Anil Seth

speaker

1,118 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 28 Jul

Anil Seth’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Know Thyself · E205 - Anil Seth: Your Perception of Reality & Self Is a Hallucination · 28 Jul 2026 podcast

I mean, there's costs the other way, of course, as well.

If we underplay the importance of individual selfhood, then we also get into trouble.

We just don't care about people.

And that's equally problematic.

I think like many things, there's virtue in moderation.

Selfhood is good in limited doses, but we don't want to do away with it.

I think if we overestimate the reality of the self...

then we probably underestimate the importance to which self-experience is shaped by the societies we live in, the interactions we have with other people, with animals, with nature in general.

We may suffer more because we feel that the self has to be preserved at all costs, can't change, and things become more threatening to the self.

But if we're a bit more fluid with the nature of self, that it's always changing.

then perhaps we can diminish a little bit of the fear of change and defuse some of these threats.

Ultimately, I worry about something we're seeing a little bit more these days, people really taking seriously the idea that they want to live forever.

Imagine a world where that becomes possible.

I think there'd be many problematic consequences.

And one of the great, I guess, retaining walls on some sense of equality is the fact that within an order of magnitude, everyone dies at more or less the same time.

Once that's gone, then inequality in society will become massively increased.

And that's probably not a good thing.

I think, yeah, there's lots of issues in taking ourselves too seriously.

But it's also understandable.

We are built to try to stay alive.

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