674 Neuroscientist David Eagleman — Exploring Consciousness, Sensory Augmentation, The Lazy Susan Method of Extraordinary Productivity, Dreaming, Improving Hearing with a Wristband, Synesthesia

This is a OPEN AI summary of the Tim Ferriss Podcast #674- visit www.TinyTim.blog for more AI summaries, or www.Tim.blog for the official Tim Ferriss Podcasts.

In this episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, host Tim Ferriss interviews neuroscientist and New York Times bestselling author David Eagleman. They discuss a variety of topics including synesthesia, the Emmy-nominated series The Brain on PBS, and Dr. Eagleman's newest book, Livewired.

Mnemonists (people with exceptional memory) often have synesthesia, a condition where stimuli are associated with other senses. David Eagleman, who has studied synesthesia for 20 years, finds it fascinating because it shows how different people can experience reality.

Synesthesia is a condition in which the senses are blended, so that people might see colors when they hear sounds, for example. It can be congenital or acquired, and mnemonists (people with exceptional memory skills) may have synesthesia or develop it through training.

The brain is locked in silence and darkness inside the skull, and all it ever sees are electrical signals. However, when we open our eyes, we see the world in full color and with rich detail. This raises the question of whether we can create new senses for humans. David Eagleman, a neuroscientist, has been investigating this question and has made some progress. For example, he has developed a device that can translate sound into light, which can help people who are deaf to see sound. He is also working on a device that can translate the sense of touch into a visual sense.

This person developed a wristband that helps people hear by translating sound into vibrations. The brain is able to then interpret these vibrations as sound. This can be helpful for people who are deaf or have age-related hearing loss.

The brain can learn to associate signals from different parts of the body quite easily, and after a few weeks people can rely on signals from their wrists instead of hearing aids. The most important technological innovation for this to work is the ability to stimulate two neighboring motors to create the illusion of one virtual point in between them.

The company David Eagleman co-founded, NeoSensory, has developed a technology called bimodal stimulation, which can help reduce the severity of tinnitus by playing tones around the tinnitus frequency and corresponding buzzes on the skin.

David Eagleman is a neuroscientist who is researching ways to expand human senses. One of the projects he is working on is the development of a wearable device that allows people to see in the infrared range. He has also been experimenting with wearing a device that picks up on heat signatures, which allows him to see which cars have been parked in a lot for a while and which ones have just arrived.

David Eagleman is exploring many different projects, including one in which he uses an infrared camera to see heat signatures. He finds this particularly interesting because it allows him to "slice up time in a different way." He is also using a smart watch to collect data on heart rate and skin response, which is then fed over the internet to a wristband. This allows him to know when someone else is feeling stressed out.

Sensory expansion is the idea of tapping into senses beyond the five traditional ones. Although humans can only see a tiny fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum, we may be able to detect other parts of it if we had the proper receptors. This could lead to a number of Nobel Prize-worthy discoveries.

In the next five years, David Eagleman predicts that AI and machine learning will be used for a variety of useful purposes, including helping people with autism understand the social context they're in. He also believes that this technology will be used to summarize stock market data in real-time, allowing people to make better investment decisions.

We are training someone to develop trading intuitives by feeding them lots and lots of data. This relates to AI and machine learning, as it turns out that some of the things we might have assumed to be complex are actually quite easy to train machines for. However, some of the simplest things turn out to be the hardest for machines to do. This underscores how unaware most of us are of how much we are processing at any given point in time.

In this conversation, Tim Ferriss and David Eagleman discuss the phenomenon of being able to access memories that one has forgotten. Eagleman suggests that this may be due to the fact that the memories are still stored in the brain, and that in certain states (such as deep ketosis), one may be able to access them more easily.

The author discusses the difference between human memory and computer memory, and how human memory is much more complex and fragile. He cites the example of astronauts who have to relearn how to walk after spending time in space, showing how human memory can be easily disrupted. He also talks about how human memory has to be constantly reconsolidated in order to be retained, and how it is vulnerable to interruption if not properly taken care of.

David Eagleman and Tim Ferriss discuss the nature of memory and whether or not memories can be permanently deleted. Eagleman explains that memories need to be reconsolidated in order to be stored long-term, and that emotionally charged memories are more difficult to erase. They discuss the challenges of researching memory and how to test for it.

David Eagleman met Francis Crick while doing his post-doctoral fellowship at the Salk Institute. Crick was the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA and a titan of 20th century molecular biology. Eagleman was struck by how humble Crick was despite his massive accomplishments.

David Eagleman, a scientist and writer, was impacted by the advice of Francis Crick, a Nobel Prize-winning biologist. Crick advised that it is better to have many ideas and be wrong most of the time, than to have only one idea and be willing to fight and die for it. Eagleman took this advice to heart, and as a result, has pursued many different projects throughout his career.

David Eagleman, a neuroscientist, discusses his work in studying how the brain constructs reality. He talks about how he would approach his work if he had no obligations outside of science, and how he is currently working on a number of hypotheses and experiments related to this topic.

David Eagleman discusses the possible origins of consciousness, either as an emergent property or as a fundamental quality of the cosmos. He argues that there is no way to know for sure, but that all the evidence we have points to consciousness being an emergent property.

Crick was trying to figure out what parts of the brain are necessary for consciousness, and he believed that panpsychism could be a possible explanation for consciousness. However, he was never able to fully develop his theory before he passed away.

David Eagleman and Tim Ferriss discuss the 10 unsolved questions of neuroscience, with a focus on the question of why we dream. Eagleman explains that they have made some progress on this question, due to brain plasticity.

The fMRI experiment conducted at Harvard back in 2007 found that in just 60 minutes, the visual system started responding to touch and sound stimuli. This led the student and researcher conducting the experiment to believe that dreaming has something to do with the rotation of the planet, as we spend half our time in darkness. Every 90 minutes, specialized circuits blast activity into the visual cortex to keep it defended against takeover from other senses.

We do not know why we dream, but there is a new hypothesis that makes quantitative predictions across species. This hypothesis states that the more plastic a creature's brain is, the more it will dream. This is because rapid eye movement sleep (REM) is what correlates with dreaming, and creatures with more plastic brains tend to have more REM sleep.

REM sleep is the dream sleep, and animals with less REM sleep are less plastic (able to change/adapt). Elephants have very little REM sleep, but this falls in line with the theory that they don't need to keep their visual cortex protected against takeover in the same way that we do.

In an interview, Tim Ferriss and David Eagleman discuss the dreams of blind people. Eagleman explains that blind people still have dreams, but they are not visual. Ferriss describes his conversation with Richard Turner, a blind magician, and how Turner's experiences are highly visual.

David Eagleman is a scientist who has been influenced by many people, including Tim Ferriss, Carl Sagan, and his father.

David Eagleman credits his success to two mentors who were "total jerks" who pushed him to be his best. He says that their tough love was exactly what he needed to achieve his goals.

David Eagleman was always interested in science, but didn't find his passion until he took a neuroscience class in his last semester of college. He was then accepted into a neuroscience masters program, which he attributes to his demonstrated scientific ability.

David Eagleman talks about how he got into a neuroscience graduate program without much biology experience. He attributes his success to his willingness to read everything he could find on the topic. He also mentions that the competition is much higher now and it would be harder for someone with a similar background to get into a similar program.

After years of rejection, David Eagleman's book Sum was finally bought by a literary agent. The agent had only been interested in Eagleman as a "hip pocket client," but after hearing from three different people about the book, she decided to give it a chance. Two days later, the book was bought.

In "Sum," David Eagleman explores different potential afterlives, using each one to explore different aspects of existence, reality, perception, death, pain, and boredom. Though the book is a quick read, it offers food for thought on what happens after we die, and how we should appreciate our own lives while we're alive.

The book Why the Universe is Running Backwards by David Eagleman is about the afterlife and what it could entail. He came up with the idea for the book when he was 11 years old and talked to a rabbi about the Jewish view of the afterlife. He kept going with the book because he found the concept of the afterlife to be a great backdrop on which to ask all kinds of questions.

In 2011, David Eagleman listed Gabriel García Márquez, Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges, Toni Morrison, and William Faulkner as some of his literary influences and heroes. He recommends that someone who has not read any of their work start with Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities.

In this conversation, Tim Ferriss and David Eagleman discuss the importance of hypothesis testing and encouraging children to be good thinkers. Eagleman explains that he encourages his children to come up with their own ideas and figure out how to test them. Ferriss adds that he thinks it is important for children to read books that challenge them, such as The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino.

In this interview, David Eagleman discusses his "lazy Susan" method for managing multiple projects. This involves working on one project until he gets stuck or slows down, then randomly selecting another project to work on. This helps him to stay fresh and avoid getting overwhelmed.

David Eagleman is a neuroscientist and author who is currently the CEO of Neosensory, a company that makes wristbands to help the deaf. This week, he has a number of work and academic commitments, including meeting with VCs, giving lectures (both in person and virtual), working on business-to-business sales, and preparing for a book tour. In addition, he is also teaching a neural law class at Stanford University.

David Eagleman describes how the "lazy Susan" can be used to manage time and energy when working on multiple projects. He explains that it can be helpful to have a set amount of time each week or month to work on each project, so that you don't get overwhelmed and end up not finishing anything.

David Eagleman discusses his work on the 400-hour work week and how it can be a challenge to maintain flexibility with such a commitment. He also talks about his book, "Livewired," which covers the topic of infotropism, or the tendency of information to seek out and maximize its own replication.

Livewired is about how the brain reconfigures itself constantly in order to absorb the most information from the world around it. The author discusses the principle of infotropism, which is the brain's tendency to maximize information intake. He gives the example of the motion aftereffect, where after staring at a waterfall, everything else appears to be moving in the opposite direction. The brain does this in order to reset its zero and see if there is more information available.

David Eagleman discusses how the brain is plastic and how culture shapes a human being. He also talks about how everyone has the potential to achieve their fullest potential.

In the next decade, scientists may finally be able to crack the neural code and understand how the brain works. This will be made possible by advances in technology that allow us to measure the activity of every neuron in the brain.

Neuroscientist David Eagleman discusses the fallibility of certainty and the need for scientific inquiry. He argues that humans are too quick to assume they know the truth and that this leads to stagnation in scientific progress. Science, on the other hand, is always willing to question its own beliefs and this is what makes it special.

The idea of Possibilianism is to avoid committing to something with certainty if you don't need to. This is just an expression of the scientific temperament. Science is always provisional, based on the weight of evidence at any given time. When it comes to some fundamental questions like our existence here, we don't have enough data to know for sure.

In a discussion about the Cosmos, Tim Ferriss and David Eagleman discuss the importance of questioning one's truths. Eagleman suggests that a billboard next to an elementary school that says "Question your truth" would be a good way to get people thinking about this issue.

In this interview, Tim Ferriss talks to David Eagleman about how people tend to believe their own internal models of the world, even when they might be misinformed. Eagleman suggests that one way to get people to question their own beliefs is to show them examples of people who have expanded their internal models and been successful as a result.

In this conversation, David Eagleman and Tim Ferriss discuss Eagleman's forthcoming book, Empire of the Invisible. Eagleman explains that the book is about all the stuff we don't see and don't understand, and how we can expand our perception by asking questions and not taking our truths so seriously.

The speaker notes that people may become more aware of their own limitations as AI becomes more mainstream. However, he is not sure how this will happen, as people tend to stick to their own internal models.

David Eagleman, a neuroscientist, conducted an experiment in which he dropped people from a 150-foot tall tower in free fall and measured the speed of their perception. He found that people's perception of time varies depending on what they're experiencing.

The article discusses how people's memories can trick them into thinking they have experienced more than they actually have. It cites the example of someone who gets in a car accident and seems to remember every detail in slow motion. However, this is just a trick of memory, and people do not actually perceive faster during a scary event. Instead, they just lay down more memory. This can make it seem like they have lived longer, because they have more data to draw on when asked what just happened or how long ago something occurred.

We all have experienced time seeming to move more slowly when we were children because everything was new to us. As we get older, we have fewer new experiences and time seems to move more quickly. The pandemic has been a silver lining in this regard because it has forced us all out of our normal routines and into new situations. This is why novelty is so important in life - it helps us create rich memories.

David Eagleman, a neuroscientist, talks about how the pandemic has forced people to think about the world in a completely new way. He believes that this may lead to a decline in dementia later in life.

David Eagleman, author of Sum, talks about his book and how people can start anywhere. He also talks about how important it is to experiment and explore.

https://tim.blog/2023/05/27/david-eagleman/