Anil Seth

We can remember things from long ago and we can project out into the distant future things that haven't even happened yet.

And in our rolling mental lives, these past events and possible futures, they play a quite dominant role in a way that probably isn't the case for most other animals.

And it's a super interesting question.

How different our experiences would be were we in the same room?

I don't know if you remember or your listeners may well remember a few years ago, there was this internet phenomenon called the dress.

This was a badly exposed photograph of the dress.

And for half the people in the world, more or less, this dress seemed to be blue and black.

But for the other half of the people in the world, it seemed to be white and gold.

And this was so compelling that the blue and black people just could not believe that it was possible for somebody else to see it as white and gold.

I remember myself being mystified that this was happening, but it really happens.

And that opened up a little fracture, just a suggestion that, okay, if we can be in that much disagreement about something so simple, what are the most subtle ways in which our inner worlds differ all the time?

I think there's a vast...

unexplored territory of the diversity of how different people experience the same thing that we know surprisingly little about.

That's right.

That's right.

I mean, people have been interested in consciousness, I think, since they've been interested in pretty much anything.

It's one of the questions I think we all have as a kid.

Like, who am I?

Why is it like anything to be me?

And what happens after I die?