What Makes You “You”? An Actor + a Neuroscientist Answer | Yara Shahidi + Anil Seth | Intersections

107,180 views

2024-08-27 ・ TED


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What Makes You “You”? An Actor + a Neuroscientist Answer | Yara Shahidi + Anil Seth | Intersections

107,180 views ・ 2024-08-27

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

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