Hey Thoughty2 here. On the 26th September 1983, in the midst of
the Cold War, a Russian Colonel named Stanislav Petrov was sat in the soviet missile control
centre monitoring incoming satellite data, as he did every day. His job was to monitor the nuclear missile
early warning system and report a suspected launch higher up the command so they can retaliate. But on this day something happened for the
very first time, something he had been waiting for, yet dreading, his entire career. The alarm sounded, the early warning system
had detected that a nuclear missile had been launched from the United States, heading towards
the USSR. Then, moments later, more warnings appeared,
five more missiles had been launched by the US. But Petrov sat there and did nothing. He didn't report it higher up the command
because he knew that would mean a full-scale nuclear retaliation from Russia and the end
of the world as we know it. For he had a gut instinct, he felt that the
computers were malfunctioning and the warnings were no more than false alarms. He was right. He went on to fix the bugs in the system that
caused the false alarm. His gut instinct saved the world and he has
thus come to be known as "The man who saved the world". He received no reward from the Soviets for
his actions. He was in fact fired from his position and
re-assigned to a less sensitive post. Petrov believes his superiors were embarrassed
about there failings within the early warning system. People often tell you to trust your gut instinct,
but what exactly does that mean? Do you ever see someone and instantly get
an uneasy feeling in your stomach? A little voice inside you that says that person
is up to no good. When you're driving you just know the person
to the side of you is going to suddenly change lanes, before they even begin to move. The moment right before something bad happens
or you receive bad news you get a sinking feeling in your stomach, a distressing anxiety
and tenseness. Well what if I said that this feeling is caused
by your second brain. That's right, some experts believe we have
two brains and one of them is in our stomach. Now we're not talking about a traditional
brain here, it certainly doesn't look like one. The brain and the gut are intricately connected
by a network of neurons and nerves, these information superhighways transport chemicals
and hormones between our brain and our stomach. It's how you know when you're hungry, your
stomach tells your brain. This connection is called the brain-gut axis. But it's much more than a connection between
your brain and gut, this chemical highway is part of a larger network of hundreds of
millions of nerves and neurons, called the enteric nervous system. It monitors your entire gastrointestinal system
from the oesophagus all the way down to your anus. It reports to the brain when we should feel
hungry, full, when we're ill, nauseous and more. But this is more than a fancy monitoring system,
research has proven that the enteric nervous system really can act as a second brain. So if you have two brains, you're going to
need to feed them and the best way to do that is by learning incredible new skills from
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first 500 people will get a 2 month free trial. So how is it we have a second brain? Well the enteric nervous system is so complex
and contains so many nodes that it can act as a neural network and process information
exactly like our brain does. So your gut isn't just reporting facts, it's
thinking them up too. Now, our second brain can't compose music
or help us out with our maths homework but it can certainly think for itself. One area it excels in is hormones and emotions. The gut contains 95% of the body's supply
of serotonin, a neurotransmitter that affects our mood, it can make up happy, sad, anxious
and an array of other emotions. The gut is therefore hugely responsible for
controlling your mood. Happy gut, happy mind. So much so that there is even talk of medication
that directly targets your gut as a potential cure for depression. But the key emotion here is anxiety and it's
how your gut can predict the future and often make better decisions about a situation than
your actual brain. The enteric nervous system can make your brain
feel anxiety at the drop of a hat but it doesn't just do it for fun. Our brain is constantly taking in massive
amounts of data and I mean MASSIVE. The brain processes 400 Billion bits of information
per second. The colours and shapes of every single object
in our surroundings, every sound we can hear, the temperature, what we're going to say next. 400 Billion bits of information at a time
sounds like superhuman levels of cognition and it is. Because unfortunately, our conscious mind
is only aware of a measly 2,000 of these 400 billion bits of information. That means out of every 200 million bits of
information our brain takes in and processes, we only pay attention to one of them. It's why experience tunnel vision or single-mindedness. Although our conscious mind doesn't make use
of those 400 billion bits of information, our gut does. The enteric nervous system and the brain can
work together to deduce things from the constant tidal-wave of ignored information and using
this collective information, the brain and the gut, together can actually predict the
immediate future. And if the future looks somewhat uneasy our
gut immediately responds by making us feel anxious. Researchers in Columbia carried out experiments
and stumbled upon something they called the "emotional oracle effect". Over eight separate studies test participants
were asked to make predictions on various topics, such as who will be the next US president,
which movies will win awards, will the Dow Jones index go up or down and even the weather. Some of the participants trusted their initial
gut feeling, whilst others made an educated and calculated guess based on their knowledge. 72% of people who trusted their gut instinct
predicted that Barack Obama would beat Hilary Clinton for the 2008 Democratic nomination. Whilst only 64% of people who actually put
thought into it made the same, correct prediction. At the time the two candidates were neck and
neck in the polls. In fact the gut instinct trusters were significantly
better at all the predictions than those who thought about it logically. They were 25% better at predicting the Dow
Jones Index and they could even predict the weather with some degree of accuracy, using
nothing more than what their enteric nervous system was telling them. But the researchers found that this amazing
stomach-powered predictive talent only works if the individual has at least some knowledge
of the situation, our gut feeling doesn't work for things we know absolutely nothing
about. Suggesting that the test participants weren't
actually predicting the future in a supernatural sense, but their enteric nervous system and
brain were collectively using their aggregated knowledge to quickly form the most accurate
prediction possible. All those billions of bits of information
we take in each second are collectively summarised and these summaries are sent to our enteric
nervous system, which uses it to determine which emotion we should feel in our gut, anxiety,
fear, happiness? Remember in school when the teacher left the
classroom for a few minutes and all hell broke loose, you could guarantee that within five
seconds, someone would be stood on top of a desk or drawing phallic images on the chalk
board. But then suddenly you got a gut feeling that
the teacher was returning, you couldn't hear them, but nevertheless, out of nowhere a wave
of silence and obedience would wash over the classroom in an instant. Then the teacher would walk in, none-the-wiser. It's almost as if we predicted the future,
or our gut did anyway. You may have had the exact same experience
at work, when you're watching Thoughty2 on YouTube and suddenly, you sense that the boss
is walking down the hallway about to enter the room and rumble you, so you quickly hit
the like button and close your browser. Whilst this seems very mystical, it's not,
your brain and enteric nervous system are actually using billions of bits of data and
past knowledge to make an educated guess at the typical behavioural patterns of your teacher
or boss. Whilst your conscious mind is too distracted
with whatever is presently happening in front of you. Perhaps your boss always comes and checks
on you around the same time each day, but you've never realised, you don't look at the
clock, but your unconscious mind has, and it has created a schedule of your boss's daily
actions and stored it at the back of your brain, without you even realising it. So it seems Petrov's lack of action on that
day he saved the world wasn't random, he may not have known why at the time, but there
will have been good reasons that his gut decided to signal to him that something was amiss
with the alarm system, perhaps his unconscious brain had picked up a few subtle signals from
his environment and past knowledge, that the computers were malfunctioning. Petrov has later reflected back on the events
of that monumental day and he himself said that, at the time, he had no idea why he didn't
report it to his superiors, he just felt it was wrong, but couldn't explain why. Looking back now he says there were definite
reasons why he should have suspected a false alarm, such as, five or six missiles seemed
like an illogical first strike by the US, compared to America's total arsenal that is
a tiny number of missiles and if you want to suppress your opponent's chances of retaliation,
surely you would use your full nuclear force against them upfront. It's little things like this that Petrov's
gut will have picked up on that day, but his conscious mind wouldn't have. So yes, a man's stomach really did save the
world. Thanks for watching.
