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Speaker 1: Why is there so much polarization in the world, and

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Speaker 1: what does this have to do with the brain, And

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Speaker 1: what does any of this have to do with how

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Speaker 1: you picture a cat, or why we respond to certain

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Speaker 1: cartoons or the British nobleman Lord Gordon, or the Iroqui

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Speaker 1: Native Americans? And why do you naturally feel that everyone

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Speaker 1: who disagrees with you is a troll or misinformed? And

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Speaker 1: if you could just shout loudly enough in all caps

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Speaker 1: on Twitter, they would see that you're right. Why can't

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Speaker 1: they see that you know the truth? Welcome to inner

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Speaker 1: Cosmos with me, David Eagleman. I'm a neuroscientist and an

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Speaker 1: author at Stanford University, and I've spent my whole career

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Speaker 1: studying the intersection between how the brain works and how

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Speaker 1: we experience life. It hasn't escaped anybody's notice that we

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Speaker 1: are in a time in which polarization and disagreement is

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Speaker 1: higher than most of us have seen in our lives

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Speaker 1: so far, and so in the past decade I've become

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Speaker 1: very interested in the brain science behind that behind polarization,

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Speaker 1: and more generally, how we come to believe our own

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Speaker 1: political opinions and why we're so certain that everyone else

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Speaker 1: is wrong, and how if we could just talk to them,

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Speaker 1: if they could just listen to us, they would see

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Speaker 1: the light and they would know that we are right

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Speaker 1: and they were mistaken. Now, I want to set the stage.

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Speaker 1: Polarization is not a new thing. Although we are in

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Speaker 1: a polarized era right now, this is far from unique.

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Speaker 1: Just think about the Civil War in America, where you

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Speaker 1: had brothers and neighbors taking up arms against one another,

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Speaker 1: or in the nineteen sixties and seventies, people here held

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Speaker 1: vastly different opinions about the war in Vietnam and how

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Speaker 1: to treat the returning soldiers or take stuff that's even bigger,

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Speaker 1: like Nazism in Germany, which was the most advanced country

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Speaker 1: in Europe. The thing to recognize is that in the

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Speaker 1: nineteen thirty four elections in Germany, every single seat in

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Speaker 1: the Reichstag, the German Parliament, was either Communist Party far

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Speaker 1: left or National Socialist Party far right. Or look more

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Speaker 1: generally at the whole twentieth century, the Communist Revolution in

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Speaker 1: China or in the USSR, or the Hutu massacre of

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Speaker 1: the Tutsi in Rwanda, or the Camera Rouge in Cambodia,

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Speaker 1: and on and on. There's nothing new about polarization and

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Speaker 1: people taking up arms. And what I want to talk

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Speaker 1: about today is why so the question on lots of

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Speaker 1: people's mind, it seems to be, is this because of

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Speaker 1: social media. I don't think that has much of anything

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Speaker 1: to do with it. Keep in mind that all the

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Speaker 1: examples I just named preceded Twitter and Facebook, and those

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Speaker 1: were much worse than what we have going on currently.

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Speaker 1: The fact is it doesn't take much to get people

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Speaker 1: all worked up over different opinions and taking up arms,

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Speaker 1: and you don't need social media for that. And my

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Speaker 1: goal today is to explain why it is so easy

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Speaker 1: for people to get so worked up and believe their truth.

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Speaker 1: So this is what we're going to explore. Why does

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Speaker 1: everyone have different opinions? And why does everyone with a

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Speaker 1: different opinion to yours seem misinformed or obstreperous or like

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Speaker 1: a troll. So I'll start with a cartoon and a story.

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Speaker 1: The cartoon was one that I saw recently on Twitter.

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Speaker 1: It shows a bunch of people walking on a road

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Speaker 1: and up ahead there's a fork in the road and

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Speaker 1: off to one side there's a small number of smart,

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Speaker 1: thoughtful people that are following a windy path marked complex

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Speaker 1: but right, and on the other side of the fork

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Speaker 1: there is a very packed group of people and they're

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Speaker 1: all walking and it's labeled simple but wrong, and this

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Speaker 1: takes them to a cliff that they eventually tumble off of.

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Speaker 1: Now I'm going to come back to this cartoon later,

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Speaker 1: and when I come back, we're going to understand this

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Speaker 1: in a slightly different way.

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Speaker 2: But first I want to turn to this.

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Speaker 1: Story, which is a true story. Many years ago, I

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Speaker 1: got my PhD in neuroscience. I was a second year

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Speaker 1: graduate student when the new class of first year students

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Speaker 1: came in and one student really stood out, and I'm

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Speaker 1: going to call her Tanya.

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Speaker 2: She seemed very sweet.

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Speaker 1: And what we found out was that Tanya had extraordinary grades,

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Speaker 1: and she'd come from a very impoverished neighborhood in Chicago,

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Speaker 1: but she had these incredible grades and these incredible letters

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Speaker 1: of recommendation and great scores on her gres. So during

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Speaker 1: the first month or two of school, she was given

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Speaker 1: a special award and there was going to be a

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Speaker 1: banquet for it, and to my surprise, she asked me

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Speaker 1: if I would be her date to the banquet.

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Speaker 2: So I said yes.

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Speaker 1: I didn't know her well, but I thought she seemed

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Speaker 1: very sweet, and so I said yes. So the banquet

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Speaker 1: was supposed to be on Friday of that week, but

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Speaker 1: as it turns out, the banquet never happened. Why it's

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Speaker 1: because on Tuesday of that week, Tanya was in the

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Speaker 1: women's restroom with one of the administrators at the school

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Speaker 1: and they started talking. The administrator said, Wow, Tanya, everything

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Speaker 1: is so amazing about you and.

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Speaker 2: Your grades and your skills.

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Speaker 1: I want to know how your school cultivated a thinker

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Speaker 1: like you. And so Tanya just had some humble answer,

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Speaker 1: and so this administrator decided she was going to call

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Speaker 1: the school and find out how they produced somebody like Tanya.

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Speaker 2: So she calls to.

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Speaker 1: Talk to one of the professors that wrote a letter

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Speaker 1: of recommendations for Tanya. And so she dials up and

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Speaker 1: she gets the secretary and she asks to speak to

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Speaker 1: the professor, and the secretary says who, and the administrator

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Speaker 1: repeats the name. I'm looking for, Professor so and so,

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Speaker 1: and the woman on the other end says, there's nobody

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Speaker 1: here by that name. So the administrator says, yeah, this

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Speaker 1: is the professor that wrote this letter, and the secretary says,

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Speaker 1: I've worked here thirty years and there is nobody here

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Speaker 1: by this name. So turn out to be a fake

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Speaker 1: letter of recommendation. So the administrator calls the second letter

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Speaker 1: of recommendation, same story. So she calls the third recommender

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Speaker 1: and gets connected, and it turns out that it was

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Speaker 1: Tanya's mother's office. And so what quickly became unraveled is

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Speaker 1: that Tanya had faked everything her transcript or GRES. And

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Speaker 1: this was by the way back in the nineties. So

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Speaker 1: she did this by digitally scanning her gres and then

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Speaker 1: changing them with early versions of photoshop, and then reprinting them. Anyway,

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Speaker 1: one of my colleagues equipped that she should get a

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Speaker 1: PhD just for the cleverness of her deception. But the

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Speaker 1: thing that struck me was how blind we all were

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Speaker 1: to the deception. We were completely fooled by it. So anyway,

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Speaker 1: the graduate school said to her, WHOA, there's something really

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Speaker 1: strange here, and you have to come up with an

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Speaker 1: explanation for this, And Tanya just ran away. But one

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Speaker 1: of my classmates caught her on the way out at

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Speaker 1: the door, and she had an excuse for everything, and

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Speaker 1: she said, I got screwed by this person, and this

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Speaker 1: person cheated me, and I thought they were writing a

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Speaker 1: real letter, and I thought the school was accredited, but

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Speaker 1: they lied to me, so she had an excuse for everything. Now,

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Speaker 1: obviously the details of this story stuck with me through

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Speaker 1: the years because I had almost gone on a date

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Speaker 1: with this girl. Anyway, that was the end of the

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Speaker 1: Tanya story, or so I thought. A couple of years later,

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Speaker 1: someone pointed me to an article from the Yale University newspaper,

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Speaker 1: and that's how we learned that Tanya had left our

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Speaker 1: school and gone to ya next and faked her way

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Speaker 1: into graduate school there, and Yale had caught her. This

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Speaker 1: was just like the first time, but Yale was mad

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Speaker 1: because they had been paying her a stipend, and so

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Speaker 1: they put her in jail. And I pictured the girl

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Speaker 1: that I almost went on a date with sitting on

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Speaker 1: a cement bench in jail, and the next newspaper article

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Speaker 1: I found showed that in jail, Tanya had bitten two guards,

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Speaker 1: and at some point she was released from jail, and

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Speaker 1: then we heard nothing about her after that until two

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Speaker 1: years later. Because Tanya went home to where she lived

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Speaker 1: in Chicago, and she and her mother decided to do

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Speaker 1: a big drug deal with two men who turned out

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Speaker 1: to be undercover agents, and they got caught and she

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Speaker 1: was going to be sentenced for a long time, and

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Speaker 1: so she and her cousin came up with an idea.

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Speaker 1: So they went out and they found a woman who

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Speaker 1: was a drug addict, who who was approximately her size

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Speaker 1: and looked a bit like her. And they said, hey,

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Speaker 1: we're going to give you free drugs if you come

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Speaker 1: to the dentist. And she said she was doing an

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Speaker 1: insurance scam, and she said, come to the dentist and

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Speaker 1: say that your name is my name. And she had

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Speaker 1: the woman wearing gloves to the dentist office so there

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Speaker 1: wouldn't be any fingerprints, and she accompanied her and she

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Speaker 1: signed the paperwork for her. And then after they had

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Speaker 1: the imprints, they brought this woman home and they smashed

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Speaker 1: her on the head with a brick and they injected

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Speaker 1: her with a bunch of insulin to make her pass out.

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Speaker 1: That's all they had access to and that's why they

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Speaker 1: used the insulin. And their plan was to kill this

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Speaker 1: woman and burn the body so that the dental imprints

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Speaker 1: would be found and they would conclude that Tanya was

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Speaker 1: dead and then she wouldn't have to go to jail.

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Speaker 1: As it turns out, this poor woman eventually came to

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Speaker 1: in the basement of Tanya's cousin's house and she managed

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Speaker 1: to scramble out of the window and she ran a

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Speaker 1: crossed the street to a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant. She

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Speaker 1: screamed for help, and Tanya realized that the woman had

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Speaker 1: just escaped, and she ran into the Kentucky Fried Chicken

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Speaker 1: right after her and started screaming that the woman had

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Speaker 1: stolen her money. And everything was very confusing, but the

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Speaker 1: police showed up and they couldn't figure out what was happening,

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Speaker 1: so they arrested everyone.

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Speaker 2: Here was this woman with blood.

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Speaker 1: All over her, so they just took everyone into the station,

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Speaker 1: and eventually the whole thing became unraveled and everyone involved

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Speaker 1: in this case was jaw dropped. As this story unfolded,

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Speaker 1: the ease and creativity with which Tanya thought of a

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Speaker 1: plan that went, okay, how about I just kill this

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Speaker 1: woman and then burned the body. And when you burn

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Speaker 1: the body, the dental imprints are the things that last.

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Speaker 1: And so because this woman had gone to the dentist

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Speaker 1: under Tanya's name, then the world would conclude I'm dead

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Speaker 1: and then I won't go to jail, and I was thinking, Wow,

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Speaker 1: I almost went on a day with this woman. So

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Speaker 1: this was one of the moments in my life when

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Speaker 1: I was struck by how different people can be on

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Speaker 1: the inside and how little insight we have into the

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Speaker 1: cosmos of someone else's brain and mind. And happily this

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Speaker 1: was positioned at the very beginning of my neuroscience career,

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Speaker 1: and it influenced what I've been studying since. It has

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Speaker 1: always struck me as fascinating the differences between people. Everyone

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Speaker 1: is very different on the inside, sometimes much more than

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Speaker 1: we expect. Now it turns out my father was a

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Speaker 1: forensic psychiatrist and he was involved in most of the

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Speaker 1: big mass murder cases in New Mexico where I grew up.

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Speaker 1: One of them was a guy named William Wayne Gilbert

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Speaker 1: who had killed three people cold blooded murder, and my

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Speaker 1: father became the psychiatrist in that case. Now, I was

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Speaker 1: a child and we went to some social event with

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Speaker 1: my father, and I remember somebody saying to my father,

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Speaker 1: Gilbert should not get the death penalty because presumably he

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Speaker 1: feels terrible for what he's done. Presumably he feels deep

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Speaker 1: regret for having killed three people. And as a kid,

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Speaker 1: I remember totally feeling like I agreed with that, but

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Speaker 1: I remembered my father's surprise at the statement, because my

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Speaker 1: father had just spent hours in deposition with Gilbert, and

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Speaker 1: he explained to this man genuinely and professionally that it

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Speaker 1: simply wasn't the case that Gilbert had regret, because when

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Speaker 1: William Wayne Gilbert would think about the idea of going

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Speaker 1: to murder somebody, he said, he had the same level

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Speaker 1: of excitement that he did as a child on the

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Speaker 1: when he was thinking of killing someone. And so my

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Speaker 1: father's point to this man and to me when I

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Speaker 1: was eight years old, is you can't actually stick yourself

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Speaker 1: You think everybody's just like me, especially when you're a child,

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Speaker 1: but in fact people can be quite different on the inside.

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Speaker 1: And it turns out that the governor of New Mexico

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Speaker 1: die now, and to show his gratitude, he managed to

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Speaker 1: the most stunning prison breaks from a maximum security penitentiary

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Speaker 1: where he let out several other murderers. And so for

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Speaker 1: a few months it was very tense in New Mexico

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Speaker 1: They were finally found again, but only after this very

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Speaker 1: taking hostages. So all this stuff really got me thinking

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Speaker 1: from a young age about the differences between people. So

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Speaker 1: I'll just mention one more anecdote here, my father deposed

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Speaker 1: into Western Union office and asked the clerk to use

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Speaker 1: for customers. So this guy jumped the counter and beat

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Speaker 1: the clerk almost to death. And the interesting part is

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Speaker 1: that he said to my father during the deposition, but

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Speaker 1: anybody would have done the same thing in that situation, right,

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Speaker 1: And he meant it. He was being genuine because we

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Speaker 1: all have an internal model of the world what constitutes

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Speaker 1: appropriate behavior in the world, and we assume that everyone

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Speaker 1: genuinely could not imagine anyone having a different reaction in

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Speaker 1: that circumstance. Now, when we think about the differences between people,

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Speaker 1: were used to thinking about extreme cases like Tanya or

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Speaker 1: These people, presumably have psychopathy paths make up about one

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Speaker 1: percent of the population. These are people who simply don't

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Speaker 1: care about your feelings. You're just an obstacle that they're

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Speaker 1: this idea that other people can be different from you

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Speaker 1: on the inside can be generalized. So take something like schizophrenia.

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Speaker 1: He's delusional, he's not in contact with reality. So in

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Speaker 1: situations like this, you look at the man and you say, Okay,

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Speaker 1: I guess that man's internal model isn't the same as mine.

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Speaker 1: He's not experiencing reality the same way I do. So

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Speaker 1: you might think, okay, I get that about different models

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Speaker 1: on the inside for psychopaths and for people with schizophrenia,

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Speaker 1: But otherwise the intuition is that the rest of us

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Speaker 1: are all about the same. But there are some important

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Speaker 1: things to note here. First, when it comes to something

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Speaker 1: as being categories, like Okay, that person's psychopathic and I'm not,

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Speaker 1: or that person is schizophrenic and I'm not. But in fact,

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Speaker 1: all of these things are now appreciated as living on

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Speaker 1: So take psychopathy for example. There's a well used way

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Speaker 1: and in the United States, if you're above a thirty,

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Speaker 1: then you are labeled a psychopath. You don't want to

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Speaker 1: be roommates with the guy who scores twenty nine on

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Speaker 1: this test, even though they're not technically a psychopath, they

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Speaker 1: share a lot of the fundamental characteristics, so it's a

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Speaker 1: spectral issue. And by the way, this is the same

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Speaker 1: with everything in psychiatry. This has been the direction of

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Speaker 1: the Bible of psychiatry called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.

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Speaker 1: It used to be all about categories, and now everything

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Speaker 1: is about living on a spectrum, but let's keep drilling down.

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Speaker 1: When we look at mental illnesses more generally, we find

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Speaker 1: things that influence people's thoughts or feelings or behaviors, including

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Speaker 1: not just things like schizophrenia or psychopathy, but you presumably

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Speaker 1: know people with clinical depression or bipolar disorder, or anxiety disorder,

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Speaker 1: or obsessive compulsive disorder or borderline or narcissistic or avoidant,

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Speaker 1: or an eating disorder, or dissociated identity disorder or panic disorder,

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Speaker 1: or many other things like that. There are at least

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Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty seven of these in the Diagnostic

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Speaker 1: and Statistical Manual, So it becomes increasingly difficult to assert

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Speaker 1: that everybody is exactly like you on the inside. Despite

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Speaker 1: superficial appearances, people can be very different in terms of

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Speaker 1: what is happening on the inside. And if you've read

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Speaker 1: my books or listen to my other podcasts, you know

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Speaker 1: that when we see people with two strokes or brain

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Speaker 1: injuries to different parts of the brain, it's not hard

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Speaker 1: to say, oh, I guess their reality is a little

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Speaker 1: bit different than mine. But it proves harder to think

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Speaker 1: about this in terms of everybody that you know and love,

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Speaker 1: because we assume that the people in our lives have

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Speaker 1: essentially the same thing going on on the inside. That

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Speaker 1: we do the same opinions, the same way of sense making,

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Speaker 1: the same way of gathering meaning, the same political views

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Speaker 1: on the world as you do, but they don't. Everyone

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Speaker 1: that you know is having a slightly different reality going

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Speaker 1: on than you are. We are very different people on

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Speaker 1: the inside. Now, I want to be clear that I'm

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Speaker 1: not just saying this as a philosophical claim. We can

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Speaker 1: increasingly measure so many examples of this, and this is

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Speaker 1: something I've worked on in my lab for most of

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Speaker 1: my career. Neuroscience has always cared about the big disorders,

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Speaker 1: the things that are most obvious and societally costly. But

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Speaker 1: when we start looking at the more innocuous details, we

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Speaker 1: uncover these clear and measurable ways that reality can be

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Speaker 1: different inside different heads. So, for example, imagine that you

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Speaker 1: and I and a bunch of other people are looking

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Speaker 1: over Times Square in New York. We're standing on a

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Speaker 1: corner and enjoying watching the crowd. So you open your

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Speaker 1: eyes and there's the world and all its blues and

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Speaker 1: golds and greens. But if you happen to be colorblind,

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Speaker 1: you're seeing it differently than the person next to you.

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Speaker 1: Maybe you can't distinguish reds from greens those look exactly

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Speaker 1: the same to you. Or maybe you have a more

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Speaker 1: extreme form of color blindness in which there are no

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Speaker 1: colors at all, just shades of gray. So for you,

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Speaker 1: in the person next to you, the internal experience can

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Speaker 1: be quite different, even though you're looking at the same scene.

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Speaker 2: And we now know that a small.

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Speaker 1: Fraction of the female population has not just three types

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Speaker 1: of color photoreceptors in their eyes and their retinas, but

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Speaker 1: four types of color photoreceptors, which means they are seeing

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Speaker 1: colors that the rest of us can't even imagine. This

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Speaker 1: is called tetrachromacy, and I'll come back to this in

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Speaker 1: a future episode, But the point I want to make

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Speaker 1: now is that we might all be watching the same

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Speaker 1: corner in Times Square, but having totally different internal experiences.

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Speaker 1: This is the type of issue that I've been studying

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Speaker 1: in my lab for many years, so you might have

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Speaker 1: heard about my episode on synesthesia. In synesthesia, people have

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Speaker 1: a blending of the senses. About three percent of the

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Speaker 1: population will, for example, see a letter on a page

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Speaker 1: and that'll trigger a color experience for them on the inside.

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Speaker 1: So maybe s's a purple for you, and L triggers

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Speaker 1: a green experience, and so on. It's different for every synesthete,

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Speaker 1: and there are many forms of synesthesia. You might hear

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Speaker 1: a sound and that triggers a visual experience, or you

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Speaker 1: taste something and it puts a feeling on your fingertips. Essentially,

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Speaker 1: any sense can end up having crosstalk with any other

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Speaker 1: sense in these different forms of synesthesia. And my colleagues

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Speaker 1: and I have documented dozens and dozens of forms throughout

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Speaker 1: the population. Now, synesthesia is not considered a disease or

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Speaker 1: a disorder. It is simply an alternative reality. The point

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Speaker 1: is that people can have very different experiences on the inside,

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Speaker 1: but to a synesthee, their experience is precisely as real

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Speaker 1: as anything you might experience. So in neuroscience, this is

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Speaker 1: just one more recent appreciation that from one person to

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Speaker 1: the next, reality can be a little bit different. And

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Speaker 1: let me give you one more example that's even newer,

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Speaker 1: the issue of how we imagine a visual scene inside

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Speaker 1: our heads. So I'm going to ask you to picture

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Speaker 1: this picture a gray and white cat on a picnic

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Speaker 1: table eating colorful cereal and looking at you suspiciously, So

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Speaker 1: really picture that in your head now. There were two

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Speaker 1: researchers who began looking at this question of mental imageries

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Speaker 1: some years ago, Stephen Costlin and Zen and Felicition, and

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Speaker 1: they ended up disagreeing very strongly. Coslin said, when you're

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Speaker 1: imaging something, you're essentially running your visual cortex to see

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Speaker 1: this like a movie. It's like vision. And Felician said,

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Speaker 1: that's ridiculous. You're not seeing something. It's purely conceptual. It

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Speaker 1: doesn't involve seeing in vision. And they both did experiments

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Speaker 1: back and forth, and Felician said, look, you're insane. It's

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Speaker 1: not stored like a picture, and Costlin said, no, you're insane.

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Speaker 1: It's not stored like a proposition. You're actually seeing it.

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Speaker 1: And it was very difficult for a conclusion to be

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Speaker 1: reached here. Both argued passionately for their side of the argument,

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Speaker 1: and this went on for twenty years in the literature.

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Speaker 1: So why couldn't they come to an agreement on this.

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Speaker 1: The answer is Coslin had what we now call hyper fantasia,

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Speaker 1: which means he has extremely vivid mental imagery. When he

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Speaker 1: imagines something, it's as vivid as real seeing. Now, this

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Speaker 1: is the opposite of what Felician had, which is called

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Speaker 1: a fantasia, where mental visual imagery is not present. He

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Speaker 1: doesn't see anything in particular, He just has a concept,

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Speaker 1: and all of this lives on a spectrum from hyperfantasia

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Speaker 1: to a fantasia. Everyone in the population is somewhere on

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Speaker 1: this spectrum.

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Speaker 2: So think about this for a moment.

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Speaker 1: Picture an ant crawling on a checkered tablecloth towards a

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Speaker 1: jar of purple jelly. Are you closer to the hyper

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Speaker 1: fantasia side, where you're seeing it like a movie, or

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Speaker 1: closer to the a fantasia side where you can understand

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Speaker 1: the concept perfectly fine, but you're not seeing anything. So

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Speaker 1: my lab has studied this in detail, and we use

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Speaker 1: neuroimaging to figure out what's going on in the brain

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Speaker 1: along this spectrum.

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Speaker 2: But what I want to.

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Speaker 1: Focus on today is why there was such a spirited

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Speaker 1: debate in the literature for two decades before anyone realized

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Speaker 1: there was a spectrum. It's because both researchers were operating

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Speaker 1: under the assumption that everyone else experiences visual imagery just

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Speaker 1: like they do. So when Felician introspected, he wasn't seeing

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Speaker 1: a picture, and so he felt clear that other people

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Speaker 1: don't either, And when Coslin introspected, he was seeing a

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Speaker 1: super clear image and he assumed that's what happens inside

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Speaker 1: every head.

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Speaker 2: And I want to use.

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Speaker 1: The debate between them as a more general metaphor that

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Speaker 1: we all assume that everyone else is experiencing the world

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Speaker 1: the way we do. My point in talking about color

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Speaker 1: vision and synesthesia and visual imagery is this, as neuroscience

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Speaker 1: and psychology move on from studying the really big disorders,

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Speaker 1: we find increasingly more subtle issues, which caused us to say, wow,

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Speaker 1: I didn't realize that someone could experience so differently than

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Speaker 1: I do. But the fact is that everyone is having

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Speaker 1: a different internal experience and this led me to search

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Speaker 1: for a good metaphor. And when I saw the movie

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Speaker 1: poster for The Martian, I thought, Oh, that's it, because

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Speaker 1: the poster shows a single person, Matt Damon, walking around

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Speaker 1: on his own planet. He's the only one there, and

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Speaker 1: I thought, that's the perfect model. We're each living on

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Speaker 1: our own planet, we're each having our experiences, and we think, yeah,

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Speaker 1: this is reality, and it makes sense that everyone has

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Speaker 1: the same experience that I do. But in fact, just

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Speaker 1: like in any galaxy, each planet is different. Everyone's got

434
00:26:01,440 --> 00:26:05,119
Speaker 1: their own atmosphere, their own landscape, their own experiences. But

435
00:26:05,200 --> 00:26:09,119
Speaker 1: we always feel certain that he or she feels exactly

436
00:26:09,200 --> 00:26:13,119
Speaker 1: the same way that I do about whatever. Take for example,

437
00:26:13,160 --> 00:26:16,360
Speaker 1: what comes to mind when I say the word justice.

438
00:26:17,119 --> 00:26:22,120
Speaker 1: What happens inside everyone's head is slightly different. Or fairness

439
00:26:22,680 --> 00:26:24,760
Speaker 1: what comes to your mind it might not be the

440
00:26:24,800 --> 00:26:35,280
Speaker 1: same thing that comes to someone else's. Or attractiveness or love, home, freedom, success,

441
00:26:36,160 --> 00:26:39,679
Speaker 1: these concepts are triggering different neural networks and different people.

442
00:26:40,040 --> 00:26:43,359
Speaker 1: They trigger different meaning, which is tied to your whole

443
00:26:43,400 --> 00:26:47,359
Speaker 1: personal history and your aspirations. But we assume when we

444
00:26:47,480 --> 00:26:51,040
Speaker 1: use words that the other person knows exactly what we mean.

445
00:26:51,720 --> 00:26:55,000
Speaker 1: We operate under the assumption that words mean the same

446
00:26:55,119 --> 00:26:58,000
Speaker 1: thing to me that they do to you. But in

447
00:26:58,040 --> 00:27:02,200
Speaker 1: fact that never happens because we each have different internal lives.

448
00:27:02,560 --> 00:27:04,320
Speaker 1: And one of the ways that you can always appreciate

449
00:27:04,359 --> 00:27:06,440
Speaker 1: this is just look around you. The next time you're

450
00:27:06,480 --> 00:27:09,440
Speaker 1: in the bookstore or the library. There are so many

451
00:27:09,520 --> 00:27:13,480
Speaker 1: different sections, and nobody walks in and explores all the

452
00:27:13,520 --> 00:27:16,520
Speaker 1: sections equally. Instead, people go in and they go straight

453
00:27:16,560 --> 00:27:19,320
Speaker 1: to the section they want the thing that resonates with

454
00:27:19,440 --> 00:27:23,199
Speaker 1: their internal model of the world, mysteries or romances or

455
00:27:23,200 --> 00:27:26,879
Speaker 1: westerns or sci fi or whatever. They gravitate to particular

456
00:27:26,920 --> 00:27:30,280
Speaker 1: things and not others because of the differences in their brains.

457
00:27:30,960 --> 00:27:33,400
Speaker 1: So this is the first important lesson that I want

458
00:27:33,440 --> 00:27:36,639
Speaker 1: to establish. Others see the world differently than you do.

459
00:27:37,160 --> 00:27:40,240
Speaker 1: But why is this true? Why can't we have one

460
00:27:40,240 --> 00:27:43,840
Speaker 1: really smart person who writes a blog post and says, hey,

461
00:27:43,840 --> 00:27:45,680
Speaker 1: I think this is the way we should run the country,

462
00:27:46,080 --> 00:27:49,359
Speaker 1: and all three hundred and sixty five million people read

463
00:27:49,359 --> 00:27:52,520
Speaker 1: then say, yeah, that's pretty good. Why are we all

464
00:27:52,640 --> 00:27:55,800
Speaker 1: so different? This question has been at the heart of

465
00:27:55,840 --> 00:27:59,800
Speaker 1: a very long standing debate where people attribute differences to

466
00:28:00,080 --> 00:28:03,919
Speaker 1: either genetic factors or environmental factors, in other words, the

467
00:28:04,400 --> 00:28:08,720
Speaker 1: nature versus nurture debates. Why do you argue with your

468
00:28:08,760 --> 00:28:12,920
Speaker 1: sibling about political issues? Does your sibling have very different

469
00:28:12,960 --> 00:28:15,400
Speaker 1: genes than you do, even though you have the same parents.

470
00:28:16,040 --> 00:28:18,919
Speaker 1: Does your sibling have different nurture than you even though

471
00:28:18,960 --> 00:28:21,879
Speaker 1: you were raised in the same household? So are we

472
00:28:21,960 --> 00:28:26,119
Speaker 1: determined by our genetics or our environment? And traditionally there

473
00:28:26,119 --> 00:28:29,200
Speaker 1: have been very strong advocates on both sides of this. Well,

474
00:28:29,880 --> 00:28:33,040
Speaker 1: both of these have something to say. So let's start

475
00:28:33,040 --> 00:28:36,920
Speaker 1: with genetics. Do genetic differences matter? Heck yeah they do.

476
00:28:37,600 --> 00:28:40,720
Speaker 1: Although we're all members of this species, Homo sapiens, there

477
00:28:40,760 --> 00:28:45,120
Speaker 1: are millions of differences in our genomes from person to person.

478
00:28:45,640 --> 00:28:50,880
Speaker 1: For the cognitionanty, these are single nucleotide polymorphisms or substitution variants,

479
00:28:50,960 --> 00:28:54,080
Speaker 1: or copy number variants and so on. And your genetics

480
00:28:54,120 --> 00:28:58,640
Speaker 1: matter for who you are. Take just as an example

481
00:28:58,680 --> 00:29:02,400
Speaker 1: from my book Incognito, so I compiled statistics that if

482
00:29:02,440 --> 00:29:07,000
Speaker 1: you are a carrier of certain genes, your probability of

483
00:29:07,000 --> 00:29:10,680
Speaker 1: committing violent crime goes up eight hundred and eighty two percent.

484
00:29:11,320 --> 00:29:14,360
Speaker 1: So I took statistics from the US Department of Justice,

485
00:29:14,400 --> 00:29:16,800
Speaker 1: and I broke these down into two groups, those who

486
00:29:16,840 --> 00:29:19,080
Speaker 1: carry the genes and those who do not. And it's

487
00:29:19,080 --> 00:29:22,560
Speaker 1: a massive difference. Can you guess what this collection of

488
00:29:22,640 --> 00:29:27,920
Speaker 1: genes is. We summarize it as the Y chromosome. If

489
00:29:27,960 --> 00:29:31,440
Speaker 1: you have these genes, we call you a male. So

490
00:29:31,560 --> 00:29:35,160
Speaker 1: genes matter, but it's not all genes. It's also your

491
00:29:35,200 --> 00:29:39,000
Speaker 1: experiences in the world. We drop into the world with

492
00:29:39,320 --> 00:29:43,640
Speaker 1: half baked brains and we absorb everything around us, everything

493
00:29:43,680 --> 00:29:47,680
Speaker 1: that you know that you believe, your language, your culture,

494
00:29:47,760 --> 00:29:51,680
Speaker 1: your memories. It's all stored in this giant neural network.

495
00:29:52,120 --> 00:29:56,600
Speaker 1: And how does it get stored by reconfiguration of the network.

496
00:29:56,640 --> 00:30:01,000
Speaker 1: This is known as brain plasticity. Brains absorb the world

497
00:30:01,120 --> 00:30:04,640
Speaker 1: around them, and that's how the world shapes you. We're

498
00:30:04,760 --> 00:30:09,040
Speaker 1: influenced by our culture, our friends, our neighbors, our generation,

499
00:30:09,320 --> 00:30:12,840
Speaker 1: and so on. So you're shaped by both your genes

500
00:30:13,000 --> 00:30:17,320
Speaker 1: and your environment, and these are intertwined in very complex ways,

501
00:30:17,680 --> 00:30:20,719
Speaker 1: such that it's really rare that we can point to

502
00:30:20,720 --> 00:30:23,480
Speaker 1: one or the other and conclude that it's responsible for

503
00:30:23,560 --> 00:30:26,240
Speaker 1: something that we see. It's all about what we nowadays

504
00:30:26,240 --> 00:30:30,360
Speaker 1: call gene environment interactions. So you've got the genes that

505
00:30:30,400 --> 00:30:32,240
Speaker 1: you drop into the world with, and then you've got

506
00:30:32,280 --> 00:30:36,320
Speaker 1: all these experiences, and these intertwined in this complex way.

507
00:30:36,760 --> 00:30:40,040
Speaker 1: Your experiences actually shape your nervous system and can feed

508
00:30:40,400 --> 00:30:42,880
Speaker 1: all the way down to the level of which genes

509
00:30:42,880 --> 00:30:45,560
Speaker 1: are getting expressed and which you are getting suppressed. And by

510
00:30:45,600 --> 00:30:47,840
Speaker 1: the way, you don't choose your genes, and you don't

511
00:30:47,920 --> 00:30:51,440
Speaker 1: choose your childhood experiences. None of that is about choice,

512
00:30:51,440 --> 00:30:55,360
Speaker 1: but it makes you who you are now. These differences

513
00:30:55,360 --> 00:30:58,560
Speaker 1: can be quite subtle. You can disagree with your sibling

514
00:30:58,640 --> 00:31:02,960
Speaker 1: politically even know you're genetically similar and we're raised in

515
00:31:02,960 --> 00:31:06,800
Speaker 1: a similar environment, but small differences can take you off

516
00:31:07,040 --> 00:31:10,240
Speaker 1: in very different directions. So you're shaped by both your

517
00:31:10,280 --> 00:31:14,120
Speaker 1: genes and your environment, and hence the nature versus nurture

518
00:31:14,200 --> 00:31:18,120
Speaker 1: question is dead. And brains end up as different from

519
00:31:18,120 --> 00:31:22,239
Speaker 1: one another as faces. Just walk along the street and

520
00:31:22,280 --> 00:31:26,760
Speaker 1: look at how different people's faces are. The variety of

521
00:31:26,840 --> 00:31:29,320
Speaker 1: faces that you see around you, Well, there's that much

522
00:31:29,400 --> 00:31:32,360
Speaker 1: variety in brains too. And just as a side note,

523
00:31:32,400 --> 00:31:35,880
Speaker 1: I can recognize all my students just from their brain scans,

524
00:31:35,920 --> 00:31:40,280
Speaker 1: because brains actually physically come out looking different from one another. Okay,

525
00:31:40,320 --> 00:31:42,840
Speaker 1: so we've established that people are very different on the

526
00:31:42,880 --> 00:31:45,720
Speaker 1: inside and given a sense of how that comes about.

527
00:31:46,120 --> 00:31:49,400
Speaker 1: But you may think, okay, other people are different from me.

528
00:31:50,120 --> 00:31:53,800
Speaker 1: But what is clear is that I see the truth.

529
00:31:54,360 --> 00:31:56,400
Speaker 1: And if I could just sit down with them and

530
00:31:56,480 --> 00:31:59,600
Speaker 1: have them listen to me, or I could just shout

531
00:31:59,600 --> 00:32:03,680
Speaker 1: in cap letters on Twitter, everyone would see the correctness

532
00:32:03,720 --> 00:32:04,480
Speaker 1: of my position.

533
00:32:04,640 --> 00:32:04,880
Speaker 2: Right.

534
00:32:05,520 --> 00:32:08,480
Speaker 1: So the main question that comes up in our lives politically,

535
00:32:08,840 --> 00:32:12,880
Speaker 1: whether on social media or and dinner conversations is why

536
00:32:13,000 --> 00:32:17,600
Speaker 1: can't everyone see the truth? So now we'll turn to

537
00:32:17,680 --> 00:32:20,880
Speaker 1: Act three, where we'll ask how do you land on

538
00:32:21,080 --> 00:32:25,640
Speaker 1: your opinions, your notion of the truth, and how accurate

539
00:32:25,760 --> 00:32:30,320
Speaker 1: and complete is it really? So the critical concept I

540
00:32:30,320 --> 00:32:33,000
Speaker 1: want to tell you about here is this your brain

541
00:32:33,280 --> 00:32:37,480
Speaker 1: is locked in silence and darkness, and your brain's job

542
00:32:37,720 --> 00:32:41,120
Speaker 1: is to build an internal model of the outside world

543
00:32:41,200 --> 00:32:44,520
Speaker 1: so that it understands what is happening out there. So

544
00:32:44,720 --> 00:32:47,920
Speaker 1: everything in your life, everything about the way the world works,

545
00:32:48,440 --> 00:32:53,960
Speaker 1: is represented in your brain, usually unconsciously. How you deal

546
00:32:54,000 --> 00:32:57,560
Speaker 1: with people, where your house is, how to operate the

547
00:32:57,600 --> 00:33:01,040
Speaker 1: appliances in your kitchen, what language you speak and your

548
00:33:01,080 --> 00:33:04,120
Speaker 1: spouse speaks, how to drive your car. Everything in your

549
00:33:04,120 --> 00:33:08,280
Speaker 1: life is represented in this internal model. And I'm not

550
00:33:08,320 --> 00:33:10,560
Speaker 1: going to talk too much about the internal model today

551
00:33:10,680 --> 00:33:13,400
Speaker 1: except to say that one of the fascinating things is

552
00:33:13,440 --> 00:33:16,840
Speaker 1: that usually it's totally unconscious. And I gave an example

553
00:33:16,880 --> 00:33:19,600
Speaker 1: of this in a recent episode about putting your hands

554
00:33:19,680 --> 00:33:22,640
Speaker 1: up on an imaginary steering wheel in front of you

555
00:33:23,200 --> 00:33:26,280
Speaker 1: and pretending that you're driving thirty miles an hour down

556
00:33:26,280 --> 00:33:28,880
Speaker 1: the road, and I asked you to make a lane

557
00:33:28,960 --> 00:33:32,200
Speaker 1: change from the center lane into the right lane. And

558
00:33:32,360 --> 00:33:35,240
Speaker 1: what essentially everyone does with their hands is they turn

559
00:33:35,280 --> 00:33:37,640
Speaker 1: the steering wheel to the right and back to center.

560
00:33:38,040 --> 00:33:40,600
Speaker 1: But that would actually steer you off the road and

561
00:33:40,640 --> 00:33:43,040
Speaker 1: you would crash. When you actually get in the cart

562
00:33:43,120 --> 00:33:45,680
Speaker 1: and watch what your hands are doing, you'll see that

563
00:33:45,760 --> 00:33:48,200
Speaker 1: the way you make a lane change is by turning

564
00:33:48,240 --> 00:33:50,840
Speaker 1: to the right, back to center, just as far to

565
00:33:50,880 --> 00:33:53,160
Speaker 1: the left, and then back to center again. That's how

566
00:33:53,160 --> 00:33:55,959
Speaker 1: you make a lane change. Your brain has made a

567
00:33:56,160 --> 00:33:58,920
Speaker 1: model of the physics of cars and steering wheels and

568
00:33:59,000 --> 00:34:02,120
Speaker 1: roads and so on, but you don't even know how

569
00:34:02,200 --> 00:34:04,120
Speaker 1: you do this, and you didn't even know that your

570
00:34:04,120 --> 00:34:07,720
Speaker 1: brain had that model. This is the gap between what

571
00:34:07,800 --> 00:34:10,840
Speaker 1: your brain knows under the hood and what your conscious

572
00:34:10,880 --> 00:34:13,719
Speaker 1: mind has access to. And the point I want to

573
00:34:13,760 --> 00:34:16,280
Speaker 1: make is that you have this same sort of model

574
00:34:16,719 --> 00:34:21,160
Speaker 1: about the whole world around you and its political truths. Now,

575
00:34:21,200 --> 00:34:23,920
Speaker 1: the details of your trajectory in the world up to

576
00:34:23,960 --> 00:34:27,239
Speaker 1: this moment convince you that you know the truths, even

577
00:34:27,239 --> 00:34:30,000
Speaker 1: though someone else's internal model might tell them that they

578
00:34:30,040 --> 00:34:33,040
Speaker 1: know the truth and it might be different. Now, the

579
00:34:33,120 --> 00:34:35,920
Speaker 1: really important point here, the thing that no one talks about,

580
00:34:36,280 --> 00:34:40,200
Speaker 1: is that we don't usually take into account how poor

581
00:34:40,680 --> 00:34:44,879
Speaker 1: our internal models are. Here's just an example, starting in

582
00:34:45,080 --> 00:34:48,360
Speaker 1: early twenty twenty, when the pandemic hit, why did all

583
00:34:48,440 --> 00:34:51,799
Speaker 1: the bank lobbies close? After all, there were lots of

584
00:34:51,880 --> 00:34:54,400
Speaker 1: other shops that were open. The floorist was open, the

585
00:34:54,440 --> 00:34:56,879
Speaker 1: hair salons were open, and all of these were much

586
00:34:57,200 --> 00:35:01,680
Speaker 1: smaller spaces than the spacious lobbies of the bank. And

587
00:35:01,719 --> 00:35:04,759
Speaker 1: it's not that the banks couldn't put up plexiglass in

588
00:35:04,800 --> 00:35:07,560
Speaker 1: front of the teller's windows. In fact, that was usually

589
00:35:07,600 --> 00:35:10,360
Speaker 1: already in place. And it's not that the banks wanted

590
00:35:10,400 --> 00:35:13,600
Speaker 1: to be closed, because they still staffed the drive up

591
00:35:13,640 --> 00:35:14,799
Speaker 1: windows throughout the day.

592
00:35:15,200 --> 00:35:16,239
Speaker 2: So what was going on.

593
00:35:17,000 --> 00:35:19,719
Speaker 1: Most people didn't know why, And this is an example

594
00:35:19,800 --> 00:35:23,320
Speaker 1: of internal models. If something is not in your model,

595
00:35:23,360 --> 00:35:26,000
Speaker 1: then it just doesn't strike you. The answer was that

596
00:35:26,080 --> 00:35:28,840
Speaker 1: in the spring of twenty twenty, most of the population

597
00:35:28,960 --> 00:35:33,319
Speaker 1: began wearing masks, and the bankers didn't want masked customers

598
00:35:33,360 --> 00:35:36,800
Speaker 1: coming through all day. It's a perfect costume for a robbery,

599
00:35:37,160 --> 00:35:39,719
Speaker 1: so they closed their lobbies. The point is simply that

600
00:35:39,840 --> 00:35:42,520
Speaker 1: we always think our understanding of the world is complete,

601
00:35:42,640 --> 00:35:45,279
Speaker 1: but we're always facing situations where we say, oh, I

602
00:35:45,280 --> 00:35:48,359
Speaker 1: guess I didn't know that. Now it's complete, by the way,

603
00:35:48,400 --> 00:35:51,600
Speaker 1: the limits of your internal model. This is the engine

604
00:35:52,120 --> 00:35:55,120
Speaker 1: of comedy. So a comedian, I'll say something like this,

605
00:35:55,600 --> 00:35:57,400
Speaker 1: I went to the doctor the other day and the

606
00:35:57,440 --> 00:36:00,720
Speaker 1: doctor said, put your clothes there in the corner next

607
00:36:00,760 --> 00:36:04,280
Speaker 1: to mine. It's funny and surprising only because your brain

608
00:36:04,920 --> 00:36:08,640
Speaker 1: makes a full world of assumptions about the doctor, and

609
00:36:08,680 --> 00:36:11,840
Speaker 1: then you realize that your model didn't have all the information.

610
00:36:12,360 --> 00:36:15,480
Speaker 1: And there are so many examples of the limitations of

611
00:36:15,520 --> 00:36:18,360
Speaker 1: your model. Imagine I were to draw a handful of

612
00:36:18,440 --> 00:36:21,240
Speaker 1: diagonal lines on a page and ask you what you see.

613
00:36:21,560 --> 00:36:23,920
Speaker 1: You'd say diagonal lines. But if I say to you

614
00:36:24,560 --> 00:36:27,959
Speaker 1: how many are there here, you'd realize that you don't

615
00:36:28,000 --> 00:36:30,719
Speaker 1: know the answer, and you have to deploy your attention

616
00:36:31,360 --> 00:36:34,200
Speaker 1: to seek the answer. So this happens to us all

617
00:36:34,239 --> 00:36:36,840
Speaker 1: the time, where we think we have a complete understanding

618
00:36:36,880 --> 00:36:38,759
Speaker 1: of what's in front of us, but a little bit

619
00:36:38,760 --> 00:36:41,640
Speaker 1: of questioning unmasks that we don't actually have all the

620
00:36:41,640 --> 00:36:44,560
Speaker 1: details of the picture. And I'm using this all as

621
00:36:44,560 --> 00:36:49,560
Speaker 1: a metaphor to emphasize the importance of genuine dialogue with

622
00:36:49,600 --> 00:36:53,680
Speaker 1: other people, because sometimes you can't see what questions you

623
00:36:53,840 --> 00:36:57,400
Speaker 1: haven't asked, or the things that you're not even aware

624
00:36:57,480 --> 00:37:00,520
Speaker 1: you're not aware of. And by genuine dify dialogue, I

625
00:37:00,520 --> 00:37:03,000
Speaker 1: don't mean how do I convince the other person that

626
00:37:03,080 --> 00:37:07,400
Speaker 1: I'm right and they're wrong. I mean listening and considering

627
00:37:07,640 --> 00:37:11,359
Speaker 1: and questioning, and trying where appropriate to change your own

628
00:37:11,440 --> 00:37:15,600
Speaker 1: mind or to stand in a slightly different viewpoint than

629
00:37:15,640 --> 00:37:18,520
Speaker 1: you were before. Now, I want to come back to

630
00:37:18,560 --> 00:37:21,200
Speaker 1: this issue that it's so easy to poke holes in

631
00:37:21,280 --> 00:37:24,400
Speaker 1: our internal models. And the question I've always wondered is

632
00:37:24,440 --> 00:37:27,600
Speaker 1: why do we think our models are complete when they

633
00:37:27,719 --> 00:37:32,239
Speaker 1: lack so many answers? So consider this. Do you know

634
00:37:32,280 --> 00:37:35,399
Speaker 1: what a bicycle looks like? Of course you do. Now,

635
00:37:35,480 --> 00:37:37,279
Speaker 1: if you're in a place where you can get out

636
00:37:37,320 --> 00:37:39,680
Speaker 1: a piece of paper, I'd like you to get it

637
00:37:39,719 --> 00:37:43,480
Speaker 1: out and sketch a bicycle. Go ahead, And if you

638
00:37:44,080 --> 00:37:46,719
Speaker 1: can't get the paper, then go ahead and sketch it

639
00:37:46,719 --> 00:37:49,759
Speaker 1: in the air with your finger. Just the basic outlines

640
00:37:49,760 --> 00:37:53,279
Speaker 1: of the frame, the wheels, the seat, the handlebars.

641
00:37:53,320 --> 00:37:54,440
Speaker 2: That's all. Okay.

642
00:37:54,480 --> 00:37:56,960
Speaker 1: Now, I hope you'll actually do this, because assuming you do,

643
00:37:57,120 --> 00:38:01,480
Speaker 1: you will find yourself shocked about how poorly you are

644
00:38:01,520 --> 00:38:05,680
Speaker 1: able to actually reproduce the bike on paper. You think

645
00:38:06,000 --> 00:38:09,440
Speaker 1: you have your bicycle pictured perfectly in your mind, but

646
00:38:09,560 --> 00:38:14,840
Speaker 1: your model, your internal model, is actually quite lousy. For example,

647
00:38:14,880 --> 00:38:17,560
Speaker 1: does the chain connect to both the front and the

648
00:38:17,600 --> 00:38:21,280
Speaker 1: back wheel? And what shape is the frame exactly? And

649
00:38:21,360 --> 00:38:24,680
Speaker 1: how do the handlebars plug into the front wheel. It's

650
00:38:24,880 --> 00:38:27,440
Speaker 1: shocking because you know what a bicycle looks like, or

651
00:38:27,440 --> 00:38:30,319
Speaker 1: at least you think you do. But it's actually a

652
00:38:30,360 --> 00:38:34,680
Speaker 1: big challenge when you're really pushed on your understanding. And

653
00:38:34,719 --> 00:38:39,560
Speaker 1: this is known as the illusion of explanatory depth. Just

654
00:38:39,600 --> 00:38:42,920
Speaker 1: because you're convinced that your model has the full picture,

655
00:38:43,160 --> 00:38:46,880
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that it actually does. So here's another example.

656
00:38:46,960 --> 00:38:49,759
Speaker 1: Imagine that I ask you if you know how the

657
00:38:49,800 --> 00:38:53,759
Speaker 1: electoral college works in this country, and you might say, yeah,

658
00:38:53,800 --> 00:38:56,160
Speaker 1: I know how that works. But now I say, great,

659
00:38:56,480 --> 00:38:59,520
Speaker 1: please explain it to me, and you might find that

660
00:38:59,560 --> 00:39:02,080
Speaker 1: you get stuck. You think you know, but as soon

661
00:39:02,080 --> 00:39:04,960
Speaker 1: as I scratched the surface of something, you find that

662
00:39:05,000 --> 00:39:08,279
Speaker 1: it's not quite as clear as you suspected. And there

663
00:39:08,280 --> 00:39:10,480
Speaker 1: are a million examples of this sort of thing, And

664
00:39:10,520 --> 00:39:14,040
Speaker 1: if you start paying attention, you'll see more and more

665
00:39:14,560 --> 00:39:18,279
Speaker 1: of the limitations of your knowledge. So it's useful to

666
00:39:18,360 --> 00:39:21,600
Speaker 1: question ourselves, with all of our political opinions, about where

667
00:39:21,640 --> 00:39:27,280
Speaker 1: our knowledge is lacking, because not knowing information doesn't mean

668
00:39:27,800 --> 00:39:31,319
Speaker 1: that you don't have a high sense of certainty about it,

669
00:39:31,920 --> 00:39:34,600
Speaker 1: especially if you really don't know much about a topic

670
00:39:34,640 --> 00:39:37,719
Speaker 1: at all. My graduate advisor once told me to go

671
00:39:37,760 --> 00:39:40,799
Speaker 1: to the library to learn about lattice gases, and I

672
00:39:40,800 --> 00:39:42,840
Speaker 1: had never heard of that at all. So I walked

673
00:39:42,880 --> 00:39:46,080
Speaker 1: over to the library and I discovered there was half

674
00:39:46,080 --> 00:39:49,839
Speaker 1: a shelf with books all about lattice gases. And I

675
00:39:49,920 --> 00:39:53,480
Speaker 1: was shocked, because how could smart people have devoted their

676
00:39:53,520 --> 00:39:56,919
Speaker 1: scientific careers to writing about something that I had never

677
00:39:57,000 --> 00:40:00,400
Speaker 1: even heard of just twenty minutes before. And this is

678
00:40:00,440 --> 00:40:04,279
Speaker 1: the kind of lesson that emerges as you mature in

679
00:40:04,320 --> 00:40:07,359
Speaker 1: the world. But interestingly, it takes a great deal of

680
00:40:07,440 --> 00:40:12,040
Speaker 1: work to get there. If you've studied less about a subject,

681
00:40:12,480 --> 00:40:16,879
Speaker 1: you tend to overinflate your knowledge. This is what's known

682
00:40:16,920 --> 00:40:20,160
Speaker 1: as the Dunning Krueger effect. So these are a couple

683
00:40:20,200 --> 00:40:23,120
Speaker 1: of psychologists and they ran studies where they found that

684
00:40:23,560 --> 00:40:26,800
Speaker 1: if they ask people a bunch of questions about humor,

685
00:40:26,960 --> 00:40:30,799
Speaker 1: or grammar or logic, you then take the people who

686
00:40:30,880 --> 00:40:35,839
Speaker 1: score at the bottom quartile, and they grossly overestimate their

687
00:40:35,840 --> 00:40:39,319
Speaker 1: performance on the test. Although their test scores put them,

688
00:40:39,440 --> 00:40:43,040
Speaker 1: let's say, in the twelfth percentile, they estimate themselves to

689
00:40:43,120 --> 00:40:45,960
Speaker 1: be in the sixty second percentile when you ask them,

690
00:40:46,239 --> 00:40:48,640
Speaker 1: how much do you know about this compared to other people?

691
00:40:48,960 --> 00:40:51,560
Speaker 1: In other words, the less that you know about a topic,

692
00:40:52,000 --> 00:40:55,880
Speaker 1: the more confidence you have in your own abilities. What

693
00:40:56,080 --> 00:40:58,480
Speaker 1: happens is that as you learn more about a topic,

694
00:40:58,680 --> 00:41:01,880
Speaker 1: your confidence goes down, and it's only much later, when

695
00:41:01,920 --> 00:41:05,080
Speaker 1: you become an expert, that it starts to go back up. So, now,

696
00:41:05,120 --> 00:41:07,200
Speaker 1: given everything I've told you so far, I want to

697
00:41:07,239 --> 00:41:09,880
Speaker 1: return to the cartoon that I described at the beginning

698
00:41:09,880 --> 00:41:12,719
Speaker 1: of this podcast, about the fork in the road where

699
00:41:12,760 --> 00:41:16,279
Speaker 1: one sign points to complex but right and the other

700
00:41:16,320 --> 00:41:19,719
Speaker 1: points to simple but wrong, and almost everybody is going

701
00:41:19,719 --> 00:41:21,919
Speaker 1: in the simple but wrong path, except for the few

702
00:41:21,960 --> 00:41:25,520
Speaker 1: people winding their way up the steep, complex but right path.

703
00:41:25,960 --> 00:41:29,239
Speaker 1: Now the cartoon struck me as funny, but perhaps not

704
00:41:29,480 --> 00:41:32,440
Speaker 1: for the obvious reasons, because when I saw this cartoon

705
00:41:32,480 --> 00:41:35,640
Speaker 1: on Twitter, I noticed that it had racked up many

706
00:41:35,800 --> 00:41:39,840
Speaker 1: thousands of likes. So I started to research who exactly

707
00:41:39,960 --> 00:41:43,360
Speaker 1: were the enthusiasts, and I had a suspicion that I

708
00:41:43,440 --> 00:41:45,680
Speaker 1: knew the answer, and that turned out to be correct.

709
00:41:46,120 --> 00:41:52,080
Speaker 1: Each person of whatever political persuasion, sees himself in the

710
00:41:52,560 --> 00:41:56,719
Speaker 1: complex correct thinkers winding the steep path. Whether you are

711
00:41:56,760 --> 00:42:00,680
Speaker 1: on the right or the left, whether with the Independence

712
00:42:00,840 --> 00:42:04,600
Speaker 1: or Green Party or libertarians, whether you're a fan of

713
00:42:04,880 --> 00:42:11,080
Speaker 1: Antifa or QAnon, whether you're a denizen of Wokistan or Magastan,

714
00:42:11,800 --> 00:42:15,879
Speaker 1: you fundamentally know that you are a person who engages

715
00:42:16,080 --> 00:42:20,880
Speaker 1: in refined and proper thinking. You appreciate data that is

716
00:42:21,040 --> 00:42:24,920
Speaker 1: intricate and meaningful, while people on the other side, for

717
00:42:25,040 --> 00:42:28,880
Speaker 1: reasons that you can only guess, they believe incorrect things.

718
00:42:29,400 --> 00:42:31,879
Speaker 1: What I want to emphasize is that each person who

719
00:42:31,920 --> 00:42:35,560
Speaker 1: clicked the thumbs up button knew that he was not

720
00:42:35,840 --> 00:42:38,720
Speaker 1: like the sheep on the opposite side of the fork. Instead,

721
00:42:39,000 --> 00:42:44,680
Speaker 1: he possessed an intricate and accurate view of the world. Okay,

722
00:42:44,719 --> 00:42:48,440
Speaker 1: So which side of the political debate did the cartoonist support, Well,

723
00:42:48,480 --> 00:42:51,279
Speaker 1: who knows who cares. It was presumably one of his

724
00:42:51,440 --> 00:42:56,239
Speaker 1: most successful cartoons because it was the skeleton key that

725
00:42:56,400 --> 00:43:15,239
Speaker 1: fit the lock of each reader's internal model. So the

726
00:43:15,239 --> 00:43:18,880
Speaker 1: first step to rising above our internal models is to

727
00:43:18,920 --> 00:43:22,520
Speaker 1: start watching for these bug traps that lure us in.

728
00:43:23,160 --> 00:43:26,279
Speaker 1: I just saw an example yesterday, a bumper sticker that

729
00:43:26,400 --> 00:43:31,560
Speaker 1: read make America America Again. And everyone on the road

730
00:43:31,560 --> 00:43:36,000
Speaker 1: who saw this bumper sticker presumably thought that sounded great.

731
00:43:36,280 --> 00:43:40,160
Speaker 1: Why because both sides of the political spectrum are equally

732
00:43:40,200 --> 00:43:47,160
Speaker 1: happy to engage in retrospective romanticization. Liberals and conservatives can

733
00:43:47,200 --> 00:43:50,359
Speaker 1: equally well reach back in memory to a time that

734
00:43:50,440 --> 00:43:55,719
Speaker 1: seemed less complicated, a totally illusory era where the nation

735
00:43:56,120 --> 00:43:59,800
Speaker 1: agreed with the logic of your political viewpoint, before the

736
00:44:00,400 --> 00:44:03,239
Speaker 1: of the crazies with whom you now have to deal.

737
00:44:03,719 --> 00:44:06,400
Speaker 1: So the only thing that the bumper sticker really points

738
00:44:06,440 --> 00:44:11,440
Speaker 1: back to is the impoverishment of our memories. The cartoon

739
00:44:11,640 --> 00:44:14,279
Speaker 1: and the bumper sticker. These work because they can mean

740
00:44:14,400 --> 00:44:18,280
Speaker 1: anything to anyone, and what they reveal is the degree

741
00:44:18,440 --> 00:44:22,520
Speaker 1: to which we live inside our internal models. And we

742
00:44:22,640 --> 00:44:27,560
Speaker 1: assume everyone shares the same model we do, and anyone

743
00:44:27,560 --> 00:44:31,640
Speaker 1: who has a different internal model we tend to demonize.

744
00:44:31,680 --> 00:44:35,080
Speaker 1: And that's because we believe our models so strongly, because

745
00:44:35,080 --> 00:44:38,000
Speaker 1: that's all we have, whether that's our religion or our

746
00:44:38,080 --> 00:44:41,640
Speaker 1: political side. Of the spectrum, whether we're the Communists or

747
00:44:41,680 --> 00:44:44,800
Speaker 1: the Nazis in nineteen thirty four, it makes us angry

748
00:44:44,880 --> 00:44:48,279
Speaker 1: that other people can't see the truth as clearly as

749
00:44:48,320 --> 00:44:51,600
Speaker 1: we can, and we are suspicious of them. And this

750
00:44:51,719 --> 00:44:54,560
Speaker 1: leads me to the final chapter of today's episode, which

751
00:44:54,600 --> 00:44:58,680
Speaker 1: is the notion of empathy. And there's an important aspect

752
00:44:58,760 --> 00:45:01,640
Speaker 1: of this that's typically over look So I'll illustrate this

753
00:45:01,680 --> 00:45:05,839
Speaker 1: with a historical example. In the late seventeen hundreds, there

754
00:45:05,920 --> 00:45:09,800
Speaker 1: was a British nobleman named Lord Gordon, who was born

755
00:45:09,880 --> 00:45:13,960
Speaker 1: into privilege, but he found himself caring deeply about the

756
00:45:13,960 --> 00:45:18,279
Speaker 1: welfare of the sailors. He was an officer, but he

757
00:45:18,440 --> 00:45:22,640
Speaker 1: campaigned energetically to improve their conditions, and his empathy was

758
00:45:22,719 --> 00:45:26,480
Speaker 1: broader than that. When they sailed to Jamaica, he was

759
00:45:26,520 --> 00:45:30,000
Speaker 1: disgusted by the slavery there and he berated the British

760
00:45:30,040 --> 00:45:32,600
Speaker 1: governor about it. So here's an example of a guy

761
00:45:32,680 --> 00:45:36,240
Speaker 1: where everywhere he went he sought to improve the well

762
00:45:36,280 --> 00:45:37,000
Speaker 1: being of.

763
00:45:36,920 --> 00:45:38,440
Speaker 2: Those less fortunate.

764
00:45:38,880 --> 00:45:42,160
Speaker 1: So the question, from a neuroscience point of view is

765
00:45:42,239 --> 00:45:45,560
Speaker 1: why did Lord Gordon care so much for others? And

766
00:45:45,680 --> 00:45:48,480
Speaker 1: why do any of us help strangers after all, the

767
00:45:48,640 --> 00:45:52,960
Speaker 1: driving force of evolution is survival of the fittest, not

768
00:45:53,360 --> 00:45:57,640
Speaker 1: of the friendliest. Well, fortunately there's another force at work.

769
00:45:58,120 --> 00:45:59,000
Speaker 2: Our brains are.

770
00:45:58,960 --> 00:46:04,080
Speaker 1: Constantly in the business of simulating the experiences of other people,

771
00:46:04,520 --> 00:46:08,520
Speaker 1: and under the right circumstances, this leads to empathy, the

772
00:46:08,560 --> 00:46:15,839
Speaker 1: experiencing of another's emotions. Empathy is what counterbalances our appetite

773
00:46:15,880 --> 00:46:20,480
Speaker 1: for power and tribalism and violence. Empathy is the glue

774
00:46:20,560 --> 00:46:25,799
Speaker 1: that binds society together. Our species dominance is due in

775
00:46:25,840 --> 00:46:29,480
Speaker 1: part to our empathy, which helps us to cooperate flexibly

776
00:46:29,520 --> 00:46:34,480
Speaker 1: in large groups. Now, how can we study empathy neuroscientifically?

777
00:46:35,000 --> 00:46:38,560
Speaker 1: So in my lab we performed a brain imaging study

778
00:46:39,040 --> 00:46:41,240
Speaker 1: in which you are in the scanner and you see

779
00:46:41,280 --> 00:46:44,840
Speaker 1: six hands on the screen in front of you, and

780
00:46:44,920 --> 00:46:49,040
Speaker 1: the computer goes aroundoo and randomly picks one of the hands.

781
00:46:49,360 --> 00:46:52,000
Speaker 1: So one of two things happens. Either the hand gets

782
00:46:52,120 --> 00:46:56,160
Speaker 1: touched with a Q tip or it gets stabbed with

783
00:46:56,280 --> 00:46:57,520
Speaker 1: a syringe needle.

784
00:46:57,800 --> 00:46:58,359
Speaker 2: And when you.

785
00:46:58,280 --> 00:47:01,799
Speaker 1: See it get stabbed, it's very cringe worthy. And so

786
00:47:02,040 --> 00:47:05,200
Speaker 1: what we're doing is we're looking in the brain images

787
00:47:05,280 --> 00:47:09,160
Speaker 1: to understand what is the difference between these two cases.

788
00:47:09,520 --> 00:47:12,200
Speaker 1: That are visually quite similar, but in one of the

789
00:47:12,200 --> 00:47:16,040
Speaker 1: cases you have this very visceral response. And what we

790
00:47:16,200 --> 00:47:19,160
Speaker 1: find is that when the hand gets stabbed with the

791
00:47:19,200 --> 00:47:22,680
Speaker 1: syringe needle, this network of areas in your brain that

792
00:47:22,719 --> 00:47:27,160
Speaker 1: we summarize as the pain matrix, this comes online. And

793
00:47:27,239 --> 00:47:30,040
Speaker 1: these areas in your brain are what would come online

794
00:47:30,080 --> 00:47:34,000
Speaker 1: if your own hand got stabbed. So when you see

795
00:47:34,040 --> 00:47:39,200
Speaker 1: someone else's hand get stabed, that activates this same pain matrix.

796
00:47:39,680 --> 00:47:41,839
Speaker 2: You are not getting hurt, but you.

797
00:47:41,800 --> 00:47:43,960
Speaker 1: Are simulating what it would be like to be that

798
00:47:44,160 --> 00:47:47,880
Speaker 1: person and have your hand get stabbed. This is the

799
00:47:47,960 --> 00:47:55,480
Speaker 1: neural basis of empathy. Now, if the story ended there,

800
00:47:56,080 --> 00:47:59,399
Speaker 1: all of us humans would operate like a big, cooperative

801
00:47:59,480 --> 00:48:04,200
Speaker 1: ant called But the reality is more complex. So let's

802
00:48:04,200 --> 00:48:08,880
Speaker 1: return to Lord Gordon. He empathized with sailors and slaves,

803
00:48:09,200 --> 00:48:13,120
Speaker 1: but he had nothing but hatred for his Catholic neighbors.

804
00:48:13,520 --> 00:48:18,160
Speaker 1: He worked tirelessly to repeal the civil rights of Catholics,

805
00:48:18,640 --> 00:48:22,839
Speaker 1: and in seventeen eighty Lord Gordon marched a crowd of

806
00:48:22,960 --> 00:48:26,240
Speaker 1: fifty thousand people to the Houses of Parliament in London

807
00:48:26,480 --> 00:48:30,560
Speaker 1: and for a week, the mob destroyed Catholic churches and

808
00:48:30,600 --> 00:48:33,880
Speaker 1: Catholic homes in what came to be known as the

809
00:48:33,920 --> 00:48:38,440
Speaker 1: Gordon Riots, which was the most destructive domestic upheaval in

810
00:48:38,480 --> 00:48:42,640
Speaker 1: the history of London. So why did Lord Gordon, a

811
00:48:42,719 --> 00:48:47,799
Speaker 1: person so capable of empathy, have such antipathy for Catholics.

812
00:48:48,280 --> 00:48:52,080
Speaker 1: The answer paints a fundamental fact about human nature, which

813
00:48:52,120 --> 00:48:56,600
Speaker 1: is our tendency to form in groups and outgroups, groups

814
00:48:56,600 --> 00:48:59,200
Speaker 1: that we feel attached to and those that we feel

815
00:48:59,239 --> 00:49:05,279
Speaker 1: opposed to. Our empathy is selective. So, especially after the

816
00:49:05,280 --> 00:49:09,279
Speaker 1: Second World War, psychologists began to study this issue of

817
00:49:09,360 --> 00:49:11,840
Speaker 1: in groups and out groups and how this can so

818
00:49:12,160 --> 00:49:15,319
Speaker 1: easily lead to violence. And my lab and a lot

819
00:49:15,320 --> 00:49:17,560
Speaker 1: of others have done a lot of research into this

820
00:49:17,680 --> 00:49:21,760
Speaker 1: issue of how easily we form in groups and out groups.

821
00:49:21,800 --> 00:49:25,279
Speaker 1: And I'll give you just one example of this. So

822
00:49:25,640 --> 00:49:27,960
Speaker 1: come back to this experiment with the people in the

823
00:49:27,960 --> 00:49:32,000
Speaker 1: brain scanner watching the hands get stabbed. Now we take

824
00:49:32,040 --> 00:49:35,080
Speaker 1: these six hands on the screen and we just add

825
00:49:35,160 --> 00:49:42,400
Speaker 1: one word labels to each hand Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Scientologist, atheist.

826
00:49:42,960 --> 00:49:45,399
Speaker 1: And now the computer goes around boo boo, boo boop,

827
00:49:45,440 --> 00:49:48,080
Speaker 1: and it randomly picks a hand, and you see that

828
00:49:48,239 --> 00:49:51,200
Speaker 1: hand get touched with a Q tip or stabbed with

829
00:49:51,239 --> 00:49:54,400
Speaker 1: a syringe needle. And the question is does your brain

830
00:49:54,560 --> 00:49:58,560
Speaker 1: care as much if it's an out group versus your

831
00:49:58,680 --> 00:50:02,080
Speaker 1: in group. We tested people of all different faiths and

832
00:50:02,120 --> 00:50:06,040
Speaker 1: atheists also, and the result is that you care more

833
00:50:06,080 --> 00:50:10,600
Speaker 1: about your in group and you care less about outgroups.

834
00:50:10,960 --> 00:50:13,640
Speaker 1: When you see the hand get stabbed that is labeled

835
00:50:13,640 --> 00:50:16,200
Speaker 1: with your in group, we can measure a very big

836
00:50:16,239 --> 00:50:19,239
Speaker 1: response in the pain matrix. And when you see a

837
00:50:19,239 --> 00:50:21,880
Speaker 1: hand get stabbed that has one of the other labels

838
00:50:21,920 --> 00:50:25,279
Speaker 1: on it, we see a very small response in the

839
00:50:25,320 --> 00:50:30,319
Speaker 1: pain matrix. Your brain just doesn't care as much. This

840
00:50:30,520 --> 00:50:33,360
Speaker 1: is a large effect and it's depressing that it's true,

841
00:50:33,719 --> 00:50:36,080
Speaker 1: but it's just the way humans are. We care a

842
00:50:36,120 --> 00:50:39,600
Speaker 1: lot about our in groups. And these are just single

843
00:50:39,640 --> 00:50:42,600
Speaker 1: word labels. I mean, all the hands look the same

844
00:50:42,920 --> 00:50:45,239
Speaker 1: and they just have different colored wristbands on them so

845
00:50:45,280 --> 00:50:47,879
Speaker 1: you can distinguish them. But it turns out we are

846
00:50:48,000 --> 00:50:52,279
Speaker 1: really really sensitive to these labels. So the issue of

847
00:50:52,400 --> 00:50:57,280
Speaker 1: empathy is subtle and complex. With just a single word label,

848
00:50:57,360 --> 00:50:59,959
Speaker 1: your brain can feel more or less empathy for someone.

849
00:51:00,080 --> 00:51:03,800
Speaker 1: One can run the imagery about them and their pain

850
00:51:04,520 --> 00:51:08,680
Speaker 1: more or less vividly. Now, what's fascinating is how rapidly

851
00:51:08,719 --> 00:51:12,439
Speaker 1: our levels of empathy can change. So we next took

852
00:51:12,480 --> 00:51:15,120
Speaker 1: the exact same subject and we presented them with a

853
00:51:15,160 --> 00:51:19,080
Speaker 1: single sentence. The year is twenty twenty five, and these

854
00:51:19,120 --> 00:51:22,440
Speaker 1: three groups have teamed up against these three groups. And

855
00:51:22,520 --> 00:51:25,040
Speaker 1: so now you find your in group teamed up on

856
00:51:25,120 --> 00:51:27,520
Speaker 1: one side or the other. The computer has picked these

857
00:51:27,560 --> 00:51:30,799
Speaker 1: sides randomly, and so you've got this team and the

858
00:51:30,880 --> 00:51:33,879
Speaker 1: other team. So what do you think happens? You care

859
00:51:33,960 --> 00:51:37,719
Speaker 1: now about your allies. The two groups have randomly got

860
00:51:37,880 --> 00:51:40,759
Speaker 1: lumped in there with your in group. So suddenly when

861
00:51:40,760 --> 00:51:44,120
Speaker 1: you see their hand get stabbed, you have a larger

862
00:51:44,160 --> 00:51:46,719
Speaker 1: empathy response than you did just a moment ago.

863
00:51:46,800 --> 00:51:48,040
Speaker 2: And you didn't care about them.

864
00:51:48,239 --> 00:51:50,319
Speaker 1: You still don't care about the out groups on the

865
00:51:50,320 --> 00:51:53,640
Speaker 1: other side, but you care about these allies now more,

866
00:51:53,840 --> 00:51:57,040
Speaker 1: which is not surprising. Like, for example, when the Soviets

867
00:51:57,160 --> 00:52:00,279
Speaker 1: fought side by side with the Americans in World War II, too,

868
00:52:00,640 --> 00:52:04,760
Speaker 1: they had been bitter enemies before then World War two happened,

869
00:52:04,800 --> 00:52:08,560
Speaker 1: and suddenly their allies they're fighting together. They're clapping each

870
00:52:08,560 --> 00:52:10,759
Speaker 1: other on the back and sharing cigarettes and so on.

871
00:52:11,239 --> 00:52:13,520
Speaker 1: And then the war ends and now their enemies again.

872
00:52:16,680 --> 00:52:19,320
Speaker 1: Now take a moment to think about your own level

873
00:52:19,440 --> 00:52:24,200
Speaker 1: of empathy towards others. Imagine that you see a seventy

874
00:52:24,200 --> 00:52:26,680
Speaker 1: five year old man get hit in the face and

875
00:52:26,760 --> 00:52:29,960
Speaker 1: his nose gets cut and he's bleeding. Do you feel

876
00:52:30,080 --> 00:52:33,920
Speaker 1: an empathic sting with that? Okay, Well, now imagine that

877
00:52:34,000 --> 00:52:38,240
Speaker 1: he's at a rally for Joe Biden or for Donald Trump,

878
00:52:38,719 --> 00:52:41,920
Speaker 1: or just anyone you agree or disagree with. Is your

879
00:52:42,040 --> 00:52:46,759
Speaker 1: empathy any different? And if so, does that challenge your

880
00:52:46,880 --> 00:52:51,480
Speaker 1: view of yourself as an empathic person. If you felt

881
00:52:51,600 --> 00:52:55,239
Speaker 1: unequal responses in those two situations, a Biden rally or

882
00:52:55,239 --> 00:52:59,080
Speaker 1: a Trump rally, you're not alone. People generally assess their

883
00:52:59,120 --> 00:53:02,560
Speaker 1: own empathy by thinking about those in their in group.

884
00:53:03,160 --> 00:53:06,560
Speaker 1: I've always been struck by this in action adventure movies.

885
00:53:06,600 --> 00:53:09,960
Speaker 1: When we see a person get hurt, if it's the protagonist,

886
00:53:10,000 --> 00:53:13,560
Speaker 1: we really WinCE. But if it's the antagonist and he's

887
00:53:13,600 --> 00:53:15,960
Speaker 1: falling off one hundred foot cliff to his death, we

888
00:53:16,040 --> 00:53:19,719
Speaker 1: feel just find about that, possibly happy about that. So

889
00:53:19,800 --> 00:53:23,160
Speaker 1: what this means is that we have the capacity to

890
00:53:23,320 --> 00:53:27,359
Speaker 1: feel someone else's pain in different ways, depending on whether

891
00:53:27,360 --> 00:53:30,080
Speaker 1: they're a member of our tribe or not, and the

892
00:53:30,160 --> 00:53:35,160
Speaker 1: tribal tendencies of humans. This can incite murder and torture,

893
00:53:35,320 --> 00:53:40,520
Speaker 1: from the Spanish Inquisition to the Rwandan genocide. This can

894
00:53:40,640 --> 00:53:45,760
Speaker 1: buy the appeal of nationalist visions, from Hitler's Final Solution

895
00:53:45,920 --> 00:53:51,000
Speaker 1: to Mao's Cultural Revolution. So, given how deeply our biases

896
00:53:51,040 --> 00:53:55,480
Speaker 1: are ingrained, the question is, are we doomed to repeat

897
00:53:55,520 --> 00:53:59,440
Speaker 1: these kinds of atrocities forever? So I'm going to suggest

898
00:53:59,640 --> 00:54:04,160
Speaker 1: perhaps apps not. I'm going to give five strategies here

899
00:54:04,600 --> 00:54:09,560
Speaker 1: to narrow the empathic divide between people. The first thing

900
00:54:09,600 --> 00:54:13,279
Speaker 1: has to do with just understanding our own biases. We

901
00:54:13,320 --> 00:54:17,080
Speaker 1: can increase our awareness of our own internal thought patterns

902
00:54:17,080 --> 00:54:21,759
Speaker 1: so that we recognize our partisanship as we experience it.

903
00:54:22,200 --> 00:54:25,239
Speaker 1: For example, in our social echo chambers, we tend to

904
00:54:25,840 --> 00:54:28,680
Speaker 1: accept the logic of our in group and we reject

905
00:54:28,840 --> 00:54:33,240
Speaker 1: the logic of outgroups. And we're also predisposed to help

906
00:54:33,280 --> 00:54:36,360
Speaker 1: those in our in groups rather than those a little

907
00:54:36,640 --> 00:54:38,520
Speaker 1: farther away who might need help.

908
00:54:38,560 --> 00:54:38,799
Speaker 2: More.

909
00:54:39,520 --> 00:54:43,919
Speaker 1: Understanding the biases behind our actions in this way can

910
00:54:44,000 --> 00:54:48,600
Speaker 1: help lead us to more altruistic behavior. The second strategy

911
00:54:48,880 --> 00:54:52,480
Speaker 1: for narrowing the empathic divide has to do with building

912
00:54:52,560 --> 00:54:56,480
Speaker 1: a better model of other people. So instead of concluding

913
00:54:56,520 --> 00:55:01,080
Speaker 1: that your brother or a coworker is a or an idiot,

914
00:55:01,440 --> 00:55:04,720
Speaker 1: just try taking a crack at understanding his point of view.

915
00:55:05,280 --> 00:55:07,680
Speaker 1: It's not the same as agreeing with his point of view,

916
00:55:07,719 --> 00:55:10,920
Speaker 1: but it's trying to step into that person's world to

917
00:55:11,120 --> 00:55:16,359
Speaker 1: avoid the oversimplifications that we typically accept. And by the way,

918
00:55:16,400 --> 00:55:19,920
Speaker 1: this is often accomplished through art and literature, which has

919
00:55:20,239 --> 00:55:23,200
Speaker 1: for a long time wage day behind the scenes battle

920
00:55:23,239 --> 00:55:27,879
Speaker 1: against dehumanization. Theater and books and movies. This lets people

921
00:55:28,080 --> 00:55:30,840
Speaker 1: step into the shoes of other people, and in the

922
00:55:30,880 --> 00:55:34,040
Speaker 1: fourteen forties, when the printing press was invented, this allowed

923
00:55:34,440 --> 00:55:38,520
Speaker 1: stories to spread widely. So, for example, when Harriet Peacher

924
00:55:38,600 --> 00:55:43,400
Speaker 1: Stowe published the anti slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin in

925
00:55:43,440 --> 00:55:47,759
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty two, readers stepped inside a shack that they

926
00:55:47,920 --> 00:55:51,120
Speaker 1: otherwise wouldn't have ever entered, and once in it was

927
00:55:51,200 --> 00:55:55,239
Speaker 1: no longer so easy to relegate the characters to an

928
00:55:55,280 --> 00:55:59,920
Speaker 1: out group. The third strategy is to learn and resis

929
00:56:00,440 --> 00:56:04,200
Speaker 1: the tactics of dehumanization. There are a lot of tricks

930
00:56:04,239 --> 00:56:07,719
Speaker 1: that governments and propagandists employ and I'm going to do

931
00:56:07,760 --> 00:56:10,600
Speaker 1: a different episode on that, but I'll mention here that

932
00:56:10,760 --> 00:56:15,279
Speaker 1: one common ploy is what's called moral pollution, in which

933
00:56:15,360 --> 00:56:20,239
Speaker 1: a group is socially smeared by association with something repulsive

934
00:56:20,440 --> 00:56:24,400
Speaker 1: like vermin or insects, or anything that develops them in

935
00:56:24,440 --> 00:56:28,640
Speaker 1: a negative emotional cloud. Once you have a negative emotional

936
00:56:28,680 --> 00:56:32,480
Speaker 1: reaction to a group, it becomes harder to hear their perspectives.

937
00:56:33,120 --> 00:56:35,600
Speaker 1: So when you can recognize that a person is being

938
00:56:35,680 --> 00:56:39,920
Speaker 1: attacked for his identity rather than his arguments, you can

939
00:56:39,960 --> 00:56:44,120
Speaker 1: better defend yourself against this trick. The fourth strategy has

940
00:56:44,120 --> 00:56:48,880
Speaker 1: to do with blinding your biases, so design processes and

941
00:56:49,000 --> 00:56:54,240
Speaker 1: organizations that remove the chance that prejudices interfere with your judgment.

942
00:56:54,719 --> 00:56:58,600
Speaker 1: For example, a lot of software companies here in Silicon Valley,

943
00:56:58,840 --> 00:57:02,840
Speaker 1: they'll ask job candidates to submit code rather than to

944
00:57:02,840 --> 00:57:07,040
Speaker 1: show up in person. And many orchestras have blind auditions,

945
00:57:07,080 --> 00:57:09,640
Speaker 1: which means they audition people behind a curtain, so you

946
00:57:09,760 --> 00:57:12,880
Speaker 1: can't see the gender or the race of the person

947
00:57:13,120 --> 00:57:15,800
Speaker 1: who's looking for the job. You're just listening to the music.

948
00:57:16,200 --> 00:57:19,240
Speaker 1: And in the same way, many universities have a need

949
00:57:19,320 --> 00:57:25,080
Speaker 1: blind application process so they can separate intelligence from financial considerations.

950
00:57:25,520 --> 00:57:30,360
Speaker 1: So the idea is, wherever biases can be subconsciously triggered,

951
00:57:30,720 --> 00:57:34,160
Speaker 1: it's best if you just remove the opportunity. And the

952
00:57:34,200 --> 00:57:37,720
Speaker 1: fifth strategy I think is the least intuitive, and that

953
00:57:37,880 --> 00:57:42,920
Speaker 1: is to entangle group memberships. So what I mean is

954
00:57:43,480 --> 00:57:48,840
Speaker 1: work to ensure that communities are intertwined. So to see

955
00:57:48,840 --> 00:57:52,800
Speaker 1: how this would work in practice, consider the five tribes

956
00:57:53,000 --> 00:57:57,000
Speaker 1: of the Iroqui Native Americans, who fought intensely with each

957
00:57:57,080 --> 00:58:00,120
Speaker 1: other in the fifteenth century. So they had a new

958
00:58:00,200 --> 00:58:03,280
Speaker 1: leader come in named Deganaweda, who came to be known

959
00:58:03,320 --> 00:58:06,000
Speaker 1: as the Great Peacemaker. And what he did is he

960
00:58:06,040 --> 00:58:11,760
Speaker 1: hassigned each tribe member to one of nine different clans,

961
00:58:12,240 --> 00:58:14,480
Speaker 1: the Wolf clan or the Bear clan, or the Turtle

962
00:58:14,520 --> 00:58:16,480
Speaker 1: clan or Sandpiper.

963
00:58:15,920 --> 00:58:17,120
Speaker 2: Deer so on.

964
00:58:17,800 --> 00:58:21,720
Speaker 1: So members of each clan had representation from all the

965
00:58:21,760 --> 00:58:26,480
Speaker 1: different tribes, and these relationships were cross cutting. So I

966
00:58:26,560 --> 00:58:29,040
Speaker 1: say to you, hey, tribe member, let's go attack that

967
00:58:29,120 --> 00:58:31,480
Speaker 1: other tribe over there, And you say, oh, you know,

968
00:58:31,600 --> 00:58:34,120
Speaker 1: I would. But I'm a member of the Eagle clan

969
00:58:34,200 --> 00:58:36,400
Speaker 1: and so is he, and so I'm not really that

970
00:58:36,480 --> 00:58:41,880
Speaker 1: interested in attacking him anymore. So by emphasizing the overlapping

971
00:58:42,160 --> 00:58:47,480
Speaker 1: dual allegiances to tribe and to clan, de Ganaweda complicated

972
00:58:47,480 --> 00:58:50,880
Speaker 1: the notions of us and them, and in this way

973
00:58:50,920 --> 00:58:55,680
Speaker 1: he was able to defang the intertribal warfare. So what

974
00:58:55,720 --> 00:58:58,880
Speaker 1: we've seen in today's episode is how different we are

975
00:58:58,880 --> 00:59:02,680
Speaker 1: on the inside, and yet how strongly we believe our

976
00:59:02,720 --> 00:59:07,520
Speaker 1: own truths, even though our knowledge of everything is so impoverished.

977
00:59:08,080 --> 00:59:10,120
Speaker 1: And yet we all walk around with the impression that

978
00:59:10,160 --> 00:59:12,400
Speaker 1: if we could just sit down with another person on

979
00:59:12,440 --> 00:59:17,040
Speaker 1: the other side, we could show them the truth. So

980
00:59:17,080 --> 00:59:19,600
Speaker 1: if you have the same opinions as everyone else in

981
00:59:19,640 --> 00:59:22,919
Speaker 1: your life, great, But I hope you don't. I hope

982
00:59:22,920 --> 00:59:26,720
Speaker 1: you can take the opportunity to dig deep and find

983
00:59:26,760 --> 00:59:29,200
Speaker 1: out how the other folks in your life see the

984
00:59:29,200 --> 00:59:31,800
Speaker 1: world and listen to them. It's not the same as

985
00:59:31,840 --> 00:59:34,560
Speaker 1: agreeing with them or giving in to them, but it

986
00:59:34,600 --> 00:59:37,840
Speaker 1: is acknowledging that your point of view doesn't have a

987
00:59:38,080 --> 00:59:41,520
Speaker 1: lock on the absolute truth, and it's allowing that the

988
00:59:41,520 --> 00:59:44,560
Speaker 1: most important thing you can learn is an ability to

989
00:59:45,160 --> 00:59:49,760
Speaker 1: dialogue in conditions of disagreements and discomfort. It's the most

990
00:59:49,800 --> 00:59:52,960
Speaker 1: important thing that you can do for each other and

991
00:59:53,080 --> 00:59:58,440
Speaker 1: for your own brain. As Voltaire said, uncertainty is an

992
00:59:58,600 --> 01:00:04,440
Speaker 1: uncomfortable position, but certainty is an absurd position. So I've

993
01:00:04,480 --> 01:00:07,680
Speaker 1: given five directions for helping us to learn how to

994
01:00:07,720 --> 01:00:10,720
Speaker 1: bridge that gap, not by assuming we're right, but by

995
01:00:10,760 --> 01:00:14,680
Speaker 1: having the intellectual humility to realize that it's a big,

996
01:00:14,760 --> 01:00:19,320
Speaker 1: pluralistic world out there, and that everyone, including you, has

997
01:00:19,360 --> 01:00:22,600
Speaker 1: a model of the truth, and that only by adopting

998
01:00:22,640 --> 01:00:27,360
Speaker 1: the stance of genuine dialogue and understanding your own biases

999
01:00:27,920 --> 01:00:31,800
Speaker 1: and the possibility that we might be wrong, can we

1000
01:00:31,880 --> 01:00:39,960
Speaker 1: hope to move things forward. If you're interested in learning more,

1001
01:00:40,240 --> 01:00:43,640
Speaker 1: find further readings on these topics at Eagleman dot com,

1002
01:00:43,680 --> 01:00:48,720
Speaker 1: Slash podcast, and if you have questions, comments thoughts, email

1003
01:00:48,840 --> 01:00:52,120
Speaker 1: us at podcast at eagleman dot com, where we've been

1004
01:00:52,160 --> 01:00:56,640
Speaker 1: getting great responses. Watch full video episodes and leave comments

1005
01:00:56,680 --> 01:01:00,960
Speaker 1: on YouTube at Inner cosmospod. Until then, this is David

1006
01:01:00,960 --> 01:01:03,840
Speaker 1: Eagleman signing off from the Inner Cosmos