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TED Talks, Rebecca Saxe: How we read each other's minds

Rebecca Saxe: How we read each other's minds

Today I'm going to talk to you about the problem of other minds.

And the problem I'm going to talk about is not the familiar one from philosophy, which is, "How can we know whether other people have minds?" That is, maybe you have a mind, and everyone else is just a really convincing robot. So that's a problem in philosophy, but for today's purposes I'm going to assume that many people in this audience have a mind, and that I don't have to worry about this. There is a second problem that is maybe even more familiar to us as parents and teachers and spouses and novelists,which is, "Why is it so hard to know what somebody else wants or believes?

Or perhaps, more relevantly, "Why is it so hard to change what somebody else wants or believes? I think novelists put this best.Like Philip Roth, who said, "And yet, what are we to do about this terribly significant business of other people?

So ill equipped are we all, to envision one another's interior workings and invisible aims. "So as a teacher and as a spouse, this is, of course, a problem I confront every day. But as a scientist, I'm interested in a different problem of other minds, and that is the one I'm going to introduce to you today. And that problem is, "How is it so easy to know other minds? So to start with an illustration, you need almost no information, one snapshot of a stranger, to guess what this woman is thinking, or what this man is.

And put another way, the crux of the problem is the machine that we use for thinking about other minds,our brain, is made up of pieces, brain cells, that we share with all other animals, with monkeys and mice and even sea slugs. And yet, you put them together in a particular network, and what you get is the capacity to write Romeo and Juliet. Or to say, as Alan Greenspan did, "I know you think you understand what you thought I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant. "(Laughter) So, the job of my field of cognitive neuroscience is to stand with these ideas, one in each hand.

And to try to understand how you can put together simple units, simple messages over space and time, in a network,and get this amazing human capacity to think about minds.So I'm going to tell you three things about this today. Obviously the whole project here is huge.And I'm going to tell you just our first few steps about the discovery of a special brain region for thinking about other people's thoughts.Some observations on the slow development of this system as we learn how to do this difficult job. And then finally, to show that some of the differences between people, in how we judge others, can be explained by differences in this brain system. So first, the first thing I want to tell you is that there is a brain region in the human brain, in your brains, whose job it is to think about other people's thoughts.This is a picture of it.

It's called the Right Temporo-Parietal Junction. It's above and behind your right ear .And this is the brain region you used when you saw the pictures I showed you, or when you read Romeo and Juliet or when you tried to understand Alan Greenspan. And you don't use it for solving any other kinds of logical problems. So this brain region is called the Right TPJ .And this picture shows the average activation in a group of what we call typical human adults.They're MIT undergraduates. (Laughter) The second thing I want to say about this brain system is that although we human adults are really good at understanding other minds, we weren't always that way.

It takes children a long time to break into the system. I'm going to show you a little bit of that long, extended process.The first thing I'm going to show you is a change between age three and five, as kids learn to understand that somebody else can have beliefs that are different from their own. So I'm going to show you a five-year-old who is getting a standard kind of puzzle that we call the false belief task. Rebecca Saxe (Video): This is the first pirate.

His name is Ivan. And you know what pirates really like? Child: What?

RS: Pirates really like cheese sandwiches. Child: Cheese?

I love cheese! RS: Yeah.

So Ivan has this cheese sandwich,and he says, "Yum yum yum yum yum! I really love cheese sandwiches. "And Ivan puts his sandwich over here, on top of the pirate chest. And Ivan says, "You know what? I need a drink with my lunch. "And so Ivan goes to get a drink. And while Ivan is away the wind comes, and it blows the sandwich down onto the grass. And now, here comes the other pirate. This pirate is called Joshua. And Joshua also really loves cheese sandwiches. So Joshua has a cheese sandwich and he says,"Yum yum yum yum yum! I love cheese sandwiches. "And he puts his cheese sandwich over here on top of the pirate chest. Child: So, that one is his.

RS: That one is Joshua's.

That's right. Child: And then his went on the ground.

RS: That's exactly right.

Child: So he won't know which one is his.

RS: Oh.

So now Joshua goes off to get a drink.Ivan comes back and he says, " I want my cheese sandwich. "So which one do you think Ivan is going to take? Child: I think he is going to take that one.

RS: Yeah, you think he's going to take that one?

All right. Let's see.Oh yeah, you were right. He took that one. So that's a five-year-old who clearly understands that other people can have false beliefs and what the consequences are for their actions.Now I'm going to show you a three-year-old who got the same puzzle.

RS: And Ivan says, "I want my cheese sandwich.

"Which sandwich is he going to take? Do you think he's going to take that one? Let's see what happens. Let's see what he does. Here comes Ivan. And he says, "I want my cheese sandwich. "And he takes this one.Uh-oh. Why did he take that one? Child: His was on the grass.

So the three-year-old does two things differently.

First, he predicts Ivan will take the sandwich that's really his. And second, when he sees Ivan taking the sandwich where he left his,where we would say he's taking that one because he thinks it's his, the three-year-old comes up with another explanation: He's not taking his own sandwich because he doesn't want it,because now it's dirty, on the ground. So that's why he's taking the other sandwich. Now of course, development doesn't end at five.And we can see the continuation of this process of learning to think about other people's thoughts by upping the ante and asking children now, not for an action prediction, but for a moral judgment. So first I'm going to show you the three-year-old again. RS.

: So is Ivan being mean and naughty for taking Joshua's sandwich? Child: Yeah.

RS: Should Ivan get in trouble for taking Joshua's sandwich?

Child: Yeah.

So it's maybe not surprising he thinks it was mean of Ivanto take Joshua's sandwich,since he thinks Ivan only took Joshua's sandwich to avoid having to eat his own dirty sandwich.

But now I'm going to show you the five-year-old. Remember the five-year-old completely understood why Ivan took Joshua's sandwich. RS: Was Ivan being mean and naughty for taking Joshua's sandwich?

Child: Um, yeah.

And so, it is not until age seven that we get what looks more like an adult response.

RS: Should Ivan get in trouble for taking Joshua's sandwich?

Child: No, because the wind should get in trouble.

He says the wind should get in trouble for switching the sandwiches.

(Laughter) And now what we've started to do in my lab is to put children into the brain scanner and ask what's going on in their brain as they develop this ability to think about other people's thoughts.

So the first thing is that in children we see this same brain region, the Right TPJ, being used while children are thinking about other people. But it's not quite like the adult brain. So whereas in the adults, as I told you, this brain region is almost completely specialized --it does almost nothing else except for thinking about other people's thoughts --in children it's much less so, when they are age five to eight, the age range of the children I just showed you.

And actually if we even look at eight to 11-year-olds, getting into early adolescence, they still don't have quite an adult-like brain region. And so, what we can see is that over the course of childhood and even into adolescence, both the cognitive system, our mind's ability to think about other minds, and the brain system that supports it are continuing, slowly, to develop. But of course, as you're probably aware,even in adulthood, people differ from one another in how good they are at thinking of other minds, how often they do it and how accurately.

And so what we wanted to know was, could differences among adults in how they think about other people's thoughts be explained in terms of differences in this brain region? So, the first thing that we did is we gave adults a version of the pirate problem that we gave to the kids. And I'm going to give that to you now. So Grace and her friend are on a tour of a chemical factory, and they take a break for coffee.

And Grace's friend asks for some sugar in her coffee.Grace goes to make the coffee and finds by the coffee a pot containing a white powder, which is sugar. But the powder is labeled "Deadly Poison, "so Grace thinks that the powder is a deadly poison. And she puts it in her friend's coffee. And her friend drinks the coffee, and is fine. How many people think it was morally permissible for Grace to put the powder in the coffee?

Okay. Good. (Laughter) So we ask people, how much should Grace be blamed in this case, which we call a failed attempt to harm? And we can compare that to another case,where everything in the real world is the same.

The powder is still sugar, but what's different is what Grace thinks. Now she thinks the powder is sugar. And perhaps unsurprisingly, if Grace thinks the powder is sugar and puts it in her friend's coffee, people say she deserves no blame at all. Whereas if she thinks the powder was poison, even though it's really sugar, now people say she deserves a lot of blame, even though what happened in the real world was exactly the same. And in fact, they say she deserves more blame in this case, the failed attempt to harm,than in another case, which we call an accident.

Where Grace thought the powder was sugar, because it was labeled "sugar" and by the coffee machine, but actually the powder was poison. So even though when the powder was poison, the friend drank the coffee and died, people say Grace deserves less blame in that case, when she innocently thought it was sugar, than in the other case, where she thought it was poison and no harm occurred. People, though, disagree a little bit about exactly how much blame Grace should get in the accident case.

Some people think she should deserve more blame, and other people less. And what I'm going to show you is what happened when we look inside the brains of people while they're making that judgment. So what I'm showing you, from left to right, is how much activity there was in this brain region, and from top to bottom, how much blame people said that Grace deserved. And what you can see is, on the left when there was very little activity in this brain region, people paid little attention to her innocent belief and said she deserved a lot of blame for the accident.

Whereas on the right, where there was a lot of activity, people paid a lot more attention to her innocent belief, and said she deserved a lot less blame for causing the accident. So that's good, but of course what we'd rather is have a way to interfere with function in this brain region, and see if we could change people's moral judgment.

And we do have such a tool. It's called Trans-Cranial Magnetic Stimulation, or TMS.This is a tool that lets us pass a magnetic pulse through somebody's skull, into a small region of their brain,and temporarily disorganize the function of the neurons in that region. So I'm going to show you a demo of this.

First, I'm going to show you that this is a magnetic pulse.I 'm going to show you what happens when you put a quarter on the machine. When you hear clicks, we're turning the machine on. So now I'm going to apply that same pulse to my brain, to the part of my brain that controls my hand. So there is no physical force, just a magnetic pulse. Woman (Video): Ready, Rebecca?

RS: Yes. Okay, so it causes a small involuntary contraction in my hand by putting a magnetic pulse in my brain.

And we can use that same pulse, now applied to the RTPJ, to ask if we can change people's moral judgments.So these are the judgments I showed you before, people's normal moral judgments.And then we can apply TMS to the RTPJ and ask how people's judgments change. And the first thing is, people can still do this task overall. So their judgments of the case when everything was fine remain the same.

They say she deserves no blame. But in the case of a failed attempt to harm, where Grace thought that it was poison, although it was really sugar, people now say it was more okay, she deserves less blame for putting the powder in the coffee. And in the case of the accident, where she thought that it was sugar, but it was really poison and so she caused a death, people say that it was less okay, she deserves more blame.

So what I've told you today is that people come, actually, especially well equipped to think about other people's thoughts. We have a special brain system that lets us think about what other people are thinking.

This system takes a long time to develop, slowly throughout the course of childhood and into early adolescence. And even in adulthood, differences in this brain region can explain differences among adults in how we think about and judge other people. But I want to give the last word back to the novelists, and to Philip Roth, who ended by saying, "The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway.

It's getting them wrong that is living. Getting them wrong and wrong and wrong, and then on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. "Thank you. (Applause) Chris Anderson: So, I have a question.

When you start talking about using magnetic pulses to change people's moral judgments,that sounds alarming. (Laughter) Please tell me that you're not taking phone calls from the Pentagon, say. RS: I'm not.

I mean, they're calling, but I'm not taking the call. (Laughter) CA: They really are calling?

So then seriously, you must lie awake at night sometimes wondering where this work leads. I mean, you're clearly an incredible human being, but someone could take this knowledge and in some future not-torture chamber, do acts that people here might be worried about. RS: Yeah, we worry about this.

So, there's a couple of things to say about TMS. One is that you can't be TMSed without knowing it. So it's not a surreptitious technology. It's quite hard, actually, to get those very small changes.The changes I showed you are impressive to me because of what they tell us about the function of the brain, but they're small on the scale of the moral judgments that we actually make. And what we changed was not people's moral judgments when they're deciding what to do, when they're making action choices.

We changed their ability to judge other people's actions. And so, I think of what I'm doing not so much as studying the defendant in a criminal trial, but studying the jury. CA: Is your work going to lead to any recommendations in education, to perhaps bring up a generation of kids able to make fairer moral judgments?

RS: That's one of the idealistic hopes.

The whole research program here of studying the distinctive parts of the human brain is brand new. Until recently, what we knew about the brain were the things that any other animal's brain could do too, so we could study it in animal models. We knew how brains see, and how they control the body and how they hear and sense. And the whole project of understanding how brains do the uniquely human things --learn language and abstract concepts, and thinking about other people's thoughts -- that's brand new. And we don't know yet what the implications will be of understanding it. CA: So I've got one last question.

There is this thing called the hard problem of consciousness, that puzzles a lot of people. The notion that you can understand why a brain works, perhaps. But why does anyone have to feel anything? Why does it seem to require these beings who sense things for us to operate? You're a brilliant young neuroscientist. I mean, what chances do you think there are that at some time in your career, someone, you or someone else, is going to come up with some paradigm shift in understanding what seems an impossible problem? RS: I hope they do.

And I think they probably won't. CA: Why?

RS: It's not called the hard problem of consciousness for nothing.

(Laughter) CA: That's a great answer.

Rebecca Saxe, thank you very much. That was fantastic. (Applause

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Rebecca Saxe: How we read each other's minds Rebecca Saxe: Wie wir die Gedanken der anderen lesen Rebecca Saxe: Saxe: Πώς διαβάζουμε ο ένας το μυαλό του άλλου Rebecca Saxe: Cómo leemos la mente de los demás レベッカ・サックス私たちはいかにして互いの心を読み合うか Rebecca Saxe: Como lemos a mente uns dos outros Ребекка Сакс: Как мы читаем мысли друг друга Rebecca Saxe: Birbirimizin zihnini nasıl okuyoruz? 丽贝卡·萨克斯:我们如何读懂彼此的想法 麗貝卡·薩克斯:我們如何讀懂彼此的想法

Today I’m going to talk to you about the problem of other minds. Aujourd'hui, je vais vous parler du problème des autres esprits.

And the problem I’m going to talk about is not the familiar one from philosophy, which is, "How can we know whether other people have minds?" Et le problème dont je vais parler n'est pas le familier de la philosophie, qui est: "Comment pouvons-nous savoir si d'autres personnes ont des esprits?" That is, maybe you have a mind, and everyone else is just a really convincing robot. Autrement dit, vous avez peut-être un esprit, et tout le monde n'est qu'un robot vraiment convaincant. Yani, belki bir aklınız vardır ve diğer herkes gerçekten inandırıcı bir robottur. So that’s a problem in philosophy, but for today’s purposes I’m going to assume that many people in this audience have a mind, and that I don’t have to worry about this. Das ist also ein Problem in der Philosophie, aber für die heutigen Zwecke gehe ich davon aus, dass viele Menschen in diesem Publikum einen Verstand haben und dass ich mir darüber keine Sorgen machen muss. There is a second problem that is maybe even more familiar to us as parents and teachers and spouses and novelists,which is, "Why is it so hard to know what somebody else wants or believes? Existe um segundo problema que talvez seja ainda mais familiar para nós como pais, professores, esposos e romancistas, que é: "Por que é tão difícil saber o que alguém mais quer ou acredita? Ebeveynler, öğretmenler, eşler ve romancılar olarak bize belki daha da tanıdık gelen ikinci bir sorun daha var: "Başka birinin ne istediğini veya neye inandığını bilmek neden bu kadar zor?

Or perhaps, more relevantly, "Why is it so hard to change what somebody else wants or believes? Ou peut-être, plus précisément, "Pourquoi est-il si difficile de changer ce que quelqu'un d'autre veut ou croit? Ou talvez, mais relevante, "Por que é tão difícil mudar o que outra pessoa quer ou acredita? I think novelists put this best.Like Philip Roth, who said, "And yet, what are we to do about this terribly significant business of other people? Je pense que les romanciers le disent le mieux. Comme Philip Roth, qui a dit: "Et pourtant, que devons-nous faire à propos de cette affaire terriblement importante d'autres personnes? Acho que os romancistas colocam isso da melhor maneira. Como Philip Roth, que disse: "E, no entanto, o que devemos fazer sobre esse negócio terrivelmente significativo de outras pessoas? Bence bunu en iyi roman yazarları ortaya koyuyor. Philip Roth gibi, "Yine de, diğer insanların bu son derece önemli işi hakkında ne yapmalıyız?

So ill equipped are we all, to envision one another’s interior workings and invisible aims. Nous sommes tous si mal équipés pour nous imaginer le fonctionnement intérieur et les objectifs invisibles les uns des autres. Todos nós somos tão mal equipados para imaginar o funcionamento interior e os objetivos invisíveis um do outro. Hepimiz birbirimizin iç işleyişini ve görünmez amaçlarını tasavvur etmek için o kadar kötü donanımlıyız ki. "So as a teacher and as a spouse, this is, of course, a problem I confront every day. "Então, como professora e como esposa, esse é, obviamente, um problema que eu enfrento todos os dias. But as a scientist, I’m interested in a different problem of other minds, and that is the one I’m going to introduce to you today. Mas como cientista, estou interessado em um problema diferente de outras mentes, e é esse que vou apresentar a vocês hoje. And that problem is, "How is it so easy to know other minds? Et ce problème est: "Comment est-il si facile de connaître d'autres esprits? E esse problema é: "Como é tão fácil conhecer outras mentes? So to start with an illustration, you need almost no information, one snapshot of a stranger, to guess what this woman is thinking, or what this man is. Então, para começar com uma ilustração, você quase não precisa de informações, uma foto de um estranho, para adivinhar o que essa mulher está pensando ou o que esse homem é.

And put another way, the crux of the problem is the machine that we use for thinking about other minds,our brain, is made up of pieces, brain cells, that we share with all other animals, with monkeys and mice and even sea slugs. Et en d'autres termes, le nœud du problème est la machine que nous utilisons pour penser aux autres esprits, notre cerveau, est composé de morceaux, de cellules cérébrales, que nous partageons avec tous les autres animaux, avec des singes et des souris et même des limaces de mer . Em outras palavras, o cerne do problema é a máquina que usamos para pensar em outras mentes, nosso cérebro, é constituído por pedaços, células cerebrais, que compartilhamos com todos os outros animais, com macacos e ratos e até lesmas do mar. . And yet, you put them together in a particular network, and what you get is the capacity to write Romeo and Juliet. Et pourtant, vous les regroupez dans un réseau particulier, et vous obtenez la capacité d'écrire Roméo et Juliette. E, no entanto, você os reúne em uma rede específica e obtém a capacidade de escrever Romeu e Julieta. Or to say, as Alan Greenspan did, "I know you think you understand what you thought I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant. Ou para dizer, como Alan Greenspan fez: "Sei que você entende o que pensou que eu disse, mas não tenho certeza de que percebe que o que ouviu não foi o que eu quis dizer. "(Laughter) So, the job of my field of cognitive neuroscience is to stand with these ideas, one in each hand. Donc, le travail de mon domaine des neurosciences cognitives est de soutenir ces idées, une dans chaque main. Portanto, o trabalho do meu campo da neurociência cognitiva é permanecer com essas idéias, uma em cada mão. Bu nedenle, bilişsel sinirbilim alanımın işi, her iki elde birer birer bu fikirlerle birlikte durmaktır.

And to try to understand how you can put together simple units, simple messages over space and time, in a network,and get this amazing human capacity to think about minds.So I’m going to tell you three things about this today. Et pour essayer de comprendre comment vous pouvez assembler des unités simples, des messages simples dans l'espace et le temps, dans un réseau, et obtenir cette incroyable capacité humaine à penser aux esprits, alors je vais vous dire trois choses à ce sujet aujourd'hui. Obviously the whole project here is huge.And I’m going to tell you just our first few steps about the discovery of a special brain region for thinking about other people’s thoughts.Some observations on the slow development of this system as we learn how to do this difficult job. Évidemment, tout le projet ici est énorme et je vais vous raconter nos premières étapes sur la découverte d'une région cérébrale spéciale pour réfléchir aux pensées des autres.Certaines observations sur le lent développement de ce système à mesure que nous apprenons à faire ce travail difficile. Obviamente, todo o projeto aqui é enorme. E vou contar apenas os primeiros passos sobre a descoberta de uma região cerebral específica para pensar nos pensamentos de outras pessoas. Algumas observações sobre o lento desenvolvimento desse sistema à medida que aprendemos como faça esse trabalho difícil. Açıkçası buradaki tüm proje çok büyük. Ve size diğer insanların düşüncelerini düşünmek için özel bir beyin bölgesinin keşfiyle ilgili ilk birkaç adımımızı anlatacağım. Nasıl yapacağımızı öğrenirken bu sistemin yavaş gelişimi hakkında bazı gözlemler. bu zor işi yap. And then finally, to show that some of the differences between people, in how we judge others, can be explained by differences in this brain system. E finalmente, para mostrar que algumas das diferenças entre as pessoas, na maneira como julgamos os outros, podem ser explicadas por diferenças neste sistema cerebral. Ve son olarak, insanlar arasındaki bazı farklılıkların, diğerlerini nasıl yargıladığımızla ilgili olarak, bu beyin sistemindeki farklılıklarla açıklanabileceğini göstermek için. So first, the first thing I want to tell you is that there is a brain region in the human brain, in your brains, whose job it is to think about other people’s thoughts.This is a picture of it. İlk olarak, size söylemek istediğim ilk şey, insan beyninde, sizin beyninizde, işi diğer insanların düşünceleri hakkında düşünmek olan bir beyin bölgesi var. Bu onun bir resmi.

It’s called the Right Temporo-Parietal Junction. It’s above and behind your right ear .And this is the brain region you used when you saw the pictures I showed you, or when you read Romeo and Juliet or when you tried to understand Alan Greenspan. Está acima e atrás da orelha direita. E esta é a região do cérebro que você usou quando viu as fotos que eu mostrei, ou quando leu Romeu e Julieta ou quando tentou entender Alan Greenspan. And you don’t use it for solving any other kinds of logical problems. E você não o usa para resolver outros tipos de problemas lógicos. So this brain region is called the Right TPJ .And this picture shows the average activation in a group of what we call typical human adults.They’re MIT undergraduates. Donc, cette région du cerveau est appelée le TPJ droit. Et cette image montre l'activation moyenne dans un groupe de ce que nous appelons des adultes humains typiques. Ce sont des étudiants de premier cycle du MIT. Portanto, essa região do cérebro é chamada de TPJ direito. E essa imagem mostra a ativação média em um grupo do que chamamos de adultos humanos típicos. Eles são estudantes de graduação do MIT. (Laughter) The second thing I want to say about this brain system is that although we human adults are really good at understanding other minds, we weren’t always that way. La deuxième chose que je veux dire à propos de ce système cérébral est que, bien que nous, les adultes humains, soyons vraiment bons pour comprendre les autres esprits, nous n'avons pas toujours été comme ça. A segunda coisa que quero dizer sobre esse sistema cerebral é que, embora nós, adultos humanos, sejam realmente bons em entender outras mentes, nem sempre fomos assim.

It takes children a long time to break into the system. Il faut beaucoup de temps aux enfants pour pénétrer dans le système. I’m going to show you a little bit of that long, extended process.The first thing I’m going to show you is a change between age three and five, as kids learn to understand that somebody else can have beliefs that are different from their own. Vou mostrar um pouco desse longo processo. A primeira coisa que vou mostrar é uma mudança entre os três e os cinco anos de idade, pois as crianças aprendem a entender que alguém pode ter crenças diferentes. por conta própria. So I’m going to show you a five-year-old who is getting a standard kind of puzzle that we call the false belief task. Je vais donc vous montrer un enfant de cinq ans qui obtient un type de puzzle standard que nous appelons la tâche de la fausse croyance. Então, eu vou lhe mostrar uma criança de cinco anos que está recebendo um tipo padrão de quebra-cabeça que chamamos de tarefa de crença falsa. Rebecca Saxe (Video): This is the first pirate.

His name is Ivan. And you know what pirates really like? Child: What?

RS: Pirates really like cheese sandwiches. Child: Cheese?

I love cheese! RS: Yeah.

So Ivan has this cheese sandwich,and he says, "Yum yum yum yum yum! I really love cheese sandwiches. "And Ivan puts his sandwich over here, on top of the pirate chest. "E Ivan coloca seu sanduíche aqui, em cima do baú dos piratas. And Ivan says, "You know what? I need a drink with my lunch. Eu preciso de uma bebida com o meu almoço. "And so Ivan goes to get a drink. And while Ivan is away the wind comes, and it blows the sandwich down onto the grass. E enquanto Ivan está longe, o vento sopra e sopra o sanduíche na grama. And now, here comes the other pirate. E agora, aqui vem o outro pirata. This pirate is called Joshua. And Joshua also really loves cheese sandwiches. So Joshua has a cheese sandwich and he says,"Yum yum yum yum yum! I love cheese sandwiches. "And he puts his cheese sandwich over here on top of the pirate chest. "E ele coloca seu sanduíche de queijo aqui em cima do baú dos piratas. Child: So, that one is his.

RS: That one is Joshua’s.

That’s right. Child: And then his went on the ground. Criança: E então ele foi ao chão.

RS: That’s exactly right.

Child: So he won’t know which one is his.

RS: Oh.

So now Joshua goes off to get a drink.Ivan comes back and he says, " I want my cheese sandwich. "So which one do you think Ivan is going to take? "Então, qual você acha que Ivan vai levar? Child: I think he is going to take that one.

RS: Yeah, you think he’s going to take that one?

All right. Let’s see.Oh yeah, you were right. He took that one. So that’s a five-year-old who clearly understands that other people can have false beliefs and what the consequences are for their actions.Now I’m going to show you a three-year-old who got the same puzzle. Portanto, é uma criança de cinco anos que entende claramente que outras pessoas podem ter crenças falsas e quais são as consequências de suas ações.

RS: And Ivan says, "I want my cheese sandwich.

"Which sandwich is he going to take? "Qual sanduíche ele vai tomar? Do you think he’s going to take that one? Let’s see what happens. Let’s see what he does. Here comes Ivan. And he says, "I want my cheese sandwich. "And he takes this one.Uh-oh. Why did he take that one? Por que ele pegou essa? Child: His was on the grass. Criança: a dele estava na grama.

So the three-year-old does two things differently. Então a criança de três anos faz duas coisas de maneira diferente.

First, he predicts Ivan will take the sandwich that’s really his. Primeiro, ele prevê que Ivan levará o sanduíche que é realmente dele. And second, when he sees Ivan taking the sandwich where he left his,where we would say he’s taking that one because he thinks it’s his, the three-year-old comes up with another explanation: He’s not taking his own sandwich because he doesn’t want it,because now it’s dirty, on the ground. Segundo, quando ele vê Ivan pegando o sanduíche onde ele deixou, onde diríamos que ele está pegando esse porque ele acha que é dele, o garoto de três anos tem outra explicação: ele não está pegando seu próprio sanduíche porque ele não não quero, porque agora está sujo, no chão. So that’s why he’s taking the other sandwich. Now of course, development doesn’t end at five.And we can see the continuation of this process of learning to think about other people’s thoughts by upping the ante and asking children now, not for an action prediction, but for a moral judgment. Agora, é claro, o desenvolvimento não termina às cinco. E podemos ver a continuação desse processo de aprender a pensar nos pensamentos de outras pessoas, aumentando a aposta e pedindo às crianças agora, não uma previsão de ação, mas um julgamento moral. So first I’m going to show you the three-year-old again. RS.

: So is Ivan being mean and naughty for taking Joshua’s sandwich? : Donc, Ivan est méchant et méchant pour prendre le sandwich de Joshua? : Então Ivan está sendo mau e malcriado por tomar o sanduíche de Joshua? Child: Yeah.

RS: Should Ivan get in trouble for taking Joshua’s sandwich?

Child: Yeah.

So it’s maybe not surprising he thinks it was mean of Ivanto take Joshua’s sandwich,since he thinks Ivan only took Joshua’s sandwich to avoid having to eat his own dirty sandwich.

But now I’m going to show you the five-year-old. Remember the five-year-old completely understood why Ivan took Joshua’s sandwich. RS: Was Ivan being mean and naughty for taking Joshua’s sandwich? RS: Ivan était-il méchant et méchant pour avoir pris le sandwich de Joshua? RS: Ivan estava sendo mau e impertinente por levar o sanduíche de Joshua?

Child: Um, yeah.

And so, it is not until age seven that we get what looks more like an adult response.

RS: Should Ivan get in trouble for taking Joshua’s sandwich?

Child: No, because the wind should get in trouble. Criança: Não, porque o vento deve ter problemas.

He says the wind should get in trouble for switching the sandwiches. Ele diz que o vento deve ter problemas por trocar os sanduíches.

(Laughter) And now what we’ve started to do in my lab is to put children into the brain scanner and ask what’s going on in their brain as they develop this ability to think about other people’s thoughts. E agora o que começamos a fazer no meu laboratório é colocar as crianças no scanner cerebral e perguntar o que está acontecendo no cérebro delas enquanto desenvolvem essa capacidade de pensar nos pensamentos de outras pessoas.

So the first thing is that in children we see this same brain region, the Right TPJ, being used while children are thinking about other people. But it’s not quite like the adult brain. Mas não é exatamente como o cérebro adulto. So whereas in the adults, as I told you, this brain region is almost completely specialized --it does almost nothing else except for thinking about other people’s thoughts --in children it’s much less so, when they are age five to eight, the age range of the children I just showed you.

And actually if we even look at eight to 11-year-olds, getting into early adolescence, they still don’t have quite an adult-like brain region. And so, what we can see is that over the course of childhood and even into adolescence, both the cognitive system, our mind’s ability to think about other minds, and the brain system that supports it are continuing, slowly, to develop. E assim, o que podemos ver é que, ao longo da infância e até na adolescência, tanto o sistema cognitivo, a capacidade de nossa mente de pensar em outras mentes quanto o sistema cerebral que a sustenta continuam, lentamente, a se desenvolver. But of course, as you’re probably aware,even in adulthood, people differ from one another in how good they are at thinking of other minds, how often they do it and how accurately.

And so what we wanted to know was, could differences among adults in how they think about other people’s thoughts be explained in terms of differences in this brain region? So, the first thing that we did is we gave adults a version of the pirate problem that we gave to the kids. And I’m going to give that to you now. So Grace and her friend are on a tour of a chemical factory, and they take a break for coffee. Então, Grace e sua amiga estão em uma excursão a uma fábrica de produtos químicos e fazem uma pausa para tomar um café.

And Grace’s friend asks for some sugar in her coffee.Grace goes to make the coffee and finds by the coffee a pot containing a white powder, which is sugar. E a amiga de Grace pede um pouco de açúcar em seu café. Grace vai fazer o café e encontra no café uma panela contendo um pó branco, que é açúcar. But the powder is labeled  "Deadly Poison, "so Grace thinks that the powder is a deadly poison. Mas o pó é rotulado como "Veneno Mortal", então Grace pensa que o pó é um veneno mortal. And she puts it in her friend’s coffee. And her friend drinks the coffee, and is fine. E sua amiga bebe o café e está bem. How many people think it was morally permissible for Grace to put the powder in the coffee? Combien de personnes pensent qu'il était moralement permis à Grace de mettre la poudre dans le café? Quantas pessoas acham moralmente permitido que Grace coloque o pó no café?

Okay. Good. (Laughter) So we ask people, how much should Grace be blamed in this case, which we call a failed attempt to harm? (Gelächter) Also fragen wir die Leute, wie viel sollte man Grace in diesem Fall vorwerfen, den wir einen gescheiterten Versuch nennen, Schaden anzurichten? (Risos) Então, perguntamos às pessoas: quanto deve Grace ser culpada nesse caso, que chamamos de tentativa fracassada de prejudicar? And we can compare that to another case,where everything in the real world is the same. E podemos comparar isso com outro caso, onde tudo no mundo real é o mesmo.

The powder is still sugar, but what’s different is what Grace thinks. Now she thinks the powder is sugar. And perhaps unsurprisingly, if Grace thinks the powder is sugar and puts it in her friend’s coffee, people say she deserves no blame at all. E talvez sem surpresa, se Grace acha que o pó é açúcar e o coloca no café da amiga, as pessoas dizem que ela não merece nenhuma culpa. Whereas if she thinks the powder was poison, even though it’s really sugar, now people say she deserves a lot of blame, even though what happened in the real world was exactly the same. And in fact, they say she deserves more blame in this case, the failed attempt to harm,than in another case, which we call an accident. E, de fato, eles dizem que ela merece mais culpa neste caso, a tentativa fracassada de prejudicar, do que em outro caso, que chamamos de acidente.

Where Grace thought the powder was sugar, because it was labeled "sugar" and by the coffee machine, but actually the powder was poison. So even though when the powder was poison, the friend drank the coffee and died, people say Grace deserves less blame in that case, when she innocently thought it was sugar, than in the other case, where she thought it was poison and no harm occurred. Portanto, mesmo quando o pó era venenoso, a amiga bebia o café e morria, as pessoas dizem que Grace merece menos culpa nesse caso, quando ela pensou inocentemente que era açúcar, do que no outro caso, onde ela pensou que era veneno e não causou danos. ocorreu. People, though, disagree a little bit about exactly how much blame Grace should get in the accident case. Die Leute sind sich jedoch ein wenig uneins darüber, wie viel Schuld Grace in dem Unfallfall zukommt. As pessoas, no entanto, discordam um pouco sobre exatamente a culpa que Grace deve receber no caso de acidente.

Some people think she should deserve more blame, and other people less. And what I’m going to show you is what happened when we look inside the brains of people while they’re making that judgment. So what I’m showing you, from left to right, is how much activity there was in this brain region, and from top to bottom, how much blame people said that Grace deserved. And what you can see is, on the left when there was very little activity in this brain region, people paid little attention to her innocent belief and said she deserved a lot of blame for the accident.

Whereas on the right, where there was a lot of activity, people paid a lot more attention to her innocent belief, and said she deserved a lot less blame for causing the accident. Enquanto, à direita, onde havia muita atividade, as pessoas prestavam muito mais atenção à sua crença inocente e diziam que ela merecia muito menos culpa por causar o acidente. So that’s good, but of course what we’d rather is have a way to interfere with function in this brain region, and see if we could change people’s moral judgment. Então isso é bom, mas é claro que preferimos ter uma maneira de interferir com a função nessa região cerebral e ver se podemos mudar o julgamento moral das pessoas.

And we do have such a tool. It’s called Trans-Cranial Magnetic Stimulation, or TMS.This is a tool that lets us pass a magnetic pulse through somebody’s skull, into a small region of their brain,and temporarily disorganize the function of the neurons in that region. So I’m going to show you a demo of this.

First, I’m going to show you that this is a magnetic pulse.I 'm going to show you what happens when you put a quarter on the machine. When you hear clicks, we’re turning the machine on. So now I’m going to apply that same pulse to my brain, to the part of my brain that controls my hand. Então agora vou aplicar o mesmo pulso ao meu cérebro, à parte do meu cérebro que controla minha mão. So there is no physical force, just a magnetic pulse. Woman (Video): Ready, Rebecca?

RS: Yes. Okay, so it causes a small involuntary contraction in my hand by putting a magnetic pulse in my brain. Ok, isso causa uma pequena contração involuntária na minha mão, colocando um pulso magnético no meu cérebro.

And we can use that same pulse, now applied to the RTPJ, to ask if we can change people’s moral judgments.So these are the judgments I showed you before, people’s normal moral judgments.And then we can apply TMS to the RTPJ and ask how people’s judgments change. And the first thing is, people can still do this task overall. E a primeira coisa é que as pessoas ainda podem executar essa tarefa de maneira geral. So their judgments of the case when everything was fine remain the same.

They say she deserves no blame. But in the case of a failed attempt to harm, where Grace thought that it was poison, although it was really sugar, people now say it was more okay, she deserves less blame for putting the powder in the coffee. And in the case of the accident, where she thought that it was sugar, but it was really poison and so she caused a death, people say that it was less okay, she deserves more blame. E no caso do acidente, onde ela pensou que era açúcar, mas era realmente veneno e, portanto, causou uma morte, as pessoas dizem que era menos aceitável, ela merece mais culpa.

So what I’ve told you today is that people come, actually, especially well equipped to think about other people’s thoughts. Então, o que eu disse hoje é que as pessoas vêm, na verdade, especialmente bem equipadas para pensar nos pensamentos de outras pessoas. We have a special brain system that lets us think about what other people are thinking.

This system takes a long time to develop, slowly throughout the course of childhood and into early adolescence. Esse sistema leva muito tempo para se desenvolver, lentamente ao longo da infância e até o início da adolescência. And even in adulthood, differences in this brain region can explain differences among adults in how we think about and judge other people. But I want to give the last word back to the novelists, and to Philip Roth, who ended by saying, "The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. Mais je veux redonner le dernier mot aux romanciers, et à Philip Roth, qui a terminé en disant: «Le fait demeure que le droit des gens n'est pas de toute façon la vie. Mas quero devolver a última palavra aos romancistas e a Philip Roth, que terminou dizendo: "O fato é que acertar as pessoas não é o que é viver de qualquer maneira.

It’s getting them wrong that is living. C'est se tromper qui vit. Está enganando eles que estão vivendo. Getting them wrong and wrong and wrong, and then on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. Se tromper et se tromper et se tromper, puis après un réexamen attentif, se tromper à nouveau. Entendendo-os errados e errados e errados e, depois, com uma cuidadosa reconsideração, entendendo-os novamente. "Thank you. (Applause) Chris Anderson: So, I have a question.

When you start talking about using magnetic pulses to change people’s moral judgments,that sounds alarming. Quando você começa a falar sobre o uso de pulsos magnéticos para mudar os julgamentos morais das pessoas, isso soa alarmante. (Laughter) Please tell me that you’re not taking phone calls from the Pentagon, say. (Risos) Por favor, diga-me que você não está recebendo ligações do Pentágono, por exemplo. RS: I’m not.

I mean, they’re calling, but I’m not taking the call. Quero dizer, eles estão ligando, mas não estou atendendo. (Laughter) CA: They really are calling?

So then seriously, you must lie awake at night sometimes wondering where this work leads. Então, sério, você deve ficar acordado à noite, às vezes se perguntando aonde esse trabalho leva. I mean, you’re clearly an incredible human being, but someone could take this knowledge and in some future not-torture chamber, do acts that people here might be worried about. Quero dizer, você é claramente um ser humano incrível, mas alguém pode ter esse conhecimento e, em alguma futura câmara de não-tortura, fazer atos com os quais as pessoas aqui possam estar preocupadas. RS: Yeah, we worry about this.

So, there’s a couple of things to say about TMS. One is that you can’t be TMSed without knowing it. Uma é que você não pode ser submetido ao TMS sem saber. So it’s not a surreptitious technology. Ce n'est donc pas une technologie clandestine. Portanto, não é uma tecnologia sub-reptícia. It’s quite hard, actually, to get those very small changes.The changes I showed you are impressive to me because of what they tell us about the function of the brain, but they’re small on the scale of the moral judgments that we actually make. Na verdade, é muito difícil conseguir essas mudanças muito pequenas. As mudanças que eu mostrei são impressionantes para mim por causa do que elas nos dizem sobre a função do cérebro, mas são pequenas na escala dos julgamentos morais que realmente faço. And what we changed was not people’s moral judgments when they’re deciding what to do, when they’re making action choices. E o que mudamos não foram os julgamentos morais das pessoas quando elas decidem o que fazer, quando fazem escolhas de ação.

We changed their ability to judge other people’s actions. And so, I think of what I’m doing not so much as studying the defendant in a criminal trial, but studying the jury. And so, I think of what I'm doing not so much as studying the defendant in a criminal trial, but studying the jury. Et donc, je pense à ce que je fais non pas tant en étudiant le prévenu dans un procès pénal qu'en étudiant le jury. E assim, penso no que estou fazendo, não apenas estudando o réu em um julgamento criminal, mas estudando o júri. CA: Is your work going to lead to any recommendations in education, to perhaps bring up a generation of kids able to make fairer moral judgments? CA: Votre travail va-t-il déboucher sur des recommandations en matière d'éducation, pour peut-être élever une génération d'enfants capables de porter des jugements moraux plus justes? CA: Seu trabalho levará a recomendações em educação, talvez para criar uma geração de crianças capazes de fazer julgamentos morais mais justos?

RS: That’s one of the idealistic hopes. RS: Essa é uma das esperanças idealistas.

The whole research program here of studying the distinctive parts of the human brain is brand new. Todo o programa de pesquisa aqui estudando as partes distintas do cérebro humano é totalmente novo. Until recently, what we knew about the brain were the things that any other animal’s brain could do too, so we could study it in animal models. We knew how brains see, and how they control the body and how they hear and sense. And the whole project of understanding how brains do the uniquely human things --learn language and abstract concepts, and thinking about other people’s thoughts -- that’s brand new. E todo o projeto de entender como os cérebros fazem as coisas exclusivamente humanas - aprender a linguagem e os conceitos abstratos, e pensar nos pensamentos de outras pessoas - é totalmente novo. And we don’t know yet what the implications will be of understanding it. CA: So I’ve got one last question.

There is this thing called the hard problem of consciousness, that puzzles a lot of people. Existe uma coisa chamada problema difícil da consciência, que intriga muitas pessoas. The notion that you can understand why a brain works, perhaps. But why does anyone have to feel anything? Why does it seem to require these beings who sense things for us to operate? Por que parece exigir que esses seres que sentem coisas para que operemos? You’re a brilliant young neuroscientist. I mean, what chances do you think there are that at some time in your career, someone, you or someone else, is going to come up with some paradigm shift in understanding what seems an impossible problem? RS: I hope they do. RS: Espero que sim.

And I think they probably won’t. E acho que provavelmente não. CA: Why?

RS: It’s not called the hard problem of consciousness for nothing. RS: Não é chamado de difícil problema da consciência por nada.

(Laughter) CA: That’s a great answer.

Rebecca Saxe, thank you very much. Rebecca Saxe, muito obrigado. That was fantastic. (Applause