The Difference Between You and It (Cognition vs Creativity)
- The human mind is not particularly good at:
Reason (we need to focus in order to think rationally);
Memory (we forget and we don't remember correctly);
Computation (we need to learn it in school);
Communication (language is imprecise and ambiguous).
- Machines are better at these tasks.
- Human minds are better at: Improvisation; Imagination.
In a word: "creative improvisation".
Human minds can manage dangerous and unpredictable situations.
Human minds can be "irrational", and sometimes this is essential not only to bodily survival but to mental survival.
- Modern society organizes our lives to remove danger and unpredictability.
Modern society empowers us with tools that eliminate the need for improvisation and imagination.
Modern society dislikes (and sometimes outlaws) irrationality.
- We build redundancy,
backups,
distributed systems, and so forth
to make sure that machines can do their job all the time in any conditions.
We do not build anything to make sure that human minds can still do their job of creative improvisation all the time in any conditions.
- Humans are becoming irrelevant for the survival of their own world
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