hh on Nostr: Human consciousness and reasoning are emergent phenomenon. The closer we get to ...

Human consciousness and reasoning are emergent phenomenon. The closer we get to unconscious instinct, the more deterministic and homogeneous we get.

As we go "up", the interactions between perceptual layers and feedback systems in our brains (like memory) produce chaotic outputs (which simply means too complex for us to find the pattern, not necessarily random). But we can always trace any decision back to our two fundamental instincts as living organisms: survival and propagation in time and space.

Species-level generalizations and predictions are possible at the base fundamental level (which is abstract), and get muddy as we approach the concrete level: first community level which is a bunch of individuals whose aggregate behavior may not coincide with any individual's, and finally the individual, consciously deciding level itself, which is in practical terms unique and unpredictable.

That's why we get wildly diverging social and cultural institutions among human groups that in reality solve for exactly the same issues everywhere: how to use natural resources, how to protect genetic inheritance, how to deal with death, etc.