Short People Got No Reason....(to gripe)

That's not how the song goes, but according to a recent NPR podcast, a recent neuroscience study shows that short people actually may experience things more quickly than tall people. Really, it's more an experiment about the subjective nature of time than about tall vs. short -- from the same neuroscientist who brought us the Possibilitarian movement, Dr. David Eagleman combines psychophysical, behavioral, and computational approaches to understand the neural mechanisms of time perception. For example, touch your nose and toe at the same time. (Humor me, will you?) ... Did you feel the touch at the same time? I did. But if you think about it, shouldn't the signal from the toe take a tiny bit longer longer to get to your brain? After all, your nose is on your face, which is closer to your brain. So shouldn't you have felt the touch on your nose first?

Eagleman calls this phenomenon "temporal binding": the brain manages to synchronize what's happening even though sensory data comes through your eyes, ears, tongue and skin at slightly different times and speeds. According to Eagleman, it may be that our sensory perception of the world has to wait for the slowest piece of information to arrive; "Given conduction times along limbs, this leads to the bizarre but testable suggestion that tall people may live further in the past than short people."

To listen to the entire podcast, click here, and to read more about subjective time versus neural time, click here. And to learn more about Eagleman's Lab for Perception and Action, click here.

Are You a Possibilitarian (or Possibilian)? Tales from the Afterlives...

Tired of the blather between Dawkins and the Discovery Institute? A refreshing and amusing voice in the debate on is-there-God-or-an-afterlife, is neuroscientist and author David Eagleman, who explains that science has taught him that 1) there are so many possibilities out there, 2) that there is a new movement, Possibilitians, who are not certain about anything, 3) the bigger point is that we really don’t know what is going on, and 4) Science teaches you not to commit yourself to anything if there is not enough evidence.

In his book, Sum: Forty Tales From the Afterlives, he imagines a variety of scenarios; here is an excerpt:

"In the afterlife you discover that God understands the complexities of life. She had originally submitted to peer pressure when She structured Her universe like all the other gods had, with a binary categorization of people into good and evil. But it didn’t take long for Her to realize that humans could be good in many ways and simultaneously corrupt and meanspirited in other ways. How was She to arbitrate who goes to Heaven and who to Hell? Might not it be possible, She considered, that a man could be an embezzler and still give to charitable causes? Might not a woman be an adulteress but bring pleasure and security to two men’s lives? Might not a child unwittingly divulge secrets that splinter a family? Dividing the population into two categories—good and bad—seemed like a more reasonable task when She was younger, but with experience these decisions became more difficult. She composed complex formulas to weigh hundreds of factors, and ran computer programs that rolled out long strips of paper with eternal decisions. But Her sensitivities revolted at this automation—and when the computer generated a decision She disagreed with, She took the opportunity to kick out the plug in rage. That afternoon She listened to the grievances of the dead from two warring nations. Both sides had suffered, both sides had legitimate grievances, both pled their cases earnestly. She covered Her ears and moaned in misery. She knew Her humans were multidimensional, and She could no longer live under the rigid architecture of Her youthful choices....
The most important aspect of Her new system is that everyone is treated equally. There is no longer fire for some and harp music for others. The afterlife is no longer defined by cots versus waterbeds, raw potatoes versus sushi, hot water versus champagne. Everyone is a brother to all, and for the first time an idea has been realized that never came to fruition on Earth: true equality. The Communists are baffled and irritated, because they have finally achieved their perfect society, but only by the help of a God in whom they don’t want to believe. The meritocrats are abashed that they’re stuck for eternity in an incentiveless system with a bunch of pinkos. The conservatives have no penniless to disparage; the liberals have no downtrodden to promote. So God sits on the edge of Her bed and weeps at night, because the only thing everyone can agree upon is that they’re all in Hell."

As this interview on NPR reveals, Eagleman's imagined afterlives range from the mundane to the profane. You might say that he's a member of the Church of What's Happening Now. Or a Singularitarian.
Either way, the possibilities are endless!~ And fun to consider...

To read more about Afterlives, click here.