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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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David Eagleman
Age: 53
Born: 1971
Born: April 25
Author
Neuroscientist
Psychologist
Researcher
University Teacher
Albuquerque
New Mexico
David M Eagleman
David Eagleman
Perceiving
Tells
Brain
Whatever

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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.
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Just like a good drama, the human brain runs on conflict.
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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.
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When the brain activity is kindled in the right spot, people hear voices. If a physician prescribes an anti-epileptic medication, the seizures go away and the voices disappear. Our reality depends on what our biology is up to.
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If our brains were simple enough to be understood, we wouldn't be smart enough to understand them.
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It is only through us that God lives. When we abandon him, he dies.
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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.
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What a life in science really teaches you is the vastness of our ignorance.
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There is a looming chasm between what your brain knows and what your mind is capable of accessing.
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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.
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