How the hell do brains work?!
- Thread starter salami1212
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yea but we see out of our eyes. We dont see out of our brains do we?
What really did my head in was when my Physics teacher (god knows why he said it) asked us where we see what our eyes see?
That really got us going, it's basically a bunch of light turned into electrical signals that form an image somehow, it's getting me all twisted just thinking about it
Expanding on this a little, because it's a question that's always got me confused as hell. Is why I am my consciousness, why I control this body. I feel sometimes like a living entity outside of my own body just manipulating it. But where exactly does this 'conscious' state get attached to my 'brain'. Why am I not you, for example? It really wraps my brains and makes me wonder if there is such a thing as a soul, some kind of external influence that acts as a catalyst for life.
We do not see out of our eyes. Lightwaves enter our eyes and are received by receptors. This received information is then passed along the optic nerve to the brain to be converted into something we can comprehend. Therefore what is received by the eyes is an objective view of reality - what we then think we see is a subjective interpretation created by the brain on the received date + assumptions + with what is perceived to be less significant removed + with what is perceived to be more significant enhanced etc. This subjectivity is drastically altered by life experience, gender of recipient, current life priorities etc.
Because you're so complex the odds of producing two identically functioning units are nill.
even twins will be different mentally.
I was referring more to why my consciousness is not you. I control Sawell, my life is about my body and my 'mind'. I am no one else, sometimes I wonder if the whole world is made up of robots and I am the only living thing. You hear all the time the saying 'the world doesn't revolve around you', but because you are 'in charge' of yourself and only yourself, that's how it feels sometimes. But why, and to what end, and how? How exactly am I 'alive' in the sense that I feel an active consciousness flowing through my existence at all times, in this body?
It's really hard to put into words and make you think about what I'm trying to say, but it's one of those moments where when you actually stumble upon the meaning behind the question it kind of sucks you in and makes you feel a bit dizzy. So hard to explain.
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The brain is a distraction to keep us from finding out what's really going on.
Actually, I think that's your willy.
Why is his willy distracting? Is it the wrong colour?
Don
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Breathing and other basic life processes are controlled by an autonomous part of the brain. Where simple and basic functions required for life happen. You dont need to "remember" to breath..
You might ask the same about a hard-drive. How does it store data... Essentially it comes down to 1's and 0's. Two different states. In isolation, they mean nothing, but when paired with billions of other 1's and 0's, the mean something
You might ask the same about a hard-drive. How does it store data... Essentially it comes down to 1's and 0's. Two different states. In isolation, they mean nothing, but when paired with billions of other 1's and 0's, the mean something
This is an interesting talk on the subject: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/henry_markram_supercomputing_the_brain_s_secrets.html
False, we have great knowledge of how the brain works and it is one of the most researched organs in the body. There are several fields of science dedicated to the understanding of the brain.
This. We're at the stage of knowing roughly what parts of it handle what functions and even that isn't entirely clear-cut as there's some degree of flexibility involved and some parts can take over the function of other parts to some extent if required (e.g. after brain damage).
Thought controlled machinery is possible to a limited extent, but all that's doing is pattern matching on brain activity, not actually understanding it. For example, if you think "right" and save your brain activity while doing so, the machine will be able to detect you thinking "right" by matching your brain activity with the saved data.
But nobody understands the OS or apps running on it, or how they came to exist, or how a relatively slow computer can do the processing that it does.
FFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUU!!!
Wouldn't it still count as survival of the fittest, though? Individuals in a group that co-operated with each other would be more likely to successfully breed and raise young to adulthood than individuals alone, which is what "fittest" means in this context.That seems to be the prevailing hypothesis for why homo sapiens succeeded and homo neanderthalis failed - homo sapiens was much more social.