“Hey, I reached that conclusion already! How’d you get there?”
FINALLY reading a book by Daniel C. Dennett, after years of avoiding. I know our thinking is “close” but a little different which can be a bit grating. I started reading it from back to front and it confirmed my suspicions and I thought “Ok, no need to finish this book”.
But then I read a review which said that _From Bacteria To Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds_ (2019) was very strong and even if one disagrees with his conclusions, the first part of the book is a fantastic entertaining journey and uncontroversial.
So I started at the front and it really is good. And I’m finding myself annoyed. “Hey, I reached that conclusion already! How’d you get there?”. “Hey I had that thought a few years ago – i can show you a post I made saying THE SAME THING” – it’s like all my best clever bits are there. So, it’s a good thing as it confirms I was on a similar track, reasoning in a similar fashion as Daniel C. Dennett already… but does it have to be SO MUCH the same? Distinguishing “How come” from “what for”, I was particularly proud of – and there it is, almost exactly what I wrote a few years ago… showing that we have similar reasoning but it’s still an odd feeling.