WEBVTT - Alex O’Connor: #1 Shift That Stops Endless Overthinking (FINALLY Get Unstuck) 0:00:00.320 --> 0:00:04.000 Why do things exist? We have swallowed wholesale this idea 0:00:04.160 --> 0:00:08.559 that everything can be reduced to scientific explanations. I just 0:00:08.600 --> 0:00:09.440 don't think that's true. 0:00:10.360 --> 0:00:13.760 What is the most dangerous idea people believe without questioning? 0:00:13.840 --> 0:00:16.240 There are very few things that people can be certain of. 0:00:16.400 --> 0:00:18.680 Pay attention when you are convinced that you know why 0:00:18.680 --> 0:00:19.440 you're doing something. 0:00:19.800 --> 0:00:20.760 What is a good life? 0:00:20.800 --> 0:00:22.040 I would ask what they mean by good? 0:00:22.400 --> 0:00:25.040 What do you think people are most afraid to admit. 0:00:24.720 --> 0:00:26.800 About life that it comes to an end? 0:00:29.440 --> 0:00:32.599 Alex O'Connor, Welcome, Tom purpose Jay, nice to meet. It's 0:00:32.680 --> 0:00:34.159 nice to meet you, May I've been looking forward to 0:00:34.200 --> 0:00:35.639 me and you for a long long time. I've been 0:00:35.680 --> 0:00:39.360 a consumer and fan of your content, thoroughly enjoy watching you, 0:00:39.479 --> 0:00:44.040 whether it's debate, conversation, very very intriguing stuff. I wanted 0:00:44.080 --> 0:00:46.519 to start by asking you. I hope you've never been 0:00:46.520 --> 0:00:49.400 asked before. I don't think I saw this, but what's 0:00:49.400 --> 0:00:51.880 a childhood memory that you have that you feel defines 0:00:51.880 --> 0:00:52.760 who you are today? 0:00:53.040 --> 0:00:56.640 My childhood is a bit unusual given the line of 0:00:56.640 --> 0:01:01.400 work I found myself in. I grew up just sort 0:01:01.400 --> 0:01:04.040 of south of Oxford City Center, a place called Blackbird 0:01:04.120 --> 0:01:06.280 Lee's When I think of my childhood, what I remember 0:01:06.400 --> 0:01:09.039 is like acting up at school in secondary school, kind 0:01:09.080 --> 0:01:11.800 of not showing up for class. I used to skateboard, 0:01:11.840 --> 0:01:14.080 and I used to sort of wear jeans and the 0:01:14.080 --> 0:01:16.560 wrong shoes and have arguments with the teachers, that kind 0:01:16.600 --> 0:01:18.920 of petty stuff. I used to like playing music, so 0:01:18.959 --> 0:01:21.600 i'd like skip class to be in the school recording studio, 0:01:21.720 --> 0:01:24.480 that kind of stuff. And you know, somebody asked me recently. 0:01:24.520 --> 0:01:26.800 I was doing a talk with some school kids, and 0:01:26.840 --> 0:01:28.720 one of them asked, like, do you think your upbringing 0:01:28.760 --> 0:01:31.880 has affected your worldview? And that's a difficult question to 0:01:31.880 --> 0:01:34.160 answer because we never know for sure that someone asks 0:01:34.200 --> 0:01:36.840 like why are you an atheist? There's one sense in 0:01:36.880 --> 0:01:39.600 which you could say because I don't believe that the 0:01:39.640 --> 0:01:42.040 contingency argument is sound. And there's another in which you 0:01:42.080 --> 0:01:43.960 could say because my parents got divorced to when I 0:01:44.000 --> 0:01:45.720 was eight, you know what I mean, And those can 0:01:45.800 --> 0:01:47.840 kind of be both true, and so it's difficult to 0:01:47.840 --> 0:01:50.640 sort of psychologize. But I was thinking, like, yeah, maybe 0:01:50.680 --> 0:01:54.080 the fact that I had this slightly sort of acting 0:01:54.120 --> 0:01:58.440 out rebellious attitude that meant that when I came across 0:01:58.600 --> 0:02:02.960 the New Atheist movement, something about the debate, something about 0:02:03.000 --> 0:02:06.040 the theater attracted me to it because I had that 0:02:06.120 --> 0:02:09.440 kind of attitude as a child. My memory would be 0:02:09.560 --> 0:02:13.840 kind of like walking into school at like midday wearing 0:02:13.840 --> 0:02:17.000 the wrong uniform and having somebody kind of say, you know, 0:02:17.240 --> 0:02:20.160 you really should be wearing black shoes, and me just saying, oh, 0:02:20.160 --> 0:02:22.480 I sort it out tomorrow, and that kind of just 0:02:22.520 --> 0:02:25.200 being the kind of childhood I had, which is maybe 0:02:25.240 --> 0:02:27.919 not what people would expect, given how much I care 0:02:28.000 --> 0:02:31.800 about being a bit more like studious these days, and 0:02:31.880 --> 0:02:36.079 how I'm kind of associated with like academics. I'm not 0:02:36.120 --> 0:02:38.000 an academic myself, but I speak to them all the time, 0:02:38.040 --> 0:02:40.080 and I've got a university degree in this kind of stuff. 0:02:40.520 --> 0:02:42.840 I find that's also kind of like helpful for people 0:02:42.840 --> 0:02:45.080 to hear sometimes, because a lot of people listen to 0:02:45.120 --> 0:02:49.520 my stuff who are really interested in like philosophy or 0:02:49.600 --> 0:02:52.000 theology or whatever it is, but they don't like school, 0:02:52.040 --> 0:02:53.760 they don't do so well at school and not interested. 0:02:53.760 --> 0:02:55.480 And I kind of want to say that's that's okay, 0:02:55.560 --> 0:02:57.720 like don't flunk out, like do the best you can, 0:02:57.800 --> 0:03:01.480 but don't take school or your your sort of desire 0:03:01.520 --> 0:03:04.480 to be in school or academia as a proxy for 0:03:04.560 --> 0:03:06.160 your desire to learn about the world. 0:03:06.240 --> 0:03:07.919 You know. So it sounds like there was a bit 0:03:07.960 --> 0:03:12.800 of a rebellious, anti establishment pushing back version of you. 0:03:13.040 --> 0:03:13.720 But maybe not. 0:03:14.120 --> 0:03:15.760 Everyone wants to say that, right, Everyone WANs to sort 0:03:15.800 --> 0:03:17.040 of be what I was, such a I was a 0:03:17.080 --> 0:03:18.920 rebellious child and I used to sort of win debates 0:03:18.919 --> 0:03:21.360 with my teachers, so like, yeah, but you know, nothing 0:03:21.440 --> 0:03:25.200 super profound, just like your kind of slightly annoying kid. 0:03:25.440 --> 0:03:27.200 But you were still great at school because you went 0:03:27.240 --> 0:03:28.919 to Oxford as well, so you would have got good 0:03:28.919 --> 0:03:30.200 grades eventually. Right. 0:03:30.240 --> 0:03:31.919 The first time I did what we call A levels 0:03:31.960 --> 0:03:34.640 in the UK, which is like the last two years 0:03:34.639 --> 0:03:38.360 of high school. I did further maths, maths and physics. 0:03:38.520 --> 0:03:39.680 Yeah, there's all hard subjects. 0:03:39.680 --> 0:03:42.200 And I did critical thinking as aside sort of, and 0:03:42.240 --> 0:03:45.000 I got three US, which is like if you go 0:03:45.080 --> 0:03:48.839 like abcd f U sounds for unmarked, it means it's 0:03:48.880 --> 0:03:51.400 so low that it doesn't even register. I actually overslept 0:03:51.400 --> 0:03:53.240 one of the exams and I got a phone call 0:03:53.280 --> 0:03:57.360 from my mum to waking me up, being like you like, 0:03:57.400 --> 0:03:59.000 I've just had a call from the school and the 0:03:59.080 --> 0:04:01.480 disappointment and of it was horrifying, you know, but I 0:04:01.600 --> 0:04:03.720 just I just didn't care. It was really only in 0:04:03.760 --> 0:04:06.080 like the last year I had to go back and 0:04:06.360 --> 0:04:08.680 redo a levels because you have to stay in education 0:04:08.760 --> 0:04:11.240 until you're eighteen in the UK, and I thought, you 0:04:11.240 --> 0:04:12.840 know what, why not, let's give this a crack. So 0:04:12.840 --> 0:04:16.440 I got ABC doing humanity subjects. I remember I had 0:04:16.440 --> 0:04:19.320 some friends who still have, these friends who wanted to 0:04:19.320 --> 0:04:21.240 go to Oxford for the longest time, you know, since 0:04:21.240 --> 0:04:23.039 they were young, and they worked really hard at school, 0:04:23.279 --> 0:04:26.120 and I would sometimes joke, you know, about how I 0:04:26.160 --> 0:04:28.120 was going to go to Oxford too, and then they 0:04:28.160 --> 0:04:30.279 would laugh, and I'm like, Okay, I am joking, But 0:04:30.279 --> 0:04:33.159 why is that so funny? Why is that so funny? 0:04:33.160 --> 0:04:33.320 You know? 0:04:33.480 --> 0:04:35.040 And I kind of I got a bit motivated by 0:04:35.040 --> 0:04:37.400 these these friends of mine, seeing that like ambition and 0:04:37.480 --> 0:04:40.640 drive kind of helped me and becoming their friends. It 0:04:40.680 --> 0:04:42.160 was just a good influence in that in that very 0:04:42.160 --> 0:04:44.840 crucial period of like sort of motivating me to get 0:04:44.839 --> 0:04:47.000 the grades which allowed me to go to Oxford. But 0:04:47.240 --> 0:04:49.040 then again, like you know, if you're if you're flunking 0:04:49.040 --> 0:04:51.000 out school right now, if you're doing your exams and 0:04:51.040 --> 0:04:52.800 you think it's like the end of the world, retake 0:04:52.839 --> 0:04:54.480 these exams. It's not the end of the world. And 0:04:54.480 --> 0:04:56.760 if you don't get into your dream university, there are 0:04:56.760 --> 0:04:58.640 all kinds of reasons why I might have preferred to 0:04:58.640 --> 0:05:01.080 have gone to a different university. It's just nice to 0:05:01.120 --> 0:05:04.520 know that there are options. I think young people, everything's 0:05:04.560 --> 0:05:06.680 so serious when it comes to like exams, and they 0:05:06.720 --> 0:05:08.760 aren't you know, take them seriously. It's better if you 0:05:08.800 --> 0:05:10.520 do well, sure, but it's not the end of the 0:05:10.520 --> 0:05:11.160 world if you don't. 0:05:11.240 --> 0:05:13.200 Yeah, and you could take them again. Yeah. Talk to 0:05:13.200 --> 0:05:15.400 me about that flipping mindset, though, because getting a you 0:05:16.240 --> 0:05:19.000 not turning up to an exam and then turning it 0:05:19.080 --> 0:05:21.880 around and being able to go this is important. Talk 0:05:21.920 --> 0:05:23.640 to me about that shift though, because I think at 0:05:23.640 --> 0:05:26.760 that age we do play such a heavy weight on 0:05:26.839 --> 0:05:31.760 these things, not showing up, not turning up, failing, feeling 0:05:31.839 --> 0:05:33.720 like it's not working out, but then being able to 0:05:33.720 --> 0:05:36.560 flip it around within a short period of time. It 0:05:36.640 --> 0:05:38.840 was such a long time ago, and you can't fully 0:05:39.000 --> 0:05:41.520 say this is exactly what I was doing. But talk 0:05:41.560 --> 0:05:43.200 to me about at least what it feels like when 0:05:43.240 --> 0:05:45.960 you reflect back and go why you felt I'm going 0:05:46.000 --> 0:05:47.240 to change my mindset around this. 0:05:47.360 --> 0:05:50.599 I think it was because I knew that I could 0:05:50.880 --> 0:05:53.599 do more. I knew that I could pass the exam. 0:05:53.600 --> 0:05:56.719 I knew that I could do philosophy and critical thinking 0:05:56.800 --> 0:06:00.359 this kind of stuff. Just sort of flunking out school 0:06:00.400 --> 0:06:02.400 in that way. For me, it was a very intentional thing. 0:06:02.480 --> 0:06:04.640 I'm not interested in this. I want to be a 0:06:04.680 --> 0:06:07.599 rock star or a professional skateboarder or something like that instead. 0:06:08.360 --> 0:06:10.560 But I kind of got the feeling that people like 0:06:10.560 --> 0:06:12.599 didn't believe me. You know, they thought that the reason 0:06:12.640 --> 0:06:15.080 why I'm failing is because I'm not you know, I 0:06:15.080 --> 0:06:17.080 don't have the goods. I can't do this kind of stuff. 0:06:17.080 --> 0:06:19.000 And it wasn't just that. It wasn't like I just 0:06:19.000 --> 0:06:21.400 thought I need to prove a point now. But when 0:06:21.440 --> 0:06:23.120 I suddenly got this idea in my head that it 0:06:23.120 --> 0:06:25.360 would be fun to go to university, it would be cool, 0:06:25.400 --> 0:06:28.279 and I started admiring new atheist figures like Richard Dawkins 0:06:28.279 --> 0:06:31.159 and Christopher Hitchins, both of whom studied at Oxford, and 0:06:31.200 --> 0:06:33.760 I'd also started making YouTube videos. This was the other thing, right, 0:06:33.760 --> 0:06:36.040 I'm like seventeen when I start making videos online, at 0:06:36.080 --> 0:06:38.360 least the videos I make today, and they were these 0:06:38.440 --> 0:06:44.240 kind of edgy new atheists type videos, and like they 0:06:44.279 --> 0:06:48.080 started doing quite well relative for the time. And I 0:06:48.120 --> 0:06:49.640 think there was also this feeling of like, if I'm 0:06:49.640 --> 0:06:52.359 gonna be on the internet talking about, you know, God 0:06:52.440 --> 0:06:55.600 and religion and debating people and stuff, I'd better prove 0:06:55.640 --> 0:06:57.359 that I know one I'm talking about it. It feels it 0:06:57.400 --> 0:07:01.280 weird to be doing that. And then like failing school. Yeah, 0:07:01.320 --> 0:07:02.960 and so I kind of knew that I could do it. 0:07:02.960 --> 0:07:04.800 I thought that it might be useful, and so I 0:07:04.880 --> 0:07:07.120 just sort of decided to give it another go. And 0:07:07.160 --> 0:07:09.600 it was very much a case of being like, yeah, see, 0:07:09.600 --> 0:07:12.320 I can do this. I just didn't want to before, 0:07:12.320 --> 0:07:13.880 and I kind of regret that I didn't. But then 0:07:14.040 --> 0:07:17.160 having said that, if I'd have done further maths and physics, 0:07:17.720 --> 0:07:19.880 who knows what I'd be doing now, and I'd still 0:07:19.880 --> 0:07:22.200 be interested in philosophy. But I think that it was 0:07:22.240 --> 0:07:24.520 definitely a good thing that it went the other way. 0:07:24.720 --> 0:07:28.120 Yeah, I appreciate you addressing some things about how young 0:07:28.160 --> 0:07:30.520 people are feeling today about college or not going or 0:07:30.640 --> 0:07:33.680 university of whether attending. When you think about it from 0:07:33.720 --> 0:07:36.400 that perspective, you said you knew you had the goods. 0:07:36.880 --> 0:07:38.720 I think a lot of young people today feel they 0:07:38.760 --> 0:07:42.240 don't have the goods. They don't actually feel confident in 0:07:42.440 --> 0:07:47.440 their ability academically at school or even otherwise. What do 0:07:47.480 --> 0:07:49.040 you say to them? What do you think about for 0:07:49.120 --> 0:07:51.920 someone who's looking at that, going, yeah, I didn't even 0:07:52.000 --> 0:07:53.760 know what I would do. I don't know what i'd study. 0:07:53.840 --> 0:07:57.640 I don't really know myself. You got interested in atheism early, 0:07:57.720 --> 0:08:00.559 you were making content, you were almost this this self 0:08:00.600 --> 0:08:04.680 started it seems ten years ago, which again was pretty 0:08:04.720 --> 0:08:07.680 revolutionary for someone your age, because there's not that many 0:08:07.720 --> 0:08:09.880 people that got started that early. What would you say 0:08:09.920 --> 0:08:12.760 to someone right now who's saying, Alex, you know, I'd 0:08:12.760 --> 0:08:14.440 love to do something like you or my own thing, 0:08:14.480 --> 0:08:15.840 but I actually don't know what I'm good at. I 0:08:15.880 --> 0:08:17.240 don't don't know what my strengths are. 0:08:17.320 --> 0:08:18.880 I think it's really rare to know what you want 0:08:18.920 --> 0:08:21.120 to do at any age. Essentially a lot of like 0:08:21.160 --> 0:08:23.960 people fall into what they do, but certainly at that age, 0:08:23.960 --> 0:08:26.800 and I think that you kind of have to either 0:08:26.800 --> 0:08:30.080 take a guess and realize that you can always change 0:08:30.080 --> 0:08:33.120 your mind or you can do it later. You're going 0:08:33.200 --> 0:08:35.000 to be good at something. There's gonna be something you're 0:08:35.000 --> 0:08:37.319 good at, and it might be something which isn't traditionally 0:08:37.320 --> 0:08:40.480 recognized as a form of intelligence. I mean, intelligence is 0:08:40.520 --> 0:08:43.040 a difficult thing to define, but it's probably something like 0:08:43.320 --> 0:08:46.920 the ability to perform particular tasks. Its ability to like 0:08:47.280 --> 0:08:50.040 perform tasks with a particular goal in mind. That's why 0:08:50.080 --> 0:08:53.320 we call AI artificial intelligence. Even though it might not 0:08:53.360 --> 0:08:56.720 be conscious or a person or anything. The intelligence is 0:08:56.760 --> 0:08:59.160 the ability to perform tasks and there's something you can do. 0:08:59.200 --> 0:09:01.960 People who are music talented, it's a very particular kind 0:09:02.000 --> 0:09:05.400 of genius. They might have absolutely no idea what the 0:09:05.520 --> 0:09:10.400 quadratic equation is, but they can just intuit musical feeling 0:09:10.440 --> 0:09:12.720 in a way that other people just couldn't even comprehend. 0:09:12.880 --> 0:09:14.680 There might be skills that you didn't even know were skills. 0:09:14.960 --> 0:09:18.120 Maybe you're like really good at architecture and your school 0:09:18.360 --> 0:09:20.360 just doesn't do our and it would take a long 0:09:20.400 --> 0:09:22.760 time for you to realize that that's the thing you're into. 0:09:22.800 --> 0:09:24.599 It took me a long time to realize architecture was 0:09:24.600 --> 0:09:26.640 even like a subject that existed that. 0:09:26.600 --> 0:09:28.559 People study, you know what I mean. Yeah, I love 0:09:28.600 --> 0:09:28.960 that point. 0:09:29.040 --> 0:09:30.640 There's going to be something you're good at. And if 0:09:30.679 --> 0:09:33.160 you're being told that you're not good at something, it 0:09:33.200 --> 0:09:35.520 may be that you're not putting enough effort in and 0:09:35.559 --> 0:09:38.640 that you're slacking, in which case try a bit harder. 0:09:38.679 --> 0:09:40.440 But if you feel like you are, you're doing your best, 0:09:40.480 --> 0:09:42.040 you're trying as hard as you can, and people keep 0:09:42.080 --> 0:09:45.360 telling you you need to try harder, it's probably just 0:09:45.480 --> 0:09:48.319 that they're not recognizing the things that you're good at that. 0:09:48.440 --> 0:09:49.880 We have no idea why some people are good at 0:09:49.880 --> 0:09:52.680 things and others not. It could be social, it could 0:09:52.679 --> 0:09:55.040 be genetic, it could be anything. Who knows all that 0:09:55.080 --> 0:09:57.800 matters that right now you're good at some things and 0:09:57.840 --> 0:09:59.840 bad at others. I think the best advice anyone can 0:09:59.840 --> 0:10:03.120 get on that regard. In that regard is to figure 0:10:03.160 --> 0:10:05.560 out as quickly as possible what you're good at. That's 0:10:05.600 --> 0:10:07.360 the most important thing. What are you good at and 0:10:07.400 --> 0:10:10.000 what do you enjoy doing and try to try to 0:10:10.000 --> 0:10:12.079 pursue that, and then realize that you don't have to look. 0:10:12.120 --> 0:10:14.439 You don't have to go to university, even if you 0:10:14.480 --> 0:10:16.839 want to be a physicist or a mathematician. Eventually you'll 0:10:16.840 --> 0:10:18.199 probably have to, but you don't have to do it now. 0:10:18.720 --> 0:10:20.720 You can take some time out, you can think, is 0:10:20.720 --> 0:10:22.120 this really what I want to be doing. You can 0:10:22.120 --> 0:10:24.079 go and travel the world and whatnot. If you really 0:10:24.080 --> 0:10:26.000 want to go down the academic route. It's there are 0:10:26.040 --> 0:10:28.080 always options available for you, and there are so many now. 0:10:28.120 --> 0:10:29.520 You can do them online, you can do them virtually, 0:10:29.520 --> 0:10:31.560 you can do them part time. There's always something available 0:10:31.559 --> 0:10:35.000 for you. It's so obvious to someone who's an adult, 0:10:35.400 --> 0:10:37.480 someone who's like currently working in a cafe and doesn't 0:10:37.480 --> 0:10:39.880 really know what they want to do with themselves. It's 0:10:39.920 --> 0:10:41.240 not going to console them to say, hey, man, you 0:10:41.280 --> 0:10:43.360 don't need to worry about academia. I didn't even think 0:10:43.360 --> 0:10:45.600 of that. But when you're a kid, academia is like 0:10:45.679 --> 0:10:48.840 the only thing unless maybe you're like a particularly talented 0:10:48.880 --> 0:10:52.320 like football or school, and then maybe but even then, 0:10:52.360 --> 0:10:54.280 maybe your school doesn't encourage that kind of thing, and 0:10:54.320 --> 0:10:55.920 you will be told that the most important thing in 0:10:56.000 --> 0:10:58.199 your life are your exams. Don't get me wrong, those 0:10:58.240 --> 0:11:00.440 exams are important, like nail. Then it will help you 0:11:00.600 --> 0:11:04.560 in the long run. But the idea that that is 0:11:04.640 --> 0:11:08.240 kind of what life's about is obviously insane, and I 0:11:08.240 --> 0:11:10.880 think kids like no that, but they haven't felt it, 0:11:10.960 --> 0:11:13.319 they haven't internalized it. I speak to a lot of 0:11:13.320 --> 0:11:15.440 school kids, and they've heard this kind of stuff, you know, 0:11:15.480 --> 0:11:18.400 don't let exams rule your life and stuff. But some 0:11:18.440 --> 0:11:21.280 of them I think hearing that I literally did just 0:11:21.320 --> 0:11:24.079 completely fail and then change my mind and turned it around, 0:11:24.160 --> 0:11:27.000 and it sort of relaxes them a little bit. It's 0:11:27.000 --> 0:11:28.360 no guarantee that you're going to be able to turn 0:11:28.400 --> 0:11:30.839 it around and go to Oxford, right, It's obviously not 0:11:30.920 --> 0:11:33.120 the case. I feel very lucky in that regard, but 0:11:33.280 --> 0:11:34.400 like there are options. 0:11:34.400 --> 0:11:37.640 Man. I love the idea that you only discover subjects 0:11:37.640 --> 0:11:40.200 exist after you've become an adult. I felt like that 0:11:40.480 --> 0:11:43.760 with so many things. I thought I hated science because 0:11:43.760 --> 0:11:46.560 it was biology, and then learned about neuroscience later on 0:11:46.600 --> 0:11:49.400 and I was fascinated exactly. And I thought, oh, gosh, 0:11:49.440 --> 0:11:51.480 if I didn't have to learn plant biology, if it 0:11:51.559 --> 0:11:53.520 was always brain biology, I think I would have been 0:11:53.960 --> 0:11:55.720 That would have been something I would have wanted to study. 0:11:55.760 --> 0:11:57.960 And you can now that's the point, right, You can. 0:11:58.040 --> 0:12:01.440 Textiles, Yeah, but I think you can get the kernel 0:12:01.720 --> 0:12:03.840 of what you might be into because maybe you might 0:12:03.880 --> 0:12:06.080 find that you really enjoy your art classes and you 0:12:06.120 --> 0:12:07.800 know you don't want to be an artist. You know 0:12:07.840 --> 0:12:09.680 you're not gonna be the next you know, Mona or whatever, 0:12:09.720 --> 0:12:11.760 but like you enjoy it. That should be enough to 0:12:11.760 --> 0:12:13.280 maybe think, Okay, then I'll study that. And I don't 0:12:13.280 --> 0:12:14.520 know where it's going to end up. But that's the 0:12:14.559 --> 0:12:15.920 kind of thing that opens up these worlds that you 0:12:15.920 --> 0:12:18.240 didn't know existed. That will help with being able to 0:12:18.240 --> 0:12:21.240 be an architect because you will be able to draw images. 0:12:21.360 --> 0:12:23.520 It will help with doing textiles. It will help with 0:12:23.800 --> 0:12:25.880 set management. You know, you could be someone who designs 0:12:26.000 --> 0:12:29.400 sets for podcasts, a job that didn't even exist really 0:12:29.679 --> 0:12:32.439 when I was at school, and now it's a very specific, 0:12:32.559 --> 0:12:34.719 very niche thing that people are after. But the most 0:12:34.720 --> 0:12:36.600 important thing is the passion of it. It would always really 0:12:36.720 --> 0:12:40.880 upset me when a university there were people who would 0:12:40.880 --> 0:12:42.920 struggle a lot with the work and then also think, 0:12:43.240 --> 0:12:44.640 and I'm not even sure if I should be doing this. 0:12:45.360 --> 0:12:47.240 I don't know if this was the right subject. That's 0:12:47.280 --> 0:12:48.160 just that's nihilism. 0:12:48.200 --> 0:12:48.440 Man. 0:12:48.640 --> 0:12:51.559 Suffering is one thing. Being aware that your suffering is 0:12:51.640 --> 0:12:54.600 kind of meaningless. That's what nihilism is, and that's what 0:12:54.679 --> 0:12:56.599 can be brought out if you study something you're not 0:12:56.640 --> 0:12:59.360 passionate about, and then it gets hard because you've got 0:12:59.400 --> 0:13:02.840 this double wham of the meaninglessness plus the difficulty. 0:13:02.960 --> 0:13:04.920 But so many of us are stuck exactly there. 0:13:05.040 --> 0:13:07.840 You know, if someone studies theology or philosophy, it's famously 0:13:07.840 --> 0:13:09.880 a very unemployable job. What are you going to do 0:13:09.880 --> 0:13:13.600 except be a priest or a YouTuber. I can deal 0:13:13.640 --> 0:13:17.240 with the fact that, like, what's this all for? Is 0:13:17.280 --> 0:13:19.559 this going anywhere? Is this going to get me a job? 0:13:20.040 --> 0:13:22.240 Because I've got this passion for it, because I just 0:13:22.240 --> 0:13:24.400 love it for its own sake. Maybe you're studying to 0:13:24.400 --> 0:13:26.360 be a doctor. You're doing medicine, and maybe you're not 0:13:26.400 --> 0:13:28.000 super passionate about it. A lot of people are, but 0:13:28.040 --> 0:13:29.480 maybe you're not. But you think to yourself, well, I 0:13:29.520 --> 0:13:30.760 know where this is going. I'm going to be a doctor. 0:13:30.760 --> 0:13:32.120 I'm going to save lives, I'm going to make a 0:13:32.120 --> 0:13:33.680 lot of money. I'm going to provide to my children. 0:13:34.320 --> 0:13:35.720 And that allows you to deal with the fact that 0:13:35.720 --> 0:13:38.160 you're not passionate about it. You need at least one 0:13:38.200 --> 0:13:40.280 of those You need the passion or the direction. If 0:13:40.320 --> 0:13:42.679 you have both, then you've hit the gold mine. If 0:13:42.679 --> 0:13:45.560 you have neither, then I think you become a bit nihilistic, 0:13:45.559 --> 0:13:47.559 at least in regards to your employment. 0:13:47.679 --> 0:13:50.440 Absolutely. I've heard you say a let's say you're fascinated 0:13:50.440 --> 0:13:53.160 by history. Oh yeah, and I wanted to ask you 0:13:53.280 --> 0:13:58.320 if you could go back in time and witness something personally, 0:13:58.679 --> 0:14:00.560 what moment in history would you do using way. 0:14:00.960 --> 0:14:02.560 I'm afraid it's going to be boring in the sense 0:14:02.600 --> 0:14:04.640 that it is definitely going to be something biblical, like, 0:14:04.679 --> 0:14:06.079 there's no question about it, no. 0:14:06.080 --> 0:14:07.120 Question any time. 0:14:07.240 --> 0:14:08.680 There are certain things which it might be sort of 0:14:08.720 --> 0:14:11.760 interesting to see. I'd love to see Stonehenge getting built. 0:14:11.760 --> 0:14:13.240 I'd love to see the Pyramids be built, that kind 0:14:13.240 --> 0:14:15.920 of stuff. But when I came back and said, you know, 0:14:15.960 --> 0:14:17.640 it turns out they used a Pulley system, and everyone 0:14:17.720 --> 0:14:19.840 goes like, oh cool, It's not the most refound thing 0:14:19.840 --> 0:14:22.520 in the world. For me. My line of work is 0:14:23.040 --> 0:14:27.840 so much engaged in worldview, and the worldview that I'm 0:14:28.200 --> 0:14:31.320 mostly engaged in talking about is Christianity, and some of 0:14:31.320 --> 0:14:34.359 the biggest mysteries about the Christian religion are about specifically 0:14:34.360 --> 0:14:37.120 the kind of things that Jesus actually said and did 0:14:37.320 --> 0:14:40.360 as opposed to what orthodox Christians believe he did. The 0:14:40.400 --> 0:14:43.240 resurrection is an obvious example. Stand outside the tomb of 0:14:43.320 --> 0:14:46.040 Joseph of Aarmethea and see if somebody gets up and 0:14:46.040 --> 0:14:49.080 walks out. But also the baptism. I'd love to see 0:14:49.120 --> 0:14:51.480 the baptism of Jesus because I want to know why 0:14:51.560 --> 0:14:55.120 was Jesus being baptized, Who was John the Baptist? Why 0:14:55.120 --> 0:14:58.120 did Jesus seem to be some kind I mean, historically 0:14:58.120 --> 0:14:59.480 some people think he might have been a disciple of 0:14:59.520 --> 0:15:02.360 John the bapt which Christians won't want to accept, but 0:15:02.640 --> 0:15:04.680 I'd love to know that fact. It's the moment where 0:15:04.760 --> 0:15:08.440 jesus ministry really begins, and the Gospel tell us that 0:15:08.440 --> 0:15:10.840 the heaven's open and there's this voice from heaven, and 0:15:10.840 --> 0:15:13.640 that this is where Jesus sort of picks up some 0:15:13.720 --> 0:15:15.960 of his initial disciples from as well. I would love 0:15:16.000 --> 0:15:18.520 to see what happened there, because if I showed up 0:15:19.480 --> 0:15:22.200 and John the Baptist said, behold the Lamb of God 0:15:22.440 --> 0:15:24.080 who takes away the sins of the world, and I 0:15:24.120 --> 0:15:27.240 would say, gosh, okay, Christianity's maybe got something going for it. 0:15:27.480 --> 0:15:29.120 But if he showed up and Jesus bowed down as 0:15:29.160 --> 0:15:34.080 head master. You know, then I think it would totally 0:15:34.200 --> 0:15:38.240 upset Orthodox Christianity. And I think that's like a really 0:15:38.280 --> 0:15:40.560 important question. What's the relationship between Jesus and on the Baptist. 0:15:40.600 --> 0:15:42.760 So I'd love to see them meet, eh, But it's 0:15:42.800 --> 0:15:44.440 hard to know. I mean, you've surely got an answer 0:15:44.480 --> 0:15:45.480 to this question yourself. 0:15:45.640 --> 0:15:48.200 Sometimes I find myself being fascinated by so many moments 0:15:48.240 --> 0:15:51.280 in history, and mainly it's about human decision making. So 0:15:51.520 --> 0:15:53.160 I don't know if you saw this movie recently is 0:15:53.520 --> 0:15:54.359 called Nuremberg. 0:15:54.560 --> 0:15:55.200 I haven't seen it. 0:15:55.200 --> 0:15:58.320 It's all about the Nuremberg Trials in post World War two, 0:15:58.520 --> 0:16:02.960 how we make decisions on morality, how we make decisions 0:16:03.000 --> 0:16:09.080 on how we evaluate what the Germans did. And you've 0:16:09.120 --> 0:16:12.240 got Gerring, who is leading the Germans on behalf of Hitler, 0:16:12.400 --> 0:16:16.560 versus his therapist played by Ramy Malik, who's unbelievable in 0:16:16.600 --> 0:16:18.680 the movie. But I look at a moment like that 0:16:18.720 --> 0:16:20.800 and I go wow, like humans had to really sit 0:16:20.880 --> 0:16:23.280 down and think about because for the first time ever, 0:16:23.880 --> 0:16:27.840 how do you truly go to court for post World 0:16:27.880 --> 0:16:30.160 War two and the actions that we're taking against the Jews, 0:16:30.200 --> 0:16:32.560 and I'm like, that's a fascinating moment to be a 0:16:32.560 --> 0:16:34.840 part of. Now, that's not that long ago. So then 0:16:34.880 --> 0:16:37.920 you go, Okay, where would those other moments in history 0:16:38.120 --> 0:16:41.080 where big decisions were made by groups of human beings 0:16:41.240 --> 0:16:44.840 after groups of human beings went through certain amount of suffering, 0:16:45.200 --> 0:16:46.520 turmoil or subjugation. 0:16:46.920 --> 0:16:49.400 And when you don't have documents, I mean, when history 0:16:49.440 --> 0:16:52.080 is recent enough, you can kind of put yourself there 0:16:52.080 --> 0:16:54.000 by reading the books, and obviously there's going to be 0:16:54.040 --> 0:16:56.360 biased and misreporting and stuff like that, and you've got 0:16:56.400 --> 0:16:59.720 to be careful. But if you go far back enough, 0:17:00.680 --> 0:17:04.439 especially into ancient history, you've got like one little shred. 0:17:04.840 --> 0:17:08.399 Some of our most well known famous historical figures from antiquity. 0:17:08.640 --> 0:17:10.920 We only know they exist from like maybe one, maybe 0:17:10.960 --> 0:17:13.879 two sources. It's like a scrap the pyrus somewhere with 0:17:13.920 --> 0:17:15.720 a name scribbled on it. And yet these people were 0:17:15.760 --> 0:17:18.040 so important. So I think it would have to be 0:17:18.080 --> 0:17:19.640 it would have to be an ancient. 0:17:19.440 --> 0:17:22.200 Yes, yes, yeah, going back. I would genuinely want to 0:17:22.240 --> 0:17:25.360 go back to the point at which the bug would 0:17:25.359 --> 0:17:28.160 geta has spoken, which has always been my fascination. Yeah, 0:17:28.240 --> 0:17:31.480 and my former study but being at that moment, I 0:17:31.520 --> 0:17:33.359 wouldn't want to be on the battlefield because I couldn't 0:17:33.359 --> 0:17:36.119 handle myself. I'll tell you that I felt miserably an 0:17:36.200 --> 0:17:37.320 archery or anything like that. 0:17:37.400 --> 0:17:39.159 Do you think if you went back you would find 0:17:39.480 --> 0:17:44.000 our Juna on a literal battlefield being advised by by 0:17:44.000 --> 0:17:44.879 an actual deity. 0:17:45.080 --> 0:17:47.520 I would hope. So. I mean the place Kuruchetra exists. 0:17:47.560 --> 0:17:49.679 It's believed that that is where the battle took place, 0:17:49.760 --> 0:17:52.240 and so to me, I would hope. I would definitely 0:17:52.240 --> 0:17:54.680 hope so that I would get to experience it as 0:17:54.680 --> 0:17:57.720 it's told in the way it's told as a historic piece. 0:17:57.840 --> 0:18:00.560 If you went back and you found there were no 0:18:00.640 --> 0:18:03.520 such historical event, or maybe there were a historical battle, 0:18:03.560 --> 0:18:07.440 but like the conversation that's had throughout the Bag of 0:18:07.480 --> 0:18:11.439 a Geta is a fictional one. Would that trouble you? 0:18:11.520 --> 0:18:13.920 Because for me, I'd still quite like the Bag of 0:18:13.960 --> 0:18:15.520 bat Geta. I'd find it worth reading. 0:18:15.720 --> 0:18:18.320 I think I'd find the text still fascinating. I think 0:18:18.359 --> 0:18:22.439 you'd feel slightly misled in the fact that you were 0:18:22.480 --> 0:18:24.840 told it was historical. Sure, yeah, yeah, So I think 0:18:25.000 --> 0:18:27.480 I wouldn't have an issue with what's in the book 0:18:27.600 --> 0:18:30.679 and the conversation, because I find great value in meaning 0:18:30.720 --> 0:18:33.240 in that. But I would feel misled that I'd been 0:18:33.240 --> 0:18:36.000 told this was historic and it wasn't actually historic. 0:18:36.119 --> 0:18:39.280 It's so important, like what the claim that's being made 0:18:39.359 --> 0:18:43.520 by particular religious traditions. For example, for many Christians, if 0:18:43.560 --> 0:18:45.879 it turns out that the resurrection of Jesus is not 0:18:45.960 --> 0:18:48.199 a literal event that happened in history, but instead some 0:18:48.320 --> 0:18:52.520 kind of later mythologizing, the religion falls apart. It grounds 0:18:52.560 --> 0:18:55.719 itself on a very specific historical claim. It can't just 0:18:55.800 --> 0:18:58.240 be Oh, I'm a bit annoyed that my pastor told 0:18:58.240 --> 0:18:59.960 me that this really happened, but I guess this is fine. 0:19:00.040 --> 0:19:02.919 It would be like this has completely upended everything that 0:19:02.960 --> 0:19:05.000 I believe about the universe. That's one of the reasons 0:19:05.040 --> 0:19:07.160 why when you ask what h historical event would I see? Yah, 0:19:07.480 --> 0:19:11.959 the key moment in the world's most popular religion seems 0:19:11.960 --> 0:19:13.960 to be quite an important one to me. Suppose you 0:19:14.000 --> 0:19:16.119 went and found out that you know, Jesus didn't rise 0:19:16.200 --> 0:19:17.680 from the dead, or you found out that Muhammad was 0:19:17.720 --> 0:19:19.520 a false prophet, what are you gonna do, like come 0:19:19.520 --> 0:19:21.760 back to London and go right here yee hear yee. 0:19:22.560 --> 0:19:24.440 I've got to tell you guys, something d be terrible. 0:19:24.440 --> 0:19:26.600 I'd rather not know because I'd be terrified to let 0:19:26.640 --> 0:19:27.640 people know what i'd seen. 0:19:27.920 --> 0:19:29.919 Yeah, and no one would believe you exactly. Yeah, or 0:19:29.960 --> 0:19:32.320 there would be a you start developing a following on YouTube. 0:19:32.400 --> 0:19:35.639 Yeah yeah, probably, Yeah, you'd be able to create your 0:19:35.640 --> 0:19:38.480 own cult. Talk to me about what reading you have 0:19:38.560 --> 0:19:41.440 done in Eastern traditions. It sounds like you have done 0:19:41.440 --> 0:19:43.240 a bit of exploration that I probably haven't heard about 0:19:43.240 --> 0:19:43.600 it before. 0:19:43.680 --> 0:19:47.399 Basically, it's really funny. Because I talk about religion all 0:19:47.440 --> 0:19:50.359 the time, and particularly Christianity, people say things like a 0:19:50.480 --> 0:19:53.439 man you should talk about you should talk about Hinduism, 0:19:53.520 --> 0:19:56.360 and I'm like, okay, I get why you're saying. That's fair. 0:19:56.480 --> 0:19:58.840 I'd love to, but it's not quite as simple as that. 0:19:58.880 --> 0:20:01.520 Of course not. It's a really even. 0:20:01.320 --> 0:20:02.840 When it comes to like people say, well, you should 0:20:02.920 --> 0:20:04.439 you should have you should have a Hindu on your 0:20:04.440 --> 0:20:06.520 show to talk to them, and I'm like, even that, 0:20:07.320 --> 0:20:09.760 it's tricky because firstly, I prepare as hard as I 0:20:09.760 --> 0:20:12.280 can for every guess that comes with my show. I 0:20:12.359 --> 0:20:16.119 can't learn Hinduism. And even so it's not like you 0:20:16.119 --> 0:20:18.880 can just have a Hindu on the show and that 0:20:19.000 --> 0:20:21.400 become like, Oh, you've done, You've done Hinduism. 0:20:21.480 --> 0:20:21.680 Now. 0:20:21.760 --> 0:20:25.000 It took me a long time, like even sort of 0:20:25.040 --> 0:20:28.600 finding my feet as to like where to start looking 0:20:28.680 --> 0:20:32.200 for interesting stuff, and my way in ultimately came through 0:20:32.280 --> 0:20:35.280 my study of consciousness. I'm fascinated by the philosophy of mind, 0:20:35.640 --> 0:20:39.920 and of course the Indian tradition has this amazing content 0:20:40.200 --> 0:20:42.800 essentially on the philosophy of mind that I hadn't really 0:20:42.880 --> 0:20:46.920 encountered before becoming convinced of some weird views about consciousness, 0:20:46.960 --> 0:20:50.680 about how it's not reducible to material and how it's 0:20:50.720 --> 0:20:53.280 not as simple as saying that brains just produce consciousness. 0:20:53.320 --> 0:20:57.040 That kind of stuff sort of led me into learning 0:20:57.080 --> 0:21:01.840 about specifically the Advita Adanta tradition. Vedanta meaning like the 0:21:01.920 --> 0:21:05.600 Vaders are part of the Hindu scriptural canon. They're like 0:21:05.640 --> 0:21:07.959 the oldest religious scriptures in the world. I think like 0:21:08.280 --> 0:21:12.720 Anta means I think it's the addendum and to means 0:21:12.720 --> 0:21:15.000 like end, so you get like end of the Vaders, 0:21:15.040 --> 0:21:17.440 meaning like the latter part of the Vaders, which collectively 0:21:17.440 --> 0:21:20.760 are known as the Apanashad and Advita meaning like a 0:21:21.920 --> 0:21:26.320 like non and diviter meaning duel. So in the philosophy 0:21:26.359 --> 0:21:29.119 of mind, I think in philosophy generally, one of the 0:21:29.119 --> 0:21:32.640 biggest questions is how many types of stuff are there? 0:21:32.840 --> 0:21:35.440 Because there's this really weird sort of division of reality 0:21:35.480 --> 0:21:39.399 where we're conscious, we have subjectivity like inner thoughts, and 0:21:39.440 --> 0:21:42.320 this mug over here doesn't. So there seems to be 0:21:42.400 --> 0:21:44.440 kind of two different kinds of things. You've basically got 0:21:44.440 --> 0:21:47.000 three options when it comes to explaining that. One is 0:21:47.040 --> 0:21:49.640 that there are just two types of things in the universe. 0:21:49.800 --> 0:21:53.120 There's mind and there's body. There's mental and there's physical, 0:21:53.119 --> 0:21:55.960 and they are just separate kinds of things, and somehow 0:21:56.040 --> 0:21:58.840 they interact with each other. Another way is to say, actually, 0:21:58.880 --> 0:22:01.119 there's only one type of stuff, and that type of 0:22:01.119 --> 0:22:04.240 stuff is the dead stuff. It's the matter the atoms. 0:22:04.400 --> 0:22:06.000 This is the most popular view in the West today. 0:22:06.119 --> 0:22:08.920 The only stuff that exists is atoms that are dead, 0:22:09.359 --> 0:22:10.840 and it's just that if you put them together in 0:22:10.840 --> 0:22:12.919 the right way, you get this thing called consciousness. But 0:22:13.000 --> 0:22:15.120 really it's kind of just a manifestation of the atoms. 0:22:15.640 --> 0:22:17.800 There's a third option, which is there is only one 0:22:17.840 --> 0:22:20.879 type of stuff, and it's the mental stuff and what 0:22:20.920 --> 0:22:23.200 we call physical what we call the physical world around 0:22:23.240 --> 0:22:26.800 us is a manifestation of mental stuff. Which sounds super 0:22:26.840 --> 0:22:29.480 hippie dippy, but that's only because we're not used to it. 0:22:29.800 --> 0:22:32.439 I mean the idea that people think that, you know, 0:22:33.680 --> 0:22:36.600 they're just happy to accept that if you put physical 0:22:36.640 --> 0:22:39.560 matter together in the right order, it will produce thoughts. 0:22:40.320 --> 0:22:43.120 That is as weird to me as saying that if 0:22:43.119 --> 0:22:45.760 you put thoughts together in the right order, you could 0:22:45.760 --> 0:22:48.600 produce some physical matter. It seems like it's sort of 0:22:48.600 --> 0:22:51.080 category mistake, right, But I think there's only one type 0:22:51.119 --> 0:22:53.240 of stuff. So there's this view, which in the Western 0:22:53.240 --> 0:22:56.840 tradition is called idealism, which is kind of the view 0:22:56.880 --> 0:23:00.680 that everything exists as mental stuff. Some people have said 0:23:00.680 --> 0:23:02.760 that everything is kind of an idea in the mind 0:23:02.800 --> 0:23:06.960 of God. Some people think that nothing exists except in 0:23:07.040 --> 0:23:09.800 so far as it's being perceived. It's a very sort 0:23:09.840 --> 0:23:14.960 of complicated and quite deep philosophical tradition, but it's something 0:23:15.000 --> 0:23:19.080 that the advice of Danta tradition had been banging on 0:23:19.119 --> 0:23:22.399 about for thousands of years prior to its development in 0:23:22.400 --> 0:23:25.439 the Western canon. The reason it's Vedanta is because the 0:23:25.440 --> 0:23:29.360 apanishads are like particularly interested in the idea that kind 0:23:29.400 --> 0:23:34.399 of division is a is an illusion and unity is real. 0:23:35.000 --> 0:23:39.000 And it heavily implies that consciousness, or like the soul, 0:23:39.440 --> 0:23:42.480 the kind of stuff that makes you yourself is kind 0:23:42.480 --> 0:23:46.000 of one thing with everybody else's self, and that all 0:23:46.040 --> 0:23:47.800 of that consciousness is kind of the same thing as 0:23:47.800 --> 0:23:49.880 the universe, that this is great, big sort of unity 0:23:50.400 --> 0:23:53.199 of stuff. I thought that was really cool. So it's 0:23:53.200 --> 0:23:54.359 a bit of a sort of long winded way to 0:23:54.400 --> 0:23:56.520 say that. I started looking into that, and then I 0:23:56.600 --> 0:23:59.920 had Swami Sava Priorander, it's the head of the Vedanta 0:24:00.080 --> 0:24:02.359 Society of New York or whatever it's called, on my show, 0:24:02.359 --> 0:24:04.760 and we talked about Advita Fidanta. We talked about consciousness. 0:24:04.840 --> 0:24:07.520 We didn't talk about the Hindu pantheon of gods. I 0:24:07.560 --> 0:24:11.520 still don't understand how Brahman manifests in like hundreds of 0:24:11.520 --> 0:24:13.680 different deities. I still don't really get that at all. 0:24:13.760 --> 0:24:15.720 I don't know about the different traditions who see different 0:24:15.760 --> 0:24:17.560 deities as their main gods and stuff like that. I 0:24:17.560 --> 0:24:21.240 don't really understand that. But I understand the philsophy of consciousness. 0:24:21.400 --> 0:24:23.480 We were able to have a great conversation about this 0:24:23.520 --> 0:24:26.240 particular Indian tradition. But the thing about the Vita Fidanta 0:24:26.320 --> 0:24:28.880 is it's not really a religious tradition. It's a philosophical 0:24:28.920 --> 0:24:32.040 tradition that comes from India. So when I do this show, yeah, 0:24:32.040 --> 0:24:34.119 I'm speaking to a Hindu, and people say, great, you're 0:24:34.160 --> 0:24:36.399 talking about Hinduism for the first time, It's like, no, 0:24:36.520 --> 0:24:39.560 I'm not really, I'm talking about a philosophical school that 0:24:39.600 --> 0:24:41.639 comes from India. Yeah, which is not the same thing. 0:24:41.680 --> 0:24:43.800 I mean, the word Hindu is very unhelpful anyway, because 0:24:43.800 --> 0:24:46.240 it's what's called an excellent which is a word which 0:24:46.320 --> 0:24:50.000 is applied from the outside. People didn't call themselves Hindus. 0:24:50.400 --> 0:24:53.200 It's sort of got etymological routes with like the Indus 0:24:53.320 --> 0:24:56.840 River Valley, which is where a particular people were just 0:24:57.440 --> 0:25:00.920 doing their thing, just going about their business, and Europeans 0:25:00.960 --> 0:25:04.040 sort of label these people Hindus. But it sort of 0:25:04.080 --> 0:25:07.240 refers to the geography. Someone's saying like, have a Hindu on. 0:25:07.240 --> 0:25:09.080 It's kind of a little bit like someone saying like, 0:25:09.240 --> 0:25:12.760 have a European on. So I can get why somebody, 0:25:12.760 --> 0:25:14.960 if you'd never spoke to a European would want me 0:25:15.000 --> 0:25:16.520 to speak to a European because there is a different 0:25:16.520 --> 0:25:18.720 flavor of thought that goes on there, but it's such 0:25:18.720 --> 0:25:21.520 a rich and varied sort of culture. No, I appreciate 0:25:21.520 --> 0:25:23.199 the way you look at you can't do that. So 0:25:23.240 --> 0:25:25.679 when someone says, like you ask, you know, what's your 0:25:25.720 --> 0:25:28.879 engagement with the Indian tradition, it's sort of like somebody saying, 0:25:29.160 --> 0:25:31.960 what's your engagement in the Western philosophical canon. It's like, 0:25:32.440 --> 0:25:34.920 that's a big question. I've got to say. I'm much 0:25:34.960 --> 0:25:38.000 more specific, you know, I'm interested in this person or 0:25:38.000 --> 0:25:40.160 that personal, this school. And so for me, the stuff 0:25:40.200 --> 0:25:42.240 that I love from the Indian tradition is their views 0:25:42.280 --> 0:25:45.840 on consciousness, which I think predates the Western stuff and 0:25:45.920 --> 0:25:47.640 does it a lot more sort of intuitively. 0:26:04.200 --> 0:26:06.680 Are there a lot of new Ajathists that are also 0:26:06.680 --> 0:26:09.960 fascinated in that way? Is that common or is that 0:26:10.080 --> 0:26:10.640 quite rare? 0:26:11.080 --> 0:26:14.840 I don't think new atheists because the new atheist movement 0:26:14.880 --> 0:26:17.760 was a very it's interesting how we talk about it 0:26:17.800 --> 0:26:19.480 in the past tense now like it doesn't really exist 0:26:19.480 --> 0:26:24.280 same one. It was a very sort of prickly kind 0:26:24.320 --> 0:26:28.200 of criticism, and it's indebted to the so called Four 0:26:28.240 --> 0:26:32.879 Horsemen mostly Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchins, and Sam Harris. Daniel 0:26:32.920 --> 0:26:36.280 Dennett wasn't quite as fierce, you know, but these guys. 0:26:37.640 --> 0:26:40.760 You've got a biologist, an evolutionary biologist in Richard Dawkins, 0:26:41.040 --> 0:26:44.520 a journalist in Christopher Hitchins, a neuroscientist, although I don't 0:26:44.520 --> 0:26:47.720 know if he did anything further than his studies, Sam Harris. 0:26:48.200 --> 0:26:50.080 And then you've got the philosopher Daniel Dennett. And that 0:26:50.200 --> 0:26:51.720 is that the philosopher is the one who's like the 0:26:51.800 --> 0:26:54.920 least critical in that regard and outgoing, and although he 0:26:54.920 --> 0:26:56.920 had a lot to say about religion. The reason why 0:26:56.920 --> 0:26:59.680 these guys and other disciplines were getting involved is because, 0:26:59.760 --> 0:27:03.240 like Richard Dawkins was annoyed that Young Earth creationists were saying, 0:27:03.280 --> 0:27:07.280 you can't teach evolution in schools. Christopher Hitchins was getting 0:27:07.320 --> 0:27:12.920 annoyed that religious justifications were being used for geopolitical terrorism. 0:27:13.320 --> 0:27:15.320 That was their kind of line of attack. And so 0:27:15.359 --> 0:27:17.160 to think that they would be talking about that kind 0:27:17.200 --> 0:27:20.320 of stuff, that Hitchens would be sort of standing up 0:27:20.359 --> 0:27:24.119 and complaining about the sort of the messianic undertones of 0:27:24.160 --> 0:27:28.560 the Israeli Palestine conflict and then suddenly start going. But 0:27:28.680 --> 0:27:30.960 you know, I think that Brahman and Atman are maybe 0:27:30.960 --> 0:27:33.359 the same thing. But I want to critique that idea 0:27:33.440 --> 0:27:37.119 by you know, appealing to the rival school. It just 0:27:37.160 --> 0:27:40.600 seems ridiculous to me. So so I think New atheism no, 0:27:40.920 --> 0:27:44.840 But that's because within Eastern religions you have the same 0:27:44.920 --> 0:27:46.679 kind of conflicts going on, which I don't think that 0:27:46.680 --> 0:27:49.240 West knows as much about. But also the kind of 0:27:49.280 --> 0:27:51.480 engagement I have is not about that. Like I say, 0:27:51.480 --> 0:27:53.720 I'm not interested so much in the in the deities 0:27:53.720 --> 0:27:55.040 and the gods and the sex. I'm interested in the 0:27:55.040 --> 0:27:57.399 philosophical traditions. And I don't think the New atheists were 0:27:57.440 --> 0:28:00.920 even interested in the Western philosophical traditions. They were interested 0:28:00.960 --> 0:28:04.040 in the practical reality of religion. Religion is a force 0:28:04.080 --> 0:28:06.439 for evil, Religion causes wars and that kind of stuff. 0:28:06.920 --> 0:28:09.320 That's all very well and good. But to me, I've 0:28:09.320 --> 0:28:12.080 always compared that to saying like it's like saying politics 0:28:12.119 --> 0:28:15.439 is bad. Yes, sure, you know, politics CAUs us wars 0:28:15.480 --> 0:28:18.919 and politics drives families of It's like, that's true, but 0:28:19.520 --> 0:28:22.399 that doesn't mean we should be an anarchist. Maybe we should, 0:28:22.520 --> 0:28:24.560 but doesn't guarantee it doesn't mean there isn't a correct 0:28:24.560 --> 0:28:30.600 political position, and critiquing that kind of stuff doesn't mean 0:28:30.600 --> 0:28:34.080 that you know anything about political philosophy. You might not 0:28:34.280 --> 0:28:37.080 know anything about, you know, theories of justification of the 0:28:37.119 --> 0:28:39.720 state or whatever it is that political philosophers sit around 0:28:39.760 --> 0:28:41.480 talking about, you know, and I think the same thing's 0:28:41.520 --> 0:28:45.680 going on with New atheism. They couldn't recite Thomas Aquinas's 0:28:46.200 --> 0:28:50.440 causal arguments for God if you paid them to. Richardawkins 0:28:50.480 --> 0:28:52.600 does so in The God Delusion. He sort of responds 0:28:52.640 --> 0:28:55.240 to Thomas Aquinas directly. Thomas Aquina is the most celebrated 0:28:55.320 --> 0:28:59.160 Christian metaphysician like in history, and he responds to Thomas 0:28:59.200 --> 0:29:01.560 Aquinas in about two pages. It takes more than two 0:29:01.560 --> 0:29:05.080 pages even to explain the terminology that Thomas Aquinas is using. 0:29:05.400 --> 0:29:09.040 Let alone to list, explain and then debunk. I think 0:29:09.040 --> 0:29:11.360 we have some evidence that there's just not this engagement 0:29:11.400 --> 0:29:13.760 with the philosophical tradition. I don't mean to insult these people. 0:29:13.840 --> 0:29:15.960 I like Richard. Richard's a friend of mine. I think 0:29:16.000 --> 0:29:19.840 he knows that I disagree with his philosophical musings, and 0:29:19.880 --> 0:29:22.120 he himself just admits. He says that he's just not 0:29:22.160 --> 0:29:24.840 interested in theology and philosophy. It's just not what he 0:29:24.840 --> 0:29:26.960 wants to do. He wants to do science, I think 0:29:26.960 --> 0:29:29.480 fair enough. But then maybe don't write a book with 0:29:29.520 --> 0:29:32.320 a chapter called why there almost certainly is no God? 0:29:32.640 --> 0:29:35.360 But he did it because he cared about science. He 0:29:35.400 --> 0:29:38.959 doesn't care about the colalm cosmological argument or whatever. He 0:29:38.960 --> 0:29:41.680 cares about evolution being taught in schools and that kind 0:29:41.720 --> 0:29:44.280 of stuff. And so the idea that someone who cares 0:29:44.320 --> 0:29:46.560 about that and that's their way in is suddenly going 0:29:46.600 --> 0:29:50.680 to become interested in the even in philosophy in the West, 0:29:51.400 --> 0:29:53.520 is not very popular. The idea that these guys are 0:29:53.520 --> 0:29:55.320 going to engage with that, I think is untrue. And 0:29:55.360 --> 0:29:58.120 so that funnels down to the modern day. The sort 0:29:58.120 --> 0:30:01.880 of teenage atheist like me on YouTube making videos took 0:30:01.880 --> 0:30:05.160 me years before I even encountered Indian philosophy, and that 0:30:05.240 --> 0:30:07.760 only came after I sort of calmed down a bit. 0:30:08.000 --> 0:30:13.560 Everyone's almost arguing something from their very maybe narrow is 0:30:13.600 --> 0:30:16.440 the wrong word, but everyone's looking at something through their lens, 0:30:16.480 --> 0:30:19.120 and of course preaching or sharing whatever that maybe whether 0:30:19.160 --> 0:30:22.240 you're religious or whether you're an atheist, or whether you're agnostic, 0:30:22.760 --> 0:30:24.680 and it applies to everything in the same way as 0:30:24.680 --> 0:30:27.040 you could talk about entrepreneurship and someone could say, hey, 0:30:27.040 --> 0:30:29.000 if you don't how to sell, then you can't be 0:30:29.040 --> 0:30:31.080 an entrepreneur, and then someone else is over there going 0:30:31.120 --> 0:30:32.720 if you don't have to negotiate, you don't have to 0:30:32.760 --> 0:30:35.160 be an entrepreneur. It's almost impossible to get a three 0:30:35.280 --> 0:30:38.240 hundred and sixty degree view on a belief an idea, 0:30:38.400 --> 0:30:42.920 because there's so many different thoughts and ideas. How would 0:30:43.000 --> 0:30:46.760 you explain your worldview to a ten year old so 0:30:46.800 --> 0:30:47.960 that they simply understood it. 0:30:48.160 --> 0:30:51.960 I would probably wait until this child was taking an 0:30:52.000 --> 0:30:53.880 interest in such things, and I might ask them. I mean, 0:30:54.040 --> 0:30:56.480 it might be a bit young ten start talking about consciousness, 0:30:56.520 --> 0:30:59.720 but at some point I might sort of say, don't 0:30:59.720 --> 0:31:04.320 you think it's weird that you are conscious? You have 0:31:04.440 --> 0:31:06.640 thoughts and feelings, you have an inner sense of self. 0:31:06.720 --> 0:31:09.720 I'd use different words because they're ten, and this mug 0:31:10.080 --> 0:31:12.640 and this table in this chair don't. And depending what 0:31:12.640 --> 0:31:14.880 they'd say, you'd ask a further question. So if they say, yeah, no, 0:31:14.960 --> 0:31:17.840 that I guess so, but that's because you know you've 0:31:17.840 --> 0:31:19.880 got a brain, And then you might start asking about 0:31:20.040 --> 0:31:21.600 what they think the brain is and how so you 0:31:21.720 --> 0:31:25.160 sort of ask questions. And in my view, I think 0:31:25.240 --> 0:31:29.160 we have just sort of swallowed wholesale this idea that 0:31:29.680 --> 0:31:34.480 everything can be reduced to scientific explanation, at least everything 0:31:34.520 --> 0:31:39.800 that is true about the universe can be scientifically explained. 0:31:40.640 --> 0:31:42.600 And I just don't think that's true. And I think 0:31:42.640 --> 0:31:45.560 it's like trivially untrue. I'm not making some profound what 0:31:45.640 --> 0:31:48.080 about love, man, you can't scientifically It's like, no, you 0:31:48.080 --> 0:31:50.080 can explain the chemicals that are firing it. I mean 0:31:50.120 --> 0:31:52.880 something a bit more specific, which is that science isn't 0:31:52.880 --> 0:31:55.040 really in the business of explaining things. I'm no longer 0:31:55.040 --> 0:31:56.920 talking to the ten year old. By the way. Science 0:31:56.960 --> 0:31:59.120 is not in the business of explaining things. It's in 0:31:59.160 --> 0:32:03.000 the business of describing things mathematically. Galileo famously says that 0:32:03.040 --> 0:32:06.720 mathematics is the language of the universe. Fair enough, But 0:32:06.920 --> 0:32:09.920 maths on its own doesn't do anything. Maths just describes 0:32:10.720 --> 0:32:14.520 all mathematical equations have an equal sign, and it describes 0:32:14.560 --> 0:32:18.320 some sort of fact about reality. It doesn't cause anything. 0:32:18.800 --> 0:32:23.560 Newton's laws of motion don't cause objects to move. They 0:32:23.600 --> 0:32:26.560 describe how objects move when they're in motion. Similarly, the 0:32:26.600 --> 0:32:29.280 example I love to give because it's so explicit his 0:32:29.360 --> 0:32:33.440 Newton's discover a discovery of gravity. What did Newton actually 0:32:33.480 --> 0:32:37.400 discover when he discovered gravity? What's the thing that he 0:32:37.480 --> 0:32:39.960 actually figured out? We had known for a very long 0:32:39.960 --> 0:32:41.920 time that objects fall to the ground, right, what's the 0:32:41.920 --> 0:32:45.320 thing that he realized? Well, Newton asked an interesting question. 0:32:45.400 --> 0:32:48.760 He looks up at the moon and he asks like, like, 0:32:48.920 --> 0:32:52.760 why isn't the Moon falling towards the Earth? And his 0:32:52.880 --> 0:32:56.120 sort of profound realization is that the Moon is falling 0:32:56.120 --> 0:32:59.640 towards the Earth all the time. It's just that if 0:32:59.640 --> 0:33:02.280 something falls towards my hand will hit my hand. But 0:33:02.280 --> 0:33:03.800 if I knock it to the side a little bit, 0:33:04.040 --> 0:33:05.360 then it will kind of do this. It will kind 0:33:05.360 --> 0:33:06.800 of miss the Earth a bit and then crash into 0:33:06.800 --> 0:33:08.360 the side. And if I knock it a little bit 0:33:08.360 --> 0:33:09.920 further to the side, it will sort of miss it 0:33:09.960 --> 0:33:12.040 even more and maybe crash into the bottom eventually. And 0:33:12.080 --> 0:33:14.160 if you knock it just the right speed to the side, 0:33:14.280 --> 0:33:16.960 it will keep falling towards the Earth, but keep missing it. 0:33:17.200 --> 0:33:19.960 And that's what we call orbit. And Newton realized that 0:33:20.040 --> 0:33:22.920 the same thing that makes objects fall to the ground, 0:33:23.520 --> 0:33:27.040 keeps the planets in circulation, which is a profound realization. 0:33:27.120 --> 0:33:29.480 And then he took to the task of mathematically describing 0:33:29.520 --> 0:33:33.680 it calculus inverse square law. So he figures out that 0:33:33.920 --> 0:33:37.680 the distance between two things, if you square that distance, 0:33:38.680 --> 0:33:40.920 that is how much weaker the force of gravity is. 0:33:41.000 --> 0:33:43.560 So something is two times further away, it's four times 0:33:43.720 --> 0:33:45.760 less attractive. And he does all of this and it's 0:33:45.760 --> 0:33:47.680 brilliant in the print, could be a mathematica. But then 0:33:48.760 --> 0:33:53.120 there remains this question like why not how do objects 0:33:53.120 --> 0:33:56.000 fall to the ground? What mathematical rules do they sort 0:33:56.040 --> 0:33:57.840 of do it by? But why do they fall to 0:33:57.880 --> 0:34:00.800 the ground? And in the Sculium, which is like an 0:34:00.840 --> 0:34:04.640 addendum to the Principia Mathematica where Newton published these findings, 0:34:04.640 --> 0:34:07.400 he answers this explicitly. You can read this online. He says, 0:34:07.440 --> 0:34:11.879 like as to what gravity actually is, as to why 0:34:11.920 --> 0:34:15.520 this stuff is happening, he writes hypothesis non fingos in Latin, 0:34:15.520 --> 0:34:18.680 it means I frame no hypothesis. He doesn't know, And 0:34:18.719 --> 0:34:21.160 he says it's also not the kind of question that 0:34:21.239 --> 0:34:24.360 science should be engaged in, because it can't answer that 0:34:24.440 --> 0:34:28.400 kind of question. In other words. Newton has described brilliantly 0:34:29.920 --> 0:34:33.520 planets orbits, objects falling to the ground. This force, which 0:34:33.520 --> 0:34:37.000 he calls gravity, and it's sort of a placeholder. It's like, 0:34:37.239 --> 0:34:39.480 the word gravity is just a word for whatever is 0:34:39.520 --> 0:34:41.279 the thing that's making this happen, But he doesn't know 0:34:41.320 --> 0:34:43.560 what's making it happen. And it's so funny to me 0:34:43.920 --> 0:34:47.040 when people like look into the past and they say, 0:34:47.040 --> 0:34:49.480 how silly are the beliefs that people used to have. 0:34:49.520 --> 0:34:52.080 They used to believe in like animism, they used to 0:34:52.120 --> 0:34:54.960 believe in spirits. They used to believe that, you know, 0:34:55.360 --> 0:34:58.319 angels were pushing around planets and stuff. But no, No, since 0:34:58.320 --> 0:35:01.480 the scientific revolution, we're much more intelligent because we explain 0:35:01.560 --> 0:35:02.439 things in terms of. 0:35:04.280 --> 0:35:04.800 Forces. 0:35:07.000 --> 0:35:10.000 Forces. I think about that word for a minute, you 0:35:10.040 --> 0:35:11.719 know what I mean. We're still used to hearing it, 0:35:12.400 --> 0:35:14.080 but that's it. And if you ask a science is 0:35:14.080 --> 0:35:17.440 what a force is, they'll either have to tell you 0:35:17.520 --> 0:35:21.440 that a force is just a mathematical description of regularities 0:35:21.440 --> 0:35:24.759 that we've observed, or they'll have to say unjustifiably, well, 0:35:24.800 --> 0:35:26.520 it's the thing that makes things fall to the ground, 0:35:27.320 --> 0:35:28.799 But what is it? You don't know that, you don't 0:35:28.800 --> 0:35:30.879 know why that's happening now. To be clear, some people 0:35:30.920 --> 0:35:33.080 will say, okay, fair enough with Newton. I pick Newton 0:35:33.120 --> 0:35:36.040 because he says it explicitly. This isn't an insult to science. 0:35:37.080 --> 0:35:39.200 It's not insulting to say that it's not really interested 0:35:39.239 --> 0:35:41.200 in the why question, it's interested in how questions. Some 0:35:41.200 --> 0:35:44.160 people think the why question just shouldn't exist. That's fine 0:35:44.160 --> 0:35:47.640 to say, But science itself is definitely in the business 0:35:47.640 --> 0:35:50.640 of describing. Scientists will happily tell you that anything which 0:35:50.719 --> 0:35:54.400 is true about physics can be described mathematically. But if 0:35:54.400 --> 0:35:57.400 you think about what maths is, it's equations. They don't 0:35:57.400 --> 0:35:59.560 do anything. Stephen Hawking at the end of A Brief 0:35:59.560 --> 0:36:01.600 History of Time quite famously, I wish I could recite 0:36:01.600 --> 0:36:04.520 it from memory. It's so beautiful. He writes about how 0:36:04.560 --> 0:36:07.800 he hopes that maybe one day our basic scientific theories 0:36:07.840 --> 0:36:09.640 will condense into one great, big theory of everything, that 0:36:09.640 --> 0:36:13.560 there'll be one beautiful equation that sort of governs everything 0:36:13.560 --> 0:36:15.839 about the universe. But he says, we'll still be left 0:36:15.880 --> 0:36:18.640 with the question of what breathes fire into the equations. 0:36:19.680 --> 0:36:23.640 Equations don't make things move. They describe how things move 0:36:23.880 --> 0:36:26.319 when they're in motion. Right so we're left with this great, 0:36:26.320 --> 0:36:29.000 big explanatory gap. If people are in any doubt about this. 0:36:29.040 --> 0:36:31.480 There's a wonderful clip of Richard Feinneman. There's a BBC 0:36:31.520 --> 0:36:33.640 interview asking him about magnets. He says, you know, when 0:36:33.680 --> 0:36:36.279 I push two magnets together, they repel each other. Like, 0:36:36.760 --> 0:36:40.040 what's going on there? And Fireman's like, well, you know 0:36:40.080 --> 0:36:42.640 the magnets are repelling each other and he goes, yeah, no, 0:36:42.880 --> 0:36:47.160 but you know, what's what's what's happening there? And Fimon's like, 0:36:47.440 --> 0:36:50.279 what do you mean? What's happening there? And this is 0:36:50.320 --> 0:36:52.439 the sort of moment of confusion, and the interviewer says, 0:36:52.600 --> 0:36:54.239 I've got to say I think this is a reasonable question, 0:36:54.239 --> 0:36:56.200 and by me goes, oh, no, it's a very reasonable question. 0:36:56.239 --> 0:36:58.160 But what do you mean? Because if you ask a 0:36:58.239 --> 0:37:01.719 question like why, well it depends on your level of explanation, 0:37:01.880 --> 0:37:04.799 like why is Aunt Marie in the hospital? But because 0:37:04.800 --> 0:37:07.200 she slipped and fell on the ice. For most people 0:37:07.200 --> 0:37:09.359 that would satisfy, But if you were like an alien 0:37:09.360 --> 0:37:11.840 who didn't know anything, you'd need to know why slipping 0:37:11.840 --> 0:37:13.840 on ice sends you to a hospital, So you'd have 0:37:13.880 --> 0:37:15.960 to explain that, and then you'd have to explain, like 0:37:16.120 --> 0:37:20.239 why is ice slippery? Well, because when you step on ice, 0:37:20.280 --> 0:37:23.960 it evaporates the top level, which turns into water. No, 0:37:24.040 --> 0:37:26.440 she's we're just describing what's happening. Okay, so why does 0:37:26.480 --> 0:37:29.400 that happen? Well, now we're talking about the molecular composition 0:37:29.480 --> 0:37:32.480 of water, and it's in its sort of chemical interactions. 0:37:32.760 --> 0:37:34.000 But why does that happen? 0:37:34.120 --> 0:37:34.239 If? 0:37:34.239 --> 0:37:36.279 Fimon's just basically pointing out that if you ask the 0:37:36.280 --> 0:37:40.200 why question, you are sent into this regress down into 0:37:40.239 --> 0:37:43.160 the most fundamental questions of reality. And in fact, Fimon 0:37:43.200 --> 0:37:44.839 then says, and if you want to know why Marie 0:37:44.880 --> 0:37:47.120 fell over, you'd have to know about gravity. Why does 0:37:47.160 --> 0:37:49.359 gravity work? And that's where we just were a second ago. Right, 0:37:49.840 --> 0:37:52.640 this thing gravity, which science will describe but never like 0:37:52.719 --> 0:37:56.480 explain why it's occurring, And Fiming sort of comes back 0:37:56.520 --> 0:37:58.239 to magnets and says, so for now, you know, it 0:37:58.360 --> 0:38:00.200 will have to be enough just to say that they 0:38:00.200 --> 0:38:02.560 are repelling each other. And that's fair enough. But I 0:38:02.560 --> 0:38:06.239 think that's what's going on. Science describes, like physics is 0:38:06.280 --> 0:38:11.880 the description of and the theory of physical matter and 0:38:11.920 --> 0:38:15.480 its relations. It therefore presupposes the existence of matter and 0:38:15.520 --> 0:38:18.080 its relations. One of the foundational questions I don't think 0:38:18.120 --> 0:38:21.840 science will answer is where that physical matter came from? 0:38:22.000 --> 0:38:24.280 Like it seems plausible, we say, look at the progress 0:38:24.280 --> 0:38:26.600 we've made. We used to think that we couldn't explain 0:38:26.640 --> 0:38:29.440 biological complexity, but now we have. We used to think 0:38:29.440 --> 0:38:32.400 that we couldn't explain why objects fall, but now we have. 0:38:33.040 --> 0:38:34.560 I want to point out at firstly what we've actually 0:38:34.560 --> 0:38:37.279 done is describe those processes. But also I think as 0:38:37.320 --> 0:38:42.640 a categorical difference between explaining some kind of physical interaction 0:38:42.719 --> 0:38:45.280 at a deeper level and explaining the origin of physical 0:38:45.320 --> 0:38:49.400 matter and its interactions. I don't think you will mathematically 0:38:49.440 --> 0:38:53.480 describe the origin of the stuff which the mathematical descriptions 0:38:53.480 --> 0:38:56.400 apply to. Given what I've just said about how what 0:38:56.520 --> 0:38:59.800 scientific laws are are observations of stuff that happens in 0:38:59.800 --> 0:39:04.640 the US and then mathematically describing how they regularly like occur. 0:39:05.200 --> 0:39:07.320 I've sometimes compared this It's a bit of a crude analogy, 0:39:07.360 --> 0:39:09.439 but it gets across the point to discovering a book 0:39:09.480 --> 0:39:12.320 of Shakespeare's sonnets. If we came across a book of 0:39:12.360 --> 0:39:15.200 Shakespeare's sonnets and we didn't know what they were, then 0:39:15.200 --> 0:39:17.840 we might start studying them. And suppose that you were really, 0:39:17.840 --> 0:39:20.719 really smart, and you said, okay, well, I've noticed that 0:39:21.200 --> 0:39:24.440 each of these letters comes in two kinds, as a 0:39:24.440 --> 0:39:26.279 big one and a small one, and whenever there's a 0:39:26.320 --> 0:39:29.400 new line, they use the big one as interesting. And 0:39:29.440 --> 0:39:32.200 you call that the law of capitalization. And then you 0:39:32.280 --> 0:39:34.520 notice that there are all of these little symbols unlike 0:39:34.560 --> 0:39:37.000 the letters, little dots and squiggles, and you realize that 0:39:37.040 --> 0:39:40.000 they show up in predictable ways, and you call that 0:39:40.040 --> 0:39:43.399 the law of punctuation. And you're able to predict. If 0:39:43.400 --> 0:39:45.799 you're really clever, you might notice that if you say 0:39:45.840 --> 0:39:48.160 it out loud, it follows a particular rhythm. Done dun 0:39:48.360 --> 0:39:50.440 dunda dunda done. And you call that the law of 0:39:50.480 --> 0:39:54.319 iambic pentameter. Because you're get really clever now, and you 0:39:54.320 --> 0:39:56.600 can predict that if I turn over the page, I'm 0:39:56.600 --> 0:39:59.080 going to see something that follows these rules. What you're discovering, 0:39:59.080 --> 0:40:02.880 of course, are the laws of literacy. And then suppose 0:40:02.920 --> 0:40:05.400 I came along after all of that and said, okay, 0:40:05.400 --> 0:40:08.120 so where do you think the book came from? And 0:40:08.160 --> 0:40:10.000 you said, well, we don't know yet, but look at 0:40:10.000 --> 0:40:12.560 all the progress we're making with the laws that we've discovered. 0:40:12.560 --> 0:40:14.839 I'm sure that one day these laws of literacy will 0:40:14.840 --> 0:40:17.279 explain where the book came from. You'd be making a 0:40:17.320 --> 0:40:19.640 category error. And I think the physicist does the same 0:40:19.640 --> 0:40:21.680 thing in saying that physics will one day explain the 0:40:21.719 --> 0:40:24.239 origin of physical matter, because physics is the study of 0:40:24.239 --> 0:40:28.319 physical matter and therefore presupposes its existence. A question like 0:40:28.360 --> 0:40:31.080 that I don't think can be answered by science. I'm 0:40:31.080 --> 0:40:31.799 really not talking to. 0:40:31.760 --> 0:40:35.160 The ten year old anymore. Your ten year old is 0:40:35.200 --> 0:40:37.320 going to be really OK dad. 0:40:37.200 --> 0:40:39.799 Can I just can I get to bed now? But 0:40:39.840 --> 0:40:41.920 like the reason I bring that up, it's to say, 0:40:42.239 --> 0:40:43.560 I mean, I remember I was, I was kind of 0:40:43.600 --> 0:40:46.080 talking about consciousness, and it's all like related because people 0:40:46.120 --> 0:40:47.880 have a similar view of consciousness. I think that science 0:40:47.880 --> 0:40:49.360 will wan day explain what consciousness is. 0:40:49.400 --> 0:40:51.359 And you're trying to encourage your child to ask ask 0:40:51.520 --> 0:40:58.600 questions that I guess are maybe not comprehensively answered simply 0:40:58.640 --> 0:40:59.160 by science. 0:40:59.280 --> 0:41:01.600 Yeah, And also, so I want to be very clear here, 0:41:02.880 --> 0:41:05.279 lots of people will use this line of thought to 0:41:05.360 --> 0:41:07.440 try to sort of smuggle God in as like the 0:41:07.920 --> 0:41:10.160 they'll say, okay, so science can't explain it, so God 0:41:10.239 --> 0:41:13.719 must do so. That is categorically not what I'm doing here, right. 0:41:13.800 --> 0:41:17.080 All I'm saying is that the lexicon of science cannot 0:41:17.560 --> 0:41:21.400 describe the origin of the universe and the nature of consciousness. 0:41:21.400 --> 0:41:23.080 Those are the two things I think that science definitely 0:41:23.120 --> 0:41:27.680 can't describe. That is not to say, therefore God there 0:41:27.800 --> 0:41:31.160 might be some kind of what we might call naturalistic explanation. 0:41:31.400 --> 0:41:34.280 It's just not one that can be mathematized and therefore 0:41:34.640 --> 0:41:38.560 not sort of appropriate to use the lexicon of science 0:41:38.600 --> 0:41:41.640 to describe. That's fine, no problem with that. Of course, 0:41:41.880 --> 0:41:44.040 we still have this question. We still want to know 0:41:44.080 --> 0:41:45.960 why is there something rather than nothing? What is the 0:41:46.040 --> 0:41:48.319 nature of consciousness? But I want to be very clear 0:41:48.360 --> 0:41:51.640 that this isn't some kind of underhanded way to motivated 0:41:51.640 --> 0:41:54.440 reasoning to leave rooms for God. It's just to say 0:41:54.440 --> 0:41:57.840 that when people have this sort of confidence that the 0:41:57.840 --> 0:42:00.840 scientific method will explain everything, because it's made to progress 0:42:00.840 --> 0:42:03.960 in the past. Notice the precise nature of the progress 0:42:04.000 --> 0:42:07.040 it's made. It's explained things, but only at a sort 0:42:07.040 --> 0:42:10.600 of deeper level of resolution. It has described the mechanism 0:42:10.960 --> 0:42:15.759 take natural selection brilliantly, like Darwin figures out the mechanism 0:42:15.840 --> 0:42:20.359 by which organisms like diversify and become complex. And that's great, 0:42:20.600 --> 0:42:22.760 but it is a description. It's a description of what happens. 0:42:23.120 --> 0:42:25.600 And if you, as Finemann says, if you really do 0:42:25.680 --> 0:42:28.759 keep following that why question, you'll get down to some 0:42:28.880 --> 0:42:32.840 quite foundational questions, which it's less controversial to say science 0:42:32.880 --> 0:42:33.920 will not be able to explain. 0:42:33.960 --> 0:42:35.600 When you put it that way and you look at 0:42:35.640 --> 0:42:38.480 both sides, it seems to be more of a human 0:42:39.560 --> 0:42:44.920 mind's desire for certainty and completeness in thought, which is 0:42:44.960 --> 0:42:47.640 why we end up on either side of the spectrum 0:42:47.680 --> 0:42:51.560 without the ability to navigate the messy middle right. Specifically, 0:42:51.600 --> 0:42:53.279 in this case, it's almost like I either have to 0:42:53.280 --> 0:42:57.000 believe everything this book says is absolutely correct without any 0:42:57.080 --> 0:43:00.440 openness for questioning, door or reflection, or I have to 0:43:00.440 --> 0:43:03.240 believe this book that I learned that this textbook at school. 0:43:03.440 --> 0:43:06.319 Everything it says must be correct without any reflection, thought, 0:43:06.440 --> 0:43:10.040 or need for debate. And so it's almost like, how 0:43:10.040 --> 0:43:12.480 do we get to a point where the human mind 0:43:12.960 --> 0:43:14.920 we allow it to have the ability to question our 0:43:14.960 --> 0:43:19.759 worldview and thoughts without losing all sense of certainty instability, 0:43:20.200 --> 0:43:22.960 Because it seems as humans. When people watch a debate, 0:43:23.400 --> 0:43:25.319 nine out of ten times people are just watching it 0:43:25.360 --> 0:43:28.560 to confirm their bias. Sure, so they're already on one side. 0:43:28.640 --> 0:43:30.919 You're going to watch the debate and you're going to go, yeah, 0:43:30.920 --> 0:43:33.560 you know what, I'm fully with Alex. You know, we 0:43:33.600 --> 0:43:35.560 don't know if God exists, but we definitely know science 0:43:35.560 --> 0:43:37.719 can't answer all the questions, or on the other side, 0:43:37.719 --> 0:43:39.840 something's like, well, I'm from that religion, and that religious 0:43:39.880 --> 0:43:42.440 person is obviously spot on. So even when we watch 0:43:42.480 --> 0:43:45.040 a debate, we don't really ever come away from it going, 0:43:45.719 --> 0:43:48.400 you know what, I just couldn't believe that he said that, 0:43:48.480 --> 0:43:50.480 because we're just going there to confirm our beliefs. So 0:43:50.960 --> 0:43:54.160 I guess my question is, would you even encourage people 0:43:54.880 --> 0:43:58.040 to live in the messy middle of not being certain 0:43:58.040 --> 0:44:01.200 about their ideas? Does that create a better human I 0:44:01.200 --> 0:44:03.480 think that's where they do live, you think, so? I mean, 0:44:03.480 --> 0:44:05.680 there are very few things that people can be certain 0:44:05.760 --> 0:44:07.799 of in the sense of I would argue that most 0:44:07.800 --> 0:44:10.920 of the people you debate with, or most religious or 0:44:10.920 --> 0:44:14.439 scientific people in the world, at least in the form 0:44:14.480 --> 0:44:16.759 of how they live, are trying to live based on 0:44:16.800 --> 0:44:17.520 their belief. 0:44:17.280 --> 0:44:20.239 They have a very strong confidence, ye confidence meaning with 0:44:20.400 --> 0:44:24.160 face certainty on fe day in the Latina. I think 0:44:24.160 --> 0:44:25.440 if you speak to most of those people, they will 0:44:25.440 --> 0:44:28.120 at least ostensibly say, but I'm open to having my 0:44:28.160 --> 0:44:30.520 mind change, particularly scientists. I mean, the whole thing about 0:44:30.560 --> 0:44:33.680 science is that it's open for correction. Like, no scientist 0:44:33.719 --> 0:44:37.000 believes that we've completed science. Yeah, of course scientists are 0:44:37.120 --> 0:44:40.600 very much like one day they hope that Einstein will 0:44:40.640 --> 0:44:43.160 be proved completely wrong because it's exciting and it would 0:44:43.239 --> 0:44:46.040 like sharpen what we understand about the universe, you know 0:44:46.080 --> 0:44:48.120 what I mean. And so like, I don't think anybody 0:44:48.160 --> 0:44:51.920 has that kind of confidence that they've got it all correct. 0:44:52.320 --> 0:44:53.960 But I think there is a confidence in the method, 0:44:54.200 --> 0:44:56.640 and fair enough have a confidence in the scientific method 0:44:56.680 --> 0:44:58.320 because it's great. And again, I love science. I'm not 0:44:58.360 --> 0:45:00.200 trying to insult it or anything. I'm just saying very 0:45:00.239 --> 0:45:03.120 precise about what it's doing and what it's not. And 0:45:03.120 --> 0:45:06.440 I think we could avoid a lot of needless debate. 0:45:07.480 --> 0:45:12.000 Have we understand exactly the parameters of each of our disciplines, 0:45:12.160 --> 0:45:14.759 disciplines like interact and emerge and stuff. But like, if 0:45:14.800 --> 0:45:18.360 you're talking about mathematical models, there are things that mathematical 0:45:18.400 --> 0:45:20.800 models just can't do. And if you're talking about like 0:45:20.840 --> 0:45:23.360 thought experiments and philosophy, there are things that thought experiments 0:45:23.400 --> 0:45:28.200 can't do. They cannot provide empirical proof of various phenomena. 0:45:28.440 --> 0:45:31.239 They can't provide scientific evidence for the Big Bang, that 0:45:31.360 --> 0:45:33.719 kind of stuff. But likewise, I think that the scientific 0:45:33.760 --> 0:45:38.680 method can't describe certain foundational aspects of reality, and then said, 0:45:38.719 --> 0:45:43.000 presuppose them. I would, of course encourage people to recognize 0:45:43.360 --> 0:45:45.200 there's like lots of room to maneuver here, and I 0:45:45.239 --> 0:45:46.600 think that's one of the things that I'm trying to do. 0:45:46.640 --> 0:45:49.160 And like it kind of splits people, like especially when 0:45:49.200 --> 0:45:51.080 I talk about either consciousness or I talk about the 0:45:51.160 --> 0:45:54.040 nature of science. It splits people kind of three responses 0:45:54.080 --> 0:45:57.600 to the science stuff. Some people go, that's a load 0:45:57.640 --> 0:46:00.520 of nonsense. Of course, science explains things, and then I 0:46:00.560 --> 0:46:02.279 have to spend a bit of time really drilling down 0:46:02.280 --> 0:46:05.680 what they mean by explaining in the Fineman sense. Other 0:46:05.680 --> 0:46:08.040 people say, this is really interesting, Yeah cool, I'd never 0:46:08.080 --> 0:46:09.840 thought about it that way. That's great, that's exciting. And 0:46:09.880 --> 0:46:13.040 some people sort of say, yeah, science doesn't explain in 0:46:13.040 --> 0:46:15.960 that sense, Like description is the same thing. They just 0:46:15.960 --> 0:46:18.200 sort of say, it's like trivially true. It's not a 0:46:18.280 --> 0:46:21.319 very profound observation, but it has sort of some profound implications. 0:46:21.800 --> 0:46:24.640 If it is true that science only describes, then as 0:46:24.680 --> 0:46:27.000 long as you have an explanatory question left, it's one 0:46:27.000 --> 0:46:28.560 that science is not going to be able to answer. 0:46:28.600 --> 0:46:30.520 So I've sort of encourage people to at least explore 0:46:30.560 --> 0:46:33.839 that thought. It's totally fine to have confidence in your conclusions, 0:46:34.280 --> 0:46:38.120 but like, recognize it's about the method. It's this optimism 0:46:38.160 --> 0:46:40.120 about the progress of science because of what it's done 0:46:40.160 --> 0:46:43.440 in the past, which is great, but you have to 0:46:43.440 --> 0:46:45.319 be very precise about exactly what it's done in the 0:46:45.360 --> 0:46:48.200 past and what it might therefore mimic in the future. 0:46:48.560 --> 0:46:53.040 And answering foundational metaphysical questions about the nature of matter, 0:46:53.600 --> 0:46:55.680 why it exists in the first place, that kind of stuff. 0:46:56.080 --> 0:46:58.640 I just don't think it's an appropriate tool, and people 0:46:58.719 --> 0:47:00.160 will be thinking in their heads, but hold on, what 0:47:00.200 --> 0:47:02.160 about Like you know, there are theories that what about 0:47:02.160 --> 0:47:04.640 like string theory, what about the I'm telling you that 0:47:04.680 --> 0:47:07.160 if you investigate these closely enough, you will realize that 0:47:07.200 --> 0:47:10.440 these are proposed descriptions of the nature of reality. They 0:47:10.560 --> 0:47:12.960 proposed descriptions of what's going on, they don't answer the 0:47:12.960 --> 0:47:15.080 why question. I think you're left with two options. One 0:47:15.120 --> 0:47:17.279 is to say the why question is bogus. Some people 0:47:17.360 --> 0:47:20.040 think that, and that's fair. Richard Dawkins has said, like, 0:47:20.400 --> 0:47:21.799 if you ask you a question like what is the 0:47:21.800 --> 0:47:24.759 color of jealousy? It makes grammatical sense, but it's a 0:47:24.800 --> 0:47:27.480 meaningless question. And the why question might be the same, 0:47:27.600 --> 0:47:30.040 why do things exist? If that's the case, so maybe 0:47:30.040 --> 0:47:31.920 there is no why, Maybe there are only descriptions. In 0:47:31.920 --> 0:47:33.920 that case, I would slightly alter my thesis to say 0:47:34.120 --> 0:47:36.080 everything is that. Maybe philosophy is description. 0:47:36.320 --> 0:47:36.480 Right. 0:47:36.480 --> 0:47:39.040 When a Christian says that God is a trinity, they're 0:47:39.080 --> 0:47:41.240 just describing the nature of God, right. They're not explaining 0:47:41.280 --> 0:47:44.719 why he's a trinity, fair enough, but they would not 0:47:44.760 --> 0:47:48.319 do so in mathematical like language. You can't run the 0:47:48.360 --> 0:47:52.600 ontological argument for God's existence as a series of mathematical equations. 0:47:53.080 --> 0:47:55.280 It's just a different kind of language that's being used. 0:47:55.719 --> 0:47:58.080 I would just say that the scientific language will not 0:47:58.200 --> 0:48:01.800 describe the things which some other philosophical languages can describe. 0:48:01.840 --> 0:48:04.600 And that's not a problem. That's great. It's actually not 0:48:04.640 --> 0:48:08.000 that profound. Yeah, so many scientists are like, yeah, I 0:48:08.000 --> 0:48:11.400 mean you can call it like functionalism or descriptivism about science. 0:48:11.440 --> 0:48:14.080 That what's going on as we're just describing reality. And 0:48:14.120 --> 0:48:16.479 that's great and it's really useful, but I encourage people 0:48:16.480 --> 0:48:19.480 to just like reflect on what that means and what 0:48:19.560 --> 0:48:22.000 it should do to their confidence that science will answer 0:48:22.040 --> 0:48:22.920 these foundational questions. 0:48:23.000 --> 0:48:23.160 Yeah. 0:48:23.360 --> 0:48:25.439 I started talking about the origin of the universe because 0:48:25.440 --> 0:48:27.920 it's helpful when thinking about like Newton and Einstein to 0:48:28.200 --> 0:48:31.319 get across what I'm saying about science. But really, when 0:48:31.320 --> 0:48:33.320 you ask about what my worldview is, the reason I 0:48:33.360 --> 0:48:35.160 would bring that up is to talk about consciousness and 0:48:35.200 --> 0:48:37.360 in a similar way say that science will not explain, 0:48:37.840 --> 0:48:41.239 or at least will not tell us the nature of consciousness. 0:48:41.440 --> 0:48:46.320 For me, consciousness is the most foundational mystery. It's probably 0:48:46.360 --> 0:48:49.839 the foundational fact of reality. It's the kind of thing 0:48:50.680 --> 0:48:57.880 which science can't approach because science science sort of describes 0:48:57.920 --> 0:49:01.759 relations between things. Science uses the languge mathematics. It's like 0:49:01.840 --> 0:49:07.160 quantifying consciousness is a quality, there's qualitative, not the kind 0:49:07.160 --> 0:49:09.239 of thing that science can talk about. I did a 0:49:09.239 --> 0:49:12.080 panel not long ago that was hosted by Brian Cox. 0:49:12.360 --> 0:49:15.279 It was with some neuroscientists, one of whom was Anal Seth, 0:49:15.320 --> 0:49:17.720 a good friend of mine, and the other two whose 0:49:17.800 --> 0:49:19.520 names I forgotten. I'd only met them that one time, 0:49:19.760 --> 0:49:22.080 and they invited me because it was the show called 0:49:22.080 --> 0:49:24.080 A Question of Science, and they did all of these 0:49:24.120 --> 0:49:26.560 episodes and different scientific topics, and they did one on consciousness, 0:49:26.560 --> 0:49:30.320 and I think they wanted somebody who wasn't I guess 0:49:30.360 --> 0:49:32.880 like a neurosciencet. They want like a philosophical perspective. And 0:49:32.920 --> 0:49:35.400 I remember thinking, Okay, sure, I'll do this. I'm very 0:49:35.480 --> 0:49:37.800 grateful to be here if you really think that I'm 0:49:37.800 --> 0:49:40.200 an appropriate person. And I thought, well, what I can 0:49:40.239 --> 0:49:42.239 do is I can come along and I can talk 0:49:42.239 --> 0:49:45.120 about some philosophical perspectives. I can talk about pan psychism, 0:49:45.160 --> 0:49:47.759 I can talk about other traditions and stuff. And I 0:49:47.760 --> 0:49:50.560 remember before we started, Brian sort of looked at the 0:49:50.640 --> 0:49:53.200 questions that had been submitted by the audience and was 0:49:53.280 --> 0:49:54.719 kind of wanting to get rid of some of them 0:49:54.719 --> 0:49:56.960 because he was like, well, you know this stuff about 0:49:56.960 --> 0:49:59.600 like pan psychism and whatnot. I don't think we should 0:49:59.680 --> 0:50:02.280 really be spending any time on this kind of nonsense. 0:50:02.320 --> 0:50:04.520 And I was there. It was really awkward for me 0:50:04.560 --> 0:50:06.480 because I suddenly had to be like, oh, that's actually 0:50:07.160 --> 0:50:09.360 kind of what I'm what I'm here to do. We 0:50:09.440 --> 0:50:11.400 had this sort of slightly awkward conversation where I was 0:50:11.400 --> 0:50:14.840 a bit like, well, you know, I'm probably gonna mention it, 0:50:14.840 --> 0:50:16.480 and he's like, yeah, yeah, I mean good to at 0:50:16.560 --> 0:50:18.560 least you know, hear the view. I said, kind of 0:50:18.560 --> 0:50:21.799 that kind of thing. And then the show started, and look, 0:50:21.840 --> 0:50:24.240 I love these guys, you know, and they're obviously geniuses. 0:50:24.280 --> 0:50:26.160 And I know nothing about neuroscxs well not nothing, but 0:50:26.200 --> 0:50:28.799 you know, I'm not a neuroscientist, but it struck me. 0:50:29.320 --> 0:50:30.879 If you watch the first bit of this, the first 0:50:30.960 --> 0:50:33.600 question is what do we think? Consciousness is very difficult 0:50:33.600 --> 0:50:35.680 thing to define. I think it's impossible to precisely define. 0:50:35.680 --> 0:50:38.040 But a famous definition was given by Thomas Nagil in 0:50:38.080 --> 0:50:41.440 the seventies. To be conscious means there's something it is 0:50:41.560 --> 0:50:43.840 like to be you. There is something it is like 0:50:43.960 --> 0:50:46.839 to be this thing. Therefore it's conscious. It's like an 0:50:46.840 --> 0:50:50.800 inward sense of subjectivity. And we went round the panel 0:50:50.800 --> 0:50:53.000 and everyone agreed. Everyone was like, yeah, yeah, that's a 0:50:53.040 --> 0:50:55.360 great definition. I agree with that. That's fair enough. And 0:50:55.360 --> 0:50:58.960 the first question came, can we see consciousness in the brain? 0:51:00.040 --> 0:51:03.920 Great question, and one by one each of the neurosciences 0:51:03.920 --> 0:51:08.200 said some really interesting things, but I felt just hadn't 0:51:08.200 --> 0:51:10.879 answered the question. Ann I'll actually said at one point, 0:51:10.880 --> 0:51:12.239 you know, we can kind of put this question of 0:51:12.280 --> 0:51:15.120 like consciousness like to the to the side or on 0:51:15.120 --> 0:51:16.480 the shelf or something like that, and we can talk 0:51:16.520 --> 0:51:19.520 about like the brain activity that's going on when the 0:51:19.520 --> 0:51:22.840 conscious experience happens. And there was someone else who was 0:51:22.840 --> 0:51:27.080 talking about how when people have like hallucinations, it's like 0:51:27.680 --> 0:51:31.800 although to them they feel as real as actual site, 0:51:32.040 --> 0:51:35.399 different brain activity is happening when they think they see 0:51:35.400 --> 0:51:37.319 something when they do that's really intes it. That's great, 0:51:37.840 --> 0:51:39.960 This is all really interesting stuff about neuroscience. But it 0:51:40.000 --> 0:51:41.319 got around to me and I turned to the question 0:51:41.320 --> 0:51:43.000 and I was like, I think the answer is no. 0:51:43.360 --> 0:51:45.080 And I think what we've we've just heard has kind 0:51:45.080 --> 0:51:47.399 of proved that because what you're doing is you're talking 0:51:47.440 --> 0:51:50.080 about brain chemistry, you're talking about neurons, you're talking about 0:51:50.760 --> 0:51:54.240 the neural correlates of consciousness. You're not talking about consciousness itself. 0:51:54.680 --> 0:51:57.160 And I remember sitting there thinking like this is sort 0:51:57.160 --> 0:52:00.040 of quite strange to me because a lot of the 0:52:00.200 --> 0:52:02.239 sort of running threads throughout this one. I said, but like, 0:52:02.280 --> 0:52:04.279 what about the nature of what consciousness actually is? What 0:52:04.320 --> 0:52:07.960 about the explanation of like why we're conscious? There's sometimes 0:52:07.960 --> 0:52:10.759 this feeling of like, well, that's not really really a 0:52:10.800 --> 0:52:14.520 legitimate question. Yeah, it's enough to just describe the neural correlers. 0:52:14.560 --> 0:52:16.719 It's enough to just subscribe the brain activity. And I'm like, 0:52:16.920 --> 0:52:18.319 that's fair enough if that's what you think. If you 0:52:18.320 --> 0:52:21.000 don't think that's an interesting question, then fine, But then 0:52:21.000 --> 0:52:23.440 why are we here at an event called what is consciousness? 0:52:24.520 --> 0:52:26.759 It would sort of be like if we were at 0:52:27.280 --> 0:52:31.480 an event that was like talking about like football, and 0:52:31.560 --> 0:52:35.000 somebody asked about why the offside rull exists, and somebody 0:52:35.000 --> 0:52:37.200 started talking about how like, well, you know, it's a 0:52:37.200 --> 0:52:39.040 bit like in basketball where this how or is a 0:52:39.080 --> 0:52:40.480 bit like in cricket, or it's a bit like And 0:52:40.480 --> 0:52:42.880 then I said, but hold on, like I want to 0:52:42.920 --> 0:52:46.640 talk about like actually football. People might think I'm being 0:52:46.680 --> 0:52:48.719 a little unfair. I'd encouragem to just watch it themselves, 0:52:48.719 --> 0:52:51.960 like I don't mean to disparage these people, as I say, 0:52:52.000 --> 0:52:54.640 they are geniuses and they do very important work. But 0:52:54.680 --> 0:52:57.200 I think it's quite clear to me that when we're 0:52:57.200 --> 0:53:01.080 talking about what consciousness is not talking about the same thing. 0:53:01.600 --> 0:53:03.960 I'm talking about the experience. I'm talking about the redness 0:53:03.960 --> 0:53:06.800 of ret I'm talking about like the feeling of cold 0:53:06.840 --> 0:53:09.320 on your skin. I'm not talking about a neuron firing. 0:53:09.440 --> 0:53:10.880 And I don't think those are the same things. So 0:53:10.920 --> 0:53:14.919 that the common view amongst materialists is that experiences are 0:53:15.000 --> 0:53:17.719 just the same thing as brain activity. And I understand 0:53:17.760 --> 0:53:20.759 that thought, but they can't literally be the same thing. 0:53:20.880 --> 0:53:23.799 I'll tell you why. There's a law it's called Leibnitz's law, 0:53:24.320 --> 0:53:28.200 which says that if two things are identical, they share 0:53:28.400 --> 0:53:32.360 precisely the same properties. If X and Y are identical, 0:53:32.360 --> 0:53:34.520 that is, they are the same thing, then all of 0:53:34.520 --> 0:53:37.120 the properties of X are shared. By Why, you can't 0:53:37.160 --> 0:53:39.279 say that two things are the same And I don't 0:53:39.280 --> 0:53:41.040 mean the same kind of thing, I mean literally the 0:53:41.040 --> 0:53:43.480 same thing. But one of them is red and one 0:53:43.520 --> 0:53:46.319 of them is blue, or one of them is five 0:53:46.360 --> 0:53:47.879 sided and one of them is two sided. That would 0:53:47.920 --> 0:53:50.600 mean that they're different things. Even spatial location, they have 0:53:50.640 --> 0:53:52.480 all the same properties, except this one's in China and 0:53:52.480 --> 0:53:55.520 this one's in France. That means they're not identical. Let's 0:53:55.520 --> 0:53:59.239 think about the content of your mental experience, right you 0:53:59.280 --> 0:54:02.279 can imagine triangle in your head. I'm told that the 0:54:02.320 --> 0:54:05.319 triangle that I can literally see in my head right 0:54:05.360 --> 0:54:08.560 now is the same thing, the same thing as some 0:54:08.600 --> 0:54:10.719 neurons firing. I don't think so, because they don't have 0:54:10.760 --> 0:54:15.080 the same properties. The triangle has three sides. As a 0:54:15.120 --> 0:54:18.640 fact about the triangle in my head, the neurons firing 0:54:19.160 --> 0:54:22.440 that correlate with my experience of that triangle don't have 0:54:22.520 --> 0:54:26.920 three sides, meaning that you've got two sort of things 0:54:27.120 --> 0:54:30.320 with different sets of properties, meaning they can't literally be identical. 0:54:30.640 --> 0:54:34.040 Maybe one causes the other, maybe one emerges from the other. 0:54:34.160 --> 0:54:36.640 Maybe that's fine. We're not saying anything too crazy at 0:54:36.680 --> 0:54:39.000 the moment, but the idea that they are literally the 0:54:39.000 --> 0:54:42.279 same thing, I think just doesn't make much sense. 0:54:58.600 --> 0:55:01.880 With everything you just mentioned. How do you then explain 0:55:02.640 --> 0:55:04.920 what is a good life to a ten year old? 0:55:05.160 --> 0:55:08.120 I think one of the reasons why I wouldn't have 0:55:08.160 --> 0:55:10.200 a child at the moment is because I don't know 0:55:10.239 --> 0:55:11.200 how to answer that question. 0:55:11.480 --> 0:55:12.240 I love that answer. 0:55:12.400 --> 0:55:14.680 Yeah, it's a very serious question. If you don't have 0:55:14.719 --> 0:55:17.279 an idea of what makes the good life, then it's 0:55:17.320 --> 0:55:19.600 going to be very difficult to raise a child. I 0:55:19.600 --> 0:55:22.320 mean people say that when you choose your life partner, 0:55:22.760 --> 0:55:25.880 who's going to be the other parent to your child, 0:55:26.000 --> 0:55:27.960 So the mother or father of your child, depending on 0:55:27.960 --> 0:55:30.040 who you are, one of the most important things is 0:55:30.040 --> 0:55:33.399 that you're aligned on like core values and stuff. Why 0:55:33.480 --> 0:55:35.560 because when it comes to raising children, you'll have to 0:55:35.600 --> 0:55:37.520 have the same idea of what a good life is. Right, 0:55:38.160 --> 0:55:39.839 So in the same way, why you might not want 0:55:39.880 --> 0:55:42.319 to get married and have children with someone with whom 0:55:42.320 --> 0:55:45.680 you haven't aligned your fundamental values. I almost sort of 0:55:46.280 --> 0:55:48.560 am not married to myself in that way because there's 0:55:48.560 --> 0:55:53.319 too much internal conflict. I sort of I disagree with 0:55:54.080 --> 0:55:56.920 myself too much to have a good answer to that question. 0:55:57.040 --> 0:55:59.040 But also I'm not confident that I ever will. And 0:55:59.080 --> 0:56:02.879 so I think what people typically say is either they 0:56:02.920 --> 0:56:05.839 have a particular worldview and they say, well, the good 0:56:05.880 --> 0:56:08.440 life is to do what God commands. And that's kind 0:56:08.480 --> 0:56:10.239 of fair enough as well, because that still leaves room 0:56:10.239 --> 0:56:11.640 for the kid to go and work out who is 0:56:11.680 --> 0:56:13.960 God and what does God command? Right, It's actually quite broad, 0:56:14.440 --> 0:56:16.360 But I think if I were forced to say something, 0:56:16.760 --> 0:56:18.719 I would ask what they mean by good. You know, 0:56:18.760 --> 0:56:20.239 I'm not sure if this is the kid asking me, 0:56:21.040 --> 0:56:23.960 but the word good is a difficult thing to unpack. 0:56:24.040 --> 0:56:26.200 You know, there's morally good, or there's good in the 0:56:26.200 --> 0:56:27.960 sense that this is a good table because it holds 0:56:28.000 --> 0:56:29.759 things up, And some people think that's the same thing. 0:56:30.360 --> 0:56:34.359 But I think there are probably indicators of a good 0:56:34.400 --> 0:56:38.120 life that include like contentment and calm and lack of 0:56:38.160 --> 0:56:40.920 stress and that kind of stuff, confidence in the decisions 0:56:40.920 --> 0:56:43.399 that you've made. But I find it very difficult question 0:56:43.440 --> 0:56:43.759 to answer. 0:56:44.640 --> 0:56:46.880 Do you find that the way you think about life 0:56:47.000 --> 0:56:51.040 and the world stops you from living practically or can? 0:56:51.480 --> 0:56:53.080 Or how do you balance the two? How do you 0:56:53.120 --> 0:56:55.799 allow yourself to be someone who Because that's what I 0:56:55.800 --> 0:56:57.920 was trying to get at earlier, is that when you 0:56:58.040 --> 0:57:01.320 have even somewhat of a false can in your belief 0:57:01.360 --> 0:57:04.520 whatever that may be, life somewhat is easier to live 0:57:05.280 --> 0:57:07.960 because you just get on with it. And I consider 0:57:08.000 --> 0:57:10.200 myself to be someone who's who lives more in the 0:57:10.200 --> 0:57:13.359 middle and thinks things through too. But I realized that 0:57:13.360 --> 0:57:16.080 that comes with a lot of uncertainty in the sense 0:57:16.120 --> 0:57:19.760 that you could totally have one toe spin moment in 0:57:19.800 --> 0:57:21.640 your life because you're like, oh, well, wait a minute, 0:57:21.640 --> 0:57:23.080 I kind of believe that's true, and that's kind of 0:57:23.080 --> 0:57:25.400 not now. I prefer living like that because I think 0:57:25.440 --> 0:57:30.000 it leads to new learning and curiosity and change in transformation, 0:57:30.000 --> 0:57:33.520 which I think are actually better than just pretending to 0:57:33.600 --> 0:57:37.240 agree with something. But I guess where does your philosophy 0:57:37.240 --> 0:57:38.520 fail you in practical life. 0:57:39.040 --> 0:57:41.960 I think that most people don't live strictly according to 0:57:42.000 --> 0:57:46.480 philosophical principles. I think they develop philosophical principles based on 0:57:46.520 --> 0:57:50.360 how they live, agree like that like that, and I 0:57:50.400 --> 0:57:55.400 think that the best. So Wickenstein in his tract Artists, 0:57:56.160 --> 0:57:59.160 which is like a sort of very sort of mathematical 0:57:59.320 --> 0:58:03.959 quite short word, has this introduction and the first words 0:58:04.000 --> 0:58:08.280 he writes are, this book may only be of use 0:58:08.720 --> 0:58:12.400 to people who already agree with its contents. And I 0:58:12.400 --> 0:58:14.600 think that's so fair enough. This might seem like a 0:58:14.600 --> 0:58:16.440 weird thing to say in response to your question, but like, 0:58:17.040 --> 0:58:20.320 I don't think people just read like a philosophy and 0:58:20.320 --> 0:58:23.480 become convinced by it. I think they hear somebody put 0:58:23.560 --> 0:58:25.680 something they already kind of think in the right words 0:58:25.680 --> 0:58:26.000 and they. 0:58:25.920 --> 0:58:27.600 Go, yes, hey, I like that. 0:58:27.720 --> 0:58:30.520 Yeah, that's that's what I think, which is why I 0:58:30.560 --> 0:58:32.520 think people are sometimes a little bit confused. If they 0:58:32.560 --> 0:58:35.400 want to get into philosophy, they look up the hundred 0:58:35.440 --> 0:58:37.040 best philosophers and they think, okay, let's go and learn 0:58:37.080 --> 0:58:40.160 about it, and just out of the blue it says, oh, 0:58:40.200 --> 0:58:43.520 you should go and read like Jean Paul Sartre. So okay, 0:58:43.560 --> 0:58:44.760 So they pick it up and they read it and 0:58:44.760 --> 0:58:47.720 they're like, I don't really get this, you know, Oh, 0:58:47.720 --> 0:58:49.000 this doesn't make much sense to me. Now they read 0:58:49.000 --> 0:58:51.480 Spinosa and they're like, what's he talking about? I don't 0:58:51.480 --> 0:58:54.200 it's a bit mathsy. I don't really understand, right, And 0:58:54.240 --> 0:58:56.440 it's because that's not how philosophy is supposed to be done. 0:58:56.520 --> 0:58:58.800 People sometimes ask me, where would you recommend I start 0:58:58.800 --> 0:59:01.120 if you got any recommendations like how to get in philosophy, 0:59:01.160 --> 0:59:04.160 And my advice is always very simple, just read whatever 0:59:04.200 --> 0:59:06.240 you've heard of. And the reason for that is because 0:59:06.240 --> 0:59:08.080 if you've heard of someone, it means you've been in 0:59:08.120 --> 0:59:11.080 contexts where they have come up, right, Like if you 0:59:11.120 --> 0:59:14.120 listen to loads of Jordan Peterson, you'll have heard him 0:59:14.120 --> 0:59:16.800 talk about Nietzsche, Now you might never have read Nature, 0:59:16.800 --> 0:59:18.840 but the fact that you are so attracted to Peterson 0:59:19.080 --> 0:59:21.160 and the fact that he's so attracted to Nietzschure means 0:59:21.160 --> 0:59:22.720 it's likely if you read Nature, you're going to find 0:59:22.720 --> 0:59:25.560 something that you like in there. Right. Likewise, if you 0:59:25.680 --> 0:59:29.600 listen to Christian apologists on YouTube, you might have heard 0:59:29.640 --> 0:59:33.640 them talk about the Church Fathers or Augustin or people 0:59:33.680 --> 0:59:36.200 like this, and in which case, just read that, because 0:59:36.240 --> 0:59:38.280 there's a reason why you're attracted to the people who 0:59:38.280 --> 0:59:41.120 are attracted to those bits of content. Right, Because to 0:59:41.200 --> 0:59:43.160 some degree, you can read a philosophy and go, that's 0:59:43.200 --> 0:59:45.960 an interesting argument that makes sense, but you're not going 0:59:46.000 --> 0:59:48.240 to read it, and it sort of wash over you 0:59:48.240 --> 0:59:50.200 with this wave of conviction. I think unless you've already 0:59:50.200 --> 0:59:52.440 got one foot in that worldview, and it's just somebody 0:59:52.480 --> 0:59:54.160 has finally put into words what you were thinking this 0:59:54.200 --> 0:59:56.560 whole time. And so I think that we're very intuitive creatures, 0:59:56.600 --> 0:59:58.160 and I think that our philosophizing often. 0:59:58.000 --> 0:59:59.080 Gets in the way. 0:59:59.160 --> 1:00:02.400 I think that we according to our intuition and our 1:00:02.560 --> 1:00:05.840 emotional impulses all the time, and then we rationalize them 1:00:05.880 --> 1:00:08.560 after the fact, and then we debate about who was 1:00:08.640 --> 1:00:10.360 right and wrong, And there's so much to be said 1:00:10.360 --> 1:00:16.000 about this. For example, ethics really important branch of philosophy 1:00:16.880 --> 1:00:19.240 is what is wrong. You've got meta ethics, which is 1:00:19.240 --> 1:00:22.720 like defining what goodness is. You've got practical ethics, which 1:00:22.800 --> 1:00:25.240 is like particular case like studies. You know, what do 1:00:25.280 --> 1:00:27.720 we do in the case of abortion, euthanasia, that kind 1:00:27.760 --> 1:00:30.840 of stuff. And if you look at how people do ethics, 1:00:30.880 --> 1:00:35.680 it's extremely interesting. They'll come up with a theory, say utilitarianism, right, 1:00:36.200 --> 1:00:39.000 the right thing to do is to bring about the 1:00:39.080 --> 1:00:41.440 least suffering for the least number, or the most pleasure 1:00:41.480 --> 1:00:44.880 for the most people the fewest number, I should say. 1:00:45.560 --> 1:00:49.160 And someone says, okay, that sounds good. And then how 1:00:49.440 --> 1:00:54.080 would you test that theory? Oh, you think of a scenario? Okay, okay, 1:00:54.120 --> 1:00:58.800 but hold on. What if there was a healthy person 1:00:58.800 --> 1:01:00.960 who walked into a hospital and there were five people 1:01:00.960 --> 1:01:03.760 who needed organ transplants, and you could kill that innocent 1:01:03.800 --> 1:01:06.640 person steal their organs, and most people go, no, no, no doubt, 1:01:06.640 --> 1:01:08.600 that would be wrong. Okay, then we need to go 1:01:08.680 --> 1:01:12.520 back and revise our theory. Hold on, why I thought 1:01:12.560 --> 1:01:14.200 the whole point of having an ethical theory was to 1:01:14.240 --> 1:01:17.400 tell us what right and wrong are. But now you're saying, 1:01:17.440 --> 1:01:19.960 if you don't like the conclusion, you just go back 1:01:20.000 --> 1:01:22.800 and edit the theory. What's going on there. It's because 1:01:22.800 --> 1:01:26.520 we already have intuitions about the outcome and we have 1:01:26.560 --> 1:01:29.280 certain intuitions about the input. It's not as simple as 1:01:29.320 --> 1:01:31.640 like we're going to rationally work out what the standard 1:01:31.640 --> 1:01:33.160 of ethics is and then that will tell us what 1:01:33.200 --> 1:01:34.720 to do. It's like, we're going to come up with 1:01:34.720 --> 1:01:38.480 a kind of theory that captures how we already behave, 1:01:39.160 --> 1:01:40.960 and if it doesn't capture how we already behave, then 1:01:40.960 --> 1:01:42.960 we're going to edit it slightly. And so the process 1:01:42.960 --> 1:01:45.160 of meta ethics or practical ethics coming up with these 1:01:45.200 --> 1:01:47.960 theories is in many cases actually just working out what 1:01:48.000 --> 1:01:51.800 we already believe, but doing it precisely. It's like, you know, 1:01:51.880 --> 1:01:54.919 most people care about animals. They are animals, but then 1:01:55.040 --> 1:01:57.880 they pay for factory farming, okay, And you could have 1:01:57.920 --> 1:01:59.680 a discussion about this and you could say, well, actually, 1:02:00.080 --> 1:02:02.480 you know, I'm not sure. So their theory might be 1:02:02.560 --> 1:02:04.760 I think you should not cause unnecessary harm, and then 1:02:04.800 --> 1:02:06.840 you say, yeah, but you're palming animals and factory farms, 1:02:06.840 --> 1:02:09.240 and they go, oh, okay, maybe then we shouldn't and 1:02:09.240 --> 1:02:11.480 they'll go and edit the theory, because what you're doing 1:02:11.560 --> 1:02:13.520 is you're precisely working out what you already believe. 1:02:13.600 --> 1:02:17.040 Well, you're protecting your worldview. You're allowed to have your versions. 1:02:17.480 --> 1:02:19.240 Yeah, but it's not just to case. You're not just 1:02:19.320 --> 1:02:21.480 like protecting it defensively. You're just like, no, this is 1:02:21.520 --> 1:02:23.200 what I believe, and so I'm going to edit the theory. 1:02:23.320 --> 1:02:26.160 John Rules, the bolistical philosopher, had this concept of the 1:02:26.280 --> 1:02:29.400 reflective equilibrium, so he thought that what happened. You can 1:02:29.400 --> 1:02:32.720 sort of imagine this like machine right, and we have inputs, 1:02:33.040 --> 1:02:36.120 which are our theories about what's right and wrong, and 1:02:36.160 --> 1:02:39.720 those theories give us outputs. So we input a theory 1:02:39.720 --> 1:02:43.040 which sounds plausible we should minimize suffering, and it gives 1:02:43.080 --> 1:02:46.080 us an output like, well, then you should kill everyone instantly, 1:02:46.360 --> 1:02:48.240 and actually, don't, hold on, that's not quite right. So 1:02:48.280 --> 1:02:51.040 then you sort of you adapt the inca. It's like, okay, 1:02:51.040 --> 1:02:54.640 we actually need to minimize suffering without killing people. Also, 1:02:54.920 --> 1:02:56.400 you know, have some kind of pleasure, and then it 1:02:56.440 --> 1:02:58.520 puts out other outcomes and you sort of got this 1:02:58.680 --> 1:03:00.680 back and forth and the machine in the middle, like 1:03:00.760 --> 1:03:02.360 you know, mixes it all up and gives you the 1:03:02.360 --> 1:03:04.760 output and rules kind of says that the way this 1:03:04.920 --> 1:03:07.360 works is you come at it from like both sides. 1:03:08.080 --> 1:03:11.400 You've got intuitive like outcomes and you've got like intuitive 1:03:11.560 --> 1:03:14.160 theoretical suggestions, and you sort of do this back and forth, 1:03:14.160 --> 1:03:15.840 this tug of war between them until they kind of 1:03:15.880 --> 1:03:19.120 balance out a bit and you get this reflective equilibrium, 1:03:19.440 --> 1:03:20.920 and that that's what we're doing when we're coming up 1:03:20.920 --> 1:03:23.360 with theories. It is never as simple as somebody like 1:03:23.400 --> 1:03:25.080 writing a book and saying, right, I'm going to prove 1:03:25.280 --> 1:03:30.520 to you from first principles that abortion is wrong, specifically 1:03:30.560 --> 1:03:33.040 from the eighth week. That's never going to happen. Ever, 1:03:33.240 --> 1:03:35.440 They're going to rely on intuitions that you already have 1:03:36.120 --> 1:03:39.200 about people and the worth of humans and body autonomy, 1:03:39.200 --> 1:03:42.160 and they're going to convince you that way. So if 1:03:42.160 --> 1:03:44.920 you become really learned in the traditions of philosophy, that 1:03:44.960 --> 1:03:46.600 can be really interesting. But you'll notice that a lot 1:03:46.600 --> 1:03:49.680 of philosophers can talk about these big ideas with absolutely 1:03:49.720 --> 1:03:51.960 no personal investment in them. They'd be like, oh, you know, 1:03:52.080 --> 1:03:54.400 like so nietzsure thought that God was dead and that 1:03:54.440 --> 1:03:56.560 this was a great tragedy, and they're sort of talking 1:03:56.560 --> 1:03:59.439 it as this historical aspect. They've got zero personal sort 1:03:59.440 --> 1:04:01.480 of in there, and so they're obviously not going to 1:04:01.560 --> 1:04:03.520 use that to like guide their life in any way, 1:04:03.720 --> 1:04:05.440 and if they did, it would just lead to confusion. 1:04:05.760 --> 1:04:07.840 There's like a skit I saw once. I think, like 1:04:08.840 --> 1:04:12.200 someone's on an airplane and they're dying, and you know, 1:04:12.240 --> 1:04:14.280 they're like, is there a doctor on board? And someone 1:04:14.320 --> 1:04:16.240 shows up and says, I'm a doctor. I'm a doctor 1:04:16.280 --> 1:04:18.720 of philosophy, and they're like, oh, well, what should we do? 1:04:18.760 --> 1:04:20.160 We need to dave this man, and it's like, well, 1:04:20.360 --> 1:04:22.520 you know, the utilitarian would say that we should take 1:04:22.560 --> 1:04:25.080 resources from other people, but then the deontologists would say 1:04:25.080 --> 1:04:27.240 that that would upset their rights, and then well, if 1:04:27.240 --> 1:04:29.000 you're a Christian, maybe we should and then they just 1:04:29.080 --> 1:04:31.480 die right because you're spaying too much time sort of 1:04:31.480 --> 1:04:33.280 going back and forth. I don't think that's how people 1:04:33.360 --> 1:04:36.600 actually behave, right, and I think there's some there's some 1:04:36.720 --> 1:04:39.560 like neurological evidence for this to do with the two 1:04:39.600 --> 1:04:42.120 hemispheres of your brain, which is another thing I'm fascinated by. 1:04:42.160 --> 1:04:45.000 I think the most significant fact, perhaps in the world, 1:04:45.600 --> 1:04:48.240 is that your brain is divided into two hemispheres. 1:04:48.400 --> 1:04:50.600 Why do you think that's the most significant fact in the. 1:04:50.520 --> 1:04:54.760 World, Because if you are essentially your brain, which okay, 1:04:54.760 --> 1:04:56.520 I don't think consciousness is the same thing as the brain, 1:04:56.560 --> 1:04:58.960 but they're clearly connected, right, And the thing that at 1:04:59.040 --> 1:05:02.040 least gives you self, I don't think it produces consciousness, 1:05:02.040 --> 1:05:04.760 just to be crystal clear, but I think self heard. 1:05:04.760 --> 1:05:06.640 The thing that gives you your unified sense of self 1:05:06.760 --> 1:05:09.000 is essentially your brain and maybe the rest of your 1:05:09.040 --> 1:05:13.160 sort of neural system. And the fact that everywhere we look, 1:05:13.200 --> 1:05:15.840 every neural system we find there's some kind of asymmetrical 1:05:15.920 --> 1:05:19.240 division in the brain. There's some evolutionarily strong reason to 1:05:19.520 --> 1:05:24.240 keep two separate hemispheres has to be super significant. That's 1:05:24.280 --> 1:05:27.520 like the nature of you, that's your nature. Your nature 1:05:27.560 --> 1:05:31.520 is fundamentally lateralized. Your two hemispheres are kind of involved 1:05:31.560 --> 1:05:34.240 in different ways of thinking. It's never quite as simple 1:05:34.240 --> 1:05:36.560 as people think. I mean, Ian Mcgilchris is the person 1:05:36.560 --> 1:05:40.000 to read on this. In culture, it's like the right 1:05:40.040 --> 1:05:43.160 brain is creative and intuitive and the left brain is 1:05:43.320 --> 1:05:47.280 mathsy and rational. It's not as simple as that mcgilchris 1:05:47.400 --> 1:05:49.400 likes to say that the two hemispheres sort of attend 1:05:49.440 --> 1:05:52.720 to the world in different ways. The left brain is 1:05:52.960 --> 1:05:57.120 about sort of manipulation and the right brain is more 1:05:57.120 --> 1:06:00.280 like big picture, and we know that this is this case. 1:06:00.320 --> 1:06:02.680 I mean Mcgilchris's theory is that the reason this occurs 1:06:02.720 --> 1:06:04.880 is because as an organism, you need to be simultaneously 1:06:04.920 --> 1:06:07.960 looking out for like prey, You need to be manipulating 1:06:07.960 --> 1:06:10.240 your environment while looking out for predators at the same time. 1:06:10.520 --> 1:06:12.360 And there's some evidence to suggest that this is the case. 1:06:12.960 --> 1:06:15.520 Birds have eyes on either side of their head or 1:06:15.560 --> 1:06:17.840 lizards which have eyes on the sides of their head 1:06:18.240 --> 1:06:21.120 are really useful because the right eye feeds the left 1:06:21.680 --> 1:06:24.240 hemisphere and the left eye feeds the right hemisphere. With us, 1:06:24.320 --> 1:06:26.440 it's complicated because they're on the front. So with animals 1:06:26.480 --> 1:06:29.000 on the side, it's much easier. And there's evidence of birds, 1:06:29.000 --> 1:06:32.880 for example, if they're like building a nest, they will 1:06:32.920 --> 1:06:36.960 favor using their right eye, even when it makes it 1:06:37.000 --> 1:06:39.720 more difficult because the left brain is engaged in the 1:06:39.760 --> 1:06:42.280 manipulation stuff. And likewise, you know, you could put a 1:06:42.280 --> 1:06:44.240 lizard in a room and put a predator and it 1:06:44.280 --> 1:06:45.919 will look at the predator where this is left eye. 1:06:46.000 --> 1:06:48.560 Even if you cover up its left eye, it will 1:06:48.560 --> 1:06:50.400 still try to look at it with the left eye right. 1:06:50.520 --> 1:06:52.320 So there's some evidence to suggest this is the case, 1:06:52.760 --> 1:06:54.560 and the same kind of thing is going on with us. 1:06:54.840 --> 1:06:56.800 We've got these two brains and they kind of do 1:06:56.880 --> 1:06:59.640 different things. And so have you ever come across split 1:06:59.640 --> 1:07:04.640 brain page? This was my favorite thing to discover ever 1:07:04.840 --> 1:07:09.960 in history. Is really famous within like brain science. I 1:07:10.000 --> 1:07:13.200 suppose the two hemispheres are connected by this tissue called 1:07:13.200 --> 1:07:18.560 the corpus colossum, this sort of bundle of tissues they 1:07:18.680 --> 1:07:21.960 used to be this treatment for extreme cases of epilepsy 1:07:22.400 --> 1:07:25.760 called a corpus calisotomy, which is where the connection is severed. 1:07:26.720 --> 1:07:29.040 Epilepsy is like an electrical storm in the brain, and 1:07:29.080 --> 1:07:31.320 so one way to try to minimize it was literally 1:07:31.360 --> 1:07:34.560 just to cut the two hemispheres at their connective tissue. 1:07:35.040 --> 1:07:37.080 And so people who've had this operation done were known 1:07:37.080 --> 1:07:40.360 as split brain patients. Because their hemispheres have been disconnected, 1:07:40.960 --> 1:07:43.720 they can still communicate slightly through other means, but their 1:07:43.760 --> 1:07:46.600 main source of communication is inhibited. If you met one 1:07:46.600 --> 1:07:49.720 of these people, you wouldn't know they're just perfectly normal. 1:07:49.760 --> 1:07:51.520 They'll speak to you like I'm speaking to you now. 1:07:51.840 --> 1:07:55.959 Everything's totally fine. But in experimental conditions you can prove 1:07:56.040 --> 1:08:00.560 some really weird things. For example, speech and language of 1:08:00.560 --> 1:08:03.480 communication is broadly speaking, governed by the front left part 1:08:03.480 --> 1:08:07.440 of your brain left hemisphere. Remember, the left hemisphere controls 1:08:07.480 --> 1:08:09.640 like the right hand side of your body and the 1:08:09.720 --> 1:08:11.840 right hemisphere controls the left hand side of your body. 1:08:12.560 --> 1:08:14.160 So with humans, because our eyes are on the front, 1:08:14.720 --> 1:08:17.559 our right visual field goes to the left brain and 1:08:17.560 --> 1:08:19.640 our left visual field goes to the right brain. So 1:08:19.840 --> 1:08:21.519 in a split brain patient, they look at a screen. 1:08:21.560 --> 1:08:23.400 You can watch this experiment on YouTube. By the way, 1:08:23.560 --> 1:08:25.519 they're looking at a screen and on the right hand 1:08:25.560 --> 1:08:27.080 side of the screen it or flash a word, so 1:08:27.120 --> 1:08:29.839 it goes to their left hemisphere and it will say umbrella, 1:08:29.880 --> 1:08:33.960 and they'll say umbrella, car, car, chair, chair. Then they'll 1:08:33.960 --> 1:08:35.559 flash a word on the left hand side of the screen, 1:08:35.600 --> 1:08:38.599 so just the right hemisphere, and it will say cowboy hat. 1:08:38.760 --> 1:08:42.280 And they'll say, I didn't see anything. I didn't see anything. 1:08:42.280 --> 1:08:44.040 I don't know what you're talking about. And then the 1:08:44.040 --> 1:08:47.120 experimenter gives them a pencil in their left hand and 1:08:47.120 --> 1:08:50.080 tells them to draw something, and they draw a cowboy 1:08:50.080 --> 1:08:54.160 hat because the right hemisphere and so the left hand 1:08:54.200 --> 1:08:56.599 can draw it. But if you ask them, they'll say 1:08:56.640 --> 1:08:59.360 that they didn't see it. Wow, because the left hemisphere, 1:08:59.400 --> 1:09:02.400 which controls speech. Broadly that's a bit of an oversimplification, 1:09:02.479 --> 1:09:05.719 but broadly speaking, didn't see it, and so they can't 1:09:05.920 --> 1:09:07.400 tell you that they saw it. So they saw it 1:09:07.439 --> 1:09:10.280 and they didn't see it at the same time. So fascinating, right. 1:09:10.400 --> 1:09:12.160 I means you've kind of got these two brains that 1:09:12.200 --> 1:09:14.680 are both doing different things. And I think the most 1:09:14.680 --> 1:09:18.760 significant experiment of this kind is where And bear in mind, 1:09:18.760 --> 1:09:22.360 these people are agreeing, and thankfully so, they've already been 1:09:22.360 --> 1:09:24.200 through a traumatic experience and now they're agreeing to do 1:09:24.240 --> 1:09:28.639 these experiments. They're waiting instructions, right, So you can flash 1:09:28.640 --> 1:09:30.800 an instruction to the right hemisphere of the brain and 1:09:30.920 --> 1:09:33.080 the instruction will say something like get up and walk 1:09:33.080 --> 1:09:35.840 over to the window. So the patient stands up and 1:09:35.840 --> 1:09:39.000 they walk over to the window, and then the instructor says, 1:09:39.800 --> 1:09:41.800 why did you just do that? And you know what 1:09:41.840 --> 1:09:43.960 they say. It would be weird enough if they said 1:09:44.000 --> 1:09:46.240 I don't know, right, but they don't they make something 1:09:46.320 --> 1:09:50.360 up and they believe it. It's called confabulation, right, Like 1:09:50.400 --> 1:09:53.960 they say something like, oh, I was getting a bit 1:09:54.320 --> 1:09:56.600 warm and I just wanted some fresh air. We know 1:09:56.760 --> 1:10:00.000 that's not why they did, but their left brain hasn 1:10:00.000 --> 1:10:03.040 convinced them that that is why they did it. Now, 1:10:03.040 --> 1:10:05.160 the reason I'm talking about all of this is because 1:10:05.200 --> 1:10:07.200 this has given rise to the idea that the left 1:10:07.200 --> 1:10:10.960 brain is the so called interpreter, that the right brain 1:10:11.080 --> 1:10:13.880 kind of intuitively does stuff and then the left brain 1:10:14.240 --> 1:10:18.040 retrospectively sort of rationalizes and justifies that behavior. In split 1:10:18.040 --> 1:10:20.920 brain patients, you can prove it experimentally, but the idea 1:10:20.960 --> 1:10:22.640 is in healthy brains you couldn't prove it, but the 1:10:22.640 --> 1:10:24.519 same thing might be going on. So you know when 1:10:24.520 --> 1:10:26.840 you see someone who like they're arguing with the taxi 1:10:26.960 --> 1:10:29.559 driver and you're like, why are you shouting at that guy? 1:10:29.560 --> 1:10:31.000 And they're like, because you know he didn't give me 1:10:31.000 --> 1:10:33.519 my change, and you're like, well, actually, the reason you're 1:10:33.520 --> 1:10:35.680 shouting at him is because your dog died yesterday. That's 1:10:35.680 --> 1:10:38.439 the real reason the you're shouting at him. Like, we 1:10:38.520 --> 1:10:40.000 know that this kind of thing happens all the time, 1:10:40.000 --> 1:10:42.400 but I think it happens like literally all the time. 1:10:42.439 --> 1:10:44.679 I think, like so much of our decision making, which 1:10:44.720 --> 1:10:47.120 is intuitively move throughout the world, and then our left 1:10:47.120 --> 1:10:50.519 brain interprets what we've done and rationalizes it after the fact. 1:10:50.720 --> 1:10:52.960 And I think that so much of our philosophizing is 1:10:53.040 --> 1:10:55.320 like this is very like left brain dominant, and Ian 1:10:55.360 --> 1:10:57.559 mcgilchris says that one of the problems that we face 1:10:58.040 --> 1:11:01.439 as a sort of society is that we've become too 1:11:01.640 --> 1:11:05.040 left brain dominant in our thinking. Everything is sort of 1:11:05.680 --> 1:11:09.960 hyper rationalized and discreet, sort of abstracted, and none of 1:11:10.000 --> 1:11:12.360 it is intuitive, none of it is flux, none of 1:11:12.400 --> 1:11:15.519 it is continuous. But that is the nature of reality. 1:11:15.560 --> 1:11:18.400 So Immigochus's first book was called The Master and his Emissary. 1:11:18.920 --> 1:11:22.080 The Master and his Emissary, and the idea is that 1:11:22.120 --> 1:11:23.760 the right brain does stuff and the left brain is 1:11:23.760 --> 1:11:26.080 the emissary. But there's this, there's some kind of myths 1:11:26.160 --> 1:11:29.040 or story where an emissary thinks that he can do 1:11:29.040 --> 1:11:30.800 the job of the master, so he kills the master 1:11:30.840 --> 1:11:32.720 and then ends up doing a terrible job, and he 1:11:32.800 --> 1:11:34.559 kind of thinks that's what's happened with our left brain. 1:11:34.760 --> 1:11:36.439 So the reason that I brought that up is because 1:11:36.439 --> 1:11:40.120 when you asked, like, how do you sort of navigate 1:11:40.160 --> 1:11:42.720 the world not having a certain philosophy, I think we 1:11:42.800 --> 1:11:45.880 all navigate the world extremely intuitively, and that when we 1:11:45.960 --> 1:11:48.840 come up with reasons and explanations for our behaviors, a 1:11:48.880 --> 1:11:51.560 lot of the time those are like post hoc rationalizations 1:11:51.560 --> 1:11:54.600 without us even realizing it. It also has profound implications 1:11:54.600 --> 1:11:57.040 for free will, of course, because we think you know 1:11:57.080 --> 1:11:59.880 why you performed a particular action, But is that just 1:12:00.000 --> 1:12:01.680 because your brain is convinced you that that's why you 1:12:01.720 --> 1:12:03.760 did it when it's not the real reason. And the 1:12:03.840 --> 1:12:05.439 very least, whatever the reason is, it's something that the 1:12:06.160 --> 1:12:08.080 left brain might not be able to communicate because it 1:12:08.120 --> 1:12:10.000 might be a very right brain kind of thing. But yeah, 1:12:10.000 --> 1:12:11.680 these split brain patients. I mean, I don't know if 1:12:11.720 --> 1:12:13.040 you agree. I think that it's one of the most 1:12:13.040 --> 1:12:15.639 significant facts in the world because also it might interest 1:12:15.840 --> 1:12:17.920 you if you if you're interested in the Indian traditions 1:12:17.920 --> 1:12:20.920 that we were talking about earlier, like the concept of 1:12:20.960 --> 1:12:26.360 the self right. Once you have experimental evidence that an 1:12:26.400 --> 1:12:30.479 individual self can both see something and not see it 1:12:30.520 --> 1:12:33.560 at the same time, I think that has profound implications 1:12:33.560 --> 1:12:36.120 for the idea of the unity of personhood, like how 1:12:36.120 --> 1:12:38.040 many people are there there? If you want to say 1:12:38.080 --> 1:12:40.280 there's only one person, you have to admit a literal 1:12:40.280 --> 1:12:42.920 contradiction that it is both true and false that they 1:12:42.960 --> 1:12:44.840 saw it, which you can't do. That has to be 1:12:44.840 --> 1:12:46.760 like a part of them which saw it at the 1:12:46.840 --> 1:12:48.479 very least, you have to say part of them saw 1:12:48.479 --> 1:12:50.760 it impartment in and immediately, at the very least what 1:12:50.760 --> 1:12:52.280 you've done, as you said that the self can be 1:12:52.320 --> 1:12:57.160 split into parts. That's hugely profound because if your left 1:12:57.200 --> 1:13:00.720 brain and your right brain can have inde pendant sort 1:13:00.760 --> 1:13:04.160 of centers of awareness and yet somehow are also part 1:13:04.200 --> 1:13:06.640 of this one connective thing. I think that has some 1:13:06.680 --> 1:13:08.639 profound implications to the fact that I've got a brain 1:13:08.680 --> 1:13:10.160 and you've got a brain. But there are a great 1:13:10.200 --> 1:13:12.519 many philosophical traditions who think that we're all sort of 1:13:12.520 --> 1:13:14.639 part of one great, big thing. It at least opens 1:13:14.640 --> 1:13:17.240 a door to all kinds of interesting It's sort of 1:13:17.240 --> 1:13:18.760 like when I tell people this, if they haven't heard 1:13:18.800 --> 1:13:22.000 about split brain patients, they're sort of like, what really, 1:13:22.120 --> 1:13:25.320 I'm like, yeah, Like this stuff is way more complicated 1:13:25.360 --> 1:13:27.600 and way more weird than I think a lot of 1:13:27.640 --> 1:13:28.880 people realize is. 1:13:28.840 --> 1:13:30.880 There anything that we can do to activate a right 1:13:30.920 --> 1:13:31.400 brain more? 1:13:31.680 --> 1:13:33.960 That's a question for Ian McGilchrist, but I mean, I 1:13:34.160 --> 1:13:37.639 don't know, but I would guess that like tuning in 1:13:37.680 --> 1:13:40.200 to the way that the right brain is supposed to 1:13:40.200 --> 1:13:42.760 attend to the world and read McGilchrist on this, and 1:13:42.840 --> 1:13:45.240 just try to tune into that part of your self 1:13:45.479 --> 1:13:48.680 to try to recognize that there is a part of 1:13:48.760 --> 1:13:52.280 reality that consists in that kind of stuff that escapes 1:13:52.960 --> 1:13:56.360 the sort of hyper rationalization of left brain ways of thinking. 1:13:56.560 --> 1:13:58.400 And I think a lot of that comes through, like 1:13:58.760 --> 1:14:00.599 people are said to be a bit more left brained 1:14:00.680 --> 1:14:03.800 or a bit more right brained, and in culture that 1:14:04.160 --> 1:14:06.000 tends to manifest us like if your right brain you 1:14:06.080 --> 1:14:09.040 like sort of music and art and poetry. Left handedness 1:14:09.080 --> 1:14:11.800 was associated with creativity for a long time. Although that 1:14:11.800 --> 1:14:13.439 would be a quite fun fact, I think that's actually 1:14:13.439 --> 1:14:16.240 not true. That's not connected in that way. But like, 1:14:16.320 --> 1:14:18.479 culturally we have these sort of associations, and I think 1:14:18.479 --> 1:14:20.720 that they don't give you a tool a very good 1:14:20.720 --> 1:14:22.920 picture of what's actually happening with the brain, but I 1:14:22.920 --> 1:14:24.560 think it can be a sort of good way of 1:14:24.600 --> 1:14:26.960 thinking about the kinds of practices and ways of thinking 1:14:26.960 --> 1:14:28.920 that you might want to engage with to stop being 1:14:28.960 --> 1:14:31.639 so hygh irrational, and also pay attention. When you are 1:14:32.080 --> 1:14:35.320 convinced that you know why you're doing something, just step 1:14:35.360 --> 1:14:37.800 back and really think about what might be going into it. 1:14:37.800 --> 1:14:39.360 It's literally what I said at the beginning of this 1:14:39.400 --> 1:14:41.839 conversation when I said, you know, why are you an atheist? 1:14:42.120 --> 1:14:45.320 It's because the contingency argument for God's existence is unsound, 1:14:46.080 --> 1:14:48.759 or it's because my parents divorced when I was nine. 1:14:49.000 --> 1:14:50.799 The first of those is a very left brain answer. 1:14:50.960 --> 1:14:52.639 The second of those is a very right brain answer. 1:14:52.960 --> 1:14:54.519 And so if you're having an argument with your wife, 1:14:54.560 --> 1:14:57.320 you know C. S. Lewis in The Screwtape Letters, which 1:14:57.360 --> 1:15:02.160 is a wonderful little novel where there's this like demonic undersecretary, 1:15:02.520 --> 1:15:04.639 like this sort of a demonic civil service, and this 1:15:04.680 --> 1:15:08.280 demon has been tasked with a particular human who he's 1:15:08.280 --> 1:15:11.240 trying to make into an atheist. And one of the 1:15:11.280 --> 1:15:14.880 instructions that he has is like, when this person has 1:15:14.880 --> 1:15:17.280 an argument with his wife, convince him that they're arguing 1:15:17.280 --> 1:15:20.439 about the dishes when they're not really, because he's going 1:15:20.479 --> 1:15:21.840 to come home and he's going to say, you know, 1:15:22.520 --> 1:15:23.760 his wife is going to say, you didn't do the 1:15:23.760 --> 1:15:25.680 dishes today, and he's going to go, oh, for goodness sake, 1:15:25.680 --> 1:15:26.000 I've had a. 1:15:26.000 --> 1:15:26.639 Long day at work. 1:15:26.680 --> 1:15:28.080 And she's going to go, yeah, but you never do 1:15:28.120 --> 1:15:29.840 the bloody and he's going to really, you, you wanna 1:15:29.880 --> 1:15:31.400 raise your voice of me right now because I didn't 1:15:31.400 --> 1:15:34.040 do the dishes this morning. Because it's not about the dishes. 1:15:34.200 --> 1:15:36.080 She's not saying you didn't do the dishes. She's saying 1:15:36.120 --> 1:15:37.479 I feel like you don't pull you weight around the 1:15:37.520 --> 1:15:38.720 house and you don't listen to me, and I don't 1:15:38.720 --> 1:15:39.200 feel hurt. 1:15:39.400 --> 1:15:39.559 Now. 1:15:39.600 --> 1:15:42.040 This is very sort of like self helpy type stuff. 1:15:42.080 --> 1:15:43.600 You know, you sit on podcasts like this and you 1:15:43.680 --> 1:15:45.479 sort of go, like you know, and like, really you 1:15:45.520 --> 1:15:47.240 need to like listen to your But like I think, 1:15:47.439 --> 1:15:52.680 very specifically, we are literally becoming convinced that, like we 1:15:52.800 --> 1:15:55.479 know why we are acting and behaving in particular ways 1:15:55.800 --> 1:15:58.720 when we're not because our left brain is rationalizing things 1:15:58.720 --> 1:16:00.680 for us. So just take a step back, think a 1:16:00.680 --> 1:16:03.800 bit more intuitively about like what's going on in a 1:16:04.080 --> 1:16:06.880 very sort of non rational, abstracted kind of way. Don't 1:16:06.920 --> 1:16:09.040 try to think about this individual case and go, okay, 1:16:09.160 --> 1:16:11.479 let's let's trace the logic just like step back and 1:16:11.479 --> 1:16:14.280 like feel for a minute, you know, like like reintegrate 1:16:14.320 --> 1:16:17.679 feeling into your life. That's that's probably a helpful starting point. 1:16:34.360 --> 1:16:36.760 Alex, thank you so much. What a joy talking to you. 1:16:36.760 --> 1:16:39.599 I feel like I've totally had my mind expanded today 1:16:39.640 --> 1:16:42.400 and stretched in so many different directions. Yeah, both both 1:16:42.400 --> 1:16:44.920 on both sides. I wanted to end with you on 1:16:45.040 --> 1:16:47.120 what we do on the show called the Final Five, 1:16:47.160 --> 1:16:49.200 but I've kind of edited it for you because I 1:16:49.280 --> 1:16:50.880 felt there are a few more questions I want to 1:16:50.920 --> 1:16:53.080 take in there, so my end up being a final ten. 1:16:53.520 --> 1:16:56.200 These questions have to be answered in one sentence, Maxim Sure, okay, 1:16:56.360 --> 1:16:59.800 and so Alex O'Connor, these are your final ten only 1:16:59.840 --> 1:17:03.040 mad for you, Brought to you by State Farm. What's 1:17:03.040 --> 1:17:05.519 the hardest question you've ever asked yourself? 1:17:06.760 --> 1:17:08.000 What is consciousness? 1:17:08.479 --> 1:17:11.679 If you're wrong about everything you believe? Which belief would 1:17:11.760 --> 1:17:13.040 hurt most? 1:17:13.680 --> 1:17:15.000 That my friends and family love me? 1:17:16.960 --> 1:17:20.599 Great answer? What do you think is the most dangerous idea? 1:17:20.760 --> 1:17:22.920 People believe without questioning. 1:17:24.160 --> 1:17:29.080 That we can have certainty about the will of the 1:17:29.120 --> 1:17:35.320 creator of the universe? And that it's engaged in the 1:17:35.360 --> 1:17:38.759 peculiarities of human affairs and human political affairs. 1:17:39.479 --> 1:17:42.200 That one sentence, that that counts. That counts. You've got 1:17:42.240 --> 1:17:44.920 it all out in one breath. That counts. What do 1:17:44.960 --> 1:17:47.799 you think people are most afraid to admit about life? 1:17:48.520 --> 1:17:49.400 That it comes to an end? 1:17:50.120 --> 1:17:51.639 I wanted to talk to you about that as a 1:17:51.680 --> 1:17:55.840 final theme. Why does death feel so unnatural? You've talked 1:17:55.840 --> 1:17:58.320 about consciousness. What have you learned about death? 1:17:58.560 --> 1:17:59.840 Well, there are a few answers to that. You said 1:17:59.840 --> 1:18:01.920 by death feels so unnatural, which is a weird way 1:18:01.960 --> 1:18:03.920 of putting it, But I think, like you think, it's 1:18:03.920 --> 1:18:08.000 a weird way for many people. Death is a part 1:18:08.040 --> 1:18:11.880 of nature. But it's interesting to hear say unnatural because 1:18:11.920 --> 1:18:14.679 there are philosophical traditions, like if you're someone who believes 1:18:14.760 --> 1:18:17.880 that life exists after death, you'll either believe that because 1:18:17.880 --> 1:18:20.439 you think that we're going to like heaven and this 1:18:20.600 --> 1:18:24.559 mortal realm is sort of a purgatory realm of sorts, 1:18:25.200 --> 1:18:27.800 or maybe you think that we're all made of consciousness 1:18:27.800 --> 1:18:29.559 and we're all going to sort of reintegrate into Brahmen. 1:18:29.640 --> 1:18:33.240 You know. Either way, that would mean that our true 1:18:33.320 --> 1:18:38.960 nature is Brahman for want of a better term, right now, 1:18:39.479 --> 1:18:44.799 and that the divided physical biological selves that we currently 1:18:44.800 --> 1:18:47.720 inhabit are not our real selves. Right This is one 1:18:47.760 --> 1:18:50.680 of the biggest teachings of advice Vedanta is that you 1:18:51.720 --> 1:18:55.240 yourself is an illusion. There is one self, the app man. 1:18:55.320 --> 1:18:57.719 It's oneself, and that utman is the same thing as Brahman. 1:18:57.760 --> 1:19:00.639 There's just one great, big thing such that the thing 1:19:00.640 --> 1:19:03.040 that comes to an end when you die is not yourself, 1:19:03.840 --> 1:19:06.680 it's or other. It's the illusion of yourself, but it's 1:19:06.680 --> 1:19:08.799 not the self. The self persists, the self is eternal. 1:19:08.960 --> 1:19:13.679 It's another sort of huge theme of the Hindu scriptures. 1:19:14.240 --> 1:19:16.360 And so to hear you describe death as unnatural, it's 1:19:16.400 --> 1:19:18.519 kind of interesting because these people would say that's because 1:19:18.560 --> 1:19:21.800 it's not natural, because your true nature is eternal. The 1:19:21.880 --> 1:19:26.160 self is eternal, and what you're calling yourself is actually unnatural, 1:19:26.160 --> 1:19:27.439 and that's the thing that will come to an end. 1:19:27.640 --> 1:19:31.160 So some people might answer that for me, like, death 1:19:31.200 --> 1:19:33.320 is terrifying, and it can be terrifying for two reasons. 1:19:33.439 --> 1:19:35.920 One is that you think it's lights off and everything 1:19:35.920 --> 1:19:37.840 comes to an end. The other is that you think 1:19:37.880 --> 1:19:39.719 there is something after death and it's. 1:19:39.560 --> 1:19:41.080 Bad, right. 1:19:41.120 --> 1:19:45.599 People are genuinely terrified of concepts of hell and divine 1:19:45.720 --> 1:19:48.559 torment for the behaviors that they engage in while they 1:19:48.560 --> 1:19:51.120 were alive. And a lot of that comes from like 1:19:51.160 --> 1:19:55.000 religious upbringings, in particular doctrines about the nature of hell, 1:19:55.040 --> 1:19:58.719 which I think are not very biblical to say the least. 1:19:59.000 --> 1:20:00.800 But there's sort of two flavor fear there on the 1:20:00.840 --> 1:20:04.760 hell stuff. It requires essentially a mess physical investigation into 1:20:04.800 --> 1:20:07.080 the nature of God and whether that God would allow 1:20:08.000 --> 1:20:11.479 such suffering for finite crimes. But with the lights off 1:20:11.560 --> 1:20:13.000 kind of thing, which I think more people are kind 1:20:13.000 --> 1:20:14.880 of freaked out by. You know, some people say, oh, 1:20:14.920 --> 1:20:16.639 but it's you know, it's like before I was born, 1:20:16.920 --> 1:20:18.799 you know, like I was I was dead for thousands 1:20:18.840 --> 1:20:20.840 of years before I was born, and it never bothered me. 1:20:21.840 --> 1:20:23.840 That helps some people because it at least makes you 1:20:23.880 --> 1:20:26.040 realize that you're not going to experience it, you know, 1:20:26.080 --> 1:20:29.320 if the lights really go off. Then Epicurus famously said, 1:20:29.360 --> 1:20:31.760 you know, like if like when is death bad, it 1:20:31.800 --> 1:20:34.080 can't be bad now because I'm not dead, and it 1:20:34.120 --> 1:20:35.720 can't be bad for me when I'm dead because there's 1:20:35.720 --> 1:20:37.280 no me. So there's no point at which it can 1:20:37.320 --> 1:20:39.920 be true. Like Epicurus kind of wants to say, if 1:20:39.920 --> 1:20:42.400 something is true, there has to be a time at 1:20:42.439 --> 1:20:44.760 which it's true. There's to be some time at which 1:20:44.840 --> 1:20:46.559 this fact is true. So if the fact is death 1:20:46.600 --> 1:20:48.200 is bad for me, my death is bad for me, 1:20:48.560 --> 1:20:50.880 when is that? Facts true? Can't be true now because 1:20:50.880 --> 1:20:52.519 I'm not dead, can't be true related because there's no 1:20:52.600 --> 1:20:55.200 meat and people hear that and they go are very clever. 1:20:55.760 --> 1:20:57.639 They don't really they doesn't really see much, right, Yeah, 1:20:57.640 --> 1:21:00.840 because again that's a very left, very But I'm still 1:21:00.920 --> 1:21:04.640 kind of concerned right because of my convictions about the 1:21:04.720 --> 1:21:09.960 nature of consciousness. I'm at least agnostic enough about sort 1:21:10.000 --> 1:21:14.040 of experiences, by which I mean like experiences with an apostrophe, 1:21:14.160 --> 1:21:18.400 experiences connection to physicality. I'm agnostic enough about that that 1:21:18.520 --> 1:21:20.600 I'm kind of not super worried about the death of 1:21:20.600 --> 1:21:22.639 my physical body. I have no idea what's going to happen. 1:21:23.040 --> 1:21:24.920 I do know that if I if I do die 1:21:24.920 --> 1:21:26.320 and it all just sort of huts off, then I 1:21:26.360 --> 1:21:28.800 won't be around to worry about it, And I'm only 1:21:28.840 --> 1:21:30.280 around to worry about it now. But I you know, 1:21:30.360 --> 1:21:33.519 I think about it, like everybody does, but in some 1:21:33.600 --> 1:21:36.160 way that I can't quite explain. And it's a reason 1:21:36.200 --> 1:21:38.120 why I wouldn't really talk about it except to sort 1:21:38.120 --> 1:21:40.280 of hinted it in a situation like this, is to 1:21:40.280 --> 1:21:43.439 say that these investigations into the nature of consciousness and 1:21:43.479 --> 1:21:45.360 the nature of the brain and brain and stuff, in 1:21:45.360 --> 1:21:47.360 some way I can't quite describe, just has consoled me 1:21:47.400 --> 1:21:51.600 a little bit about the fact that one day my 1:21:51.680 --> 1:21:55.280 physical brain is going to like end, you know, because 1:21:55.960 --> 1:21:58.559 I don't know if that's quite the same thing as 1:21:58.760 --> 1:22:00.720 as what I am exactly. You know, well, it is 1:22:00.760 --> 1:22:02.000 the same thing as what I am as a self, 1:22:02.000 --> 1:22:03.599 and I am worried about the self coming to an end. 1:22:03.600 --> 1:22:05.920 But I guess one way thinking about it as well 1:22:05.960 --> 1:22:08.280 is that, like, the thing that's scary about death is 1:22:08.280 --> 1:22:12.640 not the secession of biological function. Right, you could have 1:22:12.720 --> 1:22:15.840 a biological machine that has no consciousness. It's not worried 1:22:15.880 --> 1:22:18.719 about death. The thing that death. Really people think about 1:22:18.720 --> 1:22:20.120 death in terms of the end of life, but really 1:22:20.120 --> 1:22:22.120 death is kind of the end of consciousness. That's what 1:22:22.160 --> 1:22:25.120 people are scared about. Maybe consciousness has to manifest physically, 1:22:25.120 --> 1:22:29.080 in which case, when you die, your consciousness sort of ends, 1:22:29.760 --> 1:22:33.280 and that's a bad thing, right. What's really ending there 1:22:33.400 --> 1:22:36.080 is not your biological makeup. It's not the fact that 1:22:36.080 --> 1:22:39.080 your leg and your arm start disintegrating. It's the fact 1:22:39.080 --> 1:22:42.519 that your experience, your unified sense of self, has come 1:22:42.560 --> 1:22:45.720 to an end. And one slightly naive approach this might 1:22:45.760 --> 1:22:47.840 be to say that, like, I'm not convinced that the 1:22:47.880 --> 1:22:51.599 self exists, not just because of the sort of weird 1:22:51.720 --> 1:22:54.000 esoteric you know, Indian philosophy and stuff, but also because 1:22:54.000 --> 1:22:56.120 of the split brain stuff. I think all of this 1:22:56.200 --> 1:22:57.639 kind of stuff points to the idea that the idea 1:22:57.680 --> 1:23:00.280 of the self as we commonly understand it a bit 1:23:00.320 --> 1:23:02.479 of an illusion. And it is interesting to me that 1:23:02.560 --> 1:23:05.000 this is the same kind of truth that is discovered 1:23:05.560 --> 1:23:12.439 by ancient authors of the Apanishads. And like a modern 1:23:12.640 --> 1:23:15.160 teenager who's never read a word of Sanskrit who takes 1:23:15.280 --> 1:23:17.880 lst and they sort of have these similar I think 1:23:17.880 --> 1:23:19.240 I might have something to do with the usage of 1:23:19.240 --> 1:23:22.280 psychedelics in the in the in the formulation of the Vaders. 1:23:22.280 --> 1:23:24.640 That's a whole another subject. With soma, you know, the 1:23:26.160 --> 1:23:29.559 mysterious substance that brings all of these profound spiritual truths 1:23:29.600 --> 1:23:32.519 that are uncannily similar to the profound spiritual truths that 1:23:32.520 --> 1:23:34.800 people find today when they take psychedelic drugs. But one 1:23:34.800 --> 1:23:37.000 of the foundational things that people discover in this regard 1:23:37.080 --> 1:23:39.519 is that the self is an illusion. The self does 1:23:39.520 --> 1:23:42.040 not exist. Even Sam Harris, the New Atheist, doesn't believe 1:23:42.080 --> 1:23:44.360 in the self. And so if death is not just 1:23:44.400 --> 1:23:47.000 about biological function, it's the cessation of the self. There's 1:23:47.040 --> 1:23:49.280 something about the fact that I don't think the self 1:23:49.280 --> 1:23:52.800 exists even now that gives me some consolation, you know, 1:23:53.240 --> 1:23:55.639 if the fear is what happens when the self comes 1:23:55.640 --> 1:23:58.280 to an end, like the self never came to a beginning. 1:23:58.960 --> 1:24:00.519 So I don't even know how to answer that question. 1:24:00.800 --> 1:24:02.599 But I don't say that that's not going to help people, 1:24:02.600 --> 1:24:03.800 like it's not going to I was asked about this 1:24:03.880 --> 1:24:05.639 recently at one of these schools I was talking about 1:24:05.680 --> 1:24:08.519 is as well, like this kid sort of ask me, 1:24:08.560 --> 1:24:11.240 And I can always tell sometimes when people ask certain 1:24:11.280 --> 1:24:15.400 questions they mean different things. Like if someone says, should 1:24:15.439 --> 1:24:17.599 we be afraid of Hell? I can tell in their 1:24:17.600 --> 1:24:19.960 face they're asking that because they're interested in the philosophy. 1:24:20.200 --> 1:24:22.080 They want to hear about Epicurus, or they're asking that 1:24:22.080 --> 1:24:24.200 because they're scared of death. Somebody asked me, do you 1:24:24.240 --> 1:24:26.559 think hell is biblical? They're either asking that because they're 1:24:26.560 --> 1:24:29.280 interested in New Testament studies or because they're staying up 1:24:29.280 --> 1:24:31.280 at night and afraid of death and afraid of hell. 1:24:31.720 --> 1:24:33.880 To the person who's afraid, I find it quite difficult 1:24:33.880 --> 1:24:36.360 to approach, except to say take heart that there are 1:24:36.400 --> 1:24:39.360 philosophical schools available to you that you should look at 1:24:39.400 --> 1:24:41.479 at least first before you sort of lose your mind. 1:24:41.520 --> 1:24:43.719 By boy, if I'm not trying to help other people 1:24:43.720 --> 1:24:45.559 and I'm just telling you about myself, like yeah, it 1:24:45.600 --> 1:24:47.280 opens up as well. But I think it's funny, like 1:24:47.400 --> 1:24:50.439 I would encourage people to investigate some of the Indian 1:24:50.439 --> 1:24:53.680 philosophical traditions, not because this is kind of idea in 1:24:53.760 --> 1:24:58.040 like Western thought that there's this sort of spiritual kind 1:24:58.120 --> 1:25:00.799 of thing over there. It's this kind of like mystical 1:25:00.800 --> 1:25:02.880 thing and like, oh, there's all these profounderies. It's like, actually, 1:25:02.920 --> 1:25:04.479 they're talking about the same stuff that we're talking about. 1:25:04.520 --> 1:25:05.960 They're just doing it in a different way that might 1:25:05.960 --> 1:25:09.040 make things click a little bit. And also talking about 1:25:09.040 --> 1:25:12.200 the Indian school of philosophy is like talking about the 1:25:12.240 --> 1:25:15.120 Western canon of philosophy. The Western canon is like you 1:25:15.160 --> 1:25:17.599 know Kant or maybe John Stuart Millan people. And it's 1:25:17.600 --> 1:25:20.320 not like all Westerners are running around in accordance with 1:25:20.360 --> 1:25:23.600 those principles, right. But I do think it's uncanny that 1:25:23.640 --> 1:25:27.240 somebody will say to me, I've looked everywhere I can. 1:25:26.720 --> 1:25:31.880 I've studied philosophy, I've tried to I've looked at religious traditions, 1:25:31.920 --> 1:25:33.720 and I've prayed, and I've gone to church, and i 1:25:34.000 --> 1:25:36.080 still don't have these answers, and I'm still afraid of death. 1:25:36.120 --> 1:25:39.040 And it's like, okay, hear me out. Have you ever 1:25:39.520 --> 1:25:43.680 tried reading a word of any kind of non Western 1:25:44.040 --> 1:25:46.720 philosophical canon? And if the answer is no, I'm not 1:25:46.720 --> 1:25:48.559 promising you're gonna find it there, But I'm saying there 1:25:48.600 --> 1:25:50.439 is so much more for you to do before you 1:25:50.479 --> 1:25:52.920 can confidently have even a view I think on the 1:25:52.960 --> 1:25:55.360 nature of the self the nature of death, because most 1:25:55.400 --> 1:26:00.280 of our philosophical convictions are so culturally imbedd with it 1:26:00.320 --> 1:26:03.320 without us realizing it that if you don't step outside 1:26:03.320 --> 1:26:05.360 of that for a moment, you might just be following 1:26:05.360 --> 1:26:07.600 a thread that you are not the author of and 1:26:07.640 --> 1:26:10.040 so I'd recommend stepping outside of that. And I'm not 1:26:10.080 --> 1:26:11.639 just saying that. I think people have noticed that over 1:26:11.680 --> 1:26:14.280 the course of my recent trajectory and the things that 1:26:14.320 --> 1:26:16.719 I'm talking about. This is just something that I've done. 1:26:16.880 --> 1:26:18.120 There's a lot to say about that. I spoke to 1:26:18.160 --> 1:26:20.920 a guy called Thomas Metzinger on my show about this, 1:26:21.240 --> 1:26:22.640 and so people want to kind of really know what 1:26:22.680 --> 1:26:24.960 I'm talking about. When I say all that, I'd recommend 1:26:24.960 --> 1:26:27.080 they go and watch that. If you're worried about it, 1:26:27.120 --> 1:26:29.439 also just realize that you're not alone. This is like 1:26:29.439 --> 1:26:33.320 the foundational question of human existence. I think it's weird 1:26:33.439 --> 1:26:35.920 not to be worried about it. It's sort of strange 1:26:35.960 --> 1:26:37.800 to me that people aren't talking about it all the time. 1:26:37.960 --> 1:26:40.360 We also have a sort of cultural reticence to talk 1:26:40.400 --> 1:26:43.000 about death. You know, death used to be much more present, 1:26:43.640 --> 1:26:46.160 dead bodies in the street, plagues, all this kind of stuff. 1:26:46.200 --> 1:26:48.000 COVID sort of brought that back into sharp focus for 1:26:48.000 --> 1:26:49.920 a lot of people. But death is a bit of 1:26:49.920 --> 1:26:51.920 a taboo and we don't really like to talk about 1:26:51.920 --> 1:26:53.840 it in polite society, and I think maybe that's also 1:26:53.880 --> 1:26:54.760 part of the problem. 1:26:54.960 --> 1:26:57.720 Yeah, last three one sentence. 1:26:57.439 --> 1:26:59.639 That was more than one sentence no no, by asking yeah. 1:26:59.479 --> 1:27:01.519 Okay, yeah, no, no no, I knew what I was doing. 1:27:01.520 --> 1:27:02.960 I asked to do all right, last three one s. 1:27:03.000 --> 1:27:05.080 Then we asked this to every guest who's ever been 1:27:05.120 --> 1:27:07.400 on the show, what is the best advice you've ever 1:27:07.400 --> 1:27:08.800 heard or received? 1:27:09.280 --> 1:27:10.960 Enjoy it? 1:27:11.040 --> 1:27:12.640 Simple? Well like that. 1:27:12.680 --> 1:27:16.479 There have been contexts in which I've been so caught up. 1:27:17.920 --> 1:27:20.000 I remember like the first time I did a big 1:27:20.040 --> 1:27:23.080 cinema podcast shoot where I had like a whole camera 1:27:23.160 --> 1:27:24.759 crew and a big guest, and I was really excited 1:27:24.760 --> 1:27:28.520 about it, and I was like reading this guest's books, 1:27:28.680 --> 1:27:31.639 I was looking at criticism. I was like obsessive over preparing. 1:27:31.680 --> 1:27:33.639 I was so ready. And I spoke to a friend 1:27:33.680 --> 1:27:38.080 of mine who's in the same industry, and I just 1:27:38.080 --> 1:27:39.639 asked him, because he'd done this kind of stuff before, 1:27:39.640 --> 1:27:42.800 When I said, like, he's got any advice, but any 1:27:42.880 --> 1:27:45.360 last minute advice. Then he just said enjoy it. And 1:27:45.400 --> 1:27:50.160 I was like, huh, yeah, good point. We're sort of 1:27:50.240 --> 1:27:52.880 and just like not present. I think anytime anyone's about 1:27:52.880 --> 1:27:55.280 to do something important, if someone's about to like play 1:27:55.320 --> 1:27:57.920 their first gig, or they're about to do some big 1:27:58.000 --> 1:28:00.640 career move that they've been waiting for, or about to 1:28:00.680 --> 1:28:02.600 get married or something, and they're sort of so in 1:28:02.600 --> 1:28:05.479 their head about it, and they're like they're living in 1:28:05.520 --> 1:28:07.439 the future, and then suddenly they're living in the past. 1:28:07.479 --> 1:28:09.600 It's just it's, you know, it's the sort of b 1:28:09.680 --> 1:28:11.479 way your feet are, like living the present kind of thing, 1:28:11.479 --> 1:28:13.680 but specifically like enjoy it. Take a moment to look 1:28:13.720 --> 1:28:15.599 around and be like, yeah, this is this is cool. 1:28:15.920 --> 1:28:20.479 Yeah, I love that. Two more questions. We talked about 1:28:20.479 --> 1:28:23.160 this earlier. Why have you stopped saying Yes, there's many 1:28:23.160 --> 1:28:28.400 debates they're about ego. Oh that was your reason too interesting? 1:28:28.840 --> 1:28:30.640 Well, I mean, if you want one sentence, that's what 1:28:30.680 --> 1:28:32.880 I would say. And it's not always about my ego, 1:28:33.320 --> 1:28:36.840 it's not always about their ego. It's either the case 1:28:37.280 --> 1:28:39.679 that you've got one person who just wants to prove 1:28:39.680 --> 1:28:41.240 a point and one person who wants to get to truth, 1:28:41.320 --> 1:28:45.040 in which case the egotistical one is going to probably 1:28:45.320 --> 1:28:47.719 trounce them and it's going to be a bit unfair. 1:28:48.400 --> 1:28:51.679 Or you've got two people who both are egotistically trying 1:28:51.680 --> 1:28:53.280 to prove a point, in which case it becomes a 1:28:53.320 --> 1:28:55.679 mess and a shouting match. If you have two people 1:28:55.680 --> 1:28:59.080 that everyone has ego everyone, but if you have two 1:28:59.080 --> 1:29:02.400 people who recognize that try to mitigate it and try 1:29:02.400 --> 1:29:04.360 to give it a backseat to having a good conversation. 1:29:05.000 --> 1:29:08.000 It's kind of just no longer a debate almost by definition. 1:29:08.479 --> 1:29:09.839 So no one wants to do that anymore. 1:29:09.920 --> 1:29:13.200 Well, people do, and I do debate sometimes, but I 1:29:13.200 --> 1:29:17.639 don't enjoy them. They're also extremely like expensive time wise, 1:29:18.040 --> 1:29:20.759 because you have to prepare. It's like preparing for an exam. 1:29:20.880 --> 1:29:23.360 You don't know what's going to come up. If they 1:29:23.479 --> 1:29:25.720 score a point that you weren't ready for, it's going 1:29:25.800 --> 1:29:29.200 to be embarrassing. And that is fun. It's sport, you know, 1:29:29.280 --> 1:29:32.400 And look, there is nothing wrong with small there's absolutely 1:29:32.439 --> 1:29:34.360 nothing wrong with it's fun, but you have to know 1:29:34.400 --> 1:29:36.639 that that's what you're doing. Debates are like boxing matches. 1:29:36.720 --> 1:29:39.800 You know, they will sometimes tell you who the better 1:29:39.800 --> 1:29:41.240 boxer is. They might not even tell you who the 1:29:41.240 --> 1:29:43.519 better boxer is. Don't tell you who box better in 1:29:43.560 --> 1:29:45.360 that match, but it won't tell you who the better 1:29:45.360 --> 1:29:47.360 boxer is overall, and it definitely won't tell you who 1:29:47.360 --> 1:29:49.960 the better fighter is. You have no idea what would 1:29:49.960 --> 1:29:52.759 happen if they met in a bar no holds barred, 1:29:53.120 --> 1:29:56.280 and they were able to use intelligence and weapons and 1:29:56.479 --> 1:29:58.280 call their friends and stuff like that. You have no 1:29:58.360 --> 1:30:01.760 idea what would happen. Similarly, somebody in a debate, it's 1:30:01.800 --> 1:30:03.599 like a sparring match. You're gonna see who's better at 1:30:03.600 --> 1:30:05.439 that particular dance, But you have no idea what would 1:30:05.439 --> 1:30:07.040 happen if you gave them a week to think about 1:30:07.040 --> 1:30:09.599 your point, consult their resources, and respond to you properly. 1:30:10.439 --> 1:30:12.920 And so I think that the sweet spot is somewhere 1:30:12.920 --> 1:30:15.040 in between those. Let's not take a week to respond, 1:30:15.400 --> 1:30:17.960 but let's not be like snapping back with quotes. But 1:30:17.960 --> 1:30:19.840 but having said that, a lot of people are quick 1:30:19.880 --> 1:30:22.040 to say, like, oh, like, I don't do debates because 1:30:22.040 --> 1:30:23.719 they're not about getting to truth, like I do debates 1:30:23.720 --> 1:30:26.879 sometimes because they're fun. They're fun and they are interesting, 1:30:26.920 --> 1:30:28.479 and you do bring up interesting points and they do 1:30:28.520 --> 1:30:31.160 become these spectacles and they do bring people into like 1:30:31.200 --> 1:30:33.600 thinking about these issues, and that's quite fun. But you 1:30:33.640 --> 1:30:35.759 have to recognize that that's what you're doing such that afterwards, 1:30:35.800 --> 1:30:38.639 if it goes really well, you go great, oh cool, 1:30:38.680 --> 1:30:40.400 fun I want. But it's like if you want a 1:30:40.479 --> 1:30:42.720 chess match or something, and oh sweet cool anyway, like 1:30:42.760 --> 1:30:44.439 let's play again sometime, you know, and you might lose 1:30:44.479 --> 1:30:46.320 next time. That's the attitude you have to have if 1:30:46.320 --> 1:30:49.800 you become convinced that you're like Magnus Carson because you 1:30:49.840 --> 1:30:52.280 want one chess match, even if you are Magnus Carson, 1:30:52.560 --> 1:30:54.160 like that only means you're good at chess, you know. 1:30:54.520 --> 1:30:58.200 Yeah, well said fifth and final question. We asked this 1:30:58.280 --> 1:30:59.920 to every guest has ever been on the show. If 1:31:00.000 --> 1:31:02.080 if you could create one law that everyone in the 1:31:02.080 --> 1:31:03.720 world had to follow, what would it be? 1:31:04.680 --> 1:31:11.759 No playing pop music in like fancy restaurants or should 1:31:11.760 --> 1:31:15.040 they blamed in anything else something that's suitable to the environment. 1:31:15.160 --> 1:31:16.960 I've wrote a piece on this recently. It's my least 1:31:17.000 --> 1:31:19.599 favorite thing about the world is the fact that it's 1:31:19.600 --> 1:31:21.560 not just fancy restaurants. It's like you're go into like 1:31:21.600 --> 1:31:24.960 a nice cafe, or you go into even like a 1:31:25.000 --> 1:31:29.639 hotel lobby or something, and think about how much effort 1:31:30.160 --> 1:31:35.400 has been put into designing every single aspect. Which chairs 1:31:36.080 --> 1:31:39.920 have more feng shui, you know, which which wallpaper is 1:31:39.960 --> 1:31:42.160 going to sort of bring about the particular mood that 1:31:42.160 --> 1:31:44.519 we're trying, and then they just decide to just they 1:31:44.560 --> 1:31:47.000 put zero thought into the music. You know, I've left 1:31:47.040 --> 1:31:50.120 restaurants before because if you're going to a restaurant, you know, 1:31:50.320 --> 1:31:52.559 it's a big deal. You're spending money. It might be 1:31:52.880 --> 1:31:54.479 you might not be able to do that very often. 1:31:54.479 --> 1:31:56.000 And you going, maybe you're on a date or something. 1:31:56.160 --> 1:31:58.720 The air is polluted with like do a leaper. Don't 1:31:58.760 --> 1:32:00.639 get me wrong, I like do a leap? I actually do, 1:32:01.040 --> 1:32:03.560 I really do, but just not there, you know, And 1:32:04.000 --> 1:32:07.080 it's become such an epidemic. It's like it's difficult to go. 1:32:07.360 --> 1:32:09.760 I can't go to Green King pubs because all of 1:32:09.760 --> 1:32:11.519 them are playing pop music. And these pubs are like 1:32:11.560 --> 1:32:16.759 the most they're beautiful, like these these Victorian like wooden 1:32:17.160 --> 1:32:19.360 like ancient. They've got these histories about them on the 1:32:19.360 --> 1:32:21.960 menus they're boasting about how like you know, there's like 1:32:21.960 --> 1:32:23.960 the I think it's called the Salisbury, which I wrote 1:32:24.000 --> 1:32:27.479 about in central London, which has this famous history. It's 1:32:27.520 --> 1:32:29.760 where someone proposed to someone or other. It's got all 1:32:29.760 --> 1:32:31.360 this stuff and you look at the images and it's 1:32:31.400 --> 1:32:34.840 this ornate, beautiful chandelier type stuff. And if I showed 1:32:34.840 --> 1:32:36.479 you the image and said, now, just what music do 1:32:36.479 --> 1:32:39.720 you imagine is playing? You know, somebody walks into a 1:32:39.720 --> 1:32:43.120 restaurant like that and says, you know what this really 1:32:43.160 --> 1:32:45.240 needs is like when I went in there, they were 1:32:45.240 --> 1:32:48.160 playing Kids by Robbi Williams and Kylie Minogue and I'm 1:32:48.200 --> 1:32:51.720 just like, seriously, you know, it really gets mose, So 1:32:51.760 --> 1:32:52.760 I would I would probably do that. 1:32:52.640 --> 1:32:55.479 That's one of my favorite answers. Alex, thank you so much, 1:32:55.960 --> 1:32:57.559 a Tree. I appreciate you way. Thanks. 1:32:57.880 --> 1:32:58.519 That's been fun. 1:32:58.720 --> 1:33:01.720 If you love this episode, you'll enjoy my interview with 1:33:01.800 --> 1:33:05.000 doctor Daniel Ahman on how to change your life by 1:33:05.120 --> 1:33:08.120 changing your brain. They don't do things until someone's mad 1:33:08.160 --> 1:33:12.080 at them to get it done. They need stress in 1:33:12.560 --> 1:33:17.320 order to get stuff done, and that just makes everybody 1:33:17.320 --> 1:33:18.479 around them stress