

This Is Your Brain on Kafka - Sapient
http://www.miller-mccune.com/news/this-is-your-brain-on-kafka-1474

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carterschonwald
In other news, scientists discover the human brain's learning algorithm
performs better on new problem instances when measures are taken to prevent
over fitting on the initial learning examples.

That aside, I feel like any act which exposes your mind to ideas and
experiences which are wholly new would have the same effect, eg I would be
genuinely surprised if there wasn't a similar effect after someone read the
Sandman comics that Neil Gaiman authored for the first time.

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DannoHung
Well, presumably the first experiment was constructed to help control for
that. Though I've never been terribly sure how effective these sorts of high
level psychological experiments are.

I'm much more at ease when someone talks about millisecond response times and
sacchades.

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IsaacL
Now we need only wait until some enterprising person releases 'Baby Kafka' for
expectant mothers.

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petercooper
My wife is a big The Mighty Boosh fan and reads a lot of Lewis Carroll, and
the other night, doing a crossword, asked: "Is there a word spelled.. i-n-t-o?
In-toe?"

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tarkin2
Simply put, absurdity exercises your brain when you seek meaning in such. Such
exercise increases your ability to find meaning and patterns.

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hegemonicon
Given that our brains are hard-wired to find patterns, I'll bet this also
makes us more likely to "find" them where none exist.

See:
[http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2008/11/its_one_of_the_more.p...](http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2008/11/its_one_of_the_more.php)

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RiderOfGiraffes
See also: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=826628>

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olliesaunders
Can anyone suggest some good absurdist literature then?

