 So one of my hopes is that such a question could be answerable someday But I think we have to really dig a little bit deeper I mean analogy that people coming to make is go back far enough in history and you find people Trying to understand what life is and they didn't have a definition of life But now with a lot of additional insight into biology. We talk about cells that divide. There's genes. They replicate There's now a lot of mechanistic underpinnings that allow us to have a much better understanding what life means that if you go back 500 years people would not have even had the language to describe those phenomena because they didn't know what the phenomena were consciousness remains elusive Even to define an operational way much less to explain the workings of how it occurs or to causally induce your creative part of what I think we have to do is to Understand that process because of course all of reality that we are aware of that awareness process occurs through this thing that we Haven't yet got an operational definition of What's up, everyone? Welcome to simulation. I'm your host Alan Sakyun We're on site at the transformative technology conference for our second partnership with them We're super pumped and honored to now be talking with dr. Edward Boyden. Hi Ed. Hi. How are you? Thanks for coming on the program Good to be here Man, this is gonna be so much fun So pumped Ed you are obviously extremely fascinated with the nature of reality why we're even here what this all is about Are we really all one? Well, it kind of depends where you draw the boundaries between things right part of the problem with The nature of reality is we have so much undefined words, right? So if you're talking about one, let's say we are interpreting that as a being Um, let's say I have my consciousness and you have your consciousness Part of the problem is we can't define consciousness in an operational way. You can't measure my consciousness I can't measure yours. I could for all you know be a very accurate robot sitting here right now, right? I'm not actually but but it's possible So I think part of the problem with dealing with these questions is there are a lot of things that are sort of undefined and One of my hopes is that by studying things like the brain We can find the otherwise invisible Workings of the clock the gears in the machinery that underlies these things and start to understand how they yield functions like consciousness and awareness and cognition and feeling So one of my hopes is that such a question could be answerable someday, but I think we have to really Dig a little bit deeper. I mean analogy that people commonly make is go back far enough in history And you find people trying to understand what life is and they didn't have a definition of life But now with a lot of additional insight into biology. We talk about cells that divide there's genes they replicate There's now a lot of Mechanistic underpinnings that allow us to have a much better understanding of what life means that if you go back 500 years People would not have even had the language to describe those phenomena because they didn't know what the phenomena were Yes, there's a tremendous amount of scientific advancement that is helping us There is also going back like you said in history going back even further than what you were describing Does it all go to one source? Does it all go to that big bang or that? Source or that all that is or that god or creation or whatever people want to call it. Does it all go back to one? Well, I guess it kind of depends on what you mean by one again, right? So the big bang of course Hypothesizes that from you know, this nothingness fluctuation you can get everything. So maybe it goes back to zero by that definition But again, I think part of the problem here is you know, um, this is operational definition question. So you can Describe things up to a certain point. But then looking beyond that is a speculation, right? So even people who study the first Zillions of a second after the big bang will freely admit that their theories cannot go back before it, right? So I think this is this sort of tension and where science meets philosophy, right? And that's actually was one of my original motivations. You know when I was a kid I was about eight years old and I went through a very religious phase Um, and I really wanted to understand the human condition because I felt that you know, look at the suffering Look at the the misery, but also just the puzzles, you know, why do we do what we do and why do we feel what we feel? and um, How do you feel about uh, go ahead? Oh, just to finish the thought. Uh, one of the things I really hoped was that maybe we could Drive science far enough that we could have more mechanistic things to say about Yes, yes, this is extremely important because the questions you're asking are immensely important But I guess the way to summarize what I'm saying is that I feel like we're not ready to answer these questions But maybe we can try and get to this point. This is this is great. This is the marriage of science and spirituality This is the two sides of the same coin This is where science can advance itself to prove some of the things Then there's many things in both of the fields that have certain issues with them even in science that are In a sense have some sort of perverse incentives attached to them or whatnot But let's let's stay with this for a moment. Is everything interconnected? Well, there are a couple ways to look at that. So one of course is the the physics way of looking at it where Things interact through forces and exchange energy and so forth and and so there's sort of a a way of describing the connectedness between things Then there's also sort of almost sort of a computational level, you know Turing Alan Turing the computer scientist famously proved that you know the halting problem that you can't With an algorithm predict whether a computer program is going to halter or not In the context of a Turing machine and so one of the things that is sort of interesting is think about well Are there fundamentally unpredictable things or with enough information? Can you predict what's going to happen? and I guess the way that such Things are interpreted has to in the end boil down to connectedness between things how they interact and so forth yes, and another way to even dive potentially into something that When our children are born into the world if the if the if the realization is passed on to them from their Parents as well as the community the social fabric around them There is profound Awareness shifts that happen when we're instead of when we're born and we think you're separate You're separate you're separate that you think of things and you feel things like the air that i'm breathing in Is the air that phytoplankton and trees are breathing out this water that i'm drinking this apple that i'm eating these things Are powered by the sun and that's what gives me the energy That cycle of interconnectedness is unprecedented and it's it's in science it's just it's in science and in spirit and That's where I feel like those things marrying right there. It just it transforms our society I think potentially faster than anything else would it could it potentially be that then? Those feelings of separation that many of us feel at times would those feelings of separation potentially be a root of one of One of the roots of so many of the problems that we have in our world Well, yes another way to look at your question is um Are we interconnected and how but? Um a way to flip that question on his head is what can we do about it other ways to be more interconnected? Yes? So I've been meditating a lot over the last 10 years and recently I've been talking to Friends and colleagues and trying to learn other meditations than the ones that I've been practicing And so there are meditations where you imagine um Visual or visualize yourself merging into the air and then from the air into the sky and the sky into the forest and And you can feel yourself, you know It's very visceral to me becoming bigger and more integrated with other parts of the universe and um I was in norway with my family In august and was sitting on the the edge of the the water and felt myself, you know Becoming part of the water and then the waters touches the mountain and it led to this very expansive feeling So I guess there's one way to look at it, which is here's what we have And also there's a lot of stuff we don't know but a third way to look at it Is what are we going to do about it? Yes, there are ways to cultivate Enlightenment and empathy and so forth and I guess if I go back to how I thought about Science intersected with philosophy as a child and searching for ways where they might impact each other You know one of the ways to look at my long-term desires for brain sciences Can we end in some kind of more enlightened stage? Exactly? Yes Yes, and I love how you go to these solutions of things like practicing the process of the drop rejoining the ocean This is a very beautiful and eloquent way to describe One of the most common processes that if we train ourselves on a moment-to-moment basis to be one And That can do potentially all of the work That needs to be done to solve so many of the issues Well another bad thing is the meta where you um Visualize and convey empathy and love on close Friends and loved ones and then strangers and then to distant people who even might be wishing you harm And that's another way to try to transform one's relationship to others for the better and So I've been practicing that as well and it's it's very interesting how it Changes your Perspective on things and maybe even changes you yourself. Yeah over long periods of time. These are excellent Techniques like you said there's this strategy. I'm very fascinated with this question and hearing your answer to it What is the purpose of this reality? So again, I kind of think this is something that requires us to to delve into things more Let me tell you how I think about it. So For me the biggest question is why do we feel our feelings and Are aware of things in a way that for example, I could program a robot to you know Drop a hot object if it touched it, but it wouldn't feel the heat the way that you or I feel it And so far that evades uh Easy description And there are even examples in philosophy where you could uh, you know the zombie hypothesis where you know you make a A hypothesis what if somebody Had neural mechanisms that did everything that you did, but they didn't have an associated feeling with them, right? Anyway I guess what I'm trying to say is that there's sort of this Entity that appreciates reality and we don't understand much about it consciousness remains elusive Even to define in an operational way much less to explain the workings of how it occurs or to causally induce or create it so part I think part of what I think we have to do is to Understand that process because of course all of reality that we are aware of is only That awareness process occurs through this thing that we haven't yet got an operational definition of This is again This is this continued push that you've had for the longest time and this is one of the things that Is so crucial to the ethos of our show and into the ethos of yourself this pushing of the edge of what's known in the world And then as you do that process It gives you deeper and deeper insight into all of these profound philosophical questions about the nature of reality This is absolutely true and that's why the process of pushing the edge is so important so When you see civilization's edge of knowledge and you see us pushing it with the scientific method and trying to Understand more You know you pick the brain and you pick where you go and you also have to pick your strategies at how you kind of Chip away at that edge over time and you only have so many so much time You only have so many other people that work in the synthetic neurobiology lab How do you guys pick what to do? How do you guys pick the biggest questions that are trying to get at those biggest? ultimate nature of realities Well three thoughts so one is that People have studied the mind through psychology and the brain through neuroscience for many years But I think one of the things that eludes us is the incredible almost unimaginable complexity of the underlying machinery and that's what led me When I entered neuroscience about 20 years ago to make the hypothesis that we need better tools better ways to see better ways to control and better ways to map what the brain does and that Sort of triumvirative goals is really what drives a lot of what we do in our group to invent tools that can solve those three Aspects of the brain and then to apply them in a systematic way to see what those hidden workings do So if you project it forward a bit, you know when I hope is you know when we feel a conscious sensation or when we Are making a conscious decision Presumably those states are being created by processes that occurred before the state arrived in its existence And if we understand that process, maybe that is what leads us to an operational definition of consciousness It's elusive to try to grasp it in this moment of occurrence But if we can see what happens before that leads to it that might give us a unique handle That's what that means is we have to really Look at the internal states of the brain. It's not enough just to look at the outward behaviors um, because if I put a coffee cup down and turn my head to the left, um, that might Be a behavior, but it might not reflect what I was feeling. Maybe I was feeling You know anguish over a loss from many years ago, or maybe I'm joyful that you know tomorrow I'm going to meet with an old friend or who knows what so the internal state is important to study, but it's so hard to grasp You've mentioned this and you're so focused on it the process of building tools to probat exactly that the complexity of that The process of building a tool that helps people push an edge makes it so that the edge can be pushed faster This is a main important Philosophical point that you carry and that it seems to be that it basically pushes the edge It makes creates like a bubbled explosion at the edge Instead of just a tiny little pixel that's moved at the edge creates a bigger bubble of more pixels that open up Thanks to this tool And so then yeah, go ahead. Well, we try to build tools to have three properties First is that I really like this concept, although it's also a little bit ill-defined of ground truth. Can we find the ultimate Mechanisms and reasons why things happen boiling down Something as complex as a behavior or an internal state ideally down to the physics and chemistry Um that makes it work The second thing is we want tools to be easy to use and for others to be able to learn how to use them rapidly So when we build a technology like optogenetics or expansion microscopy or other tools We try to teach them and spread them to hundreds even thousands of different researchers all over the world because It's a it's to try to catalyze serendipity, right? You know, this is such a complex problem Let's make tools that can empower many many people in Uh in their own ways to start to probe these issues and then finally, um I want to integrate the tools So it's not enough to just use one tool if you see something happen But how do you know what is the important part? So you need to perturb the system in order to understand what's really important And then of course, what is the structure? How does the building blocks? Uh that comprises structure. How do the building blocks that comprises structure make it do what it does? So one of my hopes in the coming years is to integrate the observation of the brain The control of the brain and the mapping of the brain into a single unified pipeline That lets us maybe ultimately this is a bit speculative, but it's a it's a hope to make a Uh a computer model of Thinking and feeling and these other otherwise elusive concepts So then it could potentially be at the again this this this word. It's so interesting The the chemo electro connectome at that level of brain mapping could potentially be a catalog Of a specific emotion or feeling or a process of thinking something could be mapped at that crazy complex level of what's actually going on in all of the The brain Well, let's break it down a little bit. What do we need to know to solve the brain? Is it enough just to have the geometry of the wires to see how the they're connected up in some topological Um mesh do you need to know every molecule every molecule of water of oxygen? You know, those are sort of two extremes, right? And so one of the big questions of course is well We don't know for sure what all the mechanisms of the brain do. I mean, there are brain cells that make Uh cannabinoids molecules at a bit like the active ingredient in marijuana There are brain cells that make gases like nitric oxide. They're going to diffuse around that is which of these things are important for specific computations behaviors internal states The last answer is we don't know and part of the problem is we don't have a full catalog of what all the molecules in the brain do So what I hope is that We can make very detailed maps But I think there's also going to necessarily be a cycle where we acquire knowledge We try to synthesize it into let's say a computational model or derive principles from looking at the organization of Biomolecules or wires in the brain But those models will probably initially fail quite a bit But here's what I hope for those failure those failures are going to be constructive failures They're going to tell us what to do next. So if you miss something, uh, that can't explain the data You know, you're missing something Uh where cells are far apart can coordinate their activity Well, maybe there's some kind of diffusible messenger that connects them across space and time That's not apparent in the wiring and I think we have to open to these possibilities This continued process of probing into what we think is the deepest complexities of the brain Continue opening up more and more fields at the edge that have been we didn't even think existed We were just doing the The brain mind summit at stanford and there was the consciousness day as well and that consciousness day again was so mind blowing There's so many interesting aspects that we were never thinking of What does what do anesthetics have to do with consciousness? How can those give us signals about what consciousness is? How can you actually do something like? do a An analysis of f m r i e e g e k g all these different biometric signals from the body during a state of interconnectedness during a state of Unconditional love during deep presence And what would that prove to the world when you're in that sort of a state? What would your biometrics say when you're in that sort of a state? How harmonic potentially would it be Well I'm a pretty empirical thinker So I would take a look at the data and want to know what does the data say is it correlating with the state? Can it predict a state? We don't have an overarching theory of the brain or the mind yet So it has to be very data driven Maybe the signal quality is good enough that you can correlate or predict a brain state or a behavior Maybe the signal quality isn't good enough or maybe you have to invent a new algorithm You know machine learning for example, of course is sweeping many fields of science including neuroscience Um, are there strategies to infer for what looks like a noisy signal? Something that is very powerful But ultimately the burden of the proof relies on the people acquiring the data and trying to test the theory Um to to do the work and it's hard work Um, but until we have an overarching theory of the brain or mind I think it has to be pretty empirically driven When you describe your feeling of being it was in Norway. Is that right? Oh when I was doing that meditative practice. That was in Norway. Yeah When you're there and you're experiencing the process of your drop rejoining the ocean of all that is What do you what was going on in your biometrics? Hmm. Well, I wasn't monitoring anything, but I felt very calm um And I felt joyful um I wasn't monitoring in great detail, but I seemed to recall my heart rate You know stabilizing and so forth. So there's lots of physiological correlates of these states I guess the big question is Are any of these states, um, are these physiological correlates? Causal it's an interesting way. In other words, you know, sometimes there's always a question of do you have the causality inverted I think I'm doing a and it results in b But how do you know that b is not feeding back and causing a and uh I think part of the question here is that We might need technologies that not just let you map and look at the brain But connect it to the rest of the body, of course And so there's lots of people who are investigating the gut brain relationship now exactly figure. They might even have pathology Uh consequences, you know, there's a theory now that maybe changes in the gut could lead to Parkinson's disease All right, so there's a lot of Realization that we have to think of the brain as a focal point But it's not the only focal point. We have to think of the body as a system And then of course humans create systems together, you know, I may Be born with very little knowledge about x y or z, but I read a book or I talked to somebody and suddenly I've acquired Essentially what somebody else in their life figured out or some set of people figured out. Yes So at least these concepts like extended intelligence, right? Yes. Yes, you know, um We're talking about the edge of knowledge, which is literally pushed by the hundred billion humans before us that built this world That we live in That's why it's so far out right now. Well, that's part of why also when we build a tool, we want to give it to hundreds or thousands of other scientists because You know, if we monopolize that technology and make a few paltry discoveries, you know in a small academic group Well, when that's what's the point of building such a tool We should try to help yes spread it because otherwise the probability that a line of inquiry might end without Reaching a satisfactory conclusion goes up. Yeah, I love the focus on democratization of the tools that push the edge So important super important These feelings of You said joy calm these feelings that you have when you're in these states of interconnectedness Could it be that your biometric readout is actually when I feel deep states of interconnectedness potentially the same as my biometric readout Well, it's a good question. I mean, um everybody's different of course and uh There are ways to classify people's personalities, of course and and how people react to things People react to stimuli in very different ways, right? There are people who when they hear music will get chills running running down their spine and there are people who You know music doesn't do a lot for them. So I think the Question you're asking could be turned on set a little bit and ask. Well, what are The differences in the human condition, you know, how many different kinds of experience do we have? And this is a very hard question to answer. I mean Even old philosophical questions like is the red you see different from the red. I see are very difficult to confront Or is this when we do see that red? Is it could it be a very similar biometric readout? And even it is though, what what does it mean? So if there's a biometric readout What is its use or what is its explanatory power the power? I think of the the most important Biometric readout is the biometric readout during states of interconnectedness or unconditional love or deep presence And then seeing if that same Biometric readout is applicable to when you're feeling it or when brady's feeling it because if it is That is so powerful for us to be able to figure out Who is actually? Enlightened and who is Not and why is that important? Well, who's leading our governments? Who's leading our corporations around the world? Who are the billionaires around the world? And how deep have they went into these feelings of interconnectedness? And if they haven't yet then maybe it's important to Help catalyze that just like it is on a grassroots level for people to have more feelings of interconnectedness Well, one thing I think a lot about is also whether the feeling of something relates to the actual something so there people don't experience where you know, they'll give them a task And um, some people feel like they're really good at the task and some people feel like they're not good at the task And there are a lot of people interested in this question. Do feelings of understanding or other other um interesting Properties of a state do they correlate with actual understanding and so forth? So it's one of my one of my concerns is maybe there's a disconnect there You know, there might be people who feel like they understand and are empathetic and so forth But yeah, yeah, are they really understanding and then this is exactly why? If we can figure this out, which we will figure this out. I'm very confident that we will get this it would be able to showcase when someone is doing this Intellectual masturbation around saying I am feeling interconnected Versus actually being able to read out their biometrics and prove whether or not they are And then it can also be a good feedback loop for people that are actually trying to train their states of interconnectedness To know exactly what you were talking about if it's actually landing that if that feeling or rather not and it could be Based on the biometric state of the body and this is I think such an important place in uh This is like if not one of the most important things I think about neuroscience and just about this beautiful divine Body that we all get to adventure into consciousness and can we figure out What is going on in the biometrics of the body the heart the gut the brain as we were talking about? When there are feelings of interconnectedness When there are ed you know this you have children When you have children, it's a game changer when your wife gives birth. This is a game changer Mm-hmm Your your consciousness is shifted to brand new dimensions It's never been in before all of a sudden you become interconnected with this Child even before you when it was the gestation process was happening Do those feelings of interconnectedness can potentially be quantified and then more deeply understood and then Again this process of can I really tap deeper into the water? I drink the food I eat the The air that I breathe do I feel This deep process of interconnectedness because if I do Can that potentially solve so many of the the world's challenges that we face? Maybe I mean, I think one of the reasons that attracted me to trying to see how science goes out philosophy is also It could be that we need a much more precise description of some of these things in order to make progress so part of the problem with how We think about economics or psychology or or these uh phenomena that we engage in as humans is also that there's a lot of Underlying machinery that can sometimes be in a chaotic state, right? And it's you can describe things at an outward level using things like biometrics and external observation but It can make it Or it can be difficult to understand because the internal processes that yield the biometrics Yeah, it could be far more complicated. Yeah. Um For example, I might in my mind have a whole series of events as my mind wanders which lead me to think about You know, we mentioned norway earlier So I think about water and then fish and then salty Tastes and then and then I eventually pick up the glass of water and your biometric analysis We conclude something about my hand muscle moving But you would not have known anything about norway and fish and salt, right? So I had a very low resolution level This is why I focus so much on the brain because I think we need to find those internal mechanisms and workings That generate these outwardly manifested. Yeah Biometric states rather than focusing only on these external metrics in in a sense. I love seeing it as a big catalog a big library of states of consciousness and the Insane mechanisms that are happening in the brain at all of those different states of consciousness And um at the most highest resolution level that would be incredible to have that and It requires the pushing of the edge like like you and your team do This is another this is so related to what We were just talking about regarding what this incredible initiative of brain mind is doing These new funding vehicles This is sometimes it's just not something that is venture backable. That's going to give you some return Over a period of years, but it requires something different sometimes scientific advancements require different funding strategies Speak to the different funding vehicles that you see that are evolving. There's a need to address two things one of course is that Really great science is often unpredictable because if you could predict it fully then, you know, is it Really necessary, right? You already knew the answer The other thing of course is if you want to Take a technology discovery and mature to the point of helping people in everyday life Then that does require some deployment or often commercialization or dissemination effort So part of what I'm thinking a lot about is how to connect those early stage exploratory serendipitous events To the value that people eventually Will appreciate And so, uh, you know today I talked in the seminar that I gave a bit about this three part model Invent a deep science tool optogenetics to perturb the brain expansion across get a map the brain And Help other people make discoveries with it. Yes, there's Alzheimer's. There's depression. There's schizophrenia. There's basic questions Like what is a emotion or what is a feeling? Yeah And then once you have a deep understanding deeper than previously possible ideally Then that's the time to go and design The innovation or invention that goes out into the world and this model. We've now applied in a number of contexts Um, and it's been very very exciting tool democratize and then do the invention Yeah, yeah, yeah that a lot and so So the the the tension the funding of course is how do you connect the value in stage three When the ultimate invention gets out to help people in the clinic and to recognize the scientific tool that yielded it All back in the beginnings. Yes and fund that so it's almost as though you have to sell as a proposed down the line Value that your immediate family members are going to get these these tools of assistance with their potential neurodegeneration Or any neuropathy or what have you? Um or pathology of any sort and just sell them on that vision at the earliest stages for your process of tool development But the problem is because there's two leaps that you have to make it's very hard to see that connection So I think one possibility would be to explicitly build such a network What if there were a large number of scientists who Would take new tools and apply them to lots of problems You know, what if we started making maps of I don't know all diseases or something Right to set a really ambitious goal and then we're going to go build these imaging tools So we yield the maps So now I've connected the technology To the potential for discovery and then of course can we connect the potential discovery to The third stage the design. Okay, if we have maps of all the diseases We're going to get drug targets in mind and be able to build more targeted pharmaceuticals than ever before You know, most drugs are pretty messy brain drugs amongst the messiest to fall In terms of side effects, but if we had a map, we'd like said look this targets in these seven brain circuits But not these other 34 We might be able to design a new technology that could be deployed into the medical world That would be ultra specific. I mean, this is just an idea now I like this one to me. It's it's as though if we create the The just a better knowledge graph then we can show the we can sell more easily the actual Story And also it helps to overtime to have track record too. Yeah. Yes when we started doing neuro technology Which was before neuro technology was cool A lot of people didn't buy it and A lot of engineers. I felt thought that the brain was a little bit too Nebulous, you know, if you really wanted to be a bio engineer you go after DNA, right? That's the the fundamental thing And then also I think a lot of neuroscientists at the time Distrust the technology. There just weren't that many technologies that Were that useful in everyday life? Now, there was like a couple things that in the last In the couple decades before we started trying to crank these technologies out in a serial fashion that achieve widespread use and so But one way to make it possible is to be very concrete about it, you know, let's make Deployability into the scientific scientific community a goal. Yes, and keep that in mind at the forefront I love that. I love that Ed. That's so huge Ed, I want to hit you with this question. This question is now So close to again Our hearts, you know in the question of what is the purpose of all of this Is humanity a biological bootloader for digital super intelligence? Well, I think there's a lot more than just intelligence. You know, suppose you had a robot that was just like you It was as intelligent as you it could do everything you did But it wasn't aware Which would you rather have around on earth, you know that or You know you with your awareness. What if the digital super intelligence is both intelligent and aware? So again, it goes back to the lack of an operational definition of consciousness We don't have a consciousness meter. We don't know how to create consciousness So I don't know the answer to your question. You you created consciousness with your children Uh, I think it's probably a stretch to say that I created the consciousness, right? You know, maybe cells divide and over time they form a brain and then the brain is part of it But if you if you think like that, then you could say that this water created consciousness because without water that people wouldn't be produced Right, so I don't know if this is okay. Well, this is the interconnectedness of everything Yeah, but if you're willing to say that water creates consciousness, then that how it's very hard to make this scientifically Or is panpsychism is all actually consciousness So again, I don't know if we can just as we can't measure to create it. I don't know how to answer that question Interesting. Yeah, there's there's a lot of ways to Wander down that that digital super intelligence conversation And plenty more times to endeavor into the nature of reality as we both dive deeper into, you know Our understandings of what this all is. Yeah Last question What is most beautiful in this reality? I can only pick one thing. What is most beautiful at? well, you know earlier we talked about family and children and I think that the beauty of that is sort of multidimensional one, of course, just the direct emotional connection You know with a spouse or a child, but then also as a neuroscientist It's been fascinating also to watch aspects of personality emerge So our son is almost 10 and our daughter just turned seven and to watch their Creativities and storytelling abilities and and personalities and and goals emerge as distinct entities is just fascinating So I think you know the beauty here is multidimensional. There's the emotional level, but also the intellectual level and It makes me even more want to Sort of achieve those twin goals that you know, I talked about in the seminar earlier to figure out how we can heal suffering through ground truth mapping of what's going on in the body and the brain But also understand, you know the human condition, you know, why do we do what you do? What is the brain doing when it generates our minds and Are we so many unanswered questions there? So Um, I think in our interview. I had a lot of responses where I said, well, we just don't know Maybe we should redo the interview in 20 years. I'm like, okay. Here's Here's what we figured out And in some ways your other famous one was let me flip that question on its head Let me rephrase that. Yeah, that was your other one. Well, but I think it's important. It's extremely important Because this is kind of how we approach a lot of our problems, right? Somebody comes to us and says, oh, we need a better I'm just gonna make this up but a better surgical instrument. Actually, this actually did happen People came to us and wanted better surgical instruments And we started thinking what if we just made The brain stimulation non-invasive so you wouldn't need the surgery at all So turning the question on its head And trying to understand is there a deeper question underlying the overlying question Is one of the the methodologies that we routinely practice and I think it's one of the reasons that we can As we talked about earlier try to aspire to tools that get down to the ground truth I think there's like the old saying, you know, if Henry Ford Asked people what they wanted they would have all say said they wanted faster horses, right? Because they didn't they have the concept of the automobile in their minds So digging one level deeper is at the core of core everything we do. Yeah. Yeah, I like that a lot, Ed Okay, you have two kids. What are you gonna recommend them as a skill to learn going into this Age that we're all endeavoring into Well, I think a lot of the things that we've been talking about I I think can be made into learnable teachable skills Digging one level deeper trying not to make too many assumptions Trying to think of alternative strategies to what is the current accepted path Thinking from first principles as much as possible. It's not just an incremental building from a past Data point, but what's really going on under the hood and we get to that fundamental truth? Yeah, those are huge Ed thank you very much for joining us on the show. Great. It's been an honor. It's been a pleasure. Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on Whoo, such a good one. Really appreciate you. Thank you. Ed. Thanks everyone for tuning in greatly appreciate We'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below on the episode all the different topics that we talked about regarding the nature of reality and neuroscience Check out the links in the bio below synthetic neurobiology.org also at boyden.org and ed's twitter profile Check those out. Check out the links in the bio below to the transform of technology conference as well Check out those links support them. We'd love for you to do so Also, thank you very much brady springer for co-producing the show really appreciate your brother. Thank you very much Check out the links in the bio below to simulations support the artists the entrepreneurs the spiritual leaders the organizations around the world Do you believe in support them help them grow you can find all of our links below patreon cryptocurrency paypal You can design cool merch and get paid all those links below and go and build the future everyone manifest your dreams into the world We love you very much. Thank you for tuning in and we will see you soon and check it in 20 years We have the answers to some of these questions part two in 20 years