Your memory isn't a recording. It's a reconstruction — and every time
you recall something, your brain is quietly rewriting it.
In this episode of On The Same Paige, Paige sits down with Dr. Jim Davies —
Professor of Cognitive Science at Carleton University, director of the Science
of Imagination Laboratory, author of Imagination: The Science of Your Mind's
Greatest Power, and co-host of the award-winning Minding the Brain podcast.
00:00 — Introduction
01:08 — What Is the Mind? Consciousness & Functionalism
13:15 — Memory Is a Reconstruction, Not a Recording
30:25 — The Inner Landscape: Intrusive Thoughts & Mental Time Travel
42:09 — When Imagination Becomes Dangerous
47:40 — Hallucinations, Brain Randomness & Human Obsessions
57:17 — Does AI Imagine? Creativity & Improv
TRANSCRIPT + YOUTUBE:
(00:00) So, I have a memory of riding my tricycle down the stairs when I was a really little kid. Now, I did ride my tricycle down the stairs, but I remember it in the wrong house. So, there’s something called infantile amnesia, which is like before the age of three, you really basically have no episodic memories.
(00:16) So, I have no actual memories of the home I lived in before I was three. That’s where the accident happened. But that story has been told in my family so many times that and I’ve pictured it in the house that I knew, the earliest house I can remember that now I can’t distinguish it from a regular memory. Intellectually, I know it’s false.
(00:33) It couldn’t it couldn’t have happened. But it feels just like any other memory. >> That’s the that’s the crazy thing about false memories is that you can’t tell by retrieving it whether it’s true or false because it has the same ver similitude. So I have this like contradiction. I know it’s false and yet it feels like every other memory.
(00:50) Um, well, before we get into the nuts and bolts of what this thing actually is that we have behind our eyes, this ability to have this whole other world that’s outside of or inside of, I guess, uh, the the the real world, quote unquote. Um, I want to get some definitions on the table. Why don’t you define some of the words you think that are most likely to come up in this conversation? >> From my perspective as a cognitive scientist, the mind is kind of the information processing software that’s running on a brain. So when we talk
(01:15) about the mind, we’re talking about the uh how beliefs interact with desires and perceptions and everything to you know determine the uh thinking and behavior of a of an agent like a human being. Uh as opposed to like the the firing of the neurons or you know the brain waves that travel.
(01:33) That’s not that’s not really mind. That’s the the sort of the hardware that the mind that that’s like causing the mind to be. So the mind is like an emergent property of the hardware doing what it’s doing. And the reason I define it that way is because it uh it allows you to talk about non-human minds. You know, you can have a animal mind, you could have an alien mind, you could have a a mind of an artificial intelligence.
(01:53) It doesn’t it’s separated from the the hardware. You look very shocked, right? So, you know, ju if if you separate what a belief is or what planning is from the neurons, then it’s then it makes sense to say that a computer can plan because planning is a mind ent is a mind thing. It’s like running Microsoft Word on several different computers.
(02:12) computers might be different in hardware but it’s running the same program. So that’s what that’s the way a cognitive scientist looks at the what a mind is. >> So okay um next might be perception otherwise uh I’m happy to hear what whatever you think is worth defining next. >> Perception is taking some um uh usually uh energy in the world uh and turning it into meaningful representations in a mind. So for vision that’s taking light.
(02:37) >> We have photoreceptive cells that turns into firing neurons and the the mind uh turns that into I’m looking at a woman’s face on a screen or something like that. >> Um or sound is pressure waves in the air. Um touch is kinetic. It’s pressure waves on the skin. >> The only sense that we don’t think of as energy is taste and smell because that’s chemical.
(03:01) But still it’s something in the environment and we turn it into something meaningful. Uh so that’s that’s generally what perception is. None of these terms are super well defined and a lot of them are debated because when you get to the borders of them it gets really tricky, right? The difference between like an interpretation like when you say I saw that someone was angry.
(03:19) Okay, did you really see that they were angry or did you infer that they were angry from a facial expression that could have been acted? Right? >> Um and that’s you know depending on how high in the mind you go, where does perception end and inference begin? That’s not something that’s super well defined, but that’s kind of the way we think of perception.
(03:34) >> So when you say the mind, how might the mind this uh sort of like information processing units that is the emergent property of the wet wear like the the hard the hard wet squishy brain matter that we have in our head? How do you define that as different from what is our conscious experience? Like what is our subjective experience of the world? If you think about the Thomas Nagel definition of consciousness, it’s really like that it’s like something uniquely to be like something.
(04:02) How do you define those two things as separate? >> I think that when it comes to consciousness, we need to be really humble because you know, I’ve got my opinions, but the experts on consciousness fundamentally disagree with each other. >> So there, if you look at the major consciousness theories, there’s very very little agreement even among the most popular theories.
(04:24) So there’s nothing like a consensus about consciousness, including consciousness’s relationship to the brain. >> So there are people who believe that consciousness is just like any other information processing and that the hardware doesn’t matter, right? So a a a computer or piece of software could conceivably be conscious if it was doing the right information processing.
(04:45) Uh or a bunch of tin cans connected with rope. Um there are others who think that there’s something very special about a brain like it has to be a brain and there’s something about the neurological properties that’s still unknown but you know they think it that makes consciousness possible. Others think that it’s a function of the hardware but in a sense of like how they communicate with each other.
(05:08) So an electrical grid might have consciousness but a traditional computer never could because it doesn’t have the right feedback mechanisms in the hardware. Anyway, I just wanted to give that caveat if we want to. We I can go into what I think but I don’t give what I think very much u confidence because the I’m not really a consciousness researcher.
(05:24) I’ve done a lot of independent reading about it. Like for two years I read a lot a lot of consciousness stuff but I’m not somebody who publishes a lot on consciousness and uh and it’s just fair to say that you know there’s there’s very little we can say for sure about what’s going on under the hood with consciousness.
(05:39) We know a lot more about how how it behaves, right? Like we know that you can’t follow two conversations at the same time. That seems to be a consciousness limitation. If you show your two eyes totally different colors, your mind can only see one at a time. So we know things like that, but that’s about as far as we go.
(05:57) Like making sense of all that and how it works in the in the mind and brain is is still up for grabs. >> Um well, I am interested in hearing your opinion as a cognitive scientist, as someone with a philosophy background, also as someone who works with um AI. I am interested to know what your um yeah what your and even if you want to hedge it a little bit what your best guess is at where consciousness might come from and what it might actually be.
(06:20) >> Right. So I think consciousness is a information processing entity. I think that it’s um something that uh is basically a an algorithm that’s running and um just like any other part of your mind. Uh so recognition of a word, you know, the part of your mind that determines how fast your heart is beating or anything like that.
(06:40) I think consciousness is sort of like that. It’s uh and once we start like trying to figure out what the function of consciousness is, we might be able to get a better idea of what that algorithm actually is. But I’m something in philosophy we would call a functionalist, which means that we define mental terms in terms of how they behave within a larger cognitive system.
(06:59) And the best analogy is like Hamlet. What? Like people think the play Hamlet is real, right? Nobody would deny that the play Hamlet doesn’t exist. >> But when you try to say what is it made of, it gets tricky because in some ways it’s a piece of paper with ink. In sometimes it’s it’s remembered in someone’s head if they’ve memorized it.
(07:16) Sometimes it’s uh in a digital form on your computer. And physics can’t look at all of those instances and say, “Here’s what’s the same about all those that makes it Hamlet.” There’s no way to do it. You have to know what the words are, but the words are not physical things either, right? Um, and so the idea is that Hamlet can exist with lots of different, it always has to have a physical substrate.
(07:38) So it’s not like some soul thing floating in the world. It has it has some physical substrate, >> but um, it’s not the same and it’s not defined by its physical substrate. So I think that the consciousness is a bit like that. So you could describe how consciousness happens in a human being or maybe in all human beings.
(07:54) But to say that consciousness just is that means that nothing without a human brain could be conscious. >> And it just seems ridiculous to me that if an alien were to come and be communicating doing everything, we’d say, “Well, it’s not conscious. It doesn’t have a brain. It has something completely different.
(08:08) “ So, you know, that seems really silly to me. As silly as saying, “Oh, it can’t feel pain.” Or it it’s not actually angry because it doesn’t have a brain. It’s just acting angry. So yeah, I think that conceivably a computer with the right software running on it could be conscious. I I think it’s a very bad idea to try to make that, but I think it’s possible.
(08:25) >> Why would you say it’s a bad idea? >> Particularly if it’s it’s able to be conscious of positive and negative states, >> then we would have moral obligations to it that we’re not ready to deliver. >> So imagine having a a conscious uh software that running on your laptop. >> Would you be morally obligated to keep that laptop running for the rest of eternity so you don’t shut it off and kill it? Yeah.
(08:45) >> Um would you be required to entertain it and make sure that it was happy? >> You know, if it’s not conscious, you don’t have anything to worry about. >> Yeah, that’s an interesting point actually. And I was thinking the opposite. Like if you had a piece of software in your computer and it was conscious, would you be morally obligated actually to switch your computer off and give it a break? Because my computer doesn’t ever switch off.
(09:05) And like imagine if that was a human, you know, you could never >> Yes. But but but switching it off wouldn’t be a break. >> Oh, right. >> It would be like it would be like severance. like as soon as you turn it back on it would they would they would they would have felt have felt like no time had passed >> right be like putting them under general anesthetic but that might be nice >> well you could put maybe put in the computer maybe like I don’t know I don’t even know what a break would mean but yeah like but but they would be so alien like a software AI would be so alien
(09:29) that we would have to find out what it needed >> maybe it wouldn’t want to break >> maybe all it wants to do is add numbers who knows you know >> uh but but we would have some moral obligation to it if it could be conscious of balanced states that means positive negative it was if it was just conscious of color or whatever but didn’t like have any preferences about that or um pleasures and pains then it’s it’s probably safe but yeah until we understand conscious a little better I’m I would be loathed to try to implement
(09:57) it on a machine and and luckily most AI scientists are not trying to make conscious machines not for my moral reasons though but because we don’t know what good consciousness is like we don’t know what it’s for we honestly don’t know what it’s for so when when somebody tries to make a speech recognition system with AI.
(10:13) They try to make a vision system with AI. They try to make a generative uh chatbot with AI. They try to do medical diagnosis with AI. Never does never does it come up. It’s like, well, we need to have a consciousness module to make this work. So, this is one of the weird mysteries. It’s like, okay, consciousness feels important, but what is it what what actually is like what does it need? What do we need it to do? You know, now we know in humans there are some things that you can’t do without consciousness, right? you can’t um can’t really learn
(10:42) new things like you couldn’t learn calculus unconsciously for example but we don’t really know why because you can have a computer learn calculus without consciousness so why do we need it you know these are all unknowns >> the so you mentioned before about the substrate there’s the the the potential for or not potential but there is a substrate um for something like Hamlet for example like it does have there is a physical copy of Hamlet that exists somewhere um would you say then for conscious iousness the physical
(11:10) substrate would be the brain >> for for humans it would be the brain right so when I say that there’s a physical substrate for Hamlet I mean that every instance of Hamlet has a physical substrate one instance of Hamlet might be a memory and a brain and another might be paper and another might be a file on an e-reader what I’m saying is that it’s called token physicalism which is like you don’t define Hamlet by its physical substrate but every instance of Hamlet has some physical substrate or other. So when we’re
(11:34) talking about human beings, most scientists and philosophers would agree that it is something happening in the brain, right? Exactly which part and how that’s debated, but yeah, we think it’s we think it’s a brain function. Functionalism says though is that that’s it’s not necessary. It just happens to be the way it works in humans.
(11:50) >> So all we can really say is like how it works in humans and not like h how it might emerge in anything that’s not human, but it’s not correct to say that it couldn’t emerge in anything that’s not human. >> That’s my view. Yeah. Right. So, like an octopus, uh, you know, is quite smart. Um, we don’t know if it’s conscious.
(12:10) Um, it’s got a brain, but it’s not that big. But each arm has its own little brain. So, like, you know, we if we don’t understand consciousness in humans, like we’re not ready to tackle that. >> Yeah. But if it is conscious, it’s probably consciousness in some to some degree in a different way simply because it’s neuro anatomy is is so different and alien to ours.
(12:30) I mean, and maybe this does come down to the definitions people hold of consciousness, but is there not a a case to be made that you’re conscious, your body is conscious? Um, maybe not in the same way that an octopus’s body is conscious. Um, but like your, you know, your your your fascia and your nervous system is constantly giving feedback to your brain um, sort of like outside of your or below your awareness.
(12:55) And you’re, for example, if I accidentally rested my hand inside a hot cup of tea, I would pull my hand out instantly and I could be doing that while still focusing on the conversation with you. I’d probably have a reaction to it. But is there not a case to be made that like the human body is also conscious or that the consciousness is not just um in the brain of of humans? >> So, most people think it’s in the brain.
(13:18) Um, when you pull your hand away from something hot, you are actually your hand pulls away before you are conscious of it. And that’s because the um sense it the the re the uh reflex happens in your spinal cord and it happens very very quickly and so you actually feel the pain after your hand has gone away.
(13:34) That means that the consciousness that you’re used to and that you’re that you talk about all the time is not the consciousness involved with pulling your hand away. >> If that part is conscious it’s a separate consciousness in your body. But most scientists don’t believe that that is happening.
(13:48) Right? We don’t think that the body is actually conscious. We don’t that consciousness is something that happens in the brain. And although some people talk about, oh, the body knows things and I feel things in my body, what you’re actually feeling it in is a projection of your body. It’s a representation of your body called the body schema.
(14:04) So, you’ve got a representation of your hand in your mind. That can be wrong. Sometimes if you’re like have a high fever, you might feel like your arms are really really long or if you’re on psychedelics, you might have a hallucination. their arms are super long or um but the most striking one is phantom limb which is where you get a limb amputated for whatever reason but you can still feel your hand.
(14:25) It feels like your hand is still there. How is that possible if you’re actually feeling in your physical hand? You’re not your mind your mind hasn’t caught up to the idea that the hand is not there anymore and it and it and it still feels like you’ve got a hand. So people who have amputations often have this what’s called a phantom limb which kind of proves that what you are what your mind is feeling as being in your body is in a a mental representation in your head getting fed information from the body but the feeling is in your brain.
(14:54) >> The idea that you could lose a limb and then like say I could lose my left arm and then still feel like an itch in my left hand because my mind hasn’t caught up to the fact that that that part of my body is gone. What’s happening when I can if I can see that I don’t have an arm, but I can feel that I have it, like what’s actually what is actually happening there? >> Like the phantom limb is probably happening because let’s just say that you’re you’re cut off at the elbow.
(15:18) There are still nerves going right to the end of your of whatever limb you have left and they’re sending signals of some kind and sometimes there sending signals that your hand is in like an awkward position. Um, so you can see that it’s not in an awkward position, but you’re getting mixed signals. So, your eyes are telling you that you don’t have a hand, but your uh what’s called your your proprioception, which is your sense of where your body parts are, is telling you something different.
(15:43) And it can be very confusing. You you you were sensing two things at once that aren’t compatible. In fact, one of the treatments for phantom limb is using a mirror and so that you see the hand there and you can get it out of an uncomfortable position. >> Oh my gosh. Wow. So, kind of like coordinating or or um like lining those two things up.
(16:00) Lining up what your mind thinks it can feel and what your >> Yes. >> Yeah. Okay. >> You’re realigning it. That’s a good way to put it. Yeah. >> Right. Um is there a is the the imagination in some way responsible for that? >> No. I think that’s like a perceptual thing. That’s propriception and and a problem with propriception.
(16:18) you know, similar to when you close your eyes in a dark room, you can still you can see like little, you know, shapes and things. Those are called phosphmes. And that’s just the base neural firing of your uh eyes of the retina, your retinal neurons, and then your upper mind trying to make sense of it.
(16:36) Um, but there’s nothing really out there that you’re seeing. And in the same way, the phantom limb is signals from the nerves in your uh in your body uh giving misinformation about uh the state of your body. So it’s really not imagination at all. Imagination comes from memory. Imagination is when you recombine things in memory to come up with a like a hypothetical situation or you sort of try to recreate it, recreate a representation from memory.
(17:01) >> So you wouldn’t be remembering your hand as it was. It’s actually just a misfiring of the perception tools. >> Correct. >> Okay. Um well, let’s get into memory then. Uh sorry. Well, let’s get into memory because I’m interested to talk to you about imagination. um when we are imagining something um my understanding is that we’re pulling bits and pieces from our memory to create that thing that we’re imagining.
(17:25) But what if we’re imagining something that is like completely new? Like if I’m imagining right now, I’m imagining a picture of uh like a a dolphin wearing a um woman’s dress and strutting around in high heels. And that’s something that I’ve never seen before in real life, but it’s something that I can easily imagine. And I could actually, if I had time, I could translate that imagining onto a piece of paper and draw you a picture of that.
(17:50) >> He’s drawing on memory because you do have a memory of what dolphins look like, and you have a memory of what wearing pants looks like, and you have a memory of walking in high heels. >> And so you’re that’s what I mean by imagination being a recombination of memories. So you’re you do you shouldn’t think of like like if I showed you a picture of a dinosaur riding a bike.
(18:07) You shouldn’t think of it like oh this picture of a dinosaur riding a bike is one point in my memory. It’s it’s actually drawing on what you know about dinosaurs and what they look like and what you know about bicycles and this color and all these things and that altogether forms your memory of the image.
(18:21) So when you’re imagining something, you are drawing on these bits and pieces and these different concepts and this and the AIs can do it now, right? You type into midjourney or Dali, >> you know, draw me that, it’ll it’ll create it. Obviously, it’s coming from its memory. Like where else would it come from? That’s all it has. >> But just like um these large models that create images and large language models actually like Chad GBT, it breaks up the world into tiny little concepts that can be recombined in interesting ways.
(18:49) And that’s how imagination happens. And in fact, even if you’re not trying to imagine something novel, right? So this like dolphin idea is a novel idea I assume you just came up with, right? Even if you’re trying to just imagine exactly what your kitchen looks like, >> it’s not going to be exact. And you’re still drawing on a whole bunch of concepts and putting them together.
(19:06) And when you go and you like try to picture your kitchen really vividly, there’s some things you’re going to be not sure about, some things you’re going to get wrong. You walk into your kitchen like, “Oh yeah, that.” It’s not a photograph in your mind that you’re just retrieving and bringing to your your mental screen.
(19:18) You’re trying to reconstruct what you know about your kitchen and bringing all those concepts in. So remembering something you actually saw is on the same spectrum as imagining something brand new or dreaming. It’s all re reconstituting something from its bits and pieces. >> Okay. So then how do I trust my memories? >> You should you should be like wary of your memories because they change.
(19:40) >> So yeah, you should be you know skeptical of your of your memories. You know, like if you think about a dinner party you went to and you try to and somebody ask you, “Oh, who was there?” What you’ll probably do is come up with a picture in your head and go around the table.
(19:54) Uh her, him, him, her, right? And then somebody might say, “Oh, what about, you know, Jackie? Was Jackie?” “Oh, yeah, Jackie.” You know, I was sitting between them. >> What does your mind do? Did Did your mind have a big blank space where Jackie was? No. You had a complete picture. It was It was nice. And then you just effortlessly fit Jackie in and now that’s your memory.
(20:10) So yeah, your your memory is it can be affected by the questions you’re asked. So famous studies like relevant to policing and interviews. If you ask some if you show somebody a video of a car hitting a a wall and you ask them later how fast was the car going when it encountered the wall, they’ll give a slower speed than if you say how fast was the car going when it smashed into the wall.
(20:28) So you all see the same video, but just changing the question not only changes the answer, it changes the memory itself. >> Oh wow. Yeah. like your it’s it sounds like your present mind is so easily influenced by the whatever stimulus it’s being given when it comes to recalling things.
(20:47) Is there is is there more chance that I’m going to be influenced by that stimulus if um by the stimulus of how someone asks me a question if the memory was created um more proximal or distal? Like if it’s a childhood memory, is it more likely to to be murky than it is if you’re asking me something about what I did an hour before we jumped on this call? >> I don’t really know the answer to that.
(21:09) I think I would guess that it has much more to do with how often you’ve rehearsed the memory than how old it is. Meaning, how often do you bring them bring it to mind and rehearse it? And so, if it’s a childhood memory that you think about a lot, >> maybe it’s a bad one. Maybe something a teacher said to you that was terrible or something a teacher said to you that was very inspiring and turned and turned your whole life around.
(21:27) >> That’s not going to be any dimmer than a recent memory. >> A recent memory like where you parked your car two weeks ago might be completely unex unretrievable entirely because you have no need to rehearse where your car was two weeks ago. You only need to remember it until you pick it up again, right? If you’re going to a big parking lot or whatever.
(21:45) So, I think I I would guess it has more to do with rehearsal, but I’ve never seen a study that looked specifically at memories that were encoded a long time, like initially encoded a long time ago versus recently. >> What’s that? What’s that when you have something in the front of your mind and then it escapes you? >> It’s part of it’s part of the uh constraints of consciousness, right? So, we know that consciousness and your what’s called your working memory has very very tiny window.
(22:09) And so, you’re not really able to um have more than a couple things in it at a time. This is why there’s task switching cost to get back to what we were talking about, right? If you’re working on you’re like you’re talking to me, right? You’re talking to me. I’m talking about all kinds of stuff that you know that’s that’s like news to you.
(22:24) You’re trying to keep it all in your head. You’re trying to think of the next question. Um you’re maybe you’re worried about uh you know what your friend said to you last week and that’s crowd all that’s competing for your your mental space which is this tiny little sliver of what’s going on in your in your in your whole mind can can do a lot but your consciousness seems to be a very limited capacity entity.
(22:44) And so, yeah, you uh you’re telling somebody a story and and a friend walks by and and oh yeah, hi. How you doing? Oh, then they leave and it’s gone. It’s been pushed out and then it you have to retrieve it all over again. >> Okay. Well, I just remembered what I was going to say. So, um I’m going to write that down, but then what can you explain to me what happens when all of a sudden it comes back? Like you say, you can only hold limited things in your mind.
(23:05) So, I’m juggling and at at some point the thing that I want to ask you next drops out of my mind, but as you were talking it comes back. So, is that because I’ve sort of um I’ve had to reallocate my attention to listening to what you’re saying to see if I can retrieve that thing back that I wanted to ask you, or is something else going on there? >> So, the way that memory retrieval seems to work is something called semantic priming, which means that concepts that are mean mean similar things make each other easier to remember. So, sometimes
(23:34) you just it never comes back. Like you have an idea for a song lyric, you’re like, “Oh, I should write that down.” when you’re driving or whatever and then like that you get home you’re like you just can’t you never remember it again. But sometimes you can like when you’re when something’s on the tip of your tongue or like you’re trying to remember it, your mind is like sort of like probing the different related concepts hoping that it’s going to bring it to the four.
(23:53) So sometimes people will actually um talk to themselves. They’d be like, “Oh, the name of my first yoga instructor, the name of my Why are they saying it out loud?” It’s because when you actually it goes in your ears, it reaches different parts of your brain and it might actually bring the memory to to light.
(24:08) Sometimes when I I’ll now that I’m like 55, I’ll I’ll like walk upstairs and and I play a game called what did I walk upstairs for? Like I can’t even I can’t even figure out what you know and and this is the funny thing. Sometimes if I just move my hand, I can figure it out. So I go upstairs, I like what did I come up here for? I just start moving my hand. Oh, a hammer.
(24:24) >> And that’s actually what you came came up for. >> Yeah. >> My my my my hand just starts moving because a part of my mind knows what I came up for, but I’m not consciously able to access it right now. But it feels like a hammer is related to that movement you were doing with your hand. What if what you went upstairs for was like your sock or something? Would you have to move a different part of your body for your memory to >> I might reach for my sock.
(24:47) Um I mean if I came upstairs for um uh I’m trying to think of something that wouldn’t involve my hand in some way. But to ask your wife a question then I might then my hand would be useless and I it wouldn’t help me. >> So that would help me remember when you move your hand. >> So at at this point in time you’ve just walked up the stairs.
(25:03) You don’t remember what it is that you’ve come up for. So, you don’t remember it’s a hammer. Then, how do you know to move your hand to jog? >> I just try to move my hand, and if I get something, I get something. It doesn’t always work. >> All right, I’m reading too much into this. Um, okay. So, my questions before were we were talking about you riding your tricycle down the stairs um in a house that that didn’t actually happen in, even though the action of you riding a track down the stairs did.
(25:28) I’m wondering your recollection of you in your mind, like you’re envisioning you as a little person in your mind. Is that version of you that you have in your mind the correct version? >> I’m not sure what you mean. Like I’m not super well defined in that memory. But I will say this, my memory of it is third person, which is of course not how I experienced it.
(25:46) >> Weird. Yeah. Yeah. True. And a lot of people, the further back a memory is, the more likely they are to to remember it in third person, which is another reason to doubt the sort of videape theory of memory that you’re just remembering what goes in your eyes. People often remember things as though it’s a camera watching the whole scene and they’re in it.
(26:02) >> Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, a lot of my memories are like that. And that’s >> Did it ever cross your mind that you didn’t see it that way? >> Well, not until we’ve had this conversation, but now I >> It’s so natural. It’s so natural. It’s like, yeah, of course. I couldn’t have seen it that way.
(26:15) Like, what? But but your mind is re re it’s reconstituting the scene, right? >> Yeah. Well, I guess what I was trying to get at with that question is when I think of myself in my mind, am I am I imagining what I actually look like? >> You’re imagining what you believe you look like, >> right? >> But like, you know, you’ve heard yourself on on tape a million times, but a lot of people, as you probably experienced, when they first hear themselves recorded, they’re like, “What? I sound like that?” Because the you hear more bass when in your own
(26:42) head. Um, and so a lot some of the bass is taken out when you hear recording and you’re it and and when it’s just going in your ears and it’s not reverberating through your whole head, it sounds a little bit higher pitched. Um, and yeah, people people are often Yeah, people are often surprised at at how they look or they have a people who are um depressed and and and overweight or underweight or people with anorexia have uh body images that are completely wrong.
(27:06) >> They they they see themselves uh in a way that they’re not. So some people think they’re more beautiful than they are. Some people think they’re less attractive than they are heavier, lighter. So yeah, you’re not you’re remember you’re only seeing a representation. You know, this is something a lot of people don’t really realize, but like mirrors, mirrors are a relatively new technology.
(27:24) And like even in the Middle Ages, they just had like polished brass. You could barely see anything. People really didn’t even know what they looked like unless they were rich and had somebody paint them. >> They just didn’t know what they looked like. they unless it was a a really still water on a rare day with the sun just right, maybe you could see yourself.
(27:43) But, you know, for most of human history, we didn’t really know what we look like. >> I wonder if um back when people were getting self-portraits, although I’m sure that still happens today, but um I wonder if when they thought of themselves in their mind, their their mind’s eye was like a watercolor painting because that was the input they had.
(28:04) Is that is it possible that like that that could happen if you if you had only ever seen yourself represented in watercolor? Would you actually think that that’s what you looked like in your mind’s eye? >> I mean, given that nobody else looks like a watercolor. >> Okay, true. >> You know, you might have doubts about that and it might be a modification.
(28:21) I don’t really know. That would be a very weird experiment. >> All right, that was a weird question. Um my my next question is about you said that you’re you you me storing things in your memory but then things are dropping off. So it’s like if you asked me where I parked my car 2 weeks ago there’s no way that I could recall that memory.
(28:42) Is it possible that that memory is in there somewhere that actually >> most people think most people think yes. So most people think that when you get a memory like an episot what we call an episodic memory is a memory of something that happened to you. uh once you have an episodic memory, we have no reason to think it doesn’t stay there forever.
(28:57) The problem is that it’s you can’t retrieve it. And like one of the theories of why old people forget things is is interference. They’ve seen so much that when they’re trying to when they’re trying to remember a specific thing, it’s there’s so much similar to it. They can’t they can’t distinguish the right one.
(29:16) So yeah, when you you know I mean when you forget where your car was. Yeah. So probably somewhere in your mind is some kind of representation of where your car was that you know under strange circumstances might get retrieved. I mean, you’ve probably had an experience where apparently out of nowhere something comes to mind that you’ve thought of in 20 years.
(29:33) >> Oh, all the time. That happens to me. >> And it’s like, what what was going on there? And you know, the only explanation is that there’s something you were experiencing. And that experience could be both external and your internal sort of thoughts somehow triggered the network in the right way to make that memory come out, you know, but but many memories will just never come out again.
(29:54) like this the circumstances won’t ever be right for it. >> That that tends to happen to me like all of a sudden I have a memory um of something random tends to happen to me during meditation. Actually, when I first started seriously meditating, it was happening all the time. So, if there’s something that has to trigger it for those all those neural um bits and pieces to fire in a certain way that recalls that memory and puts it in my mind’s eye.
(30:17) But if I’m just sitting there meditating, my eyes are closed, you know, nobody’s touching me, there’s no scent of anything in the air, like what could it possibly be? >> Yeah. Nobody really knows. Um, you know, there’s also theories in creativity suggest that you can get into creative mindsets where you’re um, usually you’ve got like a threat you’re you’re like this what I called semantic priming, which is like you remember things that are similar.
(30:43) Usually in your day-to-day stuff, it’s pretty restrictive. like it’s got to be really similar like doctor nurse kind of thing. Um but the idea is that when you are in a creative state, when you try to put yourself in generative creative state, uh that gets loosened so that you’re able to retrieve things that are more loosely distant um to to the thing, right? So you think about playing billiards and rather than just thinking about a pool queue, you think about, you know, your your your friend that you played pool with when you were a kid,
(31:11) right? So, so when you’re meditating, right, one of the hallmarks of it is like you’re very relaxed and maybe I’m just guessing here, right? May maybe you’re putting yourself in sort of a um uh uh you’re lowering the threshold in your mind of of similar things to retrieve and then just things just pop into your head.
(31:31) You know, it also like you could ask the same thing of dreaming. Now, why you dream a particular thing is something that’s very mysterious. Um people tend to dream about um their concerns. They tend to dream about threatening situations. They But, you know, scientists have had a hell of a time trying to get people to dream about anything specific.
(31:49) >> Show them a movie before they go to bed. Nope. They don’t dream about the movie. The mind is like, “Nope, we’re thinking about this.” And, uh, who knows why. You know, like that’s another that’s another really contentious field is like dreams. Like some people, some scientists think that they’re not.
(32:03) They have they have no function at all. They’re just your mind making sense of chaotic information coming from your brain stem. Others think that it’s rehearsal for threats or social situations. Um but yes, for from the imagination standpoint, uh yeah, we we can’t say why you uh dream particular thing or why certain memories will pop into your head when you’re meditating or just walking around.
(32:24) I just laugh them because there’s like so many um clips of women being angry like as a you know a joke sort of as a joke but it’s funny because it’s real is like women being waking up in the morning angry at their partner because their partner has cheated on them in their dream. You know, if the theory is that it’s like a threat rehearsal thing, uh the doing your dreams is is the yeah, like a survival mechanism essentially, then that’s it’s interesting like the things that you dream of really do say more about what your fears are or like what
(32:52) you perceive to be threatening to you in your life subconsciously >> and the threat and the and the rehearsal rehearsing threats theory also explains why we forget our dreams. What we need is the practice, but we don’t want to confuse the dream with something that actually happened. So you get the practice without the episodic memory.
(33:09) You get the sort of the procedural memory. >> Why is it that dreams um and even like intrusive thoughts are often like dark, depraved, violent, sexual, weird in nature? Maybe this is just me, but I don’t think it is. I think that um a lot of people have Yeah. like quite a uh creative and dark inner cinema.
(33:30) Why is that? You said intrusive thoughts and and just let’s just be clear, somebody wouldn’t call it intrusive if it wasn’t unpleasant. >> True. Okay. >> Like if you just had a h if it’s just a happy memory popped into your head, you wouldn’t be like that’s an intrusive thought, you know? So by definition, like they’re going to be dark, right? But what you like behind what you’re saying, a lot of people have a very negative stream usually of a voice.
(33:52) They have like a chatter in their head of negativity, self-doubt, paranoia, criticism, judgment of other people. Um why that is I I don’t know. Uh I just I’m glad I don’t have it. Like I don’t have a voice that’s just constantly chattering at me. >> Wow. >> I’m I’m just a blessed person. I just I think in I think mostly in concepts and I I it doesn’t come across as words very often.
(34:17) >> That’s interesting. So how do you what does inspiration look like for you? >> Well well let’s say let’s say that I forgot to feed the dog and I’m out walking and I’m like oh my god, you know and I remember that I have to go home and feed the dog. I think about the concept of my dog and the fact that they’re hungry and the fact that I need to feed them, but I don’t the words don’t pop into my head.
(34:36) I need to go home and feed the dog or you need to go home and feed the dog in English. You see what I’m getting at? >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> I just It’s just concepts. >> Do you think that your mental chatter is less negative because there’s no you in it? Like there’s more it’s it’s more likely that if it’s a you forgot to feed the dog, you’re a shitty dog owner.
(34:53) That’s more likely to happen if we’re thinking about the the you in that. >> Well, let me ask you something. Do you have negative chatter in your head? >> Yeah, definitely. >> Okay. Does it say I or you? >> Um, I have lots of voices. >> Are you saying I’m a loser or you saying you were a loser? >> Well, I don’t say that particularly.
(35:13) >> Sorry, I shouldn’t have an example. >> No, no, no, no, no. I’m I’m happy to go there. Um, what? Yeah, I guess like I do I have a lot of chatter in my head. Um that thanks to meditation now I’m like much more able to observe it. I think it’s you. I think it’s you more than I. >> Okay. Right.
(35:32) So I I think that my lack of chatter in my head and my positivity are separate. Like I think I could have a lot of negative thoughts even if it wasn’t in words because I know what a loser is and I could I can imagine like when I’m disappointed with myself or feel guilty or whatever. Uh, I I have those thoughts. They’re just not in words.
(35:50) >> So, what what do they look like? >> They’re concepts. So, yeah. Okay. You ever like try to you you can you can you’ve got an idea and you can’t you can’t bring the word to mind of what it is, but you have the idea in your head. My all my thoughts are like that except I’m not searching for the words.
(36:01) It’s that pre-linguistic meaning. Or if you’ve ever like experienced something again and again and somebody says, “Oh, that’s a X.” And you’re like, “Oh, that’s the word for it.” There that thing that I’ve been experiencing and I’ve seen over and over again. That pattern I’ve seen over and over again. I’m so glad that there’s a word for it.
(36:15) Now I have a word to attach to that meaning that I’ve always had that those meanings. That’s what I think. Yeah. >> Do you Yeah, that’s so interesting. I I’ve never really thought of anyone I guess because you project your subjective world, your Yeah. subjective experience onto the world, which is like a whole other complex psychological thing.
(36:36) But I’ve never really thought of the idea that other people would have a mental chatter that’s not chatter. >> And I was surprised to find out that most people do. That’s awful. Well, how do you live with that? That’s that’s why I I feel terrible. I I can’t believe like people have it, you know? But like, you know, if you were like shopping for a couch, we’re trying to picture how it would fit in your living room.
(36:58) It wouldn’t all be words, right? You have imagery, thoughts, too, right? And feelings, thoughts. It’s not all words. I have those, too. And I can think in words. It’s just not a constant word stream in my head. >> What if you were cuz you’re a writer as well. So, what if you’re writing? Are the words coming to you and then you’re putting them into the computer? >> Uh I don’t think that that’s much different.
(37:20) I don’t think that the way I write is much different from others. I think about meaning and then it just comes out >> right >> like you know like you even in this conversation it’s very hard for us to talk about how we come up with the words we do. We don’t even know what words we’re going to have at the end of the sentence when we start it.
(37:36) >> But we’ve got this sort of intention of what we want to communicate and your unconscious mind takes care of choosing words that make it work. And >> sometimes you screw up and you’re like, “Oh, I didn’t mean to say that.” Like when I used the loser example, you know, my mind pulled that out without my say without my approving it first, my conscious mind approving it.
(37:52) And you know, and that’s that’s the way it is for writing and for speaking. But I think it’s sort of a separate, you know, obviously I can talk and I can, you know, I can create words and I can people talk in my dreams. So I do think in words sometimes it’s just not I just don’t have a constant like background chatter.
(38:07) >> Well, happy for you. >> Yeah. Um I want to talk about the relationship between um and I guess this kind of relates to memory but the relationship between your imagination and um time because your imagination is what’s responsible for traveling ahead of time you know and making plans and um imagining possibilities. Yeah.
(38:31) When we go back in time uh yeah I don’t actually know if this this this question is fully formulated in my mind either. So if you want it so so changing going forward or backward in time in your mind is called chronosthesia. Kronos meaning time right and uh and so it’s it is definitely a part of imagination and and um people who have deficits in like imagery have a harder time imagining the future in the past and it’s very possible that animals can’t uh imagine the future of the past or many animals can’t maybe some birds.
(39:01) So yeah, it’s very it’s very tied to that because thinking about a possible future or reconstructing a memory from the past is drawing on memories and creating something new and uh that’s imagination and not um it’s very possible that very few animals can do it. >> So is there an evolutionary function for humans having the ability to travel through time in their imagination? >> Absolutely.
(39:25) Imagine if you just had to try everything instead of thinking about what um being able to reflect on the past and learn from those mistakes. Being able to think about well what if I what if I went over and slapped that person thinking about the consequences. Yeah, that’s got a huge evolutionary advantage. If you can like simulate in your mind what would happen or in the past what would have happened if I done something differently.
(39:47) That’s incredibly valuable. And you can and you can imagine why people who had the ability to do that better would outr reproduce and outs survive the people who couldn’t. And just think about people who you say they don’t think about the consequences of their actions. What are they doing? They’re not using their imagination or their world model is off, whatever, but for whatever reason they’re unable to predict uh or unwilling to predict, you know, and they then they just do things that end up not working out for them or anybody else.
(40:11) >> So then why wouldn’t animals need to have that? >> Well, because there’s a cost to everything, right? So, um it could be that the ability to imagine is some is metabolically costly, right? Like humans have these huge heads that like almost kill the mothers that come out of them, you know, and and and that’s really, you know, it’s really danger.
(40:32) It was until very recently extremely dangerous to even have a child, right? That’s not a problem for most animals because humans niche is really, really smart. And we also have hands that we can build things with. So other animals that like don’t build and make up things like make up new objects and and and build them and have to keep an keep an idea in mind and like go to different places over the course of days or weeks or months or years for cathedrals to like uh decades, you know, you have to keep that in mind.
(41:03) And if an animal doesn’t really can’t really exploit that, >> then it would be maladaptive to have the brain power to to do it because it would be nutritionally costly. >> So then why >> evolution is full of species losing things that aren’t aren’t aren’t adaptive anymore? >> So then why would birds maybe have it? I just say that because they’ve been doing a lot of experiments on like corvids, like crow crows and ravens uh and jays that um suggest that they seem to have episodic memory.
(41:36) I can’t recall the experiments exactly, but they they it’s done by hiding food and seeing how they behave and they just set them up in such a way that it seems very likely that they’re actually remembering episodes of their past rather than just doing what feels right in in a given moment. So they’re probably recalling an episode from the past.
(41:53) >> Okay. So imagination incredibly valuable um as far as evolution is concerned. But I guess your imagination also takes up um or is responsible so much for your subjective experience which is arguably the thing that brings about the most suffering in humans. So is there what’s kind of going on there where it’s like yes this imagination thing ability to plan hold ideas bring to fruition incredible concepts that move forward our species that also becoming like quite maladaptive and you know us having all kinds of mental disorders ADHD
(42:24) depression um you know body dysmorphia what’s going on there >> yeah I don’t think imagination is implicated in all those things so you can be depressed and not be using your imagination at all um I mean depressed people do use their imagination anxiety on the other would be non-existent without imagination. >> Mhm.
(42:41) >> Because anxiety is all about possible futures and worrying about them, right? So, uh you know, although like imagination and like ADHD, I don’t think imagine has imagination has anything to do with ADHD. ADHD seems to be a regul an inability to regulate your attention very well. Um and that’s like what you’re focusing on.
(43:00) But imagination is just one other thing you could be focusing on. So, I don’t really see uh that. But yes, like imagination can make you miserable or really happy. Certainly like worrying constantly about the future or like racking yourself in guilt or regret about things in the past and using your imagination to make yourself miserable is totally possible.
(43:20) Um but you it’s also fantasies. You also can make yourself happy with uh thinking about cool things and um you know uh uh uh you can listen to a m a song and and imagine what how you’d make the music video and that can be very entertaining. And then there are some people called maladaptive daydreamers or I call them compulsive fantasizers but the technical term is maladaptive daydreamer who fantasize so much and so well that they just start like dropping other things in their life.
(43:50) They just can’t wait to get home from work to just lie in bed and engage in their fantasies for hours and hours and hours and they and they’ll not they’ll not do things with friends because they don’t want to miss out on their fantasies or they’ll in the middle of a conversation they’ll just like snap into their fantasy and just be and everyone think they’re like really spacey.
(44:08) So that’s like a a problem of like enjoying your fantasies too much. >> Oh wow. What’s the uh what’s >> one of my students was like that. It’s called maladaptive daydreaming and you can hear accounts of it on YouTube if you look it up. It’s really interesting. But I had a friend who was like it was so bad for him in his like 20s that he would do really risky things.
(44:27) Like he would do really intense things like basketball, but he also did like working on an oil rig and like skydiving because those were the only ways he could escape his fantasies. And I said, “Oh, so if you were like a P and like or put in solitary confinement, would you be just fine with that?” He’s like, “When I was 20, yeah, I’d just be happy just all by myself, just engaging in fantasy all day.
(44:49) “ >> The spectrum is so wild because there’s people that literally will do anything to not have to engage with their own mind. I have so many friends that like uh just podcasts on all the time, like music blaring in the car, like never a silent or dull moment. And I think it’s interesting because for some for some of my friends, I’m like, “Oh, you grew up in a busy household.
(45:08) You have lots of siblings. That makes sense. That’s what you’re used to.” And then for other people, you can also see that like it’s this dread of having to explore what the fantasies um might reveal to you about yourself. >> Yeah. I mean, people generally are very averse to just being alone with their own thoughts.
(45:28) One crazy study had people like if you just put people in a room and tell them to just think their own thoughts, they’re generally miserable with it. Um, one experiment put an electric shocker and people were more willing. They would give themselves electric shocks rather than be alone with their own thoughts. That’s what a sad state humanity is in.
(45:44) >> And because you’re into meditation, I know that you recognize the problem and you’re taking steps to alleviate it. >> And I think that’s great. >> Um, my next book that I’m working on is actually on the science of spirituality. So, it’s like looking into all the spiritual advice for how to be okay, you know, meditation, deep breathing, all that stuff.
(46:03) and like trying to write about the science of you know what does science say about these this advice you know um and so I’m really into that but yeah it’s a problem >> yeah what have you been that’s a really interesting book concept um what have you been discovering what’s been surprising you along the journey of writing that book >> in psychology it’s called emotional regulation and um I’m learning that sometimes when an emotion is really intense certain strategies work better than others than when and it’s calm.
(46:33) So, two common strategies are distraction and uh reappraisal. And distraction is actually better when you’re in an really intense feeling. Um and reappraisal is more effective, but is really only useful when you’re a little calmer. So, um emotions can be positive or negative, but they also have arousal.
(46:54) So, you can be really high, really low arousal. So, if it’s a really intense emotion, like somebody’s making you really angry, it’s probably better to distract yourself than trying to look at the bright side and doing these like thinky cognitive things. But I would, you know what, I’d rather, you know, I’d really rather come back on your show after the book’s published and just talk about and just talk about that because it’s a a whole other subject.
(47:12) >> All right, let’s do that. I I think I’m I have an amazing imagination. I’m so grateful for how big it is. And the thing that I’ve noticed in myself is that my um my thoughts are always big and vast and crazy and the quality of those thoughts changes depending on how well I’m looking after myself. What’s the deal with hallucination? Um and how is that related to imagination? >> In my book, imagination, I I account for the seven different kinds of hallucination.
(47:43) And I’m not sure I could repeat them all, >> but um hallucination is generally thought to be um a sensory like experience uh of something that is not uh there. Um if you like press on the side of your eye, you can make like sparkles and that’s technically a hallucination. You know, nobody believes that those sparkles sparkles are real.
(48:07) Um uh migraine, there’s migraine uh auras they’re called. So people get migraines will sometimes see uh colors and that’s simply because the sort of storm in their head is is affecting um the part of the brain that perceives things like that. So you can actually predict what people are going to see in their migraine or based on where in their brain the the migraine is happening.
(48:30) Um, the ones the the hallucinations most people want to talk about are things like people uh the symptoms of schizophrenia where they like literally will like hear voices that aren’t there and uh or they’ll see things that aren’t there. And what’s interesting is that most people like you have a constant chatter in their head, but people with schizophrenia that chatter is thought to be a separate entity.
(48:54) Um, so one thought is like um that hallucinations come from a really heavy prediction system. So, I’ll explain a little bit about perception. So, like your perceptual system is really a constant negotiation between what you’re seeing. I’ll just use vision as an easy example. What you’re seeing and what your mind expects. So, every time I look at the screen, I see a bright hot pink microphone.
(49:14) So, if I turn away when I look back, I’m expecting to see a hot pink microphone. And my mind, because I’ve been expecting it, my mind has primed all those parts of my perceptual system so that I can detect that really easily. So our perception is completely sped up because we’re priming the system to be really ready to detect the things that it expects.
(49:34) So when you see something you didn’t expect, it sometimes takes you a second to process it because your mind uh couldn’t prepare for it. Now in um schizophrenia hallucinations, one of the theories is that uh that prediction is so strong that it overrides this the information that’s actually coming in. So you see red out of the corner of your eye and because you’re your other problems with schizophrenia, you’re expecting violence and blood, you turn and look and you’re and your mind is so primed to see blood that you perceive a red coat as just blood going down
(50:07) someone’s body. So there’s something called the forward modeling system. So when I you know reach out my hand and touch the the computer um I don’t get surprised when I feel the computer under my fingers because the part of my mind that sent the message to my hand to move also sent a message to my haptic system and my visual system to expect all right you’re going to feel something on the fingers because I just moved the hand and it all ends up and you don’t notice it.
(50:35) So, one theory is that this system is messed up. And so, your your senses and your motor system and your thoughts aren’t getting all the information. And so, you get what’s called alien hand syndrome. So, some people’s hand will go and pick up a phone and they’re like, I didn’t do that. I didn’t do that. So, what happened was part of their mind wanted to pick up the phone, but the message to their perceptual system and their consciousness didn’t make it.
(50:56) So, they’re surprised by what their hand did. The idea with hallucinations is that you might be imagining something, but maybe there’s a a forward system there, too. And so, your visual system, which is going to perceive that imagination, that imagery, didn’t get the memo that you’re going you’re about to imagine something.
(51:11) And so, you see it and you think it’s real. >> Oh my god. What how does it happen that there that there can be so many systems that um are just like not communicating with each other in the brain? Like, >> well, normally they do. I mean, that’s the thing. It’s like it it’s just but you know when you the more you learn about how the mind and brain work the more you can tie them to disorders right like well when this system breaks this is what we get and when this system breaks this is what we get you know >> what’s the most likely cause of
(51:38) something like that going wrong >> it’s a big mix of genetics and um and your experience but also the randomness of early childhood development >> you know like when your when your brain is getting formed there’s a lot of chance in there, you know, like get this. This is crazy. >> Paige, >> the amount of DNA information that you have to make your brain to build your whole brain could fit on a DVD.
(52:09) That is small compared to the trillions of connections that are in your brain. Trillions. So, what does that mean? It means that the information your genes is like, okay, this goes here basically. This goes here and and here’s some algorithms to connect it all up. That’s why identical twins even at birth don’t have identical brains even though the DVD was the same.
(52:30) It it was a process that’s described, an algorithm that’s described to create a brain, but it’s got so much randomness. Were they lying on their left? Was the mother lying on their left or their right? Or, you know, did the person have food? What was the nutrition? Uh, this cell couldn’t get past this cell when it was trying to move.
(52:45) And so, you end up with these different brains. So, when people talk about like why why is there mental illness? Why is there differences in IQ? on and on and on. They often talk about genes or upbringing, but the development is the third thing that the actual randomness of brain development could account for an unknown amount of uh mental illness, too.
(53:03) >> So, it’s hard to generalize. >> Okay. Well, maybe this is something you can speak to because you wrote a book about it, but why are we interested in the things that we’re interested in? >> So, my theory is that there’s like five main things and um they are basically evolutionary. uh specifically to humans.
(53:22) Um so the first one is that we’re interested in people and relationships between people particularly status. >> So we love stories with people rags to riches, riches to rags, um you know, little the little guy overcoming the big guy, domination, all these things that are and and why do we love to watch these things? Why do we love to consume these things? is because most of our evolutionary history as human beings was spent in groups of 150 people on the plains of Africa where your social life determined just about everything. Like
(53:54) how well you got along with everybody else, keeping track of who was in charge, who was sleeping with who, who was keeping secrets, all of that was incredibly important for your survival. Like we still need each other for survival, but back then almost everyone you met was somebody really important to your life.
(54:09) So now when we watch television, we see people who we’ll never meet. Not only will we never meet that actor, but it’s a fictional character. So you know, but our minds don’t understand that we didn’t involve with television. And so part of our mind thinks that this person on the screen is somebody in our community. And so when they get in trouble or they’re cheating on their spouse, we’re like, “Oh.
(54:31) “ Because part of our mind thinks we need to know that because they’re in our community and that could be strategic information. >> Same thing. You watch a zombie. You watch a zombie movie and then you have nightmares about zombies. The threat detection theories is like, yeah, we didn’t evolve with movies.
(54:45) Your brain’s like, I saw these things. I need to prepare for when they come because I saw it happen. And most your mind doesn’t realize it’s a movie, right? So anyway, so that’s like so and and if you look like most songs are about relationships with lyrics, most like music with lyrics about relationships.
(55:01) If you look at the history of great literature, it’s full of humanlike desires and feelings and it’s all psychologically realistic. Usually, even if they’re gods, if they’re aliens, if they’re monsters, anything, they’re almost always humanlike psychology, unless the author is doing something really weird like in Solaris or Stinus Loft Limbs science fiction where the point or like a arrival where the point of the book is the weirdness, but it’s hard to relate to.
(55:28) It’s almost like a force of nature then. So, you know, as creative and weird as like these aliens and monsters are, they’re all basically human in their psychology because that’s what people want to see. Anyway, there’s four other things I could go into, but like uh yeah, the first one’s a humans human relationships and dynamics. >> Yeah.
(55:44) What about our specific interests like um you know, why are you interested in imagination? Why am I interested in consciousness? Why am I interested in podcasting? What about those kinds of things? >> Yeah, those uh those I know less about. I I I was really looking into more what you’re talking about is what we call in psychology individual differences.
(56:01) Um and I’m more interested in like what do humans like in general, right? Trying to predict why one person likes something else is a little trickier, but there is some research on it. Like um a lot of it is status, >> you know, like we think things are attractive, the way we decorate a house, the way what how what clothes look, the way your teeth should look, a lot of that is based on what we perceive highass rich people to be doing. Yeah.
(56:24) So there there’s some work on like individ why you like this and why like that and some of it’s just how you were like your personal history like I’m into imagination because when I started my PhD I walked into my supervisor’s office and he we said well what what are you going to do for a PhD I’m like I don’t know and he’s like well how about visual analogy I said let’s try it and here I am 30 years later working on imagination because I got into visual analogy I was talking about how people made analogies of visual things I’d give talks and
(56:50) they’d say where do these visual representations come from I’d say well that’s imagination nobody Everybody knows. >> Okay. So, I saw you do this TED talk on YouTube in 2010 and um you you said something at the end of of it about large language models not having imagination, but you know, I’ll come back and update you um if that changes.
(57:07) You’re still working with large language models in your lab, right? >> I don’t think I referred to them back there, but I just was talking about AI. I was talking about AI as it was. Um but that was before deep learning. So, uh yeah. So, yeah, we’re they definitely imagine now. Well, it depends on how you define imagination, but like the typical image generating AIs aren’t using imagination.
(57:27) Um, they’re using they’re creating images, but they’re not having a representation of that image in their head first. So, I’ll give you I’ll give you like an example from human beings. Salvador Deli typically made 700 sketches before he would make start a painting. He would just meticulously plan before he ever set paint to canvas.
(57:45) Improvisational painting where you don’t know what you’re going to paint before you just start and then you just respond to whatever’s on the canvas is a totally different way of making art. I think you can sort of understand that, right? One’s got heavy planning, one’s not. Same with like hip-hop.
(57:58) Kanye West says that the first four albums he never wrote down a word. He just had it all in his head and then he performed it in the studio. Other rappers will meticulously like plan every word and write it all out and d and um or they’ll freestyle and they won’t know what they’re going to say and they just make it up as they do it. they just they just rap.
(58:15) So these are what the way I distinguish high for high and low imagination creativity. So when you plan everything out when Kanye has all those lyrics in his head and he and he just that’s his using his imagination and then he actually produces the art when he speaks where a freestyle rapper like Eminem can do or like um you know these other like freestylers, battle rappers or whatever, they don’t know what they’re going to say before they do it.
(58:37) So they’re not using much imagination at all. They might be thinking one or two words ahead or maybe even one line ahead, but that’s the extent of the imagination. They’re not planning four verses ahead. They don’t know what they’re going to say. So why am I talking about this? Because the way that image generators work is that they basically just make the picture without planning what it’s going to be.
(58:57) They know what elements are going to be in it, but they don’t have an image of the picture before they start. So you could say they’re not using imagination in that sense. >> But what about if you get them to plan it out? Like if you say to a language model, okay, this is what I want. Plan it out. Um, scope it.
(59:12) >> Well, the language model, like the modern language models, I think, do engage in a little imagination because what the language models do now is you ask it a question. If you’re using the like the frontier ones, it will come up with an answer, not show it to you. Read what it wrote, analyze it, see if it ask itself, does this fit what the user wants? Is this appropriate? Is this da da da? Scrap it, make another one, edit it. That’s high.
(59:35) And then it finally gives you the answer. It gives you at the final stage of it what it thinks is the best answer. To me, that is imagination because it’s creating possible representations in its mind. That’s not even outputting. Now, the first letter of language models that just were predicting the next word and we just give you the next word.
(59:51) That’s not imagination. That’s just that’s just behavior. You see the difference? >> Yeah. So, is that the like is that kind of the difference between Kanye West and Eminem? >> It’s a difference between planning and freestyling. Yeah. >> High and low. So Eminem is using low imagination when he’s freestyling and that’s not not a criticism.
(1:00:07) I mean it’s an incredible talent. I did improv for 20 years and one of and like I did like stage improv, you know, and the training they would say do not have an agenda with the scene because if you have an agenda then you’re going to be trying to force fit the scene into something that other people don’t have in their heads.
(1:00:23) So it’s much more important to be responsive to be listening. >> Right? You walk in and oh I’m going to have a scary scene about a graveyard. and somebody comes in and says, “Oh, happy birthday.” Don’t you don’t you don’t just like try to bulldo what they just said and force your idea of the scene.
(1:00:39) You got to go with it, you know? >> So, where what where is that coming from? When um you’re doing improv or or Eminem is freestyle rap rapping, he’s only thinking like one or two max like one sentence ahead of time. Where is he pulling the lyrics from? >> The same place. So, if you’re if you’re if you are writing lyrics on a piece of paper, your your mind is coming up with rhymes and ideas and you’re when you’re working them out and whatever, he’s still doing that.
(1:01:05) He’s just not he’s he’s not just like putting it um in his mind so that he can reflect on it a few times and try to hone it before it gets produced. It’s just more like a rapid production system, right? So he’s coming up with um like you could argue that if you just like to write out you were to write out a poem without editing or going back um and without sitting and thinking about it you are using a low imagination creativity.
(1:01:29) So like a first draft might be low imagination and then when you like look at a sense like how could I phrase that so it’s better then you start like thinking of and discarding ideas in your head that’s when the imagination is stronger >> kind of it almost feels like there’s a confidence thing there though you know with being able to freestyle and just like let words come creative artistic words come out of your mouth without needing to plan them.
(1:01:51) I mean it takes a lot of practice you know people say oh how could you practice improv you have to practice improv like like you know it’s like a foreign language like you when are you speaking a foreign language your second language or something um when you’re pra when you’re when you’re studying to do that or practicing to do that you’re not practicing this exact sentences you’re going to say you’re practicing being fluent so that when the time comes you can produce a brand new sentence that’s appropriate and it’s the same with improv
(1:02:17) >> like so I got to the point actually after so 20 years after like 10 years of doing improv, I was at the point where I I was so good at it that I could like be acting on stage and being in character and at the same time starting to use my imagination and think about, okay, what does this scene need? Okay, it’s been a while before.
(1:02:36) Okay, you know, it’s been a while. We need a we need a change in emotion here. So, I’m going to introduce a tilt that’s going to have an emotional effect on somebody and or or like, oh, now it’s starting to run long. This conflict is like stalemating. Somebody needs to give in. We need to resolve it. and we need to resolve it with something from earlier in the scene and I’ll start searching my mind.
(1:02:52) What do we Oh yeah, the octopus in the tank. Bring that back. The audience loves it. Scene’s over. So, that took tons of practice though to be able to act on stage while thinking about the plot. >> Um, well, thank you so much for your time. Where can people find you if they want to keep up to date with your research or they’re interested in this new book about the science of spirituality? Where? Yeah, where are the places? >> So, uh, you can follow me on um Jim Davies Cognitive Scientist on Facebook.
(1:03:17) Um, and my website is Jim at Jimdavies.org. >> I’ll put >> because I’m an organism. So, it’s jimdavies.org. >> I’ll put all of those links in the show notes. What is the name of the book that’s coming out? Does it have a title yet? >> No, it doesn’t have a title yet. >> Okay. But it’s just science spirituality.
(1:03:34) >> It’s going to be something something colon the science of spirituality very likely because all my books are the science of something, >> right? Okay. Well, keep an eye out and then once it’s published, I’ll get you back on the show to chat about it. >> I would love that. It’s pleasure to talk new paige.
