Video: TEDxReno Talk

Morality, mind perception, and concussions

I recently gave a talk at TEDx Reno about why we fight about morality and politics (the same topic as my forthcoming book, which you can check out here). In the video I explain the origins of our moral sense and how different worries about vulnerability and victimization explain many of today’s political disagreements. You can view the video at the link below:

The topic of the talk—moral and political disagreement—seems far removed from where I began my career, studying the problem of mind perception: how we fail to understand other people’s minds.

The problem of other minds is that other people’s thoughts and experiences are fundamentally inaccessible to us. How do you know that other people aren’t just mindless zombies? Or that your partner loves you as much as you love them? Or whether your dog has a rich inner life? We can’t actually answer any of these questions, and so we’re left to perceive the minds of others.

In fact, a TEDx talk I did in grad school (linked here) was about how our perception of other people’s minds changes our experience of the world. Some of my research showed that candy tastes better when it is given with good intentions and that electric shocks hurt more when they seem intentional.

The problem of other minds matters for my current TEDx talk too, because a major cause of political polarization is that we fail to recognize that our political opponents feel vulnerable and worried, just like us. We imagine the minds of our opponents as being filled with hatred, rage, and malicious intentions, and this makes us dislike and avoid them. These (mis)perceptions are contradicted by the research, which shows that people are more concerned about protecting their loved ones than ruining your life.

Speaking of the problem of other minds, one funny thing about watching lots of TED style talks and then giving one of your own is that you realize how difficult it is to imagine being the speaker. It's way more stressful and overwhelming than I expected it would be. Lights are bright, and there are a thousand or more people staring at you, coughing, moving around and dropping their books on the floor. And according to the show organizers, you're supposed to just ignore them and look straight ahead at a camera in the middle of the black wall 100 feet away.

The other thing that audience members don’t know is the mental state of the speaker, like whether they had a concussion recently. A couple months before the talk, my wife accidentally slammed the car trunk on my head and gave me a concussion. For the first week, I mostly slept, and had a constant headache behind my left eye. Concentration was hard, as if I was living life through a haze. It was hard to remember things, especially a 13 minute talk without slides or cues. I panicked and thought my professional life—a life that relies on my brain being in good condition—was all but over. Eventually things got a bit less hazy, but needless to say I was pretty nervous for the talk.

But there was also a silver lining, a little-known fact about TEDx talks: speakers mess up a lot. In fact, it’s expected. The talks are live, but both the speakers and the audience know that the real audience is you—the people watching the video from home—and so the MC tells everyone to expect pauses and breaks. As speakers, we’re told that if we mess up, we should just freeze and do the line over again until we get it right, so the editors can cut the video together. As it turns out, freezing is also a natural fear response in stressful situations, and so I witnessed many people—including myself—freeze and flub. We all reported that these seconds of awkward pauses felt like hours, but it seems like everyone's videos erased all evidence of mistakes (although perhaps you can find them in mine!).

I hope you enjoy the video on why we fight about morality and politics, and maybe think about the problem of other minds next time you watch someone on camera or talk with someone who disagrees with you about politics.