You know that moment in the horror movie where the monster is coming closer, but the person on

screen doesn't see it? Why does that drive you crazy? And what does that teach us about brains?

What is theory of mind? And why is it so important for everyone from poker players to

con men, to stage magicians, to novelists? We're going to talk about a very fundamental skill of

human brains today. And as impressive as AI is currently, we're going to ask the question of whether

computers can replicate this right now, or whether it is beyond their skill set.

Welcome to Inner Cosmos with me, David Eagleman. I'm a neuroscientist and an author at Stanford. And in these episodes, we sail deeply into our three-pound universe to understand why and how

our lives look the way they do. Today's episode is about what it takes to understand other people,

how your brain does it, and whether computers could do it. So imagine this. You're walking down the street and you see someone frantically

searching their pockets and looking around with furrowed brows and a tight frown. So without them saying a

word, you can infer that they might have lost something important. Maybe it's his keys. Your brain can

easily make a good guess about another person's mental state just from looking at their actions.

We are inferring something about what is going on in that person's head. But it's more than just

pattern matching. It's not simply that it's more than just pattern matching.

It's not simply that your brain has seen lots of people patting their pockets and you

talked with them afterwards and you figured out why they were doing that and you detected

a pattern and you memorized, ah, okay, that pattern equals that problem. Instead, you have the ability to imagine

yourself in their situation. You can mentally slip into their shoes and ask, what would I be thinking

if I were patting my pockets and frantically searching around me? And maybe you see something else. You see a kid there

around the corner and the kid is peeking around the corner at the man patting his pockets and the child

is giggling. Now why is the kid giggling while the guy is so obviously worried? Well, it probably

strikes you that he's hiding something from the guy. You see that the guy is so obviously worried. Well, it probably strikes you that he's hiding something from the guy.

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