[MUSIC] >> How can we be sure that the mistakes are not somehow predetermined by DNA or by other instances outside or, like, that cannot really be somewhat deterministic? Okay, we can do experiment, alright? So when we want to introduce any mistakes in the DNA, can we predetermine actually what the mistake would be? Now, if it is something that you're experimentally working on it, I can guide it to tell what changes to make, that is by design, but when a mistake occur in you, am I controlling actually how it's going to be changed? No, I'm not, so therefore how do I know that it's changing one way or the other? So we look at history, to see what kind of mistakes can be made when DNA go through the replication, and we find that it's roughly a random process, so therefore we know the randomness of it. Now that randomness does not translate directly into actually what the outcome is. But then how do you know that that mistake that you made, when you put in one context, it can be a mistake, but you can put it in another context, it can be a perfect thing. Life example, you develop fair skin, is it good if I put you in Africa? No, but if I put you in Sweden, oh, you're pretty happy. So the question is that, how do you know that you go to Africa or Sweden? Just by chance, it depends on where you are at that point, right? So that, again, is the randomness. And so the randomness, can you control? When I call this randomness, that means you can't control. And we need to live with our life knowing that there are something that we cannot control, and you just let it run. But when you find that it's in the wrong place, okay, you have a choice, you can leave. So for example, if you find that in Hong Kong, it's too crowded, it's too many people, you have a choice. It can be an easy choice, it can be a difficult choice, but then you have a choice. And if you've decided to stay, then there are some constraint that you need to live with it, right? And so, again, that is an educated process that you need to come to a final understanding why you make that choice. And so therefore that's what I call that you can make the choice and make the decision, right? >> The process of making a decision, how can you make sure that your brain is not controlled by the environment or your DNA or maybe your past experience? Do you think we have free will or something? >> Do we have free will? It's a, again, a very philosophical question, do we have a free will? So let me simply answer the earlier question. How do we know that our brain is not controlled by DNA? >> Maybe all of the past experience, or the environment. I think a lot of things can control our brain. >> True, true. Yes, a lot of these would control your brain. But then do they all control your brain in the same way? >> No, different. >> No, so let's say I can hit you and then you'll dodge, right? But if I keep on hitting you, always just stop one inch in front of you. Then suddenly you'll say, well, no, I won't dodge anymore. You learn from experience, right? So your brain responds to that, so that's the plasticity that you have in your brain. So the same experience, it depends on actually what it come together with it. Then it become, you can say that it's doing statistics at that point, data science now. So you would analyze actually what's the opportunity that if I hit you, that finally I would hit you right into your face? So of course, I can say, I can play trick, right? So I hit ten times, not hitting him. And then the 11th time, I really hit him hard. Then that is another way. But in the process, what is controlling your decision at that point? Whether you dodge, you don't dodge? Experience, and the experience, is it controlled by DNA? The DNA only endowed it with a mechanism to acquire that experience and learn from it and incorporate it into some sort of like an automatic response. But is it definitely a good thing or a bad thing? I can't even tell, right? So therefore, the DNA is not really controlling it, but the experiencing, it depends on how many times I try. Then actually maybe actually after 100 times, then I would say that okay, I don't really care. Because I don't let you hit me that 101st time, then I'm safe. So that would be the way that you're calculating. So the DNA is not really controlling everything. Experience is the most important part. And so one part I would say that is the hardwire. It gives you that capability. The other part is that you build in that experience to allow you to make decision afterwards. And when you make that decision, some people make fast decision, some people make slow decision. I would say that is part of us, endowed because of the DNA composition that control how your brain is being built. But then I would say that people's brain are not built too differently. So therefore the variation is very minor, but the experience changes a lot. So in a way, in that particular graph, I showed that the genetic control and the environmental control, environmental control I refer to experience. That part in most of the traits that we have, the majority of control is on the environment part. The genetic part is only a very minor part. Usually if you use a factor of like 100%, I would say it's going from 20-something percent to 30-something percent is controlled by genes. The other part, which is the bulk of it. Then you can ask, well, if that minor part is still controlled by genes, should we work on it? I would say it's not worth it. Because you can easily change your experience, you can change things dramatically, but you need to spend a lot of effort to change the small part of it. So if I give you a choice, again a choice, you can decide which part you want to change. You probably don't want to change the hardware part, you want to change the software part. So, in a way, that's again is choice, right? >> Actually, I want to know, actually, I know like our personality, our experience, actually how do you relate it? Because our personality can have an effect on our own life experience, what kind of choice we want to make. And after the experience, maybe it can also have, change our personality. >> True. >> And I want to know how much personality are given by the gene? When we're born, how much we get from our parents? >> Okay, personality, how much of this is affected by genes? People have done the study. They even look at Democrat and Republicans, and say that whether it's controlled by genes. And there are some element of control in that some people are more conservative, some people are a little bit more liberal. Gene has an element of it. I would say that from those data that I have looked at, the percentage again is 30, 40% of it is personality and the experience can easily wipe that out totally. You can be a person who's very shy at one point, but provided with the proper experience that you go through, a person become very egoistic, very extroverted type of individual. So that can change totally. But you may say that if nothing happen, you simply allow them to be, sit there and just behave as they are without any external stimulation or so, then probably there are 30, 40% of them actually is controlled by genes, right? So in a way, I think it further emphasize on the point that I'm not saying that genes, deterministic part, can be totally eliminated, but the role that it play is so difficult for you to change and it's controlling only a minor part of it. If you have a chance, which work on the easy part, work on the easy part. And you can easily swing you from one direction to the other direction much more efficiently. >> First of all, thank you for the inspiring talk, it's really interesting and meaningful, I think. But it's just, I've been having this belief that we humans, or like, we animals are actually living for the hormones. >> Living for the hormone? >> I believe I heard an experiment where researchers inject certain hormones into lab rats. >> Yea. >> And they just stopped eating right away, >> Yes, you can do that. >> And they starved to death. >> I guess human being want to do that too. >> Yeah, perhaps, just like with drugs. >> Right. >> Perhaps where you may achieve that. >> Right, true. >> They may only want to take drugs instead of food. So my question is do you think that our choice is actually affected by this hormone release? It's that our gene decides when our brains shall release these hormones. And in that way affects our behavior and our life in general? >> The answer is definitively yes. >> Yeah. >> Okay, the way that how hormone work is that it act on our entire system and change the gene expression of all the cells. Some respond more than the other and the response can be the production of a second hormone that feedback, alright? Now so therefore this communication, if you look at the entire human being, the entire nervous system, as a system with multiple components acting in it, there are a lot of cross talk among them, and most of the communication are either using the electrical signal or the hormonal signal, which is secreted chemicals that go around. So therefore that's a very dynamic process. But you can say, I can use a lot of hormone if you can say that it's a artificial injection of hormone. I extract some hormone from a pig and inject into you, fine. It will exert certain effect but normally would you be able to produce that? So I'm not talking about an individual not under medication, right? Would you be able to produce that? And there's a limit, how much you can produce and how much you can drop it. And so therefore it's always a range. And in fact this range is not solely dictated by whether you have the gene or you don't have the gene, alright? So if you are fluctuating in the certain range, and that range can have indirect effect on another target cell or tissue which would have the feedback, they would generate some sort of like equilibrium among them. So therefore, on average, we are all same. We’re not really crazy, so that’s why we fluctuate. And usually it’s under circumstances that this equilibrium has been disturbed. Then some of the hormone will exert a much stronger effect to drive in one direction or the other direction. And suddenly we see some abnormal behavior that comes up. But can our free will control it? The answer is yes. And I've seen cases like that. People, they are under hormonal influence. They are going into depression and all these things. But they can bring themselves out with determination. They put their will together to change it and they can come out of it. Is it easy? I have to say, not easy, but it can be done. So when it can be done, what it mean is that even the hormonal control is not 100% in control. You still have your own free will, your determination that you can bring it out of it. But you can also take a choice which is, I'll simply let the hormone run my life. Then the people would spiral downhill and they continue. So again, I would say that's a choice. And so in the process if you have encountered individuals who are in that kind of state, what we are doing is not necessarily any kind of medication. But somebody at, on their side will constantly provide that external experience and support. And that's the environmental experience input, you want to change that. And in fact, does it help? We have plenty of examples that it helps, right? So that means, even though everything seems to be fixed at the gene level, things can be fixed at hormone level in the communication of the tissue and organ level. Still from outside, you can still tip it in one direction or the other. And so it depends on whether how much you trust that that it's going to work. Sometimes it can be more difficult than the other. Right, but it's not that it cannot be changed. >> Okay, thank you. >> Alright. >> You mention free will. Do you believe that if we reach like you said that our bacteria in the gut can change our behavior, can affect our brain. But can our brain affect our body? Can we actually make ourself believe something can make it true? Can we cure ourself by ourself or can we make ourself fall in love with a person we actually hate from in the beginning? Or can actually we make ourself to do something that our body or our DNA wasn't determined us to? >> Can we make ourself believe in anything? >> No, make it true by our beliefs or by our strong thoughts of it. Like change something in our body, make us cure some illness by this thinking and- >> I'll have to think about examples, whether it occur or not. I haven't encountered too many examples of that. But then when you say that I'm sick, and I'm supposed to use my free will and then I'm determined to be better. I've also seen cases like that, but then I would have doubted really is their will that makes them better. It's the will that they want to have themselves cured so that they would take certain action, and that make them better. So therefore it's that action that make them better. And what that action is, for example, when people go for exercise and do different kind of practices, therapeutic treatment or all these things. People I would say that you have your free will whether you go through it or you don't go through it. And whether you have that determination to make it happen, that is your free will. But it's not simply that I think about it, then I would become better, right? Now so that is on a physical body, actually what it is. But when you say that, can I keep on thinking about it and I believe in it, then that's a slightly different thing. I have to say that it probably is also affected by genes. That some people, when they look at the world, they're not necessarily look at the world in a very physical way. They perceive the world in a more abstract format so that they sense things in the world in a slightly different way, with different focus of their attention. So therefore, if you think along certain line and you put some item or some issue on a higher priority constantly, that can continue to reinforce it. And that may gradually become the truth to you. But I would say that it's a very subjective truth to you but not necessary is the objective truth that everybody using a sane mind that we would see the same way. I'm not saying that you're insane in that case but it simply you have a very biased view in that way because you've been tuned into that mode of thinking. >> So we said that the environment is the largest influencer of our decisions. >> Right. >> But I was wondering and we talked a lot about free will, so I was still wondering where does that free will come from? Because if I think about the environment- >> Wow, we're getting more and more philosophical. >> [LAUGH] >> The environment usually is there. So we might choose which situations we put ourselves into, but usually we cannot completely change our surroundings. So- >> True. >> For example, if we think like back to all the experiences or decisions that- >> Right. >> We made before. Like back to, I don't know, which choice of elementary school which might define your high school and stuff. >> Yes, yes, yes. Who your friends are. >> What determines whether you comply with your parents' decision to send you to that school rather than just fighting. Doesn't that going back, back, back actually go back to the genes and- >> True, true, true. That doesn't go back to the gene, it goes back to your parent's experience. So I have to put it this way. Where does the free will come from? I would say that in the physical world, in fact, events occur in a stochastic way. Some of them when they are put together, it doesn't lead to the happening of anything, some of it does have a consequence. And so whenever this consequence that get registered and you call it free, free because actually it's random. But then when it happen, then it consolidates and it become certain experience, and that experience would dictate the next step. And so, gradually, this free will, I would say that once you develop certain mindsets, free will in fact is always in tune of certain way of thinking. And that, do you still call it free will? >> Because if it's random, it's not a will. >> Right, true. And so there is some randomness to start with, I stay away from saying who put that randomness there. But then once the randomness go into a certain way that it clicks and forms some sort of formulated decision, get registered as the experience that when it go on, it would tune towards a certain direction, and that I would say that is no longer free. But at any single time point with this will that means you have a certain way of valuing what's on higher priority what's on low priority, you can still have a choice. And if you look at that possibility of having a choice is part of the free will, that you still have it, right? But then the experience still dictates it at the very beginning. But earlier on, it's a randomness that come in from the physical world as molecules and all these. >> Relating to what you said earlier about the environmental factor. >> Right. >> So for example, like the Stanford prisoner experiment we know that it change people's behavior as you already pointed out, there are different ways that we can change people's behavior. >> Right. >> Then from a life scientist's point of view, does it actually change some composition, not the DNA, but then any other physical, biological chemical. >> It does. It does. >> What, for example, the behavior change. >> Right. >> From our learning, from our experience. So how does it reflect from a life science scientist's point of view? What is- >> In fact, all this experience as I would visualize it, again, using the similar term that we've been using. All this experience, in fact, changed the way that, how our, if I use the term hormonal, I would simply say that these are the chemical compositions that we have circulating in our body. They will have been changed. All this experience essentially would change the way that actually every single cell that gene expression profile will be changed. How much is it changed? Because there are so many different genes, in human being there at least 35,000 genes, every one will be changed a little bit. And we know that every single experience we encounter will change a gene expression. Some of it, it doesn't really matter, change like 1% higher, 1% lower, it doesn't really matter. But collectively with a lot of different components that all of them are adjusting, you need to look at it in a very systematic level and in a systematic level, then you go into it. I would say that whether it tipped the decision in one direction or the other, that can be huge. And in fact, even if you use the prisoners' experiment. That tipping actually may not need to be very high. You just provide some constraint and you're just giving an order, you are in control. You are the god, right? So I take it as it is so I follow that order, so taking order is something that which we learn in the past that something we need to follow. And in fact when you think in that mode, you'll say that I am the superior. And I'm pretty sure although I don't have evidence for that, for those individual who are acting as a god, I believe that their testosterone level is going up. Because in general, they would be the one who is in authority, they would have higher level production. And we would sink into that mode because actually the entire body's gene expression profile and hormonal control actually everything been tuned into that, it's because of that instruction, because they are in that position. And once the testosterone level goes up, then they will act more aggressively, they act more dominantly so that change the way that it is. And the same thing, we see people that when they become in a particular family, I think that we studied that, I read in the past that there are individual in the family that are usually the more submissive one, but at work actually the more dominant one and they see actually the hormonal level get changed when they are at work and at home. So, that is the external environment that changed the way that you behave. So how much is needed and how much you want to tune it? I would say that in fact, you can say that if you want to tune it, you can tune a lot of it. But, do we want to play around with it? I don't know. Now, in my free will, I don't want to play, mess around with that. [LAUGH] >> Okay, thanks. >> Okay, alright. >> Thanks a lot. Any other question? If not, then we thank Professor Chow, for this [CROSSTALK] >> [APPLAUSE] >> Okay, Thanks.
