
Revenge of the lizard brain - biggfoot
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2012/09/07/revenge-of-the-lizard-brain/
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Sharlin
Surely the concept itself is sound if you forget the misleading names and the
idea of three independent modules? The more ancient parts of the brain
certainly are located nearer the brainstem, and the most recent ones near the
surface.

Also, even though the brain appears on a high level to function as a
coordinated whole, there are certainly situations where, for instance, the
ancient FFFF[1] responses compete with whatever the neocortex wants to do.
Indeed, there's even a plausible-sounding hypothesis[2] that subjective
experience itself arises from conflicts between the different modules.

[1] Fight, flee, feed, reproduce

[2] [http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=791](http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=791)

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ExpiredLink
"Brain science" is ripe for debunking. Why do people still accept this humbug?
[http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2012/09/your-
brain...](http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2012/09/your-brain-
pseudoscience)

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webhat
Thanks for the information, I was guilty of perpetuating this myth too.

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biggfoot
You're not alone! The most upvoted answer on Quora did this too.
[http://www.quora.com/Procrastination/How-do-I-get-over-my-
ba...](http://www.quora.com/Procrastination/How-do-I-get-over-my-bad-habit-of-
procrastinating/answer/Oliver-Emberton)

Credit to the author, he wrote an (equally well received) apology after he was
corrected in this.

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kristofferR
I disagree actually. It's obviously not a legitimate scientific hypothesis,
and shouldn't be presented as such, but it's still a really useful way to
think about procrastination.

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biggfoot
People do present it or use it as a scientific fact.

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guard-of-terra
How can you have a lizard brain when lizards are an unrelated evolutionary
branch? It should be a frog brain perhaps.

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biggfoot
Well a reptilian brain is what he means :) Aren't reptiles common ancestors?

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guard-of-terra
They absolutely aren't! Mammals are Synapsids, reptiles and birds are
Sauropsida. They branched before most of brain development in both groups took
place and since then we don't share ancestors.

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biggfoot
Hmm. Interesting. So there is absolutely __no __basis to a reptilian brain
component thingie?

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guard-of-terra
There might or might not be - we still have some our distant evolutionary
ancestors; but the nice name for it ("lizard brain") is false.

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linuxhansl
Having spent some time in meditation practice, I have come to the conclusion
that this is true (maybe not literally, but at least in effect).

We all spend most (all?) of our time being driven by impulses and habits
without realizing that we're doing so and without any choice in that matter.

Moments of mindfulness are the exception, typically caused by some "unusual"
event - like somebody you know dying.

It's quite a sad state of affairs (IMHO anyway). More like living the live of
an extremely sophisticated robot, rather than a conscious, living being.

Everybody should spend a few minutes every day reflecting on exactly how
decisions throughout the day were made.

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biggfoot
Eh? Markov chain? Just asking.

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larsonf
No matter someone's stance on this, it seems a bit forward to discredit a
relatively widely-held theory as something that is weakly argued by providing
a few bullet points and then an outright assertion of another competing
theory. This kind of thing has no place on Hacker News.

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biggfoot
How is it a widely-held theory? It hasn't stood up to scrutiny, at least any
well documented tests.

It is sorta misleading, in fact, because a lot of good authors and speakers
assume it as a well known fact and add their leaps of imagination to it. It is
OK at best as a pop culture thing, maybe a poetic spin off.

Why does it have no place on Hacker ... oh, you know what, scratch that. No
point entering that debate. Thanks.

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larsonf
I think you're right on this.

It's not so much about whether the stance is true or not and whether we should
debate that. It's that articles that discredit something as trivially untrue
by way of a trivially small statement. In the extreme it would be like
discrediting [insert pseudoscience topic] by simply mentioning a copy of
_Nature_. There's some degree here, sure. But tabloid-style takedowns,
regardless of whether they are right, seem almost out of place.

I am wrong to say this has no place, though, which is in itself a pretty big
claim with no substance behind it.

