Waking up Hermes

New science points us back to old ways of thinking about consciousness.

Back in the 60s, we thought we would have fully-functional robots walking around and doing our dishes.

But, obviously, that didn’t happen.

At the time, we had no idea what role attention (consciousness?) plays in seeing the world. We figured the world of stuff was just “out there,” and you interacted with it. Easy! Right?

As more and more decades slipped by with no fully autonomous robots, scientists started coming to strange conclusions.

What’s worth paying attention to

Over the last couple of decades, roboticists and cognitive scientists — unlikely bedfellows — began to come to similar conclusions: you don’t “see” an objective world out there. You see tools and obstacles. Those are directly related to your goals. Your overall story.

It’s hard to overstate how literally true it is that the world is a story.

To philosophers, this is called relevance realization.