Considering Consciousness | Dr Heather Berlin | Modern Wisdom Podcast 146

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   But, you know, the…

   1. HBHeather Berlin0:00

      But, you know, the studies show that when you tell people they don't have free will, like when you tell them about these neuroscience studies and then you test them after, they're more likely to behave unethically and to cheat on an exam.

   2. CWChris Williamson0:12

      Mm.

   3. HBHeather Berlin0:12

      So, the illusion of free will is actually very adaptive. We've evolved to have this very strong sense of our control over our own agency for a reason. Because it helps us interact in social environments, right? If we know that we have control, if we think we have control of our actions and we are responsible for our actions, then we're going to behave in ways that are socially appropriate. If your, you know, if you think, "Well, it doesn't matter anyway. My brain's deciding." You know, I could just, like, kill this person and say, "My brain made me do it," right? So, the strong illusion of free will, it, it evolved for... It has a purpose.

   4. CWChris Williamson0:48

      I'm joined by the lovely Heather Berlin. Heather, welcome to the show.

   5. HBHeather Berlin0:51

      Hi. Thanks for having me.

   6. CWChris Williamson0:53

      Pleasure to have you on today, talking about your daughter's stickers just behind you.

   7. HBHeather Berlin0:58

      (laughs) .

   8. CWChris Williamson0:58

      They look good. I think they, they really-

   9. HBHeather Berlin1:00

      Yeah.

   10. CWChris Williamson1:00

       ... they really add something to the room.

   11. HBHeather Berlin1:03

       Yeah. It's kind of like those cool tattoos that are, like, the little ones that are randomly, you know, dispersed, and it's just, it's that cool kind of look. Yeah.

   12. CWChris Williamson1:10

       Is that the same thing that happens when you have a child? They just start adding little flavor of personality into all of the rooms all over the house?

   13. HBHeather Berlin1:17

       Pretty much. Pretty much, yeah. They slowly take over your life, and that's symbolic of that.

   14. CWChris Williamson1:22

       (laughs)

   15. HBHeather Berlin1:22

       So, yeah. (laughs)

   16. CWChris Williamson1:25

       I love it. Um, so why don't you tell us what it is that you do? What do you spend your days thinking about and, and working on?

   17. HBHeather Berlin1:33

       Okay. So, uh, I am a cognitive neuroscientist and psychologist, um, and I'm... I mean, fundamentally, the kind of driving force in my career has been trying to understand the fundamental question of how the physical brain creates our subjective awareness, so basically the neural basis of consciousness. Um, but, but I also got really interested in the neural basis of all of these unconscious processes that are motivating our behavior, because much of what we do, the decisions we make, our behaviors are being dictated by things that are happening outside of our awareness, and we're only consciously aware of a very small bit of what's actually happening. We often make up these, like, post hoc explanations about why we do things, but these are not necessarily the real reasons, so, you know, we have a narrative that we tell ourselves. Um, so I'm interested in both the kind of, how the physical brain creates our conscious experience and our subjective states as well as the unconscious processes that are, that are motivating us and explaining how we behave.

   18. CWChris Williamson2:36

       Wow. So, we've got a lot that we can delve into today. We've had a lot of discussions recently about sort of purpose and meaning in life and, and things like that, but I guess at an even more base level, the fact that we are able to be conscious, the fact that we're beings that can kind of consider our own existence sits before all of that, right?

   19. HBHeather Berlin2:56

       Yeah. I mean, you know, I think it was Carl Sagan who said, like, we are a way for the, you know, universe, for matter to know itself, right? Because it's basically matter that's organized itself in such a way that it, it can, you know, have subjective states. It can try to understand itself and its place in the universe. It's pretty amazing. Um, but it's very fundamental. I mean, when we talk about consciousness, we don't need language for it. We don't need a sense of self. Um, it's really just pure subjective experience, so like, you know, um, tasting something sweet or, you know, seeing the color red or, or smelling a rose. Um, and other animals have it. We, you know, assume they do, because they have similar hardware than we, that we have. They act as if, you know, they... For example, if you step on a cat's paw, it'll pull away and maybe yell. It acts like it's experiencing pain. We'll never know 100% for sure, but then again, I don't know that you're conscious, right? I mean, I assume you are. But, um, so we just define it... Basically, consciousness is first person subjective experience. You know, I just know that I have it. And even when we do experiments, I mean, the only way to really tell is the person has to report. Like, did you see it or not? You know, were you consciously aware of that stimuli or not? They have to self-report. Um, and we can make some predictions, like with babies, you know, where they look might be what they're attending to or what they're conscious of. But again, it's really, um, this first person's subjective experience that we're trying to understand.

   20. CWChris Williamson4:22

       So, that's our definition of consciousness that we're working with today?

   21. HBHeather Berlin4:26

       Right. Yeah, it's pretty, that's pretty much it.

   22. CWChris Williamson4:28

       Good.

   23. HBHeather Berlin4:28

       Um, and then there's different levels, you know. Then there's like... Then you add in language or self-awareness, and there are ways to sort of elaborate this subjective experience. But fundamentally, what we're trying to explain is just how a physical piece of matter could, um, produce this sort of subjectivity, these feelings.

   24. CWChris Williamson4:44

       Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. So, how low down the animal kingdom does this go? Do we presume that insects are conscious? Is there a, a line somewhere that we hit?

   25. HBHeather Berlin4:56

       Yeah. So, there's been a lot of debate and discussion about this, um, topic. I was... It was a year or two ago, I was at a meeting which was all about animal consciousness. You know, what, what do we know? And so, look, we can take it down to, you know, a fish. A fish, for example, if you give it, like, a noxious stimuli, you know, something that might cause them pain or that's, you know, offensive, you'll see they might go towards the stimuli, then they get a sense of it and they'll move away, right? Something that, say, causes pain. But then if you give them something like a type of anesthesia that kind of blocks their pain receptors, then they don't move away from the, the noxious stimuli. So, the idea with this is that they were feeling something, right? Because when you block their... You give them kind of anesthesia, then they no longer retract from that stimuli, right? So, we assume there's some sort of feeling there. Um, and now how far down the animal kingdom, it's hard to say. For this, we really need a, sort of a fundamental, overarching theory of consciousness. So, for example, one theory that is pretty popular is called the integrated information theory of consciousness, which basically says that any system that has a high degree of, degree of integrated differentiated information will have the property of consciousness. It's like a fundamental property of the universe, like gravity. So, the brain happens to be one of those systems where when we say integrated, it means, like, if one neuron fires, it will directly affect whether the neuron next to it fires, right? There's integration of information rather than-... say, a pixel in your phone goes out, like it's not gonna affect the one next to it, right? So that's not integrated. So we talk about high degree of integrated information. Um, and so the brain happens to be one of those systems, and then basically there's a, a, a mathematical calculation called phi which you can calculate the amount of differentiated integrated information of a system, and that predicts how conscious it is. So if we go along with that through your consciousness, we can look at like a, a bee or, you know, a fetus and try to make a measure of how much phi it has, um, and see. But Aldroo- this theory basically, it's kind of pan-psychic. It means anything. Like a light switch has a bit of information, right? It's either on or off, so in some sense it would have a degree- a bit of phi.

   26. CWChris Williamson7:07

       Oh.

   27. HBHeather Berlin7:07

       So it gets very like philosophical. Um, so that's just one theory. You know, so again, it depends on the theory. Um, you know, I think you have to have some sort of nervous system to have consciousness. Like, you know, some people talk about plant consciousness and things like that, and I just don't think that they have necessarily subjective states or any kind of feeling. But I mean, I could be wrong. It might feel like something to be a plant that like responds to light and starts growing towards it, you know? Um...

   28. CWChris Williamson7:33

       Yeah. I think the (clears throat) sort of the anecdotal quote that I've heard from Sam Harris is that-

   29. HBHeather Berlin7:39

       Mm-hmm.

   30. CWChris Williamson7:39

       ... consciousness within any being is if there is something that it is like to be that being, if there is something that it is like to be a plant or if there is something that it is like-
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Right. …

   1. CWChris Williamson15:00

   2. HBHeather Berlin15:00

      Right.

   3. CWChris Williamson15:00

      ... dose of psilocybin?

   4. HBHeather Berlin15:02

      So it's different for the different drugs. So each drug has a different mechanism, um, and we're still in the very early stages. So there are different theories about why the different drugs work. Um, one, let's say I'll take, um, a psilocybin, which works on the serotonin receptors in the brain. Um, but one thing that it does, as well as like LSD and other psychedelics, is it tends to, in a very general sense, um, open you up in many ways. So parts of the brain that are involved in your sense of self and your ego, um, you... tend to kind of decrease in activation. So you tend to feel like one with everything, right? You kind of get this disillusion of your sense, of your ego. And a lot of these parts of brain, like the prefrontal cortex, when they're really highly active or involved in like rumination and anxiety, or like when you're depressed and you have these thoughts that you just can't get out of your head, these negative thoughts, and it's kind of helped break that cycle. Um, it also helps you kind of make the... We see a lot of novel activation across these long-range networks in the brain where a lot of the time there's a lot of local communication, whereas now it kind of opens things up. So you're thinking in a completely different way. But... So there's a lot of, you know, we look at what's happening at the hardware in the brain, but, but I think a lot of the therapeutic effects of this kind of, these kind of drugs is, is the psychological effect. Because you only need to take it one or two times, like with a gu- guided with a therapist, for it to have this long-lasting effect. Whereas other drugs, let's say an SSRI that you take for depression or sero- selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, you ha- it always has to be in your system. Like it only works while it's in your system, and as soon as it wears off, that's why you have to take it every day, right? So they're saying, okay, it's clearly the effect of the drug itself, whereas with the psychedelics, it seems to be the psychological experience that's profoundly, like shifts your consciousness or your perspective and has these long-term, um, long-term impact.

   5. CWChris Williamson17:00

      How do you, as a neuroscientist, look at that situation? I have a particular experience. I've not drilled or greased a particular thought groove a lot. I've not wrapped tons of myelin around one particular way of being, and yet-

   6. HBHeather Berlin17:16

      Right.

   7. CWChris Williamson17:17

      ... this particular experience has been so profound or changing that it's caused everything downstream to, to alter. What's that, what's that mean?

   8. HBHeather Berlin17:28

      (laughs) Well, what happen... Okay, so like when you have, when you're talking about, you know, actual changes in the figi- physical structure of the brain, you're talking about things like long-term potentiation, or like when you're learning something and you develop a new pathway in the brain, you know, by like rehearsing it over and over again, right? And that doesn't seem to happen with this. Um, but there is also something, you know, called one-trial learning. So like often this happens with something like a very negative experience, and it's an adapt-, it's adaptive because let's say, you know, back in the caveman days, you know, you're foraging through the forest, you get really violently ill by eating a particular berry, right? So for survival, it makes sense to like really remember that berry and that experience and never go near it again.

   9. CWChris Williamson18:08

      Mm-hmm.

   10. HBHeather Berlin18:09

       So basically, you know, you get sick from it one time, and that's all it takes for you to, like, avoid it. And, you know, and we know that from now. Like if you ever get food poisoning from something, you know, you won't touch that food for a while-

   11. CWChris Williamson18:20

       (laughs)

   12. HBHeather Berlin18:20

       ... and that's adaptive, right? So you learn it, um, and, and so with the drugs, it seems like it's a very profound one-time experience, right?... that might shift the way that you think about things. And then over time, that shift in your thought process will start to develop new pathways and new ways of thinking, right? But it's such a profound, you know, it has to be li- such a heightened level of experience, whether positive or negative, that it can really shift how you think, which then can go on to create these new long-term pathways.

   13. CWChris Williamson18:51

       That's so fascinating, the evolutionary basis for it as well, and it makes total sense. You've got this very, very intense experience. Like, you either want to have it happen again, you find this unbelievable kill, or you, you come up with a new way of taking down a, a particular prey or whatever it might be, or, you know, the negative side, you do something that you don't ever, ever, ever want to do again.

   14. HBHeather Berlin19:14

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson19:14

       That's so cool.

   16. HBHeather Berlin19:15

       I mean, it works. And so we're kind of like hacking into the sort of, you know, caveman brain in a sense. Um, and again, it can work, I guess, li- like when, when people have a traumatic experience, right, that also can stick with them, right? Something very negative happens, it's, you know, in ... A soldier in war and they see, like, their friend almost dies or, or does die, you know, that can have such a profound effect that it causes all these negative psychological effects after. So, I think with the psychedelics, it's trying to take that and having a very, something very intense positive, you know, experience that then sticks with you over time and helps change your brain in a positive way rather than a negative way, say, with like PTSD.

   17. CWChris Williamson19:54

       Mm-hmm. So, uh, what about MDMA? What's the ... Do you have an understanding of the reasoning for that?

   18. HBHeather Berlin20:00

       So with MDMA, it's more about, um, and with the psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, which it's called, it's a, uh, it's about ... So often there's this sort of traumatic experience, like let's say with PTSD. And then our brain, we put up these kind of protective mechanisms because if it kept coming to the surface and we had to think about it all the time, it would be maladaptive. It interferes with our daily life. So we suppress it. But yet, it goes on to affect our behavior, right? So, you know, we're, we're anxious or hypervigilant or having nightmares, right? And one way to, to sort of resolve that is to gain conscious access of that unconscious memory that might be suppressed, let's say, and reintegrate it into the brain in a more neutral way so it's not intimately connected with the negative emotion. So, you know, for instance, I don't know, let's say it's a ... I mean, somebody was like sexually assaulted, you know? You could be able to like think about that assault and really think about it in your mind, but kind of separate it from the terrible emotions that it, it brings up. So with the MDMA, it's a way to allow people to re-remember these traumatic experiences, um, in a neutral way, and in fact in a way where they're feeling very calm and, and p- pleasurable so that it can kind of re-associate these, these memories with, with more at least neutral emotions so that they're not constantly, every time they're triggered, it triggers a negative emotion, right? So, it's, it's about kind of restructuring the brain and also allowing you to access unconscious processes that when you're in your sort of normal defensive h- state, you're not even allow- they don't even come to the surface, right?

   19. CWChris Williamson21:38

       Yeah.

   20. HBHeather Berlin21:38

       So it's sort of a way to access the unconscious and then reintegrate the memories, um, in a more neutral way. Yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson21:46

       I keep on seeing so much about psilocybin, MDMA, and Tim Ferriss is donating tons and tons of money to MDMA therapy and, and psilocybin therapy because that's how much he ... How, how much sort of future and how much, uh, efficacy he thinks is in these treatments. So, it's so mad that something that's a party drug that's seen as people as this kind of raver's drug from Woodstock or Creamfields or whatever it might be-

   22. HBHeather Berlin22:17

       Yeah.

   23. CWChris Williamson22:17

       ... to now be something that's potentially changing the lives of soldiers with PTSD or, uh, people that are addic- have got addictions and dependencies or people that have had traumatic childhoods. It's so crazy.

   24. HBHeather Berlin22:29

       Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Again, but it's not just, you know, it's, it's with, doing it with somebody who's trained to help you, let's say, gain access to these memories, um. I think just doing the drug itself without having that guided psychological experience doesn't have the same impact.

   25. CWChris Williamson22:44

       (laughs) You know the ...

   26. HBHeather Berlin22:44

       So we're kind of using it in conjunction, you know, with the therapy.

   27. CWChris Williamson22:47

       Yeah.

   28. HBHeather Berlin22:47

       Yeah.

   29. CWChris Williamson22:48

       Or, or else everyone that was walking out of Creamfields or Ultra Festival in Miami would just be complete zen-

   30. HBHeather Berlin22:53

       Yeah.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Ah. …

   1. HBHeather Berlin30:31

      ...First of all, there are different circuits in the brain. No, I, I've, I'm actually writing a book now about impulse control. You know, how to control our, our impulses, our urges, our behaviors, right? So somebody who... There are people out there who, for example, can't control body movements. People with tics, right? Tic disorder, where they have these uncontrollable urges to move, let's say, you know, a body part, and they just can't seem to suppress that. So there are times when we have an urge to do something physically, but we are able to then suppress it. Um, the thing, the brain is always active. It's always on, right? It's always humming away in the background. And, you know, at certain points, thoughts pop up, right? And we can either kind of suppress them or, but we can't stop them from just popping up. And so the way the motor system works is slightly different, right? So it's not like randomly, like the arm will start to move, or, you know. Um, we have more, it's sort of called like conscious volition, you know, over the, that, um. But our thoughts are, are different, and so we can't... Like I often say to people with, say, OCD, uh, obsessive-compulsive disorder, they have these obsessive thoughts they can't stop. Now, you might not be able to stop the thoughts themselves, but you can, you can control the behavior. So usually, you have an obsession, like, I'm gonna catch. Like right now, I don't know, there's the coronavirus, right? That's really scary. And somebody might just be constantly thinking about it and anxious about it. And in order to relieve the anxiety, they wash their hands, but then they're washing their hands, you know, 10 times a day. So part of the treatment is, well, you can control the behavior. You can't control the thought from coming. So when you have the thought, we have to not do the behavior, and over time, the thought will eventually start to subside because basically what you wanna do is habituate to the anxiety. So, um, when you wash your hands, you're basically getting rid of the anxiety and not, and not... And so the cycle keeps happening. But if you force yourself to sit with the anxiety, not wash your hands, eventually the thoughts will start to subside.

   2. CWChris Williamson32:50

      Ah.

   3. HBHeather Berlin32:50

      So yeah, we have more control over our physical behavior, in most cases, than we do our thoughts, but we can control how we respond or react to our thoughts, and we can reframe our thoughts and, you know, contextualize them and things. But it's very hard to just stop them from naturally coming up. And that's a lot of what meditation is. It's like allowing the thoughts to come up and just observe them and kind of be separated from them or a bit distant and not having to, like emotionally react to them.

   4. CWChris Williamson33:15

      Mm. Yeah, the, I've had a number of discussions recently, one being with Aubrey Marcus about not fixating or suppressing when something arises. So that equanimity, right? That just allowance that it is, and then it goes, and then it is, and it goes, um.

   5. HBHeather Berlin33:29

      Right.

   6. CWChris Williamson33:30

      And that's certainly something that I know my friends who are significantly more experienced meditators than me sort of talk about, uh, enjoying on a day-to-day basis. What, when-

   7. HBHeather Berlin33:39

      Um, oh, and one other thing. Oh, I was just gonna say one other thing about that.

   8. CWChris Williamson33:42

      Yeah.

   9. HBHeather Berlin33:42

      The more... Counterintuitively, so the more you try to suppress it, the more it's likely to come up. So like with the elephant-

   10. CWChris Williamson33:48

       Mm-hmm.

   11. HBHeather Berlin33:48

       ... if I'm like, "Don't think about an elephant. Don't think about it."

   12. CWChris Williamson33:50

       (laughs)

   13. HBHeather Berlin33:51

       All you're gonna do is think about an elephant. So the idea is to kind of, in a way, go into it. Be like, if you're afraid of something, like, and s- or, or you're getting anxious, like if you're about to have a panic attack, be like, "Okay, let's see, how anxious can I get?" You know, "Let's... Is that all you have? Like, let's make it more."

   14. CWChris Williamson34:06

       Mm-hmm.

   15. HBHeather Berlin34:06

       Because the more you try to not be anxious, the more anxious you're gonna get. The more you try to not think of an elephant, the more you'll think of it. So it's like, let's go, let's move into it. You know, be like, "Hey, let's think about the best elephant you could possibly think of."

   16. CWChris Williamson34:19

       Mm-hmm.

   17. HBHeather Berlin34:19

       And all sorts of, you know, ways to think of it. And after a while, you're just gonna get so sick of thinking of an elephant, you're not gonna wanna think of it anymore.

   18. CWChris Williamson34:25

       Mm.

   19. HBHeather Berlin34:25

       So it's like kind of counterintuitive how you have to stop suppressing in order to get rid of something.

   20. CWChris Williamson34:30

       Do you think that that's reflected when people have challenging experiences in psychedelic trips? So a lot of the time-

   21. HBHeather Berlin34:38

       Yes.

   22. CWChris Williamson34:38

       ... people will say, "If you see a big snake or something scary, don't run away from it, run toward it." Is that a symbolic version of what we're talking about here?

   23. HBHeather Berlin34:46

       Yeah, pretty similar. Exactly, 'cause the more you try to run away, the worse it's gonna get. So you should just go into it, and then eventually it'll dissipate. Yeah.

   24. CWChris Williamson34:55

       It's so hilarious that you've got a, a symbolic representation in a psychedelic state of something which is much more common and usually traveled by people in a normal day-to-day state, right? You've got the thought that's coming up-

   25. HBHeather Berlin35:09

       Yeah.

   26. CWChris Williamson35:09

       ... and you're running away from it, and that's actually making it worse. And now that manifests as a dragon or a snake or a guy in a hooded jacket or whatever it might be.

   27. HBHeather Berlin35:19

       Yeah, that's often what we do with kids, like with OCD. We call, we kind of make a metaphor. Like, we'll call it the OCD monster, and you know, like, that thought is just the OCD monster coming, and you know, you can't be scared of it. You just have to, like, confront it. And so it's kind of similar. I guess therapy with children is like dealing with adults on a psychedelic trip.

   28. CWChris Williamson35:38

       (laughs)

   29. HBHeather Berlin35:38

       Although they do say (laughs) , they do say that, actually, there's this great work by Alison Gopnik who's a child psychologist at Berkeley and talks about the, um, baby's brain because the prefrontal cortex doesn't simply develop until like you're 25. But that's normally what filters all the sort of random stimuli coming in 'cause the brain's trying to make sense of it. But that, being a baby, the, the kind of conscious experience of a baby is, is kind of like a psychedelic trip. It's very similar to that. Everything is just like, you know, cool and moving. I don't... You know, I had, you know, kids, and so I see it. Like, they look like they're tripping.

   30. CWChris Williamson36:13

       (laughs)
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah,…

   1. CWChris Williamson45:00

      the rabbit hole of, like, every free will video on YouTube that he could find. Went through the full works, went through ... T- and then has just come out as this complete ... Is it determinism? Is that the particular, uh-

   2. HBHeather Berlin45:10

      Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson45:11

      ... viewpoint? So now he's just, he completely subscribes to that. But you were right. He was like, he didn't want to go to the gym. He's like, "What's the point of me going to the gym? I'm not gonna go to the gym if I don't go to the gym." Um-

   4. HBHeather Berlin45:21

      (laughs)

   5. CWChris Williamson45:21

      And you can totally see now, and it all makes sense. Wow. That's really, really cool.

   6. HBHeather Berlin45:25

      Right. That's it. Yeah. There's actually ... I was just interviewing ... There's gonna be a documentary film coming out on free will. Um, and actually, my husband does ... He's a rapper and he raps about science, and he's doing a rap on it about free will and the illusion of free will. And he kind of argues a way around it, like, there's, like, something called compatible determinism. And I won't even try to describe it because it's all philosophical, but it's sort of a way to kind of get us out of it a little bit. Like, even though everything's sort of determined from the Big Bang on, like there is some, you know, there's some indeterminacy there.

   7. CWChris Williamson45:58

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   8. HBHeather Berlin45:59

      Um, it's nothing to do with the, with the, with the eth- the also ... Let me just take this away for now. A lot of people want to talk about the, um, what is it called? Molec- ... Oh, God. What is it?

   9. CWChris Williamson46:11

      Quantum states.

   10. HBHeather Berlin46:11

       Quantum states, exactly.

   11. CWChris Williamson46:12

       Yeah.

   12. HBHeather Berlin46:12

       Couldn't think of it. Because there's indeterminacy at the quantum level, whatever. Like, none of that scales up to, like, whether a neuron fires or not.

   13. CWChris Williamson46:19

       Yeah, so to-

   14. HBHeather Berlin46:20

       So-

   15. CWChris Williamson46:20

       To interject there-

   16. HBHeather Berlin46:21

       Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson46:21

       I had, uh-

   18. HBHeather Berlin46:22

       Okay.

   19. CWChris Williamson46:22

       Professor Sean Carroll on recently, who is-

   20. HBHeather Berlin46:24

       Okay. Oh, I know Sean.

   21. CWChris Williamson46:25

       Yeah.

   22. HBHeather Berlin46:25

       Yeah, yeah.

   23. CWChris Williamson46:26

       So I had him on-

   24. HBHeather Berlin46:26

       Yeah.

   25. CWChris Williamson46:26

       And, um, i- i- he said exactly the same as that, that you can talk about what's happening at the quantum level and it, in theory, is how everything acts, but it's not at all how our conscious experience of the world exists. And this, the, uh, quantum uncertainty principle that we've got, just, it, it's not enough to ... It doesn't create the special stuff to allow, to allow things to change in that way, which is what I think you're getting at.

   26. HBHeather Berlin46:53

       Yeah, it doesn't scale up. So, for instance, if ... 'Cause we're living at the macro level of physics, right? Classical physics, not quantum physics. And so, if we were going, if we were ... 'Cause basically it's an emergent property, so you have these things that are happening at the quantum level but they don't scale up. So, if we were living by the rules of quantum physics, we could disappear at any moment. Like, switch states, right? Like, all of a sudden I'm here and then I'm not here, right? So that doesn't happen. So, just because there's these quantum effects happening at that level doesn't scale up to the emergent properties of, like, what's happening at the classical physics level and, like, whether a neuron fires or not.

   27. CWChris Williamson47:29

       Mm-hmm.

   28. HBHeather Berlin47:30

       So it's just not a way to, like ... Some people want to try to argue free will into that somehow, but it just doesn't work.

   29. CWChris Williamson47:35

       I think the-

   30. HBHeather Berlin47:36

       Yeah.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:05:42

   ... I would also…

   1. CWChris Williamson1:00:00

      "I wish, I wish that I was Daisy. It would be so much easier and simpler if I was Daisy." And I was thinking, "That's actually really profound to say that." It's actually really interesting to say, well, I would lose so much of the depth, of the anxiety, of the depression, of the rumination, of the... all this sort of stuff, but- Mm-hmm.

   2. HBHeather Berlin1:00:20

      ... I would also lose the ability to be able to think abstractly, to be able to contemplate the fact that I am here thinking these thoughts. And I just thought... I mean, she didn't realize it at the time, and I've never told her, but, you know, fair play.

   3. CWChris Williamson1:00:33

      (laughs)

   4. HBHeather Berlin1:00:33

      (laughs) Well, you know, it's that ignorance is bliss. You know, sometimes I look at, you know, like babies or really young kids and they're just fully in the moment, right? Their prefrontal cortex is fully developed. I mean, they're kind of like a cat. I was just talking about this last night with a friend. Like, they can play peek-a-boo like all night long. I mean, it's endlessly exciting.

   5. CWChris Williamson1:00:51

      And never bored.

   6. HBHeather Berlin1:00:52

      And never bored. It's always like a surprise, you know. So, or like a cat, you know, chasing a light. Like, it's just constantly novel. Um, and so that's kind of fun, right? G- dogs don't feel guilt, you know, these kinds of, or shame. I mean, they might act a little bit, like we might anthropomorphize and think they are, but these are very more complex emotions. And so, you know, I often wish sometimes I was just like...... just as a human, like less, you know, I'm always thinking about these big questions, whatever. Like, can't I just stop and just, you know, chill out and, I don't know, watch the Kardashians or something and just be okay with that? (laughs) But I can't seem to... Yeah. So I think, you know, there's pluses and minuses, right? You can live in the moment, but I think that's what meditation does, is it kind of helps you to just be purely in the moment and try to release all the rumination and the anxiety and the thoughts about the future or the past, and just be present and be kind of like a dog, is really where you wanna go with that. (laughs)

   7. CWChris Williamson1:01:46

      That, to me, that sounds like a wonderful way for me to live the rest of my life. If I could just be as simple as a dog, that would be beautiful. But I also, I also-

   8. HBHeather Berlin1:01:54

      Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson1:01:54

      ... appreciate what you mean. Someone asked, I went to go see Jordan Peterson lecture in Manchester last year, no two years ago, sorry. And, um, someone asked a question which was essentially, "The depth of my consciousness causes me to suffer." That was broadly what the question was interpreted as, and it was the same as you, is, is ignorance bliss? Like can I-

   10. HBHeather Berlin1:02:14

       Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson1:02:14

       ... can I scale back the depth of my consciousness and think about thinking less and think about things less? And Jordan gave a very typically sort of symbolic answer, but, um, what he said was, "Once you've opened that Pandora's box, there's no real closing it. Once you've realized the depths that your mind can go to, there's nothing that you can do to stop it." And he says, "The only choice really is to go deeper, not to go back, because there is no retreat." So he says-

   12. HBHeather Berlin1:02:40

       Right.

   13. CWChris Williamson1:02:40

       ... "Take more of the thing that poisons you until you turn it into a tonic, and girdle the world around it." And I was like, I mean, it was real grand and metaphysics, like-

   14. HBHeather Berlin1:02:48

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson1:02:48

       ... the way that, like, classic Jordan Peterson. But I actually really liked that. I thought, you know, when we're talking about the crisis of overthinking, the crisis of worry and concern and anxiety, and what did you say right at the beginning when we were talking about something you have a fear over? It's like I have my worry about this particular thing, it's like, "Right, okay, I'm gonna lean into it. I'm gonna completely immerse myself in whatever this thing is and break it apart into its component pieces. What are the actual, fundamental piece, parts that this is constructed of, and that's what I'm gonna do." And I think there's, I don't know, there's something there. I feel like there's something there.

   16. HBHeather Berlin1:03:22

       Yep. No, I like that, lean into it. And the other, I mean, the other thing I'll say just about that is that, you know, if, I don't know what your beliefs are or whatever, but this is, you know, the one chance we get of, like, being conscious, like sandwiched between two eternities of nothingness, right? Like, let's try to get as much as we can get out of this experience. All right, you know, we have this limited, this little piece of matter, this brain that limits our ability to sort of understand the world around us. Like, we're seeing it all through this one organ. But whatever it allows us to see or think or contemplate, like, like I wanna experience as much of it as I can, you know, with the good and the bad, right? The further, the greater depth of experience I can have, I mean, if this is my one and only chance to just be conscious and experience things, then I want, like, the fullest gamut of it all. So I choose, you know, non-i- ignorance, and w- with whatever that may come with, um, 'cause that's the fullness of life.

   17. CWChris Williamson1:04:18

       That's really beautiful. What a wonderful way to finish.

   18. HBHeather Berlin1:04:20

       Thanks.

   19. CWChris Williamson1:04:20

       Heather, thank you so much.

   20. HBHeather Berlin1:04:21

       Thank you.

   21. CWChris Williamson1:04:21

       Um-

   22. HBHeather Berlin1:04:21

       Thank you, yeah.

   23. CWChris Williamson1:04:22

       ... when's your book gonna be done?

   24. HBHeather Berlin1:04:24

       Oh, that's a good question. Um, so I'm writing it now, and it's due, um, next year. So I'm, I'm hoping, optimistically, it's gonna be the end of next year. Um-

   25. CWChris Williamson1:04:34

       Amazing.

   26. HBHeather Berlin1:04:34

       ... the working title is The Fine Art of Losing Control.

   27. CWChris Williamson1:04:38

       That's cool.

   28. HBHeather Berlin1:04:38

       So-

   29. CWChris Williamson1:04:39

       I like that.

   30. HBHeather Berlin1:04:39

       ... yeah, it's about sort of impulse control, when to rein it in, how to rein it in. Is there any control really? And then when to let it go, and how letting go in a controlled way can counterintuitively allow you to gain more control.

Episode duration: 1:05:42