman, at one hundred and five point 0:20:48.040 --> 0:20:50.960 eight miles per hour. So if you work the numbers, 0:20:51.040 --> 0:20:53.800 what you see is that Chapman's pitch left the mound 0:20:53.840 --> 0:20:57.040 and cross the home plate in four tenths of a second, 0:20:57.280 --> 0:21:01.359 four hundred milliseconds. What that means is there's just enough 0:21:01.400 --> 0:21:04.639 time for light signals from the baseball to reach the 0:21:04.680 --> 0:21:08.240 batter's eye work through the circuitry of the retina. Activate 0:21:08.320 --> 0:21:12.760 these successions of cells along the loopy super highways of 0:21:12.800 --> 0:21:15.439 the visual system at the back of the head, cross 0:21:15.560 --> 0:21:19.439 the vast territories to the motor areas, and modify the 0:21:19.480 --> 0:21:23.720 contraction of the muscles swinging the bat. And amazingly, this 0:21:24.000 --> 0:21:27.359 entire sequence is possible in less than four tenths of 0:21:27.400 --> 0:21:30.280 a second. Otherwise no one would ever hit a fastball. 0:21:30.359 --> 0:21:34.920 But the surprising part is that conscious awareness takes longer 0:21:34.960 --> 0:21:38.320 than that, at least half a second, so the ball 0:21:38.440 --> 0:21:43.000 travels too rapidly for batters to be consciously aware of it. 0:21:43.400 --> 0:21:46.080 And when I was playing baseball, my experience of hitting 0:21:46.160 --> 0:21:49.280 the ball was always this. I would stand there ready 0:21:49.320 --> 0:21:53.479 to swing, and then I would become consciously aware that 0:21:53.560 --> 0:21:55.600 I had hit the ball and it was flying away 0:21:55.600 --> 0:21:57.600 from me, and then I would say to myself, you 0:21:57.720 --> 0:22:00.320 hit the ball, Now drop the bat and run. But 0:22:00.400 --> 0:22:03.359 the actual moment of hitting the ball with the bat 0:22:03.480 --> 0:22:07.760 was always moving way ahead of my slow consciousness, which 0:22:07.840 --> 0:22:10.000 was the last one on the ladder to get any 0:22:10.040 --> 0:22:13.080 of the news of what was transpiring. And all. This 0:22:13.119 --> 0:22:15.679 is the case because you don't need to be consciously 0:22:15.720 --> 0:22:20.840 aware to perform sophisticated motor acts. You can notice this 0:22:20.880 --> 0:22:24.399 when you begin to duck from a snapping tree branch 0:22:24.520 --> 0:22:27.800 before you are aware that is coming towards you, or 0:22:27.840 --> 0:22:30.879 you're already jumping up by the time you realize that 0:22:30.920 --> 0:22:33.640 your cell phone is ringing across the room. So these 0:22:33.720 --> 0:22:37.879 examples about writing your signature backward, or changing lanes, or 0:22:37.960 --> 0:22:42.359 hitting a baseball, these are a few among thousands. You 0:22:42.440 --> 0:22:46.240 are not consciously aware of the vast majority of your 0:22:46.280 --> 0:22:49.840 brain's ongoing activities, and nor would you want to be. 0:22:50.320 --> 0:22:55.000 It would interfere with the brain's well oiled processes. The 0:22:55.040 --> 0:22:57.240 best way to mess up your piano piece is to 0:22:57.280 --> 0:23:00.240 concentrate on your fingers. The best way to get out 0:23:00.280 --> 0:23:03.359 of breath is to think about your breathing. The best 0:23:03.400 --> 0:23:05.919 way to miss your golf ball is to think too 0:23:06.000 --> 0:23:08.640 much about your swing. And by the way, this wisdom 0:23:08.720 --> 0:23:12.159 is apparent even to children. We find it immortalized in 0:23:12.280 --> 0:23:16.280 poems like the Puzzled Centipede, which goes like this. A 0:23:16.359 --> 0:23:21.159 centipede was happy quite until a frog in fun said, 0:23:21.440 --> 0:23:25.760 pray tell which leg comes? After which this raised her 0:23:25.800 --> 0:23:29.160 mind to such a pitch she lay distracted in the ditch, 0:23:29.720 --> 0:23:34.240 not knowing how to run. So this ability to remember 0:23:34.480 --> 0:23:38.080 how to do motor acts like changing lanes is called 0:23:38.400 --> 0:23:43.560 procedural memory, and it's a type of implicit memory. Implicit 0:23:43.600 --> 0:23:46.600 means that your brain holds the knowledge of something that 0:23:46.640 --> 0:23:51.000 your conscious mind can't access, like riding a bike, or 0:23:51.080 --> 0:23:54.400 tying your shoes, or typing on a keyboard, or steering 0:23:54.440 --> 0:23:57.119 your car into a parking space while you're talking on 0:23:57.160 --> 0:24:00.560 your cell phone. These are all examples of implicit memory. 0:24:01.000 --> 0:24:05.160 You can execute these actions easily enough without having any 0:24:05.200 --> 0:24:08.120 idea of exactly how you do it. You would be 0:24:08.200 --> 0:24:13.840 totally unable to describe the perfectly timed choreography with which 0:24:13.880 --> 0:24:17.760 your muscles contract and relax as you do these things, 0:24:17.840 --> 0:24:21.120 or as you navigate around other people in a cafeteria 0:24:21.160 --> 0:24:23.760 while you're holding a tray. But you don't have any 0:24:23.800 --> 0:24:26.800 trouble doing any of these things. This is the gap 0:24:27.320 --> 0:24:30.720 between what your unconscious brain can do and what you 0:24:30.760 --> 0:24:34.920 can access consciously. To the extent that consciousness is useful, 0:24:35.440 --> 0:24:39.320 it's useful in small quantities and for very particular kinds 0:24:39.320 --> 0:24:42.240 of tasks. It's easy enough to understand why you wouldn't 0:24:42.240 --> 0:24:45.639 want to be consciously aware of the intricacies of your 0:24:45.720 --> 0:24:48.480 muscle movement, but this can be a little less intuitive 0:24:48.520 --> 0:24:53.000 when applied to your perceptions and thoughts and beliefs, which 0:24:53.080 --> 0:24:56.880 are also the final products of the activity of billions 0:24:56.880 --> 0:25:00.000 of nerve cells. For a good example of this, can 0:25:00.040 --> 0:25:04.200 consider chicken sexers. So what is a chicken sexer? Well, 0:25:04.520 --> 0:25:09.960