Speaker 1: Why are brains superstitious? Would you wear a nice sweater
Speaker 1: that belonged to a murderer? What does this have to
Speaker 1: do with mind reading or our interpretation of coincidences, or
Speaker 1: why kids often need their special blanket, and what any
Speaker 1: of this has to do with the brain. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Intercosmos with me David Eagelman. I'm a neuroscientist and author
Speaker 1: at Stanford and in these episodes we dive deeply into
Speaker 1: our three pound universe to understand some of the most
Speaker 1: surprising aspects of our lives. So here's today's question. Why
Speaker 1: do so many humans across time, across geography, even across
Speaker 1: the levels of education. Why do they believe in things
Speaker 1: they can't see and that presumably are not true, like
Speaker 1: ghosts or guardian angels, or curses or telepathy, or sacred
Speaker 1: relics or vengeful gods or karma or lucky socks. Even
Speaker 1: if you consider yourself totally unsuperstitious, you might still find
Speaker 1: that you say something and then you knock on wood,
Speaker 1: or maybe you dribble the ball three times before you
Speaker 1: take a basketball free throw, or maybe you would hesitate
Speaker 1: at the idea of moving into a house where a
Speaker 1: murderer lived. Now this is all strange behavior, right, because
Speaker 1: if you're a total rationalist, you'd say, look, no problem
Speaker 1: moving into that house. Criminality doesn't rub off on the walls.
Speaker 1: Those are totally separate issues. But somehow it's hard to
Speaker 1: move into that house. We see examples of superstitious behavior
Speaker 1: around us all the time. The tennis player John McEnroe,
Speaker 1: he would always refuse to step on the white lines
Speaker 1: of a tennis court between points. People cross their fingers,
Speaker 1: They avoid walking under ladders, they avoid black cats. So
Speaker 1: it probably won't surprise you that surveys consistently show that
Speaker 1: belief in the supernatural is alive and well even in
Speaker 1: highly secular, scientifically advanced societies. In the United States, a
Speaker 1: majority of people believe in angels sixty nine percent according
Speaker 1: to Gallup polls, And by the way, that's way more
Speaker 1: than believe in the Big Bang theory forty nine percent,
Speaker 1: and over twice as much as evolution by natural selections,
Speaker 1: which is thirty two percent. And this is broader than
Speaker 1: just the influence of religion. More generally, people believe in fate,
Speaker 1: in manifesting energy, in spiritual healing, in meaningful coincidences, and
Speaker 1: This all forms part of a rich, persistent global pattern
Speaker 1: of supernatural thought. So where does this all come from?
Speaker 1: This question about supernatural thinking has long fascinated scientists and philosophers.
Speaker 1: Some people answer this in a social lens, for example,
Speaker 1: that beliefs bind groups, and some researchers point to the
Speaker 1: psychological benefits, like belief gives us a sense of control
Speaker 1: in an unpredictable world. But there's also a deeper clue,
Speaker 1: and it has to do with the fact that the
Speaker 1: foundation of our supernatural beliefs is not taught to us.
Speaker 1: It arises spontaneously. Our brains generate them over and over
Speaker 1: from early childhood without instruction. Across cultures. The details change,
Speaker 1: but the need to reach for invisible explanations is a constant. Why. Well,
Speaker 1: it's because we don't see the world like we're passive
Speaker 1: recorders of reality. Instead, we are pattern makers. We fill
Speaker 1: the world with meaning. Our brains take incomplete data and
Speaker 1: they infer causes. We hear rustling leaves in the forest
Speaker 1: and we attribute agency. We hear a story about a
Speaker 1: murderer's house and we attribute some essence to it. We
Speaker 1: see a coincidence and we mark it up to destiny.
Speaker 1: As we're going to see today, this sort of superstitious
Speaker 1: thinking is actually a useful feature of the brain. All
Speaker 1: this starts to make a lot more sense from the
Speaker 1: neuroscience point of view, because these beliefs are natural outcomes
Speaker 1: of how human minds work. So today's episode is about this,
Speaker 1: this strange and fascinating corner of our cognition, the super sense.
Speaker 1: Super sense is a term coined by the developmental psychologist
Speaker 1: Bruce Hood, who noticed something curious in his research with children,
Speaker 1: even very young kids, before they're deeply exposed to cultural teachings,
Speaker 1: they show supernatural thinking. They believe that people have invisible essences,
Speaker 1: they recoil from bad objects, They believe in mind over matter,
Speaker 1: or that thoughts can influence events. These behaviors emerge early
Speaker 1: and automatically, so Bruce wrote a book called Supersense, Why
Speaker 1: We Believe in the Unbelievable, in which he explores why
Speaker 1: our brains are so naturally inclined toward the mystical, the magical,
Speaker 1: the metaphysical. In the book, he digs into the biology
Speaker 1: of belief, the brain mechanisms that underlie superstition and magical thinking,
Speaker 1: and spiritual conviction. Why world class athletes have their rituals.
Speaker 1: Why the belief that everything happens for a reason is
Speaker 1: so hard to shake. Why you wouldn't accept a heart
Speaker 1: transplant from a death row inmate. So the question is
Speaker 1: why are these patterns so persistent and what do they
Speaker 1: reveal about the human brain. So today we're going to
Speaker 1: examine what happens when our ancient circuitry collides with the
Speaker 1: modern world and why, even in an age of satellites
Speaker 1: and particle accelerators, the supernatural never really goes away. So
Speaker 1: here's my conversation with Bruce Hood. Okay, so, Bruce, you've
Speaker 1: been intrigued by supernatural thinking. People often believe things that
Speaker 1: defy rationality. So let's start with some examples of.
Speaker 2: That, so familiar ones of ghosts and spirits, which form
Speaker 2: the basis of a lot of storytelling in our culture.
Speaker 2: But I'm also interested in the more obscure things, like
Speaker 2: the rituals that people often engage in. That they might
Speaker 2: have special things that they do sports rituals I think
Speaker 2: are fascinating, that people have to touch certain things or
Speaker 2: wear certain clothes. And then there are more obscure things
Speaker 2: like this sense of being stared at most people think
Speaker 2: they can tell where they're being watched, and that's an
Speaker 2: interesting one because that doesn't sound supernatural to a lot
Speaker 2: of people. But when you consider it from a scientific perspective,
Speaker 2: then it's not really easy to understand how that could
Speaker 2: be done by any natural process. So really it's all
Speaker 2: those sorts of things which, in the cold light a
Speaker 2: day and you look at them through the scrutiny of
Speaker 2: a scientific lens don't stand up.
Speaker 3: So anything like that is in the category.
Speaker 1: And when you look at things like that, you realize, wow,
Speaker 1: this actually cuts across cultures and as far as we
Speaker 1: can tell, across time as well. Right, everybody seems to
Speaker 1: do this, Yes.
Speaker 2: And that's exactly one of the interesting things which suggests
Speaker 2: it might be universal. Whenever you find aspects of human
Speaker 2: behavior in different cultures that strongly suggests that it might
Speaker 2: be something to do with our biology, rather than being
Speaker 2: entirely culturally specific. There are, of course very specific cultural
Speaker 2: supernatural beliefs, but if you look at them more closely,
Speaker 2: you can see that they're very often based on the
Speaker 2: very same premise. So for example, life after death, souls
Speaker 2: and spirits and ghosts, you'll find it just about every culture.
Speaker 1: And so you categorize this under the umbrella term supersense.
Speaker 1: So give us give us understanding of what this means.
Speaker 2: Well, the super sense term, it was really the almost
Speaker 2: appealing to the intuitive nature, that these things seem like
Speaker 2: they're something you can detect, or that they feel real.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is the important point for many people
Speaker 2: when you ask them, why do you believe in these things?
Speaker 2: They say, well, I've had experience of it, or I've
Speaker 2: had that sense of being watched, or I've sensed the
Speaker 2: presence of people in houses or ghosts or whatever, that
Speaker 2: uncanny kind of sense of reality. And so I wanted
Speaker 2: to capture the supernatural term, but also a sense in
Speaker 2: which these things feel correct, because ultimately in the book,
Speaker 2: I argue that they really all really come from an
Speaker 2: intuitive way of thinking, as we have as children.
Speaker 1: And so this supernatural thinking, you argue that this is
Speaker 1: rooted in our deep mental architecture.
Speaker 2: So for me, supernatural phenomenon include anything like energies, forces, causes, entities,
Speaker 2: anything which people use to explain the experiences that they've had.
Speaker 2: So that also includes all the religious ones, but I'm
Speaker 2: also more interested in the ones which are not obviously
Speaker 2: derived from pure religion, and that includes everything else I
Speaker 2: mentioned earlier, like superstitious rituals and personal kind of you know,
Speaker 2: our attachment to objects and sentiments, mentality. These are things
Speaker 2: which I find fascinating because I think they evoke the
Speaker 2: same sort of underlying mechanisms, and those mechanisms really come
Speaker 2: from a brain which evolved to make sense of the world,
Speaker 2: and you can see this operating in children. I began
Speaker 2: as a developmental psychologists, and so I've always been fascinated
Speaker 2: in the way that children makes sense of the world.
Speaker 2: So we talk about them having intuitive theories, which are
Speaker 2: ways of understanding the world evoking causal mechanisms that are
Speaker 2: not taught formally, and that's the important point. These are
Speaker 2: things that children spontaneously come up with as their own
Speaker 2: explanations for why the world is the way they are. So,
Speaker 2: for example, when it comes to making a distinction between
Speaker 2: living and non living things, they spontaneously think there must
Speaker 2: be some sort of energy or life force in a
Speaker 2: living thing which gives it sort of autonomy and self
Speaker 2: propelled motions, as opposed to more inert things like.
Speaker 3: Objects and wooden blocks and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: So Jiennal already starting to draw a distinction between the
Speaker 2: biological and non biological in the way that they think
Speaker 2: about that. And once they've made that distinction, they then
Speaker 2: also start to evoke the notions of intentionality. They start
Speaker 2: to infirm minds having causes for making things do the
Speaker 2: things they do. And that's the beginnings of mind body dualism,
Speaker 2: which is a philosophical position, and that I think is
Speaker 2: also the basis for a lot of beliefs in.
Speaker 3: The body and mind being separate.
Speaker 2: And if that's the case, then well, once the body's gone,
Speaker 2: maybe the mind continues to exists, and therefore you have
Speaker 2: the basis of spirit, souls, and ghosts and the afterlife.
Speaker 2: So in kind of understanding the world around them, children
Speaker 2: are evoking the kind of causal mechanisms or intuitive theories
Speaker 2: which lay the foundation for what can become adult supernatural beliefs.
Speaker 2: And I think that's the way that religions actually are working,
Speaker 2: is that they kind of operate or their successful because
Speaker 2: they tap into what our inclinations about what could be possible, ghosts,
Speaker 2: life after death, and so on.
Speaker 1: So the idea is you think, look, here's a living object,
Speaker 1: but there's a mental state that's different. And so when
Speaker 1: Grandma passes away, she still exists even though her body
Speaker 1: is buried. Right, this is what dualism means. We have
Speaker 1: the mental and the physical being separate, whereas the view
Speaker 1: of modern neuroscience is that these things are linked. The
Speaker 1: reason that's the view of modern neuroscience is because anytime
Speaker 1: a person gets damage to the brain let's say, stroke,
Speaker 1: at tumor traumatic brain injury, things like that, we see
Speaker 1: very specific changes in who they are based on what's
Speaker 1: happened with the brain.
Speaker 2: As Pinker put it very aptly, said, the mind is
Speaker 2: what the brain does. So it's a sort of I
Speaker 2: hate the analogies of software and hardware, but yeah, the
Speaker 2: mind is the operating system in many ways. And your science,
Speaker 2: as you say, tells us that if you damage or
Speaker 2: disease the brain or drug it, I'll change the concepts
Speaker 2: of the content of the mind. But the general point
Speaker 2: is that most people would assume that the mind is
Speaker 2: separate to the body, but neuroscientists tend to sort of
Speaker 2: be more materialistic about that process. But let's just assume
Speaker 2: that you've gone for the mind being separate from the body.
Speaker 2: Then once the body's gone, then if you don't see
Speaker 2: it as being tethered to the body. Then that allows
Speaker 2: for a whole lot of beliefs. So it could be
Speaker 2: things like astral planing, you know, leaving your body and
Speaker 2: traveling around the world, or projection, all the sorts of
Speaker 2: things that people readily acknowledge or identify with as being
Speaker 2: phenomena that they think they've experienced. So there's a whole
Speaker 2: lot of you know, there are a lot of natural
Speaker 2: phenomena that people reinterpret us supernatural. It's not to say
Speaker 2: that these things couldn't possibly happen. I mean, for example,
Speaker 2: take telepathy. Telepathy in its current state, we would argue, well,
Speaker 2: being able to read someone's mind without technology would be
Speaker 2: a supernatural ability. But you know, you've worked with human interfaces,
Speaker 2: it won't be long before you can actually start to
Speaker 2: read the output of the brain, and maybe that could
Speaker 2: be transmitted to another person and effect you could read
Speaker 2: minds at a distance. So it's not impossible, but at
Speaker 2: the moment it's just not as improbable given our current
Speaker 2: understanding of the technology and our scientific theories.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we just cover an intuitive dualism, this idea
Speaker 1: that mind and body are separate. What else is bearing
Speaker 1: in our cognitive architecture such that that leads to supernatural beliefs.
Speaker 2: Okay, so my favorite is essentialism. This is something that
Speaker 2: I've I continue to think about. It's something that I've
Speaker 2: done research upon. Essentialism is that once you form an
Speaker 2: emotional attachment to an item, you essentialize it. And that
Speaker 2: can be you know, it can be an object, it
Speaker 2: can be a possession, that can be another person even
Speaker 2: But the point is essentialism is evoking a core identity
Speaker 2: sort of if you like, a metaphysical property to a
Speaker 2: physical entity that gives it its unique identity.
Speaker 1: So give us an example. Just everyone understands what centialism is.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: One of my daughters formed a very emotional attachment to
Speaker 2: a her blanket as she calls it, and I've heard
Speaker 2: it's not uncommon. About two thirds of children in the
Speaker 2: West form a strong emotional attachment to a teddy bear
Speaker 2: or a blanket. Now, what starts off, I think is
Speaker 2: a simple sensory support thing that helps them to get
Speaker 2: off of sleep at night and add some sort of
Speaker 2: security if you like this, sometimes called security blankets.
Speaker 3: These objects soon.
Speaker 2: Become irreplaceable and they're anthropomorphized. In other words, children treat
Speaker 2: them as if they are entities which have thoughts and
Speaker 2: feelings and get lonely. We did an experiment that children
Speaker 2: who had attachment objects mentalized them. They thought that they
Speaker 2: had mental states, and what makes them essentialize is that
Speaker 2: they're irreplaceable. So we did other experiments with Paul Bloom,
Speaker 2: the psychologists, where we create this illusion where we could
Speaker 2: duplicate any object, a toy or a blanket or anything,
Speaker 2: and we asked the children whether or not.
Speaker 3: They were different or not.
Speaker 2: And children were very happy for any object, any of
Speaker 2: their favorite toys, to be duplicated. But once you offered
Speaker 2: the opportunity to put their blanket, their unique sentimental object,
Speaker 2: into a machine which appears to duplicate it, they were
Speaker 2: really distressed by that. And I think that speaks to
Speaker 2: the idea that they didn't like the idea that you
Speaker 2: could somehow, you know, copy something which is authentic, and
Speaker 2: that is actually a behavior which manifests in adults. When
Speaker 2: you think about the value that we placed on authentic
Speaker 2: objects and.
Speaker 3: Works of art.
Speaker 2: A work of art is valuable by its providence, by
Speaker 2: its authenticity, by its origins. And if you had two
Speaker 2: identical works of art that you couldn't tell the difference
Speaker 2: between That would be really difficult for someone who really
Speaker 2: has an emotional attachment to the original. So I think
Speaker 2: it's a connection between are processing about objects and identity
Speaker 2: and this emotional tag that we add to it, like
Speaker 2: this internal metaphysical property which makes it unique and irreplaceable.
Speaker 1: So give us you've got a great example about a
Speaker 1: cardigan sweater. Give us that example.
Speaker 2: So I think one of the best demonstrations, if you like,
Speaker 2: of central reasoning is the contagion effect. So if I
Speaker 2: was to offer you a cardigan sweater and say, David,
Speaker 2: would you put this on for twenty dollars, you probably say, yeah, sure,
Speaker 2: twenty dollars, I'll put it on, depending how how much
Speaker 2: you need the twenty dollars. If I then say it
Speaker 2: to you, well, would you still put this cardigan on
Speaker 2: if you knew it belonged to Jeffrey Dahmer or Fred
Speaker 2: West or whatever cereal curry you can think of? And
Speaker 2: then immediately people feel a revulsion and repugnance, a kind
Speaker 2: of sense of disgust and the idea of coming into
Speaker 2: physical contact with a cardigan as if it somehow contains
Speaker 2: the essence of the former murderer. So I think that's
Speaker 2: a fascinating demonstration that people evoke all sorts of ideas
Speaker 2: or metaphysical notions about E manifesting or contaminating the physical world.
Speaker 2: Now it turns out, of course, whenever I've done this,
Speaker 2: it's not a real it's not really it doesn't really
Speaker 2: belong to Jeffrey Dahmer, Fred West. But the mere mention
Speaker 2: of that is enough to make people feel disgusted. So
Speaker 2: you might say, oh, well, that's just simple association. As
Speaker 2: soon as you say the names of famous serial killers,
Speaker 2: of course people are going to feel revolted and disgusted.
Speaker 2: But I think it's a really interesting counter example. So
Speaker 2: for example, if I say would you hold a book,
Speaker 2: and I give you a book, a cookery book, for example,
Speaker 2: you say, no problem with that cookery book. I said,
Speaker 2: what have you discovered that actually this was the personal
Speaker 2: possession of Aldolf Hitler out of Hitler's cookery book. Then
Speaker 2: people would go, well, that's rather disgusting, that's murder billy.
Speaker 2: You don't want to have anything to do with that.
Speaker 2: So it could be you could argue, well, maybe that's
Speaker 2: because you've used the word of out of Hitler. But
Speaker 2: if I was to offer you a biography of out
Speaker 2: of Hitler, then you wouldn't feel the same discuss it's
Speaker 2: the personal contact that this supposed book has had which
Speaker 2: triggers this kind of intuitive notion of essentialism. And that's
Speaker 2: what I find very fascinating because it explains a lot
Speaker 2: of our attitudes to contamination. It explains a lot of
Speaker 2: explains a lot of prejudices about not coming into contact
Speaker 2: with peoples are maintaining a certain distances is what they
Speaker 2: do in traditional Indian societies with the cast system. There's
Speaker 2: a notion in which people do not want to come
Speaker 2: into physical contact, and I think that's because of a
Speaker 2: kind of naive biological theory or germ theory that they
Speaker 2: think is operating.
Speaker 1: So we talked about dualism and we talked about essentialism.
Speaker 1: In your book, you had one more pillar upon which
Speaker 1: supernatural thinking lies.
Speaker 2: Causal reasoning might be one of the issues, which is
Speaker 2: theological that people think things happen for a purpose, so
Speaker 2: they evoke causal mechanisms, were causal determinists, so we can't
Speaker 2: easily see randomness. In fact, the brain is not set
Speaker 2: up for this. You'll know this is neuroscientist that we
Speaker 2: invariably impose structure and order everywhere. So this explains why
Speaker 2: people see patterns all the time and they infer causality.
Speaker 2: And you know, if they have a dream about somebody
Speaker 2: dying and by chance the person does die, they think
Speaker 2: that's a prophecy.
Speaker 3: And so people.
Speaker 2: Immediately see all the coincidences as being auspicious, when in
Speaker 2: fact we're surrounded in the sea of random chance and coincidence,
Speaker 2: but we only ever notice the ones which seem to
Speaker 2: be sort of important or poignant, and this leads us
Speaker 2: to draw all sorts of sort of causal mechanisms about
Speaker 2: how we can predict the future and so on. So
Speaker 2: that's another example of a mechanism which is very common.
Speaker 3: We can't help but see structure.
Speaker 2: In order, and that's a good thing because that's one
Speaker 2: of the ways that we make inferences in the world
Speaker 2: when we see causality.
Speaker 1: So give us an example of the kind of supernatural
Speaker 1: thinking that we see coming out of that.
Speaker 2: So one of the most common forms of that behavior
Speaker 2: is in sports rituals. So for example, let's say you
Speaker 2: go into the you know, to the tennis court, and
Speaker 2: you have a particularly great day so you start to say,
Speaker 2: what did I do differently? And I say, oh, I
Speaker 2: was wearing that pair of socks, and you decide to
Speaker 2: put them on the next sit. You don't normally wear
Speaker 2: that pair of socks, so you're trying to make sense
Speaker 2: of what happened, and you put them on another day
Speaker 2: and guess what, you have another good day at tennis.
Speaker 2: And soon, very quickly that becomes a ritual and it
Speaker 2: becomes shaped by operating conditioning. This is from psychology, so
Speaker 2: we know that you know animals and humans, their behavior
Speaker 2: becomes shaped by reinforcement, and soon that becomes part of
Speaker 2: your ritual. And what's interesting is that actually it does
Speaker 2: work in some sense because it gives you a sense
Speaker 2: of control. If you think about it. A lot of
Speaker 2: the rituals that we have are often to do with
Speaker 2: very important life events like birth's, deaths, starting a new business,
Speaker 2: all the sorts of major transitions in life. We want
Speaker 2: to try and control them, and that's why we have
Speaker 2: all these additional rituals to provide a sense of control
Speaker 2: over that. So, yeah, even though it may start off
Speaker 2: as a spontaneous kind of quirk, it soon becomes part
Speaker 2: of the whole habit preparing for that match, and that
Speaker 2: might prepare or give the player as the confidence.
Speaker 1: Something that's so fascinating is that it's so difficult to
Speaker 1: shake this kind of intuitive reasoning that we do about
Speaker 1: the world, even among philosophers or scientists. This is with us.
Speaker 1: So as an example, I'm sure you know this question
Speaker 1: about the Star Trek transporter, which is, if I were
Speaker 1: to step into the Star Trek transporter and it degrades me,
Speaker 1: it pulls me apart adam by adam, and reconstructs me
Speaker 1: on the surface of the planet.
Speaker 3: Is that me?
Speaker 1: Because it's just a bunch of atoms that were put
Speaker 1: together on the surface of the planet. So did I
Speaker 1: die and someone else came about? And then there's a
Speaker 1: second version of this transporter philosophical question, which is, what
Speaker 1: if the transporter breaks me down into all my atoms
Speaker 1: and then shoots those atoms themselves over to the planet
Speaker 1: and then it's reconstructed. And people often feel better about
Speaker 1: the second scenario because it seems like, Okay, well, they're
Speaker 1: my atoms and you're just putting them back together like
Speaker 1: a jigsaw puzzle. So this is an issue of both
Speaker 1: the essentialism and the dualism. But this proves really hard
Speaker 1: for us to shake these sorts of cognitive architectures that
Speaker 1: we've grown up on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I love that example of the transporter. It builds.
Speaker 2: It's actually a modern version of the Ship of Theseus,
Speaker 2: which was the parable or the story of the King
Speaker 2: of Greece. When he died, they put a ship into storage,
Speaker 2: and the shipwrights went back to look at it each year,
Speaker 2: and they noticed that some of the planks need replacing,
Speaker 2: so they eventually they replace the planks to the extent
Speaker 2: eventually none of the original wood is left on show.
Speaker 2: So the question is is it still the ship of Theseus?
Speaker 2: And if that transition happens gradually, people think, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's just like you're just renovating or repairing a ship.
Speaker 2: But it's still the ship of Thesius, even though it
Speaker 2: doesn't contain any of the original material. And then you say, okay,
Speaker 2: let's assume they never threw that wood away, are you.
Speaker 2: Now they re construct a second ship, which is the
Speaker 2: Ship of Thesis. And this really throws people because identity
Speaker 2: and unique attachment that we have to thinks that we
Speaker 2: care about evoke this essential notion and it is a
Speaker 2: kind of metaphysical property.
Speaker 1: And by the way, what I've read, I don't know
Speaker 1: how to verify this, but what I read is that
Speaker 1: about half of the philosophers in Athens at the time
Speaker 1: felt that this was the original ship and half felt
Speaker 1: that it was not. So this is great. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: been a problem for a long time.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I was just going to add there was
Speaker 2: another famous philosoph, Well he's not that famous, but his
Speaker 2: name was dun Scottis, and that's where we get the
Speaker 2: word dunce from Dune. Scottis was a medieval philosopher, and
Speaker 2: he made the distinction between essences of a group and
Speaker 2: essences for the individual. So what we've been talking about
Speaker 2: is what he would call haseity, which is the unique
Speaker 2: essence which specifies a unique individual. But we also essentialize groups,
Speaker 2: and this is how you get prejudiced. So you say
Speaker 2: they're all alike or they've all got something like that,
Speaker 2: and that's that's quidity. So within essentialism literature, there are
Speaker 2: two distinctions. The essence of the group defines the membership
Speaker 2: of that group, and then the unique individual, which is
Speaker 2: the hasty. So all dogs have quidity because their dogginess
Speaker 2: but your Fido, your pet dog, has his own sort
Speaker 2: of hasity. So it's an interesting distinction to draw. But
Speaker 2: of course hasity and quidity are metaphysical, they're complete concept
Speaker 2: their conceptual. We just invoke them when we're categorizing and
Speaker 2: drawing distinctions between groups and individuals and unique ones.
Speaker 1: It sounds like he was a thoughtful person. Why did
Speaker 1: the word dunce come from his name.
Speaker 2: Because they thought he was just because it was he
Speaker 2: was basically criticizing Plato. Plato was very much from the
Speaker 2: sort of you know, the group identities really, so they
Speaker 2: were I remember what was going on at the time,
Speaker 2: but that's the origin of the word does. But it
Speaker 2: was a whole the phosophers, you know what they're like.
Speaker 2: There was arguing about these sorts of things. But the
Speaker 2: point is that, and I always like to just mention this, David.
Speaker 2: I always go back to the Lord of the flies,
Speaker 2: The Lord of the flies, you know, the William Golding story.
Speaker 3: Of course, of these sort of kids.
Speaker 2: Abandoned on an island, and people ask me, well, you know,
Speaker 2: are we teaching our kids all these belief systems? And
Speaker 2: I say, well, just imagine a real Lord of the
Speaker 2: fly scenario. Where you drop a bunch of kids on
Speaker 2: an island and you give them no culture, what would
Speaker 2: they do? And I would argue that they would spontaneously
Speaker 2: generate the gods and the demons and the spirits and
Speaker 2: all the sorts of things that we find in today's culture,
Speaker 2: because that's how we make sense of the world, and
Speaker 2: it's how we understand it, interpret it, and try and
Speaker 2: gain a sense of control. So I think it's actually
Speaker 2: part of the natural condition of the human mind to
Speaker 2: generate all these extra you know, accounts and explanations.
Speaker 1: And what's your take about where we are right now
Speaker 1: with artificial intelligence coming into its own and soon humanoid
Speaker 1: robotics everywhere in terms of our desire to anthromorphize.
Speaker 2: Well, athropromorphism is of course, again something that children will
Speaker 2: spontaneously do. It's in our nature to kind of treat
Speaker 2: things as intentional agents and see them as purposeful. The
Speaker 2: late flosser Dan Dennett use the term the intentional stance,
Speaker 2: and he argued that when you infer intentionality is an
Speaker 2: easy way to interact with a complex system because you
Speaker 2: can see is goal directed, and all you have to
Speaker 2: try and do is figure out what its goals are.
Speaker 2: I think AI is going to play into that. So
Speaker 2: I think we've got a new generation of people growing
Speaker 2: up more familiar with the technology, and AI and the
Speaker 2: large language models, as everyone's discovering, are incredibly good at
Speaker 2: simulating human thought and human actions. So I think it
Speaker 2: will be an interesting future with our interactions with these things.
Speaker 2: I would imagine that there might be a premium for
Speaker 2: having real human interaction, and maybe I don't know, as
Speaker 2: the technology gets more indistinguishable from real humans, that might
Speaker 2: present a real problem to our natural tendency to try
Speaker 2: and identify with who we're speaking with.
Speaker 3: So I think it will upset a lot of people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And I just did
Speaker 1: an episode with our friend Alison Gopnik about her view
Speaker 1: with some of her colleagues is that we should be
Speaker 1: looking at these large language models as a cultural technology,
Speaker 1: essentially like a library, a way of collecting lots of
Speaker 1: information and disseminating in different ways. But it's precisely because
Speaker 1: we're so prone to anthromorphizing that we can't help but
Speaker 1: assume it is an intelligent agent and treat it like
Speaker 1: a human.
Speaker 2: Well, the interesting thing is, you probably remember The first
Speaker 2: chat bought was Eliza, which was building back in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty seven, which was basically a low project to try
Speaker 2: and stimulate Raggierian therapy where you just repeat the question back.
Speaker 2: And what they found was even though the people working
Speaker 2: on it in you it was actually a piece of software,
Speaker 2: they nevertheless enjoyed interacting with it because it actually felt
Speaker 2: therapeutic to talk to them to a program.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, we are.
Speaker 2: We're very biased towards nthropomorphism, and I think we can
Speaker 2: easily be fooled and seduced by it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, there's one more piece of that
Speaker 1: that I'm just working on this now. But I'm even
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how to phrase this. But I
Speaker 1: recently wrote a substack article about AI bots that engage
Speaker 1: in debate online and whether they can change the other
Speaker 1: person's mind, And the answer is they're quite good. They're
Speaker 1: much better at humans than changing the other person's mind.
Speaker 1: In part this is because they argue genuinely and they
Speaker 1: don't insult, and they try to be empathic and so on,
Speaker 1: and so they actually have better debating skills because of that.
Speaker 1: There's an interesting question that came up, which is can
Speaker 1: we even use the term lying. So let's say the
Speaker 1: AI bought pretends to be a black man arguing for something.
Speaker 1: The question is is it lying. Well, it's not lying
Speaker 1: anymore than if it pretended to be a white man
Speaker 1: or any person, because it's been trained on the entirety
Speaker 1: of humankind and so we can't even use words like
Speaker 1: it's lying. Instead, it's just representing one facet of what
Speaker 1: it is.
Speaker 2: Well, of course lying, yeah, I guess. I mean what
Speaker 2: we're doing when we're interacting with humans and interacting with
Speaker 2: machines as we're inferring different levels of intentionality.
Speaker 3: So a machine is.
Speaker 2: Of just a very complex set of algorithms and data.
Speaker 2: It doesn't have intentionality as such, whereas when you're interacting
Speaker 2: with another sentient human then there's a whole set of
Speaker 2: other factors that we're entering into. What is this is
Speaker 2: a SoCal theory of mind that we evoke, which is
Speaker 2: one of their goals?
Speaker 3: What do they want?
Speaker 2: And you know, with good cause we have reasons to
Speaker 2: be sort of suspicious. Now, we can't be suspicious of technology,
Speaker 2: but it's only as a proxy of someone who programmed it,
Speaker 2: but not suspicious of the machine per se. Or whatever
Speaker 2: the interface you're dealing with. So I guess what I'm
Speaker 2: saying is that when you interact with what is another
Speaker 2: sentient human, then I think we're much more Our guard
Speaker 2: is up a lot, although we do tend, of course
Speaker 2: to trust humans more than we trust machines. So I
Speaker 2: suppose I'm kind of contradicting that to some extent, but
Speaker 2: I can see how the inference of intentionality is an
Speaker 2: important premise upon which to kind of make a judgment
Speaker 2: about whether lying is taking place.
Speaker 1: That was my interview with psychologist Bruce Hood, and we
Speaker 1: talked about why humans, all humans and all cultures in
Speaker 1: all times hold irrational beliefs. We talked about dualism and
Speaker 1: essentialism and our brains need to assign structure in order
Speaker 1: to things that are actually random. The lesson that emerges
Speaker 1: is that supernatural thinking is something that's not just restricted
Speaker 1: to superstitious people, but instead it reflects a central feature
Speaker 1: of how the human mind works. If you are a
Speaker 1: regular listener to this podcast, you've heard me talk about
Speaker 1: how the brain is locked in silence and darkness inside
Speaker 1: the skull, and its job is to make sense of
Speaker 1: the thin, little trickle of input that it's receiving. It's
Speaker 1: all about meaning making. Our brains are shaped by millions
Speaker 1: of years of evolution, and they aren't just passively recording
Speaker 1: the world. They interpret, they infer, they guess, they imbue
Speaker 1: the world with meaning. So what Bruce terms supersense is
Speaker 1: the whole system working as it is supposed to. These
Speaker 1: cognitive habits presumably helped our ancestors survive in a world
Speaker 1: full of uncertainty. It is better to assume that there's
Speaker 1: a predator lurking behind the bush and to be wrong,
Speaker 1: than to assume you are safe when you're not. And
Speaker 1: just note that the reflex to avoid a murderer's sweater,
Speaker 1: or the feeling that someone's watching you, or the instinct
Speaker 1: to believe in fate or signs or karmic retribution, these
Speaker 1: don't happen because your parents taught them to you. They
Speaker 1: emerge naturally from the architecture of the mind. These are
Speaker 1: the shadows cast by a brain wired to detect threats
Speaker 1: and connections, to build invisible bridges between cause and effect.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the wiring overshoots, and we see patterns where there
Speaker 1: aren't any We feel intention where there's only randomness. We
Speaker 1: imagine essences and objects. We look at some visible event
Speaker 1: and imagine invisible forces behind us. Now, that leads to
Speaker 1: strange behaviors and beliefs sometimes, but from the brain's point
Speaker 1: of view, that instinct is also what allows us to empathize,
Speaker 1: to believe in justice, to tell stories, to imagine better worlds.
Speaker 1: In other words, the same circuitry that gives rise to
Speaker 1: magical thinking is what allows us to wonder, to hope,
Speaker 1: to hypothesize invisible forces like gravity, to fall in love
Speaker 1: with things that don't technically exist, like nations or ideals,
Speaker 1: or the person that someone might become. So it's hard
Speaker 1: to say we'd be better off without it. Sometimes we
Speaker 1: need beliefs. So even as science offers better explanations for
Speaker 1: the world, like this disease was caused by germs instead
Speaker 1: of a shaman's curse, we're still going to find ourselves
Speaker 1: drawn to the invisible. Our brains are all we have
Speaker 1: to view the world through. We are human, and we're flawed,
Speaker 1: and even skeptical people still whisper wishes into birthday candles
Speaker 1: and still say something to their passed away loved ones
Speaker 1: and quiet moments. So one lesson that emerges from Bruce's work,
Speaker 1: I think isn't only about suppressing these impulses, but more
Speaker 1: deeply understanding them. To see the brain as an engine
Speaker 1: that generates meaning, one that sometimes creates ghosts and gods
Speaker 1: and other times creates music and literature and political ideas.
Speaker 1: In the end, we're all navigating a world way too
Speaker 1: vast and complex for us to fully understand. So your
Speaker 1: brain does what it can. It connects dots in the dark,
Speaker 1: it tells stories. So tonight, when you're lying in bed
Speaker 1: and you hear a creak in the floorboards and you
Speaker 1: think you feel the weight of someone's presence even though
Speaker 1: you're alone, pay attention. That's your brain humming its old tune,
Speaker 1: the tune that kept your ancestors alive, and that allows
Speaker 1: you to extrapolate ideas about what could be. Go to
Speaker 1: eagleman dot com slash podcast for more information and to
Speaker 1: find further reading. Check out my newsletter on substack and
Speaker 1: be a part of the online chats there. You can
Speaker 1: watch the videos of Inner Cosmos on YouTube, where you
Speaker 1: can leave comments. Until next time, I'm David Eagleman, and
Speaker 1: this is Inner Cosmos.