Harvard Professor: Why Nothing Feels Real Anymore - Arthur Brooks - #1109

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Why do so many people feel like modern life is simulated rather than real?

**Arthur Brooks** (0:04)
Because it is. We're living in the Matrix. That movie, The Matrix, came out 27 years ago. I hate to shock and sadden you. It'll make anybody who was alive then feel old. But the plot of that movie was that a great artificial intelligence was dominating the human race and kept the human race placid in a pleasant simulation so that it could feed off human kinetic energy. It kept them in pods and ran a simulation. The truth of the matter is that we are subjugated, not by people necessarily, but by algorithms that fundamentally are creating a simulated version of a real life that's pleasant enough, keeps us from being bored, and that feeds off our attention and energy and money. We're living in the matrix. That's why people say, I don't know, it doesn't feel like real dating.
It doesn't feel like real friends. Scroll, scroll, scroll. It doesn't feel like real achievement. Game, game, game.
Because we're living in a simulation.

**Chris Williamson** (1:02)
What's happening neurologically there?

**Arthur Brooks** (1:04)
So what's happening neurobiologically is that we're literally in the wrong half of our brains. So this is the work of Ian McGillchrist, the great, have you had him on the show?

**Chris Williamson** (1:14)
Friend of the show.

**Arthur Brooks** (1:15)
He's fantastic. He's an Oxford neuroscientist. He's a great genius. And he brought back the whole idea of hemispheric lateralization. That's the concept that the two halves of your brain do different things. I mean, they do a lot of things the same too, but the fact is that they have different core competencies. Now, when I was a kid in the 70s, this is long before you youngsters were born, there was this belief that there were right-brained and left-brained people. Right-brained people were creative, left-brained people were analytical. My mom, who was an artist, was a right-brained person. My father, who was a mathematician, was a left-brained person. Growing up, I was a right-brained person like my mom because I was a musician. I was a classical musician and I painted and I wrote poetry and then I got my PhD and I became apparently a left-brained person because I'm a scientist. Well, the truth is that that theory didn't work.
What does work, however, is what Ian McGilchrist brought back to show that we have we ask and answer different questions with the different hemispheres of our brain. The right hemisphere is the complex why, the mystery and meaning of life, the things that set us out in the hunt for the things that matter in life.
The left brain is the how-to and what, it's how we execute, it's the linear side, it's the analysis, it's the engineering, it's the apps of life or the left brain side.
What's happening is when we're running a simulation of life, we're running a left brain simulation to meet our right brain questions of love and mystery and meaning, and you can't simulate the meaning of life.

**Chris Williamson** (2:43)
Is it not a good thing for people to be more rational and analytical and objective? Is this not something that only a couple of decades ago, we were trying to push more on people?

**Arthur Brooks** (2:52)
Yeah, I suppose, except that we need both. The truth is that we need both because life is full of both kinds of problems. Look, if you don't know the why of the things in your life, the how to and what mean nothing. But if you only know the how to and what, then the why and the why is elusive. I mean, you get the point that I'm trying to make. I mean, you can either be incompetent at executing anything in your life, or you'll have no purpose in the life that you lead. You actually need both. You know, I go to work every day. I'm traveling around doing my job. It's great. I know how to do it. I'm competent at it because my left brain is working properly. I know how to get where I'm trying to go and do what I'm trying to do. I can write my speeches and my columns and books, etc. But I kind of know why, which is that I want to do something good for the world. I want to support the people that I love. I want to glorify God. That's what I want. That's the why side and that originates on the right side of our brains. And furthermore, all the things we really care about are not the analytical things. The things that we care about are not the physical, they're the metaphysical. That's what we really care about. I'll give you an example. A big left brain question is, how does my car work?