“In many of my books, I explore the ways in which grandparents or other older persons are shaped by the young, and the young are shaped by the old, in an evolving dance.” WayPersonsBookYoungEvolveGrandparent Author:Sharon Creech
“Synthesize new ideas constantly. Never read passively. Annotate, model, think, and synthesize while you read, even when you're reading what you conceive to be introductory stuff. That way, you will always aim towards understanding things at a resolution fine enough for you to be creative.” ThinkingWayIdeasEnoughReadingStuffUnderstandingCreativeFineModelsAimResolutionNew IdeasBe CreativeUnderstanding Things Author:Edward Boyden
“I think the definition will change as we learn more, but my working definition of solving the brain is: one, we can model, maybe in a computer, the processes that generate things like thoughts and feelings, and two, we can understand how to cure brain disorders, like Alzheimer's and epilepsy. Those are my two driving goals. One is more human-condition oriented, and one more clinical.” ThinkingHumansTwoFeelingsProcessGoalBrainConditionsComputerModelsDefinitionsDrivingCuresDisorderHuman ConditionThoughts And FeelingsAlzheimerAlzheimer'sClinicalsEpilepsy Author:Edward Boyden
“I worry that we don't have a very good definition of consciousness yet which makes it hard to tackle.” HardConsciousnessWorryVery GoodDefinitions Author:Edward Boyden
“We don't have a "consciousness meter" that'll tell us exactly how conscious something is. I think we might get there eventually.” ThinkingMightConsciousnessConsciousMeter Author:Edward Boyden
“If you give somebody a lot of questions to answer and then they walk by a bowl of candy, they are more likely to grab the candy because they're tired out from answering questions and can't resist.” IfsGivingAnswersWalksTiredBowlsCandyAnswering Questions Author:Edward Boyden
“Behavioral economics can explain some things, but it's hard to explain a lot of the underlying processes that generate these decisions, much less some of these unconscious things that we don't have a handle on at all.” HardProcessDecisionEconomicsHandleUnconsciousBehavioral Economics Author:Edward Boyden
“Remember, when we're conscious of something, that state is quite often generated by unconscious processes that happen right before it.” StatesHappensRememberProcessConsciousUnconsciousRemember When Author:Edward Boyden
“I would argue that if you understand how the cells of the brain are organized into circuits, almost computational circuits if you will, and we see how information flows through those circuits and how it's transformed, we might have a much firmer grasp on why our brains make decisions the way that they do. If we get a handle on that, maybe we can overcome some of our limitations and at the very least we'll understand why we do what we do.” IfsWayMightDecisionBrainInformationFlowOvercomingArguingHandleCellsLimitationOrganizedTransformedCircuitsWhy We Do What We DoInformation Flow Author:Edward Boyden
“You can imagine over very long timescales, perhaps far beyond the multi-decade time scale, we might be able to ask very deep questions about why we feel the way we feel about things, or why we think of ourselves in certain ways - questions that have been in the realm of psychology and philosophy but have been very difficult to get a firm mechanistic laws-of-physics grasp on.” ThinkingWayFeelsLongHas BeensPhilosophyMightAbleLawCertainAsksDifficultPsychologyImagineDecadesPhysicsScalesFirmRealmsVery DeepLaws Of Physics Author:Edward Boyden