David Eagleman
speaker
1,631 appearances
7 recordings
5 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard 20 Mar
David Eagleman’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 2.
Appearances
Even though my very first reaction is this, I know that if I sit down at the bar with this guy and talk to him, he obviously had a desire to do that to see if he could discover something new. then he can do something wonderful. And obviously, we all know as kids we grow up, whatever neighborhood we're in, we're maybe exposed to all these races and religions, but not these other ones.
And so it's easy with our in-group, out-group proclivities to say, okay, that's an out-group. But then you go to college, you meet people of various things. This is the whole game. It's just meeting lots of people and seeing that... Look, here's how I view it. Humans moved out of Africa about 250,000 years ago.
Humans started radiating north out of Africa and some turned left and became Europeans, some turned right and became Asians. And... That period of time is so short from a biological point of view. We're all exactly the same on the inside. We've all got brains and lungs and hearts. If you look from the point of view of a biologist, there's no difference between people.
Obviously, cultural differences exist. Religious differences exist. There's all kinds of local cultural stuff, but people are the same. So the important part is to figure out how do we find ways to reach across the aisles? And so one of my... Big interests is if I can get to the right ears, the right place to tweak the social media algorithms. So here's what I mean.
Currently, as we all know, the social media algorithms favor anger and it's incentivized to be incendiary, let's call it. But here would be the optimal social media algorithm that I think could actually change the world is imagine that you and I have totally different political beliefs. But we both like hang gliding and this kind of dog and we like biking on Sundays and whatever.
So every time one of us makes a post on that, we're both seeing that. I don't know you yet. You're a stranger to me, but I see that post and you see my post. Oh, hang gliding. Oh, this. We find all these things that we have in common. Then one day when we discover, oh, we have different political opinions, then we're like, oh, cool, Jordan, tell me about that. Why do you feel that way? And so on.
Then we can talk. But if the first thing you know about me is that I have a different political opinion, then it's a different ballgame.
Exactly right. And by the way, it doesn't have to be the in-group everybody. It's my in-group is other hang gliders and other people who like this kind of dog. Like, that's my only group. That's fine, because there's nothing about that that's going to make me pick up arms and go to war over that stuff.
Exactly. Exactly right. And by the way, obviously these social media companies from our behavior and things we post, they know hundreds of data on us. So that can really be used for good by saying, hey, look, these two strangers have something in common that they like. Just whatever. We like Salvador Dali paintings or whatever it is.
Yeah. So, okay. The short answer is right now, we don't have the technology that would even get us close to that. Why? Because the brain is made up of 86 billion neurons, about that same number of glial cells. And the connections between the neurons is about 200 trillion synapses, the connections between them. Okay. What does that mean?
It means we don't have, if you took all the computing power on the planet right now, it's not enough. To actually... On the whole plane. On the whole plane. Yeah, because it's about a zettabyte of information is what it would take to actually scan and store your brain. And we have probably a quarter of that capacity right now. So we can't do that yet.
But 100 years for sure, we'll have the capacity. No problem there. Okay. But the question is, if we took your brain and we put it onto a different substrate, let's say on silicon, would it be you? In theory, yes. In theory, it would be because if we're running the algorithm of Jordan, that is you. And I could probably replicate it out of different material.
I could make it out of beer cans and tennis balls. And if it's running the right algorithm, I can say, hey, Jordan, how are you feeling? You say, oh, I'm feeling good, whatever. This is what's known as the computational hypothesis of neuroscience, which is it's the algorithms that matter and not the details of how Mother Nature had to build it out of cells. Okay, fine.
but it's still a simulation of just my brain. Right, so here's the key. Is that me? Yeah, well, there's a few interesting points here. One is we have to actually capture the mechanisms of brain plasticity. In other words, your brain's ability to change and move. Your brain is reconfiguring itself all the time, every second of your life.
This was my last book, LiveWired, is all about this brain plasticity stuff. Because if we don't, if we simply replicate this snapshot, then you don't remember anything new. In other words, if I took a static snapshot of your brain, then you say, oh great, today is whatever, January 20th of 2035, and you never get past it. I'm just in this room with you forever. Forever, exactly.
That's number one, is you gotta get brain plasticity. And then number two is there's this really interesting thing about whether it is you. So let's imagine we scan your brain and then we kill you. You have to. And 100 milliseconds later, we start the thing up. Then it's like you've transferred it.
The thing that starts in this computer world says, whoa, I was just sitting in the living room with David and now I'm here in this computer world. Okay, and it feels like you've transferred it. The question is, the you sitting here right now
Do you feel like you have transferred or do you feel like you just got killed and then this other creature came up that happened to have all of your memories, but the question is, is it you? And it might not be. It might not be you.
He's miserable. What's weird is that if I kill you 100 milliseconds after the upload, then that's murder. Yeah, you're just murdering.
Exactly right. I find this really interesting. Look, here's the thing. If we do upload ourselves at some point in the distant future, let's say a thousand years from now, there's a couple of things that we have to really watch for. One is, who are the programmers? Who watches the Watchmen? Like, you are completely at the mercy of whoever is running the simulation.
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