WEBVTT - Ep134 "What do brains teach us about morality?" with Joshua Greene 0:00:05.160 --> 0:00:08.840 Why will your brain gladly flip a switch to save 0:00:09.119 --> 0:00:12.680 five lives at the cost of one life, but it 0:00:12.720 --> 0:00:16.560 will refuse to push one person off a bridge to 0:00:16.640 --> 0:00:21.240 accomplish the same thing. Why do Buddhist monks and psychopaths 0:00:21.360 --> 0:00:25.160 and patients like Phineas gage behave differently than you might? 0:00:25.640 --> 0:00:30.639 And what happens when ancient moral instincts collide with modern 0:00:30.800 --> 0:00:36.080 problems like pandemics and AI alignment and political tribalism. Could 0:00:36.159 --> 0:00:41.200 a simple online game reduce polarization? And could you contribute 0:00:41.240 --> 0:00:45.519 to charities more effectively if you understood how your moral 0:00:45.640 --> 0:00:49.639 brain works. This week on Inner Cosmos, my colleague Joshua 0:00:49.720 --> 0:00:53.840 Green helps us open the hood on human morality and 0:00:54.040 --> 0:00:58.400 asks whether we can build technologies that steer us towards 0:00:58.400 --> 0:01:06.200 cooperation in a world our brains weren't built for. Welcome 0:01:06.200 --> 0:01:09.360 to Intercosmos with me, David Eagleman. I'm a neuroscientist and 0:01:09.440 --> 0:01:13.040 author at Stanford, and in these episodes we sail deeply 0:01:13.120 --> 0:01:17.000 into our three pound universe to understand how we see 0:01:17.000 --> 0:01:20.120 the world, and, for that matter, how we see each other. 0:01:35.840 --> 0:01:37.040 When you peer. 0:01:36.880 --> 0:01:40.440 Into the human brain, you find a machine built on 0:01:41.120 --> 0:01:45.040 conflict on the one hand, it's exquisitely tuned to the 0:01:45.080 --> 0:01:51.520 immediacy of social life, reading faces, sensing fairness, feeling indignation 0:01:51.640 --> 0:01:55.400 when someone breaks the rules, feeling compassion when someone needs help. 0:01:55.880 --> 0:02:00.480 These emotional circuits evolved to help the oldest problem of 0:02:00.560 --> 0:02:04.520 group living, to bind us together, to keep our small 0:02:04.600 --> 0:02:09.560 bands cohesive, to punish the cheaters, to reward the cooperators. 0:02:09.880 --> 0:02:14.040 These systems are fast and automatic and deeply intuitive, and 0:02:14.120 --> 0:02:16.840 at the same time housed in the very same skullp 0:02:17.040 --> 0:02:21.680 we have slower, more deliberative systems. This is the circuitry 0:02:21.680 --> 0:02:28.359 that lets us step back, cool off, calculate, imagine alternative futures. 0:02:28.680 --> 0:02:32.320 It allows us to override that first impulse and to 0:02:32.440 --> 0:02:37.480 ask what actually leads to the best outcome, what matters 0:02:37.520 --> 0:02:41.040 the most in this situation. Our brains can operate in 0:02:41.200 --> 0:02:43.399 both of these modes, and most of the time we 0:02:43.480 --> 0:02:45.800 toggle between the two without even noticing. 0:02:46.360 --> 0:02:47.200 And as we'll see. 0:02:47.040 --> 0:02:52.320 Today, our moral lives exist in a strange dance between 0:02:52.639 --> 0:02:57.360 instinct and reflection. The strange part is that evolution never 0:02:57.440 --> 0:03:02.200 anticipated that we would one day wield these moral instincts 0:03:02.320 --> 0:03:07.400 on a planetary scale. Our emotional machinery was designed for 0:03:07.600 --> 0:03:12.000 life in small groups of hunter gatherers, not a world 0:03:12.000 --> 0:03:16.680 of eight billion people with global pandemics and climate changed 0:03:16.720 --> 0:03:22.640 and polarized democracies. But we bring the same ancient intuitions 0:03:22.639 --> 0:03:25.320 to all of it. We still divide the world into 0:03:25.680 --> 0:03:30.080 us and them. We still experience harm differently depending on 0:03:30.120 --> 0:03:34.680 whether it's direct or indirect. We still recoil from active 0:03:34.680 --> 0:03:40.280 wrongdoing far more than passive neglect. Sometimes these instincts guide 0:03:40.360 --> 0:03:43.800 us well, other times they mislead us. If you want 0:03:43.840 --> 0:03:47.480 to understand the tensions at the heart of modern ethical life, 0:03:47.880 --> 0:03:51.040 from trolley problems, which we'll talk about in a second, 0:03:51.280 --> 0:03:56.960 to end of life decisions, from pandemic policy to political tribalism, 0:03:57.520 --> 0:04:01.160 we have to understand how this dual process, this moral brain, 0:04:01.600 --> 0:04:05.520 actually works. We have to understand why we help, why 0:04:05.560 --> 0:04:09.960 we punish, and why certain dilemmas feel difficult even when 0:04:10.000 --> 0:04:12.800 the math is simple. So this is why I called 0:04:12.840 --> 0:04:16.479 my colleague Joshua Green today. Josh is at Harvard where 0:04:16.480 --> 0:04:19.960 he's a psychologist and a neuroscientist and a philosopher, and 0:04:20.040 --> 0:04:24.560 his lab studies how we make moral judgments, how our 0:04:25.000 --> 0:04:30.159 fast gut reactions and our slow reasoning systems work together 0:04:30.200 --> 0:04:32.080 and sometimes work against each other. 0:04:32.600 --> 0:04:33.400 He's the author of. 0:04:33.400 --> 0:04:36.800 A book called Moral Tribes, where he argues that our 0:04:37.040 --> 0:04:41.960 everyday moral sense works beautifully within groups, but can fail 0:04:42.000 --> 0:04:45.719 spectacularly between groups. And I want to mention that Josh 0:04:45.720 --> 0:04:50.680 has been working lately on going beyond describing the machinery. 0:04:50.920 --> 0:04:55.080 He's begun building tools what he calls moral technologies to 0:04:55.240 --> 0:04:59.920 help societies navigate around our blind spot. So well, here 0:05:00.040 --> 0:05:04.280 about tools which help people donate in more impactful ways, 0:05:04.680 --> 0:05:09.400 or online games that measurably reduce political animosity. 0:05:09.600 --> 0:05:11.320 In other words, how. 0:05:11.240 --> 0:05:15.840 Can we actually engineer cooperation rather than just hope for it. 0:05:16.279 --> 0:05:19.080 So today we're going to zoom into the moral mind, 0:05:19.160 --> 0:05:23.320 where emotions meet reason, where tribes collide, and where ancient 0:05:23.400 --> 0:05:26.880 circuitry tries to steer a modern world. 0:05:27.480 --> 0:05:28.400 So let's dive in. 0:05:33.200 --> 0:05:36.040 So, Josh, when you look at the sense of morality 0:05:36.040 --> 0:05:39.240 that our brains generate, what is that for? What problem 0:05:39.400 --> 0:05:41.279 was evolution trying to solve there? 0:05:41.800 --> 0:05:45.760 So morality is kind of a mystery from an evolutionary 0:05:45.800 --> 0:05:48.040 point of view, because if you think about evolution in 0:05:48.080 --> 0:05:51.920 the most straightforward terms, you would think that the greediest, 0:05:52.040 --> 0:05:54.840 brawniest individuals would be the ones who get the most 0:05:54.880 --> 0:05:57.960 resources and are able to produce the most offspring. And 0:05:58.040 --> 0:06:01.520 why would anyone ever be nice to anybody else? And 0:06:01.560 --> 0:06:04.800 this is something that really bothered Darwin right from from 0:06:04.800 --> 0:06:08.080 the beginning, and people even said to him, Look, how 0:06:08.400 --> 0:06:11.680 could you possibly explain any kind of human goodness if 0:06:11.800 --> 0:06:16.080 nature is red in tooth and claws, as Tennyson famously 0:06:16.120 --> 0:06:19.440 said about Darwin's theory. And he thought about this and 0:06:19.520 --> 0:06:23.159 his answer was one that turned out to be very precient. 0:06:23.520 --> 0:06:29.400 So he recognized that while individuals may benefit from being 0:06:29.480 --> 0:06:34.120 ruthless and nasty, teams of individuals, groups of individuals can 0:06:34.200 --> 0:06:37.880 benefit from being more cooperative within the group. Right, if 0:06:37.880 --> 0:06:40.560 you're a member of a group where you know, if 0:06:40.600 --> 0:06:43.839 you fall in the river tough luck, then that group 0:06:44.120 --> 0:06:47.599 may not survive very well, even if the individual who 0:06:47.680 --> 0:06:51.640 carried on hunting instead of rescuing you does a little 0:06:51.640 --> 0:06:55.880 bit better. And so the idea that we depend on 0:06:55.920 --> 0:07:01.479 each other, that teamwork is a powerful weapon for you know, 0:07:01.600 --> 0:07:05.400 fighting against the elements but also out competing other groups. 0:07:05.680 --> 0:07:09.039 That idea emerged early on, early on, along with the 0:07:09.120 --> 0:07:13.040 idea that individuals who are genetically related uh can can 0:07:13.080 --> 0:07:16.280 benefit their their genes indirectly by by by helping others. 0:07:16.560 --> 0:07:18.120 So that's the sort of idea. 0:07:18.200 --> 0:07:21.760 At a strategic biological level, why would anyone ever look 0:07:21.760 --> 0:07:24.840 out for anybody else? And then on a psychological level, 0:07:24.840 --> 0:07:29.360 the question is how does this work? And it mostly 0:07:29.480 --> 0:07:33.520 works at the level of what we might call social emotions. 0:07:34.520 --> 0:07:38.120 That is, you, you know, if if someone's in trouble, 0:07:38.200 --> 0:07:41.560 you have a sense of vicarious distress and you're motivated 0:07:41.880 --> 0:07:44.320 to help them. Or if someone's not being a good 0:07:44.320 --> 0:07:46.680 cooperative member of the group, you might be angry at 0:07:46.680 --> 0:07:48.520 them and might want to punish them or let other 0:07:48.520 --> 0:07:51.560 people know what a jerk that guy is is being. 0:07:51.600 --> 0:07:54.160 So it kind of operates on on on two levels, 0:07:54.720 --> 0:07:59.800 uh the level of surviving through cooperation, and I think 0:07:59.800 --> 0:08:04.040 of morality as a suite of psychological mechanisms that enable 0:08:04.160 --> 0:08:07.160 us to be more effective cooperators. And then this is 0:08:07.200 --> 0:08:12.440 implemented largely emotionally, but we can also use our reasoning 0:08:12.480 --> 0:08:15.400 capacities to figure out how to make our way in 0:08:15.440 --> 0:08:18.320 the moral and social world. And it's that duality that 0:08:18.400 --> 0:08:21.440 gives rise to some of the most interesting dilemmas that 0:08:21.480 --> 0:08:22.080 we've studied. 0:08:22.480 --> 0:08:25.480 And you've used the analogy of a camera when it 0:08:25.520 --> 0:08:27.720 comes to that duality, can you unpack that for us? 0:08:28.120 --> 0:08:31.960 So, at least the old sort of digital SLR camera 0:08:32.000 --> 0:08:34.959 that I have, you know, have these little automatic settings 0:08:35.000 --> 0:08:39.319 like portrait mode and landscape mode, and if you want 0:08:39.320 --> 0:08:41.360 to take a picture of a mountain from a mile away, 0:08:41.679 --> 0:08:43.640 then you know, you put it in landscape mode and 0:08:43.679 --> 0:08:46.480 it does everything and configures it in that kind of, 0:08:46.600 --> 0:08:52.280 you know, familiar situation that the manufacturers of the camera anticipated. 0:08:52.600 --> 0:08:54.760 But let's say you know you're an artist and you've 0:08:54.800 --> 0:08:57.440 got your idea about exactly the sort of off kilter 0:08:57.559 --> 0:08:59.440 shot that you want with the light just so and 0:08:59.480 --> 0:09:02.240 trying to get a certain weird effect. Then you want 0:09:02.280 --> 0:09:04.360 to put the camera in manual mode and adjust the 0:09:04.440 --> 0:09:07.520 f stop and everything yourself to take advantage of your 0:09:07.600 --> 0:09:10.720 understanding the situation and your understanding of your goals and 0:09:10.800 --> 0:09:13.120 get exactly the shot that you want. And you can 0:09:13.200 --> 0:09:19.520 think of intuition and including emotional intuitions as like those 0:09:19.760 --> 0:09:23.520 automatic settings, where this is a sort of ready made 0:09:23.559 --> 0:09:26.920 response for this kind of situation, and it can be 0:09:26.960 --> 0:09:32.439 something that we have acquired biologically speaking, that we automatically 0:09:32.480 --> 0:09:35.240 dislike certain smells or some people argue that we or 0:09:35.280 --> 0:09:38.120 other species have an automatic fear of snakes that might 0:09:38.120 --> 0:09:40.560 be poisonous and things like that. But a lot of 0:09:40.600 --> 0:09:43.240 it is stuff that we have learned, essentially, habits that 0:09:43.280 --> 0:09:47.000 we have acquired. But whether it comes from our individual 0:09:47.080 --> 0:09:50.120 experience or things we've learned culturally, or if it's part 0:09:50.120 --> 0:09:53.760 of our genetic endowment, it's all in the form of 0:09:54.320 --> 0:09:58.680 ready made, quick responses to situations that are either familiar 0:09:59.080 --> 0:10:02.520 in our biological history, our cultural history, or our personal history. 0:10:02.920 --> 0:10:06.760 And then on the other side, we've got our reasoning abilities, 0:10:07.000 --> 0:10:11.600 where we can look at the situation and say, Okay, 0:10:12.240 --> 0:10:14.240 normally I don't like to jump out of buildings, but 0:10:14.280 --> 0:10:16.439 if the building's on fire, maybe that's something I've got 0:10:16.480 --> 0:10:17.319 to do in this case. 0:10:17.800 --> 0:10:21.359 So, with this dual process nature, you've got fast gut reactions, 0:10:21.360 --> 0:10:24.480 you've got slower, more controlled reasoning. So how does this 0:10:24.520 --> 0:10:26.679 play out in the domain of morality. 0:10:27.280 --> 0:10:30.920 You can see this tension between kind of the automatic 0:10:30.960 --> 0:10:37.320 response and the more detached reason response in moral dilemmas 0:10:37.400 --> 0:10:38.840 that are sometimes. 0:10:38.400 --> 0:10:39.480 Called trolley problems. 0:10:39.679 --> 0:10:43.400 Right, So in the classic pair of cases, you've got 0:10:43.440 --> 0:10:46.480 a trolley that is headed towards five people, and the 0:10:46.520 --> 0:10:48.800 only way that you can save them is to hit 0:10:48.800 --> 0:10:51.160 a switch that will turn the trolley onto another track. 0:10:51.360 --> 0:10:54.280 But unfortunately there's another person there. And the question is 0:10:54.280 --> 0:10:56.840 can you hit the switch to avoid having the five 0:10:56.920 --> 0:11:01.000 get killed? And there most people say yes, that's okay. 0:11:01.120 --> 0:11:03.679 But from a cognitive science point of view, the most 0:11:03.679 --> 0:11:07.840 interesting thing is the contrast between that case where you're 0:11:08.160 --> 0:11:10.280 hitting a switch and turning the trolley away from five 0:11:10.360 --> 0:11:14.280 but onto one, and the classic footbridge case. So this 0:11:14.360 --> 0:11:17.360 is where the trolley is again headed towards five people. 0:11:17.800 --> 0:11:21.079 This time you are on a footbridge over the tracks, 0:11:21.440 --> 0:11:22.960 and the only way you can say to those five 0:11:23.000 --> 0:11:26.400 people is to do something that's pretty uncomfortable. There's a 0:11:26.640 --> 0:11:29.520 guy next to you wearing a big backpack, and you 0:11:29.559 --> 0:11:31.840 can throw the guy with the big backpack onto the 0:11:31.880 --> 0:11:35.000 tracks and then he'll be a trolley stopper and stop 0:11:35.040 --> 0:11:37.560 the trolley from killing the five people. But that person 0:11:37.920 --> 0:11:40.320 will be killed, and you can't jump yourself because you're 0:11:40.360 --> 0:11:42.280 not wearing the big backpack, so this wouldn't work. And 0:11:42.520 --> 0:11:44.760 we're going to suspend disbelief and assume that you have 0:11:44.800 --> 0:11:47.440 good aim and all of that stuff, and even with 0:11:47.520 --> 0:11:51.440 all of those somewhat unrealistic assumptions in place, most people 0:11:51.480 --> 0:11:53.960 say that it's wrong to push the guy off the footbridge, 0:11:54.080 --> 0:11:56.240 or they at least feel a lot more uncomfortable about it. 0:11:56.880 --> 0:11:59.880 And so the nice thing about these cases is in 0:12:00.120 --> 0:12:03.920 some sense they're very similar death by trolley, five lives 0:12:04.000 --> 0:12:07.560 versus one, and yet we give very different responses to them. 0:12:07.600 --> 0:12:10.840 And this was the thing that kind of got me 0:12:11.000 --> 0:12:13.800 into cognitive neuroscience, you know, many years ago, twenty years 0:12:13.800 --> 0:12:17.000 ago or whatever it was when you and I first 0:12:17.120 --> 0:12:20.840 met and started looking at this with brain imaging. 0:12:20.920 --> 0:12:24.080 So give us the punchline of why people are happy 0:12:24.080 --> 0:12:26.480 to flip the switch in the first case and they 0:12:26.559 --> 0:12:29.640 are not in the second case, and what your brain 0:12:29.679 --> 0:12:31.080 imaging studies revealed there. 0:12:31.480 --> 0:12:34.800 Yeah, so that the short answer seems to be that 0:12:34.920 --> 0:12:38.160 we have a kind of negative emotional response to the 0:12:38.200 --> 0:12:41.560 thought of pushing the guy off the footbridge that we 0:12:41.720 --> 0:12:44.880 don't have in response to hitting the switch in that case. 0:12:45.000 --> 0:12:45.640 And why and. 0:12:45.600 --> 0:12:48.760 Then right, And so we can answer that question on 0:12:48.800 --> 0:12:51.480 sort of two levels. What's going on in the dilemma 0:12:51.559 --> 0:12:54.080 that makes us feel differently, and then what's going on 0:12:54.120 --> 0:12:56.559 in our brains that is the basis for having that 0:12:56.960 --> 0:13:00.160 differential response. So in terms of what's going on on 0:13:00.200 --> 0:13:04.440 in the dilemma, there are three things that really seem 0:13:04.480 --> 0:13:07.000 to be driving the effect, although there are other things 0:13:07.000 --> 0:13:09.880 you could vary as well. But the difference is between 0:13:09.920 --> 0:13:12.120 the switch case and the footbridge case. And these were 0:13:12.880 --> 0:13:16.520 nicely identified, and since we're fined by people like my 0:13:16.640 --> 0:13:18.120 colleague Fiery Cushman. 0:13:18.720 --> 0:13:19.840 So one is that. 0:13:20.559 --> 0:13:22.560 Well, actually, one thing that's just in the background is 0:13:22.600 --> 0:13:26.440 that harm is much more salient when it's active rather 0:13:26.520 --> 0:13:28.480 than passive, and that's true in both of these cases. 0:13:28.720 --> 0:13:31.280 The two things that really differentiate these cases are one 0:13:33.120 --> 0:13:36.280 the harm is more direct when you're pushing the guy 0:13:36.280 --> 0:13:39.280 off the footbridge, so we call this personal force. This is, 0:13:39.320 --> 0:13:41.679 you know, if you're pushing with your hands or pushing 0:13:41.720 --> 0:13:44.839 even with a stick, that feels worse than if you're 0:13:44.920 --> 0:13:47.240 hitting a switch. Even if you're hitting a switch, that 0:13:47.240 --> 0:13:49.400 would drop the guy through the trap door. 0:13:49.320 --> 0:13:50.080 Or something like that. 0:13:50.160 --> 0:13:53.199 So it's just like the footbridge case, we see a 0:13:53.240 --> 0:13:57.800 big difference there. That difference interacts with something else which 0:13:57.840 --> 0:14:00.680 is a bit more subtle. It has a longer philosophic history, 0:14:01.040 --> 0:14:07.400 and this is the difference between harming somebody purposefully. 0:14:06.080 --> 0:14:07.360 Or as a side effect. 0:14:08.360 --> 0:14:11.120 So the idea is that in the switch case, what 0:14:11.160 --> 0:14:13.120 you're doing is you're turning the trolley away from the 0:14:13.160 --> 0:14:16.160 five people, and as a side effect, you end up 0:14:16.240 --> 0:14:17.400 running over the one person. 0:14:17.640 --> 0:14:19.360 But that one person is not part of your plan. 0:14:19.440 --> 0:14:23.000 If they were to magically disappear, that would be great, 0:14:23.200 --> 0:14:26.120 Whereas in the footbridge case, you are using that person 0:14:26.120 --> 0:14:31.040 as a trolley stopper, right. And it's that combination of 0:14:31.520 --> 0:14:35.160 harming somebody in this purposeful way, using them as a means, 0:14:35.520 --> 0:14:37.680 and doing it in this direct personal way. And then 0:14:37.720 --> 0:14:40.480 in the background, is this the fact that it's active. 0:14:41.920 --> 0:14:44.360 Those things combine to really give us our sense of 0:14:44.480 --> 0:14:48.000 like what is a violent action. If you remove any 0:14:48.040 --> 0:14:50.760 of those three things, it doesn't have that sense of 0:14:50.800 --> 0:14:53.240 sort of immediate violence, like touching somebody in the face. 0:14:53.640 --> 0:14:56.440 So that's sort of the trigger in terms of like 0:14:56.480 --> 0:14:59.120 the features of the dilemma, the differences that make the 0:14:59.160 --> 0:15:00.720 difference in terms of the situation. 0:15:01.760 --> 0:15:02.640 Then you say, okay, so. 0:15:03.320 --> 0:15:08.440 That combination of harming somebody in a way that's active, purposeful. 0:15:07.920 --> 0:15:10.920 And direct, that gives us the sense of violence. 0:15:10.960 --> 0:15:14.040 But what's going on in our heads and here I 0:15:14.040 --> 0:15:17.760 think the best evidence actually comes from cases where people 0:15:17.800 --> 0:15:22.280 have studied patients with brain damage, similar to the famous 0:15:22.320 --> 0:15:25.280 case of Phineas Gauge. So if you've taken intro psychology 0:15:25.400 --> 0:15:27.560 or have heard about it otherwise, you probably know about 0:15:27.600 --> 0:15:31.120 this case. So this was a railroad form and living 0:15:31.200 --> 0:15:34.359 in Vermont in the nineteenth century, working on the railroad 0:15:34.440 --> 0:15:38.239 all the livelong day. And there was a terrible explosion 0:15:38.640 --> 0:15:42.640 and an iron spike, a tamping iron was blasted out 0:15:42.680 --> 0:15:47.240 of essentially a cannon, and it went into Phineas Gage's 0:15:47.520 --> 0:15:51.320 eye socket, through the front of his brain, and out 0:15:51.320 --> 0:15:55.600 the top of his head. And amazingly he survived once 0:15:55.640 --> 0:15:58.480 the wound was treated. But when he survived, he didn't 0:15:58.520 --> 0:16:04.320 survive intact. He his reasoning abilities, what you might loosely 0:16:04.360 --> 0:16:08.240 call his sort of cognitive abilities, remain intact. He could speak, 0:16:08.320 --> 0:16:11.000 he could do math problems, he could do basic reasoning. 0:16:11.480 --> 0:16:16.440 But his personality, his character, his values, and his decision 0:16:16.480 --> 0:16:20.320 making abilities, those things seem to be compromised, and he 0:16:20.400 --> 0:16:23.440 ended up going from being this upstanding, you know, a 0:16:23.560 --> 0:16:27.600 respected railroad officer who people looked or looked looked up to, 0:16:27.600 --> 0:16:31.040 to a kind of lawless Wanderer, and this was one 0:16:31.080 --> 0:16:33.080 of the first sort of clear indications that there are 0:16:33.160 --> 0:16:36.920 distinct systems in the brain for that that that that 0:16:36.920 --> 0:16:41.800 that handle things like social emotional decision making, things that 0:16:41.880 --> 0:16:44.440 you kind of have to do by feel, by judgment, 0:16:44.840 --> 0:16:48.680 rather than following some kind of formula or using some 0:16:48.760 --> 0:16:53.640 previously acquired skill like your skill for for for for language. 0:16:53.760 --> 0:16:57.440 After I did those initial brain imaging studies, a group 0:16:57.480 --> 0:17:00.720 at the University of Iowa, a group in in Italy 0:17:00.800 --> 0:17:03.360 also did a version of this where they tested patients 0:17:03.360 --> 0:17:07.400 with damage like Phineas Gage. And these are patients that 0:17:07.640 --> 0:17:11.000 you know Demasio kind of described as they know the words, 0:17:11.000 --> 0:17:14.199 but they don't feel the music. They say things like 0:17:14.280 --> 0:17:16.080 I'm looking at this picture you're showing me of a 0:17:16.160 --> 0:17:19.600 gory car accident, and I know, before my brain tumor 0:17:19.680 --> 0:17:21.639 or whatever it was, this used to bother me, but 0:17:21.760 --> 0:17:23.760 now it just leaves me flat. So they don't have 0:17:23.800 --> 0:17:28.119 that feeling. They're kind of emotionally cold. And what you 0:17:28.160 --> 0:17:30.840 find with these people is that they're much more likely 0:17:30.880 --> 0:17:32.479 to say that it's okay to push the guy off 0:17:32.520 --> 0:17:35.440 the footbridge, right. And it's not just these two cases. 0:17:35.480 --> 0:17:37.119 There are a lot of different dilemmas. You know, they 0:17:37.160 --> 0:17:40.879 don't necessarily involve literal trolleys and things like that, And 0:17:41.280 --> 0:17:42.200 this effect was huge. 0:17:42.240 --> 0:17:43.919 You don't need statistics to analyze this. 0:17:44.040 --> 0:17:47.200 You can just see it's like overwhelmingly, they're much more 0:17:47.280 --> 0:17:51.760 likely to make those judgments. We've also found or others 0:17:51.800 --> 0:17:55.159 have found that psychopaths are more likely to say that 0:17:55.200 --> 0:17:57.880 it's okay to push the guy off the footbridge. And again, 0:17:57.920 --> 0:18:00.520 the idea is that they can reason, but they don't 0:18:00.560 --> 0:18:04.440 have that emotional moral sense, that sense of horror or 0:18:05.000 --> 0:18:08.120 reluctance at directly harming somebody in this violent way. 0:18:08.720 --> 0:18:10.440 But then something really interesting. 0:18:10.520 --> 0:18:13.080 This is work that's unpublished, al though I'm pretty confident 0:18:13.119 --> 0:18:18.440 about it. I had a fantastic undergrad named Shin Sheng 0:18:18.480 --> 0:18:22.800 who's now long since graduated, who went to Tibet and 0:18:22.880 --> 0:18:27.720 tested Buddhist monks on the footbridge case. And she tested 0:18:28.480 --> 0:18:32.320 about fifty of them, and she found that eighty percent 0:18:32.359 --> 0:18:35.000 of the Buddhist monks approved of pushing the guy off 0:18:35.040 --> 0:18:35.760 the footbridge. 0:18:35.960 --> 0:18:37.959 Now you might say why. 0:18:38.200 --> 0:18:39.840 You know, when we ask people, what do you think 0:18:39.840 --> 0:18:42.480 Buddhist monks would say about this? And they said, definitely, 0:18:42.520 --> 0:18:44.480 they are not going to be like, you know, the 0:18:44.880 --> 0:18:49.440 Phineas gauged patients and the psychopaths and that, so what's 0:18:49.600 --> 0:18:50.399 that's really weird? 0:18:50.480 --> 0:18:54.000 Right? And the idea is that you can reach with this. 0:18:53.960 --> 0:18:56.560 Dual process approach where it's partly about how you feel 0:18:56.560 --> 0:18:59.240 and partly about how you think you could reach the 0:18:59.280 --> 0:19:02.840 same conclusion in different ways. So the Phineas gauge people 0:19:02.880 --> 0:19:05.959 with the emotion related brain damage and the psychopaths who 0:19:06.040 --> 0:19:08.639 don't have that emotional moral sense, they just don't have 0:19:08.680 --> 0:19:10.080 the feeling that says no. 0:19:09.960 --> 0:19:11.880 Don't do that horrible violence. Right. 0:19:12.600 --> 0:19:16.479 The Buddhist monks said, yeah, I feel that, and I 0:19:16.520 --> 0:19:21.240 sense that, but I have this more detached and expansive view, 0:19:21.800 --> 0:19:23.840 and I can see in a case like this, if 0:19:23.840 --> 0:19:26.959 it is really done with the noble intention of saving 0:19:27.000 --> 0:19:31.280 more lives, then that can be acceptable. And many of them, 0:19:31.280 --> 0:19:34.880 I think five different monks cited this sutra, this Buddhist 0:19:34.960 --> 0:19:38.760 teaching about a ship captain who found himself in this 0:19:38.920 --> 0:19:41.320 situation where he could kill somebody to prevent a much 0:19:41.359 --> 0:19:44.119 greater harm, and he did that, and he did it 0:19:44.200 --> 0:19:46.240 thinking that it was going to be bad karma for him, 0:19:46.400 --> 0:19:49.760 but in fact he was reborn as a bodhisattva because 0:19:49.800 --> 0:19:51.000 he had this noble intention. 0:20:06.680 --> 0:20:09.600 So, given what we know about this moral machinery, are 0:20:09.600 --> 0:20:14.480 there certain kinds of problems that we are systematically bad at? 0:20:14.960 --> 0:20:15.240 Well? 0:20:15.280 --> 0:20:17.320 You know, it's always controversial when it comes to efficult 0:20:17.359 --> 0:20:19.000 questions of you know what, what's the right answer and 0:20:19.040 --> 0:20:22.560 what's the wrong answer. But I think there are cases 0:20:22.600 --> 0:20:26.280 where we're we're bad when it comes to causing harm 0:20:26.480 --> 0:20:29.160 or or or And for example, when it. 0:20:29.080 --> 0:20:32.000 Comes to physician assisted suicide. 0:20:32.320 --> 0:20:35.399 Right, Let's say you have someone who has a terrible 0:20:35.480 --> 0:20:38.320 terminal illness. They have you know, at most they're going 0:20:38.400 --> 0:20:40.200 to live in another couple of months, but they're living 0:20:40.280 --> 0:20:43.160 right now in agonizing pain. Let's say this is someone 0:20:43.160 --> 0:20:45.760 whose bodies just riddled with cancer and they're just hanging 0:20:45.800 --> 0:20:48.040 on and you know, despite all the drugs you can 0:20:48.080 --> 0:20:50.800 give them, their their their their in miserable pain, and 0:20:50.840 --> 0:20:54.359 they just want to say goodbye and be done for 0:20:54.400 --> 0:20:55.000 a long time. 0:20:55.080 --> 0:20:56.359 I don't know if this is still true. 0:20:56.440 --> 0:21:01.119 The American Medical Association's position on this is no, you know, 0:21:01.880 --> 0:21:03.119 you can't end life. 0:21:03.160 --> 0:21:04.280 Life is sacred, et cetera. 0:21:04.400 --> 0:21:08.320 Right, Whereas in other countries like the Netherlands, for example, 0:21:08.680 --> 0:21:11.480 there are procedures and protocols and guardrails in place. But 0:21:11.520 --> 0:21:15.439 if you want to end your life, typically in cases 0:21:15.480 --> 0:21:19.199 where someone is has as a terminal illness and it 0:21:19.240 --> 0:21:21.720 is a great deal of pain and distress, you can 0:21:21.760 --> 0:21:23.440 do that, right, And you can think of this as 0:21:23.440 --> 0:21:26.000 a case where the greater good is on the side 0:21:26.000 --> 0:21:28.119 of letting this person and their life if that's what 0:21:28.160 --> 0:21:31.520 they want. They're experiencing nothing but misery, and everyone around 0:21:31.520 --> 0:21:35.800 them is just watching them suffer. But there's this sense that, 0:21:36.160 --> 0:21:39.080 you know, ending this person's life actively is like pushing 0:21:39.160 --> 0:21:42.240 somebody off of footbridge, and that is just inherently wrong. 0:21:42.680 --> 0:21:46.880 Our moral instincts evolved for life in small groups. What 0:21:47.000 --> 0:21:49.439 happens when you take a brain like this and you 0:21:49.520 --> 0:21:51.400 drop it into the twenty first century? 0:21:52.200 --> 0:21:56.000 Right, So the way I think about it is as 0:21:56.040 --> 0:21:58.520 a kind of sequel to this famous. 0:21:58.359 --> 0:22:00.880 Parable called the traad of the commons. 0:22:00.960 --> 0:22:04.600 Right. So, the ecologist Garrett Harden had this famous paper 0:22:04.600 --> 0:22:08.679 in nineteen sixty eight, and he was writing about over population, 0:22:08.760 --> 0:22:11.040 which turned out to be not as big a concern 0:22:11.080 --> 0:22:14.000 as he thought it was. But he had this very 0:22:14.080 --> 0:22:18.439 nice story that sort of beautifully illustrates the challenge of 0:22:18.480 --> 0:22:20.760 life in a group. Right, So he imagined a bunch 0:22:20.800 --> 0:22:24.720 of herders living on a near a pasture, and each 0:22:24.800 --> 0:22:29.480 of them has their separate herds, and each of them 0:22:29.520 --> 0:22:32.280 says to themselves, well should I add more animals to 0:22:32.320 --> 0:22:34.119 my herd? And they think, well, they're just grazing on 0:22:34.160 --> 0:22:36.720 this common pasture, so why not bigger herd, more money 0:22:36.720 --> 0:22:39.680 when I take my animals to market. So they all 0:22:39.720 --> 0:22:41.960 grow their herds, and they all grow and grow and grow, 0:22:42.119 --> 0:22:44.040 until at some point there are more animals on the 0:22:44.080 --> 0:22:47.600 pastor than it can support, No food enough for any 0:22:47.640 --> 0:22:49.720 of them, as they're scrambling to eat the last few 0:22:49.760 --> 0:22:52.280 shreds of grass, and they all die. And that's the 0:22:52.320 --> 0:22:55.560 tragedy of the commons. And this is the classic problem 0:22:55.680 --> 0:22:58.760 of me versus us, where if everybody does the thing 0:22:58.760 --> 0:23:02.560