308. The Blind Storyteller: How We Reason About Human Nature (4)
2 (35m 12s):
Yep. We are what our brain tells us,
1 (35m 15s):
Right? So what do you need a body for?
2 (35m 19s):
The brain is the body,
1 (35m 23s):
Right? Yes. They're so integrated, you can't separate 'em. Well I'm just curious about this stuff. Cause I wrote, I wrote this, a book about this Heavens on Earth about the scientific attempts to achieve immortality and you know, the idea of mind uploading or chronically frozen or whatever. But the mind uploading seems to be the most popular one now. So my question is, is what's getting uploaded? How
2 (35m 42s):
Do you do that? Yeah, what's the trick? How do you upload the mind?
1 (35m 46s):
Well, the, the theory is that you, it's called the connectome, right? We're gonna like the genome, we're gonna copy every single synaptic connection in your brain, all trillions of them, you know, giant computer and just basically copy the file. It'll be a digital file, then you upload it into the cloud and you turn it on and there you are, you're up there now, right? This is the theory. I think it's utter nonsense. Cause if we did this while you were still alive and say a sophisticated MRI brain scanner and then pulled you after scanning you and say, Hey, guess what? You're up in the cloud now you're, you're standing there in the room next to the MRI machine looking through your eyes going, no, I'm not, I'm right here. This is me. Now to the immortalists, these are the transhumanists, they or the arians people like raker as well.
1 (36m 31s):
They, they just say, well you have to redefine the self. There's just two of you now. But how would that be any different from identical twins? The moment you separate are in different environments and turn both systems on, you're leading different life paths and you're gonna have different memories and different experiences. However identical you try to make it, they're not gonna be identical. Anyway, that's the theory.
2 (36m 51s):
Putting aside the merits of this theory, which are very questionable to me, it is true psychologically that we think about ourselves in different terms. And it's not just a single self that we have in mind, but rather there are multiple notions of the self to think about it, if you are on the one hand dualist, and you think that what you really are is your mind, which is separate from the body, and it's this mind that's going, in fact this, you can continue to exist without your body. So you yourself, in some sense is distinct from the body. You're also essentialist. You believe that your true essence must be embodied.
2 (37m 34s):
So there must be an notion of the self that is intimately linked to the body and what it means that you're really in trouble because you have two conflicting notions of the self, one that is embodied and one that is disembodied. And I'm talking about how we perceive ourselves rather than what the self really is.
1 (37m 53s):
Yeah. I am curious though, to know what you think the self really is. Maybe it's an illusion, maybe we can't get at it because if I understand you, your, your book, there is no permanent self because I'm constantly changing. I'm an infant and I'm a child and I'm a middle schooler, then I'm a high schooler, then I'm college now. Here I am 68. There's no place, there's no point in time when you say that's the real Michael Shermer. There he is right there. Right? Which is my argument against the connectome. You know, the moment you copy and scan my connectome, well that's just me. That particular day. The next day I'm slightly different. But is there, is there not sort of a core essence of me, you know, my temperament, my personality, and it's relatively consistent through the lifespan.
2 (38m 37s):
So people have asked this question. So again, it's the question of how we perceive ourselves. I don't know to tell you what is the self, but how, what we, what is our intuitive psychology of who we are? And there is one body of literature that asks who is the person who is Michael? Really? Right? So you're a different now from when you were a child, who is Michael? Truly? And the answer that comes from this literature is A, people really believe that there is a true self that exists and persists despite all this physical changes. And second, this true self is linked to your morality of all the traits that can define Michael. It's your moral acts that are most important.
2 (39m 17s):
It's your morality. And particularly it's the good act. So if you give people vignettes where a person changes either to the better or to the worse, and you ask them, okay, so tell us who is Michael really is, is it the good guy, the bad guy? And they will tell you no, it's the good guy. So not only do they define the truth, they distinguish the true self from the self. They think that there is a person who still remains there, despite the, so for example, you know, a corrupt policeman turned fine or the opposite, who is this person? And they say it's the good one who really represents the, the true self.
2 (40m 0s):
So yeah, that, that that's how we, we seem to think about it. But then we also think about our essence, which is part of the body. So to flesh out the, the contrast between the two, there's a large literature that looks at how people rise about morality and about responsibility, say in the legal system. And people think about morality as something that is part of the mind, not part of the body. So in fact, if you tell them they killed the person because there was something in the brain, then they, this, they think that the person is less responsible for their act. They think that morality is part of the mind, not part of the body.
2 (40m 41s):
And the true self aligns with the moral core and therefore it's in the mind. But then people also think about the, there must be an essence of Michael that is part lying hidden in your body. So there really these two Michaels, the moral Michael, which is in the mind, which is good, which will maintain there. So in fact, people have asked beautiful work about, people have asked families of people with Alzheimer's, is the person still there? And as long as they're the pro, the person's good moral attributes are there, they still think that the person is, is remains. So that is one answer to who you are.
2 (41m 21s):
But then there is the other answer that says, no, there must be something lying in your body that explains your essence. And, and it's, yeah. So we are really have these two conflicting notions.
1 (41m 33s):
Yeah, that's really interesting because in say in a court case where somebody's committed a crime, they've embezzled or they, whatever they did, you know, the defense will say, well that's not the real person. It was this mitigating circumstances, it was under stress or you know, the Twinky defense or you know, there's something that nudged him off of his normal moral path and this was an aberration and so please go light on them. Of course, the prosecution's arguing just the opposite, right? That no, no, this is a tell of who this person really is. Just take the Herschel Walker case since this, according this October 7th, he's in the news every night for, you know, being pro life to the point of wanting to ban abortion under all circumstances. And it turns out he, you know, paid for one of one of his many girlfriend's abortion and has, you know, five children by five different women or whatever it is.
1 (42m 21s):
And you know, he's Mr. Family values. Well what does that even mean, right? So it, you know, the debate is, you know, conservatives say, well that's not the real h this was some mitigating thing way back when. And other liberals will go, no, no, that's the real him, right? These are, these are clues about his true innate self. Or when somebody gets drunk like a, you know, comedian and blurts out some racist comments on stage like Michael Richards did, guy from Seinfeld, or you know, Mel Gibson gets pulled over by the Malibu police and he'd been drinking and he's ranting on about the Jews and, and women and stuff like that. It's like, so the question is, is that the real male Gibson and the alcohol released it that, so now we get to see what he is really like? Or is it the alcohol that just kind of sent him down some path?
1 (43m 1s):
Normally he's not a racist guy and he is a good guy or whatever.
2 (43m 4s):
So I, I don't know to answer this particular cases, but what I can tell you based on the literature that exists is people assume that it's actually, you know, as Anne Frank said, deep down where humankind is good. Funny that she said that, but yes,
1 (43m 20s):
It's astonishing. She said that. I love that you quote that in your book cuz you know, given where she was in hiding from the Nazis and then was later murdered to have that kind of confidence in human nature. And yet a lot of people are pretty pessimistic about that, right? That, you know, the, the, the inner demons are the true human self. This is called the, I think Franz Deval calls this the thin veneer theory of human nature of which he accuses Richard Dawkins of having that is in Richard Dawkins selfish gene. As, as some people read it, that, you know, we're innately selfish and civilization is this like thin veneer kind of keeping the beast down. And then so Fran says, no, no, no, it's actually, we're good inside and civilization is an extension of that goodness.
1 (44m 5s):
You know, see again along the lines of your research, it's kind of reflecting two different theories, intuitive theories about human nature.
2 (44m 12s):
You know, I don't know how to answer those questions of who we are really, I find it more fruitful to ask who we think we are. Yeah. Because a lot of the answer to who we are, what matters is what we think. Anyway. I mean, I think that, so I I choose to try to understand the lenses by which we look at our psychological reality rather than to ask what this reality is. I don't know that we can answer that question of what the reality really is.
1 (44m 44s):
Well, if what you're saying is true, then we can't because it's all a story. You know, you're the, the, the blind storyteller. I'm telling a story. You're telling a story. The person that says, I know what the true self is. That's a story. And somebody else that says the true self is an illusion. There is no true self. That's a story. So they're all stories. But I guess in science, what we wanna know is
2 (45m 4s):
True. Exactly. And we have, so we can, we can see what are the stories that we tell by using scientific methods and demonstrate that people do in fact construct certain narratives and identify what are the principles that guide those narratives. Beyond that, asking what's really out there, I think this is partly a judgment call. And as a scientist, I don't feel prepared to answer it.
1 (45m 31s):
No, but you surely must have an opinion, your own personal story. I mean, do you think there's a, a self, are you a core essence of characteristics that roughly speaking as a family resemblance idea of concepts, a concept of you?
