Download Subtitles for Stanford Neuroscientist Dream Analysis Video

After many many decades of people

debating this, you might have figured

out the reason why we dream. Yes. And

it's a simple answer. So if you go

blind, the visual cortex in the back of

the brain gets taken over by hearing and

by touch and by other things. In fact,

our colleagues at Harvard did an

experiment where they blindfolded

normally cighted people. And you could

start seeing that takeover happening

after 60 minutes. And that's when we

realized, wow, the purpose of dreaming

is to defend the visual territory from

takeover from the other senses. But what

fascinates me about brain plasticity and

what I've devoted my career to is

figuring out the way that we can be the

sculptors of our own brains and how it

gives us an opportunity to become the

kind of person we would like to be.

>> And can we do that?

>> Yes. Here's the thing. Your brain peaked

at the age of two. Okay. So at the

beginning you've got fluid intelligence,

meaning you could learn anything. But

now that you have grown up in this

world, you've got crystallized

intelligence, meaning you know how to

drive a car. You know how to operate a

cell phone. You know how to run a

business. And so your brain doesn't

require as much change which means that

the structure of the brain is always

degenerating.

>> So what are the set of actions that will

fundamentally change my brain and make

me that type of person who's motivated

and disciplines and who has high agency

and attacks the world.

>> So this is something I've studied in my

lab for decades now. And the key is that

>> and what about AI and the social media

debate as it relates to brain

development?

>> Well, I happen to be a cyber optimist

for young people. I think it's going to

make them much smarter than the

generation that came before. And here's

why.

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Dr. David Eagleman, what made you so

fascinated about the brain? And why

should everybody listening be fascinated

about the brain as well? Here's what I

think it is. When I was 8 years old, I

fell off of the roof of a house that was

under construction and I fell 12 feet

and broke my nose on the floor below.

But the whole thing seemed to take a

long time. I did the calculation and

figured out that it only took 6 of a

second to get from the top to the

bottom. And I couldn't figure out why it

seemed to have taken so long. So I think

that got me really interested in

perception and the machinery by which we

view the world and taken in and what is

actually real versus what's a

construction of the brain. And that's

how what I've devoted my career to is

figuring out how the brain which is

locked inside the skull. It's about

three pounds. How it constructs this

model of the world and which things we

can take as reality and which things we

shouldn't.

>> I think most people don't even know they

have a there's a brain there almost. It

sounds like a strange thing to say, but

we've never really most of us haven't

really seen our own brains at all. We've

never been able to touch our own brains

at all. So, it's it's easy to fall into

the trap of thinking that everything I

experience is true and is reality. So,

I'm wondering how a deeper understanding

of all this stuff can help me live a

better life.

>> Yeah. One of the things that I started

writing about years ago is that I think

we're not I think we often think of

ourselves as individuals, meaning not

divisible into other things. But really,

you are a team of rivals. So, you've got

all these neural networks that have

different drives making different

suggestions to you.

>> What's a neural network?

>> Um, so in the brain, you've got 86

billion cells called neurons. And these

are communicating with each other at a

blindingly fast rate. Many of these

cells are hooked up in networks. So,

they're, you know, this guy's talking to

this guy and this guy, and they're all

in particular networks. The thing is,

you can actually get competing networks.

So, for example, Stephen, if I drop some

chocolate chip cookies in front of you,

part of your brain wants to eat it. It's

a good energy source. Part of your brain

says, "Don't eat it. I'll gain weight."

Part of you says, "Okay, I'll eat one,

but I'll go to the gym tonight." The

point is you are arguing with yourself.

You are conflicted. This is what makes

humans so interesting is that we have

all these voices trying to drive us to

different conclusions about our

behavior.

The way that your ship of state moves

depends on the vote of the neural

parliament at any time. So understanding

this I think is really critical to

navigating our own lives because all of

us do things where retrospectively we

regret it. We say I shouldn't have eaten

that whole bag of chips or done the you

know the alcohol or the drugs or what

like everybody has regrets all the time

with things and it's because you have

different voices in charge at different

times. Okay.

>> Part of what this leads to is what we

call the Ulisses contract. So a Ulisses

contract is where you do something now

to prevent yourself from behaving badly

in the near future. Just as an example,

you know, when people go to Alcoholics

Anonymous, the first thing they're told

is clear all the alcohol out of the

house. Because even if you feel like,

look,

>> I'm in a moment of sober reflection. I

don't want to ever drink again. If you

have alcohol in the house, you're going

to bust into that cabinet at some point

on a festive Saturday night or a lonely

Sunday night or whatever. So, what you

do is you constrain your future behavior

by setting things up in the right way so

your future uh the future you can't

behave badly. We naively think, okay,

well, I know who I am. I'm just one

person. But but you're not. And under

different circumstances, you're tempted

by different things and you'll do

different kinds of behavior. So having a

sense of what's going on under the hood

gives us an opportunity to be more

closely aligned with the kind of person

we would like to be

>> because it feels like there's just one

well I do argue with myself in my head

sometimes but it feels like there is

just one me

>> and so when I hear that voice say Steve

you should have that cookie and it's

1:00 a.m. And then the other voice says,

"No, you shouldn't." I think it's kind

of the same person just tussling with

himself,

>> right? Well, but that tustling with

himself implies different political

parties that are all battling it out.

You know, when you look at a parliament,

you've got all these political parties

that all love their country. They just

have different ideas of how to steer it.

And this is what's going on uh in in the

brain all the time.

>> So, what does one do about that? How do

I make do I do I have to make a list

contract? I think it's very useful to

make that sort of thing. But also just

understanding oneself. I mean part of

the you know there was this Greek

admonition to know thyself. This was a

sign they had in various places, various

temples and stuff. But I think that

becomes know thyelves. And the better we

know ourselves, the more we can get rid

of the illusion that we are one person.

Because all any of us need to do is look

back on our behavior to say, "Oh yeah,

in some circumstances I would do that.

and other circumstances I think is a

terrible idea. So this is all to the

goal of understanding who you are.

>> What are the big misconceptions about

the brain that people have gone through

their life believing? I mean that's one

of them. Something that is true that

kind of could fall in place of that is

just this fundamental idea that our

brains are plastic or sort of adaptable

because when I found out that I could

change my brain by what I do, I found

that to be really really inspiring.

>> Yes, that that's exactly right. So brain

plasticity, if someone hasn't heard that

term before, it sounds like a weird

term, but the reason it came about 100

years ago is because the great

psychologist William James pointed out

that, you know, if you take a piece of

plastic, what we like about that

material that we call plastic is that

you can mold it into a shape and it'll

hold that shape. And that's what your

brain does. So if I ask you the name of

your third grade teacher, you can

remember that name even though it's been

a long time because your neural networks

changed and held on to that piece of

information. Okay? Well, our whole lives

our brains are changing every moment. So

now we have certain doors that close at

different times. So just as an example,

um you need to learn language in the

first several years of your life. If you

don't learn language, you can never get

the concept of language. Your brain will

never figure that out.

>> You're not saying you can't learn a new

language as an adult. You're saying the

concept of

>> the concept of language, the concept

that I can name things and I can ask for

things and so on. Just that never clicks

in the brain. For example, in Romania at

the fall of Chuchescu, there were tens

of thousands of kids in the orphanages

because their parents had been killed.

It was too many kids. And so the staff

there said, "Look, the kids will get,

you know, clingy if you pay too much

attention to them. So here's what we're

going to do. We're going to feed the

kids, but we're not going to hold them

and we're not going to talk to them."

And all these children grew up with real

cognitive deficits as a result. Here's

the thing about brain plasticity. Human

beings have a a similar brain to all our

neighbors in the animal kingdom. If you

compare our brain to a horse brain, a

dog brain, anything like that, it's the

same general structures and stuff. But

what we have is much more of the wrinkly

outer bit called the cortex. It's the

outer 3 mm. And maybe we'll come back to

why that matters so much. But the other

thing that mother nature tweaked with

us, it's small genetic tweaks. But we

have much more plasticity, adaptability

such that when a horse drops into the

world, it's doing the same thing that

horses did 100,000 years ago. It's just,

you know, eat mate. But when a human

drops in the world, we learn everything

that's happened before us. And then we

springboard off the top of that. So we

living in the 21st century, we say, "Oh

great, you know, physics, math, this,

that, art, blah, blah, great. We got

everything that's happened before us.

Now let's do our own thing." And that's

what's so special about the plasticity

of the human brain, the adaptability of

it. The downside, the gamble is that

mother nature drops human brains into

the world kind of halfbaked and we then

get to absorb everything. But in the

rare circumstance where you're not

getting the right input, then then that

ends up really in trouble because it's

only halfbaked. So when it comes to

language, we can learn multiple

languages when we're young. That's very

easy, but it gets harder and harder as

that goes along. And various other

things become harder. And here's why.

It's because I I mentioned this earlier,

but the job of the brain is to make a

model of the world so it can operate

within it. So, for example, you're an

entrepreneur and you love doing

business. So, you get it. You okay,

here's how, you know, here's how you

structure business. Here's how you hire.

Well, here's how you set up a board.

Well, you're doing everything because

you've got a really rich internal model

of how to structure a business. That's

what the brain wants to do is get that

stuff right. As a result, if you

suddenly ended up, you know, taking a

trip to Mars and there's a whole very

different society there that does

businesses very differently, you would

have to relearn stuff really quickly.

So, here's the thing. You went from

having a brain that had high fluid

intelligence to now having a brain that

has high crystallized intelligence. What

that means is at the beginning you can

learn anything. You could learn any

language. You could have dropped into

any area. You could have dropped into

13th century Japan when I was young.

>> When you were young, when you were a

baby, if you had dropped out of the womb

in, you know, 10th century Mongolia, you

would have said like, "Okay, cool. Learn

lang." You would you would be a 10th

century Mongolian. But as it happens,

you dropped into this era, you know, a

certain place and time and neighborhood

and culture and family. And so you learn

that that's who you become is that

person. We often think that plasticity

diminishes as you age. But it's not

simply that it's diminishing. It's that

you are getting the right answers about

how to operate in the world. And so you

don't have to change as much. Your brain

doesn't require as much change.

>> What if I want to change?

>> Yes. So it turns out you still can

change. That's the key is that the

reason brains change less and less is

because they don't have to. But when

things get upside down, just as one

example, everything about the pandemic

really stunk, except for one thing, I

think the tiny silver lining is that all

of us had to reassess. Oh my gosh, wait,

how is the world working? I thought I

knew how the world worked, but now I

don't know if there's going to be toilet

paper at the store. I don't know if the

bank's going to be open. I don't know if

I can get coffee at the coffee shop.

Like, everything was different. As awful

as it was, it's really useful to

challenge your internal model of the

world and get to do that as an adult. We

don't usually get to.

>> So, if I want to change, what would you

recommend that I do? If I want to if I

want to change who I am, say I'm

stubborn, I'm not motivated,

>> um, and I want to be a different person.

>> The key is challenge. The key is seeking

challenge. So, it turns out that where

we always want to be is in between the

levels of frustrating but achievable.

and you want to take on new tasks. You

want to seek novelty to find yourself in

that zone and push yourself to do things

that you just haven't done before. And

one of the things that's so wonderful

about the modern world, you know,

everyone's got complaints about the

internet and social media and stuff like

that, but the good news is it deep it

exposes you to so much more than you

ever even knew was out there. The key is

to actively seek those challenges and

seek new things and seek to become

expert in various sorts of fields. And

and I think the key is that once you

become good at something, you you have

to drop that and take on something

you're not good at. This is the best

thing that you can do for your brain.

The reason is because what you're doing

is you're constantly building new

roadways and pathways in the brain.

There's a study that's been going on for

for decades now called the religious

orders study where a bunch of Catholic

nuns agreed to donate their brains for

autopsy when they passed away. What the

researchers discovered when they look at

the brain carefully is that some

fraction of these nuns had Alzheimer's

disease. Their brains were physically

degenerating with the ravages of of this

dementia, but they didn't show any of

the cognitive deficits that one normally

has. They didn't seem to be having

memory problems and so on. It turns out

it's because all these nuns lived in

these convents till the day they died.

They had social challenges and they had

fights with their fellow sisters and

they played games with their fellow

sisters and they were they had chores

and responsibilities and they were doing

stuff. What that means is even as the

tissue the brain tissue was physically

degenerating, they were making new

roadways and bridges all the time.

>> And so that's what kept them cognitively

healthy. We call that cognitive reserve.

Contrast this with with people who

retire at 65 and they go home and they

watch television and their social

circles shrink and so on. That's when

you've really got concerns because

you're not building the new pathways. Is

there data to support that that when you

retire, if you retire early or if you

retire say in your 60s, it increases

your probability of an earlier death or

cognitive decline? Almost certainly with

cognitive decline because you're just

not getting the challenge at that point.

You're just coasting on your internal

model.

this. It's tragic, but what happens

often is that people's hearing gets

worse. And so by the time they retire,

let's say in their mid-60s, it's not

really that fun for them to go out to

parties and restaurants anymore because

they can't quite hear. And so there

there all these converging reasons why

their social lives shrink. But it turns

out social life is one of the most

important things that we can do for our

brains because there's an expression we

sometimes use in neuroscience, which is

that nothing is as hard for the brain as

other people. because you never know

what the other person's going to say and

do and how they'll react emotionally and

so on. So, you're constantly on your

toes with other people. And if you're

not doing that anymore, that ends up

being a problem.

>> H

interesting. And as a as a I'm 33 years

old, so if you were to plot where my

brain is on like a graph of decline,

I is it the case that I should be doing

as much as I can now to build as many

pathways I can so that when I'm 80, my

decline sort of levels out in a in a

better place? Oh yeah, for for sure. But

this is true for many reasons actually.

Okay, so look, the truth is your brain

peaked at two at the age of two because

that's when you get the most connections

between neurons, between these cells in

the brain. You get this, at first you're

born with these 86 billion neurons and

they connect and connect and connect and

it finally becomes like a overgrown

garden at the age of two and from there

you're pruning. From there you're taking

connections away. Now it happens that

that's not a bad thing. That's a good

thing because that's how you're

resonating with the world that you are

in.

you know, 21st century London and LA

versus, you know, 10th century Mongolia

because you're you're just strengthening

those pathways that resonate and you're

getting rid of everything else. Okay,

fine. But over time, your brain cells

die. You know, every time you hit your

head on something or whatever, your

brain cells are going down. Um, so in

that sense, you've peaked. But your

crystallized intelligence that you've

been building your whole life, you know,

that keeps going and you'll you'll have

decades ahead of you where you can start

doing stuff. But yes, the reason to

learn everything you can is because all

that stuff cashes out at various points

in your life when you're starting your

next business or you're, you know,

wanting to do the next great thing where

you're surfing the way web of AI. You

know, you'll say, "Oh, I learned this

thing when I was 16. I learned this

thing when I was 22." And and these are

these are paying off now. I think I

heard Andrew Hubman say that one of the

most fascinating discoveries of the last

century is a particular part of the

brain called the anterior mid-sul cortex

and it links to what you were saying a

second ago about challenge and doing

things that are difficult.

>> Yeah, it turns out that area of the

brain is involved and other networks as

well because when you're doing something

new and challenging and difficult, you

have stress and anxiety. Your whole

brain is active. Let's say I measured

your brain even with something like EEG,

electronphilography. That's where I

stick electrodes on the outside. Let's

say I measure your brain in my brain.

We're doing something that let's say

you're an expert at what's something

you're really good at juggling. I don't

know some physics.

>> Let's go for juggling.

>> Okay. Let's say you're an expert

juggler. Let's say I've never juggled.

Okay. If we're both juggling, you're

going to be much better than I am. But

your brain will be less active. You

won't have as much activity in your

brain. all my brain is on fire with

activity because why I'm trying to

figure out okay where do I put my hand

how do I throw this and blah blah blah

so when I'm in novice at something my

brain is using much more activity not

just the anterior made singulate but

tons of activity all over because I'm

trying to figure out the rules I'm

trying to figure out what's going on you

as an expert you know you got it you

don't you don't need to burn much

activity this is what the brain's goal

is is to say hey once I've practiced

something along once I get something

about the world I'm going to burn it

deeper and deeper into the circuitry So

I don't have to burn a lot of energy on

it.

>> On this part of the brain, the anterior

mid singular cortex, Andrew human was

saying it's larger in people that do

things that they basically don't want to

do hard things. If you spend your life

doing things you don't want to do, then

it happens to be bigger. And so people

have now thought of this part of the

brain almost like the willpower muscle

because for some reason those that are

doing hard things have bigger ones and

those that are not have smaller ones. I

mean it wouldn't be so much the

willpower of muscle. It would be some

indication retrospectively of how hard

you have worked. Look, the fact is you

can see changes in brain size with lots

of things. I'll give you an example. If

you are a pianist, if you play piano,

then we can actually see physical

changes in your motor cortex. This is

the part of the brain essentially

underneath where you would wear

headphones. For those who are looking

visually, it's this red part here. You

actually get a bigger loop of tissue

here than you do in a normal brain. Why?

Because you're doing so much fine motor

activity with your fingers with both

hands. Okay? In contrast, if you're a

violinist,

you're only really doing that kind of

detailed activity with one hand. The

other hand is just boeing. And so you

only get that activity here in one half

of the brain for violinists. So I can

look at a brain and tell, hey, is the

person a pianist or a violinist or an

either? I can tell just by looking at

the visual cortex because you see

changes in the brain based on what you

do. For example, jugglers, people who

play music, even you can tell this with

medical students who study for final

exams. You actually see changes in the

distribution of of their cortex.

>> Why would it be getting bigger?

>> The reason is the brain's devoting more

real estate to that. In this case, let's

say we're talking about fingers on a

piano or a violin. The brain is devoting

more there's more relevance to that and

so it more real estate so that you can

do it better in the future.

>> Exactly. The key about the cortex this

wrinkly outer part is that it is a

one-trick pony. This is often overlooked

because even this brain that I'm holding

here uh is colorcoded so that we think

oh okay that's clearly labeled this

that's clearly labeled that and so on.

But in fact it's all the same stuff and

it can change. So for instance, if you

are born blind, then this area that we

normally call the visual cortex gets

taken over by the rest of the brain. If

you're born deaf, then this part that we

call the auditory cortex gets taken

over. It gets devoted to other tasks.

And so this whole system is very very

fluid. And this is what fascinates me

about brain plasticity is the way that

we can be the sculptors of our own

brains because we can devote ourselves

to particular things and have the brains

real estate get involved in that. So if

I was currently someone that couldn't

get out of bed, I didn't have a lot of

discipline or motivation and I wasn't

very good at committing myself to hard

things.

With everything you know about the

brain, is it possible to take a set of

actions that will fundamentally change

my brain and make me that type of person

who runs marathons, who does hard

things, who's motivated and disciplines,

and who has high agency and attacks the

world.

>> Yes. Yeah. But it's much more than

simply resolve because I mean just look

at New Year's resolutions. You know, by

by February, most people have dropped

most of them. So, it's really a

psychology problem about figuring out

okay, what are the things that motivate

me? So, let's say you want to become a

marathon runner. You've got that distant

dream. You figure out like what actually

motivates me in the short term? Who am I

trying to impress? What am I trying to

accomplish in my life? How can I

structure things like this Ulyses

contract that I talked about earlier

where I'm actually locking myself into a

contract? Like, you know, I call Bob and

I say, "I will meet you every morning at

7:00 and we're going to run until we

drop." Like once I've committed to those

sorts of things, that's how you set

things up so that you do the right

thing.

>> It's a bit of a cycle, right? Because

then my brain will adapt and then

presumably that will make it easier for

me to run.

>> Yeah.

>> And then I'll run more and then my brain

will adapt.

>> That's right.

>> And the cycle continues.

>> And it's not just your brain, of course.

In this case, it's your body. You're

getting better. You're getting stronger.

You don't get as out of breath. And so

all these things help. Exactly. But in

order to keep the cycle going, you need

to figure out what is spinning this

flywheel and what are the all the other

things in your life. Whether good

motivations or bad, it doesn't matter.

You just figure out what it is that you

can do to to get there.

>> Are there certain physical exercises

that are particularly good for the brain

from what you've understood?

>> The general story is exercise is really

important for the brain. I'll give you

just one example of that, which is

there's still this debate going on about

whether we get new neurons in the brain.

The general story has always been you're

born with 86 billion neurons and those

slowly die with time. But in rats, for

example, there is a little trickle of

new cells, new brain cells. And there's

been a debate for a long time about

whether that little trickle happens in

humans or not. Still unresolved. But in

rats, what you can see is that exercise

causes the trickle to increase. If you

stick the rat on the wheel and it's

doing physical exercise, you get more

new brain cells. Now, we don't know for

sure that this happens in humans, but

lots of things about physical fitness

and exercise matter a lot to the brain.

This is nothing new. Exercise, sleep,

diet, these are really important things

for keeping the health of this organ. Is

there anything else that's important to

know for someone that is trying to

change and improve and keep their brain

in a healthy state as they age that we

haven't touched on?

>> There is something that that all of us

are thinking about which is about um

social media and the internet in

general. I do think one of the

interesting things about the internet

and social media is that if we were

growing up in a village 500 years ago,

you just know the people in the village

and what they can do and so on. But

let's say no one in the village was an

entrepreneur or a neuroscientist. And so

we we can't even picture that as a

thing. We don't know anything about

that. One thing that the internet has

done for kids growing up in the digital

age is that you get a lot of more

exposure to things. You you have so much

more exposure. I actually think this is

one of the positive things that I would

say about social media is that you not

only get exposure, wow, that kind of

thing is possible and that kind of thing

is possible, but you also have people

teaching you how to get there.

>> They say like, hey, I'm a fitness

influencer and I'm going to show you

exactly how to do the thing. Or, you

know, you say, "Hey, here's exactly how

you start a business." Or I say, "Hey,

here's the the route that you go through

undergrad and grad school to become a

neuroscientist." And that's great. I

mean, there's just there's so much more

uh of a talent window now that that

everyone gets exposed to. So, I think

that makes a better brain.

>> What are we doing to our children that

you think we probably shouldn't be doing

as it relates to brain development?

>> Here's the thing that's really important

about this debate is that nobody really

knows. And I'll tell you why. It's

because to do anything in science when

you're saying something about a group,

you need to have a control group that

you're comparing against. And when it

comes to asking the question of, hey,

kids growing up now with social media or

the internet, how do they compare to

other brains of kids who don't grow up

with that? Well, we don't have a control

group unless you look at kids who are

incredibly impoverished or let's say

Quakers who don't believe in technology.

And with both those groups, there's a

hundred other important differences. So,

you can't just say, "Oh, look, I'm

comparing to this kid who grew up

without food and and I'm going to say

there's this difference." Who the heck

knows why the difference is there? even

a generation ago. There's so many

differences in terms of diet and

pollution and politics and blah blah

blah what like everything that you can't

do it. So I I only mention this because

I think it's very important. A lot of

people pipe off with things about oh the

younger generation their brain this that

but we don't actually know and I will

tell you that I happen to be a cyber

optimist on this point about what

growing up with the internet does for

young people. I think it's going to make

them much smarter than the generation

that came before. And here's why. It has

to do with the size of the intellectual

diet that they can bring in. So when I

was a kid, I grew up pre- internet. You

know, I wanted to know stuff. So my mom

would drive me to the library, which was

25 minutes away, and I would pick up the

Encyclopedia Bratannica and I would flip

through it and hope they had an article

about the thing that I wanted to know

about. And that's how I was able to get

my little straw of knowledge. But now

kids are growing up with access to

anything they're interested in. And this

is so good for the brain. And from a

plasticity point of view, the reason

this matters is because change happens

in the brain when you are curious about

something. So when a kid asks a question

to Alexa or Siri or whatever and they

get the answer, that sticks because they

have the right cocktail of chemicals

going on in their head. In contrast,

when I grew up, I learned tons of just

in case knowledge. I mean, that's all

that the teachers could teach us is just

in case you ever need to know this fact,

here it is. But kids are in a really

great situation now. So, there are pros

and cons to to all this stuff, but I

think I'm very optimistic about what

this means for the for the warehouse of

knowledge that that kids can build up

now. And by the way, I saw an interview

with Isaac Azimoff in 1988. He was the

great science fiction writer who wrote

Foundation and so many other books. And

he was saying on this show in 1988, he

said, "Look, I envision a day when there

will be one central supercomput and

every house will have a cable running to

that supercomputer and you can ask any

question you want and it knows the

entirety of humankind's knowledge on

that computer." You know, what he was

foreseeing here was the internet. He got

the details wrong, which doesn't matter.

The idea is he saw how this would be so

incredible for education

because he pointed out look in any

classroom it's going too fast for half

the kids too slow for the other half of

the kids and if you could just pursue

the sphere of humankind's knowledge if

you could enter in whatever door you

wanted to that's the way to do it

because you'll be motivated now he

wasn't talking about brain plasticity or

anything but this is exactly what I'm

saying from a brain plasticity point of

view really matters

I I'll just mention something which is a

lot of people are concerned that oh with

with AI we're going to get lazy. We

won't you know know how to do anything

anymore because we can outsource it. It

just so happens that I I love doing home

improvement. I'm always fixing my house.

I have 3xed myself in the last half year

because of AI because I take a picture

of something. I say hey I've never seen

this kind of thing before. How does this

work? Whatever. And chat GPT says oh you

do this and you take this out and here's

the bolt and blah blah. It's not me

outsourcing it. It's me being curious

about something and so I remember how to

do everything now. I know how to do much

more than I used to because I like it.

>> What about the you there's been a couple

of studies that have come out that say

things like your brain's going to

atrophy if you don't continue to write

or um if you just defer all of your

learning to things like chatgbt or other

AI models. Um, one I guess one of the

areas that I think in one of the

studies, was it a Stanford study that

everyone was talking about where the the

participants used Google and AI and then

they'd learned something themselves.

>> But one of the things I've wondered is

if I'm going through my business life

and I'm encountering hard problems and

every time I encounter a hard problem, I

drop it into an AI. The AI spits out a

textbased answer. I copy and paste that

and send it as my response. presumably

there's some kind of important part of

the learning cycle or the you know

neurological development that I'm like

foregoing there I'm missing that I

probably should you know you said

earlier about doing hard things what I'm

doing there is I'm avoiding the hard

thing which is like thinking about it

and trying to understand it

>> yeah here's I think the really important

distinction there's vicious friction in

our lives and there's virtuous friction

so vicious friction is all the stupid

stuff that you have to do like hey

Stephen for your business I need you to

cop copy this spreadsheet over here and

fill in all these cells and and do your

taxes and whatever. Okay, that if we can

push that off to AI is massively

important for for improving human lives.

There's really not benefit in vicious

friction. But virtuous friction is, hey

Stephen, I really want you to think

about what is the optimal way to do this

business. What is the best structure for

this? How do we actually go DT to C? How

do we go B2B on this? What's the what's

the approach here that we're going to

take that you haven't done before that

would be amazing? That's virtuous

friction because you're really using

your brain to learn stuff that way. So

that's the first distinction that

matters is get rid of all the busy work.

There's no honor in that. I mean I'll

just mention in the 1990s there was this

big debate about whether we should have

kids use desk calculators or not. And

thank god that finally got resolved and

we let kids use calculators so that we

can learn, you know, couple we can spend

a couple days learning long division,

but you don't have to spend six months

on it because who cares? With the

virtuous friction, there's real

opportunity to surf the wave of AI so

that you are figuring out these tough

problems with the aid of somebody who

cares about your problem and is willing

to talk with you 247 and never gets

tired of talking to you about it. And so

you are not just copying and pasting,

but you're working with the AI to come

up with ideas that were beyond what you

would have come up with. Because I

mentioned earlier about internal models,

we have pretty narrow fence lines and

you can think of all these things, but

you don't even know what you don't know.

So, if you can have somebody who's

willing to talk with you, an expert in

all of humankind's knowledge, willing to

talk with you about it as much as you

want, there's a real opportunity there

to have a synergy where collectively you

both come up with a better idea than

either of you could have alone. But is

there a way for that relationship to

take place so that I actually benefit?

Because, you know, in the example I

gave, I'm just I take the question I was

asked, I put it into an AI, it gives me

an answer, I copy and paste it back to

the person that asked me the question.

that would happen if you really didn't

care about the person asking you the

question or the question. I mean

>> I mean this is what a lot of people are

doing like I get so many email because

you know we interview a lot of

candidates who join the business and so

I see tens of thousands of emails

sometimes a week that I mean I don't see

all of them but the ones that I see I

often know that you know because we've

sent them five questions or a task and I

look at it and go this is I can almost

predict the exact model that sent it to

me because they all have a different

personality so I go oh this one the

person put into Gemini or this one the

person put it into chatbt. Yeah,

exactly. And it's full of contrastive

constru construction like

>> it's not this, it's that. Yeah, exactly.

And then the M dashes. Exactly.

>> I'm really asking like is the person

that did that benefiting from from it?

>> No.

>> Well, no, but for a couple reasons. One

is that, you know, you and it it

triggers your red flag and so that does

not do anyone any good. see so many of

my colleagues posting on LinkedIn these

very obvious AI things and it irritates

me because I feel like I'm not going to

spend my time reading that because of I

call this this the effort phenomenon

which is um in in psychology we care a

lot about things that seemed like they

took a lot of effort and there's

something about seeing an AI post that's

just irritating because it's so

obviously AI

>> that's a really interesting idea the

effort phenomenon

>> yeah I've been I've been writing about

this for a while because um it turns out

there are psychology ology studies where

if I offer you two pieces of art and one

of them looks like, you know, let's say

it's a a red dot in the middle of a

white canvas and the other one is, you

know, bottle caps stacked up and glued

in this great shape or whatever, you'll

pay you'll pay much more for the thing

that looks like it took a lot of effort.

People will pay more for a real diamond

than a synthetic lab grown diamond,

which is exactly the same thing. It's

just carbon in the matrix. But they feel

like, oh well, mother nature took

hundreds of millions of years of effort

on this one, but not over here. It just

took a few days in the lab. So, there's

a million ways where we care about that

a lot. When it comes to this AI thing,

um, yes, anybody who's just popping back

something to you, it just feels like,

all right, they took the the path of

least resistance, and I'm not so

interested.

>> I want to know from a neuroscience

perspective whether they benefit.

>> Presumably, they don't benefit too much

either. I mean, it's hard to know

exactly how many times they went back

and forth with it. They could have said,

"Hey, Chad GPT, thank you for this, but

I'm kind of this more of this person.

When I really think about it, this is

the thing that inspires me." Not not

what you suggested. So, so somebody

could put effort into it. It's just that

we can't know that when we get the AI

response. It seems to be a pretty

consistent principle of life generally

that like when you do something hard or

when you put in effort, as you say, you

tend to get back like an equal and

opposite return like relatively. So I I

would think that if I fought through,

you know, maybe even using AI as a

companion, but I fought then to write it

out myself instead of just copying and

pasting.

>> Yeah.

>> One of the things I've learned from

doing this podcast and all these

episodes is everything is a trade-off.

>> Yeah.

>> And and if you don't know what the trade

you're making, then you're often at

great risk. And so like some of my

friends will say, "Oh, I take this pill

and it's amazing. It does all these

things for me. It's the most amazing

thing ever. I can just focus for 24

hours a day and I'm so productive now.

And I go, "What's the what's the

downside?" And they go, "Oh, there's no

downside." And I go, "Hm." Like, so

that's what I mean. It's even worse when

you don't you don't know the trade

you're making. And so with AI, I go,

"Okay, if it's making me wildly more

efficient or productive, what trade am I

making?" I think understanding this it's

probably not two categories but a

spectrum from vicious friction to

virtuous friction but really paying

attention to what is virtuous friction

what would make me a better person if I

actually put the effort into this that

matters a lot and I will say for us as

professors for you looking for job

candidates we need to change how we're

asking the questions if we just say hey

write answer these five questions of

course everyone's going to use it for

example in my classes is at Stanford. I

I don't have people turn in a final

paper anymore. That was from previous

life before AI. Now I have them do

projects as their final thing where

they're uh you know running an

experiment on something. And of course

they use AI to help them generate some

of the issues, but they have to deal

with other people and look at the data

and figure out what's wrong and that

kind of stuff. I worry that it's getting

into the age of, you know, the whole

calculator thing you said where maybe

actually it is now you need to assess

them on their ability to use the AI,

>> not to succeed without it.

>> Yeah, agreed. This is the whole game for

all of us, I think, is figuring out how

to surf this wave of AI where it can

make us super human. We can just be

better, so much better than anything we

ever were doing before because we have

immediate access to knowledge and facts

that either we had forgotten or we never

knew existed. And so we should be

surfing that wave. So I I I totally

agree with you on that point. If you can

figure out how to change your interview

questions so that you're seeing, hey,

can this person really get the speed?

With everything you know about learning

and neuroplasticity and expanding one's

brain, is there a anything else you can

say to the audience about how they

should use AI so that they become a

superhum?

>> Interesting. I you know, look, I I have

been talking to my friends about this

issue a lot lately and I I mentioned how

I've become so much better at home

improvement stuff. I just know so much

more. Each one of my friends has

something like that where like, hey, you

know what? I've actually gotten so much

better at this super random thing that I

never even thought I, you know, I never

thought about it explicitly, but because

I'm always asking AI questions about

that and it's giving me the answers.

It's not simply that it gives me the

answers and I forget it. It gives me the

answers and I remember it. I become

better and better because it's like the

way that Alexander the Great had

Aristotle as his tutor and could ask him

anything and learn great stuff from him.

We've all got Aristotle in our pocket

now and we can become better at the

things that we want to do, the things

that resonate with us for whatever

reason. If everyone's got Aristotle in

their pocket, how does one create an

edge?

>> I think it has to do with we're all just

going to be running faster. In the same

way that when Steve Jobs introduced

Apple computers, he said this is like a

bicycle for the mind. What he meant by

that was that for millions of years

we've been walking bipedily and then

just in the last nancond of evolution we

invented the bicycle and suddenly humans

can move faster because of the bicycle

and he said having a personal computer

is like a bicycle for the mind and I

think of AI now as like a motorcycle for

the mind it's it allows us to move so

much faster so now it's a motorcycle

race and there will be people who are

much faster than other people because

they're really using that optimally.

>> And that's what I mean. It's like how do

I create an edge versus my whoever I'm

competing with in whatever industry I'm

in.

>> Well, for sure the people who are just

copying and pasting the AI slop that'll

be easy to beat that crowd. But

otherwise, I think it's just a matter

of, hey, these are the newest things.

It's like in history when the new sword

gets invented or the new gun or the new

cannon, you know, you have to keep

improving and and using that. And that's

what's going on now with AI

>> and with from a neuroscience

perspective. If I wanted to use AI to

based on all these things you've told me

about novelty and all these other points

that expand the the connections across

my brain and give me a big cognitive

reserve.

What might I I install as a practice

every week when I'm speaking to my AI?

Oh, ask it questions that you're curious

about about anything. Just asking

questions. Here's one thing I do all the

time. I'll say, "Hey, I've been thinking

about this. You know, I on my podcast, I

do a lot of monologues and so I'll start

talking to it and I'll say, "Hey, I've

got this idea that I'm thinking about.

What if blah blah blah blah." And then

I'll say, "Here's my idea. Give me pros

and cons." You know, tell me why this is

wrong. And I do that pretty much with

everything that I ask it if I'm

proposing some, you know, stupid seed of

an idea and it really gives me the

counter arguments and I really engage

with it. That is the important part, I

think. And by the way, I just want to

say I think for the next generation that

we're teaching this, there really only

two things we can teach because all the

details of, you know, hey, let's teach

computer programming or something,

that's probably already gone as a useful

thing. So what we can teach is critical

thinking and creativity. That's it. I

think that's such an important point,

this point about asking your AI why you

might be wrong.

>> Yeah. I I think I've had most of my

paradigm shifting moments when I've come

to an AI model that I was using with a

very with very high conviction. And the

prompt that always I think is most sort

of expansive in terms of my intellectual

knowledge is when I say to it, be

brutally honest about your opinion.

Think for yourself and be objective and

tell me where my blind spots are.

There's something innate with within us

all where we don't actually want to be

wrong. We often I think as a natural

reflex and this is why people get really

sort of trapped in echo chambers of

political opinion and you know Leon

Fesser talked about this idea of

cognitive dissonance when something you

believe contrasts with new information

and how it makes you feel uncomfortable

there's something when I type that out

when I when I love the idea or the thing

I've written or the memo I've written

this new idea and I go on tell me why

I'm completely completely wrong and it

eviscerates me it is both uncomfortable

but it feels incredibly important

because then then it's like I've I've

grown. But these AIs, they're they're

programmed almost to like kiss my ass.

>> Yes. Although, you know, Chatupati

released a very sickopantic version, I

don't know, maybe a year ago. Meaning it

compliments you. You give some idea and

it says, "Oh, Stephen, that's the best

idea I've ever heard. You're a genius

and blah blah." And that didn't last

very long, that model, because nobody

actually liked it. So, you're exactly

right. And and I'm sure most listeners

know this, but you can tell your AI to

be brutally honest with you all the

time. You can tell them to do that all

the time and it'll do that. So you can

you can establish the kind of person

that you're talking to. Here's the

thing. You're right. Of course, people

don't like to be wrong. It can be

socially embarrassing. It can be

uncomfortable. And yet, there's

something very different when you're

talking to your AI. It's a very private

thing. And you say, "Hey, tell me why

I'm brutally wrong." And when it tells

you, you think, "Oh, thank God it's

telling me that instead of like a real

human." So I I think a lot of that is

alleviated with AI. We we don't feel as

bad about being wrong there.

>> As you were saying that, I just went on

chat and I typed this in. Is my joke

funny? And the joke I typed in is knock.

Who's there? A letter. Let us who? Let

us in and I'll tell you.

>> Okay. You didn't laugh. I didn't laugh.

>> Okay.

>> Chapati said, "Yes, it works as a joke.

solid structure, uses the classic pun

payoff, which is exactly how most not

jokes land. And then it's done a

laughing emoji. I then said, "Be

brutally honest and completely

objective. Was that funny?" It said,

"It's not very funny."

Interesting. You know, but but that's

interesting because it depends, right? A

little child actually finds that joke

funny and and for a little child, they

then get to repeat that to their

classmate. They're learning how to do a

joke and so on. So I'm not I'm not sure

I think there's a single answer to

whether that can be funny or not.

>> But the interesting thing is it just

reinforcing what I already believed. And

therefore when we think about growth or

having a growth mindset if someone's

just always reinforcing what you already

believe and know I don't know if it's

ever going to be a growth mindset. I

mean I just asked it again. I said be

really honest and it said it's

absolutely not funny.

>> Yeah. But but remember all it's doing is

it's just it's a statistical parrot. And

so when you say be brutally honest, it

it thinks that's what it should answer.

>> Also, be even more honest. It says it's

basically not funny at all and you

shouldn't say that to people.

>> Okay.

>> And it says comedic originality 1 out of

10. Likelihood of real laughter 1 out of

10.

>> Well, that's that's quite good. That's

quite accurate. Um, here's the thing.

I've been thinking about this issue a

lot about whether AI can be funny. And

at the moment, it can't be. It It's

great at repeating jokes, but it doesn't

understand humor on its own. what it

knows if you ask it to make up a new

joke, what it'll do is it'll have, you

know, the first guy walks in the bar,

then the second guy walks in the bar and

does X, and that establishes the

pattern, but then the third guy, it'll

have break that pattern, which is the

structure of a joke, but it doesn't know

how to break the pattern in a way that's

funny. It's just the third guy does some

random thing. So AI as it stands now,

the way it's structured with what's

called a transformer model, doesn't know

how to think of the punchline and then

go back and make the joke lead to that

punchline.

>> A lot of people don't either.

>> Do you know what I mean? Like I say that

not in an offense way, but just to say

that like

>> I don't know. I often hear the claim

that AI could never be creative.

>> It's massively creative. Here's why.

Creativity in the brain, all creativity

is is you absorb your world. the whole

world around you, every experience

you've ever had. And then you're bending

and breaking and blending those

cognitive concepts into new remixes.

That's all creativity is. And you're

doing that all the time. Whether you're

just trying to think of what to say next

or what recipe to make next or what

patent to do or what company to start,

you're just remixing the stuff that you

already know. And that's why, you know,

I don't know, take Beethoven, he could

have written any kind of music that was

being done anywhere in the world. But of

course, he didn't. like that's what he

grew up with was the music and his local

culture and so on. What we have now is a

much broader diet as I mentioned before

where we can get everything going in.

But the point I want to make here is

that AI that's what it does. It remixes

stuff that's come in. So AI is massively

creative. The part of creativity that AI

can't do right now is selection. Meaning

it can generate a 100 pictures but it

doesn't know which one to pick. It

doesn't know which one is going to be

the most appealing to you. But it can

remix beautifully.

>> But neither do humans, right? So if I

asked an intern to make me 100 pictures,

I mean, I could get my AI to pick one,

but it wouldn't know what the intern or

the AI wouldn't know which one I loved.

>> The intern would have a much better shot

at it. And as the intern is there for a

while, he or she becomes quite good at

getting, oh, okay, I get Steven's taste.

It would be this one.

>> And the AI can't learn that what my

taste is. I don't think the AI could

learn that about visual images because

when it generates the pixels, it's doing

this, you know, this magical stuff under

the hood where it's deciding which

pixels and how they diffuse together

and, you know, mix the image, but it

doesn't know how to read that image

like, oh yeah, the way this is and blah

blah that'll really appeal to Steve. It

does it it's not seeing the image except

as a bunch of pixels. Hm. Hm.

>> You need to be a human for that

>> cuz I feed um I was doing an experiment

recently where I took our my behind the

scenes channel which is a 30 minute long

video. I dropped it into Gemini and I'd

say things to it like predict where

people would drop off on the video and

then we upload the video to YouTube. we

get the retention data back and Gemini

uh in the last two times that I've done

it has a 100% record of knowing that at

minute 7 where insert person talked for

too long and might have been a bit more

sight might have tried to sell a hoodie

for example in that part it would say

you're going to lose people here and it

would and it very accurately say why it

would say because there's you talked for

74 seconds and it was jarring versus the

the the moment that came before it and

when I feed the AI I don't let's say

thumbnails and say which thumbnail is

going to perform the best. We did a test

recently where we put four thumbnail

test results that we knew the answer to

into Gemini and said which one's going

to win on YouTube AB testing and it got

100% accuracy of predicting on data we

already had which one would win. And so

now I I don't know I I keep having these

paradigm shifting moments where only

humans could could do that. But

increasingly the the AIs that we're

experimenting with are making better

creative decisions than now I can make

myself as if the outcome of that

creative decision is which one is people

going to prefer.

>> Yeah.

>> I'd say a year ago that wasn't the case.

>> Okay. So I totally agree with you. But

but let me just mention one thing which

is fascinating which is that often the

way it's doing it is not at all the way

that a human would do it which might be

fine for our purposes but the data and

the way that it's picking up on it. It

might be something about you know how

much I'm making this up you how much

green was in the YouTube thumbnail image

or how much red or whatever whatever the

thing is or just noticing that there's

big font versus smaller font or

whatever. the next time you try it, it

says, "Oh, yeah, this thumbnail is going

to be great." And it's some ridiculous

thumbnail that doesn't make any sense to

you as a human, nor to your fellow

humans, but it might say, "Oh, yeah,

this would be great." Because it's

judging things on very weird dimensions

that we can't always see. You know, the

example you gave about maybe it's cuz

the text is bigger or the color red, but

those are the same factors we think

about as a human. We think if we know

that if the font is bigger, it performs

better. We know that red performs better

than green.

>> Quite possibly. But here's the

interesting thing. Human art constantly

evolves and all AI is trained on is what

has been done before and what has

worked. And so if I asked it, let's say

we composed five different songs and

said, "Hey AI, which song is going to be

better?" It's going to say something

that's right in the middle of the

distribution of popular songs. But

that's not what actually makes it next

year and the year after. It's new

things. It's new twists that that nobody

has seen before. That's what we love.

That's what we seek as consumers. And so

because AI can only be trained up on

what already exists, it's never going to

get the new thing at the edge.

>> But if if the AI was asked to cuz I

think the reason why a new song would

break out, let's say, you know, a new

Drake song comes out and it's a smash

hit. If we think about that distribution

curve, so like if I draw on the GR,

you're saying that um this middle

section here is what sort of AI will aim

at because it's the popular in the

known. Well, if I tell AI to make a

million songs, which is kind of what I

guess is what's going on every day um

around the world, if you scattered them

on on this graph at like, you know,

>> Absolutely.

>> And then the AI's most unusual song ends

up taking off. But it's just because

there's so many of them.

>> Quite right. But that's the human

selection part that we're seeing over

there. If you asked, okay, out of all

these dots, which do you think AI is

going to be best? It's going to have to

tell you the middle of the curve. But

the surprising part is the part that you

circled there, which is the one on the

edge is the one that humans like. Why?

Because we're constant novelty seekers.

We care about the things that are new. I

think the the point I'm getting at is

that um the creation of it, the creative

process is still the same, which is like

>> totally

>> AI or humans just trying a bunch of

and then the world going, "Ooh, that

one."

>> Oh. Oh, yeah. I totally agree. This is

consistent with what I was saying, which

is that AI can be massively creative in

terms of the generation of something,

but you need humans to do the selection.

I'm only arguing the point that AI is

not good at saying, okay, I've generated

a 100 songs. This is the one humans will

choose. We end up saying, hey, wait,

this one is just weird and unique enough

that I really like that. It's

interesting because when you um when you

speak to like record labels about music,

what they're often doing is getting a

format of a song that they know will

work. So they're like, "Right, so it's

got to be eight bars here. It's got to

be this here. You got to have a chorus

that's like hookie. It's got to come

back around. It's got to build up pace.

And there's like a rough format to it."

And it's no surprise that Ed Sheer

someone like Ed Sheeran has written so

many songs for so many people.

>> Yeah. When I spent some time working

with Sony, they had a brand new boy band

in the wake of One Direction. And when I

sat with the boy band um and was

introducing myself, they said they said

to me, "Oh yeah, so um here are their

his the boy band's first three songs and

um Ed Sheeran has written all of them."

And I was like, "What?" I thought I

thought like they're like, "No, Ed Ed

Sheeran's written all of them." And then

what we do is we give them to the boy

band and then the boy band sing them and

they're pretty much guaranteed to be

hits because Ed Sheeran has like a

formula. the way he writes is really in

like vogue right now. You people tend to

think a lot that the songs that are

number one in the charts are there

because just because someone had

creative genius and of course that is

the case sometimes but there is a lot of

this writing going on and then handing

the formula over because someone has

cracked the code of a hit,

>> right? But here's the thing and you know

that we all know this which is that the

code never lasts. So humans have this

pull where they're always seeking things

between novelty and familiarity. So we

like things where we recognize the brand

and we recognize what the singer has

done before. But there has to be novelty

or else we're not going to go for it.

We're not going to listen to that boy

band for the next 10 years doing the

same song over and over. So you're of

course right that we, you know, we want

a bit of familiarity. We want to be

anchored, but we definitely seek the

new. This is what humans always do. This

is why car companies always release the

next model even though the current model

is perfectly fine. This is why haircuts

evolve. This is why fashion evolves

through the years. Um because we always

care about novelty. And the other thing

in the music industry that I think is is

also creating a hit is I was reading

many years ago about some psychology

which you'll probably know much more

about that says exactly what you just

said which is we love something when it

is familiar but new.

>> Exactly. So the way that the record

industry and the radio industry make

something familiar is they blast the

same song at you on every radio station

for a long period of time until it

breaks past being just novel, just new

and it becomes familiar. And like I saw

this graph which shows that the a song

that you'll love is right there in the

middle of like it's new enough that

you're still into it but it's um

familiar now because you've heard it so

many times that you love it and you'll

if anyone listening the first time you

hear a song you might not love it as

much as once you've heard it like 20

times

>> and then at some point you've heard it

too much.

>> Yeah.

>> And it comes back down the other side of

the cover where it's now too familiar.

>> Yeah. That's exactly right. And so we're

always seeking that tension in the

middle. And yeah, companies run into

this all the time. Like sometimes they

try things that are too novel that just

completely fail. You know, Coca-Cola

tried this a long time ago with

introducing new Coke and no one liked

it, whatever. Um, and other companies

like what was that company? Blackberry

with the the little thumb things that

you can press the physical keyboard on

the phone. They failed because they

wouldn't change fast enough. But anyway,

companies that make it are always

staying in that uh sweet spot.

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When you think about the brain and how

it's built and then you think about the

exact technology that they've used to

create AI, isn't it very very similar?

And if so, if it is similar, what does

that say about humans role in the

future? It's similar, but it's not the

same. Which is why with AI, you get what

what we call jagged intelligence,

meaning that it can do something so

extraordinarily smart and then in the

next moment give an answer that's weird

and doesn't make any sense. AI still is

doing this. It's not it's not yet

thinking like we think. Okay. Why? It's

because

AI as we think about it now really

started of course decades and decades

ago where people said look you've got

all these billions of cells neurons in

the brain that are connected to each

other. What if we ignore all that

complexity and we just say look imagine

that you have units that are connected

to each other. We're going to forget

about you know a single cell in the

brain is as complicated as a city. It's

got the entire human genome. It's

trafficking millions of proteins. Let's

put all that aside. Just imagine it's a

circle and it's connected to other cells

and each connection has a certain

strength and that's what we call an

artificial neural network. Now that went

off in its own direction and the kind of

amazing surprising part is how

successful it's been to just get rid of

all the detail but it's still super

different than what human brains are

like. So just an example uh this thing I

mentioned at the very beginning about

how we're a team of rivals under the

hood. You got all these different

competing neural networks that are

trying to drive your behavior and so on.

The fact that we're emotional, the fact

that we are driven by different

appetites, whether food or sexuality or

whatever it is, but you know, you're a

your chat GPT, you don't want that in

the chat GPT. So, it's just an

artificial neural network many layers

deep and it's extraordinary at what it

does, but it's so different than a

human. For example, the fact that it's

read everything on the planet and

remembers it and you haven't, you would

need to lead a thousand lifetimes to

read that much. And of course, you

wouldn't remember much of it. It It's

very different is the point I'm making.

They both have converged on something

that we would call intelligence, but

it's a pretty different structure. Even

though AI was inspired by the brain,

that's what Jeffrey Hinton was telling

me. He was telling me that like much of

the the breakthroughs that have made AI

what it is today came from understanding

how the brain works.

>> Yeah. But that's interesting because

Hinn isn't is incentivized to say that.

But a neuroscientist

>> incentivized to say that

>> people doing AI of course are paying a

lot of attention to how this is

structured like the brain because before

that people would do things like

probability theory or rules or you know

they were trying to do AI by trying to

say okay if this then do that but when

people started doing artificial neural

networks that led to a lot of success

I'm only pointing out that the

artificial neural network looks a lot

like the brain on the surface You say,

"Hey, you've got units and you've got

connections, but beyond that, there's a

lot of differences."

>> And why are those differences

significant as it relates to what's

possible?

>> Because what we've developed is this a

new species essentially that is

incredibly impressive, but it ain't a

human brain. It's different than a human

brain. There may be all kinds of

similarities, things that we even come

to understand are similar, but there are

so many differences. Here's an example.

You know, we humans do one trial

learning all the time. Meaning if I say

or when you were a kid and and your mom

said, "Hey, Stephen, this is a

pomegranate." You say, "Okay,

pomegranate. Got it." But you can't when

you're training up a an artificial

neural network like at OpenAI or Gemini

or Anthropic, you have to give thousands

or millions of examples of everything

for it to learn anything. There's no one

trial learning on those uh systems. And

they have to be trained at the cost of

billions of dollars. then they can do a

run where you ask a question and and it

answers the question. But brains in the

real world don't have that luxury of

having a training phase and then an

action phase. We have to learn on the

fly. It's very different.

>> So I guess the the pertaining question

is

does it change what's possible for the

brain versus the artificial neural

networks we see in AI? like is there

some limitation based on what you've

just said that means the this brain in

front of me, this human brain in front

of me will always be better than the AI

at something because I'm trying to track

forward about what this means for the

future of humans.

>> Yeah.

>> Um

>> I think it's an interesting question um

that we'll have to see. But it's clearly

the case that we know what it is to be a

human from the inside. And when I'm

making a model of you and who you are

and you're making a model of me, we have

assumptions about what it is like to be

a human. AI only watches human behavior

from the outside. And so it can tell a

lot of great stuff, but it doesn't

really know what it is to be a human. So

if I ask it some question about what

would it be like if this or that

happened, it can answer based on

observing lots of things, but it can

only ever know from the outside

>> in terms of why that matters.

>> Yeah. Because you know if I ask my AI my

fiance's been like this today or if I

ask my best friend my fiance's been like

this today. If it both of them give me

the same useful answer it doesn't really

matter what's

>> I agree with you. I agree it may I I I'm

actually writing a new podcast on this

about what you can tell from the outside

and what you can tell from the inside

and whether that difference matters.

Look an example is you know I last year

got a Tesla with full self-driving and I

was watching as it was full

self-driving. I was coming up on a very

complicated traffic situation. And I

thought, well, what's my car going to do

here? How's it possibly going to

understand? But what it did is it slowed

down and came to a stop, which was

exactly the right thing. And I thought,

oh, that's interesting. Algorithmically,

it might think of it very differently

than I am thinking about the situation.

Doesn't matter. It comes to the same

conclusion, ends up in the same place.

Yeah, I agree. We have yet to see where

these differences matter and and what it

is to be a human. But I can tell you one

thing. We care about other humans. So

here's my little prediction is that

there's going to be actually a

renaissance in things like live theater

and live performances. When when things

first came out like Napster, everyone

thought, okay, that's the death of

concerts. Like who's that's the death of

musicians, right? But in fact, you look

at a a Taylor Swift concert, gajillions

of people there paying lots of money.

Like everyone loves the the thing. Why?

Because they're going to see the real

Taylor Swift in person. And I have

noticed I give a lot of talks on the

road. I have noticed an increase in the

number of talks since AI came out a few

years ago. The first thing that my

friend said to me is hey did you know

David that you can you know use uh 11

labs and hey Jen and you know you can

make an avatar of yourself and you can

use your voice and and use chat to

generate what you're going to say and

have a fully virtual version of you. He

said my friend who gives talks too he

said maybe we can start doing this and

do virtual talks. I said nobody's going

to want that. In fact, what's happened

is more people want to fly us across the

country to have us stand there in person

because it really matters to see fellow

humans. And I think that's only going to

increase.

>> I completely agree with you. I think I

think it's so funny. I did a post on

LinkedIn the other day saying that maybe

the like interesting paradox or

interesting outcome of AI is that every

other iteration of technology made us

less human. And maybe the intelligence

now has gotten to a point where

>> it's now forcing us to be more human

because that is all that kind of remains

in a way that maybe the the technology

has gotten so good like social media

didn't make us more human in any

capacity. But maybe this is the moment

where it goes we've got this now

>> go do what only you as a human can do

which is like go out there Taylor Swift

and sing in front of people IRL.

>> Go and do something in the real world.

Even for like nurses um and doctors,

maybe they shouldn't be filling out

admin and paperwork anymore. Maybe they

should be holding your hand and giving

you, you know, in real life care that

only a human could do.

>> I totally agree.

>> And so maybe that's the like the the

positive upside to all of this is um

finally, you know, we've been on this

journey with technology and finally it's

delivered upon its promise.

>> I totally agree. And by the way, you

know, AI relationships, by one estimate,

there's a billion people having

relationships with AI, like a girlfriend

or boyfriend kind of thing.

>> Okay? And so for people like us who grew

up before that existed, we think, "Oh my

gosh, that's weird." But in fact, I

think it might become helpful because it

can be a sandbox as long as we have the

proper feedback. In the end, we have

millions of years of evolution driving

us towards being with the person you

love, touching another human being,

watching the stars, taking her out to

dinner with your parents, like all you

know, we care about that. And so this

worry that people sometimes talk about

about oh people are just going to be on

their phone with their AI relationship I

don't think is realistic for almost

everybody because it gives us the chance

to you know hopefully sandbox some

things about relationships and get over

some dumb things with relationships and

then we can actually be with our fellow

humans. counterargument would be that

maybe there's going to be a bifocation,

a splitting of society where some people

are going to become even more addicted

to the technology because the AI is now

much smarter at retention. Like I know

exactly what I need to say to you based

on your brain, Dr. David, to make you

not put this device down. Yes. But

fundamentally, I want to be in contact

with my wife. I mean, that's that's the

evolution

of hundreds of millions of years is that

I want to make babies. I want to go and

eat dinner with somebody. And and as

much as I might find my phone appealing,

I'm not going to sit it across from me

at a nice Italian restaurant and sit

there like that. So, I a lot of people

do.

>> Me and my me and my friends are at

restaurants cuz we have a rule where we

don't touch our phones when we're at

date night. And I have to look around

and I'm like, "Oh my god, like how is

how are all these guys getting away with

this?" Like, but do you see what I'm

saying? Like some some people they just

have a different sort of proclivity or

they have a different wiring which means

that you know instead of doing the hard

thing of going out there and going on a

first date and being rejected,

pornography or a virtual uh wife might

be a substitute for that.

>> Yeah. No, I agree with you. There will

be bifurcations. One question I don't

know the answer to, but one question is

what would that person have done in

previous generations? You know, is it

really the case that person would have

gone out and had a great successful

relationship or would they always have

had troubles relating to people?

>> Yeah, I sat with um a few

neuroscientists and experts that are

studied dopamine. Dr. Anna LMK was one.

>> Yeah, she's my colleague.

>> She's your colleague. Yeah. And uh she

talks a lot about how we all have

different types of addictive substances

and like you know we will think like

heroin's addictive for everybody and

alcohol's addictive and I used to think

of it on a spectrum but actually she

said like for her addiction was romantic

erotic novels.

>> Yeah. and she she almost ruined her

relationship because of erotic novels,

which is something that I would read and

just throw in the bit like but so maybe

this new technology is particularly

addictive to a certain type of person.

>> Yeah, I I think that's exactly right.

And I think we're going to see that with

everything. I mean,

>> the wild part about human society is

that there's so little that we have in

common, meaning everybody is really

different. And this is something I've

studied in my lab for for decades is

this issue about what are the subtle

differences from person to person. Not

big things like oh this person is a

psychopath or this person has

schizophrenia but the more subtle

things. I'll just give you an example

like if I ask you to imagine to

visualize let's say an ant on a purple

and white tablecloth uh crawling towards

a jar of red jelly. Do you see that in

your head like a movie or do you have

like no particular picture at all or

somewhere in between? What what do you

experience?

>> An ant crawling towards a jar of jelly.

>> Yes.

>> Yeah. I see a big black ant and then

this jar of jelly is like overflowing

down the sides with a wooden lid on top

of it and the ant is almost there.

>> Oh wow. Okay. So you have a Okay. So

what you have I'm just guessing where

you are but you are on the end of the

spectrum that we call hyperfantasia

which means you have very rich

visualization. You're like seeing it

like a picture or a movie. Is that is

that accurate? Okay. I happen to be at

the other end of that spectrum called

aphantasia where I don't have any visual

images at all. There's no I I don't see

things visually in any way.

>> And it turns out the whole population is

spread evenly along this spectrum. I'll

just give a quick side note which is

that for many years I've been talking

with Ed Catmull about this. He's the guy

who started Pixar films. So he's got all

the patents on how to do ray tracing and

how to make these beautiful animated

characters, right? Ed Catmull is

afantasic like I am. And when he learned

about this, he got really interested and

he gave the questionnaire to everybody

at Pixar. And it turns out many of his

best animators and directors are

aphantasic. They don't picture anything

inside their heads. Now this seems

surprising and strange, right? But it

turns out that if you are an aphantasia

kid, you're going to become better at

drawing because you have to really pay

attention to the subject out there and

really have a dialogue with the page

with your pencil. Whereas a kid who's

hyperfantasic might say, "Oh, I know

what a horse looks like." And just draws

it. Okay. So anyway,

>> got tracks.

>> Yeah. Yeah. So it turns out there's a

real spectrum across the population,

meaning inside your head and my head,

we're having pretty different

experiences. But I've studied this along

dozens of different axes and everyone's

got different things going on. Just as

one example, do you know about

synesthesia? Have you ever heard of

this? Forget is that forgetting or

something?

>> No. Sesthesia is having a blending of

the senses. So someone with sesthesia

might look at letters and it triggers a

color experience in their head. So they

look at J and that triggers green and

they look at M and that triggers blue

and whatever. It's different for each

person. Or you might hear music and it

triggers a visual experience. Or you

might taste something, it puts a feeling

on your fingertips or whatever. It's

just it's a blending of the senses. At

least 3% of the population has this.

It's not a disease or a disorder. It's

just an alternative perceptual reality.

So if you have aphantasia, does that

mean that you can't picture your kids?

>> It means that the way I picture them is

not visually. I mean there's sort of a

very g but for me it's more motoric

imagery and you know I I and audio

imagery. Like I'm I'm imagining talking

to them and being with them and being

close to them and probably some old

factory imagery meaning you how they

smell and the whole thing like I have a

very rich notion of what it is to be

with my kids but it's a pretty terrible

visual picture. Not much there.

>> So I imagine people at home have done

that same experiment while they were

listening. Could they picture an ant

walking towards a jar of jam and if they

find themselves on the aphantas I can't

remember the two.

>> Aphantasagasic. Yeah. Or hyperfantasic.

So hyperfantasia is you can picture it,

aphantasia because you can't.

>> Yes.

>> What does that potentially suggest about

nothing? Now here's the interesting

part. So we've done lots of studies

about what this translates to in terms

of your capacities in the world.

Nothing. Why does it translate to

nothing? It's because you can

accomplish tasks in a hundred different

ways. And so some people are doing this

very visually. Other people are doing it

where they're like picturing it with

their motor systems. Others are doing

it, you know, as I mentioned, with sound

or smell or whatever, or others are

doing it just purely conceptually, just

thinking through how the steps would go.

But there's nothing there's nothing

obvious other than this thing I

mentioned about visual artists often

being aphantasic.

Um, otherwise you can kind of accomplish

anything.

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I heard that you might have after many,

many decades of people debating this,

you might have figured out the reason

why we dream.

>> Yeah. Yeah, it's actually after

millennia of people debating this. This

is the cool part. So, okay, remember I

mentioned earlier that if you go blind,

the visual cortex of the back of the

brain gets taken over by hearing and by

touch and by other things and it's no

longer visual cortex. Well, what we

realized is that because we live on a

planet that rotates into darkness for

half the time, the visual cortex, the

visual part of your brain is at a

disadvantage. So what I realized is that

the purpose of dreaming is to defend the

visual territory from takeover from the

other senses. So every 90 minutes you've

got these um you've got this very

ancient thing in your midbrain that

shoots random activity into the visual

system and only the visual system only

this very tiny part of the visual

system. Every 90 minutes you just blast

random activity in here and the reason

is you are just defending that territory

against takeover. Now, the reason that

all this came together is because our

colleagues at Harvard did an experiment

where they took normally cighted people

and they blindfolded them tightly for 60

minutes. And it turns out that 60

minutes was sufficient for the visual

cortex to start responding to sound and

to touch. You could start seeing that

takeover happening after 60 minutes. And

that's when we realized, wow, this this

part of the brain really needs a way of

defending itself now because the brain

is a natural storyteller. If you blast

random activity in there, it'll, you

know, put that together in some sort of

visual story about what's happening,

mostly based on what connections are hot

from the day. But that's why we dream.

So we we dream to stop the other parts

of our brain overtaking the visual part

of our brain, um, overpowering it, and I

guess ultimately making us go blind.

>> Yeah, that's exactly right. If we lived

on a different kind of planet that did

not rotate into darkness, then we would

we presumably wouldn't dream.

>> Would we even need to close our eyes? I

mean,

>> not necessarily. Yeah. It may be that in

the sleeping state, in the state of deep

sleep, the brain is doing particular

things like taking out the trash and

cleaning some things up. That might be

necessary. Who knows? But yeah, I don't

think we would need to dream. We

wouldn't need to blast random activity

in there. um you know if if if our eyes

were always open for example and it was

always light out

>> are there other examples in the animal

kingdom which support this?

>> Yes, thank you for asking that. It's

this is why this new theory about why we

dream is taking off because we can make

quantitative predictions across animal

species. So for example in our last

paper we looked at 25 different species

of primates, apes and monkeys and we

looked at how plastic their brains are.

In other words, how flexible the whole

circuitry was and how much they dream at

night, which you can tell by looking at

rapid eye movements. You know, when you

dream at night, your eyes are shooting

back and forth like that. It's called

REM, rapid eye movement sleep. So, you

can measure that in other animals, their

eyes moving back and forth. So, we

correlated how plastic the brain is and

how much dream sleep you have. And it

correlates perfectly, which is to say,

humans, which are the most plastic, have

dream sleep all the time. And by the

way, when you're an infant, you sleep

for you have dream sleep for half of

your sleep time, 50% of the time. As you

get older, you get less and less dream

sleep because you just don't need it as

much anymore. But anyway, when we look

across species, it correlates perfectly

if you're a monkey that drops into the

world sort of already fully baked and

you don't need to have much plasticity.

You don't have much dream sleep either.

Interesting.

Seems like a very strange thing. It

sounds like it's a very strange thing

for the for the brain to do, but it also

is perfectly plausible based on

everything you've said.

>> Yeah. And by the way, I just want to

mention dreaming is across the animal

kingdom. Everybody dreams. All animals

dream at night. Even like animals at the

bottom of the ocean. Uh, yes. It's

harder to measure stuff all the way at

the bottom of the ocean. But fish do

have what is equivalent to dream sleep

where you're just zapping activity in

there. And by the way, even animals that

have gone blind, like there's a there's

a mammal called the blind mole rat,

which lives in darkness and has eyes,

but they're blind because over

evolutionary time, they've lost vision.

But they still dream because the dream

circuitry is so ancient. This is so

ancient that all animals have to defend

themselves against the darkness by

keeping their visual systems going. And

so even though the animal went blind,

the rest of the brain didn't catch up. I

mean, that's how evolution goes.

>> Funny. It's funny because it's kind of

like that evolution gave us this TV

that comes on at nighttime when the real

TV, our real life turns off and it just

puts on this fake TV set to keep that

part of the brain doing something so

that it doesn't deteriorate and um

atrophy.

>> It's exactly right. Yeah, it's exactly

right. Which means dreams are quite

pointless outside of just protecting our

neurological matter.

>> I suspect so. It might be that the

particular pathways that could travel

down, you know, maybe there's some

meaning there. I my own suspicion is

that it's like if I went to your

bookshelf and I picked picked a random

book up and I flipped to a random page

and picked a random sentence. I might

find some meaning in that. I might say,

"Oh, that was just the sentence that I

needed to hear." But it's not really.

It's just that it has some meaning to

me. Anyway, the point is if you blast

random activity in there, I might dream

about something where I wake up and say,

"Oh, that was pretty useful." But the

thing that I think gets overlooked is

that most dreams are totally useless and

bizarre. Dr. David, what is the most

important thing we haven't talked about

that we should have talked about as it

specifically relates to people that are

trying to improve their lives, get

better at whatever their subjective

mission is and the brain.

There are probably a lot of things, but

I got to say the thing that I've been

thinking about so much lately is just

about our political uh interfacing with

one another. And so I do feel that

really learning the skills of dialogue

with our fellow humans where we listen

to what they're saying and try to better

understand what their internal model is.

It's not equivalent to agreeing with

them. But it is saying, "Hey, somebody

is coming from this perspective. Let me

see if I can understand that." I think

that matters a lot. And I also think

that because we're so highly predisposed

for in-groups and outgroups, it's really

useful to figure out how to complexify

those relationships. Meaning, how do you

figure out the all the things that cross

cut in the relationship so that you say,

"Hey, you know what? I shouldn't dismiss

this person as a member of my out group

right away because actually

they belong to the same group I do and

they love surfing as much as I do and

they love golden retriever dogs and they

you know grew up in my hometown and

whatever. Like finding those things uh

explicitly helps the brain to keep these

circuits on that are involved in seeing

another person as a person. We have we

have all this social circuitry that is

all about understanding other people and

when things get dehumanized that

actually gets dialed way down. When we

look at you know let's say a homeless

person or a drug addict or someone who

we think of as our enemy or an out group

that gets dialed down so we don't think

of them as a person anymore. We think of

them as an object to to get around. Mhm.

So, this is what I think is really

important is figuring out what we can do

to keep that social circuitry still

going, which includes the things like

eye contact and conversation. And this

is this is one of the most important

things we can do as citizens in a

rapidly changing world as it relates to

things like dementia, which I know is a

fear that a lot of people have. A lot of

people are suffering with dementia, I

think increasingly. In fact, if I was

trying to save off dementia, what advice

would you give me, David?

>> Yeah, keep your brain active. Keep it

active till the day you die. Take on new

challenges. And as soon as you get good

at something like, you know, sudoku,

drop it and pick up some that you're not

good at.

>> And in simple terms, why?

>> It's because you're forcing your brain

to make changes. Otherwise, your brain

says, "Okay, I got this. I got the

world. I understand what's going on.

There's no real particular need for me

to change." And the fact is that the

structure of the brain is always

degenerating. And when you get something

like a disease like Alzheimer's disease,

it degenerates much faster. And what you

want to always be doing is building new

roadways and fashioning new paths that

had not been walked before.

>> So that there's more to degenerate,

which gives me more left over once that

degeneration begins.

>> Yeah, I that's Yeah, I think that's a

good way to look at it. your pathways

are falling apart and if you can build

new pathways which requires effort you

have to actually care and pursue and do

the thing even as parts of the thing

have fallen apart you still have ways of

getting from A to B

>> what do I need to stay away from in

terms of chemicals or supplement I don't

know or food I don't know

>> yeah obviously there's just been a lot

more emphasis on getting good sleep and

good diet and this stuff really matters

I think that's really useful for the

brain I mean it's fascinating to watch

what's happened in the latest generation

in terms of alcohol ol consumption. I

live up in Silicon Valley and there's a

lot of people who have wineries just

north of me and they're like selling

half their acorage. It's absolutely

fascinating to see what's happening

there. I will say I have a friend who's

who's in her 20s who said that she's in

favor of bringing drinking back. Why?

Because she said we go to parties and

everything's so awkward and no one knows

how to talk to one another. And so

they're missing something else. they're

missing the the dumb mistakes category

that we all got to enjoy growing up. So,

it it is a really interesting balance of

of how abstious one wants to become.

>> David, we have a closing tradition where

the last guest leaves a question, the

next guest, not knowing who they're

leaving it for.

>> Question left for you is, what do you

wish most for our planet over the next

10 years?

>> Well, the whole list are the top 10.

>> Yeah. um can't be world peace.

>> You know, I think I would come back to

this piece about the complexification of

relationships, which is to say, if we

could just get a little bit smarter

about understanding people out groups as

being humans with lives with their own

thing going on. doesn't mean we have to

love them or agree with them, but if we

can just get to that point, I don't

think we'll ever hit world peace, but at

least we'd have slightly less

polarization. So, I'm I'm definitely in

favor of that and I do think it's

possible and I do think AI can help us

get there by challenging us on these

points and saying, "Hey, that group that

you've already dismissed as an out

group, what if I told you this story

about this person? What if I introduced

you to this person?" That kind of stuff.

and you know having there's all kinds of

social movements that have sprung up

that allow people of different political

opinions to come together in a room and

talk with one another again it's not

that anyone has to change their mind but

they can say hey you know what I really

like that person I thought that was a

cool person a sweet person nice person

and and now I understand that somebody

who I have seen with my own eyes has a

different opinion on this than idea

>> is that wishful thinking to some degree

>> I don't think so because these things

are happening all over the place and and

>> the macro is is division isn't it It's

polarization echo chambers. There's now

I think there's now 20 social networks

or some crazy number that have more than

20 million people on them which means

that social networks are splintering off

into niches and interests and you know

there's like Rumble and Bumble and then

there's like threads and X and Facebook

snap Instagram and and what we're seeing

is more and more

>> interest group and also the other thing

with algorithms is we went from having

like a social graph where if I had a

thousand people follow me those thousand

people would see my stuff to now these

interest graphs where it doesn't matter

if I have one follower or million

followers, the algorithm is going to

decide who's interested in that thing

and it's going to serve it to them

because that's the most retentive thing

if you're a publicly listed company

that's driven by ad revenue. So, you've

got this algorithm that's actually

forcing you into what you know into this

into tighter and tighter and tighter

echo chambers. And even as someone

that's been on social media 15 years and

ran social media companies, this is one

of the great things I've noticed is when

I had a million followers back in the

day, I would reach those people because