Daniel Dennett describes symmetry breaking using the neologism 'strange inversion of reasoning'. He describes theories from Darwin, Turing and Hume as examples of these.
Competence without comprehension is shared by Darwin and Turing's theories. Hume argues that habitual anticipation is how humans recognize causality. Habits lead to competence. Comprehension is an illusion.
Intuition involves the unconscious. It is below our conscious awareness. It is unknown for the conscious, but known for the unconscious. It is the unknown known.
Intuition is forged through constructive experience. The learning brain is live wired to its world. The illusions that we create of this world arise from interactive and empathic emergence.
Minds invent meaning in this world through the illusions that we create. What we call reasoning is based on the illusions that we've invented. We act in surprise or in disgust when these illusions are broken.
New discoveries in science have the effect of breaking human habits of thinking and thus our illusions. The feeling of the loss of meaning in this world is a consequence of modern life demolishing our previous illusions.
The unconscious mind is driven by a systematic inference process that is informed by the cognitive biases or habits that are formed through experience. Unconscious inference does not imply non-systematic thought.
Geniuses like Einstein who have spent years spent in the habits of systematic thought have developed a systematic intuitive mind. Systematic conscious thought leads to a systematic unconscious mind.
AlphaZero the chess playing system from @deepmind is a synthetic demonstration of how a systematic thought process (i.e. tree search and self play) leads to a systematic intuition.
It is indeed unfortunate that a majority of humanity is immersed in the notion that all relevant thought is conscious. In reality, all relevant thought is unconscious. Our consciousness exists to find explanations for these unconscious thoughts.
Kahneman's book 'Thinking Fast and Slow' that is meant for a popular audience if virtually unknown by most people. I did not know of it until I tried to attempt an understanding of Deep Learning technology.
It was only in the last few years that even DL researchers began to see the parallels with dual-process theory. The fact that human thought is mostly system 1 thinking comes as quite a shock. Even Kahneman himself in a recent AI debate had to revise his thinking.
An 'inversion of reasoning' or a 'symmetry breaking' happens when we discover what we previously thought to be true was in fact wrong. It comes as a shock to many that we are indeed intuition machines.
@threadreaderapp unroll
Completed and expanded here: medium.com/intuitionmachi…
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