Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: And welcome back to Coast to Coast georgin OORI with
Speaker 2: your doctor Jeffrey Done with us, President of the International
Speaker 2: Consciousness Research Laboratories, an organization established back in nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: seven to continue the research of the effects of consciousness
Speaker 2: on physical systems carried out at Princeton University from seventy
Speaker 2: nine to two thousand and seven. His latest book is
Speaker 2: called Nexus. Jeff Dunn and on Coast to Coast first
Speaker 2: time guest, Jeff Welcome.
Speaker 3: I am, thank you George. It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 2: How did you get involved in consciousness studies?
Speaker 3: Hereditarily? Actually, my mother was one of the main manager
Speaker 3: research manager of the Princedent Engineering and Omalis Research Laboratory,
Speaker 3: and so I kind of grew up in that environment
Speaker 3: and then over the years continued to grow an interest
Speaker 3: and an experience with it. Over the last echo or so,
Speaker 3: it became a more active researcher.
Speaker 2: You got the bug and couldn't let it go right exactly.
Speaker 2: You tell us more about the Princeton Engineering and Anomalies
Speaker 2: Research or Laboratory or peer is that the one that
Speaker 2: so many people we've heard about have come from could be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is a research effort that was started, as
Speaker 3: you mentioned, back in the end of the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 3: and what they set out to do is to take
Speaker 3: a different approach to understanding the effects of consciousness on
Speaker 3: other things systems, especially physical systems. And what made it
Speaker 3: kind of unique was rather than trying to explore sort
Speaker 3: of gifted people doing amazing things, the research focused on
Speaker 3: regular people, everyday people who had come in and tried
Speaker 3: to have an influence on physical systems, whether were mechanical
Speaker 3: systems like balls dropping through a series of pins to
Speaker 3: influence them to go to the left of the right,
Speaker 3: or digital systems. Think of an electronic coin flipper that
Speaker 3: was giving heads and tails? Could you make more heads
Speaker 3: and tails? And what was unique about the program was
Speaker 3: that they collected huge amounts of data to identify relatively
Speaker 3: small effects, but effects that were statistically significant. And after
Speaker 3: the course of some thirty years, they collected such a
Speaker 3: huge body of data that it really became sort of
Speaker 3: this unquestionable body of evidence that there really was an
Speaker 3: effect here, not a huge effect, but a statistically significant
Speaker 3: effect that you would have to essentially run the universe
Speaker 3: over a few times if this is to happen by.
Speaker 2: Chance, Jeff, are you concerned that artificial intelligence is going
Speaker 2: to do away with humanity like some others are?
Speaker 3: A good question, you know, I don't think artificial intelligence
Speaker 3: is going to replace human intelligence. But I worry, admittedly
Speaker 3: a little bit about the effect that artificial intelligence will
Speaker 3: have on us from a psychological and sociological perspective, because
Speaker 3: if you look at all cases in history where people
Speaker 3: have sort of stopped trying to use their minds to
Speaker 3: do things and relegated to two devices, those capabilities atrophy
Speaker 3: same way that for example, I used to be able
Speaker 3: to drive almost anywhere and know what direction was north,
Speaker 3: and now I use a GPS, I can't do any
Speaker 3: of that. So I do worry a bit about AI
Speaker 3: having this impact on us, But I think there are
Speaker 3: aspects of humanity that AI cannot replace. The obvious one
Speaker 3: of being relationships. We are a creature that is, you know,
Speaker 3: sort of designed over the course of millennia through evolution
Speaker 3: to be social. Uh, And I don't think think AI
Speaker 3: or any kind of computer is really going to be
Speaker 3: able to fulfill that need at the end of the day.
Speaker 2: We're talking with doctor Jeff Dunn. His book is called Nexus.
Speaker 2: We'll talk about that in a moment. What does consciousness
Speaker 2: mean to you?
Speaker 3: Doc? Well, great question, you know that because that is
Speaker 3: a different Different people have different answers to that question.
Speaker 3: Consciousness when I talk about it, when I think about it,
Speaker 3: is sort of the ultimate expression of oneself. If you
Speaker 3: think about you know, the idea that you have thoughts,
Speaker 3: and you can be aware that you have thoughts. What
Speaker 3: is it that is being aware that you've got thoughts
Speaker 3: going on in your head? That level of self that
Speaker 3: is sort of above those sort of typical things that
Speaker 3: you think of the things that you're doing. That's sort
Speaker 3: of the heart of what I consider to be consciousness,
Speaker 3: And that's what's that's ultimately what is the representation of self.
Speaker 2: I don't think there's any way artificial intelligence can capture
Speaker 2: the consciousness of human mind, do you?
Speaker 3: I don't, And in large part because people have done
Speaker 3: so many different studies and demonstrate in so many ways
Speaker 3: that the essence of what it is that we're doing
Speaker 3: as conscious beings is not a brain induced phenomenon. Whether
Speaker 3: you're talking about people sitting on an operating or part
Speaker 3: of me people watching themselves on an operating table because
Speaker 3: they've dissociated and observing things that happen while their brain
Speaker 3: activity has stopped. We talk about just a huge array
Speaker 3: of different experiences that people have that suggests that what
Speaker 3: the brain is is more of a transducer or transmitter
Speaker 3: that connects something larger, consciousness into the physical representation. Right.
Speaker 3: And if that is the case, which, like I said,
Speaker 3: the evidence just is overwhelmingly that it is, then we're
Speaker 3: more than the physical matter. We go beyond that.
Speaker 2: Well, I was going to say, can we really did
Speaker 2: determine whether consciousness is tied directly to the brain physical
Speaker 2: as you mentioned, or outside of the brain.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of cases where there are things
Speaker 3: that are happening that simply can't be explained by placing
Speaker 3: consciousness in the brain. For example, if you think about
Speaker 3: people who receive information that is simply not available to
Speaker 3: them through the eyes and ears and so forth, there
Speaker 3: are channels that things are coming through, and like I said,
Speaker 3: experiences where people have sensory observations where the brain's malfunctioning
Speaker 3: suggests I think very very strongly that we are definitely
Speaker 3: operating beyond the brain. The brain is certainly a piece
Speaker 3: of the overall puzzle, but it's not the central aspect
Speaker 3: of who what we are, and as such we've got
Speaker 3: to be beyond that.
Speaker 2: It is dramatic, though, isn't it its abilities to do
Speaker 2: what it does the.
Speaker 3: Brain you mean, yeah, well, you know, it's hard. It's
Speaker 3: hard to say if it's the brain that's doing it
Speaker 3: or sort of the consciousness that's doing it. And we
Speaker 3: are able to measure some aspect of that by looking
Speaker 3: at the brain. Uh, sort of like taking a picture
Speaker 3: of one side of something that's really amazing and not
Speaker 3: even appreciating necessarily that there's a lot more going on
Speaker 3: on the other side.
Speaker 2: But of course there are times when the brain gets
Speaker 2: damaged or injured, it screws up the person.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, it's certainly you know, if you look at
Speaker 3: that antenna metaphor, right, it's that antenna gets damaged, it's
Speaker 3: not able to connect in the same way with whatever
Speaker 3: it was before, right, And so if even if that
Speaker 3: consciousness is out there, it's it's representation as it gets
Speaker 3: to the physical has been interfered with, its corrupted in
Speaker 3: some sense, and as a result, the physical manifestation of that,
Speaker 3: the way that we see somebody, the way that we're
Speaker 3: able to interact, and all the rest of that is
Speaker 3: naturally going to be affected by that too. On the
Speaker 3: other hand, we're also very adaptable creatures. Lots of interesting
Speaker 3: examples of people who do have brain injuries and in
Speaker 3: time learn to sort of call it this reprogram themselves
Speaker 3: to work around the parts of the brain that aren't
Speaker 3: that have been damaged.
Speaker 2: Jeff, what do you expect of the human brain in
Speaker 2: the next twenty thirty years?
Speaker 3: What do you think, Well, you know, we're involved. There's
Speaker 3: no question that people are changing. It's certainly generation by generation.
Speaker 3: Is we experience different things in growing up right right
Speaker 3: right from day one. That changes how brain development's going
Speaker 3: to happen, and it changes, as I say, I think
Speaker 3: the brain is only one piece of the puzzle. Changes
Speaker 3: how we as conscious beings evolved. So people who are
Speaker 3: growing up in a world where there is a lot
Speaker 3: of information and the challenge is to identify out of that,
Speaker 3: to sift through that to find the information that's relevant
Speaker 3: or hopefully accurate. That's a different growing up experience than
Speaker 3: somebody one hundred years ago, where the problem was just
Speaker 3: getting any information at all.
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