brain spy gray stuff... how does it hang onto all sorts of crazy stuff? 980903 ... sarah jane how does the crazy stuff leave room for what keeps us sane? 981014 ... Rainer I don't feel anything right now. Except for my brain which feels like a pile of mud inside my head. Except for my eyes that went dry when I stared at those papers for hours. Except for my knees cause I've been sitting on a too small chair. Except for my fingers cause I'm typing right now. I've been in the repetition of my final exam yesterday, and I hope so much I made it. 990423 ... jared_d Sometimes i just wish I could turn it off for a while. Always bombarding me with all these inconvenient ideas and doubts. Life would often be a lot easier without it. That being said, I wouldn't trade it for anything, not even a really good blowjob. 990923 ... Toade Probably the most dangerous thing to ever come out of the human race. Any substance that can create both the Haiku and the Holocaust is something to be regarded with suspicion. 991122 ... Mental Siege The brain is really amazing. I think that intelligence has a lot to do with the ability to make connections. I wonder how far the calibration can go... how could have a brain, or an intelligence, making connections, before it goes too far, and it all becomes nonsense? Is there an absolute limit to intelligence? It takes intelligence to even decide .. I'm blathering, aren't I? But, oh well, that's what this page is for, and it's Thanksgiving, and I have nothing better to do. Thanksgiving is the most boring day of the year. .. what is worth thinking about. I could decide to try to unearth connections between the laws of physics and corn, but it doesn't really seem worthwhile. I have a feeling I had some kind of point, but it's getting lost in the shuffle. Maybe another time. 991125 ... why me we all use our brain, but half the time it doesn't show. 991126 ... ralph A pretty dumb organ considering it's infinitely complex. The source of all of our experience. Is there an objective reality? Ask it. 991207 ... fucked won't leave me be, won't leave me alone! I wish it would go away and stop bugging me with its millions of useless thoughts and questions and ideas and concepts and words words words. So much chaos within my head. It never stops. I can't escape - not even in sleep. Perhaps in death? 000220 ... meggie its crazy to think that everything we need to live on processes in our brains, it hurts my brain to think about it. 000304 ... Brad brains are fun things. They let you do things like listen to vinyl records and play the vibraphone. Buh. 000308 ... Ernesto listless,almost comatose, still I want another dose. Erase my thoughts erase my brain, a dose would help me break this chain. Thinking ,spinning where's the beginning to this end? The end of this lonliness the end of this uselessness, yes just the end of this. 000407 ... lisa_is_bionic Never thought I'd get any higher Never thought you'd fuck with my brain Never thought all this could expire Never thought you'd go break the chain 000526 ... ted of coarse i speak. but only to break silence. if there was no silence we would not speak except with our brain 000529 ... bebop The mother of thought is a slab of technology that ripped itself from its natural surroundings. I think it needs a kick in the ass. 000808 ... amy imagine... we only use 1/10 of our brain's capacity..what would happen to the world if we used all of it? what would become of us? 001219 ... jeff ament evolution, baby 001219 ... kx21 b1) Will you still alive without your Brain? 001230 ... kx21 b1) Are you still alive without your Brain? 001230 ... kx21 b2) Are you still alive without your Brain and your Body? b3) Are you still alive without your Brain, your Body and your Soul? 001230 ... kx21 b4) Are you still alive after BRAIN-DEAD? 001230 ... User24 crazy brain like a speeding train or a speeding bullet, speeding right through it, i need more drugs to lower the pain, and i wanna hold your body next to mine for one last time before i go (on with the show) into the dark dead in a park who would know just go with the flow, hold that thought i know you ought and although we fought we've had good times together at the end of our tether its time to say goodbye lets fly going on for far too long so lets stop. 010524 ... ditto why do people end things like that? 010524 ... User24 blurgh. 010609 ... johnny west You don't have to have one to be successful. You don't have to have one to be liked by others. You don't have to have one to do anything. If you do have one, you can kill it stifle it or you could let others do that for you. It's all down to what you have, and what you choose to do with it. A lot of good it does. 010609 ... The Truth A brain is a beautiful thing. It's as if our brain is the life within us, and the rest of our body parts are just there to feed the brain, and move it around. (And to make more little brains too.) The brain has two major components, the conscious, and the subconscious. The subconscious is filled with mystery and the unknown, and makes up about 80% of our total brain. They taught us in High School that humans only use about 20% of our brains. I would like to say, here and now, that I think that is (almost)the biggest bunch of CRAP I've ever heard!! NOTHING in life/nature is inefficient! Everything is used and recycled to form a completely circular system. So why would the most magnificent structure ever to come out of nature be inefficient? No, I am afraid I'll have to object, your honor. Our brains are probably 1000% efficient! By that I mean that one day "scientists" will tell us that they "discovered" that humans use not only our ENTIRE brains, but within our brain is an electrochemical "projector" that utilizes non-organic tissues to process higher brain funcions. EXAMPLE: Let's say that the hypercortex emmits high frequency waves in a spherical shape around the outside of the brain, forming an invisible electrical energy field. This is possibly what some people refer to as the aura, or perhaps even the soul. 010627 ... shade makes bad decisions. or is that the heart? goes where it pleases at nightime wants a cigarette and also does not want one 010906 ... silentbob faithful 010906 ... starved the world turning circles running 'round 010906 ... finished with lies Two entities, hand in hand, working in unison under your direction. Break the link, and see what happens. You're not a Peter Sellers fan, by any chance, are you? 011024 ... moron I dont like to use my brain 011205 ... cube I don't believe that old saw about us using only 10% of our brains. Homo sapians are limited in their brain size by the inability of the (average) birth canal to pass a larger head. If we only used 10% of our brains, our heads would be 90% smaller and giving birth would be considerably easier... ³ 020222 ... starved my heart's been cooking mine 020526 ... letters to peter ...kinda bruised and swollen from all your mind-fucking. now my head is shaped oddly and I will forever have bad hair days because of the asymmetry. next time be more gentle, my dear. 020616 ... maim brain train crane fame dame elain pain disdain rain drain brain 020629 ... dr. stupid if the brain was simple enough to understand, we would be to simple to understand it. 020629 ... dr. stupid if the brain was simple enough to understand, we would be too simple to understand it 020629 ... little fury bug i had a biology teacher who had a human brain in a jar just sitting there on the shelf amongst a whole slew of preserved human organs and tiny animals. one day she passed it around to our class..i kind of just held the jar in my hand and looked at it for a while...just wondering who's brain it was, what kind of thoughts ran through it when it was still inside that person's head, the memories it contained...pain, heartache, happiness, dreams, wishes, visions...all rolled up in this lump of gray mass, looking kind of like chewing gum...it used to be alive, it used to be part of a human...and there i was just holding it in my hands...for a moment it felt overwhelmingly surreal--mystifying, perplexing...yeah, and at that moment i realized that there's no way in hell i can ever be a doctor... 020629 ... Ahmad messing round with this organ makes u feel good! 020821 ... ~gez~ what? your nob? oh the post is about brains. bit of a slow pick up there, sorry all 020821 ... ferret gez is sort of a strange name, i bet you didn't use your brain to come up with that, this ad is stupid, it's on a tv nope no check no money use the brain brain brai bra ooh bra! i like those brains and bras yummylicious bra brain bra brains !!!!!!!!1 yay! boobs brains brains boobs bras bras boobs brains! i'm so confused 021231 ... pajama electric & chemical reactions that cant be it..... I just laugh at how cruel that is... We are so lost.. no bigger than a grain of sand, just an unfortunate "oops" but no one to say it.. just had an increased chance of survival with greater social cohesion… Poof increase the frontal lobe... Hehehe.... And now.....well.. blather 030304 ... niska that dog on inspetor gadget. if it weren't for him, gadget would get it bad every time. how the dog can dress as a hula girl and nearly seduce gadget every time too, is amazing. how can he not recognize a dog that lives in his house? have i really lost all of my imagination? or is this show just really stupid? these are the questions on my brain tonight. 030506 ... wednesday Brains are the strangest things in the world, the most amazing to.. its like a living ball of slush, creature even, inside a round hard cage. Which has decided exaclty what you are about to do, before the thought even enters your mind(so to speak, if that makes any sence) 030519 ... once again Blather is alot like the human brain. They're both big, very big and yet so very small. They both contain everything and anything, and if it's not in there, you can put it in. Somewhere in my head are the entire lyrics to thousands of songs, memories and conversations and all my trivial doings. People put new stuff in my head everyday and it stays there, weather I know it or not. And I can look at something and it will remind me of twenty other somethings, whose meanings and memories come rushing back. Some where on blather are the entire lyrics to thousands of songs, memories and conversations and all of our trivial doings. People put new things on blather everyday and they stay here forever, weather we see them or not. And you can look at something on blather and it will remind you of something you read years ago on blather and all the memories come rushing back. Amazing. Simply Amazing. 031003 ... Sam Vaknin The brain (and, by implication, the mind) have been compared to the latest technological innovation in every generation. The computer metaphor is now in vogue. Computer hardware metaphors were replaced by software metaphors and, lately, by (neuronal) network metaphors. Metaphors are not confined to the philosophy of neurology. Architects and mathematicians, for instance, have lately come up with the structural concept of "tensegrity" to explain the phenomenon of life. The tendency of humans to see patterns and structures everywhere (even where there are none) is well documented and probably has its survival value. Another trend is to discount these metaphors as erroneous, irrelevant, deceptive, and misleading. Understanding the mind is a recursive business, rife with self-reference. The entities or processes to which the brain is compared are also "brain-children", the results of "brain-storming", conceived by "minds". What is a computer, a software application, a communications network if not a (material) representation of cerebral events? A necessary and sufficient connection surely exists between man-made things, tangible and intangible, and human minds. Even a gas pump has a "mind-correlate". It is also conceivable that representations of the "non-human" parts of the Universe exist in our minds, whether a-priori (not deriving from experience) or a-posteriori (dependent upon experience). This "correlation", "emulation", "simulation", "representation" (in short : close connection) between the "excretions", "output", "spin-offs", "products" of the human mind and the human mind itself - is a key to understanding it. This claim is an instance of a much broader category of claims: that we can learn about the artist by his art, about a creator by his creation, and generally: about the origin by any of the derivatives, inheritors, successors, products and similes thereof. This general contention is especially strong when the origin and the product share the same nature. If the origin is human (father) and the product is human (child) - there is an enormous amount of data that can be derived from the product and safely applied to the origin. The closer the origin to the product - the more we can learn about the origin from the product. We have said that knowing the product - we can usually know the origin. The reason is that knowledge about product "collapses" the set of probabilities and increases our knowledge about the origin. Yet, the converse is not always true. The same origin can give rise to many types of entirely unrelated products. There are too many free variables here. The origin exists as a "wave function": a series of potentialities with attached probabilities, the potentials being the logically and physically possible products. What can we learn about the origin by a crude perusal to the product? Mostly observable structural and functional traits and attributes. We cannot learn a thing about the "true nature" of the origin. We can not know the "true nature" of anything. This is the realm of metaphysics, not of physics. Take Quantum Mechanics. It provides an astonishingly accurate description of micro-processes and of the Universe without saying much about their "essence". Modern physics strives to provide correct predictions - rather than to expound upon this or that worldview. It describes - it does not explain. Where interpretations are offered (e.g., the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Mechanics) they invariably run into philosophical snags. Modern science uses metaphors (e.g., particles and waves). Metaphors have proven to be useful scientific tools in the "thinking scientist's" kit. As these metaphors develop, they trace the developmental phases of the origin. Consider the software-mind metaphor. The computer is a "thinking machine" (however limited, simulated, recursive and mechanical). Similarly, the brain is a "thinking machine" (admittedly much more agile, versatile, non-linear, maybe even qualitatively different). Whatever the disparity between the two, they must be related to one another. This relation is by virtue of two facts: (1) Both the brain and the computer are "thinking machines" and (2) the latter is the product of the former. Thus, the computer metaphor is an unusually tenable and potent one. It is likely to be further enhanced should organic or quantum computers transpire. At the dawn of computing, software applications were authored serially, in machine language and with strict separation of data (called: "structures") and instruction code (called: "functions" or "procedures"). The machine language reflected the physical wiring of the hardware. This is akin to the development of the embryonic brain (mind). In the early life of the human embryo, instructions (DNA) are also insulated from data (i.e., from amino acids and other life substances). In early computing, databases were handled on a "listing" basis ("flat file"), were serial, and had no intrinsic relationship to one another. Early databases constituted a sort of substrate, ready to be acted upon. Only when "intermixed" in the computer (as a software application was run) were functions able to operate on structures. This phase was followed by the "relational" organization of data (a primitive example of which is the spreadsheet). Data items were related to each other through mathematical formulas. This is the equivalent of the increasing complexity of the wiring of the brain as pregnancy progresses. The latest evolutionary phase in programming is OOPS (Object Oriented Programming Systems). Objects are modules which encompass both data and instructions in self contained units. The user communicates with the functions performed by these objects - but not with their structure and internal processes. Programming objects, in other words, are "black boxes" (an engineering term). The programmer is unable to tell how the object does what it does, or how does an external, useful function arise from internal, hidden functions or structures. Objects are epiphenomenal, emergent, phase transient. In short: much closer to reality as described by modern physics. Though these black boxes communicate - it is not the communication, its speed, or efficacy which determine the overall efficiency of the system. It is the hierarchical and at the same time fuzzy organization of the objects which does the trick. Objects are organized in classes which define their (actualized and potential) properties. The object's behaviour (what it does and what it reacts to) is defined by its membership of a class of objects. Moreover, objects can be organized in new (sub) classes while inheriting all the definitions and characteristics of the original class in addition to new properties. In a way, these newly emergent classes are the products while the classes they are derived from are the origin. This process so closely resembles natural - and especially biological - phenomena that it lends additional force to the software metaphor. Thus, classes can be used as building blocks. Their permutations define the set of all soluble problems. It can be proven that Turing Machines are a private instance of a general, much stronger, class theory (a-la Principia Mathematica). The integration of hardware (computer, brain) and software (computer applications, mind) is done through "framework applications" which match the two elements structurally and functionally. The equivalent in the brain is sometimes called by philosophers and psychologists "a-priori categories", or "the collective unconscious". Computers and their programming evolve. Relational databases cannot be integrated with object oriented ones, for instance. To run Java applets, a "virtual machine" needs to be embedded in the operating system. These phases closely resemble the development of the brain-mind couplet. When is a metaphor a good metaphor? When it teaches us something new about the origin. It must possess some structural and functional resemblance. But this quantitative and observational facet is not enough. There is also a qualitative one: the metaphor must be instructive, revealing, insightful, aesthetic, and parsimonious - in short, it must constitute a theory and produce falsifiable predictions. A metaphor is also subject to logical and aesthetic rules and to the rigors of the scientific method. If the software metaphor is correct, the brain must contain the following features: Parity checks through back propagation of signals. The brain's electrochemical signals must move back (to the origin) and forward, simultaneously, in order to establish a feedback parity loop. The neuron cannot be a binary (two state) machine (a quantum computer is multi-state). It must have many levels of excitation (i.e., many modes of representation of information). The threshold ("all or nothing" firing) hypothesis must be wrong. Redundancy must be built into all the aspects and dimensions of the brain and its activities. Redundant hardware -different centers to perform similar tasks. Redundant communications channels with the same information simultaneously transferred across them. Redundant retrieval of data and redundant usage of obtained data (through working, "upper" memory). The basic concept of the workings of the brain must be the comparison of "representational elements" to "models of the world". Thus, a coherent picture is obtained which yields predictions and allows to manipulate the environment effectively. Many of the functions tackled by the brain must be recursive. We can expect to find that we can reduce all the activities of the brain to computational, mechanically solvable, recursive functions. The brain can be regarded as a Turing Machine and the dreams of Artificial Intelligence are likely come true. The brain must be a learning, self organizing, entity. The brain's very hardware must disassemble, reassemble, reorganize, restructure, reroute, reconnect, disconnect, and, in general, alter itself in response to data. In most man-made machines, the data is external to the processing unit. It enters and exits the machine through designated ports but does not affect the machine's structure or functioning. Not so the brain. It reconfigures itself with every bit of data. One can say that a new brain is created every time a single bit of information is processed. Only if these six cumulative requirements are met - can we say that the software metaphor is useful. 031014 ... TK brainbrianbrainbrianbrainbrianbrainbrianbrainbrianbrainbrianbrainbrianbrainbrian my dad brian is such a brain, I in-hair-it-ed his eye color to an extent, but I'd much prefer to of in-hair-it-ed his brains, he knows so much about everything, and if theirs anything he doesent know (witch is unlikely) he can pick it up and memorize it @ the speed of light (or so it seems) I'm so envious, and yet he doesent ever brag, about anything... I miss daddy sometimes 031213 ... olivia we learn about cells in biology. cytoplasm, mitochondria, etcetera. we learn about nerve impulses too. i still don't understand how a mass of cells and nerves holds our memories and thoughts. the structures seem far too simplistic for that gargantuan purpose. 040413 ... . ..sometimes 040618 ... CowsandMoosesRule my brains a living in my head in my head in my head my brains are living in my head oops i killed my egg head brain death dead kill fat kleenex 041013 ... phil pain 041201 ... monee i've seen pictures of my mother's brain 041201 ... a birdmad in the lonesome crowded west heart_cooks_brain 041201 ... acidshank my brain keeps fucking up. its making me stupid. except im happy rite now damn coffee grinds. fucking up the side of my vision 041201 ... phil it is all my brain's fault. 051026 ... ricecake my best friend or my worst enemy depending on my state of mind actually its never really my best friend its more like a neutral companion when it keeps quiet and lets me get on with it.. i dont really know to be honest 051107 ... max......................................... the brain is like a super wireless network component fully functional and ready to go. If only we clicked that we are psychic we could steer our system into the thing that we all want. We all want the same thing, damn it! No oneda we fite. If we wanted different things we could just let one have everything and that one is going to be me! So you have to go and do something else 051228 ... association for higher intelegence for al you rejects out there who are anoyed by those "inconvienent" ideas, DOnt ignore them listen to them 070601 what's it to you? who go blather from