What Makes Someone Tick?

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

The idea is that by definition, almost a lot of things are going on under the surface that we don't have access to in our brain. You go to bed trying to think of the name of a comic strip that's just outside your memory and you wake up and the word pogo jumps in your mind. Your brain worked on it while you were asleep and we understand that that happens all the time. But we don't really understand what's going on underneath there. The sort of, it's almost Bayesian. It's also a little bit of a voting or wisdom of crowds approach, an emergent idea that comes, it runs all through economics.

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.