If Current.Subroutine(inputs) == ‘Failure’ Then ApplyConsciousAwareness(inputs)
In my first post, I touched on the idea that our brain can be hijacked by modern day dopamine triggers, but I’d like to zoom out and address the more general phenomenon of our brain’s software and how to troubleshoot.
It may be useful to think of natural selection like an amateur programmer taking her Intro to Computer Science course the first semester at school. Like natural selection, she is eager for success, but in writing her code she makes an amateur mistake: While testing and debugging, she only applies test cases that she expects are typical for that type of problem.
Function DivideByTwo(x): #Divides input by 2
Integer answer = x/2;
Return answer;
Here, our avid young programmer wrote a function to take an input, ‘x’, divide it by 2, and return the answer. This function works quite well for inputs like ‘4’,’10’,’28’,’100’, which may have been what she had in mind. In this simplistic example, it easy to see where this function will fail. Because the variable ‘answer’ was declared as an integer, any odd-numbered ‘x’ will lead to a loss of information when stored in ‘answer’.
DivideByTwo(9); #This test case demonstrates the programmer’s oversight with regard to the input set. The variable answer will be fed the result to the formula 9/2, which is 4.5. The integer variable ‘answer’ cannot store a decimal value, and so it is truncated down to 4.
The software in your brain is also lovingly written by a well-meaning programmer who only prepares for test cases he expects and has seen before. Therefore, to know whether your software is prepared to handle certain kinds of inputs, you must ask if it has received similar inputs before. In evolutionary terms... to determine whether to trust your instincts and listen to your body, you should know whether your ancestors encountered this situation in their environment.
Furthermore, unlike a freshman computer science student who can simply go correct her code once a bug has been detected, natural selection will have members of a species die by the hundreds before that bug has been patched. It’s not enough for one Homo Heidelbergensis to fall off a cliff in order for natural selection to write in a subroutine for Fear.ofHeights(). A statistically significant number of them however, falling from mountains, trees, canyon-edges is enough to begin selecting for those who, by virtue of variation in the population, already had a relatively healthy respect for the edge of a cliff.
Fear.ofHeights() has served us well, even in modern times. There is another one called Consume.Carbohydrates(), which was sadly written in a time when simple carbohydrates were very rarely ever available. It contains a tragic loop:
While simpleCarbs == ‘available’: #AND Stomach != ‘full’ *Was never useful
Consume();
...which is why you’ll notice that you tend to snack on certain things indefinitely, even when you’re not particularly hungry. When simple carbs are involved, you may often overeat, which is why food manufacturers put them in EVERYTHING. Make yourself aware.
We have another function in the same class called Consume.Water(), where the opposite is true. It was written in a time when water was sometimes available in abundance. So, it contains a loop with a greater range of inputs in mind:
While Water == ‘available’ AND Stomach != ‘full’:
If waterSaltBalance < ideal Then
Consume();
Else break;
...and yet we are commanded by the medical establishment to consume eight 8 oz glasses of water every day to avoid dehydration. This recommendation is sorely misled, as our sense of thirst is one of the pieces of code that runs just fine today. Even our household pets, well outside their wild environment, don’t force themselves to drink x ounces of water per day. They drink when they’re thirsty. So should you.
The takeaway here is that there are times when you can trust your body and follow your instincts. There are other times when you need to make yourself aware of your own pitfalls.
When you hear someone say that they ‘have bad genetics’ or that someone else ‘lucked out with good genes’, it becomes appropriate to slap them in the back of the head. If you’re reading this, then you are descended from a long line of winners… from a lineage of proto-humans who survived every dire situation in the wild you can imagine - and many times at that. Through the harshest ice-age winters, through weeks without food, through regular attacks from predators and microscopic pathogens, through crippling injuries and illnesses, through the loss of countless comrades (most of whom did not pass on their genes), and every combination thereof. Your genes are awesome.
It took a while, but natural selection wrote some killer software. However, it never saw the 21st century coming.