The illusion of self and the illusion of free will, explained | Annaka Harris — Transcript

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1. 0:00- People often think that illusions are evolved
2. 0:03for their usefulness,
3. 0:04but the truth is that most illusions
4. 0:06that we experience are actually glitches.
5. 0:10One example of this is the illusion of self
6. 0:13and the illusion of free will,
7. 0:15and the illusion of free will
8. 0:17and self are really two sides of the same coin.
9. 0:19It's this experience we all have
10. 0:22of being a solid entity,
11. 0:25an unchanging entity that moves through time,
12. 0:28that is somehow living somewhere inside my body.
13. 0:32It's my body, it's my brain,
14. 0:35and therefore, somehow separate from the physical world,
15. 0:39and this illusion confuses us about our place in nature
16. 0:44and the state of reality on on many different levels.
17. 0:47But the truth is that there really is this positive way
18. 0:50to view it.
19. 0:57So I think that free will, for the most part,
20. 1:00is an illusion.
21. 1:01But when I talk about free will,
22. 1:03I like to distinguish between conscious will and free will.
23. 1:07So I use the term free will
24. 1:09to talk about decision-making processes in nature,
25. 1:12which there clearly are.
26. 1:14If you look at something like a pea tendril,
27. 1:18when it senses that it's close to a branch
28. 1:21that it can wrap itself around,
29. 1:22it starts growing more quickly in that direction,
30. 1:26and then it changes the growth,
31. 1:27so that it wraps itself around a branch.
32. 1:30Most of us wouldn't consider that
33. 1:32to be a free decision-making process.
34. 1:35It's a cause and effect process that occurs in nature.
35. 1:38And as you move up in complexity to the level of brains
36. 1:42and then human brains,
37. 1:44the number of factors that come into play
38. 1:47are so expansive
39. 1:50that it would be impossible for us to track them all.
40. 1:53But it is a process,
41. 1:56and it's a process by which the brain is interacting
42. 1:59with the exterior world
43. 2:01and measuring the different outcomes
44. 2:05of the different possible futures,
45. 2:06and then ultimately making a decision.
46. 2:09This is something that I think we can refer to as free will,
47. 2:13and that what many people mean by free will.
48. 2:16The problem with having "free" in the title
49. 2:21is that it's not free in the way we feel it is,
50. 2:25and this is where the illusion comes in.
51. 2:29We begin with this illusion of self,
52. 2:32of being this solid, concrete entity
53. 2:35that lives somewhere in the head,
54. 2:37and even though we know better,
55. 2:40feels as though it's separate from the physical world
56. 2:42and separate from the cause-effect relationships
57. 2:45that we know to be in place
58. 2:47that could somehow freely make a decision,
59. 2:51or freely intervene in the physical world outside
60. 2:56of the relationships of cause and effect.
61. 2:59And because everything we experience,
62. 3:03everything we know takes place
63. 3:05within this felt experience of consciousness,
64. 3:08we often equate this feeling of self with consciousness,
65. 3:14and that I think is clearly an illusion,
66. 3:17and I call that conscious will
67. 3:19because it is this feeling
68. 3:21that my conscious experience is this self
69. 3:24and is the thing that has this freedom,
70. 3:26and this is how the illusion of self
71. 3:28and the illusion of free will are related.
72. 3:32There was a very interesting study done in 2013
73. 3:35in which they put participants in an fMRI machine
74. 3:39and showed them a screen,
75. 3:40and presented two numbers on that screen,
76. 3:43and they gave them the option of either adding
77. 3:46or subtracting these two numbers,
78. 3:49and they were scanning the activity
79. 3:51of these participants' brains
80. 3:53while they were doing this calculation,
81. 3:55and the result of this study
82. 3:57was that the experimenters could tell up to four seconds
83. 4:02not only when this person was going to make the decision,
84. 4:07but whether they decided to add or subtract,
85. 4:10and so you get the sense viscerally that there's no self
86. 4:15or free will making decisions behind the scenes,
87. 4:19but that in terms of your conscious experience,
88. 4:22a decision really arises.
89. 4:27So when I talk about the illusion of self,
90. 4:31this is often very hard for people
91. 4:33to grasp what that could even mean,
92. 4:36and so I'd first like to just be very clear
93. 4:39about what I'm not talking about
94. 4:41when I talk about the illusion of self.
95. 4:43So what is not an illusion is the fact
96. 4:46that we are organisms and systems in nature,
97. 4:50and that we have certain tendencies,
98. 4:52and that we're organized in a certain way,
99. 4:54and so we can talk about ourselves in the same way
100. 4:57that we can talk about a cat as another organism in nature,
101. 5:00or even an ocean wave.
102. 5:03But even though we can label it a wave
103. 5:05and we can call it a wave
104. 5:06and talk about the types of things waves do,
105. 5:09we all understand
106. 5:10that a wave is not a static thing in nature.
107. 5:13It's a process,
108. 5:14and our brains are very much the same thing.
109. 5:17They are processes in nature that are ever-changing,
110. 5:20ever-evolving,
111. 5:22that we are in constant communication
112. 5:24with the external world,
113. 5:26and that the boundaries between ourselves and the world
114. 5:31and ourselves and each other are not as solid
115. 5:34and firm as they appear to us
116. 5:36or that they feel to us to be,
117. 5:38especially when we feel like a static self.
118. 5:42So the neuroscience is really still in its infancy,
119. 5:45but we're starting to learn more
120. 5:47and more about how this illusion of self gets created.
121. 5:51Part of it has to do with something called change blindness,
122. 5:55which we know about in vision.
123. 5:57We have a blind spot in our visual field
124. 5:59that we are not conscious of,
125. 6:00that we don't detect,
126. 6:01and neuroscientists are just now starting to understand
127. 6:05that there is a change blindness with respect
128. 6:08to our experience over time,
129. 6:10so that we don't notice how different each
130. 6:14of our experiences in every moment are from every other,
131. 6:19which adds to this illusion of being a solid entity
132. 6:22that moves through time unchanged,
133. 6:25and we also know that memory plays a role
134. 6:28in creating this experience of self as well.
135. 6:33There's a sense in which all of the memories
136. 6:37that we have access to over time were being experienced
137. 6:42by the same subject,
138. 6:44and you can imagine if your memories weren't strung together
139. 6:48and your experience was just of each present moment,
140. 6:51there'd be much less of a sense
141. 6:53of a self moving through time.
142. 6:56We're also learning a little bit more
143. 6:58about what neuroscientists refer to
144. 7:00as the default mode network.
145. 7:02So we know that when the default mode network is active,
146. 7:06we are highly aware of this illusion of self,
147. 7:10and it tends to quiet down when we're experiencing
148. 7:13what people talk about as a flow state.
149. 7:15So when we're very immersed in our work,
150. 7:17if we're very immersed in a sport,
151. 7:19when people are under the influence
152. 7:21of some psychedelic substances,
153. 7:23or various meditation techniques
154. 7:25that quiet down the default mode network,
155. 7:28we are not so aware of self versus other
156. 7:32or self versus world,
157. 7:34which is actually closer to the underlying reality.
158. 7:40So many people find this realization
159. 7:42to be quite disconcerting,
160. 7:44which is understandable,
161. 7:46and I think one way to address that is levels of usefulness.
162. 7:50The vast majority of the time,
163. 7:52it is not useful or helpful to realize
164. 7:56that there's an illusion of sorts taking place.
165. 7:59One example I like to give
166. 8:01is that we more or less walk around with the illusion
167. 8:04that the Earth is flat,
168. 8:05and we act as though the Earth is flat,
169. 8:07and that's the best way to go about our everyday lives.
170. 8:09If we constantly reminded ourselves
171. 8:12that the Earth is a sphere, and had to keep that in mind,
172. 8:14and had to feel that way everywhere we went,
173. 8:16it would just be an annoying distraction,
174. 8:19and would get in the way of all kinds of activities
175. 8:21and would not be helpful.
176. 8:22And the same is true of the illusion of self
177. 8:24and the illusion of free will.
178. 8:27There are places where it's useful.
179. 8:29It's useful, obviously, for the sciences
180. 8:31and for neuroscience,
181. 8:32but it actually can also be useful psychologically
182. 8:36in certain circumstances, and again,
183. 8:38this isn't something you wanna remind yourself of
184. 8:39in every moment,
185. 8:41but there are moments where realizing
186. 8:44that there's an experience
187. 8:47of conscious will taking place
188. 8:51can be quite liberating.
189. 8:55Many people get stuck in feeling responsible
190. 8:58for their psychological state,
191. 9:01and there's a way in which simply being
192. 9:04with whatever uncomfortable emotions you're experiencing,
193. 9:07whether it's sadness or frustration or anger,
194. 9:11being with them rather than believing
195. 9:14that you are controlling them can be extremely beneficial
196. 9:18for psychological wellbeing.
197. 9:21There are also ways
198. 9:22that we can apply this in our relationships
199. 9:24with other people.
200. 9:26I sometimes talk about the fact
201. 9:27that you would never get angry at a tornado,
202. 9:30and that doesn't mean anger doesn't have a place
203. 9:32in society and culture.
204. 9:34But there are times when anger can overcome us
205. 9:38and start to rule our lives in a way
206. 9:41that is incredibly unhelpful and unhealthy,
207. 9:45and when we understand
208. 9:48that our brains are essentially processes playing out
209. 9:51in nature,
210. 9:52and there isn't a solid self to every person
211. 9:57that is somehow evil
212. 9:58or worthy of blame can also be liberating
213. 10:02to notice in certain circumstances.
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