Incognito
by David Eagleman · first published 2011
87% recommend13% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Accessible neuroscience introduction showing how little of the mind is under conscious control, using split-brain studies and a model of competing mental agents; suits readers who liked Kahneman or want a brain primer.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
"This book will shine light on some of the hard-to-reach places in the brain, showing the ways in which we are not the ones driving the boat. Why does the conscious mind know so little? What do visual illusions unmask about the machinery running under the hood? How much of our lives are determined by choices and behaviors that are hard-wired, unconscious, and beyond our control? Do we have any management over who we find gorgeous or repugnant? How is it possible to get angry at yourself: who exactly, is mad at whom? If the drunk Mel Gibson is an anti-Semite and the sober Mel Gibson is authenti
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- For an interesting take on (1) and (2) i would suggest reading this http://www.amazon.com/Incognito-Secret-Lives-David-Eagleman/... ; I think there's ample evidence there, too. - You need a tool to "discover" right and wrong, just like you need a metric tensor to measure length. That tool is empiricism.…
on “How Elon Musk Thinks: Reasoning from First Principles.” ↗Incognito: The Secret Lives of The Brain - David Eagleman. A much recommended read. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Incognito-Secret-Lives-Brain-ebook/d...
on “Ask HN: Best book you read in 2011” ↗Here's a few of my favorites I read this year: 1. Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman 2. Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman 3. Developing a Universal Religion by David Hockey 4. Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua…
on “Ask HN: Best books you read in 2012” ↗Haven't read The Society of Mind, but I enjoyed Incognito, which explores similar ideas: http://www.amazon.com/Incognito-Secret-Lives-David-Eagleman/... And from a therapeutic perspective, I've gotten a lot out of Voice Dialogue - http://www.voicedialogueinternational.com/…
on “Marvin Minsky Reflects on a Life in AI [video]” ↗For me: * Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter * The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins * Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman * Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation by Mitch Horowitz * Little Brother by Cory Doctorow * Siddhartha by Herman Hesse…
on “Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?” ↗Studies of split brain patients play a good part in illustrating how little our consciousness is in control in "Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain" by David Eagleman, a book I highly recommend.
on “Split Brain Psychology” ↗…prevalent metaphor which imagines the brain as a digital computer. However, this is a metaphor and not actual facts. While we have some good ideas on how the brain works on higher levels (recommended reading Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman) we do not really have any ideas on the lower levels. As the essay I link below mentions, for example, when attending a concert, our brain changes so that…
on “Why your brain is 3 milion more times efficient than GPT-4” ↗…life categories as it grows (like a psychiatrist) Super book on the subject and also talks about the rising bar for individual culpability as we understand more about the brain: https://www.amazon.com/Incognito-Secret-Lives-David-Eagleman...
on “FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies” ↗You’d probably enjoy David Eagleman’s book Incognito and also maybe his quirky book of short stories Sum.
on “Ask HN: What are some of the best documentaries you've seen?” ↗…for top book of 2012 and for top all time book like another commenter. If you really want to expose the bias and structure of your consciousness, this the book to read. I would also pair this book with Incognito by David Eagleman (2012) to rehash some of the ideas of Kahneman and for a discussion of the implications of these ideas in morals and justice. Also Connectome by Sebastian Seung (2012) gives a good…
on “Ask HN: Best books you read in 2012” ↗Another author (and neuroscientist) is David Eagleman. His book - Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, is fantastic.
on “What Happens When a Neurosurgeon Removes Your Hippocampus ” ↗My own personal theory of mind is heavily inspired by David Eagleman's Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain. There he describes a model of mind in which a multitude of independent "agents" propose "ideas", which bubble up to our consciousness (the top-level agents), which pick…
on “Writing Is Thinking: Learning to Write with Confidence” ↗I found David Eagleman's books, especially Incognito, to be really good introduction to how the brain works. "Proust was a Neuroscientist" is a delightful look at how non-scientists throughout history (artists, dancers, writers) have intuited truths about…
on “Ask HN: What are some of the best books you’ve read about memory and the brain?” ↗This is discussed in the book Incognito by David Eagleman. I remember reading about someone learning to "see" with their tongue. Along the same line, his team developed a vest which translates information into vibration patterns on the torso:…
on “Implicit model of other people’s visual attention as an invisible beam” ↗…these little signals and nothing else. And yet you perceive the world in shades of brightness and colors. Your brain is in the dark but your mind constructs the light." — David Eagleman in his book Incognito. Without the nerves connecting your toe to your brain, you are unlikely to feel the otherwise agonizing pain of having had stubbed it against a coffee table.
on “Pig brains partially revived four hours after death” ↗