Q Right, and we'll get into that. I think one of the interesting things is that the questions about consciousness is, you know, if let's say the goal was survival, you know, we could do that all sort of mechanically, but For some reason, we don't just do it mechanically, right? We do it in a way that we have awareness of it as we go along.
A Yeah, and that's kind of, you know, that's one of the hard problems. I mean, this idea, you know, most of what the brain does, it does without our awareness, right? It's monitoring the body 24 seven. It's adjusting your heart rate, your blood pressure, your, you know, glucose levels. I mean, amazing amount of things to keep you at the proper homeostatic set point. And we're not aware of this. Yet some at the tip of that ice iceberg of mind is this area of stuff we are aware of. So why isn't all automated? Why wouldn't that have made more sense? Why did some of it have to come into our awareness? And there are various theories about that. Um, you know, one, and I find it persuasive is that, um, there are certain things that go on for a creature that need to be addressed In a reflective way. In other words, um, that if you, let's say you have needs that are incommensurate, um, and, and are in conflict, you're hungry and you're tired, which should you, which should you address first? That kind of stuff would, would come into consciousness. Um, I also think consciousness is really helpful in a social situation. When you're dealing with Um, a world that is fundamentally unpredictable. That is to say what other people are going to do at any given time, what other people are going to say at any given time. And you have to be able to imagine yourself into their heads. We call it theory…
AI assessment note: “we live in this intricate social world, being conscious is a huge boon”