How to Be More Aware of Your Unconscious World

3min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

I think it's possible to become more aware of your unconscious world and its impact on your conscious world, even if you don't understand it fully. The unenxamined life isn't worth living is one extreme, which I happen to nearly completely agree with. But once you've kind of see yourself as being trapped, like in a huge Escher diagram that happens to be your, your, your self perception, then you can kind of enjoy it. You can laugh at your own behavior. If people could only understand that they were operating according to a bunch of principles, they don't understand and hidden layers that are firing off in ways that they can't.

Neurologist and author Robert Burton talks about his book, On Being Certain, with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Burton explores our need for certainty and the challenge of being skeptical about what our brain tells us must be true. Where does what Burton calls "the feeling of knowing" come from? Why can memory lead us astray? Burton claims that our reaction to events emerges from competition among different parts of the brain operating below our level of awareness. The conversation includes a discussion of the experience of transcendence and the different ways humans come to that experience.