We are watching a psychology show on Netflix right now. Brain Games explores the way the brain works, and how it can play tricks on us. There are plenty of optical illusions and interactive activities. (After several episodes my curiosity got the better of me -- I did peak once when they said to close your eyes and listen. The sign on the screen? "We told you to close your eyes.")
One episode was quite interesting in that it began with the premise that --from birth-- men and women are different. They think differently. They have different brains with different strengths and weaknesses. This is inbred in our cells and DNA. I was amazed that such a thing would be stated so bluntly a mere 3 years ago. (We've made quite the rapid slide into nonsense here the last year or so, eh?)
Another interesting episode was how people tend to be overconfident. We don't like to think we don't know. We don't like to accept that we make mistakes. We justify ourselves. There are spiritual and theological ramifications to this psychological fact. (Or maybe flip it around: they showed the psychological ramifications of what is actually a spiritual fact.) It makes me even more put off by [ahem] confidence.
The episode on paying attention helped me understand some situations I face at work ... and why it's so easy to overload a mind (especially after a brain injury that compromised my thinking skills).
In many ways, I apparently think more like a man than a woman: my color perception, my spatial skills, my verbal skills. Oh well.
The episode on memory showed me something else that I suspected. My memory has really gone downhill. [My apologies, Gary. But it has.]
The oddball thing of this whole series? My brain is more like Maggie's now than it used to be; we're finding quite often that we both come up with the same answer in the interactive games. But we keep answering the "wrong" answer (that is, the unexpected answer, given by a small minority of their subjects). We're wondering if we have trained our brains this way. If so, I think it's a good thing.
Thursday, June 25, 2015
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The interesting thing is actually how society has flip flopped on the idea that men and women's brains are different. They used to say they weren't but in order to justify men thinking they are women and vice versa they've actually had to accept that our brains are different from birth (because then you can show that a person's brain scan "shows" they are the wrong gender).
ReplyDeleteI am curious about the show now it looks interesting.