WEBVTT - Ep45 "Why did a man shoot himself after hearing the lottery numbers?" (Time Traveling: Part 3) 0:00:05.120 --> 0:00:08.760 Why would a man without a lottery ticket shoot himself 0:00:08.920 --> 0:00:14.080 after hearing the winning numbers? Who is the most disappointed 0:00:14.120 --> 0:00:16.680 person at the Olympics? And what does this have to 0:00:16.680 --> 0:00:21.560 do with Pan American airlines or botox? And why should 0:00:21.600 --> 0:00:25.000 you always put yourself in the shoes of future people? 0:00:28.200 --> 0:00:31.040 Welcome to enter cosmos with me David Eagleman. I'm a 0:00:31.040 --> 0:00:34.800 neuroscientist and an author at Stanford and in these episodes 0:00:35.000 --> 0:00:39.720 we sail deeply into our three pound universe to understand 0:00:39.840 --> 0:00:42.840 why and how our lives look the way they do. 0:00:51.640 --> 0:00:56.520 Today's episode is about mental time travel. Now we've done 0:00:56.520 --> 0:00:59.920 two episodes in the past two weeks on time traveling. 0:01:00.440 --> 0:01:03.800 I started with the concept of memory, which is our 0:01:03.840 --> 0:01:07.800 way of unhooking from the here and now and putting 0:01:07.800 --> 0:01:12.240 ourselves into past time points. And in order to do this, 0:01:12.319 --> 0:01:15.160 you need this whole network of brain areas that are 0:01:15.200 --> 0:01:18.680 involved in situating you not in the world that's right 0:01:18.720 --> 0:01:23.200 in front of you, but a remembered world. This network 0:01:23.319 --> 0:01:27.880 allows you to resimulate what the spatial layout was, who 0:01:28.000 --> 0:01:32.560 was there, what your emotions were, sounds and smells. All 0:01:32.640 --> 0:01:37.039 of this is run like a simulation, and nobody else 0:01:37.080 --> 0:01:41.080 can see it. It takes place entirely in the privacy 0:01:41.560 --> 0:01:45.360 of your own skull. Then last week I talked about 0:01:45.560 --> 0:01:52.440 the other direction of time travel. Imagining possible futures. Simulation 0:01:52.640 --> 0:01:55.320 of what could happen next is one of the most 0:01:55.360 --> 0:02:00.400 important jobs of brains. We plan out what are going 0:02:00.440 --> 0:02:03.400 to say, what we're going to do, how we're going 0:02:03.440 --> 0:02:06.680 to act in a situation, what might happen to us, 0:02:06.720 --> 0:02:09.400 and on and on. And as a reminder about a 0:02:09.440 --> 0:02:13.280 couple important points I made throughout those episodes. Point one 0:02:13.480 --> 0:02:16.399 was that we spend most of our time as humans 0:02:17.040 --> 0:02:21.400 disconnected from the here and now and playing these little 0:02:21.480 --> 0:02:24.799 movies in our heads were reminiscing on the past or 0:02:24.840 --> 0:02:28.440 we're simulating the future. And point two is it turns 0:02:28.480 --> 0:02:32.480 out to actually be the same core network of brain 0:02:32.520 --> 0:02:37.080 areas that's involved both in memory and in simulation of 0:02:37.120 --> 0:02:40.600 the future. If a person gets damaged to a particular 0:02:40.639 --> 0:02:44.960 part of their brain, like the hippocampus, they can get amnesia, 0:02:45.000 --> 0:02:47.760 meaning that they can't remember anything about their past, and 0:02:47.800 --> 0:02:52.680 they also end up unable to simulate possible futures. If 0:02:52.720 --> 0:02:56.480 you ask them to imagine standing in the shopping mall 0:02:56.600 --> 0:02:59.600 in an hour from now, they just draw a blank. 0:02:59.639 --> 0:03:03.600 They can't put a simulation together. They're not seeing a 0:03:03.680 --> 0:03:08.160 little movie in their heads. So memory and future imagination 0:03:08.360 --> 0:03:13.480 use the same brain mechanisms. They are both versions of simulation. 0:03:14.520 --> 0:03:17.240 So I used to think that who you are is 0:03:17.320 --> 0:03:20.760 the sum total of your memories. But it's even more 0:03:20.760 --> 0:03:23.880 interesting than that, because I would argue now that who 0:03:23.919 --> 0:03:29.240 you are includes the sum total of your future simulations. 0:03:29.320 --> 0:03:33.639 If you're a person who envisions big goals for yourself, 0:03:33.680 --> 0:03:36.160 that makes you a bit different from someone who has 0:03:36.560 --> 0:03:41.160 pedestrian goals. Now, from the outside, you don't know what 0:03:41.240 --> 0:03:45.080 a person is simulating. On the inside, you see someone 0:03:45.200 --> 0:03:48.120 sitting at the restaurant booth next to you, sipping on 0:03:48.200 --> 0:03:52.200 their coffee, and you don't know if they're thinking deeply 0:03:52.280 --> 0:03:55.920 about their path to a Nobel prize or instead they're 0:03:55.960 --> 0:03:58.560 just thinking about wanting a bag of chips at the 0:03:58.600 --> 0:04:02.120 local gas station. In the same way that we don't 0:04:02.160 --> 0:04:06.080 act out our dreams when we're asleep, we can dream 0:04:06.200 --> 0:04:11.280 of the past and future without execution by the awake body. 0:04:12.280 --> 0:04:15.480 So now we're all set up for two days episode, 0:04:15.560 --> 0:04:18.880 and this one involves a hypothesis that I've been working 0:04:18.880 --> 0:04:21.920 on for years. And to get going, I'm going to 0:04:21.960 --> 0:04:25.520 start with a small event that happened in Liverpool, England 0:04:25.600 --> 0:04:28.880 in nineteen ninety five when a man was listening to 0:04:28.960 --> 0:04:32.200 the radio. So this man had a wife and two children, 0:04:32.560 --> 0:04:36.520 and he was listening to the lottery numbers being read out. Now, 0:04:36.880 --> 0:04:41.480 he did not have a lottery ticket, but he listened 0:04:41.520 --> 0:04:45.120 to the first number and he was transfixed. Now the 0:04:45.200 --> 0:04:48.200 second number was announced, and then the third, and the fourth, 0:04:48.800 --> 0:04:52.960 and he was frozen. And after the sixth number got 0:04:52.960 --> 0:04:56.800 read out, he went and got down his gun and 0:04:56.920 --> 0:05:02.360 he shot himself. Six numbers that translated to his suicide, 0:05:02.800 --> 0:05:06.720 even though he didn't have a lottery ticket. Where the 0:05:06.839 --> 0:05:10.920 numbers some sort of code. What exactly had happened will 0:05:10.960 --> 0:05:14.760 return to Tim's story in a moment. First, I want 0:05:14.800 --> 0:05:18.560 to tell you about facial muscles. So just over one 0:05:18.640 --> 0:05:22.360 hundred and sixty years ago, a French neurologist named Guillome 0:05:22.440 --> 0:05:27.080 Duchen studied lots of patients, and he's immortalized in the 0:05:27.200 --> 0:05:32.080 names of diseases like Duschen's muscular dystrophe and several others. 0:05:32.520 --> 0:05:35.080 But somewhat less known about him is that he was 0:05:35.160 --> 0:05:39.200 obsessed with using electrodes to send zaps of electricity into 0:05:39.240 --> 0:05:45.800 facial muscles to characterize how facial expressions got made. And 0:05:45.880 --> 0:05:50.120 what he realized is that when a person smiles, it's 0:05:50.200 --> 0:05:54.640 caused by the contraction of just two very particular muscles 0:05:54.640 --> 0:05:58.520 of the face. Around the mouth. There's a muscle called 0:05:58.520 --> 0:06:02.279 the zygomaticus major, which raises the corners of the mouth 0:06:02.400 --> 0:06:06.119 and draws it back, and the muscles around the eye, 0:06:06.800 --> 0:06:11.240 called the orbicularis oculide, raise the cheeks and send out 0:06:11.360 --> 0:06:14.920 crows feet around the eyes. And so when your mouth 0:06:15.040 --> 0:06:18.400 and eyes smile at the same time, this is called 0:06:18.760 --> 0:06:22.720 smising or smiling with the eyes, and this is described 0:06:22.800 --> 0:06:26.800 as the Duchen smile. But why does this have a 0:06:26.880 --> 0:06:31.760 special name Because people eventually realized that this only happens 0:06:31.800 --> 0:06:35.640 when someone is genuinely happy. But there's another way that 0:06:35.680 --> 0:06:39.479 people sometimes smile when they're not actually happy, and this 0:06:39.600 --> 0:06:43.760 is known as a non Duchen smile, and it involves 0:06:43.880 --> 0:06:47.920 only the zygomaticus major muscle around the mouth and nothing 0:06:48.000 --> 0:06:51.000 goes on around the eyes. Now, as it turns out, 0:06:51.080 --> 0:06:55.000 several groups have researched smiles, which sounds like a really 0:06:55.000 --> 0:06:58.600 fun job, and the conclusion is that the eye muscles 0:06:58.640 --> 0:07:03.000 are only involved when someone is actually happy. In other words, 0:07:03.040 --> 0:07:08.480 the Duschen smile only occurs when there is genuine positive emotion. 0:07:09.080 --> 0:07:12.800 People have long noticed the non Dushen smile, and for 0:07:12.840 --> 0:07:16.200 a long time this was popularly called the pan Am 0:07:16.360 --> 0:07:20.680 smile after the airliner where the flight stewardesses apparently gave 0:07:20.760 --> 0:07:25.119 this same non smising smile to everyone all the time 0:07:25.400 --> 0:07:30.560 because they weren't genuinely happy. Also, bowtos can paralyze the 0:07:30.600 --> 0:07:33.720 small muscles around the eye, which means that people with 0:07:33.800 --> 0:07:38.120 botox sometimes just can't pull off a smiling with the 0:07:38.200 --> 0:07:41.840 eyes Duschen smile, and so a non dus Shen smile 0:07:42.200 --> 0:07:47.360 is sometimes called a botox smile as well. Okay, I 0:07:47.440 --> 0:07:50.320 tell you all that because of an observation that has 0:07:50.400 --> 0:07:55.080 been replicated multiple times, and that involves the question who 0:07:55.200 --> 0:07:59.640 is happiest when they receive an Olympic medal. Now, it 0:07:59.720 --> 0:08:02.440 seems like the answer is obvious. The gold medalist is 0:08:02.480 --> 0:08:05.200 the most happy, the silver medallist is the next happiest, 0:08:05.240 --> 0:08:09.360 and the bronze medallist is the least happy. But that's 0:08:09.800 --> 0:08:14.520 not what researchers find. Instead, they find that the gold 0:08:15.000 --> 0:08:18.560 and bronze medalists are the most happy, and this silver 0:08:18.720 --> 0:08:23.920 medalist is the least happy. For example, one study examined 0:08:23.920 --> 0:08:27.200 photographs from eighty four medallists from the two thousand and 0:08:27.280 --> 0:08:31.640 four Athens Olympics, and they found that at the metal ceremony, 0:08:32.200 --> 0:08:36.559 the gold and bronze medallists tended to have Duchen smiles, 0:08:36.880 --> 0:08:40.960 while the silver medallists tended to have non Duchen smiles. 0:08:40.960 --> 0:08:45.559 In other words, the silver medallists weren't really smiling joyfully. 0:08:46.040 --> 0:08:48.280 And this was actually an extension of a study that 0:08:48.320 --> 0:08:52.280 had been done a decade earlier, when three researchers gathered 0:08:52.360 --> 0:08:56.040 footage from the metal ceremonies of the nineteen ninety two 0:08:56.040 --> 0:08:58.640 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, and they got a bunch of 0:08:58.760 --> 0:09:02.600 undergraduates to rate the happiness of each medalist from one 0:09:02.600 --> 0:09:06.160 to ten, where one was agony, in ten was ecstasy. 0:09:06.559 --> 0:09:09.680 At the ceremonies where they are given the medals, the 0:09:09.840 --> 0:09:13.520 silver medallists scored an average of four point three on 0:09:13.600 --> 0:09:18.240 this happiness scale, while the bronze medalists scored a five 0:09:18.280 --> 0:09:22.040 point seven. The bronze medalists were happier, and it was 0:09:22.120 --> 0:09:25.960 obvious to everyone with the naked eye. Now this is weird, right, 0:09:26.360 --> 0:09:30.040 How could the second place winners be less happy than 0:09:30.120 --> 0:09:33.920 the third place winners? So let's unpack what's happening here. 0:09:34.880 --> 0:09:39.040 Why would a man commit suicide after hearing the lottery numbers? 0:09:39.080 --> 0:09:43.000 And why would a silver medalist be more disappointed than 0:09:43.000 --> 0:09:47.720 a bronze medallist. The key is what is known as 0:09:47.920 --> 0:09:53.800 counterfactual thinking. The brain doesn't just run simulations forwards and backwards, 0:09:54.240 --> 0:09:58.319 but it can step back to past time points and 0:09:58.440 --> 0:10:03.320 crank things forward to see what could have been now. 0:10:04.760 --> 0:10:08.280 In other words, this is not a simulation of the future, 0:10:08.840 --> 0:10:13.760 but instead a simulation of the present from a previous 0:10:13.840 --> 0:10:19.680 time point. This is called counterfactual thinking because the now 0:10:20.080 --> 0:10:24.599 that gets simulated is not factual. It's the brain's own construction, 0:10:24.679 --> 0:10:30.400 its own internal creation. But we can imagine present moments 0:10:30.760 --> 0:10:35.600 that might have been. Now. Why did the man in 0:10:35.679 --> 0:10:41.280 Liverpool shoot himself after hearing the lottery numbers? It was 0:10:41.360 --> 0:10:47.040 because he had been playing those exact numbers every week 0:10:47.120 --> 0:10:51.360 for five weeks, that sequence of six numbers, but this 0:10:51.440 --> 0:10:56.200 week he hadn't bought the ticket. As he listened to 0:10:56.240 --> 0:11:00.840 the numbers being read out, he thought those were my numbers. 0:11:00.920 --> 0:11:04.640 He envisioned the ways that his life could have changed. 0:11:04.640 --> 0:11:08.600 If he had just bought that ticket, His present would 0:11:08.640 --> 0:11:12.600 be different. He could immediately plug into a pastime point 0:11:12.679 --> 0:11:17.080 and crank the machinery forward to a potential now, a 0:11:17.280 --> 0:11:21.560 now that didn't happen, and the comparison of that now 0:11:22.160 --> 0:11:25.720 to the present was overwhelming to him. He thought about 0:11:25.760 --> 0:11:28.600 his potential now, the one he had missed. He pictured 0:11:29.000 --> 0:11:32.280 having an ability to pay those bills, to finish off 0:11:32.280 --> 0:11:36.439 his mortgage, to beat the financial struggles that he was facing, 0:11:36.480 --> 0:11:41.240 and he was haunted by this now that wasn't real, 0:11:41.559 --> 0:11:46.640 that was counterfactual, but that could have been. It felt 0:11:46.679 --> 0:11:51.199 so distant from where he was in reality, everything would 0:11:51.240 --> 0:11:55.200 be different if he had just bought that ticket. He 0:11:55.440 --> 0:12:00.960 was filled with regret, a regret so strong wrong that 0:12:01.040 --> 0:12:04.800 he chose to end his life. Now, I suggest we 0:12:04.840 --> 0:12:09.320 can understand regret from a computational point of view, in 0:12:09.360 --> 0:12:13.320 other words, an algorithm that the brain runs. The key 0:12:13.440 --> 0:12:18.040 is that for most situations, the emotion of regret acts 0:12:18.160 --> 0:12:22.920 as a learning signal. That means your brain readjusts itself 0:12:23.320 --> 0:12:26.959 based on that signal. So if you get mad at 0:12:26.960 --> 0:12:30.600 someone and say something mean and then that person stops 0:12:30.679 --> 0:12:35.440 talking with you. You might feel regret about what you've done 0:12:35.480 --> 0:12:38.880 to that relationship, because in the present moment you have 0:12:39.080 --> 0:12:42.880 lost a friendship, and your brain runs the simulation from 0:12:42.920 --> 0:12:46.720 that past time point moving forward, in which it constructs 0:12:46.720 --> 0:12:50.640 a scenario where you didn't say or do that offensive thing, 0:12:50.840 --> 0:12:55.120 and you're still friends. And you compare your actual present, 0:12:55.200 --> 0:12:59.520 which is uncomfortable and bad, to your simulated present in 0:12:59.559 --> 0:13:03.559 which every thing is warm and close, and the difference 0:13:03.800 --> 0:13:08.199 generates a signal of regret, and your brain uses that 0:13:08.320 --> 0:13:12.960 signal to learn on to hopefully improve its performance next time. 0:13:13.640 --> 0:13:17.839 Here's another example. Kids are always saying no to things 0:13:17.840 --> 0:13:20.920 that their parents want them to do, and parents, when 0:13:20.960 --> 0:13:24.440 they are thoughtful about this, will let this kind of 0:13:24.600 --> 0:13:28.520 learning signal do its own work. So the parent says, hey, 0:13:28.600 --> 0:13:31.679 it's freezing outside, put on your jacket, and the kid says, 0:13:32.120 --> 0:13:33.920 I don't want to wear a jacket. I'm not gonna 0:13:34.000 --> 0:13:37.360 do it. So after some push and shove, the right 0:13:37.400 --> 0:13:40.280 thing for the parent to do is say, fine, don't 0:13:40.280 --> 0:13:43.720 do it. There will be natural consequences. So the kid 0:13:43.800 --> 0:13:47.200 goes out and after a while finds that he's really 0:13:47.320 --> 0:13:51.360 cold and uncomfortable. So he now has this learning signal 0:13:51.400 --> 0:13:56.559 that tells him, had I taken the jacket, my now 0:13:56.720 --> 0:13:59.959 would be different, I would be warm. And the regret, 0:14:00.000 --> 0:14:05.760 the regret that they feel, navigates their future behavior. I 0:14:05.800 --> 0:14:08.880 saw a quotation from the author Kurt Vonnegut, who wrote, 0:14:09.440 --> 0:14:12.920 of all the words of mice and men, the saddest 0:14:13.240 --> 0:14:17.559 r it might have been, But I slightly disagree. I 0:14:17.600 --> 0:14:21.520 would rephrase it, Of all the thoughts of mice and men, 0:14:21.800 --> 0:14:26.680 the most important r it might have been. Regret is 0:14:26.760 --> 0:14:32.840 a way for us to build different nows moving forward. Now, 0:14:33.000 --> 0:14:36.280 note that in some circumstances, you might take a past 0:14:36.320 --> 0:14:40.960 time point and crank that forward, and that imagined now, 0:14:41.080 --> 0:14:45.640 your counterfactual now is actually worse than you're real now, 0:14:46.080 --> 0:14:50.320 and in that case you experience a different emotion relief. 0:14:51.160 --> 0:14:54.600 This is what happens if you're considering investing in some 0:14:54.720 --> 0:14:57.240 stock and then you don't get around to it, and 0:14:57.280 --> 0:14:59.520 then you find out the company went out of business 0:14:59.520 --> 0:15:02.920 and the lost all their money on it. Your present 0:15:03.040 --> 0:15:05.800 now is better than it would have been, so you 0:15:05.920 --> 0:15:10.000 feel relief at the path that you took versus what 0:15:10.040 --> 0:15:13.280 you might have done, or to return to the weather. 0:15:13.720 --> 0:15:16.480 Imagine that you go for a day hike and then 0:15:16.520 --> 0:15:19.640 it rains unexpectedly, and you know you don't have an 0:15:19.720 --> 0:15:22.200 umbrella in your car, but you search around in the 0:15:22.240 --> 0:15:24.720 trunk of your car anyway, and then you find one 0:15:25.120 --> 0:15:28.720 and you feel relief. And again, this can be a 0:15:28.920 --> 0:15:31.880 learning signal because it tells your brain, hey, this was 0:15:31.920 --> 0:15:35.320 a fortunate accident, but you can make this happen more 0:15:35.360 --> 0:15:40.880 purposefully from now on. So let's return to the Olympic medalists. 0:15:41.480 --> 0:15:44.800 Why is there the happiness difference between the silver and 0:15:44.880 --> 0:15:49.280 the bronze medalist Where the silver medalist is less happy. 0:15:49.360 --> 0:15:54.320 It's because the silver medalist almost got gold but missed. 0:15:55.000 --> 0:15:57.560 He or she is running the simulation over and over 0:15:57.640 --> 0:16:02.600 of how things could have gone, and in those imagined scenarios, 0:16:03.120 --> 0:16:06.000 they're the ones standing on the top platform and getting 0:16:06.040 --> 0:16:10.680 wreathed with gold. The bronze medalist, in contrast, is just 0:16:10.760 --> 0:16:13.120 happy to be there. They know they're not good enough 0:16:13.160 --> 0:16:16.120 for gold or silver, and they can imagine plenty of 0:16:16.200 --> 0:16:20.080 scenarios where they're not on the platform at all. So 0:16:20.200 --> 0:16:25.840 the silver medallists now is worse than his other imaginary now's, 0:16:26.480 --> 0:16:29.560 while the bronze holders now is better than most of 0:16:29.600 --> 0:16:35.600 his imagined scenarios. Now, interestingly, this general observation about second 0:16:35.600 --> 0:16:39.520 place winners is not new. In eighteen ninety two, the 0:16:39.560 --> 0:16:44.440 great American psychologist William James touched on this. He wrote, quote, 0:16:44.960 --> 0:16:48.360 so we have the paradox of a man shamed to 0:16:48.520 --> 0:16:52.000 death because he is only the second pugilist or the 0:16:52.080 --> 0:16:55.000 second oarsman in the world that he is able to 0:16:55.080 --> 0:16:58.200 beat the whole population of the globe minus one is 0:16:58.280 --> 0:17:02.640 nothing end quote. So the second place winner is so 0:17:03.000 --> 0:17:05.720 close to a victory that could have been, and that 0:17:05.880 --> 0:17:25.280 is a more painful place to be. So this is 0:17:25.440 --> 0:17:29.399 mental time travel. But it's not from now to the past, 0:17:29.480 --> 0:17:31.840 which is memory, as I talked about two episodes ago. 0:17:32.240 --> 0:17:35.880 And it's not from now to the future, which is prediction, 0:17:36.119 --> 0:17:38.880 which I talked about in the last episode. But instead 0:17:38.920 --> 0:17:43.560 this is starting from past time points and simulating forward 0:17:43.840 --> 0:17:48.280 to what could have been right now now. I want 0:17:48.320 --> 0:17:50.160 to make a point that I'll return to at the end, 0:17:50.200 --> 0:17:53.680 which is that as you simulate yourself for all these 0:17:53.720 --> 0:17:58.680 different time points, this allows you to see different possibilities 0:17:58.760 --> 0:18:02.919 about who you could have been. And so in this sense, 0:18:03.119 --> 0:18:06.960 you're used to thinking about different us, different versions of 0:18:07.000 --> 0:18:11.000 yourself that might have existed. So before we dive deeper 0:18:11.000 --> 0:18:13.040 into the science, we're going to take a moment to 0:18:13.160 --> 0:18:16.320 dive into the literature. I'm going to read a story 0:18:16.359 --> 0:18:18.879 from my book of short stories. Some this story is 0:18:18.920 --> 0:18:24.600 called subjunctive. In the afterlife, you are judged not against 0:18:24.680 --> 0:18:29.360 other people, but against yourself. Specifically, you are judged against 0:18:29.480 --> 0:18:33.240 what you could have been. So the afterworld is much 0:18:33.280 --> 0:18:36.919 like the present world, but it now includes all the 0:18:37.160 --> 0:18:40.600 us that could have been. In an elevator, you might 0:18:40.680 --> 0:18:45.080 find more successful versions of yourself, perhaps the you that 0:18:45.240 --> 0:18:48.879 chose to leave your hometown three years earlier, or the 0:18:48.920 --> 0:18:51.480 you that happened to board an airplane next to a 0:18:51.520 --> 0:18:55.320 company president who then hired you. As you meet these ewes, 0:18:55.800 --> 0:18:58.919 you experience a pride of the sort you feel for 0:18:59.000 --> 0:19:03.480 a successful cousin. Although the accomplishments don't directly belong to you, 0:19:03.560 --> 0:19:09.040 it somehow feels close. But soon you fall victim to intimidation. 0:19:10.080 --> 0:19:13.920 These us are not really you. They are better than you. 0:19:14.520 --> 0:19:19.600 They made smarter choices, worked harder, invested the extra effort 0:19:19.680 --> 0:19:24.560 into pushing on closed doors. These doors eventually broke open 0:19:24.600 --> 0:19:27.720 for them and allowed their lives to splash out in 0:19:27.840 --> 0:19:32.720 colorful new directions. Such success can't be explained away by 0:19:32.760 --> 0:19:38.080 a better genetic hand. Instead, they played your cards better 0:19:38.680 --> 0:19:44.240 in their parallel lives. They made better decisions, avoided moral lapses, 0:19:44.800 --> 0:19:48.159 did not give up on love so easily. They worked 0:19:48.160 --> 0:19:52.080 harder than you did to correct their mistakes, and apologized 0:19:52.160 --> 0:19:57.760 more often. Eventually you cannot stand hanging around these better use. 0:19:58.440 --> 0:20:02.280 You discover you've never felt more competitive with anyone in 0:20:02.280 --> 0:20:05.720 your life. You try to mingle with the lesser use, 0:20:06.040 --> 0:20:09.560 but it doesn't assuage the sting. In truth, you have 0:20:09.680 --> 0:20:13.439 little sympathy for these less significant use and more than 0:20:13.480 --> 0:20:17.280 a little haughtiness about their indolence. If you had quit 0:20:17.400 --> 0:20:19.680 watching TV and gotten off the couch, you wouldn't be 0:20:19.720 --> 0:20:22.320 in this situation. You tell them when you bother to 0:20:22.320 --> 0:20:25.560 interact with them at all, but the better use are 0:20:25.600 --> 0:20:28.680 always in your face. In the afterlife. In the bookstore, 0:20:28.680 --> 0:20:31.040 you'll see one of them arm in arm with the 0:20:31.080 --> 0:20:35.359 affectionate woman who you let slip away. Another you is 0:20:35.440 --> 0:20:38.520 browsing the shelves, running his fingers over the book he 0:20:38.600 --> 0:20:42.920 actually finished writing, And look at this one jogging past outside. 0:20:43.080 --> 0:20:45.760 He's got a much better body than yours, thanks to 0:20:45.840 --> 0:20:48.840 a consistency at the gym that you never kept up. 0:20:49.880 --> 0:20:55.119 Eventually you sink into a defensive posture, seeking reasons why 0:20:55.200 --> 0:20:57.680 you wouldn't want to be so well behaved and virtuous. 0:20:57.720 --> 0:21:01.080 In any case, you grudgingly be friends some of the 0:21:01.160 --> 0:21:04.360 lesser use and go drinking with them. Even at the bar, 0:21:04.800 --> 0:21:08.240 you see the better use buying rounds for their friends, 0:21:08.480 --> 0:21:13.760 celebrating their latest good choice, And thus your punishment is 0:21:14.000 --> 0:21:18.800 cleverly and automatically regulated in the afterlife. The more you 0:21:19.000 --> 0:21:23.159 fall short of your potential, the more of these annoying 0:21:23.440 --> 0:21:27.800 selves you are forced to deal with. So that's the 0:21:27.960 --> 0:21:31.679 sense in which our constant time travel generates lots of 0:21:31.720 --> 0:21:35.480 different versions of who we could be, and presumably there's 0:21:35.520 --> 0:21:40.720 no afterlife where we meet them, but nonetheless different use 0:21:41.160 --> 0:21:46.920 exist right now, trapped in the boundaries of your skull. Now, 0:21:46.960 --> 0:21:50.280 I'll mention one interesting note about regret, one that's been 0:21:50.320 --> 0:21:53.120 noticed by psychologists and economists, and I'm going to tell 0:21:53.119 --> 0:21:55.959 you this just in case you decide to open a restaurant. 0:21:56.600 --> 0:22:00.880 Don't have too many choices on the menu, because when 0:22:00.920 --> 0:22:05.639 there are too many choices, customers feel higher levels of 0:22:05.760 --> 0:22:10.639 regret after the meal is over. How do we understand this, Well, 0:22:11.000 --> 0:22:13.800 you can only choose one thing for your main meal. 0:22:14.760 --> 0:22:17.520 If there were lots of choices on the menu, then 0:22:17.560 --> 0:22:22.840 your brain keeps running simulations of Oh, I would have 0:22:22.840 --> 0:22:25.000 gotten this, and this is what the experience could have 0:22:25.040 --> 0:22:27.359 been like, or I could have gotten that, or I 0:22:27.359 --> 0:22:33.760 could have gotten that. More choices lead to more regret afterward. 0:22:33.960 --> 0:22:37.960 So compare going to the cheesecake factory, which has a 0:22:38.320 --> 0:22:43.000 twelve page menu spilling over with choices, versus you go 0:22:43.080 --> 0:22:48.280 to in an Outburger whose menu reads Hamburger cheeseburger fries. 0:22:49.280 --> 0:22:52.240 So when you're done with an in an Outburger meal, 0:22:52.640 --> 0:22:55.399 you don't really have much of anything to compare for 0:22:55.480 --> 0:23:00.680 what could have been. But after a cheesecake factory meal, 0:23:01.320 --> 0:23:05.800 your brain unconsciously churns on all the choices that it 0:23:05.920 --> 0:23:10.520 didn't take, and it might conclude, correctly or incorrectly, that 0:23:10.680 --> 0:23:14.239 one of those other choices would have been better, and 0:23:14.280 --> 0:23:20.080 then you feel slightly less happy about the choice you made. 0:23:20.160 --> 0:23:23.640 So here's where we are so far. Regret is any 0:23:23.640 --> 0:23:28.200 emotion that a companies negative outcomes to decisions for which 0:23:28.240 --> 0:23:32.080 we've been responsible. But it turns out, since we are 0:23:32.119 --> 0:23:35.760 creatures who are so good at moving around in time, mentally, 0:23:36.480 --> 0:23:41.919 we come to operate and make decisions based on anticipated regret. 0:23:42.960 --> 0:23:46.919 That is, we come to anticipate the emotional consequences of 0:23:47.000 --> 0:23:51.200 decisions we're making now. So imagine you're facing two choices. 0:23:51.280 --> 0:23:54.639 Let's say which new job to take, and one of 0:23:54.680 --> 0:23:57.680 them is a really risky startup with big dreams about 0:23:57.720 --> 0:24:01.359 where they'll go, and the other is a well established 0:24:01.400 --> 0:24:04.960 company that's a little boring but very stable. So a 0:24:05.000 --> 0:24:08.760 lot of people will gravitate toward the stable choice, and 0:24:08.840 --> 0:24:11.440 you might think, fine, I get it, they're avoiding risk. 0:24:11.560 --> 0:24:14.840 But there's a slightly richer way to view this, which 0:24:14.880 --> 0:24:19.800 is that they're avoiding anticipated regret. If one of the 0:24:19.880 --> 0:24:23.240 choices is risky and the other certain, and the startup 0:24:23.640 --> 0:24:27.040 goes out of business, you'll feel bad that you took 0:24:27.119 --> 0:24:30.080 such a big risk. But if the stable company were 0:24:30.080 --> 0:24:32.560 to go out of business, you wouldn't feel much regret 0:24:32.960 --> 0:24:37.720 because that was an unforeseen possibility. You had made the 0:24:37.800 --> 0:24:40.639 right choice by placing your chips on something that was 0:24:40.760 --> 0:24:45.120 unlikely to fail. So the simulation of the future generally 0:24:45.240 --> 0:24:49.320 drives people to choose the safer choice to avoid the 0:24:49.480 --> 0:24:54.840 possibility of feeling the really bad feelings later. This is 0:24:54.880 --> 0:24:58.600 also suggested to be why you will buy a brand 0:24:58.760 --> 0:25:01.800 that you know, even if it it's more expensive, over 0:25:01.920 --> 0:25:05.400 a brand that you don't know that's less expensive, even 0:25:05.440 --> 0:25:08.119 though it's a better deal to take the unknown brand, 0:25:08.520 --> 0:25:11.119 For many people, it feels worth it to spend the 0:25:11.200 --> 0:25:15.320 extra money because they anticipate they will have more regret 0:25:15.400 --> 0:25:18.760 if the unknown brand ends up being a bad choice. 0:25:19.840 --> 0:25:22.320 And this comes up in a thousand ways in our lives. 0:25:22.960 --> 0:25:26.320 Anticipated regret is what gets you to buy something that's 0:25:26.359 --> 0:25:30.080 on sale now instead of waiting for maybe a better 0:25:30.160 --> 0:25:33.880 sale later, because you're afraid that the sale won't last. 0:25:33.960 --> 0:25:36.640 And then you'll think, oh, man, I could have had 0:25:36.640 --> 0:25:39.399 that for ten percent off, but I waited and I 0:25:39.520 --> 0:25:43.280 missed my chance. It's not that you're experiencing regret now, 0:25:43.720 --> 0:25:47.040 it's that you're anticipating that you will feel regret in 0:25:47.080 --> 0:25:51.840 the future, and so that steers your behavior now. And 0:25:51.880 --> 0:25:55.120 this is of course what high pressure car salesmen try 0:25:55.119 --> 0:25:58.240 to do when they say I'll give you this special discount, 0:25:58.320 --> 0:26:01.639 but it only applies right now. The second you walk 0:26:01.680 --> 0:26:06.040 off this car lot, the offer goes away forever, so 0:26:06.160 --> 0:26:09.560 you simulate how you would feel if you lost this 0:26:09.760 --> 0:26:12.520 offer that's being dangled in front of you right now. 0:26:13.240 --> 0:26:17.800 The anticipation of that regret spurs you into actions so 0:26:17.880 --> 0:26:21.920 you won't have to feel bad later. So your brain 0:26:22.040 --> 0:26:26.400 simulates futures and it feels them, and often that includes 0:26:26.520 --> 0:26:30.080 questions like how bad will I feel if I lose 0:26:30.119 --> 0:26:34.280 this gamble. You don't just minimize risk, you minimize the 0:26:34.440 --> 0:26:40.040 regret that you expect to feel. But anticipated regret isn't 0:26:40.160 --> 0:26:44.400 just about avoiding risk. Sometimes you can leverage the issue 0:26:44.400 --> 0:26:49.159 of anticipation to improve your decision making. So when I 0:26:49.240 --> 0:26:52.119 was younger, if I was having a hard time making 0:26:52.119 --> 0:26:56.080 a decision between two choices, my mother would tell me 0:26:56.560 --> 0:26:59.359 to toss a coin. Heads meant that I would take 0:26:59.400 --> 0:27:01.760 the first choice, and tails meant I would take the 0:27:01.840 --> 0:27:06.120 second choice. But the coin toss wasn't the thing. The key, 0:27:06.200 --> 0:27:08.800 she told me was to toss the coin and see 0:27:08.840 --> 0:27:12.760 the result, and then see how that result felt in 0:27:12.840 --> 0:27:16.760 my gut. When you see which choice gets indicated by 0:27:16.760 --> 0:27:20.840 the coin, you might feel a tiny bit of relief, 0:27:21.000 --> 0:27:24.200 well I'm glad Atlanta that way, or you might feel 0:27:24.520 --> 0:27:29.200 instead a tinge of regret, and the second that that 0:27:29.359 --> 0:27:33.360 regret bubbles up, then you know that the other choice 0:27:33.560 --> 0:27:37.840