I’m watching “God Is In the Neurons” and “Athene’s Theory of Everything”. The video begins with a great explanation of how memories are formed by our experiences and how, as a result, talent and skills are formed. This is a great explanation for why people become good at something and why they are the ones that pioneer their fields and discover new things. Something to ponder: our consciousness is the current unity of actively firing neurons (whereas our subconsciousness is the collective of inactive neurons?). Could it also be said that mirror neurons are what create distinction or difference between each other person? That by viewing the lives of others were are subconsciously comparing and placing ourselves in society against them? Does this explain why we have a class based system for society?
I’m thinking about people being nothing more than the state of currently active neurons. For example, who I am when I am sitting at my computer is different from the person outside playing tennis. Although there must be a set of neurons that are almost always active that define traits of my personality. I don’t become an entirely new person, I simply shift the focus of parts of my active neurons to the ones that relate to tennis. What this makes me consider is the opportunity to control these patterns in your brain and utilizing the most relevant, productive, inspiring, motivated, etc. in every situation. By realizing this and focusing mental energy on activating these neurons, I could effectively become exactly the person I want to be?
UPDATE 2014-03-16: It’s strange to think that I learned this back then and trust it as a source for understanding the world. While it’s an incredibly compelling piece of entertainment, what belief structures have I built around interpreting reality this way? What if some element of it is wrong and thus an entire branch of my reasoning is poisoned by it? What if we discover that the mind works in an entirely different way than we thought? How would that effect my worldview and would I be able to adapt?