The Ravenous Brain: How the New Science of Consciousness Explains Our Insatiable Search for Meaning (49 page)

BOOK: The Ravenous Brain: How the New Science of Consciousness Explains Our Insatiable Search for Meaning
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60
Ecosystems . . . self-organize
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Cell . . . computation
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63
Protozoa and bacteria . . . learning and memory
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63
Limiting factors to this process
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Unconscious statistical machine
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C. elegans
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Recognize our own emotions . . . our body states
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Patterns . . . attractive to bees
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CHAPTER 3: THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG
 
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Three evolutionary versions of brains
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The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
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Parietal lobes . . . linked with . . . IQ
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Frontal lobes . . . complex and novel
Ibid.
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When under . . . anesthesia . . . learning is beyond us
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One of Dijksterhuis’s experiments
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Delegate thinking . . . to the unconscious
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Malcolm Gladwell
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Made up their minds before . . . seen all the facts
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No advantage for unconscious processing
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Conscious deliberation provided an advantage over distraction
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95
Transfer that learning . . . while still believing . . . guessing randomly
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Distracted . . . then we learn absolutely nothing
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The unconscious mind is unable to cope
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98
Damage to the lateral prefrontal . . . don’t generate . . . wrong theories
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No evidence . . . subliminal messages influence our behavior
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Held . . . position . . . closeness of their relative
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101
Event . . . placed Kahneman on the path of psychology
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Unconscious anchoring of our choice
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Benjamin Libet demonstrated this fact
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Similar unconscious source . . . decision to veto
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Consciousness was smeared across time
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104
Computational model by Stanislav Nikolov
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105
Detected up to 10 seconds prior to the conscious decision
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CHAPTER 4: PAY ATTENTION TO THAT PATTERN!
 
111
“. . . Mummy sent me to fetch you”
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113
Brain . . . half of all the energy the child consumes
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Human brain . . . nearing the endpoint . . . biologically possible
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114
Two photos identical except for one feature
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115
Half the volunteers notice . . . person has changes

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