Originally Posted by regal
He was doing other things too, like the difference between a phone and a TV. It was amazing, is amazing what the brain can do.
It is amazing the self-congratulatory patting on their backs humans do in calling themselves amazing. I guess unabashed pride has no limits.
As someone who has studied cognitive psychology and neuroscience, I see the brain as something, like all the products of evolution, that is far from optimized and in fact a barely 'will make do in most circumstances' solution. Any familiarity with the suboptimal heuristic algorithms the brain uses for most cognitive processing, and not to mention the extreme inefficiency from an energy point of view (it consumes an inordinate fraction of your calories), and I won't even get into all the mental problems and diseases that are far from uncommon...
Humans like to see themselves as the peak of evolution. In fact nothing could be further from the truth. By any evolutionarily meaningful measure of success, be it total numbers, total biomass, adaptability, resilience, being widespread throughout the biosphere in all different environments, it is bacteria that win outright, with no multicellular organism coming close. Why did they win? Simple (pun intended): they're just complex enough, and no more. Chances of a mutation being detrimental are much lower because there is less complexity that could be ****ed up, and the short life cycle and horizontal gene sharing makes them readjust to pretty much any change in environment in no time.