I understand you

I have written already about the inborn difference between us that creates unfair starting condition. My friend Volodia Timofeev has pointed me to another area of our wiring – the mirror neurons. These neurons are present in primate species and fire “both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another.“

There are several types of mirror neurons, and it is not proven yet how they contribute to the human cognition (most of the experiments, for the obvious reason, were performed on monkeys), but the idea itself has generated already a lot of speculations among scientists and public at large.

Some studies link them to our understanding of goals and intentions of others. Quite a few scientists argue that this is an underlying mechanism of the human empathy (and its deficiency is responsible for the autism). Yet others suggest that “human language evolved from a gesture performance/understanding system implemented in mirror neurons.”

For me, it is another possible source of our differences and the way to decrease it. Have you been ever surprised how others did not see what was “obvious” to you and how they insisted that something – very doubtful to you – was “obviously true” to them? It used to annoy and even irritate me. Only after I started – later in life – noticing changes in my views, I began to appreciate how little control we have about our understanding of others because we are “wired” so differently.

Marco Icoboni (a neuroscientist at the University of California at Los Angeles), for example, thinks that without mirror neurons, “we would likely be blind to the actions, intentions, and emotions of other people” (see his interview with Scientific American here). Which means those mirror neurons are at the very core of our ability to trust and cooperate. If so, then our mutual understanding very much depends on how well this mechanism works in each of us.

I can imagine that in the future we will be able to improve (if necessary) the mirror system deficiency and increase our mutual understanding.

It will come just in time in support of our ability to exchange our thoughts via the brain-computer interface.

And then we will be united into a one – omniscient and omnipresent – being.

Will this being become omnipotent too?

A father asks his son:

– Why do you read the book about raising teenagers?

– Just wanted to make sure you do it right.