Quotes About Cognition

There is more information in one thimble of reality than can be understood by a galaxy of human brains. It is beyond the human brain to understand the world and its environment, so the brain compensates by creating simplified illusions that act as a replacement for understanding.

Your brain can only process a tiny portion of your environment, It risks being overwhelmed by the volume of information that bombards you every waking moment. Your brain compensates by filtering out the 99.9 percent of your environment that doesn't matter to you.

There are three important things to know about human beings in order to understand why we do the things we do. Humans use pattern recognition to understand their world. Humans are very bad at pattern recognition. And they don't know it.

Humans think they are rational, and they think they understand their reality. But they are wrong on both counts.

The human mind is a delusion generator, not a window to truth. Everyone, including skeptics, will generate delusions that match their views. That is how a normal and healthy brain works. Skeptics are not exempt from self-delusion.

As a general rule, irrational people don't know they are irrational.

You've heard the old saying that knowledge is power. But knowledge of psychology is the purest form of that power. No matter what you're doing or how well you're doing it, you can benefit from a deeper understanding of how the mind interprets its world using only the clues that somehow find a way into your brain through the holes in your skull. When

The grand illusion of life is that our minds have the capacity to understand reality. But human minds didn't evolve to understand reality. We didn't need that capability. A clear view of reality wasn't necessary for our survival. Evolution cares only that you survive long enough to procreate. And that's a low bar. The result is that each of us is, in effect, living in our own little movie that our brain has cooked up for us to explain our experiences.

The worst thing your brain could do is reinterpret your reality into a whole new movie with each new bit of information. That would be exhausting and without benefit. Instead, your brain takes the path of least resistance and instantly interprets your observations to fit your existing worldview. It's just easier.

Intelligent people are always the best encyclopaedia.

En inan?lmaz ?eylere bile inanmaya programlanm???z ve bunlar haf?zam?za bir kez kaz?nd? m?, onlar? silmeye çal??an?n vay haline

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The unconscious evaluation of everything does appear to be a very old and primitive effect that existed long before we developed conscious and deliberate modes of thought.

People are smarter than you might think.

Seeing come before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak. But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.

Seeing comes before words. A child looks and recognises before it can speak

consciousness is the way information feels when being processed in certain complex ways.

I believe that consciousness is, essentially, the way information feels when being processed.

Our brains trick us into thinking that we have Moral Truth on our side when in fact we don't, and blind us to important truths that our brains were not designed to appreciate.

Everybody "thinks" - Homo sapiens means "thinking man" - but most people don't "think" very well.

[An intellectual] is someone who can listen to the "William Tell Overture" without thinking of the Lone Ranger.

something we are poorly developed to retain, e.g., a phone number), into something easier to remember (and that we are better developed to remember).

although his physician had advised him not to be overly concerned about forgetting facts and names, and he should begin to worry only if he stopped noticing that he couldn't remember them—if, in essence, he forgot that he was forgetting.

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind,