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The Predictive Mind | Jakob Hohwy: You don't see the world

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It's a brain hallucination

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Try a small experiment

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Close your eyes for five seconds

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Then open them

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You think you open your eyes

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And see the room

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The sky outside

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The phone screen in front of you

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But you don't

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Your brain

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From birth until now

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Has never seen light for a single second

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Nor heard a sound for a single second

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It's sealed in the skull, a lightproof

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And nearly soundproof black box

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Living a lifetime in darkness and silence

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All it receives

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Is a stream of pulses from the optic nerve

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And pulses from the cochlea

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They are all the same thing

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Neurons firing

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There is no red in these pulses

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No mother's voice

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No sky outside

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Just a bunch of unlabeled electrical signals

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Like bitstreams in undersea cables

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So how do you see sky and hear sound

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Your brain isn't perceiving the world

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In total darkness

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It's playing a massive

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Unsung guessing game with these pulses

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It's guessing what these signals

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Most likely mean is happening outside

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Every image you've ever seen

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Every sound heard, every texture felt

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Is essentially guessed by your brain

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This concept

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In 2013

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Australian philosopher Jakob Hohwy

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In his book "The Predictive Mind"

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Explained it systematically

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In the decade since publication

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It revolutionized cognitive science and philosophy

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Even how psychiatry views perception

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When I first finished this book

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One thought kept lingering

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Isn't this exactly what

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The Buddha said 2,500 years ago

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After 49 days under the Bodhi tree

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Hello

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Hi everyone

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I'm Wang Lijie

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In today's episode

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I want you to join me

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in exploring a chilling comparison

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A modern Australian philosopher's

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brain model built on math and neuroscience

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vs. ancient Indian practitioners'

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Yogacara model built on introspection

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Are they talking about the same thing?

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First, who is Hohwy?

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Jakob Hohwy

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Philosophy professor at Monash University

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He's not an experimental neuroscientist

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But he works with many scientists and doctors

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He has a rare talent

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To take clues from math, science, and philosophy

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And use a framework for laypeople

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To integrate them into one map

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What he did

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Wasn't invented from scratch

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The pillars of Predictive Processing

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Were built bit by bit by his predecessors

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In 1999

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Rao and Ballard wrote a famous paper

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Proposing the visual cortex's hierarchy

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Is a loop of prediction and error

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Around 2005

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Karl Friston of UCL

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Took this even further

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He proposed the Free Energy Principle

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Arguing all living organisms

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From bacteria to humans

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Are essentially doing the same thing

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Minimizing prediction error

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Hohwy's contribution

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Was taking these scattered academic ideas

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And integrating them into a philosophy

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That non-experts can understand

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In "The Predictive Mind"

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He wrote a bold line on page one

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He said

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This single mechanism

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Explains perception, action

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And every mental phenomenon in between

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It's not a modest claim

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But he has the confidence to say it

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Because in his book

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This mechanism truly grows into a tree

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A tree explaining all mental phenomena

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So how does this mechanism work?

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Just remember three things

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First

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Your brain

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In every moment

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Is making outward predictions

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Not conscious guesses like "it might rain"

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But deep, subconscious inference

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Based on existing internal models

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Past experiences and genetics

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Visual patterns learned in infancy

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Every millisecond

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Predicting the next sensory input

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Second

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Predictions flow top-down

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Higher levels form a hypothesis

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Sending it as a prediction signal

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Down to lower-level regions

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Lower levels compare it to actual pulses

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Matching parts

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Are ignored by the brain

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Assumed to be correct

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No processing needed

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Only the mismatches

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Called prediction errors

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Are sent back up

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To update the high-level hypothesis

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Third

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And most importantly

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What decides the outcome

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Is not truth

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But precision

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If your prior is strong and stable

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Input will hardly change you

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You see what you expect to see

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Even if it isn't there

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Conversely

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If priors are weak and input is strong

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The input leads you

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Even if that input is noise

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This sounds abstract

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But it explains many familiar mysteries

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Like the blind spot

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Part of your retina lacks photoreceptors

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Where the optic nerve exits

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Logically

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There should be a permanent black hole

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But you never see it

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Why?

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Because at that spot, your brain

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based on the surrounding images

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guesses the most likely content

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and seamlessly fills it in

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You've looked at this brain-painted patch your whole life

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without ever noticing it

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Take the inverted goggles experiment

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In 1896

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American psychologist George Stratton

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wore lenses that flipped his vision upside down

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For the first few days, he couldn't walk

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The whole world was inverted

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But after about eight days

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his brain recalibrated its predictive model

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The world flipped upright again

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He could live normally

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When he took the lenses off

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the real world appeared upside down

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It took days to flip it back

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The lenses were physical

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but what corrected the image

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wasn't the lenses

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It was the predictive model quietly rewriting itself

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Or consider the rubber hand illusion

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In 1998

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psychologists Botvinick and Cohen

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published in the journal Nature

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an experiment now repeatedly verified

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Hide one of your hands under a table

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Place a rubber hand on the table

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roughly where your real hand would be

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The experimenter brushes both hands simultaneously

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You watch the rubber hand being brushed

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After a minute or two

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you get a powerful illusion

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That rubber hand

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becomes your own hand

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Your brain has claimed it

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This is predictive processing at work

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Based on synced sight and touch

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your brain generates the best-fit guess

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And that guess is

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this rubber hand is part of my body

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Once that guess emerges

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it becomes your reality

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Then there are hallucinations

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Traditional psychiatry couldn't fully explain

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why schizophrenics see things that aren't there

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or hear non-existent voices

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In the predictive processing framework

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This has become very clear

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Their problem isn't seeing things that don't exist

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But a flaw in their prediction mechanism

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Either high-level priors are weighted too heavily

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Causing predictions to override sensory input

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Or low-level sensory precision is unstable

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Forcing the brain to fill gaps with priors

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In simpler terms

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Hallucination isn't seeing extra things

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It's the brain trusting its guesses too much

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Now that you understand the framework of predictive processing

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I want you to take a turn

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Back 2,500 years

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About 900 years after the Buddha's passing

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There were two brothers in India

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The elder, Asanga

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The younger, Vasubandhu

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They organized centuries of Yogacara observations

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Into a single system

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Today we call it Yogacara or Consciousness-Only

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The core of this school

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Is the Eight Consciousnesses model

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It says

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You think you're perceiving an objective world

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But everything you experience

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Is the coordination of eight types of consciousness

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At the surface

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Are the first five consciousnesses

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Eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body

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Corresponding to sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch

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One layer deeper

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Is the sixth consciousness

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Called Mano-vijnana or mental consciousness

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It assembles fragments from the first five

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Into an understandable picture

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Responsible for thinking, judging, and memory

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Deeper still

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Is the seventh consciousness

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Called Manas

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It has only one job

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To constantly grasp onto something

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And treat it as 'Self'

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It's the function that makes you feel 'I' am here seeing

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And 'I' am here hearing

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At the very bottom

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Is the eighth consciousness

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The Alaya-vijnana or storehouse consciousness

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It is a reservoir

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Storing imprints of all past experiences

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Called 'seeds' in Buddhism

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These seeds

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constantly affect what you see, hear, and think

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When seeds meet the right conditions

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they manifest

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becoming your current experience

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And your current experience

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plants new seeds back into the Alaya-vijnana

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Do you see it?

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Alaya-vijnana

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is that deepest a priori storehouse

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What it stores

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isn't clear memories you recall

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but the underlying patterns of how you guess

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underlying tendencies

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Manas-vijnana

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is the ego-centric anchor of the prediction model

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All predictions

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are built with the self as the coordinate

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It is the mechanism that closes the loop

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making the world revolve around a center

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The sixth consciousness

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is the reasoning layer

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where prediction errors update the hypothesis

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The first five consciousnesses

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are not pure inputs

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they arrive already carrying predictions

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Every red you see, every sound you hear

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is a finished product guessed and labeled

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I'm not forcing a connection

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This is a model from 2,500 years ago

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and a model from 2013

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describing the same structure

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with frameworks built in the same place

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Yogacara has an even sharper concept

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called the Three Natures

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The first is Parikalpita

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It says

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your predictions

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completely override actual input

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You no longer see the thing itself

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but the story you project onto it

292
00:10:53,480 --> 00:10:55,735
This matches Hohwy's extreme case

293
00:10:55,921 --> 00:10:58,256
where priors overwhelm sensory input

294
00:10:58,960 --> 00:11:00,876
All attachments and prejudices

295
00:11:01,241 --> 00:11:03,235
all "I already knew you were like this"

296
00:11:03,600 --> 00:11:05,376
are Parikalpita

297
00:11:06,377 --> 00:11:07,913
The second is Paratantra

298
00:11:08,178 --> 00:11:09,136
It says

299
00:11:09,137 --> 00:11:12,273
nothing exists in isolation

300
00:11:12,418 --> 00:11:13,992
Everything you experience

301
00:11:14,178 --> 00:11:17,232
All are results of countless causes co-creating

302
00:11:17,418 --> 00:11:18,736
The cup you see

303
00:11:18,737 --> 00:11:22,293
Is light, the eye, the optic nerve, the cortex

304
00:11:22,617 --> 00:11:25,492
The moment you learned the concept of "cup"

305
00:11:25,857 --> 00:11:27,937
And the direction of your current attention

306
00:11:27,938 --> 00:11:29,512
All working together

307
00:11:29,617 --> 00:11:30,332
This corresponds to

308
00:11:30,457 --> 00:11:32,112
The entire predictive processing

309
00:11:32,298 --> 00:11:34,297
The world is never just "seen"

310
00:11:34,298 --> 00:11:37,273
It is co-generated by prediction and input

311
00:11:38,034 --> 00:11:39,968
The third is Parinispanna

312
00:11:40,193 --> 00:11:40,992
It means

313
00:11:40,993 --> 00:11:43,309
When you are no longer fooled by illusions

314
00:11:43,593 --> 00:11:46,328
Nor treat dependent origins as solid things

315
00:11:46,434 --> 00:11:50,289
But see that seeing itself is prediction

316
00:11:50,473 --> 00:11:51,909
In that moment, what you see

317
00:11:52,194 --> 00:11:53,128
Is ultimate reality

318
00:11:53,394 --> 00:11:54,512
These three terms

319
00:11:54,513 --> 00:11:58,208
Yogacara scholars debated for a millennium

320
00:11:58,593 --> 00:12:00,008
Hohwy didn't use these words

321
00:12:00,233 --> 00:12:03,208
But in the last chapter of The Predictive Mind

322
00:12:03,513 --> 00:12:03,868
He said

323
00:12:04,274 --> 00:12:06,208
Predictive processing shows us

324
00:12:06,314 --> 00:12:08,433
The link between mind and world

325
00:12:08,434 --> 00:12:10,608
Is fragile and indirect

326
00:12:10,753 --> 00:12:13,049
He used "fragile" and "indirect"

327
00:12:13,113 --> 00:12:14,968
To describe the same thing

328
00:12:15,942 --> 00:12:17,118
Moving forward

329
00:12:17,182 --> 00:12:18,221
In Hohwy's framework

330
00:12:18,222 --> 00:12:21,878
He integrated another concept

331
00:12:21,903 --> 00:12:23,902
Invented by Karl Friston

332
00:12:23,903 --> 00:12:25,238
Called active inference

333
00:12:25,383 --> 00:12:27,262
The predictive processing you just learned

334
00:12:27,263 --> 00:12:28,557
Is only half the story

335
00:12:28,743 --> 00:12:29,621
The other half is

336
00:12:29,623 --> 00:12:32,957
The brain doesn't just wait for signals

337
00:12:32,983 --> 00:12:34,957
It also actively changes the world

338
00:12:34,983 --> 00:12:37,118
To make the world fit its predictions

339
00:12:37,263 --> 00:12:37,898
You are hungry

340
00:12:38,062 --> 00:12:39,817
Your brain predicts you shouldn't be

341
00:12:40,222 --> 00:12:41,337
To fulfill that prediction

342
00:12:41,582 --> 00:12:43,061
You can modify the prediction

343
00:12:43,062 --> 00:12:45,398
By accepting the fact that you are hungry

344
00:12:45,542 --> 00:12:46,981
Or you can modify the world

345
00:12:46,983 --> 00:12:48,998
By getting up to find food

346
00:12:49,822 --> 00:12:50,577
The act of eating

347
00:12:50,863 --> 00:12:52,398
Is not just because you want to

348
00:12:52,462 --> 00:12:55,797
But because it reduces prediction error

349
00:12:56,262 --> 00:12:57,676
It sounds strange

350
00:12:58,102 --> 00:12:59,796
But the meaning is profound

351
00:13:00,222 --> 00:13:00,897
It says that

352
00:13:01,222 --> 00:13:02,541
all your actions

353
00:13:02,541 --> 00:13:03,217
from breathing

354
00:13:03,622 --> 00:13:04,257
to speaking

355
00:13:04,581 --> 00:13:06,060
to choosing a job

356
00:13:06,061 --> 00:13:07,541
to ending a relationship

357
00:13:07,541 --> 00:13:09,477
share the same underlying goal

358
00:13:09,862 --> 00:13:13,036
closing the gap between prediction and reality

359
00:13:13,581 --> 00:13:15,757
Your priors shape your actions

360
00:13:15,821 --> 00:13:18,477
Your actions shape the next moment

361
00:13:18,701 --> 00:13:23,156
The world then reinforces or loosens your priors

362
00:13:23,541 --> 00:13:24,477
This cycle

363
00:13:24,541 --> 00:13:27,237
has a 2,000-year-old Buddhist name

364
00:13:27,742 --> 00:13:28,877
Karma

365
00:13:29,301 --> 00:13:30,137
Seeds manifesting

366
00:13:30,541 --> 00:13:32,076
Manifestations perfuming seeds

367
00:13:32,585 --> 00:13:36,439
Seeds in the Alaya-vijnana become your experience

368
00:13:36,585 --> 00:13:40,279
Your experience sows seeds back into the Alaya

369
00:13:40,784 --> 00:13:42,079
This is not a metaphor

370
00:13:42,505 --> 00:13:45,679
It is active inference at the conscious level

371
00:13:46,064 --> 00:13:48,343
You don't live in an external world

372
00:13:48,345 --> 00:13:49,480
and then feel it

373
00:13:49,824 --> 00:13:51,343
You are within your predictions

374
00:13:51,345 --> 00:13:54,919
carving the world into its current form

375
00:13:55,064 --> 00:13:57,559
while being carved in return

376
00:13:57,664 --> 00:13:59,240
into who you are now

377
00:14:00,201 --> 00:14:01,855
So the real question is

378
00:14:02,201 --> 00:14:04,155
if everything is driven by prediction

379
00:14:04,561 --> 00:14:05,576
then what is awakening

380
00:14:05,600 --> 00:14:06,556
exactly

381
00:14:07,041 --> 00:14:07,475
What happens

382
00:14:07,801 --> 00:14:09,155
during sudden enlightenment

383
00:14:09,748 --> 00:14:10,547
This question

384
00:14:10,720 --> 00:14:13,375
Hohwy didn't answer directly in his book

385
00:14:13,681 --> 00:14:16,095
But his students and collaborators

386
00:14:16,201 --> 00:14:17,696
in the decade following

387
00:14:17,720 --> 00:14:22,095
pushed this question to a clear position

388
00:14:22,561 --> 00:14:23,696
In 2020

389
00:14:23,801 --> 00:14:26,216
a team led by Laukkonen

390
00:14:26,240 --> 00:14:28,436
published a key paper in

391
00:14:28,441 --> 00:14:30,495
Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews

392
00:14:30,600 --> 00:14:34,235
titled "From Many to None"

393
00:14:34,801 --> 00:14:35,515
What they said

394
00:14:35,880 --> 00:14:37,015
was very direct

395
00:14:37,961 --> 00:14:38,395
Meditation

396
00:14:38,841 --> 00:14:41,015
especially the deconstructive kind

397
00:14:41,041 --> 00:14:42,440
its entire mechanism

398
00:14:42,441 --> 00:14:46,375
is a systematic reduction of prediction

399
00:14:47,185 --> 00:14:48,841
Focused attention meditation

400
00:14:48,986 --> 00:14:50,680
like focusing on the breath

401
00:14:50,825 --> 00:14:52,001
What it does

402
00:14:52,106 --> 00:14:55,680
is take the brain's scattered predictions

403
00:14:55,785 --> 00:14:57,601
and force them into a single point

404
00:14:57,905 --> 00:14:59,040
It makes you realize

405
00:14:59,185 --> 00:15:02,721
you can't stop thoughts from arising

406
00:15:02,905 --> 00:15:04,601
Open monitoring meditation

407
00:15:04,665 --> 00:15:08,081
like observing thoughts without judgment

408
00:15:08,226 --> 00:15:09,060
What it does

409
00:15:09,386 --> 00:15:11,400
is let you observe prediction itself

410
00:15:11,785 --> 00:15:15,025
The background guessing process

411
00:15:15,025 --> 00:15:16,440
is pulled into the foreground

412
00:15:16,665 --> 00:15:17,841
You begin to see

413
00:15:17,866 --> 00:15:20,040
that this emotion is a prediction

414
00:15:20,185 --> 00:15:22,761
that the sense of 'self' is a prediction

415
00:15:22,785 --> 00:15:26,440
even the 'external world' is a prediction

416
00:15:27,103 --> 00:15:28,137
At the deepest level

417
00:15:28,542 --> 00:15:30,238
is non-dual meditation

418
00:15:30,703 --> 00:15:31,497
What it does

419
00:15:31,863 --> 00:15:32,558
is even more radical

420
00:15:32,902 --> 00:15:34,478
It makes all your predictions

421
00:15:34,583 --> 00:15:37,517
temporarily lose their precision weight

422
00:15:38,063 --> 00:15:39,578
In that moment, you experience

423
00:15:39,863 --> 00:15:41,238
not emptiness

424
00:15:41,343 --> 00:15:43,917
but everything you usually cling to

425
00:15:44,183 --> 00:15:45,297
suddenly becoming

426
00:15:45,583 --> 00:15:46,958
optional or different

427
00:15:47,302 --> 00:15:48,757
In Hohwy's language

428
00:15:48,902 --> 00:15:52,277
this is a massive prior weight reset

429
00:15:52,583 --> 00:15:54,037
In Yogacara language

430
00:15:54,142 --> 00:15:56,238
it is turning consciousness into wisdom

431
00:15:56,542 --> 00:15:58,757
The 6th consciousness is seen through

432
00:15:58,943 --> 00:16:00,917
The 7th consciousness's ego loosens

433
00:16:01,142 --> 00:16:04,558
Seeds in the Alaya consciousness

434
00:16:04,583 --> 00:16:06,877
lose their original precision weight

435
00:16:07,510 --> 00:16:08,785
Do you know in Buddhist sutras

436
00:16:09,110 --> 00:16:10,525
at the moment of enlightenment

437
00:16:10,551 --> 00:16:12,106
what the most common metaphor is

438
00:16:12,591 --> 00:16:13,606
Waking from a dream

439
00:16:13,910 --> 00:16:15,606
Not seeing something better

440
00:16:15,990 --> 00:16:17,309
Not gaining anything

441
00:16:17,311 --> 00:16:18,630
Not going anywhere

442
00:16:18,630 --> 00:16:19,606
Waking from a dream

443
00:16:19,831 --> 00:16:22,405
You were in a dream of your own making

444
00:16:22,431 --> 00:16:24,086
You took this dream as reality

445
00:16:24,270 --> 00:16:25,186
Then at some point

446
00:16:25,510 --> 00:16:26,830
for some unknown reason

447
00:16:26,831 --> 00:16:28,005
you suddenly realize

448
00:16:28,030 --> 00:16:28,226
Oh

449
00:16:28,510 --> 00:16:29,326
this is a dream

450
00:16:30,412 --> 00:16:32,051
It's not that the world changed

451
00:16:32,052 --> 00:16:34,267
Your relationship with the world has changed

452
00:16:34,333 --> 00:16:35,208
You are still looking

453
00:16:35,453 --> 00:16:36,128
Still listening

454
00:16:36,373 --> 00:16:37,348
Still walking

455
00:16:37,453 --> 00:16:40,787
But the sense of "this is real" that locks everything in

456
00:16:40,853 --> 00:16:41,748
Has loosened

457
00:16:41,892 --> 00:16:43,947
Hohwy says at the end of his book

458
00:16:44,052 --> 00:16:46,067
Predictive processing shows us

459
00:16:46,093 --> 00:16:48,067
The relationship between mind and world

460
00:16:48,093 --> 00:16:50,187
Is fragile and indirect

461
00:16:50,333 --> 00:16:50,927
Indirect

462
00:16:51,133 --> 00:16:52,091
These three words

463
00:16:52,093 --> 00:16:54,348
The ancients had a simpler way to say it

464
00:16:54,613 --> 00:16:55,287
They called it

465
00:16:55,733 --> 00:16:56,468
Like a dream

466
00:16:57,036 --> 00:16:59,011
I've finished the part I most wanted to share

467
00:16:59,356 --> 00:17:00,911
But I want to end on a question

468
00:17:01,077 --> 00:17:02,011
Without a conclusion

469
00:17:02,437 --> 00:17:04,092
Hohwy didn't know about Yogacara

470
00:17:04,597 --> 00:17:07,131
Asanga and Vasubandhu didn't know Bayesian inference

471
00:17:07,477 --> 00:17:08,836
Between these two models

472
00:17:08,837 --> 00:17:11,411
Neither needs validation from the other

473
00:17:11,636 --> 00:17:12,871
Independently

474
00:17:13,036 --> 00:17:14,411
Using their own tools

475
00:17:14,477 --> 00:17:16,675
One with equations and neuroimaging

476
00:17:16,677 --> 00:17:18,491
One with inward meditation

477
00:17:18,516 --> 00:17:20,091
They reached the same place

478
00:17:20,937 --> 00:17:23,617
But the reason I'm here talking about this

479
00:17:23,617 --> 00:17:24,673
Isn't their similarity

480
00:17:24,937 --> 00:17:27,193
But the empty space between them

481
00:17:27,538 --> 00:17:29,633
Hohwy gave us a microscope

482
00:17:29,738 --> 00:17:32,633
To see clearly how prediction works

483
00:17:32,818 --> 00:17:36,433
Yogacara gave us a map inside the microscope

484
00:17:36,538 --> 00:17:40,673
To show it can be seen and released personally

485
00:17:41,098 --> 00:17:42,252
The microscope and the map

486
00:17:42,578 --> 00:17:43,873
Are not the scenery

487
00:17:44,626 --> 00:17:46,840
So finally, I leave this question to you

488
00:17:47,185 --> 00:17:49,281
If everything you see right now

489
00:17:49,386 --> 00:17:50,600
Is your prediction

490
00:17:51,106 --> 00:17:52,261
The one who is predicting

491
00:17:52,666 --> 00:17:53,100
Who is it

492
00:17:53,945 --> 00:17:56,001
No need to rush the answer

493
00:17:56,305 --> 00:18:00,920
Just let it sit for minutes, hours, or days

494
00:18:00,985 --> 00:18:02,241
Even weeks

495
00:18:02,745 --> 00:18:03,380
You will find

496
00:18:03,985 --> 00:18:04,801
It won't leave

497
00:18:05,225 --> 00:18:06,481
And it won't let you go

498
00:18:07,349 --> 00:18:09,823
Have you read "The Predictive Mind"

499
00:18:10,349 --> 00:18:10,904
What do you think

500
00:18:11,228 --> 00:18:13,444
Between predicting and being predicted

501
00:18:13,468 --> 00:18:14,384
What else is hidden

502
00:18:15,069 --> 00:18:19,828
If you want to hear about Hovey's latest consciousness experiments

503
00:18:19,829 --> 00:18:23,363
Or the part of Yogacara that deconstructs active inference

504
00:18:23,428 --> 00:18:25,204
Let me know in the comments

505
00:18:25,388 --> 00:18:26,103
I'm Wang Lijie

506
00:18:26,349 --> 00:18:27,684
See you next time