"Our bodies are hanging along for the ride, but my brain is talking to your brain. And if we want to understand who we are and how we feel and perceive, we really understand what brains are"
About this Quote
The phrasing does a few clever things. "Hanging along for the ride" is intentionally dismissive, almost comic, reducing flesh to inert cargo. It flatters the listener into joining an exclusive channel of contact: not you and me, but "my brain" and "your brain" in direct conversation. That move quietly reframes human intimacy as information exchange, a premise that sits comfortably inside Silicon Valley's bias toward computation. The subtext is that identity, emotion, and perception are not mysteries of meaning or culture; they're engineering problems awaiting better schematics.
The line also smuggles in a claim about authority. If personhood is brainhood, then the people who can explain brains (neuroscientists, AI researchers, the inventors building brain-inspired models) become the people best positioned to explain us. That elevates a particular kind of expertise while sidelining the messier truth that bodies are not just vehicles: hormones, gut signals, pain, disability, pleasure, and social context shape cognition. Hawkins isn't ignorant of that complexity so much as strategically simplifying it to make a persuasive bet: crack the code of the brain, and you get the master key to mind, machines, and meaning.
Quote Details
| Topic | Science |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite | Cite this Quote |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Hawkins, Jeff. (n.d.). Our bodies are hanging along for the ride, but my brain is talking to your brain. And if we want to understand who we are and how we feel and perceive, we really understand what brains are. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/our-bodies-are-hanging-along-for-the-ride-but-my-112018/
Chicago Style
Hawkins, Jeff. "Our bodies are hanging along for the ride, but my brain is talking to your brain. And if we want to understand who we are and how we feel and perceive, we really understand what brains are." FixQuotes. Accessed February 1, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/our-bodies-are-hanging-along-for-the-ride-but-my-112018/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Our bodies are hanging along for the ride, but my brain is talking to your brain. And if we want to understand who we are and how we feel and perceive, we really understand what brains are." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/our-bodies-are-hanging-along-for-the-ride-but-my-112018/. Accessed 1 Feb. 2026.





