> In humans it seems as if some states of depression, boredom, etc. are > designed (whoops there I go anthropomorphising evolution) to break > through certain types of deadlock and runaway. E.g., there is a > separate feedback mechanism that sits on top of and responds to the > "intelligence"/"make sense of this" mechanism -- when the latter > breaks down, the former kicks in in certain ways. It might not be > always productive -- "f*ck it, let's just do it" / "damn the > torpedoes" -- but it does get us out of deadlocks and spirals.
this is something I have wondered about myself; particularly the interaction between boredom and curiosity. imo, these two features likely are an important part of the innate 'bootstrapping' program that seems to exist within humans (and to a lesser extent other animals) during development. the existence of said 'program' is an open question, but it would strike me as very odd if in fact it did not. I wonder if the habituation to repetitive stimuli seen in organisms has something to do with the high-level feedback system hypothesized in the quoted section above... ------- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
