Ashwini Kumar

“What do we mean by "knowledge" or "understanding"? And how do billions of neurons achieve them? These are complete mysteries. Admittedly, cognitive neuroscientists are still very vague about the exact meaning of words like "understand," "think," and indeed the word "meaning" itself.”
― V. S. Ramachandran, The Tell-Tale Brain: Unlocking the Mystery of Human Nature

“The purpose of all of this (left hemisphere's way of choosing denial or repression over considering an anomaly) is to impose stability on behavior and to prevent vacillation because indecisiveness doesn't serve any purpose. Any decision, so long as it is probably correct, is better than no decision at all. A perpetually fickle general will never win a war.”
― V.S. Ramachandran, Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind

“The TELL-TALE BRAIN A Neuroscientist’s Quest for What Makes Us Human V. S. RAMACHANDRAN”
― V.S. Ramachandran, The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human

“Despite all their surface diversity, most jokes and funny incidents have the following logical structure: Typically you lead the listener along a garden path of expectation, slowly building up tension. At the very end, you introduce an unexpected twist that entails a complete reinterpretation of all the preceding data, and moreover, it's critical that the new interpretation, though wholly unexpected, makes as much "sense" of the entire set of facts as did the originally "expected" interpretation.
In this regard, jokes have much in common with scientific creativity, with what Thomas Kuhn calls a "paradigm shift" in response to a single "anomaly." (It's probably not coincidence that many of the most creative scientists have a great sense of humor.) Of course, the anomaly in the joke is the traditional punch line and the joke is "funny" only if the listener gets the punch line by seeing in a flash of insight how a completely new interpretation of the same set of facts can incorporate the anomalous ending.
The longer and more tortuous the garden path of expectation, the "funnier" the punch line when finally delivered.”
― V.S. Ramachandran