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David Eagleman -
Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain (2011)
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The brain is a complex system, but that doesn't mean it's incomprehensible. Our neural circuits were carved by natural selection to solve problems that our ancestors faced during our species' evolutionary history. Your brain has been molded by evolutionary pressures just as your spleen and eyes have been. And so has your consciousness. Consciousness developed because it was advantageous, but advantageous only in limited amounts.
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It is problematic to imagine yourself in the shoes of a criminal and conclude, Well, I wouldn't have done that —because if you weren't exposed to in utero cocaine, lead poisoning, or physical abuse, and he was, then you don't fit in his shoes. Even if you would like to imagine what it's like to be him, you won't be very good at it.
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A typical neuron makes about ten thousand connections to neighboring neurons. Given the billions of neurons, this means there are as many connections in a single cubic centimeter of brain tissue as there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy.
David Eagleman
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There is a looming chasm between what your brain knows and what your mind is capable of accessing.
David Eagleman
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You're not perceiving what's out there. You're perceiving whatever your brain tells you.
David Eagleman
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The conscious mind is not at the center of the action in the brain; instead, it is far out on a distant edge, hearing but whispers of the activity.
David Eagleman
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We believe we're seeing the world just fine until it's called to our attention that we're not.
David Eagleman
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The first thing we learn from studying our own circuitry is a simple lesson: most of what we do and think and feel is not under our conscious control.
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Keep in mind that every single generation before us has worked under the assumption that they possessed all the major tools for understanding the universe, and they were all wrong, without exception.
David Eagleman
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Brains are like representative democracies. They are built of multiple, overlapping experts who weigh in and compete over different choices.
David Eagleman
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You are more likely to believe that a statement is true if you have heard it before - whether or not it is actually true.
David Eagleman
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All activity in the brain is driven by other activity in the brain, in a vastly complex, interconnected network.
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Knowing yourself now requires the understanding that the conscious you occupies only a small room in the mansion of the brain, and that it has little control over the reality constructed for you.
David Eagleman
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Some men may be genetically inclined to have and hold a single partner, while some may not. In the near future, young women who stay current with the scientific literature may demand genetic tests of their boyfriends to assess how likely they are to make faithful husbands.
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One of the most impressive features of brains - and especially human brains - is the flexibility to learn almost any kind of task that comes its way.
David Eagleman
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In my view, the argument from parsimony is really no argument at all - it typically functions only to shut down more interesting discussion. If history is any guide, it's never a good idea to assume that a scientific problem is cornered.
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Each cell sends electrical pulses to other cells, up to hundreds of times per second. If you represented each of these trillions and trillions of pulses in your brain by a single photon of light, the combined output would be blinding.
David Eagleman
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Instead of reality being passively recorded by the brain, it is actively constructed by it.
David Eagleman
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The first lesson about trusting your senses is: don't. Just because you believe something to be true, just because you know it's true, that doesn't mean it is true.
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Who we can be begins with our molecular blueprints - a series of alien codes penned in invisibly small strings of acids - well before we have anything to do with it. We are a product of our inaccessible, microscopic history.
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Imbalance of reason and emotion may explain the tenacity of religion in societies: world religions are optimized to tap into the emotional networks, and great arguments of reason amount to little against such magnetic pull.
David Eagleman
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The majority of human beings live their whole lives unaware that they are only seeing a limited cone of vision at any moment.
David Eagleman
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The continuous networks of neural circuitry accomplish their functions using multiple, independently discovered strategies. The brain lends itself well to the complexity of the world, but poorly to clear-cut cartography.
David Eagleman
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Your brain is built of cells called neurons and glia - hundreds of billions of them. Each one of these cells is as complicated as a city.
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Asleep vision (dreaming) is perception that is not tied down to anything in the real world; waking perception is something like dreaming with a little more commitment to what's in front of you.
David Eagleman
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Quote of the day
At last, in 1611, was made, under the auspices of King James, the famous King James version; and this is the great literary monument of the English language.
Lafcadio Hearn
David Eagleman
Born:
April 25, 1971
(age 53)
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