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. David Eagleman More Quotes by David Eagleman More Quotes From David Eagleman 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
