The Brain Knows More Than You Think

It's time to discuss the brain, if I may be a bit controversial. The more I read about it the more incredible it is, and thus we are. Here are some images of my brain taken shortly after my accident.

That's what a grade 3 DAI looks like. The white denotes, you guessed it, blood. One of the first books I read post-coma was Your Brain Knows More Than You Think. It was a good read for me at the time; about plasticity and ultimately, whether I agree or not, anti-euthanasia.

Another information source I used was the android app, 3D Brain. Be warned it uses up a good chunk of disk-space. This allowed me to learn about the different lobes of the brain, and what they control and to relate it back to my head. All this and other information sources lead me to the undeniable fact, that there is no such thing as free will. The human personality is simply an illusion, a meme, that is developed by our interaction with the world and our bodily functions' reaction to the same. We should, ultimately, hold no more "ill-will" toward any misdeed than we would against a physical act of clumsiness. I often think of Usain Bolt and Lionel Messi in this context. Surely their bodies are set up close to perfectly, to allow them to accomplish what they do in their sports. Further, the responsibility of parenthood should be seen as one's opportunity to produce something close to "perfection".

It's difficult for me, and I guess anyone who comes to similar realisations, to get impressed by a person's character traits. Character traits, like singing voices, just are. This is often discussed between Claire and I. We're both free-will deniers but she thinks that agency is very important and can be trained. I would say that a person must have will to train anything and since that's all physical, childhood is where the buck stops with such training, and you can't blame children for anything.