Wishful Thinking
The brain, a mere computer?
Why, no more than the bladder is a reservoir, the kidney is a sieve, the liver is a big ol' chemical-smashin' anvil, the eye is a projection screen, or than the heart is a pump.
What is it with these simplistic interpretations of among the most complicated systems in existance? Here we are, the veritable masterworks of evolution (just below bacteria, viruses, and a few other organisms whose inferiority we ascribed largely due to size and lack of having built pyramids), but we're so easily falling into heuristics of perception. Sure, it does help us cope. We don't go ahead and assume that just because we can only see the head of the cat, the animal exists only as a floating head and bipedal torso. We work by expectation and analogy, and that's fine and quick, but it's too far from rigorous. Yes, the car is like a horseless carriage, but what's a 12-cylinder engine, a sparkplug, a computer-guided braking system, or stick-shift transmission?
There's so much we can understand, limited by their being 'only' so much we can understand. It may be a stable truism that we are limited, but do not under any circumstances let that limit you. The tremendous variability and non-universality between individual systems should give pause: why are their these kinds of abberations, deviations, detractions? What makes the difference?
Well, realizing that makes all the difference.
Why, no more than the bladder is a reservoir, the kidney is a sieve, the liver is a big ol' chemical-smashin' anvil, the eye is a projection screen, or than the heart is a pump.
What is it with these simplistic interpretations of among the most complicated systems in existance? Here we are, the veritable masterworks of evolution (just below bacteria, viruses, and a few other organisms whose inferiority we ascribed largely due to size and lack of having built pyramids), but we're so easily falling into heuristics of perception. Sure, it does help us cope. We don't go ahead and assume that just because we can only see the head of the cat, the animal exists only as a floating head and bipedal torso. We work by expectation and analogy, and that's fine and quick, but it's too far from rigorous. Yes, the car is like a horseless carriage, but what's a 12-cylinder engine, a sparkplug, a computer-guided braking system, or stick-shift transmission?
There's so much we can understand, limited by their being 'only' so much we can understand. It may be a stable truism that we are limited, but do not under any circumstances let that limit you. The tremendous variability and non-universality between individual systems should give pause: why are their these kinds of abberations, deviations, detractions? What makes the difference?
Well, realizing that makes all the difference.