Ask A Genius 665: Cave Brains with Televisions
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2022/01/08
[Recording Start]
Rick Rosner: Well, my focus is on how our brains are filled up. You see, we have the same brains, genetically speaking, as people did 100,000 or even 10,000 years ago. But today, three key factors contribute to our brains being more saturated with information than they were 2,000 or even 500 years ago. The first factor is our increased lifespan; we live longer, giving us more time to accumulate experiences, memories, and information. The second factor is language, an efficient tool for storing or compacting information. It involves naming things and manipulating them symbolically, as a word in our brains is a symbol for an actual thing.
Then there’s the third point, and I’d add a three and a half to it. We’re constantly bombarded with information-rich content all day long – TV, movies, social media, newspapers, printed materials. And three and a half, this content is processed, reflecting a comprehension of the world that early humans lacked.
Our perception of the world and our thoughts are largely shaped by our external environment, by the things around us. We’re naturally distractible, which makes sense. If your brain functions as a predictor, which it does, you need some level of distractibility to ensure safety and to exploit new situations. You need to be acutely aware of what’s happening around you and not get lost in your own thoughts. Hence, our stream of consciousness is erratic; our thoughts can shift in just a third of a second based on external stimuli. Our thoughts are influenced by, or we’re prompted to think about things by, our surroundings. And with more control over our environments than early humans, we have greater control over our thoughts.
All this boils down to the idea that our thoughts are much more coherent than those of humans 90,000 years ago. Before language and the ability for systematic thinking, our behaviors and thoughts were probably quite similar to other primates. Back then, we could likely make tools and find shelter, but coherent thinking was a smaller part of our daily lives. I’d argue that, 80,000 years ago, most of our time was spent responding to immediate stimuli, whereas now, we integrate these moment-to-moment responses into our comprehensive worldviews.
So, there’s definitely a quantitative difference between us and the primates on the savannas 80,000 years ago. I think it’s also qualitative – we have more coherent thoughts, which probably requires a deeper exploration of what we mean by ‘coherent thought’. But for now, I’ll just leave it here, having outlined just a few reasons why our thinking is probably way more coherent than that of people 100,000 years ago. Our thinking will likely become even more coherent in the future, especially as the people who come after us utilize AI tools and integrated resources to hold, manipulate, and analyze more information. Thus, we’ll be able to respond to moment-to-moment situations while retaining more knowledge.
[Recording End]
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
In-Sight Publishing 