Why Do Pacific Rim Jaegers Need Two Brains? | Because Science w/ Kyle Hill

today's episode of because science is sponsored by Pacific Rim uprising that [Music] wasn't enough helicopter for my mass what do you need to fight giant monsters well a good weapon is a must as is good protection like a giant robot but at least according to the Pacific Rim franchise if you really wanted to beat down a kaiju most effectively would you need two brains Oh according to the Pacific Rim cannon when the giant fighting robots known as Yeager's were first implemented the brain machine interfaces they use put too much of a neural load on single pilots therefore a two-pilot system was implemented one for each of the brain's hemispheres the human brain is capable of truly amazing things so why would piloting a giant robot be too much for one and a half kilograms of thinking meat but not three first let's rule out answers that depend on myths about the brain you use more than 10% of your brain period if you didn't among other weird conclusions it would mean that there is 90 percent of your brain that I could damage or destroy and it wouldn't make any difference that would mean that brain surgery would have a lot of wiggle room but you know that it doesn't while it's true that we don't use all of our brains all at the same time you do use every single part of your brain so piloting a Jaeger doesn't need two brains because of brain capacity and going from 10% of the brain to 20% of the brain just to pilot a Jaeger is silly and this isn't a silly franchise elbow rocket take me to the next scene no and even though Pacific Rim mentions the importance of controlling left and right brain hemispheres that is not because pilots are either left-brained or right-brained people your brain is indeed split into two hemispheres is I have drawn very poorly and exaggeratedly here and they are joined by the corpus callosum in the middle now very generally speaking the left hemisphere of your brain controls the right side of your body and your right hemisphere controls the left side of your body and you may have heard that left brain people are supposedly more logical oh probabilities and that right brain people are more creative who rainbow colors in the band Radiohead but this is a self-help book myth neuroscience in general and some of the largest studies ever conducted on the subject in specific have found that although some brain functions are lateralized to one hemisphere or the other no one is really left brain or right brain dominant we are all whole brain people so I don't think a Jaeger needs higher capacity brains or hemisphere specific pilots no I think the robots just need more flexibility the human brain isn't nearly as flexible as you may feel it is here I'll prove it to you try to memorize this number two three and eight six zero hi 189 nine harder than you thought right oh five or try this alright get a piece of paper and a pen or a pencil and a stopwatch and draw four horizontal lines like I did you can pause the video as we do this alright after I am done speaking pause the video start your timer and then write because science on the first line and one through 15 on the second line you're gonna time yourself all right are you ready and go [Music] all right now whatever that first time was that is your base time now for this second two lines I want you to do something else when I'm done speaking pause the video and then alternate between what you have to write on these two lines so start with B and then one then you have to go to E and then two and so on alright are you ready go [Music] all right now compare your two times how did you do well your second time where you had to alternate between lines where you had to attempt to multitask should have felt a lot harder you may have even made some mistakes and therefore it should have taken longer well that's because multitasking is a myth even though there are entire industries built around trying to make you a better multitasker research has consistently shown that if you try to make someone perform two or more tasks simultaneously they will either be slower or worse Robert J Sternberg in 1999 proposed that this is because attention is a mechanism that focuses limited mental resources on the most important tasks or information at the time and limited means that if I am spending mental resources dealing with one or many problems I won't have any more mental resources to deal with problems if more start popping up then I won't fail with a capsule and apocalypses but the amount of attentional resources tasks can take can be reduced so I think that this is the advantage of having two brains inside of a gig we should close that the more a task the more a task is autumn eyes the more its burned into our brain so to speak the less mental resources you have to spend on it so here's another example close your eyes don't worry it's fine close your eyes and then imagine you have to make a lane change to the right in a car now make the motion what did you do most people will just turn the wheel to the right and then straighten it out but that's exactly wrong if you only turn the wheel once and then straighten out you are headed for the ditch you actually have to turn the wheel twice first to the right and then to the left to the left in the same amount you turn to the right it feels like it doesn't make sense and most people get this question wrong so how can we do this in our daily lives without even thinking about it it's because we don't think about it the lane change example that we just went through is what David Eagleman uses in his very interesting book incognito to show that we are unaware of the vast majority of what our brain is doing being able to change lanes on a highway or ride a bike or tire shoes without even thinking about it is an example of implicit memory knowledge and memory that your brain has that conscious you has no real access to piloting the biggest robots in human history to punch giant tied you in the face is something you would probably want a lot of implicit memory for Jaeger pilots don't have the time to think about what must be like riding the most complicated bike on the planet and at least in the Pacific Rim universe stop the clock and reset it thank you pilots do not have a lot of training time because the kaiju just keep coming so how could you get access to more implicit memory to more subconscious knowledge without the years of training the drift compatible my argument is that Yeager's need to fuse the consciousnesses of two pilots because as david eagleman also explains the brain is best and most efficient at dividing mental resources and completing tasks when those tasks are burned into the circuitry hardwired if you will and so the best Jaeger pilots will be those just like the best tennis players the best musicians the best chess grandmasters who can have enough implicit memory to just do things without thinking about it the moment they start consciously questioning what actions they are taking mistakes will be made just like our lane change example and so in this view one brain is good two brains is even better and two brains links subconsciously by the drift would be so why does piloting a Pacific Rim Jaeger take two brains well if the neural load is too much for a single pilot that implies that moving around these machines is incredibly taxing on mental resources so then by combining two consciousness together these pilots can immediately add to their implicit memory and their repertoire of hardwired actions to lessen this neural load and then the two brain requirement would have nothing to do with left brain or right brain hemisphere dominance or only using 10% of your brain building giant robots to fight interdimensional monsters makes more sense than either of those because science [Music] you know there is real research about how effective two brains are at completing a task if they are linked together through a brain machine interface and that research has found that there is at least for certain very specific tasks some advantage to having two brains work together so Pacific Rim confirmed also a Jaeger punching you in the face would feel like a 747 hitting you at at taxi speed in the face tell it to your significant other and thanks again to Pacific Rim uprising for sponsoring today's episode of because science it will be in theaters next Friday March 23rd in RealD 3d and IMAX you can get tickets right now at Pacific Rim tickets.com Pacific Rim uprising takes place ten years after the Battle of the breach victory and while all has been quiet up until this point something has reopened the breach for the kaiju and it's up to john boyega's Jake Pentecost to fight back and cancel another extinction apocalypse you get it thank you so much for watching Blaine make sure to hit that notification bell and subscribe button if you're on youtube and hit that like button if you are on facebook and if you want more of me you can go back to nerdist.com for more videos or you can look up let's watch with me and my friend and colleague Dan Casey or the space program on project alpha comm which is a premium show that I did on that platform if you subscribe now for a free 30-day trial you can get because science two days earlier than everyone else sounds pretty good you know else sounds pretty good following because science and me here thanks [Music]

Channel: Because Science

Views: 1,290,555

Keywords: Nerdist, Fvid, Because Science, Kyle Hill, pacific rim uprising, jaeger, kaiju, drift, pilots, brains, chemistry, human anatomy, implicit memory, movies, science

Id: F_SH8nkZqGQ

Length: 11min 27sec (687 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 15 2018