Annaka Harris: Free Will, Consciousness, and the Nature of Reality | Lex Fridman Podcast #326

Annaka Harris 0:00 When we use the term free will, we're talking about this feeling that consciousness, that- that- that we have a self that is... There's this concrete thing that's separate from brain processing that somehow swoops in and is the- the cause of our decision or the cause of our next action. And that is, in large part, if not in its entirety, an illusion.

Lex Fridman 0:24 The following is a conversation with Annika Harris, author of Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind, and is someone who writes and thinks a lot about the nature of consciousness and of reality, especially from the perspectives of physics and neuroscience. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the descriptions. And now, dear friends, here's Annika Harris.

Lex Fridman 0:53 In your book Conscious, you described evidence that free will is an illusion, and that consciousness is used to construct this illusion and convince ourselves that we are in fact deciding our actions. Uh, can you... Can you explain this? I think this is chapter three.

Annaka Harris 1:07 First of all, I- I really think it's important to make a distinction between free will and conscious will, and we'll get into that in a moment. So free will, in terms of our brain as a system in nature making complex decisions and doing all of the complex processing it does, there is a decision-making process in nature that our brains undergo, um, that we can call free will. That's- that's fine to use that shorthand for that. Although once- once we get into the details, I- I might, um, convince you that it's not so free, but that... The decision-making process is a process in nature. The feeling, our conscious experience of feeling like consciousness is the thing that is driving the behavior. That is, I would say, in most cases an illusion, and usually when we talk about free will, that's the thing we're talking about. I mean, som- sometimes it's in conjunction with the decision-making process, but for the most part, when we use the term free will, we're talking about this feeling, that consciousness, that- that- that we have a self, that this... There's this concrete thing that's separate from brain processing that somehow swoops in and is the- the cause of our decision or the cause of our next action. And that is, um, in large part, if not in its entirety, an illusion.

Lex Fridman 2:29 So conscious will is an illusion, and then we can try to figure out-

Annaka Harris 2:33 Free will, I would say, is- is good shorthand for a process in nature, which is a decision-making process of- of the brain.

Lex Fridman 2:40 But decisions are still being made. So there's, um, uh, if you ran the universe over again-

Annaka Harris 2:48 Hmm.

Lex Fridman 2:49 ... is there... Would it turn out the same way? I mean, maybe... I'm trying to sneak up to, like, what does it mean to make a decision in a way that's almost, uh, that means something? (laughs)

Annaka Harris 3:01 So, right. So this is where intuitions get challenged. I've been thinking about some new examples for this, just because I talk about it a lot, and- and the truth is, most of the things I write about and talk about and think about are so counterintuitive. I mean, that- that's really what my game is, is breaking intuitions, shaking up intuitions in order to get a deeper understanding o- of reality. I'm often, even though I've thought about this for 20 years and think about it all the time, it's an obsession of mine, really, I have to get back into that mind frame to be able to think clearly about it, because it is so counterintuitive.

Lex Fridman 3:38 How long does that take?

Annaka Harris 3:39 (laughs) It depends.

Lex Fridman 3:40 How hard is that?

Annaka Harris 3:41 Depends on if there are kids around or if I'm alone or if I've been meditating, but what I was going to say, actually, I felt like we- we needed to just take one step back and talk a little bit, just because I think the- the importance of shaking up intuitions for scientific and advancement is such an important piece of the scientific process, um, and I think we've reached a point in consciousness studies where it's very difficult to move forward. And usually that's a sign that we need to start shaking up our intuition. So, you know, throughout history, the huge breakthroughs, the things that have really shifted our view of the universe and- and our place in the universe and all of that, those almost always, if not always, require that we, at the very least, shift our intuitions, um, update our intuitions. But many of them, we just have to let go of intuitions that are feeding us false information about the way the world works.

Lex Fridman 4:39 Well, the weirdest thing here is that here we're looking at our own mind.

Annaka Harris 4:44 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 4:44 So you have to, uh, let go of your intuitions about your own intuitions.

Annaka Harris 4:51 Yeah. Right, exactly. It's very meta, and makes it hard. And it's part of the reason why doing interviews, for me, feels so difficult, aside from the fact that I just have social anxiety in general.

Lex Fridman 5:04 Well, it's good, 'cause I took mushrooms just before we started.

Annaka Harris 5:07 (laughs) Perfect. That's what I should have done.

Lex Fridman 5:08 So we're in this (laughs) ... We're in this journey together. Let's go. Uh, so where- where- where do we take a step backwards to?

Annaka Harris 5:14 Well, I was just... I was going to say, I mean, this leads into the point I was going to make, but what I was going to say is, I mean, also, just for me, I feel like I... I'm not as good at speaking as I am at writing, that I'm- I'm clear in my writing. And because these topics are so difficult to get our minds around, um, it's hard to kind of get to any real conclusion in real time. It's actually how I started writing my book, um, was just writing for myself. I decided that I needed to spend some time writing down all of my thoughts in order to get clear about how I think about them.

Lex Fridman 5:50 So you write down a sentence, and you think. You s- In the- in the silence and the quiet-

Annaka Harris 5:55 Paragraphs.

Lex Fridman 5:56 Paragraphs.

Annaka Harris 5:56 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 5:56 And you- and you just-

Annaka Harris 5:58 And then I see if that makes sense, and then I check it with my intuitions, which is really the scientific process. And I really... In many ways, I feel like I'm a physicist at heart. All of my inquiry, all of my career, everything I'm interested in, actually going back to being a child, is just...... deep curiosity about how the world works, what this place is, what it's made of, how we got here, um, just being amazed at the fact that I'm having an experience over here, and you're having one over there, and we're in this moment of time, and, you know, what does that all mean? My interest in consciousness really came out of originally an interest in physics. And I- and I guess the- the two were always side-by-side, and I didn't really connect them until I was older. But, um, I've always been really interested in just understanding the nature of reality, um, before I even had language to- to describe it.

Lex Fridman 6:54 Yeah. You talked about sort of laying down and looking up at the stars and-

Annaka Harris 6:59 Hmm. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 7:00 ... sort of trying to let go of the intuition that there's a ground below us-

Annaka Harris 7:04 Yeah. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 7:05 ... which is a really interesting exercise. And there's many exercises of this sort you can do-

Annaka Harris 7:09 Yes.

Lex Fridman 7:09 ... but that's a really good one.

Annaka Harris 7:10 Well, and I think, you know, scientists and children who are or will become scientists or just kind of scientists at heart, um, really enjoy that feeling of breaking through their intuitions. And I remember the first time it happened actually. I was, um, playing with marbles. And, you know, marbles have all these different shapes. Each one is unique, and they're all the... It looks like there's liquid inside them. And I remember asking my father how they got the liquid inside the glass ball, and he said, "Actually, it's solid all the way through. It's all glass." Um, and I had such a hard time imagine... It just didn't seem right to me. I was very young when I... But he, he's a complicated person, but he was wonderful in this way, in that he would kind of entertain my curiosity. And so he's, he said, "Let's- let's open them up." And he got a towel, and we put the marbles on the towel and got a hammer, and he smashed them all. And lo and behold, it was all glass. And I remember, it's like the first time I had that feeling of realizing, wow, the truth was so different from what I expected, and I like that feeling. And of course, we need to be able to do that to understand that the Earth is flat, to understand the germ theory of disease, to understand long processes in nature, like evolution. I mean, we just can never really intuit that we share genes with ants.

Lex Fridman 8:33 Did you just say the Earth is flat?

Annaka Harris 8:35 (laughs) Yeah.

Lex Fridman 8:35 You mean the Earth is not flat.

Annaka Harris 8:37 Did I say that? (laughs)

Lex Fridman 8:37 Yeah. This is great. What's- I actually like to think about-

Annaka Harris 8:40 Exactly. See, this is why I need to write and not speak. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 8:43 Well, I actually really like, uh, so, you know, conspiracy theories and so on.

Annaka Harris 8:46 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 8:46 I really like flat Earth, uh, people that believe the Earth is flat or-

Annaka Harris 8:50 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 8:50 ... not believe, but argue for the Earth is flat. I-

Annaka Harris 8:53 Well, it's interesting because you can see. I mean, the intuition is so strong. I just said it.

Lex Fridman 8:56 The thing I love about folks who argue for flat Earth is they are thinking deeply. They are questioning actually what has now become intuition. Our... It's- it's become the mainstream narrative that the Earth is round-

Annaka Harris 9:11 Hmm.

Lex Fridman 9:11 ... where people actually don't, you know, yeah, don't think actually how crazy it is that the Earth is round.

Annaka Harris 9:20 Right.

Lex Fridman 9:20 (laughs) We're in a ball.

Annaka Harris 9:22 Yeah, yeah.

Lex Fridman 9:22 And, like, what, that's exactly what you're doing when you're looking out into space. It's really humbling 'cause I think-

Annaka Harris 9:29 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 9:29 ... at the basic intuition when you're walking around on the ground. You kind of... There's a underlying belief that Earth is the center of the universe. There's a kind of feeling-

Annaka Harris 9:39 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 9:39 ... like this is the only world that exists. And you kind of know that there's a huge universe out there, but you don't really load that information in.

Annaka Harris 9:47 Right.

Lex Fridman 9:47 And I think-

Annaka Harris 9:48 Right.

Lex Fridman 9:48 ... flat Earthers are really contending with those ide- with those big ideas.

Annaka Harris 9:53 Yeah. No, and I think, I mean, the truth is that when those observations were first made, when the celestial observations were made that revealed this fact to us, I can't remember how long it took, but I think it was close to 100 years before it was actually accepted as common knowledge that we're no longer the center of the universe, or of course we never were, but... And- and that's true almost every time we have a breakthrough like that, that challenges our intuitions. There's usually a period of time, um, where we have to... And- and this is an important part of the process because often our intuitions give us good information. And so when the science goes against, when our scientific observations go against our intuitions, it's important for us to let that in and to see, you know, whi- which side is gonna win. And once it's clear that the evidence is winning, um, then there's this period of time where we have to grapple with our intuitions and shift the way we frame our world view and go through that process.

Lex Fridman 10:59 But free will.

Annaka Harris 11:00 Free will's a hard one. So-

Lex Fridman 11:01 It's a hard one.

Annaka Harris 11:02 So here we are, still, you know, in consciousness studies, pretty stuck, at least in terms of the neuroscience. And so that's why I started thinking more deeply about that. That- that's why a lot of scientists right now are actually interested in studying consciousness, um, where it was very taboo before. And so we're at this really interesting turning point, and- and it's wonderful, but I- it will require that we shake up our intuitions a bit and reframe some things and look at what the neuroscience is telling us. Um, and there are a lot of questions. We have m- more questions than answers. But I think it's time. I think if we're going to make progress in consciousness studies, we need to start really looking at the illusions and false intuitions that are getting in our way.

Lex Fridman 11:52 Do you think studying the brain can give us clues about free will, like some of these questions?

Annaka Harris 11:56 Oh yeah, absolutely. I think it already has, and I think many facts that have come out of neuroscience are still barely seeping into the culture. I mean, they're- we're, uh, I think this is gonna be a long process. So- so part of my work is really just looking at areas where we already know some of our intuitions are wrong and-... starting to accept them and starting to let them in and starting to ask questions about, well, what does this mean then about the nature of consciousness?

Lex Fridman 12:24 Let's try to actually get into this, uh, at this question of free will and conscious will. I- I- I have s- my intuitions here are, I mean, I'm a human being.

Annaka Harris 12:34 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 12:34 It's- it's really... I mean, I approach it from two aspects, from, one as a human being and two, from a robotics perspective.

Annaka Harris 12:42 Right, right.

Lex Fridman 12:42 And I wonder how big the gap between the two is.

Annaka Harris 12:46 Mm.

Lex Fridman 12:47 Um, and that's- that- that's a useful from an engineering perspective is another perspective that's useful and helpful to take on this. It's like, are we really so different, you and I?

Annaka Harris 12:57 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 12:57 The robot and- and the human. Um, you'd like to believe so.

Annaka Harris 13:02 Yeah. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 13:02 But you don't exactly see where the difference is.

Annaka Harris 13:05 Research into AI and just the fact that it's entered our consciousness at the level of- of stories and film and- and all of these questions that it's raising, um, is facing us with that. It- it- it's almost like the zombie experim- experiment is coming to life for us, you know? We're- we're more and more looking at human-like systems and wondering, is there an experience in there and how can we figure that out? Um, when you were talking about your experience of looking at- at robots, it reminds me of how I, for many years, have been looking at plants. Um, because the plant behavior, and actually this is the example, maybe we'll just try it out.

Lex Fridman 13:47 Mm-hmm.

Annaka Harris 13:47 It may not work.

Lex Fridman 13:48 Let's go.

Annaka Harris 13:48 This is an example I was thinking of recently because I was reading back on the work of Mark Jaffe, who did this research with pea tendrils. I'm sure he did many other plant studies, but this is the one I was reading about, and I- and I'm hoping this analogy, I'll just set it up.

Lex Fridman 14:04 Yeah.

Annaka Harris 14:04 I'm hoping that this analogy will be something that we can keep coming back to as we move forward because, you know, as we shake up our intuitions and get confused and then our int- we come back to our intuitions and say, "No, that just can't be," I think this analogy might- might be helpful, but...

Lex Fridman 14:17 What kind of plant was he working on?

Annaka Harris 14:19 Uh, pea tendrils. So pea, a pea plant has these tendrils, you can, um, you can picture them, they- they, um, coil.

Lex Fridman 14:25 Mm-hmm.

Annaka Harris 14:26 So I don't- I don't know what year this research was done. I- I'm- I'm guessing in the 80s, but, you know, some...

Lex Fridman 14:34 But pea tendrils have been around long before that.

Annaka Harris 14:37 Yes, of course. (laughs) And then- and the research may have happened long before.

Lex Fridman 14:41 In fact, they might be doing the research on the humans, but that's another story.

Annaka Harris 14:44 (laughs) Yeah, right. Pea tendrils, um, as a system, generally, there are a few more things they can do, but generally, they can behave in two ways. They can grow in a straight line slowly or they can grow in this coil form more quickly. And what happens is when they are growing in a straight manner and they encounter a branch or a pole or something else that it can wrap itself around to gain more stability, when it senses a branch there, that gives it the cue to start growing at a more rapid pace and to start coiling instead of growing straight. So, it has these two behaviors. As a system, it's capable of growing straight and it's capable of coiling. One interesting thing actually, I'll just add this, it's not totally relevant, but one interesting thing is, um, Mark Jaffe's work, so he, um, cut a pea tendril, he was curious to see if it could do this on its own separate from the rest of the plant. So, he cut a pea tendril off the plant, um, if you keep it in a moist warm environment, it will continue to- to behave in these ways, so it will continue to coil. If he, he noticed that if he touched one end of it, if he rubbed one side of it, that gave it enough of a cue that it would start to coil. And then he noticed that it needed light to perform this action. So, in the dark when he rubbed the- the edge of the tendril, it did not coil. Um, in the light, it would, and then he re- recognized this further fact which was that the pea tendril that he rubbed in the dark that was still straight, if he brought it out into the light, and this could be hours later, it would start to coil.

Lex Fridman 16:24 Mm.

Annaka Harris 16:25 It has a primitive form of memory where it's- it's- has the sensation and then it holds onto that information and as soon as there's light, it- it acts on that information.

Lex Fridman 16:36 But also in the kind of distributed intelligence because you can separate it from the main...

Annaka Harris 16:42 Right.

Lex Fridman 16:42 From the main part.

Annaka Harris 16:43 Right.

Lex Fridman 16:43 Like, if you chop off a human arm, it's not gonna...

Annaka Harris 16:46 Right. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 16:47 ... keep growing.

Annaka Harris 16:48 Even if you keep it in a moist warm environment-

Lex Fridman 16:50 In- i- in the light.

Annaka Harris 16:50 ... it's not- it's not gonna reach out for the cup of coffee when you come in with Starbucks.

Lex Fridman 16:54 Maybe- maybe in the correct environment, maybe we just- we just haven't found the environment, but anyway, that's pretty amazing.

Annaka Harris 17:00 So, that's a separate fact, but anyway, so- so if you just use the analogy of a pea tendril and if you imagine which is something I like to do a lot, if you imagine, um, this plant has some kind of conscious experience, of course it doesn't have complex thought, it doesn't have anything like a human experience, but if it were possible for a plant to have some felt experience, you can imagine that when it comes into contact with a branch and starts to coil that that feeling could be one of deciding to do that or that it feels good to do that or kind of wanting. I mean, it's, that's- that's too complex, that's- that's anthropomorphizing, but there's a way in which you could imagine this pea tendril under those circumstances suddenly wants to start coiling.

Lex Fridman 17:46 So, you're saying you tried to meditate what it's like to be a pea tendril, a plant. Like, that's what's required here. It's like, you have to empathize with a plant or with another organism that's not human.

Annaka Harris 17:58 Yeah. And you don't actually need that for this analogy that I'm, the larger analogy that I'm getting at-

Lex Fridman 18:02 Yeah.

Annaka Harris 18:02 ... but I think that's an interesting piece to keep in mind.

Lex Fridman 18:04 Right.

Annaka Harris 18:04 That you could imagine that in nature if there's a conscious experience associated with a pea tendril that at that moment what that feels like is a want to start moving in a different way.

Lex Fridman 18:17 Right. So, you- you want to imagine that without anthropomorphizing. So, without projecting the human experience but rather sort of humbling yourself...... that we're just another plant with more complexity-

Annaka Harris 18:29 Yes, in- in a way.

Lex Fridman 18:30 ... like trying to see where, like-

Annaka Harris 18:31 Exactly. So that, yeah, that's where I'm going with this.

Lex Fridman 18:33 Sure.

Annaka Harris 18:34 So, and, and when you start making that connection, you can see where there are a few points at which there's room for an illusion to come in, for our own feelings of will. So when we move from a P tendril to human decision-making, obviously human decision-making, uh, h- human brains are many, many, many times more complex than whatever is going on in a P tendril. I mean, it, it is... The brain is actually the most complex thing we know of in the universe thus far. So there is the genes that help develop the brain into any particular brain, into what it is. There are all the inputs there. There are countless factors that we could never... I mean, it may as well be an infinite number of factors. And then in that particular moment, whatever the inputs are to a brain, the brain is capable of almost an infinite number of outputs, right? So if you... if I walked in here this morning and you said, um, "Would you like water or tea?" Um, and that's, you know, simple decision for me to-

Lex Fridman 19:36 I think that's a passive-aggressive way of telling me I should have offered you (laughs) some tea.

Annaka Harris 19:40 (laughs) That's funny.

Lex Fridman 19:40 But yes, go on. Uh-

Annaka Harris 19:41 No, I wanted water. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 19:43 Okay. All right.

Annaka Harris 19:44 You... I actually asked for water.

Lex Fridman 19:45 (laughs) Okay. All right, great.

Annaka Harris 19:47 Um, you're gonna...

Lex Fridman 19:47 (laughs)

Annaka Harris 19:47 And you didn't have any free will anyway, so it doesn't matter. I don't, I don't hold you responsible for any of it.

Lex Fridman 19:51 (laughs) Oh, exactly. I was just running an algorithm deterministically.

Annaka Harris 19:55 So-

Lex Fridman 19:55 Anyway.

Annaka Harris 19:55 ... you, you give me this decision, right? To make water or tea.

Lex Fridman 19:59 Yes.

Annaka Harris 19:59 Go back to the P tendril for a second. A P tendril is capable of growing in a straight line slowly or in a coil quickly.

Lex Fridman 20:06 Mm-hmm.

Annaka Harris 20:06 Um, my brain is capable of all kinds of responses to that question, even though you've given me, uh, you know, two options. You could offer me water or tea, and I could just run out of the room screaming-

Lex Fridman 20:18 Yeah.

Annaka Harris 20:18 ... if I wanted to, right?

Lex Fridman 20:19 Happens to me all the time at dates.

Annaka Harris 20:20 (laughs) Say, "Never mind, I don't want to do this."

Lex Fridman 20:22 Yes.

Annaka Harris 20:23 The fact that the brain is capable-

Lex Fridman 20:27 Yeah.

Annaka Harris 20:27 ... that there's so many inputs and then the brain is capable of so many outputs, um, as a system, what it's hard for us to get our minds around is that it may not be capable of any behavior in every moment in time. So as a system, it's capable of doing all kinds of things. And the point I'm making is that if we could see all of the factors leading up to the moment where I chose water or where I ran screaming from the room, um, we could, in fact, see that there's, there was no other behavior I was going to or could have exhibited in that moment, in the same way that when the P tendril hits the branch, it starts coiling.

Lex Fridman 21:13 There's a parallel, which is very interesting in, in robotics-

Annaka Harris 21:17 Hmm.

Lex Fridman 21:17 ... with, with fish and water.

Annaka Harris 21:19 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 21:20 So you, you could see... Th- they've experienced with, like, dead fish, and they keep swimming.

Annaka Harris 21:24 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 21:25 So, the fish is capable of all kinds of complicated movements as a system.

Annaka Harris 21:30 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 21:31 But in any one moment, the river, the full complexity of the river defines the actual movement of the fish.

Annaka Harris 21:40 Right.

Lex Fridman 21:40 And then it's the fish into-

Annaka Harris 21:41 Well, and I, I should also... I mean, this brings up another point, which is that there is a difference between voluntary and involuntary behavior. So, of course, we have reflexes. And it is a different... There's different brain processing in action when I make a decision about water or tea than there is, you know, i- if my behavior is forced from the outside or if I have a brain tumor that's causing me to make certain decisions or feel certain feelings. And so, um, the point is, at bottom, it's all brain processing and behavior, but the reason why certain actions feel willed, there's a good reason why it feels that way. And it's to distinguish our own self-generated behavior based on thinking and, you know, possibly weighing the different results of different things, "I already had caffeine today, I don't want more." You know, there are, there are all these, um, processes, things that we can point to and things that we can't, things I'm affected by at a subconscious level. Um, and that is very different from an unwilled action or a reflex or something like that. And so s- some people, I can imagine, haven't used the P tendril example, but I can imagine they wouldn't like that because the P tendril, um, sounds more to them like a reflex, and that doesn't address the question of a much more complex, um, decision-making process. But I think at bottom, um, that is, that is what it is, and that's really where the illusion of free will and the illusion of self, which I think is... they're kind of two sides of the same coin, come from. So even when we intellectually understand that everything we're feeling, everything we're doing is, is based on our brain processing and brain behavior, if you're a physicalist, you, you've bought into that. Um, even when you intellectually understand that, we, and I cl- include myself in this, we still have this feeling that there's something that stands outside of the brain processing that can intervene, and that's the illusion. I was tweeting with someone recently, which I almost never do, but we're working in the TED documentary that I'm making right now, we're working on the episode on free will.

Lex Fridman 23:57 Mm-hmm.

Annaka Harris 23:58 So I was allowing myself to go back and forth in a way that I don't usually on Twitter. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 24:03 Like arguing or-

Annaka Harris 24:04 About free will. It was, it was a friendly debate. Gonna go into the reasons why I'm not crazy about Twitter, but let's leave that for another time. (laughs) I mean, talk about how hard it is to have this conversation when we have as many hours as, as we like-

Lex Fridman 24:17 Mm-hmm.

Annaka Harris 24:18 ... you know, trying to do it in sound bites over Twitter is-

Lex Fridman 24:20 See, I like how you made the decision now not to talk about Twitter.

Annaka Harris 24:23 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 24:24 That's a-

Annaka Harris 24:25 Well, my brain, my-

Lex Fridman 24:26 ... road less traveled.

Annaka Harris 24:26 ... my brain... That was one of the things I, I said to this person, was, um, 'cause-... s- someone, someone chimed in and said, "You said I. What do you mean by I?" And, and so actually that's another point I could make, which is, um, uh, first my response to that was, "Well, people tend to get creeped out when I say the system that is my brain and body that we call Annaka-"

Lex Fridman 24:48 Yeah.

Annaka Harris 24:48 ... recommends." You know? (laughs)

Lex Fridman 24:50 Why do they get freaked out?

Annaka Harris 24:51 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 24:52 Oh, you mean, like, in your-

Annaka Harris 24:53 Instead of I.

Lex Fridman 24:53 ... personal life? Oh, instead of I.

Annaka Harris 24:54 Instead of, like, never saying I. Yeah. Always-

Lex Fridman 24:57 Uh, you're just being intellectually honest.

Annaka Harris 24:58 You know, I always refer to you as the brain and body we call Lex.

Lex Fridman 25:01 Yes.

Annaka Harris 25:02 Um, yeah. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 25:03 (laughs) Well, I don't know. That's kinda, that's kinda charming in a way.

Annaka Harris 25:07 But, so-

Lex Fridman 25:07 Alleged brain.

Annaka Harris 25:07 So I and you are very useful shorthand, even though a- at some level they're allusions. U- um, they're very useful shorthand for the, the system o- of my brain really and, you know, and my body, the, the whole system that I is useful for that. But the illusion is when we feel like there's something outside of that system that can intervene, that is free, that's somehow free from the physical world. Um, I can have the thought, um, yeah, I really not crazy about having intellectual back and forth on Twitter, and then feel like I decide to not follow that thought, right? And the feeling, that's, that, that's the feeling, um, where the illusion comes in because it really feels as if, sure, my brain had that original thought, and then I came in and made a different decision.

Lex Fridman 25:58 Yeah.

Annaka Harris 25:58 But, of course, the truth is, it was just further brain processing that got me to decide not to go down that path.

Lex Fridman 26:05 How much is that feeling of conscious will is culturally constructed-

Annaka Harris 26:10 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 26:11 ... shorthand... So, like, uh, I and you is a, is a, you could say, a culturally constructed shorthand. How much of that affects how we think? So our parents say I and you, I and you, and then we start to believe in I and you. And is that... Or are we f- is that fundamental to the human brain machine-

Annaka Harris 26:35 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 26:35 ... that we s-

Annaka Harris 26:36 I think, I think it goes very deep. I think it's fundamental, and I think it probably... Some form of feeling like a self goes as deep as cats and dogs. And it's possible, I mean, if consciousness does go down to the level of cells or however fa- far down you wanna take it, worms, or I think any, any system that's navigating, um, itself, that kind of has boundaries and is navigating itself in the world, um, my guess is that it's, it's an intrinsic part of... That's why I imagined that the P-tendril would have this feeling. Um, a- and so, you know, we use the word I... I think you're right, first of all, that the way we talk about things affects our intuitions about them and how we feel about them. And so there are other cultures who are more open to breaking through these illusions than others, for sure, just because of their, um, their belief sense, the way they talk. I mean, I'm sure... I don't, I don't... I'm not a linguist, and I don't even speak a second language, so (laughs) I can't, can't speak to it. But I, you know, if, if there were a language that, um, that framed who we are differently in everyday language, I mean, in our, in our everyday communication, I would think that would have an effect.

Lex Fridman 27:57 Yeah, language does affect things. I- I mean, just knowing, uh, Russian and the history of the Soviet Union in the 20th century, obviously it lived under communism for a long time. So your conception of individualism is different, and that reflects itself-

Annaka Harris 28:13 Absolutely.

Lex Fridman 28:13 ... in the language.

Annaka Harris 28:14 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 28:14 Um, you could probably have the similar kind of thing within the language in terms of how we talk about I and we and so on.

Annaka Harris 28:23 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 28:23 And I, you know, I'm sure there's, like, um, certain countries or maybe even villages with certain dialects that, uh, uh, like, let go of the individualism that's inherent in our-

Annaka Harris 28:34 Yeah, I mean, there mu- there must be a range, but I do think that it's pretty deep.

Lex Fridman 28:38 Yeah.

Annaka Harris 28:38 And I think, um, there's also a difference between the autobiographical me and then this more fundamental me that, that we're talking about or that I'm pointing to as the illusion. So, um, in my book, I talk about if someone, um, wakes up with amnesia, if they have, um, brain injury and suddenly have amnesia and can't remember anything about their lives, can't remember their name, don't recognize people they're related to, um, they would have lost their autobiographical self, but they would still feel like an I. They would still have that basic sense of, "I'm a person." I mean, they'd be speaking that way. "I don't remember my name. I don't know where I live." Um, you still... It's, it goes very deep, this feeling that I am a single entity, um, that is somehow not completely reliant upon the cause and effect of the physical world.

Lex Fridman 29:41 Can I ask you a pothead question?

Annaka Harris 29:42 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 29:43 Um, would you... (laughs) Would you rather lose all your memories-

Annaka Harris 29:50 Hm.

Lex Fridman 29:51 ... or not be able to make new ones? If you had to ch- y- now I'm asking you as a human-

Annaka Harris 29:57 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 29:57 ... in terms of happiness and preference.

Annaka Harris 29:59 Oh. I can't answer that. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 30:06 You like both. You like both features of the organism that you embody?

Annaka Harris 30:11 Well, one is intellectual and one is psychological really. I mean-

Lex Fridman 30:15 Which one?

Annaka Harris 30:15 ... I w- I would have to choose the memories only because, I mean, the memories of the past-

Lex Fridman 30:19 Yeah.

Annaka Harris 30:20 ... um, only because I have children and a family, and it would just be... It wouldn't just be affecting me, it would be affecting them. It'll just be too horrible.

Lex Fridman 30:28 No, but you would r- make new ones, right?

Annaka Harris 30:31 If I lost my memory of the 13, past 13 years of my senior life?

Lex Fridman 30:34 Are you think... Would you... Wa- you, you think you would lose...This is a dark question.

Annaka Harris 30:39 Oh, wait, wasn't that the question? Maybe I misunderstood the question.

Lex Fridman 30:41 No, no, no, no. You understood it perfectly, but-

Annaka Harris 30:43 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 30:44 ... you, you don't... Oh, s- sorry for the dark question.

Annaka Harris 30:47 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 30:47 But the people you love in your life, if you lost all your memory of everything, do you think you would still love them? Like, you show up, you don't know.

Annaka Harris 30:56 I don't know.

Lex Fridman 30:57 It's the roll of the dice.

Annaka Harris 30:57 I mean, it would... Not in the way that I do.

Lex Fridman 31:00 Right. So s- some-

Annaka Harris 31:01 You know?

Lex Fridman 31:01 ... deep aspect of love is the history you have together.

Annaka Harris 31:04 Oh, absolutely. Well, and this gets to an interesting point actually, which I think a lot about, which is memory. Um, and we won't go into this yet, but I'll just plant a flag here that-

Lex Fridman 31:14 I love the song.

Annaka Harris 31:14 ... memory is... (laughs) Yeah. Memory is, um, obviously related to time, and time is something that I'm fascinated with. And, and for this project I'm working on now, I've mostly been speaking to physicists who are interested in consciousness. Um, and it's partly because of this link between memory and time, and, you know, uh, all of these new fascinating, um, theories and thoughts around the different inter- interpretations of quantum mechanics. And looking at, you know, the thing that I've always been looking for is, is really the fundamental nature of reality, and why my questions about consciousness lead me to wonder if consciousness is a more fundamental aspect of the universe than, than we previously thought, and certainly I previously thought. Um, and so memory... But memory is, is tied to so many things. I mean, even, um, basic functions in nature. Actually, so, so the, the P-tendril-

Lex Fridman 32:16 Mm-hmm.

Annaka Harris 32:16 ... as I mentioned, memory comes into play there, and that's so fascinating. Um, and there is no sense of self without memory. Even if you're starting from scratch, as you said, with amnesia, um, if you truly couldn't lay down any new memories, I think you would... Then that sense of self would begin to disintegrate, because the sense of self is one of a concrete entity through time. And if each moment, if you really were stuck in the present moment eternally, you'd be, basically be meditating. (laughs) And in meditation, this is a very common experience, is losing that sense of self, that sense of free will, that those illusions, um, more easily drop away in meditation. And I would say for most people who meditate long enough, they, they do drop away, and there's actually an explanation at the level of the brain as well. The default mode network is circuitry in the brain that neuroscientists don't completely understand, but know is, is largely, largely responsible for this feeling of being a self. Um, and when that circuit gets quieted down, which it does in meditation, and also does, um, with the use of, of psychedelic drugs, um, a- and there are other ways to quiet down the, the default mode network. Um, people have this experience of losing this, this illusion of being a self. They no longer feel that they're a self in the way that they usually do.

Lex Fridman 33:49 So there's, uh, the autobiographical self is connected to the, the sense of self through-

Annaka Harris 33:56 Oh, absolutely.

Lex Fridman 33:57 ... th- through the memory.

Annaka Harris 33:58 Yeah, sure.

Lex Fridman 33:58 And then you're thinking that-

Annaka Harris 34:00 But even if-

Lex Fridman 34:00 ... the solution to that lies in physics, not just neuroscience. Like, ultimately, consciousness and the experience that conscious will is, uh, a question of physics.

Annaka Harris 34:13 I may have said something misleading, because I was connecting too many dots, um-

Lex Fridman 34:18 I-

Annaka Harris 34:18 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 34:19 Half the things I say are misleading. Let us mislead each other.

Annaka Harris 34:24 I just got, I got excited when memory came up, because I love talking about time.

Lex Fridman 34:29 So you mentioned a project that you're working on a couple times. What, what's that about? Uh, I think you said Ted is involved. You're interviewing a bunch of people. What's going on?

Annaka Harris 34:36 Yeah. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 34:36 What's the topic?

Annaka Harris 34:38 Um, so I'm working on an audio documentary about consciousness, um, and it picks up where my book left off. Um, so all of the questions that were still lingering for me, um, and research that I still wanted to do, uh, I just started conducting. So I've done about 30 interviews so far, um, and I... It's not totally clear what the end result will be. I'm currently collaborating with Ted, and I'm having a lot of fun creating a, a pilot with them. Um, and so we'll s- we'll see where it goes, but the idea is that it's a narrated, um, documentary.

Lex Fridman 35:11 And it's like a series?

Annaka Harris 35:12 A series. It'll be-

Lex Fridman 35:13 Yeah, so it-

Annaka Harris 35:13 ... a 10-part series.

Lex Fridman 35:14 It's an, an unclear... Oh, you already know the number of parts?

Annaka Harris 35:17 Uh, sorry. In my mind, it's a 10-part series. It may end up being eight-

Lex Fridman 35:20 Because you like the number 10?

Annaka Harris 35:21 ... or 11 or 12. I don't know why.

Lex Fridman 35:22 Listen-

Annaka Harris 35:22 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 35:22 ... I am very comforted by the numbers zero-

Annaka Harris 35:24 From one to ten.

Lex Fridman 35:24 ... and one as well.

Annaka Harris 35:25 About 10.

Lex Fridman 35:26 I like the confidence of 10. Um-

Annaka Harris 35:28 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 35:29 ... (laughs) As... So... And you're not sure what the title, like... Well, not the title, but the topic. Will there be consciousness, or something bigger, or something smaller, something different?

Annaka Harris 35:37 Yeah, I mean, it's my... So at the end of my book, I, I kind of get to the place where I've convinced myself, at least, that this question about whether consciousness is fundamental is a legitimate one. And then I just start spending a lot of time thinking about what that would mean, if it's even possible to study scientifically. Um, so I mostly talk to physicists actually, um, because I really think ultimately this is a question for, for physics, um, if consciousness is fundamental. I think it needs to be strongly informed by neuroscience, but, um, it, it's... Yeah. If it's part of the f- fabric of reality, it is a question for a physicist. So I speak to different physicists about different interpretations of quantum mechanics, so getting at, at the fundamentals, so-

Lex Fridman 36:22 So, Sean Carroll

Narrator 36:22 Yeah.

Annaka Harris 36:22 ... string theory and many worlds. I spoke to Sean Carroll, had a great conversation with Sean Carroll. He's so generous, because he clearly doesn't agree with me about (laughs) many things. Um, but he has a curious mind, and he's willing to have these conversations. And I was really interested in understanding many worlds better, and if consciousness is fundamental, what the implications are. Um, so I... That was where I started actually was with many worlds, and then...... uh, we had conversations about string theory and, um, the holographic principle. I spoke to Lee Smolin and, um, Brian Greene and Janna Levin and, uh, Carlo Rovelli actually. Have you had Carlo on?

Lex Fridman 37:01 No. No.

Annaka Harris 37:02 Okay. He's great also and fun to talk to because he's just en-

Lex Fridman 37:06 Great. Great accent.

Annaka Harris 37:06 ... endlessly curious. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 37:07 And you're doing audio?

Annaka Harris 37:09 It's all audio. Yeah. But it's in the format of a documentary, so I'm narrating it and kind of telling the story of what questions came up for me, what I was interested in exploring, and then, you know, why I talked to each person I, I talked to.

Lex Fridman 37:21 Uh, by the way, I highly recommend Sean Carroll's Mindscape podcast, I think it's called.

Annaka Harris 37:26 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 37:27 Um, it's amazing. One of my favorite things... Well, when he interviews physicists, it's great. But any topic, his A+ but one of my favorite things is how frustrated he gets with panpsychism.

Annaka Harris 37:37 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 37:38 (laughs) But he's still like... It's like a fly-

Annaka Harris 37:40 I know. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 37:40 ... towards the light.

Annaka Harris 37:41 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 37:42 For some reason, he can't, like make sense of it-

Annaka Harris 37:44 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 37:44 ... but he still struggles with it. And I think that's a-

Annaka Harris 37:47 He's ... s- s- tive.

Lex Fridman 37:47 ... the sign of a good scientist, really.

Annaka Harris 37:50 Absolutely.

Lex Fridman 37:50 Struggling, uh, struggling-

Annaka Harris 37:52 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 37:52 ... with these ideas.

Annaka Harris 37:53 I totally agree. And, yes, that's what I appreciate i- in him and, and many scientists like that.

Lex Fridman 37:59 Who has the craziest, most radical ideas who you talk with currently? So, you can go either direction. You can go like panpsychism, consciousness permeates everything.

Annaka Harris 38:10 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 38:11 Like, I don't know how far you can go down that direction. Or you could, uh, say that, you know, uh, what's the... What would be the other direction? That there's a-

Annaka Harris 38:20 There isn't really. The problem is they're all crazy. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 38:22 They're all crazy.

Annaka Harris 38:23 (laughs) Each one is crazier than the next.

Lex Fridman 38:24 Wait. All of us are crazy.

Annaka Harris 38:25 And my own... I mean, my own thoughts now, I, I have to be, um, very careful about the words I choose, because, I mean, it's, it's just like talking about, um, the different interpretations of quantum mechanics. It's once, once you get deep enough, um, it's so counterintuitive and it's so beyond anything we understand that they all sound crazy. Many worlds sounds crazy. String theory. I mean, these are things we just cannot get our minds around, really. And so that's kind of... That's the realm I love to live in and love to explore in, and the realm that, to my surprise, my interest in consciousness has taken me back to.

Lex Fridman 39:08 Can I ask you a question on that?

Annaka Harris 39:10 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 39:10 Uh, just a side tangent. How do you prevent... When you're imagining yourself to be a pea tendril-

Annaka Harris 39:16 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 39:16 ... how do you prevent from going crazy? I mean, this is kinda-

Annaka Harris 39:19 Um.

Lex Fridman 39:19 ... the Nietzsche question of like-

Annaka Harris 39:21 Mm.

Lex Fridman 39:21 ... uh, you have to be very careful thinking outside the norms of society-

Annaka Harris 39:26 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 39:27 ... because you might fall off. Like mentally, you're so connected as a human to the, the collective intelligence-

Annaka Harris 39:33 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 39:34 ... that in order to question intuitions, you have to step aside, step outside of it for a brief moment.

Annaka Harris 39:39 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 39:39 How, how do you prevent yourself from going crazy?

Annaka Harris 39:42 I think I used to think that was a concern. Um-

Lex Fridman 39:48 And then you became crazy. (laughs)

Annaka Harris 39:48 I've learned so much about the brain. No.

Lex Fridman 39:50 Oh, interesting.

Annaka Harris 39:50 And I've, and I've had, and I've had experiences of, of deep depression and, and I struggled with anxiety my whole life. I think in order to be a good scientist and in order to be a truthfully... You know, uh, let's say, um, to allow yourself to be curious and honest in your curiosity, I think it's inevitable that lots of ideas and theories and hypotheses will just sound crazy. And that is always how we advance science. And maybe, you know, nine out of ten ideas are crazy, and you... Crazy meaning they're, they're actually not correct. Um, but all of... I mean, it's, it's... As I said, all of the big scientific breakthroughs, all of the truths we've uncovered that are the, um, earth-shattering truths that we uncover, they really do sound crazy at first. So, I don't think one necessarily leads to a type of mental illness. I see mental illness in, in a very different category. And I think some people are more susceptible to being destabilized by this type of thinking, and that might be a legitimate concern for some people, that kind of being grounded in everyday life is important. For my psychological health, the more time I spend thinking about the bigger picture and outside of everyday life, the more happy I u- I am, the more expansive I feel. Um, I mean, it feels, it feels nourishing to me. It feels like it makes me more sane, not less, so-

Lex Fridman 41:34 Well, that's the happiness. But in terms of your-

Annaka Harris 41:36 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 41:36 ... ability to see the truth-

Annaka Harris 41:38 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 41:39 ... that you can be happy-

Annaka Harris 41:40 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 41:40 ... and, uh, completely-

Annaka Harris 41:42 I guess I don't see mental illness necessarily being linked to truth or not truth actually.

Lex Fridman 41:48 So, so w- we were talking about minimizing mental illness-

Annaka Harris 41:50 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 41:51 ... but also truth is a different dimension. So, you have to-

Annaka Harris 41:55 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 41:55 You can go crazy in both directions. You can-

Annaka Harris 41:57 Yes.

Lex Fridman 41:57 ... uh, like, you know, you could be extremely happy, and they are, uh, flat Earthers-

Annaka Harris 42:04 (laughs) Right.

Lex Fridman 42:04 ... you know, who can believe the Earth is flat-

Annaka Harris 42:06 Right.

Lex Fridman 42:07 ... because they're... Well, actually, I mean, there's... I'm sure there's good books on this. But it's somehow really comforting, it's fun and comforting to believe you figured out the thing that everybody else hasn't figured out.

Annaka Harris 42:19 I think that's what conspiracy theories always provide people.

Lex Fridman 42:23 Why is it so fun?

Annaka Harris 42:24 That's the thing.

Lex Fridman 42:24 It's so fun. It's-

Annaka Harris 42:25 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 42:26 Except when it's dangerous, uh, you know?

Annaka Harris 42:29 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 42:29 But even then, it's probably fun. But then you shouldn't do it because it's unethical.

Annaka Harris 42:33 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 42:34 Uh, (laughs) anyway, so-

Annaka Harris 42:35 It's not true. I'm not a fan of following...

Lex Fridman 42:38 Well, then, that makes one of us.

Annaka Harris 42:40 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 42:41 No. I don't know. Uh, there's probably a fascinating story to what, why conspiracy theories are so, um, so compelling to us human beings that's deeper than just-... fun internet stuff that-

Annaka Harris 42:53 Yeah. I'm very interested in why they're so compelling to some people and not others. I feel like there must be some difference that, at some point, we'll be able to discover. Um...

Lex Fridman 43:03 Yeah. Yeah, and-

Annaka Harris 43:05 Because some people are just not susceptible to them, and some people are-

Lex Fridman 43:09 And I wonder what's the correlation?

Annaka Harris 43:10 ... really drawn to them.

Lex Fridman 43:11 'Cause I feel like the kind of thinking that allows for you to be open to conspiracy theories is also the kind of thinking that leads to brilliant breakthroughs in science.

Annaka Harris 43:23 Hmm.

Lex Fridman 43:24 Sort of willingness to go to crazy land, something that seems like crazy land.

Annaka Harris 43:28 That's interesting. I see it the opposite way.

Lex Fridman 43:30 Really?

Annaka Harris 43:31 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 43:33 So you don't see the connection between thinking the Earth is flat and, um, coming up with special relativity?

Annaka Harris 43:40 Thinking the Earth is flat is following your intuitions and not being open to counterintuitive ideas.

Lex Fridman 43:49 Sure.

Annaka Harris 43:49 It's a, it's a closed, it's a very closed way of viewing things, saying, "It's actually, it's not the way you feel, there's a d- there's, there's information that tells us this is, there's something else going on." And that type of person will say, "No, it's exact, it's the way it feels to me."

Lex Fridman 44:04 No, no, no. But wait a minute, there's a mainstream narrative of-

Annaka Harris 44:08 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 44:08 ... science that says the Earth is round.

Annaka Harris 44:11 Right.

Lex Fridman 44:12 Like, and I think a flat Earther in the be- see, I admire the very first step of a flat Earth.

Annaka Harris 44:19 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 44:19 I don't, I don't admire the, the full journey, but the first step is-

Annaka Harris 44:23 I think if you're open to evidence, then the evidence clearly takes you in one direction.

Lex Fridman 44:28 Right. But the, you have to ask the question, you have to ask... To me, this is like first principles thinking.

Annaka Harris 44:35 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 44:35 The Earth looks flat, so I'm gonna look around here, and I, I, I, like... How crazy is it-

Annaka Harris 44:45 Hmm.

Lex Fridman 44:45 ... that the Earth is round and there's a thing called gravity that operates between objects that's related to the mass of the object?

Annaka Harris 44:54 Right.

Lex Fridman 44:54 That's crazy.

Annaka Harris 44:55 Yes. The truth is often crazier than what, what the situation feels to be.

Lex Fridman 45:00 So a good, a good step is to question what everyone is saying and then-

Annaka Harris 45:03 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 45:03 ... they, then you learn a little bit-

Annaka Harris 45:04 I know what you mean, to be skeptical about the, uh, it's the authority factor.

Lex Fridman 45:07 Yeah. But I think that's the, and the authority in not in some kind of weird, uh, current where everyone questions institutions, but more like the authority of the senior scientists. The, the junior scientists coming up, "Wait, wait a minute, why have we been doing things this way?" And that, that first step, I feel like that rebelliousness or that open-mindedness or maybe, like, resistance to... Or maybe curiosity that's, uh, that is not affected by whatever the mainstream science says of today.

Annaka Harris 45:41 Cas, I feel like mainstream science has never been mainstream, and it's always a struggle for science to become mainstream. It's part of the reason why I started doing the work I did actually, helping scientists make their work more accessible, is that it's usually not.

Lex Fridman 45:57 Yeah.

Annaka Harris 45:57 It's usually not.

Lex Fridman 45:58 Here's advice for scientists, be more interesting-

Annaka Harris 46:01 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 46:02 ... and much more important, be less arrogant. So arrogance, uh, there's a, there's, uh, uh, there's very little money in science, and so everyone is fighting for that money, and they become more and more arrogant and siloed. I don't know why. They don't need to.

Annaka Harris 46:15 I will say that the scientists I know, and some of them are very well-known, very famous scientists, are the least arrogant people I've ever met. That scientists in general, their personalities are more open, more humble, more likely to say they, say they just don't know.

Lex Fridman 46:34 Mm-hmm.

Annaka Harris 46:34 Because I've been involved a lot in the science writing and how the media portrays. So one of scientists', the scientific community's greatest frustration is how their work gets presented in the media. And a lot of the time, that is the fru- and I would say that's the main frustration, is there's some new breakthrough, there's something, and the scientists will be saying, "We're not sure. We, you know, it's gonna take five year." And the me- you know, no one likes to write a story about something that may or may not be true, they think it's true, they're gonna take five years testing it. And so the headline will be, "Neuroscientists discovered..." You know, they want the sensational. And so I think the public often gets the false impression-

Lex Fridman 47:21 Yes.

Annaka Harris 47:21 ... that the scientists are arrogant, and I really don't find that to be the case. And I've worked with all kinds of people, artists and... My life path has, has taken a (laughs) strange-

Lex Fridman 47:36 You've met some incredible people.

Annaka Harris 47:38 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 47:38 You work with some incredible people. (laughs) So let's (laughs) the, the, the cr-

Annaka Harris 47:42 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 47:42 ... the crazy topic of, of freewill, I mean, I just, we have to link on this-

Annaka Harris 47:46 Okay.

Lex Fridman 47:46 ... 'cause I, I can't-

Annaka Harris 47:47 Okay.

Lex Fridman 47:48 ... uh, (laughs) so the plan... All right. Can you, can you try to steel man the case that there's something really special about humans?

Annaka Harris 47:55 Hmm.

Lex Fridman 47:56 That there is a fundamental difference between us and the petondril. You know, humans are clearly very special in the evolution of organisms on Earth.

Annaka Harris 48:07 Absolutely. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 48:08 Could that have been the magical leap? Could consciousness-

Annaka Harris 48:13 Hmm.

Lex Fridman 48:14 ... been like the invention of the u- the eukaryotic cell or something like this?

Annaka Harris 48:18 Well, then, I mean, so I have to get clear on what you're asking. So, so are, are you s- are you coming from a place of wondering if we are the only conscious mammals?

Lex Fridman 48:29 Yes.

Annaka Harris 48:30 Do you really think that's a question?

Lex Fridman 48:33 Can you make a case for it?

Annaka Harris 48:34 (laughs) Do you really think that's a question? Take one step back. We look out at the universe, um, ev- uh, at this point in, in our scientific understanding, we know that essentially we're all made of the same ingredients, right? They're, they're atoms in the universe doing their thing. They find themselves in different configurations based on the laws of physics. Um-And then, the question is, if we look out at all of the configurations of atoms in the universe and ask, "Which of these entail conscious experiences? Which of these have a felt experience of being the matter they are?" And there are really only two, broadly speaking, there are really only two, um, assumptions to make here. And the first one is the one that s- science has, has taken, and that I have for most of my career as well, and that, in many ways, makes the most sense. Which is, electrons aren't conscious, tables aren't con- there's no felt experience there, but at a certain point in complex processing, um, that processing entails an experience of being that processing. Now, that- that's just a fascinating fact all on its own, and I love to spend s- time thinking about that. But the, so the question is, does consciousness arise at some point? Are some of these collections of atoms conscious? Um, or, are all of them? Because we know the answer isn't none. You know, I know that, uh, I'm at least having a conscious experience. I know that conscious experiences exist in the universe. Um, and so the answer isn't none. So, so the answer has to be all or some. And this is a, a starting assumption that y- you're really kind of forced to, to make, and that it's all or some.

Lex Fridman 50:23 All, or some, or one?

Annaka Harris 50:24 I would say one is some, also. We either need an explanation for why there's non-conscious matter in the universe, and then something happens for consciousness-

Lex Fridman 50:32 Yes.

Annaka Harris 50:32 ... to come into being, or it's part of the fundamental nature of reality.

Lex Fridman 50:37 It's also, if consciousness is a fundamental property of reality, it could also choose to not reveal itself until a certain complexity of organism. Y-

Annaka Harris 50:49 I'm not sure what that means. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 50:51 I- I'm not sure what that means, either.

Annaka Harris 50:52 Okay. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 50:53 Like, like the flame of consciousness does not start burning un- until, um, a certain complexity of organisms is able to reveal it.

Annaka Harris 51:02 Ah, so I don't think we can look at consciousness that way. I don't think ... Um, I mean, many people like to try to make that argument, that it's a spectrum, why do we have to say all or nothing, maybe.

Lex Fridman 51:11 Yeah.

Annaka Harris 51:12 And I agree that I actually think it is a, a spectrum. Um, but it's a spectrum of content, not of consciousness itself.

Lex Fridman 51:19 Right.

Annaka Harris 51:19 So, um, you know, if a worm has some level of conscious experience, it is extremely minimal, something we could never imagine being, having the complex experience you and I have. Um, maybe some felt sensation of pressure or heat, or something super basic, right? So there's, there's this range. Or even if you just think of an infant, you know, like the first, the moment an infant becomes conscious, what that, there's a very, very minimal experience of inputs of sound and light and, and whatever it is. Um, and so there's a spectrum of content, there's a spectrum of how much, um, a, a system is consciously experiencing. But there's a moment at which you get on the spectrum, and that's ... And I truly believe that that piece of it is binary. So, if there's no conscious experience, there is no consciousness. You can't say, "Consciousness is there, it just hasn't lit its flame yet."

Lex Fridman 52:13 Hmm.

Annaka Harris 52:13 If consciousness is there, there's an experience there, by definition. It has to arise at some point-

Lex Fridman 52:17 Yes.

Annaka Harris 52:17 ... or it has to always be there.

Lex Fridman 52:19 Is it possible to make the case that that ar- it arising happens f- first, for the first time ever with homo sapiens?

Annaka Harris 52:30 I think that is extremely unlikely. What I think is more possible, based on what we understand about the brain, is that it arises in brains or nervous systems. Um, and so then, we're talking about flies and bees and all kinds of things that kind of fall out of our, our intuitions for whether they could be conscious or not. But I think, especially once you talk about more complex brains with many, many more neurons, when you're talking about cats and dogs and dolphins, um, it's very hard to see how there would be a difference between humans and other mammals in terms of consciousness.

Lex Fridman 53:21 Well, is there a difference in terms of intelligence-

Annaka Harris 53:24 So, oh-

Lex Fridman 53:24 ... between m- humans and other mammals?

Annaka Harris 53:26 Of course. Sure.

Lex Fridman 53:26 You know, like a fundamental leap in intelligence?

Annaka Harris 53:29 It's hard to say definitively. I, I mean, it depends on, you know, how you define intelligence and, and all kinds of things. But obviously, humans are unique and capable of all kinds of things that no other mammals are capable of. And there are important differences, and I don't think you need any magical intervention of something outside of the physical world to explain it.

Lex Fridman 53:53 Mm-hmm.

Annaka Harris 53:53 And the way I think about consciousness, I actually think it's part of the reason we're mistaken about consciousness, is because we are special in the ways that we're special. And because we're complex creatures, we have these complex brains.

Annaka Harris 54:10 So, I think we should probably get into some of the details of why I think, um, we're confused about what consciousness is.

Lex Fridman 54:15 Yes.

Annaka Harris 54:16 But just to, to finish this point, I think that we don't actually have any evidence that consciousness is complex, that it comes out of complex processing, that it's required for complex processing. And I think we've made this anthropomorphic mistake because we are conscious, and it's very hard to f- to get evidence. Um, it's one of the things that makes consciousness unique and mysterious, and why I'm fascinated with it, is it's the one thing in nature that we can't get conclusive evidence of from the outside. We can by analogy. You know, you're behaving, m- basically the same way I behave, more or less. Um, you talk about your conscious experiences, and therefore, I just extrapolate from that, that you're having a felt experience in the way I am, and, and we can do that throughout nature.Well, there's no physical evidence. There's nothing we can observe from the outside that will g- give us conclusive proof that consciousness is there. And so, I think we've made this leap to... Because we're conscious and because we're unique and special and, um, complex and intelligent in the way that we are, and because we don't have an intuition that anything else is conscious, or we have no feedback about it, we've made this assumption that consciousness... That those things aren't conscious, and felt experience does not exist out there in, in other atoms, and, and forms of life even, but especially not inanimate objects. Um, and therefore, consciousness is somehow tied to these other things that make us unique, that consciousness arises when there is this complex processing, when there is... And there's... We can talk about the evolution argument too, which I think is super interesting to get into, and I'm hoping to talk to Richard Dawkins, um, about this for my series.

Lex Fridman 56:16 What do you think about consciousness?

Annaka Harris 56:18 He's not interested (laughs) . He's not interested, and actually, the conversation I would have with him would be very brief, because he's, he's just not that interested in this topic.

Lex Fridman 56:26 Oh.

Annaka Harris 56:26 But let's go back to the Richard Dawkins piece 'cause there's... I feel like there's a lot to talk about here in terms of our intuitions about consciousness-

Lex Fridman 56:33 Mm-hmm.

Annaka Harris 56:33 ... what it's doing, why in my book and, you know, everywhere I talk about consciousness, I bring it back to these two questions that I think are at the heart of our intuitions about consciousness. And so, your questions about whether human beings are unique and special, and all of that, um, I think are interesting questions and, and something we could talk about. I see them as separate questions from the consciousness question.

Lex Fridman 56:55 So, you see consciousness as giving a felt experience to our uniqueness, as opposed to the uniqueness giving birth to consciousness?

Annaka Harris 57:03 Yes, and that potentially, there is felt experience, even though it sounds crazy even to me, that there is felt experience in all matter. And at this point in my thinking and after a few conversations with some physicists, I think, if consciousness is fundamental, the only thing that actually makes sense is that it is part of the most fundamental, um, that spacetime and everything else emerges out of, that-

Lex Fridman 57:30 Out of consciousness.

Annaka Harris 57:30 ... felt experience is, is, is just part of the fabric of reality.

Lex Fridman 57:35 So, is it possible to intuit this? Can we start by thinking about dogs and cats, go to plants-

Annaka Harris 57:41 Hmm.

Lex Fridman 57:41 ... and then going all the way to matter? Or is this going to be like modern physics, where it's just going to be impossible to even, uh, in, in the, the... through our reason alone?

Annaka Harris 57:50 Hmm.

Lex Fridman 57:50 Like, we're gonna have to have s- tools of some kind.

Annaka Harris 57:52 I think, I think it'll be a little bit of both. I mean, I think the science has a very long way to go. And the truth is, I don't even think we can get to the science yet, because we have to do this work. And this is why I'm so passionate about this work. Um, and it's really, it's really taking hold. I mean, there are scientists, neuroscientists and physicists interested in consciousness, and kind of having gotten over the initial obstacle of wrestling with these intuitions, so that it's now being talked about in a serious way, which was the first huge hurdle. But I think a lot more of that has to happen, a lot more of the intuition breaking from the science we already have. I mean, I think we almost need to catch our intuitions up to what we, we already know, um, and then continue to break through these intuitions systematically, so that we can really think more clearly about consciousness. Um, there are a couple of, um, scientists now working on theories of consciousness which do go... They don't quite go to the fundamental level, but they go extremely deep, um, so that something like an electron might be conscious under their theory. This is, um, Integrated Information Theory, IIT, with Christof Koch and Giulio Tononi. Um, I've spoken to, to both of them. I spoke to, um, Christof Koch, uh, once or twice for, for this project I'm working on now. Um, what they're working on is incredibly interesting to me, and I think very important work. Um, however, I think they are also really led by some false intuitions about self and free will, and I think-

Lex Fridman 59:40 Ooh. Like what?

Annaka Harris 59:40 ... that will be a limit to their work. So, we can get into that, but, um-

Lex Fridman 59:44 Let's go. Let's-

Annaka Harris 59:45 We will, we will. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 59:46 Christof Koch-

Annaka Harris 59:46 S- let me just complete my thought.

Lex Fridman 59:47 ... is awesome. Oh, yes, uh-

Annaka Harris 59:48 Which is that-

Lex Fridman 59:49 (laughs)

Annaka Harris 59:51 ... what they're working on, I think, is the most important next step forward, which is just even being open to the fact that consciousness goes as deep as particles.

Lex Fridman 1:00:00 And being rigorous with it.

Annaka Harris 1:00:01 But even their theory isn't going as deep as I think we need to go. Um, and it's hard to say how we could actually study this scientifically, but that's part of the reason why I'm such a supporter of IIT and why I'm so interested in what they're doing, even though I think they're wrong. (laughs) Um, is because they're, they're opening this path, and I think they're getting more people interested. And I think, um, yeah, it'll be, it'll be... It's hard for me to imagine what the science will actually look like, but-

Lex Fridman 1:00:30 Okay, so your intuition-

Annaka Harris 1:00:31 I'm optimistic, yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:00:32 ... or at least the direction which you're pushing is that consciousness is the only fundamental thing in the universe, that everything else, like time, all those kinds of things emerge from that.

Annaka Harris 1:00:46 I will say that what I believe... At this point, I, I've been saying 50/50 for a long time. I would say now it's like 51/49, um, in terms of consciousness being emergent versus fundamental. So, I, I am not convinced of this at all. I'm not convinced that consciousness is fundamental. What I think is, there are very good reasons to think it could be, and essentially all of science up to this point has...... been led by the other assumption, by the first assumption, that consciousness arises at some point, namely in brains, and that's where all the science has gone. And I think that's wonderful, and I think it should keep on going. And I actually think that was a more important place to start. But I think there's a possibility that the correct assumption is that it's fundamental. And so that's the science I support. That's the thing I spend a lot of my time thinking about and talking to scientists and philosophers about. And so I- I shouldn't give the idea that I actually have crossed over into believing this is the case, but it is, it's the assumption I follow in my work at this point.

Lex Fridman 1:01:56 It's a possibility, an understudied possibility, so it deserves serious rigorous attention.

Annaka Harris 1:02:02 And there are good reasons to start with that assumption versus the other that I think we're just now starting to realize.

Lex Fridman 1:02:10 So just to clarify, when we're talking about consciousness, we're talking about the hard problem of consciousness, that it feels like something to... You know, there's a subjective experience.

Annaka Harris 1:02:20 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:02:22 Do we... You know, if consciousness permeates all matter, it's fundamental, is that going to be somehow... Is our current intuition about consciousness, like, r- a- the very tiny subset of what consciousness actually is? So, like, we have our intuitions about personal experiences, like what it feels like, what it tastes like to eat a cookie or something like that.

Annaka Harris 1:02:47 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:02:48 Uh, but that seems like a very specific implementation of consciousness in an organism.

Annaka Harris 1:02:57 Sure.

Lex Fridman 1:02:57 So how can we even reason about something that's-

Annaka Harris 1:03:00 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:03:00 ... if consciousness is fundamental.

Annaka Harris 1:03:02 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:03:02 How can we reason about that? Like, what- what-

Annaka Harris 1:03:05 I'm not sure I'm understanding the connection between those two things, but...

Lex Fridman 1:03:09 When you think about what it's like to be a plant, to experience a thing, okay, we can kind of get that. We can kind of understand that.

Annaka Harris 1:03:15 There are a lot of places we could go with this. One is there's actually work being done by people like David Eagleman. He's a neuroscientist. I don't know if you know him.

Lex Fridman 1:03:22 Yes, yes.

Annaka Harris 1:03:22 You should talk to him for your podcast if you haven't. He's wonderful. Great science communicator. He's someone I interviewed for my, my current project, too. Um, so he, he's done... This actually... Okay, there are many places we can go. One is he does work with sensory addition, sensory substitution, and this is going in some very interes- interesting directions and, and maybe partly answers your question, which is giving humans qualia sensory experiences that we're not wired for, that human beings have never had before. You let me know what you're most interested in hearing about, but we could talk about things like the brain port. Um, there was actually a study done, I- I just talked to one of the participants in the study, where they were seeing if they could give human beings an experience of magnetic north. So other animals have this, um, this sense that, that we don't have, where they can feel intuitively the way that our eyes work to give us an intuitive sense of our environment. We don't have to, um, translate the information coming in through our eyes. We just have a map of the external world and we can navigate it. Um, so many animals use a sense of magnetic north to, to get around, and it's an intuitive sense. So I spoke to someone who was in this, part of this experiment, um, and it was fascinating to hear him acquire a sense not only that he had never had, but that no human being had ever had. So when I asked him to describe the experience, um, it was challenging for him, and understandably so, because it would be like you describing sight to someone who's never seen. Um, but this is clearly possible, and scientists like David Eagleman and others are working, um, on these. And so I do think it's possible that this line, that this, these scientific advancements may actually start to dovetail with, um, the consciousness research in terms of being able to experience things we've never experienced before. But I do think that at some level, yes, we're limited as human beings. Um, we may be able to find some proof or enough proof to at least assume that consciousness is fundamental or, you know, who knows, one day actually believe that that's the correct scientific view of things and not really be able to get our minds around that or to understand what it means and, and certainly not to know what it feels like. I mean, we can't, we don't even know what it feels like to be other creatures.

Lex Fridman 1:06:03 Maybe we'll be-

Annaka Harris 1:06:04 I don't know what it's like to be you. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:06:07 (laughs) Um, yeah. I mean, th- I mean, that's, I guess that's what empathy is about, that's why I try to exercise-

Annaka Harris 1:06:14 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:06:14 ... is try to imagine what it's like to be-

Annaka Harris 1:06:16 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:06:16 ... other people. And then you, you're doing that even farther-

Annaka Harris 1:06:19 Pea tendrils. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:06:21 ... with pea tendrils. But perhaps, perhaps we can do that thing more rigorously by connecting different sensory mechanisms to the brain to do that for all kinds of organisms on Earth, but they're similar to us in scale and the time at which they function, the time scale and the spatial scale.

Annaka Harris 1:06:38 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:06:39 Perhaps it's much more difficult to do for electrons and so on.

Annaka Harris 1:06:42 Some of the intuitions I talked about, I mean, I just kind of, uh, I'm taking them for granted that you and everyone knows what I'm talking about. But in, in terms of the science, in terms of the studies, um, understanding things like binding processes, understanding just a little bit about how the brain works and as far as we understand, and then there's just a ton of evidence now to support that our conscious experience is at the tail end of a lot of...... um, brain processing. Um, and so-

Lex Fridman 1:07:14 So it just tells a story?

Annaka Harris 1:07:15 Yeah. So s- so just a little bit... I mean, I give... In the example in my book, I, I talk about tennis and the binding of the sights and sounds, and felt experience of hitting a tennis ball, which in the world are happening at different times. The, the rates, um, it takes the sound waves and the light waves and the f- the felt sensation to travel to my brain are different that... There are these binding processes that happen prior to the conscious experience that were essentially delivered to us by, by the brain. Um, and so we can get, we can get back in, into this. I can answer your, your bigger question first. But I, I feel like for, for a lot of people, to understand some of the science that already is shattering some of our intuitions about the role consciousness plays I think is helpful in terms of being able to be open to thinking about these other ideas.

Lex Fridman 1:08:14 Let's go there. Where the heck does consciousness happen in what we understand about the brain, timing-wise? Uh, I mean, this connects to conscious will too, our experience of free will.

Annaka Harris 1:08:25 Yeah. There is this period of time, and it's... Depending on the situation and the behavior, um, it, it can be anywhere from... It, it's essentially half a second. There's 200 milliseconds. I actually don't know. I was gonna compare it to the timing of syncing film and sound. I don't know if you know this data.

Lex Fridman 1:08:44 Yeah. Unfortunately, I know this very well.

Annaka Harris 1:08:46 You do?

Lex Fridman 1:08:47 The, the, the film and sound?

Annaka Harris 1:08:48 Yeah. Like-

Lex Fridman 1:08:49 Yes. What?

Annaka Harris 1:08:50 ... how, what, how the ti- how the timing has to work so that we conscious... So that our experiences of it happening at the same time.

Lex Fridman 1:08:56 Let me just, let me just-

Annaka Harris 1:08:57 So it's-

Lex Fridman 1:08:58 ... sit, sit in the-

Annaka Harris 1:08:58 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:08:58 ... in the silence of it. There's been so much pain on this one point.

Annaka Harris 1:09:03 (laughs) Sorry. I had-

Lex Fridman 1:09:04 So much suffering.

Annaka Harris 1:09:04 ... I had no idea I was... (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:09:06 So, I mean, I... Th- th- yeah. I, I did a lot of algorithms and automatic synchronization of audio and video-

Annaka Harris 1:09:13 Right. Right.

Lex Fridman 1:09:13 ... and all these kinds of things, and so I know this well. Uh, there's a lot of science and there's a lot of differences, but it's a- b- it's about... And people claim it's about 100 milliseconds, you can't tell the difference, but it's m- much more like 30 to 50 milliseconds.

Annaka Harris 1:09:27 Okay. Okay.

Lex Fridman 1:09:27 And it, it dr- it... You can go nuts-

Annaka Harris 1:09:30 Yes.

Lex Fridman 1:09:30 ... trying to see if something is in sync or not.

Annaka Harris 1:09:32 Yes.

Lex Fridman 1:09:33 Is it in sync or not?

Annaka Harris 1:09:34 Well, also, you know-

Lex Fridman 1:09:35 Am I out of sync right now?

Annaka Harris 1:09:36 ... your brain, your brain is constantly making adjustments.

Lex Fridman 1:09:38 Yeah.

Annaka Harris 1:09:38 And so it can shift for you while you're doing that, which is probably part of the thing that's driving you crazy.

Lex Fridman 1:09:45 Yeah. Yep.

Annaka Harris 1:09:45 Um, okay. So I'll start with binding processes, and then I'll just give a couple examples. Um, so yes. There's this window, um, where your brain is essentially putting all of the information together to deliver you a present moment experience that is most useful for you to navigate the world.

Lex Fridman 1:10:05 Mm-hmm.

Annaka Harris 1:10:06 Um, so as I said, and, you know, I use this example of tennis in my book. So the sights and sounds are coming at us at different rates. Um, it takes longer for a sensation in my hand when I hit the ball with the racket to travel to my brain than it does for the light waves to hit my retina and get processed by the brain. It... The... So all these, these signals are coming in at different times. Our brains go through this process of binding to basically weave it all together so that our c- our conscious experience of that is of seeing, hearing, and feeling the ball hit the racket all at the same time. That's obviously most useful to us. Binding is, is mostly about timing. It, it can be about other things. But I was just talking to David Eagleman, who was talking about a very simple experiment actually, and this kind of shows how your brain is basically always interacting with the outside world and always making adjustments to make its best guess about the most useful present moment experience to deliver. So this is a very simple experiment. This is from many, many years ago. Um, and David Eag- David Eagleman was, was involved in this research, where they had participants hit a button, and that button caused a flash of light.

Lex Fridman 1:11:25 Mm-hmm.

Annaka Harris 1:11:26 And so our brains, through binding, the brain, it notices, is, is able to kind of calibrate the experience you have because the brain is aware that it is its own hand that is causing the light to flash, that there's this cause and effect going on. And so you have this experience of pushing the button that causes the flash of light, which is true, and the, the light flashes. You can start to introduce longer pauses, um, starting with 20 milliseconds, 30 milliseconds, going up to, I think, 100, maybe even 200 milliseconds, where if you do it gradually, since your brain is making the adjustment, um, you can introduce a delay, I think it's up to 200 milliseconds. If you do it gradually, you will still have the experience. Even though there's now a delay between when you hit the button and the light flashes, you will still have the exact same experience you had initially, which is that the light flashes right when you push the button. In your experience, nothing is changing. But then... So they, they gradually m- give a delay. You've acclimated to that because it was done gradually. If they then go back to the original, instantaneous flash, your brain doesn't have time to make the adjustment, and you have the experience that the light flashed before you hit the button.

Lex Fridman 1:12:52 Oh, yeah.

Annaka Harris 1:12:52 And that is your true experience. It's not like you're-

Lex Fridman 1:12:55 True.

Annaka Harris 1:12:55 ... confused. But that is... Your brain didn't have time to, to make that adjustment. You think you're in the same environment. You're pushing the button, it makes the light flash. It's kind of calibrating all the time. But then the, the participants are suddenly saying, "Oh, wait, that was so weird. The light flashed before I hit the button."And so these types of-

Lex Fridman 1:13:15 That's crazy.

Annaka Harris 1:13:16 They built a, um, roshambo, rock-paper-scissors computer game that was unbeatable based on this glitch that you can present in, in binding by training someone. If you introduce the delay slowly enough, then the computer can get the information before it responds, but you still have the experience that you're both throwing out your rock or paper, scissors at the same time. But in actuality, the computer saw your choice before it makes its choice. And it's in this window of milliseconds where you don't notice it.

Lex Fridman 1:13:57 So that starts to help you build up an intuition that this conscious experience is an illusion constructed by the brain after-

Annaka Harris 1:14:06 Uh, conscious will.

Lex Fridman 1:14:07 Conscious will.

Annaka Harris 1:14:08 Yeah. And, and just in general that, that consciousness is not the thing that we feel it is, which is driving the behavior. That is actually at the tail end of it. And so a lot of decision-making processes, and the- there are studies that are more controversial, and I, I don't usually, um, like to cite them, although if you want to talk about them, we can. They're super interesting and intu- intuition-shattering. But there, there are now studies specifically about free will, to see if there are markers at the level of the brain that can see what decision you're going to make and when you make that decision. And, um, I think this, the neuroscience inevitably is just going to get better. And so part of the reason I'm so passionate about this, I mean, there's, there's the science and there's just the curiosity that, that drives me of wanting to understand how the universe works. But I actually see a lot of the neuroscience presenting us with truths that are going to be difficult for us to accept, and I actually think there are really positive ways to view these truths that we're uncovering. And even though they can be initially kind of jarring and, and even destabilizing and, and creepy, I think ultimately, there's actually a lot ... It can have a positive effect on human psychology and, and a whole range of things, um, that I and others have, have experienced, and that I think it's important for us to talk about, because you can't hide from the truth, especially in science, right? Like, it just, it, it will reveal itself. And if this is true, I think not only for better understanding the universe and nature, which is kind of my, my primary passion, um, it's important for us to absorb these facts and realize that they don't ... It doesn't necessarily take away the things from us that we fear. Um, I, you know, I've heard people say, this was talked about, it's a common, common point to make or question to ask a scientist, "Can you still, you know, enjoy chocolate if you're a molecular biologist?" And, um, as a m- molecular biologist, that would be the one who would understand how we experience chocolate. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:16:27 Right.

Annaka Harris 1:16:27 May have the wrong science.

Lex Fridman 1:16:28 Yeah.

Annaka Harris 1:16:29 But anyway, if you-

Lex Fridman 1:16:30 But the point stands.

Annaka Harris 1:16:31 ... if you're focused on the, the details of the, you know, the underlying nature of reality, does that take the joy and the pleasure and, um, for lack of a better word, spirituality out of our experience as human beings? And I actually think, um, for these illusions like free will and self, the reverse is true. I actually think they can give us ... There are reasons and bases for feeling more connected to each other and to the universe, for spiritual experiences, for, um, even just on a more basic level, for increasing our, our well-being, just in, in terms of our psychology, of lowering rates of depression and anxiety. And, um, I actually think these realizations can be extremely helpful to people.

Lex Fridman 1:17:25 Well, it's like, uh, realizing that the universe doesn't rotate around Earth, that the Earth is not the center-

Annaka Harris 1:17:32 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:17:32 ... of the universe is a really challenging thought.

Annaka Harris 1:17:35 Well, and people were worried about how that would affect society.

Lex Fridman 1:17:38 Well, yes, that's like long-term.

Annaka Harris 1:17:40 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:17:40 But short-term, I bet you the number of, of people who had an existential crisis as it got integrated into society, that thought is huge. It's like, um ... it's a hard one. And you're saying it's-

Annaka Harris 1:17:52 But it can't ... But it's also a source of awe and of ... I mean, so many people now use that fact to inspire a positive, um, response.

Lex Fridman 1:18:08 Yeah.

Annaka Harris 1:18:08 To inspire creativity and curiosity and awe and all of these things that are so, um, useful for human well-being.

Lex Fridman 1:18:19 Where's the source of meaning when you're not the center of the universe, when the you doesn't even exist? The even you does n- the, the, the sense of self and the s- and the sense of decision-making is an illusion.

Annaka Harris 1:18:35 The truth is that for the most part, the sense of self is kind of at the core of human suffering, because it feels as if we are separate from the rest of nature. We're separate from each other, we're separate from, um, you know, the, the illusion that I, that I referenced of feeling like, you know, we have these thoughts that are brain-based thoughts, but then the I swoops in to, to make a decision. Um, in some sense, it goes so deep that it's as if the I is separate from the physical world. And that separation, um, plays a part in depression, plays a part in anxiety, um, even plays a part in addiction. So at the level of the brain, um, I think ... Stop me if I'm repeating myself, but we, we started talking about the default mode network.

Lex Fridman 1:19:24 Mm-hmm.

Annaka Harris 1:19:25 Um, and so we actually know that w-... when the default mode network is quieted down, when people lose a sense of self in meditation and on psychedelic drugs in, in therapy, there is a feeling that people describe of a, an extremely positive feeling of being connected to the rest of nature. And so, that's a piece of it that I think if you haven't had the experience, um, you wouldn't necessarily know that would be a part of it. Um, but truly having that insight that you're not the self you feel you are, immediately your experiences are embedded in the universe and you are a piece of everything, and you see that everything is interconnected. And so rather than feeling like a lonely eye in this bigger universe, there's a sense of being a part of something larger than yourself. And this is intrinsically positive for human beings. Um, and even just in our everyday lives and choices and what we do for work, feeling part of something larger than yourself is the way people describe spiritual experiences and the way, um, many positive psychological states are, are framed. And so there, there's that piece of it.

Lex Fridman 1:20:50 There is something, so, so one giant hug with the universe, uh, e- everything in it. Uh, but there is some sense in which we, um, attach the search for meaning with, um, the eye, with the ego. And, uh, it, you-

Annaka Harris 1:21:11 So-

Lex Fridman 1:21:11 ... it could almost seem like life is meaningless. Our existence, our eye, my existence is meaningless.

Annaka Harris 1:21:18 I think you can kind of go there under any worldview (laughs) -

Lex Fridman 1:21:21 Right.

Annaka Harris 1:21:21 ... really.

Lex Fridman 1:21:22 Right, right.

Annaka Harris 1:21:22 Um, and the truth is, we want to find a truth out of that downward spiral and not a story that we have to tell ourselves that isn't true.

Lex Fridman 1:21:40 Yeah.

Annaka Harris 1:21:40 And the fact is, we have these facts available to us that in, with the right framing and the right context, um, looking at the truth actually provides us with that psychological feeling we're searching for. And I think that's important to point out. And so-

Lex Fridman 1:21:59 I think humans, uh, are fascinatingly good at finding beauty and truth-

Annaka Harris 1:22:06 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:22:06 ... no matter how painful the truth is. So, yes.

Annaka Harris 1:22:08 Yes. I totally agree. Yes. Um, but in this case, I think there are ... the concerns are legitimate concerns, and I have them myself, um, for how people respond. I've actually had people tell me they had to stop reading my book halfway through because the parts on free will were so upsetting to them. And this is something I think about a lot, because that, um, kind of breaks my heart (laughs) . Um, I don't... because I see this potential for these realizations bringing levels of well-being that many people don't have access to, um, I think it's important to talk about them in ways that override what can be an initial, um, fear or kind of spooky, spooky quality that can come out of these realizations.

Lex Fridman 1:23:13 So, at the end of that journey, there's, there's a clarity and an appreciation of beauty that if you just ride it out. By the way, if you want to read Upsetting-

Annaka Harris 1:23:22 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:23:22 ... I'd just gotten through the, boy, the, the four books, if you want to read Upsetting.

Annaka Harris 1:23:29 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:23:29 So, my, my Audible is hilarious. So, it has Conscious in it, and then d- so your book, and then (laughs) , and then it has The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

Annaka Harris 1:23:38 Uh-huh. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:23:39 Uh, uh, Bloodlands by, by Timothy Snyder, probably the most upsetting book I've ever read.

Annaka Harris 1:23:45 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:23:45 If you wanna... 'cause it's not just Stalin or Hitler, it's Stalin and Hitler. It's the worst, the worst hits, the opposite of the best hits. It's really, really, really well written. Really difficult. Um, I read, uh, Solzhenitsyn's, um, Gulag Archipelago. And what else? Red Famine, which is, um-

Annaka Harris 1:24:08 Hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:24:10 ... um, Anne Applebaum. Is that, does that hurt? Yeah. Anyway, so those are truly upsetting and that's-

Annaka Harris 1:24:15 Yeah. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:24:16 ... and those are a lot of times the results of, um, hiding the truth versus pursuing the truth. So, truth in the short term might hurt, but it did ultimately, uh, set us free.

Annaka Harris 1:24:29 I believe that. And I also think, um, whatever the truth is, we have to find a way to maintain (laughs) ci- civil society and love and all the things that are important to us.

Lex Fridman 1:24:42 If we can jump around a little bit, can I just ask you on a, on a personal note, because you said you've suffered from depression and there, there's a lot of people that see guidance on, on this topic because it's such a difficult one. How were you able to, when it was, when it has struck you, how were you able to overcome it?

Annaka Harris 1:24:59 Yeah. I mean, this is maybe too long an answer. So, I've experienced it in different forms. So, it was my, I would say my depression has almost always mostly taken the form of anxiety. I didn't realize how anxious I was, I think until I was an adult. So, I was always very functional. Um, I think, you know, all the positive sides of suffering in that way (laughs) . Um, I think I'm a little OCD, as, as you can tell (laughs) .

Lex Fridman 1:25:32 I mean, this whole conversation-

Annaka Harris 1:25:33 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:25:33 ... is hilarious because we're both suffer-

Annaka Harris 1:25:35 (laughs) .

Lex Fridman 1:25:35 ... to some level of anxiety.

Annaka Harris 1:25:37 Psychology is just laid out in front of us here (laughs) .

Lex Fridman 1:25:39 Yeah. It's just a giant mess. It's great.

Annaka Harris 1:25:41 We're the same kind of human. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:25:42 It's great.