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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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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Our reality depends on what our biology is up to.
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Scientists often talk of parsimony (as in the simplest explanation is probably correct, also known as Occam's razor), but we should not get seduced by the apparent elegance of argument from parsimony this line of reasoning has failed in the past at least as many times as it has succeeded.
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Many people prefer a view of human nature that includes a true side and a false side - in other words, humans have a single genuine aim and the rest is decoration, evasion, or cover-up. That's intuitive, but it's incomplete. A study of the brain necessitates a more nuanced view of human nature.
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As we develop better technologies for probing the brain, we detect more problems.
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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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The brain runs its show incognito.
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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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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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It is the most wondrous thing we have discovered in the universe, and it is us.
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