Self-awareness
as the term suggests is awareness of yourself - your thoughts and
feelings. Of course, no one has this because we lie to ourselves. We
pretend that we're nicer than we are. We "feel" guilty as a
way of punishing ourselves for an action that we know to be bad so
that we can continue doing it without admitting how awful we are.
As
no one does it, there's no part of the brain that is responsible for
it.
Oh
wait. You're not going to like that answer. So, let's approach it
from another direction, shall we?
Your
question is the classic problem of trying to understand function from
the physical form.
Self-awareness,
if it were to exist, would be a function of the brain. To make
matters worse, self-awareness isn't just a function, it's a
metafunction. It is "being aware of being aware" or the
function reflected upon itself. Only really specialised functions
that require specialised forms are located in a single place, like
seeing in the eyes.
You
see, the brain isn't like a machine, it's like an army. With a
machine, a part has a specific function and if the part breaks. the
machine loses that function. With an army, a soldier is given a
specific task like communications. However, if that soldier is unable
to perform that function, the task is simply re-assigned to another
soldier.
The
idea that each area of the brain has a specific function is so 19th
Century. Yet every time there's another piece of evidence that shows
that this idea is wrong, it's a major revelation - and then it's
quickly forgotten so as not to disturb the status quo. Then we wonder
why we have trouble developing AI.
I
watched the boxset of "Westworld" recently. In it robots
eventually reach consciousness and have to prove it by ... killing
everyone. When did it become clever to kill?
When
did we become so fucked up?
When
did we become afraid of the very things we need to survive and
prsoper?
We
fear intelligence and we fear change.
We
fear intelligence. This is the real reason why we fear artifical
intelligence. We're worried that if robots ever became intelligent,
they will want to kill us.
When
has the destruction of one species by another ever been the
intelligent answer?
We
didn't kill and eat the Neanderthals because we were more intelligent
than them. We ate them because we were more brutal and nastier than
they were. Time and again, human civilisations have grown and
honoured intelligence - only to be swept out of existence by ignorant
savages. How much knowledge has been lost because of the book
burners?
When
Pol Pot came to power, his first order was to kill all of the
intellectuals. Wearing glasses was sufficient evidence of
intelligence and a death sentence. He wasn't the first. Lenin did the
same. But aren't these the very people you need to re-build society
after a war? That probably explains why Cambodia is still on the
poverty line as a country.
1.
Roleplaying - having to solve problems in real time with incomplete
data and understanding with whatever you have at hand. And then you
do it again and again for 2,3,4,5 hours or sometimes even longer if
you're having fun. You do that a few times and you start to get real
smart. If you want to get smarter even quicker, try Games mastering a
roleplaying session. It's 1000x more intense. Pick your favourite
genre and find a group
2.
Game Design. Come up with a new game to play. It can be a board game
or a card game or something entirely different. I'm staggered by the
sheer number of variations of games out there. Take "Kill Dr
Lucky" as an example. This has been designed as a prequel to
"Cluedo". In Cluedo, you work out who killed the poor
doctor. In "Kill Dr Lucky", you're trying to do the
dastardly deed while the other players are trying to stop you so they
can kill him. Brilliant fun! Start by changing the rules of an
existing game and see where it takes you. My brothers once decided
the play "Snakes and Ladders" where you did the reverse and
went down ladders and up snakes. That will teach you that rules
aren't set in stone and changing the rules, changes the game.
3,4
& 5 - Just how much time do you have to devote to becoming
smarter that you can afford to do 5 hobbies? What's wrong with you?
Carl
Sagan said "The dumbing down of American is most evident in the
slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential
media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less),
lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on
pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration
of ignorance”
Unfortunately,
it's worse than that. There isn't a celebration of ignorance, there
is a glorification of ignorance, even a deification of ignorance. I
see it all the time in real life and on the internet. There's an
attitude that says "I know less than you and that makes me
better than you". I often quip that I wished I lived in the film
"Idiocracy" because at least they had the good sense to
have a system that identified intelligent people and promote them to
a position of influence. That's more than we have.
There
is very little information about the items in your example. So the
brain seeks additional information through context.
Let
me illustrate. Take the question:
"How
important is tweadlfark?"
Your
first question is "wtf is tweadlfark?"
Your
second question is "how can I found out more so I can put
tweadlfark into context?"
Now
your brain has a clever mechanism that seeks out differences and
enhances them. That's because differences matter in nature. The
difference may be that there is only one fruit that is ripe or, more
importantly, one of those mushrooms is poisonous. So the ability to
see differences is an essential survival skill. So, surprise,
surprise, your brain emphasizes differences. This is what's happened
here.
In
the one on the left, the orange circle is smaller than the others so
its smallness is emphasised. On the right, it's the largest so it's
largeness is emphasized.
However,
I lied.
There
is an illusion here. It's the illusion that there is only one
"correct" answer as defined by the arbitrary idea that they
are the "same size" or, should I say, that "same size"
is the defining characteristic of this comparision and all other
considerations are null and void and should take no part in the
discussion.
The
logic is that because they're the same size, they are the same in
every other respect. When said like that, you can see how silly the
idea is.
Take
this picture:
Here,
the man is larger than the Eiffel Tower. So is that an illusion?
Well, it may be. That could be a model of the Eiffel Tower built to
fool us. But the con is all in the 2 dimensional distortion of
reality that is the photo.
It's
like asking why a 2 dimensional representation of a 3 dimensional
cube looks like this:
It
is the distrorted attempt to suggest 3 dimensions when you only have
2 to play with.
But
which one is right? They're all right in that that is how a cube can
look from a particular angle but they're all wrong if they claim that
that is the only way a cube can look from any direction or that one
direction is more important than another.
And
that is the illusion.
This
is a clear case of mistaking the map for the territory.
Let's
take a more famous example
The
words underneath say "This is not a pipe".
And
they're right, it's not a pipe. It's just blocks of various colours
on a screen. We resolve those colours into a definable shape and then
determine the 3 dimensional object that best "fits" that
shape and decide that it is a pipe and, in fact, is a a particular
pipe that is usually associated with Sherlock Holmes.
But,
of course, it's only a pipe if we recognise it as a pipe.
A
plumber would say, "That's not a pipe. This is a pipe"
And
they would be right
A
musician would say, "That's not a pipe. This is a pipe"
And
they would be right
I
see this kind of stunted thinking all of the time in lateral thinking
puzzles - which is ironic when you think about it.
Let's
take a classic example:
There
are three objects in the damp grass under the bright sunshine. What
are they?
The
usual answer is two pieces of coal and a carrot which were the eyes
and nose of a recently melted snowman as demonstrated by the damp
grass.
The
real answer is: they can be anything you can think of. For example,
they might be a rock, a goldfish and an overturned goldfish bowl
where the aforementioned rock hit the bowl spilling the contents
onto the now damp grass and leaving our poor goldfish to its fate
under the sunshone. Or it could be a gun and two gloves thrown out of
the window of a passing train after a murder wher the grass is damp
with morning due and has no immediate relevance to the identification
of the objects only the time they were placed. Or it could be an
alien and their robot which has recently parked their alien craft
(the third object) there for a picnic only to be disappointed because
the grass is wet from recent rainfall. The number of "correct"
answers is near infinite.
The
illusion is that when you limit the amount of usable information, you
also limit the number of "correct" answers to that
information when the reverse is actually the case. As, less
information is given, more has to be inferred to construct a sensible
scenario and in that inference, the number of options multiplies
exponentially.
The
illusion is that the assumptions we make are the only assumptions you
can make and all others are wrong.
In
case, you're wondering a tweadlfark is a type of tuning fork used to
find the note of the human aura so you can re-tune it to be in
harmony with the music of the spheres.
The
best question you can ask is "How do you know that?"
People
are very quick to give advice or impart knowledge and most of the
time (99% at least), it's great, steaming, flies-buzzing-round-it
bullshine.
You
wouldn't believe the amount of advice I've had about running a
business from people who have never done it and never intend to do
it. So how would they know?
What
I've just told you is question authority. Just because someone is a
parent, teacher, boss, manager, cop or judge doesn't automatically
make them right.
Seek
better advice
If
you want to climb Mount Everest, don't ask me, I wouldn't know how.
Ask Brian Blessed or another climber who could tell you something
worth hearing. All I can tell you is that it can be done because
people have done it.
Don't
be afraid to ask
People
are afraid of looking stupid. Why would not knowing something mean
that you're stupid? It merely means that you're uninformed. As the
world grows more complex and information-driven, it becomes
impossible to be informed about everything. So does that mean people
are becoming more stupid?
