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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and

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Speaker 1: we're back for part two of our discussion of this

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Speaker 1: present moment, the now, and we're trying to get inside

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Speaker 1: the now. So in our last episode we talked some

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Speaker 1: about the physics of now, but the history of time

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Speaker 1: keeping and about the physical concept of now, of the present,

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Speaker 1: and whether there is such a thing as now. Now.

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Speaker 1: We're going to keep doing this, probably accidentally several time

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Speaker 1: and now all the time, but physicists in general would

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Speaker 1: probably say that there is no such thing as now

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Speaker 1: from a universal point of view, that relativity shows us

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Speaker 1: that there isn't simultaneity across the universe, and there's no

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Speaker 1: external objective way to to sort synchronize events into and

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Speaker 1: now in the timeline of the universe right and and similarly,

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Speaker 1: you can't say I'm gonna do x uh eight now's

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Speaker 1: from right now. It just doesn't work. Yeah, there's no

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Speaker 1: apparent unit of now in in physical time keeping either.

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Speaker 1: But physics aside, we still do have this profound sense

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Speaker 1: of the present. I mean there's a reason these concepts

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Speaker 1: appear in our language. Why do we have a word

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Speaker 1: for now? Why do we have a word for the

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Speaker 1: present if there isn't something relevant going on there? So

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Speaker 1: this time we wanted to explore the philosophy of the present,

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Speaker 1: the philosophy of now, and the psychology and neuroscience of now.

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Speaker 1: What's going on in our minds when we perceive a

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Speaker 1: present moment, when we think about what's happening right now?

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Speaker 1: You know, I know I've mentioned New age and spiritual

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Speaker 1: author Eckart Tootle on the show before and how I

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Speaker 1: found some of his ideas concerning mindfulness rather helpful. Uh,

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Speaker 1: And what his central thesis is that the present is

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Speaker 1: is all we have and this too, being part of

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Speaker 1: time is an illusion. Oh great, so we've got nothing, Well,

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Speaker 1: you've got, but there's a lot to be had and nothing.

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Speaker 1: Here's here's a quote from totally. He says, quote time

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Speaker 1: isn't precious at all because it is an illusion. What

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Speaker 1: you perceive as precious is not time. But the one

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Speaker 1: point that is out of time the now. And I

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Speaker 1: really like that the idea that maybe we shouldn't think

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Speaker 1: of now as a point within time, but a point

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Speaker 1: outside of time. Yeah, I kind of like that too.

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Speaker 1: I think it might be easy for, you know, some

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Speaker 1: kind of hard science minded people to think of that

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Speaker 1: as like, oh, that's just new age nonsense, that doesn't

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Speaker 1: mean anything. I think that kind of does mean something.

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Speaker 1: I mean, think about your experience of time. What do

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Speaker 1: you have the power to act on in your own experience? Like,

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Speaker 1: what point of time do you have the power to

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Speaker 1: do something about. You can't really do anything about the

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Speaker 1: past past, because it's already happened. You can remember it,

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Speaker 1: but you can't change it except in your memory by

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Speaker 1: distorting it. And don't underestimate the power of that. No,

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Speaker 1: that can happen, but you can't actually change what happened

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Speaker 1: in reality. You can change your memory, but the past

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Speaker 1: is gone. You can't really change the future because it's

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Speaker 1: not here yet. You don't have access to it. Right,

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Speaker 1: So it's you know, you don't have any power over

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Speaker 1: things that are causally disconnected from you down the chain,

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Speaker 1: And in a weird way, you almost don't really have

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Speaker 1: the power to change the present either, because it's happening.

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Speaker 1: That's right, it's happening right now, at least as you

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Speaker 1: sense it. I mean, to whatever extent there is such

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Speaker 1: a thing as the present in our experience, it's what

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Speaker 1: you're experiencing, not really what you're doing. So where where

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Speaker 1: do you live? Where does action happen? Where does change

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Speaker 1: take place? Yeah? Is it? To what extent? Is it?

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Speaker 1: Is it a conscious thing? Is it is? It? Is?

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Speaker 1: It's subconscious? Is it a series of subconscious processes that

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Speaker 1: are going on? Are we all as as our friend, uh,

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Speaker 1: Scott Baker who put it, Are we all just slaves

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Speaker 1: to the darkness that comes before and therefore there's no

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Speaker 1: there's no real choice or or or agency at all. Well,

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Speaker 1: I'd say that I think our Scott Baker and Eckhart

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Speaker 1: total are on exactly the same page here that it's

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Speaker 1: just a question of whether you make it sound positive

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Speaker 1: or make it sound negative. I never thought of that before. Now,

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Speaker 1: wouldn't you kind of agree? Yeah? Yeah, I think there's

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Speaker 1: a valid point. Yeah, Uh, totally is just totally is

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Speaker 1: selling a a more positive vision of what the world

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Speaker 1: can be, um and uh and Baker baman not. That's

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Speaker 1: not to say that Baker doesn't have some optimistic ideas

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Speaker 1: in mind, but he has a much darker vision of

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Speaker 1: of of reality of course, and this we're already getting

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Speaker 1: into the realm of philosophy, right, and there is a

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Speaker 1: heck of a lot of philosophy of time out there.

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Speaker 1: Oh yes, yes, yeah, I mean the nature of the

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Speaker 1: present moment is it's tied up with our experience of reality.

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Speaker 1: So it is of course the domain of philosophy. It's

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Speaker 1: one of the most argued about topics in all the philosophy.

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Speaker 1: You have multiple different schools of thought that weigh in

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Speaker 1: on the nature of now and time and the place

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Speaker 1: of time, of now in time, and we could we

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Speaker 1: could podcast until the end of time about just the

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Speaker 1: various approaches to this. Yeah. I would say one reason

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Speaker 1: that philosophy of time is so popular is because it's

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Speaker 1: so closely related to the philosophy of the perception of

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Speaker 1: free will. Um. This came up actually just a minute ago,

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Speaker 1: and what I was talking about comparing you know, our

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Speaker 1: Scott Baker and Eckartley. In both cases, I think they

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Speaker 1: might be add I don't want to speak too much

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Speaker 1: for totally, but I think in both cases it sounds

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Speaker 1: like they're advocating a universe in which we just kind

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Speaker 1: of accept that we are not necessarily the causal agents

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Speaker 1: ourselves that bring about change. That we have the experience,

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Speaker 1: you know, sort of the sensation of being behind our

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Speaker 1: own actions. But you can't get behind the behind the actions.

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Speaker 1: You know that that you as you are acting now

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Speaker 1: or a product of things that came before, and though

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Speaker 1: those consequences that came before, we'll have consequences that echo

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Speaker 1: into the future. But you don't necessarily have free will

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Speaker 1: in the classical sense under this understanding of time, because

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Speaker 1: where would the free will take place? What would happen?

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Speaker 1: What changes in the now? Alright, So so let's just

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Speaker 1: roll through some of the broad categories of philosophy of

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Speaker 1: time and the now, uh, and and again again. Each

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Speaker 1: of these is a topic that we could easily do

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Speaker 1: an entire podcast episode on and and maybe very well

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Speaker 1: returned to in the future. So first up, we have

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Speaker 1: to touch on fatalism. My favorite. This is the notion

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Speaker 1: to him that the future is unavoidable. With enough data,

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Speaker 1: or perhaps a robust enough simulation, you could accurately predict

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Speaker 1: all future events. What's more, you wouldn't be able to

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Speaker 1: avoid those events. The future is not open, but rit

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Speaker 1: closed in inexorable, and this entails a good bit more

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Speaker 1: than the present, but we'll see how it all ties in. Shortly,

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Speaker 1: I would say that this point of view and my

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Speaker 1: experience is more popular with physicist than it is with philosophers,

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Speaker 1: because a lot of philosophers, I think, are are caught

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Speaker 1: up in the idea of explaining agency, like they're really

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Speaker 1: trying to find free will and agency and our actions.

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Speaker 1: But you know, physicists just say, well, look at what

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Speaker 1: the math says. It looks. You know, every indication from

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Speaker 1: our mathematical model of the universe is that past and

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Speaker 1: present and future they're all just part of the same block.

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Speaker 1: And that's a block of the universe that exists. So

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Speaker 1: what how how could you change it? In what sense

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Speaker 1: would you be altering the future? Up next, we have

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Speaker 1: a reductionism with respect to time. So the idea here

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Speaker 1: is that time does not exist independently of the events

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Speaker 1: that occur in time. When we talk about time, we're

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Speaker 1: talking about temporal relations among things and events. And this

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Speaker 1: was an argument of Aristotle and many others. So where

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Speaker 1: do you think this would fit into our idea of

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Speaker 1: modern physics? It seems like modern physics except for the

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Speaker 1: people who don't believe in time like you know, Julian

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Speaker 1: Barber and all those. Most modern physicists would probably not

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Speaker 1: agree with this, would you say, because spacetime is spacetime? Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I would think so. Up next, we have platonism, as

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Speaker 1: in Plato with respect to time, Plato, Newton, and others.

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Speaker 1: They counter reductionism with respect to time. The general ideas

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Speaker 1: there with the idea that time is the independent container

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Speaker 1: in which all else is stored. Okay, so this sounds

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Speaker 1: a little bit more like the spacetime idea, like spacetime

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Speaker 1: could exist without the objects in it. Maybe. Yeah. Now

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Speaker 1: this next one is a doozy and it takes us

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Speaker 1: all the way up to Uh. This is mc taggart's argument,

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Speaker 1: which he made in his work The Unreality of Time. J. N. E.

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Speaker 1: McTaggart argued that there is no such thing as time.

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Speaker 1: He argued that there are two ways to order time,

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Speaker 1: A series in which we measure everything by its relation

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Speaker 1: to the present, and B series, in which we measure

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Speaker 1: things by the relationship between two moments in time. Each

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Speaker 1: one comes with it share of complications and Nictaggart believes

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Speaker 1: that time containing both A and B series is not real,

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Speaker 1: but other thinkers have come along to accept either A

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Speaker 1: or B rather than reject time itself. So this is

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Speaker 1: sort of asking the question of whether time actually flows, like,

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Speaker 1: is there such a thing as the present? Is there

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Speaker 1: happening in the universe? And if things really do happen,

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Speaker 1: that would seem to be the A series, Right. If

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Speaker 1: if there's a present moment moving along through the history

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Speaker 1: of the universe, that that's the A series, and the

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Speaker 1: B series would be that time is just a It's

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Speaker 1: just a measurement between change events, right, So that the

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Speaker 1: subset here people who latch onto A or B A

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Speaker 1: theory is that is that A series is all there

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Speaker 1: is and anything that looks like B is really A.

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Speaker 1: In other words, time passes yet a past a present

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Speaker 1: in the future. This is also referred to as the

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Speaker 1: tensed view of time. And you have B theory, which

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Speaker 1: this say is B is all there is, anything that

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Speaker 1: looks like A is actually be and time time does

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Speaker 1: not pass the tense less theory of right. You know,

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Speaker 1: we talked about this, and I think maybe we should

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Speaker 1: come back in the future outside of this discussion of

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Speaker 1: the present moment and now to do a whole episode

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Speaker 1: on the idea that time doesn't exist, because I think

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Speaker 1: this is not a majority viewpoint among physicists. You know,

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Speaker 1: the majority physicists might say nothing actually happens. There is

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Speaker 1: no present moment in the universe, but there is a

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Speaker 1: time in the universe. Right. It's it's such a mind

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Speaker 1: blowing topic that we we do need more time to

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Speaker 1: consider it, and we will come back to it at

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Speaker 1: a future point in time. Right, that's when we'll discuss

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Speaker 1: that there's no such thing as time. Of course, it's

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Speaker 1: all an illusion. But yeah, so hopefully then we can

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Speaker 1: talk about Julian Barber and McTaggart and the others who

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Speaker 1: agree with them. Alright, So moving along with the sort

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Speaker 1: of broad schools of the philosophy of time, we have

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Speaker 1: a present is um. This is an a theorist approach

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Speaker 1: that states that only the present exists. Things outside of

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Speaker 1: the present. So the claw source of roads, Genghis Khan,

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Speaker 1: or the next Fast and Furious movie does not exist.

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Speaker 1: They just literally are not real until they are currently existing. Right.

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Speaker 1: If it's not currently existing, it's not a thing, be

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Speaker 1: it Genghis Khan or or or a movie that is

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Speaker 1: inevitable but not yet made. So the only thing that

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Speaker 1: exists is the present moment, and the past and the

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Speaker 1: future are not real and do not exist. Uh yeah,

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Speaker 1: that seems like it would be hard to make sense

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Speaker 1: of for me, It would be hard to make sense

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Speaker 1: of that picture of the universe given um, given like

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Speaker 1: the lack of simultaneity you know, across the universe and

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Speaker 1: the fact that things can appear out of order to

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Speaker 1: different observers based on the speed of light and all that,

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Speaker 1: right exactly, so, we have another another argument that might

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Speaker 1: work better with all that, and that is eternalism. This

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Speaker 1: is one of several non presidentism approaches, and it argues

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Speaker 1: that objects from the past and future exist. We can

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Speaker 1: call these non present objects. They exist just as much

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Speaker 1: as present objects. So the Clossus of Roads and Genghis

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Speaker 1: Khan exist just as much as you and I, even

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Speaker 1: if they are no longer present. And here's the other thing,

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Speaker 1: the inevitable next the Fast and the Furious movie is

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Speaker 1: much the same. It's as real as anything that's around

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Speaker 1: right now or existed in the past. But that's only

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Speaker 1: because it's actually going to happen. It's not like hypothetical

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Speaker 1: future things that never actually happen exist right now. Well,

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Speaker 1: that's the thing, it's ultimately hypothetical because something could occur,

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Speaker 1: or a series of things that could occur that would

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Speaker 1: obviously prevent the next Fast and Furious movie from happening.

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Speaker 1: But in that case it never would have existed to

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Speaker 1: begin with. Yeah, I mean, I mean, I would say

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Speaker 1: under this model, only the future that actually happens to

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Speaker 1: come to exist exists right now. But of course we

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Speaker 1: never got another Interspace movie, we know when we never

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Speaker 1: got to explore future um miniaturized adventures inside of Martin

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Speaker 1: short stomach. Oh but we will because Hollywood will continue

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Speaker 1: to be out of ideas for new things, and they

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Speaker 1: will just revisit old franchises until they're plowing into like

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Speaker 1: Police Academy reboots and stuff, and they've got to get

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Speaker 1: to Interspace two before they do the Police Academy reboot.

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Speaker 1: All right, well, I look forward to Interspace too, even

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Speaker 1: if I'm ultimately disappointed at how overwhelming the c g

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Speaker 1: I is. Alright, Beyond this, we have the growing Block

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Speaker 1: Universe theory of time. This is an anti presidentism approach

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Speaker 1: in which the universe is continually getting bigger because of

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Speaker 1: all this stuff we keep adding. So we're you know,

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Speaker 1: we're front loading time with new time, new stuff, new

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Speaker 1: space time. So every second that exists, we're essentially adding

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Speaker 1: a room onto the house because there's more for the

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Speaker 1: universe to contain since it contains past and present. Okay,

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Speaker 1: and then just a one added note on time travel

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Speaker 1: that I thought was interesting. So time travel cannot happen

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Speaker 1: in an eighth theory theorist president is um because the

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Speaker 1: present is all their is, so you can't travel into

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Speaker 1: the future of the past. Uh. And of course you know,

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Speaker 1: in addition to all the backward this is an addition

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Speaker 1: to all the backward causation is impossible talk, which is

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Speaker 1: all fruit for another discussion. Yeah, well, I think backward

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Speaker 1: time travel is also impossible under b theory, right. Yeah, well,

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Speaker 1: I mean I would say that that that is my

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Speaker 1: understanding as well. But we're really overdue too for a

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Speaker 1: proper time travel discussion on this show. Yeah, well, I

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Speaker 1: think we should take a quick break and when we

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Speaker 1: come back, we will start to look at the psychology

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Speaker 1: and neuroscience of our experience of now, what what happens

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Speaker 1: to the mind on the present moment? Thank alright, we're back.

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Speaker 1: So in our previous episode, we talked a little bit

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Speaker 1: about mental time travel uh in memory and how these

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Speaker 1: are core to our experience of time as flowing. We

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Speaker 1: remember what has come before, we anticipate and use mental

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Speaker 1: time travel or chronasthesia to understand what is going to happen.

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Speaker 1: And then we have to wonder what what what would

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Speaker 1: it be like to be un shackled from these I

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Speaker 1: mean that's kind of cord to a lot of meditative

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Speaker 1: exercises or even the flow states that we get into

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Speaker 1: with our our work or our hobbies, like what what

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Speaker 1: can we do to cut off the default mode network

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Speaker 1: and no longer worry about the past and the future

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Speaker 1: and live in the quote unquote present. Well, some answers

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Speaker 1: to this question can be found in an individual known

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Speaker 1: to psychologists as Patient K. This is a Toronto resident

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Speaker 1: who suffered severe brain damage during a motorcycle accident, and

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Speaker 1: he lost his episodic memory. So it's important to note

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Speaker 1: here he can still do all the things he learned

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Speaker 1: to do prior to the accident thanks to his procedural memory. Right, so,

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Speaker 1: if you lose your ability to make memories, you still

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Speaker 1: probably remember how to tie your shoes, right, you can't

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Speaker 1: remember what you had for breakfast? Right. So this guy

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Speaker 1: can speak, he can play games that he learned previously,

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Speaker 1: He can navigate his his neighborhood without becoming lost. But

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Speaker 1: he cannot remember what he did yesterday, and he cannot

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Speaker 1: acculate on what he's going to do tomorrow. He has

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Speaker 1: no autobiographical memory at all. Now, that second thing you

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Speaker 1: said is fascinating. So his ability to make memories is compromised.

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Speaker 1: And it's not just that now he can't remember what

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Speaker 1: he had for breakfast, can't remember, you know, what he

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Speaker 1: did yesterday. He also can't imagine what tomorrow will be like.

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Speaker 1: That's fascinating to me because it means, in some sense,

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Speaker 1: our ability to remember the past is necessary for our

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Speaker 1: ability to imagine the future. That forward and backward time

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Speaker 1: travel are inextricably linked. Yeah, and now something's pointed out

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Speaker 1: about this patient by Dan Falk and his book In

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Speaker 1: Search of Time, The History, Physics and Philosophy of Time.

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Speaker 1: He says that patient Casey is quote completely rooted in

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Speaker 1: the present, with no ability to move backwards for forward

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Speaker 1: cognitively in time. And here's the thing too, He's completely

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Speaker 1: unaware of his condition because he has no no memory,

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Speaker 1: he cannot form new memories of explanations of what's going

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Speaker 1: on here, and uh Daniel Shackter, who who wrote the

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Speaker 1: silent to seven Sins of Memory, which we've referenced on

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Speaker 1: the show before he had He has said that the

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Speaker 1: patient Casey is quote, a shell of a person, a fragment,

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Speaker 1: but also notes that Casey rates his own personal happiness

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Speaker 1: at a level of four out of five, so he's

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Speaker 1: he's he's quite happy, He's not in a state of misery.

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Speaker 1: And you have to, you know, ask to what to

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Speaker 1: what degree is he happy because he's unshackled from worrying

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Speaker 1: about the future and contemplating the future or remembering anything

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Speaker 1: in the past. Yeah, I mean that it's sort of

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Speaker 1: like asking like, would you like to be like that?

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Speaker 1: I mean, I think most people probably wouldn't, because you

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Speaker 1: would still feel that many opportunities for things that you

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Speaker 1: deeply care about in life are would be closed off

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Speaker 1: to you if you had this condition, even though the

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Speaker 1: having the condition might not be all that unpleasant in

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Speaker 1: the moment. Yeah, I mean, it comes down to that

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Speaker 1: description of a shell of a person. Would you like

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Speaker 1: to be a shell of a person who's tremendously happy

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Speaker 1: all the time? Four out of five, tremendously happy. I mean, well,

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Speaker 1: I don't know what would you rate yourself, Robert, Uh,

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Speaker 1: you know what out of well? It vary, you know,

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Speaker 1: it varies from moment to moment. I guess I would

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Speaker 1: say four out of five because I wouldn't want to

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Speaker 1: say five out of five. That's that doesn't leave me

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Speaker 1: any room for improvement. You could always be happier. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: But I you know, I I hesitated to give myself

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Speaker 1: a three. It's a complex question, you know. I hate

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Speaker 1: to answer well being questions in relation to coffee because

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Speaker 1: it's such a cliche. But I know mine is in

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Speaker 1: relation to coffee. It's like when I when I have

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Speaker 1: had a little bit of coffee, I'm a four. But

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Speaker 1: when I've had, you know, two cups of coffee, I'm

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Speaker 1: a two. Oh, because you get you get too jittery,

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Speaker 1: and I get that, I get the fear. Yeah, it's bad.

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Speaker 1: I have I have noticed that with my own caffeine consumption,

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Speaker 1: that the rate is a little different now. In his

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Speaker 1: book book, Falk also references another individual, a San Diego

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Speaker 1: resident named ep and he has nearly a nearly identical

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Speaker 1: condition to patient Casey and Likewise, he has described as

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Speaker 1: being quote happy all the time, I'm quote and devoid

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Speaker 1: of a stream of consciousness. He is trapped into present

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Speaker 1: without the ability to traverse either recorded memory or simulated future.

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Speaker 1: So this seems to show the same thing that he

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Speaker 1: his inability to think about events in the past also

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Speaker 1: prevents him from mentally exploring future events. Um, and I

359
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Speaker 1: know I've seen at some point there was a case

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Speaker 1: where one of these patients was being asked, uh, what

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Speaker 1: will you do tomorrow? And his answer was whatever is

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Speaker 1: most beneficial. That's that's that's revealing, like in a way,

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Speaker 1: he's he's more honest about the He's more honest in

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Speaker 1: his answer because he's he cannot engage in mental time travel. Right. Well,

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Speaker 1: if I ask you what you're gonna do tomorrow, you're

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Speaker 1: gonna kind of bluff a little bit, right, You're gonna say, well,

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna I think what I'm gonna do is I'm

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Speaker 1: gonna get up and do my normal stuff, do yoga,

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Speaker 1: have breakfast, whatever. You're kind of bluffing. You can't really

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Speaker 1: know that's what you're gonna do. You just think that's

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Speaker 1: probably what you're gonna do. Right, It's it's ultimately my answer.

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Speaker 1: It's gonna be just as inevitable as the next Fast

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Speaker 1: and Furious movie, you know. Um, But obviously many different

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Speaker 1: things could occur to to drive both of these trains

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Speaker 1: off the track. I guess the true answer would be

376
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Speaker 1: I'm gonna do whatever I do. Yeah. Uh, you know

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Speaker 1: I mentioned uh Eckartola already. I'm gonna come back to

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00:20:25,160 --> 00:20:28,359
Speaker 1: him one last time in this episode because there's a

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Speaker 1: wonderful children's book that he put out with Mutt's cartoonist

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Speaker 1: Patrick McDonald, titled Guardians of Being. And it looks at

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Speaker 1: our pets, cats and dogs in particular, and it looks

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Speaker 1: at them as windows into the formless, into the timeless,

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Speaker 1: the idea that that creatures are bound by neither past

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Speaker 1: nor present. And this enables us to better center ourselves

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Speaker 1: in the present. Uh and and and and you actually

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Speaker 1: reference this a little bit, uh in the first episode

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Speaker 1: talking about when you when you see the excitement that

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Speaker 1: your dog has for a walk, right, Well, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean there's there's like nothing happier in the entire

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Speaker 1: universe than Charlie about to go outside into the grass.

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Speaker 1: And uh, and you get the sense I mean probably

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Speaker 1: probably this is projection, but at least you get the

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Speaker 1: feeling that this is because it's all there is to

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Speaker 1: him right now. The only thing in the universe to

395
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Speaker 1: him is the thing he's excited about doing, and it's

396
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Speaker 1: he's seen all the signals it's about to happen. Like,

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Speaker 1: he's not worried about anything else. There's nothing else beyond

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Speaker 1: that thing. There's nothing really behind him. Is just all

399
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Speaker 1: about what's about to happen. Yeah, he is. He is

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Speaker 1: devoid or free from the very human concerns of time.

401
00:21:43,480 --> 00:21:46,119
Speaker 1: And indeed this has been a long a long time

402
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Speaker 1: understanding of animals that they neither remember the past nor

403
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Speaker 1: contemplate the future in a truly meaningful human fashion. Now,

404
00:21:53,400 --> 00:21:56,320
Speaker 1: I think that that's a little bit complicated by some

405
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Speaker 1: observations of people like, for example, friends of All who

406
00:21:59,680 --> 00:22:02,919
Speaker 1: we talk to on the show before um who you know.

407
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Speaker 1: He's a primatologist. He studies apes primarily, but he talks

408
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Speaker 1: a lot about the intelligence of animals and signs that

409
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Speaker 1: he thinks he sees elements of rudimentary time travel in

410
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Speaker 1: in some of the great apes and in some birds

411
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Speaker 1: and stuff. Right, well, yeah, it does get complimental time travel. Yeah,

412
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Speaker 1: I think not actual time. The morlocks did try and

413
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Speaker 1: and steal the machine, as I recall. But yeah, if

414
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Speaker 1: Falk gets into this a bit in his book, he

415
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Speaker 1: he makes a point that that no ape has ever

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Speaker 1: communicated with sign language anything to suggest he was remembering

417
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Speaker 1: a past event. Of course, these sign language by apes

418
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Speaker 1: as a way of develving into their mind is also

419
00:22:42,280 --> 00:22:46,640
Speaker 1: a complicated situation. Uh. And and there have been studies

420
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Speaker 1: with various animals and some birds, uh, mainly primates and

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Speaker 1: birds that have that have allowed scientists to argue in

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Speaker 1: favor of mental time travel. But the the argument against

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Speaker 1: that is, well, to what extent are the do these

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Speaker 1: anticipations fail to go beyond the context of the present?

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Speaker 1: So like are they are they is using a tool

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Speaker 1: to get a meal out of a log? Are you

427
00:23:13,040 --> 00:23:17,360
Speaker 1: actually engaging in in mental time travel or are you

428
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Speaker 1: just applying a certain uh you know, certain cleverness to

429
00:23:24,119 --> 00:23:26,760
Speaker 1: the the situation or is there any difference between the two.

430
00:23:26,880 --> 00:23:28,720
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, I would say in the

431
00:23:28,760 --> 00:23:31,000
Speaker 1: case of apes, I think there are some examples. I

432
00:23:31,040 --> 00:23:32,840
Speaker 1: hope I'm not remembering this wrong, but I think I

433
00:23:32,880 --> 00:23:37,439
Speaker 1: remember some examples of apes, for example, saving tools for

434
00:23:37,600 --> 00:23:40,600
Speaker 1: later that they don't need for a task right now,

435
00:23:40,640 --> 00:23:44,480
Speaker 1: but they know can be useful in the future. Or

436
00:23:44,640 --> 00:23:49,680
Speaker 1: for example, I think it was Jay's right, Jay's remembering

437
00:23:49,800 --> 00:23:53,520
Speaker 1: where items had been placed in a room even though

438
00:23:53,560 --> 00:23:56,920
Speaker 1: they couldn't immediately access them. Yeah, these are scrub jays,

439
00:23:56,960 --> 00:24:00,600
Speaker 1: I believe, right. Yeah, those those come up in experiments

440
00:24:00,600 --> 00:24:02,840
Speaker 1: a lot. So this remains kind of an open question.

441
00:24:02,880 --> 00:24:04,960
Speaker 1: There are some some fascinating arguments to be made on

442
00:24:05,000 --> 00:24:09,359
Speaker 1: both sides. Uh. As far as humans go, however, human

443
00:24:09,440 --> 00:24:13,439
Speaker 1: infants do seem to live in an eternal presence up

444
00:24:13,520 --> 00:24:16,840
Speaker 1: until around eight months of age or so, and then

445
00:24:16,920 --> 00:24:19,359
Speaker 1: key abilities begin to come online more between three and

446
00:24:19,440 --> 00:24:23,159
Speaker 1: five and a six year old child is is just

447
00:24:23,680 --> 00:24:27,240
Speaker 1: light years ahead of the smartest chimp or or j

448
00:24:27,480 --> 00:24:30,240
Speaker 1: that has ever lived. And uh and this is this

449
00:24:30,320 --> 00:24:32,720
Speaker 1: is a fascinating two. Between eight and ten years old,

450
00:24:32,760 --> 00:24:35,359
Speaker 1: that's where begin when we begin to see time as

451
00:24:35,400 --> 00:24:39,200
Speaker 1: an abstraction. Uh. And another great fact that I ran

452
00:24:39,240 --> 00:24:42,240
Speaker 1: across in false book is that most ten year olds

453
00:24:42,520 --> 00:24:45,280
Speaker 1: think they age an hour when the clock turns ahead

454
00:24:45,280 --> 00:24:49,080
Speaker 1: for daylight savings, but most fifteen year old realize that

455
00:24:49,080 --> 00:24:51,320
Speaker 1: that's not the case. I'm kind of surprised about that

456
00:24:51,359 --> 00:24:53,560
Speaker 1: with ten year olds. I would think generally ten year

457
00:24:53,560 --> 00:24:56,440
Speaker 1: olds would know that, like, the clocks don't determine how

458
00:24:56,480 --> 00:24:58,119
Speaker 1: old you are. Well, I wonder how much of the

459
00:24:58,160 --> 00:25:00,200
Speaker 1: two is just they're not thinking about that kind of thing,

460
00:25:00,240 --> 00:25:02,399
Speaker 1: and if you just spring it on them, they might say, Oh, well,

461
00:25:02,440 --> 00:25:04,920
Speaker 1: I guess I am the clocks. The clock when ahead

462
00:25:04,960 --> 00:25:07,280
Speaker 1: an hour or so, I'm an hour ahead to Yeah.

463
00:25:07,359 --> 00:25:09,040
Speaker 1: But but I found I found that in righted this

464
00:25:09,080 --> 00:25:11,520
Speaker 1: idea that we don't have it now, we don't have

465
00:25:11,560 --> 00:25:15,320
Speaker 1: a presence, and then our understanding of time just kind

466
00:25:15,359 --> 00:25:18,280
Speaker 1: of begins to grow and swell until we can truly

467
00:25:18,359 --> 00:25:23,080
Speaker 1: begin to understand the abstraction and just mind rending complexity

468
00:25:23,119 --> 00:25:24,800
Speaker 1: of time. All right, well, I think it's time to

469
00:25:24,840 --> 00:25:27,840
Speaker 1: turn to some psychology and neuroscience experiments to try to

470
00:25:27,920 --> 00:25:30,000
Speaker 1: understand a little bit more about what's going on in

471
00:25:30,000 --> 00:25:33,840
Speaker 1: the brain. We've established that physics probably doesn't really allow

472
00:25:33,960 --> 00:25:37,160
Speaker 1: for a now, or at least doesn't allow for any

473
00:25:37,200 --> 00:25:41,840
Speaker 1: kind of universal simultaneity. There's no externally objective now whether

474
00:25:41,920 --> 00:25:44,760
Speaker 1: or not things actually happen, or whether or not time

475
00:25:44,800 --> 00:25:47,679
Speaker 1: actually flows in the universe. That's maybe up for debate,

476
00:25:47,920 --> 00:25:50,480
Speaker 1: but there's not a universal now, and we still have

477
00:25:50,560 --> 00:25:53,439
Speaker 1: this experience of now. So what's going on in the

478
00:25:53,520 --> 00:25:56,360
Speaker 1: brain when we have a feeling of the present, when

479
00:25:56,359 --> 00:25:59,400
Speaker 1: we say something is happening now, how does the brain

480
00:25:59,480 --> 00:26:02,399
Speaker 1: decide what now is? I want to look at a

481
00:26:02,480 --> 00:26:07,720
Speaker 1: series of experiments and thoughts associated with the neuroscientist David

482
00:26:07,760 --> 00:26:11,240
Speaker 1: Eagleman and many researchers working with Eagleman in his lab.

483
00:26:11,640 --> 00:26:14,639
Speaker 1: They've done some really cool stuff with the perception of

484
00:26:14,680 --> 00:26:17,440
Speaker 1: simultaneity in the brain. And the first case I want

485
00:26:17,440 --> 00:26:21,160
Speaker 1: to look at is the idea of the flash lag experiments. Now, Robert,

486
00:26:21,200 --> 00:26:24,040
Speaker 1: have you ever seen these demonstrated or had you know?

487
00:26:24,160 --> 00:26:26,320
Speaker 1: Just let this work on your mind a little bit.

488
00:26:26,520 --> 00:26:29,440
Speaker 1: I don't think I've actually observed footage of one of

489
00:26:29,480 --> 00:26:32,600
Speaker 1: these experiments now, I've only read about them. They're more

490
00:26:33,240 --> 00:26:35,400
Speaker 1: They sound very simple when you describe them, but when

491
00:26:35,440 --> 00:26:38,000
Speaker 1: you actually notice it happening to you, it's a little

492
00:26:38,000 --> 00:26:41,760
Speaker 1: bit troubling. So there are a lot of video demonstrations online.

493
00:26:41,760 --> 00:26:43,200
Speaker 1: If you want to see it for yourself, you can

494
00:26:43,200 --> 00:26:45,440
Speaker 1: go look up a video of a flash lag experiment.

495
00:26:45,440 --> 00:26:47,399
Speaker 1: But I think I can describe it pretty simply here's

496
00:26:47,720 --> 00:26:52,000
Speaker 1: one version. Imagine there's a room and in the middle

497
00:26:52,040 --> 00:26:55,480
Speaker 1: of the room there's a big vertical hoop, and there

498
00:26:55,600 --> 00:26:59,240
Speaker 1: is also a little light that flat that can flash

499
00:26:59,320 --> 00:27:02,280
Speaker 1: somewhere in the room. And you see somebody standing at

500
00:27:02,280 --> 00:27:04,760
Speaker 1: one end of the room throwing a ball through the air.

501
00:27:05,520 --> 00:27:07,679
Speaker 1: And while the ball is in the air, there's a

502
00:27:07,680 --> 00:27:11,240
Speaker 1: flash in the video and video of this room, and

503
00:27:11,320 --> 00:27:15,200
Speaker 1: you watch it over and over again, Throw flash, throw flash.

504
00:27:15,240 --> 00:27:18,520
Speaker 1: And what it looks like to you is that every

505
00:27:18,520 --> 00:27:22,399
Speaker 1: time the flash happens uh somewhere in the air after

506
00:27:22,440 --> 00:27:26,080
Speaker 1: the ball is about a foot or so past the hoop.

507
00:27:26,720 --> 00:27:29,439
Speaker 1: But when the video gets slowed down frame by frame,

508
00:27:30,000 --> 00:27:32,439
Speaker 1: you can see clearly that the flash happens at the

509
00:27:32,520 --> 00:27:36,560
Speaker 1: exact same time the ball passes through the hoop. And

510
00:27:36,640 --> 00:27:40,320
Speaker 1: your brain is getting it wrong. Your brain is lagging

511
00:27:40,440 --> 00:27:45,000
Speaker 1: behind events in registering when it sees the flash. So

512
00:27:45,160 --> 00:27:46,840
Speaker 1: you might not think this is all that weird, but

513
00:27:46,920 --> 00:27:49,720
Speaker 1: it's weirder than it sounds. You're probably thinking, Okay, yeah, Well,

514
00:27:49,840 --> 00:27:51,840
Speaker 1: it takes the brain a fraction of a second to

515
00:27:51,880 --> 00:27:56,960
Speaker 1: see things like there's a delay between external reality. Um,

516
00:27:57,040 --> 00:27:59,160
Speaker 1: and the light has to hit my eyes, my mind

517
00:27:59,200 --> 00:28:02,359
Speaker 1: has to process it. But it's weirder than that because

518
00:28:02,440 --> 00:28:05,359
Speaker 1: it's not just that you're seeing the entire world or

519
00:28:05,400 --> 00:28:08,840
Speaker 1: the whole video at a delay. You're seeing one part

520
00:28:08,920 --> 00:28:12,480
Speaker 1: of the video at a delay relative to a different

521
00:28:12,600 --> 00:28:17,119
Speaker 1: part of the same video. You're you're perceiving events out

522
00:28:17,119 --> 00:28:20,000
Speaker 1: of order, so the flash is lagged relative to the

523
00:28:20,000 --> 00:28:21,960
Speaker 1: motion of the ball. It's not just that we don't

524
00:28:22,040 --> 00:28:25,600
Speaker 1: see things exactly when they happen. We don't necessarily see

525
00:28:25,640 --> 00:28:28,399
Speaker 1: things in the order they happen. And again, this is

526
00:28:28,480 --> 00:28:31,919
Speaker 1: this is seeing and perceiving, not remembering, right, Yeah, this

527
00:28:32,000 --> 00:28:35,080
Speaker 1: is seeing and perceiving right there in the moment um.

528
00:28:35,160 --> 00:28:37,199
Speaker 1: So this effect, and you can show this with all

529
00:28:37,280 --> 00:28:39,760
Speaker 1: kinds of different things. Like another version of this would

530
00:28:39,760 --> 00:28:42,640
Speaker 1: be you've got a square moving around on a screen,

531
00:28:43,160 --> 00:28:46,040
Speaker 1: and when it passes a certain point on the screen,

532
00:28:46,080 --> 00:28:48,800
Speaker 1: another square flashes up on the screen for a second,

533
00:28:49,280 --> 00:28:52,000
Speaker 1: and you'll be asked to judge the relative positions of

534
00:28:52,000 --> 00:28:54,360
Speaker 1: the squares, and you might say, well, the square that

535
00:28:54,440 --> 00:28:56,960
Speaker 1: flashes up is I don't know, you know, three or

536
00:28:56,960 --> 00:29:00,920
Speaker 1: four grid squares behind the moving square, But in fact

537
00:29:01,000 --> 00:29:04,040
Speaker 1: they're exactly in the same place. Like the square that

538
00:29:04,080 --> 00:29:06,880
Speaker 1: flashes up flashes up when the other. When the moving

539
00:29:06,920 --> 00:29:09,480
Speaker 1: square is exactly in line with it, but you see

540
00:29:09,480 --> 00:29:12,880
Speaker 1: it flashing up behind the moving square. Why is this?

541
00:29:13,320 --> 00:29:16,560
Speaker 1: Why would your brain be lagging one type of perspective

542
00:29:16,640 --> 00:29:21,040
Speaker 1: perception with with relation to the other. This effect has

543
00:29:21,040 --> 00:29:22,960
Speaker 1: been known about for at least sixty years. There were

544
00:29:22,960 --> 00:29:25,280
Speaker 1: experiments with it in the nineteen fifties and there have

545
00:29:25,320 --> 00:29:27,719
Speaker 1: been a bunch of experiments on it since. And before

546
00:29:27,800 --> 00:29:31,000
Speaker 1: Eagleman's team first had this paper about this in the

547
00:29:31,080 --> 00:29:33,640
Speaker 1: year two thousand, there were two major explanations that have

548
00:29:33,680 --> 00:29:37,600
Speaker 1: been hypothesized. One was known as the latent se difference,

549
00:29:38,120 --> 00:29:42,880
Speaker 1: and this proposes that the brain processes moving objects faster

550
00:29:43,440 --> 00:29:48,880
Speaker 1: than it processes flashed objects. And this assumes quote online

551
00:29:48,960 --> 00:29:51,880
Speaker 1: model of visual perception, which essentially means that you are

552
00:29:51,880 --> 00:29:55,200
Speaker 1: conscious of perceiving something as soon as the brain can

553
00:29:55,240 --> 00:29:57,520
Speaker 1: get the data ready for you. It's all just coming

554
00:29:57,560 --> 00:30:00,280
Speaker 1: in as fast as you can see it, and if

555
00:30:00,320 --> 00:30:03,080
Speaker 1: it takes longer to get one kind of data ready,

556
00:30:03,360 --> 00:30:06,280
Speaker 1: then you just perceive that thing later. You can think

557
00:30:06,280 --> 00:30:09,800
Speaker 1: of this sort of like a TV camera that's supplying

558
00:30:09,840 --> 00:30:12,840
Speaker 1: a live feed or a live stream, but the feed

559
00:30:12,920 --> 00:30:15,200
Speaker 1: is a little bit glitchy, and some types of things

560
00:30:15,200 --> 00:30:17,760
Speaker 1: show up on the screen and get pixelated out. It's

561
00:30:17,800 --> 00:30:21,720
Speaker 1: basically live, but sometimes things get messed up. The other

562
00:30:21,760 --> 00:30:25,920
Speaker 1: main explanation before their paper was motion extrapolation, and this

563
00:30:25,960 --> 00:30:30,560
Speaker 1: basically says that perception is predictive. When your brain perceives

564
00:30:30,600 --> 00:30:35,360
Speaker 1: a moving object, it compensates for a processing latency by

565
00:30:35,400 --> 00:30:38,760
Speaker 1: making you see the object ahead of where it actually

566
00:30:38,880 --> 00:30:41,920
Speaker 1: is in its trajectory. So under this model, when you

567
00:30:42,000 --> 00:30:45,560
Speaker 1: like see an eagle diving after a rabbit, your brain

568
00:30:45,680 --> 00:30:49,040
Speaker 1: actively moves the eagle ahead and its dive to make

569
00:30:49,080 --> 00:30:51,640
Speaker 1: up for the processing lag. So it's really about ten

570
00:30:51,680 --> 00:30:54,040
Speaker 1: feet from the ground, but your brain says, well, it's

571
00:30:54,080 --> 00:30:56,800
Speaker 1: moving pretty fast. Let's make it look like it's seven

572
00:30:56,840 --> 00:30:59,240
Speaker 1: feet from the ground to compensate. And then this is

573
00:30:59,280 --> 00:31:02,000
Speaker 1: the basic prince of bowl of of of hunting. Right,

574
00:31:02,080 --> 00:31:04,080
Speaker 1: you think you're going to aim for where the prey

575
00:31:04,160 --> 00:31:06,480
Speaker 1: will be as opposed to where the prey is. Yeah,

576
00:31:06,520 --> 00:31:09,360
Speaker 1: but notice in hunting you actually have to aim ahead

577
00:31:09,400 --> 00:31:12,920
Speaker 1: of where you see, so your brain isn't fully aiming

578
00:31:12,960 --> 00:31:15,520
Speaker 1: ahead for you, like you have to use your hands

579
00:31:15,520 --> 00:31:19,200
Speaker 1: and stuff to do that. You can't just aim at

580
00:31:19,200 --> 00:31:22,280
Speaker 1: exactly where you see, because that's not actually ahead of

581
00:31:22,280 --> 00:31:24,600
Speaker 1: the animal enough to to hit it with the arrow

582
00:31:24,720 --> 00:31:27,720
Speaker 1: or whatever. So this version would be kind of like

583
00:31:27,760 --> 00:31:31,840
Speaker 1: a live feed, but updated with predictive models of things

584
00:31:31,840 --> 00:31:34,200
Speaker 1: that haven't yet taken place in front of the camera.

585
00:31:34,200 --> 00:31:37,680
Speaker 1: It would be a predictive, anticipatory camera that says, Okay,

586
00:31:37,920 --> 00:31:40,760
Speaker 1: you know this person is moving towards stage left. We'll

587
00:31:40,800 --> 00:31:43,000
Speaker 1: just put them a few frames ahead to make up

588
00:31:43,040 --> 00:31:45,440
Speaker 1: for the fact that the camera is a little slow. Wow,

589
00:31:45,720 --> 00:31:48,600
Speaker 1: I mean it's it sounds like a system that is

590
00:31:48,640 --> 00:31:53,240
Speaker 1: in place for a brain that is not not employing

591
00:31:53,240 --> 00:31:55,400
Speaker 1: a lot of like conscious thought about the position of

592
00:31:55,400 --> 00:31:58,200
Speaker 1: the target. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think that's a

593
00:31:58,240 --> 00:32:00,840
Speaker 1: really interesting idea. But you can, in iediately see some

594
00:32:00,880 --> 00:32:02,840
Speaker 1: reasons for doubting this, and I'll bring up a big

595
00:32:02,880 --> 00:32:04,440
Speaker 1: one in a minute. All right, we're gonna take a

596
00:32:04,520 --> 00:32:06,280
Speaker 1: quick break, and when we come back, we'll have more

597
00:32:06,400 --> 00:32:11,680
Speaker 1: on the science of now and we're back. So in

598
00:32:11,720 --> 00:32:15,840
Speaker 1: their two thousand paper, Eagleman and said Snowski proposed an

599
00:32:15,840 --> 00:32:19,480
Speaker 1: alternative explanation. It's not either of those. They call their

600
00:32:19,480 --> 00:32:26,000
Speaker 1: explanation postdiction quote. Visual awareness is neither predictive nor online,

601
00:32:26,080 --> 00:32:29,680
Speaker 1: but instead postdictive. And this means that when you perceive

602
00:32:29,800 --> 00:32:35,400
Speaker 1: the flash, happening is retroactively determined by stuff that happens

603
00:32:35,440 --> 00:32:38,000
Speaker 1: in a period of time after you see it. I'll

604
00:32:38,040 --> 00:32:39,560
Speaker 1: explain why in a second, but they come up with

605
00:32:39,600 --> 00:32:42,520
Speaker 1: a period of about eighty milliseconds following the flash. So

606
00:32:42,560 --> 00:32:46,520
Speaker 1: in other words, then now you perceive is not a

607
00:32:46,560 --> 00:32:50,240
Speaker 1: predictive model of the future like the motion extrapolation hypothesis,

608
00:32:50,480 --> 00:32:53,680
Speaker 1: And it's not a slightly glitchy live feed like the

609
00:32:53,760 --> 00:32:57,360
Speaker 1: latency difference hypothesis. It's more like a movie. It's more

610
00:32:57,400 --> 00:33:01,720
Speaker 1: like a pre taped, edited film home patched together by

611
00:33:01,760 --> 00:33:04,400
Speaker 1: your brain, and it happens really fast. It was a

612
00:33:04,440 --> 00:33:07,840
Speaker 1: film that was only filmed about eighty milliseconds ago. But

613
00:33:07,920 --> 00:33:12,000
Speaker 1: it's not a live feed. It's an edited product. It

614
00:33:12,080 --> 00:33:16,480
Speaker 1: kind of it kind of plays into, you know, ideas

615
00:33:16,520 --> 00:33:19,280
Speaker 1: of our of our brain, or at least our perception

616
00:33:19,360 --> 00:33:22,280
Speaker 1: as being like the pilot in a cockpit, you know,

617
00:33:22,480 --> 00:33:25,240
Speaker 1: and uh, and we're given the information we need to

618
00:33:25,280 --> 00:33:28,840
Speaker 1: know about what the crew is doing. We're not actually

619
00:33:28,840 --> 00:33:32,160
Speaker 1: piloting the starship, but we're just kind of the the

620
00:33:32,200 --> 00:33:36,360
Speaker 1: head observer. Yeah, I mean there's a lot in neuroscience

621
00:33:36,400 --> 00:33:38,440
Speaker 1: that can kind of create that impression, though that also

622
00:33:38,520 --> 00:33:41,400
Speaker 1: gives a rise to the homunculous fallacy inside the brain.

623
00:33:42,160 --> 00:33:44,920
Speaker 1: Um But I want to mention a couple of experiments

624
00:33:44,920 --> 00:33:49,240
Speaker 1: that they used to back up this hypothesis of postdiction.

625
00:33:49,760 --> 00:33:53,440
Speaker 1: So the first experiment tested the motion extrapolation theory and

626
00:33:53,480 --> 00:33:55,320
Speaker 1: they found it to be wrong. So the way this

627
00:33:55,360 --> 00:33:59,640
Speaker 1: works is you've got a ring going counterclockwise around a screen,

628
00:34:00,280 --> 00:34:02,640
Speaker 1: and once it hits a certain spot on the screen,

629
00:34:02,720 --> 00:34:05,240
Speaker 1: the screen flashes up an image of a white disk,

630
00:34:05,920 --> 00:34:08,239
Speaker 1: and then the ring does one of three things. It

631
00:34:08,320 --> 00:34:11,880
Speaker 1: either stops right when the white disc appears, or it

632
00:34:11,920 --> 00:34:16,759
Speaker 1: continues along its original path, or it reverses direction and

633
00:34:16,840 --> 00:34:20,400
Speaker 1: heads back to the top of the screen. And they said,

634
00:34:20,440 --> 00:34:23,319
Speaker 1: to quote what participants report to have seen at the

635
00:34:23,360 --> 00:34:26,800
Speaker 1: time of the flash depends on the events after the flash.

636
00:34:27,000 --> 00:34:29,759
Speaker 1: So if the ring stops moving right at the time

637
00:34:29,800 --> 00:34:32,480
Speaker 1: of the flash, there's no flash lag effect at all.

638
00:34:33,000 --> 00:34:35,719
Speaker 1: If our brains were predicting the motion of the ring,

639
00:34:36,120 --> 00:34:39,439
Speaker 1: we would probably see a flash lag effect even though

640
00:34:39,600 --> 00:34:42,640
Speaker 1: the ring stops moving when the when the disc flashes up.

641
00:34:43,480 --> 00:34:46,640
Speaker 1: And then they did another experiment experiment to which further

642
00:34:46,719 --> 00:34:50,040
Speaker 1: tested the motion extrapolation theory by having the moving ring

643
00:34:50,480 --> 00:34:53,560
Speaker 1: start with the flash, so that the white disk flashes

644
00:34:53,640 --> 00:34:56,240
Speaker 1: up as soon as the ring starts moving. The flash

645
00:34:56,320 --> 00:34:58,799
Speaker 1: lag effect still showed up even though there was no

646
00:34:58,880 --> 00:35:02,480
Speaker 1: original trajector read to predict from. So this seems to,

647
00:35:02,840 --> 00:35:06,040
Speaker 1: in my view, pretty much bust the motion prediction theory.

648
00:35:06,520 --> 00:35:10,040
Speaker 1: If there's no original trajectory, how could you be predicting right?

649
00:35:10,520 --> 00:35:13,720
Speaker 1: So instead, what this seems to indicate is that AFT

650
00:35:13,920 --> 00:35:17,200
Speaker 1: is something that happens after we see a flash of

651
00:35:17,280 --> 00:35:21,240
Speaker 1: something determines how we integrate the information of the flash.

652
00:35:21,480 --> 00:35:24,719
Speaker 1: And this is consistent with other findings in psychology and neuroscience,

653
00:35:24,719 --> 00:35:27,840
Speaker 1: for example, that this is really weird one the color

654
00:35:28,040 --> 00:35:31,680
Speaker 1: fi effect. Robert, have you ever witnessed this one personally?

655
00:35:32,360 --> 00:35:34,880
Speaker 1: I don't think I have. Okay, so very simple set up.

656
00:35:35,239 --> 00:35:37,960
Speaker 1: In fact, it's it's so simple it'll sound like it

657
00:35:38,000 --> 00:35:40,600
Speaker 1: couldn't be disturbing to you yet again, but it probably

658
00:35:40,640 --> 00:35:43,600
Speaker 1: should be. So there's a screen that flashes two dots,

659
00:35:44,120 --> 00:35:48,000
Speaker 1: that's all. Dot one appears, then disappears, then Dot two appears,

660
00:35:48,080 --> 00:35:51,920
Speaker 1: then disappears. Weirdly enough, under the right conditions, like if

661
00:35:51,920 --> 00:35:56,440
Speaker 1: it's happening fast enough, instead of seeing what really happens,

662
00:35:56,480 --> 00:35:59,640
Speaker 1: Dot one appears, then disappears, Dot two appears, then disappears.

663
00:35:59,680 --> 00:36:03,240
Speaker 1: In said, we perceive a dot moving back and forth

664
00:36:03,480 --> 00:36:06,600
Speaker 1: between the positions of the two dots. This is the

665
00:36:06,640 --> 00:36:09,480
Speaker 1: plane fi effect. It's the tendency of the brain to

666
00:36:09,600 --> 00:36:14,120
Speaker 1: interpret a series of still images as continuous motion. And

667
00:36:14,200 --> 00:36:19,080
Speaker 1: of course we we know that this is crucial in film, right. Yeah, well,

668
00:36:19,120 --> 00:36:20,880
Speaker 1: I mean this really makes sense when you when you

669
00:36:20,920 --> 00:36:23,480
Speaker 1: think about it, right, because we have evolved to perceive

670
00:36:23,680 --> 00:36:27,720
Speaker 1: the movement of generally physical objects like a mouse running

671
00:36:27,760 --> 00:36:31,080
Speaker 1: across the ground, and then the mouse is not going

672
00:36:31,120 --> 00:36:33,600
Speaker 1: to teleport, and therefore, when you have a dot of

673
00:36:33,680 --> 00:36:37,239
Speaker 1: light seem to teleport from one spot to another, our

674
00:36:37,280 --> 00:36:40,600
Speaker 1: brain is interpreting that as movement from one spot to another.

675
00:36:40,680 --> 00:36:42,560
Speaker 1: I think that's a very good explanation. I mean, yeah,

676
00:36:42,560 --> 00:36:45,480
Speaker 1: there's no reason to expect we'd see teleportation in nature,

677
00:36:45,840 --> 00:36:48,080
Speaker 1: and if we see something that looks like teleportation, it

678
00:36:48,120 --> 00:36:50,000
Speaker 1: would make the most sense for the brain to adapt

679
00:36:50,000 --> 00:36:52,160
Speaker 1: to that as if it were an error. This This

680
00:36:52,239 --> 00:36:54,960
Speaker 1: reminds me too that there have been experiments with very

681
00:36:55,040 --> 00:36:59,799
Speaker 1: young children that demonstrate uh that they know that teleportation

682
00:36:59,840 --> 00:37:03,760
Speaker 1: has not possible if they see something like teleportation presented

683
00:37:03,800 --> 00:37:07,279
Speaker 1: to them, that they know that it's b S. That's cool.

684
00:37:08,160 --> 00:37:09,960
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets even weirder. So that's just the

685
00:37:09,960 --> 00:37:12,560
Speaker 1: five effects. That's pretty normal, and we can see the

686
00:37:12,560 --> 00:37:16,040
Speaker 1: normal explanation for that. It gets weirder when you add

687
00:37:16,080 --> 00:37:19,399
Speaker 1: colors to the dots. So it's exact same setup. Dot

688
00:37:19,400 --> 00:37:22,920
Speaker 1: one appears than disappears, Dot two appears than disappears, but

689
00:37:23,080 --> 00:37:27,240
Speaker 1: make the dots different colors. Dot one is red, dot

690
00:37:27,280 --> 00:37:30,920
Speaker 1: two is blue. What people claim to perceive usually in

691
00:37:30,960 --> 00:37:34,000
Speaker 1: this experiment is not only a single dot moving between

692
00:37:34,000 --> 00:37:40,080
Speaker 1: the two positions, but changing colors halfway along. So dot

693
00:37:40,120 --> 00:37:42,160
Speaker 1: one is red, dot two is blue, and you see

694
00:37:42,200 --> 00:37:46,000
Speaker 1: it moving to the dot to position and becoming blue

695
00:37:46,040 --> 00:37:49,919
Speaker 1: about halfway there. Now, it would seem like this would

696
00:37:50,040 --> 00:37:55,319
Speaker 1: only be possible if the brain were retroactively changing the

697
00:37:55,360 --> 00:37:58,960
Speaker 1: contents of your present time perception, because if your if

698
00:37:58,960 --> 00:38:01,680
Speaker 1: your brain is being pre addictive, if it's thinking ahead,

699
00:38:02,160 --> 00:38:04,560
Speaker 1: there would be no way for the brain to predict

700
00:38:04,760 --> 00:38:07,640
Speaker 1: the color of the second dot right because you haven't

701
00:38:07,680 --> 00:38:10,759
Speaker 1: seen it yet. So the only way you could have.

702
00:38:10,920 --> 00:38:15,359
Speaker 1: This illusion is if your brain is retroactively telling you

703
00:38:15,560 --> 00:38:18,799
Speaker 1: what you're seeing right now. There you go. There, there's

704
00:38:18,840 --> 00:38:22,600
Speaker 1: your now. So the now isn't is starting to look

705
00:38:22,640 --> 00:38:24,960
Speaker 1: not so much like a now, The now is starting

706
00:38:25,000 --> 00:38:27,520
Speaker 1: to look like a then. So earlier we mentioned that

707
00:38:27,600 --> 00:38:31,200
Speaker 1: all this happens to within an eighty millisecond window after

708
00:38:31,239 --> 00:38:34,320
Speaker 1: an event. What's the deal with the eighty milliseconds? Well,

709
00:38:35,000 --> 00:38:38,200
Speaker 1: in the next couple of experiments, Eagleman and said Snowski

710
00:38:38,280 --> 00:38:42,520
Speaker 1: tried to test the latency difference hypothesis. So they put

711
00:38:42,520 --> 00:38:45,520
Speaker 1: a came up with a setup similar to the previous experiments.

712
00:38:45,640 --> 00:38:48,160
Speaker 1: A ring goes around a screen, A white disk flashes

713
00:38:48,160 --> 00:38:50,880
Speaker 1: in the rings path, and then verily, very shortly after that,

714
00:38:51,239 --> 00:38:54,920
Speaker 1: the direction of the ring reverses. And essentially they wanted

715
00:38:54,920 --> 00:38:57,840
Speaker 1: to see how long the ring had to keep going

716
00:38:57,920 --> 00:39:01,560
Speaker 1: in the same direction as it's a original trajectory to

717
00:39:01,680 --> 00:39:05,480
Speaker 1: produce the same flash lag effect from the earlier experiments.

718
00:39:05,880 --> 00:39:08,000
Speaker 1: If it was just that flashes take a little bit

719
00:39:08,040 --> 00:39:11,880
Speaker 1: longer to process than movement, allow the latency difference hypothesis.

720
00:39:11,960 --> 00:39:14,839
Speaker 1: They figured that changing the direction of the ring more

721
00:39:14,880 --> 00:39:17,600
Speaker 1: than you know, uh ten or twenty milliseconds after the

722
00:39:17,600 --> 00:39:22,080
Speaker 1: flash shouldn't change the flash lag impression. Instead, they found

723
00:39:22,120 --> 00:39:25,959
Speaker 1: that it did and it lessened it. So any reversal

724
00:39:26,080 --> 00:39:29,240
Speaker 1: of the direction of the moving object and before twenty

725
00:39:29,239 --> 00:39:34,520
Speaker 1: six milliseconds completely canceled the illusory displacement. And they found

726
00:39:34,520 --> 00:39:37,680
Speaker 1: that sixty seven to eighty milliseconds of movement in the

727
00:39:37,760 --> 00:39:41,120
Speaker 1: same direction as the original movement are needed to cause

728
00:39:41,200 --> 00:39:44,560
Speaker 1: the full flash lag effect. And so their conclusion is

729
00:39:44,600 --> 00:39:49,480
Speaker 1: that the flash quote resets motion integration, and motion is

730
00:39:49,640 --> 00:39:53,920
Speaker 1: newly calculated and postdicted to the time of the flash.

731
00:39:54,280 --> 00:39:57,440
Speaker 1: So what they're saying there their experiments show here is

732
00:39:57,480 --> 00:40:00,279
Speaker 1: that flashes get processed a little bit different ly in

733
00:40:00,280 --> 00:40:02,840
Speaker 1: the brain than motion does. And when we see a

734
00:40:02,880 --> 00:40:07,759
Speaker 1: flashed object, the brain recalculates what we've just seen and

735
00:40:07,880 --> 00:40:11,120
Speaker 1: presents it to us. So the first time we're seeing something,

736
00:40:11,600 --> 00:40:15,440
Speaker 1: it has already been edited in post kind of a

737
00:40:15,480 --> 00:40:17,799
Speaker 1: weird thing to imagine, Like, what does this mean for us?

738
00:40:17,800 --> 00:40:20,440
Speaker 1: I would say that in some cases for visual processing,

739
00:40:20,480 --> 00:40:23,600
Speaker 1: there is a lag window about eighty milliseconds in which

740
00:40:23,600 --> 00:40:27,479
Speaker 1: our brains are still constructing the sense of now, now

741
00:40:27,640 --> 00:40:31,080
Speaker 1: isn't happening? Now? Now is happening? At a delay, and

742
00:40:31,120 --> 00:40:33,960
Speaker 1: you're not even getting the full story. So from this,

743
00:40:34,080 --> 00:40:36,799
Speaker 1: I wonder if it could reasonably said be said that

744
00:40:36,840 --> 00:40:39,600
Speaker 1: the human now is not a moment in reality, but

745
00:40:39,920 --> 00:40:43,319
Speaker 1: first of all, a perceptual impression. It's sort of a

746
00:40:43,360 --> 00:40:48,040
Speaker 1: sketch edited together by the brain, not necessarily reflecting the

747
00:40:48,160 --> 00:40:50,920
Speaker 1: order in which events occurred, as might be measured by

748
00:40:50,920 --> 00:40:55,760
Speaker 1: a camera or a machine, reflecting an information gathering period

749
00:40:55,840 --> 00:40:59,880
Speaker 1: of roughly eighty milliseconds, and with variable editing, editing a

750
00:41:00,040 --> 00:41:04,120
Speaker 1: facts depending on what happened during those eighty milliseconds. And

751
00:41:04,160 --> 00:41:05,759
Speaker 1: this brings us, I mean, it just brings us back

752
00:41:05,760 --> 00:41:09,200
Speaker 1: to the the idea of the cave. Right, we're just

753
00:41:09,239 --> 00:41:11,880
Speaker 1: watching the silhouettes on the wall. But the way I

754
00:41:11,960 --> 00:41:14,200
Speaker 1: put it is this, we already know that our memories

755
00:41:14,239 --> 00:41:17,520
Speaker 1: are not perfect copies of events as they took place. Right.

756
00:41:17,520 --> 00:41:19,440
Speaker 1: We've talked about this on the show lots of times.

757
00:41:19,480 --> 00:41:23,480
Speaker 1: Our memories are very low resolution, very suggestible. We tend

758
00:41:23,560 --> 00:41:26,440
Speaker 1: to change our memories without realizing it all the time.

759
00:41:26,560 --> 00:41:29,759
Speaker 1: You just memory is not that good for lots of

760
00:41:30,040 --> 00:41:33,319
Speaker 1: kinds of things. But what this suggests is even the

761
00:41:33,360 --> 00:41:36,600
Speaker 1: first time you see something, it is in a way

762
00:41:36,760 --> 00:41:40,160
Speaker 1: already like a memory. It's as if there is no

763
00:41:40,239 --> 00:41:44,160
Speaker 1: such thing as seeing in the real time. Even when

764
00:41:44,160 --> 00:41:47,200
Speaker 1: you think you're seeing something right now, it is already

765
00:41:47,239 --> 00:41:51,840
Speaker 1: a kind of a constructed memory. Yeah, so many analogies

766
00:41:51,880 --> 00:41:55,160
Speaker 1: I'm tempted to like to run to to explain this. Uh,

767
00:41:55,440 --> 00:41:58,000
Speaker 1: they all have to They all hinge on the idea

768
00:41:58,040 --> 00:42:00,719
Speaker 1: that what we were seeing we're really see you know.

769
00:42:00,760 --> 00:42:03,319
Speaker 1: It's like the one that came to mind was, it's

770
00:42:03,400 --> 00:42:06,799
Speaker 1: like if we're all going through life seeing through a periscope,

771
00:42:07,480 --> 00:42:10,000
Speaker 1: you know, and so we're not really seeing out of

772
00:42:10,040 --> 00:42:13,279
Speaker 1: our eyes, you know. Yeah, i'd have to be like

773
00:42:13,280 --> 00:42:17,560
Speaker 1: a computerized periscope. It's like making some editing decisions about

774
00:42:17,600 --> 00:42:21,279
Speaker 1: what passes through and stuff like that. Um, I mean,

775
00:42:21,400 --> 00:42:24,520
Speaker 1: this would I think cause us to to be a

776
00:42:24,520 --> 00:42:28,600
Speaker 1: little more cautious about even like, even if you're aware

777
00:42:28,680 --> 00:42:31,759
Speaker 1: that you should be conscious of the fallibility of your

778
00:42:31,760 --> 00:42:33,279
Speaker 1: own memory, and you know, if you were going to

779
00:42:33,360 --> 00:42:36,239
Speaker 1: testify in a court case, you shouldn't be like, you know,

780
00:42:36,320 --> 00:42:40,360
Speaker 1: I'm absolutely sure that what happened here is you know, X, Y,

781
00:42:40,400 --> 00:42:42,399
Speaker 1: and Z, because your memory is a little bit more

782
00:42:42,440 --> 00:42:45,640
Speaker 1: fallible than you think it is. Probably, But even your

783
00:42:45,680 --> 00:42:49,720
Speaker 1: perception of events you just now saw just a second

784
00:42:49,760 --> 00:42:53,560
Speaker 1: ago is maybe a little more accurate maybe, but still

785
00:42:53,600 --> 00:42:56,040
Speaker 1: could have flaws in it. Even though you think you

786
00:42:56,160 --> 00:42:59,720
Speaker 1: just saw something, it's not necessarily how it was, especially

787
00:42:59,719 --> 00:43:03,319
Speaker 1: if it happened fast. Legal experts will have to chime

788
00:43:03,320 --> 00:43:05,520
Speaker 1: in and let us know if if this has actually

789
00:43:05,600 --> 00:43:08,160
Speaker 1: been used, because we know that the foulibility of memory

790
00:43:08,160 --> 00:43:12,120
Speaker 1: has come up in trial cases before. But but I

791
00:43:12,120 --> 00:43:14,200
Speaker 1: wonder if anyone has just brought up, as has brought up,

792
00:43:14,239 --> 00:43:17,759
Speaker 1: just how fallible even first impressions may be. I mean,

793
00:43:17,800 --> 00:43:19,640
Speaker 1: I wonder by the time you get into a chord,

794
00:43:19,640 --> 00:43:21,399
Speaker 1: it's always going to be a memory. But this might

795
00:43:21,440 --> 00:43:25,239
Speaker 1: apply to like, say, uh, impressions from the moment, like

796
00:43:25,280 --> 00:43:27,759
Speaker 1: if you immediately if you saw something and then immediately

797
00:43:27,800 --> 00:43:30,360
Speaker 1: wrote down what you saw or told somebody else what

798
00:43:30,440 --> 00:43:33,799
Speaker 1: you saw right then, Um, that that could maybe apply

799
00:43:33,920 --> 00:43:37,960
Speaker 1: to that. Yeah, there's a place where things get even weirder.

800
00:43:38,520 --> 00:43:42,560
Speaker 1: In a two thousand six paper published in Neurons, Stetson, Qui, Montague,

801
00:43:42,560 --> 00:43:46,240
Speaker 1: and Eagleman found that you could actually manipulate this effect,

802
00:43:46,360 --> 00:43:49,640
Speaker 1: the flash lag effect, to cause people to question their

803
00:43:49,680 --> 00:43:54,319
Speaker 1: own causal role in real time actions. Here's how it

804
00:43:54,360 --> 00:43:57,600
Speaker 1: went down. So the team had research subjects press a

805
00:43:57,680 --> 00:44:01,600
Speaker 1: key to make a light flash. Pretty pretty simple, right,

806
00:44:01,960 --> 00:44:03,880
Speaker 1: you press the key, the light comes up, But the

807
00:44:03,960 --> 00:44:06,920
Speaker 1: light didn't flash immediately. There's a time lag between the

808
00:44:07,000 --> 00:44:10,799
Speaker 1: key press and the flash. And because we're so adaptable

809
00:44:11,080 --> 00:44:14,239
Speaker 1: and so crafty and and and such great little critters,

810
00:44:14,239 --> 00:44:16,640
Speaker 1: our brains just started to say, Okay, we've noticed that

811
00:44:16,680 --> 00:44:19,200
Speaker 1: there's a lag every time between when you press the

812
00:44:19,280 --> 00:44:20,839
Speaker 1: key and the light comes up, so we're just going

813
00:44:20,880 --> 00:44:27,000
Speaker 1: to start to ignore that. People started to perceive that

814
00:44:27,120 --> 00:44:29,640
Speaker 1: the light was flashing as soon as the button was pressed.

815
00:44:30,280 --> 00:44:33,640
Speaker 1: Then the researchers did the really devious thing. They cut

816
00:44:33,680 --> 00:44:37,360
Speaker 1: out the delay after this adaptation period had taken place.

817
00:44:38,280 --> 00:44:41,200
Speaker 1: And what did the subjects perceive then, Well, because of

818
00:44:41,239 --> 00:44:44,839
Speaker 1: their adapted perception, sort of updating the speed of the

819
00:44:44,880 --> 00:44:48,279
Speaker 1: flash perception, some of them started to think the light

820
00:44:48,360 --> 00:44:52,799
Speaker 1: was flashing before they pressed the key. You know, I

821
00:44:52,800 --> 00:44:55,279
Speaker 1: feel like I almost felt this effect when my work

822
00:44:55,280 --> 00:44:58,479
Speaker 1: computer was updated most recently, because it got to where

823
00:44:58,480 --> 00:45:00,640
Speaker 1: it was so slow, and it was there's a certain

824
00:45:00,640 --> 00:45:04,440
Speaker 1: amount of lag time opening programs and sometimes even even typing,

825
00:45:04,640 --> 00:45:08,600
Speaker 1: especially in a browser. And then everything was suddenly so fast.

826
00:45:09,640 --> 00:45:11,960
Speaker 1: It was almost as if the words were appearing on

827
00:45:12,000 --> 00:45:15,279
Speaker 1: the screen before I tied them, almost but not quite. Yeah, well,

828
00:45:15,320 --> 00:45:18,160
Speaker 1: I mean one has to wonder that what would you

829
00:45:18,200 --> 00:45:21,040
Speaker 1: start to feel if you genuinely believed that it was

830
00:45:21,080 --> 00:45:24,040
Speaker 1: possible that the words were appearing on the screen before

831
00:45:24,080 --> 00:45:27,919
Speaker 1: you typed them. Well, actually, that's you know what, I guess.

832
00:45:27,920 --> 00:45:29,640
Speaker 1: I tend not I'd tend not to think of it

833
00:45:29,719 --> 00:45:33,200
Speaker 1: in these terms. But when one enters a like a

834
00:45:33,239 --> 00:45:38,480
Speaker 1: real flow state of writing, it's it's almost like that.

835
00:45:38,600 --> 00:45:42,080
Speaker 1: And I can and certainly there have been writers before

836
00:45:42,160 --> 00:45:46,000
Speaker 1: who claim a sort of uh, you know, muse inspiration

837
00:45:46,160 --> 00:45:49,160
Speaker 1: or something, or the idea that something is writing through them.

838
00:45:49,200 --> 00:45:51,399
Speaker 1: And I could see where where where it would where

839
00:45:51,400 --> 00:45:54,160
Speaker 1: that situation would lend itself to such an interpretation. Right,

840
00:45:54,200 --> 00:45:57,479
Speaker 1: You're probably never genuinely confused about what the words where

841
00:45:57,480 --> 00:45:59,839
Speaker 1: the words are coming from. But if you work hape

842
00:45:59,840 --> 00:46:02,560
Speaker 1: a bowl of being genuinely confused about that, that could

843
00:46:02,640 --> 00:46:05,200
Speaker 1: lead to really interesting states of mind. And so there's

844
00:46:05,200 --> 00:46:07,239
Speaker 1: a good New Yorker piece from two thousand eleven about

845
00:46:07,239 --> 00:46:11,520
Speaker 1: Eagleman actually, and it discusses his hypothesis at the time

846
00:46:12,160 --> 00:46:15,360
Speaker 1: that this very phenomenon could be one of the causes

847
00:46:15,440 --> 00:46:20,120
Speaker 1: of auditory hallucinations in people with schizophrenia. Uh So this

848
00:46:20,160 --> 00:46:22,759
Speaker 1: came to light when Eagleman discovered that people with schizophrenia

849
00:46:22,920 --> 00:46:26,719
Speaker 1: tended to be very inaccurate on these types of timing tests.

850
00:46:27,440 --> 00:46:30,600
Speaker 1: And so, to quote from the article quote, the voices

851
00:46:30,640 --> 00:46:34,120
Speaker 1: in their heads he suspected were no different from anyone

852
00:46:34,200 --> 00:46:39,120
Speaker 1: else's internal monologues. Their brains just processed them a little

853
00:46:39,200 --> 00:46:42,480
Speaker 1: out of sequence so that the thoughts seemed to belong

854
00:46:42,760 --> 00:46:46,719
Speaker 1: to someone else. And then a quote from Eagleman, all

855
00:46:46,760 --> 00:46:48,960
Speaker 1: it takes is this tiny tweak in the brain, this

856
00:46:49,040 --> 00:46:52,360
Speaker 1: tiny change in perception, and what you see as real

857
00:46:52,680 --> 00:46:56,560
Speaker 1: isn't real to anyone else. So, yeah, I mean that's

858
00:46:56,560 --> 00:47:00,000
Speaker 1: a fascinating question. Could schizophrenia or any kind of hallucinatory

859
00:47:00,120 --> 00:47:04,759
Speaker 1: condition possibly becaused not by uh, you know, not by

860
00:47:04,760 --> 00:47:08,280
Speaker 1: all the normal mechanisms, but by malfunctions in our constructed

861
00:47:08,360 --> 00:47:11,959
Speaker 1: sense of now? Is your is your feeling of now,

862
00:47:12,080 --> 00:47:15,479
Speaker 1: your period of now causation with relationship to the rest

863
00:47:15,480 --> 00:47:18,719
Speaker 1: of time and the universe, crucial for your sense of

864
00:47:18,760 --> 00:47:23,000
Speaker 1: agency and self. Yeah, and you can easily imagine too,

865
00:47:23,080 --> 00:47:25,920
Speaker 1: like the the feeling of that you did something before

866
00:47:25,960 --> 00:47:29,120
Speaker 1: you could consciously decide to do it, and what that

867
00:47:29,160 --> 00:47:31,520
Speaker 1: would do to your you know, it doesn't take take

868
00:47:31,640 --> 00:47:35,200
Speaker 1: much of a supernatural worldview lane over that to create

869
00:47:35,480 --> 00:47:37,719
Speaker 1: you know, all matter of demons, and because we now

870
00:47:37,800 --> 00:47:40,600
Speaker 1: know from Eagleman's experiments, if they are you know, if

871
00:47:40,680 --> 00:47:44,359
Speaker 1: the interpretation of them is correct, that your sense of

872
00:47:44,360 --> 00:47:48,080
Speaker 1: what's happening in the moment right now is that is postdicted,

873
00:47:48,200 --> 00:47:51,440
Speaker 1: is reconstructed over a very short period of the past,

874
00:47:52,200 --> 00:47:55,200
Speaker 1: then you can very well see that happening like you

875
00:47:55,239 --> 00:47:59,239
Speaker 1: do actually to decide to do something, but eighty milliseconds

876
00:47:59,320 --> 00:48:01,840
Speaker 1: later you have of the impression that you did not

877
00:48:02,000 --> 00:48:04,719
Speaker 1: decide to do it, that it just happened. On the

878
00:48:04,760 --> 00:48:07,200
Speaker 1: plus side, if there's anything to this hypothesis, and I

879
00:48:07,280 --> 00:48:10,560
Speaker 1: don't know how widely this would be taken seriously by

880
00:48:10,960 --> 00:48:13,480
Speaker 1: you know, psychiatrists in the field, they might say, you know,

881
00:48:13,640 --> 00:48:15,160
Speaker 1: there are a lot of reasons not to agree with that.

882
00:48:15,200 --> 00:48:18,359
Speaker 1: But if there's anything to the schizophrenia hypothesis, I think

883
00:48:18,400 --> 00:48:22,439
Speaker 1: one positive takeaway could be that timing conditioning therapies could

884
00:48:22,480 --> 00:48:25,239
Speaker 1: possibly have success in giving people with these kind of

885
00:48:25,280 --> 00:48:28,239
Speaker 1: conditions relief from some of their symptoms. One last thing

886
00:48:28,280 --> 00:48:31,839
Speaker 1: about the experience of now from Eagleman's research. Uh, there's

887
00:48:31,880 --> 00:48:33,960
Speaker 1: that classic adage. You know that if you were spending

888
00:48:33,960 --> 00:48:36,359
Speaker 1: a minute with your favorite friend or something, the time

889
00:48:36,400 --> 00:48:39,239
Speaker 1: passes so fast. But then when your hand, when your

890
00:48:39,239 --> 00:48:43,040
Speaker 1: hand is caught in a hot wolf trap, time passes

891
00:48:43,120 --> 00:48:47,320
Speaker 1: very slowly. Eagleman did not find evidence that the duration

892
00:48:47,360 --> 00:48:50,399
Speaker 1: of perception actually changes in the moment, but he did

893
00:48:50,440 --> 00:48:53,720
Speaker 1: find evidence that the duration of certain types of experiences

894
00:48:53,880 --> 00:48:57,800
Speaker 1: did change upon recollection. So the length of now varies

895
00:48:57,920 --> 00:49:02,399
Speaker 1: drastically when you're remembering events in your episodic memory. Uh.

896
00:49:02,400 --> 00:49:06,360
Speaker 1: And he thinks this depends largely on the salient novelty

897
00:49:06,400 --> 00:49:10,480
Speaker 1: of events we experience. So, for example, a simple experiment,

898
00:49:10,520 --> 00:49:12,800
Speaker 1: if you show somebody a flashing pattern on a screen,

899
00:49:13,880 --> 00:49:18,440
Speaker 1: any initial change in the pattern gets remembered as lasting

900
00:49:18,640 --> 00:49:22,880
Speaker 1: longer than the repeated iterations of a familiar pattern. So

901
00:49:23,000 --> 00:49:26,360
Speaker 1: take that very simple example and apply that to your life.

902
00:49:26,680 --> 00:49:29,160
Speaker 1: I think you might immediately see that, oh yeah, that

903
00:49:29,280 --> 00:49:33,480
Speaker 1: does kind of happen. Like even if all events last

904
00:49:33,640 --> 00:49:37,120
Speaker 1: the same amount of time in the moment when they're

905
00:49:37,120 --> 00:49:42,000
Speaker 1: measured objectively, instances that introduce novelty to your consciousness tend

906
00:49:42,040 --> 00:49:46,000
Speaker 1: to get stretched out in your memory. Retrospectively, this would

907
00:49:46,000 --> 00:49:49,360
Speaker 1: mean we could kind of extend our lives by filling

908
00:49:49,400 --> 00:49:52,239
Speaker 1: them with change and novelty. Yeah, I mean, this is

909
00:49:52,280 --> 00:49:56,160
Speaker 1: the reason one should travel, one should go on vacations.

910
00:49:56,200 --> 00:49:59,080
Speaker 1: One should try new things, even even if you're not

911
00:49:59,400 --> 00:50:02,040
Speaker 1: actually try having to do them. You know, go go

912
00:50:02,160 --> 00:50:04,840
Speaker 1: try mini golf if you've never tried mini golf, because

913
00:50:04,840 --> 00:50:08,919
Speaker 1: it seems to stretch your your experience of life out

914
00:50:09,760 --> 00:50:13,120
Speaker 1: out even further. Well, I mean I noticed this with

915
00:50:13,400 --> 00:50:18,759
Speaker 1: um respect to like, uh, reading and watching movies and

916
00:50:18,800 --> 00:50:21,640
Speaker 1: so just any kind of media. Like if I'm re

917
00:50:21,760 --> 00:50:27,480
Speaker 1: experiencing something familiar, that experience kind of disappears in the

918
00:50:27,880 --> 00:50:31,080
Speaker 1: memory hole, you know. But when I'm experiencing something new

919
00:50:31,160 --> 00:50:33,279
Speaker 1: in media, watching a new movie for the first time,

920
00:50:33,320 --> 00:50:36,680
Speaker 1: reading a new book for the first time, I'm uh,

921
00:50:36,760 --> 00:50:40,040
Speaker 1: that experience gets expanded in memory, like it fills up

922
00:50:40,040 --> 00:50:43,920
Speaker 1: more time. It seems like my life was lasting longer

923
00:50:43,960 --> 00:50:46,400
Speaker 1: in the moment. This is why one should also go

924
00:50:46,480 --> 00:50:49,719
Speaker 1: out of their way to see experimental films that are

925
00:50:49,760 --> 00:50:55,120
Speaker 1: both novel and boring, because the combined energy, like you'll

926
00:50:55,120 --> 00:50:57,799
Speaker 1: remember that experience for the rest of your life. It

927
00:50:57,840 --> 00:51:00,479
Speaker 1: was only it was only a two hour him about

928
00:51:00,480 --> 00:51:02,400
Speaker 1: a person setting in a room, but it felt so

929
00:51:02,480 --> 00:51:06,000
Speaker 1: much longer. Yeah, so I like this. If so, here's

930
00:51:06,120 --> 00:51:08,400
Speaker 1: one of the takeaways about the experience of the present

931
00:51:08,480 --> 00:51:11,760
Speaker 1: and now. If you want, if if you're Roy Batty

932
00:51:11,800 --> 00:51:16,120
Speaker 1: and you want to have more life, always try something new. Yeah.

933
00:51:16,400 --> 00:51:20,120
Speaker 1: That was Roy's problem, is that all he did was saying,

934
00:51:20,520 --> 00:51:21,920
Speaker 1: is that you know, he had to turn to violence.

935
00:51:21,920 --> 00:51:24,000
Speaker 1: He should have turned to art and travel. I guess

936
00:51:24,040 --> 00:51:25,640
Speaker 1: he did turn to travel a little bit. He's seen

937
00:51:26,040 --> 00:51:28,799
Speaker 1: that most of us, uh, you know, wouldn't believe, but

938
00:51:29,160 --> 00:51:31,640
Speaker 1: you'd think that all those those sea beams glittering in

939
00:51:31,680 --> 00:51:34,440
Speaker 1: the in the starlight or whatever, that would have He

940
00:51:34,520 --> 00:51:36,239
Speaker 1: sure did talk about it a lot. Yeah, you know,

941
00:51:36,320 --> 00:51:39,880
Speaker 1: so it made an impression. Yeah, you know, it reminds

942
00:51:39,880 --> 00:51:43,400
Speaker 1: me of I came across this quote recently, um by

943
00:51:43,440 --> 00:51:46,839
Speaker 1: Staring Carcer Guard that, uh he said life must be

944
00:51:46,920 --> 00:51:50,680
Speaker 1: lived forward, but can only be understood backward. And I

945
00:51:50,680 --> 00:51:53,440
Speaker 1: think maybe that's the same way with the present, right,

946
00:51:53,560 --> 00:51:56,680
Speaker 1: Like you can't really catch the present, you can't catch

947
00:51:56,760 --> 00:52:01,319
Speaker 1: the present in in a backward looking way. You can

948
00:52:01,320 --> 00:52:05,080
Speaker 1: only sort of open, have an openness to experiencing the

949
00:52:05,120 --> 00:52:07,160
Speaker 1: present going forward. That's the only way to do it

950
00:52:07,200 --> 00:52:09,640
Speaker 1: in the moment. But the only way you can really

951
00:52:09,719 --> 00:52:13,080
Speaker 1: understand the significance of the moments, the little present now

952
00:52:13,160 --> 00:52:16,279
Speaker 1: is in your life is looking back on them with memory. Alright, Well,

953
00:52:16,320 --> 00:52:19,120
Speaker 1: on that note, we're gonna wrap it up. But again,

954
00:52:19,239 --> 00:52:21,080
Speaker 1: there there's so much that came up in this two

955
00:52:21,160 --> 00:52:25,359
Speaker 1: part discussion of now and time. Uh, so much that

956
00:52:25,440 --> 00:52:29,160
Speaker 1: we we can and should revisit in future episodes. So

957
00:52:29,480 --> 00:52:34,440
Speaker 1: obviously let us know about any particular points of diversion

958
00:52:34,480 --> 00:52:36,360
Speaker 1: that you would you would like us to return to

959
00:52:36,640 --> 00:52:38,960
Speaker 1: in the meantime. Check out our homepage that's Stuff to

960
00:52:38,960 --> 00:52:41,160
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind dot com. That's where we'll find all

961
00:52:41,200 --> 00:52:44,000
Speaker 1: the podcast episodes. You'll find blog posts. You'll find links

962
00:52:44,000 --> 00:52:47,680
Speaker 1: out to our social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,

963
00:52:47,719 --> 00:52:51,440
Speaker 1: and tumbler. Oh and by the way, however, you listen

964
00:52:51,480 --> 00:52:56,120
Speaker 1: to us, be it Apple Podcasts or Stitcher, what have you.

965
00:52:56,280 --> 00:52:59,600
Speaker 1: If there's a way to rate us and leave a review, uh,

966
00:53:00,040 --> 00:53:02,600
Speaker 1: leave us a high star rating, leave us a glowing review.

967
00:53:02,880 --> 00:53:04,920
Speaker 1: That is a great way to support the show. It's

968
00:53:04,920 --> 00:53:06,560
Speaker 1: a great way to spread the love and the fear.

969
00:53:07,040 --> 00:53:09,000
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, and do spread the love and the fear.

970
00:53:09,000 --> 00:53:10,960
Speaker 1: That's the other great ways to just tell your friends,

971
00:53:11,080 --> 00:53:12,960
Speaker 1: listen to stuff to blow your mind, and as always,

972
00:53:13,000 --> 00:53:14,640
Speaker 1: if you want to get in touch with us directly,

973
00:53:14,719 --> 00:53:17,239
Speaker 1: you can email us at blow the Mind if how

974
00:53:17,320 --> 00:53:30,160
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands

975
00:53:30,160 --> 00:53:55,320
Speaker 1: of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com