Dr. David Eagleman

And that was all pre-social media.

So I don't think that has much to do with it, except that I do think maybe we're more aware because it used to be that everyone was in their echo chambers.

Also nothing new there.

But, you know, all of your friends and neighbors and whatever all believed in whatever.

And so you didn't realize there were other people who believed other things.

But I think now we're just much more exposed to that.

OK, so polarization, nothing really new about that, but it's very important for us to understand this.

So one of the experiments we did in my lab was the following.

We put people in the brain scanner, fMRI.

They see six hands on the screen.

All the hands look pretty much alike.

And the computer goes around and it picks one of the hands.

And then you see that hand get stabbed with a syringe needle.

What happens is you have this empathic response, specifically this network of areas that we summarize as the pain matrix comes online.

It's not your hand getting stabbed, nonetheless you're watching a hand getting stabbed and you, this is the neural basis of empathy.

You're feeling, what would it feel like if that were my hand?

Great.

Okay.

Now what we do is we put a one-word label on each hand.

Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Scientologist, Hindu, Atheist.