January 28, 2025 • 50 mins
Meet David Eagleman - neuroscientist, author, and more. He is best known for his work on sensory substitution, time perception, brain plasticity, synesthesia, and neurolaw and is currently a neuroscientist at Stanford University. He's also a fellow podcaster with his show Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman. I thoroughly enjoyed picking his brain and I hope you enJOY too!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Craig Ferguson Pants on Fire Tour is on sale now.
It's a new show, it's new material, but I'm afraid
it's still only me, Craig Ferguson on my own, standing
on a stage telling comedy words. Come and see me,
buy tickets, bring your loved ones, or don't come and
see me. Don't buy tickets and don't bring your loved ones.
(00:21):
I'm not your dad. You come or don't come, but
you should at least know what's happening, and it is.
The tour kicks off late September and goes through the
end of the year and beyond. Tickets are available at
the Craig Ferguson Show dot com slash tour. They're available
at the Craig Ferguson show dot com slash tour or
at your local outlet in your region. My name is
(00:45):
Craig Ferguson. The name of this podcast is Joy. I
talk to interest in people about what brings them happiness.
On the podcast today, my guest is David Eagleman.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Professor David Eagleman to be precise. Professor Eagleman, or David
as I call him, is a neuroscientist he knows a
lot about the human brain, but as it turns out,
he knows a lot about artificial brains too.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
He's just a very brainy guy.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
So I'm going to sound a bit more stupid than
usual in Jomi, David. Let me just say this before
we start.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Do I call you David? Do I call you mister Eagleman?
Do I call you doctor Eagleman? Or do you call
you professor Eagleman?
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Or sir? Please call me David. All right? Is it
a doctor? By the way, you're doctor? Yeah? Doctor Eagelman
would be what yes, but my mother would call me yes.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Now I gotta apologize because I'm going to not so
much to you personally, because I think you'll probably be
able to handle it, but to people who already know
and and understand what you do, I'm going to come
across as someone who doesn't know anything about what you do. Now,
let's just say that I actually do know what you're doing.
(02:11):
I know everything about your studies and and what you
kind of do. And I'm not an ideot, but everybody
knows I kind of a little bit. Because neuroscience is
I barely understand the Dictionary definition of neuroscience correct me
if I'm wrong. I think it is the study of
(02:34):
how the brain works due to the physicality of the brain.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Is that. Yeah, you don't even need the second half.
Just trying to figure out how the brain works, trying
to figure out what's going on with the brain. And
it can be anything from understanding how vision works, are hearing,
to understanding decision making, to understanding emotions, to understanding why
we have consciousness or how we perceive time. Any of
(02:59):
that falls under the umbrella of neuroscience.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
But it's interesting because it seems to me to be
something that it's an interesting science because it seems to
kind of wonder the theology and metaphysics, and because everything
is perception. Even the study of neuroscience is perception. So
how do you feel like you kind of examining yourself
from the inside.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Yeah, that's right. Well, I would say at the edges,
neuroscience scratches lots of things, certainly philosophy, maybe theology, but
the you know, the way you can do things is
set things up objectively in the real world where you
can verify. Look, I have, you know, three circles that
(03:44):
are the color red, you know, projecting this wavelength on
the screen and you know, what are people seeing. That's
still example, But the point is we can set things
up in the world and understand what people are individually experiencing.
I'll give you an example. One of the things I
study is called synesthesia, and that's where people have a
(04:04):
blending of the senses. So they might look at letters
on the page and it triggers a color experience for them,
so they'll see Jay is purple, and why is blue?
And m is red and so on, and you know,
it's just an internal experience that they're having. We can
verify what's going on in the real world. We can
compare people to each other. About three percent of the
(04:25):
population has synesthesia. But there are lots of things like
this that we do where we study across people to
understand how perception differs. You know, there are other things
like if I ask you Craig to imagine a you know,
an ant crawling our red and white table cloth towards
(04:47):
jar of purple jelly. How do you perceive that in
your head? Is it clear like a movie or is
it you don't really see anything at all, it's just conceptual.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Does it involve you then? And like, for example, you
just gave me the the ant on the If you say,
is it clear like a movie, it's such a weirdly Uh,
it's semantics because I mean, if I do I imagine
a clear iPhone film?
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Is it show on? Is a sixteen millimeters or print?
Is it? Do you know what I mean? Is it
black and white? Right? So, if you had to have
if there was a spectrum from no picture at all
in your head to a movie at you know, at
the other end of the extreme, where would where would
you be with the ant on the paper? Yeah, the
on on the table cloth.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
I think I could get myself right up to imax
with the end on the paper.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Okay, that's that's amazing. So it turns out that there
is a spectrum across the population. Everyone's spread pretty evenly
across this in terms of how how visually you imagine
things on the inside. And again, this is something that
we can test across the population, and we can also
test it objectively using grain imaging to see how much
(05:57):
activity there is in the visual part of the brain.
And we see that across anything we measure people exist
on a spectrum. For example, if I ask you how
loud or intrusive is your internal voice? You know, everyone
has a dialogue with themselves, right right? Are you aware
of your internal voice all the time or hardly? Ever?
Speaker 1 (06:18):
I would say that that is very much situationally dependent.
When I'm you know, when I'm calm, not at all.
When I'm angry, probably not at all. And when i'm
you know, when I'm trying to make a difficult or
political decision a lot, you know so, or or am
(06:39):
I thinking about the wrong thing?
Speaker 3 (06:41):
No? No, that's that's right. That's a good observation that
it differs moment to moment. But across the population, we
also find, you know, some people are really overwhelmed by
their internal radio. Other people have what's called an endophasia,
which means no internal voice. They just know it's totally
silent in there. Essentially, across anything we measure, we find
(07:03):
that people have very different results. Or how about your memory?
Are you do you have a great autobiographical memory? Can
you remember exactly what you were doing at this time
last year or five years ago?
Speaker 1 (07:14):
And I think it's deteriorating as well. Actually as I age,
I really am beginning to think there may be something
in that.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
Yeah, yeah, you just said that three minutes ago. No,
I'm kidding her. Yeah, that's the thing. But you know,
some people like Mary Lou Henner the actress, and you
know somebody I have this, you know, untaxable autobiographical memory
and everywhere in between.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
I talked to Mary Lou Henna rctly and asked her
about that, and she I tested her because I had
worked with her years before on a different show. This
was and I talked to her on late night and
she had been on the drink, you know why. I
got even remember why I was talking to her about it.
But she really she really could do that. It's kind
of it's like a weird trick. It's very it's impressive.
(08:00):
I guess is a genetic I guess it's genetics.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Right, yeah, yeah, and so and actually so are all
these things, at least as far as we can tell,
you know, all this. But what it goes to illustrate
is that people are very different from one another on
the inside. And one of the this has been one
of my eras of interest in neuroscience is figuring out
why what are the genes or what are the experiences
(08:23):
or you know, what is the thing that has led
to different circuitry in Mary Leeu's brain in your brain,
that would lead you to have different experiences of what
memory is.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
What would happen or have you ever encountered anithon divid
I can imagine that it could be potentially very explosive
if you say you know, well you know, because it
could lead you into horrible areas of racism. Like you say,
Medisranean people tend their brains stand to be like this,
or Nordic people their brains stand to.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Be like this. Is that a real thing or is
that made up by Nazis? The general story is, you know,
Homo sapiens have only spread around the earth very recently.
So you know, we originated in Africa about two hudred
fift thousand years ago. We came out the top and
half the people turned left and half turned right and
became you know, Europeans or Asians. But on the inside,
(09:20):
the organ that we have, that three pound mission control
center hasn't changed. That's the same same thing. Why because
two hundred fift thousand years just isn't enough time. In
the same way that people's hearts and lungs and kidneys
are the same as you go around the world. So
while there's an enormous amount of difference between people, there
(09:40):
aren't between groups of people. On average. You find this
giant distribution everywhere.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Well about the idea, I mean, I presume this study.
Is it driven, I mean it's knowledge driven. I guess
it's science. But is it a medical Is that what.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
We're looking for?
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Is it to try and solve problem? Like one of
this brings to mind is demanchia obviously in Alzheimer's, which
is a real kind of cognitive problem.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
Yes, yeah, exactly right. So you know, the field of
neuroscience traditionally studies diseases and disorders and what happens with
the brain to make it change, for example, in cases
of dementia. I also study that. A lot of the
things I do have to do with those areas, but
just personally, I got very interested in the topic of
(10:34):
you know, how does the brain run in everyone under
normal circumstances, and again, what are the differences between people?
And by the way, how does it matter for society.
So one of the things I do I run this
Center for Neuroscience and Law, which is all the things
that we're learning in neuroscience. How does this affect the
(10:55):
legal system and how we think about things there.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
I mean, so if it there's a behavioral problem, for example,
excuse me, if you find out that someone reacts a
certain way being triggered by a certain stimulus. Like off
the top of my head, I'm not a doctor and
I don't know what I'm talking about, but say that
I have a brain that if you touch me, I
get very very upset. Is that something that you could
(11:20):
bring into the legal world where you say, well, this
person behaved very badly when they were being arrested, but
now we found out they've got the type of brain
if you touch them, they get very upset.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
So here's the thing, great question. It turns out none
of this lets people off the hook. So if you
break the law, if you cross a sideal line, you
still have to confront the legal system for it. But
one of the things that tells us a lot about
is new methods for rehabilitation. So what we do right
now is a society and it is true around the
(11:51):
world we treat incarceration as a one size fits all solution,
but in fact, we know so much about the brain
now that if you come in with this particular disorder
where touching you on your shoulder, makes you react badly.
You know, maybe there's something we can do to help
you out, at least such that you know at least
(12:13):
exactly what we're not gonna do. And then it turns
out that you know, we might be able to help
you for the next time. Now, again, it doesn't let
people off the hook. It's not that you go without punishment,
but that's that's the idea, and there are lots of
ways we can do this. Just one example. I've been
a strong advocate for having specialized mental health courts. So
(12:33):
what we do right now as everyone goes to the
same court system, but if somebody has mental illness, which
is a you know, quite a high number of people
with mental illness end up on the wrong side of
legal system. You know, you have judges and juries that
maybe don't know anything about let's say schizophrenia or take
drug rehabilitation. Yeah, most judges and juries don't know a
great deal about what options are available. So having specialized
(12:55):
mental health courts, specialized drug courts, things like this are
really helpful where you have people that expertise, they know
the strategy is available.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
It's an interesting thing that you mentioned excuse me schizophrenia
and drug rehabilitation, because schizophrenia. Remember I know nothing about this.
You know, you're the brain. I'm pinky, right, So that
my understanding of is or the tinium and I know
about it is that schizophrenia is a condition which you
(13:24):
I develop.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
From a genetic position. Right. It's it's an illness that
is born within you. Right. It has a strong generic
component to it. It's not entirely can it be brought
on by by outside stimulus. It certainly can be exacerbated
and brought on early by things like drugs, for example.
So for sure, example, this is a real problem with
(13:45):
young people using marijuana, which has a much higher percentage
of THHC now than it used to in earlier strains.
A lot of young people are getting psychotic breaks as
a result of that much higher percentage than used to.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
That happened to me when I took marijuana when I
was when I was young, I stopped take it.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
I started.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
I took marimana when it was about eighteen through until
I was about twenty, which is all terrible thing to do.
And I didn't do tons of it, but there was
at one point I took some and it it was
one of the most horrendous experiences of my life from marijuana,
and it's very hard to explain that to people who
don't get affected.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
By it that way, right, right, exactly, And there's probably
a genetic component to that in terms of who gets
affected and who doesn't. But yeah, So back to your
question about schizophrenia though, right, So, what were you going
to So it's mostly genetic, but there are environmental things
that exacerbate it.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Well, I was going to ask you about drug addiction,
which I think I don't know. Is that the same
is it percent more percentage genetic for schizophrenia is for
drug addiction? Is it more environmental and land behavior for
drug and alcohol addiction? I can't imagine there is peer
pressure to become schizophrenic, you know. It seems like it's
(15:10):
almost accidental. Whereas I speak, is a sober alcoholic? I mean,
I didn't say out for that to happen, you know,
I say for the sober thing to happen, it basically,
but it kind of crept up on me. Is there
a genetic predisposition to both of these things? Is what
I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
There is, although completely separate genetics on the Sudie. But yes,
there is a genetic predisposition for addiction, for having an
addictive personality. That is clearly a thing. But there are
very few things really that can be separated cleanly into
nature versus nurture, because there are influences on both. I'll
just give you an example. It turns out that with
(15:50):
back to schizophrenia, one of the things that influences whether
someone has a psychotic break in part has to do
with whether they are living in a place where they
are in their culture, in their language, or whether they
have immigrated somewhere else. And when you're living somewhere else,
there are things like you know, you can't for example,
(16:10):
you can't make jokes in your new language as well,
or you can't fit in exactly as well. And it
turns out that more people have psychotic breaks. In my
book in Cognito, I talked about this as you know,
one of the risks of getting schatphrenia is the color
of your passport. So you know that's that's a surprising
social aspect of it that people have discovered.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Well, that's that's kind of fascinating to me. Then does
that does that lead you to study more men aloneness,
because clearly there are things like it's not a man
in aloneness, but clearly if someone is dyslexic, they're bre dyslexic. Right,
it's not something you learn as a little baby, that's right.
But if someone's left handed or right handed? I was,
(16:53):
was that do you learn?
Speaker 3 (16:55):
That? Is it?
Speaker 1 (16:56):
I mean, how much information you get right in the beginning,
I think, is what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
Yeah, yeah, these are great questions. The fact is, when
it comes to nature versus nurture, the answer is almost
always both. There are a very tiny number of things
that are one or the other. Four example, the first
gene that was pulled for a disease was Huntington's disease,
and everyone thought, great, if you have this gene, you're
gonna get Huntington's that's it. And never thought this is
(17:21):
going to be easy. But it turns out it's one
of the few monogenetic diseases that exist, meaning you know,
if you have this gene, blah blah, because everything turns
out to be more complicated. Other diseases involve genetics. They
have all lots of different genes, whole families of genes.
We're still trying to get to the bottom of them.
But also most of everything involves what's going on societally too.
(17:42):
Let me give you an example of this. This came
out some years ago. The question is are there genes
for depression? Well, it turns out if you're a carrier
of particular genes, the question is, okay, are you more
likely to get depression? And the answer is that totally
depends on the number of really traumatic life events you have.
So let's say, you know, a terrible car accident or
(18:03):
the death of a loved one, things like that. If
you've had a lot of traumatic life experiences and you
carry these genes, then your chance of getting depression is
much higher than someone who's had the same number of
traumatic life experiences but don't carry the genes. But if
you don't have let's say any or just a few
life experiences that are bad, your chances are no different
(18:24):
than anyone else. So this is now we refer to
this as gene times environment you know, gene x environment interactions.
So it depends on both things.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
So it's kind of like a recipe then, right, yeah, yeah,
Like so I want to stay about like some some
bit of this and some bit of that.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
You know, you get a little bit of sugar and
a little bit of salt and a little.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Bit of trauma, and you get you know, you get
a spatial thing, exactly.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
And what this points to is the complexity of both
biology and life, right you know, yeah, born, Yeah, things
can happen to you that we're unexpected, and you can
have genes that interact in unexpected ways.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Yes, And that's so I imagine those probably an almost
infinite amount of variables and all these different things. So
to depend on how someone is ever going to be,
it just remains as elusive as ever then, right, that
is exactly right.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
So you take a movie like Minority Report, where the
shtick was that you could predict who's going to commit
a crime in the future. It's total fantasy and it'll
never happen. In other words, people think, hey, as we
get better with brain imaging or with AI, won't we
get to that point someday? But the answer is never happened.
Why Because your brain is changing and rewiring every second
(19:40):
of your life depending on your interactions. So, for example,
your brain and my brain are different than they were
five minutes ago, just from conversing with each other. Right, So,
and this is the notion of brain plasticity, which is
that fundamentally, what mother nature has done is built a
system that absorbs the world and is constantly reconfiguring itself.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
So I kind of you mentioned the AI there, so
I kind of find that fascinating because the idea I
suppose of AI. Again, I know not of AI either,
but the idea is that it mimics the landing pattern
of a human brain, right, because that's all it can do,
given the fact that's all we have to build it with.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
Sort of, So this is the really interesting thing. So
AI launched many decades ago, and the idea was, okay, look,
the brain is super complicated, but fundamentally you've got these units,
and you've got these connections between the units in the brain.
These are neurons, and these are all the connections between
the urts. So people said, look, what if we just
make a cartoon version of this where you just have
(20:42):
these you know, little units that we've got these connections
that you are just changing the strength of those connections
across the big network. So that's where artificial neural networks
took off and went in that direction, and it turns
out that's become incredibly successful. We've got this great renaissance
going on of AI. But it's actually not that much
(21:04):
like the human brain. It's it's quite different. So there
are many many things that the human brain does that
AI simply can't, and at least in its current architecture,
you won't do anytime soon. I'll give you an example
of that. But I'll also say really quickly that it's
not to say that we can't build artificial neural networks
(21:24):
that are just like the brain and someday, maybe five
years now, maybe fifty years from now, do everything in
brain does. But our current stuff like chat GPT, for example,
does not have an internal model of the world. So
if I ask GPT, hey, when Craig Ferguson walks into
a room, does his nose come with him? It won't
know the answer to that because it has no model
(21:47):
of the world. You know, does does his spleen come
with him?
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Well?
Speaker 3 (21:50):
How does it know? It doesn't? It why? Because the
way chat GPT is trained, it's read everything in the
world and it's just doing statistical games on what word
is likely to come next. That's all GPT does. It's
an enormous, enormous network yeah, that's just why I did ask.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
I asked chat GPT to write me a short Craig
ferguson stand up comedy routine. And you know, I feel
like either I'm a terrible writer but my delivery is great,
or just a a terrible comedian, or chat GPT has
got a way to go yet, and it should maybe,
you know, work on his material in some clubs.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
So so, okay, this is a really good point. And
chat GPT is terrible at humor, at making up new jokes, Okay.
Why it's because it's just a statistical parent. And what
it realizes is that humor is all about the violation
of expectation, but it doesn't know how to violate it. Well,
so if you ask it, tell me a joke about
(22:50):
you know, three guys who walk into a bar and say,
you know, and do blah blah blah. It'll say the
first guy does this, the second guy does this, and
the third guy does this, and it'll say something that
doesn't make any sense because it knows the third thing
is supposed to break the pattern, but it doesn't know
how to do it in a funny way.
Speaker 5 (23:06):
I feel in Spain, I I think there's an argument
to be made for having a comedy night in a
club where comedians have to tell jokes written by computers.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
And in fact, I am going to put that together
as soon as possible.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
So this is funny that you mentioned this because I'm
actually working on on on a television documentary now. I'm
writing this up with my colleagues. It's called Bits and Giggles,
and it's exactly about this. It's about a comedian who
goes on a road trip with no Yeah, We've actually
built a little bot that does you know speech to text?
(23:45):
It goes off to chat GPT and then does you
know text to speech? So you can have a dialogue
back and forth with this little bot. And the question
is what does AI mean for us? Will it be
funny it, can it take the place of community? Can
it perform on stage with a comedian? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (24:03):
I think I think it's quite interesting because I because
of my own history with komedy, I love it and
I feel that it's a very human connectivity thing. It's
a very and it's odd way, it's very intimate thing,
even although you know it's one person then an audience
in the way that I do it anyway, and I
wonder if that happens, then do you have your robot lover,
(24:27):
do you have your robot husband, your robot wife, your
robot spouse, your robot children?
Speaker 3 (24:34):
I mean, is it? Is it possible? Yeah? So okay,
so this is funny mite. So my wife has been
joking about this for a long time. She's been joking
about the five percent better David, by which she means,
what does she have AI David that had all my
good qualities but it never got distracted or angry or
you know, we looked in my phone beeps or whatever. So, uh,
(24:56):
we've talked about this a lot and what this means.
And you know, the issue now is that lots of
young people are getting AI girlfriends and to some lesser
extent AI boyfriends girls getting that. In Japan, apparently this
is becoming a bigger thing where people have these AI relationships.
We can imagine perhaps the downsides of this, but I
(25:17):
do want to note I think an upside for young
people is you might be able to learn how to
navigate relationships a little bit better, and you know, you
kind of get your sandbox, your practice relationship, and if
the AI it gives you good feedback, you might actually
be a better person in relationships.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Yeah, but then you don't get the requisite amount of
trauma to make you human. I mean, no one wants
to wish trauma and anyone but junior high school may
be an essential component of making you a better persons.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
It's an interesting conundrum. So I agree with you, and
it turns out the way to do this, I think,
is to make the AI bought be traumatic in the
sense of, you know, if you say something wrong to it,
it's not kind or something. You know, it gets its
feelings hurt. Obviously it's just statistically impersonating this, but the
point is instead of having an AI that just says, oh,
(26:12):
that was so good, that was so funny and nice,
instead it gives you real feedback, tough love.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
And that that might actually work better than the parenting
that my generation inflicted on the next generation, which I
think was a little too positive. I don't know, something
went wrong, So let me try it. Let me steer
you around back to the brain and perception a little bit,
because I'm fascinated by the idea in my own life,
I'm fascinated by the idea of I think most people
(26:39):
are What is all about was the meaning of life
was the is there a god?
Speaker 3 (26:44):
You know?
Speaker 1 (26:45):
And I wonder if in the study of the brain,
which is you know, it's information central, it's information and
control everything's passing through there, does it lead you in
any direction personally for yourself? Does it lead you in
an atheistic direction?
Speaker 3 (27:03):
Does it lead you in a faith based direction? But
does it do anything to you personally? Sure? I mean,
I've spent my life in science, and I feel like
the main lesson that one can derive is to really
understand the vastness of our ignorance. And so the more
you reach down into science in the world and the cosmos,
(27:26):
you find that there's so much that we don't know,
we don't understand. So what does that meant for me?
I am neither an atheist nor religious, because atheism, at
least in its harshest form, in its strictest form, kind
of often pretends, Hey, we've got this all figured out,
we know what's going on here, but it's clear that
we don't know what's going on here. On the flip side,
(27:49):
all the traditional religions also pretend to have certainty about stuff,
and they're all making it up. And so that puts
me in the middle. I don't call my self agnostic,
because agnostic often means I don't know if there's a
guy with a beard on a cloud or not. But
I call myself something else. I call myself a possibilion.
(28:11):
And the idea with possibilianism is an active exploration of
the possibility space, trying to figure out what is going
on in this great, big cosmos that we're in. And
so the idea is, you know, to take a scientific
mindset to this question, which is to say, you know,
science always has a broad table and allows lots of
(28:34):
hypotheses on and says, okay, maybe this, maybe that cool.
I'll let anything on the table. But you know, we
use the tools of science to rule out parts of
the possibility space. So if you come and say, hey, look,
I think you know this thing is going on with
crystals or this or yesp or whatever, we can actually
test that and rule things out. And we and we
that's what we do all the time. There's lots of
(28:55):
stuff that's sort of off the table at this point.
For example, you know, if you were to say, like
you know, traditional religious books, hey the earth is six
thousand years old. You know that's a problem because you know,
the Japanese were, you know, making pottery six thousand years
before that, and so that can't be true. So we
(29:16):
can use the tools of science to open up new
folds in the possibility space and to rule things out.
But what it allows is a big space where we
can shine a flashlight around and say, all right, look,
we're not going to pretend that we know for sure
that nothing exists, or that this particular made up story exists. Instead,
we're going to explore. It's fascinating to me.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
I imagine at some point in your life you run
across the varieties of religious experience.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
The William James lechos, did you run under them? I
have not read that. I've heard of it.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Yeah, essentist because I'm kind of like claiming through it
right now for I don't know. I guess that's what
I do for entertainment. There was one of the lectures
he gave when he talks about that when people believe
something and it makes them feel good, then they are
convinced it's true. He's talking and I thought, that's fascinating
(30:08):
to me. I knew I was going to be talking
to you today as well, and I thought that that's
an interesting position to be in that the religious experience.
If something a ceremony, or a story, or a particular
piece of dogma gives you a sense of euphoria, is
euphoria something that breeds very similitude? Is it something that
(30:31):
you say, I feel good, therefore this must be true.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
Yeah. I think there are lots of reasons why people
believe things about any religious story. One of them, of course,
is that often people don't apply real rigor in what
they call true or not true in the first place.
But secondly, there's a huge social component to this. If
your friends, your family, or loved ones go and they
pray to this deity at this situation, then people feel like, hey,
(30:59):
you know, that's something that is meaningful to me too.
So I think there are a lot of reasons why
people believe in things. One of them is that people,
you know, don't necessarily apply rigorous tools when they're deciding
what to believe or not. But more than that, there's
a huge social component to religion or faith of any sort,
which is to say, if your friends and loved ones
(31:22):
believe in a particular thing, we tend to be compelled
that way. And if you live in a place where
everyone around you believes whatever deity and whatever crazy thing.
Then you grow up that way and you think, of,
of course I must be true because these people that
I love and respect they believe that. So there are
many different things that compel people. And you know, maybe
(31:42):
someone says, Okay, I'm going to finally break from my
religion and they go to some other religion and whatever
they're you know, attractive people there, or a compelling narrator
who tells them something, and so they feel like, hey,
that fits with what I need in my life. That's
the message I need right now. But none of this, Yeah,
none of this qualifies as good reasons to believe. It's
(32:05):
just why people believe.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
It's interesting though, because the only the ultimate measuring tool
that you have in front of you, or that you
have to use, is in fact your own perception and
the perception of your contemporaries. Right, So if you set
up even the most rigorous academic test, you're still looking
at it with your eyes and thinking about it with
your brain.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
Don't I don't think so. I think that we can
actually use the tools of science really. So yeah, So,
for example, I mentioned the way that science opens up
new folds in the possibility space as we discover things,
for example, about the size of the I mean, look,
you know, poor you know, Galileo had to spend the
last part of his life imprisoned because he suggested that
(32:49):
maybe the Earth is going around the Sun and not
vice versa. But as we discover more and more about
the cosmos and understand the absolute enormity of it, and
that our galaxy has one hundred billion stars, any number
you know, any one of which has number of planets
rolling around it, and and our galaxy is one of
one hundred billion galaxies in the cosmos. And as we
(33:11):
as we understand these things, I think that opens us
up to a very different kind of faith, so that
we don't have to think about, Okay, my little local
deity can beat your local deity and so on. First
of all, science opens up these things. But then the
other thing I mention is that science rules things out,
you know, whether that's the age of the Earth or
(33:33):
the idea that you know, your deity, you know, did
some little things, some little magic trick, and you can
rule that stuff in or out. I think we probably
have a very different perspective on the world than we
did even three hundred years ago. When people consider it, Hey,
do I think this deity represents the truth? And and
(33:53):
and you know, for example, we're so global now that
we see there are two thousand religions on the planet,
and so it becomes harder to believe, Oh, the thing
that I grew up with has to be the right one,
because you now see that there are two thousand other
versions of this stuff. So anyway, all these things point
(34:14):
to as we become smarter as a society, I think
we can develop notions that maybe are more appropriate to
a deeper view along the lines of what you were saying.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
I remember before my first kid was born, I said
to the obstetrician, how much do you actually know about
what pregnancy was going on in pregnancy? And she said,
if you'd ask me that question ten years ago, i'd
have said about fifty percent. But we've learned so much
(34:52):
that now I would say about twenty five percent.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
Excellent, very good.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
And I think that that that's a fascinating though, because
if you follow the logical, mathematical root of that, literally,
the more you know, the less you know.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
Yeah, that's exact. I mean, there used to be people
called pansophists, which meant, you know, someone who knows everything
to be known. And you know, back in ancient Greece
it was plausible to have somebody who was a Panzifist,
and now it's totally impossible. It has been for centuries.
So you know, that's lovely. And what I love, by
(35:32):
the way, about this moment in time right now, is
we've got AI that has consumed you know, every single
thing ever written by humans, and so that provides a
whole new way of interacting and learning human kind's knowledge,
which is a sphere that is now much too large
for any of us to ever hope to even get into.
(35:52):
But what we can do is find some doorway that
interests us and enter the sphere that way, and by
talking to the AI just you know, learn all about
the world by asking questions that are relevant to us.
And I think this is going to really change our
educational systems for schooling, because right now, you know, kids
in classrooms, it's too fast for half the kids, too
(36:13):
slow for half the kids. But we can finally achieve
this dream of real individualized education where everyone you know
has an AI tutor, which is, by the way, how
it used to go. You know, Alexander the Great was
tutored by Aristotle, and you know you'd sit there and
have conversations. And I think we'll return to that. But
(36:35):
what that's I mean, that's fantastic for learning.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
But I mean what we what we were, you're talking
about as well, even we were talking about religion. Is
that your religion or your propensity to certain depressions or
or or.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
Different traumas.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
All of that's to do with socialization and to have
an AI a certain point, I have to ask myself.
I mean, I'm just speaking.
Speaker 3 (37:04):
I love that. What's the point if it just mimics
everything that we've already go. We've ready to go all that,
So okay, great. Those are two types of questions. So
as far as socialization, I think that's what school will become.
I think you know, you're exactly right that that's such
an important part of growing up. And this was the
terrible thing for parents about COVID is seeing your young
(37:27):
children having to stay home and not wrestling and rolling
around and jumping on trampolines with other kids. So we'll
always have that, but school will become more about that
and instead of having the teacher drone on to the kids.
It'll be you know, the kids put on headphones. Do that,
at least as it stands. Now, what humans are really
(37:47):
great at doing is creativity and also understanding which creative
moves matter. So, for example, I can say to the AI,
hate generate one hundred pictures of you know, Craig sitting
in an avocado chair holding a poodle, and it'll do that.
(38:07):
But it doesn't know which of those pictures are better
than another. But a human looks at and says, oh, Craig,
that's a really good one, and that one over these
staying over here or whatever. And so humans are actually necessary,
at least at the moment for doing this next step
for figuring out Okay, I can ask, I can query
the AI, but what do I do with that? What's
(38:28):
the next step. I'll give you a specific example science.
So AI can tell me incredible things like, hey, I
need to understand you know, these facts that are scattered
around all these different journal papers across fifty years. Give
me a summary of this. It's trivial for it to
do that, and that's super useful. But what it can't
(38:49):
do is generate new sorts of science in the way that.
Let's say Albert Einstein says, Okay, what if I were
writing on a photon of lightweight? What would that be
like if we were moving into speed of light? And
he thinks through that, he says, oh, and he comes
up with the special theory of relativity. That's progress. He
wants to know about prize for this sort of stuff.
(39:10):
That's the kind of things that at least at the moment,
AI does not do. So in answer your question, the
ultimate perfect thing is if we have AI co pilots
with us who can tell us lots of information, and
then we use our creativity and our extrapolation and simulation
of possible futures to put that together to make to
(39:34):
make something that's the next step for our civilization.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
All right, So if that can happen, and let's imagine
that it can, is there a possibility the certain point,
if we can find the genetic and chemical recipe for
any individual's personality, that that can be I'm asking the
(39:58):
singularity question. Can you put the mind and the soul
of a cognizant, coherent santient being inside something which is digital?
Speaker 3 (40:10):
Okay, so that's the question of can you upload your brain?
So you don't have to die. Here's how it would work.
It would work by taking a scan of your brain
at the kind of resolution that we can't even dream
of now. Right now with our very fancy brain imaging
what we call fMRI functional magnetic residence imaging is very crude. Okay,
(40:31):
but cut to one hundred years from now, our great
grand children are sitting around having a podcast with each other,
and the question is, could you scan a brain at
the resolution where you know every single neuron and all
the connections and perhaps everything going on inside the neuron
and reproduce that algorithm on a computer? The answer is
probably probably you could do that, and therefore you could
(40:54):
download it and run Craig or Craig's great grandchild such
that you really couldn't tell a difference. So I say
to the computer, Hey, Craig's great grandchild, are you in there?
And she says, yeah, I'm here, what's up? And you know,
we have a conversation that's fascinating to me.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
So the idea that is, I mean, I wouldn't hold
you to it, but sort of theoretically, sort of kind
of maybe.
Speaker 3 (41:22):
Oh, theoretically yes. And it's because as best we can
tell this is just a machine in here. It's the
most complex sophisticated thing that we have ever come across
in our universe, the human brain. But it's just a machine.
It's just built out of eighty six billion neurons and
about the same number of glial cells, and it's you know,
(41:44):
every neuron in your head is popping off the little
signals tends to hundreds of times per second, So it's
unbelievably complex. You've got something like two hundred trillion connections
between these neurons, and as I said, it's it's like
a forest that's re configuring with every experience that you have.
So it's unbelievably complex. But it's a machine. And so
(42:05):
there's no reason that we should not be able to
reproduce that on silicon or whatever I mean. In theory,
I could reproduce your brain out of beer cans and
tennis balls.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
And if it's definitely yeah, I don't think you need
the tennis ball.
Speaker 3 (42:21):
And if it's doing the same algorithm, then then it's you.
And if I say, hey, Craig, how you doing, you say, ah,
I'm a little hungry, whatever, But it's it's you. Because
all we are is you know, these vast machines. And
by the way, the reason we know that, I'm not
just saying this as an assertion. The reason we know
that is because of centuries of studying brain damage. If
you study even a very tiny bit of your brain
(42:44):
that completely changes that can change your personality or decision making,
your ability to recognize animals, or see colors, or hear music,
or you know a thousand other things that we see
in the clinics every day. And that's how we know
that you are the operation of your brain and when
little things change, that changes you. And by the way,
drugs and alcohol are just invisibly small molecules that get
(43:06):
in your blood stream and change the functioning of your
brain changes you. You know, when you sleep each night,
you go into deep sleep and then you're not even
there anymore, and then you know, when you wake up,
it sort of reboots the whole system and so on.
But the point is it's all happening in these three
pounds here. That is you. That is fascinating.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
So I have to ask you personally, what does anything
frighten you about this?
Speaker 6 (43:33):
I don't think so, I mean, just because what you're saying,
would I think what you're saying would frighten a lot
of people who are committed to different theological or psychological
or philosophical ideas, and you're and you're saying some stuff
that would challenge that.
Speaker 3 (43:51):
I think from a scientific point of view, Yeah, I mean,
I guess I can't say that people have all kinds
of you know, with eight point three billion people on
the earth, there are that many views on the world.
So but this view, I would assert, is the only
one that's defensible. I mean, you could have whatever faith
(44:13):
you have, whatever deity you have, But if you walk
into a neurology ward and you see patients with different
brain damage and they have different things going on, I
don't know how one would explain that otherwise except to say, yeah,
you are your brain. I guess the part that frightens me,
But it's sort of a calm, mellow fright is just
(44:33):
how fragile we are as creatures. But everybody knows that anyway.
All it takes is a stroke, you know, a little
clot that gets in there, or traumatic brain injury or
a brain tumor or whatever, and then you're not even
you anymore. So I guess that part is frightening, but
I'm so used to thinking about that. Yeah, it's a
(44:54):
fascinating endlessly.
Speaker 1 (44:56):
I think that must be one of the attractions of it,
surely is the fact that it it's endless. It's endless,
there's no there's no endpoint where you go, well, that's
the brain done, let's move on to the kidneys. It's
there's just not it's a long way to go.
Speaker 3 (45:13):
Yeah, that's exactly right. And you know what's so cool
is so I've been in the field now, I wow,
well over a quarter century and the progress that I've seen.
But I would say exactly what the you know, what
the obstetricians said about pregnancy, I would say the same
thing about the brain, which is we we have so
(45:34):
much knowledge now we know less and less as a percentage.
You know, we have this book in the field called
Principles of Neuroscience, and it's enormous. It's about a thousand
pages long at this point, you know, it's the umpteenth
edition of this of this book. But what's very funny
about it is it keeps growing longer with each edition.
And it's not principles, because if it were principles, it
would be like a pamphlet, But instead, as we get
(45:58):
more and more data, we just keeping stuff in there.
We say, oh, well, but there's also this, and there's
that in these kind of cells and that kind of genes.
And what it demonstrates is we don't have the principles
yet that allow us to have some sort of compression
of this.
Speaker 1 (46:12):
Does it have an effect on you and your personal level?
Do you drink alcohol? Do you? Do you take drugs?
Speaker 3 (46:18):
Do you? I mean you don't have to in a
vague way? Do you know? No, I don't do any
of that. Actually. Is that because of brain damage? Yeah? Yeah, no,
I think right. I think it's because I'm sort of
a control freak about my brain. I just want to
keep this as healthy as I can. Yeah, so I
don't do any of that. I'm the last guy in
(46:39):
Silicon Valley that hasn't done psychedelics and had interesting trips
and souf and everyone asks me about that around here,
but I, yeah, I just I haven't taken it. It's
probably it's probably so low risk to do that, but
I just maybe that's a fear. Is the my consciousness
is a very particular thing, and I know that if
(47:00):
I stick in these invisibly small molecules. It'll change the
you know, the receptors or whatever. It'll change the activity
just a few percentage, and I'll be talking to silver leprechauns.
But I don't. I don't want to change that. I
don't want to mess up the system because this is
all I've got. And what about physical health do you?
Speaker 1 (47:22):
I mean it kind of obviously your body feeds your brain,
I mean everything. So I mean do you find yourself
avoiding certain foods or or avoid in certain activities.
Speaker 3 (47:34):
Or or yeah? We basically that I keep in really
good shape and I I eat healthfully. Yeah, I just
I try to make sure that I'm optimizing everything I
can on that front.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
You are you hyper aware of it? Like if you
eat if you eat some sugar, do you do you
feel it?
Speaker 3 (47:52):
Do you know what it's doing? Yeah? I know what
it's doing. I we let's see. I don't think I'm
hyper aware of it. But I I'm not even attracted
to sugary things. I don't even like that. But I
think I would say anymore. Obviously when I was a child,
I did. But the more the more I care about
optimizing the whole system, the less I'm even interested in
(48:12):
those sorts of things.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
Let's very quickly, because I've been taken up an enormous
of your time.
Speaker 3 (48:19):
But I'm fascinated by this.
Speaker 1 (48:20):
What does because sugar is a thing for me, What
does sugar do in your brain?
Speaker 3 (48:27):
Well, you know, so you increase blood sugar in your body,
and there are all kinds of bad effects that that
can have just physically in the brain. It's actually not
a bad thing because it's it's an energy source. It's
a quick energy source. So you know, if you're if
you're really tired and you need to do something, it's
probably it's probably not a bad idea. But the rest
(48:48):
of the body it reeks happy with time.
Speaker 1 (48:51):
Yeah, it's well, it's a it's a fascinating thing, David.
And and thank you for being so patient with me,
because I really do know nothing about this, but I
feel like I know a little more another And now
that I know a little more, I really know how
little I.
Speaker 3 (49:06):
Know about what I was talking about. But it's a
fascinating subject.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
And I hope you'll come back and talk to us
again because it's it really is an endlessly interesting piece
of the world that you're involved in. Great, probably the
most important piece, I guess, I kind of think so.
Speaker 3 (49:25):
I mean, it is the center of who we are.
There's really if you want to understand something about the self,
one can take you know, spiritual classes, psychology class and
stuff like that, and those are probably good inroads, but fundamentally,
this is the perceptual machinery by which you view the
whole world. So this is probably the best inroad there
is to understand what the what the heck we're doing here,
(49:47):
what your perception of the world is, and why you
react the way you do, why you have the feelings
and emotions you do, while you think the way you do,
and so on, and by the way, you know, you know,
I think. I've got this podcast called Inner Cosmos, and
what I do is every week I talk about this
intersection between the brain and daily life and why we
(50:07):
experience the world the way we do.
Speaker 1 (50:10):
It is a fascinating idea, and I will watch your
Inner Cosmos and listen to your inner cosmos and investigate
your inner cosmos.
Speaker 3 (50:19):
And see if it can help me. By I am
fascinated by it, and it really is great. David, Thank
you so much for being around great. Thanks Greig it's
such a pleasure to be here. Thanks buddy,
The Craig Ferguson Pants on Fire Tour is on sale now.
It's a new show, it's new material, but I'm afraid
it's still only me, Craig Ferguson on my own, standing
on a stage telling comedy words. Come and see me,
buy tickets, bring your loved ones, or don't come and
see me. Don't buy tickets and don't bring your loved ones.
(00:21):
I'm not your dad. You come or don't come, but
you should at least know what's happening, and it is.
The tour kicks off late September and goes through the
end of the year and beyond. Tickets are available at
the Craig Ferguson Show dot com slash tour. They're available
at the Craig Ferguson show dot com slash tour or
at your local outlet in your region. My name is
(00:45):
Craig Ferguson. The name of this podcast is Joy. I
talk to interest in people about what brings them happiness.
On the podcast today, my guest is David Eagleman.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Professor David Eagleman to be precise. Professor Eagleman, or David
as I call him, is a neuroscientist he knows a
lot about the human brain, but as it turns out,
he knows a lot about artificial brains too.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
He's just a very brainy guy.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
So I'm going to sound a bit more stupid than
usual in Jomi, David. Let me just say this before
we start.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Do I call you David? Do I call you mister Eagleman?
Do I call you doctor Eagleman? Or do you call
you professor Eagleman?
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Or sir? Please call me David. All right? Is it
a doctor? By the way, you're doctor? Yeah? Doctor Eagelman
would be what yes, but my mother would call me yes.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Now I gotta apologize because I'm going to not so
much to you personally, because I think you'll probably be
able to handle it, but to people who already know
and and understand what you do, I'm going to come
across as someone who doesn't know anything about what you do. Now,
let's just say that I actually do know what you're doing.
(02:11):
I know everything about your studies and and what you
kind of do. And I'm not an ideot, but everybody
knows I kind of a little bit. Because neuroscience is
I barely understand the Dictionary definition of neuroscience correct me
if I'm wrong. I think it is the study of
(02:34):
how the brain works due to the physicality of the brain.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Is that. Yeah, you don't even need the second half.
Just trying to figure out how the brain works, trying
to figure out what's going on with the brain. And
it can be anything from understanding how vision works, are hearing,
to understanding decision making, to understanding emotions, to understanding why
we have consciousness or how we perceive time. Any of
(02:59):
that falls under the umbrella of neuroscience.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
But it's interesting because it seems to me to be
something that it's an interesting science because it seems to
kind of wonder the theology and metaphysics, and because everything
is perception. Even the study of neuroscience is perception. So
how do you feel like you kind of examining yourself
from the inside.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Yeah, that's right. Well, I would say at the edges,
neuroscience scratches lots of things, certainly philosophy, maybe theology, but
the you know, the way you can do things is
set things up objectively in the real world where you
can verify. Look, I have, you know, three circles that
(03:44):
are the color red, you know, projecting this wavelength on
the screen and you know, what are people seeing. That's
still example, But the point is we can set things
up in the world and understand what people are individually experiencing.
I'll give you an example. One of the things I
study is called synesthesia, and that's where people have a
(04:04):
blending of the senses. So they might look at letters
on the page and it triggers a color experience for them,
so they'll see Jay is purple, and why is blue?
And m is red and so on, and you know,
it's just an internal experience that they're having. We can
verify what's going on in the real world. We can
compare people to each other. About three percent of the
(04:25):
population has synesthesia. But there are lots of things like
this that we do where we study across people to
understand how perception differs. You know, there are other things
like if I ask you Craig to imagine a you know,
an ant crawling our red and white table cloth towards
(04:47):
jar of purple jelly. How do you perceive that in
your head? Is it clear like a movie or is
it you don't really see anything at all, it's just conceptual.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Does it involve you then? And like, for example, you
just gave me the the ant on the If you say,
is it clear like a movie, it's such a weirdly Uh,
it's semantics because I mean, if I do I imagine
a clear iPhone film?
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Is it show on? Is a sixteen millimeters or print?
Is it? Do you know what I mean? Is it
black and white? Right? So, if you had to have
if there was a spectrum from no picture at all
in your head to a movie at you know, at
the other end of the extreme, where would where would
you be with the ant on the paper? Yeah, the
on on the table cloth.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
I think I could get myself right up to imax
with the end on the paper.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Okay, that's that's amazing. So it turns out that there
is a spectrum across the population. Everyone's spread pretty evenly
across this in terms of how how visually you imagine
things on the inside. And again, this is something that
we can test across the population, and we can also
test it objectively using grain imaging to see how much
(05:57):
activity there is in the visual part of the brain.
And we see that across anything we measure people exist
on a spectrum. For example, if I ask you how
loud or intrusive is your internal voice? You know, everyone
has a dialogue with themselves, right right? Are you aware
of your internal voice all the time or hardly? Ever?
Speaker 1 (06:18):
I would say that that is very much situationally dependent.
When I'm you know, when I'm calm, not at all.
When I'm angry, probably not at all. And when i'm
you know, when I'm trying to make a difficult or
political decision a lot, you know so, or or am
(06:39):
I thinking about the wrong thing?
Speaker 3 (06:41):
No? No, that's that's right. That's a good observation that
it differs moment to moment. But across the population, we
also find, you know, some people are really overwhelmed by
their internal radio. Other people have what's called an endophasia,
which means no internal voice. They just know it's totally
silent in there. Essentially, across anything we measure, we find
(07:03):
that people have very different results. Or how about your memory?
Are you do you have a great autobiographical memory? Can
you remember exactly what you were doing at this time
last year or five years ago?
Speaker 1 (07:14):
And I think it's deteriorating as well. Actually as I age,
I really am beginning to think there may be something
in that.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
Yeah, yeah, you just said that three minutes ago. No,
I'm kidding her. Yeah, that's the thing. But you know,
some people like Mary Lou Henner the actress, and you
know somebody I have this, you know, untaxable autobiographical memory
and everywhere in between.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
I talked to Mary Lou Henna rctly and asked her
about that, and she I tested her because I had
worked with her years before on a different show. This
was and I talked to her on late night and
she had been on the drink, you know why. I
got even remember why I was talking to her about it.
But she really she really could do that. It's kind
of it's like a weird trick. It's very it's impressive.
(08:00):
I guess is a genetic I guess it's genetics.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Right, yeah, yeah, and so and actually so are all
these things, at least as far as we can tell,
you know, all this. But what it goes to illustrate
is that people are very different from one another on
the inside. And one of the this has been one
of my eras of interest in neuroscience is figuring out
why what are the genes or what are the experiences
(08:23):
or you know, what is the thing that has led
to different circuitry in Mary Leeu's brain in your brain,
that would lead you to have different experiences of what
memory is.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
What would happen or have you ever encountered anithon divid
I can imagine that it could be potentially very explosive
if you say you know, well you know, because it
could lead you into horrible areas of racism. Like you say,
Medisranean people tend their brains stand to be like this,
or Nordic people their brains stand to.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Be like this. Is that a real thing or is
that made up by Nazis? The general story is, you know,
Homo sapiens have only spread around the earth very recently.
So you know, we originated in Africa about two hudred
fift thousand years ago. We came out the top and
half the people turned left and half turned right and
became you know, Europeans or Asians. But on the inside,
(09:20):
the organ that we have, that three pound mission control
center hasn't changed. That's the same same thing. Why because
two hundred fift thousand years just isn't enough time. In
the same way that people's hearts and lungs and kidneys
are the same as you go around the world. So
while there's an enormous amount of difference between people, there
(09:40):
aren't between groups of people. On average. You find this
giant distribution everywhere.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Well about the idea, I mean, I presume this study.
Is it driven, I mean it's knowledge driven. I guess
it's science. But is it a medical Is that what.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
We're looking for?
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Is it to try and solve problem? Like one of
this brings to mind is demanchia obviously in Alzheimer's, which
is a real kind of cognitive problem.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
Yes, yeah, exactly right. So you know, the field of
neuroscience traditionally studies diseases and disorders and what happens with
the brain to make it change, for example, in cases
of dementia. I also study that. A lot of the
things I do have to do with those areas, but
just personally, I got very interested in the topic of
(10:34):
you know, how does the brain run in everyone under
normal circumstances, and again, what are the differences between people?
And by the way, how does it matter for society.
So one of the things I do I run this
Center for Neuroscience and Law, which is all the things
that we're learning in neuroscience. How does this affect the
(10:55):
legal system and how we think about things there.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
I mean, so if it there's a behavioral problem, for example,
excuse me, if you find out that someone reacts a
certain way being triggered by a certain stimulus. Like off
the top of my head, I'm not a doctor and
I don't know what I'm talking about, but say that
I have a brain that if you touch me, I
get very very upset. Is that something that you could
(11:20):
bring into the legal world where you say, well, this
person behaved very badly when they were being arrested, but
now we found out they've got the type of brain
if you touch them, they get very upset.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
So here's the thing, great question. It turns out none
of this lets people off the hook. So if you
break the law, if you cross a sideal line, you
still have to confront the legal system for it. But
one of the things that tells us a lot about
is new methods for rehabilitation. So what we do right
now is a society and it is true around the
(11:51):
world we treat incarceration as a one size fits all solution,
but in fact, we know so much about the brain
now that if you come in with this particular disorder
where touching you on your shoulder, makes you react badly.
You know, maybe there's something we can do to help
you out, at least such that you know at least
(12:13):
exactly what we're not gonna do. And then it turns
out that you know, we might be able to help
you for the next time. Now, again, it doesn't let
people off the hook. It's not that you go without punishment,
but that's that's the idea, and there are lots of
ways we can do this. Just one example. I've been
a strong advocate for having specialized mental health courts. So
(12:33):
what we do right now as everyone goes to the
same court system, but if somebody has mental illness, which
is a you know, quite a high number of people
with mental illness end up on the wrong side of
legal system. You know, you have judges and juries that
maybe don't know anything about let's say schizophrenia or take
drug rehabilitation. Yeah, most judges and juries don't know a
great deal about what options are available. So having specialized
(12:55):
mental health courts, specialized drug courts, things like this are
really helpful where you have people that expertise, they know
the strategy is available.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
It's an interesting thing that you mentioned excuse me schizophrenia
and drug rehabilitation, because schizophrenia. Remember I know nothing about this.
You know, you're the brain. I'm pinky, right, So that
my understanding of is or the tinium and I know
about it is that schizophrenia is a condition which you
(13:24):
I develop.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
From a genetic position. Right. It's it's an illness that
is born within you. Right. It has a strong generic
component to it. It's not entirely can it be brought
on by by outside stimulus. It certainly can be exacerbated
and brought on early by things like drugs, for example.
So for sure, example, this is a real problem with
(13:45):
young people using marijuana, which has a much higher percentage
of THHC now than it used to in earlier strains.
A lot of young people are getting psychotic breaks as
a result of that much higher percentage than used to.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
That happened to me when I took marijuana when I
was when I was young, I stopped take it.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
I started.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
I took marimana when it was about eighteen through until
I was about twenty, which is all terrible thing to do.
And I didn't do tons of it, but there was
at one point I took some and it it was
one of the most horrendous experiences of my life from marijuana,
and it's very hard to explain that to people who
don't get affected.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
By it that way, right, right, exactly, And there's probably
a genetic component to that in terms of who gets
affected and who doesn't. But yeah, So back to your
question about schizophrenia though, right, So, what were you going
to So it's mostly genetic, but there are environmental things
that exacerbate it.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Well, I was going to ask you about drug addiction,
which I think I don't know. Is that the same
is it percent more percentage genetic for schizophrenia is for
drug addiction? Is it more environmental and land behavior for
drug and alcohol addiction? I can't imagine there is peer
pressure to become schizophrenic, you know. It seems like it's
(15:10):
almost accidental. Whereas I speak, is a sober alcoholic? I mean,
I didn't say out for that to happen, you know,
I say for the sober thing to happen, it basically,
but it kind of crept up on me. Is there
a genetic predisposition to both of these things? Is what
I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
There is, although completely separate genetics on the Sudie. But yes,
there is a genetic predisposition for addiction, for having an
addictive personality. That is clearly a thing. But there are
very few things really that can be separated cleanly into
nature versus nurture, because there are influences on both. I'll
just give you an example. It turns out that with
(15:50):
back to schizophrenia, one of the things that influences whether
someone has a psychotic break in part has to do
with whether they are living in a place where they
are in their culture, in their language, or whether they
have immigrated somewhere else. And when you're living somewhere else,
there are things like you know, you can't for example,
(16:10):
you can't make jokes in your new language as well,
or you can't fit in exactly as well. And it
turns out that more people have psychotic breaks. In my
book in Cognito, I talked about this as you know,
one of the risks of getting schatphrenia is the color
of your passport. So you know that's that's a surprising
social aspect of it that people have discovered.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Well, that's that's kind of fascinating to me. Then does
that does that lead you to study more men aloneness,
because clearly there are things like it's not a man
in aloneness, but clearly if someone is dyslexic, they're bre dyslexic. Right,
it's not something you learn as a little baby, that's right.
But if someone's left handed or right handed? I was,
(16:53):
was that do you learn?
Speaker 3 (16:55):
That? Is it?
Speaker 1 (16:56):
I mean, how much information you get right in the beginning,
I think, is what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
Yeah, yeah, these are great questions. The fact is, when
it comes to nature versus nurture, the answer is almost
always both. There are a very tiny number of things
that are one or the other. Four example, the first
gene that was pulled for a disease was Huntington's disease,
and everyone thought, great, if you have this gene, you're
gonna get Huntington's that's it. And never thought this is
(17:21):
going to be easy. But it turns out it's one
of the few monogenetic diseases that exist, meaning you know,
if you have this gene, blah blah, because everything turns
out to be more complicated. Other diseases involve genetics. They
have all lots of different genes, whole families of genes.
We're still trying to get to the bottom of them.
But also most of everything involves what's going on societally too.
(17:42):
Let me give you an example of this. This came
out some years ago. The question is are there genes
for depression? Well, it turns out if you're a carrier
of particular genes, the question is, okay, are you more
likely to get depression? And the answer is that totally
depends on the number of really traumatic life events you have.
So let's say, you know, a terrible car accident or
(18:03):
the death of a loved one, things like that. If
you've had a lot of traumatic life experiences and you
carry these genes, then your chance of getting depression is
much higher than someone who's had the same number of
traumatic life experiences but don't carry the genes. But if
you don't have let's say any or just a few
life experiences that are bad, your chances are no different
(18:24):
than anyone else. So this is now we refer to
this as gene times environment you know, gene x environment interactions.
So it depends on both things.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
So it's kind of like a recipe then, right, yeah, yeah,
Like so I want to stay about like some some
bit of this and some bit of that.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
You know, you get a little bit of sugar and
a little bit of salt and a little.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Bit of trauma, and you get you know, you get
a spatial thing, exactly.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
And what this points to is the complexity of both
biology and life, right you know, yeah, born, Yeah, things
can happen to you that we're unexpected, and you can
have genes that interact in unexpected ways.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Yes, And that's so I imagine those probably an almost
infinite amount of variables and all these different things. So
to depend on how someone is ever going to be,
it just remains as elusive as ever then, right, that
is exactly right.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
So you take a movie like Minority Report, where the
shtick was that you could predict who's going to commit
a crime in the future. It's total fantasy and it'll
never happen. In other words, people think, hey, as we
get better with brain imaging or with AI, won't we
get to that point someday? But the answer is never happened.
Why Because your brain is changing and rewiring every second
(19:40):
of your life depending on your interactions. So, for example,
your brain and my brain are different than they were
five minutes ago, just from conversing with each other. Right, So,
and this is the notion of brain plasticity, which is
that fundamentally, what mother nature has done is built a
system that absorbs the world and is constantly reconfiguring itself.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
So I kind of you mentioned the AI there, so
I kind of find that fascinating because the idea I
suppose of AI. Again, I know not of AI either,
but the idea is that it mimics the landing pattern
of a human brain, right, because that's all it can do,
given the fact that's all we have to build it with.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
Sort of, So this is the really interesting thing. So
AI launched many decades ago, and the idea was, okay, look,
the brain is super complicated, but fundamentally you've got these units,
and you've got these connections between the units in the brain.
These are neurons, and these are all the connections between
the urts. So people said, look, what if we just
make a cartoon version of this where you just have
(20:42):
these you know, little units that we've got these connections
that you are just changing the strength of those connections
across the big network. So that's where artificial neural networks
took off and went in that direction, and it turns
out that's become incredibly successful. We've got this great renaissance
going on of AI. But it's actually not that much
(21:04):
like the human brain. It's it's quite different. So there
are many many things that the human brain does that
AI simply can't, and at least in its current architecture,
you won't do anytime soon. I'll give you an example
of that. But I'll also say really quickly that it's
not to say that we can't build artificial neural networks
(21:24):
that are just like the brain and someday, maybe five
years now, maybe fifty years from now, do everything in
brain does. But our current stuff like chat GPT, for example,
does not have an internal model of the world. So
if I ask GPT, hey, when Craig Ferguson walks into
a room, does his nose come with him? It won't
know the answer to that because it has no model
(21:47):
of the world. You know, does does his spleen come
with him?
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Well?
Speaker 3 (21:50):
How does it know? It doesn't? It why? Because the
way chat GPT is trained, it's read everything in the
world and it's just doing statistical games on what word
is likely to come next. That's all GPT does. It's
an enormous, enormous network yeah, that's just why I did ask.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
I asked chat GPT to write me a short Craig
ferguson stand up comedy routine. And you know, I feel
like either I'm a terrible writer but my delivery is great,
or just a a terrible comedian, or chat GPT has
got a way to go yet, and it should maybe,
you know, work on his material in some clubs.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
So so, okay, this is a really good point. And
chat GPT is terrible at humor, at making up new jokes, Okay.
Why it's because it's just a statistical parent. And what
it realizes is that humor is all about the violation
of expectation, but it doesn't know how to violate it. Well,
so if you ask it, tell me a joke about
(22:50):
you know, three guys who walk into a bar and say,
you know, and do blah blah blah. It'll say the
first guy does this, the second guy does this, and
the third guy does this, and it'll say something that
doesn't make any sense because it knows the third thing
is supposed to break the pattern, but it doesn't know
how to do it in a funny way.
Speaker 5 (23:06):
I feel in Spain, I I think there's an argument
to be made for having a comedy night in a
club where comedians have to tell jokes written by computers.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
And in fact, I am going to put that together
as soon as possible.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
So this is funny that you mentioned this because I'm
actually working on on on a television documentary now. I'm
writing this up with my colleagues. It's called Bits and Giggles,
and it's exactly about this. It's about a comedian who
goes on a road trip with no Yeah, We've actually
built a little bot that does you know speech to text?
(23:45):
It goes off to chat GPT and then does you
know text to speech? So you can have a dialogue
back and forth with this little bot. And the question
is what does AI mean for us? Will it be
funny it, can it take the place of community? Can
it perform on stage with a comedian? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (24:03):
I think I think it's quite interesting because I because
of my own history with komedy, I love it and
I feel that it's a very human connectivity thing. It's
a very and it's odd way, it's very intimate thing,
even although you know it's one person then an audience
in the way that I do it anyway, and I
wonder if that happens, then do you have your robot lover,
(24:27):
do you have your robot husband, your robot wife, your
robot spouse, your robot children?
Speaker 3 (24:34):
I mean, is it? Is it possible? Yeah? So okay,
so this is funny mite. So my wife has been
joking about this for a long time. She's been joking
about the five percent better David, by which she means,
what does she have AI David that had all my
good qualities but it never got distracted or angry or
you know, we looked in my phone beeps or whatever. So, uh,
(24:56):
we've talked about this a lot and what this means.
And you know, the issue now is that lots of
young people are getting AI girlfriends and to some lesser
extent AI boyfriends girls getting that. In Japan, apparently this
is becoming a bigger thing where people have these AI relationships.
We can imagine perhaps the downsides of this, but I
(25:17):
do want to note I think an upside for young
people is you might be able to learn how to
navigate relationships a little bit better, and you know, you
kind of get your sandbox, your practice relationship, and if
the AI it gives you good feedback, you might actually
be a better person in relationships.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Yeah, but then you don't get the requisite amount of
trauma to make you human. I mean, no one wants
to wish trauma and anyone but junior high school may
be an essential component of making you a better persons.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
It's an interesting conundrum. So I agree with you, and
it turns out the way to do this, I think,
is to make the AI bought be traumatic in the
sense of, you know, if you say something wrong to it,
it's not kind or something. You know, it gets its
feelings hurt. Obviously it's just statistically impersonating this, but the
point is instead of having an AI that just says, oh,
(26:12):
that was so good, that was so funny and nice,
instead it gives you real feedback, tough love.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
And that that might actually work better than the parenting
that my generation inflicted on the next generation, which I
think was a little too positive. I don't know, something
went wrong, So let me try it. Let me steer
you around back to the brain and perception a little bit,
because I'm fascinated by the idea in my own life,
I'm fascinated by the idea of I think most people
(26:39):
are What is all about was the meaning of life
was the is there a god?
Speaker 3 (26:44):
You know?
Speaker 1 (26:45):
And I wonder if in the study of the brain,
which is you know, it's information central, it's information and
control everything's passing through there, does it lead you in
any direction personally for yourself? Does it lead you in
an atheistic direction?
Speaker 3 (27:03):
Does it lead you in a faith based direction? But
does it do anything to you personally? Sure? I mean,
I've spent my life in science, and I feel like
the main lesson that one can derive is to really
understand the vastness of our ignorance. And so the more
you reach down into science in the world and the cosmos,
(27:26):
you find that there's so much that we don't know,
we don't understand. So what does that meant for me?
I am neither an atheist nor religious, because atheism, at
least in its harshest form, in its strictest form, kind
of often pretends, Hey, we've got this all figured out,
we know what's going on here, but it's clear that
we don't know what's going on here. On the flip side,
(27:49):
all the traditional religions also pretend to have certainty about stuff,
and they're all making it up. And so that puts
me in the middle. I don't call my self agnostic,
because agnostic often means I don't know if there's a
guy with a beard on a cloud or not. But
I call myself something else. I call myself a possibilion.
(28:11):
And the idea with possibilianism is an active exploration of
the possibility space, trying to figure out what is going
on in this great, big cosmos that we're in. And
so the idea is, you know, to take a scientific
mindset to this question, which is to say, you know,
science always has a broad table and allows lots of
(28:34):
hypotheses on and says, okay, maybe this, maybe that cool.
I'll let anything on the table. But you know, we
use the tools of science to rule out parts of
the possibility space. So if you come and say, hey, look,
I think you know this thing is going on with
crystals or this or yesp or whatever, we can actually
test that and rule things out. And we and we
that's what we do all the time. There's lots of
(28:55):
stuff that's sort of off the table at this point.
For example, you know, if you were to say, like
you know, traditional religious books, hey the earth is six
thousand years old. You know that's a problem because you know,
the Japanese were, you know, making pottery six thousand years
before that, and so that can't be true. So we
(29:16):
can use the tools of science to open up new
folds in the possibility space and to rule things out.
But what it allows is a big space where we
can shine a flashlight around and say, all right, look,
we're not going to pretend that we know for sure
that nothing exists, or that this particular made up story exists. Instead,
we're going to explore. It's fascinating to me.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
I imagine at some point in your life you run
across the varieties of religious experience.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
The William James lechos, did you run under them? I
have not read that. I've heard of it.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Yeah, essentist because I'm kind of like claiming through it
right now for I don't know. I guess that's what
I do for entertainment. There was one of the lectures
he gave when he talks about that when people believe
something and it makes them feel good, then they are
convinced it's true. He's talking and I thought, that's fascinating
(30:08):
to me. I knew I was going to be talking
to you today as well, and I thought that that's
an interesting position to be in that the religious experience.
If something a ceremony, or a story, or a particular
piece of dogma gives you a sense of euphoria, is
euphoria something that breeds very similitude? Is it something that
(30:31):
you say, I feel good, therefore this must be true.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
Yeah. I think there are lots of reasons why people
believe things about any religious story. One of them, of course,
is that often people don't apply real rigor in what
they call true or not true in the first place.
But secondly, there's a huge social component to this. If
your friends, your family, or loved ones go and they
pray to this deity at this situation, then people feel like, hey,
(30:59):
you know, that's something that is meaningful to me too.
So I think there are a lot of reasons why
people believe in things. One of them is that people,
you know, don't necessarily apply rigorous tools when they're deciding
what to believe or not. But more than that, there's
a huge social component to religion or faith of any sort,
which is to say, if your friends and loved ones
(31:22):
believe in a particular thing, we tend to be compelled
that way. And if you live in a place where
everyone around you believes whatever deity and whatever crazy thing.
Then you grow up that way and you think, of,
of course I must be true because these people that
I love and respect they believe that. So there are
many different things that compel people. And you know, maybe
(31:42):
someone says, Okay, I'm going to finally break from my
religion and they go to some other religion and whatever
they're you know, attractive people there, or a compelling narrator
who tells them something, and so they feel like, hey,
that fits with what I need in my life. That's
the message I need right now. But none of this, Yeah,
none of this qualifies as good reasons to believe. It's
(32:05):
just why people believe.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
It's interesting though, because the only the ultimate measuring tool
that you have in front of you, or that you
have to use, is in fact your own perception and
the perception of your contemporaries. Right, So if you set
up even the most rigorous academic test, you're still looking
at it with your eyes and thinking about it with
your brain.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
Don't I don't think so. I think that we can
actually use the tools of science really. So yeah, So,
for example, I mentioned the way that science opens up
new folds in the possibility space as we discover things,
for example, about the size of the I mean, look,
you know, poor you know, Galileo had to spend the
last part of his life imprisoned because he suggested that
(32:49):
maybe the Earth is going around the Sun and not
vice versa. But as we discover more and more about
the cosmos and understand the absolute enormity of it, and
that our galaxy has one hundred billion stars, any number
you know, any one of which has number of planets
rolling around it, and and our galaxy is one of
one hundred billion galaxies in the cosmos. And as we
(33:11):
as we understand these things, I think that opens us
up to a very different kind of faith, so that
we don't have to think about, Okay, my little local
deity can beat your local deity and so on. First
of all, science opens up these things. But then the
other thing I mention is that science rules things out,
you know, whether that's the age of the Earth or
(33:33):
the idea that you know, your deity, you know, did
some little things, some little magic trick, and you can
rule that stuff in or out. I think we probably
have a very different perspective on the world than we
did even three hundred years ago. When people consider it, Hey,
do I think this deity represents the truth? And and
(33:53):
and you know, for example, we're so global now that
we see there are two thousand religions on the planet,
and so it becomes harder to believe, Oh, the thing
that I grew up with has to be the right one,
because you now see that there are two thousand other
versions of this stuff. So anyway, all these things point
(34:14):
to as we become smarter as a society, I think
we can develop notions that maybe are more appropriate to
a deeper view along the lines of what you were saying.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
I remember before my first kid was born, I said
to the obstetrician, how much do you actually know about
what pregnancy was going on in pregnancy? And she said,
if you'd ask me that question ten years ago, i'd
have said about fifty percent. But we've learned so much
(34:52):
that now I would say about twenty five percent.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
Excellent, very good.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
And I think that that that's a fascinating though, because
if you follow the logical, mathematical root of that, literally,
the more you know, the less you know.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
Yeah, that's exact. I mean, there used to be people
called pansophists, which meant, you know, someone who knows everything
to be known. And you know, back in ancient Greece
it was plausible to have somebody who was a Panzifist,
and now it's totally impossible. It has been for centuries.
So you know, that's lovely. And what I love, by
(35:32):
the way, about this moment in time right now, is
we've got AI that has consumed you know, every single
thing ever written by humans, and so that provides a
whole new way of interacting and learning human kind's knowledge,
which is a sphere that is now much too large
for any of us to ever hope to even get into.
(35:52):
But what we can do is find some doorway that
interests us and enter the sphere that way, and by
talking to the AI just you know, learn all about
the world by asking questions that are relevant to us.
And I think this is going to really change our
educational systems for schooling, because right now, you know, kids
in classrooms, it's too fast for half the kids, too
(36:13):
slow for half the kids. But we can finally achieve
this dream of real individualized education where everyone you know
has an AI tutor, which is, by the way, how
it used to go. You know, Alexander the Great was
tutored by Aristotle, and you know you'd sit there and
have conversations. And I think we'll return to that. But
(36:35):
what that's I mean, that's fantastic for learning.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
But I mean what we what we were, you're talking
about as well, even we were talking about religion. Is
that your religion or your propensity to certain depressions or
or or.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
Different traumas.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
All of that's to do with socialization and to have
an AI a certain point, I have to ask myself.
I mean, I'm just speaking.
Speaker 3 (37:04):
I love that. What's the point if it just mimics
everything that we've already go. We've ready to go all that,
So okay, great. Those are two types of questions. So
as far as socialization, I think that's what school will become.
I think you know, you're exactly right that that's such
an important part of growing up. And this was the
terrible thing for parents about COVID is seeing your young
(37:27):
children having to stay home and not wrestling and rolling
around and jumping on trampolines with other kids. So we'll
always have that, but school will become more about that
and instead of having the teacher drone on to the kids.
It'll be you know, the kids put on headphones. Do that,
at least as it stands. Now, what humans are really
(37:47):
great at doing is creativity and also understanding which creative
moves matter. So, for example, I can say to the AI,
hate generate one hundred pictures of you know, Craig sitting
in an avocado chair holding a poodle, and it'll do that.
(38:07):
But it doesn't know which of those pictures are better
than another. But a human looks at and says, oh, Craig,
that's a really good one, and that one over these
staying over here or whatever. And so humans are actually necessary,
at least at the moment for doing this next step
for figuring out Okay, I can ask, I can query
the AI, but what do I do with that? What's
(38:28):
the next step. I'll give you a specific example science.
So AI can tell me incredible things like, hey, I
need to understand you know, these facts that are scattered
around all these different journal papers across fifty years. Give
me a summary of this. It's trivial for it to
do that, and that's super useful. But what it can't
(38:49):
do is generate new sorts of science in the way that.
Let's say Albert Einstein says, Okay, what if I were
writing on a photon of lightweight? What would that be
like if we were moving into speed of light? And
he thinks through that, he says, oh, and he comes
up with the special theory of relativity. That's progress. He
wants to know about prize for this sort of stuff.
(39:10):
That's the kind of things that at least at the moment,
AI does not do. So in answer your question, the
ultimate perfect thing is if we have AI co pilots
with us who can tell us lots of information, and
then we use our creativity and our extrapolation and simulation
of possible futures to put that together to make to
(39:34):
make something that's the next step for our civilization.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
All right, So if that can happen, and let's imagine
that it can, is there a possibility the certain point,
if we can find the genetic and chemical recipe for
any individual's personality, that that can be I'm asking the
(39:58):
singularity question. Can you put the mind and the soul
of a cognizant, coherent santient being inside something which is digital?
Speaker 3 (40:10):
Okay, so that's the question of can you upload your brain?
So you don't have to die. Here's how it would work.
It would work by taking a scan of your brain
at the kind of resolution that we can't even dream
of now. Right now with our very fancy brain imaging
what we call fMRI functional magnetic residence imaging is very crude. Okay,
(40:31):
but cut to one hundred years from now, our great
grand children are sitting around having a podcast with each other,
and the question is, could you scan a brain at
the resolution where you know every single neuron and all
the connections and perhaps everything going on inside the neuron
and reproduce that algorithm on a computer? The answer is
probably probably you could do that, and therefore you could
(40:54):
download it and run Craig or Craig's great grandchild such
that you really couldn't tell a difference. So I say
to the computer, Hey, Craig's great grandchild, are you in there?
And she says, yeah, I'm here, what's up? And you know,
we have a conversation that's fascinating to me.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
So the idea that is, I mean, I wouldn't hold
you to it, but sort of theoretically, sort of kind
of maybe.
Speaker 3 (41:22):
Oh, theoretically yes. And it's because as best we can
tell this is just a machine in here. It's the
most complex sophisticated thing that we have ever come across
in our universe, the human brain. But it's just a machine.
It's just built out of eighty six billion neurons and
about the same number of glial cells, and it's you know,
(41:44):
every neuron in your head is popping off the little
signals tends to hundreds of times per second, So it's
unbelievably complex. You've got something like two hundred trillion connections
between these neurons, and as I said, it's it's like
a forest that's re configuring with every experience that you have.
So it's unbelievably complex. But it's a machine. And so
(42:05):
there's no reason that we should not be able to
reproduce that on silicon or whatever I mean. In theory,
I could reproduce your brain out of beer cans and
tennis balls.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
And if it's definitely yeah, I don't think you need
the tennis ball.
Speaker 3 (42:21):
And if it's doing the same algorithm, then then it's you.
And if I say, hey, Craig, how you doing, you say, ah,
I'm a little hungry, whatever, But it's it's you. Because
all we are is you know, these vast machines. And
by the way, the reason we know that, I'm not
just saying this as an assertion. The reason we know
that is because of centuries of studying brain damage. If
you study even a very tiny bit of your brain
(42:44):
that completely changes that can change your personality or decision making,
your ability to recognize animals, or see colors, or hear music,
or you know a thousand other things that we see
in the clinics every day. And that's how we know
that you are the operation of your brain and when
little things change, that changes you. And by the way,
drugs and alcohol are just invisibly small molecules that get
(43:06):
in your blood stream and change the functioning of your
brain changes you. You know, when you sleep each night,
you go into deep sleep and then you're not even
there anymore, and then you know, when you wake up,
it sort of reboots the whole system and so on.
But the point is it's all happening in these three
pounds here. That is you. That is fascinating.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
So I have to ask you personally, what does anything
frighten you about this?
Speaker 6 (43:33):
I don't think so, I mean, just because what you're saying,
would I think what you're saying would frighten a lot
of people who are committed to different theological or psychological
or philosophical ideas, and you're and you're saying some stuff
that would challenge that.
Speaker 3 (43:51):
I think from a scientific point of view, Yeah, I mean,
I guess I can't say that people have all kinds
of you know, with eight point three billion people on
the earth, there are that many views on the world.
So but this view, I would assert, is the only
one that's defensible. I mean, you could have whatever faith
(44:13):
you have, whatever deity you have, But if you walk
into a neurology ward and you see patients with different
brain damage and they have different things going on, I
don't know how one would explain that otherwise except to say, yeah,
you are your brain. I guess the part that frightens me,
But it's sort of a calm, mellow fright is just
(44:33):
how fragile we are as creatures. But everybody knows that anyway.
All it takes is a stroke, you know, a little
clot that gets in there, or traumatic brain injury or
a brain tumor or whatever, and then you're not even
you anymore. So I guess that part is frightening, but
I'm so used to thinking about that. Yeah, it's a
(44:54):
fascinating endlessly.
Speaker 1 (44:56):
I think that must be one of the attractions of it,
surely is the fact that it it's endless. It's endless,
there's no there's no endpoint where you go, well, that's
the brain done, let's move on to the kidneys. It's
there's just not it's a long way to go.
Speaker 3 (45:13):
Yeah, that's exactly right. And you know what's so cool
is so I've been in the field now, I wow,
well over a quarter century and the progress that I've seen.
But I would say exactly what the you know, what
the obstetricians said about pregnancy, I would say the same
thing about the brain, which is we we have so
(45:34):
much knowledge now we know less and less as a percentage.
You know, we have this book in the field called
Principles of Neuroscience, and it's enormous. It's about a thousand
pages long at this point, you know, it's the umpteenth
edition of this of this book. But what's very funny
about it is it keeps growing longer with each edition.
And it's not principles, because if it were principles, it
would be like a pamphlet, But instead, as we get
(45:58):
more and more data, we just keeping stuff in there.
We say, oh, well, but there's also this, and there's
that in these kind of cells and that kind of genes.
And what it demonstrates is we don't have the principles
yet that allow us to have some sort of compression
of this.
Speaker 1 (46:12):
Does it have an effect on you and your personal level?
Do you drink alcohol? Do you? Do you take drugs?
Speaker 3 (46:18):
Do you? I mean you don't have to in a
vague way? Do you know? No, I don't do any
of that. Actually. Is that because of brain damage? Yeah? Yeah, no,
I think right. I think it's because I'm sort of
a control freak about my brain. I just want to
keep this as healthy as I can. Yeah, so I
don't do any of that. I'm the last guy in
(46:39):
Silicon Valley that hasn't done psychedelics and had interesting trips
and souf and everyone asks me about that around here,
but I, yeah, I just I haven't taken it. It's
probably it's probably so low risk to do that, but
I just maybe that's a fear. Is the my consciousness
is a very particular thing, and I know that if
(47:00):
I stick in these invisibly small molecules. It'll change the
you know, the receptors or whatever. It'll change the activity
just a few percentage, and I'll be talking to silver leprechauns.
But I don't. I don't want to change that. I
don't want to mess up the system because this is
all I've got. And what about physical health do you?
Speaker 1 (47:22):
I mean it kind of obviously your body feeds your brain,
I mean everything. So I mean do you find yourself
avoiding certain foods or or avoid in certain activities.
Speaker 3 (47:34):
Or or yeah? We basically that I keep in really
good shape and I I eat healthfully. Yeah, I just
I try to make sure that I'm optimizing everything I
can on that front.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
You are you hyper aware of it? Like if you
eat if you eat some sugar, do you do you
feel it?
Speaker 3 (47:52):
Do you know what it's doing? Yeah? I know what
it's doing. I we let's see. I don't think I'm
hyper aware of it. But I I'm not even attracted
to sugary things. I don't even like that. But I
think I would say anymore. Obviously when I was a child,
I did. But the more the more I care about
optimizing the whole system, the less I'm even interested in
(48:12):
those sorts of things.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
Let's very quickly, because I've been taken up an enormous
of your time.
Speaker 3 (48:19):
But I'm fascinated by this.
Speaker 1 (48:20):
What does because sugar is a thing for me, What
does sugar do in your brain?
Speaker 3 (48:27):
Well, you know, so you increase blood sugar in your body,
and there are all kinds of bad effects that that
can have just physically in the brain. It's actually not
a bad thing because it's it's an energy source. It's
a quick energy source. So you know, if you're if
you're really tired and you need to do something, it's
probably it's probably not a bad idea. But the rest
(48:48):
of the body it reeks happy with time.
Speaker 1 (48:51):
Yeah, it's well, it's a it's a fascinating thing, David.
And and thank you for being so patient with me,
because I really do know nothing about this, but I
feel like I know a little more another And now
that I know a little more, I really know how
little I.
Speaker 3 (49:06):
Know about what I was talking about. But it's a
fascinating subject.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
And I hope you'll come back and talk to us
again because it's it really is an endlessly interesting piece
of the world that you're involved in. Great, probably the
most important piece, I guess, I kind of think so.
Speaker 3 (49:25):
I mean, it is the center of who we are.
There's really if you want to understand something about the self,
one can take you know, spiritual classes, psychology class and
stuff like that, and those are probably good inroads, but fundamentally,
this is the perceptual machinery by which you view the
whole world. So this is probably the best inroad there
is to understand what the what the heck we're doing here,
(49:47):
what your perception of the world is, and why you
react the way you do, why you have the feelings
and emotions you do, while you think the way you do,
and so on, and by the way, you know, you know,
I think. I've got this podcast called Inner Cosmos, and
what I do is every week I talk about this
intersection between the brain and daily life and why we
(50:07):
experience the world the way we do.
Speaker 1 (50:10):
It is a fascinating idea, and I will watch your
Inner Cosmos and listen to your inner cosmos and investigate
your inner cosmos.
Speaker 3 (50:19):
And see if it can help me. By I am
fascinated by it, and it really is great. David, Thank
you so much for being around great. Thanks Greig it's
such a pleasure to be here. Thanks buddy,
Host
Craig Ferguson
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