0:00:09.487,0:00:10.324
Hi.

0:00:10.324,0:00:12.874
I have no idea[br]what Milton just said, so -

0:00:12.874,0:00:13.894
(Laughter)

0:00:13.894,0:00:16.194
If it was bad,[br]you will tell me, won't you?

0:00:16.194,0:00:19.024
(Laughter)

0:00:21.022,0:00:24.552
We human beings can be[br]quite clever when we try,

0:00:24.702,0:00:28.752
and over the centuries[br]we've managed to solve

0:00:28.752,0:00:31.982
many of the great mysteries[br]of the world, of life.

0:00:33.312,0:00:37.312
We know now that the sky is not really[br]held up with four tent poles

0:00:37.829,0:00:40.589
and that stars are not really[br]tiny little things.

0:00:40.589,0:00:42.791
They're just a very long way away.

0:00:44.139,0:00:48.909
We even know that teenagers[br]are not really possessed by demons.

0:00:48.909,0:00:50.399
(Laughter)

0:00:50.399,0:00:52.539
They're just clinically insane.

0:00:52.539,0:00:54.719
(Laughter)

0:00:55.071,0:00:57.458
But there are still some mysteries left.

0:00:57.966,0:01:01.121
There's the origin of the universe.

0:01:01.378,0:01:03.218
That's quite a big one.

0:01:04.728,0:01:08.558
And there's a lot of mysteries[br]about how a tiny little egg cell

0:01:09.573,0:01:11.023
can grow and develop

0:01:11.023,0:01:17.573
into something as complex and wonderful[br]and tremendously attractive as you.

0:01:20.501,0:01:25.551
And there's the mystery of consciousness,[br]the great secret of consciousness.

0:01:25.740,0:01:29.490
How come there's a me[br]inside my head looking out?

0:01:31.724,0:01:34.354
I'd love to talk to you[br]about all three of those things,

0:01:34.354,0:01:37.284
but I only have thirteen minutes,

0:01:37.284,0:01:40.694
so I'm just going to solve[br]the secret of consciousness.

0:01:43.650,0:01:45.578
I don't want to leave you in suspense,

0:01:45.578,0:01:49.210
because frankly, when you hear the answer,

0:01:49.210,0:01:51.710
you're just going to be[br]bitterly disappointed anyway.

0:01:51.710,0:01:54.100
So I'll tell you the secret straightaway,

0:01:54.385,0:01:57.345
and then I'll try to make you[br]feel better about it.

0:01:58.471,0:02:00.851
So, okay, here we go. Are you ready?

0:02:02.122,0:02:06.202
The great secret of consciousness is ...

0:02:08.815,0:02:10.894
No, actually, I'll tell you a story first.

0:02:10.894,0:02:13.004
(Laughter)

0:02:14.070,0:02:18.070
When my son Christopher[br]was a little boy, about that big,

0:02:18.070,0:02:19.560
one of his teachers asked him

0:02:19.560,0:02:23.820
what he wanted to be,[br]what he wanted to do when he grew up.

0:02:23.980,0:02:26.710
And Christopher very confidently answered,

0:02:27.040,0:02:29.700
"I want to study how one thing[br]affects another."

0:02:31.914,0:02:34.434
And as career plans go,

0:02:34.434,0:02:38.154
I think his teacher felt[br]that was a little bit vague,

0:02:38.816,0:02:41.016
but I was really proud of him.

0:02:41.953,0:02:45.393
For a start, you can never be unemployed[br]with a skill like that, can you?

0:02:45.393,0:02:46.533
(Laughter)

0:02:46.533,0:02:48.496
You want to solve the problems of cancer,

0:02:48.496,0:02:51.693
you want to find out why wars get started,

0:02:51.693,0:02:53.673
you want to design better spacecraft,

0:02:53.673,0:02:58.143
who better to ask than somebody who knows[br]how one thing leads to another?

0:03:00.584,0:03:01.954
But he was right.

0:03:01.954,0:03:04.414
You can study how one thing[br]affects another.

0:03:05.054,0:03:07.073
It's called cybernetics, in fact.

0:03:09.271,0:03:12.991
Because there's not that many ways[br]in which one thing can affect another.

0:03:13.311,0:03:15.081
And if you're quite good at patterns,

0:03:15.081,0:03:18.291
you start to see that the same[br]kinds of dynamics

0:03:18.699,0:03:21.209
occur in many, many levels of scale.

0:03:22.941,0:03:26.521
Chris was kind of simplifying -[br]because it was a teacher, you know -

0:03:26.891,0:03:31.561
and what he really meant[br]was not how one thing affects another,

0:03:32.333,0:03:37.443
but how one thing affects another[br]that affects the first thing again.

0:03:37.953,0:03:41.723
So something called[br]circular causality or feedback,

0:03:42.241,0:03:45.211
and cybernetics is the study of feedback.

0:03:45.984,0:03:47.481
This is really important

0:03:47.481,0:03:52.221
because basically everything[br]you see around you

0:03:53.208,0:03:54.948
exists because of feedback.

0:03:55.740,0:03:59.270
The atoms in the seat in front of you,

0:03:59.713,0:04:03.893
the mind and the body[br]of the person sitting in that seat,

0:04:04.246,0:04:09.986
the words I'm using, Portugal, even TED.

0:04:10.143,0:04:12.823
All of these things exist[br]because of feedback,

0:04:13.379,0:04:17.899
because they are self-reinforcing[br]or self-regulating in some way.

0:04:18.696,0:04:20.916
Because if they weren't,[br]they'd just disappear.

0:04:21.924,0:04:25.544
So everything is feedback[br]and feedback is everything.

0:04:26.393,0:04:31.243
Anyway, where was I?[br]Consciousness. Alright. This time.

0:04:31.243,0:04:32.923
(Laughter)

0:04:32.923,0:04:36.945
The great secret of consciousness is ...

0:04:39.275,0:04:40.575
By the way,

0:04:40.575,0:04:42.395
(Laughter)

0:04:42.395,0:04:44.965
have you ever spent much time[br]thinking about the fact

0:04:44.965,0:04:49.905
that you are actually[br]a colony of single-celled creatures?

0:04:50.870,0:04:53.860
It's kind of freaky,[br]but it's also quite wonderful.

0:04:54.621,0:04:55.681
You are.

0:04:57.226,0:05:02.275
You are a society[br]of 100 trillion little creatures,

0:05:02.704,0:05:07.524
and 90% of them are bacteria,[br]which is kind of embarrassing,

0:05:07.524,0:05:12.834
but you can't live without them,[br]so collectively they're you.

0:05:14.107,0:05:16.777
And even the ones that have human genes,

0:05:18.595,0:05:21.195
they're really just[br]little single-celled animals,

0:05:21.657,0:05:24.127
and they reproduce asexually;

0:05:24.127,0:05:27.447
they divide into two, then four,[br]then eight and sixteen.

0:05:27.954,0:05:31.674
And almost the only thing[br]that's special about them

0:05:31.674,0:05:34.644
is the fact that they're covered in glue,

0:05:34.890,0:05:38.530
so they kind of end up[br]stuck together in a lump

0:05:39.082,0:05:42.652
instead of swimming off and living[br]happy independent lives.

0:05:43.657,0:05:47.407
So basically you are a lump[br]of sticky little creatures.

0:05:49.903,0:05:51.929
The reason I tell you this partly is

0:05:51.929,0:05:55.293
that it kind of explains[br]what I do for a living.

0:05:56.090,0:05:58.974
I work in a field called artificial life,

0:06:00.485,0:06:05.495
which basically means[br]using technology to explore biology.

0:06:06.300,0:06:09.780
And so I spend my days[br]making artificial creatures.

0:06:10.493,0:06:12.163
Sometimes robots.

0:06:12.163,0:06:18.423
In fact I have a full-sized female,[br]mini-skirted robot sitting in my bedroom,

0:06:18.423,0:06:19.513
(Laughter)

0:06:19.513,0:06:22.263
which causes a big shock[br]to anyone who comes in

0:06:22.263,0:06:24.493
to do something in my apartment.

0:06:27.367,0:06:31.257
But mostly, I make virtual creatures[br]that live inside a computer.

0:06:33.995,0:06:39.555
The only thing worth knowing about this[br]is that they are also communities.

0:06:39.555,0:06:43.665
So I don't try to program computers[br]to behave like animals;

0:06:43.865,0:06:47.325
I try to program computers[br]to behave like brain cells

0:06:47.445,0:06:49.425
and kidney cells and liver cells,

0:06:49.425,0:06:53.035
and then I try to find ways[br]to plug them together into systems,

0:06:53.637,0:06:55.094
into communities,

0:06:56.853,0:07:02.076
that collectively have thoughts[br]and feelings and hopes and dreams.

0:07:04.382,0:07:08.082
And many, many years ago,[br]about 20,000 years ago,

0:07:08.082,0:07:13.456
I took some of my little creatures[br]and put them into a computer game

0:07:13.918,0:07:15.471
and let people play with them,

0:07:15.471,0:07:17.488
and the results were wonderful.

0:07:19.020,0:07:23.370
At least a million people[br]started looking after my little creatures,

0:07:23.370,0:07:25.830
and they did great things.

0:07:27.108,0:07:29.751
They would set up adoption agencies,

0:07:30.384,0:07:31.698
write lots of stories,

0:07:31.698,0:07:33.870
do scientific experiments on them,

0:07:34.326,0:07:36.092
study their genetics.

0:07:40.968,0:07:42.888
Actually quite a lot of them went on,

0:07:42.888,0:07:44.488
when they grew up,

0:07:44.488,0:07:46.628
they went on to become[br]scientists and stuff,

0:07:46.628,0:07:48.844
because of the experiments[br]they had been doing

0:07:48.844,0:07:51.088
on my little artificial life forms.

0:07:51.399,0:07:55.399
But the most important thing[br]was that they asked a lot of questions,

0:07:55.399,0:07:59.749
deep questions about what is life,[br]what is the mind, what is consciousness.

0:07:59.749,0:08:03.449
And I just loved that;[br]it made my whole life worth living.

0:08:05.255,0:08:07.285
Because these questions really matter.

0:08:09.043,0:08:12.137
How do we know,[br]how can we make good judgements

0:08:12.504,0:08:19.484
about ethical questions[br]like abortion or animal cruelty

0:08:19.946,0:08:22.176
if we don't know what consciousness is?

0:08:23.183,0:08:27.093
You can't be cruel to something[br]unless it knows you're being cruel to it.

0:08:27.093,0:08:29.303
But how do we know whether it knows?

0:08:31.278,0:08:33.066
I live in America,

0:08:33.845,0:08:39.438
and over there, abortion[br]is a huge political subject.

0:08:40.138,0:08:44.658
It sometimes seems to me[br]like half the population believe this,

0:08:44.937,0:08:47.607
and the other half[br]of the population believe that.

0:08:49.089,0:08:53.469
They can't both be right.[br]They could of course both be wrong.

0:08:55.456,0:08:58.736
Are they sitting down[br]around a really long table,

0:08:58.975,0:09:03.285
having discussions and trying to work out[br]what the right answer is about abortion?

0:09:03.491,0:09:06.641
Well no, of course not. It's America.[br]They just shoot each other.

0:09:06.641,0:09:09.002
(Laughter)

0:09:10.424,0:09:11.604
So it's a mess.

0:09:11.604,0:09:13.464
We don't know what we're talking about,

0:09:13.874,0:09:18.544
and part of the reason is,[br]I think, that we're stuck.

0:09:19.364,0:09:21.934
We're stuck, we can't move[br]forward with these problems,

0:09:21.934,0:09:26.474
because we don't know[br]what the secret of consciousness is.

0:09:28.979,0:09:34.029
I guess that's me there.[br]Third time lucky, I'll tell you.

0:09:34.029,0:09:37.279
This time, I'll tell you,[br]and you're not going to like it.

0:09:37.869,0:09:42.779
Alright, so the great secret[br]of consciousness is ...

0:09:45.099,0:09:47.509
that there is no secret of consciousness.

0:09:47.509,0:09:49.099
(Laughter)

0:09:49.981,0:09:52.304
I'll tell you the bad news first,

0:09:52.304,0:09:55.602
and then I'll try to convince you[br]that it's actually good news.

0:09:58.196,0:09:59.513
The thing is -

0:10:01.361,0:10:04.496
Over the last few years,[br]I've been building some new creatures,

0:10:04.673,0:10:08.263
and I really think that now,

0:10:08.263,0:10:12.653
I am starting to get a glimmer[br]of consciousness out of these creatures.

0:10:13.615,0:10:17.289
And for me that's great.

0:10:17.526,0:10:19.935
I really wanted to bring them along.

0:10:19.935,0:10:23.815
I'm so sorry, but they misbehaved[br]and I just couldn't do it.

0:10:23.815,0:10:25.595
(Laughter)

0:10:25.595,0:10:28.365
So for me it's great[br]because this is my life's work.

0:10:28.365,0:10:30.761
I've spent 35 years doing this stuff,

0:10:30.761,0:10:34.185
and it's nice to feel that I'm starting[br]to get close to something.

0:10:34.723,0:10:38.343
But a lot of people don't feel[br]that way about these things,

0:10:40.267,0:10:42.417
because these creatures are artificial.

0:10:42.720,0:10:44.220
They live in a computer.

0:10:44.220,0:10:47.620
So they can't have a supernatural soul,

0:10:48.434,0:10:53.118
and they can't even have freaky,[br]weird things like quantum mechanics

0:10:53.154,0:10:57.544
to explain the consciousness[br]and all the other things that we concoct

0:10:57.544,0:11:01.038
to try to make ourselves feel better[br]about how special we are.

0:11:04.687,0:11:06.328
They're machines,

0:11:06.678,0:11:10.028
and therefore, if I'm right, so are we,

0:11:10.790,0:11:13.920
and nobody wants to be called a machine.

0:11:14.174,0:11:17.924
You just don't want to tell people that.[br]They don't want to be it.

0:11:17.924,0:11:22.804
It's not exactly special,[br]and machines wear out.

0:11:24.318,0:11:26.308
So what do I do?

0:11:27.450,0:11:30.150
What do you do if it bothers you?

0:11:30.521,0:11:33.231
Well, all that stuff I was telling you

0:11:33.231,0:11:38.041
about Christopher and feedback[br]and collections of little cells,

0:11:38.889,0:11:40.779
that's where the answer lies.

0:11:40.970,0:11:45.220
I can't explain it to you now,[br]but if you want to know

0:11:45.220,0:11:48.585
how to deal with the fact[br]that we are machines -

0:11:49.413,0:11:52.321
and that's not a bad thing -[br]that's where to look.

0:11:52.786,0:11:56.856
But let me try and finish[br]with a cosmogony,

0:11:56.856,0:11:59.366
a little story of a better origins,

0:11:59.366,0:12:01.066
the creation story.

0:12:01.312,0:12:03.552
You know the biblical creation story.

0:12:05.703,0:12:12.213
Basically, God created the universe[br]perfect and fully formed,

0:12:13.212,0:12:15.882
and then some people came along[br]and screwed it all up,

0:12:15.882,0:12:18.952
and it's all been downhill ever since.

0:12:19.854,0:12:24.274
So that creation story[br]is all about decline and decay.

0:12:25.537,0:12:29.227
But in my field, complexity studies,

0:12:29.227,0:12:30.627
complexity theory,

0:12:31.982,0:12:35.982
we can offer a different kind[br]of creation story.

0:12:37.074,0:12:42.164
And in that story the universe[br]wasn't created fully formed and perfect;

0:12:43.261,0:12:49.161
it was very, very simple and very, very,[br]very, very, very, very boring.

0:12:50.330,0:12:55.310
But it's a creative universe,[br]a self-organizing universe,

0:12:55.660,0:12:59.861
a universe that discovers and invents[br]things that didn't exist before -

0:13:00.397,0:13:01.527
all the time.

0:13:04.916,0:13:09.506
Essentially thanks[br]to the power of feedback,

0:13:10.129,0:13:15.789
an empty universe once discovered[br]how to make matter out of empty space.

0:13:16.700,0:13:18.890
And once it had figured out[br]how to make matter

0:13:18.890,0:13:20.510
and the matter cooled down enough,

0:13:20.510,0:13:22.880
it discovered it could do[br]chemistry with it.

0:13:23.951,0:13:28.071
And the chemistry practiced and practiced[br]and practiced for billions of years

0:13:28.071,0:13:30.861
and eventually figured out[br]it could make life.

0:13:31.605,0:13:35.795
And then as soon as life showed up,[br]it was never going to go away again,

0:13:36.815,0:13:39.615
so it experimented with different ways

0:13:39.615,0:13:42.165
of plugging cells together[br]into communities

0:13:42.165,0:13:45.345
to do different things[br]that enabled it to survive,

0:13:45.345,0:13:47.840
made it self-sustaining,

0:13:47.840,0:13:50.597
and during that process, eventually,

0:13:50.709,0:13:53.655
it needed to build models of the world

0:13:53.826,0:13:58.486
so that it could make plans[br]and predict things,

0:13:58.595,0:14:01.135
and I think that's where[br]consciousness came from.

0:14:01.135,0:14:06.425
So it's just what happens[br]when a certain kind of machine is working.

0:14:06.425,0:14:08.708
There's nothing freaky about it.

0:14:10.510,0:14:14.642
But this is a pretty cool universe

0:14:14.912,0:14:16.980
because we emerged out of all this.

0:14:16.980,0:14:19.410
So what I'm saying is that,

0:14:19.410,0:14:23.730
yes, we are machines,[br]but we're not just machines;

0:14:24.282,0:14:26.952
we're amazing machines.

0:14:28.305,0:14:32.305
We're the product[br]of 14 billion years of experiment

0:14:33.013,0:14:35.323
by an incredibly creative universe.

0:14:35.323,0:14:38.963
And so hopefully that makes you[br]feel a little bit better

0:14:40.222,0:14:41.832
about being a machine.

0:14:42.000,0:14:46.560
So my advice is to try[br]and embrace you're in a machine,

0:14:47.033,0:14:50.483
and it's not a bad thing to be.

0:14:50.771,0:14:52.001
So thank you.

0:14:52.001,0:14:54.872
(Applause)