← On Purpose with Jay Shetty
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Alex O’Connor: #1 Shift That Stops Endless Overthinking (FINALLY Get Unstuck)
01:33:19
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- [00:00]
Jay Shetty
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- [02:06]
Alex O'Connor
Why do things exist? We have swallowed wholesale this idea that everything can be reduced to scientific explanations. I just don't think that's true.
- [02:16]
Interviewer
What is the most dangerous idea? People believe without questioning.
- [02:20]
Alex O'Connor
There are very few things that people can be certain of. Pay attention when you are convinced that you know why you're doing something.
- [02:26]
Interviewer
What is a good life?
- [02:27]
Alex O'Connor
I would ask what they mean by good.
- [02:28]
Interviewer
What do you think people are most afraid to admit about life?
- [02:32]
Alex O'Connor
That it comes to an end?
- [02:35]
Interviewer
Alex o' Connor welcome to On Purpose.
- [02:37]
Alex O'Connor
Jay, nice to meet you.
- [02:38]
Interviewer
It's nice to meet you, mate. I've been looking forward to meeting you for a long, long time. I've been consumer and fan of your content. Thoroughly enjoy watching you, whether it's debate, conversation. Very, very intriguing stuff. I wanted to start off by asking you, I hope you've never been asked before. I don't think I saw this, but what's a childhood memory that you have that you feel defines who you are today?
- [02:59]
Alex O'Connor
My childhood is a bit unusual given the line of work I found myself in. I grew up just sort of south of Oxford city centre in a place called Blackbird Lees, which when I think of my childhood, what I remember is acting up at school, in secondary school, kind of not showing up for class. I used to skateboard and I used to sort of wear jeans and the wrong shoes and have arguments with the teachers, that kind of petty stuff. I used to like playing music so I'd like skip class to be in the school recording studio, that kind of stuff. And you know, somebody asked me recently, I was doing a talk with some school kids and one of them asked like, do you think your upbringing has affected your worldview? And that's a difficult question to answer. Cause we never know for sure. If someone asks like, why are you an atheist? There's one sense in which you could say, because I don't believe that the contingency argument is sound. And there's another in which you could say, because my parents got divorced when I was 8, you know what I mean? And those can kind of be both true and so it's difficult to sort of psychologise. But I was thinking like, yeah, maybe the fact that I had this slightly sort of acting out, rebellious attitude, that meant that when I came across the new atheist movement, something about the debate, something about the theater attracted me to it because I had that kind of attitude as a child. My memory would be kind of like walking into school at like midday wearing the wrong uniform and having somebody kind of say, you know, you really should be wearing black shoes. And me just saying, oh, I'll sort it out tomorrow. And that kind of just being the kind of childhood I had, which is maybe not what people would expect given how much I care about being a bit more like studious these days and how I'm kind of associated with like academics. I'm not an academic myself, but I speak to them all the time and I've got a university degree and this kind of stuff. I find that's also kind of like Helpful for people to hear sometimes because a lot of people listen to my stuff who are really interested in like philosophy or theology or whatever it is, but they don't like school. They don't do so well at school and not interested. And I kind of want to say that's okay. Like don't flunk out. Like do the best you can, but don't take school or your, your sort of desire to be in school or academia as a proxy for your desire to like learn about the world, you know.
- [05:13]
Interviewer
So it sounds like there was a bit of a rebellious, anti establishment, pushing back version of you, but maybe not.
- [05:20]
Alex O'Connor
Well, but everyone likes to say that, right? Everyone wants to sort of be. Well, I was such a, I was a rebellious child and I used to sort of win debates with my teachers. So like. Yeah, but you know, nothing super profound. Just like your normal, kind of slightly annoying, yeah, kid.
- [05:31]
Jay Shetty
But you were still great at school
- [05:33]
Interviewer
because you went to Oxford as well.
- [05:34]
Alex O'Connor
So you would have got good grades eventually, right? The first time I did what we call A levels in the uk, which is like the last two years of high school, I did further maths, maths and physics.
- [05:44]
Interviewer
Yeah, those are all hard subjects.
- [05:46]
Alex O'Connor
And I did critical thinking as a side sort of thing. And I got three U's, which is like, if you go like A, B, C, D, E, F, U stands for unmarked, it means it's so low that it doesn't even register. I actually overslept one of the exams and I got a phone call from my mum to waking me up, being like, are you like, I've just had a call from the school. And the disappointment in her voice, it was horrifying, you know, but I just, I just didn't care. It was really only in like the last year I had to go back and redo A levels because you have to stay in education till you're 18 in the UK. And I thought, you know what, why not? Let's give this a crack. So I got ABC doing humanities subjects. I remember I had some friends who still had these friends who wanted to go to Oxford for the longest time, you know, since they were young and they worked really hard at school. And I would sometimes joke, you know, about how I was going to go to Oxford too. And then they would laugh and I'm like, okay, I am joking, but why is that so funny? Why is that so funny? You know. And I kind of, I got a bit motivated by these, these friends of mine. Seeing that like ambition and drive kind of helped me and becoming their friends. Was just a good influence in that. In that very crucial period of like, sort of motivating me to. To get the grades which allowed me to go to Oxford. But then again, like, you know, if you're, if you're flunking out school right now, if you're doing your exams and you think it's like the end of the world, retake these exams. It's not the end of the world. And if you don't get into your dream university, there are all kinds of reasons why I might have preferred to have gone to a different university. It's just like, nice to know that there are options. I think. Young people, everything's so serious when it comes to exams and they are, you know, take them seriously. It's better if you do well. Sure. But it's not the end of the world if you don't.
- [07:17]
Interviewer
Yeah. And you can take them again.
- [07:18]
Alex O'Connor
Yeah, exactly.
- [07:19]
Interviewer
Talk to me about that flip in mindset, though, because getting a U, not turning up to an exam and then turning it around and being able to go, this is important. Talk to me about that shift though, because I think at that age we do place such a heavy weight on these things. Not showing up, not turning up, failing, feeling like it's not working out, but then being able to flip it around within a short period of time. It was such a long time ago and you can't fully say this is exactly what I was doing, but talk to me about at least what it feels like when you reflect back and go why you felt I'm going to change my mindset around this.
- [07:53]
Alex O'Connor
I think it was because I knew that I could do more. I knew that I could pass the exam. I knew that I could do philosophy and critical thinking and this kind of stuff. Just sort of flunking out of school in that way. For me, it was a very intentional thing. I'm not interested in this. I want to be a rock star or a professional skateboarder or something like that instead. But I kind of got the feeling that people didn't believe me. You know, they thought that the reason why I'm failing is because I'm not, you know, I don't have the goods, I can't do this kind of stuff. And it wasn't just that. It wasn't like, I just thought, I need to prove a point now. But when I suddenly got this idea in my head that it would be fun to go to university, it would be cool, and I started admiring new atheist figures like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, both of whom studied at Oxford. And I'd also started making YouTube videos. This was the other thing. Right. I'm like 17 when I start making videos online, at least the videos I make today and they were these kind of edgy, new atheist type videos and like they started doing quite well relative for the time. And. And I think there was also this feeling of like, if I'm going to be on the Internet talking about, you know, God and religion and debating people and stuff, I better prove that I know what I'm talking about. It feels a bit weird to be doing that and then like failing school. And so I kind of knew that I could do it. I thought that it might be useful and so I just sort of decided to give it another go. And it was very much a case of being like, yeah, see, I can do this. I just didn't want to before and I kind of regret that I didn't. But then having said that, it, if I'd have done further maths and physics, who knows what I'd be doing now and I'd still be interested in philosophy. But I think that it was definitely a good thing that it went the other way.
- [09:31]
Interviewer
Yeah. I appreciate you addressing some things about how young people are feeling today about college or not going or university or whether attending. When you think about it from that perspective, you said you knew you had the goods. I think a lot of young people today feel they don't have the goods. They don't actually feel confident in their ability to academically at school or even otherwise. What do you say to them? What do you think about, for someone who's looking at that going, yeah, I don't, I don't even know what I would do, I don't know what I'd study. I don't really know myself. You got interested in atheism early. You were making content. You were almost this, you were this self starter, it seems, 10 years ago, which again was pretty revolutionary for someone your age because there's not that many people that got started that early. What would you say to someone right now who's saying, alex, you know, I'd love to do something like you or my own thing, but I actually don't know what I'm good at. I don't know what my strengths are.
- [10:23]
Alex O'Connor
I think it's really rare to know what you want to do at any age. Essentially a lot of people fall into what they do, but certainly at that age and I think that you kind of have to either take a guess and realize that you can always Change your mind, or you can do it later. You're going to be good at something. There's going to be something you're good at. And it might be something which isn't traditionally recognized as a form of intelligence. Intelligence is a difficult thing to define, but it's probably something like the ability to perform particular tasks. It's the ability to, like, perform tasks with a particular goal in mind. That's why we call AI artificial intelligence. Even though it might not be conscious or a person or anything. The intelligence is the ability to perform tasks, and there's something you can do. People who are musically talented, it's a very particular kind of genius. They might have absolutely no idea what the quadratic equation is, but they can just intuit musical feeling in a way that other people just couldn't even comprehend. There might be skills that you didn't even know were skills. Maybe you're, like really good at architecture and your school just doesn't do architecture. And it would take a long time for you to realize that that's the thing you're into. It took me a long time to realize architecture was even like a subject that existed that people study. You know what I mean?
- [11:34]
Interviewer
Yeah, I love that point.
- [11:35]
Alex O'Connor
There's going to be something you're good at. And if you're being told that you're not good at something, it may be that you're not putting enough effort in and that you're slacking, in which case try a bit harder. But if you feel like you are, you're doing your best, you're trying as hard as you can, and people keep telling you you need to try harder. It's probably just that they're not recognizing the things that you're good at. But we have no idea why some people are good at things and others not. It could be social, it could be genetic, it could be anything. Who knows? All that matters is that right now you're good at some things and bad at others. I think the best advice anyone can give on that regard, in that regard is to figure out as quickly as possible what you're good at. That's the most important thing. What are you good at, and what do you enjoy doing? And try to try to pursue that and then realize that you don't have to look, you don't have to go to university even if you want to be a physicist or a mathematician. Eventually you'll probably have to. But you don't have to do it now. You can take some time out. You can think, is this really what I want to be doing. You can go and travel the world or whatnot. If you really want to go down the academic route, there are always options available for you and there are so many now. You can do them online, you can do them virtually, you can do them part time. There's always something available for you. It's so obvious to someone who's an adult, someone who's like currently working in a cafe and doesn't really know what they want to do with themselves. It's not going to console them to say, hey man, you don't need to worry about academia. They're going to be like, I didn't even think of that. But when you're a kid, academia is
- [12:51]
Interviewer
like the only thing, the only thing.
- [12:53]
Alex O'Connor
Unless maybe you're like a particularly talented like footballer or something in your school. And then maybe. But even then, maybe your school doesn't encourage that kind of thing. And you will be told that the most important thing in your life are your exams. Don't get me wrong, those exams are important, like nail them. It will help you in the long run. But the idea that that is kind of what life's about is obviously insane. And I think kids know that, but they haven't felt it, they haven't internalized it. I speak to a lot of school kids and they've heard this kind of stuff, you know, don't let the exams rule your life and stuff. But some of them, I think hearing that I literally did just completely fail and then changed my mind and turned it around and it of relaxes them a little bit. It's no guarantee that you're going to be able to turn it around and go to Oxford. Right. It's obviously not the case. I feel very lucky in that regard. But like, there are options, man.
- [13:41]
Interviewer
I love the idea that you only discover subjects exist after you become an adult. I felt like that with so many things. I thought I hated science because it was biology and then learned about neuroscience later on. And I was fascinated.
- [13:54]
Alex O'Connor
Exactly.
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Interviewer
And I thought, oh gosh, if I didn't have to learn plant biology, if I. It was always brain biology, I think I would have been. That would have been something I would have wanted to study. And you can now, that's the point, right?
- [14:03]
Alex O'Connor
You can textiles. But I think you can get the kernel of what you might be into because maybe you might find that you really enjoy your art classes and, you know, you don't want to be an artist. You know, you're not going to be the next, you know, Monet or Whatever. But, like, you enjoy it. That should be enough to maybe think, okay, then I'll study that. And I don't know where it's going to end up. But that's the kind of thing that opens up these worlds that you didn't know existed. That will help with being able to be an architect. Yes, because you will be able to draw images, it will help with doing textiles, it will help with set management. You know, you could be someone who designs sets for podcasts. A job that didn't even exist really when I was at school. And now it's a very specific, very niche thing that people are after. The most important thing is the passion. It would always really upset me when at university there were people who would struggle a lot with the work and then also think, and I'm not even sure if I should be doing this. I don't know if this was the right subject. That's just. That's nihilism, man. Suffering is one thing. Being aware that your suffering is kind of meaningless. That's what nihilism is. And that's what can be brought out. If you study something you're not passionate about, and then it gets hard because you've got this double whammy of the meaninglessness plus the difficulty.
- [15:09]
Interviewer
But so many of us are stuck exactly there.
- [15:11]
Alex O'Connor
You know, if someone studies theology or philosophy, it's famously a very unemployable job. What are you going to do except be a priest or a YouTuber? I can deal with the fact that, like, what's this all for? Is this going anywhere? Is this going to get me a job? Because I've got this passion for it, Because I just love it for its own sake. Maybe you're studying to be a doctor, you're doing medicine, and maybe you're not super passionate about it. A lot of people are, but maybe you're not. But you think to yourself, well, I know where this is going. I'm going to be a doctor. I'm going to save lives, I'm going to make a lot of money. I'm going to provide for my children. And that allows you to deal with the fact that you're not passionate about it. You need at least one of those. You need the passion or the direction. If you have both, then you've hit the gold mine. If you have neither, then I think you become a bit nihilistic, at least in regards to your employment.
- [15:54]
Interviewer
Absolutely. I've heard you say, Alex, that you're fascinated by history.
- [15:57]
Alex O'Connor
Oh, yeah.
- [15:58]
Interviewer
And I wanted to ask you if you could go back in time and witness something personally. What moment in history would you choose and why?
- [16:07]
Alex O'Connor
I'm afraid it's gonna be boring in the sense that it is definitely going to be something biblical, like. There's no question about that, really. No question.
- [16:12]
Interviewer
Anytime.
- [16:13]
Alex O'Connor
There are certain things which it might be sort of interesting to see. I'd love to see Stonehenge getting built. I'd love to see the pyramids be built, that kind of stuff. But when I came back and said, you know, it turns out they used a pulley system and everyone goes like, oh, cool. It's not the most profound thing in the world for me. My line of work is so much engaged in worldview, and the worldview that I'm mostly engaged in talking about is Christianity. And some of the biggest mysteries about the Christian religion are about specifically the kinds of things that Jesus actually said and did, as opposed to what orthodox Christians believe he did. The resurrection is an obvious example. Stand outside the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea and see if somebody gets up and walks out. But also the baptism. I'd love to see the baptism of Jesus, because I want to know, why was Jesus being baptized? Who was John the Baptist? Why did Jesus seem to be some kind. I mean, historically, some people think he might have been a disciple of John the Baptist, which Christians won't want to accept. But I'd love to know that fact. It's the moment where Jesus ministry really begins. And the Gospels tell us that the heavens open and there's this voice from heaven, and that this is where Jesus sort of picks up some of his initial disciples from as well. I would love to see what happened there. Because if I showed up and John the Baptist said, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And I would say, gosh, okay, Christianity's maybe got something going for it. But if you showed up and Jesus bowed down and said, master, you know, then I think it would totally upset orthodox Christianity. And I think that's like a really important question. What's the relationship between Jesus and John the Baptist? So I'd love to see them meet, but it's hard to know. I mean, you've surely got an answer for this question yourself.
- [17:52]
Interviewer
Sometimes I find myself being fascinated by so many moments in history. And main me, it's about human decision making. So I don't know if you saw this movie recently. It's called Nuremberg.
- [18:00]
Alex O'Connor
I haven't seen it.
- [18:01]
Interviewer
It's all about the Nuremberg trials and Post World War II, how we make decisions on morality, how we make decisions, on how we evaluate what the Germans did. And you got Guring, who is leading the Germans on behalf of Hitler, versus his therapist, played by Rami Malek, who is unbelievable in the movie. But I look at a moment like that and I go, wow, like humans had to really sit down and think about. Because for the first time ever, how do you truly go to court for Post World War II and the actions that were taken against the Jews? And I'm like, that's a fascinating moment to be a part of now, that's not that long ago.
- [18:40]
Alex O'Connor
Yeah.
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Interviewer
So then you go, okay, where were those other moments in history where big decisions were made by groups of human beings after groups of human beings went through certain amount of suffering, turmoil or subjugation?
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Alex O'Connor
And when you don't have documents, I mean, because when history is recent enough, you can kind of put yourself there by reading the books and obviously there's going to be bias and misreporting and stuff like that. And you've got to be careful. But like, if you go far back enough, especially into ancient history, you've got like one little shred. Some of our most well known famous historical figures from antiquity, we only know they exist from like maybe one, maybe two sources. It's like a scrap of papyrus somewhere with a name scribbled on it. And yet these people were so important. So I think it would have to be. It would have to be an ancient event.
- [19:26]
Interviewer
Yes, yes. Yeah. I go back, I would genuinely want to go back to the point at which the Bhagavad Gita was spoken, which has always been my fascination and my form of study. But being at that moment, I wouldn't want to be on the battlefield because I couldn't handle myself. I'll tell you that I'd fail miserably at archery or anything like that.
- [19:43]
Alex O'Connor
Do you think if you went back, you would find Arjuna on a literal battlefield being advised by an actual deity?
- [19:51]
Interviewer
I would hope so. I mean, the place Kurukshetra exists, it's believed that that is where the battle took place. And so to me, I would hope, I would definitely hope so that I would get to experience it as it's told in the way it's told, as a historic piece.
- [20:04]
Alex O'Connor
If you went back and you found there were no such historical event, or maybe there were a historical battle, but like the conversation that's had throughout the Bhagavad Gita is a fictional one, would that like trouble you? Because for me, I'd still quite like The Bhagavad Gita, I'd find it worth reading.
- [20:22]
Interviewer
I think I'd find the text still fascinating. I think you'd feel slightly misled in the fact that you were told it was historical.
- [20:30]
Alex O'Connor
Sure, yeah.
- [20:30]
Interviewer
Yeah. So I think I wouldn't have an issue with what's in the book and the conversation because I find great value and meaning in that. But I would feel misled that I'd been told this was historic and it wasn't actually historic.
- [20:42]
Alex O'Connor
It's so important, like what the claim is that's being made by particular religious traditions. For example, for many Christians, if it turns out that the resurrection of Jesus is not a literal event that happened in history, but instead some kind of later mythologizing, the religion falls apart, it grounds itself on a, on a very specific historical claim. It can't just be, oh well, I'm a bit annoyed that my, my pastor told me that this really happened, but I guess this is fine. It would be like this is completely upended everything that I believe about the universe. That's one of the reasons why, when you ask what historical event would I see the key moment in the world's most popular religion seems to be quite an important one to me. Suppose you went and found out that, you know, Jesus didn't rise from the dead, or you found out that Muhammad was a false prophet. What are you going to do, like come back to London and go right here?
- [21:27]
Interviewer
Ye hear?
- [21:27]
Alex O'Connor
Yeah. I've got to tell you guys something, you know, I'd rather not know because I'd be terrified to let people know what I'd seen.
- [21:34]
Interviewer
Yeah, and no one would believe you.
- [21:35]
Alex O'Connor
Exactly. Yeah.
- [21:36]
Jay Shetty
Or there would be a, you'd start
- [21:37]
Interviewer
developing a following on YouTube.
- [21:38]
Alex O'Connor
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [21:40]
Interviewer
You'd be able to create your own cult.
- [21:42]
Jay Shetty
Talk to me about what reading you
- [21:44]
Interviewer
have done in Eastern traditions. It sounds like you have done a bit of exploration that I probably haven't heard about before.
- [21:50]
Alex O'Connor
Basically. It's really funny because I talk about religion all the time, and particularly Christianity. People say things like, hey man, you should talk about, you should talk about Hinduism. And I'm like, okay, I get why you're saying that. That's fair. I'd love to, but it's not quite as simple as that.
- [22:05]
Interviewer
Of course not.
- [22:05]
Alex O'Connor
You know what I mean?
- [22:06]
Interviewer
Definitely.
- [22:06]
Jay Shetty
It's a really.
- [22:07]
Alex O'Connor
Even when it comes to like, people say, well, you should, you should have, you should have a Hindu on your show to talk to them. And I'm like, even that is tricky because firstly, I prepare as Hard as I can for every guest that comes on my show, I can't learn Hinduism. And even so, it's not like you can just have a Hindu on the show and that becomes like, oh, you've done. You've done Hinduism now. It took me a long time, like, even sort of finding my feet as to, like, where to start looking for interesting stuff. And my way in ultimately came through my study of consciousness. I'm fascinated by the philosophy of mind, and of course, the Indian tradition has this amazing content, essentially on the philosophy of mind that I hadn't really encountered before, becoming convinced of some weird views about consciousness, about how it's not reducible to material and how it's not as simple as saying that brains just produce consciousness. That kind of stuff sort of led me into learning about specifically the Advaita Vedanta tradition. Advaita Vedanta, meaning, like, the Vedas are part of the Hindu scriptural canon. They're like the oldest religious scriptures in the world. I think, like, anta means. I think it's the addendum. Anta means, like, end. So you get like, end of the Vedas, meaning, like the latter part of the Vedas, which collectively are known as the Upanishad, and advaita meaning like a, like non, and divider, meaning dual. So in the philosophy of mind, I think in philosophy generally, one of the biggest questions is how many types of stuff are there? Because there's this really weird sort of division of reality where we're conscious, we have subjectivity, like inner thoughts, and this mug over here doesn't. So there seems to be kind of two different kinds of things. You've basically got three options when it comes to explaining that. One is that there are just two types of things in the universe. There's mind and there's body, there's mental and there's physical. And they are just separate kinds of things, and somehow they interact with each other. Another way is to say, actually, there's only one type of stuff, and that type of stuff is the dead stuff. It's the matter, the atoms. This is the most popular view in the west today. The only stuff that exists is atoms that are dead. And it's just that if you put them together in the right way, you get this thing called consciousness. But really it's kind of just a manifestation of the atoms. There's a third option, which is there is only one type of stuff, and it's the mental stuff. And what we call physical. What we call the physical world around us is a Manifestation of mental stuff, which sounds super hippie dippy, but that's only because we're not used to it. I mean, the idea that people think that, you know, they're just happy to accept that if you put physical matter together in the right order, it will produce thoughts. That is as weird to me as saying that if you put thoughts together in the right order, you could produce some physical matter. It seems like a sort of category mistake, right? But I think there's only one type of stuff. So there's this view which in the Western tradition is called idealism, which is kind of the view that everything exists as mental stuff. Some people have said that everything is kind of an idea in the mind of God. Some people think that nothing exists except insofar as it's being perceived. It's a very sort of complicated and quite deep philosophical tradition. But it's something that the Advaita Vedanta tradition had been banging on about for thousands of years prior to its development in the Western canon. The reason it's Vedanta is because the Upanishads are particularly interested in the idea that kind of division is an illusion and unity is real. And. And it heavily implies that consciousness or like the soul, the kind of stuff that makes you yourself is kind of one thing with everybody else's self. And that all of that consciousness is kind of the same thing as the universe. That there's this great big sort of unity of stuff. I thought that was really cool. So it's a bit of a sort of long winded way to say that I started looking into that. And then I had Swami Sarvapriyananda, he's the head of the Vedanta Society of New York or whatever it's called on my show. And we talked about Advait Vedanta, we talked about consciousness, we didn't talk about the Hindu pantheon of gods. I still don't understand how Brahman manifests in like hundreds of different deities. I still don't really get that at all. I don't know about the different traditions who see different deities as their main gods and stuff like that. I don't really understand that, but I understand the philosophy of consciousness. We were able to have a great conversation about this particular Indian tradition. But the thing about Advaita Vedanta is it's not really a religious tradition. It's a philosophical tradition that comes from India. So when I do this show, yeah, I'm speaking to a Hindu and people say, great, you're talking about Hinduism for the first Time. It's like, no, I'm not really. I'm talking about a philosophical school that comes from India, which is not the same thing. I mean, the word Hindu is very unhelpful anyway because it's what's called an exonym, which is a word which is applied from the outside. People didn't call themselves Hindus. It's sort of got etymological roots with, like, the Indus river valley, which is where a particular people were just doing their thing, just going about their business. And Europeans sort of label these people Hindus, but it sort of refers to the geography. Someone's saying, like, have a Hindu on. It's. It's kind of a little bit like someone saying, like, have a European on. So I can get why somebody, if you'd never spoken to a European, would want me to speak to a European. Because there is a different flavor of thought that goes on there. But it's such a rich and varied sort of culture.
- [27:27]
Interviewer
No, I appreciate the way you're looking at it.
- [27:28]
Alex O'Connor
You just can't do that. So when someone says, like, you ask, you know, what's your engagement with the Indian tradition? It's sort of like somebody saying, what's your engagement in the Western philosophical canon? It's like, that's a big question. I've got to say I'm much more specific. You know, I'm interested in this person or that person or this school. And so for me, the stuff that I love from the Indian tradition is their views on consciousness, which I think predates the Western stuff and does it a lot more sort of intuitively foreign.
- [28:03]
Jay Shetty
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- [28:51]
Alex O'Connor
Connecting changes everything.
- [28:53]
Jay Shetty
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- [30:45]
Interviewer
Are there a lot of New Age atheists that are also fascinated in that way? Is that common or is that quite rare?
- [30:52]
Alex O'Connor
I don't think New atheists because the New atheist movement was a very. It's interesting how we talk about it in the past tense now, like it doesn't really exist anymore. Yeah, it was a very sort of prickly kind of criticism and it's indebted to the so called four Horsemen, mostly Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris. Daniel Dennett wasn't quite as fierce, you know, but these guys, you've got a biologist, an evolutionary biologist in Richard Dawkins, a journalist in Christopher Hitchens, a neuroscientist, although I don't know if he did anything further than his studies. Sam Harris and then you've got the philosopher Daniel Dennett and notice that the philosopher is the one who's like the least, you know, in that regard and outgoing, although he had a lot to say about religion. The reason why these guys in other disciplines were Getting involved is because Richard Dawkins was annoyed that young Earth creationists were saying, you can't teach evolution in schools. Christopher Hitchens was getting annoyed that religious justifications were being used for geopolitical terrorism. That was their kind of line of attack. And so to think that they would be talking about that kind of stuff, that Hitchens would be sort of standing up and complaining about the sort of the messianic undertones of the Israeli Palestine conflict and then suddenly start going, but, you know, I think that Brahman and Atman are maybe the same thing, but I want to critique that idea by appealing to the rival. It just seems ridiculous to me. So I think New Atheism. No, but that's because within Eastern religions you have the same kind of conflicts going on, which I don't think west knows as much about. But also the kind of engagement I have is not about that. Like I say, I'm not interested so much in the deities and the gods and the sex. I'm interested in the philosophical traditions. And I don't think the new atheists were even interested in the Western philosophical traditions. They were interested in the practical reality of religion. Religion is a force for evil. Religion causes wars and that kind of stuff. That's all very well and good, but to me, I've always compared that to saying like. It's like saying politics is bad. Yes, sure, you know, politics causes wars and politics drives families. It's like, that's true, but that doesn't mean we should be an anarchist. Maybe we should, but it doesn't guarantee. It doesn't mean there isn't a correct political position. And critiquing that kind of stuff doesn't mean that you know anything about political philosophy. You might not know anything about, you know, theories of justification of the state or whatever it is that political philosophers sit around talking about, you know, And I think the same thing's going on with New Atheism. They couldn't recite Thomas Aquinas's causal arguments for God if you paid them to. Richard Dawkins does so in the God Delusion. He sort of responds to Thomas Aquinas directly. Thomas Aquinas, the most celebrated Christian metaphysician, like, in history, and he responds to Thomas Aquinas in about two pages. It takes more than two pages even to explain the terminology that Thomas Aquinas is using, let alone to list, explain, and then debunk. I think we have some evidence that there's just not this engagement with the philosophical tradition. I don't mean to insult These people, I like Richard, Richard's a friend of mine. I think he knows that I disagree with his philosophical musings. And he himself just admits, he says that he's just not interested in theology and philosophy. It's just not what he wants to do. He wants to do science. I think fair enough, but then maybe don't write a book with a chapter called why There Almost certainly is no God. But he did it because he cared about science. He doesn't care about the Kalam cosmological argument or whatever. He cares about evolution being taught in schools and that kind of stuff. And so the idea that someone who cares about that and that's their way in is suddenly going to become interested in the, even in philosophy in the west is not very popular. The idea that these guys are going to engage with that I think is untrue. And so that funnels down to the modern day. The sort of teenage atheist like me on YouTube making videos. Took me years before I even encountered Indian philosophy. And that only came after I sort of calmed down a bit.
- [34:49]
Interviewer
Everyone's almost arguing something from their very, I don't know, maybe narrow is the wrong word, but everyone's looking at something through their lens and of course preaching or sharing whatever that may be, whether you're religious or whether you're an atheist or whether you're agnostic. And it applies to everything in the same way as you could talk about entrepreneurship and someone could say, hey, if you don't know how to sell, then you can't be an entrepreneur. And then someone else is over there going, if you don't know how to negotiate, you don't know how to be an entrepreneur. It's almost impossible to get a 360 degree view on a belief, an idea because there's so many different thoughts and ideas. How would you explain your worldview to a 10 year old so that they simply understood it?
- [35:29]
Alex O'Connor
I would probably wait until this, this child was taking an interest in such things. And I might ask them, I mean, it might be a bit young 10 to start talking about consciousness, but at some point I might sort of say, don't you think it's weird that you are conscious, you have thoughts and feelings, you have an inner sense of self? I'd use different words because they're 10 and this mug and this table and this chair don't. And depending on what they'd say, you'd ask a further question. So if they say, yeah, no, that, I guess so, but that's because you know, you've got a brain. And then you might start asking about what they think the brain is and how. So you sort of ask questions. And in my view, I think we have just sort of swallowed wholesale this idea that everything can be reduced to scientific explanation. At least everything that is true about the universe can be scientifically explained. And I just don't think that's true. And I think it's like trivially untrue. I'm not making some profound. What about love, man? You can't scientifically, it's like, no, you can explain the chemicals that are firing. I mean something a bit more specific, which is that science isn't really in the business of explaining things. I'm no longer Talking to the 10 year old, by the way. Science is not in the business of explaining things, it's in the business of describing things mathematically. Galileo famously says that mathematics is the language of the universe. Fair enough, but maths on its own doesn't do anything. Maths just describes. All mathematical equations have an equal sign. And it describes some sort of fact about reality. It doesn't cause anything. Newton's laws of motion don't cause objects to move. They describe how objects move when they're in motion. Similarly, the example I love to give because it's so explicit is Newton's discovery of gravity. What did Newton actually discover when he discovered gravity? What's the thing that he actually figured out? We had known for a very long time that objects fall to the ground, right? What's the thing that he realized? Well, Newton asked an interesting question. He looks up at the moon and he asks like, like why isn't the Moon falling towards the Earth? And his sort of profound realization is that the Moon is falling towards the Earth all the time. It's just that if something falls towards my hand, it'll hit my hand, but if I knock it to the side a little bit, then it will kind of do this. It'll kind of miss the Earth a bit and then crash into the side. If I knock it a little bit further to the side, it will sort of miss it even more, maybe crash into the bottom eventually. And if you knock it just the right speed to the side, it will keep falling towards the Earth, but keep missing it. And that's what we call orbit. And Newton realized that the same thing that makes objects fall to the ground keeps the planets in circulation, which is a profound realization. And then he took to the task of mathematically describing it. Calculus, inverse square law. So he figures out that the distance between two things, if you square that distance that is how much weaker the force of gravity is. So if something is two times further away, it's four times less attractive. And. And he does all of this, and it's brilliant in the Principia Mathematica. But then there remains this question, like, why not how do objects fall to the ground? Not what mathematical rules do they sort of do it by, but why do they fall to the ground? And in the Scholium, which is like an addendum to the Principia Mathematica, where Newton published these findings, he answers this explicitly. You can read this online. He says, like, as to what gravity actually is, as to why this stuff is happening. He writes, hypothesis non fingo. It's in Latin. It means I frame. No hypothesis. He doesn't know. And he says it's also not the kind of question that science should be engaged in because it can't answer that kind of question. In other words, Newton has described brilliantly planets, orbits, objects falling to the ground, this force which he calls gravity. And he just. It's sort of a placeholder. It's like the word gravity is just a word for whatever is the thing that's making this happen, but he doesn't know what's making it happen. So funny to me, when people, like, look into the past and they say, how silly are the beliefs that people used to have? They used to believe in, like, animism, they used to believe in spirits, they used to believe that, you know, angels were pushing around planets and stuff. But no, no, no. Since the scientific revolution, we're much more intelligent because we explain things in terms of forces. Forces. Like, think about that word for a minute. You know what I mean? Like, we're so used to hearing it, but that's it. And if you ask a scientist what a force is, they'll either have to tell you that a force is just a mathematical description of regularities that we've observed, or they'll have to say unjustifiably, well, it's the thing that makes things fall to the ground. But what is it you don't know that you don't know why that's happening. Now, to be clear, some people will say, okay, fair enough with Newton. I pick Newton because he says it explicitly. This isn't an insult to science. It's not insulting to say that it's not really interested in the why question. It's interested in the how question. Some people think the why question just shouldn't exist. That's fine to say, but science itself is definitely in the business of describing. Scientists will happily tell you that anything which is true about physics can be described mathematically. But if you think about what maths is, it's equations. They don't do anything. Stephen Hawking, at the end of A Brief History of time, quite famously, I wish I could recite it from memory. It's so beautiful. He writes about how he hopes that maybe one day our basic scientific theories will condense into one great big theory of everything, that there'll be one beautiful equation that sort of governs everything about the universe. But he says we'll still be left with the question of what breathes fire into the equations. Equations don't make things move. They describe how things move when they're in motion. Right. So we're left with this great big explanatory gap. If people are in any doubt about this, There's a wonderful clip of Richard Feynman. There's a BBC interviewer asking him about magnets. He says, you know, when I push two magnets together, they repel each other. What's going on there? And Feynman's like, well, you know, the magnets are repelling each other. And he goes, yeah, no, but you know what's happening there? And Feynman's like, what do you mean, what's happening there? And there's a sort of moment of confusion, and the interviewer says, I've got to say, I think this is a reasonable question. And feimon goes, oh, no, no, it's a very reasonable question. But what do you mean? Because if you ask a question like why? Well, depends on your level of explanation. Like, why is aunt Marie in the hospital? Because she slipped and fell on the ice. For most people, that would satisfy. But if you were like an alien who didn't know anything, you'd need to know why slipping on ice sends you to hospital. So you'd have to explain that. And then you'd have to explain like, why is ice slippery? Well, because when you step on ice, it evaporates the top level, which turns into water. Notice we're just describing what's happening. Okay, but so why does that happen? Well, now we're talking about the molecular composition of water, and it's in its sort of chemical interactions. But why does that happen? Feynman's just basically pointing out that if you ask the why question, you are sent into this regress down into the most fundamental questions of reality. And in fact, Feynman then says, and if you want to know why Aunt Marie fell over, you'd have to know about gravity and why does gravity work? And that's where we just were a second ago, right? This thing gravity, which science will describe but never explain why it's occurring. And Feynman sort of comes back to magnets and says, so for now, it will have to be enough just to say that they are repelling each other. And that's fair enough. But I think that's what's going on. Science describes, like physics is the description of and the theory of physical matter and its relations. It therefore presupposes the existence of matter and its relations. One of the foundational questions I don't think science will answer is where that physical matter came from. Like, it seems plausible. We say, look at the progress we've made. We used to think that we couldn't explain biological complexity, but now we have. We used to think that we couldn't explain why objects fall, but now we have. I want to point out that firstly, what we've actually done is describe those processes. But also I think there's a categorical difference between explaining some kind of physical interaction at a deeper level and explaining the origin of physical matter and its interactions. I don't think you will mathematically describe the origin of the stuff which the mathematical descriptions apply to, given what I've just said about what scientific laws are, are observations of stuff that happens in the universe and then mathematically describing how they regularly, like, occur. I've sometimes compared this. It's a bit of a crude analogy, but it gets across the point to discovering a book of Shakespeare's sonnets. If we came across a book of Shakespeare's sonnets and we didn't know what they were, then we might start studying them and suppose that you were really, really smart. And you said, okay, well, I've noticed that each of these letters comes in two kinds. There's a big one and a small one. And whenever there's a new line, they use the big one as interesting. And you call that the law of capitalization. And then you notice that there are all of these little symbols, unlike the letters, little dots and squiggles, and you realize that they show up in predictable ways. And you call that the law of punctuation. And you're able to predict, if you're really clever, you might notice that if you say it out loud, it follows a particular rhythm. Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. And you call that the law of iambic pentameter. Because you're really clever now. And you can predict that if I turn over the page, I'm Going to see something that follows these rules. What you're discovering, of course, are the laws of literacy. And then suppose I came along after all of that and said, okay, so where do you think the book came from? And you said, well, we don't know yet. But look at all the progress we're making with the laws that we've discovered. I'm sure that one day these laws of literacy will explain where the book came from. You'd be making a category error. And I think the physicist does the same thing in saying that physics will one day explain the origin of physical matter. Because physics is the study of physical matter and therefore presupposes its existence. A question like that I don't think can be answered by science. I'm really not talking to the 10 year old anymore.
- [45:15]
Jay Shetty
I was about to say, your 10 year old is going to be really, really smart.
- [45:18]
Alex O'Connor
Okay, dad, can I go to bed now?
- [45:20]
Interviewer
Yeah.
- [45:20]
Alex O'Connor
Gosh. But the reason I bring that up, it's to say, I mean, I remember I was kind of talking about consciousness and it's all related because people have similar view of consciousness. They think that science will one day explain what consciousness is.
- [45:31]
Interviewer
And you're trying to encourage your child to ask questions that I guess are maybe not comprehensively answered simply by science.
- [45:41]
Alex O'Connor
Yeah. And also I want to be very clear here. Lots of people will use this line of thought to try to sort of smuggle God in as like a God of the gap. They'll say, okay, so science can't explain it, so God must do so. That is categorically not what I'm doing here. Right. All I'm saying is that the lexicon of science cannot describe the origin of the universe and the nature of consciousness. Those are the two things I think that science definitely can't describe. That is not to say therefore God. There might be some kind of what we might call naturalistic explanation. It's just not one that can be mathematised and therefore not sort of appropriate to use the lexicon of science to describe. That's fine. No problem with that. Of course we still have this question. We still want to know why is there something rather than nothing? What is the nature of consciousness? But I want to be very clear that this isn't some kind of underhanded way to like motivated reasoning to leave room for God. It's just to say that when people have this sort of confidence that the scientific method will explain everything because it's made such progress in the past, notice the precise nature of the progress. It's made. It's explained things, but only at a sort of deeper level of resolution. It has described the mechanism. Take natural selection. Brilliantly, Darwin figures out the mechanism by which organisms diversify and become complex. And that's great, but it is a description. It's a description of what happens. And as Feynman says, if you really do keep following that why question, you'll get down to some quite foundational questions which it's less controversial to say science will not be able to explain.
- [47:15]
Interviewer
When you put it that way, and you look at both sides, it seems to be more of a human mind's desire for certainty and completeness in thought, which is why we end up on either side of the spectrum without the ability to navigate the messy middle right, specifically in this case. It's almost like I either have to believe everything this book says is absolutely correct without any openness for questioning, thought or reflection, or I have to believe this book that I learned that this textbook at school. Everything it says must be correct without any reflection, thought, or need for debate. And so it's almost like, how do we get to a point where the human mind, we allow it to have the ability to question our worldview and thoughts without losing all sense of certainty and stability? Because it seems, as humans, when people watch a debate, nine out of 10 times, people are just watching it to confirm their bias.
- [48:08]
Alex O'Connor
Sure, yeah.
- [48:09]
Interviewer
So they're already on one side. You're going to watch the debate and
- [48:11]
Jay Shetty
you're going to go, yeah, you know what? I'm fully with Alex.
- [48:14]
Interviewer
You know, we don't know if God exists, but we definitely know science can't answer all the questions. Or on the other side, someone's like, well, I'm from that religion. And that religious person is obviously spot on.
- [48:23]
Jay Shetty
So even when we watch a debate,
- [48:24]
Interviewer
we don't really ever come away from it going, you know what? I just couldn't believe that he said that because we're just going there to confirm our beliefs. So I guess my question is, would you even encourage people to live in the messy middle of not being certain about their ideas? Does that create a better human?
- [48:42]
Alex O'Connor
I think that's where they do live.
- [48:44]
Interviewer
You think so?
- [48:44]
Alex O'Connor
I mean, there are very few things that people can be certain of in
- [48:48]
Interviewer
the sense of I would argue that most of the people you debate with, or most religious or scientific people in the world, at least in the form
- [48:56]
Jay Shetty
of how they live, are trying to
- [48:58]
Interviewer
live based on their belief.
- [48:59]
Alex O'Connor
They have a very strong confidence. Confidence meaning with faith, certainty.
- [49:03]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [49:03]
Alex O'Connor
With fide in the Latin Faith. I think if you speak to most of those people, they will at least ostensibly say, but I'm open to having my mind change, particularly scientists. I mean, the whole thing about science is that it's open for correction. Like, no scientist believes that we've completed science. Yeah, of course, scientists are very much like, one day they hope that Einstein will be proved completely wrong, because it's exciting and it would sharpen what we understand about the universe. You know what I mean? And so I don't think anybody has that kind of confidence that they've got it all correct. But I think there is a confidence in the method, and fair enough, have a confidence in the scientific method, because it's great. And again, I love science. I'm not trying to insult it or anything. I'm just saying be very precise about what it's doing and what it's not. And I think we could avoid a lot of needless debate if we understand exactly the parameters of each of our disciplines. Disciplines interact and they merge and stuff. But if you're talking about mathematical models, there are things that mathematical models just can't do. And if you're talking about thought experiments in philosophy, there are things that thought experiments can't do. They cannot provide empirical proof of various phenomena. They can't provide scientific evidence for the Big Bang, that kind of stuff. But likewise, I think that the scientific method can't describe certain foundational aspects of reality and instead presuppose them. I would, of course, encourage people to recognize there's, like, lots of room to maneuver here. And I think that's one of the things that I'm trying to do. And it kind of splits people. Especially when I talk about either consciousness or I talk about the nature of science, it splits people. There's kind of 3 Responses to the science stuff. Some people go, that's a load of nonsense. Of course, science explains things. And then I have to spend a bit of time really drilling down what they mean by explain in the Feynman sense. Other people say, this is really interesting. Yeah, cool. I'd never thought about it that way. That's great. That's exciting. And some people sort of say, yeah, science doesn't explain in that sense. Description is the same thing as they just sort of say, it's, like, trivially true. It's not a very profound observation, but it has sort of some profound implications. If it is true that science only describes, then as long as you have an explanatory question left, it's one that science is not going to be able to answer. So I'd sort of encourage people to at least explore that thought. It's totally fine to have confidence in your conclusions, but recognize it's about the method. It's this optimism about the progress of science because of what it's done in the past, which is great, but you have to be very precise about exactly what it's done in the past and what it might therefore mimic in the future. And answering foundational metaphysical questions about the nature of matter, why it exists in the first place, that kind of stuff. I just don't think it's an appropriate tool and people will be thinking in their heads. But hold on. What about, like, there are theories of it. What about, like, string theory? What about the. I'm telling you that if you investigate these closely enough, you will realize that these are proposed descriptions of the nature of reality. They're proposed descriptions of what's going on. They don't answer the why question. And I think you're left with two options. One is to say the why question is bogus. Some people think that, and that's fair. Richard Dawkins has said, like, if you ask a question like, what is the color of jealousy? It makes grammatical sense, but it's a meaningless question. And the why question might be the same. Why do things exist? If that's the case, maybe there is no why. Maybe there are only descriptions. In that case, I would slightly alter my thesis to say everything is. Maybe philosophy is description. Right? When a Christian says that God is a trinity, they're just describing the nature of God. Right? They're not explaining why he's a trinity. Fair enough, but they would not do so in mathematical language. You can't run the ontological argument for God's existence as a series of mathematical equations. It's just a different kind of language that's being used. I would just say that the scientific language will not describe the things which some other philosophical languages can describe. And that's not a problem. That's great. It's actually not that profound. So many scientists just are like, yeah, I mean, you could call it like functionalism or descriptivism about science, that what's going on is we're just describing reality. And that's great and it's really useful. But I'd encourage people to just reflect on what that means and what it should do to their confidence that science will answer these foundational questions. I started talking about the origin of the universe because it's helpful when thinking about Newton and Einstein to get across what I'm saying about science. But really, when you asked about what my worldview is, the reason I would bring that up is to talk about consciousness and in a similar way, say that science will not explain, or at least will not tell us, the nature of consciousness. For me, consciousness is the most foundational mystery. It's probably the foundational fact of reality. It's the kind of thing which science can't approach because science sort of describes relations between things. Science uses the language of mathematics. It's like quantifying consciousness is a quality. It's qualitative. It's not the kind of thing that science can talk about. I did a panel not long ago that was hosted by Brian Cox. It was with some neuroscientists, one of whom was Anil Seth, a good friend of mine, and the other two whose names I'd forgotten. I'd only met them that one time, and they invited me because there was a show called A Question of Science. And they did all of these episodes on different scientific topics, and they did one on consciousness. And I think they wanted somebody who wasn't, I guess, like a neuroscientist. They wanted a philosophical perspective. And I remember thinking, okay, sure, I'll do this. I'm very grateful to be here if you really think that I'm an appropriate person. And I thought, well, what I can do is I can come along and I can talk about some philosophical perspectives. I can talk about panpsychism. I can talk about other traditions and stuff. And I remember before we started, Brian sort of looked at the questions that had been submitted by the audience and was kind of wanting to get rid of some of them because he was like, well, you know, like this stuff about, like, panpsychism and whatnot. I don't think we should really be spending any time on this kind of nonsense. And I was there. It was really awkward for me because I suddenly had to be like, oh, that's actually kind of what I'm here to do. We had this sort of slightly awkward conversation where I was a bit like, well, you know, I'm probably gonna mention it. And he's like, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's good to at least hear the View, I suppose, kind of, that kind of thing. And then the show started, and look, I love these guys, you know, and they're obviously geniuses, and I know nothing about neuroscience. Well, not nothing, but, you know, I'm not a neuroscientist. But it struck me, if you watch the first bit of this, the first question is, what do we Think consciousness is very difficult thing to define. I think it's impossible to precisely define. But a famous definition was given by Thomas Nagel in the 70s. To be conscious means there's something it is like to be you. There is something it is like to be this thing, therefore it's conscious. It's like an inward sense of subjectivity. And we went around the panel and everyone agreed. Everyone was like, yeah, yeah, that's a great definition. I agree with that. That's fair enough. And the first question came. Can we see consciousness in the brain? Great question. And one by one, each of the neuroscientists said some really interesting things, but I felt just hadn't answered the question. Anil actually said at one point, we can kind of put this question of consciousness to the side or on the shelf or something like that, and we can talk about the brain activity that's going on when the conscious experience happens. And there was someone else who was talking about how when people have, like, hallucinations, it's like, although to them they feel as real as actual sight, different brain activity is happening when they think they see something versus when they do. That's really interesting. That's great. This is all really interesting stuff about neuroscience. But it got around to me and I turned to the question. I was like, I think the answer is no. And I think what we've just heard has kind of proved that. Because what you're doing is you're talking about brain chemistry, you're talking about neurons, you're talking about the neural correlates of consciousness. You're not talking about consciousness itself. And I remember sitting there thinking, like, this is sort of quite strange to me because a lot of the sort of running thread throughout this when I said, but, like, what about the nature of what consciousness actually is? What about the explanation of, like, why we're conscious? There's sometimes this feeling of like, well, that's not really. Really a legitimate question. Yeah, it's enough to just describe the neural correlates. It's enough to just describe the brain activity. And I'm like, that's fair enough. If that's what you think. If you don't think that's an interesting question, then fine, but then why are we here at an event called what is consciousness? It would sort of be like, if we were at an event that was, like, talking about, like, football and somebody asked about why the offside rule exists, and somebody started talking about how, like, well, you know, it's a bit like in basketball, where this how or it's a bit like in cricket or it's a bit like. And then I said, but hold on, like I want to talk about like actually football. People might think I'm being a little unfair. I'd encourage them to just watch it themselves. I don't mean to disparage these people. As I say, they are geniuses and they do very important work. But I think it's quite clear to me that when we're talking about what consciousness is, we're just not talking about the same thing. I'm talking about the experience, I'm talking about the redness of red. I'm talking about the feeling of cold on your skin. I'm not talking about a neuron firing. And I don't think those are the same thing. So the common view amongst materialists is that experiences are just the same thing as brain activity. And I understand that thought, but they can't literally be the same thing. I'll tell you why there's a law, it's called Leibniz's law, which says that if two things are identical, they share precisely the same properties. If X and Y are identical, that is they are the same thing, then all of the properties of X are shared by Y. You can't say that two things are the same. And I don't mean the same kind of thing, I mean literally the same thing. But one of them is red and one of them is blue, or one of them is five sided and one of them is two sided. That would mean that they're different things. Even spatial location, they have all the same properties. Except this one's in China and this one's in France. That means they're not identical. Let's think about the content of your mental experience. You can imagine a triangle in your head. I'm told that the triangle that I can literally see in my head right now is the same thing. The same thing as some neurons firing? I don't think so, because they don't have the same properties. The triangle has three sides. That's a fact about the triangle in my head. The neurones firing that correlate with my experience of that triangle don't have three sides. Meaning that you've got two sort of things with different sets of properties. Meaning they can't literally be identical. Maybe one causes the other, maybe one emerges from the other. Maybe that's fine. We're not saying anything too crazy at the moment. But the idea that they are literally the same thing I think just doesn't make much sense.
- [59:32]
Jay Shetty
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- [62:00]
Interviewer
is a really good place to start.
- [62:01]
Jay Shetty
Get prepped for the patio season. For way less, head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com Wayfair Every style, every home.
- [62:14]
Alex O'Connor
Wayfair Every style, Every Home.
- [62:26]
Interviewer
With everything you just mentioned, how do you then explain what is a good life to a 10 year old?
- [62:32]
Alex O'Connor
I think one of the reasons why I wouldn't have a child at the moment is because I don't know how to answer that question.
- [62:39]
Interviewer
Love that answer.
- [62:39]
Alex O'Connor
Yeah, it's a very serious question. If you don't have an idea of what makes the good life, then it's going to be very difficult to raise a child. I mean, people say that when you choose your life partner, who's going to be the other parent to your child, so the mother or father of your child, depending on who you are, one of the most important things is that you're aligned on core values and stuff. Why? Because when it comes to raising children, you'll have to have the same idea of what a good life is. So in the same way, why you might not want to get married and have children with someone with whom you haven't aligned your fundamental values. I almost sort of am not married to myself in that way because there's too much internal conflict. I disagree with myself too much to have a good answer to that question. But also I'm not confident that I ever will. And so I think ultimately what people typically say is either they have a particular worldview and they say, well, son, the good life is to do what God commands. And that's kind of fair enough as well because that still leaves room for the kid to go and work out who is God and what does God command? Right. It's actually quite broad, but I think if I were forced to say something, I would ask what they mean by good. I'm not sure if this is the kid asking me, but the word good is a difficult thing to unpack. There's morally good or there's good in the sense that this is a good table because it holds things up. And some people think that's the same thing. But I think there are probably indicators of a good life that include contentment and calm and lack of stress and that kind of stuff. Confidence in the decisions that you've made. But I find it a very difficult question to answer.
- [64:12]
Interviewer
Do you find that the way you think about life and the world stops you from living practically or can? Or how do you balance the two? How do you allow Yourself to be someone who. Because that's what I was trying to get at earlier is that when you have even somewhat of a false conviction in your belief, whatever that may be, life somewhat is easier to live.
- [64:32]
Alex O'Connor
Yeah.
- [64:32]
Interviewer
Because you just get on with it. And I consider myself to be someone who's. Who lives more in the middle and thinks things through, too. But I realized that that comes with a lot of uncertainty in the sense that you could totally have a 180 spin moment in your life because you're like, oh, well, wait a minute. I kind of believe that's true and that's kind of not now. I prefer living like that because I think it leads to new learning and curiosity and change and transformation, which I think are actually better than just pretending to agree with something. But I guess where does your philosophy fail you in practical life?
- [65:06]
Alex O'Connor
I think that most people don't live strictly according to philosophical principles. I think they develop philosophical principles based on how they live.
- [65:15]
Interviewer
Agreed.
- [65:15]
Alex O'Connor
I think it's kind of the other way around.
- [65:16]
Interviewer
I like that. Yeah, I like that.
- [65:17]
Alex O'Connor
And I think that the best. So Ludwig Wittgenstein, in his Tractatus, which is like a sort of very. Sort of mathematical, quite short work, has this introduction. And the first words he writes are, this book may only be of use to people who already agree with its contents. And I think that's so fair enough. This might seem like a weird thing to say in response to your question, but, like, I don't think people just read like a philosophy and become convinced by it. I think they hear somebody put something, they already kind of think in the right words and they go, yes, hey, I like that. Yeah, that's what I think. Which is why I think people are sometimes a little bit confused if they want to get into philosophy. They look up the hundred best philosophers and they think, okay, let's go and learn about it. And just out of the blue it says, oh, you should go and read like Jean Paul Sartre. Okay. So they pick it up and they read it and they're like, I don't really get this, you know, oh, this doesn't make much sense to me. They read Spinoza and they're like, what are you talking about? I don't. It's a bit mathsy. I don't really understand. Right. And it's because that's not how philosophy is supposed to be done. People sometimes ask me, where would you recommend I start? Have you got any recommendations for, like, how to get into philosophy? And my advice is always very simple. Just read whatever you've heard of. And the reason for that is because if you've heard of someone, it means you've been in contexts where they have come up, right? Like if you listen to loads of Jordan Peterson, you'll have heard him talk about Nietzsche. Now, you might never have read Nietzsche, but the fact that you are so attracted to Peterson and the fact that he's so attracted to Nietzsche means it's likely, if you read Nietzsche, you're going to find something that you like in there, right? Likewise, if you listen to Christian apologists on YouTube, you might have heard them talk about the church fathers or Augustine or people like this, in which case just read that because there's a reason why you're attracted to the people who are attracted to those bits of content, right? Because to some degree you can read a philosophy and go, that's an interesting argument, that makes sense, but you're not going to read it. And it sort of wash over you with this wave of conviction, I think, unless you've already got one foot in that worldview and it's just somebody has finally put into words what you were thinking this whole time. And so I think that we're very intuitive creatures and I think that our philosophizing often gets in the way. I think that we act according to our intuition and our emotional impulses all the time, and then we rationalize them after the fact, and then we debate about who was right and wrong. And there's so much to be said about this. For example, ethics, really important branch of philosophy. What is right, what is wrong? You've got meta ethics, which is like defining what goodness is. You've got practical ethics, which is like particular case, like studies, you know, what do we do in the case of abortion, euthanasia, that kind of stuff. And if you look at how people do ethics, it's extremely interesting. They'll come up with a theory, say utilitarianism, right? The right thing to do is to bring about the least suffering for the least number or the most pleasure for the most people. The fewest number, I should say, and someone says, okay, that sounds good. And then how would you test that theory? Well, you think of a scenario. Okay, okay, but hold on. What if there was a healthy person who walked into a hospital and there were five people who needed organ transplants, and you could kill that innocent person, steal their organs, and most people go, no, no, no, that would be wrong. Okay, then we need to go back and revise our theory. Hold on. Why? I thought the whole point of having an ethical Theory was to tell us what right and wrong are. But now you're saying if you don't like the conclusion, you just go back and edit the theory. What's going on there? It's because we already have intuitions about the outcome, and we have certain intuitions about the input. It's not as simple as, like, we're going to rationally work out what the standard of ethics is, and then that will tell us what to do. It's like we're going to come up with a kind of theory that captures how we already behave. And if it doesn't capture how we already behave, then we're going to edit it slightly. And so the process of metaethics or practical ethics coming up with these theories is in many cases actually just working out what we already believe, but doing it precisely. It's like most people care about animals, they love animals, but then they pay for factory farming. And you could have a discussion about this and you could say, well, actually, I'm not sure. So their theory might be, I think you should not cause unnecessary harm. And then you say, yeah, but you're harming animals in factory farms. They go, oh, okay, maybe then we shouldn't. And they'll go and edit the theory. Because what you're doing is you're precisely working out what you already believe.
- [69:41]
Interviewer
Well, you're protecting your worldview. You're allowed to have your versions.
- [69:44]
Alex O'Connor
Yeah, but you're not just, like, protecting it defensively. You're just like, no, this is what I believe. And so I'm going to edit the theory. John Rawls, the political philosopher, had this concept of the reflective equilibrium. So he thought that what happened, you can sort of imagine this, like, machine, right? And we have inputs which are our theories about what's right and wrong, and those theories give us outputs. So we input a theory, which sounds plausible, we should minimise suffering, and it gives us an output like, well, then you should kill everyone instantly. And actually, hold on, that's not quite right. So then you sort of. You adapt the. It's like, okay, we actually need to minimize suffering without killing people, or also have some kind of pleasure. And then it puts out other outcomes. And you've sort of got this back and forth, and the machine in the middle mixes it all up and gives you the output and rules kind of says that. The way this works is you come at it from both sides. You've got intuitive outcomes and you've got intuitive theoretical suggestions, and you sort of do this back and forth, this tug of war between them until they kind of balance out a bit and you get this reflective equilibrium and that that's what we're doing when we're coming up with theories. It is never as simple as somebody, like, writing a book and saying, right, I'm going to prove to you from first principles that abortion is wrong. Specifically from the eighth week. That's never going to happen, ever. They're going to rely on intuitions that you already have about people and the worth of humans and bodily autonomy, and they're going to convince you that way. So if you become really learned in the traditions of philosophy, that can be really interesting. But you'll notice that a lot of philosophers can talk about these big ideas with absolutely no personal investment in them. They'll be like, oh, you know, like, so Nietzsche thought that God was dead and that this was a great tragedy. And they're sort of talking it as this historical artifact. They've got zero personal sort of input in there. And so they're obviously not going to use that to guide their life in any way. And if they did, it would just lead to confusion. There's like a skit I saw once, I think, like, someone's on an airplane and they're dying, and they're like, is there a doctor on board? And someone shows up and says, I'm a doctor. I'm a doctor of philosophy. And they're like, well, what should we do? We need to save this man. And it's like, well, you know, the utilitarian would say that we should take resources from other people, but then the deontologists would say that that would upset their rights. And then, well, if you're a Christian, maybe we should. And then they just die, right? Because you're spending too much time sort of back and forth. I don't think that's how people actually behave. And I think there's some neurological evidence for this to do with the two hemispheres of your brain, which is another thing I'm fascinated by. I think the most significant fact perhaps in the world is that your brain is divided into two hemispheres.
- [72:15]
Interviewer
Why do you think that's the most significant fact in the world?
- [72:18]
Alex O'Connor
Because if you are essentially your brain, which, okay, I don't think consciousness is the same thing as the brain, but they're clearly connected, right? And the thing that at least gives you selfhood, I don't think it produces consciousness, just to be crystal clear, but I think selfhood, the thing that gives you your unified sense of self, is essentially your brain and maybe the rest of your Sort of neural system. And the fact that everywhere we look, every neural system, we find there's some kind of asymmetrical division in the brain. There's some evolutionarily strong reason to keep two separate hemispheres has to be super significant. That's like the nature of you, right? That's your nature. Your nature is fundamentally lateralized. Your two hemispheres are kind of involved in different ways of thinking. It's never quite as simple as people think. I mean, Ian McGilchrist is the person to read on this. In culture, it's like the right brain is creative and intuitive, and the left brain is mathsy and rational. It's not as simple as that. McGilchrist likes to say that the two hemispheres sort of attend to the world in different ways. The left brain is about sort of manipulation, and the right brain is more like big picture. And we know that this is the case. I mean, McGilchrist's theory is that the reason this occurs is because as an organism, you need to be simultaneously looking out for, like, prey. You need to be manipulating your environment while looking out for predators at the same time. And there's some evidence to suggest that this is the case. Birds have eyes on either side of their head, or lizards, which have eyes on the sides of their head are really useful because the right eye feeds the left hemisphere, and the left eye feeds the right hemisphere. With us, it's complicated because they're on the front. So with animals on the side, it's much easier. And there's evidence of birds, for example. If they're, like, building a nest, they will favor using their right eye, even when it makes it more difficult, because the left brain is engaged in the manipulation stuff. And likewise, you could put a lizard in a room and put a predator, and it will look at the predator with its left eye. Even if you cover up its left eye, it will still try to look at it with the left eye, Right? So there's some evidence to suggest this is the case. And the same kind of thing is going on with us. We've got these two brains, and they kind of do different things. And so. Have you ever come across split brain patients? This was my favorite thing to discover ever in history. Is really famous within, like, brain science, I suppose. The two hemispheres are connected by this tissue called the corpus callosum, this sort of bundle of tissues. They used to be this treatment for extreme cases of epilepsy called a corpus callosotomy, which is where the connection is severed. Epilepsy is like an electrical Storm in the brain. And so one way to try to minimize it was literally just to cut the two hemispheres like their connective tissue. And so people who'd had this operation done were known as split brain patients because the hemispheres had been disconnected. They can still communicate slightly through other means, but their main source of communication is inhibited. If you met one of these people, you wouldn't know, they're just perfectly normal. They'll speak to you like I'm speaking to you now. Everything's totally fine. But in experimental conditions, you can prove some really weird things. For example, speech and language of communication is, broadly speaking, governed by the front left part of your brain, left hemisphere. Remember, the left hemisphere controls like the right hand side of your body and the right hemisphere controls the left hand side of your body. So with humans, because our eyes are on the front, our right visual field goes to the left brain and our left visual field goes to the right brain. So in a split brain patient, they look at a screen. You can watch this experiment on YouTube, by the way. They're looking at a screen and on the right hand side of the screen it'll flash a word. So it goes to their left hemisphere and it will say umbrella and they'll say umbrella. Car. Car. Chair. Chair. Then they'll flash a word on the left hand side of the screen, so just the right hemisphere and it will say cowboy hat. And they'll say, I didn't see anything. I didn't see anything. I don't know what you're talking about. And then the experimenter gives them a pencil in their left hand and tells them to draw something and they draw a cowboy hat because the right hemisphere saw it and so the left hand can draw it. But if you ask them, they'll say that they didn't see it.
- [76:25]
Interviewer
Wow.
- [76:25]
Alex O'Connor
Because the left hemisphere, which controls speech, broadly, that's a bit of an oversimplification, but broadly speaking, didn't see it. And so they can't tell you that they saw it. So they saw it and they didn't see it at the same time. So fascinating, right? Means you've kind of got these two brains that are both doing different things. And I think the most significant experiment of this kind is where, and bear in mind these people are agreeing and thankfully, so they've already been through a traumatic experience and now they're agreeing to do these experiments. They're waiting instructions, right? So you can flash an instruction to the right hemisphere of the brain. The instruction will say something like, get up and walk over to the window. So the patient stands up and they walk over to the window. And then the instructor says, why did you just do that? And you know what they say? It would be weird enough if they said, I don't know, right? But they don't. They make something up and they believe it. It's called confabulation, right? Like they say something like, oh, I was getting a bit warm and I just wanted some fresh air. We know that's not why they did it, but their left brain has convinced them that that is why they did it. Now the reason I'm talking about all of this is because this has given rise to the idea that the left brain is the so called interpreter, that the right brain kind of intuitively does stuff. And then the left brain retrospectively sort of rationalizes and justifies that behavior. In split brain patients you can prove it experimentally, but the idea is in healthy brains you couldn't prove it, but the same thing might be going on. So you know when you see someone who likes, they're arguing with the taxi driver and you're like, why are you shouting at that guy? And they're like, because he didn't give me my change. And you're like, well actually the reason you're shouting at him is because your dog died yesterday. That's the real reason that you're shouting at him. We know that this kind of thing happens all the time, but I think it happens literally all the time. I think so much of our decision making, we just intuitively move throughout the world and then our left brain interprets what we've done and rationalizes it after the fact. And I think that so much of our philosophizing is very left brain dominant. And Ian McGilchrist says that one of the problems that we face, space as a sort of society, is that we've become too left brain dominant in our thinking. Everything is sort of hyper rationalized and discrete, sort of abstracted. And none of it is intuitive, none of it is flux, none of it is continuous. But that is the nature of reality. So imagokilchrist's first book was called the Master and His Emissary. The Master and his Emissary. And the idea is that the right brain does stuff and the left brain is the emissary. But there's some kind of myth or story where an emissary thinks that he can do the job of the master, so he kills the master and then ends up doing a terrible job. And he kind of thinks that's what happened with Our left brain. So the reason that I brought that up is because when you asked, like, how do you sort of navigate the world not having a certain philosophy, I think we all navigate the world extremely intuitively. And that when we come up with reasons and explanations for our behaviors, a lot of the time those are like post hoc rationalizations without us even realizing it. It also has profound implications for free will, of course, because we think, you know why you performed a particular action. But is that just because your brain has convinced you that that's why you did it, when it's not the real reason? At the very least, whatever the reason is, it's something that the left brain might not be able to communicate because it might be a very right brain kind of thing. But yeah, these split brain patients, I mean, I don't know if you agree. I think that it's one of the most significant facts in the world. Because also it might interest you if you're interested in the Indian traditions that we were talking about earlier, like the concept of the self. Right. Once you have experimental evidence that an individual self can both see something and not see it at the same time, I think that has profound implications for the idea of the unity of personhood. Like, how many people are there there? If you want to say there's only one person, you have to admit a literal contradiction, that it is both true and false, that they saw it, which you can't do. There has to be like a part of them which saw it. At the very least, you have to say, part of them saw it and part of them didn't. And immediately, at the very least, what you've done is you've said that the self can be split into parts. That's hugely profound. Because if your left brain and your right brain can have independent sort of centers of awareness and yet somehow are also part of this one connective thing. I think that has some profound implications for the fact that I've got a brain and you've got a brain. But there are a great many philosophical traditions who think that we're all sort of part of one great big thing. It at least opens a door to all kinds of interesting. And it's sort of like when I tell people this, if they haven't heard about split brain patients, they're sort of like, what? Really? And I'm like, yeah, like this stuff is way more complicated and way more weird than I think a lot of people realize.
- [80:56]
Interviewer
Is there anything that we can do to activate our right brain more?
- [80:59]
Alex O'Connor
That's a question for Ian McGilchrist. But I mean, I don't know, but I would guess that like tuning in to the way that the right brain is supposed to attend to the world and read McGilchrist on this and just try to tune into that process, that part of yourself, just try to recognise that there is a part of reality that consists in that kind of stuff that escapes the sort of hyper rationalization of left brain ways of thinking. And I think a lot of that comes through people are said to be a bit more left brained or a bit more right brained. And in culture that tends to manifest as like if you're right brained, you like sort of music and art and poetry. Left handedness was associated with creativity for a long time. Although that would be a quite fun fact. I think that's actually not, not true. That's not connected in that way. But culturally we have these sort of associations and I think that they don't give you at all a very good picture of what's actually happening with the brain. But I think it can be a sort of good way of thinking about the kinds of practices and ways of thinking that you might want to engage with to stop being so hyper rational. And also pay attention when you are convinced that you know why you're doing something. Just step back and really think about what might be going into it. It's literally what I said at the beginning of this conversation when I said, you know, why are you an atheist? It's because the contingency argument for God's existence is unsound. Or it's because my parents divorced when I was nine. The first of those is a very left brained answer. The second of those is a very right brained answer. And so if you're having an argument with your wife, you know C.S. lewis in the Screwtape Letters, which is a wonderful little novel where there's this like demonic undersecretary, like there's sort of a demonic civil service and this demon has been tasked with a particular human who he's trying to make into an atheist. And one of the instructions that he has is like when this person has an argument with his wife, convince him that they're arguing about the dishes when they're not really. Because he's going to come home and he's going to say, you know, his wife's going to say, you didn't do the dishes today. And he's going to go, oh for goodness sake, I've had a long day at work. And she's going to go, yeah, but you never do the bloody. And he's going to. Really? You're going to raise your voice at me right now because I didn't do the dishes this morning? Because it's not about the dishes. She's not saying you didn't do the dishes. She's saying, I feel like you don't pull your weight around the house and you don't listen to me and I don't feel heard. Now this is very sort of like self helping type stuff. You sit on podcasts like this and you sort of go like, you know and like really, you need to listen to your. But like, I think very specifically, we are literally becoming convinced that we know why we are acting and behaving in particular ways when we're not, because our left brain is rationalizing things for us. So just take a step back, think a bit more intuitively about what's going on in a very sort of non rational, abstracted kind of way. Don't try to think about this individual case and go, okay, let's trace the logic. Just step back and feel for a minute, like reintegrate feeling into your life. That's, that's probably a, a helpful starting point.
- [83:54]
Jay Shetty
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- [86:18]
Interviewer
Reasons.
- [86:18]
Jay Shetty
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- [86:34]
Interviewer
Alex, thank you so much. What a joy talking to you. I feel like I've totally had my mind expanded today and stretched in so many different directions. Yeah, both, both, both sides. I wanted to end with you on
- [86:45]
Jay Shetty
what we do on the show called
- [86:46]
Interviewer
the Final five, But I've kind of edited it for you because I felt there were a few more questions I wanted to sneak in there. So it might end up being a final 10. These questions have to be answered in one sentence maximum.
- [86:55]
Alex O'Connor
Sure. Okay. That's fine.
- [86:56]
Interviewer
And so, Alex O', Connor, these are your final 10, only made for you, brought to you by State Farm. What's the hardest question you've ever asked yourself?
- [87:06]
Alex O'Connor
What is consciousness?
- [87:08]
Interviewer
If you're wrong about everything you believe, which belief would hurt most?
- [87:14]
Alex O'Connor
That my friends and family love me.
- [87:17]
Interviewer
Great answer. What do you think is the most dangerous idea? People believe without questioning that we can
- [87:25]
Alex O'Connor
have certainty about the will of the creator of the universe and that it's engaged in the peculiarities of human affairs and human political affairs. Is that one sentence that counts?
- [87:41]
Interviewer
That counts? You got it all out in one breath. That counts. What do you think people are most afraid to admit about life?
- [87:48]
Alex O'Connor
That it comes to an end.
- [87:50]
Interviewer
I wanted to talk to you about that. As a final theme. Why does death feel so unnatural? You've talked about consciousness. What have you learned about death?
- [87:58]
Alex O'Connor
Well, there are a few answers to that. You said, why does death feel so unnatural? Which is a weird way of putting it, but I think, like, you think it's weird.
- [88:04]
Interviewer
Why?
- [88:05]
Alex O'Connor
For many people, death is a part of nature. But it's interesting to hear you say unnatural because there are philosophical traditions. If you're someone who believes that life exists after death, you'll either believe that because you think that we're going to heaven and this mortal realm is sort of a purgatory realm of sorts, or maybe you think that we're all made of consciousness and we're all going to sort of reintegrate into Brahman. Either way, that would mean that our true nature is Brahman, for want of a better term, right now, and that the divided physical, biological selves that we currently inhabit are not our real selves. Right. This is one of the biggest teachings of Advaita Vedanta, is that your self is an illusion. There is one self, the Atman. It's one self. And that Atman is the same thing as Brahman. There's just one great big thing, such that the thing that comes to an end when you die is not yourself, or rather it's the illusion of yourself, but it's not the self. The self persists. The self is eternal. It's another sort of huge theme of the Hindu scriptures. And so to hear you describe death as unnatural is kind of interesting, because these people would say that's because it's not natural, because your true nature is eternal, the self is eternal, and what you're calling yourself is actually unnatural. And that's the thing that will come to an end. So some people might answer it like that. For me, death is terrifying. And it can be terrifying for two reasons. One is that you think it's lights off and everything comes to an end. The other is that you think there is something after death and it's bad. Right? People are genuinely terrified of concepts of hell and divine torment for the behaviors that they engaged in while they were alive. And a lot of that comes from religious upbringings, in particular doctrines about the nature of hell, which I think are not very biblical, to say the least. But there's sort of two flavours of fear there on the hell stuff. It requires essentially a metaphysical investigation into the nature of God and whether that God would allow such suffering for finite crimes. But with the lights off kind of thing, which I think more people are kind of freaked out by. You know, some people say, oh, but it's, you know, it's like before I was born, you know, like I was dead for thousands of years before I was born, and it never bothered me. That helps some people because it at least makes you realise that you're not going to experience it if the lights really Go off. And Epicurus famously said, when is death bad? It can't be bad now because I'm not dead. And it can't be bad for me when I'm dead because there's no me, so there's no point at which it can be true. Epicurus kind of wants to say if something is true, there has to be a time at which it's true. There has to be some time at which this fact is true. So if the fact is death is bad for me, my death is bad for me. When is that fact true? Can't be true now because I'm not dead. Can't be true later because there's no me. And people hear that and they go, oh, very clever. But it doesn't really do much, right, because again, that's a very left frame way of thinking. Very clever. But I'm still kind of concerned, right, because of my convictions about the nature of consciousness. I'm at least agnostic enough about sort of experiences, by which I mean like experiences with an apostrophe, experiences, connection to physicality. I'm agnostic enough about that that I'm kind of not super worried about the death of my physical body. I have no idea what's going to happen. I do know that if I do die and it all just sort of shuts off, then I won't be around to worry about it. And I'm only around to worry about it now. But I think about it like everybody does, but in some way that I can't quite explain. And it's a reason why I wouldn't really talk about it except to sort of hint at it in a situation like this is to say that these investigations into the nature of consciousness and the nature of the brain and split brain and stuff in some way I can't quite describe just has consoled me a little bit about the fact that one day my physical brain is going to end. Because I don't know if that's quite the same thing as what I am exactly. Well, it is the same thing as what I am as a self. And I am worried about the self coming to an end. But I guess one way of thinking about it as well is that the thing that's scary about death is not the secession of biological function. You could have a biological machine that has no consciousness. It's not worried about death. The thing that death, really people think about death in terms of the end of life, but really death is kind of the end of consciousness. That's what people are scared about. Maybe Consciousness has to manifest physically, in which case when you die, your consciousness sort of ends. And that's a bad thing, right? What's really ending there is not your biological makeup. It's not the fact that your leg and your arm start disintegrating. It's the fact that your experience, your unified sense of self has come to an end. And one slightly naive approach to this might be to say that I'm not convinced that the self exists. Not just because of the sort of weird esoteric Indian philosophy and stuff, but also because of the split brain stuff. I think all of this kind of stuff points to the idea that the idea of the self as we commonly understand it is a bit of an illusion. And it is interesting to me that this is the same kind of truth that is discovered by ancient authors of the Upanishads. And like a modern teenager who's never read a word of Sanskrit, who takes lsd. And they sort of have these similar. I think that might have something to do with the usage of psychedelics in the formulation of the Vedas. That's a whole nother subject with Soma, the mysterious substance that brings all of these profound spiritual truths that are uncannily similar to the profound spiritual truths that people find today when they take psychedelic drugs. But one of the foundational things that people discover in this regard is that the self is an illusion. The self does not exist. Even Sam Harris, the new atheist, doesn't believe in the self. And so if death is not just about biological function, it's the cessation of the self. There's something about the fact that I don't think the self exists even now, that gives me some consolation, you know, if the fear is what happens when the self comes to an end. Like the self never came to a beginning. So I don't even know how to answer that question. But I don't say that that's not going to help people. That's not going to. I was asked about this recently at one of these schools I was talking about as well. This kid sort of asked me and I can always tell. Sometimes when people ask certain questions, they mean different things. Like if someone says, should we be afraid of hell? I can tell in their face they're asking that because they're interested in the philosophy they want to hear about Epicurus. Or they're asking that because they're scared of death. Somebody asks me, do you think hell is biblical? They're either asking that because they're interested in New Testament studies or because they're Staying up at night and afraid of death and afraid of hell to the person who's afraid. I find it quite difficult to approach except to say, take heart that there are philosophical schools available to you that you should look at at least first, before you sort of lose your mind with worry. If I'm not trying to help other people and I'm just telling you about myself, yeah, it opens up this world. But I think it's funny, I would encourage people to investigate some of the Indian philosophical traditions. Not because there's this kind of idea in Western thought that there's this sort of spiritual kind of thing over there. It's this kind of cool, mystical thing. And like, oh, there's all these profound. It's like actually they're talking same stuff that we're talking about. They're just doing it in a different way that might make things click a little bit. And also, talking about the Indian school of philosophy is like talking about the Western canon of philosophy. The Western canon is like Kant or maybe John Stuart Mill and people. And it's not like all Westerners are running around in accordance with those principles. Right. But I do think it's uncanny that somebody will say to me, I've looked everywhere I can. I've studied philosophy, I. I've tried to. I've looked at religious traditions and I've prayed and I've gone to church and I still don't have these answers and I'm still afraid of death. And it's like, okay, hear me out. Have you ever tried reading a word of any kind of non Western philosophical canon? And if the answer is no, I'm not promising you're going to find it there. But I'm saying there is so much more for you to do before you can confidently have even a view, I think, on the nature of the self, the nature of death. Because most of our philosophical convictions are so culturally embedded with it without us realizing it, that if you don't step outside of that for a moment, you might just be following a thread that you are not the author of. And so I'd recommend stepping outside of that. And I'm not just saying that. I think people have noticed that over the course of my recent trajectory and the things that I'm talking about, this is just something that I've done. There's a lot to say about that. I spoke to a guy called Thomas Metzinger on my show about this, and so people want to kind of really know what I'm talking about when I say all that. I'd Recommend they go and watch that if you're worried about it. Also just realize that you're not alone. This is like the foundational question of human existence. I think it's weird not to be worried about it. It's sort of strange to me that people aren't talking about it all the time. We also have a sort of cultural reticence to talk about death. You know, death used to be much more present. Dead bodies on the street, plagues, all this kind of stuff. Covid sort of brought that back into sharp focus for a lot of people. But death is a bit of a taboo, and we don't really like to talk about it in polite society. And I think maybe that's also part of the problem.
- [96:55]
Interviewer
Yeah, last three, one sentence.
- [96:57]
Alex O'Connor
That was more than one sentence.
- [96:58]
Jay Shetty
No, no, but I asked you to.
- [96:59]
Alex O'Connor
Yeah, okay.
- [97:00]
Interviewer
Yeah. No, no, no. I knew what I was doing. I asked you to. All right, last three, one sentence. We ask this to every guest who's ever been on the show. What is the best advice you've ever heard or received?
- [97:09]
Alex O'Connor
Enjoy it.
- [97:11]
Interviewer
Simple.
- [97:12]
Alex O'Connor
Well, there have been contexts in which I've been so caught up. I remember the first time I did a big cinema podcast shoot where I had a whole camera crew and a big guest, and I was really excited about it. And I was reading this guest's books. I was looking at criticism. I was obsessive over preparing. I was so ready. And I spoke to a friend of mine who's in the same industry, and I just asked him, because he'd done this kind of stuff before, and I said, if you've got any advice, any last minute advice. And he just said, enjoy it. And I was like, yeah, good point. We're so often just, like, not present. I think anytime anyone's about to do something important, if someone's about to play their first gig or they're about to do some big career move that they've been waiting for for a long time or about to get married or something, and they're sort of so in their head about it, and they're like, they're living in the future, and then suddenly they're living in the past. It's just. It's, you know, it's the sort of be where your feet are, like, live in the present kind of thing. But specifically, like, enjoy it. Take a moment to look around and be like, yeah, this is cool.
- [98:16]
Interviewer
Yeah, I love that. Two more questions. We talked about this earlier. Why have you stopped saying yes to as many debates?
- [98:25]
Alex O'Connor
They're about ego.
- [98:26]
Interviewer
Oh, that Was your reason too interesting?
- [98:29]
Alex O'Connor
Well, I mean, if you want one sentence, that's what I would say. And it's not always about my ego, it's not always about their ego. Go. It's either the case that you've got one person who just wants to prove a point and one person who wants to get to truth, in which case the egotistical one is going to probably trounce them and it's going to be a bit unfair. Or you've got two people who both are egotistically trying to prove a point, in which case it becomes a mess and a shouting match. If you have two people that everyone has ego, everyone. But if you have two people who recognize that, try to mitigate it and try to give it a backseat to having a good conversation, it's kind of just no longer a debate almost by definition.
- [99:08]
Interviewer
So no one wants to do that anymore.
- [99:10]
Alex O'Connor
Well, people do. And I do debates sometimes, but I don't enjoy them. They're also extremely like expensive time wise because you have to prepare. It's like preparing for an exam. You don't know what's going to come up. If they score a point that you weren't ready for, it's going to be embarrassing. And that is fun. It's sporting, you know, and look, there is nothing wrong with sport. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it. It's fun, but you have to know that that's what you're doing. Debates are like boxing matches. You know, they will sometimes tell you who the better boxer is. They might not even tell you who the better boxer is. They'll tell you who boxed better in that match, but it won't tell you who the better boxer is overall. And it definitely won't tell you who the better fighter is. You have no idea what would happen if they met in a bar, no holds barred, and they were able to use intelligence and weapons and call their friends and stuff like that. You have no idea what would happen. Similarly, somebody in a debate, it's like a sparring match, you're going to see who's better at that particular dance, but you have no idea what would happen if you gave them a week to think about your point, consult all their resources and respond to you properly. And so I think that the sweet spot is somewhere in between those. Let's not take a week to respond, but let's not be like snapping back with quips. But having said that, a lot of people are quick to say, oh, I don't do debates, because they're not about Getting to truth. I do debate sometimes because they're fun. They're fun and they are interesting and you do bring up interesting points and they do become these spectacles and they do bring people into thinking about these issues and that's quite fun. But you have to recognise that that's what you're doing, such that afterwards, if it goes really well, you go, great. Oh, cool. Fun. I won. But it's like if you win a chess match or something. Oh, sweet. Cool. Anyway, let's play again sometime. And you might lose next time. That's the attitude you have to have. If you become convinced that you're like Magnus Carlsen because you won one chess match, even if you are Magnus Carlsen, that only means you're good at chess, you know?
- [100:54]
Interviewer
Yeah. Well said. Fifth and final question. We ask this to every guest who's ever been on the show. If you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be?
- [101:04]
Alex O'Connor
No playing pop music in, like, fancy restaurants.
- [101:11]
Interviewer
What should they play instead?
- [101:13]
Alex O'Connor
Anything else. Something that's suitable to the environment. I wrote a piece on this recently. It's my least favorite thing about the world is the fact that it's not just fancy restaurants. It's like you go into, like, a nice cafe, or you go into even like a hotel lobby or something, and you think about how much effort has been put into designing every single aspect. Which chairs have more feng shui, you know, which. Which wallpaper is going to sort of bring about the particular mood that we're trying to. And then they just decide to just. They put zero thought into the music. You know, I've left restaurants before because if you're going to a restaurant, you know, it's a big deal. You're spending money, you might not be able to do that very often. And you go, maybe you're on a date or something. The air is polluted with, like, dua lipa. Don't get me wrong, I like dua lipa. I actually do. I really do. But it's not there, you know, and it's become such an epidemic. It's like. It's difficult to go. I can't go to Green King pubs because all of them are playing pop music. And these pubs are, like, the most. They're beautiful, like these Victorian, like, wooden, like, ancient. They've got these histories about them on the menus. They're boasting about how, like, you know, there's like, the. I think it's called the Salisbury, which I wrote about in central London, which has this famous history. It's where someone proposed to someone or other. It's got all this stuff and you look at the images and it's this ornate, beautiful, chandelier type stuff. And if I showed you the image and said, now, just what music do you imagine is playing?
- [102:37]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [102:38]
Alex O'Connor
You know, somebody walks into a restaurant like that and says, you know, what this really needs is like, when I went in there, they were playing Kids by Robbie Williams and Kylie Minogue. And I'm just like, seriously, you know, it really gets on my nerves. So I would probably do that.
- [102:53]
Interviewer
That's one of my favorite answers. Alex, thank you so much. Such a treat. Appreciate you, mate.
- [102:57]
Alex O'Connor
Thanks. That's been fun.
- [102:58]
Jay Shetty
If you love this episode, you'll enjoy my interview with Dr. Daniel Amen on how to change your life by changing your brain.
- [103:06]
Interviewer
They don't do things until someone's mad at them to get it done. They need stress in order to get stuff done.
- [103:15]
Alex O'Connor
And that just makes everybody around them stressed.
- [103:20]
Jay Shetty
I've been seeing a lot more EVs lately. Parked in driveways, passing on the road, friends making the switch. And they all say the same thing. These cars are simpler. Fewer parts, fewer repairs, fewer headaches.
- [103:32]
Alex O'Connor
Stakes.
- [103:33]
Jay Shetty
That's what makes EVs worth considering. Less to break, less to fix. Even if you haven't made the move yet, it's hard to ignore the shift. They're more affordable, more available, and honestly just make sense for everyday life. The way forward is electric. Learn more@electricforall.org there's nothing like escaping to a happy place. And Celebrity Cruises helps you do just that. At from the Caribbean to Europe and Alaska. You'll eat in restaurants known for good taste. Enjoy all day date nights and dive into the best pool days around. Celebrity Cruises doesn't just build ships, they build vacations you'll Never forget. Visit celebrity.com, call 1-800-celebrity or contact your travel advisor. Ships Registry Malta and Ecuador Making space for ourselves is one of the most important things we can do, giving ourselves the time and the room to try new things. Well, it turns out our feet benefit from more space too. That's why I just picked up a pair of Ultra running shoes. The Ultra Fit design has more room for my toes, so they're comfortable, they keep me balanced. And seriously, my feet actually feel stronger. I've even started running more because of it. And honestly, I didn't expect to notice it this quickly, but from my first walk, it just felt different. Lighter, more natural. I've been wearing them on my morning walks and it genuinely makes getting out there feel easier. Treat yourself to a pair of ultras@ultrarunning.com and use code purpose10 for 10% off. That's a L T R-running.com. stay out there.
- [105:10]
Alex O'Connor
This is an I heart podcast. Guaranteed human.