Page Not Found — Wait But Why

Reason and imagination, combined together, lead to something even more incredible.

The Primitive Mind doesn’t care about you any more than gravity cares about atoms.

But genes can’t talk to their animals, so instead they control them by having them run on specialized survival software.

When he thinks about it—and he does think about it, sometimes—he wonders whether this is all a mistake and he ended up in the wrong head. Because he can’t help but notice that next to him at all times is a hectic ball of orange fuzz that was living here when he moved in.

The human, with smoke obscuring its self-awareness, doesn’t realize its mind has been switched over to software automation, leaving the Higher Mind pretty helpless to take back the controls. This is when humans start trouble, for themselves and for others.

Animals are just a hack these outlier genes came up with—temporary containers designed to carry the genes and help them stay immortal.

In simple animals, the software is an automated program that runs the animal on instinct. In more complex animals, the software also includes a number of feelings—higher-level behavior-manipulation tools like pain punishments, pleasure treats, and emotion manipulations.

They evolved into a variety of hominid species, all of whom have since been discontinued, except one—a saucy one called homo sapiens. For them, the advancements in intelligence proved to be a major survival asset, so their cognitive capacity rapidly increased, developing into an array of shiny new tools that no animal had ever possessed before. Thr... See more

If genes could talk to their animal, they’d probably issue a few simple commands:Stay alive and well functioning as long as possible. And then pass us into new containers before you inevitably deteriorate. Once we’re in new containers, those containers are more important than you. Sacrifice yourself if it’ll help them fulfill the first two instruct... See more