Lisa Feldman Barrett: Love, Evolution, and the Human Brain
生物与进化心理与人性音乐与艺术历史与文明技术与编程
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🔑 关键词
donbrainbooksaidanimalshumanhumanspersondoesnbrainsscienceguessenvironmentfeelinginterestingmadeculturesthoughtyourselfwhole
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🎙️ 完整对话（2754 条）
Lex Fridman (00:00.000)
The following is a conversation with Lisa Feldman Barrett,
以下是与丽莎·费尔德曼·巴雷特的对话，
Lex Fridman (00:03.600)
her second time on the podcast.
她第二次参加播客。
Lex Fridman (00:05.720)
She's a neuroscientist at Northeastern University
她是东北大学的神经科学家
Lex Fridman (00:09.040)
and one of my favorite people.
和我最喜欢的人之一。
Lex Fridman (00:11.240)
Her new book called Seven and a Half Lessons
她的新书叫《七个半课》
Lisa Feldman Barrett (00:13.400)
about the Brain is out now as of a couple of days ago,
关于大脑的内容已经在几天前发布了，
Lex Fridman (00:16.720)
so you should definitely support Lisa by buying it
所以你一定要买来支持Lisa
Lex Fridman (00:19.520)
and sharing with friends if you like it.
并与朋友分享（如果您喜欢）。
Lex Fridman (00:21.760)
It's a great short intro to the human brain.
这是对人脑的精彩简短介绍。
Lisa Feldman Barrett (00:25.440)
Quick mention of each sponsor,
快速提及每个赞助商，
Lex Fridman (00:27.000)
followed by some thoughts related to the episode.
接下来是一些与这一集相关的想法。
Lisa Feldman Barrett (00:29.840)
Athletic Greens, the all in one drink
运动绿饮料，多合一饮料
Lex Fridman (00:32.040)
that I start every day with
我每天都以此开始
Lisa Feldman Barrett (00:33.920)
to cover all my nutritional bases.
涵盖我所有的营养基础。
Lex Fridman (00:36.480)
Eight Sleep, a mattress that cools itself
八号睡眠，一个可以自动冷却的床垫
Lex Fridman (00:39.440)
and gives me yet another reason to enjoy sleep.
给了我另一个享受睡眠的理由。
Lex Fridman (00:42.320)
Masterclass, online courses that I enjoy
我喜欢的大师班、在线课程
Lisa Feldman Barrett (00:45.080)
from some of the most amazing people in history.
来自历史上一些最了不起的人。
Lex Fridman (00:48.600)
And BetterHelp, online therapy with a licensed professional.
还有 BetterHelp，由持照专业人士提供的在线治疗。
Lisa Feldman Barrett (00:52.640)
Please check out these sponsors in the description
请在说明中查看这些赞助商
Lex Fridman (00:55.000)
to get a discount and to support this podcast.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (00:58.000)
As a side note, let me say that Lisa,
Lex Fridman (01:00.160)
just like Manolis Calles,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (01:02.360)
is a local brilliant mind and friend
Lex Fridman (01:05.240)
and someone I can see talking to many more times.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (01:08.120)
Sometimes it's fun to talk to a scientist
Lex Fridman (01:10.720)
not just about their field of expertise,
Lex Fridman (01:12.600)
but also about random topics, even silly ones,
Lex Fridman (01:15.840)
from love to music to philosophy.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (01:19.160)
Ultimately, it's about having fun,
Lex Fridman (01:21.480)
something I know nothing about.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (01:23.760)
This conversation is certainly that.
Lex Fridman (01:25.800)
It may not always work, but it's worth a shot.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (01:28.760)
I think it's valuable to alternate
Lex Fridman (01:31.040)
along all kinds of dimensions,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (01:32.960)
like between deeper technical discussions
Lex Fridman (01:35.720)
and more fun random discussion,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (01:37.880)
from liberal thinker to conservative thinker,
Lex Fridman (01:40.720)
from musician to athlete, from CEO to junior engineer,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (01:45.880)
from friend to stranger.
Lex Fridman (01:48.000)
Variety makes life and conversation more interesting.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (01:51.480)
Let's see where this little podcast journey goes.
Lex Fridman (01:54.800)
If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (01:57.040)
review it with five stars on Apple Podcast,
Lex Fridman (01:59.280)
follow on Spotify, support it on Patreon,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (02:02.000)
or connect with me on Twitter at Lex Friedman.
Lex Fridman (02:05.240)
And now, here's my conversation with Lisa Feldman Barrett.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (02:11.040)
Based on the comments in our previous conversation,
Lex Fridman (02:13.800)
I think a lot of people will be very disappointed,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (02:17.040)
I should say, to learn that you are in fact married.
Lex Fridman (02:20.920)
As they say, all the good ones are taken.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (02:22.960)
Okay, so I'm a fan of your husband as well, Dan.
Lex Fridman (02:28.200)
He's a programmer and musician,
Lex Fridman (02:29.760)
so a man after my own heart.
Lex Fridman (02:32.080)
Can I ask a ridiculously over romanticized question
Lex Fridman (02:36.160)
of when did you first fall in love with Dan?
Lex Fridman (02:40.960)
It's actually, it's a really romantic story, I think.
Lex Fridman (02:45.360)
So I was divorced by the time I was 26, 27, 26, I guess.
Lex Fridman (02:53.040)
And I was in my first academic job,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (02:54.960)
which was Penn State University,
Lex Fridman (02:57.240)
which is in the middle of Pennsylvania,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (02:59.840)
surrounded by mountains.
Lex Fridman (03:01.040)
So you have, it's four hours to get anywhere,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (03:03.200)
to get to Philadelphia, New York, Washington.
Lex Fridman (03:05.920)
I mean, you're basically stuck, you know.
Lex Fridman (03:09.320)
And I was very fortunate to have
Lex Fridman (03:12.640)
a lot of other assistant professors
Lisa Feldman Barrett (03:14.480)
who were hired at the same time as I was.
Lex Fridman (03:16.440)
So there were a lot of us,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (03:17.560)
we were all friends, which was really fun.
Lex Fridman (03:20.440)
But I was single and I didn't wanna date a student.
Lex Fridman (03:24.320)
And there were no,
Lex Fridman (03:27.560)
and I wasn't gonna date somebody in my department,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (03:29.760)
that's just a recipe for disaster.
Lex Fridman (03:33.520)
So even at 20, whatever you were,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (03:35.400)
you were already wise enough to know that.
Lex Fridman (03:37.160)
Yeah, a little bit, maybe, yeah.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (03:39.440)
I wouldn't call me wise at that age.
Lex Fridman (03:41.200)
But anyways, not sure that I would say that I'm wise now,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (03:44.080)
but.
Lex Fridman (03:46.080)
And so after,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (03:50.080)
I was spending probably 16 hours a day in the lab
Lex Fridman (03:53.720)
because it was my first year as an assistant professor
Lex Fridman (03:57.240)
and there's a lot to do.
Lex Fridman (03:58.800)
And I was also bitching and moaning to my friends
Lisa Feldman Barrett (04:02.640)
that I hadn't had sex in I don't know how many months
Lex Fridman (04:06.320)
and I was starting to become unhappy with my life.
Lex Fridman (04:10.520)
And I think at a certain point,
Lex Fridman (04:13.040)
they just got tired of listening to me bitch and moan
Lex Fridman (04:15.560)
and said, just do something about it then,
Lex Fridman (04:18.320)
like if you're unhappy.
Lex Fridman (04:20.360)
And so the first thing I did was I made friends
Lex Fridman (04:23.720)
with a sushi chef in town.
Lex Fridman (04:25.720)
And this is like a State College, Pennsylvania
Lex Fridman (04:28.840)
in the early 90s was there was like a pizza shop
Lex Fridman (04:32.160)
and a sub shop and actually a very good bagel shop
Lex Fridman (04:36.240)
and one good coffee shop and maybe one nice restaurant.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (04:39.120)
I mean, there was really,
Lex Fridman (04:40.160)
but there was the second son of a Japanese sushi chef
Lisa Feldman Barrett (04:44.440)
who was not going to inherit the restaurant.
Lex Fridman (04:47.200)
And so he moved to Pennsylvania and was giving sushi lessons.
Lex Fridman (04:51.200)
So I met this guy, the sushi chef
Lex Fridman (04:54.240)
and we decided to throw a sushi party at the coffee shop.
Lex Fridman (04:57.400)
So we basically, it was the goal was to invite
Lex Fridman (04:59.680)
every eligible bachelor really within like a 20 mile radius.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (05:05.000)
We had a totally fun time.
Lex Fridman (05:07.000)
I wore an awesome crushed velvet burgundy dress,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (05:11.040)
it was beautiful dress.
Lex Fridman (05:14.000)
And I didn't meet any, I met a lot of new friends,
Lex Fridman (05:16.560)
but I did not meet anybody.
Lex Fridman (05:17.760)
So then I thought, okay, well,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (05:18.720)
maybe I'll try the Personals ads,
Lex Fridman (05:20.960)
which I had never used before in my life.
Lex Fridman (05:23.400)
And I first tried the paper Personals ads.
Lex Fridman (05:29.160)
Like in the newspaper?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (05:30.000)
Like in the newspaper, that didn't work.
Lex Fridman (05:33.000)
And then a friend of mine said,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (05:33.960)
oh, you know, there's this thing called Net News.
Lex Fridman (05:36.600)
So we're going, this is like 1992 maybe.
Lex Fridman (05:40.160)
So there was this anonymous, you could do it anonymously.
Lex Fridman (05:43.840)
So you would read, you could post or you could read ads
Lex Fridman (05:49.960)
and then respond to an address which was anonymous
Lex Fridman (05:54.920)
and that was yoked to somebody's real address.
Lex Fridman (05:57.560)
And there was always a lag
Lex Fridman (06:01.040)
because it was this like a bulletin board sort of thing.
Lex Fridman (06:04.880)
So at first I read them over
Lex Fridman (06:08.920)
and I decided to respond to one or two.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (06:12.680)
And, you know, it was interesting.
Lex Fridman (06:15.240)
Sorry, this is not on the internet.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (06:16.960)
Yeah, this is totally on the internet.
Lex Fridman (06:18.320)
But it takes, there's a delay of a couple of days
Lisa Feldman Barrett (06:20.160)
or whatever.
Lex Fridman (06:21.000)
Yeah, right, right.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (06:21.820)
It's 1992, there's no web, web pictures.
Lex Fridman (06:25.160)
There's no pictures, the web doesn't exist.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (06:27.120)
It's all done in ASCII format sort of.
Lex Fridman (06:30.600)
And, you know, but the ratio,
Lex Fridman (06:33.280)
but the ratio of men to women was like 10 to one.
Lex Fridman (06:38.360)
I mean, there were many more men
Lisa Feldman Barrett (06:39.840)
because it was basically academics and the government.
Lex Fridman (06:42.920)
That was it.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (06:44.400)
I mean, I think AOL maybe was just starting
Lex Fridman (06:47.020)
to become popular, but.
Lex Fridman (06:51.240)
And so the first person I met told me that he was a scientist
Lex Fridman (06:56.240)
who worked for NASA and, yeah.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (07:03.800)
Anyways, it turned out that he didn't actually.
Lex Fridman (07:07.040)
Yeah, this is how they brag is like you elevate your,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (07:11.200)
as opposed to saying you're taller than you are,
Lex Fridman (07:12.840)
you say like your position is higher.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (07:14.080)
Yeah, and I actually, I would have been fine
Lex Fridman (07:16.720)
dating somebody who wasn't a scientist.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (07:18.360)
It's just that they have, it's just that whoever I date
Lex Fridman (07:21.820)
has to just accept that I am and that I was pretty ambitious
Lex Fridman (07:28.240)
and was trying to make my career.
Lex Fridman (07:30.320)
And, you know, that's not, I think it's maybe more common
Lisa Feldman Barrett (07:34.440)
now for men to maybe accept that in their female partners,
Lex Fridman (07:38.500)
but at that time, not so common.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (07:40.520)
It could be intimidating, I guess.
Lex Fridman (07:41.880)
Yes, that has been said.
Lex Fridman (07:44.120)
And so then the next one I actually corresponded with,
Lex Fridman (07:49.120)
and we actually got to the point of talking on the phone,
Lex Fridman (07:51.620)
and we had this really kind of funny conversation
Lex Fridman (07:53.880)
where, you know, we're chatting and he said,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (07:57.520)
he introduces the idea that, you know,
Lex Fridman (08:00.080)
he's really looking for a dominant woman.
Lex Fridman (08:02.380)
And I'm thinking, I'm a psychologist by training,
Lex Fridman (08:05.240)
so I'm thinking, oh, he means sex roles.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (08:07.080)
Like, I'm like, no, I'm very assertive
Lex Fridman (08:08.960)
and I'm glad you think that, you know, okay.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (08:10.320)
Anyways, long story short, that's not really what he meant.
Lex Fridman (08:16.360)
Okay, got it.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (08:17.200)
Yeah, so, and I just, you know,
Lex Fridman (08:20.380)
that will just show you my level of naivete.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (08:22.320)
Like, I was like, I didn't completely understand,
Lex Fridman (08:24.560)
but I was like, well, yeah, you know, no.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (08:27.480)
At one point he asked me how I felt
Lex Fridman (08:29.240)
about him wearing my lingerie, and I was like,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (08:33.520)
I don't even share my lingerie with my sister.
Lex Fridman (08:35.680)
Like, I don't share my lingerie with anybody, you know?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (08:39.600)
No.
Lex Fridman (08:40.800)
The third one I interacted with was a banker
Lisa Feldman Barrett (08:45.280)
who lived in Singapore, and that conversation
Lex Fridman (08:50.880)
didn't last very long because he made an analogy,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (08:55.160)
I guess he made an analogy between me
Lex Fridman (08:57.720)
and a character in The Fountainhead,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (09:03.000)
the woman who's raped in The Fountainhead,
Lex Fridman (09:06.160)
and I was like, okay, that's not.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (09:08.620)
That's not a good.
Lex Fridman (09:09.460)
That's not a good, no, that's not a good one.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (09:11.440)
Not that part, not that scene.
Lex Fridman (09:12.920)
Not that scene.
Lex Fridman (09:13.760)
So then I was like, okay, you know what?
Lex Fridman (09:16.240)
I'm gonna post my own ad, and so I did.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (09:18.440)
I posted, well, first I wrote my ad,
Lex Fridman (09:20.080)
and then I, of course, I checked it with my friends
Lisa Feldman Barrett (09:22.600)
who were all also assistant professors.
Lex Fridman (09:24.700)
They were like my little Greek chorus,
Lex Fridman (09:26.440)
and then I posted it, and I got something like,
Lex Fridman (09:30.180)
I don't know, 80 something responses in 24 hours.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (09:34.280)
I mean, it was very.
Lex Fridman (09:35.120)
Do you remember the pitch?
Lex Fridman (09:37.960)
Like how you, I guess, condensed yourself?
Lex Fridman (09:40.920)
I don't remember it exactly, although Dan has it,
Lex Fridman (09:44.840)
but actually for our 20th wedding anniversary,
Lex Fridman (09:48.080)
he took our exchanges, and he printed them off
Lex Fridman (09:51.640)
and put them in a leather bound book for us to read,
Lex Fridman (09:54.640)
which was really sweet.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (09:57.240)
Yeah, I think I was just really direct.
Lex Fridman (09:58.680)
Like I'm almost 30.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (10:00.160)
I'm a scientist.
Lex Fridman (10:01.220)
I'm not looking, I'm looking for something serious.
Lex Fridman (10:04.960)
But the thing is, I forgot to say where my location was
Lex Fridman (10:08.960)
and my age, which I forgot.
Lex Fridman (10:12.000)
So I got lots of, I mean, I will say,
Lex Fridman (10:14.680)
so I printed off all of the responses,
Lex Fridman (10:17.880)
and I had all my friends over, and we had a big,
Lex Fridman (10:22.280)
I made a big pot of gumbo,
Lex Fridman (10:24.480)
and we drank through several bottles of wine
Lex Fridman (10:27.280)
reading these responses.
Lex Fridman (10:28.640)
And I would say for the most part, they were really sweet,
Lex Fridman (10:32.460)
like earnest and genuine as much as you could tell
Lisa Feldman Barrett (10:36.400)
that somebody is being genuine.
Lex Fridman (10:37.320)
I mean, it seemed, there were a couple of really funky ones,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (10:40.320)
like this one couple who told me
Lex Fridman (10:42.440)
that I was their soulmate, the two of them,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (10:44.480)
when they were looking for a third person,
Lex Fridman (10:47.160)
and I was like, oh, okay.
Lex Fridman (10:48.760)
But mostly super, seemed like super genuine people.
Lex Fridman (10:53.980)
And so I chose five men to start corresponding with,
Lex Fridman (10:57.600)
and I was corresponding with them.
Lex Fridman (10:58.900)
And then about a week later, I get this other email.
Lex Fridman (11:03.160)
And okay, and then I post something the next day
Lex Fridman (11:05.020)
that said, okay, thank you so much,
Lex Fridman (11:06.760)
and I'm gonna, I answered every person back.
Lex Fridman (11:10.320)
But then after that, I said, okay,
Lex Fridman (11:11.620)
and I'm not gonna answer anymore,
Lex Fridman (11:13.600)
because they were still coming in,
Lex Fridman (11:15.080)
and I couldn't, I have a job,
Lex Fridman (11:16.760)
and a house to take care of and stuff.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (11:18.720)
So, and then about a week later, I get this other email.
Lex Fridman (11:22.680)
And he says, he just describes himself,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (11:27.440)
like I'm this, I'm this, I'm this, I'm a chef,
Lex Fridman (11:30.200)
I'm a scientist, I'm a this, I'm a this.
Lex Fridman (11:32.520)
And so I emailed him back, and I said, you know,
Lex Fridman (11:36.760)
you seem interesting, you can write me
Lisa Feldman Barrett (11:38.400)
at my actual address if you want, here's my address.
Lex Fridman (11:40.840)
I'm not really responding,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (11:42.120)
I'm not really responding to other people anymore,
Lex Fridman (11:43.700)
but you seem interesting, you know,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (11:45.040)
you can write to me if you want.
Lex Fridman (11:46.800)
And then he wrote to me, and I wrote him back,
Lex Fridman (11:52.560)
and it was a nondescript kind of email,
Lex Fridman (11:54.900)
and I wrote him back, and I said, thanks for responding.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (11:56.860)
You know, I'm really busy right now.
Lex Fridman (11:58.840)
I was in the middle of writing
Lisa Feldman Barrett (11:59.720)
my first slate of grant applications,
Lex Fridman (12:02.600)
so I was really consumed, and I said,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (12:04.920)
I'll get back to you in a couple of days.
Lex Fridman (12:06.880)
And so I did, I waited a couple days
Lisa Feldman Barrett (12:09.240)
till my grants were, you know, safe,
Lex Fridman (12:11.280)
grant applications safely out the door.
Lex Fridman (12:13.440)
And then I emailed him back, and then he emailed me,
Lex Fridman (12:16.960)
and then really across two days, we sent 100 emails.
Lex Fridman (12:22.920)
And text only, was there pictures or any of that stuff?
Lex Fridman (12:25.280)
Text only, text only.
Lex Fridman (12:27.560)
And then, so this was like a Thursday and a Friday,
Lex Fridman (12:30.800)
and then Friday, he said,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (12:33.860)
let's talk on the weekend on the phone.
Lex Fridman (12:35.660)
And I said, okay.
Lex Fridman (12:37.080)
And he wanted to talk Sunday night,
Lex Fridman (12:39.840)
and I had a date Sunday night.
Lex Fridman (12:42.500)
So I said, okay, sure, we can talk Sunday night.
Lex Fridman (12:48.200)
And then I was like, well, you know,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (12:49.440)
I don't really wanna cancel my date,
Lex Fridman (12:50.720)
so I'm just gonna call him on Saturday.
Lex Fridman (12:52.440)
So I just called, I cold called him on Saturday,
Lex Fridman (12:55.480)
and a woman answered.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (12:57.280)
Oh, wow.
Lex Fridman (12:59.120)
That's not cool.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (12:59.960)
Not cool.
Lex Fridman (13:01.640)
And so she says, you know, hello.
Lex Fridman (13:04.520)
And I say, oh, you know, stand there.
Lex Fridman (13:06.880)
And she said, sure, can I ask who's calling?
Lex Fridman (13:09.760)
And I said, tell him it's Lisa.
Lex Fridman (13:11.720)
And she went, oh my God, oh my God, I'm just a friend.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (13:14.480)
I'm just a friend.
Lex Fridman (13:15.360)
I just need to tell you, I'm just a friend.
Lex Fridman (13:17.760)
And I was like, this is adorable, right?
Lex Fridman (13:21.280)
She doesn't, and then he gets on the phone,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (13:23.120)
not hi, nice to meet you.
Lex Fridman (13:24.480)
The first thing he says to me, she's just a friend.
Lex Fridman (13:27.400)
So I was just so charmed really by the whole thing.
Lex Fridman (13:32.880)
So it was Yom Kippur.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (13:34.560)
It was the Jewish day of atonement that was ending
Lex Fridman (13:38.160)
and they were baking cookies and going to a break fast.
Lex Fridman (13:40.240)
So people, you know, as you know, fast all day,
Lex Fridman (13:42.460)
and then they go to a party and they break fast.
Lex Fridman (13:44.840)
So I thought, okay, I'll just cancel my date.
Lex Fridman (13:49.840)
So I did, and I stayed home and we talked for eight hours.
Lex Fridman (13:56.080)
And then the next night for six hours.
Lex Fridman (13:58.320)
And basically it just went on like that.
Lex Fridman (14:00.160)
And then by the end of the week, he flew to stay college.
Lex Fridman (14:06.880)
And, you know, we'd gone through this whole thing
Lisa Feldman Barrett (14:08.680)
where I'd said, we're gonna take it slow.
Lex Fridman (14:10.640)
We're gonna get to know each other, you know.
Lex Fridman (14:12.960)
And then really by, I think we talked like two or three times
Lex Fridman (14:16.080)
these like really long conversations.
Lex Fridman (14:18.120)
And then he said, I'm just gonna fly there.
Lex Fridman (14:20.280)
And then, so of course there's,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (14:23.720)
I don't even know that there were fax machines
Lex Fridman (14:26.560)
at that point.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (14:27.400)
Maybe there were, but I don't think so.
Lex Fridman (14:31.120)
Anyway, so he, we decided we'll exchange pictures.
Lex Fridman (14:34.120)
And so he, you know, I take my photograph
Lex Fridman (14:37.800)
and I give it to my secretary.
Lex Fridman (14:39.040)
And I say to my secretary.
Lex Fridman (14:41.720)
Fax this.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (14:42.560)
I say that, send this priority mail.
Lex Fridman (14:45.000)
Priority mail, yeah.
Lex Fridman (14:45.840)
And he goes, okay, I'll send a priority mail.
Lex Fridman (14:47.200)
And I'm like, it's a priority mail.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (14:48.440)
He's like, I know, priority mail, okay.
Lex Fridman (14:50.400)
And then, so I get Dan's photograph in the mail.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (14:55.880)
And, you know, it's him in shorts.
Lex Fridman (14:59.640)
And you can see that he's probably somewhere
Lisa Feldman Barrett (15:01.760)
like the Bahamas or something like that.
Lex Fridman (15:03.480)
And it's like cropped.
Lex Fridman (15:05.040)
So clearly what he's done is he's taken a photograph
Lex Fridman (15:07.440)
where, you know, he's in it with someone else
Lisa Feldman Barrett (15:10.280)
who turned out to be his ex wife.
Lex Fridman (15:11.920)
So I'm thinking, well, this is awesome.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (15:14.080)
You know, I've hit the jackpot.
Lex Fridman (15:15.480)
He's, you know, very appealing to me, very attractive.
Lex Fridman (15:18.640)
And then, you know, my photograph doesn't show up
Lex Fridman (15:23.080)
and it doesn't show up.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (15:24.360)
And, you know, so like one day and then two days
Lex Fridman (15:27.360)
and then, you know, he's like, you know, I said,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (15:30.720)
well, I asked my secretary to send a priority.
Lex Fridman (15:34.160)
I mean, I don't know, you know, what he did.
Lex Fridman (15:37.240)
And he's like, I said, I'm like, well, you don't have to,
Lex Fridman (15:40.960)
you know, you don't have to come.
Lex Fridman (15:41.880)
And he's like, no, no, no, I'm gonna, you know,
Lex Fridman (15:43.600)
we've had like five dates,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (15:45.400)
the equivalent of five dates practically.
Lex Fridman (15:48.480)
And then, so he's supposed to fly on a Thursday or Friday,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (15:52.360)
I can't remember.
Lex Fridman (15:53.560)
And I get a call like maybe an hour
Lisa Feldman Barrett (15:56.360)
before his flight's supposed to leave.
Lex Fridman (15:58.120)
And he says, hi.
Lex Fridman (15:59.000)
And I say, and it's just something in his voice, right?
Lex Fridman (16:00.960)
And I say, cause at this point I think I've talked to him
Lisa Feldman Barrett (16:03.000)
like for 25 hours, I don't know.
Lex Fridman (16:05.400)
And he says, hi.
Lex Fridman (16:07.280)
And I'm like, you got the picture.
Lex Fridman (16:09.280)
And he's like, yeah.
Lex Fridman (16:10.480)
And I'm like, you don't like it.
Lex Fridman (16:12.640)
And he's like, well,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (16:17.120)
I'm sure it's not, I'm sure it's your,
Lex Fridman (16:20.040)
I'm sure it's just not a good, you know,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (16:21.840)
it's not, it's probably not your best.
Lex Fridman (16:24.200)
Oh no.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (16:25.200)
You know, you don't, you don't have to come.
Lex Fridman (16:28.040)
And he's like, no, no, no, I'm coming.
Lex Fridman (16:29.360)
And I'm like, no, you don't have to come.
Lex Fridman (16:30.640)
And he's like, no, no, I really wanna,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (16:32.200)
I'm, you know, I'm getting on the plane.
Lex Fridman (16:33.840)
I'm like, you don't have to get on the plane.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (16:36.880)
He's like, no, I'm getting on the plane.
Lex Fridman (16:38.240)
And so I go down to my, I go,
Lex Fridman (16:40.640)
I'm in my office, this is happening, right?
Lex Fridman (16:42.040)
So I go downstairs to one of my closest friends
Lisa Feldman Barrett (16:44.640)
who is still actually one of my closest friends,
Lex Fridman (16:48.600)
who is one of my colleagues and Kevin.
Lex Fridman (16:51.240)
And I say, Kevin, and I go to Kevin,
Lex Fridman (16:53.160)
I go, Kevin, Kevin, Kevin, he doesn't like the photograph.
Lex Fridman (16:55.760)
And Kevin's like, well, which photograph should you send?
Lex Fridman (16:57.480)
And I'm like, well, you know the one
Lex Fridman (16:58.880)
where we're shooting pool?
Lex Fridman (16:59.880)
And he's like, you sent that photograph?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (17:03.920)
That's a horrible photograph.
Lex Fridman (17:05.040)
I'm like, yeah, but it's the only one that I had
Lisa Feldman Barrett (17:07.360)
that was like, where my hair was kind of similar
Lex Fridman (17:09.600)
to what it is now, and he's like, Lisa,
Lex Fridman (17:13.000)
like, do I have to check everything for you?
Lex Fridman (17:15.840)
You should not have sent that, you know?
Lex Fridman (17:18.440)
But still, he flew over.
Lex Fridman (17:20.280)
So he flew. Where from, by the way?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (17:22.560)
He was in graduate school at Amherst,
Lex Fridman (17:25.880)
yeah, at UMass Amherst.
Lex Fridman (17:27.920)
So he flew and I picked him up at the airport
Lex Fridman (17:32.920)
and he was happy, so whatever the concern was, was gone.
Lex Fridman (17:38.880)
And I was dressed, you know, I carefully, carefully dressed.
Lex Fridman (17:43.080)
Were you nervous?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (17:44.120)
I was really, really nervous.
Lex Fridman (17:46.280)
Because I don't really believe in fate
Lex Fridman (17:49.920)
and I don't really think there's only one person
Lex Fridman (17:52.360)
that you can be with.
Lex Fridman (17:54.040)
But I think some people are curvy,
Lex Fridman (17:59.040)
you know, people who, some people are curvy,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (18:02.880)
they're kind of complicated,
Lex Fridman (18:04.280)
and so the number of people who fit them
Lisa Feldman Barrett (18:06.360)
is maybe less than.
Lex Fridman (18:08.040)
I like it, mathematically speaking, yeah.
Lex Fridman (18:10.800)
And so when I was going to pick him up at the airport,
Lex Fridman (18:13.120)
I was thinking, well, this could,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (18:15.720)
I could be going to pick up the person I'm gonna marry.
Lex Fridman (18:20.280)
Or not.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (18:21.480)
I mean, like, I really, but I really, you know,
Lex Fridman (18:24.680)
like, our conversations were just very authentic
Lex Fridman (18:27.800)
and very moving and we really connected.
Lex Fridman (18:33.240)
And I really felt like he understood me, actually,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (18:38.960)
in a way that a lot of people don't.
Lex Fridman (18:41.640)
And what was really nice was, at the time,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (18:49.240)
you know, the airport was this tiny little airport
Lex Fridman (18:53.160)
out in a cornfield, basically.
Lex Fridman (18:54.720)
And so driving back to the town,
Lex Fridman (18:58.440)
we were in the car for 15 minutes,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (19:00.160)
completely in the dark, as I was driving.
Lex Fridman (19:02.400)
And so it was very similar to,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (19:04.440)
we had just spent, you know, 20 something hours
Lex Fridman (19:07.480)
on the telephone, sitting in the dark,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (19:09.960)
talking to each other.
Lex Fridman (19:11.280)
So it was very familiar.
Lex Fridman (19:14.480)
And we basically spent the whole weekend together
Lex Fridman (19:16.400)
and he met all my friends and we had a big party.
Lex Fridman (19:19.000)
And at the end of the weekend,
Lex Fridman (19:22.840)
I said, okay, you know,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (19:26.800)
if we're gonna give this a shot,
Lex Fridman (19:30.160)
we probably shouldn't see other people.
Lex Fridman (19:33.120)
So it's a risk, you know?
Lex Fridman (19:35.640)
Commitment.
Lex Fridman (19:36.920)
But I just didn't see how it would work
Lex Fridman (19:40.160)
if we were dating people locally
Lex Fridman (19:42.160)
and then also seeing each other at a distance.
Lex Fridman (19:44.120)
Because, you know, I've had long distance relationships
Lisa Feldman Barrett (19:46.080)
before and they're hard and they take a lot of effort.
Lex Fridman (19:50.240)
And so we decided we'd give it three months
Lex Fridman (19:51.880)
and see what happened and that was it.
Lex Fridman (19:54.560)
This is an interesting thing.
Lex Fridman (19:57.200)
Like we're all, what is it?
Lex Fridman (19:58.800)
There's several billion of us
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:00:04.040)
you can see that the idea of an inner beast
Lex Fridman (1:00:08.020)
that we're just predators, we're just basically animals,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:00:10.880)
baseless animals, violent animals
Lex Fridman (1:00:13.300)
that have to be contained by culture
Lex Fridman (1:00:15.240)
and by our prodigious neocortex
Lex Fridman (1:00:17.640)
really took hold, particularly after World War I,
Lex Fridman (1:00:25.300)
and really held sway for much of that century.
Lex Fridman (1:00:32.500)
And then around, at least in Western writing, I would say,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:00:36.940)
you know, we're talking mainly
Lex Fridman (1:00:38.520)
about Western scientific writing,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:00:41.140)
Western philosophical writing.
Lex Fridman (1:00:42.780)
And then, you know, late 90s maybe,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:00:47.980)
you start to see books and articles
Lex Fridman (1:00:50.500)
about our social nature, that we're social animals.
Lex Fridman (1:00:53.560)
And we are social animals,
Lex Fridman (1:00:54.660)
but what does that mean exactly?
Lex Fridman (1:00:57.140)
And about.
Lex Fridman (1:01:00.180)
It's us carving out different niches
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:01:02.020)
in the space of ideas, it looks like.
Lex Fridman (1:01:03.460)
I think so, I think so.
Lex Fridman (1:01:04.500)
So, you know, do humans, can humans be violent?
Lex Fridman (1:01:14.040)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (1:01:15.540)
Can humans be really helpful?
Lex Fridman (1:01:17.940)
Yes, actually.
Lex Fridman (1:01:19.720)
And humans are interesting creatures
Lex Fridman (1:01:22.920)
because, you know, other animals
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:01:25.940)
can also be helpful to one another.
Lex Fridman (1:01:28.340)
In fact, there's a whole literature, booming literature
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:01:30.940)
on how other animals support one another.
Lex Fridman (1:01:38.560)
They regulate each other's nervous systems
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:01:40.620)
in interesting ways,
Lex Fridman (1:01:41.700)
and they will be helpful to one another, right?
Lex Fridman (1:01:43.540)
So for example, there's a whole literature on rodents
Lex Fridman (1:01:46.400)
and how they signal one another what is safe to eat,
Lex Fridman (1:01:52.000)
and they will perform acts of generosity
Lex Fridman (1:01:57.000)
to their conspecifics that are related to them,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:02:01.000)
or who they were raised with.
Lex Fridman (1:02:03.280)
So if an animal was raised in a litter
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:02:05.960)
that they were raised in,
Lex Fridman (1:02:07.760)
although not even at the same time,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:02:09.360)
they'll be more likely to help that animal.
Lex Fridman (1:02:11.320)
So there's always some kind of physical relationship
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:02:14.800)
between animals that predicts
Lex Fridman (1:02:17.720)
whether or not they'll help one another.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:02:19.840)
For humans, you know, we have ways of categorizing
Lex Fridman (1:02:27.800)
who's in our group and who isn't by nonphysical ways, right?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:02:32.800)
Even by just something abstract, like an idea.
Lex Fridman (1:02:35.960)
And we are much more likely to extend help
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:02:39.840)
to people in our own group,
Lex Fridman (1:02:41.760)
whatever that group may be at that moment,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:02:44.960)
whatever feature you're using to do that.
Lex Fridman (1:02:48.760)
Feature you're using to define who's in your group
Lex Fridman (1:02:51.040)
and who isn't.
Lex Fridman (1:02:53.000)
We're more likely to help those people
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:02:55.840)
than even members of our own family at times.
Lex Fridman (1:02:59.240)
So humans are much more flexible in their,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:03:05.240)
in the way that they help one another,
Lex Fridman (1:03:07.000)
but also in the way that they harm one another.
Lex Fridman (1:03:08.860)
So I don't think I subscribe to,
Lex Fridman (1:03:13.860)
I don't think I subscribe to, you know,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:03:18.180)
we are primarily this or we are primarily that.
Lex Fridman (1:03:21.020)
I don't think humans have essences in that way, really.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:03:25.140)
I apologize to take us in this direction
Lex Fridman (1:03:27.260)
for a brief moment,
Lex Fridman (1:03:28.260)
but I've been really deep on Stalin and Hitler recently
Lex Fridman (1:03:32.900)
in terms of reading.
Lex Fridman (1:03:34.060)
And is there something that you think about
Lex Fridman (1:03:37.860)
in terms of the nature of evil
Lex Fridman (1:03:41.580)
from a neuroscience perspective?
Lex Fridman (1:03:44.020)
Is there some lessons that are sort of hopeful
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:03:52.220)
about human civilization that we can find in our brain
Lex Fridman (1:03:58.060)
with regard to the Hitlers of the world?
Lex Fridman (1:04:01.140)
Do you think about the nature of evil?
Lex Fridman (1:04:05.360)
Yeah, I do.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:04:07.420)
I don't know that what I have to say is so useful
Lex Fridman (1:04:11.020)
from a, I don't know that I can say as a neuroscientist,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:04:14.100)
well, here's a study that, you know,
Lex Fridman (1:04:17.700)
so I sort of have to take off my lab coat, right?
Lex Fridman (1:04:20.180)
And now I'm gonna now conjecture as a human
Lex Fridman (1:04:22.780)
who just also, who has opinions,
Lex Fridman (1:04:24.660)
but who also maybe has some knowledge about neuroscience.
Lex Fridman (1:04:28.140)
But I'm not speaking as a neuroscientist when I say this,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:04:30.640)
cause I don't think neuroscientists know enough really
Lex Fridman (1:04:33.680)
to be able to say,
Lex Fridman (1:04:34.520)
but I guess the kinds of things I think about are,
Lex Fridman (1:04:38.000)
what, so I have always thought,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:04:44.280)
even before I knew anything about neuroscience,
Lex Fridman (1:04:48.400)
I've always thought that,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:04:53.120)
I don't think anybody could become Hitler,
Lex Fridman (1:04:54.980)
but I think the majority of people can be,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:04:59.960)
can do, are capable of doing very bad things.
Lex Fridman (1:05:05.260)
It's just, the question is really
Lex Fridman (1:05:06.680)
how much encouragement does it take from the environment
Lex Fridman (1:05:09.200)
to get them to do something bad?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:05:11.240)
That's what I kind of, when I look at the life of Hitler,
Lex Fridman (1:05:14.400)
it seems like there's so many places where...
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:05:19.480)
Something could have intervened.
Lex Fridman (1:05:20.960)
Intervene, no, it could change completely the person.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:05:23.360)
I mean, there's like the caricature,
Lex Fridman (1:05:25.280)
like the obvious places where he was an artist
Lex Fridman (1:05:28.480)
and if he wasn't rejected as an artist,
Lex Fridman (1:05:30.360)
he was a reasonably good artist.
Lex Fridman (1:05:32.080)
So that could have changed,
Lex Fridman (1:05:33.360)
but just his entire, like where he went in Vienna
Lex Fridman (1:05:36.760)
and all these kinds of things,
Lex Fridman (1:05:37.720)
like little interactions could have changed
Lex Fridman (1:05:40.000)
and there's probably millions of other people
Lex Fridman (1:05:44.240)
who are capable, who the environment may be able to mold
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:05:49.560)
in the same way it did this particular person
Lex Fridman (1:05:51.760)
to create this particular kind of charismatic leader
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:05:55.960)
in this particular moment of time.
Lex Fridman (1:05:57.560)
Absolutely, and I guess the way that I would say it,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:06:01.360)
I would agree 100% and I guess the way that I would say it
Lex Fridman (1:06:04.000)
is like this, in the West,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:06:08.200)
we have a way of reasoning about causation,
Lex Fridman (1:06:14.240)
which focuses on single, simple causes for things.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:06:21.280)
There's an essence to Hitler,
Lex Fridman (1:06:22.680)
there's an essence to his character.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:06:24.800)
He was born with that essence
Lex Fridman (1:06:26.640)
or it was forged very, very early in his life
Lex Fridman (1:06:30.160)
and that explains the horrible landscape of his behavior.
Lex Fridman (1:06:38.720)
But there's another way to think about it,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:06:41.080)
a way that actually is much more consistent
Lex Fridman (1:06:42.800)
with what we know about biology,
Lex Fridman (1:06:45.720)
how biology works in the physical world.
Lex Fridman (1:06:48.920)
And that is that most things are complex,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:06:52.160)
not as in, wow, this is really complex and hard,
Lex Fridman (1:06:54.280)
but complex as in complexity,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:06:56.880)
that is more than the sum of their parts
Lex Fridman (1:06:59.800)
and that most phenomena have many, many
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:07:05.120)
weak nonlinear interacting causes.
Lex Fridman (1:07:08.760)
And so little things that we might not even be aware of
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:07:13.880)
can shift someone's developmental trajectory
Lex Fridman (1:07:17.200)
from this to that and that's enough
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:07:20.000)
to take it on a whole set of other paths
Lex Fridman (1:07:24.640)
and that these things are happening all the time.
Lex Fridman (1:07:28.400)
So it's not random and it's not really,
Lex Fridman (1:07:31.280)
it's not deterministic in the sense
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:07:32.840)
that like everything you do determines your outcome,
Lex Fridman (1:07:35.960)
but it's a little more like you're nudging someone
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:07:41.240)
from one set of possibilities
Lex Fridman (1:07:44.520)
to another set of possibilities.
Lex Fridman (1:07:46.640)
But I think the thing that I find optimistic
Lex Fridman (1:07:50.000)
is that the other side of that coin is also true.
Lex Fridman (1:07:54.680)
So look at all the people who risked their lives
Lex Fridman (1:08:00.560)
to help people they didn't even know.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:08:05.400)
I mean, I just watched Borat, the new Borat movie.
Lex Fridman (1:08:09.120)
And the thing that I came away with,
Lex Fridman (1:08:11.680)
but the thing I came away with was,
Lex Fridman (1:08:15.280)
look at how generous people were in that.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:08:19.000)
Oh, he's making, there are a lot of people he makes fun of
Lex Fridman (1:08:21.400)
and that's fine, but think about like those two people
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:08:24.600)
two guys, those.
Lex Fridman (1:08:27.080)
The Trump supporter guys.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:08:28.400)
The Trump supporter guys.
Lex Fridman (1:08:29.960)
Those guys.
Lex Fridman (1:08:30.800)
That was cool, there was kindness in them, right?
Lex Fridman (1:08:33.200)
They took a complete stranger in a pandemic
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:08:38.920)
into their house.
Lex Fridman (1:08:41.920)
Who does that?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:08:42.920)
Like that's a really nice thing.
Lex Fridman (1:08:44.720)
Or there's one scene, I mean, I don't wanna spoil it
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:08:47.540)
for people who haven't seen it,
Lex Fridman (1:08:49.340)
but there's one scene where he goes in,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:08:51.800)
he dresses up as a Jew, I laugh myself sick at that scene,
Lex Fridman (1:08:57.400)
seriously, but he goes in
Lex Fridman (1:09:00.840)
and there are these two old Jewish ladies.
Lex Fridman (1:09:04.180)
What a bunch of sweethearts, oh my gosh.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:09:07.920)
Like really, I mean, that was what I was struck by actually.
Lex Fridman (1:09:12.240)
I mean, there are other ones or like the babysitter, right?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:09:15.440)
I mean, she was really kind.
Lex Fridman (1:09:18.560)
And yeah, so that's really what I was more struck by.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:09:22.680)
Like sure, there are other people
Lex Fridman (1:09:25.480)
who do very bad things or say bad things or whatever,
Lex Fridman (1:09:30.520)
but like there's one guy who's completely stoic,
Lex Fridman (1:09:35.160)
like the guy who's sending the messages,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:09:39.160)
I don't know if it's facts or whatever.
Lex Fridman (1:09:41.760)
He's just completely stoic,
Lex Fridman (1:09:43.440)
but he's doing his job actually.
Lex Fridman (1:09:45.580)
Like you don't know what he was thinking inside his head,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:09:48.880)
you don't know what he's feeling,
Lex Fridman (1:09:49.800)
but he was totally professional doing his job.
Lex Fridman (1:09:53.080)
So I guess I just, I had a bit of a different view, I guess.
Lex Fridman (1:09:58.920)
So I also think that about people,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:10:00.440)
I think everybody is capable of kindness,
Lex Fridman (1:10:06.120)
but the question is how much does it take
Lex Fridman (1:10:08.820)
and what are the circumstances?
Lex Fridman (1:10:09.880)
So for some people it's gonna take a lot
Lex Fridman (1:10:11.920)
and for some people it only takes a little bit,
Lex Fridman (1:10:14.360)
but are we actually cultivating an environment
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:10:21.680)
for the next generation that provides opportunities
Lex Fridman (1:10:28.480)
for people to go in the direction of caring and kindness
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:10:32.720)
or, and I'm not saying that as like a Pollyanna ish person.
Lex Fridman (1:10:40.360)
I think there's a lot of room for competition
Lex Fridman (1:10:42.600)
and debate and so on,
Lex Fridman (1:10:45.240)
but I don't see Hitler as an anomaly and I never have,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:10:50.200)
that was even before I learned anything about neuroscience.
Lex Fridman (1:10:52.680)
And now I would say knowing what we know
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:10:55.000)
about developmental trajectories and life histories
Lex Fridman (1:10:57.280)
and how important that is,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:10:59.920)
knowing what we know about that the whole question
Lex Fridman (1:11:03.600)
of like nature versus nurture is a completely wrong question.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:11:07.860)
We have the kind of nature that requires nurture,
Lex Fridman (1:11:11.000)
we have the kind of genes that allow infants to be born
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:11:14.960)
with unfinished brains where the brains,
Lex Fridman (1:11:18.040)
their brains are wired across a 25 year period
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:11:21.900)
with wiring instructions from the world
Lex Fridman (1:11:23.780)
that is created for them.
Lex Fridman (1:11:25.980)
And so I don't think Hitler is an anomaly,
Lex Fridman (1:11:32.480)
even if it's less probable that that would happen,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:11:37.040)
it's possible that it could happen again
Lex Fridman (1:11:39.160)
and it's not like, you know, he's a bad seed.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:11:43.280)
I mean, that doesn't, I just wanna say for like,
Lex Fridman (1:11:45.980)
of course he's completely 100% responsible for his actions
Lex Fridman (1:11:48.720)
and all the bad things that happen.
Lex Fridman (1:11:50.120)
So I'm not in any way, this is not me saying.
Lex Fridman (1:11:53.360)
But the environment is also responsible in part
Lex Fridman (1:11:56.240)
for creating the evil in this world.
Lex Fridman (1:11:59.240)
So like Hitler's in different versions of even more subtle,
Lex Fridman (1:12:05.240)
more smaller scale versions of evil.
Lex Fridman (1:12:07.480)
But I tend to believe that there's a much stronger,
Lex Fridman (1:12:13.800)
I don't like to talk about evolutionary advantages,
Lex Fridman (1:12:16.360)
but it seems like it makes sense for love
Lex Fridman (1:12:20.520)
to be a more powerful emergent phenomena
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:12:25.240)
of our collective intelligence versus hate
Lex Fridman (1:12:28.680)
and evil and destruction.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:12:30.540)
Because from a survival, from a niche perspective,
Lex Fridman (1:12:34.400)
it seems to be like in my own life
Lex Fridman (1:12:38.600)
and my thinking about the intuition
Lex Fridman (1:12:40.280)
about the way humans work together to solve problems,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:12:44.560)
it seems that love is a very useful tool.
Lex Fridman (1:12:47.760)
I definitely agree with you.
Lex Fridman (1:12:50.080)
But I think the caveat here is that, you know,
Lex Fridman (1:12:54.400)
humans, the research suggests that humans are capable
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:12:58.600)
of great acts of kindness and great acts of generosity
Lex Fridman (1:13:04.560)
to people in their in group.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:13:07.320)
Right, so we're also tribal.
Lex Fridman (1:13:11.720)
Yeah, I mean, that's the kitschy way to say it.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:13:14.400)
We're tribes, we're tribal, yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:13:16.560)
So that's the kitschy way to say it.
Lex Fridman (1:13:18.280)
What I would say is that, you know,
Lex Fridman (1:13:22.320)
there are a lot of features
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:13:25.880)
that you can use to describe yourself.
Lex Fridman (1:13:28.300)
You don't have one identity, you don't have one self,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:13:31.160)
you have many selves, you have many identities.
Lex Fridman (1:13:34.580)
Sometimes you're a man, sometimes you're a scientist,
Lex Fridman (1:13:37.420)
sometimes you're a, do you have a brother or a sister?
Lex Fridman (1:13:40.240)
Yeah, brother.
Lex Fridman (1:13:41.060)
So sometimes you're a brother.
Lex Fridman (1:13:42.400)
You know, sometimes you're a friend.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:13:45.120)
Sometimes you're a human so you can keep zooming out.
Lex Fridman (1:13:47.640)
Yes, exactly.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:13:48.480)
Living organism on Earth.
Lex Fridman (1:13:49.660)
Yes, exactly, that's exactly right.
Lex Fridman (1:13:53.400)
And so there are some people
Lex Fridman (1:13:58.120)
who there is research which suggests
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:14:01.820)
that there are some people who will tell you,
Lex Fridman (1:14:05.180)
I think it's appropriate and better to help.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:14:08.660)
I should help my family more than I should help my neighbors
Lex Fridman (1:14:11.420)
and I should help my neighbors more than I should help
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:14:13.920)
the average stranger.
Lex Fridman (1:14:15.360)
And I should help, you know, the average stranger
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:14:19.240)
in my country more than I should help
Lex Fridman (1:14:20.840)
somebody outside my country.
Lex Fridman (1:14:22.120)
And I should help humans more than I should help,
Lex Fridman (1:14:25.480)
you know, other animals.
Lex Fridman (1:14:26.520)
And I should, right, so there's a clear hierarchy
Lex Fridman (1:14:28.400)
of helping and there are other people who, you know,
Lex Fridman (1:14:33.120)
they are, their niche is much more inclusive, right?
Lex Fridman (1:14:37.120)
And that they're humans first, right?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:14:40.920)
Or creatures of the Earth first, let's say.
Lex Fridman (1:14:45.400)
And I don't think we know how flexible those attitudes are
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:14:50.640)
because I don't think the research really tells us that.
Lex Fridman (1:14:53.960)
But in any case, there are, you know,
Lex Fridman (1:14:56.860)
and there are beliefs, people also have beliefs about,
Lex Fridman (1:14:59.960)
there's this really interesting research in,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:15:03.360)
really in anthropology that looks at
Lex Fridman (1:15:08.320)
what are cultures particularly afraid of?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:15:12.420)
Like what the people in a particular culture
Lex Fridman (1:15:15.160)
are organizing their social systems
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:15:17.360)
to prevent certain types of problems.
Lex Fridman (1:15:20.120)
So what are the problems that they're worried about?
Lex Fridman (1:15:22.200)
And so there are some cultures that are much more
Lex Fridman (1:15:24.360)
hierarchical and some cultures that are,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:15:28.400)
you know, much more egalitarian.
Lex Fridman (1:15:30.520)
There are some cultures that, you know,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:15:32.380)
in the debate of like getting along versus getting ahead,
Lex Fridman (1:15:35.700)
there are some cultures that really prioritize
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:15:38.640)
the individual over the group.
Lex Fridman (1:15:40.100)
And there are other cultures that really prioritize
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:15:41.880)
the group over the individual.
Lex Fridman (1:15:43.300)
You know, it's not like one of these is right
Lex Fridman (1:15:45.340)
and one of these is wrong, it's that, you know,
Lex Fridman (1:15:47.880)
different combinations of these features
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:15:49.600)
are different solutions that humans have come up with
Lex Fridman (1:15:52.960)
for living in groups,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:15:55.600)
which is a major adaptive advantage of our species.
Lex Fridman (1:16:00.000)
And it's not the case that one of these is better
Lex Fridman (1:16:02.640)
and one of these is worse.
Lex Fridman (1:16:03.840)
Although as a person, of course, I have opinions about that.
Lex Fridman (1:16:07.320)
And as a person, I can say,
Lex Fridman (1:16:10.600)
I would very much prefer certain, I have certain beliefs
Lex Fridman (1:16:14.000)
and I really want everyone in the world
Lex Fridman (1:16:15.680)
to live by those beliefs, you know.
Lex Fridman (1:16:17.360)
But as a scientist, I know that it's not really the case
Lex Fridman (1:16:21.360)
that for the species,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:16:24.200)
any one of these is better than any other.
Lex Fridman (1:16:26.920)
There are different solutions that work differentially well
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:16:29.920)
in particular, you know, ecological parts of the world.
Lex Fridman (1:16:36.400)
But for individual humans,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:16:39.180)
there are definitely some systems that are better
Lex Fridman (1:16:42.120)
and some systems that are worse, right?
Lex Fridman (1:16:43.840)
But when anthropologists or when neuroscientists
Lex Fridman (1:16:46.820)
or biologists are talking,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:16:48.360)
they're not usually talking about the lives
Lex Fridman (1:16:50.460)
of individual people,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:16:52.040)
they're talking about, you know, the species,
Lex Fridman (1:16:54.400)
what's better for the species,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:16:55.640)
the survivability of the species.
Lex Fridman (1:16:57.360)
And what's better for the survivability of the species
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:16:59.960)
is variation,
Lex Fridman (1:17:01.640)
that we have lots of cultures
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:17:03.680)
with lots of different solutions
Lex Fridman (1:17:05.800)
because if the environment were to change drastically,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:17:09.880)
some of those solutions will work better than others.
Lex Fridman (1:17:17.580)
And you can see that happening with COVID.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:17:21.500)
Right, so some people might be more susceptible
Lex Fridman (1:17:23.780)
to this virus than others.
Lex Fridman (1:17:26.220)
And so variation is very useful.
Lex Fridman (1:17:28.380)
Say COVID was much, much more destructive than it is.
Lex Fridman (1:17:32.020)
And like, I don't know, 20% of the population died.
Lex Fridman (1:17:36.020)
So, you know, it's good to have variability
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:17:40.180)
because then at least some percent will survive.
Lex Fridman (1:17:42.860)
Yeah, I mean, the way that I used to describe it
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:17:46.540)
was, you know, using, you know, those movies
Lex Fridman (1:17:51.300)
like the War of the Worlds or Pacific Rim,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:17:55.180)
you know, where like aliens come down from outer space
Lex Fridman (1:17:58.360)
and they, you know, wanna kill humans.
Lex Fridman (1:18:01.220)
And so all the humans band together as a species
Lex Fridman (1:18:04.560)
and they all, like all the, you know,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:18:06.500)
little squabbling from countries and whatever
Lex Fridman (1:18:08.900)
all, you know, goes away
Lex Fridman (1:18:10.460)
and everyone is just one big, you know.
Lex Fridman (1:18:13.340)
Well, that, you know, that doesn't happen.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:18:19.700)
I mean, cause COVID is, you know,
Lex Fridman (1:18:21.980)
a virus like COVID 19 is like a creature from outer space.
Lex Fridman (1:18:29.940)
And that's not what you see happening.
Lex Fridman (1:18:31.780)
What you do see happening,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:18:33.260)
it is true that some people, I mean,
Lex Fridman (1:18:35.580)
we could use this as an example of essentialism also.
Lex Fridman (1:18:37.860)
So just to say, like exposure to the virus does not mean
Lex Fridman (1:18:41.240)
that you will become infected with a disease.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:18:45.020)
So, I mean, in controlled studies,
Lex Fridman (1:18:48.200)
one of which was actually a coronavirus, not COVID,
Lex Fridman (1:18:51.540)
but this was, these are studies from 10 or so years ago,
Lex Fridman (1:18:55.140)
you know, only somewhere between 20 and 40% of people
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:18:59.460)
were developed respiratory illness
Lex Fridman (1:19:02.180)
when a virus was placed in their nose.
Lex Fridman (1:19:06.300)
And so.
Lex Fridman (1:19:07.140)
And there's a dose question, all those.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:19:09.060)
Well, not in these studies, actually.
Lex Fridman (1:19:10.660)
So in these studies,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:19:11.580)
the dose was consistent across all people
Lex Fridman (1:19:15.500)
and everything, you know,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:19:16.780)
they were sequestered in hotel rooms
Lex Fridman (1:19:18.820)
and what they ate was, you know,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:19:21.380)
measured out by scientists and so on.
Lex Fridman (1:19:23.220)
And so when you hold dose, I mean,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:19:25.620)
the dose issue is a real issue in the real world,
Lex Fridman (1:19:27.980)
but in these studies, that was controlled.
Lex Fridman (1:19:32.460)
And only somewhere between 20,
Lex Fridman (1:19:34.580)
depending on the study,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:19:35.420)
between 20 and 40% of people became infected with a disease.
Lex Fridman (1:19:38.700)
So exposure to a virus doesn't mean de facto
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:19:43.340)
that you will develop an illness.
Lex Fridman (1:19:46.340)
You will be a carrier
Lex Fridman (1:19:47.660)
and you will spread the virus to other people,
Lex Fridman (1:19:50.220)
but you yourself may not,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:19:52.540)
your immune system may be in a state
Lex Fridman (1:19:55.820)
that you can make enough antibodies
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:19:58.740)
to not show symptoms, not develop symptoms.
Lex Fridman (1:20:05.180)
And so, of course, what this means is,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:20:08.340)
again, is that, you know,
Lex Fridman (1:20:10.380)
like if I asked you, do you think, you know,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:20:12.700)
a virus is the cause of a common cold or,
Lex Fridman (1:20:17.460)
you know, most people, if I asked this question,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:20:19.780)
I can tell you, because I asked this question.
Lex Fridman (1:20:21.760)
So do you think a virus is the cause of a cold?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:20:25.780)
Most people would say, yes, I think it is.
Lex Fridman (1:20:27.780)
And then I say, yeah, well,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:20:28.620)
only 20 to 40% of people develop respiratory illness
Lex Fridman (1:20:32.620)
in exposure to a virus.
Lex Fridman (1:20:34.300)
So clearly it is a necessary cause,
Lex Fridman (1:20:38.020)
but it's not a sufficient cause.
Lex Fridman (1:20:39.660)
And there are other causes, again,
Lex Fridman (1:20:41.060)
so not simple single causes for things, right?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:20:44.100)
Multiple interacting influences.
Lex Fridman (1:20:47.540)
So it is true that individuals vary
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:20:50.420)
in their susceptibility to illness upon exposure,
Lex Fridman (1:20:53.560)
but different cultures have different sets of norms
Lex Fridman (1:20:57.900)
and practices that allow,
Lex Fridman (1:21:01.300)
that will slow or speed the spread.
Lex Fridman (1:21:05.820)
And that's the point that I was actually trying to make here
Lex Fridman (1:21:08.820)
that, you know, when the environment changes,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:21:15.220)
that is, there's a mutation of a virus
Lex Fridman (1:21:18.720)
that is incredibly infectious,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:21:21.620)
some cultures will succumb,
Lex Fridman (1:21:25.540)
people in some cultures will succumb faster
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:21:27.600)
because of the particular norms and practices
Lex Fridman (1:21:32.380)
that they've developed in their culture
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:21:35.600)
versus other cultures.
Lex Fridman (1:21:36.560)
Now, there could be some other, you know,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:21:40.540)
thing that changes that where those other cultures
Lex Fridman (1:21:45.240)
or, you know, would do better.
Lex Fridman (1:21:46.420)
So very individualistic cultures like ours
Lex Fridman (1:21:49.780)
may do much better under other types of selection pressures.
Lex Fridman (1:21:53.840)
But for COVID, for things like COVID,
Lex Fridman (1:21:57.460)
you know, my colleague Michelle Gelfant,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:22:00.000)
her research shows that she looks at like loose cultures
Lex Fridman (1:22:03.960)
and tight cultures,
Lex Fridman (1:22:04.800)
so cultures that have very, very strict rules
Lex Fridman (1:22:08.160)
versus cultures that are much more individualistic
Lex Fridman (1:22:10.440)
and where personal freedoms are more valued.
Lex Fridman (1:22:14.220)
And she, you know, her research suggests that
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:22:18.100)
for pandemic circumstances, tight cultures actually,
Lex Fridman (1:22:22.100)
the people survive better.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:22:24.940)
Just to linger a little bit longer,
Lex Fridman (1:22:27.180)
we started this part of the conversation talking about,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:22:30.620)
you know, did humans evolve to think,
Lex Fridman (1:22:33.360)
did the human brain evolve to think,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:22:36.020)
implying is there like a progress to the thing
Lex Fridman (1:22:39.460)
that's always improving?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:22:41.380)
That's right, we never, yeah,
Lex Fridman (1:22:43.600)
and so the answer is no.
Lex Fridman (1:22:46.060)
But let me sort of push back,
Lex Fridman (1:22:47.860)
but so your intuition is very strong here,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:22:51.020)
not your intuition, the way you describe this,
Lex Fridman (1:22:54.000)
but is it possible there's a direction to this evolution?
Lex Fridman (1:22:58.540)
Like, do you think of this evolution as having a direction?
Lex Fridman (1:23:01.920)
Like it's like walking along a certain path
Lex Fridman (1:23:04.620)
towards something?
Lex Fridman (1:23:06.540)
Is it, you know, what is it?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:23:12.140)
Is it Elon Musk said like the Earth got bombarded
Lex Fridman (1:23:16.700)
with photons and then all of a sudden,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:23:20.700)
like a Tesla was launched into space or whatever,
Lex Fridman (1:23:23.180)
a rocket started coming?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:23:24.420)
Like, is there a sense in which,
Lex Fridman (1:23:26.780)
even though in the, like within the system,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:23:30.780)
the evolution seems to be this mess of variation,
Lex Fridman (1:23:33.140)
we're kind of trying to find our niches and so on,
Lex Fridman (1:23:35.980)
but do you think there, ultimately, when you zoom out,
Lex Fridman (1:23:38.780)
there is a direction that's strong,
Lex Fridman (1:23:40.860)
that does tend towards greater complexity and intelligence?
Lex Fridman (1:23:49.240)
No.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:23:50.940)
So, I mean, and again, what I would say is I'm really,
Lex Fridman (1:23:54.900)
I'm really just echoing people who are much smarter
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:23:58.220)
than I am about this.
Lex Fridman (1:24:00.060)
But see, you're saying smarter.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:24:01.600)
I thought it doesn't, there's no,
Lex Fridman (1:24:03.420)
I thought there's no smarter.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:24:04.960)
No, I didn't say there's no smarter.
Lex Fridman (1:24:06.180)
I said there's no direction.
Lex Fridman (1:24:08.060)
So I think the thing to say, or what I understand
Lex Fridman (1:24:11.700)
to be the case, is that there's variation.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:24:15.360)
It's not unbounded variation.
Lex Fridman (1:24:17.380)
And there are selectors.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:24:18.780)
There are pressures that will select.
Lex Fridman (1:24:22.540)
And so not anything is possible
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:24:25.300)
because we live on a planet
Lex Fridman (1:24:26.860)
that has certain physical realities to it, right?
Lex Fridman (1:24:31.220)
But those physical realities
Lex Fridman (1:24:32.620)
are what constrain the possibilities, the physical realities
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:24:39.660)
of our genes and the physical realities
Lex Fridman (1:24:42.140)
of our corporeal bodies and the physical realities
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:24:45.620)
of life on this planet.
Lex Fridman (1:24:51.060)
So what I would say is that there's no direction,
Lex Fridman (1:24:56.060)
but there is, it's not infinite possibility
Lex Fridman (1:25:03.820)
because we live on a particular planet
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:25:07.020)
that has particular statistical regularities in it,
Lex Fridman (1:25:10.220)
and some things will never happen.
Lex Fridman (1:25:12.380)
And so all of those things are interacting
Lex Fridman (1:25:15.940)
with our genes and so on,
Lex Fridman (1:25:20.880)
and the physical nature of our bodies
Lex Fridman (1:25:23.800)
to make some things more possible
Lex Fridman (1:25:25.480)
and some things less possible.
Lex Fridman (1:25:26.740)
Look, I mean, humans have very complex brains,
Lex Fridman (1:25:29.340)
but birds have complex brains,
Lex Fridman (1:25:31.060)
and so do octopuses have very complex brains.
Lex Fridman (1:25:37.240)
And all three sets of all three of those brains
Lex Fridman (1:25:40.680)
are somewhat different from one another.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:25:45.580)
Some birds have very complex brains.
Lex Fridman (1:25:47.320)
Some even have rudimentary language.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:25:48.820)
They have no cerebral cortex.
Lex Fridman (1:25:51.140)
I mean, admittedly, they have,
Lex Fridman (1:25:53.160)
this is now lesson two, right?
Lex Fridman (1:25:54.900)
They have, is it lesson two or lesson one?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:25:56.580)
Let me think.
Lex Fridman (1:25:57.420)
No, this is lesson one.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:25:58.900)
They have the same neurons,
Lex Fridman (1:26:05.460)
the same neurons that in a human
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:26:07.600)
become the cerebral cortex.
Lex Fridman (1:26:09.300)
Birds have those neurons.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:26:10.980)
They just don't form themselves into a cerebral cortex.
Lex Fridman (1:26:13.660)
But I mean, crows, for example,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:26:15.260)
are very sophisticated animals.
Lex Fridman (1:26:17.140)
They can do a lot of the things that humans can do.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:26:19.780)
In fact, all of the things that humans do
Lex Fridman (1:26:22.340)
that are very special, that seem very special,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:26:24.900)
there's at least one other animal on the planet
Lex Fridman (1:26:26.940)
that can do those things too.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:26:29.040)
What's special about the human brain
Lex Fridman (1:26:30.780)
is that we put them all together.
Lex Fridman (1:26:33.980)
So we learn from one another.
Lex Fridman (1:26:35.880)
We don't have to experience everything ourselves.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:26:37.620)
We can watch another animal or another human
Lex Fridman (1:26:40.740)
experience something, and we can learn from that.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:26:42.620)
Well, there are many other animals
Lex Fridman (1:26:44.060)
who can learn by copying.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:26:45.800)
That we communicate with each other
Lex Fridman (1:26:47.540)
very, very efficiently.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:26:48.620)
We have language.
Lex Fridman (1:26:49.460)
But we're not the only animals
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:26:51.080)
who are efficient communicators.
Lex Fridman (1:26:52.900)
There are lots of other animals
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:26:54.300)
who can efficiently communicate, like bees, for example.
Lex Fridman (1:26:58.280)
We cooperate really well with one another
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:27:00.560)
to do grand things.
Lex Fridman (1:27:01.720)
But there are other animals that cooperate too.
Lex Fridman (1:27:03.420)
And so every innovation that we have,
Lex Fridman (1:27:06.180)
other animals have too.
Lex Fridman (1:27:07.740)
What we have is we have all of those together
Lex Fridman (1:27:11.300)
interwoven in this very complex dance
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:27:14.900)
in a brain that is not unique exactly,
Lex Fridman (1:27:19.900)
but that is, it does have some features
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:27:25.260)
that make it particularly useful for us
Lex Fridman (1:27:30.980)
to do all of these things,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:27:33.660)
to have all of these things intertwined.
Lex Fridman (1:27:35.660)
So our brains are, actually the last time we talked,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:27:40.580)
I made a mistake because I said in my enthusiasm,
Lex Fridman (1:27:45.580)
I said, you know, our brains are not larger,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:27:50.240)
or relative to our bodies,
Lex Fridman (1:27:51.600)
our brains are not larger than other primates.
Lex Fridman (1:27:55.760)
And that's actually not true, actually.
Lex Fridman (1:27:57.760)
Our brains relative to our body size is somewhat larger.
Lex Fridman (1:28:01.500)
So an ape who's not a human, that's not a human,
Lex Fridman (1:28:06.560)
their brains are larger than their body sizes
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:28:09.720)
than say, relative to like a smaller monkey.
Lex Fridman (1:28:13.320)
And a human's brain is larger relative to its body size
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:28:17.240)
than a gorilla.
Lex Fridman (1:28:18.080)
So that's a good approximation of your, of whatever,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:28:22.100)
of the bunch of stuff that you can shove in there.
Lex Fridman (1:28:25.180)
But, well, what I was gonna say is,
Lex Fridman (1:28:26.600)
but our cerebral cortex is not larger
Lex Fridman (1:28:29.560)
than what you would expect for a brain of its size.
Lex Fridman (1:28:33.520)
So relative to say an ape, like a gorilla or a chimp,
Lex Fridman (1:28:38.520)
or even a mammal like a dolphin or an elephant, you know,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:28:44.620)
our brains, our cerebral cortex is as large
Lex Fridman (1:28:50.020)
as you would expect it to be for a brain of our size.
Lex Fridman (1:28:53.900)
So there's nothing special about our cerebral cortex.
Lex Fridman (1:28:57.780)
And this is something I explain in the book,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:29:00.000)
where I say, okay, you know, like by analogy,
Lex Fridman (1:29:04.020)
if you walk into somebody's house
Lex Fridman (1:29:05.400)
and you see that they have a huge kitchen,
Lex Fridman (1:29:08.100)
you might think, well, maybe this is a place
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:29:11.620)
I really definitely wanna eat dinner at
Lex Fridman (1:29:13.740)
because these people must be gourmet cooks.
Lex Fridman (1:29:16.660)
But you don't know anything
Lex Fridman (1:29:17.500)
about what the size of their kitchen means
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:29:19.180)
unless you consider it in relation
Lex Fridman (1:29:20.800)
to the size of the rest of the house.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:29:23.100)
If it's a big kitchen in a really big house,
Lex Fridman (1:29:26.580)
it's not telling you anything special, right?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:29:29.300)
If it's a big kitchen in a small house,
Lex Fridman (1:29:31.960)
then that might be a place that you wanna eat for,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:29:33.900)
you wanna stay for dinner because it's more likely
Lex Fridman (1:29:36.740)
that that kitchen is large for a special reason.
Lex Fridman (1:29:39.380)
And so the cerebral cortex of a human brain
Lex Fridman (1:29:43.660)
isn't in and of itself special because of its size.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:29:48.540)
However, there are some genetic changes
Lex Fridman (1:29:53.700)
that have happened in the human brain as it's grown
Lex Fridman (1:30:00.060)
to whatever size is typical for the whole brain size, right?
Lex Fridman (1:30:04.200)
There are some changes that do give the human brain
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:30:07.660)
slightly more of some capacities.
Lex Fridman (1:30:12.460)
They're not special, but we can do some things
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:30:18.580)
much better than other animals.
Lex Fridman (1:30:21.620)
And correspondingly, other animals can do some things
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:30:24.740)
much better than we can.
Lex Fridman (1:30:25.780)
We can't grow back limbs,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:30:27.000)
we can't lift 50 times our own body weight.
Lex Fridman (1:30:29.020)
Well, I mean, maybe you can,
Lex Fridman (1:30:30.040)
but I can't lift 50 times my own body weight.
Lex Fridman (1:30:31.860)
Ants with that regard are very impressive.
Lex Fridman (1:30:34.140)
And then you're saying with the frontal cortex,
Lex Fridman (1:30:36.900)
like that's the size is not always the right measure
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:30:40.780)
of capability, I guess.
Lex Fridman (1:30:44.140)
So size isn't everything.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:30:46.540)
Size isn't everything.
Lex Fridman (1:30:48.300)
That's a quoted book.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:30:49.820)
People like it when I disagree,
Lex Fridman (1:30:51.080)
so let me disagree with you on something
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:30:53.820)
or just like play devil's advocate a little bit.
Lex Fridman (1:30:56.380)
So you've painted a really nice picture
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:30:58.620)
that evolution doesn't have a direction, but is it possible
Lex Fridman (1:31:03.900)
if we just ran Earth over and over again,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:31:06.380)
like this video game,
Lex Fridman (1:31:08.640)
that the final result will be the same.
Lex Fridman (1:31:11.820)
So in the sense that we're,
Lex Fridman (1:31:14.140)
eventually there'll be an AGI type,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:31:17.220)
HAL 9000 type system that just like flies
Lex Fridman (1:31:19.980)
and colonizes nearby Earth like planets.
Lex Fridman (1:31:25.420)
And it's always will be the same.
Lex Fridman (1:31:26.900)
And the different organisms
Lex Fridman (1:31:29.040)
and the different evolution of the brain,
Lex Fridman (1:31:31.620)
like it doesn't feel like it has like a direction,
Lex Fridman (1:31:35.180)
but given the constraints of Earth
Lex Fridman (1:31:38.800)
and whatever this imperative,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:31:40.640)
whatever the hell is running this universe,
Lex Fridman (1:31:43.260)
like it seems like it's running towards something,
Lex Fridman (1:31:47.760)
is it possible that it will always be the same?
Lex Fridman (1:31:49.940)
Thereby it will be a direction.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:31:51.800)
Yeah, I think as you know better than anyone else
Lex Fridman (1:31:57.640)
that the answer to that question is,
Lex Fridman (1:31:59.280)
of course there's some probability that could happen, right?
Lex Fridman (1:32:03.000)
It's not a yes or no answer.
Lex Fridman (1:32:04.320)
It's what's the probability that that would happen?
Lex Fridman (1:32:07.580)
And there's a whole distribution of possibilities.
Lex Fridman (1:32:14.800)
So maybe we end up, what's the probability we end up
Lex Fridman (1:32:17.400)
with exactly the same compliment of creatures,
Lex Fridman (1:32:21.600)
including us?
Lex Fridman (1:32:22.680)
What's the likelihood that we end up with
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:32:27.040)
creatures that are similar to humans,
Lex Fridman (1:32:29.960)
but similar in certain ways, let's say,
Lex Fridman (1:32:33.080)
but not exactly humans or all the way
Lex Fridman (1:32:35.760)
to a completely different distribution of creatures.
Lex Fridman (1:32:41.480)
What's the intuition?
Lex Fridman (1:32:42.320)
Like if you were to bet money,
Lex Fridman (1:32:43.880)
what does that distribution look like
Lex Fridman (1:32:45.440)
if we ran Earth over and over and over again?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:32:47.320)
I would say given the, you're now asking me questions that.
Lex Fridman (1:32:51.200)
This is not science.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:32:52.240)
This is not science.
Lex Fridman (1:32:53.440)
But I would say, okay, well,
Lex Fridman (1:32:54.640)
what's the probability that it's gonna be a carbon life form?
Lex Fridman (1:32:59.000)
Probably high.
Lex Fridman (1:33:00.680)
But that's because I don't know anything about really.
Lex Fridman (1:33:03.920)
Yeah, I'm not really well versed that.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:33:07.880)
What's the probability that,
Lex Fridman (1:33:09.360)
so what's the probability that the animals will begin
Lex Fridman (1:33:12.120)
in the ocean and crawl out onto land?
Lex Fridman (1:33:14.720)
Versus the other way.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:33:15.560)
Versus the, I would say probably high.
Lex Fridman (1:33:19.280)
I don't know.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:33:20.120)
You know, but do I think what's the likelihood
Lex Fridman (1:33:22.760)
that we would end up with exactly the same or very similar?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:33:26.720)
I think it's low actually.
Lex Fridman (1:33:28.640)
I wouldn't say it's low, but I would say it's not 100%.
Lex Fridman (1:33:32.120)
And I'm not even sure it's 50%.
Lex Fridman (1:33:34.520)
You know, I would say,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:33:36.400)
I don't think that we're here by accident
Lex Fridman (1:33:38.960)
because I think, like I said, there are constraints.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:33:41.680)
Like there are some physical constraints about Earth.
Lex Fridman (1:33:44.760)
Now, of course, if you were a cosmologist,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:33:46.560)
you could say, well, the fact that the Earth is,
Lex Fridman (1:33:49.200)
if you were to do the Big Bang over again
Lex Fridman (1:33:51.280)
and keep doing it over and over and over again,
Lex Fridman (1:33:53.040)
would you still get the same solar systems?
Lex Fridman (1:33:56.360)
Would you still get the same planets?
Lex Fridman (1:33:58.240)
Would, you know, would you still get the same galaxies,
Lex Fridman (1:34:00.840)
the same solar systems, the same planets?
Lex Fridman (1:34:02.800)
You know, I don't know, but my guess is probably not
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:34:06.920)
because there are random things that happen
Lex Fridman (1:34:08.520)
that can, again, send things in one direct, you know,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:34:12.600)
make one set of trajectories possible
Lex Fridman (1:34:14.520)
and another set impossible.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:34:15.880)
So, but I guess my, if I were gonna bet money
Lex Fridman (1:34:24.240)
or something valuable, I would probably say,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:34:28.080)
it's not zero and it's not 100%
Lex Fridman (1:34:31.480)
and it's probably not even 50%.
Lex Fridman (1:34:33.280)
So there's some probability, but I don't know.
Lex Fridman (1:34:34.680)
That it will be similar.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:34:35.520)
That it will be similar, but I don't think,
Lex Fridman (1:34:37.320)
I just think there are too many degrees of freedom.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:34:40.560)
There are too many degrees of freedom.
Lex Fridman (1:34:42.840)
I mean, one of the real tensions in writing this book
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:34:47.680)
is to, on the one hand, there's some truth in saying
Lex Fridman (1:34:52.760)
that humans are not special.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:34:57.720)
We are just, you know,
Lex Fridman (1:35:00.760)
we're not special in the animal kingdom.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:35:03.040)
All animals are well adapted.
Lex Fridman (1:35:07.160)
If they're survived, they're well adapted to their niche.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:35:11.120)
It does happen to be the case that our niche is large.
Lex Fridman (1:35:15.560)
For any individual human, your niche is whatever it is.
Lex Fridman (1:35:18.400)
But for the species, right?
Lex Fridman (1:35:20.080)
We live almost everywhere, not everywhere,
Lex Fridman (1:35:23.360)
but almost everywhere on the planet, but not in the ocean.
Lex Fridman (1:35:28.600)
And actually other animals like bacteria, for example,
Lex Fridman (1:35:32.360)
have us beat miles, you know, hands down, right?
Lex Fridman (1:35:35.600)
So we're, by any definition,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:35:40.400)
we're not special.
Lex Fridman (1:35:43.560)
We're just, you know, adapted to our environment.
Lex Fridman (1:35:46.720)
But bacteria don't have a podcast.
Lex Fridman (1:35:48.360)
Exactly, exactly.
Lex Fridman (1:35:50.320)
And so that's the other, so that's the tension, right?
Lex Fridman (1:35:53.080)
So on the one hand, you know, we're not special animals.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:35:55.320)
We're just, you know,
Lex Fridman (1:35:56.920)
particularly well adapted to our niche.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:35:58.240)
On the other hand, our niche is huge.
Lex Fridman (1:36:00.040)
And we, you know, we don't just adapt to our environment.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:36:03.080)
We add to our environment.
Lex Fridman (1:36:04.760)
We make stuff up, give it a name,
Lex Fridman (1:36:06.920)
and then it becomes real.
Lex Fridman (1:36:08.480)
And so no other animal can do that.
Lex Fridman (1:36:10.800)
And so I think the thing,
Lex Fridman (1:36:13.440)
the way to think about it from my perspective
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:36:15.360)
or the way I made sense of it is to say,
Lex Fridman (1:36:17.920)
you can look at any individual single characteristic
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:36:21.840)
that a human has that seems remarkable.
Lex Fridman (1:36:26.440)
And you can find that in some other animal.
Lex Fridman (1:36:30.120)
What you can't find in any other animal
Lex Fridman (1:36:33.840)
is all of those characteristics together
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:36:37.280)
in a brain that is souped up in particular ways,
Lex Fridman (1:36:43.080)
like ours is.
Lex Fridman (1:36:44.440)
And if you combine these things,
Lex Fridman (1:36:46.360)
multiple interacting causes, right?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:36:48.840)
Not one essence, like your cortex, your big neocortex,
Lex Fridman (1:36:53.720)
but which isn't really that big.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:36:56.160)
I mean, it's just big for your big brain,
Lex Fridman (1:36:59.840)
for the size of your big brain.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:37:01.200)
It's the size it should be.
Lex Fridman (1:37:04.040)
If you add all those things together
Lex Fridman (1:37:05.960)
and they interact with each other,
Lex Fridman (1:37:07.320)
that produces some pretty remarkable results.
Lex Fridman (1:37:10.960)
And if you're aware of that,
Lex Fridman (1:37:14.160)
then you can start asking different kinds of questions
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:37:19.800)
about what it means to be human
Lex Fridman (1:37:22.560)
and what kind of a human you wanna be
Lex Fridman (1:37:25.120)
and what kind of a world do you wanna curate
Lex Fridman (1:37:28.760)
for the next generation of humans.
Lex Fridman (1:37:31.040)
I think that's the goal anyways, right?
Lex Fridman (1:37:33.720)
Is just to have a glimpse of,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:37:38.080)
instead of thinking about things in a simple linear way,
Lex Fridman (1:37:42.760)
just to have a glimpse of some of the things that matter,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:37:45.760)
that evidence suggests matters
Lex Fridman (1:37:49.040)
to the kind of brain in the kind of bodies that we have.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:37:55.800)
Once you know that, you can work with it a little bit.
Lex Fridman (1:37:58.720)
You write, words have power over your biology.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:38:02.040)
Right now, I can text the words,
Lex Fridman (1:38:04.160)
I love you from the United States
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:38:06.400)
to my close friend in Belgium.
Lex Fridman (1:38:08.480)
And even though she cannot hear my voice or see my face,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:38:12.000)
I will change her heart rate, her breathing
Lex Fridman (1:38:15.000)
and her metabolism.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:38:16.640)
By the way, beautifully written.
Lex Fridman (1:38:19.560)
Or someone could text something ambiguous to you,
Lex Fridman (1:38:22.040)
like, is your door locked?
Lex Fridman (1:38:24.680)
And odds are that it would affect your nervous system
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:38:27.360)
in an unpleasant way.
Lex Fridman (1:38:29.480)
So, I mean, there's a lot of stuff to talk about here,
Lex Fridman (1:38:33.000)
but just one way to ask is,
Lex Fridman (1:38:37.440)
why do you think words have so much power over our brain?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:38:43.080)
Well, I think we just have to look at the anatomy
Lex Fridman (1:38:46.200)
of the brain to answer that question.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:38:48.160)
So, if you look at the parts of the brain,
Lex Fridman (1:38:52.640)
the systems that are important for processing language,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:38:57.640)
you can see that some of these regions
Lex Fridman (1:39:01.640)
are also important for controlling
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:39:03.560)
your major organ systems.
Lex Fridman (1:39:05.160)
And like your autonomic nervous system,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:39:07.160)
that controls your cardiovascular system,
Lex Fridman (1:39:09.600)
your respiratory system, and so on.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:39:12.240)
That these regions control your endocrine system,
Lex Fridman (1:39:17.640)
your immune system, and so on.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:39:20.240)
So, and you can actually see this in other animals too.
Lex Fridman (1:39:22.800)
So in birds, for example,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:39:24.760)
the neurons that are responsible for birdsong
Lex Fridman (1:39:28.080)
also control the systems of a bird's body.
Lex Fridman (1:39:30.840)
And the reason why I bring that up is that the,
Lex Fridman (1:39:33.640)
there's some scientists think that the anatomy
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:39:38.640)
of a bird's brain that control birdsong
Lex Fridman (1:39:42.000)
are homologous or structurally have a similar origin
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:39:45.760)
to the human system for language.
Lex Fridman (1:39:48.360)
So, the parts of the brain that are important
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:39:51.000)
for processing language are not unique
Lex Fridman (1:39:53.240)
in, and specialized for language.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:39:57.560)
They do many things.
Lex Fridman (1:39:59.160)
And one of the things they do is control
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:40:01.760)
your major organ systems.
Lex Fridman (1:40:03.680)
Do you think we can fall in love,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:40:05.240)
I have arguments about this all the time.
Lex Fridman (1:40:07.840)
Do you think we can fall in love based on words alone?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:40:10.560)
Well, I think people have been doing it for centuries.
Lex Fridman (1:40:14.000)
I mean, maybe it used to be the case
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:40:15.480)
that people wrote letters to each other,
Lex Fridman (1:40:17.520)
you know, and then that was how they communicated.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:40:22.160)
I guess that's how you and Dan got it.
Lex Fridman (1:40:24.160)
Exactly, exactly, exactly.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:40:26.400)
Yeah, exactly.
Lex Fridman (1:40:28.040)
So is the answer a clear yes there?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:40:31.120)
Because I get a lot of pushback from people often
Lex Fridman (1:40:34.040)
that you need the touch and the smell
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:40:39.440)
and, you know, the bodily stuff.
Lex Fridman (1:40:42.120)
I think the touch and the smell and the bodily stuff helps.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:40:45.560)
Okay.
Lex Fridman (1:40:46.400)
But I don't think it's necessary.
Lex Fridman (1:40:47.880)
Do you think you can have a lifelong monogamous relationship
Lex Fridman (1:40:51.920)
with an AI system that only communicates
Lex Fridman (1:40:54.560)
with you on text, romantic relationship?
Lex Fridman (1:40:58.040)
Well, I suppose that's an empirical question
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:41:00.800)
that hasn't been answered yet.
Lex Fridman (1:41:02.080)
But I guess what I would say is
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:41:08.080)
I don't think I could.
Lex Fridman (1:41:10.920)
Could any human?
Lex Fridman (1:41:12.680)
Could the average human?
Lex Fridman (1:41:14.400)
Could, you know, so if I,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:41:18.000)
if I even, I wanna even modify that and say,
Lex Fridman (1:41:25.520)
I'm thinking now of Tom Hanks and the movie.
Lex Fridman (1:41:31.080)
Castaway?
Lex Fridman (1:41:31.920)
Yeah, you know, with Wilson.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:41:33.280)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:41:34.120)
I think if that was, if you had to make that work,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:41:37.440)
if you had to make that work.
Lex Fridman (1:41:39.040)
With a volleyball, yeah.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:41:40.400)
If you had to make it work, could you,
Lex Fridman (1:41:43.160)
could you, prediction and simulation, right?
Lex Fridman (1:41:45.280)
So if you had to make it work, could you make it work?
Lex Fridman (1:41:49.480)
Using simulation and, you know, your past experience,
Lex Fridman (1:41:53.400)
could you make it work?
Lex Fridman (1:41:56.280)
Could you make it work?
Lex Fridman (1:41:57.120)
You as a human, could you, could you like?
Lex Fridman (1:41:59.800)
Could you have a relationship literally
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:42:01.920)
with an inanimate object and have it sustain you
Lex Fridman (1:42:04.640)
in the way that another human could?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:42:08.840)
Your life would probably be shorter
Lex Fridman (1:42:11.000)
because you wouldn't actually derive
Lex Fridman (1:42:12.920)
the body budgeting benefits from, right?
Lex Fridman (1:42:15.400)
So we've talked about, you know, how your brain,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:42:21.640)
its most important job is to control your body
Lex Fridman (1:42:24.200)
and you can describe that as your brain running a budget
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:42:27.080)
for your body and there are metaphorical, you know,
Lex Fridman (1:42:31.840)
deposits and withdrawals into your body budget
Lex Fridman (1:42:34.640)
and you also make deposits and withdrawals
Lex Fridman (1:42:37.400)
in other people's body budgets, figuratively speaking.
Lex Fridman (1:42:40.360)
So you wouldn't have that particular benefit.
Lex Fridman (1:42:45.880)
So your life would probably be shorter
Lex Fridman (1:42:48.280)
but I think it would be harder for some people
Lex Fridman (1:42:51.040)
than for other people.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:42:52.360)
Yeah, I tend to, my intuition is that you can have
Lex Fridman (1:42:54.320)
a deep fulfilling relationship with a volleyball.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:42:59.240)
I think, I think a lot of the, the environments
Lex Fridman (1:43:03.560)
that set up, I think that's a really good example.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:43:05.440)
Like the constraints of your particular environment
Lex Fridman (1:43:11.200)
define the, like I believe like scarcity is a good catalyst
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:43:16.960)
for deep, meaningful connection with other humans
Lex Fridman (1:43:20.000)
and with inanimate objects.
Lex Fridman (1:43:22.000)
So the less you have, the more fulfilling
Lex Fridman (1:43:24.680)
those relationships are.
Lex Fridman (1:43:25.880)
And I would say a relationship with a volleyball,
Lex Fridman (1:43:29.240)
the sex is not great but everything else,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:43:31.640)
I feel like it could be a very fulfilling relationship
Lex Fridman (1:43:34.640)
which I don't know from an engineering perspective
Lex Fridman (1:43:37.240)
what to do with that.
Lex Fridman (1:43:38.760)
And just like you said, it is an empirical question but.
Lex Fridman (1:43:41.520)
But there are places to learn about that, right?
Lex Fridman (1:43:43.560)
So for example, think about children and their blankets.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:43:49.100)
Right, so there, there's something tactile
Lex Fridman (1:43:51.220)
and there's something olfactory and it's very comforting.
Lex Fridman (1:43:56.240)
I mean, even for, even for nonhuman little animals, right?
Lex Fridman (1:44:00.180)
Like puppies and so I don't know about cats but, but.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:44:04.480)
Cats are cold hearted, there's no,
Lex Fridman (1:44:07.600)
there's nothing going on there.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:44:08.800)
I don't know, there are some cats that are very doglike.
Lex Fridman (1:44:12.000)
I mean, really, so.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:44:14.040)
Some cats identify as dogs, yes.
Lex Fridman (1:44:15.800)
I think that's true, yeah, they're species fluid.
Lex Fridman (1:44:21.360)
So you also write, when it comes to human minds,
Lex Fridman (1:44:26.120)
variation is the norm.
Lex Fridman (1:44:28.080)
And what we call quote, human nature
Lex Fridman (1:44:30.400)
is really many human natures.
Lex Fridman (1:44:32.740)
So again, many questions I can ask here.
Lex Fridman (1:44:36.260)
But maybe an interesting one to ask is I often hear,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:44:41.620)
we often hear this idea of be yourself.
Lex Fridman (1:44:45.260)
Is this possible to be yourself?
Lex Fridman (1:44:48.120)
Is it a good idea to strive to be yourself?
Lex Fridman (1:44:51.500)
Is it, does that even have any meaning?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:44:54.460)
It's a very Western question, first of all,
Lex Fridman (1:44:57.320)
because which self are you talking about?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:45:00.780)
You don't have one self.
Lex Fridman (1:45:01.860)
There is no self that's an essence of you.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:45:04.540)
You have multiple selves.
Lex Fridman (1:45:05.960)
Actually, there is research on this.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:45:09.260)
To quote the great social psychologist, Hazel Marcus,
Lex Fridman (1:45:13.300)
you're never, you cannot be a self by yourself.
Lex Fridman (1:45:18.700)
And so different contexts pull for
Lex Fridman (1:45:22.000)
or draw on different features of who you are
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:45:26.820)
or what you believe, what you feel, what your actions are.
Lex Fridman (1:45:32.020)
A different context will put certain things,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:45:35.100)
make some features be more in the foreground
Lex Fridman (1:45:38.060)
and some in the background.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:45:39.820)
It takes us back right to our discussion earlier
Lex Fridman (1:45:42.060)
about Stalin and Hitler and so on.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:45:46.060)
The thing that I would caution,
Lex Fridman (1:45:48.500)
in addition to the fact that there is no single self,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:45:51.660)
that you have multiple selves, who you can be,
Lex Fridman (1:45:54.300)
and you can certainly choose the situations
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:45:59.040)
that you put yourself in to some extent.
Lex Fridman (1:46:01.200)
Not everybody has complete choice,
Lex Fridman (1:46:02.860)
but everybody has a little bit of choice.
Lex Fridman (1:46:04.440)
And I think I said this to you before,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:46:06.400)
that one of the pieces of advice that we gave Sophia
Lex Fridman (1:46:10.600)
when she went, our daughter,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:46:11.920)
when she was going off to college,
Lex Fridman (1:46:13.280)
was try to spend time around people,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:46:18.440)
choose relationships that allow you to be your best self.
Lex Fridman (1:46:21.240)
We should have said your best selves, but, you know.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:46:28.680)
The pool of selves given the environment.
Lex Fridman (1:46:31.600)
Yeah, but the one thing I do wanna say
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:46:34.080)
is that the risk of saying be yourself, just be yourself,
Lex Fridman (1:46:38.320)
is that that can be used as an excuse.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:46:42.440)
Well, this is just the way that I am, I'm just like this.
Lex Fridman (1:46:45.540)
And that, I think, should be tremendously resisted.
Lex Fridman (1:46:51.800)
So that's one, that's for the excuse side,
Lex Fridman (1:46:54.360)
but, you know, I'm really self critical often,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:46:57.640)
I'm full of doubt, and people often tell me,
Lex Fridman (1:47:00.600)
just don't worry about it, just be yourself, man.
Lex Fridman (1:47:04.120)
And it's, the thing is, it almost,
Lex Fridman (1:47:07.520)
it's not, from an engineering perspective,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:47:09.880)
does not seem like actionable advice.
Lex Fridman (1:47:12.480)
Because, I guess, constantly worrying about who,
Lex Fridman (1:47:19.440)
what are the right words to say
Lex Fridman (1:47:24.080)
to express how I'm feeling is, I guess, myself.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:47:30.040)
There's a kind of line, I guess,
Lex Fridman (1:47:32.020)
that this might be a Western idea,
Lex Fridman (1:47:34.520)
but something that feels genuine
Lex Fridman (1:47:37.560)
and something that feels non genuine.
Lex Fridman (1:47:39.380)
And I'm not sure what that means,
Lex Fridman (1:47:42.620)
because I would like to be fully genuine and fully open,
Lex Fridman (1:47:45.820)
but I'm also aware, like this morning,
Lex Fridman (1:47:49.180)
I was very silly and giddy, I was like,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:47:52.220)
this is just being funny and relaxed and light,
Lex Fridman (1:47:57.300)
like there's nothing that could bother me in the world,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:48:01.140)
I was just smiling and happy.
Lex Fridman (1:48:02.700)
And then I remember last night,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:48:04.100)
was just feeling very grumpy,
Lex Fridman (1:48:05.980)
like stuff was bothering me.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:48:09.100)
Like certain things were bothering me.
Lex Fridman (1:48:10.780)
And like, what are those?
Lex Fridman (1:48:12.660)
Are those different selves?
Lex Fridman (1:48:14.500)
Like what, who am I in that?
Lex Fridman (1:48:16.940)
And what do I do?
Lex Fridman (1:48:17.780)
Because if we take Twitter as an example,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:48:20.520)
if I actually send a tweet last night
Lex Fridman (1:48:23.220)
and a tweet this morning,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:48:24.340)
it's gonna be very two different people tweeting that.
Lex Fridman (1:48:28.900)
And I don't know what to do with that,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:48:30.560)
because one does seem to be more me than the other,
Lex Fridman (1:48:34.980)
but that's maybe because there's a story that I'm trying,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:48:38.280)
there's something I'm striving to be,
Lex Fridman (1:48:40.460)
like the ultimate human that I might become,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:48:43.200)
I have maybe a vision of that,
Lex Fridman (1:48:44.580)
and I'm trying to become that.
Lex Fridman (1:48:46.460)
But it does seem like there's a lot
Lex Fridman (1:48:48.960)
of different minds in there.
Lex Fridman (1:48:51.300)
And they're all like having a discussion
Lex Fridman (1:48:54.460)
and a battle for who's gonna win.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:48:56.780)
I suppose you could think of it that way,
Lex Fridman (1:48:58.180)
but there's another way to think of it, I think,
Lex Fridman (1:49:00.140)
and that is that maybe the more Buddhist way to think of it,
Lex Fridman (1:49:03.740)
right, or a more contemplative way to think about it,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:49:05.740)
which is not that you have multiple personalities
Lex Fridman (1:49:08.800)
inside your head, but you have,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:49:11.820)
your brain has this amazing capacity.
Lex Fridman (1:49:18.940)
It has a population of experiences that you've had
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:49:24.580)
that it can regenerate, reconstitute.
Lex Fridman (1:49:27.820)
And it can even take bits and pieces of those experiences
Lex Fridman (1:49:32.700)
and combine them into something new.
Lex Fridman (1:49:35.940)
And it's often doing this to predict
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:49:39.180)
what's going to happen next and to plan your actions,
Lex Fridman (1:49:42.240)
but it's also happening, this also happens just,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:49:46.340)
that's what mind wandering is,
Lex Fridman (1:49:47.860)
or just internal thought and so on.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:49:50.240)
It's the same mechanism, really.
Lex Fridman (1:49:52.300)
And so a lot of times we hear the saying,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:49:57.060)
just think, if you think differently,
Lex Fridman (1:49:58.860)
you'll feel differently.
Lex Fridman (1:50:00.860)
But your brain is having a conversation continually
Lex Fridman (1:50:04.900)
with your body, and your body,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:50:08.100)
your brain's trying to control your body,
Lex Fridman (1:50:10.660)
well, trying, your brain is controlling your body,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:50:13.020)
your body is sending information back to the brain,
Lex Fridman (1:50:16.140)
and in part, the information that your body sends back
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:50:19.780)
to your brain, just like the information
Lex Fridman (1:50:23.620)
coming from the world, initiates the next volley
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:50:27.780)
of predictions or simulations.
Lex Fridman (1:50:30.300)
So in some ways, you could also say,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:50:34.260)
the way that you feel, I think we talked before
Lex Fridman (1:50:37.300)
about affective feeling or mood,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:50:40.220)
coming from the sensations of body budgeting,
Lex Fridman (1:50:46.060)
influences what you think.
Lex Fridman (1:50:50.300)
And as much as, so feelings influence thought,
Lex Fridman (1:50:54.840)
as much as thought influence feeling, and maybe more.
Lex Fridman (1:50:58.740)
But just the whole thing doesn't seem stable.
Lex Fridman (1:51:01.460)
Well, it's a dynamic system, Mr. Engineer, right?
Lex Fridman (1:51:05.480)
It's a dynamic, it's a dynamical system, right?
Lex Fridman (1:51:07.740)
Nonlinear dynamical system.
Lex Fridman (1:51:09.380)
And I think that's, I'm actually writing a paper
Lex Fridman (1:51:11.780)
with a bunch of engineers about this actually.
Lex Fridman (1:51:14.980)
But I mean, other people have talked about the brain
Lex Fridman (1:51:17.540)
as a dynamical system before,
Lex Fridman (1:51:18.860)
but the real tricky bit is trying to figure out
Lex Fridman (1:51:22.260)
how do you get mental features out of that system?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:51:24.900)
I guess one thing to figure out how you get
Lex Fridman (1:51:26.220)
a motor movement out of that system,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:51:27.760)
it's another thing to figure out
Lex Fridman (1:51:28.940)
how you get a mental feature,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:51:30.380)
like a feeling of being loved
Lex Fridman (1:51:32.900)
or a feeling of being worthwhile,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:51:34.860)
or a feeling of just basically feeling like shit.
Lex Fridman (1:51:38.620)
How do you get a feeling,
Lex Fridman (1:51:39.740)
a mental features out of that system?
Lex Fridman (1:51:43.940)
So what I would say is that you aren't,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:51:48.020)
the Buddhist thing to say is that you're not one person
Lex Fridman (1:51:50.780)
and you're not many people.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:51:52.300)
You are the sum of your experiences
Lex Fridman (1:51:58.240)
and who you are in any given moment,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:52:02.080)
meaning what your actions will be,
Lex Fridman (1:52:05.000)
is influenced by the state of your body
Lex Fridman (1:52:07.680)
and the state of the world that you've put yourself in.
Lex Fridman (1:52:10.240)
And you can change either of those things.
Lex Fridman (1:52:12.880)
One is a little easier to change than the other, right?
Lex Fridman (1:52:15.200)
You can change your environment
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:52:16.640)
by literally getting up and moving,
Lex Fridman (1:52:18.960)
or you can change it by paying attention
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:52:21.000)
to some things differently
Lex Fridman (1:52:22.320)
and letting some features come to the fore
Lex Fridman (1:52:26.080)
and other features be backgrounded.
Lex Fridman (1:52:28.000)
Like I'm looking around your place.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:52:30.040)
Oh no, this is not something you should do.
Lex Fridman (1:52:32.600)
No, but I'm gonna say one thing.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:52:34.960)
No green plants, no green plants.
Lex Fridman (1:52:39.640)
Because green plants mean a home
Lex Fridman (1:52:41.380)
and I want this to be temporary.
Lex Fridman (1:52:43.160)
Fair, fair, but.
Lex Fridman (1:52:45.880)
What goes to your mind when you see no green plants?
Lex Fridman (1:52:48.480)
No, I'm just making the point that what if you,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:52:54.360)
again, not everybody has control over their environment.
Lex Fridman (1:52:59.280)
Some people don't have control over the noise
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:53:01.520)
or the temperature or any of those things.
Lex Fridman (1:53:04.520)
But everybody has a little bit of control
Lex Fridman (1:53:07.100)
and you can place things in your environment,
Lex Fridman (1:53:10.280)
photographs, plants, anything that's meaningful to you
Lex Fridman (1:53:15.280)
and use it as a shift of environment when you need it.
Lex Fridman (1:53:19.360)
You can also do things to change
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:53:21.680)
the conditions of your body.
Lex Fridman (1:53:24.000)
When you exercise every day,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:53:25.760)
you're making an investment in your body.
Lex Fridman (1:53:28.880)
Actually, you're making an investment in your brain too.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:53:31.280)
It makes you, even though it's unpleasant
Lex Fridman (1:53:33.880)
and there's a cost to it, if you replenish,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:53:37.280)
if you invest and you make up that,
Lex Fridman (1:53:39.680)
you make a deposit and you make up what you've spent,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:53:44.280)
you're basically making an investment
Lex Fridman (1:53:46.320)
in making it easier for your brain
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:53:48.880)
to control your body in the future.
Lex Fridman (1:53:51.360)
So you can make sure you're hydrated.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:53:54.600)
Drink water.
Lex Fridman (1:53:55.640)
You don't have to drink bottled water.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:53:57.040)
You can drink water from the tap.
Lex Fridman (1:53:58.600)
This is in most places, maybe not everywhere,
Lex Fridman (1:54:01.680)
but most places in the developed world.
Lex Fridman (1:54:06.280)
You can try to get enough sleep.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:54:09.640)
Not everybody has that luxury,
Lex Fridman (1:54:11.240)
but everybody can do something to make their body budgets
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:54:16.720)
a little more solvent.
Lex Fridman (1:54:17.880)
And that will also make it more likely
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:54:21.680)
that certain thoughts will emerge
Lex Fridman (1:54:23.640)
from that prediction machine, basically.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:54:27.040)
That's the control you do have,
Lex Fridman (1:54:28.840)
is being able to control the environment.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:54:31.440)
That's really well put.
Lex Fridman (1:54:34.680)
I don't think we've talked about this,
Lex Fridman (1:54:36.760)
so let's go to the biggest unanswerable questions
Lex Fridman (1:54:39.040)
of consciousness.
Lex Fridman (1:54:41.360)
What is, you just rolled your eyes.
Lex Fridman (1:54:43.880)
I did, that was my, yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:54:45.720)
So what is consciousness from a neuroscience perspective?
Lex Fridman (1:54:49.000)
I know you, I mean.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:54:52.760)
I made notes, you know,
Lex Fridman (1:54:54.240)
because you gave me some questions in advance
Lex Fridman (1:54:56.440)
and I made notes for every single.
Lex Fridman (1:54:58.120)
Oh, except that one?
Lex Fridman (1:54:58.960)
Yeah, well that one I had, what the fuck?
Lex Fridman (1:55:01.240)
And then I took it out.
Lex Fridman (1:55:04.000)
So is there something interesting,
Lex Fridman (1:55:05.960)
because you're so pragmatic.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:55:07.560)
Is there something interesting to say about intuition
Lex Fridman (1:55:10.960)
building about consciousness?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:55:13.240)
Or is this something that we're just totally clueless about
Lex Fridman (1:55:16.240)
that this is, let's focus on the body,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:55:20.640)
the brain listens to the body,
Lex Fridman (1:55:22.120)
the body speaks to the brain,
Lex Fridman (1:55:24.520)
and let's just figure this piece out,
Lex Fridman (1:55:26.920)
and then consciousness will probably emerge somehow
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:55:29.160)
after that.
Lex Fridman (1:55:30.440)
No, I think, you know, well, first of all,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:55:33.080)
I'll just say up front,
Lex Fridman (1:55:35.120)
I am not a philosopher of consciousness
Lex Fridman (1:55:37.640)
and I'm not a neuroscientist who focuses on consciousness.
Lex Fridman (1:55:40.360)
I mean, in some sense, I do study it
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:55:41.880)
because I study affect and mood.
Lex Fridman (1:55:44.480)
And that is the,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:55:49.600)
you know, to use the phrase,
Lex Fridman (1:55:50.920)
that is the hard question of consciousness.
Lex Fridman (1:55:54.080)
How is it that your brain is modeling your body?
Lex Fridman (1:55:57.960)
Brain is modeling the sensory conditions of your body.
Lex Fridman (1:56:02.560)
And it's being updated,
Lex Fridman (1:56:03.840)
that model is being updated by the sense data
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:56:06.400)
that's coming from your body
Lex Fridman (1:56:07.760)
and it's happening continuously your whole life.
Lex Fridman (1:56:11.000)
And you don't feel those sensations directly.
Lex Fridman (1:56:15.560)
What you feel is a general sense of pleasantness
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:56:19.120)
or unpleasantness, comfort, discomfort,
Lex Fridman (1:56:21.120)
feeling worked up, feeling calm.
Lex Fridman (1:56:22.320)
So we call that affect, you know, most people call it mood.
Lex Fridman (1:56:26.360)
So how is it that your brain gives you
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:56:28.840)
this very low dimensional feeling of mood or affect
Lex Fridman (1:56:33.720)
when it's presumably receiving
Lex Fridman (1:56:35.760)
a very high dimensional array of sense data?
Lex Fridman (1:56:39.120)
And the model that the brain is running of the body
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:56:42.520)
has to be high dimensional
Lex Fridman (1:56:44.400)
because there's a lot going on in there, right?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:56:47.680)
You're not aware, but as you're sitting there quietly,
Lex Fridman (1:56:49.840)
as your listeners or as our viewers are sitting.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:56:54.440)
They might be working out, running now,
Lex Fridman (1:56:56.360)
or as many of them write to me.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:56:57.880)
That's fair.
Lex Fridman (1:56:58.720)
They're laying in bed, smoking weed
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:57:00.160)
with their eyes closed.
Lex Fridman (1:57:01.880)
That's fair, so maybe we should say that bit again then.
Lex Fridman (1:57:05.040)
So if, so some people may be working out,
Lex Fridman (1:57:07.800)
some people may be, you know, relaxing.
Lex Fridman (1:57:11.280)
But you know, even if you're sitting very still
Lex Fridman (1:57:14.120)
while you're watching this or listening to this,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:57:16.920)
there's a whole drama going on inside your body
Lex Fridman (1:57:19.600)
that you're largely unaware of.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:57:21.400)
Yet your brain makes you aware
Lex Fridman (1:57:26.200)
or gives you a status report in a sense
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:57:29.600)
by virtue of these mental features
Lex Fridman (1:57:31.600)
of feeling pleasant, feeling unpleasant,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:57:33.600)
feeling comfortable, feeling uncomfortable,
Lex Fridman (1:57:35.320)
feeling energetic, feeling tired and so on.
Lex Fridman (1:57:38.080)
And so how the hell is it doing that?
Lex Fridman (1:57:41.240)
That is the basic question of consciousness.
Lex Fridman (1:57:46.560)
And like the status reports seem to be,
Lex Fridman (1:57:49.200)
in the way we experience them, seem to be quite simple.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:57:52.480)
Like it doesn't feel like there's a lot of data.
Lex Fridman (1:57:56.560)
Yeah, no, there isn't.
Lex Fridman (1:57:57.640)
So when you feel, when you feel discomfort,
Lex Fridman (1:58:02.840)
when you're feeling basically like shit,
Lex Fridman (1:58:04.840)
you feel like shit, what does that tell you?
Lex Fridman (1:58:06.960)
Like, what are you supposed to do next?
Lex Fridman (1:58:08.360)
What caused it?
Lex Fridman (1:58:09.320)
I mean, the thing is not one thing caused it, right?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:58:12.160)
It's multiple factors probably influencing
Lex Fridman (1:58:15.560)
your physical state.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:58:16.920)
Your body budget.
Lex Fridman (1:58:17.760)
It's very high dimensional, yeah.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:58:18.600)
It's very high dimensional.
Lex Fridman (1:58:20.200)
And there are different temporal scales of influence, right?
Lex Fridman (1:58:28.000)
So the state of your gut is not just influenced
Lex Fridman (1:58:33.200)
by what you ate five minutes ago.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:58:34.680)
It's also what you ate a day ago and two days ago
Lex Fridman (1:58:37.600)
and so on.
Lex Fridman (1:58:38.480)
So I think the, you know,
Lex Fridman (1:58:43.480)
when I'm, I'm not trying to weasel out of the question,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:58:50.320)
I just think it's the hardest question actually.
Lex Fridman (1:58:55.120)
Do you think we'll ever understand it as scientists?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:59:03.280)
I think that we will understand it
Lex Fridman (1:59:06.680)
as well as we understand other things
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:59:09.720)
like the birth of the universe or the, you know,
Lex Fridman (1:59:15.320)
the nature of the universe, I guess I would say.
Lex Fridman (1:59:18.200)
So do I think we can get to that level of an explanation?
Lex Fridman (1:59:21.920)
I do actually, but I think that we have to start asking
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:59:24.880)
somewhat different questions and approaching the science
Lex Fridman (1:59:28.080)
somewhat differently than we have in the past.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:59:30.280)
I mean, it's also possible that consciousness
Lex Fridman (1:59:32.040)
is much more difficult to understand
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:59:33.600)
than the nature of the universe.
Lex Fridman (1:59:35.320)
It is, but I wasn't necessarily saying
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:59:37.680)
that it was a question that was of equivalent complexity.
Lex Fridman (1:59:40.800)
I was saying that I do think that we could get
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:59:44.160)
to some, I am optimistic that I would not,
Lex Fridman (1:59:51.040)
I would be very willing to invest the time,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:59:54.520)
my time on this earth as a scientist
Lex Fridman (1:59:57.040)
in trying to answer that question
Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:59:58.400)
if I could do it the way that I wanna do it,
Lex Fridman (20:00.440)
and we're kind of roaming this world
Lex Fridman (20:02.320)
and then you kind of stick together.
Lex Fridman (20:04.400)
You find somebody that just like gets you.
Lex Fridman (20:07.640)
And it's interesting to think about,
Lex Fridman (20:09.960)
there's probably thousands if not millions of people
Lisa Feldman Barrett (20:12.760)
that would be sticky to you,
Lex Fridman (20:14.920)
depending on the curvature of your space.
Lex Fridman (20:17.720)
But what is the, could you speak to the stickiness?
Lex Fridman (20:23.400)
Like to the, just the falling in love?
Lex Fridman (20:25.920)
Like seeing that somebody really gets you?
Lex Fridman (20:29.880)
Maybe by way of telling, do you think,
Lex Fridman (20:35.200)
do you remember there was a moment
Lex Fridman (20:36.360)
when you just realized, damn it, I think I'm,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (20:40.520)
like I think this is the guy.
Lex Fridman (20:42.760)
I think I'm in love.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (20:44.240)
We were having these conversations actually
Lex Fridman (20:46.560)
from the, really from the second weekend we were together.
Lex Fridman (20:49.520)
So he flew back the next weekend to State College
Lex Fridman (20:51.560)
because it was my birthday.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (20:52.400)
It was my 30th birthday.
Lex Fridman (20:53.240)
My friends were throwing me a party.
Lex Fridman (20:55.200)
And we went hiking and we hiked up some mountain
Lex Fridman (20:58.040)
and we were sitting on a cliff over this overlook
Lex Fridman (21:01.520)
and talking to each other.
Lex Fridman (21:02.480)
And I was thinking, and I actually said to him,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (21:04.040)
like I haven't really known you very long,
Lex Fridman (21:06.880)
but I feel like I'm falling in love with you,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (21:08.520)
which can't possibly be happening.
Lex Fridman (21:10.160)
I must be projecting, but it certainly feels that way.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (21:14.800)
Like I don't believe in love at first sight.
Lex Fridman (21:16.640)
So this can't really be happening,
Lex Fridman (21:18.880)
but it sort of feels like it is.
Lex Fridman (21:20.200)
And he was like, I know what you mean.
Lex Fridman (21:21.720)
And so for the first three months or four months,
Lex Fridman (21:24.480)
we would say things to each other.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (21:25.440)
Like, I feel like I'm in love with you,
Lex Fridman (21:28.080)
but you know, but that can't,
Lex Fridman (21:32.640)
but things don't really work like that.
Lex Fridman (21:34.160)
So, but you know, so, and then it became a joke.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (21:37.040)
Like I feel like I'm in love with you.
Lex Fridman (21:38.520)
And then eventually, you know, I think,
Lex Fridman (21:41.680)
but I think that was one moment
Lex Fridman (21:43.280)
where we were talking about just,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (21:50.200)
you know, not just all the great aspirations you have
Lex Fridman (21:53.880)
or all the things,
Lex Fridman (21:54.720)
but also things you don't like about yourself,
Lex Fridman (21:56.560)
things that you're worried about,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (21:57.920)
things that you're scared of.
Lex Fridman (21:59.720)
And then I think that was sort of solidified
Lisa Feldman Barrett (22:03.200)
the relationship.
Lex Fridman (22:04.040)
And then there was one weekend
Lisa Feldman Barrett (22:06.400)
where we went to Maine in the winter,
Lex Fridman (22:09.120)
which I mean, I really love the beach always,
Lex Fridman (22:12.720)
but in the winter, particularly.
Lex Fridman (22:15.680)
Because it's just beautiful and calm and whatever.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (22:18.520)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (22:19.360)
And I also, I do find beauty in starkness sometimes.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (22:24.720)
Like, so there's this grand majestic scene
Lex Fridman (22:28.280)
of, you know, this very powerful ocean
Lex Fridman (22:30.360)
and it's all these like beautiful blue grays
Lex Fridman (22:33.040)
and it's just stunning.
Lex Fridman (22:35.680)
And so we were sitting on this huge rock in Maine
Lex Fridman (22:39.440)
and where we'd gone for the weekend,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (22:40.800)
it was freezing cold.
Lex Fridman (22:42.440)
And I honestly can't remember what he said
Lisa Feldman Barrett (22:45.880)
or what I said or what,
Lex Fridman (22:48.560)
but I definitely remember having this feeling of,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (22:53.840)
I absolutely wanna stay with this person.
Lex Fridman (22:57.160)
And I don't know what my life will be like
Lisa Feldman Barrett (22:58.820)
if I'm not with this person.
Lex Fridman (23:00.120)
Like I need to be with this person.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (23:02.400)
Can we, from a scientific and a human perspective,
Lex Fridman (23:05.680)
dig into your belief that first love at first sight
Lex Fridman (23:09.320)
is not possible?
Lex Fridman (23:11.520)
You don't believe in it?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (23:13.160)
Cause there is, you don't think there's like a magic
Lex Fridman (23:15.800)
where you see somebody in the Jack Kerouac way
Lex Fridman (23:19.680)
and you're like, wow, that's something.
Lex Fridman (23:22.880)
That's a special little glimmer or something.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (23:26.760)
Oh, I definitely think you can connect with someone
Lex Fridman (23:29.680)
instant, in an instance.
Lex Fridman (23:32.120)
And I definitely think you can say,
Lex Fridman (23:34.720)
oh, there's something there
Lex Fridman (23:35.760)
and I'm really clicking with that person.
Lex Fridman (23:37.740)
Romantically, but also just as friends,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (23:39.600)
it's possible to do that.
Lex Fridman (23:40.760)
You recognize a mind that's like yours
Lisa Feldman Barrett (23:44.120)
or that's compatible with yours.
Lex Fridman (23:47.520)
There are ways that you feel like you're being understood
Lisa Feldman Barrett (23:50.440)
or that you understand something about this person
Lex Fridman (23:52.720)
or maybe you see something in this person
Lisa Feldman Barrett (23:54.440)
that you find really compelling or intriguing.
Lex Fridman (23:58.240)
But I think your brain is predictive organ, right?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (24:03.360)
You're using your past.
Lex Fridman (24:05.480)
You're projecting.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (24:06.600)
You're using your past to make predictions
Lex Fridman (24:10.120)
and I mean, not deliberately.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (24:12.880)
That's how your brain is wired.
Lex Fridman (24:14.360)
That's what it does.
Lex Fridman (24:15.280)
And so it's filling in all of the gaps that you,
Lex Fridman (24:21.200)
there are lots of gaps of information
Lisa Feldman Barrett (24:23.120)
that you don't, information you don't have.
Lex Fridman (24:26.280)
And so your brain is filling those in and.
Lex Fridman (24:31.400)
But isn't that what love is?
Lex Fridman (24:32.600)
No, I don't think so, actually.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (24:35.160)
I mean, to some extent, sure, you always,
Lex Fridman (24:38.360)
there's research to show that people who are in love
Lisa Feldman Barrett (24:41.640)
always see the best in each other
Lex Fridman (24:43.800)
and when there's a negative interpretation
Lisa Feldman Barrett (24:48.300)
or a positive interpretation,
Lex Fridman (24:49.640)
they choose the positive ones.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (24:50.820)
There's a little bit of positive illusion there going on.
Lex Fridman (24:54.080)
That's what the research shows.
Lex Fridman (24:55.540)
But I think that when you find somebody
Lex Fridman (25:00.540)
when you find somebody who not just appreciates
Lisa Feldman Barrett (25:07.900)
your faults but loves you for them actually,
Lex Fridman (25:13.100)
like maybe even doesn't see them as a fault,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (25:16.620)
that's, so you have to be honest enough
Lex Fridman (25:20.540)
about what your faults are.
Lex Fridman (25:24.020)
So it's easy to love someone for all the things
Lex Fridman (25:26.060)
that they, for all the wonderful characteristics they have.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (25:34.080)
It's harder, I think, to love someone despite their faults
Lex Fridman (25:37.940)
or maybe even the faults that they see
Lisa Feldman Barrett (25:39.820)
aren't really faults at all to you.
Lex Fridman (25:41.140)
They're actually something really special.
Lex Fridman (25:43.860)
But isn't that, can't you explain that
Lex Fridman (25:45.700)
by saying the brain kind of, like you're projecting,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (25:50.780)
you have a conception of a human being
Lex Fridman (25:54.300)
or just a spirit that really connects with you
Lex Fridman (25:58.100)
and you're projecting that onto that person
Lex Fridman (26:01.220)
and within that framework, all their faults
Lisa Feldman Barrett (26:04.820)
then become beautiful, like little.
Lex Fridman (26:06.420)
Maybe, but you just have to pay attention
Lisa Feldman Barrett (26:09.140)
to the prediction error.
Lex Fridman (26:11.540)
No, but maybe that's what love,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (26:13.700)
like maybe you started ignoring the prediction error.
Lex Fridman (26:17.620)
Maybe love is just your ability, like.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (26:21.220)
To ignore the prediction error.
Lex Fridman (26:22.780)
Well, I think that there's some research
Lisa Feldman Barrett (26:24.900)
that might say that, but that's not my experience, I guess.
Lex Fridman (26:30.340)
But there is some research that says,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (26:31.940)
I mean, there's some research that says
Lex Fridman (26:33.260)
you have to have an optimal margin of illusion,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (26:35.780)
which means that you put a positive spin on smaller things,
Lex Fridman (26:42.500)
but you don't ignore the bigger things, right?
Lex Fridman (26:45.100)
And I think without being judgmental at all,
Lex Fridman (26:48.380)
when someone says to me, you're not who I thought you were,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (26:52.740)
I mean, nobody has said that to me in a really long time,
Lex Fridman (26:55.060)
but certainly when I was younger,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (26:56.580)
that was, you're not who I thought you were.
Lex Fridman (26:58.540)
My reaction to that was, well, whose fault is that?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (27:01.460)
You know, I'm a pretty upfront person.
Lex Fridman (27:08.140)
I mean, I will though say that in my experience,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (27:11.820)
people don't lie to you about who they are.
Lex Fridman (27:15.860)
They lie to themselves in your presence.
Lex Fridman (27:18.420)
And so, you know, you don't wanna get tied up in that,
Lex Fridman (27:29.140)
tangled up in that.
Lex Fridman (27:30.260)
And I think from the get go,
Lex Fridman (27:32.500)
Dan and I were just for whatever reason,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (27:34.420)
maybe it's because we both had been divorced already
Lex Fridman (27:36.220)
and, you know, he told me who we thought he was
Lex Fridman (27:44.380)
and he was pretty accurate as far as I could,
Lex Fridman (27:47.380)
pretty much actually.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (27:48.540)
I mean, there's very,
Lex Fridman (27:51.420)
I can't say that I've ever come across a characteristic
Lisa Feldman Barrett (27:54.780)
in him that really surprised me in a bad way.
Lex Fridman (27:58.460)
It's hard to know yourself.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (28:00.380)
It is hard to know yourself.
Lex Fridman (28:01.220)
And to communicate that.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (28:02.580)
For sure.
Lex Fridman (28:03.420)
I mean, I'll say, you know,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (28:05.460)
I had the advantage of training as a therapist,
Lex Fridman (28:08.420)
which meant for five years I was under a fucking microscope.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (28:11.660)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (28:12.500)
You know, when I was training as a therapist,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (28:14.820)
it was hour for hour supervision,
Lex Fridman (28:17.020)
which meant if you were in a room with a client for an hour,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (28:20.580)
you had an hour with a supervisor.
Lex Fridman (28:23.860)
So that supervisor was behind the mirror for your session.
Lex Fridman (28:28.300)
And then you went and had an hour of discussion
Lex Fridman (28:30.660)
about what you said, what you didn't say,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (28:33.140)
learning to use your own feelings and thoughts
Lex Fridman (28:37.860)
as a tool to probe the mind of the client and so on.
Lex Fridman (28:42.220)
And so you can't help but learn a lot of,
Lex Fridman (28:45.660)
you can't help but learn a lot about yourself
Lisa Feldman Barrett (28:47.700)
in that process.
Lex Fridman (28:48.860)
Do you think knowing or learning how the sausage is made
Lex Fridman (28:55.260)
ruins the magic of the actual experience?
Lex Fridman (28:58.100)
Like you as a neuroscientist who studies the brain,
Lex Fridman (29:01.540)
do you think it ruins the magic of like love at first sight?
Lex Fridman (29:05.900)
Or are you, do you consciously are still able
Lex Fridman (29:09.180)
to lose yourself in the moment?
Lex Fridman (29:11.260)
I'm definitely able to lose myself in the moment.
Lex Fridman (29:13.620)
Is wine involved?
Lex Fridman (29:14.740)
Not always, chocolate.
Lex Fridman (29:17.340)
I mean, some kind of mind altering substance, right?
Lex Fridman (29:20.220)
But yeah, for sure.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (29:23.100)
I mean, I guess what I would say though,
Lex Fridman (29:24.620)
is that for me, part of the magic is the process.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (29:31.140)
Like, so I remember a day there was,
Lex Fridman (29:35.140)
while I was working on this book of essays,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (29:38.220)
I was in New York.
Lex Fridman (29:41.300)
I can't remember why I was in New York,
Lex Fridman (29:42.780)
but I was in New York for something.
Lex Fridman (29:44.660)
And I was in Central Park and I was looking
Lisa Feldman Barrett (29:47.940)
at all the people with their babies.
Lex Fridman (29:50.380)
And I was thinking, each one of these,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (29:54.860)
there's a tiny little brain that's wiring itself right now.
Lex Fridman (2:00:01.920)
not in the way that it's currently being done.
Lex Fridman (2:00:04.400)
So like rigorously?
Lex Fridman (2:00:05.600)
I don't wanna say unrigorously.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:00:06.960)
I just wanna say that there are certain set of assumptions
Lex Fridman (2:00:09.400)
that, you know, scientists have
Lex Fridman (2:00:11.720)
what I would call ontological commitments.
Lex Fridman (2:00:13.760)
They're commitments about the way the world is
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:00:16.120)
or the way that nature is.
Lex Fridman (2:00:18.720)
And these commitments lead scientists sometimes blindly
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:00:23.720)
without, they don't, scientists sometimes,
Lex Fridman (2:00:25.200)
sometimes scientists are aware of these commitments,
Lex Fridman (2:00:27.000)
but sometimes they're not.
Lex Fridman (2:00:28.360)
And these commitments on the list influence
Lex Fridman (2:00:30.600)
how scientists ask questions, what they measure,
Lex Fridman (2:00:34.560)
how they measure, and I just have very different views
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:00:39.560)
than a lot of my colleagues about the ways to approach this.
Lex Fridman (2:00:43.160)
Not everybody, but the way that I would approach it
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:00:46.400)
would be different and it would cost more
Lex Fridman (2:00:50.360)
and it would take longer.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:00:52.600)
It doesn't fit very well
Lex Fridman (2:00:54.280)
into the current incentive structure of science.
Lex Fridman (2:00:56.360)
And so do I think that doing science
Lex Fridman (2:00:59.120)
the way science is currently done
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:01:00.520)
with the budget that it currently has
Lex Fridman (2:01:02.280)
and the incentive structure that it currently has
Lex Fridman (2:01:04.240)
will we have an answer?
Lex Fridman (2:01:05.280)
No, I think absolutely not.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:01:06.800)
Good luck is what I would say.
Lex Fridman (2:01:09.760)
People love book recommendations.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:01:12.520)
Let me ask what three books.
Lex Fridman (2:01:14.640)
Oh, you can't just like, you can't just give me three.
Lex Fridman (2:01:17.200)
I mean, like really three?
Lex Fridman (2:01:18.640)
What seven and a half books you can recommend.
Lex Fridman (2:01:22.560)
So you're also the author of seven and a half lessons
Lex Fridman (2:01:24.600)
about the brain.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:01:26.080)
You're a author of how emotions are made.
Lex Fridman (2:01:29.240)
Okay, so definitely those are the top two recommendations
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:01:32.760)
of all, the two greatest books of all time.
Lex Fridman (2:01:35.240)
Other than that, are there books that technical,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:01:38.440)
fiction, philosophical that you've enjoyed
Lex Fridman (2:01:41.080)
or you might recommend to others?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:01:42.720)
Yes, actually, you know, every PhD student
Lex Fridman (2:01:46.840)
when they graduate with their PhD,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:01:50.360)
I give them a set, like a little library,
Lex Fridman (2:01:52.880)
like a set of books, you know,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:01:54.240)
some of which they've already read,
Lex Fridman (2:01:55.920)
some of which I want them to read or,
Lex Fridman (2:01:58.040)
but I think nonfiction books, I would read,
Lex Fridman (2:02:03.520)
the things I would recommend are The Triple Helix
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:02:07.680)
by Richard Lewontin.
Lex Fridman (2:02:10.280)
It's a little book published in 2000,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:02:14.080)
which is, I think, a really good introduction
Lex Fridman (2:02:17.520)
to complexity and population thinking
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:02:23.760)
as opposed to essentialism.
Lex Fridman (2:02:25.160)
So this idea, essentialism is this idea
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:02:27.200)
that, you know, there's an essence to each person,
Lex Fridman (2:02:29.920)
whether it's a soul or your genes or what have you,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:02:32.880)
as opposed to this idea that you,
Lex Fridman (2:02:35.440)
we have the kind of nature that requires a nurture.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:02:38.160)
We are, we are, you are the product of a complex dance
Lex Fridman (2:02:43.480)
between an environment, between a set of genes
Lex Fridman (2:02:47.680)
and an environment that turns those genes on and off
Lex Fridman (2:02:52.080)
to produce your brain and your body
Lex Fridman (2:02:53.920)
and really who you are at any given moment.
Lex Fridman (2:02:56.640)
It's a good title for that, Triple Helix.
Lex Fridman (2:02:59.240)
So playing on the double helix where it's just the biology,
Lex Fridman (2:03:02.240)
it's bigger than the biology.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:03:03.920)
Exactly.
Lex Fridman (2:03:05.360)
It's a wonderful book.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:03:06.240)
I've read it probably six or seven times
Lex Fridman (2:03:08.280)
throughout the year.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:03:09.120)
He has another book too, which is,
Lex Fridman (2:03:11.720)
it's more, I think scientists would find it,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:03:14.320)
I don't know, I've loved it.
Lex Fridman (2:03:15.480)
It's called Biology as Ideology.
Lex Fridman (2:03:18.560)
And it really is all about,
Lex Fridman (2:03:20.840)
I wouldn't call it one of the best books of all time,
Lex Fridman (2:03:22.840)
but I love the book because it really does point out,
Lex Fridman (2:03:26.800)
you know, that science is its currently practice.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:03:31.640)
I mean, the book was written in 1991,
Lex Fridman (2:03:33.160)
but it actually, I think, still holds,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:03:34.920)
that science is a currently practice,
Lex Fridman (2:03:36.960)
has a set of ontological commitments,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:03:38.880)
which are somewhat problematic.
Lex Fridman (2:03:41.600)
So the assumptions are limiting.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:03:43.520)
Yeah, in ways that you, it's, you know,
Lex Fridman (2:03:45.400)
it's like you're a fish in water and you don't, like,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:03:47.640)
okay, so, yeah, so here's the.
Lex Fridman (2:03:49.160)
David Foster Wallace, that stuff.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:03:50.000)
Yeah, but, you know, but here's a really cool thing
Lex Fridman (2:03:52.680)
I just learned recently.
Lex Fridman (2:03:55.120)
Is it okay to go off on this tangent for a minute?
Lex Fridman (2:03:57.920)
Yeah, yeah, let's go tangents, great.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:04:00.560)
I was just gonna say that I just learned recently
Lex Fridman (2:04:02.600)
that we don't have water receptors on our skin.
Lex Fridman (2:04:06.120)
So how do you know when you're sweating?
Lex Fridman (2:04:07.720)
How do you know when a raindrop,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:04:10.560)
when, you know, when it's gonna rain and, you know,
Lex Fridman (2:04:12.480)
like a raindrop hits your skin
Lex Fridman (2:04:13.760)
and you can feel that little drop of wetness.
Lex Fridman (2:04:16.600)
How is it that you feel that drop of wetness
Lex Fridman (2:04:18.480)
when we don't have water receptors in our skin?
Lex Fridman (2:04:22.280)
And I was, when I.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:04:23.320)
My mind's blown already.
Lex Fridman (2:04:24.840)
Yeah, that was, I have my reaction too, right?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:04:27.200)
I was like, of course we don't
Lex Fridman (2:04:29.240)
because we evolved in the water.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:04:31.460)
Like, why would we need, you know, it just,
Lex Fridman (2:04:33.240)
it was just this like, you know, you have these moments
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:04:35.120)
where you're like, oh, of course, there's like a, yeah, so.
Lex Fridman (2:04:38.240)
You'll never see rain the same way again.
Lex Fridman (2:04:40.680)
So the answer is it's a combination of temperature
Lex Fridman (2:04:46.160)
and touch, but it's a complex sense
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:04:49.840)
that's only computed in your brain.
Lex Fridman (2:04:52.520)
There's no receptor for it.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:04:54.240)
Anyways.
Lex Fridman (2:04:55.320)
Yeah, that's why like snow versus cold rain
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:04:58.440)
versus warm rain all feel different
Lex Fridman (2:05:00.520)
because you're trying to infer stuff from the temperature
Lex Fridman (2:05:03.600)
and the size of the droplets is fascinating.
Lex Fridman (2:05:05.840)
Yeah, your brain is a prediction machine.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:05:07.600)
It's using lots and lots of information and combining it.
Lex Fridman (2:05:11.000)
You know, anyway, so.
Lex Fridman (2:05:12.160)
But so biology is ideology is,
Lex Fridman (2:05:17.320)
I wouldn't say it's one of the greatest books of all time,
Lex Fridman (2:05:19.000)
but it is a really useful book.
Lex Fridman (2:05:22.560)
There's a book by,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:05:24.280)
if you're interested in psychology or the mind at all,
Lex Fridman (2:05:27.000)
there's a wonderful book, a little,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:05:29.040)
it's a fairly small book called Naming the Mind
Lex Fridman (2:05:34.960)
by Kurt Danziger, who's a historian of psychology.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:05:38.540)
Everybody in my lab reads both of these books.
Lex Fridman (2:05:42.440)
So what's the book?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:05:43.920)
It's about the origin of the,
Lex Fridman (2:05:45.520)
where did we get the theory of mind that we have
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:05:49.560)
that the human mind is populated by thoughts and feelings
Lex Fridman (2:05:53.440)
and perceptions and where did those categories come from?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:05:57.800)
Because they don't exist in all cultures.
Lex Fridman (2:06:01.680)
Oh, so this isn't, that's a cultural construct?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:06:05.940)
The idea that you have thoughts and feelings
Lex Fridman (2:06:08.040)
and they're very distinct is definitely a cultural construct.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:06:11.280)
That's another mind blowing thing, just like the rain.
Lex Fridman (2:06:16.180)
So Kurt Danziger is a,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:06:18.540)
the opening chapter in that book
Lex Fridman (2:06:22.580)
is absolutely mind blowing.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:06:26.220)
I love it, I love it.
Lex Fridman (2:06:29.380)
I just think it's fantastic.
Lex Fridman (2:06:32.100)
And I would say that there are many,
Lex Fridman (2:06:35.480)
many popular science books that I could recommend
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:06:39.020)
that I think are extremely well written in their own way.
Lex Fridman (2:06:42.500)
You know, before I, maybe I said this to you,
Lex Fridman (2:06:44.580)
but before I undertook writing How Emotions Are Made,
Lex Fridman (2:06:49.140)
I read, I don't know, somewhere on the order of 50 or 60
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:06:54.340)
popular science books to try to figure out
Lex Fridman (2:06:56.540)
how to write a popular science book.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:07:00.460)
Because while there are many books about writing,
Lex Fridman (2:07:03.980)
Stephen King has a great book about writing.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:07:07.380)
And, you know, where he gives tips
Lex Fridman (2:07:10.660)
interlaced with his own personal history.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:07:14.660)
That was where I learned you write for a specific person.
Lex Fridman (2:07:17.500)
You have a specific person in mind.
Lex Fridman (2:07:19.320)
And that's, for me, that person is Dan.
Lex Fridman (2:07:22.740)
That's fascinating.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:07:23.580)
I mean, that's a whole nother conversation
Lex Fridman (2:07:24.780)
to have like which popular science books,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:07:27.980)
like what you learned from that search.
Lex Fridman (2:07:31.340)
Because there's, I have some,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:07:34.300)
for me, some popular science books
Lex Fridman (2:07:35.700)
that like I just roll my eyes, like this is too,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:07:40.100)
it's the same with TED Talks.
Lex Fridman (2:07:41.780)
Like some of them go too much into the flowery
Lex Fridman (2:07:45.140)
and don't, I would say don't give enough respect
Lex Fridman (2:07:48.860)
to the intelligence of the reader.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:07:51.780)
And, but that's, this is my own bias very specifically.
Lex Fridman (2:07:55.140)
I completely agree with you.
Lex Fridman (2:07:56.660)
And in fact, I have a colleague, his name is Van Yang,
Lex Fridman (2:08:01.660)
who, you know, he produced a cinematic lecture
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:08:08.060)
of how emotions are made that we wrote together
Lex Fridman (2:08:10.580)
with Joseph Fridman, no relation.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:08:13.860)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (2:08:14.940)
Well, we're all related.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:08:16.100)
Well, I mean, you and I are probably,
Lex Fridman (2:08:17.420)
you know, have some, yeah.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:08:18.620)
Yeah, I remember.
Lex Fridman (2:08:20.740)
It's the memories are in there somewhere.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:08:22.820)
Yeah, it's from many, many, many generations ago.
Lex Fridman (2:08:26.140)
Well, half my family is Russian, so from.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:08:28.700)
The good half.
Lex Fridman (2:08:29.540)
The good half, right.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:08:31.780)
But, you know, he, his goal actually is to produce,
Lex Fridman (2:08:44.020)
you know, videos and lectures
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:08:46.460)
that are beautiful and educational
Lex Fridman (2:08:49.820)
and that don't dumb the material down.
Lex Fridman (2:08:56.260)
And he's really remarkable at it actually.
Lex Fridman (2:08:59.260)
I mean, just, but again, you know,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:09:01.980)
that requires a bit of a paradigm shift.
Lex Fridman (2:09:04.340)
We could have a whole conversation
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:09:05.460)
about the split between entertainment
Lex Fridman (2:09:08.340)
and education in this country
Lex Fridman (2:09:09.780)
and why it is the way it is,
Lex Fridman (2:09:11.060)
but that's another conversation.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:09:13.380)
To be continued.
Lex Fridman (2:09:14.340)
But I would say if I were to pick one book
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:09:17.300)
that I think is a really good example
Lex Fridman (2:09:20.420)
of good science writing, it would be The Beak of the Finch.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:09:23.640)
Which won a Pulitzer Prize a number of years ago.
Lex Fridman (2:09:30.520)
And I'm not, I'm not remembering the author's name.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:09:34.280)
I'm blanking.
Lex Fridman (2:09:35.920)
But the, I'm guessing, is it focusing on birds
Lex Fridman (2:09:40.680)
and the evolution of birds?
Lex Fridman (2:09:42.480)
Actually, there's also The Evolution of Beauty,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:09:45.160)
which is, yeah, which is also a great book.
Lex Fridman (2:09:48.080)
But no, The Beak of the Finch is,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:09:51.460)
it's a, it has two storylines that are interwoven.
Lex Fridman (2:09:56.820)
One is about Darwin and Darwin's explorations
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:10:02.680)
in the Galapagos Island.
Lex Fridman (2:10:04.040)
And then modern day researchers from Princeton
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:10:07.800)
who have a research program in the Galapagos
Lex Fridman (2:10:10.880)
looking at Darwin's finches.
Lex Fridman (2:10:13.060)
And it's just a really, first of all,
Lex Fridman (2:10:18.280)
there's top notch science in there.
Lex Fridman (2:10:21.400)
And really science, like evolutionary biology
Lex Fridman (2:10:26.040)
that a lot of people don't know.
Lex Fridman (2:10:28.480)
And it's told really, really well.
Lex Fridman (2:10:30.860)
It sounds like they're also, there's a narrative in there.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:10:34.440)
It's like storytelling too.
Lex Fridman (2:10:35.840)
Yeah, I think all good popular science books
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:10:38.720)
are storytelling, but storytelling grounded,
Lex Fridman (2:10:42.060)
constrained by the evidence.
Lex Fridman (2:10:44.680)
And then I just wanna say that there are,
Lex Fridman (2:10:47.220)
for fiction, I'm a really big fan of love stories,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:10:51.280)
just to return us to the topic that we began with.
Lex Fridman (2:10:54.600)
And so my, some of my favorite love stories
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:10:59.600)
are Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson.
Lex Fridman (2:11:05.280)
It's a love story about people
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:11:08.700)
who you wouldn't expect to fall in love
Lex Fridman (2:11:11.260)
and all the people around them
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:11:12.960)
who have to overcome their prejudices.
Lex Fridman (2:11:15.720)
And I love this book.
Lex Fridman (2:11:19.520)
What do you like, like what makes a good love story?
Lex Fridman (2:11:23.280)
There isn't one thing.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:11:24.560)
There are many different things
Lex Fridman (2:11:25.640)
that make a good love story.
Lex Fridman (2:11:26.880)
But I think in this case, you can feel,
Lex Fridman (2:11:32.020)
you can feel the journey.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:11:36.160)
You can feel the journey that these characters are on
Lex Fridman (2:11:39.080)
and all the people around them are on this journey too,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:11:42.860)
basically to come to grips with this really unexpected love,
Lex Fridman (2:11:47.700)
really profound love that develops
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:11:50.280)
between these two characters
Lex Fridman (2:11:52.080)
who are very unlikely to have fallen in love, but they do.
Lex Fridman (2:11:55.680)
And it's just, it's very gentle.
Lex Fridman (2:12:00.000)
Another book like that is the storied life of A.J. Fierke,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:12:08.140)
which is also a love story.
Lex Fridman (2:12:11.120)
But in this case, it's a love story
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:12:12.920)
between a little girl and her adopted dad.
Lex Fridman (2:12:18.320)
And the dad is this like real curmudgeony, you know, guy.
Lex Fridman (2:12:26.480)
But of course there's a story there.
Lex Fridman (2:12:28.120)
And it's just a beautiful love story.
Lex Fridman (2:12:31.760)
But it also, it's like everybody in this community
Lex Fridman (2:12:36.680)
falls in love with him because he falls in love with her.
Lex Fridman (2:12:40.960)
And he, you know, she just gets left at his store,
Lex Fridman (2:12:44.400)
his bookstore, he has this failing bookstore.
Lex Fridman (2:12:46.840)
And he discovers that, you know,
Lex Fridman (2:12:51.800)
he feels like inexplicably this need
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:12:54.440)
to take care of this little baby.
Lex Fridman (2:12:56.540)
And this whole life emerges out of that one decision,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:13:00.380)
which is really beautiful actually, very poignant.
Lex Fridman (2:13:05.380)
Do you think the greatest stories have a happy ending
Lex Fridman (2:13:10.300)
or a heartbreak at the end?
Lex Fridman (2:13:14.060)
That's such a Russian question.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:13:15.420)
It's like Russian tragedies, you know.
Lex Fridman (2:13:18.140)
So I would say the answer to that for me,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:13:20.020)
there has to be heartbreak.
Lex Fridman (2:13:21.860)
Yeah, I really don't like heartbreak.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:13:24.180)
I don't like heartbreak.
Lex Fridman (2:13:25.620)
I want there to be a happy ending
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:13:27.560)
or at least a hopeful ending.
Lex Fridman (2:13:32.320)
But you know, like Dr. Chivago, like,
Lex Fridman (2:13:36.540)
or the English patient, oh my goodness, like why?
Lex Fridman (2:13:40.820)
Oh, it's just, yeah, no, mm mm.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:13:45.220)
Well, I don't think there's a better way to end it
Lex Fridman (2:13:47.740)
on a happy note like this.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:13:50.980)
Lisa, like I said, I'm a huge fan of yours.
Lex Fridman (2:13:53.020)
Thank you for wasting yet more time with me talking again.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:13:57.700)
People should definitely get your book
Lex Fridman (2:13:59.540)
and maybe one day I can't wait to talk
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:14:02.440)
to your husband as well.
Lex Fridman (2:14:03.500)
Well, right back at you, Lexi.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:14:07.740)
Thanks for listening to this conversation
Lex Fridman (2:14:09.260)
with Lisa Feldman Barrett and thank you to our sponsors.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:14:12.760)
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Lex Fridman (2:14:15.380)
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Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:14:16.740)
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Lex Fridman (2:14:19.300)
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Lex Fridman (2:14:21.980)
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Lex Fridman (2:14:24.980)
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Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:14:28.260)
from some of the most amazing humans in history.
Lex Fridman (2:14:31.500)
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Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:14:36.140)
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Lex Fridman (2:14:38.660)
to get a discount and to support this podcast.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:14:42.060)
If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube,
Lex Fridman (2:14:44.220)
review it with five stars on Apple Podcast,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:14:46.580)
follow on Spotify, support on Patreon,
Lex Fridman (2:14:49.140)
or connect with me on Twitter at Lex Friedman.
Lex Fridman (2:14:52.440)
And now, let me leave you with some words
Lex Fridman (2:14:54.860)
from Sun Tzu and the Art of War.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:14:58.340)
There are not more than five musical notes,
Lex Fridman (2:15:01.020)
yet the combination of these five give rise
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:15:03.620)
to more melodies that can ever be heard.
Lex Fridman (2:15:06.700)
There are not more than five primary colors,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:15:09.660)
yet in combination they produce more hues
Lex Fridman (2:15:12.940)
that can ever be seen.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:15:15.140)
There are not more than five cardinal tastes,
Lex Fridman (2:15:18.860)
and yet combinations of them yield more flavors
Lisa Feldman Barrett (2:15:22.940)
than can ever be tasted.
Lex Fridman (2:15:25.460)
Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.
Lex Fridman (30:00.180)
And I just, I felt in that moment,
Lex Fridman (30:03.580)
I was like, I am never gonna look at an infant
Lisa Feldman Barrett (30:06.020)
in the same way ever again.
Lex Fridman (30:08.340)
And so to me, I mean, honestly,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (30:11.220)
before I started learning about brain development,
Lex Fridman (30:14.340)
I thought babies were cute, but not that interesting
Lisa Feldman Barrett (30:17.780)
until they could do interact with you and do things.
Lex Fridman (30:21.380)
Of course, my own infant, I thought,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (30:22.820)
was extraordinarily interesting,
Lex Fridman (30:24.360)
but they're kind of like lumps.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (30:27.140)
That's until they can interact with you,
Lex Fridman (30:29.980)
but they are anything but lumps.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (30:31.600)
I mean, so, and part of the,
Lex Fridman (30:35.860)
I mean, all I can say is I have deep affection now
Lisa Feldman Barrett (30:38.940)
for like tiny little babies in a way
Lex Fridman (30:41.600)
that I didn't really before
Lisa Feldman Barrett (30:46.580)
because of the, I'm just so curious.
Lex Fridman (30:51.740)
But the actual process of the mechanisms
Lisa Feldman Barrett (30:53.620)
of the wiring of the brain, the learning,
Lex Fridman (30:56.480)
all the magic of the neurobiology.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (30:58.340)
Yeah, and or something like,
Lex Fridman (31:03.080)
when you make eye contact with someone directly,
Lex Fridman (31:05.940)
sometimes you feel something, right?
Lex Fridman (31:10.940)
Yeah, that's weird.
Lex Fridman (31:13.260)
What is it?
Lex Fridman (31:14.420)
And what is that?
Lex Fridman (31:15.760)
And so to me, that's not backing away from the moment.
Lex Fridman (31:20.220)
That's like expanding the moment.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (31:22.020)
It's like, that's incredibly cool.
Lex Fridman (31:24.940)
You know, when I was, I'll just say that
Lisa Feldman Barrett (31:27.320)
when I was in graduate school,
Lex Fridman (31:30.420)
I also was in therapy because it's almost a given
Lisa Feldman Barrett (31:34.780)
that you're gonna be in therapy yourself
Lex Fridman (31:36.900)
if you're gonna become a therapist.
Lex Fridman (31:38.380)
And I had a deal with my therapist,
Lex Fridman (31:41.980)
which was that I could call timeout
Lisa Feldman Barrett (31:44.100)
at any moment that I wanted to,
Lex Fridman (31:46.140)
as long as I was being responsible about it.
Lex Fridman (31:48.220)
And I wasn't using it as a way to get out of something.
Lex Fridman (31:50.640)
And he could tell me, no, he could decline and say,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (31:54.340)
no, you're using this to get out of something.
Lex Fridman (31:56.940)
But I could call timeout whenever I want
Lex Fridman (31:58.940)
and say, what are you doing right now?
Lex Fridman (32:00.460)
Like, what are you, here's what I'm experiencing.
Lex Fridman (32:02.360)
What are you trying to do?
Lex Fridman (32:03.580)
Like I wanted to use my own experience
Lisa Feldman Barrett (32:06.340)
to interrogate what the process was.
Lex Fridman (32:10.880)
And that made it more helpful in a way.
Lex Fridman (32:18.020)
Do you know what I mean?
Lex Fridman (32:18.860)
So yeah, I don't think learning how something works
Lisa Feldman Barrett (32:21.600)
makes it less magical actually,
Lex Fridman (32:23.400)
but that's just me, I guess.
Lex Fridman (32:25.340)
I don't know, would you?
Lex Fridman (32:27.780)
Yes.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (32:29.620)
I tend to have two modes.
Lex Fridman (32:32.100)
One is an engineer and one is a romantic.
Lex Fridman (32:35.580)
And I'm conscious of like, there's two rooms.
Lex Fridman (32:41.340)
You can go into the one, the engineer room.
Lex Fridman (32:43.700)
And I think that ruins the romance.
Lex Fridman (32:45.820)
So I tend to, there's two rooms.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (32:48.540)
One is the engineering room.
Lex Fridman (32:50.420)
Think from first principles, how do we build the thing
Lex Fridman (32:53.400)
that creates this kind of behavior?
Lex Fridman (32:55.940)
And then you go into the romantic room
Lisa Feldman Barrett (32:57.980)
where you're like emotional, it's a roller coaster.
Lex Fridman (33:00.180)
And then the thing is, let's take it slow.
Lex Fridman (33:03.900)
And then you get married the next night
Lex Fridman (33:05.900)
that you just this giant mess and you write a song
Lex Fridman (33:08.660)
and then you cry and then you send a bunch of texts
Lex Fridman (33:12.180)
and anger and whatever.
Lex Fridman (33:14.180)
And somehow you're in Vegas and there's random people
Lex Fridman (33:17.180)
and you're drunk and whatever, all that,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (33:18.760)
like in poetry and just mess of it, fighting.
Lex Fridman (33:21.900)
Yeah, that's not, those are two rooms
Lex Fridman (33:24.860)
and you go back between them.
Lex Fridman (33:27.020)
But I think the way you put it is quite poetic.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (33:29.600)
I think you're much better at adulting
Lex Fridman (33:32.900)
with love than perhaps I am.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (33:37.580)
Because there's a magic to children.
Lex Fridman (33:40.180)
I also think like of adults as children.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (33:45.740)
It's kind of cool to see, it's a cool thought experiment
Lex Fridman (33:48.640)
to look at adults and think like that used to be a baby.
Lex Fridman (33:53.300)
And then that's like a fully wired baby.
Lex Fridman (33:56.260)
And it's just walking around pretending to be like
Lisa Feldman Barrett (33:58.500)
all serious and important, wearing a suit or something.
Lex Fridman (34:01.820)
But that used to be a baby.
Lex Fridman (34:03.660)
And then you think of like the parenting
Lex Fridman (34:05.460)
and all the experiences they had.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (34:07.500)
Like it's cool to think of it that way.
Lex Fridman (34:09.900)
But then I start thinking like
Lisa Feldman Barrett (34:11.420)
from a machine learning perspective.
Lex Fridman (34:13.460)
But once you're like the romantic moments,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (34:16.260)
all that kind of stuff, all that falls away.
Lex Fridman (34:19.080)
I forget about all of that, I don't know.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (34:21.580)
That's the Russian thing.
Lex Fridman (34:23.420)
Maybe, maybe.
Lex Fridman (34:24.700)
But I also think it might be an age thing
Lex Fridman (34:26.460)
or maybe an experience thing.
Lex Fridman (34:28.060)
So I think we all, I mean,
Lex Fridman (34:33.020)
if you're exposed to Western culture at all,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (34:35.300)
you are exposed to the sort of idealized,
Lex Fridman (34:40.020)
stereotypic, romantic exchange.
Lex Fridman (34:45.620)
And what does it mean to be romantic?
Lex Fridman (34:48.060)
And so here's a test.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (34:53.640)
I'm seeing how to phrase it.
Lex Fridman (34:55.000)
Okay, so not really a test,
Lex Fridman (34:56.980)
but this tells you something about
Lex Fridman (34:58.740)
your own ideas about romance.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (35:03.780)
For Valentine's Day one year,
Lex Fridman (35:06.380)
my husband bought me a six way plug.
Lex Fridman (35:10.740)
Is that romantic or not romantic?
Lex Fridman (35:14.980)
Like, sorry, six way plug, is that like an outlet?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (35:17.980)
Yeah, like to put it in an outlet.
Lex Fridman (35:19.460)
Is that romantic or not romantic?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (35:21.620)
I mean, it depends the look in his eyes when he does it.
Lex Fridman (35:28.020)
I mean, it depends on the conversation
Lisa Feldman Barrett (35:31.540)
that led up to that point.
Lex Fridman (35:33.780)
Depends how much, it's like the music,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (35:38.140)
because you have a very, you're both from the,
Lex Fridman (35:42.060)
my experiences with you as a fan,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (35:44.300)
you have both a romantic niche,
Lex Fridman (35:45.700)
but you have a very pragmatic,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (35:46.980)
like you cut through the bullshit of the fuzziness.
Lex Fridman (35:51.260)
And there's something about a six way plug
Lisa Feldman Barrett (35:53.300)
that cuts through the bullshit
Lex Fridman (35:54.380)
that connects to the human,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (35:55.380)
like he understands who you are.
Lex Fridman (35:57.380)
Exactly, exactly.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (36:00.500)
That was the most romantic gift he could have given me
Lex Fridman (36:03.120)
because he knows me so well.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (36:05.980)
He has a deep understanding of me,
Lex Fridman (36:08.020)
which is that I will sit and suffer and complain
Lisa Feldman Barrett (36:12.180)
about the fact that I have to plug and unplug things.
Lex Fridman (36:15.580)
And I will bitch and moan until the cows come home,
Lex Fridman (36:17.940)
but it would never occur to me to go buy
Lex Fridman (36:21.300)
a bloody six way plug.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (36:23.380)
Whereas for him, he bought it, he plugged it in,
Lex Fridman (36:27.120)
he arranged, he taped up all my wires,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (36:29.340)
he made it like really usable.
Lex Fridman (36:31.980)
And for me, that was the best present.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (36:38.300)
It was the most romantic thing
Lex Fridman (36:40.500)
because he understood who I was
Lex Fridman (36:43.600)
and he did something very,
Lex Fridman (36:45.060)
or just the casual, like we moved into a house
Lisa Feldman Barrett (36:49.360)
that we went from having a two car garage
Lex Fridman (36:51.400)
to a one car garage.
Lex Fridman (36:52.920)
And I said, okay, I'm from Canada,
Lex Fridman (36:54.640)
I'm not bothered by snow.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (36:56.020)
Well, I mean, I'm a little bothered by snow,
Lex Fridman (36:57.620)
but he's very bothered by snow.
Lex Fridman (36:59.240)
So I'm like, okay, you can park your car in the garage,
Lex Fridman (37:01.820)
it's fine.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (37:03.280)
Every day when it snows, he goes out and cleans my car.
Lex Fridman (37:06.500)
Every day.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (37:08.980)
I never asked him to do it, he just does it
Lex Fridman (37:12.060)
because he knows that I'm cutting it really close
Lisa Feldman Barrett (37:15.240)
in the morning, when we all used to go to work.
Lex Fridman (37:18.780)
I have a time to the second
Lex Fridman (37:20.860)
so that I can get up as late as possible,
Lex Fridman (37:23.460)
work out as long as possible,
Lex Fridman (37:25.980)
and make it into my office
Lex Fridman (37:27.460)
like a minute before my first meeting.
Lex Fridman (37:29.220)
And so if it snows unexpectedly or something,
Lex Fridman (37:31.660)
I'm screwed because now that's an added 10 or 15 minutes
Lex Fridman (37:35.180)
and I'm gonna be late.
Lex Fridman (37:36.740)
Anyways, it's just these little tiny things.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (37:39.340)
He's a really easygoing guy
Lex Fridman (37:43.620)
and he doesn't look like somebody
Lisa Feldman Barrett (37:45.340)
who pays attention to detail.
Lex Fridman (37:48.340)
He doesn't fuss about detail,
Lex Fridman (37:50.500)
but he definitely pays attention to detail.
Lex Fridman (37:53.140)
And it is very, very romantic in the sense
Lisa Feldman Barrett (37:56.940)
that he loves me despite my little details.
Lex Fridman (38:04.620)
And understands you.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (38:05.820)
Yeah, he understands me.
Lex Fridman (38:06.660)
It is kind of hilarious that that is,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (38:09.540)
the six way plug is the most fulfilling,
Lex Fridman (38:14.940)
richest display of romance in your life.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (38:19.220)
I love it.
Lex Fridman (38:20.060)
I love it.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (38:20.880)
That's what I mean about romance.
Lex Fridman (38:21.720)
Romance is really, it's not all about chocolates
Lex Fridman (38:23.700)
and flowers and whatever.
Lex Fridman (38:25.500)
I mean, those are all nice too, but...
Lisa Feldman Barrett (38:28.220)
Sometimes it's about the six way plug.
Lex Fridman (38:29.820)
Sometimes it's about the six way plug.
Lex Fridman (38:32.260)
So maybe one way I could ask
Lex Fridman (38:35.500)
before we talk about the details,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (38:36.700)
you also have the author of another book
Lex Fridman (38:38.540)
as we talked about how emotions are made.
Lex Fridman (38:41.300)
So it's interesting to talk about the process of writing.
Lex Fridman (38:44.020)
You mentioned you were in New York.
Lex Fridman (38:46.020)
What have you learned from writing these two books
Lex Fridman (38:48.180)
about the actual process of writing?
Lex Fridman (38:50.300)
And maybe, I don't know what's the most interesting thing
Lex Fridman (38:53.420)
to talk about there.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (38:54.260)
Maybe the biggest challenges
Lex Fridman (38:55.860)
or the boring, mundane, systematic,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (38:58.340)
like day to day of what worked for you,
Lex Fridman (39:00.380)
like hacks or even just about the neuroscience
Lisa Feldman Barrett (39:04.060)
that you've learned through the process
Lex Fridman (39:07.000)
of trying to write them.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (39:08.380)
Here's the thing I learned.
Lex Fridman (39:09.680)
If you think that it's gonna take you a year
Lisa Feldman Barrett (39:11.760)
to write your book,
Lex Fridman (39:12.660)
it's going to take you three years to write your book.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (39:15.260)
That's the first thing I learned
Lex Fridman (39:17.120)
is that no matter how organized you are,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (39:22.560)
it's always gonna take way longer than what you think
Lex Fridman (39:28.740)
in part because very few people make an outline
Lex Fridman (39:33.740)
and then just stick to it.
Lex Fridman (39:36.740)
Some of the topics really take on a life of their own
Lex Fridman (39:39.020)
and to some extent you wanna let them have their voice.
Lex Fridman (39:43.740)
You wanna follow leads until you feel satisfied
Lisa Feldman Barrett (39:46.960)
that you've dealt with the topic appropriately.
Lex Fridman (39:52.060)
But that part is actually fun.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (39:54.460)
It's not fun to feel like you're constantly behind the eight
Lex Fridman (39:57.420)
ball in terms of time.
Lex Fridman (39:59.460)
But it is the exploration and the foraging for information
Lex Fridman (40:02.860)
is incredibly fun.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (40:05.020)
For me anyways, I found it really enjoyable.
Lex Fridman (40:07.020)
And if I wasn't also running a lab at the same time
Lex Fridman (40:09.180)
and trying to keep my family going,
Lex Fridman (40:13.240)
the whole thing would have just been fun.
Lex Fridman (40:15.900)
But I would say the hardest thing about,
Lex Fridman (40:18.420)
the most important thing I think I learned
Lisa Feldman Barrett (40:20.180)
is also the hardest thing and that for me,
Lex Fridman (40:22.180)
which is knowing what to leave out.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (40:27.740)
A really good storyteller knows what to leave out.
Lex Fridman (40:32.500)
In academic writing, you shouldn't leave anything out.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (40:38.760)
All the details should be there.
Lex Fridman (40:45.380)
I've written or participated in writing
Lisa Feldman Barrett (40:50.820)
over 200 papers, peer reviewed papers.
Lex Fridman (40:54.620)
So I'm pretty good with detail.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (40:57.660)
Knowing what to leave out and not harming
Lex Fridman (41:01.940)
the validity of the story.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (41:04.140)
That is a tricky, tricky thing.
Lex Fridman (41:06.820)
It was tricky when I wrote How Emotions Are Made,
Lex Fridman (41:10.180)
but that's a standard popular science book.
Lex Fridman (41:13.780)
So it's 300 something pages.
Lex Fridman (41:15.420)
And then it has like a thousand end notes.
Lex Fridman (41:18.300)
And then each of the end notes is attached to a web note,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (41:22.420)
which is also long.
Lex Fridman (41:23.960)
So I mean, it's, and it start, and I mean the final draft,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (41:28.960)
I mean, I wrote three drafts of that book actually.
Lex Fridman (41:33.600)
And the final draft, and then I had to cut by a third.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (41:36.960)
I mean, it was like 150,000 words or something.
Lex Fridman (41:42.520)
And I had to cut it down to like 110.
Lex Fridman (41:44.960)
So obviously it's, I struggle with what to leave out.
Lex Fridman (41:49.240)
Brevity is not my strong suit.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (41:50.520)
I'm always telling people that it's a warning.
Lex Fridman (41:52.840)
So that's why this book was,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (41:55.120)
I'd always been really fascinated with essays.
Lex Fridman (41:58.280)
I love reading essays.
Lex Fridman (41:59.960)
And after reading a small set of essays by Anne Fadiman
Lex Fridman (42:05.960)
called At Large and At Small,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (42:07.800)
which I just love these little essays.
Lex Fridman (42:10.280)
What's the topic of those essays?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (42:12.280)
They are, they're called familiar essays.
Lex Fridman (42:15.280)
So the topics are like everyday topics,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (42:18.240)
like mail, coffee, chocolate.
Lex Fridman (42:22.160)
I mean, just like, and what she does
Lisa Feldman Barrett (42:23.960)
is she weaves her own experience.
Lex Fridman (42:26.160)
It's a little bit like these conversations
Lisa Feldman Barrett (42:28.060)
that you're so good at curating, actually.
Lex Fridman (42:32.060)
You're weaving together history and philosophy and science
Lex Fridman (42:36.240)
and also personal reflections.
Lex Fridman (42:38.560)
And a little bit, you feel like you're like eavesdropping
Lisa Feldman Barrett (42:44.760)
on someone's train of thought in a way.
Lex Fridman (42:47.640)
It's really, they're really compelling to me.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (42:51.560)
Even if it's just a mundane topic.
Lex Fridman (42:53.320)
Yeah, but it's so interesting
Lisa Feldman Barrett (42:55.280)
to learn about like all of these little stories
Lex Fridman (43:02.760)
in the wrapping of the history of like mail.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (43:08.080)
Like that's really interesting.
Lex Fridman (43:10.080)
And so I read these essays
Lex Fridman (43:12.000)
and then I wrote to her a little fan girl email.
Lex Fridman (43:15.400)
This was many years ago.
Lex Fridman (43:16.940)
And I said, I just love this book.
Lex Fridman (43:21.700)
And how did you learn to write essays like this?
Lex Fridman (43:23.760)
And she gave me a reading list of essays
Lex Fridman (43:26.000)
that I should read like writers.
Lex Fridman (43:27.640)
And so I read them all.
Lex Fridman (43:28.980)
And anyway, so I decided it would be a really good challenge
Lisa Feldman Barrett (43:33.600)
for me to try to write something really brief
Lex Fridman (43:37.160)
where I could focus on one or two really fascinating tidbits
Lisa Feldman Barrett (43:45.360)
of neuroscience, connect each one
Lex Fridman (43:50.200)
to something philosophical or like just a question
Lisa Feldman Barrett (43:54.800)
about human nature.
Lex Fridman (43:56.560)
Do it in a really brief format
Lisa Feldman Barrett (43:58.680)
without violating the validity of the science.
Lex Fridman (44:05.160)
That was a, I just set myself this,
Lex Fridman (44:07.240)
what I thought of as a really, really big challenge
Lex Fridman (44:09.480)
in part because it was an incredibly hard thing
Lisa Feldman Barrett (44:11.480)
for me to do in the first book.
Lex Fridman (44:13.340)
Yeah, we should say that this is,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (44:15.520)
The Seven and a Half Lessons is a very short book.
Lex Fridman (44:17.960)
I mean, it's like it embodies brevity, right?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (44:22.840)
The whole point throughout is just,
Lex Fridman (44:25.680)
I mean, you could tell that there's editing,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (44:27.920)
like there's pain in trying to bring it
Lex Fridman (44:31.200)
as brief as possible, as clean as possible, yeah.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (44:35.040)
Yeah, so it's, the way I think of it is,
Lex Fridman (44:37.880)
it's a little book of big science and big ideas.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (44:41.400)
Yeah, really big ideas in brief little packages.
Lex Fridman (44:44.960)
And I wrote it so that people could read it.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (44:49.840)
I love reading on the beach.
Lex Fridman (44:51.800)
I love reading essays on the beach.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (44:53.520)
I read it, I wrote it so people could read it on the beach
Lex Fridman (44:55.880)
or in the bathtub or a subway stop.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (44:58.920)
Even if the beach is frozen over in the snow.
Lex Fridman (45:02.080)
Yeah, so my husband, Dan, calls it
Lisa Feldman Barrett (45:04.700)
the first neuroscience beach read.
Lex Fridman (45:06.720)
That's his phrasing, yeah.
Lex Fridman (45:11.000)
And like you said, you learn a lot about writing
Lex Fridman (45:13.360)
from your husband, like you were saying offline.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (45:15.280)
Well, he is, of the two of us, he is the better writer.
Lex Fridman (45:20.300)
He is a masterful writer.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (45:24.800)
He's also, I mean, he's a PhD in computer science.
Lex Fridman (45:28.760)
He's a software engineer,
Lex Fridman (45:29.960)
but he's also really good at organization of knowledge.
Lex Fridman (45:36.480)
So he built for a company he used to work for,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (45:38.840)
he built one of the first knowledge management systems.
Lex Fridman (45:41.680)
And he now works at Google
Lisa Feldman Barrett (45:44.200)
where he does engineering education.
Lex Fridman (45:46.560)
Like he understands how to tell a good story,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (45:51.540)
just about anything, really.
Lex Fridman (45:55.680)
He's got impeccable timing, he's really funny.
Lex Fridman (45:59.120)
And luckily for me, he knows very little
Lex Fridman (46:01.720)
about psychology or neuroscience.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (46:03.560)
Well, now he knows more, obviously, but.
Lex Fridman (46:05.720)
So when How Emotions Were Made, he was really, really helpful
Lisa Feldman Barrett (46:13.600)
to me because the first draft of every chapter
Lex Fridman (46:17.200)
was me talking to him about what,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (46:19.780)
I would talk out loud about what I wanted to say
Lex Fridman (46:22.560)
and the order in which I wanted to say it.
Lex Fridman (46:24.840)
And then I would write it and then he would read it
Lex Fridman (46:28.880)
and tell me all the bits that could be excised.
Lex Fridman (46:33.200)
And sometimes we would, I should say,
Lex Fridman (46:35.520)
I mean, we don't, he and I don't really argue about much
Lisa Feldman Barrett (46:39.080)
except directions in the car.
Lex Fridman (46:41.440)
Like if we're gonna have an argument,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (46:44.280)
that's gonna be where it's gonna happen, where.
Lex Fridman (46:46.200)
What's the nature of the argument about directions exactly?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (46:50.000)
I don't really know, it's just that we're very,
Lex Fridman (46:52.520)
I think it's that spatially,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (46:56.600)
I use egocentric space.
Lex Fridman (46:58.700)
So I wanna say, turn left.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (47:01.400)
Like I'm reasoning in relation
Lex Fridman (47:03.880)
to my own physical corporeal body.
Lex Fridman (47:06.640)
So you walk to the church and you turn left and you,
Lex Fridman (47:10.000)
then whatever, I'm always like,
Lex Fridman (47:11.960)
and he gives directions allocentrically,
Lex Fridman (47:16.240)
which means organized around north, south, east, west.
Lex Fridman (47:21.000)
So to you, the earth is at the center of the solar system
Lex Fridman (47:24.320)
and to him, reasonably.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (47:26.480)
I'm at the center.
Lex Fridman (47:27.320)
You're at the center of the solar system.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (47:29.960)
Okay, so.
Lex Fridman (47:30.920)
Anyway, but here, we had some really riproaring arguments,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (47:37.680)
like really riproaring arguments where he would say,
Lex Fridman (47:40.280)
like, who is this for?
Lex Fridman (47:41.920)
Is this for the 1%?
Lex Fridman (47:44.360)
And I'd be like, 1% meaning not wealth,
Lex Fridman (47:47.880)
but like civilians versus academics.
Lex Fridman (47:51.120)
Are these for the scientists
Lex Fridman (47:52.160)
or is this for the civilians, right?
Lex Fridman (47:54.120)
So he speaks for the people, for the civilians.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (47:56.360)
He speaks for the people and I'd be like, no, you have to.
Lex Fridman (47:59.200)
And so he made, after one terrible argument that we had
Lisa Feldman Barrett (48:03.080)
where it was really starting to affect our relationship
Lex Fridman (48:05.800)
because we were so mad at each other all the time,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (48:09.040)
he made these little signs, writing and science.
Lex Fridman (48:14.280)
And we only use them, this was like,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (48:17.760)
when you pulled out a sign, that's it.
Lex Fridman (48:20.480)
Like the other person just wins
Lex Fridman (48:22.200)
and you have to stop fighting about it and that's it.
Lex Fridman (48:25.200)
And so we just did that.
Lex Fridman (48:26.600)
And we didn't really have to use it too much for this book
Lex Fridman (48:29.160)
because this book was in some ways,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (48:34.400)
I didn't have to learn a lot of new things for this book.
Lex Fridman (48:37.280)
I had to learn some, but a lot of
Lex Fridman (48:41.960)
what I learned for How Emotions Are Made
Lex Fridman (48:46.480)
really stood me in good stead for this book.
Lex Fridman (48:49.600)
So there was a little bit,
Lex Fridman (48:50.440)
each essay was a little bit of learning.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (48:52.400)
A couple were, was a little more than the small amount.
Lex Fridman (48:55.920)
But I didn't have so much trouble here.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (48:59.400)
I had a lot of trouble with the first book.
Lex Fridman (49:02.320)
But still even here, he would tell me
Lisa Feldman Barrett (49:07.320)
that I could take something out
Lex Fridman (49:08.720)
and I really wanted to keep it.
Lex Fridman (49:10.160)
And I think we only use the signs once.
Lex Fridman (49:14.440)
Well, if we could dive in some aspects of the book,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (49:17.160)
I would love that.
Lex Fridman (49:18.200)
Can we talk about, so one of the essays looks at evolution.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (49:23.200)
It looks at evolution.
Lex Fridman (49:28.480)
Let me ask the big question.
Lex Fridman (49:30.880)
Did the human brain evolve to think?
Lex Fridman (49:33.880)
That's essentially the question that you address in the essay.
Lex Fridman (49:38.320)
Can you speak to it?
Lex Fridman (49:39.440)
Sure.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (49:40.960)
The big caveat here is that
Lex Fridman (49:43.360)
we don't really know why brains evolved.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (49:45.760)
The big why questions are called teleological questions.
Lex Fridman (49:49.800)
And in general, scientists should avoid those questions
Lisa Feldman Barrett (49:55.040)
because we don't know really why, we don't know the why.
Lex Fridman (49:58.660)
However, for a very long time,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (50:03.860)
the assumption was that evolution worked
Lex Fridman (50:07.080)
in a progressive upward scale,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (50:09.400)
that you start off with simple organisms
Lex Fridman (50:11.200)
and those organisms get more complex
Lex Fridman (50:13.160)
and more complex and more complex.
Lex Fridman (50:14.940)
Now, obviously that's true in some like really general way,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (50:18.720)
right, that life started off as single cell organisms
Lex Fridman (50:22.720)
and things got more complex.
Lex Fridman (50:24.440)
But the idea that brains evolved in some upward trajectory
Lex Fridman (50:32.320)
from simple brains in simple animals
Lisa Feldman Barrett (50:34.700)
to complex brains in complex animals
Lex Fridman (50:37.040)
is called a phylogenetic scale.
Lex Fridman (50:40.240)
And that phylogenetic scale is embedded
Lex Fridman (50:44.380)
in a lot of evolutionary thinking,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (50:46.020)
including Darwin's actually.
Lex Fridman (50:48.880)
And it's been seriously challenged, I would say,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (50:53.120)
by modern evolutionary biology.
Lex Fridman (50:57.480)
And so thinking is something that,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (51:01.540)
rationality is something that humans,
Lex Fridman (51:04.340)
at least in the West, really prize
Lisa Feldman Barrett (51:07.360)
as a great human achievement.
Lex Fridman (51:10.640)
And so the idea that the most common evolutionary story
Lisa Feldman Barrett (51:15.640)
is that brains evolved in like sedimentary rock
Lex Fridman (51:21.680)
with a layer for instincts, that's your lizard brain,
Lex Fridman (51:25.520)
and a layer on top of that for emotions,
Lex Fridman (51:30.460)
that's your limbic system, limbic meaning border.
Lex Fridman (51:33.240)
So it borders the parts that are for instincts.
Lex Fridman (51:36.480)
Oh, interesting.
Lex Fridman (51:37.320)
And then the neocortex or new cortex
Lex Fridman (51:42.320)
where rationality is supposed to live.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (51:46.120)
That's the sort of traditional story.
Lex Fridman (51:48.440)
It just keeps getting layered on top by evolution.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (51:52.000)
Right.
Lex Fridman (51:52.840)
And so you can think about, I mean,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (51:55.880)
sedimentary rock is the way typically people describe it.
Lex Fridman (51:58.440)
The way I sometimes like to think about it
Lisa Feldman Barrett (52:00.440)
is thinking about the cerebral cortex
Lex Fridman (52:03.320)
like icing on an already baked cake,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (52:08.800)
where the cake is your inner beast.
Lex Fridman (52:11.120)
These like boiling, roiling instincts and emotions
Lisa Feldman Barrett (52:14.520)
that have to be contained by the cortex.
Lex Fridman (52:19.760)
And it's just, it's a fiction, it's a myth.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (52:23.840)
It's a myth that you can trace all the way back
Lex Fridman (52:26.240)
to stories about morality in ancient Greece.
Lex Fridman (52:31.040)
But what you can do is look at the scientific record
Lex Fridman (52:35.600)
and say, well, there are other stories
Lisa Feldman Barrett (52:38.120)
that you could tell about brain evolution
Lex Fridman (52:40.160)
and the context in which brains evolved.
Lex Fridman (52:45.560)
So when you look at creatures who don't have brains
Lex Fridman (52:50.560)
and you look at creatures who do, what's the difference?
Lex Fridman (52:55.920)
And you can look at some animals.
Lex Fridman (53:02.960)
So we call, scientists call an environment
Lisa Feldman Barrett (53:05.640)
that an animal lives in a niche, their environmental niche.
Lex Fridman (53:09.280)
What are the things, what are the parts
Lex Fridman (53:10.800)
of the environment that matter to that animal?
Lex Fridman (53:13.160)
And so there are some animals whose niche
Lisa Feldman Barrett (53:15.840)
hasn't changed in 400 million years.
Lex Fridman (53:18.400)
So they're not, these creatures are modern creatures
Lex Fridman (53:21.520)
but they're living in a niche that hasn't changed much.
Lex Fridman (53:24.480)
And so their biology hasn't changed much.
Lex Fridman (53:27.200)
And you can kind of verify that by looking at the genes
Lex Fridman (53:30.400)
that lurk deep in the molecular structure of cells.
Lex Fridman (53:34.440)
And so you can, by looking at various animals
Lex Fridman (53:38.880)
in their developmental state, meaning not,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (53:41.920)
you don't look at adult animals,
Lex Fridman (53:43.160)
you look at embryos of animals and developing animals,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (53:46.920)
you can see, you can piece together a different story.
Lex Fridman (53:49.760)
And that story is that brains evolved
Lisa Feldman Barrett (53:53.960)
under the selection pressure of hunting.
Lex Fridman (53:57.960)
That in the Cambrian period, hunting emerged on the scene
Lisa Feldman Barrett (54:01.840)
where animals deliberately ate one another.
Lex Fridman (54:06.160)
And what, so before the Cambrian period,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (54:11.200)
the animals didn't really have,
Lex Fridman (54:14.440)
well, they didn't have brains,
Lex Fridman (54:15.840)
but they also didn't have senses really,
Lex Fridman (54:19.000)
the very, very rudimentary senses.
Lex Fridman (54:20.920)
So the animal that I wrote about in seven and a half lessons
Lex Fridman (54:26.360)
is called an amphioxus or a lancelet.
Lex Fridman (54:29.120)
And little amphioxus has no eyes,
Lex Fridman (54:34.240)
it has no ears, it has no nose, it has no eyes.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (54:38.960)
It has a couple of cells for detecting light and dark
Lex Fridman (54:44.760)
for circadian rhythm purposes.
Lex Fridman (54:47.480)
And it can't hear, it has a vestibular cell
Lex Fridman (54:51.240)
to keep its body upright.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (54:53.960)
It has a very rudimentary sense of touch
Lex Fridman (54:56.960)
and it doesn't really have any internal organs
Lisa Feldman Barrett (55:00.400)
other than this like basically stomach.
Lex Fridman (55:03.040)
It's like a, just like a,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (55:04.760)
it doesn't have an enteric nervous system.
Lex Fridman (55:06.960)
It doesn't have like a gut that moves like we do.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (55:11.440)
It just has basically a tube.
Lex Fridman (55:14.320)
So it's like a little container, yeah.
Lex Fridman (55:16.680)
And so, and really it doesn't move very much.
Lex Fridman (55:20.120)
It can move, it just sort of wriggles.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (55:22.120)
It doesn't have very sophisticated movement.
Lex Fridman (55:24.680)
And it's this really sweet little animal.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (55:27.800)
It sort of wriggles its way to a spot
Lex Fridman (55:30.560)
and then plants itself in the sand
Lex Fridman (55:33.520)
and just filters food as the food goes by.
Lex Fridman (55:37.880)
And then when the food concentration decreases,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (55:41.560)
it just ejects itself, wriggles to some spot randomly
Lex Fridman (55:47.920)
where probabilistically there will be more food
Lex Fridman (55:50.440)
and plants itself again.
Lex Fridman (55:51.920)
So it's not really aware,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (55:56.280)
very aware that it has an environment.
Lex Fridman (55:58.320)
It has a niche, but that niche is very small
Lex Fridman (56:00.680)
and it's not really experiencing that niche very much.
Lex Fridman (56:05.200)
So it's basically like a little stomach on a stick.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (56:08.040)
That's really what it is.
Lex Fridman (56:09.800)
And, but when animals start to literally hunt each other,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (56:14.800)
all of a sudden it becomes important
Lex Fridman (56:17.800)
to have, to be able to sense your environment.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (56:20.480)
Cause you need to know, is that blob up ahead
Lex Fridman (56:23.880)
gonna eat me or should I eat it?
Lex Fridman (56:27.440)
And so all of a sudden you want,
Lex Fridman (56:29.520)
distance senses are very useful.
Lex Fridman (56:31.680)
And so in the water, distance senses are vision
Lex Fridman (56:36.720)
and a little bit hearing.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (56:38.920)
Olfaction, smelling and touch,
Lex Fridman (56:43.920)
because in the water touch is a distance sense
Lisa Feldman Barrett (56:46.280)
cause you can feel the vibration, so it's right.
Lex Fridman (56:49.280)
So on land, you know, vision is a distance sense,
Lex Fridman (56:54.600)
touch not so much, but for elephants maybe, right?
Lex Fridman (56:58.600)
The vibrations.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (56:59.440)
Vibrations, olfaction definitely
Lex Fridman (57:02.760)
because of the distance sense.
Lex Fridman (57:04.280)
And so it's very important to have a sense of touch
Lex Fridman (57:07.480)
and olfaction definitely because of the concentration
Lisa Feldman Barrett (57:09.840)
of, you know, the more concentrated something is,
Lex Fridman (57:12.240)
the more likely it is to be close to you.
Lex Fridman (57:14.840)
So animals developed senses.
Lex Fridman (57:17.920)
They developed a head, like a literal head.
Lex Fridman (57:20.340)
So amphyoxus doesn't even have a head really.
Lex Fridman (57:22.120)
It's just a long.
Lex Fridman (57:23.640)
What's the purpose of a head?
Lex Fridman (57:25.760)
That's a great question.
Lex Fridman (57:27.360)
Is it to have a jaw?
Lex Fridman (57:29.600)
That's a great question.
Lex Fridman (57:30.800)
So jaw, so yes, jaws are a major.
Lex Fridman (57:35.560)
Useful feature.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (57:36.680)
Yeah, obviously they're a major adaptation
Lex Fridman (57:39.280)
after there's a split between vertebrates and invertebrates.
Lex Fridman (57:42.600)
So amphyoxus is thought to be very, very similar
Lex Fridman (57:45.320)
to the animal that's before that split.
Lex Fridman (57:48.740)
But then after the development,
Lex Fridman (57:50.160)
very quickly after the development of a head
Lisa Feldman Barrett (57:52.660)
is the development of a jaw, which is a big thing.
Lex Fridman (57:56.060)
And what goes along with that
Lisa Feldman Barrett (57:59.400)
is the development of a brain.
Lex Fridman (58:02.000)
It's weird, is that just a coincidence
Lisa Feldman Barrett (58:04.160)
that the thing, the part of our body,
Lex Fridman (58:07.800)
of the mammal, I think, body that we eat with
Lex Fridman (58:12.520)
and attack others with is also the thing
Lex Fridman (58:15.300)
that contains all the majority of the brain type of stuff.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (58:21.840)
Well, actually the brain goes with the development of a head
Lex Fridman (58:25.000)
and the development of a visual system
Lex Fridman (58:27.760)
and an auditory system and an olfactory system and so on.
Lex Fridman (58:31.440)
So your senses are developing
Lex Fridman (58:34.800)
and the other thing that's happening
Lex Fridman (58:38.740)
is that animals are getting bigger
Lisa Feldman Barrett (58:41.680)
because they're, and also their niche is getting bigger.
Lex Fridman (58:44.560)
Well, this is the, just sorry to take a tiny tangent
Lisa Feldman Barrett (58:47.840)
on the niche thing is it seems like the niche
Lex Fridman (58:50.400)
is getting bigger, but not just bigger,
Lisa Feldman Barrett (58:53.400)
like more complicated, like shaped in weird ways.
Lex Fridman (58:56.680)
So predation seems to create, the whole world
Lisa Feldman Barrett (59:01.760)
becomes your oyster, whatever,
Lex Fridman (59:03.400)
but you also start to carve out the places
Lisa Feldman Barrett (59:06.680)
in which you can operate the best.
Lex Fridman (59:08.360)
Yeah, and in fact, that's absolutely right.
Lex Fridman (59:10.500)
And in fact, some scientists think that theory of mind,
Lex Fridman (59:15.040)
your ability to make inferences
Lisa Feldman Barrett (59:16.520)
about the inner life of other creatures
Lex Fridman (59:21.000)
actually developed under the selection pressure of predation
Lisa Feldman Barrett (59:24.200)
because it makes you a better predator.
Lex Fridman (59:28.100)
Do you ever look at, you just said you looked at babies
Lisa Feldman Barrett (59:31.180)
as these wiring creatures.
Lex Fridman (59:34.960)
Do you ever think of humans as just clever predators?
Lisa Feldman Barrett (59:39.300)
Like that there's, underneath it all is this
Lex Fridman (59:44.560)
the Nietzschean will to power in all of its forms?
Lex Fridman (59:49.440)
Or are we now friendlier?
Lex Fridman (59:52.080)
Yeah, so it's interesting.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (59:54.200)
I mean, there are zeitgeists
Lex Fridman (59:57.260)
in how humans think about themselves, right?
Lex Fridman (59:59.660)
And so if you look in the 20th century,
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