“What have we learned so far about the human brain? It messes with memories, it jumps at shadows, it's terrified of harmless things, it screws with our diet, our sleeping, our movement, it convinces us we're brilliant when we're not, it makes up half the stuff we perceive, it gets us to do irrational things when emotional, it causes us to make friends incredibly quickly and turn on them in an instant.
A worrying list. What's even more worrying, it does all of this when it's working properly.”
― The Idiot Brain: A Neuroscientist Explains What Your Head Is Really Up To
A worrying list. What's even more worrying, it does all of this when it's working properly.”
― The Idiot Brain: A Neuroscientist Explains What Your Head Is Really Up To
“The modern world is filled with men who hold dogmas so strongly that they do not even know that they are dogmas. It may be said even that the modern world, as a corporate body, holds certain dogmas so strongly that it does not know that they are dogmas. It may be thought 'dogmatic,' for instance, in some circles accounted progressive, to assume the perfection or improvement of man in another world. But it is not thought "dogmatic" to assume the perfection or improvement of man in this world; though that idea of progress is quite as unproved as the idea of immortality, and from a rationalistic point of view quite as improbable. Progress happens to be one of our dogmas, and a dogma means a thing which is not thought dogmatic.”
― Heretics
― Heretics
“It is ludicrous to suppose that the more sceptical we are the more we see good in everything. It is clear that the more we are certain what good is, the more we shall see good in everything.”
― Heretics
― Heretics
“The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world. He knows much more of the fierce variety and uncompromising divergences of men…In a large community, we can choose our companions. In a small community, our companions are chosen for us. Thus in all extensive and highly civilized society groups come into existence founded upon sympathy, and shut out the real world more sharply than the gates of a monastery. There is nothing really narrow about the clan; the thing which is really narrow is the clique.”
― Heretics: The Annotated
― Heretics: The Annotated
“One of the brain's most prominent skills is the ability to ignore anything that becomes too predictable, no matter how important it may be”
― Idiot Brain: What Your Head Is Really Up To
― Idiot Brain: What Your Head Is Really Up To
Javisalas’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Javisalas’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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