Quote

I'm using the afterlife as a backdrop against which to explore the joys and complexities of being human - it turns out that it's a great lens with which to understand what matters to us.

David Eagleman

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David Eagleman
Age: 53
Born: 1971
Born: April 25
Author
Neuroscientist
Psychologist
Researcher
University Teacher
Albuquerque
New Mexico
David M Eagleman
David Eagleman
Matters
Backdrop
Joy
Lens
Turns
Afterlife
Understand
Lenses
Human
Joys
Humans
Explore
Matter
Complexity
Great
Using
Complexities

More quotes by David Eagleman

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If our brains were simple enough to be understood, we wouldn't be smart enough to understand them.
David Eagleman
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Vision is more than looking.
David Eagleman
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Among all the creatures of creation, the gods favor us: We are the only ones who can empathize with their problems.
David Eagleman
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As Carl Jung put it, In each of us there is another whom we do not know. As Pink Floyd sang, There's someone in my head, but it's not me.
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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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One of the most pervasive mistakes is to believe that our visual system gives a faithful representation of what is out there in the same way that a movie camera would.
David Eagleman
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We are not at the center of ourselves, but instead - like the Earth in the Milky Way, and the Milky Way in the universe - far out on a distant edge, hearing little of what is transpiring.
David Eagleman
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It is more parsimonious to assume that the sun goes around the Earth, that atoms at the smallest scale operate in accordance with the same rules that objects at larger scales follow, and that we perceive what is really out there. All of these positions were long defended by argument from parsimony, and they were all wrong.
David Eagleman
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Death... The moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.
David Eagleman
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Once you begin deliberating about where your fingers are jumping on the piano keyboard, you can no longer pull off the piece.
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.
David Eagleman
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What a life in science really teaches you is the vastness of our ignorance.
David Eagleman
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We are not the ones driving the boat of our behavior, at least not nearly as much as we believe.
David Eagleman
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Societies would _not_ be better off if everyone were like Mr Spock, all rationality and no emotion. Instead, a balance - a teaming up of the internal rivals - is optimal for brains. ... Some balance of the emotional and rational systems is needed, and that balance may already be optimized by natural selection in human brains.
David Eagleman
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After all, across the population there are slight differences in brain function, and sometimes these translate directly into different ways of experiencing the world. And each individual believes his way is reality.
David Eagleman
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The main thing known about secrets is that keeping them is unhealthy for the brain.
David Eagleman
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Who you are depends on the sum total of your neurobiology.
David Eagleman
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All life is no more than a match struck in the dark and blown out again.
David Eagleman
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The more familiar the world becomes, the less information your brain writes down, and the more quickly time seems to pass.
David Eagleman
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This is what consciousness does: it sets the goals, and the rest of the system learns how to meet them.
David Eagleman