Our brains have to model the world to navigate it
BRAINS SOLVE THE PROBLEM OF SURVIVAL
The theory of evolution presents us with a basic fact: most life on earth possesses an instinct towards survival. We necessarily are offspring of life with the instincts to survive long enough to procreate, and are therefore likely to also possess that instinct.
Those that didn’t possess the instinct to survive didn’t survive long enough to procreate and create us.
Our brains evolved a strong instinct to survive.
Wouldn’t it be just perfect if we were perpetual motion survival machines?
We could exist on our own in a state of tranquility, calm, peace — needing and wanting nothing.
Unfortunately, nothing could be farther from reality.
One of the primary rules of physics is entropy…everything decays from order to disorder in the absence of a countervailing force.
Life is order; death is the result of entropy.
To stay alive…to survive…takes energy. And we don’t produce energy ourselves. We are not self sufficient.
We need things from the world.
That means that our brains must navigate the world to get what we need.
This is not a trivial task! To do this, our brains have to answer four critical questions
How do I get information about what’s happening in the world?
How do I make sense of the information I’m gathering?
How much confidence do I have in my model?
How do I focus my limited resources?
Over the next few pages we’ll talk about how the brain answers each of these questions efficiently to help you get from where you are today, to the things you need to survive.
