ant. It has a simple program of responses that generally work out all right, but

which are imprudently used by rote in many cases.

 

Another type of ant demonstrates that the limited brain of ants can be misled by

circumstances as well as by clever manipulation from other creatures. The brain

of this ant contains a simple behavioral program that directs the ant, when

walking, to follow the ant ahead. And when these ants stumble into walking in a

big circle, they sometimes walk round and round until they perish.

 

It seems obvious, to me at least, that the human brain must often operate

counterproductively just like the ant’s, from unavoidable oversimplicity in its

mental process, albeit usually in trying to solve problems more difficult than

those faced by ants that don’t have to design airplanes.

 

The perception system of man clearly demonstrates just such an unfortunate

outcome. Man is easily fooled, either by the cleverly thought out manipulation

of man, by circumstances occurring by accident, or by very effective

manipulation practices that man has stumbled into during “practice evolution”

and kept in place because they work so well. One such outcome is caused by a

quantum effect in human perception. If stimulus is kept below a certain level,

it does not get through. And, for this reason, a magician was able to make the

Statue of Liberty disappear after a certain amount of magician lingo expressed

in the dark.

 

The audience was not aware that it was sitting on a platform that was rotating