Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, where we give you insights into the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity. Each episode will feature a new guest who
Speaker 1: will stimulate your mind and give you a greater understanding
Speaker 1: of yourself, others, and the world we live in. Hopefully
Speaker 1: we'll also provide a glimpse into human possibility. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening and enjoy the podcast. So today I'm really happy
Speaker 1: to have Kurt Gray on the podcast. Kurt is an
Speaker 1: assistant professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.
Speaker 1: He received as BSc from the University of Waterloo and
Speaker 1: his PhD in Social psychology from Harvard University. He studies
Speaker 1: the mysteries of subjective experience and likes to wield Okham's
Speaker 1: razor to defend parsimony, asking whether complex phenomena can be
Speaker 1: simplified and understood through basic processes. These phenomena include moral judgment,
Speaker 1: group genesis, and psychopathology. He's been named an APS Rising
Speaker 1: Star and was awarded the Janet Spence Award for Transformative
Speaker 1: Early Career Research. He was also given the SPSB Theoretical
Speaker 1: Innovative Award for the article mind Perception is the Essence
Speaker 1: of Morality. His latest book is The Mind Club, Who Thinks,
Speaker 1: What Feels, and Why It Matters, co authored with the
Speaker 1: late great Daniel Wagner. Thanks for being on the show, Kurt,
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. What a fascinating book. You know
Speaker 1: that you talk about how you like to wield Acam's
Speaker 1: razor to defend parsimony. Well, you also in this book
Speaker 1: kind of like you'd take all of the greatest life's
Speaker 1: mysteries and that just like distill it to like, Oh,
Speaker 1: you know, you put too much science in there. I
Speaker 1: think it's like, where's the magic of life? So tell
Speaker 1: me there is a lot of science. We do try
Speaker 1: to well down everything from love to falling in love
Speaker 1: with animals. Yeah. I mean the range of topics that
Speaker 1: you cover in this book is so comprehensive, and you
Speaker 1: touch on so many big issues in the life of
Speaker 1: human existence, and I thought we could talk about a
Speaker 1: bunch of this stuff today. Yeah. So the Mind Club, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the book is called The Mind Club, and you define
Speaker 1: the mind Club is that special collection of entities who
Speaker 1: can think and feel. So in order to have a mind,
Speaker 1: do you need to satisfy both criterion. That's a great question,
Speaker 1: And what we find is actually that there's really two
Speaker 1: mind clubs. There's a thinking mind club and a feeling
Speaker 1: mind club. Then you know, you and I have both
Speaker 1: the ability to think and feel, but some things only
Speaker 1: have one ability, like animals are often seen to only feel,
Speaker 1: and corporations, for instance, are seen only to think. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm wondering because like in the field of cognitive psychology,
Speaker 1: is there a distinction between like emotions, like the study
Speaker 1: of emotions and the study of mind, the constructive mind
Speaker 1: in psychology, is it something that does naturally incorporates emotions,
Speaker 1: because I've seen it discuss different ways in the field.
Speaker 1: I've sort of seen it described like the cerebral core,
Speaker 1: you know, like more of like the higher order processes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think, you know, I think it's a really vague
Speaker 1: concept what mind is and what emotions are. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's been debates going on for centuries almost about who
Speaker 1: has a mind and who has emotions. Sure, so I think,
Speaker 1: you know, we're just defining in a way that makes
Speaker 1: it easy for us to kind of look at these
Speaker 1: different mysteries and whether emotion's part of mind or different
Speaker 1: from mind or what have you seems almost like a
Speaker 1: philosophical issue for sure. For sure, and your interest in
Speaker 1: those issues as well and incorporating that into your work.
Speaker 1: Let's back up a second and talk about how you
Speaker 1: met Daniel Wagner and this special bond you guys have
Speaker 1: and how this book came to fruition. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: actually only met Dan Wagner once I was already his
Speaker 1: grad student. Seems kind of funny. I was actually traveling
Speaker 1: in Australia. So after college I took a year off
Speaker 1: to go to Australia and surf pick grapes. And the
Speaker 1: first time I ever spoke to him was coming back
Speaker 1: from picking grapes one afternoon and my cell phone rang
Speaker 1: and it was Dan and he said, would you like
Speaker 1: to come and do grad school with me and explore
Speaker 1: the mysteries of the kind of human mind? And I said,
Speaker 1: that sounds pretty amazing. And so you know, that was
Speaker 1: in two thousand and four when I started, and I
Speaker 1: originally wanted to look at free will, that's what he
Speaker 1: was doing at the time, but he had done this
Speaker 1: whole new area of mind perception, and that sounded really interesting,
Speaker 1: mostly for me because of all the moral questions that
Speaker 1: brought up, and we talked a lot about these ideas,
Speaker 1: and I think he wanted to write a book about them,
Speaker 1: and he was going to write that book by himself.
Speaker 1: But in two thousand and ten, which is when I graduated,
Speaker 1: he found out that he had been diagnosed with ALS
Speaker 1: and he wondered if I might be willing to help
Speaker 1: him finish the book if he didn't have time to
Speaker 1: finish writing it, And you know, of course I said, yes,
Speaker 1: be grateful, And unfortunately, the disease went much faster than
Speaker 1: we hoped it would, and by the time he was
Speaker 1: too sick to write, he had kind of written the
Speaker 1: first chapter in a little bit of the second. Of course,
Speaker 1: he'd planned out a lot of other stuff. But that's
Speaker 1: how I got it into the book and ended up
Speaker 1: doing a fair amount of it. But even when I
Speaker 1: was kind of writing the chapters after he'd passed away,
Speaker 1: I still kind of had this ability to, of course,
Speaker 1: perceive Dan's mind and always kind of wonder, you know,
Speaker 1: is this what Dan would have wanted to say? And
Speaker 1: most of the time I think, yes, you know, the
Speaker 1: much of the book is as Dan would have written it,
Speaker 1: down to the weird jokes and the weird examples. So
Speaker 1: I agree, I think he would. You know, he's be
Speaker 1: very proud of you then this book. So how much
Speaker 1: of it did he write? How much did he get
Speaker 1: a chance to see before he passed away? How many chapters?
Speaker 1: So he, as I mentioned, he had kind of written
Speaker 1: the first chapter, and he had given me feedback on
Speaker 1: on the chain after of the machine. Okay, that's the
Speaker 1: third chapter, and he kind of looked at my plans
Speaker 1: for the other ones, but mostly, you know, near the end,
Speaker 1: he wasn't able to kind of write or read that much.
Speaker 1: So I would just go up there and sit next
Speaker 1: to him. We look out over the lake through his
Speaker 1: picture window, and I would just kind of tell them
Speaker 1: what my plans were. And he said, you know, those
Speaker 1: plans sound reasonable, you know, go forth and multiply chapters
Speaker 1: and yeah. And it took me about three years after
Speaker 1: he passed away to get it all written up, but
Speaker 1: it got done, it did, and it is, like I said,
Speaker 1: it's a very interesting book. You talk about cryptomnds a
Speaker 1: lot in this book, because is essentially every chapter in
Speaker 1: another manifestation of a crypto mind. Yes, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: Every chapter is a kind of interesting mind, and a
Speaker 1: cryptomnd is just something that's you know, that's cryptic to us.
Speaker 1: We have a we have a hard time understanding whether
Speaker 1: there's a mind present or not, like an animal or
Speaker 1: a machine. Let we jump, you know, all the way
Speaker 1: and we'll work backwards to the self, which is your
Speaker 1: last chapter. So do we have trouble? I know the
Speaker 1: answer to this question, but I'm asking a leading question.
Speaker 1: Do we have a trouble understanding ourselves? Yeah? We sure do.
Speaker 1: I mean, has anyone ever in the history of the
Speaker 1: world ever wondered who am I? I think I'm the
Speaker 1: first to ever bring up this question, right, So certainly
Speaker 1: psychology and philosophy before that have kind of plumbed the
Speaker 1: limits of our own self knowledge and wondered what it
Speaker 1: means to be a person. And so some reviews of
Speaker 1: The Mind Club say that they're in some ways almost
Speaker 1: two different books. The first nine chapters is about all
Speaker 1: these kind of cryptic minds, and then the last chapter
Speaker 1: on the self, as you picked up on, is really
Speaker 1: a kind of brief, fun summary of modern social psychology
Speaker 1: and how we do or really do not know who
Speaker 1: we are? Have you read? I think Bruce Hood wrote
Speaker 1: it about how the self is a myth or as
Speaker 1: an illusion. I haven't read Bruce's book, no, but Dan
Speaker 1: has a book or a chapter rather called the Self
Speaker 1: is Magic. I imagine is a similar kind of thing. Right.
Speaker 1: It's not a real thing. It's not like a book
Speaker 1: you can hold, but it feels so real. It does. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we somehow, we somehow like we feel it as
Speaker 1: a unified whole. Although you know, I think you asked,
Speaker 1: and actually in Bruce's book he asked people to think,
Speaker 1: close your eyes and try to locate where you think
Speaker 1: the self is and like kind of draw an X
Speaker 1: on a cartoon person of a version of a brain
Speaker 1: to show where it is. And you know what scared
Speaker 1: me about that exercise for me personally is when I
Speaker 1: close my eyes, I had trouble. I located it like
Speaker 1: in multiple areas, depending on what image of myself I
Speaker 1: thought of, Like I had all sorts of different images.
Speaker 1: That bad. That means I don't have a unified self.
Speaker 1: Or is that normal? I think, Well, I'm not a
Speaker 1: clinical psychologist, but I'm pretty sure it's normal. I mean,
Speaker 1: I share your intuition, you know, if I try to
Speaker 1: pin down the self I mean I might not even
Speaker 1: put the X just in myself, because who I am
Speaker 1: is determined by my wife and my colleagues, my pets,
Speaker 1: you know, my work. Maybe I put part of the
Speaker 1: X in the mind Clubs, as I poured so much
Speaker 1: of myself into the book. Right, It's it's hard to
Speaker 1: pin down absolutely. I mean, our self concept is constantly changing.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's good to have a stable source of
Speaker 1: self esteem, of course, but we do seem to have
Speaker 1: all these different aspects. So how does that relate to
Speaker 1: the mind? How does the self relate to you know,
Speaker 1: your main thesis running through this whole book that mind
Speaker 1: is a matter of perception. How does that relate to
Speaker 1: the self? Well, I think it kind of perfectly relates
Speaker 1: in some sense, because the self is really a matter
Speaker 1: of perception. And at least in psychology, we kind of
Speaker 1: understand that the self is a matter of perception. It's
Speaker 1: something we make. But we often think that the minds
Speaker 1: of others as something that's really there. Right, And you know,
Speaker 1: there is an objective fact of the matter whether your
Speaker 1: pet can be embarrassed, right, whether your cat has deep thoughts.
Speaker 1: But the most part, the minds of our pets and
Speaker 1: our machines, and dead people and vegetative patients. As you mentioned,
Speaker 1: it's a matter of perception, and that's something we really
Speaker 1: stress in the book absolutely, and you talk about implications
Speaker 1: for lots of things, and we'll get into some of this.
Speaker 1: So one I want to talk about is morality. So
Speaker 1: you talk about in this phrase diadic morality, and you
Speaker 1: talk about in virtually every chapter you talk about how
Speaker 1: it's relevant to the kind of cryptomind you're talking about.
Speaker 1: So what is adic morality and how does it relate
Speaker 1: to whether or not something we judge it as immoral
Speaker 1: or not. Yeah, So dietic morality is just the idea
Speaker 1: that we understand morality in terms of two roles or
Speaker 1: two minds. Right. The word diet is the Greek word
Speaker 1: for two, And what it means is when we think
Speaker 1: of immoral things or moral things, we think of a
Speaker 1: perpetrator and a victim. That's all it really is. That's
Speaker 1: what a diet is. So murder has a murderer and
Speaker 1: a victim. Abuse has an abuser and abuse ee, and
Speaker 1: we take that template to understand kind of everything around us.
Speaker 1: And the important thing is that those two people aren't
Speaker 1: just things but their minds. So an abuser or an
Speaker 1: a perpetrator. We think in terms of responsibility, thinking, right,
Speaker 1: kind of planning, intention, Those are what we'd call agency,
Speaker 1: but where you can think of it as really a
Speaker 1: thinking doer. On the other hand, the victim is a
Speaker 1: vulnerable feeler, right, We're concerned about their suffering and their feelings.
Speaker 1: So morality is really about pairing together. A thinking doer
Speaker 1: causes suffering to a vulnerable feeler, that's all it kind
Speaker 1: of is. Yeah, and that distinction explains so much. But
Speaker 1: can you like pull out the doer as well from
Speaker 1: the thinker, Like if we talk about like modern dual
Speaker 1: process theory, like the fact that we have you know,
Speaker 1: we have more automatic processes that might not be really thinking.
Speaker 1: We're not like consciously thinking to do them, but they
Speaker 1: still do things. Do you know what I mean? Isn't
Speaker 1: it possible to tease out the doer from the thinker
Speaker 1: as well? Yes, certainly you can kind of separate it.
Speaker 1: But I think when we pass judgments of blame and
Speaker 1: more responsibility, we're primarily concerned with the thinking behind the doing.
Speaker 1: So if you're a sleepwalker or that's a great example
Speaker 1: of an automatic process where we infer mind even though
Speaker 1: and would you say, mind is still a part of that,
Speaker 1: even though it's unconscious. I think. Well, so, of course,
Speaker 1: if you murder someone while you're sleepwalking, as we talk
Speaker 1: about in the self chapter, then you know you're still
Speaker 1: doing it, and there's still your mind is still involved
Speaker 1: in some sense, right, like your brain's making you move
Speaker 1: and kill someone. But it's not mind in the sense
Speaker 1: that we normally think, and certainly not mine in the
Speaker 1: sense that we think deserves more responsibility. So in this
Speaker 1: case of the sleepwalker, everyone acknowledged that he killed his
Speaker 1: father in law, but no one thought that he was responsible.
Speaker 1: He lacked that kind of thinking part of his mind
Speaker 1: even if he was still doing it. Okay, okay, And
Speaker 1: this idea of you know, in the opposite end of
Speaker 1: the spectrum with the vulnerable feelers, we tend to have
Speaker 1: the most compassion for them. You know, it's kind of
Speaker 1: like a ratio, like if you're much much more of
Speaker 1: a vulnerable feeler than you're thinking doer, we tend to
Speaker 1: have more compassion for you. It seems like if you've
Speaker 1: faced an injustice, for instance, or you're a victim, if
Speaker 1: you're a victim, certainly. Yeah, So people get incensed when
Speaker 1: people harm babies and puppies and orphans, right, these are
Speaker 1: all things that we think are very vulnerable and sensitive
Speaker 1: to pain. But we don't really get upset when CEOs
Speaker 1: get injured or professional wrestlers get injured. Right, So it's
Speaker 1: really about you know, this vulnerability which makes them ideal
Speaker 1: victims and then, as you say, makes us empathize with them.
Speaker 1: And could that be problematic though from in the sense
Speaker 1: that we might not have as much empathy for the
Speaker 1: people that we've kind of put in the enemy category
Speaker 1: like that, maybe we could act she lack our own
Speaker 1: empathy for them because we do that certainly, Yeah, certainly.
Speaker 1: So just because we perceive a mind a certain way,
Speaker 1: especially when it comes to human minds, doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: that's true. Right. So we can perceive that, you know,
Speaker 1: a CEO of a fortune five hundred company is cold
Speaker 1: and calculating and it's just doing things for a profit.
Speaker 1: But but maybe you know he or she is actually
Speaker 1: very sensitive to criticism and very caring, but their role
Speaker 1: just prevents us from seeing that. So again all about perception,
Speaker 1: it is, Yeah, I mean we could there could be
Speaker 1: certain individuals in a company who could actually have been
Speaker 1: more innocent than others, but we want them as a
Speaker 1: part of the whole group and kind of strip them
Speaker 1: of their humanity in a way. Yeah. And on the
Speaker 1: flip side, we could have a child maybe who you know,
Speaker 1: we really empathize child. Yeah, exactly right, like a devil
Speaker 1: spawned child for them. But oh look how cute they are?
Speaker 1: Exactly Yeah. No, for sure, My gosh, you really like
Speaker 1: nothing is off limits in this book, you know, like
Speaker 1: from bestiality to you know, I mean, it's amazing. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about bestiality for a second. You know, how
Speaker 1: does that relate to perceptions of minds? Well? So it's
Speaker 1: an interesting topic, right, because some people we cover in
Speaker 1: the book, Right, some people perceive a lot of mind
Speaker 1: an animal. They fall in love with animals, right, They
Speaker 1: fall in romantic love with animals and want to express
Speaker 1: that love. I mean, you'd be surprised to how many
Speaker 1: people do it, but not enough that I would say
Speaker 1: it's normal, using like a statistical definition of what normal is. OK.
Speaker 1: But the weird thing from my perceptions perspective is why
Speaker 1: do we think bestiality is so terrible? And probably all
Speaker 1: our listeners, right, think that's really twisted when people do that.
Speaker 1: And you know, certainly it is weird, but it's not
Speaker 1: clear that the animals necessarily right feel as offended as
Speaker 1: people do. Maybe it's not like animals give consent to
Speaker 1: sex and the wild to other animals. And so I
Speaker 1: think what people are really getting angry about is going
Speaker 1: back to this dietic morality thing, this imbalance between the
Speaker 1: person and the goat. Let's say, right, so the person
Speaker 1: is this clearly thinking doer. Right, A person can give consent,
Speaker 1: they can plan, and a goat can't. And so all
Speaker 1: we think is that they're just vulnerable feelers. And so
Speaker 1: the example we raise in the book is, imagine how
Speaker 1: upset you'd be if someone has sex with a puppy.
Speaker 1: Chances are you'd be pretty upset. But now imagine that
Speaker 1: someone falls in loves and tries to have sex with
Speaker 1: a hammerhead shark. Oh right, we wouldn't have as much compassion, right,
Speaker 1: we'd think, wow, that's a weird thing. But you know,
Speaker 1: if you can figure out a way, you know, to
Speaker 1: make love to our great way in that sense, don't
Speaker 1: we reverse it and say, like, maybe you're the victim
Speaker 1: if you get you know, your bits chomped off exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: So that's why we don't feel bad for the person
Speaker 1: because now they're the victim. So it's all about this ratio.
Speaker 1: As as you mentioned, it's fascinating, especially in the Enemy
Speaker 1: chapter you talk about how, you know, the dehumanization aspect
Speaker 1: of what we do to our enemy that strips them
Speaker 1: of their agency and experience, right, And it's really interesting
Speaker 1: because like, you know, we do that. We do that
Speaker 1: like in lots of subtle ways, like even like you know,
Speaker 1: like the person who doesn't like their partner, they think
Speaker 1: their partner is not spending a tension on them, and
Speaker 1: they call them a narcissist and they see, oh that
Speaker 1: person is such a nars My boyfriend or my girlfriends
Speaker 1: such a narcissist or like you know, so I share
Speaker 1: Rich read a really interesting book about that called The
Speaker 1: Selfishness of Others, which just came out recently, about how
Speaker 1: we throw these words around that kind of like label
Speaker 1: the person in a way that strips them of their
Speaker 1: humanity to kind of sometimes make ourselves feel better about
Speaker 1: ourselves as well. Yeah, it's very easy to take away mine.
Speaker 1: I mean, as we talk about how easy it is
Speaker 1: to give mind oftentimes, how easy it is to kind
Speaker 1: of see your computer as having a mind or your
Speaker 1: cat as being human. But it's equally easy to kind
Speaker 1: of strip a away mind from people who disagree with us,
Speaker 1: or who make us feel bad about ourselves, or we're
Speaker 1: just different than us, people have different religions or races
Speaker 1: or what have you. Are there humans though, that don't
Speaker 1: have a mind. Well, I think the I mean we
Speaker 1: don't really know is zombies could exist. Zombies philosophic Chalmers zombies,
Speaker 1: Yeah right, yeah, Chalmers zombies. For you know, for listeners
Speaker 1: who aren't familiar, is this idea of someone who acts
Speaker 1: and looks and talks just like a person with a mind,
Speaker 1: but they actually don't have a mind. They're like a
Speaker 1: Stepford wife, a very sophisticated robot, you could imagine. So,
Speaker 1: you know, as you said, it's hard to ever tell
Speaker 1: if someone's really like that. I think the best contender
Speaker 1: for someone that doesn't have a mind that's a human
Speaker 1: is maybe someone in a in a vegetative state, right
Speaker 1: who suffered a lot of brain damage. But someone walking
Speaker 1: around talking, I think it's a pretty good assumption that
Speaker 1: they have a mind like you, even if you sometimes
Speaker 1: ignore it. Okay, but even people vegeta states. You know,
Speaker 1: you talk about the emerging fMRI research or EG research
Speaker 1: looking at people vegetative states. How has that increased our
Speaker 1: understanding of the presence of mind and such people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's been actually pretty important because a lot of these
Speaker 1: these minds of vegetative patients, as we say in the book,
Speaker 1: are silent. It's very hard to know if someone in
Speaker 1: a vegetative state has a mind because they can't tell
Speaker 1: you about it. Sometimes I feel like I'm in a
Speaker 1: vegetative state. Like do you ever have days where you're
Speaker 1: trying to work and like nothing is like flowing whatsoever? Yes? Yes,
Speaker 1: why does that happen? Yeah? I guess that's a matter
Speaker 1: of perception. Yeah, as I think as dense as you
Speaker 1: feel on those days, I think you're still one up
Speaker 1: over people who you know, can't even blink. Okay, that's
Speaker 1: totally fair, that's a fair right. And so there's these
Speaker 1: people who you're not sure if they are, you know, vegetative,
Speaker 1: like there's nothing going on in their mind or they're
Speaker 1: locked in right that there's a mind there, they just
Speaker 1: can't express. It's somehow locked between their limp limp limbs
Speaker 1: and their frozen face. And so MRI helps us distinguish that.
Speaker 1: So you can ask people questions in the scanner and
Speaker 1: you know to one example is think about playing tennis,
Speaker 1: or please think about walking around your house, And if
Speaker 1: you're in a vegetative state, you can't do that, right,
Speaker 1: you can't respond to those questions. But if you're locked in,
Speaker 1: if you're still a mind back there, you can't. And
Speaker 1: so these MRI researchers found that a woman they thought
Speaker 1: was in a vegetative state actually seemed to be locked
Speaker 1: in because she could think about playing tennis when she
Speaker 1: was asked to think about playing tennis, and think about
Speaker 1: walking around her house when she was asked to do so.
Speaker 1: So it's really kind of flexible behavior. Really distinguishes it too. Wow,
Speaker 1: And fMRI was able to pick up on the relevant
Speaker 1: brain areas that we know have to do with like
Speaker 1: spatial navigation and stuff. Yeah, exactly. I think the difficulty
Speaker 1: with MRI and why this isn't you know, like a
Speaker 1: godsend for having conversations with people, is because the signals
Speaker 1: really messy and you have to ask the question something
Speaker 1: like fifty times each and average across all those things
Speaker 1: to see what's happening. So it's not like you get
Speaker 1: incredible specificity where you can be like, well, think about
Speaker 1: how you feel about your mother right now. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not clear what that would be. So it only
Speaker 1: works in specific circumstances, but still pretty powerful. Right. We
Speaker 1: can't read minds yet through fMRI, that's right exactly. I mean,
Speaker 1: do you think we'll ever get to that point? Maybe
Speaker 1: there's some researchers who are using EEG so kind of
Speaker 1: electrical signals that happen with much faster temporal resolution, not spatially,
Speaker 1: but much faster temporarily, and they're trying to get people
Speaker 1: to do kind of yes no responses, and some of
Speaker 1: those seem pretty promising. And other potential ways with the
Speaker 1: deep brain implants, so you could implant electrodes, which gives you,
Speaker 1: you know, circumvents the skull being there, which kind of
Speaker 1: messes up a lot of measurement. So they're all potentials,
Speaker 1: and I think we'll get there someday, hopefully soon, but
Speaker 1: these things always take longer. I mean, can you imagine
Speaker 1: like a Google class type of a thing where you
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm trying to think of like like
Speaker 1: science fiction where we actually can read people's minds someday,
Speaker 1: you know, we have access to their brain scans. It's creepy.
Speaker 1: I mean you could. I just think that the brain
Speaker 1: isn't very compartmentalized, right, It's all like different networks on
Speaker 1: top of each other, and so it's just hard to
Speaker 1: parse out. You just no themes. You'd be like, oh,
Speaker 1: they're in the like sexual you know, realm right now
Speaker 1: of what they're thinking, whatever it is, whatever the content is,
Speaker 1: or they're oh they're navigating something, or oh, they're really
Speaker 1: spending a lot of effort on metacognition because there be
Speaker 1: a ten is active or something, you know, right, So
Speaker 1: it's exactly exactly kind of broad themes like the when
Speaker 1: they unleashed I think it was Microsoft or Google unleashed
Speaker 1: a computer to learn about the Internet, which you can
Speaker 1: imagine is kind of like a mind, this distributed network
Speaker 1: that thinks about a lot of things. And it came
Speaker 1: up with like cats and being a jerk basically like
Speaker 1: an aggressive person who likes watching things about cats. So
Speaker 1: maybe we'll do that. Seems like both extremes of your vulnerable,
Speaker 1: feeling and thinking doer, that's true? Actually, yeah yeah, cats
Speaker 1: and trolling. Yeah, that sounds like a great example of
Speaker 1: each extreme category. Why are humanoid robots creepy? Ah? Yes?
Speaker 1: Why are humanoid robots creepy? So I think, well, I
Speaker 1: should say this has been something that's been noticed for
Speaker 1: maybe almost fifty years now. There was a Japanese roboticist
Speaker 1: named Maury and he came up with this idea called
Speaker 1: the Uncanny Valley. And the idea of the Uncanny Valley
Speaker 1: is that we generally like robots. The more human like
Speaker 1: they are, the more they express emotion and feelings, and
Speaker 1: so that's the kind of left side of a curve
Speaker 1: that's going on up. But we don't like them to
Speaker 1: talk back right, right, But you like Wally right, the
Speaker 1: robot in the animated movie. Yes, like anthromorphic right feelings
Speaker 1: and thinking. But there's a point of which this kind
Speaker 1: of upward trend of liking robots and the the where they
Speaker 1: look human takes a steep drop, and that drop into
Speaker 1: the canyon or valley is called the Uncanny Valley, and
Speaker 1: you can find it all over the place. So, if
Speaker 1: you've seen the movie The Polar Express with Tom Hanks.
Speaker 1: People don't like that because Tom Hanks looks human but
Speaker 1: not quite has these dead gray eyes. And in fact,
Speaker 1: Pixar refuses explicitly to do realistic humans because of the
Speaker 1: Uncanny Valley, so they only do things like animals or
Speaker 1: very stylized humans like The Incredibles. And so I think
Speaker 1: you know the reason for this. Some people suggested it's
Speaker 1: just the appearance that creeps us out, but I think
Speaker 1: really what's going on is perceptions of mind. So we
Speaker 1: have this in our minds, this big separation between things
Speaker 1: that should feel and things that shouldn't feel. So you
Speaker 1: and me were okay, animals, that's cool, But cars and
Speaker 1: robots they are inanimate, they're made of metal. They should
Speaker 1: not feel. And so what's creepy is when things that
Speaker 1: shouldn't feel, like robots, seem to be able to feel
Speaker 1: because they have a human like face. So we have
Speaker 1: research suggesting that even if it doesn't have a human face,
Speaker 1: if I just tell you, look, there's a robot over here.
Speaker 1: It looks pretty mechanical, but it has its like deep
Speaker 1: capacity for love and fear and pain. That's pretty nerving
Speaker 1: to people. Yeah, I just google image Tom Hanks and
Speaker 1: poor express. He looks pretty normal to me. He looks
Speaker 1: like a real human. Does it create me? Uh? He's
Speaker 1: not moving yet though. Oh okay, we need to watch
Speaker 1: the video of it then okay, yeah, his eyes kind
Speaker 1: of track strangth it's really all in the eyes. Where
Speaker 1: we take people's faces and remove the eyes kind of weird,
Speaker 1: but people get super creepy if you take their eyes out,
Speaker 1: and they don't if you take their nose out, for instance,
Speaker 1: they just look kind of silly with they're at their nose.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah, the eyes convey so
Speaker 1: much social information and so much emotion, right, So much
Speaker 1: feeling is in the eyes. We think of the mouth
Speaker 1: that's smiling, but it's really in the eyes. So true,
Speaker 1: so fascinating. Let's talk about death. Why not we talk
Speaker 1: about this? So, what's the chances that you know, when
Speaker 1: when you die, your mind is gone forever? Well, we
Speaker 1: give us some hope. I'd say it's a non zero chance. Okay,
Speaker 1: you know that's something. Okay, you're doing a little Pascal's
Speaker 1: wager here, that's right, that's right, you never know. But
Speaker 1: I think what's the chances that we continue to perceive
Speaker 1: someone's mind after they pass away. That's very, very high.
Speaker 1: That is high, And yet we perceive ghost all over
Speaker 1: the place, right, Why do you ghost always have unfinished business?
Speaker 1: For instance? Yeah, I mean, I think again, all these
Speaker 1: are outgrowths of how we perceive minds of the living.
Speaker 1: And certainly there's this effect called the Zigarnick effect in
Speaker 1: real life. And what it is is unfinished business is
Speaker 1: always more strongly activated in your mind. So if you're
Speaker 1: driving to work in the morning and you're listening to
Speaker 1: something in the car and you get out of the
Speaker 1: car and you haven't finished the song yet, then that's
Speaker 1: the song you're going to find yourself singing all day, right,
Speaker 1: because it's like you haven't gotten to the end. It
Speaker 1: just keeps kind of in your mind, right, Or if
Speaker 1: you like want, is that how seduction works as well?
Speaker 1: Like people really like people they can't have, or people
Speaker 1: really like people who like, you know, like, are kind
Speaker 1: of a little stand offish as opposed to like, I
Speaker 1: really love you, I really love you, I ruly want you,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Yeah? Yeah, And I think
Speaker 1: I mean, if you want to talk about subduction, the
Speaker 1: greatest unfinished business, right is when you are about to
Speaker 1: have sex with someone and you get stopped just a
Speaker 1: little bit short, right, yes, because then you're like, you're
Speaker 1: so aroused and you're so excited and you're so anticipating this,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden it stops. And so
Speaker 1: this is the same thing with ghosts in some sense. Right,
Speaker 1: we think about a mind who's cease to exist, but
Speaker 1: they just have one more thing left to finish. And
Speaker 1: because we can just can't imagine leaving something before we
Speaker 1: finish it, like sex, for instance, we can't imagine someone
Speaker 1: leaving to the afterlife until their work is done. And
Speaker 1: you've done actually done the study that people who die
Speaker 1: when they're in a state of alertness tend to we
Speaker 1: perceive their mind more, Is that right? That's right? Yep.
Speaker 1: So actually writing that up now in a paper, and
Speaker 1: the idea is that we again perceive the minds of
Speaker 1: the dead as if they were in life, but really
Speaker 1: as if they were in life the moment before they died. Wow.
Speaker 1: So like the Kirk Cabbin and people who were in
Speaker 1: that club was it twenty seven club? The twenty seven club? Yeah, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you make an interesting point, like if Kirk Caabine was
Speaker 1: still alive, or let's say, you know, we think it
Speaker 1: becomes eighty years old and then he's like barely able
Speaker 1: to make it on stage, you know, to play and
Speaker 1: his playing release is bad at age eighty whatever, and
Speaker 1: then he dies at age eighty five? Will we tend
Speaker 1: to remember? Will we not like idolize him as much?
Speaker 1: You think? And if he died at twenty seven, I
Speaker 1: doubt it. I doubt it. I mean Jimmy Hendrix and
Speaker 1: Amy Winehouse and Nis Joplin, all sorts of folks who
Speaker 1: are kind of immortalized in our minds about music, Buddy Holly, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, we all understand that Rolling Stones are a
Speaker 1: huge deal, and we understand like the Beatles are a
Speaker 1: huge deale. But it's really like lenin that we like
Speaker 1: pine after right, when Ringo's ninety and in some nursing
Speaker 1: home in London, would you know, would just be like, wow, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he used to be used to be Ringo, but it's
Speaker 1: not the same effective punch because he didn't end when
Speaker 1: he was famous. Wow. Okay, So we're not advocating that
Speaker 1: you kill yourself at a young age. That's true by
Speaker 1: any stretch of the imagination. But the research suggests that
Speaker 1: if you want to be remembered as go down as
Speaker 1: a legend whenever you die, be in a as a
Speaker 1: you know, a work as possible, or as a you
Speaker 1: know kind of like in the middle of like a masterpiece. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's true. Is that right? Yeah? I mean it's really
Speaker 1: I this is like the most taboo written like podcast
Speaker 1: shat I've ever had. I think, you know, even if
Speaker 1: you're not doing some great creative work, you know, you
Speaker 1: could die at the peak of your creative output. That's
Speaker 1: probably the best way to be as famous as possible.
Speaker 1: But if you're not doing some great creative work, then
Speaker 1: just make sure when you die you've got your eyes
Speaker 1: open and you're awake. Right. It's simple study. We basically
Speaker 1: ask people to say how much mind does someone have
Speaker 1: after their death when they die while a sleeper in
Speaker 1: a coma or while awaken fully alert, And if you
Speaker 1: die while you're awake and fully alert, people think you
Speaker 1: have more personality after death. And I think it's more
Speaker 1: important to follow the wishes of your will, which I
Speaker 1: think is pretty interesting because I think you know you
Speaker 1: still care about it, versus if you died while you're
Speaker 1: in a coma, then I think, wow, whatever, we can
Speaker 1: ignore his last wishes exactly. Yeah, people go to such
Speaker 1: a lens to follow people's asked wishes, even if it
Speaker 1: like sacrifices the living, you know, like, no, we can't,
Speaker 1: you know, we got to honor that his last wish
Speaker 1: to cut down that center, you know, even though it'll
Speaker 1: keep all these people out of jobs, you know, like, yeah, totally,
Speaker 1: because we still think that person still cares about it
Speaker 1: in some ways. Or so if you think about it, right, like,
Speaker 1: if you're let's say you believe in heaven and hell, Like,
Speaker 1: if you're in heaven, you're having an incredible joy and
Speaker 1: bliss being reunited with with God, you're not going to
Speaker 1: care about something so petty as you know, to build
Speaker 1: this fence or to keep this building around. And if
Speaker 1: you're in hell, what then you're in internal suffering and
Speaker 1: you really don't care about some fence because you're in
Speaker 1: pain all the time. And so it seems like there's
Speaker 1: no real, you know, account where people would care that
Speaker 1: much about what they cared about in life as in death.
Speaker 1: But where where do we go when we die? There's
Speaker 1: a very benimal possibility that we don't go anywhere, right,
Speaker 1: and that's like the most horrifying thing for people to think,
Speaker 1: you know, It's like people really don't want to accept
Speaker 1: that possibility is that we don't actually go anywhere. Are
Speaker 1: the way, which is mostly what the mind is really
Speaker 1: what is who we are just ceases to exist for eternity,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't go anywhere. That'd be the scariest thing, right, right,
Speaker 1: our consciousness is annihilated but forever, yeah, forever, or maybe
Speaker 1: like the way the universe works, is it loops back
Speaker 1: on itself at some point, like you know, eternity is
Speaker 1: a really long time, Like maybe like the laws of
Speaker 1: physics don't work that way. Maybe it's actually a continual
Speaker 1: loop or something we will never know till you know
Speaker 1: it happens. But isn't that possible? I mean, all these
Speaker 1: things are are definitely possible. I Mean some people say, like,
Speaker 1: why would I fear the world after my death? I
Speaker 1: don't fear the world for my consciousness, right, So, I
Speaker 1: mean it actually doesn't seem that funny to me because
Speaker 1: before you were born, you were you know, you didn't
Speaker 1: have a full self. By the end of death, you've
Speaker 1: got a full self and you've done all these amazing things.
Speaker 1: So I mean, but you know, if the Big Bang
Speaker 1: is right in the sense so like we don't have
Speaker 1: free will and everything was determined in that moment, then
Speaker 1: isn't it technically true that like before we were born,
Speaker 1: there still was like a destiny of what that self
Speaker 1: would end up to be someday. So yes, I think,
Speaker 1: why are you not smoking pot right now? That's right
Speaker 1: listening to some doors. For the record, I do not
Speaker 1: smoke pot. That was a joke. I just want to say.
Speaker 1: But it's definitely not predictable where you're gonna end up be.
Speaker 1: So even if the universe is determined, you know, you
Speaker 1: don't know what's going to happen next week or a
Speaker 1: year from now, and so you might as well try
Speaker 1: your best to right but someone would know. Not someone,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm inferring your mind, you know, but you
Speaker 1: know the whole God, You know, God is fascinating, like
Speaker 1: you argue in the in the chapter on God, And
Speaker 1: I was going to ask you does God exist? Because
Speaker 1: I feel like these are just like I just want
Speaker 1: to ask you all these questions like what happens when
Speaker 1: we die? Does God exist? And I feel like you've
Speaker 1: answers to all these things. So does God exist, Well,
Speaker 1: many people would definitely perceive him to exist exactly. That's
Speaker 1: that's certainly more people perceive him to exist in people
Speaker 1: who even not to exist, So that's something. And it
Speaker 1: might not even be a hymn, that's true, that's true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or even have a gender. I mean, you know, but
Speaker 1: it seems kind of offensive. Yeah, I don't want to
Speaker 1: offend God. But it's fascinating because we infer. Not only
Speaker 1: do infer, but we you know, you know how like
Speaker 1: we talk about you know, like when we're you know,
Speaker 1: childhood trauma, and then we end up projecting things onto
Speaker 1: people in our relationships. Well, God's like the ultimate projection.
Speaker 1: Every one of us kind of projects onto God to
Speaker 1: be whoever kind of create out of our own image,
Speaker 1: as opposed to God create us in his or her image. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially with morality. So you mentioned, you know, smoking marijuana,
Speaker 1: and there's a researcher named Nick Effie has this wonderful
Speaker 1: study and asks people, you know, do you think it's
Speaker 1: immoral or permissible to smoke marijuana? And what do you
Speaker 1: think God thinks about that? Yeah? And people think that
Speaker 1: God thinks the exact same thing as they do, especially
Speaker 1: with moral things. Yeah, I mean, you know, that just
Speaker 1: makes so much sense. So yeah, my gosh, so many
Speaker 1: implications there, but is almost so much we could talk
Speaker 1: about today. But my god, there's this I just said,
Speaker 1: My god. So returning to death for a second, there
Speaker 1: are people who are trying to kind of try this
Speaker 1: experiment of cryogenics, right, it's a scientific experiment whether or
Speaker 1: not there will be facilities in the future that would
Speaker 1: allow us that would not consider us dead in the
Speaker 1: sense that we consider ourselves dead now. And you know,
Speaker 1: like one hundred years ago we declared people dead and
Speaker 1: for things that we could actually now we have the
Speaker 1: technology to keep their lives going continuing. Right, So what
Speaker 1: do you think the feasibility and possibility of cryogenics are.
Speaker 1: It sounds to me like it's actually quite reasonable in
Speaker 1: the sense of, like, you know, you have one hundred
Speaker 1: percent chance of not existing forever versus some non zero
Speaker 1: chance of there being some technology in the future. So
Speaker 1: I'm actually intrigued by cryogenics. I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 1: I am also actually very intrigued by cryogenics, and out
Speaker 1: of any sense of immortality, that's the one that also
Speaker 1: appeals the most to me, and I think it's very
Speaker 1: Do you want to be in the same canister as me? Sure, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: as long as it's a big canister. Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Let's fit some other people out there too. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, it's very easy to free someone. I think
Speaker 1: the difficulty is unfreezing them and having them be alive again,
Speaker 1: because you know, you only freeze them once they're already
Speaker 1: dead by some problem. So maybe the best way to
Speaker 1: go about it is to freeze this before you know
Speaker 1: we're dead. But I think that's not it's not legal yet,
Speaker 1: but I have been thinking that is like that makes
Speaker 1: the most sense. Like if you want to like maximize
Speaker 1: the chances that you're going to live like an extended life,
Speaker 1: Like there's a good chance that, like let's say, five
Speaker 1: thousand years from now, the life extension will probably be
Speaker 1: I'm just predicting to me much more than eighty years.
Speaker 1: And like, let's say we froze you at age like twenty, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess, But then you take the huge risk. This
Speaker 1: is the point you're making, is you still take a hit,
Speaker 1: not still not guaranteed that we'd even be able to
Speaker 1: unfreeze you, even though you were alive when we freezed you, correct, right,
Speaker 1: And so that's a that's a big risk, yeah, as
Speaker 1: opposed to guarantee to least live longer than twenty Yeah. Right,
Speaker 1: And you need to think of like the motivation for
Speaker 1: society at the time, right, Like eighty years from now,
Speaker 1: no one's going to know who you are, correct, like
Speaker 1: two hundred years, Like, why do we have to unfreeze
Speaker 1: this guy? Great point, great point. Yeah, we're assuming that's
Speaker 1: a big assumption that five thousand years from now, you know,
Speaker 1: anyone will like go back to that kindister and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: we forgot about these people, right, and like let's spend
Speaker 1: a ton of money making their consciousness on the internet
Speaker 1: or you know, feeding into robots or something that it's
Speaker 1: be like, yep, let's just unthob them and throw them out. No,
Speaker 1: for sure, But doesn't it seem potentially seems kind of
Speaker 1: unfair that like we just happened to be born. We
Speaker 1: didn't choose what epic of the universe we we were born.
Speaker 1: We were luckier than those who are born like you know,
Speaker 1: twelve hundred and eighty one, you know, in terms of life,
Speaker 1: I'm just talking strict in terms of life expectancy. Right,
Speaker 1: but you know, like what if we knew that, like
Speaker 1: five thousand years from now people live as long as
Speaker 1: they wanted to live in a healthy way, it kind
Speaker 1: of doesn't that. It's like darn it, you know, do
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Like, darn it were reported
Speaker 1: the wrong totally, do you know what I mean? Does
Speaker 1: anyone ever think of like this or's just just me? No?
Speaker 1: I think they do. I mean every time I think of,
Speaker 1: you know, young kids, I just think, you know, your
Speaker 1: life expectancy, yeah, ready be higher than mine. I think
Speaker 1: of that too. Yeah. I mean I'm going to outlive
Speaker 1: my parents hopefully or my grandparents hopefully, right, So it's
Speaker 1: always getting better. So I think the key in life
Speaker 1: is probably just to do downward comparisons to make yourself
Speaker 1: feel better, whether that's in terms of longevity or income
Speaker 1: or whatever. Sure, sure, well, what a fascinating conversation. I
Speaker 1: think we can probably stop there. And thanks for writing
Speaker 1: this book and offering such fasting insights on the mind
Speaker 1: and everything else that's to do in this world. Thanks
Speaker 1: for having me, It was a fun conversation. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott Eric Hoffman,
Speaker 1: I hope you found this episode just as thought per
Speaker 1: booking and interesting as I did. If you'd like to
Speaker 1: read the show notes for this episode or hear past episodes,
Speaker 1: you can visit the Psychology Podcast dot com