It's the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine) | Daniel Gilbert | TEDxAcademy

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. Though scientific studies confirm that rising global temperatures and shifting climate patterns threaten human health, biodiversity, ecosystem sustainability, food security, water and air quality, and other ecosystem services on which we depend, less than half of adults worldwide see global warming as a threat to themselves and their families. Why aren’t we more worried about this looming disaster?

Daniel Gilbert argues that our brains naturally react to threats that are intentional, imminent, immoral and instantaneous, while global warming lacks all these properties. To assess the threats facing us today he says we should open our hands not make a fist.

Thank you for being here.

In 1896,

the London Society for the Prevention
of Premature Burial was formed.

It was formed specifically
"to prevent premature burial in general,"

but specifically among the members.

In 19th-century London, physicians
didn't always have the technology

to distinguish between people
who were nearly dead

and people who were very dead.

As a result, premature burial
was a problem,

but it wasn't a big problem.

In fact, the odds of being buried alive
in London in 1896

were roughly the same as the odds
of being buried alive in Athens in 2014,

which is to say roughly zero.

Yet, this didn't stop Londoners
from worrying about it.

They wrote editorials,
they formed societies,

they lobbied their legislators

to pass extremely expensive legislation

to prevent the horror
of premature burial.

It's just that
it basically never happened.

Why is it that we sometimes treat
little threats as if they're big,

and big threats as if they're very small?

That's the question I want
to answer for you today,

and the answer really is quite simple.

The human brain is not
a general all-purpose computer

that rationally determines
how it should respond to threats

by assessing the probability
they will occur

and the magnitude of their consequences.

The human brain
is a very specialized machine,

a computer that was evolved
to solve a very special set of problems,

that were problems
for a very small number

of hunters gatherers
who were living on the plains

of Africa 200,000 years ago.

When the threats that face us
look like the threats

that faced our ancestors,
we respond swiftly

with great force,
with great resolve.

When they don't,
we find it very hard to care.

Take two examples.
Two threats that face us today.

Terrorism and global warming.

Terrorism is a threat.
It's a very real threat.

It threatens the fabric
of a peaceful civil society.

It threatens our peace of mind,
and it threatens human life.

Sometimes dozens of people,
sometimes hundreds, sometimes thousands.

What it does not do
by any stretch of the imagination,

is threaten all life on Earth.

Global warming does exactly that.

And yet we will spend
billions of dollars this year,

preventing the premature
burial of terrorism.

And we will not even be able to get
the industrialized nations of the Earth

to meet to discuss
the possibility of agreeing

to totally inadequate provisions
to prevent the warming of our planet.

The warming of our planet
is indeed a problem.

Modern scientists sound
like biblical prophets.

They tell us that in the next 50 years
we can expect flooding of major cities.

Indeed, some countries
will be under water.

We can expect that dry places
will get drier,

and the refugees from these places
that are too wet and too dry to live

will have nowhere to go.

We can expect the waters of the ocean
to warm and create more hurricanes

that will ravage our coastal cities.

We can expect wild fires to predominate

because forests will be
too dry to resist fire.

We can expect famine.

The underdeveloped world will reduce
its agricultural production

between 10 and 25%,

countries that already
can't feed their citizens.

We can expect disease as insects
move from the South to the North,

bringing malaria and West Nile Virus

to places that have never heard
of these kinds of diseases.

This sounds like the old testament:
blood and boil and frogs,

the plagues of Egypt.

But they are coming
and they are coming for all of us.

Why are we doing nothing about it,
essentially nothing about it?

The answer is that our brains are evolved

to respond to threats
that have four essential features.

And when a threat
has these features, we respond.

When it lacks these features,
we find it difficult to care.

We respond to threats
that are intentional, immoral,

imminent and instantaneous.

I want to tell you about the psychology
of each of these four things.

Let's start with "intentional."

Now everybody here knows, I hope,
that the human brain has different parts,

and each of the parts
does a slightly different thing.

The human brain devotes special regions
to extremely important functions.

So, right back here is
where vision is located.

Right over here is where
language is located.

Seeing and talking are extremely
important for our survival.

So the brain has the unique areas
that do these jobs.

There is no area for tennis;
there is no area for shopping.

These are not just important
to the survival of our species,

and the brain doesn't have
a unique place to do them.

Guess what we've discovered
in the last 15 years.

The brain has a specialized
network devoted

to understanding other human minds,

a special network that is devoted
just to understanding the thoughts

and feelings, the intentions,
the plans, the ambitions

of other human beings.

What's more, this network never turns off.

It is permanently stuck
in the on position.

And that's why our brain is obsessed
with anything human.

Look at these two pictures
and you see no pattern whatsoever.

But I turn them over,
and everybody instantly sees

a face in the clouds
and Jesus on a tortilla!

(Laughter)

You didn't have to work hard
to see these patterns

because this special network
is always looking for patterns

of human agency
and human intelligence in nature.

That's why when I put
some dots on the screen

and move them in a special way,

you instantly see a man
running towards you,

who then becomes a woman
running towards you.

We look at the sky,
we see Hercules and Zeus.

When we hallucinate, what do we hear?

Human voices, not train whistles,
not alarm clocks.

We hear people talking.

Our obsession with human intentions
is the reason we care so much

about people who hide bombs
in their underwear.

The annual death toll
from underwear bombing

by the way, is zero.
(Laughter)

And noone here worries very much
about the flu.

The annual death toll from this virus
is 300,000 people a year.

That's a pretty large number.

Many parents are more worried
about a stranger driving up

and taking their child

than about their child eating
too many french fries.

But stranger abduction of children
is an extremely rare event,

and obesity due to junk food is not rare,
and it's getting less rare every day.

You don't have to look far,
for examples of this.

I assume that Athens, like the US,
every day we had news about an airplane,

that for some mysterious reason, seems
to have disappeared and killed 200 people.

I heard about this airplane
twice a day, every day, for months,

and I still hear about it once a week.

And yet so many of us seem
to have missed this other article

published at the same time, that
pollution killed 7 million people in 2012.

That's the holocaust.

Yeah, yeah, but
let's get back to that airplane.

Because the airplane has something
to do with a person's intentions

and pollution not so much.

We see the same thing
in laboratory experiments.

By the way, we bring subjects
into the laboratory,

and we have them play economic games.

And guess what? They get very angry

if another human player
gives them an unfair deal,

but they don't mind if the unfair deal
comes from a computer.

If you give people electric shock
in a psychology laboratory,

they say it hurts more
if a person gave them the shock,

than if a machine gave them the shock.

If this airplane had crashed
into this building

because it had been hit by lightning,

not one person in this room could
name the date on which it happened.

And yet for all Americans
and many Europeans

this is an iconic photograph
that makes us say September 11th.

Global warming is not trying to kill us,
and that's too bad.

Because if global warming were a plot
by some nefarious man with a bad mustache,

we would have agencies
like the CIA and the NSA

dedicated to ending
global warming tomorrow.

Number two. Threats to which we respond
are threats that have a moral component.

Human beings are social animals.
We care very much about other minds.

But we are also moral animals.

Indeed the only animal
that cares very deeply

about good and bad,
right and wrong, good and evil.

But I want you to notice
something very interesting

about our moral rules
and their violation.

Let me give you a story
that, I think, will violate

everybody's moral rules.

Julie and Mark are brother and sister.

They are traveling together in France
on summer vacation from college.

One night, they are staying alone
in a cabin near the beach.

They decide that it would be interesting
and fun if they tried making love.

At the very least, it would be
a new experience for each of them.

Julie was already taking
birth control pills,

but Mark used a condom
just to be safe.

They both enjoyed making love,
but they decide never to do it again.

They keep that night a special secret,

which makes them
feel even closer to each other.

So, now here's the question.

What do you think about that?
Was it OK for them to make love?

This question has been asked
to thousands of people

and so far nobody has said "Yes".

Everybody thinks it's absolutely wrong
for them to have made love.

And then people are asked why.

They come up with all sorts of answers.

"Well, my gosh. If a brother
and sister have sex,

they'll have deformed children."

Well, but remember the story says

that they're using
two kinds of birth control.

They didn't have a baby.

"Well, it's going
to mess them up psychologically."

Well, but the story says
that they're really just fine,

and it was a special occasion
for both of them,

and it made them closer together.

"Well, it's against the law."

Yes, but not in France.
They were in France.

(Laughter)

So, you see, you can keep telling me
why it's wrong,

and I can keep telling you
those reasons don't count,

and I won't change your mind for a minute,

because the reason you think
this is wrong is not a reason at all.

It's an emotion.

Violations of moral rules
make us feel strong emotions

that compel us to action.

In this case, the emotions
are usually anger and disgust.

But notice something
about the violation of moral rules,

and about moral rules themselves.

They tend to concern
the very same things,

that concerned our ancestors.

Every human culture has a moral rule

about who you can kiss
and who you can kill.

No human culture has a moral rule

about whether you can use
your air-conditioning in your car

or what kind of light bulbs
you should buy.

As the result, problems
like global warming

don't seem to have a moral component.

Yes, they make us feel worried,
they make us feel concerned.

But they don't make us feel nautious,
they don't make us feel disgusted,

they don't make us feel insulted,
they don't make us feel dishonored.

And as a result, we find it very hard
to get worked up about problems

like global warming
and instead we turn our attention

to other major threats
to life on Earth

like gay marriage, flag burning,

the kinds of things that are really likely
to wipe out the species.

(Laughter)

"Imminent," we respond
to threats that are imminent.

If I were to pick up my shoe
and throw it at you, like this man is,

you would do just
what President Bush is doing.

You would duck.

I guarantee you if president Bush
can do it, you can do it, too.

(Laughter)
(Applause)

Our president was not known
for being a quick man,

but look how quickly
he can get out of the way.

And that's because
it's the specialty of human brains

to get out of the way of present dangers.

Indeed, for the first few hundred
million years on our planet,

that's really what brains did.

They were just big
get-out-of-the-way machines,

and they tried to get out of the way
of things that would try to eat you.

In the last two million years,
the human brain has learned a new trick:

It has learned to get out of the way
of threats that have not yet appeared.

About two million years ago
the human brain discovered

a new country called "the future,"
a country no other animal inhabits,

a country that our species
had never seen before.

Our ability to think forward in time,
to react to the consequences of things

that have not yet happened --
not just shoes coming towards us,

but shoes that might come
towards us someday --

is a very new ability indeed.

It involves a particular
part of the brain,

a brand new part, called the frontal lobe.

The frontal lobe is the newest part
of the brain evolutionarily.

It's the last part of the brain
to mature.

Really until you are about 18 or 19,
your frontal lobe is not fully mature.

It's the first part of the brain
to deteriorate as you get older.

It's a very fragile part of the brain

and the ability it gives us
is very fragile, too.

The ability to think about the future
is something very new for us

and something we are not so good at.

Imagine what is like
not to have that ability,

to have damage to the frontal lobe.

Here's a conversation
between a psychologist and a patient

with damage to this critical area.

The psychologist asks a question
that any of you could answer,

but this patient find it
incredibly vexing.

"What will you be doing tomorrow?"

"I don't know."

"Do you remember the question?"

"About what I will be doing tomorrow."

"Yes, would you describe
your state of mind

when you try to think about it?"

"Blank, I guess. It's like being asleep,

like being in a room with nothing there

and having a guy tell you to find a chair,

but there's nothing there...

like swimming in the middle of a lake.

There's nothing to hold you up
or do anything with."

That's what it's like to live
in a permanent present,

a present with no tomorrow.

If you look at the human brain,
you will notice something interesting.

We have this much dedicated
to worrying about now,

and this much dedicated
to worrying about the rest of eternity.

That's why when you ask people questions

they can give you what seems
to be rather irrational answers.

I offer you either 100 euros in 12 months
or 200 euros in 13 months.

Most people offered these amounts
will take the 200 euros.

Why? It's worth waiting
an extra month to double your money.

Don't you think? Yes, of course.

But look what happens
when I ask you the same question,

but I offer you the 100 euros now
and the 200 in a month.

Suddenly people become very impatient,

"Oh no, I want my money now."
Why?

Because "now" has a special power,
that no "tomorrow" can ever challenge.

One of the problems with global warming
is that it is happening later.

Finally we respond to threats
that are instantaneous.

Nobody here, I can see, can take
their eyes off this flickering candle.

And the reason is that the human brain
cares a lot about change.

It cares about change in location,
change in light, change in sound,

change in size, change in pressure,
change in temperature.

Any kind of change is something
the human brain notices,

but only if that change is fast.

This is not a picture, this is a movie.

Right now, you are watching a movie,
and something very important

on the screen is changing
and you can't see it,

because it is changing
over the course of 20 seconds.

Did some of you notice what it was?

Here, I'll play it for you again.

I'll speed it up double time.

So now, you are watching
this change happen in 10 seconds.

A few of you are noticing it now.

Let me make it very fast.
I'll play it in 5 seconds.

That's exactly the change
I showed you in the first film,

but most of you couldn't see it
because it was too slow.

Terrorism causes fast changes.

One day a building is there,
the next day it's gone,

and the brain notices,

but global warming,
all of its changes are slow.

In the last 15 or 20 years,
the impurity of our water,

of our air and of our food
has increased dramatically,

but it has always increased
one day at a time.

And our brains are just not built
to recognize changes

that happen this slowly.

Look, we do care about the environment.

Look how angry we get
when an oil companies spills

a thousands barrels of oil in one day.

But we don't mind
if they spill one barrel of oil

every day for a thousand.

Young men, beware.

(Laughter)

Boldness happens one hair at a time.

(Laughter)
(Applause)

If I didn't have a mirror or a wife,

I wouldn't even know
it had happened.

(Laughter)

But the important point is this:

If I had woken up one morning in 1989,
looked in the mirror

and seen this bold man,
I would've screamed,

I would've run to the doctor,
I would've gone to the hair club for men,

and said, "Put in the plugs."

But I barely noticed that my hair went
away, because it went away so slowly.

The irony is that the human brain
is not designed

to combat a slow moving enemy.

Threats that are intentional, immoral,
imminent and instantaneous

attract our attention
and make us react.

Threats that lack these features do not.

Global warming,
one of the greatest threats

to the future our species
doesn't have any of these properties.

Does that mean
that our destruction is inevitable?

That there's nothing we can do?

No, not at all.

Human beings do many things
for which nature did not design us.

I came here by flying.

Nature never imagined
that this mammal would fly to Greece.

I can do algebra.
I can write a symphony.

I can live in a civilized
peaceful society.

All things for which nature really
did not design me.

We can respond to threats
that don't have these four features.

But we must do it through effort.
It is not a reaction, it is an action.

Indeed it's a human achievement.

When the nice people at Starbucks
invited me to write some words

to put on the side of their cup,
I thought very hard,

because I realized that
these would probably be

the most important words I ever wrote.

After all, these words would be seen
by millions of people

who did not yet have coffee,

and they are very suggestible
and might believe anything.

(Laughter)

So I thought long and hard
and these are the words I wrote.

"The human brain is the only object
in the known universe

that can predict its own future
and tell its own fortune.

The fact that we can make
disastrous decisions

even as we foresee their consequences

is the great, unsolved mystery
of human behavior.

When you hold your fate in your hand,

why would you ever make a fist?"

We know the answer.

Making a fist is the natural response
to danger.

Our salvation, if it comes, will come

because we are the animal
that can now use our brains

to do what no animal does
when it's threatened.

Open up our hands.

Thank you.

(Applause)