From Smithsonian:
A Neuroscientist Tells You What’s Wrong With Your Brain
Dean Burnett’s new book, Idiot Brain, explains why your mind evolved to thwart you
People should be free to write what they want, including idiocy, but these neurosciencey claims about how our brains are constantly fooled and our minds do not really grasp anything undermine the idea that adults, citizens, voters, can make valid decisions. And that has been going on for decades.
Good news for long-running corrupt rackets of every kind. Less good news for responsible government.
That said, Burnett notes, in response to a question,
Research seems to show that more intelligent people use less brain power. Why?
[Researchers were] putting people into fMRI machines and giving them intelligence tests—deductions and puzzles. It turns out the people who are better at doing the tests, who can solve them faster and more efficiently, were showing less activity in the intelligence part of the brain. Which is obviously puzzling—if that’s the intelligence part of the brain, why are people who are more intelligent not using it? The main theory now is that it means this area is more efficient. It doesn’t need to work as hard to do the same effort as one who is less intelligent because it’s better connected, it’s more integrated. More.
Or maybe the main point is that no one should take this updated phrenology seriously in the age of information.
See also: Neuroscience tried wholly embracing naturalism, but then the brain got away
Would we give up naturalism to solve the hard problem of consciousness?
Follow UD News at Twitter!