 Hi, and welcome to episode number seven of What's Sex Got To Do With It with my wonderful 84-year-old great-grandmother, Arthur, who is my favorite grandmother in all of the east coast of the United States. So this chapter is called My What A Big Brain You Have. Do you want to tell us why? That's kind of a play on Little Red Riding Hood. Oh my, what big eyes you have. My, what big ears you have. My, what a big mouth you have. The better to call you up with, but so it was sort of the thing, my, what a big brain you have because intelligence is one of the things, perceived intelligence is one of the things that makes a man attractive to a woman. And you know, I don't have a lot of faith in standardized intelligence tests. I think they measure, they're almost a social construct, but there's a lived intelligence that women are very quick to spot. And it's often, to me best reflected in a sense of humor. Women love men with a good sense of humor, quick on the uptake. Those are all signs of intelligence that women do code away. He was really smart. You know, like how could you not fall for him? He was so smart. You know, so I heard that kind of thing a lot. So it just sort of, this chapter indicates that I believe that one of the things that drove human evolution was selection for a special kind of intelligence. In our case, intelligence, you know, if my hypothesis about the origin of our species being that chromosome fusion, we might have been born with some traits that were not necessarily adaptive. And so by selecting for intelligence, women were selecting for men who knew how to fit themselves to manipulate the environment in such a way that they might survive in it, even though they were hairless apes. They might not have had the fur to keep them warm, but they had an ability to figure out how to build a shelter for those kinds of things. Right. I got you. This is so much in this chapter. It's going to be really hard to squeeze it into 30 minutes because I was really, you discussed a lot of things that I've thought about. And your conclusions, in some cases, are a little bit different than mine. So we'll explore that. Because you talk about the brain being more than a computer. Not necessarily more different from a computer. The brain is different from a computer. Right. But you do still see it as a mechanism, though, right? I guess, yeah. I have said to people, the human brain is not a skilled worker. That is one of my lines, but it's very good at two things. It's been shaped by evolution to be very good at survival, short-term survival, and at reproduction. That's what it's best at. And it can really trick itself, use language to trick itself about other things in order to make sure that those two things get accomplished. So it's a very skilled worker if you're talking about getting people to reproduce. But it's not such a good skilled worker if you're trying to, for example, get political parties to see reasonable solutions, that kind of thing. Right. So one of the things you say is that AI will not be able to reproduce what the brain does. Well, yeah. And you are much more familiar with AI than I am. So I'm interested in your viewpoints on this too. My bias on this is what little I've read on AI, which is just a few books, is that the human brain and artificial intelligence, to me, they're different animals with different functions. And so to try to use the computer as a model for the human brain, I argue with that a little bit, because I think our human brains are very good technologically. We're good at designing things because we have systems in place to keep us honest. You know, I really believe that language has given us the ability to lied ourselves. Self-deception, deceit, we're very good at those things. But we have designed systems to keep us honest. I was thinking about your remark the other week when we interviewed about the difference between logic and rational. Yeah. And I said, well, we're good at rationalizing. To me, logic is a set of rules that we've set up to keep our rationalization in line. So to me, that's a system of rules that keeps the human brain from getting out of line with its rationalization. And I view the scientific method the same way. The scientific method is a system of rules we've designed to keep our brain in check because it does get up to no good. And so that's why I think the human brain has designed computers to make up for the flaws. You know, the computer is really good at holding information in a way that the human brain is not. So we've designed computers, and probably artificial intelligence as well, to make up for some of the failings that our skill with self-deception put into the human brain. Does that make sense, Len? Does that make any sense at all? And so this is me, maybe at this point, there's not a good connection to the previous question, and maybe I'll tie this back in, maybe not, or just kind of having fun in this conversation here. So consciousness. I think of it as an emergent property. What do you mean by an emergent property? So to that, you have this network of neurons in the brain that are thinking, that are doing things, primarily focused on sex. And what was the other one you said? Survival sex and survival. Survival is a big thing. You can put a lot into survival. But the sense of self is emergent from that network. Because I think the sense of self is what people see as the spirit. And it's like, well, in their minds, there's no mechanism for the sense of consciousness. But I see it as an emergent property from the network of neurons in the brain. Where do you think consciousness comes from? I think that that's true. I believe that humans have consciousness. I actually think that probably all species have kind of a sense of consciousness. By that, I simply mean a sense of self, an awareness of self. And I think it's a real thing that like philosophers like Daniel Dennett, I parked company with him on this. He thinks that consciousness is an illusion. Maybe I've stated that wrong. He might not have used those exact words. But what do you think he means by illusion? That he doesn't think that it's, I shouldn't speak for him because I don't, you know, but I know when I was reading his book that I just paid over $30 for hardcover. He said some things that angered me so much. I felt like throwing it, not only across the room, but right through my skylights, which would have been very expensive to repair. So, so I know that and he's very held in very high regard. So I have to be careful not to misrepresent. But I, I have, you know, I, if it feels real to us, and we base our behavior on our sense of self, I, I just, you know, if it feels real, and you act as if it's real, then to me it is real. I like your idea of emergent. It's good. That's what he means me by, by, what was the term that he said, you know, illusion, you know, Well, that's that it's a word I put in his mouth. So maybe the book that I wanted to throw across the room, I maybe should go home and read again. I still do have it with angry notes scribbled in the margins. That's how I read books. But a book that warrants no notes in the margins, that's not a good book. You know, the books that have influenced me the most or the books I fight with while I'm reading them. And, and I express, you know, I have dialogue like you and I are having now with the books I read, I write in the margins, I put notes on all the fly with page numbers on the various fly leaves. And if I filled them all up, then that's, that's a book I never want to lend to anybody. Gotcha. Yeah, of course, with your notes in it. So, so, so, yeah, so we're gonna, we're backing up as you can maybe tell in this chapter. So you had talked about it to some lecture that you attended with, I guess it was Elizabeth Laskas. She was, she was the speaker, yes. And that she, you say she not only convincingly described research that documented the ease with which false memories can be suggested into the distance, but she also fooled the audience into creating a few flawed memories of her own. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? It's, it's a subject I didn't realize I was interested in until I heard her speak. And I was there with a friend when it was over, Sarah and I turned each other went, wow, that was life altering, just the sense that false memories can be implanted that easily. Now most of the false memories that she implanted in the audience did not work for me because I suffer from face blindness, prosopagnosia, and a lot of those involved photographs of faces and confusingness about who did what. But the research that she described with children when she first began studying false memories and the ease with which false memories are implanted were astonishing to me. For example, she would suggest to a child, oh, we talked to your grandmother. And she reminded us of the time you got lost in the mall. This child has never been lost in the mall. However, that then became a traumatic memory for the child. And even having the grandmother tell and the researcher tell and everybody tell her no, no, no, that didn't really happen. We were just kind of playing a game with you. Very difficult to remove that memory even when told it was wrong. So she tried to move to memories that would be less traumatic. Do you remember the time you got sick after eating chocolate ice cream? Well, guess what? Then the child has an aversion to chocolate ice cream because they have a memory of having gotten sick eating it even though they never did. So those were the kinds of experiments she talked about and how the the ethical responsibility she felt in designing those kinds of experiments to try to come up with a memory that wouldn't alter a person's life by being told that that it happened when in fact it hadn't. And so I just found that completely fascinating. I think in this chapter is this the chapter where I describe my sister and I having totally different memories of the identical event. Yeah, no, I think it's another chapter. But you know, but I mean, yep, why don't we save it for then? Okay, yeah, and if I don't talk about in that chapter, we can, or if I don't bring it up, you know, then well, it's just that I'm aware that the memory is tricky. You know, I can believe something passionately to be true. And then have to acknowledge that maybe I'm wrong about that. Right. And having seen Elizabeth Loft as one of the things that I say is I know I I yield too easily in family arguments now, because I now know that my memory can be wrong. And once you're aware of that, it is life altering. My friend was correct describing that as life altering. And my understanding to from I think it was on 60 minutes few years ago is that memories are immutable to it seems like each time you access a memory, you store it differently. And they did some research for people who had PTSD. And if they activated the memory, and they use the drug at the same time, when the memory was accessed, and they and then stored again, because it's somehow when you access the memory, you make it susceptible to being stored again with that drug there. I mean, it got stored in a way that wasn't as powerful, you know, so that it kind of took away the PTSD because the memory was there. But I think the deal is that for you get PTSD, the memory has to be stored in a way that also triggers an emotion. I mean, when I probably remember this, not quite correctly, but then when you put the drug there, I mean, when the memory is accessed, the ability to store the memory with the emotion that comes with it is removed. Oh, it's a disconnect. It's a disconnect. Now you have the memory, but it doesn't carry the emotional check. I think I'm quoting Elizabeth Loftus correctly. When she said memories are like Wikipedia entries, you can take your information out and alter it and then put it back in, but so can other people. Yeah. And that's what's astonishing to me. You're not the only one. And every time you take it out and remember it, it alters a little bit when you put it back in. So our memories are always transforming. They're not accurately stored, but they help us create meaningful senses of ourselves, a meaningful sense of ourselves and our lives and keep us, keep us whole in a way so that we can proceed forward. So we construct memories to help us survive, actually. Right, right, right, right. And it's funny to me, when you say about the Wikipedia, that was the end of that paragraph. I mean, and it was something about this section that kind of reminded me of something that was written by Jennifer Werner, who is at the Kennedy School, and she has this article called The Angry Mind. I'm forgetting the exact title of it. Something in the Angry Mind, you know, and it's really about how the Angry Mind is a mind that's very certain of itself. And when you are certain, that's when you stop thinking. And that's what generally gets us in trouble, is that we are no longer open to new ideas. And so with anger, you are convinced that someone else has done you wrong. And once you're convinced of that, you're not going to reconsider that at all. And uncertainty is the state at which you are most open to new ideas. But people don't generally like being uncertain. I mean, all I have to do is turn on the TV and look at the ferocity of the divides between people, the certainty that their view of something is correct. And of course, so many of our wonderful technological inventions amplify the worst of what it is about us, the ability to be tribal, first of all, and then algorithms that keep feeding us news that reinforces what we already believe. And so there is a lot of anger. And to your point, when you're that angry, it's very hard to let new information get introduced. That's a species-specific trait we've to learn to rise above. And we'll do it only by recognizing we're all vulnerable to getting a memory wrong. We all are. I think once we acknowledge that, then you're a little more able to listen to other people and think, wait, wait, you know, maybe I don't have that quite right. Right. So the article was on, the paper was called Decision Making and the Angry Mind. Who was it? Jennifer Lerner. I mean, it's really good. And so, and yeah, so uncertainty is where you are most open to learning new things, but no one really likes being uncertain. We always are fighting. It's like you're trying to resolve that uncertainty. And along with that, I mean, it's not only anger being that shuts down the thinking process. It's also happiness. Yeah, happiness can shut down the thinking process too, because it creates a state of certainty too. And I've noticed that from being a poker player, you know, I don't go to casinos or anything, but I play a lot with friends. And it's when you win, especially when you win big, I mean, you feel really good. And that's their sense of, well, I did this. So where it's anger is like someone's done something to me. I mean, happiness is that I've created this me. And so there's a certainty. And I learned myself is like, when I win big, I mean, I really have to work hard, you know, to be conservative in the way that I play the next few hands, because there is that sense of, well, I won. You know, I'm good. I've heard that someone who wins big the first time they gamble is much more vulnerable to becoming a problem gambler than someone who doesn't. I don't gamble. But the first time I ever went to a casino, I was my late husband was he was not late at that time. He was still very much a lot. But he went to get change. And so I just was using the change in my pocket in a slot machine. I knew nothing about them. And suddenly bells and sirens started going off. And I thought, Oh, I've broken the machine. I've broken the machine. I was a dutiful person. I didn't want to run away. I thought I should stand there and take responsibility. Suddenly one of the casino workers came to me and I forget I won some ridiculous amount of money. I said, I'm sorry. First I said to him, I don't all I did was pull the thing. I don't I didn't mean to break it. He said, Are you kidding me? Because I had no idea. But luckily, because I don't like that whole atmosphere, I never did go back. So I didn't become a problem gambler. But yeah, I won big the first time I ever pulled the handle on the slot machine. So the casino lost on you. Yeah, yeah, because they've never recouped that right. Yeah. Very well, good, good. You won big. You know, I don't remember how much. Yeah, I probably exaggerate how much. But it felt enormous to me. It's fine. So what's your sense on how the brain's going to evolve? Assuming we live long enough to evolve? That's an interesting one, Landon. Because as you know, part of my motivation for writing, I know, so let's not let's not. We just kind of eat people up. Yeah, but let's say the species. Oh, I would hope it would evolve to be more open to its own fallibility. I don't think we'll survive unless it does. Right. I think that's that's that's a necessary evolution our brain has to take. If we're going to continue to survive. So that so given that in my feeling, if we fail to recognize our own imperfections and try to rise above them, we're not going to survive. So to me, the human brain, I hope evolves to be more aware of its own frailty. So do you think it can evolve fast enough on its own? Or will humans have to get in there and muck around with evolutionary process? And maybe I shouldn't use the evolutionary process. It's like just get in there and intervene. What do you mean change? Well, genetic genetic therapies and things like that genetic intervention, which gets us into some interesting territory, right? Yeah, we're starting to make decisions about which genes and which traits mean. Yeah, that stuff makes me nervous. Lynn, I just want us all to become more aware of our own impact on the world around us and to take more responsibility. So right, but that awareness is generated by the brain by the brain. And so you ask me if the brain is going how it's going to evolve. My answer would be if we survive, that's how it's going to have to evolve. To become more aware, right? To rise above our own. And then my question to kind of repeat it was that, do you think it can evolve quickly enough? I don't know. Maybe, maybe, maybe there will be some environmental thing that will, I mean, who knows infection by virus or something that will change our neurology? It's possible. Or it could be that people who are more socially aware, I mean, select for each other, I mean, not select for each other, but are more attracted to each other and generate progeny that is more aware. I don't think that can resolve and change quickly enough. Interesting. And why is that? Well, just our generation, you know, what's a generation? How many? 25 years? 25 years. I mean, we don't have enough generations. I mean, I think it would take a lot of generations to affect that kind of change. Gotcha. Oh, oh. So I don't think there's an, I see the pessimist in me, and yet my family thinks I am such an optimist. I am, but in terms of humans, you know, if I watch the news, it's hard to remain optimistic. Right. Gotcha. Okay. So, so, so given, given the later chapters which we're getting, made a very nice big look at right now, you know, so, okay, you know, well, that's interesting. And, and even though we have a few more minutes to be left in this half hour, it's not quite enough meaning to, I think, launch into a whole other topic. And, and so, we don't want to get our editors here at ACMI who have been just so generous with their time in facilities. Fabulously generous. Thank you. Yeah, we're, we're going to end this chapter now and tease the next one with, well, what sex got to do with it, or apparently it's on the brain. You know, so, so, so, so, so, so, so I imagine like a big, like, uh, futon that has a brain map on it or something. So, he's having sex on the brain. He is. So thank you very much, Heather, and thanks for watching and, and come back for episode number eight.