Complex Numbers

Brain Trust

Today in You're Doing It Wrong, "Thinking:"

Your Brain Doesn't Work the Way You Think It Does  
A conversation with neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett on the counterintuitive ways your mind processes reality—and why understanding that might help you feel a little less anxious.

This is one of those articles that is basically a book promotion, but to reiterate: This is a writing site, and I'm not going to rag on anyone for promoting their book, here or elsewhere. And honestly, this one looks like it might be interesting.

People tend to feel like we’re reacting to what’s actually happening in the world. But what’s really happening is that your brain is drawing on your deep backlog of experience and memory, constructing what it believes to be your reality, cross-referencing it with incoming sense data from your heart, lungs, metabolism, immune system, as well as the surrounding world, and adjusting as needed. In other words, in a process that even Dr. Barrett admits “defies common sense,” you’re almost always acting on the predictions that your brain is making about what’s going to happen next, not reacting to experience as it unfolds.

Or as I like to put it: we think we have free will, but that's an illusion; we don't so much make choices as rationalize our choices after the fact.

“Predictions transform flashes of light into the objects you see. They turn changes in air pressure into recognizable sounds, and traces of chemicals into smells and tastes. Predictions let you read the squiggles on this page and understand them as letters and words and ideas,” Barrett writes. “They’re also the reason why it feels unsatisfying when a sentence is missing its final.”

Oh, she's smart and funny? I think I'm in love.

Anyway, my own brain is (metaphorically) running on fumes right now, so I don't have a lot more to say. The article proceeds in interview Q&A form, and both Qs and As are interesting and insightful. But one quote by Barrett stands out for me:

Your brain is making guesses about what is going to happen next, so it knows how to act next to keep you alive and well. It’s continuously drawing on your past experiences to create your present. The really cool thing about this? It's really hard for people to change their past. However, by changing your present, you are cultivating a different future. By changing what you do and say, and feel, you are seeding your brain to predict differently in the future.

This, of course, has implications for psychology and probably even philosophy. I think I suspected this on some level, because this is why I don't stop trying to learn new things. Thus:

The actions and the experiences that your brain makes today become your brain's predictions for tomorrow. So making an effort to cultivate new experiences and learn new things today is an investment in who you will be tomorrow. Some people have control over many things in their lives, and some people have less control because of their life circumstances, but everyone can control something.

So it's worth a read; the article isn't all that long. And for once, I'm actually tempted to buy the book. Or, to put it another way, I've been conditioned to accept advertisements disguised as journalism, and when said ads spark my confirmation bias, my brain wants me to buy the book so I can learn more.