1
00:00:05,840 --> 00:00:07,960
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name

2
00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:10,920
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And it's Saturday.

3
00:00:11,200 --> 00:00:14,320
Speaker 1: The vault door is open. Will you go in? That's right,

4
00:00:14,360 --> 00:00:17,800
Speaker 1: It's it's a perfect day to say, rewatch David Cronenberg

5
00:00:17,920 --> 00:00:21,759
Speaker 1: Scanners or listen to this episode on Technotal Epathy in

6
00:00:21,800 --> 00:00:25,520
Speaker 1: which we reference scanners probably way too many times now.

7
00:00:25,520 --> 00:00:27,440
Speaker 1: One thing I do want to clarify because people have

8
00:00:27,480 --> 00:00:29,720
Speaker 1: been asking about this. Some people are like, hey, why

9
00:00:29,800 --> 00:00:32,960
Speaker 1: are you doing reruns lately? Aren't you doing new episodes?

10
00:00:33,440 --> 00:00:35,519
Speaker 1: We should be clear. I hope you're getting all of

11
00:00:35,560 --> 00:00:38,680
Speaker 1: the new episodes we're releasing just as many original episodes

12
00:00:38,720 --> 00:00:42,520
Speaker 1: as always. That has not changed. Uh. These Saturday Vault

13
00:00:42,600 --> 00:00:45,519
Speaker 1: selections are in addition to our regular lineup, so you

14
00:00:45,560 --> 00:00:47,640
Speaker 1: are not missing out on any new stuff to Blow

15
00:00:47,680 --> 00:00:50,360
Speaker 1: your Mind content. If you're not getting our new regular

16
00:00:50,360 --> 00:00:53,440
Speaker 1: episodes on Tuesday and Thursday, check your feed or use

17
00:00:53,479 --> 00:00:56,320
Speaker 1: a different way of getting to them. Yeah, and by

18
00:00:56,360 --> 00:01:00,320
Speaker 1: all means note the original publication date because you know,

19
00:01:00,320 --> 00:01:03,280
Speaker 1: a lot of these topics do involve scientific stories and

20
00:01:03,360 --> 00:01:07,160
Speaker 1: scientific findings, but in general, if there's something major that

21
00:01:07,200 --> 00:01:10,959
Speaker 1: has changed, we will either not rerun it, or we'll

22
00:01:10,959 --> 00:01:14,280
Speaker 1: make sure to clue you into what has occurred, or

23
00:01:14,319 --> 00:01:17,040
Speaker 1: we'll be oblivious and hear about it from you later exactly,

24
00:01:17,120 --> 00:01:19,880
Speaker 1: and then we'll just that's just part of the fan conversation.

25
00:01:20,000 --> 00:01:22,160
Speaker 1: So it's all good either way. So this episode was

26
00:01:22,200 --> 00:01:26,080
Speaker 1: originally called Brain to Brain The Science of Techno Telepathy,

27
00:01:26,200 --> 00:01:29,680
Speaker 1: and it aired on December twenty two, so it's a

28
00:01:29,680 --> 00:01:32,080
Speaker 1: couple of years old now, but I think this one

29
00:01:32,200 --> 00:01:35,080
Speaker 1: still holds up. It's still an interesting and developing topic

30
00:01:35,160 --> 00:01:38,880
Speaker 1: in neuroscience and neuro technology, and I especially would like

31
00:01:38,959 --> 00:01:42,720
Speaker 1: to revisit this idea sometime in the future with reference

32
00:01:42,760 --> 00:01:46,280
Speaker 1: to the ideas of neuro security that we discussed in

33
00:01:46,400 --> 00:01:49,760
Speaker 1: in another episode from a while back. So anyway, I

34
00:01:49,800 --> 00:01:56,520
Speaker 1: hope you enjoy the Science of Techno Telepathy. Welcome to

35
00:01:56,840 --> 00:02:07,480
Speaker 1: Stuff to blow your mind from housetop works dot com.

36
00:02:07,520 --> 00:02:09,960
Speaker 1: I would like to scan all of them in this room,

37
00:02:10,280 --> 00:02:13,680
Speaker 1: one at a time. I must remind you that the

38
00:02:13,680 --> 00:02:18,320
Speaker 1: scanning experience is usually a painful one, sometimes resulting in nosebleeds,

39
00:02:18,960 --> 00:02:23,600
Speaker 1: ear aches, stomach cramps. Wait, wait, joke, You can't just

40
00:02:23,680 --> 00:02:27,200
Speaker 1: scan everybody in the room. Well why not? Will did

41
00:02:27,240 --> 00:02:30,480
Speaker 1: you get everyone to sign those consent forms? I figured

42
00:02:30,880 --> 00:02:32,720
Speaker 1: they show up for a press conference, they must be

43
00:02:32,760 --> 00:02:34,480
Speaker 1: game for a little till episode. But they might have

44
00:02:34,560 --> 00:02:37,400
Speaker 1: pre existing health conditions. I mean, you just warned them

45
00:02:37,440 --> 00:02:40,120
Speaker 1: that they might get cramps and nose bleeds, you know,

46
00:02:40,320 --> 00:02:43,400
Speaker 1: mild nosebleeds. I mean, we're not gonna catch anybody on

47
00:02:43,480 --> 00:02:45,519
Speaker 1: fire or any What about their mental health? What about

48
00:02:45,560 --> 00:02:48,160
Speaker 1: their privacy, the right, the right of freedom of thought

49
00:02:48,240 --> 00:02:51,880
Speaker 1: and the deliberate communication. Well, that's not what this experiment

50
00:02:51,960 --> 00:02:53,880
Speaker 1: is about. And that doesn't even touch on the fact

51
00:02:53,919 --> 00:02:57,080
Speaker 1: that you can scan their smartphones and laptops with your mind.

52
00:02:57,160 --> 00:02:59,120
Speaker 1: I mean, that's not quite as bad as peering into

53
00:02:59,160 --> 00:03:04,520
Speaker 1: their private thoughts, dreams, and bears. But nobody wants that either. Geez, Robert,

54
00:03:04,800 --> 00:03:07,480
Speaker 1: I was really looking forward to this, and I have

55
00:03:07,600 --> 00:03:11,720
Speaker 1: to report that you are now being a major buzz kill. Hey,

56
00:03:11,760 --> 00:03:16,519
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I knew you are. I know you are

57
00:03:20,760 --> 00:03:26,040
Speaker 1: a bit of migraine forming here. Okay, I'm good. That

58
00:03:26,160 --> 00:03:28,799
Speaker 1: was a close one. Hey, you welcome to stuff to

59
00:03:28,800 --> 00:03:30,720
Speaker 1: blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm

60
00:03:30,800 --> 00:03:33,399
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. And if you haven't guessed already today we're

61
00:03:33,400 --> 00:03:37,840
Speaker 1: going to be talking about telepathy scanning, as it's often

62
00:03:37,880 --> 00:03:41,200
Speaker 1: called in the literature. Yes, yes, I imagine a number

63
00:03:41,200 --> 00:03:45,600
Speaker 1: of you identified our homage there to uh to David

64
00:03:45,600 --> 00:03:49,440
Speaker 1: Cronenberg's sci fi classics Scanners. You know, what I found

65
00:03:49,440 --> 00:03:51,920
Speaker 1: out just this week is that Scanners has a huge,

66
00:03:52,400 --> 00:03:56,400
Speaker 1: uh catalog of sequels I was unaware of. I knew

67
00:03:56,400 --> 00:03:59,440
Speaker 1: there was a Scanners too that's got some corrupt police

68
00:03:59,440 --> 00:04:02,320
Speaker 1: commissioner with an army of Scanners, but there's a Scanners

69
00:04:02,400 --> 00:04:04,440
Speaker 1: three that has a scene where a woman makes a

70
00:04:04,480 --> 00:04:08,440
Speaker 1: pigeon blow up with her mind. And then I had

71
00:04:08,480 --> 00:04:10,480
Speaker 1: no idea about this until you told me. But there's

72
00:04:10,520 --> 00:04:15,000
Speaker 1: a spinoff series called Scanner Cop Scanner Top one and

73
00:04:15,000 --> 00:04:19,920
Speaker 1: then Scanner Cop two, which is also sometimes essentially Scanners four,

74
00:04:20,040 --> 00:04:22,320
Speaker 1: depending on which a version of the at least you're

75
00:04:22,320 --> 00:04:24,880
Speaker 1: looking at. You know. One of the funny things about

76
00:04:25,240 --> 00:04:27,920
Speaker 1: the development of the Scanners series, at least as far

77
00:04:27,960 --> 00:04:29,960
Speaker 1: as I can tell, I haven't watched all of the movies,

78
00:04:30,040 --> 00:04:33,479
Speaker 1: that the most of the sequels look quite bad. But

79
00:04:34,240 --> 00:04:37,839
Speaker 1: there is a sort of slow development or escalation of

80
00:04:37,880 --> 00:04:40,720
Speaker 1: the powers that are attributed to Scanners. I can remember

81
00:04:41,240 --> 00:04:45,000
Speaker 1: in the first movie, you can read somebody's thoughts, and

82
00:04:45,080 --> 00:04:48,560
Speaker 1: you can also sort of I think, plant implant thoughts

83
00:04:48,560 --> 00:04:51,640
Speaker 1: to a certain extent um, And then of course you

84
00:04:51,680 --> 00:04:54,479
Speaker 1: can cause the resident frequency cascade that makes their head

85
00:04:54,480 --> 00:04:56,960
Speaker 1: blow up, right, and I think you can make fire,

86
00:04:57,160 --> 00:04:59,520
Speaker 1: and you can you can well then also there's at

87
00:04:59,600 --> 00:05:02,120
Speaker 1: least um I don't want to give too many spoilers,

88
00:05:02,160 --> 00:05:04,279
Speaker 1: but it's at least mentioned that you might be able

89
00:05:04,320 --> 00:05:07,919
Speaker 1: to absorb another individual's mind state into your own. Okay,

90
00:05:07,960 --> 00:05:10,599
Speaker 1: so that's pretty goadline. It's getting pretty weird even in

91
00:05:10,600 --> 00:05:13,400
Speaker 1: the first movie. But later on you add what would

92
00:05:13,440 --> 00:05:16,880
Speaker 1: conventionally be called telekinesis where you're throwing things around, you

93
00:05:16,960 --> 00:05:20,680
Speaker 1: throw people across the room, So you're just generally developing

94
00:05:20,760 --> 00:05:24,640
Speaker 1: psychic powers. Yeah, it goes into that realm of essentially

95
00:05:24,680 --> 00:05:30,920
Speaker 1: magic pan psychic sorcery. But telepathy is something that I

96
00:05:31,240 --> 00:05:34,159
Speaker 1: can understand why that happens, because it's a concept that

97
00:05:35,400 --> 00:05:38,640
Speaker 1: I thought. I think it's been interpreted in various ways

98
00:05:38,680 --> 00:05:41,560
Speaker 1: that are often quite vague. So as much as I

99
00:05:41,600 --> 00:05:44,279
Speaker 1: hate to go to the dictionary at the beginning of

100
00:05:44,279 --> 00:05:46,320
Speaker 1: a discussion, I do think it's helpful to get a

101
00:05:47,240 --> 00:05:51,440
Speaker 1: specified common definition on the table for telepathy, and I

102
00:05:51,440 --> 00:05:53,920
Speaker 1: want to go with one included in Miriam Webster, which

103
00:05:54,080 --> 00:05:58,360
Speaker 1: it just says communication from one mind to another by

104
00:05:58,400 --> 00:06:01,880
Speaker 1: extra sensory means. So I think that's what we're gonna

105
00:06:01,920 --> 00:06:07,000
Speaker 1: be talking about today. It's sharing ideas. It's communication without

106
00:06:07,120 --> 00:06:10,200
Speaker 1: using any of the senses, because we're using our our

107
00:06:10,200 --> 00:06:13,640
Speaker 1: senses and our our language abilities or vocal abilities right now. Yeah,

108
00:06:13,720 --> 00:06:17,039
Speaker 1: we're engaging in a in in in a communication, in

109
00:06:17,080 --> 00:06:20,280
Speaker 1: a communal thought process. Yeah, like right now, a man

110
00:06:20,400 --> 00:06:23,320
Speaker 1: walks into a bar and there's a duck on the bar.

111
00:06:23,480 --> 00:06:24,960
Speaker 1: I just put that image into your head. I just

112
00:06:24,960 --> 00:06:27,000
Speaker 1: put that image into everyone's head. I essentially use my

113
00:06:27,040 --> 00:06:30,320
Speaker 1: scanner powers on everyone listening to this podcast. But there

114
00:06:30,400 --> 00:06:33,440
Speaker 1: was a fidelity copying problem there because when I pictured

115
00:06:33,480 --> 00:06:37,760
Speaker 1: in my brain, what I pictured was a swan. And

116
00:06:37,839 --> 00:06:40,960
Speaker 1: that sort of gets to the basic problem of communication.

117
00:06:41,040 --> 00:06:43,839
Speaker 1: One of the reasons we often imagine the idea of

118
00:06:43,880 --> 00:06:46,159
Speaker 1: telepathy as we defined it for the purpose of this

119
00:06:46,200 --> 00:06:51,440
Speaker 1: episode communication without words or any of the normal sensory means,

120
00:06:51,839 --> 00:06:56,880
Speaker 1: is that those normal canonical means of communication are highly flawed,

121
00:06:56,920 --> 00:06:59,760
Speaker 1: like our ability to use them is far from perfect.

122
00:07:00,120 --> 00:07:02,919
Speaker 1: Just think how often there's a conflict in your life

123
00:07:02,960 --> 00:07:06,680
Speaker 1: because somebody took something that you said or wrote the

124
00:07:06,839 --> 00:07:10,440
Speaker 1: wrong way, or because or because you don't know how

125
00:07:10,480 --> 00:07:13,760
Speaker 1: to interpret what somebody has said or wrote. If only

126
00:07:13,800 --> 00:07:17,880
Speaker 1: you could truly understand what their intentions and feelings about

127
00:07:17,960 --> 00:07:22,080
Speaker 1: the subject really were without everything being garbled through this

128
00:07:22,160 --> 00:07:26,440
Speaker 1: language transmission mediator, then then things would seem to be

129
00:07:26,480 --> 00:07:28,800
Speaker 1: a lot easier, right, Yeah. I mean there's a study

130
00:07:28,840 --> 00:07:31,720
Speaker 1: that came out earlier this year talking about how there

131
00:07:31,960 --> 00:07:34,280
Speaker 1: I think they were mainly looking at, you know, situations

132
00:07:34,320 --> 00:07:38,040
Speaker 1: between spouses where individuals have known each other for an

133
00:07:38,120 --> 00:07:41,760
Speaker 1: extended period of time. They've they have this this this

134
00:07:41,880 --> 00:07:46,520
Speaker 1: long relationship and this collaboration going on, and you would think, oh, well,

135
00:07:46,560 --> 00:07:49,360
Speaker 1: they're they've been they've been together so long, they totally

136
00:07:49,440 --> 00:07:51,800
Speaker 1: understand each other. They can totally read each other's intents,

137
00:07:51,840 --> 00:07:54,640
Speaker 1: and they know what the other person wants in values.

138
00:07:55,280 --> 00:07:58,880
Speaker 1: But this particular study found there's kind of the the

139
00:07:59,000 --> 00:08:02,120
Speaker 1: opposite in many cases, because you end up having an

140
00:08:02,200 --> 00:08:05,520
Speaker 1: idea in your head of what that other individual wants

141
00:08:05,520 --> 00:08:07,760
Speaker 1: and needs and it may not actually be accurate, but

142
00:08:07,800 --> 00:08:11,200
Speaker 1: you're no longer feeling it out as much anymore, because

143
00:08:11,240 --> 00:08:14,320
Speaker 1: it's you feel like it's written in stone. Yeah, like

144
00:08:14,440 --> 00:08:18,040
Speaker 1: everything you say, because I know you, I'm interpreting through

145
00:08:18,120 --> 00:08:22,200
Speaker 1: the lens of what I think about Robert. So even

146
00:08:22,280 --> 00:08:25,600
Speaker 1: though all you said was hey can you can you

147
00:08:25,640 --> 00:08:28,600
Speaker 1: grab a cup of coffee from the kitchen, I'm thinking,

148
00:08:29,080 --> 00:08:34,280
Speaker 1: why is he asking for a Satanic ritual? Yeah? Yeah,

149
00:08:34,280 --> 00:08:36,200
Speaker 1: there's just so much that can that can become lost

150
00:08:36,240 --> 00:08:39,920
Speaker 1: and ambiguous and just misinterpreted entirely. Of course, most of

151
00:08:40,000 --> 00:08:42,559
Speaker 1: us are familiar with telepathy from fiction. That's when we

152
00:08:42,600 --> 00:08:46,120
Speaker 1: started off with an example from a fictional sci fi

153
00:08:46,200 --> 00:08:50,560
Speaker 1: horror movie. Uh and and certainly fiction gives us plenty

154
00:08:50,600 --> 00:08:55,920
Speaker 1: of wonderful, rich examples uh and some more thoughtful than others. Yeah. Yeah,

155
00:08:56,000 --> 00:08:59,679
Speaker 1: of course, there's like the shining in the Shining, you know,

156
00:08:59,720 --> 00:09:03,040
Speaker 1: the title of The Shining refers to this this uh

157
00:09:03,400 --> 00:09:06,400
Speaker 1: sort of telepathic ability, though it seems to extend beyond

158
00:09:06,920 --> 00:09:11,040
Speaker 1: just communication. Telepathy is more just like we've mentioned earlier,

159
00:09:11,120 --> 00:09:14,880
Speaker 1: the general psychic awareness, being able to sense things that

160
00:09:14,920 --> 00:09:18,080
Speaker 1: are beyond what we can normally see with our see

161
00:09:18,160 --> 00:09:20,640
Speaker 1: or here since is, yes, they have a sensory it's

162
00:09:20,640 --> 00:09:22,600
Speaker 1: like they have a sensory ability that everyone has, but

163
00:09:22,640 --> 00:09:25,480
Speaker 1: there's this amped up to an incredible level, so they're

164
00:09:25,960 --> 00:09:29,240
Speaker 1: constantly bombarded with the signals. You can finally hear the

165
00:09:29,280 --> 00:09:32,840
Speaker 1: red rum resolve from the background noise. Yeah. Another one

166
00:09:32,880 --> 00:09:35,480
Speaker 1: that comes to my mind is I assume you've seen

167
00:09:35,520 --> 00:09:38,760
Speaker 1: The Dark Crystal, right, and do you remember the guelf

168
00:09:38,880 --> 00:09:42,560
Speaker 1: Lin dream Fast in that vaguely? That's uh, that's when

169
00:09:43,120 --> 00:09:47,000
Speaker 1: Jin and Kira, I believe, the two gelf Liings meet

170
00:09:47,080 --> 00:09:48,640
Speaker 1: and the sort of they kind of have this mind

171
00:09:48,720 --> 00:09:51,320
Speaker 1: meld moment where they share visions of their childhood, right,

172
00:09:51,640 --> 00:09:54,000
Speaker 1: they share their memories. It seems like it's been a

173
00:09:54,000 --> 00:09:55,760
Speaker 1: while since I've seen the movie, but it is a

174
00:09:55,760 --> 00:09:57,960
Speaker 1: great movie. And what I remember is that they just

175
00:09:58,000 --> 00:10:03,079
Speaker 1: sort of download their memories directly from one another, so

176
00:10:03,160 --> 00:10:07,319
Speaker 1: you can suddenly remember the other one's life. Another one,

177
00:10:07,400 --> 00:10:10,120
Speaker 1: of course, is Box Vulcan mind meld in Star Trek,

178
00:10:10,320 --> 00:10:13,960
Speaker 1: and that seems also kind of like the dream Fast

179
00:10:14,000 --> 00:10:16,160
Speaker 1: from what I recalled that it's not just like a

180
00:10:16,240 --> 00:10:20,000
Speaker 1: single coded message being traded between minds, but it's like

181
00:10:20,240 --> 00:10:23,640
Speaker 1: I've got your consciousness in me now. Yeah? Is that

182
00:10:23,960 --> 00:10:26,640
Speaker 1: is that pretty much? Right? Yeah? I believe. So it's

183
00:10:26,640 --> 00:10:29,360
Speaker 1: it's it's been Hanstin's I've seen any trek with actual

184
00:10:29,440 --> 00:10:31,960
Speaker 1: mind melding moments. But yeah, alright, well a few that

185
00:10:32,000 --> 00:10:34,480
Speaker 1: came to my mind. Well, first of all, uh, I

186
00:10:34,520 --> 00:10:36,520
Speaker 1: was wondering, do you think that the spice orgies and

187
00:10:36,600 --> 00:10:40,600
Speaker 1: doone count? There's it's not directly mentioned as I recall that,

188
00:10:40,920 --> 00:10:43,000
Speaker 1: and I could be wrong on this, that there's a

189
00:10:43,080 --> 00:10:47,120
Speaker 1: telepathic link, And certainly I think the spice is going

190
00:10:47,160 --> 00:10:50,160
Speaker 1: to affect individuals and you know, varying levels. Well, this

191
00:10:50,240 --> 00:10:52,200
Speaker 1: is a problem I've read about in some of the

192
00:10:52,200 --> 00:10:56,760
Speaker 1: skeptical literature on telepathy is that it's difficult to tell

193
00:10:56,840 --> 00:11:00,840
Speaker 1: the difference between different types of extra sense reperception that

194
00:11:00,880 --> 00:11:04,760
Speaker 1: people have claimed. So how can you tell the functional

195
00:11:04,800 --> 00:11:09,920
Speaker 1: difference between telepathy and precognition, or telepathy and clairvoyance? Yeah,

196
00:11:10,240 --> 00:11:13,160
Speaker 1: I mean so I think that comes through in Dune.

197
00:11:14,000 --> 00:11:17,120
Speaker 1: Our trouble here may just be that there's general psychic

198
00:11:17,240 --> 00:11:20,720
Speaker 1: hyper awareness. Can you tell the difference between am I

199
00:11:20,760 --> 00:11:23,720
Speaker 1: reading your mind or am I standing atop the dune

200
00:11:23,880 --> 00:11:26,840
Speaker 1: viewing the great order of the universe? And one of

201
00:11:26,840 --> 00:11:30,280
Speaker 1: the things I gain awareness of is what you would

202
00:11:30,280 --> 00:11:34,000
Speaker 1: be thinking or saying yes, yeah, A good point. Another

203
00:11:34,000 --> 00:11:36,319
Speaker 1: one that comes to mind, This one's hot on uh

204
00:11:36,520 --> 00:11:39,600
Speaker 1: in my memory since I just watched the whole thing.

205
00:11:39,679 --> 00:11:43,120
Speaker 1: But then the Marvel Netflix series Jessica Jones has the

206
00:11:43,440 --> 00:11:49,000
Speaker 1: villain Purple Man Zebediah Killgrave and fabulous, uh, fabulous villain

207
00:11:49,200 --> 00:11:52,560
Speaker 1: that uses mind control. What he but what he commands

208
00:11:52,600 --> 00:11:54,680
Speaker 1: you to do you want to do. You don't just

209
00:11:54,679 --> 00:11:57,160
Speaker 1: turn into a zombie. They use a nice exploration of

210
00:11:57,160 --> 00:11:59,480
Speaker 1: this to where if he puts an impulse in your mind,

211
00:11:59,600 --> 00:12:02,599
Speaker 1: like that the thing you want. So that's not just communication,

212
00:12:02,679 --> 00:12:06,200
Speaker 1: that's full online control. Yeah, but it's it kind of

213
00:12:06,280 --> 00:12:08,000
Speaker 1: leaks into some of the stuff we're gonna talk later,

214
00:12:08,120 --> 00:12:10,120
Speaker 1: and that he kind of it's kind of I get

215
00:12:10,120 --> 00:12:14,080
Speaker 1: the impression that kill Grave he's kind of temporarily thinking

216
00:12:14,120 --> 00:12:17,000
Speaker 1: with your brain. And so he's thinking with your brain

217
00:12:17,360 --> 00:12:21,160
Speaker 1: and giving you, you know, something to to want, something

218
00:12:21,200 --> 00:12:23,640
Speaker 1: to believe in that you know or desire that you

219
00:12:23,760 --> 00:12:26,520
Speaker 1: normally would not. Well, that blurs a line that will

220
00:12:26,559 --> 00:12:28,680
Speaker 1: become important later in this episode when we talked about

221
00:12:28,679 --> 00:12:32,160
Speaker 1: scientific studies. Yeah, indeed and uh. And another thing about

222
00:12:32,240 --> 00:12:34,160
Speaker 1: kill Grave is that you know it raises the question

223
00:12:34,160 --> 00:12:36,640
Speaker 1: that if there's an outside force making you want or

224
00:12:36,679 --> 00:12:40,560
Speaker 1: believe something temporarily, and then that a force eventually you know,

225
00:12:40,600 --> 00:12:43,719
Speaker 1: it's it's influence is gone, how does that affect what

226
00:12:43,760 --> 00:12:46,000
Speaker 1: you're going to believe or want in the long term?

227
00:12:46,080 --> 00:12:49,120
Speaker 1: You know, like, how does that memory and form? Can

228
00:12:49,160 --> 00:12:52,760
Speaker 1: you remember that you wanted something but recognize that it

229
00:12:52,800 --> 00:12:56,320
Speaker 1: was not original to your mind? Yeah? Indeed, so I

230
00:12:56,360 --> 00:12:58,959
Speaker 1: thought that was a There was some some excellent explorations

231
00:12:58,960 --> 00:13:02,400
Speaker 1: of that in that particular show um in the vampire

232
00:13:02,400 --> 00:13:06,200
Speaker 1: in the vampire novel by John Steckley Vampires where the

233
00:13:06,400 --> 00:13:10,000
Speaker 1: s is a dollar sign, which was adapted into John

234
00:13:10,000 --> 00:13:13,280
Speaker 1: Carpenter's movie. But believe me, the book is so Yeah

235
00:13:13,320 --> 00:13:16,960
Speaker 1: that the book is really really frightening and terrifying and

236
00:13:17,160 --> 00:13:20,800
Speaker 1: the just hideous. Yeah. But the vampires in the book

237
00:13:20,880 --> 00:13:24,400
Speaker 1: they engage in in mind control that's very similar to

238
00:13:24,400 --> 00:13:27,440
Speaker 1: to kill Gray and from the world of Dungeons and Dragons.

239
00:13:27,440 --> 00:13:28,720
Speaker 1: I feel like I need to mention just a couple

240
00:13:28,800 --> 00:13:31,920
Speaker 1: of species real quick. There's of course the meld communal

241
00:13:31,960 --> 00:13:36,240
Speaker 1: meditation of the fungal my conid species. You know, shambling

242
00:13:36,240 --> 00:13:38,839
Speaker 1: fungus people benevolent that live in the under Dark, but yeah,

243
00:13:38,880 --> 00:13:42,000
Speaker 1: they engage in a kind of communal meditation. And then

244
00:13:42,040 --> 00:13:45,880
Speaker 1: also they're the hive mind college colonies of the alipid

245
00:13:45,960 --> 00:13:51,360
Speaker 1: mind flares, and there of course just catastrophically evil uh beings,

246
00:13:51,600 --> 00:13:54,439
Speaker 1: and they're using all a bit just about every shade

247
00:13:54,520 --> 00:13:58,120
Speaker 1: of of psychic power and telepathic power to to work

248
00:13:58,880 --> 00:14:02,280
Speaker 1: their evil schemes. The under Duck they strike terror just

249
00:14:02,320 --> 00:14:05,839
Speaker 1: by directly transmitting the pages of the Monster Manual to

250
00:14:06,000 --> 00:14:09,280
Speaker 1: feature them into your brain. Yeah, and and they also

251
00:14:09,360 --> 00:14:12,760
Speaker 1: it's like a whole host of under dark creatures in Dungeon.

252
00:14:12,880 --> 00:14:16,040
Speaker 1: Dragons are are weird and twisted and horrible because the

253
00:14:16,080 --> 00:14:19,720
Speaker 1: mind players use their abilities to enslave their species in

254
00:14:19,520 --> 00:14:22,280
Speaker 1: a in an earlier times. So yeah, it seems to

255
00:14:22,320 --> 00:14:25,520
Speaker 1: me that in all these different conceptions of telepathy from fiction,

256
00:14:25,640 --> 00:14:28,800
Speaker 1: you can basically break them down into two different categories

257
00:14:28,840 --> 00:14:35,000
Speaker 1: of communication, linguistic and non linguistic. So even the linguistic version,

258
00:14:35,000 --> 00:14:39,000
Speaker 1: of course, is not involving written or spoken words, but

259
00:14:39,200 --> 00:14:44,320
Speaker 1: it's silent internal brain to brain communication without the senses

260
00:14:44,400 --> 00:14:47,840
Speaker 1: that still somehow seems to be mediated through language, Like

261
00:14:48,240 --> 00:14:52,160
Speaker 1: you hear a voice inside your head communicating with you

262
00:14:52,280 --> 00:14:55,880
Speaker 1: through words or some other type of structured coded message.

263
00:14:56,760 --> 00:15:00,760
Speaker 1: Then there's non linguistic telepathy, and that's commune mucation that's

264
00:15:00,840 --> 00:15:03,600
Speaker 1: not mediated by language. And I think this is more

265
00:15:03,680 --> 00:15:06,480
Speaker 1: difficult to represent in fiction, but it's the kind we

266
00:15:06,560 --> 00:15:10,200
Speaker 1: see more often because it's the kind that's even stranger

267
00:15:10,360 --> 00:15:14,280
Speaker 1: to to to reality. You know, it's one thing to

268
00:15:15,200 --> 00:15:18,080
Speaker 1: send a message into somebody's brain. You could accomplish almost

269
00:15:18,160 --> 00:15:20,840
Speaker 1: the same thing by them just having a tiny earpiece,

270
00:15:21,080 --> 00:15:23,680
Speaker 1: you know, and talking into a microphone. But it's a

271
00:15:23,680 --> 00:15:28,480
Speaker 1: different thing to download somebody's memories or to uh or

272
00:15:28,560 --> 00:15:33,520
Speaker 1: to experience uncoded conceptual thought like the guelf link dream

273
00:15:33,560 --> 00:15:36,040
Speaker 1: fast I was talking about. And that second kind, I

274
00:15:36,040 --> 00:15:39,600
Speaker 1: think is it may end up introducing some conceptual problems

275
00:15:39,640 --> 00:15:41,680
Speaker 1: with the concept of telepathy that we can talk about

276
00:15:41,680 --> 00:15:44,960
Speaker 1: more once we look at the science. But so today

277
00:15:45,000 --> 00:15:49,880
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking primarily about technologically enabled brain to

278
00:15:50,000 --> 00:15:55,160
Speaker 1: brain communication or technologically enabled telepathy, because we we should

279
00:15:55,160 --> 00:15:57,520
Speaker 1: at least give a brief nod to the concept of

280
00:15:57,560 --> 00:16:00,520
Speaker 1: paranormal telepathy. I don't think we need to spend a

281
00:16:00,560 --> 00:16:02,520
Speaker 1: lot of time on this because I think by and large,

282
00:16:02,520 --> 00:16:06,320
Speaker 1: our listeners are are scientific skeptics of one kind or another. Yeah,

283
00:16:06,320 --> 00:16:10,480
Speaker 1: I mean, there have been studies into paranormal telepathy, of course,

284
00:16:10,640 --> 00:16:13,360
Speaker 1: and we could go through all all those here today,

285
00:16:13,400 --> 00:16:16,080
Speaker 1: but I think we pretty much decided that this would

286
00:16:16,320 --> 00:16:19,440
Speaker 1: this would take time away from the more pressing studies

287
00:16:19,480 --> 00:16:22,840
Speaker 1: we're going to discuss regarding technological telepathy. Yes, so we'll

288
00:16:22,880 --> 00:16:26,120
Speaker 1: just say very briefly that the scientific community has not

289
00:16:26,200 --> 00:16:29,200
Speaker 1: been convinced that there's ever been any good evidence of

290
00:16:29,240 --> 00:16:33,000
Speaker 1: telepathy from properly controlled studies. Lots of people have claimed

291
00:16:33,040 --> 00:16:35,680
Speaker 1: to find evidence of telepathy, but usually when you look

292
00:16:35,720 --> 00:16:38,520
Speaker 1: at these studies, they're not double blinded, they're not being

293
00:16:38,560 --> 00:16:40,960
Speaker 1: carried out with the kind of strict rigor you expect

294
00:16:41,000 --> 00:16:43,440
Speaker 1: if you want to get a scientific result that that

295
00:16:43,560 --> 00:16:47,120
Speaker 1: you can feel confidence in. Yeah. So, so, by and large,

296
00:16:47,400 --> 00:16:51,360
Speaker 1: we have not seen any convincing evidence that paranormal telepathy exists.

297
00:16:51,400 --> 00:16:53,880
Speaker 1: There doesn't seem to be any known mechanism of action

298
00:16:53,960 --> 00:16:56,400
Speaker 1: for that, so we will leave that to the side

299
00:16:56,600 --> 00:16:59,480
Speaker 1: for today. Yeah, because when it comes to brain to

300
00:16:59,560 --> 00:17:03,080
Speaker 1: brain communication, we have all of these other wonderful systems

301
00:17:03,120 --> 00:17:05,960
Speaker 1: and and equally, I mean even more mind blowing than

302
00:17:06,520 --> 00:17:10,440
Speaker 1: than than brains sending little waves because we're communicating with language.

303
00:17:10,440 --> 00:17:14,160
Speaker 1: We're communicating with all the various expressions and micro expressions

304
00:17:14,200 --> 00:17:18,120
Speaker 1: that are that are rippling across this facial communication ray

305
00:17:18,160 --> 00:17:20,560
Speaker 1: that we all have. Yeah, it's one of those things

306
00:17:20,600 --> 00:17:23,560
Speaker 1: that's uh, it can seem kind of silly to say

307
00:17:23,560 --> 00:17:26,320
Speaker 1: it now, but really just take a second and try

308
00:17:26,400 --> 00:17:30,080
Speaker 1: to step back from human experience and feel the weirdness

309
00:17:30,160 --> 00:17:33,440
Speaker 1: of language. It's language is totally normal to us because

310
00:17:33,480 --> 00:17:35,159
Speaker 1: we use it all the time. But just try to

311
00:17:35,480 --> 00:17:39,360
Speaker 1: pretend you're not a creature that uses language, and look

312
00:17:39,359 --> 00:17:43,080
Speaker 1: at this from the universe's perspective. What a bizarre thing

313
00:17:43,160 --> 00:17:46,960
Speaker 1: we're doing. We're taking electrical patterns in our brain and

314
00:17:47,000 --> 00:17:50,680
Speaker 1: then infecting other people with copies of those patterns by

315
00:17:50,760 --> 00:17:56,919
Speaker 1: making waves in the air. It's freaky. So, setting aside

316
00:17:56,920 --> 00:18:00,600
Speaker 1: any kind of naturally occurring, you know, brain wave telepathy

317
00:18:00,840 --> 00:18:04,879
Speaker 1: situation going on, we're talking about using technology, using the

318
00:18:05,160 --> 00:18:08,560
Speaker 1: technology that we've created and have access to, to serve

319
00:18:08,600 --> 00:18:11,760
Speaker 1: as a bridge between one mind and the next. So

320
00:18:11,840 --> 00:18:14,520
Speaker 1: you might be thinking like, well, wait a minute, how

321
00:18:14,560 --> 00:18:17,800
Speaker 1: could you do this? Let us tell you a story.

322
00:18:17,960 --> 00:18:21,159
Speaker 1: So for years now, scientists have been developing lots of

323
00:18:21,200 --> 00:18:25,760
Speaker 1: different technologies for brain to computer interfaces, or they're often

324
00:18:25,760 --> 00:18:28,199
Speaker 1: known as b C I S brain computer interfaces. And

325
00:18:28,200 --> 00:18:31,320
Speaker 1: in physical terms, it makes sense that you can do

326
00:18:31,359 --> 00:18:35,720
Speaker 1: this because the brain is an electrochemical machine. Things are

327
00:18:35,760 --> 00:18:38,840
Speaker 1: happening inside the brain when you're thinking thoughts, when you're

328
00:18:38,840 --> 00:18:43,640
Speaker 1: performing behaviors, whenever your brain is doing something, there's electrical

329
00:18:43,680 --> 00:18:48,480
Speaker 1: activity going on inside it that is allowing that activity,

330
00:18:48,560 --> 00:18:52,439
Speaker 1: that external activity, or that conscious thought to happen, and

331
00:18:52,520 --> 00:18:55,600
Speaker 1: its activities are expressed in ways for this reason, that

332
00:18:55,640 --> 00:19:00,280
Speaker 1: are detectable by machines that are sensitive to electromagnetism. You

333
00:19:00,280 --> 00:19:02,320
Speaker 1: have to get outside of this idea that your your

334
00:19:02,359 --> 00:19:04,960
Speaker 1: mind is this magical soul or that lives in a

335
00:19:05,000 --> 00:19:08,160
Speaker 1: little meat house in your skull um and just start

336
00:19:08,200 --> 00:19:10,800
Speaker 1: thinking about the meat house itself as as being the thing,

337
00:19:10,840 --> 00:19:13,080
Speaker 1: you know, taking a very uh uh, you know, direct

338
00:19:13,119 --> 00:19:17,440
Speaker 1: approach to what what what is going on with our mind? Yeah,

339
00:19:17,520 --> 00:19:21,640
Speaker 1: not to not to downgrade the beauty and mysteriousness of consciousness,

340
00:19:21,640 --> 00:19:25,920
Speaker 1: which is a wonderfully powerfully strange thing, but when there's

341
00:19:25,960 --> 00:19:29,800
Speaker 1: something happening in your brain, there is electricity concurrent with that,

342
00:19:30,280 --> 00:19:32,840
Speaker 1: and so if you can figure out how to measure

343
00:19:32,880 --> 00:19:37,280
Speaker 1: that electricity, you can somehow represent it as data that's

344
00:19:37,400 --> 00:19:40,440
Speaker 1: usable by technology. So what I've just been talking about

345
00:19:40,640 --> 00:19:44,520
Speaker 1: is neuroimaging, various forms of neuroimaging to take what's going

346
00:19:44,520 --> 00:19:48,160
Speaker 1: on in the brain and understand that with a computer,

347
00:19:48,320 --> 00:19:51,040
Speaker 1: say okay, there's some electrical spiking in this part of

348
00:19:51,040 --> 00:19:53,280
Speaker 1: the brain. Here's here's what's going on with the action

349
00:19:53,320 --> 00:19:57,280
Speaker 1: potentials in in this cortical region, and then stimulate that

350
00:19:57,359 --> 00:20:01,240
Speaker 1: same region in another individual's brain being. So in a sense,

351
00:20:01,320 --> 00:20:05,000
Speaker 1: it's kind of like peeking behind one puppet theater, you know,

352
00:20:05,000 --> 00:20:06,880
Speaker 1: out on the street, like a punch and judy thing, right,

353
00:20:07,480 --> 00:20:11,240
Speaker 1: seeing what what manner of physical manipulations that puppet that

354
00:20:11,400 --> 00:20:15,560
Speaker 1: puppet master is making, and then transmitting or relating those

355
00:20:15,600 --> 00:20:19,760
Speaker 1: exact manipulations to a puppet here within a second puppet theater.

356
00:20:20,119 --> 00:20:23,880
Speaker 1: So that's a great analogy because it encapsulates both what

357
00:20:23,920 --> 00:20:28,240
Speaker 1: you're trying to do and the limitations we have when

358
00:20:28,280 --> 00:20:30,200
Speaker 1: we try to do this. And we'll talk more about

359
00:20:30,200 --> 00:20:33,680
Speaker 1: the limitations at the end. But notice that that what

360
00:20:33,760 --> 00:20:36,359
Speaker 1: you just said would only really make sense if both

361
00:20:36,440 --> 00:20:40,960
Speaker 1: puppet theaters were exactly the same size and had exactly

362
00:20:41,000 --> 00:20:44,720
Speaker 1: the same puppets and the same type of puppets, and

363
00:20:44,720 --> 00:20:48,320
Speaker 1: then to the exact same method of manipulation, which is

364
00:20:48,400 --> 00:20:51,879
Speaker 1: not necessarily the case for the brain, but maybe you

365
00:20:51,920 --> 00:20:55,040
Speaker 1: can get some kind of approximation. You know, your brain

366
00:20:55,119 --> 00:20:57,679
Speaker 1: isn't the exact same as somebody else's brain. Your puppet

367
00:20:57,720 --> 00:21:00,960
Speaker 1: theater is different, but there are some general all rules

368
00:21:01,000 --> 00:21:04,400
Speaker 1: that operate in both puppet theaters that you can exploit.

369
00:21:04,960 --> 00:21:07,480
Speaker 1: So let's look at some of the technologies here. What

370
00:21:07,480 --> 00:21:10,239
Speaker 1: what actual technology would you use if you want to

371
00:21:10,280 --> 00:21:14,800
Speaker 1: scan somebody else's brain and see what's happening inside there. Well,

372
00:21:14,840 --> 00:21:17,359
Speaker 1: one of the most powerful methods we would have would

373
00:21:17,359 --> 00:21:22,000
Speaker 1: be implanted electrodes. You can implant directly into somebody's brain,

374
00:21:22,359 --> 00:21:27,720
Speaker 1: cortical microelectrode arrays which are capable of of recording what's

375
00:21:27,760 --> 00:21:30,320
Speaker 1: going on in the brain. And also what's known as

376
00:21:30,359 --> 00:21:34,560
Speaker 1: intracortical micro stimulation or i c m S, And this

377
00:21:34,640 --> 00:21:39,320
Speaker 1: means you can get both input and output with the brain,

378
00:21:39,440 --> 00:21:42,360
Speaker 1: so you can read the electrical activity to find out

379
00:21:42,400 --> 00:21:44,880
Speaker 1: what's going on, and if you want to stimulate parts

380
00:21:44,920 --> 00:21:47,400
Speaker 1: of the brain, you can provide little bits of electric

381
00:21:47,440 --> 00:21:50,160
Speaker 1: current through these two light up that part of the brain.

382
00:21:51,000 --> 00:21:54,679
Speaker 1: You can also use electro corticography, which is electrodes on

383
00:21:54,720 --> 00:21:57,480
Speaker 1: the exposed surface of the brain. If you want to

384
00:21:57,520 --> 00:22:00,960
Speaker 1: be really weird at out, google pictures of this. Uh.

385
00:22:01,240 --> 00:22:03,440
Speaker 1: But if you don't want to cut your skull open,

386
00:22:03,600 --> 00:22:05,760
Speaker 1: and I think most of us would prefer that method.

387
00:22:05,960 --> 00:22:08,200
Speaker 1: There there are still other ways you can scan what's

388
00:22:08,240 --> 00:22:10,159
Speaker 1: going on in the brain. I think typically they're not

389
00:22:10,200 --> 00:22:12,800
Speaker 1: going to be as sensitive, so there's a drawback. The

390
00:22:12,920 --> 00:22:15,760
Speaker 1: advantages you don't have to go through brain surgery. The

391
00:22:15,800 --> 00:22:19,119
Speaker 1: advantage or the disadvantages you're not gonna get quite as

392
00:22:19,200 --> 00:22:22,120
Speaker 1: much precision with the signals you're receiving. But you can

393
00:22:22,200 --> 00:22:25,920
Speaker 1: use f m r I, so that's functional magnetic resonance imaging,

394
00:22:26,000 --> 00:22:28,800
Speaker 1: So it's like an m r I, except you detect

395
00:22:28,880 --> 00:22:31,760
Speaker 1: real time activity in the brain by mapping blood flow

396
00:22:31,880 --> 00:22:36,720
Speaker 1: to different parts of the brain. There's magneto encephalography, which

397
00:22:36,760 --> 00:22:40,320
Speaker 1: is great. Google pictures of this also. I love telling

398
00:22:40,320 --> 00:22:42,320
Speaker 1: people to Google pictures of things. I think I do

399
00:22:42,400 --> 00:22:44,959
Speaker 1: that pretty often, but this this one is worth it

400
00:22:45,040 --> 00:22:48,679
Speaker 1: because it's a It's a system that detects magnetic field

401
00:22:48,760 --> 00:22:52,280
Speaker 1: fluctuations caused by electrical activity in the brain, and it

402
00:22:52,320 --> 00:22:54,800
Speaker 1: looks like you're wearing a hat the size of a car.

403
00:22:55,680 --> 00:22:57,280
Speaker 1: You're you're kind of like you get in like the

404
00:22:57,320 --> 00:23:00,080
Speaker 1: space jockey scene from Alien and then you put it

405
00:23:00,119 --> 00:23:01,919
Speaker 1: on a hat that's as big as a van with

406
00:23:02,080 --> 00:23:05,159
Speaker 1: tons of the wires and stuff. Yeah, it's gigantic and

407
00:23:05,160 --> 00:23:07,320
Speaker 1: it just goes over your head. And I guess it's

408
00:23:07,359 --> 00:23:10,200
Speaker 1: got to be very sensitive to to detect what's going

409
00:23:10,240 --> 00:23:12,680
Speaker 1: on with these tiny little electrical currents in your brain,

410
00:23:13,080 --> 00:23:15,000
Speaker 1: but it does it. Yeah, And all of these are

411
00:23:15,119 --> 00:23:17,359
Speaker 1: methods that I'm sure that you've heard mentioned on this

412
00:23:17,400 --> 00:23:21,320
Speaker 1: podcast before or in other science podcasts, in science literature,

413
00:23:21,320 --> 00:23:24,480
Speaker 1: these are standard means of looking at the brain and

414
00:23:24,560 --> 00:23:27,440
Speaker 1: figuring out what's going on. Yeah, and then this very

415
00:23:27,520 --> 00:23:29,560
Speaker 1: last one is gonna be crucial. And some of the

416
00:23:29,560 --> 00:23:33,439
Speaker 1: studies we're talking about it's electro and cephalography or e

417
00:23:33,280 --> 00:23:35,880
Speaker 1: E G. You've probably heard of this one before, but

418
00:23:36,160 --> 00:23:38,119
Speaker 1: this one is very appealing because you don't have to

419
00:23:38,160 --> 00:23:40,119
Speaker 1: get into a chair with a hat the size of

420
00:23:40,119 --> 00:23:43,760
Speaker 1: the car. You just put some electrodes on your scalp,

421
00:23:44,240 --> 00:23:46,680
Speaker 1: and the electrodes they go on the skin on your head.

422
00:23:46,720 --> 00:23:50,560
Speaker 1: They're really really sensitive to electricity enough that they can

423
00:23:50,640 --> 00:23:54,320
Speaker 1: read some of the electrical activity in your brain through

424
00:23:54,440 --> 00:23:57,080
Speaker 1: your scalp, though obviously, like we said, it's not nearly

425
00:23:57,080 --> 00:24:01,760
Speaker 1: as sensitive as implanted electrodes um And then of course

426
00:24:01,800 --> 00:24:03,200
Speaker 1: if you want to go so that's all the ways

427
00:24:03,240 --> 00:24:06,640
Speaker 1: we can read what's happening inside your brain. Imagine we

428
00:24:06,680 --> 00:24:09,600
Speaker 1: want to switch to input on the brain. How can

429
00:24:09,640 --> 00:24:12,520
Speaker 1: we put things directly into your brain without the use

430
00:24:12,560 --> 00:24:14,879
Speaker 1: of your senses. Well, of course, like we said, you

431
00:24:14,880 --> 00:24:18,480
Speaker 1: can implant electrodes, So just put some get some brain surgery,

432
00:24:18,880 --> 00:24:21,719
Speaker 1: put those stimulators in your brain and give you little shocks.

433
00:24:21,760 --> 00:24:25,240
Speaker 1: When we want you to experience something, you can use

434
00:24:25,440 --> 00:24:29,239
Speaker 1: focused ultrasound, and that's high frequency sound waves targeted at

435
00:24:29,280 --> 00:24:33,280
Speaker 1: specific parts of the brain. That's experimental. It's been used

436
00:24:33,280 --> 00:24:36,080
Speaker 1: in animals, but I think it's it's not super cool

437
00:24:36,119 --> 00:24:38,240
Speaker 1: to use this in humans yet. And I should throw

438
00:24:38,280 --> 00:24:41,040
Speaker 1: into like most people are familiar with with ultrasound, probably

439
00:24:41,080 --> 00:24:42,880
Speaker 1: from you know, hearing about it, you know, us sort

440
00:24:42,920 --> 00:24:46,440
Speaker 1: of witnessing participating in its use to look inside an

441
00:24:46,440 --> 00:24:48,840
Speaker 1: individual and see what's going on in there inside, particularly

442
00:24:48,880 --> 00:24:51,840
Speaker 1: to look at a at at a grilling fetus, right,

443
00:24:52,400 --> 00:24:55,760
Speaker 1: And that just underlines that that ultrasoience sound, depending on

444
00:24:55,800 --> 00:24:59,840
Speaker 1: the frequency, can be used for something as as pain

445
00:25:00,080 --> 00:25:03,440
Speaker 1: us and mundane is that, or it can be used

446
00:25:03,480 --> 00:25:06,760
Speaker 1: at higher frequencies, much higher frequencies to actually destroy tissue

447
00:25:06,760 --> 00:25:10,119
Speaker 1: in the body, like in cancer. So this is a

448
00:25:10,240 --> 00:25:13,040
Speaker 1: more middle ground where we can use it to stimulate

449
00:25:13,119 --> 00:25:18,120
Speaker 1: but not harm. Little middle ground that's comfortable middle ground

450
00:25:18,119 --> 00:25:20,440
Speaker 1: when you're talking about your brain. Yeah, yeah, we're gonna

451
00:25:20,440 --> 00:25:22,840
Speaker 1: stimulate the tissue. We're not just gonna look at it,

452
00:25:22,880 --> 00:25:24,840
Speaker 1: but we're also not going to just not enough to

453
00:25:24,880 --> 00:25:27,480
Speaker 1: melt it, we promise. And then of course the last

454
00:25:27,480 --> 00:25:29,399
Speaker 1: one we're going to mention is another one that's going

455
00:25:29,480 --> 00:25:31,600
Speaker 1: to be important in the studies we talk about, which

456
00:25:31,640 --> 00:25:37,240
Speaker 1: is transcranial magnetic stimulation or TMS. And this is where

457
00:25:37,240 --> 00:25:40,840
Speaker 1: you put a nice friendly electro magnet against your skull,

458
00:25:41,160 --> 00:25:44,280
Speaker 1: carefully aligned over the scalp to target a particular part

459
00:25:44,280 --> 00:25:48,560
Speaker 1: of the brain, and it pulses with electromagnetism to stimulate

460
00:25:48,600 --> 00:25:51,879
Speaker 1: electrical activity in the targeted region in your brain. And

461
00:25:51,960 --> 00:25:53,560
Speaker 1: this is of course the domain of the god helmet

462
00:25:53,640 --> 00:25:56,560
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, countless studies out there anytime we're

463
00:25:56,600 --> 00:26:00,000
Speaker 1: looking at at you know, what's physically going on into

464
00:26:00,040 --> 00:26:03,280
Speaker 1: brain versus what the experience of reality is. You often

465
00:26:03,320 --> 00:26:06,560
Speaker 1: see this technology employed. Yeah, and so for more than

466
00:26:06,600 --> 00:26:09,680
Speaker 1: a decade now, we've seen experiments using methods like this

467
00:26:09,760 --> 00:26:13,600
Speaker 1: to send messages to and from to and from brains,

468
00:26:14,080 --> 00:26:17,320
Speaker 1: between brains and computers. These are brain computer interfaces or

469
00:26:17,359 --> 00:26:19,960
Speaker 1: b C guys. So you can get people to, say,

470
00:26:20,040 --> 00:26:24,280
Speaker 1: control a robot arm with their minds, or control a

471
00:26:24,359 --> 00:26:27,919
Speaker 1: computer cursor with their minds. This is now pretty much

472
00:26:28,000 --> 00:26:30,960
Speaker 1: conquered ground and science. We're still getting better at doing

473
00:26:31,000 --> 00:26:34,080
Speaker 1: it and better at doing it with less invasive procedures,

474
00:26:34,119 --> 00:26:36,600
Speaker 1: but it's a thing we can comfortably do in science

475
00:26:36,600 --> 00:26:46,480
Speaker 1: and technology. Monkey moves a robot with its brain. Yeah,

476
00:26:46,840 --> 00:26:50,160
Speaker 1: but what if instead of communicating with a robot arm

477
00:26:50,400 --> 00:26:55,960
Speaker 1: or with a computer, you just substituted another brain. Mm hmm.

478
00:26:57,240 --> 00:27:01,600
Speaker 1: That's where it gets kind of difficult to comprehend. Uh. So,

479
00:27:02,440 --> 00:27:06,040
Speaker 1: stuff is going from inside your brain through a computer

480
00:27:06,480 --> 00:27:10,760
Speaker 1: to another brain and then back the other way. That

481
00:27:10,920 --> 00:27:15,040
Speaker 1: sounds like you have suddenly discovered a technological basis for

482
00:27:15,080 --> 00:27:18,400
Speaker 1: telepathy sharing the contents of our brains, or at least

483
00:27:18,480 --> 00:27:23,000
Speaker 1: some form of brain activity, without talking, without text, without

484
00:27:23,040 --> 00:27:27,800
Speaker 1: any external communication of any kind. It's brain to brain communication.

485
00:27:28,080 --> 00:27:30,320
Speaker 1: All right, Well, let's let's launch into the studies. We'll

486
00:27:30,320 --> 00:27:33,200
Speaker 1: get more into discussion of what this would be like,

487
00:27:33,280 --> 00:27:36,760
Speaker 1: what the experience of molving your mind via technology would

488
00:27:36,840 --> 00:27:39,720
Speaker 1: consist of. First Let's yeah, let's just launch into some

489
00:27:39,800 --> 00:27:43,560
Speaker 1: of the studies, most of them pretty recent studies dealing

490
00:27:43,720 --> 00:27:48,760
Speaker 1: with technological telepathy. How about some rat to rat brain communication.

491
00:27:48,840 --> 00:27:51,760
Speaker 1: That's what I'm talking about, rat telepathy. It's my favorite.

492
00:27:51,800 --> 00:27:54,600
Speaker 1: How many are there any good novels about rat telepathy?

493
00:27:54,680 --> 00:27:56,560
Speaker 1: They've got to be is that in secretive nim who

494
00:27:56,920 --> 00:27:59,240
Speaker 1: you know? There there are some rats in dungeons and

495
00:27:59,320 --> 00:28:02,120
Speaker 1: dragons where and I love these guys because they're called

496
00:28:02,119 --> 00:28:05,600
Speaker 1: off hand. But each individual rat has a rat intelligence, right,

497
00:28:06,200 --> 00:28:09,680
Speaker 1: but they have a certain amount of of psychic ability.

498
00:28:09,720 --> 00:28:12,760
Speaker 1: So you get two rats together close together, and their

499
00:28:12,800 --> 00:28:15,240
Speaker 1: minds melt and they have the intellect of like a

500
00:28:15,280 --> 00:28:19,400
Speaker 1: double deck or rat brain. But you know, rats, eventually

501
00:28:19,480 --> 00:28:23,160
Speaker 1: they form large groups. Two's company three is Willard, right,

502
00:28:23,200 --> 00:28:25,840
Speaker 1: So you end up with a huge swarm of rats.

503
00:28:25,880 --> 00:28:28,800
Speaker 1: But they their brain powers all pooled together into a

504
00:28:28,880 --> 00:28:32,640
Speaker 1: powerful intellect that's capable of launching uh, you know, psychic

505
00:28:32,680 --> 00:28:36,159
Speaker 1: attacks attack patterns. Yeah. Well, and also just like the

506
00:28:36,200 --> 00:28:38,640
Speaker 1: mental energy, like we have so much mental power, they

507
00:28:38,720 --> 00:28:42,800
Speaker 1: actually have paranormal abilities. Well maybe the people who created

508
00:28:42,840 --> 00:28:45,760
Speaker 1: those for the Dungeons and Dragons manual went ahead and

509
00:28:45,800 --> 00:28:48,280
Speaker 1: a time machine to read about this study that was

510
00:28:48,280 --> 00:28:52,600
Speaker 1: published in Nature called a brain to brain interface for

511
00:28:52,680 --> 00:28:56,440
Speaker 1: real time sharing of sensory motor information. So I'm not

512
00:28:56,480 --> 00:28:58,400
Speaker 1: going to get too much into the details in the

513
00:28:58,400 --> 00:29:01,440
Speaker 1: study because it was very long. In the multiple experiments

514
00:29:01,440 --> 00:29:04,400
Speaker 1: described in the study with lots of different aspects to

515
00:29:04,480 --> 00:29:07,880
Speaker 1: them that we're all individually interesting but kind of technical,

516
00:29:08,160 --> 00:29:11,520
Speaker 1: So I'll give you the broad overview. There's several different experiments,

517
00:29:11,520 --> 00:29:14,200
Speaker 1: and the basic idea is that you've got two rats,

518
00:29:14,640 --> 00:29:18,520
Speaker 1: an encoder rat and a decoder rat. So you take

519
00:29:18,640 --> 00:29:20,720
Speaker 1: both your rats and you train them on a task.

520
00:29:21,040 --> 00:29:24,800
Speaker 1: For example, an led light comes on over one of

521
00:29:24,880 --> 00:29:28,040
Speaker 1: two levers, either a left lever or right lever, and

522
00:29:28,080 --> 00:29:30,440
Speaker 1: then you pick that lever, You pick the correct lever,

523
00:29:30,640 --> 00:29:33,200
Speaker 1: and you get a reward. Now, once the rats have

524
00:29:33,320 --> 00:29:35,880
Speaker 1: been trained on the basic task enough to to be

525
00:29:35,960 --> 00:29:40,400
Speaker 1: good at it, you split them up into encoders and decoders.

526
00:29:40,440 --> 00:29:44,320
Speaker 1: These rats get electrodes implanted in their brains with wires

527
00:29:44,400 --> 00:29:47,239
Speaker 1: running out of their heads, so this probably is not

528
00:29:47,320 --> 00:29:49,560
Speaker 1: an experiment you want to try on your friends at home.

529
00:29:51,040 --> 00:29:54,480
Speaker 1: But the encode rat has a micro electrode array that

530
00:29:54,600 --> 00:29:57,600
Speaker 1: can read its neuronal activity, so essentially it's measuring the

531
00:29:57,640 --> 00:30:00,760
Speaker 1: electrical patterns between cells in the AND like we're talking

532
00:30:00,760 --> 00:30:04,120
Speaker 1: about earlier. And the decode rat also has electrodes and

533
00:30:04,280 --> 00:30:07,560
Speaker 1: implanted in its brain for intracortical micro stimulation or i

534
00:30:07,640 --> 00:30:11,840
Speaker 1: c MS like we mentioned earlier, So the encoder rat

535
00:30:12,040 --> 00:30:16,680
Speaker 1: gets the same familiar stimulus. For example, the the l

536
00:30:16,720 --> 00:30:20,840
Speaker 1: E ed over the left lever lights up, and then

537
00:30:20,960 --> 00:30:24,560
Speaker 1: it goes to press the correct lever to get its reward.

538
00:30:24,640 --> 00:30:27,880
Speaker 1: It presses the left lever, but then the decoder rat

539
00:30:27,920 --> 00:30:31,280
Speaker 1: gets its turn and it doesn't get a clear visual signal.

540
00:30:31,320 --> 00:30:34,040
Speaker 1: Instead of the LED just popping up over the left lever,

541
00:30:34,360 --> 00:30:37,920
Speaker 1: the LED lights come on over both levers instead. What

542
00:30:37,960 --> 00:30:41,520
Speaker 1: happens is that the micro electrode array measures the first

543
00:30:41,640 --> 00:30:45,600
Speaker 1: rats brain activity, then it runs that data through some

544
00:30:45,640 --> 00:30:49,400
Speaker 1: analysis and amplification and sends the output straight down the

545
00:30:49,440 --> 00:30:52,600
Speaker 1: wire into the I i c m S equipment in

546
00:30:52,680 --> 00:30:57,200
Speaker 1: the decoder rats brain. Then the decoder rats brain lights

547
00:30:57,280 --> 00:31:01,320
Speaker 1: up in patterns correlated with the behavior of the encoder rats,

548
00:31:01,400 --> 00:31:04,080
Speaker 1: so that the decoder rat goes to choose a lever

549
00:31:04,480 --> 00:31:07,280
Speaker 1: and the translation was on a perfect It didn't get

550
00:31:07,320 --> 00:31:09,960
Speaker 1: it right every time, but it did a good bit

551
00:31:10,080 --> 00:31:14,600
Speaker 1: better than chance. So, through implanning electrodes in the brain,

552
00:31:14,800 --> 00:31:19,440
Speaker 1: one rat teaches another rat which button to push from

553
00:31:19,440 --> 00:31:23,720
Speaker 1: a separate room. This is rat to rat education with

554
00:31:23,760 --> 00:31:27,680
Speaker 1: no external communication required. It's rat brain to rat brain

555
00:31:27,840 --> 00:31:29,840
Speaker 1: teaching you how to get a reward, all right, and

556
00:31:29,880 --> 00:31:31,320
Speaker 1: you only have to throw out the stimulus once. You

557
00:31:31,400 --> 00:31:33,800
Speaker 1: only have to flip the switch once. It's like it's

558
00:31:33,840 --> 00:31:36,520
Speaker 1: like each rat is a string of Christmas lights and

559
00:31:36,560 --> 00:31:39,000
Speaker 1: you've just connected them together. Yeah, and so note that

560
00:31:39,040 --> 00:31:41,320
Speaker 1: this study was complex. It involved a bunch of other

561
00:31:41,360 --> 00:31:44,760
Speaker 1: interesting stuff as well, like UH commentary on the rats

562
00:31:44,760 --> 00:31:48,760
Speaker 1: as a cooperative di AD computing team, and then UH

563
00:31:48,840 --> 00:31:52,160
Speaker 1: stuff about feedback from one rat to the other, like

564
00:31:52,200 --> 00:31:56,040
Speaker 1: the encoder rat also getting positive feedback a reward for

565
00:31:56,040 --> 00:31:59,120
Speaker 1: when the decoder rat did things right. But anyway, so

566
00:31:59,440 --> 00:32:02,280
Speaker 1: this is is the creation of a rat to rat

567
00:32:02,760 --> 00:32:06,080
Speaker 1: brain to brain interface, which they called a bt b I,

568
00:32:07,000 --> 00:32:10,160
Speaker 1: and this is a pretty cool study. One of the

569
00:32:10,160 --> 00:32:13,040
Speaker 1: things I found very interesting is they said, quote, it

570
00:32:13,080 --> 00:32:17,760
Speaker 1: remains to be explained how the brain simultaneously integrates information

571
00:32:17,800 --> 00:32:21,760
Speaker 1: generated by direct I c MS and by natural stimuli,

572
00:32:22,200 --> 00:32:25,160
Speaker 1: for example, real whisker stimulation. And that's referring to a

573
00:32:25,160 --> 00:32:28,080
Speaker 1: second test they did where the rats were supposed to

574
00:32:28,200 --> 00:32:33,200
Speaker 1: judge real versus virtual width of an opening by by

575
00:32:33,560 --> 00:32:37,400
Speaker 1: touch on the whiskers. Okay, because they're essentially incorporating both

576
00:32:37,920 --> 00:32:42,120
Speaker 1: natural stimuli and this new you know, unnatural stimuli, you

577
00:32:42,200 --> 00:32:45,360
Speaker 1: will into into their single experience. Right, So how does

578
00:32:45,440 --> 00:32:49,920
Speaker 1: the rat like what's imagine you are the rat, and

579
00:32:50,560 --> 00:32:56,880
Speaker 1: how does the rat differentiate between between stimulation coming in

580
00:32:57,120 --> 00:33:01,280
Speaker 1: through the brain that's just like the brain being electrically

581
00:33:01,320 --> 00:33:05,040
Speaker 1: stimulated and the real sensory information it's getting from its

582
00:33:05,080 --> 00:33:09,440
Speaker 1: eyes and its whiskers. Can it tell the difference? How

583
00:33:09,560 --> 00:33:12,080
Speaker 1: how does that information get put together? We don't really

584
00:33:12,080 --> 00:33:15,600
Speaker 1: know because we have not done such experiments on humans

585
00:33:15,640 --> 00:33:19,160
Speaker 1: for obvious reasons, So we don't know what the experience

586
00:33:19,240 --> 00:33:21,640
Speaker 1: is like for the rat. But it's at least powerful

587
00:33:21,760 --> 00:33:25,640
Speaker 1: enough that the rat can perform tasks based on this

588
00:33:25,720 --> 00:33:30,680
Speaker 1: incoming brain information. But you know rat to rat is

589
00:33:30,720 --> 00:33:33,000
Speaker 1: one thing. Yeah, I think we need to do some

590
00:33:33,120 --> 00:33:35,680
Speaker 1: cross species telepathy. Yeah, we want to get a little

591
00:33:35,920 --> 00:33:40,280
Speaker 1: Willard E here and talk about human to rat mind control.

592
00:33:40,280 --> 00:33:43,880
Speaker 1: And this study tattled non invasive brain to brain interface

593
00:33:44,160 --> 00:33:49,440
Speaker 1: establishing functional links between two brains is from April and Uh.

594
00:33:49,640 --> 00:33:54,280
Speaker 1: In this particular study, a US South Korean team investigated, uh,

595
00:33:54,880 --> 00:33:58,840
Speaker 1: that classic question how might a human wag a rat's

596
00:33:58,920 --> 00:34:02,960
Speaker 1: tale using only their brain and brain to brain interface

597
00:34:03,000 --> 00:34:09,080
Speaker 1: system that shockingly requires no surgical implantation. So in this

598
00:34:09,120 --> 00:34:11,560
Speaker 1: particular experience of how it went down, First, the human

599
00:34:11,600 --> 00:34:16,800
Speaker 1: controller is hooked up to to that e G. Based

600
00:34:16,840 --> 00:34:21,640
Speaker 1: brain computer interface. Again we're talking electro in cephalography. Um,

601
00:34:21,680 --> 00:34:24,319
Speaker 1: it's in this the monitoring system. Generally it's based on

602
00:34:24,360 --> 00:34:27,840
Speaker 1: scout based electrodes to record electrical activity of the brain.

603
00:34:28,280 --> 00:34:31,000
Speaker 1: Then they hooked the rat up to a focused ultrasound

604
00:34:31,040 --> 00:34:35,200
Speaker 1: based computer to brain interface and uh, these again have

605
00:34:35,280 --> 00:34:38,600
Speaker 1: high frequency sound waves uh that are that are going

606
00:34:38,600 --> 00:34:42,280
Speaker 1: into the tissue. Uh, not enough to do any damage. Next,

607
00:34:42,440 --> 00:34:45,400
Speaker 1: they hit the human with some visual stimulation to invoke

608
00:34:45,480 --> 00:34:49,480
Speaker 1: a little uh steady state visually evoked potential. So we're

609
00:34:49,480 --> 00:34:52,799
Speaker 1: talking strobe light flashes here. The researchers were then able

610
00:34:52,800 --> 00:34:57,600
Speaker 1: to identify the same burst frequency in the humans brain. Okay,

611
00:34:57,800 --> 00:34:59,960
Speaker 1: then the humans b c I detects this and then

612
00:35:00,040 --> 00:35:04,800
Speaker 1: transfers that that same pattern to the focused ultrasound based

613
00:35:04,840 --> 00:35:07,480
Speaker 1: cb I on the rat, targeting the region of the

614
00:35:07,560 --> 00:35:10,759
Speaker 1: rat's brain that controls its tail, and this causes the

615
00:35:10,800 --> 00:35:14,120
Speaker 1: tail to move with the same frequency that's flashing through

616
00:35:14,160 --> 00:35:17,319
Speaker 1: the humans mind, the same frequency this flashing on the

617
00:35:17,360 --> 00:35:23,000
Speaker 1: strobe lights. Creepy, yeah, and the rat. Yeah. These six

618
00:35:23,040 --> 00:35:26,200
Speaker 1: different humans and six different rats in this experiment with

619
00:35:27,480 --> 00:35:31,280
Speaker 1: success rate. So, I mean, there's a lot of these experiences.

620
00:35:31,280 --> 00:35:34,240
Speaker 1: They may not seem all that amazing when you break

621
00:35:34,239 --> 00:35:36,799
Speaker 1: it down into these simple parts, but you really have

622
00:35:36,840 --> 00:35:38,600
Speaker 1: to look at what's being done, and most importantly, what's

623
00:35:38,640 --> 00:35:42,160
Speaker 1: being done completely non evasively. If it seems simple, that's

624
00:35:42,200 --> 00:35:46,279
Speaker 1: because the experiment breaks down thought and action into simple components,

625
00:35:47,400 --> 00:35:51,000
Speaker 1: which is always kind of both overwhelming and underwhelming at

626
00:35:51,000 --> 00:35:53,799
Speaker 1: the same time. When you when you see something that

627
00:35:53,840 --> 00:35:57,360
Speaker 1: we think of as magical, like thought, broken down into

628
00:35:57,360 --> 00:36:00,279
Speaker 1: the physical actions that constitute it, it just kind of

629
00:36:00,280 --> 00:36:03,040
Speaker 1: seems like really that's all there is, all right, So

630
00:36:03,080 --> 00:36:05,520
Speaker 1: what's next on the plate. Then we've gone we've gone

631
00:36:05,560 --> 00:36:08,719
Speaker 1: rat to rat, we've gone human to rat. What's next, Oh,

632
00:36:08,760 --> 00:36:12,040
Speaker 1: we gotta go human to human? Okay, okay? So here

633
00:36:12,120 --> 00:36:15,080
Speaker 1: was another study came out in ten called conscious Brain

634
00:36:15,160 --> 00:36:19,400
Speaker 1: to brain Communication and Humans using Noninvasive Technologies, published in

635
00:36:19,680 --> 00:36:23,640
Speaker 1: Plos one. And here are the basics. You've got a

636
00:36:23,680 --> 00:36:28,200
Speaker 1: cinder in India and recipients in France. So here we're

637
00:36:28,280 --> 00:36:30,799
Speaker 1: we're the cinder wears an e G cap like we're

638
00:36:30,800 --> 00:36:33,560
Speaker 1: saying stuff on the scalp to text electrical activity in

639
00:36:33,600 --> 00:36:36,799
Speaker 1: the brain, and the recipients sit under a different thing

640
00:36:36,880 --> 00:36:40,719
Speaker 1: than we've seen before, one of those transcranial magnetic stimulation

641
00:36:40,840 --> 00:36:44,720
Speaker 1: coils or TMS coils. And uh and like I said earlier,

642
00:36:44,719 --> 00:36:47,480
Speaker 1: what this does is it generates an electromagnetic field, so

643
00:36:47,520 --> 00:36:52,160
Speaker 1: it stimulates the brain with electrical activity at the sender's end.

644
00:36:52,640 --> 00:36:54,960
Speaker 1: There are some code words, so the sender with the

645
00:36:54,960 --> 00:36:59,040
Speaker 1: e G cap gets code words chow and o lah

646
00:36:59,280 --> 00:37:03,920
Speaker 1: a couple of different kind of European hellos and had

647
00:37:03,920 --> 00:37:06,640
Speaker 1: to translate them into binary code. So that's ones and

648
00:37:06,760 --> 00:37:09,800
Speaker 1: zeros are on and off switches, and then the sender

649
00:37:09,920 --> 00:37:14,919
Speaker 1: had to think about different actions to represent each one

650
00:37:15,000 --> 00:37:18,399
Speaker 1: and zero in the string to spell the word. So

651
00:37:18,520 --> 00:37:21,080
Speaker 1: for example, thinking about moving your hands could be a

652
00:37:21,120 --> 00:37:24,920
Speaker 1: one and thinking about moving your feet could be a zero,

653
00:37:25,239 --> 00:37:28,239
Speaker 1: and then they thought out the binary string. So if

654
00:37:28,320 --> 00:37:30,640
Speaker 1: to spell a law, it would be like, you know,

655
00:37:30,800 --> 00:37:35,040
Speaker 1: zero one, zero, you have to think about feet and

656
00:37:35,080 --> 00:37:38,239
Speaker 1: then think about moving your hands, and then think about

657
00:37:38,320 --> 00:37:40,960
Speaker 1: moving your feet, but on and on as you would

658
00:37:41,000 --> 00:37:43,200
Speaker 1: have to do to spell the whole word. So the

659
00:37:43,280 --> 00:37:46,920
Speaker 1: e G measured those different electrical patterns, sent them to

660
00:37:46,960 --> 00:37:50,600
Speaker 1: the computer, and then that was sent five thousand miles

661
00:37:50,600 --> 00:37:54,120
Speaker 1: over the Internet to the recipients t MS coils. The

662
00:37:54,160 --> 00:37:57,759
Speaker 1: TMS coils caused the recipients to experience this is great

663
00:37:58,320 --> 00:38:01,920
Speaker 1: phosphenes or vision of lights. So you're sitting under this coil,

664
00:38:02,360 --> 00:38:05,040
Speaker 1: you're sitting in the chair, and suddenly you might see

665
00:38:05,200 --> 00:38:09,719
Speaker 1: dots or lines sort of visual light hallucination patterns pop

666
00:38:09,800 --> 00:38:13,200
Speaker 1: up in your vision. And it's caused by when the

667
00:38:13,480 --> 00:38:16,600
Speaker 1: pulses of electromagnetism come through the t M S coil,

668
00:38:17,160 --> 00:38:21,120
Speaker 1: and so different kinds of visions translated into ones and zeros,

669
00:38:21,200 --> 00:38:24,160
Speaker 1: of code, and once you got your string of ones

670
00:38:24,200 --> 00:38:26,960
Speaker 1: and zeros from the t MS code, you could translate

671
00:38:27,040 --> 00:38:31,000
Speaker 1: that back into text from the binary code. And thus

672
00:38:31,200 --> 00:38:35,360
Speaker 1: brain to brain communication of coded messages in language was

673
00:38:35,400 --> 00:38:38,480
Speaker 1: achieved over five thousand miles. You see some of the

674
00:38:38,520 --> 00:38:41,040
Speaker 1: media reports, it sounds like they're kind of gushing over

675
00:38:41,080 --> 00:38:43,160
Speaker 1: the fact that it was five thousand miles, like the

676
00:38:43,239 --> 00:38:46,120
Speaker 1: distance matters a lot when it comes down to the

677
00:38:46,600 --> 00:38:48,839
Speaker 1: use of the Internet, you know, yeah, exactly. To me,

678
00:38:49,480 --> 00:38:51,440
Speaker 1: maybe there's something I didn't understand, but to me that

679
00:38:51,440 --> 00:38:53,799
Speaker 1: the distance didn't really seem to matter. I mean, once

680
00:38:53,840 --> 00:38:58,040
Speaker 1: you've got a decoded brain signal on the Internet sent

681
00:38:58,080 --> 00:39:01,000
Speaker 1: to somebody else and then reek aded back into the

682
00:39:01,040 --> 00:39:03,880
Speaker 1: message it was supposed to be, it's the Internet, And

683
00:39:04,160 --> 00:39:05,800
Speaker 1: why does it matter if it's one mile or a

684
00:39:05,840 --> 00:39:08,880
Speaker 1: hundred miles or a thousand miles. Yeah exactly. But anyway

685
00:39:08,880 --> 00:39:11,920
Speaker 1: that that that's some human to human text communication. But

686
00:39:12,000 --> 00:39:15,560
Speaker 1: then there's another one, and this one got some interesting

687
00:39:15,600 --> 00:39:18,719
Speaker 1: media attention. I actually wrote about this last year for

688
00:39:18,760 --> 00:39:21,960
Speaker 1: a forward Thinking video, but it was also published in

689
00:39:22,120 --> 00:39:24,480
Speaker 1: Plos one, and it was called a direct brain to

690
00:39:24,600 --> 00:39:27,880
Speaker 1: brain interface and humans. And this involves a video game.

691
00:39:29,200 --> 00:39:32,920
Speaker 1: So it's it's cooperative gaming. No, it didn't sound like

692
00:39:32,920 --> 00:39:36,160
Speaker 1: a very good video I'm looking at the image right now.

693
00:39:36,160 --> 00:39:38,480
Speaker 1: It's one of these video games. Yeah, it sounded like

694
00:39:38,800 --> 00:39:40,759
Speaker 1: I think it was one of those free video games. No,

695
00:39:41,320 --> 00:39:44,440
Speaker 1: it may have been designed purposefully for this study. I

696
00:39:44,480 --> 00:39:49,200
Speaker 1: don't know. It looks it looks kind of boring. Yes, So,

697
00:39:50,239 --> 00:39:54,280
Speaker 1: researchers at the University of Washington published this study showing

698
00:39:54,360 --> 00:39:58,120
Speaker 1: they were they were able to establish a non invasive

699
00:39:58,120 --> 00:40:02,400
Speaker 1: brain to brain interface between pete which allowed them to

700
00:40:02,480 --> 00:40:08,480
Speaker 1: cause movements in a different person's body without speech across

701
00:40:08,560 --> 00:40:14,320
Speaker 1: the internet to play the game. So it works this way.

702
00:40:15,000 --> 00:40:18,279
Speaker 1: One person sits in a room with the ability to

703
00:40:18,440 --> 00:40:21,799
Speaker 1: look at a screen. The screen has the game on it,

704
00:40:22,360 --> 00:40:24,640
Speaker 1: and what you see on the game is that there's

705
00:40:24,680 --> 00:40:28,239
Speaker 1: a pirate ship launching rockets at a city, and you've

706
00:40:28,239 --> 00:40:31,239
Speaker 1: got control of a cannon that can shoot down the

707
00:40:31,360 --> 00:40:34,080
Speaker 1: rockets if you time the cannon shot right. So you've

708
00:40:34,080 --> 00:40:36,560
Speaker 1: got to wait until the pirate ship shoots a rocket,

709
00:40:36,920 --> 00:40:38,920
Speaker 1: and then when it does, you shoot your cannon to

710
00:40:39,000 --> 00:40:41,239
Speaker 1: shoot the rocket and knock it out of the sky.

711
00:40:41,640 --> 00:40:45,880
Speaker 1: Pretty simple, right, But the problem is you can't press

712
00:40:45,920 --> 00:40:49,759
Speaker 1: a button. The only person who has a controller to

713
00:40:49,840 --> 00:40:53,440
Speaker 1: control the game is in a different room across the campus,

714
00:40:54,080 --> 00:40:59,759
Speaker 1: different buildings, like exactly right. So you are sitting there

715
00:41:00,280 --> 00:41:02,960
Speaker 1: watching the screen of the game with an e G

716
00:41:03,160 --> 00:41:05,839
Speaker 1: cap on your head. And when you see that it's

717
00:41:05,840 --> 00:41:08,600
Speaker 1: time to press that button to shoot down the rocket,

718
00:41:09,000 --> 00:41:12,759
Speaker 1: you think, move my hand. You don't move your hand,

719
00:41:12,800 --> 00:41:16,280
Speaker 1: You just think move my hand. The e G cap

720
00:41:17,080 --> 00:41:20,120
Speaker 1: records that and says, oh, okay, it's time. Since that

721
00:41:20,200 --> 00:41:23,960
Speaker 1: information across the internet to the room which has the

722
00:41:24,000 --> 00:41:26,760
Speaker 1: other person sitting in it. Now, this person cannot see

723
00:41:26,840 --> 00:41:30,160
Speaker 1: the screen that the game is being played on, but

724
00:41:30,440 --> 00:41:33,000
Speaker 1: this person has the ability to press the button to

725
00:41:33,080 --> 00:41:36,920
Speaker 1: fire the rocket. And when the when the timing is right,

726
00:41:36,960 --> 00:41:40,560
Speaker 1: when the signal arrives, it activates a t MS coil

727
00:41:41,120 --> 00:41:45,440
Speaker 1: that causes their hand to jerk. And when that causes

728
00:41:45,520 --> 00:41:48,440
Speaker 1: their hand to jerk, they press a button that says

729
00:41:48,440 --> 00:41:51,360
Speaker 1: fire the rocket. That signal goes back to the game

730
00:41:51,840 --> 00:41:55,680
Speaker 1: and fires the rocket. So you have to so neither

731
00:41:55,760 --> 00:41:58,880
Speaker 1: one can play the game alone. They have to cooperate

732
00:41:58,960 --> 00:42:01,520
Speaker 1: to play the game, and they can't talk about it.

733
00:42:01,520 --> 00:42:05,440
Speaker 1: It's just thought to thought to action, all right. I

734
00:42:05,480 --> 00:42:07,960
Speaker 1: think that makes that makes sense. I think everybody's falling

735
00:42:08,000 --> 00:42:10,880
Speaker 1: along with that. So so what was the success rate? Like,

736
00:42:11,080 --> 00:42:14,640
Speaker 1: how did that? How did these uh weirdly conjoined individuals

737
00:42:14,960 --> 00:42:17,879
Speaker 1: um perform in this simple game? So there were three

738
00:42:17,880 --> 00:42:21,760
Speaker 1: pairs of subjects and they correctly identified and destroyed eighty

739
00:42:21,840 --> 00:42:25,320
Speaker 1: three point three percent, twenty five percent, and thirty seven

740
00:42:25,320 --> 00:42:28,920
Speaker 1: point five percent of the rockets, respectively during the the

741
00:42:28,960 --> 00:42:32,400
Speaker 1: experimental games, and then they had a zero percent success

742
00:42:32,480 --> 00:42:36,200
Speaker 1: rate during control games. So they did better in the

743
00:42:36,239 --> 00:42:39,520
Speaker 1: experimental games where real information was being transmitted than in

744
00:42:39,560 --> 00:42:42,760
Speaker 1: the control games when it wasn't. So there are several

745
00:42:42,800 --> 00:42:44,920
Speaker 1: takeaways from this. One of the things that I think

746
00:42:45,000 --> 00:42:47,480
Speaker 1: is interesting about this is that the receiver's action is

747
00:42:47,520 --> 00:42:51,520
Speaker 1: not conscious. They're not thinking, they're not getting a message

748
00:42:51,560 --> 00:42:55,440
Speaker 1: that they're decoding. They're just being caused to jerk, all right.

749
00:42:55,440 --> 00:42:57,040
Speaker 1: So they're not hearing a voice in their head that's

750
00:42:57,080 --> 00:42:59,279
Speaker 1: saying saying, shoot it now, push the button, now, push

751
00:42:59,320 --> 00:43:02,400
Speaker 1: the button now. It's just happening. No, they're they're getting

752
00:43:02,440 --> 00:43:06,480
Speaker 1: some magnetism that says, uh, Suddenly their hand moves and

753
00:43:06,520 --> 00:43:09,520
Speaker 1: they press a button. Uh. There are three takeaways that

754
00:43:09,600 --> 00:43:12,479
Speaker 1: the authors of the study came up with. So they said,

755
00:43:12,520 --> 00:43:15,279
Speaker 1: one of the takeaways from the study is that we've

756
00:43:15,280 --> 00:43:19,520
Speaker 1: got the technology now that's sufficient to develop devices for

757
00:43:19,800 --> 00:43:23,640
Speaker 1: rudimentary brain to brain communication. So that's one of the

758
00:43:23,680 --> 00:43:26,120
Speaker 1: things they say. They've demonstrated it's already here. We can

759
00:43:26,160 --> 00:43:35,719
Speaker 1: do it now, though it is rudimentary. The second thing

760
00:43:35,760 --> 00:43:39,280
Speaker 1: they point out is that working brain to brain interfaces

761
00:43:39,320 --> 00:43:42,360
Speaker 1: can be built out of non invasive technologies. Neither person

762
00:43:42,480 --> 00:43:46,520
Speaker 1: here required a brain implant. Uh, they it was e g.

763
00:43:46,840 --> 00:43:51,160
Speaker 1: To the transcranial magnetic stimulation. And then the third thing

764
00:43:51,200 --> 00:43:55,040
Speaker 1: they point out is that this is very rudimentary, but

765
00:43:55,120 --> 00:43:57,359
Speaker 1: the fact that it can be done at all means

766
00:43:57,440 --> 00:44:01,440
Speaker 1: we need to start having a conversation between atist neuroscientists

767
00:44:01,760 --> 00:44:07,480
Speaker 1: and regulatory agencies on the ethical, moral, and societal implications

768
00:44:07,600 --> 00:44:10,520
Speaker 1: of b b I. S Uh. They're they're talking. They're

769
00:44:10,520 --> 00:44:13,239
Speaker 1: about the ones that could grow in the future out

770
00:44:13,280 --> 00:44:16,960
Speaker 1: of the rudimentary technologies that are being developed now. Yeah. Yeah,

771
00:44:16,960 --> 00:44:20,839
Speaker 1: setting the stage for the whole world of neural security, right,

772
00:44:20,960 --> 00:44:25,080
Speaker 1: neuro security protecting our our our thoughts and emotions and

773
00:44:25,239 --> 00:44:29,720
Speaker 1: true feelings from all those technologically enhanced scanners out there. Yeah.

774
00:44:29,960 --> 00:44:32,600
Speaker 1: Now there's an even more recent study on this, right,

775
00:44:32,600 --> 00:44:34,719
Speaker 1: there was one that came out just in September of

776
00:44:34,760 --> 00:44:39,440
Speaker 1: this year in September, where it was not exactly the

777
00:44:39,480 --> 00:44:42,120
Speaker 1: same group, but most of the same scientists, uh, some

778
00:44:42,160 --> 00:44:45,360
Speaker 1: of the same authors from that that previous one published

779
00:44:45,360 --> 00:44:48,880
Speaker 1: again in p o OS one a study called Playing

780
00:44:48,880 --> 00:44:52,840
Speaker 1: twenty Questions with the Mind Collaborative problem solving by humans

781
00:44:52,880 --> 00:44:54,840
Speaker 1: using a brain to brain interface. And it was a

782
00:44:54,880 --> 00:44:57,120
Speaker 1: set up a lot like the last one. It was

783
00:44:57,160 --> 00:44:59,840
Speaker 1: pretty much just the same with cinder with the g

784
00:45:00,640 --> 00:45:04,400
Speaker 1: and a receiver using a transcranial magnetic stimulation coil. But

785
00:45:04,600 --> 00:45:07,040
Speaker 1: instead what they did here, instead of playing a video

786
00:45:07,080 --> 00:45:11,000
Speaker 1: game together, they got them to trade coded messages in

787
00:45:11,120 --> 00:45:15,400
Speaker 1: order to play a game of twenty questions without talking. Okay,

788
00:45:15,440 --> 00:45:18,840
Speaker 1: so this is communication that goes beyond merely just push

789
00:45:18,840 --> 00:45:21,280
Speaker 1: that button, push that button, right, and but it's still

790
00:45:21,480 --> 00:45:23,480
Speaker 1: one of the things worth pointing out is that it

791
00:45:23,640 --> 00:45:26,480
Speaker 1: is still coded communication. Now that they had a pretty

792
00:45:26,560 --> 00:45:29,200
Speaker 1: high success rate, the setup is a is a whole

793
00:45:29,200 --> 00:45:31,319
Speaker 1: lot like the last experiment. You've got to you've got

794
00:45:31,320 --> 00:45:34,280
Speaker 1: a cinder wearing an e G cap to read their brain,

795
00:45:34,400 --> 00:45:36,840
Speaker 1: and you've got a receiver under a t MS coil

796
00:45:37,000 --> 00:45:41,000
Speaker 1: to uh to give them information. Except what's different here

797
00:45:41,120 --> 00:45:44,000
Speaker 1: is that instead of the t MS coil giving somebody

798
00:45:44,080 --> 00:45:47,600
Speaker 1: a jerk hand movement in the hand, it gives them

799
00:45:47,640 --> 00:45:50,080
Speaker 1: what we were talking about earlier, a phosphene of vision,

800
00:45:50,520 --> 00:45:54,279
Speaker 1: and they can use that to decode information sent by

801
00:45:54,320 --> 00:45:57,120
Speaker 1: the person in the e G cap. And by trading

802
00:45:57,120 --> 00:46:00,920
Speaker 1: information back and forth this way, by being able to

803
00:46:01,280 --> 00:46:04,399
Speaker 1: answer yes or no questions by sending them a phosphene

804
00:46:04,600 --> 00:46:09,319
Speaker 1: or not, these people can ask and answer questions to

805
00:46:09,400 --> 00:46:12,560
Speaker 1: play a game of twenty questions to guess an object

806
00:46:13,760 --> 00:46:16,919
Speaker 1: without any words or language. So the basic ideas say

807
00:46:16,960 --> 00:46:20,120
Speaker 1: you have a parakeet in mind, the person asks a

808
00:46:20,239 --> 00:46:22,920
Speaker 1: question that they select from a square from a screen,

809
00:46:23,040 --> 00:46:25,960
Speaker 1: like can this thing fly? And then the person in

810
00:46:26,000 --> 00:46:29,000
Speaker 1: the e G cap gives a stimulus by looking at

811
00:46:29,040 --> 00:46:31,920
Speaker 1: two different lights to answer yes or no, And then

812
00:46:31,960 --> 00:46:34,040
Speaker 1: that goes back to the person who answered the question

813
00:46:34,200 --> 00:46:36,480
Speaker 1: and they get They get a sense of whether the

814
00:46:36,480 --> 00:46:38,520
Speaker 1: answer is yes or no by whether or not they

815
00:46:38,520 --> 00:46:41,280
Speaker 1: get this vision of light from the from the coil,

816
00:46:41,680 --> 00:46:44,160
Speaker 1: and by going back and forth this way they can

817
00:46:44,200 --> 00:46:47,480
Speaker 1: solve the puzzle and eventually figure out what the object is.

818
00:46:47,800 --> 00:46:50,279
Speaker 1: And this set up allowed the people in the experimental

819
00:46:50,280 --> 00:46:52,759
Speaker 1: group to win seventy two percent of the games. And

820
00:46:52,840 --> 00:46:55,840
Speaker 1: so there's a control group where no genuine information was

821
00:46:55,880 --> 00:46:58,600
Speaker 1: being traded back and forth, and only eight percent of

822
00:46:58,640 --> 00:47:02,919
Speaker 1: those participants were all to correctly identify the object. So

823
00:47:04,160 --> 00:47:07,640
Speaker 1: pretty cool. This is twenty questions without words. Well, actually

824
00:47:07,680 --> 00:47:10,000
Speaker 1: know there were words because you had to select the

825
00:47:10,120 --> 00:47:13,160
Speaker 1: questions to go back and forth, but the answers didn't

826
00:47:13,160 --> 00:47:16,960
Speaker 1: require words. It was just coded brain signals, the flashes

827
00:47:16,960 --> 00:47:20,440
Speaker 1: of light in the mind. Yeah, okay, So the authors

828
00:47:20,480 --> 00:47:22,799
Speaker 1: themselves point out a couple of limitations at the end.

829
00:47:22,840 --> 00:47:26,480
Speaker 1: One of them is that the kind of obvious thing

830
00:47:26,560 --> 00:47:33,120
Speaker 1: is that this doesn't necessarily provide any better communication than talking, right,

831
00:47:33,120 --> 00:47:35,960
Speaker 1: It's it's it feels very hamstrong that you're having to

832
00:47:35,960 --> 00:47:40,279
Speaker 1: to to rely on this convoluted method of flashes, where

833
00:47:40,520 --> 00:47:43,800
Speaker 1: when really we have far better means of communication and artists,

834
00:47:44,000 --> 00:47:46,240
Speaker 1: it would be much easier to play the game by

835
00:47:46,239 --> 00:47:50,160
Speaker 1: by text messages or just by talking. But they point

836
00:47:50,160 --> 00:47:53,240
Speaker 1: out how well, even something like this could probably help

837
00:47:53,280 --> 00:47:56,799
Speaker 1: in somebody who has UH, for example, the inability to

838
00:47:56,840 --> 00:47:59,520
Speaker 1: move or speak if it broke as aphasia or something

839
00:47:59,560 --> 00:48:03,479
Speaker 1: like that, um or if it's being played between people

840
00:48:03,480 --> 00:48:06,439
Speaker 1: who don't speak the same language. So so that that's

841
00:48:06,560 --> 00:48:09,440
Speaker 1: possibly a good point. But then they also point out

842
00:48:09,440 --> 00:48:11,680
Speaker 1: that this is just sort of a proof of concept

843
00:48:11,719 --> 00:48:15,160
Speaker 1: for technologies that could become much more power and powerful

844
00:48:15,160 --> 00:48:19,279
Speaker 1: and sensitive in the future, and that's the real question. Yeah.

845
00:48:19,280 --> 00:48:21,040
Speaker 1: And then the other thing they point out is a

846
00:48:21,080 --> 00:48:24,040
Speaker 1: limitation of their own study, is that it doesn't allow

847
00:48:24,160 --> 00:48:28,080
Speaker 1: bi directional transfer of information. The information is going from

848
00:48:28,200 --> 00:48:31,000
Speaker 1: one person to the other, but it would be very

849
00:48:31,040 --> 00:48:34,480
Speaker 1: interesting to hook up both the sender and the recipient,

850
00:48:34,640 --> 00:48:37,399
Speaker 1: or both people at least with both capabilities. So you've

851
00:48:37,440 --> 00:48:40,200
Speaker 1: got an e G and a t MS coil and

852
00:48:40,239 --> 00:48:43,759
Speaker 1: you can send information back and forth both ways, which

853
00:48:43,840 --> 00:48:47,239
Speaker 1: is when things would really start getting creepy. All right,

854
00:48:47,280 --> 00:48:50,000
Speaker 1: So there's a taste of where we are with the type,

855
00:48:50,080 --> 00:48:52,319
Speaker 1: with the with the research and the technology where and

856
00:48:52,320 --> 00:48:55,120
Speaker 1: in an idea of where we may be going. So

857
00:48:55,400 --> 00:48:57,400
Speaker 1: how do we prepare for and what's it gonna be

858
00:48:57,480 --> 00:49:02,880
Speaker 1: like as these more advanced telepathic technologies become available and

859
00:49:02,920 --> 00:49:05,239
Speaker 1: even become a part of our life. Well, I think

860
00:49:05,239 --> 00:49:09,200
Speaker 1: it's interesting because it's a question whether these have really

861
00:49:09,360 --> 00:49:12,000
Speaker 1: changed that concern we brought up at the beginning of

862
00:49:12,040 --> 00:49:17,080
Speaker 1: the episode about linguistic versus non linguistic telepathy. Um, if

863
00:49:17,080 --> 00:49:21,040
Speaker 1: it's just saying that you will be able to send

864
00:49:21,320 --> 00:49:25,120
Speaker 1: coded messages like like this kind of binary morse code

865
00:49:25,200 --> 00:49:28,520
Speaker 1: type thing we were talking about earlier between brains, that's

866
00:49:28,560 --> 00:49:31,120
Speaker 1: one thing. If it were to somehow become the case

867
00:49:31,200 --> 00:49:35,400
Speaker 1: that you could send something more complex and difficult to quantify,

868
00:49:35,640 --> 00:49:41,680
Speaker 1: like a non encoded thought or memory or something like that,

869
00:49:41,680 --> 00:49:44,279
Speaker 1: that would be very interesting. But I don't know if

870
00:49:44,320 --> 00:49:47,279
Speaker 1: that's even possible, because, like we talked about with our

871
00:49:47,320 --> 00:49:51,200
Speaker 1: puppet theater analogy, your puppet theater is not exactly the

872
00:49:51,239 --> 00:49:54,840
Speaker 1: same as somebody else's puppet theater. They can't just put

873
00:49:54,920 --> 00:49:58,640
Speaker 1: electrodes in your brain and say, well, I'm going to

874
00:49:58,719 --> 00:50:01,759
Speaker 1: share this, uh, this image by lighting up exactly the

875
00:50:01,800 --> 00:50:04,560
Speaker 1: same neurons in your brain that are lit up in

876
00:50:04,680 --> 00:50:08,440
Speaker 1: somebody else's brain. You don't have the same neurons as them.

877
00:50:08,480 --> 00:50:10,960
Speaker 1: Everybody's brain is going to be a little bit different.

878
00:50:11,360 --> 00:50:14,000
Speaker 1: So I'm not sure how that would even work without

879
00:50:14,160 --> 00:50:17,319
Speaker 1: some kind of encoding back and forth. And this is

880
00:50:17,320 --> 00:50:19,680
Speaker 1: something that's been pointed out in some of the criticism

881
00:50:19,719 --> 00:50:23,600
Speaker 1: of these studies and the supposed implications of it, Again,

882
00:50:23,640 --> 00:50:27,320
Speaker 1: they are just sending coded messages, right, It's still basically language.

883
00:50:27,320 --> 00:50:31,280
Speaker 1: It's not emotions. Ideas thoughts though the one about making

884
00:50:31,280 --> 00:50:33,680
Speaker 1: the hand jerk or making the tail wag is kind

885
00:50:33,680 --> 00:50:36,839
Speaker 1: of interesting because that's motor control. But for the most

886
00:50:36,880 --> 00:50:39,040
Speaker 1: part of these situations where you could still lie, it's

887
00:50:39,080 --> 00:50:43,440
Speaker 1: not like it's so this direct, you know, unfiltered communication system. Yeah,

888
00:50:43,840 --> 00:50:46,120
Speaker 1: but what would that be like that? That's the thing

889
00:50:46,160 --> 00:50:48,120
Speaker 1: I keep coming back to, what would what would it

890
00:50:48,160 --> 00:50:51,719
Speaker 1: be like to have this communal mind experience with someone else?

891
00:50:51,840 --> 00:50:54,200
Speaker 1: And in researching this, I came across a really cool

892
00:50:54,360 --> 00:50:58,799
Speaker 1: u A in magazine article by Peter Watt's titled Hive Consciousness.

893
00:50:59,239 --> 00:51:03,080
Speaker 1: And in this he points out that the brain that

894
00:51:03,239 --> 00:51:06,560
Speaker 1: makes us who we are, you know, essentially, it quotes,

895
00:51:06,640 --> 00:51:11,840
Speaker 1: spreads across two cerebritl hemispheres connected by the corpus colossum,

896
00:51:11,840 --> 00:51:16,879
Speaker 1: a fat, meaty pipe more than two hundred million accents thick. Yeah,

897
00:51:16,920 --> 00:51:19,399
Speaker 1: this sort of the idea that you've already got two

898
00:51:19,480 --> 00:51:22,080
Speaker 1: brains in a way, and in fact, he points out

899
00:51:22,239 --> 00:51:24,440
Speaker 1: that if you were to cleave these hemispheres in two

900
00:51:24,520 --> 00:51:28,719
Speaker 1: and that's indeed a last ditch surgery that sometimes a

901
00:51:29,120 --> 00:51:31,279
Speaker 1: uh SEE employee to deal with to deal with certain

902
00:51:31,320 --> 00:51:34,760
Speaker 1: forms of epilepsy, each half would go its own way,

903
00:51:34,800 --> 00:51:37,640
Speaker 1: developing its own taste and beliefs. And to support this,

904
00:51:37,719 --> 00:51:41,080
Speaker 1: he points to uh a talk that was given by

905
00:51:41,600 --> 00:51:46,560
Speaker 1: noted neuroscientist Villano Ramaschandren at the two thousand six Beyond

906
00:51:46,640 --> 00:51:49,160
Speaker 1: Belief Conference, and you can find video of this on YouTube.

907
00:51:49,200 --> 00:51:51,719
Speaker 1: I'll try and link to the clip on the landing

908
00:51:51,719 --> 00:51:53,279
Speaker 1: page for this episode of Stuff to Boil Your Mind

909
00:51:53,280 --> 00:51:56,880
Speaker 1: dot com. But Ramachandren points the he shares an account

910
00:51:56,920 --> 00:52:00,200
Speaker 1: of a split brain patient with a Christian hemisphere and

911
00:52:00,239 --> 00:52:03,200
Speaker 1: an atheist one UH and they have to end up

912
00:52:03,239 --> 00:52:06,759
Speaker 1: having to teach the hemispheres to communicate with each other.

913
00:52:07,000 --> 00:52:09,680
Speaker 1: So the the general idea here, I think was that

914
00:52:09,719 --> 00:52:14,520
Speaker 1: he's saying that the corpus colosum helps uh homogenize the

915
00:52:14,560 --> 00:52:19,120
Speaker 1: two different brains. It creates the conscious illusion that your

916
00:52:19,160 --> 00:52:22,160
Speaker 1: hemispheres are in accord with one another. But if you're

917
00:52:22,160 --> 00:52:24,640
Speaker 1: able to sever them and you don't have this high

918
00:52:24,680 --> 00:52:29,160
Speaker 1: bandwidth connection between them, they're very much two different minds. Yeah,

919
00:52:29,200 --> 00:52:31,360
Speaker 1: and it's not a gradual separation either. It's not like

920
00:52:31,360 --> 00:52:34,239
Speaker 1: a musical duo breaking up and then each struggles for

921
00:52:34,320 --> 00:52:36,440
Speaker 1: years to find their own solo identity. You know, this

922
00:52:36,480 --> 00:52:38,680
Speaker 1: side of the brain eventually becomes atheists, and this side

923
00:52:38,680 --> 00:52:42,839
Speaker 1: eventually becomes a believer. No, scientists can actually induce hemispheric

924
00:52:43,080 --> 00:52:46,960
Speaker 1: isolation chemically in the brain, just shutting it down uh

925
00:52:47,160 --> 00:52:51,000
Speaker 1: and uh and then watching just without any delay that

926
00:52:51,160 --> 00:52:54,920
Speaker 1: the undrugged hemisphere sort of coming into its own, becoming

927
00:52:54,960 --> 00:53:00,640
Speaker 1: the primary decider, developing a whole new personality right there

928
00:53:00,640 --> 00:53:03,040
Speaker 1: in front of so, Like I I a neesthetize your

929
00:53:03,120 --> 00:53:05,880
Speaker 1: left brain and I suddenly see your right brain evil

930
00:53:05,960 --> 00:53:09,320
Speaker 1: twin emerges the dominant personality, which was really only half

931
00:53:09,360 --> 00:53:12,840
Speaker 1: of you before. Yeah, it reminds me of a character

932
00:53:13,040 --> 00:53:16,640
Speaker 1: in the Culture book by Enim Banks consider Flibus. There's

933
00:53:16,640 --> 00:53:22,040
Speaker 1: a character name uh Craiklin who has enhanced hemispheric task

934
00:53:22,120 --> 00:53:25,719
Speaker 1: division in his brain, but basically he sleeps with one

935
00:53:25,760 --> 00:53:28,279
Speaker 1: eye open. He can use a uni hemispheric sleep much

936
00:53:28,320 --> 00:53:30,960
Speaker 1: like a you know, like many animals out there that

937
00:53:31,000 --> 00:53:34,279
Speaker 1: never completely put their brain under uh. So, one third

938
00:53:34,280 --> 00:53:37,400
Speaker 1: of the time, one half of his brain sleeps and

939
00:53:37,400 --> 00:53:40,080
Speaker 1: he's a bit dreamy and vague. Another third of the

940
00:53:40,120 --> 00:53:42,759
Speaker 1: time he's all logic in numbers and doesn't communicate all

941
00:53:42,800 --> 00:53:45,080
Speaker 1: that well. And only one third of the time is

942
00:53:45,120 --> 00:53:48,520
Speaker 1: he fully awake with both sides of his brain making

943
00:53:48,640 --> 00:53:52,160
Speaker 1: up who he is. That's pretty cool, yeah, and uh yeah,

944
00:53:52,239 --> 00:53:53,719
Speaker 1: So it's it's interesting to think of it in terms

945
00:53:53,719 --> 00:53:56,680
Speaker 1: of Ramachandren's example. He he jokingly pointed out, what happens

946
00:53:56,680 --> 00:53:59,160
Speaker 1: if this individual dies? Does half his brain go to

947
00:53:59,200 --> 00:54:02,120
Speaker 1: heaven and one half go to hell? And uh? And

948
00:54:02,280 --> 00:54:05,640
Speaker 1: it makes us ask some difficult questions about consciousness itself,

949
00:54:06,080 --> 00:54:09,040
Speaker 1: because consciousness remains something of a mystery and when we

950
00:54:09,080 --> 00:54:12,000
Speaker 1: have a hell of a time unraveling and as author

951
00:54:12,080 --> 00:54:15,200
Speaker 1: our Scott Backer points that, we're trying to explain the

952
00:54:15,239 --> 00:54:18,400
Speaker 1: magic of a coin trick, right, but we're in a

953
00:54:18,440 --> 00:54:21,560
Speaker 1: horrible position because we are the magic that we're trying

954
00:54:21,560 --> 00:54:24,680
Speaker 1: to understand. We're trying to explain consciousness. You mean, yeah,

955
00:54:24,719 --> 00:54:27,520
Speaker 1: with consciousness and then but ultimately with any any time

956
00:54:27,560 --> 00:54:30,920
Speaker 1: time we try and tackle our you know, our our

957
00:54:30,960 --> 00:54:34,680
Speaker 1: cognition and our and our brain activity, and certainly we

958
00:54:34,680 --> 00:54:37,240
Speaker 1: try to translate it into another being or try to

959
00:54:37,280 --> 00:54:40,160
Speaker 1: bring two of them together. We have to we have

960
00:54:40,239 --> 00:54:44,120
Speaker 1: to unravel the magic of the human experience. Yeah, well,

961
00:54:44,160 --> 00:54:47,520
Speaker 1: we mentioned this earlier. I mean, when you start under

962
00:54:48,040 --> 00:54:50,960
Speaker 1: understanding consciousness for some reason, that's kind of a scary thing.

963
00:54:51,600 --> 00:54:55,239
Speaker 1: Like we we like this magical illusion of the unified

964
00:54:55,320 --> 00:54:59,840
Speaker 1: self to to persist. And when you start separating consciousness

965
00:54:59,840 --> 00:55:03,480
Speaker 1: in to constituent parts or understanding I mean we I'm

966
00:55:03,520 --> 00:55:06,600
Speaker 1: not saying we fully understand consciousness, but even understanding little

967
00:55:06,640 --> 00:55:09,960
Speaker 1: bits that might inform how it comes together, it's a

968
00:55:10,000 --> 00:55:13,400
Speaker 1: little alarming. You don't like the idea that your consciousness

969
00:55:13,680 --> 00:55:17,320
Speaker 1: can be explained via, you know, a combination of different

970
00:55:17,320 --> 00:55:20,560
Speaker 1: processes in the brain. But one of the scary things

971
00:55:20,600 --> 00:55:22,880
Speaker 1: here is is the implication, going back to brain to

972
00:55:22,960 --> 00:55:29,240
Speaker 1: brain interfaces, that what if combining different brains with technology

973
00:55:29,360 --> 00:55:34,160
Speaker 1: in different skulls will become just as seamless as combining

974
00:55:34,239 --> 00:55:39,120
Speaker 1: the two hemispheres of your brain via the corpus colossum. Uh.

975
00:55:39,200 --> 00:55:44,799
Speaker 1: And it's such that maybe our producer Null and our

976
00:55:45,160 --> 00:55:48,239
Speaker 1: other co host, Christian would link their brains up via

977
00:55:48,400 --> 00:55:51,480
Speaker 1: computer and it wouldn't feel like they were two different

978
00:55:51,480 --> 00:55:55,799
Speaker 1: brains connected. It would just feel like they were one brain. Yeah,

979
00:55:55,920 --> 00:55:58,440
Speaker 1: like essentially would be like you know, like a Vultron

980
00:55:58,520 --> 00:56:03,120
Speaker 1: scenario or or or like an assemblage of of keywords.

981
00:56:03,160 --> 00:56:05,399
Speaker 1: So like, oh, we we need somebody who's really good

982
00:56:05,440 --> 00:56:09,040
Speaker 1: at maritime law, but we also need somebody who really

983
00:56:09,040 --> 00:56:11,600
Speaker 1: it's really tuned into pop culture and we need to

984
00:56:11,640 --> 00:56:13,080
Speaker 1: go out and speak. Well, what can we do? Well,

985
00:56:13,120 --> 00:56:15,480
Speaker 1: let's just take these two individuals, hook them up together

986
00:56:15,920 --> 00:56:19,200
Speaker 1: and make them manifest a new individual who is a

987
00:56:19,200 --> 00:56:24,239
Speaker 1: perfect uh you know, convergence of those two uh skill sets. Yeah. Now,

988
00:56:24,560 --> 00:56:26,759
Speaker 1: now again, I want to say, who knows if such

989
00:56:26,760 --> 00:56:28,719
Speaker 1: a thing as possible? We don't want to get to

990
00:56:29,040 --> 00:56:32,320
Speaker 1: uh to hype heavy here and suggest that we we've

991
00:56:32,360 --> 00:56:35,279
Speaker 1: now demonstrated that it's possible to link brains up in

992
00:56:35,280 --> 00:56:37,959
Speaker 1: a way that they seamlessly combined. But just the mere

993
00:56:38,000 --> 00:56:45,120
Speaker 1: possibility of that is a very like human experience changing proposition. Yeah,

994
00:56:45,160 --> 00:56:47,960
Speaker 1: and and what are the legal ramifications? So if if me,

995
00:56:48,080 --> 00:56:51,600
Speaker 1: if you and I, if we conjoined our brains with

996
00:56:51,680 --> 00:56:55,760
Speaker 1: some fancy helmets and essentially became this different mind state,

997
00:56:55,920 --> 00:56:59,880
Speaker 1: and in that mind state broke a law or invented something,

998
00:57:00,520 --> 00:57:04,160
Speaker 1: you know, who owns that invention? Who's responsible for that crime.

999
00:57:04,480 --> 00:57:06,440
Speaker 1: And then it gets even weirder if you look at

1000
00:57:06,480 --> 00:57:09,040
Speaker 1: our own brains and think of it as two halves

1001
00:57:09,040 --> 00:57:12,120
Speaker 1: of brains that are connected together. It's like which individual

1002
00:57:12,239 --> 00:57:14,840
Speaker 1: has the right to exist and even his personhood that

1003
00:57:15,320 --> 00:57:19,600
Speaker 1: the Joe Robert being Joe Robert or the two halves

1004
00:57:19,840 --> 00:57:21,520
Speaker 1: of Joe in your head and the two halves of

1005
00:57:21,600 --> 00:57:24,680
Speaker 1: Robert in mind. I mean, do you think it's possible

1006
00:57:24,760 --> 00:57:27,400
Speaker 1: for one hemisphere of your brain to conspire to kill

1007
00:57:27,480 --> 00:57:30,520
Speaker 1: the other one? Yeah, or sue it, or or get

1008
00:57:30,520 --> 00:57:33,760
Speaker 1: out of some sort of a neural divorce. We will

1009
00:57:33,800 --> 00:57:38,880
Speaker 1: be all right, brain from now on. Uh yeah. Well, anyway,

1010
00:57:38,880 --> 00:57:41,480
Speaker 1: if we've got you worried about this based on this

1011
00:57:41,520 --> 00:57:44,800
Speaker 1: final discussion, it is a good thing to consider in

1012
00:57:44,800 --> 00:57:47,880
Speaker 1: the long run. But please do remember that these these

1013
00:57:47,880 --> 00:57:51,320
Speaker 1: experiments we've been talking about in this episode don't indicate

1014
00:57:51,440 --> 00:57:54,120
Speaker 1: anything like that yet. Like we we certainly don't want

1015
00:57:54,120 --> 00:57:58,120
Speaker 1: to get into the overhype machine that the types of communication,

1016
00:57:58,240 --> 00:58:01,480
Speaker 1: not the overhype machine, but maybe the over dream machine.

1017
00:58:01,560 --> 00:58:03,920
Speaker 1: You like, take these and run wild with the possibilities,

1018
00:58:03,960 --> 00:58:08,280
Speaker 1: But don't you know, this is still super super rudimentary communication.

1019
00:58:08,360 --> 00:58:13,000
Speaker 1: Like we said, it's it's very coded, It requires extremely

1020
00:58:13,080 --> 00:58:18,760
Speaker 1: bulky and difficult and expensive equipment, and it's it's it's

1021
00:58:18,760 --> 00:58:21,320
Speaker 1: impressive in one sense that it can be done at all,

1022
00:58:21,520 --> 00:58:23,760
Speaker 1: But what can be done with it is not that

1023
00:58:23,840 --> 00:58:27,040
Speaker 1: impressive yet. Indeed, who knows how impressive it will be

1024
00:58:27,160 --> 00:58:30,200
Speaker 1: or is impressive the right word? Who knows how daunting

1025
00:58:30,320 --> 00:58:36,040
Speaker 1: and uh and mind bending it will be? Yeah? Game changing? Alright. Well,

1026
00:58:36,080 --> 00:58:39,800
Speaker 1: there you have it, a little exploration into technological telepathy

1027
00:58:39,880 --> 00:58:44,760
Speaker 1: and some of the possible near future and far future ramifications.

1028
00:58:45,560 --> 00:58:47,840
Speaker 1: Before we head out here, I just want to remind everyone, Hey,

1029
00:58:47,840 --> 00:58:49,400
Speaker 1: don't over to stuff to Blow your mind dot com.

1030
00:58:49,480 --> 00:58:52,080
Speaker 1: If you want to check out all the podcast episodes,

1031
00:58:52,120 --> 00:58:54,840
Speaker 1: all the videos, blog postlinks out to our social media accounts,

1032
00:58:55,000 --> 00:58:58,320
Speaker 1: it's all there. And in the meantime, how can they

1033
00:58:58,360 --> 00:59:01,480
Speaker 1: get in touch with us? How can how can they

1034
00:59:01,480 --> 00:59:05,800
Speaker 1: communicate the contents of their brain to our brains the

1035
00:59:06,440 --> 00:59:08,200
Speaker 1: magic of the internet. Well you can use some good

1036
00:59:08,200 --> 00:59:12,120
Speaker 1: old Stone age linguistic technology and type out an email

1037
00:59:12,200 --> 00:59:14,080
Speaker 1: and send it to us that blow the mind at

1038
00:59:14,080 --> 00:59:27,920
Speaker 1: House of Works dot com for more on this and

1039
00:59:28,040 --> 00:59:54,160
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Because it how stuff works dot Com.

1040
00:59:36,680 --> 00:59:37,000
Speaker 1: Remember