Tim Urban || Wait But Why? Unravelling Life's Biggest Mysteries

to be speaking with our guest, Tim Urban. Tim has become one of the Internet's most popular writers, with rye stick figure illustrations and occasionally epic prose, and everything from procrastination to artificial intelligence. Urban's blog weight but Why has gardered millions of unique page views, thousands of patrons, and famous fans like Elon, who he's actually written about. Fas Kopany has said that quote, wait but Why has captured a level of reader engagement that even the new media

giants would be envious of. Hey Man, thanks for being on the show today. Yeah, thanks for having me on. Did you write that bio? No? I did not. Actually, I think that was written by the ten people. They are good. It was way too They are good at that. Yeah, are good at that. I feel like they're professionals at that. Yeah, it was like, it was very exciting seeing a professional bio writer trying to blame what you do. Yeah, exactly, but it well deserved. I'm a huge fan. I would

use the word fan. I very rarely use that word, by the way, but I will say thank you. Yeah, I'm a fan of your thinking and your blog. And I wanted to start with like understanding a little more who Tim Urban is. I'm not going to like psychoanalyze here, don't worry. But yeah, no, no, that's fine. I could use some therapy. Yeah. I'm from Boston, Boston area, and I basically spent most of my twenties after college kind

of like doing five different things at once. And I had, you know, I wanted to you know, I had all these things I wanted to do, and I kind of made the mistake and I think kind of spreading myself like pretty thin. And that was I think a frustrating experience. So, you know, three four years ago, I decided to take one of those things I had been doing, blogging and try to do that, you know, full time with all my attention. And so that's how way why I started,

and that's what I've been doing ever since. Yeah, you were a government major, is that right? In college? Yes? Yeah, I was a government major. So there was a time when you were potentially thinking about got into politics or definitely not. I think if I had ever had an interest in anything like that, it would have been like that probably would have been before the age of about eighteen.

Once I was in college, I decided I wanted to go and do you know something creative music or writing, and maybe something in entrepreneur entrepreneurial land, but I definitely didn't want to go into politics. I majored in government because it was I had to decide my major ex freshman year, and I had no idea what I wanted

to learn. And at the time, I if I could go back, I would have said, look, this is like my opportunity to learn here, and I have this great opportunity to dive into something, Right, what do I really care about? And I probably would have majored in something with music or history, something I was really interested in, and or you know, some kind of delicious science topic

astronomy or something. But at the time I just did what seemed broad and you know, I could do a million things under government, So I did that kind of you know, didn't really have the confidence you tould just trust my instinct there at the time. So I yeah, I actually learned a lot because you can do a bunch of broad things, but political science political theory is

incredibly boring. So those classes, which was a lot of them, were forward me after the first kind of basic one, which was interesting, but then you know, you do a lot of other things, and it was okay, man, So what instrument do you play? I played the piano. Oh wow. So I moved to la after college to write movie scores, so I was using the piano, but I was writing for all kinds of instruments, you know, strength and everything else you have to write for. Yeah. I mean I

get from your writing that you're voraciously curious about everything. Yes, actually except maybe political theory. No, that's not true. You finally wrote that are we going to be okay post? Yeah? I'm actually in the middle right now about what would be a two hundred page book on but it's going to be a blog post. But it's going to be a very long one on a lot of political topics. Actually, unfortunately, well, do you think we're going to be okay. Yeah, I

think we're going to be okay. I think it's actually like a ninety percent that we're going to be okay. I think normally it would be like more like ninety nine. And I think that ninety percent includes a bunch of bad things, a bunch of bad policies, or a bunch of kind of upsetting moments in the decade. But in twenty thirty years, you know, you won't look back on this as like the dark period of American because it'll be like another, you know, another tumultuous period in American history.

We've had a bunch of those. That's the ninety percent. Ten percent, you know, is something more more upsetting, like a big, big war or a big big like upsetting, you know, an attack on us, or something completely unrelated to Trumpet in the administration, and just you know, something with some upsetting things with technology or you know, terrorism

and technology or something. You know, there's somethings that are very you know, there's that ten percent that I would say, you know, actually, we really don't know, we're gonna be okay. But the other ninety percent is the kind of the old man saying, Oh, it's always been fine in the past, it'll always you know, it'll be fine now too. So that's what that's kind of how I break it down. No,

I appreciate that. I'll keep my fingers crossed. A lot of your writing tends to have these deep existential themes. It seems like you find it useful in your thinking to take the very long term approach not to This is just my read from reading most of your articles, as opposed to just you know, freaking out in the moment. You sort of like to like stretch the perspective out as as far as possible into infinity in one of

your posts or is that accurate? Yeah? I think, I mean, I just think that if you look, if you compare someone in eighteen seventy seven writing about that decade or writing about you know whatever and what they think irrelevance is, and then you take someone today writing about that same decade. We're going to better out of tickets. We can see the whole picture. We can see the zoomed out view. When you zoom out, you can always see what's going

on a lot better. If you want to understand, I always trying to figure ot how they made Matt back in the fifteen hundreds, and they're just sailing around coastlines. Basically, they're just on a boat, and the coastline just looks so big and amorphous from when you're next to it. How can you possibly like sketch out a real picture what the whole thing looks like. And if you can just take a satellite picture, it would be a lot easier.

So I'm always trying to take a satellite picture, even though the challenge is the things you're often taking a picture of you aren't on the satellite view. You're next to the coast with your own psychology and things that happen in your life. You know, the perspective that you'll have in twenty years. You don't have that right now, but you want to still try to imagine what that

perspective will be. So I'm always trying to like imagine what this looks like from above, and what this would looks like from someone in the future looking back in history, or what this would look like for me looking back in my life, et cetera. You know, I certainly I try to do that too in my own life, and I think that's why I resonate a lot with your writing.

But I find and I don't know, I want to know if this happens with you at all in your in your daily life, Like you still have to live life. I mean you you write it, you write about it at this higher level, and you can kind of like in those moments kind of look down or take this perpective. You also have to live your life on a day to day basis. And I find that if I start in my day to day life thinking too much about like you know, like, oh really, what's the point I

mean of this moment? Like like it's like if I'm a following in love, It's like, yeah, well, okay, well you know all this is going to be gone. Like if you start thinking too much about that, if you like, what would it be like to walk around it every day, every second of life, taking kind of like this very very like long term existential perspective. Will that be conducive to well being? Well, it depends. I think it's actually kind of funny where you like, as you zoom out,

you go on a roller coaster. So I don't think it's a good place to be, is well. Look, I actually I think there's an argument for every level. So being completely zoomed in, sometimes that's a very present place to be, and sometimes that's a very peaceful place to be. Don't just think about anything. Kids are always zoomed in.

You know, it's really nice being seven. You're just unbelievably excited that it's Friday and you get to go to a movie with your friend and you know all these like you know, you're just so incredibly excited about like Friday night sleepover with this other seven year old like, and so that's like there's something blissful about that. It's very hard for adults to get there. So I think if we can actually be there, that's a nice place to be. A lot of the time, I don't think

adults are very good at that. I think we are at least one big notch zoomed out from that at all times as adults, And I don't think that's a very happy place to be because you don't have the bliss of being totally present, but you don't have the big picture really either, So you sweat the small stuff a lot, and I think then when you go another level out, you can get to a wiser place of like you know that don't sweat the small stuff level where it's like, you know, this is all part of life,

it's okay, and you know it's all going to be fine, and we just try to focus on what matters in life, your relationship and you know, the things you really like to do, and taking care of your health and let me just enjoy yourself. That's a very wise place. But then you go to the level beyond that, and like you said, you're like, oh my god, none of this really matters. It's all We're all going to die, it's all, and this is this is all I disappear. And then

you get to like an upsetting place. But then I think you can go even one level more zoomed now to like the Buddhist place, which is a hard place to get to, you know, to really and that's the place where you're like, well, none of even that doesn't matter. Death is just an object of my consciousness. It's just the fear of death as an object of my consciousness. Death itself isn't scary, and I'm just a bunch of vibrating atoms in this energy field that we live, you know,

so you can keep going. I think the Buddhist Muslim is the highest zoom out you can get to I think, and that to me is a very peaceful place too. And the times when I can actually feel that, it is absolutely And I don't know, do you meditate at all? I do sometimes, and then I'm obsessed with it, and then I'm like, I'm gonna do this every day. This is obviously a great and I do it. The next day I'm like, oh my god, this is amazing, and

then I'll do it for forty two days. Then in general, how you live your life because I can totally relate to that. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of that going on. There's a lot of I get in a real honeymoon phase of something I'm sure I want to do it forever, and then I don't. Even though it really was a good thing, it really was making me happy to do it. It's just hard for me to build new habits and break old ones, very very hard. But then I've done

it hard. That also makes your career perfect, that you're perfectly suited to what you do because you can get these bursts of inspiration, put your all into it, write a post, get it out there and millions of people will read it, and then you can move on to another topic. Yeah, yeah, blogging works for me in that regard nicely in that well. It also the point is it's not that I don't like committing to something. It's

just that I'm not good at committing to something. And so it's not just a bloggings which topics is good because that is I do like that component, but it's also just having readers having an expectation that I'm going to be writing allows me to have to quit blogging in generally, you know. I mean it's like, but if there were no readers and now we're just sitting here working on a huge epic book and everything I'd written for wait, but why I was all part of this

book that was going to come out. I don't know if I would have written as much as I had in the last three years. I might I might have stopped after a month, you know. So that's another reason that's good for me. Oh wait, that's really interesting. Is it because of the feedback process, the like the sort of immediate gratification of getting one thousand comments and shares and things. No, I mean, that's that's very motivating, But

it's the it's that there's external pressure, there's some other factor. Oh, I see as opposed to It's just it's opposed to, you know, just coming from within. So it's not that there's not internal motivation. I'm incredibly internally motivated, but I'm not internally disciplined. So the external kind of pressure is what pushes me to be disciplined, which is the thing I lack. What is the external pressure there? So how is it the peoples are expecting a new post? Is

that it? Yeah, it's it's well, it's also that, well, you know, I've decided this is now my job. So I have a business partner who is expecting me to be doing this be I have readers that start emailing me when I haven't written in too long, which currently is what's happening. Okay, once it's my thing, then friends and family are saying, where's your next post? What's going up? You know, and it's I can't just hide from it. I can't just procrastinate for a year and then come

back to writing. I can't do that. Everyone will just be asking what the hell I'm doing. And as a blogger, you never feel secure you have you know, attention is a very very very hard thing to get. And when you have some you're always assuming and worry that it's just going to disappear, that people are going to get sick of you, so and then you have to go to something else. So there's a lot of pressure on a blogger to stay productive and that creates, Yeah, that

creates that helps you discipline yourself. Yeah, it seems like your kind of stresses are very aligned with the stress of those for like freelance journalists for instance. There's that, yeah, yeah, but there's also some guilt aspect in that, you know, you really love your readers and you're a blogger because you know there are the people who really get what you're doing and like it and they agree with you

on a lot of the topics. So and when those people are checking the site, and I've been there, I know what it's like to check something that you really like and just waiting and it's nothing and it's just disappointing, and eventually you get kind of angry and you just say through it, and you really don't want that to happen to them. You really don't want to let them down. So there's a lot of factors, tim Yeah, I think there's So it goes in both directions. It's such a

you've hit a magic spot of this balancing actor. There's also if you post too much, you kind of some of the quality gets diluted. Potentially. It's kind of I feel like you've kind of mastered the art of minimalism in a way. And I bet it's not minimalism on your side, Like you work so hard, Like there's so much production going on on your end that we don't see.

But you know, there's something I think kind of beautiful about, Like my life is comprised around doing like like, so, how often do you post, for instance, like once a month or so? Well, that depends on year you're asking me. So twenty fourteen I posted about once a week. Twenty fifteen posted about once every two or three weeks. Twenty sixteen I posted even less, but the things got longer. So I'm right and like, right now, I've been three

months since I posted something new. But the thing I'm working on is that like it would be about a two hundred page illustrated book if I made it a book exactly. Oh yeah, I've been drifting in this direction of more thorough and fewer posts. I'm not sure I

like that. I think there's something to it. I think sometimes that's the right move, but I do miss, and I think a lot of readers miss also, just to you know, a good twenty five hundred word weekly post can be really great just one crack at one idea. You don't have to get that deep into it and you move on. There's something really fun about that, and I miss that a little. So I think, after I do this big post, I'm going to be doing a book next year, and so that's going to be even

a bigger one. And I think then I can see really enjoying just all the pressure off any given topic. We'll kind of coming back and just just writing about a bunch of things. Again, do you think you'll be able to because you just said you had some concerns about having to write a book and the sort of the it makes it lends to procrastination easier than blogging. Yeah,

I mean that's a little a little borious. On the other hand, again, the thing that it would be dangerous would be if if I were just on my own, like on the side, working on a personal project. Good book is different because there's a publishing company involved, an agent involved, and they are not amused by dropping the project, and and there's also readers to get back to as a blogger, and you don't want the book to just stop, you know, just just make you disappear from the world

for a decade. So there is a lot of external pressure and other people involved in expectations, and that's the key. Yeah, no, I totally hear you. Now, do you think a big part of your success is this kind of minimalism? You know, you had a lot of things you're doing in your life. You decide oka I'm going to pick one, I'm really going to commit to. I'm going to focus on it. You have really been improving your quality for a quantity

and you're getting increasingly popular with that approach. You know. Do you think that like a big part of this is kind of mastering, Like there's a beautiful simplicity to what you're doing in a way that is obviously complex, but you know, it's still simplistic at the same time. I think it depends. I think you know, there's I love deeth God's blog and it's kind of the opposite.

It's it's high quality, but it's also high quantity. It's one little thought every day, So I wouldn't want him to be doing a long article every three weeks instead of bags. I like that, So I think it's just different formats with the quantity the volume versus minimalism can all work for me. I like it this way because kind of a perfectionists, I like to really dig in when I do it. I'm not I don't think I'm like reliably productive enough to put out something every day.

I think I would just I think I actually tried that one week. So I'm gonna do ani week. I'm gonna do a little mini post every day, and a mini post would take me an hour, but of course I put once I announced that it was a mini post and I started working on it, and it was and then I made it a back round book and there were five pretty long posts and it was like it almost killed me that week. So I think I'm

very not satisfied by writing something really really small. I don't get a chance to dive in and really analyze it. So for me, it's better this way. But I don't think it's a rule for everyone. Yeah, it's it's sort of like the evolutionary process like has went it down to your like you've like eventually, over for three years, I figured out the exactly the amount of words like piece that works best for you. Yeah, and it depends on the post. As I said, you know, I'm running

without SpaceX. I wanted to be forty thousand works because there's I need to explain the entire story of space that you're going to really get it, and the entire story of if you have the human you know, the human future. If I'm writing about you know, I don't know cool things about your family tree, like, then that's a good three thousand word posts. And so I think I'm starting to get better at figuring out the length each topic should be, you know. So yeah, awesome, Now

this is this is a great great nuance here. So let me just dive in the rest of the scenerio. Let me dive into just I picked out some topics of thing that you've written about before. I want to discuss with you. One I thought was a really cool post. You had people choose iq eq or grit, and I posted this on my Facebook wall, and I have lots of psychologists on my friends list, and it got into a huge discussion about well, how do we know in

that year two? That and forty five that the reliability and validity of the GRIT scales and EQ scales will match the validity and reliability the i Q scales. That's one thing that came up. And I mean, look, this is so nerdy, like you should see all maybe I'll even city of the linked I made a public so you could see all the comments. But it's really I mean, I had like people were experts in the psychometrics of

these topics, like having a whole discussion. You set off with this question what are some what are some other things? Other things are like well, he assumes that what the heritability coefficients are the same among these three that like, you know, my god, what else deep water is there? You did also you put it on a zero one hundred percent of it confused a lot of people because they're used to like IQ seventy is usually considered below average,

where you said it was above average. And then I had a keep reminding people, yes, but in his thoughtic, but that's what happens when you post something like that too. Well, this wasn't even so. So if this were that were full posts, I would have you know, I would have interviewed a couple of you know psychologists. I would have read a couple of books, and I would have really you know, I'm probably would have speaking the right lingo

more and talking about a lot of these things. So this was a dinner table, which is literally just a conversation I had had on text with two friends and then I said, Okay, this is interesting. Only pose it to this week on Sunday. And so I just kind of like threw something out there. And I don't think it was ready for prime time on the psychology boards yet, absolutely, And it's just it's it is an interesting question, for sure.

I want to ask why, just those three, why didn't you include creativity for instance, Like why is yeah part of that. I think creativity is a factor, for sure. I mean it's probably maybe the most important factor. But I think creativity is more like how your reason than it is in anate talent. Actually, I really think that like a lot of us who feel not creative just

the fact that we are. We stopped exercising that muscle when we were like five, because we have the creativity essentially trained out of us by school and by everyone telling us to obey and not to you know, not to create, the to obey and I think creativity is just getting that kind of what like people like Elon Musk call like reasoning from first principles, like always assuming that conventional wisdom or your initial assumptions and thoughts about

something may not be the best way, and that you think about everything from a blank slate that you care a lot about. You can't do that all the time. It's not efficient. But like so I think creativity is thinking you can be thinking like that, like kind of thinking like an original. I think that all this creativity burst out. So to me, I feel like, although you know, the problem with that is a grit is also kind of like a nurture learned thing, probably much more than nature.

While I feel like, well that's not true. But a lot of people think that. You know, so Angel Duckworth, who you know, I guess you read her book Grit. I actually haven't, but I saw her Ted talk and I've seen her new other talks, and so I've learned about a group. Awesome. Yeah, she's like a close colleague of her office is right next door to mine, and you know, I hear that how they talk about this

stuff all the time. I mean, the research actually shows that grit we're conscientiousness, which is it's correlated with the very highly with the personality trait. Consciousness has the same heritability coefficient as IQ. Both IQ and GRIT are about equally environmentally determined and genetically influenced. I think people think it's just another personality trait. In fact, all the personality traits probably have the same heritability coefficients or exact mix

of both nature and nurture. But you do see that a lot. You see people saying that IQ is in need whereas grit is learned. And that is such an oversimplification, but you see that a lot. Yeah, I didn't really think about it that way, but I the nature. The more I learned, the more I understand, I realize that I don't really understand nature nurture. It's not into it what you think, right. Nature nurture is just not It's

just not intuitive. And I think people attribute way more to nurture than they should, Like nurture is really a big deal. But I just continue to hear about all this stuff that is that goes back to your nature and in other ways people could contribute too much the other way, you know, I think there are other times when things are assumed to be just who you are,

when actually it was based on formative experience. So I would need to study a lot more, read a bunch more, I think to understand that that would make a great weight But why posting I think it would also. I got in big trouble from him, Adam Grant, for writing that post, because he's a big IQ over EQ proponent, so he was he thought I was overrating EQ and sent me some articles to show me that too. So that's so funny. I was going to send you some

articles too about that too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think. I think I also do a little bit more research next time before I get into those and maybe we can talk then. Sounds good. No, but it was a really interesting thought experiment, and so yeah, I'm just basically in this conversation, I'm just bringing up things that you really stimulated my thinking and I want to just discuss with you. So another thing, I'm wondering how you reconcile

these two posts with each other. You wrote Teaming the Mammoth, why you should stop caring what other people think of you, and then you also wrote seven ways to be insufferable on Facebook, basically like people who were in my view being authentic, you kind of make fun of them in a way. So I'm wondering, you know how those two are reconcilble with each other. I mean, the seven ways

to be insufferable on Facebook post. I'm sure you read some of the comments, like you upset a lot of people with that post, and what do you think was

going on? Maybe what did you trigger in them? And also maybe you could just tell me some of the seven ways that you mentioned, right, Okay, So what I'll say about it is I wrote the Facebook post six months before weight but Why started and it was the first weaightit why post and a time when I was anonymous and it was an unknown blog trying to get attention, and so there's an element there of like trying to go viral that I think made it significantly less empathetic

and more kind of dickish than I normally would be. That said, there's also I think there's a combo. I think the heart of the post. I think there's a lot of truth in the post, and I think there's also an overly harsh and underly empathetic take on the issue.

So I demandmoth post, I believe fully with my heart is way that we should be thinking that the mammoth, which is the little character I assigned to the part of our brains that thinks it's in a tribe in fifty thousand BC where it absolutely must get along with people. It must fit in, It must be liked. It can't be rejected, you know. It wants approval from It wants to please the authorities. Wants approval, and it can't stand the concept of a little clique forming and talking bad,

you know, talking trash about you behind your back. That's like the worst thought you can have. And it feels great, on the other hand to be on the other side of that place. So that makes sense to fifty thousand BC, because your tribe was everything. It was your life, systant support system. You needed to be in good if you wanted to ever have a mate, you wanted to survive, you wanted to have you need to have status in

this tribe. Today that's not the case. But the mammoth is still there, and the maymoths still thinks of fifty thousand BC, and we're all kind of living with the We're all just kind of yeah, we're all kind of living with this influence in our head. That is not actually very rational today in the world that we currently live, it doesn't make much sense. But he doesn't know that.

So Facebook, I would say that part of that post was criticizing, like you said, authenticity because it's unknowing or whatever, and that that is not fair. And I don't think today I would have had that take. I might have made fun of it, might have made fun of those people a little. I've been those people, we all have, but it's more like making fun of them, So I

think I might have made fun of those people. But in terms of what I would have focused on if I wrote it today, is still the concept that in the real world, in an interaction in social life, we have a lot of etiquette. You know, we have a lot of norms, and some of it is unnecessary, but a lot of it is there for a pretty good reason. You know, politeness is there for a good reason, and other things we don't. You know, we don't just openly kind of brag and talk about ourselves for an hour

straight to someone without ask any questions. That's etiquette there for a good reason. It makes us people that people want to spend time with, and makes you consider it and thoughtful on the Internet. I feel like it's the wild West of social life back. It's back to that. You know, there's no etiquette yet, and at least in a lot of ways, and all these traits and qualities and people that would be appalling if they happened in person just kind of come out, you know. You see.

Obviously there's the cliche kind of YouTube comment that are just super nasty and insulting and personal. But then some of the stuff I'm criticizing on Facebook, you know, is stuff like unself aware, just kind of very self absorbed, kind of narcissistic, And to me, I think a lot

of it is the Mammoth at his work. So I think in some ways, yes, yes, yes, I'm criticizing, like in some ways, I think the thing that it is hard about the post is when I'm just saying, oh, your manmos should care more about that, you know, okay, right, that I wouldn't written today. But a lot of that post is that the mammoths is totally in charge of you when you're on Facebook obsessing over this public image crafting. You know, this incredible image crafting that happens on Facebook.

People if you look at their photos their profile photos. It's just like this, you know, they's spend all this time like trying to craft this thing. Is if they're like kind of a movie star within their friends, and it's just to me it is very managed, controlled. Well, where is the image crafting? There? Couldn't one make the case that you're actually arguing for more image crafting? You know, Let's say I read your post and I think, oh my gosh, that is all one hundred percent of what

I do on Facebook. Now I'm going to start overthinking every post I do. Isn't that image crafting? Though? Well? No, okay, so yeah, again, this post is a jecul and high situation. So there's some some parts of this post where I'm criticizing perfectly fair, innocent human behavior and I'm just kind

of being like a mean person about it. And then there's other parts of this post where I would say where it's no different than it if if you have a friend who shows up at a party and just again spend twenty minutes talking about himself and then dragging and then just kind of like walks away, and afterwards you had to talk with that friend and said, you know, you might want to like you know, have a radar in your head that you know, maybe you should ask

other people questions, so you know, not that you people should asking questions on Facebook, but it's the same idea of there's just some people that really rubbed me the wrong way. And I don't think it's because I'm being a mean person in those moments. I think sometimes it's because I'm just like, you know, you're better than this, and we should all remember that, like we're just still

human interaction. So I don't know. Again, I don't really defend that boat very hard because that one was written before I was trying to really be my most authentic self as a writer, and I think, you know, it was supposed to be funny and provocative and make some good points and also kind of make some controversial points. Well, we could absolutely move on. No, I appreciate that very much, and I appreciate that you respond at these points and we can move on from it. What I just think

it's just just really interesting. There's like a deeper question here that I guess I'm trying to bring up it between authenticity versus image crafting, and like what is the

like optimal level of authenticity? It does seem you know, I just feel like, even know, Facebook seems to be a place to be to act narcissistic, although I do think we overused the word narcissm has a very clinical term to it, right, So what you're really saying is that we're acting selfish or we're not being narcissists, because that that is a very clinical All of us have those needs. It seems like, yeah, how can we get those needs? Where in the world can we get those needs?

It seems like Facebook is a good way and hopefully

a safe space two amongst your friends to get that out. Absolutely, like it's what it is is a lot of people treating Facebook like a safe So again, the part of the post I wouldn't defend at all is the part that just kind of rails on people for treating it like too much of a safe space, when like that's totally a fair thing to do and to make everyone like more self conscious about just like kind of you know, the parts of people that are mammoth free on Facebook,

like blispally mammoth free for once and just kind of doing their things and that someone's like, you're so annoying, Why are you being like that's like horrible. So yeah, definitely the safe space regard. I think Facebook is a good thing, and I don't agree with my own post on you know, being critical of people for that. No,

that's cool, that's totally cool. I think of theuals who are like unapologetically assholes, for instance, and they are authentically themselves and there are a lot of people in their life they're like, you know what, you really should tone that down or dial it down, and they seem to be like it doesn't seem to bother them at all.

I find that a fascinating phenomenon as well. It quick essentially like annoying, and I don't feel bad about credit, I think, which is like the humble bragging, you know that kind of social media you know what humble brag? Oh I do. I've been guilty of it for sure. Oh yeah, as soon as I saw I said, oh my god, I totally I mean, and I still sometimes catch myself and even now a friend that we really send each other humble brag and we see them and

he sometimes sends me my own. I'm like, damn it, and you know, like you know, it's like like I was, like, I interviewed Elon musk, you know, and I like, instead of just being like, hey, I how cool is that? I was like, you know, you know, I essentially kind of humble brag basically just like that. I was like in my pajamas walking around, I can't believe talking to this guy. And I was like, oh God, was that right I did? It? Was that a humble brag right there?

By even telling me that story the way you did it might have been, Yeah, it might have been so just one time I was talking to him, I mean, a humble brag like exception. Right now, this is a disaster. But the point is that's the exact kind of thing that happens on social media that happens less in the

real world. And it's just it doesn't happen in the real world too, but it's like rampant on social media because we're just sometimes like a less kind of self aware versions of ourselves like that, and that I'm apologetically criticized. I hear you, man, and I think like, probably it's all about tone. I think, like, you know, if you wrote the post in a way that was like more

like can we all just laugh at each other? Like can we all just like we're all human, you know, can we all just sort of like, you know, like, I think that probably wouldn't have pissed off so many people in the comments, but I did it today. Not only would I have been more empathetic, yeah, but I also would have fully At the time, as I was anonymous, I didn't want people to know whether I was a guy or all fifty years old or twenty years old, so I also didn't talk and no one knew me.

Now people who read the blog know me, so I would fully, I'd be center character. I'd be giving examples from my own Facebook feed for each of them, and I think that would stop people because then I'm kind of like making fun of all of us on it, versus being like, you're a loser. Why are you being like that, like acting like some like critical dick. So yeah, that's also something that would have been different. Awesome, Okay, we could move on for this topic. I appreciate I

appreciate that. I appreciate that a lot. So wow, you covered what makes you you? I mean, you really do like the big questions. This question is something I'm utterally fascinated with too, and doing neuroscience studies and things. You left with a profound like, well, is that all there is to us? You know? When I look at a brain scan, you know, and it's like in my hand, I look at them, I'm like that is this the person? You know? Is there something else about this person? And

I think it really is a profound question. And you covered it from various angles, you know, the body theory, the brain theory, and then you did all these thought experiment and you talked about all these thought experiments that so let's talk about one of the thought experiments. Let's just pick one. How about the body scattering test? What

is the body scattering test? Yeah? So I think there are a lot of this from Shelley k a professor at Yale who just does this unbelievably interesting cource online. I linked to it in the post. You can just go watch it from your computer, and it just could not have been more interesting. And so I think what you're referring to is the concept of if you actually look at what a human is, it's just a large

collection a collection of atoms and a certain arrangement. That's all it is, with a certain amount of velocity I guess energy levels of each atom, and that's it. That together is forming you and all of your actions and behavior and thoughts right or supposedly. And so the body scattering tests, I think essentially says, you know what if you had a thing that could take all those atoms

and suddenly scatter them into a space. So suddenly you just like vaporize into a you know, just puff into a bunch of gas that's in the room, and you wouldn't be able to see you This is all the same atom. And then you know a wizard who does that whatever, And then the wizard comes back with magic wands and okay, and tells the atoms back to where you were, and they come back. So when you're poofed out, are you dead? Are you alive? Like you know? Are you?

Do you exist in that moment? And then when when the atoms come back and form you again, is that still you? That person probably would act like you. That person probably would have all your memory because memories are just you know what, your arrangement of atoms in your brain. So all that's back, and you would say, wow, that was weird, and you'd walk out and you'd head on with your day. The question is did someone die and now there's this new being that thinks it's you as

clone or is that still you? And you start to just every one of these thought experience experiments makes you realize that it's kind of an illusion the self in a lot of ways, and that a lot of it we think, we think it's obvious, and then when you do these thought experiments, you start to realize that this is not obvious what the self actually is, and maybe this whole thing is kind of an illusion. So I find it endlessly fascinating. And that's I just don't feel

like I have the answer to this question. Oh man, let me know if you do. It is a very fascinating question. And I found that post really did a nice summary of all all the different perspectives. And you know, I had this podcast chat. Do you know David Chalmers, the philosopher of mind. Yeah, yeah, I had a chance to meet him once briefly. Yeah, great, this whole we talked about whether or not we're living in a simulation. He thinks that it's there's like forty percent probable that

we are potentially that living in a simulation. But also you know that like once you start uploading yourself to computer, and let's say you start uploading your entire memories, everything to the computer, and you lose everything you have as soon as it gets onto the computer. At what point, where is that demarcation put where you're no longer you anymore? You know, what is it we're talking, we're doing, Like what is it when it's if it's fifty to fifty?

You know, like in the computer, you know, like which one is you and right? Or like if you replace you know, each part of your body one by one, you know, when you hit the point where you're now just not you anymore? You replace every brain cell one by one with someone else's. You know, when does it

change over? The thing that is the most crazy of all of these things is the fact that someone can damage their brain and lose half of their brain and still be themselves and living and okay that there are examples of this when the other half of your brain compensates and starts doing a lot of the functions of the other half and the missing half, and that the person is still them, they have their memories, still the personality,

and they are living in okay life. This happens. So now that makes me think, okay, so what if you removed someone half of someone's brain, they were still themselves. And somehow you can remove an entire person's brain, a person's entire brain, and put the other half of person a's brain into person B. So now they both have you know, person A has the left half of his original brain and person being now has the right half a person A's brain as his only brain. Are they clones? Like?

And so if that were my friends who suddenly had the other half of my brain, I'm like, oh no, he would like know everything I think about him and about everything else. And I'm like, but it's not him, He's me. He is me. Now it's super weird to me. I could see how that could be super weird, for sure. This is how I like to think of it. You know that the self is an illusion. I mean it's

all an illusion. Really, Like technically, if you look at like, I have no atoms in common when I was six years old, right, I actually am like, there is a version of me that is actually dead forever, you know, right, And I'm not mourning that six year old. You're you're a lot closer to being me than you are to

being your five year old. Absolutely, and so really all I mean, our whole sense and construction of self is all an illusion so that we don't go crazy, that we keep some sort of continuity there, and you do talk about continuity there at the end, So that is

a really neat way of tiding it. But it seems like, you know, all the research and I can send you some papers on this showing that the thing that seems to most make us feel like ourselves when we even when we get dementia, even when we start losing our memories, even if we lose our IQ, you know, our IQ lowers. The one thing that seems if we lose that we seem to lose our sense stuff is our morality. Oh interesting, And yeah, they've done this, you know, I don't know

if you've heard of the group. They're experimental philosophers, so they try to actually test philosophical theories experimentally. And they did this study on people's you know, whole list of all the things that yeah, it'd be okay to lose this, it'd be okay to like, if I lost this, I wouldn't lose my sense of stuff. It really was the sense of rin. Once we start losing and doing things like let's say we impulsively start doing things that go

against our value system. That cuts the core to us of what it means to feel like we're unique in this world? Is really our value? Really our values? Yeah, i'd love to value. Sure. I feel like sense of humor, like some core personality things that you know, kind of without that, you're just not you. I think there's other things that strike me as candidates, but I'm sure you get people who thought a lot more about this and that's when they come to that's really interesting. Yeah, I'd

love to send you the paper. Yeah, so I'm thinking about this really interesting idea that you just proposed about the left and so on in the different in right hemisphere. I mean, in a lot of ways, we do have lots of different people in our body competing with each other. I mean, we do have sizes of ourselves that eat the ice cream, and then we have the other side that like, doesn't you know that's like, oh, I hate

the person who just ate that ice cream. That's true, that's true, But there still seems to be some inner sense consciousness behind all of those things that is the real you. And that's the thing that I can't pin down, you know, to any physical system or you know, I can't figure out where that is and how you lose it or how you preserve it. Yeah, and it is

for example, Yeah, you know the teletransport experiment. Okay, I won't get into it now, but like the end of the experiment, you know, it's like again, it's or with a scatter experiment, like the person walks out to your friends and family, nothing that happen. You're still there, You're fine. They don't care. You're still you in every way that

you can be you as far as they're concerned. But if you but if I'm about to be the one who's vaporized and then back to together, it's critically important to me to know whether the first person actually just disappears and now there's just a new person, because that means I die and there's essentially someone made a clone that is going on. Who cares? I'm dead? Who cares? And it's like it's suddenly it's like wait, I need

to know that. And your friends and family they just see, you know, you walk out, You're like, wow, that was super weird. Yeah I don't know that, and they just think that you're still there. So what's the difference for them? Versus for you, you know, what is that inner like I need There's like this eye that needs to be behind the eyes looking out of the new person. I need to have access to the consciousness of the new person.

And that's this thing that I can't pin down. I can't figure out why that would or would not be there, you know, yeah, absolutely, and and and they're really there is no one in this world has like the answer. But I feel like a smarter species, you know, even us in fifty years you might like that doesn't seem like it seems like something that It's like Aristotle, you know, thought that your intelligence is located in your heart. Like it seems so crazy, but like, we just don't know

stuff till we know it. And so I can see them looking back and say, wow, they really didn't get what consciousness was back in the the twenty first century. Well this is the you know, hard for solve problem distinction. People are quite confident in my field that in fifty years we will have mapped out the brain, you know, and we will have so even if we find out in fifty years exactly what the neurocurrelits of consciousness are, some people are skeptical that we'll ever wearn the hard problem.

So that was the easy problem. You know, the hard problem is knowing, you know, what is explaining quality, explaining where does your own unique experience of being tim urban you know, what gives rise to that? I mean, man, but maybe you're right, Maybe you're right, Maybe we will figure it out someday. And you start thinking about like, yeah, like what does it mean? Like what dies when we die? You know, like what die is? Like, well, what dies

is the construction of our sense of self? You know a lot of things that are very selfish, and if you get to the highest Buddhist level you start to get that. You're like, oh no, you know this is not something to be like upset about it. It just is That's okay, really cool. It's a pretty hard place to get. Yeah, really cool conversation. I really want to

be respectful of your time. I thought I would done this conversation talking about I know you've thought about a lot about cryonics, and it's something I've thought a lot about too, And when I read your article was like, it really helped consolidate a lot of things for me. And so, first of all, thank you for writing that article, being so brave. I know it's a bit of a controversial topic. I know that Alco probably loves you after right, Yeah, they did say they got a bunch of sign ups.

This is awesome. Now have you so? Are you signed? Do you have the bracelet? Now? No, I'm actually I'm one out of New York state blood test short of getting the insurance in place that will officially sign me up. But I'm as close as I can be right now. I'm all ready to go. So don't die, don't die. Yeah, I'll be good to die in about two months. But yeah, I'm almost there. Yeah. So David Chalmers and I on the podcast, we were joking about how we want to

get chirogetically preserved in the same cubicle. I was thinking that too. You want people to the right kind of people to hang out and it could be a long time exactly exactly, and also are It's something that I would definitely considering. It makes Your article argues, it makes a lot of sense. But your article does have one really big assumption, and that there's no afterlife, no spiritual religious afterlife. Now let's do the thought experiment here for

a second. What if your atheist inclinations are wrong and there actually is an afterlife, and then so you die and you go to this amazing afterlife, and then they resurrect you thirty thousand years and you leave into this horrible world. Wouldn't you be like start it? That really sucks. But then you just jump off a bridge and go back. Oh, I see, because you know the truth, so you could just go back. But yes, okay, okay, that's good. Good,

that's actually a good answer. I mean the truth is a world with an afterlife is so magical and different than the world that I think it is. Yes, that at that point I feel like, yeah, you can just use magic to get back there. I mean that, you know, yeah, what if it confuses the afterlife system in a way that like what if there was something like I'm totally just being out there right now. I'm not, but I'm just trying. I want to think this all through. Let's

just think this through, like really think this through. Like what if like things are meant to be, like things have been have happened a certain way for the whole existence of organic species, and we're kind of playing messing with that a little bit. What if we are to simulation, like Dave Chalmer said, it's forty percent probability, or so what if, like you know that, really, isn't that really going to piss off the programmers or something? Would they

be pissed off? If you want? If someone if right now, if someone went into a coma and instead of just having the do not rescitate order, they bought through and then the two years later the doctors revived them and they were back with that something that mess up their after life with that meant because the idea with the crowded is that you're not even dead yet, that you're actually just they're going to basically preserve you in a you know, something you can compare to a coma intentionally

keep you alive until a future hospital can cure you. All that's doing is just it's the same thing as fighting through cancer. It's fighting through disease to try to preserve your life. If you think about it that way, it doesn't really conflict with anything. It's it's no different than long term patient care, long term patient care. I love that point in the article. Actually, I absolutely love that article. I'm thinking of like free will here, like if it was in our destiny, you know, when the

Big Bang happened that we would get into a coma. Okay, so maybe even figure out chiogenically preserve yourself. Maybe that's part of free will that maybe that's just part of it. That's no different than it might be. It might be determined from the big Bang that you were going to get cancer, and it's also determined that you were going to fight through it, just like determined you're going to fight through It's all about your definition of death, you know.

Cryonicists say, well, what is death? If life is just this arrangement of atoms that makes you in your brain, that makes you you, then death is when those atoms are so irreparably scattered that there's no way for any future technology or any future intelligence to figure out how they want to work. And once and I call that info death, and that's when you're really truly gone. There's

nothing they can ever get you back. Until then they see you as a hard drive, which are really smart species or a smart AI could recover and if they can recover you, they don't consider you dead in the first place. So that's when you get to get to Okay, Well, if there's afterlife, what is the moment that the afterlife considers you debt, right, that's a good question, you know, it's not. You look fifty years ago, that answer was, oh your heart stops beating and you stop breathing. That

was someone was this clear debt on that moment. Actually, now they're not. They're resuscitated. Often it was within five minutes of that they're fine or they can be fine. And so someone fifty years ago would say, don't resuscitate me, it's going to mess with my aster life. But now no one thinks that we redefine death. So when you start thinking about what death actually means and how it's shifted over the years, and how this is just another shift,

it becomes a lot less controversial. I think. I think it becomes no different than rushing you across the town to a hospital that has the tools to save you. This is rushing you, rushing you to the future to

a hospital that can save you. And I think that you know, right now, it's still in the zone where people think of it as vain and you know, to and kind of selfish to want to live forever, you know this kind of but it's not wanting to live forever, it's wanting to live want Yeah, It's no different than when people had a lifespan of forty on average, you know, fighting to try to make it eighty. Well, chronics just try fighting to make it even longer and preserve people.

It just there's nothing vain about that anymore than fighting cancer. I think it's reframing to understand that. But once you're getting it doesn't really make sense to not I think be favorable. I completely agree. And the things I'm putting forward are not vanity issues. They're like, let's just really think this through, right, Like what if I did think you really thought it through. But I'm just adding additional things like because this is just fun to talk about.

I mean, you're taking the risk as well that you're going to actually prefer the world you wake up into death. I mean, who knows, like this could be, like we could wake up in a just terrible torture like in a zoo or something. Right, Yeah, Okay, So on one hand of people like oh you wake up and you knowing you know there and just hopeing in future. Okay, well then I just kill myself. So that doesn't work. What you got to at the end there, it is

a little worrisomewhere yeah, they can't. Well, they won't let you kill yourself. Or it's even more because I don't think a moregant species is going to be more medieval than we are. I think they're gonna have anything going to be even you know, more based on human rights and all of that. So I'm not really about the

species so much. Is more of like some sick fuck buys one of these facilities and is like, right, these are gonna be I'm going to see how much suffering and pain human consciousness can endure by bringing in how much fear, what can happen? They're going to use it as tests. That is an unfortunate possibility that if you just die normally, no way that's going to happen someone else.

I don't know if you know Julia Galiff, but she talked about it, and she said that, you know what if somehow we don't understand consciousness and once you get you know, you get preserved, you're actually your consciousness revives and you're just stuck in it for a thousand years in this nitrogen, not able to say anything. And that to me, now we get the same question as the act, like we're now I'm saying, well, that's now we're in

magic land. Because consciousness requires biological activity, right, I mean it has to, it can't. Thinking can't occur without biological life. So that answer in the afterlife thing don't bother me is nearly as much as you know, and nor does waking up and not knowing anyone. Well, okay, I can always die. But like if people lose their family now, they don't want to. They might want it, but they

don't usually kill themselves day. They try to get back in the feat then they make new friends, and then they get married, and then suddenly they love their life again. So that doesn't work for me. It's really just this loan sick fuck idea that I really don't think that I'm not in good good We've really narrowed it down to our biggest concern. This is why these kinds of thought experiments are good. They'll probably do it though, because yeah, look the upside. I mean, if you just revived, I

don't bet against the future. You know, the past would never have imagined the kind of things we could do now, so the future might really be able to bring that that consciousnes say, yeah, that's not even hard, Like we we very much understand human brain, human consciousness. We can look at this chronically preserved brain and we can very easily bring back this person with a new fresh body, and they can live for hundreds of years and enjoy things.

That's not that insane when you think about what The brain is just a physical object, and the future is going to be very very very impressive, probably to us shockingly mind bogglingly impressive. So I'm like, yeah, I'll roll my bitchrified brain to those people and say see what you can do. Yeah, even Elon Musk, I know, I know how much you admire him. I saw him give a talk to the World Government summit last couple of weeks ago, and they were like kept asking him, what

do you think the future is gonna be? With it? You know, He's like, well, the immediate, you know future, I see, like self driving cars is going to be a big thing, blah blah. But he said, honestly, I got no idea. Like you know, He's like, He's like, if you asked them a hundred years ago to predict any of the shit we're having now, like even the stoutest people of that generation would have been like not

have got nailed this. Stuff. So he said, the only thing I could predict this is going to be something we have no idea. Yeah, that's right. I thought that was a really cool answer. It's exciting. Yeah, it's really exciting, and I found this conversation exciting as well. Tim, thanks a lot for chatting with me and for the great work you do. Oh, thanks so much. Great talking to you. Thanks for listening to The Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott barrk Kaufman. I hope you found this episode just as

thought for booking and interesting as I did. If you'd like to read the show notes for this episode or hear past episodes, you can visit the Psychology Podcast dot com.