Thinking Hard about Stuff...

Hey! Enki has moved his blog to Armyofevilrobots.com. Check it out after you are done here. This page is going nowhere though...

I have spent most of my day letting my subconscious do all of the work, while my forebrain sits in idle, reading crap on the internet. Every few seconds, the solution to the latest algortihmic problem I have been having, surfaces, and I tap it into Anjuta, and then go back to the browser.

I realized suddenly (prompted perhaps by thinking briefly about my previous Fark post), that most of all of my thoughts function in this way. I am gifted with an unusually active, and intelligent subconscious... Or am I?

Is it possible that everybody thinks this way? When I read a particularly brilliant quote from a particularly renowned (for his wittiness) author... I wonder how much of this is just bubbling up from some base of intellectual inuendo way down in our limbic system.

Earlier today I had an interesting encounter at the leading hamburger outlet:

Me: (to counter people, of whom there are many, waiting for customers) Who wants it?
Manager: (nudges tiny little counter girl) You want it?
Tiny Counter Girl: Oh yeah! I want it!
Both break down in giggles
Me: One McGrill meal please, supersized, no subtext on that.
Both counter girls: huh?

So it seems that the entire conversation occured (for them at least, and mostly for me as well), in our subconscious brains. Just coasting along giggling with the inuendo tossed up by our lower neurological functions.

Maybe it is meant to be this way. Maybe Sterling was right in Our Neural Chernobyl where he posited that we have a primate stupidity barrier, where we have to be kept dumb enough that basic tasks like eating, washing, and avoiding predators are more interesting than whatever is going on in our own heads. It would certainly explain why people like Einstein have earned a reputation for being disconnected from the world they inhabit.

Posted by Enki at January 8, 2004 01:13 PM | TrackBack