TEDxHouston - Dr. David Eagleman

Dr. Eagleman holds joint appointments in the Departments of Neuroscience and Psychiatry at the Baylor College of Medicine. His areas of scientific expertise include time perception, vision, synesthesia, and the intersection of neuroscience with the legal system. He directs the Laboratory for Perception and Action, and is the Founder and Director of Baylor College of Medicine's Initiative on Neuroscience and Law. Dr. Eagleman has written several neuroscience books, including Wednesday is Indigo Blue: Discovering the Brain of Synesthesia (co-authored with Richard Cytowic, MIT Press, 2009) and Dethronement: The Secret Life of the Unconscious Brain (Pantheon, 2010). He has also written an internationally bestselling book of literary fiction, Sum, which was named a Best Book of 2009 by Barnes and Noble, New Scientist, and the Chicago Tribune. Dr. Eagleman has written for the New York Times, Discover Magazine, Slate, and New Scientist, and he appears regularly on National Public Radio to discuss both science and literature.

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• Category

  Science & Technology

[CorrectingReligion]

Good insight into the depths of our ignorance and the vastness of cosmic space. Hearing the confident assertions of those who proudly boast of their certainties makes me laugh. The new frontiers of knowledge undermine all that has gone before and will no doubt unveil things beyond our wildest imagination. What is demanded is humility and a willingness to revise what has gone before. Not posturing and foolish arrogance.

[AtheistGallant]

Loved this speech. The wonders of reality are greater than what people have so far envisioned. I'm tired of the bullshit artists pretending they know what they possibly can't. Dogmatic fools on all sides claiming to have it all figured out on the basis of reading what dead men have said, be they godly or godless. Let the Possibilian vision take root.

[Kai Anttila]

This guy is a pseudoscientist.

[TheOmegaPointProject]

Alan Watts, Robert Anton Wilson and Terence McKenna have talked about this view a lot before; Except that David now has a name for it.

[devdissent]

Good speaker, terrible ideas. First dark matter is only 24%, second atheism is not the position that there is definitely no God/gods, it's just the position that He/they are unlikely (which is what possibilianism automatically implies)

[rith5]

Really? you found Hitchens writing dull? That must make you the winner, congratulations.

[TheOCTCD]

All you and he are saying is that we don't know everything yet.

I don't see how that makes it okay to make random claims about the nature of reality that you can't prove, what's wrong with people saying that in conversation we should stick to the things that we do know?

[deadlyspartan242]

In the spirit of this video, I would like to point out to you that; it is in fact a possibility and he is not wrong in asserting his suggestion of possibility. There may not be any evidence for it, our universe is huge, to us at least. We may in fact be a universe inside a much larger one, WE will never know. ~Nothing is entirely impossible, but can be highly improbable!~

[Dane Mason]

Best. Video. Ever.

[Iritscen]

Most easily amused audience ever.

[LuolDeng4MVP1]

I want to sit next to David Eagleman on a plane...

[Jessica Basa]

This man is AMAZING! Great public speaker, great educator!