The Main Thing Known About

Visual Cortex Is Fundamentally A Machine Whose Job Is To Generate A Model Of The World.

A Mere 400 Years After Our Fall From The Center Of The Universe, We Have Experienced The Fall From The Center Of Ourselves.

We Are Nothing But The Product Of Billions Of Years Of Molecules Coming Together And Ratcheting Up Through Natural Selection, We Are Composed Only Of Highways Of Fluids And Chemicals Sliding Along Roadways Within Billions Of Dancing Cells, Trillions Of Synaptic Conversations Hum In Parallel, This Vast Egglike Fabric Of Micron-thin Circuitry Runs Algorithms Undreamt Of In Modern Science, And These Neural Programs Give Rise To Our Decision Making, Loves, Desires, Fears, And Aspirations. That Understanding Would Be A Numinous Experience, Better Than Anything Ever Proposed In Anyone's Holy Text.

I Know One Lab That Studies Nicotine Receptors And All The Scientists Are Smokers, And Another Lab That Studies Impulse Control And They're All Overweight.

Even While It's True That We Are Tied To Our Molecules And Proteins And Neurons - As Strokes And Hormones And Drugs And Microorganisms Indisputably Tell Us - It Does Not Logically Follow That Humans Are Best Described Only As Pieces And Parts.