The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size PDF
Preview The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size
THE USER ILLUSION Tork NSRRETRANDERS Translated by Jonathan Sydenham VIKING Canada $39.98 The “user illusion” of this groundbreaking book's title comes from computer design and refers to the simplistic mental image most of us have of our PCs. Our consciousness, says Ngrretranders, is our user illusion of ourselves. During any given second, we consciously process only sixteen of the eleven million bits of information our senses pass on to our brains. In other words, the conscious part of us receives much less information than the unconscious part of us. We should trust our hunches and pursue our intuitions because they are closer to reality than the perceived reality of consciousness. In fact, most of what we call thought is actually the unconscious discarding of information. What our consciousness rejects constitutes the most valuable part of ourselves, the “Me” that the “I” draws on for most of our actions — fluent speech, riding a bicycle, anything involving expertise. Since this discarding takes time, there’s a half-second delay between reality and our perception of it. !f a baseball player thought about swinging at a pitch, he’d never hit the ball. makes the case that humans are designed for a much richer existence than process- ing a dribble of data from a computer screen, which actually constitutes a form of sensory deprivation. That there is actually far too little information in the so-called Information Age may be responsible for the malaise of modern society, 0498 that nagging feeling that there must be more to life. There is—but we have to get outside and live life with all our senses to expe- rience it more fully. Drawing on wildly disparate areas of scientific research, Tor Ngrretranders has made a compelling case for putting consciousness in perspective and embracing all that the world has to offer. SAXGREN HENRIK is Denmark's leading science writer and the award-winning author of more than ten books, many of them bestsellers. He has hosted numerous television programs on science and science-related topics and established a major coop- erative network of scientists and artists. He lives north of Copenhagen. Jacket design by David J. High Jacket photograph: OChris Windsor/Tony Stone images .A S A member of Penguin Putnam Inc. nU i VIKING h3t7t5 p:H/u/dswownw .pSetrnegetu,i nNpeuwt nYaomr.k,c omN. Y. 10014 Printed THE USER ILLUSION Cutting Consciousness Down to Size VIKING Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England First published in 1998 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. 35710 89 6 4 2 Copyright © Tor Norretranders, 1991 Translation copyright © Jonathan Sydenham, 1998 All rights reserved Originally published in Danish as Maerk verden by Gyldendalske Boghandel. Illustrations by Jesper Tom-Petersen LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA Norretranders, Tor. The user illusion : cutting consciousness down to size / Tor Norretranders ; translated by Jonathan Sydenham. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index: ISBN 0-670-87579-1 1. Consciousness. 2. Subconsciousness. 3. Human information processing. I. Tide. BF311.N675 1998 97-39580 153—dc21 CIP This book is printed on acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of America Set in New Baskerville Designed by Kathryn Parise Wibout limiting the nights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. What is done by what is called myself is, I feel, done by something greater than myself in me. JAMES CLERK MAXWELL on his deathbed, 1879 CONTENTS Preface 1X PART I CoMPUTATION 1 CHAPTER Maxwell’s Demon mn CHAPTER n Throwing Away Information 23 CHAPTER o Infinite Algorithms 45 CHAPTER P The Depth of Complexity 69 PART II CoMMUNICATION 89 CHAPTER The Tree of Talking 91 e CHAPTER p The Bandwidth of Consciousness 124 CHAPTER The Bomb of Psychology 157 I CHAPTER O The View from Within 178 vii viii Contents PART III CONSCIOUSNESS 211 CHAPTER 9: The Half-Second Delay 213 CHAPTER 10: Maxwell's Me 25] CHAPTER II: The User Illusion 277 CHAPTER 12: The Origin of Consciousness 310 PART IV ComPOSURE 329 CHAPTER 13: Inside nothing 331 CHAPTER 14: On the Edge of Chaos 355 CHAPTER 15: The Nonlinear Line 376 CHAPTER 16: The Sublime 400 Notes 419 Bibliography 445 Index 457
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