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

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What a life in science really teaches you is the vastness of our ignorance.
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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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If you have certain problems with your brain but are raised in a good home, you might turn out okay. If your brain is fine and your home is terrible, you might still turn out fine. But if you have mild brain damage and end up with a bad home life, you're tossing the dice for a very unlucky synergy.
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Every atom in your body is the same quark in different places at the same moment in time.
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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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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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Interestingly, schizophrenics can tickle themselves because of a problem with their timing that does not allow their motor actions and resulting sensations to be correctly sequenced.
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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 our brains were simple enough to be understood, we wouldn't be smart enough to understand them.
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All activity in the brain is driven by other activity in the brain, in a vastly complex, interconnected network.
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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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It is only through us that God lives. When we abandon him, he dies.
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The deep secret of the brain is that not only the spinal cord but the entire central nervous system works this way: internally generated activity is modulated by sensory input. In this view, the difference between being awake and being asleep is merely that the data coming in from the eyes anchors the perception.
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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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As an undergraduate I majored in British and American literature at Rice University.
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