Think About It

Every cathedral, every symphony, every scientific discovery, every terrible mistake, every joke that ever made you laugh, every act of kindness, every "I love you" and every "I'm sorry" all began the same way:

Someone had a thought.

But what is a thought?

You can decide to think about an elephant. But can you decide what your very next spontaneous thought will be?

That simple challenge opens the door to one of the oldest and strangest questions human beings have ever asked. Along the way, we'll discover why the Scarecrow may have been the wisest character in The Wizard of Oz, why Socrates annoyed almost everyone he met, how Eratosthenes measured the Earth with shadows, what Galileo saw that changed the universe, and why neuroscientists can watch your brain think without being able to explain why thinking feels like anything at all.

We'll wander through optical illusions, consciousness, thought experiments, and the surprisingly powerful question that lies at the heart of critical thinking:

How do I know this is true?

By the end of the hour, you probably won't know where thoughts come from.

Neither does anyone else.

But you may find yourself asking better questions than you were asking when we began.

And that might be how real thinking starts.

Find our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/447251562357065/

Transcript

THINK ABOUT IT The Anne Levine Show with Michael Over There 



THE MICHAEL OVER THERE EDITION

Editor’s note: This transcript has been corrected from the original automated transcript for spelling, punctuation, formatting, proper names, and obvious transcription errors while preserving the spoken performance. 

OPENING SONG: “I Think” 

Don’t think about elephants. I had a thought about a thought About another thought I had. And halfway through the thought, I thought The first one wasn’t bad. Then that thought another thought— Hey, think about it. [Brief audio clip] 








Every story you’ve ever heard. Every symphony. Every cathedral. Every scientific discovery. Every terrible mistake. Every act of kindness. Every joke that ever made you laugh. Every “I love you.” Every “I’m sorry.” Every one of them began the same way. Someone had a thought. So what is a thought? I mean, we all know what thinking feels like. We spend a lot of time doing it. But if I asked you to point to a thought, tell me exactly where one comes from, or explain why one thought appears instead of another, that’s when things get a little more interesting. Today I thought we’d spend our time together doing something that is simultaneously the easiest and the hardest thing in the world. We’re going to think about thinking. At least most of the time. Okay. Some of the time. Right? But have you ever stopped to ask what thinking actually is? I mean, not what you’re thinking about. Not whether your neighbor is thinking. Not whether Congress is thinking. Just: What is thinking? What is happening inside your head right now as you’re listening to me? How is it possible that a collection of atoms can somehow wonder about itself? And perhaps, more importantly, have we forgotten how to do it properly? Today we’re going to talk about ancient philosophers, some astonishing discoveries about the brain, and one of the biggest mysteries in all of science, all related to critical thinking. And by the end of the hour, I promise you will not know the answer. But you might have better questions. When most people think about The Wizard of Oz—stay with me—they think, “We’re not in Kansas anymore.” Or Toto. Or Oz. Or Dorothy. Me? I think about the village of Dennis, Massachusetts. That’s because the movie had its world premiere right here, just a few miles from where I’m sitting, at the Cape Cinema. So let’s begin our journey into thinking with someone who thought he couldn’t. After Dorothy sets off on her journey to find the Wizard, her first companion is the Scarecrow. And if you’ve seen the film, you remember his number-one problem while singing “If I Only Had a Brain.” But if you pay even limited attention to the rest of the movie, it becomes obvious that the Scarecrow isn’t stupid. In fact, if you watch carefully, he’s often the one solving the problems. He figures out practical solutions. He devises plans. He notices things. He reasons. The only thing he’s missing is confidence in his own ability to think. Now, after about an hour and a half of this classic film, have you ever noticed that nobody in Oz actually tests the Scarecrow’s intelligence? They simply accept his opinion of himself. And I wonder how many of us have done the same thing. Not because we can’t think, but because somewhere along the way, you know, we decided we weren’t the sort of people who could. Then, when we finally meet the Wizard, does he give the Scarecrow a brain? Spoiler alert, folks. If you haven’t seen this movie from 1939—or read the book—I’m about to reveal a big secret. No. He doesn’t give him a brain. He gives him a diploma. He gives him permission to recognize the abilities he already had. The Tin Man believes he has no heart, yet he’s the most compassionate. The Cowardly Lion believes he has no courage, yet he repeatedly acts bravely. The Scarecrow believes he has no brain, yet he keeps demonstrating remarkably sound judgment. Thinking and believing you’re a good thinker are two completely different things. Thinking and believing you’re brave are two completely different things. Thinking and believing you’re a good person are two completely different things. You know, every generation thinks the next generation has lost its mind. Well, and vice versa, really. The Greeks complained about young people. The Romans complained about young people. The Victorians complained about young people. Today we complain about young people on social media. It’s a human tradition. I think we might gain a little insight into this phenomenon by using some critical thinking. But have we actually forgotten how to think critically? Maybe. But I don’t think so. I think what we’ve forgotten is that critical thinking is hard. Critical thinking isn’t being cynical. Critical thinking isn’t disagreeing with everything. Critical thinking isn’t being the loudest person in the room. Critical thinking isn’t being critical. Critical thinking is asking one question: How do I know this is true? That’s it. One question. How do I know this is true? A politician makes a claim. How do I know? A television expert says something with absolute certainty. How do I know? Your favorite podcast host tells you a fascinating historical fact. How do I know? Especially that guy. He’s suspicious. I spend a lot of time reading weird stories. Lost cities. Strange archaeological discoveries. Mysterious creatures. Odd news. The first thing I’ve learned is that the best stories are often not true. Or at least not true in the way they’re being told. The real story is usually more complicated and, strangely enough, more interesting. Because reality does not owe us a good narrative. Reality just is. Which brings us to an interesting question. When did humans start doing this? When did somebody first stand up and say, “Hey, wait a minute. How do we know that’s true?” We know a surprising amount about thinking. We also don’t know what thinking ultimately is. There are really three questions hiding inside that one question. First: What is the brain doing when we think? This is the part science understands fairly well. Thinking involves billions of neurons communicating with one another using electrical impulses and chemical signals. Different kinds of thinking use different networks. If you’re visualizing something, much of your visual cortex becomes involved. Makes sense, right? Remembering draws on networks involving the hippocampus and the cortex. Planning relies heavily on your prefrontal cortex. Language activates a distributed network rather than a single “language center.” An MRI can actually show these networks becoming more or less active while someone performs different mental tasks. So if you ask what’s happening physically, we have a pretty good answer. But what is computation inside the brain? That’s where things become murkier. Many neuroscientists describe thinking as information processing. Your brain constantly predicts what’s about to happen, compares its prediction to reality, updates its internal model, and then chooses an action. Rather than simply reacting to the world, your brain is continually trying to guess the world a fraction of a second ahead. That’s why optical illusions can really get you. Your brain isn’t simply seeing. It’s making its best prediction about what it’s going to see next. Some researchers even argue that perception itself is a controlled hallucination, continually corrected by incoming evidence. That’s crazy. But it’s cool. But what is a thought? See, this is where nobody really knows. A thought isn’t a neuron. It isn’t an electrical impulse. It’s something that emerges from enormous numbers of neurons interacting. I think it’s a bit like asking, “What is a hurricane?” A hurricane isn’t any individual water droplet. It’s a pattern. In the same way, a thought appears to be a dynamic pattern of activity spread across many regions of your brain. We can observe pieces of that pattern. We can record pieces of that pattern. But we can’t point to one location and say, “Oh, there’s the thought.” Then comes the really hard problem. Suppose I scan your brain while you’re remembering your childhood dog. If you had one. Imagine a pet. Or, you know, a stuffed animal. Insert something from your childhood that was important to you. Because if your dog bit you or something like that, don’t remember that dog. Remember something else. All right. Let’s get back to it. Suppose I scan your brain while you’re remembering this thing. I can tell which neurons are active, and I might even be able to reconstruct a rough picture of what you’re imagining. But I can’t answer the strangest question. Why does that pattern feel like something on the inside of you? Why isn’t it just information processing? Why is there experience involved? Philosophers call this the Hard Problem of Consciousness. Nobody has solved it. Not philosophers. Not neuroscientists. Not AI researchers. Nobody. There are several competing ideas. There’s emergence: the idea that conscious thought simply emerges once information processing becomes sufficiently complex. Okay. All right. There’s Global Workspace Theory, which proposes that thoughts become conscious when information is broadcast widely across the brain. There’s Integrated Information Theory, suggesting that consciousness depends on how richly information is interconnected. There’s Predictive Processing, where consciousness is the brain’s ongoing model of itself interacting with the world. And finally, there’s Illusionism, which argues that consciousness feels mysterious because the brain misrepresents its own processes to us. None of these ideas has been universally accepted. Now, here’s my favorite observation. Or perhaps the thing that always amazes me most. You can decide to think about elephants. But can you decide what your next thought will be? Try it. Before I say the next thing, choose your next completely spontaneous thought. Hello. What appeared? Where did it come from? You didn’t consciously manufacture that thought piece by piece. It simply arrived. This has led many psychologists and philosophers to suggest that conscious awareness may be less the author of thought and more its narrator or editor. We experience ourselves as deciding and directing. But much of the machinery that generates ideas seems to operate outside conscious awareness before those ideas ever enter our experience. So let’s try it again. I don’t mean think about something. I mean choose the exact thought that will occur next. Can you do it? Go ahead. Give it another try. Can you do it? Or are thoughts less like sentences we write and more like birds flying through a picture frame? Some veer left. Some head for the exit. We recognize them as ours. But did we really create them? That question sits right on the boundary between neuroscience and philosophy. And despite centuries of inquiry, it’s a boundary we still haven’t fully crossed. Most history books focus on battles. I like battles. Battles are exciting. But some of history’s biggest turning points happened because somebody asked a question, not because somebody swung a sword. Take Socrates. He had a habit that made him really unpopular. He asked people to explain themselves. People would say they knew something, and he’d ask how. They’d explain, and he’d ask another question. Then another. And before long, nobody knew anything anymore. Apparently, this was considered rude. Honestly, I understand why. I know a few people like that. Then there was Eratosthenes, one of my favorite people in history. More than two thousand years ago, he figured out the size of the Earth. No satellites. No airplanes. No GPS. He used shadows. Shadows. That’s the intellectual equivalent of fixing a car with a slotted spoon. And yet he came surprisingly close—within roughly four to fourteen percent of the Earth’s actual size—because he followed evidence instead of assumptions. He had a thought. Then came Galileo. Everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Everybody. The universe disagreed. Galileo looked through a telescope and saw things that should not have existed if accepted wisdom had been correct. That thought changed everything. Imagine discovering something true while almost everybody around you insisted it was impossible—and got angry with you for saying so. We can see thinking happening with an MRI. We know what people have done with theirs. But let’s return to another core question about thinking. Do we all think the same way? This is where things get weird. Not fun history weird. Existential weird. Most of us assume that thinking is the little voice inside our heads. The narrator. That running commentary. The one that occasionally reminds you of something embarrassing you said in 1987. But that’s only part of thinking. Musicians think in sound. Artists think in images. Engineers think in systems. Chess masters think in patterns. And some people barely have an internal monologue at all. Frankly, that sounds peaceful. So if thinking isn’t just words, maybe it isn’t one thing at all. Some people have no trouble picturing a juicy red apple in their minds. Other people can’t imagine one no matter how hard they try. So it isn’t just pictures, either. Scientists believe thought emerges from networks of billions of neurons communicating with one another. But here’s the strange part. No single neuron contains a thought, just as no single drop of water contains a wave. The thought somehow emerges from the system. And “somehow” is carrying an awful lot of weight in that sentence. [Intermission music: “Let’s All Go to the Lobby”] Let’s play a game. Not a game that requires a board. Not a game that requires cards. Just your brain. Which, if you’re listening to this show, I assume you brought with you. If you need to go to the refrigerator and get yours, I’ll wait. Okay. All set? A thought experiment is exactly what it sounds like. It’s an experiment you conduct entirely in your head. No laboratory. No microscope. No expensive government grants. Just imagination. And surprisingly often, these imaginary experiments have changed the real world. Let’s begin with a ship. Imagine an old wooden sailing vessel. Over time, one of the boards rots and is replaced. Then another. Then another. Eventually, every single board has been replaced. Here’s the question: Is it still the same ship? Most people say yes. Now let’s make it worse. Suppose someone saved all the original boards. After many years, they rebuilt the original ship from those old boards. Now there are two ships. Which one is the real one? You may now stare into space for a while. Philosophers have been doing that for more than two thousand years. This is known as the Ship of Theseus, and it raises a surprisingly personal question. Every cell in your body is replaced over time. Your opinions change. Your memories fade. Your appearance changes. Are you still the same person you were at age ten? If so, what exactly stayed the same? Next comes perhaps the most famous cat in history. And possibly the least cooperative. Although, you know, who knows? In the 1930s, physicist Erwin Schrödinger proposed a strange thought experiment. Imagine a cat sealed inside a box. Inside is a device connected to a random quantum event—whatever it is. If the event occurs, the cat dies. If it doesn’t, the cat lives. According to some interpretations of quantum mechanics, before you open the box, the cat exists in a strange state where it is both alive and dead. Not half alive. Not half dead. Both. At least mathematically. Now, Schrödinger didn’t invent this idea because he believed it. He invented it because he thought it sounded absurd. Unfortunately, physics looked at the absurdity and replied, “Yeah. That’s exactly the problem.” And to this day, physicists are still arguing about what it means. Let’s get more uncomfortable, shall we? Imagine. Come on. Imagine your brain has been removed from your body. Don’t worry. This is already going poorly enough, right? Your brain has been placed in a tank and connected to a supercomputer. The computer perfectly simulates reality. Every sight. Every sound. Every conversation. Everything. It’s basically The Matrix. Here’s the question: How would you know? What test could prove you aren’t already living inside a simulation like that? This thought experiment forces us to confront a really uncomfortable possibility. Much of what we call reality comes through our senses. And our senses can be tricked. It doesn’t prove we’re living in a simulation, but it does remind us just how difficult certainty can be. In the nineteenth century, physicist James Clerk Maxwell imagined a tiny being guarding a door between two chambers of gas. This little creature could allow fast-moving molecules through while blocking the slow ones. That would appear to violate the laws of thermodynamics. In simple terms, it would create order from disorder. Scientists spent decades wrestling with this imaginary creature. And while they were doing it, they discovered deep connections between information, computation, and physics itself. An imaginary being that helped unlock real science. Not bad, right? For a creature that never existed. Let me tell you about something I witnessed. Years ago, I met a man who had worked for the British Leyland Corporation in the United Kingdom. He described a meeting he had attended where they were discussing the basic requirements for a new airplane. This would have been sometime in the 1950s. A new thrust engine had been invented, and someone had an idea. They laid out most of the requirements to the engineering staff. It all sounded fairly repetitive, because an airplane is an airplane. Then, at the very end, they added one small caveat. I’m paraphrasing, but essentially they said: “And, yeah—no runway.” One tiny idea. One thought experiment in action. Here’s the remarkable thing. None of these experiments actually happened. There was no ship. No cat. No brain in a vat. No little demon. Yet every one of them revealed something important. About identity. About reality. About knowledge. About physics. About ourselves. Sometimes the most powerful tool humans possess isn’t a telescope, a microscope, or a supercomputer. Sometimes it’s the ability to imagine a question so clearly that reality has no choice but to answer. Speaking of people who spent a great deal of time asking questions that made everyone’s head hurt, let’s meet a French philosopher named René Descartes. One day, he asked a question so fundamental that we’re still trying to answer it four centuries later: How do I know I exist? One of history’s most famous overthinkers, Descartes decided to doubt everything. Everything. What if his senses were wrong? What if his memories were wrong? What if reality itself were an illusion? That led him to one conclusion. If he was doubting, then someone had to be doing the doubting. Hence: “I think, therefore I am.” Four hundred years later, we’re still arguing about what he meant. And that’s probably exactly what he would have wanted. [Brief audio clip] I don’t know. I don’t know. I titled this episode Think About It. We’ve talked about what thinking is. But what about the strange experience of becoming aware that you’re thinking? And I don’t mean meditation. I mean that delightful moment when you catch yourself. Let’s look at the opening song again: I had a thought about a thought About another thought I had. And halfway through the thought, I thought The first one wasn’t bad. It’s silly. It’s a song. But it points to something real. Human beings can watch their own thoughts. What can you catch going by right now? And then, poof. You can forget you have thoughts at all and become blissfully unaware, with no thoughts wishing to intrude. I’ll tell you exactly what happened today while I was recording this show. I started recording a show about thinking, and halfway through, my brain wandered off to the next episode. Then the episode after that. For a moment, I forgot where I was in the process. Sometimes thoughts seem to run out of energy. Or time. Or maybe patience. Here’s where we leave history, folks, and enter mystery. Scientists can tell us which parts of the brain become active when you remember your first bicycle, hear a favorite song, or recognize a face. But nobody knows why those experiences feel like anything. Why isn’t the brain simply a machine processing information? Why is there an experience attached to it? Why does it feel like something to be you? Nobody knows. And that may be the biggest mystery humanity has ever encountered. Not aliens. Not Atlantis. Not Bigfoot. Not even why socks disappear in the dryer. Consciousness. The fact that you are having an experience right now. Maybe critical thinking isn’t really about knowing answers. Maybe it’s about becoming comfortable with questions. The people who changed history weren’t always the smartest people. They were often the people willing to ask one more question than everybody else. So this week, ask yourself a question. Not what you’re thinking. But what thinking is. And if you don’t find an answer, welcome to the club. Some of the smartest people who ever lived are still waiting. And finally, perhaps sometime before you go to sleep tonight, notice one thought. Don’t judge it. Don’t analyze it. Just notice it arriving. Then ask yourself where it came from. Odds are, you won’t know. And that’s kind of amazing. For Anne Levine, I think we should put a light on.