Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglass. Julie,
Speaker 1: what did you do this weekend? Oh? Well, I had
Speaker 1: the privilege of going to see David Eagleman speak at
Speaker 1: the Decatur Book Festival. And uh, I'm talking about science
Speaker 1: hunky nous all rolled together in one package. He un No,
Speaker 1: it's not really hunky, but you know, the media sort
Speaker 1: of plays that image out as suppose yeah, I would.
Speaker 1: You know, he's an attractive guy. He's up there with
Speaker 1: like Brian Cox, not Brian Cox the old grizzly actor,
Speaker 1: but Brian Cox, the young cosmologist in terms of like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're sort of if they had like a teen magazine
Speaker 1: for science, two year old science geeks, Eagleman would be
Speaker 1: on the cover every other month. Yeah, I'd be like
Speaker 1: saber tooth tiger Beat, yeah or something like that. Definitely,
Speaker 1: he he would fulfill that role. And he's got fancy jacket,
Speaker 1: but more and more importantly, he's got fancy thoughts. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's the most important part. And he's great at relating
Speaker 1: these thoughts to a general audience, which we all love,
Speaker 1: I mean, because that's that's the whole thing is, like
Speaker 1: scientists can do their own their own thing in a
Speaker 1: bubble all day and it's great, but somebody has to
Speaker 1: bring that knowledge to the outside world. And it's great
Speaker 1: when the scientists can do it themselves. Eagleman has also
Speaker 1: been on Colbert Report. People probably seen him there. He's
Speaker 1: all over the place to total media darling. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: we've actually talked about him before in a podcast about
Speaker 1: possibility andism. Oh yeah, yeah, which he is. He's actually
Speaker 1: sort of founded this idea of Yeah, that's what I
Speaker 1: actually yeah, I interviewed him about that. Yeah. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: took a few minutes out of his time to talk
Speaker 1: to me. But in this podcast, we're talking about a
Speaker 1: little something called free will. What Yeah, free will, which
Speaker 1: is which is like the one of the big ideas
Speaker 1: of human culture and what it is to be human,
Speaker 1: the idea that obviously we make choices in life and
Speaker 1: those choices lead us where we need to be. And
Speaker 1: we we recently recorded and published in an episode about
Speaker 1: decision fatigue. So so this kind of plays nicely with
Speaker 1: that or in a in a way kind of conflicts
Speaker 1: with it at times at times, but sometimes they sort
Speaker 1: of melt together because and that we were talking about
Speaker 1: how we were we have so many choices in any
Speaker 1: given day, little choices and big choices that it just
Speaker 1: wears us out. But but there's a theme here. There's
Speaker 1: finite mental energy, finite mental energy which plays into, as
Speaker 1: we'll find out, free will or our perception that we
Speaker 1: have free will. Yeah, and at hard here we have
Speaker 1: a very old idea too, the idea very old philosophical
Speaker 1: religious discussion of whether we are in charge of our
Speaker 1: own destiny, if we're really the captains of our soul
Speaker 1: or yeah, like Invictus, or if we're destined to do things,
Speaker 1: if our fate is outside of our own control. Now,
Speaker 1: the old days, it was kind of a question of
Speaker 1: whether we were this self moving soul or it's the
Speaker 1: gods or the fates or some of their force is
Speaker 1: is writing the book and we're just carrying along with it.
Speaker 1: But today the discussion is steeped in neuroscience with a
Speaker 1: nice sprinkling of philosophy or a layer of Chico philosophy
Speaker 1: on top. Well, you can't separate the philosophy from this, right,
Speaker 1: This is just one of those subjects that, yeah, you can,
Speaker 1: you can pour a bunch of neuroscience on, and you
Speaker 1: should because it's pretty illuminating. But at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, it's still is this. It's still a big
Speaker 1: question mark. And that's what's really exciting about it too,
Speaker 1: is that in some of these older philosophical arguments that
Speaker 1: they've been around forever, but now we have these new
Speaker 1: ideas and neuroscience, these new findings. It's forcing the philosophers
Speaker 1: to like kind of rush in and make sense of things,
Speaker 1: and they're kind of, uh, you know, I'm kind of
Speaker 1: having fun with the idea here. But it's kind of
Speaker 1: like if you have like a fire department and hasn't
Speaker 1: been a fire in town in years and years and years,
Speaker 1: and there's finally a little blaze and all these old
Speaker 1: guys are like, yeah, let's get in there and do it.
Speaker 1: In a way, it's kind of like fresh philosophical territory
Speaker 1: and that they get to tackle old arguments but in
Speaker 1: a light of new scientific discoveries. Yeah, and we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about that, particularly in the context of David
Speaker 1: Eagleman's Incognito. This is his new book, The Secret Lives
Speaker 1: of the brain, and Eagleman claims that the brain is
Speaker 1: running the show incognito, hence the title, and that this consciousness,
Speaker 1: this I that we feel that I, Julie Um really
Speaker 1: is just a bit player to the vast network of
Speaker 1: our neural circuitry. Okay um, So this is a quote.
Speaker 1: He says, we are not at the center of ourselves,
Speaker 1: but instead like the Earth in the Milky Way and
Speaker 1: the milky Way in the universe, far out on a
Speaker 1: distant edge, hearing little of what's transpiring. So, in a
Speaker 1: simple sense, instead of going with the idea I am
Speaker 1: my brain or and it's more like I am a
Speaker 1: character in the story that is told by my brain,
Speaker 1: or something to that effect. Well, yeah, And he uses
Speaker 1: the analogy of a newspaper, like your brain sort of
Speaker 1: gathering all of this data and doing all the legwork. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, the brain sort of like these localized population,
Speaker 1: sort of like you you see in a newspaper, these
Speaker 1: local communities, and all of a sudden that the headline
Speaker 1: gets served up in your brain and you the reader,
Speaker 1: I take all the credit for the headline, Like can
Speaker 1: you read it and think, oh, yeah, I knew that,
Speaker 1: But in fact, he's saying that these these ideas, these
Speaker 1: um concepts, our choices are really just a result of
Speaker 1: this activity, activity bubbling in our brains for sometimes years,
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes months, hours, um coming up with these concepts.
Speaker 1: It is not the eye saying, oh, yeah, I had
Speaker 1: that idea, and we're going to talk about that how
Speaker 1: because right now that sounds really abstract, but we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about some studies that bear this out at a
Speaker 1: physical level. It also makes me think of The Daily
Speaker 1: Show to a certain extent, because if you if you
Speaker 1: just tune into The Daily Show, as I'm sure a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of you guys do, it's easy
Speaker 1: to think, oh, man, that John Stewart is a really
Speaker 1: funny guy. He's so clever. He is and he is,
Speaker 1: he's a very clever guy, very funny guy. But that
Speaker 1: show is coming at the end of the whole day
Speaker 1: of writing, a team of writers cracking a out around
Speaker 1: the table. Yeah, and you know, just working, working, putting
Speaker 1: all this work into it, all for just a few
Speaker 1: minutes of payoff. But if you're not privy to that information,
Speaker 1: it's just like, well, look at that guy's that guy
Speaker 1: is awesome. Yeah, and this analogy. Yeah that John John
Speaker 1: Stewart is the eye of the brain. Yeah, and John
Speaker 1: Stewart is an illusion. And that is so okay. What
Speaker 1: do we do when we have consciousness or I as
Speaker 1: a bit player on the sidelines, what do we do
Speaker 1: with this information? Well, we could freak out, I guess
Speaker 1: that's one way some people are yeh, because it's I mean,
Speaker 1: it really turns everything we sort of believe on its head.
Speaker 1: We really want to believe in this idea of the
Speaker 1: self moving soul, and the idea that we're making choices
Speaker 1: and getting stuff done, and the idea that we're just
Speaker 1: this kind of surface illusion on a on a sea
Speaker 1: of cognitive depth. It's it's really kind of hard to swallow,
Speaker 1: and it makes you. I mean Daniel Dinnett, for instance,
Speaker 1: he argues that we kind of have to tweak the
Speaker 1: language a little to make sense of it all, taking
Speaker 1: the stance that we need to redefine what free will is. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: interesting enough. Freud actually sort of to tap into this,
Speaker 1: this idea or actually this problem a long time ago
Speaker 1: when he was thinking about his own relationship to his
Speaker 1: father and realizing that although he had he admired his
Speaker 1: his father there were all the things that play sort
Speaker 1: of shame and um also at times hatred and love,
Speaker 1: all these different things bubbling underneath the surface of subconscious,
Speaker 1: the subconscious, you know, our buddy Freud and the subconscious.
Speaker 1: And that's when he decided to say to himself, well, okay,
Speaker 1: if I've got all these hidden mental processes, then free
Speaker 1: choice is either an illusion or at the very least
Speaker 1: it's playing second fiddle to the unconscious. Wow, there you go.
Speaker 1: So you know, of course he didn't have neuroscience to
Speaker 1: back him up at that time, but he had an
Speaker 1: inkling that this was the case. Although he got ladies
Speaker 1: all wrong, I will say, yeah, unfortunate. So yeah, it
Speaker 1: forces us to ask the question like how does an
Speaker 1: idea even form? Because the way we feel it, the
Speaker 1: way we experience it is eureka, right, that light bulb
Speaker 1: going off above the head. Well, and that's why why
Speaker 1: a lot of people say, yeah, we do have free will,
Speaker 1: because I feel like I made that choice right. You
Speaker 1: look look at some of these other ideas and it's
Speaker 1: it maybe seems like it's a little more like a
Speaker 1: like when you turn on the hot water, you know,
Speaker 1: and the hot water comes out of the faucet, but
Speaker 1: there's really a lot going on behind the wall and
Speaker 1: under the house. There was this guy named Johann Frederick Herbart,
Speaker 1: German philosopher and psychologists. He argued that ideas might best
Speaker 1: be understand is a structured mathematical framework. So an idea
Speaker 1: is opposed by an opposite idea. You know, it's kind
Speaker 1: of like the to use a very simple analogy, Um,
Speaker 1: like the devil and the angel on the shoulder. One
Speaker 1: idea is opposed by an opposite is happening underneath us,
Speaker 1: right that we're not aware of this. We're not conscious
Speaker 1: of this. Yeah, so they're not maybe on your shoulder.
Speaker 1: Maybe they're like hanging out in your armpits, you know,
Speaker 1: as they should, and they're they're contrasting back and forth
Speaker 1: at the devil and the angel, that guy, I think
Speaker 1: we should do this, I think we should do that.
Speaker 1: And eventually one of these guys is beaten down below
Speaker 1: the threshold of awareness, and so the idea is sort
Speaker 1: of discounted right when it runs contrary. But if there
Speaker 1: is another idea that that has sort of a network
Speaker 1: of support already some proof right of the pudding, then
Speaker 1: it rises to the top and it becomes something that
Speaker 1: we're aware of, which I think is really fascinating. Uh,
Speaker 1: that you have these thoughts struggling at these deeper levels
Speaker 1: and they kind of get kicked out sometimes. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He he coined the term appreciative mass to indicate that
Speaker 1: an idea becomes conscious not in isolation, but only in
Speaker 1: assimilation with a with a complex of other ideas already
Speaker 1: in consciousness. And I was thinking about that. I was
Speaker 1: thinking again that back to this idea that we have
Speaker 1: a finite amount of mental energy, which we talked about
Speaker 1: with decision fatigue, and it would make sense that you
Speaker 1: would tamp down what seemed contrary to yourself because your
Speaker 1: brain really has to sort of fold up in a sense.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine being completely aware at every goal moment?
Speaker 1: Like if if your brain flagged every stimuli that that
Speaker 1: was floating past, I mean you would be you might
Speaker 1: actually be mad, right yeah, because I mean, we'll we'll
Speaker 1: discuss a little Morris. That's the podcast unrolls, and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of stimuli because on one one level light
Speaker 1: right now, we're just talking about the stuff going on
Speaker 1: inside your brain. It's facing facing choices and weighing one
Speaker 1: choice against the other. So it's all the hard mathematical programming,
Speaker 1: if you will, beny the operating system that would be
Speaker 1: actually perceive or are. But then there's also going to
Speaker 1: be all this environmental stimuli coming at us and all
Speaker 1: these influences that are taking hold of biological biological level.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's impossible for me to imagine like what
Speaker 1: that would be like if you were actually conscious of
Speaker 1: all these things, I mean to a certain extent. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we've talked about people who are who engage
Speaker 1: in meditation, Like a lot of that is trying to
Speaker 1: become conscious of thought, becoming conscious of how the environment
Speaker 1: is affecting you. But even that is only like if
Speaker 1: if you know, if if we are experiencing this this
Speaker 1: surface layer above an ocean and of cognitive wheels and
Speaker 1: and and gears, and even even like deep practice meditation
Speaker 1: is not going to take you all the way down
Speaker 1: to the bottom. But with so paradox all about that
Speaker 1: is that if you're going to get to that sort
Speaker 1: of level of awareness, you have to tamp down so
Speaker 1: much else, right, Like your your brain is still going
Speaker 1: to have to batten down the hatches and say, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's just a dog barking, if that's just this and
Speaker 1: that in order to become very aware of what your own,
Speaker 1: well your own not your own thoughts, but the important thoughts,
Speaker 1: like on some level, you're still having a cherry pick
Speaker 1: through the mind and figure out what's important and what's
Speaker 1: not important. And so I think that's why I think
Speaker 1: this is so interesting, because because Eagleman sort of pointed
Speaker 1: to this too and um in the book and also
Speaker 1: in his talk, that we're really the only animal that
Speaker 1: has sort of like a computer, Like if you can
Speaker 1: imagine a computer taking itself apart and taken the camera
Speaker 1: and aimed at ourselves to figure out what in the
Speaker 1: world is going on? You mean, you obviously don't see
Speaker 1: this in the animal world, and if it were going on,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't be privy to it, right, That sort of
Speaker 1: part and parcel of why this is so fascinating and
Speaker 1: mysterious that we are trying at the end of the
Speaker 1: day to get to this question of who am I?
Speaker 1: Who is this person in my head talking to me
Speaker 1: and this consciousness and am I really making the decisions
Speaker 1: in my life? And he talks again about our brains
Speaker 1: again battening down the hatches with these predictive models. And
Speaker 1: we've talked about this before that you know, this is
Speaker 1: really important from an evolutionary standpoint that we would have
Speaker 1: to come up with these predictive models of operating because
Speaker 1: every time we came into a new situation, if every
Speaker 1: single bit of information that was beamed toward us was
Speaker 1: being judged, it would be really hard to react. Right,
Speaker 1: So there are certain things that you have to model
Speaker 1: blueprint for yourself. So you come into a room you
Speaker 1: expected to, or you expect a window, you expect this,
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. And she was actually talking
Speaker 1: about how our visual cortex is the model generator for that.
Speaker 1: For this, it receives data from the bretna and then
Speaker 1: it sends its predictions based on past experience to the thalamus,
Speaker 1: which runs a report on the differences of what came
Speaker 1: in and what was expected. And this is really important
Speaker 1: because our expectations certainly color our perceptions um and actually
Speaker 1: what we think is going on. So then the thalamus
Speaker 1: sends the report back to the visual cortex and it
Speaker 1: updates its models. So it's constantly doing this and when
Speaker 1: you think about it that way, it's really cool, right.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, what things are we missing,
Speaker 1: what things are we tamping down that are going on
Speaker 1: that that that don't fit into the model, That could
Speaker 1: perhaps give us a little bit more information about choices
Speaker 1: that we might or might not make if we had
Speaker 1: more access to that information. Yeah, the I mean, the
Speaker 1: whole visual realm of this alone is fascinating. Was reading
Speaker 1: the articles to see You, sent by Susan Blackmark. There's
Speaker 1: a whole section too, for she was going into the
Speaker 1: way way sound is interpreted in the brain. But just
Speaker 1: but there are like various theories about just how we see, uh,
Speaker 1: not in terms of how the eyes work, but how
Speaker 1: the brain makes sense of that data. Because our entire
Speaker 1: field of vision is not a precision instrument. It's like
Speaker 1: there's like a tiny area of precision site and the
Speaker 1: rest is kind of vague. Side And Daniel Bennet, who
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, who's a philosopher, he's one of the old
Speaker 1: fireman rushed in to extinguish the blazes or or at
Speaker 1: least deal with the blazes that have risen up in
Speaker 1: the way of all this New New York scientific data.
Speaker 1: But he he makes a lot of arguments based on
Speaker 1: the way our eyes work and I thought one of
Speaker 1: the most interesting things that he pointed out was if
Speaker 1: you go to a mirror and look, you look at
Speaker 1: one eye and then you look at the other, and
Speaker 1: if you try and see your eyes moving from one
Speaker 1: eye to the next, you can't see it. The brain
Speaker 1: doesn't read about this. I was like, this is such
Speaker 1: a stonar moment. Did you do like I do when
Speaker 1: you ran to the bathroom and tried it out for
Speaker 1: about ten minutes? I didn't. I just had the moment
Speaker 1: in my head. I was like, whoa, because you know
Speaker 1: that your brain does that, right, but you you believe
Speaker 1: that everything that your eyes are telling you or the truth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so it creates this moment of wow, Okay again
Speaker 1: here I am questioning reality around me, if if my
Speaker 1: brain is has these blind spots, or if things just
Speaker 1: aren't that important that it's not reporting things to me. Yeah, which,
Speaker 1: of course that leads us right into change blindness, this
Speaker 1: idea that um and then there are various studies along
Speaker 1: this this line as well that that have shown that
Speaker 1: you you make minute changes to say, picture between picture
Speaker 1: A and picture BT, and people want will inevitably like,
Speaker 1: they'll stare at it and will eventually get it and
Speaker 1: they'll be like, oh, well, this is the difference. I
Speaker 1: feel like there are numerous examples of this too, various.
Speaker 1: Can you spot the difference between this picture and this
Speaker 1: which I think Uffington Post or somebody does that. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that the brain is just blind to it unless you
Speaker 1: actually center your processing on it for for several seconds
Speaker 1: in the case of some of these. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: very it's really fascinating. And right after this break, we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about how all of this really serves EO.
Speaker 1: This podcast is brought to you by Intel, the sponsors
Speaker 1: of Tomorrow and the Discovery Channel. At Intel, we believe
Speaker 1: curiosity is the spark which drives innovation. Join us at
Speaker 1: curiosity dot com and explore the answers to life's questions.
Speaker 1: And we're back. So ego, Yeah, the ego and the
Speaker 1: illusion of consciousness. That's right, Implicit egotism is what we're
Speaker 1: talking about again. Eagleman is talking about this in the
Speaker 1: context of why we may or may not have free Well.
Speaker 1: He talks about psychologist John Jones, who was looking to
Speaker 1: see if he could detect a pattern in a literative
Speaker 1: romantic pairings. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I love this.
Speaker 1: He examined fifteen thousand public records from two counties in
Speaker 1: Georgia and Florida, and he saw that there was a
Speaker 1: pattern that emerged that was greater than chance that cutles
Speaker 1: with the same first letter of their first names. We're
Speaker 1: getting hitched to one another. I don't know about that,
Speaker 1: I know, I know, yeah, yeah, Well, there was some
Speaker 1: there was some information that was like, you've got to
Speaker 1: be kidding. It doesn't it doesn't feel like we could
Speaker 1: be so easily manipulated or self manipulated on that level.
Speaker 1: But there are a ton of studies that are coming out,
Speaker 1: like if your name is Dennis, then you're more likely
Speaker 1: to be a dentist or Denise. Um. There's these associations,
Speaker 1: and I think it the studies said that, like it
Speaker 1: implied that I would have been more likely to run
Speaker 1: a hardware store or something than become a writer. So
Speaker 1: r it was something about like both both possibilities were
Speaker 1: equally kind of dreadful to me. But but then also
Speaker 1: it's yeah, the whole you're more likely to marry somebody
Speaker 1: with the same letter of Well, now this isn't happening, like,
Speaker 1: you know, this isn't a great occurrence, but it's significant
Speaker 1: enough that it raises eyebrows and Eagleman say, in this idea,
Speaker 1: this implicit egotism is a result of us being so
Speaker 1: enamored with ourselves that we can't help but find reflections
Speaker 1: of ourselves and others, and it could be behind they
Speaker 1: need to align ourselves with that familiar feeling on some
Speaker 1: unconscious level. Oh yes, and then this is also where
Speaker 1: Resputin comes in, the idea that if you tell somebody
Speaker 1: that they share a birthday with Resputin, they're more likely
Speaker 1: to be sympathetic towards the Resputin or or to behave
Speaker 1: more gregarious themselves. Right, yeah, Yeah, there's a university study.
Speaker 1: They took a bunch of college kids. They had this
Speaker 1: same essay. The only thing they fussed with is they
Speaker 1: in the biographical data on the essay. They matched it
Speaker 1: to each person's birthday. So the person reading it and
Speaker 1: then you know, half the class it was it just
Speaker 1: had a random birthday that didn't match theirs. So of
Speaker 1: course the birthdays that match, those students were more likely
Speaker 1: to say that Resputin was a stand up citizen or
Speaker 1: something along those lines. Are report that on a biographical level,
Speaker 1: this guy was pretty great, not necessarily like that the
Speaker 1: content of the essay itself. So if one were to
Speaker 1: be deceptive when applying for a job, and I'm not
Speaker 1: arguing that one should, because you can get a lot
Speaker 1: and do a lot of trouble for things like this,
Speaker 1: but if you were to lie and say that you
Speaker 1: had the same birthday as the person hiring you or
Speaker 1: is your boss, that would theoretically be beneficial. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I mean all this points back to the fact that
Speaker 1: we can't help but find commonalities with one another. Our
Speaker 1: brain is sort of hard wired to for these sort
Speaker 1: of confirmation biases, which we've talked about before. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: I mean we've talked before in the in the past,
Speaker 1: we form these stories where the center of the story,
Speaker 1: where the center of this world view. No matter what
Speaker 1: other characters are involved, be it God or just the
Speaker 1: neighbor across the street, it all ultimately comes down to
Speaker 1: what am I getting out of it? How does it
Speaker 1: relate to me. It's a story, there's a main character.
Speaker 1: I'm the main character. If there's another character in it,
Speaker 1: I need to know what the relationship is. And Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's funny because we can't. We try to inhabit someone
Speaker 1: else's perspective, but we can't help coloring that with our
Speaker 1: perspective all the time, and on the unconscious level. Right,
Speaker 1: So if I'm like, oh, Wow, I really love that
Speaker 1: blue and gray shirt that you're wear right now, that's
Speaker 1: that's one of my favorite colors, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I feel like, man, I'm really connecting with Robert today. He's,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe not even understanding it because you've got
Speaker 1: my favorite colors on. So all these things are, these
Speaker 1: these underpinnings are holding together these ideas that rise to
Speaker 1: the top without us even knowing. So though it may
Speaker 1: feel sort of ridiculous that these couples are getting married
Speaker 1: on because they have the first initials they share that
Speaker 1: in their first names, there may be something to it
Speaker 1: in other instances, right, I mean, we we'd like to
Speaker 1: believe that our romantic relationships are deeper than that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well I didn't. I didn't marry somebody just because she
Speaker 1: had the same first letter on her first name as me.
Speaker 1: I did it because her pupils were dilated. Oh yes, yes,
Speaker 1: um nice, that's giving ahead with that. But we'll we'll
Speaker 1: explain that. Well, and Egan then I also talked about
Speaker 1: this too, and in an instance, what's called priming, which
Speaker 1: sort of creates this atmosphere in which is more favorable
Speaker 1: to get the results that you want. And he talked
Speaker 1: about this, uh the Decater Book Festival and saying that
Speaker 1: there was an experiment in which people were asked to
Speaker 1: talk about their mothers. They were given either like a
Speaker 1: warm beverage to drink or a cold beverage. And again,
Speaker 1: you would not think that we could be so easily manipulated.
Speaker 1: Those with warm beverages, they had warm memories of their mothers.
Speaker 1: Those with cold beverages, Uh, it was it was it
Speaker 1: was snow cold. Yeah, it was cold. Breezeville. Prime to
Speaker 1: to remind everybody, We've we've discussed it in some previous
Speaker 1: podcasts because it is one of the forms of memory
Speaker 1: at work in the human mind. There's not just one
Speaker 1: gear of memory, of there there are multiple gears. Memory
Speaker 1: is a is a chorus of different cognitive elements, and
Speaker 1: priming is one of those that There's been cases where
Speaker 1: an individual's brain has been damaged and one form of memories,
Speaker 1: say remembering facts or or something spatial or what have
Speaker 1: you will be disabled, but the priming will still be active.
Speaker 1: So that's what we're talking about here. Yeah, your brains
Speaker 1: are tagging certain things that you've seen this over and
Speaker 1: over again. Political ads we've talked about before, and Engleman
Speaker 1: talks about a political ad from when Bush and we're
Speaker 1: running against each other and the Bush campaign had a
Speaker 1: really kind of funny commercial, well not funny depending on
Speaker 1: your sense of humor there, But basically what goes across
Speaker 1: the screen with flashes is rats. But what you find
Speaker 1: out as is the word kind of zooms back around,
Speaker 1: is that it's bureaucrats. It's actually being broadcast on the television,
Speaker 1: but of course your mind is already thinking rats negative.
Speaker 1: Eagleman also talked a little bit about face blindness, which,
Speaker 1: of face blindness is one of those things it's like
Speaker 1: trust any neuroscientists to bring it out in a conversation
Speaker 1: at least once, because it's pretty fascinating when area of
Speaker 1: the brain that deals with visual perception or facial features
Speaker 1: ends up not working. You see faces that you don't
Speaker 1: identify those with the people. There have been experiments that
Speaker 1: show that even individuals with facial blindness there's some sort
Speaker 1: of priming memory is there. They can they can see
Speaker 1: it in like facial tips. Yeah, they see it activated, right,
Speaker 1: So they can't necessarily recognize the person, but they see
Speaker 1: activity going on where the brain is saying, okay, there's
Speaker 1: something for something there. This ties in with the recent
Speaker 1: episode we did about false memories, where you can have
Speaker 1: a memory that is false. I think it is true,
Speaker 1: but somewhere in the cognitive depths, your brain knows it's
Speaker 1: not true. So this is an example of at the
Speaker 1: surface level, we don't know whose face that is, but
Speaker 1: deep down inside us the brain knows. And all this
Speaker 1: I keep coming back to a quote that I'm taking
Speaker 1: out of context from the Mahaparata where Christians Christians says
Speaker 1: there is another intelligence beyond the mind, where he's not
Speaker 1: talking about the illusion of free will exactly, but I
Speaker 1: keep coming back to that, the idea that that our mind,
Speaker 1: as we experience it, is this thin layer, and beyond
Speaker 1: that there's this whole other system, this sort of shadow
Speaker 1: mind that's running the show. Well, it's funny you say
Speaker 1: that because in the book Incognato, Eagleman talks about Samuel
Speaker 1: Taylor College's poem Kubla con and Kubla insanity to Kubla
Speaker 1: on a stately pleasure dome decree, that's the one. Yes,
Speaker 1: I know that's still that's that's nice. Um. But he
Speaker 1: talks about as an example of us losing the center
Speaker 1: of ourselves and who is really the person who is
Speaker 1: creating or making decisions, because he says, who exactly wrote
Speaker 1: the poem? And he says, and he brings us up
Speaker 1: because obviously we know that College did. But he says,
Speaker 1: since College wrote it primarily under the influence of opium,
Speaker 1: which allowed College to access his subconscious it wasn't the
Speaker 1: college that was aware. That was the sober eye Collorridge.
Speaker 1: So who wrote it? College or the opium? I'd say
Speaker 1: a little both. Alright, fair enough, author, I'll go with that.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about dilating pupils. Yes, this is where we're
Speaker 1: really getting into the biological roots of things. The rat
Speaker 1: like hind brain backing up the brain that we experienced.
Speaker 1: There's this one study that Equalman mentions where people were
Speaker 1: nine particularly we're given, uh, we're given all these different
Speaker 1: photos of women and judge them on attractiveness, and the
Speaker 1: women was dilated. Pupils were the ones that they overwhelmingly liked.
Speaker 1: Like half of the photos contained women with dilated pupils.
Speaker 1: And when we say dilated pupil, say, we're not huge,
Speaker 1: and we're talking about a couple of millimeters, right, It's
Speaker 1: not something that you would be like, ah, dilated pupils
Speaker 1: that one so not like full on. I just came
Speaker 1: from the optometrist office and concert just took off my
Speaker 1: granny and glasses from my dilated eyes. So his point
Speaker 1: was that these men were scanning these faces within seconds
Speaker 1: and making these choices, and on some level they were
Speaker 1: detecting what that she was really into the situation right
Speaker 1: that she was, she was rare to go. This is
Speaker 1: apparently a sign of sexual readiness, this dilated eyes. So
Speaker 1: tuck that in the back of your your brains, folks. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: we're not advocating, ladies that you dilate your eyes before
Speaker 1: a big date, because disaster will want sue when you
Speaker 1: try and try. Yeah yeah, Belladonna opium. Dilated eye is
Speaker 1: never any classes. It's not really necessary. But that's just
Speaker 1: one aspect of why we do the things we do,
Speaker 1: or we make the choices that we do. And Eagleman
Speaker 1: is talking about this again from an evolutionary perspective or
Speaker 1: biological perspective. We've seen this over and over again. Oh,
Speaker 1: there was the study we have with the strippers, yeah,
Speaker 1: laptop dances. Yeah, from the was this the University of Nevada,
Speaker 1: I believe, and they found that the strippers who are
Speaker 1: ovulating received higher tips than those who are not, which
Speaker 1: which meant that on on a on a very basic
Speaker 1: biological level, and the men liked the women who were
Speaker 1: better potential biological mates at any given moment. And we're
Speaker 1: talking about like an average of sixty eight dollars and
Speaker 1: tips right as opposed to non ovulating women whose averages
Speaker 1: around like thirty five bucks. So there's quite a difference.
Speaker 1: So both of these really point of the idea that,
Speaker 1: especially when it comes to choices regarding mating and survival
Speaker 1: and these very primal biological things, there's somebody else calling
Speaker 1: the shots. I mean, it's kind of a an overstatement
Speaker 1: of the obvious to a certain extent, because they're shortage
Speaker 1: of jokes about that. You know about like men don't
Speaker 1: think with their brain, they think with their well and
Speaker 1: they they talked. They also talk about in the book
Speaker 1: Um David Ggelman talks about how women will select a
Speaker 1: partner when they are ovulating based on how much facial
Speaker 1: hair and how broad their shoulders are, because they want
Speaker 1: somebody who's husky and protective and strong. Yeah, yeah, they
Speaker 1: want the incredible hulk. Well when when is it? Then
Speaker 1: they want somebody who is kind and delicate when they're
Speaker 1: not ovulating. There they look for people who have softer features,
Speaker 1: and having a broadcast just doesn't matter as much. The
Speaker 1: idea is that they're looking for someone who can nurture,
Speaker 1: learn more his words, not mine, Because when I read
Speaker 1: stuff like this sometimes I have to raise my eyebrow
Speaker 1: in a big question mark because sometimes I think this
Speaker 1: is overstated to a certain degree. Yeah, yeah, none of
Speaker 1: these are the hard and fast rule by which to live.
Speaker 1: But but again it chose that that again their stuff
Speaker 1: going on at a biological level, that if it's not
Speaker 1: robbing us of our free will completely, it's at least
Speaker 1: limiting the number of options. It's steering us towards certain choices,
Speaker 1: if not choosing them outright. For the surface, and it
Speaker 1: begs the question, so does free will really exist? And
Speaker 1: Eagleman says the argument for these the existence of free
Speaker 1: will is essentially that it's a direct subjective experience. And
Speaker 1: I talked about this earlier. I feel like I just
Speaker 1: made a choice to scratch my arms, so therefore I
Speaker 1: feel like I made a choice the objective forward being feel.
Speaker 1: But Eagleman brings up a really interesting study by I
Speaker 1: believe he's a neuroscientist Labette, who had a finger raising experiment.
Speaker 1: And in the nineteen sixties, Benjamin Labette put electrodes on
Speaker 1: his test subject's head and asked them to lift their
Speaker 1: finger whenever they got the urged to do so, okay,
Speaker 1: and it seems pretty straightforward, right. They were given a
Speaker 1: timer and asked to note the exact movement that they
Speaker 1: felt the urge. People reported the urge about a quarter
Speaker 1: of a second before they actually move their fingers. The
Speaker 1: curious part is that the E E G read out
Speaker 1: from the electrodes reported the activity in their brain rose
Speaker 1: out one full second before they actually felt the urge
Speaker 1: to move. So why is this important? I mean because
Speaker 1: it's basically saying that there are parts of the brain
Speaker 1: that are making decisions well before you become conscious of it. Wow.
Speaker 1: So it's like John Stewart just made a funny joke.
Speaker 1: Know that joke was written six hours ago by like
Speaker 1: four dudes, and it was already determined funny and served
Speaker 1: up right, approved by a committee, stamped, typed up, signed,
Speaker 1: handed over, and delivered yeah yeah, which all flies in
Speaker 1: the face of the argument that, well, I feel like
Speaker 1: I just made a choice to scratch my arm. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well you were kind of served up the information to
Speaker 1: do it. You know, this other, this other part of
Speaker 1: your brain that's working under the covers, is not necessarily
Speaker 1: giving a direct subjective experience, and it raises all sorts
Speaker 1: of interesting questions about then, then what do we do
Speaker 1: with this information? How does it change the world we
Speaker 1: live in? I was checking out the author or Scott
Speaker 1: Baker's blog, re Pound Brain. He was talking about going
Speaker 1: to see a talk by Daniel Dennett, who mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: the Philosopher, and then was discussing two recent studies by UM.
Speaker 1: It's a cooperation between the University of Minnesota and the
Speaker 1: University of British Columbia, and they found that college students,
Speaker 1: when exposed to arguments that were not completely in charge
Speaker 1: of our choices, that free will is either an illusion
Speaker 1: or not near as big a factor in our choices
Speaker 1: as we think it is they were more likely to
Speaker 1: cheat first on a mathematics test, then on a on
Speaker 1: another form of tests. But that that raises an interesting question.
Speaker 1: If we were to live in a world where everyone
Speaker 1: is thinking, well, we're not really in charge, there's no
Speaker 1: such thing as free will, I'm just privy to all
Speaker 1: these other forces beneath the surface of things. Then am
Speaker 1: I more likely to make bad choices just because I
Speaker 1: don't feel like they're my choices? Well, and that's what
Speaker 1: Jennet and others argue, right, Like, you can't blame your
Speaker 1: brain or or your lack of awareness for bad choices. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't be on trial for murder and say my
Speaker 1: brain made me do it. To a certain extent, you can,
Speaker 1: but but but not not across the board. We can't
Speaker 1: blame our brains because is we still are our brains,
Speaker 1: even if there's a lot more going on on underneath,
Speaker 1: even if we're at the periphery. Really, Yeah, Eagleman was
Speaker 1: talking about this, and he was he brought up actually
Speaker 1: Turetts and parasomnias as an example of what he calls automatism,
Speaker 1: And he's saying that someone with Touretts could be said
Speaker 1: to have no free will since the neural circuit trees
Speaker 1: making decisions for him or her right and decisions that
Speaker 1: they're consciously aware of, they can't do anything to stop it.
Speaker 1: And of course when you've got a parasomnia though you're
Speaker 1: not quite aware. This is for people who didn't hear
Speaker 1: the parasomnia episode, this is crazy sleep. This is sleep
Speaker 1: eating sleep. Um. Some people who have r b D
Speaker 1: when actually act out their dreams, which you can be
Speaker 1: quite frightening. Sleep sleep. Karate is pretty much from yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's the shorthand for that, um, But it's really
Speaker 1: sort of redefining again what free will is. And what
Speaker 1: he says is that we should come up with something
Speaker 1: called the principle of sufficient automatism. So he says, in
Speaker 1: legal parlance, automatism is is basically someone doing something and
Speaker 1: the root cause for it is a biological process for
Speaker 1: which the person has little or no control over. His
Speaker 1: example would be, for instance, like a person isn't culpable
Speaker 1: for an accident if they had a seizure right and
Speaker 1: they caused a traffic accident. Interesting story, I know somebody
Speaker 1: who was in a traffic accident, uh, and it was
Speaker 1: caused by an individual who had a seizure, and the
Speaker 1: insurance company involved claimed act of God active God. It's
Speaker 1: got to be like a state by state thing in
Speaker 1: the US, because, Yeah, I wonder if they all call it,
Speaker 1: call it active God or or in this case, that's
Speaker 1: supposed to be called automatism. M hmm, there you go.
Speaker 1: We'll see. That's a whole another podcast for psycholinguism, right
Speaker 1: and how we described meaning to language? So Egoman though
Speaker 1: he takes this example and he says, Okay, the person
Speaker 1: didn't have a choice in the matter, right, the perion
Speaker 1: that had the seizure, they didn't want to have a
Speaker 1: seizure and they didn't want to cause an accident. So
Speaker 1: he wonders if this biological process quote describe most or
Speaker 1: some would argue all of what's going on in our
Speaker 1: rains given the steering power of our genetics, childhood experiences,
Speaker 1: environmental talks and hormones, neurotransmitters, and neurocircuitry, enough of our
Speaker 1: decisions are beyond our explicit control that we arguably are
Speaker 1: not the ones in charge. In other words, free will
Speaker 1: may exist, but if it does, it has a very
Speaker 1: little room in which to operate. So he says we
Speaker 1: should reframe it as this principle of sufficient automatism. Basically,
Speaker 1: the principle arises naturally from the understanding that free will,
Speaker 1: if it is, if it does exist, is only a
Speaker 1: small factor writing on top of enormous automated machinery, so
Speaker 1: small that we may be able to think about bad
Speaker 1: decisions being made in the same way that we think
Speaker 1: about any other physical process, like diabetes or lung disease.
Speaker 1: I don't know, is he is he letting us off
Speaker 1: too easily? You think? I don't think. I mean he
Speaker 1: he out you know, in his Bookie outright came out
Speaker 1: and said, I'm not making the argument, and I don't
Speaker 1: think it. There's a risk that we're going to unlock
Speaker 1: the doors in the prisons and say, oh, you guys
Speaker 1: go free. There's no sich thing as free will, so
Speaker 1: carry on. No, I agree, but I think he's still
Speaker 1: posing that question do we have free will? And he's
Speaker 1: sort of saying, no, we don't, but possibly we could
Speaker 1: act on it within seconds. Well, this is me, not
Speaker 1: him freere Perhaps all zen meditation experts right, and we
Speaker 1: could monitor every thought, because when we get down to it,
Speaker 1: the experience is that we have free will unless we
Speaker 1: really work on ourselves to change the way we experienced
Speaker 1: the world. It's this weird paradox in the in the
Speaker 1: way we are the experience, you know, we are this,
Speaker 1: uh like like, how do you change that? How how
Speaker 1: do we do that? Could you become the brain without
Speaker 1: this subsurface of perceived free will? I don't know, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I think that's why neuroscience is so fascinating,
Speaker 1: and I think that's that's why he leaves the door open,
Speaker 1: even though he says I pretty much side with other
Speaker 1: neuroscientists and saying that we don't necessarily have the free will,
Speaker 1: or at least it's not what we think it is.
Speaker 1: It's it's definitely a different creature than what we've been discussing.
Speaker 1: But he says that he feels like neuroscience is too
Speaker 1: young and in a field right now to really definitively
Speaker 1: answer this question. And it does make me think back
Speaker 1: to the Blue Brain project, which we've talked about. This
Speaker 1: building the computer or the digital model of the brain,
Speaker 1: right trying to re engineer like our billion neurons and
Speaker 1: see this detail at a cellular level and see if
Speaker 1: it can tell us and the answer to these questions
Speaker 1: about who we are. If this consciousness this I does
Speaker 1: it really exist in this brain floating around? Yeah, As
Speaker 1: we've mentioned before, I think it's it's like I'm one extreme.
Speaker 1: You can look at such revelations as um terrifying, and
Speaker 1: on the other side you can look at it as enlightenment.
Speaker 1: And I think ultimately it's going to be ideally somewhere
Speaker 1: in between where to see the enlightening aspects of it
Speaker 1: but also see the sobering aspects of it as well.
Speaker 1: So on one level you can say, well, I'm not
Speaker 1: really completely in charge of all my choices and look
Speaker 1: at that in so far as it keeps you from
Speaker 1: beating yourself up too much, but also don't cling to
Speaker 1: it so much that you just run around doing whatever
Speaker 1: the heck entered your mind and didn't bang every impulse. Personally,
Speaker 1: I think that it's it's actually pretty liberating because I
Speaker 1: think that it gives us another way to think about
Speaker 1: our actions and perhaps even sort of back up a
Speaker 1: little bit and rethink them in a way that we
Speaker 1: make better choices, if at all possible. If that little
Speaker 1: middle second window does exist where we can make decisions
Speaker 1: that I the consciousness that we that are aware. Then hey, okay,
Speaker 1: even even better to know that that exists and take
Speaker 1: hold of it. Yeah, well, it's kind of like to
Speaker 1: come back to John Stewart. When John Stewart reads a joke,
Speaker 1: he knows that that this was written hours ago by
Speaker 1: a team of riders. We still have to add to
Speaker 1: deliver it. So there you go. Maybe there's a model there.
Speaker 1: I think there's a unifying theory of mine right there,
Speaker 1: and have to do with John Stewart. Yeah, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna patent that. Speaking of free will, some
Speaker 1: of our listeners had the free will to send us
Speaker 1: in some emails. Maybe maybe there were suggestions in this
Speaker 1: creepy voice. But if you got there, you got one.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I've got one. Well normally I read them,
Speaker 1: but I know you had one that wasn't need to
Speaker 1: do to your heart. Yeah. This is from Spencer and
Speaker 1: he was talking about the podcast that we recently did
Speaker 1: about cycolinguistics and our treatment of animals and eating animals.
Speaker 1: Believe it was called Don't Eat the Pandada. And he writes, um,
Speaker 1: and I'll skip around this a little bit because it's longer.
Speaker 1: Was very thoughtful email, says I myself am a metatarian
Speaker 1: who has always struggled with the idea of not having
Speaker 1: to participate or even think about the process by which
Speaker 1: the animal went from breathing and living to sitting on
Speaker 1: my plate, all seasoned and delicious for me personally, The
Speaker 1: internal struggle began when I was invited on a hunt
Speaker 1: with my cousin when I was sixteen. Um. I agreed
Speaker 1: enthusiastically and was taken to a farmer's field. Will re
Speaker 1: drove most of the way and we just uh for
Speaker 1: this a little bit. We spotted a group of deer
Speaker 1: who must have been suitable for shooting us. My cousin
Speaker 1: directed me to take any because like farmers field. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, yeah, Manby's coming into this, dude. My cousin
Speaker 1: directing me and take aim Adam matured dough, which I did.
Speaker 1: Upon firing the shot and seeing that my actions had
Speaker 1: directly resulted in the struggle an imminent death of a
Speaker 1: beautiful animal, immediately started crying. Since that day, I've always
Speaker 1: had an issue with the death of other animals for
Speaker 1: our enjoyment, until that first pie of a juicy burger
Speaker 1: or other savory meat concoction that I mysteriously and suddenly
Speaker 1: forget I ever took issue with how I got how
Speaker 1: it got to my mouth. And then he talks about
Speaker 1: his wife who was in the four h Beef Club
Speaker 1: for many years, and how when you're in the club,
Speaker 1: you basically raise a calf and you get to show
Speaker 1: it off and it's like this great experience and you've
Speaker 1: bonded with this animal. And he said that of course,
Speaker 1: when the young for hrs are showing their calves at
Speaker 1: the auction, many inevitably start crying as their animals are
Speaker 1: lead away for slaughter, whereupon everyone takes a few minutes
Speaker 1: to calm down and get ready for delicious beefs upper
Speaker 1: after the event. Thanks so much for the podcast. It
Speaker 1: always as promise, has blewn my mind, So I thought
Speaker 1: that was just really interesting too. Again, we're talking about
Speaker 1: the things that we do and the things that we
Speaker 1: think in how sometimes they're not quite squared together. So
Speaker 1: thank you very much Fance for for sending that to us.
Speaker 1: If you have any thoughts you'd like to share with us.
Speaker 1: You've got some some cool study you ran across, some
Speaker 1: idea that you think would make for a cool episode
Speaker 1: of this podcast, you should share it with us and
Speaker 1: with the other listeners. You can log on a Facebook
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Speaker 1: you can always send us an email at blow the
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