Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / Why Smart People Make Dumb Choices

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Why Smart People Make Dumb Choices · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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  Get A Humans Welcome to Safe Space for Dangerous Ideas.
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  All of life's biggest decisions tend to be the most uncomfortable ones.
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  Should you have a baby, should you quit your job, should you move to a new country, should
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  you drop acid?
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  Anytime your face with a decision is likely to change who you are, your face with a very
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  unique conundrum.
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  The person who you'll be, the person who will judge whether or not you made the right
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  call or the wrong call, is a future you, but there are different future you than the
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  one who would be evaluating the decision if you've made a different call.
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  So how are we supposed to decide how to lead a good life if we can only ever know what
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  we know right now, but the decisions we're making are going to affect who will be in
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  the future.
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  Laurie Paul is a professor of philosophy and cognitive science at Yale University.
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  She's a world leading expert on the counterfactual analysis of causation and what she calls
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  transformative experiences, by which she means any experience that's big and profound
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  enough in your life that it's likely to kind of change who you are or after you've made
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  it, things like starting a family or moving to a new country or listening in the army
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  when there's a war.
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  She joined me to discuss how we judge whether to become a parent, how your preferences
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  get scrambled by addiction, why atheists and religious people are secretly terrified
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  of each other's epiphanies, what cocclier implants tell us about our identity, artificial
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  intelligence, psychedelics and what it means to make a choice in a state of radical ignorance
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  about the person who you'll be after you've made it.
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  I hope you enjoy as much as I did, the one the only Laurie Paul.
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  I have eight-year-old twins and I was talking to a friend of mine in London who I used to
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  live with in New York City throughout my 20s and she and I were hard-drinking, hard-partying
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  singles and she has decided not to have kids and was asking me whether or not I regret
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  it and it was such an interesting conversation because I no longer drink and I now have
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  kids and I have the mortgage and I was like it's I don't think I can actually I don't
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  think I actually know whether I regret it or not like I like my life but I also know
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  that I like my life because I'm the type of person who's had the experiences over
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  the past eight years of being a father and if I was still freewheeling like you are then
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  maybe I would be happier doing that it's like when my kids were four months old I could
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  definitely say that I did regret it because I hated fathering for one thousand but now
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  I'm under the illusion that I enjoy fathering eight-year-olds and it's a true illusion
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  because I'm now the type of person who enjoys fathering eight-year-olds but I'm not saying
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  that you should be the type of person who regrets not mothering eight-year-olds because
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  you're not that person anymore and then I I sort of was reminded of your work and I thought
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  I should probably actually figure out what's going on there how do we how do we in advance
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  make decisions about things when the act of making the decision is going to turn us into
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  a different person than the one who is trying to evaluate the making of the decision if
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  that makes sense.
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  Right I mean I'm not going to tell you how to make those decisions we can talk about
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  what those decisions involve and why we find ourselves in these in these strange situations
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  and I liked what you said about how are you going to evaluate this right like who are
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  you now and it's not just comparing yourself to a person to your friend who doesn't want
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  to have children but also comparing yourself to who you would have been if you if you
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  hadn't had children right like how are you supposed to how are you even supposed to make
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  that up that comparison.
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  What is the yes and so there's a kind of counterfactual right there's like or there's
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  multiple counterfactuals there's like almost an infinite number of parallel universes in
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  which I'm a person who did or did not have children and that and knowing what that variable
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  does to my life seems totally baffling to me.
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  Yeah so here's I mean the way that I think about this okay let me I just want to back up
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  for a second so so there are a whole bunch of interesting things here but one part of
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  it is that like when you choose or when you just undergo an experience like becoming a parent
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  especially for the first time as opposed to like having a second or a third or fourth child
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  that that can also be interestingly different or especially if you have I assume you didn't
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  have any children before and so boom all of a sudden now you have twins you're more radical
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  and I can also add a wrinkle here Laurie which is that I'm in a relationship with a guy so our
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  process of choosing to have children was a much more conscious and deliberate and expensive thing
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  right it was like we had to really make the decision it wasn't like we could just get knocked
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  up one night and then oh well I guess we're gonna our lives are gonna take it was like yeah
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  we have to know that this is a thing that we're gonna choose to jump into yes but carry on
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  did you have a surrogate just out of interest as we did yeah yeah we got a surrogate who we're still
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  close with yeah all right yeah so there's interesting there are interesting questions even that come
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  up with like somebody who agrees to be a surrogate of course but we can go there if you want okay so
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  but the thing is you undergo this experience and it changes you right and um part of what I
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  think is that you can't even know some of the essential ways in which it's gonna change you until
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  you're actually in it so you can only prepare so much and by undergoing the experience it sort of
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  reworks some of the things that you care about most I would say it probably reworks who you care
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  about most in various ways like um I certainly care in very basic ways more about my children
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  than myself in lots of ways I care about myself but in lots of ways if it really comes down to it
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  I will sacrifice things very happily and willingly I want to sacrifice things from uh for the sake of
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  my children that I can honestly say I never really wanted to give up for it pretty much anyone
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  else maybe I would have still given them up but I didn't want to give it up it's it's really strange
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  like what so like what like what like career um uh I don't know opportunities um money
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  I'm really just finding money actually sometimes that money depends on how much we're talking about
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  but like really quite significant opportunities um even my life okay so um if I had to if someone
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  came in with a gun and held it like and I was there with my daughter um and I had to choose
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  I would take the bullet yeah of course and I would do that yeah you know well yeah of course right
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  yeah but if it was somebody else I might at least have to think about it and I'm not it would
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  take an absolute break anyone else an actor yeah exactly if it's me you let me get shot yeah if it's
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  your daughter not a chance not a chance and so um so that changes who matters most basically that's
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  what happened I mean there's this kind of fundamental kind of uh I think of it as a kind of I don't
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  self-preservation sort of preference that we have that seems to shift with um when we attach to
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  to our babies and um this changes I think like the kind of person that we take ourselves to be
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  sometimes right at least it changed you but Laurie in some ways that's a known unknown isn't it
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  like that's uh if if I'd asked you before you had kids what are some of the ways in which your
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  life is likely to change then among that set of answers would likely have been I guess I'm going
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  to care about my kids more than I even care about me which will be a first you know I've never cared
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  about another person more than I care about my own interests but based on all of the data based
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  on everything that you talk to other parents about you would know that that's going to be a phenomenon
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  that exists in your life post yeah parenting yeah but knowing that by description knowing that
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  in this kind of generic sense is completely different from living it so you know someone can tell
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  you if you've ever been um I really like visiting Japan if you've if you've if you've never been
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  to Japan then you really have to go because all the descriptions you can watch
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  zero dreams of sushi one of my favorite kind of cult uh cult classics yeah films or you can watch
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  documentaries or whatever and that's going to give you some sense you like you know okay maybe
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  I'm gonna have some sense of like what it's like to visit Japan but until I actually go there
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  and I'm actually in uh in Kyoto or in Tokyo there's something really really essential that I can't
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  know so there are some things you just have to live to know what they're like and that's what I
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  was that's what I said so I said earlier right the it's a really important a really important element
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  of how I think about these things is that you're embarking on this new kind of experience so
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  it's like the examples I use like seeing red for the first time or falling in love for the first time
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  like these are very distinctive kinds of experiences that descriptions just aren't kind of capture
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  just remind us of what you mean when you say something like seeing red for the first time you're talking
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  about the Mary's room like yeah yeah so the philosophical example and this comes from Frank Jackson
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  a good Australian um who uh uh dreamed up an example he was trying to show something a little
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  different from what I'm trying to show in his example um we have a woman who grows up in this
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  black and white space and I guess like her skin is painted black or skin is painted better so she
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  never sees any color but she knows all the science um and her friends can tell her like what what
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  I mean I don't know I can describe you're wearing a red shirt I can try to describe just someone
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  who's never seen probably what it's like to see red I probably wouldn't get very far but I could
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  try you know oh I don't know it's like warm water or something like that um so she knows all the
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  science she knows what everyone can tell her but until she actually leaves her black and white
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  space and sees red for herself she doesn't know what it's like to see red she can't know because
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  language and descriptions sometimes just aren't enough to kind of uh communicate everything like
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  all of the information okay um and that kind of example I mean Jackson was using it to try to make
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  a point about consciousness and I want to use that kind of example for a different a different point
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  just to show that you know the way that um we work is human perceivers is that we analogize like
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  if I have seen other colors and maybe I know I can say well okay red is kind of what happens when
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  you um you know when you take the blue out of the purple or something like that and if I have some
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  experience then maybe I can get somewhere with that description still not very good but um but
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  if I have it if it's an entirely new kind of experience then there's a sense in which I have to
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  have that experience to really kind of understand the nature and quality in carrying that experience
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  yeah and the point yes and so the point is that if Mary only knows the scientific and academic
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  difference between blue and red and you ask her whether or not she wants to I don't know what her
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  favorite color is or whether she wants her house to be painted blue or red or whatever then
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  in your model of using this as an allegory for a transformational experience rather than the original
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  one where maybe we were talking about qualia and the like the experience of being alive
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  you're saying that up that post exiting the room the chooser is actually a different person
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  in the sense that they're evaluating a different set of things due to the due to the way that the
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  experience of experiencing them has changed them I would say they are epistemically different
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  so with Mary I mean she just learned what it's like to see red I mean maybe that change
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  her as a person but I you know I wasn't gonna I wasn't gonna fratid that heavily but it would
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  be like a massive acid trip to walk out into the world and suddenly see colors for the first time
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  it's pretty radical yeah and so a lot of people might say actually in fact they are like a new
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  kind of person okay I mean they saw the same version to be over but like they understand the world
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  in a different way yeah or take a real life example somebody you grew up blind and then
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  has a retina operation or somebody you grew up deaf and then has gets cochlear implants
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  or take it the other way somebody who has a terrible accident and becomes quadriplegic
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  they are gonna experience the world in a really different way and it's gonna change what they
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  care about it's gonna change how they think of themselves it's gonna change how they interact
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  with people these kinds of like kind of major life experiences of the ones I'm interested in
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  yeah and I think they're really interestingly different like it's not like I can know what
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  is like to be quadriplegic by I don't know sitting in a wheelchair for a while or something I
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  thought that's just not gonna not gonna do it there are interesting wrinkles here in the sense
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  that a person who you know I remember being in elementary school and a person in a quadriplegic
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  in a I think it was a paraplegic in a wheelchair came to talk to us about road safety because he'd
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  been crossing the road you know there'd been a green walk person but he didn't look both ways
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  and someone took him out and he had gotten enormous meaning his life was a mess prior to that
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  and he'd gotten enormous meaning from you know using his life as a way to teach young people about
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  road safety and on balance it was in some respects an enriching and life affirming thing that
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  had happened to him although no one in like an objective state of preference choosing should
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  there be such a thing would say that it's objectively better to not have functioning legs than to
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  have legs that work is that exactly yeah so how does that work anyone you mentioned cockly
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  implants which is even more divisive because there are some people in the deaf community who are like
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  you know stop trying to fix our way of experiencing the world we don't need sound we have a fully
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  you know flourishing lived experience without hearing things don't treat us like we're a subhuman
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  and take that away but then on the other side of the hearing you're no longer the kind of person
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  who necessarily values you know being deaf because now you're not anymore here's the way that I
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  I think about some of these cases and part of what there are two kinds of like I think strange
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  questions that can come up around these cases of disability where somebody you know other has
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  an accident or maybe they're born with a congenital condition or something like that and on the
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  one hand people often after a certain period of time if they have an accident they will return
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  to some kind of dispositional set points so they even though for example no I would not want to
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  become paraplegic if I did become paraplegic with some luck any with I was lucky after maybe
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  six months or two years I might kind of return to my kind of dispositional state right like maybe
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  and say that yeah I'm still living a life with the same one happiness and satisfaction I had before
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  that doesn't mean it wouldn't be terrible but that to happen I would think that would be terrible
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  that's often and then there's even a further thing which you just described which is that the
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  the kind of that it opens up basically having this kind of experience which changes people or
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  opens up a whole new space for them can sometimes then have good effects right depending on how
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  they respond to it and how they change the way that they live their life it doesn't mean the fact
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  that can happen does not mean that we should all go out and kind of create disabilities in ourselves
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  right and that's because there's a big difference between the process that gets you into this
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  state where you learn something new and the I think just general value of learning something that's
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  radically new there are I want to separate those two and I think that's part of what we're picking up
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  on when you're talking about this particular person's example we could talk about that some more but
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  I think that's it's complex for that reason yes yeah don't I mean talk about that some more it's
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  reminding me of maybe some kind of a distinction between what I would want to want
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  happen to me from some kind of elevated meta perch and the way that I can derive richness or
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  meaning from what actually does happen to me in a contingent way I mean so what I would say about
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  that is part of my view is that what's interesting about some of these experiences is that you can't
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  actually take that elevated meta perch like it's if so let's go back to go back to being
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  becoming a parent or we could talk about let's talk about parenting it's like obviously relevant
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  to everybody yeah yeah yeah and so one of the things that I think is that because we're talking
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  about having a new kind of experience so it's going to change you epistemologically it's going to
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  change what you know and how you think about things um there's a sense in which you can't take
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  that meta perch you can know that you're going to be changed imagine actually compare it to like
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  experiencing dementia okay so that's easier to see it's like I if I imagine so let's say I'm
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  diagnosed I'm going to come back to the parenting and so that's the way I'm diagnosed with early
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  onset Alzheimer's so I know in three to five years I'm going to have radical cognitive decay I can
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  know that and people can tell me all kinds of things about what that you know what to expect
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  on the other hand there's obviously a way which I can't know like what it's going to be like to
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  experience and live my life with with dementia right because the very like nature of my reasoning
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  processes is going to change so there's no meta agent that has like that mental capacity that stretches
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  across both the early version of lary and the later version of lary you with me absolutely so
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  yeah yeah so those cases I think are are suppression that kind of brings out though um part of what
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  I think happens even in the parenting case okay so not to say that we're cognitively
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  demented after becoming a parent although that one could make the case I mean I certainly
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  was certainly for a while yeah lots less sleep right so um but it's not just it's not um doesn't
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  require cognitive decay or dementia it just requires a real shift in the way that you make sense
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  of the world yeah yeah you could compare it even to like Copernicus okay this we're now talking
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  about the chat like I'm actually talking about some things I've talked about in the first chapter of
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  this book that I'm working on because I'm explaining the kind of trans transformation in in in
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  thinking as being at the root of some of these interesting puzzles so Copernicus right had a
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  theory about um what we saw in the heavens and it pushed against the teleneic theory because
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  the old view was that the sun revolved around the earth and that seemed to kind of explain things
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  right the sun comes up in the east and it goes down the west like perfect but there were some you
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  know um and now a not anomalies in um in trying to kind of figure out how the stars and everything
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  else were uh kind of moving around the earth and then Copernicus had this insight and realized
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  no it's actually the earth revolves around the sun and so he took a different conceptual framework
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  and applied it to this information and it and as soon as he applied it um to what we were seeing
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  we were able to draw radically different consequences right it really changed like um the way that we
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  thought like was no human civilization was no longer at the center of the universe right I mean
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  the raw kinds of interesting implications right so what I want to say is in a certain sense
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  becoming apparent is like having this kind of massive conceptual revolution and how you think of
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  of of yourself in the world right like no longer does everything rotate around you um I said
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  everything rotates around that baby um including you and um and you and you think differently
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  so going back to before because you think differently and you kind of basically are embedded
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  in the world in an entirely different way or a very fundamentally different way there's a sense
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  in which there is no meta agent yes that's right problem yeah and I mean it felt it feels like
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  part of this is just a logical extension of what it means to be a living organism that evolves and
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  grows old and changes in the sense that you know part of what I was getting out in my uh conversation
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  with my former New York uh roommate that I was articulating earlier was that like you know
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  right after the baby is born you're still the same person but there's a fork in the road and the
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  paths diverge and with the slight change in the in the tack of the of the sailboat to mix metaphors
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  you end up over time becoming a sufficiently different person that the comparisons are truly
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  incommensurate because after eight years of being a father I really am not at all remotely the person
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  that I would be after eight years of not that's right that's right and you know so that's right
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  transformative change can happen very very slick it can happen very slowly I bet your friend is
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  also not the same person like she might enjoy her life also took a fork in the road in the moment
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  that my children were born because her non-existent children were not born at that instant too that's
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  right that's right and I'm sure other things changed very slowly as well and so I do think that
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  just aging or maturing because you know or whatever like growing up from you know 10 to
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  sort of 50 involves like a ton of change and so if you compare like when I was 10 years old
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  I could definitely not get into my 50 year old head and I know my 50 year old head old head cannot
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  get back into my 10 year old head so you see this kind of thing even like stretched out over a long
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  period of slow change but I also think you see it you see this a very kind of intense kind of
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  punctuated change with these big life decisions yes that's why I think they're especially
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  interesting is this what's a midlife crisis then is it is it an accretion of small changes that
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  then erupt into a spontaneous big change I don't know if you've ever thought about this but you're
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  just making me think of it now in the sense that the branching off of life options is what one
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  has to reconcile oneself to at particular points in life when you realize that the tree of opportunity
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  with all of its different branches going in different directions in your future is somewhat more
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  curtailed than it was when you started you know making your life choices and like a friend of mine
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  another friend of mine in New York asked me do I miss living in New York where I spent you know
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  more than a decade and I said yeah I really do you know I miss it and she said what do you miss
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  about I was like I miss you know I'm getting a text message from a friend at 10 pm and going out
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  and there being a hundred and fifty different bars that we could go to and staggering home at four
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  in the morning and you know that just the amount of you know eating at some greasy Chinese diner
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  in Chinatown at you know three in the morning and she was giving me she said you don't miss New York
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  you miss not being father and having a job you miss being in your 20s whatever yeah and I was
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  like yes she's absolutely right I miss being 26 in New York City that doesn't mean that New York
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  would be a better place for me to be now at this stage in my life and once you realize that you're
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  like yeah we're all kind of constantly on these these forks of experience that are changing us
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  and maybe at some point even in the absence of a transformative experience life catches up to
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  us and we suddenly side swiped and we go oh shit here I am and we have some kind of a psychological
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  crisis I don't know whether that model fits um yeah I mean I guess I think of a midlife crisis rate
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  is like kind of stepping back and that's when you do take the metacognitive perspective and
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  and step back and say well who am I now and how you know how do my how how did my goals and my
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  how how are my deals or whatever the representations I have of myself how does that all line up with
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  who I actually am and what opportunities I still have available to me basically and you know I I
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  I don't know okay so maybe it's the opposite of a transformative experience in the sense that it
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  does it is an opportunity to try to get as close as we can to some kind of a meta evaluation of
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  your life and to make conscious choices um rather than ones that are trapped in the contingency
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  of the now well yeah well I mean one thing and this is related to the midlife thing it's like
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  I do think that when you do have a transformative experience of my category which again it's like
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  becoming apparently going to war whatever moving to another country like just moving not just
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  visiting but like moving and setting up shot there um that um especially if it happens quickly
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  when it happens slowly it might be a little bit different but when you like at least I had this
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  experience some of you should know if you had this experience that you know this new this new thing
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  kind of rushes in on you and it's pretty intense because you have to do some psychological rebuilding
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  and I describe the one of the effects as involving a kind of revelation and I use that word
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  intentionally like it's not religious but I think um religious revelations like one kind of
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  revelation um where you suddenly discover basically like a new way to be and it's super interesting
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  um and I do think that if someone has a midlife crisis and then they get divorced or whatever
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  go off and quit their job or whatever it is they know that they make they decide I'm
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  going to shake things up I'm going to like radically change out my life that they are often
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  going to transform themselves in some sense and they will probably get some kind of revelation
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  that they will learn something new um about themselves they'll have the experience of reconstructing
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  themselves it might be bad and not making any promises about being good but um but it will probably
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  be interesting yes absolutely and clearly the easiest way of doing that is to move to a different
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  country in a different city yes totally revelatory to you know especially to a city like New York when
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  you're in your 20s fabulous best time of your life uh what's not to love um and so just coming back
• 26:37
  yeah parenting and the transformational experience I mean one of the other analogies that you've
• 26:41
  used in the past in addition to the Copernicus one that you're using in your upcoming book is
• 26:45
  this idea of like if you if you had the option to become a vampire and the only way that you could
• 26:50
  choose whether or not it's a good idea to gain eternal life you know from being a vampire was to ask
• 26:56
  other people who have become vampires whether they like it and they're all like it's fabulous
• 27:01
  what credence should you give to the people who've become vampires and to their perspective
• 27:07
  on the world because maybe it's just part of becoming a vampire that sort of hoodwinks you into
• 27:12
  liking being a vampire but the you the pre vampire human you should not pay attention to that or should
• 27:21
  you right so this goes back to what I was saying about how um the experience kind of reconstruct
• 27:28
  like reworks you reconstructs you reconstructs the way that you think right so you know let's say
• 27:33
  you asked these vampires hey you know well how is it for you should I do it and they all tell you
• 27:38
  that it's like amazing okay so and let's say it's right it's amazing for them and here's the decision
• 27:44
  kind of theory problem and that is that you're supposed to act in accordance like with your
• 27:49
  preferences like with who you are like most in some sense it is a big life choice like who you are
• 27:53
  most fundamentally like in alignment with your values and if your values are not those of a vampire
• 28:00
  then the fact that vampires are happy with who they are does not mean that you should become a
• 28:06
  vampire at least not on this kind of ordinary way of thinking about things unless you just want to
• 28:10
  change who you are I mean if you're having a little life crisis and you hate who you are well then
• 28:14
  maybe you should go for it but if the thought is instead that you want to see well you know is
• 28:18
  becoming a vampire going to kind of satisfy something deep about myself as I am like you know
• 28:24
  that I care about now as I make the decision then that testimony from vampires is like not relevant
• 28:29
  to you and that's strange but but I still think the parenting case helps because take somebody who
• 28:37
  doesn't want to become a father who shutters at the thought of having twins but his partner is cis
• 28:48
  or also maybe you had planned for one but then there were two and obviously if you have two then
• 28:54
  you're going to keep you want to keep both so you end up in this situation and then you have the
• 29:00
  children and you engage with them and and attach to them and all of a sudden you become a vampire
• 29:08
  you're the happiest happiest person in the world the same kind of what were you in your pre vampire
• 29:16
  state thinking about having children like obviously as a heady philosophical professorial person
• 29:23
  who analyzes all of this stuff like what did it mean for your heart in the decision making process
• 29:28
  to become a mother yes so okay so now you see why I wrote others all very personal because first
• 29:35
  I wasn't sure if I wanted to have kids but but my partner at the time who's my first husband
• 29:42
  wanted to have kids and I was I mean I was ambivalent I thought well you know and I I really believed
• 29:48
  you know all of this oh you know maybe it will be something it's it's a fundamental part of
• 29:55
  human existence I still actually believe that not that everyone has to do it but that it's one
• 30:01
  really strange way to live your life I thought it would have value but I was also very concerned about
• 30:08
  I love doing philosophy I want to spend all my time doing philosophy I'm kind of a nerd
• 30:13
  I'm thinking about things and I really didn't want to distract myself from
• 30:17
  the path that I had chosen especially because I thought very hard to do what I wanted to my parents
• 30:22
  were not six like supportive of my going into philosophy I didn't do it have any philosophy
• 30:26
  background so I went I had this sort of torturous path to get into grad school
• 30:32
  and to you know to find to get myself into the position that I was in and then all of a sudden it's
• 30:38
  like oh why don't you let let's have a kid I'm like whoa you know is this what I want so I
• 30:44
  read up on it thought about it very hard decided to do we decided to do it and then I had my
• 30:52
  first child which by the way my first child was had in Australia I had her in Canberra and so I was
• 30:59
  visiting the Australian National University at the time and after about four I mean the first four
• 31:06
  months I was sort of like barely coherent but then after I was able to kind of at least get a
• 31:10
  little bit more sleep I realized that this was like this incredibly interesting experience like this
• 31:17
  was like something I both that I had not been able to to predict with even with all the
• 31:23
  discussion and anecdotes and in like a scientific exploration I read lots and lots of regular books
• 31:30
  like what you can't expect when you're what what to expect when you're expecting which is a book I
• 31:33
  hate because it's a lie to me you wrote a you wrote a piss take of a title against that didn't you?
• 31:40
  I was in Australia I found much better baby books bitch basically where like took definitely
• 31:45
  took piss takes on the horror of being pregnant because I was miserable whole time right but
• 31:51
  and I was like wait a minute there there there are all these incredibly interesting features
• 31:55
  of this experience and their relevant to decision theory and their relevant to how we think
• 32:00
  about epistemology and actually I think there's a whole bunch of metaphysics there but nobody
• 32:03
  talks about them what's the metaphysics oh well the metaphysics is about this stuff about like what I
• 32:10
  was saying about how we're this a different kind of person but still the same person so the way I
• 32:18
  would think about it is we okay we live our lives from brick to the I think about I think of
• 32:25
  of this as being basically we live our lives as space-time worms so there's um you asked
• 32:32
  so so think about like I thought it would take longer than like about 15 words to get from my
• 32:38
  question what is the metaphysics to the phrase space-time worms yeah yeah yeah why do you
• 32:44
  hate to leave so quickly so think about this way so here's a temple stage of me okay there's
• 32:50
  another temple stage right there's Lauren is dotting around there's something like a space-time worm
• 32:54
  but yeah that's yeah each temporal state there's a each instant is a temple stage of me
• 33:00
  and then you fuse them all together from birth to death and you get this four-dimensional entity
• 33:04
  right me at every three-dimensional uh uh location I'm at spatial location plus the times that's
• 33:11
  the fourth dimension so add them all together and you get this worm um and um basically I think
• 33:18
  this worm is composed of a bunch of different um selves which are kind of segments of the worm
• 33:24
  they're temporarily extended right they're like stick some of those temporal stages together
• 33:27
  and you get a self and as long as there's enough kind of continuity in who I am and what I care
• 33:31
  about and the way that my brain works there's the oneself but then radically change things and you
• 33:38
  replace the old self with the new self and I think that's and I actually just think that that's
• 33:44
  how we live our lives is these kinds of like segments basically like one self and another one
• 33:48
  another one um and then sometimes but it's also really interesting is that we can't kind of
• 33:55
  uh see our way back to our past the way that you were describing like I actually could not
• 34:00
  I lived in Chicago for a while when I was um in my 20s and I I love that time as well and I
• 34:07
  can't really see back into my old mind or never mind when I was 10 so there are these walls
• 34:13
  between the cells um and so even though I think of myself I think I have a grasp on my life and how
• 34:19
  I've lived my life and who I am there's some stuff that's just like totally impenetrable to me
• 34:23
  and if anybody should know what I was like when I was 26 like from the inside it should be me
• 34:29
  and I can't know it and you're saying that it's not impenetrable just because of the degradation
• 34:33
  of time and memory it's impenetrable because there are these disjoints these transformational
• 34:39
  experiences that turn you into sort of a different version of yourself on the that's right
• 34:44
  on the worm as you as you sort of bore your way through the the cheese block of time
• 34:50
  those discontinuities are I mean it's interesting because I you know I often argue that the way to
• 34:57
  have a to make life feel longer than it is and richer than it is and full of more experiences is
• 35:05
  if you are faced with an option of undertaking some kind of transformational experience a lot
• 35:10
  I don't use that language you know if you have an option of changing jobs or of moving to a different
• 35:17
  city then you've probably if you're on the fence about it you you're probably already you should
• 35:22
  probably already just do it because you're humans are cautious and you know we don't necessarily
• 35:29
  like uncertainty and so you've probably already banked the downsides and the more of those
• 35:35
  new experience like the the extra payoff that you'll get for one more year of living in the place
• 35:42
  where you are is a diminishing return in comparison to the payoff that you get for a major change
• 35:48
  so that you can have as many sort of chapters in your life as possible as the chapter when I was
• 35:53
  in New York there's the chapter where I was at this kind of job there's a chapter with that kind
• 35:57
  of job there's and so in some ways whether or not the experiences are fully transformational in
• 36:02
  your sort of philosophical sense at least tap dancing through a bunch of different variety is
• 36:08
  likely to give you a life that feels like it was longer than if you were sitting in the same job
• 36:14
  in the same town for 50 years okay so I was that I do agree actually it might feel longer because
• 36:23
  of the variety of experiences and I'm very much and it's a better word because it doesn't feel like
• 36:30
  it doesn't feel long in a each moment doesn't feel long right it feels like more things happened
• 36:37
  it might it might there are there there are some theories that the more variation you have
• 36:43
  the longer the longer it feels like it feels like time moves more slowly if you have more
• 36:49
  variation actually it's if you don't have much change your memories can kind of compress and
• 36:54
  your sense of duration might be affected so actually it might actually be that you feel like you're
• 36:58
  having a longer life but so I and I also agree with you and that my temperament is such that I
• 37:04
  really value new experiences this notion of revelation that I described is super important to me
• 37:09
  and I think people can choose to have transformation just in virtue of wanting to kind of make a
• 37:15
  discovery about like a new way of living and a new kind of living but not everybody is like this
• 37:21
  right it has to do with like your risk temperament and it has to do with that like how you value
• 37:26
  new information some people thrive on a certain kind of stability like and they thrive on a certain
• 37:33
  kind of lack of changing things up so I think dispositions can be quite different and it's pretty
• 37:40
  rational to frame it in terms of not just maximizing exposure to utility and not just kind of
• 37:48
  facing uncertainty but also feeding in while how risk averse are you right how risk tolerance
• 37:55
  are you yes I mean I'll take that and I'll still be sufficiently self aggrandizing to say that
• 38:01
  those people are unfortunate to suffer the impediment of not being adventurous enough to have a
• 38:06
  fully lived life this is an unbiased you know meta perspective of God here that I'm giving you
• 38:15
  Larry unsullied by my own pond shot for you know novelty and change getting back to parenting
• 38:24
  then like like I'm really interested in what you make of the arguments that we hear about whether
• 38:29
  it's a good thing or a bad thing to have kids and how you could evaluate that I mean both at a
• 38:34
  personal level and then also at a global level you're just as likely walking down the street if
• 38:39
  you stop someone to ask whether it's like a good thing or a bad thing to have kids for them to say
• 38:43
  that it's terrible because look at the world and you know there's Trump and climate change and AI
• 38:48
  and so anyone who brings a child into this world is is terrible as an aside my dad said that to
• 38:56
  one of his mentors before he had my brother in the 1970s my older brother and he was saying look
• 39:05
  at the you know there's the you know the Soviets with their nuclear weapons and there's you know
• 39:10
  environmental degradation and the Cold War and everything and my dad was born in a refugee
• 39:17
  camp in Switzerland in 1943 as a Jewish you know kid and his his mentor was like what are you
• 39:23
  talking about like look at the time when you were born the Nazis were still in control of Europe
• 39:29
  and your mother had you anyway like get over yourself and that was what made him finally decide
• 39:33
  to have kids being like ah who knows what's going to happen and thank God he got that advice
• 39:38
  and then you're just as likely to run into somebody who says you know you you got to have kids
• 39:43
  you got to propagate the species like we're facing a demographic collapse and you know an economic
• 39:48
  collapse because of it um you know it's sort of our responsibility to keep civil human civilizations
• 39:54
  going what do you make of just that okay okay there's two there's two questions here one is
• 40:01
  they can have larger implications of people having children or not having children but let me talk
• 40:05
  about the individual case first because when when when you you know you asked someone well look
• 40:11
  should it um is it a good thing or a bad thing to have kids I don't think there's any answer like
• 40:16
  I don't think it's I don't think it's either I don't think it makes sense to say it's good or bad
• 40:20
  at least in terms of like good for me or bad for me all right um and that's because again I think
• 40:27
  you're going to replace the kind of self that you are within yourself um and also that there's this
• 40:32
  kind of like I just don't think one can even kind of compare um who you would have been if you
• 40:41
  hadn't had children with who you are now I don't think there's any there's just no comparison it
• 40:45
  doesn't make sense to try to compare those two things and it's the same for somebody who doesn't
• 40:50
  have children there can be lots of good things about not having children sure there are many good
• 40:54
  things about not having children and I don't think you can compare like the person who never
• 40:58
  has kids with who they would have been if they'd had kids because I mean you can compare like
• 41:03
  characteristics but you can't say one is better than the other right because the values of these
• 41:07
  people are really just different it's like trying to compare so well it's better to be a Muslim
• 41:12
  than it is to be Jewish well I think that's like that's that's not I don't think you that doesn't
• 41:17
  make sense to me like there's you know having a particular faith and I'm not going to say one faith
• 41:23
  is better than the other especially or worse than the other especially as long as it's not like
• 41:26
  something like I guess Satanism might not be one I mean it is interesting that it is interesting
• 41:31
  that your mind goes to faith though because that's also something that you've written about where
• 41:36
  like the that that it is in some ways religious people are terrified of atheists and perhaps
• 41:43
  vice versa because they are afraid of becoming convinced of something that will turn them into
• 41:49
  the type of person who is happy you know it's like I mentioned that I don't drink anymore and
• 41:55
  you know someone I know who stopped drinking for a time and then was like I'm just gonna drink
• 42:01
  this is not an alcoholic I'm talking about and nor was I wouldn't classify myself that way but
• 42:06
  this person said you know I'm going on a trip I'm just gonna have some drinks while I'm over there
• 42:11
  and I my only advice was like be aware that the risk is not that you're gonna come home
• 42:21
  and not be able to stop drinking again the risk is that you're not gonna want to right and in some
• 42:29
  ways you know for the religious person the fear is not that they're gonna be convinced of the
• 42:37
  non-existence of God and regret it's that they're gonna be happy to have the will lifted from
• 42:44
  their eyes and conversely for the atheists the fear is not that they're gonna somehow be you know
• 42:50
  trapped in a prison of belief but that they're gonna delight in the revelation and be a new person
• 42:57
  that's right yeah so so I um wrote this and I I I use as an analogy um the story of Elysses
• 43:07
  and the sirens so um remind us of the detail yeah um so right so um Elysses is a ship captain and
• 43:18
  he wants to hear the song of the sirens the sirens live on an island they have an incredibly
• 43:23
  beautiful song and it also carries all information of things past present and future right you
• 43:29
  sorry sorry sorry by the way are a beautiful cumley scantley clad maidens not and yes of a police
• 43:36
  sirens right yes yeah just in case there are young people listening right there Greek mythology
• 43:44
  and um so but the problem is if you hear the song of the sirens um it'll drive you insane
• 43:51
  and so uh so and in the and and so and this is basically what I think people fear like either if
• 44:00
  they are committed um atheists they don't like they they view what um they would hear like the like
• 44:08
  basically they view like being religious as kind of uh effectively the song of the sirens kind of
• 44:15
  contorting the way that they think about the world um and also I think somebody who's very religious
• 44:20
  with you the sceptica that then the unbeliever has also have it like um as also like you know
• 44:26
  having a contorted or corrupted mind in some sense or you know going back to like talking about
• 44:32
  cognitive decay it's the same kind of thing like a cross a divide where you view the mind of the other
• 44:37
  as corrupt or unable to kind of think about things in the right way and the problem is is that um
• 44:45
  um it's like that's the it's the song it's the experience that corrupts you right and so the fear
• 44:52
  is that by listening to the words of the other somehow that you'll be drawn in and change it'll
• 44:57
  change not just like what what you know but how you know or how you think about things I think
• 45:02
  I think it's I think that's it's a it's a really interesting kind of poignant situation that
• 45:07
  we can find ourselves it reminds me you know dementia is a hard case because it's almost all
• 45:13
  downside but they're uh and it's probably apparent to the person who's at the early stages of it
• 45:19
  that it's pretty much down side whereas the siren example the elixis example it reminds me more
• 45:27
  of something like addiction where it's much more complicated the relationship with the thing and
• 45:35
  when you're I mean you know one of the epiphanies that I had when I was drinking a lot was just
• 45:41
  that you're if you if you're routinely consuming a mind-altering and addictive substance then
• 45:48
  the tool that you use to evaluate how much you enjoy and get value from that substance is impaired
• 45:57
  by its relationship with the substance there's a tool being your brain and so there's all
• 46:02
  kinds of extraneous nonsense that's going on in the way that you cognitively interpret your
• 46:07
  the the value of this thing precisely because you're just habitually using it all the time
• 46:14
  and remind it does make me think that like you you the trap of the addict which anyone who is not
• 46:21
  an addict can see whether they're looking at someone you know puffing desperately on cigarettes
• 46:26
  huddled in the cold you know outside uh to get their fix of nicotine or you know someone injecting
• 46:33
  themselves with I don't know some addictive drug is that the person really believes that there's
• 46:40
  value that's being gotten because from their perspective there is they really is yeah and the
• 46:48
  challenge is to try is to find the transformational experience I suppose that helps them to become
• 46:53
  the person for whom there isn't value well I mean you know some people think that addiction would
• 46:59
  be perfectly rational if there weren't so many societal like negatives so say that you're 85
• 47:05
  and no one depends on you anymore and you're got your comfortable pension what's so wrong with
• 47:10
  like you know living and maybe you have some pain or whatever why not just get addicted to heroin
• 47:15
  and enjoy the rest of your life like what's the what's the problem and um I don't know it's not
• 47:21
  a bad argument I don't think there's anything wrong with that at all I mean that's my plan if I can
• 47:26
  like you know I'm one why wouldn't you but I mean but it's interesting that you say heroin because
• 47:31
  I do sometimes wonder this like I was I was exposed to someone who was obviously I assume
• 47:38
  on heroin um passed out on the street um last year and I did kind of wonder because I'd just
• 47:49
  heard a story of a friend who was who had relapsed onto heroin about whether with something as
• 47:58
  intense in its psychoactive effects as heroin or morphine or related drugs and I don't want this
• 48:06
  to be misunderstood as me like encouraging people to do these drugs because I haven't and wouldn't
• 48:11
  but it is possible that they're making a rational choice in some way that like it is
• 48:19
  conceivable that the experience is so much better than anything that you or I could fathom
• 48:28
  that it's a price worth paying to lead a shortened impoverished life but have those
• 48:36
  that is full of those experiences than to lead a long functional life without them.
• 48:42
  I think someone can make they can make the case for that that's what I think it's important to be
• 48:46
  open-minded in that way and you can think of other kinds of examples say somebody who doesn't
• 48:53
  want to take their meds they're depressed or something like that and they they know that they'll
• 48:57
  be happier if they take the medication but it changes the way that they think and they would
• 49:01
  rather suffer and because they value the particular way that they think rather than take their meds
• 49:06
  I think people make that kind of choice. I think people I think choosing to become a parent
• 49:14
  is choosing actually kind of suffering that you willingly take on because you think there's a
• 49:19
  different kind of meaning or maybe just a so much joy associated along with the suffering that
• 49:26
  it's worth it to you. But you're right that you can't make that call in advance but you have to
• 49:32
  leap off the cliff anyway. I'm interested in your reasons for choosing to become a mother which
• 49:41
  is not dissimilar to mine. I was equally ambivalent. I didn't become a mother you may notice but
• 49:48
  I was equally ambivalent and then I think the two things that made me decide to pursue it were
• 49:56
  sort of akin to what you were saying that it's a fundamental part of being a mammal. It's like
• 50:01
  you know I mean as you say not everyone has to do it but for me if I get to the end of my life
• 50:07
  and I haven't experienced you know the lights go out and I'm never reincarnated and that's it
• 50:13
  and I didn't have the experience of being a parent then I did miss a pretty fundamental jigsaw
• 50:22
  piece of life of what life is about. Yeah and the other thing was just it'll be interesting and
• 50:30
  it'll be just going to be different so it's going to be yeah it's going to be a chapter it's
• 50:34
  going to be one of those chapters on the worm on the wiggling worm of life that's going to be
• 50:39
  differentiated from the others. I mean I guess I think of people who don't who choose not to have
• 50:46
  children if they choose it because I mean sometimes obviously people want to have children
• 50:51
  they can't and that's that's you know that's I think a very painful thing but if they very happily
• 50:58
  choose not to have children it's because there'll be something else that they can do instead
• 51:03
  and so and so there's I think there's a kind of look I chose to do what I tried to do in
• 51:11
  rational way as possible but I don't think that I think I was fooling myself like I didn't know
• 51:17
  what I was choosing I knew it was going to be a new thing and I wanted to find out about it the
• 51:20
  way that you described but it's not like I knew that that would be somehow better than
• 51:25
  yeah moving to another country like moving to Japan and learning Japanese and you know
• 51:30
  attempting to kind of how a new way of of living there. The childless Japan option sounds better
• 51:39
  when you when you when you really think about it like did it does but but you'd be missing out
• 51:44
  yeah exactly I mean the light nights just drinking sake and you know but I mean the but that's
• 51:50
  the thing you put to get you're trying to put together a past each of an existence on the basis
• 51:56
  of what you hope is a reasonable assumption about the way that human biology and psychology
• 52:05
  and civilization and culture and the cosmos conspire to a flourishing life and children
• 52:12
  crop up a lot you know and our art deals a lot with parents and children and siblings and family
• 52:21
  so it just felt like yes there were lots of pieces of of tile that you can use to build the mosaic
• 52:28
  of life but if it's missing that tile then it's an uncommon you know it's a pretty fucking important
• 52:35
  tile it was all I felt yeah yeah I mean yeah I see that's I think that I mean again I think that's
• 52:41
  completely reasonable and I would use words like reasonable and permissible I mean I I had no
• 52:49
  doubt it would be like super interesting and meaningful and it absolutely has been but but I also
• 52:57
  I mean I live I was living in India for a while studying Buddhism and I was thinking about
• 53:03
  these different books I wanted to write and the kind and and whether I wanted to like I
• 53:09
  immerse myself in like different kinds of languages and history to try to figure out what for me
• 53:15
  what I'm like kind of obsessed by with these questions about the like the nature of being and how
• 53:20
  we you know what is the nature of reality and and I had to make a certain kind of trade off there
• 53:26
  and the question is like how do I evaluate so there's this there's this interview that Yo-Yo Ma
• 53:34
  gave to Terry Gross on NPR where she asked him about I'm playing a particular piece that he's
• 53:43
  been playing since he was two years old and he described how now after playing it for whatever
• 53:50
  was 40 years or something like that the years that his like the experience of playing it has
• 53:56
  changed fundamentally he described it as now I feel like I'm touching infinity and it wasn't that
• 54:01
  way when he was younger he had to he had to devote himself to playing the cello in order to kind of
• 54:07
  reach that sort of one might say in light and state right not everyone can reach and so he got
• 54:14
  that I mean I don't know if he has children with that but I'm just saying it felt kind of like I
• 54:18
  was making a choice but I was making a choice between like attempting to kind of reach that state
• 54:24
  of kind of you know expert expertise and purity that can only happen through devoting yourself
• 54:32
  pretty much essentially to that and first it's having this other experience and if I could really
• 54:38
  know what touching infinity was like and what and compare it to what it would be like to be a
• 54:43
  parent before doing either of those things well then maybe I could make a rational choice but I don't
• 54:47
  think I could know either of those things yeah so the choice just work that way so you don't regret
• 54:52
  having kids no and if you hadn't had kids you probably wouldn't regret not having them that's
• 55:02
  exactly I think I suspect that that would be the case because I never would have met my children
• 55:06
  and become the person that I am now if you hadn't that you'd probably be annoyed with them maybe
• 55:10
  someone else's kids you know you'd be sitting on the airplane with them going like shut up
• 55:16
  New York to Sydney oh my god you know as someone who is married to a gentleman from New Hampshire and
• 55:24
  you know goes to Boston from Sydney a lot which is about as far away as like you can you can get
• 55:30
  it's let me tell you doing that with kids you know yeah it's good fun with twins exactly
• 55:38
  they're a bit better now you can you can turn on a movie now that they're eight but yeah when
• 55:42
  they're you know when they're three it's it's not it's not pretty get a human well if you've
• 55:49
  listened to this much of the episode then you must enjoy it presumably unless you're just
• 55:53
  listening from massacistic reasons so you shouldn't listen to the rest of it and the way you do that
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  conversations by going into your Apple podcasts and clicking subscribe I love you if you don't do
• 57:04
  that that's fine and I'll see you the next free episode I guess take care