[Music]
I think the worst possible way to start
a talk would be by asking the audience
to do some mental arithmetic so I
apologize because that’s exactly what
I’d like to do if you don’t mind play
along and add the following simple
sequence of numbers quietly in your head
here we go what is a thousand plus forty
plus a thousand plus thirty plus a
thousand plus twenty plus a thousand
plus ten thank you so please raise your
hand if you arrived at the answer of
five thousand great please raise your
hand if you arrived at the answer four
thousand one hundred okay so maybe 60
forty percent I would say so what
happens there is when you’re adding the
last two numbers four thousand and
ninety plus ten you miscarry the one and
arrive at the incorrect answer five
thousand now this is a gratuitous
example because I don’t think anybody
needed any evidence that we suck at
mental arithmetic it doesn’t matter if
you’re a genius
or a savant or how much you practice no
human will ever perform numerical
calculations as quickly and accurately
as a computer the question is why your
brain is the most complex device in the
known universe you can recognize faces
understand speech think create can even
juggle all of those things are vastly
more complicated than mental addition
the standard answer to this question is
that we didn’t involve to do math this
is exactly true of course the mammalian
brain evolved to do things like pattern
recognition discriminate a branch from a
snake not to calculate that the
circumference of the snake equals two PI
R but I don’t think the lack of
evolutionary pressure is the full answer
rather I think neuroscience gives us a
deeper answer
or science as you know is the study of
the brain and neuroscience is very
unique field right it’s the only field
in science in which the thing being
studied is also doing the studying and
this means that neuroscientists are
studying themselves which makes
neuroscience a bunch of narcissists
but neuroscientists do often view the
brain as a computational device so has
inputs our hands our eyes and our ears
it stores memories and generates outputs
but the brains architecture is entirely
different from a standard digital
computer for one the brain is not made
of transistors the brain is made up of
neurons so neurons have their dendrites
and their axons the inputs and outputs
and they communicate through each other
through synapses one of the reasons were
bad at numerical calculations is that no
engineer would ever use these things to
build a calculator they are noisy
they’re slow they have a lot of
crosstalk and they don’t work well as
switches but fortunately neurons are
good at other things like making
associations and that’s because each
neuron can communicate with thousands
and thousands of others and because
neurons that fire together wire together
so that means that if you have two
stimuli such as the site of the rose and
the smell of the rose and they activate
different neurons because neurons that
fire together wire together they might
connect to each other making an
association if neurons are good at
making associations you should be too so
let me prove to you that that’s the case
I’m going to ask you three questions
there’s simple questions please answer
out loud and for the last one just
answer the first thing that pops into
your head in what continent is Kenya
what are the two opposing colors in the
game of chess think of any animal
great so I heard a lot of zebras I heard
some animals from Africa so those were
your answers because you’re good at
making associations my point is is that
to understand why we’re good at some
things like making associations and bad
at others like mental arithmetic we need
to understand how our brains are built
and that this is really important
because what the brain is good at and
bad at has a profound effect on the
world in which we live if we were going
to make a list of society’s most serious
problems it would probably include
things like failure to adjust climate
change health issues such as obesity and
addiction irrational fear of GMOs and
vaccines war and terrorism and the fact
that we sometimes elect leaders that are
either incompetent or self-serving now
do these problems have something in
common
absolutely they’re caused by our
decisions and our decisions our product
of our brain so in a way those societal
problems reflect how our brains work our
brains aren’t perfect
we have many biases flaws and glitches
which I will refer to as brain bugs let
me give you an example of a brain bug
answer the following question quickly
what do cows drink okay so the parts the
circuits in your brain that just thought
of milk and I know you did are referred
to as the automatic system and they’re
driven by associations and emotions the
circuits in your brain that just that
thought that said whoa whoa wait a
minute the answers water or referred to
as the reflective system if you need to
guess somebody’s age just by looking at
them your automatic system is pretty
good but if you need to decide on who to
vote for or how much save for retirement
you shouldn’t rely on your automatic
system because your automatic system is
very biased and short-sighted ultimately
we don’t understand how the brain makes
even simple decisions much less much
less complex decisions but we know that
we often make bad
decisions decisions that are not in our
own best interest consider for example
that in the 20th century a hundred
million people died of cigarette related
causes and every year in the United
States approximately 500,000 people died
of cigarette related causes compared to
approximately three hundred people who
died a year due to terrorism when we
start to smoke are we making a decision
that’s in our own best interest or in
the best interest of the tobacco
companies when we smoke we’re giving up
our money and health with very little in
return so I think it’s fair to say that
we smoke because it’s in the best
interest of the tobacco companies but
how did this come to be well it started
because in the beginning of the 20th
century there was a revolution
advertisers and propagandists figured
out how to effectively sway and
manipulate our opinions and decisions to
suit their own best interests just as a
digital computer can be exploited by a
virus to do things it wasn’t intended
for the human brain can be exploited by
advertising propaganda fear-mongering
and populism to do things that are not
in its own best interest perhaps the
most serious consequence of our brain
bugs is in the context of the democratic
process
if we can’t elect competent leaders we
can’t address society’s problems and
when we vote our automatic system is
often influenced by irrelevant factors
such as advertising and propaganda fear
familiarity and fake news we don’t
understand why it can be so easy to
manipulate our our opinions sometimes
but I think there’s two factors that
contribute first the brain is incredibly
good at making associations and second
we’re very good at learning by
observation if you’re born in the Amazon
you’re going to learn the local dialect
and how to gather food in the forest if
you’re born in England you’re going to
learn English and to root for England
during the World Cup
so maybe animals are a bit smarter than
us I think would be hard to talk a cat
into smoking because by showing it
pictures of other cute cats smoking but
humans are of course the smartest
species on the planet but what makes us
smart is not that we know everything
it’s that we can recognize our own
ignorance we can know what we don’t know
intelligence isn’t about knowing all the
answers sometimes about realizing how
complex problems are and that we need to
rely on experts to tell us the answer
wisdom is in being able to distinguish
the real experts from the fake experts
your brain is solely responsible for
your ability to make decisions to think
create to feel pain and pleasure your
brain is also responsible for whether or
not you believe your brain is
responsible for your ability to think
create and pleasure this is hard to
accept it’s hard to believe that I am my
brain my brain is me but I think we have
to accept this fact and recognize that
in the same way that we’re not
inherently good at voting or making
health decisions or financial decisions
any more than we’re inherently good at
mental arithmetic recognizing this I
think will help us make better decisions
and better address society’s most
serious problems thank you
you
I think the worst possible way to start
a talk would be by asking the audience
to do some mental arithmetic so I
apologize because that’s exactly what
I’d like to do if you don’t mind play
along and add the following simple
sequence of numbers quietly in your head
here we go what is a thousand plus forty
plus a thousand plus thirty plus a
thousand plus twenty plus a thousand
plus ten thank you so please raise your
hand if you arrived at the answer of
five thousand great please raise your
hand if you arrived at the answer four
thousand one hundred okay so maybe 60
forty percent I would say so what
happens there is when you’re adding the
last two numbers four thousand and
ninety plus ten you miscarry the one and
arrive at the incorrect answer five
thousand now this is a gratuitous
example because I don’t think anybody
needed any evidence that we suck at
mental arithmetic it doesn’t matter if
you’re a genius
or a savant or how much you practice no
human will ever perform numerical
calculations as quickly and accurately
as a computer the question is why your
brain is the most complex device in the
known universe you can recognize faces
understand speech think create can even
juggle all of those things are vastly
more complicated than mental addition
the standard answer to this question is
that we didn’t involve to do math this
is exactly true of course the mammalian
brain evolved to do things like pattern
recognition discriminate a branch from a
snake not to calculate that the
circumference of the snake equals two PI
R but I don’t think the lack of
evolutionary pressure is the full answer
rather I think neuroscience gives us a
deeper answer
or science as you know is the study of
the brain and neuroscience is very
unique field right it’s the only field
in science in which the thing being
studied is also doing the studying and
this means that neuroscientists are
studying themselves which makes
neuroscience a bunch of narcissists
but neuroscientists do often view the
brain as a computational device so has
inputs our hands our eyes and our ears
it stores memories and generates outputs
but the brains architecture is entirely
different from a standard digital
computer for one the brain is not made
of transistors the brain is made up of
neurons so neurons have their dendrites
and their axons the inputs and outputs
and they communicate through each other
through synapses one of the reasons were
bad at numerical calculations is that no
engineer would ever use these things to
build a calculator they are noisy
they’re slow they have a lot of
crosstalk and they don’t work well as
switches but fortunately neurons are
good at other things like making
associations and that’s because each
neuron can communicate with thousands
and thousands of others and because
neurons that fire together wire together
so that means that if you have two
stimuli such as the site of the rose and
the smell of the rose and they activate
different neurons because neurons that
fire together wire together they might
connect to each other making an
association if neurons are good at
making associations you should be too so
let me prove to you that that’s the case
I’m going to ask you three questions
there’s simple questions please answer
out loud and for the last one just
answer the first thing that pops into
your head in what continent is Kenya
what are the two opposing colors in the
game of chess think of any animal
great so I heard a lot of zebras I heard
some animals from Africa so those were
your answers because you’re good at
making associations my point is is that
to understand why we’re good at some
things like making associations and bad
at others like mental arithmetic we need
to understand how our brains are built
and that this is really important
because what the brain is good at and
bad at has a profound effect on the
world in which we live if we were going
to make a list of society’s most serious
problems it would probably include
things like failure to adjust climate
change health issues such as obesity and
addiction irrational fear of GMOs and
vaccines war and terrorism and the fact
that we sometimes elect leaders that are
either incompetent or self-serving now
do these problems have something in
common
absolutely they’re caused by our
decisions and our decisions our product
of our brain so in a way those societal
problems reflect how our brains work our
brains aren’t perfect
we have many biases flaws and glitches
which I will refer to as brain bugs let
me give you an example of a brain bug
answer the following question quickly
what do cows drink okay so the parts the
circuits in your brain that just thought
of milk and I know you did are referred
to as the automatic system and they’re
driven by associations and emotions the
circuits in your brain that just that
thought that said whoa whoa wait a
minute the answers water or referred to
as the reflective system if you need to
guess somebody’s age just by looking at
them your automatic system is pretty
good but if you need to decide on who to
vote for or how much save for retirement
you shouldn’t rely on your automatic
system because your automatic system is
very biased and short-sighted ultimately
we don’t understand how the brain makes
even simple decisions much less much
less complex decisions but we know that
we often make bad
decisions decisions that are not in our
own best interest consider for example
that in the 20th century a hundred
million people died of cigarette related
causes and every year in the United
States approximately 500,000 people died
of cigarette related causes compared to
approximately three hundred people who
died a year due to terrorism when we
start to smoke are we making a decision
that’s in our own best interest or in
the best interest of the tobacco
companies when we smoke we’re giving up
our money and health with very little in
return so I think it’s fair to say that
we smoke because it’s in the best
interest of the tobacco companies but
how did this come to be well it started
because in the beginning of the 20th
century there was a revolution
advertisers and propagandists figured
out how to effectively sway and
manipulate our opinions and decisions to
suit their own best interests just as a
digital computer can be exploited by a
virus to do things it wasn’t intended
for the human brain can be exploited by
advertising propaganda fear-mongering
and populism to do things that are not
in its own best interest perhaps the
most serious consequence of our brain
bugs is in the context of the democratic
process
if we can’t elect competent leaders we
can’t address society’s problems and
when we vote our automatic system is
often influenced by irrelevant factors
such as advertising and propaganda fear
familiarity and fake news we don’t
understand why it can be so easy to
manipulate our our opinions sometimes
but I think there’s two factors that
contribute first the brain is incredibly
good at making associations and second
we’re very good at learning by
observation if you’re born in the Amazon
you’re going to learn the local dialect
and how to gather food in the forest if
you’re born in England you’re going to
learn English and to root for England
during the World Cup
so maybe animals are a bit smarter than
us I think would be hard to talk a cat
into smoking because by showing it
pictures of other cute cats smoking but
humans are of course the smartest
species on the planet but what makes us
smart is not that we know everything
it’s that we can recognize our own
ignorance we can know what we don’t know
intelligence isn’t about knowing all the
answers sometimes about realizing how
complex problems are and that we need to
rely on experts to tell us the answer
wisdom is in being able to distinguish
the real experts from the fake experts
your brain is solely responsible for
your ability to make decisions to think
create to feel pain and pleasure your
brain is also responsible for whether or
not you believe your brain is
responsible for your ability to think
create and pleasure this is hard to
accept it’s hard to believe that I am my
brain my brain is me but I think we have
to accept this fact and recognize that
in the same way that we’re not
inherently good at voting or making
health decisions or financial decisions
any more than we’re inherently good at
mental arithmetic recognizing this I
think will help us make better decisions
and better address society’s most
serious problems thank you
you
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