Free The Future of the Mind by Michio Kaku Page B

situations, we also constantly analyze and evaluate information from many feedback loops. We do this by running simulations sometimes even beyond our own life span and even thousands of years into the future. The point of running simulations is to evaluate various possibilities to make the best decision to fulfill a goal. This occurs in the prefrontal cortex, which allows us to simulate the future and evaluate the possibilities in order to chart the best course of action.
    This ability evolved for several reasons. First, having the ability to peer into the future has enormous evolutionary benefits, such as evading predators and finding food and mates. Second, it allows us to choose among several different outcomes and to select the best one.
    Third, the number of feedback loops explodes exponentially as we go from Level 0 to Level I to Level II, so we need a “CEO” to evaluate all these conflicting, competing messages. Instinct is no longer enough. There has to be a central body that evaluates each of these feedback loops. This distinguishes human consciousness from that of the animals. These feedbackloops are evaluated, in turn, by simulating them into the future to obtain the best outcome. If we didn’t have a CEO, chaos would ensue and we would have sensory overload.
    A simple experiment can demonstrate this. David Eagleman describes how you can take a male stickleback fish and have a female fish trespass on its territory.The male gets confused, because it wants to mate with the female, but it also wants to defend its territory. As a result, the male stickleback fish will simultaneously attack the female while initiating courtship behavior. The male is driven into a frenzy, trying to woo and kill the female at the same time.
    This works for mice as well. Put an electrode in front of a piece of cheese. If the mouse gets too close, the electrode will shock it. One feedback loop tells the mouse to eat the cheese, but another one tells the mouse to stay away and avoid being shocked. By adjusting the location of the electrode, you can get the mouse to oscillate, torn between two conflicting feedback loops. While a human has a CEO in its brain to evaluate the pros and cons of the situation, the mouse, governed by two conflicting feedback loops, goes back and forth. (This is like the proverb about the donkey that starves to death because it is placed between two equal bales of hay.)
    Precisely how does the brain simulate the future? The human brain is flooded by a large amount of sensory and emotional data. But the key is to simulate the future by making causal links between events—that is, if A happens, then B happens. But if B happens, then C and D might result. This sets off a chain reaction of events, eventually creating a tree of possible cascading futures with many branches. The CEO in the prefrontal cortex evaluates the results of these causal trees in order to make the ultimate decision.
    Let’s say you want to rob a bank. How many realistic simulations of this event can you make? To do this, you have to think of the various causal links involving the police, bystanders, alarm systems, relations with fellow criminals, traffic conditions, the DA’s office, etc. For a successful simulation of the robbery, hundreds of causal links may have to be evaluated.
    It is also possible to measure this level of consciousness numerically. Let’s say that a person is given a series of different situations like the one above and is asked to simulate the future of each. The sum total number of causal links that the person can make for all these situations can be tabulated. (One complication is that there are an unlimited number of causal links that aperson might make for a variety of conceivable situations. To get around this complication, we divide this number by the average number of causal links obtained from a large control group. Like the IQ exam, one may multiply this number by 100. So a person’s level of consciousness,