Modern WisdomThe One Question That No Scientist Can Answer - Annaka Harris
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
115 min read · 23,376 words- 0:00 – 6:04
Most Unsettling Idea About Consciousness
- CWChris Williamson
What do you think is the most unsettling idea about consciousness that keeps you up at night?
- AHAnnaka Harris
Hmm. I wouldn't call it unsettling. Um, I would call it exciting and mysterious and, um, I'm, I'm a bit obsessed (laughs) um, th- thinking about how it is that all of this non-conscious matter in the universe, this, this universe that is apparently made of all this non-conscious matter, in some instances, gets configured in such a way that there's an experience of being that matter from the inside, and how that process takes place, how it could be... Um, let me go back. Wha- what it w- um, so what it's like actually to jump on that spectrum. So clearly, there's a range of conscious experiences that a living being or system can have. Um, some very, very minimal experiences. Maybe, you know, if, uh, snails are conscious, there's very minimal experience of being a snail. Maybe pressure, um, a sense of heat and cold. Maybe some very, uh, rudimentary experience of hunger, um, a desire to move toward food. That, that type of thing, then all the way up to, to human beings and all the things that we experience. Um, but the, the question for me and the thing that, that does keep me up at night, um, is what is that transition from no consciousness to consciousness? And how is that anything but a completely unexplained mystery? Um, there doesn't seem to be anything. I've worked with neuroscientists for more than 20 years now and, um, studied the science of consciousness and, you know, we, we have not made any progress in the sciences in, in understanding how consciousness comes to be. Um, and that was, that was a long answer to your question. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Why, why is that the case? Why has it been such a dead end?
- AHAnnaka Harris
Hmm. Um, I think it's a categorically different thing than anything else science has studied before. Um, and actually Philip Goff has a wonderful book that, that explains this very well called Galileo's Error. Um, and it is because we have these fantastic tools in science for studying behavior from the outside, and the thing that's unique about consciousness and the wh- the r- the reason why I find it so fascinating and why it keeps me up at night is because it's a different property that we're trying to get at, which is experience from the inside. It can only be felt, um, from the, f- from the inside. Um, so, you know, you and I are very similar beings. We're similar systems and so we experience a lot of the same things and we've developed language so that we can, um, talk about those experiences. But what's interesting actually, to me, about communication and language is that it only works between systems that have similar conscious experiences because if... You know, the only reason you and I can talk about anything or share ideas is because we share so much of the same conscious content. Um, you know, if you try to explain to someone who's born deaf what, you know, middle C sounds like, or any sound for that matter, um, there are a lot of analogies you can make, but there's no way you can actually deliver that experience of sound to someone who has never had it before. And so to talk about it adequately and to be able to understand, you know, the way I understand that you are conscious is because you're saying things that lead me to believe you're experiencing very similar things to the things I'm experiencing. Um, and so the trick is, there is no way to get true evidence of a conscious experience but from the inside, but from having it yourself. Um, and as I said, we have all these ways of communicating that, that can give us, you know, a, a fair amount of non-direct evidence that other systems besides ourselves are conscious, but we can't get direct evidence, and that's different from anything else that we study scientifically. Um, I think there may be changes in, in the last chapter of my documentary. I talk a little bit about how there might be changes to the science, um, in the future that might enable us to kind of get around this, this issue, but, um, I mean, it is still a, a pretty solid issue that it is only from the inside that con- consciousness can be known. Um, and then conscious content can be carried through time, um, by memories, and so we kind of have access. It's always a different experience in a new moment, um, but we can have access to content from previous experiences through memory.
- CWChris Williamson
I've heard people say before that if we didn't experience it, the universe would give us no indication that consciousness exists. How true do you think that is?
- AHAnnaka Harris
Well, sure. Yeah. I mean, uh, y- you know, that's even true on a more, um, uh, on a more tangible level, which is that, um, i- in my, in my documentary, I talk about, um, locked-in syndrome, which is a very terrifying circumstance. Um, but that's a circumstance where, um, someone has had brain damage either due to a stroke or injury, um, where they become completely paralyzed, yet their conscious experience is, is completely intact. So they can hear, they can see, um, they can think, um, but they literally have no form of any kind of movement, let alone communication. And so that's, um, a, a circumstance where there is no... You can't get any clues about the conscious experience that's happening on the inside from the outside. Um, and, you know, what, it's these types of conditions in neuroscience that started, that started me down this path of wondering, is it possible there are other systems that are just so unfamiliar to us where con- even, you know, very minimal conscious experiences are actually arising in those systems, um, we would have no way of knowing in the same way we have no way of knowing, um, in a person who's in a locked-in state.
- 6:04 – 9:31
How Unintuitive Is Consciousness?
- AHAnnaka Harris
- CWChris Williamson
What are some of the other...... interesting examples, experiments, insights from neuroscience that sort of reveal how-
- AHAnnaka Harris
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
... um, unintuitive consciousness is?
- AHAnnaka Harris
Hmm. I would say (laughs) most of them. (laughs) And it's kind of, um, what led me down this path, because I spent so much time working with neuroscientists and learning about, um, the, the most recent research. And there are so many intuition-shattering facts that come out of our current understanding of the brain. Um, I talk a lot about priming processes. This is something that David Eagleman, the neuroscientist, writes a lot about and writes beautifully about. Actually, I recommend all of his books. Um, and I speak to him in my, in my documentary series. So, um, sorry, I said priming, uh, which is also another example, but I meant, um, I meant binding. (laughs) Um, and so yeah, so-
- CWChris Williamson
You were pri- you were primed to say priming.
- AHAnnaka Harris
(laughs) Yeah, that's right. Priming actually is, is less understoo- less well understood than binding, but binding processes, um, are the processes that the brain uses, and there are many different types, um, of bringing in different types of perceptions, different types of information from the outside, and then consolidating them into a present moment experience. Um, so I'll give the example sometimes of playing the piano, um, or playing tennis, where you can, um, be aware of the fact that, use the example of piano, you, in your conscious experience, you feel that you push the key down in the same moment that you hear the note, um, in the same moment that you see the key go down. But all of these signals, the light waves, the sound waves, the feeling of touch, these all move, um, through space at different speeds. They get to our brains at different times because they're different distances away, and then they get processed, um, in different speeds by, uh, by the brain. And so we are left with this experience that all of this happens in one moment when there's actually all of this subconscious brain processing that's taking place, um, leading up to those moments. Um, and then there, there are countless examples of ways that we feel the universe is structured because of the way we experience them, um, that when you look underneath the hood, you realize things are happening, um, in a way that kind of give you this illusion. Actually, Ani- um, Anil Seth, the neuroscientist, uses the term controlled hallucinations, um, to describe how the brain is, is mapping out the external world for us, um, by giving, by creating these conscious experiences that are extremely useful for navigating the world, um, and evolutionarily advantageous, of course, but that actually don't give us clear insight into the underlying reality.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, I guess we don't really need to know the underlying reality, right? We just need to be effective within the environment.
- AHAnnaka Harris
I want to know it. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Oh.
- AHAnnaka Harris
But yes, of course, evolutionarily speaking, yes. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Adapt- adaptively-
- AHAnnaka Harris
That's right, no, and-
- CWChris Williamson
... if we just spent all our time contemplating whether or not this is really the way that a tree looks-
- AHAnnaka Harris
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... we might not, we might not have got as much done.
- AHAnnaka Harris
Well, and, yes, absolutely. And, um, Donald Hoffman, I don't know if you've ever, um, spoken to him, but he makes a, a very strong case, um, for the fact that evolution actually serves the purpose of hiding reality from us that-
- CWChris Williamson
Like obfuscated, yeah.
- AHAnnaka Harris
Yes.
- 9:31 – 19:14
What Does It Mean To Live In The Present Moment?
- AHAnnaka Harris
- CWChris Williamson
Okay. So if we don't ever... So binding is this, uh, sequential processing-
- AHAnnaka Harris
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
... and time delay adjustment in order to be able to make things feel to us like they're happening in sequence and that-
- AHAnnaka Harris
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... the, other things get, uh, uh, moved around in a way that helps us to feel them happening, uh-
- AHAnnaka Harris
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... uh, cohesively. If that's the case-
- AHAnnaka Harris
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
... what, what does it mean to say live in the present moment as a sentence?
- AHAnnaka Harris
(laughs) Yeah. Um, well, that, you know, that's obviously a term from, um, meditation training and also, you know, this, uh, this kind of science of wellbeing. Um, and I really think that, in most cases, is referring to our conscious experience. And so there is a present moment conscious experience, however delusional we are (laughs) about the underlying reality. Um, you know, the only thing actually we all can know for sure is the experience that we're having. So, you know, whatever the circumstances happen to be, if I'm a brain in a vat or, you know, under some other circumstance I can't imagine, it is still true that whatever, you know, it feels like to touch this table, that feeling of touch is a felt experience that is arising in the universe. And so you can be with your present moment experience being completely, you know, oblivious to, to the underlying reality. I mean, even if you, um, look at something like sight. You know, if I see the color blue, um, you know, even now that I'm scienc- I'm aware of the science, um, I don't usually think about the fact that there isn't actually blue out there in the world, right? There are these light waves that enter the retina and get processed by the brain, and then this experience of seeing blue i- is kind of materializing. Um, that is a real experience. That's a real thing that happens in the universe. But, um, the experience gives me the impression that there is blue out in the universe. Um, and so th- it's that impression that, that's not right.
- CWChris Williamson
Is it right to say that consciousness is behind our eyes? If, if it seems like it's in our head-
- AHAnnaka Harris
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
... right, and our eyes are a bit of our brain that gets extruded out through the front of our skull during, uh, gestation, you follow the eyes back and then it's in here, right?
- AHAnnaka Harris
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Somewhere in here.
- AHAnnaka Harris
Um, well, we don't know, and we don't know... Um, I mean, obviously, you know, people who are blind have consciousness without being able to see. Um, it does...... certainly to most of us feel like our consciousness is, is in this area, it's where mo- it's where all of the inputs from the outside world are coming, they're all getting ge- processed by the brain. Um, they're all linked up through the nervous system to the brain, and so it makes sense that that's, um, what we feel. And so part of the way we have a sense of being kind of a solid self, an "I," um, is through this stream of memories that are connected, that are threaded through time. Um, there could be an experience I have that I don't remember, um, but we don't know the difference between there not being an experience that was had at all or just not remembering it. And so if there are other experiences happening in my system, you know, if there are some experiences of liver processing or, you know, other, other types of processing that happen in my body that never enter this stream of awareness, my conclusion is that they're not conscious, but we just don't know. We only know, um, what enters the stream of memory and then what can be reported on. Um, this is where I often talk about, and I, I get into this, um, in the documentary series as well, um, the work on split-brain patients, because this is a very real world example of a suggestion of what I'm talking about, which is, um, the- there's, um, a surgical procedure call- called a callosotomy that is not performed, um, very often anymore but was- used to be used as a treatment for epilepsy for people, um, whose lives were severely disrupted by grand mal sh- grand mal seizures. Um, and when the seizure spreads from one side of the brain to the other, that's, you know, a much more serious condition and people can get injured and fall and, and die from, from this condition, so sometimes they would perform a callosotomy which actually splits the connections between the right and left hemispheres of the brain. Um, I don't know how much you, you want me to go into this research or if you're familiar with it, um, but one fascinating thing about this research is that they, um, were able to find a way to probe and interrogate the right hemisphere of the brain which is, in most people, not all people, but in most people, the non-speaking side of the brain. Um, so it's the left hemisphere that's verbal. And so, you know, when these patients were being studied, the doctor would ask them a question and they would answer, you know, if it was an opinion-related question, "What's your favorite color?" Um, only the left hemisphere was answering because the left hemisphere is in control of the speech. And so they might say "blue," um, but if they then, they realized that something interesting was going on and that perhaps the right hemisphere was having a different experience, um, the right hemisphere is, is controlled by the left hand, and so they would ask the person the same question and have them write the answer with their left hand. And often the answer would be different. Um, and then there's a series of fascinating studies that were done that you can look up. I, I, I, um, refer to many of them in my documentary series and they're all in the, in the notes for the documentary, um, so you can look at patients being interrogated in this way. It's incredibly fascinating. But the takeaway there, at least for me, is it's possible to even have, um, a human-like mind that has no ability to communicate inside the same body of a mind that is able to communicate, right? And so we already know of an example where consciousness, um, in one living system can be split in that way, um, such that they're having- there are different conscious experiences arising and some can be reported on and some can't. And so the question for me is, you know, once I got really deep into this research and deep into... once I accepted the fact that I was actually willing to ask this question (laughs) which was very taboo for a long time and not something, um, that neuroscientists, um, were really open to discussing, you know, 10, 20 years ago. Um, but once I kind of allowed myself to go down this path and realized that, um, you know, not only is this a, a legitimate scientific question but I think it's a really important scientific questions, is there consciousness, um, in, in other systems and much simpler systems than, than we've assumed? And if so, it's possible that there are all kinds of conscious experiences happening within my brain and body-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- AHAnnaka Harris
... um, that I'm not aware of, that I can't report on, but that are, you know, arising and passing away all the time.
- CWChris Williamson
It is very counterintuitive 'cause there's nothing more real.
- AHAnnaka Harris
Very (laughs) .
- CWChris Williamson
But there's nothing more real to me than the sense-
- AHAnnaka Harris
I still, I still feel like I sound crazy when I say these things (laughs) .
- CWChris Williamson
A little. Um...
- AHAnnaka Harris
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
But there's nothing more real to me or anybody that's listening than the sense of being me, you know?
- AHAnnaka Harris
Sure.
- CWChris Williamson
The-
- AHAnnaka Harris
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... sort of, "I think, therefore I am. Am I a brain in a vat? Well, th- at least I know that I am this thing."
- 19:14 – 23:47
Various Ranges Of Consciousness
- CWChris Williamson
so there's an interesting question there, which is, what is the lowest possible amount of consciousness that you can have before one step of consciousness eroding would mean that consciousness no longer exists?
- AHAnnaka Harris
This is the kind of thing that keeps me up at night, exactly (laughs) .
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, scary. Um, I s- suppose there's... You know, if we've got this Overton window of consciousness, you would ask yourself, "Okay, well, what's the maximum amount of consciousness?" 'Cause there's no reason to assume... If we think that there's a gradation, right, between a bat or a flower-
- AHAnnaka Harris
Yeah. I just don't think there's a gradation of consciousness. I think there's a gradation of content, the types of things that are experienced.
- CWChris Williamson
Interesting.
- AHAnnaka Harris
So, I think even the most minimal experience we could imagine, you know, just a, a low humming noise and nothing else-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- AHAnnaka Harris
... I wouldn't say that's less consciousness than what I'm experiencing now. I would say that's less content.
- CWChris Williamson
Okay, but if you were an amoeba-
- AHAnnaka Harris
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... and you have that level, or a bat, or-
- AHAnnaka Harris
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... a flower, or a mycelium network, or-
- AHAnnaka Harris
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... a blue dolphin, or us-
- AHAnnaka Harris
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... would you say that the range of consciousness is greater... No? Okay, so across the board.
- AHAnnaka Harris
No.
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, that's interesting. Well, even then, if we're just talking about contents, then-
- AHAnnaka Harris
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... the ability for our consciousness to experience more, more depth, more breadth, or whatever-
- AHAnnaka Harris
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... or at least for us to be able to detect more signal, let's say, there's no reason to assume that we are the, the ceiling of that.
- AHAnnaka Harris
Oh, no, absolutely not, no. I think there are, you know, likely more complex things to be experienced than the things we experience. Um, I also... You know, part of why I've come to this conclusion is because of, um, another area of neuroscience, um, which, you know, more or less proves that this f- s- feeling of being a self that we have i- is, is an illusion. Um, and I can, I can explain more about that, but, but the way you just referenced, um, you know, a dolphin or a human or... as if that's a solid entity that has experiences. The, the way I, I think is a more accurate way to think of it is, um, that conscious experiences take place in the universe. Um, and so, you know, a lot, a lot of things have to happen, um, for any particular conscious experience to take place. Um, I don't think it's accurate to think of, um, me as a human, as some kind of solid self somewhere here inside my head that these conscious experiences happen to. It's that there are these systems that get, um, configured by the unfolding of the universe, however that happens, that we don't yet understand or may never understand, um, that cause certain experiences to arise. And some are incredibly complex, and some are very simple. Um, but there's no self that moves through time that is the vehicle of those experiences i- in any form. So, um, an example I've been giving lately is, um, the experience of, of self is more... A- and the experience of, of human mind, um, and any mind really, is analogous to an ocean wave. So, we call an ocean wave an, a wave, and we, we use that term and we talk about it like it's a thing, um, and in many senses we can point to an ocean wave, we can talk about the dynamics of an ocean wave, there are lots of things we can say about it, um, but we all understand intuitively that an ocean wave is not a thing, a static thing that moves through time. It is a dy- it's a dynamic process in nature. Um, and so the human brain is just a constant dance of electrical firing, much more like an ocean wave, um, than a static thing. And so this experience we have of being something that's static and kind of unchanging at its core, moving from one moment to the next, is what the illusion of self i- entails. Um, and we fail to see that it's much more like an ocean wave, where it's an ever-evolving, changing process. It never sits still. It never, um, is one thing. As I said, you're a different, you're a different, you know, system now than you were when we started this conversation. Um, and so that doesn't mean we can't have a word for it, but the way we think about it, because of the way we experience the world, I think gives us a false sense of there being these solid entities in the world, rather than, um, dynamic processes unfolding over time.
- 23:47 – 30:36
Theories Of Consciousness
- AHAnnaka Harris
- CWChris Williamson
I've heard some theories that consciousness might just be a, a malfunction of the brain rather than an essential feature, or, uh, like, it could be just a side effect of energy efficiency in the same way that a light gives off heat and light, and you were to look at it and say... W- when it comes to the more sort of adaptive explanation, is it-
- AHAnnaka Harris
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... is it just us being able to model the thoughts of our Dunbar number 150 tribe, and I need t- to know that-
- AHAnnaka Harris
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... Annika and John are no longer friends, but that John and Joe actually have become friends now?
- AHAnnaka Harris
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
What's your...
- AHAnnaka Harris
No, so I think this is really a false assumption. It's a very strong intuition, you know, one that I had my whole life and through most of my career working with scientists as well. Um, but it goes back to one of your first questions about, you know, how did the neuroscience get me to start questioning whether consciousness goes deeper in nature. Um-So, we have a strong intuition that consciousness is causal. That it's doing something, that it evo- you know, the reason why we believe it evolved is because we believe it affects behavior. Um, but what I'm, most of the neuroscience and science in general is continuing to unveil is the fact that none of these things that we think we need consciousness for, we don't actually have any evidence to believe that. Um, and so in, in my book Conscious, and also in this documentary series, I go through these two questions. Um, I kind of frame this investigation in, uh, I frame this investigation through these two questions. Um, and the first one is, can we find evidence of consciousness from outside the system? Is there any way to ever say, you know, these are the list of things, if you see them on the outside, there is consciousness on the inside? And the second quest- uh, the second question is, is consciousness doing something? Is it driving our behavior in the way that we feel it is? And we feel it must be. And so yes, a- as you just described, we think, you know, "Well, I have this experience of putting all these things together and then, you know, I can act very quickly." Um, the truth is that when you drill down on the processes in the brain and this intuition, you're, you come up completely empty-handed. There's no reason to think that having an experience of that processing gives you an advantage at all. Everything that we can point to, we can imagine a computer doing those things. Actually, if you just, you know, again, take sight as an example. Um, you know, my retina, my brain process light waves, process different, um, different wavelengths, e- um, are able to distinguish between the different wavelengths of light. Um, my subsequent behavior is based on that processing. All of these things happen, um, yet for some reason that processing, for me, entails an experience of seeing things, right? Of the colors, of the texture, of all these things. Um, but we can imagine a computer, a camera, lots of other systems, um, plants. I talk a lot about plants in my documentary because they're, um, fascinating even on this specific issue of, um, sensing light waves, sensing different frequencies of light, their behavior being adjusted based on the frequencies of light. Um, but we imagine that cameras and computers and plants can do all of that without. We don't think they must need to see, they must need to have the experience of the conscious experience to be able to do any of those things. But for some reason, we do. Um, and the closer you look at the brain processing, the less there is a place to find where, "Oh, yes, it's because of the ex- the, the system experienced the, that thing that enabled it to behave this way." And, a- and, you know, in such a more advantageous way than it could if it, if it weren't conscious. There's no place to find that. And in fact, we find the opposite. We find that many things, um, that we've evolved to do, like get out of a dangerous situation quickly, you know, run fast, uh, startle response, um, all the things, all the places we try to find where we could point to and say, "Okay, if this, this must have to be consciously experienced, otherwise we wouldn't be as good at it." Um, in a lot of those cases, we're now aware of what modern neuroscience considers to be unconscious brain processing being the thing that drives the behavior before we're even aware, before it, i- before it becomes a conscious experience.
- CWChris Williamson
So are you saying that consciousness is largely surplus to requirements for us?
- AHAnnaka Harris
It's largely mysterious. We don't have any idea. The things that we think we know about it, it turns out we have no evidence to, to believe those things. And so, you know, a lot of my work is about just getting us to square one, getting us to kind of shake some of our intuitions, um, to shake them up so that we can think more creatively about it, you know, maybe do different types of science than we've been doing. Um, because this is how all scientific breakthroughs happen. Um, you know, each time we are kind of faced with evidence from whatever type of probing we do of the universe. We make celestial observations, you know, taking us way back, um, and suddenly it doesn't quite make sense that, um, the universe revolves around us. It makes more sense to see us as revolving around the sun. Um, and that changes our intuitions about what our perceptions tell us what the circumstance we're in. Um, and so it takes, you know, some kind of evidence coming towards us, and then also human beings who are incredibly curious and willing to just look and look and look and look (laughs) and seek and say, "Actually, the way we feel things are is wrong." Um, and the universe is structured in a different way. And there's, um, usually a period of time, sometimes decades or more, um, before the evidence really, um, encroaches in on our intuitions and gets us to start to think creatively and shift the way we feel. Um, the same was true for, you know, discovering the germ theory of disease. You know, eventually we developed tools where we could see the microscopic things. Um, but first it was a theory, and it was very hard for people to believe and to get their minds around because it just sounded crazy that there are these things we can't see or smell or taste or touch, we can't perceive them, but they, that's what's making us sick and that they can kill us. Um, and so there are all of these paradigm shifts in science, all these scientific breakthroughs that entail kind of new evidence coming in and shifting the way we thought things worked. And so I think we're, we're at a place like that with consciousness now. Um, and, and this is some of the ways we, we can, we can see through, at the very least, the way our intuitions tell us things are, are not, are, are off.
- CWChris Williamson
If we can get to the stage where AI is able to out-think us-
- AHAnnaka Harris
Hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... does that, does that suggest that consciousness is overrated?
- 30:36 – 33:00
Is Consciousness Overrated?
- AHAnnaka Harris
I'm not sure how those two are related. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Well, whether or not-
- AHAnnaka Harris
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... if, if AI can out-think us and it's not conscious-... so if it's functionally-
- AHAnnaka Harris
Oh, if it's not, if it's not conscious.
- CWChris Williamson
Yes, and it's functionally able to do-
- AHAnnaka Harris
Well, I do think consciousness is overrated in the sense that we think, you know, like a lot of things, we think we're special and we're the only ones that have it. Um, and I, you know, I do think human beings are special, and obviously we do all kinds of things that no other, you know, living systems we know of can do. Um, but I'm not sure that consciousness is even a result of complex processing at this point. So w- a lot of my work has just been breaking through all of these assumptions, and so at this point, um, I don't think we have any evidence to believe that, um, high level of intelligence or complexity is required for consciousness.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- AHAnnaka Harris
And so, I think consciousness still holds, um, this very magical position in the universe because the experience, the felt experience, the sentience, um, I think is magical in and of itself, but I don't know that, um, it's unique, I don't think it's unique to human beings, and I don't think we have any reason to think that it is responsible for all of the things that we, um, value in ourselves. And so, I think much less simple systems have them, m- if we develop more complex systems, they will likely have it, but whether or not they do, um, I think the things we value in, in human beings, in our intelligence, in our, um, thinking skills, creativity skills, ability to create new things and build new things that never existed and imagine new things and then generate them and make them real, um, all of that may not really have anything to do with consciousness any more than a pea tendril, you know, needs consciousness to do all of the things in a much simpler way but s- some, you know, more miraculous than you would've realized until you start studying plant behavior (laughs) , um, that you don't, there's n- we don't know any reason why you would need consciousness for either of those things. So, I mean, I think AI is interesting and it will be a very interesting development either way, um, conscious or not, but I don't think it changes the status of consciousness.
- 33:00 – 35:59
How Likely Will AI Unveil Insights About Consciousness?
- AHAnnaka Harris
- CWChris Williamson
Do you think that it, uh, how likely do you think it is that progress in AI will unveil some interesting insight about-
- AHAnnaka Harris
Mm...
- CWChris Williamson
... about consciousness?
- AHAnnaka Harris
Uh, I think that's probably unlikely. Um, but I don't, I mean, that's, that's a big question mark for me. I don't know. I, I, I can't imagine a way that it would. The type of science, you know, the last chapter of my docuseries is called The Future of Science, and I'm imagining a science that, um, rethinks our ability to, um, experience other systems than the ones we experience. Um, so, you know, we experience light waves and sound waves and, and, but there are many, we don't experience the Earth's magnetic field, and many animals do. Um, there are lots of things that, that we actually have a, um, have, kind of have a head start studying scientifically because we perceive them, and so we have, have developed these intuitions for them. Um, i- in my series, in one chapter, I interview someone who was part of a study where they actually gave participants an experience of magnetic north. Um, it's f- fascinating study. I can tell you more about those details. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, how d- how do you experience-
- AHAnnaka Harris
Um-
- CWChris Williamson
... magnetic north?
- AHAnnaka Harris
Yeah, so maybe I'll finish that point and then come back. Um, but the idea is that if we want to understand consciousness better, we're going to have to find a way to expand our experiences and also, um, well, I can give more examples, but, but that's, that's kind of the way I think it's headed. I'm not sure that AI, I'm not sure how AI could be helpful there, although I guess, you know, any, any kind of intelligent system might give us ways to, to experiment, um, and ideas for, for things we might do. But it will, it will entail, uh, human, um, a human participation (laughs) because it will in- it will have to entail experiences and sharing experiences and being able to talk about them. Um, and, you know, of course maybe AI will develop to that point and they'll just be way beyond us in all these ways and they'll figure it out (laughs) . Um, so, you know, I guess the, the issue will be if AI is not able to or uninterested in communicating with us, we just won't know (laughs) . If they do, if they kind of move forward in the way I, I talk about science progressing i- in my, in my docuseries, um, if they're able to do that before we are in some way and they actually figure something out, we won't be able to just know because they tell us. Um, there has to be a sufficient level of communication for us to understand and believe what they're saying and, you know, we'll, we'll have to hope that they care enough about us (laughs) to explain it.
- CWChris Williamson
Please, please, please, Mom, don't forget me. Don't leave me on the school bus.
- 35:59 – 42:42
How Do You Experience Magnetic North?
- CWChris Williamson
- AHAnnaka Harris
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, uh, magnetic north.
- AHAnnaka Harris
So, yes.
- CWChris Williamson
How do you experience it?
- AHAnnaka Harris
Um, so there's an area of science, of neuroscience, um, it started with something called sensory substitution. Um, David Eagleman, again, the neuroscientist, um, was very involved in this work at Stanford, um, and, and some others. Um, and sensory substitution, you may have heard of some of these devices that have been developed for people who are blind or deaf. Um, for the blind, originally they created something called a brain port, and this was like a Popsicle-like thing that sits on the tongue and delivers electrotactile signals, um, based on a camera that's worn, like, on a headband. So it's receiving the, the, the visual input and then it translates that into, um, electrotactile signals on the tongue. What's so interesting about the brain is, you know, at first, the, the participants, they, they use these and they, they're just getting a buzzing sensation. They, means nothing to them-Um, I think, uh, over a little bit of time they start to notice patterns and it starts to feel like they... Oh, like when I'm getting close to a wall, I kind of feel this on my tongue. But eventually, it's usually about six to eight weeks in of using a device like this, the brain converts to intuitive way of experiencing. And so people, um, are able to use something like a BrainPort over time, and they're no longer feeling electro- electrotactile signals on the tongue. It's no longer about the tongue. Their brain is actually giving them a map of their external world based on this information. So, they can shoot hoops, they can walk through mazes, they can-
- CWChris Williamson
No way.
- AHAnnaka Harris
(laughs) Yeah. Um, David Eagleman gives a great TED Talk on this if, um, anyone in your audience wants to check it out, and he actually then goes to, on to talk about, um, sensory addition in that talk, which is kind of the natural progression of th- this. So once they realize they could give these tools to people who couldn't see, um, they realized maybe we can tap into other things that, you know... Why just light waves? Why not other things in our environment that we don't perceive? And maybe the brain can, um, interpret those signals as well. And so one of these studies was, um, to try to give participants an experience of, of the Earth's magnetic field. Um, this was a belt they devised. Um, so it was a belt that went all the way around the body and had electrotactile signals all around. And I don't totally (laughs) understand the science or the technology of how it worked, but it was, you know, perceiving the Earth's magnetic field. Um, and again, this is something that other animals can do, so they thought they'd start with something that other brains that we know about are, are able to interpret. Um, just the human b- human brains aren't set up that way. So, um, it was such fun talking to, um, Dr. Sasha Fink. He's a neuroscientist and he was one of the participants in this study. Um, and the way he talks about that experience is really interesting. It's like... The way he was talking to me was like someone trying to explain to a blind person what it's like to see. Um, so he would kind of try to compare it to other senses, um, but he got, he s- had this intuitive feel after six or eight weeks of where he was oriented. Um, he said a few very funny things. One was, "I noticed all the toilets in my life face north." (laughs) You know? And it's just because, he was like, my... He said the main toilets. "My toilet at home, my toilet at the office, my toilet wh- you know, wherever. My friend's house." Th- he noticed they all face the same direction because he said it s- he said it's like noticing, um, a color or noticing... You walk into a room and you're both wearing the same shirt and you say, "Oh, we're both wearing the same shirt." Like, you just know it because it's intuitive and because you see and your brain works that way. And so it was just a feel. Like, he knows which way he's facing all the time, and so he would make these connections and associations like, "Oh, this faces that way." He could kind of... He had a better sense of, like, the map of the world, really. Um, he said it also completely threw off his intuitions for, you know, the streets where he lived because he realized, you know, the e- no- none of the streets are actually facing the way they say they are. (laughs) Um, and I'm trying to think of some other. He, he described this very interesting sensation. Um, he said just like with sight or sound or anything else, there are pleasant versions of it and unpleasant versions. So there are things we like to look at that bring us joy and things that we find repulsive, um, with taste and sound and, you know, music on all of these things. We don't ever even think about this. But the same is true with the Earth's, Earth's magnetic field. So there were circumstances he would find himself in where he didn't like the position he was facing in that certain, um, place, and then he described this thing that I just think is so beautiful where he said he went up a spiral staircase once and it was so enjoyable. (laughs) There was something about, I don't know, orienting around a center that way that he just found himself, like, seeking out spiral staircases (laughs) because-
- CWChris Williamson
Be careful. This-
- AHAnnaka Harris
... it felt so good.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- AHAnnaka Harris
He said it was like hula hooping but you're the hula hoop or so- something like that. (laughs) Um, anyway, I think, you know, if we're able to get a better sense of what consciousness is, it will keep moving in this direction of broadening our experiences, potentially sharing experiences, you know. The fact that, um, I have so many memories throughout my life of other conscious experiences that existed in the universe and other, you know, times and places, um, that's, that's through memory. And when I me- when I remember a situation that I was in, it's never exactly the situation I was in. It's, I'm in a new moment but I have enough of the residual of those memories that I can kind of... You know, I have this experience knowing what that situation was like. Um, there may be some future technology where we can do that rather than between people through time. My, you know, myself as a three-year-old and myself now. Um, very different systems, very different brains, very different places in time and space. Um, there might be a future technology where I can have a memory of yours placed in my stream of memories and then I'll remember all the things that I did but then I'll remember-
- CWChris Williamson
You do not want, y- you do not want that at all.
- AHAnnaka Harris
(laughs) No.
- CWChris Williamson
It'd be very dangerous.
- AHAnnaka Harris
Maybe I'll choose someone else for my first memory. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
It'll be very d- very, really very dangerous.
- AHAnnaka Harris
You know, just the experience you're having right now of looking at me and, you know, th- having earbuds in, in your ears and just a simp- simple everyday experience that, you know, I could have a similar one from my day yesterday but I could have a memory of being over there looking this way and that would just kind of be in my stream of memories in the same way that all of my memories are there. And I think that's the type of thing that will help us better understand.
- 42:42 – 47:26
Studies Behind Behaviours In Plants
- AHAnnaka Harris
- CWChris Williamson
You've mentioned plants a couple of times today.
- AHAnnaka Harris
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
What have you-
- AHAnnaka Harris
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
What have you learned about plants?
- AHAnnaka Harris
Um, plants... Well, first of all, the science is really speeding up now. Um, there was quite a taboo around studying these things for a while.Um, there's a new book, um, and I, I interview the author for my series. Um, her name is Zoe Schlenger, and she wrote a book called The Light Eaters, which is so poetic and beautiful because plants eat light. Um, and she gives so many examples of relatively new findings, you know, starting in 2014, um, again with light. Um, plants have more photo receptors, um, than we do. They can see, um, see is, you know, probably not the right word to use, but everyone's starting to get confused 'cause it's hard to know how to talk about these things. Um, there's an example of... Trying to think. Oh, the, um, there's a parasitic plant called the doddervine, D-O-D-D-E-R, not daughter as in daughter and son, but doddervine (laughs) . Um, a doddervine can, um, sense when it... When the seedling is sprouting it kind of moves around, um, in the air like you've seen other plants do in, in, um, um, time-lapse photography. It'll kind of move around and it, it seems to be sensing, you know, where it can find something to, to, um, parasitize, and there are certain plants that they can live off of and there are certain plants it can't. And so scientists for a long time wondered, is it chemicals? Like what are they... How do they know that in this direction... They shouldn't go that direction, they should go in this direction? Um, they started running all of these studies, and it turns out that at least part of the way they do this is through sensing light, and so they can sense the shape of a plant because, um, you know, the reason we see green when we look at a green leaf is because the other light wavelengths are passing through but the green ones are bouncing off the leaf, and that's why we're perceiving them green. Um, and so the doddervine can apparently tell... I, I forget. There's a long list of things it can tell, but essentially, you know, the type of plant it is. It won't grow towards grasses. It's very hard to get itself attached to a grass. It can't really survive that way, so if there are grasses planted, you know, over here, it'll sense the shape and, um, how much, uh, nutritional content is there and all this whole list of things that they've now studied. It can, it can tell by the light, um, that is getting filtered through the leaves and branches of these plants. Um, and the s- the final study that they did to prove this was they used LED lights and they set up different shapes of different plants, the types of plants, um, some being the types of plants that they would be interested in attaching to, and others like grasses. Um, but they were just LED lights in the shape of grass and LED lights in the shape of plants that would be the type of plants it would enjoy, um, and it went toward... It went... It made the right choice (laughs) . Um, so all of this I find fascinating, I think just because it is fascinating, but in terms of the level of complexity that we think is required for consciousness, I think this is all very intuition shaking, i- and that's kind of where I like to live and where I like to, to do my work. And so, um, you know, you can kind of fall on either side of it. I, I, I don't know if plants are conscious. That's not actually why I became interested in them. The reason I started doing a deep dive into this is because, um, my intuition is that plants aren't conscious like, like most people. Um, and so the question is when we started unveiling some of these much more complex behaviors that kind of fall into the categories of human behaviors, um... I spoke to a plant biologist, um, Danny Chamovitz, Daniel Chamovitz, um, and he and I spoke a lot about how he wasn't sure which terms to use. He would say, you know, "Can you say a plant can hear? Can you say a plant can see? And i- without consciousness, how do you describe the same phenomenon?" Uh, um, and then, of course, you know, is it possible that there is some conscious, level of conscious awareness there? But my interest was less in that and more in, how is it that we can look at some behaviors that are quite human-like and not think consciousness is necessary for them, but somehow when we exhibit similar behaviors we think it w- it, it couldn't be done without consciousness, and what is... Where, where are we mistaken?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. Yeah, that's humbling.
- AHAnnaka Harris
Yeah (laughs) .
- 47:26 – 53:53
Current Stance Annaka Is At About Consciousness
- CWChris Williamson
I wonder whether... Well, actually, w- where have you come to land on the where consciousness comes from question, all of the different schools of thought? Are you a, are you a, a neo-panpsychist now? Like what, w- what is this?
- AHAnnaka Harris
You know-
- CWChris Williamson
Do you fit into some broad bucket?
- AHAnnaka Harris
I do not fit into a bucket (laughs) . Um, where I have landed with all of this is that I think... I have been convinced that it's a legitimate and very important scientific question to be asking. Um, does conscious... Two questions, I would say. Does consciousness go deeper in nature than the part- than the sciences have previously assumed? Um, and the one I'm most interested in now is, is consciousness fundamental? So is it actually a fundamental property of the universe, um, something that is, is much more basic, you know, no less magical or interesting but something more, more basic i- in terms of a fundamental layer, more akin to gravity, um, than to, you know, something that arises out of complex, um, processing and behavior? And so, I think all that... I, I'm, I'm a very science-minded person and I've worked with scientists for decades, and that's really where, where my heart is, and I think that's how we... That's our best method for discovering truth, um, and for breaking through all of these, these false intuitions that we have, um, and giving us a reason to do that. And, um, and so I, I think-... it's truly a question. We just don't know, and I think it's fine for us to say we don't know, but to say that we have always assumed that consci- the sciences have always assumed that consciousness arises out of complex processing, and it's time to realize the evidence is not supporting that, and it's possible, um, that consciousness is actually fundamental, and it's not serving the purpose we feel it is, um, but is actually kind of a part of every process in nature.
- CWChris Williamson
Are we asking the wrong people?
- AHAnnaka Harris
But that's a question. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Well, are we asking the wrong people about consciousness? Should we, should we be asking mystics and meditation experts instead of scientists?
- AHAnnaka Harris
Well, my issue with that is that it's, it's not a reliable... The- those don't tend to be reliable methods. So I think we, we should and we do. Um, I think especially people who, um, have taken meditation very seriously, because that is the only tool we have, um, and I really see it, uh, as a tool, as a scientific tool, we have for investigating our own personal experience, for investigating consciousness directly. Um, and what's interesting too about meditation is that it serves the same function. It gets us, um, to actually drop some of these false intuitions. It has that effect because when we use our attention in that way, um, we can actually see through some of these illusions that the brain creates for us. So, the illusion of self can drop away. The illusion of conscious will can drop away. Um, even in, in one of the chapters of my series, um, On Space and Time, I, I talked to physicists, two physicists about space and time, and one thing that I found interesting there, and again this is just interesting. I don't know that, you know, how much, um, weight we need to put in it, but physicists are basically in agreement at this point that space is an emergent property, that space is not part of the fundamental story. And what's interesting about, um, meditation practice is that usually comes as an insight as well to people who have been meditating for m- many years, who are experienced meditators. Um, and there's a way in which it actually makes sense that the brain could be mapping something out for us, you know, som- something that is part of the external reality, um, that makes us feel that there is space, um, directly in the way that we experience it, where we may be perceiving something, you know, fundamental, a fundamental structure of the universe that is not really about space in the way that w- we perceive it. And now I'm remembering, that's when I had that conversation with Jann Levin about love, (laughs) where we were talking about, we were talking a- about something completely different. We were talking about, um, string theory and different interpretations of, of quantum mechanics, um, and different dimensions of space, and could there be 10, 11, 12, or more dimensions of space? And I was talking about how, you know, we have no intuitions as human beings for anything like that. We just like, "Where would that space be? We can't do that." Um, not only can we not go in higher dimensions, but we actually can't conceive of two-dimensional space even though we kind of feel like we can, um, because we can imagine a plane, uh, like a very thin plane, but the truth is if you make that plane thinner and thinner, we can't imagine a plane with truly no depth. That's not something that's imaginable to us. Um, and so, um, in that little video clip that, um, my, my publisher beautifully captured in a kind of sidebar conversation, um, I was explaining, um, to someone on our team about this conversation I had with Jann Levin where we really are kind of stuck in three dimensions of space. We can't imagine any more or any less. Um, and she mentioned love and said, "Well, you know, how many dimensions is love?" (laughs) And she actually got me to realize that there are many, many conscious experiences we have that are not necessarily in space.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- AHAnnaka Harris
Um, and that kind of led me down this path that I get into towards the end of the series, um, thinking about whether space is like color, where until we reached, um, the science that told us there isn't green out there in the world, um, that's being generated by the brain. There are light waves out there and what... you know, to the extent that we can understand even what light waves are. Um, but the thing we experience is not out there in the way that we feel it is. And is it possible that space is like color, where, you know, we only perceive a certain part of a spectrum and the spectrum is larger, um, than we perceive and that it's giving us information about something about the structure of the universe, but that space is actually not what it really is-
- CWChris Williamson
There's a-
- AHAnnaka Harris
... in the way that we, in the way that we experience
- 53:53 – 1:00:21
Does Quantum Physics Have Any Relation To Consciousness?
- AHAnnaka Harris
it.
- CWChris Williamson
You mentioned quantum physics, the-
- AHAnnaka Harris
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
There's kind of a God of the gaps, quantum of the gaps entanglements d- d- down at the quark level, et cetera, thing that goes on.
- AHAnnaka Harris
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Have you got... Well, there is. It's like, you know-
- AHAnnaka Harris
Yes!
- CWChris Williamson
... these words just get fucking snuck in, like-
- AHAnnaka Harris
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... like, where people don't-
- AHAnnaka Harris
No, they, they, they act like it's normal. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... really understand what's going on. Yeah, and they say, "Oh, yeah, it's the quantum fluctuations, and we can't explain about-"
- AHAnnaka Harris
"We don't understand any of that." Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
Before you know it, you're reading The Three-Body Problem. Um-
- AHAnnaka Harris
Yes. (laughs) That's a great book.
- CWChris Williamson
Have you got any sense of whether quantum physics... I mean, quantum physics is playing an important role in everything in that it's a part of physics.
- AHAnnaka Harris
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, but i- is there something extra special, extra salient about quantum physics when it comes to consciousness?
- AHAnnaka Harris
Um, I don't think so. I think in the same way that modern neuroscience is showing us that our intuitions about consciousness have been wrong in a lot of areas. Um, I think it's a clue... Well, it's not just a clue. There is a lot we don't understand about the physical world, right? And we've hit the quantum level, and we are deeply perplexed. Um, and there are, you know, many efforts to try to understand-... um, the types of things we see in quantum mechanics, um, and a lot of people, I should say, try to kind of make this connection that, you know, we still don't understand consciousness and that's mysterious and we don't understand quantum mechanics and so maybe it's part of the same thing, and I think that's not the, that- that- that's not a good reason (laughs) for putting them together. Um, but my path, you know, it's interesting. My path brought me to fundamental physics from neuroscience because my work in neuroscience led me to believe that consciousness very well might go deeper in nature and led me to believe if it does go deeper in nature, it could go all the way down to the fundamental. So then I kind of, you know, had to start working with physicists to understand what that meant or if that made no sense at all or if, you know, something we already understand about physics that would rule that out. Um, but what I found is... If consciousness is fundamental, it actually helps us make sense of some of the things that we are seeing in quantum mechanics. That doesn't mean it's true, (laughs) um, but it's interesting to me that it's helpful in terms of interpreting those things, and I think whether or not consciousness is fundamental, thinking of it that way, in the same way that we have assumed consciousness, um, arises out of complexity, we've actually made a ton of progress in, in neuroscience based on that assumption. Um, I think we could start with the... We ha- we have this, you know, just as many reasons to start with the opposite assumption that it's fundamental and take the science from that starting point and see where it goes, and I actually think we will make, um, a lot of interesting progress and think about things in a very different way and kind of open up our creativity to the way we think about things, um, whether or not it turns out to be true or not. Because we still, you know, we still haven't figured out that consciousness is due to complexity in the way, you know, we kind of started out with that assumption. We haven't gotten any closer to s- to believing that's true, um, and I think we could start with this other assumption and do some really interesting work there, um, but yes, I do think that if we think about consciousness as being fundamental, that it is actually what everything physical that we perceive and measure and see is actually a representation of other conscious experiences arising in the universe. Um, suddenly, lots of things that seem impossible for us to understand seem a little easier to get-
- CWChris Williamson
What like?
- AHAnnaka Harris
... to get our minds around. Um, this is usually just the first example that, that I start with, but, you know, there are some physicists who talk about, you know, objects that, that come out of the math, you know, a ten-dimensional object, um, a decarect is, is, um, you know, this is just, uh, an, uh, um, geometric object that exists because the math says it exists. Um, most mathematicians wouldn't say there are decarects in the universe. It's just that that shape is a possible shape, a ten-dimensional shape. There are some physicists who actually believe, um, that if it comes out of the math, it actually does exist, it must exist, and Max Tegmark i- is one, and there, there are other well-known, well-respected physicists who will say this, who have this intuition that if the m- if the math, if we can... These shapes get created by the math, they actually do exist in the universe. Um, if consciousness is fundamental and, you know, we kind of go back to that, like, w- how many dimensions is love, right? If we kind of change our intuitions about space and realize we're picking up on something about the structure that we're a part of, um, but it's not about space, and so picturing a fourth dimension, we're kind of thinking about it wrong. Um, it's a little bit like picturing a color you've never seen before. Um, i- it doesn't mean the color couldn't be there. It just means we don't perceive it, and so it's n- uh, it's, it's not part of our, um, conscious reality, but if a ten-dimensional object exists, if we're just talking about the physical world as we know it, we don't know how to make sense of that sentence, (laughs) you know, a ten-dimensional object. If a ten-dimensional object represents a very complex type of conscious experience that arises in the universe, still it's beyond something we could picture, but it's not beyond our comprehension. I mean, we can comprehend that there are all kinds of experiences that we don't understand, don't feel, don't know about. We don't know what it's like to be a bat. We don't know what it's like to be all kinds of creatures that we already know exist. Um, so if the math, um, and the physics tell us that certain structures exist and every structure that exists in the universe is, at bottom, a felt experience, um, or many felt experiences arising, then suddenly, those types of things, um, make more sense and are, and are easier to talk about, and I think open new avenues for exploration also.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- 1:00:21 – 1:04:07
The Future Of Consciousness Research
- CWChris Williamson
What do you think the future of consciousness research looks like, should look like?
- AHAnnaka Harris
Hm. Um, this is kind of what the last chapter of my documentary is devoted to, and I wish I were more creative (laughs) in my thinking, and I actually talk about the fact that, um, as creative as human beings are, for some reason, we're very bad at envisioning the future and where, like, new technologies will lead us. Um, but I did spend a lot of time thinking about this, and so, um, it, you know, I, I don't know how this will manifest and where it will lead exactly, but the things that I can think of and imagine, um, are things like sensory addition, so I imagine that, um, perceiving new, um, forces and systems, um, like magnetic north and all the other things that we don't sense that...Um, feeling them intuitively actually give us a lot of scientific knowledge. Um, you know, all of... Not all, but most of the physics, um, that we've done comes from the fact that we feel ourselves in the world. We feel a lot of the physics, um, and we're able to get a, a tremendous amount of information just from perceiving it. And so I think if we're able to start to, um, perceive other things in our environment with our brains in a way that we can develop intuitions for them, I think that that's, that's one avenue. Um, the other one I mentioned is, you know, if it's possible to not just share memories across, you know, the ages of one person as they evolve over time, but to share them across human beings. So it wouldn't be the same as having the same experience in the same moment, um, but just being able to have someone else's experience as part of my memory, I think, suddenly gives us a whole new set of intuitions, um, about consciousness and, and what's happening and how, you know, we are... relate to one another and, and all of that. Um, I also was thinking when I was reading, um, Sara Walker's book, and I mentioned this in the series also, she's a, a astrophysicist who's working on a theory of life. Um, she talks about... She mentions in her book how Einstein, you know, had this intuition for spacetime. He was the first human being we know of to think about gravity not as a force, but to imagine that space and time are somehow part of the same fabric, and when that fabric warps, um, it affects how objects move, right? So rather than gravity being a force, um, it's actually the warping of spacetime. And he had that intuition, he had that insight, um, but it took him years and decades to formalize that intuition to be able to express it to others. I mean, again, it's another communication issue where if somebody else doesn't share that experience, it's very difficult to talk about and communicate it. So, you know, it took decades for him to get this out in the mathematics and in language and to communicate it to other scientists so that other people could share this idea and move forward with it. Um, and I had this thought while reading her book, you know, what if that intuition could be shared? You know, that's a, that's a conscious experience. That's a felt experience. He has a, you know, later, 10 years later in his life, he has a... he still has the memory of that intuition. The intuition didn't go away for him. Um, is there some way in which in the future human beings might be able to share and really progress science? I mean, imagine if, if Einstein, the day he had that intuition, could have shared it with 15 other scientists. (laughs) Um, and so yeah, it's in, it's in this vein that I imagine, if it's possible, th- this is kind of where things will be headed.
- CWChris Williamson
Heck
- 1:04:07 – 1:04:48
Where To Find Annaka
- CWChris Williamson
yeah. Annaka Harris, ladies and gentlemen. Annaka, I love the fact that you went and did a unnecessarily complex-
- AHAnnaka Harris
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... uh, audio documentary series trying to answer these questions, uh, after writing a book on it.
- AHAnnaka Harris
Me too.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, where should people go if they wanna check out the documentary?
- AHAnnaka Harris
Um, for the documentary, there's a website for the documentary. It's just lightsondocumentary.com. Um, my website you can find, um, all of my social media links and all of that, and that's annakaharris.com.
- CWChris Williamson
Heck yeah. Annaka, I appreciate you. Thank you.
- AHAnnaka Harris
Thank you.
- CWChris Williamson
Congratulations. You made it to the end of the episode. And if you want more, well, why don't you press right here? Come on, tap it.
Episode duration: 1:04:48
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Transcript of episode M2DbhKDyo18
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