Theory of Mind - Baba Brinkman

I got my mind on your mental

and your mental on my mind

I can see into the minds of people,

but I’m not a mentalist

No psychic powers required to predict your preferences

My mind is constantly uploading info like an iCloud

I can read your thoughts with just a glimpse of eyes and eyebrows

Lovin' it, not lovin' it, confident, confused, covetous

I can watch your body language for a second and discovered it

It’s called «perspective taking,"also known as «mentalizing»

When combined with oxytocin it can lead to empathizing

What’s he thinkin?

What’s she thinkin?

What’s he thinkin' she’s thinkin'

I’m thinkin' he’s thinkin' that she’s keen to get a drink with him

But she’s thinkin' he wants someone different to believe she’s into him

'Cause competition can increase a person’s influence

Now take that scenario,

expand it exponentially

And add layers of Shakespearean, Machiavellian density

Until survival depends on mapping intentions mentally

And that’s why evolution would have favoured this propensity

I got my mind on your mental and your mental on my mind…

No other animal can achieve this,

believe it

A chimp or a dog might conceal where food has been hid

But a chimp can’t predict that when a man knows his wife believes

That he’s out of town,

he’d better creep to keep an eye on things

And a dog could probably tell I’m good at rappin' over these jams

But it can’t tell whether you think your mom would think her friends would be

fans

That’s theory of mind: the ability to infer

The contents of the mental based on actions observe

'Cause we have invisible minds, with their own beliefs and desires

Their own passions and pains when you hold their feet to the fire

It’s a necessary but insufficient condition for god belief

What do these ancestors and spirits and demons want from me?

Disembodied minds communicating with us via signs

Like coincidences and weather patterns and wind chimes

Are these the end times,

like ancient alien ghost hunters?

Why don’t they just tell us straight-up if they know something?

I got my mind on your mental and your mental on my mind…

If your ability to read mental content is disconnected

You probably have a condition on the autism spectrum

And that makes an intriguing prediction,

it predicts

That god’s intentions should be invisible to autistics

And sure enough,

they tend to think of god as an essence

But not as a presence with personal thoughts and intentions

And actually, autistic people are prone to atheism

Cause why place your faith in god if he doesn’t take positions?

If he’s perfectly indifferent;

our religious intuitions

Need more to keep them sweet than a sense of supreme disinterest

And what’s the opposite of a mind of the autistic kind?

It’s a paranoid schizophrenic mind that sees religious signs

Of every size and shape on every side, every time

A person takes a step it’s a direct message from the divine

Or a message from a devil,

deception is his weapon

And how can you tell the difference?

You can tell by what you step in

I got my mind on your mental and your mental on my mind…

Okay, I know what you’re thinkin' -

that’s a first-order theory

And you can tell that I know what you’re thinkin' -

second-order theory

Third-order: she can see that you can tell that I know what you’re thinkin

Fourth-order:

keep a poker face and quit blinkin'

I can get inside your head in 'bout a second so forget it

I’m the perfect combination of autistic and schizophrenic

Artistic and scientific,

my skills are mentalistic

If I couldn’t represent you mentally I couldn’t spit this

I got Christian cousins,

and they believe that god loves them

And hugs them and wants nothin' but obedience from them

Which means their mental «theory of mind"module is buzzin'

Every time they pray to or for somethin'

That same module is how Mona Lisa sees into your soul

And how Scorsese movies can make a lotta dough

It all flows from that evolved capacity for mental hijinks

When you model a model of a model of what a mind thinks