Dr. Stephen Braude – your memories aren’t in your brain|318|

When I read the underlined, ( not saying it's you), it leads me to wonder if people take as much time keeping up with neuroscience as they do over the stuff they believe is true?

Your brain does not process information, retrieve knowledge or store memories. In short: your brain is not a computer


Robert Epstein is a senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology in California. He is the author of 15 books, and the former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today.

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Can Neuroscience Understand Donkey Kong, Let Alone a Brain?



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Power failure: why small sample size undermines the reliability of neuroscience

A study with low statistical power has a reduced chance of detecting a true effect, but it is less well appreciated that low power also reduces the likelihood that a statistically significant result reflects a true effect. Here, we show that the average statistical power of studies in the neurosciences is very low. The consequences of this include overestimates of effect size and low reproducibility of results. There are also ethical dimensions to this problem, as unreliable research is inefficient and wasteful. Improving reproducibility in neuroscience is a key priority and requires attention to well-established but often ignored methodological principles.

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Resources critiquing memory traces can be found in the Limitations of Mechanistic Thinking thread here & here, the latter from the immaterialist neuroscientist Tallis.
 
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I'm under the impression that there's a new trend in the last several Skeptiko Show threads. Has the CD forum merged with the Skeptiko Shows Forum and are we back to Skeptiko 1.0? If so, I missed the announcement.

I think the show threads being open are fine, so long as they stick to the actual topic. (What's a bit annoying about this time around is people don't address the argument Braude is making about memories which just makes this thread into one long debate about basically everything that gets argued in CD.)

The bigger problem right now, IMO, is you have a spammer messaging everyone, posting the same link in multiple sections (including Spirituality), and an unclear line between C&S and CD.

My thinking was C&S is about where science goes after one accepts immaterialism on some level, CD is whether immaterialist ideas are valid?

p.s. This isn't an attack against the mods, just curious about what's going on.
 
I suspected from the moment I read the title something wasn't right. I can think of one point where his position is full of cr_p, is when he asks someone to draw the dollar bill and they draw a very inaccurate depiction. He should ask Stephen Wiltshire an autistic savant artist who was tasked with drawing from memory a panorama of the city of London after a 15 minute helicopter ride. He had 5 days to complete it. To see him drawing it, start the video at 30 minutes. He should also test his beliefs against such folks as these. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_claimed_to_possess_an_eidetic_memory

Other not so sweet things people have to say about Mr. Epstein
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/scientific-american-mind-is-not-so-scientific/
http://lukependergrass.work/blog/the-information-processing-brain
https://sergiograziosi.wordpress.com/2016/05/22/robert-epsteins-empty-essay/
http://recursed.blogspot.com/2016/05/yes-your-brain-certainly-is-computer.html
 
Nice article by Epstein. In it, he emphasizes A. Chemaro and his Ecological Psychology worldview. I embrace his work, which was to some degree inspired by J. J. Gibson.and his theory of direct perception.
A few cognitive scientists – notably Anthony Chemero of the University of Cincinnati, the author of Radical Embodied Cognitive Science (2009) – now completely reject the view that the human brain works like a computer. The mainstream view is that we, like computers, make sense of the world by performing computations on mental representations of it, but Chemero and others describe another way of understanding intelligent behaviour – as a direct interaction between organisms and their world.
Let me say that my simplistic view is that the isomorphism between brains and computers (wetware and hardware) is that both of their information processing is modeled by the same natural laws that govern information processing. They work very differently, with truly divergent physical substrates. Computers have no functional means of doing a special process of what minds of living creatures do -- Understand Facts - both the particular and the global levels of abstraction. Understanding, a mental process, has as its mode of operation the detection of information objects, (IMHO).
 
I suspected from the moment I read the title something wasn't right. I can think of one point where his position is full of cr_p, is when he asks someone to draw the dollar bill and they draw a very inaccurate depiction. He should ask Stephen Wiltshire an autistic savant artist who was tasked with drawing from memory a panorama of the city of London after a 15 minute helicopter ride. He had 5 days to complete it. To see him drawing it, start the video at 30 minutes. He should also test his beliefs against such folks as these. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_claimed_to_possess_an_eidetic_memory

I thought about eidetic memory, the moment I read it, also. Eidetic memory is a major empirical fact, which points to Direct Perception. But in fact, the normative person will not exhibit the skill, and only have heighten recall with emotionally charged experiences.
 
I suspected from the moment I read the title something wasn't right. I can think of one point where his position is full of cr_p, is when he asks someone to draw the dollar bill and they draw a very inaccurate depiction. He should ask Stephen Wiltshire an autistic savant artist who was tasked with drawing from memory a panorama of the city of London after a 15 minute helicopter ride. He had 5 days to complete it. To see him drawing it, start the video at 30 minutes. He should also test his beliefs against such folks as these. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_claimed_to_possess_an_eidetic_memory

Other not so sweet things people have to say about Mr. Epstein
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/scientific-american-mind-is-not-so-scientific/
http://lukependergrass.work/blog/the-information-processing-brain
https://sergiograziosi.wordpress.com/2016/05/22/robert-epsteins-empty-essay/
http://recursed.blogspot.com/2016/05/yes-your-brain-certainly-is-computer.html

I didn't say the theory was accurate, I even questioned it elsewhere on this forum. But all the things I mentioned have been posted on this forum in the past, thus showing that yes at least some people here are keeping track of neuroscience.

As for the links given I've read a few of them already.
 
I thought about eidetic memory, the moment I read it, also. Eidetic memory is a major empirical fact, which points to Direct Perception. But in fact, the normative person will not exhibit the skill, and only have heighten recall with emotionally charged experiences.


I did too, hey that reminds me, this word normative. It's something I hear only on this forum. Never in normative conversation, normative tv, normative radio, normative... When did it become popular? Was it ever normative to use the word normative?
 
I thought about eidetic memory, the moment I read it, also. Eidetic memory is a major empirical fact, which points to Direct Perception. But in fact, the normative person will not exhibit the skill, and only have heighten recall with emotionally charged experiences.

There's some review of incredible feats of memory in Irreducible Mind, and Chapter 4 goes into some possible ideas.

Off the top of my idea I recall a woman who saw a "magic-eye" type picture but on two separate occasions yet was able to layer them in her mind and see the picture. Think it was in that book?
 
I did too, hey that reminds me, this word normative. It's something I hear only on this forum. Never in normative conversation, normative tv, normative radio, normative... When did it become popular? Was it ever normative to use the word normative?
It is a word associated with data sets. (geek alert) Data sets are like collectable trading cards for science wonks.
 
There's some review of incredible feats of memory in Irreducible Mind, and Chapter 4 goes into some possible ideas.

Off the top of my idea I recall a woman who saw a "magic-eye" type picture but on two separate occasions yet was able to layer them in her mind and see the picture. Think it was in that book?
There is also the famous "woman who can't forget".
As far as I recall this was investigated pretty thougroughly by neuro scientists. The lady could literally remember the news on the paper of any day of any year... she knew what she had for lunch 15 years ago etc... As if she didn't have any short term memory.

Funny how it didn't come to my mind when listening to this show, LOL :D
 
There is also the famous "woman who can't forget".
As far as I recall this was investigated pretty thougroughly by neuro scientists. The lady could literally remember the news on the paper of any day of any year... she knew what she had for lunch 15 years ago etc... As if she didn't have any short term memory.

Funny how it didn't come to my mind when listening to this show, LOL :D
My wife wasn't famous, but boy o boy she didn't forget.
 
I did too, hey that reminds me, this word normative. It's something I hear only on this forum. Never in normative conversation, normative tv, normative radio, normative... When did it become popular? Was it ever normative to use the word normative?

Normative - Of or relating to, or prescribing a norm or a standard
(nothing to do with data sets)
 
I think the show threads being open are fine, so long as they stick to the actual topic. (What's a bit annoying about this time around is people don't address the argument Braude is making about memories which just makes this thread into one long debate about basically everything that gets argued in CD.)

The bigger problem right now, IMO, is you have a spammer messaging everyone, posting the same link in multiple sections (including Spirituality), and an unclear line between C&S and CD.

My thinking was C&S is about where science goes after one accepts immaterialism on some level, CD is whether immaterialist ideas are valid?

p.s. This isn't an attack against the mods, just curious about what's going on.

Hi Sciborg_S_Patel
Can you explain to me please what does 'CD' and 'C&S' refer to
Thanks
 
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