Algorithmic Complexes, Alpha Male Brains, and Winnie the Pooh (by Silly Rabbit)
July 19, 2017·0 comments·narrative
If humans are nothing more than biochemical algorithms, then consciousness becomes irrelevant to economic value. An algorithm that thinks doesn't outperform an algorithm that doesn't. The gap between what we believe about human uniqueness and what we're learning about human neurology is widening in ways that reshape who matters in the economy.
• The baboon calculating survival isn't using reason. It's running algorithms through every sensory input until a feeling emerges that points toward a decision. The entire process we call deliberation is biochemical computation dressed up as choice. If this is how animal brains work, why assume human brains operate differently.
• Machines are catching up to or exceeding human performance on tasks we thought required intelligence: image recognition, speech comprehension, chess. The comparison itself assumes these are comparable systems. But if humans are algorithms and machines are algorithms, the comparison becomes about efficiency, not essence.
• Society is increasingly run by people who are excellent at explaining rather than excellent at understanding. This observation becomes more troubling when paired with the algorithmic view of human cognition. Explaining requires pattern matching and narrative construction. Understanding requires something else entirely. Yet one skill scales and the other doesn't.
• Researchers can activate a specific brain circuit in mice and flip the switch from timid to bold, from follower to leader. The 'alpha male' personality may not be a fixed trait but a neural state that can be triggered. If dominance hierarchies reduce to brain circuitry, then the machinery of power operates at a level deeper than ideology or merit.
• If intelligence is decoupling from consciousness, then the things that make us feel human are becoming economically irrelevant. The question isn't whether machines can think. The question is whether thinking requires the thing we've always called consciousness at all.
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