This Is What Consciousness Does:

There Are An Infinite Number Of Boring Things To Do In Science.

A Typical Neuron Makes About Ten Thousand Connections To Neighboring Neurons. Given The Billions Of Neurons, This Means There Are As Many Connections In A Single Cubic Centimeter Of Brain Tissue As There Are Stars In The Milky Way Galaxy.

Just Like A Good Drama, The Human Brain Runs On Conflict.

We Are Made Up Of An Entire Parliament Of Pieces And Parts And Subsystems. Beyond A Collection Of Local Expert Systems, We Are Collections Of Overlapping, Ceaselessly Reinvented Mechanism, A Group Of Competing Factions. The Conscious Mind Fabricates Stories To Explain The Sometimes Inexplicable Dynamics Of The Subsystem Inside Brain. It Can Be Disquieting To Consider The Extent To Which All Of Our Actions Are Driven By Hardwired Systems Doing What They Do Best While We Overlay Stories About Choices.

When One Part Of The Brain Makes A Choice, Other Parts Can Quickly Invent A Story To Explain Why. If You Show The Command "walk" To The Right Hemisphere (the One Without Language), The Patient Will Get Up And Start Walking. If You Stop Him And Ask Why He's Leaving, His Left Hemisphere, Cooking Up An Answer, Will Say Something Like "i Was Going To Get A Drink Of Water."