Why we are doomed

I was thinking about why we (mankind) haven't made all that much progress in human relations in the past millennium or so, and some of our discussions over the holidays. By 'human relations' I mean everything from law and government to talking with one another. We really are doomed to more or less waddle through our problems as we have been in the past. That is hardly a revelation, but I have come up with the reason: our brains. They are just not good enough.

I audited a course taught by Nobel Prize winner Herb Simon. Despite its fancy name the course was basically about our brains and how we think. He said that the brain was a serial machine, i.e. it can only process one piece of information at a time (as opposed to parallel processing). We were not allow to take notes in class since time spent writing would interrupt time spent listening. Others say this as well and, while I don't think that it is the last word, I think it is generally true. The popular 'multitasking' is actually switching very quickly from one thing to another.

And that's a shame. If I could hold two thoughts at the same time, I would be much better at discourse. I could hold two ideas at once—yours and mine—and really see how they fit together. I know…we can think about, compare, evaluate and synthesize ideas, but it seems that we continually think and talk in terms of THIS is how it is. If we could hold two somewhat contradictory ideas at once, I think the whole way of looking at the world would be different.

So until our brains evolve to parallel processing, we are doomed. (Well, unless, we can enlarge the 'compassionate' area of our brains.)