Anil Seth: When you perform
an action onstage,
like something even simple,
picking up a mug of coffee,
do you feel a sense of agency
or free will or intentionality about it?
Or is it more that you're observing
your body do something?
Yara Shahidi: I've never really thought
about it in those terms.
I think I'm always striving to mimic
that automated response that I have,
as though I was just Yara on set,
or pretending to be Yara on camera.
[Intersections]
[Anil Seth: Cognitive neuroscientist]
[Yara Shahidi: Actor, producer]
YS: And I'm grateful
that they have paired us,
because I feel like there is such
an interesting overlap in acting
and how I’ve viewed myself over time.
And I thought, you know,
your perspective
on controlled hallucination
just clarified so much for myself
as a young person trying to figure out
what am I doing every time I wake up
and choose to go about the world?
AS: Can we start there?
Because this is something
that's absolutely fascinated me.
So for years now, far too many years,
I've been, as an academic,
trying to understand not only how
we experience the world around us
but how we experience
being a self within it.
Being me, being you, being Yara.
And we do all these experiments,
we put people in brain-imaging scanners,
we do all this stuff.
But when I remember started talking
to people who had experience of acting,
it struck me that there’s something
really underexamined here,
which is people,
especially someone like you,
who's been acting
since you were very young.
YS: Yeah.
AS: I've just been wondering
how that affects your experience
of being who you are.
YS: Well, it's something
that I think has evolved over time
because when I was acting at a young age,
it was very much about saying
certain lines, having fun.
I don't think the idea
of embodying a character
came to me until much later.
And then I think that presented new ideas
because at the core of it, for me,
like when I was Tinker Bell,
as much as that was a small role
and I really didn’t even speak in it,
I was surrounded by a stage
and setup a lot like this one,
where it was grip stands
and lights and cameras
and nothing like the immersive
sets people were on.
And so my task was convincing
myself every day
that I was seeing what everybody
else was seeing.
And I think it made me create a base sense
of having to, I don't know,
undermine what I knew was in front of me,
and say, "Oh, that thing in front of me
is actually a huge tree."
And there would literally be stick figures
with my costar’s faces on them,
plastered around me.
And I'd have to believe
that they were saying the words
that the speaker behind me was playing.
And I really can’t understand for myself
what was exactly happening.
But I’d have to say it was actually
more engaging as an actor
to have to be so solely sold
on the world around me,
that it was strangely easier
than sometimes when I'm on sets
that are, you know, super immersive.
AS: That's surprising.
I was thinking about that,
and I was thinking, you know,
there's all kinds of contexts
in which acting happens.
You can be on a stage in front of people,
on a TED stage in front of people,
and in theaters as well, or on a set.
Or I would have thought
the hardest thing would be
when you have to conjure everything
and generate the surroundings
that you're going to be in
after the filming has been done,
after the post-production.
I'd have thought
that would have been harder.
How real did it seem to you?
Is it something that as you did this more
that the sense of, you know,
the stick figures actually being people,
sense of that wall being a forest,
did that grow?
YS: Well, I think I started to learn
what senses helped teleport me.
And so for me, I've always been a more
auditory person than a visual person.
And so as I started to focus
on their voices,
I knew that that would help
teleport me into that space
more than looking
at the image of their face.
And I think in many ways it was the fact
that I had nothing to hold on to
that made me have to really double down
and imagine that I was in this world.
Whereas sometimes when I'm on a stage,
you're flipping in and out
of your own life
and your character's life.
I mean, I'm far from a method actor,
but I'd say, like on a comedy set,
you have people running
in and out on stage.
So as much as you're in
this immersive house
and you're in your character's clothing,
they call cut, a ton of people rush in,
you talk about all sorts
of stuff between takes,
and then they yell "action,"
and then you pretend
you're the character again.
Whereas there was something
about having to stay in it
and know that I didn't have
this set around me.
I didn’t have my costars around me.
That created quite a new experience.
I was even surprised because I came in
quite nervous about the process, saying,
this is the first time I've done
anything like this
where you're asking me to suspend
what's in front of me to such an extent.
And then I think, even
on the last project I had done,
a lot of transforming into that character
was about mapping my own
experiences and emotions
onto what this character
was going through.
And in that way,
there were moments that felt very real.
And, you know, that storyline
was about me supporting a friend
through a terminal illness.
And there was something so interesting
that happened to me
for the first time as a young actor,
where I felt like it was hard
to snap out of
in a way that I hadn’t
experienced before.
Because I was so emotionally there
that I'd come home at the end of the day
a little tired and fatigued.
But can I ask, I feel
like I can go on a tangent.
AS: We're going to come back
to some of this stuff for sure.
YS: But I want to know just,
this may sound so basic,
but why consciousness?
And what made you start
examining the thing that I mean,
you even said we can take for granted
as just a part of our everyday experience.
AS: I think, to take something
you talked about, curiosity.
I think everybody, I might be wrong
about this, but when I was a kid,
I remember there was a time
when I first questioned these things like,
why am I me and not somebody else?
Where was I before I was born?
What will happen when I die?
And those questions, you know,
you think about them as a kid.
You don't do anything with them.
And I had no idea that I would end up
as an academic, a researcher,
still being interested in these questions.
They matured a bit later on
to this idea about consciousness,
which is one of the oldest mysteries
in the book, right?
I mean, at one level, we're objects,
very complicated objects.
I don't want to undersell how amazing,
rich and beautiful human beings
and other animals are.
But we’re made of stuff.
And on the other hand,
we have experiences.
We open our eyes,
and there's not just
information processing
happening in our brains,
we have an experience.
There's the redness of red,
the sharpness of pain.
And part of that is the experience
of being a self within that,
with all the emotions, all the the moods,
the feeling of the body,
the first-person perspective,
the memories, the beliefs, the plans.
And this for me was just the most
fascinating thing, I think,
because it combined something
that was this big, big mystery
that's still a big mystery,
with something that’s so personal.
And we all want to understand ourselves,
know ourselves better.
And with something
that's really practical.
I think in the idea
of studying consciousness
has often been thought
of as a philosophical indulgence.
But actually, especially now,
there are so many practical,
important reasons to better understand it.
We have epidemics of mental illness.
We have really outdated views
about ethics for non-human animals,
for patients with brain injuries.
We have new technologies
like AI and neurotechnologies,
which are really challenging
the assumptions
that we have about there being like,
a separate disembodied soul
that marches around with your body.
And so for me,
it was the confluence
of all of these things
that never really let me go.
YS: Can I ask, particularly
since you mentioned AI,
I know in your talk you had said
that the relief of knowing
just how consciousness is
our body and mind working in tandem
with the outside world,
is that sentience
is not easily replicated.
How do you feel now?
We're at our second conference,
where we're surrounded by conversations
on AI and how far we've gone,
even in the last three years alone.
AS: No, that's right, it's really changed.
I mean, my PhD
was in artificial intelligence,
like, 20 years ago,
when it was not very monetizable.
I stayed in academia.
YS: You were thinking long-term.
AS: I was too far
ahead of the curve, I think.
That's the way I like to think about it.
But it has really taken off.
And I think there’s a risk
where we have these technologies,
and we use them as mirrors for ourselves.
And I think this can be quite denuding
for the human spirit.
And this is happening at the moment
with these language models.
So, you know, you've played around
or used ChatGPT probably.
And you know, these systems
that you can talk to.
And they are kind of magic.
They talk back, and they certainly
are much more capable
than I would have expected them to be.
But we overproject, I think,
we anthropomorphize.
We attribute properties to these systems
they don't have.
In a sense, there's another parallel here.
Whereas we can be tempted to feel
that AI systems really understand us,
they feel things, as well
as just spouting interesting text,
we’re overprojecting.
And that can lead us astray
because they aren't,
in my view anyway.
And there's a lot
of disagreement about this,
but I don't think AI is conscious,
has experiences,
but it can certainly
persuade us that it does.
And perhaps we should
think about these systems as role-playing
in a similar way to how
you might play a role.
They're not actually how they seem to be.
There's something else
going on under the hood.
But yeah, I think we inhabit this,
I mean, you must think
about this all the time.
About what do people project onto you
when you're on stage or on a set.
And how's that going to work?
Because we just do this, I think,
it's a natural psychological tendency.
We project things.
YS: Most definitely.
And I think about something
that's always presented an interesting,
I don’t know, maybe curveball
in how I’ve perceived myself
is at times less the acting
but more so when I do advertisements
as a public figure or a fashion ad.
I’ll look at those, and it does not
feel like looking in the mirror.
It feels like, oh, that’s something
I’ve participated in,
while I’m looking at an image of myself.
Because, I don’t know,
when I see those images,
I see the collaboration it took,
I see this highly curated thing
that we've created together.
A lot of times, well before I ever
see myself in the image.
And so I find it interesting
because when, you know,
family or friends will see a picture of me
they'll be like, oh my goodness,
that’s Yara, in a way that it just
doesn’t register the same.
And so I think that's why I found
your talk so interesting,
because I've often struggled
with this feeling of my friends and I,
less academically
call it the “brain taxi,”
of being like, oh, our bodies
are just here to carry this brain.
But otherwise, what is my body doing?
How is it actually helping me
exist in the world
or helping me experience the world?
And I found just how you broke down
our different types of self
to be really reaffirming too, to say,
oh no, I'm obviously fully connected.
I'm not just a brain taxi,
because my body is helping me
interact with the external world.
But also, what you were saying
on regulation in our internal world
made so much sense to me
in a way that hadn't made sense before.
AS: That's interesting.
I mean, one of the things
I've always tried to push back on
is this idea that the self
is this singular thing,
this essence of you or me,
that derives a little bit
from ideas of the soul.
Which I think there’s still
a role for the soul
in how we think about life,
but not as this singular, separable,
distillable, transportable,
detachable, transubstantiable
essence of you or essence of me.
There are many different aspects
to how the self manifests, you know.
We have the body,
and the body is this object in the world.
This, as you say, this kind of
brain taxi or meat robot
that takes the brain around.
But there’s the body from the inside, too.
And the brain,
the primary role of the brain
is to keep the body alive.
And that's all about regulating
the interior of the body.
Heart rate, blood pressure.
Then there's the perspective.
Like, we see the world
from a point of view.
And we take that for granted, too.
But that's something the brain
is always kind of figuring out,
like, where it is in the world
in relation to other things.
Then there's free will and agency.
Like, we feel to be the cause of actions.
And only then these sort of
aspects of self
that I think many people think of
when they think of self,
which is personal identity.
I'm Anil, I have
these memories, these plans.
And the social self.
How we experience being who we are
through the minds and memories of others.
And all of these aspects of self
come together in a particular way
for each of us.
But they can come apart.
And I was wondering, in acting,
whether that you start to strain
at the boundaries
of these different components of self.
Like one thing I’ve always
wanted to ask somebody
who's done a lot of acting like you
is when you perform an action onstage,
like something even simple,
picking up a mug of coffee,
do you feel a sense of agency
or free will or intentionality about that?
Or is it more that you're observing
your body do something?
YS: That's a good question,
I've never really thought
about it in those terms.
I think, you know, there’s one character
I’ve played for ten years,
and in many ways I feel like hopping
into her is almost automated.
And I don’t think about my actions
in the same way I don't think
about my actions while I'm Yara.
And oftentimes the challenge
is to think less about my agency,
because otherwise I feel like an actor
doing things like, oh,
I was told to move towards this cup
of coffee and pick it up at this time.
And I think I’m always striving to mimic
that automated response that I have,
as though I was just Yara on set,
or pretending to be Yara on camera.
But oftentimes I think
I do feel a sense of agency,
and a lot of it comes with buying,
having to buy my surroundings.
And I find that I’m most in my characters
when I can believe the person
across from me.
And that's why I thought, you know,
what you were clarifying
on perception of this idea
that as much as we're perceiving
these objective things around us,
we also have our own inputs,
and we also have our own
predictive abilities
that are projecting how
we intake what's around us,
I think clarified what I think
my own process is.
Because as much as the person
across from me is a friend
that I've known for a handful
of years off of set,
as soon as they transform into character,
suddenly they bring out
something else in me
that feels instinctual at its best.
And then other times, I can begin
to project different memories onto them.
And that's kind of the task.
So when I was working across from somebody
recently that has been a friend,
and I knew them
in such a different context
than the context of this film,
so much of it was creating
these different timelines
of what our friendship must have been like
in this other alternate universe,
and having to buy it
when I looked at her.
And that was the project
I was just talking about,
where I think there were times
in which we had done it so well
that it was hard
to then shift back at times,
because we'd taken ourselves
to such a place of either deep sorrow
or deep friendship
or had recreated things
that just had not happened to us.
AS: But your body
doesn't know that, right?
So you have this, like, I guess,
empathy-generation process
that's necessary to do that.
YS: Most definitely.
I mean, I think at the core of even acting
and then going into my own, you know,
bachelor degree studies
came from just an interest in humans.
Because I think to be an actor
you have to just naturally be very curious
about the people around you
and want to know more about them.
At least for me,
I think even in my real life,
so much of my life is determined
by who's around me.
I feel like they determine who I am
when I walk into a room.
That acting has always been
about needing to be able to care deeply
about whoever is across from you
for whatever reason.
And that's proven to me to be when I find
my work to be the most intuitive,
when I feel like, oh, that natural
sense of care is easy.
And then ...
AS: Has that ever got to a stage
where it's almost concerning or worrying?
I mean, I know there's been
examples of actors
who've required therapy
or have really struggled, really suffered
in playing a character that has required,
you know, deep emotional challenges.
I don't know if that's
dependent on the way,
is that something that comes out
in method acting more than other kinds?
YS: Many times that is when you hear
about the method actors in particular.
And I mean, I think there's levels to it.
I think as somebody
that isn’t a method actor
but oftentimes is projecting
my own experiences
or trying to mimic emotional responses
to these fictionalized situations,
there are times where I think it takes
a while for me to transition out of it.
Luckily, I think, you know,
having my own very full world
has always helped with that.
I think oftentimes acting,
and to be a good actor,
it's thought that you have to be
so fully immersed in your world,
thus method acting,
that you never snap out of it.
Or that your whole world is oriented
towards being an actor.
And I think that is
where it can feel a little unstable.
But for me, I think it's always
been helpful saying,
OK, I'm fully immersing
myself in this world,
but when I go home,
I have a full world as Yara,
as a sister, as a daughter,
as a friend, that I get to go
back to, that re-anchors me.
And many times I'd actually say
going into a different world
is quite healing.
I almost wish that everybody
had the opportunity
to be somebody that isn't them.
It makes me so much clearer on who I am
every time I play somebody that isn't me.
AS: Just dwell on that for a second.
Why do you think that is?
I was I was wondering about that.
Producer: We're almost out of time.
We could listen to you guys talk all day.
AS: (Laughs)
Producer: We're kind of sad
that we have to --
AS: We're just starting.
YS: Yeah.
Can I at least ask --
Can I at least ask of you how this work
has changed your sense of self?
Because I can imagine, you know,
as much as we all think
about consciousness,
you dwell in it in a way
that I don't think many people do
and has that for you, made, you know,
the study of self, has that made
how you relate to yourself change
or evolve over time?
AS: I think it must have done.
I think we both faced the challenges
that we don't have,
like, a control condition.
We don't have an alternative Anil
or an alternative Yara
that wasn't acting
or wasn't a neuroscientist.
But I think it really has.
And I think this manifests for me
a little bit in,
it opens a bit of distance between
what it feels like to be me here now,
and how I might reflect on that.
So I can sort of understand emotions
as being constructions of the brain.
It doesn't mean they're not real,
everything feels real and is real.
But it might not be quite
how it seems to be.
And I think the other thing,
which is actually very
complementary to ...
centuries of thought
in things like Buddhism,
that everything is impermanent,
everything is changing.
And to become comfortable with the idea
that the self is always
changing, always evolving.
There's a certain liberation in that too.
It makes you think differently
about the person that you were
and the person that you might
be in the future.
Almost as distinct individuals,
different people you can care about
in a similar way to how I might care
about friends and family.
And that's an interesting shift.
YS: OK, we're truly out of time.
Well, I guess we'll have to do part two.
We'll continue this.
This conversation
could clearly go on for a long time,
and I'm just so grateful
to share space with you
and begin what I’m sure is going
to be a much longer dialogue.
AS: I feel the same way.
It’s been really eye-opening,
and it's been a great pleasure
talking to you about all this.
I hope we get the chance to continue.
Thanks so much, Yara.
YS: Thank you.