WEBVTT - Ep102 "Could you ever know what it’s like to be someone else?" (Part 1) 0:00:05.000 --> 0:00:09.240 Could you ever know what it's like to be someone else? 0:00:10.080 --> 0:00:13.480 What does this have to do with bats? Or empathy 0:00:13.760 --> 0:00:18.919 or bomb robots or Helen Keller or literature or when 0:00:18.960 --> 0:00:25.959 someone says I know exactly how you feel. Welcome to 0:00:25.960 --> 0:00:29.200 inner cosmos with me, David Eagelman. I'm a neuroscientist and 0:00:29.200 --> 0:00:32.080 an author at Stanford and in these episodes we sail 0:00:32.240 --> 0:00:36.319 deeply into our three pound universe to understand why and 0:00:36.360 --> 0:00:55.640 how our lives look the way they do. Today's episode 0:00:55.880 --> 0:00:59.120 is about the question of whether we can ever really 0:00:59.200 --> 0:01:03.720 know what it's like to be someone else? Why are 0:01:03.720 --> 0:01:07.080 we all so different? And is it possible that those 0:01:07.200 --> 0:01:11.000 gaps are unbridgable. We'll examine this from the point of 0:01:11.080 --> 0:01:15.840 view of neuroscience and philosophy and literature, and then technology. 0:01:16.000 --> 0:01:20.440 Can new tech ever allow us to better understand what 0:01:20.560 --> 0:01:23.360 it is to be someone else? Or is there an 0:01:23.360 --> 0:01:28.319 inherent impossibility? So let's start with a simple question, what 0:01:28.480 --> 0:01:35.360 is it like to be a bat? Now? This is 0:01:35.360 --> 0:01:38.800 an interesting question because bats are so different from us. 0:01:39.200 --> 0:01:41.720 They are mammals like us, but in many ways their 0:01:41.760 --> 0:01:46.800 lives are unrecognizably foreign to our own. They sleep upside down, 0:01:46.840 --> 0:01:51.200 but more importantly, they navigate through their dark caverns by 0:01:51.560 --> 0:01:56.600 emitting little shrieks, and then their extremely sensitive ears pick 0:01:56.680 --> 0:01:59.360 up on the echoes from that, and they figure out 0:01:59.640 --> 0:02:03.360 the dimensional structure of the world in which they're flying. 0:02:03.800 --> 0:02:06.960 And they can do this with terrific resolutions, such that 0:02:07.400 --> 0:02:11.600 they can catch a flying moth just with this echolocation 0:02:12.160 --> 0:02:15.000 in the pitch black. So in nineteen seventy four, the 0:02:15.000 --> 0:02:19.399 philosopher Thomas Nagel wrote an essay by this title, What 0:02:19.560 --> 0:02:22.639 Is It Like To Be a Bat? And it quickly 0:02:22.639 --> 0:02:26.360 became one of the most famous thought experiments in modern philosophy, 0:02:26.639 --> 0:02:31.560 because it challenges something fundamental about one of our intuitions. 0:02:31.800 --> 0:02:35.720 He suggested that no matter how much we study another 0:02:35.960 --> 0:02:41.560 being's brain or behavior or sensory experiences, we can't ever 0:02:42.280 --> 0:02:47.799 truly grasp what their subjective experience feels like from the inside. 0:02:48.120 --> 0:02:51.920 Nagel used the bat as his example, because seeing the 0:02:51.960 --> 0:02:57.080 world through echolocation is a perfectly good sensory solution, but 0:02:57.160 --> 0:03:01.760 it's totally foreign to cited humans. His point was that 0:03:01.800 --> 0:03:05.720 we can study the process of echolocation scientifically, and we 0:03:05.760 --> 0:03:08.640 can analyze how it works, and we can simulate it 0:03:08.680 --> 0:03:11.760 with machines, and we can measure how a bat's brain 0:03:11.919 --> 0:03:17.080 responds to these signals, but we can't feel it. We 0:03:17.160 --> 0:03:21.160 can't step inside a bat's world and know what it 0:03:21.320 --> 0:03:25.359 is like to move through space by sound. We can 0:03:25.480 --> 0:03:30.800 understand it intellectually, but not experientially. And that brings us 0:03:30.800 --> 0:03:34.359 to the question of this episode and the next one. 0:03:34.639 --> 0:03:37.040 Can you ever truly know what it is like to 0:03:37.120 --> 0:03:40.680 be something else, like another creature? But more importantly, can 0:03:40.720 --> 0:03:44.400 you ever really know what it's like to be another person? 0:03:45.200 --> 0:03:49.200 Not just sympathize with them, but really inhabit their world 0:03:49.280 --> 0:03:53.680 from the inside out, know what it's like to be them. 0:03:57.480 --> 0:04:00.560 When we're children, we think this is self. It's evidently 0:04:00.600 --> 0:04:03.120 true that everyone is like us on the inside. But 0:04:03.240 --> 0:04:06.880 as we get older, we recognize more and more differences, 0:04:06.880 --> 0:04:10.400 and the question becomes more nuanced, because, as I've talked 0:04:10.400 --> 0:04:14.040 about on many episodes, people can be very different from 0:04:14.160 --> 0:04:16.960 one to the next on the inside. So we're gonna 0:04:16.960 --> 0:04:19.400 dive deep into that and what it means. But first 0:04:19.600 --> 0:04:23.560 let's get back to Nagel and bats to set the table. 0:04:23.920 --> 0:04:29.159 Nagel's proposal was that there's something about subjective experience that's 0:04:29.279 --> 0:04:32.920 just not accessible from the outside. So essentially, he said, look, 0:04:33.000 --> 0:04:36.760 even if we had the most detailed scientific account of 0:04:36.880 --> 0:04:39.680 the mental processes in the bat, even if we could 0:04:39.680 --> 0:04:42.720 write down every neuron in the bat's brain and exactly 0:04:42.800 --> 0:04:45.320 what the activity is doing, and even point to the 0:04:45.400 --> 0:04:49.040 genes involved, and we could model the way that echolocation 0:04:49.200 --> 0:04:53.200 works and simulate the bat's behavior perfectly, still we wouldn't 0:04:53.240 --> 0:04:55.919 have answered the question what it is like to be 0:04:56.760 --> 0:05:00.880 that bat? And this is the problem of the subjective 0:05:01.120 --> 0:05:05.680 character of experience. It's not about behavior or function or 0:05:05.720 --> 0:05:08.680 brain states. It's about what it feels like to be 0:05:08.760 --> 0:05:13.880 a conscious creature, and that what it feels like quality. 0:05:14.360 --> 0:05:19.080 This is what we call qualitia, the internal experience of something. Now, 0:05:19.320 --> 0:05:23.320 qualia turn out to be really tough for science. Why 0:05:23.440 --> 0:05:28.799 because science aims for objectivity. It tries to strip away 0:05:29.360 --> 0:05:32.840 individual perspectives so that we can find truths that are 0:05:32.920 --> 0:05:38.600 universally valid. But conscious experience just doesn't cooperate with that. 0:05:39.200 --> 0:05:44.520 Consciousness is defined by perspective. It's the one thing that 0:05:44.760 --> 0:05:49.359 can't be fully described in third person terms. There's no 0:05:49.520 --> 0:05:56.320 outside view of the inside experience. So Nagel pointed to 0:05:56.600 --> 0:06:00.440 bats simply because their sensory world is so different from 0:06:00.440 --> 0:06:04.359 ours that it forces us to confront the limits of 0:06:04.400 --> 0:06:07.320 our imagination. We can imagine what it would be like 0:06:07.440 --> 0:06:11.040 for us to behave like a bat. We can imagine 0:06:11.200 --> 0:06:14.839 hanging upside down, or eating insects, or maybe even using 0:06:15.160 --> 0:06:17.920 sonar as a tool. But that's not what he's asking. 0:06:17.960 --> 0:06:20.880 He's asking what is it like for the bat to 0:06:20.960 --> 0:06:24.080 be the bat? And that he says is something we'll 0:06:24.160 --> 0:06:28.360 never know, not even in principle. And this reminds us 0:06:28.640 --> 0:06:31.680 that knowledge comes in different forms. There's the kind of 0:06:31.720 --> 0:06:35.680 knowledge we can write down and measure and test, and 0:06:35.720 --> 0:06:38.839 then there's the kind that lives only in the first person, 0:06:39.120 --> 0:06:43.760 in the me in the subjective point of view. And 0:06:43.800 --> 0:06:47.480 that second kind, that inner experience, isn't something we can 0:06:47.520 --> 0:06:54.720 share or translate fully, even with the best science. So 0:06:54.760 --> 0:06:57.800 this returns us to the question, can you ever truly 0:06:57.880 --> 0:07:01.760 know what it's like to be another person? Even when 0:07:01.800 --> 0:07:05.520 we're talking about someone we know intimately, we're up against 0:07:05.560 --> 0:07:10.520 a wall because experience is totally private. And maybe this 0:07:10.600 --> 0:07:13.600 is not just a philosophical or scientific challenge. Maybe this 0:07:13.720 --> 0:07:16.559 is a human challenge, because no matter how we try, 0:07:16.880 --> 0:07:20.160 there is a part of every person, every mind that 0:07:20.320 --> 0:07:23.680 is forever out of reach. So let's zoom out for 0:07:23.720 --> 0:07:26.560 a minute to make clear how much difference there is 0:07:26.600 --> 0:07:30.080 between everyone's experience in the world. So let me start 0:07:30.120 --> 0:07:33.119 with just a simple personal example. Many years ago, during 0:07:33.120 --> 0:07:36.440 my postdoctoral fellowship, I dated a young woman and even 0:07:36.440 --> 0:07:39.480 though she was often quite sad inside, she had a 0:07:39.600 --> 0:07:43.240 very stunning Hollywood smile that she would paste on and 0:07:43.280 --> 0:07:45.920 it would light up the room every time she did. So. 0:07:46.040 --> 0:07:48.600 One day we went into a restaurant together and we 0:07:48.640 --> 0:07:50.960 had to get to the back, but it was packed, 0:07:51.000 --> 0:07:54.400 so we had to wind our way through a crowded 0:07:54.480 --> 0:07:57.040 maze of tables to get to the back, and the 0:07:57.080 --> 0:08:00.760 only way we could squeeze through was with me scooching 0:08:00.800 --> 0:08:03.640 in right behind her, And because I was taller than 0:08:03.680 --> 0:08:06.840 she was, I could see over her head as we 0:08:06.880 --> 0:08:09.560 wound our way through, So she was the front guard 0:08:09.920 --> 0:08:13.120 and I was mostly hidden behind her, and what I 0:08:13.200 --> 0:08:17.560 saw was like a VR experience. Suddenly I was seeing 0:08:17.600 --> 0:08:21.520 the world through a different set of eyes because she 0:08:21.560 --> 0:08:24.600 had turned on her smile, and as we wound through 0:08:24.640 --> 0:08:29.080 the crowd, everyone looked up at her and smiled back 0:08:29.400 --> 0:08:32.040 and moved their chairs out of the way. It's not 0:08:32.080 --> 0:08:35.120 that people weren't normally perfectly nice to me alone as well, 0:08:35.360 --> 0:08:37.600 but there was a noticeable difference here. It was like 0:08:37.640 --> 0:08:40.560 I was wearing the costume of someone else, and I 0:08:40.640 --> 0:08:43.880 saw the world through her eyes and how people looked 0:08:43.880 --> 0:08:46.560 at her and reacted to her. I saw how she 0:08:46.760 --> 0:08:50.760 experienced the social realm. Now that told me something about 0:08:50.800 --> 0:08:53.840 her experience of the world, But still the question remains 0:08:54.160 --> 0:08:57.640 about her experience on the inside. What is that like 0:08:57.720 --> 0:09:00.520 to her? We can extrapolate make some guess is but 0:09:01.000 --> 0:09:04.320 how accurate are we? Of course? Lots of people experience 0:09:04.360 --> 0:09:07.360 the world differently. Take height. What would it be like 0:09:07.400 --> 0:09:10.440 if you were looking up at people at a cocktail 0:09:10.480 --> 0:09:13.600 party because you were quite short? Or what's it like 0:09:13.640 --> 0:09:16.240 if you're looking down on people because you're quite tall? 0:09:16.320 --> 0:09:19.880 Does that change your social experience of the world. What 0:09:19.880 --> 0:09:23.000 would it be like if you had much stronger arms 0:09:23.080 --> 0:09:25.520 or legs and could do things yourself that you thought 0:09:25.559 --> 0:09:29.080 you couldn't, or vice versa. What if you were the 0:09:29.559 --> 0:09:33.439 opposite gender or looked very different than you do now? 0:09:33.800 --> 0:09:36.480 There are a thousand little ways in which the body 0:09:36.520 --> 0:09:40.880 that you're trapped in subtly changes your experience in the world. 0:09:41.040 --> 0:09:44.800 But again, that's just the starting point for your internal life. 0:09:45.440 --> 0:09:47.640 And if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, 0:09:47.679 --> 0:09:49.920 you know that one of my main interests is about 0:09:50.000 --> 0:09:55.800 the differences in our internal lives. The world looks and 0:09:55.880 --> 0:09:59.640 sounds and feels a bit different to you than the 0:09:59.640 --> 0:10:02.240 person sitting next to you. Many of my episodes have 0:10:02.320 --> 0:10:07.680 explored this question the astonishing variety of internal experiences that 0:10:07.720 --> 0:10:12.600 people have. For example, take synesthesia. Some people will look 0:10:12.640 --> 0:10:15.839 at letters or numbers on a page and that will 0:10:15.880 --> 0:10:19.400 trigger an experience of color, or that listen to music 0:10:19.440 --> 0:10:24.200 and that will trigger swirling visual forms, or they'll taste 0:10:24.240 --> 0:10:27.719 something and that'll put a feeling on their fingertips. This 0:10:27.760 --> 0:10:31.520 isn't metaphorical stuff. This is a real experience that a 0:10:31.640 --> 0:10:36.480 fraction of the population has. Their senses are crosswired in 0:10:36.520 --> 0:10:40.920 a way that makes their inner world different from someone else's. 0:10:41.360 --> 0:10:44.319 If you're interested in synesthesia, I talk about that at 0:10:44.400 --> 0:10:47.240 length in episode four, or you've heard me talk about 0:10:47.320 --> 0:10:50.800 other ways in which we might see things in our imagination. 0:10:51.440 --> 0:10:55.880 One example of this is the spectrum from hyperfantasia to 0:10:56.000 --> 0:10:59.360 a fantasia, which I talk about in episode fifty nine 0:11:00.120 --> 0:11:05.720 or hyperfantasic, you visualize things with great clarity, almost like 0:11:05.760 --> 0:11:09.280 a movie. If you are a fantasic, you don't form 0:11:09.320 --> 0:11:12.679 any mental images. Let's say I ask you to imagine 0:11:12.720 --> 0:11:16.240 a yellow dog running in a shallow creek in the woods. 0:11:16.600 --> 0:11:21.760 The hyperfantagic person visually imagines that with great detail, almost 0:11:21.760 --> 0:11:27.200 like they're watching it. A fantagic person sees nothing, no dog, 0:11:27.320 --> 0:11:31.439 no color, no visual sense of shape or motion. Everyone 0:11:31.480 --> 0:11:34.960 in the population is spread somewhere along the spectrum and 0:11:35.040 --> 0:11:39.520 having different experiences on the inside. And there are dozens 0:11:39.559 --> 0:11:43.400 of things like this. I've previously talked about word aversion 0:11:43.559 --> 0:11:47.599 in episode twenty six. Word aversion is the immediate emotional 0:11:48.000 --> 0:11:51.840 disgust that some people feel when they hear particular words 0:11:52.280 --> 0:11:59.320 like moist or tissue or slacks or panties or nugget. 0:12:00.080 --> 0:12:03.040 For most people, these words are just vocabulary, but for 0:12:03.160 --> 0:12:08.000 other people they trigger an immediate visceral response like discuss 0:12:08.160 --> 0:12:12.760 or anxiety. The point is across the population, even something 0:12:13.160 --> 0:12:16.640 as simple as how you experience a word can be 0:12:16.800 --> 0:12:20.400 very different from one brain to another. When we start 0:12:20.440 --> 0:12:24.400 looking for examples like these. In neuroscience, things like synesthesia 0:12:24.559 --> 0:12:27.439 or a fantasia or word a version. We just find 0:12:27.520 --> 0:12:33.079 more and more examples. The differences in people's internal worlds 0:12:33.480 --> 0:12:36.640 are real, and they're measurable, as has been done by 0:12:36.679 --> 0:12:39.560 my lab and dozens of others. And I'm attaching some 0:12:39.600 --> 0:12:43.040 studies to the show notes, and these differences between people, 0:12:43.080 --> 0:12:46.120 they're not just about preferences or histories or what we 0:12:46.160 --> 0:12:51.280 pay attention to. It's about the raw feel of experience itself, 0:12:51.840 --> 0:12:54.520 how we perceive the world, how we process it, how 0:12:54.559 --> 0:12:58.600 we represent it internally. And the more we learn about 0:12:58.600 --> 0:13:01.640 these differences, the more are humble we have to become, 0:13:01.720 --> 0:13:03.880 because it turns out that what you think of as 0:13:04.160 --> 0:13:08.080 being a normal human is just one point on a 0:13:08.200 --> 0:13:30.360 vast spectrum of human minds. Now, this doesn't stop us 0:13:30.400 --> 0:13:34.400 from trying to step into another person's shoes. And this 0:13:34.480 --> 0:13:37.160 is the notion of empathy, which is something our brains 0:13:37.200 --> 0:13:42.959 do automatically. Empathy is our brain's ability to simulate what 0:13:43.080 --> 0:13:46.120 someone else is going through, and researchers typically divide this 0:13:46.200 --> 0:13:50.720 into emotional empathy, which is your ability to share the 0:13:50.760 --> 0:13:54.840 emotional experiences of someone else, and cognitive empathy, understanding the 0:13:54.880 --> 0:13:58.360 other person's perspective or their mental state. Now, even though 0:13:58.360 --> 0:14:01.400 empathy seems like just a feeling you experience, it's of course, 0:14:01.520 --> 0:14:05.360 under the hood a biological algorithm. Now you may have 0:14:05.440 --> 0:14:09.240 heard of mirror neurons, which are neurons that become active 0:14:09.600 --> 0:14:12.840 when you perform some action and also when you see 0:14:12.880 --> 0:14:16.520 someone else do that same action. I mention these because 0:14:16.800 --> 0:14:21.480 many people erroneously think that the mirror neuron system is 0:14:21.600 --> 0:14:25.360 the basis of empathy, but in fact, empathy involves much 0:14:25.440 --> 0:14:28.120 more than that, because you also need a whole collection 0:14:28.200 --> 0:14:33.640 of regions that integrate emotional information and social information and 0:14:33.800 --> 0:14:36.360 tell you what are the really salient things to pay 0:14:36.400 --> 0:14:40.160 attention to. So nowadays you can put together hundreds of 0:14:40.240 --> 0:14:45.280 brain imaging studies fMRI to see that there's a whole 0:14:45.320 --> 0:14:48.720 network of brain regions that come online when you're considering 0:14:48.800 --> 0:14:53.080 the emotions of another person, regions like the anterior insula 0:14:53.200 --> 0:14:56.600 and the anterior singulate cortex, and the amygdala and the 0:14:56.640 --> 0:15:00.840 inferior frontal gyrus. Okay, the details don't matter for today's purpose, 0:15:00.960 --> 0:15:05.080 except to say that all these areas consistently come online 0:15:05.200 --> 0:15:10.040 during tasks that require you to simulate another person's state, 0:15:10.360 --> 0:15:13.840 like if you see them experience pain or distress. Even 0:15:13.840 --> 0:15:19.000 though you're not experiencing that, your brain runs the simulation. Now, 0:15:19.120 --> 0:15:22.160 why do we have such a rich system for simulating 0:15:22.240 --> 0:15:27.120 other people in our heads. It's because biologically, empathy is 0:15:27.160 --> 0:15:30.440 not just a nice to have, it's a survival tool. 0:15:30.480 --> 0:15:35.120 It helps us connect and cooperate and parent and navigate 0:15:35.160 --> 0:15:38.640 the complexities of social life. And in that sense, it's 0:15:38.640 --> 0:15:43.440 not just emotional intelligence we're talking about. It's neural engineering 0:15:43.680 --> 0:15:48.320 evolved for living together in large groups. And this is 0:15:48.400 --> 0:15:51.440 why we flinch when we see someone else in pain, 0:15:51.880 --> 0:15:55.920 and also why laughter spreads so easily through a crowd. 0:15:56.320 --> 0:16:00.600 It's because when we witness another person's emotional state, our 0:16:00.640 --> 0:16:05.480 brains simulate it, creating a kind of inner echo of 0:16:05.520 --> 0:16:08.760 what they're feeling. It's not the real thing, but it's 0:16:08.760 --> 0:16:12.000 a rough sketch. And this capacity for empathy is very 0:16:12.080 --> 0:16:16.720 useful for what's known as theory of mind, which I 0:16:16.760 --> 0:16:19.600 talked about in episode seventy two. This is the cognitive 0:16:19.640 --> 0:16:23.920 ability to understand that other people have thoughts and feelings 0:16:23.920 --> 0:16:29.240 and perspectives different from yours. Little kids don't have theory 0:16:29.280 --> 0:16:32.760 of mind, but it develops through early childhood and that 0:16:33.040 --> 0:16:37.440 moment when a Toddler realizes that another mind is not 0:16:37.720 --> 0:16:42.800 the same as theirs. This marks the beginning of perspective taking. 0:16:43.040 --> 0:16:46.400 This is the foundation of social connection and storytelling and 0:16:46.440 --> 0:16:50.160 even deception, because without theory of mind, you'd be stuck 0:16:50.160 --> 0:16:53.440 in your own mental bubble. And by the way, having 0:16:53.480 --> 0:16:56.160 good theory of mind is something we keep refining our 0:16:56.200 --> 0:17:00.000 whole lives. Some people become especially fluent in it, especially 0:17:00.040 --> 0:17:03.920 people like actors or therapists or even parents. Other people 0:17:04.359 --> 0:17:07.320 struggle with theory of mind, not because they're cruel, but 0:17:07.400 --> 0:17:12.439 because the skill of imagining someone else's internal world takes 0:17:12.560 --> 0:17:16.080 practice and effort and humility and the right kind of 0:17:16.160 --> 0:17:20.719 neural circuitry. So we are as species who tries to 0:17:20.880 --> 0:17:25.199 model one another. We try to step into each other's shoes, 0:17:25.720 --> 0:17:29.439 but we're really not so good at it. Mostly we 0:17:29.600 --> 0:17:33.640 just assume that everyone else is like us on the inside. 0:17:34.000 --> 0:17:37.160 When you really look at empathy, you can see that 0:17:37.200 --> 0:17:41.199 what we're really doing is imposing our models on what 0:17:41.240 --> 0:17:44.440 we think the other person is feeling. As a really 0:17:44.440 --> 0:17:48.240 good example of this, I've noticed this with videos of 0:17:48.440 --> 0:17:52.479 robots produced by a company called Boston Dynamics. You might 0:17:52.520 --> 0:17:55.280 have seen these. They are these robots that look like 0:17:55.440 --> 0:17:58.320 metal dogs, and one of the things the company wanted 0:17:58.359 --> 0:18:02.280 to show is that these dogs are robust against being 0:18:02.359 --> 0:18:05.800 knocked off course. So the robot dog is running forward 0:18:05.840 --> 0:18:08.560 in the video and someone comes out and kicks it, 0:18:09.040 --> 0:18:11.840 and the robot's legs do a quick scramble, and even 0:18:11.880 --> 0:18:14.720 though it tilts to the side, it manages to stay 0:18:14.800 --> 0:18:17.840 upright and it keeps going, which is very impressive. But 0:18:17.920 --> 0:18:20.920 here's the thing. I've seen dozens of people watch these 0:18:21.000 --> 0:18:25.879 videos and they WinCE. Their empathy is stoked. And I 0:18:25.960 --> 0:18:28.280 get it. It looks like a creature, it looks like 0:18:28.320 --> 0:18:33.000 a sentient being, and it's getting kicked. It's really difficult 0:18:33.359 --> 0:18:37.439 to watch this and not feel an empathic sting. But 0:18:37.520 --> 0:18:41.959 I think what this illustrates is our propensity to imagine 0:18:42.000 --> 0:18:45.480 that other things feel the way we do, even when 0:18:45.480 --> 0:18:48.640 there's really no good reason to imagine that we're looking 0:18:48.680 --> 0:18:51.359 at anything other than a collection of nuts and bolts 0:18:51.359 --> 0:18:53.600 and wires in the case of this robot. So, in 0:18:53.640 --> 0:18:57.400 other words, our feelings of empathy are a massively important 0:18:57.440 --> 0:19:01.680 part of our success as a species. Details presumably say 0:19:01.720 --> 0:19:06.399 more about us than they do about the accuracy of 0:19:06.440 --> 0:19:09.760 the feeling in other words, how much your assumptions about 0:19:09.800 --> 0:19:12.800 the inner life of the other is right on target. 0:19:13.040 --> 0:19:15.280 I'll give you another example of the weirdness of this 0:19:15.640 --> 0:19:20.320 our responses to reading or watching fiction. One of the 0:19:20.440 --> 0:19:23.880 classes I teach at Stanford is called Literature and the Brain, 0:19:24.280 --> 0:19:27.000 and an issue I always talk about with amazement is 0:19:27.040 --> 0:19:31.560 the fact that we shed tears, or we laugh out loud, 0:19:31.640 --> 0:19:35.080 or we worry or we agonize over the pain of 0:19:35.200 --> 0:19:39.320 somebody else, someone we know is not real. You're reading 0:19:39.359 --> 0:19:42.240 about let's say John Snow in Game of Thrones, and 0:19:42.280 --> 0:19:45.160 you're aware that the whole world he's in isn't even real. 0:19:45.359 --> 0:19:47.959 The author can tell us, look, this is fiction. There 0:19:48.040 --> 0:19:50.760 can be a giant sign in front of you that 0:19:50.880 --> 0:19:54.399 says this is a string of words depicting a world 0:19:54.600 --> 0:19:58.240 that is totally made up, And it won't stop tears 0:19:58.359 --> 0:20:01.440 running down your cheek once something bad happens to John 0:20:01.520 --> 0:20:04.320 snow Now. I'll come back to literature and empathy in 0:20:04.320 --> 0:20:06.840 a moment, because I think literature is one of our 0:20:06.880 --> 0:20:11.280 most important tools for expanding the fence lines of our empathy. 0:20:11.640 --> 0:20:14.040 But for now, I'm just making the point that simply 0:20:14.400 --> 0:20:17.560 because you feel that someone else must be feeling the 0:20:17.560 --> 0:20:20.480 same thing you are. You might be talking about a 0:20:20.600 --> 0:20:24.400 robot or an explicitly made up character, and you'll still 0:20:24.440 --> 0:20:28.479 impose what you believe is this is what that person 0:20:28.600 --> 0:20:32.440 must be feeling. And obviously it's not just with robots 0:20:32.560 --> 0:20:37.240 or fictional characters. We empathize more with people we assume 0:20:37.680 --> 0:20:41.000 are more like us, and that might not be accurate. 0:20:41.119 --> 0:20:45.240 So in episode twenty, I talked about neuroimaging experiments in 0:20:45.240 --> 0:20:48.640 my lab where we put people into the brain scanner 0:20:48.680 --> 0:20:51.639 and we showed them six hands, and one of the 0:20:51.720 --> 0:20:55.040 hands gets selected by the computer and you see that 0:20:55.160 --> 0:20:59.600 hand get stabbed with a syringe needle. This activates a 0:20:59.680 --> 0:21:02.080 net work in your brain that we summarize as the 0:21:02.200 --> 0:21:05.280 pain matrix. And as I mentioned before, this is the 0:21:05.320 --> 0:21:09.439 neural basis of empathy. You're having this fireworks show in 0:21:09.480 --> 0:21:12.520 your brain light up, even though it wasn't your hand 0:21:12.520 --> 0:21:15.440 that got stabbed. You're just watching someone else's hand, and 0:21:15.520 --> 0:21:19.000 yet you are simulating the pain involved. But here's the 0:21:19.080 --> 0:21:22.880 key thing. We then labeled each hand with a one 0:21:22.960 --> 0:21:28.680 word label Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Scientologist, atheist, Hindu, and now 0:21:28.760 --> 0:21:31.399 the computer picks the hands one at a time. And 0:21:31.440 --> 0:21:35.000 you see them get stabbed with this syringe needle. And 0:21:35.040 --> 0:21:38.840 the question is do you care as much if it's 0:21:38.920 --> 0:21:41.720 any of the members of your out group versus the 0:21:41.800 --> 0:21:45.040 label of your in group. So we studied one hundred 0:21:45.080 --> 0:21:47.639 and five people on this and the answer was clear. 0:21:48.000 --> 0:21:52.640 Your brain has a large empathic response when you see 0:21:52.680 --> 0:21:56.359 the hand with your group label get stabbed, and it 0:21:56.520 --> 0:22:00.320 just doesn't muster the same degree of response when it's 0:22:00.320 --> 0:22:03.320 anyone else getting stabbed. And this was equally true across 0:22:03.359 --> 0:22:06.199 all the groups, including the atheists, who cared more when 0:22:06.240 --> 0:22:09.479 they saw the atheist hand get stabbed. So in earlier 0:22:09.520 --> 0:22:11.960 episodes I talked all about the meaning of this from 0:22:12.000 --> 0:22:14.800 a societal point of view, but for today I want 0:22:14.840 --> 0:22:19.320 to emphasize that whatever your religion is or your non religion, 0:22:19.640 --> 0:22:23.200 there are literally millions or billions of people who belong 0:22:23.320 --> 0:22:26.200 to that label too with you, and they are all 0:22:26.440 --> 0:22:30.159 as different as can be, and the spread is enormous, 0:22:30.480 --> 0:22:33.600 And so the idea that you would care for those 0:22:34.160 --> 0:22:38.440 millions of people more than other millions of people suggests 0:22:38.440 --> 0:22:42.040 again that your empathy is not so much about climbing 0:22:42.040 --> 0:22:46.280 into someone else's head, but instead about imposing your model 0:22:46.640 --> 0:22:50.480 onto the external world. So whether that's for robots or 0:22:50.520 --> 0:22:54.439 for John Snow or your group label, it really just 0:22:54.560 --> 0:22:59.760 represents your internal world more than an actual bridge that 0:23:00.040 --> 0:23:05.760 reaches a cross and connects with another. And this I 0:23:05.800 --> 0:23:10.439 think illuminates an important facet of our human experience. We 0:23:10.600 --> 0:23:12.560 started off with the question of whether you can ever 0:23:12.960 --> 0:23:15.679 truly know what it's like to be someone else, And 0:23:15.760 --> 0:23:18.080 on the surface, it seems like we do this all 0:23:18.119 --> 0:23:22.080 the time. We empathize, we imagine, we say things like 0:23:22.560 --> 0:23:26.520 I know exactly how you feel. But do we actually 0:23:27.080 --> 0:23:29.960 when we say to someone that we know how they feel. 0:23:30.000 --> 0:23:33.679 We mean it as a comfort, But sometimes it misses 0:23:33.680 --> 0:23:36.760 the mark because even though two people can go through 0:23:36.760 --> 0:23:40.960 something similar, the emotional landscape can be entirely different. Think 0:23:40.960 --> 0:23:44.200 about somebody that you know really well, maybe your partner, 0:23:44.480 --> 0:23:47.320 and think about some moment in their life that was 0:23:47.359 --> 0:23:51.600 emotionally charged, some loss or some triumph. You might have 0:23:51.680 --> 0:23:55.240 even been there, but did you experience it exactly as 0:23:55.320 --> 0:23:58.480 they did, or is it possible there was something else 0:23:58.560 --> 0:24:04.200 going on inside there in her cosmos? So here's an example. 0:24:04.320 --> 0:24:07.960 A listener recently wrote into me about losing his father. 0:24:08.440 --> 0:24:12.440 He described sitting at the hospital bedside, holding his father's hand, 0:24:12.840 --> 0:24:16.240 feeling the warmth drain away. A friend of his, who 0:24:16.320 --> 0:24:20.040 had also lost a parent, worked to comfort him by saying, 0:24:20.359 --> 0:24:24.399 I know exactly how you feel. But instead of feeling seen, 0:24:25.119 --> 0:24:29.399 he felt misunderstood, because in that moment, his grief was 0:24:29.560 --> 0:24:34.000 raw and specific, tied to a lifetime of private memories 0:24:34.320 --> 0:24:37.960 and smells and words and rituals. His friend's grief was 0:24:38.000 --> 0:24:41.320 real too, but it wasn't the same. This is where 0:24:41.359 --> 0:24:46.480 the question of understanding a bat or another person matters, 0:24:46.600 --> 0:24:50.600 because we share space, we share language, but we can't 0:24:50.600 --> 0:24:55.600 always share perspective. Even when we use the same words, 0:24:55.880 --> 0:25:00.480 like grief or joy or fear, what those as words 0:25:00.520 --> 0:25:05.280 refer to feels different inside of you and me and 0:25:05.359 --> 0:25:08.280 everyone we know. As another example, you and I might 0:25:08.359 --> 0:25:12.160 both bite into an orange and say it tastes sweet, 0:25:12.600 --> 0:25:16.280 But your sweetness is not necessarily my sweetness. It's a 0:25:16.440 --> 0:25:21.639 private event dressed up in public language. Now take that 0:25:21.720 --> 0:25:24.720 idea and stretch it to more complex experiences. What is 0:25:24.760 --> 0:25:27.800 it like to grow up in a war zone, to 0:25:28.000 --> 0:25:31.679 live with chronic pain, to navigate the world in a 0:25:31.760 --> 0:25:35.080 body or a mind that's profoundly different from yours? We 0:25:35.160 --> 0:25:38.119 can ask questions, we can listen, we can learn, but 0:25:38.160 --> 0:25:41.120 we also have to acknowledge that there is a hidden 0:25:41.560 --> 0:25:44.879 interior to every life. And this is something that no 0:25:45.080 --> 0:25:49.680 brain scan, no survey, no biology jargon is ever going 0:25:49.720 --> 0:25:53.720 to fully capture. So probably the best thing to do 0:25:53.800 --> 0:25:56.640 with a friend or loved one is not to assume 0:25:57.040 --> 0:26:00.119 that you've been there too, but to be willing to say, 0:26:00.160 --> 0:26:17.920 haven't been there, but I'm here with you now. Now 0:26:17.960 --> 0:26:21.359 this whole episode so far, I've been emphasizing how poor 0:26:21.440 --> 0:26:24.600 we are at expanding our models to know what it 0:26:24.680 --> 0:26:28.600 is like to me someone else, Even among humans' experience 0:26:28.800 --> 0:26:34.000 is just not fully shareable. Empathy isn't mind melding what 0:26:34.080 --> 0:26:38.480 we have our approximations. These are efforts to close the gap, 0:26:38.560 --> 0:26:42.520 but these aren't bridges that actually close it. And yet, 0:26:42.800 --> 0:26:46.200