I caught myself today

going off on tangents while talking to the medical student.

The issue of the predictive value of risk assessments took me to randomness, Gödel's theorem, Hofstadter's book and my understanding of his hypothesis that consciousness arises through the interplay of recurrence and self-similarity, and fractals (they were so fashionable when I was a student; I was surprised my young colleague-to-be knew nothing about them. Have they perhaps fallen from grace?)

Yes, maybe fMRI is the way forward in terms of researching the hardware basis of mental disorders, as she suggested. It sounds appealing to be able to see the human brain functioning in real time, becoming colourful with activity.

But how far can a human mind go in terms of studying the human mind?

In the end I gave her a copy of the HCR-20, a book title- Why Love Matters- and the suggestion that if she were to keep something from our discussion I would like this to be the notion that it is important to remain humble, open-minded, curious and caring when studying humans.

And off she went.