Science does not disprove free will
Someone contacted me through Quora recently because they were having an existential crisis — it was stimulated by the ostensibly scientific notion that humans do not have free well.
Any theory that insists that we do not actually make choices is going to causes distress among many people who valorize academic thinking. Many hard-nosed metaphysicians simply don’t care about the mental well-being of the general public. I find this attitude simultaneously patronizing and irresponsible.
Yanny or Laurel? A perspective from the science of mind and brain
I really like the Yanny versus Laurel meme, which exploded yesterday. It helps illustrate some key points about human perception:
- In some situations people can differ wildly in their experience of low-level perception.
- Active top-down expectations (and other, weirder processes) have a strong effect on low-level perception.
So basically, it’s an auditory version of #ThatDress.
Is a memory a bunch of atoms? And does this mean we can transfer exact memories?
I was asked the following question on Quora.
Short answer: No.
Modern science has shown that every thing is an arrangement of atoms: neurons, apples, tables, rockets, asteroids, aardvarks… they are all made up of atoms.
The question now is this: is a memory a thing?