Kind: captions
Language: en
when we use the term free will we're
talking about this feeling that
Consciousness that that we have a self
that this there's this concrete thing
that's separate from
brain processing that somehow swoops in
and is the the cause of our decision or
the cause of our next action and that is
in large part if not in its entirety and
illusion
the following is a conversation with
Annika Harris author of conscious a
brief Guide to the fundamental mystery
of the mind and is someone who writes
and thinks a lot about the nature of
Consciousness and of reality especially
from the perspectives of physics and
Neuroscience
this is the Lux reading podcast to
support it please check out our sponsors
in the description and now dear friends
here's Annika Harris
in your book conscious you described
evidence that Free Will is an illusion
and that Consciousness is used to
construct this illusion and convince
ourselves that we are in fact deciding
our actions uh can you can you explain
this I think this is chapter three first
of all I I really think it's important
to make a distinction between Free Will
and conscious will and we'll get into
that in a moment so free will in terms
of our brain as a system in nature
making complex decisions and doing all
the complex processing it does there is
a decision-making process in nature that
our brains undergo that we can call Free
Will that's that's fine to use that
shorthand for that although once once we
get into the details I I might
um convince you that it's not so free
but that the decision-making process is
a process in nature the feeling our
conscious experience of feeling like
Consciousness is the thing that is
driving the behavior
that is I would say in most cases an
illusion and usually when we talk about
Free Will that's the thing we're talking
about I mean sometimes it's in
conjunction with the decision-making
process but for the most part when we
use the term free will we're talking
about this feeling that Consciousness
that that we have a self that this
there's this concrete thing that's
separate from
brain processing that somehow swoops in
and is the the cause of our decision or
the cause of our next action and that is
um in large part if not in its entirety
and illusion so conscious will is an
illusion and then we can try to Free
Will I would say is a good shorthand for
a process in nature which is a
decision-making process of of the brain
but decisions are still being made so
there's a
uh if you ran the universe over again
hmm
is there would it turn out the same way
I mean maybe I'm trying to sneak up to
like
what does it mean to make a decision in
a way that's almost uh that means
something so right so this is where our
intuitions get challenged I've been
thinking about some new examples for
this just because I talk about it a lot
and and the truth is most of the things
I write about and talk about and think
about are so counter-intuitive I mean
that that's really what my game is is
breaking intuitions shaking up
intuitions in order to get a deeper
understanding of reality
I'm often even though I've thought about
this for 20 years and think about it all
the time it's an obsession of mine
really I have to get back into that mind
frame
to be able to think clearly about it
because it is so counter-intuitive how
long does that take
how hard is that depends on if there are
kids around or if I'm alone or if I've
been meditating but what I was going to
say actually I felt like we need to just
take one step back
and talk a little bit just because I
think the the importance of shaking up
intuitions for scientific and
advancement is such an important piece
of the scientific process
um and I think we've reached a point in
Consciousness studies where
it's very difficult to move forward and
usually that's a sign that we need to
start shaking up our intuition so you
know throughout history the the huge
breakthroughs the things that have
really shifted our view of the universe
and and our place in the universe and
all of that those almost always if not
always require that we at the very least
shift our intuitions
um update our intuitions but many of
them we just have to let go of
intuitions that are feeding us false
information about the way the world
works well the weirdest thing here is
that here we're looking at our own mind
yeah you have to uh let go of your
intuitions
about your own intuitions yeah right
exactly it's very meta and makes it hard
and it's part of the reason why
doing interviews for me feels so
difficult aside from the fact that I
just have social anxiety in general
what's good because I took mushrooms
just before you started so it worked
we're on this journey together let's go
uh so what what where do we take a step
backwards well I was I was going to say
I mean this leads into the point I was
going to make but what I was going to
say is I mean also just for me I feel
like I
I'm not as good at speaking as I am at
writing that I'm clear in my writing and
because these topics are so difficult to
get our minds around
um it's hard to kind of
get to any real conclusion in real time
it's actually how I started writing my
book
um was just writing for myself I decided
that I needed to spend some time writing
down all of my thoughts in order to get
clear about how I think about them so
you write down a sentence and you think
he's in the in the silence
paragraphs and yeah and you just and
then I see if that makes sense and then
I check it with my intuitions which is
really the scientific process and I
really in many ways I feel like I'm a
physicist at heart all of my inquiry all
of my career everything I'm interested
in actually going back to being a child
it's just deep curiosity about how the
world Works what this place is what it's
made of
how we got here
um just being amazed at the fact that
I'm having an experience over here and
you're having one over there and we're
in this moment of time and
you know what does that all mean my
interest in Consciousness really came
out of originally an interest in physics
and I guess that the two were always
side by side and I didn't really connect
them until I was older but
um I've always been really interested in
just understanding the nature of reality
before I even had language to describe
you talked about sort of laying down and
looking up at the stars and yeah sort of
trying to let go of the intuition that
there's a ground below us yeah which is
a really interesting exercise and
there's many exercises of this sort you
can do but that's a really good one well
and I think you know scientists and
children who are who will become
scientists or just kind of scientists at
heart really enjoy that feeling of
breaking through their intuitions and I
remember the first time it happened
actually I was
um playing with marbles and you know
marbles have all these different shapes
each one is unique and they're all the
it looks like there's liquid inside them
and I remember asking my father how they
got the liquid inside the glass ball and
he said actually it's solid all the way
through It's All Glass
and I had such a hard time imagine it
just didn't seem right to me I was very
young when I but he he's a complicated
person but he was wonderful in this way
and that he would kind of entertain my
curiosity and so he's he said let's
let's open them up and he got a towel
and we put the marbles on the towel and
got a hammer and he smashed them all and
lo and behold it was all glass and I
remember it's like the first time I had
that feeling of
realizing wow the truth was so different
from what I expected and I like that
feeling and of course we need to be able
to do that to understand that the Earth
is flat to understand the germ theory of
disease to understand long processes in
nature like Evolution I mean we just can
never really Intuit that we share genes
with ants did you just say the Earth is
flat I mean the Earth is not flat did I
say that yeah this is great but I
actually like to think about see this is
why I need to write and not speak well I
actually really like uh you know
conspiracy theories and so on I really
like flat Earth uh people that believe
the Earth is flat or yeah not believe
but argue for the Earth is flat I well
it's interesting because you can see I
mean the intuition is so strong I just
said it the thing I love about folks who
argue for Flat Earth is they are
thinking
deeply they're questioning actually what
has now become intuition are it's it's
become the mainstream narrative that the
Earth is round where people actually
don't
you know yeah don't think actually how
crazy it is that the Earth is round
right we're in a ball yeah yeah and like
that's exactly what you're doing you're
looking out at the space it's really
humbling because I think the basic
intuition when you're walking around the
ground you kind of there's a underlying
belief that Earth is the center of the
universe there's a kind of feeling yeah
like this is the only world that exists
and you kind of know that there's a huge
Universe out there but you don't really
load that information in right I think
right flat earthers are really
contending with those idea with those
big Ideas yeah no and I think I mean the
truth is that when those observations
were first made when the celestial
observations were made that revealed
this fact to us I can't remember how
long it took but I think it was close to
100 years before
it was actually accepted as common
knowledge that we're no longer the
center of the universe or of course we
never were but and and that's true
almost every time we have a breakthrough
like that that challenges our intuitions
there's usually a period of time
um where we have to and and this is an
important part of the process because
often our intuitions give us good
information and so when the science goes
against when our scientific observations
go against our intuitions it's important
for us to
let that in and to see you know which
side is going to win and once it's clear
that the evidence is winning
um then there's this period of time
where we have to Grapple with our
intuitions and shift the way we frame
our world view and go through that
process but free will Free Will is a
hard one so it's a hard one so here we
are still you know in Consciousness
studies pretty stuck at least in terms
of the neuroscience and so that's why I
started thinking more deeply about that
that's why a lot of scientists right now
are actually interested in studying
Consciousness
um where it was very taboo before and so
we're at this really interesting turning
point and and it's wonderful but I it
will require that we shake up our
intuitions a bit and reframe some things
and look at what the Neuroscience is
telling us and there are a lot of
questions we have more questions than
answers but I think it's time I think
we're going to make progress in
Consciousness studies we need to start
really looking at the Illusions and
false intuitions that are getting in our
way do you think studying the brain can
give us clues about free like some of
these absolutely I think it already has
and I think many facts that have come
out of Neuroscience are still barely
seeping into the culture I mean they're
we're I think this is going to be a long
process so so part of my work is really
just looking at areas where we already
know some of our intuitions are wrong
and
starting to accept them and starting to
let them in and starting to ask
questions about what does this mean then
about the nature of Consciousness let's
try to actually get into this at this
question of Free Will and conscious will
I I have my intuitions here are I mean
I'm a human being yeah it's it's really
I mean I approached it from two aspects
from one is a human being and two from a
robotics perspective right right and I
wonder how big the gap between the two
is
um and that's that's a useful from an
engineering perspective is another
perspective that's useful and helpful to
take on this it's like are we really so
different you and I the robot and and
the human uh you'd like to believe so
but you don't exactly see where the
differences Research into Ai and just
the fact that it's entered our
Consciousness at the level of of stories
and film and and all of these questions
that it's raising
um is facing us with that it's almost
like the zombie experiment experiment is
coming to life for us you know we're
we're more and more looking at
human-like
systems and wondering is there an
experience in there and how can we
figure that out
um when you were talking about your
experience of looking at robots it
reminds me of how I for many years have
been looking at plants
um because the plant behavior and
actually this is the example maybe we'll
just try it out it may not work this is
an example I was thinking of recently
because I was reading back on the work
of Mark Jaffe who did this research with
P10 rules I'm sure he did many other
plant studies but this is the one I was
reading about and I'm hoping this
analogy I'll just set it up I'm hoping
that this analogy will be something that
we can keep coming back to as we move
forward because we you know as we shake
up our intuitions and get confused and
then our in we come back to our
intuitions and say no that just can't be
I think this analogy might might be
helpful but what kind of plant was he
working on uh P tendrils so p a p plant
has these tendrils you can you can
picture them they they
um coil
so
I don't I don't know what year this
research was done I'm I'm guessing in
the 80s but you know some but P10 just
have been around long before that yes of
course
right
P tendrils as a system
generally there are a few more things
they can do but generally they can
behave in two ways they can grow in a
straight line slowly
or they can grow in this coil form more
quickly
and what happens is when they are
growing in a straight Manner and they
encounter a branch or a pole or
something else that it can wrap itself
around to gain more stability when it
senses a branch there that gives it the
cue to start growing at a more rapid
pace and to start coiling instead of
growing straight so it has these two
behaviors as a system it's capable of
growing straight and it's capable of
coiling
one interesting thing actually I'll just
add this it's not totally relevant but
one interesting thing is
um Mark jaffe's work so he um cut a P10
drill he was curious to see if it could
do this on its own separate from the
rest of the plant so he cut a pitendril
off the plant
um if you keep it in a moist warm
environment it will continue to to
behave in these ways so it will continue
to coil if he he noticed that if he
touched one end of it if he rubbed one
side of it that gave it enough of a cue
that it would start to coil and then he
noticed that it needed light to perform
this action so in the dark when he
rubbed the the edge of the tendril it
did not coil
um in the light it would and then he
recognized this further fact which was
that the P tendril that he rubbed in the
dark that was still straight if he
brought it out into the light and this
could be hours later it would start to
coil it has a primitive form of memory
where it's it's has the sensation and
then it holds on to that information and
as soon as there's light it acts on that
but also in the kind of distributed
intelligence because you can separate it
from the main
right in the main part right like if you
chop off a human arm it's not gonna
right keep
growing even if you keep it in a moist
warm environment it's not going to reach
out for the cup of coffee when you come
in with Starbucks maybe maybe in the
correct environment maybe we just
haven't found the environment but anyway
that's pretty amazing so that's the
separate fact but anyway so so if you
just use the analogy of a p tendril and
if you imagine which is something I like
to do a lot if you imagine
um this plant has some kind of conscious
experience of course it doesn't have
complex thought it doesn't have anything
like a human experience but if it were
possible for a plant to have some felt
experience you can imagine that when it
comes into contact with a branch and
starts to coil that that feeling could
be one of deciding to do that or that it
feels good to do that or kind of wanting
I mean it's that's too complex that's
that's anthropomorphizing but there's a
way in which you could imagine this P
tendril under those circumstances
suddenly wants to start coiling so
you're saying you try to meditate potato
what it's like to be a p tendril a plant
like that's what's required here
it's like you have to empathize with a
plant or with another organism that's
not human yeah and you don't actually
need that for this analogy that have the
larger analogy that I'm getting at but I
think that's an interesting piece to
keep in mind that you could imagine that
in nature if there's a conscious
experience associated with a p tendril
that at that moment what that feels like
is
a want to start moving in a different
way so you you want to imagine that
without anthropomorphizing so without
projecting The Human Experience but
rather sort of humbling yourself that
we're just another plant with more
complexity yes like trying to see where
exactly so that yeah that's where I'm
going with this sure so and and when you
start making that connection you can see
where there are a few points at which
there's room for an illusion to come in
for our own feelings of will so when we
move from the P tendril to human
decision making obviously human decision
making human brains are many many many
times more complex than whatever is
going on in a p tendril I mean it is the
brain is actually the most complex thing
we know of in the universe thus far
so there is the genes that help develop
the brain into any particular brain into
what it is they're all the inputs
they're they're countless factors that
we could never I mean it may as well be
an infinite number of factors and then
in that particular moment whatever the
inputs are to a brain the brain is
capable of almost an infinite number of
outputs right so if you if I walked in
here this morning and you said um would
you like water or tea
um and that's you know simple decision
for me massive aggressive way of telling
me I should have offered
some tea but yes go on no I wanted water
okay all right I actually asked for
water okay all right and you didn't have
any free will anyway so it doesn't
matter I don't I don't hope you're
responsible for any of it exactly I was
just running an algorithm
so deterministically you can you give me
this decision right to make water or tea
go back to the pizza for a second a p
tendril is capable of growing in a
straight line slowly or in a coil
quickly
um my brain is capable of all kinds of
responses to that question even though
you've given me you know two options you
could offer me water or tea and I could
just run out of the room screaming if I
wanted to right happens to me all the
time never mind I don't want to do this
yes the fact that the brain is capable
that there's so many inputs and then the
brain is capable of so many outputs as a
system what it's hard for us to get our
minds around is that it may not be
capable of any behavior in every moment
in time so as a system it's capable of
doing all kinds of things
and the points I'm making is that
if we could see all of the factors
leading up to the moment where I chose
water or where I ran screaming from the
room
um we could in fact see that there's
there was no other Behavior I was going
to or could have exhibited in that
moment in the same way that when the P
tendril hits the branch it starts
coiling there's a parallel which is very
interesting in robotics with with fish
and water so you could see they've
experienced with like dead fish and they
keep swimming so
the fish is capable of all kinds of
complicated movements as a system but
in any one moment the river the full
complexity of the River defines the
actual movement of the fish that's
sufficient well and I I should also I
mean this brings up another point which
is that there is a difference between
voluntary and involuntary Behavior so of
course we have reflexes and it is a
different there's different brain
processing in action when I make a
decision about water or tea then there
is you know if my behavior is forced
from the outside or if I have a brain
tumor that's causing me to make certain
decisions or feel certain feelings and
so
um the point is that at bottom it's all
brain processing and behavior but the
reason why certain actions feel willed
there's a good reason why it feels that
way
and it's to distinguish our own
self-generated behavior based on
thinking and you know possibly weighing
the different results of different
things I already had caffeine today I
don't want more you know they're all
these
um processes things that we can point to
and things that we can't things I'm
affected by at a subconscious level
um
and that is very different from an
unwilled action or reflex or something
like that and so some some people I can
imagine I haven't used the P tendril
example but I can imagine they wouldn't
like that because the p tendril
um sounds more to them like a reflex and
that doesn't address the question of a
much more complex
decision-making process but I think at
bottom
um that is that is what it is and that's
really where the illusion of Free Will
and the illusion of self which I think
is they're kind of two sides of the same
coin come from so even when we
intellectually understand
that everything we're feeling everything
we're doing is is based on our brain
processing and brain Behavior if you're
a physicalist you you've bought into
that
um even when you intellectually
understand that we and I could include
myself in this we still have this
feeling that there's something that
stands outside of the brain processing
that can intervene and that's the
illusion
I was tweeting with someone recently
which I almost never do but we're
working in the Ted documentary that I'm
making right now we're working on the
episode on free will so I was allowing
myself to go back and forth in a way
that I don't usually on Twitter like
argue without free will it was it was a
friendly debate gonna go into the
reasons why I'm not crazy about Twitter
but let's leave that for another time
I mean talk about how hard it is to have
this conversation when we have as many
hours as as we like you know trying to
do it in sound bites over Twitter see I
like how you made the decision now not
to talk about Twitter that's uh well my
brain Road Less Traveled that was one of
the things I I said to this person was
um because someone someone chimed in and
said you said I what do you mean by I
and and so actually that's another point
I could make which is
um first my response to that was well
people tend to get creeped out when I
say the system that is my brain and body
that we call Annika recommends you know
why do you get freaked out
Oh you mean like in your personal life
instead of like never saying I yeah
always well you're just being I always
refer to you as the brain and body we
call Lex yes um well I don't know that's
kind of that's kind of charming in a way
alleged brain so I and you are very
useful shorthand even though at some
level they're Illusions
um they're very useful shorthand for the
the system of my brain really and you
know and my body the the whole system
that I is useful for that but the
illusion is when we feel like there's
something outside of that system that
can intervene that is free that's
somehow free from the physical world
um I can have the thought
um yeah I really not crazy about having
intellectual back and forth on Twitter
and then
feel like I decide to not follow that
thought right and the feeling that's
that that's the feeling
um where the illusion comes in because
it really feels as if sure my brain had
that original thought and then I came in
and made a different decision but of
course the truth is it was just further
brain processing that got me to decide
not to go down that path how much is
that feeling of conscious will is
culturally constructed shorthand so like
uh I and you is a is a you could say a
culturally constructed shorthand
how much of that
affects how we think so our parents say
I and you I and you and then we start to
believe in I in you and is that or are
we is that fundamental to the human
brain machine yeah that we I think I
think it goes very deep I think it's
fundamental and I think it probably some
form of feeling like a self goes
as deep as cats and dogs and it's
possible I mean if consciousness
does go down to the level of cells or
however far down you want to take it
worms or I think any any system that's
navigating
um itself that kind of has boundaries
and is navigating itself in the world
um my guess is that it's it's an
intrinsic part of that's why I imagined
that the P tendril would have this
feeling
um and so you know
we use the word I I think you're right
first of all that the way we talk about
things affects our intuitions about them
and how we feel about them and so there
are other cultures who are more open
to breaking through these Illusions than
others for sure just because of their
um their belief sets the way they talk I
mean I'm sure I don't I don't I'm not a
linguist and I don't even speak a second
language so I can't I can't speak to it
but I you know if if there were a
language that
um
that framed
who we are differently in everyday
language I mean in our everyday
communication I would think that would
have an effect yeah language does affect
things I mean just knowing Uh Russian in
the history of the Soviet Union in the
20th century obviously it lived under
communism for a long time so your
conception of individualism is different
and that reflects itself from the
language yeah um you could probably have
this similar kind of thing
within the language
in terms of how we talk about I and we
and so on yeah and I yeah I'm sure
there's like um certain countries or
maybe even villages with certain
dialects that uh
like let go of the individualism that's
inherent yeah I mean there there must be
a range but I do think that it's pretty
deep and I think
um
there's also a difference between the
autobiographical me and then this more
fundamental me that we're talking about
where that I'm pointing to is the
illusion so in my book I talk about if
someone
um wakes up with amnesia if they have
brain injury and suddenly have amnesia
and can't remember anything about their
lives can't remember their name don't
recognize people they're related to
um
they would have lost their
autobiographical self but they would
still feel like an eye they would still
have that basic sense of I'm a person I
mean they'd be speaking that way I don't
remember my name I don't know where I
live
um you still it goes very deep this
feeling that I am a single entity
um that is somehow
not completely Reliant upon the cause
and effect of the physical world can I
ask you a pothead question yeah
um would you
would you
rather lose all your memories or not be
able to make new ones
you get to now I'm asking you as a human
yeah in terms of happiness and
preference
I can't answer that you like both you
like both features of the organism that
you embody well one is intellectual and
one is psychological really I mean I
would have to choose the memories only
because I mean memories of the past yeah
um only because I have children and a
family and it would just be it wouldn't
just be affecting me it would be
affecting them it would just be too
horrible
no but you would make new ones right
if I lost my memory of the 13th are you
think would you you think you would lose
this is a dark question oh wait wasn't
that the question maybe I missed no no
no no you understood it perfectly but
yeah
you you know sorry for the dark question
but the people you love in your life if
you lost all your memory of everything
do you think you would still love them
like you show up you don't know I don't
know to roll the die I mean it would not
in the way that I do right just some
deep aspect of Love is the history you
have together oh absolutely well and
this gets to an interesting point
actually which I think a lot about which
is memory
um and we won't go into this yet but
I'll just plant a flag here memory is
yeah memories um obviously related to
time and time is something that I'm
fascinated with and and for this project
I'm working on now I've mostly been
speaking to physicists who are
interested in Consciousness
um and it's partly because of this link
between memory and time and you know all
of these new fascinating
um theories and thoughts around the
different interpretations of quantum
mechanics and
looking at you know the thing that I've
always been looking for is is really the
fundamental nature of reality and why
my questions about Consciousness lead me
to wonder if Consciousness is a more
fundamental aspect of the universe than
than we previously thought and certainly
I previously thought
um and so memory but memory is is tied
to so many things I mean even
basic functions in nature actually so so
the the pitendril as I mentioned memory
comes into play there and that's so
fascinating
um and there is no sense of self without
memory even if you're starting from
scratch as you said with amnesia
um if you truly couldn't lay down any
new memories
I think you would then that sense of
self would begin to disintegrate because
the sense of self is one of a concrete
entity Through Time
and if each moment if you really were
stuck in the present moment
eternally you'd be basically be
meditating
and in meditation is a very common
experience is losing that sense of self
that sense of free will that those
Illusions
um more easily drop away in meditation
and I would say for most people who
meditate long enough they do drop away
and there's actually an explanation of
the level of the brain as well the
default mode network is circuitry in the
brain that neuroscientists don't
completely understand but no is is
largely largely responsible for this
feeling of being a self and when that
circuit gets quieted down which it does
in meditation and also does
um with the use of psychedelic drugs
um and there are other ways to quiet
down the default mode Network
um people have this experience of losing
this this illusion of being a self they
no longer feel that they're self in the
way that they usually do so there's uh
the autobiographical self is connected
to the the sense of self oh absolutely
through the memory and then you're
thinking that the solution to that lies
in physics not just Neuroscience like
ultimately Consciousness and the
experience the conscious will
is uh a question of physics
I may have said something misleading
because I was connecting too many dots
um that's the things I say are
misleading
um let us mislead each other I just got
I got excited when memory came up
because I love talking about time so you
mentioned a project you working on a
couple times what what's that about uh I
think you said Ted is involved you're
interviewing a bunch of people what's
going on what's the topic
um so I'm working on an audio
documentary about Consciousness
um and it picks up where my book left
off
um so all of the questions that were
still lingering for me um and research
that I still wanted to do I just started
conducting so I've done about 30
interviews so far
um and I it's not totally clear what the
end result will be I'm currently
collaborating with Ted and I'm having a
lot of fun creating a pilot with them
um and so we'll we'll see where it goes
but the idea is that it's a narrated
um documentary it's like a series a
series it'll be a 10 part series it's an
unclear oh you already know the number
of Parts uh sorry in my mind it's a
10-part series Amanda being 8 or 11 or
12. I don't know why listen I'm very
comforted by the number zero and one as
well about ten I like the confidence of
10.
um
so and you're not sure what the title
like not the title but the topic it will
there be Consciousness or something
bigger or something smaller yeah I mean
it's mine so at the end of my book I I
kind of get to the place where I've
convinced myself at least that this
question about whether Consciousness is
fundamental is a legitimate one and then
I just start spending a lot of time
thinking about what that would mean if
it's even possible to study
scientifically
um so I mostly talk to physicists
actually
um because I really think ultimately
this is a question for for physics if
Consciousness is fundamental I think it
needs to be strongly informed by
Neuroscience but
um it's yeah if it's part of the fabric
of reality it is a question for a
physicist so I speak to different
physicists about different
interpretations of quantum mechanics so
getting at the fundamentals so string
theory in many worlds I spoke to Sean
Carroll had a great conversation with
Sean Carroll he's so generous because he
clearly doesn't agree with me about
many things but he has a curious mind
and he's willing to have these
conversations and I was really
interested in understanding many worlds
better and if Consciousness is
fundamental what the implications are
um so I that was where I started
actually was with many worlds and then
uh we had conversations about string
theory and the holographic principle I
spoke to Lee smullen and
um Brian Greene and Jan 11 and Carlo
rivelli actually have you had Carlo on
no no he's he's great also and fun to
talk to because he's just endlessly
curious yeah are you doing audio it's
all audio Yeah but it's in the format of
a documentary so I'm narrating it and
kind of telling the story of what
questions came up for me what I was
interested in exploring and then you
know why I talked to each person I I
talk to by the way I highly recommend
Sean Carroll's mindscape podcast I think
it's called yeah
um it's amazing one of my favorite
things when he interviews physicists
it's great but any topic his aim is but
one of my favorite things is how
frustrated he gets with pan psychism
but he's still like it's like a fly
towards the light for some reason he
can't like make sense of it but like he
still struggles with it and I think
that's the that's the sign of a good
scientist really struggling uh
struggling with these ideas
and yes that's what I appreciate in him
and and many scientists like that who
has the craziest most radical ideas who
you talk with currently so you can go
either direction
you can go like pan psychism
Consciousness permeates everything yeah
I I don't know how far you can go down
that direction or you could uh say that
you know what's the what would be the
other direction that there's a there
isn't real the problem is they're all
crazy they're all crazy
and my own I mean my own thoughts now I
I have to be
um very careful about the words I choose
because
I mean it's it's just like talking about
um the different interpretations of
quantum mechanics it's once you get deep
enough
um it's so counter-intuitive and it's so
beyond anything we understand that they
all sound crazy many worlds sounds crazy
string theory I mean these are things we
just cannot get our minds around really
and so that's kind of that's the realm I
love to live in and love to explore in
and the realm that to my surprise my
interest in Consciousness has taken me
back to can I ask you a question on that
yeah uh just a side tangent how do you
prevent when you're imagining yourself
to be a p tendril how do you prevent
from going crazy I mean this is kind of
the Nietzsche question of like uh you
have to be very careful thinking outside
the Norms of society
because you might fall off like mentally
you're so connected as a human to the
the collective intelligence yeah that in
order to question intuitions you have to
step aside step outside of it for a
brief moment how do you prevent yourself
from going crazy I think I used to think
that was a concern
um and then you can learn so much about
the brain no and I've and I've had and
I've had experiences of deep depression
and I struggled with anxiety my whole
life
I think in order to be a good scientist
and in order to be a truthfully you know
let's say um
to allow yourself to be curious and
honest in your curiosity I think it's
inevitable that lots of ideas and
theories and hypotheses will just sound
crazy and that is always how we've
Advanced science and maybe you know nine
out of ten ideas are crazy and you crazy
meaning they're actually not correct
um
but all of I mean it's as I said all of
the big scientific breakthroughs all of
the truths we've uncovered that are the
um
earth-shattering truths that we uncover
they really do sound crazy at first so I
don't think one necessarily leads to a
type of mental illness I see mental
illness in a very different category and
I think some people
are more susceptible to being
destabilized by this type of thinking
and that might be a legitimate concern
for some people that kind of being
grounded in everyday life
is important for my psychological health
the more time I spend thinking about the
bigger picture and
outside of everyday life the more
happy I I am the more expansive I feel
um I mean it feels it feels nourishing
to me it feels like it makes me more
sane not less well that's a happiness
but in terms of your ability to see the
truth that you can be happy and uh guess
I don't see mental illness necessarily
being linked to Truth Or Not truth so we
were talking about minimizing mental
illness yeah but also truth is a
different dimension so you have to you
can go crazy in both directions you can
uh like you know you could be extremely
happy and they are uh flat earthers you
can believe the Earth is flat right
because there actually I mean I'm sure
there's good books on this but it's
somehow really comforting it's fun and
comforting to believe you've figured out
the thing that everybody else hasn't
figured out I think that's what
conspiracy theories always provide
people why is this so fun is so fun it's
it's except when it's dangerous uh you
know yeah but even then it's probably
fun but then you shouldn't do it because
it's unethical
uh anyway so it's not true I'm not a fan
of following
well that makes one of us I don't know I
there's probably a fascinating story to
what why conspiracy theories are so
um so compelling to us human beings
that's deeper than just fun internet
stuff yeah I'm very interested in why
they're so compelling to some people and
not others I feel like there must be
some difference that at some point will
be able to discover
um yeah yeah and because some people are
just not susceptible to them and some
people are and I wonder really
correlation drawn to them because I feel
like the kind of thinking that allows
for you to be open to conspiracy
theories is also the kind of thinking
that leads to brilliant breakthroughs in
science
sort of willingness to go to Crazy Land
really yeah
see you don't see the connection between
thinking the Earth is flat and
um coming up with this flat is following
your intuitions and not being open to
counter-intuitive ideas it's like it's a
close it's a very closed way of viewing
things saying it's actually it's not the
way you feel there's a there's there's
information that tells us this is
there's something else going on and
that type of person will say no it's
exact it's the way it feels to me no no
but wait a minute there's a mainstream
Narrative of science that says the Earth
is round right like and I think a flat
Earth see I admire the very first step
of a flatter I don't I don't admire the
the full Journey but the first step is
think if you're open to evidence then
the evidence clearly takes you in One
Direction right but you have to ask the
question you have to ask
to me this is like first principles
thinking yeah the earth looks flat so
I'm gonna look around here and I I like
how crazy is it that the Earth is round
and there's a thing called gravity that
operates between objects that's
related to the mass of the object right
that's crazy yes the truth is often
crazier than what what the situation
feels it could be a good step is to
question what everyone is saying and
then I know what you mean to be
skeptical about the it's the authority
yeah but I think that the and the
authority in not in some kind of weird
uh current where everyone questions
institutions but more like the authority
of the senior scientists the the junior
scientists coming up wait a minute why
have we been doing things this way and
that that first step I feel like
that rebelliousness or that
open-mindedness or maybe like resistance
to or maybe curiosity that's uh
uh that is not affected by whatever the
mainstream science says of today yes I
feel like
mainstream science has never been
mainstream and it's always a struggle
for science to become mainstream it's
part of the reason why I started doing
the work I did actually helping
scientists make their work more
accessible is that
it's usually not yeah it's usually not
here's advice for scientists be more
interesting and much more important be
less arrogant
so arrogance uh there's a there's a uh
there's very little money in science and
so everyone is fighting for that money
and they become more and more arrogant
and siled I don't know why I will say
that the scientists I know and some of
them are very well known very famous
scientists are the least arrogant people
I've ever met that scientists in general
their personalities are
more open more humble more likely to say
they say they just don't know
because I've been involved a lot in the
science writing and how the media
portrays so one of scientists the
scientific community's greatest
frustration
is how their work gets presented in the
media
and a lot of the time that is the for I
would say that's the main frustration is
there's some new breakthrough there's
something and the scientists will be
saying we're not sure where you know
it's going to take five years and the me
you know no one likes to write a story
about something that may or may not be
true they think it's true they're going
to take five years testing it and so the
headline will be
neuroscientists discovered you know they
want The Sensational and so I think the
public often gets the false impression
that the scientists are arrogant and I
really don't find that to be the case
and I've worked with all kinds of people
artists and
my life path has has taken a
strange you've met some incredible
people you work with some incredible
people so let's the the crazy topic of
free will I mean I just we have to link
up on this because okay
uh so the plant all right can you can
you try to steal man the case that
there's something really special about
humans
that there is a fundamental difference
between us and the the P tendril you
know humans are clearly very special in
the evolution of organisms on Earth
absolutely yeah could that have been the
magic leap
could Consciousness been like the
invention of the the eukaryotic cell or
something like that well then I mean so
I have to get clear on what you're
asking so so are you
are you coming from a place of wondering
if we are the only conscious mammals yes
do you really think that's a question
can you make a case for it
do you really think that's a question
take one step back we look out at the
universe
um at this point in in our scientific
understanding we know that essentially
if we're all made of the same
ingredients right they're they're atoms
in the universe doing their thing they
find themselves in different
configurations based on the laws of
physics
um and then the question is if we look
out at all of the configurations of
atoms in the universe and ask
which of these entail conscious
experiences which of these have a felt
experience of being the matter they are
and there are really only two broadly
speaking they're really only two
um assumptions to make here and the
first one is the one that science has
has taken and that I have for most of my
career as well and that in many ways
makes the most sense which is
electrons aren't conscious tables aren't
there's no felt experience there but at
a certain point in complex processing
um that processing entails an experience
of being that processing now that that's
just a fascinating fact all on its own
and I love to spend time thinking about
that but the so the question is does
Consciousness Arise at some point are
some of these collections of atoms
conscious
um or are all of them because we know
the answer isn't none you know I know
that I'm at least having a conscious
experience I know the conscious
experiences exist in the universe
um
and so the answer isn't none so so the
answer has to be all or some and this is
a starting assumption that you're really
kind of forced to to make and that it's
all or some all or some I would say one
is some also we either need an
explanation for why there's
non-conscious matter in the universe and
then something happens for Consciousness
to come into being or it's part of the
fundamental nature of reality
it's also
if Consciousness is a fundamental
property of reality it could also choose
to not reveal itself until a certain
complexity of organism
I'm not sure what that means I'm not
sure what that means either like like
the flame of Consciousness does not
start burning on until
um a certain complexity of organisms
able to reveal I don't think we can look
at Consciousness that way I don't think
um I mean many people like to try to
make that argument that it's a spectrum
why do we have to say all or nothing
maybe and I agree that I actually think
it is a spectrum
um but it's a spectrum of content not of
Consciousness itself so
um you know if a worm has some level of
conscious experience it is extremely
minimal something we could never imagine
being having the complex experience you
and I have
um maybe some felt sensation of pressure
or heat or something super basic right
so there's there's this range or even if
you just think of an infant you know
like the first the moment an infant
becomes conscious what that there's a
very very minimal experience of inputs
of sound and light and whatever it is
um and so there's a spectrum of content
there's a spectrum of how much
um a system is consciously experiencing
but there's a moment at which you get on
the Spectrum and that's and I truly
believe that that piece of it is binary
so if there's no conscious experience
there is no consciousness you can't say
Consciousness is there it just hasn't
lit its flame yet if Consciousness is
there there's an experience there by
definition it has to Arise at some point
or it has to always be there is it
possible to make the case that that
arising happens first
for the first time ever with homo
sapiens
I think that is extremely unlikely what
I think is
more possible based on what we
understand about the brain is that it
arises in brains or nervous systems
um and so then we're talking about flies
and bees and all kinds of things that
kind of fall out of our
our intuitions for whether they could be
conscious or not but I think
especially once you talk about
more complex brains with many many more
neurons when you're talking about cats
and dogs and dolphins
um it's very hard to see how there would
be a difference
between humans and other mammals in
terms of Consciousness was there
difference in terms of intelligence
between humans and other mammals sure
not but like a fundamental leap in
intelligence it's hard to say
definitively I mean it depends on you
know
how you define intelligence and all
kinds of things but obviously humans are
unique and capable of all kinds of
things that no other mammals are capable
of and there are important differences
and I don't think you need any magical
intervention of something outside of the
physical world to explain it and the way
I think about consciousness
I actually think it's part of the reason
we're mistaken about consciousness
is because we are special in the ways
that we're special and because we're
complex creatures we have these complex
brains so I think we should probably get
into some of the details of why I think
um we're confused about what
Consciousness is yes but just to finish
this point
I think
that we don't actually have any evidence
that consciousness
is complex that it comes out of complex
processing that it's required for
complex processing and I think we've
made this anthropomorphic mistake
because we are conscious and it's very
hard to to get evidence it's one of the
things that makes Consciousness unique
and mysterious and why I'm fascinated
with it is it's the one thing in nature
that we can't get conclusive evidence of
from the outside we can buy analogy you
know you're behaving
basically the same way I behave more or
less
um you talk about your conscious
experiences and therefore I just
extrapolate from that that you're having
a felt experience in the way I am and
and we can do that throughout nature
well there's no physical evidence
there's nothing we can observe from the
outside that will give us conclusive
proof that Consciousness is there and so
I think we've made this leap to
because we're conscious and because
we're unique and special and
um complex and intelligent in the way
that we are and because we don't have an
intuition that anything else is
conscious or we have no feedback about
it we've made this assumption that
Consciousness that those things aren't
conscious and felt experience does not
exist out there in in other atoms and
and forms of life even but especially
not inanimate objects
um and therefore consciousness
is somehow tied to these other things
that make us unique that consciousness
arises when there is this complex
processing when there is and there's we
can talk about the evolution argument
too which I think is super interesting
to get into and I'm hoping to talk to
Richard Dawkins
um about this verse why do you think
about consciousness
he's not interested
he's not interested in actually the
conversation I would have with him would
be very brief because he's he's just not
that interested in this topic but let's
go back to the Richard Dawkins piece
because there's I feel like there's a
lot to talk about here in terms of our
intuitions about Consciousness what it's
doing why in my book and you know
everywhere I talk about Consciousness I
bring it back to these two questions
that I think are at the heart of our
intuitions about Consciousness and so
your questions about whether human
beings are unique and special and all of
that I think are interesting questions
and something we could talk about I see
them as separate questions from the
Consciousness question so you see
Consciousness as giving a felt
experience to our uniqueness as opposed
to the uniqueness giving birth to gosh
yes and that potentially there is felt
experience even though it sounds crazy
even to me that there is felt experience
in all matter and at this point in my
thinking and after a few conversations
with some physicists I think if
conscious business is fundamental the
only thing that actually makes sense is
that it is
part of the most fundamental
that space-time and everything else
emerges out of out of Consciousness felt
experience is is just part of the fabric
of reality so is it possible to Intuit
this can we start by thinking about dogs
and cats go to the plants and going all
the way to matter or is this going to be
like modern physics where it's just
going to be impossible to even uh in in
the through our reason alone like we're
gonna have to have tools of some kind I
think it'll be a little bit of both I
mean I think the science has a very long
way to go and the truth is I don't even
think we can get to the science yet
because we have to do this work and this
is why I'm so passionate about this work
um and it's really it's really taking
hold I mean there are scientists
neuroscientists and physicists
interested in Consciousness and kind of
having gotten over the initial
Obstacle of wrestling with these
intuitions so that it's now being talked
about in a serious way which was the
first huge hurdle but I think a lot more
of that has to happen a lot more of
the intuition breaking
from the science we already have I mean
I think we almost need to catch our
intuitions up to what we we already know
um and then continue to break through
these intuitions systematically so that
we can really think more clearly about
Consciousness
um there are a couple of scientists now
working on theories of Consciousness
which do go they don't quite go to the
fundamental level but they go extremely
deep
um so that something like an electron
might be conscious under their Theory
this is um
integrated information Theory IIT with
Christoph Coke and Julio tanoni
um I've spoken to to both of them I
spoke to Christoph coke uh once or twice
for this project I'm working on now
um what they're working on is incredibly
interesting to me and I think very
important work
um however
I think they are also really led by some
false intuitions about self and Free
Will and I think that will be a limit to
their work so we can get into that but
um let's go
it's awesome which is that
what they're working on I think is the
most important next step forward which
is just even being open to the fact that
Consciousness goes as deep as particles
and being rigorous but even their Theory
isn't going as deep as I think we need
to go
um and it's hard to say how we could
actually study this scientifically but
that's part of the reason why I'm such a
supporter of IIT and why I'm so
interested in what they're doing even
though I think they're wrong
um is because they're they're opening
this path there and I think they're
getting more people interested and I
think
um yeah it'll be it'll be it's hard for
me to imagine what the science will
actually look like but okay so your
Intuition or at least the direction
which you're pushing is that
consciousness
is the only fundamental thing in the
universe that
everything else like time all those
kinds of things emerge from that
I will say that
what I believe at this point I I've been
saying 50 50 for a long time I'd say now
it's like 51.49
in terms of Consciousness being emergent
versus fundamental so I I am not
convinced of this at all I'm not
convinced that Consciousness is
fundamental what I think is there are
very good reasons to think it could be
and
essentially all of science up to this
point has
been led by the other assumption by the
first assumption that Consciousness
arises at some point namely in brains
and that's where all the science has
gone and I think that's wonderful and I
think it should keep on going and I
actually think that was a more important
place to start but I think there's a
possibility that the correct assumption
is that it's fundamental and so that's
the science I support that's the thing I
spend a lot of my time thinking about
and talking to scientists and
philosophers about and so I I shouldn't
give the idea that I actually have
crossed over into believing this is the
case but it is
it's the Assumption I follow in my work
at this point it's a possibility an
understudied possibility so it deserves
serious rigorous attention and there are
good reasons to start with that
assumption versus the other that I think
we're just now starting to realize so
just to clarify when we're talking about
Consciousness we're talking about the
hard problem of Consciousness that it
feels like something to
you know there's a subjective experience
do we
you know if Consciousness permeates all
matter is fundamental
is that going to be somehow
is our current intuition about
Consciousness like
the very tiny subset of what
cautiousness actually is so like we have
our intuitions about personal
experiences like what it feels like what
it takes to eat a cookie or something
like that um
but
that seems like a very specific
implementation of Consciousness in an
organism so how can we even reason about
something that's if Consciousness is
fundamental how can we reason about that
like I'm not sure I'm understanding the
connection between those two things but
when you think about what it's like to
be a plant to experience a thing okay we
can kind of get that we can kind of
understand that there are a lot of
places we could go with this one is
there's actually work being done by
people like David Eagleman he's a
neuroscientist I don't know if you know
him you should talk to him for your
podcast if you haven't he's wonderful
great science Communicator he's someone
I interviewed for my my current project
too
um so he he's done this actually okay
there are many places we can go one is
he does work with sensory addition
sensory substitution and this is
going in some very interest interesting
directions and and maybe partly answers
your question which is giving humans
qualia sensory experiences that we're
not wired for that human beings have
never had before
you let me know what you're most
interested in hearing about but we could
talk about things like the brain Port
um there's actually a study done I just
talked to one of the participants in the
study where they were seeing if they
could give human beings an experience of
magnetic north so other animals have
this
um
this sense that that we don't have where
they can feel intuitively the way that
our eyes work to give us an intuitive
sense of our environment we don't have
to translate the information coming in
through our eyes we just have a map of
the external world and we can navigate
it so many animals use a sense of
magnetic north to to get around and it's
an intuitive sense so I spoke to someone
who was in this part of this experiment
um and it was fascinating to hear him
acquire a sense not only that he had
never had but that no human being had
ever had so when I asked him to describe
the experience
it was challenging for him and
understandably so because it would be
like you describing sight to someone
who's never seen
um but this is clearly possible and
scientists like David Eagleman and
others are working on these and so I do
think it's possible that this line that
this
these scientific advancements may
actually start to dovetail with
the Consciousness research in terms of
being able to
experience things we've never
experienced before but I do think that
at some level yes we're limited as human
beings
we may be able to find some proof or
enough proof to at least
assume that Consciousness is fundamental
or you know who knows one day actually
believe that that's the correct
scientific view of things and not really
be able to get our minds around that or
to understand what it means and and
certainly not
to know what it feels like I mean we
can't we don't even know what it feels
like to be other creatures maybe what
it's like to be you
um
yeah I mean I mean that's I guess that's
what empathy is about that's why I tried
to exercise is try to imagine what it's
like to be other people and then you
you're doing that even farther with P10
but perhaps perhaps we can do that thing
more rigorously by connecting different
sensory mechanisms to the brain to do
that for all kinds of organisms on Earth
but they're similar to us in scale and
the time at which they function to time
scale and the spatial scale perhaps it's
much more difficult to do for electrons
and so on some of the intuitions I
talked about I mean I just kind of I I'm
taking them for granted that you and
everyone knows what I'm talking about
but in terms of the science in terms of
the studies
um understanding things like binding
processes understanding just a little
bit about how the brain works and as far
as we understand and then there's just a
ton of evidence now to support that our
conscious experience is at the tail end
of a lot of
um brain processing
yeah so it's just a little bit I mean I
give in the example in my book I I talk
about tennis and The Binding of the
sights and sounds and felt experience of
hitting a tennis ball which in the world
are happening at different times the the
rates
um it takes the sound waves and the
light waves and the the felt sensation
to travel to my brain are different that
there are these binding processes
that happen
prior to the conscious experience that
were essentially delivered to us by by
the brain
um and so we can get we can get back in
into this I can answer your your bigger
question first but I I feel like for for
a lot of people
to understand some of these science that
already
is shattering some of our intuitions
about the role Consciousness plays I
think is helpful in terms of being able
to be open to thinking about these other
ideas let's go there where the heck does
Consciousness happen in what we
understand about the brain timing wise
uh I mean this connects to the conscious
will to our experience of free will yeah
there is this period of time and it's
depending on the situation and the
behavior
um it can be anywhere from it's
essentially half a second there's 200
milliseconds I actually don't know I was
going to compare it to the timing of
thinking film and sound I don't know if
you know this yeah and I know this very
well you do the the the film and sound
yeah like yes what how the time how the
timing has to work so that we conscious
so that our experiences of it happening
at the same time
let me just let me just sit in the in
the Silence of it there's been so much
pain on this one point
so much we have no idea so I mean I yeah
I did a lot of algorithms on automatic
synchronization of audio and video and
all these kinds of things no I know this
well uh there's a lot of Science and
there's a lot of differences but it's
about
and people claim it's about 100
milliseconds you can't tell the
difference but it's much more like 30 to
50 milliseconds okay and it it Dr you
can go nuts trying to see if something
is in sync or not yes is it in sync or
not well also am I out of sync right now
brain is constantly making adjustments
yeah and so it can shift for you while
you're doing that which is probably part
of the thing that's driving you crazy
um okay so I'll start with binding
processes and then I'll just give a
couple examples
um so yes there's this window
um where your brain is
essentially putting all the information
together to deliver you a present moment
experience that is most useful for you
to navigate the world
um
so as I said and you know I use this
example of tennis in my book so the
sights and sounds are coming at us at
different rates
um it takes longer for a sensation in my
hand when I hit the ball with the racket
to travel to my brain than it does for
the light waves to hit my retina and get
processed by the brain so all these
these signals are coming in at different
times our brains go through this process
of binding to basically weave it all
together so that our our conscious
experience of that is of seeing hearing
and feeling the ball hit the racket all
at the same time that's obviously most
useful to us
binding is is mostly about timing it can
be about other things but I was just
talking to David Eagleman who was
talking about a very simple experiment
actually and this kind of shows how your
brain is basically always interacting
with the outside world and always making
adjustments to make its best guess about
the most useful present moment
experience to deliver
so this is a very simple experiment this
is from many many years ago
um and David David Eagleman was was
involved in this research where they had
participants hit a button and that
button caused a flash of light and
so our brains through binding the brain
it notices is is able to
kind of calibrate the experience you
have because the brain is aware that it
is its own hand that is causing the
light to flash that there's this cause
and effect going on and so you
have this experience of pushing the
button that causes the flash of Light
which is true and the light flashes
you can start to introduce longer pauses
starting with 20 milliseconds 30
milliseconds going up to I think 100
maybe even 200 milliseconds where if you
do it gradually since your brain is
making the adjustment
um you can introduce a delay I think
it's up to 200 milliseconds if you do it
gradually you will still have the
experience even though there's now a
delay between when you hit the button
and the light flashes you will still
have the exact same experience you had
initially which is that the light
flashes right when you push the button
in your experience nothing is changing
but then
so they they gradually give a delay
you've acclimated to that because it was
done gradually if they then go back to
the original instantaneous flash your
brain doesn't have time to make the
adjustment
and you have the experience that the
light flashed before you hit the button
and that is your true experience it's
not like you're confused but that is
your brain didn't have time to to make
that adjustment you think you're in the
same environment you're pushing the
button it makes the light flash it's
kind of
calibrating all the time but then the
the participants are suddenly saying oh
wait that was so weird the light flashed
before I hit the button
and so these types that's crazy they
built a
um Rochambeau rock paper scissors
computer game that was unbeatable based
on this glitch that you can present in
in binding by training someone if you
introduce a delay slowly enough then the
computer can get the information
before it responds but you still have
the experience that you're both
throwing out your rock or paper scissors
at the same time but in actuality the
computer
saw your choice
before it makes its choice and it's in
this window of milliseconds where you
don't notice it
so that starts to help you build up an
intuition that this conscious experience
is an illusion constructed by the brain
after uh conscious will conscious will
yeah and and just in general that that
Consciousness is not the thing that we
feel it is which is driving the behavior
that is actually at the tail end of it
and so a lot of decision-making
processes and they're studies that are
more controversial and I don't usually
um like to cite them although if you
want to talk about them we can they're
super interesting and into intuition
shattering but they're they're now
studies specifically about free will to
see if there are markers at the level of
the brain they can see what decision
you're going to make and when you make
that decision and I think this the
Neuroscience inevitably is just going to
get better and so
part of the reason I'm so passionate
about this I mean there's there's the
science and there's just the Curiosity
that that drives me of wanting to
understand how the universe works but I
actually see a lot of the Neuroscience
presenting us with truths that are going
to be difficult for us to accept
and I actually think there are really
positive ways to view these truths that
we're uncovering and even though they
can be initially kind of jarring and
even destabilizing and creepy I think
ultimately
there's actually a lot
it can have a positive effect on human
psychology and a whole range of things
that I and others have have experienced
and that I think it's important for us
to talk about because
you can't hide from the truth especially
in science right like it just it will
reveal itself and if this is true I
think not only
for better understanding the universe
than nature which is kind of my my
primary passion
um it's important for us to
absorb these facts and realize that they
don't it doesn't necessarily take away
the things from us that we fear
um I you know I've heard people say this
is talked about the common common point
to make or question to ask a scientist
can you still
you know enjoy chocolate if you're a
molecular biologist and
um is in a molecular biologist that
would be the one who would understand
how we experience chocolate
yeah but anyway if you get the point
stance if you're focused on the the
details of the you know the underlying
nature of reality does that take
the joy and the pleasure and for lack of
a better word spirituality out of our
experience as human beings and I
actually think
um for these Illusions like Free Will
and self the reverse is true I actually
think they can give us
their reasons and bases for
feeling more connected to each other and
to the universe for Spiritual
experiences for
um
even just on a more basic level for
increasing our well-being just in terms
of our psychology of lowering rates of
depression and anxiety and
um actually I think these realizations
can be extremely helpful to people
well it's like uh realizing that the
universe doesn't rotate around Earth
that the Earth is not the center the
universe is a really challenging thought
well people were worried about how that
would affect society well yes that's
like long-term but short-term I bet you
the number of
people who had an existential crisis as
it got integrated into society that
thought is huge it's like um
it's a hard one and you're saying but it
can't but it's also a source of awe and
I mean so many people now use that fact
to
inspire a positive
um response to inspire creativity and
curiosity and awe and all of these
things that are so
um useful for human well-being where's
the source of meaning
when you're not the center of the
universe when the U doesn't even exist
that even you the the the sense of self
and this and the sense of decision
making is an illusion
the truth is that for the most part the
sense of self is kind of at the core of
human suffering because it feels as if
we are separate from the rest of nature
we're separate from each other we're
separate from
um you know the the illusion that I that
I referenced of feeling like you know we
have these thoughts that are brain based
thoughts but then the eye swoops in to
make a decision
um in some sense it goes so deep that
it's as if the eye is separate from the
physical world
and that separation
um plays a part in depression plays a
part in anxiety even plays a part in
addiction so at the level of the brain I
think stop me if I'm repeating myself
but we started talking about the default
mode Network
um and so we actually know that when the
default mode network is quieted down
when people lose a sense of self in
meditation and on psychedelic drugs in
in therapy
there is a feeling that people describe
of
an extremely positive feeling of being
connected to the rest of Nature and so
that's a piece of it that I think if you
haven't had the experience
um you wouldn't necessarily know that
would be a part of it but truly having
that Insight that you're not the self
you feel you are immediately your
experiences are embedded in the universe
and you are a piece of everything and
you see that everything is
interconnected and so rather than
feeling like a lonely eye in this bigger
Universe there's a sense of
being a part of something larger than
yourself and this is intrinsically
positive for human beings
um and even just in our everyday lives
and choices and what we do for work
feeling part of something larger than
yourself is the way people describe
spiritual experiences in the way
um many positive psychological states
are framed and so there there's that
piece of it there is something there's a
one giant hug with the universe uh
everything in it but there is some sense
in which
we attach the search for meaning
with um the eye
with the ego
and uh you you it could almost seem like
life is meaningless our existence our
eye my existence is meaningless it
doesn't kind of go there under any world
view right really right
um and the truth is
we want to find
a truth
out of that downward spiral and not
a story that
we have to tell ourselves that isn't
true and the fact is we have these facts
available to us that in with the right
Framing and the right context
um
looking at the truth actually provides
us with that psychological feeling we're
searching for and I think that's
important to point out I think humans
are
fascinatingly good at finding Beauty In
Truth No matter how painful the truth is
so yes I totally agree yes but in this
case
I think there are
the concerns are legitimate concerns and
I have them myself for how people
respond I've actually had people tell me
they had to stop reading my book halfway
through
because
the parts on Free Will were so upsetting
to them
and this is something I think about a
lot because of that
kind of breaks my heart
um I don't
because I see this potential for these
realizations bringing
levels of well-being that many people
don't have access to
um I think it's important to talk about
them in ways that override what can be
an initial
um
fear or kind of spooky spooky quality
that can come out of these realizations
so at the end of that Journey there's
there's a Clarity and an appreciation of
beauty that if you just write it out by
the way if you want to read upsetting I
just gotten through
the boy the the four books if you want
to read upsetting so my my audible is
hilarious so there's conscious in it
and then so your book and then and then
it has the rise and fall of the Third
Reich
uh
bloodlands but by Timothy Snyder
probably the most upsetting book I've
ever read if you wanna because it's not
just Stalin or Hitler it's Stalin and
Hitler it's the worst the worst hits the
opposite of the best hits It's really
really well written really difficult
um I read uh sojunitsen's
um go like archipelago and what else red
famine which is um
um and applebum is that that hurt yeah
anyway so those are truly upsetting and
that's yeah and those are a lot of times
the results of
um hiding the truth versus pursuing the
truth so truth in the short term might
hurt but it did ultimately uh sets us
free I believe that and I also think
um whatever the truth is we have to find
a way to
maintain civil society and love and all
the things that are important to us if
you can jump around a little bit can I
just ask on a personal note because you
said you've suffered from depression and
there's a lot of people that see
guidance on this topic because it's such
a difficult one how were you able to
when it was when it has struck you how
were you able to overcome it yeah I mean
that's
maybe too long an answer so I've
experienced it in different forms so it
was my I would say my depression has
almost always mostly taken the form of
anxiety
I didn't realize how anxious I was
I think until I was an adult so I was
always very functional
um I think you know all the positive
sides of suffering in that way
um I think I'm a little OCD as soon as
this whole conversation is hilarious
because we're both suffering to some
level of anxiety psychology is just laid
out in front of us here it's a giant
mess it's kind of human it's great
is trying trying to organize hold on
like the Tom Waits song
um but then I I suffered from postpartum
depression after both of my daughters
after both pregnancies
um that was a very different experience
from anything I've ever experienced but
clearly it had a predisposition towards
you know suffering from something like
that
um anyway it really wasn't until I fully
recovered from the second experience of
postpartum depression that I realized
that I had been suffering on some level
my whole life and I think I always knew
I I thought of myself as a very
sensitive person an empathic person
um I mean I've been in therapy for 10
years
um
I knew I
had a lot of anxiety I would never have
denied that I had a lot of anxiety I
just didn't realize it crossed over into
a disorder really until I was an adult
and ended up taking
um Prozac I took an SSRI for postpartum
and
it was fascinating to me I ended up
interviewing my psychiatrist because I
was so fascinated in the whole thing
once I was on the other side of it just
what I had been through how different I
felt during that period of time and then
how quickly the medication made me feel
like myself again
I had come out the other side of the
experience of postpartum
um and was going to start tapering off
the medication and in this window where
I no longer had postpartum depression
um
and hadn't yet gone off the SSRI
I realized
that life was not only a lot easier than
when I had postpartum but it was easier
than it had ever been
and it took
taking all of that anxiety away to
recognize how much I had been
grappling with it my entire life
and it first started coming in the form
of realizations like
oh is this how other people yeah is this
how other people feel is this how that
like the things that I just always
thought of myself I'm really sensitive I
I'm an introvert I need a lot of time to
myself and all of these things that I
felt like
um I mean it's always very high
functioning
um and in some ways you know I was a
professional dancer and I think that was
the type of therapy for me there was the
obsessing over
um
the training and dancing nine hours a
day and all of that I now look back on
and see how much that was
um therapeutic for me
um and then I was kind of treating
something but uh yeah it was so it was
just this experience of
um
treating an anxiety disorder that caused
me to realize that I had one I didn't
know I could feel the way I felt
after taking Prozac and I became very
interested in I mean I I was already
working with neuroscientists I was
always already interested in
Consciousness in the brain and
um it just you know this kind of rattled
other intuitions for me in terms of how
our child how our childhoods shape who
we become
um because I had been convinced my my
father was
my my father was a complicated person as
you said before that's what I was just
gonna say again
I mean so he he was not diagnosed I
think he was born I think he had
borderline personality disorder and was
emotionally abusive and I thought that
all of the ways I experienced the world
and all of my anxiety and my
sensitivities
um I thought almost all of that if not
all of that was because of these
experiences I had growing up and Trauma
that I experienced as a child and
obviously those things play a part but
what I realized
um after going through postpartum and
then the thing that was extremely
informative to me was having my own
children
um
because they were basically living my
dream childhood they had none of the
things that I thought were the cause of
the psychological suffering that I
experienced
um there was none of that and they have
a lot of the same
um they struggle with a lot of the same
anxiety and panic attacks and what I
realized was
how much were kind of Born Into the
world with these things that we that we
struggle with and with our strengths and
with all of that and of course then if
you have an abusive childhood if you're
if you're someone who
tends to be anxious and sensitive and
empathic and then you're you're born
into an abusive situation that's obvious
terrible combination
but I'd never acknowledged or realized
how strong just the the genetics and the
wiring
played where's the line between you kind
of accepting the challenges you're born
with and this is what life will be
versus then figuring out that life can
be somehow different
I think they're part of the same process
and I think
it's kind of necessary to accept
what you're experiencing and what the
situation is and
how you feel and the types of
um
thoughts and patterns you tend toward in
order to make whatever changes can be
made so I do think it's kind of part of
the same process could life have been
any different I do regret certain
aspects of the decisions made
not by you I mean you know it depends
depends on what level we're talking I
think you know at a fundamental level I
I don't believe anything could be
different are you able to think about at
that level about your own life sure and
that's actually that's part of what I
was when I wanted to kind of talk a
little bit about the
um levels of usefulness of being aware
of these different Illusions because I
would say most of the time in our daily
lives
um the types of illusions that I'm
interested in in shaking up are not
useful to remind ourselves of most of
the time
I really think there are different
levels of usefulness to
thinking about and reminding ourselves
of the places where we have false
intuitions and so I I often use
um
the analogy of living on a sphere
um so
it still feels to most of us most of the
time I mean in our intuitive sense we're
not thinking about whether the the Earth
is flat or a sphere but we behave as if
it's flat and that makes the most sense
and
um it would be exhausting to keep
reminding ourselves as we walk down the
street like it feels flat but it's not
flat like there's just no reason to do
it's not useful in in that moment um if
you're building a house you can build it
as if the world is flat
um
and but you know of course so that so
their psychological reasons to bring it
into view and maybe even spiritual
reasons to bring an interview and then
there's just like usefulness so if
you're building a rocket to the moon you
better understand
the geometry of the earth
um even if you're flying an airplane if
you're an airplane pilot you have you
have to be aware of the truth of our
situation
um and then I think there are other
places where it's interesting
to remind ourselves is where I I start
out my book
um just
as a way to inspire awe and to get
yourself out of your everyday life and
see the big picture which can be
um just a relief but also helps you feel
more connected to the universe into
something larger than ourselves and so I
see these intuitions
um reminding ourselves that these
intuitions are Illusions in the same way
that most of the time they're not useful
they are useful if we want to think
about a science of Consciousness they're
useful for a whole range of
neuroscientific studies and I think they
can be incredibly useful in the same way
that lying on the ground and feeling the
gravity pushing you against a sphere and
realizing you're floating in the middle
of outer space
it gives me the same feeling to realize
and so
I have I mean there's so many levels to
it but if I'm thinking about difficult
things that I've experienced
um different traumas in my life when I
take a step back and kind of get this
bird's eye view of
kind of the mystery of this unfolding of
the universe and the fact that
um it happened the way it happened and
whether it could have happened another
way or there's no going back that is
that's the way it unfolded and being
able to surrender to that I think
um is very psychologically healthy and
and prevents us from I mean I think
regret is one of the most toxic Loops we
can get into so this is this is a path
to acceptance oh absolutely yeah because
Free Will I mean I think part of what is
the function of the experience of it is
is learning um I mean I think we can
still learn without being under the
illusion that we that we have free will
so for some people depression
can destroy them so how did how how can
you think about
avoiding that yeah so one so I didn't
totally answer your question first is um
therapy
ways that I have
have worked through anxiety and
depression so you like you're uh
uh an introvert and a deeply
intellectual person therapy works for
you
to a point
it was very helpful
um I mean I think talk therapy is one
tool and can be helpful
for I mean it depends on the therapist
it depends on the type of therapy but I
I found it
to be one piece and probably not the
biggest piece actually
um but I think
Medicare I wish I had discovered
medication sooner that
would have made a big difference in my
life even just intellectually to realize
that oh
like I'm not life was a lot harder than
it needed to be yeah and it wasn't about
keeping everything just so
um you know there's another state my
brain can be in where I don't have to
work so hard to be okay
um meditation was probably the most
meditation and psychedelic
experiences were probably the most
transformative
um
but you know a lot of these things don't
you know I'm I'm lucky that I didn't my
my anxiety and depression never really
got in the way of my living my life of
enjoying my life I mean there were
struggles that made life harder for me
um
but you know something like treatment
resistant depression
or severe PTSD
um these are things that
you know at this point in time you know
based on my understanding I think once
you've tried and and the truth is that
meditation is not is often not helpful
for those things it can actually
exacerbate them
um and the most promising thing that I
have seen is this Research into
psychedelic therapy assisted psychedelic
does that make sense to you that
psychedelics work so well for such
difficult cases what what is it about
psychedelics and I've been following
This research from the beginning when
they were doing end of life yeah they
started with end-of-life patients I
don't know maybe 20 years ago I met at a
Ted conference I met one of the doctors
who was who was doing this research it
was the first time I became aware that
the research was happening and I'd
already had my own experiences before
that and so it made perfect sense to me
that this would work it was still
astonishing to see the results to see
how successful
um the work is so much of the time but
it doesn't surprise me it makes sense
and it's actually in line with all these
other things so quieting down
the default mode Network
one of the things that's so
transformative about taking something
like psilocybin and everyone's
experience is different it can vary each
time you take it even in a single person
but
the experience I had and the experience
that many people have that is so
transformative is this feeling that's
very hard to describe but it's a feeling
of being one with the universe and that
comes with it's kind of all one feeling
that that is again hard to put into
words but there's this feeling that
everything is okay
um and I'd never had that feeling before
in my life and when I took psychedelics
that feeling would stay with me for
months and I never understood why and it
was always fascinating to me but there
was it was as if I was glimpsing a
deeper truth of the world that
it's all one thing we're all connected
um there's no sense that there could
even be a feeling of loneliness it was
just this visceral sense of being one
with everything and that everything was
okay that all the things I was afraid of
even death
um
that the Universe in a sense is just is
is an endless Recycling and
I don't know it's hard to describe but
we also know on the other side that
depression and anxiety
in when people are experiencing those
things the default mode network is is
more active yeah and so it's this this
cycling and this kind of obsessive
cycles of thinking about one's self that
is a huge part of the suffering in the
first place and so
the one thing that's surprising to me
about the research is that
um I I may be fudging the the data but
it's something like 80 of people who are
treated for PTSD after one
only one session are cured of their pts
yeah the the effect stays for prolonged
periods of time yeah that's really
interesting an addiction as well which
is interesting that's not something I'm
like personally personally familiar with
so that was a surprise to me but yeah I
mean it's just wonderful that we
yeah it's incredible I mean of course
it's also incredible for people who
don't uh suffer to see what psychedelics
can do with the mind which is that kind
of appreciation well and I think it's
actually important for this work it's
one of the questions I ask everyone I
talk to
for this series
um many of them you know I won't be able
to use that audio
or a lot of them yes and what their
experience wasn't if that's informed you
know actually initially in the 50s I
want to do more research on this and
look into it but in the 50s there were
some studies that were being done with
Scientists who there were hundreds of
scientists they put into the study where
they were on the brink of some kind of
Discovery some where they were stuck so
they had been doing research and they
were stuck and they used psychedelics to
come up with an answer to find a path
forward and it was extremely useful for
that yeah I mean it's fascinating and
then the nice thing about psychedelics
for my perception is that they don't
currently suffer from the taboo that
weed does
I don't think so like um for example
there's some kind of uh cultural
construct about a pothead
that makes it so that you know like Elon
got in trouble for smoking weed right he
would have gotten in trouble for taking
mushrooms too I don't know really I
don't think so oh that's interesting I
don't think that's a surprise to me
because mushrooms mushrooms to me seem
like a journey like there's a perception
that you don't take mushrooms all the
time it's not an addictive substance
it's not a lifestyle it's uh it's like
going to burning man it's like a
experience that stays with you for a
long time didn't realize that
understanding had permeated into the
culture yeah it's a good question of how
uh if it has or not because maybe I have
a very narrow perspective these kinds of
things but I think what has permeated is
through Hollywood ideas of what it means
to be a person who smokes weed a lot
yeah and that and that has like has it
has had its effect which is hilarious
given
the the effects of weed versus alcohol
but that's a whole nother story
and you've spoken
spoken yeah yeah so well not not a lot I
really want to do a lot more I've taken
uh mushrooms aspirations yeah I mean
because
and I didn't didn't have I have a very
addictive personality so I'm very
nervous about substances but I didn't
have any addictive relationship with
that yeah I think well every time I it
is a treatment for addiction so
interesting but
uh I you know I'm almost nervous because
every time I've I've taken mushrooms
I've had a really pleasant experience I
mean it was um
it's already the thing I feel anyway
yeah but I feel it more intensely the
thing I feel anyways like appreciation
of the moment how beautiful life is the
weird thing
that I feel not throughout the day but
certain moments of the day especially
early on that's like life
is intensely beautiful
like
um that's usually when I'll tweet yeah
it's like Everything is Everything is
awesome and I I remember those feelings
because sometimes when I feel really
down and all those kinds of things you
remember that like it's a roller coaster
and you just and then you find the good
feelings and it's cool and it does make
me a little bit sad that they kind of
fade but then as they get older you get
to use those moments you realize they
don't use them well you know because
when you feel great when you're focused
all that kind of stuff use them well
yeah because the mind is a roller
coaster yes that's true that's partly
why I do this work I feel like my work
is therapy
I don't know if you feel that way work
is therapy this work not work in general
thinking about the Deep questions
thinking about the nature of the
universe
um thinking about Consciousness even
meditation I mean I got into meditation
to me it's interesting to me I mean I
think a lot of meditators feel this way
about it but I think just I'm thinking
about it from the perspective of someone
who hasn't meditated before but it feels
like a scientific experiment it feels
like it's the same physicist in me
um who was drawn to meditation because
the experience is one of
getting closer to your experience and
asking similarly deep questions like
what is time what does that even mean
what what do I mean by time what does it
feel like
um what is a thought is one of the most
interesting questions to me hey how do
you meditate let's talk about this so
what you let go of time
well I'm not really doing anything I
mean the the exercise is really so
simple it's just paying attention to
your present moment experience and it's
an extremely challenging thing to do
it's not the natural state of the brain
um it's an exercising concentration
um which is why you know athletes and
and other people who who spend a lot of
time needing to focus intensely find it
so useful I mean it's really
um a focus a concentration practice
um but all it is really I mean there are
different ways there are different
methods but
it really is quite simple at its core
which is just paying close attention to
your present moment experience and so
um in vipassana which is what I've
mostly been trained in
um you're usually paying attention to
the breath but there's always some focus
of concentration and the focus can even
be just an open awareness just
watching your mind go just what what
comes into your experience and part of
that is the Mind part of it is the
external World
um so you hear a sound you think a
thought you feel a feeling you're
your cheek is itching am I gonna scratch
it am I not gonna scratch it just like
sounds like the most boring thing in the
world and what's interesting is
the mo paying close attention to the
most boring thing in the world is
incredibly fascinating
noticing that each breath no two breaths
are the same that time keeps moving that
your thoughts keep appearing
um it's there yeah I mean it's it's a
spiritual practice for notice it's more
and more beautiful things about the
simpler simpler things yeah it's great I
I like to do that I don't meditate I've
tried a few times uh
and I will but I meditate I do meditate
but not I meditate by thinking about a
thing uh-huh and like holding on to that
thing and just like it's not that's not
really I guess technically meditation
but it's keeping a focus on an idea and
then you you walk with it
and you solved a little puzzle of it
especially any kind of programming or
math stuff you're holding stuff in your
head and you and put don't don't look
stuff up don't
uh take notes you're only allowed to
have your mind and that's you would
really enjoy a Meditation Retreat I mean
you would also not enjoy it it would be
hard because it's all you wouldn't go
nuts it would be hard
but you you would get it what's the
commentation tree is it usually silent
or it is not always silent or actually
at least the one I would recommend you
do is a silent Meditation Retreat five
five days five days
okay we'll talk later but you might be
my next victim I've I've con I have five
days a long time it's a long time did
you just sit it changes your brain it's
the type of experience that will change
your brain permanently there's been like
two three four hour sessions you don't
have children I don't have children oh
the children uh leaving them for five
days and not speaking and impossible
I've I've only done one Retreat since I
had kids I'm doing another one
maybe that's what the thoughts will be
coming in my head you should be you
should be getting married whatever let
the thoughts be I think it's always
really good at letting things just be
and focusing on the present moment and
you might come out with some Epiphany
about what you should do next
um yeah no I I love the idea obviously
uh I love the idea I love that you know
I fast I'm faster for three days I want
to fast for longer that's also yeah in a
different way perhaps but it brings you
makes you more sensitive to the world
around you smile I'm not exactly sure
what the Yeah the chemistry of that is
but obviously you're
actually it's not obvious because you're
not always that hungry uh but you're
more time slows down and you feel things
you feel a breeze all this kind of stuff
right it's very interesting uh you've I
think a tweeted something about ideas
coming out from
sometimes feeling about coming from
outside of you sometimes so you
mentioned as you meditate
you know you notice these ideas come in
so
thoughts ideas how did that connect
consciousness
so the thing I was responding to that
you wrote
um
I think I was partly
picking up on the part of you that would
really get a lot out of a Meditation
Retreat
that was my way of beginning that
conversation
um that experience you had of a thought
coming from somewhere else
when you spend
an extended period of time paying close
attention to your moment-to-moment
experience that's how all of your
thoughts
appear to you
and it's really beautiful because you're
letting go just through the practice of
meditation meditation you're quieting
down your
um default mode Network and without
necessarily
um intellectually thinking yourself out
of free will it it naturally kind of
drops away and so
when you're under the spell of this
illusion that you are the author of your
thoughts and your conscious experience
is driving all of your behavior and
there's this eye that stands
somewhere near your brain but is not
your brain that stands free of the
physical world is is the thing
generating the thoughts
um
when you're meditating
that quiets down and can kind of quiet
down completely so that your experience
is just of the next thing arising in
your conscious awareness but it's the
source of that is still this brain what
you realize is the source of it is not
your conscious experience and that's the
important insight
and that's the insight and so there are
many insights you can have in meditation
that align with the science which is
what's really fascinating because it
doesn't have to be that way like I can
imagine finding a meditation to be
extremely useful and helping me with
anxiety and all the rest and having all
kinds of insights that turn out to not
be true
but the interesting thing is that these
insights actually turn out to be true
um and so that that is one of them is
the
when you're just watching what your
conscious experience actually is you
realize that it's not doing all the
things you usually feel like it's doing
and so the thoughts really just arise
in much the same way that a sound or a
sight or a feeling
um you know maybe your leg starts to
hurt you when you're just watching
Moment by Moment by moment pain arises a
bird chirping arises
a thought arises a feeling arises
you're just kind of watching watching it
all unfold and there's something really
beautiful about that
yeah it's
the the the perspective you could take
on is there's a connectedness to the
entirety of the universe like to Nature
in general and that there's something so
beautiful about Consciousness about the
fact that
it's not just a dead Universe with atoms
doing their thing that
at least in this one instance there is a
felt experience of the universe
of the University it's not even I'm part
of the universe yeah I'm there's a right
here in this little point in space and
time there is an experience of the
universe but it's still interesting to
think about where those ideas
if those ideas are solely a construction
of the brain or is there some kind of
mechanism of joint collective
intelligence of humans as social
organisms where that those like
like how much of it is
me training when you're on network and
the ideas of tens of thousands of other
people and how much is it myself talking
like in terms of psychic phenomena and
you're talking in terms of just
absorbing the information of the past
and education and
well um just kind of our Collective
human project that gets in throughout
our lives I don't know much about
psychic phenomena but I also want to be
open-minded in the way we speak about
collective intelligence because it's
very easy to simplify to it's a neural
network trained on knowledge developed
over generations and so on it it does
feel
like intelligence is stored in some kind
of distributed fashion
across humans like if you take one out
I I think that intelligence quickly goes
down
I don't know how quickly it goes down if
you just take one out and depends on
which one I think I half agree and half
disagree with what you're saying but
yeah I mean the other thing you notice
when you spend a lot of time in
meditation and when you spend a lot of
time kind of shaking up the these
intuitions that I think get in the way
of of clearly
okay
thinking about what Consciousness is
um
is that we are these systems in nature
that are not at all isolated and there
are the obvious ways like if I just stop
drinking water you know that's going to
change the system very drastically right
so there's just you know the the energy
consumption but the fact that we
exchange ideas is
um we part of who I am is everyone I've
interacted with and of course the people
that interact more with have sculpted me
more but we our brains are sculpted
through our interactions with each other
as well
yes but I wonder if it's a more correct
and useful perspective to take
that those interactions are the
organisms
like you're you're saying you're still
making the brain the primary
there could be like
uh that the brain is what it is because
of the social interactions and the
social interactions are the living
organism like that's a weird perspective
because it's I don't I don't actually
think it's one or the other
they're both yeah they're both both
living yeah it's like cats and dogs
yeah I mean it's a little bit like you
know I I have two children and a lot of
people with two children will say like
when when you're preparing to have the
second one and soon after you've had the
second one that having two is kind of
like having three because you are
um nourishing and protecting and
overseeing each individual life but then
there's the sibling relationship which
is almost another
thing yeah it's weird so you've spoken
with uh with Don Hoffman a few times yes
uh in his bookcase against reality yeah
many more than a few there's a lot of
fun ones because everyone was Sam was
involved well Sam and I interviewed him
yeah sorry most of the conversations
I've had with him are private they're
not public but we used to meet before
the pandemic we were meeting about
monthly
to discuss ideas I would love to be a
fly in the wall of those discussions but
he wrote a book case against reality
yeah makes the case that our perception
is completely detached from objective
reality
can you explain his perspective and let
us know well no no maybe not fully but
to which degree you
agree and don't so this is much more
focused I guess you guys have an
agreement that Consciousness is somehow
fundamental yeah I mean I think we both
think we might be wrong
um about the Consciousness they're about
about it being fundamental but I think
we're both just we both agree that this
is a legitimate
um question to ask at this point in
science is consciousness fundamental and
I really see it as a question and I
think he does too but he goes hard on
reality yes
I you know
especially so I actually now have
recorded three conversations with him
for this project I'm working on yeah and
in every conversation we have we seem to
land on the same place but this last
conversation we had it seemed to be even
more clear that
the semantics really get in the way when
you get into the weeds in these
conversations
we it's almost like we need some new
terminology because it's hard to know
sometimes whether we're talking about
the same thing
um I have issues with his terminology
that when we talk about what his
terminology represents it seems like we
completely agree but the conclusions you
don't
it's possible we have a very similar
view of the universe if Consciousness is
fundamental it may be an identical view
it's hard for me to know because I
disagree with a lot of his terminology
okay but our four-dimension reality he
says that's like a complete
construct space time is a complete weird
construction that yeah well I mean the
truth is that I mean if you talk to a
neuroscientist like Anil Seth and I
would say most neuroscientists but he's
he's really good on this subject and and
his
expertise and his area of focus is in
perception so he talks a lot about how
our perceptions give us an experience of
the world and he calls it a controlled
hallucination
um I'm sorry he probably got I think he
says that he got that term from someone
else but that that's the that's the term
he used we got every term from somewhere
right that's true everything there's no
new ideas all right
there's a sense in which what Hoffman is
saying is already we already know to be
the case so our brains are creating this
conscious experience
um based on these interactions with the
outside world it is in some sense all a
controlled hallucination
and someone like Anil Sessa from the
neuroscientific point of view I actually
have a quote here somewhere if you if
you have any interest in hearing the
quote
um but he's essentially saying
everything we experience as a perception
including our experience of time and
space so we still don't really know what
our experience of space represents out
there in the world and then of course
when you talk to physicists about the
different interpretations of quantum
mechanics I mean where physics is is
seems to be headed across the board at
this point is that space and time are
emergent that they're not part of the
fundamental fabric of reality and so
there are some ways in which
Dawn is saying things that is he being
too poetic about it is that is that the
right way to to phrase it because like
no go ahead he says like
it's not that our perception is a con
just a controlled hallucination well no
it's not he's saying something more than
that I mean it but my point is that a
lot of what he's already saying on some
level we kind of science is already
there and could agree with yeah but not
all the way yeah because he's saying
like well that we don't even we've like
The evolutionary process yeah has
constructed our brain mechanisms in such
a way that we're really far from having
access to
objective reality although I think we
already know that as well I mean if any
version of string theory is correct and
you know of course we don't know yet
it's all up for grabs but the truth is
each theory is more weirder than the
last
um
if there are 15 dimensions of space we
are just not
we're not wired but to be able to
understand the fundamental reality right
but but I think we have a consistent
abstraction that seems to be reliable
yeah like uh like a blockchain yes and
he's not just saying that we really only
have this tiny window onto reality he's
saying that that window onto reality is
giving us a lot of false information
it's not just an abstraction it's false
yeah because he's saying there's no
reason it needs to be true
like there's no
uh it does it's not required to be true
yeah and in fact there's through natural
selection it's very possible to uh
imagine or it's likely to imagine that
organisms will evolve in such a way that
you're going to just be lying to
yourself completely and but the question
there is if that's the case it's a
really interesting thing to think about
I think yeah the regular which he
approaches it is really
um admirable I mean I do think it's
scientific uh but
it's uh the question for me is why is it
so consistent across all of these
organisms we all seem to see the table
like and feel and yeah so what he will
agree so what I would say to that and
when I post this to him I really don't
want to speak for him but I'll I'll
answer it myself and say that I believe
he agrees with what I'm about to say
which is that
the things we perceive
are connected to the structure of
reality it's just that the structure of
reality is made of something completely
different than the thing we're
experiencing
so imagine if you just go with the the
holographic principle
um you know Loosely uh and actually the
holographic principle applies to black
holes only um so there's ads CFT Duality
anti-decider space and conformal field
Theory am I getting all these terms
right
but I can't believe we're going there
well I mean this is where I've in all of
my conversations but this is this
because the idea is so so if we just if
we just have the basic principle that
reality and all the information can be
contained or is is actually in a
two-dimensional space that gets
projected this is something that you
don't buy based on the look on your face
no no no I'm I'm actually freaking out
because yes any theory of modern physics
gives inkling that reality is very weird
right and completely different from how
we experience that's one example which
is so so this is an intuition that for
whatever reason has has always felt true
to me this is this is the way I thought
about things as a child I've met other
people that felt this way when I've had
experiences in psychedelics and this is
where I start to sound crazy to but
nope but um everybody else is crazy
except it does but
that has always seemed right to me and
that's always the thing that I feel like
I'm looking for that it's funny recently
I was thinking that it's it's as if I
feel like I'm and it was more how I was
thinking of how I felt as a child but
um I feel this way a lot as an adult too
that the uh the image is one of a snow
globe that I that I that I'm confined to
the snow globe based on my human
perceptions and the truth of reality is
is out there and it's actually why I'm
so drawn to shaking intuitions I feel
like every time we shake up an intuition
it's like an opportunity to leave the
snow globe for for a moment
um you know it's like smashing the
marbles and seeing Oh it's not liquid in
there like I thought it's it's it's
getting this glimpse of something truer
than what we typically experience
I feel like as though it's for a long
time going to be snow globes inside snow
globes inside snow globes but the larger
point is that yes whatever is true about
the fundamental nature of reality is not
something we're experiencing however it
is linked and give us gives us Clues to
it so so one image I've been I came up
with recently I actually wrote about
this I have an article in Nautilus about
time
um because I was as I spend time
thinking about what it would mean for
Consciousness to be fundamental
um and at the same time I'm talking to
physicists about
different interpretations of quantum
mechanics and the and the fact that the
ones I'm talking to believe that space
and time are are emergent and are not
part of the fundamental story
um I was thinking about what is it
what could time be if it's not the way
we experience it what could it be
pointing to
um and you know I'm not the first person
to think like this many people have have
um you know developed different thought
experiments around this but
um and this is I'm not saying this is
the way things are but this is just one
solution is that time and causality
um appear to us the way they do because
for whatever reason we're only
perceiving one moment at a time
and
these connections between events that we
perceive as time are actually just part
of the fabric of reality there's some
structure to
reality at a deeper level
um where you know it's like shining a
flashlight on the structure of reality
where for us for whatever reason
everything else disappears and the only
thing that exists is is
that single pin
pinprick of light that we happen to be
inhabiting or that we can perceive but
that the rest of it is there and so that
even though time would be an illusion
and and the causality in the way we
experience it is an illusion
um or it doesn't mean what we think it
means it's still pointing to a deeper
structure there's something that it
corresponds to in the fundamental nature
of reality and I've had many enough
conversations with Don I think
to know that he
he would agree with that that our
perceptions
map onto something
it's just not
the experience of it that we're having
so so to go back to
um you uh the idea that all of reality
could be
contained in two dimensions and there's
something about the the interaction
between different points
um that cause this
a holograph so that it seems like
there's a three-dimensional world when
in fact that it's it's a projection of
this two-dimensional surface
um
what we experience as space still
references something
at the fundamental level it's just that
it's not space
and that is something that makes a lot
of sense to me I also I posted an
excerpt George Musser wrote a great book
spooky action at a distance
um and he talks about he's he's a great
science writer and he talks about
ways to kind of absorb what this would
mean this ads CFT Duality and he talks
about he gives an example of
um music as an analogy that two
different notes can exist in three
dimensions as if the other doesn't exist
because of the frequency of the sound
waves and that in another way you can
think of the sound waves existing in
different dimensions
thank you
I don't know if that's i i i i yeah
that's really interesting so I don't
speak as well as I write so
I've written about this in a way that I
think is is easier to absorb than the
way I just described it but I think
causality is a trickier trickiest one
trickier one time it's a trick you want
to like yeah
oh boy and there are physicists who
think that space is emergent but time is
still fundamental and Lee smolen is one
of those scientists and it's really
interesting to talk to him about this
but yeah but time being emergent
um is a really trip you want to think
about yeah also I I wonder if it's
possible at which point this the
experience of time
start becoming a part of the conscious
experience of living organisms so is it
something that evolved on Earth yeah
only or is it it's also very hard to
think about Consciousness without time
and that's something that's really
interesting for me to think about too
um although not that this is scientific
evidence of anything but I and many
others have had the experience a
Timeless spaceless experience
um in certain states of meditation and
on under the internet conscious
experience would you say yeah absolutely
but didn't you say that some aspect of
conscious experience is memory it seems
like that too no no so I I said an
experience of being a self is due to
memory
um it seems that Consciousness and time
are inextricably linked but I I think
that may be an illusion also and when I
think about Consciousness being
fundamental and you know someone oops
someone like Max tegmark I don't know
who if there are other mathematicians
I'm sure there are he's the only one I
know of who will talk about
mathematical forms and shapes as not
just being he talks about them as being
actual
objects in nature that that exist that
are not just mathematical structures
that we can think about
but any mathematical structure that
comes out of the math actually exists in
reality yeah and so when I think about
Consciousness being fundamental
I think about
physics and Mathematics being a
description of the structure of it
and that when mathematicians say things
like that or physicists say things like
that
um it makes sense
if we're talking about
a conscious experience of some sort yeah
that's really interesting I mean first
of all Max is great as
man this is really interesting to think
about like how
what is fundamental yeah it's a good
exercise to do in general yeah like that
to truly think through it I mean
ultimately it's a very humbling process
because we're probably in the very early
days of uh well we can't no currently
right right
me I mean maybe permanently but
I I remain optimistic
right uh well to jump around a little
bit the Google AI engineer
I'm using the terms from the Press it's
kind of hilarious
but it's a friend of yours no it's not
no no uh but just you know the term AI
is really not used amongst machine
learning people oh I see okay so like
I'm using kind of right Google AI
engineer and just like sentience and
chatbot and like none of those words are
really used in one by the people that
actually build them you know you're much
more likely to use language model versus
chatbot or uh like natural language
dialogue versus chatbot or whatever and
certainly not sentience but that's the
point I mean sometimes the difference
between the public discourse and the
engineering is actually really important
because engineering tends to want to
ignore the magic they don't
notice the magic anyway the Google AI
engineer uh believes that uh the Lambda
1 language
natural language system
achieved sentience I don't know if you
paid attention to that I didn't you
didn't but the the general question is
do you think a chatbot do you think a
robot could be conscious
so I mean this answer is slightly
different or very different depending on
whether I kind of follow the assumption
that Consciousness emerges at some point
in physical processing or whether it's
fundamental
um since I've just chosen to stay on the
fundamental Channel
um
I mean then then it's kind of a silly
answer because if Consciousness is
fundamental in in the way I currently
think about it the only way I imagine it
working
um
every physical thing we perceive is the
representation of a conscious experience
so I mean yes that's true true of
everything in the world
um however I would say if that's the
case
even though there's a way in which it's
behaving in similar ways to a human
being
the way it's constructed what it is
actually made of and the physics of it
is so different that I would expect it
to have
an entirely completely non-human
conscious experience
and whether it even feels like a self I
think would be
a big question mark well there's
questions of ethics and yeah is it
capable of suffering is suffering
connected to Consciousness Consciousness
I mean obviously it is it's the it's the
only way you can suffer is
well maybe maybe it's not maybe it's not
maybe it's more connected to self
I would say I mean just on my own use of
these words suffering is only something
that can happen in a conscious
experience right so can robots suffer
if they have a car anything that has a
conscious experience can experience
suffering but do plants suffer in the
same so is there some level
where when we construct
our morals and ethics
that is there a class of conscious
experiences or organisms that are
capable of conscious experience
that we can anthropomorphize
sufficiently such that we give them
rights
yeah I mean this is not an area
that for physics I have spent for me
I have not spent a lot of time thinking
about this most people expect that I
have it's interesting these types of
questions are much less interesting to
me than the other questions and I think
it's because I'm interested in the
physics of things sure I'm I'm somewhat
interested I'm definitely interested in
in ethical questions for human beings
but I have spent very little time
thinking about the implications for
other types of intelligence
um I will say that I think the capacity
for suffering
of con of the capacity for suffering of
a of a conscious system
um goes up with memory and with a sense
of self
so if you take if
if anesthesia only erased your memory
and it didn't actually make you
unconscious you actually experienced
horrifically experienced some surgical
procedure but we could completely wipe
out your memory of it
as
nightmarishes that scenario scenario is
and I'm not suggesting we should ever do
this I would say
if our only option were to erase your
memory of it that would be the more
ethical thing to do than
to have you maintain that memory because
the suffering is then carried
across a longer distance through time
that's presuming that suffering is
unethical
well isn't that what ethics is all about
it's about suffering
I mean I think to me ethics is all about
suffering and well-being and I don't
know what ethics is without that uh
there's different measures of suffering
so having one traumatic event May if you
erase that one traumatic event that
potentially might have
um negative on net consequences for the
growth so that yeah so then it's a
different it's a different question but
I would
say that memory increases suffering
globally
so that if any moment of suffering
only existed for itself in the present
moment
that is a lesser kind of suffering
than
a suffering that is drawn out over time
through memory so hard to think about
and so yeah I mean in terms of AI
if they're conscious and there's a sense
of self and memory which I think I
actually think you need memory to have a
sense of self
um actually sorry I take that back I
actually think you can have a really
primitive sense of self without memory
um but an AI that is conscious that has
memory and a sense of self
um yeah that's capable of suffering
absolutely well one of the things
because
you said you haven't really looked into
this area
um because there's so many interesting
things to look into and you're really
focused on the physics side to me the
the the Neuroscience experiments that
you mentioned where there's a difference
between the timing of things that kind
of reveal there's something here yeah to
me working with robots I have robots
that are moving around my home in in
Austin I know I it's a very good
embodied thought experiment but here's
the thing
that
looks like he has a free will
it it looks like it has conscious
experiences
and uh and then I know how it's
programmed and so like I have to go back
and forth
and it's you know this is what I do
you lay on the ground looking up at the
stars thinking about plants and I and I
look at like a robot like well you can
do this with plants too I mean there's
some complex enough behavior that looks
like Free Will from a certain angle and
it makes you wonder it makes you wonder
two things one is there Consciousness
associated with that processing
um and two if there isn't
what does that say about our experience
and
both are our circumstance in nature what
does that say yeah
um but yeah I do I do that with plants
all the time I go back and forth but the
zombie thought experiment now
um at least for me is often presented as
AI because now that's easier as a robot
because that's easier
um
I don't know if it's just because it's
in it's in pop culture now in the form
of films and television shows but it's
it's easier
to
get to that point of um contemplation I
think by imagining
a robot I don't know why exactly I'm
bothered by philosophers talking about
zombies
because
it feels like they're missing it's like
talking about
it's reducing
a a joyful experience so like uh
that's like talking about listen when
you fall in love with somebody yeah the
other person is a zombie you don't you
don't know if they're conscious or not
you're just making presumptions and so
on it's like it says philosophers will
do this kind of things they might as
well be a zombie or you know there's no
such thing as love it's just a mutual
Catholic Economist will reduce love to
some kind of mutual calculation that
minimizes risk and stability over time
right it's like all right what I want to
do with each of those people yeah is I
want to take I want to find every one of
those philosophers to talk about zombies
and eventually give them one of those
robots and watch them fall in love and
then and see right how their
understanding of how humbled they are by
how little we understand that's the
point of the zombie experiment I mean
sure maybe the zombie God experience
that I mean I I can't think of zombies
is that the thought is that no so for me
I mean I don't like spending much time
on it I think it has limited use for
sure and I under understand your your
annoyance with it but for me what's so
useful about it is it gets you to ask
the same questions you're asking when
you're looking at robots
if you just run the experiment and you
say okay you know I'm sitting here with
Lex what if I try to trick myself
what's different about the world if
someone tells me actually he's a robot
is essentially what the zombie
experiment is he's over there he has no
conscious experience he's acting
officias but there's no experience there
so it gets you to ask some interesting
questions one is
okay when it seems impossible I just
think no that's that makes no sense I I
can't I can't even imagine that okay
what do I think Consciousness is
responsible for what is consciousness
doing in that in that human over there
that is Lex that I can't
fathom
all of your behavior and everything that
you're you're doing and about without
Consciousness so it gets you to ask this
question and these are this is these are
the questions I begin my book with
um what is consciousness doing it gets
you to ask that question in a deeper way
and then I kind of found this alternate
I don't know if other people have done
this but
I found this alternate use for it which
is even more useful to me which is I'm
able to do it sometimes I'm able to just
sit with someone and and you know get my
imagination going and imagine
there really is no conscious experience
there in that person
and what happened for me the first few
times I was able to do this is it
reminded me exactly of how I feel when I
look at complex plant behavior and other
behaviors in nature where I assume
there's no conscious experience
and
to me it just flips everything it just
flips everything on its head it just
gets you to be able it gets you to be
open to possibilities that you were
closed to before and I think that's
useful does it enhance or
um
dissipate your capacity for love of
other human beings what role does Love
play in The Human Condition
I mean in so many ways it's the most
important role
I don't think any of these realizations
I mean if if anything I think it
enhances it
but I don't think they I mean it's it
kind of goes back to the levels of
usefulness
sometimes you want to picture your
friends as a plant it's helpful
it's helpful to to appreciate the beauty
that they are as an organism yeah I mean
I don't know for for me the more time I
spend
um practicing meditation being seeing
through these illusions
um the more poignant
my conscious experience becomes and love
is obviously one of the most powerful
and one of the most positive experiences
we have and I don't know there's just
there's whatever its cause is there's
just something miraculous about it
in and of itself and for itself
I think love romantic love is a
beautiful thing connection friendship is
a beautiful thing and it's so
interesting how people can grow together
how interact together disagree together
and make each other better like uh
scientific collaborations are like this
too uh
uh Damian caught him in taversky I mean
that there's
and most people are not able to do that
in the in the scientific realm they
create the more successful you become
the more solid rare and you recognize it
when you have it when you have a great
collaboration I mean in science but also
in other areas and in this this Ted
production I'm working on I just
happened to be working with this
producer where we had this instant
connection and the chemistry is great
and I have so much fun recording with
her it's like it's so great to have I
usually work alone and it's been
wonderful to have so it's a good it's
like a chat it's like a conversation
type of thing yes she's taking my
conversation we're playing around with
it we're just working on the pilots I
love how you have no idea I was gonna
turn out this is great yeah
um um well I just started working
without a clear
a clear image of the end result although
it started with an idea for a film
um I don't know I guess I have a feeling
I was thinking wondering if I talked
about this with you before anywhere but
probably not no yeah because you and I
have never spoken no we just met we just
know each other I mean you didn't see me
when I was listening to that podcast
yeah of course because I thought you
didn't hear that thought that's that's I
mean we were mentioning this offline as
a small attention there's a cool dynamic
in how we get to become really close
friends without never having met never
having talked one way but it could be
one-way friendships that form it's a
beautiful thing I I think I don't know
that that makes me feel like we're all
connected yeah and you're almost like
plugging into some kind of weird yeah
thing yeah
there's so many things I want to say now
but here's one thing is the way I think
about Consciousness if it's fundamental
um is analogous to a pot of boiling
water where the water is the
Consciousness and the bubbles are the
conscious experiences and so
it is all one thing and then there are
these shapes that take form and they
there's a felt experience right it's all
felt experience and so when we're able
to let go of this sense of self or this
illusion of self
um the idea that experiences are
happening to something or to someone
drops out and what you get is just
experiences arising so there's the
fundamental nature of the universe which
obviously has a structure and obeys laws
but what you get out of that are
appearances of different conscious
experiences they're they're just
coming into being right and so
there is under that view I mean there
are different ways to look at the
fundamental nature of reality without
Consciousness and kind of come up with a
similar view but
in that view it is just kind of one it's
one thing with different experiences
and in that Boiling Pot is a lobster
which represents the Human Condition the
devil because it's because life is
suffering I don't know if you've read
Pastor Wallace consider the lobster I
mean it's no I think the stuff that due
to lobsters is fascinatingly
but oh yeah no I mean that that was my
my first rejection of many worlds just
my psychological rejection of it was
just imagining the multiplication of all
the suffering I just I mean I spend a
lot of time
um thinking about consumed by and trying
not to be overwhelmed by the depth of
human suffering to imagine many worlds
with his just infinite suffering oh my
God yeah what is it about humans I think
you spent too much on Twitter is focused
on the suffering I mean there's also the
awesomeness yeah I think the awesomeness
outpowers the suffering over time that's
so nice I wish I believed that with
memory as you said uh the suffering is
Multiplied it's it's uh it's an
interesting thought but with memory
um
beauty is Multiplied as well so it's
like yes where I stand with it and I'm
for some reason still optimistic that we
can get ourselves to a different place
but the way things currently are
um or the way things have always been
for for animals and humans and I think
any any conscious life form is
um
to me the suffering seems so much
more impactful and powerful than any
happy for lack of a better word
experience that
no happy experience is worth
it's equivalent
experience of suffering
that's certainly how I feel as well but
I I've learned not to trust my feelings
yeah well
so uh you know the folks who are
religious will ask the question which I
think applies whether you're religious
or not wise they're suffering in the
world why does it just God allow
suffering or those kinds of questions I
think
I think
um
it does seem that suffering is a deep
part of human history
and uh if the if to really think about
that part of nature it means part of
nature if
feeling good is surviving and thriving
nothing survives and thrives forever so
you just encounter suffering it's just
built in yeah death meets us all in the
end and only uh
it's kind of hilarious to then think
about most of Nature and the cruelty and
the poverty of nature like how horrible
the conditions are for animals and
plants
all over the place but it's mostly yeah
it's War but it's also just and it's
like poverty it's extreme poverty like
when people like criticize like farms
and so on you also have to consider the
Suffering The Animals we try to imagine
that animals in the woods are all as
happy time notes like you have to really
consider if you really asked an animal
would they like to sit in a boring zoo
and be fed away from the wild the nature
and the freedom and so on I don't know
how many of them would choose the zoo
versus like nature anyway
um but what's the meaning of life
let me ask the question for me yes
there's no you it's the question for
whatever you're plugged into is that a
question for the body and mind system we
call Annika
colonica let's see what that the meaning
of life yeah the why the why
why
interesting I've never been drawn to the
why questions I'm interested in the what
and the how
um
what is life what is this place what are
we doing how are we here how is this how
is this taking place you know but I mean
if if I had to answer
I don't I guess I don't think there is a
why really
it's funny the the the quote
the thought that comes to mind is really
uh like a kind of a Cheesy quote that
I'm sure is printed on a bunch of mugs
and t-shirts but it's tick not Han
um I'm gonna get it wrong but it's
something like
um we're here to awaken from our
illusion of separateness
and I don't really see that as an answer
to the why question although that that's
how it's framed in in his quotes we are
here for that purpose
um I think if there is a purpose worth
being here for
that's that's kind of the ultimate I
think
let me ask you for advice you had a
um a complex and a beautiful journey
through life you exceptionally
successful what advice would you give to
Young Folks in high school or in college
about how to live a life like yours or
how to live a life uh they can be proud
of or have a career that can be proud of
it you know
how to pave a path and journey that can
be uh happy with and be proud of
had this conversation with my kids I
mean we have lots of deep conversations
and they're all kind of
pertaining to each moment or whatever
they're facing
um
I think career is difficult because
ways I just feel like I'm lucky that I
ended up being able to do
for a living the thing I love to do but
the difference is look
yeah well the Free Will luck is an
illusion
there's no such thing as luck when you
believe in Free Will right right that's
true
I
really start in retrospect started
working on my book
30 years ago and had no idea that I was
working on a book
and this kind of ties into my advice
which is I think it's really important
to
follow your passion and
to find things that you love and that
you find inspiring and motivating and
exciting whether they relate to your
career or not and I think
many times
if you persist just for the pure passion
of
the thing itself it finds a way
into your everyday life
the career manifests itself I mean out
of whatever person to me and I said you
know I've had such a unconventional path
it's very hard for me to
give advice based on that path but I do
believe that it's extraordinarily
important to keep your passions alive to
keep your curiosity alive to keep your
Wonder at Life Alive however you do that
and it doesn't necessarily have to be in
your career
um and I think for a lot of people their
career enables them
the time and the space to
experience other things that
you know maybe wouldn't be as enjoyable
if they were at their career yeah I mean
in general a dogged pursuit of the stuff
you love will create some something
beautiful and if it's an unconventional
path those are the best kinds those are
the most beautiful kind and it created
in this case I think you're a beautiful
person Annika a beautiful mind thank you
so much for uh doing everything you do
and for sharing with the world and thank
you so much for talking with me today
that was awesome good to finally meet
you great to finally meet you
thanks for listening to this
conversation with Annika Harris to
support this podcast please check out
our sponsors in the description and now
let me leave you with some words from
Mahatma Gandhi
I will not let anyone walk through my
mind with their dirty feet
thank you for listening and hope to see
you next time