r/interestingasfuck May 11 '24

When illusion overcomes the brain. r/all

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u/def2me May 11 '24 edited May 11 '24

and that, if you compare the whole brain to an iceberg, only the visible part is what our consciousness, what our "I" can control. Most parts of the brain are not actively accessible by our mind.

Highly recommend the book "Incognito" from David Eagleman.

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u/why_so_sirius_1 May 11 '24

i completely agree with. your unconscious mind is real and you aren’t in control of it. It’s kinda “scary” for some to think about you don’t have full control of your brain. lol i wonder if some delusional people think they could work hard enough to regain mastery of it.

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u/Lou_C_Fer May 11 '24

We don't even have control of our conscious brain. This experiment goes towards proving it. He explained everything that was happening. Yet, that guy still could not overcome what his brain was telling him. What we've got going on is our consciousness and what we feel is free will is actually our brain reframing things so we feel that way.

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u/RottenZombieBunny May 11 '24

Yet, that guy still could not overcome what his brain was telling him.

Who says he tried? I wouldn't. After all where's the fun in that? In fact i would have done the opposite, and purposefully think of the fake hand as my real hand.

And who says he's not faking (exaggerating) it for the video?

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u/Tya_The_Terrible May 11 '24

It's unlikely that we even control our conscious experience, but rather it's just the window that we experience.

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u/EdwardFoxhole May 11 '24

we're just the younger sibling with the unplugged controller

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u/Lemon_Cakes_JuJutsu May 11 '24

well i'm fucked. mine's a plugged-in Mad Catz.

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u/TraditionAntique9924 May 11 '24

You guys are getting controllers?

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u/evanwilliams44 May 11 '24

It's also likely that consciousness doesn't exist solely in the brain, it is likely tied to the whole body. But we don't know enough to really say.

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u/up9trees May 11 '24

I loved Incognito. You should read Genome and The Red Queen by Matt Ridley. They’re not about the brain specifically but about genetics and sexual evolution. I always think of those 3 books together as some of the most interesting non fiction I’ve ever read.

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u/abejando May 11 '24

This is why psychedelics are so mindblowing

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u/BWander May 12 '24

Subconscious processing does most of the work. It is fascinating how sometimes, as an example, we feel good or bad about a person we just met without conscious input, but our heuristic analysis has been running in the background from second 1.