Anyone with half a brain can see that! Iain McGilchrist at TEDxGhent

look you are superfluous and so am i we didn't have to be at all but we are we haven't a clue why there's a general air of extravagance about it all a beautiful but unfathomably complex order seems to be at work which is driven not by necessity and utility but dedicated its producing difference and abundance we too don't act to maximize utility the earliest human artifacts confirm that we prize beauty and complexity every bit as much as usefulness we're not so easily predictable speaking of which if we'd been there when the first particles of the cosmos arose do you think we would have been able to predict the wealth of life in the sea or the diversity of life in a forest or Shakespeare or you your qualities their qualities are nowhere to be found in the primal particles this makes prediction difficult now we'd love to predict and control it's a natural urge don't be too hard on it from time to time it gives rise to civilization from time to time it gives rise to an utter mess and I think what makes a difference is how we think about the world in doing so we create a model hmm what's it like I know it's like a machine yes I know it doesn't look or behave like a machine but to let that pass in order that it should be manageable and easier to understand we simplify the complexity shared the super abundant beauty and focus simply on utility we generalized the unique which after all is all that actually exists we take the apparently distinct parts out of the context which alone gives them mean and eventually voila a working model of the world then we're surprised when we find we've got a dead duck you see we only know what the part is when we see it in its context the hole where it belongs we need to know the hole to understand the part just as much as the other way around as Vidkun stein amongst others noted we can't reduce anything to anything reductionism is a dead duck rabbit little joke for Vic and Stine fans everything that exists does so in a context and can only be understood in that context which gives it its meaning and makes it what it is like the heart in the body or a fish in the sea take it out and it dies so would an act of lovemaking or an act of worship or just a dinner with friends when seen through the laboratory window I was struck a long time ago by how unhelpful it is to try to understand the world by taking things out of context as if it were made up of bits and pieces like the bike in the garage a once great poem ends up a heap of banal sentiments you could have heard down the pub it's tough when someone you love dies coupled to a clunky verse form of little interest yet the poem itself can Electrify here is the ancient Fleur foot worn and hollowed and thin here was the former door where the dead feet walked in and similarly music is made up of note that each on its own is completely meaningless so the meaning can't be in them is it in the gaps then can't be can it because those are just silences which on their own mean nothing yet put them together and you have a unique living whole a new context in which they have new meaning say Schubert C major quintet that could change your life with a change in context meaning can change cut early and this has its lighter side in America for example there are four sizes of cereal packet there's jumbo which means very large this economy which means large this family which means medium and thus large which means small context changes everything it's about a hundred years ago that physics gave up the idea of a universe composed of little pieces interacting like billiard balls it discovered that everything is quite literally connected to everything else it discovered that particles at the opposite end of the universe appear to be entangled that their existence is necessarily uncertain and probabilistic that light connects like a wave or a particle and that observation affects the outcome of an experiment all that is lies in relationship with everything else and has to be understood in context in genomics we discovered having decoded the genome that DNA is not just a list of instructions in any case there's nowhere near enough information there it emerges from the context genes do not simply code for steps in a linear chain but depend on the hole in which they find themselves operating for example the same gene pack six codes for a fly's eye a frog's eye and your eye that the eyes are very different each part of the system has effects on all the other parts as a result each creature exhibits emergent properties not found in the pods so when we ignore context we're taken unawares by the way things work out we speak of the law of unintended consequences don't you love that it's as if it's not our fault for simple-minded faith in a mechanical model but the some version of sods law at the heart of the universe let's take two hugely important recent examples the Gulf Wars and the global financial crisis in each case it seems to me too much reliance with placed on abstract thinking ignoring context embodied concrete differences in history geography climate social structure ethical values religious belief were not taken into account by the theorists in either sphere they supposed we are all the same given to one set of irrational responses their own their intuitions probably told them otherwise because I'm sure they're not stupid but the model squashed their intuitions as it often does and made them done they ignored the obvious the real the specific at the same time they look too narrowly thinking too much about the immediate not about ongoing effects they would be powerless to influence and they ignored the fact that in the real world no system is simple and linear with neat causes and effects but constantly feeds back on itself the very fact of our intervention changes the situation it's rather like stock market predictions or that article in the Sunday papers extolling the beauty of an unspoiled island which ever thereafter will be spoiled I know we need to have models of a kind they can reveal some things but importantly they blind us to others that's the dangerous part and once you begin to mistake them for the real world we're in deep deep trouble we start trying to live in a realm where no one truly can live at all I think that's where we're now heading why well here in three minutes I'm going to sum up an argument that takes four hundred pages it's an odd fact that the brain the whole purpose of rich is to make connections is divided but the difference between right and left is not the one you think it is between logic and language on the one hand and emotion and visual imagery on the other both halves are involved in absolutely everything but in a consistently different way and only 1/2 of our brains sees things in bits and pieces out of context and acting on one another in linear fashion like billiard balls to produce a predictable outcome the half of our brain that sees least this is because of an evolutionary adaptation which enables us to survive by paying two kinds of attention to the world at once one kind paid by the left hemisphere is narrow beam precisely focused piecemeal and aimed at a particular object of interest it's the kind paid by an animal locked onto its prey in humans it's designed for grasping controls the right hand and helps us manipulate rather than understand the world it's confident tends to be black and white and jumps to conclusions it has to if it's to succeed it sees a linear relationship between the doer and the done - between arrow and target the other kind paid by the right hemisphere is quite the opposite wide open vigilant sustained and without preconception it's designed to look out for whatever else is going on in the world while we are busy grasping for a predator for example or for a mate whatever may come along his purpose is to help us understand rather than manipulate the world to see the hole and how we relate to it it's more tentative less certain more interested in shades of meaning it has to be if it is to succeed all relationships in this world reverberate changing both parties and there's no simple linear cause-and-effect now our brains are designed to pay both kinds of attention and since the kind of attention we pay to the world governs what sort of thing we find there we're constantly juggling nothing less than two versions of the world in the left hemisphere world things are disembodied general in nature apparently familiar and predictable and stay like that until given a push by us this world has distinct bits and pieces which get put together in a mechanical way to produce a certain result cause leading to predictable effect it's a bureaucrats dream it has an illusory quality quite unlike the world we experience it's an object and we are just observing subjects like a map this version of the world is simple compared with the world it Maps but that's why it's useful by contrast the right hemispheres world reveals a living web in which all is forever new and unique in which all is changing flowing into connected to everything else and constantly forming new embodied wholes it's an animate universe and a bureaucrats nightmare this is a world from which we cannot detach ourselves since we have part of it and affected by our relationship with it it's a world in which like music and maths like poetry and physics everything emerges from relationships from the context the left hemispheres view is hugely seductive because it gives the impression we can understand and control things but it's a fiction stale and lifeless you can laugh cry sleep eat and fall in love in New York but you can't in the map of New York and unfortunately the left hemisphere has little insight into its own limitations it's unjustifiably optimistic on self-rating scales it consistently overestimates its strengths while the right hemisphere if anything underestimates its own and someone with right hemisphere damage therefore relying on their left will even deny a paralyzed limb claiming that it belongs to the person in the next bed it thinks it's got it all taped it knows it all but it doesn't know what it is it doesn't know and that's the worst mistake you can make now these two ways of seeing the world are each vital to our survival we need to simplify and stand apart to manipulate things but we also need to belong to the world and to understand the complexity of what we're dealing with this division of attention works to our advantage when we use both however it's a handicap in fact it's a catastrophe when we use only one which is where increasingly we're going we fallen for the left hemispheres glim patter its belief that it knows it all so it is we go on despoiling the natural world thinking of it as just a heap of resources to exploit not as our home but this thinking is everywhere we look so it is the teachers receive evermore complex instructions about how to teach drawn up by people who no longer teach or never taught and who are reflecting on the process in the abstract not on Tuesday morning in Manchester with a class of real children of diverse histories personalities interests and talents as a psychiatrist and the delighted recipient of helpful algorithms generated in an office in London by people who've never met my patients if they had they wouldn't have time to draw up the algorithms telling me how to treat them for depression depression you know as if it was not as varied as the myriad people who suffer from it one size does not fit all the art of being a good doctor is finding the fit for this particular patient I do understand the idea they want to avoid disasters that's certainly what they would say but so I should remind you did the West when it went into Iraq and so did the clever chaps who were overseeing the economy when it crashed in reality following rules and procedures will avert some disasters that simply cause others walk on to a hospital ward now and your impression is that the nursing station is a typing pool with very little time for attending to patients time-consuming record-keeping checking and monitoring will never ensure the absence of disasters as the newspapers confirm they do ensure stress staff able to deliver only a fraction of their potential and demoralized by the mechanical model they're posed to follow rather than using their initiative and having ticked all the boxes they're otherwise astute senses off-guard fatal disasters will continue the one thing we make sure of is mediocrity excellence is ruled out for that you have to take risks in no walk of life can true skill be achieved us by following rules many discoveries in medicine were made by serendipity they won't be happening in the future because practice is too tightly straitjacketed truly novel research the lifeblood of science nowadays is harder and harder to do because its outcome is too unpredictable and the establishment thinking has ossified as a result much effort is concentric going into the same tiny familiar spot in ever greater detail confirming only what we already knew but missing the big picture it ensures we only know more about what we already think we know science is not the orderly process it sometimes seems to be moving rationally from this step to that most great discoveries were made by people with freedom to experiment in ways that might have proved fruitless you have to accept that some of it will go slowly nowhere but if you don't we'll all be going nowhere fast we seem obsessed with the idea that we can shape the world we want mostly we can't we either allow it to flourish or thwart it in certain respects as medicines do but notice medicines don't create health they permit it we don't create by putting things together any more than this statute was put together from the bids it was reviewed by clearing things away we need to create space for life and creativity to happen not strangle them with our anxious need to control and predict so when you're told to follow a model be skeptical you're not a machine and you never will be keep your ordinary senses alert including that far from common one common sense don't let ticking boxes put you to sleep difficult there that may be listen also with skepticism to your intuitions intuitions can lead you astray sure but so can a rationalizing that is itself unreasonable intuitions are not random or irrational they're the precious distillate of experience people who reason well have better intuitions than those who don't equally those with good intuitions use reason better than those who haven't lets resist uniformity let's seek to trust more and control less let's leave room for wisdom otherwise we'll become what the reductionists say we are mechanical predictable mediocre lifeless and you will be superfluous anyone with only half a brain I'm afraid you can see that thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 46,022

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Keywords: tedx, TEDxGhent, tedx talk, Psychology, ted talk, ted talks, English, tedx talks, TEDx, Belgium (Country), Science, ted x, ted

Id: DiPrM0DNI8w

Length: 19min 10sec (1150 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 11 2014