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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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David Eagleman
Age: 53
Born: 1971
Born: April 25
Author
Neuroscientist
Psychologist
Researcher
University Teacher
Albuquerque
New Mexico
David M Eagleman
David Eagleman
Understood
Wouldn
Brain
Simple
Understand
Enough
Brains
Smart

More quotes by David Eagleman

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Reductionism is not the right viewpoint for everything, and it certainly won't explain the relationship between the brain and the mind. This is because of a feature known as emergence. When you put together large numbers of pieces and parts, the whole can become something greater than the sum.
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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I spent my adult life as a scientist, and science is, essentially, the most successful approach we have to try and understand the vast mysteries around.
David Eagleman
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I always bounce my legs when I'm sitting.
David Eagleman
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Everybody knows the power of deadlines - and we all hate them. But their effectiveness is undeniable.
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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Just like a good drama, the human brain runs on conflict.
David Eagleman
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Just give the brain the information and it will figure it out.
David Eagleman
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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.
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.
David Eagleman
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Love was not specified in the design of your brain it is merely an endearing algorithm that freeloads on the leftover processing cycles.
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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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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Vision is more than looking.
David Eagleman
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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.
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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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.
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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Neuroscience over the next 50 years is going to introduce things that are mind-blowing.
David Eagleman
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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.
David Eagleman