speaking of intentional action and if the brain is pre if prediction is indeed a core component of the brain let me ask you a question that scientists also hate is uh about free will so how does uh do you think about free will much how does that fit into this into your view of the brain why does it feel like we make decisions in this world this is a hard q a scientists hate this because it's a hard it's a hard question we don't really take it aside i think i have free will i think i have taken aside but it i don't put a lot of stock in my own intuitions or anybody's intuitions about the cause of things right our ex one thing we know about the brain for sure is that the brain creates experiences for us my brain creates experiences for me your brain creates experiences for you in a way that lures you to believe that those experiences actually reveals the way that it works right but it doesn't so so you don't trust your own intuition about not really not really no i mean no but but i am also somewhat persuaded by you know i think dan dennett wrote at one point like um uh you know the philosopher dan dennett wrote at one point that um it it's i can't say it as eloquently as him but it people obviously have free will they are obviously making choices so it's you know and so there is this observation that we're not robots and we can do some things like a little more sophisticated than an amphioxus so um so here's what i would say i would say that your predictions your internal model that's running right now right that your ability to understand the sounds that i'm making and attach them to ideas is based on the fact that you have years of experience knowing what these sounds mean in a particular statistical uh pattern right i mean that's how you can understand the words that are coming out of my mouth right i think we did this once before too didn't we when we were i don't know i would have to access my memory module i think when i was in your glen yeah i think we did it just like that actually so bravo wow yeah i have to go look look back to the tape yeah anyways the um the idea though is that your brain is using past experience and it can and it can use past experience in um so it's remembering but you're not consciously remembering it's basically re-implementing prior experiences as a way of predicting what's going to happen next and it can do something called conceptual combination which is it can take bits and pieces of the past and combine it in new ways so you can experience and make sense of things that you've never encountered before because you've encountered something similar to them and so a brain in a sense is not just doesn't just contain information it is information gaining meaning it can create it new information by this generative process so in a sense you could say well that maybe that's that's a source of free will but i think really where free will comes from or the kind of free will that i think is worth having a conversation about is um involves cultivating experiences for yourself that change your internal model when you were born and you were raised in a particular context that your mod your brain wired itself to your surroundings to your physical surroundings and also to your social surroundings so you were handed an internal model basically um but uh when you grow up the more control you have over your where you are and what you do um you can cultivate new experiences for yourself and those new experiences can change your internal model and you can actually practice those experiences in a way that makes them automatic meaning it makes it easier for the brain your brain to make them again and i think that that is something like what you would call free will you aren't responsible for the model that you were handed that someone you know your your caregivers uh cultivated a model in your brain you're not responsible for that model but you are responsible for the one you have now you can choose you choose what you expose yourself to you choose uh how you spend your time not everybody has choice over everything right but everybody has a little bit of choice um and and so i think that is uh something that i i think is arguably called free will yeah there's this like the the ripple effects of the billions of decisions you make early on in life have are so great that uh even if it's not even if it's like all deterministic just the amount of possibilities that are created and then the focusing of those possibilities into a single trajectory uh that somewhere within that that's free will even if it's all deterministic that might as well be of just the number of choices that are possible and the fact that you just make one trajectory to those set of choices seems to be like something like they'll be called free will but it's still kind of sad to think like there doesn't seem to be a place where there's magic in there or it is all just a computer well there's lots of magic i would say so far because we don't really understand uh how all of this is exactly played out at a i mean scientists are working hard and disagree about some of the details under the hood of what i just described but i think there's quite a bit of magic actually and also there's there's also um stochastic firing of neurons don't they they're not purely digital in the sense that there is there's also analog communication between neurons not just digital so it's not just with not just with firing of axons and some of that uh there's there are other ways to communicate and also um uh there's noise in the system and the noise is there for a really good reason and that is um the more variability there is the more potential there is for your brain to be able to be information bearing so um basically you know there are some animals that have clusters of cells the only job is to inject noise you know into their um neural patterns so maybe noise is the source of free will so you can think about you can think about stochasticity or noise as as a source of free will or you can think of of um conceptual combination as a source of free will you can certainly think about cultivating uh you know you can't reach back into your past and change your past you know people try by psychotherapy and so on but what you can do is change your present um which becomes your past right think about that sentence so one way to think about it is that you're continuously this is a colleague of mine a friend of mine said so what you're saying is that people are continually cultivating their past and i was like that's very poetic yes you are continually cultivating your past as a means of controlling your future so you think uh yeah i guess the the construction of the mental model that you use for prediction ultimately contains within it your perception of the past like the way you interpret the past or even just the entirety of your narrative about the past so you're constantly rewriting the story of your past oh boy yeah that's one poetic and also just awe-inspiring you speaking of intentional action and if the brain is pre if prediction is indeed a core component of the brain let me ask you a question that scientists also hate is uh about free will so how does uh do you think about free will much how does that fit into this into your view of the brain why does it feel like we make decisions in this world this is a hard q a scientists hate this because it’s a hard it’s a hard question we don’t really take it aside i think i have free will i think i have taken aside but it i don’t put a lot of stock in my own intuitions or anybody’s intuitions about the cause of things right our ex one thing we know about the brain for sure is that the brain creates experiences for us my brain creates experiences for me your brain creates experiences for you in a way that lures you to believe that those experiences actually reveals the way that it works right but it doesn’t so so you don’t trust your own intuition about not really not really no i mean no but but i am also somewhat persuaded by you know i think dan dennett wrote at one point like um uh you know the philosopher dan dennett wrote at one point that um it it’s i can’t say it as eloquently as him but it people obviously have free will they are obviously making choices so it’s you know and so there is this observation that we’re not robots and we can do some things like a little more sophisticated than an amphioxus so um so here’s what i would say i would say that your predictions your internal model that’s running right now right that your ability to understand the sounds that i’m making and attach them to ideas is based on the fact that you have years of experience knowing what these sounds mean in a particular statistical uh pattern right i mean that’s how you can understand the words that are coming out of my mouth right i think we did this once before too didn’t we when we were i don’t know i would have to access my memory module i think when i was in your glen yeah i think we did it just like that actually so bravo wow yeah i have to go look look back to the tape yeah anyways the um the idea though is that your brain is using past experience and it can and it can use past experience in um so it’s remembering but you’re not consciously remembering it’s basically re-implementing prior experiences as a way of predicting what’s going to happen next and it can do something called conceptual combination which is it can take bits and pieces of the past and combine it in new ways so you can experience and make sense of things that you’ve never encountered before because you’ve encountered something similar to them and so a brain in a sense is not just doesn’t just contain information it is information gaining meaning it can create it new information by this generative process so in a sense you could say well that maybe that’s that’s a source of free will but i think really where free will comes from or the kind of free will that i think is worth having a conversation about is um involves cultivating experiences for yourself that change your internal model when you were born and you were raised in a particular context that your mod your brain wired itself to your surroundings to your physical surroundings and also to your social surroundings so you were handed an internal model basically um but uh when you grow up the more control you have over your where you are and what you do um you can cultivate new experiences for yourself and those new experiences can change your internal model and you can actually practice those experiences in a way that makes them automatic meaning it makes it easier for the brain your brain to make them again and i think that that is something like what you would call free will you aren’t responsible for the model that you were handed that someone you know your your caregivers uh cultivated a model in your brain you’re not responsible for that model but you are responsible for the one you have now you can choose you choose what you expose yourself to you choose uh how you spend your time not everybody has choice over everything right but everybody has a little bit of choice um and and so i think that is uh something that i i think is arguably called free will yeah there’s this like the the ripple effects of the billions of decisions you make early on in life have are so great that uh even if it’s not even if it’s like all deterministic just the amount of possibilities that are created and then the focusing of those possibilities into a single trajectory uh that somewhere within that that’s free will even if it’s all deterministic that might as well be of just the number of choices that are possible and the fact that you just make one trajectory to those set of choices seems to be like something like they’ll be called free will but it’s still kind of sad to think like there doesn’t seem to be a place where there’s magic in there or it is all just a computer well there’s lots of magic i would say so far because we don’t really understand uh how all of this is exactly played out at a i mean scientists are working hard and disagree about some of the details under the hood of what i just described but i think there’s quite a bit of magic actually and also there’s there’s also um stochastic firing of neurons don’t they they’re not purely digital in the sense that there is there’s also analog communication between neurons not just digital so it’s not just with not just with firing of axons and some of that uh there’s there are other ways to communicate and also um uh there’s noise in the system and the noise is there for a really good reason and that is um the more variability there is the more potential there is for your brain to be able to be information bearing so um basically you know there are some animals that have clusters of cells the only job is to inject noise you know into their um neural patterns so maybe noise is the source of free will so you can think about you can think about stochasticity or noise as as a source of free will or you can think of of um conceptual combination as a source of free will you can certainly think about cultivating uh you know you can’t reach back into your past and change your past you know people try by psychotherapy and so on but what you can do is change your present um which becomes your past right think about that sentence so one way to think about it is that you’re continuously this is a colleague of mine a friend of mine said so what you’re saying is that people are continually cultivating their past and i was like that’s very poetic yes you are continually cultivating your past as a means of controlling your future so you think uh yeah i guess the the construction of the mental model that you use for prediction ultimately contains within it your perception of the past like the way you interpret the past or even just the entirety of your narrative about the past so you’re constantly rewriting the story of your past oh boy yeah that’s one poetic and also just awe-inspiring you