Contrary to common sense Just because I—or everyone—thinks it is, it doesn’t follow that it is. But ask yourself, is it possible to consciously doubt this?.. Ludwig Wittgenstein They lie to us about the nature of man, about the motives of his behavior, about what we really are. To illustrate this fact, I’ll start with a simple scientific experiment that was supposed to turn all our ideas about human nature upside down. Back in the fifties of the last century, a young physiologist named Benjamin Libet signed a contract to work in the neurosurgery department of a San Francisco hospital. He couldn’t wait to conduct experiments on an open brain, and the only way to get into a person’s head is through neurosurgery. So Libet got access to living human brains. He applied electrons to them and measured the reaction rate, trying to figure out how long it would take after an electrical pulse for a particular muscle contraction to occur in the patient’s body. And then an amazing incongruity came to light — it turned out that the delay between the pulse and the movement is more than half a second. This is a fairly large gap. But where is the human consciousness at this moment? Does he really not notice this pause? Then Libet designed a special machine. He brought one sensor to the subject’s head (there was a helmet with electrodes), and attached the second to the wrist. The subject looked at a large white dial on which a green dot was moving, and had to mark the moment when he made the decision to consciously move his brush. As a result, Libet received three indicators:

•  the time when a person decided to move a brush (“green dot”);
• the time when his brain was excited to move his hand (information from the helmet);
• the time when the brush actually moved (the sensor on the wrist). What do you think was the sequence of these “times”?

If you follow common sense, first a person makes a conscious decision to move his hand, then his brain gives the body the appropriate command, and after that movement should occur. But this logic is incorrect, at least with respect to the first two points. Libet showed that the brain makes decisions before our consciousness. When the brain has already made the decision to move its arm, consciousness is not yet aware of this decision of the brain. The same half-second passes (!), and our consciousness learns what it should think (it was at this moment that the subject marked the position of the green dot). Then another 0.2 seconds, and the sensor on the wrist reacts — the muscle has contracted. It’s nothing, right? It’s only half a second between the brain’s reaction and the consciousness’s reaction! Maybe… But after this “nonsense”, the Vatican assembled a special congregation, trying to figure out what to do with the doctrine of the faith now that it has been scientifically proven that there is no free will. Yes, Libet’s research was akin to the discovery of gravity, evolution, the atom, or radioactive radiation. It’s no joke — a person’s behavior is controlled not by his consciousness, as we always thought, but by his brain. And by itself, bypassing that very consciousness! Libet’s experiment proved with scientific precision that we have no control over our behavior. Yes, theoretically we have 0.2 seconds when we can stop the action that our brain has already started. But these 0.2 seconds are also a convention. To stop an action triggered by the brain, you need to make an appropriate decision. And who will accept it in such a short time, if consciousness is always 0.5 seconds late? It’s still the same brain, by itself. Of course, Libet’s experiment was not the only one, it only gave a powerful start to the future scientific revolution. Subsequently, thousands of experiments were conducted, both by supporters of the theory and by its opponents. But the established fact stands like a rock: everything that you thought about the importance of your consciousness in your own life is nonsense, forget it! One of the latest studies on this topic has already been conducted using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) at the Institute of Cognitive Psychology and Neurophysiology. Max Planck in Leipzig shows that by recording brain activity, we can tell in seven seconds that a person is now in seven seconds! — he decides to do it. More precisely, what he is aware of as his decision, which in fact has already been made by his brain. I think it’s hard to comprehend. And I suspect that you still don’t really realize it. It is difficult to understand and accept. This is contrary to “common sense”. But the whole point is that we don’t have any “common sense”! We just think we have it. The truth is that all our “senses” are controlled by our brain, and not at all by consciousness, which we are used to talking about with awe. For the rest, I honestly don’t quite understand — is this really a conspiracy by the Vatican, or are we really suffering from mass idiocy?.. Science has known for almost half a century that the behavior of any of us is regulated by a half-kilogram jelly-like biomass, in which there are not even pain receptors, and they continue to tell us that we are conscious and intelligent beings! So conspiracy or idiocy? Do you remember how many times you blamed yourself for decisions that the cockroaches in your head applauded standing up? How many times have you chastised yourself for mistakes and blunders? How many times have you had to justify your actions? It turns out that everything was in vain. Nobel prize In 2002, psychologist Daniel Kahneman was awarded the Nobel Prize for a study in which he (along with the late Amos Tversky) clearly proved that even economic agents act extremely irrationally when making crucial decisions. Attention: people who decide how to dispose of colossal money, stocks, all kinds of futures and derivatives, endlessly dumb and do stupid things! But these are not some mentally retarded subjects from a special boarding school. After all, they were taught at Ivy League universities, they graduated from the MBA several times! But all this does not prevent them from remaining slaves to the very biological machine that is hidden in their skulls. Ecclesiastes said: “If God wants to punish a man, he takes away his mind.” But in order to deprive us of reason, we, in theory, must have it. And such, as it turns out, is not found during the day with fire! Is it any wonder now that one of the first professions that artificial intelligence will completely destroy very soon will be the profession of a stockbroker? Yes, it’s much safer to entrust money to a car than to a financial analyst who sincerely believes that he knows well what he’s talking about. The English Queen The self-proclaimed order is only a cover for chaos. Theodor Adorno But let’s move on from high science to everyday life and practice. Why did we decide to get the profession that we got (or are currently studying for), and not some other one? Why does our social circle consist of exactly the people it consists of, and not of some others? Why did we fall in love with the person we fell in love with, and not with someone else? Why did we form a marriage with our current partner, even though there were obviously other options? It seems to us that every time we acted intelligently, meaningfully, thoughtfully. But it only seemed that way to us. Our brain has made and continues to make the appropriate decision. Moreover, this is a funnel: first, the brain makes a decision, and then it adapts to its consequences. Yes, he is literally physically rebuilding himself! He rebuilds himself and begins to consider the decision he has made not only the right one, but also the only possible one. This is really a Matrix from which you cannot escape without the help of some fabulous Morpheus! Is it necessary to explain that the changes that have occurred in the structure of our brain affect all its subsequent decisions? It is not so easy to turn off the path if we have already gone downhill: it does not matter in our personal life, in our professional life, in the field of human relations or addictions. Moreover, even our vaunted worldview — what we consider intimate, soulfully lived and deeply thought out (and therefore conscious and conscious) — is exactly the same program in our head. Yes, this is a well—defined coupling of well-defined neurons with each other: our attitude to life is not what we think, but what connections our brain has created. All our thoughts, worldviews, and other intellectual garbage are just automatisms of our brain. In fact, these are just stupid reflexes that only seem to us to be “conscious choices” and “meaningful decisions.” It so happened that we were once influenced by exactly those ideas that later became our worldview. We, driven by the same brain, found “evidence” for these ideas, used them as a life strategy, and that’s it, our brain adapted to them. Now, no matter how reasonable we may seem to ourselves, our brain searches for and notes only those facts that prove its correctness, and on the contrary, it rigidly ignores everything that contradicts its attitudes. Then it’s just a matter of chance: if we’re “lucky”, we’ll be hit by something with terrible force, life will fall apart into pieces, and we may put it back together in a new way. But by itself, our brain will not produce revolutions — it paves a track along which we then just roll back and forth like bowling balls. And it doesn’t matter what exactly it is about — the habit of drinking with friends after work or eating three pizzas a day, spending hours on the Internet and scrolling through a social network feed or playing computer games, surfing pornography sites or being an avid Kantian, believing in god or a pasta monster. It doesn’t matter what kind of habit, what kind of stereotype we are talking about. We’ve already been caught! And we are addicted. Just get it right.: we are not addicted to all this particular nonsense (that would be too easy), we are addicted to our own brain. We don’t even have the right to vote! Our brain makes it up for us. And even before we consciously decide to speak out… Our personality, our consciousness, and in general everything we think of ourselves is just a fake outfit, this is the English queen who reigns, but does not rule. Not only do we obediently agree with what our brain does, we don’t even know that it wasn’t us who decided that, not our conscious self! Our near future I admit that for some it all sounds like complete nonsense. But I confess that I sincerely feel sorry for such “psychiatrists”. You can bury your head in the sand as much as you want, but the truth will still come out. The data of modern science are radically changing our understanding of man, his personality and consciousness. Sometimes it even seems to me that they are being deliberately hidden from us so as not to cause a public uproar with subsequent riots, revolutions and the “loss of all values.” However, I do not believe in conspiracies, and it is clear that nothing is being hidden from us. The problem is that we cannot believe in facts that contradict our intuition, our conscious experience, and our traditional beliefs. We believe our eyes, not scientific facts. And of course, we have no idea how much our eyes are lying to us. One way or another, but be sure that these scientific data about a person and his behavior are not idle. Let the layman not understand them, let him remain in simple ignorance, serious business actively uses scientific discoveries for its own purposes. Neuromarketing is a good example of this. Ten years ago, manufacturers of consumer goods or, for example, movies gathered focus groups to test a new product on potential consumers. The test participants “tried” the product, and then told them what they liked and disliked about it, and all this was taken into account — the manufacturers brought the product to mind and brought it to the market. However, even such a deep, personalized and comprehensive analysis of consumer preferences for some reason did not have a significant effect, that is, it did not affect sales results. Sometimes it even happened the other way around: the focus group liked the product or the movie, but in retail and at the box office it was a complete failure! However, you now know why such focus groups were ineffective. About ten years ago, this was proven in a special experiment. Young people were placed in fMRI machines and given a series of music tracks by little-known artists. All tracks were new and were awaiting official releases. The subjects had to choose those musical compositions that, in their opinion, have every chance of becoming sales leaders and taking the highest places in music ratings. Young people, as you understand, made their choice consciously, according to common sense, so to speak. But the scientists knew not only about the conscious choice of the subjects, but also saw which tracks their brains liked. Two things have become clear. Firstly, the list of those tracks that the subjects liked and the list of those tracks that their brains liked did not match. But that’s half the trouble. A year has passed, and scientists have compared the forecasts with reality. It turned out, and secondly, that the leaders of the charts were those musical compositions that the subjects’ brains liked, and not those that they preferred at the level of consciousness. So now, if a large business wants to understand what the chances of a new product’s success are, it no longer conducts focus groups and does not conduct surveys of potential consumers. He puts them in scanners and finds out what their brains are thinking about all this. This is important, not our “opinion”. Yes, no one is interested in our “ideas of beauty” anymore. You can safely shove them far away — there will be no trouble, no one will shed tears. The decision to buy, view, or listen is made by our brain, not by ourselves. However, this applies to all “our” decisions: consciousness simply agrees with the choice of the brain and does not even notice how stupid it has been. Just think about it and admit it to yourself: so far in your entire life you have not made a single independent decision! All the decisions were made by your brain. Your mind was just waving. It only seemed to you that you were acting in your own interests, but in fact you were acting solely in the interests of your brain. Why do you think it’s so difficult to make a strong—willed decision, even if it’s about the seemingly simple things like quitting smoking and running in the morning? But in other cases, when it comes to really difficult things — for example, the desire to defeat all rivals in Warcraft — do you easily subscribe to it? It’s simple: in some cases, our brain wants something, and in others it doesn’t. And you can try to persuade yourself, come up with tricks, but the truth is that until your brain wants something (for example, it will suddenly be afraid of a heart attack and think that cigarettes are somehow connected with it), you yourself can’t do anything about its habits. So let it all sound bitter and unflattering, but this is the truth of life. So please put down the book and just think about it — none of your decisions have ever really been yours. Never and not a single one! That’s the law. You are no exception. Not you, not your loved ones, not your parents, not your boss, not even (God forgive me!) the boss of all bosses — never made their own decisions. Therefore, there may be a number of questions for them too. But it’s not them and their nonsense that matters now, but you and your life. And what about her if you are not even aware that your decisions are imposed on you? And it wasn’t some State Department that dictated them to you, or a Higher Intelligence, but your own brain, which you hadn’t taken into account at all until that moment! This is true. Think about it: •Why do you have so many noble impulses, but almost all of them remain in words? • Why can’t you make an important decision, even though it’s “high time” and time is running out? • Why do you know that bad habits should be stopped, but you don’t? The answer is always the same: your brain didn’t make the right decision. Of course, we can think whatever we want—daydreaming, daydreaming, making plans, and even writing them down in countless diaries. But we will act only on the command of our brain. He has to make a decision, he has to prepare for it, he has to make a decision. But life is not a neurosurgical operation, and we don’t have direct access to our own brains. And how to influence him is a big question. Well, do you still find it strange that your life is not what you want it to be? You didn’t understand anything then. Reread this chapter. A machine instead of consciousness There is such a legendary figure in the field of computer technology — Ray Kurzweil. He was the one who created the first musical synthesizer and was the first to teach computers to recognize human speech. He also formulated the “law of accelerating returns”, which allows him to predict the future[3]. Kurzweil’s predictions come true with terrifying accuracy: he predicted when Bluetooth phones will appear, simultaneous computer translation will work, Siri will be created, 3D videos and augmented reality glasses will be invented, IBM Watson supercomputer will be created, driverless Google cars will be launched, etc. So, Kurzweil is currently working on creating an assistant “capable of answering questions even before you formulate them.” This is a quote. Now you know that this is not absurd. Such an “assistant” will indeed appear soon. But it’s not going to help you and me, it’s going to help our brain. Maybe it’s not bad, but then what will be left of you and me? In which corner will our consciousness hide when it realizes its uselessness? One can only guess. Well, I prefer to admit the facts before they pin me to the wall. And yes, I still want to have it. And yes, despite all that has been said, I think we still have a chance for that. It’s just that the brain is not stupid The subconscious mind can compose a symphony, but it is not able to multiply 173 by 19. Richard Nisbett If you decide to read on, then you must have a question: how is it that our consciousness does not participate in decision-making, but we still manage to do something “meaningful” at least from time to time? There is nothing surprising in this. It’s just that our brain is not stupid. All I want to say is that we don’t make our own decisions, really consciously. But this does not mean at all that we cannot make the right and good decisions. Two Dutch scientists— Al Dextahaus and Laurent Nordgreen, conducted the following experiment. They formed three groups of students who were asked to choose the best apartment out of four possible options. Each apartment had its own pros and cons. One, for example, was in a good neighborhood, while the other had an unfriendly owner. At the same time, one of the options was definitely better than all the others — seven positive characteristics, three neutral and three negative. The first group of students had to make a choice immediately — immediately after they got acquainted with the options. The second group was given three minutes to think about it. The third group also got three minutes, but the participants in this group could not think about the choice, because they had to spend the same three minutes solving mathematical problems. Well, let’s make a prediction: which group of students made the best choice? Of course, the answer immediately comes to mind — the one who got time to think about everything. But you and I already know that “common sense” is just an illusion. And we’re right. The representatives of this group have made the worst decisions! The second place of honor in this competition, you will probably be surprised, was taken by a group where students had to give an answer immediately. But the best results — and this is certainly fantastic — were in the group where the brains of the subjects were given time to think, but their minds were not. Yes, in this kind of competition, the group won, the participants of which directed their consciousness to solve mathematical problems, and the brain had three minutes calmly (that is, without the intervention of consciousness!) scroll through the options and make an informed decision. It’s not surprising that our brains are capable of making good decisions. Evolution has been working on it for millions of years and, as we can see, has succeeded quite well in this. But there are two problems. First, our brain is still very primitive in its decisions – selfish, often short—sighted, and acts primarily on instinct. The world we have to live in is too complicated for him. The second problem is that we trust our consciousness too much, and it is with its help that our brain skillfully covers up any stupidity with beautiful formulations and “wise” explanations. In fact, consciousness sanctions what, according to the mind, it should be fighting. A case from a psychotherapeutic practice The story of this boy is deeply etched in my memory. Ilya (I’ll call him that) was about sixteen when his mother brought him to my office. But he looked at least fourteen years old: small, even petite, perhaps because he started taking heroin at twelve. If you’ve ever dealt with heroin addicts, you know how terrible this addiction is. There is nothing that could stop such a person: in order to get the next dose, he is ready to steal, cheat and commit much more serious crimes. Just to find an opportunity to give another injection. For the past six months, Ilya’s desperate mother has not let him out of the house. And when she needed to leave, she handcuffed him to the radiator. This, in fact, complete isolation from the outside world allowed Ilya to survive withdrawal and recover a little, but his brain was not cured and was completely controlled by the drug. Despite his medical history, he turned out to be a piercingly intelligent and subtle person. “Of course, I’m not taking anything right now,” Ilya was saying, staring somewhere at the center of my desk. “But if you put a syringe in front of me, everything else will lose its meaning.”.. There was some kind of terrible, frightening dissonance in his whole image: an almost childish face, beautiful, as if he had just stepped out of a Botticelli painting, and the future that inevitably awaited him ahead. A boy doomed to die. “You know,” he said at one point, “that’s what everyone says.”: “Addiction, addiction.”.. But no one understands what it is. I was told that after one time, addiction would not arise. And I tried. Yes, it turned out that there is no dependence. And I tried a second time. There is no dependency. I tried a third, a fourth… No! But it turns out that it was an addiction. We can think whatever we want about our consciousness, we can have any kind of brilliant consciousness. But it is powerless to make decisions, even if our lives are at stake. This consciousness told Ilya: “There will be no dependence after the first time.” And he believed it, and he was sorely mistaken. Another global revolution has recently taken place in the human sciences. But, as often happens in such cases, scientists did not really explain their discovery, and the public, “because it is difficult,” was not interested. Well, we may have missed the most important discovery since Benjamin Libet’s experiments. In 1997, neurophysiologist Gordon Shulman was puzzled by the question: where exactly is the place in our brain that is responsible for our conscious thinking? It seemed easy to figure it out. You need to put a person in a CT scanner, inject a contrast agent into his blood and see which areas of his brain will activate when he solves a particular task[4]. Actually, Shulman did exactly that — he injected contrast into the blood, turned on the tomograph and allowed the subjects to solve problems… He conducted hundreds of tests, but the result was virtually zero: people who solve different tasks have activated different areas of the brain. That is, there is no specific center of consciousness in the brain! But you must admit, this is strange, because we have heard so much about the cerebral cortex, about the frontal lobes, we know what concentration is… Finally, we feel our own attention as a kind of concentration. In this case, why does the brain not show any systemic patterns of activity, but shines, despite our concentration, like some kind of drunken Christmas tree?! The answer came from nowhere. Shulman rechecked his protocols and drew attention to one mysterious circumstance. Yes, when the subjects were solving problems, their brains behaved randomly. But sometimes there were technical pauses — for example, Shulman needed to pick up and display the next batch of tasks on the screen. And it was during these intervals that the subjects’ brains began to work as a single and well-coordinated organism! That is, as soon as the human brain was not distracted by solving any conscious tasks, it began to work synchronously – a number of the same brain areas were activated. Thus, Shulman identified a whole structure of “passive thinking”, consisting of a dozen areas! It’s funny: the results of this study were published in a scientific journal, but as a “curiosity”, the best experts in the field of neurophysiology considered Shulman’s data to be a banal error, an inaccuracy of research and generally anti—scientific heresy. However, every Galileo has its own Giordano Bruno: in 2001, Marcus Rachel declared Schulman’s research a fundamental breakthrough in understanding human consciousness and formulated a theory of that very “passive thinking”, which was called the “default brain system” (DSM). Since then, the number of complex scientific experiments devoted to DSM has already exceeded ten thousand! This is one of the most rapidly developing areas of neurophysiology and neuropsychology. It turned out that it is these brain structures (which are, in fact, our subconscious) that are responsible for how we organize the world we perceive, how we build our relationships with other people and what decisions we ultimately make. There was a clear explanation of why, for example, Dmitry Mendeleev could really dream of his periodic table. And, apparently, it was not by chance that Henri Poincare claimed that the best mathematical discoveries were made by his “subconscious self,” and Mozart and Picasso were sure that the images of their works came to them from somewhere “above.” It seems to us that we have a wonderful mind (and that we have one at all), and if we strain it properly, we will definitely create something great. But this is an illusion. Our brain can create truly great things, and all our consciousness can do is perform highly specialized tasks well (and only if it has the appropriate algorithms in its arsenal) — for example, it solves mathematical examples and classifies flashcards according to the experimenter’s assignment. How do you get your subconscious mind — your brain — to work for you?.. The illusion of consciousness  It is easier to deceive a person than to convince him that he is deceived. Mark Twain Our brain is not such a bad unit, but in order for it to create something really worthwhile or decide on something truly grandiose, it must be put into an appropriate state. He must be prepared for this. The question naturally arises — how can this be achieved if our consciousness is, in fact, completely subordinate to our brain and is a partial derivative of it? It is clear that we, with all our desire, cannot manage it directly. He controls us, we don’t control him. First of all, let’s try to understand the main thing: consciousness cannot be overestimated. His “incredible capabilities” are a myth. It’s stupid to flaunt them, you don’t need to sing hosanna to him. Yes, the relationship between consciousness and the brain is extremely confusing, but our ideas about this relationship are a complete misunderstanding. Here is a simple example for you — one of the countless psychological experiments set up to study this issue. The subject is shown two bright dots of different colors on the screen, for example, yellow and green. If the dots are separated from each other at a short distance, and the interval between the inclusion of these dots on the screen is about 100 milliseconds, then the person perceives the movement with a transformation — as if the yellow dot runs to the place of the neighboring one and turns green itself. This is the so-called stroboscopic motion effect. What happens at the level of subjective perception? It seems to us that in the middle of the line of “movement”, which in fact does not exist, the dot turns from yellow to green. But how is this possible if the second dot—that is, the green dot— has not even been presented to us yet? We couldn’t have seen it before it actually lit up in the place where the “path” of the yellow dot was supposed to end! In other words, why is the direction of movement of this “ray” and its final color known to us before the second point lights up — in the appropriate place and the appropriate color? Scientists have only one explanation: in fact, what we see and realize is only an interpretation of events that have already happened to our brain. I understand that it’s not easy to imagine such a thing, but let’s realize what’s happening: our brain records how one point lights up, then the second, and connects these phenomena. Then he shows our consciousness the “movement” that he himself invented! At the same time, our consciousness unconditionally accepts this illusion at face value. We were shown two different points in two different places that light up at different times, and we came up with a whole story about the journey of a color-changing light beam and even “saw” it. All this has nothing to do with reality, but we have no doubt about the truth of our own “vision”! You might say that this is probably due only to the phenomenon of visual perception. But how do you hear the whole melody in this case, because the notes — these sound “dots” — sound sequentially to your brain, one after the other? You can say that the problem is in short periods of time. They say that consciousness will not allow such blunders over longer time periods and the corresponding paradoxes are excluded. Okay, I’ll give you the data from an experiment that has nothing to do with direct perception — neither auditory nor auditory — and was implemented with a long time interval. The authors of the study, two American psychologists George Goethels and Richard Reckman, conducted a survey of high school students about “basing”[5]. The teenagers expressed their opinion — what would be better: if white and black children would be transported home on different buses, or if it would be one common bus, regardless of the skin color of the students? Two weeks later, the experimenters organized the second stage of the study. The teenagers were divided into groups of four, each with an “agent of influence.” The “agent” acted on the instructions of the experimenters, and he had a whole set of armor—piercing arguments in favor of one option or another – either for individual buses, or for a general one. I must say that this argument worked in the vast majority of cases — in almost every group, teenagers leaned towards the position that the corresponding “agent of influence” offered them. But that’s not the main thing, and that’s not the point… It’s the turn of the third stage, and that’s where the fun begins. Psychologists gathered the children for a second survey, but warned them that they would compare its results with the previous survey two weeks ago. So what? Almost all the children who changed their point of view to the opposite, claimed that they always adhered to this particular point of view, which was actually new to them! Once again, two weeks ago they said and wrote one thing, then they talked to someone and not only began to think differently, but decided that they had thought differently before, and not the way they actually thought before! Why did they lie? There are documents, after all! But no, we lie all the time! We lie and don’t blush! Do you know why? Because we don’t lie. It’s just that our brain can easily replay everything to make it convenient and consistent, while our consciousness is literally awake and, obviously, a fool for a fool. Cognitive dissonance Consciousness constantly adjusts to the decisions that our brain makes, and then selflessly explains why they are “right”, “fair”, “reasonable”, etc., no matter what nonsense we do. Perhaps the first researcher who demonstrated this feature of our psyche was psychologist Leon Feistinger, who introduced the concept of “cognitive dissonance” into scientific usage. From his book “The Theory of cognitive Dissonance”, if you read it, you will learn a lot of amazing facts. In particular, Feistinger describes the behavior of members of the “Guardians of the Cosmos” sect, who, believing in the end of the world, abandoned their families, homes, and jobs and began to wait for Judgment Day. When no aliens arrived on the appointed day and the End of the World did not happen, they found an excellent explanation for this fact: “it turns out” that they extended the time of the world with their prayers! Clever, isn’t it? Is it worth being surprised now by studies that clearly show that doctors, for example, completely deny the influence of communication with pharmaceutical company agents on their assessment of the effectiveness of a medical drug? Doctors continue to believe in their objectivity, but it’s not even close! Can we help a person who feels sick on the street? Of course, we’re good people, and that’s right! But the truth is, it’s going to depend on a lot of factors that you might not even notice. For example, you will appreciate the appearance of the unfortunate, and if he is not presentable enough, you will pass by. If you are in a hurry, then the chances of someone in need decrease significantly. You will also subconsciously count how many people are nearby. If there are a lot of them, then the poor guy has little chance at all: everyone will automatically explain their inaction to themselves by saying that someone else, more competent, will probably help the victim. As a result, perhaps no one will approach him at all. Or else: if you get an adrenaline injection before taking an exam and are given the opportunity to cheat, you won’t do it. You will be afraid, it will seem that your deception will surely be revealed. By the way, if, on the contrary, you are injected with a tranquilizer (sedative), then you will write off even in cases where you are quite sure of the answer. The sea is knee-deep under tranquilizers. By the way, it is the effect of releasing internal adrenaline that explains the fact that men whom women interviewed on a high suspension bridge over a stormy river found these women more attractive than those men whom the same women interviewed in less extreme conditions. That is, it’s all and always a mind game, which, however, has absolutely nothing to do with our consciousness and our awareness. There are a lot of very diverse processes going on in our brain — both intellectual, but unconscious, and physiological, as in the case of adrenaline — and we are not aware of the real state of affairs. We don’t really know why we made this or that decision, or how we felt. But believe me, our consciousness will always find a way to explain everything in a way that is logical, correct, justified and sound. It justifies us, no matter what we do. And he has no opinion of his own… I understand that this sounds at least strange: they say, our brain is in conflict with our own consciousness. Let’s say. But take a closer look at your friend — he probably thinks about himself, he has some version of himself (this is his consciousness), and there is also what he really is, what he actually does (this is the result of his brain). Would you be surprised if it turns out that his words are at odds with his deeds? In the case of another person, this does not seem strange or surprising to us. We are used to other people saying and thinking the same thing, but behaving and acting in a different way (maybe not in the exact opposite way, but still in a different way). And if we try to “expose them,” we are guaranteed to encounter misunderstanding and a powerful layered defense. Do you know why? Because other people think about themselves what they think about themselves, not what you notice in their behavior, not what you see and feel. Of course, they believe themselves — it can’t be otherwise! As soon as a person stops believing himself, he will immediately begin to personally seek emergency psychiatric help. Now look at yourself. You’re built the same way. And yes, you believe yourself. Always. You believe in your own interpretation of your own behavior (this is your consciousness), but there is also your actual behavior, what is really happening to you is your brain. It may be difficult to understand and accept, but your brain and your consciousness are really two different parts of you. Moreover, it is rare when they are on the same wavelength. A metaphor for the brain  — The real work is done here, inside, by the gray cells. Never forget about the gray cells, mon ami. Agatha Christie Our entire reality is hidden inside our own cranial box — in our brain. This thing has only extended its tentacles (receptors) outwards: some catch photons, others — air vibrations, others react to pressure, and others — to certain molecules. The brain converts signals from its tentacles into pictures, sounds, sensations, feelings, and complex abstract representations. Thus, everything you see, hear, feel, feel, think, etc., is the result of your brain’s work. He actually does it. He produces all this stuff. If you are placed in a hearing aid (a special device in which your receptors stop perceiving anything), you will begin to hallucinate after a while. It’s your brain, devoid of external stimuli, that gets bored and starts creating pictures of reality on its own[6]. In short, the brain creates everything we deal with. Moreover, we ourselves are also his work: we ourselves, our consciousness, and in general everything that we can imagine is what the brain creates, weaving a web of its neural connections. Therefore, in a sense, when we talk about the relationship between “brain” and “consciousness”, we are talking about the relationship of milk to a cow, or the airflow generated by a fan to the fan itself, or the relationship of a car to its movement. It is impossible to draw a clear boundary here. Of course, it will not be difficult to break such a connection formally and logically. But this way you’ll only get two new abstractions, and the relationship you’re looking for—what’s really going on—will be lost. A broken cup, of course, can be glued together, but it is at least strange to seriously talk about some kind of functional “relation” of one piece of a broken cup to another piece of it. But in this case, what do we mean by the word “consciousness”? An illustration in experience Imagine how many processes are going on in your brain at the same time… For example, I’m just sitting on a chair right now and typing this text on my computer. It would seem an elementary action. But in fact, this “simplicity” is provided by an incredible number of different brain processes. At the same time, my brain controls the position of my body in space, remembers who I am, what I am doing and why I am doing it. It regulates the activity of the organs of my body — the heart, every vessel, intestines, kidneys and bladder. It makes my world colorful and voluminous, muffles unnecessary sounds so that I don’t get distracted from writing the text. At the same time, he somehow manages to combine the reaction of my photoreceptors, which react to photons of light flying from the computer screen, with thoughts that are being generated in different parts of my brain at that moment. He plays with the associations that arise, adds to this knowledge of grammar and spelling, transmits all this to the nerve centers responsible for the movement of the fingers, which therefore hit the corresponding keys on the keyboard. And all this is somehow linked to my previous experience, memory, and my goals – to what I want to write, as well as to my ideas of how you, an unknown person, are reading this, and how I should describe it so that you understand what I’m trying to tell you. Say it. Moreover, this list is not even the tip of the iceberg, it is the tip of the tip. And even less than that! Well, what do you think can fit into a unit of time in my “consciousness”? What am I really “aware” of at this moment? Now, given the complexity of the issue, let’s switch to the language of metaphor. Imagine the brain (that is, in general, everything that you are dealing with) It’s like one big ocean, with all its inhabitants, reefs, depressions, currents, temperatures, ice, and shores. Now let’s imagine all the wildlife inhabiting the ocean, these are mammals and fish, jellyfish and arthropods, mollusks and crustaceans, corals and plankton, as well as countless plants, bacteria and fungi. Each of these creatures lives its own life in the ocean: here is the life of a starfish, and here are oysters, sharks, dolphins or sperm whales. Each such life is a part of the ocean, but each of them also somehow “sees” this ocean, somehow perceives it. That is, the ocean seems to be looking at itself from the inside. It sounds strange, but imagine this. And now project on yourself: all these views on what is happening in you are your “consciousness”. Well, now let’s move on from the metaphor to the psychological game. Just follow the instructions and keep an eye on what’s happening to you. Just take your time. •I suppose you’re either sitting, standing, or lying down. Feel your body pressing against the appropriate surface: buttocks, for example, on the seat of a chair, back on the back of a sofa, legs resting on the floor. • Now feel the weight of the book (or your gadget), the density of the cover and individual pages (or the case of your device). Look at the color of the letters, the shade of the paper, or the radiation from the screen. See how evenly the paper is flooded with light, how the screen glares. • Shake your leg, then your arm, then your head. Stretch out. • Now you will need to hear the sounds that surround you (they are definitely there, even if you are so engrossed in reading that you “can’t hear anything”). Close your eyes and listen. • I hope your eyes are open again and you are reading me… • Now try to relive the earliest memory of your childhood. What was that? What were you doing? Where did this happen? Who was there? • Okay, now try multiplying 16 by 5 in your mind. • Another difficult task: try to reproduce the alphabet from the end, starting with the letter “I”. As many as you can get… • Now imagine that a five-year-old child asks you what an “orgasm” is. What will you say to him? • Name the three character traits that define you most accurately. • How would you describe the itch? • Remember your first love and think about how you felt about this person back then. Would you be able to tell him that in person? • I don’t know how to cook borscht, tell me how to do it. Thanks! • If you have a boss, what kind of relationship do you have with him? Have you ever imagined having sex with him? Can you imagine now? • Remember the most intense feeling of pain that you have ever experienced. • What would you tell a therapist if he asked you about your mood, anxiety, and relationship with your parents? • Imagine a baby crying, followed by gagging sounds. • What are you hiding from everyone? What does no one else know about you? • What was the last video you watched on YouTube? And let’s stop there… Let’s think about what happened to you just now. It feels a little weird, doesn’t it? Remember how I asked you to direct the beam of your attention to physical sensations (tactile, visual, auditory), and then demanded to remember mathematics. Different areas of the brain are responsible for these topics, and you had to switch consciousness from one area to another. I asked about baby crying, vomiting, pain, as well as about “high feelings” — first falling in love, nostalgic memories. These are different mental registers — some are related to our instinctive reactions, others to cultural and aesthetic ones. It’s impossible to think about it at the same time, so your mind had to switch. And how can we simultaneously remember the recipe for cooking borscht and experience the feeling of awkwardness that naturally arises when we are asked to explain to a child what an “orgasm” is, or imagine having sex with a boss? Consciousness has to make real somersaults! But even though your consciousness was jumping from one place to another, from topic to topic, all this was already contained in your brain, all this was already in it. And he doesn’t hold all this information passively — it circulates in him, reverberates, “mixes” and affects, so to speak, the overall tone. Everything that makes up your world lives and seethes in your brain all the time. Remember the chaos of your dreams — this is the collaboration of different brain regions. When you are awake, the light of consciousness hides these stars from you, but they do not disappear from the brain and continue to influence what happens to us. The brain is everything, and consciousness is what we highlight in our brain. It’s a small ray of light gliding across the raging ocean of your brain. Being conscious, we do not hear even a hundredth of what is happening in our brain, we do not see its constant work. We are sure: what has come to our attention is reality, but in fact it is only a corner of it, a piece of it. And again, let’s return to the image of the ocean: answering each of my questions, you looked at yourself from the inside through the eyes of different creatures of your own. It is clear that the guppy fish, cuttlefish, coral reef, and dolphins see everything in their own way, live their lives, and the story told by one of these creatures will not reflect the whole truth of the ocean, but only the smallest part of it. This is the relationship our consciousness has with our brain. Consciousness cannot be separated from our brain, and the work of the brain is something that cannot be captured by consciousness. And this whole life of the brain — voluminous and significant — goes on relentlessly, in every gray cell and in every microscopic contact between them. However, whether consciousness knows about this complex and inexplicable work of our brain or not does not matter. This ocean continues to live its life. We are our brain: an ocean populated by different states, experiences, experiences, sensations, reactions, instincts, thoughts, feelings, memories, stereotypes, algorithms, automatisms, etc., etc. All this is us, our brain, and our consciousness is just where the ray of our attention is at the moment. Simply put, our consciousness deals only with fragments, with pieces, with fragments of ourselves, but the whole and authentic picture is hidden from it. Source: Kurpatov A.V. The Red Tablet. Face it!