The best one-sentence description I’ve read of how we think is “humans, if given the choice, would prefer to act as context specific pattern recognizers rather than attempting to calculate or optimize.”
We’re free to coast on simple pattern matching and automatic processing 90% of the time. Consciousness is only there because it’s monitoring any deviation of action from intention. If something goes wrong and our learned rules and basic instincts aren’t working, consciousness has to step in and try to cobble a solution together on the fly (usually badly).
Consciousness is a failure mode. He was trusted with root access, and he’s spent the last hundred thousand years or so abusing it.
Substitute “behavioral control” for “root access” for something closer to my intended meaning (I couldn’t resist going with the metaphor, but it doesn’t really work).
If something goes wrong and our learned rules and basic instincts aren’t working, consciousness has to step in and try to cobble a solution together on the fly (usually badly).
Considering that we’ve so completely kicked ass against any other species that we haven’t been even on the same playing field for thousands of years I’d say conciousness has done rather well for itself.
Ofcourse this is just in relation to other species, in absolute scale we probably are not that good.
The best one-sentence description I’ve read of how we think is “humans, if given the choice, would prefer to act as context specific pattern recognizers rather than attempting to calculate or optimize.”
We’re free to coast on simple pattern matching and automatic processing 90% of the time. Consciousness is only there because it’s monitoring any deviation of action from intention. If something goes wrong and our learned rules and basic instincts aren’t working, consciousness has to step in and try to cobble a solution together on the fly (usually badly).
Consciousness is a failure mode. He was trusted with root access, and he’s spent the last hundred thousand years or so abusing it.
What? No, the whole point of this post, the whole problem, is that consciousness does not have root access.
Substitute “behavioral control” for “root access” for something closer to my intended meaning (I couldn’t resist going with the metaphor, but it doesn’t really work).
Considering that we’ve so completely kicked ass against any other species that we haven’t been even on the same playing field for thousands of years I’d say conciousness has done rather well for itself.
Ofcourse this is just in relation to other species, in absolute scale we probably are not that good.