To a space alien or a German Shepherd dog, two humans would be indistinguishable, just as attractive and unattractive space aliens and German Shepherd dogs are difficult for you to tell apart. David Eagleman More Quotes by David Eagleman More Quotes From David Eagleman All creation necessarily ends in this: Creators, powerless, fleeing from the things they have wrought. David Eagleman fleeing creation ends Awareness of your surroundings occurs only when sensory inputs violate expectations. When the world is successfully predicted away, awareness is not needed because the brain is doing its job well. David Eagleman expectations brain jobs My lab and academic work fill my day from about 9 am to 7 p.m. Then I zoom out the lens to work on my other writing. David Eagleman academic-work lenses writing Everything that creates itself upon the backs of smaller scales will by those same scales be consumed. David Eagleman consumed scales 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 afterlife what-matters joy Brains are like representative democracies. They are built of multiple, overlapping experts who weigh in and compete over different choices. David Eagleman democracy choices brain A mere 400 years after our fall from the center of the universe, we have experienced the fall from the center of ourselves. David Eagleman center-of-the-universe years fall Humans have discovered that they cannot stop Death, but at least they can spit in his drink. David Eagleman spit drink humans Societies would _not_ be better off if everyone were like Mr Spock, all rationality and no emotion. Instead, a balance - a teaming up of the internal rivals - is optimal for brains. ... Some balance of the emotional and rational systems is needed, and that balance may already be optimized by natural selection in human brains. David Eagleman balance emotional brain One of the most impressive features of brains - and especially human brains - is the flexibility to learn almost any kind of task that comes its way. David Eagleman tasks brain way Neuroscience over the next 50 years is going to introduce things that are mind-blowing. David Eagleman mind-blowing next years As an undergraduate I majored in British and American literature at Rice University. David Eagleman university british literature People wouldn't even go into science unless there was something much bigger to be discovered, something that is transcendent. David Eagleman transcendent bigger people The three-pound organ in your skull - with its pink consistency of Jell-o - is an alien kind of computational material. It is composed of miniaturized, self-configuring parts, and it vastly outstrips anything we've dreamt of building. David Eagleman consistency skulls self Evolve solutions; when you find a good one, don't stop. David Eagleman solutions evolve Everybody knows the power of deadlines - and we all hate them. But their effectiveness is undeniable. David Eagleman effectiveness deadline hate The more familiar the world becomes, the less information your brain writes down, and the more quickly time seems to pass. David Eagleman down-and brain writing We are made up of an entire parliament of pieces and parts and subsystems. Beyond a collection of local expert systems, we are collections of overlapping, ceaselessly reinvented mechanism, a group of competing factions. The conscious mind fabricates stories to explain the sometimes inexplicable dynamics of the subsystem inside brain. It can be disquieting to consider the extent to which all of our actions are driven by hardwired systems doing what they do best while we overlay stories about choices. David Eagleman choices mind brain 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. David Eagleman cutting brain world This is the hallmark of a robust biological system: political parties can perish in a tragic accident and the society will still run, sometimes with little more than a hiccup to the system. It may be that for every strange clinical case in which brain damage leads to a bizarre change in behavior or perception, there are hundreds of cases in which parts of the brain are damaged with no detectable clinical sign. David Eagleman political party running
