00:00We think we are the main character of our story.
00:04We feel our consciousness as a solid, continuous thing flowing from one moment to the next.
00:11But I want you to try a little experiment, right now.
00:16Think of your most vivid memory.
00:18A first kiss, a moment of triumph, a sudden loss.
00:22Really feel it.
00:23The sounds, the smells, the texture of the emotion.
00:27Now, here is the strange part.
00:30You are not revisiting that memory.
00:32You are visiting the asterisk last time.
00:35You remembered it asterisk.
00:37Every time we reach into the vault of our past, we don't pull out the original artifact.
00:43We pull out a copy, and in the process of copying, we change it.
00:48We smooth over rough edges.
00:50We tint it with our current mood.
00:53We might even add details that never were convinced of their truth.
00:57So, who are you, the person who lived the event?
01:03Or the curator, the editor, who has been subtly rewriting it ever since?
01:08This isn't a metaphor.
01:11This is neuroscience.
01:13This is how the brain works.
01:16Memory is not a recording.
01:18It is a reconstruction.
01:20A live performance, every single time.
01:22And with each performance, the script changes just a little.
01:30So, the past is not a fixed place.
01:33It's a story we tell ourselves.
01:35And the story is constantly being updated to make sense of the present.
01:42This means your childhood, your adolescence, your last relationship.
01:47They are not solid things.
01:49They are active, evolving narratives.
01:51You are not a statue carved from the marvel of your past experiences.
01:59You are a river, constantly remaking your own banks as you flow.
02:06This is terrifying.
02:08It means our most cherished truths are fluid.
02:11But, it is also profoundly liberate.
02:15If the past is not set in stone, then we are not chained to it.
02:21The story of the hurt that defined you, the failure that limited you.
02:28You have the power, right now, to change the meaning of that story.
02:34Not the facts, perhaps, but the narrative, the weight it holds over you.
02:41You are the author, even if you didn't know you were holding the pen.
02:46Now, let's take this further.
02:49What about the present?
02:51The now, this very moment.
02:54It feels immediate, undeniable, right?
02:57But by the time your brain has processed the light from this screen,
03:02by the time it has assembled the signals into a coherent form,
03:07that moment is already in the past.
03:11There is a tiny, but real delay, a processing lag.
03:17You are never experiencing the present.
03:20You are experiencing the very recent past.
03:24Your consciousness is a commentary on a game that has already happened.
03:29So, if we can't trust the past to be fixed, and the present is already gone,
03:37what is left, what are we?
03:39We are a process, a pattern, a prediction machine.
03:44Your brain's primary job is not to record reality, but to predict it.
03:51It uses past experiences, those flawed, edited memories to guess what comes next.
03:57It creates a model of the world, and that model is what you live inside.
04:03When you reach for a cup, your brain has already predicted the weight, the texture.
04:09When you have a conversation, it's predicting the responses.
04:14You are living in a carefully constructed simulation of the immediate future.
04:20And most of the time, it's right, when it's wrong, we call that surprise.
04:26You are a biological machine, running unedited memories of a past that never existed, as you recall it.
04:38Living in a predictive simulation of a future that hasn't happened yet.
04:44And you call this consciousness, this is the self.
04:50It feels solid, but it's a ghost, a beautiful, complex, ever-changing ghost.
04:58And this is where the real magic begins.
05:02If you are a prediction machine, you can change your predictions.
05:06If you are a story, you can change the ending.
05:10The plasticity of memory, the lag of the pre's and these aren't bugs.
05:15They are the features that allow for growth, for learning, for change.
05:21They are the cracks where freedom gets in.
05:24You are not doomed by your history, you are informed by it.
05:29You are not chasing a future, you are actively building it with every expectation.
05:36So, the next time you find yourself trapped by a story from your past, remember that you
05:43are the one telling it.
05:45The next time you feel anxious about the future, remember that you are the one making the prediction.
05:54You are not a prisoner of time.
05:56You are its author, its architect.
06:00A ghost, yes, but a ghost with the power to haunt the future.
06:06To shape it with hope, with intention, with a better story.
06:11The machine is running, the predictions are being made.
06:15What will you choose to predict next?
Comments