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| The Believing Brain - Michael Shermer |
May 30, 2017
Book 45 - The Believing Brain - From Ghosts and God
to Politics and Conspiracies - How We Construct Beliefs
and Reinforce them as Truths
Michael Shermer (2011)
Part 3 - pages 111-163
Reading Time - 1 hour
to Politics and Conspiracies - How We Construct Beliefs
and Reinforce them as Truths
Michael Shermer (2011)
Part 3 - pages 111-163
Reading Time - 1 hour
This section left me in the dust. A whole chapter is called The Believing Neuron and it is a bunch of fairly detailed information on cognitive neuroscience. A few tidbits I picked up... dopamine is a belief chemical... which means that ideas can be as addictive as substances. Creative people tend to find new patterns and generate more ideas than others... partly because of dopamine it seems. Belief comes quickly and naturally... skepticism is slow and unnatural.
Another chapter dealt with Belief in the Afterlife. The author doesn't believe in an Afterlife... in part because he says it is not scientifically provable. Everything for him comes down to science. He says it is natural for us to believe we have a timeless and eternal essence... so the belief comes first and then we look for reasons to support that belief. All of the near-death experiences, he says, can be put down to misfiring electrical impulses in the brain and oxygen deprivation. I'm not sure I like this author... he takes all the mystery out of things!
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