Thread: Psychological Blockade of the Human Brain

Anybody who insists that Human Beings are incapable of expressing concepts and ideas just has not read enough yet.

But yes I will concede the point that most people are not up to the task.

But certainly some insight into one's own stupidity should not be used as a general indictment to accuse everybody else of being equally stupid.

It quite reminds me of the self proclaimed 'Apostle' paul who in discerning his own inherent baseness and corruption went an unwarranted step further to proclaim that all of humanity was equally corrupt. Well, it could convince everybody but a righteous man.

And your Doctrine of Universal Stupidity can certainly convince other stupid people, but anybody who has ever recognized or discerned intelligence, would have his doubts.

I'll add a penny or two: The human brain (as well as, I think, the brains of all organisms) is hard-wired for survival over understanding, therefore the false premise of understanding that allows for the ability to go to the next moment and process correctly in our habitat is sought after by evolution over real comprehension of the Universe. The human being would stumble around blindly if their brain only related the images from the eyes "as is." Everything would become random, and meaningless. That's why humans don't see the world as it really is, but they see the world their brain makes for them, and that, i think, is the limitation the mind sets in favor of survival. It's necessary that you see only what your brain can relate to, as opposed to seeing everything, but being unable to relate to any of it.

Arawok Indians, upon seeing Christopher Columbus' ships on the horizon, actually saw nothing at all because ships that big were completely unrelatable to anything they had ever experienced. What they saw was unexplanably strange movement by the Ocean on the horizon. Their wiseman (I forgot the specific term) studied the Ocean's movements on the horizon for days until finally he prolcaimed there were ships out there, and little by little the fellow tribes-people began to see them. I don't have a source for this anecdote and I can't give evidence that this was actually how it went down, but I've read it at least twice in my life.

My point, reiterated, is that the eyes see everything, the mind sees only the familiar, it's why we see shapes in the random imaging on plaster walls, we have to be able to comprehend meaning out of randomness, and sometimes what seems random will later be uncovered as a scientifically explanable, logical occurrence but for the purpose of moment to moment survival it's necessary for humans to have certain limits on their understanding.

Thats true the human mind does try to fit everything into patterns, and it is hard-wired for survival. It would be a mistake to say you can't overcome that however. Many people live day to day on auto pilot, not thinking and your probably right that they may not see things for what they really are. If however, you are actively thinking, you will see things for what they really are.

As for the stupid thing, thats probably true. A donkey that uses his brain 100% is probably smarter than a human who only thinks 30% of the time. Like leo said however, a human who thinks 100% of the time, is not stupid.

One thing to keep is that the brain is like a muscle. Look around and see how many people are out of shape, the same amount of people are probably out of shape when it comes to thinking. Its not as obvious because your brain doesn't really shrivel up that much but it might as well.

DoomedOne's comment reminded me of Sankara's Snake. Sankara was India's foremost scholastic Saint and the founder of Vedanta Philosophy... the highest and most coherent expression of Spiritualist Philosophy the world had yet or has ever heard. True even today, as even the Modern Vedantists are hardly standing still but rush forward to make sure nobody gets ahead of them.

Anyway, back to Sandara's Snake.

Sankara pointed out that at twilight, when the light of day is fading into shadows, it often happens that people are afraid when seeing a mere rope coiled on the ground by a well. They think it is a snake.

Well, this Mistake in Perception points out for a fact that people do not experience Direct Perception of the Truth. Perceptions are only inferential and may be wrong. Perceptions are like navigating by shadow and echo. Humans do not have access to Direct Knowledge, at least not through the senses.

From this premise Sankara moved forward to insist that the the Material World, as far as anybody could tell from their disconnected Rope-is-Snake perceptions, was Illusory. The World of our Perceptions was not Real but only inferential.

Well, the problem with Sankara is that his Philosophy only works at twilight... when the Rope appears to be a Snake. During the Day the rope is definitely a rope. And at night one does not see it, but when one feels around for the rope at the Well... if it does not wiggle and bite, then it is probably a rope.

My point is that intelligent inference is not such a bad thing, and we can permit ourselves to believe in them. Bats fly quite well by echos, and in scientific labs they now use shadows of collamated light to make precision measurement of irregular objects.

Well, Sankara did die at 33... too young to have finished a life's work. If he had lived to be as old as myself he certainly would have come to wider conclusions.

Some very good points brought up guys!

It seems to me the separation is our level of consciousness. Our sentient being. Our capacity for awareness of our own perceptions.
As Leo state most of what we perceive is an illusion.
Our consciousness. Sometimes we want t look in a mirror to see what we look like. In a similar manner our consciousness tries to observe itself as well. The individual, me - "I" It seems s our own consciousness begins to adhere labels to create it's identity, the illusions follow.

In short, the human brain cannot live with something that is unexplained. We have a psychological blockade that stops us from not being able to explain a phenomenon. So we explain it with something that is within the reach of our understanding. Within the borders of the blockade. So we think up an explanation. [/b]

You think people would realize this and take this into account when they feel that their is ONE religion.
No matter how segregated a culture or how many other things you can account for the human mind, transferring it's concepts to the surrounding region, all have come up with A religion or reasoning behind what we can't explain. Whether it be God or Zeus. We have to have answers.

BTW - The God of thunder, Zeus is not throwing lighting bolts during thunder storms. It is something more in the line of positive and negative charges & convection!

Originally Posted by Leo

Anybody who insists that Human Beings are incapable of expressing concepts and ideas just has not read enough yet.
But yes I will concede the point that most people are not up to the task.
But certainly some insight into one's own stupidity should not be used as a general indictment to accuse everybody else of being equally stupid.
It quite reminds me of the self proclaimed 'Apostle' paul who in discerning his own inherent baseness and corruption went an unwarranted step further to proclaim that all of humanity was equally corrupt. Well, it could convince everybody but a righteous man.
And your Doctrine of Universal Stupidity can certainly convince other stupid people, but anybody who has ever recognized or discerned intelligence, would have his doubts.
[/b]

don't be a dick leo. It's scientifically proven that the human brain has a greater potential than we can conceivably reach. Just look up any of the research being done on autistic savants. And as an intelligent person myself [/narcissism] I can tell you without a doubt that most people are indeed idiots.

Do you mean to say that there are people that don't view misunderstandings as pieces to the puzzle of the universe?

Every time we identify a piece to the puzzle, we become one step closer to the truth. From there, we can look for a place to put the puzzle piece. When we find it's correct place, we refine our view of reality. Eventually, we will fit all the pieces together. Then we no longer see an illusion, but instead we have a true view of the universe.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE("DoomedOne")</div>

Arawok Indians, upon seeing Christopher Columbus&#39; ships on the horizon, actually saw nothing at all because ships that big were completely unrelatable to anything they had ever experienced. What they saw was unexplanably strange movement by the Ocean on the horizon. Their wiseman (I forgot the specific term) studied the Ocean&#39;s movements on the horizon for days until finally he prolcaimed there were ships out there, and little by little the fellow tribes-people began to see them. I don&#39;t have a source for this anecdote and I can&#39;t give evidence that this was actually how it went down, but I&#39;ve read it at least twice in my life.[/b]

There&#39;s no historical evidence for that, and it&#39;s a completely ridiculous idea. In addition, the entire Arawak population was annihilated in the next fifteen years or so, so how did the story survive?

1. The entire population was not annihilated. Enrique, an arawok hero, defended the remains of the Hispanola natives against Spanierds and eventually the Spanierds were forced to sue for terms favorable to the Arawoks. IU forgot the numbers, but there proportions of the arawoks killed means they were practically annihilated, still many survived.

2. A priest that was with Columbus recoreded the Arawoks constantly, and wrote a lot about their culture into journals, as did many other people that were apart of that event.

3. Depends on your definition of historical evidence, as there are plenty of ideas passed down purely through oral tradition, not even written down as this story was, that are accepted as true in our society.

4. If you were to take a good look at history as well as science you&#39;d eventually find it completely absurd to ever remark anything as a ridiculous idea.

I too find this absurd. You saw that in "What The Bleep Do we Know", right?
That would be similar to saying anything I have never seen before, I could not perceive...

Maybe there are hundreds of alien space ships in the air & we can&#39;t see them.

And therefore we should all be blind, since we can never see anything we&#39;ve never seen before. Yes, it was mentioned in that "What the Bleep Do We Know?" film, which I have not seen but have heard a lot (mostly negative) about.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE("DoomedOne")</div>

1. The entire population was not annihilated. Enrique, an arawok hero, defended the remains of the Hispanola natives against Spanierds and eventually the Spanierds were forced to sue for terms favorable to the Arawoks. IU forgot the numbers, but there proportions of the arawoks killed means they were practically annihilated, still many survived.[/b]

I&#39;ve never heard anything about Enrique. The Arawak population of a few hundred thousand was cut down to a few hundred by some point in the 1500s. I&#39;ve never heard a thing about successful Arawak resistance, though I know that it was tried and many fled to the hills, only to be massacred later.

2. A priest that was with Columbus recoreded the Arawoks constantly, and wrote a lot about their culture into journals, as did many other people that were apart of that event.[/b]

Of course there was documentation of certain important events. However, it&#39;s not like they could understand the Arawak language at the time, so any documentation of this story that exists would have come later. As far as I know, there&#39;s still no evidence that this happened. If you can provide it (preferably an online source that cites sources from the late 1400s or 1500s), I&#39;d be happy to review it and see if it&#39;s credible at all.

3. Depends on your definition of historical evidence, as there are plenty of ideas passed down purely through oral tradition, not even written down as this story was, that are accepted as true in our society.[/b]

Yes. Like urban legends. Oh, wait, those aren&#39;t true (with the occasional exception).

4. If you were to take a good look at history as well as science you&#39;d eventually find it completely absurd to ever remark anything as a ridiculous idea.[/b]

I think you&#39;re wrong. I think I&#39;d be correct in saying that when I wake up tomorrow, the sky won&#39;t be orange from the eastern horizon to the western horizon, there won&#39;t be eight moons in the sky, and I won&#39;t have twelve toes on each foot. I think I&#39;d also be correct in calling those ideas "ridiculous."

This is a stupid argument and I&#39;m, not playing anymore, the point of this topic is psychological blockades. It honestly doesn&#39;t matter what evidence I pull up, you can choose to believe whatever you want.

The fact is that is a surviving story from the Arawoks, and the point of that anecdote is to highlight the bias in human perception. The human brain is hard-wired for familiarity, and without that hardwiring we could at anything, no matter how logical. We could look at a coil of rope (as Leo mentioned earlier) and not see a snake, but without the proper hard-wiring in our brain to see a coil of rope, we wouldn&#39;t even see that, we would see random, meaningless imagery. It&#39;d look like a plaster wall, except that because of the way our brain is hard wired, we even see familiar imagery in plaster walls, as well as clouds and designs on the bark of trees and so on.

EDIT: That&#39;s right I saw it in that movie, but I&#39;ve also heard of that anecdote before ever seeing "What the fuck do we know," as well as the idea that human perception is biased, which is pretty common knowledge for most people, though to the level of not seeing anytrhing at all because it was completely unlike anything they;d seen before, that&#39;s a stretch but a plausible one.

As far as everything being initially unfamiliar, actually that&#39;s part of early development of the brain. I mean, if you want to see how biased perception is look at the mechanics of the eye. The eyes see everything completely upside-down. Hence, when a baby grabs at something, usually they&#39;re grabbing at the wrong spot, because everything get&#39;s sort of switched as light bounces into the eye. Their minds learn to turn the image their brain is sending them... upside-down, and suddenly everything become tangible, and their brains start forming connections, linking thing together, and ascertaining their universe, making it practical, understandable. Initially there probably isn&#39;t any meaning associated with anything at all, but it&#39;s not a plaster wall because there are feelings associated with everything, mom, dad, the crib, the stuffed animal, whatever.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE("DoomedOne")</div>

This is a stupid argument and I&#39;m, not playing anymore, the point of this topic is psychological blockades. It honestly doesn&#39;t matter what evidence I pull up, you can choose to believe whatever you want.

The fact is that is a surviving story from the Arawoks, and the point of that anecdote is to highlight the bias in human perception. The human brain is hard-wired for familiarity, and without that hardwiring we could at anything, no matter how logical. We could look at a coil of rope (as Leo mentioned earlier) and not see a snake, but without the proper hard-wiring in our brain to see a coil of rope, we wouldn&#39;t even see that, we would see random, meaningless imagery.[/b]

Don&#39;t be a jerk. I only asked you to provide evidence for your claim. If it really is a story that the Arawaks passed down, there should be evidence that they passed it down, and if the Spanish heard the story from some Arawaks, there should be more evidence of it. As it is, I&#39;ve seen nothing to support it, so I don&#39;t believe it. Fair enough?

I&#39;m not being a jerk, it&#39;s just easy to play the skeptic in an argument. All you have to say is, "That evidence isn&#39;t good enough, this is reidiculous, that is illogical" meanwhile I&#39;ve been racking my brain with all these plausible explanations as to how that story could have survived and other reasonable evidence to prove the concept exists besides that arawok anecdote. I figure I&#39;ve done my part, I&#39;ve given you plausibility for how that story could have survived and I&#39;ve given you a little bit of evidence for how the brain might actually work that way.

Now if you&#39;ll excuse me a movie is on.

I&#39;m not being a jerk, it&#39;s just easy to play the skeptic in an argument. All you have to say is, "That evidence isn&#39;t good enough, this is reidiculous, that is illogical" meanwhile I&#39;ve been racking my brain with all these plausible explanations as to how that story could have survived and other reasonable evidence to prove the concept exists besides that arawok anecdote. I figure I&#39;ve done my part, I&#39;ve given you plausibility for how that story could have survived and I&#39;ve given you a little bit of evidence for how the brain might actually work that way.[/b]

You know, if you had ever given me any evidence that the Arawaks could not see the ships, I could actually think about whether it added up or not. You haven&#39;t. If it actually occurred, there should be something you can link me to or reference. I&#39;m only asking for some kind of evidence that the event happened.

Now if you&#39;ll excuse me a movie is on.[/b]

Hopefully it&#39;s not "What the Bleep Do We Know?"

I SAID GOOD DAY