Latest / The You Project / #1660 Lab of Misfits - Dr. Beau Lotto

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#1660 Lab of Misfits - Dr. Beau Lotto · The You Project

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Good a team. It's Harps, it's Melissa, it's doctor Bo,
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: who you'll meet in a minute. It's the You Project.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: It's bloody Thursday night at eight seventeen, Melissa, what are
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: you doing?
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: I'm old. You know that I peak at about nine
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: am and it's a spiral after that. What are you
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: doing to me?
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: I reckon, you've come back to life. I can tell
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: you're a bit excited about this site.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: And I may or may not have had some kind
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: of neotropic at about ten No, not ten to five.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: I may or may not have. I don't know if
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: that's ethically gets the tick from the dock, So I'm
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: not going to commit either way. How's your day been, Melissa?
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: It has been good. Thank you very good? And yourself well.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: I lifted heavy stuff and I had a miracle happen today.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: I might well with my eyes. Remember I told you
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: a miracle. Yes, I had a miracle. Maybe the doc
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: can explain to us why. And I don't want to
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: tell my two minute story with him sitting in the wings,
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: So let's say, hi, Hi, doctor Bo, how are you.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: I'm well. I love the fact that I'm talking to
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: someone who had a miracle.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, miracle. I don't know. The Vatican haven't ticked it
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  Speaker 1: off yet. It's a matter of time.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: Okay, the sainthood is in your future.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Well we discovered before.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: Do you do the miracle? Or was it done to you?
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: It was done to me?
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: Or were you alone? Was this like too much sort
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: of intimate detail?
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: Well no, it was Hang on, I'll give you the story.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: Now.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: I know this is unorthodox and you've never started a
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: podcast ever like this. Oh good, so we'll feel free
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: to chop it out. So my eyes have been I'm
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: fifty eight, so my eyes started going to crap at
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: about early forties, just started.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: Wearing most people.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: When I was it was literally I was overseas. I
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: was in Colorado when I was doing some gigs, and
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: I was at a place called Breckenridge, and I was
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: trying to read, and I'm like, what's wrong with what's
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: wrong with this book or screen or whatever? And then
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  Speaker 1: I realized anyway, so I went and bought myself. I
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  Speaker 1: think they were reading glasses, and they were just like
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: a one, you know, one magnification. Anyway, I put on
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: them and everything was clear, and I went, well, I'm
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: getting old. My eyes as shit, and then I went
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: eventually to one half, then two and you know the deal.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: And then I got some proper glasses which are kind
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: of multifocals, so I can look up here and see
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: long distance, look down here, read anyway. I I feel
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: like lately reading through the same glasses my vision's gotten worse,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: or looking through the same glasses. So I went and
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: got the old number twos out of the desk, the
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  Speaker 1: reading glasses to you know what it's like when you're
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: doing a PhD. I'm reading one million bloody research papers.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: And I thought, oh, maybe somehow these will be better.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: I put them on and they were souper for blurry,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: and I went, my eyes, I'm almost blind. And then
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: I thought, I'm going to walk up to the pharmacy chemist.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: What do you call it over there? What do you
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: call a pharmacy or chemist?
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: Well, in the States is a drug store, but in Britain,
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: as you know, it's chemist or pharmacy. And where am
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: i I'm in ib it's a pharmacy here.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: Cool anyway, I went up there when I'm going to
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: just get some off the shelf, and I went, I
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: put on the twos, which is where I stopped last
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: time and I couldn't see shit. I put on two
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  Speaker 1: and a halfs. I'm like, oh god, I must I'm
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: going to have to stop driving soon. I must be
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  Speaker 1: legally blind. Then I tried threes. It was still blurry,
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: and it only goes to three and a half and
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: I'm like, if these don't work, I'm not sure what
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  Speaker 1: I'm going to do. And they didn't work. Everything was blurry,
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: but it was almost like the higher the number, the
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: blurrier it got. So, being the scientific genius that I am,
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: I went, why don't I tried less than two th
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: thinking there's no way, but you know the evidence so far.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: So I tried one and a half and it was
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  Speaker 1: pretty good. I'm like, what is this? And then I
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  Speaker 1: tried one and that was it And now I'm a one,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: Like my eyesight is better than it used to be.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: What is that about? Neuroscience? Man?
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  Speaker 2: So that no pressure? That's a good question. I mean,
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: let's see, first of all, how far away were you
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: holding these things your face? Because if you're holding like
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: a five meters away, then you know.
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  Speaker 1: Maybe fourteen or fifteen inches.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, you know it is possible for your I is
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: to get but I mean it's there. There's a there's
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  Speaker 2: research suggests that as you sort of let yourself go
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  Speaker 2: to more and more mag magnification, your brain will then
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: adapt to that. So I personally try to keep it
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: a low modification in order to have my eyes work.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: So I'm about your age. I'm only a few years
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: younger than you, and like you, my eyes, like most
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: people start going at forty. It's remarkable, like clockwork. Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: and then you sort of work to keep your eyes working.
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  Speaker 2: And I'd say this is true in life, right, because
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  Speaker 2: your brain, you know, evolved to adapt, and so we're
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: constantly your brains like a muscle, you use it to
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  Speaker 2: lose it. It is your your eyes. The muscles of
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: your eyes. You know, they're getting weaker, stronger depending on
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: how you work with them.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: Well, right, I'm going to call it a miracle. You
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  Speaker 1: can call it science. I don't care.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: Miracles, but't isn't science like the study of miracles. I mean,
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  Speaker 2: it is quite miraculous the world, isn't it.
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  Speaker 1: I think everything is miraculous. I think humans miraculous. I
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: think you know I like, I mean, I'm sure you
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: like when I did first time round at UNI when
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: I did anatomy in physiology to reasonably, I'm like, how
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: how on earth is all this stuff in here and
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  Speaker 1: it does what it does? Like, I mean, I know
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  Speaker 1: there's so many things, but just the body is ridiculous.
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  Speaker 2: It's absolutely true. I mean, we share that passion. I
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  Speaker 2: was my background as an undergrad at Berkeley back in
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  Speaker 2: the eighty six to ninety one, and the so as
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: anatomy physiology major. So we'd have average out on the
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: out on there and you know, of course you treated
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: everything with respect and everything, but it was it was
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  Speaker 2: just remarkable looking at the body and thinking that this
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  Speaker 2: even works, and then when you literally get to understand it,
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: and this is why, you know, I think the Romantic
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: movement is a wonderful thing. But of course they were
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  Speaker 2: sort of anti science because they found by explaining something
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  Speaker 2: it became less beautiful. But doesn't it actually just increase
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: the beauty because it just increases the wonder of how
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: this thing even worked. I mean, just thinking about the
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: nephron of a kidney and how you get the filtration.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: Quite apart from this ultracomplex structure that we most possibly
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: the most complex structure we have sitting on top of
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  Speaker 2: our shoulders. Right, So I was actually a developmental My
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: PhD was a developmental neuroscience. So I used to study
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: how the brain grows, because just development is itself inherently fascinating.
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  Speaker 2: How do we go from a cell to billions and
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  Speaker 2: billions of cells and the thing works incredibly remarkable, right,
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  Speaker 2: And each of those cells has the same genetic information,
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  Speaker 2: but it gets specialized and then and then how it
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  Speaker 2: all interacts. And then what's also I find remarkable. And
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  Speaker 2: what science has actually been not so good at, you know,
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  Speaker 2: over the years, is that, you know, science and the
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  Speaker 2: reductionist method actually eliminates the very thing that biology is
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  Speaker 2: trying to understand, which is life. And life has actually
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  Speaker 2: lives at the interactions between stuff and the stuff, but
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  Speaker 2: interactions with But the reductionist method gets rid of those interactions,
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  Speaker 2: gets rid of the very thing that we actually have
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  Speaker 2: passionate about about emerging. How does this stuff emerge from interaction?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's remarkable.
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  Speaker 1: All right. Now, before we get too farther further in,
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: let me just.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: We're going to cut all that out.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: Now, we're keeping all that that was great. I just
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: feel like I feel like I better tell people who
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: they're listening to Melissa. You will love this. So Bo
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: is the founder and CEO of a lab or it's
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: just called Lab of Misfits. I can't tell you how
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: much that name appeals to me because I've made a
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  Speaker 1: misfit my whole life. So I definitely belong. I need
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: at least an honorary membership. So that's gorgeous, Bo says,
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  Speaker 1: what yep, I'll tell you what. I'll follow up on
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: that very insecure. You don't know how much that would help.
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  Speaker 1: Once you understand how works, you can't but see yourself
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  Speaker 1: in the world in a different way and engage in
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: it a different way. I want to talk to you
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: a lot about perception. I'm sure you actually I do,
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: and I don't because I feel like you must get
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  Speaker 1: sick of banging on about the same stuff. Here's a
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: little bit of your bio. Doctor Bolotto is a neuroscientist
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  Speaker 1: and world renowned expert in perception. Is research explores the
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  Speaker 1: way in which we experience the world through our own
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  Speaker 1: versions of reality. As both says, the brain never sees
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  Speaker 1: the world as it actually is, only the world that
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  Speaker 1: is useful to see. By illuminating these principles, the perception
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  Speaker 1: has helped individuals and companies transform their approach to create
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  Speaker 1: creativity and innovation. All right, my first real grown up
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  Speaker 1: question for you differentiate and this is a bit of
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  Speaker 1: a naff question, but what's at the intersection of the
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  Speaker 1: brain and the mind or are they intertwined or they
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  Speaker 1: tell me that just what you know, we don't see
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  Speaker 1: things as they are. We see things as we are.
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  Speaker 1: Which is that often quoted idea that's been accredited to
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  Speaker 1: different people. But is it? Is it? Are we recognizing
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  Speaker 1: and perceiving and downloading and storytelling through the mind or
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  Speaker 1: through the brain?
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  Speaker 2: Uh? Through the brain? I mean, I'm materialist, I'm not
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  Speaker 2: a duellist. So the mind is the function of the brain.
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  Speaker 2: If we see something or hear something or do something different,
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  Speaker 2: that's your brain doing doing what it does. Yeah. And
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  Speaker 2: what's more is the brain we so often forget is
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  Speaker 2: the brain is embodied. You know, brain is part of
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  Speaker 2: a body of body is in our world. Uh. And
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: you know, Silicon Valley keeps forgetting this. You know that,
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: you know, trying to do everything virtual, but you know
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  Speaker 2: it's we make meaning and all that by physically engaging
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: with the world, in which case it also means that
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: we have kind of an extended feenotype. We're also again
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: getting back to that interaction. Your brain doesn't exist in isolation,
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: in interaction with other brains and so perception. That's why
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: we have a T shirt that says, you know, be
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: in between that in some sense, that's where your brain lives.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: It's constantly in between. It's constantly making things.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, right, by.
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  Speaker 2: Interaction in which keys you can't really understand the brain
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  Speaker 2: outside of its interaction with the world.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: Understand the idea, the idea of the brain analyzing itself.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: Isn't it though, I mean it's it's uh. I mean,
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  Speaker 2: that's one of its remarkable capacities and capabilities, right, But
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: but yeah, it is, uh, it is the brain. But
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: we could celebrate that's.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: The idea, like the it. I mean, I love innovation,
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: and I listened to a little bit of a guy
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: called Alex Friedman, who you may or may not know
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: from M I T. Who's like a real pioneer in
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: AI and a bunch of other stuff that I don't
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  Speaker 1: really get, but there are they're talking about, you know,
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: machine learning and autonomy and machines, robots, AI or whatever
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: that will think, I just I don't. I mean, I
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: guess it depends on how you define thinking, but thinking, cognition, creativity,
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  Speaker 1: decision making in interpretation, like my version of cognition and metacognition.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: I don't think a machine can do that. What about you?
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: Well, right, not right now, but in principle I think
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: it could. I mean, my lab has been doing artificial
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: intelligence for about twenty twenty five years. We have the
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: first artificial networks that saw that see in some sense
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  Speaker 2: the same illusions that humans see.
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  Speaker 1: Wow.
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  Speaker 2: And because the neural networks, basically if we unless you
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: think there's something inherently special about the connectivity of the brain,
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: as opposed to special something special about networks. What's important
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: about networks is interaction, and then you get emergence as
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: a consequence of those interactions. Think about the metaphor I
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: like using is the whirlpool. So whirlpool is a function
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: of the interaction between water molecules. Without an interaction, the
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: warlpool doesn't exist, right, But the whirlpool does physical stuff
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: in the world. You know, it can sink ships if
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: it's big enough. Yeah, right, you get rid of it.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: But you couldn't predict a whirlpool by studying any individual
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: water molecule. So the mind, you could say, is a
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: consequence of the interacting between neurons brain cells. Brain cells
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: are like water molecules, right, and so in some sense
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: information comes in and it generates different kinds of warpools
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  Speaker 2: in your brain, and those warpools are what you see.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, incredible, what I was thinking. Also though, with humans,
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: so our thinking is intertwined with emotion, with feeling, with
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: previous experiences, with memories, with Does that not differentiate us
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: between artificial intelligence?
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: No, because not necessarily, well at the moment, yes, right, Well,
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: it's one way of differentiating us. But the point is
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: that artficial neural networks, for instance, are also networks. So
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: in theory they could also generate emergent patterns, and those
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: emergent patterns have consequence. One consequence for us is that
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: the consequence is to see red or to feel a
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: certain thing. Right, in principle, there's no reason why they
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: couldn't generate similar consequences from the interaction between artificial neural networks,
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: because again it's a network. So for me, what's inherently
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: important is the interaction between things. Now, those things, right,
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: and and the interaction with john brain cell seems to
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: generate the stuff that we're experiencing. Clearly, why couldn't that
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: also be happen through the interaction between artificial systems artificial elements.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: What about the individuality person and person of how I
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: think and perceive and process the same stimulus. Like ten
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: people go through the same thing event, situation, circumstance, conversation,
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: but they all have a different experience.
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, where they're not all going through the same thing. Well,
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: they're not going through.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: The being subjected to the same stimulus anyway.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: In some sense yes, and in some sense no. Okay, good,
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: So if you walk through let's say, okay, we both
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: walk let's see how could we would be an example?
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: I mean, even if I show you a picture, we're
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: not all at the same picture because it depends on
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: where you look. Yes, right, So you have a phobia,
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: which is a very highly sensitive part of your retina,
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: and it's really quite small. Right if people hold their
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: handout and you know at arm's length, the sensitivity the
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: fobia is about the width of the thumbnail at arm's length.
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: You know, that's where we're particularly sensitive. And that's what
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: we call foviation. That's where we're sort of really attending
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: and that's where your brain's really processing that information. Now
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: if we but an image is much bigger than that,
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: So you could actually be looking in the upper right
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: and it might be looking at the lower left. We're
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: getting very different experiences. And what if I go from
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: the lower left to the upper right, that might change
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: my interpretation, whereas you're going from the upper right to
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: the lower left right. If you meet one person before
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: another person, right, it's going to change the person you
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: first meet, it's going to change your perception of the
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: second person. But you could say we both met two people,
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: we both met the same people, So our experiences are
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: always different. What's more, the history that we're bringing to
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: this experience is different.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So excuse me for asking a dumb question,
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: what's an experience?
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: What is an experience? Well, I suppose it really depends
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: on what it is in some sense that we're measuring.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: So you could say, so, what do you mean from
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: the individual person?
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm thinking there's so much subject there's so much
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: subjectivity and assigning everything. Yeah, and assigning it, you know.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: So one of the things I say when I'm talking
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: to a big group. Right, So I do a lot
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: of public speaking, and I talk about, you know, not
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: to the level you do, so feel free to correct me.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: And Melissa take notes because I can use this man's
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: brain and take all the credit. I talk about, you know,
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: the reality that we're all in the same room on
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: the same day, listening to the same dude say the
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: same words with the same intention. You're all sitting in
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: identical seats and same lighting. Everything. All these stimuli are
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: the macro of what we're in right now, but the
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: micro is the way that you process everything. So we're
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: in the same room, we're in the same workshop, but
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: we're not in the same experience and so so, and
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: then I talk to them about so, you know, is
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: it possible that right now, some somebody finds what I'm
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: saying fascinating. Therefore their experience is fascination. Somebody finds me
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: boring the experiences boredom. Somebody finds me offensive, their experience
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: right now is offence, and so on. And then we go, well,
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: where is that experience that version of your reality coming from?
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: Is it about me? Or is it about your response
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: to me? And we kind of hope where and Now
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: this kind of opens the door a bit anyway in
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: my space on metacognition is starting to think about why
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: we think or respond the way we do.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thinking about thinking. So the the experiences are different,
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: that's for sure, to you for your audience. In fact,
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: when I do like you, I do quite a bit
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: of public speaking or professional speaking, and at one point
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: in my talk I'll say everything I'm saying to you
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: right now is meaningless.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I saw you say that on a Ted talk
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: and I'm like, that's so brilliant but fucking confusing, because.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: It literally is right, Because I mean, if we didn't exist,
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: these these sounds that we're making have no meaning. Yeah,
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: there's no inherent meaning in any of these words. Right.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: This is not laws of physics, This is not gravity. Yeah, right,
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: there is no meaning in these utterances. No one but
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: us understands them. So for not here, they don't make
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: you know, there is no meaning. Your brain's not interested
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: in data, right, your brain gets information. So if you're
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: giving a talk, if I'm giving a talk, people are
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: you know, they're geting sound waves that's vibrating in the
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: ear drums, right, that's not actually what they're hearing. What
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: they're hearing is the meaning of that data. They don't
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: hear the data, They're not seeing the data, right, And
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: what their brain is doing is they're making a meaning
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: of it. And the reason why they have to do
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: that is because there is no inherent meaning in that data. Now,
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: data exists, right, the physical world exists. And like I
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: like to say, you know, if a tree falls in
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: the woods, doesn't make a sound, and the answer is no,
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: But it makes energy, sound vibration, right. The sound is
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: a function of our brain. The brain then turns out
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: of information into the perceptual experience that we become aware of.
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: What is that perceptual experience? It's a meaning. It's a
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: meaning that isn't inherent in the data itself. Where does
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: that meaning come from? It comes largely from our history
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: of what that information meant for a behavior in the past. Right.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: So if someone hears here's me say a word or
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: not a word makes here a sound, it means something
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: to them because in the past it meant something before, right,
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: and then they generated behavior. It's like that worked, okay, brilliant,
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: I'll keep I'll stick with that meaning. Or that didn't work. Huh,
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: maybe I'll change that meaning. And we're constantly doing this
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: all the time, and this is what evolution's doing, right.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: We're constantly changing the structure of our brain according to
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: trial and error experience, whether that be over millennium genetics
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: or over a second in changing the connections between our neurons.
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: So we're doing that all according to feedback.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, straight up, smarty pants. And I thought my eye
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: story was fucking fascinating. That was a yawn fist.
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: I like your eye story.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: So he's he's one of my questions. Doc. So you
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: are a really good science communicator, which there are not
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: many people. Andrew Huberman's pretty good. You're good, You're great. Okay,
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: so let me paint this picture. You're in front of
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: a thousand people. You're in an auditorium. They're not you.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: They're not neuroscientists. They're maybe not even scientists. Most of them.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: They're people who work for the XYZ Foundation or organization,
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: and they sell widgets and you're there talking to them
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: about whatever, how do it? They better think better, do better,
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: produce better, be happy and more fulfilled whatever. So you
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: are sharing thoughts and ideas that you fully understand and
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: concepts that a lot of people wouldn't understand unless you've
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: found a way to disseminate it in a user friendly manner.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: But you're up the front, You're in your own experience,
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: and there are a thousand people in their own individual experience.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: How do you in real time navigate that? And I
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: know this masking this because I want the answer. How
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: do you in real time navigate that realizing that no
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: one including you is in the same experience? And how
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: do you build rapport and connection and engagement and career
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: ID right experience? I now you can't control all of that,
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: but how do you do that knowing that there's such
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: so many different experiences happening.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: While there's different experiences, we all have commonality, so we
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: also have it. We were also looking at the world
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: through an evolved brain. So when we think about experience,
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: most of your life happened without you even there. What
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: do I mean by that? So the immediate answer your
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: question is, I try to speak to commonalities, sort of
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: human truths and values, things that are common to all
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: of them. Okay, seeing red is common to all of us,
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: or I can't be inside your head and know whether
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: your quality of red is my quality of red? It
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: is called the inverted spectrum, right, because I can never
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: be inside anyone else's head, but we will behave towards
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: red in exactly the same way. So by assumption that
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: it's like presumably you're you know, at least behaviorally, we're
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: behaving towards something exactly the same way. Why, because we
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: came into the world being evolved brain Right, you're looking
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: through the eyes of your ancestors. So why is that?
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: Because you know, the only reason why you're here is
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: because your ancestors did stuff that was useful, right, Rather,
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: they didn't die. So evolution works not by success, it
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: works by failure, so you know, and in fact, this
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: is a really important point and it's kind of a
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: bit of an aside, but there's something called form from
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: failure rather than form from success. So we evolve because
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: we didn't die, not because we are successful. We typically
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: engage with the world to not die rather than to succeed.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: They are not symmetrical, right, And it's also really important
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: to become aware of that. And this is one of
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: the reasons why news tends to be biased towards the negative,
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: because we tend to avoid not dying. We don't go
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: towards success. So negative stuff is far more salient to
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: us because die ying during evolution it was easy. It's
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: really easy to die, right, there are billions of ways
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: of dying, not so many ways to survive. M Okay,
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: So we typically tend to buyas towards safety, towards not dying.
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: So what's the point. The point is that the functional
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: structure your brain is a history of experience. Most of
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: those experiences were not yours. It could be evolved experiences.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: So you come into the brain with a functioning, structured brain.
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: Then during development, it then starts refining itself. But that's
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: an environment. It could be a culture environment, a familiar environment,
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: a physical environment that other people also are developing in,
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: and then you have your nuanced individual experience. So in
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: some sense, you could say, we're all kind of like
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: living in the same suburban house. It's just that our
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: furniture is in different places. Yeah, right, But we make
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: a big deal about the fact that our furniture is
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: different places without realizing the fact that we kind of
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: are all in the same house. Right, What would happen
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: if we actually focused on the house right than the friends.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: Maybe we'd have a bit more commonality.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So to me, this is what's important. The whole
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: reason why I do any of this work partly is
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: because I'm passionately interested in understanding stuff. But once you
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: understand that this is the case, you can't help but
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: have humility.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: What's something that you, as a researcher and scientists had,
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: like I'm sure there were many, but maybe one or
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: two epiphanies or aha moments where you something absolutely confounded
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: you or shocked you, or something that you realize you've
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: got terribly wrong and had to let go because you know,
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: we like, as you say in your talks, we like certainty,
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: we like predictability, we like familiarity, we like knowing, and
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: we become very attached to what we think is our
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: knowledge and sometimes it's erroneous, you know, and we've become
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: very attached to our ideas and beliefs. What was something
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: you needed to unlearn or peraps something that for you
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: was a massive lock bulb? M Well, tell me if
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: I ever got anything wrong? Come on, No.
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: On the contrary, I get things wrong all the time.
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: But that's what I actually like. Yes, right, so you know,
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: maybe it's a pathology, But what I find beautiful is
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: realizing that shifts not quite what I thought. I love
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: having my assumptions and biases contradicted, not for the sake
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: of it, because now suddenly I understand more so by
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: the irony is that you own I mean, think for
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: your audience, yourself. Have you ever done anything interesting from
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: the position of knowing? Right? Why you do it from
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: the position of not knowing? Right? Which is why on
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: my wrist I have a tattoo that says I don't know. Yeah,
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: because you only do anything something. You only do something
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: interesting from the position of not knowing. By definition, if
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: you already know it, how can you do anything right?
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: It's always from the position not knowing. In order to
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: not know, you have to be willing to let go
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: of what you thought to be true before.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: The problem is we hate doing that because that's to
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: step into uncertainty. Uncertainty again, coming back to evolution, was
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: a really bad idea. If you didn't know, you kind
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: of died, yes, right.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: If you didn't.
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, If you didn't know, I could eat this fruit
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: or that fruit, you died. Right. We evolved to know
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: stuff because it kept us alive, and we evolved to
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: predict because you know, if the food's not coming to me,
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: I got to go to it. But it's unfortunately doing
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: stuff that seems random until I can predict it. Now
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: I know where to wait for it. Now I can
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: capture it, right, So we're constantly so when we can't
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: predict it's like shit, I don't know what to do. Now,
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: I'm scared because I'm looking at it through my evolved ancestors.
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: That was a moment of potential. That's why our cortosol
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: level goes up. We get stressed, all kinds of things happen.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: Your brain cells start dying, your immune system degrades. As
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: I mentioned in my talks, you become a more extreme
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: version of yourself. If you're liberal, you become more liberal
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: if you're conservad Why because you go into familiarity, which
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: is one of the reasons why we get polarization right now.
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: You become more gullible, right because you're just trying to
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: find any associations to explain. So, which is why we're
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: getting so many conspiracy theories right now. In this sort
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: of incredible time of global uncertainty, I mean uncertainly always existed,
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: your brain will evolved to deal with it. So we
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: hate that. But in my case, and not just in
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: my case, in your case, doing your PhD, you're being
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: trained to not know science is nothing but basically increasing uncertainty,
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: the role.
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: Of exceptional not knowing. Just so you know, yeah, brilliant.
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: I'm a huge celebrator of being naive. Naive tea is
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: a beautiful not ignorance. But naive tea is a beautiful thing.
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: But ironically, bo we we I'm generalizing. But we seem
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: to get our sense of self and our identity from
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: what we think we know or our beliefs.
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: Is that a silly idea?
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, our identity is tied to our beliefs. So when
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: who I am is, oh, i am a vegetarian, or
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: I am a I am a Christian, or I am
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: a Buddhist, or I am an atheist or I am
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: a I'm a.
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: We tire ourselves Now we identify with nouns, right, And
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: what a silly idea because nouns are necessarily transient. Because okay,
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: so you know, I tie myself to this thing. Then
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: science comes through or someone says that's a bad idea.
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: It's like shit, and I've got to rethink my whole identity.
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: What if we tight our identity of verbs?
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but do you know what I reckon? Though? We
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: don't go now I've got to change my identity, we
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: go fuck that research at floor.
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: Well, that's usually what happens right now. But what really
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: depends on whether or not we do that is how
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: open someone is. So people who are more neurotic or
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: less like are more willing to do what you just
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: It's like, screw that. People are more open, are more
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: willing to do that. It has to do with ego.
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: I'm not interested in small or large egos. I'm interested
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: in whether or not your ego's fragile, right, And so
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: if you have a fragile ego where you're gonna you know,
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: you're not gonna you're not gonna challenge it. But if
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: you have a strong ego, it's like, Okay, I don't
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: define myself. I'm willing to define myself in a different way.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: Let's go for that. It's amazing how narrowly and superficially
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: we so often define ourselves, not only by nouns, but
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: by pretty superficial nouns as well. Yes, why don't we
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: define ourselves in terms of someone who's you know, I'm
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: someone I'm not. I hope to be this person, but
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: in general, as an example, to define myself, I'm someone
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: who's resilient. I'm someone who's adaptable. I'm someone who's generous. Right,
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: I'm someone you know, a verb, someone who is defined
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: by a process. In fact, in some sense, you could
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: argue Buddhism does that, right, whereas you know I don't
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: necessarily want well, I'm very happy to get in revigion.
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: Whereas Christianity is defined by a noun, Buddhism is much
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: more about a process. I'm someone who's willing to evolve.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: I'm someone who's willing to expand right as opposed to
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: I am X. And then if I show you data
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: to show that X isn't valid, more likely, if you've
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: tied your identity to it, you're going to hold yourself
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: even stronger to that, which means I've now pushed you
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: to faith. And the whole point of faith is to
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: believe in it despite the evidence, and we celebrate it
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: so much. Think of every hero you know, they go
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: against all the odds because they just know, you know,
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: they're completely anti evidence driven, right heroes. Right, And ironically,
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: now that kind of also works the best things in
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: life makes sense.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: And also you bring emotion into these beliefs or faith,
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: and now people are defiant and angry, and we have
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: echo chambers, and we have people screaming at each other,
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: and we have people absolutely like people willing to kill
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: each other over things that they can't even prove it
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: like at all, you know, Like I got raised in
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: a really a religious environment, and so I'm a minor
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: expert on religion or my religion anyway, and it's it's
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: we spoke about this recently. You know just how how
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: discouraged I was. And this is many people's experience, not
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: even discouraged, but condemned for thinking, for thinking for myself
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: and for questioning. You can't question, you conform. You don't question,
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: You don't think yourself. You can't. In fact, if you
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: do that, you're sinning. What sinning? And by the way,
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: I got told this when I was eight. Bo. By
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: the way, if you die with a mortal sin on
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: your soul, you will go to an eternal lake of
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: fire and you will burn forever. I'm like, oh, well,
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: that's good news. Thanks for telling me that, father. I mean,
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: fucking hell, who tells a child.
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: That millions and millions of people tell each other that. So,
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: but it's not just religious education as well. So I
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: like you. It sounds like we came from the same
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: place and I was an altar boy.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: Wow, dude, yeah, wow. It is a podcast all by itself,
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: but let's leave it alone.
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: But and I mean, with that said, there's some really
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: really interesting in some sense truths that exist within all
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: these religions. I was a religious studies miner when I
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: was at Berkeley as well as my because I'm very
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: interested in how people think, how people adapt. There's and
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: there's some really valuable insights there. The problem is thinking
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: about what the source of that is and whether or
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: not it shouldn't be self evolve and be questioned. I
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: would argue that one of the most dangerous things you
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: can do is not an action. It's a word. And
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: the word is why, right, which is one of the
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: reasons why institutions like governments, especially totalitarian governments, education systems, religions,
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: not all religions, are set up to block that one
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: word because if you ask why, suddenly it's like, wait
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: a minute, you mean it could be different? Well, if
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: it could be different well, now suddenly you've lost a
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: little bit of control over me. Yes, But the way
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: I keep control over you is by saying, look, you
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: don't need to worry about these questions. Come on, you
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: don't like uncertainty anyway, Let's just all be let's just
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: all be certain in the same way. Then we'll all
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: be happy, won't we.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: Right, Which is why there's a wonderful phrase which I
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: quote in the book, which is, you know, all revolutions
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: begin with a joke, or rather every joke is a
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: small revolution, because it's to say it could be different.
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: And for me, questions are wonderful. But we don't even
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: educate children to ask questions. Most questions are rubbish. Your questions,
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: of course brilliant, but most questions, most questions are rubbish, right,
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: Which isn't say that they're bad to ask. It's because
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: asking a good question is really, really hard. It's really hard.
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: It can take fifty years. Think of Einstein. It took
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: years and years and years to ask the brilliant question
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: that he was able to ask. But it's asking questions
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: in the empirical process. To me, science is about asking
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: brilliant questions. Is not about answers. Finding those grilliant but
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: brilliant questions are challenging, right because they challenge our assumed beliefs.
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: They challenge what we assume to be true already, it
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: requires us to let go of identity, right, which is
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: why my lab works on we're creating an education. We've
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: created an education system resulting the youngest published scientists in
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: the world at eight to ten years old, right, and
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: we're creating now a whole education program around this because
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: our argument is that science is nothing other than play
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: with intention. It's a mindset that says, actually, not knowing
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: is a brilliant thing, questions are wonderful. It's literally a
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: mindset that enables you to go to the very place
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: we evolved to avoid.
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: Melissa was telling me about that study before you came
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: on and correct me if I get this wrong. Apparently,
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: because they are all so young that the boffins wouldn't
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: publish the study. But then some other people quoted their
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: research and that got published, and then is that right?
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: Then they ended up getting published.
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: So what happens? First of all, we couldn't we couldn't
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: get funding for it, ironically from the Welcome Trust, which
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: is supposed to be in public engagement of science because
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: we're doing actual science, because like you know, you're supposed
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: to be talking about science, not doing science. And my
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: point is, well, the best way to communicate science is
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: to do science. You just in the public.
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: Stop making sense though, will come on the company line,
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: bro stop fucking thinking for yourself.
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: As opposed to you know, do science and then you know,
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: talk about it. But you know, actually, let's let's get
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: people to truly engage and actually have them walk away
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: with a deeper understanding themselves. Anyway, so we couldn't get
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: the funding for us. We've self funded it, and then
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: we couldn't get it published because not you know, not
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: surprising that the kids didn't have access to the references.
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: They didn't have the history, so we had unique insights
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: that no one else had known. It was his research
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: done on bumblebees, and the kids design an experiment around
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: whether bumblees can solve a complex problem if then that
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: you know, go to the blue it's surrounded by yellow,
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: but yellow is surrounded by blue. It's a complex problem.
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: And they found the answer. But because they didn't know
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: the history, they couldn't write the introduct to the paper,
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: we can get it published, which creates some really interesting
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: is science about history or science about new insight? And
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: so that's why I loved about it is it was
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: also challenging science. You know, what is science?
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: Then?
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: So then what we were able to do is we
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: we then brought in other scientists. Uh, doctor Maloney wanted
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: a wonderful, wonderful scientist n y U and he then
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: contextualized it because and then and then the paper was published,
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: and then they become the younger publish scientists. But it
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: took two years to get it published. And uh, and
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: now I want to do another study where the kids
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: actually communicate it in story form. What would happen if
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: we had a science paper that it was actually a
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: children's book? Right, wouldn't that be wonderful? It's still be
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: presenting them, but that's how kids talk. Why would we
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: want to have them talk to each other via science paper?
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: There's nothing wrong with science?
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: What's I think the same? I think? What is literally?
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: What is wrong with writing? Even stuff that's complicated or
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: deep or not easy to solve, but write it in
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: a way that the general public or the general population
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: can understand. You know so much if you handed you know,
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: like I've been reading today and yesterday one paper. It's
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: forty five pages, right, but it takes takes half an
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: hour to reach one read one page and absorb it
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: and figure it out sometimes, you know, I mean it
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: wouldn't take it take you one minute. But and I
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: just think this stuff, some of it is so unnecessarily
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: verbose in a way that is difficult to process. And
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: then by the time I figure out what they're saying,
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: I go, oh, okay, well they're just saying that. What
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: didn't they just write that?
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: You know, yeah, there is that right there, there's you know,
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: you also see this in art as well. You know,
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: by writing it in a very complex way, it gives
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: the illusion of it actually being much more important than
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: it really is. With that said, science papers are also
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: such that they're written, in my view, so that the
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: scientist is not relevant. Right. You think about when you
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: have someone giving a science talk, they almost never say,
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: or if they're a good speaker, they're not going to say,
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: I I did this, I did that, right, because you're
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: not relevant. What's relevant is the finding. If you're relevant
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: in the finding, well then it's not a good study
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: because it can't be reproduced. So the science paper needs
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: to be depersonalized. It's like this was discovered, it was observed.
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: But if it's if I'm relevant in the observation, now,
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: well that's that's an issue. Whereas an artist will say
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: I did this, I did that. What's interesting is when
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: brilliant artists like a friend of mine, Olifar Ellison, I
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: suddenly disappear, right because now they've realized that actually it's
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: something that transcends them, right, and science is about stuff
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: that transcends us. Yeah, yeah, it goes beyond the individual.
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: But then how do you communicate it to people who
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: are not scientists? And we worked with the UK government
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: with the White Paper for how to communicate climate information
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: to the public. It's you don't present more data to
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: convince people. You have to make it relevant and make
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: them part of it. Yeah, right, ye, say, why why
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: does this matter of tea? And what can you do
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: about it? What's the meaning of the data, not just
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: the data? Yeah, because your brain works the level of.
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: Meaning, yeah, and the level of your understanding right.
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: Well that well, it's a really inching question. What's the
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: difference between knowing and understanding? And it's something that the
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: lab's actively pursuing. To me, there's a fundamental distinction between
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: knowing stuff and understanding stuff. Education tends to be focused
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: on knowing stuff. It's on answers. It's uncertainty, right, not ununderstanding,
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: But understanding is actually what your brain wants, because if
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: you understand something, it means you can generalize it. If
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: I can understand you now, I can predict you. I
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: can understand what your needs are, what your wants are.
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: That's where love lives. Love lives and understanding someone not
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: to knowing someone. So and that's true in nature. If
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: I understand something now, I can predict to a new experience.
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: But if I just know it now, I'm just stuck
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: to that experience. Now I have to relearn a whole
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: new experience.
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's funny like knowledge is. It's almost like something
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: that sits on a shelf in your brain, or it
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: can be, but exactly right. Understanding is a different thing.
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: And I my knowledge and understanding obviously can go hand
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: in hand, but not always, you know. And I used
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: to have friends when I was at school, you know,
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: in high school, and who could literally memorize big chunks
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: of crap and pass an exam and you'd ask them
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: two days later. They not only wouldn't they know it anymore,
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: but they couldn't explain things to you because they just
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: had basically short terms, like a brilliant capacity to store
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: short term information, and then it was gone. But they
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: didn't understand it, but they could memorize things.
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. Then we reward that behavior in our society.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: Well, that behavior then becomes successful and it perpetuates itself.
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: The reason why that's useful is because it's efficient.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: Right, So coming back to you know, you talked on
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: the very beginning about innovation, and innovation has two sides,
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: efficiency and creativity. Were educated to be efficient, Yeah, because victorians.
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: It was a good idea. Things were pretty chaotic. Let's
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: try to make things a bit more efficient. It's not
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: a bad idea. What we've also abandoned is creativity. You
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: have to have the both to be innovative, not just
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: one or the other. Right. But the problem is we
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: then try to make things creative in an efficiency model. Right,
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: that doesn't work. We need another model that subsumes both
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: creativity and innovation. That's you know, that's what we're focused
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: on and to me, that's what science is. Yeah, you
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: still got to make findings, you still got to write
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: the paper, you still got to get grants. But I
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: can't say to my PhD sudents, I like that discovery
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: by Tuesday.
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: Please you could sign that.
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: I could say that, yeah, but you know, but we
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: still got to try to make discoveries.
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: So you know, I feel like there's a place in
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: science for creativity because you you know, you've got to
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: solve problems, and you know that that's a creative process.
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: And even with my research is on a thing called
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: external self awareness, which is your ability to understand that
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: you experience for others. So your ability to accurately represent
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: the way that people you know experience you. It's more
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: than that, but that's the kind of easy route to it.
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: And it's funny when I ask CEOs or managers or
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: leaders like one simple question that there's many of them
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: never thought about. I go, what do you think it's
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: like being around you? Like some of them are quite uncomfortable,
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: And I go, because I can guarantee you that your
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: version and understanding of you is no one else's. The
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: way you think you are is like nobody in your
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: organization thinks you are right. And the quick example I
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: give I say to an audience, I say, put your
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: hand up if you've ever heard your voice recorded on audio.
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: Everyone goes, oh god, they put their hand up, and
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: I go, now put up your hand if you think
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: you sound shit, And everybody puts up their hand, and
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: I go, well, here's the news. How how you sound
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: on audio is how the rest of us hear you
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: all the time. And they hate it, And I go,
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: you don't know what you like. You only think you
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: know what you like. And not only not only not
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: like how I see you, you're also something different for
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: every person in this room. And so we think we
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: get ourselves, but we only get our cells from an
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: introspective space.
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: That's right. And in any interaction there's about sixteen different
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: In any interaction between two people, there's about sixteen people there, right, correct, Correct.
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: There's me that's perceiving me, there's a me that's perceiving you,
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: there's the me that's you know, there's a you that's
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: perceiving me, the you that's perceiving you. But what's more,
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: I'm also contextual, So there's a certain aspect of me
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: that I'm bringing out with you when there'll be a
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: different aspect that's brought around in a different context with
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: a different person, right, So you know we're a collection
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: of people within as well. We have this illusion that
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: were one thing, and then it's amazing that we can
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: even get on.
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: It all right, and then you get sorry, dude, go
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: on no.
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's why I'm a huge fan of naivete
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: and humility because once you if people truly understood, then
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: just know this stuff right, truly felt it, which is
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: why in my own public speaking, I try to get
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: people to feel what I'm saying now here, what I
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: say in some sense, as soon as you said it
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: to them, you've taken it from them. So I get
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: people standing up, I get people interacting because I want
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: them to embody it because as soon as it becomes embodied,
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: now you're shifting it to understanding, even if I even
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: if I can't explain it.
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: Well, I love the way that you with that musical piece.
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: Was it Tchaikovsky or Strauss or someone? Yeah, and you
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: like that really well known symphony piece and it's just
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: about coming to the big musical crescendo, and I'm listening
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: to it I'm like, this is all right, yeah, and
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: then you just stopped it and everyone's like, oh fuck exactly.
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: Because if I say your greatest need is closure, it's like, oh,
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: that's interesting. But if I don't say it and they
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: feel it's like, ah, yeah, now I get what you mean.
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell you how that annoyed me. That example.
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: Fuck your example.
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, someone said I should actually give people closure after that,
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: because you know, we so need it, and I would
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: argue that, I mean, just you know, going off on
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: a bit of a tangent. Is people ask how can
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: we help people deal with uncertainty because uncertainty is we
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: hate uncertainty, right, We evolved too, except that in that
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: mindset of play with intentionality science, which is closure, right,
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: we love closure. I love closure. I hate uncertainty. I
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: would hate to be uncertained all the time. Right, But
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: I love closure so much that I'm willing to get
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: through uncertainty because you can't get closure, you can't get
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: understanding if you didn't have the question beforehand. Yes, right,
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: uncertainty by itself is pretty meaningless. Closure doesn't exist if
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: you didn't have four you know. I love the example
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: of an orgasm an orgasm is closure, but it doesn't
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: exist without the stuff that came before.
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: And what's more is you get the intrinsic An orgasm
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: is an intrinsic reward. It's evolution said, well, that's a
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: good idea. Let's keep them from that again, because if
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: we don't get that, we're going to get selected out.
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: But what's fascinating is we get the same type of
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: reward stimulut reward activation in our brain with an orgasm
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: we have food. With understanding understanding, you get a similar
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: kind of like mini orgasm. Yeah right, because evolution said,
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: whoa understanding is a good idea, because now these people
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: are going to be adaptable. Let's get them doing that. Ironically,
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: we almost design our whole culture to prevent the possibility
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: of understanding, much less understanding another person, because we try
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: to stand still. When the world changes, we try to
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: stand still even more. Imagine you're in Australia. Are you
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: a surfer?
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: I have surfed? I wouldn't call. All my listeners are
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: falling off their chairs. Hi, you can all get fucked,
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: I can serve.
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: Well. Imagine okay, imagine the waves coming in. You're standing
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: on your surfboard. Imagine trying to just not fall. Okay,
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: you're trying to keep your surfboard steady. The waves are
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: coming and just not going to fall. Imagine the energy
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: required to do that, Yeah, as opposed to just surf. Yes,
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: right to go with the waves. Right, our education, our
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: lives are set up to sort of bob in the
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: water with all these waves coming in and making sure
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: we don't fall. Yeah, why don't we actually create an
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: environment where we can actually surf with the waves. The
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: amount of energy required goes down, the risk that ironically
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: goes down. But we think the risk is in movement,
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: when in nature, life is movement. You stand still, you
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: get selected out. A relationship that doesn't move dies Love
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: that doesn't move deteriorates.
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: We need to give ourselves permission to fall off that
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: wave and go, ah, that wasn't too terrible. You know,
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: when you're talking about orgasms, I thought, and how you
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: know orgasms trying to happen without all this lead up?
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: Because I'm essentially four nine years old, it.
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: Sounds like you're not celebrating the lead up bit.
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, the lead spin a while, spin a while.
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: But I was thinking, imagine if if we were designed
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: or we evolved to have spontaneous idiopathic orgasms and you
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: just be you've just been in a business meeting and
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: you'd be like, oh my god, no, no, no, anyway,
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: that's just how my mind works.
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: Some people do, and they actually have done experiments when
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: youre stimulating.
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: That's right, isn't it? That actually happens, doesn't it?
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: That actually happens. And there's you know, and you know,
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: they stimulate rats in that part of the brain and
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: they'll just you know, they hit the levity, stimulate that
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: part of the brain. They'll just keep stimulating and eventually
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: they just die of dehydration.
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: So it's pretty active rewards. Yeah, But my approach is
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: actually what's called an intrinsic reward, right, Right. It's something
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: we do for the reason for doing it. Thinking about surfing,
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: what's the reward of surfing? When the hell would we surf?
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: What's the reward of surfing? It's surfing?
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: Yes, do we need to explain it?
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: Right? But that's what evolution is like, Ah, because play
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: with intention, asking questions, not knowing is actually a good thing. Yeah,
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: that's what kept us alive during evolution because that means
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: we could change with.
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: Change interesting thing with I mean, there are many interesting things.
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: But the irony is that most people, as you pointed out,
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: hate the unknown, the unfamiliar, the uncertain, and the uncomfortable.
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: But all of that essentially is life or periodically like
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: it's like, dude, that's lot. Have you have you been anywhere?
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: That's life? I mean, life is you know. But also
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: the other irony is that we'll me way and most
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: people I've worked with, where I've grown and learned and
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: evolve and gained insight and skill and awareness and competence
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: mostly is in the middle of all of that shit.
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: And so you know, you go where you grow, and
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: it's like also in the middle of that knowing that
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: you know that life is difficult, that that bad things
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: happen to good people, that the world I love it.
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: How people say the world's unfair or whatever, well, you know,
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: it just is what it is. But nonetheless, you know,
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: kids get cancer, wars happen, poverty happens, like terrible things happen,
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: and of course we don't celebrate any of those, but
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: we need to. I feel like we do ourselves a
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: disservice when we always take the easy option when we
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: always when we we always give in to instant gratification,
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: and there's so much great stuff when we say no
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: or no for now, and when we say yes to
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: something that is not fun, quick, easy, sexy or painless.
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: You know it's so true. I mean, And of course
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: we should be saying no, and we should also be
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: saying yes. The question is what are we saying no?
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: One yes too? And I don't want to reduce things
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: to rules. When I do my toxic I say, I'm
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: not going to give you any rules. We all want rules.
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to give you any because rules are
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: biased towards efficiency and their fragile. With that said, one
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: strategy for thinking about no one yes is is the
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: thing expanding me? Or is it contracting me? So if
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: I say no to something, am I being contracted? Am
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: I reducing? If I say yes to it? Am I expanding?
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: With that said, we can also say yes to things
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: that actually contract us, Like yes to anger can contract us.
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: Which isn't to say anger is a bad idea. Sometimes
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: it's really important to be anger if something terrible is
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: happening to you. Anger can be a wonderful motivation, wonderful
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: using a sort of most literal sense wonderful in the
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: sense of wonder to actually motivate you to action. Okay,
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: And it's the action that follows it is meaningful. It's
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: not the thing itself, because, as we're talking about from
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: the very beginning, there is no inherent meaning in the
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: stuff that's happening in the world. Stuff is happening in
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: the world, it's just it has no meaning. Light exists,
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: but it has no meaning. It's not red, it's not green,
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: it's not blue. In fact, we're sensitive to a very
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: small range of electromagnetic radiation. Right, So at the beginning
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: of the Bible, you know, it should have said God
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: should have said, let there be electromagnetic radiation, not let
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: there be lighted, because.
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: I say it, that'stid style.
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: So it's what you actually do with the information that matters.
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: And are you doing it in a way that expands
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: you or more importantly expands someone else, or is it
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: contracting you? And that's where the yes and no come in.
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: And that's maybe a principle as opposed to rule, that
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: people can use for thinking about their yeses and nos.
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: And that's adaptable in that right, can they change with
• 57:25
  Speaker 3: that because someone whenever I'm in conversation, someone says, you know,
• 57:28
  Speaker 3: there are two types of people. I'm going to explain
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: to the rest of the evening, proving that there's more
• 57:32
  Speaker 3: than two types of people. Right, Any absolute statement is
• 57:36
  Speaker 3: almost always, at some point not correct, because everything is contextual.
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: I'm with you. I fucking hate that generalized science. Like
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: there's an ad on TV at the moment in Australia
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: and it says from the age of forty you will
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: lose one percent of your muscle mess per year. And
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: I'm like, hang on, hang on, Like every single person
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: in Australia, all twenty six million of us, all of us,
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: are losing the same amount of muscle at the same rate.
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: And it's like, I go, that's absolutely not true. But
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: no one, no one says anything. No, there are so
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: many variables around virtually everything. But we make these categorical
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: statements as though they are fact, but they are so
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: far from a fact, you know where, because people don't.
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: If somebody in a white coat says something, people go, oh, okay, yep,
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: well I'm going to die in five years, all right,
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: then I best get ready.
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And why is that ironically comfortable is because it's
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: very certain. We love certainty so much, so much that
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: people will actually choose predictable pain over uncertainty.
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: If I say you know it, I'm going to shark
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: you from time to time in a predictable manner. It's
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: going to hurt or I'm not going to shock you.
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: But there's going to be some uncertainty. So give me
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: the shot the shop. And you see this in people's
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: lives all the time, in my own as well. I mean,
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: it's not like I escape from any of this. I'm
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: just as human as anyone else. But learning, of course,
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: is learning that you're trying to find those certainties that
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: actually aren't serving you. But to do so means first
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: you have to know that that's actually how it's working
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: in the first place. If you don't have understanding, if
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: you don't know why you see what you do, how
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: you're ever going to see differently. Which is why I
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: study perception, because the perception underpins everything it is to
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: be you, right.
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: So much great stuff. I want to ask something I
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: was thinking about. I've lost it all right, let's go
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: with Oh, no, that's right, you're talking about people would
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: rather deal with something that's painful but familiar. Then step
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: into uncertainty and whatever I was thinking. I've had that
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: conversation with people about They're like, why do I stay
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: in this shop relationship? And it could be a friendship,
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: it could be a romance, it could be a marriage,
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: it could be a business partnership. And my answer to
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: that is, because you would rather the predictable, known, certain
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: three out of ten that you're in, then stepping out
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: of the three out of ten, and who knows you
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: might end up in a one out of ten. So
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: I'll stay with the three and you know, keep the
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: door closed, because you're right, people would rather be in
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: something that they know, they know what's coming. It's not great,
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: it's periodically horrible, but I can cope. And but if
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: I walk out on this, then my life could go
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: to total shit and I'll regret what I did. So
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: and now I'm fifty five years old.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: That's right. That happens all the time. That's happened in
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: my own life. That's probably happened in everybody's life, right. Yeah,
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: And with that said, even that's complex because you know,
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: some people say we stay too often, we too often
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: stay in bad relationships too long. Right. With that said,
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: sometimes the greatest relationships, you know, if you get through struggles,
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: that getting through process is actually incredibly bonding. So we
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: can equally give up on things far too quickly. I mean,
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: a really really challenging question, maybe an impossible question to answers,
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: which I actually asked my mentor and ask the number
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: of people I ask you, is how do you know
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: when to stop? How do you know when to stop anything?
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: It's a really difficult question to answer.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: I think that question, I think that answer is different
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: for different people and.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: On different context, different situations. Right, and knowing why we're stopping?
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: Is it self hard? Am I stop me because I
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: just can't be bothered because I've never learned how to
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: work hard, or because I'm just I just love just
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: new bodies or new Ever, then you know I'm a
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: novel seeker, and I'm afraid of commitment, you know, all
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: kinds of reasons. So that's why the greatest pursuit in life,
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: I think, in some sense, is the pursuit of self honesty. Yes,
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: it's really really hard to achieve it, so it requires
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: a lot of questioning of oneself.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: There's a model I forget I should know who it is.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: But it's in psychology and it's it's kind of four stages.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: And stage one is self self reflection and then so
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: reflection reflecting on who we are, how we are, why
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: we you know, just just reflecting on the self. Number
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: two is self awareness, when we realize certain things and
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: we acknowledge certain traits or behaviors that generally might not
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: be so great. Then there's a self evaluation stage, which
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: is number three, which is where we acknowledge where we
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: are and we compare it to where or who we
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: would like to be. And then number four is self regulation,
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: is being able to change it and the process of
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: like real self awareness. It is very difficult because again
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: everything for me is subjective, like there's you know, it's
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: like I everything that I evaluate, I'm evaluating perceiving processing
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: through the craigfilter, Like I've got fifty eight years of
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: programming that I've got to deal with and acknowledge and
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: be aware of and try and work around. Like you think,
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: every person listening to this has in some way, shape
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: or form been program condition told train their whole life
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: without even being aware of that conditioning and programming. And
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: now they sit listening to this twenty thousand or so
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: people having twenty thousand experiences, and some have already turned off,
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: and some are leaning in, going this is fucking ace,
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: and some are like, yeah, maybe I could implement that,
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: but the commonality of you and I and this conversation
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: the same stimulus. But you know that it's a really
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: it's a very difficult to become fully aware and to
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: have a level of consciousness of who you are and
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: how you are beyond the programming. It's a I think
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: it's it's not impossible, but it's very hard.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: It's not impossible, and it's I think that at least
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: my aim in life is to have that and rather
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 2: to pursue it, not to have its constantly changing. So
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: that's why I suggest people defining themselves in terms of
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: a verb rather than a noun. Yes, it's defining oneself.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: Is I'm in the pursuit of that? Well, if you're
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: truly in the pursuit of that, then you have to
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: engage in every conflict in a different way. You have
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: to engage in every conflict with the possibility that you're wrong,
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: knowing that you're engaged with that conflict, with the assumptions
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: of the other person with your history, et cetera. Then
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: knowing actually that's what that person is doing as well.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: Now only then do you ironically conflicts is a beautiful thing.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: It's a wonderful thing. The problem is not conflicts how
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: we engage in it. But instead we try to, you know,
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 2: engage in conflict with the need to convince to not move,
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: to be on that surfboard and still have the waves
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 2: coming in and not move. What if you actually engaged
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: conflict with a question, you know, engage with the aim
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: to understand another person, not to not to validate them.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: Too often we confuse those two things. We think to
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 2: you know, if you agree with me, well then you
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: must have understood me right looking for validation. What they
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: really want is to be understood my view. So yeah,
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: so this pursuit opens up possibility. The other strategy closes
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: possibly coming back to that, you know, yes and no question,
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: is it opening or is it closing? And then is
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: my response opening me or is my response closing me?
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 2: And if it's closing me, think about my emotions. Your
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: emotions are sort of they're telling you, not about the world,
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: they're telling you about you. If I'm afraid. It's like, Okay,
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: it's not that this thing has an inherent meaning of afraidness.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: It's I'm afraid of it. So why am I afraid
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: of this? What's that telling me about me? What's that
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: telling you about my expectations assumptions in the situation? What's
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: it challenging? Now, maybe those challenges are a good idea.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: It's not like it's a bad idea. Inherently, yes, but
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: now it creates opportunity for a question.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: And we also have in our brain kind of an
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: intrinsic understandtrinsic knowing or feeling that when we know we're
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: being dishonest. And what's interesting is that there will be
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: a part of your brain that gets active when that happens.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: And when we then lie and we get away with it,
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: the next time, the amount of activity that part of
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: the brain goes down, and then it goes down again,
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: and then goes down. And every time we win with
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: a lie, we lose that sense of guilt, which is
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: a real problem because guilt is a wonderful thing in
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: some sense. If you didn't have guilt, how would you
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: know that you did something wrong? How would you have
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: the motivation to do something. It's like the opposite of
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: an intrinsic reward.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: I wonder if people can become sociopaths, because when we
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: talk about sociopathy we talk a lot about genetic disposition
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: to that. I wonder if people, via the process you
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: just spoke about, can actually become legit sociopaths who like
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: basically don't feel bad about anything.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but then in some sense, it's that what you
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 2: can argue again, I think everything comes from uncertainty ultimately
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: is ultimate driver because think about how certain that person is. Yeah,
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: that must be a wonderful feeling that you knew everything right,
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: everything you say is truth. My god, I must feel great, right. So,
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 2: and so we can engineer our lives around that. We
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: can engineer our decision making around that, how we interact
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: with people. But it's not such a good person to
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 2: be around.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, hey, when we talk about I just want to
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: kind of take a left turn for a minute and
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: then come back to where we are a version.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: I love turning left. I have whole blogs it's about turning.
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: Left cold it So, as I told, I set up
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: the first personal training centers in Australia. So I was
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: the first trainer. I employed five hundred trainers in my time.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: I had four gyms and or four PT centers, and
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: we did really well. We had a really great little business,
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: and I you know, taught exercise science and all the
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: courses and all those things. And so we talk about
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: progressive overload, or we talk about progressive resistance. It's training.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: And the idea is that, you know, we do something,
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: we lift something, move something, we work against resistance. We
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: do something that's hard, and we do ten of them
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: and we do three sets of ten or whatever we do,
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: and then next week we do the same and we
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: go it's a bit easier when we do three sets
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: of twelve with the same weight. Then eventually we lift
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: the weight, move the reps. We more volume, more sets,
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: more reps, more intensity. But over time the experience is well,
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: this thing that was really hard is now literally physiologically
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: really easy. So my relationship and my perception and my
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: ability around this task with this weight has really changed.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: And so by working against the resistance, literally resistance training
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: progressive resistance, by working against the resistance, I adapt. I
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: am now stronger, I'm more capable, I'm more competent with
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: this thing. I'm more powerful, I've got more speed, and
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: I can create better performance outcomes as an athlete because
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: I went through this thing that was hard. So too,
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: when people go to me, how do I, Craig, how
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: do I overcome my fear of public speaking? I say
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: by public speaking? Right, Because we can't get good at
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: what we won't do, and we can't master what we avoid.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: So my long winded segue your honor is, do you
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: think we should train for the unknown, the uncertain, the unfamiliar,
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: and the uncomfortable? Do you think we should train ourselves
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: to be better in that space?
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: Absolutely? And that's actually that's in some sense the whole
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 2: point of my work is your brain's like a muscle.
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 2: You use it to lose it, right, And you know this.
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 2: This has always been an inherent passion of mine, but
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 2: not inherent, but a passion mine for a long time.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 2: And Marion Diamond, my one of my mentors at Berkeley,
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 2: wonderful on erful woman, and she showed how actually, if
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 2: you raise rats and enriched environment, the brain will actually
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 2: increase and its complexity, and if you raise rats in
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 2: a deprived environment, they'll decrease their complexity. Right, and a
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 2: more complex brain is a more open, more agile, more
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 2: adaptable brain. It's a stronger brain in some sense. But
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 2: you only get that by effectively putting yourself in complexity.
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 2: But initially, when you do that, it's like lifting a weight.
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 2: It's like, wow, this is more complex than I had before.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: Now I've gone from ten kilos to fifteen kilos. But
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 2: now I can live in that complexity and I'm figuring
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 2: it out. Okay, now let's increase. Now I'm going to
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 2: twenty kilos. I am more complex. And each time you
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 2: do that, your brain is becoming more complex itself. And
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: the reason is because the amount of energy required for
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 2: your brain is massive relative to in your muscles. So
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 2: at one statistic is twenty percent of the energy we
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 2: consume goes to two percent of our body mass, which
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: is your brain. So thinking is really expensive, which is
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 2: again why I say so few people do it because
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 2: it truly costs energy to think, and it literally costs
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 2: even more energy to think differently, because you're literally growing
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: brain cells, you're growing connectivity, you're growing tissue. Right, and
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: during evolution, spending energy was a bad idea, right, I mean,
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 2: how many how many chips do you see going out
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 2: on a jog for the sake, right, I mean, like,
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 2: come on, we're eating lettuce here, you're going for runs.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 2: I mean, what a stupid what you know, Charlie was
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 2: great shape, but you know, so he's dying of exhaustion
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 2: because you know he can't he can't take in enough
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 2: calories to support his lifestyle here. Yeah, which is why
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: you go to Safari. If the cheetah, if she doesn't
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 2: catch her prey by the fifth go, she's dead. So
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: she's going to consider her energy and tell she has
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 2: that sense. So we evolved effectively to be sort of
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 2: like couch potato, Facebook, watching McDonald's eaters right, kind of
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: our peak, right, because we're massively conserving energy, we're taking
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 2: them in as many calories as possible, and we're doing
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 2: sort of social but it isn't social, right, And so
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 2: each of these industries like Facebook sort of triggers on
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 2: sort of the our need for social and McDonald's on
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 2: our need for fats and sugars and you know, and
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 2: the television our need to sit still. Energy is hard,
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 2: and so thinking is hard takes energy.
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: So it's funny because when you said that, this is
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: what's sprung to mind. This is not a word of
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: a lie. Last week outside my gym, not I don't
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: own it, but the gym I try that. They had
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: like an a frame board and it said making said
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: the excuses don't burn calories, and I went in and
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: corrected them. I went, it depends on the excuses. But
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: like sometimes coming up with a great excuse, it's there's
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: quite a cost.
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 2: Well, but that's actually a long term cost. But what's
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 2: interesting is actually we get a trin we get an
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 2: intrinsic we get a reward from procrastination.
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: Why because we conserve energy. So we wounded for that
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: conservation of energy. Yeah. So so it's really difficult to
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 2: to uh uh, you know, to that's you know, one
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 2: of the one of the biggest challenges, you know, of
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: all this conversation. And let's hope that some of it,
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: you know, maybe a piece or two of it. It
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: was at least from Mina said, you know, everything that
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 2: you said is deeply but you know, from my straight
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 2: let's you know, maybe they takes something away, but unless
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: they actually want to, no one's going to do anything.
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 2: So you can have all the gym, you can do
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 2: the training, all this information, But the fundamental point is
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 2: you have to want to, because if you don't want to,
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: you're not going to apply it.
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: I think there's another part to it, and my part too,
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: is it because I've been talking to people who want
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: to get in shape for forty years literally, and people
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: who want to change their body, habits, behaviors, outcomes, look, feel, function, performance, diet,
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: blah blah blah, right, and even athletes that I work with,
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: I go don't. I don't care so much what you
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: do when people are watching you, when you've got, you know,
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: a round of applause, or you're motivated. I care what
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: you do when you can't be fucked and you don't
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: want to do it, and it's not fun, it's not quick,
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: it's not sexy, it's not painless. I care what you
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: do then, because like everybody's a champion when they're motivated,
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: when you're in the zone, everyone's a champion. But I
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: believe the make or break is what you can do
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: when you really don't want to do it, while knowing
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: that you need to do it to create that outcome.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, I couldn't agree with you more. I have three gremlins.
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 2: There are twenty twenty two and twenty three beautiful people.
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 2: And I said to them that you will when things
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 2: are When things are easy, you actually don't have much choics.
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 2: You don't have much freedom when things are when things
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 2: are happy, what are you gonna do. You're gonna keep
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 2: doing what you did before. There's really no choice there, right,
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: unless you're a nihilist. When you actually have choices when
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: things are hard, that's actually where freedom lives. Yes, Because
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 2: when things are hard, you can do reflexively what you've
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 2: done before. Yes, And those might be a good idea, right,
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 2: it might be a good idea to go to anger
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 2: or something like that. But you can also not do
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 2: what's obvious. You can also look away from the obvious.
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 2: You can also do something different, right, And when you
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 2: that's when you actually both reveal yourself and you create yourself.
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 2: So you're revealing your past and you're creating your future
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 2: in that moment. And you don't do that when things
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 2: are lovely. Anyone could do that, right, You don't have
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 2: to be you don't have to do all that clever
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 2: and strong and all that to do. You know who
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 2: can't do that?
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 2: Right? Yeah? But do what that said, Joy itself can
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 2: be hard. That also can be a practice and a
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: training because we can also become train ourselves to be cynical,
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 2: because cynical is easy. Yeah, you can't stand the pseudo
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 2: intellectualism right finding out what's wrong with something? Who can't
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 2: do that. There's a million reasons why something won't work,
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 2: but we present it if it's somehow intelligent. It's not
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 2: finding out why something will work or teaking the possibility
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 2: of something might work. Like starting your company. You know
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: that was a risk. I'm not interested in confidence. I'm
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 2: interested in courage that require courage doing it knowing that
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 2: it might fail.
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: You know what's an interesting motivator Speaking of starting like,
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: I had a really significant awareness by the time I
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: was twenty one or two bo that I didn't want
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: to work for anyone. And it wasn't because I was lazy,
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: and it wasn't because I was a rebel. I just didn't.
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: I thought, like I used to watch my dad and
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: some of his friends and some older people which really
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: went old but to me old, and I thought, I
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: can't do that, like I don't want to like I
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: want to work with people. But and so for me,
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: starting my company was more about becoming aware of what
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: I didn't want than I did. Like it was what
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: I was moving away from, which is sitting in a cubicle,
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: working in an office, wearing a suit and tie, belonging
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: to a group I didn't really want to belong to. Like,
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: So for me, that was the motivation was is recognizing
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: clearly what I didn't want. Yeah, that's a moving moving
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: away from it.
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and and and in some maybe that's kind of
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 2: life in a in a really beautiful way, which is
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 2: maybe we have much more control in what we move
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 2: away from and not so much control over what we're
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 2: moving towards.
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 2: I'm not a big believer in goals, at least I'm
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 2: not a believer in achieving goals. Yeah, I'm a believer
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 2: in setting or sure, but there should be reasons for
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 2: getting out of bed. Yeah, because if you've achieved your goal,
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 2: you've probably missed so much along the way. What's more,
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 2: you define yourself in terms of the goal, Well, that
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 2: goal is fleeting. Even if you achieved, it's like, Okay,
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 2: I got it, that lasted a second yea, But I
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 2: might have destroyed people along the way. I may have
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 2: destroyed my relationships along the way? Am I destroyed my
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 2: health along the way. It's like, great, you achieved your goal, brilliant,
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 2: well done, but you're living a pretty miserable life. Yeah again,
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 2: thinking about identity and goals, why don't we set our
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 2: goals are going to the verbs and the process about
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 2: how I'm going to achieve it, not simply that I'm
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 2: achieving it, right.
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: And you know the interesting thing also that's interesting, But
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: another interesting thing is so many people have this idea
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: of so I talk about external world, internal world scene unseen,
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: so situation, circumstance, environment, government, weather, money, job, car, house,
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: physical body, and then the internal world thought, feelings, emotions, ideas, creativity, pain, pleasure,
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: all that right, and all of the goals or most
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: of the goals that we normal people set, all about
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: the external world. It's about my house, it's about my income,
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: it's about it's about my academic this or that. It's
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: about you know, writing a book. And none of these
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: things are bad, by the way, but often when we
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: get there, like I've worked with so many people who
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: wanted to achieve a certain look or weight or size
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: or whatever, thousands and we got there. They got there,
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: and then they get there. And you know how many
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: people are truly satisfied, hardly any Yeah, it's wherever they are,
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: it's not where they want to be. Whatever they own
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: or have, it's not enough. Whatever their weight, it's not
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: the right weight, whatever their strength, whatever they're it's not
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: It's like I feel like and this is maybe another podcast,
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: but we try and resolve internal things with external solutions.
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 2: The proxies, the proxies for something else. So often when
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 2: people are working, even on seals, they're just looking in
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 2: the wrong places. They feel like they're looking, they're looking
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 2: around where they're should look. Because if they're really to
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 2: look in the right place, they would have to start
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 2: admitting certain things. They'd have to become aware of certain things.
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 2: Once you have that awareness, you're a bit screwed right
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 2: with the Once you have awareness, it's like shit, now
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 2: do I do well? There are only a couple of options.
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 2: You either do something right, you actively ignore it, or
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 2: you blame it.
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 2: And so often people will go to ignore or blame
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 2: as opposed to actually doing because if I'm actually going
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 2: to do something about it, which to me, I'm not
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 2: in you know, I'm not so interested in words. You know,
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 2: people say I love you or whatever, it's like, Okay,
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 2: you know some of the worst things have done in
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 2: the in with that name or that word in mind,
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 2: It's like, but what did you do? What was your action?
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 2: Because it's that action that reveals truth. Yes, right, because
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 2: we all kind of know what we're supposed to say. Yeah,
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 2: but from you for your brain, if you don't have
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 2: that alignment between intentions, words and actions, you then start
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 2: feeling stressed. So when we were talking about self honesty
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 2: before and that that center of your brain that's feeling
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 2: that guilt, we kind of know when that's not of alignment.
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 2: And then when it's out of alignment, rather than take
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 2: ownership responsibility, it's like, well that was that's kind of
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 2: you know, it was less his.
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: Fault, right, But I mean it normally do you know what?
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: Do you know how much hate I get? Because everyone
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: literally loves Melissa way more than me, which is HERU. Hey, mate,
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: we're going to wind up, and I so love talking
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: to you, and I would love it. I know you're busy,
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: but gee, I'd love to have you back again in
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: a month or three. But how do people how do
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: people find you connect with you? By what's your what's
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: your latest book called latest?
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 2: First called Deviate.
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: You know when I first read it, I thought it
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: said deviate deviant.
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 2: Well, it's kind of that's kind of its point because
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 2: people to deviate. I think everyone everyone's a misfit. Yeah,
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 2: deate is really just to be oneself. Yeah right, we're
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 2: all feeling misfits. The question is whether or not you
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 2: embrace it. The question is what's a reference point for
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 2: your next step? Is it everybody else? I'm not a
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 2: real believer in rebels because rebels are just as in
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 2: reference to people who are conformists. It's just they're moving
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 2: in the opposite direction. They're still making reference to everybody else.
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 2: Right where, it's a misfits like I don't know where
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 2: I'm going, but I'm going to take a step here
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 2: because it feels right, and I know where everybody else is,
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 2: but I think I need to go this way, and
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 2: things like that, and they're figuring it out and then
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 2: they look up and they think no one's around me.
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: So there's all loneliness with misfits, which is why we
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 2: have the Lab of Misfits. So then you can create
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 2: a community of misfits, like, oh okay, right, we're all
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 2: in different places, but we're all kind of in the
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 2: different places together.
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: So the problem is, once you get a room full
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: of widows, there are not widos anymore.
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 2: Well, I s that maybe I actually have to think
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 2: about that one.
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I want you to get a room full of misfits.
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: Nobody's a misfit a misfit.
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well maybe that's not a bad idea. But isn't
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 2: that What isn't that where every room is in fact
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 2: people acknowledge it or not, but the so where they
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 2: can find So there's the Lab of Misfits website, which
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 2: is Labmisfits dot com. The relevance there is that people
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 2: can go to blogs, adventure blogs, things about perception. The
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 2: whole website set up to expand people's perception. They can
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 2: take part in experiments and things. The other places are
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 2: are Instagram. So there's a personal Instagram which is my
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 2: name Boloto, and then there's a Lab of Misfits Instagram.
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: Do you do a podcast yourself?
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 2: I do, so I do a blog and then I've
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 2: been turning that into a podcast and now we're going
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 2: to start doing conversations and the conversations are about expanding perception.
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: You listen to May telling you what you should do.
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: Ignore me, but I would. I can't guarantee, but I
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: could almost guarantee that if you did a plug cast,
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: it would do very very well, very well.
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 2: Oh thank you. Well, there's one out there, but it's
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 2: mainly just me monologuing. But I think it'd be very
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 2: interesting to have. I mean, I love having conversations. I
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 2: find everybody. I find everyone has an interesting, important story,
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 2: and I love meeting people for the very first time
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 2: influence of business, meaning without doing any checks on them.
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah right, because I am I'm aware of as many
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 2: biases as anyone else, any assumption as well, So I
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 2: want to try to and meet someone without all those
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 2: bias assumptions like okay, who are you right now? And
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 2: so do very little research on it. So I find
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 2: that interesting and.
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: I always but I do the sign but it's driven
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: by laziness.
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 2: Or I just have a really good justification for my laziness.
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 2: That's also possible.
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: No, I think yours is true curiosity. Let's say goodbye,
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: but stay there and we'll say goodbye off here, but
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: let's do our official goodbye by lot. I thank you
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: so much much for coming on the new project. We
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: love chatting to you, and I'm going to keep I'm
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: going to get your book, I'm going to read it,
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: and I'm going to follow you, and if I'm going
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: to be honest, I'm probably going to stalk you.
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 2: So You're welcome, wonderful. I'm looking forward to it.
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: I'll just for a long, creepy relationship. Melissa. Do we
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: get a tip of approval?
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 2: That was brilliant. Thank you so much for your time.
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 2: I know our listeners are going to love this episode,
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 2: so thank you so much.
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: Thanks mate, stay there well say goodbye. Thanks everyone. So
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: yea