Ezra Klein

That's not a bad metaphor.

We don't know exactly how it works.

There is still this question of if the workspace idea is true, everything we think should be of some consequence.

And we all know that's not true.

And so why do things that are completely trivial or banal enter our consciousness?

You know, Freud would say we're suppressing more important things.

I mean, you know, there are standards by which that makes sense.

And also, and that pleasure is not driving this, right?

I mean, it's success.

You are learning algorithms, if we're going to use that computer metaphor, that are, even though it doesn't feel good, are promoting the kind of behavior that's going to solve problems and keep everybody happy.

maintain the peace, you know, all these kind of things.

So our minds are, you know, invested in our success, not our pleasure.

I mean, one of the things, you know, I talked a lot about how psychedelics inspired this book, but meditation did too.

Because as soon as you stop to examine what's going on in your mind, which many people don't do,

but now tens of millions of people do do, especially since the pandemic, there are a lot more meditators than there were, is how strange our minds are and how little volition is involved, and that we think we're calling the shots as conscious human beings, but to a remarkable extent, we're not.

Where that material is coming from, we can call it the unconscious, we don't really know.

But it's just defamiliarized, right?

I mean, you're just estranged from your own mental processes.

And this whole idea that that great meditation exercise will look in your brain for who's thinking those thoughts, who's feeling those feelings, and you won't find anybody.

Oh, yeah.