Takeshi Yoro, anatomist: In Japan, we don't see a robot as a threat: it's simply another form of presence in the world'

"In Baka no Kabe (The Wall of Ignorance), he argued that human intransigence is not a moral flaw but a neurological condition: when faced with information that contradicts its certainties, the brain simply does not process it it behaves as if it does not exist. We have vast amounts of information, he writes, yet fail to understand one another because of an invisible wall made up of prejudice, bias, self-assurance, and the failure to listen."

"When he retired from teaching in 1995, he turned to studying the human brain and its relationship with the body and to collecting insects. In 2003, he published Baka no Kabe (The Wall of Ignorance), in which he argued that human intransigence is not a moral flaw but a neurological condition: when faced with information that contradicts its certainties, the brain simply does not process it it behaves as if it does not exist."

"The book sold four million copies in its first two years, turning him into a celebrity who explained mathematical concepts on variety shows and in packed auditoriums of families. His critics note that Yoro does not always escape his own diagnosis: a self-confessed smoker of more than 20 cigarettes a day, he denied for decades any scientific link between tobacco and lung cancer; in 2024, he published an essay revealing that he himself had developed the disease."

"At the Osaka World Expo, an AI version of Professor Yoro a digital double trained on his more than 200 books was unveiled. Yoro receives EL PAIS at the Tokyo Museum of Photography, where giant photographs of his insect collection are on display. He has thick, white hair. He walks leaning on a black cane. He wears a patchwork vest and a light blue cotton blazer, accentuated by a tiny turquoise beetle pin that his wife pinned to his lapel before they left."

Takeshi Yoro spent decades performing autopsies and later studied the human brain and its relationship to the body while collecting insects. He published Baka no Kabe, arguing that stubbornness is not a moral defect but a neurological condition in which the brain fails to process information that contradicts its certainties. He linked misunderstanding between people to an invisible barrier made of prejudice, bias, self-assurance, and poor listening. The book became widely popular and made him a public figure. Critics noted that he previously denied a scientific link between tobacco and lung cancer, later revealing he had developed the disease. An AI digital double trained on his books was unveiled at an expo, and his insect photographs are displayed in a museum.

Read at english.elpais.com