The Ravenous Brain

Bor's theory of consciousness says that consciousness emerged to guide our mind's attention and working memory, to help with storing, recalling and processing the patterns we perceive in the world around us. Chunking - the grouping of information into more memorable segments - is at the heart of man's advantage over animals. It allows us to increase the limits of our working memory and therefore process and analyse more complex patterns.

Bor explains his theory by starting from zero, starting all the way down with genetic evolution. Even though there is content you've likely heard before, he does find interesting ways of telling the story. I especially remember finding his description of the Chinese Room thought experiment to be very insightful.

“Perhaps what most distinguishes us humans from the rest of the animal kingdom is our ravenous desire to find structure in the information we pick up in the world.”

When we are children every sensory stimuli excites us, as it represents new and undiscovered territory. Over our lifespan we lose that childlike excitability as we store more and more patterns into memory. Bor suggests the power of meditation to try to retrieve some of that fresh insatiable state of mind that children have.