Annaka Harris: Free Will, Consciousness, and the Nature of Reality

Lex Fridman Podcast #326 – Annaka Harris: Free Will, Consciousness, and the Nature of Reality Machine transcription by Qwen3-ASR 0.6B (MLX, local, Apache-2.0). May contain recognition errors. The following is a conversation with Anika Harris, author of Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind, and is someone who writes and thinks a lot about the nature of consciousness and of reality, especially from the perspectives of physics and neuroscience. And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. We got Wealthfront for investing, BetterHelp for mental health, Blinkist for nonfiction, Onit for supplements, and Indeed for hiring. Choose wisely, my friends. And now onto the full ad reads. As always, no ads in the middle. I try to make this interesting, but if you skip them, please still check out our sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. 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This is the Lex Friedman podcast to support it, please check out our sponsors in the description and now dear friends here's Anika Harris. In your book Conscious, you described evidence that free will is an illusion, and that consciousness is used to construct this illusion and convince ourselves that we are in fact deciding our actions. Can you can you explain this? I think this is chapter three. First of all, I really think it's important to make a distinction between free will and conscious will, and we'll get into that in a moment. So free will in terms of our brain as a system in nature making complex decisions and doing all of the complex processing it does there is a decision making process in nature that our brains undergo that we can call free will that's that's fine to use that shorthand for that although once once we get into the details I might convince you that it's not so free but that the decision making process is a process in nature the feeling our conscious experience of feeling like consciousness is the thing that is driving the behavior that is I would say in most cases an illusion and usually when we talk about free will that's the thing we're talking about I mean sometimes it's in conjunction with the decision making process but for the most part when we use the term free will we're talking about this feeling that consciousness that that we have a self that this there's this concrete thing that separate from brain processing that somehow swoops in and is the the cause of our decision or the cause of our next action and that is in large part if not in its entirety an illusion so conscious will is an illusion and then we can try to free will I would say is is good shorthand for a process in nature which is a decision making process of of the brain but decisions are still being made so there's if you ran the universe over again is there would it turn out the same way I mean maybe I'm trying to sneak up to like what does it mean to make a decision in a way that's almost that means something so right so this is where our intuitions get challenged I've been thinking about some new examples for this just because I talk about it a lot and and the truth is most of the things I write about and talk about and think about are so counterintuitive I mean that that's really what my game is is breaking intuitions shaking up intuitions in order to get a deeper understanding of reality I'm often even though I've thought about this for 20 years and think about it all the time it's an obsession of mine really I have to get back into that mind frame to be able to think clearly about it because it is so counterintuitive how long does that take how hard is that depends on if there are kids around or if I'm alone or if I've been meditating but what I was going to say actually I felt like we we need to just take one step back and talk a little bit just because I think the the importance of shaking up intuitions for scientific advancement is such an important piece of the scientific process and I think we've reached a point in consciousness studies where it's very difficult to move forward and usually that's a sign that we need to start shaking up our intuitions so you know throughout history the the huge breakthroughs the things that have really shifted our view of the universe and and our place in the universe and all of that those almost always if not always require that we at the very least shift our intuitions update our intuitions but many of them we just have to let go of intuitions that are feeding us false information about the way the world works well the weirdest thing here is that here we're looking at our own mind yeah you have to let go of your intuitions about your own intuitions yeah right exactly it's very meta and makes it hard and it's part of the reason why doing interviews for me feels so difficult aside from the fact that I just have social anxiety in general what's good because I took mushrooms just before started so we're in this we're on this journey together let's go so where do we take a step backwards well I was I was going to say I mean this leads into the point I was going to make but what I was going to say is I mean also just for me I feel like I I'm not as good at speaking as I am at writing that I'm clear in my writing and because these topics are so difficult to get our minds around it's hard to kind of get to any real conclusion in real time it's actually how I started writing my book was just writing for myself I decided that I needed to spend some time writing down all of my thoughts in order to get clear about how I think about them so you write down a sentence and you think you in the in the silence paragraphs and you just and then I see if that makes sense and then I check it with my intuitions which is really the scientific process and I really in many ways I feel like I'm a physicist at heart all of my inquiry all of my career everything I'm interested in actually going back to being a child is just deep curiosity about how the world works what this place is what it's made of how we got here just being amazed at the fact that I'm having an experience over here and you're having one over there and we're in this moment of time and you know what does that all mean my interest in consciousness really came out of originally an interest in physics and I guess that the two were always side by side and I didn't really connect them until I was older but I've always been really interested in just understanding the nature of reality before I even had language to to describe it you talked about sort of laying down and looking up at the stars and sort of trying to let go of the intuition that there's a ground below us yeah which is a really interesting exercise and there's many exercises of the sort you can do but that's a really good one well and I think you know scientists and children who are who will become scientists who are just kind of scientists at heart really enjoy that feeling of breaking through their intuitions and I remember the first time it happened actually I was playing with marbles and you know marbles have all these different shapes each one is unique and they're all the it looks like there's liquid inside them and I remember asking my father how they got the liquid inside the glass ball and he said actually it's solid all the way through it's all glass and I had such a hard time imagine it just didn't seem right to me I was very young when I but he he's a complicated person but he was wonderful in this way and that he would kind of entertain my curiosity and so he said let's let's open them up and he got a towel and we put the marbles on the towel and got a hammer and he smashed them all and lo and behold it was all glass and I remember it's like the first time I had that feeling of realizing wow the truth was so different from what I expected and I like that feeling and of course we need to be able to do that to understand that the earth is flat to understand the germ theory of disease to understand long processes in nature like evolution I mean we just can never really intuit that we share genes with ants did you just say the earth is flat you mean the earth is not flat did I say that this is great I actually like to think about this is why I need to write and not speak well I actually really like you know conspiracy theories and so on I really like flat Earth people that believe the earth is flat or not believe but argue for the earth is flat I it's interesting because you can see I mean the intuition is so strong I just said it the thing I love about folks who argue for flat Earth is they are thinking deeply they are questioning actually what has not become intuition are it's it's become the mainstream narrative that the earth is round where people actually don't you know yeah don't think actually how crazy it is that the earth is round we're in a ball yeah yeah and like that's exactly what you're doing you're looking out into space it's really humbling because I think the basic intuition when you're walking on the ground you kind of there's a underlying belief that Earth is the center of the universe there's a kind of feeling like this is the only world that exists and you kind of know that there's a huge universe out there but you don't really load that information in and I think flat Earthers are really contending with those with those big ideas yeah no and I think I mean the truth is that when those observations were first made when the celestial observations were made that revealed this fact to us I can't remember how long it took but I think it was close to 100 years before it was actually accepted as common knowledge that we're no longer the center of the universe or of course we never were but and and that's true almost every time we have a breakthrough like that that challenges our intuitions there's usually a period of time where we have to and and this is an important part of the process because often our intuitions give us good information and so when the science goes against when our scientific observations go against our intuitions it's important for us to let that in and to see you know which side is going to win and once it's clear that the evidence is winning then there's this period of time where we have to grapple with our intuitions and shift the way we frame our worldview and go through that process but free will free will is a hard one so a hard one so here we are still you know in consciousness studies pretty stuck at least in terms with the neuroscience and so that's why I started thinking more deeply about that that that's why a lot of scientists right now are actually interested in studying consciousness where it was very taboo before and so we're at this really interesting turning point and and it's wonderful but it will require that we shake up our intuitions a bit and reframe some things and look at what the neuroscience is telling us and there are a lot of questions we have more questions than answers but I think it's time I think if we're going to make progress in consciousness studies we need to start really looking at the illusions and false intuitions that are getting in our way do you think studying the brain can give us clues about free will like some of these yeah absolutely I think it already has and I think many facts that have come out of neuroscience are still barely seeping into the culture I mean there we're I think this is going to be a long process so so part of my work is really just looking at areas where we already know some of our intuitions are wrong and starting to accept them and starting to let them in and starting to ask questions about well what does this mean then about the nature of consciousness let's try to actually get into this at this question of free will and conscious will I I have my intuitions here are I mean I'm a human being it's it's really I mean I approach it from two aspects one is a human being and two from a robotics perspective right right and I wonder how big the gap between the two is and that's that that's a useful from an engineering perspective is another perspective that's useful and helpful to take on this it's like are we really so different you and I the robot and and the human we'd like to believe so but you don't exactly see where the difference is research into AI and just the fact that it's entered our consciousness at the level of of stories and film and and all of these questions that it's raising um is facing us with that it's almost like the zombie experiment is coming to life for us you know we're we're more and more looking at human like systems and wondering is there an experience in there and how can we figure that out when you were talking about your experience of looking at At robots, it reminds me of how I for many years have been looking at plants. Um, because the plant behavior and actually this is the example, maybe we'll just try it out. It may not work. This is an example I was thinking of recently because I was reading back on the work of Mark Jaffe who did this research with p tendrils. I'm sure he did many other plant studies, but this is the one I was reading about. And I'm hoping this analogy. I'll just set it up. I'm hoping that this analogy will be something that we can keep coming back to as we move forward because. You know, as we shake up our intuitions and get confused, and then we come back to our intuitions and say, "No, that just can't be." I think this analogy might might be helpful. But. What kind of plant was he working on? A p tendrils. So a p plant has these tendrils. You can you can picture them. They they coil. So I don't I don't know what year this research was done. I'm I'm guessing in the 80s, but you know. Some. But p tendrils have been around long before that. Yes, of course, and and the research may have happened long before. They might be doing the research on the humans, but that's another. Yeah, right. P tendrils, um, as a system, generally there are a few more things they can do, but generally they can behave in two ways. They can grow in a straight line slowly, or they can grow in this coil form more quickly. And what happens is when they are growing in a straight manner and they encounter a branch or a pole or something else that it can wrap itself around to gain more stability. When it senses a branch there, that gives it the cue to start growing at a more rapid pace and to start coiling instead of growing straight. So it has these two behaviors as a system. It's capable of growing straight and it's capable of coiling. One interesting thing actually, I'll just add this. It's not totally relevant, but one interesting thing is Mark Jaffe's work. So he cut a p tendril. He was curious to see if it could do this on its own separate from the rest of the plant. So he cut a p tendril off the plant. If you keep it in a moist warm environment, it will continue to to behave in these ways. So it will continue to coil. If he he noticed that if he touched one end of it, if he rubbed one side of it, that gave it enough of a cue that it would start to coil. And then he noticed that it needed light to perform this action. So in the dark, when he rubbed the the edge of the tendril, it did not coil. In the light, it would. And then he recognized this further fact which was that the p tendril that he rubbed in the dark that was still straight. If he brought it out into the light, and this could be hours later, it would start to coil. It has a primitive form of memory where it's it's has the sensation and then it holds on to that information and as soon as there's light it it acts on that. But also on the kind of distributed intelligence because you can separate it from the main. Right. In the main part, right. Like if you chop off a human arm, it's not going to. Right. Keep growing. Even if you keep it in a moist warm environment, it's not going to reach out for the cup of coffee when you come in with Starbucks. Maybe maybe in the correct environment. Maybe we just haven't found the environment, but anyway that's pretty amazing. So that's a separate fact, but anyway so so if you just use the analogy of a p tendril and if you imagine which is something I like to do a lot if you imagine. Um, this plant has some kind of conscious experience. Of course, it doesn't have complex thought. It doesn't have anything like a human experience. But if it were possible for a plant to have some felt experience, you can imagine that when it comes into contact with a branch. And starts to coil that that feeling could be one of deciding to do that or that it feels good to do that or kind of wanting. I mean it's that's that's too complex that's that's anthropomorphizing, but there's a way in which you could imagine this p tendril under those circumstances suddenly wants to start coiling. So you're saying you try to meditate what it's like to be a p tendril a plant. Like that's what's required here. It's like you have to empathize with a plant or with another organism that's not human. Yeah, and you don't actually need that for this analogy that the larger analogy that I'm getting at, but I think that's an interesting piece to keep in mind that you could imagine that. In nature, if there's a conscious experience associated with a p tendril, that at that moment what that feels like is. A want to start moving in a different way. So you you want to imagine that without anthropomorphizing, so without projecting the human experience, but rather sort of humbling yourself that we're just another plant with more complexity. Yes, like trying to see where exactly. So that yeah that's where I'm going with this. Sure. So and and when you start making that connection, you can see where there are a few points at which there's room for an illusion to come in for our own feelings of will. So when we move from a p tendril to human decision making. Obviously, human decision making human brains are many many many times more complex than whatever is going on in a p tendril. I mean it is the brain is actually the most complex thing we know of in the universe thus far. So there is the genes that help develop the brain into any particular brain into what it is. There are all the inputs there there are countless factors that we could never. I mean it may as well be an infinite number of factors and then in that particular moment whatever the inputs are to a brain. The brain is capable of almost an infinite number of outputs, right? So if you if I walked in here this morning and you said, "Would you like water or tea? " Um, and that's you know simple decision for me to passive aggressive way of telling me I should have offered you. Some tea, but yes, go on. No, I wanted water. Okay, all right. I actually asked for water. All right, great. And you didn't have any free will anyway, so it doesn't matter. I don't I don't hold you responsible for any of it. Exactly, I was just running an algorithm. So terministically, you could you give me this decision right to make water or tea. Go back to the p tendril for a second. A p tendril is capable of growing in a straight line slowly or in a coil quickly. Um, my brain is capable of all kinds of responses to that question, even though you've given me you know two options. You could offer me water or tea, and I could just run out of the room screaming if I wanted to. Right, happens to me all the time. Never mind, I don't want to do this. Yes, the fact that the brain is capable that there's so many inputs and then the brain is capable of so many outputs. Um, as a system, what it's hard for us to get our minds around is that it may not be capable of any. Behavior in every moment in time, so as a system, it's capable of doing all kinds of things. And the point I'm making is that if we could see all of the factors leading up to the moment where I chose water or where I ran screaming from the room. Um, we could in fact see that there's there was no other behavior I was going to or could have exhibited in that moment in the same way that when the p tendril hits the branch it starts coiling. There's a parallel which is very interesting in robotics with with fish in water. So you could see they've experienced with like dead fish and they keep swimming. So the fish is capable of all kinds of complicated movements as a system. But in any one moment, the river the full complexity of the river defines the actual movement of the fish. Right, efficient. Well, and I I should also I mean this brings up another point which is that there is a difference between voluntary and involuntary behavior. So of course we have reflexes and it is a different. There's different brain processing in action when I make a decision about water or tea. Then there is you know if my behavior is forced from the outside or if I have a brain tumor that's causing me to make certain decisions or feel certain feelings and so. Um, the point is at bottom it's all brain processing and behavior, but the reason why certain actions feel willed. There's a good reason why it feels that way. And it's to distinguish our own self-generated behavior based on thinking and. You know possibly weighing the different results of different things. I already had caffeine today. I don't want more. You know there there are all these um processes things that we can point to and things that we can't things I'm affected by at a subconscious level. Um. And that is very different from an unwilled action or reflex or something like that. And so some some people I can imagine haven't used the p tendril example, but I can imagine they wouldn't like that because the p tendril. Um sounds more to them like a reflex and that doesn't address the question of a much more complex decision making process, but I think at bottom. Um, that is that is what it is and that's really where the illusion of free will and the illusion of self which I think is they're kind of two sides of the same coin. Come from so even when we intellectually understand that everything we're feeling everything we're doing is is based on our brain processing and brain behavior. If you're a physicalist, you you've bought into that. Um. Even when you intellectually understand that we and I include include myself in this, we still have this feeling that there's something that stands outside of the brain processing that can intervene and that's the illusion. I was tweeting with someone recently which I almost never do but we're working in the TED documentary that I'm making right now we're working on the episode on free will. So I was allowing myself to go back and forth in a way that I don't usually on Twitter. Like arguing about free will, it was it was a friendly debate. Going to go into the reasons why I'm not crazy about Twitter, but let's leave that for another time. I mean talk about how hard it is to have this conversation when we have as many hours as as we like you know trying to do it in sound bites over Twitter. See I like how you made the decision now not to talk about Twitter. That's well my brain road less travel. That was one of the things I I said to this person was because someone someone chimed in and said you said I what do you mean by I and and so actually that's another point I could make which is. Um, first my response to that was well people tend to get creeped out when I say the system that is my brain and body that we call Anika recommends you know. Why do they get freaked out? Oh, you mean like in your personal life? Oh, like never saying I. Yeah. Always. You're being. I always referred to you as the brain and body we call Lex. Yeah, well I don't know. That's kind of that's kind of charming in a way. Alleged brain. So I and you are very useful shorthand even though at some level they're illusions. Um. They're very useful shorthand for the the system of my brain really and you know and my body the the whole system that I is useful for that but the illusion is when we feel like there's something outside of that system that can intervene that is free that somehow free from the physical world. I can have the thought. Um, yeah, I really not crazy about having intellectual back and forth on Twitter and then. Feel like I decide to not follow that thought right and the feeling that that that's the feeling, um where the illusion comes in because it really feels as if sure my brain had that original thought and then I came in and made a different decision. But of course the truth is it was just further brain processing that got me to decide not to go down that path. How much is that feeling of conscious will is culturally constructed shorthand? So like I and you is a is a you could say a culturally constructed shorthand. How much of that affects how we think? So our parents say I and you I and you and then we start to believe in I and you and is that or are we is that fundamental to the human brain machine. Yeah, we. I think I think it goes very deep. I think it's fundamental and I think it probably some form of feeling like a self goes. As deep as cats and dogs and it's possible I mean if consciousness. Does go down to the level of cells or however far down you want to take it? Worms or I think any any system that's navigating itself that kind of has boundaries and is navigating itself in the world. Um. My guess is that it's it's an intrinsic part of that's why I imagined that the p tendril would have this feeling. Um and so you know. We use the word I. I think you're right first of all that the way we talk about things affects our intuitions about them and how we feel about them and so there are other cultures who are more open. To breaking through these illusions than others for sure just because of their um their belief sets the way they talk. I mean I'm sure I don't I don't I'm not a linguist and I don't even speak a second language so I can't can't speak to it but I you know if if there were a language that. Um. That framed who we are differently in everyday language. I mean in our in our everyday communication I would think that would have an effect. Yeah, language does affect things. I mean just knowing. Russian in the history of the Soviet Union in the 20th century, obviously it lived under communism for a long time. So your conception of individualism is different and that reflects itself in the language. Yeah. You could probably have the similar kind of thing. Within the language, in terms of how we talk about I and we and so on. Yeah, and I yeah I'm sure there's like certain countries or maybe even villages with certain dialects that. Like let go of the individualism that's inherent. Yeah, I mean there there must be a range, but I do think that it's pretty deep and I think. Um. There's also a difference between the autobiographical me and then this more fundamental me that that we're talking about or that I'm pointing to is the illusion. So in my book I talk about if someone wakes up with amnesia if they have brain injury and suddenly have amnesia and can't remember anything about their lives can't remember their name don't recognize people they're related to. Um. They would have lost their autobiographical self, but they would still feel like an I. They would still have that basic sense of I'm a person. I mean they'd be speaking that way. I don't remember my name. I don't know where I live. Um, you still it it goes very deep this feeling that I am a single entity. Um, that is somehow not completely reliant upon the cause and effect of the physical world. Can ask you a pothead question? Yeah, would you would you. Rather lose all your memories or not be able to make new ones. You get to now I'm asking you as a human in terms of happiness and preference. I can't answer that. You like both. You like both features of the organism that you embody. Well, one is intellectual and one is psychological. Really, I mean I would have to choose the memories only because I mean memories of the past. Yeah. Um, only because I have children and a family and it would just be it wouldn't just be affecting me it would be affecting them it would just be too horrible. No, but you would make new ones right. If I lost my memory of the 13. Oh, you think would you you think you would lose? Is a dark question. Oh wait, wasn't that the question? Maybe I misunderstood. No, no, no, no. You understood it perfectly, but yeah. You don't sorry for the dark question. But the people you love in your life, if you lost all your memory of everything, do you think you would still love them? Like you show up, you don't know. I don't know. It's a role of the dead. I mean it would not in the way that I do. Right, so some deep aspect of love is the history you have together. Oh, absolutely. Well, and this gets to an interesting point actually, which I think a lot about, which is memory. Um, and we won't go into this yet, but I'll just plant a flag here that memory is yeah. Memories, um, obviously related to time and time is something that I'm fascinated with and and for this project I'm working on now. I've mostly been speaking to physicists who are interested in consciousness. Um, and it's partly because of this link between memory and time and. You know all of these new fascinating um theories and thoughts around the different interpretations of quantum mechanics and. Looking at you know the thing that I've always been looking for is is really the fundamental nature of reality and why. My questions about consciousness lead me to wonder if consciousness is a more fundamental aspect of the universe than than we previously thought and certainly I previously thought. Um, and so memory, but memory is is tied to so many things. I mean even. Um, basic functions in nature actually so so the the p tendril as I mentioned memory comes into play there and that's so fascinating. Um. And there is no sense of self without memory, even if you're starting from scratch as you said with amnesia. Um, if you truly couldn't lay down any new memories, I think you would then that sense of self would begin to disintegrate because the sense of self is one of a concrete entity through time. And if each moment, if you really were stuck in the present moment eternally, you'd basically be meditating. And in meditation, this a very common experience is losing that sense of self, that sense of free will that those illusions. Um, more easily drop away in meditation, and I would say for most people who meditate long enough they do drop away. And there's actually an explanation at the level of the brain as well. The default mode network is circuitry in the brain that neuroscientists don't completely understand but know is is largely largely responsible for this feeling of being a self. Um and when that circuit gets quieted down which it does in meditation and also does with the use of psychedelic drugs. Um and there are other ways to quiet down the default mode network. Um, people. Have this experience of losing this this illusion of being a self. They no longer feel that their self in the way that they usually do. So there is the autobiographical self is connected to the. The sense of self. Oh absolutely through the memory. And then you are thinking that. The solution to that lies in physics, not just neuroscience. Like ultimately consciousness and the experience, the conscious will. Is a question of physics. I may have said something misleading because I was connecting too many dots. After things I say, I am misleading. Let us mislead each other. I just got I got excited when memory came up because I love talking about time. So you mentioned a project you are working on a couple times. What what's that about? I think you said TED is involved. You are interviewing a bunch of people. What's going on? What's the topic? So I am working on an audio documentary about consciousness, and it picks up where my book left off. So all of the questions that were still lingering for me and research that I still wanted to do. I just started conducting so I've done about thirty interviews so far and I it's not totally clear what the end result will be. I am currently collaborating with TED and I am having a lot of fun creating a pilot with them. And so we'll we'll see where it goes, but the idea is that it's a narrated. Documentary. It's like a series. A series. It'll be a ten part series. It's an unclear. Oh you already know the number of parts. Sorry, in my mind it's a ten part series. It may end up being eight or eleven or twelve. I don't know why. Listen, I am very confident with number zero and one as well. About ten. I like the confidence of ten. So and you are not sure what the title