Your Brain is Running a Simulation Right Now [Max Bennett]

About this episode

Tim and Max Bennett discuss the evolution of the brain and its implications for understanding human intelligence and AI.

Tim sits down with Max Bennett to explore how our brains evolved over 600 million years—and what that means for understanding both human intelligence and AI. Max isn't a neuroscientist by training. He's a tech entrepreneur who got curious, started reading, and ended up weaving together three fields that rarely talk to each other: comparative psychology (what different animals can actually do), evolutionary neuroscience (how brains changed over time), and AI (what actually works in practice). *Your Brain Is a Guessing Machine* You don't actually "see" the world. Your brain builds a simulation of what it *thinks* is out there and just uses your eyes to check if it's right. That's why optical illusions work—your brain is filling in a triangle that isn't there, or can't decide if it's looking at a duck or a rabbit. *Rats Have Regrets* *Chimps Are Machiavellian* *Language Is the Human Superpower* *Does ChatGPT Think?* (truncated description, more on rescript) Understanding how the brain evolved isn't just about the past. It gives us clues about: - What's actually different between human intelligence and AI - Why we're so easily fooled by status games and tribal thinking…

People in this episode

Host: Tim

Guest: Max Bennett

Topics covered

• brain evolution
• human intelligence
• artificial intelligence
• comparative psychology
• evolutionary neuroscience
• optical illusions
• tribal thinking

Keywords

• neuroscience
• AI
• human intelligence
• evolution
• psychology
• optical illusions
• status games

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Amazon

Books & works: Your Brain Is a Guessing Machine, A Brief History of Intelligence

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