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Episode 42: Exploring Sequential, Simultaneous, Reflective Logical, and Verbal Ways of Processing

Below you can view or listen to Episode 42 of The Personal Brain Trainer Podcast.  

Exploring Sequential, Simultaneous, Reflective Logical, and Verbal Ways of Processing

episode 42 of the personal brain trainer podcast

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        Erica: Welcome to the personal brain trainer podcast. I'm Dr. Erica Warren.

        Darius: And I'm Darius Namdaran and we're your hosts. Join us on an adventure to translate scientific jargon and brain research into simple metaphors and explanations for everyday life. We explore executive function and learning strategies that help turbocharge the mind.

        Erica: Come learn to steer around the invisible barriers so that you can achieve your goals. This podcast is ideal for parents, educators, and learners of all ages. This podcast is brought to you by Goodsensorylearning.com, where you can find educational and occupational therapy lessons and remedial materials that bring delight to learning. Finally, you can find Dr. Warren's many courses at, uh, Learningspecialistcourses.com. Come check out our newest course on developing executive functions and study strategies.

        Darius: This podcast is sponsored by Dyslexiaproductivitycoaching.com. We give you a simple productivity system for your Apple devices that harnesses the creativity that comes with your Dyslexia. All right, Erica, what are we talking about today?

        Erica: Well, today we're exploring sequential, simultaneous, reflective, logical, and verbal ways of processing. So last week, we dove into the first four of twelve ways of processing. We did visual, auditory, tactile, and kinesthetic. And so now we're going to explore the second set of four ways of processing. These are interesting. They're not sensory processing like the ones last week. They're more a combination of information processing. And I actually pulled the reflective, logical, and verbal ways of processing from Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences. It's a new set that really does pull from those two works of research, which is, again, information processing and Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences.

        Darius: Well, this sequential and, um, simultaneous processing. Could you just give us the listeners a brief overview of what sequential is and what simultaneous is, and then we can share a little bit about our experiences and stories to do with that, right?

        Erica: So sequential and simultaneous, I do like to clump them together because there are two different ways of organizing. So sequential learners like to place things in a series order. First, you do this. Second, you do this. Third, you do this. And it can manifest in many different ways. It can manifest in an outline, it can manifest in they, uh, want to proceed through doing a map problem, a sequence of steps. So they're really applying a sense of order to their life. So it might be maybe they have a CD collection, maybe they actually purchase them. They're not online. Or I suppose you could even organize the order of your CD collection on your phone. You might alphabetize it. Right. Whereas simultaneous processing is a little bit different. It's another way of organizing information, but it organizes it more spatially so that you're clumping things by likeness. You're creating mental mind maps or flowcharts, and it allows you to see how things are interconnected. So a wonderful example of a tool that you can use that utilizes both sequential and simultaneous, while you can use it both ways, is a timeline. So many timelines are presented in a sequence, but they offer a lot of information like little webs off of the sequence that gives you more imagery, more pictures, more ideas. But ultimately, I think the simplest way of distinguishing them is to think of maybe alphabetizing or placing a numerical order versus a mind map, which is simultaneous.

        Darius: So in a way, actually, your timeline is both at the same time. So a person who's a simultaneous learner will be looking at the whole timeline and their eye will be looking backwards and forwards and looking at the beginning and the end and trying to make meaning of a sense of whole and fit things into a sense of wholeness, et cetera. Whereas the sequential learner will be reading the timeline. Right, we're going to start at the beginning. We'll go to the next one and next one and next one. So often they'll be reading it differently, but it's the same information but being absorbed in a different way. And I think that's probably a good way of looking at this. Two people looking at the same thing and it meeting their needs in different ways.

        Erica: Well, it's funny because I think a sequential learner would create a timeline differently than a simultaneous learner. The sequential learner would just really be going in order maybe from left to right or top to bottom. Whereas the simultaneous learner would have all these webs and branches sticking off of it with all these little details that go down these little paths and these little roads that enable them to get more details. More details kind of sprinkled throughout.

        Darius: Because if you think about a timeline, a timeline is not a timeline on its own because there's another timeline of another person or another country or another event and the relevant sequence of times in that is different. And often, the way a person thinks, the way they would do the timeline would be different, too, because they would maybe incorporate different kinds of timelines, which is where all these webs are coming off. So one of the things I wanted to talk about, which this really makes me think about, is our world tends to be organized very sequentially as a default. Our, uh, work world, for example. Like, we have standard operating procedures and sequences, et cetera. And then there's times when we're being creative as well where it's simultaneous as a big brainstorm, et cetera. And there's this interplay between these two modes of processing information. And I've been thinking about this with regard to Chat GPT because I've been finding Chat GPT really helpful to be a sequential processor for me, because I am a simultaneous learner m myself. I like to create mind maps, see the big picture, see how everything's interconnected. But often that doesn't help me when it comes to right. How should I explain this? In an email to a coworker or in a blog post? Or how do I communicate this in the typical way that a person expects information to be given to them, and often that requires a systematic, sequential way. And I type that into Chat GPT. What are the things that they'll be looking for? What's the order that they would expect? And boom, boom, boom. This is the order they would expect. These are the topics they would expect you to cover. And I go. All right. Okay. Pop the relevant information into the different slots, and it's in the order that person needs to process the information. What are your thoughts on that?

        Erica: Yeah, I'm right there with you. Uh, in fact, I was just working with one of my college students a couple of days ago, and she's working on a research paper. And I said, you can't use I mean, anybody can, but you shouldn't use Chat GPT to write an essay. However, if you're doing a research essay or you're doing an outline, there's no reason why you can't ask, uh, it questions on how could I organize a paper on this topic, what are some possible sequences? And the fun thing about that is it'll present something, and then you might say, oh, I like the first two body paragraphs, but change the last three. And then, oh, can you put this idea into this paragraph? So you are still organizing it, but it does it very quickly. And what it does is it releases your working memory so that you can really be the conductor of cognitive skills instead of getting bogged down in, uh, doing the actual sequencing yourself. And I think that can be extraordinarily helpful. I know this student of mine is really brilliant, and she gets bogged down in the executive functioning pieces and gets lost. Now she's not now she can just use her creative skills to show her brilliance. And I love the fact that it's just offering that organizational structure that she needs to release that piece within her working memory so that she can do more brilliant things.

        Darius: Yeah. So what I'm seeing emerge here, then, is that this AI really understands the sequential and processes sequentially. And in fact, it is a sequential processor in many ways. By its design. It is always predicting what the next probable word is, and then the next word, and the next word and next word. It's not thinking simultaneously like we are, because we're all a mixture of simultaneous and sequential. There's a mix of it, uh, by default, within human beings. So it's interesting to see how, if you are a sequential learner, does this kind of undermine your way of processing or does it help it?

        Erica: Well, I guess you can utilize it if you need the help, but you don't have to. But interestingly enough, I think it initially does. Chat GPT. That is, it does process simultaneously because it's able to collect from this massive knowledge of information and pulls from it. And that in itself is a simultaneous process that we just don't have the capacity of doing we don't have that amount of information within our brain accessible, but then once it pulls it, it sequences it.

        Darius: Yes, that's true. Yeah. You know what, this is a bit of a tangent, but working memory an executive function and Chat GPT, chat GPT has a limited working memory and you can measure it. Okay, this is fascinating. Right. So Chat GPT 3.5 has a working memory of 4000 tokens, which is roughly 2000 words. And so in the whole conversation you're having, it will remember up to 2000 words. Okay? And let's say at the beginning you gave it an instruction and then you keep going and having a conversation with it. It will forget the first instructions and you can test it. And so it has this kind of trailing 2000 units of words, as it were, that tracks all the way down. So you can keep having this conversation. There could be 10,000 words in it, but it's only remembering the last 2000 and it's kind of extrapolating and guessing what you need and you can test when that happens. Now, Chat GPT Four, on the other hand, has got a bigger working memory in that sense and you pay for the bigger working memory. So I just find it fascinating that even a computer program has a working memory process where I've got a limited amount of information, words I can hold, and um, if I don't store them somewhere, that will disappear.

        Erica: That's interesting. Well, with that said, we don't have a working memory of nearly that large. However, we also don't forget the way it can forget.

        Darius: Yeah.

        Erica: Because if it's truly gone, it's gone. Although it does, I think the beauty here is combining a human being with Chat GP because then your productivity just explodes. So it's going to change education. And I feel education has to embrace it and utilize it and think, how can we use this to expand our way of being and processing? So it's just going to explode things exponentially. You and I had a conversation at another time where once it's able to read research, it can do a meta analysis like that. And a meta analysis is the analysis of all research to find out what the truth is because you can always find something that supports your claim. So it's going to be really interesting. And I think people's creativity, they can ask it questions. So we should be able to solve things like how can we create electricity? Might be able to or, uh, even with medical research, it might be able to get us out of because we tend to do things, we build on an old structure, it might be able to come up with new structures and new ideas. Um, but we have to ask it the right questions to get to the answers that we want. So it's really a beautiful piece that can help take our society, our cognition, our abilities individually and collectively to a whole new level. So one other thing that I want to share with you about sequential, which I think is going to be interesting for you and just perhaps trigger a nice little conversation is that time is sequential. So if you think of sequencing, time is sequential. Simultaneous processing is really traveling across time. So when reflecting, although I guess if you're reflecting back, it can be somewhat sequential, but not so much. But if you're reflecting back, you're moving it from the past to the present to the future to think that's more simultaneous. So I think thinking is really a combination, almost like chat GPT of, uh, collecting the information simultaneously and then sequencing it, or ordering it, or perhaps even just presenting it like a flowchart, which is more simultaneous. But it's fascinating. It's really a way of us processing the information, going back to information processing in a way that organizes it, which is what, uh, ideal for executive functioning.

        Darius: Yeah, and I think what we've been talking about is having enough self awareness that you increase your self awareness so that you start to realize what your preferred style is and your mode of processing is. You've got some great materials on this that we'll put in the link below that can help you use different tools for sequential learning, simultaneous processing as well, like mind mapping for simultaneous processing and et, uh, cetera. There's a whole range of things that can help with all of that. You've got some great resources on it. So what about reflective and verbal?

        Erica: So reflective and verbal, I integrated that into the Twelve Ways of Processing, based on some research by Howard Gardner that really resonated with me and really hit on some other pieces of processing that I feel that are very necessary for many people. So reflective, uh, logical has to do with those people that just need to think about it. They have a lot going on in their head. It's like chewing the cud. They're thinking about what they're learning, they're making connections, they're maybe drawing out new ideas. So it's probably a combination of intermixing what they're learning in their environment, utilizing their inner voice of working memory to process to themselves, and also using their visualization capacity, which is another piece of working memory to visualize connections. They might even be sequencing things a little bit or using their simultaneous processing. But it's all very inner. Now, they're those people that really don't do a lot of inner reflection or thinking. Now, some of those are the opposite. Not all of them, but many are either reflective, logical or verbal. Some are both, some are neither. But the verbal piece is more of the take that when you say it, that helps you to process it. So sometimes people don't even know what they're thinking until they say it. They have to think out loud. And that, uh, opportunity just to speak helps the information to get integrated and helps their thought processes and their logic to be able to move forward. So, yeah, one is really reflective, logical is inner thinking, and verbal is outer thinking.

        Darius: Yeah. I wonder how this ties in with being introverted and extroverted. Because my wife is very introverted and there's a big revelation for her, the whole introversion thing. And and it's often a very big revelation for other people when they discover, oh, what being introverted means. That often people who are introverted need to go away and they get energy when they're alone and processing stuff. And then when they come out and they're socially with people, they're discharging that energy, whereas the extroverts are gaining energy when they're with people and they discharge energy when they're on their own. But we need both, all of us. Uh, how would that weave into this?

        Erica: I don't think it does, really. I mean, I think for some people it does, and for other people it doesn't. So one is really processing and understand that verbal learners aren't necessarily verbalizing for the interaction, so they're actually verbalizing for the processing. Next time we're going to talk about interactive learners. But people that are verbal learners aren't always interactive learners.

        Darius: That's why sometimes you're sitting there and someone's just talking at you and you know that they're just processing information and it's not really a conversation. It's just like I just need to say this, and if you were it's like the castaway. If you were the ball with a face painted on it, that would be enough because they just need to say it.

        Erica: That's right. Uh, yeah. There are those people that just need to process out loud. In fact, I was in a, uh, consultation with a family just yesterday, and the mother was very verbal and the father was very reflective, logical, but he was also very interactive. So their relationship worked. It drove him a little crazy that she had to process out loud all the time. And it drove her a little crazy that he didn't give her any verbal feedback because he was just reflecting. But, uh, the fact that he was interactive, he enjoyed the interaction. So it was funny. I gave them a little bit of advice. I said to the father, I said, if you can just give her any kind of verbal feedback, not for you, but for her, that would go a long way. And he laughed and he said, I didn't realize that this was going to be like, uh, a marriage counseling session. This is really about my daughter. But this is really, really helpful. And in fact, just understanding how somebody processes builds compassion. Because for him, he can't understand why she's talking so much because that would not work for him. So he's definitely not going to respond because that doesn't work for him. But if he understands that, oh, if I respond, it actually helps her feel heard, then it's really accommodating her way of processing. So it's interesting, what do you do.

        Darius: With someone because this is an interesting thing, right? Because in the workplace, this can become an issue. For example, okay, in the classroom, a child's a verbal processor, it becomes an issue because they just need to talk all the time. And teachers like, stop talking, stop distracting people, just get on and do your work. But that child just needs the verbal processor. But let's just park that for now. I'm much more in the world of the workplace, and often the verbal processors can dominate a meeting and they can be regarded as arrogant because they feel like they need to hold the space all the time and say their piece all the time. And so they can be mistaken for poor emotional regulation or low emotional, uh, intelligence. Like, hold on a minute, give people, uh, backwards and forwards and so on. And it can be an issue for bosses because they're like, I know their hearts in this. But what do you do when someone's a verbal processor, but there isn't necessarily the capacity for people to sit there and listen to them, like in a meeting at, uh, work, for example. What do you do in that scenario? You got any thoughts? I've got a few thoughts, but what.

        Erica: You yeah, so, you know, it's funny. I have a version of the profile which which is very, very appropriate for work situations, because if everybody in an organization takes the profile, then it builds compassion. So if you realize that someone's very verbal, then all of a sudden it changes. It because you understand, oh, they're just processing. And then everybody is more comfortable with it. So there's that piece of it. But also for employers, when they use this inventory, it helps them to assign the right projects to the people based on how they process best. So, for example, someone that needs to process verbally needs to always be working in a team. And they might work really well with somebody that's interactive. So an interactive verbal group, and perhaps they need a note taker so you could throw in a tactile person so you can really help to figure out how to empower your employees and accommodate your employees. Because when you do, then they're going to give you your best work.

        Darius: Mhm, that's fascinating.

        Erica: Mhm. Yeah, it's really interesting. But the level of compassion is profound when you do this, because people assume that everybody processes the way that they process, when in fact they don't. And when they have that realization, they're like, oh, that's why blah ah blah blah is always telling me to do it that way. It's because they're really trying to help me because they think it's going to help, but it doesn't.

        Darius: I mean, I'm like that with my wife because I've learned now, but she's a sequential processor and I'm a simultaneous one. Okay? So mind mapping is absolutely essential for me all the time. Otherwise, all my ideas are floating around all over the place, bumping into them, and I'm trying to keep hold of them, but if I can get them down and get them connected in the mind map, I can let them go because I know where they are. Whereas she has a list of thoughts and she can remember those thoughts as well. And she doesn't need the map. She just doesn't understand a mind map, although she does understand it, she just doesn't get why I need it. And so often I would say, oh, you need to learn how to do this, or you need to do it this. And I've realized, no, she doesn't need to do that at all, and it's not necessary for everyone. And that's quite a realization. Um, okay. I'm 50 now, and it takes a while to learn that because you've got to kind of live with people or work in a team for long enough to see the consequences of making it work well and the consequences of making it not work well for you to realize, hold on a minute. This is actually worth taking time on, because if I don't do this and we don't become a good match, then the consequences are a lot of wasted time and hopes and dreams.

        Erica: Yeah. So it's really helpful to and it's simple. It's a very simple assessment to assess people's best ways of processing. And the interesting thing about it is that it's very fluid, it changes, and it morphs. And in some situations you might be very sequential, and in other situations you may not. But, uh, just being able to understand the twelve different ways of processing just really helps you to, again, have compassion, but also connect with what other people's needs are.

        Darius: Is it just you that's done it as the twelve modes of processing it is? Yeah.

        Erica: 20 years ago, I picked it from Research in Learning styles, information processing, cognitive styles, howard Gardner's, multiple intelligences. I kind of looked across the literature, and I really wanted to figure out what are all the different ways of processing? There is a 13th that I don't use very often, but I have it in my back pocket, and it's olfactory, so I smell or taste. It's very unusual to use it, but I have a few times, and for those kids that I just couldn't reach, it worked. Like, I taught one of my students how to write a five paragraph essay by using the metaphor of a pizza. And it totally worked for this kid. But yes, we've talked a whole lot about reflective logical, which is such an interesting one. Now, you mentioned that your wife and you were opposing, you were simultaneous and she was sequential. Where do you guys fit on logical reflection?

        Darius: I'm very verbal, and she's very reflective. So she will need to go away and just say, look, Terrify, I just need to go away and think about this for a day or two and we'll have another conversation. So we end up having these conversations that are put onto pause, and then two days later, we hit play and we keep talking about it and so on. And that's just the way we operate. But then again, maybe, uh, is it a male female thing? I mean, it's a classic scenario where often there's often a lot of women want to talk about stuff, whereas men are characterized as being wanting to just kind of internally process and don't say very much. What's your take on that?

        Erica: I've not seen that. Looking across the different ways of processing over the years. Uh, I think there might be other things coming into play when it comes to emotional things that we want to talk about that are emotional, which is not necessarily processing. It's kind of the environment. Right? But I was surprised. I had the same thought when I first started this. I had that same thought that I wonder if more women are, uh, verbal processors. But over the years that I've been doing it, I've not seen that.

        Darius: So you're making a distinction between verbally processing information and verbally processing emotions.

        Erica: Perhaps. I mean, you'd have to do a research study on that, right, in order to determine that. But yes, what we really are talking about here is processing information. Well, and the other thing that's very important to understand is it's not that you're either reflective or verbal. You might be both, you might be neither. The other thing that's important to understand is that everybody can process all of these ways, its preferences. So unless there is some profound disability, like if you're blind, but even people that are blind that have never seen process spatially, which is still I consider that to be visual spatial, somewhat in the realm of visual. Yeah, it's very interesting.

        Darius: I was, uh, speaking to Stan Gloss, our mutual friend Stan Gloss, fellow Dyslexic entrepreneur and going back to Chat GPT. Because I mean, it's so relevant, Chat GPT to thinking and executive function. And he was saying, I reckon Chat GPT is one of the biggest answers to executive function difficulties, uh, in the future. And I so agree with that on many levels. But in this reflective, logical and verbal, actually, because one of the things he's doing is he's dictating his verbal thoughts, random verbal thoughts into Chat GPT speech to text and then clicking, could you organize that, please? And it will just categorize the thoughts into something a bit more. And he's like, yeah, that is exactly what I'm thinking about. But it's put it into a sequence that someone else can get. And another thing that he's doing and we were talking about was, uh, this sort of, uh, reflective side. Because sometimes to reflect on things, you need to be adversarial. Sometimes to reflect on something, you could go, well, what if I'm not right? What if there's a better way? What if this happened? Would that change things? And so on. So there's a sort of this reflective process is not just being self reflective, it's also reflecting on it can be adversarial helpful. Let's do some, uh, like Edward Debono says, the black hat thinking, the seven thinking caps. That would be fascinating to do, the seven thinking caps and connect it with this, because in a way, they are different forms of processing, too, kind of. And the black hat thinking is very much the person who will stand there and say, I will be devil's advocate and just throw things at this and see if it stands up to like, a shock test. And you can use Chat GPT to do that. So you could say, here is my essay, here are my thoughts, here's my plan. How would you criticize this and find four or five main areas where you might criticize this or improve? This may be a better way of saying it, but if you ask it to be critical, and I've done this, actually, with the students essay. Um, so what we did was we took an essay that she had written, and I said to Chat GPT, please take this essay and mark it as if you're an examiner, according to the GCSE grading requirements for English and use their grading system. And so that's what it did. It, uh, knew the grading system. Chat GPT has learned every grading system in the world, regional, national school systems. If it's on the Internet and there's a rubric, it's read it. Now, what happened then was that it marked it and it said and I had done a marking on my rubric, and I'd given this essay 74%, and Chat GPT marked it 75%. And it went through the thinking and it said the characterization of the people in the story got twelve out of 20, and it was a low mark. And then other things, the structure, the verbal, et cetera, got higher marks. So it brought her up. So the biggest gap was the characterization. Now, there was only one character in this story, and so we set it up adversarially and said, okay, so how would you criticize this essay? And so it brought the criticisms and said, well, there's only one character. It would be better if there's maybe two or three. And they interrelated and had some conversation or something like that. And so it gave some suggestions and critiques. And so that's really fascinating to have that as part of your reflective process. What do you think?

        Erica: Right, well, it's interesting. When you were even talking about Stan and him using it verbally, well, he reflected, then he used it verbally, then it sequenced it for him. The interesting thing about your way of processing is when you combine ways of processing, it becomes exponentially more powerful, particularly if they're ones that you really like. So if you are very visual and you're. Very verbal and you're very simultaneous. If you do something that accommodates all three, then it becomes super powerful. So I think combining ways of processing is really powerful as well. M, but yeah, I think it's really very interesting how this new technology can really support our thinking in a way that it releases our creativity and it also allows our working memory more space to be able to do higher level thinking instead of the lower level thinking. So I think that the smartest people may not be the smartest anymore because it's not a matter of knowledge, it's a matter of what you do with that knowledge. I, uh, think creativity is going to be a much better indicator of success in the future than just rote knowledge.

        Darius: Fascinating. Yes, I think it's not just releasing creativity. I think it's channeling creativity because often we can have so much creativity, but we're not necessarily channeling it into we don't know how to express it in words, or we don't know how to express it in the world or connect it to what's going on. But whereas you've got this medium which is Chat, GPT, or any other AI that's coming in the future, it would be saying, well, if you're wanting to express this piece of creativity, the expected way of doing it would be X, Y and Z. And you go, oh well, I can do that and you do it. I want to create this great video about such and such and so on, and it would go well. Okay, if you want to create a video about it, what about an introduction and introducing the characters and introducing the problem and what you think is maybe the solution and the people involved in the solution and maybe at the end, the reward that they got from it. And you're like, gosh, yes, I've got all of those things, but I'll put them into that order because that's the way people digest a story. They want what's the landscape, what do people want? What's the problem, what's the solution? And what's the reward at the end as the classic kind of hero's journey in a story?

        Erica: I think what's most important with this new AI technology is that we teach people the ethics of using it, because everybody's terrified. Like, I heard about a school district that won't let kids use computers anymore, they have to handwrite everything. Uh, that's really extreme. And I feel really bad for the kids that have dysgraphia in that school because that's just going to be a nightmare for them. But I think we have to embrace that our society has changed and think about how can we teach the ethics behind it, because there are wonderful ways that we can use it, there are wonderful ways that we can release intellect and creativity. But there's a dark side to it where I also have heard college students say, oh great, I don't have to write an essay anymore. Yeah, and that's not great either, because then all of a sudden they're not processing anything, they're letting something else process for them. So we have to teach students, just like you could pay someone to write an essay for you, but not many people do that. Granted, essentially you are paying for it if you want to get their upgraded. I guess they have a 4.0 out now and you have to pay for that at Chat GPT. But yeah, I think really jumping into the ethics, jumping into the ethics of it. And of course, they do have ways of determining whether this technology was used in writing a paper. But I am not convinced that it's all that accurate.

        Darius: It's not it's very easy to game that system. And you know what, what would be interesting is you've got the sequential learning processing, for example. And we talked about GPT working sequentially. We've also talked about it simultaneous, we've also talked about it, uh, reflective. And I'm just kind of thinking what would be interesting to see if there will emerge these twelve different ways of expressing it for people who process that way. Do you see what I mean? Like if tools come out that are very sequential or very reflective, logical or very verbal, so that it matches people's way of working. And the other thought that I had was that I found it really helpful. One of the reasons why we've done these three podcasts as a set and one more to come, is that it is really helpful to just reflect back on your way of working and maybe even more so in the future. Because we're thinking, all right, yeah, this computer can do X, Y and Z for us, but actually it's not. It's going to do X, Y and Z with us. And that's the reality of the world we're going into. It is going to be a copilot for us. Just like our executive function is about channeling ourselves towards a certain direction, towards a certain goal, and we use the resources at our disposal. AI is just one more resource and it's going to be important that we know what our processing preferences are.

        Erica: Sure. Well, the interesting thing is AI is still sensory limited in the sense that right now it's just searching for words. But I know that there are visual AIS. It would be interesting. I guess a tactile AI would have to be a physical body. But you could think about them all as, uh, being the different types of ways of processing. And can we create AIS that accommodate each of those ways of processing? Like, for example, we'll be talking next week about rhythmic melodic processing. Will there be a time where we can talk it through creating a song?

        Darius: Yeah, it's doing it now. I mean, it's creating like there was a DJ who asked it to create song, uh, in the style of Eminem and he played it and people absolutely loved it. And I think Eminem even loved it too. He's a famous DJ. But it's creating some really beautiful music. And in a way, music is so process orientated and math orientated and rhythmic and there's sequences and it's so much more. And now you can create lyrics as well as the music together. And now it can synthesize people's voices, so it can actually make you sound like such and such. And now it can synthesize the person the way they look. And now it can synthesize a video movement on top of someone and make them dance it and sing it.

        Erica: You know what? I can't wait until it can take my voice and make it beautiful. Like, I can sing, but I miss a few notes. But I'm looking forward to when I can just sing and it just comes belting out as beautiful as it feels like it should be.

        Darius: Yeah.

        Erica: I don't know. It's very interesting.

        Darius: It can already do that. You know that, don't you?

        Erica: I kind of suspected.

        Darius: Yeah. I mean, it's been doing that, right?

        Erica: They have been we've been having computers.

        Darius: Doing that for quite a while. But it's not necessarily open to the masses because they're pretty expensive pieces of software. But it won't be long before AI. Have you seen how these filters on TikTok where they're making you like a teenager or they're beautifying you and people are, uh, looking at and it's like you've been made up for your wedding and you look absolutely brilliant. And you wouldn't be able to tell until you switch the filter off. And then you look at yourself and you go, oh, that's the way I look. Have you seen those?

        Erica: I've seen things like that where they kind of give you the dough eyes. You can tell when someone's eyes are a little bit bigger than natural stars around them. Yeah, it's concerning to me about children because it's really making them feel that they're not good enough. It's a big problem. So yeah, it's triggering a lot of these perfectionistic kids and, um, causing a lot of issues about their self esteem about yeah, I'm just not good enough visually.

        Darius: All, uh, that yeah, I mean, not good enough visually as a person. Maybe not good enough musically because it starts playing music better than you. Not good enough with chess, because it plays chess better than you. Not good enough with drawing because it now draws and composes art better than you. Modern art, impressionist art, whatever. Virtually any area of good enough. It's like, how are we going to judge success?

        Erica: I guess it has to do with you. It's like it's the horse. You just have to learn how to ride the horse.

        Darius: Yeah.

        Erica: Right. You have to learn how to drive the car. Once you learn how to drive the car, it's nothing without us. Right?

        Darius: Well, one thing for sure, it's way easier to deal with all of this as an adult. Than it is as a child.

        Erica: Well, we'll have to see. I'm sure some children do some amazing things with it.

        Darius: Well, they are. But the thing is, the whole self esteem thing I'm so thankful I have not grown up in the world of social media where I've had to deal with some of these things that our children have. It's tough. It's hard. And now things are going to a whole new level of complexity.

        Erica: Life is fast, and it changes at such a rapid pace that it's mind boggling. It's mind boggling. And because of that, kids are expected to do more, which makes it very difficult.

        Darius: Great. Erica. That was a good chat.

        Erica: Thank you. Thank you. A lot of fun. I guess we will hit the last four ways of processing next week.

        Darius: Yeah, let's do that.

        Erica: Excellent.

        Darius: And in the meantime, in thank you.

        Erica: For joining our conversation here at the Personal Brain Trainer Podcast. This is Dr. Erica Warren

        Darius: And, Darius Namdaran. Check out the show notes for links to resources mentioned in the podcast. Uh, and please leave us a review and share us on social media. Until next time. Bye bye.