Alex O’Connor: #1 Shift That Stops Endless Overthinking (FINALLY Get Unstuck)

of petty stuff. I used to like playing music, so i'd like skip class to be in the school recording studio, that kind of stuff. And you know, somebody asked me recently. I was doing a talk with some school kids, and one of them asked, like, do you think your upbringing has affected your worldview? And that's a difficult question to answer because we never know for sure that someone asks like why are you an atheist? There's one sense in which you could say because I don't believe that the

contingency argument is sound. And there's another in which you could say because my parents got divorced to when I was eight, you know what I mean, And those can kind of be both true, and so it's difficult to sort of psychologize. But I was thinking, like, yeah, maybe the fact that I had this slightly sort of acting out rebellious attitude that meant that when I came across the New Atheist movement, something about the debate, something about the theater attracted me to it because I had that

kind of attitude as a child. My memory would be kind of like walking into school at like midday wearing the wrong uniform and having somebody kind of say, you know, you really should be wearing black shoes, and me just saying, oh, I sort it out tomorrow, and that kind of just being the kind of childhood I had, which is maybe not what people would expect, given how much I care about being a bit more like studious these days, and

how I'm kind of associated with like academics. I'm not an academic myself, but I speak to them all the time, and I've got a university degree in this kind of stuff. I find that's also kind of like helpful for people to hear sometimes, because a lot of people listen to my stuff who are really interested in like philosophy or theology or whatever it is, but they don't like school, they don't do so well at school and not interested.

And I kind of want to say that's that's okay, like don't flunk out, like do the best you can, but don't take school or your your sort of desire to be in school or academia as a proxy for your desire to learn about the world.

just I just didn't care. It was really only in like the last year I had to go back and redo a levels because you have to stay in education until you're eighteen in the UK, and I thought, you know what, why not, let's give this a crack. So

I got ABC doing humanity subjects. I remember I had some friends who still have, these friends who wanted to go to Oxford for the longest time, you know, since they were young, and they worked really hard at school, and I would sometimes joke, you know, about how I was going to go to Oxford too, and then they would laugh, and I'm like, Okay, I am joking, But why is that so funny? Why is that so funny?

you think it's like the end of the world, retake these exams. It's not the end of the world. And if you don't get into your dream university, there are all kinds of reasons why I might have preferred to have gone to a different university. It's just nice to know that there are options. I think young people, everything's so serious when it comes to like exams, and they aren't you know, take them seriously. It's better if you do well, sure, but it's not the end of the world if you don't.

flip it around within a short period of time. It was such a long time ago, and you can't fully say this is exactly what I was doing. But talk to me about at least what it feels like when you reflect back and go why you felt I'm going to change my mindset around this.

didn't believe me. You know, they thought that the reason why I'm failing is because I'm not you know, I don't have the goods. I can't do this kind of stuff. And it wasn't just that. It wasn't like I just thought I need to prove a point now. But when I suddenly got this idea in my head that it would be fun to go to university, it would be cool, and I started admiring new atheist figures like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchins, both of whom studied at Oxford, and

I'd also started making YouTube videos. This was the other thing, right, I'm like seventeen when I start making videos online, at least the videos I make today, and they were these kind of edgy new atheists type videos, and like they started doing quite well relative for the time. And I think there was also this feeling of like, if I'm gonna be on the internet talking about, you know, God and religion and debating people and stuff, I'd better prove

that I know one I'm talking about it. It feels it weird to be doing that. And then like failing school. Yeah, and so I kind of knew that I could do it. I thought that it might be useful, and so I just sort of decided to give it another go. And it was very much a case of being like, yeah, see, I can do this. I just didn't want to before, and I kind of regret that I didn't. But then having said that, if I'd have done further maths and physics, who knows what I'd be doing now, and I'd still

be interested in philosophy. But I think that it was definitely a good thing that it went the other way.

university of whether attending. When you think about it from that perspective, you said you knew you had the goods. I think a lot of young people today feel they don't have the goods. They don't actually feel confident in their ability academically at school or even otherwise. What do you say to them? What do you think about for someone who's looking at that, going, yeah, I didn't even know what I would do. I don't know what i'd study.

I don't really know myself. You got interested in atheism early, you were making content, you were almost this this self started it seems ten years ago, which again was pretty revolutionary for someone your age, because there's not that many people that got started that early. What would you say to someone right now who's saying, Alex, you know, I'd love to do something like you or my own thing, but I actually don't know what I'm good at. I don't don't know what my strengths are.

recognized as a form of intelligence. I mean, intelligence is a difficult thing to define, but it's probably something like the ability to perform particular tasks. Its ability to like perform tasks with a particular goal in mind. That's why we call AI artificial intelligence. Even though it might not be conscious or a person or anything. The intelligence is the ability to perform tasks and there's something you can do. People who are music talented, it's a very particular kind

of genius. They might have absolutely no idea what the quadratic equation is, but they can just intuit musical feeling in a way that other people just couldn't even comprehend. There might be skills that you didn't even know were skills. Maybe you're like really good at architecture and your school just doesn't do our and it would take a long time for you to realize that that's the thing you're into. It took me a long time to realize architecture was even like a subject that existed that.

things and others not. It could be social, it could be genetic, it could be anything. Who knows all that matters that right now you're good at some things and bad at others. I think the best advice anyone can get on that regard. In that regard is to figure out as quickly as possible what you're good at. That's the most important thing. What are you good at and what do you enjoy doing and try to try to pursue that, and then realize that you don't have to look.

You don't have to go to university, even if you want to be a physicist or a mathematician. Eventually you'll probably have to, but you don't have to do it now. You can take some time out, you can think, is this really what I want to be doing. You can go and travel the world and whatnot. If you really want to go down the academic route. It's there are always options available for you, and there are so many now. You can do them online, you can do them virtually,

you can do them part time. There's always something available for you. It's so obvious to someone who's an adult, someone who's like currently working in a cafe and doesn't really know what they want to do with themselves. It's not going to console them to say, hey, man, you don't need to worry about academia. I didn't even think

of that. But when you're a kid, academia is like the only thing unless maybe you're like a particularly talented like football or school, and then maybe but even then, maybe your school doesn't encourage that kind of thing, and you will be told that the most important thing in your life are your exams. Don't get me wrong, those exams are important, like nail. Then it will help you

in the long run. But the idea that that is kind of what life's about is obviously insane, and I think kids like no that, but they haven't felt it, they haven't internalized it. I speak to a lot of school kids, and they've heard this kind of stuff, you know, don't let exams rule your life and stuff. But some of them I think hearing that I literally did just completely fail and then change my mind and turned it around,

and it sort of relaxes them a little bit. It's no guarantee that you're going to be able to turn it around and go to Oxford, right, It's obviously not the case. I feel very lucky in that regard, but like there are options.

didn't know existed. That will help with being able to be an architect because you will be able to draw images. It will help with doing textiles. It will help with set management. You know, you could be someone who designs sets for podcasts, a job that didn't even exist really when I was at school, and now it's a very specific, very niche thing that people are after. But the most

important thing is the passion of it. It would always really upset me when a university there were people who would struggle a lot with the work and then also think, and I'm not even sure if I should be doing this. I don't know if this was the right subject. That's just that's nihilism.

maybe you're not. But you think to yourself, well, I know where this is going. I'm going to be a doctor. I'm going to save lives, I'm going to make a lot of money. I'm going to provide to my children. And that allows you to deal with the fact that you're not passionate about it. You need at least one of those You need the passion or the direction. If

you have both, then you've hit the gold mine. If you have neither, then I think you become a bit nihilistic, at least in regards to your employment.

it turns out they used a Pulley system, and everyone goes like, oh cool, It's not the most refound thing in the world. For me. My line of work is so much engaged in worldview, and the worldview that I'm mostly engaged in talking about is Christianity, and some of the biggest mysteries about the Christian religion are about specifically the kind of things that Jesus actually said and did as opposed to what orthodox Christians believe he did. The

resurrection is an obvious example. Stand outside the tomb of Joseph of Aarmethea and see if somebody gets up and walks out. But also the baptism. I'd love to see the baptism of Jesus because I want to know why was Jesus being baptized, Who was John the Baptist? Why did Jesus seem to be some kind I mean, historically some people think he might have been a disciple of John the bapt which Christians won't want to accept, but

I'd love to know that fact. It's the moment where jesus ministry really begins, and the Gospel tell us that the heaven's open and there's this voice from heaven, and that this is where Jesus sort of picks up some of his initial disciples from as well. I would love to see what happened there, because if I showed up and John the Baptist said, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, and I would say, gosh, okay, Christianity's maybe got something going for it.

But if he showed up and Jesus bowed down as head master. You know, then I think it would totally upset Orthodox Christianity. And I think that's like a really important question. What's the relationship between Jesus and on the Baptist. So I'd love to see them meet, eh, But it's hard to know. I mean, you've surely got an answer to this question yourself.

the movie. But I look at a moment like that and I go wow, like humans had to really sit down and think about because for the first time ever, how do you truly go to court for post World War two and the actions that we're taking against the Jews, and I'm like, that's a fascinating moment to be a

part of. Now, that's not that long ago. So then you go, Okay, where would those other moments in history where big decisions were made by groups of human beings after groups of human beings went through certain amount of suffering, turmoil or subjugation.

two sources. It's like a scrap the pyrus somewhere with a name scribbled on it. And yet these people were so important. So I think it would have to be it would have to be an ancient.

It would be like this has completely upended everything that I believe about the universe. That's one of the reasons why when you ask what h historical event would I see? Yah, the key moment in the world's most popular religion seems to be quite an important one to me. Suppose you went and found out that you know, Jesus didn't rise from the dead, or you found out that Muhammad was a false prophet, what are you gonna do, like come back to London and go right here yee hear yee.

I've got to tell you guys, something d be terrible. I'd rather not know because I'd be terrified to let people know what i'd seen.

my study of consciousness. I'm fascinated by the philosophy of mind, and of course the Indian tradition has this amazing content essentially on the philosophy of mind that I hadn't really encountered before becoming convinced of some weird views about consciousness, about how it's not reducible to material and how it's not as simple as saying that brains just produce consciousness. That kind of stuff sort of led me into learning

about specifically the Advita Adanta tradition. Vedanta meaning like the Vaders are part of the Hindu scriptural canon. They're like the oldest religious scriptures in the world. I think like Anta means I think it's the addendum and to means like end, so you get like end of the Vaders, meaning like the latter part of the Vaders, which collectively are known as the Apanashad and Advita meaning like a

like non and diviter meaning duel. So in the philosophy of mind, I think in philosophy generally, one of the biggest questions is how many types of stuff are there? Because there's this really weird sort of division of reality where we're conscious, we have subjectivity like inner thoughts, and this mug over here doesn't. So there seems to be kind of two different kinds of things. You've basically got

three options when it comes to explaining that. One is that there are just two types of things in the universe. There's mind and there's body. There's mental and there's physical, and they are just separate kinds of things, and somehow they interact with each other. Another way is to say, actually, there's only one type of stuff, and that type of stuff is the dead stuff. It's the matter the atoms. This is the most popular view in the West today.

The only stuff that exists is atoms that are dead, and it's just that if you put them together in the right way, you get this thing called consciousness. But really it's kind of just a manifestation of the atoms. There's a third option, which is there is only one type of stuff, and it's the mental stuff and what we call physical what we call the physical world around us is a manifestation of mental stuff. Which sounds super hippie dippy, but that's only because we're not used to it.

I mean the idea that people think that, you know, they're just happy to accept that if you put physical matter together in the right order, it will produce thoughts. That is as weird to me as saying that if you put thoughts together in the right order, you could produce some physical matter. It seems like it's sort of category mistake, right, But I think there's only one type of stuff. So there's this view, which in the Western tradition is called idealism, which is kind of the view

that everything exists as mental stuff. Some people have said that everything is kind of an idea in the mind of God. Some people think that nothing exists except in so far as it's being perceived. It's a very sort of complicated and quite deep philosophical tradition, but it's something that the advice of Danta tradition had been banging on about for thousands of years prior to its development in

the Western canon. The reason it's Vedanta is because the apanishads are like particularly interested in the idea that kind of division is a is an illusion and unity is real. And it heavily implies that consciousness, or like the soul, the kind of stuff that makes you yourself is kind of one thing with everybody else's self, and that all of that consciousness is kind of the same thing as the universe, that this is great, big sort of unity

of stuff. I thought that was really cool. So it's a bit of a sort of long winded way to say that. I started looking into that, and then I had Swami Sava Priorander, it's the head of the Vedanta Society of New York or whatever it's called, on my show, and we talked about Advita Fidanta. We talked about consciousness. We didn't talk about the Hindu pantheon of gods. I still don't understand how Brahman manifests in like hundreds of different deities. I still don't really get that at all.

I don't know about the different traditions who see different deities as their main gods and stuff like that. I don't really understand that. But I understand the philsophy of consciousness. We were able to have a great conversation about this particular Indian tradition. But the thing about the Vita Fidanta is it's not really a religious tradition. It's a philosophical

tradition that comes from India. So when I do this show, yeah, I'm speaking to a Hindu, and people say, great, you're talking about Hinduism for the first time, It's like, no, I'm not really, I'm talking about a philosophical school that comes from India. Yeah, which is not the same thing. I mean, the word Hindu is very unhelpful anyway, because it's what's called an excellent which is a word which is applied from the outside. People didn't call themselves Hindus.

It's sort of got etymological routes with like the Indus River Valley, which is where a particular people were just doing their thing, just going about their business, and Europeans sort of label these people Hindus. But it sort of refers to the geography. Someone's saying like, have a Hindu on. It's kind of a little bit like someone saying like,

have a European on. So I can get why somebody, if you'd never spoke to a European would want me to speak to a European because there is a different flavor of thought that goes on there, but it's such a rich and varied sort of culture. No, I appreciate the way you look at you can't do that. So when someone says, like you ask, you know, what's your engagement with the Indian tradition, it's sort of like somebody saying, what's your engagement in the Western philosophical canon. It's like,

that's a big question. I've got to say. I'm much more specific, you know, I'm interested in this person or that personal, this school. And so for me, the stuff that I love from the Indian tradition is their views on consciousness, which I think predates the Western stuff and does it a lot more sort of intuitively.

You've got a biologist, an evolutionary biologist in Richard Dawkins, a journalist in Christopher Hitchins, a neuroscientist, although I don't

know if he did anything further than his studies, Sam Harris. And then you've got the philosopher Daniel Dennett. And that is that the philosopher is the one who's like the least critical in that regard and outgoing, and although he had a lot to say about religion. The reason why these guys and other disciplines were getting involved is because, like Richard Dawkins was annoyed that Young Earth creationists were saying,

you can't teach evolution in schools. Christopher Hitchins was getting annoyed that religious justifications were being used for geopolitical terrorism. That was their kind of line of attack. And so to think that they would be talking about that kind of stuff, that Hitchens would be sort of standing up and complaining about the sort of the messianic undertones of the Israeli Palestine conflict and then suddenly start going. But you know, I think that Brahman and Atman are maybe

the same thing. But I want to critique that idea by you know, appealing to the rival school. It just seems ridiculous to me. So so I think New atheism no, But that's because within Eastern religions you have the same kind of conflicts going on, which I don't think that West knows as much about. But also the kind of engagement I have is not about that. Like I say, I'm not interested so much in the in the deities and the gods and the sex. I'm interested in the

philosophical traditions. And I don't think the New atheists were even interested in the Western philosophical traditions. They were interested in the practical reality of religion. Religion is a force for evil, Religion causes wars and that kind of stuff. That's all very well and good. But to me, I've always compared that to saying like it's like saying politics is bad. Yes, sure, you know, politics CAUs us wars and politics drives families of It's like, that's true, but

that doesn't mean we should be an anarchist. Maybe we should, but doesn't guarantee it doesn't mean there isn't a correct political position, and critiquing that kind of stuff doesn't mean that you know anything about political philosophy. You might not know anything about, you know, theories of justification of the state or whatever it is that political philosophers sit around talking about, you know, and I think the same thing's going on with New atheism. They couldn't recite Thomas Aquinas's

causal arguments for God if you paid them to. Richardawkins does so in The God Delusion. He sort of responds to Thomas Aquinas directly. Thomas Aquina is the most celebrated Christian metaphysician like in history, and he responds to Thomas Aquinas in about two pages. It takes more than two pages even to explain the terminology that Thomas Aquinas is using. Let alone to list, explain and then debunk. I think we have some evidence that there's just not this engagement

with the philosophical tradition. I don't mean to insult these people. I like Richard. Richard's a friend of mine. I think he knows that I disagree with his philosophical musings, and he himself just admits. He says that he's just not interested in theology and philosophy. It's just not what he wants to do. He wants to do science, I think fair enough. But then maybe don't write a book with a chapter called why there almost certainly is no God? But he did it because he cared about science. He

doesn't care about the colalm cosmological argument or whatever. He cares about evolution being taught in schools and that kind of stuff. And so the idea that someone who cares about that and that's their way in is suddenly going to become interested in the even in philosophy in the West, is not very popular. The idea that these guys are going to engage with that, I think is untrue. And

so that funnels down to the modern day. The sort of teenage atheist like me on YouTube making videos took me years before I even encountered Indian philosophy, and that only came after I sort of calmed down a bit.

if you don't have to negotiate, you don't have to be an entrepreneur. It's almost impossible to get a three hundred and sixty degree view on a belief an idea, because there's so many different thoughts and ideas. How would you explain your worldview to a ten year old so that they simply understood it.

they'd say, you'd ask a further question. So if they say, yeah, no, that I guess so, but that's because you know you've got a brain, And then you might start asking about

what they think the brain is and how so you sort of ask questions. And in my view, I think we have just sort of swallowed wholesale this idea that everything can be reduced to scientific explanation, at least everything that is true about the universe can be scientifically explained. And I just don't think that's true. And I think it's like trivially untrue. I'm not making some profound what about love, man, you can't scientifically It's like, no, you

can explain the chemicals that are firing it. I mean something a bit more specific, which is that science isn't really in the business of explaining things. I'm no longer talking to the ten year old. By the way. Science is not in the business of explaining things. It's in the business of describing things mathematically. Galileo famously says that mathematics is the language of the universe. Fair enough, But

maths on its own doesn't do anything. Maths just describes all mathematical equations have an equal sign, and it describes some sort of fact about reality. It doesn't cause anything. Newton's laws of motion don't cause objects to move. They describe how objects move when they're in motion. Similarly, the example I love to give because it's so explicit his Newton's discover a discovery of gravity. What did Newton actually discover when he discovered gravity? What's the thing that he

actually figured out? We had known for a very long time that objects fall to the ground, right, what's the thing that he realized? Well, Newton asked an interesting question. He looks up at the moon and he asks like, like, why isn't the Moon falling towards the Earth? And his sort of profound realization is that the Moon is falling towards the Earth all the time. It's just that if something falls towards my hand will hit my hand. But if I knock it to the side a little bit,

then it will kind of do this. It will kind of miss the Earth a bit and then crash into the side. And if I knock it a little bit further to the side, it will sort of miss it even more and maybe crash into the bottom eventually. And if you knock it just the right speed to the side, it will keep falling towards the Earth, but keep missing it.

And that's what we call orbit. And Newton realized that the same thing that makes objects fall to the ground, keeps the planets in circulation, which is a profound realization. And then he took to the task of mathematically describing it calculus inverse square law. So he figures out that the distance between two things, if you square that distance, that is how much weaker the force of gravity is. So something is two times further away, it's four times

less attractive. And he does all of this and it's brilliant in the print, could be a mathematica. But then there remains this question like why not how do objects fall to the ground? What mathematical rules do they sort of do it by? But why do they fall to the ground? And in the Sculium, which is like an addendum to the Principia Mathematica where Newton published these findings,

he answers this explicitly. You can read this online. He says, like as to what gravity actually is, as to why this stuff is happening, he writes hypothesis non fingos in Latin, it means I frame no hypothesis. He doesn't know, And he says it's also not the kind of question that science should be engaged in, because it can't answer that kind of question. In other words. Newton has described brilliantly planets orbits, objects falling to the ground. This force, which

he calls gravity, and it's sort of a placeholder. It's like, the word gravity is just a word for whatever is the thing that's making this happen, But he doesn't know what's making it happen. And it's so funny to me when people like look into the past and they say, how silly are the beliefs that people used to have. They used to believe in like animism, they used to believe in spirits. They used to believe that, you know,

angels were pushing around planets and stuff. But no, No, since the scientific revolution, we're much more intelligent because we explain things in terms of.

will say, okay, fair enough with Newton. I pick Newton because he says it explicitly. This isn't an insult to science. It's not insulting to say that it's not really interested in the why question, it's interested in how questions. Some people think the why question just shouldn't exist. That's fine to say, But science itself is definitely in the business of describing. Scientists will happily tell you that anything which is true about physics can be described mathematically. But if

you think about what maths is, it's equations. They don't do anything. Stephen Hawking at the end of A Brief History of Time quite famously, I wish I could recite it from memory. It's so beautiful. He writes about how he hopes that maybe one day our basic scientific theories will condense into one great, big theory of everything, that there'll be one beautiful equation that sort of governs everything

about the universe. But he says, we'll still be left with the question of what breathes fire into the equations. Equations don't make things move. They describe how things move when they're in motion. Right so we're left with this great, big explanatory gap. If people are in any doubt about this. There's a wonderful clip of Richard Feinneman. There's a BBC interview asking him about magnets. He says, you know, when I push two magnets together, they repel each other. Like,

what's going on there? And Fireman's like, well, you know the magnets are repelling each other and he goes, yeah, no, but you know, what's what's what's happening there? And Fimon's like, what do you mean? What's happening there? And this is the sort of moment of confusion, and the interviewer says, I've got to say I think this is a reasonable question, and by me goes, oh, no, it's a very reasonable question.

But what do you mean? Because if you ask a question like why, well it depends on your level of explanation, like why is Aunt Marie in the hospital? But because she slipped and fell on the ice. For most people that would satisfy, But if you were like an alien who didn't know anything, you'd need to know why slipping on ice sends you to a hospital, So you'd have to explain that, and then you'd have to explain, like why is ice slippery? Well, because when you step on ice,

it evaporates the top level, which turns into water. No, she's we're just describing what's happening. Okay, so why does that happen? Well, now we're talking about the molecular composition of water, and it's in its sort of chemical interactions. But why does that happen?

gravity work? And that's where we just were a second ago. Right, this thing gravity, which science will describe but never like explain why it's occurring, And Fiming sort of comes back to magnets and says, so for now, you know, it will have to be enough just to say that they are repelling each other. And that's fair enough. But I think that's what's going on. Science describes, like physics is the description of and the theory of physical matter and

its relations. It therefore presupposes the existence of matter and its relations. One of the foundational questions I don't think science will answer is where that physical matter came from? Like it seems plausible, we say, look at the progress we've made. We used to think that we couldn't explain biological complexity, but now we have. We used to think that we couldn't explain why objects fall, but now we have. I want to point out at firstly what we've actually

done is describe those processes. But also I think as a categorical difference between explaining some kind of physical interaction at a deeper level and explaining the origin of physical matter and its interactions. I don't think you will mathematically describe the origin of the stuff which the mathematical descriptions

apply to. Given what I've just said about how what scientific laws are are observations of stuff that happens in the US and then mathematically describing how they regularly like occur. I've sometimes compared this It's a bit of a crude analogy, but it gets across the point to discovering a book of Shakespeare's sonnets. If we came across a book of Shakespeare's sonnets and we didn't know what they were, then

we might start studying them. And suppose that you were really, really smart, and you said, okay, well, I've noticed that each of these letters comes in two kinds, as a big one and a small one, and whenever there's a new line, they use the big one as interesting. And you call that the law of capitalization. And then you notice that there are all of these little symbols unlike the letters, little dots and squiggles, and you realize that they show up in predictable ways, and you call that

the law of punctuation. And you're able to predict. If you're really clever, you might notice that if you say it out loud, it follows a particular rhythm. Done dun dunda dunda done. And you call that the law of iambic pentameter. Because you're get really clever now, and you can predict that if I turn over the page, I'm going to see something that follows these rules. What you're discovering, of course, are the laws of literacy. And then suppose I came along after all of that and said, okay,

so where do you think the book came from? And you said, well, we don't know yet, but look at all the progress we're making with the laws that we've discovered. I'm sure that one day these laws of literacy will explain where the book came from. You'd be making a category error. And I think the physicist does the same thing in saying that physics will one day explain the origin of physical matter, because physics is the study of

physical matter and therefore presupposes its existence. A question like that I don't think can be answered by science. I'm really not talking to.

can't describe. That is not to say, therefore God there might be some kind of what we might call naturalistic explanation. It's just not one that can be mathematized and therefore not sort of appropriate to use the lexicon of science to describe. That's fine, no problem with that. Of course, we still have this question. We still want to know why is there something rather than nothing? What is the

nature of consciousness? But I want to be very clear that this isn't some kind of underhanded way to motivated reasoning to leave rooms for God. It's just to say that when people have this sort of confidence that the scientific method will explain everything, because it's made to progress in the past. Notice the precise nature of the progress it's made. It's explained things, but only at a sort

of deeper level of resolution. It has described the mechanism take natural selection brilliantly, like Darwin figures out the mechanism by which organisms like diversify and become complex. And that's great, but it is a description. It's a description of what happens. And if you, as Finemann says, if you really do keep following that why question, you'll get down to some quite foundational questions, which it's less controversial to say science will not be able to explain.

without the ability to navigate the messy middle right. Specifically, in this case, it's almost like I either have to believe everything this book says is absolutely correct without any openness for questioning, door or reflection, or I have to believe this book that I learned that this textbook at school. Everything it says must be correct without any reflection, thought,

or need for debate. And so it's almost like, how do we get to a point where the human mind we allow it to have the ability to question our worldview and thoughts without losing all sense of certainty instability, Because it seems as humans. When people watch a debate, nine out of ten times people are just watching it to confirm their bias. Sure, so they're already on one side. You're going to watch the debate and you're going to go, yeah,

you know what, I'm fully with Alex. You know, we don't know if God exists, but we definitely know science can't answer all the questions, or on the other side, something's like, well, I'm from that religion, and that religious person is obviously spot on. So even when we watch a debate, we don't really ever come away from it going, you know what, I just couldn't believe that he said that,

because we're just going there to confirm our beliefs. So I guess my question is, would you even encourage people to live in the messy middle of not being certain about their ideas? Does that create a better human I

think that's where they do live, you think, so? I mean, there are very few things that people can be certain of in the sense of I would argue that most of the people you debate with, or most religious or scientific people in the world, at least in the form of how they live, are trying to live based on their belief.

believes that we've completed science. Yeah, of course scientists are very much like one day they hope that Einstein will be proved completely wrong because it's exciting and it would like sharpen what we understand about the universe, you know what I mean. And so like, I don't think anybody has that kind of confidence that they've got it all correct. But I think there is a confidence in the method, and fair enough have a confidence in the scientific method

because it's great. And again, I love science. I'm not trying to insult it or anything. I'm just saying very precise about what it's doing and what it's not. And I think we could avoid a lot of needless debate. Have we understand exactly the parameters of each of our disciplines, disciplines like interact and emerge and stuff. But like, if you're talking about mathematical models, there are things that mathematical

models just can't do. And if you're talking about like thought experiments and philosophy, there are things that thought experiments can't do. They cannot provide empirical proof of various phenomena. They can't provide scientific evidence for the Big Bang, that kind of stuff. But likewise, I think that the scientific method can't describe certain foundational aspects of reality, and then said,

presuppose them. I would, of course encourage people to recognize there's like lots of room to maneuver here, and I think that's one of the things that I'm trying to do. And like it kind of splits people, like especially when I talk about either consciousness or I talk about the nature of science. It splits people kind of three responses to the science stuff. Some people go, that's a load of nonsense. Of course, science explains things, and then I have to spend a bit of time really drilling down

what they mean by explaining in the Fineman sense. Other people say, this is really interesting, Yeah cool, I'd never thought about it that way. That's great, that's exciting. And some people sort of say, yeah, science doesn't explain in that sense, Like description is the same thing. They just sort of say, it's like trivially true. It's not a very profound observation, but it has sort of some profound implications.

If it is true that science only describes, then as long as you have an explanatory question left, it's one that science is not going to be able to answer. So I've sort of encourage people to at least explore that thought. It's totally fine to have confidence in your conclusions,

but like, recognize it's about the method. It's this optimism about the progress of science because of what it's done in the past, which is great, but you have to be very precise about exactly what it's done in the past and what it might therefore mimic in the future. And answering foundational metaphysical questions about the nature of matter, why it exists in the first place, that kind of stuff.

I just don't think it's an appropriate tool, and people will be thinking in their heads, but hold on, what about Like you know, there are theories that what about like string theory, what about the I'm telling you that if you investigate these closely enough, you will realize that these are proposed descriptions of the nature of reality. They proposed descriptions of what's going on, they don't answer the why question. I think you're left with two options. One

is to say the why question is bogus. Some people think that, and that's fair. Richard Dawkins has said, like, if you ask you a question like what is the color of jealousy? It makes grammatical sense, but it's a meaningless question. And the why question might be the same, why do things exist? If that's the case, so maybe there is no why, Maybe there are only descriptions. In that case, I would slightly alter my thesis to say everything is that. Maybe philosophy is description.

And that's not a problem. That's great. It's actually not that profound. Yeah, so many scientists are like, yeah, I mean you can call it like functionalism or descriptivism about science. That what's going on as we're just describing reality. And that's great and it's really useful, but I encourage people to just like reflect on what that means and what it should do to their confidence that science will answer these foundational questions.

the foundational fact of reality. It's the kind of thing which science can't approach because science science sort of describes relations between things. Science uses the languge mathematics. It's like quantifying consciousness is a quality, there's qualitative, not the kind of thing that science can talk about. I did a panel not long ago that was hosted by Brian Cox. It was with some neuroscientists, one of whom was Anal Seth, a good friend of mine, and the other two whose

names I forgotten. I'd only met them that one time, and they invited me because it was the show called A Question of Science, and they did all of these episodes and different scientific topics, and they did one on consciousness, and I think they wanted somebody who wasn't I guess like a neurosciencet. They want like a philosophical perspective. And I remember thinking, Okay, sure, I'll do this. I'm very grateful to be here if you really think that I'm

an appropriate person. And I thought, well, what I can do is I can come along and I can talk about some philosophical perspectives. I can talk about pan psychism, I can talk about other traditions and stuff. And I remember before we started, Brian sort of looked at the questions that had been submitted by the audience and was kind of wanting to get rid of some of them because he was like, well, you know this stuff about

like pan psychism and whatnot. I don't think we should really be spending any time on this kind of nonsense. And I was there. It was really awkward for me because I suddenly had to be like, oh, that's actually kind of what I'm what I'm here to do. We had this sort of slightly awkward conversation where I was a bit like, well, you know, I'm probably gonna mention it, and he's like, yeah, yeah, I mean good to at least you know, hear the view. I said, kind of

that kind of thing. And then the show started, and look, I love these guys, you know, and they're obviously geniuses. And I know nothing about neuroscxs well not nothing, but you know, I'm not a neuroscientist, but it struck me. If you watch the first bit of this, the first question is what do we think? Consciousness is very difficult thing to define. I think it's impossible to precisely define. But a famous definition was given by Thomas Nagil in

the seventies. To be conscious means there's something it is like to be you. There is something it is like to be this thing. Therefore it's conscious. It's like an inward sense of subjectivity. And we went round the panel and everyone agreed. Everyone was like, yeah, yeah, that's a great definition. I agree with that. That's fair enough. And the first question came, can we see consciousness in the brain?

Great question, and one by one each of the neurosciences said some really interesting things, but I felt just hadn't answered the question. Ann I'll actually said at one point, you know, we can kind of put this question of like consciousness like to the to the side or on the shelf or something like that, and we can talk about like the brain activity that's going on when the

conscious experience happens. And there was someone else who was talking about how when people have like hallucinations, it's like although to them they feel as real as actual site, different brain activity is happening when they think they see something when they do that's really intes it. That's great,

This is all really interesting stuff about neuroscience. But it got around to me and I turned to the question and I was like, I think the answer is no. And I think what we've we've just heard has kind of proved that because what you're doing is you're talking about brain chemistry, you're talking about neurons, you're talking about the neural correlates of consciousness. You're not talking about consciousness itself.

And I remember sitting there thinking like this is sort of quite strange to me because a lot of the sort of running threads throughout this one. I said, but like, what about the nature of what consciousness actually is? What about the explanation of like why we're conscious? There's sometimes this feeling of like, well, that's not really really a legitimate question. Yeah, it's enough to just describe the neural correlers. It's enough to just subscribe the brain activity. And I'm like,

that's fair enough if that's what you think. If you don't think that's an interesting question, then fine, But then why are we here at an event called what is consciousness?

It would sort of be like if we were at an event that was like talking about like football, and somebody asked about why the offside rull exists, and somebody started talking about how like, well, you know, it's a bit like in basketball where this how or is a bit like in cricket, or it's a bit like And then I said, but hold on, like I want to talk about like actually football. People might think I'm being

a little unfair. I'd encouragem to just watch it themselves, like I don't mean to disparage these people, as I say, they are geniuses and they do very important work. But I think it's quite clear to me that when we're talking about what consciousness is not talking about the same thing. I'm talking about the experience. I'm talking about the redness of ret I'm talking about like the feeling of cold on your skin. I'm not talking about a neuron firing.

And I don't think those are the same things. So that the common view amongst materialists is that experiences are just the same thing as brain activity. And I understand that thought, but they can't literally be the same thing. I'll tell you why. There's a law it's called Leibnitz's law, which says that if two things are identical, they share precisely the same properties. If X and Y are identical, that is, they are the same thing, then all of

the properties of X are shared. By Why, you can't say that two things are the same And I don't mean the same kind of thing, I mean literally the same thing. But one of them is red and one of them is blue, or one of them is five sided and one of them is two sided. That would mean that they're different things. Even spatial location, they have all the same properties, except this one's in China and

this one's in France. That means they're not identical. Let's think about the content of your mental experience, right you can imagine triangle in your head. I'm told that the triangle that I can literally see in my head right now is the same thing, the same thing as some neurons firing. I don't think so, because they don't have

the same properties. The triangle has three sides. As a fact about the triangle in my head, the neurons firing that correlate with my experience of that triangle don't have three sides, meaning that you've got two sort of things with different sets of properties, meaning they can't literally be identical. Maybe one causes the other, maybe one emerges from the other.

Maybe that's fine. We're not saying anything too crazy at the moment, but the idea that they are literally the same thing, I think just doesn't make much sense.

have the same idea of what a good life is. Right, So in the same way, why you might not want to get married and have children with someone with whom you haven't aligned your fundamental values. I almost sort of am not married to myself in that way because there's too much internal conflict. I sort of I disagree with myself too much to have a good answer to that question.

But also I'm not confident that I ever will. And so I think what people typically say is either they have a particular worldview and they say, well, the good life is to do what God commands. And that's kind of fair enough as well, because that still leaves room for the kid to go and work out who is God and what does God command? Right, It's actually quite broad, But I think if I were forced to say something,

I would ask what they mean by good. You know, I'm not sure if this is the kid asking me, but the word good is a difficult thing to unpack.

You know, there's morally good, or there's good in the sense that this is a good table because it holds things up, And some people think that's the same thing. But I think there are probably indicators of a good life that include like contentment and calm and lack of stress and that kind of stuff, confidence in the decisions that you've made. But I find it very difficult question to answer.

middle and thinks things through too. But I realized that that comes with a lot of uncertainty in the sense that you could totally have one toe spin moment in your life because you're like, oh, well, wait a minute, I kind of believe that's true, and that's kind of not now. I prefer living like that because I think it leads to new learning and curiosity and change in transformation, which I think are actually better than just pretending to

agree with something. But I guess where does your philosophy fail you in practical life.

think that's so fair enough. This might seem like a weird thing to say in response to your question, but like, I don't think people just read like a philosophy and become convinced by it. I think they hear somebody put something they already kind of think in the right words and they.

Spinosa and they're like, what's he talking about? I don't it's a bit mathsy. I don't really understand, right, And it's because that's not how philosophy is supposed to be done. People sometimes ask me, where would you recommend I start if you got any recommendations like how to get in philosophy, And my advice is always very simple, just read whatever

you've heard of. And the reason for that is because if you've heard of someone, it means you've been in contexts where they have come up, right, Like if you listen to loads of Jordan Peterson, you'll have heard him talk about Nietzsche, Now you might never have read Nature, but the fact that you are so attracted to Peterson and the fact that he's so attracted to Nietzschure means it's likely if you read Nature, you're going to find

something that you like in there. Right. Likewise, if you listen to Christian apologists on YouTube, you might have heard them talk about the Church Fathers or Augustin or people like this, and in which case, just read that, because there's a reason why you're attracted to the people who

are attracted to those bits of content. Right, Because to some degree, you can read a philosophy and go, that's an interesting argument that makes sense, but you're not going to read it, and it sort of wash over you with this wave of conviction. I think unless you've already got one foot in that worldview, and it's just somebody has finally put into words what you were thinking this whole time. And so I think that we're very intuitive creatures, and I think that our philosophizing often.

is like particular case like studies. You know, what do we do in the case of abortion, euthanasia, that kind of stuff. And if you look at how people do ethics, it's extremely interesting. They'll come up with a theory, say utilitarianism, right, the right thing to do is to bring about the least suffering for the least number, or the most pleasure for the most people the fewest number, I should say. And someone says, okay, that sounds good. And then how

would you test that theory? Oh, you think of a scenario? Okay, okay, but hold on. What if there was a healthy person who walked into a hospital and there were five people who needed organ transplants, and you could kill that innocent person steal their organs, and most people go, no, no, no doubt, that would be wrong. Okay, then we need to go back and revise our theory. Hold on, why I thought the whole point of having an ethical theory was to

tell us what right and wrong are. But now you're saying, if you don't like the conclusion, you just go back and edit the theory. What's going on there. It's because we already have intuitions about the outcome and we have certain intuitions about the input. It's not as simple as like we're going to rationally work out what the standard of ethics is and then that will tell us what

to do. It's like, we're going to come up with a kind of theory that captures how we already behave, and if it doesn't capture how we already behave, then we're going to edit it slightly. And so the process of meta ethics or practical ethics coming up with these theories is in many cases actually just working out what we already believe, but doing it precisely. It's like, you know,

most people care about animals. They are animals, but then they pay for factory farming, okay, And you could have a discussion about this and you could say, well, actually,

you know, I'm not sure. So their theory might be I think you should not cause unnecessary harm, and then you say, yeah, but you're palming animals and factory farms, and they go, oh, okay, maybe then we shouldn't and they'll go and edit the theory, because what you're doing is you're precisely working out what you already believe.

those theories give us outputs. So we input a theory which sounds plausible we should minimize suffering, and it gives us an output like, well, then you should kill everyone instantly, and actually, don't, hold on, that's not quite right. So then you sort of you adapt the inca. It's like, okay,

we actually need to minimize suffering without killing people. Also, you know, have some kind of pleasure, and then it puts out other outcomes and you sort of got this back and forth and the machine in the middle, like you know, mixes it all up and gives you the output and rules kind of says that the way this works is you come at it from like both sides.

You've got intuitive like outcomes and you've got like intuitive theoretical suggestions, and you sort of do this back and forth, this tug of war between them until they kind of balance out a bit and you get this reflective equilibrium, and that that's what we're doing when we're coming up with theories. It is never as simple as somebody like writing a book and saying, right, I'm going to prove to you from first principles that abortion is wrong, specifically

from the eighth week. That's never going to happen. Ever, They're going to rely on intuitions that you already have about people and the worth of humans and body autonomy, and they're going to convince you that way. So if you become really learned in the traditions of philosophy, that can be really interesting. But you'll notice that a lot of philosophers can talk about these big ideas with absolutely

no personal investment in them. They'd be like, oh, you know, like so nietzsure thought that God was dead and that this was a great tragedy, and they're sort of talking it as this historical aspect. They've got zero personal sort of in there, and so they're obviously not going to use that to like guide their life in any way, and if they did, it would just lead to confusion. There's like a skit I saw once. I think, like someone's on an airplane and they're dying, and you know,

they're like, is there a doctor on board? And someone shows up and says, I'm a doctor. I'm a doctor of philosophy, and they're like, oh, well, what should we do? We need to dave this man, and it's like, well, you know, the utilitarian would say that we should take resources from other people, but then the deontologists would say that that would upset their rights, and then well, if you're a Christian, maybe we should and then they just die right because you're spaying too much time sort of

going back and forth. I don't think that's how people actually behave, right, and I think there's some there's some like neurological evidence for this to do with the two hemispheres of your brain, which is another thing I'm fascinated by. I think the most significant fact, perhaps in the world, is that your brain is divided into two hemispheres.

sort of neural system. And the fact that everywhere we look, every neural system we find there's some kind of asymmetrical division in the brain. There's some evolutionarily strong reason to keep two separate hemispheres has to be super significant. That's like the nature of you, that's your nature. Your nature is fundamentally lateralized. Your two hemispheres are kind of involved in different ways of thinking. It's never quite as simple as people think. I mean, Ian Mcgilchris is the person

to read on this. In culture, it's like the right brain is creative and intuitive and the left brain is mathsy and rational. It's not as simple as that mcgilchris likes to say that the two hemispheres sort of attend to the world in different ways. The left brain is about sort of manipulation and the right brain is more like big picture, and we know that this is this case.

I mean Mcgilchris's theory is that the reason this occurs is because as an organism, you need to be simultaneously looking out for like prey, You need to be manipulating your environment while looking out for predators at the same time. And there's some evidence to suggest that this is the case. Birds have eyes on either side of their head or lizards which have eyes on the sides of their head are really useful because the right eye feeds the left

hemisphere and the left eye feeds the right hemisphere. With us, it's complicated because they're on the front. So with animals on the side, it's much easier. And there's evidence of birds, for example, if they're like building a nest, they will favor using their right eye, even when it makes it more difficult because the left brain is engaged in the

manipulation stuff. And likewise, you know, you could put a lizard in a room and put a predator and it will look at the predator where this is left eye. Even if you cover up its left eye, it will still try to look at it with the left eye right. So there's some evidence to suggest this is the case, and the same kind of thing is going on with us. We've got these two brains and they kind of do different things. And so have you ever come across split

brain page? This was my favorite thing to discover ever in history. Is really famous within like brain science. I suppose the two hemispheres are connected by this tissue called the corpus colossum, this sort of bundle of tissues they used to be this treatment for extreme cases of epilepsy called a corpus calisotomy, which is where the connection is severed.

Epilepsy is like an electrical storm in the brain, and so one way to try to minimize it was literally just to cut the two hemispheres at their connective tissue. And so people who've had this operation done were known as split brain patients. Because their hemispheres have been disconnected, they can still communicate slightly through other means, but their main source of communication is inhibited. If you met one of these people, you wouldn't know they're just perfectly normal.

They'll speak to you like I'm speaking to you now. Everything's totally fine. But in experimental conditions you can prove some really weird things. For example, speech and language of communication is broadly speaking, governed by the front left part of your brain left hemisphere. Remember, the left hemisphere controls like the right hand side of your body and the right hemisphere controls the left hand side of your body.

So with humans, because our eyes are on the front, our right visual field goes to the left brain and our left visual field goes to the right brain. So in a split brain patient, they look at a screen. You can watch this experiment on YouTube. By the way, they're looking at a screen and on the right hand side of the screen it or flash a word, so it goes to their left hemisphere and it will say umbrella,

and they'll say umbrella, car, car, chair, chair. Then they'll flash a word on the left hand side of the screen, so just the right hemisphere, and it will say cowboy hat. And they'll say, I didn't see anything. I didn't see anything. I don't know what you're talking about. And then the experimenter gives them a pencil in their left hand and tells them to draw something, and they draw a cowboy hat because the right hemisphere and so the left hand can draw it. But if you ask them, they'll say

that they didn't see it. Wow, because the left hemisphere, which controls speech. Broadly that's a bit of an oversimplification, but broadly speaking, didn't see it, and so they can't tell you that they saw it. So they saw it and they didn't see it at the same time. So fascinating, right. I means you've kind of got these two brains that

are both doing different things. And I think the most significant experiment of this kind is where And bear in mind, these people are agreeing, and thankfully so, they've already been through a traumatic experience and now they're agreeing to do these experiments. They're waiting instructions, right, So you can flash an instruction to the right hemisphere of the brain and the instruction will say something like get up and walk

over to the window. So the patient stands up and they walk over to the window, and then the instructor says, why did you just do that? And you know what they say. It would be weird enough if they said I don't know, right, but they don't they make something up and they believe it. It's called confabulation, right, Like they say something like, oh, I was getting a bit warm and I just wanted some fresh air. We know that's not why they did, but their left brain hasn

convinced them that that is why they did it. Now, the reason I'm talking about all of this is because this has given rise to the idea that the left brain is the so called interpreter, that the right brain kind of intuitively does stuff and then the left brain retrospectively sort of rationalizes and justifies that behavior. In split brain patients, you can prove it experimentally, but the idea is in healthy brains you couldn't prove it, but the

same thing might be going on. So you know when you see someone who like they're arguing with the taxi driver and you're like, why are you shouting at that guy? And they're like, because you know he didn't give me my change, and you're like, well, actually, the reason you're shouting at him is because your dog died yesterday. That's the real reason the you're shouting at him. Like, we know that this kind of thing happens all the time, but I think it happens like literally all the time.

I think, like so much of our decision making, which is intuitively move throughout the world, and then our left brain interprets what we've done and rationalizes it after the fact. And I think that so much of our philosophizing is like this is very like left brain dominant, and Ian mcgilchris says that one of the problems that we face as a sort of society is that we've become too

left brain dominant in our thinking. Everything is sort of hyper rationalized and discreet, sort of abstracted, and none of it is intuitive, none of it is flux, none of it is continuous. But that is the nature of reality. So Immigochus's first book was called The Master and his Emissary. The Master and his Emissary, and the idea is that the right brain does stuff and the left brain is

the emissary. But there's this, there's some kind of myths or story where an emissary thinks that he can do the job of the master, so he kills the master and then ends up doing a terrible job, and he kind of thinks that's what's happened with our left brain.

So the reason that I brought that up is because when you asked, like, how do you sort of navigate the world not having a certain philosophy, I think we all navigate the world extremely intuitively, and that when we come up with reasons and explanations for our behaviors, a lot of the time those are like post hoc rationalizations

without us even realizing it. It also has profound implications for free will, of course, because we think you know why you performed a particular action, But is that just because your brain is convinced you that that's why you did it when it's not the real reason. And the very least, whatever the reason is, it's something that the left brain might not be able to communicate because it might be a very right brain kind of thing. But yeah, these split brain patients. I mean, I don't know if

you agree. I think that it's one of the most significant facts in the world because also it might interest you if you if you're interested in the Indian traditions that we were talking about earlier, like the concept of the self right. Once you have experimental evidence that an individual self can both see something and not see it at the same time, I think that has profound implications for the idea of the unity of personhood, like how

many people are there there? If you want to say there's only one person, you have to admit a literal contradiction that it is both true and false that they saw it, which you can't do. That has to be like a part of them which saw it at the very least, you have to say part of them saw it impartment in and immediately, at the very least what you've done, as you said that the self can be

split into parts. That's hugely profound because if your left brain and your right brain can have inde pendant sort of centers of awareness and yet somehow are also part of this one connective thing. I think that has some profound implications to the fact that I've got a brain and you've got a brain. But there are a great many philosophical traditions who think that we're all sort of

part of one great, big thing. It at least opens a door to all kinds of interesting It's sort of like when I tell people this, if they haven't heard about split brain patients, they're sort of like, what really, I'm like, yeah, Like this stuff is way more complicated and way more weird than I think a lot of people realize is.

And I think a lot of that comes through, like people are said to be a bit more left brained or a bit more right brained, and in culture that tends to manifest us like if your right brain you like sort of music and art and poetry. Left handedness was associated with creativity for a long time. Although that would be a quite fun fact, I think that's actually

not true. That's not connected in that way. But like, culturally we have these sort of associations, and I think that they don't give you a tool a very good picture of what's actually happening with the brain, but I think it can be a sort of good way of thinking about the kinds of practices and ways of thinking that you might want to engage with to stop being

so hygh irrational, and also pay attention. When you are convinced that you know why you're doing something, just step back and really think about what might be going into it. It's literally what I said at the beginning of this conversation when I said, you know, why are you an atheist? It's because the contingency argument for God's existence is unsound, or it's because my parents divorced when I was nine. The first of those is a very left brain answer.

The second of those is a very right brain answer. And so if you're having an argument with your wife,

you know C. S. Lewis in The Screwtape Letters, which is a wonderful little novel where there's this like demonic undersecretary, like this sort of a demonic civil service, and this demon has been tasked with a particular human who he's

trying to make into an atheist. And one of the instructions that he has is like, when this person has an argument with his wife, convince him that they're arguing about the dishes when they're not really, because he's going to come home and he's going to say, you know, his wife is going to say, you didn't do the dishes today, and he's going to go, oh, for goodness sake, I've had a.

very sort of non rational, abstracted kind of way. Don't try to think about this individual case and go, okay, let's let's trace the logic just like step back and like feel for a minute, you know, like like reintegrate feeling into your life. That's that's probably a helpful starting point.

These questions have to be answered in one sentence, Maxim Sure, okay, and so Alex O'Connor, these are your final ten only mad for you, Brought to you by State Farm. What's the hardest question you've ever asked yourself?

about consciousness. What have you learned about death?

of nature. But it's interesting to hear say unnatural because there are philosophical traditions, like if you're someone who believes that life exists after death, you'll either believe that because you think that we're going to like heaven and this mortal realm is sort of a purgatory realm of sorts, or maybe you think that we're all made of consciousness and we're all going to sort of reintegrate into Brahmen.

You know. Either way, that would mean that our true nature is Brahman for want of a better term, right now, and that the divided physical biological selves that we currently inhabit are not our real selves. Right This is one of the biggest teachings of advice Vedanta is that you yourself is an illusion. There is one self, the app man. It's oneself, and that utman is the same thing as Brahman. There's just one great, big thing such that the thing that comes to an end when you die is not yourself,

it's or other. It's the illusion of yourself, but it's not the self. The self persists, the self is eternal. It's another sort of huge theme of the Hindu scriptures. And so to hear you describe death as unnatural, it's kind of interesting because these people would say that's because it's not natural, because your true nature is eternal. The self is eternal, and what you're calling yourself is actually unnatural, and that's the thing that will come to an end.

So some people might answer that for me, like, death is terrifying, and it can be terrifying for two reasons. One is that you think it's lights off and everything comes to an end. The other is that you think there is something after death and it's.

such suffering for finite crimes. But with the lights off kind of thing, which I think more people are kind of freaked out by. You know, some people say, oh, but it's you know, it's like before I was born, you know, like I was I was dead for thousands of years before I was born, and it never bothered me. That helps some people because it at least makes you realize that you're not going to experience it, you know,

if the lights really go off. Then Epicurus famously said, you know, like if like when is death bad, it can't be bad now because I'm not dead, and it can't be bad for me when I'm dead because there's no me. So there's no point at which it can be true. Like Epicurus kind of wants to say, if something is true, there has to be a time at which it's true. There's to be some time at which this fact is true. So if the fact is death is bad for me, my death is bad for me,

when is that? Facts true? Can't be true now because I'm not dead, can't be true related because there's no meat and people hear that and they go are very clever. They don't really they doesn't really see much, right, Yeah, because again that's a very left, very But I'm still kind of concerned right because of my convictions about the nature of consciousness. I'm at least agnostic enough about sort of experiences, by which I mean like experiences with an apostrophe,

experiences connection to physicality. I'm agnostic enough about that that I'm kind of not super worried about the death of my physical body. I have no idea what's going to happen. I do know that if I if I do die and it all just sort of huts off, then I won't be around to worry about it, And I'm only around to worry about it now. But I you know, I think about it, like everybody does, but in some

way that I can't quite explain. And it's a reason why I wouldn't really talk about it except to sort of hinted it in a situation like this, is to say that these investigations into the nature of consciousness and the nature of the brain and brain and stuff, in some way I can't quite describe, just has consoled me a little bit about the fact that one day my physical brain is going to like end, you know, because I don't know if that's quite the same thing as

as what I am exactly. You know, well, it is the same thing as what I am as a self, and I am worried about the self coming to an end. But I guess one way thinking about it as well is that, like, the thing that's scary about death is not the secession of biological function. Right, you could have a biological machine that has no consciousness. It's not worried about death. The thing that death. Really people think about death in terms of the end of life, but really

death is kind of the end of consciousness. That's what people are scared about. Maybe consciousness has to manifest physically, in which case, when you die, your consciousness sort of ends, and that's a bad thing, right. What's really ending there is not your biological makeup. It's not the fact that your leg and your arm start disintegrating. It's the fact that your experience, your unified sense of self, has come

to an end. And one slightly naive approach this might be to say that, like, I'm not convinced that the self exists, not just because of the sort of weird esoteric you know, Indian philosophy and stuff, but also because of the split brain stuff. I think all of this kind of stuff points to the idea that the idea of the self as we commonly understand it a bit of an illusion. And it is interesting to me that this is the same kind of truth that is discovered

by ancient authors of the Apanishads. And like a modern teenager who's never read a word of Sanskrit who takes lst and they sort of have these similar I think I might have something to do with the usage of psychedelics in the in the in the formulation of the Vaders. That's a whole another subject. With soma, you know, the mysterious substance that brings all of these profound spiritual truths that are uncannily similar to the profound spiritual truths that

people find today when they take psychedelic drugs. But one of the foundational things that people discover in this regard is that the self is an illusion. The self does not exist. Even Sam Harris, the New Atheist, doesn't believe in the self. And so if death is not just

about biological function, it's the cessation of the self. There's something about the fact that I don't think the self exists even now that gives me some consolation, you know, if the fear is what happens when the self comes to an end, like the self never came to a beginning. So I don't even know how to answer that question.

But I don't say that that's not going to help people, like it's not going to I was asked about this recently at one of these schools I was talking about is as well, like this kid sort of ask me, And I can always tell sometimes when people ask certain questions they mean different things. Like if someone says, should we be afraid of Hell? I can tell in their face they're asking that because they're interested in the philosophy. They want to hear about Epicurus, or they're asking that

because they're scared of death. Somebody asked me, do you think hell is biblical? They're either asking that because they're interested in New Testament studies or because they're staying up at night and afraid of death and afraid of hell. To the person who's afraid, I find it quite difficult to approach, except to say take heart that there are philosophical schools available to you that you should look at at least first before you sort of lose your mind.

By boy, if I'm not trying to help other people and I'm just telling you about myself, like yeah, it opens up as well. But I think it's funny, like I would encourage people to investigate some of the Indian philosophical traditions, not because this is kind of idea in like Western thought that there's this sort of spiritual kind of thing over there. It's this kind of like mystical

thing and like, oh, there's all these profounderies. It's like, actually, they're talking about the same stuff that we're talking about. They're just doing it in a different way that might make things click a little bit. And also talking about the Indian school of philosophy is like talking about the Western canon of philosophy. The Western canon is like you know Kant or maybe John Stuart Millan people. And it's not like all Westerners are running around in accordance with

those principles, right. But I do think it's uncanny that somebody will say to me, I've looked everywhere I can. I've studied philosophy, I've tried to I've looked at religious traditions, and I've prayed, and I've gone to church, and i still don't have these answers, and I'm still afraid of death. And it's like, okay, hear me out. Have you ever tried reading a word of any kind of non Western

philosophical canon? And if the answer is no, I'm not promising you're gonna find it there, But I'm saying there is so much more for you to do before you can confidently have even a view I think on the nature of the self the nature of death, because most of our philosophical convictions are so culturally imbedd with it without us realizing it that if you don't step outside of that for a moment, you might just be following a thread that you are not the author of and

so I'd recommend stepping outside of that. And I'm not just saying that. I think people have noticed that over the course of my recent trajectory and the things that I'm talking about. This is just something that I've done. There's a lot to say about that. I spoke to a guy called Thomas Metzinger on my show about this, and so people want to kind of really know what I'm talking about. When I say all that, I'd recommend they go and watch that. If you're worried about it,

also just realize that you're not alone. This is like the foundational question of human existence. I think it's weird not to be worried about it. It's sort of strange to me that people aren't talking about it all the time. We also have a sort of cultural reticence to talk about death. You know, death used to be much more present, dead bodies in the street, plagues, all this kind of stuff. COVID sort of brought that back into sharp focus for

a lot of people. But death is a bit of a taboo and we don't really like to talk about it in polite society, and I think maybe that's also part of the problem.

I was so ready. And I spoke to a friend of mine who's in the same industry, and I just asked him, because he'd done this kind of stuff before, When I said, like, he's got any advice, but any last minute advice. Then he just said enjoy it. And I was like, huh, yeah, good point. We're sort of

and just like not present. I think anytime anyone's about to do something important, if someone's about to like play their first gig, or they're about to do some big career move that they've been waiting for, or about to get married or something, and they're sort of so in their head about it, and they're like they're living in the future, and then suddenly they're living in the past. It's just it's, you know, it's the sort of b way your feet are, like living the present kind of thing,

but specifically like enjoy it. Take a moment to look around and be like, yeah, this is this is cool.

mess and a shouting match. If you have two people that everyone has ego everyone, but if you have two people who recognize that try to mitigate it and try to give it a backseat to having a good conversation. It's kind of just no longer a debate almost by definition.

that that's what you're doing. Debates are like boxing matches. You know, they will sometimes tell you who the better boxer is. They might not even tell you who the better boxer is. Don't tell you who box better in that match, but it won't tell you who the better boxer is overall, and it definitely won't tell you who the better fighter is. You have no idea what would happen if they met in a bar no holds barred, and they were able to use intelligence and weapons and

call their friends and stuff like that. You have no idea what would happen. Similarly, somebody in a debate, it's like a sparring match. You're gonna see who's better at that particular dance, But you have no idea what would happen if you gave them a week to think about your point, consult their resources, and respond to you properly. And so I think that the sweet spot is somewhere in between those. Let's not take a week to respond,

but let's not be like snapping back with quotes. But but having said that, a lot of people are quick to say, like, oh, like, I don't do debates because they're not about getting to truth, like I do debates sometimes because they're fun. They're fun and they are interesting, and you do bring up interesting points and they do become these spectacles and they do bring people into like

thinking about these issues, and that's quite fun. But you have to recognize that that's what you're doing such that afterwards, if it goes really well, you go great, oh cool, fun I want. But it's like if you want a chess match or something, and oh sweet cool anyway, like let's play again sometime, you know, and you might lose

next time. That's the attitude you have to have if you become convinced that you're like Magnus Carson because you want one chess match, even if you are Magnus Carson, like that only means you're good at chess, you know.

has been put into designing every single aspect. Which chairs have more feng shui, you know, which which wallpaper is going to sort of bring about the particular mood that we're trying, and then they just decide to just they put zero thought into the music. You know, I've left restaurants before because if you're going to a restaurant, you know, it's a big deal. You're spending money. It might be you might not be able to do that very often. And you going, maybe you're on a date or something.

The air is polluted with like do a leaper. Don't get me wrong, I like do a leap? I actually do, I really do, but just not there, you know, And it's become such an epidemic. It's like it's difficult to go. I can't go to Green King pubs because all of them are playing pop music. And these pubs are like the most they're beautiful, like these these Victorian like wooden

like ancient. They've got these histories about them on the menus they're boasting about how like you know, there's like the I think it's called the Salisbury, which I wrote about in central London, which has this famous history. It's where someone proposed to someone or other. It's got all this stuff and you look at the images and it's this ornate, beautiful chandelier type stuff. And if I showed you the image and said, now, just what music do

you imagine is playing? You know, somebody walks into a restaurant like that and says, you know what this really needs is like when I went in there, they were playing Kids by Robbi Williams and Kylie Minogue and I'm just like, seriously, you know, it really gets mose, So I would I would probably do that.