Dimension #4: Cognition
I Interpret, Therefore I Am: Dissonances Abound!
In our last article, we established that emotion - the Third Dimension of Reality - acts as a powerful amplification agent, paving the way for us to discuss the Fourth Dimension and the other function of our brain that is well understood: cognition.
This is the area where we start distancing ourselves from the other animals on the planet. Whereas we share similar capacities of material, perception, and emotion dimensions with them, we are many orders of magnitude more complex than other species when it comes to cognitive ability. Humans today have the ability to create quantum computers, micro black holes, and even synthetic cognition otherwise known as artificial intelligence.
The disparity between us and other life in this regard astounds me because while there are deviations in nature, anomalies of this magnitude are extremely rare. And for good reason as nature is a system, and systems breed a form of homogenous ranges to minimize the risk of runaway scenarios that can bring entire systems down.
Yet, here we are.
Our thinking ability is derived from a myriad of factors including the size of our brain relative to our body, the number of neurons, the number of connections, the speed of the connections, the structural folds, and so on. Among these factors, it is the number of neurons and the density of them in our cerebral and prefrontal cortex that is understood to be a main distinguishing factor for our intelligence. For example, even though elephants have brains four times heavier and house three times as many total neurons, they only have a third of the number of neurons in their cerebral cortex compared to us.
Once again, there is an evolutionary history to our cognitive development and why our brains are so large relative to the size of our bodies. A pivotal development was the harnessing of fire and using it to cook food.
Our brain is a huge metabolic cost center - it consumes 20% of our body’s energy even though it represents just 2% of our mass. In fact, our brain needs more energy for its size than any other organ in our body. So when our ancestors came up with the innovation of cooking about 1.8 million years ago, it was accompanied by a huge surge in human brain size. The reason is that 100 percent of cooked food is metabolized by the body, whereas raw foods yield just 30 or 40 percent of their nutrients. Cooked food gave us the caloric energy that larger brains require.
It is important to understand why our cognitive abilities are so different from other animals because, as mentioned earlier, it is where we begin to branch off into higher level thought processes where control begins to shift from the external to the internal realm.
The human mind is essentially a very sophisticated prediction machine - it is constantly making predictions at various levels and comparing sensory data with the predictions made in a perpetual tuning process.
For example, we can ‘fill in the blanks’ and mentally finish someone else’s sentences. Every word or sound is processed by our brain which creates detailed statistical expectations. The moment there is a contextually unexpected word, there is a strong response as part of the tuning process. Saying something unexpected is treated as disruptive and triggers an emotional response that locks the memory in. This is a technique I have used when giving presentations to have my audience “lock-in” my message - something you should consider using too.
Our prediction machine extends well beyond words and linguistics. For example, we all have visual blind spots due to the absence of receptors where the retinas of our eyes connect with the optic nerve. For example, close your left eye, and look at the “+” with your right eye.
If you move your head closer to the image, the black dot will disappear at a certain distance. Yet, if you shut one eye and walk around this world, you will never notice this blind spot because your brain visually fills in the missing perception data.
Beyond filling in the blanks, our minds can also create meaning through associative pattern recognition. Take this audio sample - the same audio can be interpreted as either “green needle” or “brainstorm,” two words that phonetically do not sound anything like each other:
The only thing that changes is the tuning of your cognitive mind. To put into ChatGPT context, we “hallucinated” meaning into the audio - something we are a lot better at than artificial intelligence, at least for the time being.
In fact, our minds are always trying to predict what is going to happen next so that we are ready for whatever life throws at us. Even before events happen we estimate, in advance, whether they are likely to happen.
Within our anterior lateral prefrontal cortex (one of the areas highlighted earlier as a distinguishing feature of humans) is an area that is crucial to our ability in estimating our future chances of success. This ability guides the tasks that we are most likely to attempt, and those that we may forgo.
We have now covered four of the six dimensions: material, perception, emotion, and cognitive. They present us with the framework and tools at our disposal to generate an observable rendition of reality.
I hope by now you realize that the representation we manifest through these four dimensions is a fuzzy “best guess” with multiple influencing points that could alter the rendering. Much of it is a result of biological evolution over many thousands of years, which has spawned capabilities through which we literally fabricate parts of our reality.
As we go about our daily lives, we must keep this understanding abreast - things that we think are absolute certainties may actually not be so. We are rendering machines developed over hundreds of thousands of years that predict, fill in the gaps, and learn as we stumble along.
Always keep an open mind, no matter how certain you are. Do not be afraid to question the defaults. Realize that others may be at different levels of awareness, and factor that in when you react to how they present themselves.
The final two dimensions complete the construction by incorporating concepts that address “for what,” and “for whom” - concepts that transverse science and delve into the metaphysical and spiritual realms.
➡️ Watch the accompanying YouTube video for this article here:
➡️ Read the previous FoFty manuscript article here:
About Sang: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sangyshin