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Reality is not real. Your world is a prediction. Every sight, sound, and touch you experience is the result of calculations your brain makes before reality even reaches you. It fills in gaps, fabricates details, and even alters time itself so you feel like you’re in control. But if everything you know is an illusion… what does that say about you? What does it mean for your choices? Is there even free will?


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Transcript
00:00The world you see is not real.
00:04You're not living in this very moment that you're experiencing,
00:07and nothing is like it seems.
00:09It turns out your brain constructs your reality as you're experiencing it.
00:14It edits your memories as they happen.
00:16It lives in totally different time spheres,
00:18and tells you a story about the world that feels real.
00:21What's going on, and who's really in control of your life?
00:25The gap between reality and you.
00:28Vision is maybe our main source of information about the world,
00:32but in reality, we don't really see that much.
00:35Only a thumbnail-sized area of your visual field is in high resolution,
00:39while the rest is out of focus.
00:41If it doesn't feel like this, that's because it's made up by your brain,
00:45using a pretty neat trick.
00:47Each second, your eyes make three to four sudden jerky movements,
00:51saccades of 50 milliseconds, focusing from one point to another,
00:55scanning your environment to get different sharp images
00:58that your brain then edits together.
01:00During a saccade, your brain shuts down your vision
01:03so you don't see a wild motion blur.
01:05This means that each day, for around two hours, you're completely blind.
01:09If you could actually see what your eyes see,
01:12it would look something like this.
01:17Instead, your brain fills this time
01:19with its best guesses of what happened during the blackness.
01:22But it does way more.
01:24It turns out that you're not really experiencing time correctly.
01:28What's really happening when you're stirring milk into a cup of coffee?
01:32As the spoon hits the ceramic,
01:34light reflects off it and hits your eyes after 1.3 nanoseconds.
01:38The ceramic vibrates and creates a shockwave of air molecules
01:41that travels to your ear in 1.2 milliseconds.
01:44Heat is picked up by fibers in your fingers
01:47that send a signal to your brain in 50 milliseconds.
01:50Three very different inputs,
01:52all processed in your brain at different times.
01:54You don't experience them separately,
01:56but as one smooth, simultaneous, and connected moment.
02:00Your brain takes a moment to process
02:02and then invents a reality,
02:04a present moment that's not real.
02:06What you feel is now
02:08is in fact a selectively edited version of the past.
02:11You really only consciously experience the world
02:140.3 to 0.5 seconds after things happened.
02:17Except this is also not really true,
02:20because your brain is editing time and space way more than that,
02:24and it makes decisions completely out of your conscious control.
02:28You're living in the past.
02:30No, future.
02:32No, a made-up future.
02:34Your present, what you experience right now,
02:37is kind of the future.
02:39Imagine for a second that you're a table tennis pro.
02:41In pro table tennis,
02:43balls whoosh around at 25 meters per second,
02:45which is pretty fast,
02:47so let's slow down time.
02:49Light passes from the ball to your eye in nanoseconds.
02:52It's converted into electrical impulses
02:55that reach your brain to be processed after 100 milliseconds.
02:58Meanwhile, the ball travels 2.5 meters through the air,
03:01the length of the table.
03:03If your brain showed you the past,
03:05where the ball was 100 milliseconds ago,
03:07it would hit you before you could react.
03:09So instead, your brain takes its location,
03:11speed, and direction,
03:13and calculates where the ball should be in the future,
03:16by the time the information reaches you,
03:18and then it creates a fictional version of it.
03:20This is what you see in your fake present,
03:23a fake ball that's somewhere else.
03:25But you don't need to just see the ball.
03:27You want to smash it back hard.
03:29If you acted now and started swinging your arm,
03:32you'd miss by a mile.
03:34Things are just too fast.
03:36So before the ball even touches your opponent's bat,
03:38your brain starts predicting
03:40where it will likely be in space after they hit.
03:42Based on the other player's posture
03:44and your table tennis experience.
03:46But as it can't be sure if it will be correct,
03:48it prepares multiple different responses.
03:50Maybe the ball will be here,
03:52or here, or even here.
03:54To be ready for all of these scenarios,
03:56your brain sends pre-programmed orders
03:58to the muscles you need to jump left,
04:00right, or up,
04:02telling them to be ready for any of them at a moment's notice.
04:04For a short moment,
04:06multiple ghost versions of you exist,
04:08all equally real inside your brain.
04:10And then as your opponent is about to lay into the swing,
04:12your brain decides on a single future
04:14that it thinks is most likely.
04:16All but one of the ghosts are deleted.
04:18You only ever experience the ghosts that won,
04:20never the potential ones.
04:22The order to the muscles to act out
04:24the willing movement is triggered
04:26even before the ball is hit back to you.
04:28You are totally oblivious to this.
04:30By the time you consciously see the ball
04:32coming at you and decide to hit it
04:34in a particular way, your body has already hit it back.
04:36In reality,
04:38your brain already made all the decisions.
04:40Your conscious experience
04:42is nothing more than an invented future,
04:44a prediction based on the information
04:46your brain received a fraction of a second ago.
04:48This is not just true for
04:50extreme sports like, um,
04:52table tennis, but also for walking.
04:54Walking
04:56is time travel.
04:58After your game, you're walking back home,
05:00seemingly choosing your path and reacting to things.
05:02Meanwhile, your brain is operating
05:04in three different time spheres at once.
05:06It processes the sensory feedback
05:08of the past, it calculates
05:10the current state of your body, and it predicts
05:12your future, because walking is intense.
05:14Before the signal
05:16from your foot touching the ground has even reached
05:18the brain, it's already sent the order to your
05:20foot to make the next step, and it's
05:22already calculated the muscle patterns for the
05:24next two. But what if something
05:26truly catastrophic happens?
05:28There's a banana peel, and you
05:30step on it and slip. How did it get
05:32here? Listen, don't worry about it.
05:34It turns out your brain is ready for this.
05:36So far, we spoke of your
05:38brain making decisions for you,
05:40but this is not really true.
05:42You don't have a central control room where the world
05:44comes together. In reality,
05:46different parts of your body are aware of different
05:48things at different times.
05:50Your spinal cord usually knows stuff
05:52before your brain. And even within
05:54your brain, different regions process the
05:56same event at different speeds and make
05:58independent decisions.
06:00As your foot catches the peel, the
06:02microscope inside your ears notices a sudden
06:04change of your position in space.
06:06It submits this information to your brainstem
06:08and spinal cord, the
06:10things-must-happen-quickly section of your
06:12body. They immediately trigger
06:14emergency recovery patterns and
06:16send orders to different muscle groups.
06:18Within 200 milliseconds,
06:20pre-programmed sequences activate
06:22to catch your fall. Your arms
06:24shoot out, your other leg stiffens to
06:26support your weight, your core muscles
06:28contract to stabilize you.
06:30100 milliseconds later, when you become aware
06:32that you're tripping, your body is already
06:34recovering. You are only
06:36just now catching up.
06:38Okay, so we've learned that your brain is constantly
06:40predicting reality around you,
06:42makes decisions about the best way to act,
06:44and then shows you an edited version.
06:46Which totally makes sense. Would you really
06:48want to be in charge of all that?
06:50But your brain is not just predicting the
06:52external world. Right now,
06:54it's predicting a way more complex thing.
06:56You.
06:58Are you just a prediction of your brain?
07:00Why do you feel
07:02about the world the way you do?
07:04Your sense of hunger, your energy
07:06level, and especially your emotions
07:08are not just objective reactions
07:10to what state you're in, but predictions.
07:12Your brain's prediction
07:14of what you'll need soon, or need
07:16to be ready for. You're probably used
07:18to getting food or going to bed roughly around
07:20the same time. And as the time approaches,
07:22your brain releases hormones
07:24to prepare you. A self-fulfilling
07:26prophecy. You get hungry or tired
07:28because your brain assumes this is the
07:30time when this is needed.
07:32This is the most striking thing about
07:34your emotions. They aren't just
07:36reactions to the outside world,
07:38they're predictions.
07:40When you go to a party, your brain isn't waiting
07:42to see how you feel once you get there
07:44based on how the party actually is.
07:46It analyses your experiences
07:48of past parties, and who it expects
07:50to be there. Maybe close friends you feel
07:52safe around. Maybe people you don't
07:54know who are a less socially secure
07:56bet. Maybe your brain
07:58remembers a party where you felt anxious
08:00and that experience stuck.
08:02This can be pretty annoying. If your
08:04brain predicts anxiousness, it
08:06adjusts your heart rate, hormone levels
08:08and muscle tensions before you even
08:10enter the room. It prepares
08:12your body for anxiety, making you
08:14actually feel anxious, which
08:16then confirms the brain's prediction
08:18and gets saved for future reference.
08:20Does this make you feel like you're
08:22just along for the ride, forced to experience
08:24whatever predictions your brain feeds you?
08:26Thankfully, it's not
08:28quite like that. Your conscious
08:30self is obviously not the decider of most
08:32things as you go through your day.
08:34But that is not what it's good at anyway.
08:36Your brain and all of these
08:38different organ systems decide a lot
08:40of things, but they're more like butlers
08:42taking care of all the busy work.
08:44You may not be in the driver's
08:46seat, but you are the passenger that
08:48decides where to go. What your
08:50conscious self is good at is long
08:52term planning and abstract thinking.
08:54It's a storyteller that
08:56tells the story of your life to your brain
08:58and to yourself, wherever
09:00the edges of these overlapping entities
09:02melt into each other.
09:04You are able to see the big picture
09:06that your internal prediction machine
09:08could never begin to grasp.
09:10You are the part of you that can
09:12edit and write new predictions into
09:14the system. Sometimes you
09:16and your brain disagree on what's correct,
09:18but in the end, you are the person
09:20in power who tells the story about
09:22who you are in this world.
09:24A story so convincing that you experience
09:26it as undeniable reality.
09:28And as a happy accident,
09:30your conscious self is great at
09:32being happy about ice cream,
09:34fascinated by internet videos,
09:36and thinking deeply about Pokemon types.
09:40What if you could
09:42train your brain to be more than just
09:44a regular butler?
09:46Transforming it into a lean, mean,
09:48problem-solving machine
09:50with supercharged critical thinking skills
09:52and next-level intuition
09:54to help make your reality
09:56even more interesting and fun.
09:58Thanks to our friends at Brilliant,
10:00you can. Brilliant helps you
10:02get smarter every day,
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10:06lessons on just about anything
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11:28We're finally making a PC
11:30game. Starbirds is a cheerful,
11:32cosy resource management game
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11:44We've been working on this for almost two
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