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Jun. 9th, 2019 06:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sestra_kerry...Our brains are like this ping pong ball tank, but massively more complex. You might be able to fit a few hundred ping pong balls in a tank, but your skull houses trillions of times more interactions than the tank, and it goes on bouncing throughout every second of your lifetime. And from those innumerable exchanges of energy, your thoughts, feelings, and decisions emerge.
And this is only the beginning of the unpredictability. Each individual brain is embedded in a world of other brains. Across the space of a dinner table, or the length of a lecture hall, or the reach of the internet, all the human neurons on the planet are influencing one other, creating a system of unimaginable complexity. This means that even though neurons follow straightforward physical rules, in practice it will always be impossible to predict exactly what any individual will do next.
This titanic complexity leaves us with just enough insight to understand a simple fact: our lives are steered by forces far beyond our capacity for awareness or control.
David Eagleman, "The brain - The story of you"
And this is only the beginning of the unpredictability. Each individual brain is embedded in a world of other brains. Across the space of a dinner table, or the length of a lecture hall, or the reach of the internet, all the human neurons on the planet are influencing one other, creating a system of unimaginable complexity. This means that even though neurons follow straightforward physical rules, in practice it will always be impossible to predict exactly what any individual will do next.
This titanic complexity leaves us with just enough insight to understand a simple fact: our lives are steered by forces far beyond our capacity for awareness or control.
David Eagleman, "The brain - The story of you"
