Trace this spray of winking light in the head.
Neurons firing. It is framing a new idea.
I see. Down below, in the under-brain, now coming up to its limited awareness.
Now the idea erupts into the over-brain. Spreads. Pretty, in a way.
That is how ideas come to it? A surprise.
Whereas to us, it is more like fog condensing.
How confusing, to never know what is going on inside yourself.
They speak the same way. Series of sounds emitted acoustically, without their knowing what they will say.
They find out what they think by speaking?
Access its acoustic emissions! It is stringing together bursts—“words”—to deal with us.
What a long word this is.
That is a scream, actually.
Meanwhile I see below its topbrain the motor muscle commands are—caution!
There! I caught the weapon. A simple chemical-discharge type. Amusing, the presumption.
Retain it for inspection. The creature became very excited—see the gaudy streamers of thought-webs!
Nearly all below the overbrain, so it does not truly know that it is feeling them. Yet the thoughts cause organs to squirt chemicals into the blood. What a curious way of talking to yourself. Not sensing it directly.
Or controlling it.
It still wriggles in our grasp. What slow neurons!
This poor thing has been hampered all through its evolution by these pitifully torpid synapses. They are a million times slower than ours!
But beautiful, in their serene way.
Do not try to manufacture beauty out of mere necessity.
This design was necessary?
Clearly these sluggish neurons forced such creatures to use parallel distributed processing.
How horrible.
See it dance! Is that “anger”?
Apparently. Their literature speaks of such a response. They do it often. See, “anger” is coded much like those orange-white filigrees now spreading through its midbrain.
Similar patterns, I see. Confirmation—they run in parallel.
Watch it try to have a new idea! See, they decide what to think by adding up many thousands of brain cell triggers. And those same brain cells are at the same time tied up in other parallel problems.
See, while it believes it is thinking about getting away from us—
Yes!—a small submind is meditating upon a sexual adventure it had, quite some time ago. And the submind enjoys its recallings.
What pleasure-fiends they are.
I wonder that they can get anything done at all.
They do everything at once, that is their secret. The same brain cell can be idea-making and at the same time, helping it digest food. How difficult!
Meanwhile, other decisions are trying to get made. They have to wait in line!
All with the same cells, tied together.
Incredible!
I am amazed that the tiny thing can concurrently walk and talk.
Simultaneously, yes—but not very well.
So ungainly! Even a sentimentalist like you will have to admit that.
True. Delicate neural circuits atop the head. Feet go forward, it starts to fall, then catches itself with the other foot. What if it did not?
