welcome to our Google+ Hangouts
celebrating 125 years of inspiration
hello hello to all you brain geeks out
there tuning in for the brain games
hangout today we have kind of a loosely
structured thing prepared for you with
three participants including me I’m
Ginny Hughes the blogger from national
Geographics phenomena science salon I
write about the brain and genetics and
other human stuff and so with me today
we have Jason Silva who’s the host of
national Geographics brain games really
popular TV show hi Jason hi how’s it
going great to be here guys yeah and
then we also have Amy Robinson who is a
creative director at MIT works in a
computational neuroscience lab hi hi
everyone how’s it going good so Amy’s in
her apartment in Cambridge near Boston
and Jason you’re in Manhattan at the
NatGeo offices right that’s right they
were kind enough to give me a room
through the Hangout for him it looks
very bright and cheery in there right
yes this is a nice nice light coming in
so hopefully some all right so today
we’re supposed to talk about how the
brain works and other cool stuff about
the brain and I hear that Jason you
wanted to start by trying to trick me
and Amy yes
I mean first I’d love to tell you just a
little bit about brain games in general
for those but um so you know brain games
is an interesting experiment because
it’s this pop science series about the
brain that basically uses these kind of
perceptual experiments these kind of
brain hacks and optical illusions and so
on and so forth
to basically create a crack in your
perception of reality I mean we want the
show
through the use of these games to create
a feeling of doubt in people to
highlight the kind of the shortcomings
and how your brain perceives reality and
through that kind of feeling of just wow
what you see is not always what you get
hopefully it serves as a hook to make
you want to learn about your brain and
about neuroscience you know what I mean
because I mean on the one hand the brain
is the most complicated object in the
known universe right we haven’t found
anything that is more complex in the
human brain and yet it’s also
surprisingly surprisingly easy to fool
so I think that that is a kind of
interesting juxtaposition is there such
complexity but then at the same time
there’s all these ways in which we can
highlight the ways in which the brain is
limited and I think it’s very relevant
because you know you have Obama’s brain
mapping initiative going on you have the
European there’s Europe they’re spending
a billion dollars to reverse-engineer
the brain so you know the brain is hot
stuff you know there’s a lot we don’t
know about the brain but there’s more
and more than we do know about it and so
that’s why I’m very just excited to be
you know doing this show and putting out
you know more and more of these brainy
notions into the world so it’s good yeah
so do you think what do you think that
average do you think the average person
is just like automatically interested
and curious about how the brain works or
isn’t like neuroscience that’s that’s
really tough and well did I tell you
that’s a very fair question I mean I
think that we’re you know human beings a
very curious you know I think if you
aggregate all of humanity and you look
at our story of exploration from the
beginning and from the dawn of man and
we have this kind of cosmic restlessness
and this insatiable curiosity that is
the reason that we consistently like
just transcend our boundaries you know
we didn’t stay within the caves we
haven’t stayed within the planet I mean
that’s kind of what it is to be human is
to discover and to sort of explore and
transcend but at the same time you know
in a day to day in our day to day lives
you know as Ernest Becker used to say we
tranquillize ourselves with trivialities
so the day to day things that we have to
do in our lives sometimes keep us from
sitting back and being like how does
consciousness works how to add a
self-awareness work you know how does my
how does this you know piece of meat
inside my skull
– a sense of self lead to a voice in my
head and it lets me know that I even
exist you know it’s it’s kind of wild
you know it so I think that what what I
care about is is is using media or
finding ways of using content to kind of
elicit elicit that wonder and that awe
from people to make them you know to
shake them out of their comfort zone to
pull them out of context so that they’re
like okay yes there is this fascinating
thing called the brain and there is
science and there is all in and make
them interested you know that’s kind of
that’s kind of my thing and so that’s
what we’re trying to do with brain games
is to do is that to shake people up and
to be like hey look at this fascinating
thing and look at all the flaws at hats
and look at all the wonders it has and
wake up you know all right well you
should you should wake us up then right
now I wanna I want to get shaken up yes
sure well see this thing you want to
check us with so okay so one of the
things that we do on the show is that we
have to adapt these real lab experiments
and make them into games because you
know people at home want to have fun
when they watch the show and they want
to do stuff that they can then do it
cocktail parties and these sort of
little brain tricks that we do they’re
actually kind of fascinating because
they sort of they have always these
profound takeaways and so they highlight
stuff that’s really fascinating even
even if it seems like oh this is just a
little trick it’s actually what actually
it’s pretty profound because it shows
you it gives you an insight into how
your brain works so one of the things
that we talk about is how your brain can
be primed and your brain is consistently
looking to connect the dots your brain
receives incomplete information from the
world and it wants to do its best to
complete that information to complete
the pattern but it often does so
erroneously you often miss key details
from the world and from the information
you’re receiving because you’re very
quickly just trying to find a pattern as
efficiently as possible in complete
pattern so here’s a riddle that that
uses that idea and and so what we’ll do
is we’ll ask you the question and then
we’ll ask people to tweet at NatGeo as
well as to send comments here in the
chat box to what they think the answer
is okay so let’s do one of these and see
how it see if it works you walk into a
room with a match a kerosene lamp and a
candle and you see a fireplace
should you light first your brain your
brain is receiving this information and
it has to find an answer as quickly as
possible it’s doing that by looking for
patterns and completing patterns but
let’s see if it actually missed any key
details in the question I can ask it
again if you want yeah let’s hear it
again so you walk into a room with a
match a kerosene lamp and a candle and
then you see a fireplace which should
you light first hmm are people tweeting
at night you and I think they can also
put their answers on Google+ yes yeah
what do you think Amy oh my gosh I don’t
know I’m thinking you know if if you
light the fire first then you can with
it like the match and then like the
kerosene candle yes but how do you like
how do you light a fire without a match
yeah you know I’ll give you guys a clue
people are probably sending in their
answers right now but it you know these
are these questions are these riddles
are worded in a specific way to
highlight the way your brain is very
quickly looking to complete a pattern
without really taking in the details of
the questions so should I are we waiting
to get some answers or should I actually
tell you the answers don’t tell don’t
tell the answer I think we’re gonna wait
till the end of the Hangout and okay
aggregate the answers okay so here I’ll
ask you another one that we’ve done on
on TV before so maybe it would be easier
for people to know it but I just think
it would be fun to ask so mary’s mother
has four daughters April May June and
Mary what’s the fun okay well your your
now you’re catching on to me but again
people people hear the pattern there you
go
people hear April May and June and what
comes after April May and June July no
so they’ll answer the pattern without
paying attention to what the question is
the question is not saying what comes
after April May and June in the months
of the year the question is Mary’s
has four daughters April May and June
that’s three of them but obviously
Marie’s mother is one Mary is one of
them and so most people won’t get that
again quickly the brain is quick to
complete an incomplete pattern without
taking into account the full question
that’s being asked and this happens all
the time and of course these are fun and
people get tricked
but again the profound takeaway here is
how many things how many times does this
happen in your day-to-day life how many
times you get information from the world
and make inferences about the world and
make estimations about the world that
are completely inaccurate this happens
all the time and I think that’s that’s
fascinating yeah even in like the
history of science or anything there are
so many times when researchers and
scientists you know hundreds of years in
the past have been working towards
scientific theories that were just wrong
without actually questioning the
theories themselves without actually
making what were the revolutionary
paradigm shifts that led them to really
solve the challenges absolutely I
remember in our episode on perception we
were talking about you know we all go
through life feeling pretty confident
that our kind of daily rendering of this
3d world that we live in is sort of
accurate representation to that world or
they it’s an accurate experience of said
world but you know that through our eyes
we actually only receive low resolution
2d images like our eyes are like low res
flat 2d cameras and then our brain takes
that raw information and then renders a
high-def 3d rendering of the world based
on that limited information so we really
kind of do live in a matrix in the sense
that we interface and interact with a
representation of the world that by many
accounts is not a complete picture of
what’s out there and I think that’s
fascinating how much of our brain is a
filling in the blanks
you know our brain creates reality and
we bring to that reality all of our
preconceptions expectations stereotypes
past experiences in many many instances
we see what we want to see and I think
that’s just fascinating and then so
Jason can you tell us why our brain is
so stupid like why why do we fill in the
blanks well I did involved to think like
that well it’s not that it’s so stupid
or that it’s so amazing it’s that it’s
it’s both it’s amazing and dazzling and
complex but it’s a machine and so a
machine is trying to be efficient it’s
trying to use less energy it’s trying
limit its bandwidth I mean think of for
example why we compress video to make it
flow on the Internet you know people
talk about h.264 compression or MPEG
compression it takes digital information
and it literally grabs only the elements
that the eye can see so that it can
shrink the file size of video and so
when you watch HD movie trailers on
YouTube you’re not really seeing like an
uncompressed high-definition picture
you’re seeing a representation that’s
taking high lighting elements of it that
your brain will not be able to tell the
difference but that’s kind of the same
thing your brain does with reality your
brain cannot take in all the information
that possibly could come in through its
senses so it makes inferences based on
the limited information that can
perceive like it’s just like you know
cuz cuz the world out there is sort of
infinite right and our brains are you
know fixed our biological brains are
fixed at least until we have some kind
of technological singularity or a human
tech sort of coeval you know symbiosis
that allows us to extend the capacities
of the brain beyond their current limits
we have true you know bandwidth
limitations you know it’s like your
brain is like a 56k modem and we’re
trying to take in like HD video 24
frames per second it’s impossible right
so we’re just very selective we have to
be sort of adaptation fascinating he was
where we had another riddle here which
we’d read another riddle yeah yeah okay
so a farmer had 15 sheep and all but
eight died how many are left well it
can’t be seven because that that’s what
my brain immediately thinks is but did
you listen to the questions I thought I
did again so a farmer had 15 sheep and
all but eight died how many are left
oh eight you you your brain went
straight to like what was the channel
I have to do a subtraction okay have 15
and then all but eight you didn’t hear
all but eight you said eight you heard
eight you heard that eight died and you
didn’t hear that all but 82 died you
didn’t realize that the answer was
written into the question instead you
went ahead and filled a pattern and did
the subtraction and gave us the answer
that you assumed was the answer I think
again same example of the same thing
happening there so how do you think we
can
are there tips you have for how we can
try to transcend these natural limits on
our brain or how do we yeah well sure I
think that one of the things that people
often ask them you know what they watch
the show they’re like oh my god I sure I
can’t believe my brain is so silly you
know my brain is so stupid I don’t we
tell people no it’s not that these
tricks are meant to highlight
shortcomings in how you perceive reality
but I think that one of the cool things
is that in a way knowledge is power so
upon realizing that you have these
shortcomings it might make you pay a
little bit more attention into your
day-to-day reality you realize that the
world is a little bit more ambiguous and
that your interpretation of said world
is a little more ambiguous than what you
thought it is then maybe it makes you
open your eyes a little bit you know
there’s that beautiful line that says we
have eyes yet see not ears that you’re
not in hearts that neither feel nor
understand you know we go through life
in a state of looks kind of like
autopilot we’re kind of half asleep
there’s this idea of hedonic adaptation
and that anything we get used to we
hardly pay attention to because we’re
kind of relying on these mental map map
models of the world we assume there’s
nothing new to discover and so we we
again we run on autopilot and I think
that one of the exciting things about a
show like brain games and also you know
the content that I make on the web is
that it’s meant to shake you up a little
bit and when you’re shaken up a little
bit although all of a sudden the world
becomes new again becomes interesting
becomes wonderful it becomes the way
they know the way a child looks upon the
world with a constant state of grace and
Wonder you know that’s kind of the point
and so I think it has to do with
constantly reminding yourself that you
know that reality is kind of it’s not as
you know your fixed perceptions of
reality or not as fixed as you think
they are and I think that you know
you’re reminded of that anytime you get
on a plane and go somewhere new any time
you collide against a different culture
any time you really pulled out of
context in the dramatic man
you’re forced to see the world in a new
way I think that’s a healthy thing yeah
really you have a really amazing video
on the biological benefits of aw it’s
one of my favorite ones that you’ve ever
done and there’s the one line in there
where you have something you know when
you look into the heavens you’re taking
in basically the entire of the universe
through your optic nerve don’t you love
that
yeah well that was that I read this book
by Nicolas Humphrey that actually said
that the human mind the human brains
unique capacity to be awestruck was
something that was evolutionarily
advantageous because it imbued our life
with a sense of cosmic significance and
meaning you know in other words the
unique so here a human ability to just
contemplate to marvel to awe made us
feel like we had some special
significance in the world beyond just
mere biological survival and so that
idea that there was something more to us
that we had a higher purpose our ability
to be awestruck
he says resulted in a species that
worked harder than just to survive
species that felt it had to thrive and
that he said that unique quirk you know
this guy Humphrey they wrote the book is
responsible for you know us building
rockets and skyscrapers and smartphones
I mean you know such an interesting
species we are and and I remember this
guy Ross Anderson who was a wonderful
writer for The Atlantic wrote an article
about the Hubble Space Telescope and the
new James Webb telescope and he talked
about the line was from his article he
says that with instruments like the
Hubble just like with telescopes and
microscopes and any other technological
instrument that we use to extend the
boundaries of our perception he refers
to these instruments as technological
scaffoldings that extend the boundaries
of the brain you know you could all you
could argue that we dovetail our
cognitive capacities to our tools we
outsource our memories to these extended
minds but in all in other ways the
Hubble you know is is an extension of
our neocortex it’s an extension of the
human eyeball and the Hubble is the
eyeball of mankind and with it we are
able to mainline the whole of time
through the optic nerve I mean think of
that idea
again that’s what you do that’s what we
do with these brains and that’s
something that I’m really interested in
so besides learning about sort of that
sort of limited perceptual qualities of
the brain which we learned about on
brain games we also realized that it’s
because we have these limitations that
we’ve had this kind of desire to
transcend those limitations with our
instruments there is no animal that uses
tools the way we do to extend its
cognitive capacities and I think that’s
really fascinating that’s what I’m
really interested even interesting so I
think we’ve got a poster here to go to
to go back to the how easily were fooled
apparently there’s a poster that has a
sentence on it that shows us we see it
on screen everybody should read this out
loud to themselves out loud to
themselves well everybody when we see it
on screen everybody should read it and
see if there’s anything wrong with that
sentence even the sharpest mind can be
fooled there are certain things that the
average reader will overlook even if
you’re paying extra attention you may
not notice simple mistakes you you may
not notice simple the average reader
there you go we were looking for the
mistakes so that’s probably we we we did
this experiment on the show as well and
this again has to do with you know your
brain wants to extrapolate information
from the world as quickly as possible
right it’s very quickly just wants to
what’s the conclusion here and so in a
sense in this case it’s not really
expecting to find a mistake and so it
doesn’t and so you know it seems a few
of the words it glances through the
sentence and it just sort of assumes
that what it says there is what Amy read
until the second time around where she
caught the error that’s kind of
interesting you know that things can be
like blatantly written incorrectly but
you’ll still read them correctly it’s
kind of a mess that is amazing I think
one of the coolest things about brain
games is the the interaction you have
with the audience yeah and Amy I heard a
little bit about
this program that you’re doing that also
is all about like getting people to
connect with with science in a really
accessible way
it’s called eyewire right ey e so what
is what is AI I wire right yeah so I
wire is a game to map the brain it’s
created from Sebastian Seung’s
computational neuroscience lab at MIT
and so we basically were interested in
studying connectomics which looks at how
neurons connect together to form
networks that process information and
this theory you know is that you are
your connectome so there’s 85 billion
neurons in one brain with roughly the
same order of magnitude number of
synapses in your one brain as there are
stars in the universe and these synapses
are constantly changing but we’ve never
really mapped a brain we’ve never even
mapped a mouse brain the only thing
we’ve ever mapped is C elegans which is
the worm one millimeter long worm and it
took 12 years to map them Wow
yeah it’s what years and so we we’re
it’s taking so long because of a
technology bottleneck so it currently
takes us 50 hours to reconstruct one
cell Wow one cell and there’s 85 billion
in one brain so we drew inspiration from
Angry Birds and candy crush and all
these viral addicting online games
people spend 3 billion hours every week
playing games online so we decided to
make a game interface over what we do as
a lab you know which is discovering new
neural networks and understanding how
the brain processes information so we
built a wire and we have now 70,000
people who’ve joined some squeeze 70
thousand seventy seven thousand people
from 133 countries actually now who’ve
joined since we launched in December and
they’re reconstructing neural networks
they’re actually helping us understand
how vision information processing works
so we’re looking at how we perceive
motion and so in the short term these
these gamers are actually discovering
never before mapped neural networks yeah
and in the long term all the actions of
players and eyewear is being used for
advanced machine learning that will help
create software that will help
researchers more rapidly reconstruct
neural networks and can thus make faster
new discoveries about how the brain
works
Wow so if I want to play what’s the is
it a wire calm oh yeah I’m an org yep
more WI re org cool well we’ve been
getting some questions from viewers so I
think first we’re gonna do a video
question for Jason
hi Jason my name is Taylor and I’m nine
years old because of my favorite show
brain games I was the only one in third
grade to pass I followed the directions
test the first direction on the test
said to read through all the directions
before starting the test all the other
kids started doing the test before
reading through everything I was the
only one to do it correctly I learned
this from the battle of the sexes
episode of brain games not my question
for you is why can I remember something
when I was 2 but I can’t remember what I
ate for dinner last night that’s a
really good question I’ve thought about
that before wow what a smart kid he’s
referring to that thing where you’re
supposed to read all the instructions
and then after all the questions at the
bottom it says don’t answer any of the
questions everybody would have gone
through it so again they smart and I
love that he took notes from from that
episode that’s brilliant I have to be
honest I don’t have an answer to his
question and I was actually trying to do
some research recently about that and
apparently we don’t really know why
that’s the case though I can make a kind
of poetic inference which is I think
that things that are really really
really meaningful and resonates maybe
you know they can they kind of stay
right if they resonate it’s like they
carved themselves inside of you you know
meaningful experiences tend to not be
forgotten as easily as sort of you know
maybe what he had for dinner was kind of
boring last night or something that’s
not a scientific explanation that’s like
the poetics account of why I think
that’s the case but maybe you can answer
it you’re the brain expert well actually
what you said does have some scientists
some research behind it where you know
for instance when people study
post-traumatic stress disorder whenever
there’s a really strong emotional
experience it does actually cement the
circuits and the amygdala and other
parts of the of the brain so yeah
totally totally right I mean I know that
for me when I stumbled upon a piece of
content that inspires me
I want to literally like swallow the
content like I want to download it it’s
this I become obsessed with beautiful
passages lines ideas quotes because I
sort of want them to become part of my
collective unconscious so that they’re
always there and they become just like
referential you know things that I come
back to again again and I’m one of those
people that when something resonates I
have anxiety about it not resonating so
it becomes something where I said this
needs to I need to be reminded of this
every single day and because of that
very reason I just I don’t want to
forget you know that’s a scary idea yeah
okay we’ve got another live question
this one is from Rajdeep nair on Google+
he says does deja vu really exists well
it’s certainly an experience that we
have perceptually it exists as a
subjective experience I definitely think
that that is a phenomenon that we can
all attest to just like dreams do dreams
really exist well that’s like you know
subjectively we can all vouch that they
do and I don’t know how deja vu is
explained at the sort of level of neural
chemistry in your brain maybe Amy does I
do not know there are there are so many
interesting questions that we’re unable
to answer about how the brain works I
mean we just put it in perspective you
know we can you know make movies like
IBM’s little boy in his atom literally
you know nano movies and we convert
these I know right and we can skydive
from space but we don’t even know how
many different types of cells there are
in our own heads it’s like the greatest
mystery is so close to home that it is
home and I think it’s really interesting
kind of bringing these kind of questions
to light because we don’t know the
answers yet but we will yeah well in
Europe they’re spending a billion
dollars the people behind the Large
Hadron Collider are spending a billion
dollars to reverse-engineer the brain I
mean the goal here is to emulate a mind
on a digital substrate so we’re talking
about an on by
illogical intelligence to create
sentience awareness consciousness in a
non-biological space now that is
referred to as a technological
singularity because the moment that we
can do that that non-biological brain
wouldn’t have the limitations of the
hardware that our biological brains do
so it would basically the moment that we
give birth to a consciousness that we
can’t endlessly upgrade you know by
putting more RAM in it that would be the
human epoch will have ended I mean that
will be the next stage in evolution that
will be the other that is birthed from
humanity and ultimately I think it’s
something that’s very exciting
because we can merge with that
intelligence I mean I think it’s us if
people talk about oh this scary AI is
these digital brains no that’s us that’s
an extension a scaffolding of humanity
and I’m particularly excited about that
I think that’s the future of brain and
mind what do you think about that I
think that’s pretty wild
starts talking about singularity we’re
gonna get all kinds of crazy people I’m
writing in so I wanted to ask you to
make sure before before we run out of
time to tell us what ad rudl is yes
absolutely
in our episode on creativity we had we
were comparing children and adults and
how you know adults they come to rely on
these kind of mental maps and these like
neural pathways that they’ve kind of
cemented over time whereas humans
I mean whereas children approach the
world sort of fresh and they’re ready to
make more interesting connections that’s
why we say that children are more
creative so add rudl is is a term for
what is basically a drawing and a doodle
together and what we ask people to do is
to look at these ambiguous figures these
drawing these droodles and to ask adults
and then children tell us all the things
that you see here and there are no right
or wrong answers the idea is how many
different possible scenarios how many
things do you see in this ambiguous
through ttle and what we found is that
children see a lot more than adults do
children are willing to take two sort of
more creative risks in and more
imaginative leaps and so they see more
in these droodles
so if you want to put one on screen and
we can ask people to tweet at NAT G
or right here on Google+ what do they
see tell us all of the things that this
drew delete all of the scenarios that
you can describe it as what do you think
Amy what do you see it reminds me of
Looney Tunes cartoons
I guess Lebec why would the roadrunner
guy I mean it could be it could be a
teepee in the in a little cavern it
could be a ocean ridge yes that’s great
creative girl so go on oh my gosh it
could be a whale coming up and eating
plankton out of the ocean oh my god it
could be a geometry math problem yes oh
my gosh there’s someone else Johnny I
see a really scary cliffs
yes which if you if you fell off of it
you would be skewered by a really sharp
rock what is that this is like sort of
Freudian or something what is you can
have a little psychology experiment sort
of like the inkblot yes exactly exactly
but it was funny to see the kids and
they come up with such great stuff but
anyway so we want to hear for people to
send their their answers to what they
see here to at NatGeo
as well as you can tweet at us as well
I’m at Jason Silva and you guys if you
want to continue the conversation after
this tell us what you see on the
droodles tweet us and we have the
results now from the riddle poll oh cool
want to say the riddle one more time and
then I’ll tell you what percentage of
people said what yes absolutely so the
first one we were looking at was you
walk into a room with a match a kerosene
lamp a candle and you see a fireplace
which should you light first
okay so 82% of people out there watching
this hangout said match oh wow brilliant
that’s the right answer
yeah said fireplace 5% said candle and
two and a half percent said the lamp oh
wow they all got it so the majority of
people realize that the
counterintuitive answer was the most
obvious one it’s like duh you gotta like
the match before anything else gets lit
so so what are what uh what were you
expecting them okay so you walk into a
room with a match and then you mentioned
a kerosene lamp a candle in a fireplace
you would expect that at that point
after listing four things people would
have forgotten that a match is required
to be lit and they would have just
thought totally randomly Oh well should
you like the lamp first or the candle
first of the fireplace first and they
were given some arbitrary answer like
how about the fireplace or how about the
candle like they would have just like
said whatever they think should be lit
first without realizing that the match
is kind of a prerequisite to lighting
anything so the match is obviously
answered but people would have not
realized that there was a distinction
between match and the other four things
gotcha okay is that what you thought Amy
I think a fireplace because you could
use it to light other things but how
would you light a fireplace unless
you’re a dragon or something
all right great well I think we just
have one last question and then we’ll
wrap up so Akshay Ram Rica from Malaysia
asked on Google+ Jason can you list five
situations in our daily lives in which
we encounter these kinds of illusions or
tricks yeah I mean every time every time
you open your eyes and you walk around
your room and you walk to the bathroom
and you let’s check you know you you you
experience this 3d world this solid
world and you trust your inferences
about that world you are really relying
on your brains sort of representation or
interpretation of that limited
information that it’s receiving again
you don’t see the world in 3d you see
low resolution 2d images through your
eyes and then your brain takes that and
then creates this mathematical construct
and it’s like well this is what it would
look like if it was in 3d and it’s
accurate enough that you don’t crash
into things but still you don’t have a
direct experience of that 3d reality so
for me that’s one of the most
dating things now it’s also has to do
with what you pay attention to Henry
Miller had that great line that says
even a blade of grass if given proper
attention becomes a magnificent world in
itself so think of all the things that
you walk by or you ignore on a daily
basis oh you know this boring piece of
grass or this like silly little lamp on
my desk or like I mean he what Henry
Miller is a saying that is if we
anything that you give enough attention
to becomes fascinating I think it was
Darwin that used to say that attention
if sudden and close graduates into
surprise and this into astonishment and
this into stupefied amazement so I would
encourage people just to just try their
best to reorient what they pay attention
to on a day-to-day basis and they’ll
discover sort of a ubiquitous world of
everyday wonders that we’re culturally
disposed to ignore and that we miss out
on on a day to day basis that’s what I
would say that’s good advice I’m gonna
try to do that I think it’s probably
easier said than done
but we can all try yes people what do
you need to meditate watch more Jason
Silva videos I don’t get you there yeah
they’re great they’re great all right
well that’s that’s it we’re gonna wrap
up thanks everybody for coming
I been fun and you can find Jason on
Twitter and you can find a me on Twitter
you can find me on Twitter and Facebook
and all the other social media out there
so thanks a lot bye
thanks everyone bye bye Amy bye
you
celebrating 125 years of inspiration
hello hello to all you brain geeks out
there tuning in for the brain games
hangout today we have kind of a loosely
structured thing prepared for you with
three participants including me I’m
Ginny Hughes the blogger from national
Geographics phenomena science salon I
write about the brain and genetics and
other human stuff and so with me today
we have Jason Silva who’s the host of
national Geographics brain games really
popular TV show hi Jason hi how’s it
going great to be here guys yeah and
then we also have Amy Robinson who is a
creative director at MIT works in a
computational neuroscience lab hi hi
everyone how’s it going good so Amy’s in
her apartment in Cambridge near Boston
and Jason you’re in Manhattan at the
NatGeo offices right that’s right they
were kind enough to give me a room
through the Hangout for him it looks
very bright and cheery in there right
yes this is a nice nice light coming in
so hopefully some all right so today
we’re supposed to talk about how the
brain works and other cool stuff about
the brain and I hear that Jason you
wanted to start by trying to trick me
and Amy yes
I mean first I’d love to tell you just a
little bit about brain games in general
for those but um so you know brain games
is an interesting experiment because
it’s this pop science series about the
brain that basically uses these kind of
perceptual experiments these kind of
brain hacks and optical illusions and so
on and so forth
to basically create a crack in your
perception of reality I mean we want the
show
through the use of these games to create
a feeling of doubt in people to
highlight the kind of the shortcomings
and how your brain perceives reality and
through that kind of feeling of just wow
what you see is not always what you get
hopefully it serves as a hook to make
you want to learn about your brain and
about neuroscience you know what I mean
because I mean on the one hand the brain
is the most complicated object in the
known universe right we haven’t found
anything that is more complex in the
human brain and yet it’s also
surprisingly surprisingly easy to fool
so I think that that is a kind of
interesting juxtaposition is there such
complexity but then at the same time
there’s all these ways in which we can
highlight the ways in which the brain is
limited and I think it’s very relevant
because you know you have Obama’s brain
mapping initiative going on you have the
European there’s Europe they’re spending
a billion dollars to reverse-engineer
the brain so you know the brain is hot
stuff you know there’s a lot we don’t
know about the brain but there’s more
and more than we do know about it and so
that’s why I’m very just excited to be
you know doing this show and putting out
you know more and more of these brainy
notions into the world so it’s good yeah
so do you think what do you think that
average do you think the average person
is just like automatically interested
and curious about how the brain works or
isn’t like neuroscience that’s that’s
really tough and well did I tell you
that’s a very fair question I mean I
think that we’re you know human beings a
very curious you know I think if you
aggregate all of humanity and you look
at our story of exploration from the
beginning and from the dawn of man and
we have this kind of cosmic restlessness
and this insatiable curiosity that is
the reason that we consistently like
just transcend our boundaries you know
we didn’t stay within the caves we
haven’t stayed within the planet I mean
that’s kind of what it is to be human is
to discover and to sort of explore and
transcend but at the same time you know
in a day to day in our day to day lives
you know as Ernest Becker used to say we
tranquillize ourselves with trivialities
so the day to day things that we have to
do in our lives sometimes keep us from
sitting back and being like how does
consciousness works how to add a
self-awareness work you know how does my
how does this you know piece of meat
inside my skull
– a sense of self lead to a voice in my
head and it lets me know that I even
exist you know it’s it’s kind of wild
you know it so I think that what what I
care about is is is using media or
finding ways of using content to kind of
elicit elicit that wonder and that awe
from people to make them you know to
shake them out of their comfort zone to
pull them out of context so that they’re
like okay yes there is this fascinating
thing called the brain and there is
science and there is all in and make
them interested you know that’s kind of
that’s kind of my thing and so that’s
what we’re trying to do with brain games
is to do is that to shake people up and
to be like hey look at this fascinating
thing and look at all the flaws at hats
and look at all the wonders it has and
wake up you know all right well you
should you should wake us up then right
now I wanna I want to get shaken up yes
sure well see this thing you want to
check us with so okay so one of the
things that we do on the show is that we
have to adapt these real lab experiments
and make them into games because you
know people at home want to have fun
when they watch the show and they want
to do stuff that they can then do it
cocktail parties and these sort of
little brain tricks that we do they’re
actually kind of fascinating because
they sort of they have always these
profound takeaways and so they highlight
stuff that’s really fascinating even
even if it seems like oh this is just a
little trick it’s actually what actually
it’s pretty profound because it shows
you it gives you an insight into how
your brain works so one of the things
that we talk about is how your brain can
be primed and your brain is consistently
looking to connect the dots your brain
receives incomplete information from the
world and it wants to do its best to
complete that information to complete
the pattern but it often does so
erroneously you often miss key details
from the world and from the information
you’re receiving because you’re very
quickly just trying to find a pattern as
efficiently as possible in complete
pattern so here’s a riddle that that
uses that idea and and so what we’ll do
is we’ll ask you the question and then
we’ll ask people to tweet at NatGeo as
well as to send comments here in the
chat box to what they think the answer
is okay so let’s do one of these and see
how it see if it works you walk into a
room with a match a kerosene lamp and a
candle and you see a fireplace
should you light first your brain your
brain is receiving this information and
it has to find an answer as quickly as
possible it’s doing that by looking for
patterns and completing patterns but
let’s see if it actually missed any key
details in the question I can ask it
again if you want yeah let’s hear it
again so you walk into a room with a
match a kerosene lamp and a candle and
then you see a fireplace which should
you light first hmm are people tweeting
at night you and I think they can also
put their answers on Google+ yes yeah
what do you think Amy oh my gosh I don’t
know I’m thinking you know if if you
light the fire first then you can with
it like the match and then like the
kerosene candle yes but how do you like
how do you light a fire without a match
yeah you know I’ll give you guys a clue
people are probably sending in their
answers right now but it you know these
are these questions are these riddles
are worded in a specific way to
highlight the way your brain is very
quickly looking to complete a pattern
without really taking in the details of
the questions so should I are we waiting
to get some answers or should I actually
tell you the answers don’t tell don’t
tell the answer I think we’re gonna wait
till the end of the Hangout and okay
aggregate the answers okay so here I’ll
ask you another one that we’ve done on
on TV before so maybe it would be easier
for people to know it but I just think
it would be fun to ask so mary’s mother
has four daughters April May June and
Mary what’s the fun okay well your your
now you’re catching on to me but again
people people hear the pattern there you
go
people hear April May and June and what
comes after April May and June July no
so they’ll answer the pattern without
paying attention to what the question is
the question is not saying what comes
after April May and June in the months
of the year the question is Mary’s
has four daughters April May and June
that’s three of them but obviously
Marie’s mother is one Mary is one of
them and so most people won’t get that
again quickly the brain is quick to
complete an incomplete pattern without
taking into account the full question
that’s being asked and this happens all
the time and of course these are fun and
people get tricked
but again the profound takeaway here is
how many things how many times does this
happen in your day-to-day life how many
times you get information from the world
and make inferences about the world and
make estimations about the world that
are completely inaccurate this happens
all the time and I think that’s that’s
fascinating yeah even in like the
history of science or anything there are
so many times when researchers and
scientists you know hundreds of years in
the past have been working towards
scientific theories that were just wrong
without actually questioning the
theories themselves without actually
making what were the revolutionary
paradigm shifts that led them to really
solve the challenges absolutely I
remember in our episode on perception we
were talking about you know we all go
through life feeling pretty confident
that our kind of daily rendering of this
3d world that we live in is sort of
accurate representation to that world or
they it’s an accurate experience of said
world but you know that through our eyes
we actually only receive low resolution
2d images like our eyes are like low res
flat 2d cameras and then our brain takes
that raw information and then renders a
high-def 3d rendering of the world based
on that limited information so we really
kind of do live in a matrix in the sense
that we interface and interact with a
representation of the world that by many
accounts is not a complete picture of
what’s out there and I think that’s
fascinating how much of our brain is a
filling in the blanks
you know our brain creates reality and
we bring to that reality all of our
preconceptions expectations stereotypes
past experiences in many many instances
we see what we want to see and I think
that’s just fascinating and then so
Jason can you tell us why our brain is
so stupid like why why do we fill in the
blanks well I did involved to think like
that well it’s not that it’s so stupid
or that it’s so amazing it’s that it’s
it’s both it’s amazing and dazzling and
complex but it’s a machine and so a
machine is trying to be efficient it’s
trying to use less energy it’s trying
limit its bandwidth I mean think of for
example why we compress video to make it
flow on the Internet you know people
talk about h.264 compression or MPEG
compression it takes digital information
and it literally grabs only the elements
that the eye can see so that it can
shrink the file size of video and so
when you watch HD movie trailers on
YouTube you’re not really seeing like an
uncompressed high-definition picture
you’re seeing a representation that’s
taking high lighting elements of it that
your brain will not be able to tell the
difference but that’s kind of the same
thing your brain does with reality your
brain cannot take in all the information
that possibly could come in through its
senses so it makes inferences based on
the limited information that can
perceive like it’s just like you know
cuz cuz the world out there is sort of
infinite right and our brains are you
know fixed our biological brains are
fixed at least until we have some kind
of technological singularity or a human
tech sort of coeval you know symbiosis
that allows us to extend the capacities
of the brain beyond their current limits
we have true you know bandwidth
limitations you know it’s like your
brain is like a 56k modem and we’re
trying to take in like HD video 24
frames per second it’s impossible right
so we’re just very selective we have to
be sort of adaptation fascinating he was
where we had another riddle here which
we’d read another riddle yeah yeah okay
so a farmer had 15 sheep and all but
eight died how many are left well it
can’t be seven because that that’s what
my brain immediately thinks is but did
you listen to the questions I thought I
did again so a farmer had 15 sheep and
all but eight died how many are left
oh eight you you your brain went
straight to like what was the channel
I have to do a subtraction okay have 15
and then all but eight you didn’t hear
all but eight you said eight you heard
eight you heard that eight died and you
didn’t hear that all but 82 died you
didn’t realize that the answer was
written into the question instead you
went ahead and filled a pattern and did
the subtraction and gave us the answer
that you assumed was the answer I think
again same example of the same thing
happening there so how do you think we
can
are there tips you have for how we can
try to transcend these natural limits on
our brain or how do we yeah well sure I
think that one of the things that people
often ask them you know what they watch
the show they’re like oh my god I sure I
can’t believe my brain is so silly you
know my brain is so stupid I don’t we
tell people no it’s not that these
tricks are meant to highlight
shortcomings in how you perceive reality
but I think that one of the cool things
is that in a way knowledge is power so
upon realizing that you have these
shortcomings it might make you pay a
little bit more attention into your
day-to-day reality you realize that the
world is a little bit more ambiguous and
that your interpretation of said world
is a little more ambiguous than what you
thought it is then maybe it makes you
open your eyes a little bit you know
there’s that beautiful line that says we
have eyes yet see not ears that you’re
not in hearts that neither feel nor
understand you know we go through life
in a state of looks kind of like
autopilot we’re kind of half asleep
there’s this idea of hedonic adaptation
and that anything we get used to we
hardly pay attention to because we’re
kind of relying on these mental map map
models of the world we assume there’s
nothing new to discover and so we we
again we run on autopilot and I think
that one of the exciting things about a
show like brain games and also you know
the content that I make on the web is
that it’s meant to shake you up a little
bit and when you’re shaken up a little
bit although all of a sudden the world
becomes new again becomes interesting
becomes wonderful it becomes the way
they know the way a child looks upon the
world with a constant state of grace and
Wonder you know that’s kind of the point
and so I think it has to do with
constantly reminding yourself that you
know that reality is kind of it’s not as
you know your fixed perceptions of
reality or not as fixed as you think
they are and I think that you know
you’re reminded of that anytime you get
on a plane and go somewhere new any time
you collide against a different culture
any time you really pulled out of
context in the dramatic man
you’re forced to see the world in a new
way I think that’s a healthy thing yeah
really you have a really amazing video
on the biological benefits of aw it’s
one of my favorite ones that you’ve ever
done and there’s the one line in there
where you have something you know when
you look into the heavens you’re taking
in basically the entire of the universe
through your optic nerve don’t you love
that
yeah well that was that I read this book
by Nicolas Humphrey that actually said
that the human mind the human brains
unique capacity to be awestruck was
something that was evolutionarily
advantageous because it imbued our life
with a sense of cosmic significance and
meaning you know in other words the
unique so here a human ability to just
contemplate to marvel to awe made us
feel like we had some special
significance in the world beyond just
mere biological survival and so that
idea that there was something more to us
that we had a higher purpose our ability
to be awestruck
he says resulted in a species that
worked harder than just to survive
species that felt it had to thrive and
that he said that unique quirk you know
this guy Humphrey they wrote the book is
responsible for you know us building
rockets and skyscrapers and smartphones
I mean you know such an interesting
species we are and and I remember this
guy Ross Anderson who was a wonderful
writer for The Atlantic wrote an article
about the Hubble Space Telescope and the
new James Webb telescope and he talked
about the line was from his article he
says that with instruments like the
Hubble just like with telescopes and
microscopes and any other technological
instrument that we use to extend the
boundaries of our perception he refers
to these instruments as technological
scaffoldings that extend the boundaries
of the brain you know you could all you
could argue that we dovetail our
cognitive capacities to our tools we
outsource our memories to these extended
minds but in all in other ways the
Hubble you know is is an extension of
our neocortex it’s an extension of the
human eyeball and the Hubble is the
eyeball of mankind and with it we are
able to mainline the whole of time
through the optic nerve I mean think of
that idea
again that’s what you do that’s what we
do with these brains and that’s
something that I’m really interested in
so besides learning about sort of that
sort of limited perceptual qualities of
the brain which we learned about on
brain games we also realized that it’s
because we have these limitations that
we’ve had this kind of desire to
transcend those limitations with our
instruments there is no animal that uses
tools the way we do to extend its
cognitive capacities and I think that’s
really fascinating that’s what I’m
really interested even interesting so I
think we’ve got a poster here to go to
to go back to the how easily were fooled
apparently there’s a poster that has a
sentence on it that shows us we see it
on screen everybody should read this out
loud to themselves out loud to
themselves well everybody when we see it
on screen everybody should read it and
see if there’s anything wrong with that
sentence even the sharpest mind can be
fooled there are certain things that the
average reader will overlook even if
you’re paying extra attention you may
not notice simple mistakes you you may
not notice simple the average reader
there you go we were looking for the
mistakes so that’s probably we we we did
this experiment on the show as well and
this again has to do with you know your
brain wants to extrapolate information
from the world as quickly as possible
right it’s very quickly just wants to
what’s the conclusion here and so in a
sense in this case it’s not really
expecting to find a mistake and so it
doesn’t and so you know it seems a few
of the words it glances through the
sentence and it just sort of assumes
that what it says there is what Amy read
until the second time around where she
caught the error that’s kind of
interesting you know that things can be
like blatantly written incorrectly but
you’ll still read them correctly it’s
kind of a mess that is amazing I think
one of the coolest things about brain
games is the the interaction you have
with the audience yeah and Amy I heard a
little bit about
this program that you’re doing that also
is all about like getting people to
connect with with science in a really
accessible way
it’s called eyewire right ey e so what
is what is AI I wire right yeah so I
wire is a game to map the brain it’s
created from Sebastian Seung’s
computational neuroscience lab at MIT
and so we basically were interested in
studying connectomics which looks at how
neurons connect together to form
networks that process information and
this theory you know is that you are
your connectome so there’s 85 billion
neurons in one brain with roughly the
same order of magnitude number of
synapses in your one brain as there are
stars in the universe and these synapses
are constantly changing but we’ve never
really mapped a brain we’ve never even
mapped a mouse brain the only thing
we’ve ever mapped is C elegans which is
the worm one millimeter long worm and it
took 12 years to map them Wow
yeah it’s what years and so we we’re
it’s taking so long because of a
technology bottleneck so it currently
takes us 50 hours to reconstruct one
cell Wow one cell and there’s 85 billion
in one brain so we drew inspiration from
Angry Birds and candy crush and all
these viral addicting online games
people spend 3 billion hours every week
playing games online so we decided to
make a game interface over what we do as
a lab you know which is discovering new
neural networks and understanding how
the brain processes information so we
built a wire and we have now 70,000
people who’ve joined some squeeze 70
thousand seventy seven thousand people
from 133 countries actually now who’ve
joined since we launched in December and
they’re reconstructing neural networks
they’re actually helping us understand
how vision information processing works
so we’re looking at how we perceive
motion and so in the short term these
these gamers are actually discovering
never before mapped neural networks yeah
and in the long term all the actions of
players and eyewear is being used for
advanced machine learning that will help
create software that will help
researchers more rapidly reconstruct
neural networks and can thus make faster
new discoveries about how the brain
works
Wow so if I want to play what’s the is
it a wire calm oh yeah I’m an org yep
more WI re org cool well we’ve been
getting some questions from viewers so I
think first we’re gonna do a video
question for Jason
hi Jason my name is Taylor and I’m nine
years old because of my favorite show
brain games I was the only one in third
grade to pass I followed the directions
test the first direction on the test
said to read through all the directions
before starting the test all the other
kids started doing the test before
reading through everything I was the
only one to do it correctly I learned
this from the battle of the sexes
episode of brain games not my question
for you is why can I remember something
when I was 2 but I can’t remember what I
ate for dinner last night that’s a
really good question I’ve thought about
that before wow what a smart kid he’s
referring to that thing where you’re
supposed to read all the instructions
and then after all the questions at the
bottom it says don’t answer any of the
questions everybody would have gone
through it so again they smart and I
love that he took notes from from that
episode that’s brilliant I have to be
honest I don’t have an answer to his
question and I was actually trying to do
some research recently about that and
apparently we don’t really know why
that’s the case though I can make a kind
of poetic inference which is I think
that things that are really really
really meaningful and resonates maybe
you know they can they kind of stay
right if they resonate it’s like they
carved themselves inside of you you know
meaningful experiences tend to not be
forgotten as easily as sort of you know
maybe what he had for dinner was kind of
boring last night or something that’s
not a scientific explanation that’s like
the poetics account of why I think
that’s the case but maybe you can answer
it you’re the brain expert well actually
what you said does have some scientists
some research behind it where you know
for instance when people study
post-traumatic stress disorder whenever
there’s a really strong emotional
experience it does actually cement the
circuits and the amygdala and other
parts of the of the brain so yeah
totally totally right I mean I know that
for me when I stumbled upon a piece of
content that inspires me
I want to literally like swallow the
content like I want to download it it’s
this I become obsessed with beautiful
passages lines ideas quotes because I
sort of want them to become part of my
collective unconscious so that they’re
always there and they become just like
referential you know things that I come
back to again again and I’m one of those
people that when something resonates I
have anxiety about it not resonating so
it becomes something where I said this
needs to I need to be reminded of this
every single day and because of that
very reason I just I don’t want to
forget you know that’s a scary idea yeah
okay we’ve got another live question
this one is from Rajdeep nair on Google+
he says does deja vu really exists well
it’s certainly an experience that we
have perceptually it exists as a
subjective experience I definitely think
that that is a phenomenon that we can
all attest to just like dreams do dreams
really exist well that’s like you know
subjectively we can all vouch that they
do and I don’t know how deja vu is
explained at the sort of level of neural
chemistry in your brain maybe Amy does I
do not know there are there are so many
interesting questions that we’re unable
to answer about how the brain works I
mean we just put it in perspective you
know we can you know make movies like
IBM’s little boy in his atom literally
you know nano movies and we convert
these I know right and we can skydive
from space but we don’t even know how
many different types of cells there are
in our own heads it’s like the greatest
mystery is so close to home that it is
home and I think it’s really interesting
kind of bringing these kind of questions
to light because we don’t know the
answers yet but we will yeah well in
Europe they’re spending a billion
dollars the people behind the Large
Hadron Collider are spending a billion
dollars to reverse-engineer the brain I
mean the goal here is to emulate a mind
on a digital substrate so we’re talking
about an on by
illogical intelligence to create
sentience awareness consciousness in a
non-biological space now that is
referred to as a technological
singularity because the moment that we
can do that that non-biological brain
wouldn’t have the limitations of the
hardware that our biological brains do
so it would basically the moment that we
give birth to a consciousness that we
can’t endlessly upgrade you know by
putting more RAM in it that would be the
human epoch will have ended I mean that
will be the next stage in evolution that
will be the other that is birthed from
humanity and ultimately I think it’s
something that’s very exciting
because we can merge with that
intelligence I mean I think it’s us if
people talk about oh this scary AI is
these digital brains no that’s us that’s
an extension a scaffolding of humanity
and I’m particularly excited about that
I think that’s the future of brain and
mind what do you think about that I
think that’s pretty wild
starts talking about singularity we’re
gonna get all kinds of crazy people I’m
writing in so I wanted to ask you to
make sure before before we run out of
time to tell us what ad rudl is yes
absolutely
in our episode on creativity we had we
were comparing children and adults and
how you know adults they come to rely on
these kind of mental maps and these like
neural pathways that they’ve kind of
cemented over time whereas humans
I mean whereas children approach the
world sort of fresh and they’re ready to
make more interesting connections that’s
why we say that children are more
creative so add rudl is is a term for
what is basically a drawing and a doodle
together and what we ask people to do is
to look at these ambiguous figures these
drawing these droodles and to ask adults
and then children tell us all the things
that you see here and there are no right
or wrong answers the idea is how many
different possible scenarios how many
things do you see in this ambiguous
through ttle and what we found is that
children see a lot more than adults do
children are willing to take two sort of
more creative risks in and more
imaginative leaps and so they see more
in these droodles
so if you want to put one on screen and
we can ask people to tweet at NAT G
or right here on Google+ what do they
see tell us all of the things that this
drew delete all of the scenarios that
you can describe it as what do you think
Amy what do you see it reminds me of
Looney Tunes cartoons
I guess Lebec why would the roadrunner
guy I mean it could be it could be a
teepee in the in a little cavern it
could be a ocean ridge yes that’s great
creative girl so go on oh my gosh it
could be a whale coming up and eating
plankton out of the ocean oh my god it
could be a geometry math problem yes oh
my gosh there’s someone else Johnny I
see a really scary cliffs
yes which if you if you fell off of it
you would be skewered by a really sharp
rock what is that this is like sort of
Freudian or something what is you can
have a little psychology experiment sort
of like the inkblot yes exactly exactly
but it was funny to see the kids and
they come up with such great stuff but
anyway so we want to hear for people to
send their their answers to what they
see here to at NatGeo
as well as you can tweet at us as well
I’m at Jason Silva and you guys if you
want to continue the conversation after
this tell us what you see on the
droodles tweet us and we have the
results now from the riddle poll oh cool
want to say the riddle one more time and
then I’ll tell you what percentage of
people said what yes absolutely so the
first one we were looking at was you
walk into a room with a match a kerosene
lamp a candle and you see a fireplace
which should you light first
okay so 82% of people out there watching
this hangout said match oh wow brilliant
that’s the right answer
yeah said fireplace 5% said candle and
two and a half percent said the lamp oh
wow they all got it so the majority of
people realize that the
counterintuitive answer was the most
obvious one it’s like duh you gotta like
the match before anything else gets lit
so so what are what uh what were you
expecting them okay so you walk into a
room with a match and then you mentioned
a kerosene lamp a candle in a fireplace
you would expect that at that point
after listing four things people would
have forgotten that a match is required
to be lit and they would have just
thought totally randomly Oh well should
you like the lamp first or the candle
first of the fireplace first and they
were given some arbitrary answer like
how about the fireplace or how about the
candle like they would have just like
said whatever they think should be lit
first without realizing that the match
is kind of a prerequisite to lighting
anything so the match is obviously
answered but people would have not
realized that there was a distinction
between match and the other four things
gotcha okay is that what you thought Amy
I think a fireplace because you could
use it to light other things but how
would you light a fireplace unless
you’re a dragon or something
all right great well I think we just
have one last question and then we’ll
wrap up so Akshay Ram Rica from Malaysia
asked on Google+ Jason can you list five
situations in our daily lives in which
we encounter these kinds of illusions or
tricks yeah I mean every time every time
you open your eyes and you walk around
your room and you walk to the bathroom
and you let’s check you know you you you
experience this 3d world this solid
world and you trust your inferences
about that world you are really relying
on your brains sort of representation or
interpretation of that limited
information that it’s receiving again
you don’t see the world in 3d you see
low resolution 2d images through your
eyes and then your brain takes that and
then creates this mathematical construct
and it’s like well this is what it would
look like if it was in 3d and it’s
accurate enough that you don’t crash
into things but still you don’t have a
direct experience of that 3d reality so
for me that’s one of the most
dating things now it’s also has to do
with what you pay attention to Henry
Miller had that great line that says
even a blade of grass if given proper
attention becomes a magnificent world in
itself so think of all the things that
you walk by or you ignore on a daily
basis oh you know this boring piece of
grass or this like silly little lamp on
my desk or like I mean he what Henry
Miller is a saying that is if we
anything that you give enough attention
to becomes fascinating I think it was
Darwin that used to say that attention
if sudden and close graduates into
surprise and this into astonishment and
this into stupefied amazement so I would
encourage people just to just try their
best to reorient what they pay attention
to on a day-to-day basis and they’ll
discover sort of a ubiquitous world of
everyday wonders that we’re culturally
disposed to ignore and that we miss out
on on a day to day basis that’s what I
would say that’s good advice I’m gonna
try to do that I think it’s probably
easier said than done
but we can all try yes people what do
you need to meditate watch more Jason
Silva videos I don’t get you there yeah
they’re great they’re great all right
well that’s that’s it we’re gonna wrap
up thanks everybody for coming
I been fun and you can find Jason on
Twitter and you can find a me on Twitter
you can find me on Twitter and Facebook
and all the other social media out there
so thanks a lot bye
thanks everyone bye bye Amy bye
you
Please follow and like us: