Dr. David Eagleman

I think it's very useful to make that sort of thing, but also just understanding what's, I mean, part of the, you know, there was this Greek admonition to know thyself.

This was a sign they had in various places, various temples and stuff.

But I think that becomes know thyselves.

And the better we know ourselves, the more we can get rid of the illusion that we are one person.

Because all any of us need to do is look back on our behavior to say, oh, yeah, in some circumstances I would do that.

Other circumstances I think it's a terrible idea.

So this is all to the goal of understanding who you are.

Yes, that's exactly right.

So brain plasticity, if someone hasn't heard that term before, it sounds like a weird term.

But the reason it came about 100 years ago is because the great psychologist William James pointed out that, you know, if you take a piece of plastic, what we like about that material that we call plastic is that you can mold it into a shape and it'll hold that shape.

And that's what your brain does.

So if I ask you the name of your third grade teacher, you can remember that name, even though it's been a long time, because...

Your neural networks changed and held on to that piece of information.

Okay.

Well, our whole lives, our brains are changing every moment.

So now we have certain doors that close at different times.

So just as an example, you need to learn language in the first several years of your life.

If you don't learn language, you can never get the concept of language.

Your brain will never figure that out.

You're not saying you can't learn a new language as an adult.