I fuckin' figured it out. I figured out what humans can do or just do that no other animal does, i figured out how we become so mentally advanced, and i figured out the function and purpose of laughter.
Monkeys might have a little bit of our ability, but beyond a certain point they stop doing it or or stop doing it as much.
All animals, including humans seek consistency. We want to solve problems, animals solve problems too. Inconsistency causes panic, and confusion, fear, and inappropriate behavior in animals. However humans hunger for inconsistency. We exist with conflicting desires for consistency and inconsistency.
Most AI projects I have seen involve trying to recreate human problem solving abilities, but they always seem to learn so slowly, and they miss out on key problems to solve which we are inclined to include in our decisions, and the way they usually try to fix this is that they rework the pattern recognition of the machine so it can then solve more verstile problems.
How we use those conflict drives is that we create problems for ourselves to solve. Emotional and mental development come first from solving problems, but then later organizing information INTO problems which we then again solve. Every problem we create for ourselves allows us to create new ways to solve problems, and with each new solution we come up with we create new systems for dealing with future problems. We are not reactionary, we are actively trying to create and find inconsistencies which we then solve. As children we seem to develop certain conflicts and based on how we deal with them, we develop different personalities and problem solving skills. I believe that we dont stop there. We spend the rest of our lives creating solutions for problems we make up and emotional and mental maturity are the result.
Animals like dogs are social and they have conflicts they instinctively and situationally face and use the solutions to determine the dynamics of their social structure. Animals like monkeys develop emotionally like us too, they gradually face new conflicts which they solve and that develops them emotionally, but unlike us, at a certain point they largely stop creating new problems to solve.
And the purpose and function of laughter has to do with this. The basis of humor is inconsistencies. So hungry we are for inconsistencies that we have developed humor as a mechanism to reward us for finding it. And laughter is a signal to other humans that we have discovered something interesting and worth looking into.
So I think our advanced mentality has everything to do with us as a species hungering for problems to solve and satisfying that hunger by creating them ourselves.
Of course, and i wish this went without saying, this is only a hunch. I am not sure it is true, but it seems like an excellent explanation(besides being a usable model for my AI) But i'd be willing to specifically research it or use this as a masters thesis.
