Braaaains

So it is actually completely coincidental that I have started thinking about brains, but it occurs to me in thinking about them that I have a good many good reasons to comment on them at the moment. Aside from the obvious becoming a zombie joke, which I already made in the title.

Matt and I saw The Rite tonight and it reminded me how fascinated I am by possession, exorcism, and human psychology in general. I am the only person I know my age who actually read the Exorcist (it was a book first. The book is way better than the movie). In the book the question of whether Exorcism is actually demonic in nature, or whether it is a very specific (or even very general) psychological state, and whether that is ultimately a meaningful question to ask, is dwelt on a great amount.

I am fully atheistic, although my spiritual involvement with the world is far more complicated and human than that word would make it sound. That said, I fully believe that there are people who believe themselves to be possessed, and that people under the impression that they are possessed can do things which appear supernatural. I read something once about the "demonic" voice commonly reported in possessions. You can even find audio recordings of it online quite easily (not for the faint of heart). Incidentally, I'm pretty sure those tapes are from the exorcism which was the basis for the movie the Exorcism of Emily Rose.

Anyway, people usually think of such voices as demonic, possessed, etc. But it turns out that us humans have two sets of vocal chords (you may remember this was awkward during puberty), and the voices are generally caused simply by the activation of both at once. This is not supernatural, but it is very impressive. Actually, there are monks who spend great amounts of effort to train themselves to do this at their own whim.

As an atheist, I think possession is an amazing example of how far beyond our understanding of our own bodies our bodies can actually perform. Superhuman strength, speaking languages we do not generally understand, sudden changes in blood distribution throughout our body, activation of vocal chords simultaneously. Yes, it is terrifying, but it is simultaneously amazing. Also as an atheist, I think that if people can be tricked into thinking they are possessed and start acting possessed, and that if exorcism can trick them into thinking they're not again, then exorcism should be pursued regardless of the existence of God or of demons.

As a mass-volume poker player, I achieve flow states where my body functions beyond my understanding of its abilities. There have been times when I have been consciously planning to call or to fold on a river, only to click to make the opposite decision subconsciously before I am able to do what I had been planning to do, and I have never to my knowledge had my subconscious decision be wrong (hard to know for sure because when I fold I don't get to see their cards). When you get all-in preflop it's very common for the range of hands your opponent can have to be QQ+ or AK, but very often I know with a fair amount of certainty which of those hands I'm going to see. How? How long it takes them to press call, I guess. Maybe how quickly they reraised me the first time. It's hard for me to say exactly. In Blink Malcolm Gladwell talks about a guy who knows instinctively whenever a tennis player is going to double-fault as they are throwing the ball up for their second serve, but cannot work out how he knows. How wonderful it would be to actually work such things out, and be able to teach them and use them.

At the last coaching session I was at we had KQ on K9xK with two clubs, and we raised. Our opponent tanked for a little and then shoved all in. I said quite confidently that he had JT of clubs. We called. He had JT of clubs. We didn't have the queen of clubs in our hand, but I had absolutely no instinctual thought that our opponent had QJ of clubs, despite them being almost identical hands on that board. Maybe people take longer to raise JT preflop, or bet slightly differently on the flop and turn. I don't know. Maybe I'm just lucky and succumbing to researcher bias where I remember when I'm right and don't when I'm wrong. Probably some of all of the above.

I've heard people use the expression "playing like he's possessed". I wonder at what point that becomes technically true.