One thing that I've learned, this is from my graduate students and hanging out with

computer programmers, is that when somebody is creating an AI algorithm, for example,

they will specifically program noise into the system.

And the idea is that if you're putting a computer on a machine learning task, you don't want

it to get stuck in a local minimum. As in, it comes up with a solution and it's like,

oh, this is a good solution, but yet there's a better solution just over that next energetic hurdle,

you know, and it's an even better one. So if you make the road bumpy, you know, if there's

a little bit, if there's a little ride in the road, you know, we might fall into that ride,

but then the road's bumpy enough that we bump out of that and then we find the bigger route,

the one that's actually a useful solution, so to speak.

In this episode, we sit down once again with Dr. Judd Brewer, who has since his last appearance

on the show, written and published a book, which is now a New York Times best-seller titled

Unwinding Anxiety. Dr. Judd is the director of research and innovation at the Mindfulness

Center and associate professor in behavioral and social sciences at the School of Public Health

and Psychiatry at the Medical School at Brown University. He's also a research affiliate at MIT

and his bonafides go on and on from there. He's a psychiatrist and an expert in mindfulness,

addiction and anxiety, and a lot more, and he's specialized himself in creating and curating

mindfulness programs for behavioral change, and that's what his new book is about. In fact,

the full title is Unwinding Anxiety. New science shows how to break the cycles of worry and fear

to heal your mind. And that is what we will be talking about in this episode. Follow Dr. Judd

on Twitter at Judd Brewer, that's J-U-D-B-R-E-W-E-R, and listen to him right now after this intro music.

Welcome to the U-R-Not-So-Smart Podcast, episode 218.

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