Dr. Jordan B. Peterson sits down with neuroscientist, bestselling author, and PBS presenter Dr. David Eagleman. They discuss brain plasticity, how perception works, whether free will exists (and if it’s superordinate), how willingness to engage with higher entropy indicates sophistication of thought, and the preconditions for forming a Ulysses contract.
Dr. David Eagleman is a neuroscientist at Stanford University and an international bestselling author. He is co-founder of two venture-backed companies, Neosensory and BrainCheck, and he also directs the Center for Science and Law, a national nonprofit institute. He is best known for his work on sensory substitution, time perception, brain plasticity, synesthesia, and neurolaw. He is the writer and presenter of the international PBS series, “The Brain with David Eagleman,” and the author of the companion book, “The Brain: The Story of You.” He is also the writer and presenter of “The Creative Brain” on Netflix.
This episode was filmed on January 13th, 2025.
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| Links |
For David Eagleman:
On X https://x.com/davideagleman
On Instagram https://www.instagram.com/davideagleman/?hl=en
Website https://eagleman.com/
Read his most recent book: “Livewired: The Inside Story of the Ever-Changing Brain” https://a.co/d/cBY6tGx
| Chapters |
(0:00) Coming up
(0:47) Intro
(3:08) Brain plasticity — “Mother Nature drops you into the world half-baked”
(5:19) Perception doesn’t work the way you think
(8:29) Value is built into your perception; “truth” is your filter
(16:30) The psychological field needs to update its model for drive and motivation
(21:49) The vote of neural parliament and our “personal team of rivals”
(25:12) Examples of rivaling networks: the stuck mouse, the stickleback gull
(26:38) A potential function of consciousness: network conflict resolution
(33:06) The problem with consciousness, how the relevant becomes automated
(38:38) The dopamine and acetylcholine systems: impact on relevancy, emotion, and feeling that something “matters”
(46:35) A slight dispute: if rivalry is subconscious, does that map to personality?
(49:02) Superordinate aims and principles of validity, Panksepp’s rats
(54:47) The Ulysses contract
(1:04:13) Prioritizing constraints over whims, principles of maturation
(1:07:43) The preconditions for forming an alliance with your future self
(1:13:19) Entropy and the theater of the find, “we live a little bit in the past”
(1:21:00) “If we have free will, it’s a bit player in a much larger system”
(1:24:21) Why does everyone think they know the truth?
(1:29:39) Sophisticated thinking is to voluntarily enter a higher entropic state
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