We often talk as though we are in direct contact with reality - as though our eyes show us the world, and our minds read off the facts. But between whatever reality fundamentally is and the experience you're having right now, there are a surprising number of layers. At each layer, two types of error happen: information gets left out, and bias creeps in. By the time experience reaches you, there's the potential for a great deal of both to have accumulated.
Put another way, rather than p...
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brain
Controversial Issues – Good, Bad or Both?
Nearly all controversial issues (i.e., nuclear power, marijuana legalization, and minimum wage increases) have both benefits and drawbacks. Yet our brains resist seeing issues that way.
It’s easy for us to believe that our side is fully right, and therefore that the other side is completely wrong. That’s typically what both our own side and the other is convinced of, and usually, we’re all mistaken!
Since most of us discuss these controversial issues with people who share our perspective,...
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The Brain of Theseus – a thought experiment
Here's my favorite philosophy of mind thought experiment that challenges pur view of personal identity or "self". It takes a while to explain but is quite a mind fuck, so bear with me.
THE SETUP
It feels, to nearly everyone, on a gut level, that I am 'me' and you are 'you', and consciousnesses are distinct from each other and easy to separate. Moreover, the vast majority of people accept that you 1 minute from now is still the same "YOU" in a meaningful sense as YOU right now; that ...
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Some Things Are Only In Your Simulation
It is impossible to perceive anything directly. What we experience as a visual image starts out as electromagnetic radiation of various frequencies which reflects off of an object and then hits our eye. The photoreceptor cells in our eye are stimulated, information propagates down the optic nerve, and so forth. We usually interpret this as seeing the object we are looking at. However, a more complete description involves acknowledging that we live in a simulation constructed by our brain. Our ey...
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