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You know, consider how you ended up listening

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to this deep dive today. Just take a second and

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like really think about the mechanics of it.

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Right. How did you get here? Yeah, exactly. Did

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a sequence of deeply ingrained psychological

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and neurochemical mechanisms inevitably lead

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you here? Driven by a cascade of unconscious

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brain states. Yeah. Environmental cues, algorithms,

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historical conditioning, things that practically

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forced your hand to press play. Or did you...

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consciously and freely and independently choose

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to be here. Right. Because usually when we talk

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about human behavior, there is this fundamental,

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just unquestioned expectation of agency. We assume

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we're in charge. Totally. You weigh your options,

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you make a conscious decision, and your physical

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body carries out that command. You are the captain

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of the ship. But then you step into the world

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of experimental psychology and modern neuroscience.

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And suddenly, that pristine, intuitive image

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of a conscious decision maker just shatters completely.

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We are looking at a landscape that is profoundly

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unsettling, honestly. Right, it really is. Because

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it suggests the captain is entirely asleep at

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the wheel. Or maybe the captain doesn't even

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exist in the way we think. It represents the

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absolute definition of a philosophical and scientific

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paradox. I mean... On a moment -to -moment basis,

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we possess this undeniably vivid feeling that

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we are the authors of our actions. I feel like

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I'm choosing to say these exact words right now.

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Exactly. Yet virtually every piece of rigorous

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scientific data we gather suggests we are, at

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our core, highly complex biological mechanisms

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running deterministic programs. It's oil and

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water. The subjective experience and the objective

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data are just completely irreconcilable if you

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take them both at face value. And that profound

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tension is exactly what we are exploring today.

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Our mission is a meticulous chapter -by -chapter

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exploration of a truly paradigm -shifting text.

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Daniel M. Wegner's magnum opus. Yeah, the illusion

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of conscious will. We're going to unpack the

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highly controversial but utterly fascinating

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idea that your feeling of doing something is

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completely like 100 % distinct. from the actual

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neurological mechanisms that cause your actions.

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And if you are listening to this and worrying

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that you need a background in neuroanatomy or

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a degree in 19th century epistemology to keep

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up, please don't. No, we've got you covered.

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We are going to carefully define every single

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concept, every anatomical structure, and every

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experimental methodology as we go. We'll walk

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through the experimental psychology, the brain

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anatomy, and the historical oddities. The goal

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is for you to experience the exact same aha moments

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that genuinely shocked the scientific community

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when Wegner first put these disparate pieces

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together. Okay, let's unpack this. We are dealing

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with an oil and water relationship here. Yeah,

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that's a good way to put it. On one side, you

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have the deeply intuitive feeling of free will.

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On the other side, you have psychological determinism.

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Which is the scientific view that all behavior

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has a prior physical cause, an unbroken chain

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of causality stretching back in time. Right.

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And Wegner argues that these two things can actually

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coexist, but only if we accept a massive caveat.

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And that caveat is that conscious will is an

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illusion. So, if it is an illusion, what exactly

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is the trick? Like, if the brain is a magician,

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how is it pulling the elephant out of the handkerchief

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without us ever noticing the trapdoor? Well,

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to dismantle the trick. We first have to cleave

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apart two concepts that human beings normally

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blur together into one single experience. OK,

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what are they? Empirical will and phenomenal

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will. This distinction is the bedrock of everything

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we are going to discuss today. So let's define

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them. What is empirical will? Empirical will

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is the actual scientifically verifiable causal

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link between a thought and an action. It's the

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literal physical engine of behavior. Like the

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firing of neurons. Yes, the release of acetylcholine

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at the neuromuscular junction, the contraction

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of the muscle fiber. That's empirical will. Okay,

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so the engine. Then what is phenomenal will?

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Phenomenal will is entirely subjective. It is

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the feeling or the conscious experience that

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we caused in action. Ah, so that's the speedometer

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on the dashboard. Exactly. Wagner's central devastating

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thesis is that the speedometer is not the engine.

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The feeling of doing something is not the thing

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that actually causes the doing. Wow. There are

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two separate systems that usually run in parallel,

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which is why we confuse them. Right. And tracing

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the roots of that confusion takes us all the

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way back to the philosopher David Hume. Hume

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pointed out something about how we perceive the

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world that seems, well, painfully obvious once

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you hear it. But it completely breaks how we

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assume reality works. He argued that causality

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itself isn't something you can physically see.

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Wait, really? What do you mean? Well, it's a

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critical epistemological point. Hume used the

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classic example of billiard balls, or let's say

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a bowling ball hitting pins. Okay, picture that.

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When you watch a bowling ball strike the pins,

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you don't actually see a magical glowing force

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of causation transfer from the ball to the pins.

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I just see the ball hit the pins and they fall.

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Exactly. What your eyes actually process is one

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visual event, a heavy sphere rolling down a wooden

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lane, followed immediately by another visual

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event, the pins flying apart. Okay, I follow.

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Because those two events are constantly conjoined

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in time and space, your brain infers causality.

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Causality is an invisible inference manufactured

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by your mind. It's not an observable object in

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the physical world. Right. Your brain is a prediction

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machine, and when event A consistently precedes

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event B, it writes rule A causes B. And Wegner

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takes that exact framework of physical inference

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and turns it inward. Into our own skulls. Yes.

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So when I have the internal thought like I'm

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going to reach out and pick up my coffee mug

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and then half a second later, my hand reaches

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out and picks up the mug. I didn't actually feel

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the motor cortex sending electrical signals down

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my spinal cord. No, you didn't experience the

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neurochemical cascade at all. I just experienced

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a conscious thought followed immediately by a

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physical action. And my brain acting as an inference

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machine says, ah, my thought caused that action.

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You've hit on the exact mechanism of the illusion.

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And what is so vital to understand here is that

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because the feeling of will is an inference,

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an interpretation of events rather than a direct

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perception of the physical gears turning it can

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be wrong. Just like you might infer that a loud

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bang outside was a gunshot when it was actually

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just a car backfiring. Precisely. Your brain

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can misinterpret its own internal causality.

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The physical action and the feeling of will can

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entirely disconnect from one another. We can

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observe this most clearly. when we look at cases

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of action without will. Yes, and a stark, often

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terrifying medical example is alien hand syndrome.

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Which is something a lot of people know through

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Bob Culture, like Peter Sellers in the movie

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Dr. Strangelove. Oh, yeah, the classic scene.

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Where his hand keeps trying to give a Nazi salute,

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and he has to physically wrestle it down with

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his other hand. It's usually played for laughs,

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but the underlying neurology is no joke, is it?

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Not at all. It's a real, incredibly distressing

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neurological condition for the patients who experience

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it. How does it happen? Alien hand syndrome often

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occurs after severe damage to the frontal lobe

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or when the corpus callosum, the thick band of

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nerve fibers connecting the left and right hemispheres

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of the brain, is severed or damaged. So the communication

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breaks down. Right. When this underlying architecture

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is disrupted, a person's hand will begin acting

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autonomously, completely outside of their conscious

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control. But what's crucial is how the hand acts,

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right? We aren't talking about a random muscle

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spasm or a twitch. No, the alien hand performs

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highly complex, goal -directed behaviors. I was

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reading case studies where patients would be

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trying to do something mundane, like button a

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shirt with their right hand, and their alien

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left hand would follow right behind, methodically

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unbuttoning it. Or they would light a cigarette,

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and the alien hand would instantly pluck it from

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their lips and throw it away. That is wild. The

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alien hand is grasping... pulling utilizing tools

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actions that require immense cognitive processing

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and motor planning the physical engine is running

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flawlessly the empirical will is fully operational

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but the phenomenal will the subjective feeling

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of authorship is completely severed the patient

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experiences absolutely zero phenomenal will they

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feel quite literally like a hostage watching

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their own limb behave with a mind of its own

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it's the ultimate proof that complex action doesn't

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require the feeling of conscious intention And

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you don't even need catastrophic brain damage

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to see this disconnect, do you? No, you really

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don't. You can induce this loss of phenomenal

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will through standard hypnosis. Like the stage

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hypnosis stuff. Exactly. A hypnotist might suggest

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to a subject that their arm is getting heavy,

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heavy as lead, a massive weight pulling it down

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to the floor, and eventually the subject's arm

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slowly lowers. And if you ask the hypnotized

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person why they did that, they'll say, I didn't

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lower my arm, it just fell. Even though their

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own deltoid and bicep muscles executed a controlled

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descent, the internal feeling of authorship is

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completely absent. The brain hides its own labor

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from the conscious self. We see the exact same

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architecture of hidden labor in the bizarre history

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of 19th century table -turning seances. Oh, I

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love this historical stuff. This was a massive

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craze, right? Huge. A group of people would sit

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around a small table, place their hands flat

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on the surface, and wait for spirits to arrive.

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And after a long period of concentration, the

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table would start moving, tilting and sometimes

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violently spinning across the parlor room. The

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participants were absolutely mesmerized and they

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would swear on their lives that they weren't

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pushing it. And to be clear, they weren't lying.

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They truly, genuinely felt no conscious will.

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They were completely convinced they were passive

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conduits for ghosts. But then Michael Faraday

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decides to investigate and completely ruins the

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ghost party. Faraday, the brilliant physicist

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who gave us electromagnetic induction. He don't

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just call them frauds. He brought empirical rigor

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to the parlor room. His methodology was so smart.

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It was brilliant in its simplicity. He needed

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to figure out if the table was pulling the hands

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or if the hands were pushing the table. So what

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did he do? He designed small force measurement

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devices, essentially layers of cardboard separated

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by a soft cement that would record the direction

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of pressure. He placed these under the participants'

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hands. And what did the devices show? Indisputably

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that the top layer of cardboard always moved

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before the bottom layer. Meaning? The participants'

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hands were slipping forward, actively generating

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the force to push the table. They were the engine,

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but their internal speedometer registered zero.

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They generated the action but completely lacked

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the phenomenal will. That is action without will.

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But if these two systems, the engine and skidometer,

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are truly separate, we should be able to find

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the reverse scenario, shouldn't we? We should

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be able to find instances of will without action.

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And we do. What's this called? This is known

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in psychology as the illusion of control, where

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you vividly feel like you are generating an outcome,

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but objectively you aren't doing anything at

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all. The book has this fantastic, highly relatable

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analogy for this. Wagner describes being in a

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toy store, walking past a video game display.

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Yeah, he grabs the joystick and starts furiously

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wiggling it to make a little animated monkey

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jump over barrels on the screen. He gets totally

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absorbed. He's anticipating the barrels, timing

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his jumps, feeling the flow of the game, and

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experiencing a robust, undeniable feeling that

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he's controlling that monkey. And then a full

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minute later, the screen flashes. Press start

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to play. He was watching a prerecorded demo.

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His frantic joystick movements were doing absolutely

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nothing. Yet for a solid minute, his brain manufactured

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a flawless illusion of conscious control over

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that digital monkey. It perfectly isolates the

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phenomenon because it removes actual causality

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entirely. Why did his brain generate that feeling

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of will? It generated it based purely on the

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fact that his physical joystick movements happened

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to... coincidentally align with the monkey's

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movements on the screen. The timing matched.

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So his brain's inference engine kicked in and

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said, we must be causing this. Exactly. But I

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really have to push back here because this is

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where the theory gets terrifying for me. I know

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where you're going with this. I can accept that

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my brain gets tricked in an arcade or in a spooky

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Victorian parlor room or if a surgeon cuts my

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corpus callosum. Those are edge cases. Right.

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But surely I am not hallucinating my entire daily

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life like a video game demo. When I choose to

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speak these exact words right now, I feel a profound,

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continuous intuition that I am the agent causing

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them. Of course you do. How does my brain trick

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me so consistently every single minute of the

283
00:12:45,080 --> 00:12:47,679
day if none of it is actually driven by my conscious

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choice? To understand why the illusion is so

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00:12:50,429 --> 00:12:53,230
pervasive and inescapable, we have to look at

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how the brain perceives the world at a fundamental

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00:12:55,610 --> 00:12:58,690
level. Okay, take me there. There is a classic

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1944 film experiment by psychologists Fritz Heider

289
00:13:03,269 --> 00:13:05,850
and Marianne Simmel that answers your question

290
00:13:05,850 --> 00:13:07,970
beautifully. What do they do? They created a

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very simple, rudimentary animation. It just showed...

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two -dimensional geometric shapes, a large triangle,

293
00:13:15,149 --> 00:13:17,970
small triangle, and a circle moving around a

294
00:13:17,970 --> 00:13:20,149
box with a line that looked like a door. They

295
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showed this silent animation to subjects and

296
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simply asked them to describe what they saw.

297
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And if human beings were objective, rational

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observers, they would say, the large triangle

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moved two inches to the right on an x -y axis,

300
00:13:31,870 --> 00:13:34,370
while the small circle remained stationary. But

301
00:13:34,370 --> 00:13:36,889
nobody said that, did they? Nobody. The subjects

302
00:13:36,889 --> 00:13:39,350
immediately and universally imposed a narrative.

303
00:13:39,649 --> 00:13:42,110
They said things like, The big triangle is a

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00:13:42,110 --> 00:13:44,509
bully, aggressively chasing the little circle,

305
00:13:44,690 --> 00:13:47,029
and the little triangle is bravely trying to

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00:13:47,029 --> 00:13:50,649
protect its friend. Exactly. They saw rage, fear,

307
00:13:50,850 --> 00:13:54,210
bravery, and intention. We instantly anthropomorphize.

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00:13:54,309 --> 00:13:56,889
Give us two seconds of moving shapes, and we

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assign modals, complex goals, and agency to completely

310
00:14:00,330 --> 00:14:03,970
inanimate objects. Because humans possess a highly

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evolved, specialized mental module, often referred

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00:14:06,669 --> 00:14:10,169
to in cognitive science as theory of mind. We

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are biologically hardwired to scan our environment

314
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for minds. From an evolutionary standpoint, it

315
00:14:15,929 --> 00:14:18,389
is incredibly advantageous to predict the behavior

316
00:14:18,389 --> 00:14:21,789
of predators, prey, and peers by attributing

317
00:14:21,789 --> 00:14:24,059
goals to them. We view the world through a mental

318
00:14:24,059 --> 00:14:26,600
causality lens. We use this lens to understand

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00:14:26,600 --> 00:14:28,799
other people, to understand animals. And as anyone

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00:14:28,799 --> 00:14:30,799
who has ever yelled at a freezing laptop knows,

321
00:14:31,019 --> 00:14:33,879
we even apply it to our machines. So true. What

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00:14:33,879 --> 00:14:36,259
Wagner argues is the ultimate twist. We simply

323
00:14:36,259 --> 00:14:38,820
take this exact same hardwired theory of mind

324
00:14:38,820 --> 00:14:41,559
lens and turn it inward on ourselves. We look

325
00:14:41,559 --> 00:14:44,840
at our own sprawling, unimaginably complex biological

326
00:14:44,840 --> 00:14:47,639
machinery, the hormones, the reflex arcs, the

327
00:14:47,639 --> 00:14:50,340
learned behaviors, and we use our theory of mind

328
00:14:50,340 --> 00:14:52,600
module to perceive ourselves. as what Wigner

329
00:14:52,600 --> 00:14:55,500
calls ideal agents. Yes. We don't feel the messy

330
00:14:55,500 --> 00:14:57,860
gears turning. We just perceive a clean, unified

331
00:14:57,860 --> 00:14:59,879
mind that wanted to do something and did it.

332
00:14:59,980 --> 00:15:02,740
We are blind to our own mechanics, so we summarize

333
00:15:02,740 --> 00:15:05,720
ourselves using the only language our perception

334
00:15:05,720 --> 00:15:08,759
module knows, intention and will. Precisely.

335
00:15:08,799 --> 00:15:10,980
Okay. So if the feeling of being the captain

336
00:15:10,980 --> 00:15:13,879
is just an artifact of how our perception module

337
00:15:13,879 --> 00:15:17,100
summarizes data, what is actually happening down

338
00:15:17,100 --> 00:15:18,980
in the engine room? That's the million -dollar

339
00:15:18,980 --> 00:15:21,759
question. If I'm not the prime mover, what is?

340
00:15:22,299 --> 00:15:24,899
Let's move from the realm of psychological observation

341
00:15:24,899 --> 00:15:29,059
into the actual meat of the brain, the neuroanatomy.

342
00:15:29,159 --> 00:15:31,440
Because historically, even the most materialist

343
00:15:31,440 --> 00:15:34,299
scientists assumed there had to be a spark, a

344
00:15:34,299 --> 00:15:37,620
localized light bulb of will somewhere in the

345
00:15:37,620 --> 00:15:39,779
neural tissue that lights up right when we make

346
00:15:39,779 --> 00:15:42,169
a conscious decision to move. The search for

347
00:15:42,169 --> 00:15:44,789
that specific light bulb has a long, fascinating,

348
00:15:45,049 --> 00:15:47,610
and frequently baffling history in neuroscience.

349
00:15:48,029 --> 00:15:50,470
It really does. Researchers desperately wanted

350
00:15:50,470 --> 00:15:53,309
to find the exact anatomical origin point of

351
00:15:53,309 --> 00:15:55,409
a voluntary action. But it became complicated

352
00:15:55,409 --> 00:15:57,549
almost immediately, right? Consider a rather

353
00:15:57,549 --> 00:15:59,590
eccentric experiment conducted by a researcher

354
00:15:59,590 --> 00:16:03,450
named Baer in 1901 involving ear wiggling. Oh,

355
00:16:03,509 --> 00:16:05,360
this is a great one. I really love the setup

356
00:16:05,360 --> 00:16:08,220
for this one. They clamped this intricate, highly

357
00:16:08,220 --> 00:16:10,659
sensitive mechanical contraption to people's

358
00:16:10,659 --> 00:16:13,620
heads to measure the slightest muscular twitch

359
00:16:13,620 --> 00:16:15,820
around the ears. Right, because Bear wanted to

360
00:16:15,820 --> 00:16:18,460
understand how a voluntary movement is born from

361
00:16:18,460 --> 00:16:21,059
scratch. And what did he find? He discovered

362
00:16:21,059 --> 00:16:23,200
that if subjects didn't inherently know how to

363
00:16:23,200 --> 00:16:25,500
wiggle their ears, if they lacked the existing

364
00:16:25,500 --> 00:16:27,539
motor pathways, they couldn't simply will it

365
00:16:27,539 --> 00:16:30,460
to happen. They would sit there, staring at the

366
00:16:30,460 --> 00:16:33,399
wall, trying to summon the intention. But the

367
00:16:33,399 --> 00:16:35,379
experience was like falling into a psychological

368
00:16:35,379 --> 00:16:37,740
black hole. You can't just generate a robust

369
00:16:37,740 --> 00:16:40,539
feeling of will out of thin air if the physical

370
00:16:40,539 --> 00:16:43,279
body doesn't already possess the capacity to

371
00:16:43,279 --> 00:16:45,500
execute the movement. So the feeling of will

372
00:16:45,500 --> 00:16:48,279
isn't a magical, independent starting point?

373
00:16:48,480 --> 00:16:52,120
No, it is deeply, inextricably tethered to the

374
00:16:52,120 --> 00:16:54,820
body's existing motor engrams. It's like trying

375
00:16:54,820 --> 00:16:57,269
to consciously will yourself to fly. Because

376
00:16:57,269 --> 00:16:59,490
the hardware can't do it, the software can't

377
00:16:59,490 --> 00:17:01,909
even properly generate the intention. Exactly.

378
00:17:01,929 --> 00:17:04,670
So what happens if you bypass the person's conscious

379
00:17:04,670 --> 00:17:07,529
mind entirely and just stimulate the brain directly?

380
00:17:07,869 --> 00:17:11,609
Right. In the mid -20th century, pioneering neurosurgeons

381
00:17:11,609 --> 00:17:14,710
like Wilder Penfield and Jose Delgado were working

382
00:17:14,710 --> 00:17:16,950
with conscious patients. And to give context,

383
00:17:17,170 --> 00:17:19,910
the brain itself has no pain receptors, so you

384
00:17:19,910 --> 00:17:21,970
can have a patient wide awake while their skull

385
00:17:21,970 --> 00:17:24,369
is open. Delgado would take an electrical probe.

386
00:17:24,819 --> 00:17:27,640
and apply tiny currents to specific areas of

387
00:17:27,640 --> 00:17:30,099
the motor cortex. And this is where the data

388
00:17:30,099 --> 00:17:33,960
gets incredibly strange. Tell me. When Delgado

389
00:17:33,960 --> 00:17:37,299
stimulated the right specific spot, the patient's

390
00:17:37,299 --> 00:17:39,839
arm would raise or their leg would kick or their

391
00:17:39,839 --> 00:17:41,519
head would turn. So from the electrical current?

392
00:17:41,700 --> 00:17:44,759
Just from the current. But Delgado observed something

393
00:17:44,759 --> 00:17:47,339
that fundamentally challenges our concept of

394
00:17:47,339 --> 00:17:50,569
self -awareness. Often, when the electrical stimulation

395
00:17:50,569 --> 00:17:53,630
forced the patient to execute a complex movement,

396
00:17:53,950 --> 00:17:56,430
say, turning their head and looking behind them,

397
00:17:56,549 --> 00:17:59,029
the patient wouldn't act surprised. They wouldn't

398
00:17:59,029 --> 00:18:01,190
say, doctor, why did you just make my head turn?

399
00:18:01,329 --> 00:18:04,910
No. Instead, they would effortlessly confabulate

400
00:18:04,910 --> 00:18:07,450
a reason. What do you mean? They would say, oh,

401
00:18:07,490 --> 00:18:09,150
I turned my head because I thought I heard a

402
00:18:09,150 --> 00:18:11,109
noise, or I was just looking for my slippers

403
00:18:11,109 --> 00:18:14,740
under the bed. It is... utterly terrifying. The

404
00:18:14,740 --> 00:18:17,240
doctor literally pressed a button on a battery

405
00:18:17,240 --> 00:18:19,779
pack to force the patient's physical hardware

406
00:18:19,779 --> 00:18:23,279
to move, and the patient's brain instantly, seamlessly

407
00:18:23,279 --> 00:18:26,440
invented a fictional narrative to claim authorship

408
00:18:26,440 --> 00:18:28,559
of that movement. It's incredible. The brain's

409
00:18:28,559 --> 00:18:31,559
interpreter module hates a vacuum of agency so

410
00:18:31,559 --> 00:18:34,119
much that it will just write a fake intention

411
00:18:34,119 --> 00:18:36,940
after the fact to protect the illusion that it

412
00:18:36,940 --> 00:18:39,720
is in control. It's doing PR for a bodily movement

413
00:18:39,720 --> 00:18:42,519
it had no part in initiating. Which brings us

414
00:18:42,519 --> 00:18:44,940
directly to the doorstep of perhaps the most

415
00:18:44,940 --> 00:18:47,299
famous and certainly the most heavily debated

416
00:18:47,299 --> 00:18:49,799
experiment in the history of free will research.

417
00:18:50,019 --> 00:18:52,400
Oh, this is the big one. In the early 1980s,

418
00:18:52,400 --> 00:18:55,180
a neuroscientist named Benjamin Libet set out

419
00:18:55,180 --> 00:18:58,460
to map the exact millisecond by millisecond timeline

420
00:18:58,460 --> 00:19:01,299
of a voluntary movement. Libet hooked his participants

421
00:19:01,299 --> 00:19:04,880
up to an EEG, an electroencephalogram. which

422
00:19:04,880 --> 00:19:07,059
involves placing electrodes on the scalp to measure

423
00:19:07,059 --> 00:19:09,039
the gross electrical activity of the cerebral

424
00:19:09,039 --> 00:19:12,000
cortex. And he also placed highly sensitive EMG

425
00:19:12,000 --> 00:19:14,619
sensors on the participants' fingers to measure

426
00:19:14,619 --> 00:19:17,339
the exact millisecond the muscle fiber actually

427
00:19:17,339 --> 00:19:20,799
contracted. And the participants' job was deceptively

428
00:19:20,799 --> 00:19:23,880
simple. Labette sat them in front of an oscilloscope,

429
00:19:24,039 --> 00:19:26,559
a screen displaying a small dot moving rapidly

430
00:19:26,559 --> 00:19:28,839
around a clock face. He gave them one instruction,

431
00:19:29,200 --> 00:19:31,920
watch the clock. Whenever you feel the spontaneous

432
00:19:31,920 --> 00:19:34,670
internal urge to move your finger, Go ahead and

433
00:19:34,670 --> 00:19:37,250
flick your wrist. But pay very close attention

434
00:19:37,250 --> 00:19:40,410
to exactly where the dot is on the clock face,

435
00:19:40,509 --> 00:19:42,849
the precise moment you become consciously aware

436
00:19:42,849 --> 00:19:45,650
of your urge to move. The goal was to chart the

437
00:19:45,650 --> 00:19:47,930
sequence of three specific events, right? Yes.

438
00:19:48,309 --> 00:19:51,569
First, the W moment, the conscious will, as reported

439
00:19:51,569 --> 00:19:53,789
by the subject watching the clock. Okay. Second,

440
00:19:53,930 --> 00:19:56,349
the M moment, the actual muscle movement recorded

441
00:19:56,349 --> 00:19:58,930
by the sensors. And the third? And third, the

442
00:19:58,930 --> 00:20:02,539
RP, or readiness potential. What exactly is that?

443
00:20:02,660 --> 00:20:04,839
The readiness potential is a gradual buildup

444
00:20:04,839 --> 00:20:07,380
of negative electrical energy in the supplementary

445
00:20:07,380 --> 00:20:09,779
motor area of the brain that always precedes

446
00:20:09,779 --> 00:20:12,460
any voluntary movement. It is literally the brain

447
00:20:12,460 --> 00:20:15,339
revving its engines to initiate an action. Common

448
00:20:15,339 --> 00:20:18,480
sense and centuries of philosophy dictate a very

449
00:20:18,480 --> 00:20:22,079
specific timeline. First, you consciously decide

450
00:20:22,079 --> 00:20:25,920
to move, the W moment. Then your brain responds

451
00:20:25,920 --> 00:20:28,599
to your conscious command and revs its engine,

452
00:20:28,779 --> 00:20:32,140
the RP. And finally, your physical finger moves.

453
00:20:32,359 --> 00:20:35,140
The M moment. But that is not what Libet found,

454
00:20:35,279 --> 00:20:37,839
is it? Yeah, not at all. The timeline he uncovered

455
00:20:37,839 --> 00:20:40,599
was totally backward and it sent shockwaves through

456
00:20:40,599 --> 00:20:42,779
the scientific community. Let's break down the

457
00:20:42,779 --> 00:20:45,119
exact milliseconds of Libet's timeline because

458
00:20:45,119 --> 00:20:47,930
the implications are staggering. Labette found

459
00:20:47,930 --> 00:20:50,190
that the readiness potential, the unconscious

460
00:20:50,190 --> 00:20:52,950
electrical buildup in the brain, started at approximately

461
00:20:52,950 --> 00:20:56,009
800 milliseconds before the physical finger moved.

462
00:20:56,150 --> 00:20:58,410
Okay. The conscious experience of willing the

463
00:20:58,410 --> 00:21:00,430
finger to move the moment the person looked at

464
00:21:00,430 --> 00:21:02,190
the clock and felt they made the decision happened

465
00:21:02,190 --> 00:21:04,690
at only 200 milliseconds before the movement.

466
00:21:04,890 --> 00:21:06,829
Wait. And then the actual muscle contraction

467
00:21:06,829 --> 00:21:09,529
happened at roughly 50 milliseconds before movement

468
00:21:09,529 --> 00:21:12,240
as the signal traveled down the arm. Wait, I

469
00:21:12,240 --> 00:21:13,680
want to make sure you're absorbing the math here.

470
00:21:13,799 --> 00:21:16,500
The physical brain starts preparing the action

471
00:21:16,500 --> 00:21:19,559
600 milliseconds before the conscious mind even

472
00:21:19,559 --> 00:21:22,519
knows it wants to move. Yes. The physical brain

473
00:21:22,519 --> 00:21:25,819
initiates the process of action well over half

474
00:21:25,819 --> 00:21:28,259
a second before the conscious mind decides to

475
00:21:28,259 --> 00:21:30,819
do it. Half a second in brain time is an eternity.

476
00:21:31,119 --> 00:21:34,099
It really is. The conscious will cannot possibly

477
00:21:34,099 --> 00:21:37,460
be the initiator or the cause of the action because

478
00:21:37,460 --> 00:21:40,220
the causal chain has already been initiated by

479
00:21:40,220 --> 00:21:44,019
unconscious cerebral processes long before the

480
00:21:44,019 --> 00:21:45,900
conscious will even shows up on the timeline.

481
00:21:46,180 --> 00:21:49,200
OK, but I have a major issue with extrapolating

482
00:21:49,200 --> 00:21:51,259
this to all of human behavior. Let's hear it.

483
00:21:51,579 --> 00:21:53,960
Measuring a spontaneous, meaningless flick of

484
00:21:53,960 --> 00:21:56,680
the wrist in a sterile laboratory is a highly

485
00:21:56,680 --> 00:21:59,539
controlled artificial micro movement. Sure. Does

486
00:21:59,539 --> 00:22:02,220
that 800 millisecond readiness potential actually

487
00:22:02,220 --> 00:22:05,839
translate to complex macro decisions? Does my

488
00:22:05,839 --> 00:22:08,079
brain unconsciously rev up before I decide to

489
00:22:08,079 --> 00:22:10,359
buy a house or get married or change careers?

490
00:22:10,640 --> 00:22:12,740
Because I can't imagine my brain makes those

491
00:22:12,740 --> 00:22:14,980
decisions half a second before my conscious mind

492
00:22:14,980 --> 00:22:17,779
gets involved. It is a vital and common critique

493
00:22:17,779 --> 00:22:20,960
of Libet's work. You are correct that a wrist

494
00:22:20,960 --> 00:22:23,079
flick is not the same as signing a mortgage.

495
00:22:23,299 --> 00:22:26,079
Thank goodness. However, Libet's findings point

496
00:22:26,079 --> 00:22:28,420
to the fundamental architecture of execution.

497
00:22:28,900 --> 00:22:31,160
What do you mean by execution? Even when you

498
00:22:31,160 --> 00:22:34,380
spend months consciously agonizing over buying

499
00:22:34,380 --> 00:22:37,579
a house, the actual moments of execution, picking

500
00:22:37,579 --> 00:22:40,339
up the pen, signing your name, vocalizing the

501
00:22:40,339 --> 00:22:43,859
word yes, are driven by these localized, unconsciously

502
00:22:43,859 --> 00:22:47,089
initiated motor routines. Ah, I see. Your conscious

503
00:22:47,089 --> 00:22:49,750
deliberation might set the parameters, but the

504
00:22:49,750 --> 00:22:52,289
initiation of the action itself comes from the

505
00:22:52,289 --> 00:22:54,670
dark room of the unconscious. Even Libet himself

506
00:22:54,670 --> 00:22:57,109
struggled with the determinist implications of

507
00:22:57,109 --> 00:22:59,470
his data, didn't he? He did. He actually proposed

508
00:22:59,470 --> 00:23:02,569
a concept that became known as free won't. The

509
00:23:02,569 --> 00:23:05,150
idea that while the unconscious brain initiates

510
00:23:05,150 --> 00:23:08,390
the urge, the conscious mind has that brief 200

511
00:23:08,390 --> 00:23:11,369
millisecond window to veto the action before

512
00:23:11,369 --> 00:23:13,630
the muscle fires. So even the scientists who

513
00:23:13,630 --> 00:23:15,299
discovered it was... desperately trying to find

514
00:23:15,299 --> 00:23:17,779
a loophole to save free will. Yeah, humans really

515
00:23:17,779 --> 00:23:19,380
don't want to let go of that steering wheel.

516
00:23:19,579 --> 00:23:21,960
But Wegner doesn't buy the free won't loophole,

517
00:23:22,019 --> 00:23:25,000
does he? Not for a second. He argues that if

518
00:23:25,000 --> 00:23:27,160
the urge to move is unconsciously generated,

519
00:23:27,480 --> 00:23:30,680
the urge to veto the movement must also be unconsciously

520
00:23:30,680 --> 00:23:33,940
generated. It means my conscious mind is really

521
00:23:33,940 --> 00:23:37,279
not the driver of the car. It's more like a passenger

522
00:23:37,279 --> 00:23:40,299
in the back seat who has a plastic toy steering

523
00:23:40,299 --> 00:23:42,880
wheel. And every time the real driver turns the

524
00:23:42,880 --> 00:23:45,339
car, the passenger turns the toy wheel and yells,

525
00:23:45,440 --> 00:23:48,880
look, I'm driving. That's a great analogy. Wagner

526
00:23:48,880 --> 00:23:51,819
uses a wonderfully unglamorous metaphor for this

527
00:23:51,819 --> 00:23:54,200
dynamic. He says consciousness is essentially

528
00:23:54,200 --> 00:23:57,980
a slug. A slug. Yes. In the context of rapid

529
00:23:57,980 --> 00:24:01,259
reactive tasks, consciousness is incredibly slow.

530
00:24:01,640 --> 00:24:03,880
It operates on a completely different time constant

531
00:24:03,880 --> 00:24:06,599
than motor execution. Like sports, for example.

532
00:24:06,779 --> 00:24:08,940
Exactly. Think of a professional baseball player

533
00:24:08,940 --> 00:24:12,000
trying to hit a 95 mile per hour fastball. Okay.

534
00:24:12,059 --> 00:24:14,200
From the time the ball leaves the pitcher's hand

535
00:24:14,200 --> 00:24:16,579
to the time it crosses the plate, the batter

536
00:24:16,579 --> 00:24:19,799
has roughly 400 milliseconds. That's incredibly

537
00:24:19,799 --> 00:24:22,359
fast. It takes the brain's visual cortex longer

538
00:24:22,359 --> 00:24:24,680
than that just to fully process the image of

539
00:24:24,680 --> 00:24:27,099
the ball into conscious awareness. So the batter

540
00:24:27,099 --> 00:24:29,500
is swinging at the ball before they even consciously

541
00:24:29,500 --> 00:24:33,079
see the ball. Exactly. Their highly trained unconscious

542
00:24:33,079 --> 00:24:36,779
motor systems react, initiate, and execute the

543
00:24:36,779 --> 00:24:39,680
complex mechanical swing long before their conscious

544
00:24:39,680 --> 00:24:42,220
mind can process the visual data and formulate

545
00:24:42,220 --> 00:24:44,519
an intention to swing. There's mind -blowing.

546
00:24:44,720 --> 00:24:46,859
Consciousness is perpetually late to the party,

547
00:24:47,000 --> 00:24:49,480
constantly catching up to what the physical body

548
00:24:49,480 --> 00:24:52,059
has already done, and then claiming credit for

549
00:24:52,059 --> 00:24:54,180
it. Okay, this brings up a massive conceptual

550
00:24:54,180 --> 00:24:58,839
problem. If my brain fires before my conscious

551
00:24:58,839 --> 00:25:01,660
mind decides to move, and if consciousness is

552
00:25:01,660 --> 00:25:04,440
truly just a slow passenger watching a movie

553
00:25:04,440 --> 00:25:08,200
of my life on a slight delay, how on earth does

554
00:25:08,200 --> 00:25:10,700
the brain generate this incredibly convincing

555
00:25:10,700 --> 00:25:13,279
airtight feeling of being the driver? Right.

556
00:25:13,339 --> 00:25:15,400
If the engine and the speedometer are completely

557
00:25:15,400 --> 00:25:18,160
patched, what wires the speedometer to make it

558
00:25:18,160 --> 00:25:20,019
look like it's responding to the engine? This

559
00:25:20,019 --> 00:25:22,440
is where Wegner introduces his core mechanism,

560
00:25:22,759 --> 00:25:25,839
the theory of apparent mental causation. Apparent

561
00:25:25,839 --> 00:25:28,259
mental causation. He argues that we experience

562
00:25:28,259 --> 00:25:31,380
the feeling of will when, and only when, our

563
00:25:31,380 --> 00:25:33,440
minds interpret our thoughts as the cause of

564
00:25:33,440 --> 00:25:35,779
our actions. And our brains don't just guess

565
00:25:35,779 --> 00:25:39,210
right. They make this interpretation based on

566
00:25:39,210 --> 00:25:42,470
strict rules. Three strict, non -negotiable rules.

567
00:25:43,130 --> 00:25:45,730
These rules are adapted directly from how we

568
00:25:45,730 --> 00:25:48,329
perceive causality in the external physical world.

569
00:25:48,549 --> 00:25:52,059
They are priority. consistency and exclusivity.

570
00:25:52,200 --> 00:25:54,380
Okay, let's explore these three rules deeply

571
00:25:54,380 --> 00:25:57,220
because they are the literal blueprint for the

572
00:25:57,220 --> 00:26:00,819
illusion. First, priority. This means the conscious

573
00:26:00,819 --> 00:26:02,759
thought has to happen just before the physical

574
00:26:02,759 --> 00:26:05,440
action. If the timing is off, the illusion breaks.

575
00:26:05,779 --> 00:26:08,180
If I think about standing up five minutes before

576
00:26:08,180 --> 00:26:10,839
I actually stand up, I don't feel a strong sense

577
00:26:10,839 --> 00:26:13,200
of causal will. And if you think about standing

578
00:26:13,200 --> 00:26:15,319
up after you're already on your feet, you certainly

579
00:26:15,319 --> 00:26:17,960
don't feel it. Second, consistency. The thought

580
00:26:17,960 --> 00:26:20,140
has to conceptually match the action. If you

581
00:26:20,140 --> 00:26:21,680
have a strong internal thought about wanting

582
00:26:21,680 --> 00:26:24,319
a healthy salad, but you watch your hand reach

583
00:26:24,319 --> 00:26:27,099
out and grab a greasy plate of fries, the thought

584
00:26:27,099 --> 00:26:29,180
and the action are inconsistent. I don't feel

585
00:26:29,180 --> 00:26:31,400
a sense of conscious will. I feel a sense of

586
00:26:31,400 --> 00:26:34,579
loss of control or compulsion. Exactly. And third,

587
00:26:34,819 --> 00:26:38,059
exclusivity. This means there can be no other

588
00:26:38,059 --> 00:26:41,059
obvious external competing causes for the action.

589
00:26:41,279 --> 00:26:43,859
If you think about walking forward, but a massive

590
00:26:43,859 --> 00:26:46,160
crowd of people pushes you forward, you don't

591
00:26:46,160 --> 00:26:48,460
feel like you willed the movement. Because the

592
00:26:48,460 --> 00:26:53,289
crowd Those are the parameters. And to scientifically

593
00:26:53,289 --> 00:26:56,150
test these rules, specifically focusing on how

594
00:26:56,150 --> 00:26:59,369
manipulating the rule of priority can artificially

595
00:26:59,369 --> 00:27:02,650
manufacture the feeling of Will Wegner and his

596
00:27:02,650 --> 00:27:06,029
colleague Thalia Wheatley. devised an ingenious

597
00:27:06,029 --> 00:27:09,109
slightly devious laboratory setup known as the

598
00:27:09,109 --> 00:27:12,130
i spy experiment oh this one is so clever they

599
00:27:12,130 --> 00:27:14,490
brought a participant into a room but they also

600
00:27:14,490 --> 00:27:17,829
brought in a confederate someone secretly working

601
00:27:17,829 --> 00:27:20,730
for the experimenters posing as another subject

602
00:27:20,730 --> 00:27:22,769
they had the participant and the confederates

603
00:27:22,769 --> 00:27:25,210
sit across from each other at a desk both of

604
00:27:25,210 --> 00:27:27,349
them placed their fingers lightly on a single

605
00:27:27,349 --> 00:27:29,890
shared computer mouse very much like holding

606
00:27:29,890 --> 00:27:32,180
a ouija board planchette They are looking at

607
00:27:32,180 --> 00:27:34,059
a computer monitor that is completely filled

608
00:27:34,059 --> 00:27:37,420
with small, random images. A picture of a swan,

609
00:27:37,440 --> 00:27:41,160
a dinosaur, a car, a house. And the two of them

610
00:27:41,160 --> 00:27:43,359
are instructed to move the mouse together in

611
00:27:43,359 --> 00:27:46,380
sweeping, continuous circles, dragging the cursor

612
00:27:46,380 --> 00:27:48,940
over the sea of images. To isolate them further,

613
00:27:49,220 --> 00:27:51,660
they are both wearing heavy headphones, and they

614
00:27:51,660 --> 00:27:54,099
are told they will hear random words being called

615
00:27:54,099 --> 00:27:56,539
out over the audio track. Now, the critical trick

616
00:27:56,539 --> 00:27:58,720
of the experiment is that the Confederate is

617
00:27:58,720 --> 00:28:01,509
secretly the one controlling the mouse. The true

618
00:28:01,509 --> 00:28:04,369
participant believes they are mutually guiding

619
00:28:04,369 --> 00:28:07,069
it, but they're actually just along for the ride.

620
00:28:07,250 --> 00:28:10,470
On specific predetermined trials, the confederate

621
00:28:10,470 --> 00:28:14,710
will smoothly intentionally force the mouse to

622
00:28:14,710 --> 00:28:17,250
start exactly on a specific picture. Let's say

623
00:28:17,250 --> 00:28:19,269
the picture of the swan. The true participant

624
00:28:19,269 --> 00:28:21,769
had absolutely nothing to do with generating

625
00:28:21,769 --> 00:28:24,309
the physical stop. But here is the genius of

626
00:28:24,309 --> 00:28:26,609
the design. This is where they manipulate the

627
00:28:26,609 --> 00:28:29,549
priority rule. Through the participant's headphones,

628
00:28:29,950 --> 00:28:34,230
the experimenter plays the audio word swan. Okay.

629
00:28:34,549 --> 00:28:37,109
Sometimes they play the word swan a full 30 seconds

630
00:28:37,109 --> 00:28:39,869
before the Confederate forces the stop. Sometimes

631
00:28:39,869 --> 00:28:42,410
they play it five seconds before, sometimes one

632
00:28:42,410 --> 00:28:44,470
second before, and sometimes they play it one

633
00:28:44,470 --> 00:28:46,529
second after the mouse has already stopped on

634
00:28:46,529 --> 00:28:49,049
the image. And then after each trial, they ask

635
00:28:49,049 --> 00:28:51,849
the participant on a scale, how much did you

636
00:28:51,849 --> 00:28:55,130
personally intend to stop the mouse on the swan?

637
00:28:55,430 --> 00:28:57,789
And the results were a pristine mathematical

638
00:28:57,789 --> 00:29:01,190
demonstration of apparent mental causation. Tell

639
00:29:01,190 --> 00:29:03,869
me. When the participant heard the word swan

640
00:29:03,869 --> 00:29:06,690
one to five seconds before the Confederate forced

641
00:29:06,690 --> 00:29:09,430
the stop, the participant's brain checked the

642
00:29:09,430 --> 00:29:13,950
rules. Priority. Yes, the thought of a swan appeared

643
00:29:13,950 --> 00:29:17,029
right before the stop. Consistency. Yes, the

644
00:29:17,029 --> 00:29:20,589
cursor stopped on a swan. the result the participant

645
00:29:20,589 --> 00:29:23,049
claimed a significantly high degree of personal

646
00:29:23,049 --> 00:29:26,029
intention they genuinely felt that they had caused

647
00:29:26,029 --> 00:29:28,490
the mouse to stop but if they heard the word

648
00:29:28,490 --> 00:29:31,470
30 seconds before the thought had decayed in

649
00:29:31,470 --> 00:29:34,210
working memory priority was lost and the feeling

650
00:29:34,210 --> 00:29:36,990
of will vanished the same applied if they heard

651
00:29:36,990 --> 00:29:39,470
the word one second after this proves you can

652
00:29:39,470 --> 00:29:41,269
artificially inject a thought into someone's

653
00:29:41,269 --> 00:29:44,079
head Let an external force execute the action,

654
00:29:44,200 --> 00:29:46,660
and the person's brain will seamlessly claim

655
00:29:46,660 --> 00:29:49,019
authorship of the event. It's wild. Wagner uses

656
00:29:49,019 --> 00:29:51,660
this deeply unsettling analogy of a magic tree

657
00:29:51,660 --> 00:29:54,099
branch to explain this. I want to linger on this

658
00:29:54,099 --> 00:29:56,400
metaphor because it really crystallizes the horror

659
00:29:56,400 --> 00:29:59,480
of the illusion. Go for it. Imagine you are sitting

660
00:29:59,480 --> 00:30:01,859
in your living room, looking out your window

661
00:30:01,859 --> 00:30:05,180
at a large tree branch. By some bizarre magical

662
00:30:05,180 --> 00:30:08,180
quirk, you always know exactly when the branch

663
00:30:08,180 --> 00:30:10,480
is going to move in the wind and exactly which

664
00:30:10,480 --> 00:30:13,230
way it will bend. Okay, weird, but okay. So right

665
00:30:13,230 --> 00:30:14,710
before the wind blows, you think to yourself,

666
00:30:14,970 --> 00:30:18,630
bend left and the branch bends left. Bend right

667
00:30:18,630 --> 00:30:21,970
and it bends right. Shake vigorously and it shakes.

668
00:30:22,250 --> 00:30:25,549
If that happened consistently, hundreds of times

669
00:30:25,549 --> 00:30:28,750
a day, week after week, your brain would eventually,

670
00:30:28,930 --> 00:30:31,650
inevitably conclude that your mind was telekinetically

671
00:30:31,650 --> 00:30:33,630
moving the branch. You would feel a profound

672
00:30:33,630 --> 00:30:36,230
sense of conscious will over that tree. It is

673
00:30:36,230 --> 00:30:38,569
a perfect analogy because the magic tree branch

674
00:30:38,569 --> 00:30:42,089
scenario flawlessly satisfies the three rules

675
00:30:42,089 --> 00:30:44,650
of apparent mental causation. Priority is met

676
00:30:44,650 --> 00:30:47,390
because your magical prediction ensures the thought

677
00:30:47,390 --> 00:30:49,829
comes just before the movement. Consistency is

678
00:30:49,829 --> 00:30:51,930
met because your thought matches the direction

679
00:30:51,930 --> 00:30:55,150
of the bend. And exclusivity is met because from

680
00:30:55,150 --> 00:30:57,210
your vantage point inside the house, you can't

681
00:30:57,210 --> 00:30:59,930
see the wind. Your mind is the only obvious cause

682
00:30:59,930 --> 00:31:02,190
in the vicinity. Your brain has no choice but

683
00:31:02,190 --> 00:31:05,150
to infer causality. And Wegner's devastating

684
00:31:05,150 --> 00:31:08,289
point is that we do the exact same thing with

685
00:31:08,289 --> 00:31:12,150
our own physical bodies. Our bodies are the tree

686
00:31:12,150 --> 00:31:15,970
branch. Yes. Completely unconscious brain mechanisms,

687
00:31:16,009 --> 00:31:19,190
the wind, cause a thought to pop into our conscious

688
00:31:19,190 --> 00:31:21,569
awareness, I'm going to raise my hand. Entirely

689
00:31:21,569 --> 00:31:24,130
separate, completely unconscious motor pathways,

690
00:31:24,250 --> 00:31:27,190
a different gust of wind caused the physical

691
00:31:27,190 --> 00:31:30,289
hand to raise an instant later. Because the conscious

692
00:31:30,289 --> 00:31:32,890
thought occurred just prior to and consistent

693
00:31:32,890 --> 00:31:35,710
with the physical action, our afferent's engine

694
00:31:35,710 --> 00:31:38,890
kicks in and draws the false conclusion, my conscious

695
00:31:38,890 --> 00:31:41,190
thought caused the action. We are telekinetically

696
00:31:41,190 --> 00:31:43,690
hallucinating control over our own meat. That

697
00:31:43,690 --> 00:31:45,650
is the essence of the illusion. So naturally,

698
00:31:45,750 --> 00:31:47,710
the next scientific question is, what happens

699
00:31:47,710 --> 00:31:50,029
when these three rules are actively disrupted

700
00:31:50,029 --> 00:31:52,650
in the real world? What if you physically perform

701
00:31:52,650 --> 00:31:55,950
an action, but there is no prior thought, or

702
00:31:55,950 --> 00:31:58,450
there is another obvious competing cause in the

703
00:31:58,450 --> 00:32:00,990
room? When the rules of apparent mental causation

704
00:32:00,990 --> 00:32:03,029
are broken, the illusion shatters completely,

705
00:32:03,349 --> 00:32:06,309
and we experience what psychologists call automatisms.

706
00:32:06,849 --> 00:32:09,309
Automatisms. These are actions we physically,

707
00:32:09,549 --> 00:32:12,690
demonstrably perform with our own muscles, but

708
00:32:12,690 --> 00:32:15,470
we genuinely, subjectively feel that we did not

709
00:32:15,470 --> 00:32:17,690
do them. And this brings us right back to those

710
00:32:17,690 --> 00:32:20,430
strange Victorian parlor games. We mentioned

711
00:32:20,430 --> 00:32:23,230
the table -turning seances earlier, where exclusivity

712
00:32:23,230 --> 00:32:25,269
was broken by the presence of other people's

713
00:32:25,269 --> 00:32:27,289
hands. But there's also the chevreul pendulum.

714
00:32:27,819 --> 00:32:30,400
Right. And after the French chemist, Michel -Eugène

715
00:32:30,400 --> 00:32:33,200
Chevreul, who investigated it in the 1830s. The

716
00:32:33,200 --> 00:32:36,119
setup is simple. You hold a small weight suspended

717
00:32:36,119 --> 00:32:39,119
on a string. Someone tells you or you strongly

718
00:32:39,119 --> 00:32:41,420
suggest to yourself that the pendulum is going

719
00:32:41,420 --> 00:32:44,140
to start swinging in a circle. You try your absolute

720
00:32:44,140 --> 00:32:46,359
hardest to hold your hand perfectly, perfectly

721
00:32:46,359 --> 00:32:50,400
still. But slowly, inevitably, the pendulum starts

722
00:32:50,400 --> 00:32:52,920
swinging in a circle. You feel no conscious where

723
00:32:52,920 --> 00:32:55,319
you feel like a mystical, invisible force is

724
00:32:55,319 --> 00:32:57,950
pulling the weight. But in reality, what is happening

725
00:32:57,950 --> 00:33:01,029
is ideomotor action. The 19th century physician

726
00:33:01,029 --> 00:33:03,369
William Carpenter coined this brilliant term.

727
00:33:03,589 --> 00:33:06,369
He theorized that merely thinking intensely about

728
00:33:06,369 --> 00:33:08,809
an action or strongly anticipating an outcome

729
00:33:08,809 --> 00:33:11,750
can cause the body's micromuscles to perform

730
00:33:11,750 --> 00:33:14,529
that action without generating any feeling of

731
00:33:14,529 --> 00:33:17,009
conscious will. Your intent expectation that

732
00:33:17,009 --> 00:33:19,769
the pendulum will swing causes your fingers to

733
00:33:19,769 --> 00:33:23,130
make tiny, imperceptible, high -frequency adjustments

734
00:33:23,130 --> 00:33:26,099
that actually generate the swinging motion. Ouija

735
00:33:26,099 --> 00:33:29,000
boards operate on the exact same ideomotor principles,

736
00:33:29,200 --> 00:33:32,079
but they add a layer of social confusion. You

737
00:33:32,079 --> 00:33:34,519
have a group of people lightly touching a plastic

738
00:33:34,519 --> 00:33:37,460
planchette. Because everyone is touching it simultaneously,

739
00:33:38,019 --> 00:33:40,779
the exclusivity rule of our causal engine is

740
00:33:40,779 --> 00:33:43,490
totally broken. Your brain is receiving the tactile

741
00:33:43,490 --> 00:33:46,930
feedback of the movement, but it cannot definitively

742
00:33:46,930 --> 00:33:48,970
answer the question, am I pushing this or is

743
00:33:48,970 --> 00:33:51,309
my friend pushing this? Because exclusivity is

744
00:33:51,309 --> 00:33:54,009
violated, your brain refuses to grant you the

745
00:33:54,009 --> 00:33:56,329
phenomenal feeling of authorship. And here's

746
00:33:56,329 --> 00:33:58,789
where human psychology gets really weird. When

747
00:33:58,789 --> 00:34:00,950
we suffer the specific type of movement confusion

748
00:34:00,950 --> 00:34:02,869
when our bodies are doing something, but our

749
00:34:02,869 --> 00:34:05,650
brain refuses to give us the action. I did this

750
00:34:05,650 --> 00:34:07,869
feeling we still have a desperate, hardwired

751
00:34:07,869 --> 00:34:10,289
need to attribute the action to an agent. Our

752
00:34:10,289 --> 00:34:13,780
theory of mind module. demands an author. So

753
00:34:13,780 --> 00:34:15,880
if we don't feel like we did it, we project the

754
00:34:15,880 --> 00:34:18,760
authorship outward. We invent an external agent.

755
00:34:18,920 --> 00:34:22,360
We project it onto a Victorian ghost or a malevolent

756
00:34:22,360 --> 00:34:25,059
demon or the hypnotist who told us our arm was

757
00:34:25,059 --> 00:34:27,699
heavy. The historical records of automatic writing

758
00:34:27,699 --> 00:34:29,599
provide some of the most spectacular examples

759
00:34:29,599 --> 00:34:31,929
of this projection. People would sit in a trance

760
00:34:31,929 --> 00:34:34,309
state with a pen and paper and claim to channel

761
00:34:34,309 --> 00:34:36,489
ancient spirits who would write vast amounts

762
00:34:36,489 --> 00:34:39,210
of text through them. The writer Gertrude Stein

763
00:34:39,210 --> 00:34:42,329
actually experimented heavily with motor automatism

764
00:34:42,329 --> 00:34:45,469
in her early psychological research. But perhaps

765
00:34:45,469 --> 00:34:48,230
the most astounding case is that of Pearl Curran

766
00:34:48,230 --> 00:34:51,889
in 1913. Pearl was a housewife in St. Louis with

767
00:34:51,889 --> 00:34:54,829
a relatively limited formal education. She began

768
00:34:54,829 --> 00:34:57,429
using a Ouija board and soon claimed to be channeling

769
00:34:57,429 --> 00:35:00,250
the spirit of a 17th century English woman named

770
00:35:00,250 --> 00:35:03,170
Patience Worth. The Patience Worth story is unbelievable.

771
00:35:03,590 --> 00:35:05,909
Earl Curran, acting as the conduit, went on to

772
00:35:05,909 --> 00:35:08,329
write millions of words. Millions. She wrote

773
00:35:08,329 --> 00:35:11,050
critically acclaimed poetry, plays, and several

774
00:35:11,050 --> 00:35:13,789
full -length, historically accurate novels. All

775
00:35:13,789 --> 00:35:16,610
dictated seemingly on the fly, sometimes in front

776
00:35:16,610 --> 00:35:19,010
of live audiences of scholars. And through it

777
00:35:19,010 --> 00:35:22,019
all. Pearl adamantly insisted that Patience Worth

778
00:35:22,019 --> 00:35:24,059
was guiding her hands and providing the words.

779
00:35:24,340 --> 00:35:28,460
She genuinely experienced zero phenomenal authorship

780
00:35:28,460 --> 00:35:33,260
over her own staggering creative genius. It perfectly

781
00:35:33,260 --> 00:35:36,039
illustrates the vast, untapped processing power

782
00:35:36,039 --> 00:35:39,730
of the unconscious mind. Pearl Curran's brain

783
00:35:39,730 --> 00:35:42,030
possessed an immense reservoir of linguistic

784
00:35:42,030 --> 00:35:44,670
patterns, historical knowledge picked up from

785
00:35:44,670 --> 00:35:47,610
reading, and creative capacity. The unconscious

786
00:35:47,610 --> 00:35:50,840
engine was a supercomputer. But because the generative

787
00:35:50,840 --> 00:35:53,179
process bypassed her normal conscious planning,

788
00:35:53,340 --> 00:35:55,920
breaking the priority rule, her brain didn't

789
00:35:55,920 --> 00:35:57,900
generate the feeling of will. She had to invent

790
00:35:57,900 --> 00:36:00,360
patience where to explain her own output. And

791
00:36:00,360 --> 00:36:02,219
we don't just project our unconscious actions

792
00:36:02,219 --> 00:36:04,199
onto ghosts, we project them onto animals, too.

793
00:36:04,380 --> 00:36:07,340
The story of Clever Hans is the absolute gold

794
00:36:07,340 --> 00:36:09,940
standard for this. Hans was a horse in early

795
00:36:09,940 --> 00:36:12,579
20th century Germany. His trainer, a mathematics

796
00:36:12,579 --> 00:36:15,420
teacher named Wilhelm von Austin, honestly believed

797
00:36:15,420 --> 00:36:17,460
he had taught the horse to do arithmetic. You

798
00:36:17,460 --> 00:36:20,170
could stand in a courtyard. And ask Hans, what

799
00:36:20,170 --> 00:36:23,429
is five plus three? And the horse would tap its

800
00:36:23,429 --> 00:36:27,130
hoof exactly eight times and then stop. Hans

801
00:36:27,130 --> 00:36:30,449
was a sensation. He fooled crowds. He fooled

802
00:36:30,449 --> 00:36:33,050
journalists. And for a time, he even fooled a

803
00:36:33,050 --> 00:36:35,650
commission of scientific experts. But eventually,

804
00:36:35,750 --> 00:36:39,349
a brilliant psychologist named Oskar Pfunzt figured

805
00:36:39,349 --> 00:36:42,150
out the trick. Pfunzt designed a rigorous methodology.

806
00:36:42,920 --> 00:36:45,260
He put blinders on the horse. He had people ask

807
00:36:45,260 --> 00:36:47,980
questions to which they themselves did not know

808
00:36:47,980 --> 00:36:50,519
the answer. And suddenly, Hans' mathematical

809
00:36:50,519 --> 00:36:54,360
genius vanished. Hans couldn't do math. Hans

810
00:36:54,360 --> 00:36:57,559
was an unparalleled expert at reading human ideomotor

811
00:36:57,559 --> 00:36:59,519
action. Walk us through the exact mechanics of

812
00:36:59,519 --> 00:37:01,539
that, because it's so subtle. When the questioner

813
00:37:01,539 --> 00:37:04,239
asked 5 plus 3, the horse would start tapping.

814
00:37:04,750 --> 00:37:07,110
As Hans approached the correct number, six, seven,

815
00:37:07,190 --> 00:37:09,650
eight, the human questioner, who knew the answer,

816
00:37:09,750 --> 00:37:12,389
would unconsciously physically tense up in anticipation.

817
00:37:12,849 --> 00:37:14,849
They would lean forward slightly. Their breathing

818
00:37:14,849 --> 00:37:16,929
would change. When Hans hit the magical eighth

819
00:37:16,929 --> 00:37:19,090
tap, the human would unconsciously release that

820
00:37:19,090 --> 00:37:21,050
tension. They would relax their shoulders or

821
00:37:21,050 --> 00:37:23,469
slightly lift their head in relief. Hans didn't

822
00:37:23,469 --> 00:37:25,769
know math. He just learned the behavioral rule.

823
00:37:25,869 --> 00:37:27,869
Keep tapping until the human's body language

824
00:37:27,869 --> 00:37:30,610
relaxes, then stop. And you get a carrot. The

825
00:37:30,610 --> 00:37:33,050
humans were broadcasting the correct answer via

826
00:37:33,050 --> 00:37:36,369
unconscious ideomotor micro -movements and then

827
00:37:36,369 --> 00:37:38,210
projecting human intelligence onto the horse.

828
00:37:38,449 --> 00:37:41,030
So if we pull all these threads together, the

829
00:37:41,030 --> 00:37:44,530
pendulum, the Ouija board, patience worth, clever

830
00:37:44,530 --> 00:37:48,130
Hans, what? is the grand takeaway. The grand

831
00:37:48,130 --> 00:37:50,690
unsettling takeaway is that these automatisms

832
00:37:50,690 --> 00:37:53,630
aren't just quirky paranormal exceptions to normal

833
00:37:53,630 --> 00:37:56,250
human behavior. They actually strip away the

834
00:37:56,250 --> 00:37:59,230
illusion and reveal the underlying everyday truth.

835
00:37:59,469 --> 00:38:02,190
The fundamental mechanical mechanisms of all

836
00:38:02,190 --> 00:38:04,710
our behavior are unconscious. Idea motor action

837
00:38:04,710 --> 00:38:07,070
is happening all the time. In every word we speak,

838
00:38:07,110 --> 00:38:09,130
in every step we take. It is the illusion of

839
00:38:09,130 --> 00:38:12,059
conscious will. that is the fragile, rare exception.

840
00:38:12,619 --> 00:38:15,059
Conscious will is just a thin, user -friendly

841
00:38:15,059 --> 00:38:18,139
interface pasted on top of a dark, churning ocean

842
00:38:18,139 --> 00:38:20,219
of automatic processing. Okay, I hear you. The

843
00:38:20,219 --> 00:38:22,039
data is overwhelming. But I keep coming back

844
00:38:22,039 --> 00:38:24,380
to this visceral resistance. And why do we fight

845
00:38:24,380 --> 00:38:26,480
it so hard? If the illusion of conscious will

846
00:38:26,480 --> 00:38:29,559
is just a fragile interface, why do I feel so

847
00:38:29,559 --> 00:38:32,699
fiercely convinced of it? If I am basically an

848
00:38:32,699 --> 00:38:35,440
incredibly complex, deterministically driven

849
00:38:35,440 --> 00:38:38,679
meat robot navigating a physical universe, why

850
00:38:38,679 --> 00:38:41,000
do I fight so hard logically and emotionally

851
00:38:41,000 --> 00:38:43,860
to defend my status as the conscious driver?

852
00:38:44,159 --> 00:38:46,199
Because the illusion of conscious will is the

853
00:38:46,199 --> 00:38:50,139
absolute core of our ego and identity. We are

854
00:38:50,139 --> 00:38:52,920
deeply psychologically attached to the concept

855
00:38:52,920 --> 00:38:56,559
of being an ideal agent. An ideal agent. An ideal

856
00:38:56,559 --> 00:38:59,159
agent is a perfectly rational entity who knows

857
00:38:59,159 --> 00:39:01,579
exactly what they want in advance, formulates

858
00:39:01,579 --> 00:39:04,260
a plan, and executes it flawlessly. We want to

859
00:39:04,260 --> 00:39:06,059
believe our internal narrative makes logical

860
00:39:06,059 --> 00:39:08,980
sense. And when that ideal is threatened, when

861
00:39:08,980 --> 00:39:11,440
we act automatically or make a mistake or do

862
00:39:11,440 --> 00:39:13,239
something that we clearly didn't consciously

863
00:39:13,239 --> 00:39:16,530
plan. our brains experience massive cognitive

864
00:39:16,530 --> 00:39:18,809
dissonance. To resolve that dissonance and protect

865
00:39:18,809 --> 00:39:21,269
the illusion of the ideal agent, our brains will

866
00:39:21,269 --> 00:39:24,230
do logical backflips. We literally rewrite our

867
00:39:24,230 --> 00:39:26,570
own history. We see the raw, unfiltered version

868
00:39:26,570 --> 00:39:28,789
of this rewriting process in developmental psychology

869
00:39:28,789 --> 00:39:31,269
with young kids. Oh, this is so funny. Three

870
00:39:31,269 --> 00:39:33,170
-year -olds have a notoriously difficult time

871
00:39:33,170 --> 00:39:35,170
distinguishing between what they intended to

872
00:39:35,170 --> 00:39:38,309
do and what accidentally happened. If you watch

873
00:39:38,309 --> 00:39:40,030
a three -year -old throw a ball at a target,

874
00:39:40,480 --> 00:39:43,199
miss the target completely, but accidentally

875
00:39:43,199 --> 00:39:45,940
hit a cool toy piano that makes a funny noise.

876
00:39:46,380 --> 00:39:48,679
If you immediately ask them, did you mean to

877
00:39:48,679 --> 00:39:50,900
hit the piano? They will lick you dead in the

878
00:39:50,900 --> 00:39:53,480
eye and say, yes, I meant to do that all along.

879
00:39:53,800 --> 00:39:56,079
And we laugh at children for doing it, but adults

880
00:39:56,079 --> 00:39:58,480
are no different. We just use significantly more

881
00:39:58,480 --> 00:40:01,320
sophisticated vocabulary for our rationalizations.

882
00:40:01,619 --> 00:40:04,099
We engage constantly in the confabulation of

883
00:40:04,099 --> 00:40:06,960
intent. The perfect cultural metaphor for this

884
00:40:06,960 --> 00:40:09,840
is Aesop's ancient fable of the fox and the grapes.

885
00:40:10,300 --> 00:40:13,219
The fox sees a delicious bunch of grapes, jumps

886
00:40:13,219 --> 00:40:15,780
for them, fails to reach them, and then walks

887
00:40:15,780 --> 00:40:18,000
away muttering, those grapes were sour anyway,

888
00:40:18,119 --> 00:40:20,139
I didn't actually want them. The fox experiences

889
00:40:20,139 --> 00:40:22,820
a failure of execution, and to preserve his self

890
00:40:22,820 --> 00:40:25,980
-image as a capable agent, he retroactively rewrites

891
00:40:25,980 --> 00:40:28,059
his initial intention to match his failed outcome.

892
00:40:28,420 --> 00:40:31,219
This ties perfectly into the psychological concept

893
00:40:31,219 --> 00:40:34,059
of cognitive dissonance, first explored by Leon

894
00:40:34,059 --> 00:40:37,420
Festinger and later refined. by Daryl Bem's self

895
00:40:37,420 --> 00:40:40,099
-perception theory. Bem argued something incredibly

896
00:40:40,099 --> 00:40:42,940
counterintuitive. He said, we often don't actually

897
00:40:42,940 --> 00:40:45,699
know what our internal attitudes, emotions, or

898
00:40:45,699 --> 00:40:48,820
intentions are until after we observe our own

899
00:40:48,820 --> 00:40:51,119
physical behavior. We are like external observers

900
00:40:51,119 --> 00:40:53,539
of our own bodies. We look at what our meat just

901
00:40:53,539 --> 00:40:56,400
did, and we backward engineer. plausible intention

902
00:40:56,400 --> 00:40:59,260
so we don't feel like programmed robots. We say,

903
00:40:59,320 --> 00:41:01,980
wow, I just ate that entire plate of spicy Thai

904
00:41:01,980 --> 00:41:03,699
food in five minutes, so I must have strongly

905
00:41:03,699 --> 00:41:05,760
intended to eat it because I deeply love spicy

906
00:41:05,760 --> 00:41:08,780
food. A brilliant empirical demonstration of

907
00:41:08,780 --> 00:41:11,739
this retroactive rewriting is Kruglansky's prize

908
00:41:11,739 --> 00:41:14,380
experiment with school children. Researchers

909
00:41:14,380 --> 00:41:17,659
had a group of kids play a series of novel, engaging

910
00:41:17,659 --> 00:41:20,139
games in a classroom. The kids were naturally

911
00:41:20,139 --> 00:41:22,719
having a great time. Afterward, the researchers

912
00:41:22,719 --> 00:41:25,480
split them up. They told one group, As we promised

913
00:41:25,480 --> 00:41:27,300
you before we started, members of the winning

914
00:41:27,300 --> 00:41:29,780
team get a special prize and they handed them

915
00:41:29,780 --> 00:41:32,900
a toy. Now, crucially, they hadn't actually promised

916
00:41:32,900 --> 00:41:36,300
a prize beforehand, but the kids happily accepted

917
00:41:36,300 --> 00:41:39,480
the narrative and the toy. Later, the researchers

918
00:41:39,480 --> 00:41:42,579
interviewed the kids to ask how much they intrinsically

919
00:41:42,579 --> 00:41:44,880
enjoyed the games themselves. The group that

920
00:41:44,880 --> 00:41:47,280
received the retroactive prize reported liking

921
00:41:47,280 --> 00:41:49,699
the game significantly less than the control

922
00:41:49,699 --> 00:41:52,400
group. Because they completely retroactively

923
00:41:52,400 --> 00:41:55,269
changed their internal motivation. They looked

924
00:41:55,269 --> 00:41:56,829
at the prize in their hands and thought, well,

925
00:41:56,949 --> 00:41:59,929
I got a toy for playing this. Therefore, I must

926
00:41:59,929 --> 00:42:01,650
have only intended to play in order to get the

927
00:42:01,650 --> 00:42:04,070
prize, not because the game itself was intrinsically

928
00:42:04,070 --> 00:42:07,369
fun. They completely overwrote their historical,

929
00:42:07,510 --> 00:42:10,530
authentic mental state based on new environmental

930
00:42:10,530 --> 00:42:13,010
information. And this compulsive rewriting process

931
00:42:13,010 --> 00:42:16,409
isn't just a psychological quirk. It has a literal

932
00:42:16,409 --> 00:42:18,550
physical location in the brain's architecture,

933
00:42:18,829 --> 00:42:21,630
famously theorized by cognitive neuroscientist

934
00:42:21,630 --> 00:42:23,869
Michael Gazzaniga as the left brain interpreter.

935
00:42:24,400 --> 00:42:27,480
Gazzaniga did pioneering, Nobel -level work with

936
00:42:27,480 --> 00:42:30,619
split -brain patients. These were patients who

937
00:42:30,619 --> 00:42:34,079
suffered from severe epilepsy, and as a treatment,

938
00:42:34,260 --> 00:42:37,159
surgeons completely severed their corpus callosum,

939
00:42:37,260 --> 00:42:39,900
cutting off all direct communication between

940
00:42:39,900 --> 00:42:42,019
the left and right hemispheres of the brain.

941
00:42:42,400 --> 00:42:45,119
And because of how the optic nerves cross over,

942
00:42:45,360 --> 00:42:47,980
Gazzaniga could show information exclusively

943
00:42:47,980 --> 00:42:50,780
to the right hemisphere, which controls the left

944
00:42:50,780 --> 00:42:53,260
hand. without the left hemisphere, which controls

945
00:42:53,260 --> 00:42:55,699
speech, ever knowing about it. Walk us through

946
00:42:55,699 --> 00:42:58,039
his famous chicken claw experiment, because it

947
00:42:58,039 --> 00:43:00,280
is the ultimate proof of the brain's PR department.

948
00:43:00,599 --> 00:43:03,400
It is a stunning piece of science. Gazzaniga

949
00:43:03,400 --> 00:43:05,699
sat a split brain patient in front of a screen.

950
00:43:06,159 --> 00:43:08,800
To the patient's left visual field, which goes

951
00:43:08,800 --> 00:43:11,239
only to the right hemisphere, he flashed a picture

952
00:43:11,239 --> 00:43:13,579
of a snowy winter landscape. To the right visual

953
00:43:13,579 --> 00:43:15,719
field, which goes to the left hemisphere, he

954
00:43:15,719 --> 00:43:18,159
flashed a picture of a chicken claw. Then he

955
00:43:18,159 --> 00:43:20,079
placed a series of physical objects in front

956
00:43:20,079 --> 00:43:22,079
of the patient and asked them to point to the

957
00:43:22,079 --> 00:43:24,039
objects that matched the picture. The patient's

958
00:43:24,039 --> 00:43:26,280
left hand, controlled by the right hemisphere

959
00:43:26,280 --> 00:43:29,800
that saw the snow, points to a snow shovel. The

960
00:43:29,800 --> 00:43:31,559
right hand, controlled by the left hemisphere

961
00:43:31,559 --> 00:43:34,159
that saw the chicken claw, points to a toy chicken.

962
00:43:34,400 --> 00:43:37,219
Perfect logical sense so far. Both independent

963
00:43:37,219 --> 00:43:39,539
brains are answering correctly based on their

964
00:43:39,539 --> 00:43:42,880
isolated data. But... Here is the critical moment.

965
00:43:43,539 --> 00:43:46,400
Gazzaniga asks the patient speaking to the verbal

966
00:43:46,400 --> 00:43:49,880
left hemisphere, why did your left hand just

967
00:43:49,880 --> 00:43:52,400
point to the shovel? Now remember, the speaking

968
00:43:52,400 --> 00:43:55,449
left hemisphere never saw the snowstorm. It has

969
00:43:55,449 --> 00:43:58,210
absolutely no idea why the left hand is pointing

970
00:43:58,210 --> 00:44:00,449
at a shovel. But the left hemisphere does not

971
00:44:00,449 --> 00:44:02,769
admit ignorance. It doesn't say, I don't know.

972
00:44:02,929 --> 00:44:04,989
Instead, without missing a beat, the patient

973
00:44:04,989 --> 00:44:07,250
replies, oh, that's simple. The chicken claw

974
00:44:07,250 --> 00:44:09,289
goes with the chicken, and you need a shovel

975
00:44:09,289 --> 00:44:11,579
to clean out the chicken shed. It's breathtaking.

976
00:44:11,960 --> 00:44:14,440
The left brain observes the left hand doing something

977
00:44:14,440 --> 00:44:17,059
completely inexplicable, and within a fraction

978
00:44:17,059 --> 00:44:19,940
of a second, it invents a totally fabricated,

979
00:44:19,940 --> 00:44:22,260
completely plausible narrative to explain the

980
00:44:22,260 --> 00:44:25,159
action, weaving it into the only data it has

981
00:44:25,159 --> 00:44:27,460
the chicken. Gazzaniga concluded that the left

982
00:44:27,460 --> 00:44:29,780
hemisphere contains a specialized, highly active

983
00:44:29,780 --> 00:44:32,800
module, the interpreter. Its sole evolutionary

984
00:44:32,800 --> 00:44:36,480
job is to constantly, relentlessly spin a cohesive,

985
00:44:36,579 --> 00:44:39,559
logical narrative out of the disparate, parallel,

986
00:44:39,840 --> 00:44:42,440
unconsciously generated actions of our body.

987
00:44:42,579 --> 00:44:45,559
It is the ultimate spin doctor. So bringing this

988
00:44:45,559 --> 00:44:47,800
back to the listener. Yeah. What does this all

989
00:44:47,800 --> 00:44:50,699
mean for my deeply held personal beliefs? If

990
00:44:50,699 --> 00:44:54,099
I sit down and seriously evaluate why I love

991
00:44:54,099 --> 00:44:56,800
playing the guitar or why I chose my specific

992
00:44:56,800 --> 00:45:00,400
career or why I married my spouse. Am I just

993
00:45:00,400 --> 00:45:02,159
listening to my left brain interpreter making

994
00:45:02,159 --> 00:45:04,659
up a flattering story after the fact? Is my entire

995
00:45:04,659 --> 00:45:07,940
identity just a postdoc rationalization? Yeah.

996
00:45:08,019 --> 00:45:10,780
In a staggering number of cases, yes. The narrative

997
00:45:10,780 --> 00:45:13,260
you tell yourself is a simplified, logical story

998
00:45:13,260 --> 00:45:15,900
pasted over incredibly complex, nonverbal, unconscious

999
00:45:15,900 --> 00:45:18,500
drives. And paradoxically, relying too heavily

1000
00:45:18,500 --> 00:45:20,079
on that interpreter, thinking too hard about

1001
00:45:20,079 --> 00:45:22,219
your conscious intentions, can actually sever

1002
00:45:22,219 --> 00:45:24,800
your connection to your true self. Psychologists

1003
00:45:24,800 --> 00:45:27,380
Timothy Wilson and Jonathan Schooler proved this

1004
00:45:27,380 --> 00:45:30,269
in a famous study on analyzing. reasons. They

1005
00:45:30,269 --> 00:45:32,710
brought participants into a lab and had them

1006
00:45:32,710 --> 00:45:35,469
taste and rank several different brands of strawberry

1007
00:45:35,469 --> 00:45:38,090
jam. They then compare the participants rankings

1008
00:45:38,090 --> 00:45:41,130
to the objective rankings of expert professional

1009
00:45:41,130 --> 00:45:44,849
taste testers from Consumer Reports. And under

1010
00:45:44,849 --> 00:45:47,250
normal conditions, when people just taste the

1011
00:45:47,250 --> 00:45:49,530
jam and go with their gut feeling, their rankings

1012
00:45:49,530 --> 00:45:52,190
map surprisingly well onto the experts rankings.

1013
00:45:52,449 --> 00:45:54,969
We generally know what good jam tastes like.

1014
00:45:55,070 --> 00:45:58,210
Exactly. But Wilson and Schooler introduced a

1015
00:45:58,210 --> 00:46:00,989
twist for one group. Before this group ranked

1016
00:46:00,989 --> 00:46:03,550
the jams, the researchers asked them to sit down

1017
00:46:03,550 --> 00:46:06,030
and write out a detailed, logical list of specific

1018
00:46:06,030 --> 00:46:08,650
reasons why they liked or disliked each jam.

1019
00:46:08,829 --> 00:46:12,329
Was it the texture? The pectin content? The sweetness?

1020
00:46:12,489 --> 00:46:14,650
When these participants finally ranked the jams,

1021
00:46:14,750 --> 00:46:17,769
their choices were terrible. Their rankings completely

1022
00:46:17,769 --> 00:46:19,929
deviated from the experts, and they ended up

1023
00:46:19,929 --> 00:46:21,710
choosing jams they later admitted they didn't

1024
00:46:21,710 --> 00:46:24,070
really like. Why does that happen? Why does thinking

1025
00:46:24,070 --> 00:46:26,949
make us stupid in this context? Because aesthetic

1026
00:46:26,949 --> 00:46:29,570
preference, much like complex decision making,

1027
00:46:29,789 --> 00:46:33,570
is a holistic pattern recognition process handled

1028
00:46:33,570 --> 00:46:36,489
by vast unconscious neural networks. When you

1029
00:46:36,489 --> 00:46:40,510
force people to articulate logical reasons, you

1030
00:46:40,510 --> 00:46:42,650
are forcing the left brain interpreter to take

1031
00:46:42,650 --> 00:46:44,789
over. The interpreter can only process variables

1032
00:46:44,789 --> 00:46:47,130
that are easy to verbalize, like it has a lot

1033
00:46:47,130 --> 00:46:49,650
of chunks, even if chunks aren't actually what

1034
00:46:49,650 --> 00:46:51,449
makes the jam taste good to your unconscious

1035
00:46:51,449 --> 00:46:54,630
palate. By forcing a logical narrative onto an

1036
00:46:54,630 --> 00:46:57,449
unconscious process, the researchers cause the

1037
00:46:57,449 --> 00:46:59,929
participants to literally talk themselves out

1038
00:46:59,929 --> 00:47:02,769
of their own true preferences. Confabulating

1039
00:47:02,769 --> 00:47:05,409
reasons makes us functionally blind to the reality

1040
00:47:05,409 --> 00:47:07,610
of our own behavior. Okay, we have systematically

1041
00:47:07,610 --> 00:47:10,610
dismantled the entire foundation of human agency.

1042
00:47:10,849 --> 00:47:13,150
We really have. The engine is an unconscious

1043
00:47:13,150 --> 00:47:16,369
cascade of physical causes. The feeling of will

1044
00:47:16,369 --> 00:47:18,989
is a post hoc illusion generated by a set of

1045
00:47:18,989 --> 00:47:21,730
cognitive rules, and our left hemisphere constantly

1046
00:47:21,730 --> 00:47:24,289
lies to us to protect that illusion. This brings

1047
00:47:24,289 --> 00:47:26,789
us to the ultimate existential question, which

1048
00:47:26,789 --> 00:47:29,409
is the focus of Wagner's final beautiful chapter,

1049
00:47:29,610 --> 00:47:31,929
The Mind's Compass. From a Darwinian perspective,

1050
00:47:32,150 --> 00:47:34,550
why did evolution bother to give us this illusion

1051
00:47:34,550 --> 00:47:38,369
at all? Evolution is ruthlessly efficient. If

1052
00:47:38,369 --> 00:47:40,429
the conscious steering wheel is entirely disconnected

1053
00:47:40,429 --> 00:47:43,409
from the physical axle, what evolutionary advantage

1054
00:47:43,409 --> 00:47:46,050
is there to having a fake steering wheel in the

1055
00:47:46,050 --> 00:47:48,449
cockpit? It is the most crucial question of the

1056
00:47:48,449 --> 00:47:52,750
entire text. If conscious will is merely an epiphenomenon,

1057
00:47:52,750 --> 00:47:55,389
a ghost haunting the biological machine without

1058
00:47:55,389 --> 00:47:58,650
moving any of the gears, why do we possess it?

1059
00:47:58,869 --> 00:48:01,150
Wegner's genius was realizing that conscious

1060
00:48:01,150 --> 00:48:05,210
will is not a cause, it is an emotion. Specifically,

1061
00:48:05,409 --> 00:48:08,010
it is the authorship emotion. It is a somatic

1062
00:48:08,010 --> 00:48:10,929
marker, a distinct visceral feeling that brands

1063
00:48:10,929 --> 00:48:13,730
a physical action as belonging to you. We can

1064
00:48:13,730 --> 00:48:16,190
return to the compass analogy. Think of a compass

1065
00:48:16,190 --> 00:48:18,550
mounted on the dashboard of a massive ship. The

1066
00:48:18,550 --> 00:48:20,670
compass itself does absolutely nothing to steer

1067
00:48:20,670 --> 00:48:22,670
the ship. The massive diesel engines push it

1068
00:48:22,670 --> 00:48:25,030
and the rudder turns it. The compass has zero

1069
00:48:25,030 --> 00:48:27,860
causal power. But the compass tells the captain

1070
00:48:27,860 --> 00:48:30,519
where the ship is heading in the vast, featureless

1071
00:48:30,519 --> 00:48:33,500
ocean. The feeling of conscious will is a gauge

1072
00:48:33,500 --> 00:48:36,719
on our mental dashboard. It is an emotional tag

1073
00:48:36,719 --> 00:48:40,039
that says, hey, out of all the millions of sensory

1074
00:48:40,039 --> 00:48:42,119
events and physical movements happening in the

1075
00:48:42,119 --> 00:48:45,219
world right now, this specific action was generated

1076
00:48:45,219 --> 00:48:49,659
by your biological machinery. Own it. And without

1077
00:48:49,659 --> 00:48:52,980
that specific authorship emotion, Human society,

1078
00:48:53,320 --> 00:48:55,820
civilization as we have constructed it, would

1079
00:48:55,820 --> 00:48:58,460
immediately collapse. We require this internal

1080
00:48:58,460 --> 00:49:01,500
compass to build any coherent sense of self or

1081
00:49:01,500 --> 00:49:04,360
achievement. Imagine if you didn't feel the surge

1082
00:49:04,360 --> 00:49:06,719
of conscious will and ownership when you painted

1083
00:49:06,719 --> 00:49:09,099
a beautiful picture, or when you finally solved

1084
00:49:09,099 --> 00:49:11,599
a complex, grueling math problem. If you felt

1085
00:49:11,599 --> 00:49:13,420
like the action just happened to you like a sneeze,

1086
00:49:13,679 --> 00:49:16,239
you would never feel pride. You would never build

1087
00:49:16,239 --> 00:49:18,659
a cohesive catalog of your own skills. You wouldn't

1088
00:49:18,659 --> 00:49:20,280
know what you were good at, and you couldn't

1089
00:49:20,280 --> 00:49:22,590
plan for the future. And on the dark flip side

1090
00:49:22,590 --> 00:49:25,050
of that coin, without the illusion of will, we

1091
00:49:25,050 --> 00:49:27,409
couldn't be held morally or legally responsible

1092
00:49:27,409 --> 00:49:30,389
for our actions. The legal implications of Wegner's

1093
00:49:30,389 --> 00:49:32,929
work are absolutely massive. The psychologist

1094
00:49:32,929 --> 00:49:35,530
and legal scholar John Monahan critiqued the

1095
00:49:35,530 --> 00:49:38,130
entire concept of the insanity defense using

1096
00:49:38,130 --> 00:49:41,409
exactly this deterministic logic. If modern science

1097
00:49:41,409 --> 00:49:44,150
dictates that free will is ultimately an illusion

1098
00:49:44,150 --> 00:49:47,250
for everyone, if every murderer's brain was destined

1099
00:49:47,250 --> 00:49:50,269
to fire that sequence of neurons, how do we logically

1100
00:49:50,269 --> 00:49:52,789
justify punishing criminals? It is the great

1101
00:49:52,789 --> 00:49:55,710
crisis of modern jurisprudence. Monaghan points

1102
00:49:55,710 --> 00:49:58,349
out that the entire legal system operates on

1103
00:49:58,349 --> 00:50:00,750
a centuries -old free will theory of behavior.

1104
00:50:01,130 --> 00:50:04,210
To be convicted of a major crime, you generally

1105
00:50:04,210 --> 00:50:07,469
need a guilty mind, or mens rea. You had to have

1106
00:50:07,469 --> 00:50:10,210
consciously intended to commit the act. But if

1107
00:50:10,210 --> 00:50:12,610
neuroscience shows that behavior is biologically

1108
00:50:12,610 --> 00:50:15,469
deterministic, we have to reevaluate the utility

1109
00:50:15,469 --> 00:50:18,110
of punishment. Wagner argues that the illusion

1110
00:50:18,110 --> 00:50:20,369
of will is practically necessary for society

1111
00:50:20,369 --> 00:50:23,269
to function. It is the social glue. It tells

1112
00:50:23,269 --> 00:50:25,150
us who needs to feel the sting of guilt, who

1113
00:50:25,150 --> 00:50:27,210
deserves the warmth of pride, and critically,

1114
00:50:27,409 --> 00:50:30,159
who requires isolation or rehabilitation. If

1115
00:50:30,159 --> 00:50:32,659
a criminal's internal compass is genuinely broken,

1116
00:50:32,920 --> 00:50:36,079
if, due to brain damage or severe psychosis,

1117
00:50:36,280 --> 00:50:38,480
they do not experience the authorship of motion

1118
00:50:38,480 --> 00:50:40,800
for their crimes, they might be judged legally

1119
00:50:40,800 --> 00:50:43,579
insane because punishment won't alter their internal

1120
00:50:43,579 --> 00:50:46,440
compass. But the rest of us rely on the shared

1121
00:50:46,440 --> 00:50:48,739
hallucination of free will to navigate social

1122
00:50:48,739 --> 00:50:52,280
contracts. We hold people responsible, not because

1123
00:50:52,280 --> 00:50:54,900
they are magical, uncaused causes acting outside

1124
00:50:54,900 --> 00:50:57,519
of physics, but because the act of holding them

1125
00:50:57,519 --> 00:51:00,420
responsible serves as a new environmental input

1126
00:51:00,420 --> 00:51:03,280
that modifies their future deterministic behavior.

1127
00:51:03,679 --> 00:51:05,840
This theory isn't just an abstract philosophical

1128
00:51:05,840 --> 00:51:08,739
game played in university lecture halls. It has

1129
00:51:08,739 --> 00:51:12,079
profound and sometimes utterly tragic real -world

1130
00:51:12,079 --> 00:51:16,309
manifestations. Wegner's colleague, who co -authored

1131
00:51:16,309 --> 00:51:18,829
the I Spy experiment, writes about this with

1132
00:51:18,829 --> 00:51:21,329
devastating clarity in the preface to the new

1133
00:51:21,329 --> 00:51:23,829
edition of the book. Dan Wegner himself, the

1134
00:51:23,829 --> 00:51:26,050
brilliant man who dedicated his life to proving

1135
00:51:26,050 --> 00:51:28,409
that conscious will is an illusion, ended up

1136
00:51:28,409 --> 00:51:30,610
experiencing the physical reality of his theories

1137
00:51:30,610 --> 00:51:33,650
in the cruelest ways possible. Yes. Mid -career,

1138
00:51:33,670 --> 00:51:36,130
Wegner developed a brain tree located near his

1139
00:51:36,130 --> 00:51:38,539
left parietal ventricle. After he underwent surgery

1140
00:51:38,539 --> 00:51:41,059
to have the tumor removed, he temporarily suffered

1141
00:51:41,059 --> 00:51:43,960
from a highly specific deficit. He lost the feeling

1142
00:51:43,960 --> 00:51:46,239
of authorship in his right arm. He would sit

1143
00:51:46,239 --> 00:51:49,159
in a chair and watch his own hand reach up, grab

1144
00:51:49,159 --> 00:51:51,679
his sunglasses and put them on his face. And

1145
00:51:51,679 --> 00:51:53,599
he would literally have to stop himself from

1146
00:51:53,599 --> 00:51:56,539
verbally thanking his hand, as if it were a helpful

1147
00:51:56,539 --> 00:51:58,840
nurse or a stranger who had just done him a favor.

1148
00:51:58,980 --> 00:52:01,420
He was trapped inside the very syndrome he had

1149
00:52:01,420 --> 00:52:04,380
spent... decades theorizing about his physical

1150
00:52:04,380 --> 00:52:07,980
body executed complex goal directed actions flawlessly

1151
00:52:07,980 --> 00:52:11,199
but the specific neural module responsible for

1152
00:52:11,199 --> 00:52:13,340
generating the authorship emotion was temporarily

1153
00:52:13,340 --> 00:52:16,679
offline the engine ran but the speedometer was

1154
00:52:16,679 --> 00:52:19,179
broken and the tragedy only deepens from there

1155
00:52:19,179 --> 00:52:22,429
years later Wagner developed ALS Lou Gehrig's

1156
00:52:22,429 --> 00:52:25,789
disease. A truly horrific disease. ALS systematically

1157
00:52:25,789 --> 00:52:28,309
destroys the motor neurons that control voluntary

1158
00:52:28,309 --> 00:52:30,190
muscle movement, leading to total paralysis.

1159
00:52:30,250 --> 00:52:32,489
But crucially, it leaves the higher cognitive

1160
00:52:32,489 --> 00:52:35,130
functions of the mind completely intact. He spent

1161
00:52:35,130 --> 00:52:37,630
his final months experiencing the exact mirror

1162
00:52:37,630 --> 00:52:39,690
image opposite of his post -surgery condition.

1163
00:52:40,230 --> 00:52:43,150
With ALS, he possessed the intense, perfect,

1164
00:52:43,309 --> 00:52:46,369
agonizing experience of conscious will. He had

1165
00:52:46,369 --> 00:52:49,070
the robust desire, the intention, and the internal

1166
00:52:49,070 --> 00:52:52,250
command to move his arm, to speak, to walk. But

1167
00:52:52,250 --> 00:52:54,110
he was entirely without the physical machinery

1168
00:52:54,110 --> 00:52:57,030
to execute the action. He lived both sides of

1169
00:52:57,030 --> 00:52:59,489
the ultimate disconnect. He lived action without

1170
00:52:59,489 --> 00:53:02,489
will, and he died with will without action. It

1171
00:53:02,489 --> 00:53:04,610
is a heartbreaking conclusion to his life, but

1172
00:53:04,610 --> 00:53:06,829
it vividly underscores a vital point about our

1173
00:53:06,829 --> 00:53:09,250
psychological health. The illusion of control

1174
00:53:09,250 --> 00:53:12,590
is not a design flaw. It is an evolutionary masterpiece,

1175
00:53:12,869 --> 00:53:15,489
and it is absolutely vital for our well -being.

1176
00:53:15,920 --> 00:53:18,119
when people chronically lose the illusion of

1177
00:53:18,119 --> 00:53:20,760
will as we see in severe cases of clinical depression

1178
00:53:20,760 --> 00:53:23,800
where patients feel incapable of initiating action

1179
00:53:23,800 --> 00:53:25,860
or in the passivity delusions of schizophrenia

1180
00:53:25,860 --> 00:53:28,420
where patients feel their thoughts are being

1181
00:53:28,420 --> 00:53:31,300
inserted by the cia or aliens they lose their

1182
00:53:31,300 --> 00:53:33,519
fundamental anchor to their own identity they

1183
00:53:33,519 --> 00:53:36,480
feel adrift helpless or violated by outside forces

1184
00:53:36,480 --> 00:53:39,380
the illusion of conscious will is precisely what

1185
00:53:39,380 --> 00:53:42,670
makes us feel human so Synthesizing this incredible

1186
00:53:42,670 --> 00:53:45,849
mind -bending journey, we are not the prime movers

1187
00:53:45,849 --> 00:53:48,670
we desperately wish we were. We are not captains

1188
00:53:48,670 --> 00:53:50,449
commanding the ship from outside the laws of

1189
00:53:50,449 --> 00:53:53,289
physics. We are highly complex, deterministically

1190
00:53:53,289 --> 00:53:56,369
driven biological machines, shaped by our genetics

1191
00:53:56,369 --> 00:54:00,010
and our environment. But evolution and its infinite

1192
00:54:00,010 --> 00:54:03,349
pragmatism didn't leave us in the dark. It built

1193
00:54:03,349 --> 00:54:06,480
us a brilliant deeply felt emotional user interface.

1194
00:54:07,039 --> 00:54:09,559
The feeling of conscious will to help us keep

1195
00:54:09,559 --> 00:54:11,820
track of which actions belong to our specific

1196
00:54:11,820 --> 00:54:14,659
machine so we can learn, so we can feel pride,

1197
00:54:14,860 --> 00:54:16,880
so we can feel guilt, and so we can live together

1198
00:54:16,880 --> 00:54:19,139
in a functioning society. Exactly. The feeling

1199
00:54:19,139 --> 00:54:22,260
of doing is not the cause of doing, but it is

1200
00:54:22,260 --> 00:54:24,739
the indispensable, beautiful signature of the

1201
00:54:24,739 --> 00:54:27,579
self. Which leaves us with a final, highly provocative

1202
00:54:27,579 --> 00:54:30,340
thought for you to chew on. What's that? If the

1203
00:54:30,340 --> 00:54:32,440
feeling of conscious will is just a post hoc

1204
00:54:32,440 --> 00:54:34,960
emotional tag our brain uses to claim ownership

1205
00:54:34,960 --> 00:54:38,139
of an action, imagine what happens as our technology

1206
00:54:38,139 --> 00:54:40,480
continues to advance. Like artificial intelligence.

1207
00:54:40,860 --> 00:54:43,619
Imagine a near future where brain computer interfaces

1208
00:54:43,619 --> 00:54:46,940
or advanced AI become deeply integrated into

1209
00:54:46,940 --> 00:54:50,480
our daily lives. If an AI is constantly reading

1210
00:54:50,480 --> 00:54:53,059
your readiness potential, monitoring the electrical

1211
00:54:53,059 --> 00:54:55,690
buildup in your motor cortex, it could start

1212
00:54:55,690 --> 00:54:57,829
predicting and executing your desires a split

1213
00:54:57,829 --> 00:55:00,010
second before you even form the conscious thought.

1214
00:55:00,130 --> 00:55:02,690
Wow. If a smart home machine opens the door for

1215
00:55:02,690 --> 00:55:04,869
you, or your neural link phone sends a harsh

1216
00:55:04,869 --> 00:55:07,789
text message to your boss, based entirely on

1217
00:55:07,789 --> 00:55:10,250
your unconscious impulse, a fraction of a second

1218
00:55:10,250 --> 00:55:13,250
before your brain's interpreter module generates

1219
00:55:13,250 --> 00:55:16,530
the will to do it, whose action is it? If your

1220
00:55:16,530 --> 00:55:19,550
biology initiated it, but a machine executed

1221
00:55:19,550 --> 00:55:21,610
it before your consciousness could claim it,

1222
00:55:21,949 --> 00:55:23,869
Who is the author? And much more importantly,

1223
00:55:23,969 --> 00:55:25,489
whose fault is it if something goes horribly

1224
00:55:25,489 --> 00:55:28,150
wrong? When the machine bypasses the emotional

1225
00:55:28,150 --> 00:55:30,690
compass entirely, the entire concept of human

1226
00:55:30,690 --> 00:55:33,829
authorship gets cast into a very dark, very murky

1227
00:55:33,829 --> 00:55:35,809
territory. So bringing it all back to where we

1228
00:55:35,809 --> 00:55:38,050
started, you pressed play on this deep dive today.

1229
00:55:38,130 --> 00:55:40,909
Your brain's intricate engines were revving processing

1230
00:55:40,909 --> 00:55:43,869
algorithms and curiosities long before you felt

1231
00:55:43,869 --> 00:55:46,150
the conscious urge to click. But you felt it.

1232
00:55:46,250 --> 00:55:49,440
Your compass claimed it. You owned it. And whether

1233
00:55:49,440 --> 00:55:51,840
it was an inevitable cascade of deterministic

1234
00:55:51,840 --> 00:55:54,480
neurochemistry or a brilliant functional illusion

1235
00:55:54,480 --> 00:55:57,429
of choice, we're just glad your compass pointed

1236
00:55:57,429 --> 00:55:57,809
you here.