Previous: easy things are hardNext: Are people machines?Contents

Society of Mind

2.6 confusion

It's mainly when our other systems start to fail that we engage the special agencies involved with what we call consciousness. Accordingly, we're more aware of simple processes that don't work well than of complex ones that work flawlessly. This means that we cannot trust our offhand judgments about which of the things we do are simple, and which require complicated machinery. Most times, each portion of the mind can only sense how quietly the other portions do their jobs.