For eg: Most of the time, our bodies wake up, digest food, maintain hormone levels, defends itself, sends reminders when we need something etc. Individual organs are not intelligent but come together to form an “intelligent” human being. If processes on a smaller level work so well together, why are we as individuals so stupid, lazy and unorganised?
In: Biology
Because those are all things that are controlled involuntarily and unconsciously. Part of your nervous system is dedicated to managing all that stuff and you aren’t aware of it and can’t control it. All of those functions happen on their own without any control or input from you.
Think about it like this. Let’s say you’re using your computer a lot and its getting hot, so the fans speed up to keep the computer cool. You didn’t need to tell your computer to do that, it’s part of its programming to manage that on its own while you browse reddit or play games or watch Netflix, which are the choices and decisions you’re making and are aware of.
There’s a second you inside you. The “you” that you normally think of is your conscious mind. That’s the mind that thinks, provides a little voice in your head saying things like “hey she’s cute” or “I want a peanut” or “red light means stop”.
The other you, the subconscious mind, controls the autonomic nervous system, which makes your body do all the stuff it needs to do to keep you alive and functioning. Sometimes you can influence it (like when you hold your breath) but mostly it’s completely out of the control of the conscious mind.
You know how there’s all these processes on your computer doing stuff in the background like syncing your photos to iCloud, but all you see is your web browser? Same kind of thing.
You can see how there’s an evolutionary advantage to having the autonomic nervous system. Imagine if you *could* hold your breath as long as you wanted. You’d die of oxygen starvation. That’s not good.
From evolution’s standpoint, as long as we can live long enough to reproduce, job done. Doesn’t matter if we’re lazy, stupid, etc. We can still pass on our genes, and that’s good enough.
Think of your body as multiple systems working together to create you. Your body doesn’t have to remember to do everything just one system has to remember to do one thing. like the sky doesn’t have to remember to shine the sun or to schedule when it rains. The sun shines and the rain falls and when you put those together you get the sky.
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