An Actor + a Neuroscientist Answer: What Makes You “You”? | Yara Shahidi + Anil Seth | Intersections - द्विभाषीय उपशीर्षक
When you perform an action on stage,
like something even simple,
picking up a mug of coffee,
do feel a sense of agency or free will or intentionality about that or is it more that you're observing your body do something?
I've never really thought about it in those terms.
I 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.
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 on controlled hallucination, just clarify so much for myself as ever.
as a young person trying to figure out what am I doing every time I wake up and choose to go about the world.
Let me, can we start there?
Cause this is something that's absolutely fascinating.
So I'm,
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 all this stuff.
But when I remember started talking to people who had experience of acting,
it struck me that there's something really, under-examined here, which is people, especially someone like you, who's been acting since you were very young.
Yeah.
I've been wondering how that affects your experience of being who you are.
Mm-hmm.
Oh.
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 I was a small role and I really didn't speak in it.
I was surrounded by...
up a lot like this one where it was grip stands and lights and cameras and nothing like the immersive sets people were on.
And my task was convincing myself every day that I was seeing what everybody else was seeing.
And I think it made me create But 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.
there would literally be stick figures with my co-stars'
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 can't,
I mean,
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 That's that's surprising.
I was thinking about that.
I was thinking you know, there's there's all kinds of Context in which acting happens.
You can be on a stage in front of people on the Ted stage in front of people but in in theaters as well Or on a set or I
Have thought the hardest thing would be when you have to comment
everything and generate the surroundings that you're going to be in after the filming has been done, after post-production.
I'd have thought that would have been harder.
How real did it seem to you?
Is something that, as you did this more, that the sense of, you know, the figures actually being people's senses?
of that wall being a forest, did that grow?
Well, I think I started to learn what senses helped teleport me.
And 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 teleport me into that space more than looking at the image of their face.
And I think,
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.
Of course, 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 get all action
And then you pretend you're the character again
Whereas there was something about having to stay in it and and know that you know I didn't have this set around me.
I didn't have my co-stars around me that created quite a new experience.
I was even surprised quite nervous the process,
saying, well, 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
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 just come at the
end of the day I'd come home at the end of the day a little a little tired
fatigued but can I ask I feel like I can go on a TV show but I want to know
just this may sound so basic but why consciousness What made you start examining the thing that,
I mean, you said we can take for granted as just a part of our everyday experience?
I think to take something you talked about, curiosity.
I think everybody, I might be wrong about this, but I was a kid, I remember there was a time when I first.
question these things like, why am I me and not somebody else?
Where was I before I was born?
What happen when I die?
And those questions, you know, you think about them as a kid, you didn't do anything.
And I had no idea that I would end up as an academic.
still being interested in these questions,
they matured a bit later on to this idea about consciousness, which one of the oldest mysteries in the book, right?
At level we're objects,
very complicated objects,
we to undersell how amazing,
rich and beautiful human beings and other animals are,
but we're made And, on the other hand, we have experiences, you we our eyes and there's not just information processing happening in our brains.
We an experience, there's the redness of red, the sharpness of pain.
And of that is the experience.
of being a self within that.
With all the emotions, all the moods, all the feeling of the body, the first person perspective, the memories, the beliefs, the plants.
And for me was just the most fascinating thing I think because it combined something that was this big.
big mystery,
it's still a big mystery,
with something that's so personal and we will want to understand ourselves, know ourselves better, and with something that's really practical.
I think in the idea of studying consciousness as often being thought of as a philosophical indulgence,
but actually especially there are so many practical important reasons to better understand it.
We epidemics of mental illness, we have really outdated views about ethics for non-human animals, for patients with brain cells.
We have new technologies like AI and newer technologies,
which are really challenging the assumptions that we have about, you they're being like a separate disembodied soul that marches around with your body.
And for me, it was the confluence of all of these things that never really let me go.
Can I ask particularly since you mentioned AI,
I know in your talk,
you had told that one of 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?
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.
No, that's right.
It's really changed.
I my PhD was in artificial intelligence, like 20 years ago when it was not very monetizable when I stayed in academia.
You were thinking long term.
Too far ahead of the curve, I think.
That's the way I like to think about it.
But it has really taken off.
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've played around or used chat GPT probably and these systems that you can talk about.
They kind of magic, they talk back and they're so and much more capable than I would have expected them to be.
But we over project.
I 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 over projecting.
And that can lead as a stray because they aren't.
In my view anyway,
and 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 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.
of the herds.
But I think we inhabit this,
we must think about this all the time about what do people project on to you when you're on stage or on a set and how's that
going to work.
Because just do this, I think it's a natural psychological tendency we project things.
No, definitely.
something that's always presented an interesting,
I don't know,
maybe and how I perceived myself is at times less the acting,
but more so when I do advertisements as a, you know, a public figure, a fashion.
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, a lot of times well before I ever see myself in the image.
And I find it interesting because when,
you know,
family or friends will see a picture of me,
they'll like, oh my goodness, that's Yara in a way that it just doesn't register the same.
And so,
So 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 times.
to be really reaffirming, too, to say, oh no, I'm obviously fully connected.
I'm not 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.
That's interesting, yeah.
One of the things I've always tried to push back on is this idea that the self is this singular thing,
and essence you or me that derives a little bit from the ideas of the soul, whether it was me.
I there's still a role for the soul in how we think about life,
but not as this singular, separate, Distantable, detachable, transubstantial essence of you, or essence of me.
There are many different
aspects to how the self-manifest we have we have the body and we have the body as
this object in the world this as you said it's kind of meat 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 brains 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 figuring out where it is in the world, in relation to other things.
Then there's free will and agency.
We feel to be the cause of actions.
And then this sort of aspects of self that I think many people think of when they think of self, which is personal identity.
I I these memories, these plans, and the social self, you how we experience being who we are through the minds and memories of others.
And of these aspects of self come together in a particular way for each of us, but they can come apart.
wondering and acting whether that you start to strain at the boundaries of these different components of self.
One thing I've always wanted to ask somebody who's done a lot of acting like
when you when you perform an action on stage like something even simple picking
up a mug of coffee and 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?
Mmm that's a good question I think I've never really thought about it in those terms I think,
you know, there's one character I've played for 10 years, and in many ways I feel like hopping into her is almost automated.
And 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 all I was told to move towards 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 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 thought,
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 characters suddenly 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 I was working across from somebody recently that has been a friend,
And I knew them in such a different context in 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 had recreated things that just had not happened to us.
But your body doesn't know that, right?
Yeah.
So have this, I guess, empathy generation process that's necessary to do that.
Most definitely.
I I think at the core of even
acting and then going into my own 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 wanna know more about them.
At least for me, I think even in my real life, so much of my life was determined by who's around me.
I feel like they determined who I am.
a room that acting has always been about needing to be able to care deeply about whoever's across from you for whatever reason.
And 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 that's it.
Has that ever got to a stage where it's almost concerning or worrying?
I I there's been examples of actors who've required therapy or really struggled, really suffered in playing.
that has required deep emotional challenges.
I know if that's dependent on the way.
Is that something that comes out in method acting?
More than other kinds of 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 me.
of being 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 think that is where I can feel a little unstable.
But me,
I think,
It's always been helpful saying,
okay, 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 times, I'd actually say, going into a different world is quite healing.
I 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.
And it's dwell on that for a second.
What why do you think that is I was I was wondering about oh Which is starting yeah Right,
can I can I at least ask Can I at least ask if 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
the study of self has that made how you relate to yourself change or evolve over time.
I it must have done.
I think we both face the challenges that we don't have like a control condition.
We don't have an alternative annual or an alternative yard 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 mean they're not real.
Everything feels real and is real.
But it might not be quite real.
what it, 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 of the self.
is always changing, always evolving.
There's 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.
individuals, different people you can care about, and a similar way to how I might care about friends and family, and that's an interesting shift.
Okay.
We're truly out of time.
Well, I guess we'll have do part two.
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.
I feel the same way.
It's been really eye-opening, and it's been a great pleasure.
Thank you.
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