have you ever wondered what is really steering your thoughts behaviors and desires behind the scenes the answer of course is your brain but who exactly is in charge up there you might think the answer is obvious I'm in charge of my own brain who else could it be but a fascinating experiment by scientist Benjamin libbit may make you question that assumption in the experiment leeet hooked electrodes up to participants heads and asked them to flex their fingers whenever they felt the conscious urge to do so the initial goal was simply to measure the time between
the conscious decision and the physical action this interval turned out to be about a quarter of a second but the real bombshell came from an unexpected finding the participants brain showed altered activity a full second before they were consciously aware of deciding to move their fingers let that sink in the brain was initiating the action before the conscious mind had decided anything it's as if there was a hidden voice in the brain saying you want to move your finger now and only then did the conscious self agree and initiate the action the conscious mind seems
to be more of a passive recipient of decisions rather than the active Commander we assume it to be it's like there is a secret version of you pulling the strings from behind the scenes as you can imagine these findings sent shock waves through the scientific community and challenged many core beliefs about free will but clearly many questions remain If there really is a hidden self orchestrating things behind the curtain who or what exactly is it what does this mysterious Puppet Master look like the book we're exploring today Incognito The Secret Lives of the brain by
renowned neuroscientist David Eagleman takes a deep dive into these questions Eagleman is a superstar in the field of brain science teaches at Stanford and was a science adviser for the hit TV show Westworld which grapples with many of these same themes around Consciousness and free will to get to know this hidden self we need to answer two key questions one who is it that is what exactly is guiding our thoughts if not our conscious minds and two why is it hidden why are we unaware of these subconscious decision-making processes let's start with the first question
of who this hidden self really is consider another experiment where a group of men were shown photographs of women's faces and asked which ones they found most attractive and would most like to date the women were all beautiful and the expected result was that it would come down to each man's individual taste and preferences but the actual results were stunning the men overwhelmingly selected the same women as the most attractive what did this smaller set of universally appealing women have in common it came came down to a subtle factor that not a single man noticed
their pupils had been digitally enlarged none of the men were aware of this when making their choices when asked why these women were so attractive they couldn't put a finger on it they just found them inexplicably alluring so what's going on here from an evolutionary perspective dilated poils are a strong indicator of sexual arol and receptivity for any species being able to spot a willing and eager is an enormously valuable skill for successful reproduction before the chance Slips Away across countless Generations the creatures best able to seize these opportunities would have passed on more of
their genes eventually this preference for dilated pupils was etched into our DNA the men in the study found the large pupil women most attractive because in a very real sense their genes were telling them to this also helps explain the Modern Trend of cosmetic contact lenses that make the pupils look bigger this one example is just the tip of the iceberg Eagleman walks through many other fascinating cases of how our mating preferences reflect unconscious evolutionary imperatives women are drawn to men with strong jawlines broad shoulders and other typically masculine features why because these are signals
of high testosterone which doesn't kick in until puberty a chiseled jawline advertises that this male is sexually mature and ready to reproduce the attraction stems from The evolutionary drive to identify the fittest mates men tend to prefer women with waist to hip ratios between 0.67 and 0.8 the centerfolds of Playboy magazine have reliably conformed to this range from a biological perspective this ratio corresponds to the optimal balance of estrogen that signals Peak fertility the male genes that pursued this look would have hit the evolutionary jackpot we perceive fairer skin as more beautiful captured in the
saying a fair complexion hides many flaws but there's a survival logic here too skin tone is an excellent outward indicator of Health as many diseases alter skin color or Texture in noticeable ways when the skin is very fair it's easier to detect these abnormalities the porcelain skinned Beauty is advertising her good health and fitness as a mate the list of examples goes on and on the key takeaway is that so much of what we find beautiful and sexually attractive reflects strategic genetic programming rather than abstract Aesthetics when we see a knockout or dream girl there
really is a primal Force driving that reaction even though our conscious Minds remains blissfully unaware as we gawk it feels spontaneous but the origins Trace back millions of years the hidden self that's really calling the shots is from one perspective the entire Legacy of human evolution up to this point it's the combined set of adaptive behaviors and preferences our ancestors gradually honed in order to survive we don't have conscious access to this Treasure Trove of evolutionary wisdom but it's there guiding us all the same but that's not the whole story there's also the matter of
our individual hidden selves after all we're not attraction robots responding identically to the same inputs Eagleman explains how the wiring and structure of each person's brain is unique owing to differences in our genes you can think of genes as the blueprints that determine how the brain gets built and just as no two homes are exactly identical even when constructed from the same blueprints each physical brain has its own distinct neural architecture since our thoughts and behaviors emanate from the physical brain this means our personalities are shaped by our genetic inheritance in very real ways from
this angle the hidden self is the genetic self Eagleman shares some striking examples of how genes can tilt the odds of certain behaviors a particular variant of the mayoa gene for instance is linked to far higher rates of violent crime and impulsivity he walks through some chilling statistics on just how deterministic this relationship is while still emphasizing that gen means are not Destiny but clearly we do not all arrive in the world carrying the same behavioral baselines the genetic dice loaded into our brains have already been rolled to some degree so far we've explored two
versions of the Hidden self The evolutionary self that reflects our shared Heritage as a species and the genetic self that captures our innate individual differences but there's a final piece of the puzzle which Eagleman calls the experience IAL self this aspect stems from the fact that our brains are constantly being physically reshaped by our thoughts and experiences every skill we learn every memory we form every sensation we absorb these all etch physical changes into the neurons and synapses as Eagleman puts it experience is what chisel the sculpture of the Hidden brain the experiential self encompasses
all the automatic habits and ticks of expertise we build up over time when you drive your car or play an instrument or speak a foreign language you're drawing on a reservoir of mastered skills embedded as neural circuits in the hidden self once fully internalized we can activate these abilities without any conscious effort in fact as Eagleman entertainingly demonstrates too much conscious interference can actually throw you off your game highly trained athletes can have their performance destroyed by overanalyzing their physical movements There's real wisdom in the Nike slogan just do it let the hidden expert take
over Eagleman argues that many of History's Greatest Geniuses owe their breakthroughs to the experiential self it's that feeling of an epiphany hitting you out of nowhere after you've immersed yourself in a subject for years consider mathematician enri panare who once wrote of a stubborn theorem he'd struggled with fruitlessly for weeks then one day on a geologic Excursion not even thinking about math the solution struck him like a thunderbolt but this was no Divine gift Eagleman explains it as Pan's hidden self crunching away at the problem in the background after extensive priming and then bursting into
his Consciousness once it found the solution so to recap the hidden self is kind of like a Russian nesting doll the outermost shell is the evolutionary self reflecting the ancient imperatives coded into us as a species embedded with within that is the genetic self which accounts for our innate individual differences and at the very center lies the experiential self which is molded by our personal history and habits together these selves form a potent Shadow government within the brain that rules from behind the scenes this brings us to the second question why is the hidden self
hidden if it's really the one in charge why doesn't it make itself known to us Eagleman offers a few reasons for one it allows us to operate on autopilot and conserve mental energy for more important decisions there's an efficiency to it if we had to consciously deliberate over every action we'd be paralyzed so the hidden self takes over the routine tasks and frees up the conscious mind for executive control it also leads us to pursue goals aligned with evolutionary success rather than our conscious values for example we might consciously believe in Progressive ideals of beauty
but our actual attraction mechanisms are still calibrated to the physical markers of genetic fitness the hidden self keeps our mating instincts lashed to The evolutionary Mast if those systems were open to conscious override we might make reproductive choices contrary to the species best interests finally as Eagleman notes there's an interesting quirk in how we gain new skills the learning process always starts consciously and deliberately with lots of focus and mental strain before receding into the hidden self think of how you first learned to tie your shoes or ride a bike it was a real struggle
but now you can do it automatically without a second thought as skills become mastered they slip out of Consciousness and into the hidden self there's something almost mischievous about it like a fairy godmother granting you Powers but then forbidding you from peing behind the curtain to understand them Eagleman acknowledges that these ideas can be unsettling at first if we're not the captains of our own ships are we even really free do we have any will of our own or are we just puppets of our evolutionary genetic and experiential selves Eagleman grapples with these heavy philosophical
questions throughout the book in the end his view is that the situation is complex and defies a simple yes or no answer free freedom and determinism are not All or Nothing propositions we can't control the blueprint for the brain we're born with or the instincts bred into us over eons or the skills already etched into our neurons in that sense we are constrained but we do have some ability to steer the ship and reshape the hidden self through new habits and experiences the conscious and unconscious minds are more like dance Partners than ruler and subject
the book is a gripping tour of this hidden land landscape within each of us the writing is crisp and wonderfully entertaining as Eagleman has a knack for explaining heady scientific Concepts through Vivid analogies and humorous thought experiments here's one of my favorite lines that captures the book's central idea there's an enormous amount of work that gets done under the hood of Consciousness and it's critical to our survival if you had to think about every breath and every heartbeat you'd have a hard time getting out of bed in the morning we tend to trust the press
releases from our conscious Minds implicitly rarely questioning if they're the full story but the deeper reality is that our lives and choices unfold through a delicate dance between the conscious and unconscious the hidden self may be the primary partner in this duet but both have essential roles to play this has been a brief tasting menu of the Sumptuous intellectual Feast Eagleman serves up in Incognito to truly grasp the the Grandeur and Nuance of his arguments you simply have to read the book rarely have I felt my perspective shift so much over a mere couple hundred
Pages you'll never look at your own mind the same way again or even be quite sure whose mind is doing the looking but one thing is certain the hidden depths of human behavior have a brilliant cartographer in David Eagleman he shines a thrilling light on The Amazing World behind our eyes the hidden self may be unknown to us but thanks to this book it's now hidden no more I can't recommend it highly enough pick up a copy and begin your own Journey inward you'll be astounded by what you find and with that we've reached the
end of today's edition of book every day I hope you feel inspired to crack open incognito as always keep on reading keep on learning and keep on growing see you next time
