Meta Cognition

Meta-cognition I often wonder why we can't come up with interesting ideas when in isolation. I've figured it out. We are pretty limited by our short-term memory or our human randomly-accessed memory (RAM). It's this problem that limits us as a species because we can't hold "large" ideas in our heads, only the summary or the piece of the large thing. Actually we can hold large things in our heads sort of like a memory palace, but this is akin to swapping out our long-term storage (our hard disk, our long-term memories) into our short-term when we need it. This is possible but it requires focus (system 2 thinking). We don't always have the available focus to do this since our focus is limited. If we can focus though, it's still very difficult to do "big thinking" because there are distractions and we need a lot of energy (which we don't always have). However, the solution to this would be the invention of tools. I can write all this down and maybe a month from now come back to it. Humans have always relied on tools since tens or hundreds of thousands of years (I think) in the past. The problem with the tools though, like the time/energy, is that you don't always have access to them. You might have your phone with you but that only allows you to jot down a note if you're busy. If you have a few free minutes you might grab your laptop (like I have just now) and write down more. However, if you want to run an analysis, if you want to solve a complicated math problem, if you want to do anything that requires significant time, you can't. You can only do these things with dedicated time blocks, and that's a tough sell. My point with this post was to write down how we can't figure things out because we need time, tools, and energy. When my little brother Phil was stranded in the wilderness he did have tools, so he could do some things, but he could only write. He could formulate strategy or play with ideas, but he couldn't test them. Right now I'm writing, but without any counterpoint or without any rigorous evidence for my statements. I know what I'm writing is correct (or rather, I FEEL it's correct) but I have no real evidence or links to studies. Links to studies are just people who made observations. My observations matter too and I've made a lot of them. So it's like a mini-study. I want to express that if Phil had say a calculator he could do advanced calculations, so his brain could think "I know gravity is 9.8 m/s/s, if I throw this rock over this cliff how long will it take to fall" and maybe there he'd need a stopwatch for more accurate measurement of time. Accurate measurements, fast calculations, these are important things. We generate data that we can then use for future work. Computation has become the thing of the past, present, and of course our future. Elaborate games, which maybe as cave dwellers would seem basic now, this is what we can do. We like patterns, they bring us food, but because they are "fun" we can make more elaborate games. We can "play" and that will never go away. We want to know, but it's difficult to know things without time, energy, and tools. Given better tools we can put in more time and energy and know more. We are exploring. We can't explore in a void. There needs to be structure. We can't just come up with strategies to games, or rather, we can, but without testing them they are almost meaningless. Like writing down some pieces of an equation but not solving them or checking to make sure they make sense mathematically. The "checking" or the "running" of code is the important. We need time for this. The writing is not that important. The reading and understanding is. I hope you understand, I need to go play puppy rescue now (hi Oliver).