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Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Level 1 Humans

The human, the Homo sapiens. ‘Sapiens’ – related to the word ‘Sapience’ which (by Wikipedia) is often defined as wisdom, or the ability of an organism or entity to act with appropriate judgment, a mental faculty which is a component of intelligence or alternatively may be considered an additional faculty, apart from intelligence, with its own properties.

The brain is a very powerful tool. As humans, we are able to think, and think of what we are thinking, and think of what we are thinking about what we are thinking, and so on. The brain is capable of deep and multi level thought processes, but it is often not put into good use. Of course, I'm refering to are those born with brains which have no defects, the unfortunate mentally handicap group is not in discussion. Now then, my interest is in the observations that people who are equipped with a perfectly healthy brain, yet not utilizing it to its full potential.

What is meant by “deep and multi level thought process”? Let us look at a simple input-output model, where the input is an external stimulus (job, academic stress etc) and the output is the response of the human (emotions, actions etc). A basic model of human actions goes like this: stimulus → process → response. The subject of interest is in the processing part.

For a high level human, the processing is extremely complex and varies with each individual. There is identification, analysis, control, feedback, and in each part, there can be a recursion of the whole process. On the other end, at the base are the level 1 humans, their response is mostly direct and subconscious; there are zero processing of the inputs which are applied to them.

But these level 1 humans are extremely important; they form the backbone of the society and the economy. Being easily influence by the media and marketing, they keep the money flowing in the economy, they are the basis of why/how society works.

Take the apple products for example, notice how widespread iProducts has become? Their products are designed such that minimal intelligence is required of the user, for people with limited processing capabilities. The interesting part is, thanks to media and marketing, these level 1 iHumans subconsciously believe that they are high class, intelligent and knowledgeable. On there other hand, there is the counterpart of the level 1 iHumans: the level 1 andro-humans, who stubbornly believe they’re so cool just because they reject the mainstream iProducts. These people have close to zero technical knowledge and almost everything they say is wrong. It doesn't matter which 'religion' they subscribe to, these level 1 humans are just preys of marketing and they don't even realize it. It is cute how entertaining they can be.

Take politics as another example, suppose a general political system with just the ruling party vs opposition party. Level 1 humans fall into two main groups: one who believes whatever propaganda the ruling party prints on the media, and the “righteous rebels” who think they know the truth behind everything, but actually just believe in the illusion painted by the oppositions. Each team blindly believes the bullshit fed by their “team leader”. Higher level humans are capable of analyzing the situation and realize that both parties are shit.

The point is: level 1 humans are not generally incapable of information processing; they eat whatever they are provided with, and then shit. The amazing part is, they are equipped with a perfectly functional brain. I believe that my brain is not any smarter anyone else’s, but I don’t understand why level 1 humans don’t seem to be putting their brain to use. Be it at work, school, or personal life, level 1 humans are capable of only the most direct straightforward response in actions or emotions without any depth of processing. For the record, I do not think I rank very high in the levels of humans, but I think my level is not too bad, since it’s sufficient enough to observe these trends.