Quote

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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David Eagleman
Age: 53
Born: 1971
Born: April 25
Author
Neuroscientist
Psychologist
Researcher
University Teacher
Albuquerque
New Mexico
David M Eagleman
David Eagleman
Better
Instead
Internals
Human
Needed
Societies
Teaming
Humans
Emotion
Internal
Optimized
Would
Already
Brains
Spock
Like
Brain
Systems
Optimal
Natural
Rational
Rationality
Everyone
Balance
Rivals
May
Emotional
Selection

More quotes by 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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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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I call myself a Possibilian: I'm open to...ideas that we don't have any way of testing right now.
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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Modern neuroimaging is like asking an astronaut in the space shuttle to look out the window and judge how America is doing.
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Odor carries a great deal of information, including information about a potential mate's age, sex, fertility, identity, emotions, and health.
David Eagleman
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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.
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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.
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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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Who you are depends on the sum total of your neurobiology.
David Eagleman
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Just give the brain the information and it will figure it out.
David Eagleman
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Vision is more than looking.
David Eagleman
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Every atom in your body is the same quark in different places at the same moment in time.
David Eagleman
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It is only through us that God lives. When we abandon him, he dies.
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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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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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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All life is no more than a match struck in the dark and blown out again.
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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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