0:05

Why would a man without a lottery ticket

0:07

shoot himself after hearing

0:10

the winning numbers? Who

0:12

is the most disappointed person

0:14

at the Olympics? And what does this have

0:16

to do with Pan American airlines

0:19

or botox? And why should

0:21

you always put yourself in the shoes

0:23

of future people? Welcome

0:28

to enter cosmos with me David Eagleman.

0:30

I'm a neuroscientist and an author at

0:32

Stanford and in these episodes we

0:35

sail deeply into our three

0:37

pound universe to understand

0:39

why and how our lives look

0:42

the way they do. Today's

0:52

episode is about mental

0:54

time travel. Now we've done

0:56

two episodes in the past two weeks on time

0:59

traveling. I started with the concept

1:01

of memory, which is our way

1:04

of unhooking from the here and

1:06

now and putting ourselves into

1:08

past time points. And

1:11

in order to do this, you need this whole

1:13

network of brain areas that are involved

1:15

in situating you not in

1:17

the world that's right in front of you, but a

1:20

remembered world. This network

1:23

allows you to resimulate

1:25

what the spatial layout was, who

1:28

was there, what your emotions were,

1:30

sounds and smells. All of this

1:33

is run like a simulation,

1:35

and nobody else can see it. It

1:37

takes place entirely in

1:40

the privacy of your own

1:42

skull. Then last week

1:44

I talked about the other direction of

1:47

time travel. Imagining possible

1:49

futures. Simulation

1:52

of what could happen next is

1:54

one of the most important jobs

1:57

of brains. We plan out

1:59

what are going to say, what we're

2:01

going to do, how we're going to act

2:04

in a situation, what might happen

2:06

to us, and on and on. And as

2:08

a reminder about a couple important points

2:10

I made throughout those episodes. Point

2:13

one was that we spend most of our

2:15

time as humans disconnected

2:18

from the here and now and playing

2:20

these little movies in our heads were

2:23

reminiscing on the past or we're simulating

2:25

the future. And point two

2:27

is it turns out to actually be the

2:30

same core network of brain

2:32

areas that's involved both in

2:35

memory and in simulation of the future.

2:38

If a person gets damaged to a particular

2:40

part of their brain, like the hippocampus,

2:43

they can get amnesia, meaning that they

2:45

can't remember anything about their past, and

2:47

they also end up unable

2:50

to simulate possible futures. If

2:52

you ask them to imagine

2:54

standing in the shopping mall in an hour

2:57

from now, they just draw a

2:59

blank. They can't put a simulation

3:01

together. They're not seeing a little

3:04

movie in their heads. So memory

3:06

and future imagination use the same

3:09

brain mechanisms. They are both versions

3:12

of simulation. So

3:15

I used to think that who you are is

3:17

the sum total of your memories.

3:19

But it's even more interesting than that, because

3:22

I would argue now that who you are

3:24

includes the sum total

3:27

of your future simulations.

3:29

If you're a person who

3:31

envisions big goals for yourself, that

3:33

makes you a bit different from someone who has

3:36

pedestrian goals. Now,

3:38

from the outside, you don't

3:40

know what a person is simulating. On

3:43

the inside, you see someone

3:45

sitting at the restaurant booth next to you, sipping

3:48

on their coffee, and you don't

3:50

know if they're thinking deeply

3:52

about their path to a Nobel prize

3:55

or instead they're just thinking about wanting

3:57

a bag of chips at the local gas station.

4:00

In the same way that we don't act out

4:02

our dreams when we're asleep, we

4:04

can dream of the past

4:07

and future without execution

4:10

by the awake body. So

4:12

now we're all set up for two days

4:14

episode, and this one involves

4:17

a hypothesis that I've been working on for

4:19

years. And to get going, I'm

4:21

going to start with a small event that happened

4:24

in Liverpool, England in nineteen

4:26

ninety five when a man was

4:28

listening to the radio. So this

4:30

man had a wife and two children, and

4:32

he was listening to the lottery numbers

4:34

being read out. Now, he

4:37

did not have a lottery

4:39

ticket, but he listened

4:41

to the first number and he

4:43

was transfixed. Now the second number

4:46

was announced, and then the third, and the fourth,

4:48

and he was frozen. And

4:50

after the sixth number got

4:52

read out, he went and

4:55

got down his gun and he shot

4:57

himself. Six numbers that

5:00

translated to his suicide,

5:02

even though he didn't have a lottery

5:05

ticket. Where the numbers

5:07

some sort of code. What exactly had

5:09

happened will return to Tim's

5:11

story in a moment. First,

5:14

I want to tell you about facial

5:16

muscles. So just over one hundred

5:18

and sixty years ago, a French neurologist

5:21

named Guillome Duchen studied

5:24

lots of patients, and he's immortalized

5:26

in the names of diseases

5:29

like Duschen's muscular dystrophe and

5:31

several others. But somewhat less

5:33

known about him is that he was obsessed with

5:35

using electrodes to send zaps

5:38

of electricity into facial muscles

5:40

to characterize how

5:43

facial expressions got made. And

5:45

what he realized is that when a person

5:49

smiles, it's caused by the contraction

5:51

of just two very particular

5:54

muscles of the face. Around

5:56

the mouth. There's a muscle called

5:58

the zygomaticus major, which raises

6:01

the corners of the mouth and draws

6:03

it back, and the muscles around

6:05

the eye, called the orbicularis

6:08

oculide, raise the cheeks

6:10

and send out crows feet around

6:12

the eyes. And so when your mouth

6:15

and eyes smile at the same

6:17

time, this is called smising

6:19

or smiling with the eyes, and

6:21

this is described as the Duchen

6:24

smile. But why does this

6:26

have a special name Because

6:28

people eventually realized that this

6:31

only happens when someone is genuinely

6:33

happy. But there's another way that

6:35

people sometimes smile when they're

6:37

not actually happy, and this is known

6:40

as a non Duchen smile,

6:42

and it involves only the zygomaticus

6:45

major muscle around the mouth and nothing

6:48

goes on around the eyes. Now,

6:50

as it turns out, several groups have researched

6:53

smiles, which sounds like a really fun job,

6:55

and the conclusion is that the eye

6:58

muscles are only involved when someone

7:00

is actually happy. In

7:02

other words, the Duschen smile only

7:04

occurs when there is genuine

7:07

positive emotion. People

7:09

have long noticed the non Dushen

7:11

smile, and for a long time this was popularly

7:14

called the pan Am smile

7:17

after the airliner where the flight stewardesses

7:19

apparently gave this same non

7:22

smising smile to everyone all

7:24

the time because they weren't genuinely

7:26

happy. Also, bowtos

7:29

can paralyze the small muscles around

7:31

the eye, which means that people

7:33

with botox sometimes just can't

7:35

pull off a smiling with

7:38

the eyes Duschen smile, and

7:40

so a non dus Shen smile is

7:42

sometimes called a botox smile

7:44

as well. Okay,

7:47

I tell you all that because of an observation

7:50

that has been replicated multiple times, and

7:52

that involves the question who

7:55

is happiest when they receive an

7:57

Olympic medal. Now,

7:59

it seems like the answer is obvious. The gold

8:01

medalist is the most happy, the silver medallist

8:04

is the next happiest, and the bronze medallist

8:06

is the least happy. But

8:09

that's not what researchers

8:11

find. Instead, they find

8:13

that the gold and bronze

8:15

medalists are the most happy, and

8:17

this silver medalist is

8:20

the least happy. For example,

8:22

one study examined photographs from

8:25

eighty four medallists from the two thousand

8:27

and four Athens Olympics, and they

8:29

found that at the metal ceremony,

8:32

the gold and bronze medallists

8:34

tended to have Duchen smiles, while

8:37

the silver medallists tended to have

8:39

non Duchen smiles. In other words, the

8:42

silver medallists weren't really

8:44

smiling joyfully. And this was

8:46

actually an extension of a study that had been

8:48

done a decade earlier, when

8:50

three researchers gathered footage

8:52

from the metal ceremonies of the

8:55

nineteen ninety two Summer Olympics in Barcelona,

8:57

and they got a bunch of undergraduates to

9:00

rate the happiness of each medalist

9:02

from one to ten, where one was agony,

9:04

in ten was ecstasy. At the

9:06

ceremonies where they are given the medals,

9:09

the silver medallists scored an

9:11

average of four point three on this

9:13

happiness scale, while the bronze

9:16

medalists scored a five

9:18

point seven. The bronze medalists

9:20

were happier, and it was obvious to

9:22

everyone with the naked eye. Now

9:25

this is weird, right, How could the second

9:27

place winners be less happy

9:29

than the third place winners? So

9:32

let's unpack what's happening here. Why

9:35

would a man commit suicide after

9:37

hearing the lottery numbers? And why

9:39

would a silver medalist be more disappointed

9:42

than a bronze medallist. The

9:45

key is what is known as

9:47

counterfactual thinking. The

9:50

brain doesn't just run simulations

9:52

forwards and backwards, but it can

9:54

step back to past time

9:57

points and crank things forward

10:00

to see what could have

10:02

been now. In

10:04

other words, this is not a simulation

10:07

of the future, but instead

10:09

a simulation of the present

10:12

from a previous time point.

10:15

This is called counterfactual

10:17

thinking because the now

10:20

that gets simulated is not factual.

10:23

It's the brain's own construction, its own

10:25

internal creation. But we

10:27

can imagine present

10:29

moments that might have been.

10:33

Now. Why did the man in Liverpool

10:36

shoot himself after hearing

10:38

the lottery numbers? It

10:41

was because he had been

10:43

playing those exact numbers

10:46

every week for five weeks, that

10:48

sequence of six numbers, but

10:51

this week he hadn't bought

10:53

the ticket. As he listened

10:56

to the numbers being read out, he thought

10:58

those were my numbers. He

11:01

envisioned the ways that his

11:03

life could have changed. If he had just

11:05

bought that ticket, His present

11:08

would be different. He could immediately

11:10

plug into a pastime point and

11:12

crank the machinery forward to a

11:15

potential now, a now

11:18

that didn't happen, and the comparison

11:20

of that now to the present

11:23

was overwhelming to him. He thought about

11:25

his potential now, the one he had missed.

11:27

He pictured having an ability

11:30

to pay those bills, to finish off his mortgage,

11:33

to beat the financial struggles

11:35

that he was facing, and he was haunted

11:38

by this now that wasn't

11:40

real, that was counterfactual, but

11:43

that could have been. It

11:46

felt so distant from where he was

11:49

in reality, everything would

11:51

be different if he had just bought

11:54

that ticket. He was filled

11:56

with regret, a

11:58

regret so strong wrong that

12:01

he chose to end his life.

12:03

Now, I suggest we can understand regret

12:06

from a computational point of view,

12:09

in other words, an algorithm that the brain

12:11

runs. The key is that for

12:13

most situations, the emotion of

12:16

regret acts as

12:18

a learning signal. That means your

12:20

brain readjusts itself

12:23

based on that signal. So

12:25

if you get mad at someone and say

12:27

something mean and then that person stops

12:30

talking with you. You

12:32

might feel regret about

12:34

what you've done to that relationship, because

12:36

in the present moment you have lost

12:39

a friendship, and your brain runs

12:41

the simulation from that past time

12:43

point moving forward, in which

12:45

it constructs a scenario where

12:48

you didn't say or do that offensive thing,

12:50

and you're still friends. And

12:53

you compare your actual present,

12:55

which is uncomfortable and bad, to your

12:57

simulated present in which every

13:00

thing is warm and close, and

13:02

the difference generates a signal

13:05

of regret, and your brain uses

13:08

that signal to learn on to hopefully

13:10

improve its performance next

13:12

time. Here's another example.

13:15

Kids are always saying no to

13:17

things that their parents want them to do, and

13:19

parents, when they are thoughtful about

13:22

this, will let this kind

13:24

of learning signal do its own work.

13:26

So the parent says, hey, it's freezing

13:29

outside, put on your jacket, and the kid

13:31

says, I don't want to wear a jacket. I'm

13:33

not gonna do it. So after some push

13:36

and shove, the right thing for the parent

13:38

to do is say, fine, don't

13:40

do it. There will be natural consequences.

13:43

So the kid goes out and after

13:45

a while finds that he's really cold

13:47

and uncomfortable. So he now

13:49

has this learning signal that tells

13:52

him, had I taken the

13:54

jacket, my now

13:56

would be different, I would be warm. And

13:59

the regret, the regret that they feel, navigates

14:02

their future behavior. I

14:05

saw a quotation from the author Kurt

14:07

Vonnegut, who wrote, of all

14:10

the words of mice and men, the

14:12

saddest r it might

14:14

have been, But I slightly

14:16

disagree. I would rephrase it, Of

14:19

all the thoughts of mice and men, the

14:21

most important r it

14:24

might have been. Regret

14:26

is a way for us to build

14:29

different nows moving forward.

14:32

Now, note that in some circumstances,

14:35

you might take a past time point and

14:37

crank that forward, and that imagined

14:40

now, your counterfactual now is

14:43

actually worse than you're real

14:45

now, and in that case you experience

14:47

a different emotion relief.

14:51

This is what happens if you're considering

14:53

investing in some stock and then you don't

14:56

get around to it, and then you find out the

14:58

company went out of business and the lost

15:00

all their money on it. Your present

15:03

now is better than it would have been,

15:05

so you feel relief at

15:07

the path that you took versus what

15:10

you might have done, or

15:12

to return to the weather. Imagine

15:14

that you go for a day hike and

15:16

then it rains unexpectedly, and

15:18

you know you don't have an umbrella in your car,

15:21

but you search around in the trunk of your car

15:23

anyway, and then you find one and

15:25

you feel relief. And again,

15:27

this can be a learning signal because

15:30

it tells your brain, hey, this was a

15:32

fortunate accident, but you can make

15:34

this happen more purposefully from now

15:36

on. So let's

15:38

return to the Olympic medalists. Why

15:42

is there the happiness difference between

15:44

the silver and the bronze medalist Where the

15:46

silver medalist is less

15:48

happy. It's because the

15:51

silver medalist almost got gold

15:53

but missed. He or she is

15:55

running the simulation over and over of how

15:58

things could have gone, and

16:00

in those imagined scenarios,

16:03

they're the ones standing on the top platform

16:05

and getting wreathed with gold. The

16:08

bronze medalist, in contrast, is

16:10

just happy to be there. They know they're not good

16:12

enough for gold or silver, and they can

16:15

imagine plenty of scenarios where

16:17

they're not on the platform at all.

16:19

So the silver medallists now

16:23

is worse than his other imaginary

16:25

now's, while the bronze holders

16:27

now is better than most of his imagined

16:30

scenarios. Now, interestingly,

16:33

this general observation about

16:35

second place winners is not new. In

16:37

eighteen ninety two, the great

16:39

American psychologist William James

16:42

touched on this. He wrote, quote,

16:44

so we have the paradox of a man

16:47

shamed to death because he is only

16:50

the second pugilist or the second

16:52

oarsman in the world that he

16:54

is able to beat the whole population of the

16:56

globe minus one is nothing

16:59

end quote. So the second

17:01

place winner is so close to

17:03

a victory that could have been, and that

17:05

is a more painful place to be. So

17:24

this is mental time travel. But

17:26

it's not from now to the

17:29

past, which is memory, as I talked about two

17:31

episodes ago. And it's not from now

17:34

to the future, which is prediction, which

17:36

I talked about in the last episode. But

17:38

instead this is starting from past

17:40

time points and simulating

17:43

forward to what could have been

17:45

right now now.

17:48

I want to make a point that I'll return to at the end,

17:50

which is that as you simulate

17:52

yourself for all these different time

17:54

points, this allows you to

17:56

see different possibilities

17:58

about who you could have been. And

18:01

so in this sense, you're used to

18:03

thinking about different us, different

18:06

versions of yourself that might have existed.

18:09

So before we dive deeper into the science,

18:11

we're going to take a moment to dive into

18:13

the literature. I'm going to read

18:15

a story from my book of short stories.

18:17

Some this story is called subjunctive.

18:21

In the afterlife, you are judged not

18:24

against other people, but against yourself.

18:27

Specifically, you are judged against what

18:29

you could have been. So the

18:32

afterworld is much like the present world, but

18:34

it now includes all the us

18:37

that could have been. In an

18:39

elevator, you might find more successful

18:42

versions of yourself, perhaps the

18:44

you that chose to leave your hometown

18:46

three years earlier, or the

18:48

you that happened to board an airplane

18:51

next to a company president who then hired

18:53

you. As you meet these ewes,

18:55

you experience a pride of the sort

18:58

you feel for a successful cousin. Although

19:00

the accomplishments don't directly belong

19:03

to you, it somehow feels close. But

19:06

soon you fall victim to intimidation.

19:10

These us are not really you. They

19:12

are better than you. They

19:14

made smarter choices, worked

19:17

harder, invested the extra

19:19

effort into pushing on closed doors.

19:22

These doors eventually broke open for

19:24

them and allowed their lives to splash

19:27

out in colorful new directions. Such

19:30

success can't be explained away

19:32

by a better genetic hand. Instead,

19:35

they played your cards better

19:38

in their parallel lives. They made

19:41

better decisions, avoided moral

19:43

lapses, did not give up

19:45

on love so easily. They

19:47

worked harder than you did to correct their

19:50

mistakes, and apologized

19:52

more often. Eventually

19:54

you cannot stand hanging around these

19:57

better use. You discover you've

19:59

never felt more competitive with anyone

20:02

in your life. You try

20:04

to mingle with the lesser use, but it

20:06

doesn't assuage the sting. In

20:08

truth, you have little sympathy for

20:10

these less significant use and

20:12

more than a little haughtiness about their

20:15

indolence. If you had quit

20:17

watching TV and gotten off the couch, you wouldn't

20:19

be in this situation. You tell them when

20:21

you bother to interact with them at all, but

20:24

the better use are always in your face.

20:26

In the afterlife. In the bookstore,

20:28

you'll see one of them arm in arm

20:30

with the affectionate woman who you let slip

20:33

away. Another you is

20:35

browsing the shelves, running his fingers

20:37

over the book he actually finished writing,

20:40

And look at this one jogging past outside.

20:43

He's got a much better body than yours, thanks

20:45

to a consistency at the gym that

20:47

you never kept up. Eventually

20:50

you sink into a defensive posture,

20:53

seeking reasons why you wouldn't

20:55

want to be so well behaved and virtuous.

20:57

In any case, you grudgingly

21:00

be friends some of the lesser use and go drinking

21:02

with them. Even at the bar, you

21:04

see the better use buying rounds

21:07

for their friends, celebrating their

21:09

latest good choice, And

21:11

thus your punishment is cleverly

21:14

and automatically regulated in the

21:16

afterlife. The more you

21:19

fall short of your potential, the

21:21

more of these annoying selves

21:24

you are forced to deal with. So

21:27

that's the sense in which our constant time

21:29

travel generates lots of different

21:32

versions of who we could be, and

21:34

presumably there's no afterlife where

21:36

we meet them, but nonetheless

21:39

different use exist right

21:42

now, trapped in the boundaries

21:44

of your skull. Now,

21:46

I'll mention one interesting note about regret,

21:49

one that's been noticed by psychologists and economists,

21:52

and I'm going to tell you this just in case you decide

21:54

to open a restaurant. Don't

21:57

have too many choices on

21:59

the menu, because when there are too

22:01

many choices, customers feel

22:04

higher levels of regret

22:06

after the meal is over. How

22:09

do we understand this, Well, you can only

22:11

choose one thing for your main meal. If

22:15

there were lots of choices on the menu,

22:17

then your brain keeps running

22:19

simulations of Oh,

22:22

I would have gotten this, and this is what the experience

22:24

could have been like, or I could have gotten that,

22:27

or I could have gotten that. More

22:29

choices lead to more

22:32

regret afterward. So compare

22:35

going to the cheesecake factory,

22:37

which has a twelve page menu

22:40

spilling over with choices, versus

22:42

you go to in an Outburger whose

22:45

menu reads Hamburger cheeseburger

22:47

fries. So when you're

22:49

done with an in an Outburger meal,

22:52

you don't really have much of anything to compare

22:55

for what could have been. But

22:58

after a cheesecake factory meal,

23:01

your brain unconsciously churns

23:04

on all the choices that it didn't

23:06

take, and it might conclude,

23:08

correctly or incorrectly, that one

23:10

of those other choices would have been

23:13

better, and then you

23:15

feel slightly less happy

23:17

about the choice you made.

23:20

So here's where we are so far. Regret

23:23

is any emotion that a companies

23:25

negative outcomes to decisions

23:27

for which we've been responsible. But

23:30

it turns out, since we are creatures

23:32

who are so good at moving around in

23:34

time, mentally, we come

23:37

to operate and make decisions

23:39

based on anticipated

23:41

regret. That is, we

23:43

come to anticipate the emotional

23:45

consequences of decisions we're making

23:48

now. So imagine you're facing

23:50

two choices. Let's say which new

23:52

job to take, and one of them

23:54

is a really risky startup with big

23:57

dreams about where they'll go, and

23:59

the other is a well established

24:01

company that's a little boring but very

24:03

stable. So a lot of people will

24:05

gravitate toward the stable choice,

24:08

and you might think, fine, I get it, they're avoiding

24:11

risk. But there's a slightly richer way

24:13

to view this, which is that they're avoiding

24:16

anticipated regret.

24:19

If one of the choices is risky and the other

24:21

certain, and the startup goes

24:23

out of business, you'll feel

24:26

bad that you took such a big risk.

24:28

But if the stable company were to go out of business,

24:31

you wouldn't feel much regret because

24:33

that was an unforeseen

24:35

possibility. You had made the right

24:38

choice by placing your chips on something

24:40

that was unlikely to fail. So

24:42

the simulation of the future generally

24:45

drives people to choose the

24:47

safer choice to avoid the possibility

24:50

of feeling the really bad feelings

24:53

later. This is also suggested

24:55

to be why you will buy a brand

24:58

that you know, even if it it's more expensive,

25:01

over a brand that you don't know that's

25:03

less expensive, even though it's

25:05

a better deal to take the unknown brand,

25:08

For many people, it feels worth it to

25:10

spend the extra money because

25:13

they anticipate they will have more regret

25:15

if the unknown brand ends up being

25:17

a bad choice. And

25:19

this comes up in a thousand ways in our lives.

25:22

Anticipated regret is what gets

25:25

you to buy something that's on sale now

25:27

instead of waiting for maybe a better

25:30

sale later, because you're afraid

25:32

that the sale won't last. And then you'll

25:34

think, oh, man, I could have had

25:36

that for ten percent off, but I waited

25:39

and I missed my chance. It's

25:41

not that you're experiencing regret now, it's

25:43

that you're anticipating that you will

25:46

feel regret in the future, and so that

25:48

steers your behavior now.

25:51

And this is of course what high pressure

25:54

car salesmen try to do when they say

25:56

I'll give you this special discount, but it

25:58

only applies right now. The second

26:01

you walk off this car lot, the

26:03

offer goes away forever, so

26:06

you simulate how you would feel

26:08

if you lost this offer that's

26:10

being dangled in front of you right now.

26:13

The anticipation of that regret

26:16

spurs you into actions so you won't

26:18

have to feel bad later. So

26:21

your brain simulates futures and

26:23

it feels them, and often that

26:26

includes questions like how bad

26:28

will I feel if I lose this

26:30

gamble. You don't just minimize

26:33

risk, you minimize the regret that

26:35

you expect to feel. But

26:38

anticipated regret isn't just about

26:40

avoiding risk. Sometimes you can leverage

26:43

the issue of anticipation to

26:46

improve your decision making. So

26:48

when I was younger, if I was having

26:51

a hard time making a decision between

26:53

two choices, my mother

26:55

would tell me to toss a coin.

26:58

Heads meant that I would take the first choice, and

27:00

tails meant I would take the second choice. But

27:03

the coin toss wasn't the

27:05

thing. The key, she told me was to

27:07

toss the coin and see the result, and

27:10

then see how that result felt

27:12

in my gut. When you see

27:14

which choice gets indicated by the

27:16

coin, you might feel a

27:19

tiny bit of relief, well

27:21

I'm glad Atlanta that way, or you might

27:23

feel instead a

27:25

tinge of regret, and

27:28

the second that that regret bubbles

27:30

up, then you know that the other

27:32

choice is the better one for

27:35

you. And here's another

27:37

example. Let's return to the issue

27:39

of getting a kid to wear a jacket

27:41

in the snow. When the parent says,

27:44

look, it's natural consequences. That's

27:46

one way to teach the kid, But really what they're

27:48

hoping for is that the anticipated

27:51

regret will be enough the kid will

27:54

think about how things might

27:56

feel in the future when they are shivering miserably,

27:59

and that anticipated regret will

28:01

be sufficient to force their hand

28:04

to make the right choice now.

28:07

And before we move on, I'll just mention

28:09

an interesting tangent here, which is

28:11

that people with psychopathy. Psychopaths

28:15

generally have much lower

28:17

anxiety than the general population.

28:20

Why it's because one of the characteristics

28:23

of psychopathy is an inability

28:25

to simulate possible futures. So,

28:28

just as an example, if I hook up

28:31

electrodes to your tongue and then

28:33

I say, okay, I'm hooking the other end to this car

28:35

battery and you're going to get this terrible

28:37

shock on your tongue, you will

28:40

probably feel a lot of trepidation

28:42

and anxiety and maybe break a sweat.

28:45

But that's not what happens to somebody who

28:47

is a psychopath. They just don't care. They

28:50

don't get sweaty and anxious. And

28:52

it's not because they're tougher than you. It's simply

28:54

because their brains don't

28:56

simulate the future very well. Now,

28:59

I'm going to do a whole episode on psychopaths

29:01

in the near future, so if you're interested

29:03

in this and what else is going on in psychopathy,

29:06

please tune in for that one. But

29:08

for now, I'm going to get back to normal brains.

29:11

Given the fact that we simulate

29:13

futures and understand how

29:15

we might feel in those futures,

29:18

there's an interesting trick that we can use

29:20

to improve our own decision making,

29:23

and that is to put ourselves in the

29:25

shoes of future people

29:28

looking back at us. Why

29:31

because this gives us a very good way

29:33

to ethically steer our own behavior.

29:36

The world is full of temptations, and some

29:39

of them aren't that big deal, but some of them

29:41

are worth resisting. And

29:43

one way you can do this is to imagine

29:45

looking back on your choice from some

29:48

future point, when you see how

29:50

all of this played out.

29:52

A friend of mine refers to this as

29:54

the concept of book, bell and candle,

29:57

which means something very particular in the spy

29:59

world. But what he meant was, whatever

30:02

you're considering doing, imagine

30:04

how you would feel about this if it

30:06

were written down in a book that everyone

30:09

could read. Or your action

30:11

causes a bell to ring such that everyone's

30:14

attention turns to what you did, or

30:16

a candle lights up the

30:19

hidden thing you did. How would you

30:21

feel if everybody could see that

30:23

you've done it. The point is

30:25

to put yourself in the future and

30:28

imagine retrospectively that

30:30

you have been caught. How would that

30:32

make you feel? There

30:35

are many ways of placing yourself

30:37

in the future and looking back. A

30:39

colleague of mine as an epidemiologist named

30:42

Gary Slutkin, and many years ago

30:44

he started working with gangs in Chicago

30:47

to see if he could reduce the violence. Now,

30:49

there are many ways of thinking about intervening

30:53

to reduce violence, including tougher

30:55

laws or longer prison sentences, but

30:57

Gary started thinking about this differently.

31:01

He noticed, for example, that these gang

31:03

members don't act badly in front

31:05

of their grandmothers, but they do in front

31:07

of their peers, and so they're

31:09

clearly able to assess a situation

31:12

from different points of view. So

31:15

he had an amazing idea, which was to employ

31:18

former gang members who had previously been

31:20

incarcerated and who wanted

31:22

to reduce the violence in their own neighborhood.

31:25

And they came on board as what he called

31:27

the interrupters, and the

31:29

idea was for them to change

31:32

a gang member's behavior in the moment

31:35

by making them think about the

31:37

future. So he got the interrupters

31:40

to intervene when say,

31:42

a gang member felt he'd been wrong then

31:45

he wanted to go in exact revenge,

31:48

and the interrupter would say something like, hey,

31:51

think about this for a minute. When you go

31:53

to jail for shooting that guy who's

31:56

gonna be with your girl Gary.

31:59

And people think about this as reframing,

32:02

but in the context of this episode, I'm casting

32:05

this as anticipated

32:07

regret. And this kind of time

32:10

travel imagining yourself

32:12

in jail and someone else being with your

32:14

girlfriend was very effective

32:17

in steering people's behavior. It

32:19

forced people to time travel to

32:21

a what if moment that

32:24

otherwise they would not have visited.

32:43

Now Interestingly, I want to clarify

32:46

that our feelings of anticipated regret

32:49

are not always a perfect steering

32:51

mechanism. For us, because we

32:53

often assume that our near

32:56

future counterfactuals are going to be

32:58

more appealing than they actually

33:00

turn out to be in reality. In other

33:02

words, the grass always

33:04

seems greener on the other side

33:07

of the temporal fence. So

33:09

what does this have to do with civil

33:11

wars or why the Balkan nations

33:13

split off, or why the Arab Emirates

33:16

came together, or why England

33:18

split off from the European Union.

33:21

So let me answer that by

33:24

going back to one of the great classical

33:26

novels of Chinese literature. It's

33:28

a fourteenth century novel whose

33:31

title translates to Romance

33:33

of the Three Kingdoms, and this

33:35

novel spends eight hundred thousand

33:37

words dealing with the battles

33:40

and plots, both personal and military,

33:43

of different people and groups trying

33:45

to achieve dominance for almost a

33:47

century. It's like Game of

33:49

Thrones before Game of Thrones and without the dragons.

33:52

Anyhow, the key thing I want to note is

33:55

the opening lines, which

33:57

I've always found shockingly in

33:59

sight full. The opening lines

34:01

go like this, the Empire,

34:04

long divided, must unite,

34:07

long united, must

34:09

divide. Thus has it ever

34:11

been? In other words,

34:14

the prediction here is that all

34:17

unified countries are eventually

34:19

going to decide it's better to split up,

34:22

and all divided countries will eventually

34:24

decide it's better to link

34:26

arms into a union. This

34:29

is something that characterizes world

34:31

history. But why does it happen? Well,

34:33

there may be lots of reasons, including economic

34:36

factors and agricultural factors and

34:38

political expediency. But I'm

34:41

going to suggest there's a neural

34:44

factor too, and that has to do

34:46

with people running the counter factuals.

34:49

What would it be like if we

34:52

were together? Wouldn't that be terrific?

34:54

Or we're all tangled

34:56

up in each other's business, wouldn't things

34:59

be better if we were independent?

35:03

And my assertion is that we have a slight

35:05

bias for concluding that

35:07

it would be better whichever way

35:10

we haven't experienced. Why.

35:12

Well, it's because we're not perfect simulators,

35:15

and so we believe that the

35:17

low resolution simulation in our heads

35:20

is actually a good one, even though

35:22

it lacks all the blemishes

35:24

of reality. So we believe

35:27

that everyone will be happy and get

35:29

along. And wouldn't it be great if we were unified,

35:32

or wouldn't it be great if we were finally

35:34

separated and we compare

35:37

our sanitized simulation

35:40

against reality. This is the same

35:42

thing, of course, with relationships. When

35:44

we're young and single, we continually

35:46

fantasize about a partner that we're gonna

35:49

meet. The partner always says the right

35:51

thing, always makes us feel great, never

35:53

has something on his or her mind that

35:55

causes distractions so that they don't

35:58

actually listen to you, but realize

36:00

life is always more complex, for

36:02

worse and for better than our

36:04

imaginations can simulate.

36:08

So now on to the last act we've

36:10

been seeing so far. In all these episodes

36:12

that we are creatures who mentally

36:15

travel to different points in time. We

36:17

constantly simulate ourselves

36:19

in the past for memory, or simulate

36:22

ourselves in the future to steer decision

36:24

making, or we simulate

36:27

possible now's to

36:29

understand what we should have done

36:31

better. And this kind of

36:34

time traveling, if we do it intelligently,

36:37

can allow us to steer our

36:39

lives a bit better than we

36:42

otherwise might. For

36:44

example, as we get better at thinking

36:46

about and interacting with all these different

36:49

temporal versions of ourselves,

36:51

we can actively cultivate

36:53

our ability to simulate these well.

36:56

And this is what we get out of visualization,

37:00

out of actively putting ourselves

37:02

in a detailed future simulation. So

37:05

here's an example. I recently met a new friend

37:07

named Brian Burke who's an LA filmmaker,

37:10

and he'll ask people, hey, do you want to be a

37:12

film director? It's not that hard, and

37:15

the person might say, genuinely, I don't

37:17

think I could ever do that, and he says,

37:19

look, here's all you need to do to

37:21

become a film director. You

37:24

write a ten minute script and then you get your

37:26

cell phone camera and a couple friends to

37:28

shoot it, and then you do all the editing,

37:31

and he says it'll suck for

37:33

sure. So then you do it again.

37:36

You write a new script, and you shoot it again

37:38

on your cell phone, and you edit it again

37:40

and it'll probably still suck. And

37:42

then you do that a third time and you find

37:45

you're getting a little bit better at this, and then

37:47

he says at the end of that you'll be as good as

37:49

most of the directors in Los Angeles.

37:52

And this simple technique of walking somebody

37:55

in detail through a future, this really

37:57

moves and inspires people, especially

38:00

people for whom it had never even struck

38:02

them that they could possibly think of being

38:04

a film director in their internal

38:07

model. They have a job and they're

38:09

doing fine at that, and they've never

38:11

meaningfully considered film directing.

38:13

That's a totally foreign thing that other

38:15

people do. But all it takes is

38:17

someone doing them the favor of

38:20

walking them through some steps

38:22

in the imagination what it would take to

38:24

get there, and suddenly they

38:27

see that it's not impossible.

38:30

And this is why visualization of

38:32

possible futures is so meaningful.

38:35

It fleshes out what the path

38:38

can look like. When someone sees the

38:40

path clearly, then it doesn't

38:42

seem so hard to get started. And

38:45

visualization or imagination this can

38:47

also steer your behavior away

38:50

from certain things that you don't want to do again

38:52

by making them feel real. A

38:55

colleague of Mind named Jack Keene started

38:58

an app to get seniors to exercise,

39:00

and the idea is to use AI

39:03

to show the person a picture of themselves.

39:06

If they do and if they don't exercise,

39:09

they see their body in good

39:12

shape or not in good shape. And once

39:14

it's something they can picture, then

39:16

it is more real. And

39:18

there are lower resolution versions of this.

39:21

For example, in episode nine, I

39:23

outline some ways that we can get good

39:26

at navigating our future behavior,

39:28

and one example I mentioned is for people

39:30

who are trying to lose weight. You

39:33

have them find a picture of themselves

39:35

where they look more overweight than they would

39:38

like to and you get them to stick

39:40

that picture on the fridge

39:42

and that way, every time they go to the fridge

39:44

to graze, that picture reminds

39:47

them of what they want to accomplish,

39:50

and it does so by allowing them to see

39:52

right in front of them their future

39:55

if they don't modify their behavior, and

39:58

getting people to think about possible

40:00

futures, good and bad. This is what coaching

40:03

is about. Sports coaching or life coaching.

40:05

A coach's job is to

40:08

expand your model of what's possible

40:10

and to move you through the next steps

40:12

and get your aim straight on

40:15

who you could be. Generally,

40:18

being able to visualize something makes

40:20

it like a prediction that you can chase

40:22

after, or defend against, or prepare

40:25

for or whatever. It refines

40:27

the simulation and makes it

40:29

feel more real. So

40:33

wrapping up the past three episodes,

40:36

who you are is the sum

40:38

total of layered time

40:41

scales. When you walk down

40:43

the street, you look to other people

40:46

like you're just a person walking

40:48

down the street, but your

40:50

brain is colorful and

40:52

alive with reminiscence

40:55

of your past, simulations

40:57

of a variety of possible futures,

41:00

and all your regrets and reliefs

41:03

that result from simulations of

41:05

hypothetical nows, and

41:08

this rich layering of time,

41:11

this is what makes humans so nuanced

41:14

and complex and fascinating.

41:18

And as we come to learn what is

41:20

happening under the hood, and we get

41:22

better at taking advantage of

41:24

these mechanisms, that gives us

41:26

a small grip on a very powerful

41:28

tool to navigate ourselves

41:31

in the direction of who we

41:34

would like to be. Go

41:41

to Eagleman dot com slash podcast

41:43

for more information and to find further

41:45

reading. Send me an email at

41:48

podcasts at eagleman dot com

41:50

with questions or discussion and I'll

41:52

be making an episode soon in which I address

41:54

those. Until

41:57

next time, I'm David Eagleman, and this

42:00

is Inner Cosmos.