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Nathan Taylor's avatar

I'm surprised you think the function of consciousness is to tell stories. Maybe you have a post on this, or a link to book. Or perhaps I don't get what you intend to mean.

My view is the mind is a model/prediction machine. Simple as that. You intuit the future you desire, and your brain has your body act to make that desire happen. Catch a ball, eat, whatever.

The next level is theory of mind modeling for social consciousness. But again, the brain intuits what you want, and then you act.

Stories are of course important to how people understand the world. But it's not clear to me they are the "main function."

Anyway. the prediction from my view is that there is a general difficulty to understanding motives/how people would act/react. The point of your post. If it's mostly a kind of blindness to our selfish desires, then baseline is we'd understand a lot of motvies and predict them well, EXCEPT when implies selfish motives. I think your original post better supports my view of a general condition, than your view of a general capability that has targeted blind spots.

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RobinHanson's avatar

The main function of consciousness is to create a simple story of what I've been doing and why that I can remember and tell to others. That suggests that self-understanding is quite important.

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