Based Camp - Based Camp： You Probably are Not Sentient

00:00:00.000 would you like to know more hello malcolm hello simone i love your response i love that it is

00:00:09.860 your signature greeting with people very high energy but i also think it is an element of

00:00:17.820 your social autopilot not that i don't have a social autopilot i'm on that right now but

00:00:24.020 i think that's a really interesting part of human existence because for the vast majority of our

00:00:29.360 lives i don't think we're actually let alone not sapient not even really conscious not even really

00:00:37.200 aware of what's going on yeah and i think it's so arrogant when people pretend that they are aware

00:00:42.120 of most of their lives we talk about something called road hypnosis where they look back on a

00:00:46.500 drive and they're like i don't remember what i was doing during the drive their brain just shuts off

00:00:51.220 recording and the question is how much of our life is road hypnosis and i think it's a huge portion of

00:00:58.660 our life and it's something this is what initially got us talking about consciousness early in our

00:01:04.660 relationship was how do we at least enter moments of lucidity where we are aware of what's going on

00:01:14.320 somewhat sentient just long enough to be able to change things about the internal self model that

00:01:21.000 does run our autopilot so that at least in the majority of the life when we are on autopilot

00:01:26.740 we are better serving our values better better people more productive more emotionally in control

00:01:34.940 etc and i think our thought on consciousness really evolved in interesting directions from there

00:01:41.820 when we started really thinking about what consciousness means and why maybe it exists so

00:01:49.820 i think this will be really fun to talk about why don't you talk a bit about what you think sentience is

00:01:54.940 i think sentience our experience of consciousness in other words is really an emergent property of a

00:02:04.000 memory compression system so imagine you have a building security system with tons of different

00:02:09.900 inputs it's a feed of doors opening and closing within the building a bunch of different camera feeds

00:02:16.300 a chemical monitoring system coming in everything's feeding into this one control room

00:02:23.040 and then being put into a camera feed and then being stored in memory and there's a man watching the

00:02:30.940 security feed and i think that's our experience of consciousness is that our minds are synthesizing

00:02:37.840 smell sight hormonal fluctuations going on a lot of very complex inputs they're synthesizing them into

00:02:46.720 something that can be compressed in unified memory which if relevant will be stored in long-term memory

00:02:52.020 and then may in turn influence sort of automatic instinctual responses and because this memory is being codified

00:03:00.580 and in the moment it's being run through like a camera system we're getting the impression

00:03:06.600 that there is some kind of observed conscious driver that is running consciousness

00:03:15.640 i'm going to run this back to you it's almost like what you're saying is this guy who is sitting at this feed

00:03:24.400 he is collecting all of these different camera inputs all of these different sensory inputs

00:03:29.680 and they are encoded in this single quote-unquote experience which is being written into the hard drive of this computer

00:03:39.100 and when he is referencing what happened in the past when anybody is referencing what happened in the past within this big security array

00:03:48.920 they are referencing this encoding and it is because they are referencing this encoding

00:03:55.560 it creates the perception falsely so that the way this encoding works is the way that these things are being experienced in the moment

00:04:03.940 but it isn't actually well and that the that there's some intentional driver that's shaping each decision intentionally

00:04:13.100 through that interface essentially whereas the interface only actually affects insofar

00:04:20.180 the memory itself influences like automatic reactions so i and i think the research supports this

00:04:28.640 we automatically respond to things we automatically start taking action in response to stimulus

00:04:33.640 before we have some kind of conscious understanding that we're doing that and our memories absolutely

00:04:39.500 yeah mri yeah mri machines have shown this and while our memories will influence those responses

00:04:47.940 our current experience of consciousness is not in the driver's seat it is just passively experiencing this encoding of memories

00:04:57.180 it believes it's in the driver's seat i think that this is what's really interesting

00:05:00.620 is it will apply this feeling of consciousness to any experience that you're doing or any action that you're taking

00:05:07.720 so when you're doing open brain surgery on someone you need to keep them awake to prevent accidentally

00:05:12.540 cutting part of the brain you're not supposed to so they'll check right you can do things

00:05:16.240 like apply a small amount of electricity to a part of the brain and get the person to move their hand

00:05:20.660 and then you ask them why did you move your hand and they'll say oh i felt like moving my hand

00:05:24.420 and you can also see this with split brain patients these are patients where the corpus callosum

00:05:27.980 is split in their head and their right brain and their left brain actually function

00:05:31.640 pretty independently of each other when this happens right so you can cover one eye and communicate with

00:05:37.200 part of their brain and not the other part of the brain so you can tell part of their brain

00:05:40.220 pick up a rubik's cube and try to solve it then you put something on the other eye and you ask okay

00:05:44.800 why did you do that and they'll say i always felt like solving a rubik's cube i always wanted to do this

00:05:49.420 and you can do this with more complicated things so there's this experiment really great one where

00:05:54.300 they would give people pictures of like attractive women and they say which is the most attractive

00:05:57.420 and then they do a little sleight of hand later and say okay why did you say this one was the most

00:06:01.060 attractive but it wasn't the one they chose you'd actually replace it with another picture i mean you

00:06:04.680 could do this with political beliefs as well and all sorts of other things and most people will say

00:06:09.980 oh i chose this person for x y and z reasons and go into detail about why they chose that person

00:06:14.360 even though that wasn't the person they chose which shows that a lot of our consciousness a lot

00:06:20.320 of the way that we describe our sentience is more like sense making of our environment we know we made

00:06:26.700 x decision but x decision was actually made completely outside of our sentience's control

00:06:31.200 and then we have this little like lying historian in our head which is like no i made the decision

00:06:36.060 i made the decision i make every decision but but he's also recording the history that we remember

00:06:41.680 so then he's going through and saying okay i made the decision but this is it's not that he doesn't

00:06:46.360 have any say see this is where he does have a say and it's something that you mentioned which is that

00:06:50.100 he can encode emotions into the things we're doing and this can actually cause a lot of no emotion

00:06:56.580 isn't the right word because emotions do you know let's say that emotional narratives emotional yeah so

00:07:03.220 that they can encode positive or negative modifiers and they can shift the narrative like they can change

00:07:09.260 the camera angle or add sad music to something essentially to make it seem like a sad scene

00:07:14.720 i'm sure like you've seen like the youtube video of the mary poppins like preview but like done with

00:07:20.180 scary music and it just seems oh yeah yeah like that yeah like that's how we can change yeah that is how we

00:07:27.520 can change the narrative and the first time i was ever introduced to this idea that we take action

00:07:33.080 before we consciously are aware of it the person discussing it said that there's a lot of implications

00:07:37.920 to this because it would lead many people to believe that they don't have free will and have

00:07:43.080 them just say oh none of this is my fault i didn't consciously make this decision anyway where that's

00:07:47.760 really not quite we would say the right conclusion because you do have the ability to color how you

00:07:56.120 perceive reality um it's not in this kind of immediate non-asynchronous way that you would expect i would

00:08:03.500 say that this is just the myth of humanity versus the actuality of humanity and we would argue that

00:08:08.200 we likely evolved this ability because it was like a compression algorithm for communicating ideas to

00:08:13.060 other people i actually don't suspect that great eights have this sort of internal thing that we call

00:08:17.100 consciousness because they didn't need to communicate these it's a really good compassion algorithm for

00:08:21.700 linear experiences over time but one of the big lies that is that happened throughout this process

00:08:27.880 is it convinces us that we are a singular entity when in fact our brains function much more like we

00:08:34.860 see ai's function with individual instances running and we can see this with the corpus callosum split

00:08:40.040 that i mentioned earlier where it basically means that we have two largely separate parts of our

00:08:46.180 internal mental processing that are happening separate from each other this idea that the decisions you

00:08:51.700 make happen before they enter your conscious mind what that basically means is you have another part of

00:08:55.880 your brain which is making this decision and then delivers it to the conscious mind when we were talking about

00:09:02.100 the idea of a security camera with a bunch of different feeds a lot of the processing is done locally at

00:09:10.980 these various security cameras before they all get centralized into this sort of communal feed

00:09:16.540 with many of the quote-unquote decisions being made at those local levels and so we have this

00:09:22.420 illusion of ourself as a singular entity which is created by the way that this sort of sentience

00:09:30.460 processor works but it is just an illusion and so when we say oh we don't really have

00:09:37.000 self-control or we're not responsible for our decisions i think that actually even overstates the

00:09:44.820 level to which we exist in any sort of a meaningful concept close to how we think we exist

00:09:50.800 and so then there's this i would say added layer of complexity or maybe confusion you shared with me

00:09:59.660 an article saying that a very high percentage of people don't have an internal monologue what we

00:10:07.320 would describe they don't have an internal monologue they can't even another high percentage of people

00:10:11.000 can't even create images in their mind and so what we're even describing is consciousness is also not

00:10:16.800 even something that is universal as part of the human experience which is interesting because i think

00:10:25.180 most of us who experience consciousness as we're describing it would have a very hard time

00:10:34.580 understanding even what that means i don't know maybe someone watching this youtube video doesn't

00:10:41.040 have an internal monologue i wonder it's hard for you to model that but i suspect that the human

00:10:46.400 the variance within the human condition in terms of how things are processed is probably a lot larger

00:10:52.960 than we give it credit for and it will be even larger in the future a statistic that i just cannot

00:10:57.460 stop mentioning because it's something that more people should know that if you look at the heredibility

00:11:01.540 of iq right now and you look at the selective pressure so you look at the number of people who have

00:11:06.680 these markers versus people who don't have these markers which you can see because it's genetic markers

00:11:10.060 says you is this the number of kids they have we're likely looking at a one standard deviation shift

00:11:14.160 down in iq in the next 75 years in developed countries at least this is probably going to

00:11:18.400 affect developing countries later so i guess good for them they'll be all the geniuses in the world 0.97

00:11:22.660 we'll be in africa or whatever but places where you have this post prosperity fertility collapse

00:11:27.980 situation and when we think about how quickly and how much human iq can shift up or down we use this

00:11:35.140 one marker iq but i suspect it's linked to just all sorts of things about how we process

00:11:39.680 reality so actually i wanted to dig in a little bit more on the subject of kids because i think

00:11:45.500 that also as we've become parents we've had a more complex understanding of how consciousness

00:11:52.620 develops because we see it start to emerge in our kids i think there's definitely this point at which

00:11:58.300 we see consciousness blossoming and it's not one day our kids aren't very conscious and the next they are

00:12:05.440 i think that consciousness for example is starting to emerge more and more especially in our three-year-old

00:12:10.660 it's just beginning to emerge in our two-year-old and i think a lot of that has to do with where

00:12:18.100 they are with language processing i think it really influences well and that's why i say i suspect this

00:12:23.760 had to do it evolved alongside language to compress ideas but i think that this is where you can see

00:12:29.160 how the system can break in a way that can be very useful in relationships so this isn't just like

00:12:32.900 theory or whatever so one of the things you'll often see one of our kids do is he'll be in a bad

00:12:37.200 mood but he won't like understand the concept of generally being in a bad mood so he'll start crying

00:12:43.020 and he'll say i want this give me that toy and then you get him the toy and he just it doesn't stop the

00:12:48.520 bad mood and so then he's whatever he notices next close the door or move that chair like he just is

00:12:55.480 like whatever is currently causing the littlest bit of discomfort he thinks it's the core cause of like

00:13:02.420 this bad mood or why he's angry or what he's angry about and as humans i think this happens as well

00:13:08.460 and this is really bad when a friend tells you you're justified to have an angry state or something

00:13:13.200 like that because then this little narrative maker in your head says ah now you get to be angry now

00:13:17.980 you're socially justified to be angry and you will feel very angry about something or you might be in

00:13:21.880 a generally bad mood and your partner comes into the house and does something that just annoys you

00:13:26.820 in the slightest and then you create the internal narrative that you are in this bad mood because

00:13:33.800 of what your partner did and when you keep in mind why you're feeling these things and you try to keep

00:13:39.400 like fully in touch with the way your brain is actually working it leads to a lot more harmony and

00:13:44.360 a lot fewer fights and relationships because you have language for i am in a bad overlay state right now

00:13:50.620 which just means i'm in a bad mood generally but i'm not actually mad at you or anything specific

00:13:58.300 hold on though actually i think you've touched on something very interesting there which is that

00:14:03.100 maybe sometimes consciousness and narrative building hampers more than helps us for example like

00:14:10.060 the toxic girlfriend who has a bad dream in which her boyfriend cheats on her she wakes up angry

00:14:18.360 at him like she's mad at him for something he didn't actually do or maybe one day she's just

00:14:24.960 in a bad mood but then she makes up some narrative about it's because her boyfriend didn't bring her

00:14:30.760 flowers and doesn't appreciate her some he did something mean the presence of consciousness and the

00:14:36.880 presence of narrative building would cause her to turn what might be just a very transient bad mood

00:14:43.340 into something that builds a grudge over time and literally ends up killing the relationship

00:14:49.060 cumulatively but sometimes consciousness hampers us more than it helps us what i love about what

00:14:54.720 you're saying here in this fall is your idea of what it means to be meaningfully human and the

00:14:58.700 spectrum of humanity which is you become more human the more you take mastery and ownership over

00:15:06.240 these sort of evolved or quirks of the way your brain works and you don't allow them to control

00:15:13.340 your actions your actions are more logically decided and more decided based on as close to an objective

00:15:19.420 view of reality as you can get and so from the perspective of humanity that you convinced me was

00:15:24.880 a good one because this wasn't the one i had before somebody who does that somebody who has a dream and

00:15:29.200 then can't logically understand that is not a justified reason to be mad at somebody that they are like

00:15:35.520 meaningfully less human than another person and so then what does it mean to be fully human it means

00:15:40.200 to have total mastery over these things and that is something that we don't have but i think it helps

00:15:45.800 people understand because a lot of people hear the level of disdain we talk about things like

00:15:50.760 sentience and love and happiness and other human emotional states that a lot of people venerate but they

00:15:57.960 don't understand where that's coming from but then wouldn't that make an lm more human than we are

00:16:04.140 people may not know what a large language model is more sophisticated than we are and it's also not

00:16:10.740 bogged down by the need for hunger human failings hormones all these sorts of pollutants not pollutants

00:16:19.860 they're very instrumentally useful for biological human in a modern globalized society and often with

00:16:27.080 the type of knowledge work that humans are expected to do it's pretty counterproductive

00:16:31.700 well i think that this comes to your goal for yourself where your goal an iteration of yourself

00:16:37.420 that is your idealized iteration would strip out your emotional shortcomings be they love or happiness

00:16:45.280 or hatred or pain or greed and i'm not that way by the way i am not as bought into this philosophy

00:16:52.320 as simone is i would not strip those things away from myself i think that they add something

00:16:56.720 that i feel illogically i i still think has some value but i don't know maybe you feel that way too

00:17:04.120 and you're i'm mixed on it i'm mixed on it i one i'm deeply uncomfortable being human i really don't

00:17:09.840 like my body i really don't like being human i don't like the corruption to our objective functions

00:17:15.440 that human weaknesses cause but my general stance is if this is what i have to deal with if i've been

00:17:23.660 given a meat puppet i'm going to use it to the max i'm going to play the game you've given me

00:17:30.040 a crappy little battle bot i'm gonna take that thing and i'm gonna destroy everything even if 0.93

00:17:38.160 it's the worst machinery ever this is the way she talks about pregnancy she's i have a uterus i am 1.00

00:17:44.120 gonna wreck that thing i am gonna have so many babies i'm going to tear my baby to shreds if that's 1.00

00:17:50.960 what it was meant to do yeah then as a woman i reach the plains of valhalla by dying in childbirth

00:17:57.380 let it happen don't worry malcolm i promise i will play that clip at your funeral thank you

00:18:02.900 i really should probably plan that out but yeah i i feel conflicted i mean i yes if this is the hand

00:18:09.760 that we're dealt i'm gonna play it and i'm gonna play it hard but at the same time yeah i i really

00:18:16.140 aspire to that i don't think that has to be me and i guess that's maybe it's more i ai and machines

00:18:22.720 are my beatrice and dante's inferno this idealized version of humanity that i know i am not and that i

00:18:30.180 do not aspire to be but that i deeply admire i don't need to become it i don't need to be with it i

00:18:35.480 just i just see it as a better iteration and as as naturally and morally superior does that make

00:18:41.960 sense what you hope is to make our kids superior to that oh for sure but our kids are still biological

00:18:47.240 they're still human so i think i'm playing the field next generation is going to be the first

00:18:52.680 that integrates with tech i know you say our generation is going to integrate with tech i'm

00:18:56.840 sure that ai models will be trained on if not us family members or our kids or a combined version of

00:19:03.660 us which would be even cooler but i still think that for a while we're going to be biologically human

00:19:10.680 and limited by the shortcomings of biological humanity there's one other element of consciousness

00:19:17.800 that i think you downplay you used to not downplay it as much and i don't know why this has changed

00:19:23.640 maybe because you're so focused on the role that language plays in consciousness but i do really think

00:19:30.320 that humanity's focus on modeling the actions of other animals and humans plays a role in our

00:19:40.140 development of consciousness because one let's talk about this model for humanity it's yeah it's the

00:19:46.600 model of humanity that we use in the pragmatist guide to life which is our first book which is

00:19:50.680 why i don't talk about it because it's an older idea that i had when you're trying to model other

00:19:54.060 people's behavior what you do is you have a mental model of them which is like an emulation that you're

00:19:59.560 running within your own head of the way that you think that they are going to act and the things you

00:20:03.800 think that they are thinking this is how you're able to have like arguments with little

00:20:07.380 simulations of other people in your head you have modeled them and you've modeled you and you are

00:20:11.680 arguing with this different entity and i actually when i was a neuroscientist one of the spaces i

00:20:16.380 focused on was schizophrenia and what i actually think that we are seeing when people hear voices

00:20:20.280 is a lower activation of this using tms transbiotic stimulation you hyper activate parts of a person's

00:20:27.300 brain and then if you like hyper activate the part that's associated with saying letters right you

00:20:31.380 like put a letter in front of somebody and they won't be able to help but say it because you

00:20:35.140 have primed them with a vision of that letter and you have lowered the threshold activating i think

00:20:39.820 what's happening with schizophrenia is something similar to that they have their system that they

00:20:44.620 use to apply mental models to other things gets activated too easily like it can be activated by

00:20:50.920 the slightest thing like they look in a store window and they're like ah that must have been done

00:20:55.480 with intentionality there must be some like thought process behind the way everything was arranged

00:20:59.720 or they see something innocuous in the environment like a helicopter and then they are like oh

00:21:04.300 why is a helicopter there although there must be a person in it they must be thinking about me oh

00:21:07.740 my gosh or they begin to hear whispers this is why whisper hearing is associated with schizophrenia

00:21:12.880 auditory hallucinations are much more common than visual hallucinations visual hallucinations are

00:21:16.660 incredibly rare but anyway so that's what's happening with schizophrenia so the question is okay what does

00:21:23.400 this have to do with the regular person what it has to do as a regular person is that i think people

00:21:29.460 have a sort of internal mental model of themselves which is used to prime emotional reactions to

00:21:36.620 things so when the way we talked about this little like sentience box in your head what it's doing when

00:21:42.960 it's judging whether or not you should react emotionally to something and how you should react

00:21:46.680 emotionally to something is it is testing what's happening in this sort of simulation saying that's what

00:21:53.020 we would call our sentience against this little mental model that's running of the way it thinks you

00:21:58.100 should be feeling and it's saying oh does this mean he should be feeling anger oh does this mean he

00:22:02.140 should be feeling happiness and then it outputs that emotional state by telling you that you should

00:22:06.460 be feeling this the way you can see this is that if somebody justifies a particular emotion like you should

00:22:11.540 be really angry about that often a person will become much angrier and they'll begin to spin away or

00:22:16.880 how could you let your boyfriend do that to you and then you're like ah this mental model has been

00:22:21.620 adapted to feel angrier and you will actually experience much more of this emotion but what were you talking

00:22:27.420 about if not that in general the role that modeling things played in developing human consciousness

00:22:35.840 that maybe what happened is one humans have an evolutionary advantage if they are able to model

00:22:43.500 predators and prey because then they can anticipate the moves of these organisms before they make them

00:22:50.640 and that too that ability would start to just like with schizophrenics get misapplied to that compression

00:22:58.680 algorithm of memory that's being formed that's it's a mixture of language and so language and

00:23:06.300 narrative building plus our modeling things that we're literally anthropomorphizing ourselves if that

00:23:12.660 makes sense that's a good way to put it and i think people see first of all it's people with

00:23:16.880 schizophrenia not okay they are not defined by their sorry but like people with frenchness but we see 0.99

00:23:24.060 this in how easy it is that we anthropomorphize things so i think it's very hard to not anthropomorphize

00:23:30.800 like a dog right like you see a dog you can see its happiness you can see it's worried about things you

00:23:36.080 can see it's and you perceive it as experiencing these emotions the same way a human does even though it

00:23:41.180 probably doesn't and you can see this in in when people kick those robots you guys oh yes oh my gosh

00:23:47.320 yes i see somebody kick one of these robots and i'm like i feel so bad for the robot i'm like how

00:23:52.360 do you do this to this portal i know logically the robot's not experiencing all that now when you're a

00:23:57.360 human and you're anthropomorphizing yourself and you have no way of knowing that you're not feeling

00:24:02.200 these things in a real context we struggle to not anthropomorphize robots how are we how do we know

00:24:09.660 that the robot's not suffering how do we know if its objective function is to run and kick the ball

00:24:15.460 into the net that it's not experiencing some kind of suffering if you put ugly eyes on a soccer ball

00:24:20.580 people will feel bad for it simon i i i'm just trying to think of the things that people like

00:24:26.820 definitely can empathize with when i'm talking about this anthropomorphizing of things that most

00:24:31.680 people don't think we should be anthropomorphizing we're saying that if you didn't know whether or not it

00:24:36.500 feel emotions and everyone around you said it could feel emotions you would 100 believe that

00:24:41.160 robot was feeling emotions as soon as you saw it kick because you feel so bad when it gets back up

00:24:45.360 and it tries to walk again and as humans it's the same way if you didn't know if you didn't have

00:24:50.220 hard proof because you hadn't gone through all the studies like i have and you didn't know that humans

00:24:54.040 probably don't have full control of this sort of sentient aspect of themselves and it's likely

00:24:58.800 irrelevant you would totally answer for more about as humans and so i love this way of doing

00:25:03.220 things simon a very interesting thought on your part there is a subreddit i don't know if it still

00:25:10.800 exists it's nsfw where people put googly eyes on butts do you think that but people are anthem butts

00:25:20.520 you know butts uh are they are they anthropomorphizing the butts is that part of what's fun about that you and

00:25:31.080 i loved no it's more me i try to figure out like what is making people tick behind weird nsfw

00:25:37.440 subreddits but i'm wondering because that one is an outstanding process on that subscribe if that's

00:25:43.860 what you're interested in is deep dives on why people are engaged because that's what the pregnant 1.00

00:25:48.380 guy to sexuality was totally like a meditation on this why are humans like turned on because obviously

00:25:53.020 we're very interested in the way that like the human mind actually process the things i left science

00:25:57.040 why didn't i leave science because i didn't feel like real research was being done anymore and i felt like

00:26:00.480 there were specific narratives and it was like toe the line or else and i'm glad that we have reached

00:26:05.420 a level of financial security where we are able to talk about these things and research these things

00:26:09.320 because we actually do a lot of independent research which if you're wondering how we get to these ideas

00:26:13.600 and the data that leads us to get to the ideas go to our books and that's where we discuss it all

00:26:17.220 but yeah i mean it's really fun and there are just so many low-hanging fruits because academia is not

00:26:21.980 doing anything anymore or not doing the same level of work i think it should be in these areas

00:26:25.680 so there's one more thing that i think consciousness wants some credit for and sapience in

00:26:33.740 general because i think that an easy conclusion to make from our theories around consciousness

00:26:37.960 especially we see it as an illusion is to say the collinses don't value consciousness they think

00:26:45.600 it's an illusion therefore it doesn't matter to the contrary i think it could easily be argued that

00:26:51.800 sapience is one of the things that we think is most valuable most interesting it's what distinguishes

00:26:57.080 humans from other organisms but it's what makes us but more important more importantly than that

00:27:03.960 it is this narrative building this whether or not it's a loser or not it is what enables us to edit

00:27:11.620 our objective functions that is the one differentiating factor any non-conscious entity any entity that

00:27:17.820 doesn't have this narrative building effect this weird recording and encoding system and modeling

00:27:23.760 system cannot question its actions it cannot look at the compression of all the inputs and the narrative

00:27:31.420 that is being woven in say should we change the narrative and i think that i've seen critiques of

00:27:40.320 consciousness where people totally miss that where they say consciousness can get in the way of things

00:27:46.920 consciousness is not necessary it was evolved because it worked not because it's superior

00:27:51.420 and i think they're missing the core point here that consciousness has enabled humanity to pivot in ways

00:27:57.600 no species on earth has ever done it's what allowed us to make the leap i completely agree with you and

00:28:03.740 there was a final point i wanted to close out was here that there was this fun video clip of we were

00:28:09.160 talking on piers morgan and you're talking and you can see me moving my mouth to your words as you're

00:28:15.660 talking and people might wonder why i'm doing this and that this actually relates to something we were

00:28:19.040 talking about in the video so we are both on opposite sides of a spectrum if my model of

00:28:23.980 schizophrenia is correct you basically have an autism to schizophrenia spectrum which is how much do

00:28:29.800 you innately mentally model others with people who are autistic or have asperger's not innately running

00:28:35.580 mental models of other people whenever they're interacting with people and people who are on the

00:28:38.860 schizophrenia side of the spectrum not being able to help running mental models even when there's no

00:28:42.920 humans around and we always say simone is diagnosed autism so definitely on the autism side of the 0.98

00:28:48.300 spectrum but i am almost certainly when i look at myself on the schizophrenia side of the spectrum

00:28:53.380 which is i don't hear voices or anything like that but i really struggle to not mentally model people i'm

00:29:01.280 engaged with to the extent that i basically almost pass out after social situations i find them so

00:29:06.920 exhausting if i'm at a big party it's like just constantly modeling everyone and that's what was

00:29:12.600 happening on that podcast i was in a heightened emotional state where i really cared about what

00:29:16.300 she said so i was running through the words in my head as she was saying them and trying to process

00:29:20.680 how she would respond to something and i couldn't help but move my mouse because it was that sub level

00:29:27.400 of stimulation like i talk about people can't help but say the letter when that part of their brain is

00:29:31.960 tms and that's what was happening there but there are reasons why we have in the human genetic code

00:29:38.920 autism and schizophrenia why it hasn't been evolved out of us and it's because both of these extremes

00:29:43.080 are useful autism can make you able to act more logically about the world around you not being

00:29:49.480 encumbered by constantly mentally model others and then my ability people often will say it's like

00:29:54.680 eerie how much i can tell what other people are thinking like to the level where it can feel to some

00:29:59.800 people like i can read their mind in a conversation and i think that is why you have these people on the

00:30:05.440 schizophrenia side of the spectrum and then sometimes they just get a little too much of these genes

00:30:10.000 and it leads them to hear voices constantly instead of just having a really hyperactive ability to

00:30:16.200 mentally model anyone around them yeah no 100 malcolm is on overdrive and then he'll sometimes be

00:30:24.620 thinking about conversations with other people while we're walking and i can always tell because he gets

00:30:29.160 so deep into them that he's literally like gesturing as it's like we're driving in the car

00:30:34.400 like one hand is on the steering wheel the other hand is like gesturing a silent conversation he's

00:30:39.640 having with someone he anticipates speaking with in the future or reliving a conversation he had in

00:30:45.160 the past and he will have these aftershocks from when we socialize where he feels the stress or pain of saying

00:30:55.660 something not quite right to someone and it hits him like a ton of bricks and he will like visibly

00:31:01.440 like crumble and cringe and it's not just cringe yes like somebody just kicked me in the nuts or something

00:31:08.740 yeah like it looks like he's been physically hurt by something and that is not something that i can even

00:31:16.000 begin to imagine and i do think that it's a lot less stressful to be on the autist end of the spectrum and to just

00:31:24.600 not know that other people hate you yeah i'm just like doop doop doop like nothing going on there

00:31:31.320 like it's such a good partnership and i think it was one of our main goals throughout our books and

00:31:36.120 throughout our lives to understand how humans think and process things and what's really happening in

00:31:40.420 the human brain i started my career as a neuroscientist and a philosopher and that was my

00:31:44.700 interest it's like what's really going on and being able to be in a relationship with somebody who sees

00:31:50.180 the world so differently has given me such insights that i would never come to on my own and i just

00:31:55.480 admire that so much about you simone and i admire that you have taken me to where i am which is

00:32:00.760 somewhere i never could have reached without your guidance and i love you so much i love you so much

00:32:07.020 too you're the superhero that i always wish existed and i still worry that i'm going to wake up from a

00:32:12.560 coma at some point and find out that you're the sidekick that actually does everything i might be the

00:32:17.240 superhero she's the hacker nerd in the background that like actually makes everything work and know 1.00

00:32:22.740 if the hacker nerd went away the superhero would have nothing that is so our relationship i have

00:32:28.420 nothing without you actually doing all the detective work and telling me where to go next it's a massively

00:32:35.140 inflated estimation of my contribution i just follow her instructions i don't manage my calendar at all

00:32:41.920 i just i'm operating on simone is driving me like she says what was the one thing like the thing 0.98

00:32:48.920 from aliens oh yeah like people i'm the alien suit that you're using to punch through power loader

00:32:58.260 you're the you're ripley oh okay okay it's the other way we both feel about each other

00:33:06.200 i adore you i love these conversations and i know we have to pick up the kids now but i think you're

00:33:13.060 gonna make another dish tonight so i'm gonna have fun oh yes another base camp cooking we have a little

00:33:19.220 side playlist if anyone's seen it where i try to come up with new dishes so let's see get it right

00:33:24.480 you get to see the college household at night what happens after

00:33:27.220 yes all right see you soon love you

00:33:31.760 this is

00:33:37.180 you

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Based Camp - May 17, 2023

Based Camp： You Probably are Not Sentient

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