Do Humans come with Software?
When you purchase a new computer you always get more than you asked for. Along with the operating system, computers come with a lot of extra programs. Some of these are annoying. Others turn out to be useful. And some you will never even know you have.
Microsoft .NET Framework: I don’t know what you do, except keep my computer from shutting down.
Every day I learn more about computers, and every day I learn more about myself. What works on the computer? What works for me? These questions often lead me to believe that the human brain, with all its intricacies and idiotic ways, is little more than a biological computation machine.
Neurons make connections and perform functions, so they are like the processor and the RAM. The hippocampus stores memories, so it is the hard drive. The visual cortex processes data and renders it into graphics, just like a video card. Finally, our thoughts and behavior patterns, the things we actually do with our brains, are the software.
Some machines can handle more complex programs than others.
There are many circumstances in life that make me nervous. I don’t like crowded public transportation, rush hour traffic, or being stalked by wild animals. What brings about the most anxiety, though, is social interaction.
Speaking with other people is like a test and a stage performance rolled together into a single stomach-churning experience. Many times, my instinct is to turn and walk in the opposite direction rather than share a simple hello with another person. Even if I know that person. Especially if I know that person!
Oh, Crap! I know that guy. I gotta get out of here!
Social interaction is inevitable, especially if you want to get anywhere in life. Sure, you can do all your shopping online, but how will you earn money to pay? There is no job where you get to just hang out in a room by yourself all day. Even if there were, you would eventually get hungry and have to talk to the greasy guy from Dominoes.
This would be the minimal amount of interaction, but most of us are more ambitious than to sit in solitude and eat pizza for decades. In order to accomplish anything of note, you are going to have to talk to other people.
Despite my fear, I always do fine with other people. As far as I can tell, I have never had an utterly terrible interaction. The pretty girl I ask out might scowl and turn away, but she never spits in my face. And when I encounter people on the street, they don’t run in terror.
That would actually be kind of cool.
Social interaction is far easier than I think it is. I wonder if it’s a kind of stock program, like Minesweeper or Paint. A program I was born with. It’s always running in the background and taking up valuable CPU resources, but sometimes you have to sacrifice raw performance for actual functionality.
Tell that to the Linux Guys
Most of us have this software, and many of us don’t even know, because it works without having to think about it. The only way to really know everything that’s going on in our heads would be to bring up the task manager. On a PC, you press control-alt-delete. I’m not sure how to bring up the task manager on a human.
But I think it might have happened once during a game of twister.
The social-interaction program is free, and it works well enough. But we all know how free programs function. They do everything you ask of them, but not without pop-up ads or limited uses. Maybe the reason I feel nervous when interacting with others is because I only have the trial version of the software.
I bet it would work better if I shelled out some cash for the full program.
Well done fitting the analogy. Though I personally am terrified of computers, should I now be terrified of people? Children terrify me the most, being a teacher.
Thanks a lot. And yes, you should be terrified of people. Especially children.
The full program doesn’t work better. It just makes you THINK it does. Marketing, brother. It makes the world go ’round.
I guess I wouldn’t know. I’m too cheap. But I’ll take your word for it; marketing does seem to be everywhere.
Do humans come with software? Yes, they do. But as with computers, it’s damned hard to understand the manuals and make the hideously complex things work right! 😉
There is a manual!?
The main manual is philosophy, and the minor one is psychology, I think. The problem is that toady’s manuals are mostly irrational and low-quality. This is a cultural Dark Age, believe it or not. The wealth and hard science of the early 21st century is better than ever, but what seemingly COUNTS in life is mostly soft science or the humanities. And those are poor these days.
I am a historian, which falls into the social sciences category. The social sciences do appear to count more in life, especially on the individual level. But they don’t really do a great job selling themselves.
Social sciences are represented in the common perspective as poets and literature types who are very smart but don’t really do anything, vs. the “hard” scientists who build bridges and rocket ships. Both groups are stuck up, but most people are more interested on iPad apps than a treatise on gender identity in 19th century minstrel shows.
Social sciences are too bogged down in race, religion, and diversity to make a great case for why people should care, vs hard sciences that usually produce applicable results.
But I think we can all agree that Economists are the real crazy ones.
I’ve been thinking about this same thing. I always refer to the stuff you don’t know you know as conditional memories. They are in there somewhere, but without something to trigger them they stay locked away. When we dream, it’s probably some sort of defrag program that organizes all the days info so it can be recalled more efficiently. Could it be possible we will eventually learn of human cloud storage? How handy would that be?!
That is a very interesting perspective. I have thought of dreams as jumping into parallel universes,but it has never occurred to me that they could be a defrag program. Thats why if you don’t get enough sleep, you start to feel all slow and crazy.
As for human cloud storage, that sounds handy, sure. But it also sounds confusing at best, and creepy at worst. People could then use other people as proxies, or robots. You would never really know who you are talking to. The whole world would be like the internet.
Thanks for the interesting comment!
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