Dr. David Eagleman

Look, you and I grew up in a slightly different world where if I count the number of childhood photos that I have that I see, you know, I've got like little landmarks every couple of years.

Oh, that was me at eight years old standing in front of my house in Albuquerque and that was me at 10 years old and so on.

But now, you know, we have an Alexa in our kitchen and it's constantly cycling through the pictures of my kids who see that every day.

Oh, that was me a few years ago.

That was me last month and so on.

I think kids are now much more tightly tied to their memory in a way that might prove very useful.

Unuseful in the sense that maybe you can't get away from your childhood, but useful in the sense that at least your memory is going to be slightly more accurate because you're getting, you know, repetition.

You're getting spaced repetition on it.

I suspect it's a social issue, yeah.

Everyone wants to prove that they were there.

You know, I went and saw the Mona Lisa at the Louvre recently, and every person there was just taking a picture of it instead of standing there looking at the damn Mona Lisa.

But here's my suspicion, is that they might have a slightly less present experience at the moment, but maybe it also lasts longer in the sense that every once in a while they see that picture of themselves at the concert and they remember it.

So maybe the area under the curve is the same.

I also think this is a social thing.

I think you can't even talk about beliefs that we hold without talking about what that means for our identity and for what team we're on.

Okay, so let me back up.

I think we're not any more polarized than ever before.

Just as an example, look at the 20th century.

You've got, you know, if you look really what happened with Nazism in Europe, in Germany or fascism in Italy or what happened in Cambodia with Pol Pot or in Rwanda or the Chinese and Russian communist revolutions.

All these things were extraordinarily polarized moments where people took up arms and killed their neighbors.