October 26, 2024 • 27 mins
Mariano Sigman, world-renowned leader in cognitive neuroscience, and author of the new book THE POWER OF WORDS: How to Speak, Listen and Think Better talks about how to leverage language to edit our memories and uncover who we truly are.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome back to What's at Risk. I'm Mike Christian. Mariano
Sigmund is an international leading figure in cognitive neuroscience. Former
director of the Human Brain Project, he has worked with chefs,
(00:23):
chess players, musicians and fine artists to bring neuroscience knowledge
to bear on different aspects of human culture. He is
the author of the Power of Words, How to Speak,
Listen and Think Better, and The Secret Life of the Mind,
an international bestseller. He's given several TED talks which have
received millions of views online. Born in Argentina, he grew
(00:48):
up in Barcelona, Spain, and has lived and studied in
Paris and New York.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
So that.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
We have hundreds of conversations every week, yet rarely think
about the words we use, but the way we describe
ourselves and the world around us profoundly shapes our decisions,
emotions and actions. The Power of Words by Mariano Sigmund,
delves into our minds, showing us how a simple shift
(01:24):
in our language can lead to personal growth and positive change.
Drawing from his extensive research in neuroscience and his role
as one of the directors of the Human Brain Project,
Mario Sigmund reveals that our minds are much more malleable
than we think. We retain the same ability to learn
(01:44):
and change throughout our whole lives. By understanding this, we
can rewrite our narratives and break free from limiting beliefs,
Offering practical guidance for self discovery. This witty and intelligent
book urge us to be open to the possibility of
being wrong and to gain a fresh perspective on our
(02:05):
own lives. By embracing conversations as a tool for growth,
we can learn to communicate better with others and most crucially, ourselves,
resulting in a more rewarding and successful life. We're here
(02:25):
with Mariano sigmund a world renowned leader in the cognitive
neuroscience and author of the new book The Power of Words,
How to Speak, Listen, and Think Better. Mariana, thanks for
being with us.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Thank you, it's a pleasure to be here with you.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Maybe a good place to start. You can tell our
listeners a little bit about your background.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Yeah, so it's hard to make it short. I'm a neuroscientist.
I've been doing science for twenty five years. I began
doing basic neuroscience recording from Neuron's trying to understand how
the brain works, and more and more I've been interested
in how these squarees relate to things of our daily life,
like how it relates to how we handle memory or
(03:07):
how we make decisions, and thinking about these things not
so much in the laboratory, but in problems of real life.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Right now, you're a director for the Human Brain Project,
the world's largest effort to understand and emulate the human brain.
What's that one all about?
Speaker 2 (03:25):
The Human Brain Project? The idea was to emulate what
had worked so well for the Human Genome Project, and
this was a lot of scientist trying to work together
as if they were solving a puzzle all you know,
different parts and one would take like the top left
corner and the other one would take the bottom right corner,
(03:45):
and then eventually all these pieces would come together. And
this worked very well for the Human Genome Project because
it's a science where the questions are well defined and
so it was more of an engineering problem. But it
didn't work so well for for neuroscience. And the reason
is more so well for neuroscience is because I think
that this kind of cohesive project of you know, thousands
(04:10):
of laboratories working together as more as an industry than
an artisan's is more prone to problems where the north
of where you want to go is clear. So you
have your puzzle, you know what you have to do,
it's just an issue of doing it. But when it
comes to really trying to understand what the questions are,
(04:30):
and what's the way to pose the questions, and and
and and even the more philosophical aspects of what we're asking,
then I think that these projects are interesting, but are
and they have not been as successful definitely as the
human genome project, which was like maybe a clear instance
(04:51):
of a success of just enterprises of these enterprises.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Right, you often refer to the language of thought. What
do you mean by that phrase.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Well, I mean it's not my own conception. People like
Fodd or Chomsky and many others have used it before.
The idea is that So so it comes up to
what's a language. So language can be the language of
words what we are speaking, but there's also language of
programming languages of Python is a language. You could argue
that in a certain way, the music is a language,
(05:23):
that mathematics is a language. So essentially, a language is
something that has the ability of convey meaning and that
has a certain structure where things can be combined, and
in these combinations they acquire different senses or or more
fine grained senses and so on. And so the question,
and it has it is an open question. It's whether
thought itself is organized in a language. And it's a
(05:48):
language that that would have some parallels and some some
some resonances with the language of words, but it certainly
exists the language of words. And this is in its
self kind of a strong conjecture because it in a
way it implies that thought is somehow symbolic, maybe not
(06:08):
the symbols of words, and maybe not even symbols that
we are completely aware of. It can be a process
of symbols and where it's like running in the background
of our minds. But what's going on in the background
of our minds is kind of a program or a language.
And the language of thought is a framework to think
about psychology. And once you have this framework, you can
(06:31):
start asking questions. Okay, if those are you know, if
there is such a language, then what would be the
observations of this language, and how would it manifest itself?
And what's the complexity of this language? And how is
it learned? Or is it innate? And you can ask
all these questions, but all these questions they come from
kind of a general observation which cannot be completely refuted.
(06:51):
So it's it's not strictly science, more like a philosophy
by which you address science, which is that there is
such a thing as a language of thought, and this
thing if a few that will take a long time,
because it's a part of them that you know, can
handle a lot of stones and still survive.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Yeah, that's fascinating. How do the stories we tell ourselves
impact the way we live our lives? We all tell
stories about ourselves, right, and we live with the way
we imagine ourselves to be. How does that impact our lives?
Speaker 2 (07:22):
We are going now from very fundamental questions and you
know the theory of psychology, and I think this is
part of the beauty of the path I've chosen, which
is that you can go from very fundamental aspects of
the brain or of the mind to things that are
very concrete. You know, how is it that you know,
we get frustrated and we do not do things that
we could do, and so on, and so once you
(07:44):
understand that there is a like an inner narrative, which
is that you know, you're constantly insuflating stories on ourselves,
most of which we are unaware of. Let me tell
you a very simple experience. So we've all been children, right,
and some of us we have all children and experience
with them. So here's how things begin, in the very
(08:04):
beginning of memory. Right. So there's a child she stays,
you know, for the entire day, and things happen. She falls,
she learned something, she tasted something that was interesting, she
tasted something that she didn't like, all of these having
experiences that somehow change her brain during the day. But
then her mother or her father, doesn't matter, it comes
(08:26):
and she will tell a story. And when she tells
this story, even if she's not aware, she's being kind
of the director that's choosing the director cat that she's
going to be telling someone else, but that she's going
to be telling herself also of what happened to her day.
And so different children will tell different things. Some of
them will tell I fall today and i'm you know,
(08:47):
and it hearted a lot, and she's making a choice,
maybe not a conscious choice and maybe not one that
even we feel that we're in control of of what
elements of the day are the ones that we want
to keep a store in the narration of our own life.
And why is it this important? Because this is the
forging of a personality. So you can start like constructing
(09:11):
a way by which you relate to other people through
pain and through suffering and through complaining. This is the
issue through like you look for affection by saying, by
looking empathy, which is a very natural reflection. There will
be other children which will go on, Oh, you cannot
believe what I discovered today. I was walking in the garden.
(09:32):
I found this stone. I took this stone, and underneath
there was this little craft that I had never seen before.
And so I mean, it's the same day that they've lived.
But somehow they're choosing to tell others, and most importantly
to tell themselves. How do they want to narrate their
own story? When you look at you know, Tom Sawyer
(09:53):
or Tin Tin or Harry Potter, there is someone that
writes this script of a car and they endow this
character with shyness or with fear, or with humbleness, or
with respect or with love. And the same way we
are doing this with ourselves when we are writing these
(10:15):
stories that every day forge these stories of our lives.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Yeah, so if I constantly tell myself I'm clumsy, or
I can't speak well in front of an audience, in
front of a group of people, or shy, all those things,
then at some point in time getting better than my personality.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Yeah, exactly this. I speak this in the book. I
mean there's there's a parallel with these with the financial markets.
So if you know financial markets, they follow these psychological bubbles.
So you think that the market is going to grow,
and then it grows. And it's not esoteric, it's not
you know, it's not explained by a weird force of nature.
(10:54):
It's just that it's a phenomena that's dominated by psychological forces.
Because if people think that something may happen, then they
do things so that this particular thing will happen. So,
to give a concrete example, and I think this is
an interesting one, there's a lot of science that shows
that the way language of thought works. As we were
speaking before, the way we organize our thoughts has a
(11:16):
lot to do with the way science works. So what
do we do. We are observating the world as like
from day one, and we try to make inferences of
how things work, how people are. Objects fall and we
don't make an assumption that they will keep on falling,
and we behave and this predictability allows us to move
(11:37):
and to do things, and to do things that we
know make a certain response on the people that because
we know that if we offense, then then they will
respond an given way. If we hug them, then they
will respond in a completely different way, and so on.
And we learn this, and the way we learn this
is by making hypotheses. And those hypotheses are of the
(11:57):
way I like John or I don't like Anna. And
if you think about this extremely simple phrase, this is
almost a scientific theory, like I've had some observations about
it looks like an opinion, but it's a conjecture which
is based on data. But usually these data we exaggerated
to a conclusion by which I say, well, I think
(12:20):
I understand that the way this person is will end
up being on someone that I would really prefer not
to be. But it gets really worse when these conjectures
are about ourselves. And so those are the kind of
sentences that we all make in different forms of the shape,
like I'm not good for math, which usually comes I'm
(12:42):
not good for math, but I can do that. Or
I can do this, but I'm not good for math,
or I'm just not good for sports, or you know,
art is something that's not for me. Or yeah, you know,
I'm really good at language in writing, but music, no,
music is not for me, or in more social domains,
like you know, I cannot have this type of relations.
I'm not I'm not you know, I'm just not good
(13:04):
for them. Each each of these statements. Look, first, it's
made on data, so it's not like we've made these
statements out of the blue. But usually this data, as
happens with science, is quite scarce. Maybe I just had
a few months of math and I didn't have a
very good professor, and this particular area of math was
one I did not dislike. And from this observation I
(13:26):
make a conclusion which is way broader than what I observed,
which is I'm not good for math. And in the
moment I say this, this is like a financial market,
because then certainly I will not be good for math,
because once I say this, I will be when in
the class of math, I will not pay attention, I
will be demoralized, I will not engage in the effort
(13:49):
that is needed to become good in something, I will
not have the motivation and so on. So the starting
point of my book has like two parts. The first
one is that and this this is not an opinion
comes from science, is that we have we're much more
malleable than we think. This is kind of one of
the biggest illusions that we all hold, is that we
(14:10):
think that as time goes on, we lose the capacity
to change. And science has shown one time after the
other one that this is just not true. And the
reason why we think we are incapable of changing is
because we keep on making these sentences, these theories about ourself,
which we do not perceive as an opinion. But if
you yourself say I'm not good for math, then you
(14:32):
do not perceive this as an opinion from you about yourself,
but you rather perceive it just as a statement of
how reality is. And then there's nothing you can do.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
After For a lot of us, we also like I
say I can't play the guitar. I've tried for years
and I'm really not good at it, but I can
actually change. Our brains are malleable, and I even though
that's embedded in my personality and the thing in the
stories I tell myself and others. There is a path
for me learning to play guitar.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
This is extremely well documented. Not only there is a path,
I think this is very important. So the answer is yes,
but this yes, I think, and it's a very definitely yes,
very clear yes. It's not maybe, it's yes, but it's
a yes that I think requires some understanding the nuances
because they're very important. First thing is we can all
(15:23):
improve with you know you can. You can have fine
like maybe one in a million for a very particular
and specific reason, but nineteen nine nine percent of the
population will improve in the way they play guitar, the
way they learn a language, the way they relate to people,
the way they run, the way they walk, the way
they handle their anguishes or or their stress. Now that
(15:47):
doesn't mean we can all become saying bold. You know,
it's it's not in us to run one hundred meters
in nine point seven seconds. Only one in a million
can do that because this is a combination of very
specific physiological property. Same thing for music. I mean, if
(16:07):
you want to become you know, Aldi Meola playing the
guitar or something, then then it's likely that you're going
to be frustrated because because maybe there are five or
six persons in our generation that can play the guitar
the way he does. So why I'm saying am I
saying this because one of the reasons why people are
frustrated before starting is because they confuse the inability to
(16:31):
improve with the inability to excel in something. Maybe you
cannot excel in this, but maybe you can be just
very good for that. And I actually run an experiment
on myself on this because you know, I am what
people call like I have a musicia, which means essentially
that I'm you know, I'm the worst person on music
that you'll find I sing really bad, you know. You
(16:53):
know when people there's the birthday of someone and there's
someone that's completely singing out of tune and out of time,
that's me that you know, you would ask, like, you know,
give this person as a birthday present, just your silence,
you know, because you don't offend him with your So
this is where I was. And to give you an example.
And my wife, she's a very gifted singer. My children
(17:16):
they inherit, Thanks God, they're more her predisposition. This is
the important predisposition to music and not mine. And so
when my children were born, I began to play the guitar.
And the reason I did is because I thought it
was something that I wanted to share. I wanted to
sing songs with them to them, and so I began.
(17:37):
Because I do experiments, and often the experiments I do
like so mostly my job for twenty years has been
getting people to the lab and asked them to do
things and observe, so like I asked them to make decisions.
So he asked them to learn something, or to memorize something,
or to express an emotion, and I observe their behavior
their brains, and I make conclusions. But then more and
(17:59):
more I've been interested of being myself the subject of
my own experiments. And this is more in the beginnings
of the tradition of psychology. Like William James, the Big
founder of psychology, he writes the entire foundations of psychology
with only one subject himself. He studied himself, his way
of thought, and Alan Turing the founding of computer science.
(18:22):
He founder. He founded the first, the first, very first
artificial intelligence that now we are so so trendy by
observing the thought of how one person computes, and this
one person was himself. And so this has been a
very introspection, and from introspection, trying to understand the human
mind has been a very fruitful part. And it's very
also in terms of it's it's interesting, I think in
(18:45):
a as a statement because I like the idea of
exposing myself and not exposing others to the you know,
the pain of undergoing through an experiment. So I decided, well,
I have the luxury in a way as a scientist
of having the pain of being the worst musician ever.
But then I can ask the question of whether you
(19:06):
know how this can be changed? And I spent eighteen months,
one year and a half only doing music. Three hours
of composition, three hours of guitar, four hours of singing.
Was this was the most painful part, not for me,
but for the others. I have the vivid feeling, really
(19:26):
vivid feeling that they're like were like three you know,
really highlights of the history of music, which were maybe
you know Bedobin or Mozart, and then the Beatles and
then my song and I understood, I mean it's not
like I thought this. I understood that my song was
just an exercise of you know, of someone doing its
(19:48):
first song. But this did not change the feeling. And
this is what I want to emphasize when I was saying,
you don't not need to run like Ussey in Bold,
or you do not need to play the guitar like
Caldimiola to feel very well about doing something that for
many years of your life you've thought that was something
(20:10):
which was completely prohibited to you, something that you just
could not do. And maybe there's nothing which is more
motivating and which gives us more pleasure than just arriving
to these places where we thought we can arrive.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Yeah, those are all really good points. Let's change the
topic a little bit just so we can touch on
another point in your book, and that's conversation and utilizing conversation,
old fashion conversation as a tool for self improvement.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Conversation is it's interesting because I mean it's in crisis now,
like political conversation is in crisis. Conversations in social networks
in crisis. And I think actually what we most of
us identify as a very imminent crisis of society is
in essence a crisis of conversation. It's a crisis of
not being able to to share ideas. And so I
(21:01):
think it's worth once again just spending ten seconds thinking
about what conversation is about, because I think that this
is one of I mean that just the predisposition and
the understanding of how we engage in the conversation is
the beginning of the error conversation you mentioned old fashion,
the Greek conversation was you know, the place to construct thoughts.
(21:24):
So when philosophers wanted to understand something like you know,
like you know how virtue or how we learn something?
Or what's love? Or what's God? Or you know, what's
the sky? Or what were these lights in the sky
and so on, they did not get inside the room
and think hardly in isolation. They called someone, often someone
(21:47):
that was an expert in this, often someone that was
not an expert in this, but was someone with whom
you could pinp on the ideas. And then conversation is
thought as a market. And so in a market, you know,
you go with coffee, and then someone will give you salt,
or maybe even better, you have wood, and you give
some wood to someone that knows how to work they would,
(22:09):
and then both of you have out of these material
have made something better. And so it's this exchange where
each person has the virtue of having an ability and
seeing things from a perspective, and then you make this
space in which these abilities are combined and you make
the best out of it. I think this is what
conversation is really about, except that what's being changed or interchange.
(22:32):
This is interesting because people when they think about science,
you know, they think about chemistry, physics, but there's a
very beautiful science of conversation. And all these signs of
conversation is in the essence of the book, just you know,
bringing people the ideas of how we learn to conversate
better with our children, with our supposes, with our significant
(22:54):
others at work, in a traffic accident or in a
traffic jam, in social net works, and so on. And
it turns out that there are some ideas, which some
of them were in the intuitions of the old philosophers,
so Montaigne, Montaigne the philosopher, and it is also quite
(23:15):
a bit of a story. But but he he he
wrote an essay which was the art of conversation or
the art of discussion, depending on how you translated, and
he himself tried to identify what were the good strategies
that made a conversation lead to flourishing of ideas to
(23:38):
to to kind of of of of better understanding between
people and not the other way around. So this is
I think, to me, a very important contribution of the book.
I would think that just this getting people to understand
that we do not have to lose hope on our
(24:01):
ability to improve things through conversation, which is a very
natural reflex today because we see, you know, failing it
all over the place, and so we make once again
the assumption that it just doesn't work. You know, it's
impossible to talk with this particular person. And in the book,
I try to argue that we are wrong on this assumption.
It's not impossible. It's hard, and it requires a certain predisposition,
(24:25):
and it requires certain strategies, but once you engage into them,
then the outcome of this process I think it's really
really worthy effort.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Well, the name of the book is The Power of Words.
It's by Marianna's segment, and it's how to speak, listen
and think better. Marianna, thank you so much for your
and I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Thank you, thank you so much for this conversation.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Well, that's all for this week. I'm Mike Christian inviting
you to join us again next week on What's at Risk.
Also check out our podcast at Wbznewsradio dot iHeart dot
com What's on your mind? Send us your thoughts, comments,
(25:29):
and questions to What's at Risk at gmail dot com.
That's one word, What's at Risk at gmail dot com.
Thank you. A big thank you to our producer, Ken
Carberry of Chart Productions. I Think, Think, Think, Think
Welcome back to What's at Risk. I'm Mike Christian. Mariano
Sigmund is an international leading figure in cognitive neuroscience. Former
director of the Human Brain Project, he has worked with chefs,
(00:23):
chess players, musicians and fine artists to bring neuroscience knowledge
to bear on different aspects of human culture. He is
the author of the Power of Words, How to Speak,
Listen and Think Better, and The Secret Life of the Mind,
an international bestseller. He's given several TED talks which have
received millions of views online. Born in Argentina, he grew
(00:48):
up in Barcelona, Spain, and has lived and studied in
Paris and New York.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
So that.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
We have hundreds of conversations every week, yet rarely think
about the words we use, but the way we describe
ourselves and the world around us profoundly shapes our decisions,
emotions and actions. The Power of Words by Mariano Sigmund,
delves into our minds, showing us how a simple shift
(01:24):
in our language can lead to personal growth and positive change.
Drawing from his extensive research in neuroscience and his role
as one of the directors of the Human Brain Project,
Mario Sigmund reveals that our minds are much more malleable
than we think. We retain the same ability to learn
(01:44):
and change throughout our whole lives. By understanding this, we
can rewrite our narratives and break free from limiting beliefs,
Offering practical guidance for self discovery. This witty and intelligent
book urge us to be open to the possibility of
being wrong and to gain a fresh perspective on our
(02:05):
own lives. By embracing conversations as a tool for growth,
we can learn to communicate better with others and most crucially, ourselves,
resulting in a more rewarding and successful life. We're here
(02:25):
with Mariano sigmund a world renowned leader in the cognitive
neuroscience and author of the new book The Power of Words,
How to Speak, Listen, and Think Better. Mariana, thanks for
being with us.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Thank you, it's a pleasure to be here with you.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Maybe a good place to start. You can tell our
listeners a little bit about your background.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Yeah, so it's hard to make it short. I'm a neuroscientist.
I've been doing science for twenty five years. I began
doing basic neuroscience recording from Neuron's trying to understand how
the brain works, and more and more I've been interested
in how these squarees relate to things of our daily life,
like how it relates to how we handle memory or
(03:07):
how we make decisions, and thinking about these things not
so much in the laboratory, but in problems of real life.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Right now, you're a director for the Human Brain Project,
the world's largest effort to understand and emulate the human brain.
What's that one all about?
Speaker 2 (03:25):
The Human Brain Project? The idea was to emulate what
had worked so well for the Human Genome Project, and
this was a lot of scientist trying to work together
as if they were solving a puzzle all you know,
different parts and one would take like the top left
corner and the other one would take the bottom right corner,
(03:45):
and then eventually all these pieces would come together. And
this worked very well for the Human Genome Project because
it's a science where the questions are well defined and
so it was more of an engineering problem. But it
didn't work so well for for neuroscience. And the reason
is more so well for neuroscience is because I think
that this kind of cohesive project of you know, thousands
(04:10):
of laboratories working together as more as an industry than
an artisan's is more prone to problems where the north
of where you want to go is clear. So you
have your puzzle, you know what you have to do,
it's just an issue of doing it. But when it
comes to really trying to understand what the questions are,
(04:30):
and what's the way to pose the questions, and and
and and even the more philosophical aspects of what we're asking,
then I think that these projects are interesting, but are
and they have not been as successful definitely as the
human genome project, which was like maybe a clear instance
(04:51):
of a success of just enterprises of these enterprises.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Right, you often refer to the language of thought. What
do you mean by that phrase.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Well, I mean it's not my own conception. People like
Fodd or Chomsky and many others have used it before.
The idea is that So so it comes up to
what's a language. So language can be the language of
words what we are speaking, but there's also language of
programming languages of Python is a language. You could argue
that in a certain way, the music is a language,
(05:23):
that mathematics is a language. So essentially, a language is
something that has the ability of convey meaning and that
has a certain structure where things can be combined, and
in these combinations they acquire different senses or or more
fine grained senses and so on. And so the question,
and it has it is an open question. It's whether
thought itself is organized in a language. And it's a
(05:48):
language that that would have some parallels and some some
some resonances with the language of words, but it certainly
exists the language of words. And this is in its
self kind of a strong conjecture because it in a
way it implies that thought is somehow symbolic, maybe not
(06:08):
the symbols of words, and maybe not even symbols that
we are completely aware of. It can be a process
of symbols and where it's like running in the background
of our minds. But what's going on in the background
of our minds is kind of a program or a language.
And the language of thought is a framework to think
about psychology. And once you have this framework, you can
(06:31):
start asking questions. Okay, if those are you know, if
there is such a language, then what would be the
observations of this language, and how would it manifest itself?
And what's the complexity of this language? And how is
it learned? Or is it innate? And you can ask
all these questions, but all these questions they come from
kind of a general observation which cannot be completely refuted.
(06:51):
So it's it's not strictly science, more like a philosophy
by which you address science, which is that there is
such a thing as a language of thought, and this
thing if a few that will take a long time,
because it's a part of them that you know, can
handle a lot of stones and still survive.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Yeah, that's fascinating. How do the stories we tell ourselves
impact the way we live our lives? We all tell
stories about ourselves, right, and we live with the way
we imagine ourselves to be. How does that impact our lives?
Speaker 2 (07:22):
We are going now from very fundamental questions and you
know the theory of psychology, and I think this is
part of the beauty of the path I've chosen, which
is that you can go from very fundamental aspects of
the brain or of the mind to things that are
very concrete. You know, how is it that you know,
we get frustrated and we do not do things that
we could do, and so on, and so once you
(07:44):
understand that there is a like an inner narrative, which
is that you know, you're constantly insuflating stories on ourselves,
most of which we are unaware of. Let me tell
you a very simple experience. So we've all been children, right,
and some of us we have all children and experience
with them. So here's how things begin, in the very
(08:04):
beginning of memory. Right. So there's a child she stays,
you know, for the entire day, and things happen. She falls,
she learned something, she tasted something that was interesting, she
tasted something that she didn't like, all of these having
experiences that somehow change her brain during the day. But
then her mother or her father, doesn't matter, it comes
(08:26):
and she will tell a story. And when she tells
this story, even if she's not aware, she's being kind
of the director that's choosing the director cat that she's
going to be telling someone else, but that she's going
to be telling herself also of what happened to her day.
And so different children will tell different things. Some of
them will tell I fall today and i'm you know,
(08:47):
and it hearted a lot, and she's making a choice,
maybe not a conscious choice and maybe not one that
even we feel that we're in control of of what
elements of the day are the ones that we want
to keep a store in the narration of our own life.
And why is it this important? Because this is the
forging of a personality. So you can start like constructing
(09:11):
a way by which you relate to other people through
pain and through suffering and through complaining. This is the
issue through like you look for affection by saying, by
looking empathy, which is a very natural reflection. There will
be other children which will go on, Oh, you cannot
believe what I discovered today. I was walking in the garden.
(09:32):
I found this stone. I took this stone, and underneath
there was this little craft that I had never seen before.
And so I mean, it's the same day that they've lived.
But somehow they're choosing to tell others, and most importantly
to tell themselves. How do they want to narrate their
own story? When you look at you know, Tom Sawyer
(09:53):
or Tin Tin or Harry Potter, there is someone that
writes this script of a car and they endow this
character with shyness or with fear, or with humbleness, or
with respect or with love. And the same way we
are doing this with ourselves when we are writing these
(10:15):
stories that every day forge these stories of our lives.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Yeah, so if I constantly tell myself I'm clumsy, or
I can't speak well in front of an audience, in
front of a group of people, or shy, all those things,
then at some point in time getting better than my personality.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Yeah, exactly this. I speak this in the book. I
mean there's there's a parallel with these with the financial markets.
So if you know financial markets, they follow these psychological bubbles.
So you think that the market is going to grow,
and then it grows. And it's not esoteric, it's not
you know, it's not explained by a weird force of nature.
(10:54):
It's just that it's a phenomena that's dominated by psychological forces.
Because if people think that something may happen, then they
do things so that this particular thing will happen. So,
to give a concrete example, and I think this is
an interesting one, there's a lot of science that shows
that the way language of thought works. As we were
speaking before, the way we organize our thoughts has a
(11:16):
lot to do with the way science works. So what
do we do. We are observating the world as like
from day one, and we try to make inferences of
how things work, how people are. Objects fall and we
don't make an assumption that they will keep on falling,
and we behave and this predictability allows us to move
(11:37):
and to do things, and to do things that we
know make a certain response on the people that because
we know that if we offense, then then they will
respond an given way. If we hug them, then they
will respond in a completely different way, and so on.
And we learn this, and the way we learn this
is by making hypotheses. And those hypotheses are of the
(11:57):
way I like John or I don't like Anna. And
if you think about this extremely simple phrase, this is
almost a scientific theory, like I've had some observations about
it looks like an opinion, but it's a conjecture which
is based on data. But usually these data we exaggerated
to a conclusion by which I say, well, I think
(12:20):
I understand that the way this person is will end
up being on someone that I would really prefer not
to be. But it gets really worse when these conjectures
are about ourselves. And so those are the kind of
sentences that we all make in different forms of the shape,
like I'm not good for math, which usually comes I'm
(12:42):
not good for math, but I can do that. Or
I can do this, but I'm not good for math,
or I'm just not good for sports, or you know,
art is something that's not for me. Or yeah, you know,
I'm really good at language in writing, but music, no,
music is not for me, or in more social domains,
like you know, I cannot have this type of relations.
I'm not I'm not you know, I'm just not good
(13:04):
for them. Each each of these statements. Look, first, it's
made on data, so it's not like we've made these
statements out of the blue. But usually this data, as
happens with science, is quite scarce. Maybe I just had
a few months of math and I didn't have a
very good professor, and this particular area of math was
one I did not dislike. And from this observation I
(13:26):
make a conclusion which is way broader than what I observed,
which is I'm not good for math. And in the
moment I say this, this is like a financial market,
because then certainly I will not be good for math,
because once I say this, I will be when in
the class of math, I will not pay attention, I
will be demoralized, I will not engage in the effort
(13:49):
that is needed to become good in something, I will
not have the motivation and so on. So the starting
point of my book has like two parts. The first
one is that and this this is not an opinion
comes from science, is that we have we're much more
malleable than we think. This is kind of one of
the biggest illusions that we all hold, is that we
(14:10):
think that as time goes on, we lose the capacity
to change. And science has shown one time after the
other one that this is just not true. And the
reason why we think we are incapable of changing is
because we keep on making these sentences, these theories about ourself,
which we do not perceive as an opinion. But if
you yourself say I'm not good for math, then you
(14:32):
do not perceive this as an opinion from you about yourself,
but you rather perceive it just as a statement of
how reality is. And then there's nothing you can do.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
After For a lot of us, we also like I
say I can't play the guitar. I've tried for years
and I'm really not good at it, but I can
actually change. Our brains are malleable, and I even though
that's embedded in my personality and the thing in the
stories I tell myself and others. There is a path
for me learning to play guitar.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
This is extremely well documented. Not only there is a path,
I think this is very important. So the answer is yes,
but this yes, I think, and it's a very definitely yes,
very clear yes. It's not maybe, it's yes, but it's
a yes that I think requires some understanding the nuances
because they're very important. First thing is we can all
(15:23):
improve with you know you can. You can have fine
like maybe one in a million for a very particular
and specific reason, but nineteen nine nine percent of the
population will improve in the way they play guitar, the
way they learn a language, the way they relate to people,
the way they run, the way they walk, the way
they handle their anguishes or or their stress. Now that
(15:47):
doesn't mean we can all become saying bold. You know,
it's it's not in us to run one hundred meters
in nine point seven seconds. Only one in a million
can do that because this is a combination of very
specific physiological property. Same thing for music. I mean, if
(16:07):
you want to become you know, Aldi Meola playing the
guitar or something, then then it's likely that you're going
to be frustrated because because maybe there are five or
six persons in our generation that can play the guitar
the way he does. So why I'm saying am I
saying this because one of the reasons why people are
frustrated before starting is because they confuse the inability to
(16:31):
improve with the inability to excel in something. Maybe you
cannot excel in this, but maybe you can be just
very good for that. And I actually run an experiment
on myself on this because you know, I am what
people call like I have a musicia, which means essentially
that I'm you know, I'm the worst person on music
that you'll find I sing really bad, you know. You
(16:53):
know when people there's the birthday of someone and there's
someone that's completely singing out of tune and out of time,
that's me that you know, you would ask, like, you know,
give this person as a birthday present, just your silence,
you know, because you don't offend him with your So
this is where I was. And to give you an example.
And my wife, she's a very gifted singer. My children
(17:16):
they inherit, Thanks God, they're more her predisposition. This is
the important predisposition to music and not mine. And so
when my children were born, I began to play the guitar.
And the reason I did is because I thought it
was something that I wanted to share. I wanted to
sing songs with them to them, and so I began.
(17:37):
Because I do experiments, and often the experiments I do
like so mostly my job for twenty years has been
getting people to the lab and asked them to do
things and observe, so like I asked them to make decisions.
So he asked them to learn something, or to memorize something,
or to express an emotion, and I observe their behavior
their brains, and I make conclusions. But then more and
(17:59):
more I've been interested of being myself the subject of
my own experiments. And this is more in the beginnings
of the tradition of psychology. Like William James, the Big
founder of psychology, he writes the entire foundations of psychology
with only one subject himself. He studied himself, his way
of thought, and Alan Turing the founding of computer science.
(18:22):
He founder. He founded the first, the first, very first
artificial intelligence that now we are so so trendy by
observing the thought of how one person computes, and this
one person was himself. And so this has been a
very introspection, and from introspection, trying to understand the human
mind has been a very fruitful part. And it's very
also in terms of it's it's interesting, I think in
(18:45):
a as a statement because I like the idea of
exposing myself and not exposing others to the you know,
the pain of undergoing through an experiment. So I decided, well,
I have the luxury in a way as a scientist
of having the pain of being the worst musician ever.
But then I can ask the question of whether you
(19:06):
know how this can be changed? And I spent eighteen months,
one year and a half only doing music. Three hours
of composition, three hours of guitar, four hours of singing.
Was this was the most painful part, not for me,
but for the others. I have the vivid feeling, really
(19:26):
vivid feeling that they're like were like three you know,
really highlights of the history of music, which were maybe
you know Bedobin or Mozart, and then the Beatles and
then my song and I understood, I mean it's not
like I thought this. I understood that my song was
just an exercise of you know, of someone doing its
(19:48):
first song. But this did not change the feeling. And
this is what I want to emphasize when I was saying,
you don't not need to run like Ussey in Bold,
or you do not need to play the guitar like
Caldimiola to feel very well about doing something that for
many years of your life you've thought that was something
(20:10):
which was completely prohibited to you, something that you just
could not do. And maybe there's nothing which is more
motivating and which gives us more pleasure than just arriving
to these places where we thought we can arrive.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Yeah, those are all really good points. Let's change the
topic a little bit just so we can touch on
another point in your book, and that's conversation and utilizing conversation,
old fashion conversation as a tool for self improvement.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Conversation is it's interesting because I mean it's in crisis now,
like political conversation is in crisis. Conversations in social networks
in crisis. And I think actually what we most of
us identify as a very imminent crisis of society is
in essence a crisis of conversation. It's a crisis of
not being able to to share ideas. And so I
(21:01):
think it's worth once again just spending ten seconds thinking
about what conversation is about, because I think that this
is one of I mean that just the predisposition and
the understanding of how we engage in the conversation is
the beginning of the error conversation you mentioned old fashion,
the Greek conversation was you know, the place to construct thoughts.
(21:24):
So when philosophers wanted to understand something like you know,
like you know how virtue or how we learn something?
Or what's love? Or what's God? Or you know, what's
the sky? Or what were these lights in the sky
and so on, they did not get inside the room
and think hardly in isolation. They called someone, often someone
(21:47):
that was an expert in this, often someone that was
not an expert in this, but was someone with whom
you could pinp on the ideas. And then conversation is
thought as a market. And so in a market, you know,
you go with coffee, and then someone will give you salt,
or maybe even better, you have wood, and you give
some wood to someone that knows how to work they would,
(22:09):
and then both of you have out of these material
have made something better. And so it's this exchange where
each person has the virtue of having an ability and
seeing things from a perspective, and then you make this
space in which these abilities are combined and you make
the best out of it. I think this is what
conversation is really about, except that what's being changed or interchange.
(22:32):
This is interesting because people when they think about science,
you know, they think about chemistry, physics, but there's a
very beautiful science of conversation. And all these signs of
conversation is in the essence of the book, just you know,
bringing people the ideas of how we learn to conversate
better with our children, with our supposes, with our significant
(22:54):
others at work, in a traffic accident or in a
traffic jam, in social net works, and so on. And
it turns out that there are some ideas, which some
of them were in the intuitions of the old philosophers,
so Montaigne, Montaigne the philosopher, and it is also quite
(23:15):
a bit of a story. But but he he he
wrote an essay which was the art of conversation or
the art of discussion, depending on how you translated, and
he himself tried to identify what were the good strategies
that made a conversation lead to flourishing of ideas to
(23:38):
to to kind of of of of better understanding between
people and not the other way around. So this is
I think, to me, a very important contribution of the book.
I would think that just this getting people to understand
that we do not have to lose hope on our
(24:01):
ability to improve things through conversation, which is a very
natural reflex today because we see, you know, failing it
all over the place, and so we make once again
the assumption that it just doesn't work. You know, it's
impossible to talk with this particular person. And in the book,
I try to argue that we are wrong on this assumption.
It's not impossible. It's hard, and it requires a certain predisposition,
(24:25):
and it requires certain strategies, but once you engage into them,
then the outcome of this process I think it's really
really worthy effort.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Well, the name of the book is The Power of Words.
It's by Marianna's segment, and it's how to speak, listen
and think better. Marianna, thank you so much for your
and I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Thank you, thank you so much for this conversation.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Well, that's all for this week. I'm Mike Christian inviting
you to join us again next week on What's at Risk.
Also check out our podcast at Wbznewsradio dot iHeart dot
com What's on your mind? Send us your thoughts, comments,
(25:29):
and questions to What's at Risk at gmail dot com.
That's one word, What's at Risk at gmail dot com.
Thank you. A big thank you to our producer, Ken
Carberry of Chart Productions. I Think, Think, Think, Think
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