Quotes About Brain

A neuron didn't know whether it fired in response to a scent or a symphony. Brain cells weren't intelligent; only brains were.

Identity changes by the second, you turn into someone else every time a new thought rewires your brain. You're already a different person than you were ten minutes ago.

Things get even messier when linked into networks, which can literally scatter one's mind even at today's rudimentary levels of connectivity. The "transactive memory system" called Google is already rewiring the parts of our brains that used to remember facts locally; now those circuits store search protocols for remote access of a distributed database.74 And Google doesn't come anywhere close to the connectivity of a real hive mind.

Brains are survival engines, not truth detectors. If self-deception promotes fitness, the brain lies. Stops noticing— irrelevant things. Truth never matters. Only fitness.

If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn't." —Emerson M. Pugh

The brain's habit of literalizing metaphors—the tendency to regard people as having "warmer" personalities when you happen to be holding a mug of coffee, the Bicamerals' use of hand-washing to mitigate feelings of guilt and uncertainty—is also an established neurological fact.

Brains are survival engines, not truth detectors. If self-deception promotes fitness, the brain lies. Stops noticing—irrelevant things. Truth never matters. Only fitness. By now you don't experience the world as it exists at all. You experience a simulation built from assumptions.

The reason that stuff goes bad is because it's crappy old tech. Internal augs are less failure-prone than your own brain." "So they'll work flawlessly when some spambot hacks in and leaves me with an irresistible urge to buy a year's supply of bubble bath for cats.

Brains are survival engines, not truth detectors. If self-deception promotes fitness, the brain lies.

As far as anyone could tell, Portia had learned to partition its cognitive processes: almost as if it were emulating a larger brain piece by piece, saving the results of one module to feed into the next. Slices of intellect, built and demolished one after another.

in some half-forgotten pesthole of twentieth-century case studies—filed under Cotard's syndrome—I found Amanda Bates and others of her kind, their brains torqued into denial of the very self.

Don't lecture me in my own field! We've got language and speech centers hardwired into our brains. That gives us a common starting point. Gels don't have anything like that. Speech might just be one giant conditioned reflex to them.

Dan, you gotta let go of this whole self thing. Identity changes by the second, you turn into someone else every time a new thought rewires your brain. You're already a different person than you were ten minutes ago.

Not blind chance. Blindsight. Amanda? Respond, please." "Blindsight?" "Nothing wrong with the receptors," he said distractedly. "Brain processes the image but it can't access it. Brain stem takes over." "Your brain stem can see but you can't?

If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn't.

THE HUMAN BRAIN WERE SO SIMPLE THAT WE COULD UNDERSTAND IT, WE WOULD BE SO SIMPLE THAT WE COULDN'T. —Emerson M. Pugh

Brains are survival engines, not truth detectors. If self-deception promotes fitness, the brain lies. Stops noticing—irrelevant things. Truth never matters. Only fitness. By now you don't experience the world as it exists at all. You experience a simulation built from assumptions. Shortcuts. Lies.

Brains are survival engines, not truth detectors. If self-deception promotes fitness, the brain lies. Stops noticing—irrelevant things. Truth never matters. Only fitness. By now you don't experience the world as it exists at all. You experience a simulation built from assumptions. Shortcuts. Lies. Whole species is agnosiac by default. Rorschach does nothing to you that you don't already do to yourselves.

MY GENES DONE GONE AND TRICKED MY BRAIN BY MAKING FUCKING FEEL SO GREAT THAT'S HOW THE LITTLE CREEPS ATTAIN THEIR PLAN TO FUCKIN' REPLICATE BUT BRAIN'S GOT TRICKS ITSELF, YOU SEE TO GET THE BANG BUT NOT THE BITE I GOT THIS HERE VASECTOMY MY GENES CAN FUCK THEMSELVES TONIGHT. —The R-Selectors, "Trunclade

My genes done gone and tricked my brain By making fucking feel so great That's how the little creeps attain Their plan to fuckin' replicate But brain's got tricks itself, you see To get the bang but not the bite I got this here vasectomy My genes can fuck themselves tonight. - The R-Selectors, Trunclade

Brains are survival engines, not truth detectors. If self-deception promotes fitness, the brain lies. Stops noticing—irrelevant things. Truth never matters. Only fitness. By now you don't experience the world as it exists at all. You experience a simulation built from assumptions. Shortcuts. Lies. Whole species is agnosiac by default.

Talented people succeed largely because they devote considerable time, attention, and effort to their topic of predilection. Through training, they develop well-tuned algorithms and clever shortcuts that any of us could learn if we tried, and that are carefully devised to take advantage of our brain's assets and get around its limits." —Psychologist and neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene

What, not even a driver?" asked Wren, focusing on the black, electric locomotive at the front of the train, a blunt, windowless thing, charging along like a bull. "The engine is the driver. A Popjoy Mark Twelve Stalker, controlled by a Resurrected human brain.