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.

David Eagleman

Categorized in : Past Lines Razors

What we find is that our brains have colossal things happening in them all the time.

David Eagleman

colossal happenings brain

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

three body names

The first lesson about trusting your senses is: don't. Just because you believe something to be true, just because you know it's true, that doesn't mean it is true.

David Eagleman

lessons mean believe

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

David Eagleman

asks conscious

You are more likely to believe that a statement is true if you have heard it before - whether or not it is actually true.

David Eagleman

ifs heard believe

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.

David Eagleman

views brain people

Instead of reality being passively recorded by the brain, it is actively constructed by it.

David Eagleman

brain reality

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

majority vision moments

When one part of the brain makes a choice, other parts can quickly invent a story to explain why. If you show the command "Walk" to the right hemisphere (the one without language), the patient will get up and start walking. If you stop him and ask why he's leaving, his left hemisphere, cooking up an answer, will say something like "I was going to get a drink of water."

David Eagleman

leaving choices water

Every atom in your body is the same quark in different places at the same moment in time.

David Eagleman

atoms different body

It is the most wondrous thing we have discovered in the universe, and it is us.

David Eagleman

wondrous universe

Nothing is inherently tasty or repulsive - it depends on your needs. Deliciousness is simply an index of usefulness.

David Eagleman

tasty depends needs

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.

David Eagleman

lonely missing people

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.

David Eagleman

stars brain mean

You´re not perceiving what's out there. You're perceiving whatever your brain tells you.

David Eagleman

brain

Once you begin deliberating about where your fingers are jumping on the piano keyboard, you can no longer pull off the piece.

David Eagleman

piano pieces jumping

We open our eyes and we think we're seeing the whole world out there. But what has become clear—and really just in the last few centuries—is that when you look at the electro-magnetic spectrum we are seeing less than 1/10 Billionth of the information that's riding on there. So we call that visible light. But everything else passing through our bodies is completely invisible to us. Even though we accept the reality that's presented to us, we're really only seeing a little window of what's happening.

David Eagleman

eye reality thinking

It turns out your conscious mind - the part you think of as you - is really the smallest part of what’s happening in your brain, and usually the last one in line to find out any information.

David Eagleman

mind brain thinking

Constant reminding ourselves that we not see with our eyes but with our synergetic eye-brain system working as a whole will produce constant astonishment as we notice, more and more often, how much of our perceptions emerge from our preconceptions.

David Eagleman

perception eye brain

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.

David Eagleman

small-rooms knowing reality