WEBVTT

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Good, good!

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So, back in the early 1990s,
I was a training commercial pilot

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with hair that probably produced more lift
than most of the small aircrafts I flew.

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(Laughter)

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Anyway, one day,
my instructor Bob came out,

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and he said, "Ash, today, I'm going
to instruct you in instrument flying."

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This was pretty exciting
because there are two flavors of flying.

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There's "visual" where you can see

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the horizon ahead of you
and what's below you,

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which is kind of for the rookie
pilots and weekend pilots.


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Then there's "instrument flying."

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Instrument flying
is for the professionals.

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That's being able
to punch into the clouds.

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So I was pretty excited about this.

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Anyway, we went out,
we did our preflight briefing

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and grabbed a little Cessna 152,

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took off, went out
to the southern training area,

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got set up at 5,000 feet.

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And Bob whacked this on me.

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(Laughter)

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This little plastic contraption
is known as "the hood,"

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and it constrains the pilot's
view to their six instruments.

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Bob said, "Okay, now I want
you to fly straight and level

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just by instruments."

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I did that, it was pretty easy.
I was pretty good at this stuff.

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(Laughter)

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Then he said, "Okay, you did well Ash.

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I want you to maintain 5,000 feet
and perform a standard right turn."

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Now, this was a bit more difficult.

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I had to organize to work
the pedals and the controls.

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At the same time, I was
scanning all these instruments

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without the wealth of information
from the visual sphere outside.

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But I got it. It was pretty good.
I was feeling pretty cocky.

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And he said, "Okay, done well.

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Roll out of that
into straight and level again."

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So I rolled out into straight and level.

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But my artificial horizon
wasn't quite right.

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It was a bit off.

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So I looked over
at my turn and slip indicator

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and the ball was out of it,
so I kicked in a bit of rudder.

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My directional gyro started moving.

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I was flying straight and level,
but my instruments were failing.

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The altimeter started rising.

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Directional gyro was spinning faster.

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The artificial horizon
just slipped right off,

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the whole dial,
and Bob whipped my hood off.

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I'd entered what is known
as "the graveyard spiral."

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Now in a recent study,

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the average pilot
with no instrument flight training,

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punching into clouds
lasts a mere 178 seconds.

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That's two seconds shy of three minutes


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before spiraling to their death.

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Fair enough, my vestibular
senses had tricked me.

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The sense that tells me
which way is up, had tricked me,

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and Bob got me good with it.


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Bob taught me a good lesson.

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Next time I'll know:
trust the instruments.

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So we went up for the next lesson,

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and I failed,

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and the next lesson, and the next lesson.

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This was frustrating me.

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I considered myself
a good, confident pilot.

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Yet I couldn't accept
the evidence in front of me.

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My intuition took over every time.

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My brain kept on making up these excuses:

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"Oh, this aircraft has
a dodgy vacuum pump."

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"The static intakes
on these little tomahawks

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always blocks up,
the instruments are failing."

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I knew the instruments weren't failing,
but I couldn't seem to accept it.

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It's amazing where we're
often taught or told

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how wonderful and powerful


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the hundred billion or so neurons
that make up our mind are.

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Yet, we rarely discuss the cognitive
shortcomings that we have.

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I mean, at school I was
taught how the mind works.

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It's very much like
a modern laptop computer.

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You have your high definition video camera

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and your mic that takes
in everything around you.


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You've got everything then
stored to memory, bit for bit,

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perfectly written to data
on your hard drive.

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And our brains process things
in a very logical fashion,

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like we should all have Intel Inside
stickers on our foreheads.

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This is the metaphor that's used,

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but it's not a very good metaphor.

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In fact, it's completely wrong.

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You see, our senses aren't like
high-def recording equipment.

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We only take in snippets
of the information,

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and our mind fills in the gaps for us.

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As a pilot we're taught
a whole lot of tips and tricks

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to get around human limitations.

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Things like when we want 
to find an aircraft in the sky,

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we've got to break it up into quadrants.

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You see, our eyes only see
this much clearly at any one time.

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It's hard to grasp,
but this is what we see.

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Our eyes dart around
at a thousand degrees a second,

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that what's called "a saccade."

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Our mind fills in the rest of the picture
with what it expects to see there.

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So if you're looking up at the sky,
it expects to see a lot of blue.

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You have to actually break
up the sky into quadrants


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and saccade across
until the aircraft lands

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within the focus of those saccades,
before you'll see the aircraft.

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And it's not just our visual
senses that work like this.

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All of our senses work like this.


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Our mind just fills in the gaps for us
without us being aware of it.

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That's why illusions work.

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That's why Simon takes great delight
in knowing how your perception works

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and being able to fool you,
being able to manipulate that.


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And up here, it doesn't
take in everything.


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It doesn't store everything to memory.

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It takes snippets,
little grabs of feelings,

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of sights, sounds,
tastes, smells, emotions.

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And then it pieces them together
when you recall a memory.


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When it pieces them together,
it makes up the bits in between again.

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It creates a movie,

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only the movie is based on a true story.

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The next time you recall that same event,
you're recalling it from that memory,

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taking snippets of that memory
and piecing it together again.

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So next time, it's actually
more like a screenplay

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based on a book based on a true story.

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Each time you remember
something, it changes a bit more.

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It takes one more step away from reality,

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even if it feels like you
remember it clear as day.

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And our cognitions, the way
we think, they're adapted.

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We evolved to be really good
at surviving in small social groups,

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for being able to match patterns,

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for being able to keep track
of social relationships -

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not very good at logic though.

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That horrible feeling I experienced

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when I couldn't get my instinct

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to match up with
the evidence in front of me,

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that's known as "cognitive dissonance."

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Now cognitive dissonance

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is when your mind tries to hold
two conflicting ideas simultaneously.

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It gives you a horrible feeling.

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It'll be a negative feeling,
it'll be feeling sick.

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It'll be feeling anxious or even angry.


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Cognitive dissonance is the mechanism

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by which we start being
able to, I don't know,

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account for irrational
behaviors like smoking.


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I've got a friend Janine,
very warm, intelligent lady.

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She's very smart. She works
as an intensive care nurse.

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Everyday, she's looking after people
with throat cancer and lung cancer

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who are dying from smoking.

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She knows the damage
that it causes, yet she smokes.

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I asked her why,
she sat me down and said,

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"Ash, I need to explain
this to you: I'm a nurse.

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I work long irregular hours.

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I don't get to exercise.
I don't get to eat well.

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Smoking helps me keep down my weight!

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(Laughter)

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You think there are problems with people
who have smoked for a long time,

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you should see the long-term
problems of obesity."

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So just like that, she'd rationalized away

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her behavior with her knowledge.

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Cognitive dissonance
does this in a number of ways.

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Also, it's a great protector
of our self-concept.

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What we think of as

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"I'm a good, moral, intelligent
person," that self-concept,

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it protects it for us.

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This guy will never admit
that he was wrong about invading Iraq,

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not because he's evil,

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but it's because he really thinks
he wasn't wrong about invading Iraq.

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He thinks of himself
as a good moral Christian.

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He was president of the United States.

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He was leader of the free world.
He was the good guys.

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Unfortunately, he also
set up the perfect context

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for making bad decisions.

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You see, George Bush
was well-known

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to fire or demote anyone
who disagreed with his opinions.

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So he cocooned himself,
surrounded himself with yes-men.

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He protected himself
from cognitive dissonance.

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So when he decided that there must
be weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,

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all his cronies went out
and scoured the intelligence reports,

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picking up the most tenuous
little bits of information

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and stringing them together
to feed his belief

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that there were weapons
of mass destruction.

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That's what is known
as "confirmation bias,"

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seeking confirming
evidence of our beliefs

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and disregarding or minimizing
the impact of disconfirming evidence.

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That's just one of the mechanisms.

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It's one of the most common
mechanisms that our brain uses

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to protect us from cognitive dissonance.

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But it's just one of many,
many biases that we have.

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In fact, you may be
experiencing one right now.

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Now these biases build up.

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(Laughter)

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That's why you're meant to be seeing.

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These biases build up and attack
our ability to reason logically.

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And people take advantage of this.


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Whole industries,
billion-dollar industries,

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are wrapped around our faulty reasoning.

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Things like cosmetics,

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anti-aging creams.

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You're right!

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Vitamins and supplements,
well, you urinate them all out.

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They don't boost your immune system.


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If they did boost your immune system,
you'd have an autoimmune disease.

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Alternative health practices,
aligning your energies,

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we got rid of that concept

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when we discovered
the central nervous system.

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Just the other day,
I was on a train in Melbourne

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and I spotted a young guy in a suit.

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He was wearing one of these,
it's a power band bracelet.

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The makers of Power Balance claim

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that this piece of silicon
with a sticker on it

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will make you stronger and more flexible.

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Now on face value,
that is laughable, it's silly,

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but he probably didn't come to this belief
from a claim like this.

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He probably came to it from seeing
one of his sports stars wearing it,

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and then noticing other
top athletes wearing it.

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These things have to chip away.

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Now Power Balance is smart
enough to give away these

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to every top athlete they can
and sponsor key top athletes to wear them.

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So he's had this.

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He has formed an idea,
and he goes and searches online.

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Power Balance has littered
YouTube and blogs

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with testimonials and demonstrations


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much like they have used
for years in martial arts

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and in applied kinesiology,

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a simple trick to show
that it makes you more balanced.

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So he probably saw this stuff,

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and that was the confirmation bias
building up the belief,

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and then he went out
and spent 60 hard dollars

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on a rubber band with a sticker on it.

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That cemented his belief even further.

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People then asked him,
"Does that work for you?"

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And he would recall a time

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when he performed
a bit better than normal,

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and not recall the times
when it was average or below average.

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More confirmation bias!

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When more people asked him,


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he would keep recalling those same
events of better performance,

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except those events would now
get even better, and even better,

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making it legendary performance.

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So his Power Balance bracelet
is working, it is good.

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Then someone might
come up to him and say,

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"You realize that they actually did
some scientific tests.

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Double blind showed
that it's just a rubber band."

00:14:41.037 --> 00:14:45.187
"- Science doesn't know everything.
Don't be so closed minded.

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You got to try it to understand!"

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These are the types of things
people will come up with

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when their mind is painted into a corner.

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And it's not just that.

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When you come up against a hard
or an unwinnable argument,

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cognitive dissonance can cause anger.

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If that argument
is unwinnable on both sides,

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it escalates to rage.

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It can escalate to ideological wars,

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people fighting to the death
trying to prove their point,

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trying to prove that their imagining frame
is the real one, not yours.

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It's not all doom and gloom
though, there is hope.


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Science is testament to that.

00:15:33.107 --> 00:15:36.707
Now when you say "science," people
have the wrong idea a lot of the times.

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Science isn't a person
or a thing, an organization.

00:15:42.226 --> 00:15:45.166
Science is simply a process.


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It's a process that was designed
specifically to overcome our biases.

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And as well as that process,

00:15:54.404 --> 00:15:58.404
it's also the body of knowledge
that results from the process.

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The process is just known
as "scientific method."

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It's simply down to making a prediction,

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testing that prediction,

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and then coming up with your conclusions,

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but most importantly being transparent
about how you did it all

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so other people
can pick apart your arguments,

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other people can test and see
if you reasoned correctly.

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It's a very important part of it.

00:16:25.538 --> 00:16:30.688
And enough people, like Temple said,
enough people are working on this.

00:16:31.245 --> 00:16:34.925
They spend their whole lifetimes
doing small detailed work,

00:16:34.945 --> 00:16:37.605
making tiny little
increments in knowledge.

00:16:37.725 --> 00:16:40.985
It's none of these eureka
moments that you hear about.

00:16:41.112 --> 00:16:43.852
It's tiny increments but it all goes
into a pool of knowledge.

00:16:43.882 --> 00:16:45.512
And because of that pool of knowledge,

00:16:45.522 --> 00:16:50.052
in medicine alone, I've never
seen a child with smallpox.

00:16:50.262 --> 00:16:53.832
I've never seen a child
afflicted by polio.

00:16:54.377 --> 00:16:59.257
I've never had a loved one
die of measles or diptheria.

00:16:59.500 --> 00:17:04.720
These killed millions of people
until we figured out vaccines for them.

00:17:04.929 --> 00:17:09.039
And closer to home,
this old fellow, my dad.

00:17:09.599 --> 00:17:13.599
I should have lost him,
twice in the last 15 years.

00:17:13.902 --> 00:17:18.202
He actually had a tube
fed through his groin

00:17:18.222 --> 00:17:22.942
and a balloon pulled through his heart
to flatten the fatty deposits in there,

00:17:22.972 --> 00:17:26.392
saving him from having
another massive heart attack.


00:17:27.053 --> 00:17:33.053
He also had tuberculosis injected
into his bladder a number of times

00:17:33.063 --> 00:17:35.743
to kill the cancer
that was growing there.

00:17:35.778 --> 00:17:40.548
just recent advances in science
that kept him around with me today.

00:17:41.171 --> 00:17:43.381
And it's not just in the area of health

00:17:43.401 --> 00:17:46.863
that this way of thinking
is useful for us.

00:17:46.903 --> 00:17:51.473
Getting rid of these misunderstandings,

00:17:51.483 --> 00:17:55.223
actually knowing about your
brain and how it's tricking you,

00:17:55.243 --> 00:17:59.493
compensating for cognitive
dissonance and cognitive biases ;

00:17:59.515 --> 00:18:02.455
it's everything, any
type of decision making

00:18:02.489 --> 00:18:05.809
from deciding on a consumer product,

00:18:05.829 --> 00:18:09.026
fighting with your partner,
to public policy ;

00:18:09.726 --> 00:18:11.901
accounting for all these cognitive biases

00:18:11.911 --> 00:18:15.501
and being open about how
you reach your conclusions


00:18:16.211 --> 00:18:19.481
is a useful and powerful thing,
and we should start with the schools.

00:18:19.501 --> 00:18:23.221
We should start getting rid of these
outdated metaphors for how we think,

00:18:23.247 --> 00:18:26.887
and teach kids how we actually do think.

00:18:27.134 --> 00:18:30.654
If we can do that,
they'll appreciate science more.

00:18:33.145 --> 00:18:35.345
Just like when I was a pilot,


00:18:35.355 --> 00:18:38.945
it was hard for me
to get over this whole thing.

00:18:39.405 --> 00:18:42.415
There was many white-knuckled,
sweat-soaked flights

00:18:42.435 --> 00:18:45.305
for me to be able to get over

00:18:45.315 --> 00:18:49.475
my own internal battle
and trust my instruments.

00:18:49.809 --> 00:18:52.279
We can all actually go
through this process.

00:18:52.329 --> 00:18:57.159
We can all learn not to start
with conclusions and find evidence.

00:18:57.189 --> 00:19:02.389
We can learn to start with evidence,
evaluate it, and come to a conclusion.

00:19:03.299 --> 00:19:05.889
We can all learn to use
our brains more effectively

00:19:05.909 --> 00:19:09.329
and I think that's
an idea worth spreading.

00:19:10.028 --> 00:19:11.308
Thanks.

00:19:11.308 --> 00:19:12.908
(Applause)