Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas - 180 | Camilla Pang on Instructions for Being Human

Episode Date: January 17, 2022

Being a human is tricky. There are any number of unwritten rules and social cues that we have to learn as we go, but that we ultimately learn to take for granted. Camilla Pang, who was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at age eight, had a harder time than most, as she didn't easily perceive the rules of etiquette and relationships that we need to deal with each other. But she ultimately figured them out, with the help of analogies and examples from different fields of science. We talk about these rules, and how science can help us think about them. Support Mindscape on Patreon. Camilla Pang received her Ph.D. in computational biology from University College London. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher in pharmaceuticals and a volunteer cancer researcher at the Francis Crick Institute. She was awarded the Royal Society Prize for Science Books in 2020 for her book Explaining Humans: What Science Can Teach Us about Life, Love, and Relationships (US title: An Outsider's Guide to Humans: What Science Taught Me about What We Do and Who We Are). Web site Wikipedia Twitter Amazon author page

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corrects, and highlights, all while staying lightweight, crease-resistant, and smooth. It may be the world's greatest eraser. Find your shade of instant eraser concealer at your local retailer. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Mindscape Podcast. I'm your host, Sean Carroll. Raise your hand if when you were young, you wondered if it wouldn't be better if there was some instruction manual for being a human being. No matter what context you live in, no matter how you're brought up, there's all sorts of unspoken rules and regulations out there. Things you're supposed to know that no one ever actually tells you explicitly, right? So today's guest, Camilla Pang, has set out to do this, to write the instruction manual. for being a human being, and she does it from a very unique perspective. Camilla was diagnosed

with autism spectrum disorder as well as ADHD, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. So when she was a kid for a long time, she struggled to understand what was going on with her family, her friends, what were the things that other people sensed and knew implicitly that she wasn't privy to, right? And she had to work it out explicitly, figure out ways to understand what was the subtext of what her friends were saying, why people were laughing in certain places, how to have normal conversations. Now, she's been very, very successful at this. You know, these conditions are ones that have varying degrees of severity. Camilla has done very, very well for herself. She has a PhD in biochemistry. She has a book that she's written that is

going to be the basis of our conversation today that recently won the Royal Society Prize for Science Books of the Year. So, but nevertheless, there are is a real difference in perspective. There's some things that some of us take for granted that other human beings, other of our fellow people, have to learn explicitly. So the great thing about Camilla's book is that not only does she go into how people behave from sort of an outsider's point of view, almost like the classic anthropologist from Mars kind of thought experiment, why are these weirdos acting in these different ways, but she uses science metaphors to explain why people act in different ways. So as a scientist, Camilla always thinks in terms of science.

I think a lot of science friends out there are going to know what this is like, are going to be sympathetic here, that you learn something that is crystal clear within the world of science. So, you know, how Bays' theorem works or how general relativity works. And that serves as a metaphor, as an analogy for the complicated and difficult to understand question of how human beings behave and why they do that. So the great thing about Camillo's book is that it's both interesting as sort of psychology, as understanding, how human beings really do behave, but she sneaks in there a lot of science communication, a lot of pedagogy about different realms of science, whether it's psychology or biochemistry or computer science or so forth. And it's always, of course, just interesting to hear about

human beings from slightly different perspectives. One of the issues that we have as a species is that we are the only species who writes books and does science, right? So there's sort of not a lot of data that we can get from an unbiased external observer. And listening to different kinds of human beings with different experiences and different perspectives is the best that we can do to understand ourselves just a little bit better, a little bit more fully. So with that, let's go. Camilla Pang, welcome to the Minescape podcast. Thank you for having me on here. I'm fascinated by the book you wrote because thinking of it as a instruction manual for being a human being. So, I mean, you have kind of an excuse for wanting

such an instruction manual and writing it, but I think that we all need it or have wondered about this at some point in our life. So, I mean, maybe tell us a little bit about your motivation for why you thought this was an important book to write. Well, when I was writing it, when I was little, I didn't actually realize I was writing a book. I just wrote it, I ended up writing a lot of notes that helped me understand what was going on around me because I'm autistic and I've also got ADHD and so that kind of makes a very interesting existence where you constantly fill out a phase with pretty much every person that you meet and so I wanted to make sense and feel like I belonged and so for that I seeked out science which is kind of concrete language that I'd

hook my days to and in the end when I realized that that manual was actually useful to someone else I was like, oh, that gave me the motivation funnily enough to actually make it into a book. Otherwise, it was just a guilty pleasure of journaling lots. So you were actually literally writing things down for years that eventually appeared in the book? Yeah, completely. And it was inspired by the books that I just, you know, read through science, through articles from my PhD. I actually ended up writing a little bit of my book within my PhD thesis. And my supervisor was like, what's this?

it's nice, but it's not actually academic writing. And I'm like, oh, no, which is really embarrassing. So I knew I had to put it somewhere. And so I just couldn't chuck it away because it was a part of me that I'd built and that I invested a lot of time and emotion in. And so I was like, I need to put it somewhere. And so that's when I realized it was actually separate from science. And it was more of my own experiment.

But it's great because what you do in the book, I mean, on the one hand, you're doing something where you're helping people. understand what it is to be human, like the sort of classic example of an anthropologist from Mars or from a different alien race comes down and observes us and tries to figure out what we're doing. But sneakily, you're teaching people a lot of science along the way, right? There's actually a lot of introduction to a lot of very interesting parts of science squeezed into one book in this framing device. Yeah, exactly. And that's one of the reasons why I felt like it was quite nice, because even if a lot of the audience of the book understood the concepts that I found difficult,

at least they would feel like for me it was an effort to make humans or people human to me through science. And because science is one of those subjects that can raise eyebrows when you say I'm a scientist at there's an table, can be quite alienated. And I wanted to humanize it so that people actually relate to it on a level that I relied on for my every day. So complete the loop. It's great. It reminded me a little bit of Francis Ford Coppola's quote about the godfather, the movie, when he made it. He wasn't sure whether anyone would like the movie, but he said, anyone who watched it would at least get a good recipe for pasta sauce. So you can have more than one goal when you do something like this. So this is an extremely sort of unfair, ambitious question, but, um, So you're someone who is autistic or on the autism spectrum?

How should I exactly say that? And then for the people who are not as familiar with this whole idea as they could be, how should we think about what that means? That's actually a very good question. I think there's a lot of language that limits how people view neurodiversity. So I think by questioning how someone wants to be viewed is a very good start. So actually, yeah, I'm autistic. and I've also got ADHD.

And the thing is with autism, it's one of those kind of, it's one of those neurodiverse conditions that affects social connection. You don't often get the nuances, or it's trying to contextualize things and construct them. For example, abstract concepts, such as tidying your room in my case,

or understanding someone's intention. You assume that everyone is kind of a neutral agent, but actually there's a lot of unhidden, a lot of hidden rules that people are sensitive to, but they don't speak. And when it comes to autism, you also have no filter of the senses. You have often a sensory disorder. And so what that means is that you get overwhelmed by lots of things that just manage to filter out on the day-to-day basis.

And so you get afraid of things that people find silly. But actually, to us, it's something that's triggering. Right. I would also like to just mention how autism manifests in women and marginalised demographics, for example, back in ethnic and minority, is extremely different to how it's benchmarked in white males. So this is another thing itself is to represent itself. There's a lot of societal pressures and it's quite complicated.

Oh, okay, yeah. We're still, but representations. Yeah, that's a good point that I hadn't really thought of. Maybe I can ask a little bit more about the connection between these different aspects that you just raised. Because on the one hand, there's the social aspect of trying to understand what is going on in the minds of other people, if your intuitions or expectations are naturally a little bit different. And then there's the story about being very sensitive to sounds and light and noise and crowds. Are these connected in some way, do you think?

me, why do they go hand in hand so often? I mean, that's just an interesting question because there are some people with autism that don't have sensory processing disorders. They're actually very tolerant. And they don't, you know, you can have some of autism who's just primarily focused on the sensory aspects of things, or often it's called hypersensitivity or sensory processes. So much like the symptoms of neurodiversity themselves, be it through calculus or dyspraxia, dyslexia, autism, ADHD.

you do have symptoms which are over the same can be applied for the name of autism itself. That makes a lot of sense. It's a bit different. It does seem like we're in the process of just beginning to understand this. I mean, I'm certainly not an expert, but my impression is that the way that the medical, psychological community thinks about autism is changing over time as it gets more input from people who are actually autistic, for example. Yeah, no, completely. And this is one of the things I want to challenge is there's a lot of, lot of research that has been great for developing methods to help people who are who manifest

traditionally as autistic. But now we are raising the barrier of what autism looks like by raising the voices of those who have it but don't present in this traditional way. So I think the more people that we empower, which is what I want my book to do, I want people to be like, wait a minute, I'm autistic, but I have a voice and I can talk about my experience and not be ashamed of it because the more we know about the nature of autism itself, the more we're likely to actually capture that in its diagnosis. Right, absolutely. So great. So with that as the background, let's get into your book because I thought it was really interesting. I mean, it wasn't just here's a little bit of science I learned about the brain or about autism or anything

like that or even just a bunch of techniques that you learn to deal with the world. It was sort of using science as an analogy or inspiration for developing these techniques. Is that a safe way to put it, you think? I guess so. I think when you're, you know, you're like, you know, when you're a kid, you'll try and find the language which makes sense to you, translate the world into the movements of your learning. And I found it quite difficult and quite a bit too abstract to associate myself with any characters on TV or those made through the media or stories. And so I was like, I don't really have that, but I know that when I read about science, it affects me. And I think one of the main things in making your own language when you feel completely out of sync is knowing what affects you and not being ashamed of it.

But the fact that the movement of leaves and me kind of going to leaves and questioning their movement and why each movement was irreversible because of entropy was a lot more affecting than looking at a disillian. And so I think this is where I found my language in an event. Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. It also is going to delay me a second, because now I want to ask about the question of representation of people with different neurodivergent behaviors or thoughts in TVs and movies, because I've forgotten, but there's this great example of Drax the Destroyer in the Guardians of the Galaxy. Do you ever see the Guardians of the Galaxy? I haven't, but no, he's dig on. So there is a character who is, I mean, he's an alien, so he's not actually labeled as autistic or Asperger's or anything like that, but many of his behaviors are similar. And one of them was, you know, he takes things very, very literally. And there are people who, you know, who've said, autistic people who have said, you know, that they recognize themselves in him. And it made me think of this incredibly charming little story you tell in the book where someone calls. your house and you pick up the phone and they say, I'm calling to see if your mom is there and you say, yes, she is, and then you hang up the phone.

And so is that, I mean, so is that kind of taking things literally rather than figuratively? Is that one of the ways in which things that you need to train yourself to pick up on what other people mean in subtext below the surface? Yes, oh yes, big time, not just subtexts, but in the context of when you meet them and how they talk, there's lots of hidden messages that fall out of this interaction between how they talk context. And this is the thing that I'm constantly trying to tune my attention to to make sure I understand what's going on, that people feel naturally. So a lot of it is trying to interpret subtext and also naturally, I think you can call it a form of naive. but I don't really assume that anyone has a gender, because I don't have an agenda.

So I'm like, hey, I just take you as you are. And so I think there are many people that don't really find that, fun that weird. But I'm like, how can you be anything else? So, yeah, it's also a thing you see people. And I think as you mentioned in a couple places in the book, maybe it's especially difficult because of the particular culture that you are embedded in, namely the British one, where being reticent and understating your feelings is just commonplace, whereas maybe if you grew up in Italy where proclaiming your feelings loudly

might have made things a little bit easier. Oh, yeah, yeah, no. It's an interesting one that you mentioned because in the UK, I've had to work extra, extra hard to really tune into the non-verbal in-between body language signals that can make a conversation. And so I think it's actually helped me a lot more. It's had to force me to detect those nuances, which probably otherwise would have been masked by actually being transparent

in other kinds. All right. You've playing the game on hard mode. I think that makes perfect sense. So good. Oh, yeah, I have to. I have to. No choices, yeah.

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see nutrition info on hero.com for sodium and sugar content. So let's get into the details of these wonderful examples that you use. I think we probably won't be able to get to all of them, but I picked out some of my favorites. So you opened the book talking about decision making and machine learning. And we all make decisions and that's a tricky thing. But you draw this wonderful analogy with supervised versus unsupervised learning boxes versus trees. So tell the audience, why has it been helpful to be inspired by concepts from machine learning

when you're trying to make decisions in your everyday life? Yeah, so basically when I was probably about 10 years old, when I was trying to make sense of things, in humans and actually want to pigeonhole everything. And this I took the complete extreme to the point where I got fooled of it being a continuum. And so it makes a difference between having lots of different options being like, I'm either this, this, this, this and this versus knowing what the options are in the context of what you're actually doing. So I was like, I don't feel like these boxes that I'm putting myself in are joining up, and I feel a lot of anxiety about it.

So I had to find another way to kind of navigate through events that aren't predictable or deterministic, because that's just life. And so I thought, well, I need a different approach and to not be so classified in it. And this is when I looked about unsupervised learning, where you start from the data, and from that you have to cluster depending on what you have to then make a decision that naturally converges to a certain whereas if you have a preset kind of conditional already there, pretty difficult to kind of engineer

that on the spot when things go wrong. So this is what led me to looking at the box-like thing. Yeah, so I'm actually not an expert. Certainly no one thinks I'm an expert in machine learning. So, I mean, maybe we can just talk about that for its own sake just for a second. So it sounds like there's a version of machine learning where you start with some categories.

The picture is either a cat or a dog, and you train your algorithm to distinguish cats and dogs. But then there's another version where you say there's a bunch of pictures and, you know, just try to classify them. Is that, is that the distinction that you're drawing here? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So you have, you know, you've got classification where you have preset can, you have preset labels

for each image or each kind of like event that you're thinking of doing. And you have, and then that's the sign you've got unsupervised learning. We're looking at the data and to see what is all. boxes it naturally falls in. So you might even have a squirrel in there. You know, it depends on what the data shows as opposed to you try and fit. But as you say, I think in the book that the OCD aspect of things, obsessive compulsive, is happy with the boxes, right? Like if you're told ahead of time, here are the boxes, here are the categories into which the world falls. That's something you can easily sympathize with. But it's not good all the time.

because sometimes the world surprises you. Exactly, which is one of the reasons why it's not like one or the other. I wanted to highlight both. I think there's a bit of a fallacy where people try and think, oh, to be, to think of box thinking, I can't think of tree thinking because I won't be a proper box thinking person or vice versa. Like everyone likes to be quite essentialists and how they do things because then it makes them feel like they're doing it properly.

But most of the time, you just need to just mix it up on the go. Mm-hmm. And that's how you're doing it properly. It's a great point. I mean, it's similar to something that T. Nguyen said, a philosopher that I had on the podcast, Lee, that he's a philosopher who thinks about games and also how they relate to the rest of human culture. And he says that there's a danger in gamification because there's such a pleasure in having clear goals and rule. And so much of a pleasure in that that we perceive them when they're not there. And this clarity of values and goals. can make it hard to understand subtleties and nuances. Yeah, much like when you read the works of fiction, games and gamification, you can provide that essential closure that reality and science can not give us. I mean, humans crave that sense of closure so that we can know how to act

and how to and to reaffirm that what we've already thought is good. So I think this whole kind of search for meaning is very much support to studies from 9 to 9. 1984 and the human's kind of tendency to seek meaning and narrative. Actually, I mean, that's a great point which I hadn't thought of. The connection between the gamification in terms of rules and rewards is compelling because we like that sort of clarity. But what you're saying that we like fiction, we like stories, because there's sort of a narrative arc and there's a payoff and there's a conclusion.

And life isn't always like that. and we should maybe resist the temptation to make life too much like a compact three-act Hollywood structure. Yes, I completely agree. And I could talk about this for quite a while. It's a subject that I'm very much interested in. And I think potentially, I mean, don't quote me on this, but this is something that's kind of stirring in my head when people, I asked my dad about this actually because he's like, I know, he's like,

he's like 56, 57 and he didn't grow up with the internet, was I did. And so I feel like a lot of people these days, feel like with so much information, we have, you know, we have everything we need. Therefore, where's the answer? It's almost like seeking answers through the space of information versus living them out through. And I think that can be quite toxic. And so that whole craving for closure is potentially increased or the expectation for closure is higher because we have more data. But that doesn't mean it's good data. Well, that's the thing. When you get a lot of data in, some of it will be misleading, which brings up the next point I wanted to mention, because you mentioned

in this chapter that one of the lessons from thinking about machine learning was to embrace the possibility of error, that your conclusions are not always going to be true and to be willing to update them. Yeah, completely. I think that's in my, which title was that? I chapter was that. Nine? Nine? How to learn from your mistakes? Was that the... Oh boy, I'm not going to remember, but I did, you do, you have a wonderful chapter that I want to get to next on Bays's theorem and empathy. Maybe that's the one where we should go to because, you know, well, give me your version of Bayesian reasoning, because I love it and I've talked about in the podcast many times, but I will never tire of explaining it. No, that's good. Well, the more I read about it,

the more I realize that if I humor myself and to go in completely base, not even thinking about anything else, I will quickly end up doing exactly what I would have done 10 years ago. I think It's a very interesting model to use, especially when you're contextualise whether something will happen or not, if you have no sense of context or if you want to kind of predict what will happen. However, it assumes that determinism is based on just what's happened before, but it's not just about that. And so, which is one of the reasons why I absolutely loved, you know, constructive theory, because it enables you to see the outward projection of what could have based on what can and can't, you know, physically in the laws of physics compared to what's already happened. So the more I read about it, the more I realize how useful it is in looking at events that precede certain others, but it's quite limiting. And the more we try and model the chaos for intelligent systems, the more we realize that we might hit a wall quite quickly. Okay, yeah, I completely, I see that, the point you're making. I mean, one of the features of Bayesian reasoning, which is both a pro and a con, is that you have some explicit

priors, right? It's both a pro because you're not starting from scratch every time you look at a new phenomenon. It's a con because you can miss important things if your priors are too strongly pushed against them. I mean, have you, so what, how has it changed your way of dealing with other human being to think of, to think in Bayesian terms, to think like, well, if they're acting in a certain way, it's most likely it's for this reason. Is that, is that a useful explicit thought process for you? Yeah, I think so. But then if you do that to such an extent,

so I've done it to the point of almost, I wouldn't say insanity, but I do it to such an extent where I try and push its limitations and question, is this actually how it is? Because you can only know so much about a person and their intentions generally. But you just need to be open mind

that your heat map protection of their reasoning is only part of it. And I think no, that they could be doing something that you can't predict is actually quite a normal thing. And you shouldn't take it personally. Right. Okay. People like to justify other people's actions according to what they think they are. But actually it's not much of...

Well, it's always a tricky thing. I mean, I had Paul Bloom on the podcast, and he's a psychologist who's written a book against empathy. He thinks that empathy is overrated. And his argument is that we tend to empathize. I think that's... Yeah. So, sorry, I don't know. Are you... What is your predilection there? Do you think that empathy is overrated or underrated?

Depends on what context. I think that there's an underrepancy of empathy in autism because we don't like to hug as often, but that doesn't mean... You know, I've got my own opinions. Sure. Yeah, I think, you know, but empathy in the sense of trying to model or understand other people's inner states, to put yourselves in the shoes of somebody else. Is that something that is very useful to you?

Yes, that's why I wrote the book. The book is a gesture of empathy. Oh, very good. Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. Right. Yeah, but Paul's argument is that because we're better at empathizing with people like ourselves than with people who are very different, we can trick ourselves into thinking we're being good human beings, whereas we're actually just prioritizing people who are like us. We should guard it. He wants to put rationality in opposition to empathy inside. Yes, actually, that's a good point. I think, yeah, no, that's a name. That's really cool. I think it makes a good point. There's an affinity bias in empathy because you have this, you know, if you have something in common with someone,

you're more likely to feel like you can predict what they want and therefore connect with them. But, you know, it's quite quickly an echo chamber. So it's Paul Bloom, B-L-O-O-O-M, like Bloom on the Rose. You should check it out, the podcast episode and his book. But the final thing on Bays' theorem is you've mentioned, that it's a useful way of thinking about self-regulation, that, you know, you have, we all have instincts, right? We all have reactions to things that we experience in the world, that maybe

are not completely cognitive, that are sort of pre-cognitive or whatever. And so, for instance, you mentioned that you react strongly to certain smells, and you've been able to use BASI and reasoning to say, that smell probably won't kill me. It's not killed anybody else yet. It hasn't killed me yet. And is that kind of updating really effective for you? It is actually, yeah, no, definitely. It helps rationalise triggers that are there. The thing is with autism is, especially with, what's it called, high function in autism or autism that isn't presented as dramatically to other people. That isn't because we feel it any less. It's that probably created mechanisms

so that we can feel our triggers and try and internalize them and process them so that we look normal. So I know that the smell of smoke won't immediately kill, but I know that it triggers me. I find it very stressful. But it occurs everywhere, okay? And I think about, you know, the base level rate of inhaling a tiny bit of, you know, pollution and, you know, am I going to die there and then? Well, so then it would be in the news. So I try and, I try and kind of talk myself through the kind of incidents of, you know, what's happened before, what's the likelihood. So I use base things to rationalize whether to be worried or not, and it can help reassure me when I'm triggered.

I wonder if this is helpful to people who are not autistic in empathizing with people who are, if you want to put it that way, because it does sound like you have to work so much harder to sort of regulate yourself in a much more explicit and cognitive way. It just sounds exhausting to me, you know, is that? Is that an accurate implication? Yes, very much. So it's definitely takes up a lot of energy to just exist, but also to justify yourself and to regulate yourself

and then to interact normally with others. It's a lot of work, which is one of the reasons why it's very good to acknowledge that. Whenever I'm social, I'm like, yay, I look normal. The days after, like two days after, I can't. Well, you know. And that's the thing. you have to admit. But you, I mean, I admire what you've been able to do. You mentioned in the Bays chapter that you went clubbing, not because you were really excited to go clubbing, but because this was an

experiment you needed to do to collect some data. Was that a fruitful experiment? Do you think you learned about human beings a little bit that way? I mean, I don't do that. The thing is with me, that's so funny. The thing is with me, though, is that I've got a bit of a curiosity, obsession, like the thing that's driven me through my anxiety and to experiment is because I'm deeply curious about everything. And I get really bad, and FOMO, I get the fear of missing out. There are people doing things that are clearly happening that I feel like I want to be part of, even though I'm going to hate it, but it's going to help me have more of a rounded view of the context of the social situation. Yeah. And I'm curious. And I'm a scientist that's exactly new,

goes against your autism to try and figure out what. Well, that's why I said it's admirable because I do not share this impulse. I mean, I think of myself as a curious scientist, but I love going to Las Vegas and, you know, eating in the restaurants and playing poker. And I walk by these huge lines of people waiting to get into the club. And I'm like, no, I have no interest whatsoever in joining them in that particular experience. So good for you. Is there anything?

Is there any specific example of something you learned from that experience that was surprising to you? I just, it was a very specific context that people talked about a lot in university. And so I didn't really go in with a motive to find anything. I went in with the curiosity thinking, this is a very different environment. I wonder how people talk more, people talk less. And if they talk less, then how can people say, oh, I had a different environment. great night. And I'm like, so I just loved, even on the basic fundamental level, I just found it interesting how different people interact in contexts. And I thought, I'm just really curious.

That was enough for me. I think that's probably a whole sequel book about the whole clubbing experience waiting to be written there. Because I don't know. Like I say, I don't do it. So people don't talk very much because the noise is too loud, right? Is that, is that a fair implication? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's what I thought. It would drive me crazy. Anyway, all right. Love bread, bake goods and pasta, but not the way they make you feel.

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See nutrition info on hero. sodium and sugar content. Let's move on to another chapter in your book that I really, really enjoyed, which is on memory and learning, obviously something that's very, very important. And you take an analogy with deep learning, with a form of artificial intelligence. Because as you mentioned, with ADHD, you can easily forget things that you're supposed to be doing. Like you come home and you're wearing your jacket for the next 10 minutes or half an hour or whatever, because you just forgot to take your jacket off.

Five hours. Five hours. So, I mean, how does it help you to think about deep learning and artificial intelligence when you think about how to get your memory working as it should be? That's a good question. And I think, you know, I think one has ADHD. Your executive memory is quite, it's a bit like those Mario games that you see where he's jumping from platform to platform.

and sometimes it comes together in one line and most of the time it's just away and they're circling around each other and you're trying to catch yourself in the middle so that you can focus on something. And for me, when it came to making mistakes, you make mistakes on such a frequent level you are constantly having to self-reflect

so that you can focus. And I think what it's actually highlighted is the fact, because I have this increased iteration of, you know, doing something and forgetting and having to reassess, I realize that actually you take it all personally, then you won't really get anywhere, but if you have to have to learn from it

and have that proactive approach, kind of help you with bigger things that, you know, I might have, you know, the difference between forgetting five cups of tea in the day because you've forgotten whether you've lost them around the house, which happens frequently, versus you're not applying to this thing. Like, it helps you deal with these smaller

and therefore bigger things of regret. Right. And assess yourself on what you act was actually important and how you can act. Well, it is very interesting because there's this idea of, you know, short-term working memory. I think that everyone has had the experience of walking from one room to another, getting into the new room and say, why did I come here? What was the reason why I had to do this? But maybe the ADHD sort of brings it into sharper focus.

so it makes us reflect on that a little bit more. So if you were just, if we were forgetting about human beings and just you were teaching me about artificial intelligence, how does a deep learning network deal with memory like that? Is there any specific, I mean, tell us what deep learning is maybe. That would be an important first step there. Okay, okay, cool. So deep learning is, I guess, when it comes to trying to model a perceptron,

for example, you know, data in, processing unit, data out, you know, for example, it could be like a simple equation. It's a perceptron that takes in data and outputs something based on a decision that you find it to make. Whereas neural networks and deep learning are a bit more intricate in the sense that you can have many different stimuli and many different kind of module can process things independent and therefore to one another and they can kind of mix up. So it's a lot more complex in that regard. It's a lot more complex. But this is great because it helps kind of what's it called split the hairs between points and their association to come up with conclusions that otherwise wouldn't really be present in a binary linear machine learning

algorithm. When it comes to memory, neural networks can learn from itself so the output of one epoch could be the input of the next. And this whole reflexive process in itself is the ability I guess to have some sense of memory. I think I used it as an analogy purely based on a feedback loop. But memory, storage is one thing, but memory and take into account in a specific context is another, which I think we are trying to do. It makes sense.

And I like the comparison you did between this sort of feedback in a deep learning algorithm and self-reflection as human beings. I mean, there it is, right? Like we not only do things and act in certain ways, we remember what we did and we say, did I act in the right way? And that could affect our behavior going forward. And so, I mean, how explicit do you want to say that's a useful analogy there? It's quite useful when you have defined right and wrong.

But most of the time, actually, we don't know what's right and wrong. And we're literally gathering data. We're in an unclustered space, unsupervised space. So you're kind of iterating and then you're kind of trying to find the tag whether it's the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do. And I think that's probably one of the hardest bits is that with the computer, you can't, you know, we've defined right and wrong for them. But with us, it's actually a lot more nuanced and complicated because not only I'll be

having this feedback loop, we're also trying to define what is right and wrong based on the emerging data. And that's, so, yeah, it's an analogy I use. No, yeah. I mean, I like it because, I mean, that, that, that, that, reminds us that there's sort of more than one system going on in our brains. We're trying to interpret the world in terms of the behavior of things and what's going to happen next, but then there's a whole separate but related set of judgments that we have, like what was right, what was

wrong, you know, and there's an interplay there, which, which, I don't know, I don't know what to say about it, except it's really complicated and really hard. So thinking about it in a more self-reflected way is probably very useful. It's very complicated. It's not something that is quantifiable as such because it relies on a moral interpretation of what right and wrong can be, which is not something that can be formulated. And then another thing that you mentioned that is crucially important to, again, all of human life, I say, because it is, you've written an instruction manual for human beings generally. Memory is good. It's good to remember things, but sometimes there are bad memories that we can kind of get stuck on, right, and kind of obsess about. and learning to debug our memory logs can be a useful skill. Yeah, completely, I think, much like in science, even bad data is good data,

because a bad result is a good result because it helps you be like, okay, well, I did that and that happens. So it helps us kind of question our own narrative and our minds of how we perceive what has gone on and how we can react that. I think to debug is to be able to do this self-reflective process and be like, we're actually, because most of the time we're existing, not question it. And I think when we're affected by some things, you know, actually indifferent and regulated and moderated, we can perform.

But a lot, we're just, we're learning on the job, no matter how many books. So, yeah, I think when it comes to debugging, you need to have an element of humility to do that. Well, you tell another story. I mean, your stories are great, you know, because you really illuminate these ideas with specifics from your own life. there wasn't that much detail in the story.

So I was going to ask you more about it. This was the story of the blue eyeliner, where you said that you decided just for fun to wear blue eyeliner to a lunch, and the people at the lunch were not impressed. So, like, what's up with those people? Why were they so judgy about your blue eyeliner? What is your current thought about that? Yeah, well, it was a Tuesday, so there's no kind of occasion of why I should have blue eyeliner.

I was just bored one day, and I thought, you know what, why not? Yeah, why not? And it was completely a fluke. But then I went into lunch, and I scared a lot of my friends. And they didn't look at me the same for the next couple of days. And I thought, what? Judgmental, you know, I'm one of those people that didn't kind of keep themselves to themselves. And so I thought, you know what, when I express myself, be it through blue eyeliner,

I expect the same courtesy in return. But I think it was interesting because that was different. It was a boarding school and everyone was encouraged to doorman. So I think it stood out a lot more than I. It was just some, it was a fun experiment for me, but, you know, this is a thing, pick it quite seriously. So this is, so how old would you have been when this happened? I was like, Dean. Yeah, okay.

It's a very judgy age, right? We would like to hope that people who are 25 would have dealt with it better maybe than 15-year-olds just are right on the cusp of figuring out what is appropriate and allowed and bad and so forth. And so you stepped outside the lines and they came down. on yet. Big time. Wild. Well, it makes me think that there's lessons here once again. There's lessons not just to help autistic people navigate the complexity of human interaction,

but to help everyone be a little bit more empathetic. Like, I mean, that story really, I reacted very strongly that story. I know it's a silly, like, two-line story, but I really was angry at these people who judged you badly. You know, why can't we learn to just let people. to just let people wear whatever makeup they want. And, you know, if we like it, that's great. If we don't like it, that that's not so great.

But it's just a reminder of how incredibly judgmental people are about other people's personal choices that are utterly harmless to them. Exactly. Yeah, exactly, which is something that I've noticed I've gotten older. There's also one of the reason why I actually quite like London. It's like you could dress up how you want, whenever you want, and people pretty much would be very accepting of that. And I really like that multicultural feeling you have to be taken. Yeah.

To be taken. So I think it's gotten a lot better. Obviously, you know, in a boarding school and everyone's and every tiny little fluctuation means a big thing, you get to choose your battles later on so they can feel like they can express themselves without having to feel like they also have to. Because, you know, it's the thing. It's having more empathy and more humility is in the everyday, being more accepting. Well, I was going to ask that.

I mean, I think, again, everybody has this process. through their lives of finding their people and finding their place and so forth. How important has that been for you to just grow up, go through the high school experience where you don't get to choose much of your environment to be more of a grown-up and finding people who are more comfortable? I think initially the structure and limitations one has when they're in boarding school can be quite limiting. But for me, because I crave structure at that age,

direction to anchor me, I think it really benefited me because it anchored me in a place where I could then in turn choose what was something I liked and didn't like. How do you choose my preferences that I needed for the next stage of life. And so I think a little bit of structure goes a long way. And for me, it was routine, it was consistency. But then when I felt like I was stable in myself and I could make that for myself, you start to venture out. And that's when you need to, that's when you need to know to take leaps and feel like you've got your own back. So structure is quite good for letting you trust your own judgment and make mistakes, but also most of the living happens when things don't go. Well, that's certainly true. Yeah. No, I mean, I think it's a very, very good point

that I'm glad you said it out loud that the structure is very useful because it's clear. You know, it's a set of rules for what is allowed and what is not allowed. But then are all structures created equal? or would you say in certain circumstances from your own experience that you discerned the existence of a certain kind of structure of good and bad and just couldn't accept it yourself? Yeah, no, this is the whole point of it. If you're, you know, especially people who are autistic, often in these structures, especially if it's causing friction with their ways of living, we already have these micro routines that we need to adhere to to to feel safe. and that can often kind of rub against the institution. And this is one of the reasons why it's really good to recognize this

and not demonize yourself because my mum always said to me, if you, you know, just because, you know, the system like you, you don't get on with the system, it's because you're born to make a new one. And I'm a firm believer in that. Even if it's a system just for you, other people can be inspired by it. Right. It's a natural. Which is a good, it's a good transition into the chapter on friend.

and biochemistry, which I thought was very charming. I mean, one of the things, one of the points you make right away was the idea that you started out being sort of charmingly immune to peer pressure because you didn't understand it. You didn't understand when you were being pressured by your peers. So you didn't worry about it as much. And it had to sort of learn to consciously realize when your peers were trying to pressure you.

Yeah, this is a thing. Like, I don't know how to, well, I don't know how to manipulate. people and I don't expect people to manipulate me. And so because that expectation isn't there, I'm like, why is you doing that? I'm just making me feel a little bit weird, but I'm probably fine. And then like hours later, I'll be like, oh, wait a minute, that was kind of mean. Yeah. So it was an immune from peer pressure because I didn't really understand it there and then.

It's really nuanced, which kind of helpful with my protection there and then. But yeah, it's something I still am yet to understand. But if you know what affects you and can feel that and question that, then that's pretty much how I dealt with it, is questioning it. Well, and you also tell the story of, you know, collecting data, literally sitting at the playground, looking at the different cliques form, and, you know, they're loners and popular kids, I guess, and just as a scientist, looking at what was happening in developing theories

on the basis of all this information that was coming in. Yeah, exactly. I didn't really feel like I was part of any of the cliques or groups on the playground that I saw. And so I thought, well, I don't want to hang around with those because I don't feel any affinity with them. But I like this bench. It just so happens to live with the playground. And this is my spot. This is my place. And I feel really happy here. And that's the thing. And I could see people. And I love the dynamics of different groups because he was like looking at, you know, it's like a fire, isn't it? you can get mesmerized by its movements. And the analogy that you draw in the chapter is with biochemistry.

Biochemistry, of course, I make no claims to understand, and it's infinitely complicated. But apparently you had a little epiphany when watching a football team. This is what we Americans would call soccer. But the point is that you realize that they're like proteins. Explain the analogy between people on a team and proteins. Well, basically, there's me looking at cliques on the playground. There's lots of big blobs of people and small blobs of people. And they kind of all work together, but cooperatively and sometimes not so cooperatively,

to have a certain goal, either be dominating the playground or just, you know, I don't know, just not getting bullied or fitting in. And I like to watch football. I find it very therapeutic. And I thought, wait a minute, he's doing the same. It's almost like a form of agent-based modelling. that I had in my head when I was about 13. It's a very good model for modeling discrete agents to have a common goal.

And I thought, wait a minute, we're like people, the dynamic. Each football player is like someone on the playground. Some of them are together. Some of them don't, but they have a motive. And to shoot the goal. I thought, this is amazing because they're similar, especially when they orchestrate cellular signal in the cell, for example, to communicate the environment to the cell nucleus,

to grow more, the nutrients. And I was like, this is very much like a clique. You've got different protein elements that have different roles, but are nevertheless kind of interlinked to each other so they can go from outside to inside to a decision. And I love that. Ask yourself, what are your best people spending their time on right now? Expense reports, receipt chasing, month in close that takes weeks.

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And there's something about proteins that you understand better than I do. So maybe your professional expertise can help us here because you bring up the fact that human beings, for example, will have different faces at work and at home. We'll sort of have different personalities or whatever. And I gathered that I think I know more about human beings and about proteins. So do proteins also have this feature that they can sort of behave in different ways in different contexts? Yeah, completely, especially when you look at protein domains.

So there is these things where, you know, evolutionary models that can perform certain functions. You can have a protein that has just one function. You can have different domains that act together that have evolved to, from two different function, but for one hybrid function. So there are many different ways in alter this kind of activity through the domains it possesses, but also binding other proteins. And I find that exquisite.

And there's even, if I understand what you said in the book, there's even a nature and nurture kind of thing. I mean, there's the structure of the protein just from its chemical composition morphology, but then proteins learn or are affected by their environments in some way that we would analogize to the nurturing of a human being? Yes, completely. So I looked at the, you know, protein structure when it's expressed in DNA

and then it's into RNA and then it's made into a protein and it folds accordingly based on the sequence it possesses, but also its environment and also with the help of other proteins that help it fold in a certain shape to perform its function. And I was like, oh my gosh, there's so much. like, you know, because protein folding is a whole new field of biochemistry itself where it's very difficult to predict from just one sequence of what the structure is going to be. And if we know the structure, then we know a lot more about its behavior and where drugs bind.

It's a big topic because why Alpha Fold was such a success, even though it was based on pretty much a decade of academic research. So, yeah, you know, proteins, much like people, are a consequence of the DNA, but also are in strict but then like a good scientist you say that you know the analogy is not perfect because you say that the protein molecules do not have egos but the human beings do so we have to be careful not to think of human beings too much like a little bit of protein because you can bruise the feelings of a human being in which case in which in the sense that the proteins don't really feel I guess so I mean one can interpret many ways in in this analogy but for me is about to highlight the biological versatility

between how a protein can perform in different environments and it be beneficial to the cell, for example, you know, not to bring up cancer in a positive light, but it definitely uses this mechanism of, it's called protein promiscuity, to try and alter the functions to adapt to its environment. And I think we can learn a lot about how biology adapts so that we can kind of let loose of the ego and actually express ourselves in many. So it's actually called protein promiscuity? Actually, well, it's what you can. have these proteins called promiscuous proteins, specifically enzymes which can bind

many different substrates, which is very good for like metabolism and you're binding lots of different intermediates. So you can have generalist enzymes and specialists. And yeah, that's a whole new field itself. It's really cool. I should give the proteins more credit. In cancer, you know, there are many. Yeah. And this is pretty close. I mean, maybe this is a little bit of a divergence, but that's okay. This is pretty close to your actual academic work. right, which we haven't really talked about. You're a cancer bioinformatics. Can you tell us what that is, what you do in your day job? Yes, so basically I'm a scientist looking at the, I guess, the genomic and proteomic data of cancer evolution. So the unique thing about it is that there are

many, there's lots of different data, there's lots of layered multionomics of what a cancer is about any one time point. However, that can change dramatically throughout the evolution. So the great thing about my work and what I love about it is the fact that we have data at different points in the tumour and at different time points. So the lab that I collaborated with is called Tracer X and the Francis Crick Institute, they've done a remarkable job in making the most of static measurements to monic system by actually taking these measurements at different spaces and time. So and from that we try and the convergence within these time points on which mutations. converge to protein structures, aka throughout protein evolution, throughout cancer evolution, what are the proteins that are most affected at different time points? And that helps us prioritize a bit more about which are responsible for resistance. Okay, cool.

I mean, someday you'll have to write a book about this too, because I think this is a very exciting, rapidly moving field. And then, okay, the final thing on the biochemistry, you draw another really good analogy about different kinds of chemical bonds, right? Because probably, Again, maybe I'm over-interpreting so you can help me here. But you might naively think that, you know, people like each other or don't like each other, and that's more or less it. But there's a richness in different kinds of chemical bonds of covalent, ionic, etc., that actually helps us understand some of the richness of human attractions and repulsion.

Yeah, so basically, it was something that I tried to, I didn't realize I was modeling it, to be honest. It was an accident. In English, someone asked me about the relationship between two characters and a book. And for me, it wasn't about the kind of curse of nuance. It was more about like the mathematical formulae. Because you ask me what a relationship is. I'm like, okay, modeled throughout time.

And for me, it was 10x. And everyone laughed, like, big time. I thought I was taking the Mickey. But I was like, no, this is actually a solid answer. You just don't realize it yet. Yeah. And then I started to realize that these different bonds were actually a dynamic equilibrium between attachment and detachment. And I was like, wait a minute, they're just like chemical bonds.

And so I spent time just kind of looking at the chemical bonds I learned in A levels of GCSE and also the different people that I knew. And so I spent a lot of my time mapping what I thought I knew into what actually happened. And I found that actually it was quite a lot of interactions, be ionic or convalent and some quite a lot of them hydrophobic. Well, no, expand upon the hydrophobic bullies a little bit, right? Because people probably don't even know a lot about what it means to be a hydrophobic molecule. Well, like, you know, you have these cliques of people that are scared to interact with anyone else because it might affect their reputation and they're only content when they're together because they have the commonality of not wanting to interact with anything that's different.

Well, oil molecules are the same. If you look at, if you drop oil and water, they cage together because it's more, you know, it's more thermodynamicsly favorable. Because to interact with water if you're non-polar is a very difficult place to be. Like, well, I've got nothing to grab onto. I'm just going to, you know, cage with someone that's similar to me. So a lot of bonds were based on kind of looking at the different atoms and sharing electrons and pulling them and apart together.

This was actually quite different. This was kind of an active polarity. And I was like, yeah, some people do that because they're scared to interact. Yeah, yeah. I don't know if that offers any solutions to how to deal with those people, but it is a vivid connection. And it actually, again, it offers a nice... That was a really good pun. Oh, yes, I didn't even try.

So my best puns are unintentional. And it slides right into the last thing I wanted to talk about, which is your chapter on etiquette and game theory. I'm a big fan of game theory. I love it. And etiquette is tricky. It's a hard thing, especially like we said, in brief. British cultures of all places where there's a royal family and all the way on down to the Hoypiloi. So you mentioned that your one's first instinct is to treat everybody the same.

And especially when you were younger, like you did not perceive differences of age and status or anything like that when you interacted with different kinds of people. No, and that got me into big trouble with teachers and figures of authority. and so yeah I didn't really question etiquette I just knew that I had to hold my chopsticks a certain way I had to hold my knife and fork a certain way I thought it was kind of very practical measure etiquette but over time and even ever small now I'm updating my models of etiquette because it isn't just about interacting with someone making them feel comfortable it's actually being aware of the fact that not everyone is equal it's treating them equally but sometimes

you have the social context of Black Lives Matter and be colourblind. So, for example, if you act as if that history isn't happening, that can be quite offensive. So I think etiquette today takes on a very different tune than being colourblind, for example. And you need to be to have the real etiquette is to, A, to not discriminate in the first place. But there's another level now where to be more aware of the differences that can occur, for example, in transgender, in sexuality, you know, LGBT plus there's lots of different new etiquette. And I think it's about navigating those.

I can write a whole book on that one. I find that quite interesting topic. No, it is. I mean, I think you're making a very good point here because, of course, there's a lot of resistance to underrepresented or discriminated against cultures or subgroups of people asking for their due or, you know, being treated as they want to be treated. People, you know, people have a certain way of acting and they like that way of acting.

and they don't want to be told that it's been harmful all along. But you're making the point that that's that kind of re-learning of how to treat people is just something that you had to learn from the start for everybody. Exactly, yeah. And I think whenever someone says to me, oh, I wasn't brought up with that, oh, that's a, it's a useless thing to consider. And I'm like, well, it's not because I've managed to learn something that I didn't even realize was useful. But actually, it's going to me connect more with people and be more empathetic. So I don't excuse, if you can't learn it, I'm like, well, I've might it.

Right, exactly. And it's a tricky thing because there's sort of the explicit rules of etiquette that we can, you know, just ask somebody, ask somebody and they'll tell us. But there's a lot of things that are implicit, a lot of things that you're either just supposed to pick up from the ether or infer from behavior. And so the work of making those implicit things a little bit more explicit is, probably useful for everybody. Yeah, which is why I think it's also not being afraid to ask. And I think people associate asking with being rude, but it's not. For example, if I said to you, what are your pronouns? It's okay to ask because we're still learning. And I think this is where etiquette has changed. That asking is actually a polite thing. Right. Very, very, I think it's a valuable

lesson to learn all around. And your extra thing that you're adding here is to analog, it or even just use game theory to think about this. I mean, game theory, we talked about modeling, agent-based modeling, but game theory has this extra complication in that need to understand the goals

of the other person in order to find the happy equilibrium for all of us. Yeah, completely. And I think it's about knowing that there is more to an event happening than just what you want. And this element of cooperation is basically

a very innate in evolution. As much as we like to be individualistic and independent and productive and all these buzzwords, ultimately we're doing it because we're doing it for love. I'm a bit of a romanticist when it comes to this kind of thing. I think everyone

ultimately wants to make sure that their family is happy and well-fed. And even though we might be territorial of our land or this, but ultimately it's a togetherness that we can't be modelled. But I think when it comes to etiquette, it's the absence of game theory. It's doing things just because that's kind of...

And in game theory, you know, there's different kinds of games, depending on what the payoff structure is, right? There's prisoner dilemma games. I've done podcasts on game theories and it's remarkable richness of possibilities. I mean, do you... How explicit are you in thinking about, oh, this interaction is this kind of game? Or is that just sort of background knowledge that is more implicit? Like I say, I go into conversations with no agenda whatsoever. And so I spent my time trying to decipher what games people are playing. And that can be exhausting. So, yeah, that's where I come from. Like, okay, what game are you playing any game? Oh, you're not? Okay, that's nice. It can be friends. Right, right. Well, you know, it's quite a journey. You know, you have a PhD, you've written the book.

The book is won prizes. You've been pretty successful at figuring this out. So I hope that people do read the book because one could see your sort of current success and not realize what it took to get there. I mean, you mentioned in the book that you felt human for the first time when you were around 17 years old. And that's a difficult thing to imagine having to go through. Oh, thank you so much. Yeah, no, I appreciate you saying that. It did take a lot, but I had nothing to compare it to.

It was just a bit of a battle that, thankfully, I surmounted in the end. Yeah, and then 17, I thought, okay, I've got a place here. I can go from here. Well, and also, you know, it's a little bit humbling for me because I and friends of mine often complain about academia and how there's sort of very rigid standards for what counts, important contributions, you know, public engagement and writing and so forth, and podcasts do not count, for example.

And so we quetch about that and wish things were better. And like you mentioned, with your PhD thesis, you've done this all while being autistic and trying to learn how to wear makeup and things like that. And so that's just an extra layer of expectations and learning that we all have to fight through a little. Yeah, no, thanks. It is true, though. I think ultimately it's just I'd like to think that it's living the inevitable of what a lot of people feel anyway.

But I think to the ability to kind of say it out loud is something that people find very useful because they can relate to it, which is what I like. And now that you've written the book and it's out and things like that and you're still doing scientific research, etc., I mean, what are your feelings about balancing those different kinds of engagement with the world?

Do you think that you're more attracted to one or the other or are you devoted to the idea of doing everything at once? I love both careers. I think it's an honor to be able to be a scientist and express that and mix it up with the books that I read to create something that I hope will be more informative. So I love that process. Both of them, yeah. That's good to hear. I'm looking forward to what comes next. Camilla Pang, thanks so much for being on the Mindscape podcast. Thank you so much.