Quote

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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David Eagleman
Age: 53
Born: 1971
Born: April 25
Author
Neuroscientist
Psychologist
Researcher
University Teacher
Albuquerque
New Mexico
David M Eagleman
David Eagleman
Choice
Previously
Either
Processes
Decision
Minimum
Choices
Hidden
Free
Considered
Process
Decisions
Constrained
Mental
Tightly
Illusion
Derive

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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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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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Everybody knows the power of deadlines - and we all hate them. But their effectiveness is undeniable.
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Because vision appears so effortless, we are like fish challenged to understand water.
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You´re not perceiving what's out there. You're perceiving whatever your brain tells you.
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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.
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People wouldn't even go into science unless there was something much bigger to be discovered, something that is transcendent.
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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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Who you are depends on the sum total of your neurobiology.
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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.
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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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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 missing crowds make you lonely. You begin to complain about all the people you could be meeting. But no one listens or sympathizes with you, because this is precisely what you chose when you were alive.
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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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The brain runs its show incognito.
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Those with Anton's syndrome are not pretending they are not blind they truly believe they are not blind. Their verbal reports, while inaccurate, are not lies. Instead, they are experiencing what they take to be vision, but it is all internally generated.
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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.
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This is what consciousness does: it sets the goals, and the rest of the system learns how to meet them.
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I know one lab that studies nicotine receptors and all the scientists are smokers, and another lab that studies impulse control and they're all overweight.
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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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