#26 Nick Chater - Mental Depth is an Illusion

Does our subconscious exist?

Today, I’m with Nick Chater, who is the author of the popular book “The Mind is Flat. In the book, he talks about how our mind is an imaginative storyteller making up things as it goes along in life. What we perceive as deep thoughts or emotions are not views into our deep self but rather a shallow, surface-level interpretation of whatever situation we find ourselves in.

Nick is a Professor of Behavioural Science at Warwick Business School and works on rationality and language using a range of theoretical and experimental approaches. He has over 200 publications, has won four national awards for psychological research, and has served as Associate Editor for the journals Cognitive Science, Psychological Review, and Psychological Science.

== What we talk about ==
0:00 - Introduction
1:17 - What motivated you to study the mind and write a book on it?
10:47 - The ‘Self’ does not exist 20:54 - Most of what we do or say might be just confabulation
32:59 - Our past experiences influence our future actions
39:26 - We are all like coral reefs
42:10 - Why does evolution make us feel like we have mental depth?
47:41 - We are creating ourselves as we are going along
49:43 - The brain architecture
1:01:53 - The exceptional cases when your brain can ‘multitask'
1:05:54 - How to become a better thinker?
1:09:35 - What are your views on free will?