Transcript
Speaker: Hello friends and welcome back to We Can Do Pod Things.
Speaker: I am Emily.
Speaker: And I'm Emily.
Speaker: And- My mind is still not working!
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I'm coming over there.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: We're doing this!
Speaker: Okay, so what had happened was, we know these things work.
Speaker: We've gotten them to work successfully.
Speaker: It's just consistently being able to execute it is not our strong suits.
Speaker: So we're sharing a mic like the olden days.
Speaker: So welcome guys, we're glad that you're here.
Speaker: We are talking today about an episode of Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard and Monica Padman.
Speaker: It aired in April and I have probably listened to it a dozen times and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it.
Speaker: So I'm hoping that today if I can articulate it and discuss it, then maybe I can finally feel some peace with this episode.
Speaker: And I support you in that endeavor.
Speaker: So the guest on that episode was Nita Farahani.
Speaker: She has just about every degree that a person can have.
Speaker: She is a professor of law and philosophy at Duke University and the author of The Battle for Your Brain.
Speaker: She's an advocate for laws and regulations guaranteeing cognitive liberty both from and to
Speaker: all that neurotechnology has to offer.
Speaker: She makes a big point of saying that she wants people to have access to the good stuff and also to be protected from all the bad stuff.
Speaker: And we're going to talk about those things.
Speaker: And I think that's balance.
Speaker: That's about balance.
Speaker: And I think that that is where what really is so critical in ethics.
Speaker: She provides a lot of really good balance in this discussion.
Speaker: She talks about the scary stuff, but she also talks about some really exciting health applications for neurotechnology.
Speaker: So before we dive in, shall I share the quote again?
Speaker: Yes, this will be a little bit less of a wow moment for you guys because she just blind read it to me and I have a specific...
Speaker: attachment, we shall say.
Speaker: And knowing this, Emily picked the quote, which she shall now read to you.
Speaker: Okay, here it comes.
Speaker: How happy is the blameless vessel's lot, the world forgetting by the world forgot, eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, each prayer accepted and each wish resigned.
Speaker: That is Alexander Pope.
Speaker: And that comes up in the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which I have a lot of feelings about.
Speaker: Which we're going to talk about for sure, for sure.
Speaker: But I know that I'm getting way ahead of us.
Speaker: Why don't you start a little earlier in your notes and we will eventually get to that.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So her book is called The Battle for Your Brain.
Speaker: And they start out talking about cryogenics and as kind of like a foundation for this like revolutionary like bio politics and, you know, people freezing themselves and how it's really not that far off in the future or it's not ridiculous to believe that very soon these –
Speaker: people will be able to utilize technology.
Speaker: And I think it was also about like, if you're, when you have some, the people who die because they were six months ahead of, of the technology, right?
Speaker: Like this surgery hasn't been approved yet and you died.
Speaker: And then six months later they figured it out or whatnot.
Speaker: And the ethics of that.
Speaker: And then they talk about,
Speaker: This transferring consciousness into bodies and how wild and crazy that is.
Speaker: And also then they reference this TV show.
Speaker: I say TV, but if it's on Netflix, I don't – what is TV anymore?
Speaker: Anyway, it's a Netflix original called Altered Carbon, and I've watched the first season and half of the second season.
Speaker: And it is a great, great show.
Speaker: It's very Philip K. Dick sci-fi, where this distant future, they have figured out how to transfer consciousness into a different body and...
Speaker: The people who are really, really rich, like ridiculously rich, have just stores of these clones that they've been able to make because science has gotten that far.
Speaker: And when they die, or something happens to them and they are critically wounded, they can just automatically upload their consciousness into the next body.
Speaker: And if they don't like that body for whatever reason, there was like a flaw in the cloning, then they just upload it to another one.
Speaker: And essentially, they are immortal.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And my immediate thought about that, well…
Speaker: My very first thought about that was the episode of Golden Girls where they all wake up and their heads on the table.
Speaker: Do you remember that one?
Speaker: Did you see that one?
Speaker: I don't think I remember that one.
Speaker: Rose talks them all into getting their heads frozen because they can't afford to get their entire body.
Speaker: So they all wake up on plates of ice in their kitchen.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a good one.
Speaker: Probably a lot like the show you were talking about.
Speaker: Essentially the same.
Speaker: Yeah, I bet they're the exact same.
Speaker: But after thinking about that, my next thought was, I love living and I love everything that it has to offer, but who wants to live?
Speaker: Who wants to live forever?
Speaker: I mean, for hundreds of years-
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Is that a goal?
Speaker: Not for me.
Speaker: I get too tired.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I just don't know.
Speaker: I haven't even really settled on buying into living to 50.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like I'm just saying I'm not saying that anyone should be concerned.
Speaker: I'm just saying it is not something that I have set in stone.
Speaker: I have made peace with that.
Speaker: So –
Speaker: There's a lot to consider when we talk about who has the opportunity to access a life that long.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And it feeds so much into, at least within the show, it feeds so much into healthcare and treatment and who even gets the opportunity to be treated in healthcare because –
Speaker: If they don't have enough money for this upgraded clones, they call them skins.
Speaker: Then what's the point?
Speaker: And there's a very low probability that they will survive a surgery.
Speaker: Why are they going to waste the resources on the surgery on this person?
Speaker: Because they won't be able to survive and they can't afford a new skin.
Speaker: So just scrap it all.
Speaker: And also then these rich people, these crazy rich people are the ones that live forever and have this extended reality and a ridiculous amount of influence over everything, politics, economy, everything.
Speaker: And this is kind of a bombshell, you guys, but the richest people are not always the best people.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: I can feel it.
Speaker: I can feel the disturbance in the force from people just incredulously hearing this.
Speaker: But just have a think on it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Speaking of biopolitics, then she talks about how there's this interesting phenomenon around biopolitics where it doesn't always align with traditional political parties, at least political parties within the American historical, historically the American government system with liberal and conservative.
Speaker: You can have people on both ends of the spectrum agreeing about the same thing, that the same thing
Speaker: needs to be regulated and for what, but it's not necessarily always, I question the authenticity of it because it seems like most of it is aligned around, we are agreeing that this thing is not okay.
Speaker: So it's like, it's not that we agree on stuff.
Speaker: It's that we, we, we agree on the rejection of stuff, which makes me think of
Speaker: Brene Brown talking about authenticity and genuineness and hot wiring connection.
Speaker: And that if you have a connection with someone because you both like to talk shit about the same things, that's not exactly, that's not really the same thing as true connection.
Speaker: And I'm not saying that it makes this common ground between one end of the spectrum and the other.
Speaker: I'm not saying it makes it less authentic.
Speaker: I'm just saying it's worth thinking about.
Speaker: It just adds a whole nother juicy layer to the whole discussion around when AI began to make neurotechnology-
Speaker: more advanced and more things possible for us, when that happens, I mean, when that really begins to happen and it becomes mainstream, we don't have an existing set of rules for that.
Speaker: So who's going to be making those rules?
Speaker: Because right now, we can't seem to make rules about even the simplest of things.
Speaker: How are we going to agree on rules regulating something this complicated
Speaker: When there's not a right or wrong answer, it's just an ethical dilemma all around.
Speaker: And she talks about this towards the end of the episode, and I had to stop taking notes.
Speaker: But she says, historically, although these laws and rules have been made to benefit capitalism or big business or corporations, and we are at a unique place in our society.
Speaker: social values where we have the opportunity to, as individuals, be the ones involved in making the rules rather than the rules that benefit us, rather than it being some, because it benefits a corporation.
Speaker: And she does a really good job in the episode of providing a very balanced perspective.
Speaker: She talks about all of the frightening things, but she also talks about all of the really exciting ways that this can improve health for just about everybody.
Speaker: I mean, in particular, she talks about dementia patients and
Speaker: Epilepsy.
Speaker: Epilepsy.
Speaker: A particular interest to me was being able to tell the difference from a wearable device that is able to gather brain data using scans, being able to use that data to determine whether someone's having a stroke or a migraine.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And being able to predict when a seizure is about to occur.
Speaker: And that this is actual science, actual things that they can do now.
Speaker: And they can sense...
Speaker: when your brain is bored versus when your brain is engaged and the effect that that can have beneficially should you choose to accept the tool or use the tool and control the tool on productivity, focus, improving focus, and then some later on implications of how that can help with cognitive function and dementia again.
Speaker: And there are two different ways that they're doing this.
Speaker: One is through EEGs.
Speaker: That's the more common.
Speaker: But then there's this fMRI technology that is even more precise.
Speaker: And there are...
Speaker: Lots of, there are actually several studies just over at Purdue that utilize this technology in their behavior neuroscience doctorate, PhD programs.
Speaker: There are at least five different studies that are being done, conducted right now that you could participate in as a doctoral, doctoral candidate.
Speaker: And I imagine also if you know someone in the lab, you can actually participate in research studies
Speaker: as an undergrad.
Speaker: But anyway.
Speaker: So yeah, I hope you guys are able to keep up with this because like I said, it took me about 10 times listening to that episode and I still haven't been able to form all my thoughts around it.
Speaker: But she's talking about, she's not talking about being in a hospital because
Speaker: being hooked up to all of these machines that are gathering this data.
Speaker: She's talking about your earbuds.
Speaker: She's talking about your watch.
Speaker: I mean, all of these things are going to be enabled sooner rather than later with the technology to record that information.
Speaker: And that is going to unlock some really, really groundbreaking possibilities that
Speaker: And also some really scary potential realities when it comes to things like government surveillance and Big Brother.
Speaker: I mean, these are all things that she says we have a right to and a right to be protected from.
Speaker: A right to and a right from.
Speaker: She's really careful to say that she wants us to have access to the good stuff and
Speaker: And also to be able to opt out of whatever we don't want.
Speaker: This is our brain data and she wants us to own it.
Speaker: Not corporations like Meta or... Your employer.
Speaker: She doesn't want your boss to be able to just go flipping through the stuff that they collected from your brain.
Speaker: How weird and crazy is that?
Speaker: And also...
Speaker: Correlation does not equal causation.
Speaker: And we're going to talk about this again later.
Speaker: When you give people information that they don't understand or know how to use, and then they are able, because of the position of power that they're in, whether or not it's because they're a shift supervisor or director of CIA or whatever, they're
Speaker: When you give people information that they don't actually understand what it means and we maybe don't even – I say we like I'm collecting the data.
Speaker: But the scientists who are the experts still don't also know entirely what it means.
Speaker: You are going to fuck shit up.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it is going to be super inappropriate and –
Speaker: It needs to be understood better before.
Speaker: And the reason that this is kind of exploding right now, because they've been able to get this information for a while, but they haven't been able to synthesize it because there's just so much.
Speaker: There's so much information.
Speaker: Water from a fire hose.
Speaker: They were not able to go through it all, but now AI has made it possible.
Speaker: It can go through all of this data in real
Speaker: record-breaking speed and collect these patterns and spot trends.
Speaker: And it's really, really neat.
Speaker: But also, what is that going to mean?
Speaker: Where does it end?
Speaker: I mean, eventually, you guys, I know this sounds so sci-fi and that's why I needed somebody else to listen to this episode.
Speaker: Because if I just ran around telling people about this and they hadn't listened, they would think I was off my rocker.
Speaker: But I mean, but, but that's on them.
Speaker: You got to listen to this guys, because like, it's actually real.
Speaker: I sound like I've got tinfoil on my head right now.
Speaker: The truth is out there.
Speaker: Don't get me started on aliens.
Speaker: You know, I bet.
Speaker: Yeah, I think a really cool aspect of this that she talks about too is behavioral genetics and criminology, the testing for the disposition of criminology and the effect that that can have on our own human choices.
Speaker: Yeah, so I want to know what you think about that.
Speaker: So if...
Speaker: it becomes possible that they are able to pinpoint some kind of genetic mutation or whatever it is that may predict criminal behavior, then what does that mean as far as how we hold people accountable?
Speaker: Are they still guilty for the crimes that they commit?
Speaker: Or are they not guilty because this is the biology of their brain?
Speaker: What do you think?
Speaker: I'm taking over the mic because I have quite a few thoughts on this.
Speaker: This is not the, when they made the movie Minority Report, I think that's the one where they predict future crimes with Tom Cruise and he gets convicted of a crime that he hasn't, I don't know.
Speaker: I think that that's right.
Speaker: I typically stay away from sci-fi stuff, which is why I am like, just, I don't know what to do with myself.
Speaker: So here's my problem.
Speaker: I have a couple problems with this and also just in general.
Speaker: But we are completely removing human choice and the ability to choose...
Speaker: our own fate and actions.
Speaker: Just because this person is likely to have an elevated psychopathy, the tendency towards psychopathy, doesn't mean that we're going to predict how it's going to manifest.
Speaker: And they talk about this.
Speaker: It could be that that person is a serial killer, or it could be that that person ends up
Speaker: just being a really great rugby player.
Speaker: And they are able to channel it in a way that is healthy.
Speaker: They choose a way that is healthy versus a way that is destructive.
Speaker: And you know what that comes down to?
Speaker: Emotional fucking regulation and how much access to emotional cognition we give our kids and we are allowed ourselves and how society either supports or rejects
Speaker: the normalization of taking the time to understand these things.
Speaker: And also then, she also talks about labeling theory and how it's a slippery slope and it can be so dangerous because it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Speaker: You tell someone you are going to be a psychopath when you grow up.
Speaker: I say that to Bonnie at least once a week.
Speaker: I would urge you to consider.
Speaker: To have that be supported by some kind of actual data would be a different ballgame.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And if she talks about the allure and the seductiveness of neuroscience, and we think because it's quantifiable that it gets mistaken for this objective truth or holy grail, and it's simply not true.
Speaker: Just because we can quantify it doesn't necessarily mean that it is the objective truth.
Speaker: Again, correlation does not equal causation.
Speaker: Just because we know this area of your brain lights up when you're bored doesn't mean, or that this area of your brain lights up.
Speaker: I mean, they're talking about being able to, from a distance, scan brains during an interview process.
Speaker: And based on algorithms generated by AI and FNAR technology,
Speaker: Being able to recognize whether or not you're conservative or liberal politically in an interview and that potentially preventing you from getting a job.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: But just because a particular part of your brain lights up or just because in studies, people's brains light up differently and in different parts when shown different pictures of famous political figures, that if you don't 110% understand why it does that or have the ability to determine whether or not there are other factors involved,
Speaker: It's not a fact.
Speaker: Well, and also, as soon as this becomes a thing, people are going to start figuring out how to hack it.
Speaker: They're going to start figuring out how to manipulate people
Speaker: the data that these interviewers are getting to match what they want these interviewers to see or to hear.
Speaker: Because as she argues, we have some right to that.
Speaker: And I also just, I come back to, that doesn't mean we should have to do that.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Just because you can do, you can do something doesn't mean you should do something.
Speaker: And we shouldn't have to disguise what is going on in our brains.
Speaker: That is supposed to be, that is our very last real safe place in our thoughts.
Speaker: And I think it's, who is his co-host?
Speaker: Monica Padman.
Speaker: Monica makes this statement about, you know, we've come to this age where we all think all of our thoughts are super special and super important and needs to be shared all the time.
Speaker: That's why people start podcasts about this and that and every other thing and TikTok and all of that.
Speaker: And I think her argument is that it's not, which –
Speaker: Possible, but we still deserve the right to determine whether or not we put that out there.
Speaker: No one's obligated to listen to this podcast.
Speaker: We're going to put it out regardless.
Speaker: We might be talking a whole bunch of shit and be super crazy, and we have an ethical responsibility to make sure that we are transparent about what
Speaker: Our limitations.
Speaker: What weight you should give our opinion.
Speaker: But that doesn't mean that people are forced to listen to it.
Speaker: And also, we don't right now think or say, or we don't say all of the things that we think.
Speaker: We do still filter it because we have to.
Speaker: But then when this technology becomes available, there's no way to opt out.
Speaker: It's potential that there's no way to opt out of it.
Speaker: You don't get to rethink anything.
Speaker: And something that they said that I thought was so interesting was,
Speaker: It almost doesn't even matter what they tell you they can interpret from your brain data.
Speaker: Just knowing that they are collecting your brain data, you are already going to begin censoring yourself.
Speaker: You are already going to start altering the things that you're thinking just because of this imagined threat that may or may not actually be there.
Speaker: And then Dax says, but then also people get all worked up about this stuff and cookies and targeted ads and all of this.
Speaker: But then they don't actually do anything about it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We're willing to give up our privacy if it's inconvenient not to.
Speaker: He talks about, you know...
Speaker: Google collecting all of this data and then you – but all you have to do is pay $19.99 a month or whatever and you can control that data.
Speaker: And it was like, why should people have to pay for the right to control their data to begin with?
Speaker: It's not that people are lazy or irresponsible.
Speaker: There's access and there's barriers.
Speaker: And again, this is money and how money controls who gets –
Speaker: Who has as much rights as the other people?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It isn't just about having rights.
Speaker: It's about it being frictionless for the public.
Speaker: I mean, she makes a point of saying that many times that it should not mean that we have to jump over hurdles to either...
Speaker: get what we want from neurotechnology or avoid the things that we don't want.
Speaker: It should be frictionless.
Speaker: And that is what would set these rules apart from historically a lot of the other rules, including the rules that came eventually around social media that we didn't even really, that conversation didn't even start to happen in any way that I was aware of until maybe the last few
Speaker: five years.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's interesting that you say that too, because I didn't go to the most recent school board meeting, but the one prior to that was a work session.
Speaker: And so they talk a little bit more freely.
Speaker: And one of the items that the superintendent brought to the board was they had been contacted by some lawyers that were putting together a class action suit against social media and
Speaker: And the school, the corporation needed to decide whether or not that was something they were interested in potentially being a part of or not.
Speaker: And it was done by the same, it's being done by the same company and litigation team who won a large class action suit on behalf of schools against big tobacco for the vaping and all that stuff.
Speaker: So they had to decide whether or not
Speaker: they were going to get involved in this class action suit of potentially suing Meta, Twitter, which is X, I don't know, all of these different companies because the regulation and the responsibility of the knowledge and the technology and the information that social media used was not done ethically.
Speaker: We were talking about the overlap at times between conservatives and liberals.
Speaker: And I think that one thing that has emerged in the last few years is that nobody believes that the government is telling us the whole truth.
Speaker: Is that safe to say?
Speaker: I mean, let me know if I'm out of line here.
Speaker: We all know you're lying.
Speaker: We just don't know what about.
Speaker: But that might actually serve us really well when we are on the brink of such a huge revolution when it comes to changes in technology and what it's capable of and what it looks like in our everyday lives.
Speaker: It might really serve us that we are all not as naive as we once were about our government.
Speaker: And-
Speaker: It's not enough to just assume that these companies are doing things that are unethical and therefore they will be punished.
Speaker: It doesn't matter how unethical it is if it's not illegal.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: If it's not illegal, if it's not written down that you cannot do it, then nobody's going to stop them from doing it.
Speaker: But then who decides?
Speaker: Who gets to decide what's legal and what's not legal and how much minutiae
Speaker: How much control do we give laws over all of this stuff?
Speaker: I mean, Nita, I know we just met, but she's got like, we didn't meet, but emotionally.
Speaker: We've met as much as we ever will.
Speaker: We've met as much as we're ever going to.
Speaker: And she's got like six different degrees.
Speaker: So if anybody is going to guide us towards what these laws in terms of service might look like,
Speaker: I feel like we could do worse than letting her be the lead the charge on this one.
Speaker: We could certainly do worse.
Speaker: And also with higher education often comes a fair amount of privilege.
Speaker: And she acknowledges this at the beginning of the episode.
Speaker: I didn't really write it down, but she does acknowledge that she's had privilege.
Speaker: And with privilege comes a change in perspective.
Speaker: But also, let's leave the stuff to the experts.
Speaker: And I can't think of anyone who's more of an expert than this.
Speaker: You know, she talks, speaking of experts, and like, who gets to decide what laws and who is qualified to make these laws.
Speaker: That's one of my big problems with some of the way that the school board is structured is that people...
Speaker: who don't necessarily have any kind of understanding of education or child development or any of that, have these positions of power.
Speaker: And I'm not saying that they shouldn't.
Speaker: I'm just saying that
Speaker: Your value lies within the lanes of your expertise.
Speaker: A business owner is a great resource for how to run a school when it comes to
Speaker: economics, perhaps some policies regarding the infrastructure of the business end of that.
Speaker: It does not make you qualified to decide which books should and shouldn't be in the library,
Speaker: or how the corporation chooses to spend money on technology related to monitoring, bullying.
Speaker: And another hard thing about these kind of conversations is that inevitably a piece of the conversation is going to have to be
Speaker: What is morally acceptable?
Speaker: And no one is an expert on what is morally acceptable because what is morally acceptable cannot be defined.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So how do you...
Speaker: Bring in experts who can speak on that or even about this technology.
Speaker: This is uncharted territory.
Speaker: I don't think anybody's an expert in this stuff yet because it's too new.
Speaker: And are you even involving experts?
Speaker: Because that's what...
Speaker: She was talking about they brought up this idea of ADHD meds as cheating.
Speaker: Cognitive enhancements.
Speaker: Cognitive enhancements as cheating.
Speaker: And I align with her position, which is that they are not.
Speaker: They're not inherently cheating.
Speaker: And she was talking about Duke, who made this policy that if students were suspected of cheating, or if they tested positive for stimulants like Vyvanse or Ritalin, the common ADHD medications, that that
Speaker: That was punishable as cheating, not as drug use, but as cheating, which is a whole different thing.
Speaker: Can I draw a quick line from A to B, how they got from the neurotech conversation to the ADHD medicine?
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: So what they were saying is that with a lot of this new brain technology, they have developed...
Speaker: these games and things that you can play that basically work those muscles in your brain and carve out those pathways in your brain so that you can improve focus and concentration.
Speaker: And Dax was saying that...
Speaker: People are going to use neurotechnology in a variety of ways, including people are going to want to have the option to enhance their cognitive skills.
Speaker: And once that becomes a thing that we can do, how will we treat that?
Speaker: Well, let's begin by looking at how we treat cognitive enhancements currently.
Speaker: And for the most part, at least in an academic environment, it's viewed as cheating.
Speaker: Which is bullshit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: If they don't make diabetics surrender their insulin before they take tests because it can affect their concentration or their ability to get through a test, I think that it is – and I might be drawing a false equivalency.
Speaker: It depends on the chemical or the tool.
Speaker: They don't say that about caffeine.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Nobody's taking away your coffee.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But people are making these decisions that are in many ways just arbitrary.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Where's the line?
Speaker: What is the definition of cheating?
Speaker: What is the definition of enhancement?
Speaker: And who decides?
Speaker: And the fact that they're targeting meds that are prescribed primarily for mental health benefits, it's not like these are – I'm not saying that people – everyone who takes a stimulant should or has ADHD.
Speaker: But people who take stimulants and ADHD and are prescribed them and are doing it all legally, it is because they need it in order for their brains to function in a way that is healthy.
Speaker: But even if they didn't, does that necessarily make it...
Speaker: Does that necessarily assign some sort of morality to doing it or immorality to doing it?
Speaker: It kind of makes me think about this, about like equity versus equality.
Speaker: Because if you take away the part that it's a drug, you also have to argue is hiring a teeter.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: It is a teeter-totter going back and forth between these different issues, but...
Speaker: Is hiring a tutor then cheating?
Speaker: Because not everybody can afford a tutor.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Is studying cheating?
Speaker: Because not everybody has the time to study.
Speaker: Not everybody has resources to make flashcards.
Speaker: Not everybody has, you know, resources or the ability to do pre-testing and purchase things.
Speaker: study materials and study aids.
Speaker: So where's the line?
Speaker: We are never going to create a completely level field for everyone.
Speaker: That's not a thing.
Speaker: So at what point do we stop interfering with what's allowed and what's not allowed?
Speaker: And they say in there, if it is a health concern, fine.
Speaker: You don't want a bunch of people running around on meth.
Speaker: That's valid.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: But discuss it as though it's a health concern.
Speaker: Have that conversation and figure out ways that people can still get whatever benefits they're trying to get without becoming addicted to these substances that are detrimental to their health.
Speaker: If it is a health concern, take the morality conversation out of it.
Speaker: Stop saying things like it's not fair.
Speaker: It's cheating.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's not – we're not doing that.
Speaker: That's off the table.
Speaker: And she talks about the human experience and how –
Speaker: All of this technology and our ability to have control over our thoughts is part of the human experience is that we get to control that.
Speaker: We get to decide that.
Speaker: And part of that is also the human experience does get to be enhanced.
Speaker: We're allowed to make choices.
Speaker: We're allowed to choose to grow.
Speaker: We're allowed to choose to develop traits that help us
Speaker: achieve our goals and get closer to the life we want to live.
Speaker: The issue is, are the people providing the tools being ethical in their reporting of how it will affect us?
Speaker: And are we being ethical in our consumption of it?
Speaker: And this requires transparency.
Speaker: And then I know I'm going to sound like an asshole, and I rest in the knowledge that Monica will probably never hear this, and I don't think she's a bad person at all.
Speaker: I disagree with her on another thing where she says, okay, so –
Speaker: They talk about this athlete who still his records have never been reached and they did a bunch of studies about it and they figured out it's because he has a genetic abnormality that helps him that makes his oxygen flow at a different rate.
Speaker: And that's essentially exactly what Lance Armstrong did.
Speaker: But Lance got labeled a cheater because he synthesized it and it wasn't some natural gene mutation that he possessed.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And what's the difference between the two?
Speaker: And then Monica says, what do, do we all have the right to be in the Olympics?
Speaker: And I don't, I think that's a false equivalency.
Speaker: It's not, it's not that everybody should be in the Olympics.
Speaker: It's that everybody should have the ability to choose whether or not they want to work for something, work at something, and improve something.
Speaker: Everyone should have the right whether or not they improve.
Speaker: It's not saying everyone should be an Olympic athlete because not everyone's going to be and not everyone should be and not everyone's going to put in the work to do that.
Speaker: But that also doesn't mean that it's somehow unfair for people to put in the work.
Speaker: or embrace their natural talents.
Speaker: If I'm naturally good at something, then I should be able to participate in it and I should use my gifts or whatnot.
Speaker: And I think it's important to say that they mentioned that having this conversation and comparing the use of cognitive enhancements to the use of steroids in sports is a flawed analogy because –
Speaker: Sports are made up.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Sports only exist according to the rules that we've given them.
Speaker: Life is not zero sum.
Speaker: It's not a game in which the rules define its existence.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: So you can follow the thread of steroids as long and as far as you want to, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to come to any sort of conclusions regarding what is fair or what should be allowed when it comes to academia.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And she kind of, they talk about how blanket rules don't apply.
Speaker: We kind of referenced this earlier.
Speaker: And Nita's solution is, well, not solution, but her response is, we need to shift the conversation back to personal freedom and choice rather than, and who makes the rules and
Speaker: Not that the rules govern us.
Speaker: And what motives do they have?
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Who benefits?
Speaker: People from making the rules.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: What motives do they have?
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Who benefits from this?
Speaker: That was something I had written down early on in the episode.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: So I think this is as good a time as any to just absolutely knock the wind out of you.
Speaker: Because I'm going to – this is the part where you're going to get to it.
Speaker: Oh, it's basically eternal sunshine and spotless mind already.
Speaker: Yeah, it is.
Speaker: So –
Speaker: Oh my God, I don't think I like what's about to happen.
Speaker: Well, I don't know that it's going to be that traumatic, but everyone deserves a little trauma.
Speaker: A little trauma.
Speaker: Or a treat.
Speaker: I did a little bit more research about Nita Farahani.
Speaker: And you'll remember in this episode, she talks about how she used some of these wearables for different reasons.
Speaker: One of them was PTSD.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: The experience that she had, and I looked for more information that I couldn't find, but she had a child named Calista.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Callista became ill very suddenly and based on what I heard, suffered for some amount of time and died.
Speaker: And this is definitely I can already I'm already lighting up pathways comparing this to grief.
Speaker: So, yeah, that's why I wanted to definitely bring this to the table because Stephen Colbert and Anderson Cooper tell us that there's value.
Speaker: And Nita Farahani agrees with that, but she also talks about a technology called DECNAF, I think.
Speaker: Let me look in my notes and be sure that I get that right.
Speaker: It was not available to her when she was going through this experience, but it's available now.
Speaker: And it can basically, she described it as turn the volume down.
Speaker: So what she was doing...
Speaker: Instead, with a therapist, was exposure therapy and things like that that worked for her but took a lot longer than something like this would have.
Speaker: And Dax brought this up.
Speaker: He said, okay, so not only should you have the opportunity, and she writes about this in her book, Breaking the Brain.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What if you don't want to make your brain better?
Speaker: What if you want to subtract?
Speaker: What if you want to remove?
Speaker: What if you want to wipe some things clean?
Speaker: Do we have a right to opt out of suffering and grief?
Speaker: She says, I would never want to forget Calista, but I want to forget the smells in the room when I got pushed out of that emergency room.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And I want to forget the sounds that she made.
Speaker: So what you got on that?
Speaker: I have a lot of feelings about it, a lot of thoughts about it.
Speaker: One thing is it sounds like what she's talking about is kind of like EMDR or the difference between brain spotting and EMDR because brain spotting is just like this more targeted, faster results version of EMDR, but it can also be –
Speaker: hella bad.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And this is what happens when maybe people who dabble, like myself, should not have that much power and the ethics of
Speaker: of a therapist who helps you with brain spotting without having established some sort of threshold that you can handle.
Speaker: It sounds very similar to that.
Speaker: Tell me if I'm getting this right, because I know that you have done EMDR therapy.
Speaker: When you do that, it is basically the client self-reports what's going on in their brain.
Speaker: The therapist has no other way of knowing what the client is.
Speaker: is picturing where they're at, what region they're in.
Speaker: It's self-report.
Speaker: And there's some room for human error in that technique.
Speaker: It sounds like- It's not as precise.
Speaker: This would be a more refined version of that.
Speaker: Yeah, this is surgical precision at this point.
Speaker: And that's fucking scary for multiple reasons.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it does beg the question, do we have a right to opt out of suffering?
Speaker: I mean, for veterans, can you imagine what that might return to them?
Speaker: Yes, I think that's an incredible tool.
Speaker: And so I'm not comfortable saying, nah, fuck that.
Speaker: That's too much power.
Speaker: Nobody should have access to that.
Speaker: And I think, again,
Speaker: Where I choose to decide how we can potentially find a boundary is back to emotional regulation.
Speaker: And what are you using it for?
Speaker: Are we using it so that we can function and return back to a healthy place?
Speaker: Or are we using it to avoid discomfort, avoid doing the work that we can do,
Speaker: Maybe it's – okay, I'm thinking of Stephen Colbert's analogy with his tiger.
Speaker: It's not getting rid of the tiger.
Speaker: It's not euthanizing the tiger, but it's training the tiger so that the tiger is not wild and unpredictable all the time.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But if I'm using it to deal with the grief of a breakup so that I don't have to think about it and I don't have to feel that anymore, that is more akin to euthanizing the tiger than training it.
Speaker: But then again, who gets to decide?
Speaker: How much is too much trauma?
Speaker: How much is too much grief?
Speaker: How much is too much discomfort?
Speaker: How much numbing are we allowed?
Speaker: And who are we to tell someone else how much numbing...
Speaker: they should get.
Speaker: If it's a health conversation, have the health conversation about it.
Speaker: If someone is drinking themselves to death because of something that happened that they can't move on from, have the health conversation about that.
Speaker: But
Speaker: At the end of the day, people are still allowed to make the quote unquote wrong choice or people are allowed to choose not to.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like this is denying someone the consequences of their behavior is a human rights violation.
Speaker: It's free Britney.
Speaker: It is though.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: I don't get to decide for you whether or not you go to rehab.
Speaker: I don't get to decide for you whether or not you go
Speaker: ever go to therapy.
Speaker: I can encourage people only as far as it affects me.
Speaker: It's boundaries.
Speaker: It's understanding boundaries.
Speaker: Boundaries aren't to govern the way other people act.
Speaker: Boundaries are for us so that other people understand how to engage with us and how we get our core needs met.
Speaker: And we don't make boundaries around things that just simply feel icky.
Speaker: We have to do the work.
Speaker: We can't automate it.
Speaker: And all of this is... And this is all automation.
Speaker: This is automation at your fingertips, in your ears, on your wrist, in your glasses.
Speaker: Because automation isn't a bad thing unless we're using it, you know, to...
Speaker: on the quote unquote wrong things, but then who gets to decide what's wrong?
Speaker: I don't fucking know.
Speaker: Now my brain hurts.
Speaker: You guys, if it sounds at any point, at least I'm speaking for myself, it's if it sounds at any point, like I reached a conclusion on any of these things that we talked about, like I made a decision about any of these things, please let me set the record straight that I don't,
Speaker: The more I listened to this episode, the more questions I had.
Speaker: And that's why I was so desperate to at least speak some of these things into the world.
Speaker: Before...
Speaker: we run out of time, I do want to talk about the text messages.
Speaker: So they brought up that in the not so distant future, this is already technology that Meta is working on.
Speaker: You will be able to type on a virtual keyboard.
Speaker: You won't have to use your hands.
Speaker: You won't have to reach for your phone.
Speaker: You will basically be able to think a thought and send it to the person that you want it to go to.
Speaker: It makes me think of those bracelets that you can buy that you can light up, but you still have to engage it physically.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It still requires some effort.
Speaker: And my question was, and they kind of touched on this, but what does it even mean?
Speaker: If you get a message from your kid saying, I'm thinking of you, but it didn't take them any effort to...
Speaker: send that.
Speaker: And also because they sent it, that kind of maybe makes them feel like they're off the hook for having to send you an actual message or having to write you a letter or having to make a phone call.
Speaker: I mean, isn't that what we've done?
Speaker: We don't call each other anymore.
Speaker: We just send text messages.
Speaker: Are you saying it's a cop out to wish someone happy birthday, like your parents a happy birthday just by simply acknowledging it on Facebook?
Speaker: Because I have...
Speaker: Well, it's normalized.
Speaker: I mean, that's the thing.
Speaker: Like, it's not a cop-out anymore because it's just normalized.
Speaker: But it wasn't always that way.
Speaker: And that's how we got on this dopamine deficit that he talks about.
Speaker: One of them said something about we're not meant to be told that we're loved a million times a day.
Speaker: And initially, I was like, fuck you.
Speaker: Mind your business, Dax.
Speaker: Dax.
Speaker: You don't know me.
Speaker: You don't know me.
Speaker: You're my childhood trauma.
Speaker: I was told I was loved all the time as a kid.
Speaker: And so I'm not saying that that, but I'm just saying.
Speaker: But he does have a point that satiation is a very real thing.
Speaker: These things lose value when we get them all the time.
Speaker: And then the things that do have value –
Speaker: we get less and less of.
Speaker: Why are we automating it?
Speaker: I think it comes back to why are we automating it?
Speaker: Right now, I automate a lot of shit because if I try to be intentional and use my phone to assist in communicating as a good tool, I end up getting sucked in and caught up in all of these other ways that it has been commodified and controlled for capitalism.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: that it is too difficult.
Speaker: And Nita says it is both utopia and dystopia.
Speaker: All of these things, just like social media, do in some ways enable greater connection.
Speaker: I'm in touch with relatives that I never knew I had because of social media.
Speaker: And this can give us some healing.
Speaker: This is ways of healing.
Speaker: Now, you could argue...
Speaker: What benefit do I get in a real world context from being in touch with so many people?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I don't know if there's an actual quantifiable, measurable benefit at all.
Speaker: I think that's the problem.
Speaker: Not everything is quantifiable.
Speaker: And just because something is quantifiable doesn't make it final.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's hard because you can very easily, well, not very easily necessarily, but the...
Speaker: The ways that social media has adversely affected us are a lot easier to pick out than maybe the ways that it has benefited us.
Speaker: Maybe it's because we've just been living with it for so long now that for some of us, it's hard to see any of the good in it anymore.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: I'm having a think on that.
Speaker: Also, I want to talk about before we finish, I want to talk very briefly about criminality and using neuroscience and all of this and the potential for misuse within law enforcement.
Speaker: And I am the first person to be an advocate for people who have had shit happen to them that shouldn't have happened.
Speaker: And
Speaker: and a scientific process towards ensuring that those people get justice.
Speaker: But if anyone who has ever listened to any true crime podcast has listened to any true crime podcast, it probably started with Serial.
Speaker: And Serial did a great, great job of illustrating what happens when people who don't understand things, understand technology,
Speaker: think they know what they're doing and try to use that to legislate or make a decision on someone else's freedom.
Speaker: This, perhaps now, cell phone pings are more accurate.
Speaker: But in the late 90s,
Speaker: It was not accurate.
Speaker: And it was being presented as this criminal evidence that this person definitively did something when, as it turns out, that is not at all what it was saying.
Speaker: And you got the wrong guy.
Speaker: And there's all, this is already happening with data.
Speaker: not just in corporations where they're trying to determine whether or not you're being productive, but within law enforcement, people using Fitbit data and law enforcement and prosecutors subpoenaing information like
Speaker: to determine whether or not this, she was talking about this case where the police had subpoenaed information regarding this person's brainwaves to determine whether or not they were really having
Speaker: a seizure when they had this physical altercation with a police officer.
Speaker: And so, but what qualifies you to be able to look at this raw data and decide whether or not it's real or not?
Speaker: You can't do that.
Speaker: That's not just because.
Speaker: That's not an open and shut case.
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: And we have so much ethical responsibility for
Speaker: in understanding that.
Speaker: And we have, so again, this goes back to the Duke thing where they made this policy.
Speaker: They didn't ask any of the neuroscientists in their department or in their school, within their organization, whether or not this was a valid application of the knowledge.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because it turns out it wasn't.
Speaker: They really
Speaker: And Dax is like, you know, oh, yeah, maybe we should get some experts to weigh in on them.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: It's too hard to find.
Speaker: Well, we could just go ask the people a couple doors down.
Speaker: Nah, it's fine.
Speaker: Fuck them.
Speaker: That's what happens though, because the- We don't want to pay him the overtime.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Who benefits?
Speaker: It's not easy.
Speaker: It's not actually about fairness, is it?
Speaker: Fair for who?
Speaker: It isn't.
Speaker: Or if it is, then what does fairness even mean?
Speaker: Because let me tell you, I want us to be able to have
Speaker: evidence, actual scientific evidence that removes the ability of anyone to have reasonable doubt and ensures that we have the right people.
Speaker: Now that I'm saying this out loud, I'm thinking, isn't this just another version of a bullet over of a bandaid over a bullet hole?
Speaker: It's not, yes, we need to be able to punish people after crimes, but how do we help people so that they don't commit these crimes in the first place?
Speaker: Not predict whether or not their brains are more likely to engage in psychopathy, but how do we help people
Speaker: And is that even possible?
Speaker: Here's what we know.
Speaker: We know that this technology would not be the first time that we had data that allowed us to predict which populations or which people
Speaker: are more likely to commit certain crimes.
Speaker: We already know things about people that make them more likely to commit crimes.
Speaker: We already know all kinds of things about people.
Speaker: Have they been abused?
Speaker: Adverse childhood experience scores.
Speaker: This is information that we already have that we could be using
Speaker: to help more people.
Speaker: How's that going for us as a society?
Speaker: How effectively are we using the data that we already have to help people proactively?
Speaker: Are we using it to help them?
Speaker: Or are we taking the lazy way or cutting corners?
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And then we get in again back into this labeling theory and you are eliminating human choice.
Speaker: You are not empowering people.
Speaker: You are not using it to help people become more embodied.
Speaker: It's being used to control.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Well, guys, that's our episode for the day.
Speaker: I know this was a really easy one, but yeah, I am also unclear.
Speaker: But like, these are the conversations we need to be having.
Speaker: Would you like to know if I have a final thought?
Speaker: Do you have a final thought?
Speaker: I might.
Speaker: Bitch, I might!
Speaker: I listened to this whole episode thinking about what it would mean if people could read my mind.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: And we could get into a whole conversation about intrusive thoughts and all kinds of stuff.
Speaker: But-
Speaker: I would like to flip that on its head for a minute.
Speaker: What would it mean if you could read the mind of every person?
Speaker: Do you remember how disgusted Edward Cullen was by all the people in his high school?
Speaker: I work in a junior high, you guys.
Speaker: I didn't ask for this.
Speaker: No, it's consent.
Speaker: I did not consent to this information being sent to me.
Speaker: I don't want to know everything that those kids or those adults are thinking.
Speaker: As someone who grew up in the church with this very real belief that there was someone who could read my thoughts, who knew every thought that I had before I even had it or was able to process it.
Speaker: This is a reality that I have actually been in.
Speaker: I have trained myself to entertain and I'm now retraining myself not to believe is real.
Speaker: Zero out of 10, do not recommend.
Speaker: I do not.
Speaker: And also, I agree with you in that it's... What does it do to people if you can read the thought?
Speaker: It's bad enough for me to know what I'm thinking in my own brain.
Speaker: It is a wilderness in here.
Speaker: If I had to look into the scariness of everybody else's brains, and yes, there's some beauty in there too.
Speaker: There would be some things that would be incredible to behold.
Speaker: That is true.
Speaker: But just have a think on that.
Speaker: And enjoy that thought while it's yours because it may not be only yours alone.
Speaker: For much longer.
Speaker: For very long.
Speaker: Sorry, that was a dark way to end.
Speaker: And yet we can't always be light.
Speaker: You're right.
Speaker: But happiness can be found in the darkest of times if one remembers to turn on the light.
Speaker: And you know what turns on the light for me?
Speaker: When people email us.
Speaker: Me too.
Speaker: I'm still waiting to hear from our guests about whether or not they think anger is real.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: I mean, I can't even pick one single question to ask from this one.
Speaker: So just choose your own adventure with this one.
Speaker: Tell me anything that you think about the stuff that we talked about from this episode, you guys.
Speaker: We want to know.
Speaker: We really do.
Speaker: We say that.
Speaker: And we're not even trying to ask you so that we can sell the information or use it for our own personal gain.
Speaker: We just genuinely want to know so that we have more perspectives to help us make more informed decisions.
Speaker: The way you might send us an email would be at podthingspodcast at gmail.com.
Speaker: You can find us on TikTok.
Speaker: And if I have a spare six hours to check the TikTok, I will check it.
Speaker: But a better way would be also find us on Instagram at wecandopodthings.
Speaker: Send us a message.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Underscores in between all the words.
Speaker: We'll be looking for you.
Speaker: Thank you guys so much for listening.
Speaker: I am so glad that we did this episode.
Speaker: This has been actually such a great compliment to the grief episode.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Who could have expected that?
Speaker: Plot twist.
Speaker: It's almost like all things are connected to each other in some way.
Speaker: It's all connected.
Speaker: I'm Annalise.
Speaker: I'm Annalise.
Speaker: And this has been We Can Do Pod Things.
