In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com — with some help from scientist, computer engineer, and philosophy writer Bernardo Kastrup — to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes: This Paper Suggests the Universe Has Dissociative Identity Disorder Bernardo Kastrup Profile Panpsychism Is the Belief That the Universe Is Conscious of Itself Consciousness Is Known as the Hard Problem of Neuroscience Your Phone Makes You a Worse Driver Even if You Don't Touch It Nearly Everyone Experiences Intrusive Thoughts — Here's How To Handle Them Blame The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon For The Things You Notice More Than Others Need help weaning yourself off of your device? Check out "How to Break Up with Your Phone: The 30-Day Plan to Take Back Your Life" by Catherine Price. If you're looking for more ways to effectively treat your mind, then check out "Cognitive Behavioural Therapy: 7 Ways to Freedom from Anxiety, Depression, and Intrusive Thoughts" by Lawrence Wallace. The audiobook is free with a 30-day trial of Audible. If you choose to make a purchase using these links, then Curiosity will get a share of the sale. Learn more about these topics and more onCuriosity.com, and download our5-star app for Android and iOS. Then, join the conversation onFacebook,Twitter, andInstagram. Plus: Amazon smart speaker users, enable ourAlexa Flash Briefing to learn something new in just a few minutes every day!
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com — with some help from scientist, computer engineer, and philosophy writer Bernardo Kastrup — to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes:
Need help weaning yourself off of your device? Check out "How to Break Up with Your Phone: The 30-Day Plan to Take Back Your Life" by Catherine Price. If you're looking for more ways to effectively treat your mind, then check out "Cognitive Behavioural Therapy: 7 Ways to Freedom from Anxiety, Depression, and Intrusive Thoughts" by Lawrence Wallace. The audiobook is free with a 30-day trial of Audible. If you choose to make a purchase using these links, then Curiosity will get a share of the sale.
Learn more about these topics and more on Curiosity.com, and download our 5-star app for Android and iOS. Then, join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Plus: Amazon smart speaker users, enable our Alexa Flash Briefing to learn something new in just a few minutes every day!
Full episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/the-universe-in-consciousness-w-bernardo-kastrup-intrusive-thoughts-phones-ruin-drivers-and-baader-meinhof
CODY GOUGH: Hi, we've got three stories from curiosity.com plus the answer to a listener question to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today, you'll learn how to handle those intrusive thoughts that almost everybody has, how your phone makes you a worse driver even if you don't touch it.
CODY GOUGH: You're also going to hear from Bernardo Kastrup who he wrote about yesterday on curiosity.com. He'll be joining us to discuss his new paper, "The Universe in Consciousness." Plus, we'll top off today's episode Sunday with a sprinkle of curiosity, where Ashley digs into a question from an awesome listener like you.
ASHLEY HAMER: That's right. Today's question comes from Caitlyn in beautiful Helena, Montana who wants to know why we consciously recognize something more often after it's been connected to a significant event. For example, her brother keeps hearing a song that was played at her graduation. But he says he doesn't remember ever hearing it before the event. So what gives? Stay tuned, and we'll explain.
CODY GOUGH: Let's talk about some curiosity. Yesterday, we ran a story about a new paper by Bernardo Kastrup, a scientist, computer engineer, and philosophy writer about the nature of the universe and consciousness. It's a fascinating read. And I would not do it justice if I tried to sum it up. So we got a hold of Bernardo. And he's going to explain high level what this paper is about. Enjoy a little bit of philosophy.
BERNARDO KASTRUP: Well, the motivation for us to believe that there is a physical world out there that is different from experience, different from mind, different from phenomenology, which is a technical word, is that we all seem to share the same world. And this world is not susceptible to our wishes, right? We can't change the world merely by wishing it to be different. So people postulate that there is this thing that isn't mind out there and within which we all live.
The problem is that once you make this postulation, you then have to find a way to derive mind from that stuff that is not mind. You have to find a way to deduce at least in principles the qualities of experience, what it is like to have a bellyache, what it is like to fall in love, what it is like to see the redness of an apple. You have to deduce that from very abstract properties like mass, momentum, geometrical relationships, and so on. And that's the hard problem of consciousness.
I think we can solve that by just visualizing that everything that we see and think of as matter is just the image of just the extrinsic appearance of mental activity. Transpersonal mental activity as it may be, not necessarily personal one, but the image of mental activity, nonetheless.
And what would then be this image? It's just how mental activity looks like from across the dissociative boundary. I think living beings, what we call biology, is just what dissociative processes look like in a universal consciousness. Just like dissociative processes in the brain of a patient with dissociative identity disorder look like something they have an identifiable image.
So dissociation, at a universal level, also looks like something. And I would say that what it looks like is what we call biology. It's life itself. So matter is always the extrinsic appearance of experience, sometimes of dissociated experience like the brain activity of a person, sometimes the extrinsic appearance of non-dissociated experience like the inanimate universe as a whole. So that's the gist of it.
CODY GOUGH: If I'm understanding correctly, our perception creates a universe around us. And because we all have different perceptions, we are the different personalities of the universe in a way.
BERNARDO KASTRUP: I think that's correct. But let's go deeper. I don't think we need to go that deep. Look. If you're a neurosurgeon, and you have a scalpel going into the living brain of a patient who is awake on your operating table-- and this happens all the time. You're manipulating a very material object, the brain.
It's made of atoms and force fields. It's the same kind of atoms and force fields as the rest of the universe. And yet, it's a very material object there in your hands. And you know that corresponds somehow to the whole inner life of a person-- love affairs, disappointments, great adventures, travels, and the whole thing. So matter, we know empirically, does correspond to inner experience, at least in the case of biological bodies.
What I'm saying is that it's not only in that case. There is no artificial discontinuity in nature. Matter is always the extrinsic appearance of inner experience, sometimes dissociated in an experience like living beings, sometimes in their experience at large like the experiences that underlie the inanimate universe as a whole. So it's a very uniform way to see nature without artificial discontinuities.
CODY GOUGH: And I want to note that this is an alternative to panpsychism which you can read about in the article. You can find links to the article and follow Bernardo on Twitter in the show notes.
ASHLEY HAMER: All right, Cody, do you text when you drive?
CODY GOUGH: Absolutely not. Honestly, I never. Have you?
ASHLEY HAMER: I will admit that I have before. It's awful. But do you text when you're at a stoplight?
CODY GOUGH: Maybe here or there.
ASHLEY HAMER: All right. Well, according to this paper, you really they need to stop doing that.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah, I know.
ASHLEY HAMER: Research says that your phone makes you a worse driver even if you never touch it.
CODY GOUGH: Oh, boy.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. Pay attention because traffic-related fatalities in the US have jumped 14% in the last two years. That's the biggest rise in half a century. Experts say our phones are partly to blame. And even if you're not holding your phone, there are about 35 studies showing that there's not a huge difference in safety between hand-held and hands-free.
Studies with driving simulators have found that talking on the phone while driving slows down your reaction time. They say that driving while talking on a hands-free device is just as dangerous as driving drunk. Real world studies have shown less terrifying results.
So it might not be that bad, but it's still bad. Don't pause our podcast, though. Listening to audiobooks or podcasts don't seem to have a negative impact on driving ability. We swear. We're not just making that up so you'll listen.
CODY GOUGH: Ashley and I did not write this article.
ASHLEY HAMER: No, we didn't.
CODY GOUGH: So it's not that biased.
ASHLEY HAMER: In fact, they might even keep you alert on long drives, but only if you hit play before you're on the road. Don't scroll or mess with your phone while driving even hands-free. Our advice, turn off your notifications altogether. The last thing a safe driver needs is a frantic stressed relative yelling over a loudspeaker while you're driving through a storm. Remember that applies to texting at stoplights too. Just don't do it.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah, that's not good. Ashley, have you ever had this weird instincts to think about jumping off a bridge?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: Not unlike you want to hurt yourself kind of way. Just--
ASHLEY HAMER: What would happen?
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. I think a lot of people have thought that. And it turns out that it's normal. In fact, it's very normal. Up to 94% of humans with no diagnosed mental illness experienced what psychologists call intrusive thoughts. So if you're listening to this, you've probably experienced it.
You might have heard this called the Imp of the Perverse which is also the name of a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. Researchers have been publishing studies on this since as early as 1978. And the most recent research says they're especially hard to cope with in patients suffering from OCD, ADHD, and postpartum depression.
I wanted to cover this story because these can be very dark thoughts including aggression and violence, religious blasphemy, and unnatural sexual acts, among other socially inappropriate or even illegal actions. And a lot of these thoughts include vulnerable parties.
I told you, I meant dark. And I think it's helpful to know that nearly all of us have these intrusive thoughts. So there's nothing necessarily wrong with you. And there are ways to get past them.
Psychologist Lee Baer says we handle it in one of two ways. Either we dismiss the thoughts and pretty much move on with our lives or we're strongly affected by the bad thoughts so they happen more frequently. And they can mess with our ability to function normally. Science hasn't figured out exactly why we have these thoughts, but researchers have suggested ways of coping with them if they're making your life hard.
According to North Point recovery a good place to start dealing with intrusive thoughts is by accepting them. Don't be afraid of them or take them personally, but be mindful and just accept that you have them. And remember that these thoughts have nothing to do with your reality. As long as you don't act on them, they're just thoughts after all.
ASHLEY HAMER: We'll wrap up with a question from Caitlin in Montana. Quote, "When do our minds start to consciously recognize something we hear better after it's been connected to a significant event?" For example, my song at graduation was "We Didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel." Great song.
"Upon hearing the song at my graduation, my brother has from here on out recognize that he's heard the song almost five times in the span of a month. But he also says that before my graduation, he doesn't remember ever having heard it. Assuming he'd heard it before my graduation but didn't recognize it and now he cannot help but recognize it, we were wondering what processes occur to make that happen," unquote.
This is a great question and basically one of our favorite psychology things here in the Curiosity office. Your brother is experiencing the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon which is also called the frequency illusion or recency illusion. Experts say that it's caused by two things.
The first is called selective attention. That happens when you're struck by a new word, a thing, or an idea. After that, you unconsciously keep an eye out for it. And when you keep an eye out for something, you actually will see it a lot more often.
CODY GOUGH: Even if you're not doing it on purpose.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: Again, that's unconsciously.
ASHLEY HAMER: Right. The second process is confirmation bias, which if you listen to the podcast, you probably are familiar with it. It tells you that each sighting is more proof that you're actually seeing this thing more often.
For example, if you buy a yellow Mazda, you are primed to think about yellow Mazdas now when you never were before. And suddenly, you are now going to see every yellow Mazda that passes you. And you're going to notice that and keep a mental tally even if you see just as many yellow Mazdas now as you did before.
Thanks for your question, Caitlin. And thanks for listening to our show on your Amazon Echo device. Remember you can add this show to your Alexa flash briefing. Search for Curiosity in the flash briefing directory or find a link in the show notes. And please leave us a five-star rating if you like having us in your daily flash briefing.
CODY GOUGH: Visit curiosity.com or check out the curiosity app for Android and iOS to learn more about everything we talked about today. Join us again tomorrow for the Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Stay curious.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
SPEAKER 1: On the Westwood One Podcast Network.