3 ms·

I love articles like this. But I have NO facility or background to evaluate them. Given their premise is "everything you've been told is wrong", how do I know t

I love articles like this. But I have NO facility or background to evaluate them. Given their premise is "everything you've been told is wrong", how do I know that this one is right? :-/ I just finished Blindsight, which is a SciFi novel but written by PhD Biologist and highly respected in Neurological circles... which pretty much commits to every.single.one. of these 'myths'. Note, this is not an issue of "it's a young empirical discipline with a lot of uncertainty" (though that is the case as well:). For things which we should be able to discern some basic patterns and models, there seems to be tremendous amount of disagreement in seemingly-authoritative and knowledgeable sources; which just allows so much Woo-Hoo of the world to arise (and I'm not just thinking of Deepak Chopra:).

sowbug 5y ago
If you find the subject interesting and would like to read more, I recommend Jeff Hawkins' A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence, which was released earlier this year and covers a theory that a large part of your brain is made of 150,000 near-identical subsystems called "cortical columns." It's geared toward people who have little background in neuroscience. You might also follow up with Anil Seth's "controlled hallucination" theory in Being You: A New Science of Consciousness. If you prefer to pay for this knowledge with just time rather than also money, on YouTube there are three videos from Numenta that cover Jeff's book, and then there's a Ted talk by Anil on consciousness.
- jcims 5y ago
  Hawkins has been on Lex Fridmans podcast at least twice now. I think the first one is when he dives into this a bit. I don’t know where he’s at in the spectrum between right and wrong but i found that his ideas mapped well to my subjective experience of thinking, particularly the hierarchical reference frame concepts.
passivate 5y ago
I think we should let anyone propose any theory in good faith. If you think you're being sold some 'woo-woo' - you simply ask - if this was true what can I do to apply this theory in practice and go out and test it? The onus should be on the person pushing for the theory to propose methods of practical application of this knowledge. Consensus only comes with repeated tests are in agreement. Until then, IMO, a theory is in the same category as an opinion - and people often do disagree with others' opiniosn.
BlueTemplar 5y ago
Sounds like a paradigm shift ?
notahacker 5y ago
Tbf Blindsight also features aliens and vampires. Unusually plausible vampire, but its very much a case of sciency-sounding detail to serve the points the story wants to make rather than a lecture on how the brain works. Plus I never believed the narrator was as detached from his emotions as he kept claiming anyway...

sowbug 5y ago

If you find the subject interesting and would like to read more, I recommend Jeff Hawkins' A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence, which was released earlier this year and covers a theory that a large part of your brain is made of 150,000 near-identical subsystems called "cortical columns." It's geared toward people who have little background in neuroscience. You might also follow up with Anil Seth's "controlled hallucination" theory in Being You: A New Science of Consciousness. If you prefer to pay for this knowledge with just time rather than also money, on YouTube there are three videos from Numenta that cover Jeff's book, and then there's a Ted talk by Anil on consciousness.

jcims 5y ago
Hawkins has been on Lex Fridmans podcast at least twice now. I think the first one is when he dives into this a bit. I don’t know where he’s at in the spectrum between right and wrong but i found that his ideas mapped well to my subjective experience of thinking, particularly the hierarchical reference frame concepts.

passivate 5y ago

I think we should let anyone propose any theory in good faith. If you think you're being sold some 'woo-woo' - you simply ask - if this was true what can I do to apply this theory in practice and go out and test it? The onus should be on the person pushing for the theory to propose methods of practical application of this knowledge. Consensus only comes with repeated tests are in agreement. Until then, IMO, a theory is in the same category as an opinion - and people often do disagree with others' opiniosn.

BlueTemplar 5y ago

Sounds like a paradigm shift ?

notahacker 5y ago

Tbf Blindsight also features aliens and vampires. Unusually plausible vampire, but its very much a case of sciency-sounding detail to serve the points the story wants to make rather than a lecture on how the brain works. Plus I never believed the narrator was as detached from his emotions as he kept claiming anyway...