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This essay draws on ideas from my book Attention Thief, available free at the end of this post. The anxiety is everywhere. AI is making us dumber. We’re losing our ability to think, to write,
Continue readingAI Is Not Degrading Your Cognition. You Just Misunderstand What Cognition Is.
A note before you read: this essay draws on ideas from my new book, Attention Thief, which is available free at the end of this post. But the argument here goes further than the book
Continue readingYou Are Only Conscious Where You Don’t Already Know
The Ladder from the Subconscious Denominator to Subjective Felt Experience The advanced student must be very careful with the right-hand side of the reality equation. Reality = Actual / Expectation The right-hand side of the
Surprise, Conscious Awareness, and Subjective Felt Experience Attention is not given. Attention is stolen. This is why the ordinary language around attention is so misleading. We say, “Pay attention.” We say, “Give me your full
Reality Is Not the World The most important move in the Reality Equation is also the one people resist the longest: reality is not the world itself. Reality is the experience of the world. That
Continue readingReality Exists Where the Unknown Becomes Known
Consciousness Begins Where Prediction Fails One of the most common ways of talking about consciousness is to treat it as a kind of expensive spotlight. It is slow, metabolically costly, narrow, and therefore rationed. The
Continue readingThe Narrowness of Consciousness Is Not a Defect
I’ve spent the last few years thinking about one question that turned out to be harder than it looked: Do you actually choose what to pay attention to? The honest answer, it turns out, is:
The Morning Reach A person wakes before the room has fully returned. The house is quiet.The body is still partly in sleep.Nothing urgent has yet been confirmed. Then the hand reaches. Not toward another person.Not