And when and how we break it Although our language ability is our most powerful trait as human social animals, its absence — silence — is also surprisingly important for our social relationships. Like the general complementary asymmetry between events and non-events in our lives — the alarm that rang…

Stop making it so easy for people to make them real — After yet more horrific mass shootings, particularly the recent, racially-motivated one in Buffalo, New York, there is resumed discussion about guns, “universal background checks”, and “mentally ill” people. But the Buffalo shooter is a perfect example of a person who found it all too easy to acquire the means to…

Are large supra-organisms too diffuse for self-awareness? Like all long-lasting human supra-organisms, living nations have cultural ideas that, although they may be expressed in written documents, videos, and other semi-permanent records, reside ultimately in the brains of the human individuals who currently collectively embody the nation. There are usually differences…

It’s one part of a system that models the overall system, including to some extent the modeling part — In some previous articles, including these, I have explored how computer programs can exhibit conscious self-awareness: A Computer Program That Exhibits Consciousness — https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/a-computer-program-that-exhibits-consciousness-964ab03f61e5 and RecipeExpert as a Philosophical Thought Experiment — https://jmason37-80878.medium.com/recipeexpert-as-a-philosophical-thought-experiment-f9d567ca6a4f

Memory involves the future as well as the past — Unless we are unconscious or demented, we all keep and manage a mental priority queue of actions that we anticipate taking each day, whether out of necessity or by free choice. …