Consciousness is learning
My cousin was solving a Rubik's cube the other day. I was amazed how fast one can learn it. But what most struck me is the difference between the processes that he was doing consciously and subconsciously. In this article I will argue that consciousness is learning. After just one week of messing around with the cube, he already learned a bunch of moves that became automatic. He make one side be filled with the same color pretty fast without paying much attention. It seemed as if it were automatic, learned, he could talk while doing it. By repeating a certain move enough times, he learned it, which means that he can now do it without consciously thinking of it. He can now think about higher order moves consciously. With time, those moves will be learned too and he will no longer need to consciously think through the sequence of moves. You don't walk consciously. There was a time, though, when you did think of every move, about when you were 1 year old. If...