How my Brain works ref. "Think" Guy P. Harrison. Flashcards
Do our brains do a good job on separating truth from fiction?
Once you understand something about how our brains operate and how easily they lead us to see, hear, and feel things that are not there, believe in things that do not exist, and think things that make no sense, you might never again find the courage to walk out of your front door.
The brutal truth is that human brains do a poor job of separating truth from fiction. This leads to many false beliefs.
What is our brain?
About 80 to 100 billion cells called neurons make up this amazing 3 pound organ. These cells are connected to each other by some 100 trillion little structures called synapses. Electrical and chemical messages fly around in the brain constantly, making it a nonstop hub of action. Even during sleep, the brain keeps working for us.
Do our brains do a good job of assessing arguments and evidence?
Our brains do not play fair. when it comes to assessing arguments and evidence. Those who realize this are far less likely to spend years of their lives clinging to lies, lame ideas, and bad beliefs. Without some basic knowlede of how stories seduce our brains, you might run right by a pile of solid scientific evidence in order to snuggle up with one tall tale.
Can your brain be fully trusted?
NO! It can be a rude awakening to realize that you are walking around in a reality that your brain created for you. A “reality” that can never be trusted completely.
Can I fully trust my memory?
You cannot trust even your most precious memories. They may feel 100% accurate, but it does not matter. They easily could be partial or total lies that your brain is telling you. Really, the personal past that your brain is supposed to be keeping safe for you is not what you think it is. It does not present the past as accurately as possible, but it will provide you with information that you will likely find to be useful. Functional value, not accuracy is the priority.
Those who do not know anything about how memory works already have one foot in fantasyland.
[MN: Remember, recalling a memory is not recalling the actual event as it happened. It is simply recalling the last time you thought about it with some extraneous false memories bundled in the package.]
When you remember your past, you do not get to watch an accurately recorded replay.
So what happens when I recall a memory?
Your brain does not replay a video tape of what really happened!
Without informing you, you brain might leave out some parts of the story just because it feels they are unimportant. It also might get confused and toss in a few scenes for a movie you watched last year. It is very good at that. It can blend the past with another past or an entirely made up event in seamless ways that you will not catch. With most stories the key elements, names, and imagery all change over time. With each recall, the facts and people get shuffled or lost entirely. That is the reality. Your memories depend on the whims of an inconsistent flakey storyteller.
Is my memory influenced by other people?
Yes. It is influenced more by other people by planting an idea that your actual memory can recall. [This is called interference memory, or even retroactive interference memory].
[MN: Remember Alan Alda being shown the pictures of events that did not happen and he swore they DID happen?]
False memories can be implanted by other people. Memory researchers have shown that doing nothing more than mentioning a name or showing an image of something before asking someone to recall an event can significantly change how he remembers that event.
The hard truth is that our memories are highly vulnerable to being hijacked by suggestions, or just plain made up by the brain. You cannot trust them completely.
This has nothing to do wtih intelligence. It is just how normal, health brain works.
If we have a biased belief, won’t evidence persuade us we are wrong?
We all have many natural biases that have stealthy ways of distorting our thinking. What we may imagine is a reliable and logical brain is more like a three ring circus of wacky thinking. For example, did you know that we instinctively notice and remember evidence that SUPPORTS our beliefs while simultaneously IGNORING AND FORGETTING evidence that contradicts our beliefs?
Just because the words are on the TV screen before our eyes does not mean it is registering in our brain, because the biases hold control over our brain and we just will not get it.
“Seeing is believing” Is this true?
Not at all!
Forget your eyes. It is the brain that sees.
What we see is something the brain has produced for us based on input it received via the eyes. It is never a 100% truth.
It sounds crazy when you think about it. We do not really see the things we look at. How can this be?
Your brain does not replay the scenery around you like a camera. It provides you with its own highly edited sketch of the scene. Your brain gives you a VERSION of what you look at.
You are not watching a video feed; you are watching a docudrama. The brain takes the liberty of leaving out what it assumes are unimportant details. You do not need to see every leaf in every tree and every blade of grass in full detail. [Your brain confabulates what it thinks is there]
[MN: Remember we only see a “thumb’s width” in our focused vision. Everything else is brain “peripheral fill in”. This explains why you walk right past your golf ball.
It explains why you walk into a room of ten people then suddenly notice your Mother is there among the people, but you did not see her there when you first walked in the room.]
So why does your brain confabulate what you see in peripheral vision?
It would just take too much data. It would clutter your thoughts and make you less efficient. [MN: It would slow down your vision to the point like a buffering hourglass comes on your computer screen, because the data is not complete and ready to present to you.]
So what is Inattentional blindness?
Inattentional blindness is the reason it is not safe to drive while talking on a cell phone. You can be staring at the road ahead of you, but as your brain devotes itself to the phone conversation, you fail to notice the truck that brakes in front of you or the motorcycle rider who pulls out in front of you.
[MN: This is why it is not safe to use a cell phone while driving. Or even to be engaged in a conversation that requires thinking before you answer.]
It is the same principle as the gorilla in the room that half the people do not notice because they are concentrating on how many times the ball is tossed by the team of people dressed in white.
How does Confirmation Bias work in our brains?
Confirmation bias is the problem we all have when it comes to thinking about our beliefs. Without being aware of it, we tend to protect our beliefs. Confirmation bias draws us toward evidence and arguments that support our beliefs while simultaneously turning us off to evidence and arguments that go against our beliefs.
[MN: On the Simpson documentary I heard a good reply. The reporter asked the lawyer what about the (anything) found in his home. The lawyer’s brilliant reply was, “Well, you know the media. They find a little kernel of something ambiguous and blow it up to a big bag of popcorn!”]
If a person has confirmation bias, how hard is it to reach their thinking?
Page 66 states: If a skeptic like me explains how psychic readings really only seem to work and why it does not make sense to believe in them, the believer’s brain is likely to instinctively go into siege mode. The drawbridge is raised, crocodiles are released into the moat, and defenders man the walls.
Little or nothing the skeptic says actually gets in. Anything that does get in is likely to be forgotten forever. The believer usually does not recognize how biased and close minded he is being. He feels that he is completly rational and fair.
How much of our brain is devoted to conscious decisions?
More than 90% of what is going on in our brains every day is subconscious, meaning we are mostly clueless about it.
Think of it like this: Our brain is like a house that has 20 rooms on four floors. But we are allowed to enter only one room in the entire house. The doors to the other 19 rooms are locked. The house is always busy. A lot of activity is going on in those onther 19 rooms and it all directly impacts us. but we go not get to peek in.
[The other 19 rooms is the brain running your body]
Summary.
Your brain constructs and interprets what you look at. You do not have a camera in your head that faithfully captures reality. What we see is something the brain has produced for us, based loosely on what comes in through our eyes. It is never 100% true and complete. For this reason, we cannot always be sure about what we think we see.
