EP 21 - The Myth of the Desert Island Self

Visit our website BeautifulIllusions.org for a complete set of show notes and links to almost everything discussed in this episode

Selected References:

2:47 - Jeff’s 5 old desert island “favorite” books: Visions of Gerard by Jack Kerouac, Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins, Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, Immortality by Milan Kundera, and The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway3:29 - Darron’s 5 favorite movies: The Big Lebowski, Goodfellas, The Shawshank Redemption, The Empire Strikes Back, The Goonies4:45 - Darron’s top 5 albums (plus one): OK Computer by Radiohead, Bringing It All Back Home by Bob Dylan, Blood on the Tracks by Bob Dylan, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot by Wilco, Kid A by Radiohead, and Appetite for Destruction by Guns N’ Roses5:20 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 19 - How We Learn Like A Scout: Critically Thinking About Critical Thinking from October 20215:57 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 08 - System 2, Superman, & Simulacra: Jeff's Amateur Philosophy from December 20206:22 - Originally published in 2007, Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts by social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson describes cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias and other cognitive biases, as well as various memory biases, and then uses these psychological ideas to illustrate how people justify and rationalize their behavior. It describes a positive feedback loop of action and self-deception by which slight differences between people's attitudes can become increasingly polarized and how memory distortions influence our present thoughts and beliefs about everything, especially our own selves. Ideas from this book were discussed in a number of previous episodes, most notably Episode 12 - A New Enlightenment and Episdode 13 - What We Talk About When We Talk About Politics Part 210:30 - See “Our Two Selves: Experiencing and Remembering” (Huffington Post, 2012),  “Living, and thinking about it: two perspectives on life” by Daniel Kahneman and Jason Riis (Chapter 11 from The Science of Well-Being, 2005), and watch Kahneman’s TED Talk: The riddle of experience vs. memory from 201011:22 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 20 - Reflections on a Year of Beautiful Illusions from November 202111:54 - Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert12:47 - In Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain  psychologist and neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett says “You can invest a little time and energy to learn new ideas. You can curate new experiences. You can try new activities. Everything you learn today seeds your brain to predict differently tomorrow…It’s also possible to change predictions to cultivate empathy for other people and act differently in the future…that is a form of free will, or at least something we can arguably call free will. We can choose what we expose ourselves to.”14:25 - See “The Real Problem” by Anil Seth (Aeon, 2016)21:42 - The Secret of Our Success by Joseph Henrich29:22 - Psychologist Jonathan Haidt characterizes the human mind as a partnership between separate but connected entities using the metaphor of the rider and the elephant - the rider represents all that is conscious and is the director of actions and executor of thought and long term goals, while the elephant represents all that is automatic, and often acts independently of conscious thought. He first introduced the metaphor in his 2006 book book, The Happiness Hypothesis and also use it extensively in his 2013 book The Righteous Min37:00 - According to the Ultimate Classic Rock website, Appetite for Destruction by Guns N’ Roses was slow to break through “partially because a string of retailers refused to carry the album. Blame a gruesome original cover image, based on a Robert Williams painting of the same name, that depicts the interruption of a robot rape by an avenging metal angel” See “The History of Guns N’ Roses Controversy-Courting ‘Appetite for Destruction’ Cover” (2017)38:55 - “You Won’t Remember the Pandemic the Way You Think You Will” (The Atlantic, 2021)51:24 - The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't by Julia Galef is discussed in Beautiful Illusions Episode 19 - How We Learn Like A Scout: Critically Thinking About Critical Thinking from October 202153:20 - See “Soldier Mindset / Scout Mindset” comparison table57:38 - Listen to Mindscape Episode 169 - C. Thi Nguyen on Games, Art, Values, and Agency which is an interview with C. Thi Nguyen who is a professor of philosophy at the University of Utah58:48 - The line “it’s alright, Ma, it’s life, and life only” comes from the song “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m only bleeding)” by Bob Dylan1:05:53 - In Act 2, Scene 2 of Hamlet by William Shakespeare the titular character, speaking of the country of Denmark, says “Why, then, ’tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison.”1:07:32 - Listen the Brain Science podcast where host Ginger Campbell, MD, explores how recent discoveries in neuroscience are unraveling the mystery of how our brain makes us human.1:07:34 - The Deep History of Ourselves: The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains by Joseph E. LeDoux1:10:15 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 12 - A New Enlightenment: The Age of Cognitivism from March 20201:10:23 - The Origins of Creativity by E.O. Wilson1:11:59 - Jeff’s current 5 desert island books: Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert, The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt, The Secret of Our Success by Joseph Henrich, and Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain byLisa Feldman Barrett

This episode was recorded in November 2021

The “Beautiful Illusions Theme” was performed by Darron Vigliotti (guitar) and Joseph Vigliotti (drums), and was written and recorded by Darron Vigliotti