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We are not conscious of most things until we ask ourselves questions about them.

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
Questions
Conscious
Asks
Things

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Our reality depends on what our biology is up to.
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Because vision appears so effortless, we are like fish challenged to understand water.
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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.
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There are always wonderful mysteries to confront.
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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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If our brains were simple enough to be understood, we wouldn't be smart enough to understand them.
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A mere 400 years after our fall from the center of the universe, we have experienced the fall from the center of ourselves.
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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.
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The brain runs its show incognito.
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It is the most wondrous thing we have discovered in the universe, and it is us.
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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.
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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.
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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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If you are a carrier of a particular set of genes, your probability of committing a violent crime goes up by eight hundred and eighty-two percent.
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There are three deaths. The first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.
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We don't really understand most of what's happening in the cosmos. Is there any afterlife? Who knows.
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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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If choices and decisions derive from hidden mental processes, then free choice is either an illusion or, at minimum, more tightly constrained than previously considered.
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We are not the ones driving the boat of our behavior, at least not nearly as much as we believe.
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It is only through us that God lives. When we abandon him, he dies.
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